Showing posts with label Catterick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catterick. Show all posts

Saturday 1 May 2021

12. From Alice Wandesford's marriage to the return of the King: 1651-1660

At Hipswell, 23 year old Christopher Wandesford was now head of the family.  He followed the custom of the time – there was a contract of marriage to fulfil and he took his brother's place.  So, on 30 September 1651 at Lowther, Christopher married the 18 year old Eleanor Lowther.  The result for Alice, John and their mother was years of trouble over money, to their lasting detriment.  Christopher, Alice said, was of too good a nature and too inexperienced to realise how he was being manipulated by his new father-in-law Sir John Lowther into denying them their money under their father's Will.  

Alice's brother John was now seventeen.  A pious, learned and quick-witted boy, sweet and affectionate in nature, he had been at Christ's College, Cambridge for two years.  Now, partly from grief at George's death and partly from the grief he felt because Christopher was refusing to pay him his annuity, he fell into a deep melancholy that, said Alice, took away the use of his understanding.  He had to leave Cambridge without taking his degree.  

Over the following years, with infinite care and pains, Mrs Wandesford nursed him back to health but he was very liable to relapses, so she was very anxious when he was persuaded to go and live in London.  Luckily she was able to secure for him the help and care of Dr Bathurst, whose renown had grown since the days when he had treated Christopher – indeed, he had become Oliver Cromwell's physician.  

Meanwhile, Mrs Wandesford grew increasingly anxious to see her daughter married and she really had nobody to advise her – how she must have wished for her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  On the whole, she still wanted the match with William Thornton, even though she was disobliging several wealthy neighbours who had also approached her – Colonel Anstruther and Colonel Darcy, son of Lord Darcy, among them.  And she had her doubts about the real value of Mr Thornton's estate. 

Alice was now 25.  She really wanted to stay single and felt that the money left her by her father should be quite enough for her to be comfortable and useful.  But she also didn't want to disobey her mother and she had been willing to marry Mr Thornton so as to help the family discharge the sequestration.  

Now she had to decide whether to go ahead with the marriage or not.  It was a hard choice and it wasn't just a question of money.  On the one hand and very much in his favour, William Thornton was a quiet, decent man, esteemed in his own neighbourhood.  He was not debauched and irreligious, like so many men that she knew.  (She doesn't say whether these included Colonel Anstruther and Colonel Darcy).  On the other hand, his religious background was not at all like her own.  His half-sisters were all Catholics – strict papists, Alice said – while the other part of his family were strong Presbyterians and Parliamentarians.  

Alice spoke to him frankly.  She said that she was of the true protestant Church of England and they would be miserable together if he wasn't of the same faith.  He was seriously troubled at this, but then he declared that he shared her opinion.  He wanted bishops – suitably reformed – back and he too wanted a King.  And she could bring the children up in her faith entirely as she wished.  And so she decided that the money was of less importance and she would accept his offer.

At last the marriage contract was negotiated and on 15 December 1651 at Hipswell Hall, Mrs Wandesford gave her daughter in marriage to 27 year old William Thornton of East Newton, which lies a little east of Oswaldkirk and about 5 miles SSW of Helmsley.  

Mr Syddall, the vicar of Catterick, took the marriage service.  Alice's brother John was there, and so was her uncle Mauger Norton of St Nicholas, and their kinsman John Dodsworth of Thornton Watlass Hall near Masham, whose son Timothy had been a confidential servant to her father in Dublin.  William Thornton's uncle Francis Darley had come to be a witness from his estates at Buttercrambe, eight miles north-east of York.  Six of her mother's servants saw Alice married, and she listed them: Dafeny Lightfoote, in whose arms her sister Catherine had died; Ralfe Ianson, who was with her when she escaped drowning in the Swale; George Lightfoote; Robert Webster; Martha Richison; and Robert Loftus the elder.

