Part 24
In the following month (January 1644), the Newark people addressed a “remonstrance” to the King on the condition of Lincolnshire. They represented that the whole county “is now in possession of the Rebels,” mentioning in particular “that seditious town of Boston,” and urged that, unless a diversion was made by his Majesty’s troops elsewhere, the whole force of the county, which was “above 5000 foot and twenty troops of horse,” would be “poured down” upon them. About the same time a hot dispute arose in Parliament about the Lincolnshire command. Lord Willoughby had much resented his supersession by the Earl of Manchester, which in his opinion lacked the authority of Parliament. Cromwell, as usual, was ready with the first blow. He moved that Lord Willoughby cease to be Major-General in Lincolnshire, as he had abandoned Gainsborough and Lincoln in the summer without necessity, and had permitted loose and profane conduct among his soldiers. These charges caused much ill-feeling. Sir Christopher Wray warmly defended Willoughby, who challenged Manchester to a duel; and three of Wray’s sons went so far as to cudgel one of the Earl’s officers. Cromwell’s motion, however, was carried; and with much difficulty Willoughby was induced to serve under Manchester. With the Lincolnshire levies he appears to have taken part in the siege of Newark in March; and, according to Mrs. Hutchinson, the brilliant feat of Prince Rupert in relieving the place and capturing most of the besieging force (March 22), was only rendered possible by the cowardly flight of the Lincoln men. This exploit caused such a panic that within three days Lincoln, Sleaford, and even distant Crowland were abandoned by their garrisons, and the defences of Gainsborough were dismantled. In his remonstrance to the House of Lords on April 8 the Earl of Essex himself used the words—“Lincolnshire is lost.” Two days before, however, Crowland had been recovered; and in three weeks Manchester and Cromwell were advancing against Lincoln. On May 3, with his army drawn up at Canwick, Manchester summoned the city by trumpet, and, on being denied, sent two regiments of foot against it, while Cromwell with 2000 cavalry held in check a relieving force. The garrison were expelled from the lower town and retreated into the Castle, after attempting to set fire to many houses. The assault on the Castle, which was delayed two days by heavy rain, took place on Monday, the 6th; and the infantry came on with such ardour that, despite the slippery state of the hill, the works were taken in a quarter of an hour. The Royalist loss was 900 in killed and prisoners—the latter including the governor, Sir Francis Fane, and Sir Charles Dalison. The upper town, having been taken by storm, was given over to the soldiers for pillage. It was on this occasion that the Cathedral suffered most at the hands of Puritanism. Pleading a recent ordinance of Parliament, the troopers tore up all the sepulchral brasses, damaged the carvings, and smashed the painted windows. If we are to believe “Aulicus,” the Oxford newswriter, whose statements are disputed, they even stabled their horses in the nave. Other churches were much injured in the assault. St. Swithin’s was destroyed by fire; St. Martin’s and St. Michael’s were much damaged by cannon; and St. Botolph’s fell down two years later through the injuries which it now received. Two extra-mural churches, St. Nicholas’ and St. Peter’s Eastgate, had already been demolished by Lord Willoughby’s order as interfering with the city’s defences.
The whole county had now been reoccupied for the Parliament; and Manchester, throwing a bridge across the Trent at Gainsborough, marched with the army of the Eastern Association to besiege Newcastle in York. The victory of Marston Moor on July 2 decided the fate of the North and East of England. But in the next few weeks the King gained marked successes in the West; and on the return of Manchester to Lincoln on August 6, there were divided counsels among the Parliamentary commanders, which developed later into an open breach between Cromwell and Manchester. For four weeks the latter lay inactive at Lincoln, though Cromwell vehemently urged him to besiege Newark. When at length he moved southwards on September 4, the Newark garrison resumed their activity, and appeared before Sir Robert Carr’s fortified house at Sleaford, the defenders of which had to retire upon Lincoln. On October 5 a force of 500 Cavaliers captured and taxed Stamford; and perhaps it was part of the same band which, a day or two later, once more occupied Crowland for the King. This daring move brought the Fen men out in strength, though at the time the pay of the Boston garrison was four months in arrear; and by October 12 a force of 4000 men of the trained bands, under Sir T. Fairfax and Fleetwood, had assembled to block up the watery citadel. But rain fell in torrents, and most of the besiegers had to be sent back to their counties, although the approaches to Crowland were carefully guarded. On October 29, the water having subsided, a closer investment became possible; and a body of horse under Colonel Hacker was detached to confront a relieving force from Newark. The two bodies came into collision at Denton, when, in Colonel Hacker’s words, his men “shouted as if the skies would have fallen” and fell upon the enemy, who fled, leaving 400 prisoners. Three weeks later another attempt at relief was frustrated by a Royalist repulse near Grantham; and on November 6 an ordinance of Parliament provided for the erection of three forts against Crowland at a cost of £600. In the first week of December the famished garrison of 275 men, whose besiegers had been subsisting comfortably on fish and wild fowl, were allowed to march off to Newark without their arms.
