heiress of William the ninth lord by a Spanish lady of high birth, Mary
Salmes, after the death of her first husband, Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, brother-in-law of King Henry VIII., became the wife of
Richard Bertie. On the accession of Queen Mary she was forced to fly
from her own country to escape the cruelties and persecutions of Bishop
Gardiner, whose enmity she had drawn upon herself by some imprudent
manifestations of her dislike of his character in the preceding reign.
Accompanied by her husband, she sought refuge in the Low Countries.
"On an October evening," says Lucy Aikin in her "Memoirs of the Court
of Elizabeth," "followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through
rain and mire and darkness, the forlorn wanderers began their march
to Wesel, one of the Hanse towns. On their arrival, their wild and
wretched appearance gave them, in the eyes of the inhabitants, so
suspicious an appearance that no one would harbour them; and while her
husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring admittance the afflicted
duchess was compelled to betake herself to the shelter of a church
porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and want of everything,
was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the circumstance, she
gave the name of Peregrine." The son who first saw the light under
these inauspicious circumstances was, at her death in 1580, and in
her right, summoned to Parliament as tenth Lord Willoughby. Two years
afterwards, when Elizabeth, on account of the hostility of Philip
of Spain, was desirous of cultivating a closer friendship with the
Northern Powers, Lord Willoughby was selected as her special envoy
to the King of Denmark to invest him with the Garter as a token of
her goodwill. Subsequently, when the battle between the two great
principles that divided Europe was being fought out by England and
Spain, he had many opportunities of distinguishing himself and won
undying fame.
Elizabeth had sent an army to assist the Protestant people of the
Low Countries to maintain their civil privileges and their religious
faith against Philip and against Rome. Leicester, who had the
chief command, was unable to cope with so skilled a general as the
Prince of Parma, and the campaign was a disastrous one. Among the
heroes in that little band was the rare scholar, the accomplished
writer, the perfect gentleman, the darling of the English people, Sir
Philip Sidney, and with him his intimate friend, the brilliant and
quick-witted--the bravest of the brave on the battle-field--the "good
Lord Willoughby"--"Good Peregrine," as his "most loving sovereign,"
Elizabeth, familiarly styled him in one of her letters. The following
story of his prowess at the battle of Zutphen, in which Sidney received
his mortal wound, is related in a comparatively modern work, "Five
Generations of a Loyal House":--
On the 22nd September, 1586, an affray took place, in which Lord
Willoughby pre-eminently distinguished himself by valour and conduct,
and many others with him upheld the glory of the English name. Sir
John Norreis and Sir William Stanley[16] were that day reconciled;
the former coming forward to say, "Let us die together in her
Majesty's cause." The enemy were desirous of throwing supplies into
Zutphen, a place of which they entertained some doubt; and a convoy,
accordingly, by orders of the Prince of Parma, brought in a store,
though an insufficient one, of provisions. A second, commanded by
George Cressiac, an Albanois, was despatched for the same purpose,
the morning being foggy. Lord Willoughby, Lord Audley, Sir John
Norreis, and Sir Philip Sidney encountering the convoy in a fog an
engagement began. The Spaniards had the advantage of position, and
had it in their power to discharge two or three volleys of shot upon
the English, who, nevertheless, stood their ground. Lord Willoughby
himself, with his lance in rest, met with the leader, George Cressiac,
engaged with, and, after a short combat, unhorsed him. He fell into a
ditch, crying aloud to his victor: "I yield myself to you, for that
you be a seemly knight," who, satisfied with the submission, and
having other matters in hand, threw himself into the thickest of the
combat, while the captive was conducted to the tent of the general,
Lord Leicester. The engagement was hot, and cost the enemy many lives,
but few of the English were missing. Willoughby was extremely forward
in the combat; at one moment his basses, or mantle, was torn from
him, but recaptured. When all was over, Captain Cressiac, being still
in his Excellency's tent, refused to acknowledge himself prisoner to
any but the knight to whom he had submitted on the field. There is
something in this and the like incidents of the period, which recall
us very agreeably to the recollection of earlier days of chivalry
and romance. Cressiac added, that if he were to see again the knight
to whom he had surrendered himself, in the armour he then wore, he
should immediately recognise him, and that to him and him only would
he yield. Accordingly, when Lord Willoughby presented himself before
him, in complete armour, he immediately exclaimed: "I yield to you!"
and was adjudged to him as his prisoner. It was in this skirmish that
the gallant and lamented Sir Philip Sidney, the boast of his age, and
the hope of many admiring friends, received the fatal wound which cut
short the thread of a brief but brilliant existence. During the whole
day he had been one of the foremost in action, and once rushed to the
assistance of his friend, Lord Willoughby, on observing him "nearly
surrounded by the enemy," and in imminent peril: after seeing him in
safety, he continued the combat with great spirit, until he received
a shot in the thigh, as he was remounting a second horse, the first
having been killed under him.
The story of Sidney's death has been told by his friend Lord Brooke,
and the affecting anecdote of his demeanour when he was carried
faint and bleeding from the walls of Zutphen inspires a love and
reverence for his name, which never ceases to cling about the hearts
of his countrymen. "Passing along by the rear of the army," says his
biographer, "where his uncle (the Earl of Leicester) the general was,
and being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for some drink,
which was presently brought him. But as he was putting the bottle to
his mouth he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last
at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle; which Sir
Philip perceiving took it from his head before he drank, and delivered
it to the poor man with these words,'Thy necessity is yet greater than
mine.'"
When the Earl of Leicester abruptly left for England Lord Willoughby
was by his direction appointed to the chief command, in which he
was subsequently confirmed by the Queen herself. He was not less
magnanimous than brave; and, disdaining the servility of a Court life,
is thought to have enjoyed on this account less of the Queen's favour
than her admiration of military merit would otherwise have prompted her
to bestow upon him. Some time after the defeat of the Armada he retired
to Spa, ostensibly for the recovery of his health, but more probably
in resentment of some injury inflicted by a venal and treacherous
Court, the intrigues of which his noble nature scorned; but Elizabeth,
unwilling to lose the support of one of her bravest and most popular
captains, addressed a letter of recall to him. He does not appear,
however, to have been actively engaged in any of the expeditions
against Spain which ensued; though he was subsequently appointed
Governor of Berwick, an appointment he held until his death in 1601.
His son was afterwards created Earl of Lindsay, and the title of Duke
of Ancaster has been borne by his descendants.
There are other names associated with the annals of Rivington of equal
historic interest with those of the former lords of Shaw Place, and
foremost among them must be ranked that of the worthy prelate, who in
the golden days of the maiden Queen, when he had risen to be Bishop
of Durham, and out of the love he bore to his native county founded
the free school at Rivington for the "bringing up, teaching, and
instructing children and youth in grammar and other good learning,
to continue for ever." In good Bishop Pilkington's early days the
opportunities of learning were few; the well-born might get admission
to the house of some great territorial lord and there receive a
scholastic training, but to those of lowlier birth the monasteries
were almost the only available sources, and the youths there educated
were usually trained for the priesthood. The heaviest reproach that
Shakespeare's Jack Cade could heap upon Lord Say was "that he had most
traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar
school." Little progress had, however, been made in "corrupting the
youth" of Lancashire, for at the time of the Reformation there were
only three such schools in the county--Farnworth, Manchester, and
Warrington--and they had then been only recently founded; hence the
common people, as may be supposed, were rude and uncultured, and,
though the merriest of Englishmen, were as illiterate as they were
merry; even the thrifty manufacturers were in very little better
case, for in only very few instances did they know how to write their
names.[17]
The Pilkingtons derived their patronymic from the manor of that name in
Prestwich parish, where they were located shortly after the Conquest,
though Fuller in his "Worthies of England" assigns, but without any
apparent authority, a much earlier date, and tells us that one of them
fought under Harold at the battle of Hastings, and, being pressed, put
on the dress of a thatcher and so escaped; whence the family crest and
the allusive motto, "_Now thus, now thus_." But in this the pleasant
old chronicler is clearly at fault, for the crest of the Pilkingtons is
not a thresher but a mower, and the motto imputed to the family belongs
to the Traffords. Fuller says he had the story from his "good friend,
Master William Riley, Norroy King of Arms," a Lancashire man. Whatever
its origin--and tradition, if never wholly accurate, is seldom entirely
destitute of foundation--it is a singular coincidence that the same, or
nearly the same, story is applied to the Traffords, the Levers, and the
Bridgeman family.
