6 FOTHERGILL'S BIRTH AND TRAINING CHAP. 



The " little house," degraded to a barn, still stands lonely 

 by the eastern shore. 



It is a place of distances, where the eye ranges over 

 bare hills and into grey skies, until it seems to grow one 

 with what it looks upon. The men of the moorland 

 sometimes live closer to the heart of things than the 

 men of the city. They are strong, too, and self-reliant, 

 for it is by hard toil that they must win her fruits from 

 the dear earth. The old ballad of Flodden Field tells of 

 the muster of the warlike wights of " Wensdale " : 



With lusty lads, and large of length, 

 Which dwelt at Seimer water side. 1 



The name of Fothergill is of old standing ; " Fother " 

 is said to be a Scandinavian folk name, whilst " gill " 

 signifies a rocky streamlet. Sir George Fothergill, a 

 Norman born, was one of William the Conqueror's 

 generals, and was with him when he took York in 1068 : 

 he was rewarded with a grant of land in Westmorland, 

 and married, it is said, a lady dowered with the manors 

 of " Sedber and Garsdale." His descendants filled 

 various offices of state in succeeding centuries, and the 

 families of Fothergill dwelling in the small secluded 

 valleys of Ravenstonedale and Mallerstang in this county 

 during the past three or four hundred years are not 

 improbably of the same stock. Some of the old Fother- 

 gill homes stand yet in Ravenstonedale : Brownber is 

 a sixteenth-century farmhouse with ancient latticed 

 windows : Tarnhouse was rebuilt in 1664. 



When Quaker history opens, we find a young man 

 called John Fothergill at " Molerstang " early convinced 

 by James Nayler. J. Fothergill became a well-furnished 

 minister among the Friends, and laboured much in 

 several parts of England. Haled out of a peaceable 

 meeting at Guildford in 1665, he was committed to prison 

 in Southwark, and, to save the constable's trouble, travelled 



1 The Ballad of Flodden Field, A Poem of the XVIth Century. Ed. by 

 C. A. Federer, 1884, p. 49. 



