Chapter IV Puritans and Packmen
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,il /nnm~ . L Chapter Four PURITANS AND PACKMEN : 1603-1702 THE BYRONS, THE WAR AND THE MANOR . ONG BEARD " Sir John Byron died in 1604 and in the same year K his son, the third successive Sir John (who married Margaret L FitzWilliam, daughter of the Lord Deputy of Ireland), received a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury referring to his "great debtts, and . many chyldren " and advising him to cut down his expenses at Newstead and live in Lancashire,] but he seems to have done exactly the opposite . His son the fourth Lord Byron (who married Anne Moly- neux of Sefton) survived him by only two years, dying in 1625, by which time Clayton and Royton had both been sold and the lease of the Rochdale Manor had lapsed. Clayton was eventually bought by Humphrey Chet- ham and his brother, thriving Manchester merchants . In 1625 Sir Rich- ard Molyneux Was Steward of the Manor of Rochdale before it was even- tually sold to Sir Robert Heath, the Attorney-General . Heath, in 1626, caused a detailed survey to be made of Rochdale and in 1638 sold the Manor for £2,500 to Sir John Byron (son of Sir John and Anne, nee Molyneux). This fifth Sir John, amongst a multiplicity of Royalist Byrons, particularly distinguished himself during the Civil War . He was Member of Parliament for Nottingham, was made a Knight of the Bath at the Coronation of Charles I and was Lieutenant of the Tower in 1641 . After fighting at Worcester and Edgehill he was created Baron Byron of Rochdale in 1643 . He was also made Field-Marshal General of the Roy- alist forces in Worcester, Shropshire, Cheshire and N . Wales, .and Gover- 44 ROCHDALE RETROSPECT nor of Chester . After the War his possessions were confiscated by the Commonwealth ; he joined the Court in Paris and died there, childless and exiled, in 1652 . His second wife, Eleanor, daughter of the Irish Viscount Kilmorey, was said by the diarist, Pepys, to have been Charles [I's seventeenth mistress abroad and to have extorted £15,000 from Charles, who also promised her £4,000 of plate, but she died in 1664 before receiving it. First married at the age of I I to a Cheshire gentleman, Peter Warbur- ton, she lived only 36 years and left the bulk of her goods and " all sums of money due to me out of His Majesty's Exchequer " to her brother and sisters .- For some time during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Gabriel Gartside was the Deputy Steward of the Manor . In 1661, after the Restoration, Richard the second Lord Byron (brother of the first), held the Manor and his descendants continued to do so until the 19th century . He was succeeded in 1679 by his son William, who died in 1695, leaving a son and heir, William the fourth Lord Byron . ROCHDALE REVIEWED . From James I's 1610 Inquisition of Rochdale, from Sir Robert Heath's comprehensive 1626 Survey of the Manor, and from other documents, a fairly clear picture presents itself of Rochdale as it must have been within the first half of the century . The market was held on Mondays, near the junction of Lord Street and Yorkshire Street (the latter was then the High Street), and around this central focus was a cluster of now vanished inns, the King's Arms, the Eagle, the Bell, the Bull and the White Hart, within whose walls much trade was transacted, also the affairs of the approximately monthly Courts and the weightier Courts Leet, which were held twice a year . Most of the near-by houses would be half-timbered and thatched, some with gables, latticed windows, galleries beneath which stalls were put up on market days, and outer wooden stairs to the upper rooms . The Town Mill was near the " Parrock " (probably what is now known as the Paddock, Bury Road) and would have heavy sluice-gates, massive wooden paddles and cog-wheels to turn the mill-stones and grind the corn ; not far away from the Town Mill was a fulling-mill . At another mill, on land owned by Robert Holt (though he had no deeds for it) malt was ground by a horse turning the mill-wheel . This mill stood near the then King's Arms and upon the site of what was " formerlie called the New Market and where the Markett was kepte ." The Roch had a ford at the Butts ; the bridge to the west was " in decay " and it was not known who should repair it, although official Surveyors were in charge of the highways . South of the river the glebe-lands stretched on both sides of the church, from Castle Hill on the west, and east as far as the present Moles- worth Street : apart from the half-timbered and thatched Vicarage and the stone Church and Grammar School there were only seven small houses or farms (including those known as Broad Field and Sparrow Hill), also PURITANS AND PACKMEN : 1603-1702 45 six houses