13. Mrs Alice Thornton of East Newton: 1660-1707

 

East Newton Hall today  [By Roger Smith CC BY-SA 2.0]

Alice made her home among her husband's people and remained at East Newton for the rest of her days.  Her marriage had been one of convenience born out of family necessity.  Unfortunately, William's position and fortune turned out less than expected and he didn't manage their finances well, so that Alice's inheritance from her mother had to be used to rescue them.  And he wasn't the strong support that Mrs Wandesford must have wished for Alice, and often he was not much practical use, being frequently ailing and melancholic.  

But a very real love grew between him and Alice.  She was deeply grieved when he died aged forty-four on 17 September 1668.  He was, she wrote, 

a most dear and tender, virtuous and loving husband, which took part with me in all my sorrows and sufferings, comforted me in sadnesses.  We walked together in dear love and union.

And what happened to the others?

Her widowed brother-in-law Sir Thomas Danby had died aged 50 not long after Alice left Richmondshire.  He was in London at the time of his death in August 1660 and he was buried in the north choir aisle of York Minster.  

His heir was his eldest son Thomas Danby – he had gone to Dublin with Mrs Wandesford and had to leave in a hurry when the rebellion broke out.  Thomas married Margaret Eure in 1659, was MP for Malton and the first Mayor of Leeds.  He was killed in a sword fight in a London tavern in 1667.  The circumstances were murky.  Alice's great-grandson Thomas Comber recorded in his memoir of Lord Deputy Christopher Wandesford that in 1776 he was told by William Danby of Swinton that it was murder, carried out at the instigation of Thomas's wife Margaret. 

Thomas and Margaret had two sons.  The eldest boy, another Thomas, inherited the estates but died unmarried and was succeeded by his younger brother Christopher.  Christopher died a couple of years later from a fall from his horse while out hunting on Watlass moor.  Neither boy reached the age of 21.

So the Danby estates passed in 1683 to the boys' 50 year old uncle Christopher.  He was the younger of the boys who had been in Dublin with the Wandesfords.  

Christopher had gone out to Virginia in his twenties and there he had met and married – without his father's permission – Anne Colepepper.  Much later, Anne was to write an account of her marriage for her son Abstrupus and in it she described Christopher unflatteringly as an "imprudent weak husband".  Their marriage had caused a family rift and it was because of this, and money disputes with his brother Thomas, and especially because of great ill-feeling between Anne and her sister-in-law Margaret, that Christopher and Anne Danby were often with Alice and William Thornton.  This ended badly when Anne turned on Alice and began to spread malicious and unfounded gossip against her – which was the reason why Alice wrote her autobiography to vindicate herself.  

When Christopher inherited the estates, he turned them over to his son.  Abstrupus made money in the wool trade, sold off the outlying estates including Thorp Perrow and began the building of the mansion house at Swinton Park.  

Alice's troubled brother John had died before she was widowed.  He was aged 32 and MP for Richmond at the time of his death on 2 December 1666.  The poor man was often ill – his mental health had been uncertain ever since the death of his brother George.  Alice took comfort in the fact that, although he had been suffering badly with ague and violent fits of the stone, he had had the perfect use of his reason and understanding for the six months before his death.  He was buried at the parish church of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire.

In 1683 Alice lost her beloved Aunt Norton.  Her father's sister Anne had always been a great comfort and support to her, going over to East Newton when Alice badly needed her and giving good advice by letter.  She died in 1683 at a great age – nearly 90 – and was buried in Richmond, where her husband Maulger had been buried ten years earlier.  They had suffered the loss of children in infancy, but the loss of their two eldest sons must have been particularly hard.

Their eldest son Edmund Norton – whose troop of dragoons was encountered by George Wandesford on Marston Moor – died of pleurisy in 1648 in York.  He had been married only the year before.  He was buried at the church of St Michael le Belfrey.  His younger brother William Norton was a barrister.  He was killed in an affray in a London tavern in December 1666 aged 39.  

When the malicious lies spread by Anne Danby reached the ears of Mrs Anne Norton in Richmond, she went straight to East Newton to support Alice.  And when she had to go home – where she made it her business to speak to various people who had believed the gossip and to put them straight – Alice wrote,

she sent my good friend Dafeny to be with me and comfort me, which she did much

Mrs Wandesford relied upon Dafeny Lightfoote, Alice's sister Catherine died in her arms, she was there at Mrs Wandesford's deathbed, and when Alice was so unwell that her mother would not let her breastfeed her new baby Elizabeth, Dafeny took on the duty of wet nurse until she herself fell pregnant.  

She had come to Mrs Wandesford's service as an unmarried girl – her surname was Carrall or Cassell (the Surtees edition differs from the Anselment edition).  She and George Lightfoote went with the family to Hipswell when they had to leave Kirklington and they married soon afterwards.  They were trusted, literate people – George was perhaps Mrs Wandesford's steward.  He was a witness to Mrs Wandesford's Will and Dafeny was there when the Will was made and when the inventory of Mrs Wandesford's goods was taken.  When Dafeny returned to Richmondshire, she too spoke to people of importance in the neighbourhood and put the record straight for Alice.  She was at East Newton in 1668 and was a witness at young Naly's marriage to Thomas Comber.  When she left, Alice gave her as a token of gratitude 

a young cow and calf to sustain her house, with other good things, which she had deserved for her faith and fidelity to me and my poor children, and sent her husband a bible and a pound of tobacco.

Alice's brother Sir Christopher – he had been one of the many gentlemen of Royalist families to be given a baronetcy in 1662 – died in London on 23 February 1686.  He was buried in the Wandesford chapel in the parish church at Kirklington.  Alice lived long enough to see her nephew Christopher made Baron Wandesford and Viscount Castlecomer.  

Three of Alice's nine children – Naly, Catherine and Robert – survived early childhood.  Alice's ninth and last child had been born at East Newton in November 1667 when she was 41.  She had suffered terribly in labour in the past and in this one she had never been so near to death.  The babe was a fortnight old when he died.  She lost her husband a year later when Naly was sixteen, Catherine twelve, and Robert only six.  

Alice had such high hopes for Robert's future.  She had managed to finance his studies at university – he had taken a degree at University College, Oxford and been a Fellow of Magdalen College.  In 1692, when he was rector of the parish of Boldon in County Durham, he died.  He was 30 years old and he had proposed and been accepted by a lady with a fortune of £2,800 only two months earlier – a match that his brother-in-law Thomas Comber had found for him.  He was buried in front of the second altar in the Chapel of Nine Altars in Durham Cathedral; Naly had a stone with a Latin inscription placed there to commemorate him. 

Catherine was married in 1682 to the Revd Thomas Purchase, who was first rector of Langton on Swale and then of Kirkby Wiske.  She was widowed in 1696 at the age of 40 after fourteen years of marriage and the birth of six children.  Two years later she married Robert Danby of Northallerton.

Naly had been married to the 23 year old Rev Thomas Comber in 1668 when she was a couple of months short of her fifteenth birthday.  The marriage wasn't made public for six months, so it may not have been consummated until then.  It seems likely that it was the poor health of both Naly's parents, the lack of people on whom Alice could rely for support, and the high opinion both she and William had of this young man that made them so anxious for the match.  He was eminent in theology and was made Dean of Durham.  He and Naly had four sons and two daughters; he died at the age of 54 in 1699.

Alice lived out her years of impoverished widowhood at East Newton.  She died aged nearly 80 in early 1707 and was buried beside her husband in Stonegrave Minster.  She was survived by her daughters and left her manuscripts to Naly.  

Stonegrave Minster

Next: 14. Epilogue: 1688

Footnote:

Naly's grandson – the son of her daughter Alice and Francis Blackburne of Richmond – was the Revd Francis Blackburne (1705-87).  A noted scholar, he was Archdeacon of Cleveland and Rector of Richmond.  His son, the Revd Francis Blackburne (1748-1816), was vicar of Hutton Rudby for six years from 1774.  During that time he married a local girl – Ann Rowntree, the daughter of Christopher Rowntree of Middleton-on-Leven.  

