THE BYROMS—KERSALL CELL—JOHN BYROM—THE LAUREATE OF THE
JACOBITES—THE FATAL ’45.
In the township of Lowton, within the limits of the ancient and
far-reaching parish of Winwick, and a short distance from the little
town of Leigh, is an old-fashioned building of no great architectural
pretensions, erected apparently in the reign of one of the Stuart
kings, and now in the occupancy of a farmer. Byrom Hall, for that is
the name, stands upon the site of an earlier structure, described in
ancient writings as a manor house, though there is no evidence that
the reputed manor ever enjoyed manorial privileges, and gave name in
times past to a family ranking with the smaller gentry, who could boast
a line of succession reaching as far back as the time of the second
Edward. The Byroms of Byrom, notwithstanding their ancient lineage, do
not appear to have ever attained to any very great distinction, or to
have held any very important offices in the county; they married and
were given in marriage among the best families of the shire, and they
maintained the outward evidences of gentility by the use of armorial
ensigns, but how or when those were acquired is not clear, and it is
somewhat singular that they did not attend at any of the Herald’s
visitations to justify their right to the use of them, or to register
their descent, at least not until September, 1664, when, in answer to
the summons of Sir William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms, Edward Byrom
attended at Ormskirk, and on behalf of his elder brother, Samuel Byrom
of Byrom—the grandfather of a certain “Beau” Byrom who wasted his
substance in riotous living, and less than half a century afterwards
parted with his patrimonial lands—registered a pedigree of five
generations.
In the reign of Henry VII., when the Wars of the Roses were ended,
and the people had settled down to more peaceful pursuits, a cadet of
the family, Ralph Byrom, repaired to Manchester, established himself
in trade, and throve apace by transactions which in those days were
accounted considerable.
From the earliest period Manchester had exhibited an aptitude for
manufacture. Kuerden tells us that as far back as the reign of Edward
II. there was a mill for the manufacture of woollen cloths, and in
the succeeding reign the industry and wealth of the town were greatly
promoted by the encouragement given to a number of Flemish artisans who
were induced to leave their homes in Flanders and settle in Lancashire,
where they revealed the secrets of their craft to the peasantry of
the neighbourhood, and thus planted the sapling of that industry
which, taking root, flourished and gradually spread through the
Lancashire valleys, the fulling mills and dyeworks then established in
Salfordshire being the auspicious beginnings of that vast manufacturing
industry which has enriched the kingdom and made Manchester the
commercial capital of the Empire.
The old chronicler, Hollinworth, quoting an ancient writer, says
that in 1520 “there were three famous clothiers living in the north
countrey, viz., Cuthbert of Kendal, Hodgkins of Halifax, and Martin
Brian, some say Byrom, of Manchester. Every one of these kept a greate
number of servants at worke, spinners, carders, weavers, fullers,
dyers, shearemen, &c., to the greate admiration of all that came into
their houses to beehould them.” Whether Hollinworth’s authority is
historically correct, or the persons he names only fictitious, certain
it is that at that time Manchester was “a greate cloathing towne;” the
Byroms had become noted as one of the great trading families, and took
their places with the Galleys, the Beckes, the Pendletons, and other of
the merchant princes of the day.
Adam Byrom, of “Saulforde, merchaunt,” as he is styled, the son of
Ralph, who first settled in the neighbourhood and diverged into trade,
was, with one exception, the largest merchant in the Salford Hundred,
and in 1540 was assessed by the commissioners of Henry VIII. at a
larger amount even than Sir Alexander Radcliffe, of Ordsall, who was
accounted the great magnate of the district. Manchester was even then
a thriving and prosperous mercantile town. Mills had been placed on
the waters of the Irwell and its affluent streams, and “Manchester
Cottons,” as they were called, and which, be it known, were then and
for a hundred years to come Lancashire woollens, were carried on
pack-horses to London and Hull, and were frequently sent to the great
fairs at Amsterdam, Frankfort, and to other foreign marts. So important
had the trade become that it was found necessary, after a year’s
experience, to repeal the statute bestowing upon the town the privilege
of sanctuary, and to send the sanctuary men, who by their idleness
and other enormities were “prejudicial to the wealth, credit, great
occupyings, and good order” of the place, to Chester, which, being
poor, was less likely to suffer by the presence of such thriftless and
disorderly characters—
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.
The wealth which Adam Byrom acquired in his business was at different
times invested in the purchase of lands, &c., in Salford, Darcy Lever,
Ardwick, Bolton-le-Moors, and other places, including the chief
messuage or manor-house called Salford Hall, in which he resided. He
appears to have been a free-trader in principle, and opposed to the
feudal monopolies that were then in vogue, for it is recorded in the
Kalendar of Pleadings that he prosecuted William Arram, the mayor of
Preston, claiming exemption from the payment of tolls and other imposts
in the fairs and markets of Salford and Preston. This worthy died on
the 25th of July, 1558. His wife, a daughter of one Hunt, of Hunt’s
Hall—the Hunt’s Bank, probably, of later days—bore him six children,
three sons and three daughters; and it is a noteworthy fact that
the two elder sons, George and Henry, died within a month of their
father’s demise. George, the first-born, was succeeded by his eldest
son, Ralph, then a child of three years of age. One of his daughters
was Margaret Byrom, the ill-fated victim of the memorable case of
supposed witchcraft in 1597, of which mention has been made in our
notice of Dr. Dee, the Wizard Warden of Manchester, who was solicited
by her friends to cast out the devil with which it was believed John
Hartley, a conjuror, had possessed her, while staying on a visit at the
house of Nicholas Starkey, of Cleworth.
It is, however, with the descendants of Henry, the second son of
Adam Byrom, the “merchaunt,” that we are at present more immediately
concerned. This Henry had in his father’s lifetime been united in
marriage with Mary, one of the daughters of Thomas Becke, a wealthy
trader in the town, an alliance that introduces us to quite a group of
Manchester worthies. The Beckes had been for years engaged in trade,
and numbered among them some of the earliest benefactors of Manchester,
and some of her most generous churchmen. Isabel, the widow of Robert
Becke, and the mother, probably, of Henry Byrom’s father-in-law, at
her own cost erected the conduit in the market-place, the first “water
works” in Manchester, conveying the water in pipes from a natural
spring at the upper end of the town, which gave name to the present
Spring Gardens and Fountain Street. Her father was Richard Bexwyke,
another opulent merchant, who founded the Jesus Chantry on the south
side of his parish church—the one which his descendant Henry Pendleton,
in 1653, gave to the parishioners of Manchester for the purpose of
a “free” public library, the first of the kind in the town, if not,
indeed, in the kingdom; he also restored the choir and nave of the
church, erected the beautifully carved stalls on the north side of
the choir, and founded a grammar school, which one of his chantry
priests was to teach. It is probable that he was the husband of Joan
Bexwyke, the sister of Bishop Oldham, who, with Hugh Bexwyke and Ralph
Hulme (ancestor of William Hulme, the “Founder,”) was named in the
first charter of feoffment of the Manchester Free Grammar School, the
three being, in fact, not only trustees, but special benefactors and
co-founders in the endowment, if not in the first erection, of the
Manchester school, which absorbed the original foundation of Richard
Bexwyke. Another of these Bexwykes, Roger, a son or nephew of the
Richard just named, married Margaret, the sister of John Bradford, the
“martyr,” a “worthy” whose name Lancashire men will always revere;
and it is recorded that this Roger attended Bradford at the stake at
Smithfield, but he was prevented by the brutal violence of one of the
officials from helping to soothe the martyrs last agonies.
Henry Byrom left two sons—Robert, who succeeded as heir, but died
unmarried in May, 1586, when the property passed to his younger
brother, Lawrence. Of this representative of the family but little is
known. He was in infancy at the time of his father’s decease, and he
was yet only young when he became heir to his brother, and succeeded
to an inheritance that seems to have involved him in no small amount
of litigation—generally with his own kinsmen, and for the purpose of
adjusting differences respecting properties bequeathed by his father
and grandfather. Ultimately, an agreement was come to, as appears by
the following deed, dated 13th December, 1586:—
Be yt knowne to all men by these p’sents that wee Raphe Byrom (a
cousin of Lawrence), of Salford, in the countye of Lancaster,
gent.; Richard Hunte of the same Town, gent.; Adam Byrom
(another cousin), of the same Town, gent.; and Raphe Houghton,
of Manchester, in the countie afforesaid, gent.; for dyvers
good causes and consideracons vs movinge Have Remysed, &c., and
quyteclaymed vnto Lawrence Byrom, of Salfforde afforesaid, gent.;
&c. All and all maner of accons, sutes, querells, trespasses, &c.
by reason of any Lease made unto us of confidence and truste by
Roberte Byrom (the elder brother of Lawrence and then deceased) to
us, &c. ffrom the beginning of the worlde till this p’sent daye
except onlie for the Release or discharge of one Obligacon of a
thousande poundes made &c. by Lawce. to Ralfe & Adam 3 Maye 28
Eliz. that the sayde Lawrence B. shall not alter the state tayle
made by Henry Byrom, father of the said Robte B. & Lawrence B.
Witnessed by “William Radclyffe” and “Roberte Leighe.” Dated 13
Dec., 29 Eliz. (1586).[41]
[Note 41: Local Gleanings (Lancashire and Cheshire), V. ii. p. iii.]
The late Canon Parkinson, in his notes on the “Private Journal of John
Byrom,” says that “after an unsettled life, and a too keen sense of his
own infelicity, at least towards the close of his earthly struggles,
he found at last a haven of rest in the Collegiate Church, being
buried there June 26, 1598. There was,” he adds, “more than ordinary
sorrow in his family on that day, and probably some ground for his
son not appearing at the Herald’s Visitation in 1613, as well as for
his own Christian name not being borne by any of his descendants.”
The appearance at the Visitation (Richard St. George’s) was scarcely
necessary, for on the same occasion Adam, the son of Ralph (Lawrence
Byrom’s cousin), entered a pedigree of six generations, claiming
descent from Ralph, “second sonne to Byrom of Byrom,” the first
occasion on which any pedigree of the family had been entered, and at
the same time he asserted his claim to and was allowed the arms borne
by the Byroms of Byrom—Argent, a chevron between three porcupines,
sable, a crescent for difference, with a porcupine, sable, charged with
a crescent for crest.
