Number in series 59; Year of publication 1966 - Fell and Rock ...

A PRIDE OF ROBINSONS
George Bott
There's Jack, of course. Everybody knows him—he's the
'before you can say . . .' chap. But common as the adage is,
its origin is doubtful. 'Who was Jack Robinson' asked
Southey in The Doctor; 'the one whose name is in everybody's
mouth because it is so easily and so soon said'.
Jack Robinson, an Appleby man, was M.P. for Westmorland
from 1763 to 1774 and later for Harwich. He was
Secretary to the Treasury and, according to the gossip of the
day, he had much to do with bribery and patronage.
'I know the charm by Robinson employed
How to the Treasury Jack his rats decoyed'
wrote Rose in his Political Eclogues.
He was frequently attacked and on one occasion when
Sheridan was flinging accusations the House shouted for
'Name, Name'. Looking pointedly at the Secretary to the
Treasury, he said, 'Yes, I could name him as soon as I could
say Jack Robinson.'
Then the complications start. In 1860 Burke, the original
editor of Burke's Peerage and Burke's Landed Gentry, devoted
a chapter in his Vicissitudes of Families to the Robinsons; in it
he challenges the accepted explanation of the remark, insisting
that it is to be found in books written before Jack Robinson
of Appleby was born . . . back to square one.
Then there's Robinson 2417: not a colleague of James Bond
but the familiar fell topping the eastern edge of Buttermere.
It hasn't inspired the poets, though one modern writer
applauds the summit as 'the best vantage-point for cloudwatching'
and many walkers miss one of its greatest charms—
the valley of Little Dale with its fine succession of waterfalls.
This unromantic-sounding fell was part of the land bought
at the dissolution of the monasteries by Richard Robinson.
Denton, Nicolson and Burn, and Whellan all testify to the
story of the clerk who, about the time of Henry VIII and
Edward VI, bought estates in the Buttermere area—'all the
land called Birknesfeld or Gatescath with the appurtenances
. . . lying and being in Buttermere'.
Richard's heir, John, sold the property to Thomas Stanley
in the 1550s but Robinson's fell kept its name. If we are
sometimes tempted to deplore its homely name alongside
euphonious Glaramara or Blencathra, we should perhaps be