[78] Pearls are or used to be found in the shell-fish in the river Irt, on the west coast of Cumberland. It is much to be feared that there are very few now left.
[85] There is a tradition that this is one of the families which claim to wear a hat in the presence of Royalty.
[89] The Packington family.
[91] The history of Martha will remind some readers (though the facts are very different) of that of Mary Robinson, commonly called “The Beauty of Buttermere,” who was betrayed into a marriage by the notorious Hadfield, under the feigned name of Colonel Hope. Hadfield was a man of good birth and education, and was afterwards hanged for forgery. Mary died not long since, the mother of a large family, in a good old age, a subject of notoriety and curiosity to her dying day. Yet Robert Walker loved his dead Martha quite as much as his living Mary!