A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



SHOOTING 



The materials for writing an account of 

 shooting in the county of Cumberland are 

 but scanty. No squire of old days seems to 

 have thought it worth his while to keep such 

 a diary as did Colonel Hawker or Lord 

 Malmesbury, and these mines of interesting 

 information available to the Hampshire his- 

 torian are quite wanting here. No game 

 book or rough jottings of sport of the 

 eighteenth century, or even very early in the 

 nineteenth, are to be met with ; one at 

 Greystoke which dates from 1825 goes back 

 the furthest of all. Though the amount of 

 game killed in a day or a season a hundred or 

 a hundred and fifty years ago would seem 

 small to us, it would not be so to those who 

 killed it. Records would be established then 

 from time to time, and no doubt these records 

 still exist, hidden away in journals and letters 

 in old country houses ; but they are inaccessible 

 now and not to be found except by chance. 

 The present business-like volumes kept by all 

 men who shoot much were unknown. If the 

 strong and comely John Osbaldistone, who 

 ' has most of the gamekeeper ' in Sir Hilde- 

 brand's old Northumberland hall, had, instead 

 of muddling himself with brandy, spent some 

 of his abundant spare time in jotting down at 

 night what he and his wild brothers had 

 killed or hunted during the day, how grateful 

 would we be to him now. As we would be 

 too if someone had cared enough for them to 

 write on the backs of the pictures ' dimmed 

 with smoke and March beer ' which hang in 

 many an old hall, some brief particulars of 

 the sitter and the artist, both now long since 

 forgotten and never to be known. 



Field sports are seldom mentioned by 

 English historians : Lord Macaulay has only 

 two or three references, one of which concerns 

 the Cumberland border. After speaking of 

 the wild state of the country in 1685, he 

 comes down to later times and quotes from 

 Scott's life in what state the then Duke of 

 Northumberland's father found the ' people 

 in Keeldar when he went up to shoot there. 

 The women had no other dress than a bed- 

 gown and petticoat ; the men were savage, 

 and could hardly be brought to rise from the 

 heather either from sullenness or fear.' * And 

 he goes on to speak of their wild dances and 

 songs. 



About the year 1803 Colonel Thornton 

 made his well-known expedition into Scot- 

 land and the north of England. He pene- 



The History of England, i. 286 (ed. 1849-61). 



trated the word is not an ill-fitting one to 

 use considering the dangers and difficulties he 

 seems to have met with on the way as far 

 north as Inverness, and returned to Yorkshire 

 through Cumberland. A sloop manned by 

 three sailors was sent first to Forres with 

 heavy goods, and then with two boats, two 

 baggage waggons and a tandem gig, and many 

 horses for riding and driving, with a valet, 

 groom, waggoner and other servants, a fal- 

 coner, an artist, and endless supplies of food 

 and liquors, guns, nets, hawks and pointers 

 with a paraphernalia, as Sir Herbert Maxwell 

 says, calculated on lines for exploring Labra- 

 dor the colonel set forth and shot and fished 

 and netted and hawked his way northwards. 

 He must have been a man of great energy 

 and power of organization ; the directions to 

 his servants are given after a military fashion 

 which is sometimes very amusing. Pike fish- 

 ing and snipe and woodcock shooting seem to 

 have been his favourite pursuits. He gives 

 long descriptions of the scenery he passed 

 through, which impressed him, as it did all 

 travellers of that period, more by its desola- 

 tion and dangers than by its beauty ; he never 

 came across a pretty girl without chronicling 

 the fact, and he devotes a considerable part 

 of his diary to detailing the elaborate dinners 

 he and his friends partook of in the wilderness, 

 and the abundant liquid with which they 

 washed them down. Probably this history 

 gives in the main a correct account of what 

 really took place, though now and then our 

 confidence in its absolute accuracy is a little 

 shaken, as, for example, when he so set his 

 ' bullet gun ' as to be sure of hitting a card 

 at 200 yards, or when, after making a long 

 shot at an old 'moor game' cock, he 

 measured the distance and was disappointed 

 to find it was ' only a hundred and three 

 yards.' 



On October 23 he reached Carlisle and 

 travelling by Wigton, Bassenthwaite where 

 he met and entered into conversation with 

 ' one of the most beautiful and innocent 

 country girls ' he ever saw Keswick, Gras- 

 mere, Rydal, Ponsonby and Muncaster, he 

 passed into Lancashire by Coniston. 



It is unfortunate for our special purpose 

 that Colonel Thornton did not devote much 

 space to the latter part of his tour ; possibly 

 he was a little stale, a little tired of shooting 

 and fishing and hawking by the time he got 

 into Cumberland ; even the dinners, though 

 the quality of them is mentioned, are not 

 given in detail. He saw men hunting salmon 



428 