The campaign of 1645 was almost wholly unfavourable to the King. When the two armies faced each other at Naseby on June 14, for the decisive struggle, Colonel Rossiter, with the Lincolnshire troops, arrived just in time to take part in Cromwell’s charge on the Royalist left wing. The King retreated eastward after his defeat; but in August he was again approaching the Associated Counties with an army of about 3000 men. In that month the Newarkers made two raids upon Stamford, and carried off some of their opponents; and on the 23rd the King himself passed through the town. But his cause was declining rapidly; and on April 27, 1646, he left Oxford in disguise to take refuge with the Scots before Newark. The night of May 3—his last as a free man—he passed at Stamford in the house of Mr. Wolph; and with the surrender of Newark by his command on May 6, two days after he reached the Scots, the first Civil War ended.
In the second Civil War of 1648 Lincolnshire took little part. Early in June an attempt was made by Michael Hudson, rector of Uffington—the chaplain who had guided the King in disguise through the eastern counties—to raise a Royalist force. Accompanied by Stiles, the Crowland parson, he occupied Woodcroft House, near Stamford, where he was soon besieged. On the surrender of the place he was denied quarter, and, having been thrown into the moat, was “barbarously knocked on the head.” A more serious rising took place at the end of the month. A body of Cavaliers from Pontefract, 600 strong, entered the Isle of Axholme and pushed on to Lincoln, where they doubtless hoped to find arms and ammunition, but the magazine had been removed to Hull. After plundering the houses of the chief Parliamentarians, they attacked the Bishop’s Palace, whither the little garrison of a hundred had retired, and reduced it in three hours; they then wrecked and burnt the building, leaving it in ruins. But their commander, Sir Philip Monkton, found it impossible to hold the town, and on July 4 his force was defeated and dispersed near Nottingham by Colonel Rossiter, who commanded for the Parliament in Lincolnshire.
At the outset of the struggle the feeling of Lindsey inclined towards the King; but the insecurity produced by the constant forays from Newark turned the balance the other way. Holland and Kesteven, especially the fen district, supported the Parliament. The nobility and gentry were about evenly divided. Of the two chief peers, Montagu Bertie, second Earl of Lindsey, followed the King through all his misfortunes, and was one of the few who attended his funeral; Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, who held Tattershall Castle for the Parliament throughout the war, changed sides, like Lord Willoughby, in 1647, and with him was impeached and thrown into the Tower, when the Independents gained the upper hand. Of the principal county families (besides those already mentioned), the Dymokes, Heneages, Husseys, Nevilles, Skipwiths, and Thorolds were for the King; the Brownlows, Fitzwilliams, Massingberds, Nelthorpes, Trollopes, and Whichcotes for the Parliament; and the Andersons, Cholmeleys, Harringtons, Listers, and Pelhams were divided. According to one list,[130] the number of persons in the county compounding for their estates was 180, and the total amount of their compositions was £80,800. This, however, does not include the sums set aside for the maintenance of ministers in parishes where the compounder possessed an impropriation. In some instances where the composition-fine could not be paid in full, the estates were either let or sold outright to some supporter of the Parliament at a ruinous loss. This happened to the estates of the Earl of Lindsey near Alford; his mansion and lands at Belleau were sold below their value to Sir Harry Vane the younger, who was residing there in 1655, when he was sent for by Cromwell and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Nor was it only persons of influence and large holders of property who were subject to fine. Anthony Gurley of the Close, Lincoln, had to pay £1, which was assessed upon “his books and apparel.” Sutton Dalton, who had some landed property, was fined £100 for spending only two days in Newark garrison. Sir William Clarke, of North Scarle, used to go to Newark on market-days, and for this offence was imprisoned for six months and had to pay £21. Of the seven Associated Counties, Lincolnshire, which had suffered the most heavily by the war, contributed to the Treasury by far the greatest sum in fines inflicted upon Royalist estates.