Edward Byrom, the son who succeeded him, married, about the year
1615, Ellen, the daughter of Thomas Worsley, of Carr in Bowdon, an
alliance that brought him in relationship with the Worsleys, of Platt
in Rusholme, of which family was the distinguished Parliamentarian
soldier, Major-general Charles Worsley, returned as the first
representative for Manchester in Cromwell’s Parliament of 1654. Like
his progenitors, he was engaged in trade, and carried on an extensive
business as a “linen draper,” a phrase that meant a good deal more in
those days than it does now. In local affairs he took an active part,
and in 1638-9 his name occurs on the Court Leet Rolls as one of two
constables of the town. His lot was cast in troublous times. Unlike his
contemporary, Humphrey Chetham, he seems to have escaped the attentions
of the money-seeking functionaries of Charles the First. Greatness was
not thrust upon him, and he had not, as Chetham had, to pay smart for
refusing to take upon himself the “honour” of knighthood—a distinction
in those days of doubtful value.
Manchester had oftentimes been the scene of conflict. Roman and
Saxon, Dane and Norman, had each in turn striven for supremacy; but
well nigh six hundred years had elapsed since the tranquillity of the
inhabitants had been disturbed by the presence of contending armies.
The day, however, was near at hand when the sounds of war were once
more to be heard, and that of war the most unnatural; when members
of the same family, and often the same blood, were to contend with
each other in deadly strife. When the storm burst, and the struggle
between Charles and the Parliament began, the Byroms of Salford and
the Byroms of Manchester, with whom the recollection of the vexatious
lawsuits of Lawrence Byrom had not yet died out, ranged themselves
on opposite sides. The Byroms of Salford, like those of the parent
house, took up arms on behalf of the King, John Byrom receiving a
commission as sergeant-major in the regiment of Lancashire militia
commanded by Colonel Roger Nowell, of Read, for which, and other
acts of delinquency, his estates were seized by the Commissioners of
Sequestration, when he was obliged to compound for them by the payment
of £201 16s. 6d.; his brother, Edward Byrom, being at the same time
required to pay £2 6s. 8d.
Edward Byrom, the representative of the Manchester stock, though in
earlier life a contributor to the building of Trinity Church, in
Salford, and accounted a moderate Churchman, was strongly inclined to
Presbyterianism, and, with two of his sons, William and John, took an
active part in promoting the cause of the Parliament. Manchester was at
the time the great stronghold and rallying point of the Puritan party,
and it is worthy of note that it was here the first blood was shed in
that unhappy conflict. When the town was in peril of assault from Lord
Strange’s (afterwards Earl of Derby) forces, Heyricke, the Puritan
warden, engaged the services of a German engineer, John Rosworm, who
had served in the Low Countries, and happened at the time to be in the
town ready to be employed by either party, and bargained with him to
superintend the defences for six months for the modest sum of thirty
pounds. Edward Byrom, “Sergeant Mr. Beirom the elder,” as he is
called, served under Rosworm, and it is recorded that he was the means
of discovering a villainous plot of certain individuals to seize and
plunder the town, through which the chief conspirators were apprehended
and their designs frustrated.[42] At a later date, when Cromwell had
been appointed “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,” and had summoned
a Parliament to meet on his “fortunate day,” September 3, 1654, the
anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, we find “Sergeant”
Byrom among those of the witnesses to the return of “Charles Worsley,
of Platt,” his wife’s kinsman, as the first member for Manchester. This
appears to have been his last official act, and his death occurred
shortly after. His wife, Ellen Worsley, bore him three sons and eight
daughters. John, the second son, was a zealous Puritan, and held a
lieutenant’s commission in the Parliamentarian army; his military
experiences were, however, cut short by an accident which cost him his
life, almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, and which is
thus recorded in a chronicle of the time:—
1642, October.—The two and twentieth day store of powder came in
(to Manchester) and the foure and twentieth day some (more powder)
coming was stayed. The joy of this last supply was sadly tempered
with the accidentall, but mortall, wound of a skilful and active
souldier.[43]
[Note 42: Ormerod’s Civil War Tracts, p. 238.]
[Note 43: Lancashire’s Valley of Achor, p. 123.]
The “skilful and active soldier”—John Byrom—who was in his
twenty-second year, was buried in the Collegiate Church, October 31,
1642.
William Byrom, the eldest son, who succeeded as heir to his father,
was an active Presbyterian, and an elder in the Manchester Classis.
In 1656 he was one of the chief inhabitants who elected Richard
Radcliffe, of Pool Fold, as the representative of Manchester in the
Commonwealth Parliament in the place of Worsley, who was then dead.
Edward Byrom, the youngest of the three sons, was twenty-eight years
of age at the time of his father’s death, and had been then married
only a few months, his wife being Ellen, the daughter of John Crompton,
of Halliwell. He inherited the Puritan principles of his father
and grandfather, and was one of those who, on the death of Richard
Hollinworth, signed the invitation to Henry Newcome to supply the
vacancy, and, with his brother William, accompanied the deputation to
Newcome’s quiet little parsonage at Gawsworth to entreat the famous
preacher to comply with the wishes of the Church at Manchester.
This Edward was the first of the family who resided at Kersall Cell,
a house occupying the site of a religious settlement that originally
formed part of the possessions of the Cluniac monks of Lenton, and
which had been confiscated to the Crown in the reign of Henry VIII.
After its suppression the place, with the manor, had been granted
to Baldwin Willoughby, who, in 1540, sold it to Ralph Kenyon, of
Gorton, and he in turn conveyed it, eight years afterwards, to Richard
Siddall, of Slade Hall, an old black and white house still standing in
Burnage-lane, Rusholme. The estate remained in the possession of the
Siddals until 1613, when it was alienated by Richard Siddal’s great
grandson, George Siddal, who seems to have been the spendthrift of his
family.
Edward Byrom made his will on the 14th June, 1668, being then, as he
states, “sick and weak of body,” and he must have died within a day or
two, for on the 18th June in the same year he was laid to rest with his
fathers in the Collegiate Church. By his wife he had a family of six
children, four of whom died in infancy, two sons only surviving, Edward
and Joseph Byrom.
Joseph Byrom, the younger son, was largely engaged in trade, and, in
1703, served the office of borough reeve. He acquired considerable
wealth in his business, and with the profits thus made he, on the 10th
July, 1710, purchased from Samuel Byrom, of Byrom, the “Beau Byrom”
before referred to, “the manor, demesne and hall of Byrom,” the ancient
house of his progenitors, and it has continued in the family ever
since.
Edward Byrom, the eldest son, took up his abode at Kersall, and he had
also a house at Hyde’s Cross, which, with Withy Grove—Within Greave,
as it was called—was then a pleasant outskirt, and the fashionable
quarter of Manchester. In 1680 he married Dorothy, daughter of Captain
John Allen, of Redvales, near Bury, and granddaughter of the Rev.
Isaac Allen, rector of Prestwich, by whom he had, in addition to seven
daughters, two sons, Edward, who, on his death in 1611, succeeded as
heir, and John Byrom, the famous poet and stenographer.
The men of seclusion were by no means insensible to the beauties of
Nature, but, on the contrary, in the selection of the sites for their
religious houses usually displayed considerable judgment—
The cunning rooks,
Pitched, as by instinct, on the fattest fallows—
and Hugo de Buron was no exception, for he must have been imbued with
the feeling so characteristic of the monkish fraternity when, in the
days of Ranulph Gernons, he withdrew himself from the world and settled
as a solitary recluse in the quiet secluded hermitage on the banks
of the Irwell, which afterwards became an appendage of the Cluniac
monastery of Lenton, in Nottinghamshire, and, in turn, the home of
the opulent Manchester merchant, Edward Byrom, and his descendants.
Fairer spot than that which Hugh de Buron chose it would be difficult
to conceive, or one better suited for a life of monastic seclusion. It
was then remote from the haunts of men, the atmosphere was not dimmed
by the smoke of innumerable chimneys, nor the broad stream polluted
with the abominations of countless manufactories. With its breezy
moor and low wooded hills, its ferny hollows and forest avenues, and
its wide shimmering river gliding swiftly yet silently along, and
heightened in beauty by the noble oaks and stately elms that feathered
down almost to the water’s edge, it was just the place where the soul
might commune with itself, and feed on thoughts and fancies ever new
and ever beautiful. A place where the purest and noblest impulses
might be awakened and the mind stirred to many a holy thought and
deed—where in leaf and blossom, in wood and water, might be discovered
the parallelism between the Great Artificer’s work and His precepts,
or, as Charles Kingsley puts it, “The work of God’s hand, the likeness
of God’s countenance, the shadow of God’s glory.”
It stood embosomed in a happy valley,
Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
Stood like Caractacus, in act to rally
His host, with broad arms ’gainst the thunderstroke.
After the Reformation, when this little sanctuary passed into lay
hands, a house was built upon the site—a picturesque black and white
structure with projecting oriels, quaint mullioned windows, and gabled
roofs, and here Edward Byrom took up his abode when he attained to
manhood, for he was a youth of but twelve summers when his father died;
to this house he took his youthful bride, Dorothy Allen, in 1680,
and here many of his children were born. He had another house, as
already stated, at Hyde’s Cross, and, besides this, his burgage shop
or place of business in the market stead opposite the Cross, to which
he afterwards added a stall, as appears by the following entry on the
court rolls of the manor of Manchester:—
1692, May 16th.—Stallinged and installed Edward Byrom, of
Manchester, milliner, in one stall, stallinge, or standing roome
at or neare the Crosse, in the Market Place, in Manchester
aforesaid, formerly in the possession of Francis Rydings,
deceased, being next to Robert Pelton’s, towards the Crosse,
conteyning in breadth two yards, and length three yards.
The spot thus indicated was in close proximity, if not, indeed,
actually in front of the shop—the quaint black and white structure
in the Market Place, which has been for many years a licensed house,
and is now known as the “Wellington.” The building has ever since
continued in the possession of the family, the present owner being Mr.
Edward Byrom, who assumed that name in lieu of Fox on his succeeding at
her death to the property of his godmother, Miss Eleanora Atherton,
the great granddaughter of Edward Byrom’s distinguished son, John
Byrom. The “milliner’s” business was in reality that of a mercer or
haberdasher. It must have prospered, for subsequently the two adjoining
stalls were absorbed; and it would seem to have been carried on after
Edward Byrom’s death by his youngest daughter, Phœbe, for in Mrs.
Raffald’s “Directory” for 1773 the name occurs, “Miss Phœbe Byrom,
milliner, 1, Shambles,” and in that for 1781, “Miss Phœbe Byrom,
milliner, Market Place.” The lady, who was five years younger than her
brother John, died on the 20th February, 1785, at the ripe old age of
88.
