Part 14

From “the Height” a most extensive view is obtained--a view unsurpassed in England for singularity and deep interest,--taking in Bolton and Warrington and other towns and villages full of factories; from hence also are seen Billinge Hill and Beacon, the far-famed Pike and Beacon of Rivington; while a deep shadow that hangs over an enormous space, points attention to busy and prosperous Manchester, buried with its prodigious wealth in the centre of a valley some fifteen miles away.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The windows formerly contained some rare specimens of painted glass, which the late proprietor permitted a clerical friend to abstract for the purpose of decorating a neighbouring church.

[2] Fuller states that Sir John Huddleston “was highly honoured by Queen Mary, and deservedly. Such was the trust reposed in him, that when Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen, she came privately to him at Sawston, and rid thence behind his servant, the better to disguise herself from discovery, to Framlingham. She afterwards made him, as I have heard, her Privy Councillor; and besides other great boons, bestowed the bigger part of Cambridge Castle, then in ruins, upon him, with the stone whereof he built his fair house in this county.”

[3] A singular tradition, alluded to by Camden, has long prevailed, that previously to the death of a heir of the house of Brereton, trunks of trees were observed to rise from the bottom of the lake of the neighbouring _Bog Mere_, and to float for several days. One historian of Cheshire, sensible of the credulity of the great antiquary, would resolve the pleasant dream of olden fancy by the laws of modern statics.

[4] Brereton is the “Bracebridge Hall” of Washington Irving.

[5] The Cheshire carpenters of old seem to have been not sparingly endowed with the “noble” aspiration. In an inscription on the fine carved oak ceiling of the neighbouring Church of Astbury, bearing date 1616 and 1617, in which occurs the name of a William Moreton, we have that also of _Richard Lowndes, Carpenter_;--his work, however, is of no mean desert.

[6] Hales and Tonkin state, that “about the middle of the _fourteenth_ century the Treffry family largely contributed towards the building of the church, and erected, adjoining to it, a magnificent castellated mansion for their own residence.” We imagine there is an error in the date of this, and should rather refer it to the middle of the _fifteenth_ century, after the French had destroyed the town; which they did about the year 1453.

[7] The following inscription upon the tomb of one of them was “formerly in the Church:”--

“Sir Rowland Vaux that sometime was the Lord of Triermaine, Is dead, his body clad in lead, and ligs law under this stane; Evin as we, evin so was he, on earth a levan man; Evin as he, evin so maun we, for all the craft we can.”

“According to the tablet in the church (we quote from the ‘Border Antiquities’ of Sir Walter Scott), this was a monastery of St. Augustine, and founded in 1116; but no mention of it in the records occurs earlier than the 16th of Henry II., 1169. Its endowments consisted of all the lands lying between Picts’ Wall and Irthing, and also between Burgh and Poltross, and several other valuable possessions. Bernard, Bishop of Carlisle, dedicated the Church to Mary Magdalen. * * * * Edward I. granted to the Prior and Convent the advowson of two churches in his patronage, because the Priory had been burnt and the lands ravaged by an incursion of the Scots. He wrote an epistle to the Pope, expressly to obtain his sanction to this grant, which was not withheld. Many other liberal donations were made to this monastery, and some of them exhibited the peculiar character of the times--such as the tithes of venison, and the skins of deer and foxes; tithe of the mulcture of a mill, pasture for milking and sheep, the bark of trees, a well or spring, and sundry villeins their issue and goods.”

[8] The sad death of this “last Lord Dacre” is thus recorded by Stow. The event occurred on the 17th of May, 1559.

“He was by a great mischaunce slayne at Thetford, in the house of Sir Richard Falmenstone, Knight, by meane of a vaunting horse of woode, standing within the same house; upon which horse, as he meant to have vaunted, and the pins of the feet being not made sure, the horse fell upon him and bruised the brains out of his head.” In the January following, Leonard Dacre, Esq., of Horsley, in the county of York, second son of Lord William Dacre, of Gilsland, “choosing,” according to Camden, “rather to try for the estate with his prince in war, than with his nieces at law,” entered into rebellion, with a design to carry off the Queen of Scots. This object was frustrated by Mary’s removal to Coventry; subsequently he seized upon Naworth and other Castles, but having been attacked and defeated by Lord Hunsdon, he fled into Flanders, where he died.

