Part 5

It should be mentioned that Mr. Garnett’s experiments on the artificial impregnation of fish ova were made without any knowledge of previous attempts of the same kind. In answer to a suggestion made by Mr. Garnett, the late Sir G. C. Lewis observed:—“You might as well propose to shoot partridges only three days a week as to restrict the netting of salmon to only three days.” In 1859, Mr. Garnett wrote some papers on the possibility of introducing salmon into Australia, and addressed a communication to the authorities of Tasmania and New Zealand on the subject. He had some doubts as to success, but thought that the experiment should be made, and that New Zealand was the likeliest place for the experiment. In 1843, 1844, 1845, and 1848, he made experiments in the cultivation of wheat on the same land in successive years, and the results were communicated to the _Manchester Guardian_. He also advocated the growing of a short-strawed wheat as peculiarly suitable to the conditions of farming in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The gravelling of his clay soils elicited some amusing comments from his neighbours, one of whom remarked that he had seen land tilled (manured) in various ways, but had never before seen a field tilled with cobble-stones! The cultivation of cotton in India and in Peru was another project in which he took a warm interest.

Mr. Garnett was a keen observer of natural history. Some excellent authorities had asserted that the common wren never lined its nest with feathers, but he showed conclusively that this was a mistake. The nest in which eggs are laid is profusely lined with feathers, but during the period of incubation the male frequently constructs several nests in the vicinity of the first, none of which are lined. The existence of these “cock-nests,” as they are called by schoolboys, was doubted, but Mr. Garnett fully made out his case. The grey wagtail (_Motacilla sulphurea_) sometimes looks at its own image in a window, and attacks it with great vivacity. A superstitious neighbour was alarmed by this conduct in a “barley-bird” (_Motacilla flava_), and thought it a portent of evil. Her alarm was cured by the young naturalist, who secured the bird of evil omen. Having caught a colony of the long-tailed titmouse, Mr. Garnett and his brother attempted to rear the half-fledged young ones, but of the six old birds, five died in confinement. The survivor was allowed to escape in the hope that it would come back to rear the young ones. This it did, and by the most unwearied exertions supplied the whole brood, sometimes feeding them ten times in a minute. Mr. Garnett took some pains to establish the identity of the green with the wood-sandpiper. The courage of the stoat, and the pertinacious manner in which the marsh-titmouse for a time resisted attempts to drive her from her nest, are amongst his curious observations. The creeper, he noticed, associated with the titmouse in winter. The language of birds has not yet been mastered, either by philologists or ornithologists, but it appears that the alarm note of one is readily understood by those of other species. Mr. Garnett desired to make some young throstles leave a nest which was in danger of visitation from mischievous lads. He took one from the nest and made it cry out. Its brethren quickly disappeared, the old bird set up a shriek of alarm, and blackbird, chaffinch, robin, oxeye, blue titmouse, wren, and marsh-titmouse, and even the golden-crested wren, which usually appears to care for nothing; in fact all the birds in the wood, except the creeper, came to see what was the matter. Mr. Garnett did not share the prejudice felt by some farmers against the rook, which he held to be serviceable to man. He reckoned that one rookery in Wharfedale destroyed 209 tons of worms, insects and their larvæ. The rook also, he notes, relieves the farmers from the apprehension caused by a flight of locusts in Craven. Contrary to Waterton’s opinion, Mr. Garnett describes the process by which birds dress their feathers with oil from a gland. The sedge-warbler owes its local name of “mocking-bird” to its imitative powers in copying the notes of the swallow, the martin, the house-sparrow, spring-wagtail, whinchat, starling, chaffinch, white-throat, greenfinch, little redpole, whin-linnet, and other birds. Of the water-ouzel he says:—“A pair had built for forty years, according to tradition, in a wheel-race near to where I was born, and had never been molested by anybody, until a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who was a great ornithologist, employed his gamekeeper to shoot this pair. I think the natives of Calcutta were not more indignant when an unlucky Englishman got one of their sacred bulls into his compound, and baited him, than was our little community at what we considered so great an outrage. The gamekeeper narrowly escaped being stoned by myself and some more lads, any one of whom would have shot fifty blackbirds or fieldfares without any misgiving.” Mr. Garnett once shot what he afterwards believed to have been a Sabine’s snipe.

