10 EARLY LIFE. 



ie 



steep banks of the river Eamont. Arrived at tl 

 church, the hearse was met by the rector, but the 

 coffin had disappeared ! The shock was enough to 

 sober the merry mourners. On searching back, the 

 coffin was discovered in the river, into which it had 

 fallen, pitched down the steep bank, at a place where 

 probably the hearse, driven by the drunken coachman, 

 had lurched against a rock. The oak outer coffin was 

 broken to pieces, but the lead remained intact at the 

 bottom of the river, too heavy to be carried down by 

 the stream. The shock and the scandal produced by 

 all this had the effect not only of sobering everybody, 

 but of putting an end to such disgraceful orgies in the 

 county for the future. The accuracy of my grand- 

 mother's story was strongly confirmed by an event 

 which happened many years afterwards. In October 

 1846, the wall of our vault in the chancel of Nine 

 Churches had given way: on the vault being opened 

 to make the necessary repairs, I myself saw the lead 

 coffin of my grandfather battered and bulged from its 

 tumble down the rocky bank of the river. 



My grandmother well remembered the events of 

 1745, for she was then past the middle age of life, 

 and the mother of several children, my father having 

 been born in June 1742. She used to talk of the 

 stirring events of that time, the battle of Clifton Moor, 

 the burial of a number of " Willie's dragoons" (the 

 Duke of Cumberland) in a ditch by the river Lowther, 

 close to Brougham, and the executions at Carlisle. 

 But these were comparatively recent events, and had 



