Part 3
It is right to add that some antiquaries make the names beginning with Coning-or Coni-to mean the Rabbits'-town, Rabbits'-head, Rabbits'-garth, and so forth, and yet even in Iceland, which was always republican, there is a Kongsbakki, King's-bank, at which no king ever lived. In ancient times, as now, sentiment counted for something in the naming of places; and many names, otherwise without meaning, may have been simply given by the settler in remembrance of his old home. We cannot say for certain that Coniston was not so called by an immigrant of the Viking Age, much later than the invasion of the Angles; possibly he came from a place of similar name in Craven or Holderness or elsewhere and brought the name with him.
The Welsh appear to have remained under Teutonic (or later, Scandinavian) masters, and one relic of their tongue seems to show how they were treated. They seem to have been employed as shepherds, and they counted their flocks:--
Un, dau, tri, y pedwar, y pimp; Chwech, y saith, y wyth, y nau, y dec; Un-ar-dec, deu-ar-dec, tri-ar-dec, pedwar-ar-dec, pemthec; Un-ar-pymthec, deu-ar-pymthec, tri-ar-pymthec, pedwar-ar-pymthec, ucent;
or in the ancient equivalent form of these Welsh numerals, which their masters learned from them, and used ever after in a garbled form as the right way to count sheep. The Coniston count-out runs--
Yan, taen, tedderte, medderte, pimp; Sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick; Yan-a-dick, taen-a-dick, tedder-a-dick, medder-a-dick, mimph; Yan-a-mimph, taen-a-mimph, tedder-a-mimph, medder-a-mimph, gigget.
And from these north-country dales the Anglo-Cymric score has spread, with their roaming sons and daughters, pretty nearly all the world over. (See the Rev. T. Ellwood's papers on the subject in Cumb. and West. Antiq. Soc. _Transactions_, vol. iii.)
During the ninth century the Anglian power declined. Welsh Cumbria regained some measure of independence with kings or kinglets of its own, under the dominant over-lordship of the Scottish crown. But the Anglian settlers still held their tuns, though their influence and interests so diminished that it was impossible for them to continue and complete the colonization of Lakeland. It remained a no-man's-land, a debateable border country, hardly inhabited and quite uncivilised.
NORSE PERIOD.
Who then settled the dales, cleared the forest, drained the swamps, and made the wilderness into fields and farms?
Let us walk to-day through the valleys to the north of the village, and ask by the way what the country can tell us of its history.
Leaving the church we come in a few minutes to Yewdale Beck. Why "beck?" Nobody here calls it "brook," as in the Saxon south, nor "burn," as in the Anglian north. In the twelfth century, as now, the name was "Ywedallbec," showing that it had been named neither in Anglian nor in Saxon, but by inhabitants who talked the language of the Vikings.
The house on the hill before us, above fields sloping to the flats, is the Thwaite house. _Thveit_ in Iceland, which the Norsemen colonized, means a field sloping to a flat. On the wooded hill behind it are enclosures called the high and low Guards--"yard" would be the Saxon word; _gardhr_ is the Norse, becoming in our dialect sometimes "garth" and sometimes "gard" or "guard."
At the Waterhead the signpost tells us to follow the road to Hawkshead, anciently Hawkens-heved or Hawkenside--_Hauk's_ or _Hákon's_ headland or seat.
Taking the second turn to the left we go up the ravine of Tarn Hows Gill (_Tjarn-haugs-gil_), and reach a favourite spot for mountain views. Above and around the moorland lake rise the Langdale Pikes (_Langidalr_ there is also in Iceland), Lingmoor (_lyng-mor_), Silver How (_Sölva-haugr_), Loughrigg (_loch-hryggr_), Fairfield (_fær-fjall_), Red Screes (_raud-skridhur_), and on the left Weatherlam (_vedhr-hjalmr_) and all the _fells_ and _dales_, _moors_ and _meres_, which cannot be named without talking Norse.
