But the old order, long decrepit, was soon to be wiped out. Strangers were pressing into the remote valley, which Gray had found in 1769 without one single gentleman's residence. Not only poets and literary men began to settle in it, but rich men from cities, who bought up the old holdings of statesmen and built "mansions" upon them. These men demanded accommodation in the old parish church of a kind befitting their notions of dignity. Opposition seems to have been made to their demands. It is not quite easy to discover, from the account given in the churchwardens' book of the meetings held about the matter in 1856 and 1857, where the difficulty lay. We may surmise, however, that while the seats in the Grasmere division of the church were full to overflowing, those belonging to the other townships would be often vacant, since not only the old Chapels of Ambleside and Langdale were in use for regular worship and communion, but new ones were built for Rydal and Brathay. It is possible that an attempt to sweep away the traditional divisions and put Grasmere folk in Langdale or Loughrigg seats produced the dead-lock we read of. At all events, a vestry meeting was held on July 24th, 1856, with the Rev. Sir Richard Fleming in the chair, "to consider the propriety of making such an arrangement with respect to the free and open sittings in the church as may conduce to the general convenience of the inhabitants; and preparatory to an allotment by the churchwardens of such free and open Sittings among the parishioners in proportion to their several requirements, due regard being had to all customary Sittings and to the rights of persons, having property in pews." This proposal was made by Mr. Tremenhere and seconded by Captain Philipps, both new-comers, though the latter (who had opened the Hydropathic Establishment at the Wray) seems to have been chosen as one of the Eighteen; and it was promptly negatived by a majority of nineteen to four. Mr. Thomas H. Marshall, another new resident, at whose instigation the matter had been begun, persisted in it however; and the two wardens for Grasmere agreed to take lawyer's counsel as to their action in carrying out a Faculty already procured, and for which they paid Dr. Twiss £3. 6s. This counsel is not very clear, but paragraph ii. of its text is of interest: "I think that the appropriation of any number of pews in a Mass to the separate townships, so as to exclude permanently the Inhabitants of the parish in general from the use of them, would be a proceeding in contradiction to the express provisions of the Faculty. The Faculty must be taken to have superseded any antecedent custom under which pews in a mass were appropriated to separate townships. I think it is the duty of the Churchwardens to assign to such parishioners as shall apply from time to time, indiscriminately as regards the townships, pews or seats, as the case may be, among the free and open sittings." Again, after expressing his opinion that the burden of the church rate should fall on the inhabitants in general, he speaks of "the custom for the townships to repair their own portions of the Church applied to the Church in the state in which it was, and under the exceptional arrangements of the Sittings which existed prior to the issuing of the Faculty.... The manner of collecting the rate by the officers of the townships may still hold good, but the rule of assessment must, I think, be derived from the general law."
The Archdeacon was likewise applied to by Mr. Marshall and Mr. Stephen Heelis, a lawyer from Manchester, who had bought a holding at Above Beck, and had built himself a house there. He was an able man, and at once took a prominent part in the proceedings. He was made churchwarden for Grasmere, and with his colleague, William Wilson, set to work in 1857 upon the unrestricted allotment of seats countenanced by the authorities. This was the end of the individual shares held by the townships in the fabric of the old mother church; it was the end of the Eighteen who had represented the township; it was an end, likewise, of the general church rate for which those Eighteen stood responsible; since it was manifestly unfair to tax those whose rights had been taken away. Langdale fell away, and the Brathay part of Loughrigg, and Ambleside-above-Stock. The rate of 11⁄2 d. in the £ on property, which the wardens proceeded to levy on the whole of the parishioners, was responded to for the last time in 1858, when Ambleside paid £7, Rydal and Loughrigg £10 17s. 10d., and Langdale £8 6s. 3d., to Grasmere's £13 14s. 111⁄4 d. The little division of Rydal with part of Loughrigg was indeed, by dint of its being dubbed a chapelry, held yet a little longer in the grasp of the old church; four statesmen and one warden were allowed her in return for the rate she continued to pay. This she seems at first to have paid equally with Grasmere, and in 1859 she contributed the high figure of £15 0s. 101⁄2 d. towards the expenses of the church. In 1861 she paid £13 5s. 11⁄2 d. By 1866, however, the rate to supply the immensely increased expenses of worship had become a burden, even to Grasmere folk. A voluntary rate took its place, and Rydal contributed its unspecified portion to this for the last time in 1870. The offertory that then superseded all rates, paid only by worshippers, was an immediate success.
In 1879, when the volume of accounts closes, the year's expenditure stands at £155 14s. 1d.
[NON-RATEPAYERS]
The religious factions—whether Baptist, Anabaptist, Independent or Presbyterian—that had sprung up during the Commonwealth left behind them no vital seeds of dissent in the wide parish of Grasmere, although the two last had in turn held the rectorate and the pulpit. As soon, indeed, as the Episcopal Church was restored, along with the Monarchy, the people returned with apparently a willing mind, and almost unanimously, to the old order of worship.
There was an exception, however, to be found in the Quakers, who were firm in refusing to re-enter the Church. George Fox, wandering on foot like an old Celtic missionary, had made his appearance in these parts in 1653, and at once his preaching (which mirrored his mystic and simple mind), united with a magnetic personality, had secured him a following. His teaching discountenanced all creeds, forms, and ritual. His meetings were, therefore, held in private houses; and so much abhorred by his followers was the "steeple-house" with its consecrated ground, as well as any fixed form of service (even the Office for the Burial of the Dead), that they often laid their dead in silence in their own garden-ground, rather than carry them to the church.
As the little band grew larger, a plot of ground was, however, secured as early as 1658 at Colthouse, near Hawkshead, in Lancashire, as a graveyard[187]; and in that neighbourhood, where they built a meeting-house in 1688,[188] they became numerous and active; and on the Westmorland side of the Brathay—in Langdale and in Loughrigg more especially—George Fox also found adherents. In particular, Francis Benson, freeholder of the Fold, of a wealthy family of clothiers, and an influential man who served as Presbyterian elder in 1646, became his follower; and remained so through the persecutions. He received Fox into his house, even when the preacher had become a marked man. Fox's Journal, after recording his Keswick preachings in 1663, runs on:—
We went that night to one Francis Benson's in Westmorland; near Justice Fleming's House. This Justice Fleming was at that time in a great Rage against Friends, and me in particular; insomuch that in the open Sessions at Kendal just before, he had bid Five Pounds to any Man, that should take me; that Francis Benson told me. And it seems as I went to this Friend's House, I met one Man coming from the Sessions, that had this Five Pounds offered him to take me, and he knew me; for as I passed by him, he said to his Companion, That is George Fox: Yet he had not power to touch me: for the Lord's power preserved me over all.