Echoes Of Old Lancashire - free ebook by William E. A. (William Edward Armytage) Axon

ECHOES OF OLD LANCASHIRE.

William Andrews &amp; Co THE HULL PRESS...

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Preface.

This volume is intended for those who find it pleasant, at times, to wander in the byways of topography and local literature. The development of Lancashire, especially in its relation to modern industrial life, has been told by more than one able historian, and all that is here attempted is to glean in the ample harvest fields. The bygone customs, forgotten worthies, outworn superstitions, historical episodes and travellers’ tales here recorded, will, it is hoped, not be without interest. If som

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The “Lancashire Plot.”

The town of Manchester was in a state of indignant and feverish excitement on the 17th of October, 1694, being the sixth year of the reign of William the Deliverer. Everywhere groups of townspeople were discussing the all-absorbing topic of the “Lancashire Plot,” for on that day there came to the town four of their Majesties’ judges, with every circumstance of pomp and parade, to try for their lives gentlemen of the best blood of Lancashire and Cheshire; unfortunate prisoners who were accused of

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De Quincey’s Highwayman.

“It was, in fact, the skeleton of an eminent robber, or perhaps of a murderer.... It is singular enough that these earlier grounds of suspicion against X. were not viewed as such by anybody until they came to be combined with another and final ground. Then the presumptions seemed conclusive. But by that time X. himself had been executed for a robbery, and had been manufactured into a skeleton by the famous surgeon Cruikshank, assisted by Mr. White and other pupils.”—Thomas de Quincey’s “Autobiog

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Some Lancashire Centenarians.

According to the census of 1891 there were 146 persons enumerated who were returned as being more than 100 years of age. Eleven of these were resident in Lancashire. It may be interesting to compare this with the statements in some of the preceding census reports. Arranged in tabular form, the following results are seen:— In Lancashire, it will be noticed, there has been a marked tendency towards the diminution of reputed centenarians. The general consent of mankind seems to have fixed upon a hu

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What was the First Book Printed in Manchester?

The answer to this question is not so obvious as might at first be expected. There were in the Lancashire of Elizabeth’s days two secret presses. From one there issued a number of Roman Catholic books. This was probably located at Lostock, the seat of the Andertons. The other was the wandering printing-press, which gave birth to the attacks of Martin Marprelate upon the Anglican Episcopate. This was seized by the Earl of Derby in Newton Lane, near Manchester. The printers thus apprehended were e

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Thomas Lurting: a Liverpool Worthy.

Quakerism has a very extensive literature, and is especially rich in books of biography; which are not only of interest from a theological point, but are valuable for the incidental and sometimes unexpected light which they throw upon the history and customs of the past. One of the early Quaker autobiographies is that of Thomas Lurting, a Liverpool worthy, who has not hitherto been included by local writers in the list of Lancashire notables. Thomas Lurting was born in 1629, and, in all probabil

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Kufic Coins found in Lancashire.

In the great find of coins at Cuerdale in North Lancashire, besides a single Byzantine piece there were several Kufic coins, along with some of North Italy, about a thousand French and two thousand eight hundred Anglo-Saxon pieces. In these coins, and in those found over the whole of Northumbria are to be seen the evidences of the active commercial intercourse that even in the pre-historic ages prevailed between the Eastern world and the people of the North of Europe, and especially those dwelli

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Newspapers in 1738-39.

It may not be uninteresting to describe some of the oldest surviving fragments of Lancashire newspapers which were formerly in the collection of Sir Thomas Baker, and are now, with many others, in the Manchester Free Library. After a fragment of one leaf we have “ The Lancashire Journal : with the history of the Holy Bible.” Monday, October 16th, 1738. Num. xvi. The printer and publishers are thus set forth:—“Manchester: printed and sold by John Berry at the Dial near the Cross, and Sold by Mr.

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A Lancashire Naturalist: Thomas Garnett.

