Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire
by James Croston · English · Gutenberg #45153 · 1,073,071 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire
Author: James Croston
Release date: March 17, 2014 [eBook #45153]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45153
Credits: Produced by Les Galloway, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC SITES OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE ***
HISTORIC SITES
OF
LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE.
HISTORIC SITES
OF
Lancashire and Cheshire.
A WAYFARER'S NOTES IN THE PALATINE COUNTIES,
HISTORICAL, LEGENDARY, GENEALOGICAL,
AND DESCRIPTIVE.
BY
JAMES CROSTON, F.S.A.
_Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain; Member of the
Architectural, Archæological and Historic Society of Chester; Member of
the Council of the Record Society._
Author of "On Foot through the Peak," "A History of Samlesbury,"
"Historical Memorials of the Church in Prestbury," "Old Manchester and
its Worthies," "Nooks and Corners of Lancashire and Cheshire," etc.,
etc.
JOHN HEYWOOD,
DEANSGATE AND RIDGEFIELD, MANCHESTER;
AND II, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS,
LONDON.
1883.
TO
JOHN LEIGH, ESQ.,
OF
THE MANOR HOUSE, HALE, CHESHIRE,
THE PRESIDENT AND
ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE
REPRINTING OF THE RARER POETICAL LITERATURE
OF THE SPENSERIAN AGE,
IN TESTIMONY OF LENGTHENED FRIENDSHIP
AND LITERARY OBLIGATION,
AND
IN APPRECIATION OF HIS EFFORTS
TO RESCUE FROM OBLIVION THE LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS
WHICH CAST THE HALO OF ROMANCE ROUND MANY OF
THE OLD HALLS AND MANOR HOUSES OF
LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH
THE BEST WISHES OF HIS SINCERE FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
The favourable reception accorded both by the Public and the Press
to a former work--NOOKS AND CORNERS OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE--has
encouraged the Author to prepare the present volume, which is issued
with the hope that it may be found not less worthy of acceptance.
Like the one which preceded it, it illustrates, in a certain degree,
the history and romance of the two Palatine counties, the Author's
aim having been to give to particular localities an individuality
and freshness, by presenting in an entertaining and popular form the
"sites" of remarkable scenes and incidents of bygone days. "England,"
says a well-known writer, "is pre-eminently the country (compared with
the rest of Europe) in which the monuments that embody historical
associations, and link the present with a far-reaching past are
most thickly strewn;" and in Lancashire and Cheshire the soil is
plentifully studded with the memorials of ancient days, that stand out
in refreshing and instructive relief among the crowding evidences of
modern power and civilisation--places hallowed by associations and as
the homes of those whose memories we would not willingly let die, and
scenes that are identified with much of the history, tradition and
romance of the centuries that are gone. No pretention is made to what
is commonly called the dignity of history, which usually means the
placing of important personages and great events in prominent relief
without regard to minor incidents or the relations the figures in the
background bear to the occurrences recorded, the Author's purpose
having been rather to combine with well-attested facts, topographical
description, personal narrative and local legend, and to snatch from
Oblivion's spoils the shadowy fragments of tradition that have floated
down through centuries of time--things that the ordinary historian
casts aside as unworthy of his notice, but which, though oftentimes
inexact in detail, are generally founded upon a substratum of fact, and
tend therefore to throw additional light on human thought and action in
the past.
The agreeable duty remains for the Author to express his obligations
to those friends who, by information communicated and in other ways,
have aided him in his enterprise. His thanks are due to Miss Abraham,
of Grassendale Park, Liverpool; the Rev. Edward J. Bell, M.A., Rector
of Alderley; John Leigh, Esq., The Manor House, Hale; Thomas Helsby,
Esq., Lincoln's Inn, the learned Editor of "Ormerod's Cheshire;" J.
P. Earwaker, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., Pensarn, Abergele, the historian of
East Cheshire; Thomas Middleton, Esq., Springfield, Adlington; Edward
T. Cunliffe, Esq., the Parsonage, Handforth; Mr. John Owen, Mile End,
Stockport; and Mr. D. Bennett, Shakspeare Terrace, Ardwick.
UPTON HALL, PRESTBURY, CHESHIRE,
SEPTEMBER, 1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Swarthmoor Hall and the Founder of the Society of Friends 1
CHAPTER II.
Old Alderley and its Memories--The Stanleys--Edward
Stanley, Pastor and Prelate--The Home of Dean Stanley 50
CHAPTER III.
Rivington and the Lords Willoughby--The Pilkingtons--The
Story of a Lancashire Bishop 104
CHAPTER IV.
Handforth Hall--The Breretons--Sir William Brereton 171
CHAPTER V.
Newby Bridge and the Lake Country--An Autumn Day at
Cartmel--The Priory Church 249
CHAPTER VI.
Disley--A May Day at Lyme--Lyme Hall and the Leghs 278
CHAPTER VII.
"Jemmy Dawson" and the Fatal '45 397
CHAPTER VIII.
A Morning at Little Moreton 431
CHAPTER IX.
Wardley Hall 448
L'Envoi 483
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
SWARTHMOOR HALL 5
GEORGE FOX'S BIBLE 7
GEORGE FOX'S CHAIR 8
ULVERSTON CHURCH 17
AUTOGRAPH OF MARGARET FELL 21
GEORGE FOX'S MEETING HOUSE 22
MEETING OF FOX AND CROMWELL 29
AUTOGRAPH OF THOMAS FELL 30
FAC-SIMILE OF FOX'S HANDWRITING 34
GATEWAY, LANCASTER CASTLE 35
AUTOGRAPH OF WILLIAM PENN 41
AUTOGRAPH OF DANIEL ABRAHAM 47
DEAN STANLEY 51
ALDERLEY CHURCH 54
ALDERLEY SCHOOL 59
ALDERLEY RECTORY 63
AUTOGRAPH OF EDWARD STANLEY 93
AUTOGRAPH OF THE BISHOP OF NORWICH 95
AUTOGRAPH OF DEAN STANLEY 103
RIVINGTON CHURCH 127
INTERIOR, DURHAM CATHEDRAL 151
DURHAM CASTLE 159
NANTWICH 209
AUTOGRAPH OF SIR WILLIAM BRERETON 217
SIR WILLIAM BRERETON 245
THE "SWAN," NEWBY BRIDGE 248
LYME HALL 279
WINDMILL AT CRESCY 293
AUTOGRAPH OF SIR PETER LEGH 361
AUTOGRAPH OF RICHARD LEGH 367
TRAITORS' GATE, THE TOWER 371
LEGH ARMS 383
MR. BYROM'S HOUSE AT THE CROSS 399
WARDLEY HALL 449
SUBSCRIBERS.
ACCRINGTON AND CHURCH CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, Accrington.
ADSHEAD, G. H., Esq., Fern Villas, Bolton Road, Pendleton.
ANDREWS, P. S., Esq., Accountant, Ashton-under-Lyne.
ANNINGSON, JOSEPH WILLIAM, Esq., L.R.C.P., 11, Yorkshire Street,
Burnley.
ARDERN, LAWRENCE, Esq., Mile End, Stockport.
ASHWORTH, JOSEPH, Esq., Albion Place, Bury.
ASHWORTH, J., Esq., 47, Cannon Street, Manchester.
ASHWORTH, WALTER, Esq., The Hollies, Bury.
ASPLAND, L. M., Esq., 47, Linden Gardens, Bayswater, London, W.
ATHERTON, JAMES, Esq., Miles Platting, Manchester.
ATTOCK, FRED, Esq., Somerset House, Newton Heath, Manchester.
AUCHINCLOSS, P. W., Esq., Prestbury.
AXON, W. E. A., Esq., F.R.S.L., Fern Bank, Higher Broughton.
AYRE, Rev. L. R., M.A., Holy Trinity Vicarage, Ulverston.
BAGNALL, BENJAMIN, Esq., Eaton Gardens House, Brighton, Sussex.
BAGNALL, J. FFREEMAN, Esq., Runcorn.
BAILEY, J. E., Esq., F.S.A., Stretford.
BAKER, WILLIAM, Esq., Messrs. Cassell & Co.
BARNES, ISAAC, Esq., Corporation Inn, Ashton-under-Lyne (2 copies).
BARLOW, J. R., Esq., J.P., Edgeworth, Bolton.
BARLOW, W. WYCLIFFE, Esq., Ashford, Wilmslow, Cheshire.
BARRATT, PETER, Esq., Greengate Lane, Prestwich.
BARNES, ALFRED, Esq., Farnworth, near Bolton.
BARNSTON, Miss, 16, Cambridge Road, Brighton.
BAYLEY, WILLIAM, Esq., Cray Brow, Lymm.
BAZLEY, SIR THOS., Bart., Eyford Park, Stow-on-the-Wold.
BEARD, JAMES, Esq., The Grange, Burnage.
BEALES, ROBERT, Esq., M.D., Congleton.
BELL, Rev. E. J., M.A., Rural Dean, Rector of Alderley.
BENTLEY, A. F., Esq., Albion Place, Bury.
BESWICK, JOHN, Esq., 1, Great Ducie Street, Manchester.
BIRLEY, The late HUGH, Esq., M.P., Moorland, Withington.
BIRLEY, JAMES, Esq., Huskisson Street, Liverpool.
BLAND, GEORGE, Esq., Park Green, Macclesfield.
BLOMFIELD, Rev. Canon, Mollington Hall, Chester.
BODDINGTON, HENRY, Junr., Esq., Strangeways Brewery, Manchester. 3
copies
BODDINGTON, HENRY, Esq., The Cove, Silverdale, Carnforth.
BODDINGTON, W. SLATER, Esq., Monton House, Eccles.
BODLEIAN LIBRARY, Oxford.
BOOTH, C. H., Esq., Solicitor, Ashton-under-Lyne.
BOOTH, JOHN GREGORY, Esq., Knight Hills, Padiham.
BOOTE, D., Esq., Oakfield, Ashton-on-Mersey.
BOSTON ATHENÆUM, Boston, Mass.
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, Boston, Mass.
BOSTOCK, ROBERT CHIGNELL, Esq., Little Langtons, Chislehurst, Kent.
BOULTON, ISAAC W., Esq., J.P., Stamford House, Ashton-under-Lyne.
BOWDLER, WM. HENRY, Esq., J.P., Kirkham, Lancashire.
BOYLE, Rev. J. R., 24, Normanton Terrace, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
BRADSHAW, CHRISTOPHER, Esq., Kenwood, Ellesmere Park, Eccles.
BRADDON, C. H., Esq., M.D., Cheetham Hill, Manchester.
BRADSHAW, GEORGE PARIS, Esq., 30, Gloucester Street, Warwick Square,
London, S.W.
BRAGG, HARRY, Esq., The Mount, Blackburn.
BRIDE, Dr., Wilmslow.
BRIDGEMAN, The Hon. and Rev. Canon, The Hall, Wigan.
BROADBENT, EDWIN, Esq., Reddish, near Stockport.
BROCKLEHURST, WILLIAM COARE, Esq., Butley Hall, Prestbury.
BROMLEY, F. W. Esq., Solicitor, Ashton-under-Lyne.
BROOK, J., Esq., Sunnyside, Old Trafford.
BROOKE, Sir R., Bart., Norton Priory, Runcorn.
BROWNELL, JOHN, Esq., Hazlecroft, Alderley Edge.
BROWN, Rev. Canon, M.A. Staley Vicarage, Staleybridge.
BROWN, R., Esq., Mosley Grange, Cheadle Hulme.
BROWN, COUNCILLOR W., 720, Rochdale Road, Manchester.
BUCKLEY, R. J., Esq., Strangeways Brewery, Manchester.
BUCKLEY, R. J. E., Victoria Street, Manchester.
BULLOCK, THOS. Esq. (The late), Rock House, Sutton, Macclesfield.
BURROW, JOSEPH, Esq., Agincourt, Bury.
BURTON, ALFRED, Esq., 37, Cross Street, Manchester.
CARRINGTON, H. H. SMITH, Esq., Whalley Bridge. East Cheshire.
CHARLTON, HENRY, Esq., Tytherington Hall, Macclesfield.
CHETHAM'S LIBRARY, Manchester.
CONNELL, THOS. R., Esq., Wavertree, near Liverpool.
CHORLTON, THOS., Esq., 32, Brazenose Street.
CHORLTON, WM., Esq., Fairfield, near Manchester.
CHRYSTAL, R. S., Esq., Flixton.
CLARKE, MATTHEW, Esq., 7, Cumberland Street, Macclesfield.
COATES, The Misses, Sunny Side, Crawshawbooth.
COLLINS, JAMES, Esq., Ada Villa, Old Trafford, Manchester.
COOPER, THOS., Esq., Mossleigh House, Congleton.
COPPOCK, RUSSELL, Esq., Solicitor, Stockport.
CORDINLEY, D., Esq., Surveyor, Ashton-under-Lyne.
COULTATE, WILLIAM MILLER, Esq., F.R.C.S., J.P., 1, York Street,
Burnley.
CRAVEN, THOS., Esq., Merlewood, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
CREEKE, MAJOR, A. B., Esq., Monkholme, Burnley.
CROFTON, Mrs., 29, Sussex Gardens, Hyde Park, London, W.
CROMPTON, GEORGE, Esq., Laund, Brierfield, Burnley.
CRONKSHAW, JOHN, Esq., White Bull Hotel, Blackburn.
CROSS, JOHN, Esq., Cambridge Villa, Heaton Norris.
CROSS, The Right Hon. Sir R. A., M.P., Eccle Riggs,
Broughton-in-Furness.
CROSTON, Mrs. S. W., Claremont Villas, Twickenham.
CUNLIFFE, ED. T., The Parsonage, Handforth.
DALE, JOHN, Esq., Cornbrook, Manchester.
DALE, THOS, Esq., J.P., F.G.S., Bank House, Southport.
DARRAH, CHARLES, Holly Point, Heaton Mersey.
DAVENPORT, E. H., Esq., Heathlands, Malvern Wells.
DAVENPORT, JOHN MASON, Esq., Marland, Rochdale.
DAVIES-COLLEY, THOS., Esq., M.D., Newton, Chester.
DEAKIN, EDWARD CARR, Esq., Hill Top, Belmont, near Bolton.
DEAN OF CHESTER, The Very Rev. The Deanery, Chester.
DEAN, THOMAS, Esq., M.D., Medical Officer of Health, Burnley.
DICKENSON, R., Esq., Sunnyside, Hunby Road, Dudley.
DILLON, Rev. GODFREY, 52, Water Street, Radcliffe.
DIXON, G., Esq., Astle Hall, Chelford, Crewe.
DOBSON, MATTHEW, Esq., Mosley House, Cheadle.
DODGSON, Mr. JOSEPH, 33, Park Row, Leeds.
DOOLEY, Mr. HENRY, Stockport.
DORRINGTON, J. T., Esq., Bonishall, near Macclesfield.
DOWNING, WILLIAM, Esq., Springfield, Olton, Acock's Green, near
Birmingham.
DRANSFIELD, WM., Esq., Ranmoor, Sheffield.
DUGDALE, JOSEPH, Esq., Park House, Blackburn.
DUNCAN, C. W., Esq., Stanley Place, Chester.
DYER, A. C., Esq., Manchester.
EASTWOOD, J. A., Esq., 49, Princess Street, Manchester.
ECKERSLEY, CHAS., Esq., Fulwell House, Tyldesley.
ECKERSLEY, J. C., Esq., J.P., Standish Hall, near Wigan.
EDGAR, R. A., Esq., Seymour Lodge, Heaton Chapel.
EGERTON, The Hon. Algernon, M.P., Worsley Old Hall, near Manchester.
ELWEN, G., Esq., 11, Knoll Street, H. Broughton.
ENION, J. E., Esq., South King Street, Manchester.
EVANS, JOHN, Esq., 1, Mytton Street, Greenheys.
EYRE, Rev. W. H., Stonyhurst College, Blackburn.
FAIRBROTHER, HENRY, Esq., Holmlea, Altrincham.
FEATHER, Rev. G., Glazebury Vicarage, Leigh, Lanc.
FIELDEN, Miss, Mollington Hall, Chester.
FIELDEN, JOSHUA, Esq., M.P., Nutfield Priory, Redhill, Surrey.
FODEN, WILLIAM, Esq., Beech Lane, Macclesfield.
FOLDS, O., Esq., Brunshaw, Burnley.
FRANCE, JAMES, Esq., Eversley Place, Taunton Road, Ashton-under-Lyne.
FRANKLAND, GEORGE, Esq., Express Office, Burnley.
FREE LIBRARY, Town Hall, Ashton.
FREE LIBRARY, BLACKBURN, per D. Geddes, Esq.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Town Hall, Heywood.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Liverpool.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Town Hall, Manchester.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Town Hall, Rochdale.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Peel Park, Salford.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Town Hall, St. Helens.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Stockport.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Sydney, New South Wales.
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Wigan.
FREEMAN, WILLIAM CHARLES, Esq., District Bank, Leigh, Lanc.
FRESTON, T. W. Esq., 8, Watling Street, Manchester.
FRYER, Dr. ALFRED, Wilmslow.
GALLOWAY, F. C., Esq., 120, Bowling Old Lane, Bradford, Yorks.
GAMBLE, Col., Windlehurst, St. Helens.
GASKELL, A. E., Esq., Trafford Mount, Old Trafford.
GASKELL, JOSIAH, Esq., Burgrave Lodge, Ashton-in-Makerfield.
GERRARD, JOSEPH, Esq., Acres Field, Bolton.
GIBBON, BENJAMIN, Esq., Woodleigh, Knutsford.
GOODMAN, DAVENPORT, Esq., Eccles House, Chapel-en-le-Frith.
GOSLING, SAMUEL F., Esq., Biddulph, Congleton.
GREENHALGH, JOSEPH DODSON, Esq., Gladstone Cottage, Bolton.
GRAHAM, Rev. P., Turncroft, Darwen.
GRANTHAM, JOHN, Esq., 2, Rothsay Place, Old Trafford.
GRATRIX, S., Esq., West Point, Whalley Range.
GRAY, Mr. HENRY, Antiquarian and Topographical Bookseller, 25,
Cathedral Yard, Manchester.
GREG, FRANCIS, Esq., Chancery Place, Manchester.
GREY, ROBERT, Esq., Greenfield House, Boro' Arcade, Hyde.
GREENALL, Col., Lingholme, Keswick.
GREENALL, Sir GILBERT, Bart., Walton Hall, Warrington.
GREENUP, JOSEPH, Esq., Johnson Square, Miles Platting.
GREENWOOD, CHARLES, Esq., 26, Akeds Road, Halifax.
GREENWAY, C., Esq., J.P., Darwen Bank, Darwen.
GRUNDY, ALFRED, Esq., Whitefield, near Manchester.
GRUNDY, HARRY, Esq., Fernsholme, Bury.
GUEST, W. H., Esq. 78, Cross Street, Manchester.
HAGUE, JOHN SCHOLES, Esq., Northwood, Buxton.
HALL, JOHN, Esq., The Grange, Hale, Cheshire.
HALL, JOSHUA, Esq., Kingston House, Hyde.
HALL, JOHN ALBERT, Esq., Park Hill, Congleton.
HALL, ROBERT, Esq., Acres House, Hyde.
HALSTEAD, LOUIS, Esq., Redwaterfoot, Cornholme.
HAMPSON, J. TAYLOR, Esq., Solicitor, Ashton-under-Lyne.
HAMPSON, J. R., Esq., Old Trafford.
HAMPSON, WM., Esq., Rose Hill, Marple.
HAMMERSLEY, T. G., Esq., Brownhills, Tunstall.
HANBY, RICHARD, Esq., Chetham's Library, Manchester.
HARDWICK, CHARLES, Esq., 72, Talbot Street, Moss Side.
HARGREAVES, PERCY, Moss Bank, Halliwell, near Bolton.
HARRISON, VEVERS, Esq., Dukinfield.
HARLOW, Miss, Heaton Norris, Stockport.
HARTLEY, Mrs., Brierfield House, near Burnley.
HARTLEY, JOB W., Esq., Westgate, Burnley.
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.
HEYWOOD, ABEL AND SON, Oldham Street, Manchester.
HIBBERT, HENRY, Esq., Broughton Grove, Grange-over-Sands.
HIBBERT, PERCY J., Esq., Ibstock, Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
HIGGINS, JAMES, Esq., Woodhey, Kersall.
HIGINBOTTOM, THOMAS, Esq., 15, York Street, City.
HILEY, B., Bookseller, Salford.
HILTON, WILLIAM H., Esq., Messrs. Sale, Seddon, Hilton, and Lord,
Manchester.
HINDLEY, THOMAS, Esq., Stockport.
HODGKINSON, S., Esq., Woodville, Marple.
HODKINSON, JOHN, Esq., 101, Mill Street, Macclesfield.
HOLDEN, ARTHUR T., Solicitor, Bolton.
HOLDEN, THOMAS, Esq., Springfield, Bolton.
HOLM, A., Esq., Elysée House, Mossley Hill, Liverpool.
HOLMES, JAMES, Esq., Egerton Road, Fallowfield.
HOLT, ROBT. (The late), Bookseller, Manchester.
HOOLEY, S. J., Esq., Manchester and Liverpool Bank, Tunstall.
HORNBY, JAMES, Esq., Standishgate, Wigan.
HOWARD, Dr., Altoft, Normanton.
HOWARD, EDWARD CARRINGTON, Esq., J.P., Poynton Birches, near Stockport.
HOWELL, E., Esq., 26 and 28, Church Street, Liverpool.
HUGHES, THOS., F.S.A., Esq., The Groves, Chester.
HULME, JAMES, Esq., Marple.
HUMBERSTON, Miss A., Newton Hall, Chester.
HUTTON, T., Fairfield House, Ormskirk.
HYDE, W., Esq., Town Clerk, Stockport.
JACKSON, HARTLEY, Esq., Pickup Terrace, Burnley.
JACKSON, H. J., Esq., Ashton-under-Lyne.
JOLLEY, THOS., Esq., Legh Street, Warrington.
JONES, JOHN JOSEPH, Esq., Abberley Hall, Stourport.
JONES, TOM H., Esq., 67, Sloane Street, Manchester.