That very day Alice fell suddenly ill with violent vomiting and sickness.  She thought it might have been because she took cold the night before, when she stayed up late to make her preparations for the wedding, but her mother thought it was because she had also washed her feet – quite the wrong time of year for such a procedure.  She made a full recovery and seven weeks later she conceived.

For the first weeks, before the babe quickened in her womb and she could feel it moving, she was very poorly but afterwards she was strong and healthy.  So when she was seven months pregnant, she was content to go with her husband to visit his family and friends.  

At the end of their visit, they set off from Mr Thornton's estate at East Newton to Osgodby Hall at Thirkleby, the home of his brother-in-law Sir William Ayscough.  William Thornton had been advised to take the road across the moors from Sproxton towards Hambleton.  He hadn't been warned that they would come to the top of Sutton Bank and that Alice would have to clamber down it herself – it was about a mile, Alice said, steep down.  Perhaps the path for horses was too steep and dangerous for them to be able to carry riders and especially a heavily-pregnant pillion passenger.  

Narrow steps were cut into the steep bank, but Alice was so big with child that she could hardly find a footing.  She had only her maid to help her – everyone else had gone on ahead – and her maid was having difficulty herself.  Each step strained Alice a great deal.  At last she was safe at the bottom, tired, hot and weary, feeling unwell, and troubled with pain.  She was troubled with pains all the way home and within a fortnight was in a desperate fever and was ill for some time.  The babe within her finally grew so weak that all movement stopped.  On 27 August 1652 her baby daughter was born, and died within the hour before they could get a clergyman to baptise her.  She was buried that night at Easby church beside the River Swale.

And this was the beginning of many griefs and joys for Alice.  She loved her children deeply, breastfed them joyously and looked after them lovingly – but she lost six children at birth or in infancy and only three grew to adulthood.  Her accounts of their illnesses and deaths are heart-rending.

Death & Change: 1651-1660

The first eight years of Alice's marriage were spent at Hipswell Hall with Mrs Wandesford, while extensive building work was being done to the old family manor house of the Thorntons at East Newton.  

So Alice and William were at Hipswell when in 1653 Parliament appointed Oliver Cromwell to be Lord Protector of the Commonwealth for life – he was king in all but name and he was addressed as Your Highness.  

Oliver Cromwell

They were at Hipswell in 1655 when, after failed uprisings by English and Scottish Royalists, Cromwell put England under martial law to bring about a godly, righteous country.  His Rule of the Major-Generals meant a repressive regime of high taxation and moral improvement – no horse racing, stage plays, fairs, cock-fighting, bear-baiting, no drunkenness, sexual licence, blasphemy or swearing.  It last fifteen unpopular months.  

The 1650s passed and everyday life went on.  During those years, Alice bore five children – four daughters and a son.  Only two of her daughters, Alice – who was always known as Naly (which must be pronounced Nallie, like Allie today) – and Katherine survived.  And through these difficult years, she found great comfort in the presence of her beloved mother, who was truly generous to them.  

Mrs Wandesford was a notable housewife.  She kept within her means but she still managed to achieve, Alice said, a noble, handsome manner of living.  She paid all Alice and William's expenses – christenings, burials, nurses, men servants and maids – and she bore the cost of entertaining and welcoming their friends as well as her own.  

She also took care of their medical bills.  These included a trip to Copgrove, a few miles south-west of Boroughbridge, to see if immersions in St Mungo's Well would cure Alice's baby Betty of the rickets.  Sadly, the holy well had no effect and at the beginning of September 1656 little Betty died.  She was, Alice wrote, aged one year, six months and twenty-one days.  She was buried the same day at Catterick by Mr Syddall.  He was buried there himself sixteen months later, having died of a malignant consumption before his fiftieth birthday. 

New upheavals in the country followed Oliver Cromwell's death on 3 September 1658.  Now his son Richard was Lord Protector.  1659 was a year of chaos.  Tumbledown Dick, as people called Richard, couldn't keep the Puritan factions together.  Who would seize control of power?  The country was gripped by uncertainty and fear.

