When Night-Dogs Ran
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WHEN NIGHT-DOGS RAN A Yorkshire Poacher and his family, 1642-1699 by Stephen Cooper 1 2 A son can bear with composure the death of his father, but the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair from The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) The quarrels of relations are harder to reconcile than any other from Law is a bottomless pit by John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) 3 For my mother and father, with whom I had no quarrel. Copyright © Stephen Cooper 2012 The right of Stephen Cooper to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, designs and Patents Act 1988 4 CONTENTS Acknowledgement and Notes on Sources, Currency and Dates Illustrations Introduction Chapter One Civil War in South Yorkshire , 1642 - 1649 Chapter Two An Innocent Country Life, 1649 - 1661 Chapter Three When Night-Dogs Ran, 1662 - 1663 Chapter Four A Widower and his Children, 1661 - 1666 Chapter Five Thomas Burdett and his Farm, 1661 - 1666 Chapter Six The Year of Wonders, 1666 Chapter Seven Margaret Crawshaw, 1667 - 1673 Chapter Eight Benjamin, Gervase, & Thomas, 1667 - 1678 Chapter Nine Francis & Phyllis, 1667 - 1678 Chapter Ten The Court at York, 1678 - 1679 Chapter Eleven A Plot and a Judgement, 1679 Chapter Twelve A Fine and Private Place, 1679 - 1699 Thomas Burdett's Will Thomas Burdett's Probate Inventory Glossary Sources and Abbreviations 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and NOTES ON SOURCES, CURRENCY AND DATES I would like to thank Melvyn Jones for reading and checking the typescript (1992). The history is based mainly on the will of Thomas Burdett dated 1st January 1666, his Probate Inventory dated 18th January 1667, and the Cause Papers relating to the case of Guest v Crawshaw in 1678-9 CP H 3320 and 3321. All these documents are at the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research in York. Prior to the introduction of decimal currency in 1971, there were twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound; and the symbols for pounds, shillings, and pence were £ s d, although the symbol for shillings was often omitted. Thus, for example, eight pounds, eight shillings, and eight pence might be written £8/8/8d. The average agricultural labourer's wage in the mid-seventeenth century was about 4/- (four shillings) a week without food1, although according to one Yorkshire squire in 1701 "the wages of a good husbandman in the parts about Barnsley and Wortley I find to be noe more than £3 a year."2 Until 1752, New Year's Day was on 25th March for civil and legal purposes. Hence many dates in seventeenth century documents are not what they appear to be at first sight. For example 18th January 1666 may very well be 18th January 1667. In such cases I have given the date according to the modern way of looking at the matter i.e. 1667. The four quarter days, when rents commonly fell due, were/are Lady Day: 25th March Midsummer Day: 24th June Michaelmas Day: 29th September Christmas Day: 25th December 1 Macaulay Chapter Three p 313; Ogg p 85. 2 Trevelyan vol 2 p 240. 6 ILLUSTRATIONS 1 Extract from John Blaeu's Map of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1672 2 Wentworth Woodhouse in the early seventeenth century 3 The trial of the 1st Earl of Strafford, 1641 3 Hound Hill 4 Richard Elmhirst's fortification 5 The Collector Earl of Arundel with the 5th Duke of Norfolk as a boy 6 Sir Richard Fanshawe 7 Anne,Lady Fanshawe 8 Tankersley Hall in 1937 9 Tankersley Park in the early eighteenth century; 10 Coursing fallow deer, c.1671 11 Sheffield Manor, the home of Francis Ratcliffe 12 Making hay 13 Ploughing in the open fields 14 Thomas Burdett's will 15 Thomas Burdett's inventory 16 Hesley Hall, the home of Humphrey Northall 17 Margaret Crawshaw's Accounts 18 The School at Wath; 19 A Schoolgirl in 1667 20 Guest v Crawshaw: the signatures of the protagonists and of the witnesses Family tree of the Burdetts of Thorpe Hesley 7 INTRODUCTION When Thomas Burdett of Thorpe Hesley died in 1666 - the year of the Great Fire of London - it seemed that he had left his affairs in good order. A prosperous yeoman, with three farms replete with live- and dead- stock, a slate quarry and over £100 lent out at interest, he was apparently able to provide for all five of his young children. He had thought long and hard about the terms of his will, after his wife Mary's death some five years before, and had formulated detailed plans for his family. Amongst other provisions, Thomas's will contained legacies for each child: £60 for Benjamin, £50 for Gervase, £100 for Thomas junior, £50 for Francis, and £100 for Phyllis, to be paid