The history of the parish and grammar school of Sedbergh, Yorkshire

Preface

Although, perhaps, so slight a sketch as this little work is hardly worthy of a Preface, I feel obliged to say a few words in explanation of my presumption in appearing in print at all. The History of our Parish and Grammar School was first written for the Sedbergh Magazine^ and is reprinted from that in an enlarged form ; and the idea of it was first suggested to me by the knowledge that there were numbers of papers, belonging to the Grammar School which few persons seemed to be acquainted with. These I have been allowed to read, and as (fortunately for my ignorance) they are almost all in English, I have compiled my History in great part from them. I should remark, that among these and other papers which have been kindly lent me, there are some which are imperfect and unintelligible for want of other papers to explain them, and these, though interesting in themselves, I have not been able to make use of.

I take this opportunity of offering my hearty thanks to those friends who have helped me by the loan of books, papers, and registers, and by information of various kinds ; and I hope my book may be interesting to the inhabitants of this, in my opinion, most beautiful valley, who will now learn, I flatter

IV PREFACE.

myself, in some cases for the first time, the part that old Sedbergh has played in the history of England. I conclude in the words of the historian of the heroes of Judaea : " And if I have done well, and as is befitting the story, it is that which I desired : but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto."

Sedbergh, September, 1875.

Table Of Contents

SEDBERGH.

Chapter I

Boundaries of the Parish of Sedbergh — Derivation of the Name — The

Church — Roger de Mowbray — Adam de Staveley — Stanley, Lord

Monteagle, Lord of the Manor — Suit of Mr. Strickland, of Sizergh —

Mr. Braithwaite Otway ... ... ... ... Page i

Chapter II

The Ecclesiastical Lords of Sedbergh — Cockersand Abbey — Jorvaulx Abbey — Andrew de Harcla — Geoffrey le Scrope — Coverham Abbey — List of Vicars — St. Agatha's Abbey, Richmond — Cultivation of Corn — The Pilgramage of Grace — Letter of Henry 8th — Adam de Sedbergh — 'List of Vicars of Trinity College — James Ritter to Lord Burghley — George Fox — Rejoicings in Dent after the Restoration ... ... ... ... ... ... II

Chapter III

Parish Accounts, 1 745 — Firbank — Petition for Justices of the Peace —

Parish Accounts — Collections in Dent — Mr. Jonathan Rose — His

Sermon at Penrith — Mr. Driffield — Parish Benefactors — Charity

School — Sunday School — The Book Club ... ... 21

Chapter IV

Patricius de Bland — William de Bland — Light in the Church — Adam

Bland, of London — The Blands of Kippax — Of Virginia — Of Der-

riquin Castle, Ireland — The Rev. Miles Bland — The Otways — The

Washingtons — Extracts from Registers — Specimen of Dialect 32

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

Chapter V

Dr. John Barwick — Dr. Peter Barwick — Practise in London — His Character — John Barwick, Fellow of St. John's — Ejected — His Efforts on behalf of the King — His Ill-health — His Imprisonment in the Gate House — In the Tower — Visit of Mr. Otway — His Release ... ... ... ... ... ... 64

Chapter VI

Mr. Otway — His Birth — Fellow of St. John's College — Ejected from his Fellowship — His Marriages — Efforts for the King — Colonel Clobery and Colonel Redman — Mr. Otway's Journey to Scotland — Letter from Charles the 2nd — Mr. Barwick at Breda — His Preferment to the Deanery of Durham — Of St. Paul's — His Improvements there — Illness and Death — His Will — Epitaph ... ... 71

Chapter VII

Recommendation of Mr. Jackson — His Behaviour at Sedbergh — Lawsuits — Petition Against Him to the College — The Triers — Letters

— The Commission for Ejecting Scandalous, etc. — Depositions of Witnesses from Sedbergh — From Garsdale ... . . 79

Chapter VIII

Mr. Jackson's Witnesses — State of Feeling in Sedbergh — George Fox — Mr. Jackson Ejected — Mr. Jackson's Remonstrance — Mr. George Otway — Appointment of Mr. Buchanan — Expenses of the Lawsuits

— Letter from R. J. — From Sir John Otway — From Mr. Holmes — Mr. Buchanan — His Marriage — His Children — Letter from Mr. Barker — Mr. Edward Fell, Master — Distant Tenants — Meeting of Governors — Mr. Fell's Marriage — Children — Death — Will — Mr. Wharton Elected by the Governors — Bishop's License ... 89