It seems strange in these days to read of a merchant or trader having
a stall in the Market Place, but the mode in which business was
conducted in the earlier years of the last century was very different
to that with which the present generation is familiar. Dr. Aikin, in
his “Description of the Country Round Manchester,” says that “When the
trade began to extend, the chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses,
and accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, which
they opened and sold to shopkeepers, lodging what was unsold in small
stores at the inn. The pack-horses brought back sheep’s wool, which
was bought on the journey and sold to the makers of worsted yarns at
Manchester or to the clothiers of Rochdale, Saddleworth, and the West
Riding of Yorkshire.” When at home the trader was invariably in his
warehouse or place of business at six o’clock in the morning; at seven
he and his children and apprentices had a “plain breakfast” together,
the “plain breakfast” being “one large dish of water pottage, made
of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled thick and poured into a
dish.” “A pan or basin of milk” was placed by the side, and each, using
a wooden spoon, dipped first into one and then into the other. The
shops in the Market Place which were occupied by clothiers, mercers,
and the better class of tradesmen were for the most part open to the
street, and a loose stall or standing in front, where their wares could
be more advantageously displayed, was not thought at all derogatory.
In the “Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom,” edited
for the Chetham Society by the late Canon Parkinson, we have pleasant
glimpses of the daily doings of the worthy linen-draper or milliner, as
he was indifferently styled, Edward Byrom, and an admirable picture of
the habits and modes of life in the household of a well-to-do trader
as well as of the literary and social characteristics of the better
class of people in Manchester a century and a half ago. Edward Byrom
had a numerous family—seven daughters, six of whom died unmarried,
and, in addition, two sons. Edward, the eldest son, who was brought up
to the business which had been carried on with so much success for so
many generations, was born March 4, 1686-7. John was baptised at the
Collegiate Church, 29th February, 1691-2, and was his junior therefore
by about five years. Having, as good old Bishop Oldham expressed
it, much “pregnant witte,” he was trained for one of the learned
professions, and in due course was sent to Chester and placed under
the tuition of his relative, the eminent schoolmaster, Mr. Francis
Harper, preparatory to his being entered at Merchant Taylors’—then
famous as a seminary of learning—in which it was expected that his
father’s influence with the city traders would secure him admission.
He proceeded from Chester to London in January, 1707-8, and in the
following month he writes to his father:—
London, Feb. 1707/8,
Hond. Sir [such was the form in which a young gentleman addressed
his “governor” in the days of Queen Anne] I received yours in
answer to mine of the 10th and 27th inst. Our feast was on
Tuesday last; the boys went to school, had wine and biscuit, then
walked to Bow Church, where one Mr. Dunstan preached on Prov.
xix. 8; from thence they walked to Leathersellers’ Hall, where
the gentlemen had a feast. The boys who were my schoolfellows at
Chester came up soon to London, which turned to their advantage.
I think it not prudence to go to University too soon, both for
Mr. Ashton’s opinion, and because I believe that when they come
there they are expected to know enough of school learning so as to
read authors, compose exercises, &c., with their own help and the
instruction of a tutor. I cannot have the opportunity of seeing
the Register Book till doctor’s day, which will be about Easter,
when I shall take particular notice how I stand as to election; in
the meantime strive to improve myself in virtue, knowledge, and
learning. We went to Bow Church on Sunday to hear the Archbishop
of York.—I am your dutiful son,
J.B.
In another letter he writes:—
My master is very kind to me, and never yet spoke a cross
word to me, and I think I never gave him occasion, which is
an encouragement and satisfaction to me, and I will strive to
preserve it.
Young Byrom’s progress in the classics was so satisfactory that in
1709 he was admitted a pensioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in
a letter, dated 14th May in that year, he gives his father a detailed
account of the examination and the circumstances attendant upon his
election. His career at the university was anxiously watched by his
father, whose letters, many of which have been preserved, contain many
admonitions and much excellent advice. Thus, apparently in response to
a request for a copy of Locke’s great work, he writes,
I have not Mr. Locke’s book of “Human Understanding,” it is
above my capacity; nor was I ever fond of that author, he being
(though a very learned man) a Socinian or an atheist, as to which
controversy, I desire you not to trouble yourself with it in your
younger studies. I look upon it as a snare of the devil, thrown
among sharp wits and ingenious youths to oppose their reason to
revelation, and because they cannot apprehend reason, to make them
sceptics, and so entice them to read other books than the Bible
and the comments upon it.
In another letter he says:—
I lately brought home Mr. Melling and Mr. Worsley from evening
prayers to drink a dish of tea in your remembrance ... good son,
look now before you to consider how precious your time is, and
how to improve yourself, to consider the design and end proposed
in your education, to fit you for sacred orders, which ought most
considerately to be undertaken ... whatever books you read, be
sure to read Dr. Hammond upon the Psalms and Lessons, with Dr.
Whitby every day; it is not every young scholar hath them, but
you have, and shall want no necessary thing I can buy you. I was
reading, the other evening, the 2nd lesson; Hebrews vi., 7, 8,
made a deeper impression on my mind now, after receiving the holy
sacrament on Good Friday and Easter day, than I ever noted in
them before, which may be applicable to you. In your case, when
the good education bestowed upon youths designed for the ministry
bringeth forth herbs meet for them to whom it is dressed, it
receiveth God’s blessing; but if thorns and briars, &c. Reading
this, I applied it so on you, who I then thought of, but on myself
as in my own case.
No wonder that with such counsel from such a father, the young
undergraduate should have become imbued with a spirit of piety that
influenced every action of his future life. But that father was soon to
be taken from him. In August, 1711, Edward Byrom, whose health had been
failing for some time, passed away at the comparatively early age of
fifty-five, and on the twenty-first of the same month was laid to rest
by the side of his fathers in the Jesus chantry, then called the Byrom
chapel, in the old church of Manchester—the church in which in life he
had so often delighted to worship.
In December, 1711, young Byrom took his B.A., and in his exuberant
joy he thus writes from Cambridge to his confidential friend, John
Stansfield, the assistant manager of his late father’s place of
business in London, whom he frequently commissioned to purchase books
for him:—
I would fain have nothing hinder the pleasure I take in
thinking how soon I shall change this tattered blue gown (the
undergraduate’s gown, which was then, as now, blue) for a black
one and a lambskin, and have the honourable title of Bachelor of
Arts. BACHELOR OF ARTS! John, how great it sounds! the Great Mogul
is nothing to it. Ay, ay, sir, don’t pride yourself upon your fine
titles before you have them. Are you sure of your degree? Can you
stand the test of a strict examination in all these arts you are
to be bachelor of? Has not one of your blue gowns been stopped
this week for insufficiency in that point already, and do you hope
to escape better? Why, sir, you say true, but I will hope on,
notwithstanding, till I see reason to the contrary.—Yours, J. B.
The “black gown,” the “lambskin,” and the “honourable title” were
gained notwithstanding, and the vacation which followed was spent by
the young Bachelor of Arts with his widowed mother and sisters in his
Lancashire home at Kersall. His sister, Sarah (Mrs. Brearcliffe), in a
letter to John Stansfield, writes—
Brother John is most at Kersall: he goes every night and morning
down to the water side and bawls out one of Tully’s orations in
Latin, so loud they can hear him a mile off; so that all the
neighbourhood think he is mad, and you would think so too if you
saw him. Sometimes he thrashes corn with John Rigby’s men, and
helps them to get potatoes, and works as hard as any of them. He
is very good company and we shall miss him when he is gone, which
will not be long to now; Christmas is very near.
From orating on the banks of the Irwell, and “threshing corn with John
Rigby’s men,” Byrom returned to his studies at Cambridge. His lively
and cheerful disposition made him popular with his brother collegians,
and secured for him many friendships. He was, too, a welcome visitor
in the house of the master of Trinity, Dr. Richard Bentley—the great
Bentley; one of his most intimate associates was the doctor’s nephew,
“Tom,” and he was also on friendly terms with the doctor’s young and
fascinating daughter, Joanna—“Jug,” as she was familiarly called—if,
indeed, they did not entertain something more than friendly feelings
towards each other. In July, 1714, we find him writing to his old
friend Stansfield as to his prospects of a fellowship, and in the
following month he writes to his brother Edward, who was then in
London:—
I have wrote to Mr. Banks to desire his interest at fellowships,
but must leave it to you to direct it and send it to him.
It was about this time that his passion for poetry first manifested
itself. He had before (August 17, 1714), under the signature of “John
Shadow,” contributed a paper to the _Spectator_ on the subject of
dreams, which elicited a complimentary editorial note from Addison.
This was followed on the 6th October in the same year by his pretty
pastoral, “Colin and Phœbe,” prefaced by another complimentary note,
which at once brought him into general notice:—
My time, O ye muses, was happily spent,
When Phœbe went with me wherever I went,
Ten thousand sweet pleasures I felt in my breast;
Sure never fond shepherd like Colin was blest!
But now she has gone, and has left me behind,
What a marvellous change on a sudden I find!
When things were as fine as could possibly be,
I thought ’twas the spring, but alas! it was she.
The poem, which comprises ten stanzas, at once became generally
popular; it was his first production in verse, and gained the
admiration of Chalmers and the praise of Bishop Monk, the latter
pronouncing it “one of the most exquisite specimens in existence.” It
is commonly supposed that the Phœbe of the pastoral was Bentley’s witty
and accomplished daughter, “Jug,” who, Bishop Monk says, “from her
earliest youth captivated the hearts of the young collegians,” and for
whom Byrom is said, though without any evidence, to have conceived a
passion. It is more than likely that he wished to attract the attention
of Bentley, who was an ardent admirer of the _Spectator_, and who,
finding in its columns a poem of such merit from one of his own college
might be induced to use his influence in obtaining for the author the
fellowship which Byrom so much desired. Certain it is that he got the
fellowship he had previously despaired of, and did not gain the hand
of Bentley’s daughter, that young lady a few years afterwards becoming
the wife of Dr. Dennison Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Clonfert
and Killaloe, the issue of the marriage being Richard Cumberland, the
well-known dramatic writer.
