BYGONE CUMBERLAND AND
WESTMORLAND.

THE LEPERS’ SQUINT, ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH, BROUGH-UNDER-STAINMORE.
From a Photo by Mr. George Arkwright, Beatrice, Nebraska, U.S.A.

Bygone Cumberland
and
Westmorland

By Daniel Scott

LONDON:
WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., 5, FARRINGDON AVENUE, E.C.
1899.

TO EMMA.

Preface.

The information contained in the following pages has been derived from many sources during the last twenty years, and in a considerable number of cases I have examined old registers and other documents without being then aware that some of their contents had already been published.

Few districts in the United Kingdom have been more thoroughly “worked” for antiquarian and archæological purposes than have Cumberland and Westmorland. The Antiquarian Society and the numerous Literary and Scientific Societies have, during the last thirty years, been responsible for a great amount of research. I have endeavoured to acknowledge each source—not only as a token of my own obligation, but as a means of directing others wishing further information on the various points.

I also desire to acknowledge the help received in various ways from numerous friends in the two counties.

Daniel Scott.

Penrith, June 1st, 1899.

Contents.

Bygone Cumberland and Westmorland.

An Unparalleled Sheriffwick.

For a period of 645 years—from 1204 to 1849—Westmorland, unlike other counties in England (excluding, of course, the counties Palatine), had no Sheriff other than the one who held the office by hereditary right. The first Sheriff of the county is mentioned in 1160, and nine or ten other names occur at subsequent periods, until in 1202, the fourth year of the reign of King John, came Robert de Vetripont. Very soon afterwards the office was made hereditary in his family “to have and to hold of the King and his heirs.” The honour and privileges were possessed by no less than twenty-two of Robert’s descendants. Their occupation of the office covers some very exciting periods of county history, the tasks committed to the Sheriffs in former centuries being frequently of an arduous as well as dangerous character.

The Sheriff had very important duties of a military character to carry out. Thus in the sixth year of Henry the Third we have the command from the King to the Sheriff of Westmorland that without any delay he should summon the earls, barons, knights, and freeholders of his bailiwick, and that he should hasten to Cockermouth and besiege the castle there, afterwards destroying it to its very foundations. This order was a duplicate of one sent to the Sheriff of Yorkshire concerning Skipton Castle and other places. It is not known, however, whether the instructions respecting Cockermouth were carried out or not.

The powers of Sheriff not being confined to the male members of the family, the histories of Westmorland contain the unusual information that at least two women occupied, by right of office, seats on the bench alongside the Judges. The first of these was Isabella de Clifford, widow of Robert, and, wrote the historian Machell, “She sate as is said in person at Apelby as Sheriff of the county, and died about 20 of Edward I.” The other case was that of the still more powerful, strenuous, and gifted woman, Anne, Countess of Pembroke. Of her it is recorded that she not only took her seat on the bench, but “rode on a white charger as Sheriffess of Westmorland, before the Judges to open the Assizes.” It will not be forgotten that territorial lords and ladies in bygone times held Courts of their own in connection with their manors and castles. The Rev. John Wharton, Vicar of South Stainmore, in a communication to the writer some time ago said: “From documents shown me by the late John Hill, Esq., Castle Bank, Appleby, the great but somewhat masculine Anne, Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, seemed partial to Courts of her own. She sat upon many offenders as a judge, and it is handed down that she executed divers persons for treasonous designs and plotting against her estate.”

The Memoranda Rolls belonging to the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer, show the mode of presenting or nominating the Sheriff for Westmorland in the time of the Cliffords, his admittance to the office by the Barons of the Exchequer, and his warrant for executing it. From the Rolls of the 15th, 19th, and 23rd years of Edward the First, when the Sheriffwick passed into the family of the Cliffords, it seems that the right of appointment was the subject of litigation between the two daughters and heiresses of the last of the Vetriponts. This ended in an agreement that the elder sister should “present” to, and the younger should “approve” the appointment. In this way Robert de Moreville was admitted to the office of Sheriff in the fifteenth year of Edward’s reign, Gilbert de Burneshead three years later, and Ralph de Manneby in 1295, each swearing faithfully to execute his office and answer to both daughters. On the death of the sisters the Sheriffwick became vested in Robert de Clifford, son and heir of the eldest, and continued in the possession of his descendants until the attainder in 1461.

The list of Sheriffs is, of course, a very long one, and even allowing for the large number of individuals who have left nothing more than their names, there is much material for interesting study in the histories of the others. The actual work was rarely done by the holders of the office. “The functionaries who performed the duties were simply deputies for the Sheriff, and although we find them attesting many ancient charters and grants relating to the county, recording themselves as Vice-Comites (or Sheriffs), they simply executed the office as Pro-Vice-Comites (or Under-Sheriffs). The attainder of the Cliffords during the Wars of the Roses, until its reversal in the first year of Henry the Sixth, causes a void as regards their family, their places being filled from among the supporters of the House of York.”[1] For a considerable period Westmorland was treated as part of Yorkshire, the Sheriff of the latter county rendering an account of the two places jointly. From the time of John, however, the accounts rendered for Westmorland by Yorkshire Sheriffs would have been as Sub-Vice-Comites for the Vetriponts.

The High Sheriffs and their connections lived in considerable state when the country was sufficiently peaceable to permit of it. This is proved by the arrangement and size of their castles, while Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, half-brother of Henry Clifford, used to boast that he had three noble houses. One, at Crosby Ravensworth, where there was a park full of deer, was for pleasure; one for profit and warmth wherein to reside in winter, was the house at Yanwath; and the estate at Threlkeld was “well stocked with tenants ready to go with him to the wars.” The various “progresses” of the Countess Anne also afford evidence of the state kept up, for she frequently speaks of her journeys from one castle to another “escorted by my gentlemen and yeomen.”

Among the numerous pieces of patronage which became the prerogative of the High Sheriffs of Westmorland, was that of the Abbey of Shap, but there does not appear to be any record when this and other privileges passed from them, the property being granted by Henry the Eighth to the Whartons. Where so much power lay in the hands of one person, or of one family, differences with other authorities was perhaps inevitable. The interests of the burgesses of Appleby would seem to have clashed at times with those of the Sheriff, and for very many years the parties kept up a crusade against each other, especially during the reigns of the first three Edwards. What the cost of those proceedings may have been to the Sheriff cannot be told, but on the other side the result was the forfeiture of rights for a considerable time, because the fee farm rent had got into arrear. The Hereditary High Sheriff had the privilege of appointing the governor of the gaol at Appleby, but he had to pay £15 per annum towards the salary, while the magistrates appointed the other officials and made up from the county rates the remainder of the cost of the institution.

The long period during which the holders of the Sheriffwick held the privilege is the more remarkable—as Sir G. Duckett, Bart., reminded the northern archæologists in 1879—because of the way in which ancient grants and statutes have in almost all cases become a dead letter and obsolete.

A singular incident in connection with the Sheriffwick happened about seventy years ago, and is recorded in the life of Baron Alderson, father of the Marchioness of Salisbury. The Baron went to Appleby to hold the half-yearly assizes, but on arriving there found that he could not carry out his work because Lord Thanet was in France, and had omitted to send the documents for obtaining juries. The Judge had therefore to spend his time as best he could for several days, until a messenger could see the High Sheriff in Paris and obtain the necessary papers.

When the eleventh and last Earl of Thanet died in June, 1849, the male line of the family ceased, the estates passing by will to Sir Richard Tufton, father of the present Lord Hothfield. The office of Hereditary High Sheriff was claimed by the Rev. Charles Henry Barham, of Trecwn, nephew of the Earl, but a question arising as to the validity of a devise of the office, Mr. Barham relinquished his claim in favour of the Crown. An Act was afterwards passed—in July, 1850—making the Shrievalty in Westmorland the same as in other counties.

Watch and Ward.

The geographical position of the two counties rendered an extensive system of watching essential for the safety of the residents. In the northern parts of Cumberland, along the Border, this was particularly the case; but there watch and ward was more of a military character than was necessary elsewhere, while as it was a part of the national defence it passed into the care of the Government for the time being. From the necessity for “watching and warding” against the northern incursions, came the name of the divisions of the two counties. Cumberland had for centuries five wards; more recently for purposes of local government these were increased to seven; and Westmorland also has four wards.

The regulations of the barony of Gilsland, in a manuscript volume belonging to the Earl of Lonsdale, are very explicit as to what was required of the tenants in the way of Border service. These stipulated for good horses, efficient armour and weapons for the bailiffs, and a rigid supervision of those of lower rank. The tenants’ nags were ordered to be “able at anye tyme to beare a manne twentie or four-and-twentie houres without a baite, or at the leaste is able sufficientlye to beare a manne twentie miles within Scotlande and backe againe withoute a baite.” Every tenant, moreover, had to provide himself with “a jacke, steale-cape, sworde, bowe, or speare, such weapons as shall be thought meatest for him to weare by the seyght of the baylife where he dwelleth or by the land-serjeante.” The rules as to the watch required that every tenant should keep his night watch as he should be appointed by the bailiff, the tenant breaking his watch forfeiting two shillings, which in those days was a formidable amount. The tenants had to go to their watch before ten o’clock, and not to return to a house till after cock-crow; they were also required to call twice to all their neighbours within their watches, once about midnight, and “ones after the cockes have crowen.”

Detailed instructions were drawn up for the guidance of the men during their watches. These were even less emphatic, however, than those which referred to the maintenance and keeping of the beacons, of which fourteen public ones (including Penrith and Skiddaw) are named in Nicolson and Burn’s History. Modernising the spelling, one of the paragraphs runs as follows:—

“The watchers of a windy night shall watch well of beacons, because in a wind the fray cannot be heard, and therefore it is ordered that of a windy night (if a fray rise) beacons shall be burnt in every lordship by the watchers. One watcher shall keep the beacon burning and the other make speed to the next warner, to warn all the lordships, and so to set forwards. And if the watchers through their own default do not see the beacons burn, or do not burn their own beacons, as appointed, they shall each forfeit two shillings. If the warners have sufficient warning by the watchers, and do not warn all within their warning with great speed, if any fault be proved of the warner he shall forfeit 18d.”

The “Orders of the Watch” made by Lord Wharton in October, 1553, are of considerable local interest in connection with this subject, and the following extracts may for that reason be quoted:—

“Ainstable, Armathwhaite, Nunclose, and Flodelcruke to keep nightly Paytwath with four persons; William Skelton’s bailiffs and constables to appoint nightly to set and search the said watch. Four fords upon Raven, to be watched by Kirkoswald, Laisingby, Glassenby, Little Salkeld, Ullesby, Melmorby, Ranwyke, and Harskew: at every ford nightly four persons; and the searchers to be appointed by the bailiffs and constables, upon the oversight of Christopher Threlkeld, the King’s Highness’s servant. Upon Blenkarn Beck are five fords, to be watched by Blenkarn, Culgaith, Skyrwath, Kirkland, Newbiggin, Sourby, Millburn, Dufton, Marton, Kirkbythore, Knock, and Milburn Grange; bailiffs and constables to appoint searchers: Overseers, Christopher Crackenthorp, and Gilbert Wharton, the King’s Highness’s servants. Upon the water of Pettrel: From Carlisle to Pettrelwray; bailiffs and constables there, with the oversight of the late Prior of Carlisle for the time being, or the steward of the lands. And from thence to Plompton; overseer of the search and watch nightly John Skelton of Appletreethwayt, and Thomas Herrington, Ednal and Dolphenby; Sir Richard Musgrave, knight, overseer, his deputy or deputies. Skelton and Hutton in the Forest; overseers thereof, William Hutton and John Suthake. Newton and Catterlen, John Vaux, overseer, nightly. For the search of the watches of all the King’s Highness’s lands, called the Queen’s Hames, the steward there, his deputy or deputies, nightly. From the barony of Graystock; the Lord Dacre, his steward, deputy or deputies, overseers. This watch to begin the first night of October, and to continue until the 16th day of March; and the sooner to begin, or longer to continue at the discretion of the Lord Warden General or his deputy for the time being. Also the night watch to be set at the day-going, and to continue until the day be light; and the day watch, when the same is, to begin at the day light, and to continue until the day be gone.”

PENRITH BEACON.
From a Photo by Mr. John Bolton, Penrith.

Penrith Beacon had an important place in the system of watch and ward in the south-eastern parts of Cumberland and North Westmorland. As a former local poet wrote:—

“Yon grey Beacon, like a watchman brave,
Warned of the dreaded night, and fire-fed, gave
Heed of the threatening Scot.”

The hill before being planted as it now appears, was simply a bare fell, without enclosures of any kind. The late Rev. Beilby Porteus, Edenhall, in one of his books,[2] after mentioning the uses of Penrith Beacon, added:—“Before these parts were enclosed, every parish church served as a means of communication with its neighbours; and, while the tower of Edenhall Church bears evident tokens of such utility, there yet exist at my other church at Langwathby, a morion, back, and breast-plate, which the parish were obliged to provide for a man, termed the ‘Jack,’ whose business it was at a certain hour in the evening to keep watch, and report below, if he perceived any signs of alarm, or indications of incursions from the Border.”

South Westmorland had as its most important look-out station, Farleton Knott, where “a beacon was sustained in the days of Scottish invasion, the ruddy glow of which was responded to by the clang of arms and the war notes of the bugle.”

Wardhole, now known as Warthol, near Aspatria, was once an important protection station, watch and ward being kept against the Scots; from this place “the watchmen gave warning to them who attended at the beacon on Moothay to fire the same.” The ancient beacon of Moota is about three miles from Cockermouth. Dealing with the natural position of Bothel, Nicolson wrote over a century ago:—“The town stands on the side of a hill, where in old time the watch was kept day and night for seawake, which service is performed by the country beneath Derwent at this place, and above Derwent, in Copeland, at Bothil, in Millom. It is called servicium de bodis in old evidences, whereupon this hill was named the Bode-hill, and the village at the foot of it Bode-hill-ton (Bolton), or Bodorum Collis. The common people used to call a lantern a bowet, which name and word was then in use for a light on the shore to direct sailors in the night, properly signifying a token, and not a light or lantern, as they call a message warranted by a token a bodeword, and the watchmen were called bodesmen, because they had a bode, or watchword given them, to prevent the enemy’s fraud in the night season.”

There was a noted beacon near Bootle, from which that town took its old name—“Bothill”—the beacon being fired, upon the discovery of any ships upon the Irish Sea which might threaten an invasion, by the watchmen who lay in booths by the beacon. For the support of this service the charge or payment of seawake was provided. This payment occurs in connection with various manors; thus on an inquisition of knights’ fees in Cumberland it was found that Sir William Pennington held the manor of Muncaster “of the King as of his castle of Egremont, by the service of the sixth part of one knight’s fee rendering to the King yearly for seawake 12^d, and the puture of two serjeants.” At the same inquiry it was certified that William Kirkby held the manor of Bolton, in the parish of Gosforth, of the King “by knight’s service, paying yearly 10/- cornage, and seawake, homage, suit of court, and witness-man.” He also paid two shillings seawake for other lands in the district. Many other instances of this tax for watch and ward in old days might be quoted, but diligent search and inquiry during the last few months have failed to show that it is now exacted in any form, or when the payments were allowed to lapse.

Of watch and ward as applied to town and village life as distinct from Border service there may be found in Cumberland and Westmorland records many very interesting and suggestive reminders. By the famous statute of Winchester it was provided that from Ascension Day to Michaelmas in every city six men should keep watch at every gate, in every borough twelve men, and in every other town six or four, according to the number of the inhabitants, and that these should watch the town continually all night from the setting to the rising of the sun. This was but one of three kinds of watches, the others being kept by the town constable, and the other set by authority of the justices. Every inhabitant was bound to keep watch in his turn, or to find another. It was specially provided that the watching and warding should be by men able of body and sufficiently weaponed, and therefore a woman required to watch might procure one to watch for her. While the person thus chosen had to bear sundry punishments in default of carrying out a duty which was neither pleasant nor safe, there was the wise provision that if a watchman were killed in the execution of his duty, as in endeavouring to apprehend a burglar, his executors were entitled to a reward of £40. In the standard work by Orton’s best known former Vicar may be found two copies of Westmorland warrants, one for the keeping of watch, and the other for the commitment of a person apprehended by the watch, while there is also a copy of an indictment for not watching. This was no mere matter of form; for hundreds of years after King Edward instituted the system it was the chief safeguard against robbery, and in a great many places against incursions of the enemy.

At Kendal watch and ward was strictly maintained, not for the purpose of keeping out marauding Scots or other undesirable characters, but for the maintenance of quiet and order in the streets. In 1575 the Mayor and burgesses of Kendal made the following order with reference to the watching of the borough:—

“It is ordered and constituted by the Alderman and head burgesses of this borough of Kirkby Kendal, that from henceforth nightly in the same borough at all times in the year, there shall be kept and continued one sufficient watch, the same to begin at nine of the clock of the night, and to continue until four of the clock in the morning, in which watch always there shall be six persons, viz., two for Sowtergate, two for Marketstead and Stricklandgate, and two for Stramagate, to be taken and going by course in every constablewick one after the other, and taking their charge and watchword nightly off the constables or their deputies, severally as in old times hath been accustomed; which six persons so appointed watchmen nightly shall be tall, manlike men, having and bearing with them in the same watch every one a halberd, ravenbill, axe, or other good and sufficient iron bound staff or weapon, sallett or scull upon every one his head, whereby the better made able to lay hands upon and apprehend the disordered night walkers, malefactors, and suspicious persons, and to prevent and stay other inconveniences, and shall continually use to go from place to place and through street and street within the borough during all the time appointed for their watch, upon pain to forfeit and lose to the Chamber of this borough for every default these pains ensuing, that is to say, every householder chargeable with the watch for his default 3s. 4d., and every watchman for his default such fine and punishment as shall be thought meet by the Alderman and head burgesses.”

Shortly before the end of 1582 the foregoing order was repealed and another regulation substituted. The material part was in the following quaint terms, the original spelling being observed:

“And shall contynnally goo and walk ffrome place to place in and throughe suche streete within the same boroughe as they shal be opoyntyd and assigned by the Constabull or his deputy then settinge the watch that is to say ij of them in everie suche streete in companye together as they may be apoynted ffor their sayd watche vpon payne to forfeyte and losse to the Chamber of this Bourgh for everie fault dewly pved theis payns ensuinge that is to say everie householder and wedow and bachler Chargeable wth the watche for his default xijd and every watchman ffor his default such ffyne and punnyshmt as shal be thought mete by the Alderman or his deputye ffrome tyme to tyme beinge.”

At Carlisle and several other places the rules for the watch were among the most interesting and important items in the whole of the rules concerning local government. On the coast at times very vigorous action was both required and taken. At Whitehaven, in February, 1793, a meeting of the authorities was held “in consequence of the daring attempts made by the enemy in other places and the dangers to which the port was formerly exposed.” Orders were issued for mounting all the heavy guns, and for procuring ammunition and other stores. Thirty-six weapons were mounted in six batteries; governors of these batteries were appointed, with other officers. A nightly watch was set, and every precaution taken to prevent a surprise, or to resist any attack which might be made on the port. Fortunately the precautions were not put to the test.

Coming down to a much later period, but still connected with the protection of the two counties, a curious incident may be recalled, if for no other reason than that it is impossible for such a contretemps ever to occur again. In 1807, after a ballot for the Cumberland Militia, Penrith being the headquarters, an order arrived for the recruits to be marched up to the regiment. They were, wrote an eye witness, accordingly mustered for that purpose in marching order, and, followed by many of the populace, arrived at Eamont Bridge, where the sister counties of Cumberland and Westmorland divide. Here there was a sudden halt. They would not cross the bridge without their county guinea. After some altercation, and promises by Colonel Lacy and other gentlemen that they should be paid on joining the regiment, which promises were of no avail, they were counter-marched to Penrith. For three successive days they were thus marched, and still halted at the division of the counties. The lower orders of the populace took part with the soldiers, and a riot ensued, in which Colonel Lacy, the commanding officer, was very roughly handled. The consequence was that a troop of Enniskillen Dragoons was sent for from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and arrived in Penrith on the morning of the third day. A hard black frost was set in at the time, and the horses being “slape shod,” they were falling in every direction. They were marched along with the recruits, who again stopped at the bridge. The populace was still unruly; the dragoons loaded their firepieces; the Riot Act was read, and the word “March” was given; but it was of no avail. A general cry was then raised that they would be satisfied with the promise of Colonel Hasell of Dalemain, but of no other man. Mr. Hasell came forward, and in a short, manly address, gave his promise that they should be paid on joining the regiment, and with cheers for the Colonel, they at once marched off.

