caught Prince Charles's rearguard and forced them to stand in
the enclosures about the village here, and fight an indecisive
action in the dark. The Pretender's people were then, of course,
in full retreat from Derby and hastening on to Carlisle, which
was being held for them by friends. No difficulties had been
encountered till Westmoreland stretched its inhospitable hills
across their path, and they began the ascent from Kendal into
a country that even in the after days of coaches and Macadam
was dreaded by the traveller more than any single stage in
England. That adventurous Franco-Scotsman, the Chevalier
Johnstone, who had a command with the Prince, and was as
ready with his pen as his sword, has left us a vivid account of
the struggle Over Shapfell with guns and waggons, threatened by



24 A MOONLIGHT BATTLE chap.

three parallel forces and pushed at the sabre's point by one of
them. The ChevaHer indeed, unlike the Countess Anne,
could have been born under no lucky star, and was fated to
chronicle the triumphs of his foes ; for he was not only at
Culloden but was at Montcalm's side fourteen years later on
the Plains of Abraham, for which, seeing his literary tastes, I
have myself had cause to be, in quite another place, extremely
thankful.

It was just before sunset on the 17th of November, when the
rebel rearguard reached Clifton, the main body being already
between that village and Penrith. A hundred and twenty of their
horse had the day before, a Sunday, made vain endeavours from
their base at Kendal to cut their way into Scotland down
the Eden valley. But the Penrith people, and the country
folk had turned out in force and hunted these Jacobite hussars
back upon their army to their no small discomfiture, and the
elation of the others.

As to this twilight and moonlight affair at Clifton, there are
several accounts of it from both points of view, but I do not
think it would be worth the while of any one, unless he were a local
antiquary whose ancestors took part in it, to try and describe
such an involved and hurly-burly business in detail. About
2,000 Highlanders seem to have been in action, while another
thousand, the Brigade of Athole, held the Lowther bridge
towards Penrith. The rest were either in the latter place or
marching on to Carlisle. A muddy narrow lane, bordered
by high walls and hedges, then ran where is now this
amyile highway, while fenced enclosures and wet ditches
abounded on both sides. Those hardy annuals of that period,
Bland's, Kerr's and Cobham's dragoons, who we sometimes see
running away like demented hares, and at others fighting like
heroes, formed the chief attack, and on this occasion played
the nobler part. There were also with them the Yorkshire
foxhunters, full of amateur zeal. The men they met were
those of Cluny, Aj)pin, and Glengarry, and the Edinburgh



I THE DUKE AND THE QUAKER 25

regiment. Night fell before they had well warmed to their
work. There was then much wild shooting, and a great deal
of very pretty hand to hand cutting and thrusting, with sword
and claymore, in narrow lanes, and amid small enclosures. An
early moon struggled fitfully through rolling clouds, and gave
fresh stimulus to a fight that threatened to collapse at times,
from sheer inability on either side to see where to shoot or
when to strike. For in these intervals of moonlight, .says a
combatant, the white belts of the dragoons, who were of course
dismounted, showed out conspicuously, whereas the plaid
enveloped clansmen were by no means so easy to see. The
rebel cavalry, the Loyalists declare, fled at once, and their own
commander, Murray, says, " our horsemen on seeing the enemy
u>e?it to Penrith" which confirms in terse fashion their enemies'
report, and shows some consideration for their feelings on
Murray's part !

Mr. Thomas Savage, a Quaker, who occupied a house in
the very thick of the fun and stuck to it, has left a graphic
account of what he saw and did. When the Highlanders
had had enough of it and followed, though leisurely, their
cavalry to Penrith, and Thomas Savage was congratulating
himself on coming so well out of the scrape, there came a thun-
dering knock at the door which made him jump. It proved
to be the Duke himself, who, liking the look of the honest
Quaker's house, had decided to spend the night there, "and
pleasant agreeable company he was, a man of parts, very
friendly and no pride in him." AVhat caused Thomas Savage
still more gratification was that none of his cattle had been
hit, though they had been between the two fires through the
whole business. And while the Duke's people camped upon
the field, and his Royal Highness snored peacefully between
the Quaker's sheets, the poor Highlanders were tramping
through Penrith and along the road to Carlisle in the mud and
darkness.