The year following his election to a fellowship of his college (1714)
Byrom proceeded to his master’s degree. The ardent aspirations of
his father that he should enter the Church were not, however, to be
realised, for in 1716 he was obliged by the statutes of his college to
vacate his fellowship in consequence of his declining to be admitted to
holy orders. The reason of this is not very clear, but it is evident
from his correspondence that he had then become strongly imbued with
Jacobitism, and, in the unsettled state of society consequent upon
the Hanoverian succession and the determined efforts that were made
to restore the crown to the exiled Stuarts, he may have felt a desire
to be free from the obligations his ordination vows would impose. Be
that as it may, he visited the continent in 1717, and remained for
some time in seclusion. There was some mystery about his movements
at the time, and it has been surmised that his retirement was not
altogether unconnected with politics, if, indeed, it was not for the
actual purpose of fomenting another Jacobite insurrection. During his
stay he met with Malebranche’s “Search after Truth,” and some pieces
of Mademoiselle Bourignon, the consequence of which was that he became
strongly impressed with the visionary philosophy of the former, and
the enthusiastic extravagance of the latter. He resided for a while
at Montpelier, where he applied himself to the study of medicine. His
brother Edward, writing to him on the 17th August, 1717, says:—
I hope you have improved yourself in physic since your being there
(Montpelier). I would gladly have you employ yourself that way,
and you need not doubt of encouragement here. Not one person but
ourselves knows where you are, but we think now to let our friends
know that you are studying physic at Montpelier.... You may save
yourself any trouble of inquiring after Mr. Roberts, for he is in
these parts, but thinks himself excepted out of the act of grace,
as are all persons who have gone beyond seas, or all who have been
with the Pretender.
While away there was a probability of the librarianship of the Chetham
Library falling vacant, a post which Byrom was rather anxious to
obtain, though the emoluments were very small. In a letter to his
brother, written from Montpelier, January 3, 1718, he writes:—
My wife (his youngest sister Phœbe, whom he playfully spoke of by
that name) writes me word that Mr. Lesley, your library keeper,
is going to die; that the feoffees ask if I will have the place.
I could like it very well, but I suppose it tied to certain
engagements which I do not like so well; I suppose the feoffees
(are) at liberty to give it to one _in_ or _out_ of orders, but
whether he must take the oaths or no depends not upon them. If I
may be as I am, I shall be glad to visit the skeleton. You all
invite me home very kindly, and in spring I think to come to you
by way of Paris, if you know of no other by any of the ports. I
have nothing should tempt me from your company at present but the
occasion of a little insight into physic in this place.
The “insight” having apparently been obtained, he returned to England,
and on the 3rd May he writes a hurried note to his brother from
Cambridge.
The post is this moment going out, so I run to the coffee-house
to return you an answer in haste to yours, and let you know that
I should be very willing to have the library, and am very much
obliged to you for your pains in engaging the feoffees; if you can
be sure of it, let me know further; it will be better worth while
than staying for a doubtful chance of a fellowship whose profit
will be slow in coming; besides, ’tis in Manchester, which place I
love entirely.
Whether admission to orders was a condition, or the taking the oaths an
obstacle, is not clear, but, though Byrom returned to Manchester, he
did not succeed to the office.
The prospect of the librarianship of Chetham’s Library was not the
only inducement for Byrom to settle in his native town. His uncle,
Joseph Byrom, had a pretty daughter, then blooming into womanhood, who
had made an impression on his susceptible heart, and, in short, the
ardent young Jacobite, who awhile before had penned verses in praise of
Bentley’s fascinating daughter—
Moving all nature with his artless plaints,
fell in love with his cousin; but the course of true love was ruffled
by the proverbial obstructions. The young lady’s favour was quickly
gained, but her father’s approval was not so easily secured, and that
is scarcely to be wondered at. Byrom at the time had not settled down
to any profession; his prospects were doubtful; he had been obliged
to seclude himself on account of his political proclivities; and
had, moreover, come to be accounted an eccentric and somewhat dreamy
philosopher, infected with the mysticism of the French school. The
practical, hard-headed Manchester merchant could, therefore, hardly
look upon him as an eligible suitor or a promising husband for a young
lady destined to inherit the ancestral home of the Byroms. Everything,
however, comes to him who can wait. Byrom did wait; and eventually
the obdurate parent yielded, and gave his consent to, if he did not
actually express approval of, the match; and on Valentine’s Day,
1720-1, at the old church, the young couple were united, the bride
having just completed her twenty-first year, and Byrom being then in
his twenty-ninth.
Chalmers, in his biography of Byrom, represents the marriage as a
clandestine one. He says the lady’s father “was extremely averse to the
match, and when it took place without his consent, refused the young
couple any means of support; and, as a means of supporting himself and
his wife, Byrom had recourse to the teaching of shorthand writing.”
But this is an error, as evidenced by a passage in a letter addressed
by the bride’s elder sister, Anne Byrom, to Mr. Stansfield, under date
February 18, 1720-1, four days after the wedding:—
I received yours last week, and designed answering it by first
post, but could not have an opportunity, we having been pretty
much engaged this week; for on Tuesday last sister Elizabeth was
married to Dr. Byrom, with consent of father and mother, and the
wedding kept here, and we having had a deal of company.
His sister here designates him “Dr.” Byrom, and the prefix to his name
was through life commonly accorded by his friends and acquaintance.
He does not appear ever to have taken a degree entitling him to it,
though in one of his letters written from Montpelier he styles himself
“Dr. of Physic.” There is a common belief that he practised medicine in
Manchester; but this was only upon rare occasions, chiefly among the
poor and the members of his own family; and he threw physic to the dogs
when he applied himself to the perfecting of his system of shorthand.
Shortly after his marriage he became the occupant of a house belonging
to Mr. Hunter, standing at the corner of Hanging Ditch, and what is
now the lower end of Cannon Street, but then called Hunter’s-lane, and
here his family resided for many years. His journal affords pleasant
glimpses of his home life and surroundings at this time:—
October 5, 1722.—This day we came to Mr. Hunter’s house. Saturday,
6th.—Laurenson’s wife died. Sister Ellen ill. Sorted my papers
all morning. Mr. Hooper came about one to ask me to go to Holme
(Hulme Hall). I followed ’em thither; Mr. M. and R. and Mrs. H.
Malyn. Dr. Mainwaring there. We bowled, read Haddon’s verses on
the eclipses, &c. Mr. Leycester came, and Mr. Kate.
[Illustration]
The Mr. Hooper here referred to was the recently-appointed librarian to
Chetham’s Library, and the chaplain to Lady Anne Bland, of Hulme Hall,
lady of the manor of Manchester. Massey Malyn was a son of Dr. Malyn,
who had acquired by his marriage the Sale Hall Estate, in Cheshire, and
was himself the rector of Ashton-upon-Mersey; Robert Malyn, his younger
brother, was an undergraduate of Cambridge; Peter Mainwaring was a
well-known medical practitioner in the town, who subsequently married
one of the sisters and co-heiresses of Massey Malyn; and John Haddon
was the rector of Warrington. Hulme Hall was at that time the centre
in which gathered the wit and learning and intellectuality of the
neighbourhood. Lady Anne Bland, the widowed owner, and the foundress
of St. Ann’s, was accounted the leader of fashion among the Hanoverian
and Whig party, and the rival of Madam Drake, who carried the palm
among the Jacobite and Tory fashionables; the former deeming it not
inconsistent with her dignity to resent the exuberant display of Stuart
tartan at the newly-built Assembly-rooms, in King Street, by arraying
her party in orange-coloured ribbons, and dancing a minuet with them
by moonlight in the open street. Byrom was always a welcome guest at
Hulme, where his sprightliness and epigrammatic humour was highly
appreciated, and with the pious, if somewhat imperious, owner he was,
in spite of his Jacobite proclivities, an especial favourite. He was a
frequent worshipper at St. Ann’s, the “new church” as it was called, in
contradistinction to the “old” or parish church, oftentimes occupying
Lady Bland’s seat, and occasionally going back to tea with her in her
own coach:—
1725.—Wednesday, Twelfth-day (January 6th), went to the new church
in the morning with Beppy (his eldest daughter Elizabeth, then
a child of three years), and sat in Lady Bland’s seat; dined at
Father Byrom’s; called to see the Wild Irishman in Smithy-door.
Tuesday, 12th,—Young Tarboc called on me, and we went to Hulme to
take the inscription off the stone (a Roman altar found in Castle
Field). I came home with Lady Bland in the coach, and went with
Mr. Cattel and Mr. Brettargh to dinner. I went to Hulme again with
young Tarboc.
Wednesday.—Lady Bland sent to invite me to the dancing to-night.
I walked to Hulme in the evening, when I found them dancing. We
came home between twelve and one in Lady Bland’s coach and father
Byrom’s chariot, which sister Ann had ordered.
Sunday.—New church; sat with Mr. Mynshull (of Chorlton Hall); took
leave with Dr. Malyn, Mr. Chetham, and Lady Bland.
It is pleasant to think that at this time, when in Manchester
political and religious feeling was at fever heat, and the place had
become little else than a hot-bed of contending factions, there was a
disposition to observe the amenities of life, and people of the most
conflicting political opinions were able to meet in social intercourse
with every appearance of complaisant good humour.
When Byrom married he obtained the consent of his bride’s father,
but he obtained little else; his own means were scanty, and with the
increasing demands of an increasing family he was compelled to follow
some occupation as a means of earning a livelihood. While pursuing
his studies at Cambridge he had invented a system of shorthand, the
leading principle of which was to denote the different sounds of
language by strokes of the shortest and simplest form. Reporting, as
a profession, was all but unknown, but in private life stenography was
much more generally practised than at the present time, especially
among students and the better educated members of society, who, before
the age of cheap literature, had recourse to it to reduce the labour
of frequent transcription. Cypher-writing had long been in vogue, the
“Diary” of Pepys being a notable illustration, but the system which
Byrom introduced was the first that was based upon any clearly defined
principle, and, though now out of date, may be said to be the parent of
all subsequent and “improved” systems. Unfortunately for him the men
of Manchester a century and a half ago thought more of looms than of
literature, and were more intent on manufactures than on metaphysics;
hence the place afforded little scope for the practice of the art
which he had invented. London was a more promising field, and during
several years he made lengthened visits to the metropolis, where he
met with very encouraging support, his patrons and pupils including
some of the most eminent statesmen and divines of the day—the Duke of
Devonshire, the Archbishop of York, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Hartington,
Hoadley, Bishop of Salisbury, Horace Walpole, Pope, and others of equal
celebrity. In his Journal he records:—“Proposals printed May 27, 1723,
for printing and publishing a new method of shorthand;” and on the 30th
January, 1724, he writes to his wife:—
I told you I was to see the Archbishop of York. I did so on
Tuesday morning, and talked with him and his son about our art.
They entered into the notion of it very readily, and his grace
promised to recommend it wherever he had an opportunity. New
proposals are now printing off, dated February 1st, 1724, that is,
Saturday, on which day I intend to advertise in the _Daily Post_,
_Evening Post_, and _London Journal_. They are the same as the old
proposals, only Mr. Leycester’s (of Toft) approbation is added to
Mr. Smith’s. Now the thing receives a formal publication I shall
see what I am likely to expect from my friend Mr. Public, and
whether he will have a true relish for clever things or no.