Fighting Bishops and Fortified Churches.

The ecclesiastical history of Cumberland and Westmorland is curiously interwoven with that of secular affairs. This to a large extent arises from the geographical position of the diocese of Carlisle—and particularly of the diocese before its extension in 1856, up to which year it was the smallest in England. The Bishop of Carlisle in bygone centuries had always to take a leading part in fighting schemes, and as the churches would be the only substantial structures in some villages, they naturally came to be put to other uses than those of worship.

The bishopric was indeed a unique district. Carlisle was the great Border fortress of the West Marches; the Bishop was invariably a Lord Marcher, and often Captain of the Castle. In copies which Halucton (Halton) caused to be extracted from the Great Roll of the Exchequer, frequent references are made to expenses incurred during a siege. These are believed to refer to 1295-6, when the Earl of Buchan and Wallace assailed the city, and when the Bishop was apparently Warden. The ecclesiasts during many hundreds of years must have been almost as familiar with the touch of armour as with that of their sacred robes. Writing on this subject over a century ago a Cumberland authority said:—

“As an example of the prevailing humour of those martial times, what sort of priest must we suppose Cressingham to have been, who never wore any coat that is accounted characteristic of a profession, but that in which he was killed, namely, an iron one. Beck, the fighting Bishop, was so turbulent a mortal that the English King, in order to keep him within bounds, was obliged to take from him a part of those possessions which he earned in battle, and in particular the livings of Penrith and Symond-Burne. But not to mention Thurstan, who fought the battle of the Standard, there are sufficient reasons for believing that most of the priests in the northern parts of England had a double profession, and they are so often mentioned as principals in these continual wars that one cannot help concluding that the martial one was more attended to. When the pastors are such, what must the people be?”

There was a very interesting quarrel—the facts being too numerous to be stated here—concerning the manor of Penrith, and those in some other parts of East Cumberland. They were in the possession of John de Baliol, by virtue of an agreement come to between the Kings of England and Scotland, but afterwards Edward the First quarrelled with Baliol, seized his lands, and granted them to Anthony Beck, the military Bishop of Durham already mentioned. That prelate had assisted the King at the battle of Falkirk, with a considerable number of soldiers, and was greatly instrumental in obtaining the victory. When the Parliament met at Carlisle, however, the grant was disapproved, and as the Bishop did not attend to show by what title he had taken the lands, they were adjudged to belong to the Crown.

The manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Carlisle contain many references to the knowledge of war required by the early Bishops. When Linstock was the episcopal residence, it lay exposed to the incursions of the Scots, whose respect of persons, as Mr. C. J. Ferguson has reminded us, was small. In April, 1309, Bishop Halton excused himself from obeying a summons to Parliament, pleading both fear of a Scots invasion and bad health as reasons. Later correspondence showed that the Bishop had been employed by the King as his deputy in suppressing outrages in the West March, and desired to be freed from some of his duties. The King therefore absolved the prelate from the duties to which he objected, but begged him to assume the remainder of the offices in his commission, so as to restrain the lawlessness prevailing on both sides of the Border.

The difficulties of defence, or the constant annoyance, became so great that in 1318 Edward the Second obtained from the Pope the appropriation to the bishopric of Carlisle of the church of Horncastle, Lincolnshire, to be a place of refuge for the Bishop and his successors during the ravages of the northern enemy. Thomas de Lucy, upon the invasion of the Scots in 1346, “joined his strength with the Bishop of Carlisle [Welton], and so alarmed the enemy in the night-time, by frequent entering into their quarters, that at length they fled into their own country. And a truce shortly after ensuing, he was again joined in commission with the same Bishop and others to see the same duly observed.” The Bishop was soon afterwards constituted one of the commissioners for the arraying of men in the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland for the defence of the Borders, the French then threatening an invasion. With the growth of these troubles from abroad, pressure was put upon those who could raise funds, of whom Bishop Appleby was not the least important. “Brevia de privato sigillo quickly succeed one another at this time,” wrote the Rev. J. Brigstocke Sheppard, in 1881,[3] when he had gone carefully through the muniments of the Dean and Chapter. “The King, in an agony of apprehension, occasioned by the threat of invasion, backed by a large fleet collected in the northern ports of France, begs the Bishop again and again to raise a defensive militia, to cause prayers to be offered in all churches, and finally to advance him as much money as he can upon security of the clerical disme which would soon be due.” In a further letter, the King being determined to borrow from such of his subjects as could best afford to lend, ordered the Bishop to send for six of the richest clergy and six of the most affluent laymen in each county, and upon these twenty-four to impose a loan of fifty marks on an average—more upon those who could afford it, and less upon those less able to bear the tax. In 1373 Bishop Appleby was enjoined by the King to reside continually in his diocese upon the Marches, and to keep the inhabitants in a state of defence as a protection to the rest of the kingdom against the Scots.

And so through all the long list of Border troubles the Bishops had to take a conspicuous share in the proceedings, until the ludicrous incident on Penrith Fell, which was the last occasion on which a Bishop took part in fighting on English soil. Various local chroniclers have given different versions, but there seems to be no room for doubt that the one by Chancellor Ferguson is accurate. When in 1715 the Jacobites marched from Brampton to take Penrith, the people from all the country side (though whether the number was 4,000 or 14,000, as variously stated, is not material), armed with guns, scythes, pitch-forks, and other handy if not always military weapons, went on to the fell to meet the rebels. The “posse comitatus were under Lord Lonsdale and Bishop Nicolson, the latter seated in his coach, drawn by six horses. So soon as the Highlanders appeared, the posse comitatus went away; in plain words they skedaddled, leaving the two commanders and a few of their servants. Lord Lonsdale presently galloped off to Appleby, and the Bishop’s coachman, whipping up his horses, carried off his master willy nilly to Rose Castle. It is said the prelate lost his wig, while shouting from the carriage window to his coachman to stop.” The result of this ignominious retreat was that the Jacobites took possession of Penrith for the time being, but behaved well, their most serious action being the proclamation of James the Third, and the capture of a lot of provisions.

From fighting prelates to fortified churches is not a long step. Three or four of these structures have come in for more notice than the rest, although the latter cannot thereby be considered as lacking some of the most interesting features of the others. During the last thirty years the changes necessitated by restorations of churches have caused some of these relics of turbulent times to be somewhat altered; there are still, however, numerous village structures which tell their own story much more vividly, to the trained eye, than could be done by written record. When the late Mr. John Cory, county architect for Cumberland, read his paper on the subject at Carlisle a quarter of a century ago, he pointed out some of the characteristics of these ancient ecclesiastical strongholds: “The distance from each other tells of a scanty population; the deficiency of architectural decoration shows that the inhabitants of the district were otherwise engaged than in peaceful occupations; while traces of continual repairs in the fabric are evidently not to be attributed to the desire shown in the churches of many southern counties to make good buildings better, but have resulted from the necessity occasioned by the partial destruction of churches through hostile aggressions. In many instances it may be said that the church had been erected scarcely less for the safety of the body than for the benefit of the soul.”

That the abbey of Holme Cultram was once both a fortress and a church is shown to this day by the remains of earthworks which once served for its defence. Curious entries in the parish books also indicate the bitter hatred of the Cumbrians for those from over the Border. The value of the abbey is shown by a petition of the inhabitants of the lordship to Cromwell in 1538, when they asked “for the preservation and standynge of the Church of Holme Cultrane before saide; whiche is not onlye unto us our parish Churche, and little ynoughe to receyve all us, your poore Orators, but also a great ayde, socor, and defence for us agenst our neghbours the Scots, witheaut the whiche, few or none of your Lordshipp’s supplyants are able to pay the King his saide Highness our bounden dutye and service, ande wee shall not onelye praye for his graciouse noble estate, but also your Lordshipp’s prosperitie with increase of honour long to endure.”

The tower of Burgh-by-Sands Church, close to the Solway, was built at the west end of the structure, with walls six feet to seven feet in thickness. A further indication of the desire for security is found in the bottoms of the windows of the church, which were placed eight feet from the ground. Entrance to the fortified tower could only be obtained through a ponderous iron door six feet eight inches high, with two massive bolts, and constructed of thick bars crossing each other, and boarded over with oak planks. As only one person at a time could gain access to the vaulted chamber, there was every possibility of offering effective opposition to attacks, while the ringing of the bells would be the signal for bringing any available help. What was true of one side of the Solway was equally true of the other, there being still traces of fortified churches on the Scottish side of the Firth.

Newton Arlosh Church is another noteworthy example of a building

“Half house of God, half castle ’gainst the Scots,”

though here the bulk of the attention would seem to have been paid to bodily danger. The doorway was made only two feet six inches wide, and as at Burgh the lowest parts of the windows were placed above the reach of a man’s hand—in this case the sills were seven feet from the ground. Light was of less consequence than security, and so the windows were only one foot wide, with a height of three feet four inches.

Though further away from the Border than either of the other churches mentioned, that at Great Salkeld was peculiarly liable to attack by the Scottish raiders, as it occupies a strong position near the river Eden, whose banks seem to have been much used by the undesirable visitors. The tower is in a splendid state of preservation, although necessarily much altered, in detail, from its former condition. There were five floors, that on the ground level being a vaulted room, with a strong door of iron and oak leading into the church. Three small apertures afforded light and opportunities for watching from the first floor, and that room also contained a fireplace. In a footnote in their “Cumberland” volume of “Magna Britannia,” the brothers Lysons suggest that Great Salkeld Church might have been fortified about the time that Penrith Castle was built. There is, however, no direct evidence on the point. Dr. Todd, the former Vicar of Penrith, who was noted for his encounters with his superiors, says in his account of Great Salkeld Church, that in his time there was a place “called the Corryhole, for the correction and imprisonment of the clergy, while the Archdeacon had any power within the diocese.”

Prior to the restoration of Dearham Church, the structure possessed numerous features of interest to the antiquary, some of which have necessarily been removed or altered. The lower storey of the tower consisted of a barrel-vaulted chamber, originally enclosed from the church, and entered only by a small and strongly-barred doorway, similar to that at Burgh. When the Antiquarian Society visited Dearham some twenty years ago, the late Canon Simpson drew special attention to this part of the church. He said it had unquestionably “been one of the old massive fortified towers peculiar to the Border district: from it, whilst the parishioners were being besieged, a beacon fire at the top would alarm their friends in the surrounding country.” Some oak beams then seen in the tower showed signs of fire, one of them being charred half through. The lower part of the tower of Brigham Church, only a few miles from Dearham, is strongly vaulted with stone, access being obtained to the chamber above by means of a narrow door and winding stairs. From these features it has been concluded by archæologists that this was one of the old Border fortified churches.

Further away from the Border, into Mid Westmorland, the searcher may still meet with evidences of old-time church builders having a much keener eye for the defensive qualities of their structures than for architectural beauty. Solidity was the first consideration, and although some of them were, after all, but ill adapted for the purpose, they must have been, as the Rev. J. F. Hodgson[4] once pointed out, “much larger and stronger buildings than the wretched hovels of the common people. Their enclosures would very generally offer the best position for defence. Among the Westmorland churches, those of Crosby Garrett (or Gerard) and Ormside, though small, and not structurally fortified, seem unmistakably posted as citadels. Orton Church, too, both in structure and position, is admirably situated for defence. At Brough, the church, a massive and easily defensible building, is situated upon the precipitous bank of the Hellebeck, and forms a sort of outwork of the Castle.” The church at Kirkby Stephen certainly occupies a position which would give its occupants a strong hold on the Upper Eden Valley. The old church at Cliburn, on the banks of the Leath, was also probably placed there with some regard to defence. It is believed that the fine old church at Barton was used for a like purpose, and the vicar some time ago pointed out to the writer existing evidences of a large moat having probably been formed in case of necessity, the river Eamont being near enough to ensure an easy means of water supply.

There are preserved in the church of Langwathby two specimens of old Cumberland armour—a helmet and a cuirass. The villagers have versions of their own as to the wearer of these articles, but obviously the stories rest on no better foundation than that of tradition; the real explanation is, doubtless, that given by the late Rev. B. Porteus, and already quoted in the chapter on “Watch and Ward.”

Above the tomb of Sir Roger Bellingham (died 1533), in Kendal Church, there is an ancient helmet suspended, but whether it was put there because the helmet belonged to the knight, or as a memorial of his having been created a knight banneret on the field of battle, there has nothing come to the knowledge of local historians to enable them to decide. The popular name for the helmet, however, is “the Rebel’s Cap,” and following the account of Machell, who was living at the time, various writers have given different versions of a story which, though doubtless correct in its main points, is open to question on others. The version given by the late Mr. Cornelius Nicholson[5] may be quoted, as it is the briefest:—

“In the Civil Wars of the Commonwealth, there resided in Kendal one Colonel Briggs, a leading magistrate, and an active commander in the Cromwellian army. At that time, also, Robert Philipson, surnamed from his bold and licentious character, Robin the Devil, inhabited the island on Windermere, called Belle Isle. Colonel Briggs besieged Belle Isle for eight or ten days, until the siege of Carlisle being raised, Mr. Huddleston Philipson, of Crook, hastened from Carlisle, and relieved his brother Robert. The next day, being Sunday, Robin, with a small troop of horse, rode to Kendal to make reprisals.

“He stationed his men properly in the avenues, and himself rode directly into the church in search of Briggs, down one aisle and up another. In passing out at one of the upper doors, his head struck against the portal, when his helmet, unclasped by the blow, fell to the ground and was retained. By the confusion into which the congregation were thrown, he was suffered quietly to ride out. As he left the churchyard, however, he was assaulted; his girths were cut, and he himself was unhorsed. His party now returned upon the assailants; and the Major, killing with his own hands the man who had seized him, clapped the saddle upon his horse, and, ungirthed as it was, vaulted into it, and rode full speed through the streets, calling to his men to follow him; and with his party made a safe retreat to his asylum on the lake. The helmet was afterwards hung aloft, as a commemorating badge of sacrilegious temerity.”

The episode was used by Sir Walter Scott for some particularly spirited lines in “Rokeby” (stanza 33, canto vi.), and in his notes Sir Walter explained that “This, and what follows, is taken from a real achievement of Major Robert Philipson, called from his desperate and adventurous courage Robin the Devil.” A reference to the poem will show that this, as dealing with fact, can only be applied to the first sixteen lines, which run:—

“The outmost crowd have heard a sound
Like horse’s hoofs on hardened ground;
Nearer it came, and yet more near,—
The very death’s-men paused to hear.
’Tis in the churchyard now—the tread
Hath waked the dwelling of the dead!
Fresh sod and old sepulchral stone
Return the tramp in varied tone.
All eyes upon the gateway hung,
When through the Gothic arch there sprung
A horseman armed, at headlong speed—
Sable his cloak, his plume, his steed.
Fire from the flinty floor was spurned;
The vaults unwonted clang returned!—
One instant’s glance around he threw,
From saddle-bow his pistol drew.”

Mr. Stockdale, in his “Annals of Furness,” says there was a tradition in his time that the Parliamentarians in 1643 stabled three troops of horse in the nave of Cartmell Church; and there can be no doubt that to similar base uses other ecclesiastical structures in the diocese were occasionally put in turbulent times. Carlisle Cathedral was often used for purposes of war, and it was not free from other exciting scenes. During the Commonwealth it was the centre of much rioting. George Fox preached there, and files of musketeers had to be brought in to clear the place of the rioters. After the ill-fated rebellion of ’45, the cathedral was still further degraded, being made into a prison for captured Highlanders.

Some Church Curiosities.

Under a great variety of divisions many curious facts connected with the old-time churches of the northern counties might be noted that cannot here be touched upon. Some of them—especially those associated with the personal aspect—had their origin solely in the circumstances of the time; others may be traced to personal idiosyncracies; while geographical reasons may be found for a third class. With a few exceptions it has not been deemed necessary in this chapter to go beyond the Reformation. Among the records concerning Kendal Church is a reference in the Patent Rolls of 1295, in which Walter de Maydenestane is described as “parson of a moiety of the church of Kirkeby, in Kendale.” An inquiry in Notes and Queries[6] brought the suggestion that probably this was one of the places which used to have both a rector and a vicar, several instances of that arrangement having been in force being mentioned. No information was, however, forthcoming as to the Kendal case.

Boy bishops are not unknown, and Westmorland affords an instance of an infant rector, the following appearing in the list for Long Marton, as compiled by Dr. Burn:—“1299. John de Medburn, an infant, was presented by Idonea de Leyburne, and the Bishop committed the custody of the said infant to a priest named William de Brampton, directing him to dispose of the profits of the rectory in such manner as to provide for the supply of the cure, and the education of the young rector in some public school of learning.” If John de Medburn ever took up the duties of his office, it could not have been for any extended period, as another rector was instituted in 1330.

There was a curious dispute at Holme Cultram in 1636. The Rev. Charles Robson, who five years previously had become vicar, being a bachelor of divinity, demanded that the parish should provide him with a hood proper to his degree. The parishioners objected on the ground that such a claim had never been made before, the previous vicars having provided their own hoods, and that Mr. Robson had on all proper occasions, as required by the canons, worn a hood of his own until within half a year of the dispute arising. A case was stated and a legal opinion taken; the result was entirely against the vicar, who made his position worse, inasmuch as it was laid down that while the churchwardens were not to provide the hood, they could be the means, through the ordinary, of compelling a priest who was a graduate to wear his hood, according to the 58th canon. Another instance of a clergyman going to law with his parishioners was that of the Rev. John Benison, vicar of Burton, who was dissatisfied with the payments of the vicarial revenues. The dispute found its way into Chancery, and Benison, in 1732, secured the following scale of payments:—“For burial in the church or churchyard shall be paid 1s., except for women who die in childbirth, for whom nothing is due. The modus for tithe lands shall be double for the two first years after the induction of a new vicar, and every person keeping a plough shall pay yearly 1d. in lieu and full satisfaction of agistment of barren cattle.”

Bishop Nicolson has left some curious pictures of the parsons in the diocese of Carlisle at the time when he made his visitation in the early years of the eighteenth century. The clergy of that time were for the most part not remarkable for their learning, although there were some notable exceptions. These were the victims of circumstances; they lived in what was really a dark age, and no one can feel surprised that so many gave way to drinking and other unclerical habits. Several, either openly or in the names of their wives, kept ale-houses; there was one rather glaring instance of this kind on the western side of Cross Fell. Poverty was continually their share; an instance of the life some of them led is recorded by James Clarke,[7] of Penrith:—

“Langdale is as poor as any in these parts, except for the slate quarries, and the slaters (like the miners in Patterdale) debauch the natives so far that even the poor curate is obliged to sell ale to support himself and family. And at his house I have played ‘Barnaby’ with him on the Sabbath Day morning, when he left us with the good old song—

‘I’ll but preach, and be with you again.’”

William Litt (1785-1847), the author of “Henry and Mary,” a story of West Cumberland life, which was very popular a generation ago, says:—“It is a well authenticated fact that a rector of Arlecdon left his pulpit for the purpose of bestowing manual correction on one of his parishioners, whom he conceived was then insulting him. The surplice, however, was such an impediment to his usual lightness of foot that his intended victim, after a severe chase, effected his escape, and for that time eluded the chastisement intended for him by his spiritual pastor.” Although nothing is known as to the identity of the cleric who thus endeavoured to deal with a supposed offender, possibly it was Thomas Baxter, who was incumbent for 62 years (1725 to 1787). He figures by name in “Henry and Mary,” and is represented as on one occasion reprimanding Squire Skelton, of Rowrah, very severely for swearing.

In 1653 George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, visited Cumberland. One Sunday afternoon he entered the church, and standing on a seat, he preached three hours to an overflowing congregation; he says in his journal, “Many hundreds were convinced that day.” A short time afterwards he again visited the church on a Sunday morning, and entered into a long theological argument with Mr. Wilkinson, the vicar, who lost his dinner in consequence. The discussion continued almost to nightfall; the result seems to have been the conversion of the vicar and the majority of his congregation, as it is on record that Mr. Wilkinson afterwards became a distinguished minister of the Society of Friends.