Descending to the weir which was built by the late Mr. Marshall, to throw into one the three Monk Coniston Tarns, as the sheet of water is still called, a broken path leads us down past the waterfall of Tom or Tarn Gill, romantically renamed Glen Mary, and now even "St. Mary's Glen," and out upon the road opposite Yewtree House, behind which stood the famous old yew blown down in the storm of 22nd December, 1894. Turning to the right, we pass Arnside (_Arna-sidha_ or _setr_, Ami's fellside or dairy) and Oxenfell (_öxna-fell_), and soon look down upon Colwith (_Koll-vidhr_, "peak-wood" from the peaked rocks rising to the left above it; or _Kol-vidhr_, wood in which charcoal was made). We quit the road to Skelwith (_skál-vidhr_, the wood of the scale or shed) and descend to Colwith Feet (_fit_, meadow on the bank of a river or lake), and ascend again to Colwith Force (_fors_, waterfall), and pass the _Tarn to Fell Foot_, an old manor house, bought in 1707 by Sir Daniel Fleming's youngest son Fletcher, ancestor of the Flemings of Rayrigg, who placed his coat of arms over the door (as Mr. George Browne of Troutbeck says--Cumb. and West. Antiq. Soc. _Transactions_, vol. xi., p. 5).
Permission is readily given to view the terraced mound behind the house, in which Dr. Gibson and Mr. H. S. Cowper have recognized a Thingmount such as the Vikings used for the ceremonies of their Thing or Parliament. There was one in Dublin, the Thingmote; the Manx Tynwald is still in use; and the name _Thingvöllr_ (thing-field) survives at Thingwall in Cheshire, South Lancashire, and Dumfriesshire. On the steps of the mound the people stood in their various ranks while the Law-speaker proclaimed from the top the laws or judgments decreed by the Council. Eastward from the mount, to make the site complete, a straight path should lead (as in the Isle of Man) to a temple by a stream or well; and around should be flat ground enough for the people to camp out, for they met at midsummer and spent several days in passing laws, trying suits, talking gossip, driving bargains, and holding games--as if it were Grasmere Sports and Wakefield Competition, hiring fair and cattle market, County Council and Assizes, all rolled into one. These requirements are perfectly met by this site, which is also in a conveniently central position, with Roman roads and ancient paths leading to it in all directions through Lakeland.
From other sources than place-names--from Norse words in the present dialect as analysed by Mr. Ellwood, we learn that the Vikings settled here as farmers. The words they have handed down to their descendants are not fighting words, but farming words--names of agricultural tools and usages, and the homely objects of domestic life.
The Norse settlement appears, therefore, to be an immigration, not of invaders, but of refugees; and the event which first caused it was perhaps the raid of King Harald Fairhair, about 880-890, on the Vikings of the Hebrides, Galloway, and the Isle of Man.
Gradually they spread from the coast into the fells, until they had filled all the hill country; and if we set down their first arrival as about 890, we find that for no less than three hundred years they were left in possession of the lands they settled, and in enjoyment of liberty to make their own laws and to rule their own commonwealth at the Thingmount on which we are standing.
NORMAN PERIOD.
The Norman Conquest, it must be understood, did not touch the Lake District. William the Conqueror and his men never entered Cumbria, nor even High Furness. The dales are not surveyed in _Domesday_, and the few landowners mentioned on the fringe of the fells are obviously of Norse or Celtic origin--Duvan and Thorolf, and Ornulf and Orm, Gospatric and Gillemichael. After William Rufus had seized Carlisle, the territory of Cumbria and Westmorland was granted to various lords; but the dales were the _hinterland_ of their claim. In the _Pipe Rolls_ we have full accounts of the inhabitants and proceedings of the lowlands during the twelfth century, but not a word about the Lakeland. And in the disturbed and disputed condition of affairs--the lordship was even in the hands of the King of Scots from 1135 to 1157--it is easy to understand that it was worth nobody's while to attempt the difficult task of reducing to servitude a body of hardy freeholders, secure in their mountain fastnesses.
In the later part of the twelfth century, the baron of Kendal and the abbot of Furness began to take steps towards asserting their claim.
Thirty men, for the most part residents in the surrounding lowlands and already retainers of the abbot and the baron, were sworn in to survey the debateable ground. Half of these men, to judge by their names or pedigrees, were of Viking origin. In the list are Swein, Ravenkell, Frostolf, Siward (Sigurd), Bernulf (Brynjolf), Ketel, and several Dolfins, Ulfs and Orms, with the Irish Gospatrick and Gillemichael. Of the other half, several are Anglo-Saxon and the rest Norman.
