Derwentwater

“ Would that there might have been one so to act for Derwentwater! More happy had it been, perhaps, for his Countess had she never uttered the taunt that ended his hesitation to join in the Rebellion: "It is not fitting that the Earl of Derwentwater should continue to hide his head in hovels from the light of day, when the gentry are up in arms for their lawful sovereign." They say that her spirit mourns yet within the tower of Dilston.
Away up the valley of the Tyne, amongst the wild Northumberland hills, news went with lagging gait, those leisurely days of the eighteenth century ”

“ The bodies of the first three earls were, on 9 Oct. 1874, reinterred at Thorndon in Essex, in the family vault of Lord Petre as the representative of the Derwentwater family. The Countess of Derwentwater died in a convent at Brussels in 1723, aged 30, and was buried in the church of the English canonesses at Louvain. The extensive Derwentwater estates in Northumberland and Cumberland were in part settled upon Greenwich Hospital ”

“ Tidings, in those good old days, but trickled through from ear to ear, slowly, as water filters through sand. Little news, therefore, of Lord Derwentwater, or of the Rising, was heard in or around Haltwhistle after the insurgent force left Brampton; no man knew for a certainty what fortune, good or bad, had waited on the fortunes of his friends. ”

“ But the finest prospect is from a gate about halfway up the hill, whence you look down upon the head of Derwentwater, with all the alps of Borrowdale, opening darkly.
After descending Castle-rigg and crossing the top of St. John's vale, we seemed as going into banishment from society, the road then leading over a plain, closely surrounded by mountains so wild, that neither a cottage, or a wood soften their rudeness, and so steep and barren, that not even sheep appear upon their sides. ”

“ The vicinity to the lake itself would make this spot as a residence most attractive. I think I like Derwentwater more than any other of the lakes. The mountains all round are so bold and so diversified in form. You see them showing themselves one behind another, many tending to the pyramidal form, and their hues as varied as their shapes. Some are of that peculiar tawny, or lion color, which is so singular in its effect in the Scotch mountains of the south; others so softly and smoothly green; others so black and desolate. Some are so beautifully wooded, others so bare. ”

“ Lady Derwentwater clapped her hands and gave a little laugh of delight.
"I know," she said, and turned to me. "My husband is the most inveterate match-maker in the kingdom, Mr. Clavering. He is like any old maid that sits by the window planning matrimony for every couple that passes in the streets. ”

“ But these streams themselves, save while nameless becks, are not so familiar to Lakers—to use an obsolete term—as the Derwent, which, gathering size above Rossthwaite within a very short space, races down Borrowdale{148} into Derwentwater, a beautiful and lusty river. Indeed, the head of the Lake knows Derwent well: when raging down in flood from the rainiest watershed in England, to lift its surface over field and roadway. ”

“ Upon one such occasion, some three weeks after I had come to Blackladies, that is to say, about midway through August, Lord Derwentwater showed to me a portrait of his wife, newly painted and but that day brought to the house. I was much struck by the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and stooped to examine the signature.
"You will not know the name," said Lord Derwentwater. "The man is young and, as yet, of no repute—Anthony Herbert." ”

“ But very probably the ballad-maker supposed Derwentwater to have gone home after his less than six weeks in arms. As he is setting forth to obey the mandate, his wife calls to him from child-bed to make his will. This business does not delay him long: one third of his estate is to be his wife’s, and the rest to go to his children. (He had a son not two years old at the date of his execution, and a daughter who must have been born, at the earliest, not much before the rising. His very large estates first passed to the crown, and were afterwards bestowed on Greenwich hospital.) ”

“ At a former period this stream must have formed one large lake covering the whole area which includes Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite; between which a flat alluvial plain is formed of the deposits of the river Greta, which now joins the Derwent from the east immediately below Derwentwater, and the Newlands Beck, which enters Bassenthwaite. ”

