It was quite a new
movement, which had its origin apparently in America, and was becoming
the prevailing subject of conversation in the country we travelled
through.
[Illustration: KENDAL CASTLE.]
Kendal was an ancient place, having been made a market town by licence
from Richard Coeur de Lion. Philippa, the Queen of Edward III, wisely
invited some Flemings to settle there and establish the manufacture of
woollen cloth, which they did. Robin Hood and his "merrie men" were
said to have been clothed in Kendal Green, a kind of leafy green which
made the wearers of it scarcely distinguishable from the foliage and
vegetation of the forests which in Robin Hood's time covered the greater
part of the country. Lincoln Green was an older cloth of pure English
manufacture.
Robin Hood was the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, and Shakespeare makes
Falstaff say--
All the woods
Are full of outlaws that in Kendal Green
Followed the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.
Catherine Parr was born at Kendal, and an old writer, noting that she
was the last Queen of Henry VIII, added, "a lady who had the good
fortune to descend to the grave with her head on, in all probability
merely by outliving her tyrant.
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