THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. II
The people of Cheshire were not all thieves and robbers in the
eighteenth century. If the rich and the idle were given to folly and
extravagance, and poorer men also too often lost the little they
possessed through gambling and cock-fighting, the heart of the people
was sound, and only waiting to be stirred to newer life and better
ideals.
In the latter half of the century a great preacher came to Cheshire, and
stirred deeply the hearts of men by denouncing the follies of the age,
and the lack of religious feeling which had spread over all classes of
society. His name was John Wesley, the founder of the Wesleyan and
Methodist bodies. At first he met with much opposition, and his meetings
were broken up by the mob, but in time the people were struck by his
earnestness and flocked to hear him. The chapel at Chester where he
preached was so crowded that it could not hold all who wished to listen
to him. In his Diary he tells us of his visits to Knutsford, Stockport,
and other Cheshire towns. But Wesley and his followers often found
themselves unable to preach in the churches, so they built for
themselves chapels, little square brick buildings, all over the county.
Another fervent preacher of the time was Captain Scott, who left the
army to be a missionary among his own countrymen, whom he gathered round
him in the streets or the inn-yards of the villages where he stayed. The
Mill Street Chapel at Congleton is one of the many chapels founded by
him in Southern Cheshire.
Many Cheshire men were fighting in the wars into which England was drawn
in the eighteenth century. In the reigns of Anne and the three Georges
war succeeded war, and the intervals of peace were few and short. France
and Spain were our enemies, each of whom looked with jealous eyes upon
the growing power of England, and, still more, her vast colonial
empire. From Canada in the West to India in the East battles were fought
on land and on sea to maintain for England the supremacy of the sea and
her colonies.
Many churches in Cheshire tell the story of Cheshire soldiers and
sailors who distinguished themselves in these wars. In the church of
Pott Shrigley you may see a memorial tablet of Peter Downes, whose
ancestors were foresters of the forest of Macclesfield. Peter Downes
entered the navy and was killed in a fight between the _Leander_, an
English man-of-war, and the French ship _Généreux_.
Peter Dennis, who was born at Chester and was a scholar at the King's
School, became an Admiral of the Fleet. He was in command of the
battleship _Centurion_ in a battle fought off Cape Finisterre.
Afterwards he was knighted and made commander-in-chief of the
Mediterranean fleet.
The battleships in which these sailors fought were very different to the
monster ironclads of the present day with which you are familiar. The
eighteenth-century vessels were the old 'wooden walls' of England, big
sailing ships called 'three deckers', with three rows of guns pointing
outwards from their sides. There is a model of one of them, the _Royal
George_, over the inner door of Vernon Park Museum.
Robert Clive was the son of a Shropshire squire, and was educated at the
little school in the Cheshire village of Allostock. Clive went to India
and became a soldier. The English and French were fighting for the
mastery of India, and it is to Clive's victories that we owe in a great
measure our Indian Empire.
In the last few years of the eighteenth century the dangers which
threatened England from France were much nearer home. In 1794 King
George the Third was obliged to ask Parliament for a large increase in
our home army. Cheshire raised a regiment of six troops, with Colonel
Leicester, of Tabley Hall, as its commander.
Shortly afterwards a call for Volunteers was made in Cheshire, as in
other parts of the country, to defend the shores of our own land from
attack. The armies of Napoleon were conquering everywhere, and an
invasion of England was expected. Knutsford Heath presented the same
busy scene that it had done 150 years before, when Lambert's troops were
encamped upon it. For Knutsford was the appointed meeting-place of all
the Cheshire forces--Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers--and the beacon
that was kept in readiness on Alderley Edge was to give the signal.
The danger was not over for many years, for the war lasted well into the
nineteenth century, ending only when Napoleon and the French were
defeated by Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. Duke Street and
Wellington Street in Stockport keep alive the memory of the 'Iron Duke',
Napoleon's conqueror.
A friend of the Duke of Wellington was Stapleton Cotton, Viscount
Combermere, whose statue stands in front of the gates of Chester Castle.
He was a descendant of the Cotton to whom the Abbey of Combermere was
given when Henry the Eighth plundered the Cheshire monasteries. The Duke
of Wellington frequently stayed at Combermere; on one of his visits he
planted an oak tree which you may still see in the Park. On the tomb of
Stapleton Cotton in Wrenbury Church you may read the names of the many
battles in which this gallant soldier took part.
The wars of the eighteenth century and the final struggle with Napoleon
would have ruined this country but for a great increase in the wealth of
the people, which made them able to bear the cost.
To understand the sources of this wealth, and the way in which it was
made, we shall have to go back again to the middle of the eighteenth
century, and tell the story of a great Industrial Revolution, a
revolution without war and bloodshed indeed, but one that brought with
it the greatest changes perhaps that Cheshire had yet seen. What these
changes were, and how they affected the lives of Cheshire men and women,
you will read in the succeeding chapters.