was finally sentenced to death. His demeanour throughout his
captivity and trial was haughty and contemptuous. Just four
months after the famous executions following on Culloden, this
last Earl of 1 )erwent\vater, if we may so call him, was led
brilliantly apparelled through lines of life guards and executed
I 2
ii6 EXECUTION OF THE (HIOST chap.
with great solemnity on a platform wrapped in black cloth.
He died with unflinching courage, as became his situation, in
the fifty-third year of his age, professing with his last breath the
utmost devotion to the Catholic faith, to Louis XV. and the
first Pretender. " I am but a poor man," said he, as he handed
the executioner ten guineas, and begged him to do his work
well. The latter earned his fee, for the axe went through the
neck at the first blow and stuck in the block. The present
lord of the manor of Castlerigg and Derwentwater is a
member of the Marshall family, whose wide interests in the
Lake Country we took note of when at Ullswater.
The humours too, if you may so call them, of my boatmen
have sometimes in idle half hours upon the lake, when all
hopes of trout have temporarily fled, caused me no little enter-
tainment.
I asked a clear-eyed long-limbed young dalesman who was
out with me one day whether he often rowed foreigners about.
To which he repfied that he took a "gey few of them" on the
lake. I then asked him how he liked Americans. He said
he liked them well enough ; but countered my query by asking
another as to the fishing in America, and then went on to say
that he supposed the waters there must be either choke full of
fish or else that there were none at all.
" What makes you think that ? " said I. " Well, sir, because
whenever I take a party of Yankees out they get in a tur'ble way if
they don't catch a fish about every two minutes. So I supposed
they had either never had a rod in their hands before, or else
were accustomed to catching fish as fast as ever they could
haul 'em in."
I discovered also the interesting fact that only a week or two
before this, Hercules had been engaged for several days by a
French family straight over from Paris. I asked him if they
could speak English.
" Aye," said the young waterman dril)-, " they cud gabble
what they ca'd English."
IV INTERNATIONAL AMENITIES u;
" Did they talk to you ? " said I.
"Aye, they crack'd \vi' me a bit."
A little more encouragement and I was favoured with some
of the conversation, which must have been of an entertaining
nature, and have given the Parisian matron, her son and
daughters, who made up the party, a rare notion of Cumbrian
amenities. To shorten matters as much as possible, it appears
that this good French lady had conceived the notion that the
British working class were whatis called pro-Boer to a man.
" She asked me," .said Hercules, " if I wasn't sorry for the poor
Boers — dom'd if she didn't. I told my lady that if I had the
handlin' of the business I'd cut t' last one of 'em into little
pieces, and wouldn't leave one o' t' dirty blackguards above
ground."
" And what did they say to that ? "
" Oh, well, t' young leddies tittered like, and the old ooman
looked a gey bit queer. They then axed me," said Hercules,
growing communicative, "whether I wouldn't like to live in
France, an I tould 'em that maybe Fd like t' country better
nor t' people ! "
" There was a young chap too, a civil enough feller, but jest
a lile nipitty Frencher like, an' he thought he could pull an
oar, and was for ever teasin' o' me to row a race wi' him. Lor,
I wasn't goin' to fash myself racin' wi' such as 'im (Hercules,
I may remark, is the champion sculler of the lake) ; it 'ud be
like stannin' up to wrastle wi' a lile gal. However, he kept
botherin' me, so I said t' last niornin' Fd give 'im a 'alf mile
spin. Lord, it ain't worth talkin' about. I left 'im stannin' still
a 'corse ; an' then I a.sked 'im if he'd had enough, and told 'im
that a Frenchman couldn't no more row than he could fight.
All 'e was fit for was to holler and make a noise."
" AVell," said I, " I shouldn't think you saw much more of
your party after that ? "
" Oh, aye, I did tho'. The very mornin' as they went away, the
lady come down to the boat landing, and asked the governor
Ii8 MIMIC SEA FIGHTS chap.
to send for me ; and she thanked me for my attention and
give me three 'alf crowns, and said if all Englishmen were as
obstinate as I was she was not surprised as Lord Roberts was
getting nigh Pretoria."
I don't think Hercules, who is a really admirable and
trustworthy young man, had any notion that he had been
discourteous. I think too that forgiving French lady must
have been worth knowing.