“Mr. Public” had the desired “relish,” and the “clever things” obtained
for their inventor the honour of admission into the Royal Society.
“Thursday, March 19th (1724).—This day I was admitted Fellow of
the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane, and Mr. Robert Ord at the
same time. He and I went there together, gave Mr. Hawkshee two
guineas, and signed bond to pay fifty-two shillings a year.”
Byrom found a competitor in the person of a Mr. James Weston, who
claimed to be the inventor of a superior method of stenography, and the
journalist thus writes of his “furious antagonist”:—
Mr. Hooper and Jo. Clowes have been to pay Mr. Weston a visit,
and we have had good diversion with the account of it.... He
describes me seven foot high,[44] tolerably dressed in a tie-wig,
spent my fortune, and a little light-headed, and showed ’em all
his challenge, and how he had frightened me from dispersing my
proposals publicly, but seemed at the bottom to be plaguily
afraid. He says I come to Dick’s coffee house almost every night
when he intends to come and challenge me before the company; when
he does, I shall let you know in what manner he (de)molishes me.
[Note 44: Byrom was of unusual stature; on one occasion he records
having met with a Mr. Jefferson, who was “taller than I by measuring,”
the only instance, it would seem, of his having met with such a person.]
During his visits to London Byrom became associated with the leading
literary and political characters of the day—with Sir Hans Sloane,
Bentley, the great Newton, the Wesleys, and others—over whom his
great intellectual ability and ceaseless industry, blended as it
was with a high tone of religious and moral feeling, enabled him to
exercise considerable influence. His “Journal,” in which from day
to day he records the trifling occurrences of his life, contains
many references to his literary friends, and embraces a variety of
information interesting as illustrative of the manners and habits of
the age. In his long absences, however, he never forgot the ties of
home and family. His letters addressed “To Mrs. Eliz. Byrom, near the
Old Church, in Manchester,” relating his daily doings, are full of
entertaining gossip, and couched in terms of the fondest endearment.
Here is a passage taken at random:—
Kent’s Coffee House, May 20, 1729.—I am sorry to hear of Nelly’s
being so ill and weakly; but I am not able to add anything to the
care which you take of her by any physic of mine. The diet of
children is the only thing to look after.... My dearest love, as
thou takest all possible care of thy infants, make not thyself
uneasy about them; but secure thine own health for the sake of
them, and thy most affectionate husband and friend.
A week later he writes:—
I promise myself that you are all pretty well at Kersall and
Nelly better, not having any letter last post.... Prithee let the
children have some sort of things that will keep the sun off ’em.
Why should one let their faces be spoiled when a little custom
might prevent it? Oh, dear! that I was with ye all. I long to jump
into Kersall river.
If he could revisit his dearly-loved haunt at Kersall he would find the
river now not quite so inviting.
* * * * *
In one of his letters to Mrs. Byrom he speaks of meeting with
Whitefield, the great preacher and founder of the Calvinistic
Methodists, who had then just returned from a visit to the American
settlement of Georgia, when it was proposed to sing a hymn; and he
remarks, “If I was to sing with ’em, it must (be) nearer homeward than
Georgia. The tune that I should sing would be something like this, I
believe:—
Partner of all my joys and cares,
Whether in poverty or wealth,
For thee I put up all my pray’rs;
Well heard if answer’d by thy health.
Long absence, cruel as it is,
Content still longer to endure,
If ought conducive to thy bliss
The tedious torment could procure.
Joyous or grievous my employ,
Absence itself would give relief,
Could I but give thee all the joy,
And bear myself alone the grief.
Lost in this place of grand resort,
Though crowds succeeding crowds I see,
Quite from the city to the court—
’Tis all a wilderness to me!
Amidst a world of gaudy scenes
Around me, glittering, I move;
I wander, heedless what it means,
Bent on the thoughts of her I love.
Still I usurp that sacred sound
Too often and too long profan’d;
When shall I tread the happy ground
Where love and truth may be obtained?
Let me and my beloved spouse,
With mutual ardour, strive to quit
False, earthly, interested vows,
And Heaven into our hearts admit.
There let th’ endearing hope take place,
Though parted here to meet above
In a perpetual chaste embrace,
United, Jesu! in thy love!”
It was during the time of these visits to London that the wordy war
arose between the admirers of Handel and his great Italian rival
Bononcini, which Byrom ridiculed in a witty epigram that will remain
famous for all time:—
Some say compared to Bononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny.
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle;
Strange all this difference should be
’Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.
Its publication created quite a sensation in the literary world; the
wits of the day attributed it to Swift, and he has been often credited
with it in later times. Handel’s biographer, M. Victor Schoelcher,
thus refers to it—“Swift, who admired nothing, and who had no ear,
wrote an epigram upon the subject,” and adds, “the angry injustice of
the nobles” who were in league against the great composer was “far
preferable to the empty eclecticism of the Dean of St Patrick’s.” The
question of authorship is, however, easily disposed of by a reference
to Byrom’s journal, in which, writing under date, Saturday, June 5,
1725, he says:—
“We went to see Mr. Hooper, who was at dinner at Mr. Whitworth’s;
he came over to us to Mill’s Coffee House, told us of my epigram
upon Handel and Bononcini being in the papers.... Bob came
to supper; said that Glover had showed him the verses in the
_Journal_, not knowing that they were mine.”
And so the years went round. The summer months he usually spent with
his family and kindred in Lancashire; looking in now and then at the
“College;” discussing learnedly with Dr. Deacon, Clayton, Thyer, and
other of the local _literati_; paying court to Lady Bland; spending
the day with “Mother Byrom” at Kersall; dining with “brother Byrom
at the Cross” (Edward Byrom’s, in the Market Place); “drinking a
dish of tea with sister Brearcliffe” at her stately house in Spring
Gardens; or taking an evening walk “after sermon by the river side by
Strangeways with Mr. Leycester and Dr. Mainwaring;” for Strangeways
Walk, as it was called, was then a pleasant tree-shaded lane, with
the pleasaunce belonging to Hunt’s Bank Hall, the residence of Mr.
Clowes, and the stately woods of Strangeways Park on the one hand, and
verdant meadows and pastures reaching down to the banks of the pure
and sparkling Irwell on the other. In London his time was pretty well
occupied with his pupils, the brief intervals of leisure being spent in
social intercourse with his Lancashire and Cambridge friends, writing
epigrams, disputing on religious doctrines, attending meetings at the
(Royal) “Society,” “making merry at the Mitre,” and lamenting the
shortcomings of his laundress.
The practice of reporting was not then universally popular, and Byrom
occasionally met with a humorous adventure. “Orator” Henley, whom Pope
has immortalised—
The great restorer of the good old stage,
Preacher at once and zany of his age.
objected to his sermons being reported on the ground that “he might
have his discourses printed against him.” He threatened to turn out
the “chiel amang them takin notes,” and when Byrom would not desist,
even when the “manager” offered to return the shilling he had paid
for admission, “went on so much faster than usual that he took the
only way to stop me,” thus effectually getting rid of the unwelcome
attentions of the inexorable shorthand writer. On another occasion
when Byrom exercised his talents in assisting the High Church party
to oppose the application to Parliament for an Act to establish a
workhouse in Manchester for the employment of the poor, a scene
occurred which is best related in his own words. A subscription had
been raised in the town to defray the cost of erection, and it was
proposed that the house should be managed by twenty-four guardians,
eight to be nominated by the Whigs, eight by the Tories, and the
remainder by the Presbyterians. Dr. Peploe, the Whig Bishop of Chester,
who was also warden of Manchester, undertook to present the Bill for
forming the guardians into a corporation; but the Tory and High Church
party offered a strong opposition to the scheme. Through some delay
the measure was defeated in the first session of Parliament, and
on being reintroduced in the succeeding year it was opposed by Sir
Oswald Mosley, of Ancoats, who, fearing that his interests as lord of
the manor might be prejudiced, had, in the meantime, caused a large
building to be erected for the purpose near Miller’s Lane—the present
Miller Street. Byrom, whom the Whigs denounced as an incendiary and
threatened to pull to pieces, was very active in supporting the Tory
opposition, and gave evidence before the Commissioners. He appears on
the same occasion to have occupied himself in taking shorthand notes,
when the scene occurred which he thus describes in a letter dated
February 20, 1731:—
I must tell you to get another petition ready to offer to the
House that a body may write shorthand in the cause of one’s
country. I have ventured to stand the threats of a complaint
and the danger of a committee in defence of that natural right
of exercising the noble art which I have acquired. At the last
committee but one I was threatened by a Scotch knight (Sir James
Campbell) whom I provoked to execution of his said valiant
threatening yesterday, for in the midst of Serjt. Darnel’s reply
out he comes at the instigation of one Brereton, and suddenly and
loud pronounces these terrible words—_To oadur, oardur, I speak
to oadur; I desair to knaw if any mon shil wrait here that is
nut a clairk or solicitur?_ and an universal silence ensuing I
was going to speak for myself but a member of my acquaintance
winking that I had better not, I repressed my rising indignation.
Nobody said anything to the knight’s query, only Sir Ed. Stanley
(M.P. for the county of Lancaster, and afterwards eleventh Earl of
Derby) hinted that there was no great harm done; and my friend the
serjeant himself said that the gentleman was famous for writing
shorthand, and for his part he was under no apprehension by his
taking down anything he should say, and so returned to his matter;
and the apparition of danger vanished; but if these attacks upon
the liberty of shorthand men go on I must have a petition from all
countries where our disciples dwell, and Manchester must lead ’em
on.
On the 12th May, 1740, Byrom’s elder brother, Edward, the “Brother
Byrom at the Cross,” died unmarried, when John, the poet and
stenographer, became the head of the family and owner of the estates at
Kersall.
Mr. Espinasse, in the first of his admirable series of “Lancashire
Worthies,” says that Byrom’s biographers “do not give the precise date
of the death of his elder brother, Edward.” The information is supplied
in the stenographer’s “Shorthand Journal,” in which occurs this entry:—
May 12th (1740).—Edward Byrom, of Kersall, elder son of Edward
Byrom, of Manchester, and Dorothy, daughter of John Allen, of
Redivales, near Bury. He was born March 4th, 1686, and died May
12th, 1740.
By his acquisition of the family estates at Kersall, Byrom was placed
in a position of comfortable independence, and able to relax from the
drudgery of teaching shorthand, though it was some time before he could
be induced to withdraw from London and its pleasant society to settle
down in quiet retirement in Manchester. Two years after this addition
to his fortune he received the welcome intelligence from Lord Morton
that the crowning act of all his anxieties—the Act securing to him for
a period of twenty-one years the exclusive right of publishing his “Art
and Method of Shorthand”—the nation’s testimony to the merits of the
system—had passed the House of Lords and received the royal assent; an
Act which, singular to say, appears to have been obtained without any
cost.
