The "Percy Survey" of the Cumbrian holdings of the Earl of Northumberland in 1578 was in part a response to an earlier survey for the government, ordered by Queen Elizabeth I's letters patent dated 18 March in the 12th year of her reign (1569-70). The 1570 survey, by Edmond Hall & William Homberston, was made because Thomas Percy, then Earl of Northumberland, "dyd lately rebell and make insurreccon ageynst or. sovreign Lady the Quenes Ma'tie". The government survey is in the National Archives at Kew (Exchequer/ Queen's Remembrancer/ Miscellaneous Books/ 37; modern reference E164/37), and I have abstracted the local material on another page, but there is an official transcript of the introduction in the Leconfield archives (D/Lec/box 300) from which, some time ago, I made a few notes about the situation of the Eskdale manors within the Honour of Cockermouth (names spelled as in original):

The Honour contains two Liberties, between the rivers Darwent and Eyn [Ehen], and between the Eyn and the Dodden. The latter, which is administered for the Earl by the "baylyf of the lyberty betwene Eyn and Dodden" contained the townships of Moncaster, Irton, Santon, Dregge, Carleton, Ravenglas, Bolton, Gosforth, Newton, Punsonby, Calder, Beckarmett, Wylton, Braystanes & Hale.

It also contained a forest (using the word in its proper sense of a large area of land subject to special conservation regulations- not necessarily covered with trees) up in the mountains, stocked with red deer. This was divided into three parts, with a staff of foresters, each assigned a particular "walk". These were Darwentfells (1 forester), Asshedale and Washdale (3 foresters) and Nether Washedale (2 foresters or keepers). A note records that the Eskdale/Wasdale part contained "no townes but the said two dales" and was well stocked with deer "and wyll so contynue yf they may be p'served".

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