to a close when dealing with the memorials of _old_ Derbyshire; nor
can more than a few more pages be spared for such a purpose. It may,
perhaps, be of some interest and permissible to chronicle with brevity
three more incidents of importance in connection with the history
of the shire, namely, (1) the Revolution of 1688, (2) the invasion
of Derbyshire by Prince Charles in 1745, and (3) the “Pentrich
insurrection,” as it has been absurdly termed, of 1817.
Derbyshire, in the person of William Cavendish, fourth Earl and
first Duke of Devonshire, may be said to have probably taken the
most prominent part in the driving of James II. from his throne, and
in the bringing to this country as his successor William of Orange.
There can be no doubt that Cavendish eventually became thoroughly and
conscientiously convinced as to the true patriotism of the course
that he took; but it would be idle to pretend that this distinguished
nobleman indulged in his first dislike of James for other than personal
motives. William Cavendish was one of the four young noblemen who
carried the train of Charles II. at his coronation in 1661. In that
year he was returned to Parliament for Derby, and remained a member of
the Commons until his father’s death in 1684. He was a man of hasty and
most vehement temper; becoming embroiled in a threatened duel in 1675,
he was committed to the Tower by the majority of the House for a short
period for having broken privilege. From that moment Cavendish took an
active part against the court party, and advocated the exclusion from
the succession of the Duke of York. After James II.’s accession, the
Earl had the bad grace to give way to his fiery temper just outside
the King’s Presence Chamber, when he felled to the ground one Colonel
Colepepper, who was said to have previously insulted him. For this
offence Cavendish was brought before the King’s Bench, when he was
fined in the gigantic sum of £30,000, being committed to prison until
payment was made. It is said that his mother, the Countess, brought to
James II. bonds of Charles I. for double that amount, lent to him by
the Derbyshire Cavendishes during the Civil War. The King, however,
refused to interfere, but the Earl managed to escape, and fled to his
house at Chatsworth. So powerful was Cavendish’s influence over his
tenantry, that when the High Sheriff and his posse arrived to arrest
him, the Earl coolly turned the tables upon them, imprisoned the whole
force at Chatsworth, and held them there until he had arranged for his
liberty by giving a bond for the gradual payment of this fine.
The earl used his retirement in Derbyshire in furthering the plots
for placing William of Orange on the throne, dispatching an agent in
May, 1687, to make a direct offer to William on behalf of himself
and other malcontent noblemen. The conspiracy came to a head in this
county, the leaders choosing for their place of meeting a room in
a small hostelry on the edge of Whittington Moor, near Chesterfield,
still known as the Plotting Parlour. The name of this humble inn was
changed, after William and Mary came to the throne, from the “Cock
and Pynot” to “Revolution” Inn; its restored remnants are now named
Revolution House. The original scheme was that William was to land in
the north, when Cavendish was at once to seize Nottingham. But these
plans were changed, and when the news reached the Midlands that William
had landed at Torbay on 5th November, 1688, the Earl of Devonshire put
himself at the head of 800 armed friends and retainers, and entered
Derby on the 21st of November, when he declared for the Prince of
Orange. He obtained some support, but the mayor (John Cheshire) refused
to sanction the billeting of the earl’s troops. Thereupon Cavendish
proceeded to Nottingham, where he met with more general support,
and issued a proclamation justifying the raising and drilling of
troops. The new sovereign naturally lavished his favours on his chief
supporter. The earl was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire in May,
1689, in place of the deposed Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1694 he was
created Duke of Devonshire and Marquis of Hartington.
[Illustration: Revolution House at Whittington.
