well known. He joined the king at Oxford, and helped him to retrieve
his defeat at Newbury, bringing off his artillery left at Dunnington
Castle in the very face of the enemy. At the decisive Battle of Naseby
we find him performing feats of extraordinary valour; but, as before,
his headlong and precipitate fury led him into the usual error; and
though the loss of the battle was not to be attributed entirely to his
imprudence, yet a little more caution would have altered materially
the results of that memorable conflict. Harassed and dispirited, he
threw himself with the remainder of his troops into Bristol, intending
to defend it to the last extremity; but even here his constitutional
fortitude and valour seemed to forsake him: a poorer defence was not
made by any town during the whole war, and the general expectations
were extremely disappointed. No sooner had the Parliamentary forces
entered the lines by storm, than the Prince capitulated, and
surrendered the place to General Fairfax. A few days before, he had
written a letter to the King, in which he undertook to defend it for
four months, if no mutiny obliged him to surrender it. Charles, who
was forming schemes and collecting forces for the relief of the city,
was astonished at so unexpected an event, which was little less fatal
to his cause than the defeat at Naseby. Full of indignation, he
instantly recalled all Prince Rupert's commissions, and sent him a
pass to go beyond sea.
Several years afterwards we find him in command of a squadron of
ships, entrusted to him by Charles II, when an exile in Normandy.
Admiral Blake received orders from the Parliament to pursue him.
Rupert, being much inferior in force, took shelter in Kinsale, and
escaping thence, fled toward the coast of Portugal. Blake pursued and
chased him into the Tagus, where he intended to attack him; but the
King of Portugal, moved by the favour which throughout Europe attended
the royal cause, refused Blake admission, and aided the Prince in
making his escape. Having lost the greater part of his fleet off the
coast of Spain, he made sail towards the West Indies; but his brother,
Prince Maurice, was there shipwrecked in a hurricane. Everywhere his
squadron subsisted by privateering, sometimes on English, sometimes on
Spanish, vessels. Rupert at last returned to France, where he disposed
of the remnants of his fleet, together with his prizes.
He was never married; peradventure the remembrance of the noble and
heroic maiden marred his wiving; he cared not for the presence of
those courtly dames by whom he was surrounded, though a soldier, and a
brave one. By one of his race the crown of these realms was inherited;
and the same line is yet perpetuated in the person of our gracious
monarch, whom God preserve! The sister of Rupert, Princess Sophia, by
marriage with the Elector of Hanover, became the mother of George I.;
and thus was that singular prediction of the supposed demoniac
strangely and happily verified. Of Marian little remains to be told;
the lives of the virtuous and well-doing furnish little matter for the
historian; their deeds are not of this world; the bright page of their
history is unfolded only in the next.
[8] Hume.
[9] Clarendon.
[10] Hume.
[Illustration: CLEGG HALL, NEAR ROCHDALE.
_Drawn by G. Pickering._
_Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]
CLEGG HALL.
"Is there no exorcist
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is't real that I see?"
--SHAKESPEARE.
Clegg Hall, about two miles N.E. from Rochdale, is still celebrated
for the freaks and visitations of a supernatural guest, called
"Clegg-Hall Boggart."
So desultory and various are the accounts we have heard, and many of
them so vague and unintelligible, that it has been a work of much
difficulty to weave them into one continuous narrative, and to shape
them into a plot sufficiently interesting for our purpose. The name
and character of "Noman" are still the subject of many an absurd and
marvellous story among the country chroniclers in that region.
Dr Whitaker says it is "the only estate within the parish which still
continues in the local family name." On this site was the old house
built by Bernulf de Clegg and Quenilda his wife as early as the reign
of Stephen. Not a vestige of it remains. The present comparatively
modern erection was built by Theophilus Ashton of Rochdale, a lawyer,
and one of the Ashtons of Little Clegg, about the year 1620.