From this time his journeyings to London became less and less frequent,
and his life seems to have been passed for the most part in his native
town in a calm round of social and domestic enjoyment, his playful
fancy finding vent in squib and pasquinade, and in sparkling epigrams,
an easy and unshackled style of versification for which he had a
special aptitude. Not the least popular of his effusions was the one
directed against the farmers or tenants of the Grammar School Mills,
Messrs. Yates and Dawson, who had involved the town in the costs of a
lawsuit because the inhabitants had refused to observe the old feudal
monopoly and grind all their corn, grain, and malt at the mills:—
Here’s Bone and Skin,
Two millers thin,
Would starve the town, or near it,
But be it known
To Skin and Bone
That Flesh and Blood can’t bear it.
The point of the epigram was in the allusion to the professions of
Yates and Dawson, _Skin_ being Joseph Yates, a barrister, the father of
Sir Joseph Yates, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas; and _Bone_,
Dr. Dawson (Byrom’s relative), a well-known medical practitioner in
the town, and the father of the ill-fated “Jemmy Dawson,” the hero
of Shenstone’s pathetic ballad. He also, on the occasion of the
Pretender’s visit to Manchester, wrote the lines which have since
become almost as famous as his epigram on Handel and Bononcini:—
God bless the King! I mean the faith’s defender;
God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all—that’s quite another thing.
The period was one of great political excitement. The men of
Manchester, who a century previously had barricaded their town and
defied the soldiers of Charles the First, became jubilant on the
restoration of monarchy in the person of his son, and, to prove their
loyalty, caused the conduit in the market place to flow with claret
and the gutters to swell with strong beer; their sons were noted for
their Jacobite proclivities, and nowhere did the young Pretender
receive a heartier welcome than in the old Puritan town where, as has
been said by a popular writer (Dr. Halley), “the orange plumes seemed
to have grown pale and faded into white feathers before the bright
colours of the Stuart tartan.” The barbarous severities with which
the rebellion of 1715 was crushed had only served to perpetuate and
increase the feeling of bitterness against the Whig Government, and
this feeling was intensified by the religious feuds that sprang up in
the town. The Tories and High Churchmen, though they had taken the oath
to King George and desired to maintain the Protestant succession, were
for the most part Jacobites, while the Low Churchmen and Nonconformists
were staunch partisans of the house of Brunswick—the one proclaimed the
divine right of kings, and the other was equally zealous in upholding
the “Glorious Revolution.”
Byrom’s intimate friend, Dr. Deacon, a nonjuring minister, who had
incurred the suspicions of the Government through his supposed
connection with the former rebellion, and on that account had removed
to Manchester, where he combined the profession of theology with the
practice of physic, assembled a congregation of nonjurors at his house
in Fennel Street, adjoining the present “Dog and Partridge”—the “Schism
Shop,” as it was irreverently called—while Joseph Owen, a fierce
Presbyterian polemic, declaimed with angry invective against the clergy
of the “Old Church” for their alleged sympathy with the nonjuring
divine. The quarrel became fiercer than ever, and the coarse sermons of
Owen were answered by the satire and clever epigrams of Byrom:—
Leave to the low-bred Owens of the age
Sense to belye and loyalty to rage,
Wit to make treason of each cry and chat,
And eyes to see false worship in a hat.
Meetings of the rival factions were regularly held at the different
taverns in the town, the “Angel” in Market Street Lane being the
head-quarters of the Whigs, and the “Bull’s Head,” opposite Phœbe
Byrom’s in the Market Place, the resort of those disaffected to the
reigning family; “John Shaw’s,” too, a “public” in the Old Shambles,
kept by a veteran trooper, who in his campaigns abroad had acquired
the art of brewing punch of unrivalled quality, and who was as famed
for the discipline and the autocratic rule he maintained as for the
excellence of the beverage he brewed, received under its hospitable
roof the more thorough-going Church and King men and supporters of
the Stuart cause.[45] Byrom was a frequent attender at the convivial
gatherings at “John Shaw’s,” and the only portrait of him in the
later years of his life that has been preserved, was one taken by
stealth by his friend Dorning Rasbotham, “after spending an evening at
Shawe’s Coffee House,” prefixed to the Leeds edition of his poems, and
reproduced in Gregson’s “Fragments.”
[Note 45: “John Shaw’s” eventually assumed the character of an organised
club, and after an uninterrupted career of a century and a half it
still remains in a flourishing state, and is as convivial in its “green
old age” as in the days when John Shaw cracked his whip, and with loud
voice and imperative tone exclaimed, “Eight o’clock, gentlemen, eight
o’clock,” and his serving maid, Molly, followed with her mop and bucket
ready to expedite the movements of the loiterer, should the cracking
of the whip have failed to “speed the parting guest.” The club has an
official staff elected annually and with much mock formality, and what
Dr. Johnson calls “obstreperous merriment,” and the members, who are
true “Church and Queen” men, assemble once a month under the shadow
of the “Mitre” to discuss punch and politics, and drink old wine, and
the traditional old toasts, omitting, however, the very suggestive one
of the King “over the water.” Among the most treasured relics in the
possession of the club, and which now adorn the room where the members
assemble, are the original portraits in oil of the autocratic and
inflexible John and Molly Owen, his prime minister, and factotum—the
Hebe of the house, and the veritable china bowl in which John brewed
his seductive compound.]
Byrom’s pen was ever at the service of his political friends, and
the “Laureate of the Jacobites,” the “Master Tool of the Faction,”
as he was indifferently styled, was more than a match for his Whig
antagonists. Imbued, however, with strong religious feelings, there
was little of bitterness in his compositions; the shaft of ridicule
was never envenomed, his playful wit and genial good-humoured satire
telling with far greater effect than the coarse and angry invectives
with which he was at times assailed. If he was ready to lampoon a foe,
he never lacked the courage to rebuke a friend. This is evidenced by
his well-timed admonition against swearing, “addressed to an officer
in the army,” Colonel Townley, the commander of the regiment raised in
Manchester in the service of the Pretender:—
O that the muse might call, without offence,
The gallant soldier back to his good sense,
His temp’ral field so cautious not to lose;
So careless quite of his eternal foes.
Soldier! so tender of thy prince’s fame,
Why so profuse of a superior name?
For the King’s sake the brunt of battles bear;
But, for the King of King’s sake do not swear.
In his early youth Byrom had manifested strong Jacobite tendencies,
but in the interval between the two rebellions—the Sacheverel riots
of ’15 and the rising of ’45—his political opinions, if in no degree
modified, had become much less demonstrative, and his Jacobitism was
under the control of a possessor sufficiently cautious to prevent its
imperilling his family interests or endangering his personal safety.
His daughter “Beppy” was then a young lady of three-and-twenty;
following her father’s example she had set up a diary, and some of
the entries in her journal, with a letter written by Byrom to his
kinsman and friend, Mr. Vigor, furnishes the most circumstantial and
entertaining accounts of the Pretenders visit to Manchester extant.
The doctor’s gossiping daughter was an ardent Jacobite, though a very
prudent one, her sentimental devotion to the Stuart cause being most
pronounced when personal danger was remote, the fair young diarist
having little scruple in designating the wearers of the white cockade
“rebels” when peril was at hand. For all that, her “Diary” is very
entertaining. Apart from the vivid portraiture of the excitement and
consternation into which the Manchestrians were thrown by the presence
of the rebel army, it is impossible to read it without feeling that you
are listening to the sprightly chat of the lively and unsophisticated
writer.
On Tuesday, the 25th of November, news came that Prince Charles
Edward had marched his forces into Lancashire. The town was in a
state of great excitement. The Presbyterians and Whigs deemed it
prudent to get out of the way; the militia, which had been very
valiant before the approach of the rebels, followed the example; the
wealthier householders removed their families into the country; and
even furniture and provisions were conveyed to places of more assured
safety. On the afternoon of Friday, the 28th, Sergeant Dickson, a
dashing young Scotchman, with his sweetheart and a drummer, entered
the town and proclaimed the Chevalier King; and on the following
morning the Prince with the main body of his army joined them, and
encamped in St. Ann’s Square. “Manchester,” says Ray, in his “History
of the Rebellion,” “was taken by a sergeant, a drum, and a woman, who
rode to the market cross on horses with hempen halters on, where they
proclaimed their King.” Here is “Beppy” Byrom’s version:
Tuesday (November) 28.—About three o’clock to-day came into
town two men in Highland dress, and a woman behind one of them
with a drum on her knee, and for all the loyal work that our
Presbyterians have made they took possession of the town, as one
may say, for immediately after they were ’light they beat up for
volunteers for P(rince) C(harles).... They were directly joined by
Mr. J. Bradshaw, Mr. Tom Sydall, Mr. Tom Deacon, Mr. Fletcher, Tom
Chaddock; and several others have listed, about 80 men by eight
o’clock, when my papa came down to tell us there was a party of
horse come in. He took care of me to the Cross, when I saw them
all. It is a very fine moonlight night.... My papa and uncle are
gone to consult with Mr. Croxton, Mr. Fielden, and others how to
keep themselves out of any scrape, and yet behave civilly (a very
prudent procedure in such a crisis). All the justices fled, and
lawyers too, but coz. Clowes.
Friday, 29th.—They are beating up for the P.; eleven o’clock we
went up to the Cross to see the rest come in; then came small
parties of them till about three o’clock, when the P. and the
main body of them came; I cannot guess how many.... Then came
an officer up to us at the Cross, and gave us the manifesto
and declarations. The bells they rung, and P. Cotterel made a
bonfire, and all the town was illuminated, every house except Mr.
Dickinson’s (the house in Market-street-lane, where the Prince
took up his quarters, and thenceforward known as the Palace). My
papa, mama, and sister, and my uncle and I walked up and down
to see it. About four o’clock the King was proclaimed, the
mob shouted very cleverly, and then we went up to see my aunt
Brearcliffe, and stayed eleven o’clock making St Andrew’s crosses
for them; we sat up making till two o’clock.
Colonel Townley, a member of the great Catholic family of that name,
who had arranged for the Prince’s reception in Manchester, and had
engaged several of the principal residents for officers, speedily
mustered and enrolled a regiment in the service of the Prince. Each
recruit received a white St Andrew’s cross, which cost little, and
a _promise_ of five guineas, which, as they were never paid, cost
less. In the next entry the enthusiastic young Jacobite describes her
impressions of the “yellow-hair’d laddie,” and the way in which her
father made homage to him:—
Saturday, 30th (St. Andrew’s Day).—More crosses making till twelve
o’clock; then I dressed up in my white gown and went up to my aunt
Brearcliffe’s, and an officer called on us to go see the prince.
