CHAPTER XVIII.

INGLETON.

History of Ingleton-Another Ingleton-Both held by the house of NevilleWhat does Ingleton mean?-Celt and Roman-The Danish Conquest- The Scandinavian Inglingians-Camp at Yarlsber-Ancient local fire customsIngleton in Domesday-" White " towns-Ingleton in A.D. 1290-Story of the Manor-Mediaval tenant rights-Customs in Elizabethan times-Ingleton Hall and the Lowthers-Residence of a Lord High Chancellor-The poet Gray at Ingleton-Twisleton and Ellerbeck disputes-The church- Old houses -Local worthies.

HE prefix Ingle, Ingel, Engel, and Angle, with their various modifications, enter so largely into British and Continental place-names, that in many cases it is impossible to establish their precise origin, without an accurate knowledge of local circumstances, such as the physical or geographical position and history of the places thus compounded. It may be at once noted that in the North of England there are two villages named Ingleton, one in Yorkshire, the subject of this sketch, and the other in the parish of Staindrop, Co. Durham; both being possessions, in the reign of Elizabeth, of the great House of Neville, Earls of Westmoreland. Henry, 5th Earl, whose effigy in wood, along with the superb monument of his progenitor, Ralph Baron Neville, 1st Earl, adorns the old church at Raby, was brother-in-law to the famous Richard Cholmondeley, mentioned in our acccunt of Bentham, who married a daughter of William, Lord Conyers, of Hornby, and to whom, and to Robert Bowes, the Earl devised by will, dated August 18th, 1563, two parts of all his manors, &c., on trust, "i.e., the manor of Bywell, in Northumberland, with my lands, &c., at Cockfeild, Keverston, Ingleton, Bollowe, Forres of Laughton, Somerhouse, and Haughton, within the Lordship of Raybye, to pay therefrom to ether of my two daughters, Marye and Adelane, one thousand markes, and one hundred pounds yearly unto Lady Margaret, now my [third] wife, and daughter of Sir Roger Cholmeley, Kt., deceased."

The manors of Ingleton and Bentham, Co. York, were as previously recorded, the property of the same Sir Richard Cholmondeley, Kt., the testator's brother-in-law. By the attainture of his nephew, Charles, 6th

Earl, (13th Elizabeth, A.D. 1570), for his share in the great Catholic "Rising in the North," the whole of the vast possessions of this ancient line were confiscated, and the old Barony of Neville, of Raby, and the Earldom of Westmoreland, were also rendered null and extinct; the noble Earl taking refuge abroad, and dying (A.D. 1584) in comparative poverty, on a small pittance allowed him by the King of Spain.

The admirable situation and various remains of high antiquity of our Yorkshire Ingleton, yield the best proof of its occupation at a very early period. While the poor and barbarous native cave-dwellers do not appear to have penetrated these inhospitable wilds, but to have harboured principally the lower parts of Craven, there is no doubt that on the migration westward of the first invaders, the Goidelic and Brythonic Celts, this commanding position and look-out post was quickly seized upon and held by successive tribes up to historic times. In ascribing this remote appropriation of Ingleton, it must be remembered that while many towns and villages owe their origin and names to later settlers, the great natural features of the country, such as the mountains and rivers, were already named by the earliest Celtic tribes. The Baal or Beltane fires blazed on the peaks, and here, on Ingleborough, the huts or habitations lay on the summit, (for summer habitation), and close to the foot of the mountain, on the sunny side, for winter occupation, some remains of which we may still see. The Roman conquerors who established themselves among the ruins of the native races, erected their fortresses and continued the watch and signal fires on the great hill, under which ran their constructed highways out of Wensleydale and over Cam Fell to Ribchester, Lancaster, and the station at Overborough, called Bremetonacæ, only a few miles off to the west, which will be described later on.

From the prominence of these Celtic-Roman ingle or beacon fires, and the borough, or castra exploratum of the Romans, it is not unlikely the hill received its name, while the village erected at a later period on its present site, became the ton, town, or enclosure of the fire or beacon-hill. Gale assumes that Bremetonacæ meant the same thing, from the old British words, Bre Meinig Tane, i.e., the hill of stone and fire, in allusion to the outpost on Ingleborough. The Pagan Britons frequently lit fires as thank-offerings to their deities, and they had great faith in their efficacy or power to prevent famine, plague, or disease. And it is certainly curious how this belief has survived at Ingleton even to our own day. Within the last thirty years or so it was a common practice in this neighbourhood to kindle the so-called Need-fire by rubbing two pieces of wood briskly together, and setting a-blaze a large heap of sticks and brushwood, which were dispersed, and cattle then driven through the smoking brands. This was thought to act as a charm against the spread or development of

the various ailments to which cattle are liable. It is a singularly interesting custom, which is still kept up in some parts of Britain with the same object.