Chapter IX

Mr. Wharton's Marriage — His Children — Death of his Second Wife — Her Epitaph — His Third Marriage — List of Scholars — Table of Rents — Dictionary Money — Exhibition — Increase of the School ... in

CONTENTS. yii

Chapter X. Suit with Sir Thomas Hodgson — With Wilfrid Lawson — His Complaint

— Defence of the Governors and Mr. Wharton ... Page 1 19

Chapter XI

Complaint of Mr. Lawson — Answers of the Governors and Mr. Wharton

Chapter XII

Defence continued — Suit Decided — Mr. Wharton's Resignation — Lord Fairfax's Letter — Mr. Dwyer — Dr. Saunders — Decree of Governors

— Dr. Saunders' Marriage — His Daughters — Mr. Eade's Commission

— Fines Granted to Dr. Saunders — His Death ... ... 137

Chapter XIIL

Mr. Broxholme — Lawsuit with him — His Release to the Governors —

His Death — Dr. Wynne Bateman — His Marriage — His Children —

Repairs of the School — Monument — Extract from Dr. Whitaker —

Allen's History of the County of York ... ... ... 148

Chapter XIV

Mr. Hull — The Dwelling-house — Mr. Hull's Incompetency — His Death

— Mr. Stevens — Decline of the School — Mr. Wilkinson — Improvement— His Death and Epitaph — Mr. Evans — Increase of the School

— His Resignation — Mr. Day — The Endowed Schools' Commission

Chapter XV

Benefactors to the School — Mr. Harrison — Mr. Sidgswicke — Mr. Wharton — Mr. Holme — Employment of Exhibition Money — Bishop Otway — Lady Elizabeth^ Hastings ... ... ... 182

GAR SD ALE.

Derivation of Name — St. Agatha's Abbey — Thomas de Staveley — Ralph Fitz Alan — Roger de Mowbray — William de Kendal — Petition to Sir Foulk Greville — His Reply — Lawsuits about the Manor of Garsdale — The Civil Wars — Mr. Dawson — Mr. Inman ... 188

THE HISTORY OF SEDBERGH.

Chapter I

The parish of Sedbergh is in the wapentake of Ewecross, and in the north-west corner of Yorkshire, the river Lune dividing it from Westmorland. The town Hes at the foot of Winder, a mountain whose summit is about 1,500 feet above the sea, in a wide valley, from which branch off Cautley, Garsdale, and Dent, all long narrow dales, of great romantic beauty. The parish also includes Howgill, a hamlet on the eastern bank of the Lune, which river divides Sedbergh from Kirkby Lonsdale parish, one of whose chapelries, Firbank, is on the opposite side of the river from Howgill. All these valleys have a river (or beck) running through them, the Sedbergh river, called the Rother, rising behind Wild Boar Fell, and running down Cautley, receives the streams from Garsdale and Dent,' and falls into the Lune about two-and-a-half miles below the town. The mountains surrounding Sedbergh are of various form and colour, and at all seasons of the year the country is exceedingly beautiful. There is very little corn, but the pastures are good, and a great quantity of butter is sent away to other places. In the town there are about 700 inhabitants, and a rather larger number scattered about the parish. The houses are built of the stone of the country, hardly ever of brick, and are almost invariably roofed with stone or slate. According to Dr. Whitaker.(to whom I am indebted for most of my information), Sedbergh was, before the Norman conquest, part of the parish and deanery of Kirkby Lonsdale. He thinks that the name of the parish is derived from the common Saxon name of Sadda, whose berg or fortified hill, now called Castle Tower, is still to be seen. Mr. Phillips, in his book on Yorkshire, conjectures that it is derived from the tribe of the Setantii, whose

