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Lancashire Catholics, Protestants and Jacobites During the 1715 Rebellion1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

B. Gordon Blackwood
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Extract

Historians are generally agreed that Lancashire was the most Catholic and the most Jacobite county in England at the time of the 1715 rebellion. Indeed, final confirmation of this connection would seem to have been established by Professor Paul Kléber Monod. In his book, Jacobitism and the English People 1688–1788, Monod has stated that ‘Lancashire had the largest [Catholic] recusant population in England’ at the end of the seventeenth century, and that of the 688 listed English Jacobite rebels captured at Preston in 1715, 366 were from Lancashire, 227 from Northumberland, 78 from other counties, six from Ireland and eleven from unidentified places. Monod also discovered the religious affiliations of four-fifths of the Lancashire rebels and noted that 76 per cent of them were Roman Catholics. With these vital statistics in our possession it would seem that there is no need for further research on Lancashire Catholicism and Jacobitism in the early eighteenth century. But certain questions, ignored or barely touched on by Monod and other historians, need answering. First, how many Catholics were there in Lancashire in about 1715, what was their geographical distribution and social composition, and how far were they dominated by the gentry? Secondly, what was the social composition of the various Lancashire Catholic groups: the active Jacobites, the passive Jacobites and those of unknown allegiance? Thirdly, how do the Catholic and Protestant Jacobite rebels of Lancashire compare from a social and political standpoint? Finally, and confining ourselves mainly to the Catholic gentry, how strong a link was there in Lancashire between the Royalism of the Civil Wars (1642–48) and the Jacobitism of the 1715 rebellion?

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 41 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1994

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Footnotes

1

This paper has benefited from discussions with Dr. Leo Gooch and J. Anthony Williams.

References

Notes

1 Only persons whose families were gentry both in the Civil Wars and in the ’ 15 rebellion are named below.

2 The gentry listed for the sixteen-forties are heads of families; those associated with the ‘15 rebellion include family heads, heirs to estates and younger brothers in order of seniority.

2 Monod, pp. 310, 321–2. It is hard to understand why Monod includes six men from Ireland among his English rebels.

3 Throughout ‘Catholic’, ‘Papist’ and ‘popish recusant’ are used as interchangeable terms; the contemporary terms are not used by the author in an offensive or derogatory sense.

4 Bossy, John, ‘Catholic Lancashire in the Eighteenth Century’ in Essays Presented to Michael Roberts, ed. Bossy and Peter Jupp (Belfast, 1976), p. 54.Google Scholar

5 Blackwood, Lanes. Gentry, p. 3.

6 The English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715, ed. Estcourt, E. E. and Payne, J. G. (London & New York, 1885), pp. 89–155;Google Scholar The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists 1717–1788, ed. R. Sharpe France, Record Society of Lanes. & Cheshire, 98 (1945), 108 Google Scholar (1960), 117 (1977). In the Registers the relevant years are 1717–22.

7 I Geo. I, cap. 55.

8 Conversely Estcourt & Payne mention six men who are not named by Sharpe France.

9 Mitchinson, A.J., ‘Tracing a Roman Catholic Family Tree’, North- West Catholic History, 14 (1987), p. 15.Google Scholar

10 P.R.O.(K), F.E.C. 1/1176.

11 PR. O (C), KB 8/66, part 1, ff. 69–77. All uncited information in this and the next two sections is from this source or the sources named in notes 6, 10 and 30.

12 I have reluctantly excluded women for the sake of consistency. They are not named in the alphabetical list of Preston informations. Moreover, the 755 women whose Catholicism can be documented are rather too few to be statistically significant. Children are not named in any of the four main sources.

