(4) A river Derwent rises in the Pennines near the borders of Northumberland and Durham, and, forming a large part of the boundary between these counties, takes a north-easterly course of 30 m. to the Tyne, which it joins 3 m. above Newcastle.
DERWENTWATER, EARL OF, an English title borne by the family of Radclyffe, or Radcliffe, from 1688 to 1716 when the 3rd earl was attainted and beheaded, and claimed by his descendants, adherents of the exiled house of Stewart, from that date until the death of the last male heir in 1814. Sir Francis Radclyffe, 3rd baronet (1625-1697), was the lineal descendant of Sir Nicholas Radclyffe, who acquired the extensive Derwentwater estates in 1417 through his marriage with the heiress of John de Derwentwater, and of Sir Francis Radclyffe, who was made a baronet in 1619. In 1688 Sir Francis was created Viscount Radclyffe and earl of Derwentwater by James II., and dying in 1697 was succeeded as 2nd earl by his eldest son Edward (1655-1705), who had married Lady Mary Tudor (d. 1726), a natural daughter of Charles II. The 2nd earl died in 1705, and was succeeded by his eldest son James (1689-1716), who was born in London on the 28th of June 1689, and was brought up at the court of the Stewarts in France as companion to Prince James Edward, the old Pretender. In 1710 he came to reside on his English estates, and in July 1712 was married to Anna Maria (d. 1723), daughter of Sir John Webb, baronet, of Odstock, Wiltshire. Joining without any hesitation in the Stewart rising of 1715, Derwentwater escaped arrest owing to the devotion of his tenantry, and in October, with about seventy followers, he joined Thomas Forster at Green-rig. Like Forster the earl was lacking in military experience, and when the rebels capitulated at Preston he was conveyed to London and impeached. Pleading guilty at his trial he was attainted and condemned to death. Great efforts were made to obtain a mitigation of the sentence, but the government was obdurate, and Derwentwater was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 24th of February 1716, declaring on the scaffold his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion and to King James III. The earl was very popular among his tenantry and in the neighbourhood of his residence, Dilston Hall. His gallant bearing and his sad fate have been celebrated in song and story, and the _aurora borealis_, which shone with exceptional brightness on the night of his execution, is known locally as "Lord Derwentwater's lights." He left an only son John, who, in spite of his father's attainder, assumed the title of earl of Derwentwater, and who died unmarried in 1731; and a daughter Alice Mary (d. 1760), who married in 1732 Robert James, 8th Baron Petre (1713-1742).