The old customs peculiar to Cumberland and Westmorland of “Whittlegate” and “Chapel Wage” have long since passed out of the list of obligations imposed, although the rector of Brougham might still, if he wished, claim whittlegate at Hornby Hall every Sunday. The parsons of the indifferently educated class already alluded to had to be content with correspondingly small stipends, which were eked out by the granting of a certain number of meals in the course of twelve months at each farm or other house above the rank of cottage, with, in some parishes, a suit of clothes, a couple of pairs of shoes, and a pair of clogs. Clarke gives the following explanation of the origin of the term:—

“Whittlegate meant two or three weeks’ victuals at each house, according to the ability of the inhabitants, which was settled among themselves; so that the minister could go his course as regularly as the sun, and complete it annually. Few houses having more knives than one or two, the pastor was often obliged to buy his own knife or ‘whittle.’ Sometimes it was bought for him by the chapel wardens. He marched from house to house with his ‘whittle,’ seeking ‘fresh fields and pastures new,’ and as master of the herd, he had the elbow chair at the table head, which was often made of part of a hollow ash tree—a kind of seat then common. The reader at Wythburn had for his salary three pounds yearly, a hempen sark or shirt, a whittlegate, and a goosegate, or right to depasture a flock of geese on Helvellyn. A story is still (1789) told in Wythburn of a minister who had but two sermons which he preached in turn. The walls of the chapel were at that time unplastered, and the sermons were usually placed in a hole in the wall behind the pulpit. One Sunday, before the service began, some mischievous person pushed the sermons so far into the hole that they could not be got out with the hand. When the time came for the sermon, the priest tried in vain to get them out. He then turned to the congregation, and told them what had happened. He could touch them, he said, with his forefinger, but could not get his thumb in to grasp them; ‘But, however,’ said he, ‘I can read you a chapter out of Job that’s worth both of them put together!’”

There may be other instances of the formal appointment of females to undertake church work usually performed by the other sex, but the writer has only met with one local example, which occurs thus in the Kendal churchwardens’ accounts:—“1683, June 29. It is then agreed & consented too by the major part of the churchwardens that Debora Wilkinson shall be continued saxton till next Easter, she keeping under her so sufficient a servant as shall please the Vicar & whole p^rish & she to give sufficient security to the churchwardens for her fidelity. As alsoe it was then granted by the major parte of church wardens that the said Debora Wilkinson for her paines herein shall have & receive to her owne use for every coffin in the church 2s. 6d. (she or her deputy in takeing up of fflaggs in the church or lying them downe to place them leveally & in good order, breaking none of them), and the said Debora or her servant shall make clean the church att all times according to the Vicar’s order, and to keepe the font w^th faire water, changeing itt every fforthnigh or as often as the Vicar pleaseth.”

The uses of some parts of ancient buildings have puzzled gentlemen thoroughly acquainted with church architecture, for the simple reason that certain of the arrangements might have been made for a variety of purposes. Leper windows are perhaps sufficiently numerous to show the intention of the builders, but there are instances where that is not at all easy to define. The side windows in Bolton Church, near Wigton, one of which has been described by the Rev. Hilderic Friend as a leper window, was suggested by the late Mr. Cory as being “for such a purpose as giving out alms or receiving confession,” as they always had hinges and bolts for shutters, but not glass. Chancellor Ferguson put forward the further theory that as lepers could not come into the church, they made confession at these windows. Dr. Simpson rejected these statements, and said that lamps were placed in the low side windows of some churches after funerals to scare away evil spirits—an interesting addition to North-Country folk-lore. Leprosy was apparently a serious trouble in the two counties five or six centuries ago. John de Vetripont gave to Shap Abbey the hospital of St. Nicholas, near Appleby, on condition that the abbot and convent should maintain three lepers in the hospital for ever. In 1356 Sir Adam, rector of Castlekayroke (Castle Carrock), was cited to show cause why, being seized with leprosy to such a degree that his parishioners dare not resort to divine service, he ought not to have a coadjutor assigned him.

There are still to be found traces in some of the older churches of the rooms of anchorites. Experts have stated that the vestry at Greystoke seems to have been used as an anchor-hold or reclusorium. It is believed that two reclusi, or inclusi, sometimes dwelt together there, one living in the vestry and the other in the room above. The latter apartment may have been used for a chantry priest, a church watcher, or a sacristan. Among the architectural curiosities of the two counties may be noted the church tower of Kirkoswald. The parish church is built at the foot of a steep hill, facing the Eden, while the old market town is on the sharply rising ground at the rear. The parishioners would thus have but a small chance of hearing the bells when sounded for service if they occupied the ordinary place. Consequently for a very long time—certainly before the present church was built—the two bells have been placed in a detached tower on the top of the hill at the rear of the church, and over a hundred yards away from the building.

Many ecclesiastical buildings, from the cathedral down to the humblest village chapel-of-ease, would seem to have had curious inscriptions or pictures upon their walls. Nearly all these have disappeared, and later comers are indebted for their knowledge of what has been to such industrious chroniclers as Machell, Burn, and others. The former put on paper in 1692 the following lines, which were on the walls of the south chapel of Kirkby Lonsdale Church:—

“This porch by ye Banes first builded was,
Of Heighholme Hall they weare;
And after sould to Christopher Wood,
By William Bains thereof last heyre;
And is repayred as you see,
And set in order good
By the true owner nowe thereof
The fore saide Christopher Wood.”

As in our own day the restoration or alteration of a church frequently caused much ill-feeling in a parish, and there are records of several such “scenes” in Cumberland and Westmorland in bygone days. One such was at Sebergham, where the church was rebuilt in 1825-6, and a tower built at the west end. On the first Sunday that the edifice was opened the following protest in rhyme was found nailed to the church door:—

“The priest and the miller built the church steeple
Without the consent or good will of the people.
A tax to collect they tried to impose
In defiance of right and subversion of laws.
The matter remains in a state of suspension,
And likely to be a sad bone of contention.
If concession be made to agree with us all
Let the tax be applied to build the church wall.

Churchyard wall now in a ruinous state. Sebergham High Bound, July 12, 1826.”

While dealing with the architectural curiosities of North-Country churches, allusion should be made to a story connected with that at Ambleside. A piece of painted glass on the north side of the old church has a representation of what is locally known as the carrier’s arms—a rope, a wantey-hook, and five packing pricks, or skewers, these being the implements used by the carriers and wool staplers for fastening their packing sheets together. The tradition is that when the church needed rebuilding, together with the chapels of St. Mary Holm, Ambleside, Troutbeck, and Applethwaite, which were all destroyed or rendered unfit for divine worship, the parish was extremely poor; the parishioners at a general meeting agreed that one church would serve the whole. The next question was, where it should stand. The inhabitants of Undermillbeck were for having it at Bowness. The rest thought that as Troutbeck Bridge was about the centre of the parish, it should be built there. Several meetings in consequence were held, and many disputes and quarrels arose. At last a carrier proposed that who ever would make the largest donation towards the building should choose the situation of the church. An offer so reasonable could hardly be refused, and many gifts were immediately named. The carrier, who had acquired a fortune by his business, heard them all, and at last declared that he would cover the church with lead. This offer, which all the rest were either unable or unwilling to outdo, at once decided the affair. The carrier chose the situation, and his arms (or more properly his implements) were painted on the north window of the church. Tradition adds that this man obtained the name of Bellman, from the bells worn by the fore-horse, which he first introduced there.

Several instances of fonts having found their way from churches to private grounds have been made known during recent years, one being at Penrith, and others at Musgrave and Brough-under-Stainmore. On the western side of the county, in the grounds of Mr. T. Dixon, Rheda, is the ancient font, dated 1578, belonging to Arlecdon Church. In the third decade of this century, says the Rev. H. Sugden in his notes on the history of the parish, it was acting at a farm-house as a trough to catch rain-water from the roof. Subsequently the font was found by Mr. Dixon in a stone wall at Rowrah Hall, and was removed to its present place of safety. It seems that the contractor who rebuilt the church in 1829, was allowed to use or dispose of any of the material or contents. The font and an ancient tombstone of the Dixons, were sold by him, and while the font was made into a water-catcher, the tombstone found its way to a farm at Kirkland, where it was utilised as a sconce in the dairy. Occasionally churchwardens were guilty of what would seem to have been vandalism. At Kirkby Lonsdale (1686), they recorded the last of a Norman font:—“Received for the old font stone, 6d.”

Among the regulations made by the Head Jurie of Watermillock in 1627 was this:—“Item, It is ordered by the jurie that every tennent of this parish shall sitt in church in their own seats that hath formerly been set forth to their ancestors. And if any have a desire to sitt in the Lady Porch, besides such as have their ancient Rooms therein, they shall sitt there paying yearly for the same to the use of the Church ijd. p^r Annum.” The churchwardens were evidently kept close to their duties by the same authority, as may be seen by this entry in the book:—“It is ordered that the Churchwardens of this Parish shall not be discharged of their office in any year before the Church Stock be fully answered at the sight and judgment of the Head Jury for the time being.”

This action probably had its origin in the losses of public funds which had to be deplored in many parishes in consequence of the money being lent out at interest. “Culyet” is not a word to be found in the standard dictionaries of our time, although it appears in the parochial records of Millom. Canon Knowles took the word to mean the free-will offerings made from house to house, being used at Christ Church, Oxford, as the equivalent of “collecta,” a collection. In some of the parishes which lent out church funds, rather heavy rates of security were exacted—at Millom the arrangement was seven and a half per cent. Hence there can be no room for surprise that so many parishes have had reason to deplore “lost stock.”

Crosthwaite differed from other places in the manner of selecting and swearing the churchwardens and sidesmen, the form being settled by the Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes in Queen Elizabeth’s time. They decreed “That yearly, upon Ascension Day, the vicar, the eighteen sworn men, the churchwardens, the owner of Derwentwater estate, the sealer and receiver of the Queen’s portion at the mines, one of the chiefest of the company and fellowship of the partners and offices of the minerals, then resiant at Keswick, the bailiffs of Keswick, Wythburn, Borrowdale, Thornthwaite, Brundholme, and the forester of Derwent Fells, shall meet in the church of Crosthwaite, and so many of them as shall be there assembled shall chuse the eighteen men and churchwardens for the year ensuing, who shall on the Sunday following before the vicar take their oath of office.”

The seating of the men and women on different sides of the church was a proceeding once so common as to almost remove it from the list of curiosities. The churchwardens’ books of Crosthwaite contain very minute orders as to where every person in the parish should sit, and in other places a similar rule obtained. In these days of “free and open churches” it is interesting to read of the arrangements which the churchwardens and vicar made so as to allocate every seat in St. Patrick’s Church, Bampton, in 1726. The rule appears to have been based on the land tax, and the list begins with “The Lord Vis. Lonsdale,” who had one complete stall for the use of the tenants of Bampton Hall, another for Low Knipe, and other seats elsewhere. The whole of the inhabitants seem to have been provided for, the catalogue concluding with a statement of the accommodation set apart for the school-master of Measand and the school-dame at Roughill; the master at Bampton Grange, being an impropriator, found a place among the aristocracy on “the Gospel side” of the chancel.

Some quaint entries concerning the provision and cost of wine for sacred purposes—and for other uses not always answering that description—are to be met with in several of the parochial records. In the vestry book of Cockermouth is this entry for June, 1764:—“Ordered that all the wine for the communicants be bought at one house where the Churchwardens can get it the best and cheapest. Ordered that no wine be given to any clergyman to carry home.” At one of the meetings of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, the late Canon Simpson produced a paper which showed that very heavy sums, comparatively, had been spent at Kendal in providing Communion wine. One item was for £6, another £9, and again £11, while opposite one of the entries was the remark: “That is exclusive of wine used at Easter.” It was customary for the vicar or rector to give the Easter Communion wine, receiving in return Easter dues. On another occasion, when the Bishop of Chester was to visit the church, the wardens ordered a bottle of sack to be placed in the vestry.

An interesting ceremony has long been gone through at Dacre Church in connection with the distribution of the Troutbeck Dole. The principal representative of the family now living is Dr. John Troutbeck, Precentor of Westminster. The Rev. Robert Troutbeck, in 1706, by his will gave to the poor of Dacre parish, the place of his nativity, a sum of money, the interest of which was ordered to be “distributed every year by the Troutbecks of Blencowe, if there should be any living, otherwise by the minister and churchwardens for the time being.” A more curious proviso was contained in the will of John Troutbeck, made in 1787. By that document £200 was left to the poor of the testator’s native parish, and the interest was ordered to be “distributed every Easter Sunday, on the family tombstone in Dacre churchyard, provided the day should be fine, by the hands and at the discretion of a Troutbeck of Blencowe, if there should be any living, those next in descent having prior right of distribution. If none should be living that would distribute the money, then by a Troutbeck as long as one could be found that would take the trouble of it; otherwise by the minister and churchwardens of the parish for the time being; that not less than five shillings should be given to any individual, and that none should be entitled to it who received alms, or any support from the parish.” The custom was carried out in due form on the “through-stone” last Easter.

Kirkby Stephen, up to about sixty years ago, had a very curious custom—the payment, on a fixed day every year, upon a tombstone still in the churchyard, of the parishioners’ tithe. The late Mr. Cornelius Nicholson, in a now scarce pamphlet on Mallerstang Forest, gave the following account of the observance:—

“The tombstone is unhewn millstone grit, covered with a limestone slab, whereon a heraldic shield was once traceable, supposed to indicate the ownership of the Whartons. Tradition says, however, that it is older than the tombs in the Wharton Chapel. Among the parishioners it went popularly by the name of the great ‘truppstone,’ a corruption perhaps of ‘through-stone.’ It is certain, however—and this is the gist of the story—that for generations, time out of mind, the money in lieu of tithes of hay was here regularly paid to the incumbent of the church on Easter Monday. The grey coats of this part of Westmorland assembled punctually as Easter Monday came round, and there and then tendered to the vicar their respective quotas of silver. Some agreement, oral or written, must have been made between the parties, which does not now appear. The practice became the law of custom. The payment was called a modus in lieu of hay tithe. I find that when Lord Wharton purchased the advowson at the dissolution of monasteries the tithes of corn and hay were excepted from the conveyance, which points to this customary modus on the ‘truppstone.’ If this reference be correct, the curious custom dates back to the time of Henry the Eighth, and perhaps farther back, and gives it a continuance of some 300 years.

“We don’t know its origin, but we do know its extinction. When the Rev. Thomas P. Williamson became vicar, in the first decade of this century, a quarrel arose between him and the tithe-payers as to this modus. Law proceedings were threatened, and some preliminaries were taken. The parishioners, notwithstanding, attended on Easter Monday as before, and tendered their doles. The vicar also attended, but determinedly refused the money, until his death in 1835, which put a stop to the custom. After his death, the vicar’s widow set up a claim for the arrears, which had been offered and refused, so she took nothing by her motion. In 1836 all the tithes were commuted in England, under the provision of the Tithes Commutation Act, carried into execution by a Cumberland M.P., Mr. Aglionby, whom I knew very well, in Lord John Russell’s Ministry. These particulars of the ‘truppstone’ were furnished me by Mr. Matthew Thompson, Kirkby Stephen, one of the county magistrates, who himself—and this clenches it as a fact—yearly attended in the churchyard, with his quota, and who was present on the very last occasion.”

An incident which in some respects has had at least one counterpart within recent years is recorded as happening at Little Salkeld towards the end of the fourteenth century. The little chapel there was “desecrated and polluted by the shedding of blood,” and as the parish church of Addingham was a considerable distance, the vicar was allowed to officiate in his own vicarage-house “till the interdict should be taken off from the chapel.”

There is a curious story attaching to some of the wood-work of Greystoke Church. The misereres under the choir stalls are very quaintly carved, and one of them, “the pelican in her piety,” was for many years used as the sign of an inn near the church. From this circumstance the hostelry lost its old name, the “Masons’ Arms,” and acquired the modern one of the “Pelican.”

Although schools in churches were very common, the holding of Courts in such buildings could not have been frequent. At Ravenstonedale, where numerous customs peculiar to the parish or immediate district prevailed, the people had a strong belief in home rule, and insisted on having it. In the old church there were two rows of seats below the Communion table, where the steward of the manor and jury sat in their Court of Judicature in the sixteenth century. The malefactors were imprisoned in a hollow arched vault, the ruins of which were to be seen not much more than a quarter of a century ago on the north side of the church. There was so much wrangling over cases, and the manifestation of such a bad spirit, which the parishioners felt was unbecoming and unsuited to such an edifice, that they petitioned Lord Wharton, the lord of the manor, to have the trying of cases removed to a house belonging to him which stood near the church. This was granted, and subsequently the Court was held in the village inn and other places.

“A gentleman who carries out archidiaconal functions,” is the familiar, though vague, definition of an archdeacon in our own time, but a couple of centuries ago that church official had very definite duties and powers. As Mr. G. E. Moser, solicitor, Kendal, once reminded the members of the two counties’ Archæological Society, the visits of the Archdeacon of Richmond to Kendal—where he sentenced offenders from his chair of state erected in the High Quire—were looked forward to with awe and reverence. The churchwardens’ books contain the following among other entries:—“Paid for bent to strawe in the High Quire against Sir Joseph [Cradock] came.” “Paid to the Churchwardens, which they laid out when they delivered their presentments to Sir Joseph Cradock.” “Paid for washing and sweeping the Church against Sir Joseph’s coming to sitt his Court of Correction, which was the 7 July, 1664.” “At the peremptory day, being the 18th day of October, 1664, the general meeting of the churchwardens, whose names are herunder written doth order that Geo. Wilkinson shall keep the clock and chimes in better order, and shall keep swine out of the churchyard, and whip the dogs out of the church in time of divine service and sermon, and remove the dunghill and the stable-door which opens into the churchyard before the next peremptory day, and reform all abuses belonging to his office, or else the Churchwardens will make complaint so that it shall be referred to the ordinary.”

Chancellor Ferguson told the members that he had found in some documents, relating to an unnamed Cumberland church, an order that no swine should be allowed in the churchyard unless they had rings in their noses! There are many reminders available of the days when rushes or other growths were put on church floors, by such entries as that in Waberthwaite registers, dated 1755:—“Bent bought, 12d.” At Millom there are charges for dressing the church. Between 1720 and 1783 there are several entries in the Hawkshead registers with reference to “strawing the church”—meaning the covering of the floor with rushes. There are also here, as at Penrith and some other places, allusions to payments for collecting moss, with which the rain was often kept out of the churches.

It was, even within the last half century, a common occurrence for dogs to accompany their owners to church, but the officials did not appreciate the custom. Mr. John Knotts, in 1734, left an estate at Maulds Meaburn for the use of the poor of the township, from which five shillings yearly had to be paid for keeping dogs out of Crosby Ravensworth Church. The legality of the will was disputed on a technicality, and the heir-at-law paid a sum of money instead, which was invested, but how long the crown was paid for anti-dog purposes is not known. The Rev. J. Wilson wrote in his parochial magazine a few years ago:—“In the olden days in Dalston there was an officer whose duty it was to whip dogs out of church during service time, and, strange as it may seem, the custom under another name and in somewhat altered guise existed till the old church was demolished in 1890. The parish dog-whipper had £1 a year for his salary during the latter portion of the 18th century, when the duties of the office were extended to other matters. In the parish accounts the following entry occurs: ‘May 3, 1753 John Gate for whipping the Dogs out of church, opening and shutting ye sashes, sweeping ye church &c. for one year, £01 00 00.’ The same entry occurs regularly every year till 1764, when his widow undertakes the job: ‘May 6th 1764 Wid: Gate for whipping ye Dogs out of ye church, opening and shutting ye sashes, sweeping ye church £01 00 00.’ The office of dog-whipper continues to be mentioned every year till 1774, when it disappears, and the entry is changed to: ‘May 1, 1774, Wid: Gate for cleaning ye church £01 00 00.’” The church records show that at Penrith an annual payment of two shillings was made for many years to the dog-whipper. Among the items bearing on church expenses contained in the Torpenhow registers in 1759, was an annual allowance of 5s. to the sexton for whipping dogs out of the church, and that he might the more efficiently do his work he was granted an extra allowance of 3d. for a whip and 2d. for a thong. There is an item in the Waberthwaite records which runs:—“According to the canons laitly sett down, four sydmen [synodsmen] are to be appointed every year, one of whose duties is to keepe the dogges out of the chirche, 1605.” At Hawkshead a dog-whipper was provided from 1723 to 1784. If the following paragraph, which appeared in the Cumberland Pacquet, in January, 1817, may be believed, there was at least one dog which would not incur the wrath of either parson or dog-whipper:—“Mr. William Wood of Asby, parish of Arlecdon, has a cur dog which for these four years past has regularly attended church, if within hearing of the bells; and what is more singular, the animal never misses going to his master’s seat whether any of the family attend or not.”

Manorial Laws and Curiosities of Tenures.

