cill. Below the rail is a horizontal panel of pierced tracery, 7 inches

deep; and, below, panels with blind tracery in the heads to the depth of 7½ inches. What is left of the parclose in the south aisle extends over a length of 12 ft. 11 in., with an interval of 2 ft. 7¼ in. for the entrance. It consists of eight rectagonal compartments, and stands 4 ft. 3 in. high, the buttressed muntins being likewise cut off to the level of the cill. Both these parcloses are Perpendicular, and exhibit a much more refined standard of execution than does the rood-screen.

Smalley.—The mediæval church was destroyed in 1722, but in 1855, on the removal of the gallery in the modern building, there was discovered an ancient beam “enriched with deep, hollow chamfers,” in which pateras of Gothic leafage and other ornaments “were carved at intervals of about eighteen inches.” It was apparently of about the date 1460. This may have been only an unusually elaborate roof-principal; but, on the other hand, it might have been the old rood-beam or one of the timbers from the rood-loft or screen.

Spondon.—The rood-loft must have been of the same extent as the nave’s width, 23 ft. 2 in. A disastrous “beautifying” process in 1826–7, besides other irreparable damage, bodily removed the fifteenth century oak rood-screen which stood across the chancel arch opening of 15 ft. 2½ in. At the same time the steps of the rood-stair were cut away to make room for the flue-pipe of a stove. The entrance remains in the south-east corner of the north aisle. The doorway is 2 feet wide, and measures 6 ft. 10 in. in height to the apex of the depressed ogee of the door-head.

Staveley.—In 1710, Francis Bassano noted at the east end of the nave, above a family pew, “a large molding, being (the) upper beam of ye rood-loft, and on (the) wood is cut ye paternal coat armour of Frecheville (azure, a bend between six escallops, argent) held by an angel on his breast.” Further details are contained in a letter, dated October, 1816, which states that “the rood-loft at Staveley, which remained pretty entire since the Reformation, was taken down about twenty-five years ago”—which would have been _circa_ 1790—“to let more light into the church.”

Sudbury.—Two fragments of carving, from the former rood-screen, were described in 1877 as having then been recently affixed to the church chest.

Tideswell.—In 1845, Sir Stephen Glynne noted that “between the nave and chancel is a good wood screen of Perpendicular character.” It was “repaired” in 1882–3, the chisellings in the responds of the chancel arch furnishing the outline of the original form of the vanished upper portion. The lower part has been declared to be almost as ancient as the church itself; but for the rest, it has been so much altered and renovated that it is doubtful whether the gates or any considerable portion of the upper half of the screen as now existing is really authentic. The slender build of the screen has led to the supposition that it cannot have been designed at the outset to carry a rood-loft. That such, however, was added subsequently is clear from the existence of the rood-stair, which, though since removed, was standing in 1824. Its site was the western side of the north corner of the chancel arch. It must have been a structure unusually conspicuous compared with others built for the same purpose. It was of stone, and occupied a space six feet square. The entrance was from the south, and gave access to a small newel staircase, the doorway measuring about 4 ft. 2 in. in height by 22 inches in width. Some remains of it, lying in the vicarage garden, were identified by the late Rev. Prebendary Andrew, and described by him in the fifth volume of the _Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society_ (published in 1883). What the ancient rood-loft was like is not recorded. In the year 1724 a faculty was obtained by one Samuel Eccles to take down an old loft (whether the mediæval rood-loft or not it is impossible to tell) then existing over the chancel, and to transfer it to the tower for the use and advantage of the singers; and at the same time to erect a loft for his own use over the entry into the chancel. The transported loft is believed to have occupied its western position until about 1820, when it was removed altogether, a new gallery being erected in its room. Beside the rood-screen itself, wooden parcloses must have divided the chantry chapels in the transepts from the nave and from the rest of the church. At any rate a quantity of pieces of ancient wood-carving were to be seen loose about the church in 1824, and “cart loads” of them are said to have been removed in 1825 on the occasion of the re-pewing of the building. A subsequent vicar, Rev. Prebendary Andrew (1864–1900), set to work to restore as much as he could. Some pieces of woodwork he rescued from various misuses within the church, others from private possession in the parish. A length of carving that had been cut in two and turned into bookstands, as well as two fragments of screenwork, open tracery of great delicacy and beauty, he set up in the Lady Chapel; while a third piece of tracery-work he placed in the middle compartment of the communion table. “The parclose of the De Bower chapel has recently”—it was written in 1877—“been restored in exactly the same position that it previously occupied.”

Weston-on-Trent.—Rev. Dr. Cox in 1879 remarked on “the north aisle being screened off by a parclose from the rest of the church.” The length of the ancient rood-loft must have been the same as the width of the nave, 18 ft. 5 in.

Wilne.—The rood-screen which occupies the chancel arch is of simple Perpendicular workmanship. It is 18 ft. 4 in. long by 7 ft. 9 in. high. There are ten bays, five on either side, arched. The lintel is plain, without any kind of ornamentation applied, and there are no gates. A small stone staircase, now walled up, to southwards of the chancel arch, commemorates the entrance into the ancient rood-loft.

Youlgreave.—The churchwardens’ accounts, though not dating back earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century, contain some interesting particulars about the rood-screen. In 1604, “the chancel gates were boarded over,” and later in the same year occurs an item “for making the partition betwixt the church and the chancell.” In 1661, a small sum was paid “for 3 hinges for ye chancell gates,” which is evidence that the rood-screen, howsoever sadly disfigured, with its doors, was yet in existence at the above date. “There is now”—it was written in 1877—“no screen across the chancel arch, though it is in contemplation to replace one, modelled on the mutilated remains of the lower part of the old one, of Perpendicular design, which were removed at the time of the ‘restoration’ (of 1869–73, by Mr. R. Norman Shaw), but have been carefully preserved.” At about the end of the eighteenth century, the fine old parclose erected round the eastern part of the south aisle was removed.

Finally, I desire, as in duty bound, to acknowledge my obligations to the Rev. Dr. Cox, whose monumental work on _The Churches of Derbyshire_ has been of inestimable service to me; to various writers, from whom I have borrowed, in _The Reliquary_ and in the _Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society_; to Rev. W. W. M. Kennedy for important particulars concerning diocesan visitations; to Arthur Cox, Esq., of Spondon Hall, for valuable introductions; and, lastly, to all those clergy who have kindly allowed me to take photographs and measurements in the churches committed to their charge.

PLANS OF THE PEAK FOREST

By Rev. J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.

Derbyshire is fortunate in possessing a considerable number of plans of the great tract of the Forest of the Peak, one of which is of late Elizabethan date, and most of the remainder of the days of Charles I. They are in safe custody in that great national storehouse in Chancery Lane termed the Public Record Office. So far as we are aware, they have never hitherto attracted the attention of any students of Derbyshire history, or of any topographical writers. At all events, nothing has hitherto been printed about them, although in many ways they are of superlative interest.

George, Earl of Shrewsbury, the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, so celebrated in history as the custodian of Mary Queen of Scots, was taken again into the favour of Queen Elizabeth in his old age in 1587; he died in 1590. Some time between these two dates the Earl was permitted to purchase a portion of the Longdendale district of the Peak Forest, which was formally disafforested for the purpose. In connection with this purchase, a large quaint map of the whole of the three great divisions of the forest was prepared, on which are marked large parallelograms, painted vermilion, where there were pasturage rights. On the Ashop and Edale section of the forest four contiguous large patches of vermilion are shown; these are lettered “quenes farmes in Ashop and Edall.” Immediately to the west of these is another large parallelogram, divided into five by parallel lines, and by the side of this is “Edall the Quenes ma^{tes} Farmes are devided into Fyve vacaries.” To the north of these pasturage grounds there are large uncoloured spaces marked “Greate Waste,” and the same term is repeated on a smaller patch to the south-east.

The section on the north-west of this plan, termed Longdendale, has “Greate Waste” marked in various places over by far the greater portion of the area. There is, however, a small vermilion parallelogram between the towns of Glossop and Hayfield, the herbage of which pertained to the Earl of Shrewsbury. A larger space in this section of the forest is marked “The Herbage of Chynley, otherwise called Maidstonfeld. Godfrey Bradshawe and others farm’s thereof.”

The third or southern section of the forest, called the Champion or Champayne, has fully half of its area coloured red in somewhat irregular patches. The largest space in the centre is lettered “The Severalles of the Champyon,” and within this is a smaller area termed “The Inner Severalles.” Attached to the larger space at different angles are other areas marked “Halsted Harbage,” “Grene,” “Ferfeld Harbage,” “Tyddeswall Harbage,” and “The Herbage of Boughtedge, Tenauntes and Fermers thereof, viz.: Thomas Lee, Henry Bagshawe, and George Thornehill.” There are also two nearly adjacent small patches of which the names are not clear.

It thus becomes evident that it was only the townships or hamlets of the Champayne division of the forest which had any claim to general pasturage rights.

The highly interesting feature of this late Elizabethan plan is the series of little outline pictures illustrative of the buildings of the chief places within the forest district. Each of these is here given in exact outline after the original, except that there is a dash of colour on the roofs of all the buildings, which throws them into better relief. Interesting as these are from an art point of view, they have to be accepted with some caution as accurate in a topographical sense. It is not, for instance, possible to imagine but that the sketch of the Peak Castle was somewhat imaginary; nor can the sketches of some of the churches be made to fit with the extant fabrics. It should also be remarked that this plan is a good deal blemished in places by having been roughly divided into three parts, with the result that several fragments are now missing, and the sketches of Castleton and Hayfield are somewhat mutilated.[77]

[77] When the list of the Duchy of Lancaster Maps and Plans was recently drawn up and printed at the Public Record Office, the fact that these three portions belonged to the same map was not recognised; they are to be found under the respective numbers 7, 37, and 44.

The view of Glossop may certainly be taken to prove that the old town had its houses arranged in irregular blocks round the large church as a centre (1). The parish church of Glossop was completely rebuilt between 1831 and 1853; it is not, therefore, possible to say how far the outline in the map is accurate. It is, however, fair to assume, with regard to the churches as well as the houses, that the artist made some effort to represent the reality, or otherwise the series of little pictures would hardly have had so great a variety.

With regard to Hayfield church, the like difficulty arises, for the old building was demolished in 1836; and here again it is difficult to believe that the delineator drew this form of a church out of his own imagination (2). In this case a portion of the hamlet on the left-hand side has been torn off.

The third pictured town in this division is Mellor, and in this instance, too, the church was entirely rebuilt at the beginning of last century, save for the western tower (3). A proof is here afforded of some measure of accuracy, for in this case the western tower is represented in its right place, and not as rising from the centre of the building, as shown in the cases of Glossop and Hayfield. There are, also, traces at the top of Mellor tower of its having formerly supported a small spire, as is here shown.

In the second division of the forest, viz., that of Ashop and Edale, there are two of these township pictures, viz., Castleton and Hope. Castleton is, unfortunately, mutilated; the parts to the left hand of the castle are missing. As to Peak Castle, it is fairly obvious that some effort, however poor, has been made to reproduce the actual buildings (4). The old Norman keep of the time of Henry II. is evidently intended to be shown in the centre of the background. The fore-part shows the later substantial enclosing of the inner bailey, probably of Edwardian date, most of which has long ago disappeared. Perhaps the most interesting detail of this, the oldest picture of the celebrated fortress, is the building within the bailey which is surmounted by a cross, and is, therefore, clearly a detached chapel. There are two or three entries in the record history of the Peak Castle which have not yet been made public, which refer to this chapel as in use in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As to the church in the town below, it is difficult to offer any conjecture as to how the drawing can coincide with the present remains of the ancient church. The draftsman seems to have had very exaggerated ideas as to the size of the south porch.

With regard to the picture of Hope, little more can be said than that here again it is very difficult to fit in this outline drawing with the fabric of the church as it now exists, except that the western tower still bears a low broached spire (5).

The third, or Champayne, division of the forest has pictures of four towns, viz., those of Chapel-en-le-Frith, Fairfield, Wormhill, and Tideswell.

The various buildings that are grouped round the large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith are sufficient to show that this old market town was a place of some importance (6). In this case the church was rebuilt throughout in the early part of last century, and there is very little of historical record or other remains to tell us anything as to its original proportions. There is, however, one gruesome record which apparently shows that its size was considerably greater than that of its successor; for in 1648 fifteen hundred prisoners of the Scottish army defeated at Preston were confined within its walls when being marched to London. They were kept in the church for over a fortnight, and it is not surprising to learn that upwards of fifty died within its walls. The outline drawing seems to suggest that the church was of cruciform shape, with a tower and spire in the centre. The only indication of a window is the large circular one of the south transept over the porch; it is exceedingly unlikely that the draftsman produced such a window as this from his own imagination.

The destruction of the old churches in the Peak district was sadly extensive about a hundred years ago. Another of the victims of the then prevalent idea of running up a snug, cheap building, when the old fabric had got into a state of dilapidation, was the church of Fairfield, near Buxton (7). It was rebuilt in the years 1838–9, and very little is known as to its original condition.

Wormhill, again, suffered after a like fashion, though at a later date (8). The present church was rebuilt in 1863–4.

Tideswell is, perhaps, the most puzzling of all these pictures. Those who know the singularly fine church of fourteenth century date, with large chancel, transepts, double-aisled nave, and western tower, will find it impossible to reconcile the outlined drawing with the church as it really exists (9).

We now come to the consideration of a considerably later series of maps, which are done roughly to scale, of various townships within the Peak forest. Derbyshire is exceptionally fortunate in having such a series of carefully-preserved early plans. A list of the records of the Duchy of Lancaster preserved at the Public Record Office was printed in 1901. One section of this list is headed, “Maps and Plans”; they consist principally of those made in the elucidation of the claims of parties in disputes pending in the Court of the Duchy Chamber. The three to which we have just referred are of the end of Elizabeth’s reign, but otherwise they are almost entirely of various seventeenth century dates. There are 116 items calendared as maps and plans at the Public Record Office, of which Derbyshire has a large share, viz., 32, or more than a quarter of the whole number. The reason for the making of all these Derbyshire plans, save the three already mentioned, was the enclosing or disafforesting of the Peak.

During the reign of Charles I. many unhappy efforts were made to raise funds for the Crown by re-establishing the almost extinct forest courts. This was chiefly the work of Noy, the King’s Attorney-General, styled by Carlyle “that invincible heap of learned rubbish.” The revival of these courts, with all their costly and obsolete formalities, accompanied by the imposition of absurdly heavy fines, created bitter resentment wherever it was carried out, as in Surrey, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire, and was, beyond doubt, one of the causes that led to the Commonwealth trouble. In other parts of England where there were royal forests, after the reimposition of forest law had been so strenuously resisted, another line of action was adopted. Attempts were made, occasionally with success, to secure money for the Crown by the enclosure of forests, the Crown claiming a half, or thereabouts, of the land, and selling them as soon as a title was gained. This action led to continuous disturbance in Duffield, in the south of Derbyshire, where the resistance made to enclosure by the commoners and tenants was eventually successful.

In the Peak, however, the destruction done to the crops by the small remnant of the once vast herds of red deer was so persistent that the commoners and others were only too ready to assent to any just scheme of disafforesting. In 1635, various of the landowners and commoners of the Peak petitioned the King, complaining of the severity, trouble, and rigour of the forest laws, and praying that the deer, which were still in sufficient numbers to do no small damage to the crops within the forest and its purlieus, might be destroyed, and asking to be allowed to compound by enclosing and improving the same. Thereupon a commission of enquiry was issued, and two juries were empanelled, with surveyors to assist them. The first jury viewed the whole forest and its purlieus, and presented that the King might improve and enclose one moiety in consideration of his rights, and that the other moiety should be enclosed by the tenants, commoners and freeholders. The second jury was empanelled to specially consider the case of the towns within the purlieus, and they presented that the King, in view of the largeness of the commons belonging to the towns of Chelmorton, Flagg, Taddington, and Priestcliffe, might reasonably have for improvement and enclosure one-third, and the remaining two-thirds for the commoners and freeholders. A like division was to be adopted in several parts within the forest. After some delay the commons were measured, and surveys made of the different townships, dividing the land into three sorts—best, middle, and worst, and the King’s share in each was staked, and maps showing the results were drafted. The surveys were not completed until 1640, and when all the preliminaries had been adjusted, the King caused all the deer to be destroyed or removed, and from that date onwards red deer were unknown within the High Peak. The extirpation of the deer was, however, almost immediately followed by the beginning of those “troublous times” which preceded the outbreak of the Civil War. The whole of the proceedings towards enclosure fell into abeyance. Soon after the restoration of the monarchy, much discussion arose as to the revival of these projects, but it was not until 1674 that the proposals for disafforesting the open or waste portions of the Peak Forest, and enclosing the portions that were capable of cultivation or good for pasture, were completed. The Commissioners appointed for this purpose were Sir John Gell, Sir John Cassy, and fifteen others, including such well-known Peak names as Bagshawe, Eyre, and Shallcross. The third portion assigned absolutely to the Crown was almost immediately granted by letters patent to Thomas Eyre, of Gray’s Inn, who speedily entered upon and enclosed the same, notwithstanding certain futile opposition in the duchy court.

It must have been a great assistance to the labours of these commissioners to find that the maps of the time of Charles I., showing the exact measurements and the three sorts of land, were still extant. These maps, though of rough execution, are of the highest interest.[78]

[78] The following are the Record Office numbers of the maps of Charles I.’s time:—13, Taddington and Priestcliffe; 14, 17, 22, 72, Bowden Middlecale, etc.; 15, Castleton Commons; 18, Wormhill Commons; 19 and 107, Bradwell; 20, Mellor Moor and Commons; 23 and 79, Bowden Chapel; 38, Fairfield; 39, Hope; 40, Monyash; 89, Flagg and Chelmorton. There are also three of Charles II. date, viz.:—16, Hope, wastes and commons; 75, Taddington; and 83, Bowden Middlecale.

There are small, rudely-drawn and occasionally coloured outlines of churches and houses on most of these maps. They are of a decidedly inferior character to those on the large Elizabethan survey, but they are still of some value. We give here two facsimiles of drawings of Mellor church, and one of Fairfield (10). Those of Mellor are sufficient to show that there was an aisled nave and a lower chancel in addition to the surviving western tower. The tower appears to have lost its low spire between the days of Elizabeth and Charles I. The drawing of Fairfield seems to give a certain rough idea of what the old church was like.

Occasionally the drawings on these plans, to denote the situation of the more important halls or manor houses, are sufficient to give a crude notion of the actual building. This is rather specially the case with the Ridge Hall; it was a chief seat of the prolific Bagshawe family, on the higher slopes of the hills to the west of Chapel-en-le-Frith, which we know they occupied as early as the reign of Edward II. (11). This hall was rebuilt on a large gabled scale in the later Tudor or Elizabethan days. The two drawings here reproduced are from maps of the respective reigns of Charles I. and Charles II.; in the latter case the artist has made some endeavour to represent the trees by which the hall was surrounded.

The drawing of Bradshawe Hall, from a plan of 1640, is almost ludicrous from its lack of resemblance to the real building, but seems to be worth giving from its quaintness.

On one of the later maps the houses are drawn with more precision; but, unfortunately, the names are not attached to some of the best examples (in Mellor township), of which we here give two reproductions (12). The very old set of lime-kilns at Dove Holes are most quaintly delineated on three of the surveys.

By far the most interesting feature of these maps, in the eyes at least of an antiquary, are the numerous instances in which crosses are marked. The remains of crosses and cross stumps on these Derbyshire moors have been casually noticed from time to time by cursory writers. In a paper contributed to the _Reliquary_ many years ago, when under the editorship of Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, it was asserted with some confidence that these crosses marked out the three great divisions or wards of the Forest of Peak. This was a natural kind of guess to make, but investigation immediately proved that such a supposition was quite baseless. With the possible solitary exception of the cross on the old pack-horse track from the head of Edale into Hayfield, not one of these crosses has any possible connection with forest bounds. Nor are they, as has been conjectured by another writer, terminal stones of monastic lands, for we know with a fair amount of accuracy the directions in which such lands lay, and in no one case do these crosses correspond with such limits. It is also quite obvious that for the most part these Peak crosses cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be described as mere wayside crosses, either to mark some special incident or tragedy, or to excite the Christian devotion of the wayfarer; and this for the simple reason that the majority of the crosses do not appear to have been on any frequented track of either the remote or nearer past. Nor is it possible to conceive, by those who have visited any number of them, that they could have been utilized for the purposes of guiding or general direction.

It is, of course, far easier to say what they were not, than to arrive at any true solution as to what was their general object or design. The solution that so far seems the most probable has already been elsewhere succinctly stated without awakening adverse criticism.[79] All those crosses that have been hitherto identified by myself and friends during three rambles with the old plans in our hands in three successive years, have been on important boundary lines. I believe almost the whole of them are pre-Norman, and I am at present strongly inclined to believe that they mark the setting out of ecclesiastical divisions or parishes, or parochial chapelries, soon after the reconversion of England had become an established fact, and when Christianity, under the ordering of Theodore and Wilfrid, was becoming definitely organised and ceasing to be mere scattered groups of missionary stations. There are reasons which are too long for statement here why such a planning out was probably accomplished in Derbyshire at an early date. It is obvious that if ecclesiastical bounds were to be marked out in a comparatively wild and treeless district, something artificial would be needed in far greater abundance than in ordinary districts, where large trees, river banks, ancient roads or lands pertaining to particular holders, could readily be named and utilized for boundary purposes.

[79] See articles in the _Athenæum_ for July 9th, 1904; June 24th, 1905; and September 8th, 1906.

The supposition that these crosses are of a township or parish boundary character is much strengthened by the frequency of their occurrence in the exact places where there are proofs of fairly early cultivation, and where there were rather intricate intersections of such divisions.

Perhaps the most interesting of these seventeenth century plans is the one which includes a considerable area, and has at the head the following descriptive title, written in a straggling hand and signed by the two surveyors:—

“The Mappe of the Wastes and Commons in Bowdon le Cappell, Fairefield, Ferneleigh, Shalcross and Mellor as they are eaqually devided into two eaqual parts quantity and qualitie considered and meas’^{ed} by us Thomas Hibbart and Samuel Barton two Survayors being Sworne upon our Oathes to that purpose by the Commissioners and delivered up unto the saide Commissioners the eight daye of October 1640

“By us Tho: Hibbart

“Sa: Barton.”

On another part of the map is written:

Measured and divided by a Scale of fortie in the Inch.

The part of this map descriptive of the wastes and commons of Mellor, which contained 356 acres, and which it was proposed to divide equally between the King and the tenants, is marked with several crosses. At the extreme north of the tenants’ portion is a curiously designed landmark, here termed “Arnfeelde Poule” (13). This outline drawing has the appearance of a pole or slender shaft affixed to the top of a somewhat elaborate cross base. In other maps the same boundary is outlined after different fashions, two of which are here reproduced. From one of these, having a cross on the summit, it may be concluded that it originally had that form. The name Arnfield or Armfield is not now in any way known in the district, but one of the six roads or lanes which meet at this point is still called Pole Lane. There is no doubt that it took its name from one Robert Armfield, whose house and land are figured on another survey. The place is now known as Jordanwall Nook, and Jordan was the name of another tenant in adjoining lands. This pole or cross is described in a survey of 1695 as parting the hamlets of Whittle, Thornsett, and Mellor. At this spot, at the junction of two of the roads, there is a large piece of boulder stone, that has been roughly hewn, measuring 37 in. by 25 in., and over the stone wall is another considerable fragment. These are probably the remains of the base of Armfield pole or cross when it was broken up. Other crosses marked on the Mellor section of the 1640 map are respectively designated “the Birgwerd Crosse,” “the Mislne Crosse,” and “the Stafforde Crosse,” all of them on boundaries.

