map

to the ethnological elements from which the true Westmorland people are mainly sprung. Leaving out of view all family names, which are somewhat precarious, we observe in the topographical names of the county an almost total absence of the terminations -such as ham and ton-which indicate the settlements of the Saxons. The prevailing designations of places are most clearly Scandinavian. But here, again, we can discriminate among the Scandinavian elements themselves. We rarely find the terminations by, or toft, or thorp, which are the characteristics of the Danish settlements in the eastern parts of our island. But, on the other hand, the map of Westmorland gives us in profusion those syllables which are familiar in the of Norway, such as thwaite, garth, ghyll, ness, force, beck: and other terms might be added to these. In every dale and every fell, we discover these Northmen, as distinctly as they are betrayed by Helmsdale' in the north of Sutherland, or by Snafell,' in the middle of the Isle of Man. The Pike of Stickle at the head of Langdale may remind us of the North Stack and the South Stack on the island of Holyhead. Scout Scar, from which these pirates must often have been seen coming up Morecambe Bay, is a Norwegian name; and so is Holme Island, near which they must sometimes have landed. Nor need we be surprised that so decisive a colonisation of this country by Northmen took place, when we consider how they occupied all the islands and coasts from the Orkneys to Milford Haven.

The coming of William the Conqueror rescues this part of England from obscurity, and brings it out once for all into the clear light of history. The Conquest and the establishment of Feudalism constitute as unaltered an epoch for Westmorland as for the rest of the Island. William's policy, here as elsewhere, was to put his vassals in remote districts and to make them tenants in chief. French mercenaries begin to appear as great lords on the Kent and the Eden. We have now particularly to notice the establishment of the two baronies, which roughly correspond with the two divisions of the county indicated above. The first baron of Kendal was Ivo de Taillebois, who is said to have married a Saxon princess, and whose fee extended over a large portion of Northern Lancashire, as well as Southern Westmorland. His great-grandson styles himself William de Lancaster and Baron of Kendal.' About the time of King Henry III. there was no male heir in the family, and these vast possessions were divided. In the case of the other barony we have a noble monument of this early period of our Norman kings in the stately keep, named 'Cæsar's Tower,' which stands above

the

the trees and the river in the little town of Appleby. Appleby Castle is marked in the annals of our Plantagenet kings by the name of Hugh de Morville, the gentlest of the four murderers of Becket-who in ancient pictures is represented as standing aloof from the massacre,' Through his sister Maud, whose name still survives not far off in the village of Maud's Meburn, the possession ultimately came to the Veteriponts, the Cliffords, and the Tuftons, who were successively not only barons of Westmorland, but hereditary sheriffs of the county.

One remarkable feature of Westmorland is its very scanty share in the church architecture of the Middle Ages. It has no great Cathedral. Carlisle overshadows all its northern part. Till very lately its southern part belonged to the see of Chester. Nor has it any grand remains of convent or abbey. One religious house indeed there was, of which a remnant still survives at Shap in the very middle of the county. The memory of the Abbey is preserved by various scattered visible marksby the quarries, from whence the stone was taken,-by the old fish-ponds,-by the place where the bridge manifestly crossed the river, by carved work and parts of tombs in cottage walls, -by the shank bones of sheep, which were used then, as now, in Westmorland, for holding the slates of the roof in their places. Turning now to such remains as survive in the county generally, a very few words must suffice for describing them. In regard to work of the Norman period, special attention should be given to the little solitary church of Barton, on the pleasant road between Penrith and Pooley Bridge. There two most curious round arches are to be seen, one over the other, under the low tower which stands between the nave and the chancel. Early English work is especially conspicuous at Kirkby-Stephen and at KirkbyLonsdale. The position of this latter church-commanding as it does the sweeping course of the Lune, with its wide-spread expanse of meadow, and the steep banks and exquisite woods of Casterton opposite,-is one of the most beautiful in England; and there is a peculiar pleasure in recording the fact that the complete restoration of this sadly-disfigured sacred fabric has been recently undertaken by Lord Kenlis, who is now lord of Underley Park in the immediate neighbourhood. Of the middle and most perfect period of Gothic Architecture hardly anything remains in Westmorland. The larger portions of the existing churches belong, like the tower of Shap Abbey, to the time immediately preceding the Reformation. But a very noble

* See Dean Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury,' pp. 70 and 85.

specimen

specimen of this period, admirably restored within recent years, is the grand old parish church of Kendal. This structure shares with a few other churches in England the distinction of having duplicate aisles, a feature which gives great impressiveness to the interior, especially when a large congregation is assembled. In the period at which we are now arrived, we must turn aside to mention one very prominent benefactor of the county. This was Robert de Eaglesfield, chaplain to the Queen of Edward III., and rector of Brough-under-Stainmoor, where the extensive ruins of the castle still remain to attest the ancient power of the Cliffords in that place. The intimate association of Queen Philippa with the North of England may have been partly the cause of her acquaintance with Eaglesfield. She was married at York; and she not only accompanied her husband, during the early years of her married life, in some of his campaigns on the Border; but one campaign there she conducted successfully herself, while he was absent in France ; and she also, with her usual thrift and forethought, gave great attention to the working of the mines of Tynedale. Queen's College, Oxford, was named in her honour. With this mark of allegiance to his royal mistress, two other feelings are conspicuous in Eaglesfield-namely, attachment to his own part of England, and a desire to promote the religious welfare of those who were educated under his statutes. He felt the need of some encouragement in learning for the north-western counties, and he established the College with a provost and twelve fellows, in pious reference to Christ and His twelve Apostles, and (in similar allusion to the Gospel History) with seventy poor scholars, 'to be reared up and educated in good arts and sciences, to supply the fellows' places when they should become void.' The old rule, that the fellows should dine in robes of scarlet, has naturally been abolished, 'because of its trouble and cost;' but they and the scholars are still, according to Eaglesfield's directions, 'summoned to refection by the sound of the trumpet.'

