History & Myth in South Yorkshire
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History & Myth in South Yorkshire 1 History & Myth in South Yorkshire HISTORY AND MYTH IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE Stephen Cooper Copyright Stephen Cooper, 2019 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 2 History & Myth in South Yorkshire To the staff and volunteers at Wentworth Woodhouse. 3 History & Myth in South Yorkshire I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. Quotation in E.H.Carr’s What is History? (1961). 4 History & Myth in South Yorkshire CONTENTS List of illustrations Preface by David Allott Introduction Acknowledgements 1 THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH The Problem; Solutions; The Forgetting of Brunanburh 2 CONISBROUGH & IVANHOE Sir Walter Scott; The Norman Yoke; Merrie England 3 THOMAS ROTHERHAM’S COLLEGE The College; William Senes & Heresy; The Destruction of the College 4 WITCHCRAFT IN YORKSHIRE William West; Sorcery; The Witch-craze; The Waning of the Superstition 5 THE DRAGON OF WANTLEY The Legend; Sheffield; Wharncliffe Chase 6 STRAFFORD’S LOYAL SERVANT John Marris; Wentworth & Strafford; The Sieges of Pontefract Castle; Trial & Execution 7 ROCKINGHAM & AMERICA In Government; The Dispute with George III; The First Administration; The American War of Independence; The Second Administration 8 THE CLIFFE HOUSE BURGLARY The Burglary; The Investigation; Trial & Conviction; Myths 5 History & Myth in South Yorkshire 9 MUTTON TOWN The Raid; The Arrest; The Trial; Mutton Town 10 THE BOMBINGS IN THORPE HESLEY The Bombings; The Trial; The Pardon; The Examiners 11 EARL FITZWILLIAM’S TREASURE-HUNT Earl Fitzwilliam’s Treasure-Hunt; Cocos Island and its Legend; British Expeditions between the Wars; The Sceptic 12 SUBSIDENCE & DECLINE at WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE The Economic Miracle; Grandeur & Decline; Manny Shinwell; The Trial Bibliography & Abbreviations 6 History & Myth in South Yorkshire LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Front cover: The Dragon of Wantley 1 Map of Brunanburh and district (Cockburn, 1931) 2 Tinsley Wood, 2018 3 St Lawrence Church, Brinsworth 4 Conisbrough Castle 5 The Keep, Conisbrough Castle 6 Rotherham Parish Church 7 Rotherham Bridge Chapel 8 Lincoln College, Oxford 9 Wortley Park 10 Wharncliffe Lodge from the Chase 11 Wharncliffe Lodge from the Don Valley 12 More Hall 13 The Dragon in Wantley Dragon Wood 14 Wentworth Old Church 15 Marris Gravestone 16 Strafford family memorial 17 Tankersley Old Hall, 1937 & 2018 18 Wentworth Woodhouse 19 Hoober Stand 20The Rockingham Mausoleum 21 The 2nd Marquis of Rockingham, by Knollekens 22 Thorpe Hesley in 1818 23 H.M.S.York as a prison hulk, Portsmouth, 1828 24 Old Nailshop, Thorpe Hesley 25 Nailmaker, c. 1844 26 Newcomen Pump, Elsecar 27 Elsecar Worskhops 28 Elsecar Station 29 Wentworth Parish Church 30 The 7th Earl Fitzwilliam 31 R.Y.S. Véronique 32 Map of Cocos Island 33 Cocos Island 34 The British Camp on Cocos Island 35 The Camelia House 36 The Long Terrace, 1947 & 2018 Back Cover: Wharncliffe Chase 7 History & Myth in South Yorkshire Introduction Jane Austen’s books were works of fiction, though they contained a brilliant portrayal of English society at the time of the Napoleonic wars; but her character Catherine Moreland once remarked ‘I often think it odd that History should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention’. The historian of the Bolshevik Revolution E.H.Carr (1892-1982) cited this in What is History? (a series of lectures first published in book form in 1961). Reading about the history of South Yorkshire over the last forty years, I now agree with Morland, not in thinking that a lot of historical writing is dull, but that much of what passes for History is based on myth rather than evidence. That is not a reason for dismissing it altogether. Leaving aside the big questions which troubled Carr (for example, whether there is any such thing as objective truth), myths have much to tell us about the society in which they were created, and often emit a sort of radiation for centuries. I hope this book will demonstrate what I mean; but I also hope that each of the chapters contains at least one good story which is firmly grounded in reality. These essays span 1,000 years of English history, between the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 CE and the death of the last Earl Fitzwilliam in 1979 - years which saw the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon nation state, the Norman Conquest, the rise and fall of the monasteries and chantries, the advent of printing and Protestantism, the growth and dissolution of the British Empire, and the rise and fall of the dynasties of Strafford, Rockingham and Fitzwilliam. The chapters follow each other in chronological order and are mostly concerned with real events which gave rise to myths of various