Название: The Church of Grasmere: A History
Автор: Armitt Mary L.
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43002
isbn:
What more natural than that the church should be added to this central group, and at a time perhaps when enlarged space and entire rebuilding of an existing edifice required to be done? The site by the river would afford deep soil for burial. To such a change of site (supposing it were made) there would naturally be opposition from some quarter; whence the tradition.
This, however, is but conjecture. The fabric of the present church shows no feature that is of a certainty older than the introduction of manorial rule into Grasmere; while it may be as late as the fourteenth century. But before considering the question of its age, it will be well to point out other evidences of the existence of a church in the valley before record began, and then pass on to such scant records as time has left to us.
PART II
THE PARISH
BOUNDARIES
THE TOWNSHIPS
LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE CHURCH
THE EIGHTEEN
THE PARISH
The church of Grasmere is found when record begins, serving as the centre of a large and regularly constituted parish. The date of the creation of this parish is not known; but from the fact that its southern boundary runs by the Stock Beck – thus cutting the now thriving town of Ambleside into two parts, one of which belonged to Grasmere and the other to Windermere – there seems a probability of it having been delineated at an early period, when the sæter of some Norse settler was but an insignificant clearing in the forest.
Every parish is but a unit in a complex Church organization, which passes upwards by rural deanery, archdeaconry, to diocese. In historical evolution, there is a descent from the greater to the less; while each successive ecclesiastical demarcation followed as a rule some political line of kingdom or state. The diocese for instance was conterminous with the Anglo-Saxon kingdom; the parish represented the township, or the manor.
But in the vast kingdom of Northumbria the superposition of church boundaries upon state boundaries was not so simple a matter, and the subdivisions that took place are not easy to trace. Archbishop Theodore, when called in by King Egfrith (678) to portion his kingdom for purposes of church rule, made at least three bishoprics out of the one whose centre – after a removal to Lindisfarne – was fixed at York.27
Next, the archdeaconries were marked out under Thomas, Archbishop of York, some time between 1070 and 1100. The archdeaconry of Richmondshire, lying in the mountainous region west of the old Anglian kingdom, was a great and peculiar province, and the archdeacon ruled over it with almost the powers of a bishop.28
The archdeaconry was divided again into rural deaneries, of which Kendal was one. This deanery embraced ten parishes, Grasmere being the westermost of them. It appears singular that this group of ten parishes lay in three different counties, – Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmorland; and from this circumstance it has been argued that here (as in our own parish) the ecclesiastical division was made prior to the political one of counties. This probably was so; and it is clear that the deanery represents in reality another political area, viz.: that of the barony of Kendal created by William Rufus.29
Kirkby Kendale, the caput of the barony, became from this period the official church centre. There the Synods and Archidiaconal Courts were held, and all dues were paid which the higher church authorities exacted from the parishes – Grasmere among them.30 Thither the rector or his substitute, along with the churchwardens, annually repaired.
The exact relationship between the central church at Kirkby and the churches of Grasmere and Windermere in early days is hard to make out. They were considered in some sort as dependencies, and were called chapels after they had become parish churches. This uncertain position recalls the constitution of the early British church. And it must be remembered that Theodore's parochia was not a parish but a diocese. Again, the laws of Edgar (959-975) place churches in three classes: first, the ancient church or monastery of a district; second, the church with a corpse-ground; and third, the church without a corpse-ground.31 Tithes moreover were enjoined to be paid to the ancient or central church.
Now Grasmere may at first have ranked in the third order, as a mission church (capella). It would in that case pay its tithes, or a large proportion of them, to Kirkby Kendal, and bury its christian dead within the consecrated soil of that church. It may not have acquired the right of burial until the lord created a demesne there.32 This view is strengthened by the fact that the church of Kendale claimed certain dues from Grasmere and Windermere down to a late date. One was a pension of 13s. 4d. (one mark) paid to the vicar out of the tithes of the parish. The other was a mortuary fee, exacted by him as late as the seventeenth century.33
BOUNDARIES
The boundary of the parish of Grasmere followed geographical lines. Starting from the point where the Rothay and the Brathay unite for their entrance into Windermere, it ascended the first river for a short distance until it reached the tributary, Stock beck. This it ascended until, near the source, it struck upwards to the line of the watershed. It then followed a devious course along the mountain tops, as "heven watter deales" (divides), according to the quaint old boundary phrase. Always clinging to the sky line between waters flowing north and south, it dropped to Dunmail Raise, to rise to the tops again. From these lonely heights it made another short artificial course to reach Little Langdale beck near the source, and with these waters – named Brathay after emerging from Elterwater – it continued to the uniting place of the two rivers at Bird-house Mouth. Thus, with the exception of the right bank of the Brathay, the parish embraced the whole area of the two valleys of the Rothay and Brathay and their confluents. Its boundary marched with that of parishes in Westmorland, Cumberland and Lancashire. Its northern line was for centuries the boundary between the Anglian rule, and the Celtic kingdom of Cumbria. Its circuit counted some thirty-five miles by flat measurement; but much of it lay on summits that reach to a great height.
THE TOWNSHIPS
This parish – a wild tract of fells, becks, and tarns, was divided into three component parts.
It has been pointed out34 that the ancient church of Northumbria left certain marks upon the districts she administered which may yet be distinguished. One peculiarity was the great extent of the parishes, some of which embraced several – occasionally many – townships. Another was, that each parish was governed secularly by a body of men known as the Twenty-four. Now Grasmere conformed nearly, though not exactly, with these rules; for the controlling body consisted of Eighteen, not Twenty-four, being in this respect like the Cumbrian parish of Crosthwaite to the north. But other parishes of the district had their Twenty-four – as Cartmel and Dalton in Furness.35 In the next parish of Windermere, the Twenty-four are still an active body, and collect at the church every Easter Tuesday, eight coming from each of the three townships, Under-Milbeck, Applethwaite and Troutbeck.
The parish of Grasmere also embraced three townships. One was Grasmere proper, situated in the basin-shaped vale that catches the sources of the Rothay, Langdale; the sister valley formed the second township, which extended to Elterwater; the third was Rydal-and-Loughrigg (often called Loughrigg and Beneath-Moss) which СКАЧАТЬ
27
Bright's
28
It may possibly represent an old sub-kingdom of Northumbria, and is suggestive of Edwin's conquest of a district to the north-west called by the Britons Teyrnllwg. See Rhys's
29
Whitaker's
30
For the connection between mother churches and chapelries or vicarages under them, see
31
Selden's
32
The early practice of burial in distant churches is inexplicable to this age. But it should be remembered that in early days man was a peripatetic animal, to whom the distance between Grasmere and Kendal, or Hawkshead and Dalton, would be slight; and that a corpse wrapped in a winding-sheet would be much lighter than one coffined.
33
Of the first, still paid, there is plenty of evidence. It was even allowed during the Commonwealth. In 1645 the Rydal Hall account-sheets show that arrears were paid to the Kendal parson out of the tithes "upon order for 5 yeares stypd out of Gresmire," amounting to £3 6s 8d or five marks. Next year is entered "Rent due to mr. M. out of Gresmire tithes" 13s 6d. The order came from the Puritan Committee at Kendal.
34
Creighton's
35
At Cartmel in 1642 measures were taken "for the makinge upp of the twentie-fourte … that there may be four in everye churchwardens division as hath formerlie been used." Stockdale's