An offshoot of the Pilkingtons was settled at Rivington in the first
half of the fourteenth century, and the old hall was the residence of
this branch of the family for many generations. The earlier history
of the family is involved in much obscurity, but in the 10th Edward
III. (1336-7) Robert, a younger son of Sir Roger de Pilkington and
his wife Alice, sister and heiress of Henry de Bury, obtained a grant
of the manor of Rivington from Alexander, son of Cicely de Rivington.
This Robert Pilkington was in the time of Richard II. a juror in the
great Scrope and Grosvenor cause, which occupied the court of the Lord
Marshall of England four years in determining the conflicting claims
of Sir Richard le Scrope and Sir Robert le Grosvenor to bear for arms
on a field azure, a bend or--a golden bar placed diagonally across the
shield. Heraldry in those days was the recognised mark of hereditary
honour and gentility, and coat armour had an intrinsic value. The suit
in which Robert Pilkington, of Rivington, took part has scarcely a
parallel in history; deeds, chronicles, monastic records, and muniments
that purported to date back to the fabulous days of King Arthur were
submitted; and John O'Gaunt, Owen Glendower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and
scores of lords, knights, and esquires, the surviving veterans from the
wars of Edward III., who had beheld the blazonry borne before the walls
of Ascalon, in the Crusades, in northern France, under the standard of
the Black Prince, on the plains of Crescy and Poictiers, and many other
famous places and fields of fame, were called as witnesses. As the
humourist has it--
Would you know more, you must look at "The Roll,"
Which records the dispute,
And the subsequent suit,
Commenced in "Thirteen sev'nty-five,"--which took root
In Le Grosvenor's assuming the arms Le Scroope swore
That none but _his_ ancestors, ever before,
In foray, joust, battle, or tournament wore,
To wit "_On a Prussian-blue Field, a Bend Or_;"
While the Grosvenor averr'd that his ancestor bore
The same, and Scroope lied like a--somebody tore
Off the simile--so I can tell you no more,
Till some A double S shall the fragment restore.
Robert Pilkington, by his wife Katharine, daughter of J. de Aynesworth,
had a son Alexander, his heir, who, as appears by an inquisition taken
9th Henry V. (1421-2), held seven parts of the manor of Rivington
of his cousin, Sir John Pilkington, Knight; he settled his estates
8th Henry VI. (1429-30), and was succeeded in turn by his son, Ralph
Pilkington, who died 30th January, 15th Edward IV. (1476). His
inquisition was taken at Eccles on Monday before the Purification of
the Virgin, 17th Edward IV. (26th January, 1478), when it was found
that Robert Pilkington, who was then 28 years of age, was his son and
next heir.
The Battle of Bosworth Field proved as fatal to the fortunes of the
parent stock of the Pilkingtons as to the power of their royal master,
Richard III. They were devoted adherents of the house of York, and
bore a part in the bloody contest which ended the struggle between
the Red and White Roses, and alike terminated the power of the feudal
barons, the line of the Plantagenet kings, and the political system
under which England had been governed by them for more than three
centuries. For his adherence to the fortunes of the fallen monarch Sir
Thomas Pilkington's estates were forfeited to the victorious Richmond,
and by him bestowed upon his crafty stepfather, Thomas, Lord Stanley,
first Earl of Derby, the only noble who survived the wars of the Roses
with added power and splendour, he having given to him almost all
the lands forfeited in the north; the originally great possessions
of his house being swollen by enormous grants of the estates of Sir
Thomas Broughton, of Broughton; of Sir James Harrington, of Hornby;
of Francis, Viscount Lovel; of Sir Thomas Pilkington, and what Sir
Thomas had inherited by descent from the heiress of Chetham--in fact,
from these forfeited possessions of the Pilkingtons came all the lands
which the Stanleys obtained in the Salford Hundred. If there is any
foundation for the story of a Pilkington having disguised himself
to escape his pursuers, it must have been after the fatal fight at
Bosworth, and not at Hastings, as Fuller affirms. There is a common
belief that Sir Thomas Pilkington was captured on the occasion of
Richard's overthrow, sent prisoner to Leicester, and there put to
death; but the statement is incorrect, for this devoted servant of the
fallen king was afterwards in arms against Henry VII., and took part in
the action at Stoke Field, near Newark, where he lost his life, June
6, 1487, the occasion being that on which Lambert Simnel, the pretended
Edward Plantagenet, was taken prisoner.
Though Robert Pilkington, of Rivington, also fought on the side
of the Yorkists at Bosworth, his lands appear to have escaped the
general wreck, and his descendants continued in the occupation of the
ancestral home for several generations. Richard Pilkington, a son or
grandson of this Robert, was born in 1480, and had to wife Alice,
daughter of Lawrence Asshawe, of Hall-on-the-Hill, in Heath-Charnock,
a township adjoining Rivington, which would appear to have come into
the possession of the Asshawes by marriage with a heiress of the
Harringtons of Westby. The Asshawes at a later date also owned lands in
Flixton, where they had a residence, Asshawe Hall, which still exists.
Round this family Mr. M'Dougall has thrown the halo of romance, and
under the title of "The Ladye of Asshawe" has enshrined in verse a
lingering tradition that possibly possesses some faint glimmerings of
truth, with, however, much that is undoubtedly apocryphal.
A branch of the family was seated at High Bullough, in Anglezark, in
the reign of Henry VIII.; and from this line, through James, younger
son of John Asshawe or Shaw, as the name began to be written, who
married Mary Gerard, a daughter of the house of Ince, descended the
Shaws who were seated at Shaw Place, in Heath Charnock, before that
mansion passed into the possession of the Willoughbys, and were
residing there when Sir William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms, made
his visitation in 1664, Peter Shaw then registering a pedigree of six
descents. We shall make acquaintance with the Shaws of High Bullough
and Shaw Place in the course of our inquiries.
Fuller says, and the statement has obtained currency by frequent
repetition, that Richard Pilkington, who married the daughter of
Lawrence Asshawe, built the church of Rivington, but the statement is
not strictly accurate, though it was no doubt through his exertions
that the building then existing received consecration. That there was
an ecclesiastical foundation here at an earlier date is evident from
the "humble complaint" which Richard Sim, the churchwarden, and other
inhabitants of the chapelry in 1628 addressed to Bishop Bridgeman.
