regained some measure of independence with kings or kinglets of
its own, under the dominant over-lordship of the Scottish crown.
But the Anglian settlers still held their tuns, though their
influence and interests so diminished that it was impossible for
them to continue and complete the colonization of Lakeland. It
remained a no-man's-land, a debateable border country, hardly
inhabited and quite uncivilised.
NORSE PERIOD.
Who then settled the dales, cleared the forest, drained the
swamps, and made the wilderness into fields and farms?
Let us walk to-day through the valleys to the north of the
village, and ask by the way what the country can tell us of its
history.
Leaving the church we come in a few minutes to Yewdale Beck. Why
"beck?" Nobody here calls it "brook," as in the Saxon south,
nor "burn," as in the Anglian north. In the twelfth century, as
now, the name was "Ywedallbec," showing that it had been named
neither in Anglian nor in Saxon, but by inhabitants who talked the
language of the Vikings.
The house on the hill before us, above fields sloping to the
flats, is the Thwaite house. _Thveit_ in Iceland, which the
Norsemen colonized, means a field sloping to a flat. On the
wooded hill behind it are enclosures called the high and low
Guards--"yard" would be the Saxon word; _gardhr_ is the Norse,
becoming in our dialect sometimes "garth" and sometimes "gard" or
"guard."
At the Waterhead the signpost tells us to follow the road to
Hawkshead, anciently Hawkens-heved or Hawkenside--_Hauk's_ or
_Hákon's_ headland or seat.
Taking the second turn to the left we go up the ravine of Tarn Hows
Gill (_Tjarn-haugs-gil_), and reach a favourite spot for mountain
views. Above and around the moorland lake rise the Langdale Pikes
(_Langidalr_ there is also in Iceland), Lingmoor (_lyng-mor_),
Silver How (_Sölva-haugr_), Loughrigg (_loch-hryggr_), Fairfield
(_fær-fjall_), Red Screes (_raud-skridhur_), and on the left Weatherlam
(_vedhr-hjalmr_) and all the _fells_ and _dales_, _moors_ and _meres_,
which cannot be named without talking Norse.
Descending to the weir which was built by the late Mr. Marshall,
to throw into one the three Monk Coniston Tarns, as the sheet
of water is still called, a broken path leads us down past the
waterfall of Tom or Tarn Gill, romantically renamed Glen Mary,
and now even "St. Mary's Glen," and out upon the road opposite
Yewtree House, behind which stood the famous old yew blown down
in the storm of 22nd December, 1894. Turning to the right, we
pass Arnside (_Arna-sidha_ or _setr_, Ami's fellside or dairy)
and Oxenfell (_öxna-fell_), and soon look down upon Colwith
(_Koll-vidhr_, "peak-wood" from the peaked rocks rising to the
left above it; or _Kol-vidhr_, wood in which charcoal was made).
We quit the road to Skelwith (_skál-vidhr_, the wood of the scale
or shed) and descend to Colwith Feet (_fit_, meadow on the bank
of a river or lake), and ascend again to Colwith Force (_fors_,
waterfall), and pass the _Tarn to Fell Foot_, an old manor house,
bought in 1707 by Sir Daniel Fleming's youngest son Fletcher,
ancestor of the Flemings of Rayrigg, who placed his coat of arms
over the door (as Mr. George Browne of Troutbeck says--Cumb. and
West. Antiq. Soc. _Transactions_, vol. xi., p. 5).
Permission is readily given to view the terraced mound behind the
house, in which Dr. Gibson and Mr. H. S. Cowper have recognized a
Thingmount such as the Vikings used for the ceremonies of their
Thing or Parliament. There was one in Dublin, the Thingmote;
the Manx Tynwald is still in use; and the name _Thingvöllr_
(thing-field) survives at Thingwall in Cheshire, South Lancashire,
and Dumfriesshire. On the steps of the mound the people stood in
their various ranks while the Law-speaker proclaimed from the top
the laws or judgments decreed by the Council. Eastward from the
mount, to make the site complete, a straight path should lead (as
in the Isle of Man) to a temple by a stream or well; and around
should be flat ground enough for the people to camp out, for they
met at midsummer and spent several days in passing laws, trying
suits, talking gossip, driving bargains, and holding games--as if
it were Grasmere Sports and Wakefield Competition, hiring fair and
cattle market, County Council and Assizes, all rolled into one.
These requirements are perfectly met by this site, which is also
in a conveniently central position, with Roman roads and ancient
paths leading to it in all directions through Lakeland.
