Cumberland
"Cumberland
is in the Diocese of Chester and
Carlisle
and is 50 miles in length and 38 in breadth.
It contains 14,820 Houses, 88,920 Inhabitants, 58 Parishes, 15 Market
Towns and sends 6 Members to Parliament. The Air is Sharp the Country
Mountainous, but there are fruitfull Valleys and the Hills are proper
for feeding Sheep. There are Mines of Copper near Newland and black
lead in Keswick which is the best in the World if not the only Place
where it is found.
Carlisle
is a Bishop's See. Penrith is noted for tanners and Whitehaven for Coals and Salt"
So wrote John Gibson in "New and Accurate Maps of the Counties of
England
and
Wales
, 1759"
Of
the fifty-eight parishes referred to by Gibson, one was Holme Cultram,
in the north-west of the county, centred on the Abbey of Holme (or
Holm), to the southwest of Carlisle. It is in this parish where we find
the first traces of the BROUGH family. Holme Abbey dates from the
twelfth century, and according to a nineteenth century gazetteer of the
region, "There was here a richly endowed Abbey of Cistercians,
said by several writers to have been founded by prince Henry, son of
David, king of Scotland, about the year 1150, and dedicated to the
Virgin Mary". The same gazetteer continues: "the monks
presently erected five granges for husbandry, at Raby, Mawbergh,
Skinburne, Culshaw, and Newton Arlosh; and they soon after were endowed
with many other lands, tenements, and hereditaments. At the dissolution
of the religious houses, the monastery was surrendered to the crown".
The
crown at that time sat on the head of Henry Vlll, during whose reign,
we find our first reference to the name BROUGH in the parish. It occurs
in a survey of the Manor of Holme Cultram conducted in the year 1538
and entitled "The Rentall of all the Possessions both spiritual and
temporal belonging to the Monastery of Holm Cultram made the 6th day of March in the 29th year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth by Mr Thomas Leigh, William Blithman and James Rokeby Commissioners".