Bygone Cumberland and Westmorland

by Daniel Scott

“Thomas Lancaster, who for poysonninge his owne family was adjudgt att the assizes att Lancaster to be carried back to his owne house att Hye-Wrey, where he liv’d, was there hanged before his owne doore till he was dead for that very facte, and then was brought with a horse and carr into the Coulthouse meadows and forthwithe hunge upp in iron chaynes on a gibbett, which was set up for that very purpose on the South syde, of Sawrey Casey, neare unto the Poole Stang, and there continued until such tymes as he rotted every bone from the other.”

There are records of wholesale executions in Cumberland for what may be called political offences. When the authorities were subduing Aske’s rebellion, for instance, little was thought of hanging a score of men, and many readers will no doubt remember the bravery of the victims’ wives on some of those occasions, for at the risk of their own necks they removed their executed husbands from the gallows and buried the bodies by night. At Appleby in former days doubtless many executed men were subjected to the further indignity of being drawn and quartered. In 1664 three of the men who supported Captain Atkinson, of Mallerstang, were, at a special assize in the county town, convicted of high treason for their share in the Kaber Rigg rising, and all were hanged, drawn, and quartered. It was not until the autumn of 1675 that Captain Atkinson was sentenced to die the death of a traitor, and pursuant to sentence was hanged, drawn, and quartered on September 1st. It was once common to hand over the bodies of those who had suffered on the gallows to surgeons for dissection. Probably the last Gallows Hill victim thus dealt with was George Mackereth, of Kendal, who was hanged in 1748 for the murder of his sweetheart.

A more interesting study is to be found in the methods adopted by the clergy when dealing with refractory individuals. Of excommunication, as imposed in the diocese of Carlisle, much might be written from the records preserved in the registry, for not only were poor folks put under the ban. Bishops and priors were declared “excommunicate,” while rectors, vicars, and less important people by the score seem to have offended.

One case of post-mortem punishment at Penrith, by way of appeasing the wrath of a former Bishop, may be quoted. The latter required the Archdeacon of Carlisle to seek out and summon certain malefactors who had insulted him while on a visit to the town. Three years seem to have passed before anything was done, and by that time one of the culprits had died and been buried. The Bishop ordered the body to be dug up, and to lie unburied until the form of absolution had been gone through. In connection, apparently, with the same affair, the Bishop “signified” to the Court of King’s Bench that John de Agliunby, who had been excommunicated for assaulting and wounding a priest, “after the term of forty days still remains impenitent and unabsolved,” and so the aid of the secular arm was invoked to coerce him. What the result may have been does not appear.

There is a peculiar case, perhaps less known than any—that of the priest or friar who officiated at the Brunskill conventicle, and made a good harvest from the “miraculous” cures wrought by the strong iron water at the Holy Well, Brough. The vicar obtained the Pope’s authority, and the offender was duly excommunicated.

In the Ven. Archdeacon Prescott’s recently edited transcript of the “Register of Wetherhall” may be read the full terms of a somewhat peculiar Cumberland case of excommunication and penance. Robert Highmore, Lord of Bewaldeth, had taken a mare, the property of John Overhouse of that place, as a heriot, before the church of Torpenhow had got the mortuary, and he was promptly punished in the orthodox way. Having quickly asked absolution, and restored the mare to Sir Robert Ellargill (for the parsons were always styled “Sir” in those days), vicar of Torpenhow, and by way of penance given the six best oaks in his wood, the Bishop absolved him. In some parts of the country the second best horse was due to the Church, and, says an old historian, “was carried, by the name of mortuary, or corse present, before the corpse, and delivered to the priest at the place of sepulture.” But in the diocese of Carlisle the Church was first served, and the lord only got the second best. Bishop Barrow, who ascended the episcopal throne at Carlisle in 1423, anathematized all men who took the heriot before “the Holy Kirke” got the mortuary. The punishment of excommunicating was far from being reserved for the lower orders. Quite a long story might be made of the part taken in this way, in the thirteenth century, by the Bishop of Carlisle, who excommunicated the Bishop of Dunkeld for refusing to pay the Pope’s tenth for the Holy Land.

When it became a matter of cursing wrong-doers, there was generally no tendency towards mincing words. Christian, Bishop of Glasgow, who became a professor of the Cistercian order, gave to the Abbey of Holme Cultram the grange of Kirkwinny. In this grant, quoted in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” the Bishop charged all men to protect and defend the grange, as they valued the blessing of God and of himself; threatening, if they did otherwise, that they should incur the papal excommunication, the curses of Almighty God and of himself, and the pains of eternal fire.

In 1361 several persons being accused of shedding blood in the church and churchyard of Bridekirk, were decreed to be excommunicated by the greater excommunication, and the incumbents of all the churches of the deanery of Allerdale were ordered to publish the sentence against them on every Sunday and holiday at high mass, when the largest number of people should be gathered together, the bells ringing, the candles lighted and put out, and the cross erected. The mother church of Greystoke being much out of repair, the belfry fallen, and the wooden shingles on the roof mostly scattered, and the inhabitants of Threlkeld and Watermillock refusing to contribute their proportion of the charge, the Bishop, at his visitation in 1382, issued his injunction “to all and every of them,” under pain of the greater excommunication—a proceeding which in those superstitious times no doubt quickly had the desired effect. Indeed no great provocation would seem to have been needed to bring the punishment of excommunication. Complaint having been made of some unknown persons riotously breaking into the houses and grange at Wet Sleddale, and committing disorders, a former Bishop issued his mandate to the Dean of Westmorland, and the local clergy, to denounce the greater excommunication at the time of high mass, the bells to ring, and the candles to be put out, against the rioters.

One of the vicars of Appleby St. Lawrence, Thomas de Burnley, was cited to York for neglecting to serve the chantry in Appleby Castle—doubtless the action was taken at the instigation of the Hereditary High Sheriff. On Burnley not appearing before the Judge of the Prerogative Court of the abbot and convent, he was excommunicated. The sentence was ordered to be read in the parish churches of St. Lawrence and St. Michael, Appleby, and in other churches and public places in the dioceses of Carlisle and York, every Sunday and holiday, so long as the abbot and convent required, or until he should comply and make satisfaction to the judge and parties. Burnley was not the only holder of his office who objected to the castle service, as Sir Walter Colwyn, who was appointed vicar of the parish forty years previously, was also sentenced (doubtless to be excommunicated) for “having endeavoured to throw the charges of serving the chantry in the castle upon the prior and convent of Wetheral.”

About the middle of the fourteenth century, Bishop Welton sent out his mandate to the rector of Brougham and another cleric to denounce the sentence of greater excommunication against certain unknown persons who had broken up a paved way and done some other outrages in the churchyard of Penrith, reserving to himself the sole power of absolution. Thereupon several of the inhabitants made a pilgrimage across country to Rose, confessed themselves guilty, and prayed for a remission of the heavy sentence. That was granted on condition of each man offering, by way of penance, a wax candle of three pounds weight, before the image of St. Mary in the parish church of Penrith on the following Sunday. In the same year the vicar of Penrith had a licence granted to him, to continue from March 8th to the Easter following, to hear the confessions of all his parishioners, and to give absolution upon the performance of penance injoined. Some exceptionally bad cases were, however, specially reserved by the Bishop. Persons who suffered from the ecclesiastical ban were deprived of the right of burial in the churchyard. Two cases of the kind are recorded in the Penrith registers for 1623. “August 29th, Lanc. Wood, being excommunicate, buried on the Fell. September 5th, Richd. Gibbon, being excommunicate, buried on the Fell.”