5. War in Yorkshire: 1642-1643

In Chester, the Wandesfords found a welcome and were treated with kindness and friendship by the gentry families.  Within the strong walls of a city well-stocked with muskets, garrisoned by Royalist troops and with armed watchmen night and day guarding the gates, Mrs Wandesford must have felt she had reached a safe haven for her family and especially for her convalescent daughter and troubled son Christopher.  Refugees like themselves from Ireland were coming into the city, and lawlessness in Cheshire was driving people there, but Sir Thomas Danby was able to relieve her of the care of her grandsons and her twenty-year-old son George was safely in France with his tutor.  

She had many anxieties to deal with.  Besides the health of Alice and Christopher, there were matters from her husband's estates in an increasingly chaotic Ireland to settle, and she was short of money because rents from Yorkshire weren't arriving.  She didn't like to accept the offers of help from friends in Chester, but she had the invaluable support of her brother Sir Edward Osborne.  

Sir Edward Osborne (1596-1647)

He, poor man, had never recovered from the death of his eldest boy Edward in 1638.  Sir Edward had taken the place of Strafford as President of the Council of the North and was living at York Manor in York, the official residence, at the time.  A violent storm brought down a chimneystack which crashed through the roof, killing 17 year old Edward and sparing 6 year old Thomas only because, when the disaster happened, he was looking under a table for his pet cat.  Now Sir Edward was busy as a Commissioner of Array for the King, charged with mustering troops.

York Manor (now King's Manor).  [Tim Green CC by 2.0]

Outside Chester the situation was bad.  

The Wandesfords knew that Scottish troops were no longer in easy reach of their Yorkshire estates – they had left England in August – but now dreadful news kept coming in from Ireland of cruelties and massacres.  Even more appalling versions of the same news, of much larger numbers of Protestants dead, of rapes and tortures and murdered babies, came from the London printers and propagandists.  Anglicans like the Wandesfords were shocked to hear of the desecration of the cathedrals of Winchester and Chichester by Parliamentary troops who smashed the stained glass and the memorials.  Alice shared the opinions of everyone she knew – the King's Scottish and English opponents were men who had wantonly tired of a lawful and peaceable government, the Irish nakedly thirsted after the blood and lives of the English, the religious grievances of the Calvinists and Catholics were nothing but pretence, and the Earl of Strafford was a martyr.  

Yorkshire and the Battle of Piercebridge: 1642

Beyond the walls of Chester – and even within the walls – conflicting loyalties were dividing families, towns and villages.  

London grew too dangerous for the King and he set up his Court in York on 19 March 1642.  The city found itself the capital of the kingdom for six months, housing foreign ambassadors, nobles, the important men of state and a committee sent by Parliament to keep an eye on the King.  

Rival Puritan and Royalist groups fought each other in the streets.  Terrifying stories of massacres in Ireland began to reach Yorkshire and wild fears of Catholic Irish invasion took root.  Having two Catholic priests executed – the head of Father Lockwood, aged nearly 90, was put on Bootham Bar, and the head of young Edmund Catterick of Carlton near Richmond, on Micklegate Bar – couldn't convince doubters that Protestantism was safe in the King's hands.  And it was no use the King decreeing that no Catholics could join his army – at the muster, anyone could see that nearly half the Royalist colonels were Catholic.  Recruitment for Parliament surged among the lower classes in the West Riding.  As time passed and the hope of finding an agreement between the two sides faded, the city authorities began to strengthen York's defences.  

On 22 August 1642, the King marched southward and raised his standard at Nottingham Castle.  He was now at war with Parliament.  

On 23 September, the Wandesfords will have seen the King being enthusiastically welcomed into Chester with great civic ceremony.  He was there because it was an important strategic stronghold, the main port for Ireland and the gateway to Royalist North Wales and he spent a few nights in the city, reviewing the troops of his supporters, before moving on to Wrexham.  A month later, his forces and the Parliamentarians met in battle for the first time.  It was at Edgehill, a dozen miles south-east of Stratford-upon-Avon, and both sides claimed victory.

