are so little useful, that at Shirland, the round-house is occupied as a cottage by a labourer and his family, as tenants to the parish. СНАР. 7. Manners. The great commercial improvements at Glossop, Chapel-en-le-Frith and other parts of the Peak, have effected a great change in the manners of General Peak within a few years; and the miners are, generally speaking, becoming a far more intelligent class of society than they were formerly. The following extract from Pilkington must therefore be taken with great allowances for alterations that have occurred since his time. "Formerly the manners of the inhabitants of the northern and southern parts of Derbyshire were considerably different from each other. And this is still in some measure the case. It has been observed, that civilization does not take place so early in a mountainous as in a champaign country. This may, in some degree, account for the rude manners of those who live in the Peak of Derbyshire. But their general employments and pursuits have probably contributed in an equal degree to produce this effect. Having always been engaged in mineral concerns, and having but little intercourse with the rest of the world, they could not receive that polish, which a free and extensive commerce with neighbouring countries frequently gives. Nor could it be reasonably expected, that much refinement would arise from the regulations, by which they were directed in their general employments, more especially in prosecuting the business of the mines. The third act of stealing from the lead mines in Derbyshire, was by a law of Edward I. punished in the following manner. A hand of the criminal was nailed to a table, and in that state he was left without meat or drink, having no means for freedom, but employing one hand to cut off the other. The inhabitants of a country, which could require or even admit of such savage and barbarous laws, must be a long time before they could arrive at any high degree of civilization and refinement. They have now, from the introduction of manufactures amongst them, a more free intercourse with the world. The company who visit the baths and medicinal waters, and examine the other curiosities with which the county abounds, must also have some influence upon the minds of those with whom they converse. But there is no circumstance which has an equally powerful tendency to refine their manners, as the establishment of Sunday-schools. The effect which these institutions have already produced, in some situations, is very obvious. As the children of the present generation become better acquainted with their duty, they will improve in their reverence for God and religion, in kindness towards each other, in civility to strangers, and in the practice of modesty and decency." Philip Kinder, in the preface to his intended History of Derbyshire, written about the middle of the seventeenth century, has the following observations relating to the character and modes of living of the inhabitants of Derbyshire. "The common sort of people, out of a genuine reverence, not forced by feare or institution, doe observe those of larger fortunes, courteous and readie to show the waies and help a passenger: you may say they are lazie and idle in a better sense, for (except the grooves) they have not whereon to set themselves on worke, for all theire harvest and sede tyme is finished in six weeks; the rest of their tyme they spend in fothering their cattle, mending their stone enclosures, and in sports. СНАР. 7. "The countrie women here are chaste and sober, very diligent in their huswifery; they hate idleness, love and obey their husbands, only in some of the great townes many seeming sanctificators use to follow the Presbyterian gang, and upon a lecture-day put on their best rayment, and hereby take occasion to goo a gossiping. Your merry wives of Bentley will sometimes look in ye glass, chirpe a cupp merrily, yet not indecently. In the Peak they are much given to dance after the baggpipes, almost every town hathe a baggpipe in it. "Their exercises, for the greate part, is the Gymnopaidia or naked boy, an ould recreation among the Greeks: with this in foote-races, you shall have in a winter's day, the earth crusted over with ice, two antagonists, stark naked, runn a foote-race for two or three miles, with many hundred spectators, and the betts very small. "They love their cards. The miners at Christmas tyme will carry tenn or twenty pounds about them, game freely, returne home againe, all the year after good husbands. "For diet, the gentrie, after the southern mode, have two state-meales a-day, with a bit in ye buttery to a morning draught; but your peasants exceed the Greeks, who had four meales a-day, for the moorlanders add three more; ye bitt in the morning, ye anders meate and ye yenders meate, and so make up seaven, and for certaine ye great housekeeper doth allow his people, especially in summer tyme, so many commessations. "The common inhabitants doe prefer oates for delight and strength above any other graine; for here you may find jus nigrum, the Lacedæmonian pottage, to be