Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 2 (2004), p. 213

Thomas Denton’s manuscript perambulation of Cumberland was prepared in the 1680s to a commission from Sir John Lowther of Lowther, and has been in the family muniments ever since. It was transferred to Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle with the rest of the archive in 1962, and has now been transcribed for publication. Angus Winchester’s introduction sets the document in its context, and provides a pen portrait of Denton himself. Lowther almost certainly sought contemporary information, but Denton provided him with much more, including historical material and his own assessment of places well beyond his original Cumberland remit. Denton had previously prepared for Lowther an account of the Honour of Penrith and Forest of Ingle-wood, and he had a local lawyer’s grasp of the problems of tenant right in the area, so Lowther knew his man and his skills. Denton was also fully cognizant with issues the Cumbrian aristocrat would want investigating, including the boundaries of parishes, townships and estates, income from rents, the value of mills and mines, church livings and impropriated tithes, together with details of customary tenure in the area. Although the manuscript included extensive borrowings from other writers, which this edition highlights in order to avoid confusion, Denton added a good deal of his own material to provide a wealth of contemporary information about the area.

Denton was typical of a genre, a topographer/ historian with a legal background, and a good working knowledge of more or less anything. He shows a keen eye for detail, to provide a useful account of his own society, although his agricultural comments tend to berather more general than we might prefer. In Distington he noted ‘the soyle here is very good for corn’, (p.109), while at Workington ‘the demesne (being a good soyle for pasturage, as well as corn & hay) breadsthe largest cattle & sheep in all the countrey’ (p.113). Not much corn was sold from Keswick ‘by reason that the town is so environ’d with mountains & hills that little or no corne growes within many miles ofthis place’. Thus, Denton continued, warming to a theme he perhaps found more interesting, ‘the tythe wool & lamb is doubly more valuable to the minister of the parish then the tythes of both corn & hay’ (p.137). There is much more in a similar vein, but the impression is that for Denton the farming was secondary to hispreoccupation with the relationship of landlord andtenant, hence his long discussions of tenure. In any case he clearly wanted to describe the community and itslocal economy, including industry, trade, fairs, andother forms of commerce, although perhaps surprisingly he had little to say about country houses and there are few descriptions of churches. Fortunately Denton had a sense of humour, hence his recounting ofthe story of the new parish clerkimposed upon thevicar of Ribton. The man was clearly not up to the task: he could sing the appropriate tune only for Psalm4. Forced to try to bluff, he tried tosing Psalm 25 to the same tune, ‘but finding the tune was longer bytwo semibreifs, he was forced to conclude, I lift 214 the agricultural myheart to thee, with Hay! Hay!’, which provoked thecongregation ‘to a loud laughter’ (p.152). We canonly hope that Sir John Lowther enjoyed such vignettesamong the discussions of economic and tenurial matters which otherwise fill the pages of Denton’s perambulation.