And what about Yorkshire, where Alice's sister Catherine must now have been in great anxiety for her husband, who had gone to join the King's army?

Hull was held for Parliament by Sir John Hotham and Scarborough by the Whitby landowner Sir Hugh Cholmley, and the independently-minded weavers and small farmers of the West Riding were mostly Puritans, but the North Riding was for the King and the few Parliamentarians there had a poor time of it.  They included men like the Earl of Mulgrave, the three sons of Sir David Foulis of Ingleby – their father had spent seven years in prison because of Strafford – and their cousins Thomas and James Chaloner of Guisborough.  The Robinsons of Rokeby near Greta Bridge were ardent Parliamentarians.  John Dodsworth of Thornton Watlass, a kinsman of the Wandesfords, was raising a company of dragoons for Parliament.

Parliamentarian captains met at Bedale in October 1642.  They tried to organise the Trained Bands and they held a public meeting in Richmond to raise funds.  But the fund-raising wasn't very successful and the Trained Bands weren't at all keen.  Very many people wanted to keep out of this argument and in some places communities made neutrality pacts with each other.  Before long, force and threats were being used to get recruits.  Hugh Cholmley of Tunstall near Catterick first tricked his neighbours into mustering for his son's troop of Royalist horse and then forced them to stay in the troop, threatening he would have them hanged and their houses burned if they didn't.

Both King and Parliament needed control of the crossing places on the River Tees.  The Royalists were bringing in supplies of arms from the Continent into the River Tyne.  They were needed for York, which was threatened from the west and from the Parliamentarian ports of Hull and Scarborough to the east.

William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, was the Royalist commander-in-chief in the North East.  His army of about 2,000 horse and dragoons, together with 4,000 foot soldiers and ten pieces of cannonry reached the narrow mediaeval bridge at Piercebridge on 1 December 1642.  On the other bank of the Tees was Captain John Hotham with about 120 horse, 400 foot and two small cannons.  

William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle

An advance guard of Royalist dragoons and foot under 36 year old Colonel Sir Thomas Howard forced its way onto the bridge and fierce fighting followed.  Finally unable to hold the bridge, Hotham withdrew his men towards Knaresborough with, he said, only three wounded.  The attackers will have suffered more in their onslaught on the bridge and their leader Sir Thomas Howard was killed.  He was buried the next day at High Coniscliffe while the Marquess of Newcastle and his forces marched on to York.   

Battles at Guisborough and Yarm: 1643

The loss of Piercebridge and the arrival in York of the supplies was an enormous blow to the Parliamentarian gentry of the North Riding.  Their goods and estates were confiscated and they couldn't help their friends in the West Riding because the men of the Trained Bands, who had turned up so reluctantly, simply melted away.  Sir Henry Foulis of Ingleby reported that a Cleveland foot regiment that had mustered 500 men at Yarm had rapidly dwindled to 80 at the approach of the enemy.  

Meanwhile, someone the Wandesfords had known in Dublin had returned home to his estates at Hemlington, just south of the Tees.  This was 32 year old Guilford Slingsby, who had been Strafford's loyal secretary to the end and who had since been secretary to the young Prince of Wales in Holland.  

Slingsby had no military experience himself, so he had brought back with him a few mercenaries to train the troops he intended to raise for the King.  They were needed to protect the arms convoys crossing the Tees and to threaten the Parliamentarians in Scarborough.

Sir Hugh Cholmley in Scarborough learned that his distant kinsman Slingsby had orders from the Marquess of Newcastle to occupy Whitby – which was his own territory, where he had his great house beside the ruins of the ancient Abbey.  Picking up two troops of dragoons in Malton, he took his men on the hard, wintry march across the moors towards Guisborough.  He had with him 80 horse, 170 dragoons and 130 foot – some 380 men in all.

