Chapter II: Part 2

Quite irrespective of the part played by the general musters during this reign in preparation for possible emergencies, there was much stir and excitement in the county, accompanied, no doubt, by a great deal of misery, consequent upon the repeated call for troops to take part in the subjection of Ireland. The levies of troops for Ireland were almost ceaseless during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It has usually been understood by historians that these raw troops came mainly from Lancashire and Cheshire; but the Belvoir manuscripts, supported by the Acts of the Privy Council and local muniments, show that Derbyshire—possibly as a compliment to her bravery—was being constantly called upon to supply men for these expeditions entirely out of proportion to the limited area and population of the county. It is not surprising to find that these forcibly impressed levies, utterly untrained in military matters, and suffering severely from poor clothing, insufficient food, the dampness of the climate, and frequent infectious disease, perished in large numbers before they could attain to any proficiency. When the Earl of Essex was granted special powers in 1573 to suppress the Irish rebellion, Derbyshire had to submit to the impressment of a hundred men, and a complaint was lodged at the sessions that some of the best lead-miners had been taken for that purpose. The whole story of these forced levies, of the difficulty of conveying them to the ports of Lancashire and Cheshire, of their frequent desertions both en route and even when they had crossed the seas, of the poorness of the weapons and equipments with which they were supplied by the swindling contractors of the day, is a most sorry and sordid tale. Nor could these Derbyshire troops have presented, even when first called out, a particularly attractive or uniform appearance, for the Belvoir manuscripts tell us that they were to be provided, in addition to convenient hose and doublet, “with a cassock of motley and other sea-green colour or russet.”

There was much nervousness with regard to Derbyshire when Elizabeth was on her deathbed, in March, 1682–3. The council were alarmed lest attempts should be made to remove Lady Arabella Stuart (who had a certain kind of claim to the throne) by violence from the custody of her grandmother, the old Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick. They dispatched Sir Henry Brounker in haste with a warrant to all the Derbyshire lieutenants, justices, and constables, to give him all assistance in guarding Arabella, and in the suppression of every form of disorder and riot. On March 25th, Sir Henry met a large body of the deputy-lieutenants and justices at North Wingfield, a short distance from Hardwick Hall, when it was arranged that there should at present be no general view of the musters, but that the constables were to see that the armour was in readiness, and to take other precautions. But whilst they were thus debating, death removed Elizabeth, and on the following day James I. was quietly proclaimed King at Derby without any trace of remonstrance.

Early in the reign of James I. the nature of the general musters or local militia was considerably changed, but their special services were never really needed during the time he was on the throne. In 1624, when James was unhappily persuaded to give authority to the Duke of Buckingham to raise 10,000 men in England to proceed to the Palatinate, this county had some share in the general misfortune. Out of the great disorderly rabble collected by impressment at Dover, half of whom died in the overcrowded vessels from the plague ere they could even be landed, Derbyshire contributed 150 men. These troops from the centre of England were allowed 8d. a day whilst marching to Dover, and they were expected to make at least twelve miles daily. It is probable that James was at Derby in August, 1609, when making a progress from Nottingham to Tutbury Castle. He was certainly in the county towards the close of his life, during the summer progress of 1624. On August 10th the King was at Welbeck, when he knighted two Derbyshire gentlemen, Sir John Fitzherbert of Norbury, and Sir John Fitzherbert of Tissington. In the following week he stopped two nights at Derby with Prince Charles, proceeding thence in the following week to Tutbury. In the latter place he knighted Sir Edward Vernon, of Sudbury.

In no other county in the whole of England is the evidence more clear or detailed than in Derbyshire as to the ill-advised proceedings in the opening part of the reign of Charles I., which eventually brought about the misfortunes of the great Civil War. The methods of raising funds for the Crown after an irregular fashion by way of benevolences and loans, was no new invention of this ill-fated Stuart King. Such exactions, though contrary to statute, were resorted to by Henry VII. in 1491, when he took a “benevolence” from the more wealthy folk for his popular incursion into France. Henry VIII. made like cause for an “aimable graunte” in 1528 and in 1548. Elizabeth appears to have always expected and received valuable “gifts” of money or plate during her progresses, and numerous “loans” demanded and obtained from Derbyshire gentlemen by that Queen were considerable, and a frequent cause of friction when it was found that they were scarcely ever repaid. Charles I., however, was so foolishly advised as to begin his reign by pressing for definite sums, which were ridiculously termed “free gifts.” Derbyshire was practically unanimous in its refusal to the demand. The courts of four of the hundreds duly met in 1626, and declined to pay a single farthing “otherwise than by way of Parliament.” The Derbyshire justices met in session on July 18th, and forwarded to the council the answers from all the hundreds. The first signature to this reply was that of the Earl of Devonshire, and in the whole county only £20 4s. was subscribed.

