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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
