Part 12

One of the earliest historians of Cheshire was Daniel King, the author of _The Vale Royal of England, or History of Cheshire_. He was more skilled in engraving than in writing, and his work was adorned with plates by Hollar. He was greatly aided by William Smith, _Rouge Dragon_, William Webb, clerk of the Mayor’s court at Chester, and William Aldersey, Mayor of Chester. Webb had some pretensions to be accounted a poet, and wrote “a Discourse on English poetry” in 1586. King’s _Vale Royal_ was not a great book, but it has served its purpose in preserving a record of many things which might have been forgotten, and its engravings and illustrations will always be valuable. An abridged and revised edition was subsequently published by Thomas Hughes.

An account of the Randle Holmes--father, son, and grandson--a noted family of antiquaries, appears in another chapter. Mr. T. Worthington Barlow, F.L.S., barrister of Gray’s Inn, wrote much on the county; and we are greatly indebted to his _Historical and Literary Associations of Cheshire_ for much valuable information which has been useful in the compiling of this record of Cheshire worthies. Nor must we forget the interesting diary of the Rev. Edward Burghall, the Puritanical vicar of Aston, who records with much perspicuity the events of the Civil War in Cheshire with many “moral reflections.” His animadversions on the Quakers, who troubled him sorely, are rather amusing reading.

Amongst Cheshire worthies must not be forgotten Sir Richard Sutton, co-founder with Bishop William Smyth of Lincoln, of Brazenose College, Oxford, “for the study of Philosophy and Sacred Theology, to the Praise and Honour of Almighty God,” in 1509. He was born at Prestbury, near Macclesfield, and was a lawyer, Governor of the Inner Temple, and Steward of the Monastery of Syon, afterward Sion College. He was the author of a work entitled _Orcharde of Syon_, but his chief fame rests on his completion of the foundation of the Oxford College which had been commenced by the bishop.

Such, then, are some of the worthies of Cheshire. Many others might be included, but the roll of honour of the county is already lengthy. We might mention the names of several of the illustrious families of the shire whose scions still continue to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers, and have conferred credit on their houses and on their native county. Some of the great and good men of Cheshire have but recently passed away, whose names are household words in the Cestrian land. They need no mention, no memorial, save that which their lives and good deeds have afforded. The love of the men of Cheshire for their shire has inspired many an act of daring, much toil, much devotion; may it continue so to do in the Vale Royal of England.

There is one name more that must be mentioned. He has been denounced as a “viper of hell,” a “monster of men,” whose bones were dragged from his tomb in Westminster Abbey and buried beneath the Tyburn gallows tree. Shall a regicide be mentioned among the worthies? Such was John Bradshaw, the judge of the Martyr King. He came of a good Cheshire family, and spent his life in studying law, rising high in his profession. This is not the place to judge his motives. He was no time-server, nor was he a universal favourite with his political colleagues. It is enough for us to note that he was born in Cheshire. A facsimile of the register of his baptism is shown with the additional word “traitor” added by a later hand, marking the writer’s detestation of the man who was called upon to play so prominent a part in the tragedy of the murder of a king, the chief instrument in the travesty of justice that ended on the scaffold at Whitehall.

THE FOUR RANDLE HOLMES OF CHESTER

(An Epitome of a Paper by the Late J. P. Earwaker, F.S.A.)

By the Archdeacon of Chester

No book dealing with memorials of old Cheshire would be complete which did not give due prominence to those noted antiquaries of former generations, the Randle Holmes, and acknowledge gratefully and without stint the indebtedness of subsequent writers and students to their research and patient investigations. What follows will show, however inadequately, how great these obligations are. At the outset it may be said that some confusion has arisen from the fact that the name Randle Holme was borne by four members of the family in successive generations, and as a consequence the work of one has sometimes been assigned to another.