KAY, JACOB, Esq., 5, Booth Street, Manchester.
KEENE, RICHARD, Esq., All Saints, Derby.
KENYON, W., Bookseller, 47, Church Street, Newton Heath, Manchester.
KENDERDINE, T., Esq., Morningside, Old Trafford.
KNOTT, JAMES, Esq., Higher Ardwick, Manchester.
LALLEMAND, G. E., Esq., Park Grange, Macclesfield.
LAWTON, G. F., Esq., Cranbourne Terrace, Ashton-under-Lyne.
LEATHES, FRED DE M., Esq., 17, Tavistock Place, London.
LEES, C. PERCY, Esq., The Limes, Middlewich.
LEES, E. B., Esq., Kelbarrow, Grasmere.
LEES, SAMUEL, Esq., Park Bridge, Ashton-under-Lyne.
LEECE, JOSEPH, Esq., Mansfield Villas, Urmston.
LEGH, Mrs., Adlington, Macclesfield.
LEIGH, ARTHUR G., Esq., F.A.S., 54, Market Street, Chorley.
LEIGH, CHARLES, Esq., Bank Terrace, Wigan.
LEIGH, JOHN, Esq., The Manor House, Hale, Cheshire. (2 copies).
LEIGH, JOSEPH, Esq., J.P., Brinington Hall, Stockport.
LEYLAND, JOHN, Esq., Hindley Grange, Wigan.
LINGARD-MONK, R. B. M., Esq., Fulshaw Hall, Wilmslow.
LIPTROTT, T. C., Esq., Rivington, Lancashire.
LITTLEWOOD, JAMES, Ashton-under-Lyne.
LONG, J. F., Esq., Ancoats.
LONGDEN, A. W., Esq., Hawk Green, Marple.
LONGTON, E. J., M.D., The Priory, Southport.
LONGSHAW, Mrs., Beach Priory, Southport.
LORD, HENRY, Esq., 42, John Dalton Street, Manchester.
LORD, W. C., Esq., Elm Lodge, Eccles.
LOWE, J. W., Esq., The Ridge, Chapel-en-le-Frith.
LOWCOCK, JOHN, Esq., Greengate Mills, Salford.
LUPTON, ARTHUR, Esq., 28, Manchester Road, Burnley.
LUPTON, ALBERT, Cumberland Place, Burnley.
LUPTON, BENJAMIN, Esq., 136, Manchester Road, Burnley.
LUPTON, JOSEPH TOWNEND, Esq., 28, Manchester Road, Burnley.
MARSON, JAMES, Esq., Hill Cliffe, Warrington.
MASSIE, ADMIRAL, Stanley Place, Chester.
MAY, J. F., Esq., Prestbury.
MAY, JOHN, Esq., Ridge Hill, Sutton, Macclesfield.
MCQUHAE, Mr., 5, Stamford Street, Brooks's Bar, Manchester.
MELLIN, Mr., Ridgefield, Manchester.
MELLOR, JAMES W., Esq., Lydgate View, Huddersfield.
METCALFE, WM., Esq., 3, Vernon Avenue, Eccles.
MIDDLETON, THOS., Esq., Springfield, Adlington. (3 copies).
MILNE, J. D., Esq., Burnside, Cheadle.
MILNES, ERNEST S., Esq., Plas Ffron, Wrexham.
MINSHULL AND HUGHES, Messrs., Chester.
MITCHELL, WM., Esq., Golbourne House, Golbourne.
MOORHOUSE, CHRIS., Esq., St. Paul's Road, Kersal.
MOORHOUSE, FRED, Esq., Kingston Mount, Didsbury.
MORTON, W., Esq., 258, Birchfield Place, Stockport Road, Manchester.
MOSLEY, Sir TONMAN, Bart., J.P., Rolleston Hall, Burton-on-Trent.
MOULTON, GEO., Esq., Hall's Crescent, Collyhurst.
MYERS, HENRY, Esq., 94, West Road, Congleton, Cheshire.
NAPIER, G. W., Esq., Merchistoun, Alderley Edge.
NASH, TOM, Esq., M.A., St. James's Square, Manchester.
NEAL, JOHN, Esq., Borough Comptroller, Longendale Mount,
Ashton-under-Lyne.
NEEDHAM, JAMES, Esq., Anglesea Place, Stockport.
NEWTON, JAMES THOMAS, Esq., Barton House, Upper Brook Street,
Manchester.
NIELD, GEO. B., Esq., 25, Queen's Road, Oldham.
NIXON, EDWARD, Esq., Methley.
OWEN, WM., Esq., F.R.I.B.A., Palmyra Square, Warrington.
PARROTT, PETER, Esq., Greenbank, Sutton, Macclesfield.
PATTESON, ALD., J.P., Manchester.
PEACOCK, R., Esq., J.P., Gorton Hall, near Manchester.
PILKINGTON, J., Esq., Swinithwaite Hall, Bedale, Yorkshire.
PINK, W. D., Esq., King Street, Leigh, Lancashire.
PEARSE, PERCIVAL, Warrington.
PENROSE, Rev. J. T., Rector of Gawsworth, Macclesfield.
PERKINS, STANHOPE, Esq., 6, Healey Terrace, Fairfield, near Manchester.
PIERPOINT, BENJAMIN, Esq., Bank, Macclesfield.
POOLEY, C. J., Esq., Toft Road, Knutsford.
PORTICO LIBRARY, Mosley Street, Manchester.
POTTS, ARTHUR, Esq., Hoole Hall, Chester.
POTTER, THOS., Esq., Sanitary Superintendant, Wellington Road,
Ashton-under-Lyne.
POWELL, FRANCIS SHARPE, Esq., Horton Old Hall, Bradford, Yorkshire.
PRESTON, THOMAS, Esq., Manchester Road, Burnley.
RALPHS, SAMUEL, Esq., Sandy Lane, Stockport.
REDHEAD, R. MILNE, Esq., F.L.S., Holden Clough, Bolton-by-Bowland.
REISS, FRITZ, Esq., Quay Street, Manchester.
REID, WM., Esq., Bewsey Road, Warrington.
REYNOLDS, Rev. G. W., St. Mark's Church, Cheetham.
RICHMOND, JAMES, Esq., Moseley House, Burnley.
RICHMOND, THOS. G., Esq., Ford House, Prestbury.
ROBSON, THOS. WM., Esq., 18, Aytoun Street, Manchester.
ROSE, JOSIAH, Esq., F.R.H.S., 59, Bond Street, Leigh, Lanc.
ROTHWELL, CHAS., M.D., Chorley New Road, Bolton.
ROYLE, JOHN, Esq., 53, Port Street, Manchester.
ROYLANCE, E. W., Esq., Brookfield, Bury Old Road, Manchester.
RUSHTON, JOHN LATHAM, Esq., M.D., Macclesfield.
RUSHTON, THOS. LEVER, Esq., Moor Platt, Horwich, near Bolton.
RYDER, T. D., Esq., Manchester.
RYLANDS, T. GLAZEBROOK, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.A.S., F.L.S., Highfields,
Thelwall.
RYLANDS, J. PAUL, Esq., F.S.A., 24, Stanley Gardens, Belsize Park,
Hampstead, London.
RYLANDS, W. H., Esq., F.S.A., 64, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
SAXBY, Miss, Brookhill House, Wokingham, Berkshire.
SAXBY, CHARLES, Esq., 32a, George Street, Manchester.
SCHOLES, JAS. C., Esq., 46, Newport Street, Bolton.
SCHOFIELD, Alderman THOMAS, J.P., Thornfield, Old Trafford.
SCOTT, C. P., Esq., The Firs, Fallowfield.
SHANN, T. T., Esq., The Hollies, Heaton Moor.
SHAW, GILES, Esq., 72, Manchester Road, Oldham.
SIDEBOTHAM, JOSEPH, Esq., F.S.A., Erlesdene, Bowdon.
SLARK, Mr., J., 41, Fishergate, Preston.
SLARK, Mr., A., 41, Fishergate, Preston.
SIMPKIN, E., Esq., 9, Spring Street, Bury.
SKELHORN, Mrs., 2, Fern Bank, Old Trafford.
SMITH, Mrs., C. TAYLOR, Broadwood Park, Lanchester, Durham.
SMITH, Miss, Gilda Brook, Eccles.
SMITH, GEO. J. W., Esq., Savings' Bank, Stockport.
SMITH, G. FEREDY, Esq., Grove Hurst, Tunbridge Wells.
SMITH, HUBERT, Esq., St. Leonards, Bridgenorth, Shropshire.
SMITH, JOS., Jun., Esq., Legh Street, Warrington.
SMITH, J. J., Esq., Holly Bank, Heywood.
SMITH, Rev.--, Liverpool.
SMITH, THOS. C., Esq., Longridge, near Preston.
SMITH, W., Esq., Adswood Grove, Stockport.
SMITH, W. H., & Son, 186, Strand, London.
SNEYD, DRYDEN H., Esq., J.P., Ashcombe Park, near Leek, Staffordshire.
SOWLER, LIEUT.-COL., Oak Bank, Victoria Park, Manchester.
STANLEY, The Hon. Colonel, M.P., Halecote, Grange-over-Sands.
STANNING, Rev. J. H., M.A., The Vicarage, Leigh.
STANTON, H., Esq., Greenfield, Thelwall, Warrington.
STEVENS, ED., Esq., Alderley Edge.
STEVENS, JAMES, Esq., F.R.I.B.A., Lime Tree House, Macclesfield.
STRANGEWAYS, W. N., Esq., 59, Westmoreland Road, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
STUBS, PETER, Esq., Statham Lodge, Warrington.
SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY, Bolton.
SUTCLIFFE, FREDERICK, Esq., Ash Street, Bacup.
SYDDALL, JAMES, Esq., Chadkirk, Romiley, Cheshire.
SYKES, ARTHUR H., Esq., J.P., Edgeley Mount, Stockport.
SYKES, THOS. HARDCASTLE, Esq., Cringle House, Cheadle.
SWINDELLS, G. H., Esq., Oak Villa, Heaton Moor.
SWINDLEHURST, ROBERT HENRY, Chorley Old Road, Bolton.
TAYLOR, HENRY, Esq., 2, St. Ann's Churchyard, Manchester.
TAYLOR, THOMAS, Esq., 33, St. James Street, Burnley.
THOMPSON, Alderman JOSEPH, J.P., Riversdale, Wilmslow.
THORP, J. W. H., Esq., Sunnyside Cottage, Macclesfield.
TOLLEY, THOS., Esq., Legh, near Warrington.
TOPP, A. W., Esq., Dean House, Rochdale.
TUBBS, H. H., Esq., Romiley.
TURNER, Rev. E. C., M.A., The Vicarage, Macclesfield.
TURNER, ENOCH, Esq., Stamford Crescent, Ashton-under-Lyne.
TURNER, J., Vale House, Bowdon.
TURNER, JOSEPH, Esq., 65, Albion Street, Leeds.
TURNER, W., Esq., Plymouth Grove.
TWEEDALE, CHARLES LAKEMAN, Esq., Holmefield House, Crawshawbooth.
UTTLEY, JAS., Esq., Sowerby Street, Sowerby Bridge.
VEEVERS, HARRISON, Esq., C.E., Dukinfield.
VICKERS, WILLIAM, Esq., Rose Hill, Smedley Lane, Cheetham Hill,
Manchester.
VICKERSTAFF, T. J., Esq., 6, Mill Street, Macclesfield.
WADDINGTON, WILLIAM, Esq., Market Superintendent, Burnley.
WAKEFIELD, SAMUEL, Esq., Heaton Norris, Stockport.
WALKER, THOS., Esq., Oldfield, Altrincham.
WALKDEN,--, Esq., 16, Nicholas Street, Manchester.
WALMSLEY, GEO., Esq., J.P., Paddock House, Church.
WALMESLEY, OSWALD, Esq., Shevington Hall, near Wigan.
WALTERS, C., Esq., Clegg Street, Oldham.
WARBURTON, SAM, Esq., Sunny Hill, Crumpsall.
WARBURTON, M. J., Esq., Fairleigh Villas, Fallowfield.
WARRINGTON MUSEUM AND LIBRARY.
WARDLEWORTH, T. R., 18, Brown Street, Manchester.
WARDLEWORTH, T. R., 12, Bank Street, Rawtenstall.
WARE, T. HIBBERT, Esq., 1, Bell Place, Bowdon.
WATTS, JOHN, Esq., Ph.D., Spring Gardens, Manchester.
WATTS, LADY, Abney Hall, Cheadle.
WEBB, F. W., Esq., Chester Place, Crewe.
WEBSTER, W., Esq., Abbotsfield, St. Helens.
WESTON, JOHN, Esq., The Heysoms, Hartford.
WHITE, CHARLES, Esq., Holly House, Warrington.
WHITTLE, ALD. R, Esq., J.P., Ashton House, Crewe.
WHITTAKER, W. WILKINSON, Esq., Cornbrook, Manchester.
WHITWORTH, JNO., Esq., Pitt and Nelson Hotel, Ashton-under-Lyne.
WHITEHEAD, EDWIN, Esq., The Hurst, Ashton-under-Lyne.
WIGGLESWORTH, JONATHAN, Esq., 90, Corporation Street.
WILD, ROBERT, Esq., 134, St. James Street, Burnley.
WILKINSON, AARON, Esq., Westbourne Grove, Harpurhey.
WILKINSON, JOHN, Esq., 25, Manor Street, Ardwick.
WILKINSON, T. R., Esq., Polygon, Ardwick.
WILKINSON, WM., Esq., M.A., Middlewood, Clitheroe.
WILSON, Rev. Canon, M.A., Prestbury Vicarage, Cheshire.
WILSON, C. M., Esq., Broughton Park, Manchester.
WILSON, WM., Esq., Savings' Bank, Stockport.
WINTERBURN, GEORGE, Junior, The Freehold, Bolton.
WOOD, JOHN, Esq., J.P., Arden, near Stockport.
WOOD, RICHARD, Esq., J.P., Plumpton Hall, Heywood.
WOOD, R., Esq., Mount Pleasant, Macclesfield.
WOOD, ROBT. J., Esq., Drywood Hall, Worsley.
WOOD, W. C., Esq., Brimscall Hall, Chorley.
WRIGHT, E. A., Esq., Castle Park, Frodsham, Cheshire.
WRIGLEY, FRED, Esq., Broadoaks, Bury.
WRIGLEY, JAMES, Esq., Holbeck, Windermere.
YOUNG, HAROLD, Esq., Wavertree, Liverpool.
YATES, J. M., Esq., Ellesmere Park, Eccles.
YATES, JAMES, Esq., Public Library, Leeds.
BOOKSELLERS.
BROWN & SON, 50, Mill Street, Macclesfield.
BURGESS, HENRY, Northwich.
BUTLER, SAMUEL, Altrincham.
CORNISH, J. E., St. Ann's Square, Manchester.
CORNISH, J. E., Piccadilly, Manchester.
DAY, T. J., Market Street, Manchester.
DODGSON, JOSEPH, Leeds.
DOOLEY, H., Stockport.
DUNNING, THOS., Nantwich.
DUTTON, THOS., Horwich.
GRAY, HENRY, Cathedral Yard, Manchester.
HALL, HENRY, Oldham Street, Manchester.
HEYWOOD, A. & SON, Oldham Street, Manchester.
HEYWOOD, JOHN, Ridgefield and Deansgate, Manchester.
HOLDEN, A., 48, Church Street, Liverpool.
HOWELL, E., Liverpool.
HUTTON, T., Ormskirk.
KENYON, W., Newton Heath.
LITTLEWOOD, J., Ashton.
LUPTON, J. & A., Burnley.
MILLS, THOS., Middleton.
MINSHULL & HUGHES, Chester.
PLATT, RICHARD, Wigan.
PEARSE, P., Warrington.
PORTER, Miss, Ashton.
SLARK, J. & A., Messrs., Preston.
SMITH & SON, New Brown Street, Manchester.
SMITH & SON, London.
SMITH & SON, L. & N. W., London Road, Manchester.
SMITH & SON, M. S. & L., Manchester.
STOCK, ELLIOT, 62, Paternoster Row, London. (27 copies).
TRÜBNER & CO., Messrs., Ludgate Hill, London.
TUBBS, BROOK, & CHRYSTAL, Messrs., Market Street, Manchester.
WALMSLEY, GILBERT G., Liverpool.
WARDLEWORTH, T. R., Manchester.
WINTERBURN, G., Bolton.
YOUNG, HENRY, Liverpool.
_LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS' NAMES_
OMITTED TO BE PRINTED IN THE FIRST SERIES OF
"NOOKS AND CORNERS OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE."
AUCHINCLOSS, P. W., Esq., Prestbury.
BAILLIE, EDMUND G., Eaton Road, Chester.
BLAND, GEORGE, Esq., Park Green, Macclesfield.
BOSTOCK, ROBT. CHIGNEL, Esq., Little Langtons, Chislehurst, Kent.
BRADSHAW, J. E., Esq., Fair Oak Park, Bishopstoke, Hants.
BROCKLEHURST, WILLIAM COARE, Esq., Butley Hall, Prestbury.
BRYHAM, WM., Esq., J.P., Ince Hall, Wigan.
BULLOCK, THOMAS, Esq. (the late), Rock House, Sutton, Macclesfield.
BURTON, Mrs. R. LINGEN, Abbey House, Shrewsbury.
CHESTER, The Very Rev. the Dean of, The Deanery, Chester.
CLARKE, EDWARD, Esq., Park Cottage, Macclesfield.
CLARKE, MATTHEW, Esq., 7, Cumberland Street, Macclesfield.
COLLEY, THOS. DAVIES, Esq., M.D., Newton, Chester.
DIXON, GEORGE, Esq., Astle Hall, Chelford, Crewe.
DUNCAN, CHAS. W., Esq., Stanley Place, Chester.
ECKERSLEY, J. C., Esq., J.P., Standish Hall, Wigan.
EGERTON, The Honble. WILBRAHAM, M.P., Rostherne Manor, Knutsford.
ENNION, THOS., Esq., High Street, Newmarket, Suffolk.
FIELDEN, Miss, Mollington Hall, Chester.
GOSLING, SAMUEL F., Esq., Biddulph, Congleton.
GREENHALGH, JAMES, Esq., Greenhill, Deane, Bolton.
HILTON, J. S., Esq., Cranbourne Terrace, Ashton-under-Lyne.
HOWARD, J., Esq., Normanton.
HUGHES, H. R., Esq., Kinmel Park, Abergele.
HUGHES, THOS., Esq., F.S.A., The Groves, Chester.
HULME, JAMES, Esq., Marple.
HUMBERSTON, Col., Glan-y-Wern, Denbigh.
HUMBERSTON, Miss A., Newton Hall, Chester.
JACKSON, Miss EVA, Durley Lodge, Bishops Waltham, Hants.
LEATHES, FREDK. DE M., Esq., 17, Tavistock Place, London, W.
MASSIE, Admiral, Stanley Place, Chester.
MAY, JOHN, Esq., Ridge Hill, Sutton, Macclesfield.
MINSHULL AND HUGHES, Booksellers, Chester.
PAINE, CORNELIUS, Esq., 9, Lewes Crescent, Brighton, Sussex.
PARROTT, PETER, Esq., Greenbank, Sutton, Macclesfield.
PIERPOINT, BENJAMIN, Esq., Bank, Macclesfield.
POWELL, FRANCIS SHARPE, Horton Old Hall, Bradford, Yorks.
RUSHTON, JOHN LATHAM, Esq., M.D., Macclesfield.
SAINTER, J. D., Esq., King Edward Street, Macclesfield.
STARKIE, Lieut.-Col. LE GENDRE, Huntroyde, Burnley.
STURKEY, THOS., Esq., Newtown, Montgomeryshire.
TOMKINSON, Mrs., 24, Lower Seymour Street, Portman Square, London.
VICKERSTAFF, T. J., Esq., 6, Mill Street, Macclesfield.
VILES, EDWARD, Esq., Pendryl Hall, Codsall Wood, Wolverhampton.
WESTON, JOHN, Esq., The Heysoms, Hartford.
WILSON, Rev. Canon, Prestbury Vicarage.
WILSON, J., Esq., LL.D., Town Clerk of Congleton.
HISTORIC SITES
OF
LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE.
CHAPTER I.
SWARTHMOOR HALL AND THE FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
The traveller who, by chance, finds himself in the quaint old town of
Ulverston with a few hours at his disposal will find no difficulty
in occupying them pleasantly and profitably. In the busy capital
of Furness he is on the very threshold of that great storehouse of
English scenic beauty, the Lake Country; almost at his feet is the
broad estuary of the Leven, and beyond, spreads Morecambe Bay with its
green indented shores, presenting alternately a flood of waters and
a trackless waste of shifting sand. In that pleasant region there is
many a picturesque corner, many a place of historic note, and many an
ancient building that wakes the memories of bygone days.
One of the historic sites, and certainly not the least interesting,
is within the compass of a short half hour's walk--Swarthmoor Hall,
for years the resort, and, for a time, the home of George Fox, the
founder of the Society of Friends; and scarcely less interesting is the
primitive-looking little structure that stands within a few hundred
yards of it, the first regularly constituted meeting-house in which
Fox's disciples, the "Friends of Truth," or the "Children of Light,"
as they were indifferently called, worshipped. The locality is one he
always loved. Here he gained his most enthusiastic converts, achieved
his greatest triumphs, and suffered his severest persecutions; it was
here, too, he won his faithful wife, and here, also, in the later years
of his life, he loved to retire to recruit his weakened energies and
prepare himself for a renewal of his arduous work.
