“Such was the state of property and manners when the house of Lacy became possessed of Blackburnshire.”  The simplicity of the Saxon tenures was destroyed.  A tract of country, which had been parcelled out among twenty-eight lords, now became subject to one; and all the intricacies of feodal dependence, all the rigours of feodal exaction, wardships, reliefs, escheats, &c., were introduced at once.  Yet the Saxon lords, though dependent, were not in general actually stripped of their fees.  By successive steps, however, the origin of all landed property within the hundred, some later copyholds excepted, is to be traced to voluntary concessions from the Lacies, or their successors of the house of Lancaster; not grants of pure beneficence, but requiring personal service from the owners, and yearly customs or payments, equivalent at that time to their value.  Their present worth grew out of the operation of causes little understood in these ages either by lord or vassal—­namely, the certainty of the possession, the diminishing value of money, and the perpetuity of the title.

In four generations, or little more than one hundred years, the line of the Lacies became extinct; Roger Fitz-Eustace, lord of Halton and constable of Chester, coming into possession by right of his grandmother Awbrey, uterine sister of Robert de Lacy, the last of this illustrious race.  Fitz-Eustace, however, took the title of De Lacy; but in the fourth descent from him the very name was lost.  Henry de Lacy, the last and greatest man of his line, dying the 5th February 1310, left one daughter only, who had married, during her father’s lifetime, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster—­and carried along with her an inheritance even then estimated at 10,000 marks per annum.  On the earl’s attainder, the honour of Clitheroe, with the rest of his possessions, were forfeited to the crown.  After undergoing many changes while it continued a member of the Duchy of Lancaster—­that is, until the restoration of Charles II.—­that prince, in consideration of the great services of General Monk, whom he created Duke of Albemarle, bestowed it upon him and his heirs for ever.  Christopher, his son, dying without issue, left his estates to his wife, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle; by her they were bequeathed to her second husband, Ralph, Duke of Montague, whose grand-daughter Mary, married George, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards Duke of Montague.  Elizabeth, his daughter, married Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, in whose family the honour of Clitheroe is now vested.

Clitheroe Castle is described by Grose as “situated on the summit of a conical insulated crag of rugged limestone rock, which suddenly rises from a fine vale, in which towards the north, at the distance of half-a-mile, runs the Ribble, and a mile to the south stands Pendle Hill, which seems to lift its head above the clouds.”

In the time of the Commonwealth it was dismantled by order of Parliament; the chapel has totally disappeared; and nothing now remains but the square keep and some portions of the strong wall by which the building was surrounded.[49] The tower, though much undermined, remains firm as the rock on which it was built, and forms the principal object in our engraving.