The family of Holme is a distinctly Cheshire one, Robert de Holme acquiring by marriage at the end of the fourteenth century a moiety of the manor of Tranmere or Tranmole. The property remained in the family till the reign of James I., when William Holme of Chester, on whom it had devolved, sold it. His uncle Thomas was the first to settle in Chester, and his fourth son was the first Randle Holme. He was born about 1571, dying in 1655, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. By his marriage in 1598 with the widow of Thomas Chaloner of Chester, a distinguished antiquary and herald, he succeeded to her late husband’s papers, and was thus probably led to take up the study of genealogy and family history. Chaloner had held an official position as deputy to the Heralds’ College, and in March 1600-1 he was succeeded by Randle Holme, who was appointed by William Segar, Norroy King-of-Arms, as his deputy, to keep a “regester booke of Funerals in the counties of Chester, Lancaster, and North Wales.” In this capacity he had to truly enter the arms and crests, &c., “of all such persons of Coate Armor and worship as it shall please God to call out of this transitory life”; and to demand and collect the “due fees.” In 1604 he is mentioned as an Alderman of his company, as also is his brother William, “a stationer,” he himself being “a painter.” In 1615 he was one of the two sheriffs of the city, and in 1622 rebuilt his house in Bridge Street, now the “Old King’s Head.” In 1631 he was one of those selected for “obligatory knighthood,” but he compounded by payment of £10. In 1633 he was elected Mayor of the city, and at the same time his son Randle became one of the sheriffs. He was in Chester throughout the whole of the troublous time of the Civil War, and also during the violent outbreak of the plague in 1647. In January 1646 he was charged by the Parliamentarians as having taken the King’s part, and was fined as a delinquent £160. This apparently he did not pay, for after his death his son protested against the payment of this large sum, and some interesting documents are in existence in which it was urged that he was looked upon as the Parliament’s friend. He died in January 1654-55, and was buried at St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill, the interesting memorial tablet on wood, bearing his arms, being unfortunately lost. He was succeeded by his son Randle, born in 1601, who in 1625 had married the eldest daughter of Matthew Ellis of Overleigh, whose widow became ten years later his father’s second wife. In 1629 he was one of the churchwardens of St. Mary’s, holding office for two years; and in 1643 he became Mayor, and as such was the recipient of numerous official letters from the chief commanders of the Royalist side. These and other similar documents were bound up by his son and successor the third Randle Holme, and are preserved in the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. They bear autograph signatures of King Charles I., Prince Rupert, Sir John Byron, Sir Francis Gamul, and many others, and form a most interesting collection. The same description applies to another volume, giving a full account of the siege of Chester, and which was written at the time and derived from papers of the Randle Holmes, the writer in one passage stating that he had “for the most part gathered this history from the study of Randle Holme”--that is, the second Randle Holme. This is a sufficient indication of the historical instinct and practice of the family, and of what we owe to it for the preservation of accurate records of events that happened. Randle Holme the Second did not long survive his father--only a little over four years. A handsome monument to his memory in the Church of St. Mary-on-the-Hill in Chester gives a pedigree of the family, tracing it back to “Peter de Lymme, son of Gilbert, Lord of Lymme, who lived in the time of Edward I.” It also contains three coats of arms, besides crests, and is a good specimen of heraldic knowledge and genealogical research. This Randle Holme, though buried at St. Mary’s, lived after his second marriage, in 1643, in the parish of Holy Trinity, where his name appears in the list as Mayor in 1644. During the siege of Chester the Stationers’ Company could not hold their meetings in the “Golden Phœnix” (the Phœnix Tower), and so they met at “Alderman Holmes junior’s house in Watergate Street.” In the entry of a meeting “at the Alderman’s howse” on October 18, 1645, we are told that “the Golden Phœnix was employed for service for the defence of the garrison of Chester, the enimie in close seidge about the Cittye.” Whether Randle Holme the Second was able to secure the remission of the fine demanded of his father we cannot say. In the Harl. MSS. is a document in which he has left a record of his family, with the dates of their births and baptisms, and the names of their god-parents, designated in some of the entries as “witnesses” and in some as “gossips.” We learn from this that his first-born and eldest son, the third Randle Holme, was born on December 24, 1627, and baptized on the 30th of the same month, and that one of his godfathers was Francis Gamul, the other being his grandfather, the first Randle Holme.

Randle Holme the Third is the most distinguished of the four who successively bore that name. He was the author of a most extraordinary book, entitled _The Academy of Armoury_; and he was also a prominent Freemason. He took up the business of his father and grandfather, and in due course was admitted a member of the same company, of which, on the death of his father, he was duly elected an alderman. He served the office of churchwarden of St. Mary’s for two years from Easter 1657, and was instrumental in the erection of a new tower or steeple and the provision of a new peal of four bells, the initials of the churchwardens (George Chamberlain and Randle Holme), as well as those of the bell founder, John Scott of Wigan, appearing on them. The peal has now been enlarged into one of eight. In 1664 he was appointed to the office of “sewer of the chamber in extraordinary to his Majesty King Charles II.” A “sewer” was an officer whose function it was to place the dishes on the table and to remove them afterwards, and some think that it was also his duty to taste them. It almost looks as if the title had arisen from the mis-spelling of the word, and as if the “se_w_er” really was the “se_rv_er.” However, the word is to be found in Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and others. In the Harl. MSS. we have the certificate of Randle Holme’s appointment, which shows that under it he was exempt from “bearing any publick office whatsoever.” This will account for the fact that, unlike his father and grandfather, he never held any office in the corporation of his native city. We do not know by what Court influence he obtained this appointment, which, though it contained certain privileges, must have been purely honorary, and we do not read of his being called upon on any occasion to fulfil its duties.

