in June an attempt was made by Michael Hudson, rector of Uffington—the
chaplain who had guided the King in disguise through the eastern
counties—to raise a Royalist force. Accompanied by Stiles, the Crowland
parson, he occupied Woodcroft House, near Stamford, where he was soon
besieged. On the surrender of the place he was denied quarter, and,
having been thrown into the moat, was “barbarously knocked on the
head.” A more serious rising took place at the end of the month. A body
of Cavaliers from Pontefract, 600 strong, entered the Isle of Axholme
and pushed on to Lincoln, where they doubtless hoped to find arms and
ammunition, but the magazine had been removed to Hull. After plundering
the houses of the chief Parliamentarians, they attacked the Bishop’s
Palace, whither the little garrison of a hundred had retired, and
reduced it in three hours; they then wrecked and burnt the building,
leaving it in ruins. But their commander, Sir Philip Monkton, found it
impossible to hold the town, and on July 4 his force was defeated and
dispersed near Nottingham by Colonel Rossiter, who commanded for the
Parliament in Lincolnshire.
At the outset of the struggle the feeling of Lindsey inclined towards
the King; but the insecurity produced by the constant forays from Newark
turned the balance the other way. Holland and Kesteven, especially the
fen district, supported the Parliament. The nobility and gentry were
about evenly divided. Of the two chief peers, Montagu Bertie, second Earl
of Lindsey, followed the King through all his misfortunes, and was one of
the few who attended his funeral; Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln,
who held Tattershall Castle for the Parliament throughout the war,
changed sides, like Lord Willoughby, in 1647, and with him was impeached
and thrown into the Tower, when the Independents gained the upper hand.
Of the principal county families (besides those already mentioned),
the Dymokes, Heneages, Husseys, Nevilles, Skipwiths, and Thorolds were
for the King; the Brownlows, Fitzwilliams, Massingberds, Nelthorpes,
Trollopes, and Whichcotes for the Parliament; and the Andersons,
Cholmeleys, Harringtons, Listers, and Pelhams were divided. According to
one list,[130] the number of persons in the county compounding for their
estates was 180, and the total amount of their compositions was £80,800.
This, however, does not include the sums set aside for the maintenance of
ministers in parishes where the compounder possessed an impropriation.
In some instances where the composition-fine could not be paid in full,
the estates were either let or sold outright to some supporter of the
Parliament at a ruinous loss. This happened to the estates of the Earl
of Lindsey near Alford; his mansion and lands at Belleau were sold below
their value to Sir Harry Vane the younger, who was residing there in
1655, when he was sent for by Cromwell and imprisoned in Carisbrooke
Castle. Nor was it only persons of influence and large holders of
property who were subject to fine. Anthony Gurley of the Close, Lincoln,
had to pay £1, which was assessed upon “his books and apparel.” Sutton
Dalton, who had some landed property, was fined £100 for spending only
two days in Newark garrison. Sir William Clarke, of North Scarle, used
to go to Newark on market-days, and for this offence was imprisoned
for six months and had to pay £21. Of the seven Associated Counties,
Lincolnshire, which had suffered the most heavily by the war, contributed
to the Treasury by far the greatest sum in fines inflicted upon Royalist
estates.
The Church history of the county would require a separate chapter;
but much of the material has been lost beyond recall. When Walker was
compiling his “Sufferings of the Clergy,” in Anne’s reign, he could
not get proper returns from Lincolnshire; and the number of ejected
clergy which he gives (37) must be far below the true figure. Bishop and
Dean-and-Chapter had been abolished in November 1643, and the cathedral
was served by a Sunday-lecturer, who, though he may have been episcopally
ordained, yet in sympathy, like Hudibras,
“Was Presbyterian true blue.”