A memorial volume of the late Mr. Thomas Garnett, of Low Moor, Clitheroe, was printed for private circulation, and some notice of it will be of interest to many outside the narrow circle for whom it was originally prepared. Mr. Thomas Garnett was one of three brothers. Mr. Richard Garnett distinguished himself as a philologist, and became an assistant-keeper in the British Museum; Mr. Jeremiah Garnett was for many years the editor of the Manchester Guardian , and Mr. Thomas Garnett settled at Cl

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The Traffords of Trafford.

The Trafford tradition is that the family were settled at Trafford as early as the reign of Canute. Radulphus, or Randolph, who is said to have died in the reign of Edward the Confessor, appears in the pedigree as the father of Radulphus, who “received the King’s protection from Sir Hamo de Massey, about the year 1080.” From the daughter of Hamo, Richard de Trafford had that entire lordship. To this early and obscure portion of the annals we must refer the tradition of the Trafford Crest, of whi

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A Manchester Will of the Fifteenth Century.

The will of George Manchester, A.D. 1483, was presented to the Peel Park Museum, Salford, by the late Mr. Stephen Heelis. It has several points of interest. The date is given in a peculiar form: “the first year of the reign of King Richard the Third after the Conquest, when he raised his realm against the Duke of Buckingham.” The Manchester localities mentioned are the Irk Bridge, the Furthys (? the Fords), the Pavey, the Spring Bank, the Butts, the Tenter Bank, Drynghouses, Bradforth, and Mylne

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A Visitor to Lancashire in 1807.

There are some interesting references to Lancashire and the manufacturing district in a volume of “Summer Excursions,” consisting of letters written by Miss E. I. Spence, published in 1809. Literary fame is not always permanent, and it may be necessary to explain that the author of these volumes and of “The Nobility of the Heart” and “The Wedding Day” was a well-known woman of letters in her own generation. Elizabeth Isabella Spence was the daughter of a Durham physician, and the granddaughter o

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How the First Spinning Machinery was taken to Belgium.

The introduction of spinning machinery to the Continent is a curious episode in the history of commerce, and has some interest for Manchester people, as it was from that place the men and the machinery were obtained. The industrial activity of England and the riches which the inventions of Kay, Highs, and Arkwright brought her, naturally attracted the attention of her foreign rivals, but in those days there were stringent regulations against the export of machines, and the “seduction of artizans

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Merry Andrew of Manchester.

In that strange old joke-book, “Pasquil’s Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments,” there is a story in which a “local habitation” is given to a name suggestive of grotesque amusement. Whether the Mancunian Merry Andrew was the first of his tribe may be doubted, but as the book was printed in 1604, he is somewhat of a patriarch in the race. The story is entitled, “How merry Andrew of Manchester serued an Vsurer,” and runs thus:—“Merry Andrew of Manchester, who is well knowne, meeting with three or f

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A Manchester Jeanie Deans.

About the beginning of the present century there was resident in the neighbourhood of Portland Street, Manchester, an elderly Irishwoman, whose violent temper made her the terror of the neighbourhood. The only person of whom she stood in awe was the Roman Catholic priest, Father Rowland Broomhead. She had a tender side to her character, however, and her son, a wild youth, having committed an offence, which in the then barbarous state of the criminal law made liable to be hanged, she undertook a

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Some Lancashire Giants.

Like other parts of Old England, the County Palatine has been distinguished by great men, physically as well as mentally. We begin with traditions of the former existence of a race of the sons of Anak. Thus at Heathwaite, in North Furness, two stone-circles are known as “The Giants’ Graves.” A tradition has of course been fitted to the name, and it asserts that the last of these Lancashire Anaks was shot by an arrow on the hill of Blawithknott. At Manchester the fame of the giant Tarquin, who he

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A Note on William Rowlinson.

A scrapbook made by William Rowlinson, first exhibited at a meeting of the Manchester Literary Club, and then liberally presented by Mr. Charles Roeder to the Manchester Free Library, is an interesting relic, and may justify a note on this now forgotten but promising young poet. It contains many newspaper cuttings, the earliest pages being devoted to his own compositions, and the remainder consisting of miscellaneous matter, chiefly poetical, that had attracted his attention. William Rowlinson w

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Literary Taste of the Eighteenth Century.