We went to Mr. Fletcher’s and saw him get a horseback, and a noble
sight it is [no wonder that amid such excitement the young lady
got a little “mixed” in her moods and tenses]. I would not have
missed it for a great deal of money. His horse had stood an hour
in the court without stirring, and as soon as he got on he [_i.e._
the horse, not the prince] began a dancing and capering as if he
was proud of the burden, and when he rid out of the court he was
received with as much joy and shouting almost as if he had been
King, indeed I think scarce anybody that saw him could dispute it.
As soon as he was gone the officer and us went to prayers at the
old church at two o’clock by their orders, or else there has been
none since they came. Mr. Shrigley read prayers; he prayed for the
King and Prince of Wales, and named no names. Then we called at
our house and eat a queen cake, and a glass of wine, for we got
no dinner; then the officer went with us all to the Camp Field
to see the artillery; called at my uncle’s and then went up to
Mr. Fletcher’s, stayed there till the prince was at supper, then
the officer introduced us into the room, stayed awhile and then
went into the great parlour where the officers were dining, sat
by Mrs. Stark(ey); they were all exceeding civil and almost made
us fuddled with drinking the P. health, for we had had no dinner;
we sat there till Secretary Murray came to let us know that the
P. was at leisure and had done supper, so we were all introduced
and had the honour to kiss his hand; my papa was fetched prisoner
to do the same [another testimony to the doctor’s discretion], as
was Dr. Deacon; Mr. Cattell and Mr. Clayton [two of the Old Church
clergy who were less cautious] did it without; the latter said
grace for him; then we went out and drank his health in the other
room, and so to Mr. Fletcher’s, where my mamma waited for us (my
uncle was gone to pay his land tax) and then went home.
December 1st.—About six o’clock the P. and the foot set out,
went up Market-street Lane and over Cheadle ford; the horse was
gathering together all forenoon; we went up to the Cross to see
them, and then to Mr. Starkey’s, they were all drawn up in the
Square and went off in companies, Lord Elcho’s horse went past
Baguley.
What follows is matter of history.
The Stuart, leaning on the Scot,
Pierced to the very centre of the realm,
In hopes to seize his abdicated helm.
The Pretender’s cause was soon lost, the progress of his army being
as brief as it was disastrous. Hearing, on their arrival at Derby,
that the Duke of Cumberland with an army of veterans was in the
neighbourhood, and distrusting the skill of their own officers, they
returned northwards, their vanguard reaching Manchester on the 9th of
December, where the regiment which Colonel Townley had raised only
a few days before was disbanded, though some of the more resolute
supporters of the Prince pushed on to Carlisle, where, after a feeble
effort to hold the city, they were compelled to surrender. Chaplain
Coppock was executed in the border city, wearing his canonicals; ten of
the others, including a son of Dr. Deacon, and the adjutant, Syddal,
whose father had given up his life in the same cause thirty years
previously, and Beppy Byrom’s cousin, Jemmy Dawson, were executed
on Kennington Common. The heads of Deacon and Syddal were sent to
Manchester and fixed upon spikes on the top of the Exchange,[46] to be
reverenced by friends and execrated by foes, an exhibition that called
forth the following lines:—
The Deel has set their heads to view,
And stickt them upon poles;
Poor Deel! ’twas all that he could do
Since God has ta’en their souls.
[Note 46: In the accounts of the Constables of Manchester occurs this
entry—1745. Sept. 18: Expenses tending the sheriff this morn, Syddal’s
and Deacon’s heads put up, £00, 01, 06.]
In Manchester the suppression of the rebellion of ’45 was hailed with
delight by the partisans of the house of Brunswick; the church bells
rang throughout the day, bonfires blazed at night, and orange-coloured
ribbons were flaunted in the streets as gaily as the Stuart tartan had
been only a few months before. That day must have been a sorrowful one
for Byrom and his enthusiastic daughter, for they could hardly have
escaped the insults of the Hanoverian mob when Dr. Deacon’s house was
attacked and that of poor widow Syddal demolished.
The ill-feeling engendered by these events was of long duration,
and the toast of “The King” was not unfrequently a cause of angry
disputation. The adherents of the exiled dynasty continued their
meetings, though they usually assembled in secret, and their movements
were carefully watched by the local authorities, suspected persons
being required to take the oath of allegiance to the reigning monarch
and abjure Popery and the Pretender. Some of the more prominent
sympathisers took alarm and fled, among them being Clayton, the
chaplain of the Collegiate Church, who was said to have offered public
prayers for Prince Charles in one of the streets of Salford. Byrom, in
describing this period, says—
We ourselves were many of us fugitives; and had we not met with
some kind asylum towns, might have wandered among the inhospitable
hills, like the present mountaineer rebels.
His Journal shows that at this time he was frequently away from
Manchester, and not unfrequently endeavouring through the influence of
his former patrons to obtain a mitigation of the punishment of such of
the Manchester rebels as had survived the thirst of Whiggish vengeance,
but were yet undergoing imprisonment. Thus he wrote to his wife (June
18, 1748):—
On Friday the 10th of June I had been asked to meet Mr. Folkes at
Mr. Ch. Stanhope’s, where I found likewise Lord Linsdale, D(uk)e
of Mountague, and Mr. Stanhope’s brother, Lord Harrington, with
whom we passed the dinner and an hour or two after very agreeably.
They asked me a great many questions about the Pretender, and
circumstances when he was at Manchester, &c., and I told them what
I knew and thought without any reserve, and took the opportunity
of setting some matters in a truer light than I suppose they had
heard them placed in, and put in now and then a word in favour
of the prisoners, especially Charles D, (Charles, youngest son
of Dr. Deacon, who had acted as secretary, and superintended the
recruiting of the Manchester regiment). They were all very free
and good natured, and did not seem offended with anything that
I took the liberty to enlarge upon. When Mr. Folkes came away,
about seven o’clock, I came with him, and he said that what had
passed might possibly occasion young D.’s liberty, that they were
not violent in their tempers, and that he took notice that they
listened very much to what I had been telling them of Manchester
affairs. I was much pleased with the openness of conversation
which we had upon several subjects; and as Mr. St(anhope) had
made me promise him some verses that I had lately writ, I added
a Latin copy to his brother the Viceroy of Ireland, which I
brought him yesterday, for he had sent a servant for me to dine
with again, and then we had Lord Harrington, Lord Baltimore, D.
of Richmond and a lady—Lady Townshend—and somebody else—oh, Sir
John Cope. The Duchess of R. should have been there, but the
Duke made an excuse for her. As we had a lady, however, and one
(as Mr. St. had hinted to me) of great wit and politeness, who
stayed the afternoon, complaisance to her turned the conversation
upon suitable subjects, so that I could not well introduce the
fate of Ch. D. &c. before the D. of R. who is one of our present
kings,[47] as I wanted to do. Mr. St. had read the Latin verses
and given them before dinner, and the Duke might have seen them if
he would, but the lady and the Latin did not suit politely enough,
and there was no urging anything untimely, or else I could have
been glad to have heard what he would have said about the lot of
the imprisoned.... One can only try as occasion offers, what mercy
can be got from trying.
[Note 47: The Duke of Richmond was at the time one of the Lords
Justices for the administration of the Government during the absence of
George II.]
He did try, and on the 23rd July he again writes:—
I have heard nothing new about Ch. Deacon. I sent him (Mr.
Stanhope) a copy of the petition representing his case, and some
further urging of my own. By a report not being made, I understand
that the judges have made no report, which I am surprised at if
that be the real meaning.
In a subsequent letter (August 4, 1748) to his “Dear Dolly” (his
younger daughter, Dorothy, then a maiden of 18) he sends a translation
of the verses, that young lady, as he says, not being “so book-learned
as to understand them in the original.” They are as creditable to the
heart as to the head of the writer for the evidence they afford of his
unswerving fidelity to a friend in adversity. The following lines are a
fair specimen:—
Three brothers—I shall only speak the truth—
Three brothers, hurried by mere dint of youth,
Precautious youth, were found in arms of late,
And rushing on to their approaching fate.
One, in a fever, sent up to be tried,
From jail to jail, delivered over, died;
Sick and distressed, he did not long sustain
The mortal shocks of motion and of pain.
* * * * *
The third was then a little boy at school.
That played the truant from the rod and rule;
The child, to join his brothers, left his book,
And arms, alas! instead of apples took.
Now lies confined the poor unhappy lad—
For death mere pity and mere shame forebad—
Long time confined, and waiting mercy’s bail.
Two years amidst the horrors of a jail.
I spare to mention what, from fact appears.
The boy has suffered in these fatal years;
Pity, at least, becomes his iron lot;
What ruin is there that a jail has not?
He is my countryman, my noble lords,
And room for hope your genius affords;
Be truly noble; hear my well-meant prayer.
And deign my fellow citizen to spare.
In the letter accompanying the English verses, he says:—
I have not such good hopes as I had of the young boy being set at
liberty upon whose account they were made; he has some enemies
or other that have represented him in so ill a light that I much
question at present if he will meet with the favour which has been
so long expected except affairs shall take a turn with relation to
him (other) than I was told they had done. But I am not sorry I
have spoken my thoughts about him as opportunity offered.
On “Prince Charles’s Birthday” (November 30th), he writes to his
daughter Beppy:—
Mr. Nanny, a Welsh gentleman, told me he had heard that Ch. Deacon
was set at liberty; but such a world of false reports have gone
about him that I can only wish this may prove true.
And on the 3rd of January following, writing to his wife, he remarks:—
I was taken ill so that I could not go into Southwark to
enquire after Charles Deacon as I thought of, nor have I had
any opportunity since, nor can I learn anything of the truth or
falsehood of the report of his going abroad.
The report was unfortunately but too true, for the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ (v. xix., p. 41) records that on the 11th January Charles
Deacon, with William Brettargh, also of the Manchester regiment, were
conveyed from the new gaol, Southwark, to Gravesend, for transportation
during life.
With the expatriation of this hapless youth may be said to have closed
the darkest and most sorrowful page in Manchester’s annals. In that
sanguinary chronicle of ruthless savagery there was perhaps no more
melancholy episode than the misfortunes of the nonjuring divine of
Fennel Street, who lost three of his sons in the Pretender’s cause.
