Penrith has suffered much in its time from wars and tumults, but it was afflicted in a dreadful manner by a great plague which almost depopulated the neighbourhood between September 1597 and January 1599, as an inscription in the church relates. In Penrith itself 2,260 people died, and in Kendal 2,500. The chief streets of the town have been much modernised, but some old landmarks reward the diligent. The “Prince Charles Restaurant,” a baker’s shop, occupies the mansion where the Young Pretender lodged, and some old Penrith merchants’ houses remain: notably one in Angel Lane, on whose front the old local passion for remembrance, that usually finds expression in dates, initials, and improving maxims, develops into family history and epitaph, as thus: This acquir^d by Rob^t Miers Merc^t, who was inter^d the 19^{th} of May 1722 His Wy^s Marg^t and Ann Sep^{br} ye 19 rebuilt in y^e y^r 1763 Sep^{br} ye 30 by W. M. This is mysterious, beyond hope of solution. On the building now an infants’ school is the inscription “WIL. ROBINSON, CIVISLONDANNO 1670,” oddly spaced, and over the entrance to an alley the initials “R. E. L. 1697,” with sculptured shears above; probably a relic of the Langhorn family, cloth-merchants, whose earliest memento in this sort is the inscription “T. E. L. 1584.” [Illustration: OLD DOORWAY, PENRITH.] XXIV [Sidenote: _TO CARLISLE_] The Boer War of 1899-1902 has left a wayside memorial at the approach to Penrith, and another, in the shape of a beautiful bronze statue, personifying Victory conferring honour upon the fallen, stands by Middlegate, as you leave for the north. “Scotland Road,” confronting you, indicates the not far distant Border, and then, at the “White Ox” inn, the ways divide: on the right the Old Carlisle Road, on the left the new. Very steep and rough goes the old road for one mile. Prince Charlie marched it, and has my heartfelt sympathy. After passing the “Inglewood” inn, which seems forlornly to wonder what has become of the traffic, it rejoins the existing highway—which runs along the traces of an ancient Roman road—at Stony Beck. To the left hand, near Plumpton station, are some traces of the Roman station of _Voreda_, known as Castlesteads, or Old Penrith. It has yielded many relics. Of the ancient Inglewood Forest, and the alarming wild boars that frequented it, there are no signs, and the road—as excellent a road as one would wish to find—goes with little incident away into Carlisle itself, the Petterill Brook on the left hand. The “Pack Horse” inn stands at the cross-road to Lazonby, where Salkeld toll-gate once stood, and then, two miles from High Hesket, on the left hand, rises the hill known suggestively as Thiefside: the thieves in question, no doubt, the old horse-thieves, cattle-raiders, and moss-trooping vagabonds of the Border. High Hesket is a tiny wayside village of the rough stone houses, generally whitewashed, that henceforward are the feature of