C. Bell’s Rhymes of Northern Bards, 1812, p. 225, three stanzas.
D. ‘Lord Derntwater,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 323.
E. ‘Lord Derwentwater,’ Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, XI, 499.
F. ‘Lord Arnwaters,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 478.
G. ‘Lord Dunwaters,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 126.
H. ‘Lord Derwentwater’s Death,’ Shropshire Folk-Lore, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne, p. 537.
I. The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xcv, 1825, Part First, p. 489.
Three stanzas of this ballad were printed in 1812 (C). I followed in 1825, a full copy, which would have been a very good one had it been given as taken down, and not restored “to something like poetical propriety.”[[86]] The editor of the “old song” observes that it was one of the most popular in the north of England for a long period after the event which it records, and a glance at what is here brought together will show that the ballad was at least equally popular in Scotland. I is repeated in Richardson’s Borderer’s Table-Book, VI, 291, and in Harland and Wilkinson’s Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, 1882, p. 265. Mr J. H. Dixon, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, XI, 389, says that the ballad “originally appeared in the Town and Country Magazine.”
‘Lord Derwentwater’s Goodnight,’ Hogg’s Jacobite Relics, II, 30, 268, was both communicated and composed by Robert Surtees. ‘Derwentwater,’ Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, p. 127, is from the pen of Allan Cunningham. It is repeated in Hogg’s Jacobite Relics, 1821, II, 28, and in Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, 1825, III, 192, etc.; also in Kinloch MSS, V, 413, with two lines to fill out an eighth stanza. (Translated by Loève-Veimars, p. 375.) ‘Young Ratcliffe,’ Sheldon’s Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 400, is another ballad of the same class.
James Ratcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, being suspected or known to be engaged in concerting a rising in the north of England in behalf of the Pretender, a warrant was issued by the Secretary of State for his apprehension, towards the end of September, 1715. Hereupon he took arms, and he was one of the fifteen hundred English and Scots who were forced to an inglorious surrender at Preston, November 14. The more distinguished prisoners were conveyed to London, where they had a boisterous reception from the mob. Derwentwater was committed to the Tower, December 9; was impeached of high treason, and pleaded guilty, in January; was sentenced to death, February 9, at Westminster Hall, and was executed February 24 (1716). In a paper which he read from the scaffold he stated that he had regarded his plea of guilty as a formality consequent upon his “having submitted to mercy,” and declared that he had never had “any other but King James the Third for his rightful and lawful sovereign.”