Part 19

The society numbered three and thirty monks at the time of its dissolution, and about one hundred converts and servants, and no convert was admitted who could not pay for the labour of an hireling. To have been head of such a colony at home, and to have wielded such a power abroad, must have made even the most pious of abbots "draw too proud a breath;" and yet with all the faults and all the vices of that cowled priesthood, we cannot now forbear to pity their sad fate, when bidden by the remorseless king to leave their grand old residences and quiet ways of life wherein they had lived so long!

It must be added, that to so much power and so great prosperity, with all the beneficence and usefulness of the society there had come to be allied an amount of profligacy and irreligion proportionate to the many advantages which it had enjoyed.

The early part of the sixteenth century found the morality of the monastery represented in many instances by social arrangements in direct violation of the injunctions laid upon all monastic institutions, "in the king's behalf;" amongst others, of that one which especially enjoins that "women of what state or degree soever they be, be utterly excluded from entering into the limit or circuit of this monastery or place, unless they first obtain license of the King's Highness, or his visitor." It was stated, and apparently well authenticated, that Rogerus Pele (abbot) had two wives, or what amounted to the same thing, two concubines; and amongst his subordinate monks, Johannes Groyn had one, whilst Thomas Hornsby had five. Thus, evil days in one sense had already come; and others were fast drawing nigh. The mandate, moreover, had been prepared for their destruction independently of these and such like shortcomings; but they afforded a powerful handle by which to wrest them to destruction.

First came the commissioners appointed by the King for visiting the monasteries in the North of England, with their searching examination into everything connected with each separate society: next, the list of crimes charged on the monks at the time of the visitation: then the devices of the Earl of Sussex "advertised" in his letter to the King, wherein "I, the said erle, devising with myselfe, yf one way would not serve, how, and by what other means, the said monks might be ryd from the said abbey;" the summons to Whalley of the unhappy Abbot to make his proposal, in his own handwriting, according to the "ded enrolled, which A. Fitzherbert hath drawn" for the surrender of his monastery to the King: and then the final consummation of all. For come it must. On the 7th day of April, 1537, in spite of prayers to the "kynge," in spite of many a "shillinge in golde" given to the "right honerable and our singler goode Mr. Mayster Thomas Cromwell, secretarie to the Kynge's highness," the royal commissioners came down upon their prey. After hanging the Abbot of Whalley, and the royal injunction that "all monks and chanons, that be in any wise faultie, are _to be tyed uppe without further delay or ceremonie_," the Abbot of Furnesse is found "to be of a very facile and ready minde," and all hope of averting his doom being over, and his sense of peril hastening his submission, "it coming freely of himself and without enforcement," he signed the fatal deed of surrender, confessing with contrition "the mysorder and evil lyfe both to God and our prynce of the brethren of this monasterie;" the pen passed from the hand of the Superior to each monk in succession, and the "lamp on the altar of St. Mary of Furness was extinguished for ever."

With forty shillings given to them by the King, and clad in "secular wedes" (that is, lay garments), without which they were not permitted to depart, they turned their faces from their magnificent home in the Nightshade Dell. To the degraded Abbot was given the Rectory of Dalton, valued at £33 6s. 9d. yearly, obtained with difficulty, and even of which he was not allowed undisturbed possession. But no traces of his associates at the Abbey appear to have survived their departure from it, unless we dimly discern them in the miserable record which relates that sixteen years after the period of their dissolution, fifteen pounds[16] were still paid in annuities out of the revenues of the late monastery; that noble possession which the hapless Thirty surrendered to the King.

Of the three and thirty monks of which the society at Furness was composed, the names of the Abbot, the Prior, and twenty-eight of the brethren, were appended to the deed: two had been committed to ward and sure custody in the King's castle of Lancaster, for being "found faultye:"[17] and one of the number remains unaccounted for.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] _Saccum._--The power of imposing fines upon tenants and vassals within the lordship.

[11] _Soccum._--The power and authority of administering justice.

[12] _Tollum._--A duty paid for buying and selling, &c.

[13] _Theam, Team._--A royalty granted for trying bondmen and villains, with a sovereign power over their villain tenants, their wives, children, and goods, to dispose of them at pleasure.

[14] _Infangenetheof._--The power of judging of thefts committed within the liberty of Furness.

[15] _Clibanus_, a portable oven: the term probably represents the quantity of bread contained in it at one baking.

[16] This sum is stated by West to be £151, which Mr. Beck says is a mistake. The deed of surrender of Bolton Priory was signed by the Prior and fourteen canons. Of the subscribers to this instrument, two, in 1553, which would be about sixteen years after their dissolution, continued to receive annuities of £6 13s. 4d.; one, £6; seven, £5 6s. 8d. each: and one, £4. The other canons were dead, or otherwise provided for.