It was a warm summer's evening when we set forth upon our short
pilgrimage; the air was unusually clear, a dreamy quietude spread
around, and the sun, as it declined towards the west, glowed grandly
upon the distant woods and fells. As we slowly mounted the ascending
road we could see the lonely sands gleaming in the mellow light,
and the broad expanse of water that lay far out in the offing calm
and smooth as a mirror; while in rear, and upon the right, the wild
mountains stood out in picturesque disorder, dark, rugged, and
forbidding, save where here and there a golden radiance brightened
their loftiest peaks. A short distance beyond the railway we turned off
the road and struck into a pleasant meadow path on the right that soon
brought us to a green and bosky dell, at the bottom of which a mountain
stream, the Levy Beck, meandered freakishly beneath the embracing
trees, prattling with the rough boulder stones and aquatic plants
along its course, and telling its admiration in a never-ending song
of gladness as it rippled onwards towards the sea. The little bowery,
untrodden nook is just the place for fays and fairies to secrete
themselves, the spot of all others where John Ruskin would expect to
catch sight of Pan, Apollo, and the Muses. Every sight and sound is
suggestive of peaceful quietude, and, while the lazy wind stirs the
over-arching branches for the warm sunshine to steal through, we are
tempted to linger in the vernal solitude, watching the playful ripples
on the water and listening to the gentle murmuring around----
Nature's ceaseless hum,
Voice of the desert, never dumb.
An old-fashioned bridge bestrides the stream, and the stump of a tree
offers an inviting seat. While we stay to contemplate the scene, the
soft zephyrs that play about and the alternate sunshine and shade as
the light clouds float overhead induce a dreamy forgetfulness of outer
things. Then we are up again, and, crossing the stream, follow a rough
and miry cart-way that climbs up the opposite height, and brings us in
a few minutes to the breezy summit.
Swarthmoor, for that is the name, possesses historic renown. It lies
just where the parishes of Ulverston, Pennington, and Urswick join
each other, and is said by tradition to have derived its name from the
Flemish general, "Bold Martin Swart," or Swartz, a valiant soldier of
noble family, who, in 1487, with Lord Lovel and the Earls of Lincoln
and Kildare, encamped here with an invading army of 7,000 German and
Irish troops, who had landed at the Pile of Fouldrey with the object
of placing Lambert Simnel on the throne of England. But tradition in
this instance, is at fault; for the name has a much earlier origin,
and is met with as _Warte_ as far back as the time of Duke William
of Normandy. At a later date, when the soldiers of King Charles had
entered Furness and "plundered the place very sore," as the old
chronicle has it, Colonel Rigby, the Parliamentarian commander,
temporarily withdrew from Thurland Castle and started in hot pursuit;
and we are told that the Roundheads, after stopping on Swarthmoor to
pray, marched on to Lindale, a couple of miles further, where they
fought with such vehemence and resolution that the unlucky Cavaliers
were put to flight.
But Swarthmoor has other and more peaceful associations. On reaching
the summit of the moor, which is now enclosed, you see in front of you
a large, irregular, and somewhat lofty pile of building, of ancient
date, which, though by no means pretentious in its outward appearance,
still wears an air of sober dignity that well accords with the memories
that gather round. Evil times have fallen upon it, and it is now
occupied as a farmhouse; but in its pristine days it was successively
the home of Judge Fell and George Fox. From the high table-land on
which it stands you can look round upon a scene but little changed from
what it must have been when the father of Quakerism gazed upon it,
more than two centuries ago. The old hills and the wild fells still
lift their heads to the breezes of heaven; the tide ebbs and flows
over those broad sands as it did of yore; there are the same bleak
moorlands, the same broad fields, the same crops of golden wheat, and
the same sun ripening for the harvest; but how changed are all human
affairs since earnest George Fox, "the man in leather breeches,"
discoursed in Ulverston church, and Judge Fell's wife "stood up in her
pew and wondered at his doctrine, for she had never heard the like
before."
The hall evidently dates from the latter part of Elizabeth's reign,
and, though it has been altered from time to time to meet the wants
of successive occupants, it still retains many of the architectural
features of that period. The roof is gabled; the windows are square,
with the usual latticed panes and heavy mullions and transoms--they
have in places been bricked up, but their original position may be
determined by the moulded dripstones which still remain--and on one
side a square bay of three storeys projects from the line of the main
structure, the only feature specially noticeable in the building.
Externally the place has a forlorn and neglected appearance, and
exhibits unequivocal signs of heedless indifference and unseemly
disrespect. It is partially surrounded with barns, shippons, and
outhouses, and heaps of refuse and farmyard litter strewn about give
an air of meanness and disorder that but ill accord with its earlier
associations as the abode of a vice-chancellor and circuit judge.
[Illustration: SWARTHMOOR HALL.]
[Illustration: The Gift of GEORGE FOX to this MEETING]
We loitered about for some time, and then, pushing back the gate,
crossed a little enclosure which seems to have been at some time a
garden, but is now only so by courtesy, and entered by a narrow doorway
a passage that communicates with the "hall." Though shorn of its
original proportions, it is still a spacious apartment; plain, however,
to a degree, and exhibiting the gloomy character common to many houses
of the Tudor period; it has a plain flagged floor, some remains of oak
wainscotting, and a huge fireplace that seems to have been intended
to make up in warmth what was lacking in cheerfulness. In this room
the earlier meetings of the Friends were held, and here it is said
that for forty years they were in the habit of assembling, after which
the chapel on Swarthmoor was built by George Fox's order and at his
cost. On one side of the room is a deep embayed recess with a slightly
raised floor--a cosy nook, with mullioned and quaint latticed windows
lighting it on three sides, and here is preserved an old-fashioned oak
desk, a treasured relic of the great reformer. A couple of stone steps
lead into a small and dimly-lighted room which tradition affirms to
have been the study of Judge Fell and afterwards of George Fox. The
upper chambers are large and airy, and one of them, more pretentious
than the others, exhibits some remains of ancient ornamentation. An old
four-post bedstead of carved oak, on which it is said that Fox slept,
still remains, and we were told that the privilege of sleeping upon it
is never denied to any member of the Society of Friends, but that it is
one very rarely availed of. From one of the chambers on this floor a
door opens to the outside, though at a considerable distance from the
ground, leading to the belief that there has been at some time or other
a projecting balcony, and it is said that within the memory of persons
still living there was such a projection with a sort of canopy above
it. It is commonly affirmed that from this elevated position Fox was
wont to address his followers assembled in the garden below, when the
number was too large to admit of their being conveniently accommodated
in the house. We were standing upon the self-same spot where the hardy,
earnest, and fearless, though imaginative and rhapsodical, Puritan
preacher stood more than two hundred years ago, while on the green
sward below, the little band of his own faith listened with wondering
awe to the outpourings of his prayers and the torrent of his eloquence,
and worshipped with silent, contemplative, "waiting" reverence of soul.
As we gazed upon the scene the events of that period of tumult and
strife crowded upon the memory. A more fitting time for our visit could
hardly have been chosen. The shadows were drawing on, and the soft,
mellow sunshine fading into the warm grey light of evening, seemed to
wrap every object in its dreamy embrace; the distant hills were fading
from view and a calm and solemn stillness prevailed that well accorded
with the impressive memories associated with the place.
[Illustration: not captioned--chair]
Of the early history of Swarthmoor Hall comparatively little is known.
Shortly after the commencement of the troublous reign of the first
Charles, it was in the occupation of Thomas Fell, a barrister of Gray's
Inn, and afterwards a justice of the Quorum, a worthy legal brother
and contemporary of Sir Matthew Hale. Though nominally a Churchman,
the owner of Swarthmoor strongly inclined towards Independency, and,
on the breaking out of hostilities, took the side of the Parliament
party, but he does not appear to have at any time engaged in active
military operations, though it is more than probable his house afforded
hospitable shelter to Colonel Rigby and his friends, when they and
their small army marched to Lindale Close to give battle to the
Cavaliers under Colonel Huddleston. The year in which the first shot
in that great struggle was fired, an ordinance was addressed by the
Parliament to Lord Newburgh, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
requiring him to place certain gentlemen named on the Commission of the
Peace for the county, and the name of Thomas Fell occurs among the
fourteen mentioned. Three years afterwards (1645) he was returned with
his neighbour, Sir Robert Bindloss, of Borwick Hall, as representative
in Parliament of the borough of Lancaster. When the Parliament found
itself sufficiently powerful to sequestrate the estates of those who
had taken up arms in the cause of the King and had refused to take the
National Covenant, committees of sequestration were appointed, and on
the 29th of August, 1645, Mr. Fell was named on the one for dealing
with the estates of "Delinquents" in the county of Lancaster. In 1648
he, with Colonel Assheton and Major Brooke, was deputed to organise the
defence of the county against the anticipated advance of the army of
the Duke of Hamilton; in the succeeding year he was appointed to the
office of Vice-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and he was also
named as one of the judges of assize for the circuit of West Chester
and North Wales. His name also occurs in 1650 on the commission for the
survey of Church livings and the provision of a competent maintenance
for preaching ministers in the several parishes throughout England and
Wales. Fell was much esteemed in his own locality, and is described as
a wise and learned man, incorruptible as a judge, honoured and feared
as a magistrate, and beloved by his neighbours.
In 1632 John Fell took to himself a wife in the person of Margaret
Askew, a lady of good family and exemplary piety, the daughter of John
Askew, of Marsh Grange, in the adjoining parish of Dalton-in-Furness,
he being at the time 34 years of age, and his bride not quite 18. Mrs.
Fell inherited an historic name that she was in every way worthy of,
her great-grandmother being Ann Askew, the most notable of the victims
of the horrible persecutions which dishonoured the closing years of the
reign of Henry VIII. Ann Askew was well known at Court, if indeed, she
was not actually employed about the person of Queen Catherine Parr,
whose Lutheran tendencies were more than suspected, she herself being
an avowed believer in the reformed doctrines. She had been married
against her will, and had been discarded by her bigoted husband on
account of the strength of her convictions. Her religious zeal outran
her discretion, and, having expressed her opinions of the doctrine of
transubstantiation with imprudent frankness, she was subjected to an
examination by the Bishop of London; she escaped on that occasion,
but was subsequently examined before the council, when she was less
fortunate, being sentenced to be burnt at the stake in Smithfield
after having undergone the torture of the rack. The barbarous scene
is thus described in a letter addressed by a London merchant, Otwell
Johnson, to his brother at Calais:--"Quondam Bishop Saxon (Shaxton),
Mistress Askew, Christopher White, one of Mistress Fayre's sons, and
a tailor that came from Colchester or thereabouts, were arraigned at
the Guildhall, and received their judgments of my Lord Chancellor
(Wriothesley) and the council to be burned, and so were committed
to Newgate again. But since that time the aforesaid Saxon and White
have renounced their opinions; and the talk goeth that they shall
chance to escape the fire for this viage. But the gentlewoman and
the other men remain in steadfast mind; and yet she hath been racked
since her condemnation, as men say; which is a strange thing in my
understanding. The Lord be merciful to us all." Burnet says that he
had seen an original journal of the transaction in the Tower, which
shows that "they caused her to be laid on the rack, and gave her a
taste of it;" but he doubts the accuracy of the statement of Fox,
the martyrologist, that the Chancellor, when the Lieutenant of the
Tower refused "to stretch her more," threw off his gown, and himself
"drew the rack so severely that he almost tore her body asunder."
Lord Campbell gives this horrid story without noticing the doubt of
Burnet, and adds that Griffin, the Solicitor-general, assisted in the
detestable crime. Let us hope that in this case human nature was not
so utterly degraded as the somewhat credulous historian of the English
martyrs has represented. There was a disgusting scene in Smithfield
which soon followed the torture of the high-minded woman, who, amidst
her sufferings, would not utter one word to implicate her friends.
Upon a bench under St. Bartholomew's Church sit the Lord Chancellor,
the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, the Lord Mayor, and other
dignitaries. There are three martyrs, each tied to a stake. The
apostate Shaxton is to preach the sermon. It is rumoured that gunpowder
has been placed about the condemned to shorten their sufferings. The
Chancellor and the other high functionaries have no compunction for
their victims, but they are in terror for their own safety. Will not
the exploding gunpowder drive the firewood where they sit? They hold
a grave consultation, and are persuaded to sit out the scene. The
gentlewoman and her fellow sufferers die heroically--a noble contrast
to the cowardice that quakes in the extremity of its selfishness upon
the bench under St. Bartholomew's Church. Such was one of the scenes
that marked the closing days of the life of Henry the Eighth.[1]
Ann Askew had a son, William, who became heir to the Marsh Grange
estate on the death without issue of Hugh Askew, on whom it had
been bestowed by the crown in 1542. This William had a son, John,
the father of Margaret Askew, who, before she had well attained
to womanhood, became the wife of Lawyer Fell, and the mistress of
Swarthmoor. Margaret Fell, as we shall see, proved herself a worthy
great-granddaughter of the martyr Ann Askew.
The period that immediately preceded the great and bitter conflict
in which many of the dearest interests of England were involved, and
much of her best blood shed, was one of great religious activity
and excitement. The seeds sown at the Reformation had ripened, and
there had been a steady continuity and successive advance towards
Calvinism and the rejection of all ceremonial not directly authorised
by Scripture. The Church had been purged of the most flagrant of the
Romish superstitions, but the Book of Common Prayer retained many
things in the ritual it enjoined which, to those who assumed a superior
sanctity and claimed to hold the Bible as their only rule, were held
to savour of Popery and idolatry. Preferring to do what was right
in their own eyes, they rejected the Liturgy and the Episcopal form
of government. They disliked the surplice and would not wear it, and
they objected to many of the ceremonies the Church prescribed. There
were great divergencies of opinion; the public mind was much exercised
with the controversies that arose; and the feeling of hostility was
increased by the intolerant and persecuting spirit manifested by the
authorities of the day. The Puritans, as they were called, had gained
considerable ascendancy, and, though they had not withdrawn themselves
from the Church, they had become a powerful party within its pale,
and asserted their peculiar views with much tenacity. It is difficult
to say what a more moderate policy might have produced, but the
determination of Laud to reduce them to submission, instead of serving
the interests of the Church, only drove them into more open resistance,
and converted religious enthusiasts into political agitators.
Such was the condition of religious parties in England at the time
when Thomas Fell and his youthful spouse became the occupants of
Swarthmoor Hall. At that time there was living in the little rural
hamlet of Drayton-in-the-Clay, in Leicestershire, a weaver of the
name of Christopher Fox, a zealous attender on the ordinances of the
Church, and who, from his integrity and piety, was known among his
neighbours by the _sobriquet_ of "Righteous Christer." His wife, Mary
Lago, was a woman imbued with strong religious feelings, well read,
and of an education superior to that usually possessed by persons in
her station of life. To this couple was born a son--George Fox--who
at the time of Thomas Fell's marriage with the great-granddaughter
of the martyr, Ann Askew, was eight years of age. His childhood and
youth were passed in the quietude and seclusion of his Leicestershire
home, with little idea of the great world beyond or the questions
that were then stirring the minds of men. He grew up silent, pensive,
and thoughtful. After receiving a scanty education, he was placed
with a relative who combined the several occupations of wool dealer,
shoemaker, and grazier. In pursuing his humble calling, young Fox
frequently attended the country fairs, but, finding his occupation
distasteful, he forsook his wool dealing and sheep-herding and betook
himself to the neighbouring town of Lutterworth, the place from which,
two centuries and a half previously, John Wycliffe had sent forth his
itinerant preachers--the "Poor Priests," as he designated them--who
traversed nearly the whole kingdom, disseminating his opinions as
they went. Of a taciturn and meditative turn of mind, with no settled
occupation, but possessing an earnest desire for holiness, Fox became
unsettled in his views and controversial in his habits. He conferred
with one divine after another in his efforts to obtain light and
peace--Churchman and Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist, each
in their turn, but could not satisfy himself with any. He remarks:
"Neither them (the Episcopalians) nor any of the dissenting people
could I join with, but was a stranger to all, relying wholly upon the
Lord Jesus Christ." As Macaulay says: "He wandered from congregation
to congregation; he heard priests argue against Puritans; he heard
Puritans harangue against priests; and he in vain applied for spiritual
direction and consolation to doctors of both parties.... After some
time he came to the conclusion that no human being was competent to
instruct him in divine things, and that the truth had been communicated
to him by direct inspiration from heaven." He had spent much of his
time in studying the Scriptures alone, in the fields and orchards, and
in the deep gloom of his native woods, and in this way had acquired a
ready aptitude in quoting particular texts. Believing that the time
had arrived for promulgating his own peculiar views of Christian truth
and ecclesiastical polity, he wandered from place to place disputing
with some and rebuking others. In 1647 he began to hold meetings,
and astonished those who heard him by his earnestness and fluency
of speech. The quiet pastoral regions of the Trent Valley and the
Derbyshire hills formed the scene of his earliest labours, and here
Quakerism may be said to have had its birth. At Nottingham, seeing
the church upon a hill, he went there, and found, as he expressed
it, that "the people looked like fallow ground, and the priest like
a great lump of earth stood up in the pulpit above." He interrupted
the preacher, and for doing so was cast into prison. On regaining
his liberty he proceeded to Mansfield-Woodhouse, where he was again
"moved to go into the steeple-house and declare the truth to the priest
and people;" but the people fell upon him, put him in the stocks,
and threatened him with "dog-whips and horse-whips." Continuing his
itinerant ministry, we next find him at Derby, where, in accordance
with his usual practice, he proceeded to church, and after the service
stood up to address the people. For uttering "blasphemous opinions"
he was taken to prison, and brought before Justice Bennett, whom he
bade to "tremble at the word of the Lord," an expression which caused
the magistrate to apply to him the term _Quaker_--a nickname that has
ever since attached to his followers, who previously had designated
themselves the "Children of Light."
After these rough experiences he visited Yorkshire, traversed the
picturesque Wensleydale, Grisedale, and Lunedale, and thence passed
into Westmoreland. Here, on the high fells between Kendal and Sedbergh,
he preached a sermon memorable in the annals of Quakerism. It was
delivered from the summit of a weather-beaten rock adjoining the
bleak moorland chapel of Firbank, whither a great company of zealous
preachers and laymen had assembled from the surrounding district for a
conference. Fox preached a sermon of three hours' duration, and with
such earnestness that many of his hearers in their enthusiasm resolved
to devote themselves to the work of promulgating his views. In all,
it is said that about sixty energetic preachers formed the harvest of
this northern mission, who traversed the country on foot, spreading
the Quaker doctrines over the entire kingdom, many of them wearing out
their lives in the hardships, privations, and persecutions they had to
endure. Journeying southwards, Fox climbed to the top of Pendle Hill,
which rises within the borders of Lancashire. "As we travelled," he
says in his _Journal_, "we came near a very great hill, called Pendle
Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it, which
I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I came
to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of
this hill the Lord let me see in what places He had a great people to
be gathered. As I went down I found a spring of water in the side of
the hill, with which I refreshed myself, having eaten or drunk but
little for several days before." The spring is still there, and in the
neighbourhood is commonly known even at this day as George Fox's Well.
[Illustration: ULVERSTON CHURCH.]
The district comprehended within his view became the scene of his most
important labours. He spent several years among the pleasant valleys
of the Lune and the Kent, and along the breezy shores of Morecambe
Bay. In his wanderings he never missed an opportunity of rebuking the
"priests," in their "steeple-houses." At Staveley, close by the foot of
Windermere, he disputed with the minister, and was roughly treated in
consequence. The same afternoon, at Lindale-in-Cartmel, a picturesque
spot a couple of miles north of Grange, he, with more prudence, waited
till the service was over before he commenced his harangue. Thence he
proceeded to Ulverston; his fame had gone before him, and the people
flocked to listen to his utterances. The visit was a memorable incident
in his life, for it was the occasion on which he first met the courtly
but courageous woman who afterwards became his wife. He was taken by a
friend to Swarthmoor Hall, where he stayed all night; the next morning
being a fast-day, he attended service at the old church of St. Mary's.
When he entered, Lampitt, the Puritan vicar, whom he describes as "a
high notionist, who would make it appear that he knew all things, was
singing with his people; but his spirit was so foul, and the matter
they sang so unsuitable to their states, that, after they had done
singing, I was moved of the Lord to speak to him and the people"--a
practice that was sometimes permitted in that age, provided it was
done with courtesy and decorum; conditions, however, that Fox did
not always observe. It must have been a stirring scene; the tall and
powerfully-built "man in leather breeches"--the stern, uncompromising
reformer, who had almost turned the religious world upside down--clad
in his strange, uncouth garb, wearing his broad-leaved immovable
hat--which, by the way, had not then become the accepted badge of
Quakerism--his long, lank hair depending upon his shoulders, and
his eyes flashing with light as he declaimed against "hypocritical
professors," and "hireling priests." Standing on one of the seats, he
delivered a stirring address on the necessity of sincerity in religious
profession. The people marvelled at his eloquence, and many of them
were moved by his earnestness. As he proceeded the fervour increased
and rose to a pitch of intense excitement, the heart of many a listener
was touched, and the stifled sob and the heaving sigh told of the
powerful effect of his utterances. Judge Fell was not there, being away
at the time discharging his judicial functions on the Welsh circuit,
but his wife, Margaret Fell, was present, and her heart was stirred
by the enthusiasm of the preacher. "I stood up in my pew," she says,
"and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before;"
and then, after describing the sermon, she adds, "I saw clearly we
were all wrong; so I sat down in my pew again, and cried bitterly;
and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, 'We have taken the Scriptures
in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.'" Fox's hearers were
not, however, all moved by the same spirit. Justice Sawrey, who was
amongst the congregation, denounced the intruder, and ordered him to
be taken away, but he continued his address until he was forcibly
removed, and then preached in the churchyard, when a crowd gathered
round, maltreated him, and drove him out. According to his own version
his sufferings were cruelly severe. He thus describes in his _Journal_
the scene that occurred on the occasion of another of his visits to the
"steeple-house" at Ulverston:
The people were in a rage, and fell upon me in the steeple-house
before his (Justice Sawrey's) face, knocked me down, kicked me, and
trampled upon me. So great was the uproar, that some tumbled over
their seats for fear. At last he came and took me from the people,
led me out of the steeple-house, and put me into the hands of the
constables and other officers, bidding them whip me, and put me out
of the town. Many friendly people being come to the market, and some
to the steeple-house to hear me, divers of these they knocked down
also, and broke their heads, so that the blood ran down several; and
Judge Fell's son running after to see what they would do with me,
they threw him into a ditch of water, some of them crying: "Knock
the teeth out of his head." When they had hauled me to the common
moss-side, a multitude of people following, the constables and other
officers gave me some blows over my back with willow rods and thrust
me among the rude multitude, who, having furnished themselves with
staves, hedge-stakes, and holme or holly bushes, fell upon me, and
beat me upon the head, arms, and shoulders, till they had deprived me
of sense; so that I fell down upon the wet common. When I recovered
again and saw myself lying in a watery common, and the people standing
about me, I lay still a little while, and the power of the Lord sprang
through me, and the eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up
again in the strengthening power of the eternal God, and stretching
out my arms against them, I said with a loud voice: "Strike again!
here are my arms, head, and cheeks!" Then they began to fall out among
themselves.