Their starting-point, in beating the boundaries, was Little Langdale--as if they had met, by old use and wont of the countryside, at the Thingmount; and they enclosed the district by Brathay, Windermere, and Leven, eastward; Wrynose and Duddon, westward; and then halved it by a line, along which we may follow them, to Tilberthwaite and by Yewdale Beck to Thurston Water. Thence their division line ran along the shore of the lake to the Waterhead and down the eastern side, and so along the Crake to Greenodd.
The western half was taken by the baron of Kendal to hold of the abbot by paying a rent of 20s. yearly on the Vigil of the Assumption (old Lammas Day). The baron also got right of way and of hunting and hawking through the abbey's lands, thence called Furness Fells. The valley of Coniston was thus divided into two separate parts--the eastern side, but including the Guards, was Monk Coniston; and the western side, including also the lake, became known from the village church as Church Coniston.
Though this arrangement was proposed about 1160, it was not finally settled until 1196; after which the two owners could proceed to reduce the old Norse freeholders to the condition of feudal tenants. A charter of John, afterwards king, at the end of the twelfth century, directs the removal of all tenants in Furness Fells who have not rendered due fealty to the abbot. By what threats or promises or actual violence this was accomplished we have no record; but we can see that it was a slow process, and we can infer that it was not done by way of extermination. For the Norse families, with their language and customs, remained in Coniston. They were a canny race, and knew how to adapt themselves to circumstances. Throughout Lakeland they evidently made good terms with the Norman lords, and kept a degree of independence which was afterwards explained away as the border tenant-right--but really must have been in its origin nothing less than a compromise between nominal feudalism and a proud reminiscence of their Norse allodial practice--the free ownership of the soil they had taken, and reclaimed, and inhabited for three centuries of liberty.
V.--MONK CONISTON.
The Furness monks were of the Cistercian order; which is to say, they were farmers rather than scholars or mere recluses and devotees. To understand them in the days of their power, we must put aside all the vulgar nonsense about fat friars or visionary fakirs, and see them as a company of shareholders or college of gentlemen from the best landowning families, whose object in their association was, of course, the service of God in their abbey church; but, outside of it, the development of agriculture and industries. They devoted their property and their lives to the work, getting nothing in return except mere board and lodging, and--for interest on their capital--the means of grace and the hope of glory.
Some of the brothers lived continually at the abbey, fully occupied in the service of the household, in hospitality to the poor and to travellers, in teaching the school, in various arts and crafts, and especially in the office work necessary for the management of their estates. Their method was to acquire land, sometimes by purchase or exchange, more often by gift from those who had entered the community, or had received services from them; and then to improve these lands, which were generally of the poorest when they came into the abbey's possession. As the plots were widely scattered over Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cumberland, it must have been no light labour to manage them. For this purpose a brother was sent to act as steward or bailiff at a grange or cell on the outlying estate.
One such manor house of the monks we may see at Hawkshead Old Hall (see the sixpenny _Guide to Hawkshead_, by Mr. H. S. Cowper). This was built more than two centuries later than the division of High Furness; and though there was probably an earlier building, the list of abbey possessions in 1292 makes no mention of it. The monks, energetic as they were, had plenty to do in improving their lands in Low Furness, and made little impression at first upon the wild woods and moors of the fells, thinly dotted with the old Norse thwaites and steads.
On the other hand, they provided almost immediately for the spiritual needs of their new flock. There was already a chapel at Hawkshead, which is mentioned in 1200, but no consecrated burial ground; and if anyone wished for Christian burial, his body had to be carried on horseback or on a sledge some twenty miles to Dalton. In 1219 the monks amended this by making Hawkshead Chapel into a parish church, greatly against the will of the vicar of Dalton, who was the loser by the reform; and Monk Coniston has ever since been in the ecclesiastical parish of Hawkshead.
Church Coniston got no share in this advantage. Up to the time of Elizabeth, its people had to take their dead to Ulverston. As you go through the village, just beyond the Baptist Chapel, is a stream known as Jenkin Syke; and the story goes than a Jenkins of Yewdale or Tilberthwaite was being carried, uncoffined, on a sledge to Dalton or Ulverston for burial, but when the procession reached Torver they found that the body was gone. They tried back, and discovered it in the beck, which bears the name to this day.