The extreme north-west angle of the Mellor division has an outline drawing, here reproduced, lettered “The two standing stones,” which are elsewhere called “the Maiden Stones” (14). This pair of stones, still to be seen, stand at an important boundary point, about 1,200 feet high, where the townships of Ludworth, Chisworth, Mellor, and Rowarth meet. At the angle of Ludworth Moor, where these remarkable stones are to be found, there is no road near, but merely an almost disused track. For more than a century at least these stones have been known by the name of “Robin Hood Picking Rods”; but such a name was obviously unknown in the seventeenth century, as it occurs in none of these old surveys. The title “Maidenstones” is one of peculiar interest to any antiquary who has given attention to early earthworks, but it is too intricate a subject to be here discussed. On a 1695 survey, a boundary mark called “The Whyte Maiden” is marked a short distance from the Standing Stones. These two circular pillar stones stand in round socket holes, 12 in. apart, in a great stone about 80 in. long by 49 in. broad. The taller of the two stands 45 in. above the base, and has a girth at the bottom of 59½ in.; the shorter one stands only 30 in. high, but has a girth of 67 in. They have been pulled out of their sockets more than once in the past century, and are both mutilated. Part of the top of the shorter one (27 in. long) is built into an adjacent wall (15). Judging from the analogy of the two Bow Stones, five miles off to the north just across the Cheshire border, they originally had filleted heads of Saxon workmanship. They may be compared with a small filleted Saxon pillar in the porch of Bakewell Church, and another taller one at Clulow, and more especially with the Saxon shaft in the grounds of a private house at Fernilee which now supports a sundial.

Various more or less wild theories have been enunciated with regard to closely adjacent twin pillar stones of this character, of which several examples survive; they have sometimes been pronounced to be of Roman origin, whilst others have claimed them as pertaining to Phœnician art and of Phallic design. It must here suffice to ask our readers, who may not have given particular attention to the subject, to believe that they are beyond doubt of Saxon construction and date. When the sites of all such twin-stones have been carefully investigated, it will probably be established that they have some particular connection with intricate boundaries, and possibly with the junction of two separate ecclesiastical jurisdictions.

There are two other sites in the Peak district marked on these early plans where a pair of stones, each surmounted by a cross, is figured, neither of which have yet been identified. One of these is also on the northern edge of the Mellor Commons, the Birgwurd cross, the outline of which is here given.

Following the track from these Standing Stones due east for exactly a mile, at the precise spot where the old track crosses the boundary between Rowarth and Charlesworth townships, is the large fragment of the base of an old cross which has at a later date been used as a direction stone. Pursuing the same boundary line for half a mile further in a south-easterly direction, the stone long known as the Abbot’s Chair, and thus marked on the ordnance maps, is reached. Though a wrong and fanciful name, it has been thus described for more than two and a half centuries. On the 1640 survey it is styled “Abots Chere” (16). This stone measures 37 in. by 24 in., and stands 24 in. high; it is hollowed out to a width of about 17 in., with three of the sides raised 5 in., so as to form a kind of rough chair with a low back and sides. Closer examination shows that the hollow is really an old socket, presumably for a large cross, one side of which has been split off by the action of frost or human violence. The road that passes near it from the north to Hayfield is called Monks Road. It was in this division (Longdendale) of the Peak Forest that the Abbot of Basingwork had considerable rights and a large grange, and possibly this stone may have been thus mutilated and obtained its present name in pre-Reformation days. It is significant that the “chair” stands on the exact spot where the boundary is suddenly deflected at a right angle; and at a distance of 200 feet from the chair-stone, on the other side of the Monks Road, on the spot where the boundary resumes a south-easterly direction, is the perfect stump of another cross. This is a well-cut base, and obviously mediæval or after the Norman Conquest

On the high ground in Cheshire, very near the Derbyshire boundary, is a stone that goes by the name of “Pym’s Chair.” This stone, like the “Abbot’s Chair,” Derbyshire, proved on examination to be the base of a large early cross; one of the sides of the squared socket having been broken away, gives it the appearance of a low, rude chair. It bears the initials P C in large capitals, which were probably cut in the seventeenth century when some survey was made. An obvious idea, locally accepted, makes the initials stand for Pym’s Chair. The name Pym is fairly common both in Cheshire and Derbyshire. It is curious to note that a few miles off in the latter county, a little beyond Edale Head Cross, another “Pym’s Chair” is marked on the ordnance map in a desolate piece of moorland not yet investigated.

The Edale Head Cross is the best known of those in the Peak district, for it stands by the old British trackway or pass from Hayfield over Kinder into the Edale Valley. It stands at the highest point (1,750 feet) of this once much used pack-horse route. This cross, which now stands fifty-seven inches out of the ground, has now no base, and seems to have been moved more than once. The head is a Latin cross, and incised within it, on the side towards the track, are lines forming another cross, and within this, “I G 1610.” This refers to a survey of parts of the Peak Forest begun in 1610, but never completed; John Gell was one of the commissioners. This particular cross, which is of far older date than the time of James I., can claim to be a forest as well as a parochial boundary, for near this spot the three forest wards of Longdendale, of Ashop and Edale, and of the Campana or Champion, met. This cross is still sometimes known as the Champion Cross, and those who have not known that Champion was only an old variant for the Champagne or open grazing district of the Peak, have been silly enough to invent would-be knightly legends and ballads in comparatively modern days to account for the title.

Lack of space altogether prohibits any complete following up of the considerable number of crosses on these seventeenth century plans, the sites of which have been already investigated. It is hoped that in the course of a few years it may be possible to produce an archæological map of the whole district, upon which the remains of crosses may be exactly defined, and then will be the time for coming to more mature conclusions as to their general object and date. Two others, however, may be now named. At a point on the verge of Abney Moor, 1,200 feet above the sea level, about a mile to the south-east of Bradwell, where the townships of Abney, Hazelbadge, and Bradwell converge, the maps mark a cross styled Robin’s or Robin Hood’s Cross. After some search we found the early rough base stone, showing half of a squared socket, protruding from the bottom of a well-built stone wall, close to a stile leading into an old roadway.

“The Martine Syde Crosse” appears on more than one of the old plans, not far from a large farmstead or hall still known as Martin Side, at an elevation of 1,100 feet above the valley of Chapel-en-le-Frith (17). About a quarter of a mile beyond the hall on the roadside towards Dove Holes, we noted the stump of a cross. The height of this stump or squared base was 20 in., and it measured at the top 28 in. by 26½ in. In the centre was an empty shaft socket 11 in. by 9 in., and 8 in. deep. From the rough character of this base stone, and from the shape of the socket, it may fairly be assumed that it is of pre-Norman date. A small channel cut from the edge of the socket to an angle of the base stone seemed to be original, and may possibly have served as a pointer to the next boundary stone.

One other point remains to be noted in these somewhat desultory remarks on the old surveys. In several places occur lines marked “Forest Wall.” This was the stone wall of a very considerable circuit that enclosed most of the Campana or Champagne district of the Peak Forest, where the feeding for the King’s game of deer was the best. It was not a high park wall to keep the deer in, but a comparatively low one, with a dyke. Its object was to prevent sheep or cattle that might be agisted within the forest from trespassing on the parts particularly serviceable as pasturing ground for the often hardly tried deer; but it had to be low enough to allow hinds and fawns, as well as harts, readily to leap it when desirous of roaming further afield. It is quite possible to trace in certain places the building of this unmortared forest wall, which is constructed in a decidedly superior fashion to other and later wall fences. One of the best places in which to note it is on the lofty ridge that separates Edale from Castleton dale. In the midst of this there is a pass and gateway in the forest wall, called Ludgate in the old plans.

In June, 1561, Queen Elizabeth issued a commission of enquiry as to the condition of Peak Castle and Forest. The commissioners were instructed, among other matters:

“To view the height of one wall erected and made in or about one parcell of one pasture called the Champion within our saide foreste, how brode and depe the Dike in and about the same wall is, whether the same dike be drye or standinge with water for the most parte of the yere, pasture notwithstandinge the said walle and dike, and whether the said wall and dyke be noisome or hurtefull to or for our deare and game there, and to thinderance of the grasse for our said deare, or be better for the cherisshinge of our said game and deare there or not.”

OLD COUNTRY LIFE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

By Sir George Reresby Sitwell, Bart., F.S.A.

The charm of country life, as we know it in England, lies almost as much in old associations as in scenery and sport. An ancient hall without its records is a body without a soul, and can never be fully enjoyed until one has learnt something of the men and women whom it has sheltered in the past—of their lives and manners, their love affairs, their wisdom, and their follies; how the oak furniture gave way to walnut, and the walnut to mahogany; how they laid out the gardens, raised the terrace, clipped the hedges, and planted the avenue. Such reflections have committed me to a task which has proved heavier than I desired or anticipated. Indeed, I should never have persevered with it had I not early come under the influence which an old house so often exercises upon those who live under its roof; sometimes for evil, as when a family inheritance of ill-health depends upon faulty drainage or a waterlogged soil; sometimes as a spur to ambition, an incentive to effort, or a liberal education in art.

My father died when I was two years old, and at the time I first went to school we used to spend but a few months in the summer at our old home at Renishaw, in Derbyshire. The building is of great size, giving an impression of past wealth and power, the “olde richesse” which Chaucer tells us is the foundation of “genterye,” and the Jacobean plaster work and stone-tiled roof bear witness to its antiquity. Most that was interesting within its walls had been swept away in 1849, when the failure of the Sheffield Bank completed the wreck of my grandfather’s affairs. The library, a gradual growth of three hundred years, and the collection of Civil War pamphlets, had been scattered abroad, and little of the original furniture remained except the tapestries, pictures and china, and a few old cabinets of tortoiseshell, rosewood, or ebony. Of family history, absolutely nothing had come down to us but the tradition that our ancestors had lived there since the reign of Elizabeth, and a story concerning a portrait of the “Boy in red” (his name was forgotten), who had died by drowning, and whose ghost was supposed to haunt the house. Yet there was enough left to excite interest and to provoke enquiry. I remember finding, on one of my holiday visits, amongst the old books in the hall, a Greek grammar of the days when Shakespeare was at school, and in it my own name, written by an earlier George Sitwell just three hundred years before. The lumber room, with its Georgian panelling and arched window looking out upon the staircase, had always excited my curiosity, and being allowed to poke about in it on rainy days, I came upon many strange and dusty relics of the past, the flotsam and jetsam which had stranded there during several generations—old portraits and brocaded dresses, portfolios of eighteenth century prints, the wreck of a machine for perpetual motion upon which somebody was said to have wasted twenty years of his life, a collection of minerals (two compartments were labelled “Rubies” and “Emeralds,” but the specimens were not so large as one could have wished), flint lock guns, rapiers and swords, and a spring gun which must have been a real terror to poachers, writing desks with letters and little treasures still stowed away in them, and, most precious of all, a few old chests, heaped up with manuscripts, parchments, and books. Within these, in the utmost confusion, lay rentals, subsidy rolls, estate accounts, and household books of the seventeenth century; bundles of old letters which had turned yellow with age or were fast falling into dust, inventories of furniture and linen, quaint little almanacs, bound in brown or red leather, and fastened with silken strings or clasps of brass; tradesmen’s bills of Queen Anne’s reign, with printed headlines or little engravings of shop signs and articles of merchandise; wills of all dates, from the fifteenth century onwards; and charters, many with fine seals attached to them, of six or seven hundred years ago, and preserved in little round or oblong boxes of thin oak, to which the original covering of black leather still clung in shreds and tatters.

Curiosity, and the rather wild hope of hitting upon autographs of Cromwell or Shakespeare, led me to examine these documents, and by the end of my second year at Eton I had unconsciously learnt to read them. After that time, my holidays were spent away from Renishaw, but before I went to Oxford I had occasional opportunities of following up the search amongst the numerous boxes of old manuscripts in the muniment room and elsewhere in the house, and thought myself rewarded by finding at one time impressions of the great seals of Elizabeth and James, an original grant of arms, or a letter-book of Charles the Second’s time; at another, King Richard’s charter to the Guild of Eckington, a “protection” from General Lord Fairfax, a household book begun in the year of the great plague, and a packet, sealed up two hundred years ago and never opened since, which proved to contain papers relating to fines, decimation, and sequestration under the Commonwealth. Still more interesting were the old letters written by various members of the family, and these I put carefully on one side, having already formed the idea of publishing a selection from them. In 1880, the year before I came of age, I commenced to write them out for the press in my leisure hours, and nine years later the work of printing my first volume was begun.

Amongst the many thousands of letters and papers at Renishaw, it was not my good fortune to discover any of real historical importance. This collection is not, of course, to be named in the same breath with the Paston letters, nor can it be compared, either in bulk or in interest, with the Rutland, the Talbot, or the Verney manuscripts. Yet even the correspondence of an undistinguished family may illustrate the history of earlier times. The letter of 1661 upon the causes of the Civil War, the account of the Whitehall plot to assassinate Oliver Cromwell, the printed summonses to appear before the Commonwealth Commissioners at York and Westminster, the series of Civil War fines, the Restoration letter-book, and the papers relating to Titus Oates and Sacheverell, supply some new facts, and are not without value. The order for the disbandment of the Derbyshire regiments in 1646, the bargain for supplying the sheriff’s table in 1652, the letter to the London Post Office authorities in 1664, the amusing description of a journey to Nottingham in a stage coach, the agreements between the gentlemen of Derbyshire in 1690 and 1736, the certified extract from the Hatfield Court Roll of 1337, and the account of a riot at Sheffield in 1756, have at least a local interest. One is glad to know what the country gentlemen of the time thought of the hypocrisy of Cromwell and the indolence of Charles the Second, of the Great Rebellion, the “Sickness,” the Popish Plot, the Revolution, the South Sea Bubble, and the invasions of 1715 and 1745; but, as would naturally be expected from a family correspondence extending over three hundred years, these letters are valuable rather as illustrating social life than as records of public events. Concerning housekeeping, education, methods of travelling, visits to London, and changes of fashion and manners, they have much to tell us; of battles and sieges, the fall of ministries, the prosaic virtues of the Georges, and the innate depravity of the Pretender, not too much.

Macaulay, in his famous third chapter, writes of the “gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman” of Charles the Second’s reign; a “man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter”; a man whose “ignorance and uncouthness, whose low tastes and gross phrases would, in our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian.” It is not easy to reconcile this description with the accounts given by contemporary observers. The portrait certainly does not err on the side of flattery, and those who are familiar with the printed literature and unpublished records of that age will ask themselves with amazement whether it can be a likeness. Macaulay asserts that the country squire of that period never visited London and never opened a book. Contemporary writers tell us that the latter was always riding post to London, and spending his substance there when he ought to have been occupied with the care of his estate, and that there were more private libraries in England than in any other country in Europe. Now it is possible, of course, that Macaulay knew more about the manners of that age than did the people who lived in it; but it is also possible that he wilfully and maliciously caricatured a class of men which he had political reasons for disliking. The “gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman” was usually a Tory.

It may readily be admitted that in the seventeenth century country gentlemen could understand the local dialect, for intercourse with their tenants and the servants and labourers in their employ would otherwise have been difficult or impossible, and that the accent of some Yorkshire squires might betray their origin as surely as that of some Irish gentlemen to-day. But life in the country is no proof of rusticity, and everyone who speaks with a brogue is not necessarily a carter. At the time of which Macaulay writes, civilization was not confined to London. York and Derby, to the inhabitants of those counties, were “town” in the same sense that London is to their descendants. London had not yet gathered to itself all the business, the fashion, and the culture of the nation, and country gentlemen still flocked in winter to cities which had once, perhaps, been the capitals of independent kingdoms, and were even now centres of society, of learning, and of government.

Neither in his virtues nor in his failings was the country gentleman of Charles the Second’s time such as Macaulay has portrayed him. His chief pleasure did not consist in drinking himself under the table with strong beer, for excess was the exception and not the rule with the class to which he belonged, and claret and sack, malago and rhenish, were the beverages he was accustomed to, both at his own house and at the taverns. His principal employment was not “handling pigs, and on market days making bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants”; on the contrary, though a good judge of horses and oxen, bullocks and swine, he left the stocking of the home farm and the sale of produce to the steward who collected his rents. He was better educated in Greek, Latin, logic, philosophy, divinity, and law, than the country gentlemen of to-day, and more competent to manage his own affairs; his taste (at least in building, furniture, gardening, and dress) was more refined; he was keenly interested in public events, and willing to make sacrifices for public objects; he took a kindly and helpful interest in his poorer neighbours; though proud of his position, was sensible enough to send his younger sons into trade; and though he could not “shoot flying,” had a proper feeling for sport. He was not free from the narrowness and want of charity, the aversion to change and to new ideas so often found in those who have made divinity and the classics the study of their lives, and religious bigotry was his besetting sin.

The letter-book of 1662–6 throws much light on the George Sitwell, of Renishaw, of that period. In appearance he was somewhat over the middle height, and, as became one already well advanced in middle age, rather neat and precise than fashionable in his dress. He wore a long periwig, scented with orange flower water, a slight moustache and tuft of hair upon his chin, a grey broad-brimmed beaver hat, large bands of white linen or cambric, a dark grey cloth coat of simple cut, unbuttoned at the waist, and with the wristbands turned back to show the soft linen cuffs underneath, a sword belt and sword, cavalier breeches open at the knee, riding tops of wrinkled buckskin, and square-toed shoes, with high heels, and tongues to protect the instep from the stirrup. On his arm he usually carried a horseman’s cloak.[80] His face, with its good forehead and eyes, strong and clear-cut nose, and well developed chin, gave an impression of force of character, tenacity of purpose, and good reasoning powers; and this impression was strengthened by his conversation, for even the most casual acquaintance could not fail to observe that he was a man who had been accustomed to think and act for himself, a man not only well educated, but gifted with a sound judgment and a marked talent for business.

[80] See the effigy upon his tomb in Eckington Church.

He was an old cavalier who had garrisoned his house for the King, and had suffered fines and “decimation” under the Commonwealth. In 1653 he had served as Sheriff, and had brought with him to Derby a chaplain after his own mind, who preached a dangerously clever Assize sermon on “Magistracie and Ministery, the State and the Church.” In a remarkable letter to Lord Frecheville, written in April, 1661, he expresses his opinion that the “late unhappy warr began about disputes in religion,” and was the work of “crafty, wicked men,” “proud, insolent, factious, seditious spirits,” who, finding it “best to fish in troubled waters,” had made “Godliness their gaine” and “religion the cloake to cover their intentions.” Such opinions were common enough at the Restoration, but it is startling to find at such a moment the expression of a belief that there had been faults on both sides, and that “flatterers of Soveraignty” were as much to blame as “flatterers of popularity.” “We have,” he adds, “a good, a gracious, and a prudent King, who, though he hath not had long, yet hath had grand experience of men, which makes him delight in and love those who are honest. He knows very well that those who were the greatest flatterers of his ffather of happy memory, divisers and promoters of monopolies and revivers of ould obsolete laws, therby to lay uncoth and strange burdens upon the people, proved his bitterest and worst enemies.” Justice between man and man the writer considered to be the “sinews of all Commonwealths,” and the laws of England the people’s “birthright” and their defence against “arbitrary power.” At the first outbreak of the Civil War he had signed two petitions inviting Charles to return from the North to meet his Parliament; and after the Restoration his chief desire in politics was to see “an Unity at home which will be a stronge Bullworke against our advarsaries.” But he was sorely troubled at the King’s neglect of business and the corruption of the public service.

Some account of his fortune and surroundings is a necessary prelude to a study of his manner of life. The Renishaw estates[81] produced at this time about £800 a year, and from other sources—chiefly from the iron furnaces and forges[82] upon his property, for like many of the greater and lesser landowners of that district he was interested in the iron trade—Mr. Sitwell received an amount at least equal to his agricultural rents. In order that the meaning of these figures may be understood, it is necessary to explain that in the seventeenth century the nation was poorer, manners were simpler and more primitive, and the value of money was not the same. The purchasing power of money, as most intelligent schoolboys are aware, was then, according to the usual estimate, four times what it is at present.

[81] These estates were considerable in the reign of Elizabeth. In the Derbyshire subsidy roll of 1596–7 Robert Sytwell is assessed at £20 a year in lands, John Curzon of Kedleston, the ancestor of Lord Scarsdale, at £21, William Cavendish, the first Earl of Devonshire, at £30, and John Manners of Haddon, the ancestor of the Duke of Rutland, at £40. Robert was sixth in descent from John Sitewell, who had a good estate at Eckington in the fourteenth century, as may be seen by a curious entry on the court roll for January, 1386–7.

[82] In the winter of 1661–2, 1,181 tons of sow iron valued at £6 a ton were made at these furnaces. This amount may be compared with the ten thousand tons which, according to Macaulay, represented the total annual output of iron in England at the close of Charles the Second’s reign.

The loyal Duke of Newcastle, who is said to have been the wealthiest subject in Great Britain at the outbreak of the Civil War, had a rental of only £22,000 a year. After the Restoration, the greatest estates in the kingdom hardly exceeded £20,000 a year, and in 1669 the average income of peers, taken one with another, was estimated at £3,000, of knights at £800, and of esquires at £400 a year. Mr. Sitwell, with a revenue of £1,600, was therefore possessed of a fortune above the common; he pleads guilty, in one of these letters, to having a “good estate,” and it is clear that in his own country he had the reputation of being a very wealthy man.

His house, “the capital messuage called Renishawe”—situated some six miles from Chesterfield, then a walled town and the “fayrest in all the Peake Cuntrie”[83]—had been rebuilt out of the savings of his minority shortly before his marriage in 1627. It stood (and yet stands, for the old hall is the centre of the new) on the summit of a rocky hill projecting into the vale of Rother, which here narrows to two or three hundred yards, and commanding fine views towards the north and south. On the latter side, a richly cultivated country, cut up into innumerable inclosures by hedgerows, and scattered with forest trees, formed a pleasing contrast to the wild and rugged moorland by which Eckington was approached; and beyond it, to the south and south-east, rose that beautiful ridge upon which Barlborough, Bolsover Castle, and Hardwick stand. The turrets and battlements of these three famous houses, towering up on the hillside above the groves and woodland which surrounded them, were all visible from Renishaw; and to the south-west the country rolled on in successive ridges of meadow land and common towards the faint blue line which marked the edge of the Chesterfield moors in the far distance. From the north front of the house, Mosborough Hall could be seen across the green valley through which the Mosbecke flows to its union with the Rother; on the left, beyond the church and village, lay the ancient woods and picturesque manor park of Eckington in a deep cleft between the hills, and to the right the view down the vale extended for many miles into Yorkshire. East of the house, the promontory upon which Renishaw stands was bare of planting, being sheltered by the higher ground beyond the river, and by the woods of Park Hall and Barlborough, and on the west a plantation of oaks and ashes protected it from the prevailing winds which sweep down from the distant moors.

[83] See the Derbyshire church notes of 1590 in Harleian MS. 6,592.

The river below the house was crossed by a highway, described in a letter of 1665 as a “great road from the West parts of Yorkshire towards London.” Approaching from the London side a traveller would catch his first glimpse of Renishaw from the point where the manors of Barlborough and Eckington meet. The building was three-storied and of stone, with a four-gabled front facing the east, and, towards the south, a battlemented hall between two projecting wings, of which the nearer was furnished with a great bow window. It was surrounded with orchards and walled gardens, and behind it a plantation of ancient trees formed an impressive background. Below lay the cliffs and rocky slope known as Broxhill, then unplanted, but deep in fern and gorse; in the left foreground a line of willows marked the winding course of the river as it approached the bridge, and to the right the ancient mill and water meadows beyond were framed in by the wooded steep of Birley Hill. Proceeding along the causeway (built as a protection against floods) and across the bridge, the road turned sharply to the right and to the left again, and so mounting the hill passed within fifty yards of the house.