_(From “Gentleman’s Magazine,” vol. lxxx, part 2, page 609.)_]
There was a considerable remnant of Jacobite feeling in the county,
particularly amongst the clergy, in the earlier part of the eighteenth
century. The Stuart rising of 1715, which came to an end at Preston,
caused much stir in Derbyshire, and there were several small tumults in
the county town. The town of Derby became much distinguished in 1745 as
the furthest place in England to which the brave Prince Charles Edward
with his little army penetrated, in what has been rightly termed a
gallant effort to achieve the impossible. There is no doubt that a very
considerable majority of the upper and middle classes of Derbyshire
were on the side of the constituted powers as then established; but
the local authorities were fully aware that there was a certain
amount of faith in a direct monarchical descent still current, and
they were in some doubts as to the views of others in a district such
as North Derbyshire, where there was still a considerable minority of
adherents to Roman Catholicism. They did not dare, therefore, to call
out the militia or any general forces of the county; but at a meeting
summoned by the Duke of Devonshire on the 28th of September, at the
“George Inn,” Derby, it was resolved to raise 600 volunteers in two
companies to resist the pretensions of a “Popish Pretender,” of which
the Marquis of Hartington and Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the two knights of
the shire, were to be colonels. A subscription list for the necessary
funds soon reached a sum of upwards of £6,000, and in the course of the
next month the number of troops raised was increased to a thousand. On
December 12th these troops were reviewed in the forenoon at Derby by
the Duke as Lord-Lieutenant. An hour later an express reached Derby
that the vanguard of the Scots had entered Ashbourne, whereupon in the
afternoon, to the astonishment of many, the local troops were again
drawn up in the market-place, and at ten in the evening “marched off by
torchlight to Nottingham, headed by His Grace the Duke of Devonshire.”
On the following morning the Scots entered Derby, and though they
tarried there for two days, the Derbyshire volunteers had no share in
their subsequent retreat and dispersion, for they were well out of the
way in the adjoining shire of Nottingham. An amusing and bitter skit
was written on the behaviour of this Derbyshire regiment, known as the
“Blues” from the colour of their uniform, wherein they were upbraided
for vanishing at the very moment when they were urgently needed. The
following is one of the concluding paragraphs:—
“And when they came to Retford, they abode until word was brought
that the young man was returned from Derby by the way which he came.
And they returned back, and when they came nigh Derby they gave great
shouts, saying, ‘Hail, Derby! happy are we to behold thee, for we
greatly feared never to have seen thee.’”
The Prince was proclaimed in the market-place, and a sum of £3,000
was seized from the excise offices. On the following morning a French
priest celebrated Mass in All Saints’ Church after the Roman use, which
is said to have annoyed the English Catholics, who used the Marian
missal in their private chapels. The Stuart forces quartered in Derby
on the first night numbered 7,098, and on the second night 7,148.
A small vanguard pushed on as far as Swarkeston bridge, but on the
third day, the 6th December, the prince, disappointed of the expected
additions to his forces and war chest, ordered a retreat, and the
little army again passed through Ashbourne to the north.
To this county belongs the discredit of being the last place in the
provinces where that horrible medley of butchery and torture—“hung,
drawn, and quartered”—which our forefathers invented as a penalty for
high treason, was carried out, although happily in a somewhat modified
form. The actually last instance occurred in 1820, when the five Cato
Street conspirators were beheaded after being hung. This shocking
form of death fell to the lot of a Derbyshire framework knitter and
two stonemasons in 1817. This was the time when the distress amongst
the working classes in the Midlands had come to a climax, when
every project of constitutional reform was stifled, and when a few
half-starved men, deliberately incited by the spies and informers
of those in authority, planned an abjectly foolish but riotous and
murderous scheme to obtain relief, which was hatched at the “White
Horse” Inn, Pentrich. The two or three score of labourers who took part
in this rising were almost instantly scattered by the yeomanry; but the
policy of the Government seems to have been to use this instrument
to terrify the populace at large, and thereby to crush all attempts
at reform. Hence everything was done that could be to exaggerate the
so-called rebellion, and although the misguided ringleaders richly
deserved punishment at the hands of the ordinary authority, it seems
monstrous to have charged the offenders with high treason, and with the
crime of levying war against the King. However, a special commission of
four judges was appointed, and the trials at Derby, which extended over
ten days, began on 15th of October. Most of the forty-six prisoners
were condemned to transportation, but three of the ringleaders, James
Brandreth, William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam, received the capital
sentence for high treason. The Prince Regent signed the warrant for
the execution of these three “traitors,” drawn from the humblest
station in life, remitting that part of the sentence which related to
“quartering,” with other absolutely unspeakable details, but ordering
the hanging, drawing, and beheading. Two axes were ordered of Bamford,
a smith of Derby, the pattern being taken from one in the Tower, which
was supposed to have served in like cases.