The Blackburnes' story is told here in The Revd Francis Blackburne (1748-1816) of Rudby-in-Cleveland.

12. From Alice Wandesford's marriage to the return of the King: 1651-1660

At Hipswell, 23 year old Christopher Wandesford was now head of the family.  He followed the custom of the time – there was a contract of marriage to fulfil and he took his brother's place.  So, on 30 September 1651 at Lowther, Christopher married the 18 year old Eleanor Lowther.  The result for Alice, John and their mother was years of trouble over money, to their lasting detriment.  Christopher, Alice said, was of too good a nature and too inexperienced to realise how he was being manipulated by his new father-in-law Sir John Lowther into denying them their money under their father's Will.  

Alice's brother John was now seventeen.  A pious, learned and quick-witted boy, sweet and affectionate in nature, he had been at Christ's College, Cambridge for two years.  Now, partly from grief at George's death and partly from the grief he felt because Christopher was refusing to pay him his annuity, he fell into a deep melancholy that, said Alice, took away the use of his understanding.  He had to leave Cambridge without taking his degree.  

Over the following years, with infinite care and pains, Mrs Wandesford nursed him back to health but he was very liable to relapses, so she was very anxious when he was persuaded to go and live in London.  Luckily she was able to secure for him the help and care of Dr Bathurst, whose renown had grown since the days when he had treated Christopher – indeed, he had become Oliver Cromwell's physician.  

Meanwhile, Mrs Wandesford grew increasingly anxious to see her daughter married and she really had nobody to advise her – how she must have wished for her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  On the whole, she still wanted the match with William Thornton, even though she was disobliging several wealthy neighbours who had also approached her – Colonel Anstruther and Colonel Darcy, son of Lord Darcy, among them.  And she had her doubts about the real value of Mr Thornton's estate. 

Alice was now 25.  She really wanted to stay single and felt that the money left her by her father should be quite enough for her to be comfortable and useful.  But she also didn't want to disobey her mother and she had been willing to marry Mr Thornton so as to help the family discharge the sequestration.  

Now she had to decide whether to go ahead with the marriage or not.  It was a hard choice and it wasn't just a question of money.  On the one hand and very much in his favour, William Thornton was a quiet, decent man, esteemed in his own neighbourhood.  He was not debauched and irreligious, like so many men that she knew.  (She doesn't say whether these included Colonel Anstruther and Colonel Darcy).  On the other hand, his religious background was not at all like her own.  His half-sisters were all Catholics – strict papists, Alice said – while the other part of his family were strong Presbyterians and Parliamentarians.  

Alice spoke to him frankly.  She said that she was of the true protestant Church of England and they would be miserable together if he wasn't of the same faith.  He was seriously troubled at this, but then he declared that he shared her opinion.  He wanted bishops – suitably reformed – back and he too wanted a King.  And she could bring the children up in her faith entirely as she wished.  And so she decided that the money was of less importance and she would accept his offer.

At last the marriage contract was negotiated and on 15 December 1651 at Hipswell Hall, Mrs Wandesford gave her daughter in marriage to 27 year old William Thornton of East Newton, which lies a little east of Oswaldkirk and about 5 miles SSW of Helmsley.  

Mr Syddall, the vicar of Catterick, took the marriage service.  Alice's brother John was there, and so was her uncle Mauger Norton of St Nicholas, and their kinsman John Dodsworth of Thornton Watlass Hall near Masham, whose son Timothy had been a confidential servant to her father in Dublin.  William Thornton's uncle Francis Darley had come to be a witness from his estates at Buttercrambe, eight miles north-east of York.  Six of her mother's servants saw Alice married, and she listed them: Dafeny Lightfoote, in whose arms her sister Catherine had died; Ralfe Ianson, who was with her when she escaped drowning in the Swale; George Lightfoote; Robert Webster; Martha Richison; and Robert Loftus the elder.

That very day Alice fell suddenly ill with violent vomiting and sickness.  She thought it might have been because she took cold the night before, when she stayed up late to make her preparations for the wedding, but her mother thought it was because she had also washed her feet – quite the wrong time of year for such a procedure.  She made a full recovery and seven weeks later she conceived.

For the first weeks, before the babe quickened in her womb and she could feel it moving, she was very poorly but afterwards she was strong and healthy.  So when she was seven months pregnant, she was content to go with her husband to visit his family and friends.  

At the end of their visit, they set off from Mr Thornton's estate at East Newton to Osgodby Hall at Thirkleby, the home of his brother-in-law Sir William Ayscough.  William Thornton had been advised to take the road across the moors from Sproxton towards Hambleton.  He hadn't been warned that they would come to the top of Sutton Bank and that Alice would have to clamber down it herself – it was about a mile, Alice said, steep down.  Perhaps the path for horses was too steep and dangerous for them to be able to carry riders and especially a heavily-pregnant pillion passenger.  

Narrow steps were cut into the steep bank, but Alice was so big with child that she could hardly find a footing.  She had only her maid to help her – everyone else had gone on ahead – and her maid was having difficulty herself.  Each step strained Alice a great deal.  At last she was safe at the bottom, tired, hot and weary, feeling unwell, and troubled with pain.  She was troubled with pains all the way home and within a fortnight was in a desperate fever and was ill for some time.  The babe within her finally grew so weak that all movement stopped.  On 27 August 1652 her baby daughter was born, and died within the hour before they could get a clergyman to baptise her.  She was buried that night at Easby church beside the River Swale.

And this was the beginning of many griefs and joys for Alice.  She loved her children deeply, breastfed them joyously and looked after them lovingly – but she lost six children at birth or in infancy and only three grew to adulthood.  Her accounts of their illnesses and deaths are heart-rending.

Death & Change: 1651-1660

The first eight years of Alice's marriage were spent at Hipswell Hall with Mrs Wandesford, while extensive building work was being done to the old family manor house of the Thorntons at East Newton.  

So Alice and William were at Hipswell when in 1653 Parliament appointed Oliver Cromwell to be Lord Protector of the Commonwealth for life – he was king in all but name and he was addressed as Your Highness.  

Oliver Cromwell

They were at Hipswell in 1655 when, after failed uprisings by English and Scottish Royalists, Cromwell put England under martial law to bring about a godly, righteous country.  His Rule of the Major-Generals meant a repressive regime of high taxation and moral improvement – no horse racing, stage plays, fairs, cock-fighting, bear-baiting, no drunkenness, sexual licence, blasphemy or swearing.  It last fifteen unpopular months.  

The 1650s passed and everyday life went on.  During those years, Alice bore five children – four daughters and a son.  Only two of her daughters, Alice – who was always known as Naly (which must be pronounced Nallie, like Allie today) – and Katherine survived.  And through these difficult years, she found great comfort in the presence of her beloved mother, who was truly generous to them.  

Mrs Wandesford was a notable housewife.  She kept within her means but she still managed to achieve, Alice said, a noble, handsome manner of living.  She paid all Alice and William's expenses – christenings, burials, nurses, men servants and maids – and she bore the cost of entertaining and welcoming their friends as well as her own.  

She also took care of their medical bills.  These included a trip to Copgrove, a few miles south-west of Boroughbridge, to see if immersions in St Mungo's Well would cure Alice's baby Betty of the rickets.  Sadly, the holy well had no effect and at the beginning of September 1656 little Betty died.  She was, Alice wrote, aged one year, six months and twenty-one days.  She was buried the same day at Catterick by Mr Syddall.  He was buried there himself sixteen months later, having died of a malignant consumption before his fiftieth birthday. 

New upheavals in the country followed Oliver Cromwell's death on 3 September 1658.  Now his son Richard was Lord Protector.  1659 was a year of chaos.  Tumbledown Dick, as people called Richard, couldn't keep the Puritan factions together.  Who would seize control of power?  The country was gripped by uncertainty and fear.