This road, with its wayside oaks and strips of green, was not, as might be imagined, a quiet country lane, but a highway full of life and colour and movement. Here, past the court gates, and in full view from the first-floor windows of the house, flowed by throughout the summer months a ceaseless stream of traffic. The smocked carriers cracked their whips as they passed with their covered waggons and long train of patient packhorses, or shouted to the women passengers crouching behind them in the straw. Postboys with budgets of letters cantered by, sounding their horns as they turned down to the village. Beggars in rags, with their little bundles carried upon staves across the shoulder, and wandering pipers and fiddlers, turned to look at the house; Scotch pedlars, with cheap linen cloth in their packs; and hawkers or chapmen with wallets full of little trifles—gloves of cordevant and sheep leather, tobacco boxes, ribbons and shoe-strings, almanacs, horn-books, jocktalegs, and ballads on the Dutch war and the hearth tax. Gentlemen in long boots, riding suits and cloaks, and velvet caps, trotted past, followed by mounted servants; or honest yeomen in coarse cloth and worsted stockings, with their wives in homespun and steeple hats riding pillion behind them. The little processions of marketing and fairing folk came and went; brown barefooted mower-women at hay and corn harvest; labourers in their loose frocks tied in at the waist, patched breeches and hose, and tall hats with vast projecting brims; country women riding to market between baskets of farm produce, with chickens or ducks swinging from the saddlebow; labourers’ wives trudging it on foot with wicker trays of vegetables or fruit upon their heads; farmers’ wains drawn by huge oxen, older and bulkier than any which can be seen to-day; and, in autumn, droves of swine on their way to the woods. Often Lord Frecheville’s or Lord Deincourt’s chariot and four passed the gates, the coach of some neighbouring gentleman bright with heraldry and gilding, a train of charcoal waggons bringing fuel to the Staveley ironworks, or of others laden with long saws and brewers’ squares, cannon shot, fire-backs, or sugar-stoves; and more rarely a ponderous furnace-hearth drawn by twenty oxen, a company of militia in their buffcoats faced with crimson plush, a gentleman riding to the poll at Derby at the head of his tenantry, or the cavalcade of some great nobleman journeying towards London with three coaches and an armed escort of thirty or forty attendants on horseback. It was an ever changing panorama of human life, an endless procession labouring towards an unknown goal, for in the seventeenth century the nation was to be studied rather on the roads than in the cities, and for commerce, for travel, and for news, the roads were all that the railways and telegraphs are to us, and more.

From the busy world outside one entered a little haven of peace and rest within the gates. The main entrance to Renishaw, which was immediately off the road, led by wooden doors between stone piers into a close court, the walls being planted round with fruit trees and the borders with flowers, and so by a broad paved walk between two grass plats to the steps of the porch. The building itself was of the usual Jacobean type, with mullioned windows protected by string-courses, gables and cupola tiled with stone, and battlemented roof over the hall. In plan, it was a double E, the central member being given by the porch on the north and by the great hall chimney to the south; on the former side the projecting wings contained a buttery (to the east) and a kitchen, on the latter a great and little parlour. Entering the porch, a second door led into a hall of moderate size (twenty feet by twenty-four), handsomely paved with grey and yellow stone, and ceiled with heavy cross beams covered with plaster. Upon the oak panelling, stags’ heads, escutcheons of arms, and maps of Europe and of Jerusalem were hung, and the centre of the room was occupied by the long table at which the family dined. On the opposite wall, between two windows corresponding to those on either side of the porch, was a great fireplace of stone, framed in by a mantel of carved oak. There was an oak cupboard by the kitchen door, and here also hung a buffcoat and some pistol-holsters. In the window lay the family Bible.

On the left hand two doors opened out of the hall, the first into a paved and arched entry which led past the buttery hatch (on the left) to the garden entrance; and the second to the “Great Staircase,” finely wainscotted and carved, and lighted by windows to the east. At the foot of the stairs was the door into the great parlour, about thirty-four feet long by twenty broad, by far the finest room in the house. A large bow window at the further end, and three windows to the east, looked out upon the flower garden. The ceiling of graceful renaissance plaster work, light and in low relief, was designed with large quatrefoils and diamonds, the points of the latter running out into branches of quince, oak, or vine, or large fleur-de-lis of varying patterns. In the centres of the spaces between were moulded ornaments of mermaids, dolphins, squirrels, roses, octofoils, and winged and coronetted lions’ heads. On the walls, immediately below the ceiling, was a frieze, also in plaster, which exhibited a running pattern of vine leaves, grapes, and birds, stopped at intervals by strapwork escutcheons, with renaissance masks and heraldic lions’ faces upon them. Richly carved panels of oak, with floral designs of lilies, roses, etc., supported the frieze, and beneath them was plainer panelling broken up at intervals by flat pilasters decorated with foliage or fruit. On this panelling a few family portraits were hung; the furniture here, as elsewhere in the house, was of carved oak, already a generation old, and there was much needlework of the kind ladies then occupied themselves in making. The mantelpieces were also of oak, one which showed in high relief the sacrifice of Isaac, supported by figures of Samson and Hercules, being especially noticeable. The fire backs in all the principal rooms had been cast at Foxbrook furnace, some two miles away, from moulds of a flower-pot, a phœnix, or the royal arms and supporters.

On the right of the hall were two doorways corresponding to those on the left. The further led by double doors into the little parlour, a small room with two windows to the south opening upon the garden, and two to the west looking out across a little green court to the brewhouse and the trees which overhung it. In the centre of the ceiling a great double rose of plaster, more than two feet in diameter, covered the junction of the beams. On the walls, maps of the World, France, Paris, and Ireland were hung, and a few Dutch pictures. The nearer door on the same side of the hall communicated with the little staircase and the kitchen, the latter room remarkable for its great three-centred chimney arch of stone, and for the pewter plates and dishes and brass stewpans and pudding pans which were ranged upon the wall. A back entry led into the kitchen court, or “well court,” a large yard built round with offices, stabling, coach-house, brewhouse, dairy, laundry, ovens, and barns. This was closed by great gates at night and contained many bays of building.

To return to the house; the bedrooms were furnished with curtains and rugs of green, purple, or “sad colour,” the great oak bedsteads decorated with hangings of needlework, and the walls covered with tapestry or wainscot. On the first floor was the “great chamber,” over the great parlour, and another of smaller size (here, under a sliding board, a secret receptacle in the floor for money or papers was found a few years ago) above the buttery. The “hall chamber,” like the hall below, was panelled with oak and ceiled with cross beams covered with plaster. This was the owner’s bedroom, and the windows to north and south, sheltered from sun and wind by the projecting wings, must have made it the pleasantest in the house. It was entered from the landing of the great staircase, and a door in the further wall led to Mr. Sitwell’s study, above the little parlour, and to the little staircase. In the study Mr. Sitwell wrote up the letter-book, passed the accounts of his steward, Thomas Starkye (Starkye came up the back stairs), and interviewed his tenants; on the panelling over the mantelpiece a carbine and some pistols were hung, and recesses in the thickness of the wall harboured a small library of books on divinity, law, and the classics, of which the greater part had been collected by Mr. Sitwell, though a few had been brought from the older house at the head of the village. Above the kitchen was another large bedchamber, given over, I suppose, to Mr. Sitwell’s youngest son, the only one of his children who was still under his care. The plan of the third story was similar to that of the second, the chamber over the hall chamber being again the only means of communication between the two staircases. This was occupied by Mrs. Heays, the housekeeper, who probably had one or two of the younger maidservants to sleep with her; and here in the long winter afternoons they wove and spun by the light of tallow dips, and talked over the gossip of the village. The two rooms to the east had formerly been used as nurseries, but were now guest chambers; and on this side also was a store-closet over the stairs. On the west, the study chamber was occupied by the cook and kitchenmaid, and that over the kitchen by the maids. The men-servants and grooms probably slept over the stables. At the Sacheverells’ house at Barton, an inventory of 1691 shows a “maids’ chamber,” a “men’s chamber,” and a “grooms’ chamber,” and this no doubt was the usual arrangement at the time.

The house was surrounded by a number of gardens,[84] courts, and orchards, the walls of which were full of pears, apples, plums, peaches, cherries, and nectarines. From the garden door one went out into a corner of the south garden, somewhat wider than the house, which projected into it. This was laid out in gravel, with borders against the walls, broad walks round and across the square, and designs of flower beds disposed in Jacobean knots, edged with box, and relieved by pyramids of yew. Out of this to the left you went into the bowling green and several courts and gardens, with green and gravel walks, walled in and full of flowers and fruit. Beyond them lay the little orchard, at the further extremity of which was an ancient dovecot of stone, perched on the very edge of the cliff, and overlooking the wild and tangled slopes of Broxhill and the flowery banks and winding course of the river below. Returning to the south garden, a door opposite the house led into the great orchard, some four and a half acres in extent, in which were a pair of butts for archery,[85] and side alleys bordered with flowers. From these sheltered paths, the further wall of the orchard being below the slope of the hill, pretty glimpses could be obtained of moorland and river, and distant spires and seats; and here also, at the south-west corner of the garden, was one of those square stone-tiled buildings without which no garden in the seventeenth century was supposed to be complete. This garden-house was set against a grove of ancient oaks and ashes, which protected it from the rays of the afternoon sun; to the north, both wind and view were cut off by the house, with its broken roof-line of battlements and gables, and tall central chimney thrown into shadow by the projecting wings; but towards the other points of the compass, a wide panorama of country was spread out to view. Mounting the steps which led to the little oak-panelled room above, one could see, over the tops of the apple trees and the Gothic coping of the green-clad garden walls, Killamarsh Moor, and the little village of Wales, in Yorkshire, from which the Hewitts took their rise; the wooded hillside just across the river; and high above the common, the ancient woods and manor houses of Park Hall and Barlborough; the Mansfield road, which skirted past the forest towards Nottingham and Derby; Emmett Carr, Barlborough Common, and Marsden Moor; the splendid cliff and keep of Bolsover, famous for the Earl of Newcastle’s prodigal entertainment to King Charles; Scarcliffe and Palterton, once with Eckington a part of the _Domesday_ Barony of Ralph Fitz-Hubert; the old and new halls of Hardwick, where the Earls of Devonshire had their seat, standing out like twin towers above the trees which surrounded them; and beyond the horizon, the spire of Tibshelf Church on the Nottinghamshire border. Nearer, between Renishaw and Hardwick, stood the little hall of Netherthorpe, in which Robert Sytwell had lived in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and the grammar school hard by he had helped to found; Lord Deincourt’s woods at Sutton Scarsdale; and Owlcotes, another of Bess of Hardwick’s houses; and to the right, the Chesterfield road mounting up a green spur two miles away towards Lord Frecheville’s ancient house and park and the iron furnaces of Staveley. Beyond Staveley, which, like Bolsover, Sutton, and Renishaw, had been garrisoned for the King in the Civil War, the spire of Brimington could be seen; and above the hollow in which Chesterfield lies, the distant hills which lead up to Clay Cross, Ogston, Ashover, and the Derbyshire moors. To the west of the garden house, a close walk between hedges led down the hill to the low meadows and the river, and from this side also was a footpath across the demesne to Foxton Wood, some two miles away, where the bluebells were a sight to see in spring, and the bracken in autumn, and good fishing and shooting were to be had. The hedgerows in the demesne contained many oaks and ashes, but there was no ornamental planting of any kind; in the woods, swine were still turned out in autumn, and another relic of mediæval agriculture was the continued use of oxen for ploughing.

[84] All these courts and gardens are shown in a map of 1756, which gives also a small sketch of the house.

[85] The practice of archery was still considered a useful physical exercise for boys. In July, 1665, Starkye paid a shilling for a bow and arrows for Timothy Treeton, the orphan son of a substantial Eckington yeoman and then fourteen years of age.

Houses and gardens such as those which I have just described can hardly have been the work of coarse and illiterate men. Their beauty and appropriateness, to which Lord Macaulay was blind, are recognised by the better taste of to-day. One can see that they were planned with infinite care and contrivance, every natural peculiarity of site, climate, and outlook being turned to account, and that the country squires who built them were thinking not merely of their own selfish enjoyment, but of future ages. In the marriage indenture of Mr. Sitwell’s eldest son in 1656, one of the considerations mentioned is that the said messuage and lands “may be settled and established in the name and blood of the said George Sitwell the ffather, soe long as it shall please God to continue the same.” From such phrases one learns not only the old builders’ pride in their houses, but the spirit which animated them, and which alone can inspire good work in building and laying out.

Renishaw was a quieter place than it had been ten years before, when Mrs. Sitwell was alive, and the house full of young people; but its owner, though he “hated ill-husbandry,” still kept a plentiful house. He was constantly visited by various relations and friends, and throughout the summer neighbouring gentlemen would occasionally ride over to dinner and bowls, and Yorkshire acquaintances call and drink at the gates, or rest their horses for an hour or two on the way to London. Mr. Sitwell’s eldest son, and his daughters and sons-in-law, were often with him, and Christmas especially, when the hall was decorated with holly and ivy, and the Chesterfield and Staveley fiddlers came over, and there was dancing in the great and card playing in the little parlours, was a time of entertainment and family reunion.[86] The preparations for Christmas and the New Year began early in November with the brewing of a couple of hogsheads of “Christmas beer” and the manufacture of “a brawne”—a mighty dish, for it is valued in the household book at £2, the price of four muttons or forty turkeys. When that season had arrived, the fat hogs were killed, gifts were made to the servants, and money distributed among the poor of the parish; turkeys, fowls, and rolls of brawn were sent as “tokens” to absent friends; the tenants came with their rent capons,[87] were regaled in the hall with beer, beef, mince pie, and plum porridge, and spent the evening in boisterous games; and a doe was usually sent over from Sheffield Park as a present from the Duke of Norfolk. It appears by one of these letters that Francis Sitwell and his wife and children were always expected from Gainsborough at Christmas, and no doubt the Wigfalls came across in the evenings from their house a few hundred yards away, the Burtons and Stones from Mosborough, and Dr. Gardiner,[88] whom Mr. Sitwell had presented to the living of Eckington eight years before, brought his children from the rectory. Indeed, friends and tenants were entertained with so much conviviality that the example proved dangerous to the younger members of the family. In the last week of 1662, John, the London apprentice, was in trouble with his master, and exactly a year later, Mr. Sitwell, while protesting that he had “ever been wary to encourage” his son in such courses, had to express a hope that in future he would “nether thinke Christmas nor any other time lawless to play the foole in,” but when he recreated himself among friends would “make choyce of sober, civell company, and keepe good howers.”

[86] Letters from Mr. Sitwell’s sons at Aleppo and Seville always reached him at Christmas. The business of keeping Christmas seems to have ended with Twelfth Night. On December 22nd, 1662, Mr. Sitwell arranges to meet a former steward, Robert Haigh, “on Munday next after the Twelfth day.”

[87] The last mention I have found of rent capons is in a lease of 6th April, 1713, whereby Mr. Sitwell’s grandson and namesake lets to Thomas Staniforth a small farm at the Ford. Staniforth, in addition to the rent, was to pay “one good Rent Capon every Christmas.” Before the middle of the eighteenth century the practice of entertaining tenants at Renishaw had gone out, and on the 17th January, 1746–7, Francis Sitwell pays to Isaiah Dixon, who kept an ale-house at Eckington, his “Bill for entertaining my tenants last Christmas.”—See _Fam. Min. Gent._, ii., 841.

[88] He had been Proctor of Cambridge University in 1649, and after the Restoration was a chaplain to the King. Dr. Gardiner was a fine preacher, as may be seen from his sermon in praise of Derbyshire, quoted in the _History of Ashbourne_, 1839, page 204. A copy of his Assize sermon, entitled “Moses and Aaron brethren,” and dedicated to George Sitwell, Esquire, High Sheriff of the County of Darbie, may be seen in Sir Henry Bemrose’s library. Francis Sitwell had been his pupil at Corpus Christi. See also Master’s _History of Corpus Christi College_ and the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for April, 1776.

The owner of the letter-book mentions on one occasion an engagement to be at the Wigfalls’ house for a christening, and no doubt he celebrated the baptism of his own grandchildren, born at Renishaw in July, 1661, and October, 1662, by entertaining his neighbours with music and card playing, according to the hospitable custom of the time. On the 14th of February there was dancing and drawing of valentines, and the Chesterfield Sessions in April, the fairs at Chesterfield, Sheffield, and Rotherham, races and bull-baitings for those who cared for such frivolities, bowling parties at Renishaw and other houses in the neighbourhood, the village wake and the “hare-getting supper”[89] to the harvesters on the demesne, helped to enliven the monotony of rural existence. But during much of the year when Mr. Sitwell and his youngest son were alone, life at Renishaw was quiet and orderly enough, and one day passed very much the same as another. At about seven o’clock they breakfasted upon beer, cold meat, Westphalia ham or neat’s tongue, oatcakes, and white bread and butter. After breakfast, William walked down to pursue his studies at the rectory, and his father rode out with Starkye to inspect his farms and iron furnaces, or to attend to the parochial and county business in which he interested himself. At eleven o’clock,[90] the servants, headed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Heays, filed in to family prayers in the hall; and immediately prayers were over the butler laid the table, with its cloth of homespun linen, pewter plates and dishes, beer and wine glasses, silver salts and spoons, porringers and tankards, for the noonday dinner,[91] and put out the silver bottles and stoneware jugs, edged with silver, upon the oak cupboard by the kitchen door. Mr. Sitwell sat at the head of the table, with his back to the map of Europe and the great staircase; and his son, in a grey cloth suit, fine worsted under-stockings, scarlet silk over-stockings, and riding shoes, at his left hand; and together they conversed about William’s studies and the big trout in the Rother, the flower garden and the home farm, John’s last letters from plague-stricken London, Robert’s adventures at Aleppo, and George’s prospects of making a fortune in Spain. The meal, plain but substantial—it consisted usually of broth served in porringers and eaten with oat cakes, a joint with vegetables, poultry or game, a pudding or tart, cheese and fruit; but on Fridays of fresh and salt fish alone—was washed down by a glass or two of tent or malago and a tankard of ale, and followed by a pipe of tobacco in the little parlour or the garden-house. After dinner, Mr. Sitwell wrote letters in his study, and read the gazettes and newsletters which his cousin forwarded by every post from London; a little later in the afternoon, he played bowls on the green, walked through the folds, looked at the horses, foals, and oxen, and strolled across the demesne to watch the mowers or harvest folk at work. Supper, the second “state meal”[92] of the day, must have been early too; and after a pipe of tobacco, a tankard of ale, and a game of cards or shovel-board in the great parlour, the evening finished with family prayer. On Sundays, the old coach, with its two bay mares, took Mr. Sitwell and his son down to church at Eckington; there, in the large square family pew by the second pillar on the right of the nave, with the servants ranged behind them, they listened to the village fiddlers and Dr. Gardiner’s learned but lengthy sermon; and when service was over, they carried the doctor and his wife back to dinner at the hall. Mr. Sitwell was a good judge of horses (in 1666 he was buying horses for Lord Ogle’s troop), and took some trouble in the breeding of them;[93] his peace-offering of four pheasants to the Duke of Newcastle in January, 1664–5, shows that he shot with a fowling-piece; the use of two coursing similes in the letter-book suggests that he may have kept greyhounds; and it is likely enough that he occasionally rode with Lord Frecheville’s staghounds,[94] for the pale of Staveley Park bordered upon his demesne. He was certainly an active man in spite of his years, and fond of an outdoor life.

[89] So harvest suppers were called in Derbyshire. The labourers at Renishaw were sometimes entertained earlier in the year:—

£ s. d. “30 June, 1666. For 20 men’s Dinners att Stones att 8d. _per man_ 0 13 4 ”For ale then 0 6 8.”

Ellen Stones (her husband was a blackmith) kept an alehouse in Eckington. At these dinners or suppers John Hunt, who was the oldest labourer in Mr. Sitwell’s employment, took the chair.

[90] Lyson’s _Derbyshire_, 257.

[91] It was the common practice at this time to dine in the parlour, but at some houses meals were still served in the hall. Henry Hastings in Charles the First’s time certainly used his parlour for this purpose (see Lord Shaftesbury’s Autobiography), and the Sacheverells at Barton did so in 1680. In an inventory of Furniture at Renishaw, taken in 1698, “the long table” appears in the hall and not in the Great Parlour, and in the latter room was an old harpsichord. Mr. Sitwell and his son may sometimes have dined in the Little Parlour in cold weather when they were alone, but undoubtedly the hall was the proper dining-room of the house.

[92] Lyson’s _Derbyshire_, v.

[93] A payment of £1 in February, 1666–7, “about a horse’s leaping,” is recorded in Starkye’s account-book.

[94] In 1687, the old dog-kennels belonging to Staveley Hall were converted into cottages. See a deed at Hardwick from Conyers Lord Darcy to Thomas Frith, dated 24th September of that year. Country gentlemen in Derbyshire took at this time much pleasure in field sports. In Leonard Wheatcroft’s _Elegy upon the death of all the greatest Gentry in Darley Dale who loved Huntinge and Hawkinge_, written in 1672, he refers to the cry—

“Of great mouth’d doggs who did not feare to kill Which was their master’s pleesure word and will,”

* * * * *

“ffarewell you Huntsmen that did hunt the Hare, ffarewell you hounds that tired both horse and mare, ffarewell you gallant Falkners every one.”

In these verses he especially mentions Mr. Sitwell’s son-in-law, William Revell of Ogston; in other pieces, written a few years later, he speaks of fox-hunting and horse-racing.

Amongst the relations and friends already mentioned as visiting Renishaw in 1662–6, the names of several occur in the letter-book. Mr. Sitwell’s cousins, William and Roger Allestry (Roger represented Derby in Parliament as his brother had previously done, and the features of both, set out in all the glory of Restoration periwigs, are known from engraved portraits), came at intervals to stay with him; and another kinsman, John Spateman, of Roadnook Hall, in Ashover, formerly a Justice of the Peace under the Commonwealth, was there in June, 1666, on his way to plague-stricken London. Captain Mazine, the “great horseman,” so good natured in supplying Mr. Sitwell with the latest news of the Dutch war, was expected from London in July, 1665. “I suppose,” the latter writes, “I shall have the happiness to kis yo^r hand in the Country shortly, w^{ch} I desire the more y^t you may be out of the Danger of the sickness.” In June of the previous year, the Captain had been staying at Welbeck, and had apparently ridden over more than once to dinner and a game of bowls at Renishaw. Mr. Sitwell meditated calling upon him in return, and in reply to a message confessed that he was behindhand with him, but when occasion offered would endeavour to come over. William Revell, of Ogston, one of the “Lovers of Huntinge and Hawkinge” in Darley Dale, upon whose lives and deaths (he died in 1669) the Ashover poet wrote his “Elegy”:

“Then I to Ogston, there to break my fast They all in mourning stood at me aghast, To think my friend and lover was departed; And so I left them, all most heavie hearted: What shall I doe (thought I) to hide my head, Seeing so many Gallants now are dead?”