Two years later the King’s consent was obtained to the Petition of Rights, and thus benevolences or forced loans were put an end to in most explicit terms. The next expedient, however, for raising money without Parliament was still more foolish. A well recognised method for getting together a navy in actual time of war, namely, by issuing ship-writs, had become established in Plantagenet days, and proved of great service to Elizabeth in resisting the Armada. There were also later precedents of 1618 and 1626, but in every one of these cases ship-writs were only served on seaports, and were never issued save for immediate warlike enterprise. The ship-writs, however, of 1634 were served when there was no war or fear of attack; and in the following year the grievance was intensified by serving writs on inland as well as maritime counties and towns. Under the writs of 1635, the small county of Derbyshire was called upon to pay the great sum of £3,500—£90 of which was to be contributed by the clergy. Many in the county actively resisted. Sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, flatly declined to pay a farthing, was put under arrest, taken before the council in London, and his goods distrained. A third ship-writ reached Derbyshire in 1636, but the sheriff could only raise £700, and that with much difficulty. A fourth writ in October of the same year, again demanding £3,500, was served on the new sheriff, Sir John Harper. Resistance was general. The King was compelled in 1640 to summon the “Long Parliament,” which speedily declared all the late proceedings touching ship money to be illegal and void. To this the King consented; but it was too late, the mischief was done.

Charles I., in the earlier part of his reign, was on three occasions the guest of the Earl of Newcastle at Bolsover Castle. The record visit of the three was in 1633, when he was accompanied by his Queen. The entertainment, as Lord Clarendon has it, was “very prodigious and most stupendous.” The expenses for hospitality on this occasion reached the huge total of £15,000; it was during the visit that Ben Jonson’s masque of _Love’s Welcome_ was performed.

In 1635 Charles I. visited Derby, and slept at the Great House in the market-place. The corporation and townsmen had very good reason to remember this visit, for they gave the Duke of Newcastle for the King a fat ox, a calf, six fat sheep, and a purse of gold to enable him to keep hospitality, with a further present to the Elector Palatine of twenty broad pieces. The King further improved the occasion by “borrowing” £300 off the corporation in addition to his gifts, as well as all the small arms in possession of the town. At the end of the Scottish War in August, 1641, Charles I. passed through Derbyshire, and was again at the county town on the eleventh of August, when he made Sir John Curzon, of Kedleston, and Sir Francis Rodes, of Barlborough, baronets.

The great Civil War began in the summer of 1642 with the raising of the Royal Standard at Nottingham. The registers of All Saints, the great church of the county town, have the following brief chronicle of this dramatic incident: “the 22 of this August errectum fuit Notinghamiæ Vexillum Regale.—Matt. xii. 25.” The vicar, Dr. Edward Wilmot, who made the entry, was a staunch Royalist, and probably employed the Latin tongue knowing full well the general tendency of the opinions of the townsmen. When the news reached Derby, the response was meagre. Hutton, the historian, tells us that about twenty Derby men marched to Nottingham and entered the King’s service. On September 13th the King marched with his army from Nottingham to Derby, but only made one day’s stay in the town, pushing on from thence to Shrewsbury. Within a few months practically the whole of the counties of Derby, Leicester, Stafford, Northampton, and Warwick were united in an association against the King.

Sir John Gell, of Hopton, at once came to the fore as the local energetic supporter of Parliamentary Government, obtaining a commission as colonel from the Earl of Essex. After rousing the county both at Chesterfield and Wirksworth, he marched with a small force to Derby, which he entered on the thirty-first of October, 1642, where he was joined by one of the leading gentlemen of the south of the shire—Sir George Gresley. It would take far more space than can here be afforded to give even the barest outline of the ups and downs of the sad civil strife that raged throughout Derbyshire, for the most part in favour of the Commonwealth, for the next few years. It must suffice to state that the county, apparently owing to its central position, suffered more in various ways, both in loss of men and property of all descriptions, than any other part of the whole of England. Wingfield Manor House, Bolsover Castle, and such great houses as Chatsworth, Tissington, Sutton, and Staveley, were held first by one side and then by the other; whilst important garrisons at places so near to the county boundaries as Welbeck, Tutbury, and Nottingham, contributed to constant raids over the parts of Derbyshire within easy reach.

In 1645 the plight of Derbyshire was most deplorable, through the frequent marches and counter-marches of the hostile forces through its limits; for, although the Parliament held its own throughout the county during the prolonged struggle, the Royalists now and again gained the victory in a skirmish, and succeeded in maintaining their hold in well-garrisoned places for a few months at a time. Both sides, also, found it essential in their campaigns to cross the county in various directions. In August of this year Sir George Gresley and others wrote to the Speaker as to the miserable condition of the county, which had been successively afflicted by the armies of Newcastle, the Queen, Prince Rupert, Goring, and others, who had freely raided from even the poorest of the people during their transits. The enemy, he stated, had lost all their Derbyshire garrisons, but they had been taken by force and at a great charge to the county. Several garrisons on the confines of the county, such as Newark, Tutbury, and Welbeck, still had power and means to levy contributions on the adjacent parts of Derbyshire, and to ruin those who denied them. Moreover, the Scotch army had been for a time very chargeable to the county, for they not only claimed free quarters, but supplied themselves with what horses they required. And now, to crown all, the King’s army had passed through, and made spoil of a great part of the county. Some of the Parliament forces had come to their help, and more were daily expected; but all of them would at least have free quarters, and the owners of the very few horses left in Derbyshire had now small hope of retaining them. The House of Commons was asked to grant them the excise of the town and county for the present maintenance of their own soldiers.

