The lords of Millom are connected with an ancient legend of
Egremont Castle, which is given elsewhere, and which especially
alludes to the horn and hatterell which they bore on their helmets.
This crest is said to have been assumed in the time of Henry I., on
the occasion of the grant of this seignory by the Lord of Egremont
to Godard de Boyvill or Boisville, whose descendants retained
possession of the greater part of it for about one hundred years
when it became vested by marriage in Sir John Hudleston, whose
pedigree is alleged to be traceable for five generations before
the Conquest. In this family it remained for about five hundred
years, when, for failure of male issue it was sold to Sir James
Lowther, nearly a century ago. The names of the first possessors
are now almost forgotten in their own lands. The castle is of
great antiquity. It is uncertain at what date it was originally
built; but it was fortified and embattled by Sir John Hudleston,
in 1335. In ancient times it was surrounded by a fine park, of
which there are some scanty remains on a ridge to the north. The
great square tower is still habitable, though its old battlements
are gone. The castle was invested during the parliamentary war,
and the old vicarage house was pulled down at the same time, "lest
the rebels should take refuge there." There are traces of the
ancient moat still visible. Between the broken pillars of an old
gateway, an avenue leads to the front of the ruin, which, though
not of great extent, presents a fine specimen of the decayed pomp
of early times. The walls of the court yard are all weather-stained
and worn; and, here and there, delicate beds of moss have crept
over them, year after year, so long, that the moist old stones are
now matted with hues of great beauty. The front of the castle is
roofless, and some parts of the massive walls are thickly clothed
with ivy. A fine flight of worn steps leads up through the archway,
to the great tower, in the inner court. Above the archway a stone
shield bears the decayed heraldries of the Hudleston family; and
these arms appear, also, on a slab in the garden wall, and in other
parts of the buildings. The front entrance of the great tower,
from the inner court, when open, shews within a fine old carved
staircase, which leads one to suppose that the interior may retain
many of its ancient characteristics.
The church is a venerable building, with its quaint little turret,
containing two bells. The edifice consists of a nave and chancel, a
south aisle, and a modern porch on the same side. The aisle was the
burial place of the Hudlestons. Here is an altar-tomb, ornamented
with Gothic tracery and figures bearing shields of arms, on which
recline the figures of a knight and his lady, in alabaster, very
much mutilated. The knight is in plate armour, his head resting on
a helmet, and having a collar of S.S.; the lady is dressed in a
long gown and mantle, with a veil. They appear to have originally
been painted and gilt, but the greater part of the colouring has
been rubbed off. Near the altar-tomb are the very mutilated remains
of a knight, carved in wood, apparently of the fourteenth century.
A few years ago there was a lion at his feet. A mural marble tablet
to the memory of the Hudleston family is on the wall of the aisle.
The lordship of Millom is the largest seignory within the barony
of Egremont; its ancient boundaries being described as the river
Duddon on the east, the islands of Walney and Piel de Foudray
on the south, the Irish Sea on the west, and the river Esk and
the mountains Hardknot and Wrynose on the north. It anciently
enjoyed great privileges: it was a special jurisdiction into which
the sheriff of the county could not enter: its lords had the
power of life and death, and enjoyed _jura regalia_ in the six
parishes forming their seignory, namely, Millom, Bootle, Whicham,
Whitbeck, Corney, and Waberthwaite. Mr. Denton, writing in 1688,
says that the gallows stood on a hill near the Castle, on which
criminals had been executed within the memory of persons then
living. To commemorate the power anciently possessed by the lords
of this seignory, a stone has recently been erected with this
inscription--"Here the Lords of Millom exercised Jura Regalia."
This lordship still retains its own coroner.
A small nunnery of Benedictines formerly existed within this
seignory, at Lekely in Seaton, which lies westward from Bootle,
near the sea. The precise date of its foundation cannot be
ascertained: but it appears to have taken place on or before the
time of Henry Boyvill, the fourth lord of Millom, who lived about
the commencement of the thirteenth century; and who "gave lands
in Leakley, now called Seaton, to the nuns;" and who in the deed
of feofment of the manor of Leakley made by the said Henry to
Goynhild, his daughter, on her marriage with Henry Fitz-William,
excepts "the land in Leakley which I gave to the holy nuns serving
God and Saint Mary in Leakley."
The nunnery was dedicated to St. Leonard; and was so poor that it
could not sufficiently maintain the prioress and nuns. Wherefore
the Duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV., by his charter, in
1357, granted to them in aid the hospital of St. Leonard, at
Lancaster, with power to appoint the chantry priest to officiate in
the said hospital. At the dissolution the possessions of the priory
were only of the annual value of £12 12s. 6d. according to Dugdale,
or £13 17s. 4d. by Speed's valuation.
When at the suppression of Abbeys it came to the crown, Henry VIII.
gave the site and lands at Seaton to his servant Sir Hugh Askew,
and his heirs. This Knight was descended from Thurston de Bosco,
who lived in the days of King John at a place then called the
Aikskeugh, or Oakwood, near Millom, and afterwards at Graymains,
near Muncaster; and from a poor estate was raised to great honour
and preferment, by his service to King Henry VIII. in his house
and in the field. Anne Askew, whose name stands so eminent in the
annals of martyrology, was one of his descendants.
There are few remains of the convent now left: some part of the
priory-chapel is still standing, particularly a fine window with
lancets, in the style of the thirteenth century. Seton-Hall,
formerly a part of the conventual buildings, and subsequently the
residence of Sir Hugh Askew, is now occupied as a farm house.
