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THE FIRST STANLEY EARI, OF DERBY THE FOUNDER OF THE MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOI JOHN BRADFORD, S.\IN'T AND MARTYR JEREMIAH HORROCKS HUMPHREY CHETHAM THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER . JAMES STANLEY, SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY BOOTH THE PLAYER JOHN BYROM JOHN COLLIER (" TIM BOBBIN ") . THE "great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES RICHARD ARKWRIGHT PAGE I 50 60 72 83 96 206 217 294 3*39 P.V'SA QQ LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO THE LARGE PAPER EDITION OF LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. AlKlN, Jamks, Estj., Ganibiev Terrace, Liverpool AiNswoRTH, R. ¥., Esq., MA)., F.R.C.P.E., F.L.S., &c., Clill' Puiut, Lower Brouglitoii, Manchester Akroyd, Edward, Esq., M.P., Bank Field, Halifax Anderson, James S., Esq., The Firs, Leyland, near Preston Andrew, Edwin, Esq., Town Clerk, Salford Andrew, Robert, Esq., Moston House, Harpurhey Armytage, James, Esq., C.E., Borough Surveyor, Preston ' AsHWORTH, Henry, Esq., The Oaks, Turton, Bolton Ashworth, John Wilding, Esci., Sorrel Bank, 8 Eccles Old Boad, Pendleton Baker, William, Esq., 50 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road, London Barton, Henry, Esq., 108 Upper Brook Street, Chorlton-on-Med., Mancheslor Bennett, Councillor W. G., Stanley House, Smedley Road, Cheethani Beswick, Charles, Esq., 4 Alljion Place, Openshaw Bevan, T. B., Es(]:., Ashton-on-J\rersey, Sale Birley, James, Esq., 1 1 Huskisson Street, Liverpool Birley, W. H., Esq., West Cliff, Preston Blacklidge, Robert, Esq., Brindle, near Preston Bleasdell, Rev. John, B.A., Enville Place, Ashton-under-Lyne BoLCKOw, Henry Wm. Ferdinand, Esq., M.P., Martou Hall, Middlesborouyli Botsford, John Wm., Esq., Manchester BooLTON, Isaac Watt, Esq., Stamford House, Ashton-under-Lyue Bremner, John A., Esq., Hilton House, Prestwich Brooks, Wm. Cunliffe, Esq., M.P., Forest of Glen Tanar, Aboyne, Aberdeen- .shire Brooks, Thomas, Esq., Barkby Hall, Leicester Brown, Councillor W., Smedley House, Cheetham, Manchester Brown, Colonel, j\I.P., Heatlifield House, Liverpool Buckley, Sir Edmund, Bart., Dinas Mawddwy BuRGHOPE, William, Esq., The Birches, Malvern Link Burnett, Robert T., Esq., Earl Street, Lower Broughton, Manchester Cammell, a. L., Esq., 69 Bradshawgate, Bolton Chesters, William, Esq., Fairfield Street, Manchester Clare, ]Mrs, Park Lane, Higher Broughton, Manchester Clegg, James W., Esq., Mumps, Oldham Cleminson, R. L., Esq., Manchester Cooper, Messrs L J. & G., Church Street, Manchester Cooper, James Gould, Esq., Westlind, Bowdon Crippin, William, Esq., Seymour House, Old Trafford Cooling, Edwin, Esq., juu., St Mary's Gate, Derby Cooper, Sir Daniel, 20 Prince's Gardens, South Kensington, London Copland, J. P., Esq., Lauriston Park, Edinburgh Crane, Rev. Canon, M.A., The Cathedral, Manchester Crossley, John, Esq., Briers Hey, Rainhill Dale, Thomas, Esq., Bank House, Hatherlow, Cheshire Davies, Mrs, 41 Dickinson Road Derby, The Right Hon. the Earl of, Knowsley, Prescot Dixon, George, Esq., Astle Hall, Congleton^ Chesliii-e Ellershaw, John, Esq., Kirkstall, near Leeds Evans, Joseph, Esq., Haydock Grange, near St Helen's Ferguson, George, Esq., Haulgh Hall, Bolton FiLDES, James, Esq., 44 Spring Gardens, Manchester For.ster, John, Esq., Palace Gate House, Kensington, London Foster, Peter, Esq., Holly Baiik, Turton Gardiner, F. G., Esq., Cheadle, Cheshire Gent, L. C, Esq., 15 Westgate Terrace, South Kensington, London Gerrard, Joseph, Esq., Acres Field, Bolton Gillespie, T., Esq., Newton-le-Willows Gray, W., Esq., M.P., 26 Prince's Gardens, London Greenall, Gilbert, Esq., Walton House, Warrington Greenall, Capt. Gilbert, Grappenhall Greenhalgh, Joseph Dodson, Esq., Gladstone Cottage, Haulgli, Bolton Grundy, Alfred, Esq., WTiitefield, near Manchester Harper, J. P., Esq., Tipping Street, Manchester Harvey, C. H., Esq., Manchester Haworth, Jesse, Esq., Manchester Hayes, William, junior, Esq., Higher Ardwick, Manchester Heywood, G. F., Esq., Heaton Road, Withington HiGGiN, John, Esq., Lord Street, Rochdale HoLDSWORTH, Charles J., Esq., Eccles, near Manchester HowARTH, James, Esq., Waterfoot, Rossendale HuLSE, William W'., Es(j[., C.E., 88 King Street, Manchester Jackson, Stanway, Esq., Ellesmere Park, Eccles Jenkins, Thomas H., Esq., Holly House, Higher Broughton, Manchester Johnson, Miss, Portland Street, Soutlii)ort Kay, Edward, Esq., 19 Elizabeth Street, Cheetham, Manchester Kenworthy, William, Esq., Devonshire Street. Manchester Lee, George, Esq., Tipping Street, Ardwick Leigh, James, Esq., Norfolk Street, Ardwick Lever, Ellis, Esq., Hyde House, Denton Levick, Edward, Esq., 106 Everton Road, Manchester LiGHTBOWN, Henry, Es(^., 24 Seedley Road, Pendleton Livesey, Thomas, Esq., B.A., C.E,, Albert Lodge, Heatnn Chapel . Lord, Simeon, Esij., Blue Pits, near Rochdale LoYD, Lieut.-Col. Edward, Lilk>sden, Hawkhurst, Kent Mabon, Walter, Esq., Hyde Road, Manchester Macmartin, James, Esq., Yew-Tree Cottage, Chea and was succeeded by his son Thomas, second Lord Stanley, afterwards first Earl of Derby, Avho carried the fortunes of the house to heights unknown before. The first Stanley Earl of Derby lived in a chaotic and turbulent age, an age, too, in which the old spirit of chivalry was being superseded by ■ modern craft and subtlety. The courage and skill of the warrior had still their value, but strength of arm and hosts of retainers were insufticient without astuteness of head, without a watchful dexterity in remaining neuter when neutrality was the safest course, or in shifting from this cause to that, so as to be on the winning side in times when clers of the Stanley family. According to one version a Sir Thomas La- tham, represented as the grandfather of the Isabel whom Sir John Stan- ley married, finds in an eagle's nest in Tarlestone wood an infant "swaddled and clad in a mantle of red." Being both issueless and " four score," Sir Thomas adopts the child, names it Oskell, and to him bequeaths all his estates. "Sir" Oskell has an only daughter, Isabel, with wliom Sir John Stanley elopes, and in right of whom, after forgiveness by the father, he inherits the Latham property. In the other version of the legend, it is a Sir Thomas de Latham, father of Isabel, who has an illegitimate son, the mother being a certain Mary Oskatell. By a stratagem of the father, the infant Oskatell, so called after the mother, is deposited in an eagle's nest. Then Sir Thomas pretends to find him as if dropped from the skies, and, concealing the bantling's parentage, easily induces his wife to adopt the child of mystery, " Sir" Oskatell is brought up as his heir by Sir Thomas, who, however, grow- ing penitent in old age, leaves him only a few manors, and bequeaths the bulk of his estates to his legitimate daughter, Isabel, and her husband, Sir John Stanley, The genuine history of the crest of the eagle and child, with a good deal of curious information respecting the Lathams, will be found in a paper contributed by Dr Ormerod, the historian of Cheshire, to Nichols's Collectanea, and in the Miscellanea Palatina (London, 1851) of the Ibrmer eminent antiquary. 6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. the vanquished of yesterday might become the victor of to- day. The first Stanley Earl of Derby, pursued this policy with consummate skill, reaping as a reward large additional domains and a peerage, in our age as in his own one of the foremost in England. His choice of a first, as afterwards of a second wife, was a very prudent one at the time, and his earliest appearance on the stage of public affairs is curiously characteristic of him. He began by marrying Eleanor, daughter of Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury, and sister to the stalwart Earl of Warwick, the famous king-maker, the most powerful noble of the day. But while ready to profit by this alliance the wary Stanley did not allow it to commit him to any very de- cided, much less to any dangerous course. On his father's death in 1459, Lord Stanley found himself at the head of the retainers of his house and of those whom his connections placed at his disposal. In the September of 1459 civil war broke out afresh. No lasting peace had been the result of the grand reconciliation-scene of the preceding year, Avhich displayed Somerset walking hand-in- hand with Salisbury, Exeter with Warwick, while after them came the feeble and innocent Lancastrian King, Henry VI., in royal habit and crown, followed by the two great ene- mies, the Duke of York (father of Edward IV.) conducting the resolute Queen, Margaret of Anjou, " with great seeming familiarity ; " all wending their way in solemnly-joyful pro- cession to St Paul's. A chance fray between a servant of the royal household and one of Warwick's retainers rekindled the Queen's old feud with the king-maker, and in the autumn a War of the Roses was raging again. On the 23rd 0/ September 1459, at Bloreheath in Staftbrdshire, Warwick's father and Lord Stanley's father-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, with 5,000 men, routed a force commanded by the King's friend, Lord Audley, of the family from which the Stanleys THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. J were originally an offshoot. Of Lord Stanley's conduct before, during, and just after this engagement there is extant a significant record in a petition of the Commons, complain- ing of it and of him, and presented to the King during the sitting of the staunchly Lancastrian parliament held in the ensuing November at Coventry. " To the King our Sove- reign Lord," begins this document, of which the spelling is here modernised — " show the Commons in this present Parliament assembled : That where[as] it pleased your Highness to send to the Lord Stanley, by the servant of the same Lord from Nottingham, charging him that upon his faith and [al]legiance, he should come to your Highness in all haste, with such fellowship" — following — "as he might make, the said Lord Stanley, notwithstanding the said command- ment, came not to you, but William Stanley, his brother, went with many of the said Lord's servants and tenants, [a] great number of people, to the Earl of Salisbury, which were with the same Earl at the distressing of your true liege people at Bloreheath." This was the Sir William Stanley of Bos- worth Field celebrity, and the conduct of the two brothers in this Bloreheath affair, curiously prefigures that which they pursued a quarter of a century afterwards on a mucli more famous occasion. " Also," the petition of the indig- nant Commons continues, " where[as] your said Highness gave in commandment to your first begotten son, Edward, Prince of Wales" — murdered, eleven years later, after the battle of Tewkesbury — " to assemble your people and his tenants, to resist the malice of your rebels, and thereupon the same noble Prince sent to the said Lord Stanley to come to him in all haste possible, with such fellow- ship as he might make — the said Lord Stanley, putting the said matter in delay, faintly excused him[self], saying he was not then ready : Howbeit, of his own confession, he had before a commandment from your Highness to be ready 8 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to come to the same with his said fellowship, upon a day's warning ; which delay and absence was a great cause of the loss and distress of your said people at Bloreheath. Also where[as] the said Lord had sent his servant to our Sovereign Lady the Queen " — Margaret of Anjou — " and to the said noble Prince of Wales and Chester, saying that he should come to them in all haste ; and after that he sent to them Richard Hokesley, his servant, to Eggleshall, certifying them that he would come to them in all haste ; and desired, for as much as he understood that he was had in jealousy," therefore " that he might have the vanward against the Earl of Salisbury and his fellowship : And the said noble Prince" of Wales, " by the advice of his council, considering that the fellowship of the said Lord Stanley was fewer in number than the fellowship of the said Earl, willed and desired him to come to the said noble Prince and his fellowship, that they being all together might come to have assisted your Highness, which was promised faithfully by his said servant should be performed in all haste : Which, notwithstanding, was not performed, but in default thereof, your people were distressed at Bloreheath aforesaid, as is well known : How- beit that the said Lord Stanley was within six miles of the said heath " at " the same time, accompanied with 2000 men, and rested him with the same fellowship, by the space of three days after, at Newcastle " under Lyne, " but six miles out of Eggleshall, where the Queen and Prince then were ; and the said Lord Stanley, on the morning next after the distress at Bloreheath, sent a letter for his excuse to our Sovereign Lady the Queen and the said noble Prince, which said letter your said Highness had sent to him, command- ing him by the same to have come to your said Highness with his fellowship in all haste, which " — that is Lord Stanley and his fellowship — " came neither to your Highness, to the Queen, nor to the said Prince, but so departed home again. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. Q " Also, \vhere[as] the said Earl of Salisbury and his fellow- ship had distressed your said people at Bloreheath, the said Lord Stanley sent a letter to the said Earl to Drayton, the same night, thanking God of the good speed of the said Earl, rejoicing him greatly of the same, trusting to God that he should be with the said Earl in other place [s], to stand him in as good stead as he should have done if" — what a virtue in that "if!" — " he had been with them there : Which letter the said Earl sent to Sir Thomas Harrington, and he showed it openly, saying, ' Sirs, be merry, for yet we have more friends : Also, whereas a Squire of the said Earl's, on the Monday next after the said distress, told to a Knight of your's " — the King's — " which was taken prisoner by the fellowship of the said Earl at Bloreheath, that a man of the Lord Stanley's had been with the said Earl at Drayton in the morning of the same day, and brought him word from the said Lord Stanley, that your Highness had sent for him, and that he would ride to you with his fellowship ; and if any man would resist or let " — hinder — " the said Earl to come to your High Presence for his excuse" — to excuse himself, then a common plea and pretext of rebellious magnates in arms — " according to the intent of the said Earl, that then the said Lord Stanley and his fellowship should live and die with the said Earl, against his resisters : Also where[as] the said Prince" of Wales, "in fulfilling of your high commandment, sent as well for your people and his tenants in Wirrall Hundred as in Maxfield Hundred in Cheshire, the said people and tenants were let " — prevented — " by the said Lord Stanley, so that they might not come to your Highness, nor to the presence of the said noble Prince : Also where[as] a servant and one of the cooks of the said Lord Stanley's, being with William Stanley in the fellowship of the said Earl of Salisbury, and left behind at Drayton, declared openly to divers gentlemen of the fellowship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, that he was sent B l^ 10 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to the said Earl of Salisbury in the name of the said Lord Stanley, with more of his fellowship : Also, where[as] certain persons being of the livery and clothing of the said Lord Stan- ley were taken at the Forest of Morff in Shropshire, the day before their death [they] confessed that they were commanded in the name and behalf of the said Lord Stanley to attend and await upon the said William Stanley, to assist the said Earl of Salisbury in such matter[s] as he intended to execute : " Of all which matters done and committed by the said Lord Stanley we, your said Commons, accuse and impeach him ; and pray your most high Regalie " — Majesty — " that the same Lord be committed to prison, there to abide after form of law." ^ Certainly a cumulative indictment, the truth of which is rendered abundantly probable by Lord Stanley's subsequent career. It is pretty clear from it that Sir William Stanley had openly joined Salisbury against the King, while his brother, Lord Stanley, amused both sides with promises of support and expressions of sympathy, though carefully for- bearing to strike a blow for either his father-in-law or his sovereign. To the petition of the Commons praying for the punishment or trial of Lord Stanley, the King returned a negative answer in the once frequent and potent but now long-obsolete formula, Le i-oi s'avisera. This may have been the result of re-assurances of his loyalty given by Lord Stanley, or of a disinclination to exasperate and render permanently disaffected a powerful family, the head of which was evidently by no means disposed to commit himself After all Lord Stanley had not actually and in person joined the rebels. Other nobles and his own brother. Sir William Stanley himself, were proclaimed traitors, and their estates declared to be confiscated by that parliament ' Rotidi Parliamentomm, v. 369. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. II at Coventry,^ but then, as always, Lord Stanley escaped. On the nth December, accordingly, " Dominus Stanley" figures in the list of the peers who took a solemn oath of allegiance to Henry.^ Nay, he is soon found employed by the King in an im.portant commission, which included the safe custody and the delivery to Henry of two of his own brothers-in-law, among other persons. On the 13th of July 1460, less than a year after the battle of Bloreheath, he is ordered by the King to bring in safe to his presence " John and Thomas Neville," sons of the Earl of Salisbur}', " and Thomas Harrington, together with James Harrington " and others, " being in ward by the King's commandment for divers matters ministered against him in his late parlia- ment holden at Coventry." ^ This Thomas Harrington was the owner, and his son, James, heir, of Hornby Castle in Lan- cashire, and its domains, which came into the possession of the Stanleys, as will be seen hereafter. I^ord Stanley's luck in acquiring for himself or for his family began early in his career. In the following year the Yorkist cause triumphed, and, of course, while the triumph lasted. Lord Stanley ceased to be a Lancastrian. Victorious in the bloody battle of Towton (29th-3oth March 1461) Edward IV. was seated on the throne, and in the second year of the new King's reign Lord Stanley was appointed Justice of Chester. Eight years passed, and then, offended with Edward, whom he had placed on the throne, king-making ^Varwick was plotting the restoration of the same Henry VI. whom he had dethroned. A victory of Edward's at Stamford (12th March 1470) crushed Lord Willes's insurrection, which ^ Rotuli Parltamentorum, v. 348, &c (Given in Baines's Lancashire i. 414, &c., wliere it is said to refer to Thomas, yfrj-/ Lord Stanley, instead of his son, an error repeated in the second and recent editions of B lines, i. 135. '^ Ruttili Farliavientorum, v. 352. ■* Beamont's Notes on the Lancashire Stanleys, p. 5, a tract full of curious and original information. 12 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Warwick had instigated, and the king-maker sped to Man- chester, to ask for aid from his brother-in-law, Lord Stanley. It was refused. Yet when, a few months afterwards, Warwick was successful and Edward an exile we read of Lord Stanley as one of the nobles who accompanied the king-maker to the Tower (6th October 1470), whence Henry was brought " with great pomp, apparelled in a long gown of blue velvet, through the streets of London to St Paul's." Scarcely seventeen months elapse and again all is changed. Edward has returned and defeated the Lancastrians at the battle of Barnet (14th April 147 1), where, fighting with desperation on foot, Warwick himself is slain. At Tewkesbury (4th May 147 1 ) the Lancastrian cause was finally overthrown. On the 22nd of the same month poor Henry VL " died," a prisoner in the Tower, and once more Edward IV. reigned in his stead. With the restored Edward the astute and fortunate Lord Stanley was soon in higher favour than before. Three years or so after the death of Henry in the Tower, he was appointed Steward of the Yorkist King's Household, a high and confidential office. It was in this capacity that, in the summer of 1475, ^^e accompanied Edward on that invasion of France which the wiles of Louis XL and the gold dis- tributed by him among the chief English courtiers turned into an alHance between France and England. Seven years later, when Richard, Duke of Gloucester — so soon to become Richard III. — was sent on an expedition into Scotland, Lord Stanley commanded, under him the right wdng, some 4000 strong, of the invading army, and with it Stanley invested and stormed Berwick-upon-Tweed, which remained English ever afterwards. There is a tradition preserved in some doggrel lines ^ that, either in going or ^ "Jack of Wigan he did take The Duke of Gloucester's banner, And hung it up in Wigan church, A monument of honour." THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. I 3 returning, there were feuds and frays between Richard's and Stanley's men, a circumstance which might help to account for the nature of the relations between the two soon after- wards. However this may be, the Scottish expedition had not been long over and Richard was at York, when (April 9th 1483) Edward IV. died, of over-eating as was surmised. His death opened a strange, eventful, and obscure chapter of English history. Meanwhile Lord Stanley had become a widower and taken a second wife — a match which gradually led him to play a principal part in the melodrama of the new time. A year or two, probably, before the death of Edward, Stanley married that memorable lady, IMargaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. Daughter and sole heiress of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, Henry VI.'s Captain, she was the great-grand-daughter of John of Gaunt — " time-honoured Lancaster." Her grand- father, John, Earl of Somerset, was the son of John of Gaunt by his mistress, Catherine Swynford, whom he after- wards married, and his offspring by whom an act of parliament legitimised. Thus, if the House of York were extinguished or set aside, Margaret had herself a shadowy claim to the crown. She was a girl of ten when she lost her father, and she grew up a pious, studious, and ac- complished woman. At fourteen she married Edmund, Earl of Richmond, half-brother of Henry VI., his father having been that lucky Owen Tudor whose handsome person gained him the heart and hand of Katherine oF Valois, the widow of Henry V., victor of Agincourt, Shakespeare's and Falstaff 's Prince Hal. The eldest son of this singular marriage was the first husband of Margaret Beaufort, and father by her of Henry, Earl of Rich- mond, who became Henry VII. A few months after the birth of this their and her only child, her husband died, 14 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. November 1456. Three years later she was married to Sir Henry Stafford, son of Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham — ^just when civil war in England was breaking out afresh. The little Henry of Richmond's uncle by the father's side, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, was a fierce Lancastrian, and when that cause was overthrown, both of them fled to France, whence the nephew was to return one day to gain the battle of Bosworth and ascend the throne of England. Mar- garet was a woman of forty when in 1481 she lost her second husband, Sir Henry Stafford. By her marriage with Lord Stanley, the great nobleman whom the Yorkist Edward IV. delighted to honour became the step-father of the Lan- castrian Pi'etender. The match seems to have been one of convenience on her side, probably it was so on both sides. It gave Lord Stanley a wife with great possessions, and her only child was an attainted exile — a half-prisoner of the Duke of Brittany. Margaret herself gained by it a powerful protector high in the favour of the King. Her piety was of the ascetic kind, and she passed part if not all of her married life with her third husband in a way not unusual in those days for wedded dames of great devoutness. " Long time before that he died," says her father-confessor, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester — the " he " being, of course, Lord Stanley — " she obtained of him licence, and promised to live chaste, in the hands of the reverend father my Lord of London, which promise she renewed, after her husband's death, into my hands again." Her in- fluence over Lord Stanley must, nevertheless, have been very considerable, and to it in all probability was due the accession of the Tudor dynasty to the throne of England. Lord Stanley returned from the North before Richard Crookback, and was present at the funeral of Edward IV. After the King's death there were three parties ready to struggle for supremacy. One was that of the Queen-Mother, THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. I 5 Elizabeth Woodville, whose marriage to Edward, and still more the honours heaped by him on her kindred, had pro- voked the ire of some of his best friends among the nobles.^ The mo^ notable member of the Queen- Mother's party was her brother, the gallant and accomplished Lord Rivers, whose translation from the French, "The Dictes or Sayings of Philosophers," was one of the earliest books issued from the press of William Caxton (1477). At the time of Edward's death Lord Rivers was at Ludlow, as governor of South Wales, having under his care his young nephew, Edward V. There, too, as Steward of the boy- King's Household, a significant fact, was Sir William Stanley. Lord Stanley himself seems to have belonged to a second party, one loyal to the young King and distrustful of his uncle, Richard of Gloucester, but hostile to the pretensions of the Queen-Mother and her kindred. This party was headed by the brilliant Lord Hastings, Edward's companion in danger, in triumph, and in pleasure, and who became the most trusted of his councillors. He, too, like Lord Stanley, had married a sister of Warwick, the king-maker. Last not least there was the party of Richard of Gloucester, already aspiring to be Protector, if not King, and about to secure the co-operation of the powerful and prominent but foolish ^ Shakespeare, with his knowledge of human nature, but seemingly without any historical or biographical authority for the suggestion, represents the high-horn Margaret of Riclimond as scorning the pafvemie, Elizabeth Woodville : — Q Eliz. The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Derby, To your good prayers will scarcely say, Amen. Yet Derby, notwithstanding she's your wife And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured I hate not you for her proud arrogance. King Richard II L — Act i. scene 3. In this passage, as often throughout the play, by a pardonable anachronism, Lord Stanley is styled Lord Derby, though he was not made Earl of Derliy until after the battle of Bosworth. 1 6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, whose uncle, Sir Henry Staftord, had been the first husband of Lord Stanley's second wife, Margaret of Richmond. The first blow was struck by Richard, a very few weeks after Edward's deatli. Witli tlie assent and approval of Hastings, who disliked them as chief among the Queen- INIother's relations and friends, and as old personal enemies of his own. Rivers and his nephew Grey were arrested by Richard's orders ; their execution followed not long after- wards. The turn of Hastings himself came next. On the 13th of June occurred the scene in the Tower (the fourth of the third act of Shakespeare's Richard III), when, at a signal from Gloucester, armed men rushed into the council-room, seized Hastings and carried him off to imme- diate execution. Hastings and Stanley were on the friend- liest terms, and according to tradition Stanley had warned Hastings of his fate and advised him to fly.^ If so, he ought himself to have fled, since, according to the same 1 " Before Lord Hastings' Housi. £>iter a Messenger. Mess. What, ho ! my Lord. Hast. \withiii\. Who knocks at the door? Mess. A messenger from the Lord Stanley. Enter Lord Hastmgs. Hast. What is't o'clock ? Mess. Upon the stroke of four. Hast. Cannot thy master sleep these tedious nights? Mess. So it should seem by that I have to say. First he commends him to your noble Lordship. Hast. And then ? Mess. And then he sends you word He dreamt to-night the boar had rased his helm, Besides he says there are two councils held ; And that may be determined at the one Which may make you and him to rue at th' other. Therefore he sends to know your Lordship's pleasure, If presently you will take horse with him And with all speed post with him toward the North, To shun the danger that his soul divines." King Richard III. — Act iii. scene 2. A white boar, it need scarcely be added, was Richard's cognizance. THE FIRS T S TANLE Y EA RL OF DERD Y. I / tradition, he was nearly involved in the destruction which befell Hastings. " In this bustle," says Sir Thomas More, the circumstantiality of whose narrative is unique, whatever doubts there may be as to its accuracy, " in this bustle," of the armed men rushing in, when Richard struck his hand upon the Council-table, " which was all before con- trived, a certain person struck at the Lord Stanley with a pole-axe, and had certainly cleft him down, had he not been aware of the blow and sunk under the table. Yet he was wounded on the head that the blood ran about his ears." This was on the 13th of June : on the 26th Richard, already Protector, was proclaimed King. If the story of the pole-axe and the ducking under the table be true, it, or its sequel, but affords another proof of Lord Stanley's wonderful dexterity and good luck. His friend Hastings was beheaded, but he himself escaped. A fortnight after the scene in the Tower, and the day after Richard was proclaimed King, Stanley emerges a trusted counsellor of the " usurper," witnessing with Buckingham the new King's formal delivery of the Great Seal to his Chancellor, John Bishop of London.^ On the 6th of July came Richard's coronation, when " the Lord Stanley bare the mace before the King, and my Lady of Richmond bare the Queen's train." Before the end of the year this most dexterous and fortunate of noblemen was appointed " Con- stable of England for life." He had been already restored to the office near the King's person, that of Steward of the Household, which he filled under Edward IV. Whatever happened to kings or to dynasties, it was the fate of Lord Stanley to flourish and increase, 1 A deliveiy 4^ "ot^ "/'c? the usuqier," as Jesse puts it ( Memoirs 0/ King Richard III., p. 340), misled probably by Miss Strickland (Queens of England, ii. 400, note), who also gives a wrong reference ta Rymer's Fccdera — xii. 189, instead of xii. 132. C 1 8 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. In Richard's triumphant progresses northward and west- ward, after the coronation, he was accompanied by Lord Stanley. During their course — if really ever enacted precisely as the time-honoured traditions represent it to have been — was enacted the dark tragedy of the Children in the lower. Just before the date assigned to this event, Buckingham is spoken of as aggrieved by Richard's treatment of him, and as having in dudgeon left the King at Gloucester for his own castle of Brecknock. To his care and custody at Brecknock had been entrusted the person of Morton Bishop of Ely (afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury), who, as a member of the Hastings party, had been arrested ^ when its chief was not only arrested but executed, and as Sir Thomas More was, in his youth, a page in Morton's household, it is sometimes fondly fancied that he received from Morton's lips the materials for his history of Richard III., which became the groundwork of much of Shakespeare's tragedy, and of the traditional version of Richard's character and earlier career as King. According to More, Buckingham in his wrath conceived a notion of setting himself up for King, descended as he was from a seventh -son of Edward III. But as he rode on his home- ward way, he met, between Worcester and Bridgenorth, his uncle's widow, Lord Stanley's wife, Margaret of Ricl> mond. In the course of their conversation — Sir Thomas More is the authority for all this — she besought him, as powerful with the King, to use his influence on behalf of her son, Henry of Richmond, then an exile in Brittany. If Richard would permit him to return to England and marry ' " C107CC. My Lord of Ely ! Ely. My Lord. Glouc. When I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there t I do beseech you send for some of them. £ly. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart," &c., &c. K in ff Richard III. — Act iii. scene 4. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. I9 one of the daughters of Edward IV., no other dowry than the favour of the King would be asked for with her. Cir- cumstantial as is More's account, it is not likely that Margaret could have expected Richard thus to restore and honour a possible pretender to the throne. However, according to More, this mention of Richmond set Bucking- ham thinking. He came to the conclusion that it would be better for him to give up his own slender claim to the crown, and to support Richmond's, When he arrived at Breck- nock, he talked the matter over with his prisoner, Morton, who strongly encouraged his new view. The peer and prelate at Brecknock opened formal negotiations with Margaret of Richmond. It seems that a project for marrpng Richmond to the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV., had been already communicated by Margaret to Elizabeth Woodville (then with her children in sanctuary at West- minster), through a Welsh physician, who ministered medi- cally to both of them. Edward's widow now welcomed the scheme, and promised the co-operation of her friends. Great nobles and prelates entered into the plot all the more eagerly that the murder of the young Edward V. and his brother in the Tower by Richard's command had begun to be bruited abroad. Messengers were sent with money and advice to Richmond in Brittany, and he consented to everything. The iSth of October (1483) was fixed for a general rising. By that day Henry was to arrive in Eng- land at the head of an invading force, and co-operate with the levies of Buckingham and his fellow-conspirators. Stormy weather delayed the arrival of Richmond and scattered his ships. When at last, with a solitary vessel, he neared the coast of Dorsetshire, he found Richard's soldiers confronting him. There was nothing left for him but to return whence he came, and there he soon beard of the failure of Buckingham's insurrection, and of 20 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. the capture and execution of Buckingham himself. Lord Stanley's wife had been deep in the plot, but he managed matters so that his own fidelity could not be directly im- peached, and might even be represented as having contri- buted to the failure of the insurrection. Lord Stanley had married his eldest son George to Joanna, the daughter and heiress of John Lord Strange (her mother, be it noted, was a sister of Elizabeth Woodville), and through this marriage, it may be mentioned, there came to the husband and his de- scendants the Barony of Strange, a circumstance which ac- counts for the fact that " Lord Strange" was long the courtesy- title of the eldest sons of the Earls of Derby. Now there has been preserved (it is printed in the " Plumpton Correspond- ence '') a letter from the secretary of this George Stanley, Lord Strange, dated the i8th October (1483), the very day fixed for Buckingham's rising, and it contains the following curious passage. "People in this country" — Edward Plump- ton writes from Latham, which, and not Knowsley, was then and for long afterwards the headquarters of the Stanleys — " people in this country be so troubled in such commandment as they have in the King's name and other- wise, marvellously" — the King ordering them one way, lords and landlords in the rebel interest ordering them another — " that they know not what to do. My lord Strange goeth forth from Latham upon Monday next with 10,000 men, wliither we cannot say. The Duke of Buck- ingham has so many as that " it " is said here that he is able to go where he will ; but I trust he shall be right withstanded, and " — or — " else were great pity." Were the sympathies and antipathies of Lord Strange and of Lord Strange's father the same as those here expressed by Mr Secretary Plumpton? If Buckingham's rising had begun successfully, and if he had been joined in force by Lord Stan- ley's step-son, Richmond, Avould those 10,000 men under THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 21 Lord Strange have been ordered to fight for Richard? It may be doubted — Mr Secretary himself did not know whither Lord Strange was bound. ^ Certain it is, however, that the ^ It might at first seem as if it were Shakespeare's marvellous instinct, unaided by suggestion of chronicler or historian, which, in the passage about to be quoted, led him to represent Richard as distrusting Stanley at the time of Buckingham's insurrection. The truth, however, is that, for his own convenience, Shakespeare suppressed the failure of Rich- mond's first and unsuccessful expedition, and makes the second and suc- cessful one to be contemporaneous with that insurrection ; whereas they were separated by nearly two years. For Richard's distrust of Stanley during Richmond's second expedition, and for his demand that Lord Strange should then be placed in his hands as a hostage, there is ample historical warrant ; how far it is rightful as regards Lord Strange (the George Stanley of Shakespeare) is another question which will be dealt with hereafter. " Enter Lord Stanley. K. Rich. How now, what news with you? Stan. Richmond is on the seas K. Rich Then, tell me, what doth he upon the sea? Stan. Unless for that, my liege, I cannot gues";. K. Rich. Unless for that he comes to be your liege You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes. Thou wilt revolt, and fly to him, I fear. Stat!.. No, mighty liege ; therefore mistrust me not. K. Rich. Where is thy power, then, to beat him back? Where are thy tenant and thy followers? Are they not now up the western shore, Safe conducting the rebels from their ships ? Stan. No, my good Lord, my friends are in the North. A'. Rich. Cold friends to Richard : what do they in the North, When they should serve their Sovereign in the West ? Stan. They have not been commanded, mighty Sovereign : Please it your Majesty to give me leave, I'll muster up my friends, and meet your Grace Where and what time your Majesty shall please. K. Rich. Ay, ay, thou would'st be gone to join with Richmond : I will not trust you, sir? Stan. Most mighty Sovereign, Vou have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful ; I never was nor never will be false. A'. Rich. Well, Go muster men ; but, hear you, leave behind Your son, George Stanley : look your faith be fii m, Or else his head's assurance is but frail. S'tan. So deal with him as I prove true to you." [Exit. King; Richard 11 L — Act iv. scene /) 22 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. ever-lucky and dexterous Stanley was a gainer by the failure of the insurrection which his wife had fomented. On the very day of Buckingham's execution, Richard granted to Lord Stanley " the Castle and Lordship of Kimbolton, late belonging to the great rebel and traitor Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham." A few months before and Stanley was in danger, while Buckingham was Richard's chief friend and favourite. Now Buckingham's head rolled from the axe of the executioner, and Stanley throve upon his destruction. Richard might have his doubts, but he kept them to himself, and laboured to per- suade Stanley practically that loyalty was the best policy. It was worth the King's while to try to secure the adhesion of a nobleman who could bring 10,000 men into the field. But Margaret of Richmond's participation in the con- spiracy which preceded Buckingham's abortive insurrection was well-known to Richard, and he could not hope to bribe her to be loyal to him or to desert the cause of her own son. Strange spectacle — while honours were heaped on the husband, all that seemed prudently possible was done to humiliate and punish the wife. Lord Stanley was made Constable of England for life in the December of 1483. Early in the new year, on the 22nd of January, 1484, a parliament met at Westminster, opened by Richard in person, his confidant and instrument, Catesby, being chosen Speaker of the Commons, Among the acts passed by this parliament for the punishment of persons implicated in Buckingham's conspiracy and insurrection, was one directed against " Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother to the King's great rebel and traitor, Henry, Earl of Rich- mond." It recited that " slie had of late conspired, con- federated, and committed treason" against the King, by " sending messages, writings, and tokens to the said Henry; desiring him to come into this realm and make war against THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 2^ him," and had also raised " great sums of money " to be employed for the same purpose. Nevertheless, it was added, the King considering " the good and faithful service that Thomas Lord Stanley had done, and intendeth to do, and for the good love and trust that the King hath in him, for his sake remitteth and will forbear to her the great punishment of attainder of the said Countess." ^ Margaret was, however, disabled from inheriting any lands or dignities, and declared to have forfeited her estates to the crown, only a life interest in them being conceded to Lord Stanley. It was an enactment which did not make the mother of Henry, Earl of Richmond — or for that matter, perhaps, his step-father either — more loyal to Richard of Gloucester. A year and a half passed away after the opening of the parliament which in the January of 1484 attainted Margaret of Richmond. The summer of 1485 found Richard at Nottingham once more awaiting a landing of Richmond's, and making energetic preparations to crush the second expedition of Lord Stanley's step-son. At the beginning of 1485 Richard acted as if he believed firmly in the fidelity of the Stanleys.^ In the January of that year he issued * Rotuli Parliameutorum, vi. 250. ^ It was about this time, probably later rather than earlier, that to help in silencing the reports of his contemplated marriage to her, Richard removed from Court the Princess EHzabeth of York, after- wards wife of Henry VII. About this time, too, the "action" of that curious piece, "The Song of the Lady Bessy," Elizabeth her- self, might be supposed to begin. In it Elizabeth is represented as making direct appeals to Lord Stanley to endeavour to place Rich- mond on the throne. Lord Stanley at first rejects them, then yields to them, and conspires accordingly against Richard. The " Song of the Lady Bessy " professes to be written by Humphrey Brereton, a confidential " esquire " of Lord Stanley's, but it cannot Ije accepted as genuine autobiography or histoiy, and beyond doubt it is at least partly apocryphal. The best edition of its text is that printed by Mr J. O. HalliwcU, in vol. xx. of the Percy Society's publications. 24 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. two commissions, one for Cheshire, the other for Lan- cashire. They were addressed to " all knights, squires, gentlemen, and all others the King's subjects " of the two counties. The Cheshire commission informs those whom it concerns that " the King hath deputed the Lord Stanley, the Lord Strange, and Sir William Stanley to have the rule and leading of all persons appointed to do the King's service when they be warned against the King's rebels. And it any rebels arrive in those parts that then all the power that they can make be ready to assist the said Lords and Knight upon their faiths and [aljlegiances." The Lancashire com- mission calls upon the "knights, squires, and gentlemen, and others" of. that county, " to give their attendance upon the Lords Stanley and Strange to do the King's Grace service against his rebels in whatsoever place within this Royaume they fortune to tarry." Richard was thus thrusting into the hands of the Stanleys weapons which seven months after- wards were to be turned against himself. And now must come the statement of a problem in the story of the Stanleys, one arising out of the traditional, long-accepted, and undisputed account of the circumstances accompanying their contribution to the over- throw of Richard Crookback and to the establishment of the Tudor dynasty on the throne of England. According to the old chroniclers, Richard became towards his latter end suspicious of Lord Stanley's fidelity, an assertion plau- sible enough since Margaret of Richmond was doubtless aiding and abetting her son's second and successful expedi- tion. There is, too, a general agreement on another point, namely, that to deter Stanley from joining Richmond, Richard secured the person of Stanley's son and heir. Lord Strange. According to one account, when quitting the Court for Lancashire, Lord Stanley was compelled to leave Lord Strange then and there a hostage in the hands of Richard. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 2$ On the other hand the following is the statement of the Croyland Chronicler, a contemporary of the events which he records : — "A little before the landing of these persons " —Richmond and his adherents — " Thomas Stanley, Steward of the King's Household, had received permission to go into Lancashire to visit his house and his family, from whom he had long been separated. Still, however, he was permitted to stay there on no other condition than that of sending his eldest son, George Lord Stanley, to the King at Nottingham in his stead, which he accordingly did." The same chronicler avers that after the landing of Rich- mond was known to Richard, the King summoned Lord Stanley to join him at Nottingham, and received a refusal on the plea of sickness. Soon afterwards, it is added. Lord Strange attempted to escape, was prevented, then confessed his guilt, acknowledging that his uncle, Sir William Stanley, was privy to Richmond's expedition, but declaring that his father was innocent, and if his own life were spared would still join the King. Last, not least, at the very crisis of the battle of Bosworth, in the old account reproduced by Shakespeare, Richard is represented as ordering the execu- tion of Lord Strange, while those around beseech him to defer it until the battle is over.i Richmond landed at IMilford Haven on the ist of August, 14S5, Richard marched from Nottingham with his army on the 16th, and the Battle of Bosworth Field was fought on the 22nd of that month. Now it so happens that there is in the Warrington Museum a deed of re- conveyance of his estates to Sir Thomas Butler from his ' " Enter a Messetiger. K. Rich. What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power? Mess. My Lord, he doth deny to come. K. Rich. Off with his son George's head. Norfolk. My Lord, the enemy is past the marsh : — After the battle let George Stanley die." King Richard III. — Act v. scene 3, D 26 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. feoffees, executed at Bewsey in Lancashire, and witnessed by Lord Stanley and his sons. Lord Strange and Sir Edward Stanley, on the i8th of July, 1485, only five weeks before the battle of Bosvvorth. Moreover, adds an obliging informant,^ "there is another document of a similar character among the Lilford Muniments at Atherton, near Manchester — where the same witnesses are named — two or three weeks later : this deed is dated at Latham." " Two or three weeks later" would bring us very near the battle of Bosvvorth, and quite to the landing of Richmond. It' is, therefore, impossible that, when Lord Stanley quitted Richard's Court for Lancashire, he could have left his son a hostage with the King or, at any rate, that Lord Strange could have remained in Richard's hands and fettered his father's action, since, as has been seen, he was, at or about the time of Richmond's landing, with his father in Lan- cashire. If Lord Strange was placed as a hostage by his father in the hands of Richard, it must have been in the brief interval between the date when he witnessed at Latham the signature of the later of the documents referred to and that of the battle of Bosvvorth. This is the account of the matter given by the Croyland Chronicler in the passage already quoted. The Croyland Chronicler is generally con- sidered a trustworthy authority, yet it is almost, though of course not altogether, inconceivable that, knowing of Rich- mond's expedition and the part which he himself was ready to play in the impending contest. Lord Stanley committed his son at such a time and in such circumstances to the tender mercies of Richard Crookback. ^ John Robson, Esq., M.D., of Warrington. It was by this gentle- man, an eminent local antiquary, that the deed in the Warrington Museum was first published, and its historical or biographical import- ance pointed out, in the Gentle»taii\ Magazine for September, 1863— not 1862, the year given in the new edition (1S70) of Baines's Lancashire, i. 272. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 2"] This, however, is what the chroniclers would have us believe, and Shakespeare has given perpetuity to the improbable story. If Lord Stanley did not join Richmond on his landing, it was, we are told, because he feared for the life of his son,^ then very possibly safe and sound at Latham. It is Lord Strange's perilous position that, in the old chroni- cles, makes Lord Stanley pretend to retreat from Lichfield, which he left open to Richmond ; this is what he pleaded as an excuse for his neutrality, during the alleged inter- view with Richmond at Atherstone three nights before the battle ;- and this is to account for his indecision during the battle itself. Perhaps it may turn out that Lord 1 ^^ Lord Derby's House. Enter Derby and Sir Christopher Urswick. Der. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me: That in the sty of this most bloody bosr, My son George is flanked up in hold : If I revolt off goes young George's head ; The fear of that withholds my present aid But, tell me, where is princely Richmond now ? Chris. At Pembroke, or at Ha'rford-west in Wales,'' &c., &C. King Richard III — Act iv. scene 5. 2 Shakespeare has transferred the scene of the interview from Ather- stone to the battle-field, and made the time the night before the battle :— •' Enter Derby to Richmond in his tent. Lords and others atiendins- Der. Fortune and victory sit on thy helm 1 Riclim. All comfort that the dark night can afford Be to thy person, noble father-in-law I Tell me, how fares our loving mother? Der. I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother. Who prays continually for Richmond's good : So much for that. — The silent hour steals on, And flaky darkness breaks within the east. In brief, — for so the season bids us be, — Prepare thy battle early in the morning, And put thy fortune to the arbitrement Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war. I, as I may (t'nat which I would I cannot), With best advantage will deceive the time. And aid thee in this doubtful stock of arms ; But on thy side I may not be too forward, Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George, Be executed in his father's sight." King Richard in. — Act v. scene 3. 28 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Strange was never in Richard's hands at all, and that Lord Stanley never stirred a finger or moved a man until the fate of the battle was decided. All accounts agree that Richard's final charge might have been successful had not Sir William Stanley, with his three thousand men, suddenly come to the rescue of Richmond.^ But Sir William seems to have been a rasher, or rapider man than his elder brother, and much more ready to run risks. The reader remembers the first appearance of the two brothers on the public stage at the battle of Bloreheath, and can easily imagine Lord Stanley at Bosworth as six and twenty years before, beguiling both combatants with promises and assur- ances of sympathy, while waiting, before he joined either, to see which was the winning side. Wlien Richard was killed and the battle over, the battered crown whicli had fallen from his helmet during the conflict was, according to a plausible tradition, placed by Lord Stanley or his brother on the head of the victorious Richmond. There was no longer room for doubts, scruples, hesitations. Nor did the Stanleys show any pity for those of their coadjutors of the ended reign, who to the last had remained faithful and true to Richard. Three days after the battle a batch of Richard's adherents was executed — Catesby among them. He made his will on the day of execution, and it contained this significant, this striking passage and petition : " My Lord Stanley, Strange, and all that blood ! help ! and pray for my soul, for ye have not for my body, as I trusted in you." ^ In one way or another the Stanleys had done great ^ Polydore Virgil (Camden Society's edition, ii. 223), detailing the composition of Richmond's army says : " The number of all his soldiers, all manner of ways, was scarce 5,000, besides the Stanleyans, whereof about 3,000 were at the battle, iiiider the conduct of William. The King's forces were twice so many and more." 2 Sharon Turner's History of E^igland during the Middle Ages (Lon- don, 1825), iv. 52 {note). THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 29 things for Richmond, and Henry VII. did not forget their services. In the October after the battle Lord Stanley was created Earl of Derby,^ and " was constituted one of the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Steward of England on the 30th of that month — the day of the King's coronation." In the March of the following year he received a grant for life of the office of Constable of England ; the same high dignity which had been conferred on him by Richard was thus renewed to him by Richard's rival and successor. On the 20th of September in the same year arrived (with almost too great punctuality) the birth of the first child of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York (they had been wedded on the 14th of January in the same year), that Prince Arthur whose marriage with Katherine of Arragon helped to bring about the EngUsh Reformation. At the christening of Arthur, the new Earl of Derby was one of the two male sponsors, the other being the Earl of Oxford, Sir Walter's and Anne of Geierstein's John Philipson, who had led the van of Richmond's army at the battle of Bosworth. Eliza- beth Woodville, Edward IV.'s widow, was the female sponsor, beholding in her little grandchild a bud from the peaceful grafting of the White Rose upon the Red. In the November of the following year came the separate corona- tion of the Queen^ and, at the feast in Westminster Hall ^ He was not the first Earl of Derby, but simply " the first Stanley, Earl of Derby." The first Earl of Derby was Robert de Ferrers, to whom King Stephen gave the earldom as a reward for his valour at the battle of the Standard. The peerage was extinguished with the deprivation of the 8th Earl of FeiTers and Derby in 1297 for complicity with Simon de Monifort. Henry, Earl of Lancaster, whose daughter Blanche married John of Gaunt, was created Earl of Derby 11 Edward in. Through Blanche the earldom went to John of Gaunt's son Henry, and was merged in the higher dignity of the crown when he became King. 30 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. which followed it, Lord Derby is described as present, '" attired in a rich gown furred with sables, a marvellous chain of gold of many folds about his neck," and " the trappers of his courser right curiously wrought with the needle." In this same year, moreover, aid given by Lord Strange, of course as representative of his father, in suppressing an insurrection against Henry, led to a further enrichment of the Stanleys. On the i6th of June, i486, was fought the battle of Stoke, in which the insurgents under the Earl of Lincoln and Sir Thomas Broughton, a North Lancashire man, were routed, and \}cv€\x protege, the pretender Lambert Simnel, taken prisoner. Lambert himself was spared and set to turn a spit in the King's kitchen, but condign was the punishment of the noblemen and gentlemen who supported him in arms. According to his secretary, Edward Plumpton, Lord Strange had " brought with him '' to Stoke against the insurgents " a great host, enough to have beaten all the King's enemies only of" — with — "my Lord Derby's folks and his own." For this service Henry bestowed on Lord Derby the estates of Sir Thomas Broughton, in Fumess. Among Henry's other grants of lands to Lord Derby then or at various times during his reign were those of the estates of " Sir James Harrington of Hornby, of Francis, Viscount Lovell " (" the cat, the rat, and Lovell, the dog "), " of Sir Thomas Pilkington, and what Sir Thomas had in right of his lady, who was daughter and heir of — .Chetham, Esq., of Chetham. The said Sir Thomas was owner of all the lands the Earl of Derby now claims in Salford Hundred. He had also Pooton of Pooton's, Bythom of Bythom's, and Newby of Kirkby's estates in this county, with at least twenty gentlemen's estates more." ^ Not a lord in all the county was half so great a lord as he. The prosperity of the Stanleys was at its height when one ' Baines, iv. 13. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 3 I prominent member of the family was suddenly disgraced and hurled into the grave ; the head of the house, however, escaping the blow which felled and made sTiort work of his brother. Sir William Stanley had reaped due rewards for his conduct at Bosworth. Henry appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer, and gave him the Garter. An act of one of Henry's Parliaments confirmed him in the possession of the large grants of land, among them that of Holt Castle in Denbighshire, bestowed on him by the Richard on whom he turned, and of whose overthrow at Bosworth he was the principal cause. At the moment of losing everything, life as well as lands, Sir William Stanley was, according to Lord Bacon (as biographer of Henry VII.), "the richest subject for value in the kingdom ; there being found in his Castle of Holt," Bacon adds, particularising with apparent gusto, " 40,000 marks in ready money and plate, besides jewels, household stuff, stocks upon the ground, and other personal estate, exceeding great. And for his revenue in land and fee, it was ;j^3,ooo a year old rent ; a great matter in those times." Some of this property had been acquired on the field of Bosworth itself, and was in fact neither more nor less than " loot." Bacon speaks of " the great spoils of Bosworth Field which came into this man's hands to his infinite enriching." Was all this not enough, or had Sir William become a malcontent because more had not been done for him, say because, while his elder brother was made Earl of Derby, Henry hesitated to revive for him and in his person the grand old Earldom of Chester, which had become a mere appendage of the Princedom of Wales ? Or did he think that Perkin Warbeck really had a chance, and, true to the Stanley policy, had he made some tentative overtures to the new Pretender or the new Pretender's friends and backers ? Certain it is that when the secret history, true or false, of Perkin Warbeck's 32 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. tamperings with disaffected English nobles was divulged by his and their agent, Sir Robert Clifford, whom Henry's gold bribed to turn King's evidence, he accused Sir William Stanley himself of being in the conspiracy, Stanley's whole guilt, if guilt there was, is said to have been the casual utterance of the remark that " if he were sure that that young man, Perkin Warbeck, was King Edward's son, he would never draw the sword against him." However, according to Bacon, when brought before the council, " he denied little of that wherewith he was charged, nor endeavoured much to excuse or extenuate his fault so that (not very wisely)" Bacon himself knew something of the dangers of hasty confessions — "thinking to make his offence less by confession, he made it enough for condemnation." The judges at West- minster sentenced him to death, and he was duly executed on the 15th February 1495. AH his estate, real and personal, was confiscated by and to the King, and Henry's greed, it is sometimes thought, prompted him to procure a sentence of death and permit it to be executed on the man whose timely rush to aid him, ten years or so before, won for him the battle of Bosworth and the crown of England. That great service itself Henry had come to regard under its more dubious aspects. " The King's wit," says Bacon, " began now to suggest unto his passion that Stanley at Bosworth Field, though he came time enough to save his life, yet he stayed long enough to endanger it." Lord Derby had not compromised himself by word or deed in the affair of Perkin Warbeck. What is stranger, he does not seem to have resented or even to have felt his brother's bloody doom. In the summer of the year of Sir William Stanley's execution. Lord Derby received at Latham and at Knowsley a visit from Henry, who perhaps wished thus to persuade the world that he had perfect trust in the fidelity of his mother's husband. Lord Derby sank the THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. "ijl brother in the subject and the step-father, and Lord Derby's fool, not the master of the house himself, is the main figure in the old tradition which hints that amid the splendours of Henry's reception by the Lord of Latham in the summer of 1495, the tragedy of the preceding February was not quite forgotten. According to " a notable tradition still " — in Bishop Kennett's time — "believed, Henry, after a view of Latham, was conducted by the Earl to the top of the leads for a prospect of the country. The Earl's fool was in com- pany, who, observing the King draw near to the edge of the leads, not guarded with business, he stepped up to the Earl, and pointing down the precipice said, ' Tom, remember Will !' The King understood the meaning, and made all haste down stairs and out of the house ; and the fool long after seemed mightily concerned that his Lord had not courage to take the opportunity of revenging himself for the death of his brother." The first Stanley Earl of Derby was not a fool ! After leaving Knowsley, Henry went by way of Warrington to Manchester. "To pro- mote the King's accommodation," says the modern historian of Lancashire, " the noble Lord built a bridge over the river Mersey at W^arrington, for the passage of himself and his suite, which bridge has been found of so much public utility as to afford a perpetual monument of the visit of Henry VIL to Lancashire." 'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good. Some nine years after this visit of King Henry, Lord Derby died, probably about the age of seventy. His death must have occurred between the 28th of July, 1504, on which day his will was dated, and the 29th of November in the same year, the day on which it was proved. He left to the King a cup of gold, and legacies to this abbey and to that, duly providing too for masses on behalf of his own soul, of those of his wives, relations, friends, servants, and in E 34 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. one case, " especially for the souls of all them he had in any wise offended, and for all Christian souls." Better, or more useful, he bequeathed " to the making of Garstang Bridge 20 marks," nor was that which he had built at Warring- ton forgotten in his will. He left it "three hundred marks to the intent that the passage shall be free for all people for evermore, without any toll or fare there to be asked." " And also I give to the making up of the aforesaid bridge at Warrington five hundred marks." One of the few personal traits preserved of him bespeaks a magnificent st3'le of doing things — worthy of his rank and possessions. The rhyming chronicle of the Stanleys, written in or about 1562, by Thomas Stanley, Bishop of Sodor and Man, and printed in Seacome's Memoirs of the House of Stanley, concludes with a postscript, in plain prose, thus : — " Yet have I left behind me a notable point which I had not presently in my remembrance, until an aged man, that sometime was servant unto this old first Earl Thomas, put it in my memory, which is: That when this noble Earl was disposed to ride for his pleasure, a hunting, or" on "other progress, or to visit his friends or neighbours, whose house soever he went unto, he sent his officers before, who made l')rovision all at his cost, as though he had been at his own house. And at his departure the surplusage was left to the use of the house where he had lodged. And thus was his manner and order in all places where and when he travelled, unless by chance he came into some lord's house. I report if this was not too honourable to be put in oblivion." Surely. Remarkable or not in his character, Thomas, second Lord Stanley, first Earl of Derby, was, it will have been seen, decidedly remarkable in his career and its results to his country and to himself. It was by him and his, more or less directly, that for good and for evil a Tudor dynasty THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OB DERBY. 35 was seated on the throne of England. This fact alone would make him a personage of some importance in English history. He lived in a turbulent age, of civil war, of violent dynastic change and unexampled political and social vicissitude, when no man of station felt his head safe on his shoulders, when life and property were equally insecure. It was possible here and there, perhaps, to avoid confiscation and the scaffold by keeping profoundly quiet, but the temporary victor in the incessant strife was apt to treat those who had not been with him just as if they had been against him, so that even the most cautious neutrality was not exempt from peril. Much greater, of course, was the danger run by those who, like this Stanley, took an active or a prominent part in the contests of the time— who staked their lives and lands on the result of a battle or an insurrection, on the wavering chances of a doubtful dynasty or succession. The Wars of the Roses made terrible havoc in the ranks of the English nobility, and estates changed hands as rapidly as if the soil of England were being played for at a colossal gaming-table. There was no appeal from the arbitrary fiat of the King, or of the faction dominant for the time being, since the servile parliaments of the period were always ready to confirm the decisions and to do the bidding of those -who convoked them. Men were ever changing sides, and your ally to-day might be your enemy to-morrow. Warwick, the king-maker, whose sister Thomas Stanley married, lost his life battling to restore the Henry whom he had dethroned. Stanley's friend. Lord Hastings, had been a chief favourite of Edward IV., but he was one of the earliest victims of Edward's brother, Richard Crookback. Humphrey Duke of Buckingham was beheaded for revolting acainst the Richard whom a few months before he had aided to usurp the throne. Stanley's brother. Sir Willian, turned the tide of battle on the field of Bosworth in fixvour T,6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of Richmond; but the same Richmond, as Henry VI T., deprived him of his life and possessions, perhaps sacrificed to the suspicions or the avidity of the King who owed him a crown. Such and similar characteristics and events of those bad old times confer a peculiar interest on the career of the first Stanley Earl of Derby, and excite a curiosity which, from the lack of data, must remain unsatisfied. Whether he chose a side or wavered and trimmed, he was always a gainer. Each change of dynasty, or extrusion of an occupant of the throne by a claimant, added to his possessions and his power. His first marriage made him a brother-in-law of Warwick, the king-maker; his second, step- father of Henry VII.; and his choice of a wife for his son and heir was so contrived as to connect the Stanley family with the queen of Edward IV. The calamities alike of friends and of foes helped to aggrandise him. At the outset of his career, the misfortunes of his brothers-in-law, the Harringtons, enabled him to acquire for his family Hornby Castle and its domains, and towards the close of his life he benefited largely by confiscations, punishing and ruining those of the gentry of his own county who had been the dupes of Lambert Simnel's imposture. He not only escaped the axe which descended on the head of his co- adjutor Lord Hastings, but he was forthwith taken into favour by the usurper who had executed his friend, and whose hirelings, if tradition and Sir Thomas More are to be trusted, had nearly inflicted on himself a violent death. It can scarcely be doubted that he was privy to Bucking- ham's insurrection, and certainly it was abetted by his wife. But while Buckingham was executed and Margaret of Richmond was attainted, Stanley was further enriched by grants of Buckingham's lands, confiscated after the failure of a conspiracy, or combination, promoted by his own wife, if not by himself. The grants and honours lavished on him THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. T^J by Richard were confirmed to him, with considerable additions in both kinds, by Richard's rival, supplanter, and successor, Henry VII. He saw his brother sent to the block, but the tragic incident was followed by the honour of a state visit from the King who had beheaded Sir William, and the first Stanley Earl of Derby died full of years and honours, having survived the wars, executions, confiscations, and multifarious perils of four reigns, not only without loss, but with splendid acquisitions and accessions of wealth and dignity. All this presupposes great good fortune, no doubt, but to have achieved such a career he must have been also a marvel of coolness, astuteness, and dexterity. These are not qualities to be much admired when unaccompanied by others higher and nobler, yet their success on so great a scale excites a certain wonderment. In any of the sides taken or not taken by this Lord Derby, there was little more of " principle " involved than in the preference of a white rose to a red, the badges of the two contending factions in the long, bloody, and almost aimless civil war which devastated fifteenth-century England. What mattered it whether an amiable and pious imbecile like Henry VI., with a vindictive French wife, or a dashing and rather ruthless voluptuary like Edward IV. was King ? Even Richard III. seems to have been rather popular than otherwise, and in any case the nation took a very slight interest in the struggle between him and Richmond for the crown, a struggle decided in Richmond's favour by the direct and indirect defection of the two Stanleys, on whom Richard had conferred many benefits. There may have been prepossessions, predilections, and prejudices operative in the contests of the historic period closed by the estab- lishment of Henry VII. and his Tudor dynasty on the throne, but personal interest and calculation played by far the greatest part in them. It was with the Reforiiiation, *y'yf^ A CIO 38 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. already at hand in the time of the first Stanley Earl of Derby, that " principle," in the modern sense of the word, made its first conspicuous appearance on the stage of our public affairs. Margaret of Richmond survived Lord Derby a few years. Of the ways and disposition of this famous lady, the last of our great mediaeval Englishwomen, much more is known than of those of her third husband. Her father- confessor in later days was Fisher, afterwards Cardinal by grace of the Pope — whom her son Henry VH. (thinking to please her), made Bishop of Rochester, and whom her grand- son, Henry VHI., sent to the block a few weeks before Sir Thomas More, for the same offence as More's — denial of the royal supremacy. Fisher preached Margaret of Richmond's funeral sermon ; and in it he dilates on her possession of all womanly and princess-like good qualities, afifectionate- ness, amiability, affability, dignity — on her munificent cha- rities, public and private, her tending and nursing of the sick, her devoutness and asceticism, her self-imposed penances, austerities, and manifold mortifications of the flesh. She was wont to say that could the Christian princes of Europe be prevailed upon to make war against their infidel enemy, the Turk, she would cheerfully follow the army as their laundress, little foreseeing that later develop- ments of the " Eastern Question " would give the banner of the Sultan a place among those of other Knights of the Garter in St George's chapel at Windsor. The portraits which Ave have of her in advanced years represent her with spare and worn features, in the habit of a recluse, and atti- tude of earnest supplication. But Margaret was no mere devotee, otherwise her son would never have reached the throne. Her letters — those to her son Henry VH., like his to her, overflow with genuine affection — show her to have been a woman of business and of the world ; in one of them THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 39 there is even a touch of humour. Two little original pieces from her pen, still extant, both of them on Court ceremonial and etiquette, are curious in themselves and as exhibiting her knowledge of, and interest in, the niceties of some of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. One of them seems to have been composed in anticipation of the birth of her grand-son, Prince Arthur, the first born of Henry VII. and of EHzabeth of York. This is the " Ordinance as to what Preparation is to be made against the Deliverance of the Queen, as also for the Christening of the Child of whom She shall be Delivered," a programme of Court procedure and code of etiquette in which nothing is forgotten, from a minute detail of state-ceremonial and pageantrj', to direc- tions anent " the little cradle of tree, of a yard and a quarter long and twenty-two inches broad, in a frame fair set forth by painter's craft." When the presumed inmate of the " little cradle of tree " had grown into a boy of eleven, and was to be married, in form, at least, to Katherine of Arragon — the marriage that helped to bring about the English Re- formation — Margaret gave a sumptuous and skilfully-ordered banquet to the Spanish courtiers, male and female, who came with the spousal-contract to England. Each Spanish gentle man present had by his side an English lady, each English gentleman a Spanish lady, and all were " served, after a right goodly manner, both of their victuals, dainties, and delicates, and with diverse wines, abundant and plenteously," in Margaret's Town-house of Cold Harbour, in what is now Upper Thames street, and on the site of which stands, or lately stood, Calvert's brewery, with its extensive manufacture of "Entire ! " Five years afterwards the young Arthur died, and ten months later again the Queen, his mother, followed him to the grave. It was probably this event that led Margaret to compose and promulgate her second extant ukase, " The Ordinance and Reformation of Apparel for Great Estates or 40 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Princesses, with other Ladies and Gentlemen, for the Time of Mourning." Devoted though she might be to the contem- plation of heavenly things, she retained a quick eye for ter- restrial differences and distinctions, and what these allowed and disallowed. A chin-cloth of fine linen Avas then com- monly worn at funerals, and called a Barbe. In this, her second " ordinance," Margaret peremptorily and stringently forbids any lady, under the degree of a baroness, to wear the Barbc over the chin, " which noble and good order," says the liigh lady, with stately indignation, " hath been and is much abused by every mean and common woman, to the great wrong and dishonour of persons of quality." Literature, profane as well as sacred, and of a loftier order than that of Court ceremonial and etiquette, was, moreover, cultivated and encouraged by Margaret, Countess of Richmond and of Derby. She was the patroness of Caxton, as of Caxton's son-in-law and successor, Wynkyn de Worde ; and after the fashion of some of the grandees of those old days, and of the Packwoods of later times, she seems even to have " kept a poet." Caxton returned from Bruges to England about 1476, when he set up his first English printing-press in the precincts of what is now West- minster Abbey. Here, about 1489, he printed, and, as we should say, published his English version of " The History of Blanchardyne and Eglantine," an old romance and " sen- sation-novel " of those days. A copy of the French ori- ginal of it, he says, he had " long before " been commis- sioned by Margaret to purchase for her — now wishing others to enjoy what she herself had enjoyed, she ordered him to translate it into English, and he, of course, obeyed the com- mands of so great a lady. Another secular work, satirical not serious, ordered by Margaret to be executed and printed, was a prose version of Barclay's metrical rendering of Sebas- tian Brandt's well-known "Ship of Fools." Of her own literary THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 4 1 performances, suffice it to mention the translation, from the French, of the fourth and final book of the famous " Imita- tion of Christ." But it is by her " endowments for educational purposes," especially those which she bestowed on our two great universities, that Margaret of Richmond is mainly remem- bered. "The Countess, indeed," says one of her biographers, " would seem to have taken an especial pleasure in super- intending the education of the young. Very possibly she delighted in the society of youth. In the first year of her son's reign, Ave discover the facts of her not only being entrusted with the ' keeping and guiding ' of the unmarried daughters of Edward IV., but also ' to her great charges ' of the ' young lords,' the Duke of Buckingham and the Earls of Warwick and Westmoreland." When Henry VIII. himself, according to this authority, " was removed from the nursery to the school-room, it was to the venerable Countess that they," the King and Queen, "confided the important charge of superintending his education;" and while this young royal gentleman was in her care, " we find her," it is added, ^ " associating with him under her roof her young kinsman, afterwards Sir John St John, father of Oliver, first Lord St John, of Bletshoe," the ancestor of Oliver St John, the Puritan regicide, and of the still more famous St John, the Bolingbroke of Queen Anne and of history, who was not in the least a Puritan. INIuch earlier she is mentioned as " maintaining certain well-born youths at their studies, under Maurice Westbury, an Oxford academician." She is said to have tried to draw Erasmus from his studies to superintend those of her husband Lord Derby's son, James Stanley, who, through her influence, was afterwards made Bishop of Ely : •' the worst thing she ever did," says an admirer of hers, but a candid and blunt one. This zeal for education was ^ Jesse's Richard III., p. 263. 