No doubt because of the proximity of the district to the Border, the tenures by which certain properties were held in Cumberland and Westmorland must be regarded as quite local in their character. The observances are, of course, all the more interesting on that account, and even in cases for which parallels are to be found in other parts of the kingdom, little peculiarities may sometimes be seen in local instances which throw light on the former habits of the people. Lords of manors were once individuals possessed of great powers. The lords of Millom held their property for hundreds of years, and had jura regalia within the seignory, in memory of which a modern stone erected at Gallow, half a mile below Millom Castle, has the inscription,

“Here the Lords of Millom exercised jura regalia.”

The lord of the manor of Troutbeck, Windermere, is also believed to have formerly exercised a jurisdiction over capital offences.

Where such powers existed, it is by no means surprising that the homage exacted from tenants and servitors on various occasions was of a character that in modern days would be regarded as extremely degrading. Thus when a free tenant went to his lord’s residence to do homage according to custom and duty, he was ushered into the presence of his superior without sword or other arms, and with his head uncovered. The lord remained seated, and the tenant with profound reverence knelt before the great man. With his clasped or joined hands placed between those of the lord, the homager repeated the following vow, which seems to have been in practically the same terms in various manors:—“I become your man from this day forward, for life, for member, and for worldly honour, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear you faith for the lands that I hold of you, saving the faith that I owe to our Sovereign Lord the King.” The lord, still sitting, then kissed the tenant, as a token of his approbation. In Cumberland and Westmorland there are several villages named Carleton, this being one of the reminders of the days of serfdom. The carls were simply the basest sort of servants—practically slaves.

The former servile condition of the poor in the neighbourhood of barons’ houses is also preserved in such names as Bongate, or as it was always written in old documents, Bondgate, at Appleby. In the great trial between the Cliffords and the burghers, when the former claimed the services of the freemen, it was decided that neither Robert de Vetripont nor any of his heirs ever had seizin of the borough, where the burgesses lived, but that King John gave to him “Vetus Apilbi ubi villani manent”—“Old Appleby, where the bondmen dwell.” The bondmen, or villeins, were probably of the same social standing as those known as drenges, the Cliffords having very many drengage tenements in various parts of their Sheriffwick. “The drenges were pure villeins—doubtless Saxons kept in a state of the vilest slavery, being granted by the lords of the manor, with a piece of land, like so many oxen. In fact they were as much the property of the lord of the manor as the negroes in the West Indian Colonies were formerly the property of the sugar planters. It is probable that the drenges were employed to perform all the servile and laborious offices at Brougham Castle; for in 1359, Engayne, lord of Clifton, granted to Roger de Clifford, by indenture, the service of John Richardson, and several others mentioned by name, with their bodies and all that belonged to them.”[8]

In the reign of Richard the First there was given to the church of Carlisle, “lands in Lorton, with a mill there, and all its rights and appendages, and namely the miller, his wife, and children”—apparently clear evidence of the servitors being regarded as part of the property.

Several manorial lords claimed for their tenants the right to go toll-free throughout England. This was the case with Armathwaite, while the privilege also pertained to the prioress and nuns at Nunnery. The manor of Acorn Bank, near Temple Sowerby, used to have the right, or rather the privilege was claimed. In the time of the late Mr. John Boazman (the immediate predecessor of Mr. Henry Boazman, the present owner), the following was written:—“The lords of this manor can still claim and exercise for themselves and tenants all the privileges granted to the Knights Templars, the most important of which is exemption from toll throughout England. The tenants when travelling carry a certificate, signed and sealed by the lord of the manor. This certificate, after reciting part of the old charter, concludes as follows:—‘Which charter [that of Henry the Second] was confirmed by King Charles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the fourth year of his reign, in witness whereof I, the said John Boazman, as lord of the manor, have executed and set my manorial seal.’” The burgesses of Appleby also possessed under their early charters privileges of a like character, and these would doubtless be of very appreciable value.

The ancient family of Hoton, or Hutton, were by Edward the Third, in consideration of the service rendered to him by Thomas de Hoton in the wars against Scotland, restored to the bailiwick and office of keeping the King’s land or forest in Plumpton, which was first bestowed upon them prior to the time of Edward the First. It is believed that this led to the family taking a horn as their badge. Besides the monetary payment of something under £2 yearly, it was found in the reign of Henry the Seventh that the lands were also held by the service of holding the stirrup of the King’s saddle while his Majesty mounted his horse in the Castle of Carlisle. The adjoining manor of Newton Reigny was held in the early days of the Lowthers by the service of finding for the King in his wars against Scotland one horseman with a horse of the value of forty shillings, armed with a coat of mail, an iron helmet, a lance, and a sword, abiding in the war for forty days with the King’s person. At a later date the terms were varied; there was then the paying of two shillings per annum for cornage, and the providing, for the King’s army, “one horseman with habiliments, one lance, and one long sword.” Penrith and five other manors were once held by the Kings of Scotland by paying one soar-hawk yearly to the constable of the Castle of Carlisle, with some privileges concerning rights in Inglewood Forest. The manor of Cargo, near Carlisle, was held for many generations by the family of de Ross, by the rendering of a hawk or a mark of silver yearly. When the same manor was the property of the Lacys, it was held by cornage, and afterwards by the Vescys for a mew’d hawk yearly in lieu of all services.

In the manor of Gaitsgill and Raughton were twenty-two freehold tenants in 1777, who paid 28s. 8¾d. yearly free rent, did suit and service at the lord’s court when called upon, and paid yearly to the Duke of Portland as chief lord of the Forest of Inglewood £2 13s. 2d., besides sending a man to appear for them at the Forest Court at Hesket every St. Barnabas’s Day, and that representative was to be on the inquest. This manor was at the Conquest “all forest and waste ground,” and was enclosed by one Ughtred, who held of the King “for keeping the eyries of hawks which bred in the Forest of Inglewood.” The posterity of Ughtred took their surname from Gatesgill, and adopted the sparhawk for their cognisance. The neighbouring manor of High Head (Higheved) was held of Edward the Third by William English by the service of one rose yearly. Later, in the time of Henry the Eighth, it was held by William Restwold as an approvement of the forest by fealty and the service of rendering at the King’s exchequer of Carlisle one red rose yearly at the feast of St. John the Baptist.

In the reign of Philip and Mary, Alexander Armstrong was granted a considerable amount of property, including a mill, in the parish of Gilcrux, at a very low rental, on condition of finding and maintaining five horsemen “ready and well-furnished, whenever the King and Queen and the successors of the Queen shall summon them within the county.” In documents belonging to the abbey of Holme Cultram, whereby Flemingby (now known as Flimby, between Maryport and Workington) was handed over to the monks, Gospatric, the donor, inserted a clause that he would himself do for the monastery “noutegeld and the like due to the King; and also to the lord of Allerdale of seawake, castleward, pleas, aids, and other services.” The nutgeld tax—an impost apparently peculiar to the Border counties—was even last century frequently enforced in Cumberland and Westmorland.

The custom of providing for gilt spurs was of a practical kind, the articles being peculiarly useful to the grantor. “Every knight (who served on horseback) was obliged to wear gilt spurs; hence they were called equites aurati.” The reservation, by Gospatrick, of homage to be performed by William de Lancastre has provided some interesting questions for past generations of historians and antiquaries. William de Lancastre the second gave thirty marks to the King that he might have the privilege of fighting a duel with Gospatrick, and the theory propounded was that this contest was caused because “the tenant’s proud spirit could not brook such a humiliation as that of doing homage.” Remembering the conditions of life, the supposition is not at all improbable, for what man of good birth would care to submit to perform the service described in the second paragraph of this chapter? In the same parish of Kirkby Lonsdale, William de Pickering had the manor of Killington granted to him for the yearly payment of a pair of gilt spurs, or sixpence, at the feast of Pentecost, and the service of the twentieth part of one knight’s service when occasion should require.

Alice Lucy, a member of the once very powerful family of that name, reserved out of Wythop a penny rent service, or a pair of gloves; and a long time afterwards it was found that Sir John Lowther, knight, held the same manor “by homage, fealty, and suit of court at Cockermouth ... and the free rent of one penny or one red rose.” The manor, now held by Sir Henry R. Vane, Bart., Hutton-in-the-Forest, was subsequently sold to the Fletchers under the services just mentioned. In addition to a heavy fine, and a rental of £10 yearly, Thomas de Multon paid “one palfrey for the office of forester of Cumberland,” granted to the family by King John. One of Multon’s ancestors, Richard de Lucy, also gave money and a palfrey in order to obtain the grant and other privileges.

At Hesket, yearly, on St. Barnabas’s Day, by the highway side under a thorn tree (according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air), wrote Nicolson in 1777, was kept the Court for the whole forest of Inglewood, to which Court the manors within that vast circumference (above twenty in number), owed suit and service; and a jury was there impannelled and sworn for the whole forest. It is a shadow or relic of the ancient Forest Courts; and here they pay their compositions for improvements, purprestures, agistments, and puture of the foresters, and the jurors being obliged to attend from the several manors, seems to be part of that service which was called witnesman. “Improvements” in this case means permission to take up open lands belonging to the manorial lord.

Horn tenures, locally known as cornage, were common. At Brougham Hall is preserved the old and quaintly fashioned horn which was sounded by the former owners of the estates in complying with the requirement to blow a horn in the van of the King and his army, when the monarch went into Scotland, or at other times when the Scots made incursions to the southern side of the Border. An interesting relic of the same description is possessed at Carlisle—the “Horn of the Altar.” The Charter Horn has thus been described by Archdeacon Prescott:—“In the year 1290 a claim was made by the King, Edward the First, and by others, to the tithes on certain lands lately brought under cultivation in the Forest of Inglewood. The Prior of Carlisle appeared on behalf of his convent, and urged their right to the property on the ground that the tithes had been granted to them by a former King, who had enfeoffed them by a certain ivory horn which he gave to the Church of Carlisle, and which they possessed at that time. The Cathedral of Carlisle has had in its possession for a great number of years, two fine walrus tusks, with a portion of the skull. They appear in ancient inventories of the goods of the cathedral as ‘one horn of the altar in two parts,’ or ‘two horns of the altar’ (1674), together with other articles of the altar furniture. But antiquaries came to the conclusion that these were identical with the ‘ivory horn’ referred to above.... Such Charter Horns were not uncommon in ancient days.”

Blackmail used to bear a significance not fully understood by the modern use of the word. In the north of England it signified, especially in Cumberland, a certain rent of money, corn, or other things, anciently paid to persons inhabiting upon or near the Border, being men of name and power, allied with certain robbers within those counties, to be freed and protected from the devastations of those depredators. By 43 Elizabeth, cap. 13, it was provided that to take any such money or contribution, called blackmail, to secure goods from rapine, was made capital felony, as well as the offences such contribution was meant to guard against. Tenants in those old times had nearly all the privileges of paying; their opportunities for getting anything without cash or labour were few. One such concession which they enjoyed was “plowbote,” being the right of tenants to take wood to repair their ploughs, carts, and harrows; and for the making of such articles of husbandry as rakes and forks. Fire-bote was the term applied to a right enjoyed by many tenants, being the fuel for firing, and obtainable out of the lands granted to them. Timber-lode was a service by which tenants were to carry to the lord’s house timber felled in his woods. The Dean and Chapter of Carlisle were formerly obliged to provide the tenants of the manor of Morland with wood for the reparation of their houses. This was released by an endowment of £16 per annum, being given by the Dean and Chapter to the school.

Boon services of all kinds were common in all the manors along what is known as the eastern fell side—the base of Cross Fell, and north and south thereof. Before they were enfranchised by Sir Michael le Fleming, the tenants of Skirwith had to supply such boons as reaping, mowing, ploughing, harrowing, carrying coals, and spinning a stipulated number of hanks of yarn. Up to the latter half of last century each tenant of the manor of Threlkeld was obliged to find half a draught for one day’s ploughing; give one day mowing, one day shearing, one day clipping, and one day salving sheep; one carriage load once in two years, but not to go above ten miles; and to dig and lead two loads of peats every year, the tenants to have sufficient meat and drink when they performed these services. The cottagers were to perform the same services, only instead of half a plough they were to find one horse with a harrow, and a footman instead of a carriage load. The tenants were also bound to the lord’s mill, pay the fortieth corn, and to maintain the wall and thatch of the mill. The tenants had house-boot (wood for repairing their houses) as set out by the lord’s bailiff; peats, turves, ling, whins, limestone, and marl, with stones and slate for building. About 1764, half the tenants bought off these services at a cost of five guineas each, the mill service only excepted. The tenements paid twopence each yearly as greenhue rent, an impost which was once a common payment by Cumberland and Westmorland manorial tenants; along with it in the Eskdale and Mitredale manors of the Earls of Egremont was a due called “door-toll.” What may have been the origin of the latter seems to be now unknown.

At Parsonby, near Aspatria, the tenants had to give to the parson each one boon day yearly at reaping. In the neighbouring parish of Blennerhasset the tenants, besides being subjected to heriots, each provided one day at mowing, shearing, ploughing, and meadows dressing, and two days leading coals. Higher up the fells the score of tenants at High Ireby and Ruthwaite, under Mr. Fletcher, had to give one day a year, or pay threepence; one would suppose the most economical alternative was to pay cash. At Egremont the burgesses who had ploughs were obliged to till the lord’s demesne one day in the year, but every burgess was required to find a reaper. In one of the manors of the parish of Wetheral, the tenants, in addition to their monetary payments, had to render to the Aglionby family, of Nunnery, boon days shearing and leading corn, with a certain quantity of oats called foster oats, six pecks being equal to four of Carlisle measure. Various attempts have been made within recent years to ascertain definitely what was the origin and meaning of the term. Nicolson says it was “perhaps heretofore for the use of the foresters, this part being within the forest of Inglewood.” That this was probable is also shown by a rule which existed in the barony of Greystoke, which was held of the King in capite by the service of one entire barony, rendering £4 yearly at the fairs of Carlisle, suit at the County Court monthly, and serving the King in person against Scotland. The lord’s tenants, of whom there were some hundreds early in this century, had to pay “a 20d. fine on the death of lord or tenant, and a 30d. fine upon alienation; also to pay foster rents, foster corn, mill rents, greenhue, peat silver, and boons for mowing and leading peats.”

There are many curious regulations bearing upon local tenures, but there is not lacking evidence that some of a still more noteworthy character have either been allowed to drop out of recognition, or the duties have been compounded for. Silver-penny fines are still enforced occasionally. In Mr. J. E. Hasell’s manor of Dacre, when a mortgagee of real estate is admitted to the court roll, he has to pay a fine of a silver penny for each. Heriots is a manorial impost about which some curious information has at various times been published. Many lords of manors and landlords have during the last half century allowed many of their rights in this direction to drop, while others have put on small money payments in lieu both of heriots and services. All customary property in the barony of Greystoke, except in the manor of Watermillock, is subject to heriots.

A curious custom obtains in Mr. H. C. Howard’s manor of Newbiggin (Dacre), as shown by a case which arose about thirty years ago. A married woman, seized in fee of customary lands, died, leaving a husband and child. The query was raised whether the husband was entitled to the estate for his own life “as tenant by the curtesy.” It was decided that by the custom of the manor, there being no will, the child or heir at law of a deceased married woman should take the property absolutely, to the exclusion of the husband. In the adjoining manor of Barton there is another interesting rule. A Pooley Bridge man, who held certain property of the manor by payment of a rent of a shilling per annum, died intestate and a bachelor. His nearest relatives were two nieces, daughters of a deceased brother. The question was asked whether the two women would be co-heiresses, as in some other manors, but the eldest was found to take all, to the exclusion of her sister. The custom of the manor of Inglewood is to the same effect, the eldest daughter, sister, or other female descendant inheriting.

A question arose some forty-five years ago as to a peculiar custom existing in the barony of Greystoke. Mr. William Bleaymire, the then steward, stated that by custom of that barony a customary tenant might convey such tenement without concurrence of his wife, as no widow was entitled to free bench in lands disposed of by her husband in his lifetime, he not dying seized thereof. Three or four years later a very similar question arose in the manor of Glassonby, the particular point being whether an owner could devise his customary land to his children so as to deprive his wife (to whom he was married prior to 1834) of her dower or free bench therein. The late Mr. Lawrence Harrison, the steward of the manor, decided that “the man dies seized of the customary tenement; therefore, notwithstanding his will, she is entitled to free bench according to the custom. The Dower Act in nowise affects the custom.” It is a well-known fact that the manorial customs in one village may be exactly contrary to those obtaining in an adjoining one. In some manors daughters are practically unnoticed, and in this connection an interesting point connected with the manor of Watermillock once came up. Mr. Bleaymire decided that an eldest daughter would be entitled to certain property in that manor, subject to her mother’s free bench, which was one half.

A fruitful source of litigation, and of disputes of a less costly character, may be found in the demands made even in quite recent times, that purchasers should personally attend the Manorial Court in order to have admittance. In some local cases such attendance is rigidly enforced, but in others—the manor of Edenhall for instance—the purchaser is admitted on production of deed of bargain and sale. The law books contain many cases in which this point has been stubbornly fought. In the manor of Cumwhitton no admittances are granted, but the property passes by deed of bargain and sale with the licence of the steward endorsed on the deed, and a simple enrolment of the purchaser. In the manors of Morland, Plumpton, and Croglin, the parties seeking to be admitted must attend in person or by attorney.

In the manor of Renwick, by an indenture mutually agreed upon in 1676, the tenants, in addition to a variety of financial payments, were obliged to scour and cleanse the water course to the lord’s mill from the bottom up to the mill trough head, and maintain the mill with wall and thatch; bring millstones thereto, and grind their corn thereat, paying a twenty-fourth multure. They were entitled to such house-boot as the steward might be pleased to allot. Some of the mills were of considerable value, a fact which will be readily understood when it is remembered how tenaciously lords of manors clung to the right almost down to our own time. The lord of Drigg had a mill, to which, as was so frequently the case, the tenants were bound. In these days, fortunately, this and other requirements are not enforced. The same manor had flotsam, jetsam, and lagan, “and so it was adjudged upon a trial at bar between Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and Sir Nicholas Curwen in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and afterwards a decree in Chancery for conforming the said prescription and securing that right to the sea against the lord paramount.”

The rector of Caldbeck is, or was, entitled to claim a God’s penny upon the change of tenant by death, in his manor in the lower part of the parish. Multure (“mooter”) was formerly a common form of tax in Cumberland; very many instances of its imposition by lords of manors might be quoted, but sometimes it extended to the markets. The following is a copy of a bill relating to a revolt on the part of the inhabitants of Cockermouth, but the writer has not been able to discover to what extent, and whether immediately, the residents in the old borough succeeded in their protest:—

COCKERMOUTH TOLLS.

At a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Cockermouth, holden at the Court House, on Saturday the 13th Instant, to take into consideration the unjust and illegal manner in which

The TOLL of GRAIN,

brought into Cockermouth Market, has for some years past been taken; and it having been admitted by the Lord of the Manor, that the Toll of Corn is

ONE HANDFUL
Out of each Sack sold in the
Market, and no more;

It was unanimously resolved, that the undermentioned Gentlemen be appointed to attend the Corn Market, for the purpose of observing the mode in which the Toll is taken in future; also that the Landowners, Farmers, and others, be requested to give information to them, if more than the Legal Toll be hereafter required or taken by the Lessees of the Tolls, or if they take it from Grain not actually sold, in order that such measures may be pursued by and for the Parties aggrieved as the Law allows.

That a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Cockermouth, together with the Landowners and Farmers of its Vicinity, be holden in the Court House,

On Monday the 22d Inst. at Two o’Clock
IN THE AFTERNOON,

to form an ASSOCIATION for the purpose of Prosecuting any Person or Persons TAKING MORE TOLL than is allowed by the Ancient Prescription.

Cockermouth, March 15th, 1830.

The lordship of Millom was anciently exempted from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of Cumberland; the lords had power to licence their own ale-houses, and wreck of the sea was enjoyed until a comparatively recent period—certainly up to near the end of last century—“whereof,” says Nicolson, “much benefit is frequently made, it being almost surrounded by the sea.”

A very unusual tenure has been noted as being in existence in the township of Kirkland, a few miles from Wigton. It was stated thus a century and a quarter ago:—“The tenants have a lease granted to them generally by Mr. Lancelot Salkeld, father of Sir Francis, for 999 years, paying a certain yearly rent for every tenement, amounting in the whole to £6 15s. 1d. yearly, and every twenty-one years they are to pay a fine to the lord, viz., a twenty-penny fine, which they call a running gressom, and then take new leases, but pay no general fine upon the lord’s death, nor upon change of tenant, but they pay a heriot upon the death of every tenant.” Tenures of cumin do not appear to have been common in the two counties. The best known of the kind was in the time of Henry the Eighth, when a yearly rent of 2½d., and one pound of cumin and services was paid by the heirs of John Reede to Fountains Abbey, for the fish garths in Crosthwaite, Keswick.