By August 1659, Alice's mother and husband were getting very alarmed by her health.  On the doctor's advice, William took Alice to Scarborough Spa to drink the waters.  The cure worked – which was very fortunate as, after a month, a message came from Hipswell.  Mrs Wandesford was very poorly with her old ailment, the stone, and she wanted Alice home.  So they set off back, stopping at Crathorne on the way to see William's half-sister Margaret, who had married Ralph Crathorne of Crathorne – that side of William's family were all Catholics, as were the Crathornes.  There, to Alice's joy, a servant from Hipswell met them with the news that Mrs Wandesford was much recovered.  The good news was followed by the realisation that she was pregnant again, and her husband and mother began to hope that this time it might be a son.

But on 17 November 1659 Mrs Wandesford fell ill.  They tried all the remedies that they could.  They managed to relieve a pain in her side with poultices of fried oats, butter and chopped camomile, but her condition grew more distressing and she grew steadily weaker.  

On Thursday 8 December, she sent for Alice, William and the children so that she could bless them and say goodbye.  Alice was about five months pregnant.  She was distraught at seeing her mother in such terrible suffering and she couldn't bear to lose her.  They had been companions through so many trials and griefs and she had been able to rely on her mother's strength and support all her life.  Mrs Wandesford said to her, 

Dear child, why will you not be willing to part with me to God?  Has he not lent me to be a comfort to you long enough?  

And she urged Alice to let her go.  

You never have been disobedient to me in all your life – I pray thee obey me in this.  

She blessed them and Alice took "the saddest last leave of my dear and honoured mother as ever a child did."  

Two days later, Mrs Wandesford saw her sister-in-law Anne Norton and her husband Mauger.  There had always been a strict league of affection and friendship, Alice remembered, between the two women.  Now they said their last goodbye.  She commended her children to the care of Mauger Norton and she died later that day, Saturday 10 December 1659.  Dafeny Lightfoote had been beside her through her illness and was among those who were with her at the end.

On the Tuesday, her body was carried out of the house by Conyers, Lord Darcy and Conyers together with his son Colonel Darcy and son-in-law Sir Christopher Wyvill and other kinsmen of the Wandesford family.  Then her tenants took her from Hipswell Green to Catterick, where nine of the neighbouring clergy, men chosen in advance by Mrs Wandesford herself, carried her into the parish church.  After the service and sermon, they laid her in her grave in the south aisle, which was the Hipswell aisle, and a charitable dole was distributed among a very great number of the poor inside the church and at the door.

St Anne's, Catterick.  [By Alison Stamp CC BY-SA 2.0]

Alice and her daughter Naly later had a blue marble slab laid in Catterick church to mark Mrs Wandesford's resting place; it was destroyed in a 19th century restoration.  

Charles II returns & Alice leaves Richmondshire: 1660

By the time of Mrs Wandesford's funeral, the political chaos meant that there was hardly anybody to mind if nine Anglican clergymen officiated at a funeral in Catterick.  General George Monck, the commander of Scotland, had already crossed the border into Northumberland and made his HQ at Coldstream.  And all people wanted was for the uncertainty to stop. 

General George Monck (1608-70)

On New Year's Day 1660, Monck marched his army south.  Within three months, he was in secret negotiation with Charles II in his exile and on 25 May 1660 Charles landed at Dover.  On 29 May – his thirtieth birthday – he entered London to great rejoicing.  To everyone's relief and to the joy of Royalists, the chaotic uncertainty of the last months had ended.  

Charles II in coronation robes

After Mrs Wandesford's death, Alice and William stayed on at Hipswell Hall for a while, kept there by bitter winter weather and Alice's weak and grieving state.  

In March, they took her to her Aunt Norton's at St Nicholas, and in April her baby was born there, after a hard labour.  He was a pretty babe and suckling well but then grew ill and restless and red round spots like smallpox appeared on his face.  He died at a fortnight old and was buried in the same grave at Easby as his eldest sister, Alice's first child. 

