Part 15

Of a quadrangular court on the west side of the church, three hundred and thirty-four feet long and one hundred and two feet wide, little vestige now appears, except the foundation of a range of cloisters, that formed its western boundary, and under the shade of which the monks on days of high solemnity passed in their customary procession round the court. What was the belfry is now a huge mass of detached ruin, picturesque from the loftiness of its shattered arches and the high inequalities of the ground within them, where the tower, that once crowned this building, having fallen, lies in vast fragments, now covered with earth and grass, and no longer distinguishable but by the hillock they form.

The school-house, a heavy structure attached to the boundary wall on the south, is nearly entire, and the walls, particularly of the portal, are of enormous thickness, but, here and there, a chasm discloses the stair-cases, that wind within them to chambers above. The school-room below, shews only a stone bench, that extends round the walls, and a low stone pillar in the eastern corner, on which the teacher's pulpit was formerly fixed. The lofty vaulted roof is scarcely distinguishable by the dusky light admitted through one or two narrow windows placed high from the ground, perhaps for the purpose of confining the scholar's attention to his book.

These are the principal features, that remain of this once magnificent abbey. It was dedicated to St. Mary, and received a colony of monks from the monastery of Savigny in Normandy, who were called Gray Monks, from their dress of that colour, till they became Cistercians, and, with the severe rules of St. Bernard, adopted a white habit, which they retained till the dissolution of monastic orders in England. The original rules of St. Bernard partook in several instances of the austerities of those of La Trapp, and the society did not very readily relinquish the milder laws of St. Benedict for the new rigours imposed upon them by the parent monastery of Savigny. They were forbidden to taste flesh, except when ill, and even eggs, butter, cheese and milk, but on extraordinary occasions; and denied even the use of linen and fur. The monks were divided into two classes, to which separate departments belonged.--Those, who attended the choir, slept upon straw in their usual habits, from which, at midnight, they rose and passed into the church, where they continued their holy hymns, during the short remainder of the night. After this first mass, having publicly confessed themselves, they retired to their cells, and the day was employed in spiritual exercises and in copying or illuminating manuscripts. An unbroken silence was observed, except when, after dinner, they withdrew into the locutorium, where for an hour, perhaps, they were permitted the common privilege of social beings. This class was confined to the boundary wall, except that, on some particular days, the members of it were allowed to walk in parties beyond it, for exercise and amusement; but they were very seldom permitted either to receive, or pay visits. Like the monks of La Trapp, however, they were distinguished for extensive charities and liberal hospitality; for travellers were so scrupulously entertained at the Abbey, that it was not till the dissolution that an inn was thought necessary in this part of Furness, when one was opened for their accommodation, expressly because the monastery could no longer receive them.

To the second class were assigned the cultivation of the lands, and the performance of domestic affairs in the monastery.

This was the second house in England, that received the Bernardine rules, the most rigorous of which were, however, dispensed with in 1485 by Sixtus the Fourth, when, among other indulgences, the whole order was allowed to taste meat on three days of the week. With the rules of St. Benedict, the monks had exchanged their gray habit for a white cassock with a white caul and scapulary. But their choir dress was either white or gray, with caul and scapulary of the same, and a girdle of black wool; over that a mozet, or hood, and a rochet[4]. When they went abroad they wore a caul and full black hood.

[4] "Antiquities of Furness."

The privileges and immunities, granted to the Cistercian order in general, were very abundant; and those, to the Abbey of Furness were proportioned to its vast endowments. The abbot, it has been mentioned, held his secular court in the neighbouring castle of Dalton, where he presided with the power of administering not only justice but injustice, since the lives and property of the villain tenants of the lordship of Furness were consigned by a grant of King Stephen to the disposal of my lord abbot! The monks also could be arraigned, for whatever crime, only by him. "The military establishment of Furness likewise depended on the abbot. Every mesne lord and free homager, as well as the customary tenants, took an oath of fealty to the abbot, to be true to him against all men, excepting the king. Every mesne lord obeyed the summons of the abbot, or his steward, in raising his quota of armed men, and every tenant of a whole tenement furnished a man and horse of war for guarding the coast, for the border-service, or any expedition against the common enemy of the king and kingdom. The habiliments of war were a steel coat, or coat of mail, a falce, or falchion, a jack, the bow, the bill, the cross-bow and spear. The Furness legion consisted of four divisions:--one of bowmen horsed and harnessed; bylmen horsed and harnessed; bowmen without horse and harness; bylmen without horse and harness[5]."