By the custom of some places a parson might be obliged to keep a bull and a boar, for the use of the parishioners, in consideration of his having tithes of calves and pigs. Such a condition held in certain parishes in Cumberland, but as the stipulation said nothing as to the quality of the animals to be maintained, many farmers, with the progress of agriculture and education, began to keep their own, and the requirement gradually became a dead letter.

A peculiar obligation concerning Sparket Mill was laid on the tenants in the hamlet of Thackthwaite, in Watermillock parish, as is explained in the following “Verdict of the Head Jurie of Weathermelock, May 9th, 1709”:—“As for the controversie betwixt the Tennents of Thackthwaite and ye miller of Sparkhead Mill concerning the repairing of the Mill Dam and the race, we find upon Oath and upon notice given by ye miller the tennents of Thackthwaite are to make ye race sufficient to carry water from the Dam to the Trough Head, upon condition that the miller give them every time they meet to work it a Pott of ale and a pennyworth of tobacco as they have had formerly. And as for the Dam we likewise find upon Oath that the repairing of the same belongs to the Lord of ye Mannor.”

What would owners of dogs in these days think and say were such regulations in force as used to be enforced at the ancient Cumberland town of Egremont? The old ordinances of Richard Lucy for the government of the borough declared that “those who hold burgage tenure in Egremont shall find armed men for the defence of the fortress forty days at their own charge; shall find twelve men for the lord’s military array, and be bound to aids for his redemption from captivity, and hold watch and ward; and that they shall not enter the forest with bow and arrow, nor cut off their dogs’ feet within the borough.” The explanation of the last item is that the inhabitants of the forest, who kept dogs to defend their dwellings, were obliged to cut off one foot to prevent their chasing the game, but the precaution was not considered necessary in the town.

Among the local peppercorn rents the following is interesting. The Gill estate, in the parish of Bromfield, is said to have belonged to the Reays “as long as any other estate in the kingdom has been in one family.” The tradition is that the head of the family had the then extensive lands of Gill granted to him and his heirs by William the Lion, King of Scotland in the twelfth century, not only in reward for his fidelity to his prince, but as a memorial of his extraordinary swiftness of foot in pursuing the deer; outstripping in fleetness most of the horsemen and dogs. The conditions of the grant were that he should pay a peppercorn yearly, and that the name of William should, if possible, be perpetuated in the family. There were several eminent men among the descendants, but the distinctive Christian name is no longer strictly adhered to.

An estate enjoying exemption from payments of tithes is that of Scale Houses, in the parish of Renwick. This arose, declared a writer early in the present century, “owing to an ancient owner of the land having slain a noxious cockatrice, which the vulgar at this day call a crack-a-Christ as they rehearse the simple fable.” The document which gives this exemption is believed to be still in existence. Among the dues to which the abbot and convent of Shap could claim were services and money payments from Bampton as “alms corn,” and there was a similar tribute from Mauld’s Meaburn and Hoff. Burn mentions in his chapter on Bewcastle a tenant’s duty not publicly noted in any other local manor, the people having to pay yearly customary rent, quit rents for improvements, and £2 1s. 4d. carriage money, whatever that may have been.

There was a curious regulation in one of the divisions of Windermere parish, which lasted up to about 1780:—“It was anciently customary in the township of Applethwaite for every tenant’s wife who lived below the highway to pay 5d. yearly rent to the lord of the manor, and every other woman above 16 years of age 2d., above the road every tenant’s wife paid 3d., and every other woman above 16, a penny. How this custom originated, or why the ladies on the low side of the road were rated higher than their contemporaries in the opposite division, we are unable to say.”[9]

Among the old manorial officers at Cockermouth chosen at the Michaelmas Courts were a bailiff, assessors, assessors of bread and ale, mill-lookers, moor-lookers, hedge-lookers, leather searchers, swine-ringers, and appraisers. The jury of the Leet formed the special jury for the government of the borough, and the bailiff was the returning officer for elections, as well as clerk of the market. At Egremont the officers chosen annually were a borough serjeant, two bailiffs, four constables, two hedge and corn-viewers, and assessors of damages. Most of the old manors, indeed, would furnish examples of quaint offices, whose purpose is now scarcely known. A good deal might be written concerning the old manorial and other Courts of the two counties. Occasionally these still afford interesting proceedings, but the real purpose for holding them has ceased to exist. The Courts of Pie Poudre, at Appleby and several other places; the Court of Conscience, or, as it was commonly called, the Wapentake Court, and the Court of Record at Kendal; and the many Court Leets, are now merely matters of local history.

Old-Time Punishments.

If one feature is more prominent than another in connection with former methods of repressing crime, or of punishing those who had been declared guilty of breaches of the law, it is that of brutality. Refinement, even in retribution, is perhaps not to be expected, having regard to the habits of the people and the conditions under which they lived. In the neighbourhood of the Border, “Jeddart justice”—to hang a man first and try him afterwards—was doubtless often found a convenient arrangement for dealing with those who were supposed to be delinquents. There is at least one case on record, too, of the drowning of a supposed witch at Carlisle, though the unfortunate woman was probably guilty of no more serious offence than being insane.

One of the most remarkable executions on record was that of Sir Andrew de Harcla, whose place in North-Country history is too well known to need further reference. He offended Edward the Second—whether he was as guilty as some historians have endeavoured to show is certainly a matter of opinion—and that monarch sent commissioners to Carlisle to seize de Harcla for treason. “The law” in those days was merely another name for the caprice of the King, and de Harcla had no trial. The cedula, or judgment, ran that Sir Andrew de Harcla, Earl of Carlisle, should be stripped of his Earl’s robes and ensigns of knighthood, his sword broken over his head, his gilt spurs hacked from his heels, and that he should be drawn to the place of execution, and there hanged by the neck; his heart and bowels taken out of his body, burnt to ashes and winnowed, his body cut into four quarters, one to be set upon the principal tower of Carlisle Castle, another on the tower of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a third upon the bridge at York, and the fourth at Shrewsbury, and his head upon London Bridge.

There has been doubt thrown upon the extent to which this revolting sentence was obeyed. Dr. Burn says “it was performed accordingly,” while the monks of Lanercost record that de Harcla “suffered in the ordinary place of execution with great fortitude, affirming to the end that in his transactions with the King of Scotland he had meant no hurt to his own King or country.” On the scaffold, they add, he said, “You have disposed of my body at your pleasure; my soul, which is above your disposal, I give to God.” It was customary to allow a sledge or hurdle on which persons condemned for high treason were dragged to the gallows; there is nothing in local records to show in what way the Earl was conveyed to the place of execution.

A question which has occupied a good deal of the attention of local antiquaries at various times is whether the body was dismembered and the parts dispersed as ordered. De Harcla’s sister petitioned Edward the Third for the restitution of her brother’s body for burial, and the order addressed to de Lucy, who had been de Harcla’s executioner, is still in existence. It runs thus:—“The King to his faithful and beloved Anthony de Lucy, Warden of Carlisle Castle, greeting. We command that you cause to be delivered without delay the quarter of the body of Andrew de Harcla, which hangs by the command of the Lord Edward, late King of England, our father, upon the walls of the said Castle, to our beloved Sarah, formerly the wife of Robert de Leyburn, sister to the aforesaid Andrew, to whom we of our grace have granted that she may collect together the bones of the same Andrew, and commit them to holy sepulture, whenever she wishes or her attorney. And this you shall in no wise omit. Witness the King at York, the 10th of August (1337), by the King himself.” A portion of the body is believed to have been buried in Kirkby Stephen Church; the tradition was strengthened by the discovery of part of the bones of a man under peculiar conditions when the church was rebuilt half a century ago.

Although there are several Gallows Hills in Cumberland and Westmorland, there only seems to be one place which has retained any particular story, and it is thus told in Mr. William Andrews’ third book relating to punishments[10]:—“It has been asserted by more than one local chronicler that John Whitfield, of Cotehill, a notorious North-Country highwayman, about 1768 was gibbeted alive on Barrock. He kept the countryside in a state of terror, and few would venture out after nightfall for fear of encountering him. He shot a man on horseback in open daylight; a boy saw him commit the crime, and was the means of his identification and conviction. It is the belief in the district that Whitfield was gibbeted alive, that he hung for several days in agony, and that his cries were heartrending, until a mail coachman passing that way put him out of his misery by shooting him.”

There is a contemporary record of the execution to be found in the St. James’s Chronicle, for August 12th, 1768, as follows:—“Wednesday, John Whitfield, for murdering William Cockburn on the Highway, near Armithwaite, was executed at Carlisle, and afterwards hung in Chains near the Place where the Fact was committed.” It will be seen that the record makes no mention of the culprit having been put into his iron cage when alive, and one can only hope that there is nothing beyond tradition to support the assertion.

Next we come to the gibbeting of a Threlkeld man, one of the earliest recorded instances of that punishment being imposed in the County Palatine. The facts are contained in the Rydal papers, published in 1890 by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Writing from Rydal on November 24th, 1671, to Sir Joseph Williamson, Sir Daniel Fleming said:—

“Being lately in Lancashire I received there—as a justice of the peace of that county—an information against one Thomas Lancaster, late of Threlkeld in Cumberland, who, it is very probable, hath committed the most horrid act that hath been heard of in this countrey. He marryed the 30th of January last a wife in Lancashire, who was agreed to be marryed that very day, or soon after, to another; and her father afterwards conveyed all his reall estate to this Lancaster upon his giveing security to pay severall sums of money to himselfe and his other daughters. And through covetousness to pay these and other payments it is very probable that Lancaster hath lately poysoned—with white arsenic—his wife, her father, her three sisters, her aunt, her cosin-german, and a servant boy, besides poyson given to severall of his neighbours who are and have been sick, that people—as it is presumed—might think the rest dead of a violent fevor. I have committed him prisoner unto Lancaster Castle and shall take what more evidence I can meet with against the next assizes, that he may there have a fair triall, and—if he be found guilty—such a punishment as the law shall inflict upon such like offenders.”

On April 3rd, of the following year, Sir Daniel, writing to Sir George Fletcher, at Hutton, returned to the subject, after he had discussed private affairs and the action of the Judges with regard to the Papists. At the Lent Assizes at Lancaster, he said, “Thomas Lancaster has been found guilty of poisoning eight persons, and is to be hanged in chains.” Three weeks later in a letter to Sir William Wilde, Justice of the Common Pleas, the same gossip recorded that “Thomas Lancaster has confessed that he poisoned the old woman with arsenic, for a bribe of £24 from the heir to her estate, worth £16 per annum.” It is, however, to the church registers of Hawkshead that we must turn for an account of the final proceedings, the entry being under date April 8th, 1672:—

“Thomas Lancaster, who for poysonninge his owne family was adjudgt att the assizes att Lancaster to be carried back to his owne house att Hye-Wrey, where he liv’d, was there hanged before his owne doore till he was dead for that very facte, and then was brought with a horse and carr into the Coulthouse meadows and forthwithe hunge upp in iron chaynes on a gibbett, which was set up for that very purpose on the South syde, of Sawrey Casey, neare unto the Poole Stang, and there continued until such tymes as he rotted every bone from the other.”

There are records of wholesale executions in Cumberland for what may be called political offences. When the authorities were subduing Aske’s rebellion, for instance, little was thought of hanging a score of men, and many readers will no doubt remember the bravery of the victims’ wives on some of those occasions, for at the risk of their own necks they removed their executed husbands from the gallows and buried the bodies by night. At Appleby in former days doubtless many executed men were subjected to the further indignity of being drawn and quartered. In 1664 three of the men who supported Captain Atkinson, of Mallerstang, were, at a special assize in the county town, convicted of high treason for their share in the Kaber Rigg rising, and all were hanged, drawn, and quartered. It was not until the autumn of 1675 that Captain Atkinson was sentenced to die the death of a traitor, and pursuant to sentence was hanged, drawn, and quartered on September 1st. It was once common to hand over the bodies of those who had suffered on the gallows to surgeons for dissection. Probably the last Gallows Hill victim thus dealt with was George Mackereth, of Kendal, who was hanged in 1748 for the murder of his sweetheart.

A more interesting study is to be found in the methods adopted by the clergy when dealing with refractory individuals. Of excommunication, as imposed in the diocese of Carlisle, much might be written from the records preserved in the registry, for not only were poor folks put under the ban. Bishops and priors were declared “excommunicate,” while rectors, vicars, and less important people by the score seem to have offended.

One case of post-mortem punishment at Penrith, by way of appeasing the wrath of a former Bishop, may be quoted. The latter required the Archdeacon of Carlisle to seek out and summon certain malefactors who had insulted him while on a visit to the town. Three years seem to have passed before anything was done, and by that time one of the culprits had died and been buried. The Bishop ordered the body to be dug up, and to lie unburied until the form of absolution had been gone through. In connection, apparently, with the same affair, the Bishop “signified” to the Court of King’s Bench that John de Agliunby, who had been excommunicated for assaulting and wounding a priest, “after the term of forty days still remains impenitent and unabsolved,” and so the aid of the secular arm was invoked to coerce him. What the result may have been does not appear.

There is a peculiar case, perhaps less known than any—that of the priest or friar who officiated at the Brunskill conventicle, and made a good harvest from the “miraculous” cures wrought by the strong iron water at the Holy Well, Brough. The vicar obtained the Pope’s authority, and the offender was duly excommunicated.

In the Ven. Archdeacon Prescott’s recently edited transcript of the “Register of Wetherhall” may be read the full terms of a somewhat peculiar Cumberland case of excommunication and penance. Robert Highmore, Lord of Bewaldeth, had taken a mare, the property of John Overhouse of that place, as a heriot, before the church of Torpenhow had got the mortuary, and he was promptly punished in the orthodox way. Having quickly asked absolution, and restored the mare to Sir Robert Ellargill (for the parsons were always styled “Sir” in those days), vicar of Torpenhow, and by way of penance given the six best oaks in his wood, the Bishop absolved him. In some parts of the country the second best horse was due to the Church, and, says an old historian, “was carried, by the name of mortuary, or corse present, before the corpse, and delivered to the priest at the place of sepulture.” But in the diocese of Carlisle the Church was first served, and the lord only got the second best. Bishop Barrow, who ascended the episcopal throne at Carlisle in 1423, anathematized all men who took the heriot before “the Holy Kirke” got the mortuary. The punishment of excommunicating was far from being reserved for the lower orders. Quite a long story might be made of the part taken in this way, in the thirteenth century, by the Bishop of Carlisle, who excommunicated the Bishop of Dunkeld for refusing to pay the Pope’s tenth for the Holy Land.

When it became a matter of cursing wrong-doers, there was generally no tendency towards mincing words. Christian, Bishop of Glasgow, who became a professor of the Cistercian order, gave to the Abbey of Holme Cultram the grange of Kirkwinny. In this grant, quoted in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” the Bishop charged all men to protect and defend the grange, as they valued the blessing of God and of himself; threatening, if they did otherwise, that they should incur the papal excommunication, the curses of Almighty God and of himself, and the pains of eternal fire.

In 1361 several persons being accused of shedding blood in the church and churchyard of Bridekirk, were decreed to be excommunicated by the greater excommunication, and the incumbents of all the churches of the deanery of Allerdale were ordered to publish the sentence against them on every Sunday and holiday at high mass, when the largest number of people should be gathered together, the bells ringing, the candles lighted and put out, and the cross erected. The mother church of Greystoke being much out of repair, the belfry fallen, and the wooden shingles on the roof mostly scattered, and the inhabitants of Threlkeld and Watermillock refusing to contribute their proportion of the charge, the Bishop, at his visitation in 1382, issued his injunction “to all and every of them,” under pain of the greater excommunication—a proceeding which in those superstitious times no doubt quickly had the desired effect. Indeed no great provocation would seem to have been needed to bring the punishment of excommunication. Complaint having been made of some unknown persons riotously breaking into the houses and grange at Wet Sleddale, and committing disorders, a former Bishop issued his mandate to the Dean of Westmorland, and the local clergy, to denounce the greater excommunication at the time of high mass, the bells to ring, and the candles to be put out, against the rioters.

One of the vicars of Appleby St. Lawrence, Thomas de Burnley, was cited to York for neglecting to serve the chantry in Appleby Castle—doubtless the action was taken at the instigation of the Hereditary High Sheriff. On Burnley not appearing before the Judge of the Prerogative Court of the abbot and convent, he was excommunicated. The sentence was ordered to be read in the parish churches of St. Lawrence and St. Michael, Appleby, and in other churches and public places in the dioceses of Carlisle and York, every Sunday and holiday, so long as the abbot and convent required, or until he should comply and make satisfaction to the judge and parties. Burnley was not the only holder of his office who objected to the castle service, as Sir Walter Colwyn, who was appointed vicar of the parish forty years previously, was also sentenced (doubtless to be excommunicated) for “having endeavoured to throw the charges of serving the chantry in the castle upon the prior and convent of Wetheral.”

About the middle of the fourteenth century, Bishop Welton sent out his mandate to the rector of Brougham and another cleric to denounce the sentence of greater excommunication against certain unknown persons who had broken up a paved way and done some other outrages in the churchyard of Penrith, reserving to himself the sole power of absolution. Thereupon several of the inhabitants made a pilgrimage across country to Rose, confessed themselves guilty, and prayed for a remission of the heavy sentence. That was granted on condition of each man offering, by way of penance, a wax candle of three pounds weight, before the image of St. Mary in the parish church of Penrith on the following Sunday. In the same year the vicar of Penrith had a licence granted to him, to continue from March 8th to the Easter following, to hear the confessions of all his parishioners, and to give absolution upon the performance of penance injoined. Some exceptionally bad cases were, however, specially reserved by the Bishop. Persons who suffered from the ecclesiastical ban were deprived of the right of burial in the churchyard. Two cases of the kind are recorded in the Penrith registers for 1623. “August 29th, Lanc. Wood, being excommunicate, buried on the Fell. September 5th, Richd. Gibbon, being excommunicate, buried on the Fell.”

The most noteworthy instance of a man of any eminence in the Church being visited with excommunication during the last two centuries is probably that of Dr. Todd, who was vicar of Penrith in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. He and Bishop Nicolson had a long and bitter quarrel as to the rights of the prelate in local Church affairs. The diocesan at length suspended the vicar ab officio et beneficio, and then excommunicated him. The story throughout is not of a particularly edifying character; Dr. Todd took his punishment very lightly, and afterwards he and the Bishop seem to have been very good friends again.

Still later there are to be found records in various parish registers of ecclesiastical pressure being brought to bear on parishioners. Without any reason being shown in the register, Jane Curry was declared excommunicate, December 10th, 1732, by Hugh Brown, curate of Hayton. At Kirkandrews-on-Esk the churchwardens’ book shows a list of presentments for not bringing children to be baptised; for clandestine marriages, fornication, and contumacy. The parties were either excommunicated, or did penance, in the church on Sunday. One man did his penance in 1711 after having for fornication been excommunicated for thirty years; another man was excommunicated for refusing to be churchwarden. In 1785 two couples were publicly rebuked in church for clandestine marriage, and Sir James Graham, on the application of the curate, Mr. Nichol, ordered all his tenants to pay their fees properly. Clandestine marriages of course deprived the rector or the curate of the fees, hence the landlord’s reproof and caution.

The power of excommunication, which during the time of Charles the First had been chiefly exercised against the Romanists, was at the commencement of the reign of James the Second turned against the Protestant Nonconformists, with, in some districts, results sometimes curious but almost always sad. The names of forty-four persons were set out in the Greystoke register on March 29th, 1685, with this announcement following them: “Were these persons whose names and sirnames are here under written denounced excommunicate for their offences, and other their contumacy in not appearing at Consistorye Court for the reformation of their lives and manners.” Some of the offenders seem to have had only indifferent moral characters, but the majority were Quakers. Quakerism had been spreading for many years in the two counties, and during the time Dr. Gilpin was rector of Greystoke, the Nonconformists, while holding him personally in the deepest respect, gave him some hard puzzles to solve. “Such were their novel phrases and cross questions and answers that the doctor seemed sometimes at a loss what to say to them.” Among those who went over to the Quakers was a noted yeoman in his day—Henry Winder, of Green Close, who was appointed by the “Friends” to be the Receiver of all their collections in Cumberland. He, however, afterwards returned to the Presbyterians, and wrote some noteworthy pamphlets on religious topics. His many quarrels did not help to wear out his frame, for we read: “Feb. 9th, 1716/7 if was buried Henry Winder, sen., of Hutton Soyle; who dyed of a dropsy in the hundredth and first year of his age.”