B port (Setantiorum Portus) is commonly supposed to have been the mouth of the Lune. The author of " Yorkshire Past and Present/' gives the broad or firm hill or fortress, as the meaning of Sedbergh, in the language of the Angles, who displaced the earlier inhabitants of Yorkshire, and founded the kingdom, afterwards the earldom, of Northumbria. I am unable to decide between these different opinions. Besides this berg, or fortress, there are near the town traces of a Roman encampment. Sedbergh was formerly, as we learn from ancient charters, in Lonsdale, and was made a separate parish probably about the time of Henry I. (1100-1135), and soon after those parts of Lonsdale which are now in Westmorland and Lancashire were separated from the Eurewickshire (Yorkshire) of Doomsday Book ; but all the ten parishes in the deanery of Kirkby Lonsdale remained under the same diocesan, the Archbishop of York, and in the same archdeaconry (Richmond). The church of Kirkby was no doubt the original church of the valley, but there were many chapels in the distant parts of the parish, most likely on the sites of the churches which were afterwards built as they were required. The clergy who served these chapels were supported by the offerings of the faithful, as there was no glebe or portion of tithes set apart for them until the chapelry became a parish. In Doomsday Book Sedbergh was mentioned as dependent on the superior manor of Whittington, and, like the rest of this neighbourhood, was part of the king's lands. I cannot find any evidence as to whether this part of the county suffered in the general devastation of Yorkshire by William the Conqueror. Sedbergh Church, dedicated to St. Andrew, was probably built within a hundred years after the Conquest (1066), and from its peculiar architecture, which resembles that of most of the churches in Ewecross wapentake, it is supposed that the great Roger de Mowbray, " one of the most devout and munificent men of his age," must have had some hand in the building of it. It is built of the stone of the country, and now that the roughcast, which used to disfigure it, is removed, the outside is handsome. It has three bells, one of which at least must have been cast before the Reformation, as in the inscription on it the title of Queen of Heaven is

I

May this bell be blessed by the Holy Trinity. 2.

Christ the King of Heaven may this sound please Thee.

Pious Virgin, Mother of Christ, Queen of Heaven.

One of these bells is unfortunately cracked. There is a centre and two side aisles, the arches and pillars being of various sizes and heights, most of the arches are round. There is no decoration of any kind in the church, but there are in some of the seats fragments of old oak carving, in all probability portions of a rood screen which existed within the memory of some now living. The altar steps are of black marble, and the font also, which is large and handsome. The church is much disfigured by a gallery and pews of various shapes and sizes, but there are many open seats of old, almost black, oak. There are no monuments earlier than the seventeenth century. In the churchyard formerly stood two old yew trees, which have been blown down within the last few years, and only a fragment of one is remaining. In former times the custom of burying in the church seems to have been very general. There was a cross standing in the Market Place adjoining the churchyard on the north, but the last remains of it, and the stone steps it stood on, were taken away some years since by private persons, and may now be seen used as gateposts to a farmyard, some ten miles from their original position. To return, however, from the old church to its supposed founder or benefactor, Roger de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland in 1 1 38. He was one of the barons who met to consult with Archbishop Thurstan on the defence of the country from the Scots, who invaded the north of England under their King David, claiming the earldom of Northumbria for their Prince,

B 2 whose wife was the daughter of the great Earl Waltheof, dispossessed and killed by the Conqueror. The " illustrious chiefs of England, by blood and race Normans ; before whom bold France trembles ; to whom fierce England has submitted ; under whom Apulia has been restored to her station ; and whose names are famous at Antioch and Jerusalem," as they were called by one of their leaders, assembled near Northallerton, under Walter d'Espec, and Thurstan, Archbishop of York, and Randolph, Bishop of Orkney, and there was fought the battle of the Standard (so called from a standard with a crucifix, which was fixed on a car, with the banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Ripon), in which the Scots were completely defeated. Roger de Mowbray went twice to the Holy Land, and according to one account was taken prisoner on his second expedition by Saladin, died, and was buried in Palestine. He possessed, and his descendants after him, until the reign of Edward II., large estates in Yorkshire. The whole of the wapentake of Ewecross, from the north-western point of Craven to the border of Westmorland, was one of his baronies, and the chief seat of it was the Castle of Black Burton, in Lonsdale. The mesne lords of Sedbergh, Dent, and Staveley, were descended from Aykfirth, a noble Dane, who, in the days of Knut, the Danish King of England, was lord of Askrigg, Dent, and Sedbergh. Dr. Whitaker saw on an old stone cross, dug up in Lancaster churchyard, and of about the time of Knut, the names of four Danes of whom Aykfirth was one ', and he thinks this Aykfirth was probably the aforesaid lord of Sedbergh, from whom, and from his son Arkyl, descended two fines, one of which took the name of Thoresby, and the other that of Staveley. Of this family we hear of Adam, lord and baron of Staveley, Dent, and Sedbergh, who is supposed to have built Clapdale Castle, at Clapham, in the days of King John (1199-1216). There is an agreement extant between him and Wilfiam de Mowbray, dividing between them the rights of free chase, in which Mowbray, the chief lord, reserves to himself the stag and the hawk; while the mesne lord was only to chase the hare and (which was then a privilege) to destroy the wolf.

