Chapter XII: Part 12

In the Peak, however, the destruction done to the crops by the small remnant of the once vast herds of red deer was so persistent that the commoners and others were only too ready to assent to any just scheme of disafforesting. In 1635, various of the landowners and commoners of the Peak petitioned the King, complaining of the severity, trouble, and rigour of the forest laws, and praying that the deer, which were still in sufficient numbers to do no small damage to the crops within the forest and its purlieus, might be destroyed, and asking to be allowed to compound by enclosing and improving the same. Thereupon a commission of enquiry was issued, and two juries were empanelled, with surveyors to assist them. The first jury viewed the whole forest and its purlieus, and presented that the King might improve and enclose one moiety in consideration of his rights, and that the other moiety should be enclosed by the tenants, commoners and freeholders. The second jury was empanelled to specially consider the case of the towns within the purlieus, and they presented that the King, in view of the largeness of the commons belonging to the towns of Chelmorton, Flagg, Taddington, and Priestcliffe, might reasonably have for improvement and enclosure one-third, and the remaining two-thirds for the commoners and freeholders. A like division was to be adopted in several parts within the forest. After some delay the commons were measured, and surveys made of the different townships, dividing the land into three sorts—best, middle, and worst, and the King’s share in each was staked, and maps showing the results were drafted. The surveys were not completed until 1640, and when all the preliminaries had been adjusted, the King caused all the deer to be destroyed or removed, and from that date onwards red deer were unknown within the High Peak. The extirpation of the deer was, however, almost immediately followed by the beginning of those “troublous times” which preceded the outbreak of the Civil War. The whole of the proceedings towards enclosure fell into abeyance. Soon after the restoration of the monarchy, much discussion arose as to the revival of these projects, but it was not until 1674 that the proposals for disafforesting the open or waste portions of the Peak Forest, and enclosing the portions that were capable of cultivation or good for pasture, were completed. The Commissioners appointed for this purpose were Sir John Gell, Sir John Cassy, and fifteen others, including such well-known Peak names as Bagshawe, Eyre, and Shallcross. The third portion assigned absolutely to the Crown was almost immediately granted by letters patent to Thomas Eyre, of Gray’s Inn, who speedily entered upon and enclosed the same, notwithstanding certain futile opposition in the duchy court.

It must have been a great assistance to the labours of these commissioners to find that the maps of the time of Charles I., showing the exact measurements and the three sorts of land, were still extant. These maps, though of rough execution, are of the highest interest.[78]

[78] The following are the Record Office numbers of the maps of Charles I.’s time:—13, Taddington and Priestcliffe; 14, 17, 22, 72, Bowden Middlecale, etc.; 15, Castleton Commons; 18, Wormhill Commons; 19 and 107, Bradwell; 20, Mellor Moor and Commons; 23 and 79, Bowden Chapel; 38, Fairfield; 39, Hope; 40, Monyash; 89, Flagg and Chelmorton. There are also three of Charles II. date, viz.:—16, Hope, wastes and commons; 75, Taddington; and 83, Bowden Middlecale.

There are small, rudely-drawn and occasionally coloured outlines of churches and houses on most of these maps. They are of a decidedly inferior character to those on the large Elizabethan survey, but they are still of some value. We give here two facsimiles of drawings of Mellor church, and one of Fairfield (10). Those of Mellor are sufficient to show that there was an aisled nave and a lower chancel in addition to the surviving western tower. The tower appears to have lost its low spire between the days of Elizabeth and Charles I. The drawing of Fairfield seems to give a certain rough idea of what the old church was like.

Occasionally the drawings on these plans, to denote the situation of the more important halls or manor houses, are sufficient to give a crude notion of the actual building. This is rather specially the case with the Ridge Hall; it was a chief seat of the prolific Bagshawe family, on the higher slopes of the hills to the west of Chapel-en-le-Frith, which we know they occupied as early as the reign of Edward II. (11). This hall was rebuilt on a large gabled scale in the later Tudor or Elizabethan days. The two drawings here reproduced are from maps of the respective reigns of Charles I. and Charles II.; in the latter case the artist has made some endeavour to represent the trees by which the hall was surrounded.

The drawing of Bradshawe Hall, from a plan of 1640, is almost ludicrous from its lack of resemblance to the real building, but seems to be worth giving from its quaintness.

On one of the later maps the houses are drawn with more precision; but, unfortunately, the names are not attached to some of the best examples (in Mellor township), of which we here give two reproductions (12). The very old set of lime-kilns at Dove Holes are most quaintly delineated on three of the surveys.

By far the most interesting feature of these maps, in the eyes at least of an antiquary, are the numerous instances in which crosses are marked. The remains of crosses and cross stumps on these Derbyshire moors have been casually noticed from time to time by cursory writers. In a paper contributed to the _Reliquary_ many years ago, when under the editorship of Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, it was asserted with some confidence that these crosses marked out the three great divisions or wards of the Forest of Peak. This was a natural kind of guess to make, but investigation immediately proved that such a supposition was quite baseless. With the possible solitary exception of the cross on the old pack-horse track from the head of Edale into Hayfield, not one of these crosses has any possible connection with forest bounds. Nor are they, as has been conjectured by another writer, terminal stones of monastic lands, for we know with a fair amount of accuracy the directions in which such lands lay, and in no one case do these crosses correspond with such limits. It is also quite obvious that for the most part these Peak crosses cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be described as mere wayside crosses, either to mark some special incident or tragedy, or to excite the Christian devotion of the wayfarer; and this for the simple reason that the majority of the crosses do not appear to have been on any frequented track of either the remote or nearer past. Nor is it possible to conceive, by those who have visited any number of them, that they could have been utilized for the purposes of guiding or general direction.

