Pulford Castle
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THE IH TKB BLBVBN'ID A.ND TWELFTD · CENTURIES .lBD 'l'llBll\ DBSCJ!l?IDA.NTS THE RERESBYS OF THRYBERGH AND A.SHOVER, THE ORMESBYS OF SOUTH ORMESBY, AND· THE PULFORDS OF ·PULFORD CASTLE BB15G All' BISTOBIC.lL A.OC01!1'T 01' TBB LOST BA.l\ONIBB OJI P'ULl'OBD .um DODLEBTON UI' CBBHBIBB, 01' BBVU DIGBTB' FBJ:B 11( LIBCOLXBBIBB ATT.lOB•D TO TKBK, UD 01' KAB"I' llulOB& TODSBIPS .UD P.A.JIJLl:BS Ill BOTH COUBTIES DY F.S.A. F.s.s. PIUNT£D UD SOLD BY SIB GBOBGE SITWBLL .lT BIS PRESS IN SCABBOBOUGH MDCCCLXXXIX THE BARONS OF PULFORD. NoTE.-Two hund·reil and fifty copiea printed, each of w1iick is numbered and signed. No 31 PREFACE. rrHIS record of a race of soldiers, whose arms were well known in battle and tournament throughout the middle ages, will justify its own existence to students of the early history of Cheshire. I believe that a new and strong light can be thrown upon the origin and development of English institutions, by the study of a province which enjoyed Home Rule from the middle of the twelfth century until the reign of Henry the Eighth ; and with it the right to remain Norman in spirit and organization, to be divorced from national progress and popular reforms, and to b~ a perpetual danger and menace, first to the Crown, and then, after the Crown had absorbed it, to the liberties of England. If our Norman Kings had not been forced to lean upon the~r English subjects for support against the baronage, if foreign disasters and the taxation they necessitated had not united baronage and people against the Crown, the whole country might have lingered with Cheshire in the twelfth century. Low and primitive types of institutions, as of plants or animals, are apt to survive in corners where they are protected from competition. The secret of the peculiar institutions of the county palatine, unguessed by Leycester, Ormerod, or Helsby, is that they were survivals. The Danish 'lawmen' still sat in the portmote of Chester in the four teenth century; the county judgers, who in England were escaping from their office in 1131, were still performing it in Cheshire in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and their duties and status (at which Dr. Stubbs declares that it is ' dangerous even to guess ') are described in minute detail in earlier records. _The ' custom of Cheshire,' which sanctioned the decapitation before trial of robbers or burglars by the Sergeants of the Peace, had in the thirteenth century been common to the whole country, but was at that time falling into general discredit, owing to the diflicul~ of repairing an occasional mistake. In Cheshire the great hereditary offices of state did not suffer eclipse; but the justiciar avenged his disappointed ambition upon the sheriff, whom he ousted from the presidency over the shiremoot. The words 'baron ' and ' barony' still retained in 1218 their larger and looser meaning, though there is some evidence of an original distinction, in qua.lity as well a.s in quantity of tenure, between Hugh le Loup's twelve greater barons, and the remainder of his tenants in chief. Parliamentary and representative institutions followed an independent course of development. It seems to have escaped the notice of writers on constitutional history that Cheshire had a Magna Carta of its own in 1218; a curious echo, valuable for purposes of comparison, but still more for purposes of contrast. I have ventured in the course of my introduction to challenge the great authority of Dr. Stubbs and of Professor Freeman, and to give the outline of a new and revolutionary theory on the subject of English palatinates. The accepted view rests upon a single fact; Camden's statement that William the Conqueror gave the county of Chester to Hugh d' Avranches "to hold as freely by the sword as the King held England by the Crown-for such are the very words of the donation." I have found the document from which Camden quoted. These questions, too large to be argued in a. preface, I reserve for a separate book on the Normans in Cheshire. The notes and ext:racts from· the public records contained in the present volume have been made for me by Mr. Greenstreet, the most accurate and learned of record agents, but I am responsible for the extension of the abbreviations : copies of early charters and other MSS. in the British Museum have been mostly taken by myself, but in a few cases, by an expert, whose work I have corrected. Reniskaw, July, 1889. INTRODUCTION. O nearly every reader of historical tastes the Memoirs of Sir John Reresby of Tthe latter half of the seventeenth century are well known, though