Of Seton and Sir Hugh Askew, we have the following quaint story in
Sandford's M.S. account of Cumberland:--
"Ffour miles southward stands Seaton, an estate of £500 per annum,
sometimes a religious house, got by one Sir Hugo Askew, yeoman of
the sellar to Queen Catherine in Henry Eight's time, and born in
this contry. And when that Queen was divorced from her husband,
this yeoman was destitute. And he applied for help to (the) Lo.
Chamberlain for some place or other in the King's service. The Lord
Steward knew him well, because he had helpt to a cup (of) wine
ther before, but told him he had no place for him but a charcoal
carrier. 'Well' quoth this monsir Askew, 'help me in with one
foot, and let me gett in the other as I can.' And upon a great
holiday, the king looking out at some sports, Askew got a courtier,
a friend of his, to stand before the king; and Askew gott on his
velvet cassock and his gold chine, and basket of chercole on his
back, and marched in the king's sight with it. 'O,' saith the
king, 'now I like yonder fellow well, that disdains not to do his
dirty office in his dainty clothes: what is he?' Says his friend
that stood by on purpose, 'It is Mr Askew, that was yeoman of the
sellar to the late Queen's M^{tie}, and now glad of this poor
place to keep him in your ma^{tie's} service, which he will not
forsake for all the world.' The king says, 'I had the best wine
when he was i'th cellar. He is a gallant wine-taster: let him have
his place againe;' and after knighted him; and he sold his place,
and married the daughter of Sir John Hudleston; (and purchased[6]
this religious place of Seaton, nye wher he was borne, of an
ancient freehold family,) and settled this Seaton upon her, and she
afterwards married monsir Penengton, Lo: of Muncaster, and had Mr.
Joseph and a younger son with Penington, and gave him this Seaton."
A brass plate on the south wall of the chancel of Bootle Church,
bears the effigies of a knight in armour, with the following
inscription in old English characters, indicating his tomb. "Here
lieth Sir Hughe Askew, knyght. late of the seller to Kynge Edward
the VI. which Sir Hughe was made knyght, at Musselborough felde, in
ye yeare of our Lord, 1547, and died the second day of Marche, in
the yere of our Lord God, 1562."
Among the local spirits of Cumberland, whose existence is believed
in by the vulgar, is one named Hob-Thross, whom the old gossips
report to have been frequently seen in the shape of a "Body aw
ower rough," lying by the fire side at midnight. He was one of
the class of creatures called Brownies, and according to popular
superstition, had especially attached himself to the family at
Millom Castle. He was a solitary being, meagre, flat-nosed,
shaggy and wild in his appearance, and resembled the "lubbar
fiend," so admirably described by Milton in L'Allegro. Gervase of
Tilbury speaks of him as one of the "dæmones, senile vultu, facie
corrugata, statura pusilli, dimidium pollicis non habentes." In
the day time he lurked in remote recesses of the old houses which
he delighted to haunt; and, in the night, sedulously employed
himself in discharging any laborious task which he thought might
be acceptable to the family, to whose service he had devoted
himself. He loved to stretch himself by the kitchen fire when the
menials had taken their departure. Before the glimpse of morn he
would execute more work than could be done by a man in ten days.
He did not drudge from the hope of recompense: on the contrary,
so delicate was his attachment, that the offer of reward, but
particularly of food, infallibly would occasion his disappearance
for ever. He would receive, however, if placed for him in a
_snipped pot_, a quart of cream, or a mess of milk-porridge. He
had his regular range of farm houses; and seems to have been a
kind spirit, and willing to do any thing he was required to do.
The servant girls would frequently put the cream in the churn, and
say, "I wish Hob would churn that," and they always found it done.
Hob's readiness to fulfil the wishes of his friends was sometimes
productive of ludicrous incidents. One evening there was every
prospect of rain next day, and a farmer had all his grain out. "I
wish," said he, "I had that grain housed." Next morning Hob had
housed every sheaf, but a fine stag which had helped him was lying
dead at the barn door. The day however became extremely fine, and
the farmer thought his grain would have been better in the field:
"I wish," said he, "that Hob-Thross was in the mill-dam;" next
morning all the farmer's grain was in the mill-dam. Such were
the tales which were constantly told of the Millom Brownie, and
as constantly believed. He left the country at last, through the
mistaken kindness of some one, who made him a coat and hood to keep
him warm during the winter. He was heard at night singing at his
favourite haunts for a while about his apparel, and "occupation
gone," and at length left the country.
The Cumberland tradition affirms that those persons who on
Fasting's-Even, as Shrove Tuesday is vulgarly called in the North
of England, do not eat heartily, are crammed with barley chaff by
Hob-Thross: and so careful are the villagers to set the goblin
at defiance, that scarcely a single hind retires to rest without
previously partaking of a hot supper.
Sir Walter Scott tells us that the last Brownie known in Ettrick
Forest, resided in Bodsbeck, a wild and solitary spot, near the
head of Moffat Water, where he exercised his functions undisturbed,
till the scrupulous devotion of an old lady induced her _to hire
him away_, as it was termed, by placing in his haunt a porringer
of milk and a piece of money. After receiving this hint to depart,
he was heard the whole night to howl and cry, "Farewell to bonnie
Bodsbeck!" which he was compelled to abandon for ever.