the county was forwarded ten years later to the council. With this
return a letter was forwarded signed by the Earl of Shrewsbury as
lord-lieutenant, as well as by his deputies. A noteworthy paragraph in
this letter shows that Derbyshire was not taking kindly to the general
substitution of explosive weapons in the place of archery which was
then in progress.
“Touching thorders prescribed for thexercise of harquebuziers, the
truthe is this shire doth not aptlie serve theretoe for we have very
few harquebuziers & they placed so farre from market townes as they
shuld nott come to a day of exercise above the nombre of six, & yet
their travell further than in the time for the same is prescribed.
Indeed we have good plenty of archers & therefore in our generall
musters wee thought it best to appoint many of them to be furnished
accordingly & nowe if we shuld make a new charge the countrey
undoubledy wuld think themselves oversore burdened.”
The Earl of Shrewsbury received orders in November, 1569, to raise the
whole force of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and to proceed against
the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, “now in rebellion.” It
would be wearisome in a sketch of this character to note the various
incidents, which can be gleaned from both the public records and the
county muniments, as to the several occasions on which the Derbyshire
musters were called out when there was no immediate necessity for their
use.
The considerable part that this county played in the safeguarding
of Elizabeth’s unhappy prisoner, Mary, Queen of Scots, during her
repeated sojourns at Wingfield Manor House, together with her visits
to Chatsworth and Buxton, are fully dealt with in another paper in
this volume. It may, however, be here remarked that the deplorable
execution of Mary, in 1587, and the way in which the youthful Babington
had so rashly conspired in her favour, made a great impression upon
this county, and caused the Council as well as the local authorities to
redouble their precautions. Not only was a certain local undercurrent
stirred up in Derbyshire through the Fotheringay execution, but it also
had the result of hastening the hostilities of Philip of Spain and
other of Elizabeth’s external enemies. There was in consequence at this
period frequent exercise of the county forces. The Earl of Shrewsbury’s
gout prevented his taking any active part, and the work was chiefly
supervised by his brother-in-law, John Manners, the senior of the
deputy-lieutenants. A certificate of the musters, as viewed by Manners
in November, 1587, shows that there were 400 “selected bands armed and
prest for present service”; these bands were divided into 160 “shot,”
80 pikemen, 80 billmen, and 80 archers. It is interesting here to note
the remarkable way in which the musket had gained ascendancy over
the bow in fourteen years. In addition to the selected 400, Manners
returned 1,300 men who were available in times of need, namely, 300 for
shot, 300 for pikes, 360 for bills, 200 for bows, 80 as carpenters
and wheelwrights, and 60 as smiths. The mounted forces consisted of 9
demi-lances and 178 light-horse.
[Illustration: Wingfield Manor.
(_From an Indian Ink Drawing by Colonel Machell, 7th August, 1785._)]
This return, large as it was, was not, however, a complete one for the
whole county, for none of the musters from the hundred of Scarsdale
were allowed to be present for fear of infection. A grievous attack of
the plague was then raging at Chesterfield and several of the adjacent
parishes. The severity of what is termed in the parish register “the
great plague of Chesterfield” may be gathered from the fact that the
deaths of that town in June, 1587, were fifty-four, in July fifty-two,
and yet the average deaths in Chesterfield for several years about that
period were only three a month.
Although Derbyshire was perhaps further removed from the sea-coast than
any other county, the threatened approach of the great Spanish Armada
appears to have made almost as much stir as in the sea-board counties.
The gentlemen of the county consented to greatly increase the number of
lances and light-horse, provided that such action should not be taken
as a precedent; and they further promised to provide an addition of 400
to the number of unmounted troops. The old earl wrote a brave letter
to his sovereign, assuring her that the gentlemen of Derbyshire were
both ready and well affected, and that, as for himself, the threatened
invasion was making him young again, “though lame in body, yet was he
lusty in heart to lead her greatest enemy one blow, and to live and die
in her service.”
The signal defeat of Spain brought for some years general peace and
quiet throughout the kingdom. The musters in Derbyshire and elsewhere
were but rarely called out, save in the winter of 1598–9, when renewed
threats from Spain caused Sir Humphrey Ferrers, the most active of
the Derbyshire deputy-lieutenants, to view the musters of the various
hundreds.
