Gents Mag 1849 part 1 p.249

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 1 p.249
St Kentigern's Church   Great Crosthwaite   Robert Southey
	St Kentigern's Church, Great Crosthwaite CROSTHWAITE CHURCH, CUMBERLAND, THE BURIAL-PLACE OF SOUTHEY. Something in this aspiring world we need To keep our spirits lowly, To set within our hearts sweet thoughts and holy. 'Tis for this they stand, The old grey churches of our native land. - MARY HOWITT. THE town of Keswick, in the parish of Crosthwaite, is situated in one of the largest and most beautiful vales in Cumberland, at the northern extremity of the lake district, on the high road, and nearly midway between the towns of Ambleside, Cockermouth, and Penrith. It is so well known, on account of the many scenes of picturesque loveliness with which its immediate neighbourhood abounds, heightened as they are by the romance which encircles the name of Derwentwater, and the glory reflected from the laurels that grace the tomb of Southey, that any further description is unnecessary. It will only be added, that, on the authority of one who knew the place about a century ago, it has been "more considerable formerly than now." The aspect of the country around has also undergone much change since that time, and many of the vestiges of its earlier years have almost wholly passed away. The translucent lakes and the majestic hills, in all their imposing durability of feature, are still as of old; but the wide amd magnificent forests, which, within a century, covered the land between the town and the lake, have long since fallen beneath the ruthless axe, which has caused so many of the finest woods in this country to disappear without leaving a trace behind. "Ah!" exclaims Walker the philosopher, a native of this alpine district, in his Tour from London to the Lakes in 1791, "how fallen is the scenery around the lake and vale of Keswick since I saw it in the year 1749, when Crow Park, Friar's Crag, Lord's Island, and indeed all the shores and islands of this beautiful lake, were covered with tall oaks. The view must have been striking when a child of ten years old, as I was then, had such an impression made by it as not to be erased for forty years, - nay, I think I could draw it from memory at this hour, if I had time. The wood was so even at top, each tree being about eighteen yards high and very thick, that it looked like a field, and the branches so interwoven, that boys could have gone from tree to tree like squirrels." We must not, however, dwell with lengthened regret on that which in the wisdom of the present day, may we deemed an unwise lament for the extinction of the ancient sylvan glories of the scene, but hasten to the immediate subject of this sketch. In the second volume of "Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society," its learned author, whose residence in this charming vale has so strongly connected it with every classic remembrance of his age, in a brief notice of the church of Crosthwaite, assigns it an antiquity as far back as Norman times; and, in the story of its patron saint, he exhibits one of those fanciful creations of monastic romance which formerly received the meed of universal credence. "Alice de Romeli," says Southey, "heiress of Egremont and Skipton, who, in the reign of Stephen or his successor, married the Lord of Allerdale, is supposed to have been the person by whom it was founded and endowed, and who subsequently gave it to Fountains Abbey. It was soon after appropriated to that monastery, the collation being reserved to the Bishops of Carlisle. Wiliam Fitz Duncan, the husband of this Alice, was son to the Earl of Murray, and brother to David, King of Scotland; and this may perhaps explain why the church was dedicated to the Scotch saint, Kentigern, Bishop of Glasgow, and patron saint of that cathedral, a personage once high among the saints of that age, though now utterly forgotten here, in the parish where, during so many generations, his festival used to be celebrated on the thirteenth of January. Here followeth his legend, which hagiologists have related without scruple, and which
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