By August 1659, Alice's mother and husband were getting very alarmed by her health.  On the doctor's advice, William took Alice to Scarborough Spa to drink the waters.  The cure worked – which was very fortunate as, after a month, a message came from Hipswell.  Mrs Wandesford was very poorly with her old ailment, the stone, and she wanted Alice home.  So they set off back, stopping at Crathorne on the way to see William's half-sister Margaret, who had married Ralph Crathorne of Crathorne – that side of William's family were all Catholics, as were the Crathornes.  There, to Alice's joy, a servant from Hipswell met them with the news that Mrs Wandesford was much recovered.  The good news was followed by the realisation that she was pregnant again, and her husband and mother began to hope that this time it might be a son.

But on 17 November 1659 Mrs Wandesford fell ill.  They tried all the remedies that they could.  They managed to relieve a pain in her side with poultices of fried oats, butter and chopped camomile, but her condition grew more distressing and she grew steadily weaker.  

On Thursday 8 December, she sent for Alice, William and the children so that she could bless them and say goodbye.  Alice was about five months pregnant.  She was distraught at seeing her mother in such terrible suffering and she couldn't bear to lose her.  They had been companions through so many trials and griefs and she had been able to rely on her mother's strength and support all her life.  Mrs Wandesford said to her, 

Dear child, why will you not be willing to part with me to God?  Has he not lent me to be a comfort to you long enough?  

And she urged Alice to let her go.  

You never have been disobedient to me in all your life – I pray thee obey me in this.  

She blessed them and Alice took "the saddest last leave of my dear and honoured mother as ever a child did."  

Two days later, Mrs Wandesford saw her sister-in-law Anne Norton and her husband Mauger.  There had always been a strict league of affection and friendship, Alice remembered, between the two women.  Now they said their last goodbye.  She commended her children to the care of Mauger Norton and she died later that day, Saturday 10 December 1659.  Dafeny Lightfoote had been beside her through her illness and was among those who were with her at the end.

On the Tuesday, her body was carried out of the house by Conyers, Lord Darcy and Conyers together with his son Colonel Darcy and son-in-law Sir Christopher Wyvill and other kinsmen of the Wandesford family.  Then her tenants took her from Hipswell Green to Catterick, where nine of the neighbouring clergy, men chosen in advance by Mrs Wandesford herself, carried her into the parish church.  After the service and sermon, they laid her in her grave in the south aisle, which was the Hipswell aisle, and a charitable dole was distributed among a very great number of the poor inside the church and at the door.

St Anne's, Catterick.  [By Alison Stamp CC BY-SA 2.0]

Alice and her daughter Naly later had a blue marble slab laid in Catterick church to mark Mrs Wandesford's resting place; it was destroyed in a 19th century restoration.  

Charles II returns & Alice leaves Richmondshire: 1660

By the time of Mrs Wandesford's funeral, the political chaos meant that there was hardly anybody to mind if nine Anglican clergymen officiated at a funeral in Catterick.  General George Monck, the commander of Scotland, had already crossed the border into Northumberland and made his HQ at Coldstream.  And all people wanted was for the uncertainty to stop. 

General George Monck (1608-70)

On New Year's Day 1660, Monck marched his army south.  Within three months, he was in secret negotiation with Charles II in his exile and on 25 May 1660 Charles landed at Dover.  On 29 May – his thirtieth birthday – he entered London to great rejoicing.  To everyone's relief and to the joy of Royalists, the chaotic uncertainty of the last months had ended.  

Charles II in coronation robes

After Mrs Wandesford's death, Alice and William stayed on at Hipswell Hall for a while, kept there by bitter winter weather and Alice's weak and grieving state.  

In March, they took her to her Aunt Norton's at St Nicholas, and in April her baby was born there, after a hard labour.  He was a pretty babe and suckling well but then grew ill and restless and red round spots like smallpox appeared on his face.  He died at a fortnight old and was buried in the same grave at Easby as his eldest sister, Alice's first child. 

On 10 June 1660, when Alice was strong again, she and William and their two little girls left St Nicholas to move to a house that William owned in Oswaldkirk.  And so she left Richmondshire, her own dear country and dear friends and relations, parting from them with a sad heart.

Next:  13. Mrs Alice Thornton of East Newton: 1660-1707

11. The wars come to an end: 1651

By this time, Alice's brother George, now aged 28, was reaching success in his endeavours to recover his sequestered estates and find a wife.  

Their uncle William Wandesford had been working for some time on the first problem, which was made difficult by the shortage of funds, and he had hit upon the solution.  A distant connection of the family, Richard Darley, was an influential man on the York Committee for Compounding with Delinquents and had promised his help in return for Alice's marriage to his nephew.  Alice was now twenty-five and she had turned down better offers because, as her aunt had said to Captain Innes, she didn't want to marry.  But her uncle said the alternative was ruin for the family and her mother was anxious for them all.  A strange sort of persuasion, she thought, between a sword in one hand and a compliment in the other, but she knew the duty of a gentry daughter and William Thornton was a sober, religious man.  She agreed.  

Meanwhile, George had finally managed to negotiate a marriage contract with Eleanor, the eldest daughter of Sir John Lowther of Lowther Castle near Penrith.

On Easter Eve, 29 March 1651, a rift between George and his 23 year old brother Christopher was healed by Alice.  George had become angry because a mischief-making servant had told him lies about Christopher.  Christopher had been incensed at George believing them.  The ill-feeling between them had grown to such a pitch of anger and animosity that neither of them would be able to take Holy Communion on Easter Sunday.  Alice had taken things in hand.  She calmed them down, entreating them to ask pardon of God and each other for all that had gone wrong between them.  At last they were able to forgive each other freely and, in zeal and devotion, they were all able to receive the Holy Sacrament the next day.  The memory was to be a great comfort to her.

Two days later, his quarrel with Christopher made up, his estates freed from sequestration and his marriage arranged, George was on his way to Richmond to discuss business with his uncle.  Having spent the previous night at Harry Darcy's at nearby Colburn, he called in at Hipswell.  Leaving his mother and sister after loving farewells and having knelt for his mother's blessing, he set off once more, telling his Irish footman James Brodrick to meet him in Richmond at two o'clock.  And so he rode on towards the River Swale.

The Swale is a fast flowing river and in those days was especially liable to flash flooding.  The floods fall, Alice said, down from the dales with a mighty mountainous force.  She had been nearly caught out once or twice – once, when going between Hipswell and her aunt Norton's, the water had been only a little above the horse's fetlocks when she began to cross, but the flood came down with such speed that the water had risen to the middle of the girths before she reached safety.  She was saved because she was only half the horse's length from the further bank by then – if she had been a couple more yards from safety, she would have met with disaster.

So when George rode by the family's little chapel on the top of the river bank and he saw that there was a wedding that day, he asked the people whether the Swale might be ridden.  Yes, they said – there had been a flood but it had fallen and some of them had crossed the water that morning.  So he wished them joy in their marriage and rode very slowly down the bank towards the wathplace, as fords were called in the dialect.  

Two men on the other bank saw him going as carefully and slowly as foot could fall – and then they saw the flood come suddenly and mightily down.  They ran to the river.  But they could only see his horse swimming to the bank and shaking itself.  They caught it by the bridle and they looked for the rider – no sign of him.  They ran to Easby and to Richmond, crying the news and calling for help.  The news came to Hipswell, a grievous and crushing blow, while great numbers flocked down to the river and began to search for George's body.