Quite irrespective of the part played by the general musters during
this reign in preparation for possible emergencies, there was much
stir and excitement in the county, accompanied, no doubt, by a great
deal of misery, consequent upon the repeated call for troops to take
part in the subjection of Ireland. The levies of troops for Ireland
were almost ceaseless during the last quarter of the sixteenth century.
It has usually been understood by historians that these raw troops
came mainly from Lancashire and Cheshire; but the Belvoir manuscripts,
supported by the Acts of the Privy Council and local muniments, show
that Derbyshire—possibly as a compliment to her bravery—was being
constantly called upon to supply men for these expeditions entirely
out of proportion to the limited area and population of the county.
It is not surprising to find that these forcibly impressed levies,
utterly untrained in military matters, and suffering severely from poor
clothing, insufficient food, the dampness of the climate, and frequent
infectious disease, perished in large numbers before they could attain
to any proficiency. When the Earl of Essex was granted special powers
in 1573 to suppress the Irish rebellion, Derbyshire had to submit to
the impressment of a hundred men, and a complaint was lodged at the
sessions that some of the best lead-miners had been taken for that
purpose. The whole story of these forced levies, of the difficulty
of conveying them to the ports of Lancashire and Cheshire, of their
frequent desertions both en route and even when they had crossed the
seas, of the poorness of the weapons and equipments with which they
were supplied by the swindling contractors of the day, is a most sorry
and sordid tale. Nor could these Derbyshire troops have presented, even
when first called out, a particularly attractive or uniform appearance,
for the Belvoir manuscripts tell us that they were to be provided, in
addition to convenient hose and doublet, “with a cassock of motley and
other sea-green colour or russet.”
There was much nervousness with regard to Derbyshire when Elizabeth
was on her deathbed, in March, 1682–3. The council were alarmed lest
attempts should be made to remove Lady Arabella Stuart (who had a
certain kind of claim to the throne) by violence from the custody of
her grandmother, the old Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess
of Hardwick. They dispatched Sir Henry Brounker in haste with a warrant
to all the Derbyshire lieutenants, justices, and constables, to give
him all assistance in guarding Arabella, and in the suppression of
every form of disorder and riot. On March 25th, Sir Henry met a large
body of the deputy-lieutenants and justices at North Wingfield, a short
distance from Hardwick Hall, when it was arranged that there should at
present be no general view of the musters, but that the constables were
to see that the armour was in readiness, and to take other precautions.
But whilst they were thus debating, death removed Elizabeth, and on the
following day James I. was quietly proclaimed King at Derby without any
trace of remonstrance.
Early in the reign of James I. the nature of the general musters or
local militia was considerably changed, but their special services were
never really needed during the time he was on the throne. In 1624,
when James was unhappily persuaded to give authority to the Duke of
Buckingham to raise 10,000 men in England to proceed to the Palatinate,
this county had some share in the general misfortune. Out of the great
disorderly rabble collected by impressment at Dover, half of whom died
in the overcrowded vessels from the plague ere they could even be
landed, Derbyshire contributed 150 men. These troops from the centre of
England were allowed 8d. a day whilst marching to Dover, and they were
expected to make at least twelve miles daily. It is probable that James
was at Derby in August, 1609, when making a progress from Nottingham
to Tutbury Castle. He was certainly in the county towards the close of
his life, during the summer progress of 1624. On August 10th the King
was at Welbeck, when he knighted two Derbyshire gentlemen, Sir John
Fitzherbert of Norbury, and Sir John Fitzherbert of Tissington. In the
following week he stopped two nights at Derby with Prince Charles,
proceeding thence in the following week to Tutbury. In the latter place
he knighted Sir Edward Vernon, of Sudbury.