—was often with his father-in-law at Renishaw; and William Sacheverell, who afterwards distinguished himself so highly in Parliament, and served as a Lord of the Admiralty under King William, rode over occasionally from Morley to see his sister, Mrs. Sitwell. William Simpson, a city lawyer, came down in October, 1662, January, 1662–3, and again, bringing with him a copy of the King’s Speech to the Parliament, in June of the same year; and in the following September, “Cozen Franceys,”[95] as appears by a gap in the correspondence, followed by the expression of a hope that he was “well got home,” enjoyed the country air for two or three weeks in Derbyshire. There are casual references also in the letter-book to country neighbours who called and dined at Renishaw, as, for instance, John Bradshaw, of Brampton Hall, a cousin of the regicide, in September, 1662; Lionel Copley, of Rotherham, in July, 1665; and John Magson, of Worksop, a rich merchant, whose fortune is estimated in one of these letters at twenty-five or twenty-six thousand pounds in January, 1662–3, and November, 1664. The last was probably a Quaker, as Mr. Sitwell addresses him without ceremony by his Christian name and surname.

[95] Ralph Franceys of Friday Street, London, a descendant of the Foremark family. He, or his father, had served as Bailiff or Mayor of Derby in 1624 and 1632, and his mother was nearly related to the Sitwells.

The household to be provided for was not a large one, and in many respects it was self-sufficing. The finer German table linen, damasked with hunting scenes, which came in soon after the Restoration, had hardly yet found its way into the midland counties, and rough table-cloths were still made in the house. Flaxen and hempen sheets, pillowbears and window curtains, and woollen blankets, were woven by the maid-servants; and I notice that in 1678–80, two stone of flax, two of hemp, and two of wool, were purchased every year for use at Renishaw. By the maids also the mattresses of the heavy four-poster beds were stuffed with feathers from the fold. Cloth sufficient to provide two suits of livery apiece for five or six men was bought at about four shillings a yard at Mr. Newton’s shop in Chesterfield, and made up in the house by John Staynrod, the village tailor. Wheat for bread, and oats for the oatcakes, so much favoured in Derbyshire, were grown on the farm, and ground with querns in the house as flour was needed; and ryebread was also eaten, probably by the servants. Pickling, preserving, and salting,[96] and the concoction of currant and gooseberry wines, were carried on under the supervision of the housekeeper; and baking, churning, and cheese-making at the ovens and dairy in the kitchen court. Ale in the cask or bottled, and November ale, and beer of various denominations—strong beer, small beer, stale beer, bottled beer, March beer, and Christmas beer—were brewed in large quantities, and about sixty-eight hogsheads represent the annual consumption.[97] The practice of laying in large quantities of salt beef and mutton at the commencement of November had already been abandoned by the richer classes, and fresh meat was eaten all the year round. From the home farm, orchards, and river, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cream, vegetables, and fruit were supplied; turkeys and fowls were bred there, and game could be obtained in any quantity from the woods, and pigeons from the dovecote. Salt fish from Scarborough or Hull was bought in Chesterfield for the Friday dinners. Wax candles for the hall and parlours were procured from George Hattersley, a chandler in the village, at the cost of four or five shillings a dozen; and tallow candles for the bedrooms were made in the house. Soap, in the form of “washing balls,” was manufactured at the farm at the cost of a shilling a dozen, and about fifty-two dozens represent the annual consumption. Pit coals were obtained from Eckington Marsh at half-a-crown a load, the carting being done upon “boon days” by Mr. Sitwell’s tenants. Groceries were bought in Chesterfield, a groom or footman being sent over on horseback, or a commission given either to the carrier or to one of the little company of “market folks” who trudged over from the village on each succeeding Saturday. At the last-named town there was an apothecary (Wood), a furniture shop (Shentall), and a bookseller (Crofts). Cases of knives for the table could be bought at six shillings in Sheffield from James Stainforth, who in 1662 served as Master Cutler. A chirurgeon (John Fleming) resided at Eckington, but on one occasion a poor boy, in whom Mr. Sitwell had interested himself, was sent over with the carrier to Nottingham for the great Dr. Thoroton’s advice.

[96] In February, 1665–6, Mr. Sitwell ordered from London a hundredweight of good white sugar, the Muscovados sugar consigned to him from Barbadoes having proved unfit for his use. For preserving, the whitest powdered sugar was necessary. (See _Verney Letters_, iii., 278.) In a pocket almanac of 1699 which belonged to Mr. Sitwell’s grandson and namesake, there is a note that the latter has lent to Mrs. Stringer his “wife’s two Receipts Bookes.” These have unfortunately been lost, but the receipt-book of a neighbour, Mrs. Colepeper, amongst the Colepeper MSS. in the British Museum, enables one to form some idea of their contents.

[97] In the last six months of 1665 (leaving out one doubtful entry of £1 5s.), £10 0s. 9d. was spent upon malt for brewing at Renishaw. Malt in that year cost £1 3s. to £1 3s. 6d. a quarter, and these payments will therefore indicate a yearly use of something over 17 quarters, which, according to Markham’s _English Husbandman_ of 1613, would give 51 hogsheads of ordinary beer and afterwards 17 hogsheads of small beer. Seventy hogsheads would allow nearly three quarts a day _per_ head to Mr. Sitwell and his son and a household of four men servants, two footboys, and six women servants. They could not, of course, have drunk so much, but the calculation makes no allowance for visitors. At Barton, the seat of the Sacheverells, £16 was paid during the year 1685 for twenty quarters of barley for malting.

But though a country house, at least in regard to the common necessaries of life, was supplied from the demesne, and did not as now depend upon shops in the village and neighbouring town, it is surprising to find how many small luxuries were ordered in London or even imported from the Continent. The packhorses of Hemingway, the Sheffield carrier, were constantly burdened with Westphalia hams at tenpence the pound, capers at the same price, and currants for the daily pudding; with newspapers and books, writing paper, French hats for Mr. Sitwell’s grandchildren, bottles of cinnamon water, orange flower water, strong water, and Rosa solis, and runlets of various wines. From London Mr. Sitwell procured also his own dress and that of his son, tobacco at eighteen shillings and sixpence a box, and silver plate. As might have been expected from one of the older generation, he was fond of good sack, which he ordered in London or on occasion from the “Angel” Inn at Chesterfield; but he supplied himself also with barrels of tent wine and malago from Spain, where one of his sons was a merchant. From that country also chests of oranges and lemons, and barrels of olives and of raisins, were forwarded to him. Sugar, on one occasion, he imported from Barbadoes, but it proved to be too coarse for his use. Chests and barrels too heavy for one horse to carry were sent by Nottingham wagon, or by way of the Humber and Trent to Bawtry, and thence by road to Renishaw. Letters from London to Renishaw were posted on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and arrived in time to be answered on Fridays and Tuesdays. The charge was threepence for postage, and fourpence to the “foot-post” from Chesterfield, and if carried to the posthouse they seldom failed.

I must not pass away from the subject of housekeeping without saying something about the extraordinary cheapness of meat, and especially of game, at this period. In the Renishaw “house-book” for 1671, a price is set against all the articles supplied from the farm or bought in the village. A veal is valued at ten to twelve shillings, a mutton at six to ten, a lamb at five to six, a beef at £3 15s. to £4 4s., a porket at ten to eleven shillings, and pigs at from 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. each. Chickens could be had for threepence and fourpence, pullets at sixpence, ducks at fourpence to eightpence, geese, capons, and turkeys at a shilling, pigeons at elevenpence or one shilling a dozen, and rabbits at sixpence to 1s. 2d. a couple. Partridges and teal were eightpence a brace, woodcock eightpence to a shilling, wild ducks a shilling, plovers fourpence to sixpence, and snipe fourpence. Cheeses were eightpence to tenpence each, and butter was fourpence a pound. Household loaves, not of white bread, were a shilling each, and flour for manchet or for the kitchen 1s. 3d. a peck.

According to Macaulay, not one gentleman in a hundred travelled once in seven years beyond the nearest market town; but the truth is that the country squires were often upon the road, and few who lived within five days’ journey of London failed to visit it occasionally. In Derbyshire, from the end of November until the beginning of April, the highways were impassable for wheels and very unpleasant for horsemen, and even April is said in one of these letters to be “too soon, for the ways will be bad.” Mr. Sitwell rode up to London every spring, usually in the last-named month or in May, and he sometimes visited it a second time in August. His plans were laid a month or six weeks in advance, and a week or ten days before starting a box or trunk of clothes was sent on by carrier. He left Renishaw at seven o’clock in the morning, attired in a riding suit, top boots, a horseman’s cloak, and a “mounteroe,” or Spanish travelling cap, of velvet. Pistols were borne in the holsters, for Sherwood was a noted haunt of highwaymen, and behind him rode a footman in livery, carrying his portmantle (it contained clean linen, a nightdress, nightcap, and change of clothes) and hatcase upon the saddle. The first night was spent at Nottingham, after a ride of thirty miles through the forest; the second at Harborough (twenty-eight miles); the third at Dunstable (thirty-five miles); the fourth in London (thirty miles). The charges incurred by himself, his man and horses, in riding up, amounted on one occasion to £1 13s. 6d., and in returning to £1 1s. 6d., and one horse was killed in the journey. In London, Mr. Sitwell frequented the “Greyhound” Inn in Holborn, next door to “Furnival’s” Inn, and there he paid about eight shillings and fourpence a week for chamber rent and washing, and eighteen shillings and eightpence for hay and corn for his horses. Food and minor expenses came to about £1 6s. 8d. a week. While in town, he met his friends at the Royal Exchange, and dined with them at one of the many taverns near it; strolled about in Gray’s Inn Walks; went by water to Westminster—his cousin, Roger Allestry, was a Member of Parliament; supplied himself with clothes, books, silver plate and tobacco from the various shops; visited his son, the scapegrace John, who was in the silk trade, being apprenticed to Nicholas Delves, Esquire;[98] and on Sundays attended divine service at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, or St. Paul’s. He had business also to attend to, for on one occasion I find him paying a sum of £200 “att the Southe Porche of St. Paule’s, London.” Sometimes, I suppose, he walked in Hyde Park, or visited Whitehall, where the King and Queen dined in public; but there is no evidence that he had any taste for the theatre, the cockpit, or the coffee-houses. His stay in the “Metropolitan City” usually lasted for a fortnight or three weeks, and the total cost of the visit was about twelve pounds, though as much more was often laid out upon various purchases.

[98] This Nicholas Delves is the person who put Titus Oates to school as a free scholar at Merchant Taylors’ in 1664. See William Smith’s _Intrigues of the Plot_, 1685, page 25.

Upon the ignorance and illiterateness of the country squires, Lord Macaulay is never tired of dwelling. He tells us that their language and pronunciation were “such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns,” and that a gentleman “passed among his neighbours for a great scholar if _Hudibras_ and _Baker’s Chronicle_, _Tarlton’s Jests_, and the _Seven Champions of Christendom_ lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces.”

Equally ill-founded, as far as I can judge, is the historian’s attack upon the “gross uneducated country gentleman,” and his assertion that in Charles the Second’s time a knight of the shire had seldom a library as good as may now be found in a servants’ hall or a tradesman’s back parlour. For the class of which he writes was at least well schooled, and few country houses were without a little collection of books upon the classics, divinity, law, and current politics. Mr. Sitwell had received an excellent education, as is evidenced by a Latin manuscript in his handwriting upon the art of logic, and several Greek and Latin schoolbooks still preserved at Renishaw. In his will, he thought his “printed books” equally worthy of mention with the pictures and maps, the wainscot, ceiling, and glass in his house at Renishaw. From the books still remaining there, and from an old catalogue taken in 1753, it is possible to reconstruct his library, and to form an opinion upon his tastes and the extent and limits of his reading. Upon the shelves in the study cupboards, Homer and Aristotle, and most, if not all, of the greater Latin writers, were represented. For divinity, there were Fox’s _Acts and Monuments_; Usher’s _Chronology_, _Annals_, and _Body of Divinity_; the Works of Tertullian, Polycarp, Eusebius, Ignatius, Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine; Leigh’s _Critica Sacra_; Corneille’s _Livre de l’imitation de Jesus Christ_; _Meditationes de vita Christi_, by Vincentius Brunus; the _Methoda Theologiæ_ of Andreas Hyperius; Justus’ _Lipsius De Cruce_; Crellius’ _Of one God_; Culverwell _On the Light of Nature_; Hakewell’s _Apology_; Jewel’s _Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_; Durell’s _View of the Reformed Church_; _A Defence of the Catholic Faith_, by Grotius; Dr. Fenton’s _Six Sermons against the Church of Rome_; Spencer _On Prodigies_; Hammond’s _Fundamentals_, and his volume on _God’s Grace and Decrees_; a _History of the Inquisition_; Whittaker’s _Controversial Tracts of 1588_; Bilson’s _Anti-Christian Rebellion of 1585_; Wigand’s _Jack of both Sides_, published in 1591; and Fuller’s _History of the Holy War_. Law was represented by Coke’s _Institutes_; Pulton’s _Statutes_, and his works on the _King’s Peace_ and on _Offences and Misdemeanours_; Scobell’s _Acts of Parliament_; Rastell’s _Statutes_; the _Institutes of Justinian_; an _Explicatio Juris inter Gentes_, and the _Civiles Doctrinæ_ of Lipsius; History by Daniel’s _Wars of York and Lancaster_; Rushworth’s _Historical Collections_; Sleidan’s _History of the Four Empires of Antiquity_; and a _Historia Universale_, published at Venice in 1605. Literature by Bacon’s _Essays_ and his _Latin Works_; the _Colloquies_ and _Praise of Folly_ of Erasmus; the _Princeps of Machiavelli_; Milton’s _Defensio Populi Anglicani_; and King Charles’ _Works_. Other books worth mentioning were Boquet’s _Discours execrable des Sorciers_, and his _Histoire de Faust_; a _Life of Tycho Brahe_; Galen’s _Medicine_; Descartes’ _Philosophy_; Galileo’s _Systema Cosmicum_; Harvey’s _De Generatione Animalium_ and _De Cordis et Sanguinis Motu_; Burgersdijck’s _Philosophia Moralis_; Gassend’s _Astronomy_; Alsted’s _Physica Harmonia_; Baker’s _Arithmetic of 1607_; Tacquet’s _Mathematics_; Oughtred’s _Trigonometry_; Butler’s _Rethorick_; Keckerman’s _Logic_, and the _Logic of Molinæus_; Wright’s _Theory of Navigation_; Bosse’s _L’Art de Perspective_; Mendez Pinto’s _Voyages_, translated by Cogan; _Hornus de Originibus Americanis_; Corderio’s _Colloquies_; an _Introduction to Geography_; a book on the Art of Speaking, and another, published in 1639, on the Actions of Gunnery. Tied up in parcels were a number of pamphlets relating to the Civil War and Restoration, and including the Bishop of Worcester’s _Sermon on the Coronation of Charles II._, Cotton’s _Panegyrick on the King_, _A Noble Salutation to Charles Stewart_, and _A Plea for a Limited Monarchy_, published in the same year. Dr. Gardiner’s _Assize Sermon_ of 1653 must not be forgotten, in which he speaks of his “honoured friend and patron,” Mr. Sitwell, as a “cordial friend to Religion and Learning, Piety and Sobriety”; nor Evelyn’s _Sylva_, in which the owner of Renishaw is once mentioned, for he had supplied the author with information concerning the giant oaks of the Rivelin and Sherwood. The library as a whole is that of a practical man who wished to make the best of both worlds, and to whom the classics, divinity, law, politics and science were the only subjects worthy of serious attention. Milton had not yet published his _Paradise Lost_, and to the country squire of that day literature meant the classics, and English poetry and prose were a world unknown.

Though “noe politition nor statesman,” Mr. Sitwell took a keen interest in home and foreign affairs. News books, papers of news, letters diurnal, gazettes, royal declarations and speeches, and Acts of Parliament, were constantly forwarded to him by his cousin, Ralph Franceys, who resided in London. Franceys frequented the Exchange, and the taverns and coffee-houses about it, and kept him informed of “what is said in the City”; and, in addition to the items of news thus supplied, Captain Mazine (well known by sight to all who have studied the engravings in the Duke of Newcastle’s book on horsemanship), Peter Pett, the naval commissioner, and other correspondents in London told him what they heard, and he had occasionally a “particular relation” of some important occurrence, a confirmation “by one who lives neare the Court,” or a copy of “a letter to the Mayor of Hull which a friend of myne saw.” He was thus better acquainted than most of his neighbours with what was going on in the world, and it is curious to find that in February, 1660–1, the loyal Marquess of Newcastle owed to him the first intimation of the date of the elections. “His Excellency,” writes Sir Francis Topp, the secretary, “hath commanded me to let you know that he will not expect you until your own occasions may give you the opportunity, and then you shall be very welcome. We presume you writt about the choosinge of Knights and bourgesses, which we conceave is by some directions of the Councell, for we have noe newes got here of y^e writts.”

The owner of the letter-book describes himself as “one of those fooles of the world who love to be busie,” and, in spite of his age, led an active and in many respects a useful life. His duty as a commissioner for the royal subsidies took him frequently to Chesterfield and Derby, and at the latter town, as became one who had served as Sheriff, he attended the Assizes, and sometimes served upon the Grand Jury. He often “waited,” either upon public or private business, or merely to “tender his service,” upon the famous Duke of Newcastle at Welbeck, the Earl of Devonshire at Hardwick, and Lord Scarsdale at Sutton, and more rarely upon Lords Deincourt, Frecheville, and Byron. On Tuesdays, when Sheffield market drew in the neighbouring gentry, he sometimes met his acquaintances at the “Angel” Inn, near the Irish Cross; and on Saturdays, as already explained, he dined at the eightpenny ordinary at Chesterfield on fish, mutton, chicken, and ale, and when dinner was over, joined his friends, Cornelius Clarke, of Norton Hall, Samuel Clarke, of Ashgate, and Mr. Watkinson, of Brampton, in the enjoyment of a game of shovel-board and a bottle of sack. He visited the fairs at Sheffield, Rotherham, and Chesterfield; rode up to London at least once a year; and at intervals paid visits of a few days to his “son Revell,” at Ogston Hall; to Doncaster, where he stayed with his daughter at Nether Hall, or with his wife’s brother, Mr. Childers, of Carr House; and to Nottingham, whence I have no doubt he ran over to see his “brother Sacheverell” at Barton. All these excursions were on horseback, and a start was made from Renishaw as early as seven o’clock in summer and eight in winter, as is shown by appointments to be at Chesterfield “before eight oth’ clock” in June, and at Whitwell “between eight and nine oth’ clock” in February. This hour, however, was not too early for letters to be written before mounting, as may be seen by one which concludes—“So breifly, for I am just putting foot into stirrop, I remaine your freind to serve you.”

There was also much local business to be attended to in Eckington and the neighbourhood. In April, 1661, just after the elections were over, Mr. Sitwell was intrusted with the proceeds of the subsidy which had been imposed upon the township for the buying of trophies, in order that he might convey it to the Sessions. A little later, being commanded upon the news of Lambert’s rising to march to Derby with whatever force could be raised, he advanced money to honest poor men his neighbours, who walked as far as Chesterfield before they learnt that their services would not be required. At another time we find him endeavouring to procure men and horses for Lord Ogle’s troop. In 1665, the bridge at Renishaw being so decayed with age that any little flood made it impassable, Mr. Sitwell applied to the Court at the Sessions for money, as it was required for the work of repair. The bridge was of stone, and approached at either end by a causeway supported upon small arches; and he supervised the rebuilding of it from the very foundations, and, partly at his own expense, made it “soe that for many generations the country will not need to be att further charge.” There is a letter to the jury in a local lawsuit, and two others, requesting the Justices to discharge or bail prisoners before trial. In January, 1663–4, when a doubt has arisen as to the proper manner of collecting hearth money in the parish, he writes to Sir Simon Degg, asking the latter to direct the constable what he is to do therein; and in December, 1665, a pauper who had been sent by warrant of two Justices from Eckington to Treeton having been returned by Sir Francis Fane, a letter is carried to Treeton by several persons who are ready to swear that the unfortunate man had no settlement in Eckington.

The owner of the letter-book had a warm and somewhat arbitrary temper, and when roused could “speak plaine English” (not, indeed, as Macaulay would have led one to expect, in oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, uttered in the broadest accent of his province, but pure, nervous, incisive English) with force and directness. In other respects, he was a good Christian, who believed that it was the “duty of every man to be careful in the service of God,” but abhorred the cloak and the mask of pretentious piety; supported the institution of Bishops and the “decent, harmless ceremonies” of the Church of England, but “meddled not with controverted points of faith.”

In disposition, the writer was a kind-hearted man, and in spite of a great deal of public and private business, he found time to help other people in their troubles. He twice redeems a debtor out of the House of Correction at Chesterfield, and endeavours to assist him when imprisoned there for the third time. He writes on behalf of “Whittles’ boy”—“a poore ffatherless and Motherless boy, an object of pitty to move one, if not to releeve him, yet to helpe him to right from those who would doe him wrong”—to the Rector of Aston and Sir Francis Fane, begging them to hear and determine the differences between the lad and his “knavish uncles”; provides him with clothes and other necessaries, and finds money to release him from a cruel master and to keep him from starving. He sets himself to help Mr. Leigh, of Coldwell Hall, who had lately fallen into a sad condition of poverty; pays £4 in order to have a son, Joseph Leigh, apprenticed to a tailor in Sheffield, and urges another son in London to “write by the next post after this comes to you, to hould up the hartt of the ould man.” Later on, he drafts a petition on behalf of the father applying for a place in the Duke of Norfolk’s Hospital or Almshouse, at Sheffield. He urges a spendthrift husband to make a settlement of his property upon his wife, who had brought him a little fortune in marriage, and was willing upon such terms to free him from his debts and to maintain his children. He endeavours to incline to mercy the creditors of a former maidservant at Renishaw, who had married a man already deeply in debt, seeing that she was willing, in her own phrase, “to part with all they had, quick and dead, to pay theire debts, soe that they might have the freedome to beginn the world new and to live by theire labor.” It was a common practice at this time for litigants to avoid the cost and delay of a lawsuit by referring their quarrel to some neighbouring gentleman for his “doom and award,” and Mr. Sitwell, believing arbitration in such cases to be a “very charitable good worke,” both rendered such services himself, and made arrangements also on behalf of others. He was “shy of his reputation” in Derbyshire, where he was “well known in his country”; anxious to do his duty by his children, and not, as he puts it, “to bringe trouble on those I leave behinde me”; and considered the possession of a good estate carried with it “an ingagement thereby to be regardfull of the welfare of one’s Country.” It may be inferred from the use of certain phrases in the letter-book that then, as now, public spirit, truthfulness, and courtesy were considered to be the distinguishing marks of the class to which he belonged.

Such, in real life, were the Tory squires upon whose memory Lord Macaulay has heaped the coarsest epithets of a not very refined vocabulary, the falsest coin of a not very sterling rhetoric; for I have no reason to believe that the owner of the letter-book was otherwise than an average specimen of the class to which he belonged, neither better nor worse than his neighbours who sat next him at the market ordinary, discussed the Dutch War with him over a quart of sack and a pipe of tobacco at the “Redd Lyon,” or rode over to a mid-day dinner and a game of bowls at Renishaw. The impression left upon the mind by such documents as the letter-book is not one of rudeness, but rather of comfort, education, and refinement. Of the ignorance and uncouthness, the drunkenness, the pig-handling, the low habits and gross phrases, the oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, the vulgar taste which aimed at ornament, but could produce nothing but deformity, there is not a trace; and instead of meeting with “the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter,” and the manners of “rustic millers or alehouse keepers,” we find a class of men useful in their generation, public-spirited and intellectual, courteous in their dealings with each other and compassionate towards the poor, and better judges of taste in architecture and gardening than at least one of their critics.