42 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. turned to the account of the Universities by her spiritual pastor and master, Fisher. He persuaded her to devote to the founding of St John's College, and to the further endow- ment of Christ Church, Cambridge, money which she in- tended leaving to monks and priests to say masses and sing dirges for her soul ; and it is significant that so zealous an ecclesiastic as Fisher should have thus diverted the stream of Margaret's bounty. Its most magnificent academic memo- rials are St John's and Christ Church, Cambridge, but her name is more directly perpetuated by the Lady INIargaret Professorship of Divinity, which she founded at Oxford as well as at Cambridge, and by the Margaret Preachership at the latter University, all of them being earlier in date than her munificence to the two Cambridge colleges. Henry VH. died in the April of 1509, having appointed, as one of the executors of his will, her whom he styled in it, " Our dearest and most entirely beloved mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond." Margaret survived her son only a few months, dying on the 3rd of the following July, in the 69th year of her age. She was buried in the chapel of Westminster Abbey which is called after her son the King. Hers is an altar-tomb, with an effigy, brass gilt and enamelled, by the same artist, Peter Torrigiano, who executed in the same " Henry VII. 's Chapel " that similar tomb of her son and his Queen, which Bacon called "one of the stateliest and daintiest in Europe." Her modest epitaph, briefly chronicling her academic and other munificences, was written by Erasmus, and for it, " as is entered in a Computus, or old book of accounts," that witty and learned gentleman received the sum of twenty shillings from the University of Cambridge, in which, three years afterwards, he was ap- pointed Margaret Professor of Divinity. One little, and as it were, living memorial of Margaret of Richmond, still further connects her with Westminster Abbey. The bread and THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 43 meat doled out to the poor of Westminster, in the College Hall, is the remnant of the old monastic charity which she founded for poor women in the Almonry ; if we remember rightly, her son, Henry VII., added one for poor men. Dean Stanley, who mentions the general fact, calls hers " the most beautiful and venerable figure that the Abbey contains."^ According to Fisher, in his funeral sermon, " Every one that knew her loved her, and everything that she said or did became her." Requicscat. Lord Derby's first wife, the Lady Eleanor, daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, aunt of the consort of Richard the Third, bore him six sons and four daughters. Of the six sons, only the youngest two, Edward and James, sur- vived him. George Lord Strange died in 1497, and in liis father's life-time, the peerage and estates descending to his eldest son Thomas, so that the second Stanley Earl of Derby was the grandson of the first. Of Edward Stanley, who at Lord Derby's death was his eldest surviving son, there falls something to be said. Seacome, the gossipping, garrulous, and credulous historian of the house of Stanley, is loud in the praises of Sir Edward. " This gentleman's active childhood and martial spirit," he says, " brought him early to King Henry VIII. 's notice and company, and his active manhood to his service. The camp was his school and his learning was a pike and sword. His Majesty's greeting to him whenever they met was, ' Ho ! my soldier.' Honour floated in his veins and valour danced in his spirits." Nevertheless there rests on his memory a dark stain, or the shadow of a dark stain. Sir Edward Stanley's second wife was the daughter of Sir John Harrington of Hornby, who, with his fiither, Sir Thomas, was committed to the custody ^ " Foremost and leaning from her golden cloud The venerable Margaret see ! " Gray's Inslallalion Ode. 44 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of Lord Derby, as already mentioned, after the battle of Bloreheath, both of them faUing, before long, in the battle of Wakefield. Sir John Harrington's two daughters, co- heiresses, seem to have been handed over to the wardship of Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, and he married the eldest of them to his son Edward, who thus and somehow else became the owner of Hornby Castle and its domains. His wife, however, had a cousin John, and he, who claimed Hornby, as male heir, was " poisoned at the Temple 2 Henry VH.," so as to create suspicion that Sir Edward Stanley had a hand in his death.^ There seems, indeed, to have been something peculiar about Sir Edward. Even his panegyrist, Seacome, avows that, " this most martial and heroic captain, soldierlike, lived for some time in the strange opinion that the soul of man was like the winding up of a watch, that when the spring was down, the man died and the soul determined;" though according to the same authority he afterwards exchanged for a better that " en- thusiastic, heathenish, and brutish notion," However this may be, our first glimpse of him is a pleasant one, as of a lover of music and minstrelsy, and of his knightly valour there never was a doubt. In 1503 he was of the escort that accompanied to Scotland the young Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VH. and Elizabeth, to be wedded to King James IV., through which marriage it is that our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria now sits on the throne of these realms. Among the social interviews between the Scotch King and his betrothed at Newbattle Abbey, near Edinburgh, there was one at which the King of Scotland " began to play on the clavichords before the Queen, which pleased her very much, and she had great pleasure to hear him. Sir Edward Stanley then sat down to the clavichords and played a ballad and sang therewith " — or, as we should ' Whilaker's RicJuiiondshire, ii. 261, ivic. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 45 say, " sang a ballad and accompanied himself" — " which the King commended right much. And meantime he " — the King — "called a gentleman of his that could sing well, and made them both sing together, the which accorded very well. Afterwards the said Sir Edward Stanley and two of his ser- vants sang a ballad or two, whereof the King gave him good thank." 1 Margaret and James were duly wedded, but the union of the Rose and the Thistle failed to produce the lasting peace between England and Scodand which the prudent Henry had doubtless expected from it. Another and a more hot-headed Henry became King, and James IV. did not grow wiser with time. Ten years later James IV. and Sir Edward Stanley met again, but this time on the field of Flodden, as foes not as friends, and with the clash and clang of contending arms substituted for the pleasant rivalry of music and of song. In that fierce fight, fatal to Scotland's King and to so many of her sons, Stanley, with his Lancashire and Cheshire men, was posted on the extreme English right, as everybody knows, thanks to Sir Walter and his Mannion?- The battle began to the disadvantage of the English with an attack which the Scottish left made on their right, commanded by Sir Edward Howard, and this transient success of Huntly and of Home is said to have been due to the circumstance that the attacked were "men of Cheshire whose wonted valour was impaired by their being separated from the rest of their countrymen, and placed under the command of a Howard ^ Juannis Lelandi De Rebus Britaniikis Collectanea (1790), iv. 2^4. ■* Surrey loquitur. " The good Lord Marmion, by my life ! Welcome to danger's hour I Short greeting serves in time of strife : — Thus have I ranged my power : Myself will rule this central host, Stout Stanley fronts their right ; My sons command the vaward post With Brian Tiinstall. stainless knight." Marmion, canto vi. a^ 46 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. instead of a Stanley."^ "Meanwhile," says Sir Walter, in plain prose, " upon the extreme right of James' army, a division of Highlanders, consisting of the clans of Macken- zie, Maclean, and others, commanded by the Earls of Len- nox and Argyle, was so insufferably annoyed by the volleys of the English arrows, that they broke their ranks, and in despite of the cries, entreaties, and signals of De la Motte, the Erench Ambassador, who endeavoured to stop them, rushed tumultuously down hill and, being attacked at once in the flank and rear by Sir Edward Stanley with the men of Cheshire and Lancashire, were routed with great slaugh- ter ; " 2 wild Celtic impetuosity then as so often since prov- ing no match for stubborn Saxon strength. It was going hard in the centre with Surrey,^ the English Commander-in-chief confronted by James and the flower of Scottish chivalry, when the victorious Stanley, and his north- country men came to the rescue, attacking the Scottish right flank and rear, and deciding the battle in favour of the Eng- lish. When night fell on the bloody field, the Scotch retreated 1 Pictorial History of England, ii. 328. * Tales of a Grandfather : First series, chap, x>;v. '' Far on the left, unseen the while, Stanley broke Lennox and Arg>'Ie : Though there the western mount-iineer Rushed, with bare bosom, on the spear. And flung the feeble targe aside, And with both hands the broadsword plied, 'Twas vain :— But fortune on the right With fickle smile, cheered Scotland's fight," &c. Mannion, canto vi. 27, ' Marmion loquitur. " FitzEustace, to Lord Surrey hie : Tunstall lies dead upon the field, His life-blood stains the spotless shield : Edmund is down : — my life is reft ; The Admiral alone is left. Let Stanley charge with spur of fire, With Chester charge and Lancashire, Fall upon Scotland's central host Or victory and England's lost." Marmioti. canto vi. 29. THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 47 with terrible losses, that of their rash King among the rest.''- Flodden gave Sir Edward Stanley a peerage. "As a reward for that service, King Henry, keeping his Whitsuntide at Eltham the next ensuing year (15 14), commanded that for those valiant acts against the Scots, where he won the hill and vanquished all that opposed him, as also for that his ancestors bore the eagle in their crest, lie should be pro- claimed Lord of Monteagle" — Mount and Eagle — "which was accordingly then and there done ; and" — to chnch the matter, as it were — " he gave to the officers of arms five marks, besides the accustomed fees, and likewise to Garter, principal king of arms, his fee." ^ The Lord Monteagle who received the historic letter hinting at the Gunpowder Plot was the great-grandson of this first Lord, the hero of Elodden. The INIonteagle barony of the Stanleys has long been extinguished, but the " last words of Marmion " form a memorial of Sir Edward Stanley prouder or more enduring than any peerage.^ The other surviving son, James Stanley, the youngest of the first Lord Derby's six, " from his youth, and probably without much regard to his own taste or inclinations, seems to have been destined for the Church, in which profession 1 ''And last of .ill among the lave, King James himself to death was brought, Yet by whose act few could perceive, But Stanley still most like was thought." The Battle 0/ Flodden Full. " Collins's Peerage, iii. 64. ' " The war that for a space did fail Now trebly thundering swell'd the gale, And Stanley I was the cry A light on Marmion's visage spread, And fired his glazing eye : With dying hand, above his head. He shook the fragment of his blade, And shouted, ' Victory I Charge, Chester, charge 1 On, Stanley, on I ' Were the last words of Marmion." Marmion, canto vi. ^2 48 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. for at least three generations, there had always been a younger son of the house of Latham brought up." He suc- ceeded his uncle James as ^\'"arden of Manchester and rose, as already mentioned, doubtless through the influence of his step-mother, Margaret of Richmond, to be Bishop of Ely (1506). A decidedly unclerical Bishop, he was summoned by the Earl of Surrey to aid in raising Lancashire when the Scotch entered England on the expedition which ended so disastrously for them on the field of Flodden. The Bishop gave the command of his tenants to his son, for a son he had, the well-known Sir James Stanley of Harford, who also dis- tinguished himself at Flodden. The Reformation not having arrived to abolish the celibacy of the clergy, this Sir James was, of course, an illegitimate son ; hence, perhaps, the sentence of excommunication under which the Bishop is reported to have been lying when he died. " I blame not the Bishop," says quaint old Fuller, " for passing his summer with his brother the Earl of Derby in Lancashire, but for living all the winter at Somersham with one who was not his sister, and who wanted nothing to make her his wife save marriage." This improper prelate was buried in a chapel of his own in the Collegiate Church of Manchester, and the inscription on his tomb asks a little favour of its reader : " Of your charity pray," it says, " for the soul of James Stanley, some time Bishop of Ely, and Warden of ]\Lanchester, who deceased out of this transitory world the 2 2d day of March 15 15, upon whose soul and all Christian souls Jesu have mercy." Amen. Between the Sir William Stanley whom Henry VH. be- headed and the James, already mentioned, who was Arch- deacon of Carlisle as well as Warden of Manchester, the first Lord Derby had another brother, Sir John Stanley, He became Sir John Stanley of Weever in Cheshire, by marry- ing the heiress thereof, and from him descend the Stanleys, THE FIRST STANLEY EARL OF DERBY. 49 formerly baronets, now Barons of Alderley in that county. Our first Lord Derby's eldest son, George Lord Strange, died in his father's life-time, and the peerage went to his eldest son, to be inherited by that son's descendants until 1736, when this line of succession expired. It and what was annexed to it then passed to Sir Edward Stanley of Bickerstaff in Lancashire, the lineal descendant of Sir James Stanley, third son of George Lord Strange, himself eldest son of the first Stanley Earl of Derby. From George Lord Strange there is an unbroken descent, in the male line, to the present, the fifteenth Earl of Derby. Since the Stanleys became Earls of Derby nearly four centuries have elapsed. The vicissitudes of time and of succession have shorn them of many of their old posses- sions. They have ceased to be Lords of the Isle of Man, and, even in their own county, Latham, long their head- quarters, has gone into other hands. But, thanks to the industrial energy and development of modern Lancashire, the fifteenth Stonley Earl of Derby is, in all likelihood, and relatively as well as absolutely, a more opulent nobleman than was the first. 50 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. IT. THE FOUNDER OF THE MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL* TT U GH OLDHAM, Bishop of Exeter and founder of the Manchester Free Grammar School, is one of those Lancashire worthies respecting whom just enough is known to excite a desire for more. In Oldham's day, as in our own, Ivlanchester and Oxford were antipodal to each other ; ]\Ianchester having already become a seat of manufacture, Oxford a seat of learning. Yet both partook of his munifi- cence, and in a way which proved him to have been animated by something of what was best in the spirit of his time. Only a single utterance of Oldham's survives, but it is of a decidedly remarkable kind, and displays him, to a certain extent, foreseeing and predicting the great English ecclesiastical revolution of the sixteenth century. To Lancashire men few bishops can be more interesting than the Tudor prelate who founded the Manchester Free Gram- mar School, with its long line of distinguished aliwmi, from Bradford, the martyr, to De Quincey, the opium eater. The place and date of Bishop Oldham's birth, his family, and genealogy are somewhat uncertain. Crumpsall, near * Churton's Lives of Smyth and Sutton (Oxford, 1800); Cooper's Athena: Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1858), vol. i. § Hugh Oldham ; W. R. Whatton's History of Manchcstey School (London and Manchester, 1834); Godwin's Catalogue of the Bishops of England {"Londion, 1601), Holinshed's Chronicles (London, 1587), &c., &c. FOUNDER OF MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 5 I Manchester, seems to have the best claim to be considered his birth-place, and in all likelihood it was that of another local benefactor, Humphrey Chetham. In Crumpsall there stands, or lately stood, an ancient house, called " Oldham's Tenement," in which, according to tradition, the bishop was born. Probably, too, Oldham's birth fell about the middle of the fifteenth century, and the time when, accord- ing to Shakespeare, Jack Cade, surrounded by his roughs, was reproaching Lord Say for having " most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school." He is surmised to have been of good family, and " \\'illiam Oldham, Abbot of St AVerburgh's, Chester, and Bishop of Man, who died in 1485, is said to have been his brother." The surmise is somewhat confirmed by the tradi- tion that he received his earlier education in the household of the first Stanley Earl of Derby. In the county of Lancaster, as in most other English counties, Jack Cade could not in those days have discovered the slightest trace of a grammar school, a deficiency, doubtless, lively in the thoughts of Hugh Oldham when, having risen to be Bishop of Exeter, he founded the Free School still extant in Manchester. For the boy of promise, whatever his birth, there existed cathedral and monastic schools, better or worse, where, with or without a subsequent resort to a University, he might obtain some sort of schooling, and possibly learn to regard the Church as his future home. To the well or better-born, on the other hand, the houses of nobles and prelates were open, where they could receive the best scholastic instruction then going, under some learned man specially appointed for the purpose, and at the same time as pages, or otherwise, be " educated " into gentlemen. This was a practice which continued in vogue until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Earl of Derby, who suffered for his loyalty in 1651, was heard 52 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. declaring that " the best, if not all, the good famalies in Lancashire had formerly dwelt in his house." ^ In Oldham's youth this most excellent of all boarding-school systems was in full vigour, and nowhere in Lancashire, or probably in England, more effectively than in the household of the first Stanley Earl of Derby, and his third wife, Margaret of Richmond, of whom so much has been already said in the preceding memoir of the last of her husbands. It was mentioned there that she kept in her service Maurice West- bury, a learned man of Oxford, for the express purpose of instructing " certain young gentlemen at her finding," and as is conjectured, along with her step-son, James Stanley, who was destined for the Church and became Bishop of Ely. Among her "young gentlemen " were, it is supposed, Hugh Oldham and his friend and subsequent patron and coadjutor, another Lancashire man, William Smyth of Widness, who rose to be Bishop of Lincoln. At almost every step in their career, these two men were powerfully aided by Margaret of Richmond, and it is reasonable to credit the tradition that both of them had been trained under her eye at Knowsley and Latham. A more influen- tial patroness they could not have had. On the 2 2d of August 1485, the battle of Bosworth was fought, and Mar- garet's son, Henry of Richmond, became King of England. Henry VII. could refuse nothing in the way of ecclesiastical preferment to the mother who had helped him to a throne. Oldham studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and thence migrated to Queens' College, Cambridge ; scarcely any- thing more is known of his academic life. Not a month had elapsed after the battle of Bosworth before Mai-garet of Richmond's two Lancashire protci^cs felt the benefit of her son's elevation. On the 19th of September 1485, Oldham was admitted to the Rectory of St IMildred's, ^ Cliurton, p. 23, FOUNDER OF MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 53 Bread street (the street in which John Milton was born), and on the following day William Smyth was appointed Clerk of the Hanaper for life. For ten years or so after this, and thanks mainly to his gracious and steady patroness, the mother of the new King, Oldham's biography is little else than a list of preferments, until at last, in 1505, came the crowning promotion of all, and he was made Bishop of Exeter. He was, according to an old sketch of him drawn by a not very flattering hand, " a man of more zeal than knowledge, and more devotion than learning, somewhat rough in speech, but in deed and action friendly. He was careful in the saving and defending of his liberties, for which continual suits were between him and the Abbot of Tavistock." 1 In the engraved portraits of Oldham the face is a handsome and even pleasant one, but the mouth speaks of inflexible determination. He seems to have been a man resolved to insist upon his rights, and scarcely had he set foot in his diocese when there began his " continual suits with the Abbot of Tavistock." The dispute was the old one between bishop and abbot — as to the right of epis- copal visitation. The monasteries had long been in the habit of claiming the right of " local self-government," and of repudiating episcopal interference. The discipline and morals of the English monks were growing laxer and laxer, and one of the prime duties of a conscientious bishop was to bring to bear upon them an episcopal authority, which the monastic officials endeavoured to shirk by pro- curing exemptions from the Pope and in other ways, until, in a subsequent generation, they brought down upon them- selves the heavy hand of the eighth Harry and his Malleus Monachoruni. The Abbot of Tavistock appears to have had no valid excuse for disputing the authority of his "ordinary," and the determined Oldham had him excommunicated 1 Godwin, p. y^C-). 54 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. for contumacy. According to one account, the Abbot returned the compliment, and Oldham himself Avas, at the time of his death, under sentence of excommunication for resisting some bull of indemnity and privilege which the importunity of the Abbot of Tavistock had wrung from the Pope.^ However this may be, the controversy with the Abbot of Tavistock, and what he saw of monastic life in his own diocese, doubtless gave Oldham a profound dislike for monks and monkery. Indeed, among the wiser of even the strictly orthodox minds of the age opinion was turning against the overgrowth of monastic establishments. Pious people of opulence and sense began to discountenance the multiplication of monasteries and convents. With the revival of learning and the invention of printing they thought rather of spreading knowledge, old and new, among high and low, rich and poor, by founding and endowing colleges and grammar schools. Margaret • of Richmond was one of the devoutest of ladies, yet she was easily induced by her confessor. Bishop Fisher, to procure the dissolution of two monasteries and apply the revenues to the support of colleges, professorships, and preacherships at Oxford and Cambridge. " Within thirty years prior to the Reformation it is observable that there were more grammar schools founded and endowed in England than had been established in the three hundred years preceding." ^ The England of Hugh Oldham's day and generation had an " Education Question " of its own. Ten years after he had become Bishop of Exeter Oldham bethought him of the " educational destitution " of the chief town of his native county, and resolved to remedy it, Manchester may be supposed to have been then, what it is described as being some twelve years later by Leland in his Itinerary, " the fairest, best-built, quickest, and most 1 Godwin. 2 Whatton, p. 3. FOUNDER OF MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 55 populous town of all Lancastershire." In Manchester, as elsewhere in the Northern counties, the woollen trade had thriven, so tliat about the year of Oldham's death there were, says HoUingworth, " tliree famous clothiers living in the North country, viz. : — Cuthbert of Kendal, Hodgkins of Halifax, and Martin Brian (some say Byrom) of Man- chester. Every one of them kept a great number of servants at work, corders, spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, and shearmen." Ignorance, however, was rife, of course, and educational means were scanty or non-existent, when about the year 15 15, much to his credit — his mind perhaps fondly reverting to the scenes where his early years may have been passed — Bishop Oldham, far away in the South, determined to establish a free school in Manchester — as (with spelling modernised) the statutes of 1525 quaintly put it : — " For the good mind which he had and bare to the country of Lancashire ; conceiving the bringing up in learning, virtue, and good manners, children in the same country should be the key and ground to have good people there, which hath lacked and wanted in the same, as well for great poverty of the common people there, as also because, of long time past, the teaching, bringing up of young children to school, to the learning of grammar, hath not been taught there for lack of sufficient school-master and usher there, so that the children in the same country, having pregnant wit, have been most part brought up rudely and idly, and not in virtue, cunning, erudition, litera- ture, and in good manners." Wherefore the good bishop purchased the lease of certain corn mills on the Irk, and an adjacent fulling mill, as also sundry messuages in Ancoats, endowing with the revenue thereof his Manchester Free Grammar School, and building for it, on the site of the present one, a school-house, taken down in 1766. With a single and insignificant exception it was to be absolutely free 56 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to all comers. This and the rest we gather from the statutes of 1525, framed some years after the founder's death, but, doubtless, expressive of his wishes. Every scholar on entering was to pay the small sum of one penny, to be given to the " two poor scholars " by whom the school " weekly, once in the week " was to be " made clean," and the school registers to be kept — a provision evidently pointing to an anticipated commingling of ranks. All other payments were forbidden. In the Manchester school there was to be neither " cock-penny '' nor " victor-penny," both of them encouragements to cock-fighting ; prohibited, too, was the "potation-penny," contributed in some ill- regulated establishments of the time by each scholar, at a certain season, that the master might give his pupils a ban- quet once a year. In the clause regulating the choice of a head-master, a dislike of monks and monkery seems to peep out. He is to be a " convenient "■ — suitable — " person and school-master, single man, priest or no priest, so shall he be no religious man " — i.e., member of a religious monastic order or community — " . . . having sufficient literature and learning to be a school-master, and able to teach chil- dren grammar, after the school use, manner, and form of Banbury, in Oxfordshire," a model establishment of the time. A provision is even made for primary as well as secondary education — nay, for something like an infant school — and in the clause to this effect tliere is a distinct announcement of the " monitorial system : " — " Item. The High " — head — " Master for the time being shall always appoint one of his scholars, as he thinketh best, to instruct and teach, in the one end of the school, all infants that shall come there to learn their ABC primer, and forth till they begin grammar, and every month choose another new scholar so to teach infants on the command- ment of the said High INIaster. . . And if any scholar FOUXDER OF MASCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 5/ refuse so to teach infants the same scholar so refusing to be banished the same school for ever." Thus, built in 15 15, re- fitted in 1525, was launched the Manchester Free Grammar School, which, with many changes of captain, crew, and sailing orders, has floated down the stream of time to our own day and generation. ISIuch of its revenues was long derivable from the ancient " rights of soke " vested in the owners of the mills on the Irk, and in virtue of which the inhabitants of the township of Manchester were bound to grind at these alone their corn and malt, ^^'ith the course of time this became a grievance, and so far as corn was concerned, relief was given by parliament in 1758, after a controversy to which Byrom contributed a noted epigram.^ But until recent years the malt had, and we fancy still nominally has, to be ground at the Grammar School mill, a late remnant of feudalism and mediasvalism, like snow flecking the hill-side on a hot summer day, rather singular to contemplate. Before and after doing all this for his native county and the town in or near which probably he was born, Bishop Oldham actively promoted the good work proceeding at Oxford, his earlier alma Jiiaicr. There is a tradition that he '' had intended to have enlarged Exeter College in Oxford, as well in building as in revenues, but being denied a fellowship there he altered his determination." According to Anthony Wood he had also intended to aid his friend. Bishop Smyth, in founding Brasenose, but here again drew back, because he was " denied to have the nomination of a founder." Yet, in all probability, he did 1 The two tenants of tlie mills seem to Ii.ive l^een very spare men when Byrom wrote : — " Bone and Skin, two millers thin, Would starve ihe town or near it : But be it known to Skin and Bone That Flesh and Blood can't b;;ar it." H 58 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. SO aid his old friend and fellow Lancashire man, since his episcopal arms were displayed in the windows of the original librar}- of Brasenose. Greatly more memorable, however, for several reasons, was his co-operation in found- ing Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with another fast friend, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, one of his predecessors in the see of Exeter. Bishop Fox had a lingering love for monkery, and thought of making his college a seminary or nursing-school for the monks of St Swithin, Winchester. " But," says Holinshed,^ whose version of the oft-told tale is the most dramatic of any, " Bishop Oldham (whether it was because he favoured not those sects of cloistered monks, or whether he saw any fall toward of those sects) dissuaded Bishop Fox what he could from that his purpose and opinion, and said unto him : ' What, my lord, shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of bussing monks, whose end and fall we, ourselves, may live to see ? No, no, it is more meet a great deal that we should have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as who by their learning shall do good in the Church and Connnonwealth.' To this Bishop Fox at length yielded, and so they proceeded in their buildings, wherein Oldham, reserving to Fox for the name of the founder, was contented with the name of a benefactor, and very liberally did contribute great masses of money to the same ; and since (according to his wish and desire) the same college hath been and is the nurse of many notable good scholars " — among them the judicious Hooker himself, the pride and glory of our ecclesiastical literature. There is a statue of Oldham at Corpus, and in recognition of his munificence one of its fellows must always be a Lancashire man. The charter of Corpus was granted in 15 17, the year of 1 iii. S40. FOUNDER OF MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 59 Pope Leo's Bull of Indulgences and of Luther's first famous protest against them. Two years or so later, on the 25th of June 1519, excommunicated or not, Bishop Oldham died at Exeter. He was interred in a chapel which he had erected in his cathedral, where there is a fine monu- ment of him with his recumbent efiigy in pontificalihiis, re- paired in 1763 by the provost and fellows of Corpus, mindful of his liberality to their college. He left directions in his will that if he died in his own diocese he was to be buried in the chapel which he had built for himself in Exeter Cathedral. If his death happened out of the diocese, his body was to be "carried to Oxford, there to be buried in Corpus Christi College tliat my Lord ot Winchester hath caused there to be made," and to which he bequeathed all his houses and lands "lying in Chelsea." ^^ And if,'^ he adds, " Jny goods will not suffice to bring nu to Oxford, then I will my body to be buried in the next college" — collegiate — "church or religious house of monks or canons." Unlike some modern bishops, the founder of the Manchester Free Grammar School and benefactor of Corpus had evidently no ground for anticipating that his " personalty " would be "sworn " under any very large sum. 60 LANCASmiiE WORTHIES. III. JOHN BRADFORD, SAINT AND MARTYR.* (~\^ the nth of March 1S70, Smithfield and the buyers and ^-^ sellers of the Metropolitan Meat Market witnessed the part-payment of a debt long due to the memory of a group of pious and valiant Englishmen, foremost among whom, in life and in death, was this famous Lancashire Worthy. On that day of that year, at the west corner of the outer wall of St Bartholomew's Hospital, and fixed in one of the recesses thereof, was formally uncovered a modest tablet of polished granite, the inscription on which proclaims to the passers-by the interesting fact : " Within a few feet of this spot, John Rogers, John Bradford, John Philpot, and other Servants of God suffered death by fire, for the faith of Christ, in the years 1555, 1556, I557-" The "illustrious Bradford," as he is designated by Mr Froude, a writer not prodigal of epithets, was me first " Manchester man," distinctly known as such, that earned for himself a niclie in English history. After and amid all modern successes, industrial, commer- cial, and political, it is well to call to mind and to lay to heart the heroism which, in the sixteenth century, conducted John Bradford, not to a topmost place in schedule A, or schedule D, not to a seat in Parliament or the Cabinet, but to a mart\'r's death in Smithfield, with a tallow chandler's ap- prentice for his companion and fellow-sufiferer. * The IVriiwgs ofjfokn Bradfoj-d, edited (with a biographical notice) for the Parker Society, by Aubrey Townsend, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1848-53) ; Froude's History of England (London, i860), vol. vi. ; Hollingvvorth's Alanciiniensis (Manchester, 1839) ; Fuller's Worthies, by Nichols (London, 1811), &c., &c. yOHK BRADFORD, SA/NT AND MARTYR. 6 1 " In Manchester was I born," writes Bradford himself, in his farewell address to his native county, a statement which dis- poses of the local tradition that he was a native of Blackley, where for this and other reasons his memory is said to be btill cherislied. About the earliest memoir of him extant, written some four years after his death, declares that he was " born in Lancastershire, in Manchester, a notable town of that county ; was of his gentle parents brought up ni virtue and good learning even from his very childhood, and among other praises of his good education, he obtained, as a chief gift, the cunning and readiness of writing, which knowledge was not only an ornament unto him, but also an help to the necessary sustentation of his living." B.unes, in his history of Lancashire, avers that Bradford "re- ceived a liberal education in tb.e Free Grammar School of his native town, founded by Bishop Oldham, and stood in high estimation for his proficiency in the Latin language and his extensive knowledge of arithmetic." He is supposed to have been born about 1510, and Bishop Oldham founded the Manchester Grammar School in 15 15. It is pleasant to think that Bradford was in all probability one of the earliest of its pupils. The success in life procured him by the "commercial element" in the education received there or else- where proved, indeed, as it happened, rather a snare to him than otherwise. The scholarsh.ip, however, of which he may have laid the foundation at Bishop Oldham's seminary, for- warded him to the acquisition of the highest spiritual truth at tainable in his age. The Reformation was in its origin the productofscholarsand divines. Not until meditation, reading, and research had done their work could princes and peoples be invited to aid in pulling down what had become a rotten and dangerous fabric of ecclesiastical falsehood and tyranny. In Bradford's supposed birth-year an Augustine monk, pro- fessor of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg, was 62 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. sent by the superiors of his order on a mission to Italy, and what he then saw at Rome first opened his eyes to the ini- quity of the Papal system. Eleven years later, when Bradford, a boy of twelve or so, may have been construing and ciphering at the Manchester Grammar School, reflection, study, and scholarly investigation had issued in the clearest conviction ; Luther was at the Diet of ^Vorn1S, resolute, fearless, invincible, vindicating in the teeth of Emperor and Pope the right of private judgment to hold its own against mere old authority, deaf, blind, and arbitrary. In course of time, Bradford's conversancy with the three R's, more especially with two of them, proved such an effectual " help to the necessaiy sustentation of his living " that he became the secretary of Sir John Harrington, Knight, of Oxton, in Rutlandshire. Sir John was Treasurer of the King's Camps and Buildings, and a semi-military, semi-civil functionary of some importance in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Bradford's " activity in writings," and "expertness in the art of auditors," according to one of his old biographers, did much recommend him to Sir John, who made him paymaster at the siege of Montreuil in 1544. when that town was beleaguered by the Duke of Norfolk and an Enghsh force, as a blind to draw off the French while Henry VIII., in person, invested and took Boulogne. A {q.\\ years later, in the spring of 1547 — soon after the accession of Edward VI. — Bradford entered himself at the Inner Temple as a student of common law. He had saved a little money, and one of Sir John's sons lived with him in chambers, on which account, and per- haps on other accounts, he received an allowance from his old employer, whom for some time he continued to call " master." One of his two sureties on his admission to the Inner Temple was his friend Thomas Sampson, a law- student like himself, who lived to be Dean of Chichester and JOHN BRADFORD, SAINT AND MARTYR. 6^ to refuse a bishopric. With the accession of Edward VI. the reformed doctrine took a fresh start in England, and was preached everywhere with new vehemence and vigour. Thomas Sampson hearkened to it, embraced it zealously, resolved to enter the Church, and in 1549 was ordained deacon by Cranmer and Ridley. A year or so before, the proselyte's zeal had been fervid enough to make him a successful proselytiser. Bradford was won over by Sampson's influence, and the earliest of his letters which had been printed, belonging apparently to the year 1 548, and addressed to a dear Lancashire friend, ministering at Blackley, show him to have embraced with his whole heart and soul the doctrines of the English Reformers. It was not only in words, but in act and deed, that Bradford mani- fested the change that had been worked in him. " After *that God touched his heart," says Sampson, Avho became his biograplier, '• with that holy and effectual calling, he sold his chains, rings, brooches, and jewels of gold, which before he used to wear, and did bestow the price of this his former vanity in the necessary relief of Christ's poor members, which he could hear of or find lying sick or pining in poverty." Better still, and much more difficult : — " even in this mean tiuT^," continues Sampson, " he heard a sermon which that notable preacher Master Latimer made before King Edward the Sixth, in which he did earnestly speak of restitution to be made of things falsely gotten, which did so strike Bradford to the heart, for with one dash with a pen, which he had made without the knowledge of his master (as full often I have heard him confess with plenty of tears), being clerk to the Treasurer of the King's Camp beyond the seas, and was to the deceiving of the KiiTg, that he could never be quiet till, by the advice of the same Master Latimer, a restitution was made." This passage clearly acquits Sir John Harrington of complicity with the original 64 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. misdemeanour, but Bradford's insistence on restitution so offended him that the connection between them ceased. The affair, however, procured him the fast friendship of brave Bishop Latimer, which stood him in good stead so long as it could be of any avail. Preachers of the Word were wanted, and Latimer en-, couraged Bradford in his design to give up the bar for the Church. In the summer of 1548 he entered Catherine Hall, Cambridge. At the University his walk and conver- sations were such, and his knowledge and learning so recognised, that, after a single year, the devout and kindly Bishop Ridley, then master of Pembroke Hall, invited him to be a fellow thereof, and by special favour the University transformed him into a Master of Arts. In another year he was ordained deacon by Ridley, who made him one of his chaplains, and " lodged him in his own house." A pre- bend in St Paul's followed. This was in 1551, and a few months later he was appointed one of the six chaplains in ordinary to Edward VL Two of them were to be always in attendance on the young King, while four preached throughout the land. Bradford's district included Lanca- shire and Cheshire, and the uncompromising earnestness of his preaching has been commemorated by the published approval of John Knox. "And God gave," says old Hollingworth, the Manchester chronicler, writing a century or so afterwards in a time of Puritanism triumphant, "good success to the ministry of the Word, and both raised up to himself and preserved a faithful people in Lancashire, especially in and about Manchester and Bolton." Bradford's last preaching-tour in his native county was at the close of '1552. " Local tradition," says his pious modern biographer,^ " even yet points to the spot in Blackley where the country- people say that Bradford, during that last visit to Manchester, ^Townsend (biographical notice), p. xxviii. yOILV BRADFORD^ SAINT AND MARTYR. 65 knelt down and made solemn supplication to Almighty God. His request at the throne of grace was that the everlasting gospel might be preached in Blackley to the end of time by ministers divinely taught to feed the flock with wisdom and knowledge. The martyr's prayer, it ,is alleged, has been answered in the continuance,with scarcely an exception, of faithful men in that place." This was written in 1853. The fervour which earned for Bradford's denunciations of . sin, in high places and in low, the praise of the terrible Reformer of Scotland, seems to have been accompanied by a sweetness of temper that made even his enemies look upon him with favour. A blameless purity, not to say austerity, of life, severity to himself greater than to others, in combination with fine intellectual gifts and the utmost gentleness of disposition, point out Bradford as approaching the ideal of a Protestant saint. " Foes as well as friends have borne testimony to his lovableness.'"' " It is. a demonstration to me,"' says Fuller, " that he was of a sweet temper, because Parsons," the Jesuit, " who will hardly afford a good word to a Protestant, saith that he seemed to be of a more soft and mild nature than many of his fellows.'' He never forgot his own old transgressions, witness his traditional saying when he saw malefactors on their way to the place of punishment : " But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford." His personal influence seems to have been singularly great, more especially when the rapidity with which it was acquired is considered. . He had been a preacher only three years, and during that period chiefly in the provinces, when he showed himself able to subdue the fury of an enraged London mob. Edward VI. died on the 6th of July 1553, and on the 3rd of August, " bloody " Mary rode triumphantly into London as queen, amid the acclamations of the populace and the joyful clangour of church-bells. Her lieges of London soon J 06 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. discovered, however, what was to be the character of the new reign, and were not slow to manifest their disappointment. On Saturday the 12th of August, the irritated queen withdrew, accordingly, to the peaceful tranquillity of Richmond, and the absence of the Sovereign encouraged the excited mal- contents. On the Sunday, one Bourne (afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), who had " ratted " from the Reformation, and whom Mary had made one of her chaplains, preached before tlie ruthless Bonner and the Mayor and Corporation of London, in the great metropolitan pulpit at Paul's Cross. A large and angry crowd, who knew their man, had as- sembled, and some praises of Bonner by the preacher gave the signal for a tumult. Possibly anticipating what happened, Bradford had stationed himself behind Bourne in the circular- roofed erection which was the pulpit. As the people yelled and raged, the affrighted Bourne besought Bradford to pacify them, and when he stepped forward he narrowly escaped a dagger which had been flung at Bourne from the crowd. " Bradford, Bradford ; God save thy life, Bradford ! " was the general shout when the beloved preacher came to the front. His exhortations pacified the multitude, and covering Bourne with his gown, Bradford conveyed him safely into the neighbouring school of St Paul's. " Ah ! Bradford, Bradford ! " said one angry and disappointed " gentleman " in the crowd, " thou savest him that will help to burn thee." The prophecy was a true one. Three days afterwards Brad- ford was brought before the Privy Council and charged with " sedition." It was easy to refute this absurdest of charges, but his principles he neither could nor Avould deny, and he was flung into the Tower. The first Marian persecution was beginning, and soon the heads of the Re- formation — Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley — with many lesser adherents, were in prison. " The Providence of God," JOIIX BRADFORD, SAINT A.\D MARTYR. 6j Latimer wrote not long afterwards, ". . . did bring this to pass that when these famous men, viz., Master Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Master Ridley, Bishop of London, and I, old Hugh Latimer, were imprisoned in the Tower of London for Christ's gospel preaching, and for because we would not go a-massing, every one in close prison from other; the same Tower being so full of other prisoners, that we four were thrust into one chamber, as men not to be accounted of, but, God be thanked, to our great joy and comfort ; there did we together read over the New Testament with great deliberation and painful study." After a time, Bradford was removed from the Tower to the King's Bench, where his benign and saintly disposition won over even his gaolers, and he preached and prayed witliout stint to those that flocked to hear him. He visited, admonished, and helped with his purse the ordinary criminals of the prison, in a fashion that calls to mind the Vicar of Wakefield, and 1 is conversations with the persons delegated to argue him into recantation read like dialogues in the Pilgrim's Progress. Meanwhile the absolute powers of the old eccle- siastical tyranny were being resuscitated. An act was passed to revive the penal statutes against the Lollards, and the Bishops' Courts were armed with authority to arrest and punish heretics. On the 4th of February 1555, Rogers, the [iroto-martyr of the English Reformation, a Warwickshire — not, as is sometimes said, a Lancashire — man, was burned at Smithfield. After lingering in one prison and another for fifteen months, Bradford was ultimately examined by Gardmer and Bonner, and condemned to death for recusancy in the January (of 1555) preceding the burning of Rogers. A few days after this event, Bradford wrote to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, rejoicing that their '' dear brother " had " broken the ice valiantly." His own doom was sealed, and he spoke of it with Cliristian playfulness ; he was their 68 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. " gentleman-usher "' going before and showing them the way. In the February he penned his " Farewell to Lancashire and Cheshire," in which occurs the following passage : " Turn unto the Lord, yet once more I heartily beseech thee, thou Manchester, thou Ashton-under-Lyne, thou Bolton, Bury, Wigan, Liverpool, IMottrine," — Mottram — " Step- port " — Stockport — " Winsley" — Winstanley — "Eccles, Prestwich, ]\Iiddleton, Radcliff, and thou City of West Chester" — Chester — "where I have truly taught and preached the Word of God." His persecutors had originally intended to send him to be burnt in Lancashire as an example to the heretics and heretically disposed of his native county, but either fear of the men of Lancashire,^ 1 In the "Farewell to Lancashire and Cheshire," Bradford thus refers to this intention : — " I hear it," he says, " reported credibly, my dearly beloved in the Lord, tl)at my heavenly Father hath thought it good to provide, that as I have preached His tnie gospel and doctrine amongst you by word, so I sliall testify and confirm the same by deed ; that is, I shall with you leave my life, which by His providence I first received there (for in Manchester was I born), for a seal to the doctrine I have taught w ith you and amongst you ; so that if from henceforth you waver in the same you have none excuse at all." Fox adds that he was to have been delivered " to the Earl of Derby, to be conveyed into Lancashire, and there to be burned in the town of Manchester where he was bom." This Avas Edward, the third Stanley Earl of Derby, who succeeded his father, the second Earl, in 1522, and died in 1572. Earl Edward was the magnificent nobleman of whom Camden said lliat with his death "the glory of hospitality seemed to fall asleep." He helped to suppress tlie Pilgrimage of Grace, and profited largely by the dissolution of the monasteries. He became a Catholic again on the accession of Mary, who appointed him Lord High Steward. Elizabeth made him one of her Privy Council, and with her reign he • everted to Protestantism. Halley's Lancashire : its Ptirita7iism and Nonconformity (Manchester, 1869, vol. i. chap, iii.), contains notices of this third Earl of Derby, especially in his relations to the religious and ecclesiastical vicissitudes of his time. " Edward Earl of Derby,'' says Dr Halley, "grandson" — no, great-grandson — "of the traitor of Bosworth, found the advantage of the several changes which were JOHN BRADFORD, SALVT AND MARTYR. 69 or a hope that he might l)e persuaded to recant, in- duced them to keep him Hngering on through the spring into the summer of 1555. By the end of May, Queen Mary's hopes of a child were disappointed, and all the confident preparations made for its advent proved to have been thrown away. In her sombre and half-insane sorrow, she issued a circular to quicken the anti-heretical zeal of the Bishops, and the execution of Bradford's sen- tence was ordered among others. He had never shown, and to the last never showed, the slightest sign of willing- ness to recant : on the contrar\% he looked forward to death in such a cause with hope and joy. He spent the day before made during his long life in the religion of his countiy. Of these Earls it was said by the Jesuit Parsons that they had three religions to use as occasion served — the Catholic, the Protestant, and the Puritan. They were not so inconstant, for their motto was Saiis changer. Earl Edward told George Marsh, the Bolton martyr, that the true religion was the religion which had most good luck. To this article of faith the Stanleys consistently adhered, and through all changes were faithful to the religion of good luck. "When the King assumed the supremacy of the Church of Eng- land, the Earl of Derby seems to have thought it his duty to imitate, so illustrious an example ; for, being King in the Isle of Man, he declared himself supreme head of the Manx Church, and maintained his supremacy with as much determination as his royal master. Although on the accession of Mary he resumed every article of the Catholic faith — except one, which required the restitution of the Church lands, on which matter he was always a sound and thorough Protestant — he became under Elizabeth a great persecutor of Lancashire Catholics." Thus far Dr Halley. Earl Edward seems to have varied in his conduct to Bradford. At first he is represented as denouncing in Parliament the mischief done by the circulation of the letters which Bradford wrote from prison to his friends "out of doors." Latterly, however, he befriended and even interceded for Bradford. "One of the Earl of Derby his men left behind my lord, his master, for the soliciting of my cause, as he said to me," figures in Bradford's accounts of his prison-conferences with controversialists. Perhaps Lord Derby's very probable dissuasions helped to make the authorities give up their intenlion of martyring Bradford in his native county. 70 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. his martyrdom in looking over his papers (for during his imprisonment he had been ever busy with his pen), in giving directions concerning them, and in " prayer and other good exercises'^ vi'ith half a dozen of his friends. He was taken to Newgate late in the night of the 30th of June 1555, when it was thought the city would be in bed, but " in Cheapside and other places between the Compter and Newgate " was a " great multitude of people that came to see him, which most gently bade him farewell, praying for him with most lamentable and pitiful tears ; and he again as gently bade them farewell, praying most heartily for them and their welfare." At nine o'clock next morning he was brought to Smithfield " with a great company of weaponed men to conduct him thither, as the like was not seen at no man's burning ; for in every corner of Smithfield there were some, besides those which stood about the stake," as if an attempt to rescue him were feared. A youth of nineteen, a tallow-chandler's apprentice, John Leaf by name, whose notions respecting "the Real Presence" were not those of Bonner and Gardiner, was condemned to die along with him. Each prostrated liimself on either side' of the stake and prayed for a minute, when one of the sherifi's interrupted dieir devotions by saying : — " Arise, and make an end, for the press of the people is great." "At that word," Fox's narrative proceeds, '* they both stood up upon their feet ; and then ^Master Bradford took a faggot in his hand and kissed it, and so likewise the stake. And when he had so done, he desired of the sheriffs that his servant might have his raiment ; ' for,' said he, * I have nothing else to give him, and besides that he is a poor man.' And the sheriff said he should have it. And so forthwith Master liradford did put off his raiment, and went to the stake ; and, holding up his hands and casting his countenance up to heaven, he said thus : — ' O England, England, rei)ent JOHN BRADFORD^ SAINT AND MARTYR. Jl thee of thy sins ! Beware of idolatry, beware of false antichrists ; take heed they do not deceive you.' And as he was speaking these words, the sheriff bade tie his hands if he would not be quiet. ' O Master Sheriff! ' said Master Bradford, ' I am quiet; God forgive you this, Master Sheriff.' And one of the officers which made the fire, hearing Master Bradford bo speaking to the sheriff, said, ' If you have no better learning than that, you are but a fool, and it were best to hold your peace.' To ^\•llich words Master Bradford gave no answer, but asked all the world's forgiveness, and forgave all the world, and prayed the world to pray for him." His last words on earth were to poor John Leaf: — " ' Be of good com- fort, brother, for we shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night ; ' and so spake no more that any man did hear, but, embracing the reeds, said thus : — ' Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate that leadeth to eternal salvation, and few be they that find it.'" " He endured the flame," says quaint old Fuller, "as a fresh gale of wind in a hot summer's day." According to Fox, the martyr was " of person, a tall man, slender, spare of body, somewhat a faint sanguine colour, with an auburn beard." More than three centuries have come and gone since Bradford's martyrdom, and the controversy between Popery and Protestantism is not yet ended, though the Smithfield fires have long been quenched for ever. The time must arrive when that controversy, too, will close. But while the English race exists, honour will be paid to the memory of men who preferred death to falsehood. ■JZ LAX CASH! RE WORTHIES. IV. JEREMIAH JIORROCI^S* TN the course of the parliamentary session of 1S69, fifteen thousand pounds were cheerfully voted by the House of Commons to provide the staff and elaborate scientific apparatus required for the due observation of a transit of Venus, which will occur in the December of 1874. The Astronomer Royal furnished a programme for the expenditure of the money, and science hopes for important results from the phenomenon, if carefully observed under favourable con- ditions. It may bring nearer to accuracy our estimate of the earth's distance from the sun, in the long-accepted com- putation of which a grave error has of late years been dis- covered. All must wish for the success of the interesting enterprise, and certainly, if there is to be failure, it will not be due to any lack of forethought, or of scientific apparatus. The chief governments and astronomers of the world are to be associated with those of Great Britain, in the expeditions to the uttermost parts of the earth, planned for the performance of the task. Striking, indeed, is the contrast between this pomp of preparation and the circumstances under which the first *Jeremiae Horroccii Ope7-a Fosthuma (London, 1673), edited by Wallis, who prefixes an Epistola Nuiicitpato7-ia. Joannis Hevelii Mercitrius in sole visa, cui annexa est Venus sole fariter visa a Joanne Horroxio nunc primum edita (Dantzic, 1662) ; Memoir of the Life a)id Lalwurs of the Rev. Jeremiah Horrox, &=c. , by the Rev. A. ]]. Whatton (London, 1859); The Sphe)-e of Marc7is Manilius made an English Poem, with annotations and an astronomical appendix, by Edward Slierburne, Esquire (London, 1675), &c., && JEREMIAH HO R ROCKS. "]% recorded observation of the transit of Venus was made by a Lancashire youth, poor and obscure, solitary, unaided, and equipped with the scantiest scientific appliances. There are many Lancashire Worthies more celebrated than Jeremiah Horrocks, but of few has his native county more reason to be proud. He was born in 1619, near Liverpool, at Toxteth Park, then an insignificant village in the vicinity of an unimportant haven, now a wealthy and populous suburb of one of the greatest of sea-ports. Of his family and their circum- stances scarcely anything definite is known, but it may be surmised that they were of the middle rank, and of means far from affluent. Respecting his childhood, boyhood, and early education, absolutely nothing can be dis- covered. After his birth, the first ascertained fact in his biography is that, on the iSth of May 1632, at or about the age of thirteen, he was entered a sizar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. That he went to the University as a sizar betokens poverty, and in his writings there are several allusions to the obstructions which narrow circum- stances interposed to his cultivation of science. Even had it been otherwise, however, Cambridge would have done little for his advancement in what became his favourite pur- suit. For the study of the classics the University gave due opportunity and assistance; and it is evident, from his Latin prose and verse, that Horrocks was a fair classical scholar. But physical, and even mathematical, science was then neg- lected at Cambridge. The year of his adm.ission to Emmanuel was, by a rather curious coincidence, that also of the well- known Wallis, who afterwards edited the works of Horrocks. In an account of his studies at Cambridge, Wallis speaks of himself as having "diverted" from what he elsewhere calls "the common road of studies then in fashion" *' to astronomy and geography as parts of natural philosophy, though,'' he K 74 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. adds, '' at that time they were scarce looked upon with us as academical studies." ^ Still more emphatic testimony to the neglect of science at Cambridge is given by the biographer of Seth Ward, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, who made himself a scientific name, and who was admitted of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, also in 1632, "In the college library," we are told, " Mr Ward found by chance some books that treated of the mathematics, and they being wholly new to him, he inquired all the college over for a guide to instruct him in that way, but all his search was in vain. These books were Greek, I mean unintelligible, to all the fellows of his college. Nevertheless he took courage, and attempted them himself, proprio Marte, without any confederate, or assistance, or intelligence in that country, and that with so good success that in a short time he not only discovered those Indies, but conquered several kingdoms therein, and brought thence a great part of their treasures which he showed publicly to the whole University not long after," ^ as Savilian Professor, and otherwise. After a few years, Hor^ocks returned to Toxteth, and un- doubtedly he took orders. Whether he had some humble clerical duty to perform at Toxteth is uncertain ; but it is almost certain that when, in the June of 1639, he removed from his native place, he became curate of Hoole, near Southport. It must have been a modest curacy, as Hoole itself was a mere chapel-of-ease to Croston. Though now a thriving township, partly reclaimed from the swamp, and resonant with the power-loom and the stir of a thousand inhabitants, Hoole, when Horrocks went to it, was nothing more than "a narrow strip of land, having a large extent of moss on the east and west, the waters of Martin- Mere and ^ "Life, prefixed to Sermons," quoled in Chalmers's Biographical Dic- tionary, § Wallis (John). 2 " Life, by Pope," quoted in Chalmers, § Ward (Seth). JEREMIAH HOR ROCKS. 7$ the Douglas on the south, and the overflow of the Ribble on the north." Between this desolate spot and his native Tox- teth the home of Horrocks alternated during the kw years which were all that were vouchsafed him of life after he quitted the University. Probably it was at Cambridge that, like Seth "Ward, he was first attracted by the chance perusal of some book or books on science to the study of astronomy. Small as was the extraneous aid which the University could then give him in the cultivation of science, smaller still was any procurable at such places as Toxteth and Hoole, The difticulties which confronted him when he first resolved to devote himself to astronomy, and the spirit in which he resolved to grapple with them, have been recorded by himself in touching language. After dilating, in eloquent Latin, on the manifold attractions which astro- nomy had for his youtliful mind, he goes on to say : — " But many obstructions, one after another, presented themselves. I was daunted by the laborious difficulty of the study, and by my own want of cultivation. Lack of means and appliances weighed down, and indeed still weighs down, my aspiring mind. But what most of all afflicted me was that there was no one to teach me, or even to aid my efforts by companionship in study ; so great was the universal indiffer- ence and lethargy. What then was I to do ? To make the laborious pursuit easy instead of difficult was not in my power I still less could I increase my fortune ; least of all was it possible for me to inspire others with a love of astro- nomy. Yet to desert science because of its difficulties was cowardly, and seemed degrading to my intelligence. I deter- mined that the difficulties of the pursuit must be conquered by industry ; my poverty, since there was no other way, by patience. Books of astronomical science must be the sub- stitute for a teacher. Armed with these weapons, I felt nerved to grapple with the destinies themselves. I listened /6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. eagerly to the story of this one and of that one, who, with no more assistance than I enjoyed, had mastered the science, and I was ashamed that any one whosoever could be more successful than myself, while before me was always that saying of Virgil : " Totidem nobis animceque maniisqiie." ^ This was the brave and determined spirit in which Jeremiah Horrocks began and continued his " pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," and, as usual in such cases, the difficulties were conquered. One easily fancies that at Toxteth, without the cure of souls, and at Hoole with it, the young student, accomplished in classics and mathematics, made or added to a slender income by teaching in school or parlour. He would deny himself, we may be sure, almost everything in order to buy books, his only possible teachers, and at one time before his death, he had collected a very fair little library, his own catalogue of which has been preserved. Chief among its contents were the principal works of Kepler, and after due comparison with, and even temporary seduc- tion by, certain of Kepler's rivals and depredators, Horrocks learned to adm.irethe greatastronomer with a wise enthusiasm too rare among the contemporaries of both of them. Better even than books, he had the faculty of observation, and the perseverance with which he employed it was rewarded by results sufficient to inspire him gradually with a just confi- dence in the genius which heaven had bestowed on him as bountifully as on German or Italian. His astronomical apparatus might be scanty, but it was with a mere opera- glass that Galileo had discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter.^ He might be poor, but still more ^ Oj>c!-a PosthuniG, p. 2, 3 (Prolegomena to the Asironotnia Kepleriaiia piotnota el defensa). 2 In the letters of Horrocks (to Crabtree) occurs such interesting little indications of progress as these; — ^^Telescopiiim tandem nacitis sum accu- ratiiis;" " Galilei Dialogtim de Systctiiaic Mitndi landeni ftactiis siivi,'" &c. JEREMIAH HORROCKS. 'JJ severe than his had been the battle fought with poverty by Kepler, whom unwearied diligence in observing, added to magnificent audacity in theorising, had enabled to irra- diate a mournful destiny by the discovery of the three laws which immortalise him. Horrocks scanned the heavens night after night; and compared the results of his observations with those of famous predecessors and contemporaries. He discovered errors even in his beloved Kepler, and from ac- cumulating data he proceeded to generalise and to form theories of his own. The sympathy and companion- ship, the absence of which he had lamented at the com- mencement of his studies, were given him as he went on. In 1636 we find him in steady correspondence with William Crabtree, described as " a clothier," living at "Broughton, near Manchester," then a hamlet adjacent to, now a populous suburb of, "the metropolis of industry." Crabtree, of whom more ought to be than is known, was himself an en- thusiastic student of astronomy and diligent observer of the heavens, besides being the friend and correspondent of several men notable in the English annals of the science. With Horrocks he kept up continual communication (occa- sionally personal as well as epistolary), and another of his correspondents was William Gascoigne of iSIiddleton, in Yorkshire, said to have been the first person who used two con- vex glasses in the telescope, undoubtedly the inventor of the micrometer, and who died, like Horrocks, prematurely, fall- ing in the bloody fight of Marston Moor, where he bore arms for the I^ing against the Parliament.^ Many of the letters of Horrocks to Crabtree have been 1 In Sherburne's Manilius, (pp.91, 92) there are some brief but intercst- ingnotices of Crabtree, Gascoigne, William Milbourne, " curate at Brance- peth near Durham, " and of "Christopher Townley of Carr, in Lancashire" (one of the Townleys of Townley), " who made all four acquainted ; " the fourth being Horrocks. Of Milboui^ne, Sherburne records thai yS LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. printed, and they are full of interest, though chiefly a scientific one. It was Crabtree whom he made his con- fidant when, after careful observation and computation, he discovered, in the October of 1639, that, on the 24th of the ensuing month, there was to be a transit of Venus over the sun's disc, a phenomenon which Kepler him- self had failed to predict, and which no astronomer since the beginning of time had been known to observe. Hoole, in its wilderness of marsh and moss, was far away from the scientific world. There was no Times to write to, and in it to point the attention of brother astronomers to the coming event. In England, indeed, practical astronomy was then chiefly in the hands of such scattered cultivators as the Crabtrees and Gascoignes. Nine years had elapsed since Kepler's death, and Galileo Avas old, blind, and in terror of the Inquisition. At home, Sir Isaac Newton was not born ; Wallis and Hooke had not written ; while the Civil War was commencing to which Gascoigne was to fall a victim on Marston Moor, and by which science was to be eclipsed for a season. And even had circumstances been more favourable to scientific observation, there was little time, in those days of very imperfect " postal communica- tion," to announce the coming transit to the world that lay beyond Hoole. The discovery of the event preceded its occurrence by only a few weeks, and Horrocks, writing to he (like Horrocks) " discovered the weakness of Lansbergius his astro- nomy." " All his observations and other papers," Sherburne laments, "were most unhappily lost by the coming in of the Scots in the year 1639," — say rather in the year 1640 — the expedition which preluded our great Civil War of the seventeenth century. Christopher Townley is celebrated by Sherburne as a gentleman " who stuck not for any cost or labour to promote as well Astronomical as other Mathematical studies by a diligent correspondence kept and maintained with the learned pro- fessors in those sciences, upon which account he was very dear to all the four." JEREMIAH HORROCKS, 79 Crabtree and bidding him watch and observe on the pre- dicted day, mentions only one mutual friend, Foster, the Gresham lecturer in London, whom it would be well to inform of what was anticipated. As the time drew nigh, Horrocks was all anxiety and expectation, and, to make assurance doubly sure, he began to watch on the forenoon of the 23d. His simple apparatus was a telescope adjusted to an aperture made in a darkened room, so that the image of the sun should fall perpendicularly on, and exactly fill, a circle of about six inches inscribed on a piece of paper, and divided into the usual 360 degrees. In his interesting little Latin tract, the Venns in sole visa, overflowing with a beautiful enthusiasm, a poetry and genuine devoutness, which give it a singular charm, Horrocks has described what was seen, or at least observed, by no eyes but his own and Crabtree's. From noon on the 23d, so long as the sun was above the horizon, he watched for four and twenty hours with only one, and that one a significant, intermission. In 1639, the twenty-fourth of November fell on a Sunday, and he describes himself as watching on that day " from sunrise to nine o'clock, and also from a little before ten until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called away in the intervals to matters of greater im- portance, which for such secondary occupations it would have certainly been improper to neglect (aliis temporibus ad inajora avocatus qiKZutique ob ha^c parerga negligi non dcciiit ).'^ In point of fact the Rev. Jeremiah Horrocks had to perform morning and afternoon service to his simple and scanty flock in the modest church or chapel at Hoole; and, for once in his life, it may be suspected, he was a little — a very little — glad when both were over, and he could rush back to his darkened room, with its telescope and disc of paper. "At fifteen minutes past three in the afternoon, when I first had leisure again to renew my 80 LAXCASHIRE WORTHIES. observations, the clouds were entirely dispersed, and invited my willing self to make use of the opportunity afforded, it might seem by the interposition of heaven. When lo ! I beheld a most delightful spectacle, the object of so many wishes : a new spot of unusual magnitude, and of a per- fectly circular shape, so completely entering the left limb of the sun that the limbs of the sun and the spot precisely coincided, forming an angle of contact. Not doubting that this was really the shadow of Venus I immediately set to work to observe it sedulously."^ The happy Horrocks was rewarded, and for half an hour, until the sun began to set, he made his unique and fruitful observations. A year and a few months ran their course after this memorable scientific achievement, and the young Lancashire astronomer was no more. He bad completed for publication his ]^c/ii/s ill sole visa, and had accepted an invitation to pay a visit to Broughton and his friend Crabtree, who was to expect him on the 4th of January 1641, "if," he wrote, on the 19th of December, seemingly with a kind of presentiment, "nothing unusual should prevent " {nisi quod prceier solitu?n impediat). Horrocks died " very suddenly," the mourning Crabtree recorded, how or of what disease is unknown, on the 3d of January 1641, the day before the expected meeting with his friend, in the 22d year of his age. The death of Crabtree, too, Wallis heard, took place not many days after that of Horrocks. In the preceding summer Horrocks seems to have quitted the Hoole curacy. At any rate he had returned from Hoole to his native Toxteth, where he was still sojourning the month before his death, apparently in doubt as to what he was to do next, since he speaks in a letter to Crabtree of his " un- settled state " and even of " perpetual annoyances." But ^ Vcn7is in sole visa (in Ilevcliiis), p. 115. JEREMIAH HORROCKS. 