In no other county in the whole of England is the evidence more clear
or detailed than in Derbyshire as to the ill-advised proceedings in
the opening part of the reign of Charles I., which eventually brought
about the misfortunes of the great Civil War. The methods of raising
funds for the Crown after an irregular fashion by way of benevolences
and loans, was no new invention of this ill-fated Stuart King. Such
exactions, though contrary to statute, were resorted to by Henry VII.
in 1491, when he took a “benevolence” from the more wealthy folk for
his popular incursion into France. Henry VIII. made like cause for an
“aimable graunte” in 1528 and in 1548. Elizabeth appears to have always
expected and received valuable “gifts” of money or plate during her
progresses, and numerous “loans” demanded and obtained from Derbyshire
gentlemen by that Queen were considerable, and a frequent cause of
friction when it was found that they were scarcely ever repaid. Charles
I., however, was so foolishly advised as to begin his reign by pressing
for definite sums, which were ridiculously termed “free gifts.”
Derbyshire was practically unanimous in its refusal to the demand. The
courts of four of the hundreds duly met in 1626, and declined to pay a
single farthing “otherwise than by way of Parliament.” The Derbyshire
justices met in session on July 18th, and forwarded to the council the
answers from all the hundreds. The first signature to this reply was
that of the Earl of Devonshire, and in the whole county only £20 4s.
was subscribed.
Two years later the King’s consent was obtained to the Petition of
Rights, and thus benevolences or forced loans were put an end to in
most explicit terms. The next expedient, however, for raising money
without Parliament was still more foolish. A well recognised method
for getting together a navy in actual time of war, namely, by issuing
ship-writs, had become established in Plantagenet days, and proved of
great service to Elizabeth in resisting the Armada. There were also
later precedents of 1618 and 1626, but in every one of these cases
ship-writs were only served on seaports, and were never issued save for
immediate warlike enterprise. The ship-writs, however, of 1634 were
served when there was no war or fear of attack; and in the following
year the grievance was intensified by serving writs on inland as well
as maritime counties and towns. Under the writs of 1635, the small
county of Derbyshire was called upon to pay the great sum of £3,500—£90
of which was to be contributed by the clergy. Many in the county
actively resisted. Sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, flatly declined
to pay a farthing, was put under arrest, taken before the council in
London, and his goods distrained. A third ship-writ reached Derbyshire
in 1636, but the sheriff could only raise £700, and that with much
difficulty. A fourth writ in October of the same year, again demanding
£3,500, was served on the new sheriff, Sir John Harper. Resistance
was general. The King was compelled in 1640 to summon the “Long
Parliament,” which speedily declared all the late proceedings touching
ship money to be illegal and void. To this the King consented; but it
was too late, the mischief was done.
Charles I., in the earlier part of his reign, was on three occasions
the guest of the Earl of Newcastle at Bolsover Castle. The record visit
of the three was in 1633, when he was accompanied by his Queen. The
entertainment, as Lord Clarendon has it, was “very prodigious and most
stupendous.” The expenses for hospitality on this occasion reached the
huge total of £15,000; it was during the visit that Ben Jonson’s masque
of _Love’s Welcome_ was performed.
In 1635 Charles I. visited Derby, and slept at the Great House in the
market-place. The corporation and townsmen had very good reason to
remember this visit, for they gave the Duke of Newcastle for the King
a fat ox, a calf, six fat sheep, and a purse of gold to enable him
to keep hospitality, with a further present to the Elector Palatine
of twenty broad pieces. The King further improved the occasion by
“borrowing” £300 off the corporation in addition to his gifts, as well
as all the small arms in possession of the town. At the end of the
Scottish War in August, 1641, Charles I. passed through Derbyshire, and
was again at the county town on the eleventh of August, when he made
Sir John Curzon, of Kedleston, and Sir Francis Rodes, of Barlborough,
baronets.
The great Civil War began in the summer of 1642 with the raising of the
Royal Standard at Nottingham. The registers of All Saints, the great
church of the county town, have the following brief chronicle of this
dramatic incident: “the 22 of this August errectum fuit Notinghamiæ
Vexillum Regale.—Matt. xii. 25.” The vicar, Dr. Edward Wilmot, who
made the entry, was a staunch Royalist, and probably employed the
Latin tongue knowing full well the general tendency of the opinions of
the townsmen. When the news reached Derby, the response was meagre.