It must also be remembered in estimating the share that Derbyshire had in this momentous conflict, that it has not only to be gauged from what went on within her borders, but from the prominent share which Derbyshire forces took in the battles and skirmishes that took place in other parts of the kingdom. At the very outset of the struggle, Derbyshire troops played an important part round Lichfield and in other parts of Staffordshire. During the winter of 1644–5, Gell’s forces from this county were busy about Newark, and also in Cheshire. In the spring of the latter year they were engaged before Tutbury Castle; and in July, 1648, Derbyshire horse played an important part in the Parliamentary victory at Willoughby, Nottinghamshire.

In this same month the Derbyshire committee were ordered to send sixty of their horse to Pontefract to help in the siege, and to join in the resistance to the invasion from Scotland. On August 18th came the rout of the great army of the Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, at Preston. The defeated cavaliers disbanded themselves in Derbyshire, dispersing in all directions. Considerable numbers of the Scotch infantry were gradually arrested, having vainly endeavoured to conceal themselves amid the hills and dales of the wild Peak district. One of the most terrible episodes of the strife in the Midlands occurred in the then large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. A vast number of the Scotch prisoners were crowded into the church, with the shocking result thus curtly entered in the registers:—

“1648 Sept: 11. There came to this town of Scots army, led by the Duke of Hambleton & squandered by Colonell Lord Cromwell sent hither prisoners from Stopford under the conduct of Marshall Edward Matthews, said to be 1500 in number put into ye church Sept: 14. They went away Sept: 30 following. There were buried of them before the rest went away 44 persons, & more buried Oct. 2 who were not able to march, & the same thyt died by the way before they came to Cheshire 10 & more.”

Space must be found for a far less tragic incident that occurred in connection with another Derbyshire church in the south of the county earlier in this strife. When the Royalists were making a special effort to regain their hold on Wingfield Manor, Colonel Eyre, with his regiment of 200 men, marching from Staffordshire, passed the night in the church of Boyleston. Major Saunders, a local Derbyshire leader on the Parliament side, heard of this night encampment, and with a small troop of horse surrounded the church, and raising a simultaneous shout at all the windows and doors demanded the instant surrender of all the Royalists under pain of immediate fire. Colonel Eyre’s men, startled from their sleep, were compelled to surrender; they were ordered to come out one by one through the small priest’s door on the south side of the chancel, and as each stepped forth he was seized and stripped of his arms—“and soe,” wrote Major Saunders, “we took men, collours, and all without loss of one man on either side.”

As to the general sympathy of this shire with the Commonwealth proceedings, even after the execution of the King, the Commission of the Peace in 1650 shows how large a proportion of the old county gentlemen were content to accept commissions at the hands of the new rulers. It includes such names as Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Edward Leach, Sir Samuel Sleigh, Sir John Gell, Nicholas Leeke, John Mundy, Robert Wilmot, Christopher Horton, James Abney, Anthony Morewood, and Robert Eyre. Among the High Sheriffs under the Commonwealth after this date were John Stanhope, of Elvaston, George Sitwell, of Renishaw, and John Ferrers, of Walton.

On the other hand there were many staunch loyalists in the county, who compounded heavily for their estates. Such were Sir Aston Cokayne, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Francis Deincourt, Sir Henry Every, Sir John Harpur, of Swarkeston, Sir John Harpur, of Calke, Sir Henry Hunloke, Sir Francis Rodes, Thomas Leeke, Roland and George Eyre, William Fitzherbert, Henry Gilbert, and Jervase Pole, of Wakebridge.

Among the great store of county muniments at Derby, there are few papers that bring before the mind the incidents of the great civil strife more vividly than the petitions from maimed soldiers addressed to the Quarter Sessions for relief. Thus, in 1649, John Matthew, of Loscoe, stated:—

“that yor petitioner was a soldier under the Comand of Captaine Bagshaw at Wingfield Mannour, & was there plundered by the Cavileirs of all the goods he had, since which it pleased God to strike yr petitioner with lamenesse, that he is not able to help himselfe further than hee is carried. That hee hath two small children & his wife, & have sould theire Cow & all theire household goods & apparell to buy them bread & other sustenance etc.”

The petitioner obtained a pension of 12d. a week, which seems to have been the usual rate. After the Restoration the old Parliamentary pensioners were discarded, and their place taken by those who had fought on the other side.

Notwithstanding the Parliamentary convictions of the majority of the inhabitants of Derbyshire, it is scarcely to be wondered that the county returned with some eagerness to the monarchical faith at the time of the Restoration, for its experiences of the evils of civil warfare had been so peculiarly bitter. The Bill of Indemnity dealt fairly generously with the large majority of those who had been in arms against the late King, or active in the administration of the Commonwealth. No one can be surprised that the extreme penalty of the law was exacted on all those who had sat in judgment on Charles I., and who had not fled the country. It is, however, specially revolting to remember that the bodies of the three leading men among the “regicides”—Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton—were dragged from their graves, hung at the three corners of the gallows erected to grace the anniversary of Charles’ death, cut down and beheaded in the evening, and the heads spiked in front of Westminster Hall. The last two of these distinguished men were of good Derbyshire families.

It is difficult to know at what point to bring this historic sketch to a close when dealing with the memorials of _old_ Derbyshire; nor can more than a few more pages be spared for such a purpose. It may, perhaps, be of some interest and permissible to chronicle with brevity three more incidents of importance in connection with the history of the shire, namely, (1) the Revolution of 1688, (2) the invasion of Derbyshire by Prince Charles in 1745, and (3) the “Pentrich insurrection,” as it has been absurdly termed, of 1817.