Stubley Hall, mentioned in our tale, was built by Robert Holt in the
reign of Henry VIII. The decay of our native woods had then occasioned
a pretty general disuse of timber for the framework of dwelling-houses
belonging to this class of our domestic architecture. Dr Whitaker
says--"It is the first specimen in the parish of a stone or brick
hall-house of the second order--that is, with a centre and two wings
only. Long before the Holts, appear at this place a Nicholas and a
John de Stubley, in the years 1322 and 1332; then follow in succession
John, Geoffrey, Robert, and Christopher Holt; from whom descended,
though not in a direct line, Robert Holt of Castleton and Stubley,
whose daughter, Dorothy, married in the year 1649, John Entwisle of
Foxholes. Robert, who built Stubley, and who was grandson of
Christopher Holt before mentioned, was a justice of the peace in the
year 1528. In an old visitation of Lancashire by Thomas Tong, Norroy,
30 Hen. VIII., is this singular entry:--"Robarde Holte of Stubley,
hase mar. an ould woman, by whom he hase none issewe, and therefore he
wolde not have her name entryed." Yet it appears he had a daughter,
Mary, who married Charles Holt, her cousin, descended from the first
Robert. Her grandson was the Robert Holt, father to Dorothy Entwisle
before-named, at whose marriage the events took place which, if the
following tradition is to be credited, were the forerunners of a more
strange and unexpected development.
In the year 1640, nine years before the date of our story, Robert Holt
abandoned Stubley for the warmer and more fertile situation of
Castleton, about a mile south from Rochdale. It was so named from the
_castellum de Recedham_, wherein dwelt Gamel, the Saxon Thane; which
place and personage are described in our first series of _Traditions_.
Castleton was principally abbey-land belonging to the house of
Stanlaw. Part of this township, the hamlet of Marland or Mereland,
was, at the dissolution of monasteries, granted to the Radcliffs of
Langley, and sold by Henry Radcliff to Charles Holt, who married his
cousin, Mary Holt of Stubley, and was grandfather to Robert, who left
Stubley for this place, which we have noticed above.
Stubley, with its neighbourhood, was always noted for good ale. From
its situation, exposed to all the rigours of that hilly region, the
climate was reckoned so cold as to require that their daily beverage
should be of sufficient strength to counteract its effects. That
habits of intemperance would be contracted from the constant use of
such stimuli may easily be inferred. The following letter from
Nicholas Stratford, Bishop of Chester, to James Holt of Castleton, son
of Robert Holt before-named, is but too melancholy a confirmation of
this inference.
The original is in the possession of the Rev. J. Clowes of Broughton
Hall:--
"SIR,--Your request in behalf of Mr Halliwell was easily
granted; for I am myself inclined to give the best encouragement
I can to the poor curates, as long as they continue diligent in
the discharge of their duty. But I have now, Sir, a request to
make to you, which I heartily pray you may as readily grant me;
and that is, that you will for the future abandon and abhor the
sottish vice of drunkenness, which (if common fame be not a
great liar) you are much addicted to. I beseech you, Sir,
frequently and seriously to consider the many dismal fruits and
consequences of this sin, even in this world--how destructive it
is to all your most valuable concerns and interests; how it
blasts your reputation, destroys your health, and will (if
continued) bring you to a speedy and untimely death: and, which
is infinitely more dreadful, will exclude you from the kingdom
of heaven, and expose you to that everlasting fire where you
will not be able to obtain so much as one drop of water to cool
your tongue. I have not leisure to proceed in this argum^t, nor
is it needful that I should, because you yourself can enlarge
upon it without my ... I assure you, S^r, this advice now given
you proceeds from sincere love and my earnest desire to promote
your happiness both in this world and the next; and I hope you
will be pleased so to accept from,
"S^r,
"Your affectionate friend
"and humble servant,
"N. CESTRIENS.
"CHESTER, _Nov. 1699_."
Clegg Hall, after many changes of occupants, is now in part used as a
country alehouse; other portions are inhabited by the labouring
classes who find employment in that populous and manufacturing
district. It is the properpty of Joseph Fenton, Esq., of Bamford Hall,
by purchase from John Entwisle, Esq., the present possessor of
Foxholes, in that neighbourhood.