The registers of Bampton contain many curious entries, especially about people who did not go regularly to church. One, which may be taken as an example of other reports by the churchwardens, reads:—“We have no presentments to make but what has been formerly presented, viz., we have Thomas Braidley and Margret his wife, Richard Simpson, John Hottblacke, and Syth Gibson, quakers, and noe other we have in our parish, but doe duely resort to church, nor any other offence presentable to our knowledge.” In other cases it was further noted that “the parties stand excommunicated.” The churchwardens were evidently strict about enforcing order, and on one occasion reported “William Stephenson for violent beating of John Wilkinson of Shap upon the sabbath and within the churchyard.” In other ways the churchwardens exercised care; and a woman got into trouble with them for acting as a midwife “without licence to the prejudice of several persons.” Again, “Lancelot Hogarth is presented to us by information of Richard Brown for loading corn on the sabbath in time of divine service.” Sometimes the parish clerk had a share in the work; one of these presented. “James Hayes of Banton, for reading two sale notices, without leave on the Sabbath day, one in the church, the other in ye churchyard.”

Possibly even Dissenters were not thought to be entirely bad, so long as they paid their tithes, and in presenting William Simpson once more the Bampton churchwardens vouched that albeit he was a Quaker he was “a very moderate one; tho’ he absent the church yett he payes his tythes.” The Church authorities seem to have carried out their unpleasant duties with a due amount of consideration; there is a tone of sympathy about some of the entries; in others indifference may be noted, as where Richard Simpson and Margaret Braidley (the latter “very old, not able to go abroad, scarcely help herself,”) are presented along with William Wilson, younger, a Dissenter—what sort we know not, but he never comes to church. Although the Howards of Naworth at one time owned the manor of Thornthwaite, and lived at the Hall, the only entry in which the name is found is the following: “We have none to present but who have been formerly presented and doe stand excommunicated, viz., Mr. William Howard and Jane his wife, papists, Richard Simpson and Margret Braidley, widow, quakers, all that we have.”

Although the sentence of excommunication was frequently used by the Nonconformist bodies, in this case the proclamation had no such serious results as followed the sentence in earlier days. Among the records of the Penrith Presbyterian Church are many allusions to excommunication; one instance will suffice to illustrate the rest. In 1818, Robert McCreery, a member of the church, had left the town in company with a woman who was not his wife, but returning three months afterwards, he petitioned to be re-admitted to the Presbyterian Society. Before the formalities could be concluded McCreery seems to have changed his mind and withdrawn his application, and he was therefore declared from the pulpit to be excommunicate.

At Ravenstonedale, in the days of Philip Lord Wharton, there was a ready method of dealing with slanderers and other transgressors. The “town” was governed by twenty-four of the principal inhabitants, called the grand jury, and the oath which they were required to take included a promise that—

“Every person or persons within this lordship which shall be convicted before the grand jury for the time being and by them be found to have offended against any person or persons within this lordship, either by slanderous words or other unlawful speech or report, that the same offender or offenders shall, upon such a Sabbath Day, before the celebration of the general Communion then next following the conviction, and in such manner before the people assembled in the church ... appoint the said offender or offenders in penitent manner to confess their fault, and to ask the party aggrieved forgiveness for the same, upon pain of every such offender or offenders to forfeit to the lord of this manor, so often as they shall contemptuously or obstinately deny or defer to make their reconcilements, 3s. 4d.: and the men in charge of the church not to fail in execution hereof upon pain to forfeit to the lord 12d.”

Though paying 3s. 4d. seems a small punishment, it was a large sum towards the end of the reign of Queen Bess, and would be equal to fully £3 now, while three years after the rule was instituted the fine was doubled. Mr. Nicholls, in a series of lectures which he delivered in the village some twenty-four years ago, remarked:—

“Such a law as this one would expect to be a very wholesome check against slander. There is a tradition that the culprit was compelled to stand up, wrapt in a white sheet, and confess his fault; but, whether this were so or no, the confession must have been a terrible ordeal, and I can understand that the fine was often paid. It would seem that notwithstanding the fine or penalty, the vice was a prevalent one, as its mention is followed by a homily against the sin of slander, in which many passages of Scripture are cleverly and skilfully incorporated.”

The long-since dismantled Abbey of Lanercost had its origin in a tragedy. Gils Beuth laid claim to a part of Gilsland, and Robert de Vallibus, lord of Gilsland, slew him at a meeting for agreement appointed between them under trust and assurance of safety. In consequence of that action Vallibus laid down arms and began to study law with such good effect that in time he became a judge. The murder still preyed on his mind until he made satisfaction to Mother Church by building Lanercost Abbey, and endowing it with the very lands which had brought about the murder.

Dr. Burn in one instance shows that not only were people allowed “the option,” in some cases, but that the money was put to good use. A silver communion chalice belonging to Beetham Parish Church “was purchased by the late Commissary Stratford with money paid in commutation of penance for adultery and fornication;” its inscription being “Ob Pœn. Mulct. Dedicat. Huic. Ecclesiæ, 1716.” Slanderers had occasionally to pay not only a monetary penalty for the free use of their tongues, but to satisfy the ecclesiastical authorities as well. Chancellor Paley had such a case before him in November, 1789, where a man had “uttered words of a shameful nature and unbecoming a Christian, in prejudice to the complainant and his daughter.” The Chancellor “decreed the defendant to do public penance in the parish church, and to be condemned in all costs.” The Pacquet which thus records the decision, is silent as to the method in which the punishment was carried out. Penance in connection with illegitimacy was not uncommon; therefore the following entry which occurs in the Kirby Thore register, dated June 27th, 1779, after the baptism of an illegitimate child, must be taken only as an example: “William Bowness, of Bolton B[achelor]: Frances Spooner, widow, of this Parish, the parents, underwent a public penance in this church.”

The Millom records under date March 27th, 1595, say that Jenet Benson was “to be sorye for her sins by order of Mr. Commissorye at Botle;” and in 1608 “Barnard Benson did his penance in the parishe chirche of Millom the 19th of March and payed to the poor of the chirche x^s. which was openly delivered in the pulpit, vi^s. viii^d. at Millom and iii^s. iv^d. at Ulfall.” The Bensons would seem to have been a troublesome lot, for another entry is that “Myles Benson p^d xii^d. for sleepinge and not goinge orderly to church.” The wardens at that time could fine any parishioners a shilling for neglecting to attend church. Insults to the clergy were visited with such punishments as could be imposed, and the doing of penance was perhaps the most suitable consequence of such an action. This paragraph appears in the Greystoke register:—“1608/9 February 12th. This daye two Sermons by Mr. P’son one afforenone, and the other afternone, and Edward Dawson taylyor did openlye conffess before the Congregation that he had abused the mynister Sr. Matthew Gibson upon the Sabboth daye at Evenynge prayer.” Sacrilege has always been very properly looked upon as one of the worst crimes, but instances must be comparatively rare of an estate being forfeited through such an act. Barwise Hall, near Appleby, descended from the family of Berewyse to that of Ross, and the last of these is said to have forfeited his domain for stealing a silver chalice out of the church.

Before the privilege was abolished by Parliament in the reign of James the First, there were several places in the two counties at which sanctuary could be obtained. One was at Ravenstonedale. The Rev. W. Nicholls, Dr. Simpson, Mr. A. Fothergill, the Rev. R. W. Metcalfe, and others have brought the history of that parish to an unusually complete stage, and the first-named gentleman has told the story.[11] The tower, according to tradition—the structure was demolished about a century and a half ago—stood apart from the church, on the road side, and rested on pillars, leaving openings at equal distances on each side, while from the centre hung the rope of the refuge bell. Any person who had committed any offence worthy of death—once a very easy matter, there being many such crimes besides murder—after ringing the bell could not be seized by the Sheriff or any other King’s officer, but must be tried by the lord’s Court at Ravenstonedale, which doubtless at first consisted of the monks. Mr. Fothergill recorded that in his time if a murderer fled to the church and tolled the holy bell, he was free, and that if a stranger came within the precincts of the manor he was safe from the pursuer. He added:—“Of our own knowledge, and within our own memory, no felon, though a murderer, was to be carried out of the parish for trial, and one Holme, a murderer, lived and died in Ravenstonedale; his posterity continued there for two generations, when the family became extinct.” Some doubt has been thrown on the local tradition that the privilege of sanctuary was possessed by the Nunnery, on the banks of the Eden, in Ainstable parish. There is still an upright pillar, having on one side of it a cross, round which is inscribed “Sanctuarium, 1088.” There is also near to Greystoke Church what is called a sanctuary stone.

In the Museum at Kendal is preserved a good specimen of the scolds’ bridle, which may have come down from the days, three centuries ago, when the Corporation set about reforming the conduct of the inhabitants. The contents of the “Boke of Recorde” are very interesting in this connection. Gambling in its varied forms was put down rigorously. It was ordered that any inhabitant allowing any play at cards, dice tables, bowls, or any other unlawful game should be fined for the first offence 6s. 8d., and for the second offence 13s. 4d., while the players escaped with half those penalties. These and other fines which were provided for were “over and beside such other punishment as shall be thought mete and requisite according to the quality of the offence.”

Among the punishments provided for may be noted the following as a specimen, there being several of the kind. Henry Wilson, a burgess and Justice of the Peace for the borough, having been living incontinently with Jennet Eskrigge, a married woman, “as is notoriouslye knowen to the sclannder and offence of the magistrats off the sayd boroughe, and evil example of the residewe off the inhabitannts heare, wherbye he is thoughte nott mete to contynewe in the sayd roweme and offyce,” it was ordered that he should be expelled from his offices. As to the woman, it was decreed that she should be carted through the town, “to the terror and fear of other persons of evil disposition for the committing of the like offence in time to come,” and she was not to be permitted to remain within the borough unless she was reconciled to and dwelt with her husband. The punishment did not act as a warning to the woman, and further orders are to be found in the minute-book showing how she was made liable to heavy fines and forbidden to enter the town “otherwise than as a stranger coming to the church or market only,” while the inhabitants who gave her shelter were liable to fines of ten shillings each.

There is a very long and verbose order passed by the Corporation in December, 1589:—“For punishinge of a mayd servant for speakinge slanderouse speeches of her master.” They found that “Mabel Atkinson, late servant unto Mr. Henry Dickson, and Sybell Dyckson, his wife, inhabitants of this borough, forgetting her duty to Almighty God and the fear and awe she ought to have had to the threatening menaces and punishments pronounced out of His Holy Word and Commandments against such persons as shall openly or privily unjustly slander, hurt, or impair their neighbours in body, goods, name or report, and also that servile regard and honest, and true favour and love she ought to have borne towards her said master and mistress in all manner of behaviours and reports by the instigation of our mortal enemy the Devil, the author of all falsehood and lying, hath of late, even within this borough of Kirkbiekendall, most maliciously, falsely, and untruly imposed, devised, framed, and brought a very horrible, unjust, and feigned slander and misreport of and against her master and mistress.”

The punishment is worth describing in full, but the following extract will suffice as a specimen of the whole order thereon:—“For condign punishment in this behalf and for a terror and fear to be wrought in all others for committing the like offence, it is ordained and constituted that Mabel Atkinson shall be attached and taken on Monday, in the morning, next, by the two Serjeants at Mace and ministers of this borough, where and in what place she may be found, and shall forthwith be had, carried, and conveyed unto the common prison or ward of the same borough, and there shall remain and continue without any bail or delivery until Thursday then next following, in the afternoon, having only for diet every day in the meanwhile one slender and spare repast of meat and drink, and only two coverlets nightly to lie in, at which time on the said Thursday, in the afternoon, being openly called forth of prison to the bar in the Mootehall of the same borough, if she will and do in very penitent, humble, and sorrowful manner, unfeignedly and truly upon her knees, in the open presence of the people then and there assembled, and before her said master and mistress, ask and pray at God His hands mercy and forgiveness for her said false and untrue report and slander, and pardon also of her said master and mistress for the said offence, then she to be delivered out of the said prison or ward, paying such fees and duties as may appertain, and if she shall the same refuse, in whole or part, or in doing the same not performing it with such true penitence as in such case is requisite, and as all the people assembled may and shall therewith be fully satisfied and resolved, that she be banished from being, tarrying, or remaining within this borough, or the liberties or precincts of the same, for and by the space of one whole year then next coming, and that no person or persons during the same year shall take her into service or suffer her to dwell in house under or with any such person or persons (except it be in lawful wedlock) upon pain to lose and forfeit to, and for the common use of all the inhabitants of the same for every month as much as ten shillings, to be levied as above.”

The poor drunkards met with none too considerate treatment from the justices of the time. Here is a curious “Order against common drunkards, how to be punished, and for common scolds”:—“Whereas sundry persons inhabiting this borough and others (of their insatiable minds without any regard to common honesty, modesty, or fear of God, or His severe punishment either in this life or the life to come) do give up their bodies (which Almighty God hath ordained to honour) unto all manner of dishonour and dissolute kind of life in quaffing immoderate and superfluous devouring of strong ale at very many needless and unfit times, continuing the same most foul and detestable vice so long till at length they be so far overtaken and gone that they become beast-like and insensible, without reason or any good understanding (besides the great loss of time and waste of their goods, and miserable want of their families at home, and their own beggaring at length, and lamentable grief to all other good Christians, their neighbours, detesting and loathing that vice) for redress whereof and preventing of sundry mischiefs which else might happen by this occasion (besides great danger to their souls) if the same enormity should not in time be speedily foreseen; it is therefore ordained and constituted by the Aldermen and burgesses of this borough that at all times hereafter when and so often as any person or persons whatsoever shall be seen or known ... to have been or at any time to be so far overtaken, besotted or drunken with immeasurable devouring of strong drink that then it shall be lawful to or for any Alderman, Justice, or Alderman’s Deputy all and every such misordered person and persons to cause to be imprisoned within the same borough, there to remain at such diet and during the pleasure of him that committed him, to the end thereby to reclaim and warn every one of them from lewdness and detestable offences of drinking; and also that every such magistrate aforesaid shall or may commit and command to be set on the cuckstool every common scold, railer, or of notorious misdemeanour, at the like pleasure of the Commander or Magistrate.”

The turning of Thirlmere into a huge reservoir, and the necessary increase of its depth, hid for ever a number of land-marks. There are, however, numerous others of an interesting character left. A reminder of the days when the manorial lord was a king in a small way is supplied by the Steading Stone. This is supposed to mark the site where the manor court of Wythburn was held, and its pains and penalties imposed. The Rev. S. Barber has supplied[12] an explanation of a term which has puzzled many a tourist as well as not a few dwellers in Lakeland:—“The City, as has been suggested by one who is no mean scholar, is neither more nor less than a corruption of ‘Sitting,’ that is, the place of session of the early judges, when they met to adjudicate in criminal cases. We can then picture the white bearded patriarchs seated in solemn conclave upon the semi-circle of boulders facing the central rock, and after the giving of sentence sternly watching the miserable captive led away to be decapitated on that very rock, before the assembled witnesses.”

Life in the old gaols for any extended period must have been a very dreadful experience. The buildings were generally crowded; that they would be in a perpetually insanitary condition goes without saying, and gaol fevers were frequent. The prisoners were not treated any better in the local gaols than in other places. They were chiefly dependent on the charity of outsiders for subsistence, and the old Carlisle and Whitehaven newspapers contain hundreds of paragraphs recording the gratitude of the prisoners to the local gentry for gifts of from £1 to £20. In these days when it is unlawful to send any tobacco or liquors into a prison, the reader notes with particular interest the announcements of presents of barrels of ale, prayer-books, bread, coals, and other articles to the debtors, as well as to those who had been convicted of serious offences.

Those, too, were “the hanging days.” Note the items in this concise report of Carlisle Assizes in August, 1790:—“On Friday afternoon the Judges were met at the usual place, near Carlisle, by Wm. Brown, High Sheriff of the county, attended by a most respectable and numerous company of gentlemen, in carriages and on horseback. On their arrival in the city, their lordships proceeded to the Hall, where His Majesty’s Commission being opened in due form, the Courts were adjourned to eight o’clock the next morning—when the business of assize proceeded. The Hon. Sir John Wilson at the Crown End; and the Hon. Sir Alex. Thomson, in the court of nisi prius. When our account left Carlisle, Wm. Bleddy, for breaking open the shop of Miss Crossthwaite, at Keswick; and John Thompson, for horse stealing, were found guilty—death. Bella Ramsay, for stealing wearing apparel, to be transported. Leonard Falshea, for stealing six sheep, found guilty—death, but ordered for transportation. Ann Wilson and Elizabeth White, for stealing a purse, etc., to be transported.”

There are no stocks standing now on the village greens of Cumberland and Westmorland, but in Tullie House Museum, Carlisle, are local examples of both pillory and stocks. Among the records of Greystoke, some seventy years ago, it was stated that the village then possessed a neat cross, “the stones of which remain piled together, and also the foot-stocks for the punishment of evil doers.” Whipping in public was so general in most towns as to occasion no great amount of notice, and often the punishment must have seemed out of all proportion to the offence. Thus at the assizes of 1790, just mentioned, Walter Smith, who was convicted of stealing a game-cock, was sentenced to be imprisoned six months and publicly whipped in Whitehaven.

GIANT’S THUMB, PENRITH.

There is a tradition among some of the old folks of Penrith that the holes at the top of the ancient cross, known as the Giant’s Thumb, in the churchyard, were at one time used for a pillory. The only authority for the assertion seems to have been the late Mr. William Grisenthwaite, builder, who had quite a store of local traditions. It was on his statement that Mr. George Watson included the information in his “Notabilia of Old Penrith.” Mr. Grisenthwaite said the last time the cross was used for that corrective purpose was for the whipping of a young woman, who died of a broken heart in consequence of her shameful exposure. It is but fair to say that other old people of great intelligence declare that they never heard of such an event, and that they do not believe it. Moreover, Penrith possessed stocks, and doubtless a pillory also, not far from where the Monument now stands; hence the statement as to the Thumb being put to such a secular purpose as being used for a whipping-post is greatly in need of confirmation. The stocks at Penrith had not ceased to be used in 1781, having been repaired by Thomas Langhorne in that year, at a cost of £1 14s. Those at Ravenstonedale stood outside the churchyard wall, and near the Grammar School. The stocks at Orton were near the church gate; those at St. Michael’s, Appleby, at Bongate Cross. An iron, with the letters “R. V. T.” (“rogue, vagabond, thief”), was attached to the dock in the Crown Court at Appleby, until the Shire Hall was improved about 1848.

It is recorded that whipping was formerly practised in Appleby to a considerable extent. On October 26th, 1743, it was ordered by the Mayor and Aldermen that the stocks and pillory, then opposite to the house which had recently belonged to a person named Knotts, should be immediately removed to the end of the open Hall, facing the Low Cross, “that being deemed the proper place for the same, and that there be a whipping-post, and a convenient place for burning criminals in the hand, erected there also.” The late Mr. M. Cussons, shortly before his death early this year, told the writer that he particularly remembered the stocks at Appleby. They were placed at the north end of the old Moot Hall, and were removed before 1835, in which year the Corporation fixed the present weighing machine on the site. The stocks were so placed that the culprit undergoing punishment had his back to the building, and faced the church. When they were last used has not been ascertained. There were stocks also at Bongate Cross, but these were removed about thirty years ago by the late Mr. Richardson, the Bongate parish clerk, and given by him to the late Mr. G. R. Thompson, Bongate Hall. From the Appleby Corporation records, Mr. W. Hewitson, Town Clerk, finds that in 1767 the grand jury set out to William Bewsher on a lease for 999 years a piece of ground on which to build a smith’s shop, at the north corner of Bridge End, near where the ducking-stool stood.

The last person flogged through the Appleby streets was a man named Johnnie Copeland, a notorious character in his time. This happened about 1819. The crime for which he suffered this punishment was a criminal assault. Mrs. Jane Brunskill, Appleby, now in her ninetieth year, who was an eye witness of the punishment, informed the writer a few months ago that she remembered the occurrence perfectly. The offender was fastened by two ropes, placed round his body, one being held by a man who walked in front, and the other by a man walking behind the culprit. The punishment was inflicted by a prisoner under confinement in Appleby Gaol. They started from the High Cross and proceeded to the Gaol, the man being flogged all the way. This took place on a market day, and the streets were crowded. The governor of the gaol at that time was named James Bewsher, and he combined with that office the business of blacksmith, which he carried on in the premises already referred to as being near the place where the ducking-stool stood.

