POLITICAL HISTORY 



Lord William Howard had a difficult part to play, inasmuch as he 

 was a recusant and could hold no official post under the Crown, but 

 King James refused to notice the charge of recusancy l and employed his 

 great local influence on the side of good government. As a successful 

 hunter of moss troopers he has won undying renown. Speaking of those 

 marauders, Fuller said : ' they had two great enemies, the laws of the 

 land and the Lord William Howard of Naworth.' 2 His manifold 

 activities spread such terror among the wrongdoers that it became a 

 common belief in the county, which his enemies tried to use to his 

 detriment, that ' ther is mercie with God but no mercie with my Lord 

 Willyam.' 3 There is no need to accept the fanciful picture which Sir 

 Walter Scott has left us of this famous chieftain. Stripped of all poetic 

 glamour and judged by the dry light of authentic records, Lord William 

 Howard stands out as the greatest figure of his time in the civilization 

 of the marches, and though he sent many moss-troopers ' to that place 

 where the officer always doth his work by daylight,' the regeneration of 

 the county was effected by legal process without recourse to those sum- 

 mary methods which tradition has connected with his name. 4 



The union of the Crowns revived once more the old controversy 

 on the nature of Border service. The tenants of Cumberland and West- 

 morland during the long period of Border warfare had held their lands 

 on the condition of rendering military service when summoned by the 

 warden of the Western Marches. The necessity of this obligation ceased 

 with the Union. As this main incident of the tenure was no longer to 

 be enforced, the baronial owners assumed that the rights of the tenants 

 were also terminated and that the lands had reverted to themselves. It 

 was a distressing period for the cornage tenants. Fortunately in the 

 case of Lord William Howard, one of the most extensive landowners 

 in the county, the dispute was amicably settled at an early period 

 by the grant of long leases. 6 



The visit of King James to Carlisle in 1617 on his return from 

 Scotland seems to have had little political significance. Bishop 

 Snowden reminded him that the city was in great ruin and extreme 

 poverty, and that in the country at large, many of the meaner sort 

 lived dispersedly in cottages or little farms, scarcely sufficient for their 

 necessary maintenance, whereby idleness, theft and robberies were 



dogge : item, the parish of Stapylton, one dogge : item, the parish of Irdington, one dogge : item, the 

 parishes of Lanercost and Walton, one dogge : item, Kirklington, Skaleby, Houghton, and Richarby, one 

 dogge : item, Westlinton, Roucliff, Etterby, Stainton, Stanwix, and Cargo, to be kept at Roucliff, one dogge' 

 (Nicolson and Burn, Hist, of Cumb. i. pp. cxxx.-cxxxi. ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iii. App. p. 39). 



1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. (Rydal MSS.), xii. App. vii. 15. 



2 Worthies of England (ed. Jefferson), p. 5. 



" S.P. Dom. James I. xl. II, Ixxxvi. 34. It was said in 1617 that Lord William Howard had gotten 

 the greatest footing in the northern counties that ever any subject had, and that he could command a 

 greater following there than the king himself (ibid. xcii. 17). 



4 It is scarcely necessary to direct attention to the Surtees Society edition (No. 68) of Selections 

 from the Household Books of Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, where Mr. Ornsby has collected 

 many documents relating to the life and time of this remarkable nobleman. 



6 Household Books of Lord W. Howard (Surtees Soc.), 413, 425-7. On the early history of tenure by 

 Border service, see F.C.H. Cumb. i. 321-7. 



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