On 16 January 1643, Cholmley's men came down from the moors.  Slingsby's forces – some 100 horse and 400 foot, mostly raw recruits – were so confident that they came about a mile out of Guisborough to meet the Parliamentary troops and they placed their musketeers under the hedges in positions of advantage.  They were able to hold their ground for a couple of hours but they were gradually forced back and defeated.  Slingsby, badly wounded by artillery fire, was taken prisoner.  The surgeons tried to save him, amputating both his legs above the knee, but he died three days later.  He was buried in York Minster.  

When Sir Hugh Cholmley, who had moderate religious views and was becoming ever more unhappy with his choice of allegiance, reported the battle to Parliament, he wrote

I am forced to draw my sword not only against my countrymen but many near friends and allies some of which I know both to be well affected in religion and lovers of their liberties.

He withdrew his men to Scarborough, and he ordered 400 foot, 150 horse and two cannons to Yarm to hold the narrow bridge over the Tees.  

A few weeks later, a very large convoy of 120 wagons and 140 packhorses, guarded by perhaps 2,000 men, was on its way south to the Marquess of Newcastle.  The Parliamentary forces at the bridge had no chance.  On 1 February 1643 the Royalists fell on them and in a very brief time most of them were taken.  The Battle of Yarm was soon over.  The prisoners were taken to Durham Castle, where they were badly treated.  The Royalist convoy left engineers at Yarm to stop future Parliamentarian attempts on the bridge – they broke down its northern arch and put a wooden drawbridge in its place.  

Within weeks, Sir Hugh Cholmley had changed sides.  The King now held Scarborough.  On 30 June, the Marquess of Newcastle won a victory at the Battle of Adwalton Moor, five miles from Bradford.  The North was now almost completely Royalist.

6. Chester: smallpox, siege and travelling home: 1643 

3. Dublin & War: 1629-1639

Until the Duke of Buckingham – who was all-powerful as King James' favourite and then as King Charles' adviser – was assassinated in 1628 by an army officer with a grievance, Mr Wandesford and Sir Thomas Wentworth had opposed him and the King.  

Duke of Buckingham: 1625

They had stood against King Charles when he tried to get round the need to have taxation voted for in Parliament by raising Forced Loans – imprisonment without trial was the penalty for those who, like Sir Thomas, refused to obliged the King with a loan – and by using martial law to force ordinary householders to lodge his soldiers and sailors in their own homes and keep them in food and clothes.  Mr Wandesford played an active part in the opposition to the King.  But by 1629 the rift between the King and Parliament widened to a gulf and positions were hardening on both sides.  The King was already viewed with great distrust and now it was feared by some that the bishops he had appointed were working to undermine the Church of England and move it towards the Church of Rome.  

If common ground couldn't be found between King and Parliament – and it was clear that it could not – then the time had come for men to make decisions.  Which side should have the upper hand?  The increasingly Puritan House of Commons or the intransigent King?  For many it was an agonising choice – a man might be as repelled by the aims and the religious position of the Puritan faction as he was by the King's past political manoeuvres and his slippery tactics.  But a choice had to be made.  Mr Wandesford and Sir Thomas Wentworth chose the King.

Now began the period known as Charles I's Personal Rule, when he governed without a Parliament from the spring of 1629 to the spring of 1640.  But it was not the end of the two friends' public life.  With the Duke of Buckingham assassinated in 1628, the King needed a new adviser and it would soon be Sir Thomas Wentworth.  He was made Viscount Wentworth and President of the Council of the North.  So he was able to help his friend to office and Mr Wandesford became the Deputy Bailiff of Richmondshire, Deputy Constable of Richmond and Middleham Castles and Master of the King's forests.  

Wentworth was by now a formidable public figure, much in the King's favour, but his gift for making enemies only grew.  It was particularly on display as President of the Council of the North.  Among the enemies were two Cleveland landowners – Sir David Foulis of Ingleby Greenhow, an old Scottish courtier of King James, and Sir Thomas Layton of Sexhow.  They clashed with Wentworth over a cynical ploy by the King to raise money by fining gentlemen who could have attended his coronation and been knighted, but who had not done so.  Sir Thomas Layton found himself in 1633 in the frightening position of being brought before the King's Court of Star Chamber.  He escaped lightly, but Sir David Foulis ended up in the Fleet Prison for seven years.  His sons would be no friends of Wentworth or of the King.  

