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in the registers in the 7zterim. The descendants of William, 
Lancelot, and Anthony are so mixed up in the registers as to make 
it difficult to trace with certainty the genealogies of some of them, 
the entries being of the briefest, no ages of persons buried are 
given, and until 1670, the names of mothers were not stated in 
baptismal registrations ; and then, as increasing the difficulty no 
little, for some years during the Commonwealth, marriages in 
churches were abolished, and civil contracts instituted, of which no 
registration has been preserved; then again the number of William 
Cooksons is perplexing: between 1639 and 1742, no less than six 
William Cookson’s appear in the registers as fathers of families. 
The William Cookson first mentioned, 1639, was no doubt the 
churchwarden of that name in 1556, when, during the Common- 
wealth, Roger Baldwin, the Presbyterian, was Vicar of Penrith; 
the second William Cookson, who by strong circumstantial evidence, 
was son of the Presbyterian churchwarden, had by his wife Alice 
six sons and two daughters, and was the immediate ancestor of the 
principal Cookson family; this second William appears to have 
inherited his father’s Presbyterian proclivities, for we find his name 
and that of his wife Alice, amongst others in the register book as 
being excommunicated for nonconformity, but notwithstanding 
this, his childrens’ names appear regularly in the baptismal register, 
with the exception of one daughter omitted, and one son errone- 
ously entered by the same name as his brother Joseph. 
All the children of William and Alice having been born before 
the passing of the Toleration Act of 1689, baptism at Church was 
in their case inevitable, notwithstanding the Nonconformist prin- 
ciples of the parents. 
It is to this family I now ask your attention, since from them, 
by his mother’s side, was descended William Wordsworth, Poet 
Laureate. 
In the middle and latter part of the last century, there were two 
William Cooksons, first cousins, both leading citizens of Penrith, 
one a grocer and the other a mercer. The name of William 
Cookson, “ grocer,” frequently occurs in the registers as the father 
of ten children, and in the churchwardens’ book as four times 