From other sources than place-names--from Norse words in the
present dialect as analysed by Mr. Ellwood, we learn that the
Vikings settled here as farmers. The words they have handed
down to their descendants are not fighting words, but farming
words--names of agricultural tools and usages, and the homely
objects of domestic life.
The Norse settlement appears, therefore, to be an immigration, not
of invaders, but of refugees; and the event which first caused it
was perhaps the raid of King Harald Fairhair, about 880-890, on
the Vikings of the Hebrides, Galloway, and the Isle of Man.
Gradually they spread from the coast into the fells, until they
had filled all the hill country; and if we set down their first
arrival as about 890, we find that for no less than three hundred
years they were left in possession of the lands they settled, and
in enjoyment of liberty to make their own laws and to rule their
own commonwealth at the Thingmount on which we are standing.
NORMAN PERIOD.
The Norman Conquest, it must be understood, did not touch the
Lake District. William the Conqueror and his men never entered
Cumbria, nor even High Furness. The dales are not surveyed in
_Domesday_, and the few landowners mentioned on the fringe of
the fells are obviously of Norse or Celtic origin--Duvan and
Thorolf, and Ornulf and Orm, Gospatric and Gillemichael. After
William Rufus had seized Carlisle, the territory of Cumbria and
Westmorland was granted to various lords; but the dales were the
_hinterland_ of their claim. In the _Pipe Rolls_ we have full
accounts of the inhabitants and proceedings of the lowlands during
the twelfth century, but not a word about the Lakeland. And in
the disturbed and disputed condition of affairs--the lordship was
even in the hands of the King of Scots from 1135 to 1157--it is
easy to understand that it was worth nobody's while to attempt
the difficult task of reducing to servitude a body of hardy
freeholders, secure in their mountain fastnesses.
In the later part of the twelfth century, the baron of Kendal and
the abbot of Furness began to take steps towards asserting their
claim.
Thirty men, for the most part residents in the surrounding
lowlands and already retainers of the abbot and the baron, were
sworn in to survey the debateable ground. Half of these men, to
judge by their names or pedigrees, were of Viking origin. In the
list are Swein, Ravenkell, Frostolf, Siward (Sigurd), Bernulf
(Brynjolf), Ketel, and several Dolfins, Ulfs and Orms, with the
Irish Gospatrick and Gillemichael. Of the other half, several are
Anglo-Saxon and the rest Norman.
Their starting-point, in beating the boundaries, was Little
Langdale--as if they had met, by old use and wont of the
countryside, at the Thingmount; and they enclosed the district
by Brathay, Windermere, and Leven, eastward; Wrynose and Duddon,
westward; and then halved it by a line, along which we may follow
them, to Tilberthwaite and by Yewdale Beck to Thurston Water.
Thence their division line ran along the shore of the lake to the
Waterhead and down the eastern side, and so along the Crake to
Greenodd.
The western half was taken by the baron of Kendal to hold of
the abbot by paying a rent of 20s. yearly on the Vigil of the
Assumption (old Lammas Day). The baron also got right of way and
of hunting and hawking through the abbey's lands, thence called
Furness Fells. The valley of Coniston was thus divided into two
separate parts--the eastern side, but including the Guards, was
Monk Coniston; and the western side, including also the lake,
became known from the village church as Church Coniston.
Though this arrangement was proposed about 1160, it was not
finally settled until 1196; after which the two owners could
proceed to reduce the old Norse freeholders to the condition of
feudal tenants. A charter of John, afterwards king, at the end
of the twelfth century, directs the removal of all tenants in
Furness Fells who have not rendered due fealty to the abbot. By
what threats or promises or actual violence this was accomplished
we have no record; but we can see that it was a slow process, and
we can infer that it was not done by way of extermination. For
the Norse families, with their language and customs, remained
in Coniston. They were a canny race, and knew how to adapt
themselves to circumstances. Throughout Lakeland they evidently
made good terms with the Norman lords, and kept a degree of
independence which was afterwards explained away as the border
tenant-right--but really must have been in its origin nothing
less than a compromise between nominal feudalism and a proud
reminiscence of their Norse allodial practice--the free ownership
of the soil they had taken, and reclaimed, and inhabited for three
centuries of liberty.
V.--MONK CONISTON.
