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Page xxiii:-
bought off, or perhaps, (as who can tell!) forgot in
troublesome times, and never revived, are still vastly
numerous in these parts, perhaps more so than they are
elsewhere. Independent of the serjeants-oats mentioned
before, and a great variety of curious dues paid by the
lands dependent on the castles of the greater lords;
independent of the hornage still exacted, and now obsolete;
or at least disguised beacon-rent, paid for giving notice of
the approach of enemies; independent of the tolls paid to
the city of Carlisle at the passages out of the county,
which are still claimed, and of a great many others which
may be called localities, there are still different
localities, which respect the tenure of lands, and which are
partly abolished and partly changed into dues of another
kind. For in the troublesome times, of which I made mention
in the foregoing paragraphs, and which I shall have occasion
to mention again, some tenants held their lands by
furnishing a man and a horse, others by furnishing a footman
whilst the lord furnished a horseman; other hamlets by
furnishing a certain number of bowmen, and others by every
individual who held lands appearing in arms when an invasion
from the Scottish Marches was expected. It is true that the
proportions were regulated by contingencies, or by the Lord
Warden; but they have now settled into a sort of uniformity,
under which, though little noted in general, they are still
somewhat retentive of their original distinction, and have
now and then given birth to law suits, which the ablest
lawyers, conscious of their intricacy, have thought proper
to decide by making the antiquity of usage their standard,
and by endeavouring to balance the apparent authority of one
custom with that of such might be alleged on a contrary
side. The uncertainty of the best investigation of matters
of this nature, and the chicane to which they must give
birth, need not be adverted to: the different claims which
the Princes of Germany could produce upon one another, and
which they have occasionally produced, are examples of it,
though upon an infinitely larger scale; and though such
intricacies are common enough in many parts of England, yet
their frequency in the Northern parts strengthens the
belief, that the masters and owners of lands have in former
times been less subject to the uniform controul of civil law
than they were generally in other parts which lay further to
the South: I must indeed acknowledge, that a circumstance of
this sort hardly needs such an argument. With respect to
those other tributes to the Lords, which were usual in every
place, they belong not so far to me as that I should be
particular about them; for being generally known to men of
the law, and better than they are to me, I shall only
mention such as are particular when I come to the places to
which such particular tributes belong. That of the best bed
and the best horse paid on the decease of any person, of the
boon-days, and many more, are not so unusual as to claim a
place here.
To a person who has been told, and that with great truth,
there is hardly a peasant at this time in these counties who
cannot at least read and write, it may seem strange, that,
not very long ago, the case was so far different, that in a
certain village the poor-rates were collected by means of a
notched stick; every notch in which represented a tenement,
and the proportion which each was to pay was known by
similar means: this stick is still preserved, and has not
been so long laid aside but that there are persons still
alive who can, to use their own phrase, read it.
There is also another village in which those rates were
never collected at all, and where the custom of providing
for their poor, which subsisted long before the laws
respecting that subject, is still continued; and its
particulars, which are curious enough, are known and
observed with the greatest exactness, both by the paupers
and the other inhabitants.
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Cultivation of every kind has also undergone a very great
change within a few years; and this change, originating
partly from the improvement of the roads, and partly from
the spirit of industry, diffused by the taking-up and
division of a great number of commons, has had a surprising
effect on the manners of the people; an effect which a man
need not have lived or made observation for any great length
of time to be sensible of. Thus, though the harvest-cry, and
the rural feasts and customs are still preserved, and though
a boundary-stone is on some occasions still sacred, yet the
number of hedges is mightily increased, and consequently the
necessity of them in
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