A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



infants ' and to bury the dead, while not a few availed themselves of the 

 Holy Eucharist at Easter and on other great festivals. Traces of this 

 respect for the ordinances of the church are still visible in many country 

 villages. It is only in our own day that the general body of methodists 

 has drifted completely into separation. 



The pecuniary assistance given to the chapelries and poor benefices 

 by Queen Anne's Bounty had a considerable effect in raising the tone 

 and increasing the efficiency of the clergy of the diocese. In Cum- 

 berland there was much need of it. To meet the requirements of 

 the large and scattered parishes in the mountainous districts, chapels 

 of ease arose with stipendiary curates dependent for their salaries on 

 parochial incumbents, the impropriators, or the free will offerings of 

 the inhabitants. Several of these chapelries were served by a reader 

 and schoolmaster not in holy orders. By statute i Geo. I. st. 2, c. 10, 

 a new ecclesiastical status was created, and protection was afforded 

 to those curacies which had received an augmentation of revenue 

 from the Bounty. It was this Act that practically abolished the lay 

 reader in the Cumberland dales. From this date the chapelries 

 which received augmentation became perpetual cures and benefices. 

 In returning a schedule of the forty-eight perpetual curacies in the 

 diocese on 26 January 1739, Bishop Fleming declared that all the 

 chapelries he had named were entirely distinct from their respective 

 mother churches, and the parishes were so very large,and many of them 

 situated in such inconvenient parts, that there was the greatest occasion 

 to have distinct curates settled in them all, as there were in most of 

 them constantly, except Newlands, Thornthwaite, Wythburn, Borrow- 

 dale and Nicholforest, though their situation was such that none could 

 require it more if the salaries had been sufficient for their mainten- 

 ance. The rectors or vicars of the mother churches had no advantage 

 from these chapelries except the right of nomination to some of them, 

 the nomination to many being with the inhabitants. 8 



No trustworthy evidence has been, produced to show that the 

 church in Cumberland had lapsed into a state of lethargy in the 

 eighteenth century. The facts are all on the other side. The bishops 

 of Carlisle were prelates of distinguished ability who devoted their time 

 and energy to episcopal work, and not a few of them were men of saintly 

 life. The names of Nicolson, Lyttelton, Law and Douglas shed a lustre 

 on the episcopate of the eighteenth century for learning and literary 

 culture. Bishop Fleming, the head of a great house in Westmorland, 

 has left a name behind him for the possession of Christian virtues 3 which 



1 The practice of keeping a register of births and baptisms is a sure sign of final separation from the 

 church. For the Wesleyan Methodists these registers begin in 1814 for Fisher Street, Carlisle; 

 in 1824 for George Street, Wigton ; in 1806 for Michael Street, Whitehaven (chapel formed in 

 1747); in 1814 for Sandgate Chapel, Penrith; in 1810 for Alston; in 1811 for Garrigill ; and 

 in 1827 for Nenthead. Primitive Methodism was established in Alston in 1823, their registers 

 commencing in 1825 (Com. Rep. on Nonconformist Registers [1838], pp. 89, 119). 



2 Carl. Epis. Reg., Fleming, ff. 67-73. 



3 In the obituary notice of this prelate which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (xvii. 3 2 4~6) 

 of 1747, it is stated that he punctually joined with his family ' four times a day in the publick devotions 



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