8l whatever his circumstances, and however gloomy his pro- spects, his love of science knew no abatement. During three months of his sojourn at Toxteth, he availed himself of his position near the estuary of the Mersey to observe the flux and reflux of the tides, detecting, he said, amid their general regularity, " variations and inequalities hitherto remarked by no one." He hoped, he wrote to Crabtree, if he remained there a whole year, " to make many discoveries, and of a kind demonstrating the motion of the earth." ^ His Venus in sole visa remained in manuscript until 1660, when a copy of it came into the hands of the eminent Huygens, from whom it passed into those of the eminent Hevelius, and by him was published, to the joy of the scien- tific world. Others of his "remains " were afterwards '' re- dacted" by his former contemporary at Emmanuel, the mathematician Wallis, and were published in 1672-3 at the expense of the Royal Society. To the unscientific, Horrocks is known, if at all, as the first observer of a transit of Venus, but the scientific claim for him still higher honours of dis- covery and induction, and some of them aver that in the works of this Lancashire youth Newton's greatest achieve- ments are foreshadowed, or even anticipated. " Amongst his discoveries"' — a mural tablet, in comparatively recent years erected to his memory in his own church at Hoole, records briefly, and not inaccurately — " are the nearest ap- proximation to the sun's parallax, the correct theory of the moon, and the transit of Venus." Herschel calls him "the pride and boast of British astronomy ; " and the foremost of European astronomers and historians of astronomy, from Halley to Airy, from Delambre to Whewell have delighted to do him honour. There are several references to Horrocks in the Principia. In one of them, after describing the moon's orbit as an ellipse about theearth, with its centre in the lower 1 Opera Posthnnta, ji. "1,^] L 82 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. focus, Sir Isaac Newton assigns the first determination of the fact to Horrocks : — " Horocc'ms noster lunam in ellipsi circum ternun, in ejus uinhilico i)iferiore co?istituta?n, revolvi, primus staiuit!' ^ To have been thus signalised as a disco- verer by Newton in the Principia is itself immortality. The praises of others can add little to the fame of Jeremiah Horrocks. Lib. iii. prop. 35 : scholium (London. 1726), p. 462, HUMPHREY CHRTHAM. , 83 V. HUMPHREY CHETHAM* /^F this Lancashire Worthy no biography has 5'et been ^^ written proportionate in its merit to his own, or on a scale commensurate with the results of his beneficence. For more than two hundred years the Chetham Hospital and Library have been useful to Manchester, and conspicuous memorials of the pious munificence of their founder. Amid the multitudinous stir of money-getting, both are there to remind merchant and manufacturer that nearly the first Man- chester trader of any note was also one of the most generous and thoughtful benefactors of the city where his fortune was made. His name has been rightly deemed the most fitting that could be assumed by the meritorious association which seeks to illustrate and elucidate the past of Lancashire. But among the numerous and elaborate publications of the Chetham Society a biography of Humphrey Chetham will be sought for in vain. The following slight account of him and of the element in which he moved, while it discharges an obvious duty, may help to remind that learned society * W. R. ^Yllatton's History of the Chdham Hospiial and Library (London, 1834), being vol. iii. of Dr Ilibbert Ware's History of the Foundations in Manchester ; the late G, T. French's Bibliographical Notices of the Church Libraries at Ttirton and Gorton, bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham (Manchester, 1855^ being vol. xxxviii. of the Chetham Society's publications; Fuller's Worthies (London, l8ri) ; Aikin's Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (London, 1795), p. 158; Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture, &c., &c. 8.1 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of the palpable deficiency which they have not as yet made even an attempt to supply. Humphrey Chetham himself once procured an investiga- tion of his genealogy, which cost him more money than it yielded him definite and satisfactory knowledge. It seems to have been made pretty clear, however, that he was de- scended from a cadet of the family of the Chethams of Nut- luirst, itself an offshoot of the Chethams of Chetham, whose founder was Geffrey (Galfridus) de Chetham, " a man of great consequence, and several times sheriff of Lancashire, temp. Hen. HI." The whole family derived their name from the locality where what was once the little village of Chetham has grown into a populous and important suburb of Manchester. " The said Sir Geffrey," says quaint old Fuller, to be enabled to quote whom is always so pleasant, "falling in troublous times into the King's displeasure, his family (in effect) was ruinated. But it seems his Posterity was unwilling to fly from their old but destroyed Nest, and got themselves a handsome habitation at Crumpsall, hard by." According to another account, it was at a later period that the Chetham family was " ruinated," by siding with Richard Crookback against the victor of Bosworth. In any case, towards the close of the sixteenth century, there re- sided at Crumpsall, a certain Henry Chetham, a man of some substance. ^ He had several sons, of whom the founder of the Hospital and Library was the fourth. Humphrey Chetham was born in 15S0, and on the loth of July in that year he was baptized, in what was then the collegiate, now the cathedral, church of Manchester. It is a reasonable conjecture that the subsequent founder of ^ The present Crunipsall Hall is, it seems, a quarter of a mile from the site of the quaint half-timbered mansion of the Chethams, which was taken down in 1825. — See Booker's History of Blackley (Man- chester, 1854), p. 211. HUMPHREY CIIETHAM. 85 the Chetham Library received a good education, probably at the Manchester Grammar School. No doubt, too, he_ was apprenticed to some dealer in Manchester wares, and it is certain that, while the eldest succeeded to the Crumpsall property, whatever it may have been, Humphrey and one or more of the other sons embarked in the Man- chester tfade, in his case with eminent success. In comparison with its present extent, Manchester was but a hamlet when, in the first decade or so of the seven- teenth century, Humphrey Chetham started in business. In a map of Manchester supposed to have been executed only a few years before his death, and when the town must have been much larger than during his youth, there are fields from Long ]\Iill-gate to Shudehill, where only a few houses break the expanse of country seen stretching away in every direction. Llarket street was a lane, with meadows and hedge rows at its top, while near this stood, in rural seclu- sion, a mansion emphasised as " Mr Lever's House," the memory of which still faintly survives in Great Lever street and the like. But Manchester was already the seat of a thriving trade, for which it had been famous since the time of Henry VIII. From Ireland there had been long a resort to it of traffickers, with linen and woollen yarn to be woven into cloth, and in certain descriptions of woollens Manchester was pre-eminent. By a singular coincidence, which has often been remarked, these woollen products ot Manchester were called " cottons," a corruption, some sup- pose, of "coatings," and which certainly had nothing to do practically with the cotton plant of East or West. Long be- fore the textile use of this was known in England, Leland wrote, " Bolton-upon-Moors Market stondeth most by cottons ; divers villages in the moores about Bolton do make cottons." Cotton may have been imported into England towards the close of the sixteenth century, and undoubtedly 86 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. it was worked up in Manchester during Humphrey Chetham's lifetime, so early as 1641, in which year was pubhshed Lewis Roberts's " Treasure of Traffic " containing the follow- ing passage : — " The town of Manchester in Lancashire must be also herein remembered, and worthily for their en- couragement commended, who buy the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, return the same again into Ireland to sell. Neither doth their industry rest here, for they buy cotton-ivoolm London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and other such stuffs." But the import was small, and the use made of it in textile fabrics was comparatively insignificant. Camden, speaking of Manchester as it was in 1590, when Humphrey Chetham was a boy of ten, refers to " the glory of its woollen cloths, which they call Manchester cottons.'^ It w^as these Avoollen coatings, too, that quaint old Fuller (a contemporary of Humphrey Chetham's, and a friend of one of his friends) had in view when he wrote : — " As for Manchester, the cottons thereof chiefly carry away the credit in our nation, and so they did an hundred and fifty years ago " — long before the fibre of the cotton plant was used in the manu- factures of this country. The paragraph that follows this one, in Fuller's " Worthies," is well worth giving, as a brief and quaint synopsis of the prevailing trade of Manchester at the same period, a trade in which flax evidently played a con- siderable part. " Other commodities " (the orthography and italics are Fuller's own) " iiiade in Manchester are so small in themselves, and various in their kinds, they will fill ihts/iop of an Haberdasher of small 7vares. Being, therefore, too many for me to reckon up or remember, it will be the safest way to wrap them all together in some Manchester Tickin, and to fasten them with the Finns (to prevent their falling out and scattering), or tie them with the Tape, and also (because HUMPHREY CHETHAM. 8/ sure bind, sure find) to bind them about with Pomts and Laces, all made in the same place. '^ ^ This was the industrial Manchester in which Humphrey Chetham did business during the first half of the seventeenth century. We fancy him a grave, solid, rather " canny " young man, decidedly Puritanical in his creed, and of the strictest walk and conversation, keeping one eye firmly fixed on the main chance and the other on the Kingdom of Heaven. He throve apace, by transactions, considerable in those days, in Manchester and Lancashire commodities, great part of which he sent up to London, where one of his brothers seems to have been settled. It is pleasant to hear that he was noted for his integrity and fair-dealing, as well as for his success. He trafficked largely in fustians, into the manu- facture of which, if Fuller is to be relied on, cotton does really seem then to have entered. The Lancashire people, Fuller says, " buying the Cotton- Wool or Yarjie, coming ^ Worthies, ii. 538. When the varied and enormous manufacturing and other industry of modern Lanca.--hire is considered, it is curious to find Fuller laying stress on its production of — hoVn ! In the introduction to his account of the Worthies of Lancashire he says, under the head of "Oxen : " — "The fairest in England are bred (or if you will, made) in this county, the tips of whose horns are sometimes distanced five foot asunder. Horns are a commodity not to be slighted, since I cannot call to mind any other substance so hard that it will not break, so solid that it will hold liquor within it, and yet so clear that light will pass through it. No mechanick trade but hath some utensil made thereof, and even now I recruit my pen with ink from a vessel of the same, Yea, it is useful cap-a-pie, from combs to shoeing-horns. What shall I speak of the many Gardens made of Horns to garnish houses? I mean artificial flowers of all colours. And besides what is spent in England, many thousand weight are shaven down into leaves for Lanthoms, and sent over daily into France. In a word the very shavings of Horns are profitable, sold by the sack, and sent many miles from London for the manuring of ground. . . . The best Horns in all England, and freest to work witliout flaws, are what are brouglit out of this County to London, the Shop-General of English Iiuli stry." S8 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. from beyond the sea, make it here into Fustians to the good imployinent of the poor and great improvement of the Rich therein, serving mean people for their ouisides, and their betters for the lineings of their garments. Bolton is the staple-place for this commodity, being brought thither from all parts of the country." It is in connection with Bolton and its fustian trade that worthy and careful Dr Aikin was enabled, on what authority he does not state, to bear the following testimony to Humphrey Chetham's superior com- mercial morality. " Fustians," quoth the Doctor, " were manufactured about Bolton, Leigh, and the places adjacent ; but Bolton was the principal market for them., where they were bought in the grey by the Manchester chapmen, who finished and sold them in the country. The fustians were made as early as the middle of the last century, when Mr Chetham, who founded the Blue-coat Hospital, was tlie ])rmcipal buyer at Bolton. When he had made his markets, the remainder was purchased by Mr Cooke, a much less honourable dealer, who took the advantage of calling the pieces what length he pleased, and giving his own price," whereby the Bolton people no doubt arrived at the conclu- sion that Chetham, not Cooke, was their friend. Thus, by honourable dealing, Humphrey Chetham came to enjoy a high character for integrity, while by skill and enterprise he pretty rapidly amassed a fortune, in which achievement he seems to have been aided by judicious investments in loans on mortgage, and otherwise. If, in the intervals of business, he was frequent in his attendance at church, consorting much with pious preachers, and reading diligently in books of Puritan theology, no one, probably, ventured to accuse him of hypocrisy, and he grew steadily in the estimation of serious and respectable Lancashire. It was a county in which the middle and trading class was deeply tinged with Puritanism of the Presbyterian type. HUMPHREY CHETHAAf. 89 In 1620, " Humphrey Chetham of Manchester, chapman," and his brother George, "grocer of London," bought for ;^47oo, from the Byrons of famous memory, Clayton Hall near Manchester, which seems to have become Humphrey's chief residence. Its ancient moat can still, or could lately, be seen, though Clayton is well-nigh absorbed in suburban Manchester. In 1628, he purchased Turton Tower, near Bolton, where a field called " Chetham's Clow " not long ago retained his name. His wealth and prosperity had already recommended him at headquarters as a victim w^orth the bleeding. Humphrey held opinions of his own, political and religious, but he was not a man to obtrude them on the public. In those times of threatened commo- tion, his own desire seems to have been to lead a quiet life, and neither to achieve honour nor to have honour thrust upon him. Moreover, by self-made men of the middle class in the seventeenth century, knighthoods and baronetcies were sometimes shunned as carefully as they are sought for now (in Manchester as elsewhere), and in his great strait for money, Charles the First's ingenious and unscrupulous financiers managed to turn the disinclination to account. The modest Chetham found himself summoned to London to be knighted, and apparently disobeying the summons, he was called on to pay a fine for non-attendance at his Majesty's " crowneation " to " take upon him the honour of knighthood." Next he heard that he was likely to be ap- pointed High Sheriff of Lancashire, news which terribly perturbed the worthy citizen, and there is a letter irom him extant in which, with amusing fervour, he deprecates the honour as one " whereby I shall be made more popular " — prominent or conspicuous — " and thereby more subject to the perils of the times." His reluctance was of no avail, and, in the November of 1634, he had to enter on the duties of his office, "discharging the place," says Fuller, who loves M 90 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to praise him, " with great honour, insomuch that very good gentlemen of birth and estate did wear his cloth at the assizes to testify their unfeigned affection to him." Among his earliest official duties was the unpleasant one ot le^^ing Ship Money, in conformity with his instructions.^ In raising the money, he found that he was considerably out of pocket, in spite of some rather peculiar measures which he took to recoup himself, and which nearly brought him into the Star Chamber. In the midst, too, of his Ship Money troubles (and in them he gave no sign of anything like the spirit of a Hampden) he was charged with having appropriated another man's coat-of-arms when, on being appointed Sheriff, he thought it incumbent on him to parade a vanity of the kind. A long controversy ensued, which ended in the confirmation of his arms and the payment of " ID pieces" to Norroy. Humphrey's answer to the letter "advising" this close to the dispute contains a passage slightly marked by a certain unexpected humour. "They" — the arms to be paid for with current coin of the realm — "are not depicted,'' the Sheriff writes, "in soe good mettall as those armes we gave for them ; but when the herald meets with a novice he will double the gayn." As the disputes between Charles and the Long Parliament came to a head, Humphrey was appointed by the Parlia- ment, and we may be sure very much against his will, " High Collector of Subsidies within the County of Lan- caster." In 1643, after the sword had been fairly drawn, 1 In one of his communications respecting this matter Humphrey Chetham bears curious testimony to the then insignificant condition of Liverpool and the poverty of its inhabitants : — "If, "he writes, "you shall tax and assess men according to their estate, then Liverpool, being poor and now goes as it were a-begging, must pay very little. Letters patent are now out for the same town." — Whatton, p. 159, note, where it is explained that this issue of letters patent was made to collect charitable contributions for the relief of " poor " Liverpool ! HUMPHREY CHETHAM. 9 1 the parliament again made him " General Treasurer for the County," although he pleaded hard to be excused " on ac- count of his many infirmities," and in truth he was now in the sixties. Both offices involved him in endless trouble and vexation, nor could he always satisfy the stern and peremptory Puritan commanders whom it was his busi- ness to keep supplied with money. In 1649, the year of King Charles's execution, Master Humphrey Chetham was an old gentleman on the verge of 70, nearing his latter end, and probably revolving in his mind more sedulously than ever his duty to God and man. He was very rich ; he was unmarried ; and his nearest re- latives were amply provided for ; so he bethought him of a work of charity that might be at least initiated before he died. He resolved to found an hospital for the education and nurture of poor boys of his native county, and he entered into negotiations for the purchase of " the College," " origi- nally erected for the residence of the ecclesiastics of the col- legiate church in Manchester, and probably of the same date as the church, which was founded by Thomas West, Lord De la Warr, in the reign of Henry VI." The College itself had been " the old Manor House, called the Baron's Hall, for many centuries the residence of the Gresleys and De la Warrs, Lords of Manchester." When Chetham wished to make the purchase, it was in the hands of the official sequestrators as a portion of the confiscated possessions of the unfortunate James seventh Earl of Derby, part of it being used as a prison and another part as a powder magazine. In the first year of Edward VI. 's reign the collegiate foundation had been dissolved, and the endow- ments, with other church property, conferred on the Stanleys. For various reasons the negotiations were broken off. It was not until after Humphrey's death that the College was 92 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. .secured for his Hospital and Library, and that quaint and interesting congeries of antique buildings rescued from the march of improvement to refresh modern Manchester with the sight of a quasi-mediaeval edifice. Humphrey Chetham, however, was not to be baulked of his benevolent purpose. Already, in 1649, he began to select objects of charity, and before his death he had " taken up and maintained fourteen poor boys of the town of Manchester, six of the town of Salford, and two of the town of Droylsden, being in all twenty-two," — to quote the language of his last will and testament. In the absence of a suitable building in which to house them, he boarded out his adopted boys among deserving persons to whom the money for the children's support might be an ac- ceptable assistance. A curious note-book has been pre- served in which the careful as well as excellent seventeenth- century philanthropist jotted down, from the 27th of October 1649 to the 4th of June 165 1, the particulars of many of his disbursements for his boys. In any future comparison of modern wages and prices with those of the middle of the seventeenth century, this note-book may be found to possess an interest other than biographical. He who cares to know may discover there that, in the Manchester of 1649, " 65 yards of Linen cloth" cost ^2, 14s., "18 dozen of thread buttons" IS. 6d., and that Humphrey Chetham "paid George Walker — for 60 days worke of himself and his men at 4d. per diem and xiid. over all for making the Hospitall Boyes cloathes " — the sum of one guinea, which seems to modern eyes a very reasonable charge. The same sum of one guinea defrayed during the same period " yr. dyate at 6d. per diem every man." The " table," or board, of the " boyes," in their scattered makeshift homes, cost 6s. 8d. per month a piece. Food for the mind was not forgotten. We light upon sucli entries as "a Psalter, lod.," "a testa- HUMPHREY CHRTHAM. 93 ment, is. sd.," "a Latin booke, 2d." "construing book," an "accidence," &c., proving that the founder of Chetham's Hospital did not consider a certain amount of classical education unsuitable for X-iva proteges. After about four years of this sort of preparation, Humphrey Chetham died at Clayton Hall on the 12th of October 1653, in the seventy-third year of his age, and he was buried in the collegiate church, where he had been baptized. His properties of Turton and Clayton had been settled on two liephews during his lifetime, and his will left numerous legacies to relatives, friends, and servants. No one could complain of the bequest for the foundation and maintenance of the Hospital and Library. He bequeathed seven thousand pounds for the purchase of a fee-simple estate, the income of which was to be applied to " the relief, maintenance, education, bringing up, and binding appren- tice, or other preferment" of " poor boys and male children," eighteen more of whom (belonging to Droylsden, Crumpsall, Bolton, Turton, "and not elsewhere or otherwise") were to be added to the original fourteen. His "will and mind" also was that his Hospital boys should be "children of honest, industrious, and painful parents, and not of wander- ing or idle beggars or rogues, nor that any of the said boys shall be bastards, nor such as are lame, infirm, or diseased at the time of their election." They were to be " well and sufficiently maintained and kept with meat, drink, lodging, and apparel, and also educated and brought up to learning or labour in the towns of Manchester and Salford." Five hundred pounds more were left to purchase a house for them, " the College, if may be." Any overplus was to go to increase the number of boys, which has since risen from forty-two to be a hundred at least. Two hundred pounds were bequeathed to be laid out in the purchase of "godly English books, such as Calvin's, Preston's, and Perkins's 94 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. works, comments, or annotations upon the Bible," or such other books as his executors should " think most proper for the edification of the common people." These were to be " chained up on desks, or to be fixed to the pillars, or in other convenient places, in the parish churches of Manchester and Bolton-in-the-Moors, and in the chapels of Turton, Walmsley, and Gorton." The bequest was duly executed, and it appears that at Turton " the books were at one time much read between the Sunday services, particularly during the summer months, and the usual place for reading them was the window-sill of the chapel." Neither books nor book-cases are extant at Manchester or Bolton, but ac- cording to a record written not very many years ago, more than two centuries after Humphrey Chetham's death, " the Gorton book-case is in good preservation, and still contains fifty-six volumes chained to an iron rail," a curious relic of the old Puritan times. Last, not least, came the bequest of one thousand pounds '' towards a Library within the to^vn of Manchester, for the use of scholars and others well affected ; . . . the same books there" — in the College if possible — " to remain as a public library for ever," and *' my mind and will is " the testator proceeded, " that care be taken that none of the said books be taken out of the said Library at any time ; " and further on that " the same books be fixed, or chained, as well as may be within the said Library for the better preservation thereof." Another hundred pounds was left to provide a place for the books, to the in- crease of which the residue of the testator's personalty was bequeathed. Thus arose the Chetham Hospital and the Chetham Library, the latter among the very earliest Free Libraries founded in England, long before the application of " local rates" to the establishment and support of such institutions was heard of or dreamt of in these realms. Humphrey Chetham did his best according to his lights HUMPHREY CHETHAM. 95 to make his surplus wealth available for the benefit of the community to which he belonged, and some of his good works are active and fruitful in the Manchester of to- day. Well might worthy old Fuller, after sketching his character and career, speak of his realised munificence as " a INIasterpiece of Bounty," and exclaim, in overflowing sincerity of heart, " God send us more such men ! " 96 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. VL THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER* HTHE Worsleys of Piatt near Manchester were an ofif- shoot from the Worsleys of Worsley, by the marriage of an heiress of which manor Worsley itself was added to the possessions of the Egertons, and so in time became the cradle of the "great" Duke of Bridgewater's canal operations. Early in the seventeenth century Charles Worsley, a cadet of this ancient family, who had diverged into trade, was established in Manchester as a " haberdasher " or linen- draper, wholesale no doubt however, if also, probably, retail. Prospering in business, this Charles purchased in 16x4 "certain lands in Rusholme " from "Oswald Mosley of Manchester," and married a sister of Alice Clarke, wife of George Clarke, founder of the Manchester charity that bears his name. His son and successor, Ralph Worsley, was a still more thriving man, having, " for the period, exten- sive dealings with weavers residing in the villages around Manchester to whom he entrusted yarn " — Irish-linen yarn it would seem — " for the purpose of having it woven into cloth, afterwards disposing of the same at his shop in Man- * Rev. John Booker's History of the Ancient Chapehy of Birch (Manchester, 1S59), being vol. xlvii. of the Chetham Society's publica- tions ; Thurloe, State Papers (London, 1742), vols. iv. and v. Par- liamcntary History (London, 1806, &c.), vol. iii.; Dr Halley's Lancashire : its Puritanism and Nonconformity (Manchester, 1869); Sydney Papers, edited by R. W. Blencowe (London, 1825) ; Dean Stanley's Historical Metnorials of Westminster Abbey, third edition (London, 1869) ; Carljle's Cro/mveH, parts 8 and 9 ; Commons yournah, &c., iS:c. THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. 9/ Chester." Out of the profits of this business he was able, in 1625, to add to the paternal purchase of lands in Rusholme the estate of Piatt (then called " The Piatt "), which had been in the possession of the family of the same name since the time of Edward I. There the successful trader esta- blished himself, and founded the family of Worsley of Piatt. In the old lath-and-plaster manor-house of Piatt, superseded more than a hundred years ago by the modern mansion,^ was born in 1622 to this Ralph a son and heir, Charles Worsley, the first member for Manchester and one of Oliver Cromwell's Major-Generals. Ralph \\'orsley of Piatt was a Puritan of the most "ad- vanced " school. As things developed themselves, and when Laudism was trampled under foot, he tended strongly to Independency, which became to Presbyterianism much what Presbyterianism had been to Laudism. At the breaking out, however, of the Civil War, the split between Presby- terianism and Independency had not become conspicuous, and Puritanism in Manchester, as elsewhere, was united against the common foe. It was in the August of 1642 that King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham ; a month afterwards came the unsuccessful assault on Manchester by the Earl of Derby. The fortifications of Manchester were strengthened ; it was made the headquarters of the ' The old mansion faced the turnpike road, and occupied in part the garden of the present one, which was built, or rebuilt, in 176431 a cost of ^10,000. Whereby hangs a tale. A certain Jonathan Lees, of Ashton, early in the last century, exchanged some humble occupation in that town for the " check trade " of Manchester, and succeeded in life. His son John married a Miss Worsley, who, in right of her brother, became mistress of Worsley. She adopted a son of her husband's by a former marriajje, and he assumed the name of Worsley, inherited the estate, and built the present mansion, regardless of expense. From him descend the actual Worsleys of Piatt, in whose veins, however, there is not a drop of Worsley blood. — (See Gcntlcinatis Magazine for 174}, p. 434-) N 98 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. parliament's army in Lancashire; and in 1643 the Solemn League and Covenant of our Presbyterian Scotch friends was accepted by its Puritan inhabitants. In the course of the following year, Charles Worsley, only twenty-two, a godly, and as his portrait at Piatt testifies, a handsome youth, was a captain in the army of theParUament Two years later (1646) Presbyterianism was established in Lancashire, in that re- spect solitary, or almost solitarj', among English counties. Elsewhere the controversy between Presbyterians and Independents — the former strong for peace with the beaten King, the latter demanding "securities" which Charles would never honestly give — was coming to a head, and Lieutenant-General Cromwell, the victor of Naseby, was throwing his weight into the scale of Independency. In this same year of 1646, it is noticeable that — at the in- stance, no doubt, of Mr Ralph Worsley among others — there migrated as minister from Gorton to Birch, and the vicinity of " The Piatt," a certain Rev. John Wigan, who begun to preach Independency in that neighbourhood, with what zeal may be imagined when it is added that he afterwards went into the army and fought for his creed with sword as well as tongue. The young Worsley much affected, we may be sure, the ministrations of this militant Reverend John, and when the conflict between Presbyterianism and Inde- pendency did arise he showed himself worthy of his spiri- tual pastor and master. He had married, was living in his father's house at Piatt, and had been so zealous an officer as to have risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel when the execution of Charles I. was followed by the flight of young Charles II. to Scotland, and his acceptance as their King by the deluded Presbyterian Scotch, little foreseeing the thumbscrews and Claverhouses of the Restoration. In the June of 1650 the Lord-General Cromwell was on the march once more, this time towards Scotland, and rein- THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. 99 forcements for his Scotch campaign were got together in many parts of England. But things had come to such a pass in Manchester that the Presbyterians there were already in the mood, which led them a little later to think seriously of raising five hundred men to help Charles II. and the Scotch against the Commonwealth/ in the hope of procuring for the whole country the blessed rule of a " covenanted King." There were other men in and about Manchester, how- ever, ,busy in a different cause, and one of the most active of them was Lieutenant- Colonel Worsley. On July 19, 1650 (three days before Cromwell on his northward march crossed the Tweed at Berwick), according to an entry in old Ralph Worsley's diary, " At Cheetham Hill was the first muster of Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley's sol- diers. The second in the same place August 2, 1650."^ Further on comes this other entry : — " 1650, August 19, Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley set forward towards the North with his regiment. August 24th, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Worsley came to Skipton. September 2d, he came to Durham " — '' Durrom" it is spelt by the old gen- tleman, whom the young Lieutenant-Colonel as he pro- ceeded northward doubtless kept informed by letter of his movements. "September 3d," the paternal record proceeds, " to Newcastle ; September 9, to Berwick, 1 llallcy, ii. 18. 2 Old Ralph Worsley himself was well inclined to tlie cause espoused by his son ; but so far as military service went he contented himself with a substitute. Under date of 1650, November 2, occiu's in his journal the following- entry (the spelling is modernised) :—*' Upon Saturday the 2nd of November 1650 I agreed with John Burdsell, of the Millgate in Manchester, to carry my arms during the service, and for his pains I have given him in liaud 30s., one green coat, and am to pay him daily is. When he with the rest of his company is trained, and when he is to go forth of the country upon service, I am to pay him 30s, more." lOO LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. September i2tli, to Edinburgh" — " Edenborrow." Then comes as a supplementary jotting : "September 3d, the battle at Dunbar, in Scotland, was fought." The Lieutenant-Colonel may have marched his very quickest, but he and his Manchester men were too late to help at Dunbar, where their presence would have been most acceptable to the Lord-General, who, however, managed to do very well without him or them. The brunt of the campaign in Scot- land was over when Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley reached " Edenborrow " nine days after the battle of Dunbar, and for two years and nine months nothing more that is signi- ficant is heard of him. Then, indeed, he emerges from obscurity, on an historical occasion and occupying an interesting position. His ser- vices, character, and breeding, conjointly or severally, endearing him to the Lord-General, the gallant young Puritan soldier, just turned thirty, had been appointed to the command of Cromwell's own regiment of foot. Perhaps it was to enter on the duties of his new post — for he took Mrs Worsley with him — that he proceeded to London in the late autumn of 1652, as is thus recorded in his father's journal : — " 1652, October 18. My son, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Worsley" — his military rank is always remembered in these jottings of the father's, as if in testimony of a certain parental pride in it — "with his wife" — " wyff " — "did set forward from Piatt to ride to London." However this may be, it is certain that when, on the 20th of April 1653, hurrying down to the House of Commons, " in plain black clothes and grey worsted stockings," on an ever-memorable errand, the Lord-General Cromwell called for a company of musketeers of his own regiment to attend him, it was Lieutenant- Colonel Worsley who commanded them and accompanied him. We ha-e arrived now at the famous dismissal and ejection of the Rump Parliament, and the Lord-General THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. lOI Cromwell's burst of passionate speech," Come, come, we have had enough of this, I will put an end to your prating, you are no parliament j I say, you are no parliament ;i I will put an end to your sitting. Call them in ; call them in !" " Whereupon the Serjeant attending the parliament opened the door, and Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley, with two files of musketeers entered the House," &c. This is Ludlow's version of the affair, penned years afterwards. According to a contemporary newspaper-account (which would in these days be called "semi-official ") " the Lord-General requested them " — the Rump — " to depart the House, and Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley, with some soldiers, came in and ordered the House to be cleared, took the mace away, and caused the House to be locked up. The next day there was a paper by some- body posted upon the Parliament House door thus : "This House is to be Let, now Unfurnished." ■^ In Carlyle's ac- count of the transaction no mention is made of Worsley ; perhaps because in Algernon Sidney's narrative his name is 1 "Come, come ! " exclaims my Lord-General in a very high key *' we have had enough of this " — and, in fact, my Lord-General now, blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, " I will put an end to your prating," and steps forth into the floor of the House and, "clapping on his hat " and occasionally "stamping the floor with his feet," begins a discourse which no man can report ! He says, heavens ! he is heard saying, " It is not fit that you should sit here any longer ! You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give place to better men ! Call them in !" adds he, briefly, to Harrison in word of command ; and " some twenty or thirty " grim mus- l;eteers enter, with bullets in their snap-hances, grimly prompt for orders, and stand in some attitude of " Carry arms" there. Veteran men, men of might and men of war, their faces ai'e as the faces of lions, and their feel are swift as the roes upon the mountains ; not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at this moment! — Carlyle's Ovwtiv//, part vii. 20th April 1653). » Parliamentary History^ iii. 1382, where Ludlow's narrative is given along with that of the contemporary newspaper, Sei-eral Proceedings in Parliament from Thursday the \\th to Thursday the 2lst of April 1653. 102 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. misprinted "Wortley," and Cromwell's biographer did not re- cognise in him the subsequent Major-General Worsley. Algernon Sidney had good reason to remember the Lieu- tenant-Colonel, as appears from this his narrative of the ejection of the Rump. " He " — Cromwell — " said to Colonel Harrison (who was a member of the House), ' Call them in ! ' Then Harrison went out and presently brought in I.ieutenant-Colonel Wortley (who commanded the General's own regiment of foot, with five or six files of musketeers, about 20 or 30, with their muskets. Then the General, pointing to the Speaker in the chair, said to Harrison, ' Fetch him down.' . . It happened that day," Sidney adds, or Sidney's father, reproducing his son's report of the pro- ceedings, " that Algernon Sidney sate " — as member for Cardiff — " next to the Speaker on the right hand. The General" — Cromwell — " said to Harrison, ' Put him out ! ' Harrison spake to Sidney to go out, but he said he would not go out, and sate still. The General said again, ' Put him out ! ' Then Harrison and Wortley put their hands upon Sidney's shoulders, as if they would force him to go out. Then he rose and went towards the door" — coerced by the gentlest "physical force." Worsley was fated to have his name misprinted in connection with his participation in the doings of that critical day. " History reports with a shudder," says Carlyle, " that my Lord- General, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, ' What shall we do with this bauble ? Take it away ! ' " And, according to a narrative which he proceeds to quote, " all being gone out, the door of the House was locked, and the key with the mace, as I heard, was carried away by Colonel Otley." No, by Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley, and there is evidence that the " bauble " remained for a time in his possession. In the official journal of the proceedings of tlie so called ^ Sj'diny Pii/crs, pj). I40, 41. THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. IO3 Barebone's Parliament, the convocation of which followed the dismissal of the Rump, occurs the following entry : — "8th of July 1653 — Resolved that the Serjeant-at-Arms at- tending this House do repair to Lieutenant-Colonel Worsley for the mace, and do bring it to the House." The imme- diate instrument of Oliver Cromwell's coup d'etat turns out to have been a " jManchester man " ! What scoffers called Barebone's Parliament was not a parliament in the modern sense of the word. Its members were appointed by the Lord-General Cromwell, not elected directly by the constituencies ; though each member nomi- nally represented a constituency, county or borough, with which he had some personal connection. It sat for rather more than five months, and then, finding their task of de- struction and reconstruction too much for them, its mem- bers resigned their powers into the hands of him who had bestowed them. Immediately afterwards came the esta- blishment of the Protectorate. The Lord-General Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Eng- land, Scotland, and Ireland, ruling in conformity with an instrument of government, one of the articles of which enacted that a parliament should meet in 1654 on the 3d of September, the anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and Worcester — Cromwell's " fortunate day." It was this time to be a parliament freely chosen by the electors, the quali- fication being property of the annual value of two hundred pounds per annum, but those, and the sons of those, who had borne arms for the King were disqualified. The " question of redistribution " had been carefully considered. Many small boroughs were disfranchised, and their members given to counties and large boroughs in some proportion to population. In fact it was a parliament elected in con- formity with a "Reform Bill" of his Highness the Lord Protector's own framing and passing. Among the great I04 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. towns thus for the first time permitted parhamentary repre- sentation was Puritan Manchester, Leeds was another. Manchester elected for its first member of parhament, " Charles Worsley of the Piatt, Esquire," whom Baines did not know to be identical with the Major-General of after years, though he surmised that the member for Manchester and the Major-General might be of the same family.^ In the proceedings of this first Protectoral Parliament, Charles Worsley's name, and little more, figures occasionally. " To him and several others was entrusted the bill for the recog- nition of the government, and his name is found in several committees of the House for ejecting scandalous ministers and schoolmasters, for the aftairs of Ireland, and for audit- ing or revising the public accounts." ^ The first parliament of the Protectorate proved to be even more unsuccessful than Barebone's. Its members fell to questioning the Pro- tector's authority, and after administering to them a mild purge, in the form of a declaration to be signed promising allegiance to him, Oliver quietly dismissed them, in the January of 1655, to their respective places of abode. For a year and nearly nine months after this England survived the absence of parliamentary government. But government there was in England during this interval, and of a very stringent kind, as it needed to be from the Lord Protector's point of view. Plotting against his rule was rife, and not Royalist plotting only, but of a much more dangerous sort. Republican. Cromwell and his Independents had gone beyond Fairfax and the Presbyterians. Now old comrades-in-arms of the Pro- tector were going beyond him, and, as Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy men, and so forth, protested against any earthly 1 The identification is made, however, in the second edition of Baines (1868), i. 324. * Booker, p. 42. THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. I05 sovereignty, and demanded the reign of the Saints with a King in heaven. One of the leaders of these enthusiasts was Harrison, the very Harrison who, with Worsley's aid had mildly compelled Algernon Sidney to leave the House of Commons at the ejection of the Rump. Above all, the Royalists, to some extent, were uniting with these ultra- Puritan Republicans. There was a "coalition" of other- wise discordant parties against the Protector, and it was a coalition which, if without votes in Parliament, had arms in its hands and daring leaders to organise its conspiracies. Hence Oliver's division of England into districts, ten in all over each of which was placed a tried, trustworthy, and zealous military or naval man, with the rank and title of Major-General — " the greatest creation of honours," Thurloe wrote (October 1655) to Henry Cromwell in Ireland, "his Highness has made since his access " — accession — " to the government." Harrison might have fallen away, not so "Wor- sley, and to him was assigned the district consisting of Lanca- shire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire. The powers of a Major- General in any district were those of a little Viceroy. " He looks," says Carlyle, "after the good of the Common- wealth, spiritual and temporal, as he finds wisest ; ejects or aids in ejecting scandalous ministers ; summons disaf- fected, suspected persons before him, demands an account of them ; sends them to prison, failing an account that satisfies him, and there is no appeal except to the Protector in Council. His force is the miUtia of his county; horse and foot levied and kept in readiness for the occasion ; especially troops of horse, involving, of course, new ex- pense — which we decide that the plotting Royalists, who occasion it, shall pay. On all Royalist disaffected persons the JMajor-General, therefore, as his first duty, is to lay an Income tax of tin per cent. ; let them pay it quietly." These were the duties which Major-General Worsley and I06 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. his colleagues were set to discharge in the October of 1655. In the Thurloe State Papers there are printed twenty or more letters from Worsley, chiefly to Thurloe himself as Cromwell's principal secretary, reporting progress, asking for instructions, and offering suggestions based on "local knowledge." They are for the most part brief, modest, as well as earnest, and combine devoutness of expression with clear indications of practical shrewdness. In his first letter (dated Manchester, November 3, 1655), just when beginning to grapple with his task, Worsley says : — " I have been with most of the officers that command the county-troops of Lanca- shire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire, and have communicated unto them that which was given me in charge by his Highness in Council. And truly I find in them a spirit extra- ordinarily bent on the work, and I plainly discern the finger of God going along with it, which is, indeed, no small encour- agement unto me. The strength of the work," he adds, "and my unworthiness and insufficiency as to the right management of it is my only present discouragement. Yet, however, this is the ground of my hope and comfort that the Lord is able to supply my wants, and will appear in weak instruments for His glory to the perfecting of His work. I shall (through the grace of God) discharge my trust in faith- fulness to those that have employed me and omit no oppor- tunity nor avoid pains wherein my weak endeavours may be useful." In the financial department of the business Worsley was successful, and the month after his appointment he was able to report to Thurloe, "I hope we shall pay our county-troops out of what we have done already, and pro- vide you a considerable sum for other uses." Indeed, in another letter, he says, " The malignant party seem to sub- mit to what is imposed with readiness." Finance, as might be expected, figures prominently in Worsley's official letters, THE FIRST MEMBER FOR MANCHESTER. 10/ and tlie claims of revenue conflict in his mind with the execution of his commission to diminish the number of "ale- houses," partly for " the reformation of manners/' partly because they were the haunts of the disaffected. This is the way in which a Major-General of Oliver Cromwell dealt with the problem of the "licensing system," and expressed his hesitations in regard to it. " I find it," he writes to Thurloe, " a difficult business how to observe my instruc- tions as to ale-houses, and not weaken that revenue, though truly it's too visible that they are the very bane of the coun- ties. Yesterday and day before I met the commissioners and justices for the Hundred of Blackburn about these things specified in the orders " — issued by the Protector in Council — " and we find that these ale-houses are the very womb that brings forth all manner of wickedness. We have ordered at least 200 ale-houses to be thrown down in their Hundred, and are catching loose and vile persons." Again, " We have put down a considerable number of ale-houses after taking notice of these several qualifications " — or dis- qualifications — "following, viz. : — i. Such as have been in arms against the parliament, and are looked upon to be enemies to the present government ; 2. Such as have good trades and need not thereunto " — /.iece of jiaper, these two Hnes : ' Upon James Earl of Derby : — ' Bounty, Wit, Courage, here in one lie dead, A Stanley's hand, Verb's heart, and Cecil's head.' " His mother, it will be remembered, was a W're, and her mother, again, a Cecil. So perished on the scaffold, in his forty-fifth year, the seventh Stanley Earl of Derby — a high-spirited and high- minded, a cultivated and devout nobleman, the victim of a beaten cause, and whose character is easily decypherable. 190 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES The first Stanley Earl of Derby gained high rank, increased his estates, and reaped through life great worldly prosperity by the skill with which he contrived to be always on the winning side. The seventh Earl of Derby reduced the fortunes of the family to their lowest by throwing in his lot with the losing side, and he died a martyr to " principle." But the contrast between the careers of the first and the seventh Earls of Derby, and the results and close of each, forms a theme for the moralist rather than for the biographer. Lord Derby's head thus fallen, the ruling powers had next to possess themselves of the Isle of Man, which, held by the Countess, was the only region in the three kingdoms where the Commonwealth was not recognised. A fortnight before the execution of the Earl, an expedition against the island had been resolved on and partly organised, respecting which there is extant this hurried note from the Lord-General Cromwell himself to Colonel Birch, Governor of Liverpool, and member for the same : — " For the Hoiourable Colo>td Birch, at Liverpool, these ; post haste. " Sir, — T do well assure you that before this I sent you an order to l>e assisting in the expedition against the Isle of Man, but hearing nothing from you I doubt whether my orders came to you. But now i iliought fit to send this desire, that (Colonel Lilburne being employed another way) you would be assisting Colonel Dukinfield in this service, who is the Commander-in-chief. ' ' I rest your very loving friend, "Septr. 30, 1651.'' "O. Cromwell." ^ The Lord-General's orders were obeyed, and before the end of October ten vessels, carrying Birch and Dukinfield with a military force, anchored in Ramsey Bay. The news of the expedition had roused the islanders to demand redress for an old grievance connected with their land tenures. 1 Raines, ii. cclx. Not in Carlyle's " Cromwell." JAMES ST A \ LEY SEVENTH EARL OE DERBY. I9I They placed their demands in the hands of WilHani Christian, who was receiver-general of the island, and whom Lord Derby, before embarking for the mainland, had appointed commander of the insular militia. There is little doubt that Christian pleaded the cause of the mal- content islanders with Lady Derby, and procured her consent to their demands ; though otherwise his conduct to her seems to have been misrepresented. With the arrival of the Commonwealth-ships in Ramsey Bay, a deputation of the disaffected islanders waited upon the commanders of the expedition, and offered to submit it' their lands and old liberties were secured to tlicm. The Commonwealth-troops landed. Lady Derby and the com- manders of the expeditionary force came to an agreement for the surrender of the island. The lordship of the Isle of Man was conferred on Fairfax, by whom Christian was re- appointed receiver-general, and afterwards deputy-governor. We shall hear more of this Christian, whom Sir Walter, in " Peveril of the Peak/' makes the brother-in-law of its Major Bridgenorth. In the following December, Lady Derby seems to have obtained permission to go to England ; but the first extant letter of hers written after the execution of her husband is dated the 26th of March 1652. As given in the translation of her recent lady-biographer, it is to this effect : — "Dear Sister, — In all my heavy trials I have desired nothing so much as the honour of your letters, which were so full of friendship for that unhappy one " — tlie Earl, her husband — " and of compassion for the misfortunes I have suffered, that, I confess, if my grief were not inconsolable, you would have relieved it But, alas ! dear sister, there is nothing left for me but to mourn and weep, since all my joy is in the grave. I look with astonishment at myself that I am still alive after so many misfortunes ; but God has been pleased to .sustain me wonderfully, and 1 know that without Mis help I could never have survived all my miseries. To tell you all would be too distressing ; bu^, in short, dear 192 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES sister, I have endured all the sharpest sorrows that could be cotrceived. and they were announced to me by the destroyers of my happiness, with all imaginable particulars, to overwhelm me. It is in this that I have experienced the wonderful assistance of my God, that I did not despair as, humanly speaking, stronger minds than my own might have done ; but His providence supported me, and led me in my misery to adore His goodness towards me, and to magnify Him in my sorrow for the noble end of that glorious martyr" — her husband, of course — ^" who showed such wonderful constancy — nothing shaking him in the least but the thought of the wretched condition in which he foresaw I should be. In his letters he gave me far greater proofs of his affection than I had any right to expect, and his last request was that I would live, and take care of his children. This thought alone sustained me in my afflictions, for my son, the Earl of Derby " — Charles of the mesalliance — " does nothing to comfort me, both he and his wife showing great bitterness of feeling towards me. But this is the will of God, to wean me altogether from the world, and to show me its vanities. If I were not obliged for my children's sake to look after my affairs, which are in an un- certain state, I should no longer have any concern with the world. It is true that in one of their courts, after incredible trouble, I have succeeded in getting my marriage-contract allowed, which settled on me, besides my dowry, certain estates bought with my own money, which is all that I have for my five children. I must, how- ever, obtain the authorisation of another of their courts, in order to receive the revenue of the estates, and it is here that my enemies endeavour to prove me guilty ; if this should happen, it will be necessary to present a petition to parliament, which is a very difficult .!ind tedious thing. But I have reason to think that I shall obtain what I desire ; the most influential people tell me to hope. God has hitherto blessed my endeavours, and has given me both friends and means of subsistence ; for I have lost all my personal property, having had only 400 crowns' worth of silver plate allowed me to bring me here from the Isle of Man, and nothing more since that. You see, then, the unhappy condition to which my life is reduced. I wish to end it with you, but I cannot yet tell what will become of me. . . . If I could get the produce of what has already been granted to me, I should have the means of bringing up my children in a manner befitting their birth, mi; two youngest sons " — Edward and William — " being of great p^misr, healthy, tall, and well grown for their age, and studious, especially the younger, who, I think, will be a good scholar. If it please God to bless them and make them worthy of their father, they will doubtless feel how much honoured they are by their connection with so many virtuous persons." JAMES STANLEY SEVEN Til EARL OF DERBY. 193 In the next letter, the date of which is not given, she announces the welcome news of the engagement of her daughter Catherine to a wealthy nobleman, an old friend of her husband's : " I was very far from thinking of such a marriage in our poverty, or indeed of any marriage. The gentleman is the Marquis of Dorchester, He has been married before, but he has only two daughters. He is a Protestant, aged forty-four ; sensible, clever, accomplished, and rich, having fourteen thousand a year, his brothers and sisters provided for, and ready money in his purse. The best and highest alliances in England have been offered to him, and yet he has sought us out. I shall not be able to give her anything until my aflfairs are settled ; but this alliance will help us not a little. ... I hope that God will pro- vide as well for the others who are in my charge ; I know of nothing in them but what is good and agreeable. As for my eldest, I cannot say as much for him ; he is worse than the prodigal son ; and I often think of what that martyr, his father, said to me about him before he went to France, ' That he had no good opinion of him ; for,' said that sainted soul, ' he has no shame for his faults, and I never saw him blush for anything that he did.' Alas ! I deluded myself ; but his father knew him better than I did. There never w^as so malignant a nature as that woman's" — the de Rupa — "who has nothing good or pleasant about her." The match made by the Lady Catherine did not, at first at least, turn out very well. Three months after her mar- riage, her mother writes : " I have not made her so happy as I expected ; I was led to hope for better things; but what consoles me is that she behaves with admirable wisdom and patience ; and, certes, she is gaining an unexampled reputatior." It may as well be added here, that the Lady Henrietta Maria Stanley was married, in 1654, to the second Earl of Strafford ; a dull and worthy man, very unlike 2 B 194 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. his great father; and that in 165c. the Lady Ameha "was made," according to her own statement, " the happiest creature alive" by marrying John second Earl and first Marquis of Athole, a very loyal nobleman, ancestor of the Duke of Athole that now is'. When, in 1736, James tenth Earl of Derby died without heirs of his body, the lordship of the Isle of Man went to James second Duke of Athole, as only surviving descendant of the seventh Earl, and was afterwards bought up and cancelled, as it were, by an Act of Parliament, on payment of a due consideration. The poverty of the Stanleys did not prevent them, it has been seen, from forming good alliances, and of the con- sideration in which the family was held, there is an interest- ing proof in a letter from Lady Derby to her sister-in-law, written in the May of 1654, after she had despatched her second son to join his relatives in France. " I send you," she writes, " in this dear child, one of the best parts of myself : I pray that God will bless him and make him acceptable to you. He is very anxious to please you, and I have com- manded him to obey, reverence, and love you as he does myself He is gentle, and of a good disposition, brave but without pride, a very common vice of his nation. His valet de chamhre is a gentleman whose father is so much attached to our poor family that he desires he should be with him, rather than m another position where he might have greater external advantages." A year later, we find Lady Derby at Knowsley, driven thither from London by poverty, and a wish to "retrench." On the istof June 1655, she writes from Knowsley thus : " You may believe, dear sister, how changed I find every- thing in this place, never having been here since my troubles; and how cruelly it recalls to my mind my past happiness, and makes my present sorrow press more heavily than ever upon me. God, however, will not forsake me, but will JAMES STANLEY SEVEN 1 H EARL OF DERBY. I95 Strengthen me of His goodness. ... As for my affairs^ they are in so bad a state — my debts being so great — that I am obliged to live here, and to reduce my expenses to suit my poor condition, in order to pay them if possible." A few months later she writes : " I know not if you have heard of the Protector's last proclamation, in which new taxes are imposed on all those whose estates have been in the hands of the parliament, and who have paid large sums to re- cover them. I had hoped that in the poor condition to which it has pleased God to reduce me, and by not interfering in anything whatever but what regards my own little property, I should not be reckoned in that number ; but I am assured that I am one of them, and everything I have in the world is mortgaged to pay my debts. The sum now demanded is the tenth part of the value of the estates, and the fifteenth part of the personal property ; but I hope I shall not have to pay for more than I possess, which is next to nothing. The good God will not forsake me, as He hath had com- passion on me in all my trouble." This was the time of the major-generals, and the ten-per-cent. income-tax upon Royalists. In the following extract of a letter from Lady Derby, written in November 1655, we catch a glimpse of that Lancashire Worthy of a previous memoir, Major- General Worsley, dealing rather sternly with the Lady of Latham, and we hear of other and spiritual troubles : " I have been taxed on 8000 livres" — say ;^32o — "more of rent than I receive. The major-general, the person who man- ages everything in the provinces where he is in command, would not listen to my agent, or to any one who like him had received the rents from the time that they were in the hands of the parliament. He asserted that I had great estates beyond the sea (as he expressed it), and many jewels and other imaginary things, and would hear nothing in my behalf, nor treat with any one who came from me. . . . IQ^') LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Everything, however, would be endurable if they had left us the free exercise of our rehgion ; but that is most strictly forbidden. It is the same religion as that professed in the time of Henry VIII. and of his daughter Mary, who made all suffer martyrdom who adhered to it \ and my mother believed it to be that of the primitive Church. She never failed to attend prayers, and had the English liturgy trans- lated into French, and commanded me to conform to it, and to the administration of the sacraments ; as I have done, and will continue to do, with God's blessing, to the end ot my days. And it was one of the last wishes of my husband that his children should be brought up in this creed." A few years more, and Lady Derby's troubles from Crom- well and his major-generals were over, but the Restoration did not prove the " Paradise Regained " which she had fancied that it would be. At first, however, and naturally, all was hope with her. On the 7th of May 1660, she writes thus to her sister-in-law, announcing the approachmg return of Charles II. : " My son, Derby, has taken his place in the House of Peers, according to his rank. His younger brother has been elected to the other House, but with much opposition ; however, by the grace of God, he was success- ful. My second son is with the King, his master, who, they tell me, does him the honour of liking him, and I have the hope of seeing him soon, if I can, please God, make pre- paration for going to London. I should be already there if I could have found the means of accomplishing it, but my poverty is very great ; yet I must make an effort, for the good of my children depends on it. You may believe that the sight of the great world and the joy therein will call up many and opposite thoughts, and the contemplation of my own mis- fortunes in the midst of so much happiness will revive very bitter recollections." A few weeks more and the King had actually returned, and Lady Derby had seen him, but things JAMES STANLF.Y SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY. IC^y had not turned out quite so well as she expected. On the 1 6th of July she writes from London : " I have been here for six weeks, and the King has done me the honour to treat me with great kindness and sympathy in my heavy afflictions. Nothing, however, has yet been done for me. Such confusion prevails in the Court, and in public affairs, that it would require much more cleverness than I possess to see my way through all this disorder. The King is over- whelmed with business, and has promoted some who have not hitherto done him good service, and cannot, it seems to me, ever be of much use to him. I am sure it is against his own inclination, but his advisers think it is good policy to govern in this fashion. I hope that, after working so many miracles to bring his Majesty back to us, God will strengthen his throne, and give him great grace to re-estab- lish His Church, and deliver it from schism, of which it is now so full. . . . I am engaged, dear sister, in pursuing the pretended judges of Monsieur, my late husband, and I hope to have justice on them, which I do not desire so much for my own satisfaction as to show God's blessing on the King and his people, by the punishment of those who spilt that dear and innocent blood with so much cruelty. I have already made some progress in the matter, and I hope to- morrow to have this issue as I desire it. I leave all to God, and I shall at least have the consolation of having done my duty. Many who have undergone similar losses have fol- lowed my example." Court-gossip forms the staple of the elderly Countess's let- ters to her sister-in-law after the glorious Restoration. Here and there a passage may be picked out of them, possessing greater or smaller personal interest ; as when, for instance, she records the arrival of Charles's widow, Henrietta Maria, with whose fate her own had some similarity : — " I have to beg you a thousand pardons for not having told you before 198 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of the arrival of the Queen, which took place last Friday, to everybody's delight, with the acclamations of the whole nation. I saw her on her arrival and kissed her hand. She met me with much emotion, and received me with tears and great kindness. You may imagine w-hat I felt. Her Majesty charms all who see her, and her courtesy cannot be enough praised." Greater still than this event was a visit from the King, in person, recorded thus : " I told you about my illness ; I can tell you now that I am better, thank God ! But it is not so much for that I trouble you, as to tell you the surprise- 1 had last night. I had only my daughter Strafford with me when suddenly they told me the King was on the stairs, attended only by the Marquis of Ormond. He did me the honour of assuring me that he wished to take charge of my children and me, and he told me that that little matter was done which I spoke to you about \ and that it was his own business which had prevented him from doing this honour before. It must be owned that he is the most charming prince in the world ! I have not been to Court for a week or ten days, but I am going after dinner." In spite of this distinction, Lady Derby did not find her position much improved. Listen to her moralising on the wickedness of Cromwell and his associates, but forced to conclude with an avowal of her own unhappy plight. On the 31st of January 1661, she writes: "There was a fast yesterday in memory of the death of the late King, of glorious memory, which was observed throughout his Majesty's dominions. An Act of Parliament had been passed ordering that the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw should be disinterred the day before, dragged in a hurdle through the town, hanged on the common gibbet, and buried under it. Nothing makes me recognise so clearly the vanity of the world, and that we have no hope but in the fear of God. It will be said with reason, that it JAMES STANLEY SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY. 1 99 would have been better for this man " — Cromwell — " if he had never been born. All this wickedness, these murders, this Macchiavellian policy, have marked him and his family with eternal infamy. The thought that it is better to be poor and at peace with one's conscience, makes me patiently bear my miserable condition, and that of my children, for though this pension " — some pittance flung to the heroine of Latham — " will help me a httle to live, yet, having received nothing for them but that, I do not knosv what will become of us. A great deal is promised, but the fulfil- ment is long in coming."^ But nothing could shake the good old lad/s loyalty. Describing the coronation of his most gracious Majesty, Charles II. : " as a very grand and imposing sight," she adds : " It is the last thing of the kind I shall see, and I have greatly desired to witness it, having prayed with tears to be permitted to behold this crown on the head of his Majesty. May he and his posterity long wear it, and may God accord to him and to us the grace of never forgetting His miraculous blessings !" In the course of a year or so, debt and difficulty drove poor Lady Derby once more from London to Knowsley. She had been promised the place of governess to the King's children, but as none arrived, she was f;\in to content herself with the good wishes of royalty. Speaking of her removal, she says, in one of her letters : " I was forced to it by absolute necessity, not having enough to support me, and being in continual misery about the payment of my debts. All sorts of people refused to supply me with the most necessary things." Before her death, which befell at Knowsley on the 31st of March, 1664, she had the small satisfaction of seeing one of her younger sons made a cornet 1 Madame de Witt, p. 263. All the extracts in the text from Lady Derby's letters are furnished by Madame de Wilt's volume. Of this one, however, there is also an English version in Raines, ii., ccl.xix. 200 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. in the Guards, and another " first and sole gentleman of the bed-chamber" to the Duke of York, afterwards James II. Her eldest son, Charles eighth Earl of Derby, behaved, according to her own account, very badly to her. Not long before she died, she wrote of him thus : " The Isle of Man was restored to my son Derby immediately after the arrival of the King. Monsieur, his late father, gave it to me for twenty-one years ; and my son, without saying a word to me, after I had helped him in prison, and maintained him and all his family, has treated me in this manner. Our friends advise me strongly to come to some agreement by which I should have half the revenue. But I do not believe I shall get anything except by force. His wife " — that Delilah ! — " is a person without a single good quality. What shocks me most of all in her is that she never speaks the truth, and that she makes her husband do things that are quite unworthy of him, which, however, I fear he is too much inclined to do ; and I apprehend there will be com- plaints of him from the parliament, for not acting legally in his government of the province of Lancaster and Chester, having raised money and overtaxed the people \ but I cannot help it, as I am quite a stranger to his proceedings. . . . As for that sword which has been restored to my son, I cannot tell what it means ; for Monsieur his father never had any carried before him in the Isle of Man. It is a piece of his wife's vanity to have it put in the Gazette.'''' The Countess made her will in the May before her death, and, as has been already mentioned, she testified her .sense of her eldest son's demerits by the one and the emphatic sentence devoted to him in it : "I give to my son, Charles Earl of Derby, five pounds." Sir Orlando Bridgman, it may be added, was one of her executors ; the other was " John Rushworth, Esq.," the compiler of the Historical Collections. '' I had helped him in jDrison, and maintained him and ail JAMES STANLEY SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY. 20I his family," it will have been seen in the foregoing extract, Lady Derby says of her eldest son. The reference is to what happened in the May of 1659, when, after the resigna- tion of Richard Cromwell, Sir George Booth made in the North an unsuccessful rising for the King, this time with the aid, or, at least, with the sympathies, of Puritan Lancashire generally. He was joined by Charles Earl of Derby, '* the boisterous merriment and profanity of whose men " were, according to the historian of Lancashire Puritanism, a stumbling-block and an offence to more godly brethren with whom they found themselves allied. The rising was quelled by Lambert, and Lord Derby was taken prisoner " in the habit of a serving-man," and thus surely effaced any suspicion of disloyalty which may have previously attached to him. After the Restoration, he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant both of Lancashire and Cheshire, and seems, according to his mother's account, to have carried matters with rather a high hand. Probably, however, she did not disapprove of his severity — clearly illegal — towards the William Christian who was Receiver-General of the Isle of Man when she surrendered it to the Commonwealth, and who was confined in the office by Fairfax. While filling the office, Christian became a defaulter, fled to the main- land, and, after various vicissitudes, returned to the island in 1662, to take advantage, as he thought, of the general amnesty which followed the Restoration. Earl Charles, in his regal way, had Christian arrested, tried by a packed Court of Keys for having been at the head of an insur- rection against the Countess of Derby in 1651, and shot to death he was in the January of 1663.^ His son appealed 1 William Christian has found a modern defender in the Rev. Mr Gumming, who is also a Stanley-worshipper. — (See The Great St anhy p. 255, &c., § " Illiam Dhone." There is an earlier and much ampler defence of him, \w\i\\ pihes Juslificatives, in the appendix to the Intro- duction to Sir Waller's Pevcril of the Peak. In the Introduction itself, 2 c 202 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to the Privy Council, which condemned the sentence and execution, and the King himself is said to have been displeased with Lord Derby for his share in the transaction, though probably the displeasure was less at the severity of the act than because it was committed in disregard of the royal prerogative. Earl Charles seems to have been a great enemy of Popery and Quakerism, and wrote two pamphlets against them, both published anonymously. Some rather interesting anecdotes are told of him. When Bishop Wilkins (of lunar memory) preached at Knowsley one Sunday, sabbatically, on the observance of the Sabbath — after dinner, as if in practical refutation of the episcopal arguments, my lord "called for tables" — draughts — "to play with his guests.'' "It is due," says the historian of Lancashire Puritanism, " to the memory of Charles Earl of Derby, the son of James, who was beheaded at Bolton, to observe that instead of showing any dispositiori to avenge the death of his father upon the Nonconformists, he was rather disposed, as Lord- Lieutenant of Lancashire, to protect them, and to execute the severe laws of which he was the reluctant minister with as much leniency and forbearance as possible." In the " Diary " of Henry Newcome is found honourable mention of several instances of the Earl's kindness to the Noncon- formists. On one occasion, when his neighbour. Sir Roger Bradshaigh, complained to him of the conventicles which were held as near his residence as St Helen's, the Earl replied that if he was compelled to enforce the laws against the Presbyterians, he must with equal severity enforce them against the Papists, whom Sir Roger protected. On another, when the rector of Walton requested him to suppress a conventicle which was held at Toxteth Park, the Earl Sir Walter makes the amende honorable iox having, in his pleasant novel, represented the Huguenot Countess of Derby as a Roman Catholic. JAMES STANLEY SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY. 2O3 inquired what the people did at the conventicle. " Pray and preach," was the reply of the rector, who was not remark- able for his own attention to such duties. " Ah ! '"' said the Earl, "you neither pray nor preach yourself: you might thank others who pray and preach for you." Earl Charles died in 1672, and his memory was regarded by Puritanism with feelings curiously mixed. Oliver Hepvood says of him : " The Earl of Derby is dead, having endured a long, pining disease. His body was opened, and the physicians found not one drop of blood in it, except a drop or two at his heart. It calls to my mind his commanding Mr Christian to be shot to death in the Isle of Man, upon his mother's instigation, for delivering the castle to the parliament many years before. This was upon the King's coming in, for which his Majesty frowned upon him. Christian's blood shed left no blood in a noble's body." After which odd bit of superstitious gossip, the honest Puritan adds : " There is a loss of him in Lancashire, as being a great bulwark against Papists." ^ His wife — "that Delilah!" — died in 1703, in the odour of Protestant sanctity. The funeral sermon preached on her extols " her great care for the poor," and speaks of " the great number of families who sub- sisted only upon her charity." She not only clothed and fed the poor, it seems, but doctored them most successfully. " She restored great numbers to that health which they had in vain sought for elsewhere." Her own death is said to have been hastened by that of her lord. All the estates of the Stanley family were formally con- fiscated by Act of Parliament before the execution of James the seventh Earl. Some of them, however — Knowsley and Lathom, for instance, — seem to have escaped actual sale ; while certain of Lady Derby's rights, acquired by her marriage settlement, were nominally respected. After the ^ Ilalley. ii. 237-8. 