It was Theodore Hook, if we remember rightly, who, when the New Monthly was in its prime and he was in one of his most playful moods, sang the praises of the "Swan" at Ditton. Our own memory recalls a pleasant visit to that quaint resting place, famous in the records of Thames anglers and Cockney pleasure parties, when, after much happy and harmless enjoyment upon

we steered our tiny bark through a small flotilla of boats, round the picturesque aits, and beneath the overhanging willows, to seek the much needed refreshment the ancient hostelry affords. But while we would not willingly decry the attractions of the "snug inn" that Hook's rhyming fancy has made for ever famous, or deny that—

we must confess that, for peaceful quietude, the beauty of the scenery without and the comforts to be found within, we give a preference to the "Swan" at Newby. The old mansion-like inn is familiar, if not indeed endeared, to everyone who has sojourned upon the green shores of wooded Windermere, and in the old coaching days, ere the shrill whistle of the locomotive had awoke the echoes in those peace-breathing valleys, it was as much in favour with the turtle doves and as much sought after by the votaries of Hymen as the "Low Wood" is at the present time. It stands on the banks of the Leven, near its outlet from the lake, and at the very foot of that bleak range of fir-clad melancholy hills that rise like a mountain barrier to guard the Lake country from the inroads of the treacherous sea. The clear river glides smoothly along by the front of the house, a quaint old bridge of five arches with queer little recesses on either side bestrides the stream, and, just below, its waters are dammed up by a weir, over which they fall in sheets of whitened foam, making a perpetual music that awakes the drowsy echoes of the vale. Simple are the details, but charming is the combination—the old bridge, grey and weather-worn and lichen-stained, the white front of the pleasant old hostelry repeating itself in the still clear waters of the Leven, the little patch of unpretentious garden with a trim pleasure-boat moored to its bank, and the clump of tall trees at the foot of the bridge that bend gracefully over the stream and now and then dip their pensile branches in the current, together make up as attractive a picture as the eye of an artist would wish to rest upon.

If you have an hour to spare, you cannot better employ it than by climbing the wooded hill that rises from behind the inn, crowned with a square tower, the "Folly," as it is called, erected in memory of England's naval victories. From the top of Finsthwaite, for that is the name, you have one of the most varied and charming prospects that even the Lake country affords. Beneath you, lying like an outstretched panorama, may be seen the whole length of Windermere, with its verdant slopes, its green isles, its wooded hills, and heather-clad fells. The water, in the intensity of its blueness, rivals the azure dome above; and the eye, as it ranges along the placid surface, can trace the river-like course of the lake and note every jutting headland and every indentation along its shores. Just beyond the Ferry is Bowness, and, further north, near the head of the lake, is a cluster of mountain peaks, the advanced guard of the mighty Helvellyn, Wansfell, Loughrigg, and the twin pikes of Langdale rising prominently among them. From the summit of this tree-clad eminence the prospect is delightful at all seasons—in the early morning when the thin filmy mists of night are gathering up their skirts and stealing lazily up the mountain sides, or when evening comes on calm, and golden, and the slanting beams of the declining sun stream upon you with dazzling, almost blinding, brilliance. If you can choose your opportunity at the season when the summer's green is changing to the russet brown which tells of the waning of the year and are fortunate enough before the gloaming begins to catch the sunset effects as the warm rays tip with roseate hue the stony coronal of Gummer How, and shed a flood of golden light upon the wild fells already purpled with autumnal splendour, you will linger long to gaze upon the scene of ever-changeful beauty, and mark the varied combinations and the exquisite gradations of colour as the yellow light changes into a gorgeous crimson and the crimson deepens into purple until all becomes shadowy and vague.

Southwards the view is of an entirely different character. You may trace the course of the Leven as it winds its way beneath the precipitous hills, through the deep-wooded glen, and by the rocky gorge at Backbarrow, where there is a cotton mill that seems strangely out of place, to the shores of Morecambe Bay; the puffs of white steam that ever and anon steal through the umbrage mark the line of the railway from Lakeside to Ulverston, and show the close companionship the rail and the river keep. Eastwards, across the valley where the lower slopes of the bleak Cartmel Fells sink down into a carpet of verdure, is the little village of Staveley, with its modest house of prayer in which good old Edmund Law,[45] the father of a bishop, the grandfather of two bishops and a Lord Chief Justice, and the great-grandfather of a Governor General of India (Lord Ellenborough), ministered for half a century in consideration of the modest stipend of £20 a year.