On 10 June 1660, when Alice was strong again, she and William and their two little girls left St Nicholas to move to a house that William owned in Oswaldkirk.  And so she left Richmondshire, her own dear country and dear friends and relations, parting from them with a sad heart.

Next:  13. Mrs Alice Thornton of East Newton: 1660-1707

Sunday 11 June 2017

Financial disaster comes to Michael Hughes of Yarm, June 1743

This is a glimpse of the life of Michael Hughes of Yarm.  He had extensive premises in Yarm and had bought land, farms and houses from Bedale to Hurworth.  Did he expand too quickly?  Was it a mistake to build the malt-kiln and the granaries and the warehouses?  Was his mercery business over-stocked with expensive luxuries?  It all came to disaster in the end, but it gives us so much interesting information on the way.

In 1743 he had property in Hutton Rudby, Thornton in Cleveland, Maltby in Cleveland, Appleton Wiske, Great Smeaton, Hurworth, Catterick, Richmond, Bedale, Brompton, Osmotherley, as well as his properties in Yarm itself, including the newly-built Malt Kiln with land going to the Tees where he had a wharf for shipping his goods.  Everything was to be sold to satisfy his creditors in auctions that took place in Hutton Rudby, Yarm, Darlington, Richmond and Northallerton. 

It must have created a sensation at the time.