[17] For treason. One of them, Henry Talley, had said that no secular knave should be head of the Church; and the other had declared that the king was not the true king, and no rightful heir to the crown.

KING DUNMAIL.

They buried on the mountain's side King Dunmail, where he fought and died. But mount, and mere, and moor again Shall see King Dunmail come to reign.

Mantled and mailed repose his bones Twelve cubits deep beneath the stones; But many a fathom deeper down In Grisedale Mere lies Dunmail's crown.

Climb thou the rugged pass, and see High midst those mighty mountains three, How in their joint embrace they hold The Mere that hides his crown of gold.

There in that lone and lofty dell Keeps silent watch the sentinel. A thousand years his lonely rounds Have traced unseen that water's bounds.

His challenge shocks the startled waste, Still answered from the hills with haste, As passing pilgrims come and go From heights above or vales below.

When waning moons have filled their year, A stone from out that lonely Mere Down to the rocky Raise is borne, By martial shades with spear and horn.

As crashes on the pile the stone, The echoes to the King make known How still their faithful watch they hold In Grisedale o'er his crown of gold.

And when the Raise has reached its sum, Again will brave King Dunmail come; And all his Warriors marching down The dell, bear back his golden crown.

And Dunmail, mantled, crowned, and mailed, Again shall Cumbria's King be hailed; And o'er his hills and valleys reign When Eildon's heights are field and plain.

NOTES TO "KING DUNMAIL."

The heroic king Dunmail was the last of a succession of native princes, who up to the tenth century ruled over those mountainous provinces in the north-western region of England which were chiefly peopled by the earliest masters of Britain, the Celtic tribes of Cymri, or Picts. The territories of Dunmail, as king of Cumbria, included the entire tract of country from the western limits of the Lothians in Scotland to the borders of Lancashire, and from Northumberland to the Irish Sea.

The several British kingdoms which were originally comprised within this area maintained a long and resolute resistance against the power of the first Saxon monarchs; and although in the course of time most of them were brought under the supremacy of those strangers, as tributary provinces, they still continued a sort of independent existence, electing their own kings and obeying their own laws.

On the establishment of the Heptarchy, several of these provinces were included within the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria; but although they were claimed by the Northumbrian monarchs, there was even then little admixture of their people with the fair-haired followers of Hengist and Horsa, and each continued to be governed by its own chieftain or king until the Norman conquest, and existed under what was called the Danish law. So long as the native chieftains were allowed to exercise a subordinate authority, the Northumbrian kings had no occasion to interfere with the internal government of the subject provinces. If the tribute was duly rendered, they remained unmolested; if it was withheld, payment was enforced by arms; or, in extreme cases, the refractory state (to use a modern phrase) was "annexed," and the domestic government extinguished.

Of the petty rulers of these British kingdoms no notices have been transmitted to us. These are confined to the kings of Strathclyde, or, as they are designated by our earliest informers, of Alclyde; the latter being the name of their capital, which stood on a rocky eminence, adjacent to the modern town of Dumbarton; whilst the former significantly describes the position of their territory in the great strath or valley of the Clyde. This little district (of Strathclyde), which must not be confounded with the larger territory of Cumbria, that as yet had no existence under any general government or common name, comprised the modern counties of Lanark, Ayr, and Renfrew, on the south of the Clyde, and, probably, Dumbartonshire on the north. In the series of Strathclydian kings, tradition has placed the name of the celebrated King Arthur; and the local nomenclature is said to afford many traces of his fame, especially in the case of their citadel of Alclyde, or Dumbarton, which is styled "Castrum Arthuri," in a record of the reign of David the Second. Ryderic, the successor of Arthur, died in 601, in the eighth year of the reign of Ethelfrith, king of Northumberland; and from that time onward, during the remainder of this and the succeeding reigns of Edwin and Oswald, we hear nothing of the independent existence of this people, nor do we even know the names of their chieftains; it is probable that they had been reduced to subjection. But in the very year of Oswald's disastrous death, A. D. 642, we find the Britons carrying on important military operations on their own account, in which Owen their king distinguished himself, by slaying on the battle-field of Strath-carmaic, Donal Break, king of the Scots. During the long reign of Oswi in Northumberland, we read of one king of Strathclyde, Guinet, but the record is only of his death, A. D. 657, not of any exploit which he performed. On the death of Ecgfrith, A. D. 670, the Britons of Strathclyde appear to have recovered their liberty; and thenceforward we have a tolerably complete list of their kings during the two succeeding centuries.

