Gents Mag 1849 part 1 p.251
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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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