The Furness monks were of the Cistercian order; which is to say,
they were farmers rather than scholars or mere recluses and
devotees. To understand them in the days of their power, we must
put aside all the vulgar nonsense about fat friars or visionary
fakirs, and see them as a company of shareholders or college of
gentlemen from the best landowning families, whose object in their
association was, of course, the service of God in their abbey
church; but, outside of it, the development of agriculture and
industries. They devoted their property and their lives to the
work, getting nothing in return except mere board and lodging,
and--for interest on their capital--the means of grace and the
hope of glory.
Some of the brothers lived continually at the abbey, fully
occupied in the service of the household, in hospitality to the
poor and to travellers, in teaching the school, in various arts
and crafts, and especially in the office work necessary for the
management of their estates. Their method was to acquire land,
sometimes by purchase or exchange, more often by gift from those
who had entered the community, or had received services from them;
and then to improve these lands, which were generally of the
poorest when they came into the abbey's possession. As the plots
were widely scattered over Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cumberland,
it must have been no light labour to manage them. For this purpose
a brother was sent to act as steward or bailiff at a grange or
cell on the outlying estate.
One such manor house of the monks we may see at Hawkshead Old Hall
(see the sixpenny _Guide to Hawkshead_, by Mr. H. S. Cowper).
This was built more than two centuries later than the division of
High Furness; and though there was probably an earlier building,
the list of abbey possessions in 1292 makes no mention of it. The
monks, energetic as they were, had plenty to do in improving their
lands in Low Furness, and made little impression at first upon
the wild woods and moors of the fells, thinly dotted with the old
Norse thwaites and steads.
On the other hand, they provided almost immediately for the
spiritual needs of their new flock. There was already a chapel at
Hawkshead, which is mentioned in 1200, but no consecrated burial
ground; and if anyone wished for Christian burial, his body had
to be carried on horseback or on a sledge some twenty miles to
Dalton. In 1219 the monks amended this by making Hawkshead Chapel
into a parish church, greatly against the will of the vicar of
Dalton, who was the loser by the reform; and Monk Coniston has
ever since been in the ecclesiastical parish of Hawkshead.
Church Coniston got no share in this advantage. Up to the time
of Elizabeth, its people had to take their dead to Ulverston. As
you go through the village, just beyond the Baptist Chapel, is a
stream known as Jenkin Syke; and the story goes than a Jenkins
of Yewdale or Tilberthwaite was being carried, uncoffined, on a
sledge to Dalton or Ulverston for burial, but when the procession
reached Torver they found that the body was gone. They tried back,
and discovered it in the beck, which bears the name to this day.
The first and most obvious use of the fells to the monks was as
a forest of unlimited timber. One purpose for which they wanted
this was for charcoal to smelt the iron ore of the mines in Low
Furness. They needed the waterway of the lake, which was the
baron's, who, in 1240, allowed them to have "one boat competent
to carry what might be necessary upon the lake of Thurstainwater,
and another moderate sized boat for fishing in it, at their will,
with 20 nets," and a similar privilege on Windermere. The baron
bargained that if any of the monks' men damaged his property it
should be "reasonably amended"--as much as to say there was really
nothing of value along the western side of our lake in 1240.
Now that the monks had the waterway and could get at their
forests, they pushed the industry. By the end of the century
(1292) they could return a considerable income from their
ironworks, while making nothing out of the agriculture of High
Furness.
There was good hunting, however, and in 1281 the abbot got free
warren in Haukesheved, Satirthwait, Grisedale, Neburthwaite,
(Monk) Kunyngeston, and other parts of the fells--the old
Norse names alone are mentioned. But in 1338 he was allowed
by Government to impark woods in Fournes fells; not to create
deer parks in a cultivated country, for that was not done until
much later, when the bad Abbot Banks in 1516 "of the tenements
of Richard Myellner and others at a place called Gryesdale in
Furness fells made another park" (beside those he had just made
in Low Furness) "to put deer into, which park is about five miles
in compass" (_Pleadings and Depositions_, Duchy of Lancaster,
quoted by Dr. T. K. Fell; Mr. H. S. Cowper supposes this site to
have been Dale Park.) These fourteenth century parks or parrocks
were simply enclosures from the wild woods, and among them were
Waterpark, Parkamoor, and Lawson Park which we have passed. So it
was a century and a half before the monks got their woods cleared
enough to settle their shepherds on the lands given them by the
thirty sworn men's division.
Even then it was notoriously a wild place. In 1346 (as we gather
from a ballad and pedigrees printed in Whitaker's _Loidis and
Elmete_, 1816, vol. ii., p. 396) it was, like Sherwood and
Inglewood, the resort of outlaws. Adam of Beaumont (near Leeds)
with his brother, and Will Lockwood, Lacy, Dawson and Haigh, came
hither after slaying Sir John Elland in revenge for the murder of
Sir Robert Beaumont.