DERBYSHIRE FOLK-LORE

By S. O. Addy, M.A.

Every English county, one might almost say every English village, has preserved some fragments of a vast body of traditional lore which, before the age of printing, was common to the whole people. Such fragments may still, like coins on the sites of Roman towns, be picked up, some in better condition than others. Unfortunately, those who have written on this subject have preferred for the most part to limit their researches to old books. For instance, Brand, in his _Observations on Popular Antiquities_, first published in 1777, has given us a collection of scraps drawn from a thousand authors. It was very entertaining, no doubt, but the work would have been more valuable had its author collected from the lips of the people the ballads, legends, tales, and other portions of belief and custom which in the eighteenth century were far more abundant than they are to-day. It was a great opportunity neglected. But in the eighteenth century there was excuse for such neglect, because the value of such things was not then understood. Nor was their importance seen until the publication of such works as Scott’s _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ in 1802, and an English translation of Grimm’s _Popular Stories_ in 1823. Even then English students did not begin to collect traditional remains systematically.

Although in these days the word folk-lore has become part of the common speech, and the subject is in some degree familiar to everybody, little original research is done. Even the Folk-lore Society, instead of collecting fresh material—and there is plenty to be had—has been printing, under the name of _County Folk-lore_, a farrago of material from local histories and guide-books, of which not one item in twenty was worth reproducing. Far different is the work of such men as Kristensen, whose labours in Denmark should have been taken as a model of what should be done in England. Not every day could a man be found to dine on potatoes or sleep on the table of a workman’s cottage, as Kristensen has done, in order to secure a ballad or a tradition. But at least it should be possible to make some effort to collect the lore which is passing away from us for ever. The old books are not likely to perish; the men and women who know the old tales are dying every year. But where you have one man ready and willing to collect folk-lore or dialect, you find a hundred who want to advance theories or to write little grammars. The armchair of the study is so much more comfortable than a rush-bottomed chair in a cottage.

In Derbyshire we have folk-lore which is common to other parts of Great Britain, just as Great Britain has folk-lore which is common to other parts of Europe. But every country has preserved items which are to be found in no other, or which, if found elsewhere, appear in such a modified shape that they contain much that is new. For folk-lore has been compared to a mosaic which has been broken and scattered, some fragments lying here and others there. In Derbyshire we have the garland or ceremony of the May King, which is performed at Castleton on the 29th of May—an ancient rite which seems to have survived in no other part of Great Britain.[99] And then we have the Derby Ram or Old Tup, which may occur in other counties, but which, at all events, is so much associated with Derby as to have taken its name from that town. It is remarkable that these ceremonies are connected with ancient boroughs, for there were burgage tenements both in Castleton and Hope in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.[100] In Castleton there was Peak Castle, older than the Norman Conquest; in Hope there was the Roman town of Burgh or Brough.

[99] First mentioned in literature by Dr. Cox, _Churches of Derbyshire_, ii., 132; see _Folk-lore_, xii., p. 394 _seq._

[100] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_, Nos. 560, 1429.

In giving the title “Hugh of Lincoln” to the Derbyshire version of the ballad which follows, regard has been had to the precedent set by others, for the ballad is usually so entitled. The Derbyshire version, here first printed, is valuable not only for the literary beauty which two or three of its lines display, but for the association of the story of the Golden Ball with that of the Maid saved from the Gallows. I have added the words “Or the Rain Charm” to the title, because I believe that such is the subject of the ballad. But the reader will be able to distinguish tradition from inference, and to form his own opinion. I would add that a better version of the ballad may yet exist at Wirksworth or in some other part of the county. We may regret that in its present form it is corrupt; indeed, no two versions are alike. But it is the duty of the collector to write down such things as he finds them, without altering a syllable. He may conjecture, if he likes, that such a phrase as “playing at ice and ball” requires emendation, but he is not at liberty to alter the spoken words.

Hugh of Lincoln; or the Rain Charm

In the summer of 1901 the following fragment of a ballad was dictated to me by Mrs. Johnston, then aged 55, the wife of the landlord of the “Peak” Hotel at Castleton, in Derbyshire. Mrs. Johnston says that she learnt it from her mother, Mrs. Fletcher, who resided at Wirksworth, in the same county, when she was young, and died in 1904. Mrs. Johnston does not remember that the ballad had any title, or was sung to any tune:—

It rains, it rains in merry Scotland, It rains both thick and small: There were three little playfellows Playing at ice and ball. They threw it high, they threw it low, They threw it rather too high, They threw it into the Jew’s garden, And there the ball must lie. “Come in, come in, thou little palarp,[101] And thou shalt have thy ball.” “I won’t come in, I daren’t come in, Without my playmates all.” They showed him apples as green as grass, They gave him sugar so sweet,

[101] My informant did not know the meaning of this word. It is accented on the final syllable.

* * * * *

They put him on a dresser ta’ To stab him like a sheep.

* * * * *

“O hangman, hangman, stay thy hand, A little before I die, I think I see my father coming, Hastening through yonder sty [path]. O father hast thou brought my ball, Or hast thou bought me free, Or art thou come to see me hung Upon the gallows-tree?” “I have not brought thy ball, my dear, I have not bought thee free, But I have come to see thee hung Upon the gallows-tree.”

[The father and the mother then appear upon the “sty,” when the same request is made to the hangman in respect of each of them, and when they both declare that they have not brought the ball, etc. At last comes the sweetheart, who says:—]

“I have brought thy ball, my dear, And I have bought thee free, And I have brought a coach and six To take thee away with me.”

During the same summer, I heard in Castleton this fragment of a story:—

Once upon a time a little girl had a golden ball bought her. One day her parents had gone away, and before going they told her if she lost her ball the _magician_ who gave it her would hang her. After they had gone she began playing with the ball, and, as it happened, it went into a brook at the back of the _magician’s_ house. She cried till she thought she would tell her father she had lost her golden ball. When she met him she began saying:—

Father, father, have you brought my golden ball Or have you come to _set me free_, Or have you come to see me hung Upon that gallant tree?”

[The same question is repeated to the mother, brother, and sister, and cousins, and last of all to the sweetheart, who says that he has not come to see her hung, and stoops down and kisses her. They were married and happy ever after.][102]

[102] Told to me by Sarah Ellen Potter, aged 14, the daughter of Mr. George Potter, of Castleton.

No fewer than eighteen other versions of the ballad here printed have been published.[103] With one exception, these other versions omit the lines about the hangman and the child’s escape from the gallows. But in other respects they substantially agree in the story which they tell. A number of children are playing at ball, when one of them accidentally throws it into a Jew’s garden. The Jew’s daughter entices the boy to come in and fetch the ball. He is then laid on a dressing-board, and stabbed to the heart with a penknife, “like a swine,” or, as four of the versions have it, “like a sheep.” His body is then encased in lead, or in “a quire of tin,” and thrown into a draw-well. His mother goes forth to seek him, when he answers from the well, and bids her make his winding-sheet. The scene is variously laid in “merry Scotland,” in the city of Lincoln, in “Mirryland town,” in “Maitland town,” and in “Merrycock land.”[104] In version F of Prof. Child’s collection the time is “a summer’s morning,” and in version N we are told that the deed was done “on a May, on a Midsummer’s day.”

[103] In Prof. Child’s _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, part v., p. 233 _seq._

[104] As regards “Mirryland town,” it appears that the soil of the Morayland, in North-East Scotland, is gravelly, and much improved by summer rains. Hence the distich:—

A misty May and a dropping June Brings the bonny land of Moray aboon.

—Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, new ed., p. 269.

In a story called “The Three Golden Balls,” reported from Romsey, in Hampshire,[105] three girls called Pepper, Salt, and Mustard have each of them a golden ball. They play with the balls, and Pepper loses hers. Her mother is angry, and Pepper is hung on the gallows-tree. Next day her father goes to her, and she says:—

[105] _Folk-lore_, vol. vi., p. 306.

“Oh, father have you found my ball, Or have you _paid my fee_, Or have you come to take me down From this old gallows tree?”

This Hampshire version is much degraded, but it mentions _three girls_, and is also important as showing that the one who was chosen for sacrifice might be ransomed, as in the Derbyshire version, and so escape death, if her father or her sisters would pay the proper fee. They refuse, however, and the girl is redeemed by her sweetheart. In this respect the Hampshire story resembles the Derbyshire metrical version, in which the child is at last “bought free.” I shall refer to the subject of redemption further on.

The concluding part of the Derbyshire version appears at first sight to be inconsistent with the first part, inasmuch as the child’s death seems to have been caused both by stabbing with a knife and by suspension on a gallows. The version, however, is quite consistent with itself, for the child was first stabbed and then suspended with the head downwards.

At the present day an English butcher who is about to kill a sheep lays it on a trestle. He then sticks a knife into the jugular vein, and leaves the sheep for a short time on the trestle until it is quite dead. Afterwards he skins and dresses it, and then he passes a piece of wood through the sinews of the hind legs. From this piece of wood it is hung, by means of a hook, head downwards from a transverse bar. In former times a transverse wooden bar appears to have been used instead of an iron bar, and to have been called the “gallows-tree” (the gallows being the two upright posts), just as the transverse bar from which the cauldron was hung in the kitchens of old houses was called the “galley-balk.” On turning to the word “gallows” in the _New English Dictionary_, I find three quotations from modern books, in which slaughtered sheep or cattle are described as being hung on the gallows. The first is from Lady Barker’s _Station Life in New Zealand_, 1866 (x. 64), in which the gallows is described as “a high wooden frame from which the carcasses of the butchered sheep dangle.” The third is from Boldrewood’s _Colonial Reformer_, 1891, p. 350, where the “gallows” of the colonists is described as “a rough, rude contrivance consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece for elevating slaughtered cattle.” One can hardly doubt that these colonists were adopting a practice once followed in the mother country, and, accordingly, the apparent inconsistency between the concluding part of the Derbyshire version and the first part of that version disappears. The child was first stabbed “like a sheep,” and then hung, as a sheep was, on a gallows-tree or transverse piece of wood. This suspension was identical with crucifixion on a Tau-cross, or _crux commissa_.

Amongst the versions of the ballad given by Prof. Child is a fragment, numbered L, which was supplied to him by the late Canon Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, and which came from Buckinghamshire. It was told to Canon Venables about the year 1825. On this, Prof. Child remarks, in a note, that “the singer tagged on to this fragment version C of the Maid freed from the Gallows given at II., 352.” The portion of the story which Prof. Child calls “the Maid freed from the Gallows” can hardly have been “tagged on.” It is found in Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, and the metre of both portions is the same. And the lost ball occurs in both.

It remains to show for what reason the child was sacrificed. Ten of the versions published by Prof. Child begin by mentioning the falling rain—a thing which at first sight appears to have nothing to do with the matter. Thus in the Shropshire version we have:—

“It rains, it rains, in Merry-Cock land, It hails, it rains both great and small.”[106]

[106] Child, _ut supra_, referring to Miss Burne’s _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 539.

And in the copy taken by Prof. Child from Brydges’s _Restituta_, we have:—

“It rains, it rains in merry Scotland, It rains both great and small.”

The Derbyshire version, as we have seen, begins by saying that the rain is falling “both thick and small.”

Now it is remarkable that seven of the versions given by Prof. Child refer to the victim’s blood, as it flowed from the wound, as being both thick and thin. Thus in the version taken from Percy’s _Reliques_, we have:—

“And out and cam the thick, thick bluid, And out and cam the thin.”

Obviously the falling rain, which seems at first sight to enter so needlessly into numerous versions of the story, would have a great deal to do with the matter if the shedding of the child’s blood were intended to be an act of imitative magic simulating, and hence producing, rain. In Central Australia men are bled with a sharp flint, and “the blood is thought to represent rain.” And “in Java, when rain is wanted, two men will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods till the blood flows down their backs; the streaming blood represents the rain, and no doubt is supposed to make it fall on the ground.”[107]

[107] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, i., pp. 86, 88, and the authorities there cited.

We know from other traditions that children were sacrificed, if not in Great Britain, at least elsewhere, with the intention of once more filling the dry beds of rivers. The Rev. Joseph Hunter (1783–1861) has recorded these lines about the English river Dun, or Don:—

“The shelving, slimy, river Dun, Each year a daughter or a son.”[108]

[108] Hunter’s MSS. in the British Museum.

The Rev. W. Gregor has told us that the Scottish river Spey “is spoken of as ‘she,’ and bears the character of being ‘bloodthirsty.’ The common belief is that ‘she’ must have at least one victim yearly.

“The rhyme about the [Scottish] rivers Dee and Don and their victims is:—

“‘Bloodthirsty Dee, Each year needs three; But bonny Don, She needs none.’”[109]

[109] _Folk-lore_, iii., 72.

There were German rivers which required their victim on Midsummer Day,[110] and this, as we have seen, is the very day mentioned in one of the versions of our ballad. In nine of the versions given by Prof. Child, the body of the little victim is thrown into a draw-well, after having been rolled, as some of the versions say, in a “case,” or “cake,” of lead. The throwing of the body into a well was doubtless intended as a further rain-charm, just as, to give a single example, the man who gave the last stroke at threshing in the Tyrol was flung into the river.[111] It appears from the _Annals of Waverley_,[112] that the body of Hugh of Lincoln was first thrown into a running stream, and ejected by the stream. It was afterwards thrown into a drinking well.

[110] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, 2nd edit., i., pp. 86, 88.

[111] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, iii., 318. See also Hartland, _Legend of Perseus_, iii., 73 _seq._ Mr. Hartland shows how widely spread was the custom of offering sacrifice to water. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century firstborn children, according to Mr. Crooke, were offered to the Ganges.

[112] Child, _ut supra_, citing _Annales Monastici_, ed. Luard, ii., 346 _seq._

A few words must be said about the Jew, or Jew’s daughter, mentioned in the different versions of the ballad and in the chronicles. We ought not to overlook the fact that the Jews at an early period of their history sacrificed, and at a later period redeemed, their first-born children, as many passages in Exodus and Numbers plainly indicate. But to say, as Matthew Paris does, that the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy named Hugh, and scourged, crowned, and crucified him, as a parody of the crucifixion of Jesus, is to make a very large demand on our credulity. The Jews of Lincoln were not at all likely to have risked their lives and property by such an act of wanton and hideous cruelty. Nor is the evidence afforded by the different versions of the ballad sufficient to establish the fact that the Jews sacrificed children in Great Britain for any purpose or in any way. These different versions seem to have all sprung from the same original, and the thing to be tested is the credibility of that original. Its value as evidence against the Jews in Britain is impaired by the different places in which the deed is alleged to have been done, and, moreover, we have seen that the prose version from Castleton speaks of a “magician,” not a Jew. Still more is the evidence vitiated by the existence of that well-known popular hatred of the Jews, which gave rise to all sorts of libels and slanders. A good example of this hatred appeared in London as late as 1758, when a man—

“published a sensational account of a cruel murder committed by certain Jews said to have lately arrived from Portugal, and then living near Broad Street. They were said to have burnt a woman and a new-born babe, because its father was a Christian. Certain Jews who had arrived from Portugal, and who then lived in Broad Street, were attacked by the mob, barbarously treated, and their lives endangered. A criminal information was granted, although it was objected that it did not appear precisely who were the persons accused of the murder.”[113]

[113] Odgers on _Libel_, 1896, p. 445.

What the evidence does suggest is the former existence of a custom of sacrificing children to make rain. It is not even alleged that the Jews sacrificed children to the Spey, the Dee, or the Don.

There is, however, a document of much greater evidential value than ballads and chronicles, which declares that a boy was crucified by Jews at Lincoln. In the _Hundred Rolls_ for 3 Edward I. (1274), a sworn jury found that “certain land in the parish of St. Martin [in Lincoln], which belonged to Leo the Jew, who was condemned for the death of a crucified boy, and which land was then in the tenure of William Badde, was forfeited to the King as from the year 1256.”[114]

[114] “Item dicunt quod quædam terra quæ fuit Leonis judei dampnati pro morte pueri crucefixi quam Willelmus Badde tenet in parochia Sancti Martini est eschaeta domini Regis ab anno regni R.R.R. xljo, et valet xx_s_ per annum.—_Rotuli Hundredorum_, i., 322. There is a similar entry a few lines below.

That Leo the Jew was condemned for the crucifixion of a boy will hardly be doubted. That the sentence was just and founded on sufficient evidence is quite another matter. There may have been as little evidence against the Jews of Lincoln in 1256 as there was against the Portuguese Jews in London in 1758.

Although the evidence against the Jews with reference to the subject which we are considering cannot be admitted as valid, we must not conceal the fact that this people at an early period of their history sacrificed their firstborn children. The story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son Isaac should lead us to suspect the early existence of this custom. Dr. Frazer says that “the god of the Hebrews plainly regarded the firstborn of men and the firstlings of animals as his own,” the firstborn of men being generally redeemed.[115] And he asks the question: “If the firstborn of men and cattle were ransomed by a money payment, has not this last provision the appearance of being a later mitigation of an older and harsher custom which doomed firstborn children to the altar or the fire?” He then discusses the Passover, and suggests that “the slaughter of firstborn children was formerly what the slaughter of firstborn cattle always continued to be, not an isolated butchery, but a regular custom, which, with the growth of more humane sentiments, was afterwards softened into the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb and the payment of a ransom for each child.”

[115] See _Golden Bough_, ii., 45 _seq._, and especially the citations from Numbers and Exodus on p. 46.

The evidence which we have been examining does not mention the firstborn. But it tells us that the child devoted to sacrifice could be redeemed on payment of a “fee.” It is probable that those versions of our ballad which end by the throwing of the body into a well, represent the actual custom of early times when no redemption was possible. The father and mother may have regarded it as a duty that their child should become a victim, on the ground that it was better that he should die than that a whole tribe should perish of drought and famine.

No tale has been more popular among English children than that which is usually called “The Golden Ball.” In some form or other every collector has heard it.[116] However much this tale may have been worn down in the course of ages, it is still repeated with emphasis. If ever there was a time when the blood of little children was shed, or when their dripping bodies hung from a gallows-tree, to make the rain fall, how could the memory of such a horror, and of deliverance from such a death, fail to be preserved in ballad or in story?

[116] A Yorkshire version, much debased, is given in the first edition of Henderson’s _Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England_, p. 333. It was collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

The Glass House[117]

[117] Told to me by Sarah Ellen Potter, aged 14, the daughter of Mr. George Potter, of Castleton, Derbyshire, in 1901. Compare Grimm’s _Kinder-und Haus Märchen_, No. 47, and Addy’s _Household Tales_, No. 10.

There was a little girl selling oranges, and she went to a lady’s house, which was made of glass. It had glass doors, and everything was glass. The girl asked her if she would purchase of her oranges, and the lady said she would have them all if her mother would let her come and be her little servant. So her mother let her go. One day she was cleaning the glass window, when it broke. Then she broke the floor, and when her mistress went to change her dress the little girl ran outside to the gooseberry tree, and she said:—

“Gooseberry tree, gooseberry tree, hide me For fear my mistress should find me, For if she does she’ll break my bones, And bury me under the marble stones.”

And the gooseberry tree said, “Go to the butcher’s.” And when she got to the butcher’s, she said:—

“Butcher, butcher, hide me,” etc.

But the butcher said, “Go to the baker.” And when she got there, she said:—

“Baker, baker, hide me,” etc.

And the baker said, “Get into this bread box.” And she got in, and he nailed it up. While she was at the baker’s, her mistress had been to the gooseberry tree, and it told her it had sent the little girl to the butcher. When her mistress got to the butcher’s, he said he had sent her to the baker’s. So she went to the baker’s, and he told her to go away; but she said she would let his house be searched, and she commenced. But when she came to the box that was nailed she shivered, and she made him undo the nails, and out came the girl. So her mistress took her with her, and as they were crossing a river the girl’s mistress was leaning over a bridge, when the girl gave her a push, and she fell over and was drowned. And the little girl went singing merrily till she got to the glass house, and kept it as her own.

Peggy with the Wooden Leggy[118]

[118] Told to me by Florence Cooper, of the Peak Hotel, Castleton, Derbyshire, in 1901. A much inferior version called “The Golden Arm” was collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould in Devonshire. It is printed in the first edition of Henderson’s _Folk-lore of the Northern Counties_.

Once upon a time there lived together a very rich gentleman and his wife, and they had a young and beautiful child—one of the fairest earth had seen. She had bright golden hair. Her eyes were blue, and her teeth like pearls from the ocean. Her parents loved her very dearly, and if in their power would grant her every wish that she asked. But Peggy fell down and broke her leg, and her father bought her a wooden one. And with Peggy having a wooden leg, the children called her Peggy Wooden Leg, and her father didn’t like that name. And at last, thinking that something was wrong with her, he bought her a cork one, and then they called her Peggy Cork Leg. And going into a shop one day, she asked the shopman if he could change her leg for a golden one. At last she was taken ill, and died, and the butler of her father’s house, thinking it was a sin to let her be buried in her golden leg, stole it, and hid it in his box. He was asleep one night, and he thought he heard a knock, knock, knocking at the door. He said, “Now, bother me, what’s that? No ghosts here.” On turning the bedclothes down he lay aghast, for there at the foot of the bed stood the ghost of beautiful Peggy, not as he had seen her the day before, beautiful as marble, but with features without flesh, sockets without eyes, head without hair, and mouth without teeth. He was terrified, but he thought he would speak to her, and he says, “Peggy, is that you?” And she replied, “Yes; ’tis I.” Then he says, “Peggy, where are those beautiful blue eyes of yours?”

She said, “They are worm-eaten and gone.”

And he said, “Where are those beautiful pearl teeth of yours?”

She said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”

And he said, “Where are those beautiful golden locks?”

And she said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”

Then he said, “Where is that beautiful golden leg of yours?”

And she said, “You—have—got it!!!” and vanished through the floor.[119]

[119] _Cf._ Pythagoras and his golden leg, referred to by Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii., 418; also the story about Isis, who, when she collected the scattered limbs of Osiris, replaced the missing member with one of wood.—Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 18.

MISCELLANEOUS FOLK-LORE

A Skull as the Protector of a House

At Tunstead, between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Whaley Bridge, a skull in three pieces has long been kept inside the window of a house. It is known as Dicky Tunstead. If the skull is taken away, things will go wrong in the house and on the land. When the house was being rebuilt and new windows put in, they set Dicky on a couple beam in the barn, and thought they had done with him, and would hear no more of him; but at the rearing supper he made such a disturbance that they had to bring him back into the house. Dicky appears in all kinds of shapes—sometimes as a dog, and sometimes as a young lady in a silk dress. In whatever form he appears, he will point to something amiss if you will follow him. One of the “quarrels” of glass in the window where Dicky is is always out, and if it is put in it is always found taken out again next morning.[120]

[120] See _Laxdæla Saga_, 17 and 24. For another version of this story see Mr. Le Blanc Smith’s article in the _Reliquary_ (new series), vol xi., p. 228.

* * * * *

I was told that at Dunscar, a farmhouse in the parish of Castleton, there is a human skull on the outside of a window sill. If it is removed, the crops fare badly. I went to the farmhouse myself, and found no skull there, and the tenant who had lived there many years had never heard of such a thing.

Christmas Eve

In Bradwell Christmas Eve is known as Mischief Night. On that evening gates are pulled off and hung in trees, and farmers’ carts are taken away. They sometimes find them in the morning in a brook at the bottom of the hill. On a certain Mischief Night a farmer was pushing a cart down a steep hill into the brook with great eagerness, not knowing that it was his own cart. He said to his companions, “layt it choiz,”[121] _i.e._, let it down gently.