The first and most obvious use of the fells to the monks was as a forest of unlimited timber. One purpose for which they wanted this was for charcoal to smelt the iron ore of the mines in Low Furness. They needed the waterway of the lake, which was the baron's, who, in 1240, allowed them to have "one boat competent to carry what might be necessary upon the lake of Thurstainwater, and another moderate sized boat for fishing in it, at their will, with 20 nets," and a similar privilege on Windermere. The baron bargained that if any of the monks' men damaged his property it should be "reasonably amended"--as much as to say there was really nothing of value along the western side of our lake in 1240.
Now that the monks had the waterway and could get at their forests, they pushed the industry. By the end of the century (1292) they could return a considerable income from their ironworks, while making nothing out of the agriculture of High Furness.
There was good hunting, however, and in 1281 the abbot got free warren in Haukesheved, Satirthwait, Grisedale, Neburthwaite, (Monk) Kunyngeston, and other parts of the fells--the old Norse names alone are mentioned. But in 1338 he was allowed by Government to impark woods in Fournes fells; not to create deer parks in a cultivated country, for that was not done until much later, when the bad Abbot Banks in 1516 "of the tenements of Richard Myellner and others at a place called Gryesdale in Furness fells made another park" (beside those he had just made in Low Furness) "to put deer into, which park is about five miles in compass" (_Pleadings and Depositions_, Duchy of Lancaster, quoted by Dr. T. K. Fell; Mr. H. S. Cowper supposes this site to have been Dale Park.) These fourteenth century parks or parrocks were simply enclosures from the wild woods, and among them were Waterpark, Parkamoor, and Lawson Park which we have passed. So it was a century and a half before the monks got their woods cleared enough to settle their shepherds on the lands given them by the thirty sworn men's division.
Even then it was notoriously a wild place. In 1346 (as we gather from a ballad and pedigrees printed in Whitaker's _Loidis and Elmete_, 1816, vol. ii., p. 396) it was, like Sherwood and Inglewood, the resort of outlaws. Adam of Beaumont (near Leeds) with his brother, and Will Lockwood, Lacy, Dawson and Haigh, came hither after slaying Sir John Elland in revenge for the murder of Sir Robert Beaumont.
In Furness Fells long time they were Boasting of their misdeed, In more mischief contriving there How they might yet proceed.
They seem to have been here until 1363 or later--a gang of brigands; which shows how little grip the abbey had so far laid upon its _hinterland_.
But gradually new farms were created and held by native families who acknowledged the abbot as their lord, and provided men for military duty or for various "boons," such as a day's work in harvest. These new farms are now known as "grounds." In Monk Coniston we find Rawlinson, Atkinson, Knipe, Bank, and Holme Grounds; and in the list of abbey "tenants" of 1532, "from the Ravenstie upwards" (the path from Dale Park by Ravencrag to Hawkshead), are Robert Atkyns, Robert Knype, Robert Bank, Rainold and Robert Holme. The Kirkbys of the Thwaite and the Pennys of Penny House also signed. Rawlinson is not on this list, but on that of 1509 giving the "tenants" "from the Ravenstie downwards," _i. e_., south part of High Furness. The lists do not state that, for example, the Bankes lived at Bank Ground, but prove that the families were then in the immediate neighbourhood.
At Bank Ground are the ruins of a house which was of some pretentions, judging from carved stones lying there. Local tradition makes it the site of a religious house, with a healing well. Dr. Gibson supplies a monk, "Father Brian," and tells a tradition of a witch living opposite (where the gondola station is) who came to the monk and confessed that she had sold herself to the devil. The monk set her a penance, and promised absolution. So when the devil came to claim his own she fled up Yewdale Beck, calling on "Father Brian and St. Herbert," and the devil's hoof stuck fast in the Bannockstone, a rock below the wooden bridge in Mr. George Fleming's field. The hole is there. Many rocks have such holes, from the weathering out of nodules. Mediævals may have called them devil's footprints; moderns often call them "cup-markings," in equal error.