A dispute arose about this time between Randle Holme and the Heralds’ College, whose powers he was charged with usurping, by preparing coats of arms and hatchments, and receiving fees for so doing. The controversy was sharp and took a very practical shape, for we learn from the diary of William Dugdale, Norroy King-of-Arms, that he pulled down or defaced some “Achievements which Holmes, the Paynter, of Chester had hung up.” This he did at Budworth, Nether Peover, and Eastham, and other places in Cheshire. The dispute had nothing to do with his heraldic knowledge and skill, which cannot have been disputed, but probably arose from the fact that he had not then (as he subsequently was) been officially appointed deputy to the Norroy King-of-Arms. It would have been a dangerous precedent to allow any unauthorised person, however competent, to undertake such functions, and might have led to much confusion and to many mistakes, so that the action of the Norroy King-of-Arms is easily accounted for. The difficulty, which lasted some five years or thereabouts, was apparently solved by the appointment of Randle Holme as deputy to the Norroy King-of-Arms (as his father had been before him), though there is no record of the date of his appointment. He had probably acted for his father, and continued the same practice after his father’s death without waiting for the requisite authority.

It was in 1688 that he issued his extraordinary book--_The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon_. From the title it might be supposed that the work was entirely on heraldic matters, whereas it treats of almost every subject under the sun, and is a kind of encyclopædia, arranged, it must be confessed, in a most awkward form. He began collecting materials for it at a very early age, when he was only twenty-two; and it was forty years later before the book was printed. Whilst there can be no doubt that much of what it contains might well have been omitted, it stands out as a monumental evidence of the industry of the author as a collector of out-of-the-way information which he was anxious to preserve, and of his desire to make the work as complete as possible. The information thus gathered together is sometimes very valuable, and often very quaint; whilst specimens of Cheshire dialect, now obsolete, are to be found in words and phrases which were evidently in common use when the book was written. The title-page, which is very long, prepares us for the variety which the book contains, as the following sentence from it will show: “Very useful for all gentlemen, scholars, Divines, and all such as desire any knowledge in arts and sciences.”

The chapters are dedicated to various personages or classes of persons, and some of these lengthy dedications are interesting compositions. The Fourth Book was never set up in type, and of the latter portion of the Third Book the only printed example is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Other copies end with the first part of Book III., concluding with a valedictory address, explaining how the vast expense entailed and the inadequate return made him “resolve to go no further.” The book was printed at Chester, and is the earliest work printed there, and as such has, of course, a special interest for the city and county. It is rather remarkable that on the site of his house in Bridge Street (engraved by Cuitt as _Lamb Row_, the house having subsequently been converted into a hostelry, “The Lamb”) now stand the printing works of Mr. Griffiths. In his will his son Randle referred to a “Room in his dwelling in the Bridge Street formerly made use of as a Printing House or place.” Dr. Ormerod describes the book as “the strangest jumble on natural history, mineralogy, and surgery, occasionally diversified by palmistry, hunters’ terms, the cockpit laws, an essay on Time, and on Men punished in Hell.” The description is not inaccurate, yet there can be no doubt that in its eleven hundred folio pages are to be found many valuable pieces of information, and that in this respect they form “a storehouse” not only of “Armory and Blazon,” but also of many other subjects, so that the student who has the patience to explore them is sure to learn something. They show, too, what an inquiring mind the author must have had, and how he noted down and kept ready for use the knowledge he obtained.

Randal Holme the Third was also a distinguished Freemason, and probably one of the earliest connected with Chester. He alludes to the fact that he was a “Member of the Society called Free-Masons” in his _Academy of Armory_, and one of his manuscript volumes is entitled _Constitutions of Masonry_, giving certain particulars as to the names of persons made Freemasons, and to the initiation fees paid by them. Evidently there was a lodge of Freemasons at Chester in the seventeenth century, of which Randle Holme (III.) was a member. It has been supposed by some that his father also may have been a Mason, as there are some masonic emblems on the monument put up to his memory in St. Mary’s Church. The Freemasons of the county showed their respect for his memory, and commemorated his connection with the church by rebuilding the north porch in 1892, whilst Mr. Henry Taylor, F.S.A., placed stained-glass windows of a heraldic nature in the same, with a full account of him. The laying of the foundation-stone of this porch by the then Provincial Grand Master, Earl Egerton of Tatton, with full masonic rites, was an interesting ceremony, and was attended by some two hundred Masons in their regalia.

It has been already noted that Randle Holme III. lived in Bridge Street. This house he apparently built about 1670, and did this without consulting the Corporation, and he was ordered to pull it down, and fined for persisting in building it. The house, however, was not demolished until early in the nineteenth century, when the Grosvenor Bridge was built over the Dee, and it was subsequently converted into a tavern called “The Lamb.”