The local hero of the fight was Colonel Honeywood, squire



26 A TOUGH HERO chap.

of Howgill. Mr. Ferguson relates how a Highlander after
the fight was heard to say, " We did vara weel till the lang
man in muckle boots came o'er the dyke," alluding to the
gallant Colonel, who was eventually " got down " and wounded
three times. Considering, however, that he had received
twenty-three sabre wounds at Dettingen and a couple of
bullets which he still carried about in him, it is not surprising
that he made light of the Clifton matter, and lived for forty
years afterwards, being much of that time M.P. for Appleby.
He was Colonel of the Twentieth Regiment in 1755, when
James Wolfe, who for some reason resents his appointment in
his private letters, was as Lieut.-Colonel making that corps
the best in the British Army, and creating for himself those
opportunities of which he made such noble use. As to the
number of the killed and wounded in the Clifton fight
accounts are hopelessly conflicting. But before leaving we
will step inside the ancient little church, and, with the vicar's
leave and help, turn back the pages of the register, and note
the following entry, not because it throws any light on the
above matter, which is of really no importance, seeing that
every man who fought here was dust ages ago, but because
these entries are somewhat unusual in the humdrum tale of
a parish record in peaceful England.

Here they are :

" 19th of December 1745 Ten Dragoons to wit. Six of
Elands, three of Cobhams and one of Mark Kerrs regiment
buried, who was killed ye evening before by ye rebels in ye
skirmish between ye Duke of Cumberland's army and them at
ye end of Clifton moor."

Then comes a later entry, a wounded man evidently :
" Robert Atkins a private Dragoon of General Blands regi-
ment buried ye 8th day of January 1746."

We are within a mile or two of Lowther Castle — immense,
magnificent and modern — but are much nearer than that to
the Park edge, for we can hear the river, noisy with the tribute



I PEEL TOWERS 27

of distant and stormy fells fretting in its rocky bed, and
see what looks like miles of woodland rolling away towards
the hollows of the hills. But Lowther is too big a sub-
ject to grapple with at this late period in the day ; though,
having gossiped so much about the Viponts and the Clif-
fords, it would seem only fitting to say something of the
potent race that, so far as changed times admit of, have suc-
ceeded to their honours.

But we have had enough of great folk perhaps to-day.
Our backs too are turned on Lowther and our faces set
towards Penrith, and scarce a hundred yards along the road
and so close that there is no overlooking it, as character-
istic a remnant of old border life as could be found in West-
moreland. I have remarked before, that in this north
country every man's home in former days was very liter-
ally his castle, and here in yonder little Peel tower was the
castle of the Wyberghs, who built it in the 15th century and
own it still.

Fallen indeed is this particular Peel tower from such dis-
tinction as it once enjoyed, for it has been rejected even of
the farming folk who for generations lived here, which, taking
note of the prodigious rents across its scarred face, I am not
surprised at ; but it has the rare merit of standing quite alone,
just as it came into the world, so to speak, and affording an
admirable object lesson in the evolution of the border family
and the border country house. For the Peel tower was the
rock on which both were founded, the chrysalis from which
they almost invariably sprang. To go about Cumberland and
Westmoreland without a knowledge of the Peel tower germ,
would be wandering in the wilderness indeed, so far as such
interests are concerned. In the larger houses they have been
so built in, duplicated or otherwise disguised, one feels inclined
on coming in sight of an ancient mansion or farm-house to
think of the familiar puzzle of the dog in the tree and exclaim,
" Find the Peel tower."