Derbyshire, in the person of William Cavendish, fourth Earl and first Duke of Devonshire, may be said to have probably taken the most prominent part in the driving of James II. from his throne, and in the bringing to this country as his successor William of Orange. There can be no doubt that Cavendish eventually became thoroughly and conscientiously convinced as to the true patriotism of the course that he took; but it would be idle to pretend that this distinguished nobleman indulged in his first dislike of James for other than personal motives. William Cavendish was one of the four young noblemen who carried the train of Charles II. at his coronation in 1661. In that year he was returned to Parliament for Derby, and remained a member of the Commons until his father’s death in 1684. He was a man of hasty and most vehement temper; becoming embroiled in a threatened duel in 1675, he was committed to the Tower by the majority of the House for a short period for having broken privilege. From that moment Cavendish took an active part against the court party, and advocated the exclusion from the succession of the Duke of York. After James II.’s accession, the Earl had the bad grace to give way to his fiery temper just outside the King’s Presence Chamber, when he felled to the ground one Colonel Colepepper, who was said to have previously insulted him. For this offence Cavendish was brought before the King’s Bench, when he was fined in the gigantic sum of £30,000, being committed to prison until payment was made. It is said that his mother, the Countess, brought to James II. bonds of Charles I. for double that amount, lent to him by the Derbyshire Cavendishes during the Civil War. The King, however, refused to interfere, but the Earl managed to escape, and fled to his house at Chatsworth. So powerful was Cavendish’s influence over his tenantry, that when the High Sheriff and his posse arrived to arrest him, the Earl coolly turned the tables upon them, imprisoned the whole force at Chatsworth, and held them there until he had arranged for his liberty by giving a bond for the gradual payment of this fine.

The earl used his retirement in Derbyshire in furthering the plots for placing William of Orange on the throne, dispatching an agent in May, 1687, to make a direct offer to William on behalf of himself and other malcontent noblemen. The conspiracy came to a head in this county, the leaders choosing for their place of meeting a room in a small hostelry on the edge of Whittington Moor, near Chesterfield, still known as the Plotting Parlour. The name of this humble inn was changed, after William and Mary came to the throne, from the “Cock and Pynot” to “Revolution” Inn; its restored remnants are now named Revolution House. The original scheme was that William was to land in the north, when Cavendish was at once to seize Nottingham. But these plans were changed, and when the news reached the Midlands that William had landed at Torbay on 5th November, 1688, the Earl of Devonshire put himself at the head of 800 armed friends and retainers, and entered Derby on the 21st of November, when he declared for the Prince of Orange. He obtained some support, but the mayor (John Cheshire) refused to sanction the billeting of the earl’s troops. Thereupon Cavendish proceeded to Nottingham, where he met with more general support, and issued a proclamation justifying the raising and drilling of troops. The new sovereign naturally lavished his favours on his chief supporter. The earl was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire in May, 1689, in place of the deposed Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1694 he was created Duke of Devonshire and Marquis of Hartington.

_(From “Gentleman’s Magazine,” vol. lxxx, part 2, page 609.)_]

There was a considerable remnant of Jacobite feeling in the county, particularly amongst the clergy, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. The Stuart rising of 1715, which came to an end at Preston, caused much stir in Derbyshire, and there were several small tumults in the county town. The town of Derby became much distinguished in 1745 as the furthest place in England to which the brave Prince Charles Edward with his little army penetrated, in what has been rightly termed a gallant effort to achieve the impossible. There is no doubt that a very considerable majority of the upper and middle classes of Derbyshire were on the side of the constituted powers as then established; but the local authorities were fully aware that there was a certain amount of faith in a direct monarchical descent still current, and they were in some doubts as to the views of others in a district such as North Derbyshire, where there was still a considerable minority of adherents to Roman Catholicism. They did not dare, therefore, to call out the militia or any general forces of the county; but at a meeting summoned by the Duke of Devonshire on the 28th of September, at the “George Inn,” Derby, it was resolved to raise 600 volunteers in two companies to resist the pretensions of a “Popish Pretender,” of which the Marquis of Hartington and Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the two knights of the shire, were to be colonels. A subscription list for the necessary funds soon reached a sum of upwards of £6,000, and in the course of the next month the number of troops raised was increased to a thousand. On December 12th these troops were reviewed in the forenoon at Derby by the Duke as Lord-Lieutenant. An hour later an express reached Derby that the vanguard of the Scots had entered Ashbourne, whereupon in the afternoon, to the astonishment of many, the local troops were again drawn up in the market-place, and at ten in the evening “marched off by torchlight to Nottingham, headed by His Grace the Duke of Devonshire.” On the following morning the Scots entered Derby, and though they tarried there for two days, the Derbyshire volunteers had no share in their subsequent retreat and dispersion, for they were well out of the way in the adjoining shire of Nottingham. An amusing and bitter skit was written on the behaviour of this Derbyshire regiment, known as the “Blues” from the colour of their uniform, wherein they were upbraided for vanishing at the very moment when they were urgently needed. The following is one of the concluding paragraphs:—

“And when they came to Retford, they abode until word was brought that the young man was returned from Derby by the way which he came. And they returned back, and when they came nigh Derby they gave great shouts, saying, ‘Hail, Derby! happy are we to behold thee, for we greatly feared never to have seen thee.’”