“ On Derwentwater’s return to his beautiful Northumbrian seat in 1714, the death of Queen Anne had excited the hopes of all the friends of the house of Stuart, and plots and secret meetings were being planned throughout Scotland and the north of England, the objective being the restoration of the exiled Stuarts to the throne. Derwentwater took little part in these attempts to organise rebellion for some time, but at length was drawn into the dangerous game, as he was too valuable an asset to be passed over by the Jacobite party. ”

“ THE HERMIT OF DERWENTWATER.
AMONGST the beautiful isles of Derwentwater, that named St. Herbert's Island deserves a more than ordinary notice, as well for its beauty as its historical associations. This insulated paradise includes an extent of four or five acres, well covered with wood, and is situated near the centre of the lake. It obtained its name from St. Herbert, a priest and confessor, who, "to avoid the intercourse of man, and that nothing might withdraw his attention from unceasing mortification and prayer," about the middle of the 7th century, chose this island for his lonely abode. ”

“ Other witnesses were called, amongst them one or two Whig gentlemen who spoke to seeing Lady Derwentwater's portrait.
"You infer from that that I am a traitor?" said Herbert to the first.
"I thought it a strange thing an artist should come so far as to Keswick," he replied.
"But, my lord, is it a crime for a man to come to Keswick?" cried Herbert "I came thither for the landscapes."
"And therefore painted portraits!" sneered the judge.
"Nay, but a man must live," answered Herbert. ”

“ Work like a sea?'
Wordsworth did not write much referring to Derwentwater. It was not size so much as beauty that captivated his imagination. What little there is may well be passed over for the poems connected with Ullswater—that English Lake Lucerne—and Helvellyn. Three years after his marriage he visited these regions in a stormy November. Of this short tour he has left a journal, and to its credit we place several of his descriptive verses, notably 'The Pass of Kirkstone,' omitted in some editions of his works. ”

“ These two lakes are in a class apart from all the rest, being broader for their length, and quite shallow (about 18 ft. average and 70 ft. maximum) , as distinct from the long, narrow and deep troughs occupied by the other chief lakes, which average from 40 to 135 ft. deep. Derwentwater (q.v.) , studded with many islands, is perhaps the most beautiful of all. Borrowdale is joined on the east by the bare wild dale of Langstrath, and the Greta joins the Derwent immediately below Derwentwater; the town of Keswick lying near the junction. ”

“ In truth, I must have cut a sufficiently pitiable figure, for my dress was all fouled from head to foot, and my face, I have no doubt, the complement of my dress.
"The soldiers are after me," I gasped out.
"Ah! Jervas Rookley!" cried Lord Derwentwater, with a bang of his fist upon the table, the while his wife got me some brandy from a sideboard. "But I warned you, Lawrence! I warned you, when I caught sight of him in Keswick."
"I know," I answered. "But you did not warn me he was a traitor. All this while Jervas Rookley has been my steward at Blackladies." ”

“ He alighted at the Mitre, whither we presently saw Lord Kenmure, Mr. Forster, and Lord Widdrington making haste to join him; and in a little came a messenger to us seeking Lord Derwentwater. He was at the moment digging in a trench to deepen it, with his waistcoat off; and slipping on his clothes:
"Curse the fellow!" he cried, and so turned to me, "Lawrence! never trust a Tory! If you outlive this misfortune never speak to one! They are damned rogues in disguise. Here's Lord Widdrington, good tender man that cannot travel without his soup in a bottle! Curse the fellow! ”

“ Jervas Rookley was paying his attentions in that quarter at one time, and the girl deserves a better fate."
"Jervas Rookley?" said I, curiously. "You knew him, of course. What sort of a man was he?"
For a moment there was a pause.
"The honestest man in the world," replied Lord Derwentwater—"to look at. But there it ends. His honesty, Mr. Clavering, is all on the outside of him, like the virtues of a cinnamon tree. He should have been a sailor. ”

“ The fellow’s hammer fell as often on the Jacobite’s ankles as on the iron rivetted round them, and this cruelty brought a hasty word to Matthews’s lips, but he soon possessed his soul in patience again, and went the way to death in quiet submission. That death was more ignominious in its form than that suffered by more guilty and, socially, more noble, offenders. But the young Jacobite underwent his doom with all the dignity of Derwentwater, all the unostentatious and manly simplicity of Kenmure. ”