The Church history of the county would require a separate chapter; but much of the material has been lost beyond recall. When Walker was compiling his “Sufferings of the Clergy,” in Anne’s reign, he could not get proper returns from Lincolnshire; and the number of ejected clergy which he gives (37) must be far below the true figure. Bishop and Dean-and-Chapter had been abolished in November 1643, and the cathedral was served by a Sunday-lecturer, who, though he may have been episcopally ordained, yet in sympathy, like Hudibras,
“Was Presbyterian true blue.”
In 1644 the Earl of Manchester, who presided over a commission for purging the Association of “scandalous” ministers, appointed committees for the separate counties; but the minutes of the Lincolnshire Committee have not survived; perhaps they were not kept; for the business was done by sub-committees of five, who would not allow the accused clergyman to be present “lest it should discourage the witnesses,” and made him pay even for a copy of the depositions. The clergy of Stamford were all deprived for Royalism; and when Paul Prestland, the rector of Market Deeping, fled to avoid arrest, his wife and children had to spend many months first in a barn and then in the belfry of the church. Thomas Gibson, vicar of Horncastle, a man of exemplary piety, was imprisoned five times, once spending four months in Tattershall Castle, and on his release had to maintain himself by teaching. Several clergy were ejected simply for going to His Majesty’s garrisons; against one, the rector of Hykeham, it was even made a charge that he had by him many copies of the Oxford “Aulicus” gazette. Some were deprived for using the prayer book, or complying strictly with its directions; the rector of Hareby lost his living for “preaching but seldom, and not being above half-an-hour in the pulpit, and having no books.” Though many of the clergy must have taken the Covenant, there is little trace that the Presbyterian “Classis” system was ever adopted within the county. In fact, the ease with which Anglicanism was restored, after eighteen years of persecution, is strong proof that even the most Puritan districts were weary of ecclesiastical chaos.
DODDINGTON HALL
BY REV. R. E. G. COLE, M.A.
Some six miles to the south-west of Lincoln, well within view of the great Minster on its sovereign hill, but on the very border of Nottinghamshire, stands the little village of Doddington, otherwise Doddington-Pigot, situated on the slightly rising ground which here forms the watershed between the valleys of the Witham and the Trent. Its most notable feature is the Elizabethan mansion, known as Doddington Hall, which is the more prominent, inasmuch as it is not secluded in any surrounding park, but stands guarded only by its own picturesque gate-house, in close and friendly proximity to church, and rectory, and village.
Needless to say, the place had a long history before the present Hall was built. Already at the time of the Domesday Survey it had its church and priest, and its manor had been given by Ailric, its owner in Edward the Confessor’s reign, as an endowment to the newly built Abbey of Westminster. Mention is especially made of the woodland, which still is such a feature of the place, and which then formed an unbroken tract, a mile and a half in length, and half a mile in breadth. No other property was held by the Abbey in Lincolnshire, and doubtless the distance made its personal management by the Abbot and convent difficult and inconvenient. At all events, from very early times the manor was held under them, for a fee-farm rent of £12 per annum, by the knightly family of Pigot, whose long tenure, lasting for some ten generations, attached their name to that of the place, to distinguish it from the several other parishes so-called. Even so, difficulties at times arose; and in 1303 the Abbot had to make complaint in the King’s courts that Sir Baldwin Pigot had failed to render the customary rents and services, and that when he caused his beasts at Doddington to be seized, the knight and his men had rescued them and assaulted the Abbot’s servants. As a rule, however, this fixed rent of £12 continued to be paid by successive tenants to the monastery until the Dissolution. It then passed into possession of the Crown; in 1661 it was sold with other Crown rents by Charles II. to Sir Edmund Turnor, and from his direct descendant it was redeemed by the late owner of Doddington in 1860, after a continuous payment of some 700 years.
It is not our purpose here, however, to trace the early history of the place. It will be sufficient to say that as early as 1194 John Pigot asserted against the Abbot his right to hold not only the manor, but the advowson of the rectory, the patronage of which has remained to his successors down to the present day. Another Sir John Pigot in 1275 claimed to have not only right of free chase and warren in his woods at Doddington, but also his own gallows there—a right which he pleaded that his ancestors had exercised for a hundred years past. The last of the family, yet another Sir John Pigot, was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1433, and died without surviving issue in 1450. His widow not only retained possession of the estate, in spite of two remarriages, but contrived to sell the reversion of it after her death to her neighbour, Sir Thomas Burgh, Knt.
