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NOBLE coast this of Cumberland and the Promontory of St. Bees
Head is a most picturesque and beautiful part of it. Great cliffs rise above
the sea that breaks at their foot and rushes into every fissure, when the
advancing tide washes the shore; a sea magnificent in its wrath and most
"heavenly beautiful" when it lies in smiles dimpling beneath the lustre of
the summer sunshine. Of what enormous masses of red sandstone those cliffs
consist, with the tracery of light sandstone dividing and enlightening their
heaviness! and they take many forms to the imagination as they rise piled
on each other - sometimes of a battlement or buttress of a castle, sometimes
of an old ruin or a church.
At St. Bees Head many lovely wild flowers are found. Wordsworth
tells us of the joy felt by one-
Here are found Lycopsis arvenis, Brassica monensis, and Geranium
sanguineum. The shore is rich in sea-anemones, star-fish, and other marine
spoils.
The town or village is built principally on the ridge of a long
narrow valley. There is a legend attached to the priory that once existed
here, the choir of the church of which still remains.
St. Bega and several nuns were wrecked on the coast of Whitehaven.
The lady of Egremont Castle had pity on the distressed sisters, and gave
them shelter, begging her lord to bestow a place to dwell in on them; he
granted her request, and the nuns soon showed that they did not mean to be
dependent on charity. "They spun, sewed, and wrought carpets, and other work,
and lived such godly lives as gained them great love."
The saint then besought the lady to ask her lord to build them a
nunnery, and Lady Earemont again used her influence with her husband to procure
it. She told him that he had great lands, and could well give some part of
them to the sisterhood; that he might thus lay up for himself treasure in
heaven. But the Lord of Egremont only laughed at her request, and told her
that he would give them as much land as the snow would cover the next morning.
It was Mid-summer Eve when he spoke.
The lady considered that she had failed, and went sadly to sleep.
But, lo! the next morning she was awakened by an exclamation from her husband,
and going to the window saw that the land glittered with purest snow from
the castle to the sea! This land was given to the saint and her daughters.
The Lord of Egremont built the abbey of St. Bees, and endowed it with all
the snow-covered land, which included the site of the present town of Whitehaven.
In the reign of Henry I. William de Meschines, Earl of Cumberland,
restored the abbey, which had been dissolved, and transformed it into a priory
of Benedictines. The collegiate church has a nave with aisles, a choir and
transepts, and a low square tower at the intersection. The west front of
the nave has a Norman doorway and three lancet windows. The nave is now used
as a parish church, and one transept has been made a library. The nave has
six pointed arches on each side, and the pillars are circular and hexa gonal
alternately, with one clustered. At the east end are three beautiful lancet
windows, the centre one higher and wider than the others, and between each
window are niches, three tiers of them, on clustered shafts with ornamented
capitals. The north side of the choir is lighted by lancet windows with plain
shafts inside and filleted outside.
There is a college at St. Bees for the education of young men intending
to enter the Church. It was founded by the Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Law, in
1817, and has been liberally supported by the earls of Lonsdale. The remains
of the old priory church - the choir - has been repaired for the use of the
college.
The castle of Egremont has a pretty tradition connected with it.
The remains of it stand on an eminence close to the town of Whitehaven. It
was built early in the twelfth century by William de Meschines, Earl of Cumberland.
His daughter and heiress married Prince William, son of Duncan II., King
of Scotland, and from her it descended to the Lucys, Multons, and Fitzwalters.
The principal remains are a square tower, a portion of a wall, and
a gateway, where the grooves for a portcullis can be seen. A deep moat surrounds
it, and the walls have herring bone work, peculiar to the Normans, on them,
of a very ancient kind. This castle was long the residence of the Lords of
Copeland, lying between the Duddon and the Derwent, which Henry I. gave to
William de Meschines. The lords had power of life and death, and a gallows
stood in a field near the castle, still called Gibbet Holm. But we must turn
to the legend.
A horn hung at the gate of Egremont castle, which could only be
sounded by the true lord of the place. Two brothers, Sir Eustace de Lucy,
Lord of Egremont, and his brother Hubert, joined the Crusades; and as they
departed for the Holy Land, Eustace blew the horn suspended at the gateway,
and said to Hubert, "If I fall in the Holy Land, return and blow this horn,
for Egremont may not be without a Lucy for its lord." Did those words awake
in Hubert de Lucy's heart a desire for the estates that might be his if Eustace
fell? It may be so; but at any rate that evil desire did wake, and while
they were in Palestine, he hired three bravoes to throw his brother into
the river Jordan.
Sir Eustace disappeared, and was believed to be dead, and Hubert
hastened home to Egremont. But at the gate he paused. He could not blow the
horn; his conscience awoke at the sight of it; he simply entered the hall
and claimed his inheritance.
A few weeks or months wore on, and Hubert, whose conscience had
ceased for a while to upbraid him, gave a great feast at the castle. Just
as the revelry was at its height a loud blast was blown on the horn, that
should only have been sounded by Hubert himself. He started up in guilty
fear. It could be no one else but Eustace - alive and returned. Hubert darted
from the room, and escaped by the postern door as Eustace entered the hall.
He (Eustace) had swum on shore from the Jordan, but had heard from his intended
murderers to whom he might have owed his death. He returned to claim his
own. Hubert took refuge in a monastery and died there, the generous Eustace
forgiving him.
The story is the subject of one of Wordsworth's poems.
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