He had a lot to tell us about Furness Abbey. He knew that it had been built by King Stephen, and he said that not far from it there was a park called Oxen Park, where the king kept his oxen, and that he had also a Stirk Park.
He asked us if we had seen the small and very old church of Cartmel Fell, and when we told him we had not, he said that travellers who did not know its whereabouts often missed seeing it, for, although not far from the road, it was hidden from view by a bank or small mound, and there was a legend that some traveller, saint, or hermit who slept on the bank dreamed that he must build a church between two rivers running in opposite directions. He travelled all the world over, but could not find any place where the rivers ran in opposite directions, so he came back disappointed, only to find the rivers were quite near the place he started from. The church was of remote antiquity, and was dedicated to St. Anthony, the patron saint of wild boars and of wild beasts generally; but who built the church, and where the rivers were to be found, did not transpire.
We had carried our mackintoshes all the way from John o' Groat's, and they had done us good service; but the time had now arrived when they had become comparatively useless, so, after thanking the keeper of the tollhouse for allowing us to shelter there, we left them with him as relics of the past. The great objection to these waterproofs was that though they prevented the moisture coming inwards, they also prevented it going outwards, and the heat and perspiration generated by the exertion of walking soon caused us to be as wet as if we had worn no protection at all. Of course we always avoided standing in a cold wind or sitting in a cold room, and latterly we had preferred getting wet through to wearing them.
We arrived in Kendal in good time, and stayed at the temperance hotel. In the town we purchased two strong but rather rustic-looking umbrellas, without tassels or gold or silver handles—for umbrellas in the rainy region of the "North Countrie" were wanted for use and not for ornament. We found them quite an agreeable change from the overalls. Of course we held them up skilfully, and as we thought almost scientifically, when walking in the rain, and it was astonishing how well they protected us when holding them towards the same side and angle as the falling rain. Many people we met were holding them straight up, and looking quite happy, reminding us of the ostrich when hunted and hard pressed, hiding its head in the sand and imagining that its body was covered also! The draper who sold us the umbrellas told us that Professor Kirk, whom we had heard in Edinburgh, was to deliver an address in the evening on the Good Templar Movement, so we decided to attend. The Professor, a good speaker, informed us that there were between five and six hundred members of the Order in Kendal. Mr. Edward Dawson of Lancaster also addressed the meeting, and told us there were about three hundred members in Lancaster, while the Professor estimated the number in Scotland at between fifty and sixty thousand. It was quite a new movement, which had its origin apparently in America, and was becoming the prevailing subject of conversation in the country we travelled through.
KENDAL CASTLE.
Kendal was an ancient place, having been made a market town by licence from Richard Coeur de Lion. Philippa, the Queen of Edward III, wisely invited some Flemings to settle there and establish the manufacture of woollen cloth, which they did. Robin Hood and his "merrie men" were said to have been clothed in Kendal Green, a kind of leafy green which made the wearers of it scarcely distinguishable from the foliage and vegetation of the forests which in Robin Hood's time covered the greater part of the country. Lincoln Green was an older cloth of pure English manufacture.
Robin Hood was the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, and Shakespeare makes Falstaff say—
All the woods
Are full of outlaws that in Kendal Green