Dishonest workmen also got a taste of the lash occasionally, as witness this newspaper paragraph of January, 1789: “A fancy-weaver, belonging to Messrs. Foster and Sons’ manufactory in Carlisle, was publicly whipped a few days ago, for stealing several of his masters’ patterns, and sending them to a manufactory in Glasgow.”

There is believed to have been no example of riding the stang in Cumberland or Westmorland during the last half century. Previously, however, it would seem to have been an unpleasantly frequent punishment. In the Westmorland Gazette for December 19th, 1835, a long description was given of “the old but now almost neglected custom.” In this case an Ambleside woman had left her husband and family, and gone with a married man to America. After an absence of eight months she returned, and, said the local journalistic chronicler of the period, “the young men of Ambleside, with that manly and proper spirit which ought to actuate the breast of every noble mind who values propriety of conduct, and that which is decent and of good report, on Monday procured, instead of a pole, a cart, in which were placed two of their companions, and accompanied by a party of both young and old, proceeded through the town repeating at certain places the following lines:—

‘It is not for my part I ride the stang,
But it is for the American——just come hame.’

The fun was continued to the amusement of hundreds for about an hour, but not being satisfied with one night’s frolic, the same party, on Tuesday evening, procured an effigy of the frail lady, and after exhibiting it in every part of the town, publicly burnt it at the Market Cross, amidst the loud hurras of the assembled crowd who had met to witness the sight, and who took that opportunity of testifying their hatred and detestation of such base and abominable conduct as the parties had been guilty of.”

Some Legends and Superstitions.

The title of this chapter sufficiently indicates that the legends and superstitions intended to be dealt with are far from including all which might be mentioned; indeed not a tithe of those which are still well known in the two counties can here be touched upon. Mr. Whitfield, M.P., in an address in West Cumberland over thirty years ago,[13] said that the superstitions in the Border country concerning fairies and brownies were more developed, and the belief in spells and enchantments more common than in many other parts of the country. The various circumstances attending the growth of those beliefs led to the conclusion that in the Middle Ages religion as then taught did not exercise any great influence on the Border. Though monasteries were founded on each side of the Border as some protection against the desolations of war, the English did not scruple to ravage the Scottish monasteries during an invasion, and the Scotch treated with corresponding violence the English foundations. At the time of the Reformation the Border was probably the most ignorant and barbarous district in England.

There is a pretty legend pertaining to St. Bees, which is supposed to have derived its name from St. Bega, an Irish nun, who came to Cumberland about the middle of the seventh century, and, with her sisters, was wrecked near to the headland. “In her distress she went to the Lady of Egremont Castle for relief, and obtained a place of residence at St. Bees. Afterwards she asked Lady Egremont to beg of her lord to build them a house, and they with others would lead a religious life together. With this the Lady Egremont was well pleased, and she asked the lord to grant them some land. The lord laughed at the lady, and said he would give them as much land as snow fell upon ‘the next morning in Midsummer Day.’ On the next morning he looked out from the castle towards the sea, and all the land for about three miles was covered with snow.”[14]

Another tradition associated with West Cumberland is that at Kirksanton. There is a basin, or hollow, in the surface of the ground, assigned as a place where once stood a church that was swallowed up by the earth opening, and then closing over it bodily. It used to be believed by the country people that on Sunday mornings the bells could be heard far down in the earth, by the simple expedient of placing the ear to the ground. A very similar legend was, in a magazine in 1883, recorded of Fisherty Brow, Kirkby Lonsdale:—“There is a curious kind of natural hollow scooped out, where, ages ago, a church, parson, and congregation were swallowed up by the earth. Ever since this terrible affair it is asserted that the church bells have been regularly heard to ring every Sunday morning.”

If an old tradition is to be believed, one of the most conspicuous land-marks in the north of England should be regarded as a memorial, so far as its name goes. The story is that the cross was planted, by pious hands, in the early days of Christianity, on the summit or table land of the chain of mountains which bounds the eastern side of Cumberland, separately known by different names along their range, but collectively called Cross Fell. At any rate, whether or not it takes its name from its transverse situation to the common run of the immense ridge, this tradition, as the Rev. B. Porteus has remarked, “is preferable to another which traces its derivative to a cross erected for the purpose of dislodging the aërial demons which were once thought to possess these desolate regions, and gave it the name of the Fiend’s Fell.” But the cyclone (the Helm Wind) and the sending for holy men to Canterbury to exorcise “the demon” supports the derivation. Alston Church is dedicated to St. Augustine. Some say the bodies of Christians who had died in the heathen eastern districts were brought “Cross t’ Fell” to be buried in the consecrated land of the primitive Christians of Cumberland and Westmorland.

There is a tradition that an attempt was made time after time to build a church in what is known as Jackson’s Park, Arlecdon, but as often as begun in the day it was destroyed in the night by some unknown and invisible hand. Eventually the attempt was abandoned, and the church built in its present position. Then there is the familiar legend connected with the building of the Devil’s Bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale. There are several versions of the erection of this structure, and as one is just as likely to be wrong as another, the story told by Mr. Speight[15] may be quoted: “The bridge was built by his Satanic Majesty, according to a compact made between himself and a poor woman who wished to recover her cow which had strayed at low water to the opposite side of the river, but could not do so without the convenient means of a bridge. And so the King of Evil agreed to erect a bridge on condition that he should have the first living thing that crossed. He knew very well of her husband’s coming home from market, and hoped to make good booty. But the cunning woman was equal to the occasion. Seeing the approach of her husband on the opposite hill, she concealed a scraggy, half-starved dog under her apron, and letting it sniff a bone, suddenly tossed the latter over the fine, new made viaduct, and the dog at once bounding after it, she stepped back, and raising her fingers in a vindictive, and certainly most unbecoming manner, lustily exclaimed,

‘Now, crafty Sir, the bargain was
That you should have what first did pass
Across the bridge—so now, alas!
The dog’s your right.
The Cheater cheated, struck with shame,
Squinted and grinned, then in a flame
He vanished quite.’”

At least two legends have come down to us of the days of the wolves. A lady belonging to the Lucy family—the great territorial lords of West Cumberland—was one evening walking near to Egremont Castle when she was devoured by a wolf at a place afterwards marked by a stone cairn, and known as Woful Bank. The name of Wotobank is given to a place in the parish of Beckermet. The story here is that Edgar, a lord of Beckermet, and his lady, Edwina, and servants, were at one time hunting the wolf. “During the chase the lord missed his lady, and after a long and painful search the party at last found her body lying on the hill, or bank, slain by a wolf, with the ravenous beast still in the act of tearing it to pieces. In the first transports of his grief, the words that the distressed husband first uttered were, ‘Woe to this Bank’—a phrase since altered and applied to the place as ‘Wotobank.’” Another wolf legend of a somewhat similar character is attached to a well called Lady’s Dub, at Ulpha.

What can only be described as legends—for as to their authenticity it would perhaps not be wise to inquire too closely—belong to the fortunes of several estates in the two counties. One of the owners of Warthell (or Warthol) Hall, in the parish of Plumbland, was notorious for his passion for card-playing—a form of amusement, by the way, which probably for more than two hundred years has been a favourite among all classes in the two counties. The Lord of Warthell, Mr. Dykes, one evening lost a large sum, and was face to face with ruin. Growing desperate, he determined to risk all on a single game of putt, and at the last deal cried,

“Up, now deuce, or else a tray,
Or Warthell’s gone for ever and aye.”

While it would perhaps be unjust even to suggest that the people of Cumberland and Westmorland are now more superstitious than those of other counties, it is nevertheless a fact that many curious beliefs prevailed in the country districts long after they had ceased in other places. The faith in the efficacy of charms has even yet not died away. Toothache has long been a favourite medium for testing the skill of the charmer and the faith of the sufferer. The Rev. H. J. Bulkeley, then rector of Lanercost, who spent much time in collecting records of the old and fleeting beliefs, told in 1885 how the toothache charm was worked. “A boy suffering from toothache was taken to an old blacksmith, who prodded the decayed tooth with a rusty nail; blindfolded the boy, led him into a wood, and, taking the bandage off his eyes, made him hammer the nail into a young oak; blindfolded him again, and led him out, making him promise not to try and find the tree or tell anyone of it. And that tooth never ached any more!” Another method was to rub, with a stone, the part affected, the operation taking place soon after sunset. While performing the rubbing, the charmer muttered an incantation which does not seem to have been preserved in print, although it is doubtless well known in the country districts.

Fairies have given place to more material creations, but the faith in the “little folk” has not died out, and even yet occasionally the dairy-maid may be seen furtively to put a pinch of salt in the fire at churning time, “so that t’ fairies mayn’t stop t’ butter frae comin’.” The rowan-tree branch used to be placed above doorways to keep away evil influences throughout the north of England, and in the Lake Country the stick used for stirring the cream to counteract the bewitching of the churn is still frequently made of rowan or mountain ash wood.

Among the old superstitions is that of the death strokes:—

“As with three strokes above the testered bed
The parting spirit of its tenant fled.”

The opinion once very commonly prevailed that shortly before the coming of the last summons three distinct raps were heard on the wall immediately over the bed head. This, of course, was nothing more than the noise made by a small worm when trying to bore itself a passage through the decayed woodwork where it had been bred.

“Telling the bees” is a custom in several parts of the country, and is still believed in by some of the old people of these counties. When a death occurred in a household where bees were kept it was deemed desirable for some one to acquaint the occupants of the hives with the fact, and also to tell them on the day of the funeral that the corpse was about to be lifted. The late Mr. W. Dickinson, who by his “Cumbriana,” “Reminiscences,” and “Glossary,” did much to preserve a knowledge of old-time life in the county, said the last case of “telling the bees” which came to his knowledge was at Asby, near Arlecdon, in 1855. To miss taking the doleful news to the bees was held to be a certain way of bringing ill-luck to the house.

Supposed miracle workers have not been lacking. About the middle of the fourteenth century the abbot and canons of Shap had licence from Bishop Kirkby to remove the body of Isabella, wife of William Langley, their parishioner, famed for having miracles done by it, to some proper place within the church or churchyard of Shap, that the reliques might be reverenced by the people with freer and greater devotion.

“Boggles” have been common in all parts of the two counties; needless to say the dreadful apparitions when inquired about in a careful manner have invariably proved to be very commonplace and harmless creatures or articles. “Boggle” is a Norse word, sometimes equal to personification of diety or saint. Natural phenomena, as ignis fatuus, account for some; the mist-mirage explains others. The mist is still called “the haut” (the haunt). Witches, too, have abounded—according to report,—and some were drowned, or otherwise persecuted because of their evil repute. Mary Baynes, the witch of Tebay, died in 1811, aged ninety. She has been described as a repulsive looking woman, with a big pocket tied upon her back, and she was blamed for witching people’s churns, geese, and goslings, so that on account of her witchcraft she became a terror to her neighbours. Many strange things which happened were laid to her charge, and thoroughly believed by the people. Ned Sisson, of the “Cross Keys Inn,” had a mastiff which worried old Mary’s favourite cat. The owner decided to have the grimalkin respectably buried in her garden, and a man named Willan dug a grave for it. Old Mary handed Willan an open book, and pointed to something he was to read. But Willan, not thinking it worth while to read anything over a cat, took pussy by the leg, and said:

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Here’s a hole, and in thou must.”

Mary grew angry, and warned her companion that he would fare no better for his levity. Soon afterwards Willan was ploughing in his field when the implement suddenly bounded up, and the handle struck one of his eyes, causing blindness. Immediately Mary Baynes was given the credit for having bewitched the plough. The old lady seems to have tried her hand also at prophesy. Once when the scholars of Tebay School were out playing, Mary predicted to them that some day carriages would run over Loupsfell without the aid of horses. The railway now goes over a portion of the land to which she referred, which was then a large stinted pasture. The best known other “witch” was “Lizzie o’ Branton,” otherwise Lizzy Batty, a remarkable woman, who, in the early years of this century, occupied a cottage on the roadside between Brampton and Talkin. She acted in a peculiar manner, dressed curiously, and generally “acted the part,” with the consequence that she was credited with many supernatural powers. She died in 1817, at the age of eighty-eight. The date of her funeral in Brampton was for long years remembered as the stormiest day the town had ever seen. Although it was in March, yet darkness came on so suddenly that lanterns were lighted at the grave-side, only to be again and again extinguished by the fury of the tempest. A tradition still lingers that those who bore the coffin to the grave solemnly affirmed that it was empty and the body gone.

The belief in the “barguest,” now practically gone, was in comparatively recent times common enough to excite but little notice. The term was generally used to denote any kind of ghostly visitant, but referred more particularly to a fearsome creation which was supposed to haunt the fells and dales, and make a horrible noise. Mr. B. Kirkby, in his “Lakeland Words” (1899), gives the definition as known in North Westmorland: “One who has the power of foretelling the demise of others; or one who makes a great din.” Mr. Anthony Whitehead says, “A barguest is a spirit known only through the sense of hearing, being a something which, during the dark hours of night, disturbed the last generations of Westmorland with its awful howling.”

There is no lack of ghostly traditions in connection with families. Perhaps the best known is that belonging to the ancient family of Machell, of Crackenthorpe Hall, near Appleby. Lancelot Machell—the same who in open court tore to pieces Cromwell’s new charter for Appleby—married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Sleddall, of Penrith. Her portrait was found on a panel in Penrith some years ago. She was executrix of her husband’s will, and for some alleged injury to her interest in the estate it used to be said that she paid the Machells ghostly visitations whenever the head of the family was about to die. The country folk used to say that she is laid under the big stone called Peg’s Stone, just below Crackenthorpe Hall, her term of incarceration being 999 years. They also say she has been seen driving along the Appleby road at a great pace with “amber leets” in the carriage, and disappear suddenly in Machell Wood, near the spot called Peg Sneddle’s Trough. Indeed, there is extant a most graphic and brilliant account of her passage of the Tollbar at Crackenthorpe, narrated by one “Brockham Dick” (Richard Atkinson, of the “Elephant Inn”), now many years deceased, who kept the gate in his youth, and who used to stick to it with much detail of thrilling circumstance, how one night in each year, when the “helm” wind was blowing, Mrs. Machell made her appearance and passed this gate in offended state. When storms come on upon the fell, Peg is said to be angry, and vice versâ in fine weather. An old tree in the neighbourhood of Crackenthorpe called Sleddall’s Oak, is also associated with Mrs. Machell’s name, and here a female figure is supposed to be seen to sit and weep when any misfortune is about to befall any member of the Machell family.

When farmers find disease among their cattle, whether it be tuberculosis, pleuro-pneumonia, or other undesirable visitation, they no longer pin their faith to the old-time observances. The progress of science has shown better methods of dealing with the disease, and now the stock owners of the northern counties would be the first to ridicule the means taken by their grandfathers for stopping an outbreak. The “needfire,” which has been witnessed by many people who are not yet old, was probably the last remnant of fire-worship in this country. “It was once,” says Mr. Sullivan, “an annual observance, and is still occasionally employed in the dales and some other localities as a charm for the various diseases to which cattle are liable. All the fires in the village are carefully put out—a deputation going round to each house to see that not a spark remains. Two pieces of wood are then ignited by friction, and within the influence of the fire thus kindled, the cattle are brought. The scene is one of dire bellowing and confusion: but the owner is especially anxious that his animals should get ‘plenty of the reek.’ The charm being ended in one village, may be transferred to the next, and thus propagated as far as it is required.”

Miss Martineau, in her “Guide to the Lakes,” tells a story of a certain farmer who, “When all his cattle had been passed through the fire, subjected an ailing wife to the same potent charm.” The last time the “needfire” was used in the Keswick neighbourhood, Mr. William Wilson says, was in 1841. In some parts of Cumberland and Westmorland there was then an epidemic amongst the cattle. It was brought over the Raise and transferred from farm to farm through the vales. But, at one farm a few miles out of Keswick, the sacred fire was allowed to become extinct, the owner, a well-known statesman, not having sufficient faith in its virtue to take the trouble to transmit it, or even to keep it alight. He told Mr. Wilson that he was severely rated at the time for his lack of faith. That, however, served to kill the popular belief in needfire, and even when the terrible ravages of the rinderpest, foot and mouth disease, and pleuro-pneumonia, were emptying the pockets and breaking the hearts of the farmers, not one of them thought of reviving the old “cure.” The last time, so far as the writer can find, the practice was reported in the newspapers was this paragraph in the Patriot of July 25th, 1834:—“A sort of murrain, or pestilential fever, is at present prevalent in the county of Westmorland, the popular remedy for which is the fumigation of the infected animals with the smoke of needfire, accompanied by certain mystic signs.” The Rev. J. Wharton, however, well remembers the fire being made at Long Marton about 1843-4, during a murrain. The term “needfire” seems to be a corruption of “neatfire,” neat cattle being an old and common term.

Among the legends relating to North-Country residences, an interesting one is concerning Corby Castle and its “Radiant Boy.” This—which corresponds to the “corpse lichten” of other countries—has been described as a luminous apparition which made its appearance with dire results, the tradition being that the member of the family who saw the “Radiant Boy” would rise to great power, and afterwards die a violent death. The only example in proof of the tradition so far made known, however, was that of Lord Castlereagh. That statesman was given a wide margin of time after seeing the spectre, as that was supposed to have happened when he was a young man, and he did not commit suicide until 1822.

The superstition as to the skulls at Calgarth, Windermere, has several parallels. Those two skulls formerly occupied a niche in Calgarth Hall, from which they could not be kept for any long time, though they were reputed to attend the banquets at Armboth Hall, Thirlmere, of their own accord! Above all, “they were buried, burned, reduced to powder, dispersed by the wind, sunk in the well, and thrown into the lake several times, all to no purpose”—truly wonderful skulls!

The superstition concerning “first-foot” has not yet died out; but the observance is not regarded with that seriousness which ruled half a century ago, and to the next generation, probably, this ancient New Year’s custom and belief will have become part of the history of the bygone.

Four Lucks.

Closely associated with the legends of Cumberland and Westmorland, dealt with in the preceding chapter, are the stories of four “Lucks.” The best known is that of Eden Hall, which has been made the theme for poems and innumerable descriptive articles. The most popular version of the origin of the Luck is that when a servant was going for water one night to the Fairy Well, in front of the hall he surprised a number of fairies at their revels, with the goblet in the centre of the ring around which they were dancing. The servant seized the Luck, while the fairies gave the ominous warning that

“If this cup should break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Eden Hall.”

Numerous poets have woven pretty stories out of the tradition, without attempting to seek the real origin of the treasured possession. The Luck is an ancient glass vessel widening by an easy curve, and terminating in a graceful lip. Its colour is green, with enamel of red, yellow, and blue; one theory is that its origin was Saracenic, and that it was brought from Palestine by a member of the family during the Crusades. Dr. Todd, when Vicar of Penrith, supposed it to have “been used as a chalice, at a time when it was unsafe to have those sacred vessels made of costlier metals, on account of the predatory habits which prevailed on the Borders.” If absolute care can preserve it, the Luck is safe, for along with its leathern case, adorned with vine leaves, and having the sacred monogram “I.H.S.” on the top, the Luck is rarely taken from its place of security—said to be one of the strong rooms of the Bank of England. Whenever the Luck is exhibited to privileged visitors at the hall, the utmost precautions are taken to prevent even the slightest accident.

1.—ANCIENT GLASS VESSEL CALLED THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL.
2.—ITS LEATHER CASE.
3.—INSCRIPTION ON THE TOP OF THE CASE.

“The Luck of Muncaster” is reputed to have been the gift of Henry the Sixth, who stayed for a brief space with the Penningtons, either in 1461 or 1464. The King was in sore straits, for death had robbed him of the service of many of his most powerful adherents; howbeit he still held the affections of large numbers of people in Cumberland and Westmorland. The owner of Muncaster was one of those able and willing to stand by Henry in his necessity, and kept the King in safety. The room in which the monarch slept is still preserved with great care; he rested in a carved oak bedstead, which bears his initials and a crown. At parting Henry gave to Sir John Pennington a glass cup or basin, about seven inches in diameter, ornamented with some gold and white enamelled mouldings, with—according to tradition—the assurance that “the family shall prosper so long as they preserve this cup unbroken.” It is unnecessary to do more than mention that this Luck has been celebrated in verse, by way of illustrating the evil designs of a kinsman who desired to destroy both the cup and the fortunes of the Penningtons.