Ethelfrith, who had effected the conquest of the central and western portion of Northumbria, and may be regarded as the founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, "conquered," as we read in Beda, "more territories from the Britons than any other king or tribune;" but although he was thus able to overrun a vast district of country, his followers were not sufficiently numerous to colonise it. In some places, indeed, "he expelled the inhabitants, and placed Angles in their stead," but "in others," and doubtless to a much greater extent, "he allowed the vanquished to retain their lands, on payment of tribute." In the reign of Edwine, too, the Anglo-Saxon population were under his immediate government; the petty British States were still ruled by tributary princes. And no doubt their political condition continued more or less the same during the century and half which preceded the dissolution of the Heptarchy, and after the reconstruction of its several parts under one crown.

On Northumbria being overrun by the renowned Danish Viking Healfdene, A. D. 875, fifty years after the Heptarchal kingdoms had been dissolved, it is recorded that the indigenous inhabitants of the part called Cymriland, the Cumbrians, or Britons, being too weak to defend themselves from the hateful aggressions of the Danes, and deprived of the protection of the Saxon kings of Northumbria, who had themselves succumbed to the common enemy, turned for aid to the only neighbours who seemed sufficiently powerful to resist the invaders. They therefore implored the aid of Grig or Gregory, king of Scotland, by whose assistance in the following year the Scandinavian ravagers were expelled. These Indigenoe, or British inhabitants, must have been the people of Galloway, and of the district around Carlisle; for the Strathclyde Britons were already under the authority of Gregory, as the guardian of Eocha, a minor, who, as the son of Hu king of Strathclyde, and nephew of the second Constantine, king of Scotland, succeeded to the crowns of both these realms. Whether the Britons subsequently quarrelled with their powerful ally, and being defeated in battle, were obliged to cede to the victor their rocky highlands and adjacent places; or they voluntarily submitted themselves to Gregory, with their lands and possessions, thinking it preferable to be subject to the Scots, who, although enemies, were Christians, than to infidel pagans, there does not appear to be any evidence to determine.

The vigour of Gregory king of Scotland having been found, notwithstanding his prowess and the success of his arms, inadequate to support an authority which had been usurped by him as regent during the minority of Eocha, after holding the reins of government in Scotland and Strathclyde during eleven years, was expelled, together with Eocha, by Donal, son of the late King Constantine II., A. D. 893.

To Donal, who was slain by the Danes, A. D. 904, succeeded his cousin Constantine III., the son of Aodh, who had been slain by Gregory. Another Donal, brother to Constantine III., had been "elected" king of the Strathclyde Britons four years before the elevation of that monarch to the throne of Scotland. During the life of this Donal, the districts of Carlisle and Galloway were not united to Strathclyde, but remained attached to Scotland; from which, however, they were separated after his decease, and given to his son and successor, Eugenius.

To the new kingdom, thus founded by Constantine in favour of his nephew and presumptive heir, by the union of Carlisle and Galloway with Strathclyde, was given the name of Cumbria, derived from the common appellation of its inhabitants. Its extent is precisely defined in a return made by the prior and convent of Carlisle to a writ of Edward the First, requiring them, as well as other religious houses, to furnish, from chronicles or other documents in their possession, any information bearing upon the alleged right of supremacy over Scotland vested in the English crown. The return sets forth, "That district was called Cumbria, which is now included in the bishoprics of Carlisle, Glasgow, and Whitherne, together with the country lying between Carlisle and the river Duddon:" in other words, the entire tract from the Clyde to the confines of Lancashire. In the "Inquisitio Davidis," which does indeed extend to all parts of Cumbria which remained in David's possession, we are expressly told that "he had not then within his dominion the whole Cumbrian region," the present county of Cumberland, or, as it was then called, Earldom of Carlisle, having been severed from it soon after the Norman Conquest. Although Fordun is the only author who narrates the cession of Carlisle and Galloway to Gregory, and the subsequent grant of these districts to Eugenius, whereby they were united to Strathclyde, and the whole merged into a single government, we have abundant evidence of the existence of Cumbria and the intimate union of Constantine and Eugenius at this period. In the year 938, these princes, in conjunction with the Danes and Welsh, attempted to wrest the sovereign power out of the vigorous hands of Athelstane. The combined forces were signally defeated by the Anglo-Saxon monarch at Brunanburgh (supposed by some to be Bromborough, near Chester); Eugenius was slain, and Constantine escaped only by a precipitate retreat.