a good dish, if you bring a Lacedæmonian stomach. It is observed, that they have for the most part fair, long, broad teeth, which is caused by the mastication of their oat bread." CHAP. 8. CHAPTER VIII. General History of Derbyshire. IT is difficult to separate the history of a county from that of the kingdom to which it belongs, and yet it is the business of the Topographer to select those events which have some bearing, either directly or indirectly, upon the district which he has undertaken to describe. In pursuing this course, he cannot but find matter particularly interesting from the very locality of the circumstances related; and if his narrative should sometimes want those connecting links that give a continuity to the records of national history, yet the facts of which he will have to speak must themselves be closely united with the surrounding scenery, and the agents in them may be frequently traced among the ancestry of the surrounding families. Throughout the following sketch, it has been the endeavour of the Editor to confine himself strictly to the History of Derbyshire, and to speak of the affairs of the kingdom at large, only when they or their immediate consequences may have had some influence on those of this county. habitants. We shall not presume to enter into any of the learned enquiries respecting the aboriginal inhabitants of this county, which, according to the earliest First Inmention of it that can be traced, formed part of a district inhabited by the Coritani; a people, who, wheresoever they had their origin, had possessed Coritani. themselves of that part of Britain which now comprises the counties of Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Rutland, Leicester and Northampton. In the Welsh or ancient British Triades, the Coranied is spoken of as the first of " the three usurping tribes that came into the island of Britain and never departed out of it." They are also said to have come from "the land of Pools," which various authors have understood to mean the coasts of Belgium. These invaders established themselves chiefly about the banks of the Humber, but it is not probable that they were ever completely masters of the mountainous tracks of Derbyshire, where it is manifest that the Druidism of the still earlier inhabitants of Britain long continued to flourish. It is true that the same rites were common to the Gauls, Germans and Britons, but the Bards and Druids of Britain were held in the greatest honour, and the youths of the other nations were sent hither for instruction. The Arbor-low or Arbelows, situated in the township of Middleton, and already described in our sixth chapter, is one of the existing monuments of this extraordinary priesthood, who undoubtedly taught the existence of a Supreme Being, intermingling their theology with much of the sciences of astronomy and astrology, while, at the same time, they exercised a powerful theocratic sway over the rude inhabitants of the land. There are similar Druidical remains in other parts of Derbyshire, though none in such excellent preservation as that near Middleton. These are supposed by many learned antiquarians, to have been places of council and courts of justice. "Here," says Mr. Pilkington, "the original inhabitants of the county met to deliberate upon the great concerns of the nation, in times of CHAP. 8. Romans. war and peace. Here were likewise their seats of judgment for the trial and punishment of criminals." The Romans first invaded Britain in the fifty-fifth year before the Christian era, but the inhabitants were far from being subdued until one hundred and thirty-four years afterwards, when the illustrious general Julius Agricola, by his repeated victories, finally established the dominion of Rome in Britain. When the Romans first divided their conquest into provinces, the county of Derby was comprehended in that which was denominated Britannia Prima; and, subsequently, when a new division was made by Severus, in A. D. 207, the whole district which included the Coritani formed the eastern part of the province, called Flavia Cæsariensis. The successes of the Romans facilitated the introduction of Christianity into Britain, and some Monkish writers, of suspicious authority, have asserted that Joseph of Arimathea preached at Glastonbury, during the first century, with considerable success. At the period of the Dioclesian persecution, which occurred about the year 303, it is certain that Christianity had made very great progress, and that the blood of martyrs flowed copiously in this island. What was the religious condition of this district is not known, but as the Romans had previously discovered the mineral wealth of our northern hills and valleys, and had made it an important article of export, there can be little doubt that many of the people of this neighbourhood had become acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity. A commercial and friendly intercourse between the Britons and the Gauls had subsisted before the invasion of this island by Julius Cæsar, but the vessels of the natives were built with light timber and covered with hides, and, therefore, incapable of being used for the conveyance of heavy goods. This was speedily remedied under the government of the Romans, and Strabo asserts, that the exports of Britain were, at this time, corn, cattle and hides; gold, silver, tin, lead and iron; a variety of toys made of fish bone, resembling ivory; beads and pearls; slaves made captives by different tribes or by the Romans; and dogs which are said to have been of a remarkable species. We have mentioned the proofs discovered of the lead mines having been worked by the Romans.