Andrew de Harcla, the first Earl of Cumberland, who was hanged at Carlisle for treason in joining the king of Scotland. We cannot, indeed, in Westmorland, boast of so many castles and halls as exist in Cumberland, but still we have some whose history is full of interest. Brougham, Appleby, Brough, and Pendragon, are of the Norman period, two of them being built upon Roman Stations, and will well repay examination. Harcla, though now almost utterly ruined, is not without its interest. Wharton Hall, the home of one who at one time exercised no little influence as the Warden of the Marches, and won the battle of Sollum Moss, is a fine specimen of the period to which it belongs. Levens, with its quaintly planned gardens; Burneside and Askham, with their ancient gateways: Hartsop, with its secret hiding place in the thickness of the wall; Brougham, about which much has been written, much disputed, and the true story of which yet remains to be told. Yanwath, with its beautiful tower, its bay window, its magnificent roof, its wainscotted rooms, and its ancient bedstead. these and many more, when examined with that painful diligence, and described with that loving care that mark the true antiquary, can hardly fail to furnish much useful and interesting information, which, if known at all, is known only

to the few.

All

The churches and religious homes in both counties must yield a valuable harvest. There is at least one in Cumberland, the architecture of which is supposed to be Saxon, and in Westmorland, Norman work may be seen at Lowther, at Crosby Garrett, and at Kirkby Lonsdale, as well as at other places. And how much we have yet to learn about the religious foundations. The grants by which they were from time to time enriched, the lands they included, the witnesses by whom these grants were signed, the registers of the houses themselves, the chronicles of the monks, and the character of the gravecovers, all of which will assist us in the work we have undertaken to do, and to help us to develope a correct history of our district. And there are in more than one place of deposit, manuscripts that need careful examination, and documents that ought to be made public, so that the knowledge known but to one or two may become the common property of all. There must be many persons in every county who have neither leisure nor ability, nor learning, to pursue these necessary researches, but they are not indifferent to the subject, and will be truly grateful to those who, by industry and careful research unfold the scrolls of history, and give us

fresh

fresh information about the counties to which we belong. And if we know so little about the history of our religious foundations, and less about our churches, how very little do we know about many of those things connected with them? The bells in these towers, what do we know of their date ? How many escaped destruction at the Reformation ?

"When, in the reign of Edward VI, the council enjoined 'that all ringing with holy bells to drive away devils, and all ringing or knowling of bells, save one before the service, should utterly be forborne,' the bells, consecrated as they were to some saint, were for the most part removed from the steeples, and if one was left it was generally the least, and the name of the saint to which it was dedicated seems in some cases to have been defaced or destroyed. But in the course of a few years peals of bells were again placed in the churches, and it would be curious to know whether there are many in these counties that were left at the Reformation, or whether most of them date from the time of Elizabeth, when they again were used, or from some later period of our history. And how full of interest are parish registers though they may not all be so old as the one at Morland which commences about 1538, or contain such quaint entries as the one at Bampton, during the incumbency of Mr. Wearing. And churchwardens' accounts contain some curious entries, illustrating manners and customs that no longer exist. Ale for rushbearing 2s. 6d. for raven, 1s. 8d., for two foxes and two badgers, 4s.' and as every minister did not then write his own sermons, 'for two homily books, 8s. And Manor books and Court Leets, with their sanitary arrangements, from which we might take a lesson, and their social regulations that would even not now be amiss, for example, no person shall wash any unclean thing at the Chappel Well, nor betwixt that well and Chare bridge, upon paine of 3s. 4d., none shall play at cards except at Christmas time upon paine of 6s. 8d.'

"And how few local particulars are known about the Pilgrimage of grace, when a notice was said to have been placed on the great door at Shappe, telling the people if they would rise and go into Lancashire, they would find a captain with money to receive them, and the people in these counties and the adjoining districts were so excited and rendered themselves so formidable that the King himself thought it worth while to reason with them; or about the protestation of 1641-2, returns of the various parishes thereto, and the number and names of those who were loyal enough to resist, or concerning

the

the deprivation of the clergy and their alleged offences, of which some interesting records exist, or of those gatherings which have given to some thorn near the place, the name of Gospel Thorn, or some gill or hollow in which they were surprised and suffered for conscience sake, the name of Martyrgill.

OLD CUSTOMS.

