Lansmere

“ Then said Randal, gravely, “If one whom you honour with a tender thought visits at Lord Lansmere’s house, you have, indeed, cause to fear for yourself, to hope for your brother’s success in the object which has brought him to England; for a girl of surpassing beauty is a guest in Lord Lansmere’s house, and I will now tell you that that girl is she whom Count Peschiera would make his bride.” ”

“ These new recruits made a great difference in the muster-roll of the Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck contest, Mr Audley Egerton beat the Captain by two votes. And the names of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law, Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on the Squire's estate. ”

“ A Lansmere election puts one in mind of pistols. I once fought a duel with an officer in his Majesty’s service, R.N., and had a ball lodged in my right shoulder, on account of an election at Lansmere; but I have forgiven Audley his share in that transaction. Remember me to him kindly. Don’t get into a duel yourself; but I suppose manufacturers don’t fight,—not that I blame them for that—far from it.’”
The letter then ran on to express surprise, and hazard conjecture, as to the wealthy marriage which Randal had announced as a pleasing surprise to the squire. ”

“ Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton; and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley Lord L'Estrange was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by intermarriages to the loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere, nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a great proprietor, and rarely came to the metropolis ”

“ This visit made a notable epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative; but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances arose which, just as the canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest the borough. ”

“ In the second place, Lansmere is neither a rotten borough to be bought, nor a close borough, under one man’s nomination. It is a tolerably large constituency. My father, it is true, has considerable interest in it, but only what is called the legitimate influence of property. At all events, it is more secure than a contest for a larger town, more dignified than a seat for a smaller. Hesitating still? Even my mother entreats me to say how she desires you to renew that connection.”
“Harley,” again exclaimed Egerton ”

“ We call the large majority of human lives obscure. Presumptuous that we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?
CHAPTER XI. It was about a year after Leonard's discovery of the family manuscripts that Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad-mare in the squire's stables, and set out on an equestrian excursion. He said that he was bound on business connected with his old parishioners of Lansmere ”

“ LANCASTER CASTLE
“A TRADITION PREVAILS THAT THIS FORTRESS HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY TAKEN BY CROMWELL, AND THAT HE PLANTED HIS CANNON ON A CIRCULAR MOUNT AT THE SOUTH-WEST SIDE OF THE TOWN, ON HILL MEADOW.”—Baines’s History of Lancashire.
Well does Lancaster deserve the name which the Romans gave to it, of the green city; and the beautiful scenery, for many miles around, may be considered as its delightful gardens. There are no huge rocks frowning, like tyrants, in the country which they have ruined, and blighting with sickness and poverty, all that is healthful and rich. ”

“ Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants. ”

“ The impending final struggle between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster would probably not excite any very great interest in the minds of the people of this county, except that they had again been called upon to find men for Lord Stanley’s army, which the King had commissioned him to raise in the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire; this force is supposed to have been about 5,000 strong, and it virtually decided the battle, as Lord Stanley, on the field, turned against the King, and led his troops to the support of Richmond. ”

“ There are still some few traces of the Roman antiquity of Lancaster, in the castle—the castle on the river Lune, that gave the place its name—but it is in Norman and mediæval circumstances that it chiefly figures. The castle, the very beginning and origin of Lancaster, stands on a bold hill rising above the Lune in so convenient a situation for defence that Nature might almost111 have thoughtfully provided it for the purpose, and represents the stronghold built by Roger of Poictou, who held all Lancashire from William the Conqueror. ”

“ The Crusaders also had many followers from this county, whilst for the wars with France and Scotland writ followed writ in quick succession, all calling for men and arms. And again in the fifteenth century the drain continued to be heavy, and culminated with the War of the Roses, which began in 1455. None of the battles between the Houses of York and Lancaster were fought within this county, but during the struggle Lancashire must have sent some of her bravest sons to perish in that ignoble strife between the roses red and white. ”

“ Stories of headless beings may be found in the lore of most countries of Europe, and are of the same class as those of the men, women and horses 'beawt yeds,' common to the hilly districts of both North and South Lancashire. As a general rule, in South Lancashire, the head is not seen at all, whereas in the northern part of the county the spectre almost invariably carries it under the left arm, as is done by the wandering beings in similar Danish stories. ”

“ In the several lulls in that civil war, when a Lancastrian and a Yorkist met by chance and talked politics, the former would say: John of Gaunt was the fourth son of Edward III. while your Edmund of York was the fifth, and thus Lancaster takes precedence. Softly my good Sir, replies the Yorkist: Richard of Cambridge married Anne Mortimer. The Lancastrian responds with the hyperbole that it is not worth{198} while to go back to king Arthur. They touch their hats and bid each other good morning, or what is quite as likely, draw their swords and fight. ”

