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Page 189:-
notched. This is called the Giant's Grave, and
ascribed to sir Ewan Caesarius, who is said to have been as
tall as one of the columns, and capable of stretching his
arms from one to the other to have destroyed robbers and
wild boars in Englewood forest, and to have had an hermitage
hereabouts called sir Hugh's parlour [p]. From the
latter part of this tradition Dr. Todd describes the four
stones as cut in the form of boars, which, unless he
saw them less sunk in the ground than at present, can only
mean that they were cut round, and perhaps rough on the edge
like the back of those animals. The Doctor supposes these
pillars were intended to place corpses on at the
north or Death's door of the church; but their height
contradicts this, and the name of Grave, given to it
by uniform tradition, assigns it as the burying-place of
some considerable person, whose eminence is expressed by the
distance of the stones asunder [q]. Mr. Sandford says the
place was opened in his time, and the great long hand-bones
of a man, and a broad sword were found [r]. A little to the
west of these is a stone called the Giant's Thumb,
six feet high, 14 inches at the base contracted to 10, which
is no more than a rude cross, such as is at Langtown
in this county and elsewhere: the circle of the cross 18
inches diameter [s]. On the north wall of the vestry without
is this inscription A.D. 1598, ex gravi peste quae
regionibus hisce incubuit obierunt apud Penrith 2260,
Kendal 2500, Richmond 2200, Carlisle 1160. Posteri
avortite vos & vivite. The parish register says the
plague broke out at Carlisle October 3, 1597, and raged here
from September 22, 1597, to January 5, 1598, and that only
680 persons were buried here: so that Penrith must have been
put for the centre of some district. At the little village
of Eden hall the register says 42 person died in this year.
The plague raged at Penrith 1380, when the Scots breaking in
at the time of a fair, carried it home to their own country,
where it made dreadful havoc. The wooden market-house is now
gone. The castle is a large square building, on high ground
to the west, single trenched, and is as old as Henry III.
[t] Here was an house of Grey friars, founded t. Edward II.
or before [u].
This town was burnt by the Scots 19 Edward III. and 8
Richard II. Richard III. when duke of Gloucester, lodged in
the castle, to check the Scots, and enlarged the works with
stones as it is said from Mayboro' before-mentioned [x].
Dr. Todd derives the name of Penrith from Petriana
three miles north of it, out of which, he says, it rose [y].
At the Conquest the manor of Penrith and the forest of
Englewood, in which it is situate, were in the possession of
the Scots, who were soon after dispossessed, but kept up
their claim to the three counties of Cumberland,
Westmorland, and Northumberland, to which king John seems to
have consented on payment of 15,000 marks by William king of
Scotland, and an intermarriage of John with one of his
daughters; but these claims were renounced by king Alexander
to Henry III. on the latter's granting him 200 librates of
land in this county or Northumberland, in any town where
there is no castle, or in places in the said counties.
Alexander's son and successor married Henry's daughter, and
had the said land confirmed to him, and a bond of 5000 marks
of silver for her marriage portion. Hence these lands had
the name of the queen's haims or desmenes. They were
Penrith, with the hamlets of Langwathby, Scotby, Great
Salkeld, and Carleton. Baliol held them till Edward I.
quarreling with him seized them, and granted them to Anthony
Bek, bishop of Durham, from whom the parliament took them,
and they remained in the crown. Richard II. gave them to
John duke of Bretaign and Richmond, and shortly after to
Ralph Neville of Westmorland, whose heir Richard of Warwick,
being slain at Barnet 11 Edward IV. the whole estate for
want of heirs male reverted to the crown, and continued as
part of the royal desmene till William III. gave the honour
of Penrith and all its dependances with the appurtenances
within the forest of Englewood, whose boundaries may be seen
in Burn, III. 522. to William Bentink, afterwards created
earl of Portland, and they are still held by his great
grandson William Henry duke of Portland [z].
A silver fibula of coarse workmanship and uncommon magnitude
and weight was found April 1784, at Huskew pike, an
eminence about three miles from Penrith on the Keswick road.
The diameter of the circle is seven inches and an half, the
length of the tongue 20 inches and ¾, the weight of
the whole 25 ounces: the studs or buttons are hollow, and
fitted on without solder. It has never been burnished, as
appears by the hammer marks remaining [a].
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"Yn the forest of Ynglewood, vi myls from Caerluel, appere
ruins of a castel, called Castle Luen [b]."
Englewood forest was disforested by Henry VIII. who
allowed the inhabitants greater liberty and freer use of it.
Hutton and Edenhall were parishes in it t. Henry I. who gave
them to Carlisle church, and Wedderhall, Warwick, Lazonby,
Skelton, Sowerby, St. Mary's, St. Cuthbert's, Carlisle, and
Dalston, were all included in it, or bordering on it, as
early as the Conquest. It was 16 miles long from Penrith to
Carlisle; and Edward I. hunting in it is said to have killed
200 bucks in one day [c]. It is now a dreary moor with high
distant hills on both sides, and a few stone farm houses and
cottages on the road side.
The rev. Mr. Robert Patten of Carlisle or Penrith, who had
been in Denmark and at Tunis, writes thus to Mr. Horsley,
Jan. 30, 1730/1:
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"I measured the Roman causeway which goes close by Old
Penrith in several places, and find it answer 21 feet. The
old castle, as the country people call it, is 130 yards in
front, a visible entry exactly in the middle, with a large
foss on all sides, the breadth 80 yards [d]. This is what
Camden calls Petriana, from the small river Peterel
that runs under it. I find the Roman way runs over Penrith
fields to Brougham, where has been a station; and, at two
places near the road I observed two tumuli, one of them with
two circles of stones, the other on a raised square piece of
ground. We have several tumuli which I believe Danish,
having seen in Den-
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