[121] I do not understand this word.

New Year

If you see the first new moon in the New Year through a glass there will be a death in the family.

At Great Hucklow they say that if you put clothes out on New Year’s Day there will be a death in the family before the end of the year.

Easter Observances

At Castleton and Bradwell, and in other villages of the High Peak, Easter Monday is known as Unlousing Day, _i.e._, releasing day. When a young woman came out of a house on the morning of that day the young men used to say “kiss or cuck.” If the girls refused the kiss the young men came in the evening and “cucked” them, _i.e._, tossed them up. The young women at Castleton used to “cuck” the young men on Easter Tuesday, and a tale is told there about a young man who was “cucked” so often on Easter Tuesday that he fell on his knees and implored an old woman who was driving a cow home not to “cuck” him. If the girl accepted the proffered kiss she was released, _i.e._, she escaped being tossed.

At Castleton the boys also kissed the girls on Valentine’s Day, and the schoolmaster had to let the girls go home before the boys to prevent the boys from kissing them.

“Cucking” was a very rough practice, and it sometimes led to charges of assault being made before the magistrates. At Castleton it was sometimes done by putting a “fork stale” or fork handle under the girl’s legs and lifting her up. It required two young men to do this. More frequently two men seized a girl by the arms and shoulders, tossed her up, and caught her as she fell. It is said at Bradwell that more girls were seen out on Unlousing Day than on any other day. The day is sometimes known as Cucking Day.

At Bradwell and Castleton parents tell their children to put pins into wells on Palm Sunday, or if they fail to do so they will break their bottles on the following Easter Monday. The pins must be new and straight, not crooked. I have talked to children who have done this, and one of them, a girl about fourteen years old, said the children go in great numbers on the afternoon of Palm Sunday to a well in Bradwell, “behind Micklow.” She took me to the well herself in October, 1901. It is divided into two parts by the boundary wall of a field, and is so small that I should never have found it alone. The Bradwell children used also to drop pins on this day into a well in Charlotte Lane, and also into a pond between Bradwell and Brough. Mr. Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, told me that on Palm Sunday “the children used to put new pins into lady wells, and the lady of the well would not let them have clean water unless they did that.” There is a lady well at the back of the castle at Castleton, from which the children used to fill their bottles at Easter, and there is another at Great Hucklow, or Big Hucklow, as some call it, from which they filled their bottles. Mr. Bradwell said the object of the children was “to get clean water by the lady’s influence. They had to do what the lady required. It was a fairy, or else an insect. On Easter Monday, a father or mother would say to a child, ‘If tha’s put no new pin in, there’ll be no clean water for thee.’” Mrs. Harriet Middleton, aged 83, once lost her slippers in the snow when she was going to put a pin in the well near Micklow. She and other young girls would have gone through snow or any weather to put them in.

At Castleton, Bradwell, and other places in the neighbourhood, Easter Monday is known as Shakking Monday. At Bradwell the children get glass bottles, such as medicine bottles, and fill them with water. They then put in pieces of peppermint cakes of various colours, but generally pink. These peppermint cakes are quite different from ordinary peppermint lozenges. They are big things, two or three inches wide, and are square or oblong in shape. The children break them up, put the broken pieces into the bottles, shake the mixture, and drink it. Some of the children tie the bottles round their necks. The sweetened water lasts for many days, and they take a drink of it from time to time. At Castleton and Aston the children put Spanish juice or “pink musks” into the water.

They say at Bradwell that unless you wear something new on Easter Sunday the birds will drop their excrement on you.

On Good Friday the lead-miners of Bradwell would on no account go into the mines. They would do any other kind of work on that day.

Shrove Tuesday Custom

About Whaley, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, they used to bake pancakes (which are eaten as soon as they are ready) on Pancake Day, _i.e._, Shrove Tuesday. If a girl could not eat a pancake between the time when the last pancake was done and a fresh pancake was ready, she was thrown into a gooseberry bush or upon the ash midden. At Abney on this day they called the one who was last in bed the “bed-churl” or “bed-churn,” and they threw him or her on the ash-midden. It was a common thing in the village to ask who had been the “bed-churl” that day.

Yule Loaf, Posset, and Candle

On Christmas Eve at Bradwell they have a large candle on the table and a large bowl of posset, which is made of ale and milk. They all sit round the table whilst the candle is burning, put their spoons into the bowl, and sup from them. The grocers still give candles to their regular customers for this purpose.

Mrs. George Middleton, of Smalldale, told me that the posset bowl used on Christmas Eve in that hamlet is a pancheon or milk bowl. They sit round the table, and put their spoons into the bowl. Any stranger who happens to come in can also put his spoon in. Posset is made of milk, which is warmed and spiced with nutmeg, ale being poured in until it “breaks” or curds. The Yule loaf was baked all in one piece. It was “like a round loaf put on the top of a four pound loaf.”

Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, said that the posset pot went round the table from one to another. There was a bit of a figure on the top of the Yule loaf to please the eye. The Yule candle was much longer than an ordinary candle.

The last of the Cave-dwellers

Two old women, called Betty Blewit and Sall Waugh, lived in a hut within the opening of the great cave at Castleton. It was one storey high; it had a mud roof, and “a bit of a lead window in front.” The bed was in one corner. These old women used to say that they “lived in a house on which the sun never shone, or the rain ever fell.” They begged of gentle people in the summer.[122] Writing of the cavern in 1720–31, the Rev. Thomas Cox says: “Within the arch are several small buildings, where the poorer sort of people inhabit, who are ready at all times with lanterns and candles to attend such travellers as are curious to enquire into these territories of Satan. These people resemble the Troglydites, or cunicular men, who, as Dr. Brown describes them, lived under the ground like rabbits.”[123]

[122] Information by Samuel Marrison, of Castleton, aged 88, in 1901.

[123] _Magna Britannia_ (Derbyshire), p. 442.

First Foot

At Castleton a dark-haired man “takes the New Year in” immediately after twelve o’clock on New Year’s Eve. He must be a dark man, _i.e._, “a man with a black head or black hair.” The parish clerk who had very black hair took the New Year in to some houses in Castleton. When the dark-haired man comes in “a glass of something good is given to him.” I was told that young dark-haired lads “get a ruck o’ money” in Castleton for taking the New Year in. Black or dark hair is obligatory in the High Peak. Miss Barber, of Castleton, aged 76, said that the black-haired man ought to be a stranger, and not a member of the family visited. In Bradwell, as in Castleton, the New Year is brought in by a dark-haired man.[124] The term “first foot” seems to be unknown in the High Peak.

[124] Near Sheffield the man who brings the New Year in brings with him a mince pie, a bit of coal, and something to drink, to cause good luck to the house. At Bradwell they have what they call “lucky bags,” things being put into them for good luck.

Curfew

At Castleton the curfew bell is known as the “curfer” bell, the accent falling on the first syllable. It is said to have been rung as a warning to people coming over the moors. It begins to ring on the 29th of September, and ends on Shrove Tuesday. On the 29th of September it rings at seven in the evening, and on the following nights at eight o’clock. It does not ring on Sundays, or between Shrove Tuesday and September 29th. Mr. Samuel Marrison, of Castleton, aged 88, said to me that “people found their way across the hills by the sound of the bells. There were no walls, and the sound of the bells was a guide.” An old man in Castleton told me that “they ring curfer because a man was lost on the hills. The parish clerk rings it on one bell.” I was surprised to find how many people in Castleton knew the exact times at which this bell is rung.

Good Times

In Bradwell they speak of “a good time as a wakes time.” One of the lead-miner’s customary rules declared “that the bar-master, by the consent of the jury, shall make a lawful dish between the buyers and the sellers of lead ore; and against a good time (or festival) as Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, etc., shall give to the poor two dishes, if need require.”[125]

[125] Hardy’s _Miner’s Guide_, Sheffield, 1748, p. 28.

Vows under the Shadow of a Hill

If lovers make vows to each other under the shadow of the castle hill at Castleton, those vows must never be broken. If broken, their love affairs will never prosper.

Thar-Cake Joinings

At Bradwell, on the fifth of November, they make a quantity of thar-cake (in South Yorkshire called tharf-cake), and divide it among the different members of the family, as the father, mother, brothers, and sisters. This is called a thar-cake joining. One Bradwell man will say to another, “Have you joined yet?” meaning “Have you made your thar-cake?”

Another informant told me that a “thar-cake join” was a kind of feast among children, and it used to be very common in Bradwell on the fifth of November. The children asked somebody to make the cake, and each of them paid his or her proportion towards the cost of the ingredients—meal, treacle, etc. They had coffee, etc., with the cake. The Primitive Methodists in Bradwell have now what they call a “thar-cake supper.” It is held on the Saturday which is nearest to the fifth of November.

Burial Customs

At Castleton burying cakes and warm ale were handed round at funerals. Burying cakes, said one of my informants, were three-cornered, and big enough to be carried under the arm. But another informant said they were round, and seven or eight inches across. They cut them into slices, and handed them round with warm ale.

At Castleton the funerals of poor people were known as “pay-buryings.” The guests used to give something towards the expenses, and an old woman with a white cap on used to sit in a chair in the corner, or in an armchair by the fire, and receive the money.

At Bradwell an old farmer called Jacob Eyre was expected to attend all funerals. A basket like a butter basket hung on one of his arms, and with the other arm he used to “deal out” pieces of bread to children standing round the door. Plenty of children gathered together at the funerals for the sake of the bread. The pieces of bread were three or four inches square, and they were either got from a bakehouse, or the relatives made it themselves. The old man was “very complimentary” to the children. He pleased them, joked, and made them laugh. What he said was very pleasant and nice. It was a regular custom in Bradwell, but it was not continued after Jacob Eyre’s death. He died many years ago.[126]

[126] Information by Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, formerly a lead-mine owner, aged 88, and given by him to me in 1901. Among the directions which William Percy gave to his executors in 1344 was one which obliged his executors, on peril of their souls, not to let a poor man depart from his funeral without receiving a penny, or the equivalent of a penny in bread.—_Testamenta Ebor._ (Surtees Society), i. p. 6.

Mrs. George Middleton, of Smalldale, widow, aged 45, said that her mother used to dress coffins with flowers at Abney, where she lived. But she did not put thyme on them, for she said “they had nothing to do with time.” But she said that whenever one of the Twelve Oddfellows at Bradwell dies, the survivors march before his coffin and sing, each surviving oddfellow carrying a sprig of thyme in his hand, which he drops on the coffin. Mrs. Middleton thought that one of their printed rules provided for this being done, but I did not find it in them. Mrs. Middleton said that her mother was present at all births and laying out of corpses at Abney, not as part of her duty, but because she liked to be there. “Funeral bread,” she said, “was made in a peculiar way.” Mrs. Middleton said it was the custom at Abney to put thyme in a house after a death and before the funeral, and also southern wood, old man, or lad’s love, these being names for the same plant.

In Eyam there was a “custom of anointing deceased children with May-dew.”[127]

[127] Bagshaw’s _History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Derbyshire_, 1846, p. 497.

Wakes

At Thornhill near Hope they have two barrels of ale at the wakes, and they feast in a barn. They dance and sing.

Mr. Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, told me in 1901 that “every day weakened the wake time. A few old women used to stand across the road at Castleton at the end of the wake week with a rope to keep the wakes in. There is only one road in Castleton—that leading from Hope.” Mr. Bradwell said he had never seen a rope tied across the road to keep the wakes in, and that it was a superstition by which they intended to prolong the wakes. I put questions to many people in Castleton about this, but found nobody who had heard of it.

At Bradwell wakes, which begin on the second Sunday in July, children got their new clothes, and all sorts of cleaning and whitewashing were done against that time. At Castleton also the children had new clothes, and the houses were whitewashed. They “fettled and cleaned for the wakes.”[128]

[128] Mrs. Johnston, of the Peak Hotel, Castleton, told me that at Morley, near Leeds, any neighbour could come into a house on the Sunday morning when the feast began and take a sop out of the pan. They walked straight in and helped themselves. English wakes seem to correspond to the festival of new fruits in other countries. On this subject see Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii., 326 _seq._

At Castleton on wakes even, _i.e._, on the Saturday night before the feast begins, they pulled trees up in gardens, hung gates in trees, hid the farmers’ carts, and took them anywhere.

Offerings to the Fairies

A Derbyshire man, aged about 55, said that his grandmother used to tell him that if you made the hearth very tidy before you went to bed, and put a little food on it, you would find the room swept and tidy next morning. He remembers trying this experiment when a boy, and the disappointment he felt when the desired result was not produced.

“Sweeping the Girl” on St. Valentine’s Day

“If the lass is not kissed, or does not get a visit from her sweetheart on St. Valentine’s Day, she is said to be dusty, and the villagers sweep her with a broom, or a wisp of straw. She is bound, subsequently, to cast lots with other girls, and finally, if she has good luck, draws the name of her future husband out of an old top hat.”[129]

[129] From an article on “Superstitions in the Peak,” in the _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_, 14th August, 1906. It was written by Mr. John Pendleton, of Manchester, who has kindly allowed me to mention his name.

Mr. Pendleton tells me in a letter that the custom was observed on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day in the middle of the last century.

JEDEDIAH STRUTT

By the Hon. Frederick Strutt

Jedediah Strutt, the second of three sons of William Strutt, a farmer at South Normanton, Derbyshire, was born on July 26th, 1726. His mother was Martha Statham, of Shottie, a hamlet in the parish of Duffield, at which church she and William Strutt were married on February 11th, 1724.

Of his elder brother Joseph little is known, except that he went to London, where he started in some commercial business, and that he married a Miss Scott.[130]

[130] Joseph Strutt went to London early in life, and we believe ultimately kept a shop there. He married in the year 1755 a Miss Scott, and from this marriage the Strutts known as the Strutts of Tutbury are descended. His two daughters married in succession Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. From the second of these marriages is descended the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, late Secretary of State for the Colonies, etc.

Jedediah’s education can have been only that of a country school of those days, though it is but fair to surmise that his father must have been a man superior to the farmers and yeomen of his day, otherwise his sons, Jedediah in particular, could not have been so successful in the respective occupations of their after life.

Mr. Felkin[131] tells us that in very early years Jedediah’s thoughts took an eminently practical turn, and that as a boy he occupied himself in making toy water-mills on a small brook, in endeavouring even to improve his father’s plough, and in other ingenious pastimes. The writer of this memoir is unaware from what source Mr. Felkin obtained his information as to the early tastes and occupations of Jedediah, but as he (Mr. Felkin) was a friend of the first Lord Belper, the grandson of Jedediah, the writer feels confident that nothing was inserted in Mr. Felkin’s account that had not Lord Belper’s full knowledge and approval.

[131] _A History of Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacture_, by W. Felkin, 1867.

It is at all events clear that at fourteen years of age Jedediah had shown a greater taste for mechanics than for husbandry, for he was then apprenticed by his father to a Mr. Ralph Massey, a wheelwright of Findern, a village about five miles from Derby, and twenty miles from his paternal home. It was to this apprenticeship, and to this life at Findern, that Jedediah Strutt owed a great part of his success in after life, and it is interesting to know that the document of the original indenture, of which a _facsimile_ is given, is in the hands of and prized by his great-grandson, the second Lord Belper.

At Findern, Jedediah was put to lodge with a family of the name of Woollatt, who were what were called hosiers (_i.e._, hosiery manufacturers in a small way); it was, as we shall see, from his intimacy with this family that a great deal of his success in after life emanated.

It may be presumed that William Strutt’s family were not members of the Church of England, but belonged to the Presbyterian, or, as it was called in later years, Unitarian persuasion. Whether that was so or not, the Woollatts at all events belonged to that sect, and sat under a Dr. Ebenezer Latham, who was a scholar of some repute, and had chapels both at Findern and at Caldwell.

Jedediah Strutt, we know, served the full time of his apprenticeship at Findern, and after that was in service or employment at Leicester, or at Belgrave, near that town, for a period of about seven years.

It must have been about the year 1754, when he was twenty-eight years of age, that an uncle, who was a farmer at Blackwell, the parish next to South Normanton, died; he left his stock on the farm to Jedediah, with the idea, we suppose, that he would succeed him as tenant. This legacy seems to have been sufficient to induce Jedediah to give up his employment, whatever it was, near Leicester, and return to the land or to husbandry. It served also as a reason for thinking he was in a position to marry. We find him, therefore, almost at once, after settling at Blackwell, writing to Elizabeth Woollatt, with whom he had been ever since his residence at Findern, now more than eight years before, on terms of intimacy if not of affection. Miss Woollatt had during that time been very little at home, but had been out in service, and at the time of Jedediah’s proposal was acting as servant or housekeeper to a Dr. Benson, an eminent Presbyterian divine in the east of London, who had written several works on divinity, and who has in more recent days been deemed worthy of a place in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.

The characteristic letter containing Jedediah’s proposal to Elizabeth Woollatt, which we are about to give, is a long one, but it is rather typical of the writer, and is also worth inserting as a proof of how well he, who was little above a working man in position, had managed to educate himself.

“J. Strutt to Elizabeth Woollatt. “Blackwell “Feby 3^{rd} 1755

“Dear Betty,

“Since our first acquaintance, which is now many years ago, I have often wrote to you but never in a strain like this; nor did I think I ever should for though we were then more intimately acquainted than since and though then I thought you had some degree of kindness for me, yet as my conduct and behaviour to you has been such as could neither raise nor continnue your regard, together with the years that have passed since then, (for time often puts a period to love as well as all other events) I did not think you could remember me with the least pleasure or satisfaction but rather the contrary; but when I was at London and had the opportunity of seeing you something or other told me (though perhaps nothing more than the last glance of your eye when I bade you farewell) that you looked on me with an eye of tenderness nay, one is so apt to speak as they wish I had liked to have said love; and if so that one generous instance of truth and constancey has made a greater and more lasting impression on my mind than all the united claims of beauty wit and fortune of your sex so far as I have had opportunity of conversing, were ever able to make; therefore it is upon this foundation I promise to tell you that from a wandering inconstant and roving swain I am become entirely yours!

“I am ready to become all that you could wish me to be if you loved me and which is all I wish your husband. But suppose I should have gone too far in this declaration, and my fond observation prove a mistake, how will you wish, nay rather how impossible would it then be for you to wish even to call me by that tender name. But let me still suppose it is not so.... Yet what argument can I use to induce you to leave London with all the delights it affords, or how persuade you to leave so good a master who I know values you and whom you both esteem and love. Here I am at a loss and if you should be indifferent with regard to me it will be impossible to say anything that will be sufficient. And indeed I am not inclined to flatter nor to fill your imagination with fine words only; and this is one of all the realities I can think of, that it is not impossible but that you may be happy here even tho’ it is true you cannot behold the splendour and the gaiety of a great city nor the noise and hurry of its inhabitants; yet the London air is not half so sweet, nor the pleasures half so lasting and sincere. Here inocense and health more frequently reside; here the beauties of nature are ever presenting themselves both to our senses and imaganations; here you may view the rising and the setting sun which many in London are strangers to; here it is that you may have the morning and the evening song of many warbling larks and linnets and as Milton expresses it ‘The shrill matin song of birds on everry bough.’ As to myself fortune has not placed me among the number of the rich and great and so not subjected me to the many temptations and follies that attend great men some of which perhaps I should not have been able to withstand, and others that I should have been loth to bear; yet by the blessing of heaven I have more then enough for happiness, and by that means at this season of the year I enjoy many leisure hours (and all the blessings of leisure and retirement) some of which I spend in reading and meditation, the rest I dedicate to love and you.

“But I shall forget myself and learn to do a thing I never loved that is to write long letters, and yet methinks I have a thousand things to say; but as I had rather you wished I had said more than less nay if I could have told you all my heart in one word, I should not now have troubled you with so many; but I have no apology to make, only my sincerity, and if you read with candour and with the same simplicity with which I write you will certainly find it sincere. I hope that will recomment it to your kind reception and obtain if possible an answer of kindness.

“I saw your brother as I passed through Derby but I did not take him the books you desired me. I heard from my brother last week and rejoyce to hear he has been abroad (i e out of the house).

“My father often talks of the Doctor and you and withall knows that I love you, nay he himself loves you and will be glad to see you here; and now if ever you had any kindness for me, if ever I did or said anything to give you either delight or pleasure, let it not be in vain that I now ask, nor torture me with silence and suspense; by so doing you will lay the highest obligations on one who is in every sense of the word

“Your sincere lover “J Strutt.”

This proposal elicited the following equally characteristic reply:—

“Elizabeth Woollatt to Jedediah Strutt. “addressed to “M^r Jedediah Strutt at Blackwell “to be left at the Bull Inn, Mansfield

“London Feby 15^{th} “1755

“Yours of the third came safe, which I would have answered before but had not presence of mind enough for some time to lay it before my master; at length a favourable opportunity offering itself, my resolution got the better of my fear, and, after a short introduction gave him your letter which he said showed you to be a man of sense and he thought of honour and honesty; but as to himself he was so surprised, disconcerted and uneasy as I never saw him, and for some time would say nothing more to me. At length he became able to talk freely on that head, bid me consult my own happiness and not think what he suffered. He then offered to make me independent, that so after his death, I might live where I pleased, not at all intending that as a dissuasive from accepting your generous offer, but as a means to prevent my being influenced by any other motive than that alone which is essential to the most lasting, most perfect happiness.

“Such, such is the behaviour of this god-like man; may he meet all the reward that such beneficence deserves in both worlds.

“As to myself was I possessed of any desirable qualification, and had I enjoyed the greatest affluence, I should not then hesitate a moment, but comply with whatever you will desire; but my consciousness of my own inferiority in points of fortune as well as anything else, makes me extremely fearful that you should find cause to repent, when it is too late; if this should be the case, what I must suffer from what in me is the least occasion of pain to you, is not for me to say; but be this as it will, you are and ever will be entitled to the best wishes of your most humble servant

“E. Woollat.

“My service to your father I wish I better deserved his good opinion.”

Many letters afterwards pass between the happy pair; but their course of true love runs very smoothly until all is made ready. At the beginning of September, we find Miss Woollatt coming down from London to Blackwell to be married. It would certainly have seemed more natural that she should be married from her father’s house, but that did not seem to be either possible or advisable under changed circumstances, as her father had married again, and the step-mother, as is often the case, seemed to stand rather in the way of the children being at home.

We now, therefore, see Jedediah Strutt happily settled at Blackwell, apparently ready to remain steadfast to farming, and married to the excellent and most industrious woman of his affections. It must have been, however, about the time his first child, William, was born, that a change came over the scene, and that Jedediah’s strong taste for mechanics obliged him to think of other things besides his farm.

His brother-in-law, William Woollatt, who had been assisting his father in the hosiery trade, and till the second marriage had been living at Findern, knowing Strutt’s bent for mechanics, desired his assistance in connection with an object which he had at heart, viz., the invention of a machine for making ribbed hose.

It will be best and most fitting here to give Mr. Felkin’s account of this invention.[132]

[132] _History of Machine-wrought Hosiery_, by W. Felkin, p. 88.