Adam de Staveley died 1225, and left a daughter and heiress, Alicia, who married Henry Fitz Ranulph, lord of Ravensworth. To him was granted in the 35th year of Henry HI. (1247) free manor in Sedbergh, Dent, and Garsdale, and in his family, afterwards called Fitzhugh, these manors remained down to Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, who died 1424, the second year of King Henry VI. ; but his son William, Lord Fitzhugh, does not appear to have held them. One of his family, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, fifth baron, married Sir William Parr, of Kendal, and their son, Sir Thomas Parr, was father of Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII. Agnes Parr, the granddaughter of Sir William Parr and Elizabeth Fitzhugh, married Sir Thomas Strickland, of Sizergh. To whom the manors of Sedbergh, Dent, and Garsdale were granted after 1424 I do not know, but early in the reign of Henry VII., Edward Stanley was lord of one moiety of the manor of Sedbergh. This gentleman was the " stout Stanley " mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's " Marmion," who was told to

" charge with spur of fire, With Chester charge, and Lancashire, Full upon Scotland's central host, Or victory and England's lost."

No doubt he was also, accompanied by Yorkshire men "stern of mood," probably by some of the tenants of his manor here. He was son of Thomas Stanley, first Earl of Derby (who crowned Henry VII. on the field of Bosworth), and was made Lord Monteagle, the year after the battle of Flodden Field, by King Henry VIIL, in consideration of his braveiy, and because he had contributed by " extraordinary valour at the head of a body of archers " to the defeat of the Scots, from whom he won a commanding position on the field. He was also made a knight of the garter. " This nobleman's birth," says Banks, "his active childht)od, and martial spirit, had brought him early to Henry the Eighth's notice and company, and his aspiring manhood to his service. The camp was his school, and his learning was a pike and sword. Whenever his Majesty met him his greeting was, 'Ho, my soldier!' Twice did he and Sir John Wallop land, with only eight hundred men, in the heart of France, and four times did he and Sir Thomas Lovel save Calais ; the first time by inteUigence, the second by stratagem, the third by valour and resolution, the fourth by hardship, patience, and industry." (See "Burke's Extinct Peerages.") He died in 1523, and was succeeded by his son, Thomas Stanley, who married Mary Brandon, daughter (by his second wife, Anne Browne) of Charles, Duke of Suffolk, the brother-in-law of Henry VI H., and left a son. Sir William Stanley, [who died in 1 581, when the barony of Monteagle devolved upon his only daughter, Elizabeth, who married Edward Parker, Lord Morley.

Their son, William, was the Lord Monteagle, to whom was addressed the celebrated letter by which the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. This Right Honourable William Parker, I^ord Monteagle ''was (as appears from a statement made by Mr. Strickland, in a suit relating to the manor of Sedbergh) heretofore not only owner of severall customary tenements within the hamlets of Cautley and Dowbiggin, Frostra and Soulbank, Marthwaite, Howgill, and Bland, but seized in fee or of some other good estate of inheritance of and in the manor or lordshipp of Sedbergh aforesaid, as Chief Lord or Lord Paramount of the same." On the 13th of January, in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Queen EHzabeth, Lord Monteagle, for the sum of 410/., "did grant, bargain, and sell unto John Corney, Henry Sawyer, and Richard Willan, and their heirs, severall tenements within the said hamlets, in the parish of Sedbergh aforesaid, together with all and singular houses, edifices, buildings, barnes, stables, orchards, gardens, lands, rents, reversions, suits, services, meadows, pastures, feedings, commons, common of pasture and turbary, woods, underwoods, waters, ways, easements, liberties, profits, emoluments, hereditaments, and appurtenance^ whatsoever thereto belonging." The paper from which I quote the above particulars is my only authority for the history of the manor after the time of the Stanley of Flodden, and it is imperfect and very obscure. It is dated 1732, and is the answer of Thomas Strickland, Esq., of Sizergh, to the Bill of Complaint of James