[5] "Antiquities of Furness."

The deep forests, that once surrounded the Abbey, and overspread all Furness, contributed with its insulated situation, on a neck of land running out into the sea, to secure it from the depredations of the Scots, who were continually committing hostilities on the borders. On a summit over the Abbey are the remains of a beacon, or watch-tower, raised by the society for their further security. It commands extensive views over Low Furness and the bay of the sea immediately beneath; looking forward to the town and castle of Lancaster, appearing faintly on the opposite coast; on the south, to the isles of Wanley, Foulney, and their numerous islets, on one of which stands Peel-castle; and, on the north, to the mountains of High Furness and Coniston, rising in grand amphitheatre round this inlet of the Irish Channel. Description can scarcely suggest the full magnificence of such a prospect, to which the monks, emerging from their concealed cells below, occasionally resorted to sooth the asperities, which the severe discipline of superstition inflicted on the temper; or, freed from the observance of jealous eyes, to indulge, perhaps, the sigh of regret, which a consideration of the world they had renounced, thus gloriously given back to their sight, would sometimes awaken.

From Hawcoat, a few miles to the west of Furness, the view is still more extensive, whence, in a clear day, the whole length of the Isle of Man may be seen, with part of Anglesey and the mountains of Caernarvon, Merionethshire, Denbighshire and Flintshire, shadowing the opposite horizon of the channel.

The sum total of all rents belonging to the Abbey immediately before the dissolution, was 946l. 2s. 10d. collected from Lancashire, Cumberland, and even from the Isle of Man; a sum, which considering the value of money at that period; and the woods, meadows, pastures, and fisheries, retained by the society in their own hands; the quantity of provisions for domestic use brought by the tenants instead of rent, and the shares of mines, mills, and salt-works, which belonged to the Abbey, swells its former riches to an enormous amount.

Pyle, the last abbot, surrendered with twenty-nine monks, to Henry the Eighth, April the 9th 1537, and in return was made Rector of Dalton, a situation then valued at thirty-three pounds six shillings and eight-pence a year.

FROM ULVERSTON TO LANCASTER.

From the Abbey we returned to Ulverston, and from thence crossed the sands to Lancaster, a ride singularly interesting and sublime. From the Carter's house, which stands on the edge of the Ulverston sands, and at the point, whence passengers enter them, to Lancaster, within the furthest opposite shore, is fifteen miles. This noble bay is interrupted by the peninsula of Cartmel, extending a line of white rocky coast, that divides the Leven and Ulverston sands from those of Lancaster. The former are four miles over; the latter seven.

We took the early part of the tide, and entered these vast and desolate plains before the sea had entirely left them, or the morning mists were sufficiently dissipated to allow a view of distant objects; but the grand sweep of the coast could be faintly traced, on the left, and a vast waste of sand stretching far below it, with mingled streaks of gray water, that heightened its dreary aspect. The tide was ebbing fast from our wheels, and its low murmur was interrupted, first, only by the shrill small cry of seagulls, unseen, whose hovering flight could be traced by the sound, near an island that began to dawn through the mist; and then, by the hoarser croaking of sea-geese, which took a wider range, for their shifting voices were heard from various quarters of the surrounding coast. The body of the sea, on the right, was still involved, and the distant mountains on our left, that crown the bay, were also viewless; but it was sublimely interesting to watch the heavy vapours beginning to move, then rolling in lengthening volumes over the scene, and, as they gradually dissipated, discovering through their veil the various objects they had concealed--fishermen with carts and nets stealing along the margin of the tide, little boats putting off from the shore, and, the view still enlarging as the vapours expanded, the main sea itself softening into the horizon, with here and there a dim sail moving in the hazy distance. The wide desolation of the sands, on the left, was animated only by some horsemen riding remotely in groups towards Lancaster, along the winding edge of the water, and by a muscle-fisher in his cart trying to ford the channel we were approaching.