It was John Plummer, one of the men who had been called as a witness against him for his sequestration, who found him on the Wednesday, four miles downstream of Richmond in a pool near Catterick Bridge.  They thought, from the fact that he was unmarked except for one bruise on his nose, that he had struck his face on some great stone – there were stones like that in abundance, Alice said, at that wathplace.  He had been an excellent swimmer, but that hadn't saved him.  They took his body up and laid it that night at Thomson's at Catterick Brigg, fearing that taking him to his mother's would only deepen her grief and perhaps endanger her life.  The next day, the Richmondshire gentry accompanied the coach that took him to Kirklington to be buried inside the church near the tomb of his great-grandfather Sir Christopher.

St Michael's, Kirklington

Charles II and the Scots invade England: 1651

So the shocked and grief-stricken Mrs Wandesford and her children will hardly have been paying attention when, in August, Charles II and his Scottish supporters invaded England and Cromwell's troops again marched through Yorkshire.  

The town of Carlisle wouldn't let them enter and very few Englishmen were joining their army.  Cromwell marched at speed from Perthshire to the River Tyne and from there – 20 miles a day in extreme heat, with the country people carrying the troops' arms and equipment – he reached Ferrybridge on 19 August.  

The young king had decided to make for the Severn valley, where many had supported his father, but the people there did not welcome a Scottish invasion.  On 6 September 1651, his army was routed by Cromwell and his fellow generals at the Battle of Worcester.  The Scottish general David Leslie was captured and put in the Tower.  Many of the fleeing Scots were killed by locals as they tried to reach the border.  Around 10,000 prisoners were taken, most of them Scots, and they were sent to work draining the fens or shipped off to America.  Charles was on the run for six weeks before he could escape to France – his experiences had taught him more about the people than his father had ever known.  

Now Parliament's rule was secure and Scotland was under English military rule.  Cromwell had already begun with massacres at Drogheda and Wexford to complete the final crushing of the Irish rebellion.  After eleven dreadful years and an enormous death toll, Ireland would soon be subdued and very many more Protestant settlements created on land confiscated from Catholics.  

Note

That was the end of the Third Civil War 1649-51

The World Turn'd Upside Down

When Christmas had been banned, a ballad called "The World Turn'd Upside Down" had appeared in print.  Its refrain was

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down

For many across the country, the Wandesfords included, the words must have seemed all too true.

Society had been turned upside down during the years of fighting.  Gentlemen and nobles had found themselves fighting alongside artisans and working men.  Ordinary men were driven by hunger into becoming soldiers and some found a chance at last of revenge for old grievances against the sort of men who had always had the upper hand.  Revolt and new ideas were in the air.

There were new religious sects like the Quakers – George Fox, their founder, had made followers across the North and East Ridings – and there were Baptists among Parliamentarian leaders.  There were political revolutionaries like the Levellers.  There were religious radicals – sects like the Fifth Monarchists who believed Jesus was coming any moment to begin a thousand-year reign – and wandering self-proclaimed messiahs.  Witch panics had broken out.  Over 300 people were executed – most by strangling at the stake before burning – in Scotland in the space of eighteen months.  The hysteria had spilled over into Berwick.  Twenty had died in Newcastle.  Matthew Hopkins, who called himself the Witchfinder General, was active in East Anglia, where about a hundred people were executed.

Note

For estimates of the death toll from battle and disease, see for example this Wikipedia entry

Next: 12. From Alice Wandesford's marriage to the return of the King: 1651-1660 

10. The Man of Blood & the English Republic: 1648-1650

 In the early days of 1648 news would come to Hipswell of rebellions and fighting.  The Christmas riots were turning into rebellions, Royalists in Wales had risen, Royalist commanders had taken Berwick and Carlisle and the fleet had mutinied.  

In the very cold, wet weeks of July 1648, the people of Teesdale and Richmondshire realised fighting was coming closer to home.  A Scottish army had crossed into England on 8 July and was quartered at Penrith and Appleby, waiting for reinforcements.  And this time they had invaded to support the King – and this time he had agreed, after secret negotiations with one of the Scottish factions, that he would impose Presbyterianism on the English if they would put him back on his throne.  Finally he had his army – Scots, English and Welsh Royalists, Scots Covenanters and some English Presbyterians.

When this was realisesd, what were people to think?  It must have been baffling and unsettling.  The King's attempt to impose his Anglicanism on the Presbyterian Scots had started the wars in the first place, all those years ago.  For the Wandesfords, their Anglican religion and their King were inseparable and they longed to be rid of the Presbyterian minister forced on them at Kirklington.  Did the King mean to keep his word to the Scots?  And if he didn't, what would happen?

Sir Thomas Danby had given his word not to take up arms against Parliament when he got his sequestered estates back, so for him and men like him the only honourable option was to stay at home and await events.  George Wandesford had a choice.  His property was still sequestered and he had made no promise.  But he decided not to risk his family's safety and security to join with a Scottish army – the last people he would have wanted to join and possibly the very men who had been quartered on them at Hipswell – for a possibly doomed attempt at defeating Parliament.

Then a Parliamentary army of 4,000 men under the able and decisive young Major-General John Lambert of Kirkby Malhamdale arrived to garrison Barnard Castle.  They were waiting to meet the Scots, expecting them to cross Stainmore on their way to Pontefract Castle, which Royalists had retaken for the king.  

General John Lambert (1619-84)

But there was no sign of the Scots – they had moved south, not east.  And their timing was all wrong – the rebellions and the invasion hadn't coincided.  By the time the Scots set off towards Cheshire, Oliver Cromwell had taken the surrender of Pembroke Castle and was on his way north.   General Lambert marched his men south and met Cromwell at Wetherby.  They now had about 9,000 men, half the strength of the Royalists.

The weather was terrible, the armies made slow progress.  The Scots were short of supplies and they were getting no reinforcements from the English as they passed.  Cromwell crossed the Pennines via Skipton at speed and, catching the Royalists by surprise, he took Preston.  After grim fighting for two hours, his men drove across the Ribble bridge at push of pike, driving the Scots from the bridge over the River Darwen soon after.  In wind and driving rain, the Scots continued south in the mud, exhausted and demoralised.  Wigan, the town that had welcomed the Wandesfords so kindly in 1643, was plundered violently by hungry Scots soldiers, even though it had always been a Royalist town.  Their goal had been Warrington, where they hoped for reinforcements from Cheshire and Wales.  Their attempt ended instead on 19 August with surrender and imprisonment for many, escape for some – and execution for their commander, the Duke of Hamilton.  

Charles I at his trial

The attempt to restore Charles to the throne had failed.  Now the radicals in power in the Army and Parliament had run out of options with him.  The King – that Man of Blood, as they called him – had brought Scottish troops into England and set off another civil war.  More death, more destruction.  His slipperiness and dubious intrigues made further negotiations impossible.  They put him on trial for high treason as an enemy of the people.  And now he rose to the occasion – never in his life had he behaved with such quiet dignity.  The outcome was a foregone conclusion.  He was declared guilty and 59 of the 68 commissioners who sat in judgement signed the death warrant – one of them was Thomas Chaloner of Guisborough.  

Charles was executed on 30 January 1649 in Whitehall, on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House where the glorious ceilings he had commissioned Rubens to paint celebrated the belief in the Divine Rule of Kings that he and his father had held so dear.  

The execution of Charles I

The shock to his supporters was dreadful.  The Annointed of the Lord, the Joy of our hearts, the light of our eyes had been cruelly murdered, wrote Alice, by blasphemous rebels.  And not just to his supporters – the execution of the king by an army faction was deeply unsettling and at the moment of his death, when a groan went up from the silent watchers, the cult of King Charles the Martyr was born.

Note

This was the end of the Second Civil War, 1648

The English Republic and the invasion of Scotland: 1650

England was now a republic and soon Parliament declared it was a Commonwealth – the traditional word for a community founded on the common good of all.  But they had executed the king without consulting the Scottish parliament, and Charles was not only king of England but king of the Scots as well.  Within days of the execution, the Scots proclaimed his son as King.  