It is, of course, far easier to say what they were not, than to arrive at any true solution as to what was their general object or design. The solution that so far seems the most probable has already been elsewhere succinctly stated without awakening adverse criticism.[79] All those crosses that have been hitherto identified by myself and friends during three rambles with the old plans in our hands in three successive years, have been on important boundary lines. I believe almost the whole of them are pre-Norman, and I am at present strongly inclined to believe that they mark the setting out of ecclesiastical divisions or parishes, or parochial chapelries, soon after the reconversion of England had become an established fact, and when Christianity, under the ordering of Theodore and Wilfrid, was becoming definitely organised and ceasing to be mere scattered groups of missionary stations. There are reasons which are too long for statement here why such a planning out was probably accomplished in Derbyshire at an early date. It is obvious that if ecclesiastical bounds were to be marked out in a comparatively wild and treeless district, something artificial would be needed in far greater abundance than in ordinary districts, where large trees, river banks, ancient roads or lands pertaining to particular holders, could readily be named and utilized for boundary purposes.

[79] See articles in the _Athenæum_ for July 9th, 1904; June 24th, 1905; and September 8th, 1906.

The supposition that these crosses are of a township or parish boundary character is much strengthened by the frequency of their occurrence in the exact places where there are proofs of fairly early cultivation, and where there were rather intricate intersections of such divisions.

Perhaps the most interesting of these seventeenth century plans is the one which includes a considerable area, and has at the head the following descriptive title, written in a straggling hand and signed by the two surveyors:—

“The Mappe of the Wastes and Commons in Bowdon le Cappell, Fairefield, Ferneleigh, Shalcross and Mellor as they are eaqually devided into two eaqual parts quantity and qualitie considered and meas’^{ed} by us Thomas Hibbart and Samuel Barton two Survayors being Sworne upon our Oathes to that purpose by the Commissioners and delivered up unto the saide Commissioners the eight daye of October 1640

“By us Tho: Hibbart

“Sa: Barton.”

On another part of the map is written:

Measured and divided by a Scale of fortie in the Inch.

The part of this map descriptive of the wastes and commons of Mellor, which contained 356 acres, and which it was proposed to divide equally between the King and the tenants, is marked with several crosses. At the extreme north of the tenants’ portion is a curiously designed landmark, here termed “Arnfeelde Poule” (13). This outline drawing has the appearance of a pole or slender shaft affixed to the top of a somewhat elaborate cross base. In other maps the same boundary is outlined after different fashions, two of which are here reproduced. From one of these, having a cross on the summit, it may be concluded that it originally had that form. The name Arnfield or Armfield is not now in any way known in the district, but one of the six roads or lanes which meet at this point is still called Pole Lane. There is no doubt that it took its name from one Robert Armfield, whose house and land are figured on another survey. The place is now known as Jordanwall Nook, and Jordan was the name of another tenant in adjoining lands. This pole or cross is described in a survey of 1695 as parting the hamlets of Whittle, Thornsett, and Mellor. At this spot, at the junction of two of the roads, there is a large piece of boulder stone, that has been roughly hewn, measuring 37 in. by 25 in., and over the stone wall is another considerable fragment. These are probably the remains of the base of Armfield pole or cross when it was broken up. Other crosses marked on the Mellor section of the 1640 map are respectively designated “the Birgwerd Crosse,” “the Mislne Crosse,” and “the Stafforde Crosse,” all of them on boundaries.

The extreme north-west angle of the Mellor division has an outline drawing, here reproduced, lettered “The two standing stones,” which are elsewhere called “the Maiden Stones” (14). This pair of stones, still to be seen, stand at an important boundary point, about 1,200 feet high, where the townships of Ludworth, Chisworth, Mellor, and Rowarth meet. At the angle of Ludworth Moor, where these remarkable stones are to be found, there is no road near, but merely an almost disused track. For more than a century at least these stones have been known by the name of “Robin Hood Picking Rods”; but such a name was obviously unknown in the seventeenth century, as it occurs in none of these old surveys. The title “Maidenstones” is one of peculiar interest to any antiquary who has given attention to early earthworks, but it is too intricate a subject to be here discussed. On a 1695 survey, a boundary mark called “The Whyte Maiden” is marked a short distance from the Standing Stones. These two circular pillar stones stand in round socket holes, 12 in. apart, in a great stone about 80 in. long by 49 in. broad. The taller of the two stands 45 in. above the base, and has a girth at the bottom of 59½ in.; the shorter one stands only 30 in. high, but has a girth of 67 in. They have been pulled out of their sockets more than once in the past century, and are both mutilated. Part of the top of the shorter one (27 in. long) is built into an adjacent wall (15). Judging from the analogy of the two Bow Stones, five miles off to the north just across the Cheshire border, they originally had filleted heads of Saxon workmanship. They may be compared with a small filleted Saxon pillar in the porch of Bakewell Church, and another taller one at Clulow, and more especially with the Saxon shaft in the grounds of a private house at Fernilee which now supports a sundial.