Whilst we honour the great Quaker evangelist for the unfaltering
testimony he bore to his principles and admire his honesty and
fortitude, it must be admitted that he provoked much of the persecution
he was subjected to by his obtrusive and intolerant disputations, and
his disregard for ministerial authority and ecclesiastical sanctities.
Swarthmoor Hall, the home of the Fells, was then known far and wide
for the hospitality of its owner, and to none was a heartier welcome
accorded than to the professors and teachers of religion. The evening
following his first harangue in the church at Ulverston Fox was a
guest within its walls; at the request of his hostess he preached to
the family and servants, and with such effect that the whole household
became converted to his principles. Two or three weeks afterwards Mrs.
Fell's husband returned to his Lancashire home. As he crossed the
trackless waste of the Leven Sands, the only way at that time from
Lancaster into Furness, a company of his friends and neighbours went
out to meet him and apprise him of the events that had occurred at
Swarthmoor in his absence. "A deal of the captains," writes Margaret
Fell, "and great ones of the county went to meet my then husband as he
was coming home, and informed him that a great disaster was befallen
among his family, and that they were witched, and that they had taken
us out of our religion; and that he might either set them away, or
all the country would be undone." The judge, as may be supposed, was
greatly concerned at the intelligence and much incensed against the man
who had "bewitched" his family and wrought such trouble in his house.
Mrs. Fell told her husband the true state of things, and at night Fox,
who was still in the neighbourhood, was sent for. On his arrival he
answered all his interrogator's objections in so satisfactory a manner
that the judge "assented to the truth and reasonableness thereof;"
he set forth in detail the points of his new doctrine, and inveighed
against the conduct of the clergy. Margaret Fell thus records the
result of the interview:--"And so my husband came to see clearly the
truth of what he spoke, and was very quiet, that night, said no more,
and went to bed. The next morning came Lampitt priest of Ulverston,
and got my husband into the garden and spoke much to him there; but my
husband had seen so much the night before that the priest got little
entrance upon him." The judge must have been greatly impressed with
the arguments of his guest, for from that time he offered no further
objection to the Quakerism of his household; though he himself remained
a Churchman to the end of his days he was a steady friend to the
members of the new sect and its founder on all occasions when it was
in his power, and in token of his sympathy gave them permission to
hold their meetings in his house, there being no other place in the
neighbourhood where they could assemble. "He let us have," said his
wife, "a meeting in his house the next first day after, which was the
first public meeting that was at Swarthmoor; our meetings being kept
at Swarthmoor about thirty-eight years, until a new meeting-house was
built by George Fox's order and cost, near Swarthmoor Hall."
[Illustration: handwritten as follows;
Thy dutyfull wife till
death Margaret Fell
'8 Feb: 1652]
[Illustration: not captioned--meeting house]
The "new meeting-house" remains to this day, and is still resorted to
for religious worship by the Friends of Ulverston and the surrounding
district. It is a modest, unpretending structure, standing within a
little walled enclosure, and, of course, perfectly unadorned. In the
house, which forms part of the structure, is still preserved the Bible
given by Fox, with the original chain by which it was fastened to the
reader's desk, and also his "great elbow chair."[2] We passed through
the open gate into the flagged space in front to make a sketch of the
building, on which at the time of our visit the sun was casting its
evening benison of golden radiance. In front is a small gabled porch
with a panel over the doorway bearing the inscription:--"Ex dono, G.
F., 1688," the year of English freedom. That modest little structure,
unostentatiously religious and impressive in its simplicity, was to us
more "spirit-moving" than many a more pretentious monument. In that
lowly building Quakerism was cradled.
The Quakers may almost be called a Lancashire sect, for the palatine
county was the scene of the earliest and most successful labours of
the founder, and it was from the immediate district that the largest
accessions to their ranks were obtained, results that were no doubt
largely due to the influence which George Fox acquired over the
household at Swarthmoor, and to the protection and encouragement given
to him by Judge Fell himself. After the disorderly scene in Ulverston
Church and churchyard, Fox proceeded to the market place, where he was
subjected to the same rough treatment, and beaten with sticks until he
lost consciousness.
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
On recovering his senses he returned to Swarthmoor, where he found the
inmates of the hall busy dressing the heads of the Friends who had
tried to protect him from the violence of the mob in the town.
A fortnight afterwards he visited the Isle of Walney, off the adjacent
coast, where he met with similar treatment, so that his friends had to
hurry him back to the boat for safety; but here they found themselves
in a dilemma, for when they attempted to land on the other side the
people of Dalton "rose up with pitchforks, flails, and staves, to keep
him out of the town, crying 'Kill him, kill him, knock him on the
head, bring the cart and carry him away to the churchyard.'" Mrs Fell,
hearing of his misfortune, sent a horse to convey him to Swarthmoor,
when Thomas Fell issued warrants against his assailants, some of whom
deemed it expedient to leave the country. Shortly afterwards warrants
were issued by two magistrates, Sawrey and Thompson, against Fox
himself for having spoken blasphemy, and he was required to appear
at the sessions at Lancaster to answer the charge. Thomas Fell and
Colonel West were present, and stood him in good stead on the occasion,
pointing out the discrepancies in the evidence and reproving the
witnesses. The charge could not be sustained and Fox was liberated,
having achieved a triumph in that he had had an excellent opportunity
of proclaiming his principles to a large assembly of the local
magistracy. After the sessions he held a meeting in the town and gained
many converts, among them being Colonel Gervase Benson, Major Ripon,
then mayor of Lancaster, and Thomas Briggs, who afterwards became an
active missionary among the Friends and accompanied the founder when
he went out to the West Indies in 1671. Having held several meetings
in the town, in spite of the threats of the "baser sort of people"
to throw him over the bridge into the Lune, he returned to his old
quarters at Swarthmoor, but was not long before he found that another
information had been laid against him. At the following assize at
Lancaster, Windham, the presiding judge, directed a warrant to be
issued, but Colonel West, the clerk of assize, spoke boldly in his
defence, and resolutely refused to prepare the warrant, and so the
matter fell to the ground.
From Lancaster Fox again returned to Swarthmoor, and occupied the
closing months of the year (1652) in visiting various parts of North
Lancashire and adjoining parts of Westmoreland, exhorting the people,
declaiming against "steeple-houses," and unceremoniously interrupting
those who taught therein by loudly contradicting their statements of
doctrine and proclaiming them to be "hypocritical professors." Before
quitting Swarthmoor he addressed several vigorous protests to the local
magistrates and ministers, especially those who had been the most
active among his opponents, including Sawrey and Lampitt, the vicar of
Ulverston, and some of the epistles he was "moved" to write it must
be confessed were not remarkable as manifesting a spirit of meekness
and forgiveness. Thus he writes to his old enemy, Sawrey:--"Thou was
the first stirrer up of strikers, stoners, persecutors, mockers, and
imprisoners in the North, and of revilers, slanderers, railers, and
false accusers! How wilt thou be gnawed and burned one day, when thou
shalt feel the flame, and have the plagues of God poured upon thee, and
then begin to gnaw thy tongue because of the plagues! Thou shalt have
thy reward according to thy works. Thou canst not escape. The Lord's
righteous judgments will find thee out."[3] Lampitt, the Puritan
vicar, he designates "a deceiver, surfeited and drunk with the earthy
spirit," and "a right hypocrite in the steps of the Pharisee," adding
"when thou art in thy torment (though now thou swellest in thy vanity
and livest in wickedness) remember thou wast warned in thy lifetime...."
Having thus cleared his conscience to the priest and people of
Ulverston he went into Westmoreland, but returned in the spring of
1653 to his friends in Furness, and about this time he writes in his
_Journal_:--"Being one day in Swarthmoor Hall, when Judge Fell and
Justice Benson were talking of the news, and of the Parliament then
sitting, which was called the Long Parliament, I was moved to tell
them, that before that day two weeks, the Parliament should be broken
up, and the Speaker plucked out of his chair. And," he adds, "that
day two weeks, Justice Benson coming thither again, told Judge Fell,
that now he saw George was a true prophet, for Oliver had broken up
the Parliament." That event, which will be ever memorable in the
annals of England, occurred on the 20th April, 1653; Colonel Worsley,
Manchester's first parliamentary representative, on a signal from
Cromwell, entered the house with a force of 300 men, expelled the
members from their chamber, and "took away the bauble," and so the
Long Parliament, which for twelve years, under a variety of forms, had
alternately defended and invaded the liberties of the nation, fell by
the parricidal hands of its own children without a struggle and without
regret.
From Swarthmoor Fox travelled further north, visiting Cumberland,
Durham, and Northumberland, where he frequently came in contact with
the Baptists, a sect that had anticipated many of the doctrines and
much of the system of discipline adopted by the Friends, and many of
whom became followers of Fox. In the border city he preached in the
Castle, at the Market Cross, and then went into the "steeple-house,"
where a tumult arose. "The magistrates' wives," he says, "were in a
rage, and strove mightily to be at me;" then "the rude people of the
city rose and came with staves and stones into the steeple-house,
crying 'Down with these round-headed rogues.'" For interrupting the
services in the church he was committed to gaol and subjected to many
hardships; Wilfrid Lawson, a predecessor, but not an ancestor of the
present baronet of that name, who was then high sheriff, "stirred
them up to take away his life," and his peace was disturbed at night
by "a company of bitter Scotch priests, Presbyterians made up of envy
and malice" and "foul-mouthed." He lay in the prison at Carlisle for
several months. On regaining his liberty he passed into Westmoreland,
and thence to his constant friends, the Fells, of Swarthmoor.
Fox had now fought and won the decisive battles of his life; Quakerism
had become an established fact, and had taken a firm hold on the minds
of many of the people in the north, and not a few of the converts
had begun to preach the new doctrines in other parts of the country.
Having, as he considered, concluded his great pioneering work, he took
his departure from the hospitable mansion at Swarthmoor in the spring
of 1654, and travelled through the midland and southern districts of
England. While in his native county, preaching, disputing, and holding
conferences, he was taken prisoner by a company of the Parliamentary
troopers, and sent by Colonel Hacker to Cromwell under the charge of
Captain Drury. When in the presence of the Protector, at Whitehall, he
exhorted him to keep in the fear of God; and Cromwell, having patiently
listened to his lecture, parted with him, saying, "Come again to my
house, for if thou and I were but an hour a day together, we should be
nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my
own soul." Fox found a friend in Cromwell, and on another occasion,
when he and some of his friends had been dispersing "base books against
the Lord Protector," as Major-General Goffe informed Thurloe, Cromwell
sent the Quaker away, on receiving from him a written promise that he
would do nothing against his government.
The age was characterised by much religious enthusiasm and
extravagance. George Fox and his "quaking men in their leather coats"
were becoming formidable from their increasing numbers, and attracted
much attention. Their opposition, obstinacy, and self-sufficiency,
too, in denying the authority of Presbyteries and Synods, and all
ecclesiastical officers, frequently brought them into collision with
the magistrates. So numerous had they become that it has been computed
there were at this period seldom fewer than I,000 of them in prison,
some for disturbing the peace, some for refusing to pay tithes, and
others because they would not do violence to their principles by taking
the oath of allegiance or uncovering their heads in the presence of
the magistrates. So frequent and severe were the prosecutions to which
the Friends were then subjected that Margaret Fell addressed several
letters to Cromwell, drawing his attention to the sufferings they were
compelled to undergo. In one of them, written in 1657, she warned the
Protector that the wickedness of the oppressor would come to an end,
and praying that his understanding might be lightened, and that he
might exercise justice and judgment without fear, favour, or affection.
In the three years from 1654 to 1657 Fox travelled over nearly the
whole of the south of England and Wales. In the autumn of 1657 he
turned his steps in the direction of Swarthmoor, passing through
Chester and Liverpool on the way, and calling at Malpas; whence he
proceeded to Manchester. His reception in the last-named town he thus
describes in his _Journal_:--
Thence we came to Manchester; and the sessions being there that day,
many rude people were come out of the country. In the meeting they
threw at me coals, clods, stones, and water. Yet the Lord's power bore
me up over them, that they could not strike me down. At last, when
they saw that they could not prevail by throwing water, stones, and
dirt at me, they went and informed the justices in the sessions; who
thereupon sent officers to fetch me before them. The officers came in
while I was declaring the word of life to the people, plucked me down,
and haled me up into their court. When I came there all the court was
in disorder and noise. Wherefore I asked, where were the magistrates
that they did not keep the people civil? Some of the justices said
they were magistrates. I asked them why then did they did not appease
the people, and keep them sober? for one cried "I'll swear," and
another cried, "I'll swear." I declared to the justices how we were
abused in our meeting by the rude people, who threw stones, clods,
dirt, and water; and how I was haled out of the meeting and brought
thither, contrary to the instrument of government, which said, "none
should be molested in their meetings that professed God and owned
the Lord Jesus Christ;" which I did. So the truth came over them,
that when one of the rude fellows cried "he would swear," one of the
justices checked him, saying, "What will you swear? Hold your tongue."
At last they bid the constable take me to my lodging; and there be
secured till morning, till they sent for me again. So the constable
had me to my lodging; and as we went the people were exceedingly
rude; but I let them see "the fruits of their teachers, and how they
shamed Christianity, and dishonoured the name of Jesus, which they
professed." At night we went to a justice's house in the town, who was
pretty moderate; and I had much discourse with him. Next morning we
sent to the constable to know if he had anything more to say to us.
And he sent us word "he had nothing to say to us; but that we might
go whither we would." "The Lord hath since raised up a people"--he
adds--"to stand for His name and truth in that town over those chaffy
professors."
From Manchester he went to Preston, and thence to Lancaster, where,
at his inn, he met with his former friend, Colonel West. Shortly
afterwards he crossed the sandy shores of Morecambe Bay to Swarthmoor,
where, he says, "the Friends were glad to see me;" and, he adds,
"I stayed there two first days, visiting Friends in their meetings
thereaways."
From Swarthmoor he went through Westmoreland and Cumberland into
Scotland, where he remained some time, visiting Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Stirling, Dunbar, the Highlands, and other places; returning through
Durham and Yorkshire into Furness, where for a few weeks during the
winter he was again the guest of the Fells. In the beginning of 1653 he
made another journey into the southern counties, and on that occasion
he had another interview with Cromwell--a very brief one, and his last,
for it was a few days before the Protector's death. In his _Journal_
he tells us something of the great man's appearance at the time
when London was gay with ambassadors extraordinary from France, and
Mazarin's nephew was assuring the Protector of the profound veneration
his uncle had for him--"the greatest man that ever was." But the day
was passed for pomps and flatteries.
"Taking boat," says Fox, "I went to Kingston, and thence to Hampton
Court, to speak with the Protector about the sufferings of the
Friends. I met him riding into Hampton Court Park; and before I came
to him as he rode at the head of his life guard I saw and felt a
waft (or apparition) of death go forth against him; and when I came
to him he looked like a dead man. After I had laid the sufferings of
the Friends before him, he bid me come to his house. So I returned to
Kingston, and next day went to Hampton Court to speak further with
him. But when I came he was sick, and--Harvey, who was one that waited
on him, told me the doctors were not willing I should speak with him.
So I passed away, and never saw him more."
Carlyle thus characteristically comments upon Fox's narrative:--
"I saw and felt a waft of death go forth against him." Or in favour
of him, George? His life, if thou knew it, has not been a merry thing
for the man, now or heretofore! I fancy he has been looking this
long while to give it up, whenever the Commander-in-chief required.
To quit his laborious sentry-post, honourably lay up his arms, and
begone to his rest--all eternity to rest in, George! Was thy own life
merry, for example, in the hollow of the tree, clad permanently in
leather? And does the kingly purple, and governing refractory worlds
instead of stitching coarse shoes, make it any merrier? The waft of
death is not against _him_, I think--perhaps against thee, and me, and
others. O George, when the Nell Gwynne defender and two centuries of
all-victorious cant have come in upon us, my unfortunate George.
[Illustration: MEETING BETWEEN FOX AND CROMWELL.]
Cromwell died on the 3rd September; and in little more than one short
month Fox lost another, and that his truest, friend. For some time
previously the health of Judge Fell had been declining; on the 8th of
October he passed away from the scene of his earthly labours, and a
few days later was buried by torchlight in a grave under his family
pew, in the old church of St. Mary, at Ulverston.
Writing long afterwards, his widow, Margaret Fell, thus recorded her
loss:--
We lived together 26 years, in which time we had nine children, and
one that sought after God in the best way that was made known to him.
He was much esteemed in this country, and valued and honoured in his
day, by all sorts of people, for his justice, wisdom, moderation, and
mercy.... He was about 60 years of age. He left one son and seven
daughters, all unpreferred; but left a good and competent
estate for them.[4]
[Illustration: Tho: Fell]
By his will, which bears date September 23, 1658, he left various
legacies in trust for poor and aged persons in the parishes of
Ulverston and Dalton, and also for the maintenance of a schoolmaster
at Ulverston. Among other bequests is one to his "very honourable and
noble friend, the Lord Bradshaw" (John Bradshaw, the regicide), of "ten
pounds to buy a ring therewith, whom I humbly beseech to accept thereof
as all the acknowledgment I can make, and thankfulness for his ancient
and continued favours and kindness undeservedly vouchsafed unto me
since our first acquaintance." Bradshaw did not live long to wear the
memento of the departed judge's friendship, for within a year he had
found a grave in the mausoleum of kings at Westminster.
Under the provisions of Thomas Fell's will, Swarthmoor Hall, with its
appurtenances and fifty acres of land, were reserved to the use of his
widow during the remainder of her life, or until such times as she
should marry again, when the property was to pass to Daniel Abraham,
the husband of his daughter Rachel. Mrs. Fell remained in the occupancy
of the old mansion, and the meetings of the Friends were held in the
house weekly, as they had been during the judge's lifetime. It was not,
however, until after the Restoration that George Fox paid another visit
to the place. In 1660, he returned from the south, and, after holding
a general meeting for all the Friends in Westmoreland, Cumberland, and
Lancashire at Arnside, he proceeded once more into Furness, and took
up his abode at Swarthmoor; but he had scarcely done so when Major
Porter, then mayor of Lancaster, issued a warrant for his apprehension.
He was forcibly carried away from the hall to the constable's house at
Ulverston, where he remained for the night; and the following morning
was conveyed across the sands to Lancaster, when he was committed by
Porter on the charge of being "an enemy to the King, and that he had
endeavoured to raise a new war, and imbrue the nation in blood again."
In vindication of his innocence, Fox denied that he was "a disturber
of the nation's peace;" and affirmed that he was "never an enemy to
the King, nor to any man's person upon the earth." Margaret Fell,
who considered that an injustice was done to herself by his removal
from her house, also addressed a letter of remonstrance to "all the
magistrates concerned in his wrong taking up and imprisoning;" and,
failing to obtain redress, determined on proceeding to London, in order
that her case might be laid before the King.
"Having a great family," she says in her "Testimony," "and he being
taken in my house, I was moved of the Lord to go to the King at
Whitehall; and took with me a declaration, and an information, of
our principles; and a long time, and much ado, I had to get to him.
But, at last, when I got to him, I told him if he was guilty of these
things, I was guilty, for he was taken in my house; and I gave him the
paper of our principles, and desired that he would set him at liberty,
as he had promised that none should suffer for tender consciences; and
we were of tender consciences, and desired nothing but the liberty of
our consciences. Then, with much ado, after he had been kept prisoner
near half a year at Lancaster, we got a Habeas Corpus, and removed him
to the King's Bench, when he was released."
To send the delinquent Quaker all the way to London guarded by a party
of horse was a serious matter, and after much deliberation George
Chetham, of Clayton and Turton Tower--a nephew of Humphrey, the founder
of the Chetham Hospital at Manchester--who was then sheriff, to avoid
the expense of conducting his prisoner, liberated him on his promise
to appear before the judges in town on a day fixed. From Lancaster he
went straight to Swarthmoor, where he stayed two or three days; and
then set out for London, passing through Cheshire and Staffordshire,
and holding meetings at several places on the way. When he arrived in
London "multitudes of people," he says, "were gathered together to
see the burning of the bowels of some of the old King's (Charles I.)
judges, who had been hung, drawn, and quartered." The following morning
he proceeded to the King's Bench, and, pulling out of his pocket the
writ charging him with embroiling the nation in blood and making a new
war, presented it to the judges, who, as may be supposed, were a good
deal astonished and amused at the inconsistency of paroling a prisoner
accounted such a dangerous personage, and permitting him to travel a
distance of 250 miles without guard or restraint. None of his accusers
appearing, and there being nothing sufficiently serious to warrant his
committal, the matter was referred to the King, who at once gave orders
for his release.
In the summer of 1663 Fox was again at Swarthmoor, when, after a brief
stay, he went over to Arnside to attend a meeting, and thence travelled
through Northumberland and Cumberland, returning to the hospitable
home of Mrs. Fell in the autumn of the same year. On his arrival he
was informed that Colonel Kirkby, a neighbouring justice and a member
of Parliament, had, on the preceding day, sent his officers to search
the house in the expectation of finding Fox there. Undismayed, Fox
went the next morning to the colonel's house, Kirkby Hall, when he
found the Flemings, of Rydal, and several other of the neighbouring
gentry assembled to take leave of the colonel before his departure to
London to attend to his Parliamentary duties. Fox, in the presence of
the company, asked if there was any charge against him; and he was
told, in reply, that "as he," Colonel Kirkby, "was a gentleman, he
had nothing against him. But," he added, "Mistress Fell must not keep
great meetings at her house, for they meet contrary to the Act."[5]
A few days later he was again apprehended and conveyed to Holker
Hall, the residence of Justice Preston, the brave-hearted Margaret
Fell accompanying him; when, after being examined, he was ordered
to appear at the sessions at Lancaster. He then returned with Mrs.
