St. Bees' Heads, anciently called the Cliff of Baruth, are a 
      conspicuous sea-mark for all vessels sailing in the N.E. parts of 
      the Irish Sea. In a bay, one side of which is formed by the 
      southern headland, stands the village of St. Bees; a place 
      distinguished, from very early times, for its religious and 
      scholastic foundations.
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        "St. Bees," say Nicholson and Burns, "had its name from Bega, an 
      holy woman from Ireland, who is said to have founded here, about 
      the year of our Lord 650, a small monastery, where afterwards a 
      church was built in memory of her.
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        "The aforesaid religious house, being destroyed by the Danes, 
      was restored by William de Meschiens, son of Ranulph, and brother 
      of Ranulph de Meschiens, first Earl of Cumberland after the 
      Conquest; and made a cell of a prior and six Benedictine monks to 
      the Abbey of St. Mary at York."
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        Several traditions of miracles, connected with the foundation of 
      the first of these religious houses, survive among the people of 
      the neighbourhood; one of which is alluded to in these Stanzas; 
      and another, of a somewhat bolder and more peculiar character, has 
      furnished the subject of a spirited poem by the Rev. R. Parkinson, 
      M.A., late Divinity Lecturer of St. Bees' College, and now Fellow 
      of the Collegiate Church of Manchester.
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        After the dissolution of the monasteries, Archbishop Grindal 
      founded a free school at St. Bees, from which the counties of 
      Cumberland and Westmoreland have derived great benefit; and 
      recently, under the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, a college 
      has been established there for the education of ministers for the 
      English Church. The old Conventual Church has been repaired under 
      the superintendence of the Rev. Dr. Ainger, the Head of the 
      College, and is well worthy of being visited by any strangers who 
      might be led to the neighbourhood of this celebrated spot.
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        The form of stanza in this Poem, and something in the style of 
      versification, are adopted from the "St. Monica," a poem of much 
      beauty upon a monastic subject, by Charlotte Smith: a lady to whom 
      English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be 
      either acknowledged or remembered. She wrote little, and that 
      little unambitiously, but with true feeling for rural nature, at a 
      time when nature was not much regarded by English Poets; for in 
      point of time her earlier writings preceded, I believe, those of 
      Cowper and Burns.