when she attained the age of twenty-one, or when she married. Thomas appointed his sister Margaret Crawshaw as his executrix, and her role was crucial, for she not only had to carry out the directions contained in her brother's will. She also had the responsibility of bringing up his two youngest children, who were only eight and seven years of age respectively when their father died. "The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley." Thomas was not as well off as he appeared to be. He owed more than was originally thought, and several of his own debtors proved unreliable. The administration of his estate quickly gave rise to serious problems, which Margaret Crawshaw was left to grapple with throughout the late 1660s and early 1670s. Despite all her efforts, she could not collect in enough money to pay the amounts due to her nephews and her niece in full. In particular, the sum of £100 payable to Phyllis Burdett could not be found, when she came to marry the nailmaker George Guest. Phyllis Burdett/Guest was a determined young lady. She was not disposed to accept the situation which had arisen, for she did not believe her Aunt Margaret Crawshaw's protestations as to the inadequacy of her father's estate. When she was told that there was no money left, she sued, even though Margaret had looked after her as if she were her own daughter, for eight long years. The case of Guest v Crawshaw was tried in the Consistory Court in York Minster in 1678-9, during the crisis created by the so-called "Popish Plot". Convincing arguments were marshalled on either side, and copious evidence was adduced in support of each; but at the end of the day, the verdict of the court concerning Phyllis Guest's legacy was clear and unequivocal. The court proceedings in York generated a great deal of written material, including the formal legal documents or "pleadings", and several witness statements, made by people who knew the deceased. These "Cause Papers", when placed alongside the will made by the testator himself, the probate inventory prepared by his neighbours shortly after his death, and the accounts kept by Margaret Crawshaw to justify her 8 position, provide the materials for a vivid picture of a seventeenth-century yeoman farmer. This portrait is, perhaps, the most substantial legacy bequeathed to posterity by Thomas Burdett. Thorpe Hesley, 1988, 2012 9 CHAPTER ONE CIVIL WAR IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE, 1642 - 1649 There shall be a battle fought at Tankersley Moor on May Eve, and Hallamshire men shall lose the day..... from a prophecy of Old Carr of Ecclesfield quoted in Eastwood's Ecclesfield p 546 I went down, quoth Sir Ralph Stapleton, with musquet, pike and drum, To fetch Sir Francis Wortley up, but truly he'd not come. from a popular ballad, quoted in Blazeby p 37 The execution of Thomas Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse, 1st Earl of Strafford, in May 1641 was one of the most notorious events in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the English Civil War. As President of the Council of the North and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Strafford had been one of Charles I's most effective ministers, and an advocate of a "Thorough" approach to government, during the so-called "Eleven Years' Tyranny", when the King attempted to rule without Parliament. King Charles was eventually compelled, by military defeat and shortage of money, to summon the Short and the Long Parliaments; and Strafford was made the scapegoat for his master's unpopular policies and arbitrary methods: he was executed 10 in pursuance of an Act of Attainder, to which the King reluctantly gave his assent; but the monarch's surrender on this point did not resolve his differences with the majority of the House of Commons. The crisis could not be resolved politically and, as John Shaw the Puritan vicar of Rotherham wrote in his autobiography, "....in the year 1642 began our sad civil (or rather most uncivil) wars betwixt the king and parliament". At the start of the conflict, the sympathies of the people of Sheffield and Rotherham were mainly with Parliament, whilst a majority of the local aristocracy and gentry supported the King.1 Amongst those who joined the ranks of the Cavaliers in South Yorkshire were: Sir Francis Wortley of Wortley, described by the Roundheads as "the first incendiarie in this county that publikely engaged a party for the King against the Parliament", and Wortley's son of the same name; Richard Elmhirst of Hound Hill near Worsborough, who had been a close associate of the Earl of Strafford in the 1630s; Robert Greene of Thundercliffe Grange; and Thomas Barnby of Barnby Hall, near Cawthorne.