While Oliver Cromwell crushed radical mutinies in the army and crossed to Ireland to subdue it with the utmost brutality, the new king Charles II – not yet nineteen years old – went into an alliance with the Scottish Presbyterians, promising, like his father before him, to impose Presbyterianism on the English.  

Charles II c1650,
by Adriaen Hanneman

Now the English Council of State decided to preempt a Scottish invasion by invading Scotland.  

In the middle of July 1650, a large army of some 15,000 men marched through Yorkshire on its way to Durham.  It reached Berwick-upon-Tweed on 19 July.  Oliver Cromwell was in command.  It was another particularly wet, cold summer, and the Scottish commander hoped that sickness and hunger would wear the English down, so he destroyed all the crops and removed all the livestock between the border and Edinburgh.  

Cromwell began by trying to persuade the Scots that young Charles was not a fitting king for them – they were beginning to have their doubts about this charismatic and dashing young man, but Charles was ready to promise them anything and they were not to be persuaded by an invading English general.  It looked as though the Scottish army would succeed triumphantly, but in heavy rain, in sodden fields, it went down to a crushing and surprising defeat at the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650.  It was Cromwell's greatest victory.  

On Christmas Eve, Edinburgh surrendered to Cromwell.  On New Year's Day 1651, the Scots crowned Charles II at Scone in Perthshire.  

Note: the Scottish prisoners in Durham Cathedral

Cromwell was left with a lot of prisoners on his hands after the Battle of Dunbar and he wanted to advance further into Scotland.  He sent 3,900 of them south.  By the time they reached Durham, after an eight day march, some had escaped, some had been shot, and some had died of disease.  The rest – 3,000 of them – were locked inside the disused cathedral at Durham because it was the only place big enough to take them and the Parliamentarians didn't think of churches as sacred spaces anyway.  Conditions got out of control when the bloody flux – dysentery – took hold, and 1,600 were dead within six weeks.  Of the rest, some were sent to work in Sir Arthur Haselrigge's coal mines and in local industry, and some were sent at indentured servants to Massachusetts.  The last were set free in July 1652.  Their story was never forgotten in Durham.  It made the news when bodies were discovered in the grounds of the cathedral square in 2013 and again in 2018 when the results of painstaking investigation were published.  See here for a full account.

Next:  11. The wars come to an end: 1651 

9. Royalist disaster & private grief: 1645-7

On 14 June 1645, the New Model Army – Parliament's new national army – inflicted a decisive defeat on the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire.  It was a disaster for the King.  His army was shattered and his private papers had fallen into Parliament's hands.  They published them.  Now people could see that they had been right to fear that he planned to bring an army of Irish Catholics over to fight in England.  He was negotiating to do just that, and he was trying to get money and mercenaries from abroad.  

The last hopes were fading for the Royalists.  In Wensleydale, John Scrope had been holding Bolton Castle for the King.  It had been under siege since the autumn of 1644.  Now, although there was no chance of relief, the garrison held out until all their supplies had been eaten – including the horses and all the animals – and then they surrendered in November 1645.  Parliament ordered the castle to be slighted, and some of it was demolished. 

Bolton Castle

By then Sir Thomas Danby and Lady Danby were back in their own house at Thorpe Perrow.  His estates had been seized by the Sequestration Committee because he had fought for the King, but in each county there was a Committee for Compounding with Delinquents, which could let the men have their lands back if they pledged never to fight against Parliament again and if they paid a fine – a useful way for the new government to raise money.  Sir Thomas's fine was heavy, but by 1645 he had paid up and he and Catherine were at home again.  

She was now expecting her sixteenth child.  Ten of her babies had lived to be baptised but the others were stillborn, Alice remembered, from frights caused by fire in her chamber, by falls and other accidents.  She had been married at the age of fifteen and she was now thirty.  Tender-hearted and sweet-natured, she was badly grieved by the war and the state of the country and she dreaded to think what the future might hold.  She had been left during the war to manage the estate and household while her husband was away in the King's service and only able to come back rarely and she had missed him badly.  She had been vexed and troubled by the many alarms and difficulties caused by the presence of the Scots soldiers quartered on her.  She had been very unwell during this pregnancy and now she went into labour earlier than she expected.  She couldn't get her old midwife because she was in Richmond, which was shut up by the plague.  And the baby was a breech presentation, coming – as Alice said – double into this world.  

At last she was delivered of a fine boy after a long and very hard labour.  He was named Francis after Alice's little godson, his elder brother who had died that summer of smallpox.  Catherine was in dreadful pain, unable to sleep or eat.  The women of her family came to her.  Her sister-in-law Lady Armitage and her aunt Mrs Norton had been with her when Alice came to take their place.  Catherine was making her preparations for the good death which was of such paramount importance at the time, praying for her family and for peace in England, and entrusting her children to her husband's care.  After a week, Alice's grief for Catherine was such that she became ill herself.  Mrs Wandesford came with her careful young servant Dafeny Lightfoote and sent Alice home.  

Catherine loved Dafeny dearly and now Dafeny was always with her.  At last, with her head on Dafeny's breast, she said, "I am going to God, my God now."  Dafeny spoke to her bracingly, saying she hoped God would spare her to bring her children up.  "How can that be," said Catherine, "for I find my heart and vitals all decayed and gone.  No.  I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is best of all."  She died on 20 September 1645 about a month after giving birth and was buried at Masham two days later.  Her funeral was held at night, according to Alice's recollection, because the Parliamentarian and Scots soldiers would not let a sermon be preached.

On the other side of the country, the Wandesfords' friends in Chester were in trouble.  

Though the Battle of Naseby had left the King with no realistic chance of winning, the fighting continued across the kingdoms.  In parts of the West Country, the Midlands and Wales, men grew so weary of the plundering, ill-disciplined troops that they banded together to try to keep both armies out.  

Chester was still held for the King and had been under siege, off and on, for a year.  In September 1645, as Catherine Danby's life drew to a close, the city found itself under a new assault.  This time, the siege was total and it lasted until February 1646.  By the time the Royalist commander Lord Byron was finally persuaded by the Mayor to surrender, the poor were dying of hunger.  The loss of life, the damage and destruction had been huge.  After the siege was over, plague swept through the city, taking a fearful toll of the starved and homeless poor.  Alice and her mother were profoundly grateful that they had escaped.

Lord Byron (1599-1652)

The King, the Scots and the cancellation of Christmas: 1646-7

Oxford had been the King's capital city since 1642.  The University was on his side – the townspeople were not.  He had returned there in November 1645, hoping to begin again with a new campaign in the spring, but his plans fell through.  Parliamentary troops besieged the city – and then they discovered to their amazement that the King had escaped.   On 27 April 1646, with his hair cut short, wearing drab clothes and a false beard, he had slipped out of Oxford with two companions.  

He had been in secret negotiations for a separate peace with the Scots, but his arrival at their camp outside the siege of Newark took them completely by surprise.  The Scottish general in charge was David Leslie, the man to whom Mrs Wandesford had gone for help against Captain Innes.  Now he needed to get the King away at once to the Scots garrison at Newcastle.  So the King ordered the reluctant Royalist commander of Newark to surrender so that the Scottish army could leave.  On 8 May the Scots broke camp and set off north with the King. 

They kept him as an open prisoner in Newe House, a mansion with extensive grounds inside Newcastle's city walls.

Newe House, see Tyne & Wear Museums blog

From there – when he wasn't playing golf – the King plotted.  He carried on negotiations with both the Scots and the Parliamentarians, trying to exploit the divisions between them, and he intrigued with his exiled Queen, trying to get troops from Ireland and France.  He didn't succeed in any of it.  

The war was over and the Scots were negotiating with Parliament for payment towards the arrears of wages owed to their troops, after which they would leave England.  Abandoning hope of coming to an agreement with the King, the Scots handed him over to Parliament in January 1647.  

Parliamentarian troops took over his custody and the Scots marched out of Newcastle, with the fishwives pelting them and shouting "Judas" because they thought the Scots had sold the King.