Various more or less wild theories have been enunciated with regard to closely adjacent twin pillar stones of this character, of which several examples survive; they have sometimes been pronounced to be of Roman origin, whilst others have claimed them as pertaining to Phœnician art and of Phallic design. It must here suffice to ask our readers, who may not have given particular attention to the subject, to believe that they are beyond doubt of Saxon construction and date. When the sites of all such twin-stones have been carefully investigated, it will probably be established that they have some particular connection with intricate boundaries, and possibly with the junction of two separate ecclesiastical jurisdictions.

There are two other sites in the Peak district marked on these early plans where a pair of stones, each surmounted by a cross, is figured, neither of which have yet been identified. One of these is also on the northern edge of the Mellor Commons, the Birgwurd cross, the outline of which is here given.

Following the track from these Standing Stones due east for exactly a mile, at the precise spot where the old track crosses the boundary between Rowarth and Charlesworth townships, is the large fragment of the base of an old cross which has at a later date been used as a direction stone. Pursuing the same boundary line for half a mile further in a south-easterly direction, the stone long known as the Abbot’s Chair, and thus marked on the ordnance maps, is reached. Though a wrong and fanciful name, it has been thus described for more than two and a half centuries. On the 1640 survey it is styled “Abots Chere” (16). This stone measures 37 in. by 24 in., and stands 24 in. high; it is hollowed out to a width of about 17 in., with three of the sides raised 5 in., so as to form a kind of rough chair with a low back and sides. Closer examination shows that the hollow is really an old socket, presumably for a large cross, one side of which has been split off by the action of frost or human violence. The road that passes near it from the north to Hayfield is called Monks Road. It was in this division (Longdendale) of the Peak Forest that the Abbot of Basingwork had considerable rights and a large grange, and possibly this stone may have been thus mutilated and obtained its present name in pre-Reformation days. It is significant that the “chair” stands on the exact spot where the boundary is suddenly deflected at a right angle; and at a distance of 200 feet from the chair-stone, on the other side of the Monks Road, on the spot where the boundary resumes a south-easterly direction, is the perfect stump of another cross. This is a well-cut base, and obviously mediæval or after the Norman Conquest

On the high ground in Cheshire, very near the Derbyshire boundary, is a stone that goes by the name of “Pym’s Chair.” This stone, like the “Abbot’s Chair,” Derbyshire, proved on examination to be the base of a large early cross; one of the sides of the squared socket having been broken away, gives it the appearance of a low, rude chair. It bears the initials P C in large capitals, which were probably cut in the seventeenth century when some survey was made. An obvious idea, locally accepted, makes the initials stand for Pym’s Chair. The name Pym is fairly common both in Cheshire and Derbyshire. It is curious to note that a few miles off in the latter county, a little beyond Edale Head Cross, another “Pym’s Chair” is marked on the ordnance map in a desolate piece of moorland not yet investigated.

The Edale Head Cross is the best known of those in the Peak district, for it stands by the old British trackway or pass from Hayfield over Kinder into the Edale Valley. It stands at the highest point (1,750 feet) of this once much used pack-horse route. This cross, which now stands fifty-seven inches out of the ground, has now no base, and seems to have been moved more than once. The head is a Latin cross, and incised within it, on the side towards the track, are lines forming another cross, and within this, “I G 1610.” This refers to a survey of parts of the Peak Forest begun in 1610, but never completed; John Gell was one of the commissioners. This particular cross, which is of far older date than the time of James I., can claim to be a forest as well as a parochial boundary, for near this spot the three forest wards of Longdendale, of Ashop and Edale, and of the Campana or Champion, met. This cross is still sometimes known as the Champion Cross, and those who have not known that Champion was only an old variant for the Champagne or open grazing district of the Peak, have been silly enough to invent would-be knightly legends and ballads in comparatively modern days to account for the title.

Lack of space altogether prohibits any complete following up of the considerable number of crosses on these seventeenth century plans, the sites of which have been already investigated. It is hoped that in the course of a few years it may be possible to produce an archæological map of the whole district, upon which the remains of crosses may be exactly defined, and then will be the time for coming to more mature conclusions as to their general object and date. Two others, however, may be now named. At a point on the verge of Abney Moor, 1,200 feet above the sea level, about a mile to the south-east of Bradwell, where the townships of Abney, Hazelbadge, and Bradwell converge, the maps mark a cross styled Robin’s or Robin Hood’s Cross. After some search we found the early rough base stone, showing half of a squared socket, protruding from the bottom of a well-built stone wall, close to a stile leading into an old roadway.

“The Martine Syde Crosse” appears on more than one of the old plans, not far from a large farmstead or hall still known as Martin Side, at an elevation of 1,100 feet above the valley of Chapel-en-le-Frith (17). About a quarter of a mile beyond the hall on the roadside towards Dove Holes, we noted the stump of a cross. The height of this stump or squared base was 20 in., and it measured at the top 28 in. by 26½ in. In the centre was an empty shaft socket 11 in. by 9 in., and 8 in. deep. From the rough character of this base stone, and from the shape of the socket, it may fairly be assumed that it is of pre-Norman date. A small channel cut from the edge of the socket to an angle of the base stone seemed to be original, and may possibly have served as a pointer to the next boundary stone.