28 CLIFTON TOWER chap.

Indeed, from the battlements of this tottering CHfton tower
one may see, not a mile away, the stately walls of Brougham
Hall, as conspicuous an illustration of the highly elaborated Peel
as could be found in the two counties, to say nothing of the
finest avenues in the country, and of the famous Lord Chan-
cellor of that ilk whose family bought it early in the eighteenth
century and live there yet. But this cracked old relic in the
Clifton stack-yard is in its way more interesting. Like the old
log blockhouse or frontier cabin that you may sometimes see
preserved with reverence amid the brick homesteads of Virginia
or Kentucky as a relic of a rude and bloody past, so the old
Peel tower of the north, which has a much more dignified
position, reminds the Cumbrian of a much remoter past and of
the fierce fashion in which his breed was nurtured. There is
nothing resembling it in the south. Think of these scores of
country squires scattered from Kendal to the Solway, all boxed
up on the first story of their tiny castles, and compare
the situation with the spacious, gabled, lattice-windowed
mansions of their south country equivalents of the Tudor period
and the placid life that if they wished was theirs. Clifton is a
fair specimen of the Peel tower, though rather a small one, for the
dimensions of course greatly varied. Oblong, like most of them
in shape, it may be thirty feet by twenty or rather more, and
of three stories, with a spiral staircase leading through them
on to a battlemented roof, in one corner of which is a small
watch-tower. The space usually admitted of two or three
living rooms on the first story and as many sleeping apartments
on the upper one. The ground floor was more frequently reserved
for storage purposes, and was often without a door, being entered
like a cellar from the rooms above. The squire's front door
being thus on the first story was only available by a ladder ;
and as this could be hauled up at a moment's notice, the
security of the owner and his family against ordinary intrusion
was singularly complete. Swung, so to speak, in mid air and
snugly ensconced behind walls of stone five or six feet thick, he



I THE TUDOR SQUIRES 29

could snap his fingers at the whole kingdom of Scotland, and,
what is more, shoot arrows or lead at his visitors to his heart's
content.

But this mere saving of his skin was of course only the
method of procedure when odds were hopeless. The Scottish
wars were intermittent, but the moss trooper was perennial, and
might turn up at any time and in any strength, from a dozen
to a thousand. Booty of course, and cattle mainly, was his
immediate object ; human life, his own or other people's, was
only an inevitable factor in the trade. So beside every Peel
tower was an enclosure, or a " barmkin," into which at the first
warning of danger, heralded by fugitives or beacon-fires, the
cattle were driven, and around this outer rampart of the little
fortress the fiercest battles raged. Nor must it be inferred
for a moment that these conflicts took place only or even
mainly on the English side. The Scottish borderer took,
perhaps, more positive pleasure in this ill doing ; but, on the
other hand, the country north of the Solway lay even more
generally open to attack than Cumberland, and led upon the
whole as anxious and precarious an existence. But Carlisle
will be a better point at which to talk of these and kindred
matters. I will only here remark that the Peel tower did
begin to expand itself before these evil days were over.
Southern influences slowly but gradually crept into the north
as the Tudor period advanced. The squire, and his ladies too
no doubt, began to realise that their quarters were not only
cramped but no longer suited to their station. Then began
that rage for building in the two counties, which, stimulated
we may be sure by social competition, sacrificed something of
the old security for added comfort and improved appearance.
Long, low two-storied Tudor wings crept out from one side
or other of the old Peel, sometimes terminating in a second
tower — sometimes forming two sides of a square, or even
expanding gradually to the dignity of a complete four-sided
court-yard, with chapel, gateway and outbuildings. But,



30 EVOLUTION OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE chap.

unlike their larger southern prototypes, they could not throw
ofif the guise of war nor forget for a moment the enemy at
their gates. Though panelled walls and decorated ceilings
and rich oak carving began to distinguish the interiors, the
light of battle to this day still gleams through the low mullioned
windows, and defence if not defiance is written all over the
massive stone walls, while the flanking Peel towers, battle-
mented, loopholed and slotted, give a distinction to the whole
picture which the small scale of the building in no way de-
tracts from. On the contrary, it adds, I think, some charm
and character to it, and suggests a type of man and a style
of life that had no analogy elsewhere in England. On this
very account however it is in what are now farm-houses that
the best examples are usually to be found, for the others have,
with some notable exceptions, been much obscured by the
increasing requirements of modern social life. The near
neighbourhood of Penrith abounds in admirable specimens.
Yanwath is close by us and practically within sight, and one of
the very first of the Peel tower manor house combinations, being
mostly late fifteenth century work according to the late Dr. Taylor,
of Penrith, the greatest of authorities on this particular subject.
The Threlkelds lived here from the tmie of Edward the First to
that of Henry the Eighth, and it is still much as they left it.
One of them, it will be remembered, married the widow of the
Black Clifford who secreted her son the " Shepherd Lord " in his
youth. It was their boast that they had three noble houses — one
at Crosby Ravensworth, with a park full of deer ; another here at
"Yanwath nigh Penrith, for profit and warmth to reside at in
winter ; " a third at Threlkeld, " well stocked with tenants to go
with them to the wars."