[9] To understand the full importance of this appointment it is necessary to offer some explanations of the state of the Border at that period. The accession of James VI. to the English crown, although it produced the effect of converting the two _extremities_ into the _middle_ of the kingdom, contributed but little to arrest the system of plunder and depredation which had existed there for centuries. The inhabitants generally, on the Scottish side, were unrestrained moss-troopers (so called from the sloughs and bogs to which they resorted), “Knowing no measure of law,” says Camden, “but the length of their swords,”--men of whom Fuller quaintly writes, “they come to church as seldom as the 29th of February comes into the kalendar.” According to Sir Walter Scott, “the hands of rapine were never there folded in inactivity, nor the sword of violence returned to the scabbard.” The habits of these marauders, and the “interesting nature of their exploits,” are pictured in a strong light by the historian Camden. “They sally out of their own Borders in the night in troops, through unfrequented by-ways, and many intricate windings. All the daytime they refresh themselves and their horses in lurking holes they had pitched upon before, till they arrive in the dark at those places they have a design upon. As soon as they have seized upon the booty, they, in like manner, return home in the night, through blind ways, and fetching many a compass. The more skilful any captain is to pass through those wild deserts, crooked turnings, and deep precipices, in the thickest mists and darkness, his reputation is the greater, and he is looked upon as a man of an excellent head. And they are so very cunning, that they seldom have their booty taken from them, unless sometimes, when, by the help of blood-hounds following them exactly upon the track, they may chance to fall into the hands of their adversaries.”

[10] For the drawings on wood here engraved, we are indebted to Mr. T. M. Richardson, an accomplished artist of Newcastle.

[11] An anecdote is recorded of the gallant knight which strongly illustrates not only his peculiar habit, but the character of the turbulent time in which he lived. In this Library he was one day deep in study, when a soldier, who had captured a moss-trooper, suddenly entered with the news, disturbing his master with the unwelcome question of what was to be done with the fellow? “Hang him, in the devil’s name,” exclaimed the irritated lord, and turned to his books. The order was construed literally; and forthwith the unhappy prisoner was dangling from a tree; which Lord William, to his exceeding dismay, learned, when a few hours afterwards he ordered the culprit to be brought before him for examination.

[12] The Avenells, it would appear, about this time owned considerable property in the north, the benefits of which they seem to have dispensed with no niggard hand, as we find from the following notices in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” vol. i. p. 839. “The manor of Oneash (the Aneise of Domesday) was given to Roche Abbey, Yorkshire, by William Avenell, Lord of Haddon.” “Conksbury, near Over Haddon, was given to the abbey of Leicester, by William Avenell.”

[13] Monuments of the Vernons and Manners in Bakewell Church:--

“Sir John Vernon, Knt. (son and heir of Henry), 1477; Sir Geo. Vernon, of Haddon, d. 1561, and his two wives, Margaret, daughʳ of Sir Gilbert Talbois, and Maud, daughtʳ of Sir Ralph Longford; Sir John Manners (second son of Thomas earl of Rutland), who died in 1611, and his wife (Dorothy, daughter and coheir of Sir Geo. Vernon), who died in 1584. John Manners (third son of Sir John), who died in 1590. And Sir Geo. Manners, who died in 1623; he married Grace, daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepont.”

Arms of Manners, duke of Rutland:--Or, two bars azure; a chief quarterly of the second and gules, the first and fourth charged with two fleurs-de-lis of the first, and third with a lion passant-guardant of the same, being an augmentation given to the family, in consequence of their descent from King Edward IV.

_Crest_:--On a chapeau, gules, turned up erm., a peacock in pride, proper.

_Supporters_:--Two unicorns, arg., thin horns, manes, tufts, and hoofs, or.