the unique interest which th:ey possessed during the ninety years following their first publication in quarto and octavo in 1734, has now been eclipsed by the discovery of the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. The Memoirs were not Sir John's only literary venture; his' Travels' on the continent during the tyranny of Crom well were published in 1812, and though the journal or 'particular' of the parliamentary debates which he was keeping in 1675 has unfortunately been lost, one of his letter books is in the Rawlinson collection in Bodley's Library, and his manuscript history of the Reresby family has found a resting place in the J3ritish Museum. This last work has never been printed or even noticed by any Yorkshire or Derbyshire historical society, and yet it is one of wider than merely local interest, for if I am not mistaken it is the earliest of the large class to which it belongs, which is something more than a mere catalogue of genealogical evidences, and is animated with an intelligent desire to illustrate the life and __ c_ustoms of the England which has passed away. The picturesque legend which still lingers round the shone cross at Thrybergh, the interesting personality of the writer, and the dramatic ruin and extinction of his family add to it a touch of romance, and were it edited together with a few documents, -to which ho had_ not access, and illustrated with Jae-similes of his pen and ink drawings, of glass, monuments, and furniture, we could not hope for a more complete and typical account of the fortunes of a knightly race throughout the middle ages. ii Mr. Baring Gould, in his 'Lives of the Saints,' inclines to make St. Leonard of Thrybergh distinct from the more celebrated Sainb, and as his book is not always easy to meet with, I shall begin by a quotation from it. ' S. Leonard, of Reresby, (13th century) [anciently venerated at Tryberg, in 'Yorkshire. Authority:-" The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, of Th:rybergh, 'Bart., M.P. fo:r York, A.D. 1634--1689. "] "Sir John _Reresby writes:-" A deed dated 1349 is the first that mentions the "altar of S. Leonard, the tutelar saint of Thrybergh, according to the custom "of Roman rites. Tradition will have him to have been one of the family of "Reresby, and conveys to us a long.story concerning him, the substance of which "is this :-That one Leonard de Reresby, serving his prince in the Holy War, was "taken prisoner by the Saracens. and there detained captive nearly seven years; "that his wife, according to the law of tl1e land, was towards being married to " another; that being apprehensive of this accident, by the powers of prayer he "was miraculously delivered, and insensibly conveyed with shackles and gyves "and fetters upon his limbs, and laid upon the East Hill in ThrybergField as "the bells tolled for his wife's second marriage, which her first husband's return " prevented ; though he presently died as soon as brought into the church, where "he desired to pay his first visit." · " I shall not undertake either to comment or extenuate upon the story, either "to make it more or less probable. Only this I must say, superstition gave such "credit either to this or like story,that anancientcrossremainstothis day upon "the f3ame East Hill, thoug~ defaced in late times, called S. T ,eonard's cross; the "church of Thryberg and the great boll are dedicated to S. Leonard, his picture " in chains and fetters was in the church window till late broken down ; and as "some will have it, his festival observed in the family on Whit-Sunday, and his "fetters preserved in the house, till my great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Reresby's "time, when in his absence they were converted into ploughshares by his wife;s " orders." ' There are several churches in the neighbourhood dedicated to S. Leonard, as 'Wortley and Ho:rbury, and it is remarkable that in the latter, and probably in ' the former also, the village feast, which is the old dedication festival, is observed 'on the same day as rrhryberg, viz., Whit-Sunday. A somewhat similar story is Ill 'told of the Lord of Eppe, near Laon. I-Io and his two brothers were taken 'prisoners by the Saracens. In his prison he converted a beautiful Mahometan 'maiden, and for her carved an image of the Blessed Virgin. They agreed to 'escape together to Europe, She anc1 the three brothers having got away with ' the image, hid in a wood. Heavy sleep came over them. "\Vhen they a woke 'they were at Eppe again. The girl was baptized by the Bishop of Laon, 'Bartholomew de Vir (1113-1151), and the image became famous as Notre Dame 'de Liesse.