It appears that a claim had been set up by one Thomas Breers to the
inheritance of the church and churchyard as his lay fee, on the ground
that it had formed part of the possessions of Richard Pilkington, and
had been conveyed by his grandson, Robert Pilkington, to Thomas Breers,
the elder, the claimant's father. A reply was filed declaring that long
before the inquisition taken on the death of Richard Pilkington (1551)
the inhabitants of Rivington, Anglezark, Hemshaw, and Foulds, in the
parish of Bolton-le-Moors, and who were then reckoned to number five
hundred, at their own cost had built the said chapel "upon a little
toft and quillit of land" in Rivington, there to celebrate divine
service, sacraments, and sacramentals, which were performed accordingly
"for manie yeres of antiquitie;" and that afterwards Richard Pilkington
made great labour and took great pains with Dr. Bird, the Bishop of
Chester, and desired him to dedicate the same chapel and chapelyard to
God and His Holy and divine service, and the same was consecrated the
11th day of October, 1541. They further showed that Queen Elizabeth,
by a grant under the great seal dated at Westminster 13th May, in
the eighth year of her reign (1566), did, amongst other things, at
the petition of James Pilkington (son of Richard), Bishop of Durham,
grant to the governors of the Grammar School in Rivington and their
successors, that from time to time and ever afterwards there should
be in the said chapel sacraments and sacramentals celebrated, and
other divine services used, and also baptising of infants, celebration
of matrimony, burying and inhumation of the dead within the said
chapel and chapelyard, and all other rites, celebrations, prayers,
and services in the said chapel for ever, there to be used in all and
every construction and purpose, as is, are, or ought to be used in
the parish church of Bolton-in-the-Moors. And that ever afterwards
the people and inhabitants within Rivington, Anglezark, Hemshaw, and
Foulds on their own proper costs should find, from time to time, one
discreet, learned, and fit chaplain or minister to serve in the said
chapel, and make his residence there, and to perform all divine offices
in the said chapel, and all other things there which may or ought to
belong to the office of rector (_sic_) of the said parish church of
Bolton, or any other rector or curate or parish church of England. And
that the said inhabitants should not be compelled or bound to repair
to the parish church of Bolton, or to any other church or chapel, to
hear divine service, or to receive the sacraments, to bury their dead,
or to celebrate matrimony, but only to the chapel of Rivington. They
also offered to depose and prove that, time beyond the memory of man,
they and their ancestors had quietly enjoyed the said church or chapel
and chapelyard, with all the freedoms, privileges, and immunities
thereof, and had continually repaired, maintained and upholden the
same, and had also as then kept and provided a sufficient minister
and preacher at the same, and they therefore besought the Bishop to
continue the privileges to them, their heirs, and successors for ever.
The inhabitants established their case, and under date November 15th,
1628, the Bishop confirmed all their rights to them.
It would thus seem that originally Rivington had been a kind of minor
(succursal) chapel of ease, erected for the accommodation of the
people, who, residing in a remote hamlet, found it inconvenient on all
occasions to resort to the mother church, and had been licensed for
public worship, without, however, possessing the full privileges and
characteristics of a church until, through the influence and exertions
of Richard Pilkington, the Bishop of Chester was induced to consecrate
it.
It will be seen that at that early date the good people of Rivington
appointed their own minister, a circumstance that goes far to confirm
the belief that, though the Pilkingtons might have been liberal
benefactors, they were not the actual founders of the church. The
inhabitants have ever since continued to exercise the right of
patronage, the incumbent whenever a vacancy occurs being elected by
the votes of the ratepayers, a practice that is not without its
disadvantages, as people of all religious beliefs and of no religious
belief at all have equal rights in the selection of the minister, and
exercise them, not always with a view to the church's efficiency or
usefulness.
The old chapel--doubtless a very primitive-looking structure--was
rebuilt in 1666, and within the last few years has undergone a
thorough restoration. By whomsoever founded, it is clear that one of
the most liberal contributors to the endowment was George Shaw, of
High Bullough, a kinsman of Richard Pilkington's wife, whose name is
perpetuated in the following inscription on a small brass placed below
one of the windows on the north side:--
Here Lyeth the Bodye of George Shaw, Gentleman, who was the fourth
sonne of Laurence Shaw of High Bullough in the county of Lancaster,
who in his Lyfe time gave £200 to be as stocke for ever for the use
of the Church of Rivington, the profitts whereof to be paid yearly
to a Preaching Minister at this Church. And at his death hee gave,
besides other large legacies to his kinsfolkes and friends, the sume
of £100 to be as stocke for ever, the profitts whereof to be yearly
distributed amongst the Poor Inhabitants of Rivington, Andlesargh,
Heath Charnock and Anderton, on Peter's Day and Michael's Day, by
even portions; And £190 (being the remainder of his Estate) hee also
gave to be bestowed on land or laid upon a rent charge for ever, the
profitts whereof to be lent from tyme to tyme gratis to the poore
tennants within the townes aforesaid towards the paying of their Fynes
for such tyme and at the discretion of Mr. Alexander Feeilden and Mr.
George Shaw his Executors, and their heires, and others named in his
last Will. Hee dyed November the VIII day, anno Doni, 1650, being of
the age of 73 years.
The memory of the Pilkingtons is preserved in the following inscription
on a memorial in the church:--
_Vivit post Funera Virtus. Richard Pilkington qui Templum hoc condidit
hic sepeliebatur año Dñi 1551, et maii 24, tunc doñica Trinitatis, ac
ætatis suoe 66, bonæ memoriæ Vir._
_Alicia Asshaw ei uxor 12 liberos ei peperit, è quibus tres
concionatores fuerunt et Cantabrigiensis à Collegio S. Johannis ac ea
vivit octogenaria._ Fathers teach yor children nurtur & learning of
the Lorde.
_Jacobus istorum filius creat' Episcop' Dunelme 2 Martii año 1660,
et ætatis suæ 42, hanc Scholam aperuit anno 1566 et Templum._ Children
obey yor parents in ye Lord.
Richard Pilkington, who married Alice Asshawe, and died on the 24th
May, 1551, had a numerous family. One of his daughters, Katharine,
became the wife of John, son of James Shaw, of Shaw Place, in Heath
Charnock. Of the sons, Charles, the eldest, died young; George
succeeded to the family inheritance, and left a son, Robert, his
heir, who by his will dated 16th November, 1605, left the manor of
Rivington, with his other estates, in trust to Mr. Serjeant Hutton,
Thomas Tildesley, Esq., and Mrs. Katharine Pilkington, who sold the
manor to Robert Lever, of Darcy Lever. His only daughter and heiress,
Jane, in 1653, became the second wife of her kinsman, John Andrews,
of Little Lever, son and heir of Nicholas Andrews, of the city of
London, an offshoot of the old Northamptonshire family of the Andrews
of Charwelton, and his wife, Heath, daughter of Thomas Lever, of
Little Lever Hall, a captain in Cromwell's army; and the lordship
has continued in their descendants to the present time. James, the
third son of Richard Pilkington, became Bishop of Durham, and of this
distinguished member of the family we shall have more to say anon.
Francis Pilkington, the fourth son, died in 1597. Leonard, the fifth
son, became master of St. John's College, Rector of Whitburne and
prebendary of Durham; his grandson, a stout Church-and-King man, who
had to compound for his estates on account of his adherence to the
cause of the unfortunate Charles I., acquired extensive possessions
in Ireland, and founded the line of the Pilkingtons of Tore, in the
county of Westmeath, represented at the present day by Henry Mulock
Pilkington, Esq., as well as that of Pilkington of Carrick, in Queen's
County. John, the sixth son, like his brothers, James and Leonard,
was in holy orders, and became archdeacon of Durham with a prebendal
stall in that cathedral, three of the sons of Richard Pilkington thus
attaining to distinguished positions in the Church, and holding,
respectively, the offices of bishop, archdeacon, and prebendary of
Durham.