Hutton, the historian, tells us that about twenty Derby men marched
to Nottingham and entered the King’s service. On September 13th the
King marched with his army from Nottingham to Derby, but only made one
day’s stay in the town, pushing on from thence to Shrewsbury. Within a
few months practically the whole of the counties of Derby, Leicester,
Stafford, Northampton, and Warwick were united in an association
against the King.
Sir John Gell, of Hopton, at once came to the fore as the local
energetic supporter of Parliamentary Government, obtaining a commission
as colonel from the Earl of Essex. After rousing the county both at
Chesterfield and Wirksworth, he marched with a small force to Derby,
which he entered on the thirty-first of October, 1642, where he was
joined by one of the leading gentlemen of the south of the shire—Sir
George Gresley. It would take far more space than can here be afforded
to give even the barest outline of the ups and downs of the sad civil
strife that raged throughout Derbyshire, for the most part in favour of
the Commonwealth, for the next few years. It must suffice to state that
the county, apparently owing to its central position, suffered more in
various ways, both in loss of men and property of all descriptions,
than any other part of the whole of England. Wingfield Manor House,
Bolsover Castle, and such great houses as Chatsworth, Tissington,
Sutton, and Staveley, were held first by one side and then by the
other; whilst important garrisons at places so near to the county
boundaries as Welbeck, Tutbury, and Nottingham, contributed to constant
raids over the parts of Derbyshire within easy reach.
In 1645 the plight of Derbyshire was most deplorable, through the
frequent marches and counter-marches of the hostile forces through its
limits; for, although the Parliament held its own throughout the county
during the prolonged struggle, the Royalists now and again gained the
victory in a skirmish, and succeeded in maintaining their hold in
well-garrisoned places for a few months at a time. Both sides, also,
found it essential in their campaigns to cross the county in various
directions. In August of this year Sir George Gresley and others wrote
to the Speaker as to the miserable condition of the county, which had
been successively afflicted by the armies of Newcastle, the Queen,
Prince Rupert, Goring, and others, who had freely raided from even the
poorest of the people during their transits. The enemy, he stated, had
lost all their Derbyshire garrisons, but they had been taken by force
and at a great charge to the county. Several garrisons on the confines
of the county, such as Newark, Tutbury, and Welbeck, still had power
and means to levy contributions on the adjacent parts of Derbyshire,
and to ruin those who denied them. Moreover, the Scotch army had been
for a time very chargeable to the county, for they not only claimed
free quarters, but supplied themselves with what horses they required.
And now, to crown all, the King’s army had passed through, and made
spoil of a great part of the county. Some of the Parliament forces had
come to their help, and more were daily expected; but all of them would
at least have free quarters, and the owners of the very few horses
left in Derbyshire had now small hope of retaining them. The House of
Commons was asked to grant them the excise of the town and county for
the present maintenance of their own soldiers.
It must also be remembered in estimating the share that Derbyshire had
in this momentous conflict, that it has not only to be gauged from
what went on within her borders, but from the prominent share which
Derbyshire forces took in the battles and skirmishes that took place
in other parts of the kingdom. At the very outset of the struggle,
Derbyshire troops played an important part round Lichfield and in other
parts of Staffordshire. During the winter of 1644–5, Gell’s forces
from this county were busy about Newark, and also in Cheshire. In the
spring of the latter year they were engaged before Tutbury Castle;
and in July, 1648, Derbyshire horse played an important part in the
Parliamentary victory at Willoughby, Nottinghamshire.
In this same month the Derbyshire committee were ordered to send sixty
of their horse to Pontefract to help in the siege, and to join in the
resistance to the invasion from Scotland. On August 18th came the rout
of the great army of the Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, at Preston.
The defeated cavaliers disbanded themselves in Derbyshire, dispersing
in all directions. Considerable numbers of the Scotch infantry were
gradually arrested, having vainly endeavoured to conceal themselves
amid the hills and dales of the wild Peak district. One of the most
terrible episodes of the strife in the Midlands occurred in the then
large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. A vast number of the Scotch
prisoners were crowded into the church, with the shocking result thus
curtly entered in the registers:—
“1648 Sept: 11. There came to this town of Scots army, led by the
Duke of Hambleton & squandered by Colonell Lord Cromwell sent hither
prisoners from Stopford under the conduct of Marshall Edward Matthews,
said to be 1500 in number put into ye church Sept: 14. They went away
Sept: 30 following. There were buried of them before the rest went
away 44 persons, & more buried Oct. 2 who were not able to march, &
the same thyt died by the way before they came to Cheshire 10 & more.”
