Lra^^CT«.^ I^YGONE Northamptonshire fcw miimt > . J .f LI WUJJAM. AN/JJU:li'S I'.RJi.S THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES L // BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. NOTE. Of this book 500 copies have been printed, and this is No " ^" ^ Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bygonenortliamptoOOandriala NUKTHAMPrON CKOSS. : : BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. EDITED BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S., AUTHOR OF OLD CHURCH LORE, " "OLD-TIME<< PUNISHMENTS, " HISTORIC YORKSHIRE," ETC. LONDON SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, & CO., LTD. NORTHAMPTON ABEL & SONS, PARADE. HULL: WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS. I 89 I. preface. T N the following pages an attempt is made -- to bring together a series of chapters on the more interesting themes in the historic byways and highways of Northamptonshire. I am greatly obliged to my contributors, and think that their articles cannot fail to interest and instruct the readers of this book. My thanks are also due to the Rev. C. J. Gordon, m.a., and Mr. Edward Chamberlain, for the loan of illustrations, and to Mr. T. Tindall Wildridge for making some original drawings for these pages. Mr. D. Norman, Mr. A. Chamberlain, b.a., and others, have cheerfully placed important information at my service, and otherwise helped me, and to them also I beg to tender my thanks. In conclusion, I hope that this work may 534804 L2ERAKT PREFACE. prove a welcome contribution to the literature of the Midlands. Its production has recalled many pleasant memories of my earlier life spent in that part of Old England. William Andrews. Hull Literary Club, November jth, i8gi. Contents* PAGE Historic Northamptonshire. By Thomas Frost ... i The Eleanor Crosses. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. 23 FoTHERiNGHAY : PRESENT AND PAST. By Mrs. Dempsey . 37 The Battle of Naseby. By Edward Lamplough ... 55 The Cottage Countess 67 The Charnel House at Rothwell. By Edward Chamberlain 74 The Gunpowder Plot. By John T. Page .... 81 Earls Barton Church. By T. Tindall Wildridge ... 89 Old Fairs. By William Sharman 97 Witches and Witchcraft. By Eugene Teesdale . 105 The City of Peterborough. By Frederick Ross, f.r.h.s. 116 The English Founders of the Washington Family of America. By Thomas Frost 130 Anne Bradstreet, the Earliest American Poetess . 146 Liber Custumarum, Vill^^ Northamptoni.*. By Christopher A. Markham, F.s.A 153 Thomas Britton, The Musical Small-Coal Man. By E. E. Cohen 167 Old Scarlett, The Peterborough Sexton . 176 Accounts of the Towcester Constables. By John Nicholson 180 The Miserere Shoemaker of Wellingborough. By T. Tindall Wildridge 192 Sir Thomas Tresham and his Buildings. By John T. Page 196 Northamptonshire FoLK-LoRE. By John Nicholson . 205 Northamptonshire Proverbs 214 An Ancient Hospital. By the Rev. I. Wodhams, m.a. 217 Index 225 List of Subscribers 227 BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. Ibtatoric IRortbamptonebire, By Thomas Frost. THE reminder, to an average Northampton- shire man or woman of the present day, that his remote ancestors were half-naked savages at the time when Rome was the centre of the civilisation of the ancient world, would be apt to be regarded with feelings not very different to those with which most of us contemplate the theory of the evolution of our race from the simian order. There can be no doubt, however, that the aborigines of this island, at the time when the Roman legions landed upon our shores, had attained no higher degree of civilisation than existed among the islanders of the Pacific in the time of Captain Cook. The tribe that inhabited what is now the County of Northampton were called the Coritani, and that is all that is known A 2 BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. about them. When the Romans established their supremacy over the land, their territory was included in the province called Flavia Caesariensis, and soon became intersected by roads, while towns arose here and there in the clearings of the great forests which then overspread so much of the surface. Two of the four great Roman roads which crossed the county may still be traced. The one known to antiquaries as the Watling-street entered Northamptonshire at Old Stratford, and crossed towards Daventry ; and the Ermin-street entered at Castor, and was continued into Lincolnshire. Roman remains have been found in several places in the county. In 1781, extensive remains of a Roman building, including a handsome tesselated pavement, fifty feet square, were found at Preston Wood, in the parish of Piddington. At the close of the preceding century, a similar pavement was discovered in a meadow, about half a mile from the Watling- street, in the parish of Heyford Nether. About a mile from Daventry, near a branch of the Roman road just mentioned, is Borough