[Illustration:  KENDAL CHURCH.]

Kendal possessed a fine old church, in one of the aisles of which was suspended a helmet said to have belonged to Major Phillipson, whose family was haunted by the two skulls, and who was nicknamed by Cromwell’s men “Robert the Devil” because of his reckless and daring deeds.  The Phillipsons were great Royalists, and Colonel Briggs of Kendal, who was an active commander in the Parliamentary Army, hearing that the major was on a visit to his brother, whose castle was on the Belle Isle in Lake Windermere, resolved to besiege him there; but although the siege continued for eight months, it proved ineffectual.  When the war was over, Major Phillipson resolved to be avenged, and he and some of his men rode over to Kendal one Sunday morning expecting to find Colonel Briggs in the church, and either to kill him or take him prisoner there.  Major Phillipson rode into the church on horseback, but the colonel was not there.  The congregation, much surprised and annoyed at this intrusion, surrounded the major, and, cutting the girths, unhorsed him.  On seeing this, the major’s party made a furious attack on the assailants, and the major killed with his own hand the man who had seized him, and, placing the ungirthed saddle on his horse, vaulted into it and rode through the streets of Kendal calling upon his men to follow him, which they did, and the whole party escaped to their safe resort in the Lake of Windermere.

This incident furnished Sir Walter Scott with materials for a similar adventure in “Rokeby,” canto vi.: 

  All eyes upon the gateway hung. 
  When through the Gothic arch there sprung
  A horseman arm’d, at headlong speed—­
  Sable his cloak, his plume, his steed. 
  Fire from the flinty floor was spurn’d. 
  The vaults unwonted clang return’d!—­
  One instant’s glance around he threw,
  From saddle-bow his pistol drew. 
  Grimly determined was his look! 
  His charger with the spurs he strook—­
  All scatter’d backward as he came,
  For all knew Bertram Risingham! 
  Three bounds that noble courser gave;
  The first has reach’d the central nave,
  The second clear’d the chancel wide. 
  The third—­he was at Wycliffe’s side.

* * * * *

While yet the smoke the deed conceals,
Bertram his ready charger wheels;
But flounder’d on the pavement-floor
The steed, and down the rider bore,
And, bursting in the headlong sway. 
The faithless saddle-girths gave way. 
’Twas while he toil’d him to be freed. 
And with the rein to raise the steed. 
That from amazement’s iron trance
All Wycliffe’s soldiers waked at once.

(Distance walked fifteen miles.)

Friday, October 20th.

We left Kendal before breakfast, as we were becoming anxious about maintaining our average of twenty-five miles per day, for we had only walked nineteen miles on Wednesday and fifteen miles yesterday, and we had written to our friends some days before saying that we hoped to reach York Minster in time for the services there on Sunday.