In February 1647, Parliamentarian troops appeared in the North Riding, travelling south with the King.  The road lay through Northallerton and they stopped the night there at the house of the Metcalfe family, opposite the parish church.  The grief of people like the Wandesfords can be imagined – for them he was, as Alice said, a holy, pious prince who fought God's battles against his enemies, a nursing father to his three kingdoms.  

The Porch House, Northallerton: where Charles I stayed in 1647

The next grief to strike Alice's poor mother was the loss of her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  In spite of his own cares and sorrows, he had been a constant support to his widowed sister.  He had spent heavily in the King's service and been obliged to pay a large fine to get back his sequestered estates.  He had retired to live quietly at Kiveton with his second wife Ann, never ceasing to grieve for his son Edward, killed in the roof collapse at York in 1638.  It was because of some excellent melons from his gardens at Thorpe Salvin Hall and Kiveton, Alice said, that he was taken ill.  He ate a little too much – the melons were too cold for him – and he was thrown into a vomiting and diarrhoea that exhausted him past recovery.  He died a few days later on 9 September 1647 to the great distress of his family, and was buried in the chancel of Harthill church.  He was fifty-one.

While the grieving Mrs Wandesford was running her household and providing for her children like the skilful housewife that she was – Alice remembered her careful huswifery – constant in her charitable works and always remembering the needs of the newly homeless clergymen and their families who would appear at her door, Parliament was running the country.  This wasn't to everyone's liking.  

Parliament was proving highly efficient at collecting taxes – revenue much needed for the Army, which was getting worryingly radical and deeply involved in politics – and hard times under the King's rule were beginning to fade from memory.  Not everyone greeted the destruction of paintings, statues and decorations in their parish church with joy.  Theatres had been closed since 1642.  And now Christmas was cancelled.  

The English loved Christmas.  The church services were only part of it – all classes in England celebrated the twelve days with food and drink, parties and revels, while the Presbyterian Scots had banned Christmas several years earlier because it was Catholic, superstitious, not mentioned in the Bible and led only to drunkenness and debauchery.  Parliament had established a new pattern for public worship and the Feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were banned.  No more sinful behaviour to bring down God's wrath upon the kingdom – the recent war showed where that had led.  No special church services, everyone to go to work, shops to be open, no hanging up the holly and the ivy, and absolutely no partying.   

The ban probably hardly mattered to the family at Hipswell, in mourning for Sir Edward Osborne.  Tucked away in Catterick, and careful not to draw hostile attention, Mr Syddall was still able to celebrate Holy Communion for them and a quietly held Christmas service could go unnoticed.  But in Kirklington, under the eye of the Presbyterian minister Mr Nesbit, the villagers will have missed their Christmas service and the only safe way to entertain friends in anything like the proper style would be after dark, secretly, fairly quietly and behind closed doors.

News would come to the Wandesfords that in some places across the country there had been riots over the ban.  Armed force was needed to stop the partying in Kent, where the usual Christmas football game was played in Canterbury, and in Westminster the churchwardens of St Margaret's were arrested for failing to stop a Christmas day service.

And at intervals news came of the King.  

First he was held by Parliament, then he was taken by the radicals of the Army.  Then he escaped.  And then, like his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, when she thought she would find a friendly refuge with Elizabeth of England, Charles made a fatal misjudgment of character.  He didn't go to Berwick and the support of the Scots.  He went to the Isle of Wight, thinking the governor would protect him and help him get to France.  Instead, he found himself imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle.  

Notes

This period of the wars is called the English Civil War 1642-46

The Tyne & Wear Museums blog has more pictures of the Newe House, which was later known as Anderson Place.  It stood just off Pilgrim Street.

Sir Edward Osborne's gauntlets, said to have been worn by him in the war, are on display in Harthill church; his helmet was stolen in the 20th century.  See here 

Next: 10. The Man of Blood & the English Republic: 1648-1650 

8. Mrs Wandesford moves to Hipswell: 1644-1645

In Kirklington, George feared he was a wanted man and he lay low for a while.  His sympathies were with the King, but he reckoned the King's cause was lost, and what would be achieved by involving himself in utter ruin?  So he didn't attempt to go west to join Royalist forces.  He thought it would be prudent for his family if they just stayed quiet.

But the following month, the Wandesfords unintentionally attracted unwanted attention. 

Firstly, on 19 August 1644, Mr Dagget, the kindly Rector of Kirklington, died.  The Wandesfords had always been entitled in law to appoint the next Rector and their choice was Mr Michael Syddall.  They knew about him because he was married to Ellen Hunton, the widow of the late Mr Wandesford's steward, and he was a man of their own views in religion.  They had very much appreciated the sermon he had preached at Mr Dagget's funeral.  

But the decision was now Parliament's, and Mrs Wandesford's attempt to get the help of Sir Thomas Fairfax, a friend in happier days, did not succeed.  A Mr Clarkson was sent to Kirklington instead.  The congregation took badly to him, especially when he preached against the Lord's Prayer – he was a severe Puritan who believed that it was a pattern for heartfelt prayer, that simply reciting it was Popery and so those who did so would be damned.  The people booed and hissed him out of the church and another minister to the liking of Parliament, one Mr Philip Nesbit, was sent instead.  

Now he was twenty-one, George was obliged by Act of Parliament to sign the Solemn League and Covenant made between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters.  George didn't back down from his principles and he refused, because signing it went against his religious beliefs and against his loyalty to the King.  There wasn't a penalty in law for refusing, though Alice says that the Scottish armies stationed in Richmondshire were forcing men to sign under pain of imprisonment or ruin, but the names of men who refused were notified to Parliament.  So although George had tried not to attract attention, it might have been this refusal that got him denounced as a Malignant – a traitor to the Parliament.  

Then George was accused of having taken part in the Battle of Marston Moor.  Two men who had recognised him on the moor were called to York to give evidence against him, but though they wouldn't say that they had seen him engaged in the fighting, and though he was still under age at the time, he was declared a Delinquent and his estates were confiscated from him by the Sequestration Committee.  Alice always thought it was done through some sinister machinations by Mr Nesbit as a way to get himself appointed minister to the choice living of Kirklington, where he announced the sequestration of George's estates in a triumphing manner in the pulpit.

So the family went to live at Hipswell, which belonged to Mrs Wandesford under the terms of her marriage settlement.  This had the consolation that they were now near to Mr Michael Syddall, who had been their choice of minister for Kirklington and who was now vicar of Catterick.  And so they were still able to pray the Lord's Prayer and take Holy Communion, which disappeared in many places because it was contrary to Puritan beliefs, and Mr Syddall was to take baptisms and burials for the family in the years to come.

Hipswell Hall.  [By David Rogers CC BY-SA 2.0]

Scots soldiers at Hipswell & other perils

Unfortunately, Hipswell was much nearer to Richmond, and the town was now garrisoned by the Allies – the castle had been partly in ruins for a hundred years – and Scottish soldiers were everywhere.  And they were billeted on the locals.  Both armies always saved money by doing this because it meant the troops were kept at the civilians' expense.  This was a nuisance and a burden to everybody, but especially distressing if the householder had supported the other side.

For the next year and a half, Mrs Wandesford was burdened sometimes by Scots soldiers and sometimes by Parliamentarians.  She was very short of funds and she had to borrow to cover the cost of keeping her own family, making her monthly payment to the Allies and paying for the upkeep of a troop of Scots horse.  

She wasn't only bothered by worries over money – she also had to keep her pretty 19 year old daughter safe.  So she never allowed the captains and commanders to live in the house with the family.  At last there came one Captain Innes, who commanded a troop stationed at Richmond.