Cliburn too, close by on the other side, has a Peel, and a
smaller tower near it, covering a well. Sockbridge, still nearer,
the home for centuries of Lancasters and Tankards, seems an
unnoticeable farm-house till you get close up to it. Askham
lies behind us close to Lowther Castle, and is now a rectory.



THE SANDFORDS OF ASKHAM



31



Over the gateway of the court-yard, beneatli a hehnet and a
boar's head, the quaint inscription may be read :

Thomas Sandford Esquire
For this paid meat and hire
The year of our Saviour
XV hundred and seventy four.

And he got his money's worth, for it is a most beautiful and
not greatly altered house, set well upon a wooded knoll, with
the Lowther breaking finely at its base.










■5l .3 ^X■'^-^^■'"-'^.J^XJ



Askhavt Village.

Thomas Sandford doesn't suggest as a name in our con-
fused English social jumble very much distinction, but it
was one to conjure with for many generations in the north,
and, what is more, carried with it to battle one of the largest
bodies of armed and mounted retainers in the two counties.
Nor again would the homely i)atronymic of Dawes convey
to the average ear nmch social lustre. But at Barton Kirke,
over yonder beyond the Pooley road, you will find not only a
quaint and ancient church with the most remarkable chancel
arch I ever saw, but an old manor house as well, where



32 PATHOS IN STONE chap.

in the court-yard armorial bearings, showing a fess between
three Jackdaws, tell the old familiar tale of a forgotten race.
But there is always one spot in a country parish where
these vanished men and women are still permitted to prattle
to us of one another from the walls in such pathetic uncon-
sciousness of the oblivion that is sometimes to come over the
very sound of their names. I am free to confess that these
mute voices, who in stone or marble tell us the eternal story of
life and death after the varying fashions of their period, are apt at
times to hold me longer than the buildings which enclose them.
Here in Barton church for instance is the lament of Lancelot
Dawes, lord of the manor in 1676, for his young wife of two
and twenty, a Fletcher of Great Strickland, over yonder behind
the Lowther woods :

Under this stone reader Interr'd doth lye
beauty and vertues true epitomy
Att her appearance the noone sun
bhish'd and shrunken c'ause quite outdone
In her concentor'd did all Graces dwell
god pluck't my Rose y' he might take a smell
I'le say noe more but weeping wish I may
Soone w''i thy Deare chast ashes come to lay.

Just the man, the unfeeling reader will remark, to marry again
within the year and live to be ninety. Doubtless ; but the mural
records of Barton church preserve a decent silence if this indeed
were so. They do, however, tell us by inference that in a hun-
dred years the bearers of the " three Dawes " escutcheon had
vanished from the old manor house, and one Nicholson had died
possessed of it, a fact commemorated by the united efforts of his
ten grandchildren, whose satisfaction that their grandsire lived to
-see them all married and settled is quaintly expressed upon the
tablet. But this is wandering far from the Penrith road, and
to very little purpose I fear some may say. So, leaving for the
present, at any rate, all further mention of the many other Peel
towers of this district, let us hurry on across the bridge of



OVER EAMONT BRIIXIE



33



Lowther, wliere the Highlanders of Athole stood on that dark
night and Hstened to the clamour of battle on Clifton Moor,
and on yet to the more ancient bridge across the Eamont,
which lands us once again in Cumberland and within a mile
of Penrith town.

There is quite a village here at Eamont Bridge, and one by no
means devoid of interesting features, if one might note them. But
I have gossiped quite enough for one day of things dead and




Eamont Bridge, near Penrith.

gone ; and we will shake the dust of tombstones and ruins off
our minds in a little honest mirth at the gorgeous work of art
with which the " Welcome Inn " at the bridge end greets the
visitor to Cumberland. It rivets one's attention instantly
from its conspicuous position, and seerns for the moment to
exclude all other features of the landscape, and is to me at
any rate, as often as I pass this way, an unfailing source of
entertainment. For we have here the full-length portrait
of a mammoth Highlander in the height of war paint, whom a

D



34 "WELCOME TO CUMBERLAND" chap.