Newcastle Courant, 11 June 1743

To be Sold respectively to the Highest Bidder,
At the following Times and Places,
By the Assignees of a Commission of Bankrupt lately awarded against MICHAEL HUGHES, of Yarm, Merchant,
The several LANDS and TENEMENTS herein after mention'd, late the Estate of the said Bankrupt, viz. 
On the 28th of June inst. between the Hours of Two and Five in the Afternoon, at the Dwelling House of George Whorlton in Hutton near Rudby, three new built Dwelling Houses, with the Garths and Appurtenances thereunto belonging, situate in Hutton aforesaid, now tenanted by William Peacock and others, at the yearly Rent of 5 l. or thereabouts. 
On the 29th, between the Hours of Ten and Twelve, at the House of Widow Barley, Innholder, in Yarm, several Dwelling Houses, with a Blacksmith's Shop, Stable, Garth or Orchard, and near an Acre of Meadow Ground thereto belonging, situate in Thornton, in Cleveland, now lett to George Tunstal and others, at the yearly Rent in the whole of 8 l. 13s.  And between the Hours of One and Four of the same Day, and at the same Place, an improveable Freehold Estate, with a good Farm House, and all other convenient Housing thereon, situate at Maltby, in Cleveland, of the yearly Rent of 36 l
On the 30th, between the Hours of Ten and Twelve, at the said Widow Barley's, a Farm in the Township of Appleton upon Wiske, of the yearly Value of 13 l. held by Lease for a Term of 2000 Years under the reserved annual Rent of 3s.  And between the Hours of One and Four of the same Day, and at the same Place, An improveable Freehold Farm, lying at Entercommon, near Great Smeaton, of the yearly Value of 20 l. and upwards; on which two last mention'd Farms are also good Farm Houses, and all other Conveniences for Tenants, in Good Repair. 
On the 4th of July next, between the Hours of One and Four, at the House of Mr John Yorke, Innholder, in Darlington, An improveable Freehold Farm, lying in the Township of Hurworth, with a good Farm House, and other Conveniences thereon for a Tenant, in good Repair, of the yearly Value of 24 l. and upwards. 
On the 5th, between the Hours of Ten and Twelve, at the House of Mr Ralph Hawxwell in Catterick near Richmond, The said Bankrupt's Life Estate in some Lands lying in Richmond Town Fields, of the yearly Value of 6 l. 10s. or thereabouts.  Also at the last mention'd Day and Place, between the Hours of One and Four, A well built Freehold Dwelling House, with the Appurtenances, situate in Catterick aforesaid, in the Possession of Mr James Mewburn, or his Assigns under the clear annual Rent of 10 l
On the 6th, between the Hours of Ten and Twelve, at the House of Mr Careless, in Northallerton, A Freehold Close in Bedale, of the yearly Value of 3 l. 10s. or thereabouts; the same Day and Place, between the Hours of One and Four, Some Copyhold Houses, with the Appurtenances, in Brompton near Northallerton, of the yearly Value of 5 l. or thereabouts; and on the same Day, and at the same Place, between the Hours of Four and Five, A Copyhold House, with the Garth and Appurtenances thereunto belonging, situate in Osmotherley, in the Possession of Robert Fryar, at the yearly Rent Forty and Two Shillings, or thereabouts.  And 
On the 7th, between the Hours of Ten and Twelve, at the said Widow Barley's House in Yarm, A Freehold Close in the Parish of Yarm aforesaid, of the yearly Value of 5 l. or thereabouts; between the Hours of One and Four, the same Day and Place, The Freehold Dwelling House, Shop, Ale-houses, and Granaries, on the East Row or Side of the Town of Yarm aforesaid, late in the said Bankrupt's own Occupation; and between the Hours of Four and Seven of the same Day, and at the same Place, Another Freehold Dwelling House, with the Shop and Appurtenances thereto belonging, and also several Stables, Granaries, Ware-houses, and a Malt Kiln, all new built, on the Backside of the last mention'd Dwelling House, and extending to the River Tease [Tees], with a convenient Key [Quay] or Wharf for the shipping or unlading of Goods.  The said last mention'd Dwelling Houses adjoin upon each other, fronting the Market-place; and the same, with the Granaries, &c. are every way commodiously situate for Trade.  For further Particulars enquire of Mr David Burton, Attorney, in Yarm aforesaid. 
Likewise to be sold, at the said Bankrupt's Shop and Ware-houses in Yarm, all his Stock in Trade, consisting of Grocery, Mercery, Haberdashery, Distillery, Linen and Woollen Drapery Wares, with a large Quantity of Men and Womens Hats, Black Velvet Caps, and several other Goods and Merchandises.  The Sale will begin on Tuesday the 14th inst. and Attendance will be given there every Thursday and Tuesday following, till the whole be sold.  Such Tradesmen as are inclined to buy any of the Goods by Wholesale, are desired to attend the four first Days of Sale
Evidently there were too few customers for all the Hats and Caps and so forth, because soon this advertisement appeared:
Newcastle Courant, 18 June 1743
Whereas it hath been formerly advertised, that all the Stock in Trade, late of Michael Hughes, a Bankrupt, was to be sold at his Shop and Ware-houses in Yarm, and that such Tradesmen as were inclined to buy any of the said Goods by Wholesale, were desired to attend the first four Days of Sale, which said four Days being now past, and a considerable Quantity of the said Goods, particularly Broad Cloths, Dyers Goods, Leaf and Cut Tobacco, Distilled Liquors of all Sorts, Apothecarys Drugs, and Linen Cloth, are remaining yet undisposed of.  Notice is hereby given, that such Persons as are inclined to buy all or any of the said Goods now remaining in the Wholesale Way, may attend at the said Bankrupts Shop in Yarm aforesaid, the 28th and 30th Inst. and on the 5th and 7th of July next, when the said Goods will be sold by Wholesale, at reasonable Rates.
And finally Michael Hughes' Commissioners in Bankruptcy were ready to make payments to his creditors:
Newcastle Courant, 3 March 1744
The Commissioners in a Commission of Bankrupt, awarded and issued against Michael Hughes, late of Yarm, in the County of York, Merchant, intend to meet on the Twenty-eight Day of March instant, at Eleven in the Forenoon, at the House of Mrs Margaret Ellis, Innholder, at the Sign of the Anchor and Crown, in Yarm aforesaid, in order to make a Dividend of the said Bankrupt's Estate, when and where the Creditors, who have not already proved their Debts, are to come prepared to do the same, or they will be excluded the Benefit of the said Dividend

The Teesside Archives catalogue shows that it holds deeds from the 1720s relating to purchases of property by Michael and his wife Mary.