James Pilkington, "the good old Bishop of Durham," as Strype calls
him, first saw the light in the year 1518, three years after good
Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, had founded his grammar school at
Manchester, when Wolsey was in the plenitude of his power, and the
learned Erasmus was winning renown by his Greek translation of the New
Testament; the year in which Martin Luther, by his denunciation of
the new-fangled doctrine of indulgences, shook the foundation of the
Papacy, and cleared the way for that mighty change in religious thought
and sentiment the full meaning of which is tersely comprehended in
the one word which marks the epoch--the Reformation. Young Pilkington
received his earliest instruction in the seminary where so many
Puritans were trained--the Grammar School at Farnworth, which had been
then lately founded by William Smyth, of Widnes, Bishop of Lincoln, the
companion in his boyhood's days of Hugh Oldham, of Exeter, Manchester's
great benefactor. It is probable that Thomas Lever, a younger son of
John Lever, of Lever Hall, so intimately associated with Pilkington
in later years of study, labour, and exile--the future master of St
John's, Cambridge, and the favourite preacher of Queen Elizabeth--was
attending the same school at the time, so that the two, being about the
same age, may very likely, as Dr. Halley suggests, have been taught by
the same teacher, and whipped with the same birch.
Pilkington subsequently entered at St. John's, Cambridge, at that
time a stronghold of the reformed doctrine and a favourite resort of
Lancashire men, where he had his quondam schoolfellow, young Lever, as
a fellow collegian. At the University he greatly distinguished himself
by his zeal in promoting the revival of Greek literature. In due time
he obtained the degree of doctor of divinity, and was also elected
a fellow of his college. He became famous for his eloquence and his
success as a preacher of the reformed doctrines; and in December, 1550,
he was presented by the young King Edward to the vicarage of Kendal,
but did not enjoy that preferment very long. On the death of his royal
patron he ranged himself on the side of the partisans of the hapless
Lady Jane Grey, but he does not appear to have been very actively
concerned in the futile attempt to place her upon the throne. On the
accession of Queen Mary the fires of martyrdom were kindled. John
Bradford's preaching brought him to the stake, and Pilkington would
doubtless have shared the fate of the Manchester martyr had he not
prudently withdrawn from his vicarage and sought safety abroad, where
he remained for some years a voluntary exile, three other Lancashire
men being his associates in adversity--his old companion, Lever, who
afterwards became Archdeacon of Coventry; Alexander Nowell, of Read,
in Whalley parish, the future Dean of St Paul's; and Edwin Sandys, of
Hawkshead, in Furness, whom Queen Elizabeth promoted to the Bishopric
of Worcester, and who subsequently became Archbishop of York. While
at Geneva, Basle, and Zurich Pilkington read lectures and became
associated with the leading Calvinistic Reformers, whose views in
relation to ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies he warmly espoused,
though when he attained to power, strict Puritan as he was, he was
never so rigorous in enforcing them as his friend Lever.
With the close of the short reign of Mary the glare of the Smithfield
fires died out. On the accession of Elizabeth, Pilkington, being no
longer in peril, returned to his own country, and on the 20th of July
in the following year (1559) was elected master of St. John's College,
Cambridge--that in which he had graduated. He was one of the six
divines appointed to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and for these
and other services he was, on the 26th December, 1560, nominated to the
vacant see of Durham. On the 20th February following, Elizabeth issued
her warrant for his election to the palatinate. He was consecrated on
the 2nd of March, received part of the temporalities on the 25th, and
on the 10th of April following was enthroned at Durham,
Where his Cathedral, huge and vast,
Looks down upon the Wear,--
the "great high place"--
Deep in Durham's Gothic shade,
where in earlier days the prince-bishop, whose worldly franchises
invested him with a faint shadow of sovereign power, bearing alike the
sword and the pastoral staff, "looked down," as Dr. Freeman says, "from
his fortified height, on a flock which he had to guard no less against
worldly than against ghostly foes."
There is a wide-spread belief among the people of Rivington that
Pilkington was the first Protestant bishop appointed by Queen
Elizabeth, but this is undoubtedly an error. Parker had been appointed
to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury in the preceding year, and many
other vacant sees had also been filled up, but those of York and Durham
had been purposely kept open for a year, in the hope that the former
holders--Heath and Tunstall--would conform.
Nothing, perhaps, more forcibly illustrates the sturdy independence
and inflexible determination of the old Lancashire divine than his
uncompromising resistance to the unjust attempt made by Elizabeth
to appropriate to her own use, or that of some of her favourites,
a portion of the temporalities of his bishopric. The revenues of
the Cathedral church of Durham had attracted the cupidity of the
sordid minions of the Court, who were anxious to enlarge their
hereditary estates by the seizure of the Church's lands, and, at
their instigation, the Queen, following the example of her father,
Henry VIII., on Pilkington's nomination, had excepted out of the
restitution several valuable manors and estates, a procedure that the
newly-enthroned prelate, whose manly spirit, disdaining the slavish
obsequiousness which characterised many of his episcopal brethren,
refused to acquiesce in. He at once took measures for the recovery of
the detained estates, and prosecuted his claim with so much firmness
and energy, that Elizabeth, who was wont to speak of "unfrocking"
contumacious bishops, had in the long run to yield, and Pilkington in
1566 had the good fortune to obtain the restoration of the whole of
his lands, with the exception of Norhamshire, charged, however, with
the payment of an annuity to the crown of £1,020. The bishop was no
respecter of persons. If he was ready to brave the displeasure of the
Queen in guarding the rights of the Church in his own diocese, he was
equally willing to defend her interests elsewhere, and, as we shall
hereafter see, did not scruple even to rebuke both a bishop and an
archbishop in doing so.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL.]
The Church has seldom had a more faithful pastor or zealous
administrator than worthy James Pilkington. In the month of October,
1561, the first year of his episcopate, he made a visitation of his
diocese, passing through his native county on his way north, and that
would appear to have been the occasion on which he addressed a letter
of admonition to Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the lamentable
state of ecclesiastical affairs in Lancashire, and a deplorable
picture his letter presents of the Church at that time. The Archbishop
was the patron and rector of the three great parishes of Rochdale,
Blackburn, and Whalley, then embracing within their limits a large
number of chapelries, the incumbents of which were as ill-paid as
their cures were badly served; indeed, the position of the clergy was
much worse after the Reformation than before, partly because of the
extensive confiscations of parochial property, and partly because they
lost many of the fees that had been customarily paid for religious
services. William Downham was Bishop of Chester at the time--an
easy-going prelate, who was not much troubled with earnest scruples
of any kind. The Bishop was negligent, and, as might be expected, his
clergy were, for the most part, wanting in earnestness; many of them,
too, were miserably poor, lamentably incompetent, sadly ignorant, and
some grossly immoral. The Archbishop of York had compounded with the
Bishop of Chester for the visitation of the diocese, and that prelate
contented himself with simply receiving the visitation fees, which
were collected for him by a deputy, alleging, as an excuse for his
personal negligence, the difficulty of travelling in the wild parts
of Lancashire; while the jocund demeanour of the Bishop of Man, who
had taken up his abode in the county away from his own charge, was
not likely to induce much veneration for his episcopal office. Two of
the Archbishop's parishes--Blackburn and Whalley--were very sorrily
supplied, James Hylton, the vicar of the first-named, being obliged
eventually to resign on account of his ignorance, negligence, and utter
incompetence; whilst George Dobson, the vicar of Whalley, was a cleric
of low habits and licentious character, grossly ignorant, unable to
read intelligently, and altogether incapable of discharging the duties
of his office. The dependent chapelries were in even worse plight; in
many, the services were neglectfully performed, and in some not at
all, or only on the occasion of the visit of some itinerant preacher.