204 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Restoration, therefore, a portion of the large domains of the family reverted to it, with the Isle of Man. An attempt was made by Earl Charles to recover the estates which had been sold under the Commonwealth by the agents of sequestration, without his consent. A bill to this effect passed the Lords under a protest from Clarendon (who never loved the Stanleys) and other peers, and, through his and their influence, it was dropped in the Commons.^ Thus the loyalty of the seventh earl sadly diminished the hereditary estates of the Earls of Derby, which, says Seacome,- " so reduced the said Earl Charles that he had scarce sufficient left to support the honour and dignity of his character. Insomuch," he adds, " that his eldest son and successor, Earl William, whom I had the honour to serve several 3'ears as household-steward, hath often told me that he possessed no estate in Lancashire, Cumberland, West- moreland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, ^^'ar\vickshire, and Wales, but whenever he viewed any of them he could see another near, or adjoining to, that he was in possession of, equal, or greater of value, lost by his grandfather for his loyalty and service to the Crown and his country." Among the estates purchased from the agents of seques- tration, without the consent, expressed or implied, of Earl Charles, was one to which some little interest attaches in our own time. Hawarden, in Flintshire, an estate of the Stanleys, was bought, after the execution of Earl James, from 1 Raines, cclxxiv. vi. Thus there was a certain want of accuracy in the indignant inscription at Knowsley, said to be still extant there, as a memorial of the indignation of— so it runs, or ran— "James Earl of Derby, Lord of Man and the Isles, grandson of James Earl of Derby, and of Charlotte, daughter of Claude, Due de la Tremoille, whose husband James was beheaded at Bolton, 15th October, 1652, for strenuously adhering to Charles II., who refused a bill passed unanimously by both Houses of Parliament, for restoring to the family the estates lost by his loyalty to him." - p. 208. JAMES STANLEY SEVENTH EARL OF DERBY. 205 the agents of sequestration, by the notorious Serjeant Glyn (or Glynne), who served the Commonwealth with zeal ^ and with profit to himself. Trimmer of trimmers, rat of rats, after having been Lord Chief Justice during the Protectorate and one of Cromwell's peers, he managed matters so dexterously that he was taken into favour by Charles II., and died in 1666 Sir John Glyn, Knight, and his Majesty's Ancient Serjeant.- This was the Glyn who pressed the crown upon Oliver in an elaborate speech, which he actually repubhshed after the Restoration, in proof of his royalism, with the title, " Monarchy asserted to be the Best, Most Ancient, and Legal Form of Government " ! Hawartlen belonged to a batch of domains expressly named in the bill of restitution, the fate of which has been already told.^ In the hands of Glyn, however, it remained, and was inherited by his descendants, in the possession of one of whom. Sir Stephen Glynne, Bart., it now is. Hawarden Castle, Flint- shire, is the country-residence of the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, married to a sister of this Sir Stephen Glynne — a fact rather curious to consider when it is remembered what has been the part played by the late and by the present Earl of Derby on the political stage of England in relation to that Right Honourable gentleman. ' "Was not the King by proclamaiion, Declared a rebel all o'er the nation ? Did not the learned Glyn and Maynard, To make good subjects traitors strain hard ? " — Butler's Hudibras. 2 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justice! (London, 1849), J- 435-43- 8 See Raines, ii. cclxxiii-vi 206 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES, VTIL BOOTH THE PL A YER* "pUSH your way through the sliabby swing-door that admits into the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, and on the right hand the first monument that meets your eye is that of the Elizabethan Michael Drayton, with an epitaph by Ben Jonson. Next to Drayton, on the same side, is a medallion bust (with Roman toga flowing from the shoulders), showing in profile a handsome, spirited face. Overhead two cherubs suspend a laurel crown, and one of them unfolds a scroll, the inscription on which is mainly obliterated, though enough remains to tell that the monu- ment was erected " in memory of Barton Booth, Esq." This famous actor sprang from the ancient and honourable family of the Booths of Barton (in the parish of Eccles), one closely allied to the old Earls of Warrington, and which, in the reign of Henry VI., gave two archbishops to the see of York, and in their persons two chancellors to England. He was the third and youngest son of "John Booth, Esq., of Barton," and was born in Lancashire, in 1681, the year before the amalgamation of the King's players under Killi- * Chetwood's General History of the Stage (London, 1749), § "Barton Booth, Esq." ; The Life and Character of Barton Booth, Esq., by Victor (London, 1733) ; Theophilus Gibber's Lives and Characters of the Most Eminent Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1753), part I., "The Life of Barton Booth, Esq."; Biografhia Britannica, § Barton Booth ; CoUey Gibber's Apology (London. 1830) ; Lucy Aikin's Life of Addison ; Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, BOOTH THE PLAYER. 20/ grew with the Duke's players under Davenant, and their earliest conjoint performance at Drury Lane Theatre, Dryden furnishing both prologue and epilogue on the great occasion. " Blood and culture " united to form the future friend of Bolingbroke, and first performer of the hero of Addison's "Cato." He was in his third year when his father, in embarrassed circumstances, removed to London to push the family fortunes, and in his ninth he was sent to Westminster School, then presided over by the terrible Dr Busby, a pedagogue, with all his severity, however, quick to discern any promise in a pupil. Barton's own phrase subsequently, when he had to mention the place of his education, was that he had been " under the correction " of Dr Busby, but he himself was a favourite pupil. He turned out a good scholar, showing for Horace a special relish, which he retained in after-life ; and Chetwood, the prompter,, records his habit in later years, of " taking a classic " from his shelves, and reading it off in the most " elegant English." At school he betrayed the qualities which beckon their possessor to the stage. Knipe, Busby's successor in the head-mastership of Westminster, told the writer of the elaborate memoir with which Booth was honoured by the "BiographiaBritannica" that in the routine of lesson-saying the little Lancashire boy " repeated passages from the classics with such action and feeling that he was taken notice of by the whole school," and among Booth's school- fellows was Nicholas Rowe, afterAvards a famous dramatist and Shakespearian editor and biographer. BoQth's doom was sealed when Busby praised and his fellow-pupils applauded his Pamphilus in the " Andria,'' at the annual per- formance of a Latin play, the fine old custom still kept up at Westminster. Soon after this approval Busby died, and Booth's father, angry at his son's inclination for the stage, 208 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. used to say that " the old man had poisoned liim with his last breath." Mr Booth of Barton intended his hopeful for the Church, and, at seventeen, the youth was told to be in readiness for " the university." According to one rather apocryphal- looking account of his early hfe, he really did go to Trinity College, Cambridge, but soon decamped from it with a company of strolling players, and only after a series of romantic adventures, including a reconciliation with his angry family, found himself on the Dublin boards. He certainly acted at Dublin in 1698, and he told Chet- wood of a mishap which befell him on the night of his first appearance in the Irish metropolis. He was playing the hero in Southern's now all but forgotten " Oroonoko," a so- called tragedy, in which a stratum of rant is superimposed on a lower formation of the coarsest indecency. The night was hot ; and, before going on the stage. Booth wiped his face, forgetting that it had been blacked to suit the part. When he came forward, he had, he said himself, " the appearance of a chimney-sweeper," and the laughter with which the audience greeted him was anything but appropriate to the effect which he wished to produce. It says something for his powers that, in spite of this contretemps, he was success- ful. His " Oroonoko" brought him five guineas at a time when, as he avowed in confidential moments, " his last shilling was reduced to brass." His career in Dublin was of a kind to bind him firmly to the stage, and, after two or three years, he returned to England with the reputation of an actor of the highest promise. At this time he appears really to have effected a recon- ciliation with his family, fear of whose anger is said to have prevented Betterton, at a former period, from acceding to his request to be allowed to try his chance on the London boards. However this may have been, he secured friends BOOTH THE PLAYER. 2O9 in higher spheres, and Betterton at once accepted his services on the introduction of Lord Fitzhardinge, a Lord of the Bed-chamber to Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne. Booth's first appearance was in or about the opening year of that sovereign's reign. He played Maximus in Lord Rochester's " Valentinian," and soon afterwards, his old school-fellow Rowe producing the "Ambitious Stepmother," assigned to him the part of Arta- ban. Betterton was growing old, and it was not long before public opinion decided that his successor would be this handsome and stately young Lancashire gentleman, whose " style," from what we read of his great dignity of mien, seems to have prefigured John Kemble, and whose voice, says Victor, was " completely harmonious, from the softness of the flute to the extent of the trumpet." The veteran Betterton, who had been taught by Davenant how Hamlet was played in Shakespeare's own day, died in 17 10, and Booth was proclaimed his successor. His only rival was Wilks, a more versatile actor than himself, and a better performer of such parts as Sir Harry Wildair, but indis- putably his inferior in " pure " tragedy. The year after Betterton's death, Wilks, Colley Gibber (of "Provoked Husband" and "Apology" celebrity), and Dogget, the comedian (whose coat and badge are still rowed for by the London watermen on every first of August), became patentees and managers of Drury Lane. Before long, Booth himself was playing at the theatre of which his chief histrionic competitor, Wilks, was one of the managers. To be a patentee like the others becamtj, of course, his ambition, and it was one for the attainment of which he required not so much capital as the exertion of Gourt influence. The Drury Lane licence was granted by the Crown, and the Grown nominated the patentees. l\\ his previous career. Booth 2 D 210 LANCA SHIRE I VOR THIES. had not " pulled " well witli Gibber, Dogget, and Wilks, and for merely business reasons, apart from personal feel- ing, though this also contributed to their resistance, they wished to keep Booth from participating in their profits. Thus began a contest between Booth on the one side, and the patentees on the other, some of the details of which form very curious reading in the present age. Booth, as then befitted a man of his family and county, was a Tory, and he was befriended by Lord Bolingbroke, who, in the year of Betterton's death, had been appointed Secretary of State, when the Whigs, in a body, were ejected from oflice. Booth had Bolingbroke and other friends at Court, which was then much at Windsor. It gives a strange and a vivid notion of the interweavings of theatrical with political life in those days, to read of the stratagem by which the patentees endeavoured to keep Booth away from Windsor, They did not dare to dismiss him \ he was too great and popular an actor to quarrel with, and perhaps drive into managerial rivalry. Accordingly, they gave him part upon part, in order to retain him as much as possible in London. Booth " accepted the situation," which enabled him to gain a firmer hold on the admiration and affection of the play- going public, while, at the same time, he defeated the stratagem of his employers by another. Let us, however, give this odd episode of theatrical history in the words of Chetwood, the prompter, who had the story from Booth himself. " To prevent," quoth Chetwood, " his soliciting his patrons at Court, then at Windsor, they " — the patentees — " gave out plays every night, when Mr Booth had a prin- cipal part. Notwithstanding this step, he had a chariot and six of a nobleman's horses waiting for him at the end of a play, that whipt him the twenty miles in three hours, and brought him back to the business of the theatre the next night. He told me not one nobleman in the kingdom BOOTH THE PLAYER. 211 had SO many sets of horses at command as he had at that time, having no less than eight : the first set carrying him to llounslow from London, ten miles ; and the next set ready waiting with another chariot to carry him to Windsor." So great in those days was the influence of " blood and culture," even in the person of an actor, who happened, however, in Booth's case, to belong to the right side in politics, at least for the time being. These were the relations between Booth, the patentees of Drury, the public, and the Court, when there befell .a memorable dramatic and theatrical event, decidedly the greatest in his histrionic career. It came, too, at the very time to be of use of him. In the year 17 12, the cautious, careful, and nervous Mr Addison determined to finish and to bring at last on the stage the tragedy of " Cato," some acts of which had lain by him for many years, having, in fact, been written during his Italian tour, and before he was properly known to fame. In 17 12, the judicious as well as cautious Mr Addison thought that the time had arrived for the completion and production of his " Liberal " tragedy, and that, with himself and his friends flung out of office, it might be desirable, as CoUey Gibber puts it, to " animate the public with the sentiments of Cato." Of course there was little difliculty about the acceptance of the great Mr Addison's play, and nothing marks more clearly the his- trionic position which Booth had reached than tliat there was no hesitation in assigning to him the part of the hero. Many years before, when Steele read the first draught of the tragedy, he exclaimed, " Good God, what a part would Betterton make of Cato ! " Betterton was gone, but here was Booth ; nor did Gibber and Wilks, though they had a grudge at him, and he was merely a servant of theirs, for a moment dream of giving the part to any one else. Gibber was to play Syphax, Wilks Juba, and the only question with 212 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. them was whether, being a young man, Booth might not object to representing so old a personage. He was waited on, accordingly, with a respectful request, approaching to a petition, that he would undertake Cato, and thus, as it were, "oblige the management." Booth saw what a grand oppor- tunity was presented to him, and was overjoyed at the offer, but carefully dissembled his satisfaction, and pretended to be the obliger instead of the obliged. The rehearsals took place — Swift, in his " Journal to Stella," has chronicled in a characteristic jotting his presence at one of them^ — and at last the eventful day arrived, on the morning of which the London Daily Courant contained the interesting announce- ment : — '• Never Acted Before. By Her Majesty's Company of Comedians. At the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, this present Tuesday, being the 14th of April, will be represented a new Tragedy call'd Cato." The "town" was in a state of the greatest excitement, and the chiefs and rank and file of both political parties had deter- mined to muster in force, and show that each claimed the Roman patriot as its own. On the Friday week before. Good Friday as it chanced, Bolingbroke's younger brother, George, had arrived at Whitehall with a packet containing the Treaty of Utrecht, signed and sealed ; and, as soon as the welcome document was received, another sweep was made of the few remaining members of the Opposition still in office. Never had the Whigs been so angry with the Tories, and the performance of "Cato" was looked forward to as ^ "I was this morning at ten at the rehearsal of Mr Addison's play called ' Cato,' which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above a half a score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them, and the drab that acts Cato's daughter out in the midst of a passionate part, and then calling out, ' What 's next ? ' " — Journal to Stella, April 6, 1 7 13. The " drab '' was Mrs Oldfield, Pope's " poor Narcissa," and the generous benefactress of Richard Savage. BOOTH THE PLAYER. 21^ affording an opportunity for a demonstration against tlie Government. But there sate Bolingbroke, radiant, in the stage-box, and applauding Tories on one side of the house echoed the claps of Whigs on the other. ^ The vic- tory was with Bolingbroke, who, by the neatest of turns, converted the triumph of the Whig dramatist into a Tory one. An attempt had been made by the Whigs, when in office, to nominate their military favourite, the Duke of Marlborough, Captain-General ; and, after one of the acts, Bolingbroke, sending for Booth, presented him with fifty guineas, " for defending,'' as he expressed it, " the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual Dictator." Booth's act- ing on the occasion is represented as having been very fine, and the part remained one of the best in his repertory. But his triumph was partly due to extraneous circumstances, and 1 " The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by Tories on the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the heart than the head. This was the case, too, of the prologue-writer" — Pope himself — "who was clapped into a staunch Whig at almost every two lines. I believe you have heard that after all the applause of the opposite factions, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual Dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same Cato, very speedily : in the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side ; so betwixt them it is possible that Cato (as Dr Garth expressed it) may have some- thing to live upon after he dies." — Pope to Sir IVilluim Trumbull^ April 30, 1713. There are several allusions to Booth in Pope's verse, the most noticeable of them being that in the well-knov\'n lines which preserve the costume in which he played Cato : — " Booth enters — hark ! the universal peal I ' But has he spoken?' Not a syllable. What shook the -stage, and made the people stare 5 Cato's long wig, flow'r'd gown, and lacquer'd chair. *• 2 14 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. to the adroitness of Bolingbroke. It gained him, however, the coveted position of patentee, and he shared, nearly to the end of his days, with Gibber and Wilks (Dogget retiring in disgust), the profits and perils of managerial proprietor- ship. Cato had a greater " run " than was known to have been enjoyed by any piece acted until then, and reverting to the time at which it was produced, CoUey Gibber exclaims, with retrospective enthusiasm, " This, then, was that happy period when both actors and managers were in their highest enjoyment of general content and prosperity. Now it was that the politer world, too, by their decent attention, their sensible taste, and their generous encouragements to authors and actors, once more saw that the stage, under a due regulation, was capable of being what the wisest ages thought it might be — the most rational scheme that human wit could form to dissipate with innocence the cares of life, to allure even the turbulent or ill-disposed from worse medi- tations, and to give the leisure hours of business and virtue an instructive recreation." ^ Joys too bright to last ! The remainder of Booth's life was for the most part tranquil and prosperous, if clouded towards the close by ill health. He lived long enough to know himself ranked among the masters of his art, and few successes could have pleased him more than the tribute paid to his fame by the Westminster boys, proud of the great actor whom their cloisters had sent forth. A it^^ years before his death he had the satisfaction of hearing himself complimented in an epilogue to the annual Westminster play, one line of which declared that "Old Roscius to our Booth must bow," and with the mention of his name, the ancient dormitory, ^^•e may be sure, rang with applause. ' Apology, p. 256. BOOTH THE PLAYER. 21 5 After the death of his first wife (the daughter of a Norfolk baronet), and the termination, under circumstances most honourable to him, of a subsequent liaison, Booth had married Hester Santlow (Gay's "Santlow famed for dance"), a beautiful dansmse who developed into an actress, and who, though she had been the mistress of the great Duke of Marlborough, made him a most excellent wife. He cele- brated her charms and her merits in enthusiastic verse, some of it written, be it noted, years after marriage. She weaned him from his only vice, the bottle, and had to take care lest, as sometimes happens with modern votaries of so- called temperance, he did not. rush from the extreme ot drinking into the extreme of eating. "I have known Mrs Booth," says Chetwood, "out of extreme tenderness to him, order the table to be removed, for fear of overcharging his stomach." He died on the loth of May 1733, ''- wealthy man, leaving much property in town and country, and was buried in the Church of Cowley, near Uxbridge, in Middle- sex, where some of it lay. Nearly forty years afterwards, in 1772, his widow erected the monument in Poets' Corner. This is not the only memorial of him still surviving in the vicinity of the famous school where he first learned to be an actor. Behind Westminster Abbey lurk two quaint little streets, running at right angles with each other, and the appearance of which, unchanged after the lapse of a century and a half, or more, bespeaks them of the age of Queen Anne, or of the first of the Georges. They were built by Booth, who called them Barton Street and Cowley Street, names that explain themselves, and which they still retain. We always think of Barton Booth as " a scholar and a gentleman." He was apt to act carelessly when the house was thin. On one such occasion, and having suddenly exchanged languor for fire and energy, he replied, when afterwards asked the reason, " I saw an Oxford man in the 2l6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. pit for whose judgment I had more respect than for that of the rest of the audience " — an anecdote as characteristic as anything that has been recorded of him. " He was," we are told, " no great speaker in company, but when he did, it was in a grave, lofty way, not at all unlike his pronunciation on the stage." Theophilus Gibber (Coney's son) says, in his Memoir of Booth : " He had the deportment of a nobleman, and so well became a star and garter he seemed born to it." So long as histrionic success bestows celebrity, the name of Barton Booth will shine with a certain lustre of its own in the annals of the British stage. And, as Dean Stanley reminds us, "his surname has acquired a fatal celebrity from his descendant Wilks Booth, who followed in his ancestor's profession, and by the knowledge so gained, assassinated President Lincoln -in Ford's Theatre at Wash- ington, on Good Friday 1865." JOHN BY ROM. 2\J IX. JOHN BY ROM* TN the year 1725, " the town" rang one summer clay with an epigram which had appeared in the papers of the morning, and which has since become classical. Few people remember the Treaty of Vienna, concluded in that year, or the rumours produced by it of a coming European conflict, in which the belligerents of the Spanish Succession war were to change partners, and Spain and Ger- many to be ranged against England and France. But thanks to this epigram everybody remembers the bloodless, though not inkless, war of 1725, between the English partisans of Handel the celebrated, and his Italian rival, Bononcini, the otherwise forgotten. An illustration, which no amount of use and familiarity seems to hackney, is still borrowed by speakers and writers from the well-known lines : — " Some say, compared to Bononcini, That Mynheer Handel 's but a ninny , Others aver, that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle : Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee ! " The wits of London attributed the epigram to the great Dr Swift, at or about that time deep in the composition of * The Private yournal and Literary Remains oj John Byrom : edited by Richard Parkinson, D.D. (Manchester, 1854-7.), being vols. x.\xii., xxxiv., xl., and xliv. of the Chetham Society's publications. Byrom's Miscellaneous Poems (Leeds, 1814). Biographia Britannica, § John Byrom. Chalmers's English Poets (London, i8io\ vol. xv. Monk's Life of Bentlcy (London, 1830.) Victor Schoelcher's Life of Handel. The Spectator. Gibbon's Atitobiogj-aphy, &c. ^ 2l8 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. '' Gulliver." It has often since been printed in Swift's works, and Handel's latest biographer reproaches Swift with its authorship. Speaking, not many years ago, of the feud between the Handelists and the Bononcinists, M. Victor Schoelcher refers to the famous lines, and says querulously : "Swift, who admired nothing, and who had no ear, wrote an epigram upon the subject" — and for his own part, M. Schoelcher considers " the angry injustice of the nobles " who caballed against Handel, " far preferable to the empty eclecticism of the Dean of St Patrick's." Handel's bio- grapher might have saved himself the trouble of throwing this stone at " the Dean of St Patrick's." Though the epi- gram may be very much " in the manner of Dr Swift," yet in reality it is none of hi3. Its author was undoubtedly John Byrom, a Lancashire man, and one of the first natives of his county who gained a position in the literature of his country. Byrom's verse figured in the old-fashioned, many- volumed collections of the English poets ; his life is in the " Biographia Britannica " ; the system of short-hand which he invented makes him conspicuous in the annals of steno- graphy. He was a man of mark in his day and generation ; while of late years attention has been recalled to him, and new light been thrown on his character and career, through the discovery of his private journal, and its appearance among the publications of the Chetham Society. John Byrom merits a place in any Gallery of Lancashire Worthies, and the details which he has given of himself in his journal, lighten in some respects the task of the delineator. The Byroms were what the biographers of last century called "a genteel family," belonging to the lesser squire- archy, and they contributed to the fashionable world of London, in the first half of the eighteenth century, a " Beau Byrom," who wasted his substance about town, and is still faintly remembered as a predecessor of the Nashes JOHN BY ROM. 2ig and Biummells. The Byroms of Kersall, near Manchester, the branch which produced the poet and stenographer, had diverged into trade, by a process the reverse of that which takes place now, when successful commerce buys land and seeks a footing among the county families. Long before the inventions of Hargreaves, ArkwTight, and Crompton, and the enormous impetus which they gave to the stajile industry of Lancashire, Manchester and the cotton trade were growing at a rate considered rapid by our slower fore- fathers; and Dr Aikin notes that "in George the First's reign many country gentlemen began to send their sons apprentices to Manchester." John Byrom's father is styled " a linen draper," which meant a great deal more then than now. He seems to have been what we should call " a Man- chester warehouseman," and had a place of business in London- as well as in Manchester. John, his second son, was born in 1691, and being a clever boy, was destined for a ]:)rofessional, not a commercial career, while his elder brother was brought up in " the business." He was sent to school at Chester, and thence, probably with the aid of his father's city connections, he migrated to Merchant Taylors', still a famous London public school. There he studied with such distinction that, in 1709, he was admitted a pen- sioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, of which the great Bentley was master. While at college he was carefully watched in the distance by his father, some of whose letters to him ha\e been preserved, and they are not without interest. " Dear son John " — it was thus a Manchester trader admonished his son at college in the reign of Queen Anne — " I wrote to you by Mr Brookes, and sent you a piece of gold for a token. ... As for your wig, let us know whether you will have it a natural one, or wherein you would have it differ from such as Mr Banks wears, or Mr Edmondson, Mr Worsley's tutor. I took it as a piece of 220 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. extravagancy, the giving a guinea for altering the last in London, and no doubt but you were cheated, and worse hair for your own put in. So I say, write to us when you have noted those gentlemen's wigs, wherein you would have yours differ, and we will venture it, and so you may be sure of your sister's good hair and no cheat, as you will certainly be if made in London." Fancy a Manchester young lady now, in this age of chignons, sacrificing her locks to eke out the wig of her clever brother at Cambridge ! Altogether the style of living in those days in Manchester is scarcely con- ceivable at present. In the early decade of the eighteenth century an " eminent manufacturer " in Manchester was at his warehouse at six in the morning. At seven, he and his children and apprentices took "a plain breakfast " together. In the centre of the group was " one large dish of water pot- tage, made of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled thick and poured intoadish." At its side was "a pan or basin of milk," and each dipped his wooden spoon first into the one and then into the other, until Paterfamilias said, "Hold, enough." ^ The other refections of the day harmonised with this their homely prelude. The veracious Aikin records of "an even- ing club of the most opulent manufacturers " of the same period, that " the expenses of each person were fixed at fourpence halfpenny, fourpence for ale and a halfpenny for tobacco ! " ^ No wonder that a guinea for merely "altering" a wig seemed an " extravagancy " to old Mr Byrom, who could procure the raw material at a much lower cost from his daughter's head. Then the young gentleman had to be cautioned not only against profusion, but against heterodoxy, for Arianism, nay, materialism, was abroad. " I have not," proceeds the worthy Manchester trader, " Mr Locke's Book of Human 1 Aikin's Description of the Country rotDid Manchester, p. 183. = P. 188. JOHN BY ROM. 221 Understanding : it is above my capacity, nor was I ever fond of that author, he being (though a very learned man) a Socinian or an Atheist, as to which controversy I desire you not to trouble yourself with it in your younger studies. I look upon it as a snare of the devil, thrown among sharp wits and ingenuous youths, to oppose their reason to reve- lation, and, because they cannot apprehend reason, to make them sceptics, and so entice them to read other books than the Bible and the comments upon it. ... I had thought to have concluded here, but I am alone this evening, and shall observe to you two things I noted in the psalm and lessons for this morning's service," &c., &c. After some further references to Bible commentaries which he had been reading, the fond parent adds, almost patheti- cally : " If I have, by the few books I have, so much delightful reading, what pleasure may you have in the many works of so learned men your library and learning may peruse, if you apply to them ; and the pleasures of the mind much excel those of sense." To conclude with a Jittle domestic news : " Cousin Dicky and Betty have had the small-pox at Rochdale, and Cousin Anne at our house, and we are all well again ; and yesterday your sister Phoebe began, and I hope she will do well also. If your mother does not write, it is because she is busy attending my dear Phoebe." Small-pox was then a frequent and terrible scourge in English households, for Lady Mary Wortley Montague had not yet brought inoculation from the East, nor was Jenner even born. And Socinianism and Atheism were rampant ; worse pestilences than the small-pox. From such a father presiding over such a home, the young gentleman could learn nothing that was dangerous, unless it was Jacobitism, and the Byroms seem to have been Tories of the Tories. From an early age, piety and prudence were engrafted on his lively disposition, and they bore him good 222 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. fruit throughout life. In liis Lancashire home, Byrom acquired a love of domesticity and a relish for homely pleasures which never forsook him. " Brother John is most at Kersall," writes his sister of him to a friend, during the long vacation of 17 12, "he goes every night and morning down to the water-side, and bawls out one of TuUy's orations in Latin, so loud they can hear him a mile off; so that all the neighbourhood think he is mad, and you would think so too, if you saw him. Sometimes he threshes corn with John Rigby's men, and helps them to get potatoes, and works as hard as any of them. He is very good company, and we shall miss him when he is gone, which will not be long to, now ; Christmas is very near !" This cheerful and genial young gentleman, ready for any- thing, from spouting Cicero by the side of the then clear- flowing Irwell to threshing corn with John Rigby's men, was just the youth to become popular; and his college friends were many, and helpful to him throughout life. Among them was a Mr Thorp, " son of Archbishop Thorp," in whose company he learned short-hand (so useful in note-taking to a diligent reader of books and hearer of lectures), and dissatisfied with the cumbrous systems of stenography then in use, Byrom began already to frame one of his own, and to practise it sedulously. The studies of the place he prosecuted successfully, though his turn seems to have been more for classics, philology, and general literature, than for mathematics. His classics he must Have known well, otherwise no amount of geniality would have procured him the personal friendship of that grim Aristarch, the great Bentley, into whose family circle the young Lancashire scholar seems to have been admitted on fami- liar terms. With the Master of Trinity's nephew, " Tom," Byrom formed a firm intimacy ; and there was a daugliter, Joanna whom the great critic and her familiars called JOHN BY ROM. 223 " Jug." For lier Byrom is said to have entertained a peculiarly tender regard, in which case the young lady must have been prematurely fascinating, since, when Byrom is said to have celebrated her charms in verse, she was only at the unripe age of eleven. According to grave Bishop Monk, indeed, she was "the object of universal admira- tion for her beauty, wit, and accomplishments, and she is said from her earliest youth to have captivated the hearts of the young collegians." It was '' Jug" that read the daily Spectator to the grim Bentley, for so universal was the fascination exercised by Mr Addison's periodical that the slayer of Phalaris deigned to listen to it with pleasure, and is reported to have growled out an expression of regret when, lest Steele should spoil the character, Sir Roger de Coverley was hurried to the grave. Even in Johnson's time, to have written a paper in the Spectator was something that made you be pointed at in society ; and when that ingenious journal was in the full tide of popularity and success, the honour of contributing to it exceeded any that can be conceived in these days of universal scribbling and general print- ing. Byrom at Cambridge must have deemed it a day of days in his young existence when the Spectator for the 17th of August 17 14, made its appearance at the university, and he recognised for its contents a paper which he himself had written and sent, and which Mr Addison prefaced in this complimentary fashion : " By the last post, I received the following letter, which is built upon a thought that is new and very well carried on ; for which reasons I shall give it to the public without alteration, addition, or amendment." The lucky contribution, thus pleasantly welcomed by the great Mr Addison, was a mildly ethical disquisition on dreams and the re-appearance of waking thoughts in visions of the night, not at all of a 224 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. kind to produce a sensation now. " John Shadow," as its author signed himself, was soon known to be Byrom, and the fact stamped him as somebody. Perhaps he heard " Jug '"' pronounce something equivalent to the " how nice! " of our young-ladydom ; perhaps the stern Bentley's brows relaxed when the little piece was read, and its authorship divulged At any rate, according to general tradition, " Jug " was the heroine of the pastoral from Byrom's pen, which duly appeared in the columns of the same journal about a couple of months afterwards — on the 6th of October, to wit — Mr Spectator again introducing it in complimentary fashion, thus : " The following copy of verses comes from one of my correspondents, and has something in it so original that I do not much doubt but it will divert my readers." This " copy of verses " was the once famous " Colin and Phcebe ; " "the first production," says Alexander Chalmers, in his memoir of Byrom, " which brought him into general notice, and which was, as it continues to be, universally admired." Chalmers wrote in the first decade of the present century, and if "Colin and Phcebe" has ceased to be " universally admired," a popularity of nearly a hundred years is something to boast of; while even Bentley's comparatively recent, and decidedly solemn biographer, Bishop Monk (Sydney Smith's Simon of Glou- cester), pronounces it a piece " celebrated as one of the most exquisite specimens in existence " of playful poetry. Our Queen Anne was just dead, and Louis Quatorze was soon going to die, and Mr Alexander Pope had been a year or two at work upon his translation of the " Iliad," when Colin's lament for the absence of his Phoebe thrilled the hearts of the young ladies and young gentlemen of England : — 'S' " My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent, ' When Plicebe went with mc wherever I went, JOHN BY ROM. 225 Ten thousand sweet pleasures I felt in my breast : Sure never fond shepherd like Colin was blest I But now she has gone, and has left me behind, What a marvellous change on a sudden I find ! When things were as fine as could possibly be, I thought 'twas the spring, but alas ! it was she. •* When walking with Phoebe, what sights have I seen. Mow fair was the flower, how fresh was the green ! What a lively appearance the trees and the shade, The corn-fields and hedges and everything made ! But now she has left me, though all are still there, They none of them now so delightful appear : 'Twas nought but the magic, I find, of her eyes, Made so many beautiful prospects arise. *' Sweet music went with us both all the wood through. The lark, linnet, throstle, and nightingale, too ; Winds over us whispered, flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the grasshopper under our feet. But now she is absent, though still they sing on, The woods are but lonely, the melody 's gone : Her voice in the concert, as now I have found, Gave everything else its agreeable sound. " Rose, what is become of thy delicate hue ? And where is the violet's beautiful blue? Does aught of its sweetness the blossom beguile ? That meadow, those daisies, why do they now smile ? Ah ! rivals, I see what it was that you drest And made yourselves fine for — a place in her breast : You put on your colours to pleasure her eye, To be plucked by her hand, on her bosom to die." This is a sample of Byrom's pretty pastoral, and of the innocent erotics which pleased the girl of that period. If consolation was needed, Colin found it elsewhere, as will be seen anon. Some years afterwards, Phoebe made a match not unsuitable for the daughter of a Master of Trinity ; she married a (future) bishop. The happy prelate (as he became) was Dr Cumberland, Bishop successively of Clonfertand Kil- more, and from his union with the fair Miss Joanna Beniley 226 LANCAF,HIRR WORTHIES. sprang Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, whose Memoirs are still occasionally dipped into by the curious. His college-degree taken, Byrom had to choose a pro- fession. Either the Church or the Bar would have been a natural career for him, but it looks as if by this time he was rather deep in Jacobitism, and therefore, perhaps, it was that, for a season, he inclined to physic as the profession in which progress could be made with least dependence on the powers that were. At any rate, in 17 17, he crossed the Channel (the peace and the Treaty of Utrecht having re-opened France to English visitors), and resided for a year or so at Montpelier, where he attended medical classes. The editor of his journal surmises that politics had some- tliing to do witli his French visit, over which a certain mystery hangs. The rising of 1715 had been quelled, but there was a good deal of plotting in France, and elsewhere on the continent, to foment another Stuart insurrection in Britain, and Byrom, as a young and ardent Jacobite, may have been mixed up in it. In another year, however, he was back in London, without any definite prospects, and would have been glad to accept the librarianship of the Chetham Library, then vacant ; not, however, for its emolu- ments alone, but from that love, which never forsook him, of his native town. " I should be very willing," he writes from London, in 17 18, "to have the library. ... It would be better worth while than staying for a doubtful fellowship, where profit will be slow a coming : besides, 'tis in Manchester, which place I love entirely." In Byrom's case, there was a person, as well as a place to love, for he had been smitten by a fair cousin, a daughter of his father's brother, who was also in the Manchester trade. The cruel uncle seems to have objected to the match, apparently because the wooer was without profession or prospects, and possibly, too, because he looked upon JOHN BY ROM. 22/ him as eccentric and impracticable, since, during his resi- dence in France, Byrom had engrafted mysticism of the Fe'ne'lon school on a Jacobitism which was in itself dangerous to his success in life. The young lady's papa at last gave his consent, though probably not his approval, and in 17 21 the young couple were married. There is a tradition that Byrom, at or about this time, practised medicine in Manchester, which would account for his customary designation of Dr Byrom. But if so, he made nothing of it, and in this emergency it doubtless was that he bethought him of the new system of short-hand which he had elaborated, and of earning a livelihood by teaching it. To those who think of short-hand only as it is chiefly practised now, by parliamentary, legal, and general reporters for the press, the project may appear to have been unpromising. The newspapers of those days were not allowed to publish the proceedings of parliament ; and their reports of any kind were of the meagrest description, little needing or rewarding the industry of the stenographer. But, it must be remembered, short-hand was then, much more than now, practised by the higher and the educated classes. In a time of disputed succession, vigilant governmental super- vision of the individual, and frequent domiciliary seizures of papers by the authorities, short-hand seems to have served as a sort of private cypher, ^\'ith books, too, both dear and voluminous, and with the prevalent diligence of students and inquirers in heaping up manuscript collections de omni scibili, short-hand facilitated and abbreviated the labour of perpetual transcription. Last, not least, to keep a diary was a general practice, and the use of short-hand for that purpose baffled of course the impertinent curiosity of any stranger into whose hands one's daily jottings of sayings and doings, thoughts and feelings, might happen to fall. In the preceding generation, Mr Pepys had written 228 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. in short-hand his famous diary, which lay in the hbrary of Magdalen, undeciphered, almost to our own day. At present, if a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, were to begin life as a teacher of short-hand, his pupils would be chiefly among " gentlemen of the press : " it was to the upper and cultivated classes, on the contrary, that Byrom looked for his pupils, and there he found them. His system, though now exploded, or superseded, is said to be the parent of all now in vogue. It certainly was phonetic, and the principles on which it was based almost claimed for it the dignity of a science. In this way, it procured Byrom the honour of admission into the Royal Society, and enabled him to rank among his pupils Lord Chesterfield, the Duke of Devon- shire, Horace Walpole, Bishop Hoadley, Hartley the metaphysician, Lord Camden, and others, a list of whose names would excite the wondering envy of living pro- fessors of stenography. It was in London, of course, that Byrom mainly sought a market for lessons in an art and mystery for which there could have been little demand in the Manchester of his time. His home and his heart, however, were in his native town, where his wife and children remained, while he was doing business (in combination with harmless pleasure) in London, some months of every year, during a considerable portion of his life. It is of almost daily records of these visits to London [\\\\\\ occasional trips to Cambridge and his ahna mater) that the most interesting sections of his journal consists ; the jottings of his home life in Manches- ter being very meagre and inconsiderable. He takes horse from Manchester, say at noon on the Monday, " lies " at Lichfield on the Tuesday, and, jogging on by Oswestry, Daventry, Towcester, Stony Stratford, Barnet, and High- gate, does not hear the hum and see the lights of what was, even then^ the great city, until the night of Friday, con- JOHN BY ROM. 229 suming nearly as many days in the journey as hours are now required to perform it by rail, express. Arrived in London, he seeks out old friends, collegiate, Lancashire and Cheshire, clerical and legal. He gives lessons to old pupils, and beats up for new. Much of the day and evening is spent in coffee-houses, each with its type of visitors almost as strongly marked as that of the members of a London club of to-day. Here, chosen at random, is his photograph of a single day in London, done soon after his arrival on one of his periodical visit.s. The date is "April 22, 1725." "Rose at seven j called up Clowes ; went to George's coffee-house ; Harry Hatsel coming by in a coach, I went with him as far as the Horse Guards, when I went to Walker's with him till near ten : he showed me Burnet's book in Latin, that was printed, but not dispersed " — Dr Thomas Burnet's very curious book " Ue Statu Mortuorum," of the hrst edition of which a few copies only were printed " for private circulation " — " thence I went to Whitworth's ; he said his brother Frank had a mind to learn if he could " — Byrom's short- hand, of course — " and promised to send me word to Richard's when I should go to him " — to give the first lesson—" that the Duchess of Grafton had my Tunbridge verses and my psalm " — poetry of Byrom's, grave and gay, shown about in manuscript — "and likes them very well; that"— greater honour still— " Mr Pope was a subscriber to me," — a treatise on short-hand, by Byrom, always on the stocks. " Thence came to Richard's ; thence with Jemmy Ord, Holmes, Leycester, Cooper, to the Mitre," — not yet Johnson's and Bozzy's — " where I supped heartily. I went this afternoon "—bent on " practice"— " to St Dunstan's Church, and took down as much of Dr Lupton's sermon as I could in short-hand. Thence to the Royal Society ; Sir Isaac there" — the great Newton, a white-headed old gentle- 230 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. man of eighty-three. "Dr Jurin read several things of Cotton Mather's. Dr Stukeley," the Stonehenge antiquary, " spoke to me to print my book ; said that my Lord Harcourt and everybody would buy it. Dr Pierce at the" Royal "Society, and afterwards at Richard's, 'where I spoke to him and had some talk about short-hand, and he asked me to come and see him ; we were exceeding merry at the Mitre, and I was myself in very good humour." A day well spent, like hundreds of others recorded in the Journal, and many of which testify still more distinctly to Byrom's possession of the true Lancashire energy and push. Occasional verses on any conceivable subject Byrom threw off with the greatest ease, and the friends they procured him in high and cultivated society of course helped him to short-hand pupils. A few months before the entry just quoted occurs the following, which would settle the controversy, if there still were one, as to the authorship of the famous lines attributed to Swift: "June 25, 1725. My epigram upon Handel and Bononcini in the papers." ^Vith his powers, accomplishments, connections, and sociality, Byrom may have been much tempted to take up his residence in London, but if he felt the temptation, he resisted it successfully, and always returned to " Mrs Byrom, near the Old Church, Manchester." She seems to have preferred her native town to London, and where she was, Byrom's heart was. Wherever he goes, he never forgets her, or to write to her ; and if he has not celebrated this Phoebe in verse, his prose letters overflow with genuine tenderness for her : — '• And this, you see, is how I go on," he writes, after one of his circumstantial descriptions of his busy and occupied life in London ; " dull enough for me to be obliged to such an absence, but so it must be. I would give twopence halfpenny for a moment's talk with thee and my little wench. I am pretty well tired with walking up JOHN BY ROM. 23 I and down these long streets. Prithee, good girl, write to me as often as thou canst afford ; I have stepped into Richard's coffee-house to write this. . . . My dear, it is near ten, and I must get a mouthful of supper, would it were with thee; farewell, my dear. . . . Farewell, sweet- heart. Your constant admirer and lover, J. B." Again, when perhaps some friends had been urging him to settle in London and teach short-hand all the year round instead of by fits and starts, the good husband writes to his spouse : " I should have many scholars if I were to open shop, but my heart is at Manchester while thou and thine are there ; " and to Mrs B., presumably, Manchester was all the world. Thus, for years and years, between Manchester, London, and Cambridge, Byrom's life flowed on ; his greatest adven- ture an attack on the road to Cambridge, near Epping, by a highwayman, " in a red rug upon a high horse, who came out of the bushes, and, presenting a pistol first at the coachman, and then at the corporation within, with a volley of oaths demanded our money," and got it — an incident which Byrom has pleasantly versified in a poetical epistle to Martin Foulkes. Now and then, there is a little poli- tical excitement, as when Byrom has his usual business in London complicated by a commission to oppose in Parlia- ment the progress of such a measure as the Manchester Workhouse Bill, one which, with all respect for the wortliy man, seems to have been really a good measure, and to have been opposed tooth and nail by his friends and him- self, simply because its success would have thrown power into the hands of the Whigs. In the course of the pro- ceedings of a select committee on this Bill, Byrom tried to take notes, in his beloved short-hand, of what was going on, but was called to order, as thus narrated by himself: — " Before I go to Bedfordshire, I must tell you to get another petition ready to ofier to the House, tiiat a body may write 232 LANCASHIRE WORTH IRS. short-hand in the cause of one's country. I have ventured to stand the threats of a complamt and the danger of a committee, in defence of the natural right of exercising the noble art which I have acquired. At the last committee but one I was threatened by a Scotch knight, whom I provoked to execution of his said threatening yesterday, for, in the midst of Serjeant Darrell's reply, out he comes at the instigation of one Brereton, and suddenly and loud, he pronouncing these terrible words : ' To oadar, I speak to oadar, I desair to knaw if any man shil wrait here that is not a clairk or solicitour.' . . . If these attacks," quoth Byrom, " upon the liberty of short-hand men go on, I have a petition from all countries where our disciples dwell, and Manchester must lead 'em on." Again, some years afterwards, he jots : " To the Parliament-house, where I should have taken notes in an election, but an order was made yesterday to admit no strangers, the House being scarce able to hold its own members." Fearing an " unauthorised report," Orator Henley, too, the fashion- able preaching-quack of the time, still remembered by Pope's mention of him and his " gilt tub," tried to check Byrom's reporting zeal after a fashion thus described by himself : " As to Henley's turning me out, I went there one Wednesday night with Mr Dasy, senior, and took out my pen and wrote. His manager came to me and told me the Rector, as he called him, did not allow of writing. We had a long squabble ; sometimes I wrote, sometimes I gave over, for Mr Orator went on so much faster than usual that he took the only way to stop me. The man at last brought me my shilling, and desired me to walk off. I told him I should go when I thought fit. I was here to write, and I .shall as long as the Doctor preaches. ' Sir, he may have his discourse printed upon him.' ' Not by me, sir, I give you my word.'" Here is a JOHN BY ROM. 233 curious jotting on another Manchester Bill, by which the Legislature kindly allowed, on certain conditions, the sale of home-made and home-printed calicoes. On the 23rd of March 1736, Byrom writes to his wife: " Vv'ell, your Man- chester Cotton Bill is past the Lords. I am glad on't heartily, not only upon my countrymen's account, but for the respect which I bear to the vegetable nation " — Byrom, for his stomach's sake, indulged in occasional fits of vegetarianism. " Is there not some men's ware of it proper for me, for I have bought none yet ? " — so little did this Manchester man know of the manu- facture and use of printed calicoes. By way of varia- tion let there be given something of one conversation witli Bentley, who was always friendly to Byrom. The date is " 14th June 1735," when Bentley was seventy-three, and his quarrel with his college, or its visitor, had reached its acme. Byrom visiting him at Trinity Lodge, Bentley told him of his discovery of the digamma, called Epiphanius " an old rascal," &c. &c. " When Dr Walker went out for some- thing," Byrom proceeds, " he asked me how many children I had, and talked about the world," — in a rather rambling as well as melancholy strain, — " that the great men he had known had come to nothing, and the Duke of Marlborough whose family came to nothing and himself an idiot ; and said if the life of a man was two hundred it would be some- thing, that he might have three hundred of his posterity ; that boys and girls would take their own ways ; told how he had but ;i^8ooo in the world, and had lost ^^4000 in the South Sea; that his family must lose it ; that he had enough for himself; that he ate not much nor drank much ; that the newspapers were full of nothing but murders and robberies ; that we had a revolution for the sake of religion, and had less religion than ever we had " — not very cheerful talk. But the great episodes in Byrom's uneventful life — greater, 2 G 234 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. even, than his meetings and conversations with Bentley, War- burton, and Bishop Butler — were his occasional interviews with the master-mystic of the England of his time — William Law. Law, whose " Serious Call " first stirred with religious emotions the careless mind of young Samuel Johnson, was tutor to the father of Gibbon, the historian, who has given of him {in the autobiography) one of those stately characters which made Thackeray say that to be thus mentioned by Gibbon was like having your name inscribed on the dome of St Peter's. There are various interesting little notices of com- munings with Law in the green fields at Putney, and in the house of the Gibbons. It is curious indeed to note in Byrom's Journal the frequency of discussions on religion, in the miscel- laneous society which he moved in. Entries like the follow- ing are common in his diary : — " We had a supper of turbot, turkey, sweetbread, rabbit, and dessert of cherries, straw- berries, raspberries, a great custard— a mighty fine supper, in short ; and then up-stairs again to wine, and took punch in bottles. We stayed till past twelve, and then came away. We talked about persecution and prosecution, believing Chris- tianity, original sin ; and they all sung a song; but I did not, oecause I could not." And again, " We drank a bottle of French wine, and ate bread and cheese and butter, and took snuff, and he " — his entertainer — " was pleased to converse upon religious subjects." Byrom's religion, however mystical, was always cheerful, and for Calvinism he had a profound dis- taste. His many controversial poems are always light and kindly. Men of worth with whom he differed he could respect, and he gave them the go-by, when it was necessary, with an amiable ingenuity. " Mr Wesley," — the Rev. John, — he records once in his diary, " preaches at Moorfields and Kennington on Sunday morning and night ; he asked me if he should invite me to come and hear him ; ' Shall I in- vite you to stay at home ? ' said I. ' No,' said he. ' Then,' JOHN BY ROM. 235 says I, 'don't invite me to come'" — an anecdote charac- teristic of the man. Whether Byrom made what is vulgarly called a good thing of his short-hand, and his journeys to London to teach it, is not recorded, nor do his biographers give the precise date of the death of his elder brother, Edward Byrom, " without issue," by which event he became " owner of the family estates at Kersall," and was enabled to pass the rest of his days in ease and quietness. To judge from various indications in his "Remains," he seems to have been enjoying his otium cum dig. at the time of the rebel- lion of 1745, when, on the successful march as far as Derby, Manchester is said to have been taken for Prince Charles Edward by " a sergeant, a drum, and a woman." Byrom's Jacobite zeal was still strong, but age had tempered it with discretion, a fact to which we have significant testimony in the diary of his daughter during the occupation of ]\Ian- chester by the Jacobite forces. On the night of the arrival of the rebels in Manchester, the young lady {atat 23), who does not conceal her exultation, jots (28th November 1745) : " My papa took care of me to the Cross, where I saw them all : it is a very fine moonlight night." Other entries are conclusive as to Byrom's cautious behaviour at this crisis. For instance : " My papa and my uncle are gone to consult with Mr Croxton, Mr Fielden, and others, how to keep themselves out of any scrape and yet behave civilly," which bespeaks more prudence than ardour. Still more significant is the fair and enthusiastic young Jacobite's account of the very peculiar way in which Byrom paid his homage to the young Pretender. On Saturday the 30th November 1745, Byrom's daughter thus jots again: "St Andrew's Day ; more crosses making till twelve o'clock. Then I dressed me up in my white gown and went up to my Aunt Brearclifte's, and an ofticcr called on us to go see 236 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. the Prince " — Charles Edward, then in full occupation of Manchester. " We went to Mr Fletcher's and saw him get a-horseback, and a noble sight it is. I would not have missed it for a great deal of money. His horse had stood an hour in the court without stirring, and as soon as he got on, he " — the horse, that is — " began a- dancing and caper- ing as if he was proud of the burden, and when he rid out of the court, he was received with as much joy and shout- ing almost as if he had been king without any dispute ; indeed I think scarce anybody that saw him could dispute it. As soon as he was gone, the ofificers and us " — such was the grammar of a Manchester young lady in the year 1745 — " went to prayers at the old church at two o'clock, by their orders, or else there has been none since they came. Mr Shrigley read prayers. He prayed for the King and the Prince of Wales, and named no names" — hke a prudent man and clergyman. "Then we all called at our house and eat a queen-cake and " drank " a glass of wine, for we got no dinner. Then the ofificers went with us all to the Camp Field to see the artillery. Called at my uncle's, and then went up to Mr Fletcher. Stayed there till the Prince was at supper. Then the officer introduced us all into the room, stayed awhile and then went into the great parlour where the officers were dining. Sat by Mi Stark [ey]. They were all exceedingly civil and almost made us fuddled with drinking the P[rince]'s health, for we had had no dinner. We sat there till Secretary Murray came to let us know that the P[rince] was at leisure and had done supper. So we were all introduced, and had the honour to kiss his hand. My papa ivas fetched prisoner to do the sa?ne, as was Dr Deacon. Mr Cattell and Mrs Clayton " — the young lady adds significantly — " did it without. The latter said grace for him " — the Prince. " Then we went out and drank his health" — again!— "and so to Mr Fletcher, where my JOHN BY ROM. 237 mamma waited for us. My uncle had gone to pay his land tax " — to King George — " and then went home. When all was over, and Whig and Jacobite were reduced to a mere war of words, Byrom's pen was so active with squib and pasquinade, that he was dubbed the Poet Laureate of the Jacobites. To this period belong his lines — almost as well-known as the epigram on Handel and Bononcini : — " God bless the King ! I mean our Faith's defender, God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender ! But who Pretender is, or who is King, God bless us all, that's quite another thing ! '' The Pretender's cause was soon a lost one, and during most of the remainder of his existence, Byrom led a quiet life, poetising and studying his favourite theology, his angriest controversy arising out of some light metrical banter which he discharged at Warburton. The irascible Warburton, while angry with even so playful an antagonist as Byrom, spoke of him as certainly " a man of genius," and declared that his " poetical epistles, were it not for some unaccount- able negligences in his verse and language, would show us that he has hit upon the right style for familiar didactic epistles in verse." Byrom indeed seems to have been in- capable of harbouring even the odium theologicum. His religious feeling, though sincere and fervid, was not very profound, and an inquisitor or a fanatic could never have been made out of the man who often handles, thougli with perfect reverence, the most sacred themes in the lightest and gayest of jingles. Some of his poems of this later period were written to be spoken at the annual breaking up of the Free Grammar School of Manchester, and include his version of the " Three Black Crows," and other pieces still, or till very lately, popular in Lancashire. Byrom, too, may be regarded as one of the creators of the vernacular literature of his native county — his '•' Lancashire Dialogue, 238 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. occasioned by a clergyman preaching without notes," and two others, being among the earliest pieces of any sig- nificance composed in the Lancashire dialect. They are printed in the collective edition of his works, with an English translation at the foot of each page, but Chal- mers omits them in his edition of the English poets, " as unintelligible to readers in general ! " Byrom died, in ripe old age, on the 26th of September 1763, and was buried in what is now the Byrom Chapel of the Cathedral Church of Manchester. Many little touches in his Journal, and some even in this slight sketch of him, mark the mighty difference between the Lancashire of his age and of ours. Yet perhaps nothing is more indicative of the gulf between then and now, than a legal document which appeared only after his career was closed. It is a direction " to the Constables of the Township of Man- chester," from " John Gee Booth, Esq., one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace," " to levy the sum of five pounds by distress and sale of the goods and chattels " which " John Byrom had at the time of his death," one moiety to go to the poor of the township, the other to the informer. Those who cared for the poet in his last moments had committed the offence, punishable thus, of burying him " in a shirt, shift, sheet, or shroud, not made of sheep's wool," contrary to the statute made when the woollen was the staple manu facture of England, and directed against the linen and the silk manufactures, for the subsequent rise of King Cotton was unforeseen and unsuspected. " ' Odious ! in woollen, 'twould a saint provoke,' Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke." Had " poor Narcissa '' consulted her lawyer, and cared to risk a posthumous penalty of five pounds, she might have been buried in what material she pleased. JOHN COLLIER. ( '* TLM BOBBIN.") 239 X. JOHN COLLIER. ('' TIM BOBBLNr )* JOHN COLLIER, much better known by his pseudonym of Tim Bobbin, shares with his contemporary John Byrom whatever honours were gained by the contributions of Lancashire to the Enghsh hterature of the eighteenth century. When worthy Dr Aikin pubUshed, some five-and- seventy years ago, his '•' Description of the Country round Manchester," the hterary biography of the region was repre- sented by memoirs of Byrom and Collier exclusively, nor does he seem to have been guilty of any glaring oversight. Both were humorists — Collier, however, more distinctly than Byrom \ both wrote prose as well as verse ; and they were about the first authors of any note — Byrom slightly, Collier conspicuously — to employ the broad, racy, and expressive Lancashire dialect as a literary vehicle. In the eyes of their contemporaries, Byrom was far the more celebrated of the two. The friend of Bentley, the expositor of Jacob Boehmen, in later years the wealthy owner of Kersal, would have pro- bably been indignant at a comparison of himself with the humble schoolmaster of Milnrow. For a long time, however, * The South Lancashire Dialect, by Thomas Heywood, Esq. (part ii. "Of Tim Bobbin and its Author"), in Chetham I\TisceUanies, vol. iii. (Manchester, 1862), being vol. Ivii. of the Chetham Society's publica- tions ; The Works of Titn Bobbin, Esq., with a memoir of the author by John Corry (Manchester, 1862) ; Edwin Waugh's Lancashire Sketches, third edition (Manchester, 1869) ; The Dialect 0/ South Lan- cashire, or Tim Bobbin's Tummits and Meary, &c.,by Samuel Bamford, second edition (London, 1854) ; .\ikin"s Description of the Country round Manchester, § " Life of John Collier, by Richard Townley, Esq.," &c., &c. 240 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Tim Bobbin's name has been very much more familiar to the people of his native county than Byrom's. This is clue partly to the fact that his most successful work was com- posed in the Lancashire dialect. When Byrom's verse was first admitted into a collection of the British poets, the editor peremptorily excluded his pieces in the Lancashire dialect, as has been noted in the sketch of that stenographic worthy. " The whirligig of time brings his revenges." For one reader of Byrom's metrical theosophy, there have been, and there are, thousands of Tim Bobbin's "Tummus and Meary." At the beginning of 17 lo, or the close of 1709 — the latter the year in which John Byrom proceeded with distinc- tion from Merchant Taylors' to Trinity College, Cambridge — the poor village schoolmaster of Urmston, in the parish of FUxton, had a third son born to him, the John Collier afterwards famous as Tim Bobbin. The parish register of Flixton was examined of late years by Edwin Waugh — who has written from personal exploration two pleasant and picturesque papers on Tim Bobbin's birthplace and cottage respectively — and Mr Waugh has made it clear that John Collier was baptized in the parish church of Flixton on the 6th January 17 10, not 1709, the year given in Baines's " History of Lancashire." ^ In Baines's time, there was still ^ " The origin of that mistake," says Mr Waugh (p. 96), " was evident, to me with the register before my eyes. The book seems to have been very irregularly kept in those clays ; and the baptisms in the year 1709 are entered under a head-line, ' Baptisms in the year 1 709 ; ' but at the end of the baptisms of that year the list runs on into those of the follow- ingyear, 1 710, without any such head-line todivide them ; and this entry of Tim's baptism being one of the first, might easily be transcribed by a hasty observer as belonging to the previous year." So far as this goes, the irregularity is more seeming than real, since, in those days, the civil and legal year did not begin until the 25th of March, and a baptism of January 17 10 would fall to be registered as belong- ing to 1 709. Mr Hey wood, in his careful sketch of Collier's biography, persists throughout in representing 170S as the year of the birth 1 JOHN COLLIER (" TIM BOBBIN ''). 24 1 extant the " small house," known as " Richard o' Jones's," in which Tim Bobbin was born. It modestly fronted Urmston Hall, a quaint, gabled, wood and plaster Elizabethan mansion, which has long been a farm-house, and which still looks away over the Mersey on a wide expanse of Cheshire meadow-ground. Tim Bobbin's birth-place has disappeared ; its site is occupied by one of the " four or five raw-looking, new brick cottages,'' tenanted by hand-loom weavers, which disappointed Mr Waugh's inquiring gaze. In spite of the hand-loom weavers and its vicinity to Manchester, the parish of Flixton is, and always has been, mainly agricultural, presenting the characteristics of a Cheshire rather than of a Lancashire district. Mr Waugh's literary pilgrimage was rewarded by few or no traditions of the Colliers. The only other distinct vestige of the residence of the Collier family in Flixton is the baptismal register of a brother of Tim Bobbin's, Nathan Collier, born in 1706. The schoolmaster of Flixton, John Collier, Tim Bobbin's father, born in 1682, descended from a family of small landholders settled at Newton in Mottraro, Cheshire. He was "Minister of Stretford" in 1706. In 1709 he is styled " Curate of Eccles." In 1 7 16 he was " admitted to perform or discharge the office of deacon atHollinfare(Hollin's Green)." He supported his family decently, gave them a tincture of education, and had even some thoughts of bringing up his clever young Jack for the Church, but at the age of 40 his hopes were disappointed and his efforts marred by the partial loss of his sight. There is a portrait of him, taken when he was about 50, " in a blue coat and scratch wig, sitting in a of tlie author of Tummus and Meary, apparently because that is the year given for the event in the handwriting of Collier himself on the fly-leaf of an old Bible. The authority, however, of the baptismal register cannot be impeached, and this is another proof how untrustworthy are the manuscript-contributions to family history found on the lly-leavcs of old Bibles. 2 11 242 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. large chair and reading a book, which he holds at a distance with both hands." The expression of the face in this portrait is said to be " acute." He died in 1739 at Newton in Mottram, Of the elder John Collier nothing more than this is known, except what Tim Bobbin, summing up his own early biography, has recorded of him in these few character- istic sentences. " In the reign of Queen Anne," quoth Tim, telling his own story in the third person, " he was a boy, and one of the nine children of a poor curate in Lancashire, whose stipend never amounted to thirty pounds a year, and con- sequently the family must feel the iron teeth of penury with a witness. These, indeed, were sometimes blunted by the charitable disposition of the good rector (the Rev. Mr Haddon of Wigton)" — a poet, by the way, and a friend of Byrom's. " So this T. B. lived as some other boys did, content with water-pottage, buttermilk, and jannock, till he was between 13 and 14 years of age, when Providence began to smile on him in his advancement to a pair of Dutch looms,^ when he met with treacle to his pottage, and sometimes a little in his buttermilk, or spread on his jannock. However, the reflection of his father's circumstances (which now and then start up and still edge his teeth) make him believe that Pluralists are no good Christians." The remembrance of his poor father, blind and half-starved, with nine children to bring up, and only thirty pounds a year to do it on, often recurred to Tim Bobbin when he saw reverend gentlemen around him growing obese and apoplectic on their pluralities 1 " The Dutch loom was brought to England by some Flemish aitizans, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and their principal settlement was at Bolton-le-Moors. Those who adopted them had an advantage over the old English looms. The shuttle was thrown and caught by the hands of the weaver, and the Dutch looms continued to be popular until the invention of Kay's fly-shuttle, for which there was a patent in 1733." — A'c?/^ by Canon Raines in Mr Hey wood's Sketch, P- 43- JOHN COLLIER {^' TLM BOBBIN''). 