With regard to the prophecy or denunciation made by him against the Talbots, recorded in our legend, Dr Whitaker observes,—­“Something like these hereditary alternations of sense and folly might have happened, and have given rise to a prophecy fabricated after the event; a real prediction to this effect would have negatived the words of Solomon,—­’Yea, I have hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me; and who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?’

“This, however, is not the only instance in which Henry is reported to have displayed that singular faculty, the Vaticinium Stultorum."[56]

In 798, this place was noted for the defeat of Wada, the Saxon chief, by Aldred, king of Northumberland.  He was one of the petty princes who joined the murderers of King Ethelred.  After this overthrow he fled to his castle, on a hill near Whitby, and dying, was interred not far from the place.  Two great pillars, about twelve feet asunder, mark the spot, and still bear the name of “Wada’s Grave.”

It was on a bright and glorious summer evening, in the year 1464, while the red glare of sunset was still in the west, and a wide blush of purple passed rapidly over the distant fell and the blue and heath-clad mountain, that a group of labourers were returning from their daily toil through the forest glades that skirt the broad and beautiful Ribble below Waddow.  Some of them were of that class called hinds, paying the rents of their little homesteads by stated periods of service allotted to each; in this respect differing but little from the serfs and villains of a more remote era, their toil not a whit less irksome, though their liberty, in name at least, was less under the control and caprice of their lord.

Two of the peasants loitered considerably behind the rest, seemingly engrossed by a conversation too interesting or too important for the ears of their companions.  The elder of the speakers was clad in a coarse woollen doublet; a belt of untanned leather girt his form; and on his head was a cap of grey felt, without either rim or band.  His gait was heavy and slouching.  Strong, tall, and muscular, he stooped considerably; but less through age and infirmity than from the laborious nature of his occupations.  His companion, younger and more vivacious, was distinguished by a goodly and well-thriven hump, and by that fulness and projection of the chest which usually characterise this species of deformity.  His long arms nearly trailed to the ground as he walked; huge and sprawling, they seemed to have been originally intended as an attachment to a frame of much more gigantic proportions.  His face had that peculiar form and expression which always, more or less, accompany this kind of malformation.  Wide, large, angular; the chin sharp and projecting, supported on the breast; the whole head scarcely rivalling the shoulders in height and obliquity.  His disposition was evidently wayward and irascible, and a keen satirical humour lurked in every line of his pallid visage; generally at war with his species, and ready to act on the defensive; snarling whenever he was approached, and always anticipating gibe and insult from his fellows.