In Furness Fells long time they were
Boasting of their misdeed,
In more mischief contriving there
How they might yet proceed.
They seem to have been here until 1363 or later--a gang of
brigands; which shows how little grip the abbey had so far laid
upon its _hinterland_.
But gradually new farms were created and held by native families
who acknowledged the abbot as their lord, and provided men for
military duty or for various "boons," such as a day's work in
harvest. These new farms are now known as "grounds." In Monk
Coniston we find Rawlinson, Atkinson, Knipe, Bank, and Holme
Grounds; and in the list of abbey "tenants" of 1532, "from the
Ravenstie upwards" (the path from Dale Park by Ravencrag to
Hawkshead), are Robert Atkyns, Robert Knype, Robert Bank, Rainold
and Robert Holme. The Kirkbys of the Thwaite and the Pennys of
Penny House also signed. Rawlinson is not on this list, but on
that of 1509 giving the "tenants" "from the Ravenstie downwards,"
_i. e_., south part of High Furness. The lists do not state that,
for example, the Bankes lived at Bank Ground, but prove that the
families were then in the immediate neighbourhood.
At Bank Ground are the ruins of a house which was of some
pretentions, judging from carved stones lying there. Local
tradition makes it the site of a religious house, with a healing
well. Dr. Gibson supplies a monk, "Father Brian," and tells a
tradition of a witch living opposite (where the gondola station
is) who came to the monk and confessed that she had sold herself
to the devil. The monk set her a penance, and promised absolution.
So when the devil came to claim his own she fled up Yewdale Beck,
calling on "Father Brian and St. Herbert," and the devil's hoof
stuck fast in the Bannockstone, a rock below the wooden bridge in
Mr. George Fleming's field. The hole is there. Many rocks have
such holes, from the weathering out of nodules. Mediævals may
have called them devil's footprints; moderns often call them
"cup-markings," in equal error.
It may be that a hermit lived where the Bankes afterwards built
their homestead; it is possible that there was a "cell" for the
abbey's Monk Coniston representative at the Waterhead. But the
final list of abbey estates (1535), while mentioning Watsyde
Parke, Lawson Parke, and Parkamore among granges and parks, puts
"Watterhed et (Monk) Connyngston, £10-19-5-1/4" in the rental of
tenants, as if the farm were then let to a tenant, as Hawkshead
Hall was in 1512. The old Waterhead mansion, however, is known as
Monk Coniston _par excellence_, and behind the modern Gothic front
are ancient rooms with thick walls and massive beams, said by Mr.
Marshall, the owner, to be part of the original monks' house.
There are few actual relics of this period in the way of
archæological finds, so that the discovery of a tiny key of lead,
with trefles on the ring, cast in a double mould, at Tent Cottage,
where it was found under a stone, is worth remark. Mr. H. S.
Cowper thought it a pilgrim's badge of the fourteenth or fifteenth
century, and the site was one of the "grounds" of the abbey
"tenants."
The list of "tenants" referred to is in an agreement of 1532 to
prevent "improvement." They had "inclosed common pasture more
largelie than they ought to doe, under the colour of one bargaine
called Bounding of the pasture," and this sort of "improvement"
was thenceforth forbidden. But five years later the abbey was
dissolved, to the great harm and regret of the country side.
Though a bad abbot did, for a time, give trouble by making deer
parks, the abbey rule, on the whole, was good. Monk Coniston made
slow but sure progress, and reached a point beyond which it did
not advance for the next three hundred years.
What it was like when the abbey gave it up may be gathered from
the report of Henry VIII.'s commissioners:--"There is moche wood
growing in Furneysfelles in the mounteynes there, as Byrk, Holey,
Asshe, Ellers, Lyng, lytell short Okes, and other Undrewood, but
no Tymber of any valewe;" they mention also "Hasells." That there
_had_ been timber is proved by the massive oak beams of many a
farmhouse and old hall, but the forests were all by this time
cleared, and coppice had taken their place. "There is another
yerely profytte comming and growing of the said woods, called
Grenehewe, Bastyng, Bleching, bynding, making of Sadeltrees,
Cartwheles, cuppes, disshes, and many other thynges wrought
by Cowpers and Turners" (the beginning of well-known local
industries) "with making of Coles (charcoal) and pannage of Hoggs."
