WESTMORLAND ABOUT 1670 BY COLIN PHILLIPS Topography and climate This volume prints four documents relating to the hearth tax in Westmorland1. It is important to set these documents in their geographical context. Westmorland, until 1974 was one of England’s ancient counties when it became part of Cumbria. The boundaries are shown on map 1.2 Celia Fiennes’s view in 1698 of ‘…Rich land in the bottoms, as one may call them considering the vast hills above them on all sides…’ was more positive than that of Daniel Defoe who, in 1724, considered Westmorland ‘A country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales it self. ’ It was a county of stark topographical contrasts, fringed by long and deep waters of the Lake District, bisected by mountains with high and wild fells. Communications were difficult: Helvellyn, Harter Fell, Shap Fell and the Langdale Fells prevented easy cross-county movement, although there were in the seventeenth century three routes identified with Kirkstone, Shap, and Grayrigg.3 Yet there were more fertile lowland areas and 1 TNA, Exchequer, lay subsidy rolls, E179/195/73, compiled for the Michaelmas 1670 collection, and including Kendal borough. The document was printed as extracts in W. Farrer, Records relating to the barony of Kendale, ed. J. F. Curwen (CWAAS, Record Series, 4 & 5 1923, 1924; reprinted 1998, 1999); and, without the exempt, in The later records relating to north Westmorland, ed. J. F. Curwen (CWAAS, Record Series, 8, 1932); WD/Ry, box 28, Ms R, pp.1-112, for Westmorland, dated 1674/5, and excluding Kendal borough and Kirkland (heavily edited in J. Scott, The Westmorland hearth tax, ed. N. Ramsden (Cumbria Family History Society 1998); and two documents from CROK, Kendal Corporation Archives, WS/MB/K, HMC bdles, A9, dated 1674/5 and 1675 for Kendal and Kirkland. 2 Though subject to minor alteration in 1895 and 1911 (F. A. Youngs, Guide to the local administrative units of England. Vol. 2: northern England (London, 1991), p. 462), the boundaries are conveniently marked on Ordnance Survey, ‘One inch map’, seventh series, sheets 79, 82, 83, 84, and 90. 3 Fleming-Senhouse papers, ed. E. Hughes (Cumberland Record Series, 2, 1961), p. 4. 1 valleys, especially the catchment of the River Kent to the south of the central mountains, and to the north the valley of the Eden. 4 Structural geology and glaciation have combined to divide much of the county into highland tops and valley bottoms, and complicate any relationship between solid geology and soil formation. Before the glaciations of the Quaternary period started, the central dome of the Lake District, involving the western side of the county, and the faulting, which helped to produce the Pennine scarps in the east of the county, had created the drainage pattern. Glacial erosion, and perhaps more importantly, glacial deposits and alluvial deposition, modified these fundamental structures. Where the ground became waterlogged, peat developed at both low and high altitudes.5 The solid geology of the Ordovician, Silurian, and Carboniferous strata give abundant rough stone for building, with the Permo-Triassic rocks in the Eden Valley providing a softer but dressable stone.6 It can be a harsh climate in Westmorland, with high rainfall, low temperatures, late frosts and snow making communications7 even more difficult and shortening the growing season. The Helm Wind, a sudden, viciously cold wind, is especially powerful in late spring although it may blow at any time of year. Cumbria’s rainfall is the highest in England: the area around Appleby might expect around 40 inches a year, and Grasmere around 95 inches, rising to 120-130 inches on the exposed high 4 See Terrain map 5 G. Halliday, The flora of Cumbria (Lancaster, 1997), p. 8; J. Boardman, Classic Landforms of the Lake District (Sheffield, 1996), pp. 13-8. The solid geology is covered by B. J. Taylor, et al., British regional geology: northern England (4th edn, reprinted; London, 1978); and N. Aitkenhead, ed., British regional geology. The Pennines and adjacent areas (4th edn; Keyworth, 2002). 6 The journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. C. Morris (London, 1947), p. 198. 7 In 1664 Sir Philip Musgrave excused his absence from London because snow blocked Stainmore pass (CSPD 1664-5, p. 49). 