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Thomas Dalton of Thurnham: A Lancashire Royalist Colonel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
One of the more welcome aspects of recent studies of the English Civil War is the renewal of interest in the military history of the Northern Counties, through the work of B. G. Blackwood and more particularly P. R. Newman, both of whom have served, in the case of Lancashire, to illuminate Ernest Broxap’s pioneering tome of 1910. Newman has done a useful service in drawing attention to the active role in the fighting played by Northern Roman Catholics, who made substantial contributions to the Royalist war effort, a view which modifies the neutrality theory of Dr K. J. Lindley.
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1 Blackwood, B. G., The Lancashire Gentry 1625-1660, A Social and Economic Study. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis University of Oxford 1973;Google Scholar Newman, P. R., The Royalist Army in Northern England 1642-1645. Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis University of York 1978.Google Scholar For published material by Blackwood, see his The Lancashire Gentry and the Great Rebellion, 1640-60, Chetham Society, Third Series 25 (1978) and the other articles cited therein; for Newman see Newman, P. R. ‘Catholic Royalist Activists in the North, 1642-46’, in Recusant History 14 (1977), pp 26–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Catholic Royalists of Northern England, 1642-1645’, in Northern History 15 (1979), pp 88–95.Google Scholar Broxap’s The Great Civil War in Lancashire (Manchester, 1910), was reprinted in 1973 with a new introduction by R. N. Dore.
2 Lindley, K. J., ‘The Part Played by the Catholics’, in Manning, B. (ed.), Politics, Religion and the Civil War (London, 1973), pp. 126–76Google Scholar.
3 Gillow, J. in Manchester Notes and Queries 8 (1889–90), p. 39.Google Scholar
4 Roper, W. O., ‘The Daltons of Thurnham’, in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 42 (1892), p. 102 Google Scholar. Harland, J., Lancashire Lieutenancy, Chetham Society, 49, 50 (1859–60), p. 246 Google Scholar, gives 1615 as the date of Robert’s death, which seems too early.
5 Ormerod, G. (ed.), Tracts relating to Military Proceedings in Lancashire during the Great Civil War, Chetham Society, 2 (1844), p. 21 Google Scholar; Beaumont, W. (ed.) A Discourse of the Warr in Lancashire, Chetham Society, 62 (1864), p. 21 Google Scholar; Harland op. cit., p. 313. Dalton does not seem to have played much of a part in the early months of the war in South Lancashire. No doubt he was recruiting in the North.
6 Brownbill, J. (ed.), Royalist Composition Papers 6, Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 65 (1942)Google Scholar, 15-16, where a list of Royalists present is given.
7 The last reference to Dalton in Lancashire throws little light on this problem, for on 21 May 1643 he was in Furness with Girlington, Middleton, Molyneux and Tyldesley. West, Furness (1774), p. li. On his journey south Molyneux bivouacked at Leominster, Herefordshire (early July 1643) with about 200 poorly armed horse: Historical Manuscripts Commission 13, Portland MSS. 3, p. 111. Was Dalton’s regiment with Molyneux at this time? If so this would explain the paucity of officers’ names which have survived.
8 Nearly all previous authorities give Dalton as receiving his death wounds at the second battle of Newbury, e.g. Roper, op. cit., pp. 102-03 and p. 123; Money, W., The First and Second Battles of Newbury, 2nd edition (London, 1884), p. 61 Google Scholar. For a possible source of the original error, see Dugdale, William, A Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, Chetham Society Old Series, 84 (1872), p. 94 Google Scholar. Both Blackwood (thesis, pp. 345 and 353) and Newman (thesis 2, p. 61), give 1644. Gillow, J., Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (1885), 2, pp. 7–8Google Scholar, states that Dalton died at Marlborough on 2 November 1643 and was buried at Andover but that he was mortally wounded at Second Newbury! P. Young hinted that Dalton might not have been killed at Second Newbury but at First, in ‘The Order of Battle of the Parliamentarian and Royalist Armies at the First Battle of Newbury, 20 September 1643’, Journal of Army Historical Research, 42 (1964), p. 135. The correct date comes from the third Andover Parish Register, Hampshire Record Office accession number 60M67.
9 A. J. Hawkes (ed.), Anderton Deeds and Papers Calendar, 1931, 16/17. Alternatively it might have been the William Houghton/Haighton, a captain of foot from Rochdale who was admitted a freeman of Liverpool on 8 March 1643. Chandler, G. and Wilson, E., Liverpool under Charles I (1965), p. 314.Google Scholar
10 Gillow, , Bibliographical Dictionary, 3, pp. 325–9Google Scholar. All authorities agree on 1643 for Houghton’s death.
11 A List of Officers Claiming to the Sixty Thousand Pounds etc. granted by His Sacred Majesty for the Relief of His Truly-Loyal and Indigent Party (1663), P.R.O. SP. 29/68/19. Indirectly this evidence lends point to the assertion that the regiment was redistributed in 1643 and not 1644. The troops formerly under Dalton and Houghton could not have been transferred to Tyldesley’ after the Second Battle of Newbury (27 October 1644) for at that date Tyldesley was a prisoner-of-war, having been captured in Byron’s defeat at Montgomery on 18 September 1644. Phillips, J. R., Memoirs of the Civil War in Wales and the Marches, 1642-46 (1874), 2, pp. 201–09.Google Scholar
12 Lancashire Record Office, Quarter Sessions Papers 424/3 (1674).
13 Money, op. cit., pp 175-6, quoting Harl. MS. 6804, f. 92.
14 Gillow, , Bibliographical Dictionary, 3, pp. 338–9Google Scholar. Holden later became chaplain at Thurnham Hall. He died in 1686.
15 Lancashire Record Office, Quarter Sessions Papers 410/3 (1673). Here the implication is that Dalton’s troops were transferred after his death on 2 November 1643. They were in Byron’s army, which was largely Lancastrian in content when it left Oxford for Chester on 21 November 1643: Phillips, op. cit., 2, p. 105.