243 or Otherwise, and many a gibe he shot at them with his satirical tongue and pen in after-hfe, as they passed him on the road. It was not only in Lancashire, or to the eyes of one who had been born and bred a poor curate's son, that these contrasts were visible and offensive in the England of the first half of the eighteenth century. Tim Bobbin had scarcely begun to make himself known as a satirist, when (in 1742) Henry Fielding produced his first novel, Joseph Andrews, with its portraits of Parson Trulliber and Parson Adams. " Went 'prentice in May, 1722," is Tim's further accountof himself, " to one Johnson, a Dutch-loom weaver, at Newton Moor, in the parish of Mottram ,but, hating slavery in all shapes, I, by Divine Providence, vailing my skull-cap to the mitres, in November 1727 commenced schoolmaster at Milnrow." It seems probable that, half-way or so in his apprenticeship, he persuaded his master to cancel his indentures, and ex- changed the sedentary life of a weaver for pretty constant movement as an itinerating schoolmaster. No doubt he had picked up from his father some of the elements of the pedagogic art, and had been a quick learner of what the poor schoolmaster of Flixton could teach him. No doubt, too, he had read his book more or less diligently in the inter- vals of business at the loom. Wliether, with his then stock of knowledge, he would have been a " certificated teacher " in these days is uncertain, but in those there were no National schools, the Trullibers not having been superseded by a better and more useful clerical race; and Tim, flinging himself on the world as a travelling schoolmaster, found a tolerable welcome in the district which he selected for his perambulations. Bury, Middleton, Oldham, Roclidale, and the neighbouring villages, are said to have formed the sphere of his pedagogic operations, and at his head-quarters, wherever they may have been, he kept a night as well as a 244 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. day school. The " factory system " was yet a long way off, and the woollen, the chief manufacture of the time and district, was carried on at home, family-fashion, in com- bination with small farming, after the primitive and whole- some style of which there will hereafter fall something to be said. A thorough knowledge of the Lancashire dialect, nowhere so pure as in that district, Tim could not fail to acquire as he shifted his tent from village to village, and he began early to note down what was quaintest and raciest in its phraseology. The oddities and peculiarities of Lancashire rusticity were forced on his atten- tion, and the eye of the young humourist was not slow to apprehend and seize them. But whatever his acquisitions as learner in the course of his rambling life, his pecuniary gains as a teacher must have been of the slenderest kind. At seventeen poor Tim was glad to settle down on ten pounds a year, as assistant in a free school in the village of Milnrow, near Rochdale. The master, a Mr Pearson, was also the curate of Milnrow, and the whole salary which he divided with his assistant was twenty pounds a year. The school had been built, and its masters were nominated, by Mr Townley, of Belfield Hall, near Milnrow, whose son. Colonel Townley, became a steady patron of Tim's during his life, and his biographer after death. According to Colonel Townley, the ten pounds a year at Milnrow " Tim considered as a material advance in the world, as he still could have a night-school, which answered very well in that very populous neighbourhood, and was considered by him, too, as a state of independency, a favourite idea ever afterwards with his high spirit. Mr Pearson not very long afterwards falling a martyr to the gout, my honoured father gave Mr Collier the school, which not only made him happy in the thought of being more inde- pendent, but made him consider himself a rich man." JOHN COLLIER (" TIM DOBBIN "), 245 The death of Pearson and the accession ofCollieroccurredin I739,butitwas not until 1742 that the new master did, in point of fact, " vail his skull-cap to the mitres," or in other words, procure a licence from the Bishop of the diocese. Only twelve of the pupils were taught gratis — the others paid fees which went into the pocket of "the principal/' and Tim had now an assistant to drudge for him as he himself had drudged for Pearson. Horace, in his Sabine farm, was not more contented than Tim Bobbin at Milnrow, with MrTovvnley of Belfield for his McTcenas. He found himself rich enough to drop the night-school, although, at Whitsun and Christmas, he still paid teaching-visits to Oldham and Rochdale. His affluent leisure he turned to good account ; and " self-culture " was familiar to him as a fact, though the phrase had not been invented in his day. He learned the theory of drawing, for the practice of which Nature had given him a genius of his own. He taught himself to play " the hautboy and the common flute, and upon the former he very much excelled." He began to scribble, in prose and verse, little squibs on the fools and knaves of his acquaintance (" The Blackbird," a rhymed satire on Justice Edward Chetham, of Castleton, a barrister and wealthy neighbour, one of his earliest pieces, is dated 1739), and to draw heads from Nature, always with a twist of caricature or the grotesque. His society was courted by high and low, and probably, during his first years in his new situation, there was not a happier young fellow in England than Mr John Collier, schoolmaster of Milnrow. He seems to have been a bit of a buck, too, and what with his village-dandyism, his talents and accomplishments, and the twenty pounds a year of certain income, he was looked \\\^o\\ as a desirable match by the lasses of Milnrow and its neighbourhood. The conquering heroine came at last in the person of a Miss Mary Clay, a handsome young woman of good up- 246 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. bringing and connections. She was the daughter of " Mr Clay of Flockton, near Wakefield," and "had been brought up at Ledston, the seat of Lady Betty Hastings," once well known for her piety and munificence, among other things the benefactress of Queen's College, Oxford. Furthermore, ere she arrived on the visit to her aunt, Mrs Butter- worth, at Milnrow, when she captivated the school- master thereof, she had received a metropolitan poHsh during a stay of several years in London with another aunt, Mrs Pitt, "a woman of property, and married to Mr Pitt, an officer in the Tower." Such a damsel as this descending on rustic Milnrow, from the splendours of London, found, of course, many admirers, and it is to her credit that " schoolmaster " proved to be the happy man. On the I St of April 1744, they were married (the damsel being twenty-one, the bridegroom thirty-five), and an excel- lent wife she was to Tim, who needed, as it turned out, quite as much of the guardian as of the angel in his spouse. They settled down, one supposes, in the house which is, or very lately was, standing, and which has been lovingly described by Edwin Waugh in his paper on Tim Bobbin's Cottage. The old village of Milnrow, a mile and a half or so from Rochdale, " lies on the ground not unlike a tall tree laid lengthwise, in a valley, by a river side. At the bridge, its roots spread themselves in clots and fibrous shoots in all directions, while the almost branchless trunk runs up, with a little bend, above half a mile, towards Oldham, where it again spreads itself out in an umbrageous way at the little fold called Butterworth Hall," close to " the site once oc- cupied by one of the homesteads of the Byrons." About twenty yards from the west end of the bridge aforesaid spanning the little river Beal, "a lane leads between the ends of the dwelling-houses, down to the water-side. There still." that is at the time of Mr Waugh's visit, " stands the JOHN COLLIER (" TIM BOBBIN^). 2^J quaint, substantial cottage of John Collier, in the old gar- den by the edge of the river." We hear of the " uncom- mon thickness of the walls," the number and superior arrangement of the rooms, and " the remains of a fine old oak staircase ; " also that Tim was wont to decorate with the flowers of each season " the parlour, where he used to write and receive company, a little oblong room, low in the roof, and dimly lighted by a small window from the gar- den." Best of all, in the corner of this garden, " Tim had a roomy green arbour, with a smooth stone-table in the middle, on which lay his books, his flute, or his meals, as he was in the mood. He would stretch himself out here, and muse for hours together. The lads used to bring their tasks from the school, behind the house, to this arbour for Tim to examine. He had a green-shaded walk from the school into the garden. When in the school, or about the house, he wore a silk velvet skull-cap." The Savages and Boyses, his contemporaries, in their Grub-Street garrets and spunging-houses, might have envied Tim Bobbin his Lanca- shire cottage and garden on the banks of the little river Beal. Tim's idyllic existence, however, was not one of perfect innocence. Not only did Miss Mary Clay bring with her from Aunt Pitt, into wedded life, " several silk gowns and other elegant articles of female attire," the envy, probably, of surrounding matrons, but somebody, perhaps her father, is said to have given her a portion of three hundred pounds. According to proverbial philosophy, for ninety-nine men who can stand adversity, only one can stand prosperity, and Tim Bobbin's was not the one man's case and fate. The three hundred pounds melted away, it seems, in irregular joviality, and not until they were fairly gone was Tim himself again. His amendment, however, was so marked, and his wife so sensible, that she professed herself heartily glad that the money was all spent. A little family, too, began to grow 248 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. up about their knees, and Tim had to bestir himself to make both ends meet. It was to his pencil rather than to his pen, though the latter was seldom long idle, that he be- took himself, and altar-pieces for country churches and signs for inns flowed in profusion frou his prolific and catholic brush. "At Shaw Chapel, on each side of the east windows, are still large figures of Moses and Aaron, painted in oils on boards by him, and at Milnrow a figure of an angel with a trumpet in his mouth, and holding a scroll in one hand on which the psalm was announced from the singing- loft."^ When this vein was well-nigh exhausted he turned to caricature and the grotesque, the original power which he displayed making itself gradually felt. Tim shone in quantity, moreover, as well as in a sort of quality, and by dint of assiduous practice could, when he chose, turn out a head in a day or two, and a group in a week. He carried his performances, with the lowest prices afiixed, to a well- frequented inn at Rochdale or elsewhere, on the great road to Yorkshire: The friendly innkeeper was always ready to act the part of salesman, sometimes to make advances, and Tim's grotesques found purchasers, on speculation or otherwise, among the "riders," as the " commercial gentlemen " of those days were called, who journeyed from mart to mart on horseback, with samples and patterns in their saddle-bags. He learned to etch, and could thus reach more distant markets : one characteristic series which appeared in this way, " The Human Passions delineated," full of spirit and rough humour, was re-published in Manchester some fifteen years ago, from his original copper-plates re-touched. Meanwhile, Tim's pen was throwing off" many little pieces, in prose and verse, almost always satirical, and the bibliography of which has been much neglected. It seems to have been in 1 Heywood, p. 45. JOHN COLLIER i^' TIM BOBBIN'"). 249 1746^ that he published his famous Tumvms and Meary, the first genuine Lancashire classic, which was immediately successful, though poor Tim was robbed of a portion of his profits by the piracy of knavish printers and booksellers. He lived to see many editions of it appear under his own auspices, and numbers more have kept appearing down to our own day. Besides possessing obvious claims to perennial popularity in Lancashire, Ttnnmiis and Meary has a philological value from being a specimen of the Lan- cashire dialect as spoken at a time and in a district when and where it had received few alien admixtures. Samuel Bam- ford, indeed, detected in Tim's Lancashire vernacular several distinct importations from the Cheshire dialect, which may naturally have overflowed into the language of the inhabit- ants of Flixton, where Tim's boyhood was passed, not to speak of Mottram, where he was a weaver in early youth. By critics less keen this adulteration will scarcely be noticed, and while the dialect of Lancashire, as of other counties, continues to be studied, Tim Bobbin's broad and racy dia- logue willlong remain " the standard work on the subject." For the glossary, he read and used a good deal of old English, even dipping into Anglo-Saxon, of works in which, with English versions, he had made a collection. It was in the title-page of this dialogue, apparently, that Collier first dubbed himself " Tim Bobbin," the pseudonym which has almost obliterated his real name. Teaching, toping, painting, writing, a welcome guest in inn and hall, journeying sometimes as far as Newcastle and 1 In the Gentleman' s Magazine (vol. xvi. p. 527) for October 1 746, there is the following brief and frosty notice of Tummus and Meary : " We have received a Dialogue in the Lancashire Dialect, but as the peculiarity of it consists chiefly in a corrupt pronunciation of known words with few originals, and as the subject is dry and unentertaining, we shall only give a vocabulai7 of all the provincial real words, with some of the cor- ruptions, as a specimen ; and add a few lines of the performance." 2 I 250 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Liverpool to enjoy the hospitality of distant admirers, but ever keeping an eye to business and the sale of his heads, Tim Bobbin passed the remainder of his days with few vicissi- tudes more striking than the arrival of a new child, or an illness brought on by over-potations, and otherwise pun- ished, very properly, by a sound rating from his wife. Only one episode in the rest of his life is worth chronicling, and it is highly characteristic of the man. It seems to have been when he was at the zenith of his fame, five years after the publication of Tummus and Meary, that Tim received and accepted an offer of " commercial employment " from a Mr Hill, of Kibroyd and Halifax, in Yorkshire, " then one of the greatest cloth-merchants, and also one of the most considerable manufacturers of baizes and shalloons in the north of England." This magnate of the woollen trade was induced to make the offer partly from a wish to enjoy Tim's droll conversation, but partly also because the schoolmaster had some of the qualifications of a good clerk. Tim was not only, like Michael Cassio, a great arithmetician, but he wrote a hand literally like print, and, indeed, it seems very probable that in early days he had taught many a Lancashire child to read without book, by spelling out sentences written in his own caligraphy, in perfect imitation of letter-press. Tim accepted the Yorkshire offer of what is styled an " extravagant salary," though with a sad heart and dole- fiil presentiments. The Colonel Townley who became his biographer, and who meanwhile had become patron of the Milnrow school, records that, when Tim called to take his leave before starting for Yorkshire, he wept, and in faltering accents " entreated me not to be too hasty in filling up the vacancy in that school, where he had lived so many years contented and happy ; for he had already some foreboding that he should never relish his new JOHN COLLIER (" TIM BOBBIN^'). 25 I situation and new occupation." Poor Tim pleaded with tears in his eyes that it was for the sake of his '* wife and family" — the old story — that he was leaving Milnrow, and, there being two other free-schools in the district, the kind Townley gave and kept the desired promise. Setting forth on the 1 2th of June 1 75 1, with wife and chil- dren, with bag and baggage, Tim arrived at his destination; and was soon duly invested at Kibroyd with the dignity, and received the emoluments, of Mr Hill's head-clerk. The agreement was for several years, but a few months of " the desk's dull wood" were enough for Tim. Some of his letters of this period to friends have been preserved ; in one of them he breaks out ; " It is true I have more than double the salary" (than '' for swaying the birchen sceptre at Miln- row,") "and a grand house rent-free : ah, my friend ! what are these to pleasing liberty, to sweet, to calm contentment ? I must now take my farewell of all that made life worth preserving ; I must give up my painting, my rhyming, my bowHng, my tippling, and every inviting nonsense." Kibroyd is "a fresh scene of life which has brought me to my senses." From being a "little monarch" he is transformed into " a kind of slave." In another letter they are, he com- plains, "conspiring to make me rich; I am almost sick whenl hear two sixpences jingle together, and ready to swear at the sight of a guinea. By what I have seen here I have seen enough to satisfy me that he who has a bare competency, and can sleep soundly all night with his door open and never fear thieves, is the only happy man, and goes through life with the easiest burden. Such happy days have I seen at my old habitation in Lancashire, and I hope to see again, where, if you '11 come and see me, your old fa- vourite repast, muU'd ale and toast, shall be at your service." Before the first year of the engagement had expired the agreement was cancelled, and Tim, happy 252 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. as a king, was in his old cottage and school again, listening to the placid murmur of the little river Beal. To make up for the loss of his Yorkshire salary, he redoubled his diligence with the brush, and the walls oihis Royal Academy Exhibition — to wit, the inns of Rochdale and Littleborough — were soon peopled more thickly than ever with the " ugly grinning old fellows, and mumbling old women on broom- sticks," briefly described by Colonel Townley as the genre in which this Lancashire Hogarth excelled. In 1755, Tim seems to have been a candidate for the post of organist in Rochdale Church (salary twenty pounds a year), and three years later we find him at Chester, painting the panels of carriages for a coach-maker ! The rudest and most primitive forms of literature and art are exemplified in Tim Bobbin's biography. He was often his own book- seller, carrying his works about with him in his wallet, offer- ing them thence for sale, and sometimes glad to receive pay- ment for them in kind. Here is an entry or two from his account-book : " Delivered a book of prints to coz. John Hulme, to have a hat for it." " Exchanged a book of Human Passions for 3lbs. of thread at 3s. per lb. ; blue tape, |d. a yd. ; tape id. a knot; a gross of laces." " Paid John Kenyon, a book for a wig." In such another entry as the fol- lowing, his caligraphy is shown turning an honest penny: " Mr Aspinall, Burnley, — 1 2 Lord's Prayers at 2s. each, very stnall." Tim quitted Milnrow as a residence no more, until, in his 77 th year, he took up his final abode in Rochdale Church- yard. He died at Milurow, on the 14th of July 1786, and was buried beside his wife, whom he had survived only a few weeks. Six children had been born to them, most of whom reached maturity, and one of whom, Charles, settling in Kendal, and prospering there, purchased their cottage, and presented it to his parents for their lives. To JOHN COLLIER \^' TIM BOBBIN"). 253 this Charles the last letter of his father's which has been preserved is addressed : "Things remain as you left 'em," Collier writes, " they are all well but your poor mother. . . . Rich and Sal drive on, but my old peepers cannot pierce far into futurity. I have painted a good deal of things since you left, and drunk punch betimes as customers come in. Make sure to keep sober, which is more than he cou'd do who is, dear Charles, your loving Father." The epitaph on the tombstone of husband and wife in Rochdale Churchyard, contains a reference to this taste for punch ; but that vulgar doggrel, commonly attributed to Tim, turns out, one learns with satisfaction, to be not his handiwork after all. 254 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. XI. TIfE ''GREAT" DUKE OF BRIDGEWATER* 'T'HE canal-system of Great Britain acknowledges a duke as its parent, and its cradle was Worsley, in the vicinity of Manchester. Without Francis, third Duke of Bridgewater, our vast network of artificial water-ways would not have been produced just when it was wanted, as a prime ele- ment in the sudden growth of British industry during the second half of the eighteenth century, Without Worsley, the Duke of Bridgewater might never have been led to undertake the great enterprises which make his career conspicuous in the annals of the British noblesse. It is as owner and occupier of Worsley that he claims a place in our Gallery of Lancashire Worthies. Had not Worsley been among his possessions, he would not, probably, have given occasion for the proud boast of his " collateral de- scendant," the first Earl of EUesmere, that " the history of Francis Duke of Bridgewater is engraved in intaglio on the face of the country he helped to civilise and enrich." * Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, &'c. (London, 1846), vol. ii. § "Life of Lord EUesmere ;" Masson's Life of John Milton (London, 1 859), vol. i. ; Thomas Keightley's Account of the Life of John Milton (London, 1856) ; H. J. Todd's History of the College of Bonkommes at Ashridge (London, 1823) ; Horace Walpole's Letters, edited by Peter Cmmingham (London, 1859) ; Smiles's Lives of the Engineers {l^ondon, 1861), vol. i. § " Life of James Brindley ; " Earl of Ellesmere's Essays (London, 1858), § "Aqueducts and Canals;" CoUins's Peerage, vol. iii. § "Bridgewater, Earl of;" Ormerod's Cheshire, vol. i. § "Tatton ; " Baines's LMncashire ; Aikin'ss Country round Manchester ; Pope's Works, &c., &c. THE "great'' duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 255 For more than two centuries and a half the manor and estate of Worsley have belonged to people of the Egerton blood, and the present Earl of Ellesmere, though properly a Gower, is Lord of Worsley through his descent from a sister of our J3uke of Bridgewater, whose first canal was that from Worsley to Manchester. Worsley's earliest owner of whom there is any record belongs to legend almost as much as to history. This was a certain "Elias de Workes- legh, or Workedlegh," as the name was originally spelt, who possessed it "as early as the Conquest ;" and who is said to have been a crusading baron "of such strength and valour that he was reputed a giant, and in old scripts is often called Elias Gigas. He fought many duels, combats, &c." — his quaint old historiographer adding without any presentiment of the Peace Society, "for the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ ; and obtained many victories.''^ Worsley remained with the descendants of this half-legendary Elias until the end of the third Edward's reign, when the line of heirs male expired, and, by the marriage of its inheritress, it was added to the possessions of Sir John Massey of Tatton, in Cheshire. After some three generations more had passed away, the male line of the Masseys, too, was extinguished, and Tatton in Cheshire, with Worsley in Lancashire, went by marriage to " William Stanley, Esq., of Tatton and Worsley, in right of his wife, and son and heir of Sir William Stanley of Holt, in the county of Denbigh, beheaded in the reign of Henry VH." — the first Stanley Earl of Derby's younger brother, whose story has been already told. Again, by a similar vicissitude, both estates were transferred to the Breretons of Malpas, in Cheshire. The last of the Breretons owners of Worsley and Tatton, was Richard, who died without issue in 1598. "This Richard settled all his estates on Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor of Eng- 1 Baines's Lancashire, iii. 14a 256 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. land."^ From SirThomasEgerton descend the present owner of Worsley, the Earl of Ellesmere, and the present owner of Tatton, Lord Egerton of the same. Why did Richard Brereton " settle all his estate on Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor of England?" Presum- ably because, to begin with, he much liked and esteemed Sir Thomas, but, at the same time, between him and Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, James I.'s Lord Chancellor, there was a sort of connection by marriage. Richard Brereton had taken unto himself for wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir Richard Egerton, of Ridley in Cheshire, and the famous Chancellor — progenitor of the Earls and Dukes of Bridgewater that were, and of the Earls of Ellesmere and Lords Egerton of Tatton that are — being the illegitimate son of this Sir Richard Egerton, was thus a quasi brother- in-law of that Richard Brereton. His mother was one " AHce Spark, or Sparke, or Sparks, of Bickerton," whom plain-spoken Pennant reports to have been neither more nor less than a maid-servant, at Dodleston, near Chester, where Sir Thomas appears to have been born. In a sly note to his biography of Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Camp- bell^ avers that "the place where his parents met is still pointed out to travellers under the name of ' Gallantry Bank.' " From his mother he is said, in the same memoir, " to have inherited great beauty of countenance." " The tradition of the country," his Lordship adds, " is, that he N^'as nursed by a farmer's wife at Lower Kinnerton, in the neighbourhood, and that being carried, while a child, to Dodleston Hall, which he afterwards purchased when Chancellor, he expressed an eager desire to rise in the world and become the owner of it." Another and less agreeable tradition is recorded by Pennant •? — " The ^ Ormerod, i. 346. '^ i. 179. ** Tour in fl^rt/« (London 1784),!. 107. THE "GREAT DUKE OF BRIDGEWATER. 257 mother had been so much neglected by Sir Richard Kgcr- ton, of Ridley, the father of the boy, that she was reduced to beg for support. A neighbouring gentleman, a friend of Sir Richard, saw her asking alms, followed by her child. He admired its beauty, and saw in it the evident features of the Knight. He immediately went to Sir Richard, and laid before him the disgrace of suffering his own offspring, illegitimate as it was, to wander from door to door. He was affected with the reproof, adopted the child, and by a proper education, laid the foundation of his future fortune."^ ' Dr Ormerod bestirs himself (ubi suprh), to discredit Pennant's story. " His mother's family," says the historian of Cheshire, speaking of Sir Thomas Egerton, " were respectable yeomen, and a near relative of Alice Sparke was at this time wife of Ralph Catheral, a younger brother of the ancient house of Horton. This circumstance is men- tioned as being, in a great degree, a refutation of what local tradition has asserted, and a most respectable writer " — Pennant — " reported with re- ference to the infantine distresses of the future Chancellor. There is no reason for supposing that Sir Richard Egerton did, at any time, neglctt the education of his son, or if he had neglected it, that his mother's family would have been unable to supply the deficiency." Dr Ormerod adds in a note : " Alice Sparke had another son by Sir Richard, George Egerton, who married Margaret, daughter of Robert Fitton, of Carden, and was ancestor of a branch of the Egertons settled at Whitchurch." The following note on the genealogy of the Sparkes is due to the courtesy of T. Ilelsby, Esq., the editor of a forthcoming " Chronicle of Frodsham," in which parish the township and manor of Norley are situated : — " The Sparkes were indeed of very ancient descent, as appears from Randle Holme's MSS., Harl. Coll. They were descended paternally from the Norleys of Norley, in Frodsham paridi . Roger Sparke, tetnp. Ed ft". I. and II., was the son of Adam, the sou of Ambrose de Norley, of whicli family a branch settled in Wettenall, near Northwich, whose descendant, Henry Sjiarke, was of Nantwich temp. Hen. VII., and married Jane, daughter and heiress of Tho. Bulkeley of Weslanwood (his collateral ancestor, de Bulkeley, married, temp. Edw. II., Ellen, daughter and heiress of Willia.i: de Bickcrton). The issue of thib Henry was Roger Sparke, of Nanlivlch, "/ HeiL VHI., and most pro- bably he was the direct ancestor of Alice Sparke, of Bickerton, near 2 K 25 S LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Whatever the truth of this story, a " proper education " was bestowed on the oftspring of the fair and frail hand- maiden of Dodleston. " Well grounded in Latin and Greek," young Thomas Egerton was sent in his sixteenth year to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself greatly. Leaving the University, he was ad- mitted at Lincoln's Inn ; and when called to the bar, made steady progress to an excellent practice. To his early forensic career belongs the story, that after a vigorous con- duct of a case against the Crown, in the Court of Exchequer, Queen Elizabeth, who watched all such causes vigilantly, exclaimed, " On my troth, he shall never plead against me again," and immediately made him one of her counsel, a Q.C. in days when the distinction would have had more significance than now.^ A good deal of business flowed in which place Nantwich, Bulkeley, and Westan, or Westonwood, are situated. Her family connection, moreover, with the Catteralls, of Horton (who also held lands near Norley), favours this supposition. The fact, too, of Sir Thomas Egerton being sent to Brasenose College would seem to favour the hypothesis that he went as ' Founder's kin ' to a priest named Williamson, who, in Henry VII. 's time, was of Weaver- ham (in which parish part of the township of Norley is situated), and founded a scholarship in Brasenose, afterwards held by many distin- guished students." With reference to Pennant's description of Alice Sparke as a " maid- servant," the same obliging correspondent puts-in the reminder that " even so late as her time young ladies continued occasionally to be sent to the houses of their neighbours to learn household work," and that "'servant' was a word of much wider signification then than now." Finally, respecting Richard Brereton, Mr Helsby mentions a report that " he bore the cost of Sir Thomas Egerton's education ;" and states that his and his wife's monument (an altar-tomb) is still in the church of Eccles, between Worsley and Manchester. ^ That Elizabeth made this speech is, however, doubted by Mr Fossr {Judges of England, v. 138, London, 1857), and he adds : " There is no authority for Lord Campbell's assertion that the Queen, before he," Kgerton, " became Solicitor- General, ' made him one of her counsel,' nor THE ''great'' duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 259 to him from Cheshire, and some from Lancashire. For its technical interest, and apparently ignorant of Egerton's subsequent relation of heirship to his Worsley client, Lord Campbell quotes " from Lord Francis Egerton's MSS." a letter of his, addressed to " the right worshipp. Richard Brereton, esq'., thes be delivered at Worsley," and relating to a cause of that gentleman's "touchinge Pendleton Heye," in which Egerton was engaged. The epistle concludes : " Thus in hast, I take my leave, with my hartye com- mendations to you and your wyffe, and Mr Wyll. Leicester, and all other my frendes. Lyncolne's Inne, this Saterdaye, 150 Octobris, 1580. Your's assured, in all I can, Tho. Egerton." It was worth while to attend carefully to the interests of such a client as Mr Richard Brereton, one's half-sister's husband and the childless owner of Tatton and Worsley ! The year after this letter was despatched to Worsley, Egerton became Solicitor-General ; 1 1 years later, Attorney-General, with Coke (upon Littleton) for Solicitor. In 1594, having been previously knighted, a distinction more esteemed and more estimable then tlian now, he was made Lord Keeper, his handsome person doing him no harm with Queen Elizabeth. Four years afterwards Richard Brereton died without issue. He had "settled all his estate " on his wife's half-brother, who had done his law business for him with fidelity and skill, and who had raised himself to the highest office, save one, that could be filled by a subject. Thus it was that Worsley became the pos- session of an Egerton, to whose descendants it belongs at this day. An able, learned, and experienced lawyer, of dignified bearing and spotless life. Sir Thomas Egerton made an ex- cellent judge, swift in the despatch of business, equitable any appearance that such an office then existed, ' whereby he was en- tilled to wear a silk gown, and have precedence. '" 26o LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. and incorruptible in all his dealings, and impartial in the distribution of his patronage, civil and ecclesiastical. In his public and political subserviency to Elizabeth and her succes- sor, he was no worse than most of his neighbours, and his behaviour to Essex after the fall, and at the trial of that rash and ill-fated nobleman, contrasts very favourably with Bacon's. On the death of Elizabeth, James I. confirmed Sir Thomas Egerton in the Lord Keepership, and very soon afterwards raised him to the still higher office of Lord Chancellor, and to the peerage as Baron Ellesmere ; hence the Ellesmere- Earldom conferred on his descendants in recent times. He was full of years and honours when, bowed down by infirmi- ties, he resigned the great seal in 1617, just after he had been raised a step in the peerage, and created Viscount Brackley, the courtesy-title now borne by the eldest sons of our Earls of Ellesmere. In the short interval between his death and his resignation. King James promised him the Earldom of Bridgewater, a promise of which his son and heir reaped the benefit. When he died he was in his seventy-seventh year, " having held the Great Seal," Lord Campbell remarks with curious inaccuracy of language, " for a longer period than any of his predecessors or successors." Besides being a great lawyer and judge, he was an eminent orator, after the fashion of his time. The personal beauty which he is said to have inherited from his mother, he retained in old age, so that many went to the Court of Chancery to look at him, and " happy they," says quaint old Fuller, reflecting on the place, not on the upright judge, " who had no other busi- ness" there. As a man, and in relation to the age in which he lived, his character stands high. He was kind to the poet Spenser ; Ben Jonson, Daniel, and Sir John Davies united to praise him with evident sincerity, and Bacon's letter to him with The Advancement of Learning could not have been addressed to an ordinarv man. One of the now most 1 THE "great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 26 1 generally interesting facts in his biography, though to his contemporaries it may have seemed the merest nothing, is that on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's state-visit to his seat at Harefield, near Uxbridge, Oihello was played for the first time before the Queen, by Burbidge's company, and possibly with Shakespere himself there in person superin- tending the performance.^ In the lists of presents which poured in upon the Lord Keeper at the time of these festivi- ties, it is curious to note the item of " a buck," sent by the Sir Thomas Lucy, whose father, according to tradition, pro- secuted Shakespere for deer steahng. The great estates in the purchase of which liOrd Chancellor Ellesmere invested most of his wealth, with those bequeathed to him by Richard Brereton, descended to his only surviving son by his first wife, the daughter of a Flintshire squire. He had been married thrice : his second wife was a Surrey lady ; his third, the most illustrious of them all, and who survived him, was the widow of Ferdi- nand©, fifth Earl of Derby, and the daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, progenitor of the Earls Spencer and of the Dukes of Marlborough that are. John, the second Vis- count Brackley, quickly received a fulfilment of the promise which had been made to his father, and in the year of the latter's death he was created Earl of Bridgewater. Father and son had married mother and daughter : the Earl of Bridge- water's wife was the Lady Frances Stanley, daughter of Lord Chancellor EUesmere's third wife, the Countess Dowager of Derby (widow of Ferdinando fifth Earl), as already men- tioned. Thus it happened that after the Chancellor's death there was a very special intimacy between his widow and the family of the Earl of Bridgewater ; she was not only the Earl's step-mother, but the mother of his wife, and the grand- mother of his children. The Chancellor's widow resided ^ Lord Campbell, ii. 212, and note. 262 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. on his estate of Harefield, where Queen EUzabeth had paid him a visit and Oihello had been performed. The favourite seat of the Earl of Bridgewater, who had a rather numerous family, was Ashridge, in Hertfordshire, some six- teen miles from Harefield ; so that there was a certain pro- pinquity of domicile as well as affinity of blood to knit the two families together. Hence, partly, it befell that the name of Egerton came to be connected vvith that of Milton, as it had been with Spenser's, Bacon's, Ben Jonson's, Shakes- pere's, and be it noted that the Countess Dowager of Derby was a cousin of the author of the Faery Queen, that the two had met at Althorpe when both were young, that her he had celebrated as Amaryllis, and to her had dedicated The Tears of the Muses. A still greater honour was to be conferred on her. Two of her young granddaughters at Ashridge, the Ladies Alice and Mary Egerton, had for their music-master a distinguished composer of the time, Mr Henry Lawes ; the friend, too, of a certain Mr John Milton, who on leaving Cambridge University, went, in 1632, to live in his father's country house at pleasant Horton, in Bucks, ten miles from Harefield, and there among the first fruits of his then young and all but unknown muse, were two little pieces called L Allegro and // Penseroso. There is a sonnet of Milton's " To Mr H. Lawes on his airs," and who knows how much anonymous verse the poet in his youth may not have written to be set to music by the composer apostrophised thus ? — " Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long ; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for envy to look wan; To after-age thou shalt be writ the man. That with smooth air could humour best our tongue. THE ''great''' duke OF BRIDGEWATER. iG^ Thou honourest verse, and verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tunest their happiest lines in hymn or story Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing Met in the milder shades of purgatory." That Milton had a personal acquaintance with any of his great neighbours at Harefield or at Ashridge is possible, but has not been proved. The Countess Dowager of Derb) he must have known by repute, and honoured as the Ama- ryllis of Spenser, even more than as the venerable widow of Lord Chancellor EUesmere. Let us suppose, moreover, that the aged lady had talked one day to her grand- children of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Harefield, and of the Masque which on that occasion was undoubtedly among the entertainments presented to Her Majesty. Let us further sup- pose that the young people, thus stimulated, coaxed grand- mamma into allowing them to give her a little family Masque at Harefield, and thus mildly recall the glories of the former pageant. In that case, whom would they first consult but their accomplished and distinguished music-master, Mr Henry Lawes, well known to have played a foremost part in getting up and arranging many an entertainment of the same kind? When he had promised his aid, co-operation, and music for the occasion, what more natural than tliat he should apply for the words of the Masque to his young friend Mr John Milton, at Horton, of whose poetic powers he at least must have known something ? Such may have been the origin of Milton's exquisite little Arcades, the brief prose preface to which describes it as " part of an entertainment presented to the Dowager Countess of Derby, at Harefield, by some noble persons of her family, who appear on the scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state with this song" — perhaps sounding sweetly in the ears once saluted by the music of Spencer's pastoral lute. Milton's 264 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. latest biographer assigns the date of the performance ot the Arcades to the year 1634. The piece is pervaded by a poetic grace and beauty unequalled in the verse of the time, but was itself soon eclipsed by another and far finer poem, written two years after for the family at Ashridge, the noble and lovely Coiiius. In 163 1, the Earl of Bridgewater was appointed Lord President of the Council of Wales, an office of almost vice- regal dignity ; but he did not arrive at Ludlow, the seat of his government, until late in 1633. In and during 1634, there were frequent festivities at Ludlow Castle, the official residence of the Lord President, and it was resolved that the composer and the poet whose joint handiwork, the Arcades, had been so successful, should be invited to produce a Masque fit to be represented on a more public stage and before a more numerous company. Lawes and Milton con- sented. There is a tradition that, on their way to Ludlow from Herefordshire, Lord Brackley, Mr Thomas Egerton, and their sister, the Lady Alice, were benighted in Haywood Forest, and that this little adventure gave Milton a hint for his plot. However that may have been, on the Michaelmas night of 1634, the great hall of Ludlow Castle was filled by the nobility and gentry of the district, and never before had they listened to such poetic melody as then stole upon their ears. " The chief persons who presented were," says the poem itself, " The Lord Brackley ; Mr Thomas Egerton his brother ; the Lady Alice Egerton." It was printed three years afterwards, with a dedication to Viscount Brackley, by Lawes, beginning, " My Lord, this poem which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and other of your noble family," &c, and com- memorating the fixct that the musician had performed the part of the Attendant Spirit. England received the assurance thnt a new poet had arisen witliin her bounds, second to THE "great'" duke OF BR/DGEWATER. 265 Shakespere alone; To the Egertons we owe not only canals but Comiis} The first Earl of Brklgewater died in 1649, in the last raonth of the year which saw Charles I. beheaded at White- hall. An epitaph (of considerably later date) on a monu- ment to him at Ashridge, the family-seat in Hertfordshire, enumerates among his merits that " he was a dutiful son to his mother, the Church of England, in her persecution as well as in her great splendour ; a loyal subject to his Sovereign in those worst of times, when it was accounted treason not to be a traitor." The Earl's " loyalty," how- ever, must have been of an undemonstrative kind, since it seems to have cost him nothing, and his estates de- scended unimpaired to his son, John the second Earl of Bridgev/ater, the same who had played the Elder Brother in Comus. Like his father, the second Earl combined pru- dence with loyalty, suffering little or nothing under the Commonwealth, and dying in 1686 Lord-Lieutenant of four counties— Lancashire among them. The author of Comus and the personator of the Elder Brother diverged in their politics, and any connection — probably there was none — that rhay have existed between Milton and the Egertons was dissolved by the poet's fervid espousal of the popular cause. The late Earl of EUesmere (the literary and art-loving Earl) possessed a copy of Milton's Defensio pro poptdo Anglicano which had belonged to this second Earl of Bridgewater, and on the title-page of which the loyal nobleman had written : Liber igne, aucior furcd dig?ns- simi : — " A book richly deserving to be burned, and its author to be hanged." ^ He was "a learned man," was this original personator of the Elder Brother in Comus, — •See Masson's Mil/on, vol. i (§ Ilorton, Buckinghamshire), p. S(>7- 87 - Keightley (who cites Todd, i. 80), )). 122, ttoie. 2 ^ 266 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. " delighted much in his library," in which, as has oeen seen, was a copy of Milton's Defe?isio, and among the honours conferred upon him was the High Stewardship of the University of Oxford. One composition of his, though not of a literary kind, survives, and is printed in the His- tory of Ashridge by Todd, who was also the editor and biographer of Milton. It consists of a series of detailed instructions for the management of his household, and testifies to the careful and orderly, nay, almost prince-like, organization of a great English nobleman's establishment in the seventeenth century, as well as to the precise and rigorous character of this particular Lord of Ashridge who had played the part of the Elder Brother in Comiis, and who thought its author worthy of the gallows. At Ash- ridge there are domestic functionaries of every kind and degree, and each of them is copiously instructed by my Lord how to conduct himself, from " the steward," " the gentleman of my horse," " my gentleman usher," down to " the porter " and " the clerk of the kitchen," who is ad- monished to curb " the wasteful expense of butter." On the other hand, among the " orders for the huisher " — usher — " of my hall " is one conceived in a liberal spirit, and smacking pleasantly of the olden time. He is bidden " Gather together the broken meate that remaynes after meales, and carry it to the gate, that there it may be, by himselfe and the porter, distributed among the poore." "June 24, 1652. These are the orders which I require and command to be observed by all the servants in my family in their several and respective degrees. — J. Bridg- water." ^ The second Earl of Bridgewater was succeeded by his son and namesake John, third Earl, who died (in 1 701) First Lord-Commissioner of the Admiralty. It ' Todd's Ashridge, p. 47. THE '"great'' duke OF BRIDGEWATEk. 267 is noticeable that during the hfetinie of this third Earl the great estates of the Egertons were partly broken up. His third son Thomas " was seated," we are told, " at Tatton Park in Cheshire," and there he founded the family of which the present Lord Egerton of Tatton is the representative. Again, William, the second son, " was seated at Worsley, in com. Pal. Lane. .-"^ but, though married twice, he did not leave male issue, so that he founded no family of Egerton of Worsley; and that manor became once more an appanage of the Bridgewater peerage, which peerage became a dukedom in the time of Scroop, fourth Earl of Bridgewater (1681-1745), elder brother of the Thomas of Tatton and the William of Worsley aforesaid. This Scroop held various high offices at Court in successive reigns; and "in consideration of his great merits," was created in 1720 Duke of Bridgewater. He and his "great merits" are well nigh forgotten, but the memory of his first Duchess still faintly survives, embalmed in the verse of Pope. She was one of the four beautiful daughters and co-heiresses of the great Duke of Marlborough, who left no son to inherit Blen- heim and his honours. Jervas, Pope's friend and teacher in the pictorial art, had painted portraits of this once-famous beauty ; and the little bard himself had made various sketches of her, all of which he threw into the fire.- Hence several allusions to her in " the Epistle to Mr Jervas," in whose pictures, according to Pope, — " Beauty, waking all her forms, sui)plies An angel's sweetness, or Bridge water's eyes." And — " Churchill's race shall other hearts surprise." His Grace, Scroop, first Duke of Bridgewater, took to nimself, after the death of this beautiful Duchess, a second ^ Collins, iii. 197. 2 "Jervas fancied himself in love with her."— Walpole's Letters, i. 6 {note by Peter Cunningham). i6S LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. wife in the person of Lady Rachel Russell, daughter of Wriothesley Duke of Bedford. He was succeeded by his son, John, second Duke of Bridgewater (1727-48), who enjoyed die title only a few years, dying unmarried and un- remembered in the February of 1748. This unremembered Duke was succeeded in his turn by his younger brother, Francis, the third, the last, the famous Duke of Bridgewater, founder of British canal-navigation. The "great" Duke of Bridgewater, as he is sometimes called, was born on the 21st of May 1736, and thus, when his father died in 1745, he was a boy of nine. A year after, his widowed mother married Sir Richard Lyttelton of Hagley, and, happy in her new union, she seems to have neglected the child, who was not only sickly, but of such unpromising intellect that it is said to have been in con- templation to exclude him, on this ground, from the ducal succession. He was twelve when the death of his con- sumptive brother made him Duke of Bridgewater, and it was perhaps too late for his mother and his stepfather to repair, even if they had been willing, the deficiencies of an education so neglected as his had been. When it became evident that the sickly boy was not likely to follow his brother prematurely to the grave, his guardians, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Trentham (afterwards Earl Gower and Marquis of Stafford, who had married the young duke's sister) took him in hand, and sent him abroad, ignorant and awkward, to make what in those days was called " the grand tour." A scholar and a man of the world, famous in his day and generation, was appointed his tutor. This was Wood, the Eastern traveller and Homeric scholar, whom Lord Chatham afterwards transformed into an Under-Secretary of State. He had returned from exploring the ruins of Palmyra, and had just published his well-known record of exploration, when he was started on a continental THE "great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 269 tour with his unhcked cub of a duke, a youth of seventeen. The pair, as may be supposed, did not much rehsh each other's society, and " evidence exists," says Lord Ellesmere neatly, " that Wood often wished himself back in the desert he had so lately left." The Duke refused to be taught dancing in Paris, and if his tutor induced him to purchase at Rome some marbles and other art products or commo- dities of the Eternal City, his unlettered and uncultivated Grace was content with paying for them, and it stands recorded that " they remained in their original packing- cases till after his death." The first notice of him after his return from the continent is a newspaper paragraph belong- ing to the October of 1755 : — "A marriage will soon be consummated between his Grace the Duke of Bridgewater and Miss Revel, his Grace being just arrived from foreign liarts." The lady was a considerable heiress, but the match came to nothing, and a Warren of Cheshire proved the lucky man. Whether it was a serious disappointment or a disappointment at all, is unknown ; but four years after- wards a love-suit of his Grace's came to nothing, and he felt the catastrophe with a keenness which determined his sub- sequent career. In 1 75 1, two young Irish sisters, Maria and Klizabeth Gunning, had taken the town by storm with a beauty which, reproduced on the canvas of Reynolds, still fascinates the beholder. They were of good birth, but so poor that they thought at one time of going on the stage, ^ and when they were first presented to the Lord Lieutenant, at Dublin Castle, kind Peg Woffington had to lend theru the clothes in which to appear. High and low, rich and po-r, worshipped at the shrines of these Venuses, as soon as they made their appearance in London. They were mobbed at their doors by the multitude eager to catch a sight of them, and theatres ^ Walpole's Letters, ix. 358. \ 2/0 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. were crammed when it was known that they were to be present.^ The year after their arrival in London both of them were married, withm a month of each other, Elizabeth to the Duke of Hamilton, Maria to the Earl of Coventry ; and the fame of these matches was such that in Ireland, according to Horace Walpole, a common blessing of the beggarwomen was: — " May the luck of the Gunnings attend you !" The Duchess of Hamilton was a widow when, soon after attaining his majority, the young Duke of Bridgewater, smitten by her charms, proposed and was accepted. Lady Coventry's reputation had suffered from scandal," and the 1 Walpole to Mann (June i8th 1751) : — " I think their being two so handsome and both such perfect figures is their chief excellence, for singly I have seen much handsomer women than either. However, they can't walk in the Park, or go to Vauxhall, but such mobs follow them that they are generally driven away." — Letters, ii. 259. '^ Walpole to Mann (27th February 1752): — "The event that has made most noise since my last is, the extempore wedding of the young- est of the two Gunnings who have made so vehement a noise. Lord Coventry, a grave young Lord, of the remains of the patriot brood, has long dangled after the elder, virtuously with regard to her virtue, not very honourably with regard to his own credit. About six weeks ago, Duke Hamilton, the very reverse of the Earl, hot, debauched, extrava- gant, and equally damaged in his fortune and person, fell in love with the youngest at the masquerade, and determined to marry her. Some weeks afterwards, his Grace one night being left alone with her, while her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found himself so im- petuous that he sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring. The Duke swore he would send for the archbishop. At last they were married with a ring of the bed-cur- tains, at half-an-hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel. The' Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty has had its effect ; and what is most silly, my Lord Coventry declares that he will marry the other." — Letters, ii. 279. Lord Coventry did marry her; and a few years later, we have Walpole insinuating to George Montague, on the authority of Gilly Williams, such scandal about her as is implied in the following passage of his letter :— " The plump Countess, Lady Guildford, is in terrors lest Lord Coventry should get a divorce from his wife, and Lord T3olingbroke " — nephew and successor of the Boling- broke — " should marry her. " — Letters, iii. 43. THE "great" duke OF BRIDGEWATEK. 2/1 Duke, Avith a scrupulosity rare in those days, announced to his betrothed that her intimacy with her sister must cease on her marriage to him. Of course, the Duchess of Hamil- ton hesitated, but the Duke was firm, and, finding her resist, he broke off the match. Had things gone otherwise, the Duke of Bridgewater might have led the life of an ordinary nobleman of his day, gone deeper into the horse-racing which he already affected, gambled and betted at White's, produced a large family of children, and never have figured in this gallery of Lancashire Worthies. Even had he protracted his negotiations a little, a very little longer, the obstacle to his union would have been removed, since Lady Coventry died of consumption in 1759. But before then the Duchess of Hamilton had married a Colonel Campbell,^ ^ IValpole to Coii-vay (28th January 1759): — " You and M. de Bareil may give yourselves what aii-s you please of settling cartels with expedi- tion. You do not exchange prisoners with half so much alacrity as Jack Campbell and the Duchess of Hamilton have exchanged hearts. ... It is the prettiest match in the world since yours, and everybody likes it but the Duke of Bridgewater and Lord Coventry." — Letters, iii. 203. Lord Ellesmere remarks, when quoting this passage : — '"' We do not profess to know why Lord Coventry should have objected to his sister-in-law's second marriage." It may also perhaps be asked, why should the Duke of Bridgewater have " objected " if it was he himself who broke off the match ? Indeed, Lord Stanhope, in his History 0/ England (edition of 185 1, ii. 6, note), contends that while Lord Ellesmere " relies on a family tradition that the Duke w^as not rejected, and him- self broke off the match, this tradition is directly opposed to the con- temporary evidence ; a hint by Horace Walpole which Lord Ellesmere has cited, and a statement by Lord Chesterfield which he has over- looked." The "hint of Horace Walpole" has just been quoted ; here is the statement of Lord Chesterfield {Letters, iv. 309), writing to his son on the 2d of February 1759 : — " Duchess Hamilton is to be married to-morrow to Colonel Campbell, the son of General Campbell, who will some day or other be Duke of Argyll, and have the estate. She refused the Duke of Bridgewater for him." Lord Ellesmere and the family tradition, however, are more trustworthy than the contemporary gossip which Lord Stanhope dignifies with the designition of " evidence. " 272 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. who, becoming Duke of Argyle, placed a second ducal coronet on the brow of the lovely Irish adventuress. Just after the marriage, the Duke of Bridgewater gave what Horace Walpole calls "a great ball;"^ perhaps to veil his chagrin ; perhaps as a farewell to the world of fashion. In any case, very soon afterwards, and in his twenty-third year, the Duke withdrew from London and its gaieties for the rest of his Hfe, as it were, and buried himself, not even among the " myrtles of Ashridge," but in the old-fashioned manor-house of what must then have been the wilds of Worsley. From this ducal Hegira dates the rise of British canal-navigation. When his young Grace of Bridgewater migrated from the clubs of St James's Street to the coal-fields of Worsley, on vhe skirts of Chat-Moss, British Industrialism was on the verge of that enormous expansion which became the wonder of the world, and which would scarcely have been possible without a revolution in the then existing means of communication, transit, and transport, throughout the island. In 1759, James Watt, (ztat 23, had settled down in his little shop within the precincts of Glasgow University, and in that year it was that his friend Robison first called his attention to the steam-engine, in Newcomen's form of it. In the same year, Watt's future friend and patron, Matthew Boulton, succeeded to his father's business, and, determin- ing to enlarge it, was beginning the quest which ended in his establishment at the famous Soho. In 1759, Josiah Wedgwood began business on his own account, " in a hum- ble cottage near the Market-house in Burslem ;" while the English iron trade was being developed by the large and ^ Walpole to Mann (4th March 1759) : — " Colonel Campbell and the Duchess of Hamilton are married. My sister, who was at the opera last Tuesday, and went from thence to a great ball at the Duke of Bridge- water's, where she stayed till three in the morning, was brought to bed in less than four hours afterwards," &c., &c. — Letters, iii. 215. THE ''great'' duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 2/3 regular use of pit-coal in the blasting furnaces of Coalbrook- dale ; and on the ist of January 1760, the first furnace was blown in the Carron Ironworks, founded by Dr Roebuck, the grandfather of John Arthur. In 1760, too, an illite- rate Lancashire weaver, named James Hargreaves, work- ing at a new carding-engine, for the founder of the Peel family, was on his road to the invention of the famous spinning-jenny ; and in the same year there settled at Bolton, in his old trade of barber, one Richard Ark- wright, who was destined to found our modern factory system. The trade of Manchester was largely increasing, though its population was little more than 20,000, and a year or two before, the Leeds clothiers, finding " the old Norman Bridge at the foot of Briggate " no longer suf- ficient for their weekly market, had opened as a new mart *' a commodious building now known as the Mixed Cloth Hall." The commerce of Liverpool, as of other English ports, was growing fast, though it was a time of war, for under the sway of the Great Commoner, then in the pleni- tude of his power and at the zenith of his fame, commerce- as the grateful inscription on his monument in GuildhaL declares — was "united with, and made to flourish by, war." The British merchant, moreover, trading with West and East, had the ocean-highway, from which Pitt's admirals were sweeping the enemy's flag ; but at home road-making was in its infancy, and the absence of good roads obstructed the development of every branch of domestic industry. The cottons of Manchester and the woollens of Leeds had to be conveyed from place to place by pack-horses, jogging along in single file, on what were tracks rather than roads. " It was cheaper to bring foreign wares to London by sea than to bring them by tedious journeys on horses' backs from the interior of the country." The rate of carriage between Leeds and London was ;^i3 a ton. When Josiah Wedg- 2 .M 274 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. wood's trade began to extend, and a general demand for his earthenware to spring up, we are told that the roads in his neighbourhood were so bad that he was prevented from obtaining a sufficient supply of the best kinds of clay. The transport of the very necessaries of Ufe was rendered difficult, and their price enhanced in populous centres, since there was no means of supplying the scarcity of one district by the plenty of another. For some years before 1758, there were annual riots in Manchester, caused by the dearness of provisions, a dearness heightened, no doubt, by a local monopoly of flour-making. " Since that time," says Dr Aikin,! writing in 1795, "the demand for corn and flour has been increasing to a vast amount, and new sources of supply have been opened from distant parts by the naviga- tions, so that monopoly or scarcity cannot be apprehended, though the price of these articles must always be high in a district which produces so little and consumes so much." By " navigations " the Doctor meant canals, of the kind which in England the Duke of Bridgewater originated. Though the great canal-systems of the continent— those of France, Italy, and Holland — must have long been familiar to many travelled Englishmen, the notion of copying from them seems never to have been entertained until just before the Duke of Bridgewatefs arrival at Worsley. The improve- ment of internal water-communication had, until then, been almost exclusively Hmited to existing streams and rivers. Some useful work of this kind had been done before ; it was at the hest of the Duke of Bridgewater that the canal proper, made independently of the bed of river or of stream, came into existence in these realms. So early as 1720, an Act was obtained by enterprising persons in Liverpool and Manchester, in virtue of which a sort of water-communi- cation was established between the two towns, by applying 1 201 THE "great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 275 to the Irvvell the contrivances of locks, weirs, and so forth, and even by cuttings across the necks of the principal bends of the winding stream. From the Irwell to Liverpool, by the Mersey, there was already a " navigation," and thus a water communication between Liverpool and Manchester. " But," adds Dr Aikin,^ " the want of water in droughts, and its too great abundance in floods, are circumstances under which this, as well as most other river-navigations, has laboured. It has been an expensive concern, and has at times been more burthensome to its proprietors than useful to the public." Then, again, about the same time, the gentlemen of Cheshire obtained an Act for making navigable the rivei Weaver for twenty miles, whereby the rock-salt from North- wich was conveyed more cheaply to Liverpool, and furnished a profitable article for loading or ballast to ships outward bound from that port. More noteworthy, however, than these enterprises, or any other of the same sort, was the Sankey Brook navigation, one section of which undoubt- edly was to be a canal independent of the brook itself. But the Sankey Brook was the basis of the whole scheme, which, without it, would not have been undertaken. The Act authorising it was passed in 1755. The time was at hand when a system of inland navigation, new in Britain, was to be founded by the courage, energy, and per- severance of one man, and through his success the whole island was to be intersected by artificial water-ways, afford- ing cheap and easy transport for the heaviest goods, and bringing all parts of the kingdom into connection. The refusal of the Duchess of Hamilton to ignore her sister gave the country faciUties of intercommunication for traflic as superior to any then existing, as the railways of to-day are to all other modes of transport and of transit. It was in 1759, the penultimate year of the life and reign ip. 105. 276 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of His Majesty George II., that Francis, Duke of Bridge- water, a young nobleman of three and twenty, bade farewell to London, and took up his abode in the Old Hall at Worsley. The great city was ringing with the glorious news of victories by land and sea — Wolfe's on the plains of Abra- ham ; in Bengal fresh successes of Clive following up the battle of Plassey ; and, much nearer home, Hawke's triumph over the French fleet near Brest ; while, at the same time, the world of metropolitan fashion was prostrate at the feet of Kitty Fisher, the beautiful courtezan, and Samuel Johnson, sad and solitary, wrote and published Rasselas, to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral. The " Young Duke " {not a novel-hero this one), gave his last ball, never more had womankind about him, in any capacity what- ever, whether social or menial, and, having revolved his plans beforehand, set to work on a canal to connect the coal-fields of Worsley with the homes and hearths of Man- chester. So far back as 1737, an Act had been passed by Parliament, at the mstance of the first Duke of Bridgewater, to make the Worsley Brook navigable to its junction with the Irwell, and this project is thought by some to have been the germ of the great works executed by his son, the third Duke, Others fancy that during the course of his conti- nental tour, in the company of Palmyra- Wood, our Duke of Bridgewater was struck by the spectacle of the great canal- systems of France and Italy, and that to this impression is to be assigned the origin of his Lancashire enterprises. More probably the notion of undertaking them was sug- gested to him by various plans for new canal-navigations, which were being mooted about the time of his settlement at Worsley, and with at least one of which he could scarcely have failed to be familiar. In 1757, only two years before the Duke of Bridgewater's migration to Worsley, and the year in which application THE ''great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 2^/ was made to Parliament for the construction of the Sankey Canal, the Corporation of Liverpool projected a much greater enterprise. This was no less than to unite the Trent and the Mersey — and thus the great ports of Liver- pool and Hull — by a canal which was to pass by Chester, Stafford, Derby and Nottingham. At the time the pro- ject came to nothing, but one of the persons who took a strong interest in its success, and who promoted the survey made with a view to its execution, was Earl Gower, afterwards Marquis of Stafford. Now Earl Gower was the brother-in-law of the Duke of Bridgewater, whose only sister, Lady Louisa Egerton, he had married, and who was fre- quently a guest at Trentham. Further, the Duke of Bridge- water's land-agent and factotum, John Gilbert, was a brother of Lord Gower's steward, Thomas Gilbert, a practical man, and in his day and generation a useful one ; his name still survives in the Gilbert Unions, of which he was the founder. Thus speculations in which Lord Gower interested himself had a double chance of being brought to the ear and know- ledge of his brother-in-law. Nothing is more likely than that in this way the Duke of Bridgewater was first led to think of canal-making, and at the very time when he wished for some occupation other than that of a nobleman about town. At all events, early in 1759 the Duke made his first application to Parliament for a Canal Act. It authorised him, among other things, to construct a canal from Worsley to Salford, and, if successful, the project promised to be of much direct advantage to himself, as well as to the popula- tion of Manchester. In the neighbourhood of Manchester there was abundance of coal, which its inhabitants were ready to buy. But the roads to and from Manchester were as bad as those of Lancashire generally then and after\vards, as when, for instance, years later, Arthur Young, journeying on that between Wigan and " Proud " Preston itself, declared 278 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. that he knew not " in the whole range of language terms suffi- ciently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map," Arthur continues, " and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even to whole coun- ties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent ; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may acci- dentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil ; for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings -down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep and floating with mud, only from a wet sum- mer. What, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it in places receives is the tumbling-in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts, for I actually passed three carts, broken down, in these eighteen miles of execrable memory." ^ Well might Arthur ask, " What must it be after a winter? " — and in winter the demand for coal was of course greater than in summer. This state of things made the produce of most of the collieries near Manchester unavailable for its inhabitants, and, while the price of coal at the pit-mouth was lod. the horse-load of aSolbs., it was usually more than doubled before the fire-places and workshops of Manchester were reached. The Duke's own coal-seams, it is true, were not far from the Irwell, but what with the cost of carrying the coal on horses' backs to the stream, what with the high charges levied by the Merseyand Irwell Navigation Company for transporting it in their boats, slowly tugged by men, and the subsequent cost of unloading and carriage to Manchester on horses' backs again, the river was a most expensive high- way. It was primarily to extend the Manchester market ^ Tour through the North of England (London, 1770), iv. 580. THE "great duke of BRIDGEWATER, 2/9 for his coals, that the Duke applied for his first Canal Act. As soon as it had passed he started for Worsley, to superintend the execution of his scheme, in person and on the spot. On his arrival at Worsley, the Duke made a new acquaint- ance, who came to be of the utmost value in promoting, executing, and improving his plans. This was James Brindley, the Derbyshire craftsman's son, a "heaven-born" engineer, if ever such there was. Born in 1716, three miles north-east of Buxton, the son of a poor cotter, Brindley was some twenty years older than the great and wealthy Duke when their memorable connection began. His father was not only poor, but worthless and reckless, and Brindley's upbringing was of the meagrest and harshest. " His me- chanical bias, however," says his latest biographer, " early displayed itself, and he was especially clever with his knife, making models of mills, which he set to work in little mill, streams of his contrivance. It is said that one of the things in which he took most delight when a boy was to visit a neighbouring grist-mill and examine its water-wheels, cog- wheels, drum-wheels, and other attached machinery, until he could carry away the details in his head • afterwards imitat- ing the arrangements by means of his knife, and such little bits of wood as he could obtain for the purpose." ^ This was all the " technical education " ever received by the young Brindley — bestowed on himself by himself, probably in the intervals of the meanest rustic drudgery. At thirteen he was apprenticed to a millwright near Macclesfield. When he had served his time, he started at Leek on his own account, and began to show, in the humble sphere in which his lot was cast, the most extraordinary mecha- nical skill. Two things were noted of him at his start in life. One was, that his work being more strongly done, and his charges consequently higher, than his neighbours' ' Smiles, p. 311. 280 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. he obtained at first but a moderate share of business. The other was, that not only did he do most thoroughly whatever he undertook, but that he was always on the alert to suggest mechanical improvements, plans for the abridge- ment of labour or the dimmution of the power employed in it. In mill-work, and the construction of machinery for working and pumping mines, he was perpetually suggesting, so that he was known in his own county as " the schemer," while at the same time he executed the humblest details of handicraft, having at first to fell his own timber and cut it where it grew. By degrees his fame spread, and in 1758, the year before the Duke's arrival at Worsley, Brindley was employed in the survey, made under Lord Gower's auspices, for the canal between the Mersey and the Trent, formerly mentioned. What more natural than that Lord Gower or his steward should direct the attention, the one. of his brother-in-law, the other of his brother, John Gilbert, to the inventive and skilful mechanic ? The canal between the Trent and the Mersey did not seem likely to become more than a project, and here was Brindley, with his head full of " novocion," as, in his memoranda, he calls " navi- gation." Brindley could just read and write, and spelling was always beyond him. He had lacked not only " tech- nical " but the most ordinary education, a fact which, in these days above all, is worth reflecting on. The Duke of Bridgewater saw that Brindley was the very man for him. In the July of 1759, Brindley was on one of what proved to be many visits at the Old Hall of Worsley, taking counsel with the Duke and Gilbert — taking counsel we say, though, as the event proved, Brhidley gave more of it than he received. He had made what figures in his own peculiar orthography as an " ochilor servey " — ocular survey — " or a riconnitoring " of and on the ground over which the proposed canal from Worsley to Manchester was THE "GREA T '' D UKE OF BRIDGE WA TER. 2 8 I to run, and he decided on recommending a plan differing essentially from that which had been fixed on by the Duke. The canal was no longer to go down to the Irwell and up the other side again, with the aid of locks in both cases. It was to be carried right over the river on an aqueduct of stone, after passing across a huge embankment on the north side of the Irwell ; thus the locks on either side would be done without, and their delays and cost be saved. Simple and easy as the execution of such a project may seem now, it was regarded as one of stupendous magnitude then. The outside-world laughed at the notion of an aqueduct carried over a stream : it was an idle dream, and the engineer called in to give an impartial opinion on the scheme talked contemptuously of " castles in the air." But Brindley re- mained unshaken, and so, to his credit, was the Duke, though his purse alone had to bear the certain expense and the possible loss, since there were no shareholders to divide either of them with him, no " calls " to fall back upon at a pinch. The works once begun, Brindley's inexhaustible ingenuity was shown at every turn. From his tunnelling the hill near Worsley in order to connect the canal with the Duke's various coal-workings, from his application of clay- puddle to prevent the water from soaking through its earthen embankments, to his invention of a new lime for the exten- sive masonry required, and his construction of a crane and its ingenious machinery to lift the coal through a shaft in the high ground at Manchester, at the terminus of the canal, thus saving the buyers from having to drag their coals up the hill — his inventive power was triumphant in great things as in small. On the 17th of July 1761, the first boat-load of coals was borne smoothly along the Barton aqueduct. The "castle in the air" was realised, and visitors from all parts flocked to see what at once became one of the wonders of England. Nor was this, like the Thames Tunnel, a mere 2 iN 282 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. spectacle for the curious. The average price of coal at Manchester, not to speak of other commodities, was reduced one half. The construction of the canal is estimated to have cost a thousand or so pounds a mile, and it was not very long before the Duke began to reap a profitable harvest from his courage, his enterprise, and his faith in the uncouth and unlettered Brindley. The canal from Worsley to Manchester had scarcely been completed, and its pecuniary results had not been ascer- tained, when the Duke and Brindley took the field again, for a second campaign much more protracted and difiicult than the first. This time it was a canal from Longford Bridge to Runcorn, to connect Liverpool with Manchester. On the execrable roads between the two towns, the tran- sport of goods, when it could be effected at all, cost forty shillings a ton, and about twelve shillings per ton was charged when they were conveyed by the " improved " navigation of the Mersey and the Irwell, which, however, required spring-tides here, and freshes there, while in winter the floods sometimes stopped it altogether. The Duke's pro- jected canal to Runcorn not only provoked a repetition of the ridicule which had greeted the announcement of his first enterprise, but the powerful and obstructive hostility of those personally interested in opposing it. After his prior success, it was comparatively easy for him to confront the idle clamour that Brindley's new scheme for carrying a canal across bogs and through tunnels, over rivers and valleys, was impracticable. But strenuous effort and action were required to overcome the other opposition to the project. After an unsuccessful attempt to bribe him into abandoning his scheme, the proprietors of the Mersey and Irwell Navi- gation resolved on a parliamentary contest. Some of the landowners of Lancashire joined them, and the opposition to the bill was led in the Commons by the son of the Lord THE "great"' duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 283 Derby of the day. The Duke's new canal was represented as unnecessary, dangerous to the districts through which it ran, and which it was sure to flood, and, last, not least, as an interference with the vested rights of the Mersey and Irwell Company. Among the inhabitants of the districts to be benefited by the canal were many, however, who saw its advantages, and there were numerous petitions for the bill, as well as some against it. In the February of 1762, Brind- ley was examined before the Committee of the House of Commons, and stories are rife of the practical illustrations of canal-details given by him on the occasion, — how, after going out and buying a large cheese, he cut it in two to re- present the semi-circular arches of his bridge ; and how he worked some clay up with water to demonstrate to honour- able members the wonderful results of puddling.