But we are wandering from our story, for it is not Newby Bridge and its surroundings, but Cartmel and its venerable priory church—the only monastic institution that escaped mutilation when the Defender of the Faith suppressed the religious houses—that now attract our attention. A part of the hamlet of Newby Bridge is in the parish of Cartmel, but the mother church lies on the other side of the Fell, and is at least six miles distant. If the visitor is stout in lung and strong of limb he cannot do better than make the journey afoot, taking the way over the breezy moors, where every turn of the roads reveals some new object of interest, and when he has scaled the last ascent he can look down into the peaceful valley, at the bottom of which the quaint old village with its ancient church, almost cathedral-like in its proportions, may be seen nestling in serene seclusion. The less adventurous will find a more easy way by rail from Lakeside to Ulverstone, and thence to Cark or Grange, from which places it is distant a couple of miles or so, though, to our thinking, the pleasantest way is to secure the box-seat on Mr. Rigg's coach, which calls every day at the "Swan" on the way to and from Grange. You are sure of a capital team and a chatty and communicative driver, who knows all the places of interest about, and possesses an inexhaustible fund of anecdote. For a distance of three miles the road is a continuous ascent, the country presenting little else than an undulating expanse of wild moors, relieved in places with plantations of fir and larch. At Newton, a little straggling village, cold, bleak, and stony looking, you come in sight of the valley through which flows the Winster, the Milnthorp Sands, and the broad expanse of Morecambe Bay. Then the road begins to descend; Buck Crag, at the foot of which Edmund Law had his dwelling, is on the left; presently the pretty little hamlet of Lindale—the scene of one of Mrs. Gaskell's most charming stories—is reached, after which you pass beneath the wooded heights of Blawith and Aggerslack, and a few minutes later reach the seaside village of Grange. From this place the walk is about three miles, and a good part of it is uphill. Passing along the steep straggling street that comprises what ever there is of town, you reach the church, a modest little Gothic structure crowning a grassy knoll that overlooks the bay, the groves of Yew-barrow, and the long stretch of coast that sweeps round by Silverdale and Carnforth towards the Lune. Here the road tends to the right, skirting the slopes of Hampsfell, on the summit of which is the well-known "Hospice," a square stone tower, built by a former incumbent of Cartmel, the Rev. Thomas Remington, for the comfort and convenience of those who traverse the lonely fell. Continuing for some distance along a pleasant tree-shaded lane, where the scenery is fresh at every turn, you come presently to the summit of the high ground where the road divides, one path leading to Allithwaite, another to Cark, and the third, taking a northerly course, descends into the vale of Cartmel. Hedgerows border the way, alternating now and then with patches of stone wall, grey and jagged and lichen-stained, and half hidden in places with copse and brushwood. On the left the slope is steep, and at the bottom a small stream—the Ea—winds its way freakishly in and out, circling with playful eddies round the moss-clad stones that Nature's careless hand has strewn along its channel, and then hurrying on to go with the Leven to the sea. The plumy woods about Holker come well in view, and in front are the green acclivities of Broughton, backed by a cluster of swelling hills, with the Furness Fells and the range about Coniston—the Alt Maen or Old Man and its hoary companions stretching away into the shadowy distance. We meet few wayfarers, and, with the exception of a solitary homestead or two, we do not see a house until we come close upon the town. Near the entrance, on the left, is a small, unpretending building, half chapel, half school in appearance; a meeting house of the Society of Friends, which some would-be humorist has described as a centre of gravity. A few yards further on is the village school, and, passing this, we enter the town, which comprises a few groups of houses scattered irregularly round the grand old priory church, the lofty battlemented walls of which, whitened by the storms of six hundred years, tower above them with an air of solemn grandeur. It is a secluded out-of-the-world sort of place, with a quaintness about it that almost leads you to believe it has seen little change since William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, in the year 1188, gave its lands to the monks of the order of St Augustine—the same earl whose name is brought before us in Shakespeare's "King John," and whose recumbent effigy may still be seen in the round tower of the Temple Church in London.

Antiquaries tell us that the name Cartmel is of British origin,[46] and signifies the entrenched camp of fortification among the fells, an opinion that is in some measure borne out by the number of British as well as Roman antiquities that have been discovered at different times. The site of the camp is supposed to have been in the fields on the bank of the little river Ea, now called the Beck, a little to the north-west of the church, and which to this day are known as the Castle Meadows. The earliest mention we have of it is in the Life of St. Cuthbert, written by one of the monkish historians, from which it appears that some time between the years 677 and 685, Ecgfrith, King of the Northumbrian Angles, having conquered Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the adjoining districts, gave to Cuthbert, whom he had caused to be consecrated Bishop of Lindisfarne, "the whole of the lands called Cartmel, with all the Britons in it," a phrase which goes to show that, though the aboriginal Britons had been reduced to slavery by their Saxon oppressors, they had for two centuries and a half been permitted to retain their ancient home among the hills of this wild and almost insulated tract of country. From this time a chasm of something like five centuries occurs in the history. Whether the monks retained possession of the lands after the death of Cuthbert, or whether the place was ravaged by the Danish invaders, is not known with certainty, but, as no mention of it occurs in the Doomsday Survey, it is not unreasonable to assume that the place had been laid waste during some of the Danish incursions, and the church which Cuthbert reared destroyed. There is, however, undoubted evidence that a religious establishment existed at Cartmel before the priory church was founded, several of the deeds conveying lands to the neighbouring Abbey of Furness being attested by ecclesiastics of Cartmel; for example, in 1135 the name of "Willelmus Clericus de Kertmel" appears as witness to a deed of gift, and in 1155 that of "Uccheman, Parsona de Chertmel," occurs in a like capacity.

Some time during the reign of the lion-hearted King, Richard the First, William, Earl of Pembroke, influenced by the spirit of the times, conceived the idea of founding a house for a fraternity of canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, the brotherhood being so named to distinguish them from those secular canons who abandoned the practice of living in community. To carry out his purpose he obtained from John, Earl of Morteign, afterwards King John, a grant of lands in Cartmel for the permanent endowment of his house. Here tradition comes upon the scene, and with the warm colouring of romance fills in the cold outlines of historic fact. As in many other places, a marvellous story is related of the way in which Earl Pembroke's pious canons discovered and were led to make choice of this green nook hidden away among the bleak mountain solitudes. Wandering about, it is said, in search of a settlement, they somehow or other found their way into this remote corner of Lancashire, where they discovered a hill commanding an agreeable prospect and suitable in every way for their purpose. Having marked out their foundation, they were proceeding to build, when a mysterious voice was heard directing them to remove to another locality, described as "a valley between two rivers, where the one runs north and the other south." Why the particular spot was not more clearly defined the old monkish chroniclers have omitted to tell us, but the poor homeless fathers in obedience to the supernatural command, abandoned their work, and wandered up and down in search of a spot answering to the description so vaguely given. Failing in their efforts, they determined on retracing their steps; plodding their way wearily through the tangled forests, they eventually reached the pleasant vale of Cartmel, when, to their joy, they came unexpectedly upon a small stream, the flow of which was towards the north, and, crossing it, they arrived presently at another running in the opposite direction, the hill which they had originally selected being in close proximity. Here, then, midway between the two streams, they determined on erecting their church, dedicating it when completed to the Virgin. Afterwards they built a small chapel on the hill where they had heard the mysterious voice, dedicating it to St. Bernard, though St. Vox, if there is such a saint in the Roman calendar, would have been more appropriate. The church remains a lasting monument of their architectural skill, but the chapel has long since disappeared, though the tree-clad hill on which it stood still retains the name of St. Bernard's Mount.