His interest in the river was not confined to the salmon, and he made some interesting observations on the propagation of lampreys, the spawning of minnows, and the breeding of eels. A short note on the last-named topic, by Mr. Jeremiah Garnett, is also printed. On the formation of ice at the bottom of rivers, there are two papers, one by Mr. Thomas Garnett, and the other by his brother, the Rev. Richard Garnett. A shower of gossamer, the thread produced by the aëronautic spider, is recorded as seen on the hills near Blackburn. One of Mr. Garnett’s friends was the unfortunate Mr. Joseph Ritchie, of Otley, who accompanied Captain Lyon’s expedition to Fezzan, and died there in 1819. To this there is an allusion in the following passage:—“In conclusion, allow me to say that the leisure hours which a somewhat busy life has enabled me to spend in these pursuits, have been some of the happiest of my existence, and have awakened and cherished such an admiration of nature, and such a love of the country and its scenes, as I think can never be appreciated by the inhabitants of large towns, and which I cannot describe so well as in the words of one of my friends, in a beautiful apostrophe to England, when leaving it, never to return:—

‘To thee Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy; Whose mountains were my boyhood’s wild delight, Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me The food of my soul’s youthful appetite; Were music to my ear—a blessing to my sight.’”

Why do not more of the dwellers in rural districts employ their often abundant leisure in natural history studies?

The Traffords of Trafford.

The Trafford tradition is that the family were settled at Trafford as early as the reign of Canute. Radulphus, or Randolph, who is said to have died in the reign of Edward the Confessor, appears in the pedigree as the father of Radulphus, who “received the King’s protection from Sir Hamo de Massey, about the year 1080.” From the daughter of Hamo, Richard de Trafford had that entire lordship. To this early and obscure portion of the annals we must refer the tradition of the Trafford Crest, of which Arthur Agarde writes thus in 1600:—“The auncyentteste I know or have read is, that of the Trafords or Traford in Lancashire, whose arms [crest] are a labouring man, with a flayle in his hand threshinge, and this written motto, ‘Now thus,’ which they say came by this occasion: That he and other gentlemen opposing themselves against some Normans who came to invade them, this Traford did them much hurte, and kept the passages against them. But that at length the Normans having passed the ryver came sodenlye upon him, and then, he disguising himself, went into his barne, and was threshing when they entered, yet beinge knowen by some of them and demanded why he so abased himself, answered, ‘Now thus.’” At the fancy dress ball in connection with the Preston Guild of 1823 “Mr. Trafford was remarkably dressed in his own crest: a Clown in parti-coloured clothes, a flail in his hand and a motto, ‘Now thus.’” A similar crest was borne by the Asshetons and the Pilkingtons. The legend was told of a Pilkington to Fuller, who has given it a place in his “Worthies of England.” It is now impossible to tell if it has any foundation at all in actual fact. Another undated tradition is that of a “duel” between John of Trafford and Gilbert of Ashton, in which the latter was slain and buried by his antagonist in a field called Barnfield Bank, near Urmston Hall. Following the order of the pedigree we have as holders of the Trafford estates Radulphus, Radulphus, Robertus, Henricus, Henry, Richard, of whom little or nothing is known. They are followed by a succession of five Henrys, of whom the two last were knights. John, the son of the fifth, having died young, the estates passed to the grandson of the old knight. This sixth Henry came of age in 1336, was knighted, and, dying about 1370, left seven sons, and was succeeded by another Sir Henry, who died about 1386. His son, the eighth Henry, who did not attain to the knightly dignity, died in 1396, leaving a son six years old, who died about 1403, and was succeeded by his brother Edmund, who was knighted by King Henry VI. at Whitsuntide, 1426.

In 1422, the parish church of Manchester was collegiated by the action of the last rector and lord of the manor, Thomas de la Warre. The parishioners were gathered together at the sound of the bell to confirm and accept the arrangements he had made for the better service of the church. After Sir John le Byron and Sir John de Radcliffe, the first gentleman named is Edmund Trafford. Then follow representatives of the families of Booth, Longford, Holland, Strangeways, Hyde, Barlow, Hopwood, and others. Sir Edmund Trafford married Alice, the daughter of Sir William Venables. This union took place in 1409, when the bride was but eleven years of age. The little lady was co-heiress with her sister, Douce or Dulcia, of the lands of her brother Richard, the last male heir, who was drowned in the Bollin at the early age of eight, in the year 1402. She was born at Worsley and baptised at Eccles Church. One who witnessed the ceremony was David le Seintpier, and the ceremony was impressed upon his mind by the uncomfortable circumstance that he was setting out on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham when he was thrown from his horse and broke his leg. This form of artificial memory, though effectual in his case, can hardly be recommended for imitation. Sir Edmund de Trafford was in the confidence of Henry VI., whose dreams of avarice he fanned by visions of the philosopher’s stone, and of the possibility of changing all the baser metals into gold and silver. On the 7th of April, 1446, the King granted a patent to this Trafford and to Sir Thomas Ashton, setting forth that certain persons had maligned them with the character of working by unlawful arts, and might disturb them in their experiments, and, therefore, the King gave them special lease and licence to work and try their art and science, lawfully and freely, in spite of any statute or order to the contrary. The King, in issuing this commission, was overriding the provision of 5 Henry IV., c. 4. Sir Edmund lived until 1457, and if he succeeded in finding the _aurum potabile_, he carried the secret with him to the grave. In 1435, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edmund Trafford, married Sir John Pilkington. The deeds are still extant by which Pilkington endowed his bride at the porch of the collegiate church of Manchester. He entered into a bond to pay 200 marks in silver, and also “swere upon a boke” that he stood “sole seiset in his demene as of fee simple or fee tail, the day of weddynge,” of the lands of his father, including the dower land of his mother, dame Margery.