“ It faces across the lake the bloomy sweep of Place fell, and Helvellyn, with a tumult of hills around it, is also visible from its grounds. At the foot of its garden is the steamer pier. To me there seems little of anachronism about the Ullswater boats—I wonder why? At Windermere the yachts always seem out of sympathy; at Coniston this is glaringly so (such opinion does not prevent my using them when convenient) ; Derwentwater’s toy fleet plies between Portinscale and Lodore, from one palatial hotel to its neighbour. The boats here are more business-like. ”

“ In the year 1868, the Ministry and the Lords of the Admiralty, and the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital estates, were amused rather than alarmed by a401 claim made to the forfeited earldom of Derwentwater, and also to the confiscated estates. A sort of action was added to the latter claim, by taking possession of a portion of them, in the North. The claimant is an accomplished lady who has been long known by sympathising northern friends as Amelia Matilda, Countess of Derwentwater. ”

“ Another ravine in the cliff near by possesses a beautiful waterfall, but Barrow Cascade is on private ground and the free rambler can hardly be brought to see it. The head of Derwentwater is so grown with weed that a path has to be cut to allow boats to reach Lodore landings. Near here the once wonderful Floating Island anchors. A mat of vegetable fibre lying on the lake-bed at times becomes inflated with natural gas and rises to the surface. ”

“ In 1865 a woman appeared in Northumberland who claimed to be a grand-daughter of the 4th earl and, as there were no male heirs, to be countess of Derwentwater and owner of the estates. She said the 4th earl had not died in 1731 but had married and settled in Germany. ”

“ Another good way to see the beauties of the valley is to walk or cycle round. The road takes you to Crosthwaite church and over the meadows to Portinscale, then winds into the glen of Newlands. But just within, the way turns sharply, climbing up a corner of Catbells, running in a long slope down to Grange, Lodore, and so to the town again. Skiddaw, rather than Derwentwater, is the most prominent object as we leave Keswick northward. Just at present that mountain is empurpled with heather, its great flanks vivid with bloom and with the lighter green of bracken fronds. ”

“ Two spurious ballads on the death of Lord Derwentwater have been sometimes received as genuine: one by Allan Cunningham, first published in Cromek's Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 129, another (Lord Derwentwater's Goodnight) by Surtees, printed in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, ii. 31. Still another modern imitation is Young Ratcliffe, in Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 401.
There is a ballad on the disgraceful capitulation of Preston in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, ii. 102, also, Northumberland Garland, p. 85, beginning "Mackintosh was a soldier brave." ”

“ Passing over to Keswick we saw Derwentwater, and near it the Fall of Lodore. It was from Keswick that we made the excursion of a day through Borrowdale to Buttermere and Crummock Water, which I meant to speak of, but find it impossible at this moment. The mind does not now furnish congenial colors with which to represent the vision of that day: it must still wait in the mind and bide its time, again to emerge to outer air.
At Keswick we went to see a model of the Lake country which gives an excellent idea of the relative positions of all objects. ”

“ That act seemed to arouse the majority of the House to fury, as a red rag might excite the fierceness of a sufficiently angry bull. The terms in which it was written, and the epithets applied to those terms by Mr. Lechmere, stirred the Whig members as the alarm stirs the war-horse to dash forward whithersoever his rider would force him. In a burst of frenzy, the House voted, on the motion of Mr. Lechmere, the impeachment of James, Earl of Derwentwater and his six confederates, the Lords Kenmure, Nithsdale, Carnwath, Widdrington, Nairn, and Wintoun, for high treason. ”

“ By his own descendant, Lord Derwentwater is believed to have hesitated upon the verge of his fate, but to have been urged into it by his brother Charles. Young and ardent, courageous even to rashness, the first to offer himself where an enterprise was the most hazardous, seeming to set no value upon his life where glory was to be obtained, the darling of his party, and, to sum up the whole, only twenty-two years of age, Mr. ”