It is at this period that Dunmail, the second and last _sole_ "king of rocky Cumberland," appears upon the historic stage. It has been thought not improbable that he was the son of Eugenius or Owen, the preceding king, and the same person who is described as Dunwallon, "the son of Owen," and who died at Rome thirty years after his memorable engagement with Edmund of England and Leoline of South Wales, in the mountain pass which is distinguished by his name. "In the annals of Ulster, indeed," say the supporters of this supposition, "this Dunwallon is described as king of Wales, but Caradoc calls him prince of Strathclyde, and his patronymic designation seems to identify him with Dunmail, if, as we assume, the latter was the son of the first king of Cumberland." But by whatever means Dunmail obtained the crown; whether by inheritance as the son of Eugenius, or by "election" as one of the native Cumbrian princes, and according to the ancient custom of the Britons; we soon find him supporting the Northumbrians in hostilities against the Saxon monarch, Edmund the First. That monarch, although victorious, was so weakened that he dared not pursue Dunmail without the assistance of the Scots. And the condition upon which Malcolm, king of Scotland, joined Edmund with his forces, was, that if they were successful, Malcolm should possess Cumbria by paying homage to Edmund and his successors. The subjection of this wild race of mountaineers was then determined upon as a necessary step towards the pacification of the kingdom; and the last record which history affords us of the Cumbrian Britons, is that of their defeat, A. D. 945, in the heart of their native mountains, between Grasmere and Keswick, and their final dispersion or emigration into Wales.

The place where Dunmail determined to hazard the battle which proved fatal to him was the famous Pass which bears his name. Edmund slew his vanquished enemy upon the spot which is still commemorated by the rude pile of stones so well known as his cairn; and, in conformity with the barbarous customs of that age, put out the eyes of his two sons; after which, having completely ravaged and laid waste the territories of Dunmail, he bestowed them on his ally Malcolm; the latter undertaking to preserve in peace the Northern parts of England, and to pay the required fealty and homage to Edmund. Upon the same conditions they were afterwards confirmed to him by one of Edmund's successors, Edgar; which monarch also divided what at that time remained of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria into Baronies, and constituted it an Earldom. Thenceforward these north western regions were held as a military benefice subject to the English sceptre by the heir to the crown of Scotland, under the title of the Principality of Cymriland or Cumbria. This Principality, which included Westmorland, continued in possession of the heirs to the Scottish crown during the reigns of Harold and Hardicanute, the last Danish Kings, and of Edward the Confessor and Harold the Second, the last Saxon monarchs of England.

The only circumstance which is recorded of it during the century which followed the defeat of Dunmail, is its total devastation by Ethelred, king of England, A. D. 1000, at which time it is represented by Henry of Huntingdon as the principal rendezvous of the marauding Danes.

In the year 1052, Macbeth held the Scottish throne, whilst Malcolm, the son of his predecessor, the murdered Duncan, sat on that of Cumbria. Siward, earl of Northumberland, was commissioned by Edward the Confessor to invade Scotland, and avenge the "murder" of Duncan. In this he succeeded, defeated and slew Macbeth, and placed the king of Cumbria, or, as some historians assert, his son, on the throne of Scotland. This Malcolm, surnamed Canmore, held at the time of the Conquest, Cumbria and Lothian, in addition to the ancient kingdom of Scotland.

In the year 1072, the Earldom of Carlisle, containing the present County of Cumberland, with the Barony of Westmorland, was wrested from Malcolm Canmore by William the Conqueror, who granted it to his powerful noble, Ranulph de Meschin, one of that numerous train of military adventurers, amongst whom he had distributed all the fair territory of Britain, to hold, with a sort of royal power, by the sword, as he himself held the kingdom by virtue of the crown,--_tenere ita libere ad gladium, sicut ipse rex tenebat Angliam per coronam_.

Thus the existing limits were established between England and Scotland. The kingdom of Cumbria was reduced to the dimensions indicated by the "Inquisitio Davidis," and was held as a principality dependent on the crown of Scotland; until it at length became formally attached to the Scottish dominions.

Meanwhile the Barony of Westmorland having been separated from the Earldom of Carlisle, there remained the district comprised within the present limits of the County of Cumberland, to which alone that name was thenceforward applied.

The circular heap of stones which forms the pile called Dunmail-Raise, and gives its name to the mountain Pass between the vales of Grasmere and Wytheburn, is seen adjoining the highroad, where it is crossed by the wall which there marks the boundaries of Westmorland and Cumberland. The stones constituting this rude monument are thrown loosely together on each side of an earthen mound in a huge cairn or _raise_, the history of which is little known, and concerning which antiquarians are by no means agreed. It measures twenty-four yards in diameter, and rises gradually to an elevation of six feet, being flat at the top, and the centre indicated by a well defined space in rather larger stones.