TO CARLISLE The Boer War of 1899-1902 has left a wayside memorial at the approach to Penrith, and another, in the shape of a beautiful bronze statue, personifying Victory conferring honour upon the fallen, stands by Middlegate, as you leave for the north. “Scotland Road,” confronting you, indicates the THIEFSIDE CARLISLE Carlisle was the first and stoutest bulwark gainst the northern foe, and maintained that character for close upon sixteen hundred years, from the remote time of the Roman dominion until the union of the kingdoms under James the First. The place, standing as it does upon a rocky bluff, overlooking the levels of the Solway and the Eden, was, it would almost seem, intended by Nature for this office, and here accordingly the Roman wall of Hadrian was traced, running from sea to sea, from Wallsend near Newcastle, to Carlisle, and ending on the Solway Firth Carlisle, the great mediÆval fortress-town, owes its origin to Rufus. The mighty Conqueror, who subdued most other portions of this land, rested short of Westmoreland and Cumberland, which had then for one hundred and twenty years been accounted Scottish soil; but it was under his generally despised son that these broad lands were won back for England; and the Scottish King Malcolm, invading England on the east coast, in revenge, was slain in 1093, at Alnwick. Peace, however, was not to reign upon these contested lands for yet many a century; but what could be done was accomplished, and Carlisle Castle arose, a grim Norman keep, upon the highest apex of the town. It was in after years But in spite of its castle and the stout town walls, Carlisle has been, many more times than can readily be counted, the scene of warfare, and was often sacked and burnt. It was thus ever a place of arms. In all the country round about, men went armed to the plough, and the great lords held their lands from the King under the strictest obligations to military service, and were captained by the Lord Warden, whose duties included the firing of beacons and the mustering of all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Small tenants held their fields and farms under the name of “nag-tenements” and “foot-tenements,” and were bound, according to their degree, to fight mounted or on foot. When the enemy crossed the Border, there was a stir in the city of Carlisle, like that which accompanies the overturning of an ant-heap. The muckle town-bell was rung, the citizens assembled under arms, and the women manned the walls (if the expression may be allowed) with kettles, boiling-water, and apronfuls of stones. There was no worse time in this long history than the reign of Henry the Eighth. War with Scotland had brought to that country the crushing RAIDERS Carlisle Castle remained at this period, and for long after, a strong place, but nothing is more astonishing than the ease with which raiders often surprised even the stoutest castles. Let us take, for instance, the affair of the “bold Buccleuch” and Kinmont Willie, in the times of Queen Elizabeth. The borders had long been free from war on the larger scale, but the moss-trooping, reiving forays survived in much of their early severity, in spite of the amicable appointment of English and Scottish Lords Wardens, who were supposed to restrain the lawless folk on either side of the debateable lands between the marches. The Wardens’ Courts were strictly conducted in the districts of the Solway, and those assembled at them were guaranteed from violence on either side. But in 1596, when the Court assembled at Kershopeburn to settle grievances in connection with the great raids of the Armstrongs, who had come across from Scotland to the number of three All the Scottish side of the Border was immediately in an uproar at this violation of agreements, and Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale, was moved to apply for the raider’s release. Buccleuch was a law-abiding person, and would probably have been glad enough to see Kinmont Willie properly hanged on his own side, but this breach of the understanding between the Wardens was an outrage not to be endured. SIEGE OF CARLISLE Lord Scrope, the English Warden, informed him the affair was so important that it must be referred to the Queen; and she in turn ignored it altogether. Buccleuch therefore determined, at whatever cost, to rescue the prisoner, who would otherwise soon have been hanged, and he put himself at the head of two hundred and ten desperate spirits who at night crossed the Esk and silently drew near to Carlisle, two hours before peep o’ day. They had brought with them, on horseback, scaling ladders for the castle walls, and pickaxes, and made a breach by the postern-gate. What were those sentinels doing, who were not The last raid took place actually in 1601, when the kingdoms were united by the accession of James the First, and while he was at Berwick, journeying to London. Several hundreds of Scots then came plundering past Carlisle, and many were captured and duly hanged. James, anxious to unite the kingdoms in reality, ordered that the name of “the Border,” standing for centuries of