The English LakesBradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
History
The English Lakes
Bradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
Lake District (England)
made him probably a richer man than Southey, even apart from his belated
earnings.
[Illustration: BASSENTHWAITE LAKE AND SKIDDAW]
A striking picture, too, is this ancient church of St. Kentigern planted
in the level vale--the Derwent chanting in its rocky bed upon the one
hand, and Skiddaw lifting its three thousand feet upon the other, with
Bassenthwaite opening not far below its broad and shining breast. Fate
has laid the bones of many a man and woman of some modest fame in their
day beneath the heaving turf of this picturesque crowded graveyard,
caught unawares, some of them, while temporary sojourners in a country,
whose beauty drew hither two or three generations of pilgrims, before
facilities of transport made the achievement the simple one it is for
us. Within the church, however, a monument to John Radcliffe, the second
Earl of Derwentwater, father of that ill-fated young man who lost his
head and the vast estates of the family in the 'Fifteen, husband, too,
of Charles the Second's daughter by the Duchess of Cleveland, strikes an
earlier and more genuinely local note. The original nest of the
Radcliffes was on Lord's Island, one of those near the foot of the lake,
and its foundations may still be traced; but they acquired their chief
consequence through wealthy Northumbrian heiresses. The Keswick property
remained with them till the confiscation; but it is with the ruined
towers of Dilston, near Hexham, rather than the land of their origin and
their title that the memory of the Radcliffes will be chiefly
associated. So one must not linger here over the story, rather a
pathetic one, in fact, how the young peer of 1715, admirable in every
relation of life, with youth, a happy marriage, and an immense property
all to his credit, was drawn into the rising against his better
judgment, to become its chief victim. Forced by a train of circumstances
and by an almost morbid sense of honour, as a near relative of the
exiled house, to join the ill-concerted scheme, in which he had not even
been consulted, since his name only was wanted, his fate was a hard one,
and he was duly mourned on both the Western and the Eastern march.
"O Derwentwater's a bonny lord,
Fu' yellow is his hair,
And glinting is his hawky 'ee
Wi' kind love dwalling there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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