Sir Thomas Burgh, who was summoned to Parliament in 1487, and in the same year was created K.G., became the owner of Doddington in 1473, and the inheritance of it continued in his family for some 110 years. Their chief Lincolnshire manor place, however, was at the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and Doddington was an outlying possession with which they had little personal connection. We cannot wonder, therefore, that when Thomas, 5th Baron Burgh, also K.G., fell into difficulties, chiefly owing to the burdens entailed by his honourable offices as Governor of Brill and Lord Deputy of Ireland under the thrifty Queen Elizabeth, Doddington was the first of his estates sold to meet his expenses.
This was in 1586, and the purchaser was John Savile, Esq., son of Sir Robert Savile, of Howley, co. York. At this time he was M.P. for Lincoln, and doubtless found it convenient to have a residence in the neighbourhood; and as John Savile of Doddington he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1590. Later he became “the famous Sir John Savile,” who was several times Knight of the Shire for Yorkshire, and was created Lord Savile of Pontefract in 1628. His son Thomas, born at Doddington in 1590, became Comptroller and Treasurer of the Household to Charles I., and was created Earl of Sussex in 1644.
In 1593 Mr. Savile, having ceased to represent Lincoln, sold his Doddington estate. It was bought by Thomas Tailor, gent., who for many years had been Registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln, and whose neat handwriting may still be seen in the diocesan registers, dating from at least 1570. His residence hitherto had been in the parish of St. Martin, Lincoln, in which his two wives and others of his family were buried. The first of these wives was a daughter of Sir William Hansard, of South Kelsey, Knt.; the second a daughter of Martin Hollingworth, Mayor of Lincoln in 1560. Evidently the office of Episcopal Registrar was a lucrative one, for it appears by the inquisition taken after his death that, besides Doddington, he had purchased five other Lincolnshire manors, with messuages and lands in other parishes to the extent of nearly 10,000 acres.
Whatever the ancient manor-house at Doddington may have been like—and it had at least served as a residence for one of Mr. Savile’s position—we must suppose that it had become out of date, and not suited for the requirements of a man of Thomas Tailor’s wealth. And if we wish to see what sort of mansion was considered suitable, when Elizabeth was Queen, as the residence of a man of means, wishing to retire and set up as a country gentleman, we may find one in the present Hall, which remains in all essentials in its original state as it was built by him between the years 1593, when he purchased the estate, and 1607, when he died. Probably the date 1600 on a leaden plate at the top of the central cupola, marks the year of its completion.
Its site, closely adjoining the parish church, was doubtless that of the former manor-house. The principal entrance is on the east, through a three-gabled gate-house, two storeys high, standing back from the public road. Coped walls of brick connect this gate-house with the Hall itself, and enclose a quadrangle, which appears in 1700 as an open grassy court, but is now well-nigh filled by four stately cedars of Lebanon. A similarly walled quadrangle on the west is laid out as a flower garden. Between these courts is placed the house itself, facing east and west, and rising in three storeys to the height of 52 feet, surmounted by a plain parapet and flat roof of lead, from which rise three octagonal turrets of brick, capped with leaden cupolas. Roughly speaking, its ground plan is of that E-shape, fancifully said to represent the initial letter of the great Queen’s name, with projecting wings at either end, and a smaller projection in the centre, the lowest storey of which forms an entrance porch on either side. Its extreme length from north to south is 160 feet, and its greatest breadth at the wings is 75 feet. The house, as well as the gate-house and connecting walls, is built of brick, with stone groins, string-courses and coping, and has large square, stone-mullioned windows. Many of the small-sized bricks, made in fields close by, and of unsifted clay, are over-burnt and black; these are built in alternately with the others, or in parts are arranged so as to form a diamond pattern.
We may be permitted here to quote the description of the house as given by such an authority on the architecture of the period as Mr. Gotch. “Twelve years later,” he says, than Barlborough in Derbyshire, “we get Doddington in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute. It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings one room thick—the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it, the great chamber, and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing.
“There is an entrance court in front of the house, enclosed by a wall. It is approached through one of the quaint gate-houses of the time, which were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the porter’s eye, but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the sky-line being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front. The house is an example of a plain and businesslike type, which may be accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln.”[131]
What style Thomas Tailor kept up in his stately mansion we cannot tell, but that he had not impaired his fortune in the building of it is evident from his will, proved at Lincoln, 30th November 1607, in which he disposes of considerable sums of money, while the inquisition taken after his death sets forth in detail his numerous landed estates. Though his two wives and most of his children had been buried at St. Martin’s Church, Lincoln, he willed his “bodie to be buried in the parishe church of Doddington.” He was buried there on 26th November 1607, as we learn from the transcript of a former parish register, though there is nothing to mark the place.