Leaving the shadowy realm of legend and romance, and confining ourselves to the prosaic facts of history, we find that in 1188, when the pious Pembroke endowed the religious house at Cartmel, he directed that it should be free and released from all subjection to any other house. With the view of preventing its ever being transformed into an abbey he further directed that from time to time, on the death of a prior, the canons should select two of their number and present them to him as the patron, or his heirs, and from them should be chosen the one that should serve as prior in succession, and who should have the name and office of prior only, and that an abbey should never be made of the Priory, the charter of foundation concluding in these words:—"This house have I founded for the increase of holy religion, giving and conceding to it every kind of liberty that the mouth can utter or the heart of man conceive: whosoever, therefore, shall cause loss or injury to the said house or its immunities, may he incur the curse of God, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the other saints of God, besides my particular malediction." How far the invoked curses of the Blessed Virgin or the "particular malediction" of William Earl of Pembroke tended to the protection of the Priory of Cartmel we shall hereafter see.

William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, the founder of the Priory of Cartmel, was a notable personage, and filled a large space in the history of his generation. His first wife was a daughter of the redoubtable Strongbow, the real conqueror of Ireland, and the one who in the reign of Henry II. first brought that country under the dominion of the English Crown. After her death, he married for his second wife a daughter of that faithless tyrant King John, a fortunate circumstance for both King and country, for the Earl became the trusted adviser of the sovereign, and by his tact and judgment won from him the great charter of English liberties, and in so doing enabled the recreant monarch to retain his crown.

When Pembroke founded his Priory of Canons at Cartmel the sturdy old warrior and statesman made ample provision for its future maintenance, for he endowed it with the manor and all his lands in the district of Cartmel, together with the advowson of the then existing church, the funds of that more ancient ecclesiastical foundation being merged in the Priory revenues, the parishioners in turn being permitted to retain a part of the Priory as their parish church, and one of the canons being required to officiate as their priest. The earl further bestowed upon his foundation the fishery of the Kaen, the church of Balifar, and chapel of Balunadan with its appendages, and the town of Kinross in Ireland, with the advowson of its church and all that pertained thereto. The "Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Kartmele," as it was anciently written, was subsequently enriched by many grants, donations, and other "offerings of the faithful." When King John ascended the throne he confirmed by Royal charter the foundation grant of the Earl of Pembroke, the only thing he did for his son-in-law's foundation, for that not very religious, or at all events not very scrupulous, monarch was more anxious to "shake the bags of the hoarding abbots" than to add to their contents, and if we except the Abbey of Beaulieu, in Hampshire, and the monastery of Hales Owen, in Shropshire, there is no record of his having either founded or endowed any religious house during his lifetime. The charter confirming the foundation grant also ratified the gift of Gilbert de Boelton of lands on the rocky promontory of Hunfride-heved, or Humphrey Head as it is now called, where, as tradition affirms, the last wolf in England was hunted down; and also an acre of land there and the close of Kirkepoll, the present Kirkhead, which one Simon, the son of Ukeman, had bestowed.

William de Walton was appointed the first prior of the newly-founded house. Settling down in this quiet green nook in Lancashire—the very spot for a life of religious seclusion—under the protection of their pious patron, the powerful Pembroke, the fraternity continued to lead a life of sanctity and single-blessedness, and on the whole they must have had rather a pleasant time of it, for, if history is to be relied on, the monotony of a religious life was varied by a considerate attention to their worldly well-being; they tilled their lands, made home improvements, now and then they busied themselves in building a grange in which to garner their produce, and occasionally a mill, where they and their tenants might grind their corn. The prior seems to have been early imbued with the principles of free trade, for as far back as the year 1203 we find him "obtaining letters patent" empowering him to export corn from his possessions in Ireland; later on we find the same worthy in a court of law defending his fishery rights, when Ralph de Bethom had been poaching in the waters of the Kaen, and it would be unjust to the memory of the fraternity to say that they ever neglected any opportunity of augmenting the privileges or the wealth of their house. Numerous additions to the original endowments were made by pious benefactors, and, as an incentive to benevolent effort, Walter Gray, Abbot of York, promised an indulgence of twenty days of pardon to all who should charitably relieve with their goods the fabric of the church of St. Mary, of "Kertmell."

In 1233, Cartmel having submitted to the authority of the Holy Roman Father, received a special mark of his paternal regard. Among the duchy muniments, transferred some years ago to the Record Office, London, is a Papal Bull of protection granted by Gregory IX. "to his beloved children the Prior of St. Mary of Karmel and to his brethren, present and future, professing the religious life for ever." Mr. Herford, the editor of the second volume of Baines's "Lancashire," has given a careful translation of this remarkable document, which is of considerable length. It begins with the declaration that "It is fit that apostolic succour should attend those who choose the religious life, lest by chance some fit of rashness should call them back from what they have proposed, or take away the sacred power of religion. Therefore my chosen children in the Lord, we graciously assent to your just request, and have taken the Church of the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary of Kermel, in which ye are engaged in divine service, under the protection of the blessed Peter and ourselves, and favour you with the privilege of the present writing." The grant then decrees that the church shall enjoy certain immunities, ordains that the canonical orders of St. Augustine shall be observed, and confirms to the church all its possessions, and, further, gives licence to perform, during a general interdict, religious service, provided it was done in a low voice and without ringing of bells, those interdicted and excommunicated being excluded, and the doors kept closed—a general interdict being the occasion when, under the orders of the Sovereign Pontiff, public prayers and all ecclesiastical rites were to be laid aside, the sacraments to be no longer administered, except to infants and dying persons, and the dead to be cast into ditches by the wayside without any religious ceremonial. Power was also given to prohibit the building of any chapel or oratory within the limits of the parish, and any ecclesiastic or layman knowingly contravening the provisions of the Bull was threatened with the terrors of excommunication.