After the dissolution the manor remained in the Crown until 1662,
when Charles II. granted it to General Monk, Duke of Albemarle,
whose descendant Elizabeth, daughter of George, Duke of Montague
(whence the other name of Peel Island), married Henry, third Duke
of Buccleugh, whose representative is now lord of the manor.
Monk Coniston remained separate from Church Coniston, both
ecclesiastically and politically, until the Local Government Act
of 1894 establishing Parish Councils gave occasion for the union
of the two shores of the lake into one civil parish. But Monk
Coniston is still in the ecclesiastical parish of Hawkshead.
VI.--THE FLEMINGS OF CONISTON HALL.
In 1196 the baron of Kendal was Gilbert fitz Roger fitz Reinfrid,
who had got his lordship by marriage with Heloise, granddaughter
of William I. de Lancaster. In her right he claimed Furness as
well. So did the abbey, and the result of this dispute we have
seen in the division of the fells.
There was a family at Urswick who, to judge by their name, might
have been descendants of the old Norse settlers. Adam fitz Bernulf
held land there of Sir Michael le Fleming about 1150; Orm fitz
Bernulf was one of the thirty sworn men; Stephen of Urswick was
another. Stephen was doubtless christened after the king, who had
founded the abbey; for fashions in names followed royalty then as
now. Gilbert fitz Bernulf was another of the family--a Normanised
Norseman, it would seem. To him Coniston was let or assigned by
Baron Gilbert of Kendal.
His son Adam was living in 1227. Adam's daughter Elizabeth was his
heiress, and married Sir Richard le Fleming.
Le Fleming, or _the_ Fleming, meant simply "the man from
Flanders." William Rufus had invited many Flemings to settle as
"buffer" colonies in Cumberland and Wales, and Sir Richard's
ancestor Michael had received Aldingham in Low Furness. Sir
Richard's grandfather, being a younger son, had got a Cumbrian
estate with headquarters at a place called by the Cumbrian-Welsh
Caernarvon. _Ar mhon_ (arfon) means "over against Mona;" in Wales
_Caer-n-arfon_ is "the castle over against Anglesey (Mona);" in
Cumbria the same name had been given to the castle over against
Man (Mona). It was an oblong base-court with a ditch, and a round
artificial hill (later known as Coney-garth or King's-garth, cop)
exactly like the Mote at Aldingham. There Sir Richard's father
lived, and dying was buried at Calder Abbey.
But when Sir Richard married Elizabeth of Urswick, and got with
her the manors of Urswick, Coniston, Carnforth, and Claughton,
they chose to live at Coniston; and being wealthy, they probably
built a mansion which, rebuilt two hundred years later, became the
Coniston Hall we now see. Their settlement here would be about
1250 or later.
Sir Richard, being a knight, must have brought his men with him,
and let them have farms near at hand on condition of following
him to the wars. No doubt he turned out the Norse holders of
Heathwaite and Bleathwaite, Little Arrow (Ayrey, "moor") and
Yewdale, or took on them as his men. Billmen and bowmen he would
need, and we find a Bowmanstead in the village.
These tenants followed his son, Sir John, to Scotland in
1299 to fight Wallace; and got, with him, special protection
and privileges from Edward I. for bravery at the siege of
Caerlaverock. John's son, Sir Rayner, was in favour at Court, and
held the office of King's Steward, _Dapifer_, for these parts, in
the beginning of the fourteenth century. So West says.
His son, Sir John, had three children. The daughter Joan married
John le Towers of Lowick; his eldest son William died without
children; and so Coniston Hall fell to the younger brother,
Sir John, who lived there in Edward III.'s time, while Adam of
Beaumont and his fellows were outlaws in the fells, and doubtless
shot the Coniston deer. Sir John died in 1353, and was succeeded
by Sir Richard, who married Catharine of Kirkby, and died about
1392. Of his three sons, Sir Thomas, the eldest, succeeded him. He
married (1371) Margaret of Bardsey, then Elayn Laybourn (1390),
and then his deceased wife's sister Isabel (1396). His elder son
was Thomas, for whom in his childhood his father arranged a
marriage with an heiress, Isabel de Lancaster. She brought Rydal
into the family.
Up to this time the knights "le Fleming" had lived for 150 years
at old Coniston Hall; during Sir Thomas' life (he died about 1481)
the Hall seems to have been rebuilt, so far as can be gathered
from the architecture of the remains. Part of his time he spent at
Rydal, perhaps while rebuilding Coniston Hall.
After him there are no more knights "le Fleming," but a series of
Squires Fleming, keeping up both the Coniston and Rydal Halls.