On the morning of Friday, the seventh of November, the three miserable
men, heavily ironed, were jolted round the prison yard on a horse-drawn
hurdle or sledge, prepared, like the block, by Finney, the town joiner.
On mounting the scaffold in front of the county jail, Brandreth and his
fellows briefly testified that they had been brought to this plight by
the tempting of Oliver, the degraded Government spy. They hung from the
gallows for half an hour. Brandreth’s body was the first taken down and
placed on the block. The greatest difficulty had been experienced in
finding an executioner, but at last the high fee of twenty-five guineas
secured several applicants. The chosen headsman was a Derbyshire
collier; he was masked, and his identity was never disclosed. The
mutilation was bungled; but when accomplished, the executioner seized
the head by the hair, and holding it at arm’s length in three
different directions over the crowd, thrice proclaimed, “Behold the
head of the traitor Jeremiah Brandreth.” The other two were served in
like manner. The scaffold was surrounded by a strong force of cavalry
with drawn swords, and several companies of infantry were also present.
The dense crowd was quite over-awed, and could utter no other protest
than “terrifying shrieks.”
In that crowd was the poet Shelley. The day before the execution,
the Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, and Shelley seized the
opportunity to write a vigorous and now most rare pamphlet drawing a
contrast between the two deaths.
The block on which these three men were beheaded is still preserved in
the new county gaol at Derby. It consists of two 2½ in. planks fastened
together, and measures 6 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. Six inches from one end a
piece of wood 3 in. high is nailed across. The whole is tarred over,
but the wood, strangely enough, remains damp in places. A tradition
used to be current that the block sweated every seventh of November, on
the anniversary of the execution; the writer visited it on that day in
1888, and found no difference in the sweating to what he had noticed in
the previous week.
With Derbyshire during the century that has elapsed since the time of
this absurdly misnamed Pentrich “insurrection,” we have now no concern.
Its history during that period has been on the whole peaceful, and,
in the best sense of the word, progressive. When in times to come the
story of Derbyshire in the nineteenth century comes to be written,
there can be no doubt that one name will stand out in letters of gold
above its fellows. Florence Nightingale, now in her eighty-eighth
year, was the younger daughter of Mr. William E. Nightingale, of Lea
Hurst, near Matlock. It would be impossible to exaggerate the talent,
energy, and devotion which that lady displayed in her almost impossible
task of mitigating the horrors that overtook our sick and wounded
soldiers in the great Russian war. It is not too much to say that this
one gentle-born lady has entirely changed the conditions of military
and general hospital nursing, not only in England, but throughout the
civilised world. The Geneva Convention and the wearing of the Red Cross
are but some of the fruits of this Derbyshire lady’s noble example.
May it also be permitted in a single brief sentence to record the
fact that Derbyshire of the twentieth century has had the honour of
giving Chancellors to each of our two great universities—for the Duke
of Devonshire has for some time held the office of Chancellor of
Cambridge, whilst Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the late Viceroy of India,
was elected Chancellor of Oxford in March, 1907.
PREHISTORIC BURIALS IN DERBYSHIRE
By John Ward, F.S.A.
In prehistoric remains, Derbyshire is singularly favoured, and for
two reasons. In the first place, nearly every class of these remains
is represented, notably the following: cave-remains, burial-mounds,
circles, camps, villages and other habitation sites, and the doubtful
rocking-stones and other curious blocks and masses of rock which have
been regarded as rock-idols or as otherwise associated with prehistoric
man. In the second place, three of these classes—the first three of the
above enumeration—are both numerous and important, scarcely surpassed
by the corresponding remains of any other county in Great Britain.