One day, he walked unexpectedly into the house.  Alice was in her mother's chamber when he walked boldly into the room to see Mrs Wandesford, and she had no chance to hide before he saw her.  When he did, he became very determined to stay in the house, promising he would keep to his own quarters out of their way ...  Finally they managed to get rid of him.  All the while Alice was in a tremble of fear because he looked so wild and bloody looking a man and he reminded her of the rebel lords in Ireland.

Captain Innes went back to Richmond and he told Alice's aunt Mrs Norton that he would give all he was worth if she would procure Alice to be his wife, offering £4,000 and saying that his colonel Lord Adair would come with him to speak for him.  Mrs Norton replied that Alice was not to be obtained by him and that she was sure that Alice had given him no encouragement, because she was resolved not to marry.  Then she sent a private message to Alice to warn her that the men were coming and that she should get out of his way.  

Mrs Wandesford was horrified.  She was afraid that they would burn the house down and she sent Alice out of the house to find somewhere to hide.  Very frightened, Alice ran into Richmond and hid herself with a good old woman who was one of the Wandesfords' tenants.  When night came and she could be sure that the men's visit was over, she went home.  All the while, Mrs Wandesford had been trying to placate them by bringing out the best of her provisions, assuring them that she had no idea where Alice was, and sending servants out to look for her.  Captain Innes was enraged.  

At about this time her mother wasn't very well, and so Alice had been sitting up a good deal with her and writing letters for her.  Becoming anxious for Alice's own health, Mrs Wandesford used to send her out in the company of her maids to get some fresh air.  So Alice would take a walk out to Lows – probably low-lying pasture land – and come back refreshed.  One day she was stopped by one of the Scots soldiers.  He didn't want to alarm her too much but he had an urgent warning for her:  

Dear mistress, I pray do not think much if I desire you, for God's sake, not to go out with the maids to Lows.

Alice knew the man – she had treated his hand when it had been badly cut.  He had come to return the favour.  He warned her that Captain Innes, cursing and swearing, planned that very night to come with a great number of men and catch her and take her away by force.  Deeply grateful for this rescue from rape and ruin, she gave the man many thanks and rewarded him for his trouble.  And after that she stayed at home like a prisoner, waiting for Captain Innes to leave Richmondshire.

In June 1645, when the time came for the Scots troops to go, some marching south to Doncaster and others leaving for Scotland to fight against the Scottish Royalists, Captain Innes sent – in a boasting manner, Alice said – to Mrs Wandesford for his pay.  She sent him all that she owed him, but he wouldn't take it.  He demanded double.  She wouldn't pay.  So one Sunday morning he arrived with his company at Hipswell, threatening to break down the doors of the Hall, and sending his men to drive off Mrs Wandesford's cattle.  As he swore and raged, Alice went up onto the leads – the roof – to see what was happening to the cattle.  Looking up, he mistook her for her mother and he cursed her bitterly, wishing that the Devil would blow her blind and into the air.  She had been a thorn in his heel, but he would be a thorn in her side.  And so his men drove off the cattle – a delicate breed of Mrs Wandesford's own – to Richmond.

Mrs Wandesford took the pay that she owed him and set off for Richmond herself.  She went to St Nicholas, the house of her sister-in-law Mrs Norton, where she could find the Scottish commander, General David Leslie.  When she told him the story, he took the money and said he would make Captain Innes accept it.  When Captain Innes left for Scotland he swore that, if the Scots returned, they would burn both the women and all they had.

Sir David Leslie (1600-82)

And besides these dangers, there were natural perils.  

The bubonic plague was close at hand.  In November 1644, it broke out in Richmond and it lasted a year.  About 700 people died.  Unnecessary gatherings and visits to other people's houses were banned, and in muddy and damp weather the people were told to keep their doors and windows shut.  People left the town if they could.  Hipswell escaped the infection, and every day Mrs Wandesford gave out food and money to beggars whose livelihoods had been lost in the outbreak. 

At this time, after the Battle of Marston Moor and the defeat of the Royalists in the North, Alice's sister Catherine and her family were living at Middleham Castle under the protection of Edward, Lord Loftus.  

Sir Thomas was there too, as Alice remembered.  He had commanded a Mashamshire regiment for the King and must have been taken by the Parliamentarians at Marston Moor because it is said that he was imprisoned for a long while.  Lord Loftus, on the other hand, was a Parliamentarian.  Sir Thomas will have known Lord Loftus and his family not only as neighbours but also from his own brief time in Dublin – Loftus's father was Adam Loftus, who had been Lord Chancellor of Ireland until his career was destroyed and he was ruined by Strafford.  Then he had returned to his small property at Coverham and Edward, who had been imprisoned by Strafford for a short while, married the heiress to nearby Middleham and its castle.  Perhaps Sir Thomas and Lord Loftus had always been personal friends – or perhaps it was simply that Loftus was extending a courtesy to a fellow member of the local gentry – and of course Catherine would be a welcome guest as the daughter of a man who didn't make enemies, unlike his friend Strafford – at any rate, there they were, safe inside a castle that Lord Loftus was garrisoning for Parliament at his own expense.  And there she had another baby.

Middleham Castle

Alice was asked to be godmother and so she set out from Hipswell for the baptism.  She was in good health, very hearty and strong, and when she came to the River Ure at Middleham she didn't hesitate to take her horse across rather than disappoint Catherine.  So she followed her mother's servant onto the causeway, which was marked by stoupes – standing posts.  But the river was deeper than they expected.  

She kept up her horse as well as she could but when they were gone so far that she could not turn back, the river proved past riding and she realised that the mare couldn't find the bottom.  With a fervent prayer, when she saw that the mare was swimming, Alice gave her the reins and all the help that she could, and she gripped the mare's mane.  The mare bore up her head and swam – about an eighth of a mile, Alice remembered – and they were saved.  When she reached the castle, she will have been soaked to the skin.

Note

Alice refers to the "river near Midlam, called Swale" – which is a tributary of the Ure.  But it must have been the Ure that she needed to cross because that's the river at Middleham.

Next: 9. Royalist disaster & private grief: 1645-7 

7. The Siege of York & Battle of Marston Moor: 1644

 Mrs Wandesford could now turn her mind to her sons' education.  

She need have no worries for her eldest, George.  He was happy and safe in France completing his education with Mr George Anderson, an excellent man and a wise scholar.  (He was also a Scot who was zealous for the Church of England, which must explain why he was an expatriate).  But fifteen-year-old Christopher was causing her a great deal of concern.  He was still suffering terribly from the fit of the spleen – the depression – that had gripped him since his father's funeral.  His torments, Alice remembered, were dreadful to witness.  Mrs Wandesford had exhausted every possible cure and the family's tender care had been unavailing.  But now she could send him to the famous physician Dr John Bathurst, who was in York. 

Dr John Bathurst (1607-59)

So in November 1643, Christopher was sent to York, where he was successfully treated by Dr Bathurst and where he could go to school.  At the same time, his younger brother John began to attend the Grammar School at Bedale.  Life looked very promising.

Unfortunately – 

On 15 September 1643 the King and the Irish rebels had signed a one year truce.  The King could now transfer troops from Ireland to England.  Not only that – he was planning to send Irish Catholic forces to Scotland to join with Royalists there.  But the very idea of Catholic forces was anathema to many in Scotland and England.  The Parliamentarians were now looking at defeat so they came together against their common enemy with the Scottish Covenanters.  On 25 September they signed their agreement – it was called the Solemn League and Covenant.  It was a military alliance and a religious pact.  The Covenanters intended England to have the same form of religion as the Scots.

On 19 January 1644, the Army of the Covenant under Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven marched into England.  On 28 January, the Scottish advance guard was at Morpeth.  The garrison at Newcastle was inadequate – the Marquess of Newcastle led his men out of York to reinforce it, reaching there on 2 February with only hours to spare before the Scots arrived.

Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven (1581-1661)

For two months the armies manoeuvred against each other in Northumberland and County Durham, but on 12 April the Royalists were forced to evacuate Durham and Lumley Castle.  The Marquess of Newcastle aimed to make a stand at Piercebridge.