One other point remains to be noted in these somewhat desultory remarks on the old surveys. In several places occur lines marked “Forest Wall.” This was the stone wall of a very considerable circuit that enclosed most of the Campana or Champagne district of the Peak Forest, where the feeding for the King’s game of deer was the best. It was not a high park wall to keep the deer in, but a comparatively low one, with a dyke. Its object was to prevent sheep or cattle that might be agisted within the forest from trespassing on the parts particularly serviceable as pasturing ground for the often hardly tried deer; but it had to be low enough to allow hinds and fawns, as well as harts, readily to leap it when desirous of roaming further afield. It is quite possible to trace in certain places the building of this unmortared forest wall, which is constructed in a decidedly superior fashion to other and later wall fences. One of the best places in which to note it is on the lofty ridge that separates Edale from Castleton dale. In the midst of this there is a pass and gateway in the forest wall, called Ludgate in the old plans.

In June, 1561, Queen Elizabeth issued a commission of enquiry as to the condition of Peak Castle and Forest. The commissioners were instructed, among other matters:

“To view the height of one wall erected and made in or about one parcell of one pasture called the Champion within our saide foreste, how brode and depe the Dike in and about the same wall is, whether the same dike be drye or standinge with water for the most parte of the yere, pasture notwithstandinge the said walle and dike, and whether the said wall and dyke be noisome or hurtefull to or for our deare and game there, and to thinderance of the grasse for our said deare, or be better for the cherisshinge of our said game and deare there or not.”

OLD COUNTRY LIFE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

By Sir George Reresby Sitwell, Bart., F.S.A.

The charm of country life, as we know it in England, lies almost as much in old associations as in scenery and sport. An ancient hall without its records is a body without a soul, and can never be fully enjoyed until one has learnt something of the men and women whom it has sheltered in the past—of their lives and manners, their love affairs, their wisdom, and their follies; how the oak furniture gave way to walnut, and the walnut to mahogany; how they laid out the gardens, raised the terrace, clipped the hedges, and planted the avenue. Such reflections have committed me to a task which has proved heavier than I desired or anticipated. Indeed, I should never have persevered with it had I not early come under the influence which an old house so often exercises upon those who live under its roof; sometimes for evil, as when a family inheritance of ill-health depends upon faulty drainage or a waterlogged soil; sometimes as a spur to ambition, an incentive to effort, or a liberal education in art.

My father died when I was two years old, and at the time I first went to school we used to spend but a few months in the summer at our old home at Renishaw, in Derbyshire. The building is of great size, giving an impression of past wealth and power, the “olde richesse” which Chaucer tells us is the foundation of “genterye,” and the Jacobean plaster work and stone-tiled roof bear witness to its antiquity. Most that was interesting within its walls had been swept away in 1849, when the failure of the Sheffield Bank completed the wreck of my grandfather’s affairs. The library, a gradual growth of three hundred years, and the collection of Civil War pamphlets, had been scattered abroad, and little of the original furniture remained except the tapestries, pictures and china, and a few old cabinets of tortoiseshell, rosewood, or ebony. Of family history, absolutely nothing had come down to us but the tradition that our ancestors had lived there since the reign of Elizabeth, and a story concerning a portrait of the “Boy in red” (his name was forgotten), who had died by drowning, and whose ghost was supposed to haunt the house. Yet there was enough left to excite interest and to provoke enquiry. I remember finding, on one of my holiday visits, amongst the old books in the hall, a Greek grammar of the days when Shakespeare was at school, and in it my own name, written by an earlier George Sitwell just three hundred years before. The lumber room, with its Georgian panelling and arched window looking out upon the staircase, had always excited my curiosity, and being allowed to poke about in it on rainy days, I came upon many strange and dusty relics of the past, the flotsam and jetsam which had stranded there during several generations—old portraits and brocaded dresses, portfolios of eighteenth century prints, the wreck of a machine for perpetual motion upon which somebody was said to have wasted twenty years of his life, a collection of minerals (two compartments were labelled “Rubies” and “Emeralds,” but the specimens were not so large as one could have wished), flint lock guns, rapiers and swords, and a spring gun which must have been a real terror to poachers, writing desks with letters and little treasures still stowed away in them, and, most precious of all, a few old chests, heaped up with manuscripts, parchments, and books. Within these, in the utmost confusion, lay rentals, subsidy rolls, estate accounts, and household books of the seventeenth century; bundles of old letters which had turned yellow with age or were fast falling into dust, inventories of furniture and linen, quaint little almanacs, bound in brown or red leather, and fastened with silken strings or clasps of brass; tradesmen’s bills of Queen Anne’s reign, with printed headlines or little engravings of shop signs and articles of merchandise; wills of all dates, from the fifteenth century onwards; and charters, many with fine seals attached to them, of six or seven hundred years ago, and preserved in little round or oblong boxes of thin oak, to which the original covering of black leather still clung in shreds and tatters.