The next holder of the estate, Sir John de Trafford, “belonged to the great Earl of Warwick,” and with his retainers fought for the Red Rose of Lancashire under the banner of the King-maker. His allowance was twenty marks yearly, in addition to the wages usual for one of his degree. For some reason now difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, he resigned his estates to his son Edmund, the offspring of a marriage with the daughter of Sir Thomas Ashton, of Ashton-under-Lyne. One of his sisters married Sir John Ashton. Sir John Trafford transferred his estates in 1484, and died in 1488. Edmund Trafford married the young widow of John Honford, and had the guardianship of her first husband’s only son and heir. This was granted to him in a document which is worth quoting as an example alike of the customs and language of the time:—“Be hit knowen to all men wher now of late the Warde and marriage of the landez and Body of William Honford son and heir of John Honford esquier perteynet and langet to me John Savage th’ elder knight by cause ye sayd William at that tyme beinge tendur of age that is to witte under ye age of xxi yerez. I the said John Savage giffe and graunte the seid Warde and Mariage of the Body and landez of ye seid Willm during all his seid nonage to my Son in lagh Edmund Trafford esquier and my doghter Margaret his wife they to have all the seid Wardez and to marye hym at their pleasurez, worshipfullye, they takinge the profetez of all the seide Wardez and mariage during his seid nonage to their owne usez. And this is my Will and grawnte without any manner interrupcon or lett of me, myn herez, or of any other by our makyng, procuringe counsaile or assente. In wythence whereof to this my writinge I the saide Sir John Savage have sette my seall Theressez witnessez Thomas Leversege, John Sutton, William Savage the elder, Thomas ffaloghys.”

The boy became a bold soldier, and was slain at Flodden Field in 1515, and with him ended the male line of the ancient family of Honford. His daughter Margaret married, before she was twelve, Sir John Stanley, the stout knight, whose life forms a curious episode in mediæval biography. He was the son of James Stanley, the warlike Bishop of Ely, and Warden of Manchester, who was blamed by Fuller for “living all the winter at Somersham, in Huntingdonshire, with one who was not his sister, and who wanted nothing to make her his wife save marriage.” Young Stanley took part in the battle of Flodden, and is thought to have been knighted in the field. Notwithstanding his prowess he appears to have been “sicklied o’er with a pale cast of thought,” his favourite mottos being those of the preacher who declares _vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas_. In 1523, he became engaged in a dispute with one of the Leghs, of Adlington, who had married the daughter of a reputed mistress of Cardinal Wolsey. That haughty prelate summoned Sir John to London, and committed him to the Fleet until he surrendered his lease. Sir John founded a chantry in the church of Manchester, and arranged his estates for the benefit of his wife and child. Then by mutual consent a divorce was pronounced between him and Dame Margaret, and he became a monk of the Order of St. Benedict in the abbey of Westminster. His wife, when the divorce was arranged, intended to enter a nunnery, but anticipating the sentiment of a once popular song, she altered her mind, and married Sir Urian Brereton. When Stanley settled his property he directed that his son was not to be married until he was twenty-one, and then he was to choose his own wife by the advice of the Abbot of Westminster and Edmund Trafford.

The guardian of the monk’s childhood carried forward the fortunes of the Traffords, for in 1514 he was created a Knight of the Bath by Henry VIII. His son, the second Sir Edmund, was born in 1485, and died at the age of forty-eight, leaving behind him five sons and five daughters. Sir Edmund was one of the first feoffees of the Manchester Grammar School. When the school was built the east part of it adjoined “a stone chymney” of George Trafford’s.