Fell to Swarthmoor; and shortly afterwards, while the Friends were
peaceably assembled at a meeting in the hall, the door was opened,
and William Kirkby, of Adgarley, a half-brother to Colonel Kirkby,
entered with the constables, exclaiming, "How now, Mr. Fox! You have a
fine company here!" and at once proceeded to take the names of those
present; any who refused being handed over to the custody of the
officers. This proceeding led to Margaret Fell herself being examined
and committed for trial. Having traversed from the spring assizes, she
was brought up on the 29th June, 1664, her chief offence being that of
having had meetings for worship in her house at Swarthmoor. It would
appear from the evidence she had received an intimation that, on her
giving security to discontinue the meetings, the prosecution would be
abandoned; and the offer was again made that, if she would give the
required security, the case against her would be dismissed. But she
refused, and the jury found for the King. A respite was allowed; but,
she remaining obstinate, sentence of premunire was passed against her
in September of the same year, and she was committed to prison, where
she remained until the summer of 1668. Fox, who was also a prisoner
for being a "rebel" and a dangerous character, was for a time more
successful, his shrewdness and acumen enabling him to discover several
errors in the indictment; but he was immediately questioned again, the
oath was tendered and refused, and, being once more put upon trial, he
traversed to the next assizes. The sufferings of both were very severe;
each prisoner wrote an account of their trials, and the descriptions
they give furnish some interesting particulars respecting the condition
of the prison at Lancaster at the time. From the narrative of Margaret
Fell it appears that, after her trial, the judge said:--"Mistress Fell,
you wrote to me concerning your prisons, that they are bad and rain
in, and are not fit for people to lie in; and (she says) I answered,
the sheriff doth know, and hath been told of it several times; and now
it is raining, if you will send to see, at this present, you may see
whether they be fit for people to lie in or no. And Colonel Kirkby
stood up and spoke to the judge to excuse the sheriff and the badness
of the room, and I spoke to him, and said if you were to lie in it
yourselves you would think it hard; but your minds is only in cruelty
to commit others, as William Kirkby hath done, who hath committed ten
of our friends, and put them into a cold room, where there are nothing
but bare boards to lie on, where they have laid several nights, some of
them old ancient men, above three score years of age, and known to be
honest men in their country where they live. And when William Kirkby
was asked why they might not have liberty to shift for themselves for
beds, he answered and said, they were to commit them to prison, but not
to provide prisons for them. And we asked him who should do it, then?
and he said the King; and then the judge spoke to him, and said, they
should not do so, but let them have prisons fit for men." George Fox
also made complaint. He says:--"I desired the judge to send some to
see my prison, being so bad, they would put no creature they had in it,
it was so windy and rainy; and so I was had away to my prison, and some
justices, with Colonel Kirkby, went up to see it; and when they came up
in it, they durst scarcely go in it, it was so bad, rainy, and windy,
and the badness of the floor, and others that came up said it was ...
I being removed out of the prison I was in formerly; and so Colonel
Kirkby told me I should be removed from that place ere long." While
lying in this deplorable state in the gaol at Lancaster, he says he was
so starved with cold and rain that his body became greatly swelled, and
his limbs much benumbed. Well might Macaulay say of those times, "The
prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and of every
disease. At the assizes the lean and yellow culprits brought with them
from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence
which sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury."
[Illustration: Handwritten note]
[Illustration: GATEWAY, LANCASTER CASTLE.]
After some time Fox was transferred from Lancaster to the castle at
Scarborough, where, during his incarceration, he was visited by the
widow of General Fairfax. His condition there was no better than at
Lancaster. The room in which he was placed, he says, "being to the
seaside, and lying much open, drove in the wind forcibly, so that the
rain came over my bed and ran over the room, that I was fain to skim it
up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet I had no fire to dry
them; so that my body was benumbed with cold and my fingers swelled,
that one was grown as big as two." His friends were forbidden to supply
him with any comforts, and he remarks, "Commonly a threepenny loaf
served me three weeks and sometimes longer, and most of my drink was
water with wormwood steeped or bruised in it."
After he had been two years in confinement an order for his release
was obtained from the King, procured, as it would seem, through the
influence of a friend at Court, one "Esquire Marsh," to whom he had
been long known, and who declared that, if necessary, "he would go a
hundred miles barefoot for the liberty of George Fox." He was set at
liberty on Saturday, the 1st of September, 1666, and he notes in his
_Journal_ that "the very next day after my release (Sunday, September
3), the fire broke out in London and the report of it came quickly down
into the country." The date is confirmed by the gossiping Secretary of
the Navy, Samuel Pepys, who, as he tells us in his "Diary," on that
said Sunday morning rose at three o'clock, slipped on his nightgown,
and looked out of the window of his house in Seething Lane, at the east
end of the city, but, thinking the fire far enough off, "went to bed
again and to sleep."
After his release from a severe imprisonment of two years and nine
months, Fox was greatly weakened in body, and it seemed at the time
unlikely he could long survive the hardships he had had to endure. On
his release, he thus moralises upon his oppressors:--"And, indeed, I
could not but take notice how the hand of the Lord turned against those
of my persecutors who had been the cause of my imprisonment, or had
been abusive or cruel to me in it. For the officer that fetched me to
Howlker Hall wasted his estate, and very soon after fled into Ireland.
And most of the justices that were upon the bench at the sessions when
I was sent to prison died in a while after," and, he adds, "when I came
into that country again, most of those that dwelt in Lancashire were
dead, and others ruined in their estates. So that, though I did not
seek revenge upon them for their acting against me contrary to law, yet
the Lord had executed his judgments upon many of them."
It was not until 1667 that George Fox again visited Lancashire. In
that year he was at William Barnes's, near Warrington, whence he sent
letters into Westmorland and other places by Leonard Fell and Robert
Widders; monthly meetings of the Friends were held, and to one of them
he says:--"Margaret Fell, being a prisoner, got liberty to come, and
went with me to Jane Milner's in Cheshire, where we parted." In the
summer of the following year (1668) Mrs. Fell was set at liberty, and,
on regaining her freedom, went into Cornwall with her daughter Mary,
and her son-in-law, Thomas Lower. Shortly afterwards Fox proceeded to
Ireland, and on his return he met with Margaret Fell at Bristol, she
being, at the time, on a visit to another married daughter, Isabel
Yeomans. "I had seen from the Lord a considerable time before," says
Fox, "that I should take Margaret Fell to be my wife, and when I first
mentioned it to her, she felt the answer of Life from God thereunto.
But, though the Lord had opened this thing to me, yet I had not
received a command from the Lord for the accomplishment of it then.
Wherefore I let the thing rest, and went on in the work and service
of the Lord as before, according as he led me; travelling up and down
in this nation and through Ireland." His conduct in respect to his
marriage was honourable and disinterested. Before finally deciding, he
consulted the seven daughters of his intended wife and her sons-in-law,
and obtained their sanction to the proposal, and, further, took care
that the provision for the children of Judge Fell was settled and
secured before the marriage. The judge's son was the only member of
the family who disapproved of the union, but, as he is described as
irreligious and of irregular habits, his opinion was disregarded. In
his _Journal_ Fox thus records the attendant circumstances:--
But now, being at Bristol, and finding Margaret Fell there, it opened
in me from the Lord, that the thing should be accomplished. After
we had discoursed the matter together, I told her, "if she also was
satisfied with the accomplishing of it now, she should first send for
her children," which she did. When the rest of her daughters, were
come, I asked both them and her sons-in-law, "if they had anything
against it, or for it," and they all severally expressed their
satisfaction therein. Then I asked Margaret (Mrs. Fell) "if she had
fulfilled and performed her husband's will to her children." She
replied, "the children knew that." Whereupon I asked them, "whether,
if their mother married, they should not lose by it?" And I asked
Margaret, "whether she had done anything in lieu of it, which might
answer it to the children?" The children said she had answered it to
them, and desired me to speak no more of it. I told them, he adds,
"I was plain, and would have all things done plainly; for I sought
not any outward advantage to myself." So, after I had thus acquainted
the children with it, our intention of marriage was laid before the
Friends, both privately and publicly, to their full satisfaction;
many of them gave testimony thereunto that it was of God. Afterwards,
a meeting being appointed for the accomplishing thereof, in the
meeting-house, at Broadmead, in Bristol, we took each other, the Lord
joining us together in the honourable marriage, in the everlasting
covenant and immortal seed of life.
The marriage of George Fox with Margaret Fell, which took place on the
18th of October, 1669, eleven years after the death of Thomas Fell,
occasioned very little interruption to Fox's ministerial activity.
After a brief "honeymoon" of ten days they took leave of each other,
he going on a religious mission through the country, while his wife
returned to her own home at Swarthmoor.
A few months after Margaret Fox's return her old adversary, Colonel
Kirkby, caused her to be again arrested and recommitted at the age of
56 to Lancaster Castle. "The Sheriff of Lancaster," she writes, "sent
his bailiff and pulled me out of my own house, and had me prisoner to
Lancaster Castle (upon the old _præmunire_[6]), where I continued a
whole year, and most of that time I was sick and weakly." At length,
in April, 1671, through the intercession of influential Friends, a
discharge under the Great Seal was obtained and she was set at liberty,
the sentence of _præmunire_ passed seven years before being annulled.
"Then," she says, "I was to go up to London again, for my husband was
intending for America."
[Illustration: Handwritten note]
The founder of Quakerism had determined upon a voyage across the
Atlantic for the purpose of organising the numerous Friends who had
been gathered in the far West by the earlier Quaker preachers. In these
days such a voyage is accounted as little more than a mere pleasure
trip to those who like, or do not absolutely dislike the sea, but in
the days of the Stuart Kings it was a serious undertaking; nothing,
however, could daunt the spirit of Fox or obstruct his progress when
once an enterprise was determined upon. On the 12th of June, 1671,
the little yacht, the "Industry," with its living freight of fifty
passengers, including Fox and the twelve preachers, who had agreed to
accompany him on his mission, sailed down the Thames, Margaret Fox and
several Friends going with them as far as Gravesend. On the voyage they
were chased by Barbary pirates, and after their landing they underwent
many perils and hardships, for travelling in the then primitive
condition of the American colonies was arduous work, involving constant
camping out at night, fording deep rivers, wading through swamps and
quagmires, and penetrating vast forests and wildernesses. Fox was
generally welcomed, and received more kindness and courtesy from all
classes than in his own country. The journey occupied two years, and in
one of his letters he thus summarises it: "We have had great travail
by land and sea, and rivers and bays and creeks, in New England, New
Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina; where we have had great
service among Friends and governours and others, and with the Indians
and their King and Emperor." On the 21st March, 1673, he set sail
for England, and after a tempestuous voyage reached Bristol harbour
on the 28th of the following month. His wife went up from Swarthmoor
to meet him, accompanied by her son-in-law, Thomas Lower, and two of
her daughters. It was the time of Bristol fair; great meetings were
held, and the occasion was a memorable one, for it was amid the rant
and turmoil of the fair that George Fox first made the acquaintance
of William Penn. The great reformer had just landed from America, and
there can be little doubt that this meeting led Penn to investigate
human nature in the New World. A close intimacy sprang up between the
two; they travelled much together, and in Fox's journal the name of the
fearless and honest lawgiver--the future founder of Pennsylvania--is
frequently mentioned. They visited at each other's houses. Fox was a
guest at Worminghurst while Penn and his family resided there; and
there is a well-founded tradition that he visited Fox at his abode at
Swarthmoor, in Lancashire.
In January, 1674, Fox again found himself placed in durance on account
of his preaching at Worcester; Thomas Lower, Margaret Fox's son-in-law,
being imprisoned with him. He suffered from a lingering sickness, his
life at one time being despaired of. After remaining in attendance upon
him for seventeen weeks, his faithful wife went up to London, wrote
a letter to the King beseeching him to release her husband, and took
it herself to Whitehall, where she had an interview with Charles. Her
pleading was unsuccessful; but eventually, after being in confinement
for a year or more, a writ of Habeas Corpus was again obtained. He
was paroled until the time of his trial, when the indictment against
him was quashed, and he was set at liberty, being allowed to pass the
remaining fifteen years of his life in peace, unmolested by gaolers,
writs, or assizes. While he lay in the gaol at Worcester his aged
mother died, her end being hastened, it is said, by bitter sorrow at
her son's inability to come and take leave of her.
On regaining his liberty Fox returned northwards, accompanied by his
wife. At Lancaster there was great gathering of the Friends; and
having stayed there two nights and a day, they went over sands to
Swarthmoor, where they arrived on the 25th of June, 1675. Here they
were visited by many friends from different parts of the country, and
among others their old antagonist, Colonel Kirkby, called to bid them
welcome into the country, and, as the account says, "carried himself in
appearance very lovingly;" though he immediately afterwards instructed
the constables of Ulverston to inform Fox that "they must have no
more meetings at Swarthmoor; for if they had, they were commanded to
break them up." The imprisonment at Worcester had told seriously upon
his health, and it was a year and eight months before he was again
able to leave Swarthmoor. His time, however, was fully occupied in
writing pamphlets, epistles, and controversial papers. Early in 1677
Fox left his northern home, his spirit being "drawn again towards the
south;" and he did not return until the summer of the following year.
In the interval, in company with William Penn and Robert Barclay, he
spent several months preaching in Holland and Germany, after which he
returned to London, where he stayed some time, and then proceeded to
Swarthmoor, remaining there uninterrupted for a period of two years.
During his absence from Swarthmoor he vigilantly watched over
his wife's interests, and took measures to protect her from the
persecutions of some of the neighbouring clergy and magistrates.
Thus, in a letter written from London on the 8th August, 1681, he
says:--"Dearly Beloved,--There is a rumour here that one of the Justice
Kirkbys (but which I cannot tell) took one of our fat oxen and killed
him for his own table, in his own house, which ox was destrained and
taken away from thee on account of your meeting at Swarthmoor. Now
of the truth of this I desire to know, and, with a witness or two,
to prove it; for justices of peace do not deny appeals here." And he
concludes with the words: "Therefore, sweetheart, I do entreat thee to
let me soon know the truth of all these things, and what thou writes
let it be proved by witnesses."
It was in the same year that Fox and his wife were sued in the Cartmel
Wapentake Court for the small tithes of the Swarthmoor Hall estate;
he demurred to the jurisdiction of the court, when the plaintiffs
carried the suit into the Exchequer Court at Westminster, where, he
says, "they ran us up a writ of rebellion for not answering the bill
upon oath, and got an order from the sergeant to take me and my wife
into custody." In his answer to the plaintiffs' bill he stated that
his wife had lived forty-three years at Swarthmoor Hall, and that
during all that time no tithes had been either paid or demanded. Other
proofs were given, but the answer could not be received without an
oath, which the uncompromising Quaker would not take, and so, he says,
"the court granted a sequestration against me and my wife together.
Thereupon, by advice of counsel, we moved for a limitation, which was
granted, and that much defeated our adversary's design in suing out the
sequestration, for this limited the plaintiff from taking no more than
was proved." On the same occasion William Mead, who had married one of
Judge Fell's daughters, bore testimony to Fox's disinterested conduct,
and informed the court that "he had before marriage engaged himself
not to meddle with his wife's estate;" a statement the judges could
scarcely credit until the documents in proof of it were produced.
Fox derived from his own property an income amply sufficient for his
personal requirements without trenching upon that of his wife. Though
he had never actively embarked in business he held shares in two small
vessels trading from the port of Scarborough, and he had also an
interest in other undertakings, besides moneys deposited in the hands
of various friends. In addition, he had in Pennsylvania a thousand
acres of land which were given to him by William Penn, though there
is no evidence that he ever received any income from that source. The
only lands he possessed were about three acres he had purchased at
Swarthmoor for the maintenance of the meeting house, which, in 1688,
the year of English freedom, he had there erected for his disciples,
and which, shortly before his death, he conveyed by a deed of
assignment to the Friends for ever. "It is," he says, "all the land and
house I have in England; and it is given up to the Lord, for it is for
his service, and for his children."
The declining years of his life were passed in comparative
tranquillity, and its evening was soothed with the sunshine of many
precious friendships. His time was spent chiefly either at Swarthmoor
Hall or in London, where he had many followers, and where several
meeting-houses had been established, the most notable being the one
in Aldgate Street, named from its proximity to the celebrated old
hostelry, the Bull and Mouth, now, as Mr. Cunningham justly says,
"foolishly called the Queen's Hotel;"[7] and occasionally he made
quiet journeys through some of the counties. In April, 1690, he was
present for the last time at the annual gathering of the Friends from
all parts of the kingdom, held in London; through the following winter
he continued to attend the meetings of the society; and on Sunday,
January the 11th, 1690-1, he attended a large meeting at Gracechurch
Street, when he preached for the last time "fully and effectually."
On leaving he went to Henry Goldney's in White Hart Court, close by,
when he remarked that he "felt the cold strike to his heart as he
came out of the meeting." He survived but two days, dying on Tuesday,
January 13th, in the 67th year of his age, his last words being, "The
power of God is over all." Three days after his remains, followed by a
procession of 3,000 friends, were conveyed to their last resting place
in that _campo santo_ of Nonconformists--Bunhill Fields.
Fox lived long enough to see a considerable relaxation in the severity
of the penal laws against Nonconformists, and the dawn of more
peaceful times. After the accession of James II., the condition of the
Quakers was much improved, the King permitting them to substitute an
affirmation for the oath, when one of the chief causes of persecution
was removed. William Penn, too, was high in favour at Court at this
time; he had opened an asylum for the Friends in his new State of
Pennsylvania, and, enjoying the personal favour of the King and the
chief officers of the State, he won the means of securing further
toleration for his co-religionists. Then followed the peaceful
revolution which placed William of Orange upon the throne of England,
when the rights of conscience were still more fully recognised, and
the Act of Toleration put an end to the miseries and persecutions the
Friends had so long been subjected to. If the Church was too severe
in the punishments she awarded to her truant children, and oftentimes
provoked them by her harshness to forsake the sanctuary and wander
forth until new tabernacles sprang up in the wilderness of the world,
it cannot be said that Quakers fared better under the sway of the
Presbyterians or the rule of the Protectorate, for Puritanism itself
was then a grinding social tyranny, too strict in its discipline, too
little regardful of human weaknesses, and too fully persuaded that
there could be no truth or godliness outside its own conceptions.
Unfortunately for themselves, the Quakers were accounted a distinct
community, with whom neither Episcopalians nor Protestant Dissenters
had any legal or religious connection. The religious mind of the nation
was entrenched within what it persuaded itself were the limits of
Christianity, and the new sect which had sprung up was declared to be
beyond the pale. The bitterness of spirit with which the disciples of
Fox were regarded may be gathered from the resolution passed by the
delegates and ministers of the Congregational churches in London who
assembled on the occasion of the abdication of Richard Cromwell. They
then declared, among other things, that while "we greatly prize our
Christian liberties, yet we profess our utter dislike and abhorrence
of a universal toleration, as being contrary to the mind of God in
his word.... It is our desire that countenance be not given, or trust
reposed in, the hands of the Quakers, they being persons of such
principles as are destructive to the Gospel, and inconsistent with
the peace of civil societies." It was a persecuting age, and not on
one side alone of the great civil strife of the 17th century does
the stigma of bigotry and intolerance remain; happily, out of the
weakness, the foulness, and the darkness of those times, the nation,
the Church, and the people have emerged with a strong hold on better
things, the ascetic piety of the Puritan and the breadth of view of
the Churchman--the religion of Herbert and of Laud, of Sibbes and of
Milton--have mingled together and become elements of the national life
and fruitful for the common good.
The followers of Fox were subjected to unparalleled hardships, but
to their honour be it said their general acts were in strict accord
with their religious professions, for during those long years of
suffering for conscience sake there is not a single instance recorded
of vindictive retaliation on their part, or of recourse being had to
any weapon sharper than a text of Scripture. Fox, it is true, shared
the extravagances of his age, and, like all teachers of his class
and time, he was for a period more of an alarmist than a comforter;
prone, like pious enthusiasts of the present day, to plough up the
hearts of the people and discover sins which before they dreamt
not of. In one respect he and his followers were certainly most
reprehensible, in disturbing the worship of those differing in religion
with themselves, for it must be admitted by those who respect their
principles and admire their honesty and fortitude that they provoked
much of the persecution they so patiently endured. The best principles
of Quakerism--peace, and love, and brotherhood--remain, but the
distinctive formula is on the decline, and those characteristics which
made them obnoxious to other religious professors have disappeared
altogether. As Dr. Halley justly observes, "A modern 'Friend,' mild,
pleasant, neatly dressed, carefully educated, perfected in proprieties,
is as unlike as possible, except in a few 'principles,' to the
obtrusive, intolerant, rude, coarse, disputatious Quaker of the early
days of their sect."[8]
Margaret Fox survived her husband 11 years, her death occurring at
Swarthmoor on the 23rd February, 1702, in the 88th year of her age. At
the time of her marriage with the Founder of the Society of Friends she
had one son and seven daughters. Swarthmoor Hall, at her death, passed
to her youngest daughter, Rachel, who had become the wife of Daniel,
son of John Abraham, of Manchester; to them was born, in 1687, a son,
John Abraham, who succeeded to the property, and who appears to have
made some alterations and additions to the old mansion, as evidenced
by a stone in the wall of one of the outbuildings, inscribed T F,
1651, and J A, 1715; the initials answering to Thomas Fell and John
Abraham. Owing, as is supposed, to losses from some unsuccessful mining
speculations in which John Abraham had embarked, the property became
much encumbered, and in 1759, was finally brought to the hammer and
disposed of in lots, when the family removed to Skerton, near Lancaster.
[Illustration: Handwritten signature]
Of the descendants of Margaret Fox by her first husband, Thomas Fell,
it was recorded a few years ago that there were then living ninety, of
whom forty-three were members of the society which their ancestress had
so largely helped to found.