Moreover, these various remains have received the careful attention of
a succession of antiquaries during the last century-and-a-half, and a
large number of them have been more or less systematically explored,
with the result that their literature is extensive and important.
Derbyshire, indeed, has played a prominent part in the elucidation of
the prehistoric archæology of our country.
Before entering upon the subject of this article, the distribution
of these remains in the county demands a few words. They are most
numerous in the mountainous region which lies north of Ashbourne and
Wirksworth, and west of Tansley, Darley, and East Moors. They are
rarely met with in the more gently undulating country to the east
and south. Why this should be is not altogether clear. It is probable
that the valleys and the low-lying lands generally, which are now the
most populated, were in prehistoric times too swampy for habitation;
but this does not explain the general absence of prehistoric remains
from the higher tracts of the lowlands of Derbyshire. It has been
suggested that the primitive inhabitants clung to the more mountainous
regions because of the ease with which they could be defended against
the marauding incursions of other tribes. It is more likely, however,
that agriculture is mainly responsible for the uneven distribution. The
fertile higher tracts of the lowlands have long been under cultivation,
whereas many of the Peak uplands still remain in the primal state of
nature, and many more of them have only been wrested from that state
within the last two centuries. One of the earlier effects of the
enclosing of the wastes in the eighteenth century and earlier decades
of the following century, was the removal of the large stones of
ancient monuments for gate-posts, and the despoiling of stone tumuli
for the construction of field-walls and roads. Even on the moors it
is rare that these remains have escaped partial demolition for the
sake of their materials. If the havoc wrought during two centuries
in the sparsely inhabited Peak country has been so great, it is not
surprising that few prehistoric remains are to be seen where the
land has been for a much longer time under cultivation. Probably
the relative abundance or scarcity of stone is also to some extent
accountable for the distribution. In the Peak, where stone is plentiful
and rock-fragments strew the ground, cairns or stone tumuli abound;
but in the south, where clays, marls, and glacial deposits abound, and
stone is only obtained by quarrying, the few remaining tumuli are of
earth. Earthwork, if left alone, is wonderfully enduring, but is highly
susceptible of being levelled, and so obliterated, by the plough. The
plough cuts through it as easily as through the natural soil; whereas
in the Peak may often be seen the stony bases of cairns, covered with
brambles, and avoided by the ploughman.
It is scarcely necessary to say that cairns, barrows, or tumuli,
are, archæologically, the names applied to ancient burial-mounds.
How the earliest races of men disposed of their dead we do not know;
but we know that the earliest stages of civilization were everywhere
characterized by a marked consideration for the dead, and this
represents the strongest and perhaps ultimate difference between man
and beast. When Neolithic man first appeared in our island, he already
had an elaborate system of sepulture, and the megalithic chambers he
raised are the greatest monuments of his age, and are among the most
notable remains of prehistoric times. The Pyramids of Egypt are but
barrows on a colossal scale, and constructed with all the engineering
skill and refinement of a higher stage of culture than obtained in the
west of Europe, and they will probably outlast all the other works of
the ancient Egyptians.
It is not difficult to understand why burial under mounds should have
preceded burial in the ground. In primitive times, before man possessed
metal tools, it was easier to collect stones from the waste or to
scrape sand or soil from the surface, wherewith to make a heap, than
to dig a hole. Hence it is that in the tumuli of the Neolithic Age,
and many of those of the following Bronze Age, interments are found
upon or above the old ground level; while in others of the latter
age, and many subsequent tumuli, they are found in shallow or deep
excavations, over which the mounds were raised. To the early Christians
the tumuli savoured of paganism, and soon ceased to be raised, but we
have a reminiscence of the ancient mode of burial in our word “tomb.”
In our country, as in the west of Europe generally, they range from
Neolithic times to the establishment of Christianity, and the study
of their contents better enables us to bridge the long interval with
the successive advances made by man than does that of any other class
of contemporary remains. In Derbyshire this is eminently the case, and
perhaps no other English county can furnish so continuous a series of
ancient interments.