warfare, should give place to “the midlands,” but the new style does not seem ever to have come into general use; and the coming of the Stuarts meant in after years much more trouble for Carlisle and its surroundings; for it was in 1644-5 that the city endured the longest and most severe siege in its history. It was held for the King, and beleaguered for eight months by the Scottish General, Leslie. The citizens paid dearly for their loyalty, and were reduced to eating horses, dogs, and rats. Hungry folks chased errant cats hazardously across roof-tops, in view of the besiegers, who took long shots at them; and even hemp-seed became so dear that only the wealthy could afford it. Money current in the city was coined from silver plate; but there was so little food to purchase that, as a It was upon the surrender ending this memorable siege that Carlisle Cathedral suffered so greatly. The visitor who first sets eyes upon the venerable pile finds himself bewildered by its unusual proportions, and has some difficulty in distinguishing which end is east and which west. He has been used, everywhere else, to see the nave of a cathedral much longer than its choir, and to see the building stretching away westward from the central tower five and six times the length of the eastern, or choir, limb. Here, however, when he has definitely settled his bearings, he perceives the choir to be more than thrice the length of the nave. This present odd aspect of the Cathedral, looking as though it had been twisted bodily round, is entirely owing to the fury with which the soldiery fell upon it, after the siege. Where there were once eight bays to the Early Norman nave, there are now but two: the rest all went as so much rough stone wherewith to repair the walls of the city and to erect guard-houses: a curious reversal of its early use, for it was from the ancient Roman wall that these stones came in Norman times. EAST END, CARLISLE CATHEDRAL. THE STEEL THAT MAKES AFRAID But Carlisle was not done with trouble, even in the sacrilege of 1645. It escaped in 1715, for the rebels avoided coming to clashes with a fortified city; but it came to know intimately of the much George the Second, at St. James’s, began to reconsider his position at hearing of this signal failure of his sworn protectors, and many excellent, though time-serving, people in high places began to explain away the disagreeable things they had said of the Stuarts. But in a few weeks, as we know, the Highlanders were retreating; and, trimming their sails anew, politicians and witlings were repeating again their protestations of loyalty to the House of Hanover, and refurbishing that old quotation from Revelation, chapter xvii. verse 11, first current in 1715, by which they affected to believe that James the Second of England and Seventh of Scotland, and his son, the Pretender (de jure James the Third and Eighth) were the subjects of prophecy: “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” An ingenious find, it must be allowed, and The Duke of Cumberland with ease retook the city, and captured with it Prince Charlie’s devoted rear-guard: the brave Colonel Townely and his 120 men of the Manchester Regiment, together with over two hundred Highlanders, and some few Frenchmen. They were lodged in the Cathedral, and thence taken in a long melancholy procession to London, there, according to their degree, to be beheaded as gentlemen, or hanged like common malefactors. They rode, tied hand and foot, or walked, roped together, the whole bitter way. THE CASTLE DUNGEONS The Duke was not greatly impressed with the military value of the castle. He called it “an old hen-coop,” but it held securely enough the other miserable prisoners who were sent into Carlisle after Culloden. Four hundred of them awaited their doom in the grim dungeons, throughout the hot weather of 1746, and in October the executions began. Ninety-six fell to the hangman, and others were transported beyond seas. In batches of half-a-dozen or a dozen at a time, they You may see relics of that savage time, even now, in the cell fashioned in the thick eastern wall of the keep: the prison occupied by Macdonald of Keppoch. He whiled away the tedium of imprisonment by decorating the walls with designs, executed with a nail, and there they still remain. At this day Carlisle Castle is a somewhat shabby military depÔt. The outer bailey is a parade-ground skirted with barracks, and the inner ward and keep are War Office storehouses. But it is in the unexpected modern surroundings of the public library that the most tragical memento of that time brings the hazards of rebellion with greatest vividness before you. This is a plaster cast of a monument erected to Dr. Archibald Campbell in the Savoy Chapel, London. The Chapel was largely destroyed by fire in 1864, and with it the marble monument. The unfortunate doctor was a non-combatant who acted as surgeon to the rebels at Culloden, and escaped abroad from that disastrous field. He returned, after seven years, to his Scottish home, thinking he might then safely do so; but was informed against and executed. |