From the upper reach of the lake too Lodore, when
swollen by rain, shows finely as it leaps from its woody height ;
and its hoarse roar rising and falling with the breeze is a
pleasant accompaniment to the gentle gurgling of the ripples
beneath the drifting boat's keel. The sprouting ferns and the
brilliant green of the all-pervading bilberry bushes give the
nearer hills upon the Catbell side a delightful freshness
beneath these June suns ; and in the woods the oak leaves still
wear the golden flush that precedes their full maturity, and
show curious patches of almost autumnal colouring amid the
rampant greens of sycamore and beech. Nor are there many
woodlands in the I>ake Country that show their foliage to
more exquisite advantage than those which spread upwards
from Barrow Bay, enveloping the cataract of that name to
the foot of the noble ridge of grey cliffs which find their
summits in Wallow and Falcon crags.
A hundred and odd years ago, in the earlier part of the long war
with France, the inhabitants of Keswick and its neighbourhood
used to amuse themselves and nurse their martial ardour with
mimic sea fights upon the lake. Islands used to be taken and
retaken by flotillas armed with muskets and artillery, and an
immense amount of gunpowder consumed, while the elite
of the neighbourhood applauded the actors from rows of gay
marcjuees pitched u})on the shore. A contemporary account of
one of these naval functions lies before me, and would, I think,
amuse the modern reader if space allowed such inconsequent
quotations. There were " terrible cannonades and dreadful
IV COUNTRY LIFE IN THE OLDEN TIME 119
discharges of musquetry, which filled the ear with whatever
could produce astonishment and awe, and impressed on the
awakened imagination the most lively ideas of the war of
elements and crash of Avorlds." One can well believe this
when the local chronicler goes on to tell us that the noise was
heard at Appleby, thirty miles away, and through two or three
ranges of high mountains. It is pleasant too to know that what
was left of the combatants and the spectators were capable of
dancing till the small hours of the morning in a ball-room erected
for the purpose ; and Keswick streets resounded in the dawning
day to the clatter of chariots bearing the exhausted families of
squires and leading yeomen towards the rutty roads which led
to Cockermouth and Carlisle, to Ambleside and Penrith.
Country folk in those days were contented for the most part.
There were no feverish longings for distant splendours, or at
least not many. Their horizon was practically fixed, and
within it they no doubt succeeded in extracting as much
enjoyment out of life as their railway travelling descendants. I
would undertake to say that winter in the Vale of Keswick was
livelier in 1780 than it is in 1900.
Mr. Fisher Crossthwaite, who has told us much of old Kes-
wick, gives us a vivid picture of the excitement caused there
during the early years of Elizabeth's reign by the advent of a
large number of German miners, whom the enterprise of the
thrifty queen had imported to open up the minerals of the
country. Two German experts were given a free hand on all
the royal manors, and "the best copper in England" was reported
to Secretary Cecil, after a year or two of investigation, as
having been found in Newlands. It seems that three or four
hundred of these foreigners were brought into the district, with
the inevitable result of a conflict with the natives. Even the
gentry seem to have viewed the movement with suspicion ;
the Derwentwater family doing something more than stand aloof
from it, while the Earl of Northumberland had great disputes
with the queen, who seems to have worked his land as well as
I20 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GERMAN IMMIGRANTS CH. iv
her own without so much as a " by your leave " or a hint at com-
pensation. Her Majesty's poHcy however prevailed, and beyond
a doubt brought much prosperity to a poor country, in spite ot
the racial jealousy that most naturally found vent in blows, in
a region whose chief trade was war. The Germans, however,
eventually settled down ; and our authority, besides giving us the
after history of many of these families, a matter only of local
interest, gives a long list, which he says is but a fraction of
the German names upon the Crossthwaite registers, the word
" Dutchman " being written after each entry.
Eut we have idled away already so much time on Uerwent-
water there is none left to say a word about Saint Herbert and
his isle. For we must get back to the boat landing, consult
one of the many weather prophets there, who surely ought to
be sound ones, seeing they have such ample leisure for studying
a very capricious type of it ; and so back to Keswick, with a
view only to leaving it.
ynle of Nevulands.
Crutiiinock Lake
CHAPTER V.
