84 
Mary Hutchinson were married at Brompton church, near Scar- 
borough. De Quincey has said that Mary Hutchinson was 
Wordsworth’s cousin, but this was certainly not the case; her 
mother was Mary, eldest child of Mr. John Monkhouse, attorney 
at law, and the Penrith registers, as also the Wordsworth pedigrees, 
make it certain that no marriage connections had ever existed 
between either the Hutchinsons or Monkhouses, with the Cook- 
sons or Wordsworths, so that there could be no kind of cousinship 
between the poet and his wife. 
The life-long devotion of Dorothy Wordsworth to her poet 
brother, prompting his genius, supporting and encouraging him in 
every phase of life, and his loving reliance upon her, would appear 
to have afforded no place for a wife; and yet Mary Hutchinson, 
as the poet’s wife, was in the most perfect harmony with both. 
Surely such a human trinity of love and concord seldom existed 
in the world ! 
Another much-loved member of the poet’s family at Rydal was 
his wife’s sister, Sarah Hutchinson. Wordsworth’s biographer 
says of her: “She was a person of cultured mind, sound judgment, 
refined taste, tender affections, and fervent piety.” Sarah Hutch- 
inson’s grave is one of the Wordsworth group in Grasmere 
churchyard. Her epitaph describes her as “the beloved sister 
and faithful friend,” and records that she was born at Penrith, 
ist of January, 1775. 
I will now as briefly as possible allude to Wordsworth’s relations 
who resided at Penrith. His uncle Richard was receiver of 
customs at Whitehaven, and his son John, who was a captain in 
the East India Company’s Marine in 1804, came to Penrith and 
purchased the house now occupied by Dr. Montgomery, from Mr. 
Isaac Parker, who had built it in 1792. The adjoining house, 
lately occupied by Miss Bleaymire, was built by Mr. William 
Wilson at the same time and from the same design. Upon the 
leaden spout heads of the houses may be seen the initials of the 
original proprietors. Upon the corner of the house towards 
Portland-place the initials are those of Isaac and Sophia Parker, 
and upon the other the initials of William and Mary Wilson. 