13 For detailed and documented information on Lancashire Catholics in the seventeenth century see Blackwood, B. G., ‘Plebeian Catholics in the 1640s and 1650s’, Recusant History, 18 (1986), pp. 42–58;Google Scholar ibidem, 'Plebeian Catholics in later Stuart Lancashire’, Northern History, 25 (1989), pp. 153–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Walton, John K., Lancashire. A Social History 1558–1939 (Manchester, 1987), p. 91.Google Scholar

15 Two Tracts by Gregory King, ed. Barnett, G. E. (Baltimore, 1936), p. 31.Google Scholar

16 Blackwood, Lanes. Gentry, p. 5.

17 Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London, 1975), p. 175.Google Scholar

18 By ‘large’ I mean forty or more convicted recusants in one place.

19 P.R.O.(K), F.E.C. 1/1176, ff. 17–18, 27, 29–32, 35.

20 For a fuller and more sophisticated social analysis for an earlier period see works cited in note 13.

21 Houston, R. A., ‘The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–1750’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 35 (1982) pp. 205, 206 Google Scholar & n. 33, 211; Cressy, D., Literacy & the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 104–41;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and especially ibidem, ‘Describing the Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England’, Literature & History, 3 (March 1976), pp. 29–44.Google Scholar

22 Dr. Christopher Hill used the phrase ‘industrious sort’ to denote ‘yeomen, artisans and small and middling merchants’ (Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1964), p. 133).Google Scholar

23 The doctors comprised one surgeon, four apothecaries and six physicians.

24 ‘Farmers’ were probably yeomen freeholders (Monod, p. 322; Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost—further explored [3rd edn., London, 1983], pp. 43, 69).Google Scholar

25 Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society 1780–1880 (London, 1969), p. 21.Google Scholar

26 Among Englishmen as a whole the lower orders apparently comprised 67 per cent of the population in 1688 (ibidem).

27 Lenman, Bruce, The Jacobite cause (Glasgow, 1986), p. 43.Google Scholar

28 Monod, p. 11.

29 Anthony Williams, J., ‘Change or Decay? The Provincial Laity 1691–1781’ in Duffy, Eamon (ed.), Challoner and his Church (London, 1981), p. 50.Google Scholar

30 For the names of the Lancashire rebels see P.R.O.(C), KB 8/66, part 1, ff. 17, 39, 44–9, 69–77, 91, 94–5. The reliability of this source has been convincingly argued in Monod, pp. 320–1.

31 Eight of those ‘Papists’ were tried but acquitted of high treason at Liverpool or Preston in 1716 and are naturally excluded from our Catholic rebel total. The eight were: Hugh Barton of Claughton, yeoman; Richard Blackburn of Bleasdale, gentleman; William Charnley of Walton-le-Dale, weaver; John Daniel of Broughton, yeoman; Henry Rowbotham of Preston, husbandman; Edmund Sykes of Wyersdale, yeoman; Henry Walmesley of Preston, gentleman; Thomas Walmesley of Bilsborrow, innkeeper (P.R.O.(C), KB 8/66, part 2, ff. 177, 182, 192, 194, 200; Estcourt & Payne, op. cit., p. 104; V.C.H. Lanes., 1, p. 36).

32 Monod, p. 139.

33 These 33 Papists have been placed in the Catholic ‘rebel’ category in Tables 2 and 3.

34 Haydon, C. M., ‘Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth Century England C.1714-C.1780’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil, thesis, 1985), p. 141.Google Scholar

35 Jarvis, R. C. wrote: ‘Catholics registering their estates were precisely those who had refused, declined, neglected or otherwise omitted to take the legal oath’ (Jarvis, Collected Papers on the Jacobite Risings, 2 (Manchester, 1972), p. 324 n. 6).Google Scholar

36 P.R.O.(K), F.E.C. 1/1176.

37 Aveling, J. E. C., The Handle and the Axe (London, 1976), p. 244.Google Scholar

38 Monod, p. 324.

39 In the following counties it was not the ‘middle sort’ but local peers and gentry who together formed either a majority or the largest single group among the Catholic Nonjurors: Cumberland, Durham, Essex, Monmouth, Norfolk, Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Sussex and Westmorland. See Estcourt & Payne, op. cit., pp. 25–6, 45–65, 181–8, 192–7, 200–18, 253–67, 280–3.

40 Monod, pp. 324–5.

41 Ibidem, p. 325.

42 Monod deals with Jacobites generally in Lancashire and Northumberland and does not always make sufficiently clear the distinction between the Catholic and Protestant elements (ibidem, pp. 321–7).