Concerning John, the father of Daniel Abraham, who married the daughter
of Margaret Fell, the following particulars are given in a publication
called the _British Friend_, published at Glasgow, 1845:--
In Market Street (Manchester) is a pile of building called Abraham's
Court. This was the property of John Abraham. He was a man of good
parentage, and of standing and estate, of a family originally
descended, it is said, from the Abrahams of Abram near Wigan; but
his immediate ancestors resided at or near Warrington, where he was
brought up to the trade of a grocer.[9] After his marriage he carried
on his business in Manchester with great prudence and honesty, and
to a large extent. He was one of the first who joined Friends, and
suffered in the cause of truth. In 1675 he travelled southward.
In Kent he was pulled down by the informers whilst preaching in a
Friend's house, and taken to an inn with other Friends, but soon
after dismissed: but the magistrate seized his horse, and two others,
belonging to a poor man, which they ordered to be sold; the owner of
the house was fined £20 for allowing the meeting to be held, and £7
for the pretended poverty of John Abraham, though he told them where
he dwelt, and that he had an estate of his own at Manchester. For
these fines, the owner of the house suffered distraint of goods from
his house and warehouse to the amount of £77, equivalent to upwards
of £150 in those days. No account of John Abraham has ever appeared.
He was interred in the Deansgate burial ground; a stone marks his
corporeal resting-place, and the Society's register of deaths records
that "he was a minister, and travelled in Ireland and Scotland."
John Abraham had, in addition to his son, Daniel, a daughter, Mary,
who became the wife of Edward Chetham, of Cheetham, Nuthurst, and,
ultimately, of Turton Tower, the representative of Manchester's great
benefactor, Humphrey Chetham, the founder of the hospital and library
which bears his name, and from the marriage descends the present Right
Hon. Sir Henry Bartle-Frere, Bart., G.C.B., G.C.S.I.
The third in descent from John Abraham, who removed to Skerton, was
likewise named John; he married in 1844 Maria Hayes, daughter of John
Tyerman, of Liverpool, and his wife, Mary Mitford. He resided at
Grassendale, a pleasant suburb of Liverpool, and died February 20th,
1881, leaving as his heir Thomas Fell Abraham, and, with other issue,
Emma Clarke Abraham, a lady to whom the author is indebted for many
interesting particulars concerning the Fell and Abraham families.
Such are some of the memories of Swarthmoor. By the time we had
completed the inspection of the old mansion and the primitive-looking
little meeting-house, impressive in its severe and unostentatious
simplicity, the sun was rapidly sinking in the west, and the shadows of
objects were growing longer and longer, as if drawing themselves closer
to the earth; the dark range of hills looked solemnly down upon us, and
night's sable curtains were gradually closing over the scene. Turning
to depart, we retraced our steps and descended the rugged track which
soon brought us to the bottom of the dingle again. Then mounting the
opposite eminence we reached the highway, and a few minutes later were
comfortably settled in a cosy room in the "Sun," at Ulverston.
CHAPTER II.
OLD ALDERLEY AND ITS MEMORIES--THE STANLEYS--EDWARD STANLEY, PASTOR
AND PRELATE--THE HOME OF DEAN STANLEY.
Men travel far to see the dwelling-places and the costly tombs of Kings
and Conquerors in their desire to recall the memory and the mighty
deeds of the great ones who have gone before, and surely the homes of
those who have taught goodness by example to high and low, and shed a
holy and a happy influence through their country, are shrines equally
worthy of our homage. It is in that spirit, and with the desire to keep
green within the sanctuary of the heart the memory of good men, that
we enter upon our present pilgrimage. It is to the place where Bishop
Stanley spent his happiest years, and where his son, Dean Stanley,
passed his boyhood's days--the one, the "good bishop" who united in
himself the apostolical charity of a Tillotson and the pastoral energy
of a Burnet; and the other, that loving and large-hearted divine who so
lately passed into his rest, and whose removal from our midst sent a
thrill of sadness through the land, and moved the sensibilities not of
Englishmen alone but of the world.
[Illustration: DEAN STANLEY.]
Alderley, or Old Alderley as we prefer to call it in contradistinction
to the aggregation of modern Swiss chalets, Italian villas, and
imitation castles which Manchester's merchant princes have built for
themselves on the wooded hill yclept Alderley Edge, is one of the most
charmingly picturesque spots in the county--we had almost said in
the kingdom; the sort of place where, if lowered with overwork and
worry, you would wish to retire to for perfect peace and quietude--and
of a truth the wearied toiler might wander hither and thither for many
a day before he could find a retreat more to his liking. The country is
rich and varied, and there is an air of wild and untrimmed prodigality
in the woods and plantations that is delighting to the eye. It is not
a village--it can hardly be called a hamlet, the houses are so few. On
a little triangular spot where four roads meet is what is emphatically
called "the Cross," and a little way above, standing by the wayside,
may be seen an antiquated hostelry that might be called the house
of many gables. Time was when the tired wayfarer might find within
its cosy parlour a hearty welcome, and be able to refresh himself
with nut-brown ale; but good things are oftentimes abused, and so,
now-a-days, to enforce sobriety, though the traveller may receive the
welcome he must content himself with tea and coffee or such harmless
beverages as lemonade and ginger ale. Near the inn is the old corn
mill, a building that, with its surroundings, has formed the subject
for many a picture, as the walls of our local exhibitions testify; in
the rear, half hidden among the trees, is the old-fashioned rectory,
standing in the midst of its equally old-fashioned garden, in which
the old mulberry trees still flourish. The garden reaches up to the
churchyard, reminding us of Wordsworth's exquisite description--
Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends,
Is marked by no distinguishable line.
The turf unites, the pathways intertwine,
And wheresoe'er the stealing footstep tends,
Garden, and that domain where kindred, friends,
And neighbours rest together, here confound
Their several features, mingled like the sound
Of many waters, or as evening blends
With shady night.
The place belongs entirely to the past; the shadows of bygone
centuries seem to spread around, and everything bears the impress of
hoar antiquity and undisturbed respectability; while even the few
homesteads you see retain the picturesque features their builders
imparted to them long ages ago. The church tower, grey and weather
worn, and overgrown in places with ivy, looks with placid serenity over
the broad pastures and the green country that stretches southwards
and away to the west until it seems interminable, and the eye becomes
wearied in trying to follow it to its furthest limits. A sombre-looking
yew that has braved the winter's blasts through long centuries of
time flanks the gateway; the tall trees that partly surround the
churchyard throw their shadows across the grass-grown hillocks, the
grasshopper skips about and the white moth flits to and fro, and above
the blackbirds and the thrushes pour forth their sweetest music.
The ancient fane itself is thoroughly English in its character, a
church such as an artist loves to paint, and of which a true-hearted
Englishman would carry away many a pleasant remembrance. It exhibits
many architectural diversities; the tower is broad and massive, and
nave, and chancel, and porch are picturesque in their grouping. On
the north side a curious dormer window rises above the roof, and on
the south the attention is arrested by the old stone staircase that
leads up from the outside to the Stanley pew, a feature that may
smack somewhat of exclusiveness, but quaint and pleasant to look upon
notwithstanding. As you enter you see at a glance that the fabric has
been cared for both within and without, for though the "restorer" has
been at work he has dealt tenderly and lovingly with it, repairing
only where repairs where needed. The old pews in which somnolent
bucolics were wont to recline during sermon-time have been taken away;
the flat painted ceiling has disappeared and the whitewash of a dozen
generations of churchwardens has been removed from wall and pillar, but
everything that was worth preserving has been carefully retained, and--
So absent is the stamp of modern days
That, in the quaint carved oak, and oriel stain'd
With saintly legend, to Reflection's gaze
The Star of Eld seems not yet to have waned.
[Illustration: ALDERLEY CHURCH.]
The only part that has been modernised is the chancel. It was rebuilt
thirty years ago, and in it you may see many sepulchral memorials of
the Stanleys and other local notabilities. On the south side is the
monumental effigy of John Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who died in
1850, and on the opposite side, on an altar-tomb, richly inlaid with
mosaic work, is the sculptured form of the last lord, who died in 1869;
it is an exquisite work of art, and as you gaze upon the chiselled
features you are struck with the remarkable resemblance they bear to
the late Dean of Westminster. Against the wall on the same side of the
chancel is a tablet of white marble in memory of Edward Stanley--the
Bishop of Norwich--and his wife and their two sons, Charles Edward and
Owen Stanley, and their daughter Mary.
From these marble memorials of the dead you turn to the galleried pew
where, in life, those they commemorate were wont to worship. The front
of that little enclosure is resplendent with heraldic blazonries,
and tells, in the language of the "noble science," the story of the
marriages of the lords of Alderley for a couple of centuries or more.
The Stanleys are evidently proud of their armorial ensigns, for they
are displayed on every hand, and as you gaze upon the oft-repeated
shields the memory wanders back along the dim avenues of the past
to the time when, ages ago, a Sir William Stanley, by his marriage
with the heiress of Bamville, obtained the forest of Wyrral, and with
it the right to bear, as his device, the three bucks' heads upon
a cross-belt of cerulean hue; and to the time, too, when that Sir
William's great-grandson married the heiress of the house of Lathom,
and thereafter assumed as his crest the eagle and child--the "brid
and babby," as Lancashire people prefer to call it--which tradition
commemorates the circumstance of an infant being found in an eagle's
nest by a Lathom, who adopted it, and, being childless, made it heir of
all his lands.
The church is not a large building, but it is exceedingly picturesque,
and its interest is nothing lessened by the consciousness that within
its walls the voice of praise and thanksgiving has been heard for five
hundred years and more. Everything about it is decent and comely, as
befits the house of God, and if a stranger should happen to be there on
a Sunday he will find the services creditably sung by a choir of boys,
and the prayers devoutly read by a clergyman who is a sound Churchman,
and a worthy successor of good old Edward Stanley.
On one side of the entrance to the churchyard an aged yewtree,
weather-beaten and decayed, but still fighting time gallantly, flanks
the churchyard gate--the emblem of immortality reminding the living
that the spirits of those laid low have passed to the life beyond. On
the other side is the little school-house, with its quaint windows, and
mullions and masonry of red sandstone, a structure that was not reared
yesterday, as its grey lichen-stained walls testify. As you enter the
garden of the dead your ears are greeted with the pleasant music of
young voices, and your attention is arrested by the number of green
mounds where successive generations are sleeping their last sleep. A
summer's day might be spent here in meditation among the nameless but
hallowed graves, and in conning over the "uncouth rhymes" that the
weather and the green moss are fast obliterating from the crumbling
memorials on which they are inscribed. You may note, too, in places
bunches of simple wild flowers that have been placed by loving hands
upon the newly upheaved turf--the offerings of that tender affection
which longs for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice
that is still." Near the east end, under the shade of a yew, is a plain
white marble cross, with a small tablet at its base, embedded in the
rock, on which is the following inscription:--
Here
Rests
CATHERINE STANLEY
Died March 5 1862, aged 69
The wisdom
That is from above
Is first pure,
Then peaceable, gentle,
Easy to be entreated,
Full of Mercy
And good fruits
Without partiality
And without hypocrisy
[Illustration: ALDERLY SCHOOL.]
It is to the memory of the wife of Bishop Stanley--the mother of the
late Dean of Westminster--who entered into the dark valley while
her son was accompanying the Prince of Wales on his journey through
Egypt and Palestine. That grave has been once reopened--on the 2nd of
December, 1879, it received the remains of the Dean's sister, Mary
Stanley, a lady whose memory will be gratefully remembered for her
heroic efforts to mitigate the sufferings of our soldiers during the
Crimean War. The 5th of March, on which Catherine Stanley passed away,
was Ash Wednesday, a day that ever after had its saddening associations
for her son, who on another Ash Wednesday (March 1st, 1876), had to
endure another and more terrible trial, for on that day he stood by the
death bed of her who had loved, supported, and comforted him when the
spirit of his mother had passed away--his wife.
My mother--on that fatal day,
O'er seas and deserts far apart,
The guardian genius passed away
That nursed my very mind and heart--
The oracle that never failed,
The faith serene that never quailed,
The kindred soul that knew my thought
Before its speech or form was wrought.
My wife--when clos'd that fatal night,
My being turned once more to stone,
I watched her spirit take its flight,
And found myself again alone.
The sunshine of the heart was dead,
The glory of the home was fled,
The smile that made the dark world bright,
The love that made all duty light.
Now that those scenes of bliss are gone,
Now that the long years roll away,
The two Ash Wednesdays blend in one,
One sad yet almost festal day:
The emblem of that union blest,
Where lofty souls together rest,
Star differing each from star in glory,
Yet telling each its own high story.
In another part of the graveyard is an altar-tomb with a Latin
inscription perpetuating the name of Thomas Deane, of the Park--a house
near Monk's Heath--who endowed the parish school, and who is described
as a lover of God, his Church, his King, and of all good deeds. Not
far distant is an old disused font that was dug up half a century ago;
it has a circular bowl capacious enough to immerse a child in, and, in
its general outline, much resembles the one at Prestbury, both being
probably of the same age.
From the churchyard we step into the rector's garden. The rectory
house presents much the same appearance that it did fifty years ago,
when Edward Stanley was its occupant; indeed, so little is it changed
that it would require but little stretch of the imagination to picture
the kindly-hearted old pastor watching the movements of his feathered
friends, or, mounted upon his little black cob, setting out on a
mission of mercy to some member of his rustic flock, his pockets the
while filled with sweets and gingerbread for the children, with whom
he was ever a favourite. The house is the _beau-ideal_ of a country
clergyman's home. It has no architectural beauties or peculiarities
to boast of, and there is nothing pretentious about it; but it is a
roomy, enjoyable sort of place, with an air of comfort and contentment
pervading it that suggests the idea of the happy domestic life
peculiar to England. A trellis work that forms a kind of verandah
extends along the front, with honeysuckles, roses, and creeping plants
climbing round the supports, and meeting overhead in a bower of vernal
beauty. Of that verandah, which forms a kind of balcony, the Dean's
mother thus wrote in one of her letters:--
Give me credit for coming from my balcony, from the sky, the stars,
the moon, the heavenly air, to write to you. But it is not quite
coming from them; my door is open, and I look now and then to the
church tower, standing out so clear from the moonlight sky, which
has scarcely yet lost its sunlight tinge--and my summer furniture of
mignonette and sweet peas outside, to say nothing of the roses below
or the trellis and the honeysuckle above--their united perfume all
come streaming in the air. When I think of your imprisonment and your
present deprivations of such a day as this, whose healing influences
you so well would feel, I rejoice in your power of sympathy with the
enjoyments as well as the sufferings of others, which makes me feel
that I am refreshing rather than tantalizing you by placing my present
position before you.
The door of the house stands invitingly open, and the wide entrance
hall into which the visitor is ushered is in itself suggestive of the
welcome awaiting the coming guest. The rooms are spacious, and lead
one into another in a social sort of way, and the windows, reaching
down to the floor and opening on to the lawn, give a bright prospect
of the beautiful world without, of the pleasure grounds and the green
grass carpet, chequered as we look upon it with the woodland shade and
a moving group of laughing, bright-eyed nymphs engaged in a garden
game. Oftentimes from those windows, as well as in his walks and rides,
did the good old rector pursue his favourite study. "Close before
the window of our observation," he says in his "Familiar History of
Birds," "a well-mown, short-grassed lawn is spread before him (the
starling)--it is his dining-room; there in the spring he is allowed to
revel, but seldom molested, on the plentiful supply of worms, which
he collects pretty much in the same manner as the thrush, already
described. Close at hand, within half-a-stone's throw, stands an
ivy-mantled parish church, with its mossy grey tower, from the turreted
pinnacle of which rises a flagstaff, crowned by its weathercock; under
the eaves and within the hollows and chinks of the masonry of the
tower are his nursery establishments. On the battlements and projecting
grotesque tracery of its Gothic ornaments he retires to enjoy himself,
looking down on the rural world below; while, at other times, a
still more elevated party will crowd together on the letters of the
weathercock, or, accustomed to its motion, sociably twitter away their
chattering song, as the vane creaks slowly round with every change of
wind."
But Alderley has other attractions besides its venerable church and its
pleasant old-fashioned rectory. We are not now going to speak of the
Edge--of the Castle Rock, of the Holy Well, of Stormy Point, of the
weather-beaten Beacon and the glorious view over the Cheshire Plain
which it commands; nor yet to repeat the legend of the Wizard, the Iron
Gates, and the Enchanted Cave in which stand the innumerable milk-white
horses with the warriors beside them, all in a profound sleep and so--
Doomed to remain till that fell day,
When foemen, marshalled in array,
And feuds intestine, shall combine
To seal the ruin of our line.
The park, the beech woods, and Radnor Mere are well worthy of a
passing notice, and the story of the Stanleys deserves to be told, for
Alderley, though a small place, has a history behind it, and one which
it need not be ashamed to own.
[Illustration: ALDERLEY RECTORY.]
Alderley Park, "the fair domain" of the Stanleys, lies on the opposite
side of the road to the church and the rectory. It is not so extensive
as Tatton or Lyme, but it is equal to either for sylvan beauty and
the charming views it affords. The rising grounds that extend in the
direction of the Edge are clothed with a thick umbrage, the tall
"patrician trees" mingling with the "plebeian underwood;" many of the
older denizens of the wood are curled and distorted into all sorts of
weird shapes, and bear the marks of the rough warfare they have had
for ages to wage against the elements. Here and there pleasant vistas
open out and from the high ground you can look over the fairest portion
of the Vale Royal of England, over miles and miles of woodland and
pastures and green fields, dotted at intervals with old farm houses
and still older churches, a prospect such as no other country but our
own can show, and which many a wanderer in distant lands would give a
year of his life to see again. It is thoroughly pastoral in character,
and imparts an undefinable sensation of quietude and rest, suggesting
the idea of eternal tranquillity and peace. The view is charming at all
seasons, but never more so than in the spring-time, when the trees have
put on their fresh leafage, when the air is laden with the sweet odours
of the scented thorn, and the thrush and the blackbird pour forth their
melodious notes as if to make perfect the charm and witchery of our
English scenery.
From among the time-worn fathers of the grove a little rindle winds
its way with many a curve and sinuosity until it empties itself in a
broad lake, formerly called Radnor Mere, but now more commonly known as
Alderley Mere--a relic, so tradition affirms, of the great lake that in
pre-historic times is believed to have extended as far as High Legh, a
dozen miles or so away, and of which Tatton Mere, Rostherne Mere, and
Mere Mere formed a part. But the glory of the park is the beech wood
which reaches down almost to the edge of the mere; it was planted, so
the local chroniclers tell us, more than a couple of centuries ago by
Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet, who obtained a supply of beech
mast from his father-in-law's grounds at Kyre, in Worcestershire,
the tree being then uncommon in Cheshire. Possibly he was influenced
by the advice which John Evelyn about that time had been giving in
his "Discourse of Forest Trees," and desired to supply his tenantry
with stuffing for their beds. The author of "Sylva" says:--"But there
is yet another benefit which this tree (the beech) presents us; its
very leaves, which make a natural and most agreeable canopy all the
summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are
much frost-bitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world
to lay under our quilts instead of straw, because, besides their
tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or
eight years, long before which time straw becomes musty and hard." It
would be interesting to know if the primitive custom to which Evelyn
referred continues in any part of rural England at the present day, or
if it has been entirely discarded. More stately trees than the Alderley
beeches we have seldom seen in any part of the country; they stand
thick in the background, giving a forest-like character to the scene,
and the pathways that wind beneath them in a wild and wandering sort of
way afford as delightful a sylvan walk as the foot of man can tread.
The dead leaves lie the whole year round upon the turf, and overhead
the branches meet in a verdant canopy, imparting a mysterious gloom
that seems like a perpetual twilight. No one who longs for seclusion
needs "fly to a lodge in some vast wilderness," for here he may wander
for a day without the sound of a fellow mortal to disturb him or
hearing any footfall but his own, and can, if so disposed, realise the
full meaning of the words--
One impulse from a vernal wood
Will teach thee more of man,
Of moral evil, and of good
Than all the sages can.
Well do we remember a summer evening's saunter through the park and the
old beech wood in the pleasant companionship of the worthy rector of
Alderley, beguiling the time with cheerful chat.
'Twas Summer tide; the eve was sweet
As mortal eye has e'er beholden;
The grass look'd warm with sunny heat;
Perhaps some Fairy's glowing feet
Had lightly touch'd and left it golden.
Entering by a gate near the old corn-mill we struck across the park
in an easterly direction and soon reached the edge of the wood, from
which there is a good view of the hall and the old deer house, with the
mere in front, feathered down almost to the water's edge with stately
trees. The wilder parts of the grounds are alive with rabbits, and as
we strode over the green sward they started up from the fern and the
thick grass and scampered off to their warrens in all directions; but
no other sign of life was visible, and, save that now and then we could
hear the distant croaking of the corn-crake and the thrush chanting a
requiem to the departing day from a neighbouring copse, even the birds
seemed to have sunk to rest in their foliaged homes. The woods were
in the fulness of their summer verdure, displaying a thousand varied
tints of green and yellow; to the right we could see the great plain of
Cheshire stretching away towards the Frodsham hills and the estuary of
the Dee, the green meadow-breadths looking almost golden in the sunset
sheen. A warm aërial haze suffused itself over the landscape, softening
into beauty every object; the breeze which so lately frolicked through
the trees had died away, and the wide mere lay spread before us calm,
and still, and bright as a mirror, while its surface, unruffled by a
single ripple, gave back with wonderful minuteness the outline of the
plumy woods, the amber radiance of the sky, and the moving forms of
the reeds and water flags that fringe its margin; the effect being
heightened as now and then a shaft of ruddy light quivered through the
foliage and shed an almost unearthly splendour upon the water.
No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.
That scene has been so exquisitely described in the "Journal" of
Catherine Stanley that we are tempted to transcribe it:--
The purplish brown of the wood rising above the softened reflection
of it in the water, and a few touches of brighter brown in the shrubs
and ferns near the edge; the boathouse relieved by the dark wood
behind it; a line of yellowish brown reeds breaking the reflection of
it in the water, and another still brighter yellow-and-brown island
coming immediately before it; the soft blue haze spread over the water
and softening the reflected outlines of the wood without weakening
the effect, contrasted here and there with the vivid and determinate
outline of a few leaves or weeds lying on the surface of the water;
the scene enlivened now and then by a wild duck darting from the reeds
across the lake, making a flutter and foam before her, and leaving a
line of clear light behind her on her path, her wild cry distinctly
echoed from the wood and deerhouse together--such a simplicity yet
variety of tint, such a force of effect, and such a softness of shade
and colour! Artists, one and all, hide your diminished heads!