Curiosity, and the rather wild hope of hitting upon autographs of Cromwell or Shakespeare, led me to examine these documents, and by the end of my second year at Eton I had unconsciously learnt to read them. After that time, my holidays were spent away from Renishaw, but before I went to Oxford I had occasional opportunities of following up the search amongst the numerous boxes of old manuscripts in the muniment room and elsewhere in the house, and thought myself rewarded by finding at one time impressions of the great seals of Elizabeth and James, an original grant of arms, or a letter-book of Charles the Second’s time; at another, King Richard’s charter to the Guild of Eckington, a “protection” from General Lord Fairfax, a household book begun in the year of the great plague, and a packet, sealed up two hundred years ago and never opened since, which proved to contain papers relating to fines, decimation, and sequestration under the Commonwealth. Still more interesting were the old letters written by various members of the family, and these I put carefully on one side, having already formed the idea of publishing a selection from them. In 1880, the year before I came of age, I commenced to write them out for the press in my leisure hours, and nine years later the work of printing my first volume was begun.

Amongst the many thousands of letters and papers at Renishaw, it was not my good fortune to discover any of real historical importance. This collection is not, of course, to be named in the same breath with the Paston letters, nor can it be compared, either in bulk or in interest, with the Rutland, the Talbot, or the Verney manuscripts. Yet even the correspondence of an undistinguished family may illustrate the history of earlier times. The letter of 1661 upon the causes of the Civil War, the account of the Whitehall plot to assassinate Oliver Cromwell, the printed summonses to appear before the Commonwealth Commissioners at York and Westminster, the series of Civil War fines, the Restoration letter-book, and the papers relating to Titus Oates and Sacheverell, supply some new facts, and are not without value. The order for the disbandment of the Derbyshire regiments in 1646, the bargain for supplying the sheriff’s table in 1652, the letter to the London Post Office authorities in 1664, the amusing description of a journey to Nottingham in a stage coach, the agreements between the gentlemen of Derbyshire in 1690 and 1736, the certified extract from the Hatfield Court Roll of 1337, and the account of a riot at Sheffield in 1756, have at least a local interest. One is glad to know what the country gentlemen of the time thought of the hypocrisy of Cromwell and the indolence of Charles the Second, of the Great Rebellion, the “Sickness,” the Popish Plot, the Revolution, the South Sea Bubble, and the invasions of 1715 and 1745; but, as would naturally be expected from a family correspondence extending over three hundred years, these letters are valuable rather as illustrating social life than as records of public events. Concerning housekeeping, education, methods of travelling, visits to London, and changes of fashion and manners, they have much to tell us; of battles and sieges, the fall of ministries, the prosaic virtues of the Georges, and the innate depravity of the Pretender, not too much.

Macaulay, in his famous third chapter, writes of the “gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman” of Charles the Second’s reign; a “man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter”; a man whose “ignorance and uncouthness, whose low tastes and gross phrases would, in our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian.” It is not easy to reconcile this description with the accounts given by contemporary observers. The portrait certainly does not err on the side of flattery, and those who are familiar with the printed literature and unpublished records of that age will ask themselves with amazement whether it can be a likeness. Macaulay asserts that the country squire of that period never visited London and never opened a book. Contemporary writers tell us that the latter was always riding post to London, and spending his substance there when he ought to have been occupied with the care of his estate, and that there were more private libraries in England than in any other country in Europe. Now it is possible, of course, that Macaulay knew more about the manners of that age than did the people who lived in it; but it is also possible that he wilfully and maliciously caricatured a class of men which he had political reasons for disliking. The “gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman” was usually a Tory.

It may readily be admitted that in the seventeenth century country gentlemen could understand the local dialect, for intercourse with their tenants and the servants and labourers in their employ would otherwise have been difficult or impossible, and that the accent of some Yorkshire squires might betray their origin as surely as that of some Irish gentlemen to-day. But life in the country is no proof of rusticity, and everyone who speaks with a brogue is not necessarily a carter. At the time of which Macaulay writes, civilization was not confined to London. York and Derby, to the inhabitants of those counties, were “town” in the same sense that London is to their descendants. London had not yet gathered to itself all the business, the fashion, and the culture of the nation, and country gentlemen still flocked in winter to cities which had once, perhaps, been the capitals of independent kingdoms, and were even now centres of society, of learning, and of government.

Neither in his virtues nor in his failings was the country gentleman of Charles the Second’s time such as Macaulay has portrayed him. His chief pleasure did not consist in drinking himself under the table with strong beer, for excess was the exception and not the rule with the class to which he belonged, and claret and sack, malago and rhenish, were the beverages he was accustomed to, both at his own house and at the taverns. His principal employment was not “handling pigs, and on market days making bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants”; on the contrary, though a good judge of horses and oxen, bullocks and swine, he left the stocking of the home farm and the sale of produce to the steward who collected his rents. He was better educated in Greek, Latin, logic, philosophy, divinity, and law, than the country gentlemen of to-day, and more competent to manage his own affairs; his taste (at least in building, furniture, gardening, and dress) was more refined; he was keenly interested in public events, and willing to make sacrifices for public objects; he took a kindly and helpful interest in his poorer neighbours; though proud of his position, was sensible enough to send his younger sons into trade; and though he could not “shoot flying,” had a proper feeling for sport. He was not free from the narrowness and want of charity, the aversion to change and to new ideas so often found in those who have made divinity and the classics the study of their lives, and religious bigotry was his besetting sin.