“Mr. William Woollatt was at that time, 1750, a hosier in Derby. His attention was directed to the question of how these ribbed hose could be made, and he brought under the special attention of his brother-in-law, Mr. Jedediah Strutt, who, though an agriculturist, had he knew been from his youth engaged in mechanical pursuits as an occupation of his mind and hands during his leisure time. The reference thus made proved to be a most successful one. The important results could not have been at first anticipated, nor even during the lifetime of Mr. Strutt were they fully understood. But they have been such as to have given him a just prominence amongst the inventors of that age, and to require the more extended personal account about to be given. The very simplicity of the plan he devised and of the mode of its application to the machine of Lee 170 years after its invention added to the fact that no historian of the trade wrote during the next fifty years preclude any very minute details of the obstacles he encountered. Such an account now would be very interesting, if it had been forthcoming. Great difficulties there must have been, for the constructive powers of mechanics in the stocking trade had not a hundred years ago been employed as they have been since; mainly as the effect of this effort of Strutt’s genius.... It was now that he, by Mr. Woollatt’s representations of the difficulty and importance of the matter then occupying the frame-work knitting world, was induced to make himself practically acquainted with the principles and the movements of a stocking frame; probably the most if not the only very complex machine he had ever seen; and this with the idea no doubt at first but a remote one of so dealing with it as to cause it to produce what had hitherto been thought to be beyond its powers. A clergyman had invented it, why should not a farmer increase its capacity for usefulness? After much labour, time, and expense, he succeeded admirably in this by making an addition to it, or rather placing in front of it so as to work in unison and harmony with it a distinct apparatus or machine; thus between them to produce the ribbed web of looped fabric; and not as popularly stated by finding out the defects of Lee’s frame and devoting himself to its improvement.

... The principle of Strutt’s Derby rib machine remains unaltered; its operation has been simplified, however, by its subordination to automatic movement, as will be at once seen on examination of power hosiery frames lately constructed.”

From this time, though he did not leave his farm at Blackwell at once, Strutt’s mind was evidently entirely occupied with his invention, and with the consideration of the best way of making use of it. Strutt’s means were, we can imagine, very small, and therefore his only plan was to try and get some other manufacturer of hosiery to take him as a partner, and share the advantage of his mechanical skill and invention. We believe there are no letters of Strutt’s to be found relating to his invention of the Derby rib machine, but in 1757 he was evidently making great efforts to start in a hosiery business.

Early in that year, Mrs. Strutt went up to London to see her kind old master, and to inquire whether he could be persuaded to advance them or lend them some of the necessary capital for starting in business. She was, we believe, successful in this object, and we know that the next child was christened George _Benson_. The account of her journey up to town gives a rather good idea of the difficulty of travelling in those days, especially for the humbler classes, who could not afford the coach, but had to go by the waggon.

Jedediah Strutt took his wife to Derby, evidently on a pillion behind him on horseback, and from there she proceeded in the stage waggon. In this their progress must have been very slow, as she writes about the journey that at Glyn, six miles from Leicester, “I was so sick I was not able to travel further, but staid behind the waggon more than an hour, and then walked five miles before I came up with it.”

In this and the following year the necessary patents were taken out, and a great many of the leading hosiery manufacturers in the neighbourhood of Nottingham were approached, and several visits to London had to be paid. The first business Jedediah Strutt started was with hosiers of the name of Bloodworth and Herford. This arrangement, though terminated happily by all parties, did not last long, and the two brothers-in-law ultimately persuaded Mr. Need, a most respectable hosier, to join them, the firm being styled Need, Strutt and Woollatt. They had works both at Derby and Nottingham. It can be readily understood that immersed as he was in this business, Strutt had found it impossible to continue to reside on the farm at Blackwell, which place he must have left about 1759, when he took his family to reside in Derby.

Before we leave the village of Blackwell, it ought to be mentioned that the farmhouse where Strutt resided is still known, and that when one of his great-grandsons visited the place only a few years ago, he was at once taken up to a long, low garret in the roof, where it is the current tradition of the place his great-grandfather had 150 years ago worked his hosiery frame and invented the Derby rib machine.

It may also be of a little interest to some of our readers to be told that one of the Strutt family was able to acquire quite recently a cradle made by Jedediah for his first child, William. This cradle, it appears, had been acquired or bought when Strutt left Blackwell by his friend Haslam, the blacksmith at Tibshelf (a neighbouring village), who had probably assisted Strutt in making his machine. It has since that time rocked four generations of the Haslam family. The cradle is of oak, and it is needless to say, like many other works of Strutt’s, of very strong and solid construction.

The hosiery manufacture of Need, Strutt and Woollatt must have been very successful, or they would not in such a few years have been able to gain the position they did. Strutt must have been the manager or moving spirit of the establishments both in Derby and Nottingham. It is interesting to learn that in the latter town, in which we believe he never resided, he received in the year 1762 the compliment of being made a freeman.

It was, we believe, in or about the year 1770 that Richard Arkwright, knowing, of course, what the demand for cotton yarn was for hosiery making in Derby and Nottingham, came to Nottingham in the hope of finding someone to help him in starting cotton mills, by which he could reap the fruits of his recent invention, the Spinning Jenny. Messrs. Wright, the bankers, not being prepared to find all the necessary capital, advised Arkwright to apply to the successful hosiery manufacturers, Messrs. Need, Strutt and Woollatt. This advice was at once acted on, and in a very short time the firm of Messrs. Arkwright, Strutt and Need was formed.

Cotton mills, driven by horse power, were at once started at Nottingham, and a few years later mills were built at Cromford, where advantage was taken of the fine water power of the river Derwent.

Strutt was now a very busy man, as he was not only part proprietor of large hosiery works and of large cotton spinning works, but he was also starting in Derby calico or weaving works. It was he, we are told, who was the first person to start the manufacture of calico all of cotton, that is to say, not of linen warp and cotton weft. This change, though it may seem to us a small one, created a revolution in the calico trade, and all the Lancashire manufacturers were up in arms against it. In the end an Act of Parliament, after much trouble had been taken, was passed, by which certain prohibitions and discriminating duties were repealed, and the new process declared to be both lawful and laudable.

The following letter from Lord Howe,[133] the celebrated admiral, who had no doubt been helping to steer this measure through the House of Commons, is perhaps of sufficient interest to insert:—

[133] Lord Howe was not created an English peer until after this date.

“Grafton Street “August 16th 1785

“Lord Howe presents his compliments with many thanks for the piece of the new manufacture he has received from Messrs. Need & Strutt. He is very much flattered by that instance of their gallantry to Lady Howe who accepts it with equal acknowledgment, as he deems it an evidence of their obliging prejudice in his favour, tho’ conscious at the same time that the success of their application to Parliament was solely ascribable to the reasonableness and justice of their pretensions. Lady Howe will have a particular satisfaction in making the circumstances known, hoping that the elegance of the pattern and the perfection of the work will incite all her acquaintance to encourage so great an improvement in the British manufactures.”

In the year 1780, Strutt and Arkwright severed their business connection, Arkwright retaining the works at Cromford, and Strutt building works at Belper and at Milford on land that had been recently acquired. These works, as well as those at Cromford, continue to be carried on as cotton mills in spite of the enormous development of the cotton trade in Lancashire.

It is interesting, too, to know that Samuel Sclater, known in America as the “father” of the cotton spinning industry in that country, came from Belper, and was actually apprenticed for seven years to Jedediah Strutt while he was living at Milford. Samuel Sclater’s life was written in America nearly eighty years ago, and contains a view of the Belper mills, and the portrait and one or two interesting little anecdotes of his old master, Jedediah Strutt.

We must now say a few words about Strutt’s domestic and family life in the latter part of his career. In 1773 he had the misfortune to lose his wife, a loss that was irreparable to him, as she had been not only a devoted helpmate and companion to him, but a most excellent mother to their children. She died while with him on one of his many journeys to London which he made about this time. She is buried in Bunhill Fields.

We give here an extract from one of Jedediah’s letters to his children after their mother’s death:—

“At present I feel so bewildered and so lost so wanting, some how or other so but half myself that I can scarce believe things to be in the manner they are indeed it is impossible for me to describe or you to imagine how I feel. I doubt not every repetition of this kind will affect you but it will wear off especially in minds young as yours are. Other objects will make their impressions but you I trust will never forget your dear mother who loved you so well I hope you will always retain much of her goodness of temper disposition and affection; that you will imitate the example she has set you of virtue of goodness of benevolence and kindness for they are most amiable virtues and that you will study the same sentiments of sobriety temperance diligence frugality industry and economy that you observed in her. Your own recollection will bring to your minds so many things that were to be found in her worth your attention that I need not here enumerate them.”

The bereaved husband, owing to his business in London, and perhaps also to his own feelings, did not return to his family till November. The children, of whom William, the eldest, was only seventeen years of age, by their letters at any rate show how well they had been brought up. Having only one servant, a great deal of the work in the house had to be done by them, and we have proof also that both William and his sisters were making themselves of use in some of the office work of their father’s business. It is interesting, too, to find how careful their parents were in impressing upon them the importance of learning French, and to note even in their letters what trouble they took to obtain proficiency in that language.

In the letter to his son, from which we are about to make a few extracts, we can see how Jedediah felt the disadvantage of the rather humble and imperfect education and of the illiterate society he had had in early life, and was determined if possible to do his utmost to prevent his children suffering in the way he had suffered.

“London August 4th 1774

“My dear Billy

“Some time ago I happened to see some of the letters wrote by the Earl of Chesterfield to his son which pleased me so much that I determined to buy the book and on perusing it find it so full of good sense, good language and just observations that I am charmed with it. The late Lord Chesterfield was a nobleman of the first rank, had all the advantages of a learned and polite education joined to a ready wit and good understanding. He had seen and conversed and been employed in most of the countries in Europe; indeed he had spent a life of many years in the most polished and refined company that were anywhere to be met with; to all of which great advantages he added the most diligent the most careful and most just observation.”

After explaining Lord Chesterfield’s and his son’s position in the world, Jedediah Strutt continues:—

“I need not tell you that you are not to be a nobleman, nor prime minister, but you may possibly be a tradesman of some eminence and as such you will necessarily have connection with mankind and with the world and that will make it absolutely necessary to know them both and you may be assured if you add to the little learning and improvement you have hitherto had, the manners, the air, the genteel address and polite behaviour of a gentleman you will abundantly find your account in it in all and every transaction of your future life when you come to do business in the world.... You may believe me in this for I now feel the want of them (accomplishments) by dear experience. If I would I could describe the awkward figure one makes, the confusion and the embarrassment one is thrown into on certain occasions from the want of not knowing how to behave and the want of assurance to put what one does know into practice. I look on it now as a real misfortune that in the beginning of my life I had not sense nor judgment enough of my own nor any friend that was able or kind enough to point out to me the necessity of an easy agreeable or polite behaviour. Indeed so foolish was I that I looked on dancing and dress the knowing how to sit or attend or move gracefully and properly as trifles not worthy the least expense of time or money and much below the notice of a wise man. I observe in you a good deal of the same temper and disposition with regard to these things that I myself had when I was your age but if you will believe me as the best friend you have in the world they are wrong notions and must be eradicated and changed for those of a different nature if ever you mean to shine in any character in life whatever.”

After reading this letter of advice of the father to his son, it is interesting to know that the son, if he did not occupy any public position, did shine as an eminent scientific man, who numbered amongst his friends all the greatest scientists and philanthropists of his day, and was himself a member of the Royal Society.

Very little more remains to be told of Jedediah Strutt’s life. He married a second time about the year 1780 or 1781, Anne, the widow of George Daniels, of Belper, and daughter of George Cantrell, of Kniveton. This marriage, we learn from one or two letters, did not give satisfaction to his daughters and other members of his family, nearly all of whom were, however, married about that time or a little later.

Jedediah Strutt passed the end of his life at Milford House, which he had himself built. He did not die there, but at Exeter House, Derby, in the year 1797. He lies buried in the Unitarian Chapel at Belper.

We may perhaps be excused here for quoting what Mr. Felkin says about Mr. Strutt:—

“An intellect singularly clear and cool was combined in him with the faculty of devising inventions and improvements which he carried into effect with unwearied energy of mind and purpose, impressing themselves on the entire conduct of his establishments as they increased in magnitude. His tenacity of principle and moral fortitude resulted from his confidence that his determinations were founded upon truth. His convictions in regard to general views of society were equally strong. His political and religious opinions were adopted because he thought them sound and conclusive to the happiness of mankind.”

Mr. Strutt seems to have been singularly void of ambition for worldly distinction; he was only ambitious of the blessing that follows duty done.

Although the practice of writing your own epitaph cannot be exactly commended, the writer of this brief memoir may perhaps be excused for inserting in it the words found a few years ago amongst Jedediah Strutt’s papers, and in his own handwriting:—

“Here rests in peace J. S—— who without fortune family or friends raised to himself a fortune family and name in the world; without having wit, had a good share of plain common sense; without much genius, enjoyed the more substantial blessing of a sound understanding; with but little personal pride, despised a mean or base action; with no ostentation for religious tenets and ceremonies, he led a life of honesty and virtue, not knowing what would befall him after death, he died resigned in full confidence that if there be a future state of retribution it will be to reward the virtuous and the good.

“This I think my true character.

“J. Strutt.”

INDEX

_Abbey Square Sketch Book, The_, 212

Abbot’s Chair, The, 301

Abney Common, 197

—— James, 30

—— Manor, 183, 199

—— Moor, 50, 80, 304

Addy, S. O., 242

—— on Derbyshire Folk-Lore, 346–70

—— on Offerton Hall, 192–9

Addy’s _Household Tales_, 358

Ælfritha, 115

Æthelbald, 114, 115

Agincourt, Battle of, 14, 103

Aldulph, 116

Aldwark, 113

Alfred the Great, 5, 76, 117.

Algar, Earl of Mercia, 121

Alkmonton Hospital Chapel, 212, 251

Allestree, 214, 215, 249, 251

Allestry, Roger, 330, 337; William, 330

Almayne Rivettes, 18

Alselin, Ralph, 7

_Anastatic Drawing Society’s Volume_, 256, 271

Andrew, W. J., 70

—— Prebendary, 214, 278, 279

_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, 4, 114

_Annals of Hyde_, 174

Anne of Denmark, 180

Arbor Low Stone Circle, 74, 75–8, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87

_Archæological Journal, The_, 119

Archers, 13

Archery, 323

Arkwright, Richard, 379, 380

—— Strutt and Need, Messrs., 379

Armada, The, 21

Armfield, 297, 298

Armfield, Robert, 297

Arrows, 18

Arrow-heads, 46, 47

Ash, Edward, 190

Ashbourne, 11, 34–5, 208–9, 210, 212, 232, 234–9, 249, 251–2

_Ashbourne, History of_, 326

Ashmole, Elias, 106

Ashover, 219–20, 226, 232, 248, 250, 252–3

Ashton, Isabella, 171; Peter, 171

Assize of Arms, 18

Aston, 232

Athelstan, 6

_Athenæum, The_, 296

Auby, Thomas, 169

Avebury, 87

Babington, Anthony, 20, 152, 154; Roland, 17; Thomas, 253

Badow, 122

Bagshawe, Henry, 282

Bagshaw’s _Gazetteer of Derbyshire_, 368

Baine, Ralph, Bishop of Lichfield, 126

Bakelow Barrow, 59

Bakewell, 6, 97, 101, 104–7, 208, 210, 212, 215–16, 231–2, 236–8, 248, 253–4, 299

Ballidon Moor, 60

Balliol, John, 12

Bamford Moor, 80

Bar Brook, The, 80, 82

Barber, Miss, 365

—— Mr., 175

Bardolf, William de, 12

Baring-Gould, Rev. S., 357, 359

Barlborough, 139, 141–2, 316, 317, 324

Barley, Robert, 16

Barnack, 118

Barons, Rising of the, 8, 9

Barrows, 41

Barrow-upon-Trent, 232

Basingwork, The Abbot of, 301

Baslow Moor, 50, 82

Bassano, Francis, 120, 211, 270, 277

Bateman, Thomas, 44–5, 54, 59, 78, 109, 216

Beamont, Edward, 94

Beauchief Abbey, 16, 202

“Bed-churl,” 364

Bede, 4, 77

Beeston, 249

Beighton, 249

Belers, Thomas, 147

Belper, 254, 380, 381

Belvoir MSS., 22

Bemrose, Sir Henry, 327

Bennett, Gervase, 129; Robert, 129

Beresford, James, 268; Thomas, 15, 268

Berfurt, 116

Bernake, Gervase de, 100

Bertulph, 116

Bess of Hardwick, 23

Bigsby’s _History of Repton_, 122

Bills, 18

Birch, Walter de Gray, 116

Birgwurd Cross, The, 301

Birley Hill, 317

Black Edge, The, 165

Blackwell, 373, 376, 377

Blanc-Smith, G. le, 360

—— Wingfield Manor House, 146–63

Blore, Mr., 104, 105, 149, 161

Bodley, Mr., 257, 263

_Boldon Buke_, 193

Bolehill, 45

Bolsover, 250, 254, 324; Castle, 8, 25, 27, 133, 136–9, 316

Bonnell, Mrs., 178

Bothe, William, 241

Bourbon, John, Duke of, 15

Bow Stone, 299

Bowden, 167, 168

Bower, Margaret de, 103; Sir Thurston de, 103

Bowles, C. E. B., Bradshaw and the Bradshawes, 164–91

Boyleston, 29

Brackenfield, 254–5

Bradbourne, Humphrey, 19

Bradburne, John, 16

Bradshaw and the Bradshawes, 164–91

Bradshaw Hall, 133, 164–91, 294; John, 332; the Regicide, 31, 174

Bradshaw Family, 164–91

Bradwell, 361, 362, 365–369

—— Mr. Robert, 362–364, 368, 369

Brailsford, 7, 249

—— Henry de, 11

Brampton, York, 190

Brandreth, James, 36

Brand’s _Observations on Popular Antiquities_, 346

Brassington Moor Stone Circle, 80

Breadsall, 218, 219, 226, 232, 236, 240, 256–7

Brede Place, Sussex, 226

Bretby, 121, 122

Bretton, 182

Brewster, Thomas, 127

Brigstock, 118

_British Barrows_, 54, 55, 69

Brixworth Crypt, 119

Broad Marshes, The, 166

Bronze Age, The, 42

—— Barrows, 48–64

Bronze Implements, 56–8

Brough, 2

Brounker, Sir Henry, 23

Broxhill, 317, 323

Brydges’ _Restituta_, 353

Buckingham, Duke of, 23

Bull Ring Stone Circle, The, 75, 78–80, 88

Bullock, William, 129

Bunhill Fields, 381

Bupton Manor, 6

Burdett, Sir Francis, 30, 129; Sir Robert, 130

Burgh, The Roman Town, 348

Burial Customs, 367–8

—— Mounds, 39, 41, 42

“Buries, The,” 117

Burton Bridge, 90, 94

Burton-on-Trent, Abbot of, 6

Butler, Humphrey, 16

Buxton, 1, 2, 20

Cadster Stone Circle, 82, 85

Cairns, 40, 41, 49

Calke, 121, 122, 144

—— Canons of, 121

Camps, 39

“Candle-rents,” 239

Cantrell, George, 383

Canute, 116

Carnarvon, Earl, 126

Cassy, Sir John, 292

Castleton, 2, 8, 243, 283, 285, 347, 348, 350, 362–3, 365, 367, 369

Cattermole, George, 211

Cave-dwellers, 364

Cave-remains, 39

Cavendish Family, 31–3, 137, 138, 199, 315

Chaddesden, 205, 206, 226, 232, 257–8

Chamberlain, The Right Hon. Joseph, 371

Chambers’s _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, 351

Champion Cross, The, 303

Chapel-en-le-Frith, 82, 286–7

Charles I., 24–26, 289

Charles, Invasion of Derbyshire in 1745 by Prince, 31, 33–5

Charlesworth, 301

Charnells, Thomas, 129

Chatsworth, 6, 20, 27, 32, 133, 139, 150

Chaworth, Sir Thomas de, 202; Sir William, 15

Chelmorton, 45, 205, 212, 213, 215, 291

Cheshire, John, 33

Chester, 4

Chesterfield, 2, 9, 21, 27, 97, 208, 210, 212, 218, 221, 222, 223, 231, 236, 240, 245, 249, 258–62

—— Lord, 30

—— Philipp, Earl of, 129, 131

Childers, of Carr House, 341

Child’s _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, 350–4

Chinley, 181

“Christmas Eve,” 361

_Chronicon Abbatiæ de Evesham_, 116

_Chronicles of All Saints’_, 225

Church Broughton, 212, 262

_Church Notes_, 120

Cinerary Urns, 52, 55–6, 61, 62, 64

Civil War, The, 26–31

Clarke, Lettice, 189, 190

Clayton, Margaret, 173

Clulow, 299

Cock and Pynot, The, 33

Codnor Castle, 12

Cokayne Chapel, The, 251

Cokayne, Francis, 17; John, 15; Robert, 16; Sir Aston, 30; Sir Thomas, 16

Coke, Sir Edward, 30

Cold Eaton Barrow, 68

Coldwell Hall, 343

Colepeper MSS., 332

Colepepper, Colonel, 32

Columbell, Roger, 240

Commissioners of Array, 13

Cooper, Florence, 359

Cooper, Roger, 166

Copley, Lionel, 332

Cornere, John de la, 11

_Corpus Christi College, History of_, 327

Corselets, 18

_Country Folk-Lore_, 347

Cox, Arthur, 280

—— F. Walker, 257

—— Rev. Thomas, 365

—— Rev. Dr., on _Derbyshire Churches_, 97, 102, 105, 178, 269, 273, 275, 280, 347

—— Derbyshire Monuments to the Family of Foljambe, 97–113

—— Historic Derbyshire, 1–38

—— Plans of the Peak Forest, 281–306

—— _Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals_, 97, 112, 183, 193

Crawford, Major-General, 156

Crecy, Battle of, 13

Creswell Caves, 1

—— Manor, 12

Crich, 205, 210, 211, 262

Cromford, 380

Cromwell, Oliver, 158; Ralph, Lord, 137, 146, 147–8; Thomas, 122, 123

Crosslow, 53

Croxall, 122

“Crucks,” 192, 193

“Cucking,” 361–2

Cumberford, Edward, 16

Curfew, 366

Curzon Family, 15; John, 16, 26, 180, 315; Francis, 19; Richard, 9; Sir Nathaniel, 34

Dacre, Leonard, 152

Dalby, Colonel, 157

Dale Abbey, 16, 121, 201–2, 225, 236

Danes, Invasion of the, 4–6

Daniels, Anne, 383

Darley Abbey, 16, 202, 236, 242

—— Dale, 212, 214–15

Davenport, Barbara, 183; Sir John, 183

Davy, Thomas, 91

De Bower Chapel, 279

Deepdale, 121

Degg, Sir Simon, 342

Deincourt, Edward, 12; Lord, 30, 318

Delves, Nicholas, 337

Demi-lances, 18

Denby, 263

Denman, The Hon. George, 131

Derby, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 23, 26, 27, 33–35

—— All Hallows’, 207, 212, 236, 237, 240, 245, 248

—— All Saints’, 35, 94, 207, 245, 249

—— St. Alkmund’s, 212, 263

—— St. Michael’s, 232, 263

—— St. Peter’s, 210, 211, 262, 263

“Derby Ram, The,” 347

_Derbyshire Charters_, 197-9, 348

—— _Churches_, 97, 102, 105, 178, 269, 273, 275, 280, 347

—— _Folk-Lore_, 346–70

—— Lyson’s, 328

Derwent Moor Barrow, 45, 46

Dethick, 152, 154

—— Robert, 11

Dickson, Nicholas, 169

_Dictionary of National Biography_, 373

Dilke, Sir Thomas, 189

Diuma, Bishop, 115

_Domesday Survey_, 6, 114, 117, 324

Dove Holes, 78, 295, 304

Dover, 23

Doveridge, 263

“Drinking Cups,” 55–6, 61–63

“Druidical” Circles, 50

Duffield, 175, 178, 249; Fortress, 8, 9; Forest, 100; Frith, 12, 175

Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, 115, 122

Dunscar, Castleton, 361

Durdent, Walter, 122

Eadburgh, 116

_Early Renaissance Architecture in England_, 111

Earthen Vessels, 55–6

“Easter Observances,” 361–3

Ecclesbourne Valley, 5

Eccles Pike, 164, 167, 184

—— Samuel, 278

Edale, 281, 282, 285

—— Head Cross, 303

Edensor, 235

Edgar the Peaceable, 117

Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, 9

Edward I., 11, 12

—— II., 6, 12

—— III., 12

—— the Confessor, 6

—— the Elder, 5

Edwin, King, 77

Elfleda, 116

Elizabeth, Death of Queen, 22–3

Elvaston, 205–6, 209, 212, 219, 221, 231, 263–6

Emmett Carr, 324

_English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, 350, 351

Ethelbald, 4

Ethelfleda, 5

Ethelfrith, 4

Etwall, 126–7, 205, 249

Evans’ _Bronze Implements_, 69

Every, Sir Henry, 30

Evesham Abbey, 116

Exeter House, Derby, 383

Eyam, 6, 50, 78, 133, 144, 182–3, 190, 199, 249, 368

Eyre Family, 18; Anthony, 190; Arthur, 16; Colonel, 29; Dorothy, 190; George, 30; Jacob, 367; Robert, 30; Rowland, 30; Thomas, 16, 292; William, 101

