The Brougham family, still owning the Hall, trace their descent from Saxon times, and one of their ancestors, referred to as “Brum,” fortified his residence here so long ago as 1284.
SEPULCHRAL SLAB OF UDARD DE BROHAM.
An early ancestor was Udard De Broham, a crusader, who died in 1185. “His soul is with the saints, we trust”; but his skull, ravished from his grave in Brougham Church, grins from its glass case in the Hall, and his trusty sword, that had been buried with him, is near by. It was in 1846, when repairs were in progress at the church, that the skeleton of Udard was discovered, beneath the inscribed slab pictured here, a mere two feet deep. He had been laid here cross-legged and spurred on one heel. With him had been buried a fragment of glass of Phœnician manufacture, blue inside, but externally patterned in black and white stripes not unlike the striped peppermint sweets still dear to rural youth. This was considered a talisman, or luck-compelling object, in the superstitious age in which Udard flourished, and was doubtless brought by him from Palestine and buried with him as his most prized possession.
Nine ancient De Brohams in all were discovered at this time, including the remains of Gilbert, son of Udard, a man of gigantic size, who died in 1230. A curious enamelled metal circlet, of beautiful workmanship, and in perfect preservation, lay beside him; and his grave was duly rifled of it.
BROUGHAM CASTLE.
ANN CLIFFORD
But Brougham Castle is finer than the Hall, or than memories of De Brohams. Brougham derives its name, down the long alleys of time, from Brovacum, a Roman station in these outposts of the Roman dominion, thickly studded with such. And a military post of the first importance it continued to be until the time of Henry the Fourth. Normans built the keep of the old castle, and the families of Vipont and De Clifford added to it, and held the marchlands against the Scots, or warred for or against their sovereigns, with more or less success, until their line ended in a woman: the famous Ann Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, who was as good a man as any. She was born in 1590, and enjoyed length of days and strength of mind during the whole of them, dying at last in 1676. Marrying twice, and unhappily on both occasions, she was twice widowed, and left with an only daughter. Upon her second widowhood she retired to these scenes of her youth, and busied herself in rebuilding her ancient and ruined castles of Brougham, Appleby, Skipton, Bardon Tower, Pendragon, and Brough; together with the restoration of numerous churches, and the erection of monuments to various people, including herself. She was as ceaseless and busy a builder as old Bess of Hardwick herself, and an imperious and masterful old lady who even withstood Cromwell. He declared he would ding down her castles as soon as she built them up, but she merely replied that they would be rebuilt every time, and Cromwell was obliged to give in. “Let her build an she will, for me” he said, and build she accordingly did. She is described as having been a “perfect mistress of forecast and aftercast,” who “knew well how to converse of all things, from predestination to slea-silk;” and she certainly was tenacious of her rights, or what she conceived to be her rights; being as remarkable a litigant as she was a builder. By all accounts, she was nothing less than an unmitigated terror, and the plain man, who reads of her autocratic ways, is apt to think that the unhappiness of her marriages was felt by her husbands a good deal more than by herself.