Such was the condition of affairs at the time Pilkington visited his
native county. No wonder that so energetic and zealous a worker should
have addressed the following letter of complaint to the negligent
Archbishop:--
It is to be lamented to see and hear how negligently they say
any service, and how seldom. I have heard of a commission for
ecclesiastical matters directed to my Lord of York, &c. But because
I know not the truth of it, I meddle not. Your cures all, except
Rachdale, be as far out of order as the worst in all the country. The
old Vicar of Blackburn resigned for a pension, and now livest with
Sir John Biron. Whalley hath as ill a vicar as the worst. And there
is one come thither that has been deprived or changed his name, and
now teacheth school there; of evil to make them worse. If your Grace's
officers list, they might amend many things. I speak this for the
amendment of the country, and that your Grace's parishes might be
better spoken of and ordered. If your Grace would, either yourself or
by my Lord of York, amend these things, it were very easy. One little
examination or commandment to the contrary would take away all these
and more. The Bishop of Man liveth here at ease, and as merry as Pope
Joan. The Bishop of Chester hath compounded with my Lord of York for
his visitation, and gathered up the money by his servants; but never a
word spoken of any visitation or reformation. And that, he saith, he
doth of friendship, because he will not trouble the country, nor put
them to charge in calling them together. I beseech you, be not weary
of well-doing, but with authority and council help to amend that is
amiss. Thus after commendations I am boldly to write, wishing good
to my country, and furtherance of God's glory. God be merciful to
us, and grant _ut liberè currat Evangelium_. _Vale in Christo, Cras
profecturus Dunelmum, Volente Deo._
_Tuus Ja._ [Greek: Dunelmen]
Though Pilkington kept his Puritanism well under control, he was
uncompromising in the assertion of his Protestant principles, and the
boldness with which he proclaimed them not unfrequently provoked the
anger of the Papal party. The beautiful spire of St. Paul's Cathedral,
the loftiest in the kingdom, which had been restored so recently as
the year when Queen Mary ascended the throne, was in 1561 stricken, as
was alleged, by lightning[18] and destroyed, together with the bells
and the roof of the nave and aisles. The Roman Catholics represented
the accident as a judgment of Heaven for the discontinuance of the
matins and other services which had used to be performed in the church;
whereupon the Bishop preached a sermon at Paul's Cross in which he
accepted it as a judgment, but on the sins of London in general, and
particularly on the abuses by which the church had formerly been
polluted, and concluded by exhorting his hearers "to take the dreadful
devastation of the church to be a warning of a greater plague to follow
if amendment of life were not had in all estates." His observations
were supposed to reflect upon the Papists, who immediately circulated
a paper about the city declaring the chief cause of the destruction
to be "that the old fathers and the old ways were left, together with
blaspheming God in lying sermons preached there, polluting the temple
with schismatical service, and destroying and pulling down altars set
up by blessed men, and where the sacrifice of the Mass was ministered."
Pilkington, in vindication of his sermon, published a tract giving an
animated description of the practices that had prevailed, and which
is interesting at the present day as pourtraying the curious scenes
and incidents of which St Paul's was then the theatre. "No place," he
said, "had been more abused than Paul's had been, nor more against the
receiving of Christ's Gospel; wherefore it was more wonder that God had
spared it so long, than that he overthrew it now.... From the top of
the spire, at coronations or other solemn triumphs, some for vain glory
had used to throw themselves down by rope, and so killed themselves
vainly to please other men's eyes. At the battlement of the steeple,
sundry times were used Popish anthems, to call upon their gods, with
torch and paper in the evenings. In the top of one of the pinnacles
was Lollard's Tower, where many an innocent soul had been by them
cruelly tormented and murdered. In the middest alley was their long
censer, reaching from the roof to the ground; as though the Holy Ghost
came down in their censing, in likeness of a dove. In the arches men
commonly complained of wrong and delayed judgments in ecclesiastical
causes; and divers had been condemned there by Annas and Caiaphas for
Christ's cause. Their images hung on every wall, pillar, and door, with
their pilgrimages and worshippings of them; passing over their massing,
and many altars, and the rest of their popish service. The south alley
was for usury and popery, the north for simony and the horsefair, in
the midst of all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murders,
conspiracies. The font for ordinary payments of money as well known to
all men as the beggar knows his dish.... So that within and without,
above the ground and under, over the roof and beneath, from the top of
the steeple and spire down to the low floor, not one spot was free from
wickedness."[19]
In his prosperity the Bishop was by no means unmindful of those who had
been his associates in adversity. Shortly after his elevation to the
Bishopric of Durham, Thomas Lever, the companion of his boyhood, his
fellow-collegian at Cambridge and his friend in exile, was collated
to a prebendal stall in his cathedral; and his brother, John Lever,
was appointed archdeacon of Northumberland, and subsequently became
Prebendary of Durham.
In 1567 Pilkington made another visitation of his cathedral,
when, doubtless, he felt little or no reluctance in carrying out
the instructions of the Queen's Commissioners for the removal of
superstitious books and ornaments and effacing idolatrous figures
from church plate. It was shortly after this visitation, and while he
occupied the see of Durham, that the unhappy enterprise, the "Rising of
the North," occurred, when the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland
took up arms and proclaimed their design of restoring the old religion.
The insurrection was precipitated by the arrest of Thomas Duke of
Norfolk, "the most powerful and the most popular man in England," but
who, allured by ambition, and animated by a chivalrous feeling for
the beautiful but ill-fated Queen of Scots, then the captive of the
implacable Elizabeth, formed the intention of effecting her release
and then marrying her, a project that eventually proved fatal to his
own peace and life. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who
were believed to be implicated, were ordered to repair to Court, but,
apprehensive of the fate that might await them, Northumberland marched
with his vassals to join Westmoreland at Brancepeth Castle; Richard
Norton, of Rylstone, had been called to their aid, and a proclamation
was issued to those professing the Catholic faith, who in the
thinly-inhabited border counties were numerous as well as desperate.
Bishop Pilkington, by his energetic zeal in the cause of Protestantism,
had made himself particularly obnoxious to the insurgents, and their
first efforts were directed against his episcopal stronghold. They
entered the city without opposition, and thence proceeded to the
Cathedral, where they tore up and trampled under foot the English
Bibles and Books of Common Prayer, and then celebrated Mass. The rebels
marched under a banner representing the bleeding Saviour--"the banner
of the five wounds"--
The wounds of hands and feet and side,
And the sacred cross on which Jesus died,
which was borne by the venerable lord of Rylstone, Richard Norton, a
brave old man, whose fate and the fate of his eight sons have been
preserved from the oblivion of dry annals, by the legends which a true
poet[20] has invested with almost historical reality:--
Now was the North in arms; they shine
In warlike trim from Tweed to Tyne,
At Percy's voice: and Neville sees
His followers gathering in from Tees,
From Wear, and all the little rills
Concealed among the forked hills.
Seven hundred knights, retainers all
Of Neville, at their master's call
Had sat together in Raby Hall;
Such strength that Earldom held of yore;
Nor wanted at this time rich store,
Of well appointed chivalry,
Not loth the sleepy lance to wield,
And greet the old paternal shield.
They heard the summons; and, furthermore,
Came foot and horseman of each degree,
Unbound by pledge of fealty;
Appeared, with free and open hate
Of novelties in church and state;
Knight, burgher, yeomen and esquier,
And the Romish priest, in priest's attire,
And thus, in arms, a zealous band
Proceeding under joint command,
To Durham first their course they bear,
And in St. Cuthbert's ancient seat
Sang Mass,--and tore the book of prayer,--
And trod the Bible beneath their feet.