And there are the old customs at births and christenings, weddings and burials, which are fast passing away and being forgotten; and the gift to a child on its first visit to a neighbour's house of salt and silver and an egg. There are the boondays, the clippings, and the furth neets, their rules and their customs. There are the nominys, the superstitions, the legends; the belief in what were called par excellence wisemen, and the use of charms. There are the heck, the hallan, the sconce, and the renel boak; and above all there is the dialect with its proverbial distichs; its expressive words; its wise saws; its apt similies to which justice never has and probably never now can be done. All these subjects, and more than these, await examination, explanation, illustration, and though the members of this society may not bring to the work before them great ability or great learning, they have that which is oftentimes far more useful than either-local knowledge. If only we labour diligently and examine carefully, gather up facts as they present themselves, and place on record our experience as it grows; if only we speak that we know, and testify to that we have seen, bearing with each other and helping each other, we shall gradually unfold the pages from which may be read the history of our counties, throw light upon the dark places thereof, and make plain that which is doubtful or obscure, and it will not be for naught that we have this day established the Antiquarian Society of Cumberland and Westmorland, which may God prosper.

ART. II.-Tumuli of Cumberland and Westmorland. the Rev. William Greenwell, M.A.

By

Read at the First Meeting of the Society, at Penrith, Tuesday, September 17th, 1866.

THE purpose of the present paper is to give an account of

the examination of some places of sepulture, made by the Rev. J. Simpson, vicar of Kirkby Stephen, and myself, during the spring of this year. Before entering into an account of the particular places of burial in question, it may not be out of place to give a brief description of the different modes of interment which are found to exist throughout the North of England. In speaking of burial I refer entirely to times which have been called pre-historic—that is, which belong to a period before the Roman invasion. To interments subsequent to that time I shall not refer in this paper, beyond saying that from the numerous Roman settlements in this district, very valuable results would accrue from a proper investigation of the sepulchral remains in connection with them.

The field, indeed, upon the borders of which I am only just touching, is a very wide one. You possess in the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, besides numerous remains of fortified places, and of sites possibly of religious and political assembly, in the shape of stone and other circles of large dimensions, a very great number of places of burial, very many of which have been at various times ignorantly destroyed, but of which enough remain to enable a very just view of the burial rites and customs of those early people to be arrived at. They exist, scattered about, especially upon the unenclosed lands, in great abundance, and we may hope, in these days of scientific archæology, that they will receive that careful and critical examination which alone justifies their disturbance.

Two modes of burial were in use during the times we are considering, apparently contemporaneous, and not showing, so far as is at present known, the reason of their difference. The more frequent is the depositing of the body after burning, -burial by cremation; the other the depositing of an unburnt body,-burial by inhumation. I will take the latter first, because, it will be necessary to mention under this head, a class of burials which appear to me to belong to a period still earlier

earlier than that to which the greater number of burial mounds belong. These very early barrows are found more frequently in the south-west of England than elsewhere. They have occurred however in other parts, and I have examined three of them in Yorkshire. One, I believe, is to be found in this county, where indeed many others may remain unnoticed. Whether the barrow in question is one of the kind I am referring to, can however only be settled by the spade. These barrows are, contrary to the usual round shape, very long, the length being about four times the width, they generally are placed east and west, and the interments are always at the east end. They belong, I believe, to an age when metal was unknown, at least nothing but implements of flint have ever been found in them, and so many have been opened as to make this negative evidence very strong. The skulls which have been found in them present very marked features, being very long, and in other respects also they show a striking contrast to those of the bronze-using people of the round barrows. The limits of this paper will not allow me to do more than merely to advert to this subject. If the barrow I mentioned above turns out as I expect, I hope to be able to give you a paper devoted exclusively to the question of these remarkable places of burial.*

To come then to the round-headed people of the age of bronze, who buried, as I have said, indiscriminately by cremation and inhumation. The unburnt body is found under various circumstances, perhaps most frequently in a chamber made of stones set on edge, with one or more covers upon them, and without any mound over the place of burial; these burials are more common than we might think, for as there is no outward indication of an interment, in the shape of a barrow, it is only by accident that they have been discovered. Burials, in most respects similar to these, are also found under circular mounds of earth, or cairns of stones, of various sizes, sometimes one, at other times several bodies being placed in a barrow, and usually in a district where stone occurs. in cists made by slabs of stone, or in graves sunk into the rock, where such exists; at times, however, no cist or stone protects the body from the surrounding earth. A much rarer mode is where the burials have been surrounded by circles of separate stones, or circles of earth, and where no mound or cairn has. ever occupied the space within the circles, which usually go

* An examination of this supposed barrow shewed that it was a natural gravel mound.

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