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(much narrower once than now), speak of the troublous times the 
town has gone through ; that these areas received the cattle driven 
in for refuge when the watchman on the Bishop’s Tower descried 
the ancient enemy on the war path, the narrow inlets making 
defence more possible. At such times of siege the good bishop’s 
watercourse running through the town must have proved an 
inestimable blessing. 
This work of Strickland’s, as a piece of engineering, has often 
been greatly exaggerated by old writers ; but in this respect Thomas 
Fuller, in his Worthies of England, carries off the palm. You will 
probably be surprised to learn from the worthy Thomas that 
Penrith is somewhat of a seaport; he coolly asserting that Bishop 
Strickland at great cost constructed a canal from the town to the 
river Petteril, for the conveyance of boatage into the Irish Sea. 
In concluding his Westmorland Worthies, Fuller makes a quaint 
apology, which it is certain applies equally to Cumberland, and 
fully accounts for both his shortcomings and his overdoings. He 
confidingly says: ‘Reader, I must confess myself sorry and 
ashamed that I cannot do more right to the natives of this county, 
so far distant north that I never had yet the opportunity to behold 
it; but,” he adds, “‘time, tide, and the printer’s press are three 
unmannerly things that will stay for no man, and therefore I 
request that my defective endeavours may be well accepted.” Let 
us then kindly accept the apology; and when Penrithians seek 
the gay dissipations of the Naples of the Solway—Silloth—let them 
not sigh for Fuller’s boatage, via Thackay Beck and the Petteril, 
but meekly content themselves with the railway train. 
The third of Bishop Stricklands benefactions was the endowment 
of a chantry at Penrith church with six pounds a year, that the 
chantry priest migh teach the inhabitants grammar and music. 
Now, six pounds a year may at first sight appear no great matter; 
but when the value of money in the fourteenth century is con- 
sidered, it was really a substantial endowment. 
Mr. Walter Besant has written the life of Sir Richard Whittington 
—not a work of imagination such as that clever author usually 
delights us with, but a veritable history, dealing with authentic 