The revolt was quickly suppressed, and a terrible vengeance followed.
Martial law was carried out and the triumph of 1569 was disgraced by
fearful executions; an alderman, a priest, and above sixty others were
hanged in Durham alone, and many others suffered in every market town
between Newcastle and Wetherby, the "reverend grey beard," Richard
Norton, and his eight sons being among the number.
Thee, Norton, with thy eight good sons,
They doom'd to dye, alas! for ruth!
Thy reverend lockes thee could not save,
Nor them their faire and blooming youthe.
The princely house of Neville was entirely ruined, and the immense
estates of the castles of Raby and Brancepeth, with the dependent
manors, were seized by the Crown. These properties should, by
right, have vested in the bishopric, according to the full right
of forfeitures for treason and felony within the palatinate, but
Elizabeth continued to retain possession on pretence of covering the
expenses incurred in suppressing the rebellion. Pilkington claimed the
forfeitures in right of his palatinate, and, in support of his claim,
brought an action against the Queen for the recovery of the forfeited
estates, which he prosecuted with so much vigour and success that
nothing but the interposition of Parliament prevented the Sovereign
being beaten by a subject in her own courts; the Act decreeing that
"the convictions, outlawries, and attainders of Charles, Earl of
Westmoreland, and fifty-seven others, attainted of high treason, for
open rebellion in the north parts," should be confirmed, and "that her
Majesty, her heirs, and successors, should have, for that time, all the
lands and goods, which any of the said persons, attainted within the
bishopric of Durham, had, against the bishop and his successors, though
he claimeth _jura regalia_, and challengeth all the said forfeitures
in right of his church." After the failure of his suit the Bishop,
whose health seems to have given way under the anxieties of prolonged
litigation, petitioned for liberty to pass the winter in the South,
with the hope, perhaps, and the desire of being removed to some other
diocese.
On the first alarm of Northumberland and Westmoreland's rising,
Pilkington, conscious that his reforming zeal, as well as the fact
of his being a married prelate, would be likely to provoke the fury
of the insurgents, removed with his family into the South, and
there remained until all danger was passed. Fuller says that his
two daughters were conveyed away in beggars' clothes to prevent the
Papists killing them; there was, however, only one child of the
marriage born at the time of the outbreak. His wife, Alice, was a
daughter of Sir John Kingsmill, a Hampshire knight, but it is not
known with certainty when they were married, the fact having probably
been kept secret for some time on account of the strong prejudice
that society--Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, acting under the
influence of old traditions--had against married priests; for marriage
with the clergy was then accounted as hardly respectable, and even the
wives of bishops--bishops' women as they were sometimes contemptuously
styled--occupied an unpleasant position in the ranks in which their
right reverend husbands were accustomed to move.
[Illustration: DURHAM CASTLE.]
Elizabeth had a rooted aversion to married priests, and took
delight in subjecting them to annoyance and humiliation. It is recorded
that in a progress she made into Essex and Suffolk in 1561, the year of
Pilkington's appointment to the see of Durham, she expressed high
displeasure at finding so many of the clergy married and the cathedrals
and colleges so filled with women and children. In consequence she
addressed to Archbishop Parker a royal injunction, "that no head or
member of any college or cathedral should bring a wife or any other
woman into the precincts of it, to abide in the same, on pain of
forfeiture of all ecclesiastical promotion," and when the Archbishop
ventured to remonstrate with her against the Popish prohibition she
replied that she repented having made any married bishops. It was to
Parker's own wife that, in a fit of ill-humour, she addressed the
ungracious and humiliating remark, when acknowledging the magnificent
hospitality with which she had been entertained at the archiepiscopal
palace: "Madam, I may not call you; mistress, I am ashamed to call you;
and so I know not what to call you; but, howsoever, I thank you."[21]
Pilkington's wife bore him four children, two sons and two daughters,
all of whom were born during his occupancy of the see of Durham. The
sons, Joshua and Isaac, both died young, and concerning them there is
a curious tradition still current in the neighbourhood of Rivington,
though possessing no historical value. On the highest point of Wilders
Moor, a bleak mountain ridge within the limits of the old forest of
Horwich, and about three-quarters of a mile to the south-east of
Rivington Pike, are two rude piles of stone known as the Wilder Lads,
or, more commonly, the Two Lads, which, according to popular belief,
were erected in memory of two unfortunate youths who were "wildered"
(_i.e._ bewildered) and lost in the snow at this place. Baines says
(Hist. Lanc.) a tradition prevails in the neighbourhood that the two
unfortunate youths lost in the storm, to whose memory these two piles
are supposed to be erected, were the sons of Bishop Pilkington, but,
he adds, there is no evidence to support this supposition except the
coincidence that the bishop had two sons and they both died young. Of
the prelate's two daughters, Ruth became the wife of -- Dantze or
Dauntesy, of Bucks, a representative probably of the family of that
name of West Lavington, in Wiltshire, and Agecroft, in the parish
of Prestwich, in Lancashire, and Deborah, baptised at Auckland,
October 8th, 1564, who, at the time of her father's decease, was said
to be engaged to Sir Thomas Gargrave, Knight, but who married Sir
Henry Harrington, of Exton, son of Sir John Harrington by his wife
Lucy, daughter of Sir William Sidney, of Penshurst, and had by him a
daughter, Anne, who became the wife of Sir Thomas Roper, Knight, who
for his military exploits was ennobled by the titles of Baron Bantry
and Viscount Baltinglass, and was mother of, with other children, Mary,
who became the wife of the wise and witty divine, Dr. Thomas Fuller,
the church historian and the author of "England's Worthies"--quaint old
Fuller--the "dear, fine, silly, old angel," as Charles Lamb delighted
to call him.
Of the three Lancashire reformers, the friends in exile during the
Marian persecutions, James Pilkington was the first who finished his
work. On the 23rd of January, 1575-6, "the good old Bishop of Durham,
a grave and truly reverend man, of great learning and piety, and such
frugality of life as well became a modest Christian prelate," entered
into his rest. He died at Bishop Auckland, and was buried there in
accordance with his expressed desire with "as few Popish ceremonies as
may be, or vain cost," but his remains were subsequently transferred
to his cathedral at Durham, where a sumptuous monument, bearing a
long Latin inscription, was erected to his memory. His "frugality
of life"--for the pomp and estate usually observed by the prelates
of Durham, prince-bishops of the palatinate see, were not much to
his mind--enabled him to accumulate, what in those days was deemed a
considerable estate, sufficient to admit of his giving his daughters,
when they married, portions equal in amount (_£_4,000 each, it is said)
to those possessed by the Princesses Frances, Duchess of Suffolk,
and Eleanor, Duchess of Cumberland, nieces of Henry the Eighth, a
circumstance which so greatly excited the jealousy of Queen Elizabeth,
who "scorned that a bishop's daughter should equal a princess," that
she afterwards took _£_1,000 a year from the see and gave it to the
town of Berwick for garrison expenses. Possibly the Queen had not
forgotten the courageous manner in which the sturdy Lancashire prelate
had asserted the right of the Church to retain her ancient patrimony
and the fearlessness with which he had resisted her unconstitutional
exercise of the Royal prerogative.
Pilkington's will was proved on the 18th of December, 1576, by his
widow and executrix, whom he therein names as "Alice Kingsmill, my
now known wife," an expression that tends to confirm the belief that
his marriage was, for some time at least, kept secret, though it must
have been openly avowed at the time, or shortly after his elevation to
the see of Durham, for in his _Confutation of an Addition_, printed
in 1561, the year of his preferment, in his argument against the
prevailing prejudice with respect to the marriage of ecclesiastics, he
says, "I am sure that many will judge that I speak this to please my
wife," an evidence that his own marriage was then generally known.