The home of the Stanleys is a stone building of no great antiquity and
very little architectural merit, and, considering the many advantageous
sites the park affords, has been placed with a singular disregard for
the charms of situation. Until 1779 the family resided at the old
hall near the church, but in the spring of that year it was burnt
down, and until the present mansion was built they were obliged to
take up their abode at the Park House, a tenement formerly part of
the estates held in Alderley by the Abbey of Dieulacres, near Leek.
The Hon. Miss Stanley, in her description of "Alderley Edge and its
Neighbourhood," says: "The old hall of Alderley was burnt down in the
spring of the year 1779. Sir John Stanley was absent at the time;
he was on the road home, returning from Chester, where he had gone
the day before--he arrived when the whole was nearly consumed--very
little of the furniture was saved. It was never known how the fire
originated. The house stood in the village of Alderley, close to the
mill. It was surrounded by a moat spreading out into a large sheet of
water on the east side, and on the west filling a channel cut out of
the solid rock. When the house was burnt, it consisted of three sides
of (comparatively speaking) a modern built mansion, a large hall of an
older date occupying the other side, and offices behind the hall. A
handsome stone bridge of two arches crossed the moat from the ground
entrance and west side to a stone terrace, which commanded views of
the Park, the church, and the plain of Cheshire, and by a flight of
steps led to a handsome stone arched gateway close to the road, built
by Sir Thomas, the first Baronet." The inscription on the tombstone
in Alderley church of Sir Thomas Stanley, who died in 1591, says: "He
rebuilt the houses of Alderley and Weever," from which it is evident
there was a still earlier mansion upon the site; the house he erected
was doubtless the "large hall of an older date" referred to by Miss
Stanley, the other portions of the building having been added about the
beginning of the last century. The two end pillars, bearing the crest
of the Stanleys--the eagle and child--with a portion of the wall, may
be seen abutting upon the roadside; but, with these exceptions, not a
vestige of the old mansion remains.
The connection of the Stanleys with Alderley dates back about four
hundred and fifty years or thereabouts, when the estate was acquired
by the marriage of John Stanley, a brother of the first Earl of Derby,
with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Thomas Weever, of Weever
and Alderley. This John's father, Sir Thomas Stanley, of Lathom, after
serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, emerged from among the country
gentlemen as Lord Stanley, and was made controller of the household of
the "meek usurper," Henry VI., when, in consideration of his services,
he had granted to him by favour of the King the wardship and marriage
of Thomas Weever's heiress, and he, with commendable care for the
worldly well-being of his younger son, bestowed the lady and her lands
upon him.
The house of Stanley, which ranks among the greatest of our governing
families, is one of the most ancient as it is one of the most
distinguished in the page of history, comprising at the present day, in
addition to the baronetcy enjoyed by the elder line--the Stanleys, of
Hooton in Wirral--two peerages, the Earldom of Derby of Knowsley, in
Lancashire, and the Barony of Stanley of Alderley, in Cheshire, besides
the younger branches in Staffordshire, Sussex, Kent, and Hertfordshire.
The first known ancestor was one Adam de Aldithlegh, so named from
his paternal estate of Audithlegh, in Normandy, who came over with
William the Conqueror. Acquitting himself bravely on the field of
Hastings, he was rewarded with large territorial estates in the newly
conquered country. He was accompanied in the expedition by his two
sons, Lydulph or Lyulph and Adam de Aldithlegh. These sons married, and
in due course two grandsons were born to the old Norman warrior, both
of whom married into a Saxon family of noble rank and ancient lineage,
which had been fortunate enough to retain possession of its estates,
while confiscation had been the lot of those around it. The family
derived its name from the manor of Stanley or Stoneley, the stony lea
or stony field according to the Anglo-Saxon meaning, a little hamlet
lying about three miles south-west of the small manufacturing town of
Leek, in Staffordshire, a place which, Erdswick, the old topographer,
remarks "seems to take its name of the nature of the soil, which,
though it be in the moorlands, is yet a rough and stony place, and many
craggy rocks are about it." One of the grandsons, Adam, the son of
Lyulph de Audithlegh, became in right of his wife lord of Stanley, and
was ancestor of the Lord Audley of ancient times, and is represented
through the female line by the Touchets, Lords Audley of the present
day. The other grandson, William, the son of Adam de Audithlegh,
acquired with his wife the lordship of Thalck, better known as Talk o'
th' Hill, in the same county. This William seems to have conceived a
liking for the stony lea before referred to, and exchanged his lordship
of Talk with his cousin for it. Thenceforward he made Stanley his
seat, and, as the old chronicles tell us, in honour of his wife and of
the great antiquity of her family, assumed her maiden name and became
immediate founder of the Stanleys, a race the most illustrious in the
country's annals, and associated with the most stirring events of
history.
Sir William Stanley, the fourth in descent from the William who first
assumed the name, gave an impetus to the fortunes of the family by
one of those matrimonial alliances to which the house of Stanley owes
so much of its prosperity. He took to himself a wife in the person of
Joan, the youthful daughter and co-heir of Sir Philip Bamville, master
forester of Wirral, and lord of Storeton, a place some few miles south
of Birkenhead.
Associated with this match is a love story that in its romantic
incidents is scarcely less interesting than the one related of the
fair heiress of Haddon, Dorothy Vernon. The daughter of the house
of Storeton had given her heart to young Stanley, and to escape the
misery of a forced marriage with one for whom she had no love she
determined to elope. While a banquet was being given to her father,
she stole unobserved away, and, being joined by young William Stanley,
the anxious lovers rode swiftly across the country to Astbury Church,
and there, in the presence of Adam Hoton and Dawe Coupelond, plighted
their troth to each other. Six hundred years have rolled away since
that scene was enacted, but it requires little stretch of the
imagination to picture the resolute maiden hastening with tremulous
steps from her father's house, the exciting ride across country, and
the hurried joining of hands and hearts in the old church at Astbury,
and forgetting that all this occurred long ages ago, we wish from our
hearts all happiness to the pair. The story is no mere legend, for
the facts are to be found in those musty and unromantic records, the
Cheshire Inquisitions, which have been unearthed, and their contents
made accessible to the world, by the Deputy Keeper of the Public
Records. In a return to a writ of enquiry as to the betrothal of
William Stanley, the Inquisition sets forth--
That on the Sunday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and
Evangelist, two years ago, viz., on the 27th September, 1282, Philip
de Bamville, with his wife and family, was at a banquet given by
Master John de Stanley (an ecclesiastic apparently, priests at
that time who had an academical degree being entitled to be called
master), on which occasion Joan (Bamville), suspecting that her father
intended to marry her to her step-mother's son, took means to avoid
it by repairing with William de Stanley to Astbury Church, where they
uttered the following mutual promise, he saying, "Joan, I plight thee
my troth to take and hold thee as my lawful wife until my life's end,"
and she replying, "I Joan take thee William as my lawful husband." The
witnesses were Adam de Hoton and Dawe de Coupelond.
By this marriage William Stanley became owner of one-third of the manor
of Storeton (the remaining two-thirds he subsequently acquired), and
also the hereditary bailiwick or chief rangership of the Forest of
Wirral, which then overspread the peninsula lying between the estuaries
of the Mersey and the Dee, and which was so thickly wooded that,
according to the old saying:--
From Blacon point to Hilbree
A squirrel may leap from tree to tree.
After this marriage the Stanleys migrated from the Stony-lea in
Staffordshire to their newly acquired home in Cheshire, and at the same
time Sir William, in allusion to his office of hereditary forester
of Wirral, assumed the arms which have ever since been used by his
descendants in place of those borne by his ancestors, viz., _argent_,
on a bend _azure_, three bucks' heads caboshed _or_; in other words,
over a shield of silver a belt of blue crossed diagonally with three
bucks' heads displayed thereon.
Another and still more important addition was made to the patrimonial
lands of the Stanleys through the marriage of Sir William de Stanley,
the fourth in direct descent from the first of the name who held the
forestership of Wirral, with Margery, only daughter and heir of Sir
William de Hooton of Hooton, a township midway between Chester and
Birkenhead, and occupying one of the most delightful situations which
the banks of the estuary can boast, commanding, as Ormerod says, "a
peculiarly beautiful view of the Forest Hills, the bend of the Mersey,
and the opposite shore of Hale, and shaded with venerable oaks which
the Wirral breezes have elsewhere rarely afforded." From this marriage
descended the Stanleys of Hooton and their offshoots, among whom may
be mentioned that Sir William Stanley who, in the reign of Elizabeth,
betrayed the trust committed to him by the English Government in the
base surrender of Deventer to the King of Spain.
The younger line of the Stanleys, with whose fortunes we are more
immediately concerned, commences properly with a younger brother of
Sir William Stanley of Hooton, Sir John Stanley, who married Isabel,
the daughter and sole heir of Sir Thomas Lathom, lord of Lathom,
whose ancestress had also been heir of Sir Thomas de Knowsley, lord
of Knowsley, and who thus, in right of his wife, became master of the
extensive estates around which his descendants' princely property has
accreted. By the marriage with the heiress of Bamville the Stanleys
acquired the three bucks' heads which have continued ever since to
be the distinguishing charge on their heraldic coat; and in like
manner, by the marriage with the heiress of Lathom, they obtained
the remarkable crest which to the present day continues to surmount
their arms, the well-known Eagle and Child, in heraldic language
described as--on a chapeau _gules_ turned up ermine, an eagle with
wings elevated _or_, preying upon an infant swaddled of the first,
banded _argent_. Many are the stories that are told respecting Sir
John's elopement with the heiress of Lathom, and great is the amount
of legendary lore that gathers round the crest which he adopted in her
honour. The tradition has often been related, and the curious who wish
to know more respecting it will find much interesting information in
the _Miscellanea Palatina_ (1851) and in a contribution to Nichol's
_Collectanea_ by the learned historian of Cheshire. The greatness of
the Stanleys may be said to have commenced with Sir John--a cool,
shrewd, and efficient man--who in his lifetime raised the family
from the rank of simple country gentlemen. We need not recount all
the honours and distinctions bestowed, or the steady shower of royal
benefactions that descended upon him. A knight _sans peur et sans
reproche_, he was a rare instance of a courtier who could carry himself
through four successive reigns with ever increasing prosperity--and
without once sustaining a reverse. His eldest son, Sir John Stanley,
fully sustained the dignity of the family, and his grandson, Sir
Thomas, in whose person the elevation of the Stanleys to the peerage
took place, increased it. But it remained for the son of the last-named
Sir Thomas to carry the fortunes of the house to heights before
unknown. Living in an age when the spirit of chivalry had given place
to a policy of subtlety and success depending less on strength of arm
than astuteness of head, he ran a career of successful faithlessness
that has scarcely a parallel in English history. Looking always to his
own interest, fighting always for his own hand, and changing sides
at his own discretion, but always changing to the dominant party, he
received as the reward of his consummate tact enormous royal grants
which went to swell the originally great possessions of his house; and,
finally, by the boldest and most adroit stroke of his whole life--when
the rival Roses met on the field of Bosworth and he had beguiled both
combatants with promises of sympathy, after the fate of the battle
was decided he went over to the side of the victor, and completed his
services by placing the battered crown of the vanquished Richard upon
the brow of the triumphant Richmond, exclaiming--
Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!
Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty,
From the dead temples of this bloody wretch
Have I plucked off, to grace thy brows withal;
Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.
Thus Thomas Stanley earned for himself and his descendants the Earldom
of Derby. Through his eldest son, George Lord Strange, who succeeded
to the title, Thomas, Earl of Derby, was progenitor of a race of
illustrious men, conspicuous among whom were James, the "Martyr Earl,"
distinguished for his attachment to the Royal cause during the Civil
Wars, and the eminent statesman of more recent times, Edward Geoffrey
Smith-Stanley, 14th earl, who died in 1869--the father of the present
holder of the title.
The Stanleys of Alderley trace their descent from John, a younger
brother of Thomas the first Earl, who became possessed of the manor
of Alderley by his marriage with the heiress of Thomas Weever, lord
of Weever and Alderley. When Duke William of Normandy parcelled out
the land in the newly-conquered country among his faithful followers
Alderley fell to the share of William Fitz Nigel, the builder and
fortifier of Halton Castle, and was held by him as of his manor of
Halton. In 1294 he granted Over Alderley to one Roger Throsle, who
in turn gave it as a marriage portion to his daughter Margery when
she became the wife of Edmund Downes. Subsequently it passed into the
possession of the Ardernes, who held it for two or three generations.
Peter de Arderne, the last male representative of this line, had an
only surviving daughter, the heiress of all his lands; wishing in
his life-time to secure a suitable match for her he, in the reign of
Edward III., purchased from Sir John de Arderne, lord of Aldford and
the paramount lord of Weever, the wardship and marriage of Richard,
son and heir of Thomas de Weever, paying for the same 40 marks (£26
13s. 4d.), an investment he turned to profitable account by marrying
his young ward to his daughter. In this way the estates of Weever
and Alderley became united, and so they continued until the reign of
Henry VI. In 1445 Thomas de Weever, the great-grandson of Richard de
Weever and Margaret Arderne his wife, died, leaving an only daughter,
Elizabeth, who thus became heiress of the lands in Weever and Alderley.
Being under age at the time of her father's death she became a ward of
the King, and he, as previously mentioned, gave the disposal of her in
marriage to his favourite, Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who made
the most of his opportunity by marrying her to his third son, Thomas
Stanley, thus securing for him and his descendants a very handsome
patrimony, embracing the manor of Weever and the lands in Over and
Nether Alderley, &c.. Weever remained in their possession until 1710,
when it passed by sale to the Wilbrahams of Townsend, now represented
by George Fortescue Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere House, but Alderley
was retained and still continues the chief residence of the family, who
have held it in continuous succession for a period of more than four
hundred years.
It is not our purpose to trace the descent of the Stanleys through
successive generations, we therefore pass over the history of the
ancient house to the time of Sir Thomas Stanley, the sixth in direct
descent from John Stanley, who married the heiress of Weever, and the
one who added a baronetcy to the honours of the Alderley line--an
interval of nearly two centuries, during which time the family
estates had been largely increased, partly from the possessions of
the dissolved abbey of Dieulacres, and partly from lands acquired
at different times through prudent marriages, as evidenced by the
Inquisition taken in 1606, after the death of Sir Thomas Stanley,
Knight, who had married the heiress of Sir Peter Warburton of Grafton,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and which shows that at his
decease he held the manors of Weever, Over Alderley, Nether Alderley,
Clive, Little Meols, and Pulton Launcelyn; and lands in those and the
following places: Barretspool, Wimbaldesley, Stanthorne, Spittle,
Middlewich, Rushton, Bredbury, Upton near Macclesfield, Chorley, Hough,
Warford, Chelford, Astle, Birtles, Mobberley, Ollerton, Torkington,
Offerton, Norbury, Occleston, Sutton, &c., all in the county of
Chester. This Thomas, who had been knighted by James I. while at
Worksop Manor on his progress towards London, after the death of
Elizabeth, a journey during which he shed the honours of knighthood on
no less than two hundred and thirty-seven gentlemen who were presented
to him, was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Stanley, who was only
eight years of age at the time of the father's death.
Shortly after he came of age Thomas Stanley married Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir James Pytts, of Kyre, in Worcestershire, and in 1634
he was honoured with the shrievalty of his native county. The time
was an anxious one. It was the year preceding the arbitrary levy of
ship-money, when the storm was gathering that ere long was to break
with such disastrous force upon the head of the ill-fated Charles. When
the sword was drawn the head of the Alderley Stanleys ranged himself
on the side of those who contended for the privileges of Parliament in
opposition to Kingly prerogative, and who were resolved upon upholding
the bulwark of the national liberties; he does not appear, however, to
have engaged in any of the great military enterprises which marked that
stirring period, the help he rendered to the cause being limited in a
great measure to the discharge of the civil functions which devolved
upon him as a magistrate, and in the performance of which he was very
zealous and energetic. His name is of frequent occurrence in the church
books in his own part of the county, and when, during the time of the
Usurpation, marriage, as a religious ceremony, was forbidden by the
law, and transformed into a civil contract to be entered into before
a justice of the peace, Mr. Stanley appears to have been one of the
magistrates most frequently performing the office. Though a staunch
Puritan, he can hardly be said to have been a violent supporter of the
party, and except in the assiduous discharge of his magisterial office
he took little part in the events that were then transpiring. Possibly
it was the moderation shown in those exciting times that led to his
being one of the Cheshire gentlemen selected for a baronetcy on the
occasion of the Restoration of Charles II., and curiously enough his
name appears first on the list from the county on whom that dignity was
conferred. The hall at Weever had up to this time been the principal
residence of the family. Some time before 1640 Thomas Stanley added
to his possessions by the purchase of Chorley Hall, an old mansion of
the Davenports, in Wilmslow parish; afterwards he greatly improved
the ancestral home at Alderley, and erected in front of it a handsome
stone-arched gateway, two of the pillars of which may still be seen in
the wall bordering the roadside; it is said that he also planted the
beech woods bordering upon the Mere, which now form such a pleasant
adjunct of the park.
Until the present century the succeeding generations of the Stanleys
took little active interest in national affairs, preferring the
quieter and less exciting life of country gentlemen, passing much of
their time in Cheshire improving their estates, and spending much of
their leisure in the indulgence of their literary tastes. Sir Peter
Stanley, who succeeded as second baronet on the death of his father,
Sir Thomas, in 1672, served the office of sheriff in 1678. He died in
1683, having had by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Leigh of
Northcourt, in the Isle of Wight, two sons and seven daughters. Thomas
Stanley, the eldest son, who succeeded to the barony and estates, was
born at Alderley on the 25th March, 1652, and baptized there on the
15th April following. He added to the family estates by his marriage
with Christiana, daughter and heiress of Sir Stephen Leonard, of
West Wickham, Kent, Bart. During his time the old hall of Weever, a
half-timbered mansion, pleasantly situated on an acclivity that rises
from the banks of the river of the same name, and which had come into
the possession of the Stanleys as early as the reign of Henry VI., and
been their principal residence until 1660 or thereabouts, was sold,
the purchaser being Randle Wilbraham, of Townshend, direct ancestor
of the Wilbrahams of Delamere House. Lady Stanley, who died February
16, 1711-12, bore him in addition to two daughters, both of whom died
unmarried, two sons, who in turn succeeded to the honours and estates
of the family. Sir Thomas Stanley died at West Wickham in 1721,
when the eldest of his two sons, James Stanley, succeeded as heir.
He married in November, 1740, Frances, youngest daughter of George
Butler, of Ballyragget, in the county Kilkenny, in Ireland, but by her
had no issue. He seems to have been a somewhat eccentric personage, if
we may judge from a remark made by Miss Stanley. She says, quoting from
the recollections of John Finlow, an old retainer of the family, that
"Sir James used to drive up to the Edge almost daily in his carriage
drawn by four black long-tailed mares, always accompanied by a running
footman of the name of Critchley." She adds that her informant, Finlow,
was a lad then, and used to get up behind the carriage. Notwithstanding
his little foibles the old baronet is represented as having been of a
remarkably mild and placid temperament, a character that seems to be
borne out by some lines he is believed to have written, and which were
found among his papers after his death--
The grace of God and a quiet life,
A mind content, and an honest wife,
A good report and a friend in store,
What need a man to wish for more.
Sir James Stanley died March 17th, 1746-7, when the baronetcy as well
as the patrimonial lands devolved upon his younger brother, Edward, who
succeeded as fifth baronet. He did not, however, long enjoy possession
of the estates, for in 1755, while returning from Adlington, where he
had been on a visit to Charles Legh, he was suddenly seized with a fit
of apoplexy, and died in his carriage before he could be conveyed home.
By his marriage with Mary, daughter of Thomas Ward, a wealthy banker,
of London, who survived him and died at Bath in 1771, he had two sons,
James Stanley, who died in infancy, and John Thomas, born 26th March,
1735, who succeeded as sixth baronet. He was in his twenty-first year
at the time of his father's decease, and married in April, 1763,
Margaret, daughter and heiress of Hugh Owen, of Penrhos, in Anglesey,
a well-wooded estate, about a mile from the town and harbour of
Holyhead. When he came into possession of the family estates the steep
rocky promontory known as the Edge, and with which every Manchester
holiday-maker is familiar, was a wild dreary common, without any sign
of cultivation, except the few clumps of hardy fir trees which had been
planted by his father and by his uncle, Sir James Stanley, between the
years 1745 and 1755. It is recorded that in 1799 he enclosed the Edge,
with other waste lands on the estate, and, at the same time repaired
or rebuilt the old Beacon which had been in existence from the time of
Elizabeth, if not from a still earlier date, and which was then in a
state of decay, covering in the square chamber with the pyramidal roof
which, until it became obscured by the thick umbrage around, made it
one of the chief landmarks in Cheshire.
Sir John Thomas Stanley died in London, November 29th, 1807, and
was buried at South Audley. By his wife, who survived him, and died
February 1st, 1816, he had a numerous family--two sons and five
daughters. Of the sons, the eldest, born November 26th, 1766, and named
after himself, succeeded as seventh baronet, and in 1839 was elevated
to the peerage by the title of Baron Stanley of Alderley. The other
son, Edward, the youngest of seven children, was born at his father's
residence in London, January 1st, 1779.
While the baronetcy and the broad lands of Alderley were reserved for
the eldest son of Sir John Thomas Stanley, the family living--the
rectory and the pleasant old rectory house--was the portion that
Edward, the youngest son, could look forward to, for the Stanleys were
then, as now, patrons of the church, as well as lords of the manor of
Alderley.
The future rector, as we have seen, first saw the light on New Year's
Day, 1779. He was born at his father's residence in London, and
his birth and baptism are thus recorded in the church register at
Alderley:--
1779. Feb. 21.--Edward, son of Sir John Thomas Stanley and Margaret,
Lady Stanley, was born in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square,
co. Middlesex, the 1st of January, 1779, and baptized on the 31st of
the same month (by the Rev. Ralph Carr, rector of Alderley) at Sir
John's house, in the said parish of St. George's.