During the palmy days of its prosperity the head of the house at Cartmel was an important personage; his priory not only held the privilege of exemption from general interdicts, but he himself was free from the various spiritual and temporal ills that monastic flesh was heir to, and had, moreover, the right of holding his court and trying and deciding disputes within the manor, with liberty to inflict punishment upon offenders; and when his claim was disputed, as it was in 1292, though the rights to wreck of the sea and waifs which he had claimed were declared forfeit to the King, his demand of the privileges of sok, sak, tol, theam, infangthef, and utfangthef, as they are expressed in the jargon of the day, was conceded, which means that he was entitled to the privileges of a manorial lord to hold the pleas in his own court in matters arising out of disputes with his own tenants; of imposing fines therein and enforcing his decrees; of judging bondsmen and villeins as well as of punishing thieves found within his own lands, and requiring that those dwelling within his manor, if taken for felony beyond, be tried within his own court.

The time was, however, approaching when the iron rod of this disposer of the lives and liberties of those settled around him was to be broken in pieces and the people delivered from priestly domination. A mighty change in religious thought and action was taking place which gradually gained strength, and culminated in that great event which swept like a tornado over the land when the once zealous champion of the Romish system, to replenish his exhausted exchequer, became the plunderer of the Church that had bestowed on him the title of "Defender of the Faith," and swept away prior and abbot, pride, pomp and power, and shrines and relics from their ancient and accustomed places.

In 1535 the King ordered a general visitation of the religious houses. In the autumn of that year Leyton, Lee, and Petre, with Dr. John London, Dean of Wallingford, the commissioners, made their appearance and summoned the prior and monks to give an account of their worldly possessions. In the MS. surveys then made the total income varies in amount from £89 4s. 7d. to £91 6s. 3d., while Speed, the antiquary, rates it at £124 2s. 1d., the lowest computation being equal to an annual income of £2,141 10s. at the present day. In the following year the Act was passed confiscating to the Crown all the religious houses whose yearly income did not amount to £200, and Cartmel was included in the list of those doomed by the King. We need not dwell upon the way in which the Royal tyrant's edict went forth, or how the good and the bad, the honest and the corrupt, among the religious houses were ordered to be dismantled.

The brotherhood of Cartmel, however, made a vigorous protest against this invasion of their rights, and petitioned for a new survey on the ground that the previous valuation did not include the whole of the sources from which their income was derived. Commissioners were again sent down, when the Prior presented a return which included the income derived from lands and the tithes collected at the tithe-barns of Godderside, Flookburgh, and Allithwaite, and also the oblations made "at the Relyke of the Holy Crosse," preserved within their Priory Church, the total revenue being thus increased from £89 4s. 7d. to £212 12s. 10d. A copy of this survey is preserved among the Duchy Records in the Record Office, and is especially interesting from the circumstance of its giving the names of the canons on the foundation at that time, the number and names of the servants, artificers, and husbandmen employed about the establishment, with the nature of their respective occupations. Richard Preston was then the prior, and "of the age of forty-one yerys;" James Eskerige was sub-prior, and there were in addition eight canons. The "waytyng s'v'ntes" numbered ten "wayters," two "woodeleaders," two "shep'des," and one hunter. The "comon officers and artyfycers of the house" included the brewer, baker, barber, cook "skulyan," "butler of the ffratrye," "keeper of the woode," milner, ffysher, wryght, pulter, ffestman, and maltmaker, with two others whose occupations are obliterated in the manuscript, and in addition to these there were eight hinds, making a total of thirty-eight, in addition to the ten ecclesiastics, a number that seems out of proportion to the religious inmates of the house, notwithstanding that there were considerable demesne lands under cultivation. But the protestations of the Prior were of little avail. Thomas Holcroft had conceived a desire to become owner of the groves of Cartmel, and that mighty trafficker in church lands was a man not easily moved from his purpose; Cartmel was doomed, and Richard Preston had no choice but to surrender his high trust or run the risk of being hanged at the gate of his own Priory, as some ecclesiastics were who hesitated to avow their belief that Henry VIII. was God's vicegerent on earth, or who refused to voluntarily give up to his minions the fair places that had been their homes to become wanderers like so many Cains over the face of the earth.

Though the Act which authorised the suppression of the Priory was passed in April, 1536, it was not until the following year that the King's Commissioners proceeded to the accomplishment of their task. The Earls of Derby and Sussex, with their satellites, Southwell, Tunstall, Leybourne, Byron, Sandford, and Holcroft, were deputed to undertake the work; fit instruments they were, and very effectually they accomplished their purpose. They demolished the walls of the cloisters and levelled to the dust the other portions of the monastic buildings which then extended across the river on arches up to the tower gateway, the only vestige of the house which now remains. The work of destruction fell less heavily upon the church, not because it was less suited to the purposes of the levellers, but because it was parochial as well as monastic, and the parishioners claimed it as belonging to them, though it must be confessed they had not done much to entitle them to consideration at the hands of the rapacious Henry. If tradition is to be relied on, they had urged their prior to join the insurrection instigated by the northern monks, commonly known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace," but that cautious and time-serving ecclesiastic fled to Preston, where the Earl of Derby was engaged raising an army for the suppression of the revolt, and claimed his protection, returning to his Priory only to be a few short months later ejected from it for ever. When the parishioners interposed, pleading that the church was parochial and therefore beyond the control of his Majesty's Commissioners, the matter was referred to head-quarters in these words:—

Item, for ye Church of Cartmell, being the Priorie and also ye P'ich Church, whether to stand unplucked down or not?