Though some of his contemporaries might be indolent in the discharge
of their episcopal duties, Pilkington himself was a worthy son of the
Church, and performed the functions of his office with all diligence
and fidelity. "A bishop," he wrote, "is a name of office, labour, and
pains, rather than of dignity, ease, wealth, or idleness. The word
_episcopus_ is Greek, and signifies a scout-watch, an overlooker, or
spy; because he should ever be watching and warning that the devil
our enemy do not enter to spoil or destroy." Though he had, while at
Geneva, imbibed the principles of Puritanism, he duly conformed to the
practices of the Church, from his respect to constituted authority,
but all through his episcopate he manifested a strong disposition
to deal tenderly with his nonconforming brethren. He was a prolific
writer as well as an able and energetic administrator, and his literary
productions, which are, for the most part, of a controversial
character, are marked by much colloquial force, and a terseness and
vigour of language that is strongly indicative of the Lancashire mind.
His collected works were reprinted in 1842 by the Parker Society,[22]
and include his "Sermon on Bucer and Phagius, 1560;" "Exposition
upon the Prophet Haggai, 1560-1562;" "Exposition upon the Prophet
Obadiah, 1562;" "The Burning of St. Paul's Church;" "Confutation of
an Addition, 1563;" "Answers to Popish Questions, 1563;" "Letter to
the Earl of Leicester on behalf of the Refusers of the Habits, 1564;"
"_De Prædestinatione, tractatus Jacobi Pilkington dum erat studens
Cantabrigiæ_; _Epistola ad Andriam Kingsmill_, 1564;" and "Exposition
upon certain Chapters of Nehemiah," the last-named work having been
published after his death by his friend Foxe, the Martyrologist, in
1585.
In one respect Pilkington may be said to have been in advance of his
age. Brought up in a county where the practice of astrology and alchemy
extensively prevailed, where the belief in supernatural powers was
cherished and preserved long after an improved education had driven it
from more civilised communities, and where witchcraft could boast its
greatest number of votaries; living at a time, too, when a conjuror was
reckoned a necessary official in the household of an Earl of Derby,
when bishops gave authority and a form of licensing to their clergy to
cast out devils, when Jewell, in a sermon preached before the Queen,
could lament "the marvellous increase of witches," and when Elizabeth
herself was consulting the English Faust, Dr. Dee, the future Warden of
Manchester, as to the most lucky day for her coronation, it is pleasant
to find the old Lancashire divine, with all the vigour of his robust
intellect, exposing the generally prevailing delusions, and protesting
against the casting of horoscopes and the belief in lucky and unlucky
days. "What can we say for ourselves," he remarks, "but that we put
great superstition in days, when we put openly in calendars and
almanacks, and say, These days be unfortunate, and great matters are
not to be taken in hand these days, as though we were of God's privy
council? But why are they unfortunate? Is God asleep on those days?
or doth He not rule the world and all things those days as well as on
other days? Is He weary, that He must rest Him in those days? Or doth
He give the ruling of those days to some evil spirit or planet? If God
gave to stars such power that things cannot prosper on those days, then
God is the author of evil. If stars do rule men those days, then man is
their servant. But God made man to rule, and not to be ruled; and all
creatures should serve him."
Though himself of ancient and honourable lineage, Pilkington had little
respect for the "pride of ancestry" or reverence for mere "gentle"
descent, as will be seen by the following passage in his writings:--
And to rejoice in ancient blood, what can be more vain? Do we not all
come of Adam, our earthly father? And say we not all, "Our Father
which art in heaven, hallowed, &c."? How can we crack then of our
ancient stock, seeing we came all both of one earthly and heavenly
Father? If ye mark the common saying, how gentle blood came up, ye
shall see how true it is:--
When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman?
Up start the carle, and gathered good,
And thereof came the gentle blood.
And although no nation has anything to rejoice in of themselves, yet
England has less than any other. We glory much to be called Britons;
but if we consider what a vagabond Brutus was, and what a company he
brought with him, there is small cause of glory. For the Saxons, of
whom we came also, there is less cause to crack. So that of Brutus
we may well be called brutes for our brutish conditions, and of the
Saxons _saxi_, that is, stout and hard-hearted; but if we go up to
Cain, Japhet, and such other fathers of us gentiles, we may be ashamed
of our ancestors, for of all these we came, that knew no God.
All this is doubtless true, but the converse equally holds good, for
however we may affect to despise hereditary rank there can be no doubt
that the personal virtues as well as the heroic deeds of ancestors
who have signalised themselves in tournament, or on the tented
field, tends to inspire a feeling of emulation in the breast of their
descendants, and even Pilkington himself was not unmindful of the
outward marks of honour, gentility, and family distinction. The great
legal luminary, Lord Chief Justice Coke, affirmed that every gentleman
must be "_arma gerens_," and that the best test of gentle blood was
the bearing of arms; so we find Pilkington, on his preferment to
Durham, showing his regard for hereditary distinctions, as well as his
respect for the noble science, by establishing his claim to bear arms,
and obtaining from Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King, an honourable
augmentation--_quibus ex antiquo tempore ulebatur_. The grant, which
bears date February 10, 1561, sets forth that the _Reverendus in
Christe pater D. Jacobus Pilkenten Theologiæ baccalaureus Dunelmensis
Episcopus est ex nobili et antiquâ familiâ ortus gerens arma vel
insignia_; the hereditary coat--_argent_, a cross patonce, voided
_gules_--having the addition of a chief _vert_, thereon three suns
_or_; and examples of this coat may still be seen in the restored
picture in Rivington Church, one impaling the arms of the see of Durham
and the other those of Kingsmill, the bishop's wife--_argent_, semée
of cross-crosslets fitchée _sable_, a chevron _ermine_, between three
mill-rinds of the second; a chief _ermine_.
Of the monument erected to Pilkington's memory in Durham Cathedral
scarce a fragment remains, but one of a more enduring character
survives to perpetuate his name--the free Grammar School which he
founded in his native village, and endowed with lands and rents,
situate in the county of Durham, for the "bringing up, teaching, and
instructing children and youth in grammar and other good learning,
to continue for ever;" the school to be open, as the Queen's patent
expressed it, to "all our faithful and liege people, whosoever they
bee." The statutes for the government of the school contained many
curious directions. The management was vested in six governors, who
were "to choose one of the wisest and discreetest among themselves to
be spokesman (_i.e._, president) for the year." The voters had to take
an oath before the election, the governors and spokesman at election.
The regulations respecting the election of voters and those entitled
to vote were carefully laid down, and the oath to be taken by the
voters as well as that to be made by the governor-elect is prescribed.