[14] The subjoined particulars respecting one of these open-house occasions, in 1663, are curious and interesting. They are extracted from the bailiff’s accounts of the time of John, eighth earl, who died here in 1679:--

£. _s._ _d._ “Paid George Wood, the cook, for helping in the pastry all Christmas 3 0 0

Paid Robert Swindell, for helping at the like work all Christmas, and two weeks 1 5 0

Paid William Green, the cook, for helping in the kitchen all Christmas 1 0 0

Paid Antony Higton, turnspit, for helping all Christmas 0 3 0

Paid W. Creswick, for pulling fowls and poultry all Christmas 0 3 6

Paid Catherine Sprig, for helping the scullery-maid all Christmas 0 3 0

Paid Thomas Shaw, the piper, for piping all Christmas 2 0 0

Given by my honourable Lord and Lady’s command to Thomas Shaw’s man 0 10 0

Given by their honours’ commands to Richard Blackwell, the dancer 0 10 0

Given by their honours’ commands to Ottiwell Bramwell, the dancer 0 10 0

Given by their honours’ commands to Ottiwell Bramwell’s kinswoman, for dancing 0 5 0

About this time, from 1660 to 1670, although the family resided chiefly at Belvoir, there were generally killed and consumed every year, at Haddon, between 30 and 40 beeves, between 400 and 500 sheep, and 8 or 10 swine.”

[15] A romantic tradition is still current in the vicinity of Haddon, relative to the courtship and marriage of Mr. Manners (afterwards Sir John) with the younger co-heiress of Vernon. The tradition purports that the lover (who was, perhaps, thirty years of age) having conceived an attachment for Miss Vernon, a beautiful girl of eighteen, dwelt for some time in the woods of Haddon as an outlaw, or, rather, in the dress of a gamekeeper (probably with the popular reputation of being an outlawed man), for the purpose of concealment, and in order to facilitate secret interviews with his mistress; and that he at length succeeded in persuading the young lady to elope with him during the festivities of a masked ball, given by Sir G. Vernon in honour of the marriage of his eldest daughter, Margaret, with Sir Thomas Stanley, a younger son of the Earl of Derby.

[16] According to Walpole, “Anecdotes of Painting,” there is a tradition in the family of Cavendish, that a fortune-teller had told this imperious lady that “she should not die while she was building: accordingly, she bestowed a great deal of the wealth she had obtained from three of her four husbands in erecting large seats at Hardwicke, Chatsworth, Bolsover and Oldcote, and, I think, at Worksop; and died in a hard frost, when the workmen could not labour.”

[17] Hardwicke was built subsequently to the death of Mary; but there is little doubt that the room called “The Queen’s Room,” in memory of the unhappy lady, was furnished with the bed and other furniture removed thither from Chatsworth, where she was for some time a prisoner. Probably the hangings said to have been wrought by her were actually the work of her hands; needlework was unquestionably one of the modes by which she sought to solace her dismal confinement. Mr. White, writing to Sir William Cecil, describes an interview he had with her at Tutbury Castle, in 1568: “She sayd that all day she wrought with her nydill and that the diversity of the colours made her work seem less tedious, and contynued so long at it, till very payne made her to give over.”

[18] The curious in such matters may find further information on this head in the “Churchman’s Magazine” of 1801; and in the tenth volume of Bowles’ edition of Pope’s Works, 1806.

[19] Lord Braybrooke’s “History of Audley End;” to which copious volume we are principally indebted for our notices of the history of the house and its occupants.

[20] Evelyn records, in his “Diary,” his visit thus:--“From Cambridge, on August 31, 1654, we went to Audley End, and spent some time in seeing that goodly palace, built by Howard, Earl of Suffolk, once Lord Treasurer. It is a mixt fabric, ’twixt ancient and modern, but observable for its being completely finished; and it is one of the stateliest palaces of the kingdom. It consists of two courts, the first very large, winged with cloisters. The front hath a double entrance; the hall is faire, but somewhat too small for so august a pile; the kitchen is very large, as are the cellars, arched with stone, very neate, and well disposed. These offices are joyned by a wing out of the way very handsomely. The gallery is the most cheerful, and, I think, one of the best in England; a faire dining-roome, and the rest of the lodgings answearable, with a pretty chapel. The gardens are not in order, though well inclosed; it has also a bowling alley, and a nobly walled, wooded, and watered park. The river glides before the palace, to which is an avenue of lime-trees, but all this is much diminished by its being placed in an obscure bottom. For the rest it is a perfectly uniform structure, and shews without like a diadem, by the decoration of the cupolas and other ornaments on the pavilions. Instead of railings and balusters, there is a bordure of capital letters, as was lately, also, in Suffolke house.”