That such a treasured relic should have more than normal risks of misfortune can be well understood. Mr. Roby has mentioned[16] one of its escapes. “The benediction attaching to its security being then uppermost in the recollection of the family, it was considered essential to the prosperity of the house, at the time of the usurpation, that the Luck of Muncaster should be deposited in a safe place. It was consequently buried till the cessation of hostilities had rendered all further care and concealment unnecessary.” The box was allowed to fall when being brought again to the surface, which so scared the owners that they fancied that there would be a sudden end to their prosperity. The fright must have been of long duration, for the story is that forty years elapsed ere one daring member of the family, having seen no ill effects from the fall, had the box opened, and experienced the keen delight of finding the Luck uninjured. In the castle are two paintings, one representing the King giving the cup to Sir John Pennington, and another allowing the King with the Luck in his hand. On an old freestone slab in Muncaster Church is the inscription, “Holie Kynge Harrye gave Sir John a brauve workyd glass cuppe ... whyllys the famylie shold keep hit unbrecken thei shold gretelye thrif.”

“The Luck of Burrell Green,” near Great Salkeld, seems to have passed into the possession of various owners. It is an ancient brass dish of early embossed work, sixteen and a quarter inches in diameter, and one and a half inches deep. Mr. J. Lamb, formerly of Burrell Green, read a paper on the subject two or three years ago to the members of the Archæological Society, and also exhibited the dish. It is circular in form, and at one time appears to have borne two inscriptions, one in large old English letters in an inner circle around its central ornament, and the other in an outer circle, probably in the same style of lettering. Neither inscription is now legible, although on close examination certain letters may still be discerned, this being due, no doubt, to the amount of cleaning and rubbing it has undergone during late years. Thirty years ago, when greater care was taken of the Luck than has since been the case, and the inscription on the inner circle was rather more distinct than it now is, Mr. R. M. Bailey, a London antiquary, tried to decipher it, and was of opinion that it was in Latin, of which the following is a rendering: “Hail, Mary, Mother of Jesus, Saviour of Men.” Like the two other Lucks in Cumberland, the Luck of Burrell Green has its legend and couplet. This is that it was given to the family residing there long ago by a “Nob i’ th’ hurst,” or by a witch, a soothsayer, to whom kindness had been shown, with the injunction that

“If e’er this dish be sold or gi’en
Farewell the Luck of Burrell Green.”

The Luck has been in the possession of the respective families residing at Burrell Green for many generations, but its existence has not been brought very much before the public. In 1879 the late Mr. Jacob Thompson, of Hackthorpe, made a painting of the Luck. Mr. Lamb added:

“Apart from the value of the Luck as an example of ancient art, it may be said to be still more valuable from the mysterious tradition associated with it, and also as appears very probable from the rendering of the supposed inscription in the sacred use to which in all probability it has at some time been applied. From the style of the inscriptions it appears to be of as early a date as the commencement of the sixteenth century, or probably earlier. On the day Burrell Green last changed owners the Luck fell down three times in succession from its usual position, a circumstance which at that time had not been known to have occurred before, it always having been kept in a secure place.”

“The Luck of Levens” is of a kind quite different from the three already mentioned. Levens Hall has attached to it one of the oldest deer parks in England, and within its borders are some peculiarly dark fallow deer. The local people have come to believe that whenever a white fawn is born in the herd the event portends some change of importance in the House of Levens. Four such cases have occurred within living memory—when Lord Templetown came to Levens after the Crimean War, after General Upton’s death in 1883, on the day after Captain and Mrs. Bagot’s wedding in 1885, and in February, 1896, when Mrs. Bagot bore to Levens a male heir. Mr. Curwen, in his monograph on the house, mentions the following “to illustrate the superstition that had gathered round the white deer so early as Lord Templetown’s residence at Levens, between 1850 and 1860”:—

“A white buck which had appeared in the herd was ordered to be shot, but the keeper was so horrified with the deed, which he thought to be ‘waur ner robbin’ a church,’ that he actually went so far as to remonstrate with the Crimean veteran. Persuasion being of no use, he at last refused point blank to do the deed himself, and another man had to do it for him. In a few months great troubles came over the house. In quick succession it changed hands twice; the stewards, servants, and gardeners all lost their places; and the keeper firmly held to the belief that all was due to the shooting of this white deer.”

Some Old Trading Laws and Customs.

While some of the quaint laws connected with markets and fairs in other parts of the country are unknown in Cumberland and Westmorland, others not less interesting may be found in these counties. The searcher after such old-time lore may find a good deal of it in the standard histories, but still more in those byways of local literature which are too much neglected. In this chapter no attempt can be made to do more than touch the fringe of the subject.

There is in existence in the Dean and Chapter Library at Carlisle a monition probably dated towards the end of the fourteenth century addressed to the clergy of the diocese, requiring them to see the constitution of Otho strictly carried out—all fairs being banished from churchyards and suspended on Sundays and solemn feasts. Churchyard fairs were for the emolument of the churches, and were styled by the name of the saint whose example is inculcated by the church’s name. The late Canon Simpson, one of the most eminent antiquaries in the two counties, proved that, in England at least, no church was ever dedicated literally to a saint. Fairs, especially “pot fairs,” still prevail in church cloisters in Germany.

Meat selling at church doors was common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even so late as the time of Charles the Second. The only instance of such a thing occurring in Cumberland of which there is record now was at Wigton. In one of the old local histories appears the following note:—“The Rev. Thomas Warcup, who erected his monument in the churchyard long before his death, was obliged to fly from Wigton on account of his loyalty during the Civil Wars. After the restoration of King Charles he returned to the Vicarage, and tradition says that the butcher market was then held upon the Sunday. The butchers hung up carcases at the church door, to attract the notice of customers as they went in and came out of church, and it was not unusual to see people who made their bargains before prayer began, hang their joints of meat over the backs of the seats, until the pious clergyman had finished the service. The zealous priest, after having long but ineffectually endeavoured to make his congregation sensible of the indecency of such practices, undertook a journey to London on foot, for the purpose of petitioning the King to have the market day established on the Tuesday, and which he had interest enough to obtain.”

Warcup became Vicar of Wigton in 1612, and possibly on the principle that he was the best qualified to write his own epitaph because he knew himself better than was possible for another to know him, he prepared the following, which he had put on a headstone many years before his death:—

“Thomas Warcup prepar’d this stone,
To mind him of his best home.
Little but sin & misery here,
Till we be carried on our bier.
Out of the grave & earth’s dust,
The Lord will raise me up I trust;
To live with Christ eternallie,
Who, me to save, himself did die.”

There was a keen rivalry between Crosthwaite and Cockermouth at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The townsmen sent a petition to Parliament in 1306, stating that owing to the sale of corn, flour, beans, flesh, fish, and other kinds of merchandise at Crosthwaite Church on Sundays, their market was declining so fast that the persons who farmed the tolls from the King were unable to pay the rent. An order was soon afterwards issued stopping the Sunday trading at Crosthwaite. But the fairs and markets in churchyards on week-days were not prohibited by statute for two hundred and eighty years after the Cockermothians sought protection. The orders thus issued were not long recognised, but collectors of scraps of local history in all parts of the county have added to the general knowledge on this point.

The announcing of sales in churchyards was in the early part of this century a common custom. At Crosby Ravensworth the clerk hurried from his desk immediately the service was concluded, followed by the congregation, and mounting the steps he announced when a person’s sale by auction would take place, and read out any notice given to him, for which service he received a fee of fourpence. The custom has long since become obsolete; old William Richardson called the last notice in 1837. It has been asserted, with what amount of truth need not be too closely inquired into, that when this method of advertising public events was forbidden, the attendance of the parishioners at public worship showed a rapid falling-off. The custom of churchyard proclamations prevailed at Orton in the early part of the century, and the inscriptions on certain horizontal tombstones have been obliterated by the hob-nails in the clerk’s boots. While necessarily there must have been a great diversity in the articles announced in the churches or churchyards as likely to be submitted for public competition, it would be difficult to find a parallel for this paragraph, which appeared in the Pacquet for March 8th, 1791:—“A few months ago a person in very good circumstance at no great distance from Ravenglass buried his wife. His son, a few days since, also became a widower, and on Sunday, 27th ult., a sale of their wearing apparel was published at all the neighbouring parish churches! Whether motives of economy suggested the measure, or a wish to remove whatever could remind the disconsolate survivors of their loss, can only be guessed at.”

Among the relics treasured by Lord Hothfield at Appleby Castle, is an article reminding the visitor of the days when free trading was unknown. This is the principal corn measure which was used in the market at Kirkby Stephen more than two hundred years ago; its purpose and record are stated in the raised letters which run around the copper measure a little below the rim:—

“The measure of Thomas, Earle of Thanet Island, Lord Tufton, Lord Clifford, Westmorland, and Vescy, for the use of his Lopps [lordship’s] market at Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland, 1685.”

In the same building are two other corn measures, smaller than the Kirkby Stephen measure just mentioned. One bears only the word “Thanet,” and a coronet. The other measure, of different design, with the monogram, “A. P.” in raised characters, indicates approximately its age, as it was obviously the property of the Countess Anne of Pembroke. The measures, made of bell metal, formerly in use in Sir Richard Musgrave’s manor at Kirkoswald, are still carefully preserved by Mr. John Longrigg, the last steward.

How long the proclamation has been read at the St. Luke’s Fair at Kirkby Stephen is unknown; certainly for a couple of centuries the practice has been observed, and possibly for a much longer period. Although some of the terms have now no effect, nor the cautions any value, the proclamation is still made, the following being the terms of a recent one:—

“O yes, O yes, O yes, The Right Honourable Henry James Baron Hothfield, of Hothfield, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Westmorland, Lord of the Manor of Skipton in Craven, and Lord and Owner of this Fair, Doth strictly Charge and Command in Her Majesty’s name that all persons keep Her Majesty’s Peace, and not to presume to ride or go armed during the time of this Fair to the disturbance of Her Majesty’s Peace, in pain to be punished according to the Statute in that case made and provided; and also that all persons bargain and sell lawful and sound goods and merchandise, and pay their due and accustomed tolls and stallages, use lawful weights and measures, upon pain to forfeit the value of their wares and merchandise; and also that buy, sell, or exchange any horse, mare, or gelding, that the sellers and buyers thereof repair to the Clerk of the Tolls, and there enter their names, surnames, and places of abode of all such persons as shall buy, sell, or exchange any such horse, mare, or gelding, together with the price, marks, and vouchers at their perils; and lastly if any person have any injury or wrong done by reason of any bargain or contract, during the time of this Fair, let them give information thereof, and the same shall be tried by a Court of Pie Poudre, according to law.

“God save the Queen, and the Right Honourable Henry James Baron Hothfield.”

Needless to say, the Court of Pie Poudre has not sat for many years now.

Many curious and interesting customs were once connected with the holding of markets and fairs; a few of these survive, though not in the form once known. The practice a little over a century ago at Ravenglass, where a fair was held on “the eve, day, and morrow of St. James,” has been thus described: “On the first of these days in the morning, the lord’s officer, at proclaiming the fair, is attended by the serjeants of the Lord of Egremont, with the insignia belonging thereto; and all the tenants of the Forest of Copeland owe a customary service to meet the lord’s officer at Ravenglass to proclaim the fair, and abide with him during the continuance thereof; and for sustentation of their horses they have two swaiths of grass in the common field of Ravenglass in a place set out for that purpose. On the third day at noon, the Earl’s officer discharges the fair by proclamation; immediately whereupon the Penningtons and their tenants take possession of the town, and have races and other divertisements during the remainder of that day.”

The laws of the old Corporations at Kendal, Carlisle, and Appleby, and the guilds and societies at other places, were very stringent, and far surpassed the most exacting rules of the trades unions in our own day. This statement may speedily be verified by a reference to the reprinted Kendal “Boke of Recorde.” The “shoddy cloth man” appears to have flourished almost as much three hundred years ago as he does to-day; at any rate he was sufficiently in evidence to cause the Corporation to pass a very stringent order in regard to “Clothe Dightinge.” The excuse for the imposition of the regulation was that “Sundry great complaints have been made in open Court of the insufficient and deceitful dressing and dighting of clothes uttered and sold within the town, as well by the inhabitants as foreigners coming to the same, therefore it is ordered by the Alderman and head burgesses of the borough with the full assent of the most part of the fellowship of Shearmen now dwelling within the borough, that if any person or persons either now resident in the town or shall hereafter be resident here or in the country adjoining, shall from henceforth have or bring any pieces of cloth to sell or utter within this borough to any person, not being well and sufficiently dight and dressed throughout in all points alike, as well one place as another, in cotton, nop, or frieze as it ought to be; the same being so found by the four sworn men of the same occupation from time to time appointed, shall forfeit and lose for every such piece 2s. 4d., the half thereof to the Chamber of this borough, and the other half to the takers of the same.”

A further order provided that if any piece of cloth was not “well, truly, and sufficiently made in all places alike, and all parts thereof of like stuff as it ought to be, or which shall not be clean washed and clean without blemish left in it, upon the like pain of 2s. 4d., to be forwarded by the maker to those before limited for the first fault, and for every fault then after committed and duly proved, the fine and penalty to be doubled.” Factory and workshop inspectors, of a sort, were not unknown three hundred years ago. The Corporation ordered the appointment of four members of the “Company and fellowship of tayllers” to be known as searchers or overseers, having power to have the oversight of all faults, wrongs, and misusages happening or done in the trade. The order did not long remain in force before the Corporation decided to repeal them, but two or three years later they were revived by common consent, and ordered to continue during pleasure. In still later times travelling tailors were a brotherhood, and within the last fifty years when on their journeys levied money on the resident fraternity.

Cordwainers, when the “Boke of Recorde” was compiled, were only allowed to do certain kinds of work, and were forbidden to “spetche,” or patch boots. Tailors, too, could not employ any man who might apply for work, there being a very strict law about the employment of freemen in preference to those not free; nor could the shearmen enjoy any greater liberty in their trading operations. One rule ran: “No countryman or person not free shall be permitted to bargain, buy, exchange, trade, sell, or utter within this borough or the precincts hereof, any clothes for outside as a shearman, save only such as be occupiers now of the same trade, or such as shall purchase their freedom, upon pain to lose ten shillings, whereof to the Chamber 5s., and Company 5s.”

There was a salutary rule about the selling of meat on Sundays: “From henceforth no butcher, or other his servant, or factor shall sell or utter any flesh or other victuals or meat out of any shop or stall within the borough or liberties, or the precincts of the same, or keep any his or their shop or warehouses open or unshut up after the ending of the third peal or bells ringing to morning or evening prayer on any Sunday or other festival day, upon pain to lose to the Chamber of this borough 12d.”

The laws against forestalling, regrating, ingrossing, and otherwise interfering with the due course of trade, were very strict in the markets held under manors and also in those otherwise regulated. The practice was, however, not peculiar to Cumberland and Westmorland. One other rule from Kendal may be mentioned as showing the steps taken for preventing skins being hoarded up, until prices became high: “It shall not be lawful for any butcher or other person dwelling out of this borough or the liberties of the same from henceforth to bring into the borough to be sold, either on the market day or in the week-day any sheepskin (except the same skin—having the ears upon it—be cleaving unto the head or carcase of such flesh where upon it did grow) being so brought to be sold, nor that they nor any of them shall sell, or offer, or put to sale, any such skin on any market day so brought to be sold unto the borough before ten o’clock before noon, upon pain to lose and forfeit as much as 2s.”

The penalty for buying victuals before they arrived at the market was forfeiture, while it was further ordered that “no man or woman shall suffer any corn to be sold or measured in their houses upon pain of 6s. 8d., but that all corn shall be bargained, bought, and measured in open market only.”

An old native of the borough not long ago assured the writer that when he was a boy, in the old coaching days, the suspicion of “poaching” extended even to the lawyers, for, said he, “At the Assizes at Appleby the Bar had all to enter the borough together, or not before a certain hour, lest one individual might secure more than a fair share of the briefs.”

Market-bells are still rung at various places in the two counties. That in St. Andrew’s Church, Penrith, is sounded every Tuesday morning at ten o’clock, before which hour business is supposed to be forbidden. The same rule prevails at Appleby, where the bell hangs in a campanile over the Moot Hall. This, of course, is a survival of the days when forestalling was a very serious offence—and properly so. The archives of the Corporation of Carlisle contain documents bearing on the connection of the bells with trading. Mention of the market-bell appears in the bye-laws of 1561, thus: “Itm that noe outman shall sell any corn to any fore nor to such tym as the market bell be rounge on payn of forfitor.” Happily it is not possible to apply to all the saying used with reference to one old market in West Cumberland—that “it opens at twelve o’clock and closes at noon,” the meaning, of course, being that there is little or no market left. It was recorded by Mr. Green, the noted artist, that at Ambleside the market was crowded by small merchants, “who were called together by the tinkling of a small bell. Then all was bustle and animation; joy beamed in every countenance, for all the traffic was for ready money, and every individual lived upon the produce of his labour.”

Old-Time Home Life

There is a very great store of gossip and anecdote in existence which might be utilised to illustrate the picturesqueness of old-time life in Cumberland and Westmorland. Whether the lack of sanitary comforts, intellectual facilities, and of opportunities of seeing the world or of knowing of its doings, were counterbalanced by the freedom from care and the quiet humdrum lives, which were led by the majority of the people in the two counties, is an open question. An anecdote told in a book published well-nigh a century since, well illustrates the simplicity of life among Lakeland folk generations ago. A foreign physician, eminent in his profession, practiced in the neighbourhood of Keswick. He was one day asked by another medical man how he liked his position. “My situation,” he replied, “is a very eligible one as a gentleman; I can enjoy every species of country amusement in the greatest perfection; I can hunt, shoot, and fish among a profusion of game of every kind; the neighbouring gentlemen, too, seem to vie with each other in acts of politeness. But as a physician I cannot say that it is so alluring to me, for the natives have got the art of preserving their healths and prolonging their lives without boluses or electuaries, by a plaster taken inwardly, called thick poddish. This preserves them from the various diseases which shake the human fabric, and makes them slide into the grave without pain by the gradual decay of nature.”

As might be supposed, a people possessing so many primitive habits, and whose lives were so circumscribed, had numerous peculiar contrivances in their homes. Some of these have been so long out of use that their purpose has almost passed from memory. Before the days of mineral oils, the general means of illumination, both in mansion and cottage, was the rushlight. These candles were made of the pith of rushes, dipped in melted tallow. They were fixed for use in an arrangement known as a “Tom Candlestick,” which in the early years of this century were common objects in every village home. Mr. Anthony Whitehead, in the last edition of his Westmorland poems (1896), mentions a curious belief in this connection—that the rushes were not considered fit for use unless pulled at the full moon.

A love of finery has seldom been a failing with the residents in the country districts of Cumberland and Westmorland, and especially was this the case before travel became easy. In the days when at the most the ordinary folk only saw the shops of a town on “term day”—and in a vast number of instances that would only occur on a few occasions in a lifetime—dress was of the most homely and substantial sort. “Hodden grey” for the men and correspondingly good wear for the females—most of it home made—were the ordinary fabrics. Clogs were worn at one time by all classes, from parson down to the poorest labourer, and even on Sundays the wearing of boots or shoes was often an indication of the owner being a person of some local consequence. The housewives had a curious method of preserving the stocking heels, which was probably more efficacious than cleanly. They took care to “smear the heels of the family’s new stockings with melted pitch, and dipped them immediately in the ashes of turf. The glutinous mixture incorporated with the woollen, and altogether formed a compound both hard and flexible, which was well adapted to resist the united friction of wood and leather.” The utility of clogs for certain purposes is undoubted, but this useful kind of footgear is apparently losing its popularity.

There have been plenty of descriptions left—by old-time tourists and home historians—at various periods of the methods of life of the people, and they generally agree that the costumes, especially of the dales-folk, were picturesque. The homespun material was frequently undyed, black and white fleeces being mixed to save the expense of dyeing. This homely material, which is still made in some parts of Scotland and Ireland, has in recent years been pronounced by fashion to be superior, for country wear, to the most finished products of the steam loom; so that now the most elegant ladies do not disdain to wear dresses of the self-same homespun of which our ancestors made their “kelt coats.” These coats were ornamented with brass buttons, as were the waistcoats, which were made open in front for best, in order to show a frilled shirt breast. Knee breeches were the fashion for centuries. They were buttoned tight round the body above the haunches, so as to keep up without braces. Those used for best had a knot of ribbon and four or five bright buttons at the knee, and those who could afford it, had them made of buckskin. Their stockings, which were a conspicuous part of the dress, were also made from their own wool, the colour being generally blue or grey. On their feet they wore clogs on ordinary occasions, but when dressed in holiday costume, they had low shoes fastened with buckles which were sometimes of silver.