It may be that a hermit lived where the Bankes afterwards built their homestead; it is possible that there was a "cell" for the abbey's Monk Coniston representative at the Waterhead. But the final list of abbey estates (1535), while mentioning Watsyde Parke, Lawson Parke, and Parkamore among granges and parks, puts "Watterhed et (Monk) Connyngston, £10-19-5-1/4" in the rental of tenants, as if the farm were then let to a tenant, as Hawkshead Hall was in 1512. The old Waterhead mansion, however, is known as Monk Coniston _par excellence_, and behind the modern Gothic front are ancient rooms with thick walls and massive beams, said by Mr. Marshall, the owner, to be part of the original monks' house.
There are few actual relics of this period in the way of archæological finds, so that the discovery of a tiny key of lead, with trefles on the ring, cast in a double mould, at Tent Cottage, where it was found under a stone, is worth remark. Mr. H. S. Cowper thought it a pilgrim's badge of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and the site was one of the "grounds" of the abbey "tenants."
The list of "tenants" referred to is in an agreement of 1532 to prevent "improvement." They had "inclosed common pasture more largelie than they ought to doe, under the colour of one bargaine called Bounding of the pasture," and this sort of "improvement" was thenceforth forbidden. But five years later the abbey was dissolved, to the great harm and regret of the country side. Though a bad abbot did, for a time, give trouble by making deer parks, the abbey rule, on the whole, was good. Monk Coniston made slow but sure progress, and reached a point beyond which it did not advance for the next three hundred years.
What it was like when the abbey gave it up may be gathered from the report of Henry VIII.'s commissioners:--"There is moche wood growing in Furneysfelles in the mounteynes there, as Byrk, Holey, Asshe, Ellers, Lyng, lytell short Okes, and other Undrewood, but no Tymber of any valewe;" they mention also "Hasells." That there _had_ been timber is proved by the massive oak beams of many a farmhouse and old hall, but the forests were all by this time cleared, and coppice had taken their place. "There is another yerely profytte comming and growing of the said woods, called Grenehewe, Bastyng, Bleching, bynding, making of Sadeltrees, Cartwheles, cuppes, disshes, and many other thynges wrought by Cowpers and Turners" (the beginning of well-known local industries) "with making of Coles (charcoal) and pannage of Hoggs."
After the dissolution the manor remained in the Crown until 1662, when Charles II. granted it to General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, whose descendant Elizabeth, daughter of George, Duke of Montague (whence the other name of Peel Island), married Henry, third Duke of Buccleugh, whose representative is now lord of the manor.
Monk Coniston remained separate from Church Coniston, both ecclesiastically and politically, until the Local Government Act of 1894 establishing Parish Councils gave occasion for the union of the two shores of the lake into one civil parish. But Monk Coniston is still in the ecclesiastical parish of Hawkshead.
VI.--THE FLEMINGS OF CONISTON HALL.
In 1196 the baron of Kendal was Gilbert fitz Roger fitz Reinfrid, who had got his lordship by marriage with Heloise, granddaughter of William I. de Lancaster. In her right he claimed Furness as well. So did the abbey, and the result of this dispute we have seen in the division of the fells.
There was a family at Urswick who, to judge by their name, might have been descendants of the old Norse settlers. Adam fitz Bernulf held land there of Sir Michael le Fleming about 1150; Orm fitz Bernulf was one of the thirty sworn men; Stephen of Urswick was another. Stephen was doubtless christened after the king, who had founded the abbey; for fashions in names followed royalty then as now. Gilbert fitz Bernulf was another of the family--a Normanised Norseman, it would seem. To him Coniston was let or assigned by Baron Gilbert of Kendal.
His son Adam was living in 1227. Adam's daughter Elizabeth was his heiress, and married Sir Richard le Fleming.
Le Fleming, or _the_ Fleming, meant simply "the man from Flanders." William Rufus had invited many Flemings to settle as "buffer" colonies in Cumberland and Wales, and Sir Richard's ancestor Michael had received Aldingham in Low Furness. Sir Richard's grandfather, being a younger son, had got a Cumbrian estate with headquarters at a place called by the Cumbrian-Welsh Caernarvon. _Ar mhon_ (arfon) means "over against Mona;" in Wales _Caer-n-arfon_ is "the castle over against Anglesey (Mona);" in Cumbria the same name had been given to the castle over against Man (Mona). It was an oblong base-court with a ditch, and a round artificial hill (later known as Coney-garth or King's-garth, cop) exactly like the Mote at Aldingham. There Sir Richard's father lived, and dying was buried at Calder Abbey.