Though born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders, Edward
Stanley's sanguine temperament, his love of adventure and spirit of
enterprise, led him in early years to long for the excitement and the
perils of a naval life, a passion that is said to have been inspired
by a visit he made, when a child of three or four years, to Weymouth,
where he first saw an English man-of-war. Though the boyish fancy was
overruled by circumstances beyond his own control, the impression made
upon his mind was never eradicated, and his enthusiastic love for a
profession from which he was excluded remained and gave a colour to his
whole after life. As his son in later years observed, "the sight of a
ship, the society of sailors, the embarkation on a voyage, were always
sufficient to inspire and delight him wherever he might be."
A bright, happy, eager childhood seems to have been his. Of amiable
disposition, with a cheerful flow of animal spirits, fertility of
resource, activity of mind and body, and an exuberance of boyish
mirth and daring, he carried with him into the active business of
life those natural characteristics which enabled him, when he had
attained to manhood, to overcome whatever difficulties might beset
his path--characteristics that were especially useful to him when he
entered upon his University career, for it can hardly be said that
up to that time his education and training were such as to specially
fit him for the sacred calling in which he was to find his vocation,
or such as were ordinarily given to boys destined for the Church. His
early life was passed in a succession of removals from one private
school or tutor to another; subsequently he was placed in the Grammar
School at Macclesfield, under the Rev. Dr. Inglis, whose classical
attainments had earned for the school a high reputation in the
Universities. In 1798 he entered at St John's College, Cambridge, to
find, however, that he had to begin his course of study almost from
the very foundation. Dean Stanley, in his "Memoirs," to which we are
indebted for many interesting particulars of his life, says: "Of Greek
he was entirely, of Latin almost entirely, ignorant; and of mathematics
he knew only what he had acquired at one of the private schools where
he had been placed when quite a child." His earnest application and
indomitable perseverance, however, soon enabled him to make up for
these deficiencies, and to make such progress that in 1802 he appeared
as 16th Wrangler in the mathematical tripos. Of him it might with truth
be said that "he applied his heart to know, and to search, and to seek
out wisdom," and we might almost fancy him to have been the subject of
the portrait of an English clergyman which a Fellow of his own college,
W. Mackworth Praed, drew with such a skilful hand--
Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear
The doctrine of a _gentle Johnian_,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
He cherished a grateful recollection of the advantages he gained from
his academic course at Cambridge, and his affection for his _alma
mater_ was shown in the spirited letter he addressed to a local journal
when, a generation later, an attack was made upon the University by Mr.
Beverley. "I can never," he says, "be sufficiently grateful for the
benefits I received within those college walls; and to the last hour
of my life I shall feel a deep sense of thankfulness to those tutors
and authorities for the effects of that discipline and invaluable
course of study which rescued me from ignorance, and infused an abiding
thirst for knowledge, the means of intellectual enjoyment, and those
habits and principles which have not only been an enduring source of
personal gratification, but tended much to qualify me, from the period
of my taking orders to the present day, for performing the duties of an
extensive parish."
Having taken his B.A., he made a Continental tour, visiting
Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. On his return he was admitted
to Holy Orders and ordained to the curacy of Windleshaw, in Surrey,
where he remained for about three years, when the rectory of Alderley
became vacant, by the resignation of the Rev. Ralph Carr, who had held
it for the long period of forty-three years, the greater part of which
time he had been non-resident. This was in 1805--the year in which
he proceeded to his degree of M.A.--and he was then presented by his
father to the vacant living and inducted November 15th.
Though little of his early life had been passed at Alderley, the place
was endeared to him by many family associations, and from his first
entering upon the ministerial office the ardent desire of his heart
was to do something for the people, who, through the apathy and long
continued absence of his predecessor, had been as sheep having no
shepherd.
At that time the religious life of England was at a very low ebb;
ministerial neglect was the rule rather than the exception, and the
conduct of the clergy generally was not regulated by any very high
standard of morality or excellence. Among the changes that have been
wrought in our national institutions during the present century none
have been more remarkable than those in the Church--not in its abstract
constitution, but in the character and conduct of its ministers. The
clerical "lights of other days" shone but dimly. Those who resided
upon their benefices were content to spend their days in an easy
hand-in-glove kind of association with their people, but seldom or
never rose above the ordinary routine of the stated services of the
Church. With the wise man they believed that "in much study is a
weariness of the flesh," and to avoid that "weariness" they were
wont to give more time to the foxes than to the Fathers. The typical
clergyman of eighty years ago preferred conviviality to controversy;
he was more concerned about his pigs than his preaching, and dreaded
distemper in his herd a great deal more than he did dissent in his
flock. Alderley was no exception to the general condition of the
country, and many are the stories of clerical shortcomings that still
linger in the memory of the older inhabitants. Rector Carr had made it
his boast that he "never set a foot in a sick person's cottage," and it
is related that when service was held in the church "the clerk used to
go to the churchyard stile to see whether there were any more coming to
church, for there were seldom enough to make a congregation."
A parish which had remained so long in a state of spiritual torpor
presented many difficulties to a new comer filled with a desire to
promote the well-being of his people, and whose creed was--
Of hope, and virtue, and affection full.
Surrounded by so much ignorance and indifference the enthusiasm of his
fervent spirit was enkindled, and his ardent nature, combined with his
strong sense of duty, acted as an incentive, and increased the desire
to minister to the wants, both temporal and spiritual, of his flock,
and faithfully to fulfil the sacred trust committed to him in his
parochial cure. But those among whom he was called to minister were
untaught in the first rudiments of the Christian faith, and upon ground
so unprepared it was clear that the seed of the Word read and preached
in the church, and the services of the liturgy, however reverently
said or sung, could profit little, and that it was only by clothing
his thoughts in language suited to their capacity--by giving in the
plainest words such simple instruction as should touch their hearts,
and by a kindly sympathy in all their concerns that he could hope to
become "a father and a leader" to his hitherto neglected parishioners,
and sustain among them a higher standard of conduct than was then
common among an agricultural population. To be, in short--
A pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays;
Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew;
And tender Goldsmith crown'd with deathless praise.
With him duty seemed to be a delight, and piety an instinct; though
among the indolent, easy-going divines of the old school, in whom the
true liturgical teaching of the Church had withered down into a mere
lifeless form, his unwearying devotion to the charge committed to
his care was looked upon as only the fervid zeal of an enthusiastic
visionary.
Edward Stanley had nearly completed his twenty-seventh year when he
entered upon his ministry at Alderley. In his twenty-ninth year he
became engaged to the lady who may with truth be said to have been
the sunshine of his heart, who took an unfailing interest and pride
in his labours, and who was his constant stay and support through
life--Catherine Leycester, the eldest of the two daughters of the Rev.
Oswald Leycester, at the time rector of Stoke-upon-Terne, but who, in
Edward Stanley's boyhood, had been curate of Alderley, a position he
resigned on being presented by his brother, George Leycester, to the
living of the neighbouring church of Knutsford. They were married in
1810, as Maria Leycester in her family notes, transcribed in "Memorials
of a Quiet Life," thus records: "On the 8th of May, 1810, my sister
was married in Stoke Church, to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley.
Upon her marriage I left Leighton Cottage, and until my mother's
death I remained at home. My father gave me lessons in--it must be
confessed--_bad_ French and Italian, but it was my sister who still
directed my studies by letter, constantly sending me questions on the
books which I read, and expecting me to write her the answers....
Edward Stanley was to me the kindest of brothers, and great was the
amusement he gave by the playful verses he wrote to please me."
The Leycesters of Toft, of which house Oswald Leycester was a younger
son, were an offshoot of the Leycesters of Tabley, now represented
by Lord de Tabley. The family held high rank among the Cheshire
squirearchy, and between them and the Stanleys a friendship had
long existed, the intimacy being increased by near neighbourship,
for Toft, their ancestral home--a charmingly situated manor-house,
where, before his removal to Stoke, Oswald Leycester resided with
his widowed mother--was only a few miles distant, and a continuous
intercourse was kept up between the two families. "My great delight,"
wrote Maria Leycester, "was to go to Alderley Park and play with the
'Miss Stanleys;' and it was a joy when, standing by the breakfast
table, I heard it settled that the carriage was to be ordered to go
to Alderley, and that I was to be of the party." The Leycesters could
boast a lineage as ancient as that of the Stanleys, and through the
Tofts, whose estates they had acquired by marriage with a heiress of
that family in the reign of Richard II., were able to trace their
descent from Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy, the grandmother of William
the Conqueror.
Edward Stanley was approaching his thirty-second year at the time of
his marriage--his wife had then just passed her nineteenth birthday.
But, young as she was, she had, owing to the delicate health of her
mother, been taught, almost from the time of leaving school, to think
and act for herself, and had had moreover the responsibility cast
upon her of educating her younger sister, Maria Leycester. "Hers was
a porcelain understanding," said Sydney Smith; her journal and the
letters written in her earlier life give a true reflex of her mind,
and justify the remark of her son that "there was a quiet wisdom, a
rare usefulness, a calm discrimination, a firm decision, which made her
judgment and her influence felt through the whole circle in which she
lived."
To the old rectory house at Alderley, Edward Stanley took his bride,
and in that happy home five children were brought up. Of the every-day
life in that household we get many pleasant glimpses in the journal of
Maria Leycester, to which reference has already been made. She writes
upon one occasion:--
We live here (Alderley Rectory) in such perfect retirement and
tranquillity that it is more like Stoke than Alderley, and I enjoy
excessively the exemption from all interruption to the happiness of my
life here. I believe you will not have any difficulty in imagining how
great that happiness is, in the society of two people that one loves
excessively, with children that are as interesting to one as if they
were one's own, and with all the luxury of delicious spring weather
(this was written May 10, 1819) in beech woods and green fields. I
would defy you to tantalise me with the greatest temptations London
could offer; as far as happiness, real _true_ happiness is concerned,
nothing in London could present to me half as much as one perfectly
retired uninterrupted day at Alderley.
In one of her letters to Miss Clinton, written from Stoke Rectory in
the early summer of 1825, she says:--
That I have not written to you before you will easily understand to
have arisen from my unwillingness to lose a single hour of my last
days at Alderley. They were indeed very precious to me, and after
staying there for four months uninterruptedly you may well imagine how
painful it was to me to leave all those who were more than usually
endeared to me by the comfort they had offered me during a time
when nothing else could have pleased or interested. Certainly, too,
altogether, with its inhabitants, its abundance of books, of drawing,
liberty unrestrained, beautiful walks and rides and seats, luxuriance
of flowers, and, in delicious weather, there cannot on earth be so
perfect a paradise. During the hot weather we generally went on the
mere--or rode in the evenings. Every morning, before breakfast, Lucy
and I met in the wood at the old Moss House, where we spent an hour
together, and Owen (Edward Stanley's eldest son) came to ferry me
home. With so much around to interest and please me, I put away self
as much as possible, and endeavoured as much as I could to enjoy the
present. You know how dearly I love all those children, and it was
such a pleasure to see them all so happy together. To be sure it would
be singular if they were not different from other children, with
the advantages they have, when education is made so interesting and
amusing as it is to them.... While others of their age are plodding
through the dull histories, of which they remember nothing, of
unconnected countries and ages, K.'s (Katharine Stanley's) system is
to take one particular era, perhaps, and upon the basis of the General
History, pick out for them from different books all that bears upon
that one subject, whether in memoirs or literature, making it at once
an interesting study to herself and them.
The old rectory house at Alderley was not the home of the parson
only--it was, in a sense, the home of the parish, and became the
resort of all who were in trouble or difficulty, or who needed counsel
or assistance. The house was, as it were, thrown open, and every one
knew that in it they had a friend ready to listen to their little
grievances, and equally ready to remedy them where it was in his power
to do so--one who could "weep with them that wept, and rejoice with
them that rejoiced"--who had a kindly sympathy in all their concerns,
and could enter into their interests with the feelings of a father
and a friend. The good man's delight in ministering to the temporal
comforts of his people was extreme, and he took an especial pleasure
in drawing them around him, in order that he might turn any passing
circumstance to profitable account, and speak to them more familiarly
and more directly upon matters connected with the parish that might
be commented upon or set right. He preferred kneeling by the sick
bed in a cottage to the cushioned ease of a mansion, and a serious
conversation with the poor to the small talk of the drawing-room. It
was this feature in his ministerial career that left a never-fading
recollection in the minds of those he ministered to, and many a good
deed done in secret only came to light when he was removed to another
sphere of duty, and but for that removal would probably never have
been disclosed. Mounted upon his little black cob, he might be seen
daily going his rounds among his parishioners, advising them in their
difficulties, comforting them in their sorrows, and encouraging or
reproving them as he saw occasion. The sound of his horse's feet was
as music in the ears of the rustic cottagers, who would hasten to
their doors to greet his approach, while their children, with bobbing
courtesies, would stand in eager expectation of the "goodies" that
were sure to be the reward of those who were clean and tidy. "When
he entered a sick chamber," it was said, "he never failed to express
the joy which order and neatness gave him, or to reprove where he
found it otherwise," and whatever was proposed for the general good
was sure to receive his active support; he took so much trouble, the
people said, in whatever he did--never sparing himself in whatever he
took in hand. He felt that he was in a measure a temporal as well as a
spiritual guide, a leader and encourager of sobriety, good order, and
peacefulness, as well as a teacher of sound doctrine and an example of
Christian practice, and that his mission was rather to raise the rude
and uncultivated to his own level than to lower himself to theirs.
In those days pastoral life was not so charmingly innocent, nor the
Colins and Phoebes nearly so amiable and virtuous, as imaginative
poets and painters have pictured them to us. In Alderley, as in many
other places, drunkenness was the besetting sin; immorality, as a
matter of course, followed in its train; and what should have been a
kind of Arcadia was oftentimes the scene of riotous disorder. The good
rector spared no pains to repress the evil, and whenever he heard of
any drunken fight in the village he would, with the dash and daring
of an English sailor, hurry off to put a stop to it. It is related
that on one occasion word was brought to him that a riotous crowd had
assembled on the confines of his parish to witness a desperate prize
fight. "The whole field," so a rustic spectator described it, "was
filled, and all the trees round about, when in about a quarter of an
hour I saw the rector coming up the road on his little black horse as
quick as lightning, and I trembled for fear they should harm him. He
rode into the field, and just looked quick round (as if he thought the
same) to see who there was that would be on his side. But it was not
needed--he rode into the midst of the crowd, and in one moment it was
all over; there was a great calm; the blows stopped; it was as if they
would all have wished to cover themselves up in the earth--all from
the trees they dropped down directly--no one said a word, and all went
away humble." The following day he sent for the two men, but instead of
scolding he reasoned with them, and sent each away with a Bible in his
hand.
He was the centre from which whatever there was of spiritual life in
the parish emanated. Self-reliant, resolute and unwearied, but kind
and conciliatory, and withal cautious and discreet in his operations,
he exhibited a thoroughness of character that enabled him to exercise
a controlling influence over his charge, and his self-devotedness
was often gladdened by the sympathy and encouraged by the affection
of those whom he had won from the slavery of sin to the freedom of
Christian life. When he settled down with his young wife among the
scattered units that in the aggregate constituted his flock, he found
them for the most part sunk in ignorance, mental and moral; and the
parents, indifferent themselves, had allowed their children to grow up
in the same indifference. To reclaim the young, he set about gathering
them into the village schools, in the successful working of which he
ever manifested the deepest interest. Public elementary education had
then made but little progress, and the proverbial three R's, with
perhaps a dash of unintelligible geography and history, made up the
total of the knowledge usually imparted. Edward Stanley was far in
advance of many of his clerical brethren in the desire to place the
means of instruction within the reach of even the poorest classes of
society, as well as to improve the methods of conveying it; and his
zeal in this direction has been testified to by a former Chancellor of
the diocese of Chester, the Rev. Henry Raikes.
"He was the first," said the Chancellor, "who distinctly saw and
boldly advocated the advantages of general education for the lower
classes. Schools had been founded; he had borne his part--and a
most active part--in the first movement, but I think that he first
set the example of the extent to which general knowledge might be
communicated--and beneficially communicated--in a parochial school. I
well remember the appearance," he says, "of the school at Alderley,
where, in addition to the usual range of desks and books, the
apparatus for gymnastic exercises was seen suspended from the roof.
I remember the admiration excited at a lecture which he delivered in
Chester, where he exhibited a 'hortus siccus' of the plants found in
the parish, made by one of the girls in the school; and, though few
or none did more than wonder at what was accomplished at Alderley, an
impression was created that a large amount of useful secular knowledge
might be added without any deduction from what would be considered the
proper objects of a school."
His love of learning manifested itself in other ways. When half
a century ago the British Association had sprung into existence,
causing a flutter among Church dignitaries, who failed to see that
Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the
advancement of science, and very reverend deans were addressing letters
of remonstrance to its promoters on the "Dangers of Peripatetic
Philosophy," Edward Stanley courageously came forward as its advocate,
and was enrolled as one of its early vice-presidents. A one-sided
development of the mind was then the characteristic of the older
universities, and men often-times left college without a single idea
concerning the common things of every-day life or the slightest
knowledge of any of God's works. The rector of Alderley was in many
respects self-educated; dependent in a great measure upon his own
resources, he had discovered that dead literature could not be made the
parent of living science or active industry, and was one of the first
clergymen to direct popular attention to the wondrous history of the
stones of the field, the birds of the air, and the "gnats above the
summer stream." "The perversions of men," he was wont to say, "would
have made an infidel of him but for the counteracting impressions
of Divine Providence in the works of nature." Like Gilbert White, at
Selborne, he devoted much of his leisure in noting the instincts of
animals and the phenomena of ever-changing nature. Ornithology was his
favourite subject of study, and the staircases and corridors of his
rectory house, adorned as they were with cuttings from "Bewick," bore
testimony to his love of birds, while their habits and peculiarities
formed a constant source of interest and amusement to him in his
rambles through the fields and along the rural lanes of his parish.
The result of his labours he embodied in a pleasantly-written work,
published by the Christian Knowledge Society--"A Familiar History
of Birds: their Nature, Habits, and Instincts"--a work that has
passed through several editions--in which are recorded many of the
observations made at Alderley.
On the 13th of June, 1811, the rector's heart was gladdened by the
birth of a son, who, in compliment to his grandmother, was named Owen.
Owen Stanley inherited his father's passionate desire for the naval
profession, and the wish was indulged from a recollection of the
painful effort it cost the father in his boyhood to overcome the same
impulse. Another child, a daughter, was born on the 14th December,
1813, Mary Stanley, and his happiness was added to by the birth of
a second son, on the 13th December, 1815--Arthur Penrhyn Stanley,
the future Dean of Westminster. Of the home life in the pleasant old
parsonage house many glimpses are given us in that tribute of filial
affection from the pen of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley to which reference
has previously been made, as well as in that delightful chronicle of
English domestic life--its comfort, its quiet, and its innocence,
written by Arthur Stanley's kinsman--"Memorials of a Quiet Life."
Writing to her sister in May, 1818, Mrs. Stanley remarks:--
How I have enjoyed these fine days--and one's pleasure is doubled, or
rather, I should say, trebled, in the enjoyment of the three little
children basking in the sunshine on the lawns, and picking up daisies,
and finding new flowers every day--and in seeing Arthur expand like
one of the flowers in the fine weather. Owen trots away to school at
nine o'clock every morning, with his Latin grammar under his arm,
leaving Mary (his sister) with a strict charge to unfurl his flag,
which he leaves carefully furled, through the little Gothic gate, as
soon as the clock strikes twelve. So Mary unfurls the flag and then
watches till Owen comes in sight, and as soon as he spies her signal
he sets off full gallop towards it, and Mary creeps through the gate
to meet him, and then comes with as much joy to announce Owen's being
come back as if he was returned from the North Pole. Meanwhile I am
sitting with the doors open into the trellice, so that I can see and
hear all that passes.
Two years later the fond mother writes:--
I have been taking a domestic walk with the three children and the
pony to Owen's favourite cavern, Mary and Arthur taking it in turns to
ride. Arthur was sorely puzzled between his fear and his curiosity.
Owen and Mary, full of adventurous spirit, went with Mademoiselle to
explore. Arthur stayed with me and the pony, but when I said I would
go, he said, colouring, he would go, he _thought_. "But, mamma, do
you think there are any wild dogs in the cavern?" Then we picked up
various specimens of cobalt, &c., and we carried them in a basket, and
we called at Mrs. Barber's, and we got some string, and we tied the
basket to the pony with some trouble, and we got home very safe, and I
finished the delights of the evening by reading _Paul and Virginia_ to
Owen and Mary, with which they were much delighted and so was I. You
would have given a good deal for a peep at Arthur this evening, making
hay with all his little strength--such a beautiful colour, and such
soft animation in his blue eyes.
Among the letters of Mrs. Stanley is one that has more than a local or
domestic interest. She was one of the spectators on the occasion of
the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway on that memorable
15th September, 1830, when the Duke of Wellington, who was then Prime
Minister, came down to preside at the ceremony, and poor William
Huskisson, who had been such a strenuous and eager supporter of the
enterprise, met his death. After a vivid account of the scene and the
incident that gave such a mournful interest to it, she describes a
visit she made a year or two after to High Legh. She says:--
We are a party of twenty-six in the house. There are so many that
one's presence or absence is perfectly immaterial and unremarked.
There is one person who interests me very much--Mrs. Tom Blackburne,
"the Vicaress" of Eccles, who received poor Mrs. Huskisson, and
immortalised herself by her activity, sense, and conduct all through.
She made one ashamed of the ease and idleness of one's own life,
compared with hers. They have to deal with such a population--25,000
souls. She has been the ruling spirit evidently; and under her
guidance, and the help of a sound head and heart her husband has
become the very man for the place, with quickness and presence of mind
for any sudden emergency: and she describes the people--all Manchester
weavers--as grateful and sensitive, far beyond our agricultural
experience. He is in general at home to parishioners from 8 till 12
and from 4 to 6 every day, and
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/45153