With this explanation it seems almost needless to discuss the relation of the Saxon and Danish Conquests with the origin of Ingleton. But I may point out, what does not seem to have been considered, the historic importance which the Danish invasion has given to this neighbourhood, as testified in part by the remains of earthworks, &c., and by the numerous existing place-names of that origin. These bold and fearless Norsemen carried their warlike enterprises from the sea-board of England to the very mountain fastnesses of Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, leaving behind them ample evidence of their conquests and habitations in the numerous scars, garths, dales, forces, gills, lunds, thwaites, and by's, which abound in these parts. Of the single suffix by (a town), it may be mentioned, that in the north-west of Yorkshire and in the two adjoining counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, fully one hundred examples may be cited of names formed of this Danish terminal.

But with all deference to these Danish Conquests it is, perhaps, nothing more than a verbal coincidence that the celebrated Yngvi or Ingvi, son of the great King-god Odin, has bequeathed in his name some resemblance to the appellation of the later Danish settlement of Ingleton. The comparison may, perhaps, end here, but it will not be going out of our way to draw a few inferences from the analogy. The triumphant battle-march of Odin from the Caspian to the Baltic, and his subsequent conquest of Denmark and Scandinavia, excited the fear no less than it won the tribute and homage of nations, and by common consent the regal title and office was eventually bestowed by the Swedes upon his son Ingvi and his posterity, and thus sprang the long and renowned dynasty of the Inglingians, a name by which the Kings of Sweden continued to be known until the seventh century, and the Kings of Norway, from that period until the fourteenth. Of the fabulous power of Odin, the mystical father, we have some rare and curious instances. He could sing, we are told, airs so tender and melodious, "that the very plains and mountains would open and expand with delight, and that the ghosts attracted by the sweetness of his songs, would leave their infernal caverns, and stealing up to the dulcet sounds, stand motionless about him." The legend of the historical Odin is founded on the authority of the Inglinga Saga, which forms the first book of Snorr's "Heimskringla," or "Chronicles of the Kings of Norway."

To this remarkable personage and his successors are probably owing the names of many places and districts to which their conquests extended. In Denmark and Sweden the name appears to be most commonly

commemorated, and it is also in these countries that cairns, barrows, and tumuli, similar to our Yorkshire ones, are perhaps more numerous than anywhere else in the world. Such, for example, is the famous Inglinge Hög, about 1 miles south of Vexio, in Sweden, which is a large and ancient tumulus, commanding a wide view, and was undoubtedly once a place of assize, similar to that which the name (with camp) of our own Yarlsber at Ingleton, already described, seems to imply. Again, may be mentioned Ingelsholm, in Denmark, in the vicinity of many antiquities, Engelsberg, in Sweden, between Dalarne and Stockholm, on the shores of Lake Amänningen. It is noteworthy that our Ingleton is in old charters sometimes also written Engelton, and Yngleton. In Domesday (A.D. 1086) it is, however, Inglestune, i.e. the fire town.

To quit, however, the region of speculation, let us now quote this valuable historic record. The locality is thus defined :

MANOR, in Witeune (Whittington), Earl Tosti had six carucates of land to be

taxed.

In Neutune (Newton) two carucates; Ergune (Arum, or Arkholme) six carucates; Ghersincture (Gressingham) two carucates; Hotum (Hutton) three carucates; Cantesfelt (Cantsfield) three carucates; Irebi (Ireby) three carucates ; Borch (Overburrow) three carucates; Lech (Leck) three carucates.

Boretune (Burton-in-Lonsdale) four carucates; Bernulfeswic (Barnoldswick) one carucate; Inglestune (Ingleton) six carucates; Castretum (Casterton) three carucates; Bercbrune (Barbon) three carucates; Sedberge (Sedbergh) three carucates; Tiernbi (Thirnby or Thornby), six carucates.

All these villages belong to Witetune (Whittington).

Although Ingleton was but a dependent village of Whittington, yet the large extent, at least 600 acres, of cultivated land here, (small, indeed, in comparison with the total area,) and the absence of any mention of waste within the manor, says something for the peaceful occupation of the Danes, whose clemency had probably been purchased by the native Saxons, and their churches and houses spared; as also of its isolation from the after ravages of the Norman Conquest. The capital Saxon town, Whittington, now a small village, (2 miles south of Kirkby Lonsdale), and a parish of some 350 souls, was, I suppose, so called from its being conspicuously constructed of stone, while the surrounding villages consisted, as was the custom then, of an assemblage of wooden huts. Churches, indeed, when first built of stone, were often designated white churches, to distinguish them from those built of wood.

The above Earl Tosti, who was the last Saxon to hold the manor before the Conquest, was chief minister to Edward the Confessor. Of his tyranny and cruelty, when ruler of Northumbria, the following citation by Roger of Wendover affords remarkable testimony: "Tosti quitted the King's court in a rage, and coming to the city of Hereford, where his brother Harold had prepared a great feast for the king, he cut