I WOULD advise no one whose legs and lungs are adequate
to the task to omit the ascent of Skiddaw. It is rather the
fashion of some guide books to sniff at this noble mountain,
because the accomplishment of its ascent is such an easy matter.
I can understand a cragsman taking up this attitude, as I do not
think it would be possible to break your neck anywhere on
Skiddaw ; but to the ordinary climber who follows the ordinary
route, no mountain in England presents any difificulties worth
mentioning, and their relative degrees of simplicity do not seem
to me to be very much to the point. The view from its summit
at any rate will compare with that from any other mountain
top, while the outlook towards Scotland and the Solway is not
unnaturally the best of all. For the same reason Skiddaw
possesses a distinction when seen from Carlisle or Dumfriesshire
that I do not think Helvellyn or Scafell with their uncjuestion-
ably finer details of outline enjoy from any distant point. Skid-
daw fprest too, which spread? away from its farther or western
122 UP THE BANKS OF DERWENTWATER chap.
skirts, a wild wilderness of open grouse moor dark with
heather, is a feature not characteristic of many mountain views
in Lakeland, and one that has a peculiar charm when bathed
in sunlight, and looked down upon through a veil of whirling
mist.
I purpose in this chapter to compass the journey to
Buttermere, which, though but fourteen miles away, lies over
the roughest and steepest pass that the coaches surmount
anywhere in the north. But first we have to traverse the
length of Derwentwater as far as the mouth of Borrowdale by
the lakeshore road, which, though charming from a scenic
point of view, is as deficient in others as are most of the
Cumbrian highways. Westmoreland by the way prides itself
on being much ahead in this respect of its neighbour ; but both
seem to observe the vexatious custom of deferring their repairs
till May and June, and executing them even then with such un-
compromising completeness that not so much as the width of
a plank is left for the hapless cyclist to pilot his machine
along.
After passing over the Lodore beck and within sight and sound
of its famous falls, we run almost into the grounds of the fine
hotel which for choice of situation has to my thinking an
advantage over all others in this region. The wooded cliffs and
crags that overhang the spot are in themselves so beautiful :
from their readily accessible summits such a gorgeous
panorama of Derwentwater and its surroundings can be en-
joyed, while over the mountain plateau beyond, of which they
are the outer wall, such numerous expeditions suitable to every
grade of physical capacity can be so conveniently under-
taken.
But I shall never pass the other hotel, a little further on at
the mouth of Borrowdale, without recalling a most delightful
Irish waiter, whose presence contributed no little to our
entertainment while quartered there for a few days. It was at
a time when most hotels were empty, and Pat had nothing
V AN IRISH WAITER 123
like enough to occupy an all-consuming energy, which found
vent in strange performances. He was very big and very
stout, and sleek of face, and was clad of course in the ortho-
dox uniform of his profession ; but he was a Tipperary boy
and country bred, and the ruling passion of the Irishman was
so strong within him that you might hear betimes the rush, as
of a whirlwind, past the window, and if c|uick enough might
catch a vision of white socks and flying coat-tails and streaming
hair as our fifteen-stone patriot, clinging to the bare back of an
unemployed omnibus horse, sent him down the stony road at a
murdering gallop.
A patriot I have called him, for he was an ardent Home
Ruler, though who was to do the ruling was problematical, seeing
that priest, landlord and politician were all equally taboo in his
scheme for the Irish millennium. He was very eloquent,
however, when encouraged to debate. But his professional
gifts were what called forth my special admiration, and caused
it to be borne in upon me for the hundredth time how
magnificently superior the Irishman can be, when he so
chooses, to any other white man in this capacity : at any rate,
how infinitely more acceptable, how cheery, how imperturbably
good-natured, how smilingly tolerant of criticism on soup and
fish, that the average waiter resents, in his face at any rate,
knowing the fault to be none of his ; how lavish of small
attentions that are not perhaps necessary but pleasant to
receive. No one surely in these accomplishments can touch
the capable Irishman (who has not been in America) as a
table attendant. That very familiarity, which is part of his
solicitude to make you happy and comfortable, is so wholly
inoffensive, while the smiling philosophy, which receives the
sixpence with the same demonstration of gratitude as the half-
crown, challenges one's admiration.