In 1644 the Earl of Manchester, who presided over a commission for
purging the Association of “scandalous” ministers, appointed committees
for the separate counties; but the minutes of the Lincolnshire Committee
have not survived; perhaps they were not kept; for the business was done
by sub-committees of five, who would not allow the accused clergyman
to be present “lest it should discourage the witnesses,” and made him
pay even for a copy of the depositions. The clergy of Stamford were all
deprived for Royalism; and when Paul Prestland, the rector of Market
Deeping, fled to avoid arrest, his wife and children had to spend many
months first in a barn and then in the belfry of the church. Thomas
Gibson, vicar of Horncastle, a man of exemplary piety, was imprisoned
five times, once spending four months in Tattershall Castle, and on his
release had to maintain himself by teaching. Several clergy were ejected
simply for going to His Majesty’s garrisons; against one, the rector of
Hykeham, it was even made a charge that he had by him many copies of the
Oxford “Aulicus” gazette. Some were deprived for using the prayer book,
or complying strictly with its directions; the rector of Hareby lost his
living for “preaching but seldom, and not being above half-an-hour in
the pulpit, and having no books.” Though many of the clergy must have
taken the Covenant, there is little trace that the Presbyterian “Classis”
system was ever adopted within the county. In fact, the ease with which
Anglicanism was restored, after eighteen years of persecution, is strong
proof that even the most Puritan districts were weary of ecclesiastical
chaos.
DODDINGTON HALL
BY REV. R. E. G. COLE, M.A.
Some six miles to the south-west of Lincoln, well within view of
the great Minster on its sovereign hill, but on the very border of
Nottinghamshire, stands the little village of Doddington, otherwise
Doddington-Pigot, situated on the slightly rising ground which here
forms the watershed between the valleys of the Witham and the Trent. Its
most notable feature is the Elizabethan mansion, known as Doddington
Hall, which is the more prominent, inasmuch as it is not secluded in
any surrounding park, but stands guarded only by its own picturesque
gate-house, in close and friendly proximity to church, and rectory, and
village.
Needless to say, the place had a long history before the present Hall
was built. Already at the time of the Domesday Survey it had its church
and priest, and its manor had been given by Ailric, its owner in Edward
the Confessor’s reign, as an endowment to the newly built Abbey of
Westminster. Mention is especially made of the woodland, which still is
such a feature of the place, and which then formed an unbroken tract, a
mile and a half in length, and half a mile in breadth. No other property
was held by the Abbey in Lincolnshire, and doubtless the distance
made its personal management by the Abbot and convent difficult and
inconvenient. At all events, from very early times the manor was held
under them, for a fee-farm rent of £12 per annum, by the knightly family
of Pigot, whose long tenure, lasting for some ten generations, attached
their name to that of the place, to distinguish it from the several
other parishes so-called. Even so, difficulties at times arose; and
in 1303 the Abbot had to make complaint in the King’s courts that Sir
Baldwin Pigot had failed to render the customary rents and services, and
that when he caused his beasts at Doddington to be seized, the knight
and his men had rescued them and assaulted the Abbot’s servants. As a
rule, however, this fixed rent of £12 continued to be paid by successive
tenants to the monastery until the Dissolution. It then passed into
possession of the Crown; in 1661 it was sold with other Crown rents by
Charles II. to Sir Edmund Turnor, and from his direct descendant it was
redeemed by the late owner of Doddington in 1860, after a continuous
payment of some 700 years.
It is not our purpose here, however, to trace the early history of the
place. It will be sufficient to say that as early as 1194 John Pigot
asserted against the Abbot his right to hold not only the manor, but
the advowson of the rectory, the patronage of which has remained to
his successors down to the present day. Another Sir John Pigot in 1275
claimed to have not only right of free chase and warren in his woods
at Doddington, but also his own gallows there—a right which he pleaded
that his ancestors had exercised for a hundred years past. The last of
the family, yet another Sir John Pigot, was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire
in 1433, and died without surviving issue in 1450. His widow not only
retained possession of the estate, in spite of two remarriages, but
contrived to sell the reversion of it after her death to her neighbour,
Sir Thomas Burgh, Knt.