in Church Street (now Church Lane), where the cattle markets were still held . A network of lanes led through meadows and open country to the small hamlets. Goose Lane, for instance (now the main Manchester Road), continued on from Church Stile and Castle Hill between the then, no doubt, gorse-grown " wastes " of Castleton Moor and Brimrod to the old water corn mill at Sudden, Marland . The plight of tradesmen and travellers may be judged from the fact that in 1605 the bridge at Littleborough, on the highroad between Rochdale and Halifax, was fit for foot passengers only .3 Rochdale itself was a meeting-place for the four townships and had no town boundaries . According to the 1626 Survey, the principal hamlets in Castleton Township were : Castleton, Marland, Newbold and Buersill ; in Butterworth were : Butterworth, Clegg and Hollingworth ; Hundersfield contained Wardleworth, Wuerdle, Wardle, Blatchingworth (which included Littleborough), and Todmorden ; Spotland consisted of Spotland, Falinge, Chadwick, Wolstenholme and Rosseadale (or Brand- wood). In the first quarter of the century at least three more fulling mills had sprung up-one at Falinge, one at Howarth Hall, Wuerdle, and a third, James Fielding 's mill at Godplay (or Gorpley), Todmorden, together with bleach-houses at Buersill, Butterworth and at Woodhouse Lane in Spotland . The boundaries of the Parish were clearly defined . Briefly, they extended from Burnedge and across the Real stream to Ogden in the south- east, then north as far as Portsmouth and including Littleborough, Todmorden and Walsden.The western boundary descended partly along the river Irwell, west of Rockcliffe, east of Bacup, to Cowpe, Cheesden, the Naden stream, Bagslate, the Roch and then eastwards, north of Hop- wood and Thornham, to Burnedge . Edwin Butterworth's somewhat distorted map, made in 1829, gives the 1610 boundaries also the contem- porary spellings of the old land-marks of which several, such as the Wolf Stone on Naden, have now vanished . There were no lead mines within the Parish, but there were coal mines at the Trough, in Spotland ; at Featherstean, i.e. Featherstone, meaning four-sided stone, (a common above Crook in Wardle) ; at Brown Wardle : at Micherden Clough in Walsden, and at Butterworth Common . In the 1626 Survey a female coal miner, Alice Wolstenhome, is noted disapprovingly as having destroyed much timber for " supplying of her Pits " at Shore Moor, Wardle . Stone quarries were numerous . Fifteen years later the population of the Rochdale Parish may be roughly assessed as over 10,000, since in 1641-2 all the adult males within the Parish and over 18 years old, " none refusing," took the Protestation to support Parliament and oppose Roman Catholicism . Over 2,000 names were recorded, excluding officials : the clergy, churchwardens, three overseers of the poor, and one or two constables for each township . A 46 ROCHDALE RETROSPECT certain clannishness is shown by the fact that only sonic 300 surnames were represented on the lists. The first quarter of the century was dominated by the fear of plague . In 1605 it was ordered at the Quarter Sessions that " Watch and Ward shall he kept henceforth at Ratchdale from 5 a .m . until 8 p.m ." John Holt was one of the Justices on the Bench, and Alexander Butterworth, a High Constable of Salford Hundred, was put in charge . The death- rate of Rochdale did not, however, rise unduly until 1623, when it swelled to about three times its normal number, with 541 burials, and then reverted again to nearly normal . "FORCAST TO LIVE AS FOR EVER ": THE STONE HALLS . The spirit of this Puritan and Packman age is expressed by a 1632 date-stone once kept at Pike House, engraved with the initials of Nathan- iel Halliwell and the words " Forcast to live as for ever but live as to dye tomorrow." Though the houses in Rochdale's centre were still mostly half- timbered, the freeholders and copyholders of the hamlets were now buil- ding, partly through lack of timber, partly through greater wealth and security, hails now quarried from the millstone grit of the surrounding hills. Even the smaller buildings had chimneys, and fireplaces set into the walls, for coal fires. The windows were mullioned, with small panes of glass; iron bars were socketed into the sills . The oak doors, often porched, were bolted through with stout nails ; oak, too, was used for the stairs, and 20 ft . oak logs, perhaps forked above the doors, formed the beams. Roofs were of stone slates, and, apart from the hood moulds above the windows, there was little attempt at ornament . Two-storied, often L-shaped against the wind and with the moors behind them, these dwellings had the look of small fortresses : they were built to last and many of them have survived through three or four centuries.