Randle Holme III. died on March 12, 1699-1700, in the seventy-third year of his age. He was thrice married, and had issue eight sons and six daughters. Of the former only three survived him--Randle, by his first wife, born in 1659, and George and John by his second. Randle was taken into partnership by his father when he was thirty-one years of age--that is, in 1690. In 1691 he became a member of the Stationers’ Company, of which he was elected an alderman in 1705, the same year in which he was one of the two sheriffs of the city. Like his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, he also served the office of churchwarden of St. Mary’s, and like them, too, he was deputy to Norroy King-of-Arms. He continued the work of his ancestors, and the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Mary’s contain various entries of payments to him for work done. He died August 30, 1707, aged 48, all his five children having predeceased him. In his will, referred to above, he bequeaths all his books and collections of heraldry to his half-brothers George and John, to be equally divided between them. These books and collections no doubt represented the work and labours of all four Randle Holmes, as well as what the first of that name obtained by his marriage with the widow of Thomas Chaloner. They represented the researches of over a hundred years, and contained abstracts of many documents which no longer exist, and accounts of visits paid to many churches, with accurate descriptions of the monumental inscriptions, and the old heraldic stained glass in the windows. Early in the eighteenth century they were purchased by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, having been, it is said, first offered to the Corporation of Chester, who declined to buy them. They now form a portion of that magnificent collection of manuscripts in the British Museum known as “the Harleian MSS.,” and run to about 270 volumes. Naturally their contents are extremely diversified, and they vary considerably in value; but there can be no doubt that to any one inquiring into the history of Chester, Cheshire, Lancashire, and North Wales they contain a mine of information, and are simply invaluable. Unfortunately there is no complete and sufficient index of their contents, so that laborious perusal of them is necessary, for the acquisition of the information which they can convey. Allowance, too, will have to be made for the fact that none of the four were good mediæval Latin scholars, for none of them had the advantage of a university education. Consequently in their transcription of old Latin records many mistakes will be found, and though these may be irritating to the modern student, they can easily be corrected. The opinion passed on the first Randle Holme by the late Mr. W. H. Black, F.S.A., Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, may virtually be applied to them all: “In short, he was an industrious and faithful copyist or collector of historical antiquities, but his philological learning was too scanty for him to use extreme accuracy on the one hand, or to invent any of the documents which he professed to transcribe, extract, or abridge on the other. Therefore his copies may be always relied on as faithfully transcribed in substance.” Though the man of learned leisure has not yet appeared who can wade through these volumes and make us acquainted with the treasures they contain, yet it is true to say that no historian of Chester or of Cheshire can fulfil his purpose who does not either first-hand or second-hand (the former course being the better) derive a great deal of information from these industrious antiquarians of the seventeenth century. They have set an example which has been stimulating and fruitful, and it is only right that in a volume of this character generous and adequate expression should be given to the debt which we owe to them for the preservation of details and information which otherwise would have been irrevocably lost. They have left also in many of the churches in Chester and its neighbourhood many examples of their heraldic knowledge and skill in the memorials of deceased persons. Painted as these were on wood, many have disappeared; those that are still left are full of interest. May we not class these four Randle Holmes as amongst Chester’s most notable worthies?

THE CHESTER MYSTERY PLAYS

By Joseph C. Bridge, M.A., Mus. Doc. Oxon. et Dunelm., F.S.A.

_Introduction._

There is no more interesting study in our early literature than the Mystery Plays which were once so popular throughout the length and breadth of England. It may be well to premise that their proper title is “Miracle” Plays, and no early writer ever alludes to them under any other name; nor was there in this country any difference between “Miracle” and “Mystery,” as stated by some authorities. But custom has now definitely coupled the latter title with those early dramatic efforts of our forefathers, and it will be used in these pages.

Excluding odd ones, four great series of plays have come down to us, viz. those of York, Wakefield, Chester, and Coventry, and each place probably served as a centre of dramatic influence. While York acted as a stimulus to Wakefield itself and Newcastle, so Chester supported the dramatic efforts from Kendal in the north to Shrewsbury in the south and Dublin in the west.

Each series of plays possesses distinct characteristics, and, happily, Chester can claim that her plays have in them “less to offend and a more reverential tone” than many others, for it is useless to disguise the fact that many readers object to these plays as seeming to treat religious subjects with levity. But with a little reflection we shall see that these plays do not deserve such condemnation if judged from the right standpoint, and that standpoint is assuredly _not_ the twentieth century. We must throw ourselves back five centuries at least if we are to obtain a right focus. From the time of St. Paul, God’s Word has been preached in divers ways and by divers methods, and we must not be surprised if the mediæval preacher was shrewd enough to use the dramatic instincts of the people as distributing media of religious knowledge.[6]

[6] Milton thought of writing _Paradise Lost_ as a Mystery Play, but changed his mind.