Birkett, Simon Washington, and others. He admits that, in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth, Richard Lowther and John Featherstonhalgh, Esqs., were mesne lords of a portion of the manor of Sedbergh, and that before that time courts had been held (in the thirty-eighth of Henry VIII. and first of Elizabeth) by, or in the names of. Sir John Lowther and Michael Featherstonhalgh, but considers that this did not furnish sufficient evidence that they were supreme lords of the manor. Mr. Strickland further states that in February, in the forty-third year of Queen Elizabeth, Roger Otway, Esq., of Middleton, Thomas Scryven, and Richard Theakstone granted and conveyed to Sir Thomas Strickland, Knight of the Bath, in consideration of 600/. paid by him, all the manor and lordship of Sedbergh, late in the possession of Lord Monteagle, with all rights and privileges belonging to it; and by a deed of the same date, Richard Theakstone conveyed to Sir Thomas Strickland and his heirs " all that moiety and half part or portion of the manor of Sedbergh with the appurtenances, formerly part of the possessions in inheritance of Gregory Fiennes, Lord Dacres of the South, commonly called or known by the name or names of Scrope's Lands." These lands were probably named after Geoffrey le Scrope, the benefactor of Coverham Abbey, whose grandson, Stephen, possessed the manor of Sedbergh. Stephen's son, Henry, lost his head for conspiring against Henry V., and is best known from the mention of him by Shakespeare —

"But O!

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,

Thou, that did 'st bear the key of all my counsels.

That knewest the very bottom of my soul,

That almost might'st have coined me into gold,

Would'st thou have practised on me for thy use.

May it be possible that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

That might annoy my finger ? 'tis so strange

That, though the truth of it stands off as gross

As black from white, my eye will scarcely see it. "

All his estates in Richniondshire were granted to Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, to hold while those lands should continue in the

S THE HISTORY OF SEDBERGH.

king's hands, and some of them were afterwards granted him for Hfe. But in the 2nd Henry VI. all Sir Henry le Scrope's lands were granted to his brother Thomas, whose family became extinct in the male line in 151 7.

In this statement of Mr. Strickland's are many names of former landholders in Sedbergh. Sir Richard Shuttleworth, Knight, Ralph Featherstonhalgh, Esq., Richard Duckett, gentleman, Mr. Crackenthorpe, Sir Christopher Pickering, and others, who, or their successors, are said to have appeared at the courts held by Mr. Strickland's ancestors. He admitted that he could find no record of courts held by them between 1606 and 1652, but attributed the absence of evidence during this interval to the late unhappy civil wars, when Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Strickland, his great grandfather and grandfather, had been plundered and sequestrated, and their papers probably stolen or destroyed. For want of the statements of the other party to this suit, I have found it impossible to get a clear idea of the matter in dispute ; but it seems that there was a doubt whether Sir Thomas Strickland had or had not sold his rights to Sir Henry Widderington, Sir Nicholas Tempest, and Sir Francis Boynton, Knights, and Allen Chambre, gentleman, and they, or some of them, had in turn sold them or part of them to other persons. Perhaps this Sir Henry Widderington may have been descended from the Witherington of Chevy

Chase —

* ' Then stepped a gallant squire forth,

Witherington was his name, Who said, I wold not have it told,

To Henry our king, for shame That ere my captain fought on foot,

And I stood looking on.

You be two earls, sayd Witherington,

And I a squire alone, I'll do my best that doe I may.

While I have power to stand ; While I have power to wield my sword

I'll fight with heart and hand.

For Witherington needs must I wayle

As one in doleful dumps ; For, when his legs were smitten off,

He fought upon his stumps."

It was not denied that Sir Henry Widderington and Sir Nicholas Tempest had sold to Richard Willan and his heirs, on the 6th of February, 1616, a certain messuage and tenement then in his possession, of the yearly rent of 3^-. 3^., with all rights thereto belonging, to be holden of the chief lords ; but Mr. Strickland said he did not know of, or believe in, any other conveyances or grants said to have been made. The complainants accused the defendant (Mr. Strickland) of coming into the manor with " firearms or other arms, accompanied with numbers of papists or other persons," and threatening to " fill the gaol " of the county of York with the freeholders and inhabitants of the said manor ; all which he denied, except that in June, or July, 1734, he was going to view the slate quarries upon Baughall, and there being plenty of moor game there, " he, for his diversion, took a fowling-piece along with him to shoot some of the said game, and in his way thither stopped at a public-house in Sedbergh, and, fearing his gun was damp, let it off in the back -yard." On his part he said that the complainants were very many of them Quakers, and had a design to raise great sums of money, and weary him out by tedious and expensive suits, and " the defendant is rather induced so to believe for that he hath heard, and doubts not to prove some of the complainants have been so vain-glorious as to boast that he, this defendant, would never be able to stand it against ye united numbers and purse of such a wealthy body of people as they, the complainants were."