During the winter months, Mrs Wandesford had been considering her plans.  Friends advised her to move to York, where both Christopher and John could get an excellent education – and the prospect of a social life must have appealed to her, for herself and for Alice.  She had made up her mind to the plan, packed up her goods and they were on their way when they met with a messenger from a friend, Thomas Danby of South Cave.  He had sent them urgent word that they must turn back because York would soon be under siege.  This must have been just after 11 April, when Parliamentary forces had stormed and taken Selby and York was laid open to attack.  One of the commanders, Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton Hall in the West Riding, wrote to a friend, 

The blow has made us Masters of the Field in Yorkshire, God grant we may maintain it; and then nothing can hinder us to Teese-side.

So Mrs Wandesford turned back.  She and her two children went to Kirklington, where the Revd Robert Dagget took them into his home until the Hall could be ready for their occupation.  But sixteen-year-old Christopher was in York.

When the Marquess of Newcastle heard of the loss of Selby, he had to leave Piercebridge and march south to reinforce York.  The Scots were coming south behind him.  On 14 April, they occupied Darlington.  The next day they were at Northallerton, where one Royalist regiment resisted them – a forlorn hope.  

The Marquess of Newcastle reached York on 18 April.  The city's Roman and mediaeval walls had been repaired and strengthened in 1642 and an outer ring of earthworks and forts built beyond the walls.  Cannon were mounted on Bootham Bar, Walmgate Bar, Monkgate Bar and Micklegate Bar, and on the castle itself.  The garrison was well provisioned and fully manned.  

On 22 April, the Army of Both Kingdoms – the Parliamentarians and and their Scottish allies – was at York.  The formidable city was now besieged and Christopher Wandesford was inside the walls.

York Castle in 1644

Notes

Dr John Bathurst was the founder of the Bathurst family fortunes.  They owned lead mines in Arkengarthdale and held the manor of Skutterskelfe for a hundred years from about 1659.  The Bathurst Charity is still active in Hutton Rudby.

Alice puts the Battle of Marston Moor as happening on the same day as they were turned back by the message from Mr Thomas Danby, but it's clear from the context that this was not the case. 

George Wandesford & the Battle of Marston Moor: July 1644

On 1 July 1644, the King's gifted young nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine outwitted the Allied generals and raised the York siege.  The Allies had concentrated their troops on Marston Moor and Hessay Moor, the uncultivated common land to the west of York between Long Marston and Tockwith.  

Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82)

On 2 July at nine in the morning they learned that the Prince's army was approaching them.

There were now five armies at York.  On the Royalist side, there were the 18,000 men of the armies of the Prince and of the Marquess of Newcastle.  On the Allied side, there were 28,000 men made up of Lord Leven's Army of the Covenant, Lord Fairfax's Northern Association and the Earl of Manchester's Eastern Association.  Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell with his regiment of Ironsides formed part of the Eastern Association.  The coming battle – the Battle of Marston Moor – was to be the largest ever fought on English soil.

It was at this moment that 20 year old George Wandesworth arrived on the scene.

George had been obliged to come back from France, hoping to gather some funds from his Yorkshire estates because there was no income coming out of Ireland.  He had been to see his uncle Sir Edward Osborne at Kiveton, which lies about 10 miles east of Sheffield, and was now on his way home.  He and his uncle will have assumed that his best route would lie between Wetherby, which the Allies had taken some months ago, and the besiegers around York.  But Prince Rupert's rapid approach and the manoeuvres of the armies confounded his plans and he found himself among troops preparing for battle – and uncomfortably close to straggling parties of Allied soldiers.  He was glad to come upon his cousin Colonel Edmund Norton's troop of dragoons.  

When he realised what was going to happen, he decided he must go back into York and find his brother Christopher – and in the second lucky coincidence of his day he met young Kit riding out of the town with some other boys.  They were naively going off to see the battle.  A fine brotherly exchange must have taken place before George took his brother up behind him and set off home.  

And then his luck ran out.  He had been seen and recognised in the company of his cousin Edmund Norton and his behaviour was thought suspicious.  A party of Scots horse set off after them.  It was near midnight when George came at last to Kirklington.  He made his way quietly to the gate of the Hall by a back way, not wanting to attract notice by going through the village.  It must have created quite a stir in the household when he and Kit appeared.  

Behind them on Marston Moor, the Allies attacked at half past seven in the evening just as a thunderstorm broke and the Royalists had decided there would be no battle.  It was all over in two hours.  Thomas Danby of South Cave died that day, Alice said, shot to death with a cannon bullet, cut off by the midst of his body as he sat his horse.  The last stand was that of the Marquess of Newcastle's own Northerners, his Northumbrian Whitecoats, who refused quarter and died where they stood.  

Over 4,000 Royalists were dead, and about 300 Allies.  The Allied victory, won for them by Oliver Cromwell's cavalry, had not been inevitable but it was complete.  Two weeks later, the city of York surrendered.  The defeated Royalists were able, under the terms of the surrender, to march out with their arms and colours, on their way to Richmond and Carlisle – but they didn't all get there, because most of the men quickly deserted.   The gates of Micklegate Bar were opened and the victorious Allied armies came into York.   Its churches and the stained glass of the Minster were preserved from pillage and destruction by order of the Allied commanders who now held York for Parliament, the Yorkshiremen Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas Fairfax.  

Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-71)

This was the end of Royalist control of the North and the beginning of Oliver Cromwell's reputation as a military commander.  The Marquess of Newcastle left for Holland – his fortune had been spent in the King's course and he was unable, he said, to endure the laughter of the court.  Prince Rupert and the remaining Northern cavalry rode out of York on 4 July to Richmond and from there to Lancashire.  

On the coast, the strategically important Mulgrave Castle had been seized by the Royalists in 1642 – now Parliament retook it and used it as a prison.  At Stockton-on-Tees, which the King had been allowed to keep in his agreement with the Scots when they occupied County Durham, the castle's poorly paid and supplied garrison surrendered to the Scots without a fight on 24 July 1644.   

Some 25 miles to the north of York, Helmsley Castle was still held for the King.  In September it was besieged by Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax himself, who defeated an attempt at rescue by Royalist forces from Knaresborough.  In November, the food ran out and the Royalist commander negotiated a surrender.  He was allowed to march his men off to join the forces holding Scarborough, while Sir Thomas ordered the castle at Helmsley to be slighted – the curtain walls and the east tower were broken down so that the ruin could not be garrisoned again.  Knaresborough castle itself surrendered after a six month siege – like Helmsley and Mulgrave castles, it too was slighted by Parliament.  Stockton castle was destroyed.  Sir Thomas Fairfax was badly wounded at Helmsley by a musket ball that broke his shoulder, but the Royalists who hoped that he would die of his injuries were to be disappointed.  His forces moved on to besiege Scarborough and its castle.  That was to be a long and bloody business.

Helmsley Castle.  [By Barkmatter CC BY-SA 3.0]

More than sixty miles to the north, the city of Newcastle had been holding out against the Scots, the North's old enemy, since they crossed the border.  After York fell, Newcastle had no chance – there was no possibility of a relief force.  In October, the western part of the walls were broken down by artillery bombardment and mines and the Scottish Covenanters fought their way into the city, the Royalist forces retreating into the Castle Keep.  One of the Scots described the horrors – the desperate courage on both sides, the thundering cannons roaring, the thousands of musket balls flying, the clangour and carvings of swords, the pushing of pike, the wailing of women, the carcasses of men like dead dogs in the streets.  The situation was hopeless and the Royalists surrendered.  

The Scots now controlled the Tyne and they had always been able to use the port of Sunderland on the River Wear – the men who ran Sunderland were Puritans and hostile to the King, and Sunderland had been on the side of the Covenanters from the beginning.

Next: 8. Mrs Wandesford moves to Hipswell: 1644-1645