Answer—Ord. by Mr. Chancellor of the Duchie to stand styll.

It'm, for a suet of coopes (suit of copes) claymed by ye inhabitants of Cartmell to belong to ye Church thereof, the gift of oon Brigg?

Answer—Ord. that the P'ochians shall have them styll.

Item, for a chales (chalice), a Masse Booke, a Vestyment, with other things necessarie for a P'sh Church claymed by saide P'ochians to be customablie found by ye P'son of said Church?

No answer.

Though the commissioners were restrained in their "unplucking down" of the church, much havoc and destruction had been done to the sacred fane before their hands were stayed. They destroyed the painted windows, mutilated the carved work, stripped off the roof of the Piper choir and other parts of the fabric, and thus effectually got rid of the inmates, and in that state the church was allowed to remain for a period of eighty years, when Mr. George Preston, of Holker, with some assistance from the parishioners, repaired the dilapidated edifice generally, and decorated the inside with a stuccoed ceiling, and the choir and chancel with a profusion of curiously and elaborately carved wood work.

In 1541 Henry VIII. granted the site of the Priory to Thomas Holcroft, an unscrupulous agent whom an unscrupulous master afterwards knighted, but he did not keep it long, having in 32 Henry VIII. exchanged it with the King for other lands in the south of England, when it again came into possession of the Crown as part of the Duchy of Lancaster, and so continued until the time of Charles I., when, with other lands forming part of the manor of Cartmel, which had been granted by King James to Thomas Emmerson and Richard Cowdall, it was conveyed to George, son of Christopher Preston, of Holker, whose great-granddaughter Katharine conveyed it in marriage to Sir William Lowther; and her grandson, also Sir William Lowther, dying issueless in 1756, the property passed to his cousin, Lord George Augustus Cavendish, from whom it has descended with other Cartmel property to the present Duke of Devonshire, who is also patron and lay rector; the advowson with the tithes of Cartmel, which, in 1561, were annexed to the see of Chester, having been granted in 1561 by the Bishop of Chester to the George Preston, of Holker, before named.

Cartmel has a quiet, staid respectable aspect, with a dignified and decorous serenity about it that almost leads you to believe the old place must be conscious of its claim to consideration. You might fancy it to be a minster town, the air of cloisteral seclusion that prevails so well according with the superiorities of the church. Many of the houses have an old-world look about them, and, with a searching eye, you may find bits of unmistakable antiquity—random corners and architectural phantasies—enough to store the note-book of any artist fond of crooked and accidental diversities of grouping. The market place, which, with one or two straggling streets, constitutes what there is of town, is an irregular square with a tall stone obelisk that serves the double purpose of market cross and lamp-post standing in the middle; the fish stones are on one side, and surrounding it are a few old-fashioned dwellings ranged in an in-and-out sort of fashion, as if elbowing one another for frontage. On market days, when the farmers and the country people come in from the surrounding villages, the place puts on an air of bustle and activity, but at other times it is quiet and dreamy enough for the grass to grow upon the pavement. But for a chance pilgrim from Grange or Cark you might look in vain for a passer by; the people, too, seem as if the railway had not yet accustomed them to the novelty of strange faces, for as you go by they peer at you from their windows, and the shopkeeper who deals in groceries, drapery, and hardware, and everything besides, comes out on to his doorstep to gaze after you, wondering what possible business can have brought a stranger to such a secluded by-way of the world.

On one side of the square is a picturesque relic of the middle ages, the ancient gateway that once formed the principal approach to the conventual buildings. It has fallen from its former dignity and been roughly dealt with by the modern Goths and Vandals, but in its forlorn and dilapidated state it retains the unmistakable hoariness of age upon it. The walls are of considerable thickness, and within them are queer recesses and secret passages that were, doubtless, intended for safety in time of danger. The groining of the arch has disappeared, and it is now covered with a coating of plaster; the niche which, doubtless, once contained the image of the Virgin is tenantless, and the window lighting the room in which it is said the priors of Cartmel were wont to hold their manorial court and deal out a rough and ready kind of justice to their tenantry has lost its mullions, though happily the trefoil carvings still remain. After the prior and his canons had been turned adrift, the old gatehouse was purchased by the inhabitants from George Preston for the sum of £30 and converted into a "publike schoole-house," and for a period of one hundred and sixty-six years,—from 1624 to 1790, when another school was built—it continued to be used for that purpose, the children aforetime having been taught in the church by a "scriphener."

From the gateway you can trace the outer walls and note the general arrangement of the priory buildings, the area comprising all being about twenty-two statute acres.

