XI. MAUGHAN'S FIRST ACCOUNT, 1854.

[According to my best information (for which I am indebted to Professor W. G. Collingwood; Chancellor J. E. Prescott, Canon of Carlisle; Rev. George Yorke, Rector of Bewcastle; Rev. T. W. Willis, Vicar of Lanercost; and Mr. John Maughan, of Maryport, Cumberland, nephew of the antiquary), Rev. John Maughan (pronounced Mawn, but locally now and then Maffan) was born at Lanercost Abbey Farm, April 18, 1806, and baptized at Lanercost Abbey, January 6, 1807. His grandfather, Nicholas Maughan, born in 1733, came to Lanercost from the County of Durham, and became the tenant of the Abbey Farm. He was married to Elizabeth Bowman, of Nether Denton, was churchwarden in 1789, and died May 14, 1798. He had a son John, the father of the antiquary, who was born at Lanercost in 1770, succeeded to the Abbey Farm, married Mary Moses, and died at Lanercost, April 28, 1830. The Rev. John Maughan, one of a family of thirteen children, was born as stated above, took his degree of B. A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1830, was ordained by the Bishop of Chester in 1833, and became Curate of Melling, Liverpool, in the same year. He was Rector of Bewcastle from 1836 to 1873, built the present rectory in 1837, and married Mary Twentyman at Carlisle, July 21, 1840. He died without issue November 13, 1873, and was buried in the graveyard at Lanercost Abbey, next to his wife, who had died at Bewcastle Rectory, January 10, 1872, aged sixty-eight years. Besides his papers on the Maiden Way, from the second of which the following paragraphs are extracted, and the Memoir given below, he wrote many papers, chiefly on supposed Roman camps in North Cumberland, for the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society, between its foundation in 1866 and his death in 1873. Considerable excerpts and adaptations from his Memoir were embodied in The History and Topography of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, edited by William Whellan, 1860. According to Collingwood, he was a qualified medical man, a schoolmaster, magistrate, and farmer.' Elsewhere Collingwood says, apropos of certain supposed runes near Bewcastle (Early Sculptured Crosses, Shrines, and Monuments in the Present Diocese of Carlisle, Kendal, 1899, PP. 52-3): 'Mr. Maughan had been for years the enthusiastic Runologist

of the countryside, eagerly expounding the Bewcastle Cross, circulating among his parishioners the story here retold, talking to all and sundry about his theories on Petriana and place-names. In some other antiquarian matters he is known to have been deceived. It was on his authority that the Maiden Way north of Bewcastle was laid down in the Ordnance-map, with many forts, etc., which recent investigation has shown to be imaginary. (Compare his paper on "the Maiden Way," Archæological Journal, no. 41, with Transactions, C. & W. A. & A. Soc., vol. XV., part II., p. 344, etc.) There is reason to think that he was the victim, especially in his later years, of a series of practical jokes. Old roads, pavements, ruined forts (cottages) were found for him, by the zeal or roguery of his neighbors; and these runes are their creation. They are not the work of a Runic scholar; they were concocted by a clever Cumbrian who had read the Rector's papers, heard his talk, perhaps used his books, and, like his countrymen, laughed at enthusiasm and loved a joke.'

The following paragraphs are from Archeological Journal II (1854). 130-4. It is clear that Maughan was at this time inclined to date the cross after the death of Sweyn in 1014.]

In the churchyard the Monolithic Obelisk, or shaft of an ancient cross, is still standing, but remains unexplained. I have recently cleared the inscribed parts from the moss with which they were thickly coated, but have not been able to decypher the characters in a satisfactory manner. The letters appear to be Anglo-Saxon Runes, and much the same as those on the Ruthwell monument in Dumfriesshire. On a fillet on the north side the follow

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NIBARDX ing letters 1 are very legible.

1

In the year 1685 these characters were somewhat differently read by Bishop Nicholson, and expounded by him to mean, Rynburn, the burial of the Runæ,' or Ryeburn, Cemeterium, or Cadaverum Sepulchrum.' In the year 1742, an article appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine communicated by Mr. Smith, who read it 'Kuniburuk, Sepulchrum Regis.' As however these interpretations appear to be based on an in

correct copying of the letters, I would suggest another reading. I suppose the second letter to be a Runic Y; and the penultimate letter to be a compound of OU; and I would propose to read Kyneburoug. The word Cyne or Kin of the Saxons was synonymous with nation or people; and the Anglo-Saxon byrig, byrg, burh, burg, buroug, &c., was the generic term for any place, large or small, which was fortified by walls or mounds. The fortifications of the continental Saxons, before their inroads on the Roman Empire, were mere earthworks, for in their half-nomadic state they had neither means nor motive for constructing any other. But their conquest and colonisation of the greater part of Roman Britain put them in possession of a more solid class of fortifications, such as this at Bewcastle. I would suggest, therefore, that these Runes may signify the burgh or fortified town of the nation or people who occupied this district. It is probable that this was in early times a place of some importance. In the reign [131] of Edward I., 1279, John Swinburne obtained a fair and market to be held here.

On a fillet on the south side appear to be the following characters. What the first three may mean is doubtful, but the sub

sequent letters appear to

PERNFLÄMNT

be the word DANEGELT. This term was first applied to a tribute of 30,000, or according to some writers, 36,000 pounds (A. Sax.), raised in the year 1007 during the reign of Ethelred the Unready, to purchase a precarious peace from the Danes. It was also sometimes used to designate taxes imposed on other extraordinary occasions.

On the western side are three figures, which, as Bishop Nicholson says, 'evidently enough manifest the

monument to be Christian.'(3) The highest may be, as the learned prelate suggested, the Blessed Virgin with the Babe in her arms. (4) The next is that of our Saviour with the glory round his head. In a compartment underneath this is the principal inscription, consisting of nine lines; and underneath this is the figure of a man with a bird upon his hand, and in front of him a perch, which, in the absence of a better explanation, may possibly have been intended to represent Odin, or some Danish chieftain, and his dreaded raven : and we may suppose that he was placed at the bottom of the group to typify his conversion and subjection to the Redeemer, who was descended from the Blessed Virgin. The inscription appears to be as follows, so far as I have been able to trace the letters (see woodcut, p. 132). The eighth and ninth lines are quite illegible.

In the first line the three characters at the commencement probably form the monogram IH S, and

(3) 'Camden's Britannia,' ed. by Gibson, vol. ii., p. 1028.

(4) It must be admitted that this supposition is somewhat countenanced by the fact that the Church of Bewcastle is dedicated to the Virgin. The representation, however, of these weather-worn sculptures, given by Lysons in his History of Cumberland,' p. cxcix, suggests the notion, that what has been supposed to be the Infant Saviour, may be the Agnus Dei, and it is so described by him. If this be correct, the figure must represent the Baptist,1 and the two lines of characters, now defaced, under its feet, as shown in Lysons' plate, possibly comprised some mention of St. John. The figure at the base, as some have thought, most probably pourtrayed some person of note by whom this remarkable Christian monument was erected. The bird which he has taken off its perch, appears to be a hawk,2 introduced, possibly, to mark his noble rank. In examining Lysons' plate, the best representation of the sculptures, hitherto published, attention is arrested by the introduction of a vertical dial 3 on the south side, resembling those at Kirk dale and Bishopstone, described in this volume of the Journal, p. 60, the only examples of so early a date hitherto noticed. -ED.4