The letter-book of 1662–6 throws much light on the George Sitwell, of Renishaw, of that period. In appearance he was somewhat over the middle height, and, as became one already well advanced in middle age, rather neat and precise than fashionable in his dress. He wore a long periwig, scented with orange flower water, a slight moustache and tuft of hair upon his chin, a grey broad-brimmed beaver hat, large bands of white linen or cambric, a dark grey cloth coat of simple cut, unbuttoned at the waist, and with the wristbands turned back to show the soft linen cuffs underneath, a sword belt and sword, cavalier breeches open at the knee, riding tops of wrinkled buckskin, and square-toed shoes, with high heels, and tongues to protect the instep from the stirrup. On his arm he usually carried a horseman’s cloak.[80] His face, with its good forehead and eyes, strong and clear-cut nose, and well developed chin, gave an impression of force of character, tenacity of purpose, and good reasoning powers; and this impression was strengthened by his conversation, for even the most casual acquaintance could not fail to observe that he was a man who had been accustomed to think and act for himself, a man not only well educated, but gifted with a sound judgment and a marked talent for business.

[80] See the effigy upon his tomb in Eckington Church.

He was an old cavalier who had garrisoned his house for the King, and had suffered fines and “decimation” under the Commonwealth. In 1653 he had served as Sheriff, and had brought with him to Derby a chaplain after his own mind, who preached a dangerously clever Assize sermon on “Magistracie and Ministery, the State and the Church.” In a remarkable letter to Lord Frecheville, written in April, 1661, he expresses his opinion that the “late unhappy warr began about disputes in religion,” and was the work of “crafty, wicked men,” “proud, insolent, factious, seditious spirits,” who, finding it “best to fish in troubled waters,” had made “Godliness their gaine” and “religion the cloake to cover their intentions.” Such opinions were common enough at the Restoration, but it is startling to find at such a moment the expression of a belief that there had been faults on both sides, and that “flatterers of Soveraignty” were as much to blame as “flatterers of popularity.” “We have,” he adds, “a good, a gracious, and a prudent King, who, though he hath not had long, yet hath had grand experience of men, which makes him delight in and love those who are honest. He knows very well that those who were the greatest flatterers of his ffather of happy memory, divisers and promoters of monopolies and revivers of ould obsolete laws, therby to lay uncoth and strange burdens upon the people, proved his bitterest and worst enemies.” Justice between man and man the writer considered to be the “sinews of all Commonwealths,” and the laws of England the people’s “birthright” and their defence against “arbitrary power.” At the first outbreak of the Civil War he had signed two petitions inviting Charles to return from the North to meet his Parliament; and after the Restoration his chief desire in politics was to see “an Unity at home which will be a stronge Bullworke against our advarsaries.” But he was sorely troubled at the King’s neglect of business and the corruption of the public service.

Some account of his fortune and surroundings is a necessary prelude to a study of his manner of life. The Renishaw estates[81] produced at this time about £800 a year, and from other sources—chiefly from the iron furnaces and forges[82] upon his property, for like many of the greater and lesser landowners of that district he was interested in the iron trade—Mr. Sitwell received an amount at least equal to his agricultural rents. In order that the meaning of these figures may be understood, it is necessary to explain that in the seventeenth century the nation was poorer, manners were simpler and more primitive, and the value of money was not the same. The purchasing power of money, as most intelligent schoolboys are aware, was then, according to the usual estimate, four times what it is at present.

[81] These estates were considerable in the reign of Elizabeth. In the Derbyshire subsidy roll of 1596–7 Robert Sytwell is assessed at £20 a year in lands, John Curzon of Kedleston, the ancestor of Lord Scarsdale, at £21, William Cavendish, the first Earl of Devonshire, at £30, and John Manners of Haddon, the ancestor of the Duke of Rutland, at £40. Robert was sixth in descent from John Sitewell, who had a good estate at Eckington in the fourteenth century, as may be seen by a curious entry on the court roll for January, 1386–7.

[82] In the winter of 1661–2, 1,181 tons of sow iron valued at £6 a ton were made at these furnaces. This amount may be compared with the ten thousand tons which, according to Macaulay, represented the total annual output of iron in England at the close of Charles the Second’s reign.

The loyal Duke of Newcastle, who is said to have been the wealthiest subject in Great Britain at the outbreak of the Civil War, had a rental of only £22,000 a year. After the Restoration, the greatest estates in the kingdom hardly exceeded £20,000 a year, and in 1669 the average income of peers, taken one with another, was estimated at £3,000, of knights at £800, and of esquires at £400 a year. Mr. Sitwell, with a revenue of £1,600, was therefore possessed of a fortune above the common; he pleads guilty, in one of these letters, to having a “good estate,” and it is clear that in his own country he had the reputation of being a very wealthy man.