2 fells.8 Sir Daniel Fleming9 in his meteorological observations conducted in the 1690s noted snow or sleet falling at Rydal on 29 days in 1690 and 43 days in 1691. Similar observations conducted at Rydal over a 40 year period up to 1970 averaged 23 days and it is probable that the seventeenth century was colder than today.10 Farming, housing and, no doubt, society in Westmorland evolved as a response to the rocky terrain, extensive moorland, the grey, wet climate and long winter. It is against such a background that the following analysis of these documents is set. Government, society and economy The central mountains of Westmorland split the county into two lowland areas, but also divided the county administratively.11 The frontpaper map shows the main administrative divisions. Unusually, Westmorland had an hereditary sheriff, at this time Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, who acted through her undersheriff. The assizes were held annually in the county town, the borough of Appleby,12 the only corporate town in the northern part of the shire. The administrative division of Westmorland was most apparent in the activities of the quarter sessions: although 8 J. Thirsk, (ed), The Agrarian history of England and Wales, vol 5(1), 1640 -1750, p.4.; A. B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), p. 18; www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata 9 Except for Sir Daniel Fleming and Sir Nathaniel Johnson the titles here used are those current in the 1670s. 10 G. Manley, ‘Sir Daniel Fleming’s meteorological observations at Rydal, 1689-93,’ CW2, 77 (1977), p. 125. For discussion of evidence for weather aberrations at this time see The general crisis of the seventeenth century, ed. G. Parker and L. M. Smith (London, 1978) p. 7. 11 Much of what follows comes from a manuscript description of Westmorland by Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal, first published in the nineteenth century (see Hughes, Fleming-Senhouse papers, pp. 3-5), though Fleming’s work looks (HMC, 12R7, p. 77) to have been the basis of the Westmorland entry in R. Blome, Britannia (London, 1673), p. 234. 12 The make-up of the borough of Appleby differs in the hearth tax documents. See Hughes, Fleming-Senhouse papers, p. 17; House of Commons, BPP, 1835, XXV, p. 19; N&B, 1, p.342; Youngs, Northern England, pp. 460-1, 757. 3 under one commission of the peace and one custos rotulorum, the justices acted in essence as for two counties.13 Those justices resident in the north sat very infrequently in the south of the county and vice versa. The clerk of the peace normally handled business for the north of the county and his deputy dealt with the south, producing parallel sets of records.14 The north of the county was the barony of Westmorland, called the Bottom of Westmorland. It was made up of two wards, East ward and West ward,15 and divided into constablewicks. The south of the county was the Barony of Kendale, known as the Barony. The borough of Kirkby Kendal was the only corporate town in the south.16 It was here that county quarter sessions business for the Barony was routinely carried on. The Barony comprised Lonsdale ward and Kendal ward and their constablewicks. The documents printed in this volume were, with few exceptions, arranged by the constablewicks of both parts of the county. The county was also partitioned ecclesiastically, for the Bottom was in the Diocese of Carlisle while the Barony was in the Diocese of Chester. Each diocese was divided into parishes, a number of which were subdivided into chapelries.17 13 C. M. L. Bouch and G. P. Jones, The Lake Counties 1500-1830 (Manchester, 1961), p. 162. For other such arrangements see J. H. Gleason, The justice of the peace in England 1558-1640 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 103-4. 14 The earliest surviving are the separate indictment books for Appleby and for Kendal sessions, CROK, Westmorland Quarter Sessions records, WQ/I/1 and 2 A dispute arose in January 1674/5 when the justices in the Bottom attempted to hold the general sessions only at Appleby (HMC, 12R7, p. 115, discussed by C. S. Colman, ‘The Cumberland and Westmorland Musgraves, c 1500-1700: aspects of their political careers within the emerging British state’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Keele University, 2005) , pp. 261-72), the settlement of which changed attendance patterns. 15 Middle ward, between the East and West wards, though still recognised in 1606, had fallen into desuetude (N&B, 1, pp. cxx, 13). 16 Hereafter referred to as Kendal. 17 For chapelries see Youngs, Northern England, pp. 459-67. 4 Whereas estimates suggest the population of England had increased by some 68 per cent between the start of Elizabeth’s reign and 1675,18 figures for Westmorland suggest an increase of barely a fifth (Table 1, Ai). Even that rise was spread unequally around the county: the Bottom increasing by 30 per cent, compared with only 7 per cent in the Barony. The increase in the Barony is broadly comparable (Table 1, B) with that in Furness, while the Bottom shares the trend of population change found in Cumberland. Growth must have been underway by 1563 for it was later curtailed by heavy mortality recorded in the parish registers from 1587 into the 1650s.