Joseph Peile

Joseph Peile was born at Bank End on 2 February 1684. As a boy he lived as a servant at Netherhall and was later apprenticed to a ropemaker in Whitehaven. He was pressed for the Navy in 1703, until the War of Spanish Succession ended in 1710, and was aboard the ship ‘Cinque Ports’ (90 tons, 16 guns, 63 men), outward bound from Ireland via Madeira, when his crewman Alexander Selkirk was landed on the Pacific island of St Juan de Fernandez. The marooned Selkirk, who lived on the island for five years, was Defoe’s original Robinson Crusoe.
After returning from the Navy Joseph married Ruth Robinson in 1716 and moved into her father’s home at Woodside. Here his nine children were born. As he is styled ‘Mariner’ at his burial, he may have continued to go to sea for some years after his marriage. After his wife’s death in 1735 he never shaved, but grew a beard which he frequently clipped. He was reduced to poverty in old age by his children, but was much helped by the Senhouses of Netherhall.
Joseph was remarkable in being active and spry right up to his final year. He died on 18th November 1790, a few weeks short of 107 years old, from bruising he received some time before when he had fallen from his horse: it had reared when a cat he had been hired to carry some miles escaped from its basket.
Though his hearing and sight were defective towards the end of his life, his memory was perfect. The ‘Cumberland Pacquet’ in 1790 described him as tall; slender and very neat in his appearance and in general he ‘impressed the beholder with sentiments of respect and veneration’.
Joseph Peile’s memorial in St Mary’s Church points out that he lived through the reigns of no less than eight monarchs.