67 



FORMER SOCIAL LIFE IN CUMBERLAND 

 AND WESTMORLAND. 



By W. WILSON. 

 (Read at Keswick.) 



The most probable account of the origin of the peasant proprietors 

 called "statesmen" is, that their tenure is not feudal, but allodial, 

 in so far as that they acquired their estates at a very remote period, 

 either by establishing themselves on unoccupied lands (like the 

 squatters in Austraha or America), or by the conquest of previous 

 possessors. The evidence in favour of this opinion is — ist, That 

 all the estates in the dales are of customary tenure — copyhold 

 tenure only occurring as a very rare exception. Now, if the 

 "statesmen" had been enfranchised villeins, they would have held 

 their lands by copyhold, as do enfranchised villeins in other parts 

 of England. The fact that they have, since the establishment of 

 feudality, paid lord's rent, heriots, and other charges to the several 

 lords of manors, is no proof that they really held their estates from 

 them in virtue of such payments ; because freeholders, elsewhere, 

 are compelled thus to acknowledge the authority of the courts of 

 the manors in which their freeholds lie. 



12nd, Several "statesmen" can prove that the estates they now 

 possess have descended uninterruptedly in their families since the 

 time of Richard II., and always as customary freeholds. One 

 family — the Holmes of Mardale — have inherited their land in 

 unbroken succession from one John Holme, who came from 

 "Norway in the year 1060, settled in Lincolnshire, and afterwards 