To Dublin

And now Alice's life took a very different course.  When she was eight, the family moved to Dublin.  Her father had become one of the great men in the viceregal court, one of the small group of close advisers around Wentworth, now the Lord Deputy of Ireland.  

Some of Wentworth's friends had been against him going to Ireland.  They thought the post was a poisoned chalice and one he should refuse.  It was a job in which it was almost impossible to succeed and being away from Court left his enemies free to plot against him.  Perhaps Mr Wandesford thought it was a bad idea himself – he was always cautious and moderate where Wentworth was bold and dictatorial.  However, Wentworth accepted and the King agreed that he could take Mr Wandesford with him, to fill the legal and administrative post of Master of the Rolls.  

In July 1633, Wentworth, his family and advisers left for Ireland.  Mr Wandesford took with him his ten-year-old son George and his young son-in-law Thomas Danby.  Mrs Wandesford stayed behind with the younger children Alice and Christopher and they all travelled to Dublin some months later, together with baby John who had been born in London in the meantime.  The family settled into their new home in Damas Street – a very elegant house, according to a descendant, in a very wholesome Air, with a good Orchard and Garden leading down to the Water Side.  

Speed's map of Dublin in 1610

The small walled city of Dublin was a fraction of the size of London, though it had grown in size and prosperity since this map was drawn by Speed in 1610.  It had its own university, Trinity College, founded in 1592 under the encouragement of Queen Elizabeth to bring Ireland into the world of European learning and to strengthen Protestantism on the island.  It soon had a theatre – Wentworth dearly loved going to a play and he encouraged his children's tutor John Ogilby to set up Ireland's first custom-built theatre in Werburgh Street.  He had great plans for Ireland.

Life in Ireland

Six happy years followed for Alice.  She had the company of Wentworth's daughters as she learned her lessons – Anne was younger than she was by eighteen months and Arabella by four and half years – and her education was of the best.  On her father's orders she learned to speak and write French, to sing, dance, and play on the lute and theorboe, a 14-string lute with a long neck.  She was taught the arts of huswifery that her mother thought suitable for a young lady of her birth – such skills as silk embroidery, making sweetmeats, and making decorative leaves and flowers by gumming together layers of silk and cutting them into shapes.  

Wentworth's daughters, Anne & Arabella

Genteel indoor physical exercise was included, on a swing – she and the Wentworth girls used to "swing by the arms" as the ladies did for recreation and exercise, and Alice found it did her good.  Until, that is, one day at the house of Sir Robert Meredyth, when the girls wearied of the game and a page boy was instructed to push Alice.  Alice did not like this idea but could not get off the swing in time before he came over and gave it a violent shove – which resulted in her losing her grip and falling forward onto the floor onto her chin and being knocked quite silly for a while.  Sir Robert Meredyth was a member of the Privy Council; Alice's life – and that of her mother and brothers – was spent in government circles among the Protestant English rulers of a Catholic island.  

Beyond those circles lay people that Alice hardly knew or never encountered.  There were the Old English, descendants of the Norman lords who had conquered the island centuries earlier – they were still mostly Catholic.  And there were the Irish that they had defeated, also Catholic, excluded from their ancient lands and from civic life.  And there were Protestant incomers.  King James, to subjugate Ireland, had begun the Plantation of the province of Ulster, importing Protestant, English-speaking colonists from England and especially Scotland to settle there.  Wentworth, Mr Wandesford and the other close advisers believed that planting Protestants in other areas of Ireland – on land claimed by quibbles and legal loopholes to be the King's – was the way forward to a productive, modern country.  It would civilise the Irish.  Discontent simmered.

Wentworth's aim was to ensure the King had absolute power over Ireland, to bring order and prosperity to the country, to bring its Calvinist Protestant church in line with the King's High Church Anglicanism, and for Catholicism to dwindle away.  His goal was for Ireland was to be as like England as possible – but dependent on England.  He was ruthlessly efficient – everyone was glad when he put an end to piracy – but he and his policies were far from popular.  He was high-handed and his short temper was made much worse whenever he was in pain with that excruciating complaint, the gout. 