[21] It has recently been pulled down.

[22] Lord Braybrooke’s “History of Audley End.”

[23] The story of St. Osyth, as given in an old tract, entitled “Purgatory Proved by Miracles,” is printed by Wright in his History of Essex:--“St. Ositha was daughter of a Mercian prince named Frithwald, and of Wilterburga, daughter of Pende, king of the Mercians. She was bred up in great piety; and through her parents’ authority, became wife to Sighere, companion to St. Seb, in the kingdom of East Angles. But preferring the love of a heavenly bridegroom before the embraces of a king, her husband complied with her devotion; and, moreover, not only permitted her to consecrate herself to our Lord, but bestowed on her a village, situated near the sea, called Chic, where, building a monastery, she enclosed herself, and after she had spent some time in the service of God, it happened that a troop of Danish pirates landed there; who, going out of their ships, wasted and burned the country thereabout, using all manner of cruelty to the Christian inhabitants. Then he who was the captain of that impious band, having learnt the condition and religious life of the blessed virgin St. Ositha, began by entreaties and presents to tempt her to idolatry; adding withal threats of scourging, and other torments, if she refused to adore the gods he worshipped. But the holy virgin, despising his flatteries, and not fearing his threats, made small account of the torments attending her. Whereupon the said captain, enraged at her constancy and scorn of his idols, pronounced sentence of death against her, commanding her to lay down her head to be cut off. And in the same place where the virgin suffered martyrdom, a clear fountain broke forth, which cured several kinds of diseases. As soon as her head was off, the body presently rose up, and taking up the head in the hands, by the conduct of angels, walked firmly the straight way to the church of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, about a quarter of a mile distant from the place of her suffering. And when it was come there, it knocked at the door with the bloody hands, as desiring it might be opened, and thereon left marks of blood. Having done this, it fell there down to the ground.”

[24] It appears that in the time of the Confessor a “De Berkeley” possessed the adjoining manor and castle of Dursley; and his descendant might probably have joined the Conqueror on, or immediately after, his invasion, and thus retain the possessions until the domain was, during the wars between Maud and Stephen, consigned to Henry, afterwards Henry II. The gift to Robert Fitzhardinge is clear, and, occurring on the very year of his accession to the throne, was doubtless intended by the monarch to mark that event.

[25] The king had previously been treated with exceeding cruelty. It is said that on his way to Berkeley his conductors, for greater concealment of their captive, caused him to dismount from his horse and a barber to shave his head and beard with cold water from a ditch, telling him that “for once cold water must serve his purpose.” Covering his face with his hands, the unhappy monarch wept, saying, “Woulde they or noulde they, he woulde have warm water for his beard!” and to the end that he might keep his promise, he began to shed tears plentifully. This incident is related by Stowe on the authority of Thomas de Mori, “a worshipfull knight that then lived, and wrote in the French tongue, what he sawe with his eies or heard credily reported by them that sawe and some that were actors.” Lord Berkeley was allowed 5_l._ per diem for the monarch’s expenses during his imprisonment, and acquitted of all participation in the murder; Gournay was subsequently arrested at Marseilles and beheaded on shipboard, “it was supposed,” according to Hume, “because some nobles and prelates in England were anxious to prevent any discovery he might make of his accomplices.” Maltravers, many years afterwards, sued for mercy and obtained it. The greatest culprit seems to have escaped: Adam bishop of Hereford lent himself to the schemes of Mortimer and the queen, and wrote as follows to the knights who had the king in custody, “Edvardum occidere nolite timere bonum est,” purposely omitting the punctuations, so that the passage was capable of a double meaning, advising either to slay or spare the royal prisoner, and supplying a safe exit for the writer out of any difficulty that might subsequently arise.