Sir Thomas Burgh, who was summoned to Parliament in 1487, and in the same
year was created K.G., became the owner of Doddington in 1473, and the
inheritance of it continued in his family for some 110 years. Their chief
Lincolnshire manor place, however, was at the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and
Doddington was an outlying possession with which they had little personal
connection. We cannot wonder, therefore, that when Thomas, 5th Baron
Burgh, also K.G., fell into difficulties, chiefly owing to the burdens
entailed by his honourable offices as Governor of Brill and Lord Deputy
of Ireland under the thrifty Queen Elizabeth, Doddington was the first of
his estates sold to meet his expenses.
This was in 1586, and the purchaser was John Savile, Esq., son of
Sir Robert Savile, of Howley, co. York. At this time he was M.P. for
Lincoln, and doubtless found it convenient to have a residence in the
neighbourhood; and as John Savile of Doddington he held the office of
High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1590. Later he became “the famous Sir
John Savile,” who was several times Knight of the Shire for Yorkshire,
and was created Lord Savile of Pontefract in 1628. His son Thomas, born
at Doddington in 1590, became Comptroller and Treasurer of the Household
to Charles I., and was created Earl of Sussex in 1644.
In 1593 Mr. Savile, having ceased to represent Lincoln, sold his
Doddington estate. It was bought by Thomas Tailor, gent., who for many
years had been Registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln, and whose neat
handwriting may still be seen in the diocesan registers, dating from
at least 1570. His residence hitherto had been in the parish of St.
Martin, Lincoln, in which his two wives and others of his family were
buried. The first of these wives was a daughter of Sir William Hansard,
of South Kelsey, Knt.; the second a daughter of Martin Hollingworth,
Mayor of Lincoln in 1560. Evidently the office of Episcopal Registrar
was a lucrative one, for it appears by the inquisition taken after his
death that, besides Doddington, he had purchased five other Lincolnshire
manors, with messuages and lands in other parishes to the extent of
nearly 10,000 acres.
Whatever the ancient manor-house at Doddington may have been like—and it
had at least served as a residence for one of Mr. Savile’s position—we
must suppose that it had become out of date, and not suited for the
requirements of a man of Thomas Tailor’s wealth. And if we wish to see
what sort of mansion was considered suitable, when Elizabeth was Queen,
as the residence of a man of means, wishing to retire and set up as a
country gentleman, we may find one in the present Hall, which remains
in all essentials in its original state as it was built by him between
the years 1593, when he purchased the estate, and 1607, when he died.
Probably the date 1600 on a leaden plate at the top of the central
cupola, marks the year of its completion.
Its site, closely adjoining the parish church, was doubtless that of
the former manor-house. The principal entrance is on the east, through
a three-gabled gate-house, two storeys high, standing back from the
public road. Coped walls of brick connect this gate-house with the Hall
itself, and enclose a quadrangle, which appears in 1700 as an open grassy
court, but is now well-nigh filled by four stately cedars of Lebanon. A
similarly walled quadrangle on the west is laid out as a flower garden.
Between these courts is placed the house itself, facing east and west,
and rising in three storeys to the height of 52 feet, surmounted by a
plain parapet and flat roof of lead, from which rise three octagonal
turrets of brick, capped with leaden cupolas. Roughly speaking, its
ground plan is of that E-shape, fancifully said to represent the initial
letter of the great Queen’s name, with projecting wings at either end,
and a smaller projection in the centre, the lowest storey of which forms
an entrance porch on either side. Its extreme length from north to south
is 160 feet, and its greatest breadth at the wings is 75 feet. The house,
as well as the gate-house and connecting walls, is built of brick,
with stone groins, string-courses and coping, and has large square,
stone-mullioned windows. Many of the small-sized bricks, made in fields
close by, and of unsifted clay, are over-burnt and black; these are built
in alternately with the others, or in parts are arranged so as to form a
diamond pattern.
We may be permitted here to quote the description of the house as given
by such an authority on the architecture of the period as Mr. Gotch.
“Twelve years later,” he says, than Barlborough in Derbyshire, “we get
Doddington in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of
Montacute. It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings
one room thick—the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the
left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of
the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at
Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above
it, the great chamber, and on the top floor the gallery extends over the
whole central part from wing to wing.