But the old Priory Church is the great attraction of Cartmel. It is a noble monument of architectural skill, and we may thank the guardians of the centuries that the hand of Time has been restrained from pressing heavily upon it. It overshadows every other building, and gives an air of dignity and importance to the humble erections that gather round. Let us take our stand by the low wall that forms the boundary of the quiet graveyard while we gaze upon the venerable fabric and drink in the genius of the place. It is an October evening, and the sun is sinking like a great red ball behind the darkening hills; the woods are touched with russet and gold, and though the air is breathlessly calm a few leaves flutter down from the trees that skirt the churchyard wall. The ancient fane is worth going far to see—a huge pile of masonry, grey with age, and picturesque by its very diversities of style. It is cruciform in plan, with a low square tower—low by comparison, for the apex of the nave roof is nearly as high—rising from the intersection of the cross to a height of 85ft., and surmounted by another tower of smaller dimensions, also square in plan, but placed diagonally to the base of the lower one, as if it were an afterthought of the builder's, an arrangement so unusual that your attention is arrested by its oddness. The western front is good, but the master work is the choir, with its majestic window of nine lofty mullioned lights, and richly traceried head, 40ft. in height, and occupying nearly the whole of the eastern gable. A cursory glance is sufficient to show that the building has been erected at different periods—Norman and Early English—Decorated and Perpendicular mingling in curious combination. How thoroughly the old monastic builders understood their work. Whatever may have been their faults and frailties, they were imbued with a noble enthusiasm which in its religious development found vent in the sublime conceptions embodied in the magnificent structures which adorn the land, and which illustrate the rise, the progress, and the decay of Gothic art. Unfettered by the rules which curb and restrain the hand of the architect of modern days, their genius imparted its own spirit to the hand of the mason, whose skill is manifested in the glorious creations which command our admiration by the vastness of their proportions, the simple grace and beauty of their design, and the elegance of their ornamentation; while their sculptures and carvings, in which burlesque and satire oftentimes ran riot, were marked by a quaintness of conceit, every touch of the chisel seeming to impart a life and character and spirit that you look for in vain in the productions of the craftsman of modern times. Look with loving eyes upon the grand old pile as it reposes in the evening sunshine; a saintly stillness prevails, and a soft, shadowy haze is gradually shrouding the distant landscape from view. The mellowing light, as it falls on battlement and buttress, corbel and gargoyle, brings out every projection and inequality with wondrous effect, and softens into beauty every scar and furrow which the corrosive hand of Time has made upon it. You long to linger upon the scene, and not without a wish that Time would retrace his steps and show you the place as it was in its pristine glory before the men of religion had begun "to draw too proud a breath" and General Aske and his 40,000 ragamuffins had entered upon that perilous enterprise "the Pilgrimage of Grace."

But our reverie is cut short; for while we have been gazing upon the scene of quiet beauty, William Lancaster, the parish clerk, has left his saddlery and brought his keys, in order to show us over the fabric, and an intelligent and companionable guide he is, neither fussy nor obtrusive, but possessing a fund of reliable information that is serviceable to the stranger who wishes to spend a pleasant hour in examining the details.

The first thought that strikes the visitor on entering is the loftiness of the interior, and the long perspective of the nave and choir. The pillars which support the central tower are of Norman character and of massive proportions, the arches springing from them being pointed and of somewhat later date. In the centre of the roof is a panel with the inscription, Gloria in Excelsis Deo Aedif., 1188. Renov. 1850, upon a garter, and on the other parts are four heraldic shields, on which are blazoned the arms of (1) William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, the founder; (2) the Prestons, of Holker; (3) the archiepiscopal see of York; and (4) the arms of the see of Carlisle. The inscription on the centre panel shows that the church was renovated in 1850. The work has been thorough and complete, under the direction of Mr. Paley, of Lancaster, who, while carefully retaining whatever was worth preserving, has succeeded in bringing to light many interesting features that were previously hidden from view, and has thus entitled himself to the gratitude of every lover of mediÆval art. The flat ceilings have been removed, the galleries cleared away, the walls stripped of their plaster covering, the triforium arcade reopened, and the carved masonry relieved of the paint and whitewash with which successive generations of churchwardens had industriously clogged every bit of ornament they could find, so that the building now presents much the same appearance that it must have done in its palmy days. The choir is of unusually large dimensions, and worthy almost of a cathedral. It is separated from the chapels by two circular arches of Norman character, with elaborately ornamented mouldings; above them is a fine triforium arcade of twenty-two pointed arches on each side, springing from cylindrical shafts, with a passage running behind that seems to have been originally carried round the east end. The grand east window contains some remains of ancient glass, sufficient to show how exquisitely beautiful it must have been ere "Maister Thomas Houlcrofte" and his myrmidons made such havoc with it. The reredos occupying the space between the sill of the window and the top of the communion table is divided into panels and filled in with a series of frescoes in gold and colour that display considerable artistic skill; they are the work of Lady Louisa Egerton, the wife of Captain Egerton, R.N., and daughter of the Duke of Devonshire. An interesting feature in the choir is the series of stalls, twenty-six in number, that were used by the canons before the priory was dissolved; they are of Perpendicular character and handsomely carved, though unfortunately the ornamentation has been much injured by exposure to the weather during the long years the church remained unroofed. Each stall has its miserere or projecting bracket on the under side of the seat, which, as was customary in pre-Reformation times, works upon a kind of hinge, so that when turned up it would, without actually forming a seat, afford considerable relief to the ecclesiastics during those long services of the Roman Catholic Church in which they were required to remain in a standing posture. These seats will well repay examination; each is elaborately carved, and the artist has given full play to his fancy. One of them displays the emblems of the Saviour's Passion, but, in addition to the usual crown of thorns and the nails, we have the ear which Peter struck off the head of the High Priest's servant, the sword with which that rash act was performed, the basin in which Pilate washed his hands, the dice with which the soldiers cast lots for the Saviour's vesture, and the sponge that, when filled with vinegar, was presented to him while on the cross. Another seat symbolises the Trinity by the carving of three faces on one head; the favourite device of the mermaid with the usual attributes—the comb and mirror—also appears, and a common subject of mediÆval sculpture—a pelican feeding its young, or "in piety," as the heralds phrase it—is also represented. The other carvings are for the most part grotesque heads, winged beasts, and foliage. The canopies over the stalls are of much later date, and were the gift of George Preston, of Holker, who in 1619 repaired and re-roofed the building. The columns supporting them have richly carved Corinthian capitals, and are interesting as showing that in that comparatively early period the classic forms of ornamentation had come into vogue in this remote corner of Lancashire, and that Grecian had then begun to take the place of Gothic art.