The literary tastes of our great-grandfathers may be supposed to be mirrored in a catalogue of the circulating library established in the middle of the last century at Manchester. The list of the subscribers includes the names of Mr. Edward Byrom, the Rev. Mr. Ethelston, Joseph Harrop, Titus Hibbert, Thomas Henry, Dr. Peploe, Richard Townley, and Dr. C. White. The late president of the Chetham Society had a book-loving predecessor, for the name of Mr. James Crossley is also in the list. The book

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Hugh of Manchester: A Statesman and Divine of the Thirteenth Century.[10]

“Let me be the remembrancer,” says Fuller when describing the worthies of Lancashire, “that Hugh of Manchester in this county wrote a book in the reign of King Edward the First, intituled, ‘De Fanaticorum Deliriis’ (Of the Dotages of Fanatics). At which time an impostor had almost made Eleanor the queen-mother mad, by reporting the posthume miracles done by her husband, King Henry the Third, till this our Hugh settled her judgment aright. I could wish some worthy divine (with such Lancashire dot

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Mrs. Fletcher in Lancashire.

In the autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, who was for many years a conspicuous figure in Edinburgh society, there are some interesting references to Lancashire people. Eliza Dawson was born at Tadcaster in 1770, and came of good yeoman stock, from whom she inherited a steady-going Liberalism that equally avoided the extremes of “divine right” either of kings or mobs. The beauty and good nature of the girl attracted admiration even in her school days, and she had to reduce several worthy young men t

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Manchester and the First Reform Agitation.

The reform agitation began in Manchester in 1792, and its history is instructive and too little known by the present generation. The town, which was heartily Republican in the Civil Wars, was as heartily Jacobite in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and in its closing years was dominated by the sworn friends of intolerance and privilege. The vainly proposed repeal in 1789 of the Corporation and Test Acts, by which the Nonconformists were excluded from all municipal offices, led to the

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The Folk-Lore of Lancashire.

Folk-lore is a word introduced into the English language by the late Mr. W. J. Thorns to designate the superstitions, observances, sayings, traditions, and beliefs of the people; the collecting and systematic arrangement of which is now recognised as an important section of the science of comparative mythology. Folk-lore treats It takes cognisance of all the quaint notions connected with the varying seasons of the year and epochs of human life; of all the beliefs in futurity and supernatural age

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Manchester Grammar School Mill.

In 1883 the Manchester School Mill was acquired by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, in order to make a new road from Long Millgate to Victoria Station. With the destruction of the School Mill there passed away a curious relic of ancient custom, and a link that connected modern Manchester with the quaint old town that stood by Irk and Irwell in the fourteenth century. In the very home of Free Trade there existed a monopoly at least six centuries old. The School Mill claimed the right

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The Rising of 1715.

England, it has been epigramatically said, is governed by reactions. There is more truth in the remark than is usually found in smart sayings. There is an ebb and flow in the political tide, the waves which thunder against the bulwarks and threaten to overwhelm the peaceful town beyond them, fall calmly back again to their sandy bed. An example of this phenomenon we have in the intense Jacobitism of Lancashire at the commencement of the last century. Lancashire was not without gallant cavaliers

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The Fool of Lancaster.

“Take gifts with a sigh, most men give to be paid.”— J. B. O’Reilly. Rules of the Road. This story, which is told in “Jack of Dover,” 1604, is instructive if not amusing:—“There was of late (quoth another of the jurie) a ploughman and a butcher dwelling in Lancaster who, for a trifling matter (like two fooles), went to law, and spent much money therein, almost to both their undoings; but at last, being both consented to be tride by a lawyer dwelling in the same town, each of them, in hope of a f

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Alexander Barclay and Manchester.

Probably the first purely literary reference to Manchester is that contained in the first eclogue of Alexander Barclay. Of the two shepherds who carry on a dialogue, Cornix is the chief speaker, and graphically pourtrays the miseries of life at court. Early in the conversation comes this passage:— This passage has not escaped the notice either of Mr. T. H. Jamieson, who has edited Barclay’s translation of the “Stultifera Navis,” or of Dr. A. W. Ward, who has written his life in the “Dictionary o

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