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.

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.