[26] The following notes are extracted from Smith’s “Lives of the Lord Berkeleys,” edited by Fosbrooke:--

“The accompt of William Aside, receiver to the Lord Berkeley, accomptinge for a year from Mmass. anno 20 of Edward II. to the same feast in the first of Edward III., sheweth that he received to this lord’s use 700_l._ de camera scaccarii domini regis, out of the receipt in the king’s exchequer, for the expences of the house of the king’s father whilest he was at Berkeley; and hath in his said accompt an allowance of 31_s._ 1_d._ paid by him to Sir Thomas de Gournay, sent to Nottingham from Berkeley by the said Lord Berkeley to advertize the queene and the king her sonne of the death of the late king his father there. And 15th May the same year an allowance of 500_l._ more from the kynge, paid him by John de Langton, keeper of the castle of Kerfilly, for the same cause.

“The accompts of the reeves (stewards) of Hame and Alkington, and of other manors of this lord’s, near Berkeley Castle, expressly shewe what provisions and acates they sent from their severall granges and manor-houses from the 5th day of Aprill, then being Palm Sunday, when at supper time the kinge was first brought prisoner to Berkeley Castle, untill his death there the 21st September following.

“And the accompt of this said lord’s receiver for the yeare following, in 2d Edward III., sheweth what he payd for dyinge of the white canvas into black, for coveringe of the chariot wherein the bodye of the king was carryed from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester; what the cords, the hors-collers, the traces, and other necessaries particularly cost, used about the said chariot and conveyinge of his body thence to Gloucester; for a silver vessell to put the king’s hart in 37_s._ 8_d._ (in uno vase argentes pro corde dicti Domini Regis patres reponend); in oblations at several times in the chapple of the Castle for the kinges soul, 21_d._; in expenses of the Lord Berkeley’s family going with the kinges body from Berkeley unto Gloucester, 18_s._ 9_d._; and many like particularities.”

[27] About this period the records of the Castle testify that “from the manors of Ham and Cowley the following provisions were sent to the clerk of the kitchen for one year:--17,000 eggs, 1008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 80 hogs, 110 porkers, 84 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat.”

[28] In 1334 the retinue of the then Lord of Berkeley usually consisted of twelve knights, each with two servants and a page; twenty-four squires, each with one man and a page--making a total of 108 persons.

£ _s._ _d._

His expenditure for one year was 1309 14 6 He saved 1155 18 8 --------------- 2465 13 2

A large sum for yearly income in those days.

His armour cost 11 8 11 A hawk 0 15 0 A falcon 1 15 0

[29] “The governor, Sir Charles Lucas, with three horses and arms, and 50_l._ in money. Each field-officer, two horses; foot-captains, one horse; lieutenant and ensigns, sword but no horse; field-officers and captains not to exceed 5_l._, soldiers not 5_s._ 16th October, Colonel Barnes, on petition, nominated governor by the House of Commons.”

[30] In reference to this apartment Horace Walpole, in a letter to the Rev. William Cole, dated 15th August, 1774, says:--“The room shewn for the murder of Edward II. and the shrieks of an agonising king, I verily believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at the top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of footbridge, and from that descends a large flight of steps, that terminate on strong gates--exactly a _corps-de-garde_.”

[31] “Hatfield, called Haethfeld, in the Saxon times, from its situation on a heath, was an ancient demesne of the Saxon kings, till it was granted by Edgar, in the tenth century, to the abbey at Ely, in Cambridgeshire. On the conversion of that foundation into a bishopric, in the reign of Henry I., it became attached to the new see; and the manor-house becoming a palace of the bishops, the town was thenceforth distinguished by the appellation of Bishops’ Hatfield. Queen Elizabeth, who had resided in the bishop’s palace some years before she came to the crown, greatly admired the situation; and by virtue of the statute which gave her the power of exchange, procured the alienation of this manor from the then bishop of Ely, Richard Cox. James I., in the third year of his reign, exchanged it for the house, manor, and park of Theobald’s, with his minister, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, whose descendant, the Marquis of Salisbury, is the present owner.”