On the 23rd of October, 1739, Mr. Strickland's steward and bailiff held a court leet and court baron in Sedbergh, at which many of the freeholders and inhabitants were presented and amerced for various offences done or pretended to be done ; and the steward and bailiff distrained for these amercements. Whereupon several of the inhabitants thinking themselves aggrieved, brought actions against Mr. Strickland and his agents, and recovered against the defendants in the assize held at York in 1740 and 1741 ; and Mr. Strickland finding that other actions were imminent, paid costs of suits, and refunded various small sums of money which were claimed by the inhabitants in repayment of the value of their goods taken and sold. After this there was another suit in which the parishioners were defended by Braithwaite Otway, Esq., of Ingmire Hall, the son of Sir John Otway. Mr. Otway won the cause, which he managed at his own expense, and the tenants of the manor erected a monument to him in the church, " in his lifetime, but without his knowledge." Their gratitude is more to be commended than their taste, for the monument is remarkably ugly. It stands at the east end of the church, and must be eight or ten feet high ; having in the centre of it a small brass tablet, with the following inscription : — "In the year 1 744, gratitude obliged the parishioners of Sedbergh to erect this monument, in memory of Braithwaite Otway, Esq., their generous benefactor, whose singular humanity, beneficence, and integrity ought never to be forgotten. When Bluecaster was inclosed, with an intent to take it from them, and many impositions took place, he voluntarily defended their cause at his own expense, and with great assiduity recovered their rights and firmly established them in their ancient properties. A judicious and noble patriot of his country, a strenuous defender of the poor, and an ardent lover of justice ; a bright and shining example to the rich and potent, whose amiable conduct justly merits their imitation." In spite of the decisions in these two last-named suits, and another of the same kind, Mr. Strickland must have been successful in the end, for his descendant is Lord of the Manor of Sedbergh at this day. I find that a rent for Lofthouse was paid to Thomas Strickland, Esq., in 1656.

THE HISTORY OF SEDBERGH. II

CHAPTER 11.

We will now turn from the civil to the ecclesiastical lords of Sedbergh, of whom there appear to have been at one thne or other at least four. In the year 1501, Sedbergh and Bland paid eight shillings to Cockersand Abbey in Lancashire ; but I do not know how long this payment had been going on, nor for how long a time Sedbergh paid to Jorvaulx Abbey seventeen shillings and ninepence. It seems very likely that Roger de Mowbray, the great benefactor of Jorvaulx, might have given to that abbey some of his right over Sedbergh, but I have no evidence of this. It is known, however, from a deed of the time of Edward III., that in the reign of Edward II. (1307- 1327) the advowson of the Church of Sedbergh was in the hands of the king. It " was wont," we learn from this deed, " to be governed by two rectors, and a discreet man, the Archdeacon of Richmond, in the Church of York, ordinary of the place, ' to whom belonged the institution and deprival of the said archdeaconry, and the power, as it is asserted, of uniting or appropriating." Whether these two rectors were descendants of the Lords de Mowbray and de Staveley is not stated, though it may very possibly have been so ; and I do not know how their rights passed into the hands of King Edward the II., who granted the advowson of Sedbergh, or a part of it, to Andrew de Harcla, who was made Earl of Carlisle, and had large estates granted to him in the north of England. He had successfully defended Carlisle against Robert Bruce, who besieged it in 131 5, and distinguished himself afterwards at the battle of Boroughbridge on the Ure, where the Earl of Lancaster was in arms against the king, his cousin. Lancaster was taken prisoner, and afterwards executed, though he tried to bribe Sir Andrew de Harcla to let him escape. Unfortunately for himself and his country, Sir Andrew shortly afterwards accepted bribes from the Scots, and especially made overtures to