I shall notice hereafter. Meanwhile I may attempt a description of it as seen in our own time.

It is one of the smallest market towns in the kingdom, consisting of about eighty houses and about four hundred inhabitants. Its appearance is pretty accurately described by "A Gentleman," who made and published A Tour from London to the Lakes in 1791:-" A small market town, "where the houses seem as if they had been dancing a country dance, but, being all out, had stood still where "the dance ended." That it is little altered in seventy years may be inferred from the following quatrain by a resident rhymer, not much known, describing its present appearance:

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A quaint old town is Hawkshead and an ancient look it bears.
Its church, its school, its dwellings, its streets, its lanes and squares

Are all irregularities-all angles, twists and crooks,

With penthouses and gables over archways, wents and nooks.

Its squares are two, one of which may be called a square with all propriety. The other would defy a more able mathematician than I to define its figure. Of streets, accurately speaking, it possesses one, of varying contour, and width frequently and awkwardly encroached upon by gabled shops standing out at right angles to the roadway and houses, by aggressive corners, and by low upper stories projected far beyond the foundation line of the buildings. For the paucity of streets in Hawkshead, however, we are more than compensated by the number of its lanes, entries, wents, passages and nooks." The most important of these last is called Grandy nook—that is, Grandmother's corner-the way through which, though it affords the only access to the parsonage and some other residences, has long offered a puzzle to the drivers of even single-horsed vehicles. Altogether it is not easy to imagine a town laid out in a more eccentric manner, or the same number of houses shaken or huddled together with less regard to order, arrangement or convenience; nor is it possible

to conceive anything more angularly irregular than its ground plan, or more rudely picturesque than the outlines of its walls, chimneys and roofs.

The situation of Hawkshead is singularly pleasant and cheerful. It lies at a short distance from the head of Esthwaite lake, on the north-western side of a fine valley, open to the north-east and south-west, and bounded on the western side by a long range of elevated moorlands, which separate it from the vales of Coniston, Grizedale and Dalepark; and on the east by a shorter extent of similar heights, dividing it from a part of Windermere.

The town has immediately on its western side a curious but very beautiful accumulation of glacier-formed hummocks (moraines), locally called "Hows." Equally immediately to the east it has the broad green meadows which form part of the floor of Esthwaite vale, and, becoming marshy near the lake, justify Drunken Barnaby in calling them Hawkshead's "marish pasture."

Notwithstanding its lack of shelter, or perhaps in consequence of the free sweep of the winds preventing the stagnation of vapours, miasmatic or otherwise, Hawkshead is remarkably salubrious, the death rate of the whole parish being under one per cent. per annum, or considerably less than one half the average rate of the whole kingdom.*

Instances of longevity are not infrequent, for octogenarians have been numerous, and nonogenarians not singular there. Of what the ratio of increase might be, were it not for emigration and other reducing causes, we may judge by the case of Prudence Nicholson, an old lady of eighty-two, who boasts a living progeny equal in numbers to the years of her life; and the case of another has been quoted, whose descendants at her death numbered 119.

It has, however, of late years been visited with low fever of a mild type, occasioned, as is supposed, by the frequent inundation of the meadows.

Its name is stated by Mr. Ferguson to be derived from Hawkr, a Scandinavian proper name; while the late Dr. Whitaker, Vicar of Blackburn, who had a residence here, told me that it, as well as the local family name of Hawkrigg, must bear some reference to falconry. Like more of the reverend doctor's local etymologies, this derivation can hardly be accepted.

I incline to the opinion that Mr. Ferguson may be right. It is very possible that some old Norse settler named Hawkr, or Auk, once possessed a hide of land there, and so left his name to the spot.

Hawskshead may fairly lay claim to a very respectable antiquity. There is reason to believe that it was a community and a chapelry at a date considerably anterior to the Norman Conquest. In the earliest annals of Furness Abbey we find it referred to as a place even then of some standing and importance, as I shall shew when I treat of its ecclesiastical and manorial affairs.