The Prince was proclaimed in the market-place, and a sum of £3,000 was seized from the excise offices. On the following morning a French priest celebrated Mass in All Saints’ Church after the Roman use, which is said to have annoyed the English Catholics, who used the Marian missal in their private chapels. The Stuart forces quartered in Derby on the first night numbered 7,098, and on the second night 7,148. A small vanguard pushed on as far as Swarkeston bridge, but on the third day, the 6th December, the prince, disappointed of the expected additions to his forces and war chest, ordered a retreat, and the little army again passed through Ashbourne to the north.

To this county belongs the discredit of being the last place in the provinces where that horrible medley of butchery and torture—“hung, drawn, and quartered”—which our forefathers invented as a penalty for high treason, was carried out, although happily in a somewhat modified form. The actually last instance occurred in 1820, when the five Cato Street conspirators were beheaded after being hung. This shocking form of death fell to the lot of a Derbyshire framework knitter and two stonemasons in 1817. This was the time when the distress amongst the working classes in the Midlands had come to a climax, when every project of constitutional reform was stifled, and when a few half-starved men, deliberately incited by the spies and informers of those in authority, planned an abjectly foolish but riotous and murderous scheme to obtain relief, which was hatched at the “White Horse” Inn, Pentrich. The two or three score of labourers who took part in this rising were almost instantly scattered by the yeomanry; but the policy of the Government seems to have been to use this instrument to terrify the populace at large, and thereby to crush all attempts at reform. Hence everything was done that could be to exaggerate the so-called rebellion, and although the misguided ringleaders richly deserved punishment at the hands of the ordinary authority, it seems monstrous to have charged the offenders with high treason, and with the crime of levying war against the King. However, a special commission of four judges was appointed, and the trials at Derby, which extended over ten days, began on 15th of October. Most of the forty-six prisoners were condemned to transportation, but three of the ringleaders, James Brandreth, William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam, received the capital sentence for high treason. The Prince Regent signed the warrant for the execution of these three “traitors,” drawn from the humblest station in life, remitting that part of the sentence which related to “quartering,” with other absolutely unspeakable details, but ordering the hanging, drawing, and beheading. Two axes were ordered of Bamford, a smith of Derby, the pattern being taken from one in the Tower, which was supposed to have served in like cases.

On the morning of Friday, the seventh of November, the three miserable men, heavily ironed, were jolted round the prison yard on a horse-drawn hurdle or sledge, prepared, like the block, by Finney, the town joiner. On mounting the scaffold in front of the county jail, Brandreth and his fellows briefly testified that they had been brought to this plight by the tempting of Oliver, the degraded Government spy. They hung from the gallows for half an hour. Brandreth’s body was the first taken down and placed on the block. The greatest difficulty had been experienced in finding an executioner, but at last the high fee of twenty-five guineas secured several applicants. The chosen headsman was a Derbyshire collier; he was masked, and his identity was never disclosed. The mutilation was bungled; but when accomplished, the executioner seized the head by the hair, and holding it at arm’s length in three different directions over the crowd, thrice proclaimed, “Behold the head of the traitor Jeremiah Brandreth.” The other two were served in like manner. The scaffold was surrounded by a strong force of cavalry with drawn swords, and several companies of infantry were also present. The dense crowd was quite over-awed, and could utter no other protest than “terrifying shrieks.”

In that crowd was the poet Shelley. The day before the execution, the Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, and Shelley seized the opportunity to write a vigorous and now most rare pamphlet drawing a contrast between the two deaths.

The block on which these three men were beheaded is still preserved in the new county gaol at Derby. It consists of two 2½ in. planks fastened together, and measures 6 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. Six inches from one end a piece of wood 3 in. high is nailed across. The whole is tarred over, but the wood, strangely enough, remains damp in places. A tradition used to be current that the block sweated every seventh of November, on the anniversary of the execution; the writer visited it on that day in 1888, and found no difference in the sweating to what he had noticed in the previous week.

With Derbyshire during the century that has elapsed since the time of this absurdly misnamed Pentrich “insurrection,” we have now no concern. Its history during that period has been on the whole peaceful, and, in the best sense of the word, progressive. When in times to come the story of Derbyshire in the nineteenth century comes to be written, there can be no doubt that one name will stand out in letters of gold above its fellows. Florence Nightingale, now in her eighty-eighth year, was the younger daughter of Mr. William E. Nightingale, of Lea Hurst, near Matlock. It would be impossible to exaggerate the talent, energy, and devotion which that lady displayed in her almost impossible task of mitigating the horrors that overtook our sick and wounded soldiers in the great Russian war. It is not too much to say that this one gentle-born lady has entirely changed the conditions of military and general hospital nursing, not only in England, but throughout the civilised world. The Geneva Convention and the wearing of the Red Cross are but some of the fruits of this Derbyshire lady’s noble example.

May it also be permitted in a single brief sentence to record the fact that Derbyshire of the twentieth century has had the honour of giving Chancellors to each of our two great universities—for the Duke of Devonshire has for some time held the office of Chancellor of Cambridge, whilst Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the late Viceroy of India, was elected Chancellor of Oxford in March, 1907.

