There are no Roman remains at Coniston; but a great Roman road passed just to the north of the township from the camp, still visible, at Ambleside, through Little Langdale, over Wrynose and Hardknott to the camp at Hardknott Castle, and so down Eskdale to the port of Ravenglass, where at Walls Castle there are the site of a camp and the ruin of a Roman villa. It is possible that a trackway used in Roman times passed through Hawkshead, for fragments of Roman brick have been found at Hawkshead Hall and a coin at Colthouse (see Mrs. H. S. Cowper's Hawkshead and its Neighbourhood: Titus Wilson, Kendal, sixpence).

There is a tradition that the Coniston coppermines were worked by the Romans; but there is no evidence to prove it. One point that tends to suggest the possibility of such a belief is that about the year 85 A.D., soon after Agricola had overcome all this part of the country, a certain savant, Demetrius of Tarsus, fellow-townsman of St. Paul and not much his junior, was sent by the Emperor Domitian to Britain, it would seem for the purpose of enquiring into its products, especially in metals (Canon Raine, York, p. 17). Two bronze tablets, dedicated by this Demetrius to the gods Oceanus and Tethys, were found at York, and are now in the museum there; and on his return from these savage regions he went to Delphi and told his traveller's tales to Plutarch, who mentions the fact in his treatise On the Cessation of Oracles. It might be said that these rich copper mines could hardly fail to attract the notice of the conquerors; of whom their own Tacitus says, speaking of their disappointment in the pearl fishery of Britain—"I could more easily believe that the pearls are amiss, than that we Romans are wanting in 'commercial enterprise.'" Avaritia is the old cynic's word, in the life of Agricola, chap. 12.

British Period.

After the Romans left, until the middle of the seventh century this district remained in the hands of the Cumbri or Welsh, who probably dwelt in some of the ancient moorland settlements we have already visited. They have perhaps left traces in the language, but less than is often asserted.

Some have thought "Old Man" to be a corruption of the Welsh Allt Maen, "high stone" or "stone of the slope." But even if it be more reasonably explained as we have suggested, the word "man" for a stone or cairn is Welsh. Dow Crags are sometimes dignified into Dhu Crags; but though both "dow" and "crag" have passed into our dialect, both are of Celtic origin. The mountain crest over Greenburn called Carrs cannot be explained as Norse Kjarr, a "wood;" but being castle-like rocks, may be from the Welsh caer. There are many "combes" and "tors," "pens" and "benns" (the last Gaelic, for some of the hill tribes may well have been survivors of the kindred race of Celts). Of the rivers hereabouts—Kent, Leven, Duddon, Esk, and perhaps Crake are Celtic.

Anglian Period.

When the Angles or English settled in the country, as they did in the seventh century, they came in by two routes, which can be traced by their place-names and their grave monuments. One was by Stainmoor and the Cumberland coast, round to Ravenglass; and the other by Craven to the coast of Morecambe Bay. There is no evidence of their settlement in the Lake District fells, except in the Keswick neighbourhood, where the story of St. Herbert gives us a hint that though the fell country might not be fully occupied, it was not unexplored in the seventh century. The mention of the murder of Alf and Alfwine, sons of King Alfwald, in 789 at Wonwaldremere cannot be located at Windermere with any certainty; but still it is possible that the Angles penetrated to Coniston.

The Anglian settlements are known by their names—Pennington, the tun of the Pennings in Furness; Workington, the tun of the Weorcingas, and so on. Among the mountains there is only one ton—Coniston, or as it was anciently spelt Cuninges-tun, Koninges-ton. Conishead in Low Furness was Cunninges-heved, the headland of the King, where perhaps Ecgfrith or his successors had a customs-house to take toll of the traders crossing the sands to the iron mines. So Cynings-tun (the y pronounced like a French u, and making in later English Cunnings-tun) might mean King's-town; in Norse, Konungs-tun, whence we get the alternative pronunciations of the modern spelling, Coniston or Cuniston. What the Norse had to do with it we shall soon see.

Now it is unlikely that kings lived in so out-of-the-way a place; but possible that they appropriated the copper mines. The ancient claim of kings to all minerals is still kept in mind by the word "royalty." And if the king's miners lived here under his reeve or officer, their stockaded village would be rightly known as Cynings-tun, the King's-town.

It is right to add that some antiquaries make the names beginning with Coning-or Coni-to mean the Rabbits'-town, Rabbits'-head, Rabbits'-garth, and so forth, and yet even in Iceland, which was always republican, there is a Kongsbakki, King's-bank, at which no king ever lived. In ancient times, as now, sentiment counted for something in the naming of places; and many names, otherwise without meaning, may have been simply given by the settler in remembrance of his old home. We cannot say for certain that Coniston was not so called by an immigrant of the Viking Age, much later than the invasion of the Angles; possibly he came from a place of similar name in Craven or Holderness or elsewhere and brought the name with him.

The Welsh appear to have remained under Teutonic (or later, Scandinavian) masters, and one relic of their tongue seems to show how they were treated. They seem to have been employed as shepherds, and they counted their flocks:—

or in the ancient equivalent form of these Welsh numerals, which their masters learned from them, and used ever after in a garbled form as the right way to count sheep. The Coniston count-out runs—

And from these north-country dales the Anglo-Cymric score has spread, with their roaming sons and daughters, pretty nearly all the world over. (See the Rev. T. Ellwood's papers on the subject in Cumb. and West. Antiq. Soc. Transactions, vol. iii.)

During the ninth century the Anglian power declined. Welsh Cumbria 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.