Perhaps the most interesting circumstance in the history of Hawkshead is that it was one of the stations selected for the mustering of recruits in that futile rising of 40,000 men called "The Pilgrimage of Grace" in 1537, which, as may be remembered, was instigated chiefly by the heads of the large religious houses after the smaller communities had been suppressed. Robert Aske, a gentleman of East Yorkshire, was the military chief of this insurrection; and his proclamation addressed to the people of Hawkshead ran as follows:

To the Commyns of Hawkside Parish, Bailiffs or Constables, with
all the Hamletts of the same.

Wel beloved, we greet you well; and whereas our brother Poverty, and our brother Roger goith forward, is openly for the aide and assistance of your faith and holy Church, and for the reformation of such abbeys and monasteries, now dissolved and suppressed without any just cause. Wherefore gudde brethers, forasmuch as our sayd brederyn hath send to us for aide and helpe, wee do not only effectually desire you, but also under the paine of

deadly sinne we commande you and every of you

to be at the stoke green beside Hawkside Kirke, the Saturday next, being the xxviii day of October by xi of the clock in your best array; as you shall make answer before the heigh judge at the Dreadfull Day of Dome; and in the payne of pulling downe your houses, and leasing of your gudds, and your bodies to be at the Capteyn's will: for at the place aforesaid, then and there yee and wee shall take further directions concerning our faith, so farre decayed, and for gudde and laudable customes of the country and such naughty inventions and strange articles now accepted and admitted, so that our said brother bee subdued, they are lyke to go furtherwards to utter undoing of the Comynwealth.

"Our brother Poverty," named in this not very intelligible document, was a fisherman of Hawkshead, probably the leader of its contingent, who served as one of Aske's captains under the self-conferred title of the Earl of Poverty. "Our brother

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Roger" was most probably Roger Pele, the last Abbot of Furness, who afterwards succeeded, by a somewhat abject submission, in making terms with the government, and so escaped the terrible fate of his neighbour abbots of Whalley and Salley, accepting the rectory of Dalton as compensation for the loss of his abbey. It is therefore probable his share in The Pilgrimage of Grace was condoned or overlooked by the authorities.

This is the only instance on record wherein Hawkshead has been honoured by having its name made prominent in a matter of national importance. Of its internal and domestic affairs we gain some curious glimpses from its Parish Register, in which, from its commencement in 1568 to the end of the next century, the clergymen seem to have recorded everything that occurred in the parish that was at all remarkable or uncommon. I give a few of these entries as being interesting, if meagre, sketches of the state of society in a little secluded community two hundred years ago. The first has a considerably earlier date.

L

1577, November.-In this month began the pestilent sickness in this p-ishe, which was brought in by one George Barwicke, whereof is deceased-those yt are thus markt* [The number of burials so marked is thirty-eight, the same mark being prefixed to this entry.] *Anthony Dixson buried in Langdale last day of September and taken up again and brought to Hawkshead the XI day of January.

This is worthy of notice as a singular violation of a rule, if not a law, that forbade the disinterment of one who had died of plague, which, as the asterisk indicates, had been this man's fate.

Another entry fixes the age of the Friends' burial ground, which still exists at a short distance from the town.

1658 ffeb XI.-To day, one Agnes the wife of Edward Rigge de Hye Wray a Quaker which was buryet at Coulthouse in George Braithwaite's parke (?) the same being an intended burying place for that sect and she the first corps which was layde therein.

The next is somewhat ghastly in its details.

1664 Aprill ye 4th-That there was a man drownd in Thirston water which was found casten upp att the Waterhead neare the yeate on the high waye who had layde soe long in the sayde water until the haire was com of his head, and his face was soe eaten and disfigured with fyshes, he beinge a stranger and not known by any was brought here to Hawkshead Church by a horse on a carr and buryed in his close in the church yard at the north syde of the schoole the day and year first mentioned and expressed. In a former paper I called attention to the fact that serf dom was abolished in the north of England by the monks of Furness and other similar foundations at a very early period. A memorandum written at the beginning of the Hawkshead

+ The ancient name of Coniston lake.