To Clegg Hall, or rather what was once the site of that ancient house,
tradition points through the dim vista of past ages as the scene of an
unnatural and cruel tragedy. Not that this picturesque and stately
pile, with its gable and zigzag terminations, the subject of our
present engraving, was the very place where the murder was
perpetrated; but a low, dark, and wooden-walled tenement, such as our
forefathers were wont to construct in times anterior to the Tudor
ages. The present building, with its little porch, quaint and
grotesque, its balustrade and balcony above, and the points and
pediments on the four sides, are evidently the coinage of some more
modern brain--peradventure in King James's days. Not unlike the
character of that learned monarch and of his times, half-classical,
half-barbarous, it combines the puerilities of each, without the power
and grandeur of the one, or the rich and chivalric magnificence of the
other; and might remind the beholder of some gaunt warrior of the
Middle Ages, with lance, and armour, and "ladye-love," stalking forth,
clad in the Roman toga or the stately garb of the senator. The
building, the subject of our tale, has neither the gorgeous
extravagance of the Gothic nor the severe and stern utility of the
Roman architecture. Little bits of columns, dwarf-like, and frittered
down into mere extremities, give the porch very much the appearance of
a child's plaything, or a Dutch toy stuck to its side.
It has the very air and attitude--the pedantic formalities--of the
time when it was built. Not so the house on whose ruins it was
erected; the square, low, dark mansion, constructed of wood, heavy and
gigantic, shaped like the hull of some great ship, the ribs and
timbers being first fixed, and the interstices afterwards filled with
a compost of clay and chopped straw, to keep out the weather. Of such
rude and primitive architecture were the dwellings of the English
gentry in former ages: such was the house built by Bernulf and
Quenilda Clegg, in the reign of Stephen, the supposed scene of that
horrible deed which gave rise to the stories yet extant relating to
"Clegg-Hall Boggart." Popular story is not precise, generally, as to
facts and dates. The exact time when this occurrence took place we
know not; but it is more than probable that some dark transaction of
this nature was here perpetrated. The prevailing tradition warrants
our belief. However fanciful and extravagant the filling up of the
picture, common rumour still preserves untouched the general outline.
It is said that, sometime about the thirteenth or fourteenth century,
a wicked uncle destroyed the lawful heirs of this goodly
possession--two orphan children that were left to his care--by
throwing them over a balcony into the moat, that he might seize on the
inheritance. Such is the story which, to this day, retains its hold on
the popular mind; and ever after, it is said, the house was the
reputed haunt of a troubled and angry spirit, until means were taken
for its removal, or rather its expulsion. But upon the inhuman deed
itself we shall not dilate, inasmuch as the period is too remote, and
the events are too vague, for our purpose.
The house built by Bernulf Clegg had passed, with many alterations and
renewals, into the possession of the Ashtons of Little Clegg. About
the year 1620 the present edifice was built by Theophilus Ashton; and
thirty years had scarcely elapsed from its erection to the date of our
story. Though the original dwelling had, with one or two exceptions,
been pulled down, yet symptoms of "the boggart" were still manifest in
the occasional visitations and annoyances to which the inmates were
subject.
The hues of evening were spread out, like a rich tapestry, above and
behind the long unpicturesque line of hills, the lower acclivities of
Blackstonedge, opposite to the stately mansion of Clegg Hall. The
square squat tower of Rochdale Church peered out from the dark trees,
high on its dim eyrie, in the distance, towards the south-west, below
which a wan hazy smoke indicated the site of that thriving and
populous town. To the right, the heavy blue ridge of mountains,
bearing the appropriate name of Blackstonedge, had not yet put on its
cold, grey, neutral tint; but the mass appeared to rise abruptly from
the green enclosures stretching to its base, in strong and beautiful
contrast of colour, such as painters love to express on the mimic
canvas. It was a lovely evening in October; one of Nature's parting
smiles, ere she envelops herself in the horrors and the gloom of
winter. So soft and balmy was the season that the wild flowers
lingered longer than usual in the woods and copses where they dwelt.
In the gardens some of the spring blossoms had already unfolded. The
wallflowers and polyanthuses had looked out again, unhesitatingly, on
the genial sky--deprived, by sophistication and culture, of the
instincts necessary to their preservation: the wild untutored denizens
of the field and the quiet woods rarely betray such lack of
presentiment. But such are everywhere the results of civilisation;
which, however beneficial to society in the aggregate, gives its
objects altogether an artificial character, and, by depriving them of
their natural and proper instincts, renders them helpless when single
and unaided; while it makes them more dependent upon each other, and
on the factitious wants, the offspring of those very habits and
conditions into which they are thrown.
On the hollow trunk of a decrepit ash the ivy was blossoming
profusely, gathering its support from the frail prop which it was
fated to destroy. The insects were humming and frolicking about on
their tiny wings, taking their last enjoyment of their little day, ere
they gave place to the ephemera of the next.