Hill, the site of the most extensive Roman camp in the kingdom. It is supposed that when the Roman HISTORIC NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 3 general, Ostorius Scapula, subdued the Coritani, he converted the northern point of the hill into a permanent camp, near which a town rose. In 1823, when the western side of the hill was excavated in the interests of archaeology, the site of the Prsetorium, or residence of the Roman general, was unearthed, consisting of several rooms and a bath, with a tesselated pavement, together with Roman coins, pottery, etc. The foundations of a Roman building and some interesting fragments of embossed pottery were discovered, about forty years ago, in the neigh- bourhood ©f Chipping Warden, on the site of the Roman station, Brinavis. Roman coins and pottery have also been found near Towcester. What has been observed of the aboriginal population must be qualified, in some degree, by the change which resulted from the grafting of a people of a higher type upon the native stock. When the Romans withdrew from this country, it was invaded by warlike hordes from the shores of the Baltic, and they soon succeeded in over- running it and effecting a permanent settlement. Britons and Saxons became blended into one people, and the country of the Coritani a portion of the kingdom of Mercia. Subsequently, when 4 BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. the kingdoms of the Heptarchy had been united for some years under one king, and Alfred introduced the present division into counties, the town of Northampton, then called Hampton, was considered of sufficient importance to give its name to the county, with the prefix of North, to distinguish it from other places of the same name. In the following reign, the county was overrun by the Danes, who obtained possession of North- ampton. In 918, a year afterwards, the leaders of these fierce marauders submitted to Edward, the son of Alfred ; but, in 921, we find them breaking their parole, and, in conjunction with their com- patriots from Leicester, making an unsuccessful attack on Towcester. Before the close of the same year, they were defeated, and again made their submission. In loio, another irruption of the Danes took place, under Sweyn, the father of Canute, when Northampton was burned by them, and the country around devastated to such an extent that it was nearly depopulated. The Danes ceased to trouble the land during the reigns of the latter Saxon kings, but their plunderings and burnings had not faded out of memory when Norman William marched through England with his mail-clad host, and forced upon , HISTORIC NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 5 the country another change of rulers. The earl- dom of Northampton was created by him in favour of Waltheoff, son of the brave Siward, Earl of Northumberland, and, in 1070, he gave him the hand of his niece, Judith, daughter of Odo, Earl of Albemarle. Under the successors of the Conqueror, Northampton was on several occasions the residence of the sovereign, and the seat of parliaments and conferences. The first royal visit on record was that of Henry I., in 1 106, for the purpose of an interview with his brother Robert, Duke of Normandy, for the settlement of their differences, which, however, remained to be disposed of in a less amicable manner. Sixteen years later, the same monarch revisited the town with his court, and celebrated the festival of Easter with much pomp and of ; and, in 1 splendour a semi-barbaric kind 1 3 1 a parliament or convention assembled there, in which the barons swore fealty to the Empress Maud of Germany, Henry's daughter and heiress. That Maud never reigned is, however, matter of history, being deprived of her right of succession by Stephen. An interesting episode of the dispute between the Crown and the Church, or rather the priest- 6 BYGONE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. hood, in the following reign was enacted in Northampton in 1164. Archbishop Becket having refused his assent to the Constitutions of Clarendon, devised in the preceding year ** for the good order of the kingdom, and for the better defining the limits of ecclesiastical jurisdic- tion," he was cited to appear before the king and his council at Northampton, there to answer the charge of contumacy, and such others as might be made against him. The inquiry was opened in the castle, to which Becket, who lodged at the priory of St. Andrew (a portion of the site of which is now occupied by the church of that name), was attended through the streets by a great concourse of the townsmen and the people of the surrounding country. He rode on a sumptuously caparisoned horse, and wore his pontifical robes, bearing a silver cross. Thus arrayed, he entered the hall in which the court was held, from which the king, enraged by his defiant bearing, immediately withdrew, followed by his councillors.