Pat was a past master in all this ; and when a coachload of,
from his point of view, most unpromising lunchers turned up,
I used to take note of how his good-hurnoured assiduity never
124 "ME BROTHER, SORR" chap.
for a moment flagged. And he had no interest in the house
whatever, being in fact but a stopgap waiter. He was not,
I believe, regarded as such a treasure behind the scenes ; and
it is certainly true that when not riding the 'bus-horses, or talking
politics, or fetching something for somebody, or cleaning his
plate, he used to tinkle on a fearsome instrument that I had
never seen or heard before and do not remember the name of,
not being a musician. He was gifted with a powerful imagina-
tion too, for one day during the distractions of dinner, he found
time to slip a small cutting from the morning paper on the
cloth by my plate in mysterious fashion, with a stage whisper,
" Me brother, sorr ! " I found on examining the slip that it
contained a list of some troopers of a Colonial corps who had
been wounded in attacking a Boer post, and was sorry to see
underlined in pencil the name and initials of a youth of my
acquaintance in that regiment. The name was a not uncom-
mon one in both England and Ireland, and it happened to be
Pat's. I did not, however, give him away.
He disappeared amid the convulsions of joy with which
Keswick very properly celebrated the relief of Mafeking, and
was never heard of in Borrowdale again. His brother's
presence in the victorious army and his sufferings in Britain's
cause no doubt made Pat himself the unique combination of
Parnellite and Imperialist he seemed to be. Long life to him !
He was a very first-class waiter, and much more.
But I did not come into this country to talk about Irish
waiters, and by the same token we are now well round the corner
and through the gateway of Borrowdale. The broad level pas-
tures through which the Derwent ripples gently for a mile or
so above the lake, and in wet weather sometimes submerges,
narrow down where the first bridge crosses the river, and the
ancient hamlet of Grange with its little church stands at the
entrance of the gorge. One can well understand why the
eighteenth century writers fling their most strenuous epithets
at Borrowdale, and speak of it, though with much ignorance
TlIK JAWS OF BORROWDALE
125
and poetic license, as a land of unknown terrors and fearful
f)ossibilities. Gray positively declined going any further. He
had already crept along from Lodore in silence lest the crags
above should fall and crush him ; and here he gave his shaken
nerves repose in a farmhouse whose owner entertained him
with an account of the annual destruction of eagles' nests which
was then a part of the regular programme of the Borrowdale
farmer. Beyond Grange the rugged hills draw together, and
through the narrow vista of rock and wood ahead of you,
T
V
N
\ vi
T/te B>-idge at Grange.
the upstanding cone of Castle crag rises against a dark
and high and mysterious background of mountains made
grimmer in June by lingering patches of snow. Birch woods,
tender, fresh and graceful, clothe the steeps upon our left in
exquisite profusion : upon the right the river, pent in a narrow
channel, frets upon its rocky bed or slumbers just long
enough in some deep pool by the road side to show the infinite
transparency of its waters, even in a land where all waters are
clear. A mile or two further and the passage opens, the over-
126 "THE GREAT DEED OF BORROWDALE" chap.
hanging heights fall back, the river leaves us, and we are in a
tract of level meadows hemmed in on every side by mountains
and drawing rapidly towards the hamlet of Rossthwaite. "A
truly secreted spot is this," says old West, writing in the time
of the French revolution and twenty years after Gray, " com-
pletely surrounded by the most horrid romantic mountains that
are in this world of wonders."
Borrowdale must indeed have been an outlandish place in
ancient times ; a cul de sac, without any outlet at the back
save by rough pony tracks over wild mountain passes. This,
perhaps, would have no special interest but for the fact thai
some of its yeomen families have lived here upon the same
lands, so far as the most competent judges can tell, since a
period prior to the Norman Conquest. The manor, which
included most of the district, was granted by a Derwentwater
to Furness Abbey, and at the dissolution fell to the Crown, in
whose hands it remained till James the First, doubtless after his
great quarrel with the border tenantry, sold it to two Londoners.