PREHISTORIC BURIALS IN DERBYSHIRE

By John Ward, F.S.A.

In prehistoric remains, Derbyshire is singularly favoured, and for two reasons. In the first place, nearly every class of these remains is represented, notably the following: cave-remains, burial-mounds, circles, camps, villages and other habitation sites, and the doubtful rocking-stones and other curious blocks and masses of rock which have been regarded as rock-idols or as otherwise associated with prehistoric man. In the second place, three of these classes—the first three of the above enumeration—are both numerous and important, scarcely surpassed by the corresponding remains of any other county in Great Britain. Moreover, these various remains have received the careful attention of a succession of antiquaries during the last century-and-a-half, and a large number of them have been more or less systematically explored, with the result that their literature is extensive and important. Derbyshire, indeed, has played a prominent part in the elucidation of the prehistoric archæology of our country.

Before entering upon the subject of this article, the distribution of these remains in the county demands a few words. They are most numerous in the mountainous region which lies north of Ashbourne and Wirksworth, and west of Tansley, Darley, and East Moors. They are rarely met with in the more gently undulating country to the east and south. Why this should be is not altogether clear. It is probable that the valleys and the low-lying lands generally, which are now the most populated, were in prehistoric times too swampy for habitation; but this does not explain the general absence of prehistoric remains from the higher tracts of the lowlands of Derbyshire. It has been suggested that the primitive inhabitants clung to the more mountainous regions because of the ease with which they could be defended against the marauding incursions of other tribes. It is more likely, however, that agriculture is mainly responsible for the uneven distribution. The fertile higher tracts of the lowlands have long been under cultivation, whereas many of the Peak uplands still remain in the primal state of nature, and many more of them have only been wrested from that state within the last two centuries. One of the earlier effects of the enclosing of the wastes in the eighteenth century and earlier decades of the following century, was the removal of the large stones of ancient monuments for gate-posts, and the despoiling of stone tumuli for the construction of field-walls and roads. Even on the moors it is rare that these remains have escaped partial demolition for the sake of their materials. If the havoc wrought during two centuries in the sparsely inhabited Peak country has been so great, it is not surprising that few prehistoric remains are to be seen where the land has been for a much longer time under cultivation. Probably the relative abundance or scarcity of stone is also to some extent accountable for the distribution. In the Peak, where stone is plentiful and rock-fragments strew the ground, cairns or stone tumuli abound; but in the south, where clays, marls, and glacial deposits abound, and stone is only obtained by quarrying, the few remaining tumuli are of earth. Earthwork, if left alone, is wonderfully enduring, but is highly susceptible of being levelled, and so obliterated, by the plough. The plough cuts through it as easily as through the natural soil; whereas in the Peak may often be seen the stony bases of cairns, covered with brambles, and avoided by the ploughman.

It is scarcely necessary to say that cairns, barrows, or tumuli, are, archæologically, the names applied to ancient burial-mounds. How the earliest races of men disposed of their dead we do not know; but we know that the earliest stages of civilization were everywhere characterized by a marked consideration for the dead, and this represents the strongest and perhaps ultimate difference between man and beast. When Neolithic man first appeared in our island, he already had an elaborate system of sepulture, and the megalithic chambers he raised are the greatest monuments of his age, and are among the most notable remains of prehistoric times. The Pyramids of Egypt are but barrows on a colossal scale, and constructed with all the engineering skill and refinement of a higher stage of culture than obtained in the west of Europe, and they will probably outlast all the other works of the ancient Egyptians.

It is not difficult to understand why burial under mounds should have preceded burial in the ground. In primitive times, before man possessed metal tools, it was easier to collect stones from the waste or to scrape sand or soil from the surface, wherewith to make a heap, than to dig a hole. Hence it is that in the tumuli of the Neolithic Age, and many of those of the following Bronze Age, interments are found upon or above the old ground level; while in others of the latter age, and many subsequent tumuli, they are found in shallow or deep excavations, over which the mounds were raised. To the early Christians the tumuli savoured of paganism, and soon ceased to be raised, but we have a reminiscence of the ancient mode of burial in our word “tomb.” In our country, as in the west of Europe generally, they range from Neolithic times to the establishment of Christianity, and the study of their contents better enables us to bridge the long interval with the successive advances made by man than does that of any other class of contemporary remains. In Derbyshire this is eminently the case, and perhaps no other English county can furnish so continuous a series of ancient interments.

In this county, as also in the contiguous parts of Staffordshire, a barrow is popularly known as a “low,” from the Anglo-Saxon _hlaew_, a small hill, heap, or mound, a word which is a frequent component in the place-names, as in Ward_low_, Blake_low_, etc. The conspicuous barrows at these and many other places so named, leave little room for doubt that they are accountable for the names, and that when absent the names may be regarded as evidence for their former existence. Whether the evidence in the case of hills, so many of the names of which in the Peak end in _low_, is of the same value is not so clear, as the hill itself may have been regarded as a “low” on a large scale. But it is well known that Neolithic and Bronze man had a decided penchant for burying his dead on the tops and brows of hills, as the pimple-like profile of many a barrow in such situations in the Peak amply proves. It may well have been, then, that the name by which a “low” on a hill was known has become transferred to the hill itself. It is impossible to estimate the number of these ancient burial-mounds in Derbyshire. The experienced eye will often detect on the moors the slight rise on the surface which may represent one, unmarked on the Ordnance Survey, and unrecognised as of possible archæological interest. The large number of _low_ names, where no traces of these mounds are now to be seen, indicates that many have disappeared, as also does the occasional chance discovery of a cist or a cinerary urn where nothing on the surface indicated an interment. The number of prehistoric burial places (the Roman and post-Roman do not come within the scope of this article) which have been discovered in the county and _described_ is little short of 300.