“There is an entrance court in front of the house, enclosed by a wall. It
is approached through one of the quaint gate-houses of the time, which
were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was
necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the porter’s eye,
but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the
numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The
detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness
being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the
strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The
parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the sky-line
being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up
the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front.
The house is an example of a plain and businesslike type, which may be
accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one
Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln.”[131]
[Illustration: DODDINGTON HALL.]
What style Thomas Tailor kept up in his stately mansion we cannot tell,
but that he had not impaired his fortune in the building of it is
evident from his will, proved at Lincoln, 30th November 1607, in which
he disposes of considerable sums of money, while the inquisition taken
after his death sets forth in detail his numerous landed estates. Though
his two wives and most of his children had been buried at St. Martin’s
Church, Lincoln, he willed his “bodie to be buried in the parishe church
of Doddington.” He was buried there on 26th November 1607, as we learn
from the transcript of a former parish register, though there is nothing
to mark the place.
He was succeeded by his only son, a second Thomas Tailor, born at Lincoln
in 1580, who seems to have been a somewhat eccentric character, if we may
judge from the following stories related of him, which were taken down
from the mouth of an old inhabitant of Doddington:—“Tommy Tailor once
told his steward who was going to Lincoln to market to bring him a goose.
On his return he asked about it, and the man told him they were so dear
he had not got one. So Tommy shut him up in a room with a lot of money on
the table, and kept him there two days, asking him when he came out if he
had now discovered that the use of money was to buy what one wanted, not
to keep to look at. Another day he met a woman on the road carrying some
butter; he asked what it was a pound. The woman told him, and he bought
it of her, taking it and putting it on the branch of a tree. She walked
on, but soon turned back to take it away. However, he was lying in wait,
and pounced on her just as she had taken it down, and said he had bought
and paid for it, and he should put it where he liked. Another person
on whom he played the same kind of trick took away the chicken he had
bought, threw his money at him, and called him _an owd fule_. He kept his
money in a great chest, and hid it away, and, unfortunately, died very
suddenly of smallpox before he explained where he had put it.” Some have
fancied that his ghost still walks the Hall in anxiety for his hidden
money; and it was commonly believed of a late owner of Doddington, who
was fond of employing his leisure in working in the woods, that he was in
search of “Tommy Tailor’s _chist_.”
As Thomas Tailor of Doddington-Pigot, he held the office of High Sheriff
of Lincolnshire in 1620, and in the visitation of the county in 1634 he
signs the short pedigree of his family, comprising only two generations.
It was, perhaps, a mark of his eccentricity that, though he had served
as High Sheriff, he had not cared to apply for a grant of arms, and the
herald has appended to the pedigree a note: “He had been high shreife,
but had no coate.” It is doubtful whether he had ever married; but, at
all events, he left no issue, and in his nuncupative will, declared 13th
December 1652, he acknowledges his niece, Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, to be
his heiress.
Thomas Tailor had lived through all the stress of the Civil War, without
either himself or his house having apparently been affected by it. In
the course of it Lincoln had been twice besieged and taken; Cromwell’s
forces had encamped on the neighbouring moor of North Scarle, and must
have passed within sight of Doddington as they marched thence to defeat
the Royalists at Gainsborough. The house and parish must have been well
within reach of the Parliamentary forces at Lincoln, as well as of the
King’s troops at Newark, who on one occasion extended their forays past
it as far as Kettlethorpe, and on another burnt the very similar hall of
the Jermyn family at Torksey, which was garrisoned by the Parliamentary
troops. Yet he and his estates seem to have escaped unscathed. It was far
otherwise with the family into whose possession Doddington now passed.
Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, who now inherited it, was the only child of the
first Thomas Tailor’s daughter, Jane, by her marriage with George Anton,
Esq., Recorder of Lincoln, 1598-1612, and M.P. for that city in 1588 and
1592. She married Sir Edward Hussey, of Honington, Knt. and Bart., and so
added Doddington to the possessions of that distinguished Lincolnshire
family. Sir Edward, her husband, was eldest son of Sir Charles Hussey,
of Honington, Knt., and grandson of Sir Robert Hussey, who was a younger
brother of John, Lord Hussey of Sleaford, beheaded by Henry VIII. for his
supposed complicity in the Lincolnshire rising of 1536. He was already a
knight at the time of his father’s death in 1609, having received that
honour at Whitehall in 1608, and shortly afterwards, on 29th June 1611,
he was advanced to the dignity of baronet. The original bond, cancelled
by being cut into shreds, by which he bound himself to furnish £1095 by
three yearly instalments for the maintenance of thirty foot soldiers in
Ireland for three years, is still preserved at the Hall. He was High
Sheriff in 1618 and 1637, and Knight of the Shire in the Parliament
summoned to meet at Westminster, 13th April 1640. When the Civil War
broke out he exerted himself zealously on the Royalist side as one of
the King’s Commissioners of Array; and in 1642, when the loyal gentry
of Lincolnshire resolved to provide horses for the King’s service, Sir
Edward undertook to supply six, his brother Sir Charles Hussey, of
Dunholme, providing two. Later he and his brother and other Lincolnshire
loyalists assembled at Newark for its defence, and there Sir Charles
Hussey died. Shortly before its surrender by the King’s order in 1646,
we find Sir Edward at Honington endeavouring to make his peace with
the Parliament. He was very aged and infirm, he says; he had taken the
Covenant; his estates had been sequestered; and he asks that his wife may
be allowed to compound for him. In spite of his pleading, the great fine
of £10,200 was imposed. This was finally reduced to £8750, of which £4500
was raised and paid in December 1647, and three months later Sir Edward
Hussey died. His eldest son, Thomas Hussey, some time M.P. for Grantham,
had predeceased him in 1641; the next brother, Captain John Hussey, had
been slain in the fight with the Parliamentary troops at Gainsborough in
1643. It was left to his widow, and to his eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, now
remarried to Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax, to clear the impoverished
estates, and to raise the remainder of the fine, which was finally paid
off in 1650. For this purpose Lady Hussey had to sell her jointure, and
it must have been a relief to her when, on her uncle’s death at the end
of 1652, she inherited Doddington and his other estates. She enjoyed
them, however, for no more than six years, dying early in 1658.
She was succeeded in the ownership of Doddington by her grandson, Sir
Thomas Hussey, Bart., born in 1639, whose long minority, with the
addition of his grandmother’s inheritance, must have done much to repair
the shattered fortunes of the family. At the Restoration we find him,
with his mother, Lady Fairfax, then a second time a widow, living at
Doddington, and contributing, himself £60, and Lady Fairfax £30, towards
a loan for the restored King.
In 1662, 20th February, the marriage took place at Great St. Helen’s,
London, of “Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart. of Doddington, bach., and Sarah
Langham, aged twenty-one, daughter of Sir John Langham, Knt. and Bart.,
of Cottesbroke, Northants.” Portraits of Sir Thomas and Lady Hussey still
look down on the gallery of their former home; and what the house itself
resembled in their time we may see from the engraving of it, which was
executed by John Kip, after a drawing by Leonard Knyff, _c._ 1700. It
represents the Hall and gate-house much as they are at present, with an
open grassy court between. Gardens formally laid out, and orchards of
young trees in rows, surround the house; but we cannot tell how much of
this is due to the artist’s imagination.
Sir Thomas Hussey was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1668, and Knight
of the Shire 1681-95. As such he took a prominent part in the reception
of a new charter granted to the city by Charles II. in 1685. On this
occasion Sir Thomas Hussey, driving in, we must suppose, from Doddington,
was met at the entrance of Lincoln by the Mayor and Corporation, who
received the new charter from him on the green against St. Katharine’s.
After this Sir Thomas, with the Mayor and aldermen, walked up the city
to the Guildhall, with bands playing and bells ringing, and the conduits
running claret wine, that all might drink the King’s and the Duke of
York’s health. At the Guildhall the charter was read publicly by the
town-clerk, Mr. Original Peart, and the ceremony terminated with a great
dinner at the Mayor’s, and more drinking of healths. Towards the charges
of renewing the charter, the Bishop of Lincoln gave £20, and Sir Thomas
Hussey and three other gentlemen £10 a-piece.