43 Lindley, K. J., ‘The Part played by Catholics’ in Brian Manning (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London, 1973), p. 140.Google Scholar

44 Grattan, J. M., ‘The Earl of Derby's catholic army’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes. & Cheshire, 137 (1988), p. 44.Google Scholar

45 Hibbert-Ware, Samuel, Lancashire Memorials of the Rebellion, 1715, Chetham Society, Old Series 5 (1845), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

46 Monod, pp. 318–19, 325.

47 Rev. Robert Patten, the Northumberland curate who turned King's evidence against his former Jacobite comrades, believed that the High Church Anglicans were more forward in drinking toasts to the ‘King over the water’ than in military campaigning (Patten, History of the Late Rebellion (2nd edn., London, 1717), 1, p. 100).

48 I.e. 87 (64 per cent) of the 135 rebels. The majority among Catholics was greater, however. See above p. 45.

49 These towns, with their population estimates in 1664, are listed and mapped in Blackwood, Lanes. Gentry, pp. 8–9.

50 Journal of Peter Clarke, quoted in Hibbert-Ware, op. cit., p. 90.

51 Four were shot, but the rest were hanged, drawn and quartered.

52 Baines's Lancashire: History, Directory & Gazeteer of the County Palatine of Lancaster by Baines, Edward, ed. Owen Ashmore (2 vols. Newton Abbot, 1968), 1, pp. 74, 163, 639,Google Scholar 2, pp. 14, 105, 482, 607. Baines gave a total of 43 executions in Lancashire because he wrongly stated that George Hodgson of Walton-le-Dale, webster, and one Charnley were hanged at Lancaster. In fact the former was transported, while the latter may have been acquitted (P.R.O.(C), KB 8/66, part 2, ff. 180, 200).

53 The executed Catholic rebels were: William Arkwright of Preston, yeoman; James Burn of Standish, tailor; William Butler of Myerscough, gentleman; Thomas Cartmel of Bilsborrow, yeoman; Richard Chorley of Chorley, senior, esquire; Thomas Cowp of Walton-le-Dale, weaver; James Finch of the same, husband-man; John Finch of the same, webster; Thomas Gorse of Catterall, yeoman; William Harris of Burnley, shoemaker; John Rowbotham of Claughton, servant; Richard Shuttleworth of Preston, gentleman; Thomas Shuttleworth of Alston, husbandman; Joseph Wadsworth of Claughton, gentleman; William Whalley of Walton-le-Dale, whitster; Jonathan Winckley of Alston, labourer. The executed Protestant rebels were: James Blundell of Standish, wood tanner; Roger Muncaster of Garstang, attorney; Joseph Porter of Burnley, jersey comber; Stephen Sagar of Burnley, blacksmith; Allan Sanderson of Preston, ship-carpenter; Thomas Syddall of Manchester, blacksmith. See Baines's Lancashire, loc. cit.; Hardwick, Charles, Hist, of Borough of Prestonand its Environs (Preston, 1857), pp. 235–6;Google Scholar Hibbert-Ware, op. cit., pp. 192–202. For the status of the 22 executed Lancastrians, I have relied on the Baga de Secretis rather than on Hibbert-Ware.

54 However, Lancashire Catholic gentry rebels tried for treason in London were leniently treated. Richard Towneley of Towneley and Edward Tyldesley of Myerscough were acquitted, though historians have been convinced of their guilt (Baynes, John, The Jacobite Rising of 1715 (London, 1970), p. 187;Google Scholar Halley, Robert, Lancashire: Its Puritanism and Nonconformity (2nd edn., London, 1872), p. 469;Google Scholar Lenman, Bruce, The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746 (London, 1980), p. 156;Google Scholar Ian and Whyte, Kathleen, On the Trail of the Jacobites (London, 1990), p. 112).Google Scholar Nine other gentry rebels were tried and found guilty. One—Richard Butler of Rawcliffe—apparently died in prison, but the other eight—Sir Francis Anderton of Lostock, John Dalton of Thurnham, Gabriel and Cuthbert Hesketh of Goosnargh, Albert Hodgson of Leighton, John Leybourne of Nateby, Ralph Standish of Standish and Thomas Walton of Winder—were all pardoned in 1717 (P.R.O.(C), KB 8/66, part 3, ff. 209, 212, 222, 231–2; V.C.H. Lanes., 2, p. 245; Payne, J. O., Records of the English Catholics of 1715 (London, 1900), p. 155;Google Scholar Kirk, J., Biographies of English Catholics, ed. Pollen, J. H. & Burton, Edwin (London, 1909), p. 39;Google Scholar Nicholson, Albert, ‘Lancashire in the Rebellion of 1715’, Trans. Lanes & Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 3 (1885), pp. 73–4).Google Scholar No Lancashire Protestant rebel appears to have been tried in London.