His house, “the capital messuage called Renishawe”—situated some six miles from Chesterfield, then a walled town and the “fayrest in all the Peake Cuntrie”[83]—had been rebuilt out of the savings of his minority shortly before his marriage in 1627. It stood (and yet stands, for the old hall is the centre of the new) on the summit of a rocky hill projecting into the vale of Rother, which here narrows to two or three hundred yards, and commanding fine views towards the north and south. On the latter side, a richly cultivated country, cut up into innumerable inclosures by hedgerows, and scattered with forest trees, formed a pleasing contrast to the wild and rugged moorland by which Eckington was approached; and beyond it, to the south and south-east, rose that beautiful ridge upon which Barlborough, Bolsover Castle, and Hardwick stand. The turrets and battlements of these three famous houses, towering up on the hillside above the groves and woodland which surrounded them, were all visible from Renishaw; and to the south-west the country rolled on in successive ridges of meadow land and common towards the faint blue line which marked the edge of the Chesterfield moors in the far distance. From the north front of the house, Mosborough Hall could be seen across the green valley through which the Mosbecke flows to its union with the Rother; on the left, beyond the church and village, lay the ancient woods and picturesque manor park of Eckington in a deep cleft between the hills, and to the right the view down the vale extended for many miles into Yorkshire. East of the house, the promontory upon which Renishaw stands was bare of planting, being sheltered by the higher ground beyond the river, and by the woods of Park Hall and Barlborough, and on the west a plantation of oaks and ashes protected it from the prevailing winds which sweep down from the distant moors.

[83] See the Derbyshire church notes of 1590 in Harleian MS. 6,592.

The river below the house was crossed by a highway, described in a letter of 1665 as a “great road from the West parts of Yorkshire towards London.” Approaching from the London side a traveller would catch his first glimpse of Renishaw from the point where the manors of Barlborough and Eckington meet. The building was three-storied and of stone, with a four-gabled front facing the east, and, towards the south, a battlemented hall between two projecting wings, of which the nearer was furnished with a great bow window. It was surrounded with orchards and walled gardens, and behind it a plantation of ancient trees formed an impressive background. Below lay the cliffs and rocky slope known as Broxhill, then unplanted, but deep in fern and gorse; in the left foreground a line of willows marked the winding course of the river as it approached the bridge, and to the right the ancient mill and water meadows beyond were framed in by the wooded steep of Birley Hill. Proceeding along the causeway (built as a protection against floods) and across the bridge, the road turned sharply to the right and to the left again, and so mounting the hill passed within fifty yards of the house.

This road, with its wayside oaks and strips of green, was not, as might be imagined, a quiet country lane, but a highway full of life and colour and movement. Here, past the court gates, and in full view from the first-floor windows of the house, flowed by throughout the summer months a ceaseless stream of traffic. The smocked carriers cracked their whips as they passed with their covered waggons and long train of patient packhorses, or shouted to the women passengers crouching behind them in the straw. Postboys with budgets of letters cantered by, sounding their horns as they turned down to the village. Beggars in rags, with their little bundles carried upon staves across the shoulder, and wandering pipers and fiddlers, turned to look at the house; Scotch pedlars, with cheap linen cloth in their packs; and hawkers or chapmen with wallets full of little trifles—gloves of cordevant and sheep leather, tobacco boxes, ribbons and shoe-strings, almanacs, horn-books, jocktalegs, and ballads on the Dutch war and the hearth tax. Gentlemen in long boots, riding suits and cloaks, and velvet caps, trotted past, followed by mounted servants; or honest yeomen in coarse cloth and worsted stockings, with their wives in homespun and steeple hats riding pillion behind them. The little processions of marketing and fairing folk came and went; brown barefooted mower-women at hay and corn harvest; labourers in their loose frocks tied in at the waist, patched breeches and hose, and tall hats with vast projecting brims; country women riding to market between baskets of farm produce, with chickens or ducks swinging from the saddlebow; labourers’ wives trudging it on foot with wicker trays of vegetables or fruit upon their heads; farmers’ wains drawn by huge oxen, older and bulkier than any which can be seen to-day; and, in autumn, droves of swine on their way to the woods. Often Lord Frecheville’s or Lord Deincourt’s chariot and four passed the gates, the coach of some neighbouring gentleman bright with heraldry and gilding, a train of charcoal waggons bringing fuel to the Staveley ironworks, or of others laden with long saws and brewers’ squares, cannon shot, fire-backs, or sugar-stoves; and more rarely a ponderous furnace-hearth drawn by twenty oxen, a company of militia in their buffcoats faced with crimson plush, a gentleman riding to the poll at Derby at the head of his tenantry, or the cavalcade of some great nobleman journeying towards London with three coaches and an armed escort of thirty or forty attendants on horseback. It was an ever changing panorama of human life, an endless procession labouring towards an unknown goal, for in the seventeenth century the nation was to be studied rather on the roads than in the cities, and for commerce, for travel, and for news, the roads were all that the railways and telegraphs are to us, and more.

