THE FALL OF THE STUARTS
When Charles was restored to the throne the bishops also came back to
their bishoprics. The records of the churches of Chester tell of the
payments made to the ringers for the ringing of the bells when the
citizens joyously welcomed Bishop Walton to the city. A large number of
citizens and mounted soldiers went as far as Nantwich to meet him and
escorted him to the city gates of Chester, where the mayor and
corporation as well as the clergy and gentry of Cheshire received him.
Once more a Christmas was kept in the old time way, and the churches
were decked with holly and evergreens for one of the greatest festivals
of the Church. And truly the bare walls, stripped of everything that was
beautiful, needed some adornment after the ravages and desecrations of
the Civil War.
But Charles was a foolish king, and spent most of his days in idle and
frivolous pleasures. The people were disappointed with him, for he had
plenty of brains. One of his favourite hobbies was the study of science.
John Wilkins, another Bishop of Chester, was one of a little band of
clever men who helped the king to found the Royal Society for the spread
of knowledge and the study of science. To be a Fellow of the Royal
Society is to this day one of the highest honours that men of science
can obtain.
The favourite study of John Wilkins was astronomy, and he wrote a book
called the _Discovery of a New World, to prove that there may be another
habitable world in the moon_. Another book of his was called _Mercury;
or the secret and swift Messenger, shewing how a man may privately and
with speed tell his thoughts to friends at any distance_. Thus, had he
lived in a later age, he might perhaps have been the inventor of the
telegraph and telephone.
Charles secretly favoured the old Catholic religion, and on his
death-bed was received into the Catholic Church. During his reign
another Act of Uniformity was passed, much more severe than the former
one. Sixty ministers of Cheshire churches, who refused to obey the Act,
were turned out of their livings. Among them was Adam Martindale, a
noted Puritan, who was driven from his church at Rostherne. Adam
Martindale wrote the story of his life, with all his trials and
misfortunes, in a book which you may read in many of your public
libraries.
The Nonconformists were prevented by another Act from holding prayer
meetings within five miles of the town or village where they had held a
living. The gaol at Chester was soon filled with those who were ready to
suffer for the crime of preaching the Gospel in their homes and to their
friends. Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, who had been made Governor of Chester
Castle for his services in the Civil War, sought them out and persecuted
them with great cruelty.
Still there were many who continued to worship in their own way. For a
long time they held their services secretly in private houses, but, in
1690, the Toleration Act allowed them to build chapels. These they
erected chiefly on the outskirts of towns or in remote villages. During
the later years of the seventeenth century these chapels increased
greatly in number. The Unitarian chapel at Knutsford and the tiny brick
chapel at Dean Row, between the Bollin and the Dean, are among the
earliest of such places of worship in Cheshire.
Matthew Henry, a learned commentator of the New Testament, whose father
had been turned out of his church at Worthenbury, preached in the chapel
in Trinity Street, Chester. You may still see the seventeenth-century
pulpit from which he addressed his congregation. During the Civil War
the pulpit had become the most important feature of the churches. The
Puritans were in the habit of preaching long political sermons which
they timed with an hour-glass fixed on the wall near the pulpit. At
Shotwick is a pulpit of the kind called a 'three-decker', with a square
box-pew beneath it for the parish clerk.
As soon as people were permitted to choose their own form of worship
several other religious bodies came into being, each with its own
peculiar teaching and belief, often differing but slightly from each
other, all bent on practising their religion precisely in their own
particular way. Many earnest soldiers in the Parliamentary army of Sir
George Booth, when encamped in the neighbourhood of Knutsford and
Alderley, had held their services in the barn of a farmhouse at Warford.
Their children in after days built the tiny Baptist chapel which still
remains in the village.
The Quakers were very numerous in the neighbourhood of Stockport and
Wilmslow, and George Fox the founder of their sect, or 'Society of
Friends' as it was called, used often to visit them. Some cottages on
Lindow Moss were once a Quaker chapel, and there is a Quaker
burial-ground in a clump of trees near Mobberley. Many of the
gravestones have seventeenth-century dates upon them. Often the Quakers
were refused burial in the churchyards, and most out-of-the-way places
were chosen for their last resting-place. There are some Quakers' graves
in the woods at Burton in Wirral.
James the Second, who succeeded his brother Charles, did not try to hide
the fact that he was a Papist. Many people would have preferred the Duke
of Monmouth, a bastard son of Charles the Second, as king. He was known
to be a Protestant, and the people of Cheshire, who were strongly
Protestant, would have welcomed him as they had already welcomed him
once in Charles the Second's reign.
Three years before James became king, the duke had visited Cheshire and
raised the cry of 'No Popery!' He stayed at Mainwaring House in Bridge
Street, Chester, and supped at the Plume of Feathers Inn. On the
following day the little daughter of the mayor was christened, and the
duke stood godfather, naming her Henrietta.
The duke then made a triumphal progress through the villages of Wirral.