The duties of the governors, of the scholars, and of the masters and
ushers are also defined, those regulating the conduct of the scholars
in regard to their apparel, their pastimes, and their manners at meals
being curiously minute, and throwing much light on the school-life of a
grammar-school boy, as well as on the habits of the poorer classes of
the time. The devotional exercises for early morning, as well as the
prayers for midday and evening, and the grace before and after meat
are set forth. "After that they have prayed in the morning they shall
dress their beds, comb their head, wash their hands, and see their
apparel be cleanly; their hose shall not hang about their heels, nor
out of their shoes, nor their shoes be torn; for though their apparel
need not be costly, yet it is a shame to wear it slovenly; their coats
and hosen shall not be costly furnished, cut, graded, nor jagged;
no nor torn, slovenly worn, nor ragged; nor caps with feathers or
aglets. No kind of staff-dagger nor weapon shall they wear, except a
penknife, nor go to the fencing school, but their chief pastime shall
be shooting, and that in honest company and small game, or none for
money. At meat they shall not be full of talk, but rather hear what
their elders and betters say; if they be asked a question they shall
reverently take off their cap and answer with as few words as may be;
and they shall not eat greedily nor lye on the table slovenly." No
doubt these precepts were necessary in an age when there was little
disposition to value manners above morals, or to regard pleasantness
as better than honesty; and when, if one may judge from the "Bokes of
Nurture" and "Curtasy" then in vogue, the hopes-of-England even in the
higher ranks were but dirty, ill-mannered, awkward young gawks. It
was strictly enjoined that neither the schoolmaster nor usher should
serve as curate of the church; the holidays were specified, and the
modes of correction particularised. As the school was not intended
for rudimentary instruction, none were to be admitted who could not
read "except in great need," when the usher should teach it; but "in
learning to read much time was not to be spent, for the continual
exercise of learning other things should make it perfect." The children
were to be taught English grammar, and the usher was to teach them the
Latin of every noun and verb, "that by this means he and others that
hear may learn what everything is called in Latin, and so be more ready
to understand every word what it signifieth in English when they come
to construction. As first to begin with Latin words for every part of
a man and his apparel; of a house and household stuff, as bedding,
kitchen, buttery meats, beasts, herbs, flowers, birds, fishes, with all
parts of them; virtues, vices, merchandise, and all occupations, as
weavers, tanners, carpenters, ploughers, wheelwrights, tailors, tilers,
and shoemakers; and cause them to write every word that belongs to one
thing, together in order."
Some interesting particulars respecting the state of Pilkington's
school a century after his death are given in a return made to Mr.
Christopher Wase, one of the Superior Bedells in Oxford University,
who, in the latter half of the seventeenth century had conceived the
idea of publishing an account of the whole of the grammar schools in
England, with a view of showing whether those foundations were being
rightly used or not. The work was never published, but the returns
obtained are included in the MS. collection of Mr. Wase, now preserved
in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. For the following
transcript of that relating to Rivington we are indebted to the
industrious research of Mr. J. P. Earwaker, F.S.A. There is no date
appended to the return, but it was presumably written in 1673-4:--
RIVINGTON FREE SCHOOLE.
Sir,--I received a paper from your office purportinge a designe
of a gentleman in Oxon to report the state of the present English
ffree schoolis, which paper desires my Answer to and Resolution of
Sundry Queries touchinge the free Gramar School of Rivington, which
accordinge to desire is done and herewith sent to your office, which
you may please to take and represent as followeth.
_Imprimis._--The fabrick of the free Gramar School of Rivington in the
parish of Bolton was built at the charge and by the appointment of
the pious and Learned prelate James Pilkington, Bishopp of Duresme,
son of Richard Pilkington of Rivington aforesaid Esqr. who also
endowed the said school with lands and Tenements of the clear yearly
value of 27li. 14s. 10d., part whereof ariseth out of lands lying
in Lancashire viz. 2li. 13s. 4d. The remainder ariseth out of lands
scituate and lying in the Bishoprick of Durham. Other accession of
revenue by benefactors the school hath none, except with improvement
the Governors of the said school successively have made, which amounts
not to above 6 or 7 li. per annum.
(2). The said schoole at the humble suite of the said reverend and
pious prelate made to Queen Elizabeth of happy memory was founded,
created, erected and established by her Royal Grant in the nature of
Letters patents (bearinge date the 13th of May in the eighth year of
her reigne) by the name of the free Gramar School of Queen Elisabeth
in Rovington _alias_ Rivington, whereby one master or teacher and one
usher or under teacher are ordained to continue for ever, and also six
governors by the name of the governors of the possessions, revenues,
and goods of the free Gramar School of Queen Elizabeth in Rovington
_alias_ Rivington to bee one body corporate and politick of themselves
for ever incorporate and elected by the name of the governors of the
possessions, revenues, and goods of the free Gramar School of Queen
Elisabeth in Rovington _alias_ Rivington in the county of Lancashire.
(3). The names of the Governors expressly assigned chosen nominated
and appointed by the foresaid Grant or Letters patents were Thomas
Ashawe, Esq., George Pilkington, Esq., Thomas Shaw, Gentleman, Richard
Rivington, John Green, and Ralphe Whittle, yeomen. The names of the
Governours now in beinge are Thomas Willoughby, gentleman, John
Walker, clark, Thurstan Bradley, George Shaw, Richard Brownlow, and
Thomas Rivington, yeomen.
(4). Patron of the said school was the good Bishop himself _durante
vita_, and after his decease, the Master and Seniors of the Colledge
of St. John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge for the
time being, as also the Bishops of Durham and Chester all which are
instructed and authorised by the said Grant in some Cases and with
some Limitacons to chuse nominate and appoint who shall succeed in the
Governors school Master and Ushers office h. e. when and so often as
the Governors of the said school shall faile in and not execute the
power and trust committed to them.
(5). To whom of right it belongs to visit I can not say, but 'tis
averred by some intelligent persons that it peculiarly appertains to
the jurisdiction of the Dutchy of Lancaster and that it is solely
subjected to the inspection of the Honourable Chancellor of the
Dutchy. _Sed de hoc quære._
(6). The school hath not any Exhibition in either of the Universities.
(7). School Masters of the foresaid school I find to have been many,
but have not seen or heard of anything printed by any of them, a
catalogue of their names you may take as followeth. Mr. Robert
Dewhurst, Master of Arts was appointed schoolmaster by the said patron
or donor himself. Mr. Hallstead, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Brindle, Mr.
Ainsworth, Mr. Rudall famous, Mr. Bodurda, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Duckworth,
Mr. Crook, Mr. ffielden famous, Mr. Breeres, whose successor I was.
(8). Some bookes (and by many tis believed a considerable quantity)
were left by the patron or donor to the School. But by one ill means
or other how or when is not known they are reduced to a small and
inconsiderable number. Neither is there any Library within any Town
near adjoining except such as the School near of Bolton can give a
more perfect accompt of them I.
from Schoolmaster of
Rivington.
John Bradley.
Leave this at the Regesters office in Chester according to desire and
direction to bee communicated to whom it concernes.
In later years the trustees obtained from Parliament an Act by which
they were enabled to exchange the lands and tenements in Durham for
property in the more immediate neighbourhood of the school, and the
revenues having largely increased the Charity Commissioners have lately
propounded a scheme for the better regulation of the foundation, under
the provisions of which the old school has been rebuilt, and is now
used for the purposes of an elementary school, and a new grammar school
has been erected on the confines of the township.
Such is the story of the school that good Bishop Pilkington launched
three centuries ago, and which, through many changes and vicissitudes,
has floated down the stream of time to our own day and generation.
Well does the generous-hearted founder deserve the niche which Fuller
has accorded to him in his gallery of "The Worthies of England." If he
gathered wealth he did not forget the Divine injunction, "to do good
and to distribute;" he did his best according to his lights to make his
surplus wealth available for the benefit of the community to which he
belonged. Though "pillared bust" or "storied urn" may no longer mark
his resting place, he has himself left a more enduring monument, for
The glory of one fair and virtuous action
Is above all the 'scutcheons on our tomb,
Or silken banners over us.
His name will ever be held in honoured remembrance by Lancashire
men, who will be ready to say, as Fuller said of another "Lancashire
worthy"--Humphrey Chetham--"God send us more such men."