Henry Trafford, the younger brother of Sir Edmund, who died in 1537, was rector of Wilmslow, and built the chancel and placed stained glass in many of the windows. He was the youngest son of the Sir Edmund Trafford who died in 1514. His monument in Wilmslow Church represents a tonsured priest in ecclesiastical costume. The inscription, now illegible, set forth his clerical honours as “licensed doctor of divinity,” formerly Chancellor of York Cathedral, and rector of Bolton Percy, Siglisthorne, and Wilmslow. He was succeeded by Henry Ryle, who, in 1542, resigned to make way for another Henry Trafford, who was rector of Wilmslow for nearly fifty years. He died in 1591. His will contains several interesting provisions. He was anxious to be buried in the same tomb as his uncle and predecessor, and left 6s. 8d. to be paid for his funeral sermon. Evidently disapproving of sable trappings, he desired that there should be no mourning gowns at his funeral, but that a “worshipful dinner” should be made for the friends that should happen to attend. His best gown he left to the curate of Wilmslow, and the furniture of the parsonage was to remain for the use of whoever should be his successor.[6]

The third Sir Edmund, born in 1507, was knighted by the Earl of Hertford, in Scotland, in the thirty-sixth year of King Henry VIII. He was with the King at the siege of Boulogne, and died in 1564. He married a daughter of the knightly house of Radcliffe. His brother Thomas was the founder of the Traffords of Essex. Sir Edmund, in 1542, paid tax on £80 as the value of his Lancashire property. In Mary’s reign he was captain of the military musters of Salford hundred, and High Sheriff of the county. “Between 1542 and 1558,” says Mr. J. E. Bailey, “Sir Edmund Trafford was interested in promoting, in the church, the advancement of the following persons, who, belonging in some cases to the families of his tenants, were ordained at Chester upon the knight’s title: Dns Alexander Chorlton; Dns Alexander Hugson (or Hudson); Dns Robert Williamson; Dns Johannes Gregorie; Dns Willm’s Trafforde; Dns Jacobus Walker. Thomas Acson, of the diocese of Chester, an acolyte in April, 1546, soon afterwards became sub-dean, deacon, and presbyter on the title of Edmund Trafford, co. Lincoln, gentleman. The Trafford family had connections in Lincolnshire. George Trafford, a younger son of the Sir Edmund who died in 1514, had lands in Lincoln, but lived in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and in dying left provision for certain copes and vestments (which had been bought by his father-in-law) ‘to be restored again for the service of God.’” In 1564, a curious legal document was executed between Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, Esquire, and John Boothe, of Barton, Esquire, by which it was agreed that Edmund’s son (also Edmund) should marry Marget Boothe, daughter of the said John, and if she died before the union was completed he was to marry Anne, and in her default any other daughter of Boothe’s who might be her father’s heir. If Edmund died his next remaining brother in succession was to take his place. Moreover, if Boothe had any male issue a similar marriage was to be arranged with a daughter of the house of Trafford. In point of fact the feelings and dispositions of the young folk were not dreamed of as being of any account, and the future of their respective offspring, born and unborn, was dealt with by the seniors in the most arbitrary fashion, with the sole view of joining together the great estates of the two families. The fourth Sir Edmund was born in 1526, and died in 1590. His first wife was a sister of Queen Catharine Howard. By his second marriage, with Elizabeth, the daughter of Ralph Leicester, of Toft, he had three children. In 1586, the marriage of his daughter was celebrated with great pomp at Trafford, the Earl of Derby, the Bishop of Chester, “with divers knights and esquires of great worship,” were present, and the wedding-sermon, which still survives, was preached by William Massie, B.D., who dedicates it to Sir Edmund. “I having right honourably received,” he says, “by your good means, great courtesies, both in the country and at my studie at Oxford.” He was a Fellow of Brasenose College, and had been helped in his education by Sir Edmund. The conclusion of the dedication is worth quoting:—“For your selfe as you have long been a principal protection of God’s trueth and a great countenance and credit to the preachers thereof in those quarters, and have hunted out and unkenneled those slie and subtil foxes the Jesuites and seminarie Priests out of their celles and caves to the uttermost of your power, with the great ill will of many both open and private enimies to the prince and the church, but your rewarde is with the Lorde, and as you have maintained still your house with great hospitality in no point dimming the glory of your worthy predecessors, but rather adding to it: So I pray God stil continue your zeale, your liberality, your loyaltie and fidelitie, to your Prince, Church, and Common Wealth, that here you may live long with encrease of worship and after the race of your life wel runne here you maie be partaker of those unspeakable ioies in the kingdome of Heaven which be prepared for all the elect children of God, unto whose blessed protection I recommend you and al yours. Amen.”