He stayed at Peel Hall, Bromborough, in order to attend the races at
Wallasey, where he won a prize, which he sent to his little goddaughter
at Chester. Several of the Wirral gentry met in a summer-house at
Bidston, and talked of a rising in his favour. But the country people
did not show so much readiness as had been expected, and all the duke's
doings were secretly reported to the king by Sir Peter Shakerley, the
governor of Chester Castle. Monmouth also stayed at Rock Savage and
Dunham Massey, and witnessed the sports at Gawsworth. Shortly
afterwards, however, he was captured by the king's men at Stafford, and
the plot came to nothing. He was lucky not to lose his head. Charles was
kinder to him than James was when the duke raised the West of England in
1685.
James was thoroughly hated by the bulk of the people, who grew tired of
the mischievous rule of the Stuarts, and made up their minds to depose
him. They were also determined that never again should a Catholic king
reign over them. James fled to France, and Thomas Cartwright, the Bishop
of Chester, who had made the citizens angry by bringing in again the old
Catholic services of the Church, followed him into exile.
In the gardens of Gayton Hall are two ancient trees which have been
called William and Mary. William of Orange was the new king who was
invited by the English to succeed James. All who held office in Church
or State were required to take the oath of allegiance to him. Some
refused to do this. They were called non-jurors, and among them were
several of the clergy of Cheshire who had to give up their churches.
James made an effort to regain his lost kingdom, and sailed from France
to Ireland, where he hoped to win many adherents. William assembled his
forces in Wirral, staying at Gayton Hall, the home of William Clegg,
whom he knighted after his visit.
The 'King's Gap', near Hoylake, reminds us of King William's presence in
Cheshire. On the Lowlands, between Hoylake and Meols, his army lay
encamped, and in the river Dee Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the brave sailor
who rose from 'powder-monkey' to admiral, was waiting with the fleet to
take the troops across to Ireland. Cloudesley Shovel is said to have
received part of his education at the Grammar School of Stockport.
On the chancel wall of West Kirby Church is a tablet bearing the name of
Baron Johannes Van Zoelen, who died here in 1690. The foreign-looking
name is that of an officer of the Dutch troops of the Duke of Schomberg,
for William employed Dutch and German soldiers to put down James's
rising in Ireland. The soldiers embarked at Hoylake, and a few weeks
later the farmers of Wirral, who had had to feed the army, and who, no
doubt, were glad to see it depart, heard of William's great victory at
the battle of the Boyne. James took refuge again in France.
Many Cheshire men took part in William's Irish campaign. A regiment was
raised in Cheshire by Sir George Booth, the old Parliamentary leader who
had, after the Civil War, become one of Charles the Second's most
devoted followers and received the title of Lord Delamere for his
services. The regiment was also accompanied by a troop of horse from
Wilmslow and the neighbourhood.
William was never popular with his subjects. They disliked him because
he was not English. He was cold and silent, and his manners ungracious;
he spoke English with difficulty, and often he seemed anxious to get
back to his own country. But he was devoted to duty and a great soldier,
and he did much for England in checking the power of the French king who
favoured the exiled Stuart.
William died childless, and was succeeded by Anne, the last Stuart who
sat on the English throne. She had Cheshire blood in her veins, for she
was the daughter of James the Second's wife, Anne Hyde, whose
grandfather, the Earl of Clarendon, was a Hyde of Hyde Hall.
Queen Anne's children all died young. Before she came to the throne
Parliament had passed an Act of Settlement, by which the crown was
settled on a Protestant, Princess Sophia, granddaughter of James the
First, and her heirs. When Queen Anne died, George, the eldest son of
Sophia, became king.
The fallen Stuarts made more than one attempt to recover the British
crown. In 1715, when George the First was king, a number of Cheshire
gentlemen, among whom were the Leghs of Legh and Lymm, the Grosvenors of
Eaton, Warrens and Asshetons, and Cholmondeleys met in the hall of the
Asshetons at Ashley to decide whether they should give any help to James
Edward, the 'Old Pretender', James's eldest son, who was raising a
revolt in Scotland. They decided by a majority of one only to remain
loyal to the Protestant King George.
Thirty years later the inhabitants of East Cheshire saw an army of
rugged Highlanders in bonnets and kilts pass southwards from Stockport
Prince Charles Edward, the 'Young Pretender', had raised his flag in the
Highlands of Scotland and gathered together an army of 'Jacobites', as
the followers of the Stuarts were called. At Manchester the Scots had
been joined by about 200 Lancashire Catholics. But the villagers who
cheered the rebels on the Macclesfield high-road saw them returning
within a week, for they had hardly crossed the hills at Bosley and
descended into the valleys of Derbyshire when the Duke of Cumberland,
commanding an army in the Midlands, scattered them and drove them
pell-mell northwards again.
In Lyme Hall are some Jacobite wine-glasses, with the White Rose of the
Stuarts stamped on one side, and on the other the Latin word 'fiat',
which expressed the thought that was in the minds of those who used
them: 'May the king come to his own again!' When men were forbidden to
drink the health of the Pretender in public, these 'fiat' glasses were
made by the Jacobites and the toast drunk in silence.
'Bonnie Prince Charlie' stayed at the house of Sir Peter Davenport in
Macclesfield, and his officers at a house in Jordangate which is now the
George Hotel. Stuart 'Pretenders' were never seen in Cheshire again.