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page xxxiv:-
how to distinguish Saxon remains from Danish with any degree
of certainty, or (in many cases) either of them from
British, I shall leave them to be examined more accurately
by others. There is reason however to believe that the Danes
made their first settlement in the North of England: they
began with Northumberland before any other part; and very
long ago are said by historians to have been defeated at
Burgh upon Sands, in a field at the eastern end of the
village which still retains the name of the battle. Indeed
it was likely enough that they should first attack the more
remote parts of England, and might soonest effect a
settlement there; I am therefore inclined to think that the
greater number of such remains are Danish. The short
duration of the power of those conquerors, and their being,
before they acquired the supreme dominion, almost blended
with the Saxons, did not give them an opportunity of making
great alterations in the language or the names of places. I
may just mention, that Threlkeld, Melmerby, and
Ousby are said to have their names from Thoquil,
Melmer, and Ulf, sons of Haldan the Dane
or Norwegian, and that a few more derivations of this kind
are to be found in old writings.
The times later than these in a manner explain themselves;
and Expectation will easily conceive, from the general tenor
of history, in what a vast quantity, and of what kind the
vestiges of former ages may occur on the Borders; the
desolation and solitude which often took place did not
destroy and utterly deface the remnants of those works,
which were no longer formidable, but by protecting them from
the unthinking industry of agriculture; and the fastidious
nicety of refinement and innovation, served, like the
volcanic crust above Herculaneum, to preserve them. I speak
of this, alluding not only to the buildings of those ages,
of which Speed numbers, 23 castles in Cumberland,
besides the seats of gentlemen, every one of which was a
fortress; or to those encampments which the continual
marches and countermarches of armies made necessary; or to
the fields of those battles which followed of course between
such enemies; or to the religious buildings and gifts meant
to expiate their manifold crimes; but to the manners of men,
with respect to which a large field is here laid open to the
Antiquarian.
To these observations on particular and local circumstances
I shall add another, or a thing which was extensive to a
terrible degree; for such was that unequalled pestilence
which prevailed in the times of the third Edward, and Philip
de Valois, as if those times had wanted any thing to make
them taken notice of in history; that pestilence which,
having raged in all the known parts of Africa and Asia,
traversed Europe at length, compleating the havoc of a
general war in France, and of an incursive one in the North
of England: the Scots at this period took and burned the
town of Penrith on a fair-day, carried off the inhabitants
and country-people whom they found there, and sold them; but
carried along with them an infection, which is said to have
swept off above a third of the nation. I mention this,
because many vestiges of this plague, and dismal tales
concerning it yet occur, and because the monkish writers of
the North of England have left accounts of the destruction
it occasioned, not unlike, if we except for the difference
of population, to that of the charter-house church-yard (I
think that is the name) in London.
A few loose observations shall finish this subject. The
monuments of the Romans which have been found in Cumberland
shew, that far from imposing their own divinities upon the
nations, they even acquiesced in the belief of those whom
they vanquished, and erected altars to the gods of the parts
where they resided. In later times things were altered, and
the characteristic monuments are those of barbarism,
cruelty, and bloodshed. Whatever courage continual danger
may give to the human mind, it cannot be favourable, on
several accounts, to improvement or changes either in
religion or manners: under its impressions there is hardly
leisure to think of innovations; it induces moreover a
superstitious dread, which will not easily permit men to be
bold in speculation, or dare to annul at once the authority
of those gods whom they have been taught to consider as
their protectors. Such a life leaves no room for
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