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Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 1 p.251
votive practices of the age, and, her devotional feelings
being probably heightened by the overwhelming melancholy
which had taken possession of her heart, she founded and
endowed the Priory at Bolton, in Yorkshire, whose legendary
history, by assigning to her wounded spirit the fanciful
form of a milk-white doe, appearing at stated intervals
after the Reformation, to grieve over the destruction of an
edifice raised for the health of the soul of her son "the
noble boy of Egremond," has furnished the leading poetic
incident in that imaginativley beautiful ballad of "The
White Doe of Rylstone."
Lady Alice also bestowed much of her lands and goods upon
the abbeys of Pomfret and Fountains, and upon other
religious confraternities, Thus, among other donations, she
gave the church at Crosthwaite to the last named
institution; but though a supposition on the subject is
hazarded by the luminous writer already quoted at length,
the county historians are silent as to her being the
foundress thereof, their narratives being merely to the
effect that "the church of Crosthwaite was anciently
rectorial, and was given to the abbey at Fountains by Alice
de Romeli, and soon after made appropriate, the Bishop of
Carlisle reserving to the see the right of collating a
vicar."
Leaving, however, the unrecorded era of its primary
foundation involved in that historic doubt, which the
absence of unimpeachable authority for elucidation renders
obligatory, and passing over the long interval of nearly
four hundred years posterior to the days of Lady Alice, the
current of time flows onward to the epoch when the fabric,
now standing, is supposed to have been built.
Dating its construction from an age, when, as Rickman says,
"there prevailed a very rough mode of executing the details
of the different styles in the north of England, and
particularly with respect to the Perpendicular examples in
this county," the edifice of which an account is here
essayed is one of those old structures erected in the times
of the last Henries, when strength and durability were
regarded as important considerations, especially in those
churches on the exposed frontier of Cumberland, which, until
the union of the crowns, was continually re-echoing to the
slogan of border warfare. It is a spacious fabric of very
late and very poor Perpendicular architecture, mixed with
some very trifling portions of preceding styles, and on
whose ornate embellishment architectural taste has until
recently, been but sparingly bestowed; the walls, which are
coated with roughcast and whitewash (the parapets and
battlements, and dressings of the doorways and windows being
alone uncovered,) are thick, with buttresses, and a strong
square tower at the west end, which imparts an air of
dignity to the exterior. It stands on a slight elevation
near the centre of the vale, about midway between the lakes
of Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite, half a mile from the
town, and somewhat further from the foot of Skiddaw. Apart
from its associations, it is an object on which the eye
rests with pleasure, and many a sketch-book will have
preserved it, as one of the conspicuous features in a scene,
second to none for the picturesque richness of landscape
adornment.
When proceeding from the town, as the eye, travelling along
the meandering vista, takes in all the turnings of the road,
till it meets with the distant tower of the church, the
ornate porch, and ancient free-school, with Skiddaw raising
his solemn head above the grey mists that roll along his
verdant sides, it presents an aspect of much effective
beauty; or when beheld from the corner of that beautiful
footpath which leads by the grounds at Lairthwaite, with the
soaring fells of Grisdale and Grasmire looking down upon it
through the long green vale of Braithwaite, and its dim lone
tower amid the intervening trees looking
Upward fixedly,
Like stedfast hope beneath some careless wrong,
it is likewise a rich subject for pensive and admiring
contemplation, and truly constitutes what a learned
foreigner, when speaking of a somewhat similar object, has
designated as "one of the thought-deservingnesses of the
scene."
In some distant era, but at what exact period it is not easy
to discover, -
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