The year 1850 marked the inauguration of a happy era in the history of Cartmel; it was that in which the much-needed renovation of the church may be said to have begun. The zeal which prompted George Preston in 1616 to restore the ruined sanctuary to something like its pristine beauty found imitators. In that year Mr. Remington, the vicar, appealed for funds to enable him to put the decayed and crumbling edifice in a state of decent repair. His appeal was liberally responded to, and he had the satisfaction of seeing many of the hideous obstructions which past ages had crowded together removed, the flat plaster ceiling which disfigured the centre of the church cleared away, and the walls and pillars denuded of their accumulations of paint and whitewash. The work which he began was carried on with increased energy by his successor, Mr. Hubbersty, and extended throughout the nave and the north and south transepts. The progress was slow, but continuous; seventeen years were occupied upon it, and in the autumn of 1867 it was pronounced to be complete.

The windows—

which once told the story of the line of Jesse and dyed the pavement with their many-hued reflections had been despoiled of their painted glass, not by the ruthless reformers of the sixteenth century, but, as Mr. Stockdale, the historian of Cartmel, with good reason affirms, many years before, when a portion of the glass was carried off to beautify the church at Bowness, where it may still be seen; the few fragments, however, that remained were carefully preserved and protected from further risk of injury. That monopoliser of Church property, Thomas Holcroft, took away everything he could lay his hands on, including, as the survey expresses it, the "Belles, Lede, and Goodes," destroying at the same time whatever in his opinion might be described as relics of superstitious devotion. What he left undone the Iconoclasts of a later date very effectually accomplished. It is worthy of note, however, that in the troublous times of the Civil Wars Cartmel suffered little as compared with many other churches in the kingdom, the only injury it sustained being the perforation of the door at the west end of the south aisle with a number of shot holes—the work, as the inhabitants assure you, of Cromwell's troopers, which, if the story is to be relied on, must have been in 1644, when Colonel Rigby and his men, after plundering Dalton, passed the night at Cartmel on their way to Thurland Castle. It is more likely, however, to have been some of Prince Rupert's soldiers who thus left their mark behind them, for though Thomas Preston, of Holker, the patron of the church, was a staunch Royalist, the parson and the people of Cartmel were attached to the cause of the Parliament; and John Shaw, the puritan rector of Lymm, records in his diary that when he was there for a time, "preaching and catechising in season and out of season," he had "frequently some thousands of hearers," and that "usually the churches were so thronged by nine o'clock in the morning that he had much adoe to get to the pulpit." The diarist adds, "How the Prince Rupert's soldiers there caryed themselves at and near Cartmel, that country will tell to posterity," though, if it did, the "posterity" to whom it was told neglected to hand down the story.

It is only fair to say that some of the most reprehensible acts of vandalism to which the edifice has been subjected have been perpetrated within the present century. From the time of the Commonwealth until the Victorian era ecclesiastical architecture was comparatively neglected, and it is perhaps fortunate for the present generation that it should have been, else we might have seen many a grand old Gothic pile of pre-Reformation date destroyed to make room for miserable monstrosities of brick of the fashion of the Queen Anne and the Georgian periods, a style that a wretched taste has within the last few years sought to resuscitate. Little more than two generations ago architectural art was at its lowest ebb, with little prospect of its ever being revived. Utilitarianism was the order of the day, and, much as we are disposed to blame country churchwardens for their misdoings, half our indignation vanishes when we remember that they only followed the example set them by their betters. Fifty years ago or thereabouts the "Improvers" were let loose upon the ancient fane at Cartmel, when, as Mr. Stockdale in his Annales Caermoelensis tells us, "the wooden rails of the Harrington monument, split with the axe out of logs of oak, before the use of the plane or the general use of the saw (indices of high antiquity), were torn down and committed to the flames, and a smart iron railing put up in their stead. The quaintly-fashioned old font, at which the whole population of the parish of Cartmel—generation after generation—had been christened for nearly seven hundred years, was subjected anew to the mason's chisel, and fashioned into its present shape, and a modern date (1832) cut in large figures upon it. The old Matin Bell, which had summoned the monks of St. Mary to prayers for three hundred and fifty years, and afterwards the townspeople of Cartmel and the neighbourhood to their duties on saints' days and Sundays for nearly three hundred and fifty years more, was torn down from its resting place, and sold to a neighbouring gentleman—not to call his workmen and labourers to their prayers, but to warn them that the hour for the commencement of their daily toil had arrived." Since then, however, happier days have dawned upon the place.

It is somewhat remarkable that a church of so much historic interest and antiquity should possess so few sepulchral memorials of pre-Reformation date. The oldest known to exist is the tomb of William Walton, the first prior; it stands beneath a plain pointed arch on the north side of the high altar, and is covered with a grey marble slab, in the centre of which is an incised cross of floreated character, and the following inscription in Longobardic characters carved upon the edge—

HIC. IACET. FRATER. WILELMVS. DE. WALTONA.
PRIOR. DE. KERTMEL.

There are some other memorials of departed priors, though the inscriptions are too much worn to admit of their being deciphered; but the most imposing is a canopied tomb on which are the recumbent figures of a knight and his lady, placed beneath an arch on the south side of the choir. It is commonly known as the Harrington monument, and has long been a source of perplexity to antiquaries; there is no date discernible upon it, and considerable doubt exists as to where it came from—for it is clearly not in situ—and which of the Harringtons it was intended to commemorate. It has been variously assigned to Sir John Harrington of Hornby, who was knighted by Edward III. in recognition of his services in Scotland; to Sir Thomas Harrington, who married a daughter of the house of Dacre, and fell fighting on the side of the White Rose at Wakefield on the 31st of December, 1460—a day fatal to the House of York and scarcely less fatal to the victorious Lancastrians—and also to his son, Sir John Harrington, the brother-in-law of the black-faced Clifford, who received his death-blow fighting by his father's side in the same battle.

