I visit the homes of my forefathers at Hamerton, Wigglesworth, and
Hellifield Peel.--Attainder and execution of Sir Stephen Hamerton.--
Return of Hellifield Peel to the family.--Sir Richard.--The Hamertons
distinguished only for marrying heiresses.--Another visit to the Peel,
when I see my father's cousin.--Nearness of Hellifield Peel and Hollins.
In one of these years (the exact date is of no consequence) I visited
the old houses in Yorkshire which had belonged to our family in former
times. The place we take our name from, Hamerton, belonged to Richard de
Hamerton in 1170. I found the old hall still in existence, or a part of
it, and though the present building evidently does not date from the
twelfth century, it dates from the occupation of my forefathers. At the
time of my visit there was some very massive oak wainscot still
remaining.
The situation is, to my taste, one of the pleasantest in England. The
house is On a hill, from which it looks down on the valley of Slaidburn.
Steep green pastures slope to the flat meadows in the lower ground,
which are watered by a stream. There are many places of that character
in Yorkshire, and they have never lost their old charm for me. I cannot
do without a hill, and a stream, and a green field. [Footnote: Since
this was written I have been compelled to do without them by the
necessity for living close to an art-centre, a necessity against which I
rebelled as long as I could. Even to-day, however, I would joyously give
all Paris for such a place as Hollins or Hamerton (as I knew them), with
their streams and pastures, and near or distant hills.]
My forefathers lived at Hamerton, more or less, from a time of which
there is no record down to the reign of Henry VIII., but their principal
seat in the time of their greatest prosperity was Wigglesworth Hall. I
arrived there in time to see masons demolishing the building. One or two
Gothic arched door-ways still remained, but were probably destroyed the
next week. Just enough, of the house was preserved to shelter the
occupant of the farm.
For me this unnecessary destruction is always distressing, even in
foreign countries. It is excusable in towns, where land is dear; but in
the country the site of an old hall is of such trifling value that it
might surely be permitted to fall peaceably to ruin.
The family of De Arches, to which Wigglesworth originally belonged, bore
for arms _gules, three arches argent_. The coincidence struck me
forcibly when I saw the Gothic arches still standing amongst the ruins.
The place came into the possession of our family by the marriage of Adam
de Hamerton, in the fourteenth century, with Katharine, heiress of Elias
de Knoll of Knolsmere. His father, Reginald de Knoll, had married
Beatrix de Arches, heiress of the manor of Wigglesworth. These estates,
with others too numerous to mention, remained in our family till they
were lost by the attainder of Sir Stephen Hamerton, who joined the
insurrection known as "The Pilgrimage of Grace" in the reign of Henry
VIII.
During these excursions to old houses I visited Hellifield Peel, still
belonging to the chief of our little clan. The Peel is an old border
tower, embattled, and with walls of great thickness. It is large enough
to make a tolerably spacious, but not very convenient, modern house, and
my great uncle spoiled its external appearance by inserting London sash
windows in the gray old fortress wall. On this occasion I did not see
the interior, not desiring to claim a relationship that had fallen into
abeyance for half-a-century; yet I felt the most intense curiosity about
it, and for more than twenty years afterwards I dreamed from time to
time I got inside the Peel, and saw quite a museum of knightly armor
[Footnote: The first Sir Stephen Hamerton was made a knight banneret in
Scotland by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in the reign of Edward IV. He
married Isabel, daughter of Sir William Plumpton, of Plumpton, and a
letter of his is still extant in the Plumpton correspondence.] and other
memorials which, I regret to say, have not been preserved in reality.
Hellifield Peel was built by Laurence Hamerton in 1440. When the second
Sir Stephen was executed for high treason and his possessions
confiscated, the manor of Hellifield was preserved by a settlement for
his mother during her life. After that it was granted by the king to one
George Browne, of whom we know nothing positively except that he lived
at Calais, and after changing hands several times it came back into the
Hamerton family by a fine levied in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The
owners then passed the manor to John Hamerton, a nephew of Sir Stephen.
The attainted knight left an only son, Henry, who is said to have been
interred in York Minster on the day when his father was beheaded in
London. Whitaker thought it "not improbable that he died of a broken
heart in consequence of the ruin of his family." Henry left no male
issue.
The career of Sir Stephen seems to have been doomed to misfortune, for
there were influences that might have saved him. He had been in the
train of the Earl of Cumberland, the same who afterwards held Skipton
Castle against the rebels. Whitaker says "he forsook his patron in the
hour of trial." This seems rather a harsh way of judging a Catholic, who
believed himself to be fighting for God and His spoliated Church against
a tyrannical king. I notice that in our own day the French Republican
Government cannot take the smallest measure against the religious
houses, cannot even require them to obey the ordinary law of the
country, but there is immediately an outcry in all the English
newspapers; yet the measures of the Third Republic have been to those of
Henry VIII. what that same Third Republic is to the First. All that can
be fairly urged against Sir Stephen Hamerton is that "after having
availed himself of the King's pardon, he revolted a second time."
There is nothing else, that I remember, in the history of our family
that is likely to have any interest for readers who do not belong to it.
Sir Richard Hamerton, of Hamerton, married in 1461 a sister of the
bloody Lord Clifford who was slain at Towton Field, and that is the
nearest connection that we have ever had with any well-known historical
character.
Through marriages we are descended, in female lines, from many
historical personages, [Footnote: Some in the extinct Peerage, and
others belonging to royal families of England and France which have
since lost their thrones by revolution.]--a matter of no interest to the
reader, though I acknowledge enough of the ancestral sentiment to have
my own interest in them quickened by my descent from them.
Another consequence of belonging to a well-connected old family was that
I sometimes, in my youth, met with people who were related to me, and
who were aware of it, although the relationship was very distant. I
recollect, for instance, that one of the officers in our militia
regiment remembered his descent from our family, and though I had never
seen him before it was a sort of _lien_ between us.
The Hamertons do not seem to have distinguished themselves in anything
except marrying heiresses, and in that they were remarkably successful.
At first a moderately wealthy family, they became immensely wealthy
by the accumulation of heiresses' estates, and after being ruined
by confiscation they began the same process over again; but being
at the same time either imprudent or careless, or too much burdened
with children (my great-grandfather had a dozen brothers and sisters),
they have not kept their lands. One of my uncles said to me that
the Hamertons won property in no other way than by marriage, and
that they were almost incapable of retaining it; he himself had the one
talent of his race, but was an exception to their incapacity. In justice
to our family I may add that we are said to make indulgent husbands and
fathers,--two characters incompatible with avarice, and sometimes even
with prudence when the circumstances are not easy.
On a later occasion I made a little tour in Craven with a friend who had
a tandem, and we stopped at Hellifield, where I sketched the Peel.
Whilst I sat at work the then representative of the family, my father's
first cousin, came out upon the lawn; but I did not speak to him, nor
did he take any notice of me. He was a fine, hale man of about eighty.
The _nearness_ of Hellifield to Hollins was brought home to me very
strongly on that occasion. It was late afternoon when I finished my
sketch, and yet, as we had very good horses, we reached home easily the
same evening. So near and yet so far! As I have said already in the
third chapter, my grandfather's wife and children never even saw his
brother's house, and during my own youth the place had seemed as distant
and unreal as one of the old towers that I had read about in northern
poetry and romance.