These gentlemen, however, and with somewhat significant
alacrity, parted with their rights, for less than a single year's revenue,
to the occupants. The list of those who, from holding under
border or customary tenure, thus became freeholders in 1613
is practically the same as that which appears a hundred years
before on the roll of Furness Abbey tenants, and thanks to the
labours of a Keswick antiquary lies before me now. The main
addition is that of a small group of gentlemen headed by Sir
Wilfrid Lawson of Isell and Lamplugh of Lamplugh, who figure
in the contract (known as the Great Deed of Borrowdale) on
account, no doubt, of mining rights that they had acquired in
the Elizabethan " boom." Birketts, Youdales, Fishers and
Braithwates are the most prominent names, and all of them still
flourish in the district. Some are in Borrowdale itself even yet,
and there can be no doubt have lived in it since time is worth
taking any account of.
All the world knows that the last half-century has seen quite
V DALESMEN PAST AND PRESENT 127
z. debacle among the Cumberland and Westmorland statesmen.
The reasons are as varied as they will be obvious to any one
who gives a thought to the matter. These small j)roperties,
mostly between 30 and 300 acres, were not divided at death,
but went to the eldest child, boy or girl, often charged for the
benefit of tlie rest of the family. The origin of this custom
was in the obligation of each small property to provide one or
more men-at-arms, according to acreage, for service against
the Scots, and subdivision would have caused endless compli-
cations. An over fondness for ardent spirits is reckoned among
the causes of this decline, while the rise in land, often in
this country to a fancy price, before a steady inroad of wealthy
buyers for fancy purposes, added to unprecedented opportuni-
ties for engaging in commerce and going out into the world,
made a change from the old conditions inevitable. It was a
picturesque and happy state of society, however, this old one.
The farming freeholder with a fairly generous holding and at-
tached by blood to the soil, goes to make perhaps the ideal rural
community. Besides the holdings, too, there were the great
common lands on the mountains where sheep and in those days
stunted cattle also roamed free. But you could not keep such
men on the land nowadays. Primogeniture for such a class
would be of course ridiculous. Yet once begin charging or
dividing small estates, you create intolerable burdens on the one
hand, or reduce them on the other to peasant holdings which,
are quite another affair. Great numbers of statesmen's descend-
ants, it must be remembered, are now living as tenant farmers
either upon or adjacent to the lands their forbears once owned,
and the nature of this ownership and their relationship to
the Lords of Manors varied so much as to be best left
severely alone in a work like this.
I spoke just now of James the First and his quarrels with
the border tenantry. The fact is, that after the union of the
two Crowns in his illustrious person, the over-canny monarch,
thinking with some justice that the terms of military service
128 KING JAMES AND THE DALESMEN chap.
against the Scots, by which, the border tenants held their lands,
would be no longer necessary, fancied he saw an excellent
chance of turning an honest penny. Now the Crown tenants
were very numerous on the western border, and the King gave
out that all holding their estates from him were to surrender their
titles, and that fresh ones would be issued, subject, of course, to
money fines and rents, A roar of indignation arose throughout
the country from Morecambe Bay to the Solway. Men whose an-
cestors had fought for their farms for generations, in this once
wild and lawless country, could little understand the equity
of paying a money rent, more particularly since, unlike the King,
they suspected that their fighting days were by no means yet
over. At any rate, they mustered to the number of 2,000 at
Ratten Heath, between Kendall and Stavely, and there passed a
unanimous resolution to the effect that " they had won their lands
by the sword and were quite able to retain them by the same."
They then bound each other by such strenuous oaths to resist the
imposition to the very last drop of their blood that the King
was alarmed and dropped the scheme like a hot coal.
The rudeness and simplicity of life in regions like Borrow-
dale till quite recent times must by all accounts have been
astonishing. A great measure of independence and obstinacy
among mountaineers bred in this fashion, and dwelling for
centuries in what was practically a democracy, was inevitable.
A parson who had gone from the South as a young man to an
adjoining dale some thirty years ago put the matter one day
in a laconic but complete fashion. He had been viewed, he
said, with much suspicion on his arrival, as a stranger and
potential innovator. " You can't drive dalesmen," screeched an
old dame to him in significant fashion on his first parochial
visitation. " Oh ! " said the other, not greatly moved by so
familiar a platitude. " And you can't lead 'em," she shouted
after a brief pause and in still more strident and menacing
tones. " Ah ! " said the new vicar taking a more serious but
still hopeful view of the situation. Five and twenty years of
V BORROWDALE LEAD MINES 129
effort to do one or the other, he went on to declare, had con-
vinced him that the old lady had never said a truer word in