"How merry and jocund every life-gifted thing looks forth on this our
festival. It might be Nature holding high jubilee in honour of Holt's
daughter on her wedding-night!"
Thus spake Nicholas Haworth to his sister Alice, as they stepped forth
from the hall porch, and stayed for a moment by this aged trunk to
admire the scene that was fast losing its glory and its brightness.
They were bidden to the marriage-supper at Stubley, where a masqued
ball was to be given after the nuptials of Dorothy Holt, the daughter
of its possessor, with Entwisle, the heir of Foxholes.[11]
"It may be holiday and gladness too; but I feel it not," said Alice
pensively, as she leaned on her brother's arm, while they turned into
a narrow lane overarched by irregular groups of beech and sycamore
trees.
"Heed not such idle fancies," said her brother. "And so, because,
forsooth, an impudent beggar-man predicts some strange event that must
shortly befall thee, the apprehension doth cast its shadow ere it
come, and thou art ready to conjure up some grim spectre in the gloom
it hath created. But, in good sooth, here comes the wizard himself who
hath raised these melancholic and evil humours."
"I never pass him without a shudder," said she, at the same time
cringing closely to her protector.
This awful personage was one of an ancient class, now probably
extinct; a sort of privileged order, supplying, or rather usurping,
the place of the mendicant friars of former days. Their vocation was
not of an unprofitable kind, inasmuch as alms were commonly rendered,
though more from fear than favour. Woe betide the unlucky housewife
who withheld her dole, her modicum of meal or money to these sturdy
applicants! Mischief from some invisible hand was sure to follow, and
the cause was laid to her lack of charity.
The being, the subject of these remarks, had been for many months a
periodical visitor at the Hall, where he went by the name of "Noman."
It is not a little remarkable that tradition should here point out an
adventure something analogous to that of Ulysses with the Cyclop as
once happening to this obscure individual, and that his escape was
owing to the same absurd equivoque by which the Grecian chief escaped
from his tormentor. Our tale, however, hath reference to weightier
matters, and the brief space we possess permits no further digression.
This aged but hale and sturdy beggar wore a grey frieze coat or cloak
loosely about his person. Long blue stocking gaiters, well patched and
darned, came over his knee, while his doublet and hosen, or body-gear,
were fastened together by the primitive attachment of wooden
skewers--a contrivance now obsolete, being superseded by others more
elegant and seemly. A woollen cap or bonnet, of unparalleled form and
dimensions, was disposed upon his head, hiding the upper part of his
face, and almost covering a pair of bushy grey eyebrows, that, in
their turn, crouched over a quick and vagrant eye, little the worse
for the wear of probably some sixty years. A grizzled reddish beard
hung upon his breast; and his aspect altogether was forbidding, almost
ferocious. A well-plenished satchel was on his shoulder; and he walked
slowly and erect, as though little disposed to make way for his
betters in the narrow path, where they must inevitably meet. When they
came nearer he stood still in the middle of the road, as though
inclined to dispute their passage. His tall and well-proportioned
figure, apparent even beneath these grotesque habiliments, stood out
before them in bold relief against the red and burning sky, where an
opening in the lane admitted all the glow and fervour of the western
sunset. His strange, wayward, and even mysterious character was no bar
to his admittance into the mansions of the gentry through a wide
circuit of country, where his familiarities were tolerated, or perhaps
connived at, even by many whose gifts he received more as a right than
as an obligation.
He looked steadfastly on them as they approached, but without the
slightest show either of respect or good-will.
"Prithee, stand a little on one side, that we may pass by without fear
of offence," said Nicholas Haworth, good-humouredly.
"And whither away, young master and my dainty miss?" was the reply, in
his usual easy and familiar address, such as might have suited one of
rank and condition.
Haworth, little disturbed thereat, said with a careless
smile,--"Troth, thou hast not been so long away but thou mightest have
heard of the wedding-feast to-night, and, peradventure, been foremost
for the crumbs of the banquet."
"I know well there's mumming and foolery a-going on yonder; and I
suppose ye join the merry-making, as they call it?"
"Ay, that do we; and so, prithee, begone."
"And your masks will ne'er be the wiser for't, I trow," said the
beggar, looking curiously upon them from beneath his penthouse lids.