“ The subsequent wars between Alfred the Great and the Danes belong more to the general history of England; it will suffice here to state that in 878 was concluded the treaty of peace known as “Alfred and Guthrum’s Peace,” whereby the Danish settlers were recognised and the land on the east and north of Watling Street given up to them, that is, nearly all the east side of England from the Thames to the Tweed, where they were to be independent dwellers, with their own laws and institutions.41 Thus, almost the whole of Lancashire was left to the Danish invaders ”

“ But this, though the modern reality of South Lancashire, is not what the tourist [83] goes out to see. From Liverpool to Furness Abbey is his natural and joyful route. He steams at full speed up this richest, most prosperous, and well-nigh most unattractive part of England; he has left the Mersey, the county's southern boundary, far behind; he crosses the Ribble, which flows through the centre of Lancashire, and the Lune, which enters it from Westmoreland on the north and soon empties into Morecambe Bay. ”

“ The soil is a fertile loam, under corn and green crops and old pasture. Lancaster is the county town, but the largest towns are Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, and Blackburn. The northern portion, detached by Morecambe Bay, is known as Furness, belongs really to the Lake District, and has Barrow-in-Furness, with its large shipbuilding concerns, for its chief town. Lancashire has long been an influential political centre. ”

“ We now find ourselves on the eve of those domestic struggles which ever since have been known as the Civil Wars, and in which Lancashire was destined to play no small part. At this time most of the old castles and fortresses had long ago been allowed to fall into disuse and ruin, but there still remained tenable the castles at Lancaster, Clitheroe, Greenhaugh and Liverpool, and the smaller fortified houses of Thurland, Hoghton, Latham and Greenhaugh, all of which were utilized to the utmost. ”

“ But in considering this question it must be borne in mind that in what we call184 Lancashire there were at that time no large towns, nor even any number of considerable–sized villages; the inhabitants were mostly engaged in agricultural pursuits, and the religious requirements were administered from York. In Yorkshire and other parts of ancient Northumbria we know that churches and monasteries had been so long established that into the latter many abuses had been introduced even as early as A.D. 732, but we have no evidence to lead us to suppose that such was the case in Lancashire. ”

“ In the middle of the eleventh century, on the reliable testimony of the so–called Domesday Survey, we have positive evidence that in Lancashire there were then at least a dozen churches; however many more were left unnoticed, or had existed and been destroyed by the ravages of the Danes, we can only conjecture, but there are not wanting indications in that direction which leave little room for doubt that, at all events, some half–dozen others are wanting to complete the list. ”

“ To the Old Chilternians it embodies the social ideas and customs with which they grew up; and to the boys themselves, if it means anything more than a name, it represents a certain immutability and fixity of things, an as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be attitude towards life that appeals to their best conservative instincts. Any change in the hour of a lesson or the colour of a ribbon is regarded as an outrage on the Lanchester tradition, and is popularly supposed to make the dead hero turn in his grave. ”

“ FOR many of the superstitions which still cling to him the Lancashire man of the present day is indebted to his Celtic and Scandinavian ancestors. From them the Horse and Worm stories, and the Giant lore of the northern and southern mountains and fells, have come down, while the relationship of the 'Jinny Greenteeth,' the presiding nymph of the ponds and streams, with allusions to whom the Lancastrian mother strives to deter her little ones from venturing near the pits and brooks; to the water-spirits of the Gothic mythology, is too evident to admit of any doubt. ”

“ Murray in his guide-book speaks of Lancashire as a county abounding in ancient black-and-white houses, and places it at the head of all others. Cheshire, however, must have many more, and of course, as far as the towns are concerned, there can be no comparison in antique relics. There are in Lancashire now twelve boroughs, with mayors and corporations, and though Lancaster is rather picturesque, it may be fairly said that the character of these corporate towns is dreariness. ”

“ From Yorkshire, about the close of the seventeenth century, the rage for Scripture names passed into Lancashire. Nonconformity was making progress; the new industries were already turning villages into small centres of population, and the Church of England not providing for the increase, chapels were built. If we look over the pages of the directories of West Yorkshire and East Lancashire, and strike out the surnames, we could imagine we were consulting anciently inscribed registers of Joppa or Jericho. ”

“ Our peasantry retain the notion so prevalent in North Germany, that the Night-mare is a demon, which sometimes takes the form of a cat or a dog, and they seek to counteract its influence by placing their shoes under the bed with the toes outwards, on retiring to rest.
The Water Sprites, believed in by our ancestors in the north of England, still form a portion of the folk-lore of Lancashire and Yorkshire. There is scarcely a stream of any magnitude in either county which does not possess a [90] presiding spirit in some part of its course. ”

“ He would have no half-gods, this blunt, absorbed business-man of the land. Thorough as he was in every detail of his work, he carried the same demand for perfection even to his private, human joy. It had always been said of the Lancasters that they would have the best—the best stuff, the best workmen, the best methods, no matter at what cost. And the last Lancaster of all added that, in little things like love and marriage, he would also have the best—or go wanting them.
He had had a very pleasant day in Manchester. ”