The first impression that the literature of these remains gives rise to is their great diversity, a diversity which the reader will not unnaturally associate with differences of age or of race, or of both combined; but he will soon find their classification a difficult task. Very few of those which have been explored were in a reasonably perfect condition to begin with, and then the explorations have often been insufficient, and the descriptions vague and inexact. In spite of these drawbacks, however, the Derbyshire barrows are susceptible of satisfactory classification into three main divisions: (1) a small number containing megalithic chambers, and with general consent assigned to the Neolithic Age; (2) a large and varied number which belong to the Bronze Age; and (3) a few which are of later age, some of which certainly synchronize with the Roman occupation. These groups, it should be mentioned, merge into one another by transitional characters, and there is a residue which, from insufficient data, cannot be assigned to any particular class.

Neolithic Barrows

Including several more or less doubtful examples, there are or have been within the last century, remains of about a dozen barrows containing “chambers” in the county. Three of these—at Five Wells, near Taddington, and at Mininglow and Harborough Rocks, near Brassington—have yielded good results to exploration. All three were unfortunately in an extremely ruined condition, but by piecing together their evidence a fair idea can be obtained of their original state.

The Five Wells example (figs. 1 and 2) was excavated by Mr. Salt, of Buxton, and the writer, in 1899.[1] The remaining lower portion of the mound was found to be circular, about 56 feet in diameter, and constructed of quarried stones roughly laid in courses, and so disposed at the margin as to form a wall-like podium, which remained in places to the height of three feet. Near the middle are still to be seen the remains of two chambers, each about six feet long, and constructed of great slabs of stone resting on the old natural surface. Each had a paved floor, and was reached by a tunnel-like passage or gallery, of similar construction to the chambers, from a porthole-like entrance in the podium. Each chamber is somewhat wedge-shaped, the wider end being that into which the gallery opened, and immediately within this end are two pillar-like stones, one on each side, which structurally formed the last pair of side stones of the gallery; but they differed in their greater height. The use of these “pillars” is uncertain, but the writer has suggested that between each pair was a dropstone, which when raised, portcullis-fashion, to allow of access to the chamber, was received into an upper space.

[1] _Reliquary and Illustrated Archæologist_, vii., 229.

The Mininglow example is larger, is also circular, and appears to have had five chambers, of which two (figs. 4 and 5) closely resemble the above, except that they seem to have lacked the “pillars.” Mr. Thomas Bateman, who examined this tumulus in 1843, found that it had a wall-like podium as at Five Wells, and he traced one of the galleries to its orifice in this podium. Had he pushed his investigations further, it is probable he would have found the mound to be of similar built construction.[2] The Harborough Rocks barrow was excavated by the writer in 1889, but it was too ruined to allow of its shape and the number of its chambers to be determined. One chamber (fig. 3), however, remained, and this also resembled those at Five Wells, but it is doubtful whether it ever possessed “pillars.” A portion of the gallery was traced, as also what was almost certainly a fragment of a podium.[3]

[2] _Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire_, 39; _Ten Years’ Diggings_, 54, 82.

[3] _Journal_ of Derbyshire Archæo. and Nat. Hist. Soc., xii., 118.

Of the other barrows of the type, little can be said of their structure. Several have been opened or destroyed by labourers, and the rest have only been slightly examined. Mr. Bateman examined examples at Ringham-low, near Monyash; Bolehill, near Bakewell; Stoneylow and Greenlow, near Brassington; Smerrill, near Youlgreave; and a second one at Mininglow. They all appear to have been constructed with stone, and their chambers to have been on a megalithic scale. He makes no mention of galleries, but as his efforts were confined to clearing out the ruined chambers, he might easily have overlooked their remains. With the exception of the first-mentioned, they were all circular, but his plan and description of that barrow leave it uncertain whether its curious outline was original or due to additions. The remaining three barrows—the great one near Chelmerton,[4] one near Wardlow,[5] and one on Derwent Moor,[6] have only a doubtful claim to be included in the chambered class. They were broken into a century or more ago, and the accounts of them are very meagre.

[4] _Pilkington_, _View of Derbyshire_, ii., 424.

[5] _Philosoph. Trans._, 1759.

[6] _Ten Years’ Diggings_, 254.