^ The bill passed through Parliament, and then came the difficulties of execution, difficulties even more financial tlian mechanical. The mechanical were great enough, in the then state of engineering, for Brindley determined on hav- ing one continuous level of water until he approached Run- corn, when the whole descent was to be effected by a long series of locks. This necessitated embankments much greater than those at pjarton ; then, to quote one instance out of many, to carry the canal over Sale Moor Moss pre- sented most formidable difficulties, and so lively was the appreciation of these by the public, that the nickname of " the Duke's Folly " was bestowed on a tall poplar at Dun- ham Banks, on which a board had been nailed showing the height of the canal-level. But Brindley surmounted all engi- neering difficulties; the greatest of them he met by remain- ing for two or three days in bed, and in silence and solitude wrestling with them until, as the angel was vanquished by Jacob, they succumbed to his earnest effort. His inven- ^ Smiles, p. 374, 284 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. tiveness and sleepless care economised as much as he could — his own wages while he was in the Duke's service being only a guinea a week! — still money was needed continually to pay the workmen and for the works, as well as the compensation to owners for the land compulsorily sold by them under the Act — and money it became exceed- ingly difficult to procure. The Duke wasted none upon himself, cutting down his personal expenses until his whole establishment cost only ^400 a year ! But the local and general disbelief in the possibility of his success told against his credit, and at last he could scarcely get a bill for ;^5oo cashed in Liverpool.^ Many a Committee of Ways and Means was held by the Duke, Gilbert, and Brindley, over their pipes and ale, in a small public house (standing uithin the memory of living men, perhaps still standing) on the Moss, a mile and a half from Worsley, and often had Gilbert to ride round among the tenantry of the neighbouring districts, raising five pounds here and ten pounds there, until he had collected enough to pay the week's wages. ^ One thing the Duke would not do, and that was mortgage his hereditary estates. Every other ^ "There is now to be seen at Worsley, in the hands of a private per- son, a promissory note given by the Duke, bearing interest, for as low a sum as five pounds." — Smiles, p. 396. ^ " On one of these occasions he was joined by a horseman, and, after some conversation, the meeting ended with an exchange of their respec- tive horses. On ahghting afterwards at a lonely inn, which he had not before frequented, Gilbert was surprised to be greeted with evident and mysterious marks of recognition by the landlord, and still more so when the latter expressed a hope that his journey had been successful, and that his saddlebags were well filled. He was unable to account for the apparent acquaintance of a total stranger with the business and object of his expedition. The mysteiy was solved by the discovery that he had exchanged horses with a highwayman who had infested the paved lanes of Cheshire till his horse had become so well known, that its owner had found it convenient to take the first opportunity of pro- luring one less notorious." — Lord Ellesmere ; Essays, p. 236. THE * * GREA t'' D UKE OF BRIDGE WA TER, 285 resource seemed exhausted, when at last, his canal from Worsley to Manchester beginning to bring in a large annual income, he rode to London, and was successful in arranging with the banking house of Child and Co., on that security, for advances which enabled him to complete his great un- dertaking. The whole sum thus advanced, from first to last, was only ;^25,ooo, and that expended on* all his canal operations was ;^22o,ooo, less than a single year's income of more than one of the English noblemen of the present day, whom the Duke of Bridgewaters enterprise has helped to enrich. The annual revenue yielded by the Duke's canals reached ultimately ^80,000. In 1767, some five years after the passing of the Act, the new canal to Runcorn, about twenty-eight miles in length, was finished, with the exception of the series of locks which lead down to the Mersey. A lucrative traffic on the rest of the water-way had been increasing the Duke's resources when, six years or so later, the Runcorn locks, too, were completed, and Liverpool and Manchester fairly brought together. On the last day of 1772, the locks were opened, and while some hundreds of the Duke's workmen feasted at his expense on the bank, the Heart of Oak, a vessel of 50 tons burden, passed through on its way to Liverpool, amid the acclamations of a multitude of spectators gathered to- gether from far and near. The Duke's canal-making, at least on a great scale, was at an end, and he was only 36. In developing the resources which he had created, there was, however, still much for him to do, and he did it. He bought any land with coal-seams adjoining Worsley, and expended nearly ^^ 170,000 in forming subterranean tunnels for the egress of the coals, the underground-canals which connected the various workings extending to forty miles in length. From the first he had been in the habit of actively superin- tending the works along the line, and to the last his canals 286 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. were uppermost in his thoughts. A few years before his death he tried on them the experiment of steam-navigation, and long before this he had introduced passenger-boats. Meanwhile, Brindleyand others were, with the aid of the share system and the associated capital of joint-stock companies, extending to the rest of the kingdom the benefits of the inland navigation, which the Duke of Bridgewater had executed, single-handed. The Grand Trunk Canal con- nected the Mersey with the Trent, and by-andby other extensions united the ports of Liverpool, Hull, and Bristol. As it became evident that wherever they went canals en- riched and expanded old industry, created centres of new, benefited alike manufactures and agriculture, the mill-owner and the ship-owner, and, above all, were immensely profit- able to the constructors, there arose a canal-mania, resem- bling in kind, if not in degree, the railway-mania of later days. It began about the time of the first French Revolution, and was attended with the usual mixture of good and evil, general gain and individual loss. More than two thousand six hundred miles of canal-navigation in England alone opened up the country, and brought together producer and consumer, raw miaterial and the machinery and industry by which it is worked up, the manufactory and the sea-port Nor has the canal been superseded by the railway. Accord- ing to the late Lord EUesmere, at a time when the Duke of Bridgewater was beginning to reap the profit of his per- severance and sacrifices. Lord Kenyon congratulated him on the result. "Yes," he replied, "we shall do well enough if we can keep clear of these d d tramroads," a saying which, if mistaken in one sense, contained a pro- phesy of the greatness of railways. " Notwithstanding the great additional facihties for conveyance of merchandise, which have been provided of late years by the construction of railways, a very large proportion of the heavy carrying THE "GREA T " DUKE OF BRIDGE WA TER, 28y trade of the country still continues to be conducted upon canals. It was, indeed, at one time proposed, during the railway mania, and that by a somewhat shrewd engineer, to fill up the canals and make railways of them ! It was even predicted, during the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, that within twelve months of its open- ing the Bridgewater Canal would be closed, and the place of its waters be covered over with rushes. But canals have stood their ground even against railways, and the Duke's canal instead of being closed, continues to carry as much traffic as ever. It has lost the conveyance of passengers by the fly-boats, it is true, but it has retained, and in many instances increased, its traffic in minerals and merchandise. The canals have stood the competition of railways far more successfully than the old turnpike-roads, though these, too, are still in their way as indispensable as canals and rail- ways themselves. Not less than twenty millions of traffic are estimated to be carried annually upon the canals of Eng- land alone, and this quantity is steadily increasing. In 1835, before the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, the through-tonnage carried on the Grand Junc- tion Canal was 310,475 tons; and in 1845, after the rail- way had been open for ten years, the tonnage carried on the canal had increased to 480,626 tons. At a meeting of proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, held in October i860, the chairman said the receipts for the last six months were, with one exception, the largest they had ever had." ^ From a slim youth, the Duke of Bridgewater became, in middle and later age, a large and corpulent man. His fea- tures are said to have borne a strong resemblance to those of George III. He was careless in his dress, and usually wore a suit of brown — " something of the cut of Dr Johnson's," — ^ Smiles, p. 465. 288 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. which included dark drab breeches, fastened at the knee with silver buckles. His chief luxury was tobacco, which he used both ways, being a great smoker, but " out of doors, he snuffed, and he would pull huge pinches out of his right waist- coat-pocket, and thrust the powder up his nose, accompany- ing the operation with strong, short snorts." " While resident in London," according to Lord Ellesmere, from whose nar- rative chiefly such traits of the Duke are derived, "his social intercourse was limited within the circle of a it^ inti- mate friends, and for many years he avoided the trouble of a main part of an establishment suited to his station, by an agreement with one of these, who, for a stipulated sum, undertook to provide a daily dinner for his Grace and a cer- tain number of guests. This engagement lasted till a late period of the Duke's life, when the death of the friend ended the contract." As he loved the useful, so he despised the ornamental, and would allow no conservatories or flower gardens at Worsley. And on his return from a visit to London, " finding some flowers which had been planted in his absence, he whipped their heads off and ordered them to be rooted up." Yet he collected, probably thinking it a good investment, one of the finest and most valuable picture galleries in Europe, " of which," says Lord Elles- mere, " an accident laid the foundation." " Dining one day with his nephew. Lord Gower, afterwards Duke of Suther- land, the Duke saw and admired a picture which the latter had picked up a bargain, for some ^lo, at a broker's in the vicinity. 'You must take me,' he said, ' to that d d fellow to-morrow.' Whether this impetuosity produced any immediate result, we are not informed, but plenty of d d fellows ' were doubtless not wanting to cater for the taste thus suddenly developed. Such advisers as Lord Farn- borough and his nephew lent him the aid of their judgment. His purchases from Italy and Holland were judicious and THE '^ great" duke OF BRIDGEWATER. 289 important, and finally the distractions of France, pouring the treasures of the Orleans Gallery into this country, he became a principal in the fortunate speculation of its purchase." ^ Thus arose the Bridgewater Collection. On great occasions, in spite of his private economy and even parsimony, the Duke showed a princely liberality, and when his country was thought to be in danger, he subscribed a hundred thousand pounds to the "Loyalty Loan." He was rough in speech, and, from long contact with his workmen, " thee'd and thou'd," after the fashion of the district. Read- ing and conversation he cared little for ; he never wrote a letter when he could help it. His antagonism to the fair sex, after his disappointment, he carried so far that he would not allow a woman-servant to wait upon him. To those whom he employed he was a good and just master, though a precise and stern one. He looked well after the housing of his colliery workers, and the schooling of their children, — establishing shops and markets for them, and taking care tbat they contri- buted to a sick-club. Of his feeling for the poor one interest- ing anecdote survives, and is told ^ in connection with his love of travelling from Worsley in his own passage-boats. " He often went by them to Manchester, to watch how the coal-trade was going on. When the passengers alighted at the coal-wharf, there were usually many poor people about, wheeling away their barrow-loads of coals. One of the Duke's regulations was, that whenever any deficiency in the supply was apprehended, those people who came with their wheel-barrows, baskets, and aprons, for small quan- tities, should be served first, and waggons, carts, and horses sent away until the supply was again abundant. The number of small customers who thus resorted to the Duke's coal-yard rendered it a somewhat busy scene, and the Duke liked to, look on and watch the proceedings. One day a customer of ^ Essays, p. 240. * Smiles, p. 405. 2 C) 290 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. the poorer sort, having got his sack filled, looked about for some one to help it on to his back. He observed a stoutish man standing near, dressed in a spencer, with dark drab small clothes. ' Heigh ! mester ! ' said the man, ' come, gi'e me a lift wi' this sack o' coal on to my shouder.' Without any hesitation, the person in the spencer gave the man the required ' lift,' and off he trudged with the load. Some one near, who had witnessed the transaction, ran up to the man and asked, ' Dun yo know who 's that yo Ve been speaking tuU?' 'Naw; who is he ? ' 'Why, it's the Duke his-sen.' 'The Duke!' exclaimed the man, drop- ping the bag of coals from his shoulder. ' Hey ! what'll he do at me ? Maun a goo an' ax his pardon ? ' But the Duke had disappeared." ^ The " great " Duke of Bridgewater died in London on the 8th of March 1803, after a short illness brought on by a cold. His funeral was, in accordance with his own desire, the simplest possible ; and his body was deposited in the family- vault near Ashridge, his magnificent seat in Hertfordshire. The sixth earl, he was the third, the last, and the only bache- lor Duke of Bridgewater. The earldom went to his cousin, General Edward Egerton, and from him to the eighth earl, the originator, by bequest, of the Bridgavatcr Treatises, who died " in the odour of eccentricity," at Paris, in 1829 ; with him the earldom, too, became extinct. To his successor in the earldom the Duke of Bridgewater bequeathed Ashridge ; other estates and valuable property he left to his nephew, the second Marquis of Stafford and first Duke of Sutherland; while his canal-property was devolved (under trust) to that nobleman's second son, known successively as Lord Francis Leveson Gower and Lord Francis Egerton, afterwards first Earl of Ellesmere, grandfather of the third Earl of Elles- mere, the present owner of Worsley. This very year of ' Smiles, p. 405. THE "GREA T " DUKE OF BRIDGE WA TER. 29 1 1873 has witnessed the transfer of the Duke's canals to the hands of stranger-capitalists, and the Bridgewater Trust is now a thing of the past. When the change is fully carried out, no present or future Earl of Ellesmerewill be heard saying what the first said ^ of the ducal founder of British Canal-navi- gation : " Something Uke his phantom-presence still seems to pervade his Lancashire neighbourhood, before which those on whom his heritage has fallen sink into comparative insig- nificance. The Duke's horses still draw the Duke's boats. The Duke's coals still issue from the Duke's levels ; and when a question of price is under discussion, 'What will the Duke say or do? ' is as constant an element of the pro- position as if he were forthcoming in the body to answer the question." Not inappropriately the last Duke of Bridgewater has been called the " first great Manchester man." A benefactor to his country, he was specially a benefactor to Lancashire. " The Duke of Bridgewater, more than any other single man, contributed to lay the foundations of the prosperity of Manchester, Liverpool, and the surrounding districts. The cutting of the canal from Worsley to Manchester conferred upon that town the immediate benefit of a cheap and abun- dant supply of coal ; and when Watt's steam-engine became the great motive-power in manufactures, such supply became absolutely essential to its existence as a manufacturing town. Being the first to secure this great advantage, Manchester thus got the start forward which she has never since lost. " But besides being a water-way for coal, the Duke's canal, when opened out to Liverpool, immediately conferred upon Manchester the immense advantage of direct connection with an excellent seaport. New canals, supported by the Duke, and constructed by the Duke's engineer, grew out of the original scheme between Manchester and Runcorn, 1 Essays, p. 239. 292 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. which had the further effect of placing the former town in direct water-communication with the rich districts of the north-west of England. Then the Duke's canal-terminus became so important that most of the new navigations were laid out so as to join it — those of Leigh, Bolton, Stockport, Rochdale, and the West Riding of Yorkshire being all con- nected with the Duke's system, whose centre was at Man- chester. And thus the whole industry of these districts was brought, as it were, to the very doors of that town. " But Liverpool was not less directly benefited by the Duke's enterprise. Before his canal was constructed, the small quantity of Manchester woollens and cottons manu- factured for exportation was carried on horses' backs to Bewdley and Bridgenorth, on the Severn, from whence they were floated down that river to Bristol, then the chief sea- port on the west coast. No sooner, however, was the new water-road opened out than the Bridgenorth pack-horses were taken off, and the whole export trade of the district concentrated in Liverpool. The additional accommodation required for the increased business of the port was promptly provided as occasion required. New harbours and docks were built ; and before many years had passed, Liverpool had shot far ahead of Bristol, and became the chief port on the west coast, if not in all England. Had Bristol been blessed with a Duke of Bridgewater, the result might have been altogether different ; and the valleys of Wilts, the coal and iron fields of Wales, and the estuary of the Severn might have been what South Lancashire and the Mersey are now. Were statues any proof of merit, the Duke would long since have had the highest statue in Manchester, as well as Liverpool, erected to his memory, and that of Brindley would have been found standing by his side." ^ One more quotation and we have done. It is from the 1 Smiles, p. 416. THE " GREA T " DUKE OF BRIDGE WA TER. 293 graceful tribute to the Duke of Bridgewater by his grand- nephew, of which we have so often availed ourselves, and it may form a fitting close to a sketch of his career. " We are far from supposing," says the first Earl of Ellesmere,^ " that if he had never lived England could long have remained contented with primitive modes of intercourse inadequate to her growing energies. Brindley himself might have found other patrons, or, if he had pined for want of such, Smeatons, Fultons, and Telfords might have arisen to supply his place. Lut for the happy conjunction, however, of such an instrument with such a hand to wield it, inland navigation might long have had to struggle with the timidity of capitalists, and for a long time, at least, would perhaps have crept along obsequious to inequalities of surface and the sinuosities of natural water-courses. When we trace on the map the present artificial arterial system of Britain, some no lines of canal, amounting in length to 2400 miles — when we reflect on the rapidity of the creation, how soon the junction of the Worsley coal-field with its Manchester market was followed by that of Liverpool with Hull, and Lancashire with London — we cannot but think the Duke's matrimonial disappointment ranks with other cardinal pas- sages in the lives of eminent men, with the majority of nine which prevented the projected emigration of Cromwell, and the hurricane which scattered Admiral Christian's fleet, and drove back to the Downs the vessel freighted with Sir Arthur Wellesley and his fortunes." ^ Essays i p. 232. 294 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. XII. JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREA VES* V\7'ITH the invention of the fly-shuttle — certainly by John Kay — and of the spinning-jenny — almost certainly by James Hargreaves — began that development of the British cotton manufacture which, continuing to our own day, has made Lancashire one of the wealthiest, most populous, and most important counties in the United Kingdom. ^Yithout * Bennett Woodcroft's Brief Biographies of Inventors of Machines for the Manufacture of Textile Fabrics (London, 1863). Richard Guest's Compendious Eisto)'}' of the Cotton Manufacture, zuith a Disproval of the Claims of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of its ingenious Ma- chinery (Manchester, 1823); and his British Cotto7i Manufactures ; a Reply to an Article on the Spinning Machinery, contained in h recent Number of the "Edinlnirgh Review." Robert Cole, Sofne Account of leiuis Paid, and his Invention of the Machine Jor Spinning Cotton and Wool by Rolle7-s, and his Claim to such Invention, to the Exclusion of fohn Wyatt ; a Paper read in section G of the British Association at its meeting held in September 1858, and printed as " Appendix No. iv." to Mr Gilbert J. French's Life and Times of Samuel Crompton (second edition, Manchester and London, i860). Dr Ure's Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, investigated and illustrated (London, 1861). Edward ^?i\w&%, History of the Cotton Manufacture {L,orx(i on. 1835), and History of Lancashire (first edition). John James, History of the Worsted Maniifacture in England from the earliest Times (London, 1857). Bosvvell's Life of Johnson (London, i860). Defoe's Tour through the whole Island of Great Britaifi (London, 1738). Abridge ments of Specifications relating to Weaving, and Abridgments of Speci- fications for Spinning, published by the Commissioners of Patents. John Dyer, The Fleece, a Poem. Samuel Bamford's Dialect of South Lancashire. Aikin's Description of the Country yound Manchester, JOHN KA Y AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 295 Kay there might have been no Hargreaves, or no spinning- jenny; without the spinning-jenny no Arkwright and no Crompton. Before the era of Arkwright, an EngUsh cotton-manufac- ture, in the strict sense of the words, did not exist, or rather, cloth manufactured of cotton solely was not produced in this country. The old-fashioned spinning-wheel, or the venerable distaff, on which the weaver was dependent for his supply of cotton yarn, turned out thread fit only for weft, but not strong or stout enough for warps. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the warp of the fustian and other cloth containing cotton, and woven in Lancashire or else- where in England, was for the most part of linen-yarn, supplied from Ireland, as in Humphrey Chetham's day, or from Continental countries under the name of Hamburg yarn, probably because that was the port from which it was mainly shipped. This circumstance ought to be kept in mind all the more sedulously, that from the use, early and late, of the word "cottons," to denote a branch of the woollen manufacture, we are apt to exaggerate the quantity and value of the cotton worked up in England during the first half of the eighteenth century. When we read of the flourishing trade of Manchester and some other Lancashire towns of this period, we must remember that cotton, pure and simple, entered as a small element only into the com- position of the manufactures of the county. In Stuke'.ey's Itinerarmm Curiosum, published in 1724, he describes Man- chester, from personal observation, as " the largest, most rich, populous, and busy village in England" — village, be it observed, not town. "There are," he says, "about 2400 families. Their trade," he adds, "is incredibly large; con- sists much in fustians, girthweb, ticking, tapes, &c., which are dispersed all over the kingdom, and to foreign parts. ''^ ^ Baines's Lancashire, ii. 292. 296 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Defoe, in his Tour, the first edition of which appeared in 1727, was actually misled, by Camden's mention of "Man- chester cottons," into supposing not only that there was then such a thing as an independent cotton-manufacture, but that it was older than the woollen manufacture. For the rest, he speaks of Manchester as "one of the greatest, if not really the greatest, mere village in England. It is neither a walled town, city, nor corporation ; it sends no members to Parliament, and the highest magistrate there is a constable or head-borough." " Here," he says further on, " as at Liverpool, and as at Frome in Somersetshire, the town is extended in a surprising manner ; abundance not of new houses only, but of new streets of houses are added, as also a new church, dedicated to St Anne, and they talk of another, and a fine new square, so that the town is almost double to what it was some years ago." ^ Yet if the official returns of the import of cotton-wool into England are to be trusted, it could not have been to the increased use of cotton in the manufactures of the place that the increased size and prosperity of Manchester were due. That import had positively decreased since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1701 the quantity of cotton-wool imported into England was 1,985,868 lbs. ; in 1730 it had fallen to 1,545,472. In 1701 the official value of British cotton-goods (so called) exported of all sorts was ;^23,253, In 1730 this value had fallen to ^13,524.2 One of the causes of the decrease in the import of cotton-wool, and of the decline of the cotton-manufacture, or rather of the manufacture into which cotton entered as an element, is to be found in the commercial legislation of the period. The woollen manufacture — the great staple trade of the kingdom — began by attacking the import of cotton-goods from India ; and when it had succeeded in this, 1 iii. 173. ^ Baines's Cotton Manufacture, p. 215. fOHN KA V AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 2()J it went on to cripple such manufactures at home as aimed at supplying the demand created by a taste for Eastern cottons. It was the boast of the English woollen manufac- turers that they could provide clothing for all climates and all countries ; and they called on the Legislature to suppress the sale of every, or almost every fabric, which might interfere with their great and time-honoured, their national industry. " Nothing," once exclaims Defoe,i " can answer all the ends of dress but good English broadcloth, fine camblets, serges, and such like ; these they " — foreign nations—" must have, with them none but England can supply them. Be their country hot or cold, torrid or frigid, 'tis the same thing ; near the equinox or near the pole, the English manufacture clothes them all. Here it covers them warm from the freezing breath of the Northern Bear ; and there it shades them and keeps them cool from the scorching beams of a perpendicular sun." With these pretensions the woollen manufacturers were very indignant at the importation by the East India Company of the printed or dyed calicoes of Hin- dustan into England, where they found a considerable sale. The woollen manufacturers applied for protection to a sympathising legislature, and in 1700 the Act 11 and 12 William HI. cap. 10, prohibited the import of the printed or dyed calicoes of India, Persia, and China. Not only, how- ever, was this prohibition followed by an importation from the East of plain calicoes, which could be printed or dyed at home, but the Lancashire men set to work to produce cloth of linen-warp and cotton-weft, which was sent to London to be printed and dyed in imitation of the prohibited Oriental fabrics. The woollen manufacturers discovered that the prohibition of the import of printed and dyed calicoes was of little avail, and that they had thus given a ^ Plan of English Commerce, quoted by James, Worsted Manufacture, P- 187. 2 p 298 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Stimulus to the domestic production of something resembhng the hateful goods which were formerly imported from the East. In 1720 the import of cotton-wool into England nearly touched the amount imported in 1701. Again the woollen manufacturers lifted up their voices, as in the following plaintive passage of a work published about 1 719: "The very weavers and sellers of calico will acknowledge that all the mean people — the maid-servants, and indifferently poor persons — who would otherwise clothe themselves, and are usually clothed in their" — the woollen manufacturers' — " stuffs made at Norwich and London, or in cantaloons and crapes, &c., are now clothed in calico or printed linen, moved to it as well for the cheapness as the lightness of the cloth, and gaiety of the colours. The children universally, whose frocks and coats were all either made of tammies worked at Coventry, or of striped thin stuffs made at Spitalfields, appear now in printed calico or printed linen ; let any one but cast their eyes among the meaner sort playing in the street, or of the better sort at boarding schools and in our families ; the truth is too plain to be denied." ^ Once more the Legislature lent a willing ear to the complaints of the woollen manufacturers. An Act passed in 1721, the 7 George III. cap. 7, imposed a penalty of £^ on every person so much as found wearing any printed or painted or stained calico, whether made at home or abroad. With this stringent enactment the im- port of cotton-wool into England seems to have begun again to decline. From the operation of the Act of 1721, muslins, neck- cloths, and fustians were exempted. It is even said that after the passing of the Act, the Lancashire manufacturers availed themselves of this exemption to make calicoes (always with linen-warps) which could pretend to be ^ James, p. 216-17. JOHN KA Y AXD JAMES IIARGREA VE5. 299 fustians, and therefore might be printed on, "painted" or " stained," without subjecting the wearer to the penalty. However this may be, with the passing of the Act of 1721, the Lancashire manufacturers and the woollen-interest at Norwich and elsewhere, engaged in a struggle which, after fifteen years, ended in the victory of Lancashire. In 1736 Lancashire wrung from the Legislature what was known as the " Manchester Act." It allowed the use of coloured stuffs made of linen-warp and cotton-weft ; for it was not then surmised that cloth could be made at home com- posed exclusively of cotton. The prohibition of printed cali- coes exclusively of cotton remained in force, and of course operated, as it was intended to operate, against the introduc- tion of the cheap cotton-goods of India. At home a free field was left to the Lancashire manufacturers, who, could they have foreseen the future, might have been grateful to their rivals and enemies. If the woollen manuf^icturers had not for their own ends procured the prohibiiion of Indian goods, in all probability there would never have been a cotton-manufacture in ihis country. It might have been strangled by the import and competition of the cheap cotton products of India, from time immemorial the seat of a vast cotton-manufacture of its own. With the passing of the Act of 1736 the English manufacture of stuffs made of linen- warp and cotton-weft took a fresh start, visible in the statistics of the cotton-wool imported. In 1730, as has been seen, the cotton-wool imported into this country was 1,545,472 lbs. 1764 is the year in which John Kay's fly- shuttle was brought under the notice of the London Society of Arts, and it is also that in which James Hargreaves is supposed to have invented the spinning-jenny. In 1764 the cotton-wool imported into England amounted to 3,870,392 lbs., a small enough quantity when compared with the 893,304,720 lbs. imported in 1864, a century later j but 300 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. showing a considerable increase on the import of 1730, six years before the passing of the Manchester Act. In like manner the official value of the British cotton-goods of all kinds exported in 1730 amounted only to ;^i3,524. In 1764 it had risen to ;2^2oo,354. Two years later, Michael Postlethwayte, in his Universal Dictionary of Trade and Com- merce, estimated the annual value of the cottons made in England, both exported and retained for home consump- tion, at ;^6oo,ooo. A hundred years later, in 1866, the declared real value of the manufactured cotton exported from this country was more than seventy-four milhons sterling. John Kay and James Hargreaves were the beginners of the industrial revolution which efifected this marvellous growth. With the increased production, during the fourteen or fifteen years after the Manchester Act was passed, of these hybrid goods, partly linen, partly cotton, and with the general growth of the industry of Lancashire, the position of the IManchester merchant and manufacturer altered and improved. An interesting Lancashire Worthy of later times, Thomas Walker, in his Original, has thus described the life of one of the chief merchants of Manchester, bom at the beginning, and probably in full career about the middle, of the eighteenth century : " He sent the manufactures of the place into Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridge- shire, and the intervening counties ; and principally took in exchange feathers from Lincolnshire, and malt from Cam- bridgeshire and Nottinghamshire. All his commodities were conveyed on pack-horses, and he was from home the greater part of every year, perfomiing his journeys leisurely on horseback. His balances were received in guineas, and were carried \\ith him in his saddle-bags. He was exposed to the vicissitudes of the weather, to great labour and fatigue, and to constant danger. In Lincolnshire he tra- JOHN KA V AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 3OI veiled chiefly along bridle-ways, through fields where frequent gibbets warned him of his peril, and where flocks of wild- fowl continually darkened the air. Business carried on in this manner required a combination of personal attention, courage, and physical strength not to be hoped for in a deputy ; and a merchant then led a nvich more severe and irksome life than a bagman afterwards, and still more than a commercial traveller of the present day." With some improvement in the means of communication, and with the increasing prosperity and wealth of the Manchester trader, he was no longer obliged to make these journeys in person, or to hawk his goods about in pedlar-fashion. "When the Manchester trade began to extend," says Dr Aikin, writing towards 179S, " t'lc cliapnien used to keep gangs of pack- horses, and accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, which they opened and sold to shopkeepers, lodging what was unsold in small stores at the inns. The pack-horses brought back sheep's wool, which was bought on the journey and sold to the makers of worsted yarn at Manchester, or to the clothiers of Rochdale, Saddle- worth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. On the improvement of turnpike-roads waggons were set up, and the pack-luirses discontinued ; and the chapmen only rode out for orders, carrying with them paWerns in their bags. It was during the forty years from 1730 to 1770 that trade was greatly pushed by the practice of sending these riders all over the kingdom to those towns which before had been supplied from the wholesale dealers in the capital places before mentioned. As this was attended not only with more trouble, but with much more risk, some of the old traders withdrew from business, or confined themselves to as much as they could do on the old footing, which, by the competition of young adventurers, diminished yearly. In this period strangers flocked in from various quarters, which introduced a greater proportion of young men of some fortune into the town, with a conse No. 562. Given in full by Baines, p. 1 22-3. JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES. 345 and for the following reasons : After twenty years of struggle, Paul in 1758 took out a second patent, or rather perhaps a sort of renewal of the first patent ; and in the patent of 1758 the statement of the invention is confined to the descrip- tion given in the words, marked in italics, of the extract just given. The "succession of rollers " disappears. With this. explanation the reader is now invited to peruse Dr Ure's comments and criticisms on Paul's invention of spinning by rollers. In the passages about to be quoted, Dr Ure speaks occasionally of Wyatt and Paul together, sometimes even of Wyatt by himself as the inventor of material parts of the engine. This is a mistake, as will be shown afterwards. The principle of the invention, such as it was, belonged to Paul, and to Paul solely. "The action of rollers," says Dr Ure, "in laminating, drawing, or attenuating metallic bars, rods, and plates, has long constituted a leading feature in the workshops of Birmingham, and obviously suggested the plan described in the above specification" (Paul's, already given), "a plan altogether fantastic, absurd, and unmanageable for the spinning of wool, cotton, or any other textile filaments. ' The soft cord or sliver, after escaping from betwixt the first pair of rollers, passes through a succession of other rollers moving proportionably faster, so as to draw the rope into any degree of fineness.' " These are Paul's words, and this is Dr Ure's comment on them : "This succession implies clearly a series of several pairs of rollers — a complexity of construction and movement which never existed but in the brain of the patentee, impracticable with his means, and utterly destructive to woolly fibres had it been prac- ticable. It will appear from subsequent evidence that this succession of rollers moving with successive velocities was merely a fine frenzy of imagination, and was never carried into effect. But the next member of the description exceeds in absurdity anything to be found upon the «pecification-rolls, being a self-evident impossibility. 'Sometimes'" (here again Paul's words are quoted) " ' these successive rollers' (not at first) ' have another rotation besides that which diminishes the thread — viz., that they give it a small degree of twist betwixt each pair by means of the thread itself passing through the axis and centre of that rotation.' As the thread,'' Dr Ure conliiuies, "was inevitably pinched at two points — viz., bet\\ecn the first pair and last pair of rollers — any twisting 2 X 346 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. of its intermediate parts was manifestly impossible. But we may ask any mechanic what rotation such a roller could have, besides the rotation upon its axis, which diminishes the thread ; or how could the thread be made to pass through the axis and centre of that rotation without being instantly torn to atoms ? The expression here used, ' betwixt each pair,' insinuates the existence of several successive pairs of rollers, all endowed with these impossible motions and functions ; circumstances intro- duced either for the purpose of mystifying common minds, or derived from some vertiginous movement of the brain. The last sentence " of the specification, given above in italics, and to which the reader's atten- tion was specially directed, Dr Ure proceeds to say, "like the postscript of a lady's letter, contains the whole substance of the invention — a pair of flatting-rollers prefixed to the spindle and bobbin of a spinning- wheel; an ingenious fancy, no doubt, but not a mechanism capable under any modification, of converting a carded sliver of wool or cotton into tolerably good yarn." Mr Kennedy, a great authority among cotton-spinners, pronounced the following opinion upon a sample which had been spun by Mr Wyatt's roller-machine : ' From examining the yarn, I think it could not be said by competent judges that it was spun by a similar machine to that of Mr Arkwright ; for the fabric or thread is very different from the early productions of Mr Arkwright, and is, I think, evidently spun by a different machine.' . . . "The original plan of Wyatt was to employ a pair of rollers for delivering at any desired speed a sliver of cotton to the bobbin-and-fly spindle, as in a flax-wheel. The nonsensical mystifications of a succession of other 'rollers,' and another rotation besides that which diminishes the thread, appears to have been introduced into the patent of 1738 by Lewis Paul, and never existed, nor could exist, in any machine. The delivery-roller principle of Wyatt reappeared by itself in Paul's second patent of 1 758. ' The several rows or filaments so taken off (the flat cards) must be connected into one entire roll, which being put between a pair of rollers or cylinders, is by their turning round delivered to the nose of a spindle in such proportion to the thread made as is proper for the particular occasions. From hence it is delivered to a bobbin, spole, or quill, which turns upon the spindle, and which gathers up the thread or yam as it is spun. The spindle is so contrived as to draw faster than the rollers or cylinders give, in proportion to the length of thread or yarn into which the matter to be spun is proposed to be drawn.' This specification," adds Dr Ure, "is identical with the concluding paragraph of the former, and therefore afforded no valid claim to new letters-patent. In the first, the card- rolls were joined together into a kind of rope of raw wool ; in the second, the several rows (of cardings) must be connected into one entire JOHN KA V A.XD JAMES HARGREA VES. 34/ roll. The two patents are therefore entirely the same. The second is remarkable for the renunciation of the fantastic whim of successive rollers, with certain whirligig inexplicable motions, which cuts so con- spicuous a figure in the first, and which was put there, like the Martello towers on the Irish coast, for the purpose of puzzling posterity. The equable extension and attenuation of the thread by means of a pair of feeding-rollers, a pair of carrying-rollers, and a pair of drawing-rollers, cannot be traced in the preceding rude scheme, and they constitute the very essence of roller-spinning." "The grand mechanical problem," Dr Ure says, in conclusion, " which the cotton manufacture then offered to the solution of the in- genious, may be stated as follows : To construct a machine in which one member should supply continuously and uniformly porous cords of parallel filaments in minute portions ; a second member should attenuate these cords by drawing out their filaments alongside of each other by an imperceptible gradation ; a third member should at once twist and extend these attenuated threads unremittingly as they advance ; and a fourth should wind them regidarly upon bobbins exactly in proportion as they are spun. When contemplated d priori in its delicate require- ments, this problem must have appeared to be impracticable — a conviction strengthened by the total failure of Wyatt and Paul to produce good yarn even at the highly remunerating price of that lime. Their rank in the history of roller-spinning may be justly compared to that of the Marquis of Worcester in the history of the steam-engine — they gave birth to an idea which was quite erroneous for practical purposes, and which, being pursued, did and could produce nothing but disappointment and ruin to its authors — a result most unpropitious to the progress of invention in any line of industry." ^ A Statement to which several exceptions may be taken. To begin with, the researches of Mr Cole proved beyond a doubt that the invention of roller-spinning, whatever it may then have been worth, belongs exclusively to Paul, and that John Wyatt, originally a carpenter, was merely his servant and assistant. In his most boastful mood, and when writing privately to persons who had neither the capacity nor the wish to investigate any possible claim of his to the invention, and whom, therefore, he might have easily hoodwinked, Wyatt never went further than to call ' Ure, i. 237-45. 348 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. himself " the principal agent in compiling the spinning- engine." In 1756, three years before Paul's death, speaking of the machine, or " movement," as he calls it, and its productive power in 1741, he says that " it owed the condi- tion it was then in to the superintendency of Mr John Wyatt " — himself, to wit. In a covenant with Paul for the transfer to himself of some of the machines in payment of a debt due to him by Paul, occurs the following passage : " And that he, the said Lewis Paul, shall and will give unto the said John Wyatt, his executors, administrators, and assigns, and every or any of them, such further instructions for the erecting, making, and perfecting of the said machines or engines and spmdles as shall be requisite and needful for the effectual working and managing the same " — language which would never have been used had Wyatt been the inventor. Finally, in the year before Paul's second patent, Wyatt, writing to the manager of the works at Northampton, talks of the machines as " old gimcracks," a description of them which could never have been given by their inventor.^ Neither is it quite correct to say that the first invention of 1 " That the principle of spinning by rollers " was the " invention of Lewis Paul is clear from a memorandum in the handwriting of John Wyatt, found amongst his papers, to the following effect : — " ' Thoughts originally Mr Patcl's. — i. The joining of the rolls. 2. Their passing through cylinders. 3. The calculation of the wheels, by which means the bobbin draws faster than those cylinders ; this, I pre- sume, was picked up somewhere before I knew him.'" " The rest of the details of the invention were claimed by Wyatt — 'the horizontal and tracer, the conic whorves,' the proportional size of the spindle and bobbin, and sundry other mechanical details of the machine " (Smiles's Huguenots, p. 421). Mr Smiles had in his hands Wyatt's papers, and he adds, a few pages further on, " So far as we can judge from the Wyatt MSS.. Paul was the mventor of the principle of spinning by rollers, and Wyatt the skilled mechanic who embodied the principle in a working machine." JOHN KA Y AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 349 roller-spinning "ruined its authors." If "ruin" overtook some of them, it is not clear that it did not arise from otlier causes. Paul himself, though often enough in hot water, died tolerably well off He borrowed pretty freely when getting his machine into working order, but he seems not only to have repaid the loans, but to have made a good deal of money by granting licences for the use of his machine. The faith which he inspired at first in the feasibility of his invention was great, and he profited by it more than did some of those who invested in it. Dr James, the physician who at the outset lent him money, writes thus from London in 1740 to Warren, the Birmingham book- seller : " Yesterday we went to see Mr Paul's machine, which gave us all entire satisfaction, both in regard to the carding and spinning. You have nothing to do but to get a purchaser for your grant ; the sight of the thing is demonstrative enough. I am certain that if Paul could begin with ;^i 0,000, he must, or at least might, get more money in twenty years than the city of London is wortli " — a remarkable testimony to the "opening" then presented to any one who could bring roller-spinning into successful operation. When Warren failed in 1743, three years after this prophecy, his assignees under the commission of bank- ruptcy advertised for sale his " grant or licence for erecting and working of fifty spindles for the spinning of wool and cotton according to the new invention of Mr Lewis Paul " — adding, " N.B. — Mr Warren paid for the same grant ;^iooo, but the same will be sold at a less value." Of Cave of the Genikman's Magazine, Johnson, when writing his life, said that "the fortune which he left behind him, though large, had yet been larger had he not rashly and wantonly im- paired it by innumerable projects of which I know not that ever one succeeded." Cave appears to have been among Paul's chief victims. First, " he bought from Paul a licence 350 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES, for 250 spindles, and in 1740 he started a spinning-mill on Turnhill Brook, a little to the north of Fleet Bridge, at the back of Field Lane, Holborn." In spite of Paul's per- sonal superintendence, this mill proved unprofitable, and was abandoned. Yet when the factory at Northampton had failed to yield a profit after ten years' trial, Cave was in- duced to buy the lease of it. In Warren's factory at Bir- mingham, and that of Wyatt in the same town, the ma- chinery was turned by asses. At Northampton, however, Cave not only employed fifty hands, but used water-power to drive the spindles. There will be some further refer- ence to this Northampton experiment. The origin of Johnson's acquaintance with Paul, as has been already said, is unknown, though a clue to it, as also has been hinted, may be found in the number of their "mutual friends" — Dr James, Miss Swynfen, Warren, Cave. On the whole, if Johnson's letters to Paul are looked at carefully, it does not seem likely that he was the means of introducing these persons to the projector. When Johnson's letters to Paul were communicated to Croker, he inserted them in his edition of Boswell with this comment, among others: "The whole affair seems very obscure, and the letters, though marked with Johnson's usual good sense, are perhaps hardly worth inserting ; yet I am willing to preserve them as additional proofs of his kindness to his friends, and as afford- ing glimpses of his life at periods of which Boswell knew nothing. The originals are in the possession of Mr Lewis Pocock." One fancies somehow that the "young spark," as Paul called himself in his letter to Lord Shaftesbury, was a man of some education and breeding — a sort, perhaps, of industrial or speculative Richard Savage, ardent and im- pulsive, though with a good deal of savoir-faire; and that Samuel took a liking to him, and wished to stand his friend in squabbles with the very different class of people to which i JOHN KA Y AND JAMES H ARGUE A FES. 35 I the Warrens and Caves belonged. At any rate, it is not often that the history of cotton-spinning connects itself with such a man as Samuel Johnson, and the reader may not object to a closer inspection of his correspondence with Paul. The first of Johnson's letters to Paul is dated " St John's Gate, Januar}^3ist, 1 740-1." Samuel had been then for three or four years in town, and the fame of his " London" had done Uttle for him. Pope had been so struck by the merit of ** London" as to interest Lord Gower in its author, and Lord Gower wrote accordingly to a friend of Swift's, asking him to ask the Dean to " persuade the University of Dublin to send a diploma to me, constituting this poor man Master of Arts in their University." "Mr Samuel Johnson (author of 'Lon- don,' a satire, and some other poetical pieces) is a native of this county," wrote his lordship, dating from Trentham, "and much respected by some worthy gentlemen in his neighbourhood, who are trustees of a charity-school now vacant ; the certain salary is sixty pounds a year, of which they are desirous to make him master, but unfortunately he is not capable of receiving their bounty, which would make him happy for life, by not being a Master of Arts, which by the statutes of this school the master of it must be." Hence the application to Swift, through a common friend, by Lord Gower, who would be altogether forgotten, great man though he was then, but for his letter on behalf of Samuel Johnson. "This respectful application," quoth Boswell, " had not the desire^ effect ■" and Samuel had to drudge on at task-work for Cave, and yet with heart enough left to do, or try to do, a good turn to Paul. Johnson's first letter to Paul (already referred to) was occasioned by a complication between Paul on the one hand, and James and Warren on the other, in which, seemingly at Johnson's request. Cave was acting as umpire. There is 'm 352 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. it such a Johnsonian touch as this : " He that desires only to do right can obhge nobody by acting, and must offend every man that expects favours." Samuel's next letter to Paul "in Birmingham" is dated from "The Black Boy, over against Durham Yard, Strand" — Durham Yard, where Garrick sold wine before he took to the stage, and on the site now occupied by the streets and terraces of the Adelphi. The question is still the money-controversy between Paul and James and Warren, and the letter closes with this truly Johnsonian sentence : " I hope to write soon on some more agreeable subject ; for though, perhaps, a man cannot easily find more pleasing employment than" that " of reconciling variances, he may certainly amuse himself better by any other business than that of interposing in controversies which grow every day more distant from accommodation, which has been hitherto my fate ; but I hope my endeavours will be, hereafter, more successful. — I am, sir, yours, &c., Sam. Johnson." ^ There is an interval of fourteen years between this and the next that has been preserved of Johnson's letters to Paul. When 1755 arrived. Cave was dead and buried, and a " young Mr Cave," his brother seemingly, reigned in his stead. What is more important, in the April of 1755 " Johnson's Diction- ary" had appeared, and Samuel was a famous man, though in the March of the following year he had to write to Richardson the novelist : " Sir, I am obliged to entreat your assistance : I am now under an arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings." It was during the period between the publication of the dictionary and the penning of this appeal to the author of Clarissa Harlowe, that Samuel {cEiat. 47), not looking forward to a very cheerful Christmas, wrote thus to Paul "at Brook Green, Hammersmith" — " Monday, December 23, 1755. — Dear Sir, — I would not have you think that I forget or 1 Boswell, p. 43-4. JOHN KA Y AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 353 neglect you. I have never been out of doors since you saw me. On the day after I had been with you, I was seized with a hoarseness, which still continues. I had then a cough so violent that I once fainted under its convulsions. I was afraid of my lungs ; my physician bled me yesterday and the day before, first almost against his will, but the next day without my \_word wanting], I had been bled once before, so that I have lost in all 54 ounces. I live on broths, and my cough, I thank God, is much abated, so that I can sleep. I find it impossible to fix a time for coming to you, but as soon as the physician gives me leave, I will pass a week at your house. Change of air is often of use, and I know you will let me live my own way. I have been pretty much dejected. — I am, sir, your most humble servant, Sam. Johnson" — a letter which bespeaks some intimacy between the two men, and which might have suggested to Paul that there were other and worse ills in life than disputes with " young Mr Cave " about money matters. There are several more letters, written probably about the same time, from Johnson to Paul, but they are seldom distinctly intelligible. From one of them it appears that " young Mr Cave " had put in a distress at the Northampton " mill," which after the death of old Mr Cave seems to have been given over to Paul as tenant, and of which he had failed to pay the rent. " Mr Cave seized," says Samuel, with great con- ciseness of narrative and statement, "and has a man in possession. He made a sale, and sold only a fire-shovel for four shillings. The goods were appraised at about eighty pounds, c . . Mr Cave will stay three weeks without any further motion in the business, but will still keep his pos- session. He expects that you should pay the expense of the seizure ; how much it is I could not be informed. He will stay to Christmas upon security. He is willing to con- tinue you tenant, or will sell the mill to any that shall work 2 Y 354 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. or buy the machine. He values his mill at a tliousand pounds. He did not come up about this business, but another. Mr Barker, as young Mr Cave thinks, is at North- ampton. These, sir, are the particulars that I have gathered. — I am, sir, your very humble servant, Sam. Johnson." Simply because it is Johnson's last word to Paul — and obscure and insignificant though the correspondence be, one is loth to part from it — let the following billet, dateless, though written about the same date, be given : *' Sir, — I am no less surprised than yourself at the treatment which you have met with, and agree with you that Mr Cave " — the second — " must impute to himself part of the discontent that he shall suffer till the spindles are produced. If I have an opportunity of dispelling the gloom that overcasts him at present, I shall endeavour it both for his sake and yours ; but it is to little purpose that remonstrances are offered to voluntary inattention or to obstinate prejudice. Cuxon in one place and Garlick in the other leave no room for the unpleasing reasonings of your humble servant, Sam. John- son." "This," says Boswell's modern editor, "concludes the correspondence with Paul, of which I can give no further explanation." ^ The present writer is in what was Mr Croker's j)redicament. The customary term of fourteen years having run its course, Paul's first patent for spinning, granted him in 1738, expired in 1752. There is not the slightest hint that a rush was made by manufacturers or capitalists to avail themselves of the invention, when by the expiry of the patent any one who chose could make use of it without fee or reward. Was this neglect of the process due to the poor quality of the yarn spun by it, or to the circumstance that the yarn being good enough, the expense of production, to which of course the wages of labour contributed largely, was too great to allow ^Boswell, p. 103. yOHN KA Y AND JAMES H ARC RE A VES. 355 of any profit, or was even so great as to occasion a loss ? Dr Ure speaks of Paul as having " never been able to spin with all his roller-apparatus a single good thread." But this trenchant statement is not confirmed by the opinion which was pronounced on Paul's yarn by Mr Kennedy, the well- known cotton-spinner, and contributor to the history and biography of the cotton-manufacture. As quoted by Dr Ure to support his view, and in a passage already given, Mr Kennedy does not affirm Paul's yarn to be good, bad, or indifferent. He merely says, it has been seen, that he does not "think competent judges" would pronounce it to be " spun by a similar machine to that of Mr Arkwright ; for the fabric is very different from the early production of Mr Arkwright, and is, I think, evidently spun by a different machine." ^ Mr Kennedy does not condemn poor Paul's yarn, which, it is quite possible, may have been suitable for several purposes, though he could not succeed in making its production remunerative. It was perhaps this that led Paul to procure the introduction of his machine into workhouses, where, no wages being paid to the inmates, the cost of production would be reduced to a minimum. At any rate, it was so introduced into at least one Yorkshire workhouse, and further on Paul (who, it must always be remembered, was a firm believer in his own invention) will be heard pleading for its introduction into the Foundling Hospital in London. To its use in a Yorkshire workhouse there is the testimony of Dyer in "The Fleece," which, as already men- tioned, was published in 1757. The first lines of the passage in which the poet refers to the working of Paul's machine have been already given. ^ Here it is in its integrity : — ' ' Behold in Caldei's vale, where wide around Unnumbered villas creep the shrubby hills, . 1 rtw/t, p. 344. " 2 ^/«/^.^' p. 315-6. 35t) LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. A spacious dome for this fair purpose rise. High o'er the gates, with gracious air, EHza's image stands. By gentle steps Upraised, from room to room we slowly walk, And view with wonder, and with silent joy, The sprightly scene ; where many a busy hand, Where spoles, cards, wheels, and looms, with motion quick. And ever-murmuring sound, th' unwonted sense Wrap in surprise. To see them all employed. All blithe, it gives the spreading heart delight, As neither meats, nor drinks, nor aught of joy Corporeal can bestow. Nor less they gain Virtue than wealth, while on their useful works From day to day intent, in their full minds Evil no place can find. With equal scale Some deal abroad the well-assorted fleece ; These card the short, those comb the longer flake ; Others the harsh and clotted lock receive. Yet sever and refine with patient toil, And bring to proper use. Flax, too, and hemp Excite their diligence. The younger hands Ply at the easy work of winding yam On swiftly-circling engines, and their notes Warble together, as a choir of larks ; Such joy arises in the mind employed. Another scene displays the more robust, Rasping or grinding rough Brazilian woods. And what Campeachy's disputable shore Copious affords to tinge the thirsty web ; And the Caribbee Isles, whose dulcet canes Equal the honeycomb." A pleasant and cheerful scene, such as is seldom or never presented in a modern workhouse, and worthier of the poet's lyre than some of the thernes on which in Dyer's day, to say nothing of later days, the gift of song has been wasted. After this passage comes the reference to Paul's invention : — " We next are shown A circular machine, of new design, In conic shape : it draws and spins a thread Without the tedious toil of needless hands. A wheel, invisible, beneath the floor, JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES. 35/ To every member of th' harmonious frame Gives necessary motion. One, intent, O'erlooks the work ; the carded wool, he says, Is smoothly lapped around those cylinders. Which, gently turning, yield it to yon cirque Of upright spindles, which, with rapid whirl, Spin out, in long extent, an even twine." In one note to this passage the poet explains the " circular machine " of the text to be " a most curious machine, in- vented by Mr Paul. It is at present invented to spin cotton; but it may be made to spin fine-carded wool." In another note, to enlighten the ignorance of the readers of those days, imperfectly acquainted with the topography and geography of the " manufacturing districts," he tells them that the Calder is " a river in Yorkshire, which runs below Halifax, and passes by Wakefield." The particular region in a workhouse of which Dyer saw Paul's machinery in operation is sufficiently marked by the topographical allu- sions of the passage which follows the description :— *' From this delightful mansion (if we seek Still more to view the gifts which honest toil Distributes) take we now our eastward course To the rich fields of Burstal. Wide around, Hillock and valley, farm and village, smile ; And ruddy roofs, and chimney-tops appear Of busy Leeds, upwafting to the clouds The incense of thanksgiving : all is joy ; And trade and business guide the living scene Roll the full cars, adown the winding Aire Load the slow-sailing barges, pile the pack On the long-tinkling train of slow-paced steeds !" There is in Dyer's " Fleece" another reference — a brief one — to Paul's invention; but the whole passage in which it is embedded shall be given, because not only is a celebration of industrial processes rare in English poetry, but this one is germane to the matter in hand : — 358 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. "What simple Nature yields (And Nature does her part) are only rude Materials, cumbers on the thorny ground ; 'Tis toil that makes them wealth, that makes the fleece (Yet useless, rising in unshapen heaps) Anon, in curious woofs of beauteous hue, A vesture usefully succinct and warm. Or trailing in the length of graceful folds, A royal mantle. Come, ye village nymphs ; The scattered mists reveal the dusky hills ; Grey dawn appears ; the golden morn ascends, And paints the glittering rocks, and purple woods, And flaming spires ; arise, begin your toils. Behold the fleece beneath the spiky comb Drop its long locks, or, from the mingling card, Spread in soft flakes, and swell the whitened floor. " Come, village nymphs ; ye matrons, and ye maids, Receive the soft material : with light step, Whether ye turn around the spacious wheel, Or, patient sitting, that revolve, which forms A narrower circle. On the brittle work Point your quick eye ; and let the hand assist To guide and stretch the gently-lessening thread ; E'en unknotted twine will praise your skill. A different spinning every different web Asks from your glowing fingers : some require The more compact, and some the looser wreath ; The last for softness, to delight the touch .Of chambered delicacy ; scarce the cirque Need turn around, or twine the lengthening flake. " There are, to speed their labour, who prefer Wheels, double spoled, which yield to either hand A several line ; and many yet adhere To th' ancient distaff, at the bosom fixed, Casting the whirling spindle as they walk : At home, or in the sheepfold, or the mart, Alike the work proceeds. This method still Norvicum favours, and th' Icenian towns : It yields their airy stuffs an ampler thread. This was of old, in no inglorious day.s. The mode of spinning, when th' Egyptian prince A golden distaff gave that beauteous nymph, JOHN K4 Y AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 359 Too-beauteous Helen : no uncourlly gift Then, when each gay diversion of the fair Led to ingenious use. But patient Art That in experience works, from hour to hour, Sagacious, has a spiral engine formed, Which on a hundred spoles, a hundred threads. With one huge wheel, by lapse of water twines Few hands requiring ; easy-tended work, That copiously supplies the greedy loom." This wonderful " spiral engine " is in a note explained to be " Paul's engine for cotton and fine wool." " Norvicum" is, of course, Norwich, then a chief seat of the woollen manufacture ; but the poet is careful to explain, in another note to the words " Icenian towns," that " the Iceni were the inhabitants of Suffolk." The whole passage is a curious one, especially for its reference to the surviving use of the distaff, the most ancient of spinning-implements — older far than the spinning-wheel. Blending what nowadays is called " social science " with poetry, Dyer proceeds to anticipate and repel the complaint that the use of machi- nery diininishes the field of employment; and, still more curious and interesting, to refute the argument that it is unfair to expose the ordinary worker for wages to the com- petition of the wageless pauper engaged in reproductive labour : — " Nor hence, ye nymphs, let anger cloud your brows : The more is wrought, the more is still rcquii'ed : Blithe, o'er your toils, with wonted song, proceed : Fear not surcharge . your hands will ever find Ample employment. In the strife of trade, These curious instruments of speed obtain Various advantage, and the diligent Supply with exercise, as fountains sure, Which, ever-gliding, feed the flowery lawn. Nor — should the careful State, severely kind, In every province, to the house of toil Compel the vagrant, and each implement Of ruder art, the comb, the card, the wheel, r 360 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Teach their unwilling hands — nor yet complain. Yours with the public good shall ever rise." A monition and a maxim the sense and truth of which have still to be appreciated by certain political economists of our own day and generation. From the " nymphs " who spin, the poet turns to their swains, the " amorous youth," whose business it is to weave. The following description of the weaver at work indicates that within Dyer's sphere of observation Kay's fly-shuttle was not in use : — " The industrious youth employs his care To store soft yam ; and now he strains the warp Along the garden walk, or highway-side, Smoothing each thread ; now fits it to the loom And sits before the work : from hand to hand The thready shuttle glides along the lines, Which open to the woof and shut altern ; And ever and anon, to firm the work, Against the web is driven the noisy frame, That o'er the level rushes like a surge, Which often dashing on the sandy beach, Compacts the traveller's road : from hand to hand Again, across the lines oft opening, glides The thready shuttle, while the web apace Increases, as the light of eastern skies. Spread by the rosy fingers of the Morn ; And all the fair expanse with beauty glows. ' The reader must note what follows : — " Or if the broader mantle be the task, He chooses some companion to his toil. From side to side, with amicable aim. Each to the other darts the nimble bolt, While friendly converse, prompted by the work. Kindles improvement in the opening mind." ^ Whereas one of the abridgments of labour effected by Kay's fly-shuttle was that of enabling a single worker to weave the ^ The Fleece, book iii. JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES. 36 1 ** broader mantle," which had previously, as in Dyer's de- scription, required two workers, one on each side of the loom, throwing alternately to the other the " nimble bolt." Johnson's literary fastidiousness, in combination with his dislike of blank verse, made him speak slightingly of " The Fleece" in his brief biography of Dyer among the " Lives of the English Poets." "Of ' The Fleece,'" quoth Samuel, " which never became popular, and is now universally ne- glected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discord- ant natures that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpe?it with the fozul. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interspersing rural imagery and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delu- sion, the meanness naturally adherent, and the irreverence habitually annexed, to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression ; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an un- pleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased." Goethe's suggestion, that a harper would do well to go out into the fields and sing to the peasantry the wonders of potato-culture, would probably have been re- ceived by Samuel Johnson with a burst of derisive laughter. But Samuel, despite his scholastic whims and prejudices, and narrow conceptions of the dignity of literature, had a full share of sympathy with the practical. He noted with a curious and interested eye the various employments of his fellow-men, spoke sometimes at the Society of Arts, and occasionally astonished his friends by giving minute and animated details of industrial processes seemingly the most foreign to his tastes and studies. Possibly Samuel may have taken a technical interest in I 362 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Paul's invention as well as a personal one in Paul himself. At any rate, his kindly sympathy with Paul_ seems to have lasted almost as long as Paul's life. From the same motive which led Paul to procure the introduction of his machine into workhouses, he attempted to have it introduced into the Foundling Hospital in London. With this object he addressed a letter to the Duke of Bedford, as president or patron of that institution. " The draft of the letter," says Mr Cole, "is in the handwriting of Dr Samuel Johnson," and its composition is evidently Johnson's. Samuel had " dedicated " for others — not for himself — *' to the royal family all round." He was always ready to write prefaces for the books of friends, or to use his pen in applications for their benefit. Here is the final memorial of the friend- ship or intimacy of Samuel Johnson with Lewis Paul, the French refugee's son, and the undoubted inventor of roller- spinning : — *' My Lord, — As beneficence is never exercised but at some expense of ease and leisure, your Grace will not be surprised that you are sub- jected, as the general guardian of deserted infants and protector of their hospital, to intrusion and importunity; and you will pardon in those who intend, though perhaps unskilfully, the promotion of the charity, the impropriety of their address for the goodness of their intention. " I therefore take the liberty of proposing to your Grace's notice a machme (for spinning cotton) of which I am the inventor and proprietor, as proper to be erected in the Foundling Hospital ; its structure and operation being such that a mixed number of children from five to four- teen years may be enabled by it to earn their food and clothing. In this machine, thus useful and thus appropriated to the public, I hope to obtain from Parliament, by your Grace's recommendation, such a right as shall be thought due to the inventor. " I know, my Lord, that every project must encounter opposition, and I would not encounter it but that I think myself able to surmount it. Mankind has prejudices against every new undertaking, which are not always prejudices of ignorance. He that only doubts what he does not know may be satisfied by testimony, at least by that of his own eyes ; but a projector, my Lord, has more dangerous enemies — the envious and the interested, who will neither hear reason nor see facts, JOHN KA Y AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 363 and whose animosity is more vehement as their conviction is more strong." Aut Sa.m\ie\ aut Diadoh(s f "I do not implore your Grace's patronage for a work existing only in possibility. I have a machine erected which I am ready to exhibit to your Grace, or of any proper judge of mechanical performances whom you shall be pleased to nominate. I shall decline no trial ; I shall seek no subterfuge ; but shall show, not by argument but by practical experience, that what I have here promised will be easily performed. " I am an old man oppressed with many infirmities, and therefore cannot pay the attention which your Grace's high quality demands and my respect would dictate ; but whenever you shall be pleased to assign me an aiftiience, I shall explain my design with the openness of a man who desires to hide nothing, and receive your Grace's commands with the submission which becomes, " My Lord, Your Grace's most obedient And most humble Servant." ^ It was probably about the time wlien this letter to the Duke of Bedford was written (with what result is not known) that Paul began that to tlie Earl of Shaftesbury, formerly quoted from, and in which, too clearly, he was not aided by Samuel Johnson's pen. In the letter to the Duke of Bed- ford he calls himself " an old man oppressed with many infirmities ; " in the fragment of that to Lord Shaftesbury, speaking of his invention, he says that " in a course of something more than twenty years it gained me above ^20,000 as patentee." Paul's first patent was granted in 1738, and twenty years would bring us to 1758. It will have been observed that in the letter to the Duke of Bedford, Paul hinted a hope that, through his Grace's influence, he might obtain in his machine, which by the expiry of the patent had been " appropriated to the public," " such a right as shall be thought due to the inventor." In 1757-58, five or six years after the expiry of the patent, it is certain that Paul was still sanguine as to the success of his machine, ' French, p. 261-3. 364 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. though in 1757, Wyatt, his former coadjutor, thus wrote to the person then managing the works (which had once been Cave's) at Northampton : " You have herewith a reversion of old gimcracks, which by order of Mr Yeo I am directed to send to you. I most heartily wish Mr Yeo better success than any of his predecessors have had." The " old man oppressed with many infirmities" still struggled for a recognition of his machine, and for a restoration of his own right of property in it. " In 1757-58, his solicitor submitted cases to the attorney and solicitor-generals, Pratt and C. Yorke, for their opinions as to a new patent being granted to him ; but the invention being substantially the same as that for which the patent of 1738 was granted, both counsel were very guarded in their opinion, as one or the other might have to decide the question judicially ; and it would appear that there were some difficulties in the way, for a new patent was not granted until after hearing counsel for Paul. The result, however, was that the patent was obtained ; it bears date 1758,^ and here again Paul makes an oath that he was the sole inventor of the machine." ^ The machine of the second patent was described and criticised in the ex- tract formerly given from Dr Ure, when it was seen to differ from the machine of the first patent chiefly " in the renun- ciation of the fantastic whim of successive rollers with certain whirligig inexplicable motions." Paul did not long survive to enjoy his restored or renewed patent-rights, and to persevere in attempting to obtain recognition for his machine. The second patent was granted him in 1758. He died in the following year at Brook Green, Hammersmith, and was buried at Paddington on the 30th April 1759. It is clear that he was well off when he died. '^ Abridgements 0/ Specifications relating to Spinning, p. il, " 2qth June 1758. No. 274." * French, p. 264. I JOHN KA V AND JAMES HARGREA VES. 365 " Paul," we are told, "left a will, dated ist May 1758, by which he gave an annuity of ;;!