For the benefit of those who are curious in epitaphs we quote the following from a marble slab on one of the walls of the south transept:—

1600
Here before lyeth interred
Etheldred Thornbvrgh corps in dvst
In lyfe at death styll fyrmely fixed
On God to rest her steadfast trvst
Hir Father Justice Carvs was
Hir Mother Katherine his wiffe
Hir Husband William Thornbvrgh was
Whylst here she ledd this mortail lyff
The thyrde of Martch a year of grace
One thowsand fyve hundred ninetie six
Hir sowle departed this earthly plase
Of aage nighe fortie yeares a six
To whose sweet sovle heavenlye dwelling
Ovr Saviovr grant everlastinge.

There are other parts of the church that bespeak our attention. The north aisle, commonly known as the Piper Choir—though how it acquired that name nobody seems to know—retains its original stone vaulting, and is lighted by Perpendicular windows, in which some fragments of mediÆval painted glass still remain. The south aisle is perfect, and appears to have been widened at some period subsequent to its original foundation. In the church books it is described as "Lord Harrington's Queare," but is now usually designated the parish or town choir, from the supposition that it constituted the former parish church, which the prior and his canons had been obliged to enlarge owing to some dispute between the parishioners and themselves. The windows lighting it are of early Decorated character of varied design, and on one side is the original sedilia for the officiating priests, as well as the piscina in which it was their custom to rinse the chalice at the time of the celebration of the mass.

Having completed our inspection of the various chapels, the faithful custos who accompanied us, and who, by the way, though a rusticus abnormis sapiens, is an enthusiast about the church, led the way up to the triforium, and thence to the top of the lower lantern or tower, where we had an opportunity of examining more closely the peculiar disposition of the superstructure. It would seem that a century or two after the completion of the original tower the fraternity took it into their heads to erect a bell-tower, but instead of removing the parapet and raising the walls of the existing structure, as at Kirkstall, or building a new tower like that of prior Moon at Bolton Abbey, they determined on making the most of the one they possessed, and constructed four cross arches, each springing from the centre of the side walls, on which they reared their campanile with a result that said more for their originality than their regard for architectural effect. A few steps lead up to the roof of the second tower, whence a good view of the surrounding country is obtained, though the range is somewhat restricted by reason of the comparatively low position the church occupies and the nearness of the hills which environ the Cartmel Vale.

Descending again into the body of the church, we passed through the Piper Choir, and were next ushered into the vestry, where, to our surprise, we found in addition to the ordinary registers and churchwardens' accounts a library of some three hundred volumes, including many rare and curious works bequeathed to the parish in 1692 by Thomas Preston, of Holker, including a black-letter Bible in six volumes, printed at Basle in 1502; a copy of the works, also in black-letter, of Thomas Aquinas, printed at Vienna in 1509; an incomplete copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," dated 1596; a Virgil of the same date; a curious little volume, "Apophthegemes New and Old, collected by the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, 1625;" and a folio copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The old clerk sets great store by his literary treasures, and well he may, for they are such as few church libraries can equal, and are in themselves enough to make a collector covetous.

The parish registers, which begin in 1559, contain many curious entries relating to local families, and many a sad story of lives lost in crossing the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay; one of the entries records the disaster which befel a pleasure party, of whom nine were drowned, while crossing the Leven Sands on their return from Ulverston Whitsuntide fair, where they had been to purchase the wedding garments for two of their number who were about to be married.[47] The church accounts contain, among other things, a very complete record of the doings of the "twenty-four sworn men,"[48] an influential body whose jurisdiction extended over a parish nearly fourteen miles in length, and whose duties were as multifarious as they were onerous, embracing almost everything, from exterminating mouldiwarpes (moles) and choosing churchwardens to repairing organs and regaling fox-hunters. But there are other curiosities preserved in the vestry at Cartmel; among them is an umbrella of ancient date and cumbrous proportions, which our cicerone tells us was used in times past to protect the clergyman from the weather when performing the burial service in the graveyard.[49] It is of immense weight, and has a thick oilcloth cover that reminds us of Swift's lines in the Tatler—

as well as of Gay's Trivia—

The twilight was deepening when we passed out of the stately old pile, and, bidding adieu to our pleasant, gossiping guide, turned to depart. The sun had gone down in the western heavens, and the mists were gathering thick among the surrounding hills, shrouding them in a dreamy obscurity; the lofty gables and broad squat tower clad in night's sober livery seemed to have gained additional massiveness and seen through the dun medium assumed a shadowy weird-like form; the old market-place seemed to have lulled itself into a still deeper quietude; a few of the villagers were lingering about their cottage doors, and as we passed on our way a light might now and then be seen glimmering from the casement of some humble dwelling, but there was nought to disturb the sense of calmness and repose. The stillness deepened as the light declined, and everything seemed to have become wrapped in slumber, save that now and then we could hear the faint gurgling of some tiny rill trickling down the hill side, or the baying of a watchdog at some distant moorland farm mingling with the subdued rumble of a railway train bearing its living freight across the Leven Sands. One by one the silent watchers came forth to begin their nightly vigil, guarding the slumbering earth as 'twere a sleeping child, and then the pale queen of night, rising slowly from behind the lonely fells, hung her silver crescent in the blue vault above, and spread a tender radiance on the tranquil world below. Keeping the dark woods of Holker on our right, a short half-hour's walk along a lonely road brought us to the little village of Cark, where—

Cark Hall, an old gabled manor house, for generations the residence of the Curwens and the Rawlinsons. Cark is a station on the Furness line, and a few minutes after our arrival we were seated in the railway carriage and rolling along at a rapid rate beneath the wild limestone crags, over the wild estuary of the Leven, and through the devious windings of the valleys of Greenodd and Haverthwaite on the way to our comfortable resting place upon the shores of Windermere, bent on doing justice to the good fare the "Swan" at Newby Bridge affords, and with the mind stored with pleasant memories of quiet Cartmel and its grand old priory church.

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