Fairfax, General, 155, 309

Fairfield, 286, 288

“Fairy Offerings,” 369

Farr Over Close, 194

Fea, Allan, 185

Felix of Croyland, 115, 116

Felkin’s _History of Hosiery and Lace Manufacture_, 371–2, 376, 383

Fenny Bentley, 15, 209, 212, 219, 226, 267–8

Fernilee, 299

Ferrers Family, 9–12; Henry, 7–8; Sir Humphrey, 21; John, 30; Robert, 7, 9–11; William, 9–12

Findern, 372, 376

“First Foot,” 365

Fitzherbert Family, 15, 18; Sir Anthony, 126; Dorothy, 126; Henry, 11; Sir John, 24, 155; Nicholas, 16; William, 30

FitzHubert, Ralph, 324

Fitzwilliam, Alice, 110; Thomas, 110

Five Burghs, The, 5, 6

—— Wells, 43–6, 48, 60

Flagg, 291

Fletcher, J. M. J., _Tideswell Church_, 103

—— Richard, 180

Flint Arrow-heads, 46–7

—— Implements, 56

Foljambe, Monuments to Family, 97–113; Anne, 238; Chapel, 261; Cicely, 168; Sir Edward, 15; Sir Godfrey, 17, 238; Thomas, 11, 168

_Folk-Lore Society, The_, 347

Food-vases, 55–6, 61–2, 64

Foolow, 182

Ford, Stone Circle, 74, 80, 82–3

Foremark, 120, 122, 144

Forster’s _Alumni Oxonienses_, 175

Fox, Rev. Samuel, 225, 273

Foxbrook Furnace, 321

Foxton Wood, 325

Frances, John, 19

Franceys, Ralph, 331, 340

Francis, Sir Robert, 122

Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, 354, 356, 360, 369

Frecheville, Anker de, 13, 101; Lord, 314, 318, 324, 330; Robert de, 11

Friar’s Heel, The, 72, 73, 84, 86

Froggatt Edge, 80, 82

Furnival, Gerard de, 101

“Galley-balk,” The, 352

Gardiner, Dr., 326, 329

Garner House, 194

Gaveston, Piers, 12

Gell, Sir John, 26, 28, 30, 94, 155–7, 163, 292, 303

_Gentleman’s Magazine_, 111, 327

“George Inn,” Derby, 34

Gerard, Lord, 126; Sir John, 131; Sir Thomas, 126

Gernon Manor, 103

—— William de, 101

Gib Hill, 74–5, 78, 86–7

Giffard, Sir Thomas, 126–7

Gilbert, Henry, 30

Gill, John, 194

Glass House, The, 358–9

Glossop, 6, 282–3

—— John, 197; Ralph, 195; Robert, 197

Glynne, Sir Stephen, 258, 274, 277

Godstow Nunnery, 225

Golden Ball, The, 357

_Golden Bough_, 354, 356, 360, 369

Gorsey Close Barrow, 65

Gotch, J. A., The Old Homes of the County, 133–45

—— _Early Renaissance Architecture in England_, 111

Gowland, Professor, 86

Grave, William, 91

Gray Cop Barrow, 59

Great Hucklow, 361, 363

“Greavy Croft, The,” 165, 170

Greenhill, 202

Greenlow, 45–6

Greenwell, Rev. Dr., 53, 55

Grendon, Serlo de, 121

Gresley, Sir George, 27; John, 16; Sir William, 16

Grey, Henry de, 12; Mr. St. George, 78; Richard, 12, 14; Sir John, 15

Grimm’s _Popular Stories_, 346

Grindall, Edmund, 244

Grinlow Barrow, 49

Gunson, Mr., 184

Haddon Hall, 133, 134–6, 138–9, 144, 146, 211, 224

Hadrian, 3

_Hall of Waltheof_, The, 242

Halton Family, 158, 160, 163; Imanuel, 157

Hamilton, Duke of, 28

Harborough Rocks, 43–8

Hardwick, Bess of, 137, 139–41, 150; Hall, 139–41, 324

Hardy’s _Miners’ Guide_, 366

Harpur, Sir John, 25, 30; Richard, 127

Harrington, Earl of, 265

Hartington Manor, 11

Hartle Moor, 52, 59, 77

Haslam Family, 379

Hastings, George, Earl of Huntingdon, 126, 131

Hathersage, 268

Hault Hucknall, 268–9

Haverfield, Dr., 3

Hayfield, 228, 245, 248, 282–4

Hayton, Rev. E. J., 268

Heanor, 248

Heays, Mrs., 328

Henderson’s _Northern Folk-lore_, 357, 359

Henry II., 7, 18

—— III., 8, 9, 11

—— IV., 13

—— V., 14

—— VI., 131

Heriz, Mathilda de, 147

High Lane, 194

Highlow Hall, 133, 143

Hipkins, Rev. F. C., Repton: Its Abbey, Church, Priory, and School, 114–32

Historic Derbyshire, 1–38

Hob Hollin, 165

—— Hurst’s House, 50

—— Marsh, 165

Hofnerton, Eustace de, 198

Hole, William, 238

Hollington Manor, 12

Holman Hunt, 250

“Honey Spots,” 242

Hope, 242, 269, 285–6

—— Rev. W., 210–11

—— W. H. St. John, 123, 127, 203, 225

Horsley, 212, 269; Castle, 8

Horton, Christopher, 30

Howe, Earl, 131, 380; Margaret, 180; Roger, 180

Hugh of Lincoln, or the Rain Charm, 348–57

Hunloke, Sir Henry, 30

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 354

Hutchinson, Rev. Michael, 208, 224, 269

—— Colonel, 155

Ilkeston, 212, 215

Incense Cups, 55–6, 61, 68

Ingleby, 93, 122

Ingram, Sir Arthur, 113

Ireton, John, 16, 31

Isherwood, Bradshawe, 173

Jackson, John, 191

James I., 23

—— II., 31, 32

Jeayes’ _Derbyshire Charters_, 97, 197–99, 348

Jewitt, Llewellynn, 295

John, King, 8

Jordanwall Nook, 298

_Journal of Derbyshire Archæological Society_, 44, 121, 123, 127, 164–5, 175, 181–2, 184, 186–188, 195, 197, 199, 203, 278, 280

Kalc, Canons of, 121

Kedleston House, 144

Kerry, Rev. C., 175

Killamarsh, 249

Kinder Scout, 145

King’s Sterndale, 52

King Stone, The, 82

Kirk Ireton, 189, 236, 249

—— Langley, 210, 212, 216, 217, 221, 232, 269–70

Kniveton, Henry, 11; Matthew, 17; Nicholas, 239

Lambert’s Rising, 342

“Lampholme,” 239

Langwith, 250

“Lantern Chimney,” 197

Latham, Dr. Ebenezer, 372

Layton, Richard, 123

Leach, Sir Edward, 30; Philip, 15; Ralph, 16

Lead Mining, 2–3, 5, 9

Lea Hurst, 37

Lee, Thomas, 282

Leeke, Sir John, 16; John, 109; Nicholas, 30; Thomas, 16, 30

Leigh, Dr. Thomas, 123

—— Family, 343–4

Leland’s _Collectania_, 115

Leo, the Jew, 356

Leofric of Mercia, Earl, 6

Lewes, Battle of, 10, 11

Lichfield, 28, 125–6, 169, 245

Lidlow, 59

Little Chester, 2

Littleover, 250

Liverpool, Earl of, 97, 102–3, 108, 110, 113

Locko Gardens, 145

Lockyer, Sir Norman, 84, 86

Lomas, Nicholas, 190

Longbows, 18

Longdendale, 281, 282

Long Eaton, 6, 193, 249, 270–1

Longford, 212, 271

—— Nicholas de, 13

Longstone, 212, 271

Loudham Arms, 108–9; Margaret, 106–7; Sir John, 106

Loudoun, Earl, 126

“Lovers’ Vows,” 366

“Low,” A, 42

Lowe, John, 190; Robert, 191

Ludlam, Isaac, 36

Ludworth Moor, 298

Lund, Dr. Troels, 195

Lynaker, Robert, 16

Lysons’ _Derbyshire_, 328

Macaulay, 311–12, 335, 337, 344

Machell, Colonel, 158

Mackworth, 249–50, 271

“Maiden Stones, The,” 298

Maidstonfeld, 282

Makeney, Ralph de, 11

Malcolm, King, of Scotland, 7

Manners, John, 20

Marleberge, Thomas de, 116

Marple Hall Estate, 172–4

Marston Montgomery, 249

Marston-on-Dove, 248

Martin Side, 304

Mary, Queen of Scots, 20, 140–1, 149–55, 161

Massey, Mr. Ralph, 372

Matilda, 121

Matlock, 249

“May King, The,” 347

Measham, 122

Melandra Castle, 2

Melbourne, 8, 15, 91, 133, 145, 151, 208, 271–2

—— Adam de, 92; John de, 92

Mellor, 249, 284, 285, 293, 298

_Memorials of St. Guthlac, The_, 116

Meynell, Chantrey, 270; Rev. Frank, 270; Giles de, 11

Mickleover, 6, 205, 272

Micklethwaite, Mr., 119

Middleton, Mrs. George, 364, 368; Thomas, 174

Milford, 381

—— House, 383

Militia, The, 18, 23

Milton, 122

Mininglow, 43–6, 48, 60, 67

“Mischief Night,” 361

Molineux, Colonel Roger, 157

Monasteries, Suppression of, 16, 17

Monksbridge, 2

Monks Dale, 214, 215

Montgomery, Nicholas, 15

Monyash, 232, 273

Morewood, Anthony, 30

Morions, 18

Morley, 208, 236, 237, 249, 273

Mosborough Hall, 316

Mountjoy, Lord, 231, 251, 265

Mower, Arthur, 232

Mugginton, 212, 220, 249, 273–4

Mundy, John, 30

Musard, John de, 12

Musca, Thomas de, 121

Need, Strutt & Woollatt, Messrs., 379

Neolithic Barrows, 43–8

Nether Offerton, 198

Netherthorpe Hall, 324

Newark, 28, 93, 217

Newcastle, Duke of, 315, 324, 330, 341

Newton, Robert, 198

—— Solney, 122

Nichols’ _Collect. Topogr. et Geneal._, 97

Nightingale, Florence, 37–8; William, 37

Nine Ladies, The, 80, 82

Norbury, 205, 206, 208, 212, 220, 226, 274

North Lees, 133, 143

North Wingfield, 133, 141, 232, 249

Northworthy, 5

Norton, 208

Nottingham Bridge, 94

Oates, Titus, 337

Ockbrook, 274

Offerton Hall, 133, 143, 192–9

—— Moor Stone Circle, 74

Oldcotes House, 139

Old Country Life in the Seventeenth Century, 307–45

Oldeffeld, William, 238

“Old Tup, The,” 347

Osmaston, 7, 248, 274

Oswin, 115

Over Haddon, 198

Over Offerton, 198

Overton, Prior, 131

Owlcotes, 324

Oxford, Brasenose College, 126

Palmer, George, 16

Pancakes, 364

Parcelly Hay, 59

Park Hall, 324

Parker, Archbishop, 244; John, 16

Park Gate Stone Circle, 74, 80, 82

Parwich, 220, 230–1, 242, 247, 249

Peak Castle, 7, 8, 11, 133–4, 283, 285, 348

—— Forest, 9–11, 98

Peak Forest, Plans of the, 281–306

Pears, Dr., 131

Peasants, Revolt of the, 13

Pedlars, 317

Pegge, Dr., 245

Peggy with the Wooden Leggy, 359–60

Pendleton, Mr., 370

Pentrich, Insurrection of 1817, 31, 35–37

Percy’s _Reliques_, 353

Percys, Revolt of the, 14

Pett, Peter, 340

Peverel, William, 7

Pierpoint, Sir Henry, 147

_Pipe Rolls_, 7, 8, 100

Plotting Parlour, The, 33

Pole, Francis, 202; Jervase, 30; Peter, 170; Richard, 19

Pontefract, 28

_Popular Antiquities_, 346

Porte, Henry, 126; Sir John, 126–8

Posset, 364

Postage in Charles II.’s Time, 335

Potsherds, 66–7

Potter, Sarah Ellen, 350, 358

Prehistoric Barrows, Late, 64–9

Prehistoric Burials in Derbyshire, 39–69

Prehistoric Stone Circles, 70–88

Priestcliffe, 291

Prior, Dr., 120, 130

Pulpitum, The, 200–1, 205

“Pym’s Chair,” 303

Querns, 67

Radbourne Church, 202, 212, 275

Randulph, 121

Ravensdale Forest Lodge, 12, 14

Rawlins, Rev. R. R., 269, 272

Rayner, S., 211

Redfern, Emmott, 166

—— Will, 166

_Reliquary, The_, 59, 97, 175–6, 180, 182, 280, 295, 360

Renishaw, 307–345

Repton, 4, 6, 16, 91–3, 114–132, 203–5, 232, 236, 275

Repton: Its Abbey, Church, Priory, and School, 114–132

Revell, Will., 330, 331, 341

Revolution Inn, 33

—— of 1688, 31–3

Reynolds, J., 211

Richard I., 8

—— II., 13

Ridge Hall, The, 293–4

Ringhamlow, 45, 46

Risley, 223

Roadnook Hall, 330

Robin Hood’s Cross, 304

Robin Hood Picking Rods, 299

Rocester, 2

Rodes, Sir Francis, 26, 30, 142

Rodmarton, 47

Rolleston, Roger, 16; Thomas, 16

Roman Roads and Stations, 2

Roods, Screens, and Lofts in Derbyshire Churches, 200–280

Ryknield Street, 2

Sacheverell, Sir Henry, 16, 17; William, 331

Sadleir, Sir Ralph, 151–3

St. Guthlac, 115–16, 123

St. Valentine’s Day, 370

St. Wilfred’s Needle, Ripon, 76

St. Wystan, 116–17, 121–2

Salt, Mr., 43, 60

Sandiacre, 275

Saunders, Major, 29

Sawley, 6, 205, 209, 212, 229–30, 249, 275–6

_Saxon Chronicle_, 117

Sclater, Samuel, 381

Scott’s _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 346

Scott, Sir Gilbert, 259, 272

Seckington, 114

_Secret Chambers and Hiding places_, 185

Segrave, Nicholas de, 12

“Shakking Monday,” 363

Shallcrosse, Leonard, 182

Shaw, R. Norman, 280

Shawcross, Anthony, 181; Emma, 181

Shawe, H. Cunliffe, 198

Ship-writs, 25

Shirley, Sir Ralph, 15

Shottle, 371

Shrewsbury, Battle of, 14

—— Countess of (Bess of Hardwick), 23

—— Earls of: George, 15, 281; Gilbert, 138

_Shropshire Folk-Lore_, 353

Shrove Tuesday Custom, 364

Shuttlestone, 52

Simpson, William, 331

Sitwell, Francis, 326, 327; George, 30, 313–15, 322, 325–6, 328, 338–9; Robert, 324

—— Sir George Reresby, Old Country Life in the Seventeenth Century, 307–45

Skeat, Professor, 114

Skulls, 54–5

Sleath, Dr., 120

Sleigh, Sir Samuel, 30, 129

Smalley, 249, 276–7

Smerrill, 45

Smithard, William, Swarkeston Bridge, 89

Smith’s _Intrigues of the Plot_, 337

Smisby, 122

_Snitterton Hall_, 133, 143

Solney, Alured de, 122

“Solomon’s Temple,” 50

Somersal Herbert Hall, 133

South Normanton, 250, 371

Spateman, John, 330

Spinning Jenny, The, 379

Spondon, 205, 208, 249, 277

Stadon Stone Circle, 74, 80––1

Stafford, 5

—— Anne, 182; Humphrey, 182

Stag-hunting, 329, 330

Standard, Battle of the, 7

“Standing Stones, The,” 301

Stanhope, Sir John, 25, 30, 188; Sir Thomas, 126

Stanley, 248–9

Stanton, 90

—— Moor Stone Circle, 52, 58, 82, 87

—— Robert de, 91

Statham, Martha, 371

_Station Life in New Zealand_, 352

Staveley, 27, 235, 245, 277, 318, 324, 330

—— Elys, 172; Katherine, 172

Stebbing Shaw, 114, 120, 122

Stennis Stone Circle, 76

Steveton, 113

Stonehenge, 70–3, 76, 84, 86–7

Stoneylow, 45–6

Stony Middleton, 6

Strelley, 217

—— Family, 15

Stretton, Robert de, 122

Strutt, The Hon. Frederick, on Jedediah Strutt, 371–84

—— Joseph, 371; William, 371

Strype _Memorials_, 126

Stuart, Lady Arabella, 23

Sudbury, 139, 263, 277

Sutton, 27

Swarkeston Bridge, 35, 89–96

—— House, 139

—— Richard de, 91

Swillington, Margaret de, 147

Taddington, 205, 246, 249, 291

Talbot, Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury, 148–9; Sir Gylbert, 16; George, Earl of Shrewsbury, 149–55; John, Earl of Shrewsbury, 148

Tamworth, 5

Tanner’s _Notitia_, 115

Tau-cross, 352

_Ten Years’ Diggings_, 44–5, 50, 52, 59–60, 67

Thacker, Gilbert, 19, 124, 128–30, 203; Thomas, 124, 202–3

Thirkelow Barrow, 50

Thornehill, George, 282

Thornhill, 368

Thornsett, 298

_Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals_, 97, 112, 183, 193

“Three Golden Balls, The,” 351

Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 149

Throwley Barrow, 67

Thurnam, Dr., 49

Tibshelf Church, 324

Tickenhall, 122, 249

Tideswell, 11, 14, 97–113, 212, 214, 232, 235, 243, 246, 249, 277–9, 286, 288

_Tideswell Church_, 103

Tisbury, 197

Tissington, 27, 133

_Topographer, The_, 114, 120, 122, 158

Topp, Sir Francis, 340

Treeton, 343

Trustram, Mr., 74, 79

Tumuli, 41

Tunstead, 360

—— Dicky, 360

“Turncrofts, The,” 165–6, 168

Turner, William, 36

Tutbury, 7, 23–4, 27–8, 150, 154

Twyford, 243, 270

—— John de, 13; Thomas, 16

Tyrwhitt, Troth, 110

“Unlousing Day,” 361

Urn, The, 52

Vallance, Aymer, on Roods, Screens, and Lofts in Derbyshire Churches, 200–80

Vaughan, Dr., 131

Venables, Canon, 352

_Verney Letters_, 332

Vernon, Chapel, 253; Dorothy, 136, 139; Sir Edward, 24; George, 19; Sir George, 138; Henry, 19; Sir Henry, 231, 238; William, 16

_Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire_, 44, 46, 52–3, 59, 65

_Victoria History of Derbyshire_, 2, 3, 6, 98

Wakebridge, William de, 210

Wakes, 368–9

Walpole, Horace, 135

Walsyngham, Sir Francis, 151, 154

Walton, 6, 106, 107, 113

Ward, Dr. Jeremy, 195

—— John, F.S.A., Prehistoric Burials in Derbyshire, 39–69

—— Thomas, 180

Wardlow Barrow, 45, 46

Watson, Daniel, 129

Waverley, Annals of, 354

Welbeck, 23, 27

Weston Museum, Sheffield, 216

Weston-on-Trent, 212, 279

Wet Withens, Stone Circle, 74, 75, 78–80

Wetton, 47

Whaley Bridge, 82

Whitaker’s _Craven_, 197

Whitaker, Mr. H. W., 257

Whitehall Field, 167

Whittington Moor, 33

Whittle, 298

“Whyte Maiden, The,” 299

Wigfall Family, 326, 327

Wiglaf, 116

Wigstone, Mr. Thomas, 190

Wilfrid, 296

William of Orange, 31–3

William the Conqueror, 6

Willington, 122

Willoughby, Battle of, 28

Willoughby, Sir John, 223; Richard, 15

Wilmot, Dr. Edward, 26; Robert, 30

Wilne, 223, 232, 249, 279

Wimund, 116

Wing Crypt, 119

Wingerworth, 226-8, 232, 235, 249

Wingfield Manor House, 20, 27, 29, 133, 137–8, 146–63

Winwadfield Battle, 115

Wirksworth, 1, 2, 8, 27, 238

Wistanstowe, 116

Wolves, 100

Woollatt Family, 372; Elizabeth, 373–6; William, 376

Wormhill, 98–113, 286

Wormleighton, 217, 218

Wright, Thomas, 190

Wulphere, 115

Wybersley, 174

Wyston, _see_ St. Wystan

Yonge, Prior John, 123

_Yorkshire Coiners, The_, 193

Youlgreave, 212, 279–80

Yule-loaf, 364

Zouch, Dave and Sir John, 16

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MEMORIALS OF OLD WILTSHIRE.

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MEMORIALS OF OLD WARWICKSHIRE.

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=MEMORIALS OF OLD MANXLAND.= Edited by John Quine, M.A.

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GARDEN CITIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.

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Transcriber’s notes:

In the text version, italics are represented by _underscores_, and bold and black letter text by =equals= symbols. Inconsistent hyphenation and spellings have been left as printed except as noted below. Small punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

Superscripts are represented by ^{} and subscripts by _{} [=a]represents a with a line above and [~p] represents p with a tilde above

In the majority of cases, spelling has been left as printed but a small number of errors which obscure the meaning for the reader have been corrected.

Both uncorrected and corrected spellings are noted below.

Some incorrect puntuation has been silently corrected

p14 acordance left as printed. p70 betwen left as printed. p165,166 The variable spellings of Bradshaw(e) have been left as printed. p170 The footnote on this page has no anchor, so it is assumed that it refers to preceding paragraph. p180 A very wide genealogie chart has been rewritten with keys to fit in page width restrictions. The original may be seem as an illustration. The following notes relate to this. Willm. The l's have crossbars Humph. T H's have crossbars. fftafford. ff represent long s's. co-heires left as printed. p196 Jahrhunderts (footnote 65)left as printed. p258 -- added after Chesterfield section title. p265 stall-ends changed to stall ends. p330 blackmith (footnote 89) left as printed. p373 continnue left as printed. p374 everry left as printed. p391 Secret Chambers and Hiding places, hyphenation removed to match text.