lands about Derwentwater, but in 1741 also became the owner of 

 the Manor and Castle of Scaleby, by purchase from Richard 

 Gilpin, Esq., recorder of Carlisle. The Royal Oak Hotel was 

 built by the Stephensons upon the site of the former inn, which 

 was the house from which the Governor went out to India. In 

 the churchwardens' books there is an entry showing that Mr. 

 Stephenson supplied the wine for the sacrament at the parish 

 church. Mrs. I'Anson sent out one of her sons to India from the 

 Royal Oak, when she was landlady, in the hope that he would 

 return with a nabob's fortune, as Governor Stephenson had done. 



The celebrated Richard Watson, Bishop of Landaff, in his 

 autobiography, which was published by his son, the Rev. Richard 

 Watson, LL.B., in 1814, has near the commencement the following 

 characteristic remarks : — " All families being of equal antiquity, 

 and time and chance so happening to all, that kings become 

 beggars, and beggars become kings ; no solid reason, I think, can 

 be given why any man should derive honour or infamy from the 

 station which his ancestors filled in civil society ; yet the contrary 

 opinion is so prevalent, that no words need be employed in proving 

 that it is so. German and Welsh pedigrees are subjects of ridicule 

 to most Englishmen ; yet those amongst ourselves who cannot 

 inscribe on the trunk of their genealogical tree the name of a peer, 

 bishop, judge general, or any person elevated above the rank of 

 ordinary citizens, are still desirous of showing that they are not 

 sprung from the dregs of the people. Without entering into a 

 disquisition concerning the rise of this general prejudice, I freely 

 own that I am, on this occasion, a slave to it myself I feel a 

 satisfaction in knowing that ray ancestors, as far as I can trace 

 them, have neither been hewers of wood, nor dra7vers of water, but 

 ut prisca gens fnortalium — tillers of their own ground, in the idiom 

 of the country, statesmen." 



It is with some such feeling that I approach the account I am 

 now going to give of the family of Crosthwaite. I am indebted 

 to that indefatigable antiquary, Mr. William Jackson, F.S.A., of 

 St. Bees, for the earliest written record I have of the family of 

 Crosthwaite. He found amongst the Curwen papers a grant made 