diminutive gentleman in a tall hat is shaking by the hand and
bidding in very large type " Welcome to Cumberland." Now the
Cumbrian, together with his neighbour east of the Pennine range,
is accustomed to regard himself as the lengthiest among Britons,
while the physical virtues of the Highlander we all know do
not lie chiefly in his inches. By the same inverted process
the Gaelic visitor is entering the canny county by a strangely
circuitous route — unless indeed, which seems hardly likely, the
illustration contains a really unkind reference to Clifton Moor,
for this is assuredly the only time that kilted Highlanders ever
entered Penrith by Eamont bridge. And to suggest that the
Penrithians on this occasion met their visitors with the hand of
friendship and tricked out in their Sunday suits is jesting on a
serious subject with a vengeance and trampling on the feelings
of both parties. For it may perhaps be remembered how the
locals turned out with guns and pitchforks and made things
very unpleasant indeed for any parties of Prince Charles's people,
who straggled from the main body and drove numbers of them,
it is said, into the Eamont, which was then in flood. Still it is
a great picture, and for the man who doesn't appreciate it, I
wouldn't give much as a vagabond.

Like the coach travellers of olden times, we enter Penrith at
the lower end, and the distant Castle shows out finely on the
hill behind, to the complete effacement of the railway station
and public houses, which on close acquaintance jostle it in
such incongruous fashion. And above all, if the western sky
be glowing with the approach of sunset or fiery with its lingering
lights, the ragged line of broken walls standing out against
it makes a most effective picture.

I shall be told, I know, of the places I have passed un-
noticed, even in this short round — of Eden Hall, and
Carleton, of Brougham church, and the Countess pillar and
what not. But it is my privilege to go where fancy leads me
and linger where I like ; and, having thus weakly made rejoin-
der to a possible but unreasonable complaint, I shall make



GRAY IN PENRITH



35



no more. If it is of any use to assert that I am not writing
a guide book, as every author in this series has done with
pathetic reiteration, I hereby do so.

It was on September 30th, 1769, that the poet Gray was
tramping into Penrith for the first time along this very road.
He tells us how he came by Brougham Castle and " Mr.
Brougham's new house " and over Lowther and Eamont bridges,
and so to Penrith, where he " dined with Mrs. Bucken on trout
and partridges." May we fare as well !







Aikham.




The Monument, Ulverstone.






CHAPTER II

Talking of guide books it will, I fancy, be news to many
that Wordsworth condescended to write one. I suspect,
however, that tourists who are accustomed to place them-
selves with such well-merited confidence in the hands of Mr.
Baddeley or his rivals would think Wordsworth's guide a very
poor affair. Indeed there is not perhaps a great deal to be
said for it from any point of view— though it must have an
abiding interest from the mere personality of its author. It was
sixty years before this again that the first guide book to the Lake
Country was written. The author was one West, who had
been a teacher on the Continent, but ultimately became a
resident in Ulverstone, and acquired a knowledge of the
district, which he put to a practical use by conducting
"genteel parties making the tour." It will be seen therefore
how early the Lakes began to attract tourists. Taste in
landscape had then barely emerged from what may be called
the " Richmond Hill " stage, when crags and mountains and
solitudes and the nobler forms of nature created only repulsion,
and received epithets accordingly. " Lakers," as we know,
were a recognised social development in Jane Austen's time ;
and indeed West's Guide in 1774 is sufficient evidence of the



CH. II AN OLD GUIDE BOOK 37

tendency even thus early, while of Gray's tour and journal some
years previously I have already spoken. So far as I know, the
famous author of the " Elegy " is the first outside voice that comes
to us from the Lake Country. He walked to Ullswater from
Penrith, climbed Dunrnallet Hill, and thence looked up
the lake, lying motionless beneath a grey October sky. He
followed the road we are about to travel as far as Watermillock ;
gazed at the mountains " rude and awful with their broken
tops"; and then, warned by lowering clouds and the waning
light of an autumn day, turned homeward. A guide book
written twenty years before Wordsworth sang his first lay has
obvious claims on our curiosity. West, however, is at no loss
for poetical quotations, and draws heavily on Richard Cumber-
land, who in sounding periods gives Ullswater the palm not
only of all neighbouring, but of all British and Irish Lakes.
None of them, he sings,

" Shall shake thy sovereign undisturbed right,
Great scene of wonder and sublime delight."

West's table of altitudes is a remarkable testimony to the
vagueness of the period in such matters. Snowdon he has