“This ballad is given from an old black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, collated with another in the British Museum, H. 263, folio.  It is there entitled, ’The Lady Isabella’s Tragedy, or the Step-Mother’s Cruelty; being a relation of a lamentable and cruel murther, committed on the body of the Lady Isabella, the only daughter to a noble Duke, etc.  To the tune of “The Lady’s Fall."’ To some copies are annexed eight more modern stanzas, entitled, ‘The Duchess’ and Cook’s Lamentation.’”

Dr Whitaker says, “The remains of Radcliffe Tower prove it to have been a manor-house of the first rank.  It has been quadrangular; but two sides only remain.”  A licence to kernel and embattle shows the date of its erection, or rather rebuilding, to be in the fourth year of Henry IV., by James Radcliffe, who, we find by the pedigree, was the eldest son of William Radcliffe.  He married Joan, daughter to Sir John Tempest of Bracewell, in the county of York.

“The noble old hall is forty-three feet two inches in length, and in one part twenty-six feet, in another twenty-eight feet in width.  The two massy principals which support the roof are the most curious specimens of ancient wood-work I have ever seen.  The broadest piece of timber is two feet seven inches by ten inches.  A wall-plate on the outside of one beam, from end to end, measures two feet by ten inches.  The walls are finished at the square with a moulded cornice of oak.

“At the bottom of the room is a door opening into one of the towers, the lower part of which only remains, of massy grout-work, and with three arches, each furnished with a funnel or aperture like a chimney.  On the left side of the hall are the remains of a very curious window-frame of oak, wrought in Gothic tracery, but square at top.  Near the top of the hall, on the right, are the remains of a doorway, opening into what was once a staircase, and leading to a large chamber above the kitchen, the approach to which was by a door of massy oak, pointed at the top.

“Over the high tables of ancient halls (as is the case in some college halls at present) it was common to have a small aperture, through which the lord or master could inspect, unseen, what was going on below.  But in this situation at Radcliffe is a ramified window of oaken work, opening from the apartment above mentioned, but now closed up.”

[Illustration:  RADCLIFFE TOWER.

Drawn by G. Pickering.  Engraved by Edw^d Finden.]

This consists of eight arches, with trefoil-pointed tops, four and four, with two narrower apertures above.