Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, part 1, vol. ii.
15
See D. F. Hodgkin's History of Northumberland.
16
See "Lost Churches in Carlisle Diocese," Transactions Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, vol. XV.
17
Where it is still, with the mark of a cut from sword or battle-axe plain to see. – Ed.
18
Monkbergh by Windermere has become Mountbarrow.
19
The spot was pointed out to Mrs. Simpson by the Rev. Edward Jefferies, who from 1840 was curate in charge.
20
I find, however, in deeds of the early seventeenth century, only Padman hereabouts. Or is this a mistake for Padmar? Padman appears in the register.
21
See Transactions Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, N.S. 3, p. 419.
22
The same legend is attached to three Lancashire churches, the foundations of which date back to Saxon times. One is St. Oswald's, Winwick, where the saint's well was once a place of resort. Tradition has preserved, in the case of St. Chad's, Rochdale, some particulars of the elfish rabble who wrought the change. See Memorials of Old Lancashire, vol. – , p. 91-92.
23
From Edward Wilson, parish verger till November, 1906. His father, a joiner like himself, did the woodwork for the hydropathic establishment.
24
Inquisition post mortem. Calendar Patent Rolls, 25 Edward I.
25
The modern house built upon the knoll had a well within it, and behind the house – where a hidden runner gushes out by a rock – there are traces of old pavement.
26
Levens Hall MSS.
27
Bright's Early Church History, p. 291. Bishop Browne's Theodore and Wilfrith, pp. 132 and 690.
28
It may possibly represent an old sub-kingdom of Northumbria, and is suggestive of Edwin's conquest of a district to the north-west called by the Britons Teyrnllwg. See Rhys's Celtic Britain (quoted in "Rydal," Westmorland Gazette, May 2nd, 1903). It contained large portions at least of that great church province which Wilfrid made over to Ripon Minster, which was for a short time the seat of a bishop. The creation of Richmond as a centre was a late Norman measure.
29
Whitaker's History of Richmondshire. Dr. Wilson (Victorian History of Cumberland) gives 1120 to 1130 as dates between which Henry I. marked out the county divisions as fiscal areas. In the latter year the new county of Westmarieland was placed under the jurisdiction of a separate sheriff.
30
For the connection between mother churches and chapelries or vicarages under them, see History of English Church, edited by Dean Stephens, vol. ii., p. 295. ["Walter Gray, Archbishop of York in 1233 consolidated 10 chapelries in the two parishes of Pocklington and Pickering into five vicarages, two and two. Each vicar had two chapels, and was endowed with a sum to support chaplains at both, while he also paid a small sum annually to the mother church in token of subjection."] From the rural deanery of Kendal there were paid the following dues, according to an old voucher, c. 1320: at Easter 12s. 0d. for Synodalia; at Michaelmas £4 16s 8d for Procurationes; besides £3 for Presumptiones, and £3 9s 6d in Peter's pence – a goodly tribute this for the Pope from our mountains lands! Whitaker's History of Richmondshire.
31
Selden's History of Tithes. Easterby's Law of Tithes, pp. 4, 8, and 13.
32
The early practice of burial in distant churches is inexplicable to this age. But it should be remembered that in early days man was a peripatetic animal, to whom the distance between Grasmere and Kendal, or Hawkshead and Dalton, would be slight; and that a corpse wrapped in a winding-sheet would be much lighter than one coffined.
33
Of the first, still paid, there is plenty of evidence. It was even allowed during the Commonwealth. In 1645 the Rydal Hall account-sheets show that arrears were paid to the Kendal parson out of the tithes "upon order for 5 yeares stypd out of Gresmire," amounting to £3 6s 8d or five marks. Next year is entered "Rent due to mr. M. out of Gresmire tithes" 13s 6d. The order came from the Puritan Committee at Kendal.
34
Creighton's Historical Essays.
35
At Cartmel in 1642 measures were taken "for the makinge upp of the twentie-fourte … that there may be four in everye churchwardens division as hath formerlie been used." Stockdale's Annales Caermoelensis.
36
There is a tradition that a route from Skelwith Bridge dropped sharply from the top of Red Bank to the old ford of the Rothay known as Bathwath (Rydal Hall MSS.), and that it had even been used for funerals. This seems unlikely, unless the use were a repetition of a custom that had prevailed before the present Red Bank road was made; and of superstitious adherence to old corpse-roads the Rev. J. C. Atkinson (Forty Years in a Moorland Parish) gives instances. There may indeed have been once a well-trodden path there. In former times a fulling-mill stood on the left bank of the Rothay, near to the ford, and within the freehold property of Bainrigg. The mill was owned by the Benson family in the fifteenth century, but Bainrigg had belonged before that time to a family of de Bainbrigg, who had at least one capital dwelling or mansion-house standing upon it. Now a road to this house or houses there must have been. The woodman recently found a track leading up from the site of the mill to the rocky height, which emerged upon the present Wishing-Gate road. On the line of this (which was engineered as a turnpike road only about 1770-80) the older way doubtless continued towards Grasmere, past How Top and through Town End. A huge stone standing on this line was known as the How Stone. Levi Hodgson who lived at How Top, and who described the route to Mr. W. H. Hills, remembered fragments of a cottage in the wood. If the Skelwith Bridge folk ever used it as a church path, they would meet their townsmen (who had come over White Moss) at How Top. Close by there is still a flat-topped boulder used for resting burdens upon.
37
This gate is shown in a map of 1846, as well as the stile which gave its name to the house then still standing, that was immediately opposite. Both disappeared at the widening of the lane from Stock Bridge to the church.
38
Ambleside Town and Chapel.
39
It is not easy to discover what was the early practice of the church concerning the administration of the sacrament, or the number of times it was received yearly by the laity. As early as 750, laymen who failed to communicate at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, were not esteemed christians; they were expected to make offerings four times a year. A later rule, which was stringent, seems to have been once a year, though a more frequent attendance – specially at Easter and Christmas, was urged. See Abbot Gasquet's Parish Life in Medieval England, Wall's Old English Parishes, p. 90, and Wordsworth's Medieval Services in England. The sacrament was called housel, and the bread houselling-bread. Henry VII's queen, Elizabeth of York, appears to have communicated three times a year, at the festivals of Easter, All Saints, and Christmas (Canon Simmon's Notes to the Lay Folks' Mass Book, p. 239). Queen Victoria no doubt clung to an old custom when she communicated no oftener than three or four times a year. (See Life.)
40
The population must have been greater when the Kendal trade in cloth was at its height. There were 1300 "houseling people" reported for the parish of Windermere in 1549 (Commission quoted in Mr. Brydson's Sidelights on Mediæval Windermere, p. 95), and there is no reason to suppose that Grasmere was far behind. At the same time the numbers to collect at one celebration would be considerably lessened if the Easter communion were spread over several occasions, as was the case in the late seventeenth century at Clayworth, Notts, where celebrations
Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, part 1, vol. ii.
