The English Lake District may be said, in general terms, to extend from
Cross-Fell and the Solway Firth, on the east and north, to the waters
of Morecambe and the Irish Sea; or, more accurately, to be comprised
within an irregular circle, varying from forty to fifty miles in
diameter, of which the centre is the mountain Helvellyn, and within
which are included a great portion of Cumberland and Westmorland and
the northern extremity of Lancashire.
After the conquest of England by the Normans, the counties of
Cumberland and Westmorland, the ancient inheritance of the Scottish
Kings, as well as the county of Northumberland, were placed by William
under the English crown. But the regions thus alienated were not
allowed to remain in the undisturbed possession of the strangers. For
a long period they were disquieted by the attempts which from time to
time were made by successive kings of Scotland to re-establish their
supremacy over them. Supporting their pretensions by force of arms,
they carried war into the disputed territory, and conducted it with a
rancour and cruelty which spared neither age or sex. The two nations
maintained their cause, just or unjust, with unfaltering resolution;
or if they seemed to hesitate for a moment, and a period of settlement
to be at hand, their frequent compromises only ended in a renewal of
their differences. Thus these northern counties continued to pass
alternately under the rule of both the contending nations, until the
Scottish dominion over them was finally terminated by agreement in the
year 1237; Alexander of Scotland accepting in lieu lands of a certain
yearly value, to be holden of the King of England by the annual render
of a falcon to the Constable of the Castle of Carlisle, on the Festival
of the Assumption.
The resumption, at no distant period, of the manors which had been
granted to Alexander, renewed in all their strength the feelings of
animosity with which the Scots had been accustomed to regard their
southern neighbours, and the feuds between the two kingdoms continued
with unabated violence for more than three centuries longer. The
dwellers in the unsettled districts lying along the English and
Scottish borders, being originally derived from the same Celtic stock,
had been gradually and progressively influenced as a race by the
admixture of Saxon and Danish blood into the population; and although
much of the Celtic character was thereby lost, they seem to have
retained in their mountains and forests much of the spirit, and many
of the laws and manners, of the ancient Britons. They continued to
form themselves into various septs, or clans, according to the Celtic
custom; sometimes banded together for the attainment of a common
end; and as often at feud, one clan with another, when some act of
personal wrong had to be revenged upon a neighbouring community. Thus
a state of continual restlessness, springing out of mutual hatred and
jealousies, existed among the borderers of either nation. The same
feelings of enmity were fostered, and the same system of petty warfare
was carried on, between the borderers of the two kingdoms. Cumberland
and Westmorland, from their position, were subject to the frequent
inroads of the Scots; by whom great outrages were committed upon the
inhabitants. They drove their cattle, burned their dwellings, plundered
their monasteries, and even destroyed whole towns and villages. A
barbarous system of vengeance and retaliation ensued. Every act of
violence and bloodshed was perpetrated; whilst the most nefarious
practices of free-booting became the common occupation of the marauding
clans; and a _raid_ into a neighbouring district had for them the
same sort of charm and excitement which their descendants find in a
modern fox chase. Even after the union of the two kingdoms under one
sovereign, when the term "Borders" had been changed to "Middle Shires,"
as being more suitable to a locality which was now nearly in the
centre of his dominions, the long cherished distinctions and prejudices
of the inhabitants were maintained in all their vigour; and it required
a long period of conflict with these to be persevered in, before the
extinction of the border feuds could be completely effected. These
distractions have now been at an end for more than two centuries. The
mountains look down upon a peaceful domain; the valleys, everywhere the
abode of quiet and security, yield their rich pasturage to the herds,
or their corn-fields redden, though coyly, to the harvest; and the
population, much of it rooted in the soil, and attached by hereditary
ties to the same plots of ancestral ground in many instances for six or
seven hundred years, is independent, prosperous, and happy.
Some evidences of the old troublous times remain, in the dismantled
Border Towers, and moated or fortified houses called Peles, which
lie on the more exposed parts of the district; in the ruins of the
conventual retreats; and in the crumbling strongholds of the chiefs,
which still retain something of a past existence in the names which
even yet cling about their walls, as if the spirits of their former
possessors were reluctant to depart entirely from them. Whilst a few
traditions and recollections survive of those stirring periods which
have left their mark upon the nation's history, and are associated for
ever with images of those illustrious persons whose familiar haunts
were within the shadows of the hills.
But the great charm of this region, which is not without attractions
also of a superstitious and romantic character, lies in the variety of
the aspects of nature which it presents; exhibiting, on a diminutive
scale, combinations of the choicest features of the scenery of all
those lands which have a name and fame for beauty and magnificence. Mr.
West, a Roman Catholic clergyman, long resident in the district, and
the author of one of the earliest Guides to the Lakes, thus expresses
himself: "They who intend to make the continental tour should begin
here; as it will give in miniature, an idea of what they are to meet
with there, in traversing the Alps and Appenines: to which our northern
mountains are not inferior in beauty of line, or variety of summit,
number of lakes, and transparency of water; not in colouring of rock or
softness of turf; but in height and extent only. The mountains here are
all accessible to the summit, and furnish prospects no less surprising,
and with more variety than the Alps themselves." Wordsworth also, who
could well judge of this fact, and none better; he who for fifty years
"Murmured near _these_ running brooks
A music sweeter than their own,"
and looked on all their changing phases with a superstitious eye of
love; after he had become acquainted with the mountain scenery of
Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, and Italy, gave his judgment that, as a
whole, the English Lake District within its narrow limits is preeminent
above them all. He thus speaks: "A happy proportion of component parts
is indeed noticeable among the landscapes of the North of England;
and, in this characteristic essential to a perfect picture, they
surpass the scenes of Scotland, and, in a still greater degree, those
of Switzerland.... On the score even of sublimity, the superiority
of the Alps is by no means so great as might hastily be inferred;
and, as to the _beauty_ of the lower regions of the Swiss mountains,
their surface has nothing of the mellow tone and variety of hues by
which our mountain turf is distinguished.... The Lakes are much more
interesting than those of the Alps; first, as is implied above by being
more happily proportioned to the other features of the landscape; and
next, as being infinitely more pellucid, and less subject to agitation
from the winds." And again, "The water of the English Lakes being of
a crystalline clearness, the reflections of the surrounding hills are
frequently so lively, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the
point where the real object terminates, and its unsubstantial duplicate
begins."
It is therefore not to be wondered at, that during the greater part
of a century, where the old Border _raids_ of violence have ceased,
excursions of a very different character should have taken their
place. Every summer brings down upon the valleys clouds of visitors
from every corner of our island, and from many countries of Europe
and America, eager to enjoy their freshness and beauty, and breathe
a new life in the companionship of the lakes and hills. And if in
a spirit somewhat more akin to the moss-trooping Borderer of an
earlier time, an occasional intruder has scoured the vales in search
of their traditions; and in the pursuit of these has ransacked their
annals, plundered their guides, and levied a sort of black-mail upon
even casual and anonymous contributors to their history; it may in
some degree extenuate the offence to remember that such literary
free-booting makes no one poorer for what it takes away; and that
the _opima spolia_ of the adventurer are only so much gathered to be
distributed again. More especially to the Notes which constitute so
large a portion of the present Volume may this remark be applied.
Scenery long outlasts all traditional and historical associations. To
revive these among their ancient haunts, and to awaken yet another
interest in this land of beauty, has been the aim and end of this
modern _Raid_ into the valleys of the North, and the regions that own
the sovereignty of the "mighty Helvellyn."