Back home now, back on my own patch, yet the pull of the Lakes refuses to loosen its grip. I cannot leave without telling the tale of the Maid of Buttermere, a story that has clung to the valley like the morning mist on the fells. It is an eighteenth-century mix of beauty, trickery, and ruin, played out against some of the wildest scenery in England.
Mary Robinson stepped into the public eye in 1792, thanks to Joseph Budsworth and his book, “A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes”. Budsworth called her “Sally of Buttermere” and described her as the fifteen-year-old daughter of the local innkeeper. He lingered on her looks with the enthusiasm of a man who had clearly forgotten the hills for a moment, praising her “lips as red as vermillion” and her thick dark brown hair, crowning her the “reigning lily of the valley”. The effect was predictable. The quiet valley gained a beauty, and the beauty gained attention.
Attention, like bad weather, brings trouble with it. In July 1802 a stranger arrived in Keswick, calling himself Alexander Augustus Hope, brother to the Earl of Hopetoun. In reality he was John Hatfield, a practiced fraudster with unpaid debts trailing behind him like tin cans tied to a cart. Under his borrowed title and polished manners, he courted Mary and married her at Lorton Church on 2nd October 1802.
The marriage was a sham built on sand. Hatfield was not who he claimed to be, and he was already married, with a wife and two children living quietly in Tiverton. The truth surfaced when news of the wedding appeared in a Scottish newspaper and reached the eyes of his creditors. The net closed quickly. Hatfield was arrested, tried at Carlisle for forgery, and sentenced to death. Public sympathy flowed, but it changed nothing. He was hanged at the Sands in Carlisle on 3rd September 1803.
Reports of the execution dwell on his composure. He corrected the rope himself when the hangman proved “awkward” and spoke his final line with theatrical calm. “My spirit is strong, though my body is weak”. Mary, meanwhile, was pregnant with his child, left to face the fallout alone.
The press and the poets made full use of the drama. Later novels embroidered the story with tears at the scaffold and sudden deaths among the clergy. Wordsworth and others added their weight, fixing the “Beauty of Buttermere” firmly in the national imagination. The tale grew, as tales do, until it almost outshone the truth.
Life, however, carried on. In 1808 Mary married again, this time to Richard Harrison, a farmer from Caldbeck. They settled at Todcrofts farm, raised seven children, and by all accounts lived contentedly. She died in 1837 at the age of 59, having outlasted the scandal that once threatened to define her.
At the Buttermere Court Hotel, once the Fish Inn, a plaque still marks the inn where the Maid of Buttermere lived. It stands as a neat full stop to a noisy story.
Mary Robinson may be thought of as a wild daffodil, almost flattened by a sharp Spring storm blown in from distant places, yet never destroyed. When the skies cleared, she bounced back, settled into familiar ground, and lived out her life quietly where she had always belonged.
Source:
Ramshaw, David. The English Lakes: Tales from History, Legend and Folklore. Page 56-8. P3 Publications. 1996.
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