Space must be found for a far less tragic incident that occurred in
connection with another Derbyshire church in the south of the county
earlier in this strife. When the Royalists were making a special
effort to regain their hold on Wingfield Manor, Colonel Eyre, with his
regiment of 200 men, marching from Staffordshire, passed the night in
the church of Boyleston. Major Saunders, a local Derbyshire leader on
the Parliament side, heard of this night encampment, and with a small
troop of horse surrounded the church, and raising a simultaneous shout
at all the windows and doors demanded the instant surrender of all the
Royalists under pain of immediate fire. Colonel Eyre’s men, startled
from their sleep, were compelled to surrender; they were ordered to
come out one by one through the small priest’s door on the south side
of the chancel, and as each stepped forth he was seized and stripped of
his arms—“and soe,” wrote Major Saunders, “we took men, collours, and
all without loss of one man on either side.”
As to the general sympathy of this shire with the Commonwealth
proceedings, even after the execution of the King, the Commission
of the Peace in 1650 shows how large a proportion of the old county
gentlemen were content to accept commissions at the hands of the new
rulers. It includes such names as Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Edward
Coke, Sir Edward Leach, Sir Samuel Sleigh, Sir John Gell, Nicholas
Leeke, John Mundy, Robert Wilmot, Christopher Horton, James Abney,
Anthony Morewood, and Robert Eyre. Among the High Sheriffs under the
Commonwealth after this date were John Stanhope, of Elvaston, George
Sitwell, of Renishaw, and John Ferrers, of Walton.
On the other hand there were many staunch loyalists in the county, who
compounded heavily for their estates. Such were Sir Aston Cokayne,
Lord Chesterfield, Lord Francis Deincourt, Sir Henry Every, Sir John
Harpur, of Swarkeston, Sir John Harpur, of Calke, Sir Henry Hunloke,
Sir Francis Rodes, Thomas Leeke, Roland and George Eyre, William
Fitzherbert, Henry Gilbert, and Jervase Pole, of Wakebridge.
Among the great store of county muniments at Derby, there are few
papers that bring before the mind the incidents of the great civil
strife more vividly than the petitions from maimed soldiers addressed
to the Quarter Sessions for relief. Thus, in 1649, John Matthew, of
Loscoe, stated:—
“that yor petitioner was a soldier under the Comand of Captaine
Bagshaw at Wingfield Mannour, & was there plundered by the Cavileirs
of all the goods he had, since which it pleased God to strike yr
petitioner with lamenesse, that he is not able to help himselfe
further than hee is carried. That hee hath two small children & his
wife, & have sould theire Cow & all theire household goods & apparell
to buy them bread & other sustenance etc.”
The petitioner obtained a pension of 12d. a week, which seems to have
been the usual rate. After the Restoration the old Parliamentary
pensioners were discarded, and their place taken by those who had
fought on the other side.
Notwithstanding the Parliamentary convictions of the majority of the
inhabitants of Derbyshire, it is scarcely to be wondered that the
county returned with some eagerness to the monarchical faith at the
time of the Restoration, for its experiences of the evils of civil
warfare had been so peculiarly bitter. The Bill of Indemnity dealt
fairly generously with the large majority of those who had been in
arms against the late King, or active in the administration of the
Commonwealth. No one can be surprised that the extreme penalty of
the law was exacted on all those who had sat in judgment on Charles
I., and who had not fled the country. It is, however, specially
revolting to remember that the bodies of the three leading men among
the “regicides”—Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton—were dragged from their
graves, hung at the three corners of the gallows erected to grace the
anniversary of Charles’ death, cut down and beheaded in the evening,
and the heads spiked in front of Westminster Hall. The last two of
these distinguished men were of good Derbyshire families.