ancestors on an oaken chest, or (as he called it in his will) "a greate arke." This ancestral aumery, made in the year 1525, was brought from Penistone in the poet's lifetime, and used to stand in the dining-room of Rydal Mount. It is now in the possession of Mrs William Wordsworth, the poet's daughter-in-law, at the Stepping Stones, Ambleside.* The following is the inscription on it :— "Hoc op. fiebat A° D'ni м°ccccc°xxv° ex su'ptu Will'mi Wordesworth, filii W., fil. Joh., fil. W., fil. Nich., viri Elizabeth filiæ et hered. W. Proctor de Peniston qru ani'abus p'picietur De." † From the copious records of the family, collected by the industry of Mr Bedford, little need be extracted here. There was a William Wordsworth, vicar of Penistone, in 1458; another William Wordsworth had an inscription in his memory carved on the woodwork of a seat in Penistone Church, " Orate pro animabus Willmi Wordesworth et Johanna uxoris, ae pro animâ Willmi Benson, qui hanc capellum fieri fecerunt in honorem sancti Erasmi et sancti Axthonii A° D'ni M D°XXV." + In the Churchwarden's Minute Book in Penistone Church, a donation is recorded, about the year 1640, by a Wordsworth of Water Hall, "yearly for ever to be dealt to six of the most needful poore within Penistone, on St Thomas' day." In 1731, a Josias Wordsworth (who had gone to London, and was of the parish of St Dunstan's in the east) entered in his will, “ I * It is mentioned in the Publication of the Surtees Society, vol. iv., and is described in The Gentleman's Magazine, July 1850. + The Nicholas Wordsworth mentioned in this inscription was probably the Nicholas who witnessed the deed of 1392. "From whatever place he came, he seems to have been the common ancestor of numerous families of the name settled in Penistone and the part adjacent, most of whom possessed lands, and some of whom were families of consideration." (Letter from Rev. Joseph Hunter to Wordsworth, Oct. 1831. See Memoirs, ii., p. 513.) + See Hunter's South Yorkshire, vol. ii., p. 342. give to Penistone, in Yorkshire, for teaching poor girls to read and write, two hundred Pounds." Mr Hunter sent to the poet, in the year 1827, a detailed genealogical record of six branches of the Wordsworth family tree, adding that he believed the poet had sprung from the second branch, which settled at Falthwaite, near Stainborough, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and removed to Sockbridge, close to Penrith, in Westmoreland, in the eighteenth. Early in the eighteenth century Richard Wordsworth, the poet's grandfather, in consequence of unfortunate speculations in coal mines, sold his Falthwaite property, and became superintendent of the estates of the Lowthers of Lowther. When he married he bought the estate of Sockbridge, in the parish of Barton. At the time of the Rebellion of 1745, he was the receiver-general of the county. An extract from a letter of his great-grandson, Captain Charles Robinson, R. N., to the late Bishop of Lincoln, may here be given, from its allusion to an incident in the '45. "Sockbridge was not far from the public road, and not wishing that the public money would fall into the hands of the rebels, he, both upon their advance and retreat, retired, attended by a trusty servant, with his money bags into some glen about Paterdale, leaving his wife in charge of the house, who was accustomed to prepare a plentiful table upon these occasions, thinking that a good repast was the surest way to secure good treatment from them. I may add that the house at Sockbridge was built by a yeoman, who is supposed to have found some treasure left of the rebels in the previous rebellion of 1715. At his death it was bought by our great-grandfather. upon the retreat He (Richard Wordsworth) died circa 1762, and was buried in Barton Church." * See Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii., p. 523. This Richard Wordsworth's second son, John, born at Sockbridge in 1741, became an attorney at Cockermouth. In 1766 he married Anne Cookson of Penrith. They were the father and mother of the poet. John Wordsworth was a man of great force of character, and real business capacity. An old clerk of his father's, John Robinson of Appleby, had been appointed, in 1746, as principal law agent and land steward to Sir James Lowther, and was afterwards mayor of Appleby, and member of parliament for Westmoreland. In 1766 a difference arose between Sir James Lowther and Robinson on the American question and Lord North's policy; Robinson resigned his agency, which Sir James at once conferred on John Wordsworth. He lived in the town of Cockermouth, a respected. local solicitor. The present agent of Lord Lonsdale writes:mas 1771 "From the books of the Court I find that John Wordsworth was steward of the manor and forest of Ennerdale from 8-4 1766 to 1786." He was cut off suddenly at the compara- drumét el 5 tively early age of forty-two, by an attack of inflammation hn Deer 1773 of the lungs, caught by exposure on the heights of Coldfell, where he had spent the night, having lost his way in returning from Broughton-in-Furness to Cockermouth. Of the poet's mother, Anne Cookson, we know little. She was born at Penrith in January 1747, was married at the age of nineteen in February 1766, and died in March 1778, being only thirty-one years of age, and predeceasing her husband by nearly six years. * Four of the children of John and Anne Wordsworth of Cockermouth were distinguished in after life; two of them were illustrious. Their family consisted of Richard Wordsworth, born May 19, 1768, died May 19, 1816; William Wordsworth, born April 7, 1770, died April 23, 1850; * Details in reference to the poet's maternal grandmother will be found in his own autobiographical memoranda, p. 12. Fel Chris June pr Dorothy Wordsworth, born Christmas Day 1771, died January 25, 1855; John Wordsworth, born December 4, 1772, drowned February 5, 1805; Christopher Wordsworth, born June 9, 1774, died February 2, 1846. To one of the brothers of the poet, and to their "sole sister," frequent reference will be made in the pages that follow. In November 1847 Wordsworth dictated certain "autobiographical memoranda" to his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln. These have now a significance that warrants their reproduction in full. They were composed at the age of seventy-seven, and revert (as was natural) to the early days. at Cockermouth, Hawkshead, and Cambridge more than to the later years at Rydal. It is curious that there is scarcely a reference to anything that occurred after the poet's marriage in 1802. The cursory allusions in them to facts which call for further elucidation as we proceed, (and the restatement of a few already mentioned), will not make the insertion of Wordsworth's own memoranda unnecessary, or unwelcome. Autobiographical Memoranda dictated by William Wordsworth, P.L., at Rydal Mount, November 1847. "I was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770, the second son of John Wordsworth, attorneyat-law, as lawyers of this class were then called, and lawagent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of Penrith, and of Dorothy, born Crackanthorp, of the ancient family of that name, who from the times of Edward the Third had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. My grandfather was the first of the name of Wordsworth who came into Westmoreland, where he pur chased the small estate of Sockbridge. He was descended from a family who had been settled at Peniston in Yorkshire, near the sources of the Don, probably before the Norman Conquest. Their names appear on different occasions in all the transactions, personal and public, connected with that parish; and I possess, through the kindness of Col. Beaumont, an aumery made in 1525, at the expense of a William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a Latin inscription carved upon it, which carries the pedigree of the family back four generations from himself. "The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, the consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used to be called 'a best bedroom.' My father never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year. church, for our school frequent opportunities The occasion was, a "I remember my mother only in some few situations, one of which was her pinning a nosegay to my breast when I was going to say the catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. I remember also telling her on one week day that I had been at stood in the churchyard, and we had of seeing what was going on there. woman doing penance in the church in a white sheet. My mother commended my having been present, expressing a hope that I should remember the circumstance for the rest of my life. But,' said I, 'Mama, they did not give me a penny, as I had been told they would.' 'Oh,' said she, recanting her praises, if that was your motive, you were very properly disappointed.' |