Looking upstream along Scandal Beck above Smardale Bridge, where an old drovers’ track once crossed the river. The packhorse bridge here, likely built in the 18th century, stood beside a pub known as the Scotch Inn1Heritage Gateway. List Entry Number: 1312391. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1312391&resourceID=5. It served the Scots drovers who passed this way with herds of cattle and sheep, bound for the markets of central England. That traffic slowed and faded by the middle of the Victorian period.
In 1663, long before the bridge, this inn was the unlikely meeting place of men plotting to overthrow King Charles II. The scheme, known as the Kaber Rigg Plot, came to nothing. The would-be revolutionaries, led by a hardened trooper named Captain Robert Atkinson, were captured and later executed.
There is still argument over whether the plot was real or merely a trap set by Government agents keen to discredit the Parliamentary party, recently removed from power2Nicholson, F. (1911). The Kaber Rigg Plot, 1663.. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 11 (series 2). Vol 11, pp. 212-232. https://doi.org/10.5284/1064041.
Atkinson had fought for Parliament during the Civil War. He was once a captain of horse, governor of Appleby Castle, and trusted by the Commons. He lived later on his estate in Mallerstang, respected by his nonconformist neighbours. He returned their trust by becoming a spy for Sir Philip Musgrave, the area’s chief royalist and churchman.
Seventeenth-century England had its share of double-dealers. It also had no shortage of conspiracy theories. Nothing much changes.
- 1Heritage Gateway. List Entry Number: 1312391. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1312391&resourceID=5
- 2Nicholson, F. (1911). The Kaber Rigg Plot, 1663.. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 11 (series 2). Vol 11, pp. 212-232. https://doi.org/10.5284/1064041
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