Unfortunately, all the chambers in this county which have been searched from scientific motives had already been rifled, but that at Harborough Rocks had suffered least. Here the mound had been almost entirely removed for the sake of its materials, the capstone of the chamber had been thrown over, and many of the skeletons it contained scattered; but, fortunately, six of these remained untouched. These were laid on their sides across the space, in the usual contracted or doubled-up attitude. Mr. Bateman, in 1843, found in the more perfect of the two Five Wells chambers the remains of about twelve skeletons, all in a state of confusion. He also found a similar number in one of the Ringham-low[7] chambers, and in that at Smerrill, and a still greater number at Stoney-low.[8] The chambers at Mininglow and Greenlow had been too much rifled to yield more than a few scattered bones to his spade. In the Wardlow barrow seventeen skeletons were found, “inclosed by two side walls”; and from that on Derwent Moor a “cartload of human bones occupied a large trench above a yard wide.” The skulls in every case, when sufficiently perfect for their form to be made out, have been of the long or dolichocephalic shape; and all the shin bones that have come under the writer’s notice have exhibited the peculiar flattening known as platycnemism. These Neolithic people had a remarkable immunity from dental caries, although the teeth are frequently so worn down by mastication that they must have been almost level with the gums in life. Out of 148 teeth at Harborough Rocks, many of which were excessively ground down, there were only five or six which showed any signs of caries.

[7] _Ten Years’ Diggings_, 93.

[8] _Vestiges_, 46.

In no case has a bronze or other metallic object been found associated with these interments. The few stone implements which have been found are all of flint, and it is significant that these have consisted mostly of thin and delicately-worked arrow-heads of leaf-shaped form. The clayey floor of the gallery at Harborough Rocks yielded several of these, all excessively thin and beautifully wrought, all either broken or calcined, and associated with fragments of charcoal. Several fine examples were found in two of the Ringham-low chambers, and the point of one at Five Wells; and, in addition, a knife of delicate workmanship was also found with the last, as also fragments of coarse pottery, but these may have been derived from destroyed later burials at a higher level.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Figs. 3, 4, and 5.—Plans of “Chambers.” Fig. 3, at Harborough Rocks; Figs. 4 and 5, at Mininglow, Derbyshire.]

This association of numerous skeletons, dolichocephalic skulls, and leaf-shaped arrow-heads in Neolithic chambers has been observed elsewhere in Britain. We need only cross the Derbyshire border a few miles for an excellent example of this. In 1849 a large and little disturbed chamber was opened at Wetton, in Staffordshire, which yielded about thirteen dolichocephalic skeletons and several of these arrow-heads. Further afield, at Rodmarton, in Gloucestershire, the arrow-heads were all broken, apparently intentionally, as seems to have been the case at Harborough Rocks. The placing of things which are useful in life with the dead is both ancient and widespread, and has its roots in the belief in man’s continued existence after death, and that somehow they will still be of use to him. The breaking or burning of them may have been partly to render them useless to the living, and partly by thus “killing” them to set their spirits free to join the departed in the world of spirits. Perhaps, too, there was a sacrificial intention of propitiating the ancestral spirits. The presence of the arrow-heads in the gallery at Harborough Rocks is more suggestive of offerings to the dead than the depositing of objects with them at the burial. Some prehistoric man would, perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, crawl into the entrance to the vault of the family or the clan and there make his offering, and with some appropriate formula dedicate it to the dead by breaking or burning the objects, the enduring arrow-heads and charcoal alone remaining to us as witnesses of the act. The thinness and delicacy of these arrow-heads suggest that they were made, not for use, but for this special purpose, like the amber and jet models of implements which have been found in Continental chambers. A further stage, in which the act has become degraded into a purely representative one, is seen in the imitation cardboard money which the Chinaman burns to enrich the soul of his ancestor.

Assuming that the less known examples correspond with the better known, which seems probable, these Derbyshire Neolithic burial-places constitute, in their circular outlines and their abrupt entrances, a strongly marked local type, contrasting in these respects with the more usual elongated forms and incurved entrances elsewhere. The wedge-shaped plans and inward leaning sides of the chambers at Mininglow, Five Wells, and Harborough Rocks, present another peculiarity. The apparent absence of galleries in some of these remains may not be due to oversight or want of investigation, as this means of access has been proved to be absent from some of the barrows of this period; but it seems to be an essential that the chamber should have some means of access, even if it involved digging, for the whole trend of enquiry goes to show that it was designed for successive burials, and herein it differs from the cists of the barrows we next consider.

Bronze Age Barrows

The barrows of this era in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, differ so much among themselves in form, size, construction, and contents, that it is impossible to establish a Bronze Age “type.” They have little in common, except in the relics associated with their interments, which have the impress of a common age. Compared with the chambered class, they are, as a rule, smaller and of less elaborate construction; but more marked is the difference in their internal arrangements. The former barrows suggest the idea that they were erected _to receive_ the dead; these, that they were _piled up_ over the dead. The chamber, being designed to receive successive interments, was provided with a tunnel-like gallery, or other means of more or less easy access; whereas the Bronze Age cist or grave, having received its charge, was permanently closed, and if the mound which was raised over it was used for future burials, new receptacles were made for the dead, which rarely interfered with the primary or original one. Sometimes, however, in digging a new grave the primary was reached, and more often than not the bones were thrown on one side to make way for the new interment, thus indicating how completely the Neolithic procedure had disappeared.

The results of the examination of about 250 of the Derbyshire Bronze Age barrows have been placed upon record, and these represent about three times as many interments which have been described—by “interment” must be understood, not the remains of each separate body buried, but _each burial_, whether it consisted of one body or more.