In this county, as also in the contiguous parts of Staffordshire, a
barrow is popularly known as a “low,” from the Anglo-Saxon _hlaew_, a
small hill, heap, or mound, a word which is a frequent component in the
place-names, as in Ward_low_, Blake_low_, etc. The conspicuous barrows
at these and many other places so named, leave little room for doubt
that they are accountable for the names, and that when absent the names
may be regarded as evidence for their former existence. Whether the
evidence in the case of hills, so many of the names of which in the
Peak end in _low_, is of the same value is not so clear, as the hill
itself may have been regarded as a “low” on a large scale. But it is
well known that Neolithic and Bronze man had a decided penchant for
burying his dead on the tops and brows of hills, as the pimple-like
profile of many a barrow in such situations in the Peak amply proves.
It may well have been, then, that the name by which a “low” on a hill
was known has become transferred to the hill itself. It is impossible
to estimate the number of these ancient burial-mounds in Derbyshire.
The experienced eye will often detect on the moors the slight rise on
the surface which may represent one, unmarked on the Ordnance Survey,
and unrecognised as of possible archæological interest. The large
number of _low_ names, where no traces of these mounds are now to be
seen, indicates that many have disappeared, as also does the occasional
chance discovery of a cist or a cinerary urn where nothing on the
surface indicated an interment. The number of prehistoric burial places
(the Roman and post-Roman do not come within the scope of this article)
which have been discovered in the county and _described_ is little
short of 300.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.—Plan and Section of Chambered Tumulus, Five
Wells, Derbyshire.]
The first impression that the literature of these remains gives rise
to is their great diversity, a diversity which the reader will not
unnaturally associate with differences of age or of race, or of both
combined; but he will soon find their classification a difficult
task. Very few of those which have been explored were in a reasonably
perfect condition to begin with, and then the explorations have often
been insufficient, and the descriptions vague and inexact. In spite
of these drawbacks, however, the Derbyshire barrows are susceptible
of satisfactory classification into three main divisions: (1) a small
number containing megalithic chambers, and with general consent
assigned to the Neolithic Age; (2) a large and varied number which
belong to the Bronze Age; and (3) a few which are of later age, some of
which certainly synchronize with the Roman occupation. These groups, it
should be mentioned, merge into one another by transitional characters,
and there is a residue which, from insufficient data, cannot be
assigned to any particular class.
Neolithic Barrows
Including several more or less doubtful examples, there are or have
been within the last century, remains of about a dozen barrows
containing “chambers” in the county. Three of these—at Five Wells,
near Taddington, and at Mininglow and Harborough Rocks, near
Brassington—have yielded good results to exploration. All three were
unfortunately in an extremely ruined condition, but by piecing together
their evidence a fair idea can be obtained of their original state.
The Five Wells example (figs. 1 and 2) was excavated by Mr. Salt,
of Buxton, and the writer, in 1899.[1] The remaining lower portion
of the mound was found to be circular, about 56 feet in diameter,
and constructed of quarried stones roughly laid in courses, and so
disposed at the margin as to form a wall-like podium, which remained
in places to the height of three feet. Near the middle are still to
be seen the remains of two chambers, each about six feet long, and
constructed of great slabs of stone resting on the old natural surface.
Each had a paved floor, and was reached by a tunnel-like passage or
gallery, of similar construction to the chambers, from a porthole-like
entrance in the podium. Each chamber is somewhat wedge-shaped, the
wider end being that into which the gallery opened, and immediately
within this end are two pillar-like stones, one on each side, which
structurally formed the last pair of side stones of the gallery; but
they differed in their greater height. The use of these “pillars” is
uncertain, but the writer has suggested that between each pair was a
dropstone, which when raised, portcullis-fashion, to allow of access to
the chamber, was received into an upper space.
[1] _Reliquary and Illustrated Archæologist_, vii., 229.