* Coins were made of the British metals, and many of these have been discovered in this county. Two hundred copper coins, principally of the Lower Empire, were discovered in a perforated rock, called Scarthen nick, near Cromford. Several of them are in good preservation, and are now in the possession of Charles Hurt, jun. esq. of Wirksworth. At Lombards' Green, the station near Parwich, about fifty years ago, a miner searching for lead, found about eighty coins; some of which were as high as the Triumvirate of Octavius, Marc Anthony, and Lepidus, and others as low as the Emperor Aurelius. At Little Chester a variety of coinst have been discovered; as it is probable (as this was the capital of the province Flavia Cæsariensis) that the Romans had a mint in this place. The Romans drew their revenues from taxes on commerce, and on the mines: from duties on legacies and houses; and from a capitation-tax. In order to obtain money by these imposts, * See page 71. + See pages 293-5. the natives were taught the art of coining money, and thus the treasury of CHAP. 8. Rome was often replenished through the industry of the Britons. A succession of ages had almost identified the Britons with the Romans, when the latter emperors, pressed by difficulties at home, and weakened by the continual rebellions in the provinces, began to recall their troops from this island. The inhabitants, who had seen their sons and all the effective portion of the population drawn off for distant wars, implored the legions to remain, in order to protect them from the incursions of the Picts and Scots. The wall of Severus, which stretched across the island, from the Tyne on the east to Solway-Frith in the west, a distance of eighty miles, though built of solid stone, twelve feet high and eight feet thick, was no longer a sufficient barrier against the irruptions of these barbarians. The Romans departed, and the Britons invited over the Saxons to aid them against their invaders. Romans. It does not enter into our plan to fill up our pages unnecessarily with the history of the various settlements of the Saxons in Britain, and of the Saxons. formation of their seven kingdoms, which have been called the Heptarchy. The events which converted this portion of the Roman empire into so many Saxon monarchies, under different leaders, are sufficiently known to the general reader; and it is our business to confine our attention to that of Mercia alone, of which the county of Derby constituted one of the most important districts. It may here be proper to intimate, that when the Saxons arrived in this island, they were all pagans and idolaters. It was not until they had been established in their separate states for more than a hundred years that they began to be instructed in the Christian religion. About the year 597, Austin, a Benedictine Monk, was sent by Pope Gregory I. to convert the Saxons of Kent. In 653, the doctrine of the cross was taught in Mercia, by some Monks who had been protected and encouraged by the king of Northumberland. The kingdom of Mercia (says Rapin) was bounded on the north by the Kingdom of Humber, by which it was separated from Northumberland: on the west Mercia. by the Severn, beyond which were the Britons or Welsh: on the south by the Thames, by which it was separated from the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Wessex: and on the east by the kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia. Thus Mercia was guarded on three sides, by three large rivers, that ran into the sea, and served for a boundary to all the other kingdoms. Hence the name of Mercia, from the Saxon word Merc, which signifies a bound, and not, as some fancy, from an imaginary river; named Mercia. The inhabitants of this kingdom are sometimes termed by historians, Mediterranei Angli, or the Midland English; and sometimes South-Humbrians, as being south of the Humber; but the most common name is that of Mercians. The principal cities of Mercia were Lincoln, Nottingham, Warwick, Leicester, Coventry, Lichfield, Northampton, Worcester, Gloucester, Derby, Chester, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Oxford, Bristol.* Of all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, this was the finest and most considerable. Its length was a hundred and sixty miles, and its greatest breadth about one hundred.t *Rependun, now Repton, and nothing more than a small market town of Derbyshire, was the capital of the kingdom of Mercia and the burial place of its kings. +Rapin, Vol. I. page 181. |