The coast round the bay was now distinctly, though remotely, seen, rising in woods, white cliffs and cultivated slopes towards the mountains of Furness, on whose dark brows the vapours hovered. The shore falls into frequent recesses and juts out in promontories, where villages and country seats are thickly strewn. Among the latter, Holker-hall, deep among woods, stands in the north. The village and hall of Bardsea, once the site of a monastery, with a rocky back-ground and, in front, meadows falling towards the water; and Conishead priory, with its spiry woods, the paragon of beauty, lie along the western coast, where the hills, swelling gently from the isle of Walney, nearly the last point of land visible on that side the bay, and extending to the north, sweep upwards towards the fells of High Furness and the whole assemblage of Westmoreland mountains, that crown the grand boundary of this arm of the sea.

We set out rather earlier than was necessary, for the benefit of the guide over part of these trackless wastes, who was going to his station on a sand near the first ford, where he remains to conduct passengers across the united streams of the rivers Crake and Leven, till the returning tide washes him off. He is punctual to the spot as the tides themselves, where he shivers in the dark comfortless midnights of winter, and is scorched on the shadeless sands, under the noons of summer, for a stipend of ten pounds a year! and he said that he had fulfilled the office for thirty years. He has, however, perquisites occasionally from the passengers. In early times the Prior of Conishead, who established the guide, paid him with three acres of land and an annuity of fifteen marks; at the dissolution, Henry the Eighth charged himself and his successors with the payment of the guide by patent.

Near the first ford is Chapel Isle, on the right from Ulverston, a barren sand, where are yet some remains of a chapel, built by the monks of Furness, in which divine service was daily performed at a certain hour, for passengers, who crossed the sands with the morning tide. The ford is not thought dangerous, though the sands frequently shift, for the guide regularly tries for, and ascertains, the proper passage. The stream is broad and of formidable appearance, spreading rapidly among the sands and, when you enter it, seeming to bear you away in its course to the sea. The second ford is beyond the peninsula of Cartmel, on the Lancaster sands, and is formed by the accumulated waters of the rivers, Ken and Winster, where another guide waits to receive the traveller.

The shores of the Lancaster sands fall back to greater distance and are not so bold, or the mountains beyond, so awful, as those of Ulverston; but they are various, often beautiful, and Arnside-fells have a higher character. The town and castle of Lancaster, on an eminence, gleaming afar off over the level sands and backed by a dark ridge of rocky heights, look well as you approach them. Thither we returned and concluded a tour, which had afforded infinite delight in the grandeur of its landscapes and a reconciling view of human nature in the simplicity, integrity, and friendly disposition of the inhabitants.

INDEX.

Vol.

Amsterdam, approach to it, i. The streets and canals, i. The Stadthouse, i. The port, i. City government, i. Public coaches, i.

Andernach, valley of, i. Town of, i. ii.

André St., fort of, ii.

Appenweyer, i.

Arthur's table, ii.

Austrian troops, i.

B

Bacharach, ii.

Bampton grange, ii. Vale, ii.

Bassenthwaite water, ii.

Bergstrasse, i.

Biel, ii.

Bingen, ii.

Bingerloch, ii.

Bommel, ii.

Bonn, i. ii. The palace, i.

Boppart, ii.

Borrowdale, ii.

Bowther stone, ii.

Brougham castle, ii. Hall, ii.

C

Carlsruhe, forest of, i. The palace and gardens, i.

Cassel, i.

Cleves, approach to it, i. The city, i.

Coblentz, i. Flying bridge, i.

Cologne, appearance of the city, i. ii. Government, i. The fort, i. Convent of Clarisse, i. Churches, i. The Elector, i. Fugitives there, ii.

Coniston-fells, ii.

D

Dalton, ii.

Delft, its extent, i.

Delft, the Doolen, i. Palace of WILLIAM I. i. His tomb, i.

Derwentwater, ii.

Dort, ii.