Alice's time was not only passed in the city.  In 1635 Mr Wandesford bought the manor and castle of Kildare, some twenty miles from Dublin, and for a couple of years it was the family's country house.  Perhaps it was here that Alice learned to ride.  It was while living here in 1636 that Mr Wandesford wrote a book of advice for his son and heir George, for the "regulating of his whole life", with instructions on such vital points as what to study and how to choose a wife, clearly setting out the universal understanding that marriage for the gentry was a very practical matter.  The greater a wife's fortune, the greater would be George's own comfort and the gratitude of his descendants.

On one terrifying occasion which Alice remembered vividly – it was on 6 October 1636 – they had driven out of Dublin to go to Kildare.  Mrs Wandesford, Alice and the three boys were inside the coach and Mr Wandesford and his men rode alongside.  They came to a narrow place where the riders had to fall back.  On one side of their road was a deep river – the Liffey? – and on the other a dry bank.  Was there no space for the coach?  Did the ground begin to give way?  The riders watched with horror as the coach began to slip – but the coachman, with great presence of mind, forced it to overturn against the bank.  Some of the family inside were hurt, but they escaped plunging into the river.  

The following year, Mr Wandesford gave up the estate to his great friend Wentworth, who had taken a liking to it.  Splendour and ceremonial were part of his plans for imposing royal authority on Ireland and he began to build a viceregal residence there, at Jigginstown near Naas.  Mr Wandesford had already begun to plan his own plantation – a new town in County Kilkenny, nearly sixty miles from Dublin.  He bought the estate of Castlecomer on which he began, with his usual efficiency and energy, to build a model market town with a new church, manufacturies and collieries, using the labour and expertise of artisans who came over from Yorkshire with their families.  For his own family he built a house and enclosed a deer park.  Besides all this work and his other financial plans in Ireland, he was busy in Parliament and as Master of the Rolls, and he deputised when Wentworth went to England.  His family can't have seen much of him.

1639:  shipwreck & war

The year 1639, when Alice was thirteen, was marked for her forever by escape from shipwreck and drowning.  She had travelled to England with her mother, who was suffering from the stone – bladder or kidney stones – and had decided to take the waters at St Vincent's Well, just outside Bristol.  In late August they set off back to Ireland, bringing with them Alice's nephews from Yorkshire, eight-year-old Thomas and seven-year-old Christopher.  They were the eldest sons of Alice's sister Catherine, now Lady Danby – during Thomas Danby's short stay in Dublin in 1633 he had been knighted by the Lord Deputy – and the boys were coming to Ireland for their education.  When the party reached the quay at Neston on the River Dee estuary, ten miles from Chester, they found they were kept ashore for a week by contrary winds and a great storm during which five ships were cast upon the shore.  One ship was so close to the house in which they were staying that its mainmast nearly touched the window.  

At last, on 22 August, they were able to go aboard one of the King's new ships, only to find that, within an hour of sailing, they were driven by a storm miles beyond Dublin to Skerries.  The anchor was lowered but for ten hours they were in peril until a Mr Hubert sent out a fishing boat to help.  And now Alice was nearly drowned.  She was somehow caught by the cable stretched between the boat and the ship and was half overboard when a seaman, coming up onto deck, saw her and pulled her back just in time.  At last, at eight o'clock in the evening, they were all brought safely ashore to Skerries where Mr Hubert and his family made them most comfortable until the next day when Mr Wandesford and some friends came out by coach from Dublin to bring them home.

Charles I by Van Dyck: 1635 or 1636

Mrs Wandesford's illness and the shipwreck were just a part of Mr Wandesford's troubles.  In 1638, King Charles' attempts to force his own brand of religion upon Scotland had ended in crisis.  The Scots created a National Covenant, an agreement signed by the people across the country, opposing the King's new prayer book and the existence of bishops.  So the King had begun the year 1639 by announcing his intention of raising an army against his Scottish kingdom.  