kinds. Others are concerned with ideas, or works of the imagination which took on a life of their own. Maurice Keen (1933-2012), who was a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford for over 40 years, taught me that the purpose of studying history was not so much to learn about the present, as to learn about ourselves. At the same time, it is a joy to share the passion with others. I am therefore very pleased that Wentworth Woodhouse - a focal point in so much of South Yorkshire’s history - has at last been saved for the nation by a new Preservation Trust. I dedicate this book to the staff and volunteers there, in the first year of its renaissance. Stephen Cooper Thorpe Hesley September 2018 8 History & Myth in South Yorkshire Acknowledgements The photographs which serve as illustrations are largely from my own collection; but I acknowledge Sir Anthony Cooke-Yarborough’s in relation to the photographs relating to the Cocos Island expedition of 1904-5. The drawing of Tankersley Old Hall is taken from Habershon’s Chapeltown Researches. The drawing of H.M.S.York was first published in my Burglars and Sheepstealers (1992). I have consulted primary sources; a novel and a ballad; legal and administrative records; newspaper archives; official reports; the Cooke-Yarborough journal recording the sea-voyage; and a recent law report. Details of these are to be found in the footnotes and in the Bibiliography, which also contain details of the secondary works which I am most indebted to. In particular I owed a great deal to the works of Michael Wood (see chapter 1), David Hey (chapter 5) George Fox (chapter 6); and Sidney Pollard and Mick Drewry (chapter 10); and I am also grateful for the assistance of David Allott, who alerted me to the existence of Dr Marjorie Bloy’s PhD thesis (chapter 7); and of Melvyn Jones, who first showed me a copy of the Cooke-Yarborough Journal (chapter 11). 9 History & Myth in South Yorkshire 1 THE BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH They take the rustic rumour of their bourg For the great wave that echoes round the world. Idylls of the King Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Quoted in Eastwood’s Ecclesfield (1862) We will probably never know where the Battle of Brunanburh was fought; but there are many theories. Some of these rely on geography and topography but one, which located the Battle in Brinsworth near Rotherham, relied almost wholly on the supposed derivation of place-names. This is an unreliable methodology; but it was popular (and apparently unquestioned) in the 12th century, when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Historia Regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’). Geoffrey tells us that our island took its name from Brutus, Prince of the Trojans, in the same way that (according to early Scottish historians) Scotland took its name from the daughter of an ancient Pharaoh, Scota. These proved to be enduring myths. One would not have expected a 20th century audience to be so gullible. The Problem For 400 years after the first Germanic settlers arrived on our shores, ‘England’ was not even a geographical expression. The southern parts of the old Roman province of Britannia were occupied by a series of tribes whom we have come to call ‘the Anglo-Saxons’. They were ruled by a large number of kings and petty kings, though eventually there were only seven kingdoms which mattered. According to Bede, the Anglo-Saxons sometimes recognised one of their petty kings as ‘Bretwalda’, or ‘leader of the Britons’ (whch may have implied lordship over the Celtic Britons as well as Teutonic kinsmen). During the late 9th century, these kingdoms came under attack from Danish Vikings, who overran large parts of northern and eastern England while, in the early 10th century, Norse Vikings settled in the North and the West, briefly creating a kingdom based on York. Meanwhile, Alfred the Great (871-899) managed to preserve the independence of Wessex, and claimed lordship over all England. 10 History & Myth in South Yorkshire However, (as that great student of Anglo-Saxon law, Patrick Wormald, put it) ‘there is evidence that Alfred came to see himself in some sense as a king of all Englishmen; [but] there is almost no evidence that Englishmen beyond Wessex and perhaps the West Midlands would have agreed’. Alfred’s son Edward the Elder (899-924) succeeded in liberating a large part of Mercia, with the help of his sister Aethelflaed, the so-called ‘Lady of the Mercians.’ (911-918); and his son Athelstan was raised in Mercia, and retained strong connections there. His coinage styled him ‘King of all Britain’; but England was still only a ‘fledgling’ kingdom, whose survival was precarious. Athelstan’s great victory at Brunanburh in 937 ensured the survival of England as a political unit; yet he is an unsung hero, especially when we consider that his grandfather earned the soubriquet of ‘Great’.