55 The outlawed Catholic rebels were: Edward Barrow of Weeton, yeoman; Richard Billsborrow of Alston, yeoman; John Brockholes of Claughton, junior, gentleman; William Brockholes of the same, gentleman; George Clifton of Preston, gentleman; Robert Daniel of Alston, gentleman; Roger Dicconson of Wrightington, esquire; Edward Duckworth of Ribbleton, blacksmith; Joseph Fidler of Lea and Cottam, husbandman; William Haydock of Cottam, gentleman; John Hothersall of Hothersall, gentleman; Robert Kellett of Lostock, gentleman; Henry Newsham of Brockhall, husbandman; Richard Shireburn of Preston, gentleman; William Shuttleworth of Alston, husbandman; Lawrence Thorpe of Fishwick, husbandman; Robert Wadsworth of Haighton, gentleman; Robert Walker of Forton, yeoman; Edward Winckley of Walton-le-Dale, gentleman; Richard Withington of Ribbleton, farmer. The outlawed Protestant rebels were: Edward Beswick of Manchester, chapman; Richard Holland of Walton-le-Dale, yeoman; John Stoddard of Burnley, weaver; William Ward of Manchester, shoemaker. See P.R.O.(C), KB 8/66, part 2, ff. 160–75; C.R.S., 6 (1909), pp. 151n, 185n.1, 195n.; Payne, op. cit., p. 144; Gillow, Joseph, The Haydock Papers (London, 1888), pp. 45–6;Google Scholar Smith, Tom. C. & Short, Jonathan, Hist, of Parish of Ribchester (Preston, 1890), pp. 63, 65–6, 227;Google Scholar Lofthouse, Jessica, Lancashire's Old Families (London, 1972), p. 102.Google Scholar

56 See above p. 41.

57 Bossy, ‘Catholic Lanes, in Eighteenth century’, op. cit., p. 59.

58 These Catholic rebels were: Hugh Anderton of Euxton, esquire; Richard Billsborrow of Alston, yeoman; William Bolton of Bleasdale, yeoman; Thomas Breres of Preston, gentleman; Richard Butler of Rawcliffe, esquire; Richard Chorley of Chorley, junior, esquire; Edward Core of Walton-le-Dale, shoemaker; Robert Cowper of Cuerden, husbandman; John Dalton of Thurnham, esquire; Robert Daniel of Alston, gentleman; Roger Dicconson of Wrightington, esquire; Gabriel Hesketh of Goosnargh, gentleman; Albert Hodgson of Leighton, esquire; John Leyboume of Nateby, esquire; John Parkinson of Myerscough, husbandman; John Plessington of Dimples, gent; Richard Shireburn of Preston, gentleman; Richard Shuttleworth of Rawcliffe, gentleman; Ralph Standish of Standish, esquire; Thomas Stanley of Great Eccleston, esquire; Joseph Wadsworth of Claughton, gentleman; Thomas Walton of Winder, gentleman; Edward Winckley of Walton-le-Dale, gentleman; Richard Withington of Ribbleton, farmer. See P.R.O. Handbook no. 12, Records of the Forfeited Estates Commission (H.M.S.O., 1968), pp. 76–8; T. E. Gibson, Lydiate Hall and its Associations (N.P., 1876), pp. 166–7. How many of these 24 rebels eventually regained their estates is a question for other historians to answer. Another ten Catholic rebels had their estates confiscated but not, apparently, sold: Sir Francis Anderton of Lostock, baronet; John Ashton of Lathom, gentleman; Christopher Butler of Stalmine, gentleman; George Clifton of Preston, gentleman; John Gregson of Ribbleton, gentleman; Jordan Langdale of Samlesbury, esquire; Robert Scarisbrick of Scarisbrick, esquire; Nicholas Shireburn of Stonyhurst, baronet; John Sturzaker of Bleasdale, junior, husbandman; Thomas Walmesley of Preston, gentleman. See The British Chronologist (London, 1775), 2, p. 31;Google Scholar P.R.O. Handbook no. 12, pp. 123–7.

