class were
then called, and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of
Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only daughter of William Cookson, mercer,
of Penrith, and of Dorothy, born Crackanthorp, of the ancient family of
that name, who from the times of Edward the Third had lived in Newbiggen
Hall, Westmoreland. My grandfather was the first of the name of
Wordsworth who came into Westmoreland, where he purchased the small
estate of Sockbridge. He was descended from a family who had been
settled at Peniston in Yorkshire, near the sources of the Don, probably
before the Norman Conquest. Their names appear on different occasions in
all the transactions, personal and public, connected with that parish;
and I possess, through the kindness of Col. Beaumont, an almery made in
1325, at the expense of a William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a Latin
inscription[16] carved upon it, which carries the pedigree of the family
back four generations from himself.

[16] The original is as follows, some of the abbreviations being
expanded: 'HOC OPUS FIEBAT ANNO DOMINI MCCCXXV EX SUMPIU WLLLELMI
WOBDESWORTH FILII W. FIL. JOH. FIL. W. FIL. NICH. VIRI ELIZABETH FILIAE
ET HEREDIS W. PROCTOR DE PENYSTON QUORUM ANIMABUS PROPITIETUE DEUS.'

On the almery are carved the letters 'I.H.S.' and 'M.;' also the emblem
of the Holy Trinity.

For further information concerning this oak press, see Mr. Hunter's
paper in _Gentleman's Magazine _for July, 1850, p. 43.

The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed partly at
Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my
mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, the
consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used to
be called 'a best bedroom.' My father never recovered his usual
cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my
fourteenth year, a school-boy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I
had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year.

I remember my mother only in some few situations, one of which was her
pinning a nosegay to my breast when I was going to say the catechism in
the church, as was customary before Easter.[17] I remember also telling
her on one week day that I had been at church, for our school stood in
the churchyard, and we had frequent opportunities of seeing what was
going on there. The occasion was, a woman doing penance in the church in
a white sheet. My mother commend