^8 to his servant, Alice Morgan ; his plate, linen, printed books, and ^1^200, and an annuity of ;^2oo to Jane Wright, wife of Henry Wright, apothecary; and the residue of his estate to Thomas Yeo of Gray's Inn, solicitor, with directions to take the name of Paul : in default of his paying the legacies and annuities, and taking the name of Paul, then a bequest over to Henry Hadleigh, surgeon, subject to the same conditions ; and upon failure on his part, then bequest over to the president of the Foundling Hospital for the time being, for the benefit of that charity, and he appointed said Thomas Yeo executor. In accordance with the terms of the will, Yeo assumed the surname of Paul, but he soon afterwards left England, greatly involved in debt. The machinery was distrained on for rent and sold, realising but a small sum." ^ This was doubtless the Yeo mentioned in Wyatt's letter of 1757. In Yeo's — the last hands to which they can be traced — " the gimcracks " did not meet with " the better success " which Wyatt then politely wished them and him. In the course of his active, ingenious, and projecting existence, Paul had done more for the cotton -manufacture than bestow on it the first germ of roller-spinning. He had greatly improved the process of carding ^ — one in all cases 1 French, p. 265. 2 Paul's carding patent is dated "30th August 1748" [Abridgments of Specifications relating to Spinning, p. 8, No. 636). Curiously enough, in the same year (p. 7, and No. 628 of the volume just referred to), is a patent of the 20th January of the same year, granted to Daniel Bourne for an improvement in carding, apparently anticipating Paul's applica- tion of cylinders to the process. Bourne's was " a machine for carding wool or cotton either Ijy hand or water." The specification distinctly states that " the properties by which this machine of carding differs from any other method hitherto invented are principally these, that the cards are put upon cylinders or rollers, and that these act against each other by a circular motion," &c. &c. 366 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. required to prepare the cotton-wool for being spun by whatsoever contrivance or implement, from the ancient distaff to the most complicated of modern machines. " Carding is the process to which the cotton is subjected after it has been opened and cleaned, in order that the fibres of the wool may be disentangled, straightened, and laid parallel with each other, so as to admit of being spun. This was formerly effected by instruments called hand-cards, which were brushes made of short pieces of wire instead of bristles, the wires being stuck into a sheet of leather at a certain angle, and the leather fastened on a flat piece of wood about twelve inches long and five wide, with a handle. The cotton being spread upon one of the cards, it was repeatedly combed with another till all the fibres were laid straight, when it was stripped off the card in a fleecy roll, ready for the rover. The first improvement was in making one of the two cards a fixture, and increasing its size ; so that a workman, having spread the cotton upon it, might use a card double the size of the old cards, and do twice the quantity of work. The process was further facilitated by suspending the movable card by a pulley from the ceiling, with a weight to balance it, so that the workman had only to move the card, without sustaining its weight. The stock-cards, as they were called, had been previously used in the woollen manufacture : at what period they were introduced into the cotton manufacture, I have not satisfactorily ascertained." It is certain that they were used in the cotton manufacture so early as 1739. " The application of rotatory motion was the grand improvement in carding ; and this improvement, singular as it may seem, is traced back to Lewis Paul, the patentee of spinning by rollers. "The carding patent of Lewis Paul" — and in this, ten years after the grant (in 1738) of his first patent for roller-spinning, he describes himself as "of Birmingham, gentleman " — "a copy of which, with the draw- ings, I have obtained from the Patent Office, includes two different machines for accomplishing the same purpose ; the one a flat, and the other a cylindrical arrangement of cards The following description in the specification applies equally to both : ' The said machine for card- ing of wool and cotton, &c., does consist and is to be performed in the manner following, to wit : the card is made up of a number of parallel cards, with intervening spaces between each, and the matter being carded thereon, is afterwards took off each card separately, and the several rows or filaments' — ' fiUiments ' in the original — 'so took off are connected into one entire roll.' The first machine described in tl e JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES. 36/ specification consists of a flat board, varying in dimensions from three feet by two to two feet by fourteen inches, on which Vere nailed sixteen long cards, parallel to each other, with small spaces betwixt each. The wool or cotton being spread on the cards, a hand-card of the same length as those nailed on the board, but only a quarter of the breadth, and completely covered with points of wire, was drawn over the lower cards till the operation was completed. " The second and more important machine was a horizontal cylinder, covered in its whole circumference with parallel rows of cards, with intervening spaces, and turned by a handle. . . . Under the cylinder was a concave frame, lined internally with cards, exactly fitting the lower half of the cylinder, so that when the handle was turned, the cards of the cylinder and of the concave frame worked against each other and carded the wool. This bears the closest resemblance to the modern carding-cylinder, except that the concave frame is now placed over the cylinder, and in Paul's machine it was placed iinder. There was a contrivance for letting the concave part down by a lever and pulley, and turning it round, so as easily to strip off the carded wool. " When the wool was properly carded, it was stripped off ' by means of a stick, with needles in it, parallel to one another, like the teeth of a comb.' The cardings were of course only of the length of the cylinder, but an ingenious apparatus was attached for making them into a per- petual carding. Each length was placed on a flat broad riband, which was extended between two short cylinders, and which wound upon one cylinder as it unwound from the other. When the carding was placed on the riband, the turning of one of the cylinders wound the riband and carding upon it ; and length being joined to length, the carding was made perpetual, and wound up in a roll ready for the spinning-machine. It has already been seen that the upper roller in Paul's patent spinning-machine of 175S was called the riband cylinder. " Here, then, are the carding-cylinder, the perpetual carding, and the comb for stripping off the carding. It must be admitted that the in- vention was admirable and beautiful, though not perfect. Its defects were that the cylinder had no feeder, the wool being put on by the hand ; that the cardings were taken off separately by a movable comb, which of course required the machine to stop ; and that the perpetual carding was produced by joining short lengths with the hand, whereas now it is brought off the machine in a continuous roll, by a comb at- tached to the cylinder, and constantly worked against it by a crank. Paul's machine, though so great an improvement on the old method, was not known in Lancashire for twelve years, nor generally adopted for more than twenty years, after the date of the patent." 1 I Baines's CoHon Mamifacturc, p. 1 71 4. 368 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. " When the establishment at Northampton, in which the carding-cylincler is said to have been used, was broken up," we are further told, " the carding-machine was purchased by a hat- manufacturer at Leominster, who applied it to the carding of wool for hats." About 1760, the year after Paul's death, it is said to have been introduced into Lan- cashire, and applied once more to the carding of cotton, by a Mr Morris, at Brook Mill, near Wigan. This is the carding-machine which Mr Robert Peel, the founder of the Peel family, was one of the first persons in Lancashire to adopt, and which, when he had improved its form, he em- ployed James Hargreaves to construct for him. " His machine is stated to have consisted of two or three cylinders, covered with Cards, the working of which in contact effectually carded the cotton ; but there were defects both in the means of putting the cotton upon the cylinders and of taking it off : the latter operation was performed by women with hand-cards. For some years Mr Peel laid aside this machine, and it only came into general use after further improvements had been made in it." It has been seen thai Hargreaves long and undeservedly enjoyed the credit of having invented one of the greatest of these improvements — the crank and comb — which, in point of fact, he stole from Arkwright. In the hands of Arkwright the carding- machine of Paul first became permanently applicable and useful. It was, too, through the combining and adapting, if not the inventive genius — through the indomitable energy and indefatigable perseverance of the same man, that Paul's process of spinning by rollers, so long tried, and ap- parently with such imperfect results, became a great and productive reality. The British cotton-manufacture, in the true sense of the words, arose out of the achievements and successes of Richard Arkwright. 1 RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 369 XIII. RICHARD ARK WRIGHT.* nPHIS memorable man was born at Preston on the 23d of December 1732/ and in the following year John Kay patented the fly-shuttle, an invention destined to stimulate the demand for cotton-yarn, by supplying which Richard Arkwright reaped fame and fortune. Arkwright is * Richard Arkwright, Esquire, versus Peter Nighlitigale, Esquire. Copy (from Mr Gurney's shorthand notes) of the Proceedings on the Trial of this Cause in the Court of Common Pleas, before the Right Honourable Lord Loughborough, by a Special Jury, February 17, 1785. \without place or datc\. The Trial of a Cause instihitcd by Richard Pepper Arden, Esquire, his Majesty's Attorney- General, by writ of Scire Facias, to repeal a patent, granted on the i6th of December 1775 to Mr Richard Arkwright, for an invention of certain instruments and ma- chines for preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spinning ; before the Honourable Francis Buller, one of the judges of his Majesty's Court of King's Bench, at Westminster Hall, on Saturday, the 25th of June 1785 (London, 1783). Aikin's 6^^«^«/j9/r7o-;'rt//^_y (London, 1790, &c.), vol. i. § Arkwright ; and Country round Manchester. Quarterly Review for January i860, § Cotton-Spinning Machines and their In- ventors. Smiles's &'//^Z('i?^ (London, 1866). Felkin's History of the Alac hi ne-wr ought Hosiery and Lace Mamifacturcs (London, 1S67). Ilardwick's History of the Borough of Preston (Preston, 1857). Dob- son's History of the Parliamentary Representation of Preston (Preston, 1868). Walker's C>rz^Ma/ (London, 1838.) Handbook of LancasJiire, &c. (London, 1870.) Brayley and Britton's Beauties of England and Wales (London, 1801, &c. ), vol. iii. § Derbyshire. Handbook of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, &c. (London, 1868. ) Guest's Compendious History, &c., and British Cotton- Manufactura, &c. Baines and Ure on the Cotton-Manufacture. French's Life of Crompton. Defoe's Tour, &c. &c. ^ " Parish Register of Preston Church. Christenings in December 1732. Richard, son of Thomas Arkwright, born 23d, baptized 31st." Guest's Compendious History,^. 21. 3 A 370 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. said to have been the youngest of thirteen children, and if, as is supposed, his parents were very poor, his arrival in the world could scarcely have contributed to make the Christ- mas of 1732 merrier in that humble Preston household. "The house or shop in which Arkwright resided,'' says a local historian, writing or publishing in 1857, "was pulled down a short time ago. It stood on the north side of Lord Street, a little to the west of Wood Street, and faced Moly- neux Square. It was afterwards tenanted by Mr Clare, hosier. Its site is now occupied by one of the handsome shops lately erected by the Earl of Derby. It forms the southern extremity of Stanley Buildings, Lancaster Road."^ According to the same authority, Arkwright's " uncle Richard taught him to read, and he gathered some little further in- struction at a school during winter evenings." * But his education was of the scantiest, and though in later life he is said to have endeavoured to repair its deficiencies, it is doubtful whether he ever learned to write with ease. In the course of a hundred and forty years, Arkwright's birthplace has been transformed by the growth of the industry which he did so much to develop — nay, which in one sense he may be said to have created. Preston now counts some 80,000 inhabitants, and is one of the principal seats of the cotton-manufacture, to the history of which *' Preston strikes " have contributed prominent and painful episodes. But when Arkwright was born, Preston was a town with only some five or six thousand inhabitants, and was noted for its " gentility " rather than for its trade or industry. "Proud Preston," as it was called, boasted of its antiquity, and of being the capital of the Duchy of Lancaster, if Lancaster itself was the capital of the county; " and all the business of the duchy, at one time more considerable than that of the county, was transacted in the palatine county of Preston." ^ Hardwick, p. 361. * lb. p. 650. RICHARD ARK WRIGHT. ^7 ^ Even when Dr Whitaker wrote, he spoke of Preston as "an elegant and commercial town, the resort of well-born but ill-portioned and ill-endowed maids and widows." In the middle of the eighteenth century, according to that Lanca- shire worthy, Thomas Walker of " The Original," the wine merchant who used to supply Manchester lived in Proud Preston, as being the resort of all the gentry ; and his Man- chester orders, which rarely exceeded a gallon of wine at a time, were always executed on horseback. " Preston is a fine town," says Defoe, who visited it not many years before Arkwright's birth, "and tolerably full of people; but not like Liverpool or Manchester, for we now come beyond the trading part of the county. But though there is no manu- facture, the town is full of attorneys, proctors, and notaries, the process of law being here of a different nature from that in other places, by reason that it is a duchy and county palatine, and has particular privileges of its own. The people are gay here, though not, perhaps, the richer for that ; but it has, on this account, obtained the name of Proud Preston. Here is a great deal of good company, but not so much, they say, as was before the late bloody action with the northern rebels ; not that the battle hurt many of the immediate inhabitants, but the consequences of it so severely affected many families thereabout that they still retain the remembrance of it." ^ " The late bloody action " was the storm of Preston in the Jacobite rising of 17 15, the ancient town having become the headquarters of the rebels. Preston was then so gay that one of the Jacobites wrote from it, and of it, during the rebel occupation, "The ladies of this town, Preston, are so very beautiful and so richly attired, that the gentlemen-soldiers from Wednesday to Saturday minded nothing but courting and feasting." ^ Yet Proud Preston was not so entirely destitute of manu- ^ Tour,'m. 183. ^ Handbook of Lancashire, '^. i"} if. 372 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. facturing industry as from a cursory glance Defoe supposed it to be. It had a manufacture of linen " from yarn spun with the distaff and spindle, and a few worsted fabrics." It is possible that from infancy Arkwright was familiar with the rude and simple process of manufacture, which he was destined to revolutionise ; but nothing of his early life is known with certainty, except that he was apprenticed to a barber. With this single exception, his biography is a blank from his birth to his twenty-third year. He had married, and married young, though there seems to be no trace of the when or where of the wedding. This, the first Mrs Arkwright, was Patience, daughter of Robert Holt of Bolton, schoolmaster, and bore him, in the December of 1755, his only son, Richard, who survived him and inherited his wealth. It is probable, from his marriage to a Bolton woman, that on the expiry of his term of apprenticeship, Arkwright had migrated to that town and established himself in business there. It is pretty certain that this had happened within five years of the birth of his only son. Patience Arkwright died before 1 76 1, and in that year Arkwright married a second time. Of this marriage the register was copied by Mr Guest. According to the parish-register of the church of Leigh, some six or seven miles from Bolton, "Richard Arkwright, of the parish of Bolton, barber, and Margaret Biggins, of this parish of Pennington, spinster, were married in this church by licence, with consent, this twenty-fourth day of March 1761, by me, Jo. Hartley, curate."^ Mr Biggins, the father of the bride, is described as " a respectable inhabi- tant of Leigh, who had lived many years in the town ; and his daughter, up to the time of her marriage, resided with him in the market-place of Leigh, at a house now" — that is, in 1827 — "known as the sign of the Millstone."' The 1 Guest, iibi supra, ^ Guest's British Cotton- Manufacture, p. 14. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. IJl second Mrs Arkwright seems to have had a little money, or a little property of her own, "perhaps of the value of ;^4oo,"^ which also seems to have been settled on herself. That the pair were married by licence, would of itself, one supposes, betoken that Arkwright or his wife was in tolerable circumstances. Bolton, when ArkwTight settled in it, was a town very different from the Preston of his birth and early years. Standing in the dreary country from which it took its old designation of Bolton-in-the-Moors, it contained a population of some four or five thousand souls, almost wholly dependent on the manufacture of heavy fabrics of cotton mixed with wool and flax. When Arkwright married his second wife, Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning-mule, was a boy of eight, and the following description of Crompton's native town at the time of his birth no doubt pretty accurately represents its aspects during Arkwright's sojourn in it : — "It is difficult to describe exactly Bolton-in-the-Moors as it was in 1753; but some idea of it may be gathered by supposing a long, irregularly-built street, commencing at the east end in the churchyard, and continuing as a double row of closely-packed houses about lialf the lengtli of the present Deansgate ; after which, fields and gardens intervened among the dwellings. From this street Bank Street branched to the north, and Bradshawgate to the south ; they were both short and unimportant. At their intersection with Churchgale and Deansgate the market-cross was placed"' — a few yards from the spot where the seventh Earl of Derby was beheaded in 165 1 — "and about it the wealthier inhabitants had their dwellings. Gardens, meadows, and bleaching-crofts, dotted here and there with cottages, stretched on the north side down to the Croal, then a pleasant stream of pure water ; and besides the comparatively considerable suburbs of Little Bolton, the neiglibourhood of the town was thickly studded with groups of cottages in hamlets — ox folds, as they are there called — many of which have since been surrounded by new houses, and now form part of the town itself. There were no tall chimneys in Bolton in those days, but many considerable warehouses, to contain the heavy fustians and other piece-goods made in the neiglibourhood. " ^ Guest's British Cotton-Manufacture , p. 1 10. 374 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. "A weekly market was then, as now, held on Monday, at which a large amount of business was transacted with merchants from London and Manchester, who frequented it to purchase the heavy fabrics for which Bolton was then the principal mart. Other merchants also visited it from the north of Ireland to sell the linen-yam spun there, and used in Bolton for warps ; for cotton-warps were not at that period so made as to be available for the strong fustians then much in demand. Bolton was at that time dependent upon Belfast and its neighbourhood, just as Bradford is at the present day indebted to Bolton for the warps required by its stuff-manufacturers. Though there were warehouses and market-halls for the transaction of business, nevertheless a great quantity of the fabrics, rough from the loom, were pitched in the open street, or under rude piazzas erected in front of the shops, but which are now almost all swept away. The fustians, herring-bones, cross-overs, quiltings, dimities, and other goods were carried to market by the small manufacturers (who were for the most part equally small farmers) in wallets balanced over one shoulder, while on the other arm there was often hung a basket of fresh butter. The cotton goods sold in the market were invariably unbleached ; the merchants causing them to be bleached, dyed, and finished to suit the market for which they were intended. Much of the bleaching, However, was done at crofts in and about Bolton ; and the bleachers and dyers were thus regular fre- quenters of the Monday markets, receiving their orders and transacting that part of their business which is now transferred to Manchester. " Bolton must have been a bustling, busy town on these market Mondays. It had many considerable inns, most of them having large yards behind, with ample stabling for the long strings of pack-horses required for the conveyance of the raw materials and the manufactured goods which changed hands on these market-days. The merchants also all travelled on horseback, but the manufacturers at that time were well enough content to travel on foot. "Many of the inhabitants at that time depended for employment almost entirely on the Monday markets. The inns and shops were on the other days comparatively idle, and the streets all but deserted. The better class of the inhabitants at that time, and for the half century following, had thus so much leisure time to dispose of, that habits of social intercourse were established, and a consequent courtesy of manners, which, unfortunately, has not been in every case maintained. The theatre was a fashionable and well-frequented place of amusement ; and dancing assemblies were frequent and well attended. The gram- mar-school maintained a respectable rank among similar foundations. Amongst its masters during the last century it could boast of Lempriere, the author of the well-known Classical Dictionary. A still more dis- RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 37$ tinguished scholar, Robert Ainsworth, the lexicographer, had in the previous century received his education and taught a school in Bolton." ^ Such was the Bolton in which, at the age of twenty-eight, Richard Arkwright seems to have been settled, an illiterate barber, but a man, withal, of consummate practical genius. " Two shops," says the authority just quoted, " are men- tioned as having been occupied by Arkwright when he lived in Bolton : one in the passage leading to the old Millstone Inn, Deansgate ; the other, a small shop in Churchgate. The lead-cistern in which his customers washed after being shaved is still in existence, and in the possession of Mr Peter Skelton of Bolton." - Stories of his barber-life in Bolton are not wanting, but they have an apocryphal look. In one recent sketch of him, not distinguished by accuracy, he is represented as occupying in Bolton "an underground cellar, over which he put up the sign, ' Come to the subter- raneous barber, he shaves for a penny.' The other barbers," we are then told, " found their customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard, when Arkwright, deter- mined to push his trade, announced his determination to give 'a clean shave for a halfpenny.' After a few years he quitted his cellar," -^ &c. &c. Guest's record of Arkwright's career in Bolton is the only one that is in the slightest degree authoritative. " At this time he was a barber, but soon after he travelled through the country buying human hair. He possessed a valuable chemical secret for dyeing it, and when it was dyed and prepared, he sold it to the wigmakers. Mr Richardson of Leigh tells me that Arkwright's hair was esteemed the best in the county." ^ Even by a Bolton barber, if a man of ingenuity and energy, there was a sort of reputation to be gained in his own limited, very limited sphere ; and Arkwright's hair, it has been seen, was pronounced by the Lancashire wig- 1 French, p. 4-11. "lb. p. 27. '^ Self- Help, p. 33. ■» Comfewlious History, p. 21. 3/6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. makers "the best in the county." ^ To quote Guest again: " Between that period " — the time of his second mar- riage — "and 1768, Mr Arkwright resided at Bohon (about seven miles from Leigh), and occupied the shop in Deansgate, in the former town, at the end of the passage leading up to what was then the White Bear public-house, and carried on his business there as a barber and hairdresser. During his residence there, in consequence of his intercourse with Leigh and its inhabitants, obtained through his connection with his father-in-law's " — the re- spectable Biggins's — " family and friends, he engaged one Dean, a workman well skilled in making the strong country wigs, then in very general use, as his journeyman ; and the latter left the service of Mr John Richardson, senior, then a hairdresser in Leigh, and went into that of Mr Arkwright, The same man succeeded Mr Arkwright in his shop and business when he finally left Bolton. Mr John Richardson, now about seventy-four years of age, John Burkill, about seventy-two, and Joseph Pownal, about seventy-four, some of the oldest inhabitants of Leigh, and whose fathers lived there before them, authenticate these circumstances." ^ Guest's second book, from which this passage is quoted, was published in 1828 • so that the most aged witnesses to whose testimony he appeals, could only have been seven years old at the time of Arkwright's second marriage and undoubted settlement in Bolton. In 1768 the same witness would have been four- teen — reminders which perhaps are just worth giving. 1 " One part of his business was to attend the hiring-fairs frequented by young girls seeking service, for the purpose of buying their long hair to be worked up into perukes, and he is said to have been unusually expert in such negotiations. The copper-plate from which his invoice- headings were printed is still in the possession of a commercial gentleman at Manchester, and upon its margin are engraved the most grotesque representations of the wigs and perukes worn by the fashion- able ladies and gentlemen of the period." — Quarterly Review,1ilo.2\T„-^.7«/ (of 25th June lySsVp. 57. 408 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. and purposes, "about il^)"]" as he says in his Case, "and after years of intense and painful apphcation," invent the rollers which he was undoubtedly the first to turn to prac- tical account. If so, he employed Kay merely as a skilful workman, whom at Leigh he had known to be such ; and in this event, of course, most of Kay's evidence is wilfully false, and the essential part of that of Highs, respecting the conversation at the tavern must have been, consciously or unconsciously, the product of imagination. 2. All that is essential in the evidence of Kay and Highs may be true, in which case Arkwright was in the highest degree an unscrupulous and mendacious man, though one of immense practical talent and sagacity, who deliberately stole Highs's rollers, and afterwards deliberately asserted that they were his own invention. 3. It is possible that Arkwright having long pondered over the problem of spinning cotton-yarn was set to think of roller-spinning by what he had heard of Highs's experiments at Leigh, and did not scruple to borrow some hints from Kay, who knew all about Highs's " engine." At the same time, Arkwright's rollers may have been altogether different from those of Highs, workable while Highs's were unworkable, and Arkwright might fairly claim to be the virtual though not the actual inventor of roller-spinning. According to this theory, when Arkwright went to Kay at Warrington, the conception of the roller-machine was pretty complete and perfect in his mind. He taught Kay, it was not Kay who taught him, how it should be constructed. Here it may be as well to introduce the evidence of Highs himself in regard to these perplexing rollers. It was evi- dence given, be it remembered, some fifteen or sixteen years after the events to which it relates ; and Highs, when he gave it, was perfectly familiar with the construction of Ark- wright's roller-machine, a model of which was both exhibited RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 4O9 and worked in court. Mr Serjeant Bolton is examining " Thomas Hayes," as the reporter spells the name — in fact, the following is evidence belonging to the same examina- tion, the report of which has just been quoted : — " Look at those rollers through which the thread comes, the roving or spinning, or whatever it is called. Did you ever see rollers like those before X775, before Mr Arkwright's patent?" " I have seen rollers ; I made rollers myself in 1767." " You yourself made rollers in 17C7 ? " "Yes, sir." " Have you looked at them? you see one is fluted, the other covered with leather ? " "I see it is." " Were yours the same way ? " " Yes, mine was, two years after, but not then." "Not at first?" " No." " In 1769 yours were like it ? " "They were. Mine had fluted work — fluted wood upon an iron axis ; but the other roller was the same, only it was covered with shoe- leather instead of that leather. I am informed it is such as they make shoes of" " Who did you employ when you first conceived this invention ? who did you employ to make it for you? " " I employed one Kay, who came from Warrington." " What trade was he?" " He followed clockmaking at that time." " You employed him to make it ? " " Yes, I employed him to make a small model with four wheels of wood, to show him the method it was to work in, and desired him at the same time to make me brass wheels which would multiply it to about five to one." " Look at that" — the model of Arkwright's machine then in court " and see whether it is upon the same principle." " No, not exactly so ; the wheels were not exactly so." " Who made you the wheels ?" " I made them myself." " Describe what you mean by multiplying five to one." " By making the diflierent rollers go one faster than the other." " Was that for the purpose of drawing the threads finer? " "Yes, sir." 3 F 4IO LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. Next on this point comes the cross-examination of Highs by " Mr Serjeant Adair," one of the counsel employed by Arkwright. " What use did you put those rollers to that were in proportion to five to one ? " — in proportion " five to one " he should have said. " I made them on purpose to spin cotton." " To spin ? " ■' Yes, and to rove too." " Upon your oath did you ever apply them to roving of cotton ? " " I will tell you how I did it. I got a board of flat wood, as this is. I took the carding first, and rolled it with another board till it was a little harder. Then I run it through the roller to make it stronger. Then after that I run three, four, or five" slivers " through till it was thick enough. Then I put them all together through and through again, till we made it coarse thread as this is" — doubtless "this" is some of the roving made in court by the model of Arkvvright's machine. " After- wards I put in the coarse thread — I put it in the roller again, and made it fine. " The statement was an important one on that occasion, since Arkwright's second patent — unlike his first, which had been for spinning only — was both for roving and for spinning. Here was a witness who averred that on a roller-machine of his own invention he had both roved and spun. Therefore at this point one of the counsel engaged against Arkwright, Mr Serjeant Bolton, interposes, and lest the judge and jury should not appreciate the significance of Highs's statement, he makes, with em- phasis, the remark, " The roving and spinning are done with the same rollers." Mr Serjeant Adair (resuming) — " When and where did you apply them to that purpose ? " " In the towTi of Leigh. I did not follow this new manufacture. I was only improving myself, as I had a large family at that time, and was not able to follow it. I thought when I came a little abler, when I could get a friend to assist me, being poor, and having a large family — I was not willing anybody should steal it from me " — by which he seems to mean that he did not make a noise about his invention at the time lest it should be stolen from him. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 4I I " Now, Mr Hayes, this was an experiment you made for your infor- mation?" " It was an experiment, undoubtedly. I used but two spindles at that time." " You meant to preserve the benefit of it if afterwards you should be able to avail yourself of it ? " " I did, sir." " Now, what knowledge had you — how came you to suppose that Mr Arkwright ever got that from you ? " " I have no further knowledge than what I told you : Kay's wife told me." " You yourself don't know ? " " I cannot tell which way he got it." Mr Serjeant Bolton (addressing the judge) — " We have that Kay, a clockmakcr, that will tell your lordship how this Arkwright got it from him." ^ In this evidence of Highs, the first statement to provoke inquiry and suspicion is his reply to the question as to the identity of his original rollers with those of Arkwright exhibited in court. Highs says that he made rollers " in 1767 ;" but when asked whether, when he first made them, they were the same — " the same way," the counsel examin- ing puts it — as Arkwright's, Highs replies, " Yes, mine was ; two years after, but not then." "Two years after" 1767 would be 1769, the year in which Arkwright took out his first patent, and of course Arkwright could not have stolen in 1767 Highs's invention of 1769. And again it must be asked, Why did not Highs make known his invention when he discovered that Arkwright had stolen and was working it ? After he made this discovery, the reasons which he gave for keeping his invention secret at the time when he first hit upon it were no longer applicable, and a consideration of his own interest ought to have led him to publish his claim to the invention of tlie rollers. Mr Guest has a story that a gentleman of Manchester was to have established a ^ Trial, as before, p. 57, &c. 412 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. factory, and employed Highs to erect his roller-spinning machinery in it, but was unfortunately drowned just when the scheme was about to be executed. But there were numbers of other gentlemen in Manchester and elsewhere who would have been ready to try Highs's rollers if there had been anything in them, especially when it was known ; and Mr Guest himself testifies to the general knowledge of the fact, that Arkwright at Cromford was making cotton - twist fit for use in hosiery, by a machine which, it is alleged, he had stolen from Highs. In fact, according to his own account, Highs had invented a machine superior to that for which Arkwright took out his first patent. Highs alleges that he both roved and span with his machine, whereas that patented by Arkwright in 1765 only span, and the rov- ings for it had to be prepared separately. As already remarked, there was an admirable opportunity for Highs to parade his spinning-rollers, when about 1772 he exhibited his double spinning-jenny in Manchester Exchange. That exhibition, moreover, made him and his ingenuity known. He was rewarded for it by the Manchester manufacturers ; and it seems very strange that he should not have been able to procure more than the one capitalist, who was drowned, to give, if they were really effective, his spinning-rollers a trial. We left Arkwright at the moment of his success, when he had combined into one continuous series all the isolated processes of cotton-spinning. He and his partners, more- over, were energetically turning their success to the best account. The new yarn was admirably adapted for warps ; the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, which was public property, turned out yarn suitable for weft; and the cotton-manufac- , ture was now independent of flax and the old spinning- wheel. Arkwright's twist had been made into hose, why should it not have been generally purchased for conversion RICHARD ARK WRIGH T. 4 1 3 into cloth by the loom ? Arkwright's own reply, in his Case, to this question is rather a vague one. By his new inven- tion, according to himself, or to those who handled the pen for him when his Case was drawn up, " the most excellent yarn and twist was produced ; notwithstanding which the proprietors found great difficulty to introduce it into public use. A very heavy and valuable stock, in consequence of these difficulties, lay upon their hands ; inconveniences and disadvantages of no small consideration followed." Did this refusal to purchase happen because, having a monopoly of the yarns through their patent, Afkwright and his partners charged what was considered too high a price for it ? or was it through the inertia and dogged conservatism of an established trade, combined or not with a jealousy of the new firm and of operations which threatened, or promised, to revolutionise the old manufacture? or was it because the ma- nufacture of cloth made exclusively of cotton was, as will be seen hereafter, illegal, that the Lancashire manufacturers forbore to avail chemselves of the excellent yarn turned out from the rollers of the Cromford mill ? " Whatever were the motives," the Case proceeds, " which induced the rejec- tion of it," the yarn. " they," Messrs Arkwright & Co., " were thereby necessarily driven to attempt, by their own strength and ability, the manufacture of the yarn" — that is, the conversion of it info a fabric of some kind. " Their first trial was in weaving it into stockings, which succeeded ; and they soon established the manufacture of calicoes, which promises to be one of the first manufactures of the king- dom." Yes, these energetic men began to weave as well as spin ; and in 1773, at Strutt's suggestion, they erected for this purpose at Derby a mill— so called, although the power-loom was not then invented, and it must have been the ordinary hand-loom and hand-loom weavers that were employed in it. "The machinery" — the best hand-looms that could be •^J 414 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. made — " for weaving the calicoes was placed and worked at Derby in the first fireproof mill ever erected, having brick floors placed on brick arches ;" and planned, according to the same authority, by Jedediah Strutt's eldest son, William, father of the present Lord Belper. " The building remains, but is now used for other purposes." Straightway an unex- pected obstacle barred their progress in this new enterprise. " Another still more formidable difficulty arose," the Case goes on to say. " The orders for goods which they had received being considerable, were unexpectedly counter- manded, the officers of excise refusing to let them pass at the usual duty of 3d. per yard, as being" Indian "cahcoes, though manufactured in England ; besides, these calicoes, when printed, were prohibited. By this unforeseen obstruc- tion a very considerable and very valuable stock of calicoes accumulated. An application to the Commissioners of Excise was attended with no success ; the proprietors, there- fore, had no resource but to ask relief of the Legislature v/hich, after much money expended, and against a strong opposition of the manufacturers in Lancashire, they ob- tained." The factory at Derby, established in 1773, turned out calicoes of " excellent quality," woven from their own yarn by Arkwright and his partners; but a heavy duty was im- posed as they issued from the loom ; and if they were printed on, it was penal to use or wear them. This was in accordance with old Acts of Parliament which the woollen manufacturers had obtained for their pro- tection, first against the cheap cotton-goods of India, and next against the imitations of these by the Lan- cashire manufacturers. It has been already seen that after a long struggle the Lancashire manufacturers succeeded in procuring the repeal of so much of those enactments as was injurious to their own interests. But in the days of that RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 415 repeal it was not fancied possible that cloth would ever be woven in England of cotton-yarn exclusively, or of anything but a combination of linen-yarn for the warp and of cotton- yarn for the weft. Thus the heavy duties on plain calicoes made exclusively of cotton, and the penalties on the use of printed calicoes of the same material, were retained, — the Lancashire manufacturers not having the slightest objection to obstruct the import of those cotton goods from India which might compete with their own mixed fabrics. Not quite forty years afterwards (the so-called " Manchester Act" was passed in 1736), Arkwright and his partners pro- duced cloth entirely of cotton-yarn ; and they found them- selves, to their surprise, hit by those old enactments which had been aimed at Indian, not English goods. In the midst of their difficult, laborious, and most expensive enterprise, in which ever}'thing was new, tentative, and hazardous, they had to engage in a costly struggle for an Act of Parliament modifying the old imposts and repealing the old penalties. This time, too, it was not one powerful interest arrayed against another, as when the Lancashire manufacturers fought the woollen manufacturers, and wrested from Parlia- ment the Act of 1736. A solitary firm was pitted against a combination, that of the Lancashire manufacturers seeking to strangle in its cradle the infant industry which, a hundred years after their opposition to it, was to clothe half the world, enrich their descendants, and to have made their county what it is ! Arkwright and his partners triumphed. In 1774 Parliament passed an Act (the 14th George III. cap. 72) equalising the excise-duties on home-made calicoes, whether of cotton mixed with any other material or of cotton exclusively. The same Act kindly enacted that " it shall and may be lawful for any person or persons to use or wear, within the kingdom of Great Britain, either as apparel, household stuff, furniture, or otherwise, any new manufac- 41 6 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. tured stuffs wholly made of cotton spun in Great Britain, when printed, stained, painted or dyed with any colour or colours, anything in the said recited Act of the seventh year of his late Majesty King George the First, or any other Act or Acts of Parliament to the contrary hereof in any wise notwithstanding." Unshackled by legislative fetters, a genuine English cotton-manufacture could now begin to live and grow, and play its part in the industrial history of the world. "It was not," says Arkwright's Case, "till upwards of five years had elapsed after obtaining his first patent, and more than ;^i 2,000 had been expended in machinery and build- ings, that any profit accrued to himself and partners." " Upwards of five years" would bring us to 1774, the year in which Parliament passed the Act tolerating the new cotton- manufacture, and then, of course, the business of the firm expanded rapidly. The energetic and ingenious man who was the life and soul of its mechanical operations had com- pleted and perfected them. The carding-cyhnder of Lewis Paul, improved in various ways, prepared the cotton for the drawing-rollers. From the drawing it passed to the roving rollers, and the rovings again, attenuated by passing through other rollers, were twisted by the rotation of spindles and flyers, when the finished yarn wound itself on bobbins. The spectacle was celebrated by the same muse that sang "The Loves of the Plants," and Dr Darwin, who had carefully inspected Arkwright's machinery, thus tune- fully describes it in his " Botanic Garden : " — "Wheve Derwent guides his dusky floods Through vaulted mountains and a night of woods, The nymph Gossypia treads the silver sod, And warms with rosy smiles the wat'ry God ; His pond'rous oars to slender spindles turns, And pours o'er massy wheels his foaming urns ; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wields his tridents while the monarch spins. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 4^7 First with nice eye, emerging Naiads cull From leathery pods the vegetable wool ; With wiry teeth revolving cards release The tangled knots, and smooth the ravelled fleece ; Next moves the iron hand with fingers fine, Combs the wide card, and forms th' eternal line j Slow with soft lips the ■whi7-liHg can acquires The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires : With quickened pace sticcissive rollers move. And these retain, and those extend the rove : Then fly the spokes, the rapid axles glow. While slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below," driven by water, and driving the machinery, Mr James Watt's steam-engine not being perfected as yet. The series of operations, with others which the muse of Darwin passed over in silence, had, however, to be described in plain prose before Arkwright could take out a patent for them. The law requires every patentee to lodge a specifica- tion " particularly describing and ascertaining the nature of his invention, and in what manner the same is to be per- formed ;" so that when the patent has expired, any one who chooses may be in possession of such a description of the invention as will enable him to try it for himself. In taking out his first patent, Arkwright's description of his machine had been clear, full, and unreserved. But in taking out his second patent, which included all the processes for prepar- ing cotton to be spun, as well as the spinning-processes themselves, the specification which he lodged was obscure, defective, and misleading— "some things which were abso- lutely essential being omitted, and others which were not used at all in the cotton-manufacture introduced; and the drawings were so unintelligible, from the want of any scale, and from the several parts of the machines being drawn separately, without any general view of the entire machines, that it was manifest he had not intended to disclose his invention, but rather to conceal it. As specimens of this studied 3G 41 8 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. obscuration, it may be mentioned," adds Mr Baines, " that the very first article in his specification and drawing was a hammer, not of his own invention, and of no use in the cotton-manufacture, but merely used to beat hemp ; and that the wheels by which the whole machine was turned were not introduced at all !" ' That this " obscuration " was "studied" is certain. At the trial of February 1785, the person, a Mr Croft, who drew, at Arkwright's direction, the specification of the second patent, was examined, and he deposed that when he was drawing it Arkwright " told him he meant it to appear to operate as a specification, but to be as obscure as the nature of the case could possibly admit." For this infraction of the patent-law Arkwright was in course of time severely punished. His own subsequent apology for the obscure and misleading character of his second spe- cification was that, while not intending " a fraud upon his country," he wished to prevent the foreigner from appro- priating such useful and profitable machines ; " in prevention of which evil he had purposely omitted to give so full and particular a description of his inventions in his specification as he otherwise would have done." " Indeed," the Case continued, " it was impossible that he could either expect or intend to secrete his inventions from the public after the expiration of his patents, the whole machinery being neces- sarily known to many workmen and artificers, as well as to those persons (being many hundreds) who w^ere employed in the manufactory." No doubt ; but it is obvious that an obscure and misleading specification was to a certain extent a protection to Arkwright against that piracy of his machines, which in the same Case he thus plaintively recorded : " No sooner were the merits of Mr Arkwright's inventions fully understood, from the great increase of materials produced in a given time, and the superior quality of the goods manu- ' Cotton- Manufacture, p. 188. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 419 factured ; no sooner was it known that his assiduity and great mechanical abilities were rewarded with success, than the very men who had before treated him with contempt and derision began to devise means to rob him of his inventions, and profit by his ingenuity. Every attempt that cunning could suggest for this purpose was made, by the seduction of his servants and workmen, whom he had with great labour taught the business. A knowledge of his machinery and inventions was fully gained. From that time many persons began to pilfer something from him ; and then, by adding something else of their own, and by calling similar productions and machines by other names, they hope to screen themselves from punishment." This was one of Arkwright's standing troubles. It had begun early in his career with Hargreaves's theft of the crank and comb, and must have become more harassing as he proceeded. To have given a clear and exhaustive description of his machinery in his second specification would obviously have aided the pirates. To avoid it Arkwright ran the risk and broke the law, with a result which will be seen hereafter. Whatever the defects and sins of the specification, Ark- wright's second patent was granted him on the i6th Decem- ber 1775. It comprised the cartiing, drawing, and roving machines, which were described as applicable " in preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spinning." It is commonly known as the "carding patent," since though the rollers were now employed in roving, and not merely, as at first, in drawing and delivering to the spindles, there was nothing novel in their construction. In the specification Arkwright asserted that his machines were constructed " on easy and simple principles, very different from any that had ever yet been contrived ;" that he was " the first and sole inventor thereof;" and that " the same had never been practised by any other person or persons whomsoever, to the best of his 420 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. knowledge and belief." With the grant of this second patent, or rather with the completion and combination of the machines for which it was granted, Arkwright's career as an inventor, or adapter of inventions, may be said to close. His water-frame, and preliminary processes for the prepara- tion of cotton before it is spun, have received numerous modifications and additions at the hands of others, and its very name became inapplicable when the steam-engine superseded water-power in driving it. But nothing of im- portance seems to have been added to it by Arkwright him- self. There has been already quoted Dr Ure's statement that some of Arkwright's original spinning water-frames were spinning good yarn at Cromford so late as 1836. " Nor are we to suppose," says the doctor elsewhere in the same work, "that the same water-frame mechanism, though rude in aspect compared with the modern throstle, did not spin excellent twist. He " — Arkwright — " his son, and his partners, the Messrs Strutt, with the machines at that time, turned off, by dint of superior tact and attention, warp and hosiery yarn as fine as 8o's, or even loo's, which might bear a comparison with the finest and most evenly water-twist of the present day. It is the glory of modern mechanics that their machines pro- duce good yarn on automatic principles with hands relatively unskilful, and with very little superintendence. A few old water-frames still exist, both at Cromford and Belper, which spin good hosiery and thread yarns of eighty hanks to the pound." ^ With the grant of the second patent the business-opera- tions of Arkwright and his partners extended in all direc- tions. In 1776, the year after that in which it was granted, they erected, always going where water-power was to be found, the mills at Belper — the place from which the Strutt peerage of later days received its title — in the valley of the 1 Uie, Cotton- Manufacture, i. 260. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 42 I Derwent, and some seven and a half miles from Derby. Besides building mills of their own, they induced others to build mills by granting Hcences for the use of their machines. Arkwright's Case, so often referred to and quoted from, was published in 1782, only five years after the second patent of 1775, and this was the progress which it was already enabled to record. There had then, it said, been " sold to numbers of adventurers, residing in the different counties of Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Worcester, Stafford, York, Hertford, and Lancaster, many of his patent machines. Upon a moderate computation, the money expended inconsequence of such grants amounted to at least ;^6o,ooo. Mr Ark- wright and his partners also expended, in large buildings in Derbyshire and elsewhere, upwards of ;^3o,ooo ; and Mr Arkwright also erected a very large and extensive building in Manchester at the expense of upwards of ;!^4ooo." Thus '• a business was formed, which already employed upwards of 5000 persons, and a capital on the whole of not less than ;^2oo,ooo." It may be as well to glance at the statistics of cotton imported into England, and of English cotton-manu- factures exported, during those years of a progress which to Arkwright in 1782 seemed prodigious, though trifling com- pared with that made during the two last decades of the eighteenth century, and nothing at all compared with that made during the nineteenth century, up to our own day. The import of cotton into England in 1741 was 1,645,031 lbs. In 1 75 1, without any impulse received by the manu- facture from improvements in machinery, it had risen to 2,976,610 lbs. In the five years, 1771-5, when Hargreaves's spinning-jenny, even more than Arkwright's machinery, had begun to tell, the average import of each year was 4,764,589 lbs. In 1782, however, it was no less than 11,828,039 lbs. To this increase the influence of the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, about to be augmented, and in time effaced 422 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. by Samuel Crompton's invention of the mule, must, it is to be remembered, have contributed considerably. Ark- wright's water-frame was not so much a rival as a com- plement of the spinning-jenny and the mule. They turned out cotton-yarn suitable for weft ; it turned out cotton-yarn suitable for warps, and displaced the linen-yarn formerly used for that purpose. Between them there was an ample supply for the weaver, who had formerly been harassed by the scantiness of the supplies which the hand-wheel furnished him. Kay's fly-shuttle, too, was now in general use, and seems to have enabled the hand-loom weaver to keep pace in the meantime with the spinning-machines. Speaking of the years between 1770 and 1788, Mr Radcliffe says, " In weaving no great alteration had taken place during these eighteen years, save the introduction of the fly-shuttle ; a change in the woollen-looms to fustians and calico ; and the linen nearly gone, except the few fabrics in which there was a mixture of cotton. To the best of my recollection there was no increase of looms during this period, but rather a decrease."^ In point of fact, the genuine cotton-manu- facture of England was still in its infancy, though the infant was strong, healthy, and thriving. In 1780, five years after the grant of Arkwright's second patent, the value of the British cotton goods exported was only ;^355,o6o ! Meanwhile, between theyear i775,inwhichArkwTighttook out his second patent, and 1782, in the course of which he published his Case, with its report of progress made, several things had happened of considerable importance in a life like his, of which so few details have been preserved. His new patent had run for four years — years, it has been seen, of manifold activity for him — when the riots of 1779 came to disturb his peace and obstruct his prosperity. Some temporary depression of trade seems to have exasperated , * Given in Baines's Cotton- Manufacture, p. 338. I RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 423 beyond endurance, in certain districts of Lancasliire, the spinners, and those dependent upon the spinners, already- irritated by improvements which, as they fancied, threatened to destroy or diminish their means of em.ployment, and to make the weavers independent of them. Ten years previously the spinners of Blackburn and neighbourhood rose and drove Hargreaves and his spinning-jenny from their midst. A decade had elapsed since then, and again there was a rising of the populace, directed not only against the use of Har- greaves's spinning-jenny, but against that of Arkwright's new and productive machinery. Hargreaves had died the year before (1768), and had he been alive it little mattered to him if all the spinning-jennies in Lancashire were destroyed, since he had acquired no profitable patent-right in that in- vention. But Arkwright lived ; his patent-right in some of the threatened machinery was valuable, and among the mills which he had erected, and in which his inventions were at work, was one at Chorley, in Lancashire. This mill of his was one of the first objects of attack by the rioters, who showed a sort of method in their madness. They spared the spinning-jennies with twenty spindles or fewer, since these could be worked by hand, while they mercilessly destroyed all with a larger number, and, in fact, every machine, whether for spinning or carding, driven by horse or water power. Of these riots, as formidable and destructive as any that had then happened, there are several contemporary descriptions. Take first the following, from the " Chronicle " of the Annual Register for 1779 : ^ — "Manchester, October 9. — During the course of the week several mobs have assembled in different parts of the neighbourliood, and have done much mischief by destroying the engines for carding and spinning cotton-wool (without which the trade of this country could never be possibly carried on to any great extent). In the neighbourhood of ^ p. 228. 424 LAXCASHIRE WORTHIES. Chorley the mob destroyed and burned the engines and buildings erected by Mr Arkwright at a very great expense. Two thousand, or up- wards, attacked a large building near the same place on Sunday, from which they were repulsed, two rioters killed, and eight wounded taken prisoners. They returned, strongly reinforced, on Monday, and de- stroyed a great number of buildings, with a vast quantity of machines for spinning cotton, &c. Sir George Saville arrived (with three com- panies of the York Militia) while the buildings were in flames. The report of their intention to destroy the works in this town," Manches- ter, "brought him here yesterday noon. At one o'clock this morning two expresses arrived — one from Wigan, another from Blackburn — entreating immediate assistance, both declaring the violence of the insurgents" ! "and the shocking depredations yesterday at Bolton. It is thought they will be at Blackburn this morning, and at Preston by four this afternoon. Sir George ordered the drams to beat to arms at half after one, when he consulted with the military and magistrates in town, and set off at the head of three companies soon after two o'clock this morning for Chorley, that being centrical to this place, Blackburn, and Wigan. Captain Bro%vn of the 25th Regiment, with 70 invalids" — pensioners, presumably — " and Captain Thorbum of Col. White's Regiment, with about 100 young recruits, remained at Preston; and for its further security. Sir George Saville offered the justices to arm 300 of the respectable house-keepers, if they would turn out to defend the to-wn, which was immediately accepted. In consequence of these pre- parations the mob did not think it prudent to proceed to any further violences." Another description, by a part-eyewitness of what he described, is from the pen of no other a person than the famous Josiah Wedgewood, suddenly summoned from Staf- fordshire to Lancashire by the illness of a little son at school in Bolton. " In our way to this place," Bolton, — Wedgewood writes to a friend (3d October 1779), "a little on this side Chowbent, we met several hundred people in the road. I believe there might be about five hun- dred ; and upon inquiring of one of them the occasion of their being together in so great a number, he told me they had been destroying some engines, and meant to serve them all so through the country. Accordingly they have advice here to-day that they must expect a visit to-morrow ; the workmen in the neighbourhood having mus- tered up a considei^able number of arms, and are casting bullets and providing ammunition to-day for the assault to-morrow morning " — RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 425 very formidable preparations. "Sir Richard Clayton brought this account here to-day, and, I believe, is in the town now advising with the inhabitants upon the best means for their safety ; and I believe they have concluded to send immediately to Liverpool for a part of the troops quartered there. Many of the workmen having been turned oft lately, owing to a want of demand for their goods at foreign markets, has furnished them with an excuse for their violent measures. The manu- facturers say the measures which the Irish have adopted in their non- importation agreements have affected their trade very much. These are melancholy facts, upon which I forbear to comment. They do not stand in need of much illustration, but we must pray for better times." The next day Wedgewood writes again to the same correspond- ent : " I wrote to my dear friend last from Bolton, and I mentioned the mob which had assembled in that neighbourhood ; but they had not then done much mischief ; they only destroyed a small engine or two near Chowbent. We were there on Saturday morning, but I apprehend what we saw were not the main body; for on the same day, in the afternoon, a capital engine, or mill, in the manner of Arcrite's " — sic in orig., of course he means " Arkwright's " — " and in which he is a part- ner, near Chorley, was attacked ; but from its peculiar situation they could approach to it by one passage only ; and this circumstance enabled the owner, with the assistance of a few neighbours, to repulse the enemy and preserve the mill for that time. Two of the mob were shot dead upon the spot, one drowned, and several wounded. The mob had no firearms, and did not expect so warm a reception. They were greatly exasperated, and vowed revenge. Accordingly they spent all Sunday and Monday morning in collecting firearms and ammunition, and melting their pewter dishes into bullets. They were now joined by tlie Duke of Bridgewater's colliers" — for the amusement of the thing, since spinning-jennies and spinning-rollers could do them no harm — " and others, to the number, we are told, of eight thousand, and marched by beat of drum and colours flying to the mill where they met with a repulse on Saturday. They found Sir Richard Clayton guarding the place with fifty invalids, armed ; but this handful were by no means a match for enraged thousands, they" — the invalids — "therefore contented themselves with looking on, whilst the mob completely destroyed a set of mills valued at;{^lo.ooo" — "Arcrite's" among them. "This was Monday's employment. On Tuesday morning we heard their drum about two miles' distance from Bolton, a little before we left the place, and their professed design was to take Bolton, Manches- ter, and Stockport in their way to Cnmiford " — Cromford, Ark- wright's headquarters — " and to destroy all the engines, not only in these places, but throughout all England " ! " How far they will 3 H 426 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. be able to put their threats into execution time alone can discover." Four days later Wedgewood writes once more : " By a letter from Bolton I learned that the mob entered that place on Tuesday the 5th, when we had left it not more than an hour. They contented themselves with breaking the windows and destroying tlie machinery of the first mill they attacked ; but the next, the machinery being taken away, they pulled down the building and broke the mill-wheel to pieces. They next proceeded to Mr Kay's of the Folds, and destroyed his machine and water-wheel, and then went to work with the lesser machines, all above so many spindles — I think twenty-four. When they had completed their business at Bolton, I apprehend they went to their homes. Jack only says they are quiet now, and that 100 of the Yorkshire Militia are come to defend them. I hope the delusion is ended, and that the country may be in peace again " — and Wedge- wood's hope was soon fulfilled. He adds, a few days later : " I hear nothing further of the Lancashire rioters, only that some soldiers are sent to oppose them, with orders not to fire over the poor fellows' heads, but right amongst them, and to do all the execution they can the first fire, by way of intimidating them at once. This may be right for aught I know, and cause the least bloodshed in the end ; but it is dreadful, and I hope there will be no occasion for the military proceeding to such extremities. I do not like to have the soldiery famiharised to spilling the blood of their countrymen and fellow-citizens." ^ Wedgewood's tenderness to the " poor fellows " was that of a mere stranger and sojourner in Lancashire, but they seem to have met with sympathy from their superiors in their own county : — " Even the upper and middle classes in those days entertained a great dread of machinery, and they connived at, and even actually joined in the opposition of the working classes to its extension. ... It was thought a bold thing at the time for Mr Rasbotham, a magistrate near Bolton, to publish an address urging that it was for the interest of the working classes themselves to encourage inventions for abridging labour. Even the clergy were warned against interference with the mob-law of the day. Among others, the minister of the parish of Mellor "—Wil- liam Ratcliffe's parish — " a man eighty years old, felt it to be his duty, in the course of one of his forenoon sermons, to caution his parishioners against taking part in those lawless proceedings, on which his church- 1 Eliza Meteyard, A Group of English7ne7i, being Records of the Younger Wedgewoods and their Friends (London, 1871), p. 13-16. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 427 warden, a respectable yeoman, rising up in the church, called out in an excited voice and manner, ' Sir, it would become you better to follow your text than to ramble away about such temporal affairs.' The clergyman, overwhelmed with sorrow, immediately descended from the pulpit." ^ Arkwright's loss by the destruction of his property must have been considerable, and it is just possible that there occurred in his domestic life at this time some such incident as that which its narrator assigns to the year of riotous machine-breaking and the sack of the mill at Chorley. According to Mr Guest, who says that his in- formation came from (the second) Mrs Arkwright's niece, " about 1779" Arkwright separated from his wife "because she would not agree to join him in selling some property which could only be sold with her consent — perhaps of the value of ;^4oo. The separation," we are further told, " was chiefly her own act. She never spoke ill of Mr Arkwright, and never would allow any one else to do so in her presence, though for some years afterwards she lived entirely upon her own means. Even when Mr Arkwright had accumu- lated a large fortune he allowed her no more than ^^30 a year. On that allowance she lived, so far as his support went, during his lifetime." ^ It does not at first sight seem probable that Arkwright should have parted with his wife for so slight a reason as her refusal to give him the control of so small a sum as ;^4oo. Yet it is barely possible — though not at all probable — that in a year of losses like 1779, l''^ i^^y have stood in need of even this small sum. His first wife had borne him one son; his second wife bore him one daughter. ^ Quartei-fy Revieiv, No. 213, p. 64. ^ Briiish Cotton- Alanufacturc, p. no. It has been said that Ark- wright left his wife ;^5oo a-year, a statement with which, if true, Mr Guest's is scarcely reconcilable. In any case it would be desirable to verify it. The writer had searches made both in the Lichfield and the London registry, but no trace of any will of Arkwright's was to be discovered in either. 428 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. P^raployers and employed, middle-classes and working- classes, seemed to unite to harass Arkwright and obstruct his progress. Scarcely two years had elapsed after the riots in which the mill at Chorley was destroyed, when he found the infringements of his patent so numerous and so injurious to his interests that he resolved to appeal for protection to the law. The time was past when his yarn had been refused a market. Its value was now known and appreciated, and licences to use his machinery had been granted in numbers by himself and his partners. But other " adventurers " used his machinery without paying for it, and against some of them he at last took legal proceedings. Part of the narrative of his Case in regard to this matter has been already quoted, and after it comes the following passage : " So many of these artful and designing indi- viduals had at length infringed on his patent-right that he found it necessary to prosecute several. But it was not without great difficulty and considerable expense that he was able to make any proof against them. Conscious that their conduct was unjustifiable, their proceedings were conducted with the utmost caution and secrecy. Many of the persons employed by them were sworn to secrecy, and their buildings and workshops were locked up or otherwise secured. This necessary proceeding of Mr Ark- wright occasioned^ as in the case of poor Hargreaves, an association against him of the very persons whom he had served and obliged. Formidable, however, as it was, Mr Arkwright persevered, trusting that he should obtain, in the event, that satisfaction which he appeared to be justly entitled to." Arkwright now entered upon his second campaign against a phalanx of hostile manufacturers. In 1 78 1 actions for infringements of his patent were brought against nine different persons or firms. Only one of the actions came into court. The defendant RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 429 was a Colonel Mordaunt, of whom more hereafter. That " proof," of the difficulty and expense of procuring which Arkwright, it has been seen, complained, was not re- quired in this particular case. Colonel Mordaunt did not deny that he had used Arkwright's machines with- out paying for a licence. He simply pleaded that the specification of the patent of 1775 ^^"^^ not legally suffi- cient. That Arkwright had not given the sufficient de- scription required by law, that he had wilfully made his description obscure, imperfect, and misleading, omitting from it essential parts of the machinery, and inserting in it others which were not intended to be used, was Colonel Mordaunt's defence, and his only defence. In some of the other cases, apparently, it was to have been pleaded that Arkwright was not, as he had declared himself to be, and as the law required that he should be, the first inventor of all the machines which he had patented in 1775. It is certain that Kay, the clockmaker of Warrington, was in attendance, ready, doubtless, to tender much the same evidence as that of which the essence has been already given. But things never went so far as this. On the sole ground of the insufficiency of the specification, either a verdict was given against Arkwright or his counsel consented to a nonsuit. The case of Arkwright versus Mordaunt was tried in the Court of King's Bench in 1781. No report of it is to be found in the books. A rather interesting account of it, however, was given by the counsel for Colonel Mordaunt, when, four years afterwards, he appeared in the same court to procure the annulment of Arkwright's patents. His speech on this occasion aff'ords a glimpse of Thomas Erskine, who was a junior counsel against Arkwright in both the actions ; and the learned gentleman who gives it — a Mr Bearcroft — had been leader in the cause Rex 430 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. verstis Baillie, in which Erskine received his first fee and made his first hit, — such a hit that when he left: West- minster Hall on that happy day, there had been showered upon him, according to his own account, sixty-five retainers.^ Loquitur Bearcroft : — " Permit me to inform you that in the sittings after Trinity Term- that is, at this time of the year — in 17S1, Mr Arkwright, who stands now as the defendant in this proceeding, was the plaintiff in nine causes which he brought here against some persons for invading this patent of his. The fate of these causes was singular. By an accident, I bore, as my learned friend says, something like a principal part of it. I think I do remember very particularly, and will state it very faithfully. " The nine causes Mr Arkwright was plaintiff in against persons invading this patent, and using those machines against his licence. Mr Arkwright, who is a sharp man himself, and well advised by a great many very able counsel, most of them upon the northern circuit, I believe, except one or two of them, and men born in that district. which is very apt to produce sharp and penetrating men, who managed and marshalled his causes with infinite address and cunning, indeed. " It so happened one of his actions was brought against a Colonel Mordaunt, a gentleman of family, but not of much fortune, who did not much mend it by dabbling in this kind of manufacture. Mr Mor- daunt was thought from his temper, and from the lightness of his purse out of all the nine causes, as the finest to be put in the courts. Mr Arkwright had nine. He chose to put the action which was to be tried against Colonel Mordaunt first. There was a particularity in Colonel Mordaunt's temper at that moment ; it was no reflection upon him, but somehow or other he took it into his head to wish to have different counsel in his cause to defend it from the gentlemen concerned in the other eight causes. The gentlemen that were con- cerned in the other eight causes had been upon the northern circuit, very able persons ; and Mr Mordaunt, the Colonel, was fool enouo-h to come to me, and depended upon my assistance, and I remember Mr Erskine was of counsel in all the causes, and I believe Mr Erskine was my only assistant. For Colonel Mordaunt I had a brief which was written upon a sheet of paper. My other friends were concerned in the other causes, and I was to defend Colonel Mordaunt. ^ Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, ii. 398. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 43 I "I was alitlle piqued, I must confess, and I did heartil) wisn I could overset Mr Arkwright, notwithstanding my poor paltry fee, and my brief, which hardly conveyed any ideas. By good-luck, Mr Erskine, who was of counsel in one of the" other eight "causes, was with me, I stole from him his knowledge. I borrowed a witness from him. He communicated his knowledge out of his other briefs. By good- luck I comprehended the matter by the help of my learned friend's communications. I am very free to acknowledge I am obliged to him for it. It was this, that if this was a new invention, Mr Arkwright had not fairly communicated it by his specification, but had absolutely contrived to hide it. Upon that simple ground we went. We had no other to proceed upon. We picked it up, not from my brief, I vow to God, for not a syllable of it was to be found there. Mr Erskine com- municated his ideas from his other instructions, and I had the good fortune to comprehend them while they were turning the machine about" — the model in court. "I made my objections. He lent me a witness or two, and to the perfect satisfaction of the judge who tried it in 17S1, the jury found the patent was of no validity, for Mr Ark- wright, instead of disclosing his invention, did all he could to hide and secrete it ; and upon that ground a verdict was given for my client, Colonel Mordaunt ; and I don't know whether Mr Arkwright repented putting him in front, but I daresay he imagined the same thing would be done in the others, that that objection " to the sufificiency of the specification " would be admissible, though the cases were somewhat different in their nature from each other. There was an end of his patent from that time ; and I contend all the world had a right to take it so." 1 In the following year, 1782, whether in consequence or not of the issue of the trial of 1781, cancelling his patent, Arkwright and the Strutts dissolved partnership, they ^ Trial of 25th June 1785, p. 22-3. It may be worth while to quote a reference to the trial of 1781, contained in the correspondence between Boulton and James W^att, then in Cornwall applying his steam- engine to pump water out of mines. Watt writes to Boulton : "30/// yuly 1781. — Though I do not love Arkwright, I don't like the precedent of setting aside patents through default of specification, I fear for our own. The specification is not perfect according to the rules lately laid down by the judges. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that we have hid our candle under a bushel. We have taught all men to erect our engines, and are likely to suflfer for our pains. I begin to have little faith in patents ; for, according to the enterprising genius of the 432 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. retaining at least the mills at Belper^ (the little town of their own creation, from which Jedediah's grandson, the pre?ent age, no man can have a profitable patent but it will be pecked at, and no man can write a specification of a fire-engine th::t cannot be evaded, if the words and not the true intent and meaning be i.ttended to. As kissing goes by favour, and as in dubious cases men aie actuated by their prejudices, so where a blue is very like a green, tliey may decide either way." Again: "13th August 1781. — I am tiled of making improvements which by some quirk or wresting of the law may be taken from us, as I think has been done in the case of Arkv/right, who has been condemned merely because he did not specify quite clearly. This was injustice, because it is plain that he has given this trade a being — has brought his invention into use, and made it of preat public utility. Wherefore he deserved all the money he has got. In mv opinion his patent should not have been invalidated without it had clearly appeared that he did not invent the things in question. I fear we shall be served with the same s^nct for the good of the public ! and in that case I shall certainly do what he threatens " (?) " This you may be assured of, that we are as much envied here as he is at Manchester, and all the bells in Cornwall would be rung at our overthrow." — Smiles^s Lives of Boulton and Watt (London, 1865), p. 302. ^ "Some idea of the concerns of this family" — the Stratts — "may be gathered from the circumstance stated by a respectable writer after visiting Milford and Helper, that on wishing to retire from the business about 1820, they proposed to any one who would purchase their works at a valuation, that they would allow the parties a bonus of ;i^i50,ooo. The extensive area over which the yarns of this, one of the two first great cotton-spinning houses, are sold and consumed, may be gathered from the fact that from Moscow, amongst other merchandise on the road, lines of two-wheeled carts, each laden with its bales marked with the well-known brand of this firm, may be seen on their way to Novgorod fair, and from thence may be again passed on the route to Kiachta, the Russian frontier mart for the Chinese north-west provinces. Every- where these marks on bale and bundle are accepted as the unfailing pledges of the integrity of the article in every respect. Equal, perhaps superior, confidence is thus placed in the honour of the English makers and vendors of the goods, to the assurance given of their having been unrifled and unchanged in transit, by the imperial seals of Russia and China attached to them. When will the sentiments of honour and truth of an over-competitive age be aroused to feel that the forgery of a trade-mark is a flagrant robbery from the maker and imposition upon the buyer?" — Felkin's History of Hosiery, p. 98. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 433 present Lord Belper, derives the title of his peerage), he those at Cromford, and probably others in Lancashire and elsewhere. Arkwright was a loser directly and indirectly by the result of the trial, since the verdict voided those licences which he had granted for the use of his inven- tions, and it prevented him from granting any more of them. Nevertheless, his wealth must have remained considerable, since it was in this very year of 1782 that he purchased the estate of Willersley, close by those Cromford mills to the superintendence of which he seems to have mainly devoted himself. He lived chiefly at Willersley, where the " castle" which he had begun to build, and which he left unfinished at his death, was completed by his son and successor, a second Richard, and is now in the occupation of his grandson, " Peter Arkwright, Esq. of Willersley Castle." In 1782, moreover, Arkwright took a step from which, had they remained in partnership with him, the Strutts would probably have dissuaded him. He drew up, or rather, since he could scarcely write, he employed others to draw up for him the Case which has been so often quoted, and which is interesting as containing what he himself, doubtless, wished to be accepted as an authentic account of his career of invention and manufiicture up to the time of its composition. The object of the statements in the Case — the most important and interesting of them have been already laid before the reader — was to persuade Parlia- ment "to confirm," he prayed, "connect, consolidate the two letters-patent, so as to preserve to him the full benefit of his inventions for the remainder of the term yet to come in the last patent, which favour would be received by him with the deepest sense of gratitude." " A trial in West- minster Hall," he said, " in July last, at a large expense, was the consequence" of the attempts made by rival 434 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. manufacturers " to rob him of his patent-rights, when solely by not describing so fully and accurately the nature of his last complex machines as was strictly by law required, a verdict was found against him. Had he been at all aware of the consequences of such omission, he certainly would have been more careful and circumspect in his de- scription. It cannot be supposed that he meant a fraud on his country; it is, on the contrary, most evident that he was anxiously desirous of preserving to his native country the full benefit of his inventions " — the obscurity of the specification, he contended, it will be remembered, was contrived merely to bafile the foreigner. " Yet he cannot but lament that the advantages resulting from his own exertions and abilities alone should be wrested from him by those who have no pretensions to merit; that they should be permitted to rob him of his inventions before the reasonable period of fourteen years, merely because he has unfortunately omitted to point out all the minutiae of his complicated machines." ArkwTight's Case was distributed among members of Parliament, but no action seems to have been taken on it in either House. Despite the strenuous opposition of the north of England manufacturers, the Legislature had modified the absurd excise-duty on home-made calicoes, and abolished the penalties on the use of the same calicoes when printed. To grant Arkwright's new request, however, would have been to bestow validity upon his second patent, which a jury had pronounced to be invalid, and to extend for nearly six years and a half his first patent of 1769, which in the ordinary course of law was to expire during the year after the publication of his Case, on the 3d of July 1783. Arkwnght, it is probable, did not receive any encouragement from either the Ministers or from private members of Parliament, and no bill founded on the slate- RICHARD ARKWRIGIIT. 435 merits and prayer of his Case seems to have been so much as framed and presented to the Legislature. With his keen sense, however, of injustice done him, the persevering and energetic man resolved on risking once more an action- at-law in defence of the sufficiency of his second patent. During the period between 1782 and 1785 he collected a certain amount of evidence to prove that machinery effective for the object in view could be constructed after a study of the specification of his second patent. Accord- ingly he brought, in 1785, a new action, Arkwright versus Nightingale. It was tried in the Court of Common Pleas before Lord Loughborough (Wedderburn, afterwards Chan- cellor and Earl of Rosslyn), and a special jury, on the 17th of February 1785. A full report of the proceedings, from the shorthand writer's notes, was published or printed at the time. This trial, like its predecessor of 178 1, turned entirely on the sufficiency of the specification, and the question as to the originality or non-originality of the inventions which Arkwright claimed as his own was not mooted at all. Wit- nesses were called for the prosecution to prove that they had actually made from the specification and drawings accompanying it parts of the machinery ; while others testified that they believed it to be quite possible for any well-instructed mechanic, under certain easily-conceivable circumstances, to perform the feat. Among this second class of witnesses was the famous, or once-famous, Dr Dar- win, then of Derby, whose stutter gave the court some trouble, as well as James Watt (in the report his name is spelled "Watts"), whose examination was opened by the following apostrophe from Arkwright's counsel : " Though the gentlemen of the jury may not know you, sir, I do. You are that gentleman that made some improvements upon the fire-engines." The pith of Watt's evidence, very guarded 43^ LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. and very cautious, is contained in the following answer to the following question : " If you had had the old machine before you " — that of Arkwright's first patent — " and knew the manner of working it, could you from that specifica- tion and description have made, or directed to be made, a machine that would have answered the purpose?" "I beg," said Watt, in reply, " to explain before I answer that question. It was necessary also I should have known the methods Mr Arkwright practised in his spinning, which were then publicly known, as I understood. When I understood them perfectly, I think I might have made it out, but I deliver this as a matter of opinion, and desire it may be understood so." This is not very decisive, and the witnesses who had made parts of the machinery from the specification and drawings seem both to have known the " old machine," and to have had an inkling given them (by Arkwright or those who acted for him) of the structure of the whole machinery, old and new, as then actually worked, but this was not distinctly brought out in cross-examina- tion. Indeed it has been said that there was collusion between the plaintiff and defendant to secure Arkwright a verdict. The strongest point made against him was in the evidence of a clerk (called by the defendant) of Arkwright's own attorney. This person, who had been employed by Arkwright to write the formal part of the specification, deposed that he had directed Arkwright's attention to the insufficiency of that part of it. " I observed to him that it was not specified so perfectly as it might have been, from the opinion I had of Mr Evans as a draughtsman ; they " — the different parts of the machinery — " not being connected together as a machine. And Mr Arkwright said he looked upon specifications rather as a matter of form, and that for some time past they had not specified them as perfectly as they should do ] and for this reason, that in his I RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 437 opinion the invention might be taken abroad, as the specifi- cations were not locked up, and that he wished it to appear as obscure as the nature of the case would admit, and he did not doubt but that it was sufficient to answer his purpose."^ This evidence would have been corroborated had the defendant's counsel been allowed to " put in " and to read the published Case, in which somewhat the same admission was made by Arkwright himself But they were baffled in the attempt by a legal technicality. Lord Loughborough summed up very much in Arkwright's favour. Respectable witnesses, his lordship intimated, had sworn not only that the machines could be made from a study of the specification and drawings, but that they had so made it; what more was wanted? The jury gave, a verdict for Arkwright, who of course had claimed merely nominal damages, wishing only the restitution of his patent- right, of which the former trial had deprived him. At the second trial, as he had been at the first, and was again to be at the third and last, Mr Bearcroft was the leading counsel against Arkwright. At the third trial, soon to be described, he made some references to his defence at the second trial which may be just worth quoting. Referring to the often-mentioned and much-talked-of crank and comb, he spoke of it as " a very ingenious contrivance, I admit, and the very contrivance," the learned gentleman continued, "that was the destruction of us in another place. It was so ingenious, it was so clever, that I remember perfectly well, my learned friend that then had the first show in another court, in which Mr Arkwright's good genius sug- gested, after laying by two or three years, thought it con- venient to try it over again \sic in orig]. My learned friend showed the machinery with such skill and address, and per- formed the operation so well, he tickled the fancy of the jury ^Arkwright versus AlghtingaU; p. 31. 438 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. like so many children, that it was impossible to put them out of love with their plaything to the end of the cause, till they finally decided in its favour."^ Thus did the learned gentle- man console himself for the conversion of his victory of 1781 over Arkwright into the defeat of February 1785. Arkwright's triumph was short-lived. The enemy soon rallied and attacked him in greater numbers and with greater vigour than before. To his rivals it was a matter of the utmost consequence that the judgment of the Common Pleas should be reversed. For four years after the trial of 1781 the use of the inventions in Arkwright's second patent had been thrown open to all the world. Some three hundred thousand pounds had been invested in the buildings where they were worked, and some 30,000 per- sons were employed in working them. If the verdict of the Common Pleas remained in force, all this capital and labour would be jeopardised; and if the manufacturers who had triumphed over him in 1781 wished to keep the doors of their mills open, they would be obliged to sue to Arkwright for licences to be vouchsafed to them at his own price. No effort, no expense could be too great to avert such a catas- trophe, and the former combination against Arkwright was rendered more numerous and determined by the verdict in the Common Pleas. It was resolved to attack his last patent on every possible ground, and to apply for a writ of scire facias to have it annulled. The insufficiency, obscurity, and mystifying character of the specification became only one of several pleas, and by no means the most important of them. It was also to be contended that the process of roving patented in 1775 was merely the spinning-process of 1769 over again, Arkwright's exclusive right to which had lapsed with the expiry of his first patent. Attempts were to be made to prove that all the rest of the processes embodied ^ 7>7#/of 25th June 17S5, p. 19. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 439 in his second patent had been employed by others previously to its issue. Last, not least, it was to be shown that the prime invention of all, that of the rollers, whether for spin- ning or roving, and as Arkwright used them, was due to Thomas Highs (who was summoned from Ireland in great haste), and had been stolen by Arkwright through the instrumentality of Kay. Competent witnesses were to be brought to prove that the crank and comb themselves were the invention of James Hargreaves. In short, every inch of the ground held by Arkwright was to be disputed. The getting up of the case for the combined manufacturers was intrusted to the then secretary of the Society of Arts. Their leading counsel was Mr Bearcroft again, while Ark- wright's was the same who had acted for him in the Com- mon Pleas. The great trial, the result of which was awaited by Manchester and in Lancashire with the utmost anxiety, came off in the Court of King's Bench, before IMr Justice BuUer, a judge of great acuteness, and a special jury, on the 25th June 1785, little more than four months after that in the Common Pleas. Models of the machines, both old and new — patented by Arkwright in 1769 and in 1775 — were produced and worked in court, under Bearcroft's directions ; and before he had made much way in his opening speech, the jury understood perfectly the whole process of cotton-spinning as it was when Arkwriglit took out his first patent for spinning merely, and as it had become when he patented in 1775 the various machines which prepared the cotton by carding, then roved it, and finally formed it into an available and marketable thread. For Arkwright's first machine the cotton had to be carded and roved by hand, at considerable expense, before it was spun by the rollers. In the series of machines patented in 1775, the cotton was carded by machinery, and roved by 440 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. the rollers and dependent can, when another set of rollers, with the aid of the spindles, formed it into yarn. Before the two operations, the old and new, were exhibited to the jury, by having the models worked in court, Bearcroft, as counsel for the Crown (nominally), indulged in the following prelude and preface, ingenious no doubt, but decidedly dis- ingenuous in so far as they represented Arkwright's second patent to have been taken out after his first patent had expired, whereas it was really taken out when that first patent had some eight years to run. "Now the patent for spinning" — Arkwright's first patent of 1769— said the learned gentleman, "expired in July 1783; Mr Arkwright therefore had lost a glorious and profitable monopoly. He was, like every other man, unwilling to part with his term and with his profit because the time was expired, if by any means he could contrive by another kind of ingenuity than that which invents machines, to keep up the enjoyment of that monopoly in another shape. It was not, however, right or just to do it, and I pledge myself to satisfy you that such was the idea which Mr Ark- wright had in his mind. Upon that idea he took eveiy step in his business from that moment to this. I will trace his footsteps from time to time all over that line. Because he was unwilling to part with the benefit he was entitled to of fourteen years, he chose to have it as long as he could. Before the cause is at an end you vi'ill see that this was in truth what passed in Mr Arkwright's mind. Then Mr Arkwright, upon the expiration of this patent for spinning the fine thread, could no longer in these words enjoy that thing at all ; but inasmuch as the cotton-manu- factory depends upon all the several things that are already stated to you, — the carding, the roving, and the spinning — though he had lost the patent for the spinning, — if he could continue to get a patent, and to gull the world to submit to that patent as a new invention, for the roving and the carding, it would answer all his purposes, for still he would be in a monopoly of two-thirds, and that of the important parts of the spinning. In the name, therefore, he would not have the spinning ; but if he got a patent for the carding and roving, the spinning would follow — in truth, the whole operation would be his, and he would keep possession of it against the world. " Gentlemen, suppose any two men stniggling for a yard — which consists of three feet — if Mr Arkwright with one hand got hold of one foot which he is forced to part with, yet contrives to get hold of the 4 RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 44 1 other two feet with his other hand, he certainly would have the better hold. ' I have lost the spinning,' says he ; ' but I will contrive to get the carding and the roving, and then I shall keep the spinning.' For this purpose he procures the present patent. What is it for ? For spinning? No ; that would be too gross. The same word is very apt to describe the same thing, and you will see that Mr Arkwright, both in writing and in drawing this specification, has most diligently avoided any words or anything that could too plainly strike the imagination, and show that his new patent was in effect his old one. For the foundation of his new patent he says, ' I have invented machines of great public utility in preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spinning.' " And then the learned gentleman set the man with the model to work, so that judge and jury might contemplate all the operations of Arkwright's patented machinery, from the carding to the final spinning of marketable thread or yam. The jury could not fail to see that the processes of roving and spinning were essentially the same, and that the roving in the second patent was only a new application of the rollers of the first patent. Highs and Kay, accordingly, were called to swear that the rollers were not Arkwrisrht's inven- tion at all : their evidence, or what is most important in it, has been already laid before the reader. In the roving, it is true, a twist was given to the first form of the yarn by a revolving can, an ingenious contrivance which ArkwTight claimed as his invention. " Neddy Holt " was called, how- ever, to prove that he had used this can in 1774, a year before Arkwright's second patent was granted, though it turned out that the can so used by the witness was made for him by two men who had been in Arkwright's employ- ment, A certain Benjamin Butler was also called to prove that he had used a similar can twenty-six years previously — that is, in 1759, ten years before Arkwright first patented the rollers, — a very improbable story. The evidence in regard to the can was not unfavourable to Arkwright's case. Much more important than the roving-can was the whole 442 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. process of carding as patented by Arkwright. Highs's claim to have made carding-machines on Arkwright's prin- ciple may be dismissed, in Dr Ure's words, as " not only futile, but ridiculous." More damaging was the evidence of John Lees, a Quaker, who swore to having invented for the carding-cylinder, in 1772, a feed-cloth even more useful or available than that patented by Arkwright. One Pilkington and his partner Wood declared that before Arkwright took out his second patent they had used the fillet- cards, which enabled the cylinder to give off the cotton in a continuous fleece. After Arkwright's patent came out, Pilkington spoke to him on the subject, and Arkwright, he admitted, threatened him with an action. Henry Marsiand deposed that Arkwright saw the feeder in operation at his works in 1771 or 1772, and objected to his use of it, as well to that of the crank and comb ; why, it is not easy to under- stand, since Arkwright did not patent them until 1775 Marsiand also declared that after Arkwright's expostulation he gave up the use of the crank and comb as undoubtedly ArkwTight's invention, but he would not, and did not, give up the feeder. It was the crank and comb that proved fatal to this part of the case, just as it had helped Arkwright to victory at the trial of the preceding February. The reader knows that the crank and comb was Arkwright's invention, or at least that no one else has a legitimate claim to it. But small blame to the jury if, with no evidence before them to the contrary, they believed the confident testimony of the widow of James Hargreaves, of his son, and of a workman who had been in his employment, when all of them swore positively that this masterpiece of ingenuity had been invented by Hargreaves. Doubtless these witnesses really believed what they said, though the reader knows that they were utterly mistaken. Their evidence, did Arkwright irreparable injury. RICHARD ARKW RIGHT. 443 There remained the question of the insufficiency and obscurity of the specification, its wilful errors of omission and commission. On this question exclusively the two former trials had turned, and it was fully gone into at the third trial, but its importance on this occasion was of course not so great as on the others. Much the same two sets of witnesses who had figured at the trial in February repeated in July their former evidence ; one set declaring that they had made the machinery from the specification, or believed it could be so made ; the other, that it was impossible to construct it from the specification alone. The cross- examination of Arkwright's witnesses was, however, more searching at this than at the former trial. It was more clearly brought out that the witnesses who deposed to having constructed from the specification the machinery patented, had in all probability received from Arkwright's friends or agents hints that smoothed the way for them. Those witnesses who simply affirmed the possibility of making the machines from the specification were strictly cross-examined, in order to prove that this could not be done without a full knowledge of the operations patented in 1769, so that the specification of 1775 was so far defective. Moreover, as regarded the question of the insufficiency of the specification, the adversaries of x\rkwright had on this occasion the great advantage denied them at tlie trial of the preceding February. They were allowed to " put in " as evidence Arkwright's own Case, in which he had admitted and accounted for the obscurity of the specification. Here was the admission under his own hand and seal, and con- tradicting the even otherwise not very weighty evidence of his own witnesses to the contrary. Arkwright's counsel, a Mr Serjeant Adair, did his best for his chent; but it was uphill work, since if his case broke down on any one point, the verdict would necessarily go 444 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. against him. His reply to Bearcroft's remarks on the causes of Arkwright's supposed eagerness for a second patent is worth giving on account of its references to the early history of Arkwright's inventions, and the allegation, which, however, must be taken for what it is worth, that by working solely the process which was the subject of the first patent, Arkwright and his partners were actually losers : — "Gentlemen," said Serjeant Adair, "it is very natural Mr Arkwright should be desirous of having the benefit of the patent obtained " — the second patent of 1775. " In the state in which he then stood he was undoubtedly a loser. It is a most undoubted fact, the spinning-patent " — the first patent of 1769 — "never paid for itself, nor indemnified Mr Arkwright for the construction of these ingenious machines. But why did it not? Because of the modes in use at that time — during greater part of the continuance of Mr Arkwright's spinning-patent — for prepar- ing the cotton from the coarse state ; first, the operation of the spinning was so tedious and imperfect, and subject to those difficulties, it is im- possible to derive any benefit from the exercise of the spinning-machine, for so much time and so many hands were employed in carding, sizing, and roving the cotton to prepare it for spinning." A Statement the truth of which, it must be added, was denied by Bearcroft (in his rejoinder), who affirmed that Arkwright had made ;^ 100,000 by the spinning alone under his first patent. Arkwright's counsel did not directly impugn either the veracity or the character of Highs. " I know nothing," he said, " of Hayes. You know nothing of him but from his evidence, and the light that he appears in to-day. All I ask of you, in respect of Mr Hayes, is to judge him from his company, his friends, his acquaintance and associate Kay," whom the learned gentleman proceeded to revile, not a very difficult task, and who, he said, had committed " the grossest perjury." On the question of the carding improvements, the learned serjeant could not struggle against the evidence of the widow, son, and workman of RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 445 Hargreaves; and what, if the real truth had come out, would have been directly and indirectly one of Arkwright's strongest positions, was surrendered by his advocate as untenable. In the course of his address, it may be added, Serjeant Adair incidentally made the remark, as from personal knowledge, that " Mr Arkwright's powers of explanation " fell " ex- tremely short" of his "powers of invention." Two hints concerning Arkwright and his later inventions are also worth giving. Among the witnesses brought to prove the sufficiency of the specification were some of Arkwright's upper-workmen. One of them, who had been employed in making the machinery of the second patent, was asked in what way he received his instructions from Arkwright, and he replied, " He gave me directions by chalking upon a board sometimes, and crooking of lead and wire, and things in that shape." Another was asked whether the machinery of the second patent was invented from time to time, or whether patterns were given from which it was made all at once. " From time to time," was the reply ; " and sometimes it would be pulled all to pieces." The evidence as to the sufficiency of the specification was on both sides, as already stated, nearly identical with that given at the trial in the Common Pleas, and among the witnesses on Arkwright's side James Watt and Dr Darwin figured a second time. One of the witnesses who again gave on this point evidence unfavourable to Arkwright was Harrison, the son of the inventor of the chronometer, and his examination by Erskine brought out a curious little coincidence, " You were concerned with your father," said Erskine interrogatively, "in the discovery of a timepiece?" — the first marine chronometer, to wit. " Yes, sir," was the reply ; " I had the honour of being with you in the same voyage" — the cruise made in the Spanish Main by H.M.S. Tartar, on board of which the future Chancellor was a 446 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. midshipman, while Harrison junior sailed in it no doubt to watch the testing of his father's chronometer. Of Bearcroft's reply — rather a triumphant one, as might be expected in the circumstances — only one passage need be quoted. It has a certain historical or biographical value from its reference to an alleged general impression that Arkwright had stolen the invention of the rollers from Kay and Highs. "Gentlemen," said Bearcroft, " I don't find the learned serjeant " — Adair — " was surprised by this evidence " of Highs and Kay. " No man of common-sense will believe that Mr Arkwright is the only man in England that never heard the accounts spread abroad by every man that speaks upon the subject, that he did get this " — the rollers — " from Highs by means of Kay. It is a notorious thing in the manufactur- ing counties. All men that have seen Mr Arkwright in a state of opulence have shaken their heads, and thought of these poor men Hayes and Kay, and have thought, too, that they were entitled to some participation of the profits." In the case of Kay, sympathy was quite misplaced. "What is the consequence of this? Mr Arkwright must have expected this evidence. Where are the wit- nesses that tell you Mr Hayes has a bad character ? Where are the witnesses that tell you Kay and his wife are of bad character ? or that either of the three is not entitled to belief upon their oaths ? " and so on in the usual forensic style, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. The judge sumrned up clearly and carefully, but decidedly against Arkwright. There were three points, he told the jury, for their consideration : ist, Is the invention new ? 2d, Is it invented by the defendant? 3d, Was it sufficiently described in the specification ? If to any one of these questions their answer was in the negative, they were to give a verdict for the Crown against Arkwright. When the judge finished his summing up — the trial had lasted from the morning till past midnight — "the jury, without a mo- ment's hesitation, brought in their verdict for the Crown," says the official report of the trial. " It appears from a placard issued in Manchester announcing the result of the RICHARD ARKWRIGIIT. 44/ trial, that the verdict was not given till one o'clock in the morning, and that the defeat of Arkwright gave great satisfaction to the people of that town."^ "We have the pleasure to inform our readers " — thus runs a brief editorial intimation in the Manchester Merairy of June 28, 1785 — "that the trial of the King against Ark- wright came on in the Court of King's Bench on Saturday morning last, when after a full investigation, which lasted near sixteen hours, the jury without leaving the court gave a verdict in favour of the Crown ; by which decision Arkwright's patent is become null and void to all intents and purposes, and the country is liberated from the dreadful effects of a monopoly in spinning. In the course of the trial, the particulars of which we will take a further oppor- tunity of laying before the public, it was shown to the satis- faction of the whole court that Arkwright was not the inventor nor the first user of the machines for which he has so many years enjoyed a patent." At the beginning of the next term, Arkwright's counsel, Serjeant Adair, moved in the Court of King's Bench for a rule to show cause why there should not be a new trial. He made the application chiefly on the ground of " surprise " in the matter of the non-originality of the inventions, and he spoke of affidavits to rebut the evidence both of the Har- greaves family and of Kay and Highs. It is to be observed, however, that in regard to the crank and the comb solely did he go into any detail. "I have," he said, "the affidavit of Mrs James, the widow of the other partner of Har- greaves, and of his son, and of one or two of their workmen, that they were informed from Mr Hargreaves himself that the invention had been surreptitiously obtained from a workman of Arkwright's " — and this statement the reader knows to be perfectly correct. But on the contents and 1 Baines, Cotton- Manufacture,^. 192,110(6. 448 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. authorship of the afifidavit which was to rebut the evi- dence of Highs and Kay the learned gentleman preserved a significant silence. In the course of his application Ser- jeant Adair made some reference to a hint which he said had been dropped by the judge at the trial, that it might be stopped at a certain point. Whereupon Mr Justice Buller : " I will state how that was. You state it very clearly and accurately, [t appeared to me, after we had been four or five hours in the cause, the defendant " — Arkwright — " had not a leg to stand upon. I thought it a point of duty and decency in me, in such a cause, and of that con- sequence, and when it had been tried before two respectable judges, who held a difference in sentiments, that I should hear it fully out. I began with directing the idea of the jury to that point ; and I believe it occurred to the jury that if it were ever so clear, it was better they should hear it all out." Finally, the " great " Lord Mansfield, as Chief Justice, gave the application its quietus, thus : — " It is very clear to me, upon your own showing, there is no colour for the rule. The ground of it is, if there is another trial, you may have more evidence. There is no surprise stated, no new discovery ; but upon the material points in question you can give more evi- dence. There were two questions to be tried — that is, the specifica- tion and the originality of the invention. There has been one trial in this court, another trial in the Common Pleas, where this patent has been questioned ; and this proceeding is brought finally to conclude the matter, for it is a scire facias to repeal the letters-patent. The ques- tions to be tried are stated upon record : there is not a child but must know they were to try the questions there stated. They come prepared to try them. They have tried them, and a verdict has been found which is satisfactory to the judge. And now you desire to try the cause again, only that you may bring more evidence. There is not a colour for it." The rule was refused, and on the following 14th of November the Court of King's Bench gave judgment to cancel the letters-patent. The announcement of this Arkwright's third action had naturally produced a great stir in the manufacturing districts of the north of England, where his machinery had for years RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. ^49 been used without fee or reward. The " people of England," said the Manchester Mercury, when informing its readers of the coming trial, " never were more interested, and many of our northern counties will owe their manufacturing existence to the decision of a patent-cause which is expected to be tried," &c. &c. " The very great preparations," it added, " making in Scotland by Mr Arkwright, joined by several of the most conspicuous in the landed and commercial inter- ests of that kingdom, it is imagined, has induced him to revive the supposed claim." Yes: during the period between the trial of 1781 and those of 1785, Arkwright had been doing or planning in Scotland what calls for further notice than this meagre refer- ence of the Manchester newspaper. To his defeat of June 1785, in the Court of King's Bench, following on his vic- tory of the February of the same year in the Common Pleas, is commonly ascribed his resolution to commence operations north of the Tweed, in order to make up for his failure in England. The story runs, that after the verdict given against him in June 1785, Arkwright overheard one of his opponents say, " Well, we 've done the old shaver at last ! '' to which he rejoined, " I '11 find a razor in Scotland to shave you all with yet"! The story, if there be any truth in it, must belong to the time when he lost his first action — that of 1781. Certain it is that before 1785 Ark- wright had visited Scotland, and had planned with a notable Scotchman the erection of at least the New Lanark Mills, afterwards famous because in them Robert Owen tried his earliest experiments as a social reformer. The first cotton-mill in Scotland was built at Rothesay in 1778, by an English company, but it soon came into the hands of David Dale,i the notable Scotchman referred to, whose daughter Robert Owen married, from which match ^ David Brcmner, The Industries of Scotland i^^\\\\)\x\^, 1869), p. 229. 3 I- 45 O LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. sprang the contemporary Robert Dale Owen, the American diplomatist and spiritualist of our own day and generation. David Dale was an Ayrshire man, the son of a " grocer and general dealer" at Stewarton, in that county. He began by herding cattle in his native district, afterwards migrating to Paisley as a weaver, " at this time the most lucrative trade in the county," and then, always tending upwards, became clerk to a silk-mercer in Glasgow. Enterprising as well as shrewd, thrifty yet benevolent, pushing in worldly business, while one of the most God-fearing of men, David Dale was sure to rise in the Scotland of his time. By and by, " with the assistance of friends, he began business on his own account in the linen-yarn trade, importing large quantities of French yarns from Flanders. This brought him large profits and laid the foundation of his fortune." As has been already hinted, he kept an eye on improve- ments in cotton-spinning, becoming the possessor of the first cotton-mill erected in Scotland, which was probably fitted up with the spinning-jennies of Hargreaves : — "Mr Dale had been about twenty years in business in Glasgow when Sir Richard Arkwright's patent inventions for the improvement of cotton-spinning were introduced into England. Sir Richard visited Glasgow in 1783" — more probably in 1 784 — "and was entertained by the bankers, merchants, and manufacturers at a public dinner, and next day started with Mr Dale for the purpose of inspecting the waterfalls on the Clyde, with a view to erect works adapted to his improvements. A site was fixed on, and the building of the New Lanark Mills was immediately commenced. Arrangements were at the same time made betwixt Sir Richard and Mr Dale for the use of the patent of the former. Mechanics were sent to England to be instructed in the nature of the machinery and the process of the manufacture ; but in the meanwhile Arkwright's patent having been challenged, and the courts of law having decided " — finally in the June of 1785 — " against its validity, Mr Dale was thus relieved of all claim for patent-right, and the connection between him and Arkwright was consequently dissolved, the business being now entirely his own." ^ ^ Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. New edition, by the Rev. T. Thomson (London, 1868), i. 922-3, § Dale, David. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 45 I There are evidently some misstatements in this passage. Arkwright and Dale could not at the time mentioned have made an " arrangement for the use of the patent of the former," since Arkwright had neither in 17S3 nor in 1784 any patent-rights remaining, these having been cancelled by the trial of 1 781. But an arrangement may have been made conditionally on the success of the action for which Ark- wright was preparing ; and in any case Arkwright's co-opera- tion promised to be valuable, since at his EngUsh mills Scotch mechanics could be instructed in " the nature of the machinery and the process of the manufacture." Of Ark- wright's visit to the site of the New Lanark Mills we have another and a brief record of much earlier date than that just quoted. Says a topographer of Lanark parish,^ writing in the last decade of the eighteenth century : — " Perhaps no single parish in Scotland affords more eligible situations for mills of all kinds than this parish. Sir Richard Arkwright, when here in 1824" — a glaring misprint, perhaps for 1784 — "was astonished at the advantages derivable from the falls of the Clyde, and exultingly said that Lanark would probably in time become the Manchester of Scotland, as no place he had ever seen afforded better situations or more ample streams of water for cotton-machinery." By the practical Arkwright the romantic aspects of the scenery around were contemplated, no doubt, with com- parative indifference. But, though in another way, the neighbourhood was as beautiful as that of his own Cromford mills, the site of which he had selected without the slightest regard to its picturesque environment. " The next curiosity," continues this eighteenth-century topogiaphcr, " on descending the Clyde, that attracts the stranger, is New Lanark, or the cotton-mills. The situation of the village is at the western extremity of the Bonniton" — Bonnington — "ground, in a low den, and within view of another beautiful and romantic fall called DundufI Lin, signifying in Gaelic Black Castle Leap ; and no doubt formerly ^ Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (Eduiburgh, 1795), XV. 46. 452 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. some fortress has been situated hereabouts, although no traces now remain excepting in tradition, which still points out a rock called Wallace's Chair, where that patriot is said to have concealed himself from the English " — now after so many centuries invading Scotland, not with fire and sword, but with cotton-spinning machinery. " This fall is about thirty or forty feet high, and trouts have been observed to spring up and gain the top of it with ease. This fall, the village, four lofty cotton-mills, and their busy inhabitants, together with the wild and woody scenery around, must attract the notice of every stranger. Below these are the romantic rocks and woods of Braxfield, the seat of the present Lord Justice-Clerk, who, influenced alone by the good of his country, very frankly" — in 1784, according to the same authority else- where — "feued the site of the village and cotton-mills to the benevolent Mr -David Dale at a very moderate feu-duty.'' " The first mill was begun in April 1785, and a subterraneous passage of near a hundred yards in length was also formed through a rocky hill for the purpose of an aqueduct to it. In summer 1 788 a second one was built, and was nearly roofed in when, on the 9th of October that year, the first one was totally consumed by accidental fire, but was again rebuilt and finished in 1789. The proprietor has since erected other two, all of which are meant to be driven by one and the same aqueduct. " In March 1786 the spinning commenced, and notwithstanding of the severe check by the destruction of the first mill, the manufactoiy has been in a constant progressive state of advancement. In March 1 791, from an accurate account then taken, it appears there were 981 per- sons employed in the mills, whereas there are now (November 1793) I334-" David Dale had difficulties of his own to surmount before all this was accomplished. One chief obstacle was the in- disposition of the country-people to work, or to allow their children to work, in the mills. Agents in the Highlands were employed to beat up for recruits, adult and juvenile ; and once he thought it a godsend when some Highland famiUes, emigrating from the Hebrides to America, were driven back by stress of weather to Greenock, where he contrived to secure them for his mills. But though he could make more of his Celtic than of his other countrymen, even this resource failed, and he was obliged to have recourse to the workhouses of Edinburgh and Glasgow. " To obtain a RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 453 supply of adult labourers, a village was built round the works, and the houses were let at a low rent ; but the busi- ness was so unpopular, that few except the bad, the unem- ployed, and the destitute would settle there. Even of such ragged labourers the numbers were insufficient, and these, when they had learned their trade and become valuable, were self-willed and insubordinate." ^ This was the human raw material on which Robert Owen had to work when, in 1799, cetat. twenty-eight, he married David Dale's eldest daughter, became manager of the New Lanark Mills, and ^ Saxg?in\.'s Robert Owen and his Social Philosophy (London, i860), p. 31. Robert Owen is remembered now chiefly by his Utopian schemes, but in early life he was a shrewd, practical, and pushing man. Few episodes in the annals of cotton - spinning are more interesting than the story, as told by Owen himself in his Autobiography — of his rise from the ownership of a few of Crompton's mules, with three men to work them, onward to his headship, first of the Chorlton and next of the New Lanark mills. Owen, who, according to his own account, was then "an ill-educated awkward youth, speaking ungrammatically a kind of Welsh-English," had to buy the rovings, which his three spinners converted into yarn, with the aid of his three mules, in Ancoats Lane, Manchester. " I had no machinery," he says in his Atitobiography (i. 25), "to make rovings, and was obliged to purchase them — they were the half-made materials to be spun into thread. I had become acquainted with tw^o young industrious Scotchmen, of the names of M'ConncU and Kennedy, who had also commenced about the same time as myself to make cotton-machinery upon a small scale, and they had now proceeded so far as to make some of the machinery for preparing the cotton for the mule-spinning machinery, so far as to enable them to make the rovings, which they sold in that state to the spinner at a good profit. I was one of their first and most regular customers, giving them, as I recollect, 12s. per pound for rovings, which, when spun into thread, and made up into the five-pound bundles, I sold to Mr Mitchell at 2s. per pound. This was in the year 1790. Such was the commencement of Messrs M'Connell & Kennedy's successful career as cotton-spinners — such the foundation of those palace-like buildings which were after- wards erected by this firm, and of my own proceedings in Manchester, and in New Lanark in Scotland. They could then only make the roz'i:tgs without finishing the thread, and I could only finish the thread without being competent to make the rovings." 454 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. made them one of the industrial show-places of Europe, while at the same time they yielded a large return to their owners, until he lost head and had to be bought out. But the later history of the New Lanark Mills and the biography of Owen do not fall to be written here. The New Lanark Mills are still at work, though, through the invention of the steam-engine, in so many cases superseding water-power, New Lanark itself did not, as Arkwright anticipated, be- come the Manchester of Scotland. Dale, it has been seen, began the actual building of his first mill in the April of 1785, a month or two after the trial in the Common Pleas which reinstated Arkwright in his patent-rights. It is not only possible but probable that he did at that time arrange with Arkwright for the use of his restored patent. Dale was a shareholder in several other Scotch cotton-mills. He had one at Newton Douglas, in partnership with Sir William Douglas ; one in Ayrshire, at Catrine, in partnership with Mr Alexander of Ballochmyle; another in Perthshire ; and a fourth in the far north — Spin- ningdale, in Sutherlandshire, one fancies — " in partnership with Mr George Macintosh, the father of the inventor of tlie india-rubber ' macintoshes,' and other manufactures of that material." Had Arkwright been allowed to retain the patent-right restored to him by the verdict of February 1785, the English manufacturers would have been at his mercy. He could have refused them Ucenses for the use of his machinery ; and by extending operations indefinitely north of the Tweed, where water-power was so generally available, he would indeed have " shaved " them with a "razor" found " in Scotland "' ! The verdict of June 1785, whether just or unjust, gave an immediate and immense stimulus to the EngUsh cotton- manufacture. This was increased by Crompton's invention of the mule, which span the higher numbers for weft, and RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 455 soon displaced Hargreaves's spinning-jenny in all but the production of the lower numbers, while Arkwright's water- frame turned out warp-yarn available for most fabrics. " The dissolution of Arkwriglit's patent and the invention of the mule concurred to give the most extraordinary impetus to the cotton-manufacture. Nothing like it has been known in any other great branch of industry. Capital and labour rushed to this manufacture in a torrent, attracted by the unequalled profits which it yielded. Numerous mills were erected and filled with water-frames ; and jennies and mules were made and set to work w'ith almost incredible rapidity. The increase of weavers kept pace with the in- crease of spinners ; and all classes of workmen in this trade received extravagantly high wages — such as were necessary to draw from other trades the amount of labour for which the cotton-trade offered profitable employment, but such as it was impossible to maintain for any lengthened period." ^ The year before the annulment of Arkwright's patents by the verdict of June 1785, the quantity of cotton-wool im- ported into England was 11,482,083 lbs. In 1789, four years after that trial, it amounted to 32,576,023 lbs. In 1780 the value of the British cotton-manufactures exported had been only ^^355,060; in 1790 it was ^j^i, 662,369 2 — small enough compared with the value of the cotton-exports of our own day, but still showing a great stride. The old industrial aristocrat of our textile industry, the spinner, was now deposed. Machinery displaced his or her fingers and anti- quated wheel, ^ while the handloom-weaver, over whom the 1 Baines's Cotton- Mannfactui-e, p. 214. * lb., p. 215. ^ There is on record one singular and interesting instance of a long, and, since it lasted for more than forty years, a so far successful resistance of the spinning-wheel to machinery of whatever kind. " This," says Kad- cliffe {.Origin of Power- Loom Weaving, p. 64-5, note), " was a family of the name of Tomlinson, on one of the small farms in Mellor, called 456 - LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. spinner had formerly lorded it, became master of the situa- tion. In spite of the fly-shuttle, the weaver, who could not formerly obtain sufficient yarn enough for his loom, was now over-supplied with it, and there were not enough of his craft to turn into cloth the quantities of yarn furnished by the new machines of Hargreaves, of Arkwright, and of Crompton. But the weaver, too, was to be dethroned by machinery. In 1784, Edmund Cartwright, clergyman and poet, was sojourning at Matlock, and found himself in the company of "some Manchester gentlemen." The conversation Bull Hill ; it consisted of four or five orphan sisters, the youngest of whom was upwards of forty. They had a complete spinnery, consisting of two pairs of cards and five hand-wheels, by which they earned moie than paid the rent of their farm, on which they kept three cows, one horse, and always ploughed a field. This farm was also celebrated for its cheese, poultry, eggs, &c. These spinsters entered their solemn protest against any innovation upon this trade, and the property they had embarked in it — either by Sir Richard Arkwright or any other person — and declared they would never surrender a right which had descended to them from the earliest period of time, and till now had never been disputed. They disapproved of the riotous proceedings before mentioned"— directed against the use of machinery — "and ex- pressed a strong confidence that Government, when they heard of these machines, would stop them, as they ought to do ; but so far as they were concerned, they came to the following noble resolution : That until these machines were ordered by Government to cease working to the ruin of all his Majesty's loyal and dutiful spinsters in his dominions, they would oppose them with all their wealth, power, and industry, with the aid of their legitimate cards and hand-wheels. They have done so, and have fought nobly under this resolution for nearly half a century, no one ever giving way to the right or left, except three or four of them who have died in the combat. But the one or two who are left in the field of battle, I understand, are still carrying on the combat, as I saw some of their yarn just brought from the celebrated spinneiy on the same farm by a respectable manufacturer in our town only a few weeks ago (1822). But were I not opposed by an old saying we have, that ' while there is life there is hope,' I should be inclined to express a doubt of their ultimate success^ however just may be their cause." RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 457 turned, as it might well do there and then, on cotton-spin- ning, when the remark was made, that as soon as ArkwTight's patent expired, so many mills would be built and so much cotton be spun that there would not be hands enough to weave it. Cartwright said carelessly that Arkwright would have to invent machinery for weaving, as he had done for spinning, and efface the hand-loom as he was effacing the hand-wheel. " Impossible," rejoined the Manchester gentlemen. The Reverend Edmund, however, went home to brood over his own suggestion, and set to work to solve his own problem. It was not long before he had invented the power-loom, taking out his first patent in the April of 1785, the year in which Arkwright's patent was finally cancelled. Time had to elapse before the power- loom was perfected and came into general use ; but early in the present century it had begun to supplant the handloom weaver, since then hurled by it low enough from the pride of place to which the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, the rollers of Arkwright, and Crompton's mule elevated him for a season. A word may be added on the sources of our earlier cotton- supply. In 1787, out of 22,800,000 lbs. imported into Great Britain, nearly a third, 6,800,000 lbs., came from the British West Indies; 6,000,000 lbs. from the French and Spanish colonies ; 1,700,000 lbs. from the Dutch ; 2,500,000 lbs. from the Portuguese (chiefly Brazil) ; 100,000 lbs. from the Isle of Bourbon (now the Mauritius) ; and so many as 5,700,000 lbs. from Smyrna and Turkey.^ Before 1794 the export of cotton from the United States was next to nothing. " In 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool having on board eight bags of cotton, w-hich were seized by the custom-officers under an impression * Ure's Cotton- Manufacture, i. 1S6, 458 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. that cotton was not the produce of the United States " ! ^ In 1 79 1 only 189,316 lbs. were imported to this country from the United States. In 187 1, eighty years later, the quantity received in England from the United States amounted to 1,038,677,920 lbs. — more than five thousand times as much as in the first-named year. Arkwright's defeat of 1785 left him in possession of his mills, as well as of ample capital wherewith to erect more, and his career continued to be a prosperous one. " Wealth flowed in upon him with a full stream from his skilfully- managed concerns. For several years he fixed the price of cotton-twist, all other spinners conforming to his prices." "^ The year after the overthrow in the Court of King's Bench, he was knighted on presenting an address of congratulation to the King on his Majesty's escape from mad Margaret Nicholson's knife ; and the following year, 1787, he was made High Sheriff of Derbyshire. During Arkwright's later years he was partly occupied in building Willersley Castle, which, with a church at Cromford, intended by him to recei\ e his remains, but not finished when he died, was completed, according to his injunctions, by his son, heir, and successor. Perhaps worth inserting here are the following jottings about Willersley and Cromford, made on the spot by a young friend (at least he was young eighteen years ago) out from Man- chester on an exploratory trip to that pleasant and picturesque region, not then, as now, traversed by the railways, which have doubtless repeopled it with many visitors, as of yore. "THE CRADLE OF COTTON-SPINNING. " Some twelve months ago, or so, they say, a young Prussian gentle- man presented himself at the chief hostelry of the village of Cromford, in Derbyshire — hard by the famed and once much-frequented beauties 1 Baines (who cites Smithers's History of Liverpool, p. 124), Coiton- Manufacture, p. 302. " lb., p. 193. RICHARD ARK WRIGHT. 459 of Matlock Bath — with a singular story, and on a singular errand. He came, this young Prussian gentleman is said to have averred, from a Prussian hamlet of Cromford, w here had been built the first of Prussian cotton-mills, and was now minded to see the first cotton-mill ever built in England, which stood and stands near the English village of Crom- ford, the sponsor-village of his ovrti German home. He came ; he saw ; he conquered the rule that obstinately forbids ingress to the earliest of English cotton-mills, and then went on his way rejoicing, towards the Lake Country, the Scottish Highlands, and the other northern shrines of the pilgrims of the picturesque. So runs the tale as it was told to us, quite recently, by the landlord of the chief hostelry of Cromford, a tale which we would wish to be true. Do any of our German readers know anything of a Prussian hamlet of Cromford, the earliest seat of the Prussian cotton-manufacture ? Was the story a figment of an inventive German tourist, palmed upon the credulity of a Derbyshire Boniface ? Or is it, perhaps, a myth that has grown up, according to established laws, in the mind of mine host himself? Who shall say? " Undoubtedly, however, yonder does lie, in fine preservation, the cradle of all cotton-spinning that ever has been, or will be ; and it might well be, though it is not, the Mecca of Lancashire men. To the non- manufacturing mind, cotton-spinning and the processes which are its adjuncts wear afar off an ugly and dismal aspect, associated with the grind of steam-engines, a night of perpetual smoke, and masses of dingy brick huts, tenanted by a squalid population of malcontents. But the region where cotton-spinning was bom, or rather bred, is so romantic and so beautiful that a poet might pitch his tent in it, and feed his muse on the inspirations of its scenery. You come southward do«Ti the vale of Matlock, leaving behind the tall broad mountain which stands sentinel over its entrance, and which with its crown of firs, and its green- tree-clad acclivities dotted by white cottages, m clusters, terraces, or singly, only needs a snowy Alpine background to realise the mountain- scenery of Switzerland. You wend through the stone village of Matlock Bath, which slumbers at the bottom of the valley ; on the right the little Derwent murmurs past grassy slopes on this hand, and overhung on that by a grand range of limestone rocks, half veiled, half brought into relief by a luxuriant growth of elm and ash and underwood to the water's edge. On the left are mountain-heights, now towering sheer, with grove and wood, now sloping more softly, with here and there plateaus, on which cottages and mansions at various elevations nestle aeainst the hillside. For a mile or so run the Derwent and the road together, until the river makes a sudden curve. Right opposite, the rocks have passed into a lovely sloping park, on which, white and clear, 460 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. stands out Willersley Castle, built by the founder of cotton-spinning. Sir Richard Arkwright, and away through lawn and lea the little Derwent runs from you. You may enter the lodge-gate and follow it, with a range of stupendous rocks on the right hand, overwhelmed in every fissure and to the summit with rich foliage, and the private road will take you to the public one, at the point of junction rising the modest chapel where Sir Richard lies interred ; to the left another lodge admits once more to the grounds, and away to the right merrily scuds the Derwent past steeply-sloping meadows that rise into the hills which shroud Lee Hurst, the home of Florence Nightingale. If, however, from the spot where Willei'sley Castle first came in view, you decline the invitation to enter the grounds, and turn the rock-comer that fronts you, there is a parting of the ways. Onward runs the road to Belper. On the right Cromford village stretches up the hill; on the left a lane skirts the rocks that hide the grounds of Willersley. You follow the lane for a few yards and come upon a gateway on the right. Inside is an open square, surrounded by the familiar piles of windowed buildings. Siste, viator ! Here is the cradle of cotton-spinning. Here Lancashire industrialism was nursed, the not-distant Derwent singing its lullaby, and the guardian-hills looking silently on. " It was in 1771, eighty-four years ago, that Sir Richard Arkwright laid the foundation of the oldest of these mills. His first patent was procured in 1769 : in 1 770 he formed his partnership with Messrs Need & Strutt, the stocking manufacturers of Nottingham ; and the follow- ing year, finding that the horse-power by which the new machines were originally worked was too expensive for operations on a large scale, the building of the Cromford Mill was commenced, the motive-power to be derived from the Cromford Sough (not from the Derwent), as it was called, a stream formed by the drainage of the Wirksworth lead-mines. The present owner of Willersley, and of Cromford and its mills, Mr Peter Arkwright, is the grandson of the great .Sir Richard, who had only one son, a Richard like himself. The late Mr Richard Arkwright, the son and heir of the founder of the family, died so recently as 1843, ^"^ was said to be 'the richest commoner in England.' Hence, perhaps, an indifference on the part of the Willersley representative of the Ark- wrights to the pursuits and gains of manufacturing industry. So that when, some years ago, there sprang up a lawsuit between the owner of the Wirksworth lead-mines (from which came the Cromford Sough) and the present owner of Willersley, respecting the use of the stream, the Cromford mills wei^e put into a state of inactivity ; and only certain ultimate processes of the cotton-manufacture are now carried on in them, — not cotton-spinning itself any more. If there be a difficulty about RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 46 1 water-power, why not use steam ? Yes, but if one is the son of the richest commoner in England, why trouble himself about the matter at all, unless, indeed, for the sake of the poor people of the district? Accordingly the first of English cotton-mills has been placed, as it were, on half-pay, and in the serene and dignified repose of old age, can look back with satisfaction to its achievements, and the vast Lancashire industrialism which it, even it, brought into existence. " Half-way between Matlock Bath, however, and Cromford, there is a brother of the Cromford Mill still hard at work — a younger, though not much younger, brother, for the Masson Mill (as it is called) was [nit together by the great Sir Richard only some seven years after he of Cromford came into being. The Derwent drives it, so that the lovely valley is as yet unpolluted by factory-smoke ; and into it, on proper application, entrance is freely given, whether you be a Prussian young gentleman or an English. The second earliest of Sir Richard Ark- wright's cotton-mills is an interesting sight. The great inventor's machinery, mahoganied by age, is still at work there after more than seventy years of toil, and turns out, as is owned by the intelligent person who plays the part of cicerone, a much better article than the new machinery, though not producing with the same speed. The rooms where the people work are low, yet in the hot summer's day of our visit to it there was a perfect coolness, the windows being all open, and no attempt being ever made to keep up the temperature to an artificial height in order to aid the process of manufacture. Wise and humane regulations are at work in the relations between the employers and the employed, and in few seats of the cotton-manufacture is everything so wholesome and so cheerful as in this its natal place. " Were it not for this solitary mill, a stranger might deem that far from being the cradle of cotton-spinning, the fair valley had never been visited by manufacturing enterprise. The memory of the old Sir Richard has faded away into mythical obscurity, and the present repre- sentative of the family is honoured much more as the owner of Willersley and High Sheriff of Derbyshire, than as the grandson of the man who more almost than any other for centuries has contributed to the wealth of England. The landscape-gardener has done his best for the noble gi-ounds of Willersley, and on its velvet sward, among its green and rocky solitudes, where Titania and her elves might rejoice, there is nothing to call to mind the cotton which produced whatever is artificial in its beauty and its ease. The manufacturing and commercial classes seem rarely to visit Matlock, which as a watering-place lias been fairly eclipsed by Buxton, where there is a duke as chief owner to build and plan, while Matlock itself is parcelled out among a number of free- 462 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. holders without the power or the spirit to combine for its improvement. Such few visitors as do repair to Matlock are chiefly from the agricul- tural counties, nearer or more distant, and the purest Toryism and Pro- tectionism are talked over the old port of its hotels. The principal among the latter harmonises admirably, in aspect and interior, with the spirit of hoar antiquity that pervades the tone and style of life at Matlock. The large drawing-room is filled with the furniture of long-ago. In one corner is a harpsichord, such as those on which our grandmothers played. Up yonder is the old-fashioned orchestra, whence in days of yore, when Matlock was a crowded watering-place, pealed the har- mony to which danced the youth and beauty of the midland counties. Here sat young Lord Byron by the side of the lovely heiress of Annes- ley, and sulked because he could not be her partner in the dance. Those fair young English damsels, hovering about the antique furniture, with its memories of vanished generations, seem like flowers among the tombs. O ye blonde daughters of Albion ! in your presence even that mutineer of civilisation, ' the gentleman of the press,' bends the knee. How futile his pen-shafts, his arrowy sarcasnis, his flights of rhetoric, and bursts of indignation, before the mute eloquence and mis- chief of those bright conquering glances ! " ^ Which singular effusion produced in a day or two's time the following letter and rejoinder : — "The Cradle of Cotton-Spinning. " To the Editor oj the Manchester Weekly Advertiser. "Sir, — I have read with much pleasure the article in the Weekly Advertiser of last week, headed as above, and that pleasure was much heightened by its bringing to recollection a German friend, whose father is the founder of the German village of Cromford, akin, in the beauty of its scenery, to its English namesake, and akin also in its asso- ciations as being the German ' cradle of cotton-spinning.' " Every word that 'mine host ' of the hostelry of English Cromford has stated to the writer of the article in your journal is true. My friend went from liere (where he has been learning our English system of managing cotton-mills at our establishment) to Cromford, for the sole purpose of viewing it and its neighbourhood, as well as to see England's fust cotton-mill. " On his return from thence, and the Scottish Highlands, he expressed himself highly gratified with England's Cromford, and the hearty Eng- ^ ]\fanchester Weekly Advertiser o[ Au^si j^ 1 855- RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. 463 lish welcome he there received from all. — I am, Sir, yours very truly, William Harrison." ^ Nearly to the end of his days Arkwright continued to superintend the management of his concerns. Only one of them, the mill at Bakewell, was handed over by him during his lifetime to his son, who out of it alone is said to have made ;2^2o,ooo a year, spinning excellent yarns of counts as high as 8o's.^ Sir Richard Arkwright did not Hve to see the complete success of Cartwright's power-loom, which his own achievements had indirectly originated. But he did live to see the general application of James Watt's steam-engine, the first patent for which had been taken out in the same year as his own patent of the original sfjinning- roUers ; and in 1790 he erected one of Boulton & Watt's steam-engines in a mill of his at Nottingham. This is the latest act recorded of Arkwright as cotton-spinner or mill- owner. During his long career he had suffered from a violent asthma. It was to a complication of disorders, aggravated, no doubt, by his incessant attention to business, that he succumbed in his sixtieth year, at Cromford, on the 3d of August 1792. The conflict between Europe and the first French Revolution was just beginning, and the financial resources which enabled England to play a part in the struggle were largely derived from the sudden development of the cotton-manufacture, contributed to so conspicuously by Arkwright. He left property of which the value was estimated at half a million sterling. Much of it was in- herited by his daughter, Susanna, who married " Charles Hurt, Esq. of Wirksworth," High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1790 (she survived till 1835); most of it by his only son, the late Richard Arkwright of Willersley Castle, who sur- vived till 1843, when he died in his eighty-eighth year, enor- ^ Manchester Weekly Advertiser o\ h.w^w^'i II, 1855. * Ure, Cotton- Manufacture, i. 276. 464 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. mously wealthy.^ The second Richard seems to have been a hard-workhig and unostentatious man, of superior capa- city, and of no inconsiderable cultivation. A keen contro- versy was waged in his lifetime respecting the originality of his father's inventions, but during its course, as before and afterwards, he preserved a profound silence. It must be remembered, however, that when the elder Arkwright paid that first famous visit to Kay at Warrington, his son was but a boy of twelve. Of Arkwright the man, scarcely a glimpse has been afforded us beyond that unsatisfactory one of him con- versing with Highs in the parlour of " Mrs Jackson " at ' " Gardiner, in his amusing work, entitled Music and Friends, or Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante, states that he " (the second Rich- ard Arkwright) "had, by his unostentatious mode of living, attained such enormous wealth as to be, excepting Prince Esterhazy, the richest man in Europe, and as an instance of his liberality, he says : ' A few years back I met his daughter, Mrs Hurt, of Derbysliire ' — who had married her cousin, Francis Edward Hurt of Alderwasley, Derbyshire — ' on a Christmas visit at Dr Holcomb's, and she told me that a few mornings before, the whole of her brothers and sisters, amounting to ten, assembled at breakfast at Willsley [Willersley] Castle, her father's mansion. They found, wrapt up in each napkin, a ten thousand pound bank-note, which he had presented them with as a Christmas-box.' ' Since that time,' he adds, ' I have been informed that he has repeated the gift by present- ing them with another hundred thousand pounds.' . . . His eldest son, Richard" — the third — "who was in Parliament for several years, died before him, but all the other sons and some of the daughters survived him." The second " Richard Arkwright's will, which was dated Decem- ber 16, 1841, was proved in Doctors Commons by the oaths of his three surviving sons, who were made executors ; and the property was sworn to exceed a million sterling, but this was only a nominal sum, taken because the scale of stamp duties goes no higher. The probate bears a stamp of ^^15,750, and the legacy duty will be much more. A com- plete list of Arkwright's descendants, and a notice of the principal legacies in his will, are given in the Gentleman's Magazine iox'^vme: 1843." — Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of iZfi?- ful Kno^vledge {^owAow, 1844). § Arkwright, Richard {the secoTid). RICHARD ARK WRIGHT. 465 Manchester. In the great dearth of anecdote, even what Dr Ure picked up about him, and recorded when speaking of the drawing-frame, may be just worth retailing '' Arkwright," he says, "saw so clearly the great part which this machine played in cotton-spinning, that when bad yarn made its appearance in any one of his mills, he swore a loud oath, according to the vile fashion of the time, and ordered his people to look to their drawings, convinced that if they were right everything else would go well." His portrait, limned more than once, has been read off by Carlyle as that of " a plain, almost gross, bag-cheeked, pot- bellied Lancashire man, with an lir of painful reflection, yet also of copious free digestion." He must have enjoyed a certain meed of respect among his neighbours, or he would not have been deputed to present the address of congratulation to his sovereign, nor would a mere parvenu probably have been pricked High Sheriff of Derbyshire ; but of course these are not incidents on which much stress can be laid, although it may be worth observing that both of them occurred soon after the verdict given against him at a trial in which he had been denounced as the unscrupulous appropriator of other men's inventions. When the poor and illiterate Bolton barber rose to be wealthy among the wealthiest, he neither hoarded nor squandered his riches. He had, and to a certain extent he gratified, the laudable ambition of founding a county family ; he began the building of Willersley Castle and that of a church, which he left directions was to be endowed with a per- petual annuity of ^50 as the stipend of its minister. In the last, and sometimes the most ridiculous adjunct, of newly-acquired wealth, ArkwTight was careful to com- memorate its origin and his struggles. Not only did he, when his portrait was painted, have his rollers introduced into the picture, but cotton figured, with the little busy bee. 466 LANCASHIRE WORTHIES. in his armorial bearings ^ ^ and well he knew the meaning, though not the language, of his adopted motto, " Multa tuli fecique^ Some characteristics and traits of Arkwright, and scanty particulars of his habits, were received by Mr Baines " from a private source," he says, " on which full reliance may be placed," and we must be content to take them as they are given : — " He commonly laboured in his multifarious con- cerns from five o'clock in the morning till nine at night ; and when considerably more than fifty years of age — feeling that the defects of his education placed him under great difficulty and inconvenience in conducting his correspond- ence, and in the general management of his business — he encroached upon his sleep, in order to gain an hour each day to learn English grammar, and another hour to improve his writing and orthography. He was impatient of whatever interfered with his favourite pursuits ; and the fact is too strikingly characteristic not to be mentioned, that he separated from his wife not many years after their marriage, because she, convinced that he would starve his family by scheming when he should have been shaving, broke some of his experimental models of machinery " — a version of the story which differs considerably from Mr Guest's. ^ ^ Here they are (from Burke's Landed Gentry) for the benefit of those interested in such matters : — " Arms — Arg. on a mount, vert, a cotton-tree, fructed, ppr., on a chief, az., between two bezants, an escutcheon of the field, charged with a bee, volant, ppr. "Crest — An eagle rising, or, in its beak an escutcheon, pendant by a riband, gu., thereon a hank of cotton, arg. 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