Gents Mag 1849 part 1 p.250

Gents Mag 1849 part 1 p.250




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	Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 1 p.250 during many ages was believed without hesitation. The saint in question was, as the romance says of Merlin the son of the devil, a gentleman on his mother's side, his mother, Thermetes or Themis, being the daughter of King Lot of Lowthean and Okenay, a personage well known in the annals of the Round Table, by Anna, daughter to Uther Pendragon, and half-sister to King Arthur: a more illustrious stock could scarcely be found in chivalrous genealogy. The time of his birth has been fixed in 514; and, after living and flourishing in holiness and miracles, none of which, however, seem to have had any relation to, or been performed in, this parish, he died at the prodigious age of 185 years. ... When our calendar was purged at the Reformation, directions were given that respect should be had to saints of the blood royal. This must have been the chief reason why Saint Kentigern's name was inserted, though not in red letters, in the calendar prefixed to that liturgy which gave occasion to the Scottish covenant. Perhaps another motive was, that, as his other name, Mungo, had become not uncommon in Scotland, his memory, owing to that circumstance, might still have been popular. Yet we may reasonably wonder that any motives should have prevailed for its insertion, seeing how entirely fabulous the legend is in all its parts." Coinciding in this opinion, it is not therefore necessary to attach further consideration to a "legend," which, as the author just quoted has truly observed, "is a better word than history for such tales." The Lady Alice before named was the only child and heiress of Robert de Romeli, Lord of Skipton in Craven, by Alice, daughter and sole heiress of William, surnamed le Meschien, or the younger, who in the various histories of the county is called "Des Meschines," but whose correct appelative a recent and more careful spirit of antiquarian research has ascertained to be as first written. He was the earliest Norman Baron of that portion of Cumberland which before his day was called Coupland, or Allerdale above Derwent, but which denominative, shortly after his investiture with that extensive fief, he changed to Egremont or Egremond, on the occasion of building a castle of that name upon the lofty eminence which rises above the rapid current of the Egre or Ehen. Her husband was William Fitz Duncan, son of Duncan Earl of Murray, and nephew to that David, King of Scotland, whom one of his impoverished successors, when alluding to the vast extent of lands which David had alienated from the throne to enrich the numerous abbeys and religious houses he had built, feelingly emphaticized as "a sair sainct for the crown." Fitz Duncan, who after his marriage was also called William de Romeli, was lord of the adjoining Cumbrian barony of Allerdale below Derwent, and of the honour of Cockermouth, both of which had descended to him from his mother Octreda, who inherited them from her grandfather Waldeof, to whom they had been granted by Randolph du Briquesard, also surnamed le Meschien, Comte du Bessin, elder brother of William le Meschien, and the first Norman paramount feudatory of Cumberland, By this alliance the baronies of Skipton and Egremont became united in the same family with the barony of Allerdale below Derwent and the honour or seignory of Cockermouth. By her marriage she had one son, who died under age and unmarried, and three daughters, who, on their brother's death, fell heirs to those large estates, which, after their mother's decease, were accordingly parted among them. Her son, who was named William, was drowned returning home from hunting or hawking, as he crossed the Wharf, near Bardon Tower in Craven. His hound being tied to his girdle by a line struggled to get free, as they passed one of the deepest pools, pulled the youthful lord off his horse, and drowned him. When the report of her bereavement reached his mother, tradition avers her answer was couched in that memorable expression, "Bootless bayl brings endless sorrow," whose obsolete quaintness has passed on to our days, not alone in the pages of the historian, but as the affecting theme of many a poet's lay, and within recent years has again been embodied in that pathetic poem of Wordsworth's, entitlted "The Force of Prayer." Lady Alice seems always to have been of those pious dispositions whose impulses were in unison with the

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