61 



None were lost, except a few girls, who, for love of the white cockade, had 

 followed the army, throughout the whole of its singular march, with an heroic 

 devotion which deserved a better fate (Chambers' Histoy of the Rebellion in 

 1745, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 238). 



From such a fate, at all events from the risk of it, Margaret Ewing 

 saved herself, when, on the departure of the Highlanders from 

 Brampton, she voluntarily chose to be the girl they left behind 

 them. Penrith parish register in 1748 has this entry : 



Dec. 28. John Richardson and Margaret Ewing both of Brampton married. 

 John Richardson was of the ancient yeoman family of the Richard- 

 sons of Easby, a township of Brampton ; and on the death of his 

 father in 1759 he succeeded to the small estate at Easby, about 

 forty-five acres, which is known from the "Book of the Barony of 

 Gilsland" to have been in the possession of his ancestors in 1603, 

 and may have been so for centuries earlier. He died in 1799, 

 aged seventy-three. His wife, Margaret, was a remarkable woman, 

 beheved by her Brampton contemporaries to have been of a noble 

 house. "But if so," says a local record, "she kept her secret well, 

 as she was in no way communicative to those about her, not even 

 to her husband, who always stood in great awe of her" (Chees- 

 brough's Brampton Almanac). She died in 181 3, aged eighty-four, 

 leaving the estate to her grandson, Richard Richardson ; and it is 

 said that she left it to him on the condition that he inscribed on 

 her tombstone the following epitaph : 



Here rest my old bones ; my vexation now ends ; 



I have lived far too long for myself and my friends. 



As for churchyards, and grounds which the parsons call holy, 



'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded in folly ; 



In short I despise them ; and as for my soul, 



It may rise the last day with my bones from this hole ; 



But about the next world I ne'er troubled my pate ; 



If no better than this, I beseech thee, O Fate, 



When millions of bodies rise up in a riot, 



O, pray, let the bones of old Margaret lie quiet ! 



The record goes on to say that "the then vicar of the parish, his 

 attention having been called to this epitaph, sent a copy of it to 