"But that I could laugh at his impertinence, Alice, I would even now
chide him soundly, and send his pitiful carcase to the stocks for this
presumption. Hark thee, I do offer good counsel when I warn thee to
shift thyself, and that speedily, ere I use the readiest means for thy
removal."
"Gramercy, brave ruffler; but I must e'en gi'e ye the path; an' so
pass on to the masking, my Lord Essex and his maiden queen."
He said this with a cunning look and a chuckle of self-gratulation at
the knowledge he had somehow or other acquired of the parts they were
intended to enact.
"Foul fa' thy busy tongue, where foundest thou this news? I've a
month's mind to change my part, Alice, but that there's neither
leisure nor opportunity, and they lack our presence at the nuptials."
"How came he by this knowledge, and the fashion of our masks?"
inquired Alice from her brother. "Truly, I could join belief with
those who say that he obtained it not through the ordinary channels
open to our frail and fallible intellects."
Mistress Alice, "the gentle Alice," was reckoned fair and
well-favoured. Strongly tinctured with romance, her superstition was
continually fed by the stories then current in relation to her own
dwelling, and by the generally-received opinions about witches and
other supernatural things which yet lingered, loth to depart from
these remote limits of civilisation.
"Clegg-Hall Boggart" was the type of a notion too general to be
disbelieved; yet were the inmates, in all probability, less intimately
acquainted with the freaks and disturbances attendant thereon than
every gossip in the neighbourhood; for, as it frequently happens,
tales and marvels, for the most part originating through roguery, and
the pranks of servants and retainers, were less likely to come to the
ears of the master and his family than those of persons less
interested, but more likely to assist in their propagation. The
vagrant and erratic movements of "Noman" were, somehow or another,
connected with the marvellous adventures and appearances in the
"boggart chamber." At the Hall, this discarded room, being part of the
old house yet remaining, was the one which he was permitted to occupy
during his stay; and his appearance was generally the signal of a
visit from their supernatural guest. To be sure, the strange sights he
beheld rested on his testimony alone; but his word was never
questioned, and his coming was of equal potency with the magician's
wand in raising the ghost.
"We shall have some news from our troublesome guest, I suppose, in the
morning," said Alice to her brother, as they went slowly on: "I know
not the cause; but yonder vagrant seems to waken our ancient companion
from his slumbers, either by sympathy or antipathy, I trow."
"For the most part they be idle tales," said he; "though I doubt not,
in former days, the place was infested by some unquiet spirit. But
this good house of ours hath modern stuff too strong upon it. The
smell of antiquity alone hath a savour delicate enough for your musty
ghost."
Alice pressed his arm slightly as an admonition, at the same time
gently chiding his unbelief. Thus beguiling the way with pleasant
discourse, they drew nigh to the old house at Stubley, little more
than a mile distant from their own dwelling.
Though now resident in his more modern, sheltered, and convenient
mansion of Castleton, Holt determined that his daughter's wedding
should be solemnised in the ancient halls, where Robert Bath, vicar of
Rochdale, who was presented to the living on his marriage with a niece
of Archbishop Laud, was invited to perform the ceremony;--"A man,"
says Dr Whitaker, "of very different principles from his patron; for
he complied with all changes but the last, and retained his benefice
till August 24, 1662, when he went out on the Bartholomew Act, and
retired to a small house at Deepleach Hill, near Rochdale, where he
frequently preached to a crowded auditory."[12]
As they came nigh, lights were already glancing between the mullions
of the great hall window, then richly ornamented with painted glass.
The guests were loitering about the walks and terraces in the little
garden-plots, which in that bleak and chilly region were scantily
furnished. In the hall, fitted up with flowers and green holly-wreaths
for the occasion, the father of the bride and his intended son-in-law
were pacing to and fro in loving discourse; the latter pranked out in
a costly pair of "petticoat breeches," pink and white, of the newest
fashion, reaching only to the knee. These were ornamented with ribands
and laces at the two extremities, below which silk stockings,
glistering like silver, and immense pink shoe-roses, completed his
nether costume. A silken doublet and waistcoat of rich embroidery,
over which was a turned-down shirt-collar of point-lace, surmounted
the whole.
His friends and officials were busily employed in arranging matters
for the occasion, distributing the wedding-favours, and preparing for
the entertainments and festivities that were to follow.
Holt and his son-in-law were exempt from duty, save that of welcoming
those that were bidden, upon their arrival.