And so into Kendal, across the river.

Kendal, originally Kirkby Kendal, i.e. Kirk-by-Kent Dale, is indeed very much among the waters, for here the river Kent, reinforced by tributary streams pouring down from the misty fells, foams down in weirs, and is crossed, in highway and byway, by no fewer than three bridges. There is good fishing for the “gentle” angler in these waters. Though why “gentle” and where the gentleness is more than I can comprehend. For sport, the angler baits his cruel line and, if sport be good, he, himself an exemplar of “nature, red in tooth and claw,” hooks, with his fiendish barb, some unfortunate trout or grayling in the gills.

The streets of Kendal are mostly “gates,” as Stramongate and Strickland gate, and were once picturesque, in the stern way of these northern latitudes; but Kendal, in these days a highly prosperous agricultural town, and in a favourable position at the gate of the Lake Country, is being greatly rebuilt, and looks, to those who hurry by, little removed from the common run of provincial towns. Motor-tourists to and from the Lakes do not deign to halt at Kendal, and he who does may notice, any day of summer and autumn, a veritable procession of cars hurrying to and from those resorts and regarding Kendal as an unwelcome incident, containing inhabitants and dogs, which are to be run over only at risk to car and purse.

The great church of Kendal lies low, by the river, and is great, not in height, nor in any imposing architectural design, but in the sheer ground-space it covers. It has no fewer than five aisles, and by consequence of them looks squat. It is a kind of Westmoreland Westminster Abbey, the place of sepulture of barons and squires innumerable from the castle on the hill yonder and from the country round about. Their private chapels, where Parrs and Bellinghams, Stricklands, Howards, and others lie, are now not a little the worse for wear, and no longer private; and their mortuary glories obscured. But to one of the old school of county historians or patient genealogists, the interior of Kendal church would be, in the way of hatchments, heraldic carvings, and flatulent epitaphs, the study of years. More to my purpose are the strange incidents and the odd inscriptions of the place.

There hangs, for example, in the once private chapel of the dead and gone Bellinghams a helmet with a story. Once, it seems, in the days when Cavalier and Roundhead fought out their dispute, there flourished a family of Philipsons in the Windermere district, with a notorious person, Major Robert Philipson, at their head: so wild and reckless that he was commonly known as “Robin the Devil.” It is hardly necessary to add that he was not a Puritan. This rumbustious character, greatly incensed that the Puritans should have established themselves in the town, under one Colonel Briggs, set out one Sunday with a number of horsemen, to kill the colonel in church. Happily for Briggs, he had not attended service that day, and Philipson, rampaging with drawn sword over the building, was baulked of his prey: although it does not seem quite certain that Robin would have been fortunate had Briggs been present, for even without their commander the people present made him run, and in his haste to go his helmet was knocked off against an archway. He did not stop to recover it, but made off as quick as he could go. So much for your daredevils. The helmet was hung up as a trophy. But Smelfungus, the antiquary, who must for always be spoiling the best stories with his dry facts, tells us that the helmet is really a portion of the funeral armour of Sir Roger Bellingham, suspended over his tomb.

Among the interesting items in Kendal Church are pieces of an ancient cross, dated about A.D. 850, and the monument to over one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 55th (Westmoreland) Regiment, who fell in that most stupid of blunders, the Crimean War, from which none, save the Army contractors, ever reaped any advantage. Here, too, is a Chinese “Dragon Flag,” captured at Chusan, and deposited in the church in 1874.

Here, also, is a monument to the unfortunate Sir Augustine Nichols, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, poisoned when on circuit at Kendal in 1616. But the most curious object in Kendal Church is the epitaph upon a former vicar, the Reverend Ralph Tyrer, B.D., who died in June 1627. The curious rhymes of which it is composed are said to have been written by himself; but, however that may be, it is certain that whoever was the author of them was keenly desirous of puzzling posterity. He has done it effectually, too. He has set out, in his rugged and uncouth way, that—

“My sister wed me”: that is the crux of the matter; but it does not appear that this is to be taken seriously, in its ordinary meaning. As to the real interpretation, we are offered at least two stories: the one that his sister, finding him too busy or too diffident a man to do his own wooing, conducted his courtship for him and provided him with a wife of her own choosing. In that case, she dared much. The alternative theory is that the word “sister,” as used here, is intended to bear an academical meaning, and to indicate that he was educated at Cambridge but admitted ad eundem afterwards to the “sister University” of Oxford.

The people of Kendal were turbulent folk in the old days, and varied the humdrum existence of woollen manufacture and the printing of cottons by rioting: keeping up their reputation in this sort until the early years of the nineteenth century, when the first Parliamentary election was excuse sufficient for an outbreak. The making and the dyeing of the once famous “Kendal green” cloth is a thing of the past, and peace is now the characteristic of Kendal, but the reputation of the neighbourhood for incisive wit remains, in the ancient story of the horseman who asked a countryman the time o’ day. “Twelve o’clock,” said the man, looking at that rural chronometer, the sky.

“Twelve!” exclaimed the traveller. “I thought it was more.”

“Did y’ever know it to be moor nor twelve?” rejoined the man, turning away.

The traveller, struck with this unusual rustic facility for repartee, sent his servant after him, to know if he would like a situation as a jester.

“Here, fellow,” said the servant, “my master wants to know if you would like a place as fool.”

The reply was disheartening: “Does he want two on ’em, then, or are you going to leave?”

The turbulent people of Kendal no doubt acquired their character from the old-time circumstances of the place, ever subject to incursions of Scottish raiders. Sturdy independence, and a readiness to hold their own, thus become traits in these men of the dales and fells. Something of the ancient trials of Kendal town may yet be seen, behind the modern smug facing of shops in the older streets, where houses and cottages are built around courtyards approached only by narrow alleys easily to be defended, in case of attack.

The last occasion when these old defences seemed like to prove again useful was in 1745, when Prince Charlie, in memories of whose enterprise this road is so rich, came with his ill-disciplined following. But nothing serious happened: the Prince stayed the night in Stricklandgate, at the old mansion still standing, numbered 93, and rested there again on his retreat. Next day came the Duke of Cumberland, in hot pursuit, and he also halted at the old house, pleasantly remarking that they had entertained his cousin there, the day before. I suspect the more or less unwilling host of Prince and Duke, in fear of consequences, explained, as politely as he could, that he entertained whom he must.

There is, after all, singularly little pictorial quality in Kendal. The old town-house of the Bellinghams, in Stramongate, built in 1546, still exists, although the family is extinct; but it turns the commonplace front of an ironmonger’s shop to the street. Indeed, old Kendal is only to be pictured in that fine rugged building, the Castle Dairy, in Wildman Street. It is supposed to have been the dairy of the old castle, and still contains a few of the many ancient and curious relics found in old cupboards and secret places in its immensely thick walls, together with some fragments of stained glass bearing the arms of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby. But the curious genealogy of the Saxon kings, and the old illuminated Roman mass-book, have been removed to the Public Library.