With the Wars of the Roses we come upon another Queen and another Queen's College. The sad vicissitudes of Margaret of Anjou-joint foundress of the college which bears her name in Cambridge-have been well told by Miss Strickland; and the narrative is not without special associations with the county before us. It is not unfit that we should notice Miss Strickland's own connection with Sizergh Hall near Kendal, where she spent some time about twenty years ago, when engaged on her 'Lives

* In this case it must not be forgotten that two queens were associated in the founding of the college-Elizabeth Woodville with Margaret of Anjou.

of

of the Queens.'* That picturesque Hall has portions dating from the very early feudal days; and the family of Strickland used to hold nearly, if not quite, the highest rank of eminence in the county, next after the Cliffords and the Lowthers. The Lancastrian cause was popular and strong in all the NorthWestern counties; and some stories of really pathetic interest connect the red rose with Westmorland. One of these belongs to a most romantic passage in the records of the Cliffords. One Lord Clifford was slain at the first battle of St. Alban's; and the vengeance sworn by his son and executed at Wakefield has been made familiar to us, probably in an exaggerated form, by Shakspere. This younger Clifford was slain at Ferrybridge, and his estates forfeited to the Yorkists. One of his two sons was sent across the seas, and died in the Low Countries. The other lived the life of a shepherd for four-and-twenty years, and it was upon the solitary hills, and amidst the sights and sounds of nature, that the Shepherd Lord' received that poetic training for his future duties, which has been so worthily handled by Wordsworth in his Feast of Brougham Castle.' When restored to his estates, Lord Clifford was barely able to write his name; yet he rose with easy dignity to the requirements of his station, and kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred.' His tastes were simple. He rarely went to London, though, when called to Parliament, he behaved himself nobly and wisely.' He preferred to live a country life, improving his estates and rebuilding his castles. His favourite pursuit was astronomy. He had been accustomed to watch the motions of the heavenly bodies from the hill-tops, when he kept sheep; for in those days, when clocks and almanacs were few, every shepherd made acquaintance with the stars.'

We pass now to the period of the Reformation, and perhaps no county lends itself more readily, and in so small a compass, to an easy geographical association with that great religious change. It is no digression if we pause here for a moment on the valley of the Kent. The Kent has undoubtedly charms of its own, such as few rivers with so short a course can boast. And this valley has a characteristic history, as well as a characteristic beauty. As we follow it downwards, we follow the annals of the county in connection with the Reformation. At the head is Kentmere Hall, the hereditary home of Bernard Gilpin the best of the Reformers-the most candid, the most

*See particularly the early pages of the Life of Katherine Parr. Miss Strickland. always speaks of Sizergh Castle; but in the neighbourhood it is known as Sizergh Hall.

wise, the most unceasingly active, the most delicately scrupulous, the most unselfish of men. The student of English Church History should spare no effort to visit that Hall, with its ivy, its sycomores,* its sheep diligently feeding on the steep hill-sides, just as when Gilpin was a boy, and received his first religious shock through hearing the friar, who had been drunk the night before, preaching against drunkenness. How carefully and how long Gilpin weighed the theological questions of his day, both at Oxford and on the Continent,-how fearless he was in the prospect of literal martyrdom,—how peremptorily, even when he was conscientiously occupied elsewhere, he refused to retain a benefice, so as to take the profit' himself, while another took 'the pains'-how, after declining both the Bishopric of Carlisle and the Provostship of his college, he devoted himself to missionary work throughout the North of England, visiting not only ignorant parishes, but miserable jails,-how at the same time he maintained the closest personal ministration among his own parishioners, conducted business on a large scale, exercised unbounded hospitality, founded and endowed a school at Houghtonle-Spring, and trained up a large number of young men well equipped for service in the Church-these things deserve to be better known than they are among some of our modern controversialists. Our next historical resting place in proceeding down the valley is Kendal itself, where Pilkington, one of the rougher Reformers, whose works form a part of the familiar series published by the Parker Society,' was vicar in 1550 and 1551. But especially our attention will be turned to the mouldering remains on the summit of the Castle Hill. This was the birthplace and the early home of one of our first Protestant Queens. The lordship of Kendal had passed by marriage into the family of the Parrs, and Katherine's father held high office at the court of King Henry VIII. He died, however, when she was extremely young, and a contemporary writer speaks of Dame Maud Parr as ruling in Kendal Castle. She busied herself in homely and useful ways and in superintending the education of her children. Katherine seems to have had some ambitious presentiments, if it is true that once, after hearing her fortune told, she said to her mother: 'my hands are ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not spindles and needles.' Many years, however, were to elapse before her elevation to this royal state: and in her first youthful widowhood her home was with her kinswoman, the Lady Strickland, at Sizergh Hall, some few miles lower down the

This tree is characteristic of Westmorland. Almost all the farmhouses have their sycomores. Perhaps the best specimen is to be found in the rich shade which fills the village of Crosby Ravensworth at Midsummer.

Vol. 122.-No. 244.