The Book of Coniston

by W. G. Collingwood

His son, Sir John, had three children. The daughter Joan married John le Towers of Lowick; his eldest son William died without children; and so Coniston Hall fell to the younger brother, Sir John, who lived there in Edward III.'s time, while Adam of Beaumont and his fellows were outlaws in the fells, and doubtless shot the Coniston deer. Sir John died in 1353, and was succeeded by Sir Richard, who married Catharine of Kirkby, and died about 1392. Of his three sons, Sir Thomas, the eldest, succeeded him. He married (1371) Margaret of Bardsey, then Elayn Laybourn (1390), and then his deceased wife's sister Isabel (1396). His elder son was Thomas, for whom in his childhood his father arranged a marriage with an heiress, Isabel de Lancaster. She brought Rydal into the family.

Up to this time the knights "le Fleming" had lived for 150 years at old Coniston Hall; during Sir Thomas' life (he died about 1481) the Hall seems to have been rebuilt, so far as can be gathered from the architecture of the remains. Part of his time he spent at Rydal, perhaps while rebuilding Coniston Hall.

After him there are no more knights "le Fleming," but a series of Squires Fleming, keeping up both the Coniston and Rydal Halls.

Squire John, son of Sir Thomas, was a retainer of the lord of Greystoke, a fighting man in the wars of the Roses. He married Joan Broughton, and his son John in 1484-5 moved to Rydal, leaving Coniston Hall as dower-house for his stepmother Anne. He died about 1532. His son Hugh lived at Coniston, and married Jane Huddleston of Millom Castle. He died in 1557, and his son Anthony died young; and so his grandson William succeeded him in the last year of Queen Mary.

West says:—"This William Fleming resided at Coniston Hall, which he enlarged and repaired, as some of the carving, bearing the date and initial letters of his and his lady's name, plainly shows; he died about 40 Elizabeth (1598), and was buried in Grasmere Church. The said William Fleming was a gentleman of great pomp and expence, by which he injured an opulent fortune; but his widow Agnes (a Bindloss of Borwick) surviving him about 33 years, and being a lady of extraordinary spirit and conduct, so much improved and advanced her family affairs, that she not only provided for, and married well, all her daughters, but also repurchased many things that had been sold off.... This Agnes established a younger branch of the family in the person of Daniel, her then second son. When her son John married and resided at Coniston Hall, she retired to Rydal Hall, where she died 16 August, 7 Car. I. (1641)."

There is a tradition that Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) visited at Coniston Hall. There used to be an old book with his name in it and "Fulke Greville is a good boy" scribbled in an antique hand on a fly-leaf. It is probable that Squire William, the "gentleman of great pomp," invited many visitors, especially young men of distinction, for hunting parties in his deer park; and Sidney is said to have stayed at Brougham Castle, so that he may well have been, once in a while, in the Lake District.

Dr. Gibson tells a legend, which he says he collected at Coniston, of Girt Will o' t' Tarns—"one of the Troutbeck giants." (Hugh Hird, the chief of them, flourished in this period.) Girt Will is represented as carrying off "the Lady Eva's" bowermaiden, and being caught and killed at Caldron Dub on Yewdale Beck (a little above the sawmills), where his grave was shown, still haunted, they said. There is no "Lady Eva" in the records, but (allowing for distortion) there may be a grain of truth in the story, if it really was a tradition.

Squire John lived at Coniston. He was twenty-three at his father's death. His first wife was Alice Duckett of Grayrigg (died 1617); his second, the widow of Sir Thomas Bold, and daughter of Sir William Norris of Speke, the famous old timbered hall near Liverpool. She died at Coniston Hall, and was buried in Coniston Church, which Squire William had built. His third was Dorothy Strickland of Sizergh, for whose sake he became a Roman Catholic at a time when Roman Catholics were persecuted; and consequently, after being J.P. and High Sheriff, he was heavily fined, and had to get a special licence to travel five miles from home. He had a turn for literature; we find in the Rydal letters one enclosing the latest playbook and (Massinger's new work) the Virgin Martir.

His son William was only fourteen at his father's death in 1643, and soon afterwards died of smallpox in London. Consequently the Hall went to his cousin William (son of the Daniel before mentioned), born there in 1610, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was one of Charles I.'s cavaliers, and suffered severely in pocket for his loyalty. He married Alice Kirkby in 1632, and died at the hall in 1653.