At this time, there was no standing army – just the Trained Bands, local militias made up of householders and their sons, who were obliged to turn out when summoned for training and action.  Their effectiveness was improved by the many men who had served in the religious wars in Europe.  The cavalry were the shock troops.  The foot – the infantry – was made up of pikemen, each with his ash pole, which could be up to 18 feet long and was tipped with a 2 foot long iron spear, and musketeers.  Dragoons rode light ponies and dismounted to fight on foot.  The ordnance – artillery – was of a range of sizes, from the large siege guns to the lighter and more easily transportable field guns.  

Battle was a fearsome, bloody business of hand-to-hand fighting.  The musketeers would stand doggedly firing at each other at point blank range.  The pikemen would advance, their weapons at shoulder height, until the opposing sides were jabbing at each other.  Then they would lock in the Push of Pike, two solidly massed bodies of men each attempting to force the other to give way.  The cavalry would come in with their pistols, short muskets and swords, firing, hacking, slashing.

Pikemen by John Beardsworth

By the end of March 1639, Charles and his troops had reached York.  On 30 May he was at Berwick with an army mostly made up of raw conscripts and the Trained Bands of the northern border counties.  When it became clear that he wouldn't be able to defeat the Covenanter army, he decided to negotiate.  But he was still determined to succeed by force and he summoned Wentworth to England.  

Notes:

The story of Sir Thomas Layton's clash with Sir Thomas Wentworth is told at Sir Thomas Layton finds himself before the Star Chamber 1633    

Damas Street is now Dame Street – it also appears as Damask Street and Dames Street [Wikipedia entry] 

 4. War in the Three Kingdoms: 1640 

Celebrations of the tenantry in Ingleby Greenhow, 23 April 1850

York Herald, 27 April 1850

REJOICINGS AT INGLEBY GREENHOW

It was a day of gaiety and festivity long to be remembered at Ingleby Manor, on Tuesday last, the 23rd inst., in celebration of the marriage of Miss Foulis, of Ingleby Manor, to the Hon. Mr Phillip Sidney, only son of Lord de Lisle, of Penshurst, in Kent, which took place in London on that day.  

At two o'clock in the afternoon, in a commodious rustic tent, beautifully fitted up and festooned with evergreens and bloom [sic], about seventy gentlemen, including the tenant farmers on the estates, sat down to a substantial dinner with fine brown October and punch, served up in first-rate style by Widow Hunt, of the Village Inn.  John Peirson, Esq., of Thornton Fields, presided, supported on the left by John H Handyside, Esq., of Stokesley, on the right, by Thomas Garbutt, Esq., of Yarm; the vice-chair being occupied by Mr Henry Chapman of Hutton Rudby.  

Tea was provided at the Village Inn, for the wives and daughters of the tenantry, which was most tastefully set out, and the room chastely ornamented with wreaths of evergreens flowers, and orange blossom, a huge bride's cake taking command in the centre of the table.  Afterwards a ball took place, which was kept up with great spirit.  

It must not be omitted that a fatted ox was slaughtered, and an ample supply of beef given to every poor family in the villages of Ingleby and Battersby so that the aged and infirm, as well as the young and healthy, might each and all rejoice on this auspicious event.

Widow Hunt of the Village Inn was Mrs Mary Hunt, then aged 52.  In the census of 1851 she stated that she was born in Hutton, and I think this means Hutton Rudby.  She will have been assisted by her daughter Mary, aged 22.  She also had a 15 year old son, John.

John Peirson was a land agent; Thornton Fields farm is off the Redcar Road, near Guisborough.  

John Hepburn Handyside was a surgeon in Stokesley; he married Hannah Coates, daughter of the solicitor James Coates in Stokesley in 1845.

Thomas Garbutt was a Yarm solicitor.

Mr Henry Chapman of Hutton Rudby was a farmer and land agent.  The family farmed in Enterpen for many years.

Hutton Rudby had a couple of other links with this story besides Henry Chapman.  