59 Ibidem, p. 77; Gibson, op. cit, p. 167.

60 Including Sir William Molyneux of Sefton, baronet, who held an Irish peerage and has been classified as a nobleman in Tables 1–3.

61 By ‘activists’ is meant those who strongly supported the Royalist war effort by fighting in Charles I’s armies and/or by diligently serving as officials, e.g. commissioners of array, commissioners for Prince Rupert, etc.

62 Of the 38 Royalists, 28 were active in the Civil Wars.

63 Patten, Hist, of late Rebellion, 1, pp. 48–9.

64 Blackwood, D. Phil, thesis, pp. 349, 355.

65 Nicholson, op. cit., pp. 82–3.

66 Blackwood, op. cit., p. 354; Grattan, op. cit., p. 50.

67 Payne, op. cit., p. 87.

68 Blackwood, op. cit., p. 353.

69 Richard Leckonby of Elswick.

70 Monod, p. 315.

71 Blackwood, op. cit., p. 355.

72 Of the 190 individual Lancashire Catholic Royalist gentry, 134 (71 per cent) were activists in the Civil Wars. But of the 91 Lancashire Catholic Jacobite gentry, only 49 (54 per cent) were activists, i.e. rebels.

73 But the link between the Catholic neutralism of the Civil Wars and the possible Catholic neutralism of the ’15 rebellion was apparently less close. Of the six Catholic gentry whose attitudes to the ‘15 rebellion are unknown, only three were descended from Catholic Neutrals of the sixteen-forties. The other three had Royalist forebears but, significantly, they had been only ‘passive’ or unenthusiastic supporters of Charles I. See Appendix for details.

74 A Discourse of the Warr in Lancashire, ed. Beamont, E., Chet. Soc. O.S. 62 (1864), p. 43;Google Scholar Acts &Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–60, ed. Firth, C. H. & Rait, R. C. (3 vols., London, 1911), 1, pp. 1085,Google Scholar 1142; Lanes. Record Office, QSC 42.

75 On this family see Blackwood, Lanes. Gentry, passim.

76 Monod, p. 330, seq.

77 In the Civil Wars ‘it was the Roman Catholic gentry’ of Lancashire, ‘especially of West Derby hundred, who spearheaded Catholic royalism’ (Grattan, op. cit, p. 44).

78 In Blackwood, Lanes. Gentry, p. 53, I wrongly suggested that Christopher Anderton was an unenthusiastic Royalist. The evidence, however, shows that he was an active Cavalier throughout the first Civil War (Lancashire Civil War Tracts, ed. Ormerod, G., Chet. Soc., O.S. 2 (1844), pp. 38–9, 83;Google Scholar Broxap, E., The Great Civil War in Lancashire 1642–51 (2nd edn., Manchester, 1973), p. 137;Google Scholar Reid, Stuart, Officers and Regimentsof the Royalist Army (5 vols., Leigh-on-Sea, N.D.), 4, p. 176).Google Scholar

79 The Brockholes family was mainly, but not entirely, Royalist (Blackwood, op. cit., pp. 43, 71n. 155).

80 Except for Robert Hoghton (no. 48), the great-grandsons of William Hoghton, having already acquired the Thurnham estate, took the name of Dalton about 1710 (V.C.H. Lanes., 6, p. 206, 8, p. 102).