Under him and Craik Grasmere must, indeed, have slumbered spiritually. How could it be otherwise? But by this time Craik was dead, after being rector for sixty-three years--surely a record term for a lunatic! In the same year, 1806, Sir Michael le Fleming, the patron who had never exercised his rights, died likewise. His widow, Lady Diana, nominated as rector the Rev. Thomas Jackson. With him the long record of absentee rectors was broken. He is said to have sprung from a family of dalesfolk. He united, like some early predecessors, his spiritual office with a temporal one, and acted as "clerk" or agent to his patron. With his assistance, the heiress and Lady of Rydal Hall freed her estate from debt, bought the ruinous homesteads of the village, and replaced them by pretty cottages. Jackson was successful also with his own affairs, and left a good deal of property at his death, including Harry Place in Langdale, Tail End in Grasmere, Brow Head in Loughrigg, and Waterhead on Windermere. He lived, it is said, at Harry Place, and on most days rode his pony (according to the report of old Langdale folk) over the fell to Grasmere or Rydal Hall. It is well known that the rectory was let to the poet Wordsworth. The premises had been sadly neglected, the wardens having, in 1798, "presented" the "Rectory-House, Barn, and out-Houses" as being in "a ruinous state," but the new rector was too good a business man to leave them in that condition. Dorothy Wordsworth writes (May 11th, 1810) that Mr. Jackson is willing to make the Parsonage comfortable, and will contrive a good library out of part of the barn. Later (June, 1811), she says, "There is an oblong 4-cornered court before the door, surrounded by ugly white walls."[169] [169] _Letters of the Wordsworth Family._