From the busy world outside one entered a little haven of peace and rest within the gates. The main entrance to Renishaw, which was immediately off the road, led by wooden doors between stone piers into a close court, the walls being planted round with fruit trees and the borders with flowers, and so by a broad paved walk between two grass plats to the steps of the porch. The building itself was of the usual Jacobean type, with mullioned windows protected by string-courses, gables and cupola tiled with stone, and battlemented roof over the hall. In plan, it was a double E, the central member being given by the porch on the north and by the great hall chimney to the south; on the former side the projecting wings contained a buttery (to the east) and a kitchen, on the latter a great and little parlour. Entering the porch, a second door led into a hall of moderate size (twenty feet by twenty-four), handsomely paved with grey and yellow stone, and ceiled with heavy cross beams covered with plaster. Upon the oak panelling, stags’ heads, escutcheons of arms, and maps of Europe and of Jerusalem were hung, and the centre of the room was occupied by the long table at which the family dined. On the opposite wall, between two windows corresponding to those on either side of the porch, was a great fireplace of stone, framed in by a mantel of carved oak. There was an oak cupboard by the kitchen door, and here also hung a buffcoat and some pistol-holsters. In the window lay the family Bible.

On the left hand two doors opened out of the hall, the first into a paved and arched entry which led past the buttery hatch (on the left) to the garden entrance; and the second to the “Great Staircase,” finely wainscotted and carved, and lighted by windows to the east. At the foot of the stairs was the door into the great parlour, about thirty-four feet long by twenty broad, by far the finest room in the house. A large bow window at the further end, and three windows to the east, looked out upon the flower garden. The ceiling of graceful renaissance plaster work, light and in low relief, was designed with large quatrefoils and diamonds, the points of the latter running out into branches of quince, oak, or vine, or large fleur-de-lis of varying patterns. In the centres of the spaces between were moulded ornaments of mermaids, dolphins, squirrels, roses, octofoils, and winged and coronetted lions’ heads. On the walls, immediately below the ceiling, was a frieze, also in plaster, which exhibited a running pattern of vine leaves, grapes, and birds, stopped at intervals by strapwork escutcheons, with renaissance masks and heraldic lions’ faces upon them. Richly carved panels of oak, with floral designs of lilies, roses, etc., supported the frieze, and beneath them was plainer panelling broken up at intervals by flat pilasters decorated with foliage or fruit. On this panelling a few family portraits were hung; the furniture here, as elsewhere in the house, was of carved oak, already a generation old, and there was much needlework of the kind ladies then occupied themselves in making. The mantelpieces were also of oak, one which showed in high relief the sacrifice of Isaac, supported by figures of Samson and Hercules, being especially noticeable. The fire backs in all the principal rooms had been cast at Foxbrook furnace, some two miles away, from moulds of a flower-pot, a phœnix, or the royal arms and supporters.

On the right of the hall were two doorways corresponding to those on the left. The further led by double doors into the little parlour, a small room with two windows to the south opening upon the garden, and two to the west looking out across a little green court to the brewhouse and the trees which overhung it. In the centre of the ceiling a great double rose of plaster, more than two feet in diameter, covered the junction of the beams. On the walls, maps of the World, France, Paris, and Ireland were hung, and a few Dutch pictures. The nearer door on the same side of the hall communicated with the little staircase and the kitchen, the latter room remarkable for its great three-centred chimney arch of stone, and for the pewter plates and dishes and brass stewpans and pudding pans which were ranged upon the wall. A back entry led into the kitchen court, or “well court,” a large yard built round with offices, stabling, coach-house, brewhouse, dairy, laundry, ovens, and barns. This was closed by great gates at night and contained many bays of building.

To return to the house; the bedrooms were furnished with curtains and rugs of green, purple, or “sad colour,” the great oak bedsteads decorated with hangings of needlework, and the walls covered with tapestry or wainscot. On the first floor was the “great chamber,” over the great parlour, and another of smaller size (here, under a sliding board, a secret receptacle in the floor for money or papers was found a few years ago) above the buttery. The “hall chamber,” like the hall below, was panelled with oak and ceiled with cross beams covered with plaster. This was the owner’s bedroom, and the windows to north and south, sheltered from sun and wind by the projecting wings, must have made it the pleasantest in the house. It was entered from the landing of the great staircase, and a door in the further wall led to Mr. Sitwell’s study, above the little parlour, and to the little staircase. In the study Mr. Sitwell wrote up the letter-book, passed the accounts of his steward, Thomas Starkye (Starkye came up the back stairs), and interviewed his tenants; on the panelling over the mantelpiece a carbine and some pistols were hung, and recesses in the thickness of the wall harboured a small library of books on divinity, law, and the classics, of which the greater part had been collected by Mr. Sitwell, though a few had been brought from the older house at the head of the village. Above the kitchen was another large bedchamber, given over, I suppose, to Mr. Sitwell’s youngest son, the only one of his children who was still under his care. The plan of the third story was similar to that of the second, the chamber over the hall chamber being again the only means of communication between the two staircases. This was occupied by Mrs. Heays, the housekeeper, who probably had one or two of the younger maidservants to sleep with her; and here in the long winter afternoons they wove and spun by the light of tallow dips, and talked over the gossip of the village. The two rooms to the east had formerly been used as nurseries, but were now guest chambers; and on this side also was a store-closet over the stairs. On the west, the study chamber was occupied by the cook and kitchenmaid, and that over the kitchen by the maids. The men-servants and grooms probably slept over the stables. At the Sacheverells’ house at Barton, an inventory of 1691 shows a “maids’ chamber,” a “men’s chamber,” and a “grooms’ chamber,” and this no doubt was the usual arrangement at the time.