Dover, straights of, ii.

Dress of the Dutch, i.

Druidical Monument, ii.

Duisbourg, ii.

Dykes in Holland, i.

E

Ehrenbreitstein, i. ii.

Esthwait water, ii.

F

Flaarding, ii.

France, conversation relative to, ii.

Franckfort, the liberties and independence of, i. The surrender and re-capture of the city in 79, i. Cabinet Literaire, i. Theatre, i.

Franckenthal, i.

French prisoners, i.

Friburg, ii.

Furness Abbey, ii.

G

Gardens in Holland, i.

German territories, intermixture of, ii.

Germany, condition of, ii.

Goar, St. ii.

Goodesberg, i. The castle and hill of, i.

Gorcum, ii.

Government of the United Provinces, i.

Grasmere, ii.

Graystock, neighbourhood of, ii.

H

Haarlem, voyage thither from Leyden, i. The great church, i. The city, i.

Haerlemer Maer, i.

Hardwick, ii.

The Hague, palace there, i. Apartments of the States General, i. Grand Voorhout, i. Maison du Bois, i.

Half Wegen Sluice, i.

Hawkshead, ii.

Hawswater, ii.

Helvoetsluys, i.

Hockheim, i.

Hoogstrass, i.

Hornby, ii.

I

Ingleborough, ii.

Johannesberg, ii.

K

Kaub, ii.

Kendal, ii.

Kirby Lonsdale, ii.

Koningstuhl, ii.

Kostheim, i.

L

Lancaster castle, views from, ii. Sands, ii.

Landscape, of England and Germany compared, ii.

Leek, river, i.

Leyden, the Fair, i. The University, i.

Limbourg, i.

Long Sleddale, ii.

Lonsdale vale, ii.

Louvenstein, ii.

M

Manchester, neighbourhood of, ii.

Manheim, appearance of the City, i.

Manheim, the Palace, i. The surrounding country, i. Electoral Establishments, i.

Mentz, approach to it, i. Ruins made by the siege, i. La Favorita, i. Forts, i. The Siege, i. The City, i. The Noble Chapter, i.

Middleton, ii. Dale, ii.

Military Press in Germany, i.

Montabaur, i.

Muhlheim, ii.

N

Neuss, i.

Neuwiedt, i.

Nieuport, anecdote of the siege of, ii.

Nimeguen, i. Bridge of boats, i. The Belvidere, ii.

O

Oberwesel, ii.

Offenburg, i.

Oggersheim, i.

Oppenheim, i.

Oudenkirk, i.

P

Parties in Holland, i.

Patterdale, ii.

Penrith, town of, ii. Beacon of, ii.

Pfaltz, ii.

Poppelsdorff, the palace of, i.

Post, German, ii.

Prince of Orange, i.

Provisions in Holland, i.

R

Rastadt, i.

Rees, ii.

Rheinberg, i.

Rheingau, ii.

Rhinfels, ii.

Rotterdam, road and voyage to, from Helvoetsluys, i. Its appearance from the Maese, i. The city, i.

Rydal Hall, ii.

S

Saardam, i.

Saddleback, ii.

Sanctæ Crucis, the convent and hill, i.

Schevening and the vista, i.

Schwetzingen, i.

Selters, i.

Seven Mountains, i. ii.

St. John, vale of ii.

Skiddaw, ii. Ascent of ii.

Sunset and rise at sea, ii.

T

Taxes in Holland, i.

Thiel, ii.

Threlkeld, ii.

Thurston Lake, ii.

Timber, floats of, on the Rhine, ii.

Trechtschuyts, i.

U

Ullswater, road thither, ii. Lake, ii.

Ulverston, ii.

Urdingen, ii.

Utrecht, i. Canal from Amsterdam thither, i. View from the tower of the cathedral, i.

V

Vineyards in Germany, i.

W

Waal, river, i. ii.

Wesel, ii.

Wetzlaar, chamber of, ii.

Windermere, ii.

Worms, i.

Wyk de Duerstede, i.

X

Xanten, i.

Z

Zons, castle of, ii.

FINIS.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The book cover image was made by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.