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the champion with ease, and did other feats; so that the
King sent for him, and asked his name, where he came from,
&c. He told the King, that himself could neither read
nor write, therefore could not well tell his own name, but
folk commonly, says he, call me the Cork Lad a
Kentmere, (which name he undoubtedly received from his
corcousness, or corpulency.) The King asked him what he
lived upon? he said Thick pottage, and milk that a mouse
might walk upon dry shod, to his breakfast; and the sunny
side of a wedder to his dinner, when he could get it.
With many other such like questions and answers.
At last the King wanting to reward him as champion of the
wrestlers, asked him if he had want of any particular thing
and he should have it: all he asked for was the house he and
his mother lived in, the paddock behind it to get peat for
fuel, and liberty to cut wood for the fire in Troutbeck
park. These were immediately granted him, as the whole
estate would have been if he had asked it, being at that
time not worth more than five pounds a year, besides the
wood: no one, however, attempted to interfere with him in
the enjoyment of the whole, which was not long; for
tradition tells us, that he killed himself at the age of
forty-two with pulling up trees by the root. He was never
married, and the estate was afterwards granted by Charles
the I. to Huddleston Philipson of Cawgarth. He was reputed
to be a natural child, and his mother, (according to one of
my authors) a nun turned out of Furness Abbey for being with
child of him; he is by some called Gilpin, by others Herd.
There is a beam in the house of Kentmere-Hall said to be
laid up by him: I wrote to a Mr Birket of Kentmere to see if
he could find any date upon it, who wrote me the following
plain, but sensible letter.
To Mr JAMES CLARKE,
Land-Surveyor, &c. PENRITH, CUMBERLAND.
SIR,
"I RECEIVED your letter, and have taken the dimensions of
the beam at Kentmere Hall, which is 30 feet in length, and
13 inches by 12 and a half in thickness; but there is no
inscription upon it, as you mentioned in your letter; but I
shall inform you what has been given by tradition, (and I
had it from a man that was 104 years old when he died.) When
the Hall was building, and the workmen gone to dinner, this
man, whose name was Herd, happened to be there, and while
they were at dinner laid it up himself. He lived at
Troutbeck Park, in a cottage house there, and was remarkable
for his strength. At the time the Scots frequently made
incursions into England, he with his bows and arrows killed
them in coming of the mountains at a place which still
retains the name of Scot-Rake, which is about a mile distant
from where he lived. One of the kings of England hearing of
him, sent for him to London, and got him a bow made, which
he said was no bow for a man; they then made him another, he
tied them together and broke them. At that time there was a
man the most capital wrestler in the kingdom, which he was
to wrestle with; the first fall was not satisfactory to the
man; they took hold again, and Herd broke his back, threw
him off the stage, and asked if that was a fair fall? The
king asked what he would have for his journey, he only asked
for the little place where he lived, and it still retains
the name of Herd's house. There is at the Hall a pair of the
largest buck horns that any person now living has ever seen,
they are a yard long, with seven knaps on each horn, and the
round part as thick as a
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