Firstly, the Foulis family owned land in the Sexhow area and, secondly, Lucius Cary of the Falkland family, owners for a time of the Rudby and Skutterskelfe estates, was buried at the groom's family estate of Penshurst in 1871.  Lucius was the only child of Lucius Cary and Amelia Fitzclarence, daughter of William IV.  Amelia is commemorated by a tablet in Hutton Rudby church, (for details, see The People behind the Plaques.)

John Jackson (1743-1808), schoolmaster of Hutton Rudby

In the Schoolmasters section of People of Hutton Rudby (Sadler to Seamer), I had a little bit of information about the Rudby schoolmaster John Jackson, taken from The Church and Parish of Rudby in Cleveland by the Rev Arthur Eddowes (published 1924).

He took his information from The Bards and Authors of Cleveland, which was written and published by George Markham Tweddell, the Stokesley printer, in 1872.  The full title was The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham and the Vicinage.  Tweddell has a short chapter on John Jackson

who for six-and-twenty years was master of Rudby School, was so much esteemed as a classical and mathematical teacher that the sons of the principal inhabitants of Stokesley used to travel daily to and from his academy to avail themselves of his instruction.  Many of the sundials still existing in Cleveland are of his manufacture, that at Rudby Church being one.  

Tweddell quotes in full the lyrics of the song The Cleveland Fox Chase, for which John Jackson wrote both the words and the music.  It begins

The glimpse of Aurora appears o'er the hills,

The morning's inviting and fair;

The murmuring streamlets and fine purling rills,

Along with the sweet-scented air,

Invite the gay sportsmen; and first do appear

The two noble chiefs of Greenhow,

With famed Gis'brough's lord, and the hounds in the rear,

In hopes to cry off - Tally-ho!

(The gentlemen mentioned were Sir William Foulis, Bt, his brother John Robinson Foulis, and William Chaloner, owner of the hounds).

John Jackson was evidently a man of many talents.  The notice of his death in the Hull Packet of 21 June 1808 records

On Friday the 27th ult. that very useful member of society, Mr John Jackson, of Hutton Rudby school, aged 65.  He was a universal scholar, and many years a contributor (in every department) to those learned and entertaining annual publications, the Ladies' and Gentlemen's Diaries.

(I think the Diaries was an Almanac-style publication)

As for The Bards and Authors of Cleveland, which covers authors and poets from Caedmon to Francis Mewburn, the solicitor for the Stockton & Darlington Railway, you can read it here, as archive.org now has the text online.  A full account of its contents is to be found here on the website dedicated to the life and works of George Markham Tweddell (1823-1903).

Charles Hall goes coursing greyhounds, 1818

York Herald, 12 December 1818

In addition to the several convictions which have lately taken place in Cleveland, under the game laws, John Leng, of Bilsdale, carpenter, was convicted before the Very Rev. the Dean of York, on Friday week, in the penalty of £20 for setting snares in the estate of Sir Wm Foulis, at Ingleby Greenhow, on Sunday the 29th ult. and Charles Hall, of Hutton, near Rudby, labourer, was convicted on the same day before Sir W Foulis, in the like penalty, for coursing with greyhounds, without having obtained a game certificate

I think this is the Charles Hall mentioned in my research notes (People of Hutton Rudby in the C18/19):-

30 Nov 1817:  Charles Hall of Whorlton married Mary Taylor otp [of this parish].  Their children’s baptisms:  Jane 1818, Elizabeth 1819, Charles 1821, John 1823, Benjamin 1827, Robinson 1829, Marianne 1831, Isabella 1837.  Charles is described as farmer 1818-9, and labourer thereafter.  Their son Benjamin married in 1851 and remarried in 1861.  Charles died in 1854 a60.  His family’s gravestone [MI 396] is near the cholera mound, and records Charles, Elizabeth his daughter who d1844 a22, and Mary his wife

(On the subject of the Game Laws, it looks as though Gentlemen & Poachers: The English Game Laws 1671-1831 by P B Munsche is definitely the book to read.  I see from the 'Look Inside' preview pages on Amazon that Charles Hall should have paid £1 a year tax for keeping a greyhound.)