Thomas Theodorus, the eldest, as already stated, was executed, and his
head fixed on the Manchester Exchange; Robert Renatus died in prison
while awaiting trial, and Charles Clement, as we have seen, was sent
beyond seas. The father passed into his rest on the 16th February,
1753. He lies in the north-east corner of St. Ann’s Churchyard, where
his raised altar-tomb may still be seen with an inscription setting
forth that he was “the greatest of sinners and most unworthy of
primitive bishops.”
There is a tradition current that the heads of Thomas Deacon and
Tom Syddal, after being exposed for some time on the Exchange,
were one night surreptitiously removed by Mr. Hall, a son of Dr.
Richard Edward Hall, who resided in a large house at the top of King
Street, and that they were secretly buried in the garden behind his
residence. This garden with the rookery in it, which reached down to
the present Chancery Lane, existed within the recollection of the
present generation, and it is said that on the death of Mr. Hall’s
last surviving sister, Miss Frances Hall, in 1828, the grim relics of
mortality were by her expressed desire exhumed and buried in St. Ann’s
Churchyard. It was to Dr. Hall, the father, whilst paying his addresses
to the lady whom he afterwards married, that Byrom sent the following
epigram:—
A lady’s love is like a candle snuff,
That’s quite extinguished by a gentle puff;
But, with a hearty blast or two, the dame,
Just like a candle, bursts into a flame.
It was very shortly after the event just related that Byrom received
the first intimation of his son’s having formed an attachment for the
lady who became his wife, Eleanor, daughter of William and sister
of Domville Halsted, of Lymm, the representatives of an ancient and
honourable family in Cheshire, who had been owners of the Domville
moiety of Lymm from the time of Edward III., when it was inherited from
Agnes de Legh, the common ancestress of the Domvilles, Halsteds, and
the Leghs of Adlington and Lyme. The letter written on the occasion to
Mrs. Byrom is so thoroughly characteristic of the man that we make no
apology for reproducing it:—
Tuesday night, Feb. 28, 1748-9.
My dearest love: I received this afternoon the potted hare from
Mr. Wilkinson, which Tedy mentioned in his last letter, together
with thy letter concerning Miss Halsted. &c., which has thrown me
into a great but really very loving concern, for the consequence
of an affair in which the family happiness so much depends. As I
am quite a stranger to the young lady, and have no remembrance of
having ever seen her, I cannot judge how I should like her person
and behaviour; but for my beloved son’s sake, I should wish her
possessed of every qualification that might justly be agreeable
to thee, his sisters, uncle, aunts, and friends, as well as to
himself. I guess by the contents of thy letter that he has made
his addresses to her, and his Aunt A. (Mrs. Byrom’s sister Anne)
has given her a good character, which does not seem to amount to
any absolute approbation; his uncle, too, seems neither for it nor
against it; what his aunts say of it, thou dost not hint at, by
which I presume that they suppose that he is determined himself,
and they would not disoblige him by making any objection to his
choice. For my part, if my son be inclined to marry, I can only
wish that he may make a proper choice; but whether he has or not,
it is not in my power to determine, nor in my will to oppose his
inclination, without cause, for I love him too well not to consent
with great readiness to anything that others of his friends who
heartily interest themselves in his happiness should approve
of; but at present their approbation seems only to be negative,
and his uncle’s “What will his father say to it?” does not seem
to impart any great encouragement. His father would gladly hope
that his son, in a thing of this consequence, might so behave as
to please all his relations, and thereby acquire a title to his
father’s approbation, who, considering him as the only youth of
the name at present, would wish them all to assist, encourage or
prevent him as their love and judgment shall find occasion to show
itself in his favour. As to fortune, report but seldom lessens it,
though it has hardly much increased it, I suppose, in Miss H.’s
case; but as to that, though it is undoubtedly a very prudential
consideration, yet the qualities which the lady herself may or
may not have, may make her a good wife with less than she has,
or a bad one with a great deal more. I am full of wishes, hopes,
and fears, and can think of nothing else at present than to refer
myself to thy sentiments, which I wish thee to give me, and my son
to be so much master of himself as to act on this occasion with
all necessary discretion. I wish that whenever he marries he may
meet with one that he may have as just reason to love, honour, and
cherish as his father has his Valentine, whom he begs to take all
possible (care) of a life and health so dear to him, who is, with
hearty prayers to God for her and hers—hers and theirs.
J. BYROM.
To Mrs. Eliz. Byrom, near the Old Church in Manchester, Lancashire.
With the exception of an occasional journey to London, and a visit
now and then to his _alma mater_, Cambridge, the remaining portion
of Byrom’s life was passed in comparative quietude, sometimes at the
pleasant rural retreat at Kersall, “that quiet place of yours,” as
his loving sister Phœbe, in one of her letters, styles it, and where,
as she says, she “was very glad to be a bit from the hurry of the
market place;” but oftener enjoying the society and pleasant gossip
of his friends in the snug parlour of his comfortable dwelling at
the corner of Hunter’s Lane—that quaint black and white house with a
curious raised walk in front, the outlines of which the pencil of that
industrious antiquary, Thomas Barrit, has happily preserved to us. The
struggles of his earlier years gave a zest to the comforts of domestic
life, and in his _otium cum dignitate_ he whiled away the hours,
poetising on subjects grave and gay; now and then ridiculing with good
humoured banter some Presbyterian zealot or recalcitrant Whig, though
always in a spirit calculated to soften asperity; and occasionally
retaliating upon his Hanoverian opponents in some _jeu d’esprit_
or sparkling epigram, to the great delight of the _beaux-esprits_
who met in social intercourse at the Bull’s Head—a house that still
remains, and the gruff countenance of whose ancient sign may yet be
seen over the archway leading to the inn-yard and the old-fashioned
and much-frequented parlour. The great truths of Christianity had from
his earliest years made a deep impression on his mind, and many of his
writings are characterised by strong religious feeling; indeed, it
was the spirit of piety breathed into his poems that led to his being
accounted a mystic by the mere lukewarm professors, a reproach that
was, however, undeserved. His religion was without gloom, and by no
means inconsistent with the maintenance of habitual cheerfulness. His
utterances are marked by a manly, nervous style; his imagination was
fertile, and his imagery happily conceived, though there is sometimes
a lack of smoothness that suggests the idea that his effusions were
hastily penned—the impromptu utterances of the man of genius with the
happy facility of versification. Some of his pieces—the once popular
“Three Black Crows[48]” for example—were written for the annual
speech days at the Free Grammar School; he was, too, the first writer
who employed as a literary vehicle the broad, racy vernacular of
Lancashire, which in later times has been used with such signal success
by Bamford, and Waugh, and Brierley. One of the happiest specimens of
the playfulness of his muse was the poetical epistle “On the Patron
Saint of England,” addressed to Lord Willoughby, the President of the
Society of Antiquaries, and which Samuel Pegge, the antiquary, was at
such pains to refute; but perhaps the one by which he will be best
remembered is the ever popular Christmas hymn, “Christians, Awake,”
which John Wainwright, the organist of the “Old Church,” at Manchester,
set to music, the tune being called after his native town, “Stockport.”
[Note 48: It has been frequently stated that the story of the “Three
Black Crows” was inspired by the London edition, but in a recent
communication to the Manchester Literary Club, Mr. John Evans has
proved conclusively, from a letter in Byrom’s own handwriting, that it
was founded on a story related to him by Dr. John Taylor.]
Byrom outlived most of the friends of his youth, and maintained the
natural cheerfulness of his disposition throughout his last lingering
illness until, in the words of his obituary notice, “the scholar, the
critic, the gentleman, became absorbed in the resigned Christian.”
He died at the old house at Hanging Ditch, on the 26th September,
1763, having attained the ripe old age of 72, and three days later
his remains were interred in the Byrom Chapel, on the south side of
the “Old Church.” Strangely enough, there is no monument or other
sepulchral memorial to mark his resting place or perpetuate his name;
the register of burials is the only record, and that is brief indeed:—
1763.—September 29. Mr. John Byrom.
A tribute to his memory in Latin verse from the pen of his friend
and correspondent, William Cowper, of Chester, M.P., appeared in the
newspapers of the time, of which the following is a translation:—
No, much-loved friend! this breast can never lose
The dear remembrance of thy pleasing form,
Thy gentle manners, and thy placid mien;
The smile of innocence, th’ unstudied grace
Of honest countenance, th’ high-season’d wit,
The copious stores of conversation sweet,
Which to my ravish’d ears so oft supplied
Luxurious banquet, whilst th’ indulgent flow
Of thy rich genius filled my thirsty mind.
But who can tell the gifts of innate worth,
The bosom beating to the cries of woe,
The heart of soft benignity, wherein
True honour, piety, and faith have fix’d
Their everlasting mansion? Who can trace,
Alas! the portrait of such excellence
In any other mortal mind but thine?
In violation of the “Woollen Act,” a statute made famous by the
allusions of Pope and Dryden, he was buried “in a shirt, shift, sheet,
or shroud not made of sheep’s wool,” and, consequently, a direction was
issued by “John Gore Booth, Esquire, one of his Majesty’s Justices of
the Peace,” to the constables of Manchester to levy the sum of £6 by
distress and sale of his goods and chattels.
Mrs. Byrom survived him several years, and died on the 21st December,
1778, at the age of 78; of his children three died in infancy, and
three survived him—two daughters and a son. Elizabeth—Beppy, as she was
familiarly called—the first-born, and the gossiping chronicler of the
fatal ’45, died in 1801, her sister Dorothy having died three years
previously, both unmarried. Edward Byrom, the eldest and only surviving
son, succeeded as heir. Of this worthy son of a worthy sire we need say
little; his biography has been undertaken by an able writer, and with
such a congenial theme as the projected “Memorials of St. John’s” we
may rest assured that the accomplished editor of the “Old Church Clock”
will do ample justice to his memory. He was born on the 13th June,
1724, and baptised at the old church on the 24th of the same month. On
the death of his uncle, Edward Byrom, in 1740, he became devisee in
fee of his estates, and in the spring of 1750 he added to his worldly
wealth the fortune he acquired by his marriage with Miss Halsted,
already referred to, a marriage that, in accordance with the fashion of
the times, is thus chronicled in the _Chester Courant_ of the 6th March
in that year:—
A few days ago, Mr. Edward Byrom, son of Dr. Byrom, was married
to Miss Halsted of Limm, co. Cest., a lady of great merit and a
handsome fortune.
He took up his abode in the large detached house in Quay Street, now
occupied by Dr. Blackmore, and which continued to be the residence
of his grand-daughter, Miss Atherton, up to the time of her death,
in 1870. Mr. Grindon, in his pleasant volume, “Manchester Banks and
Bankers,” says: “There is a legend that he removed thither on account
of the delicate health of his little Nelly, the atmosphere of Quay
Street being purer than that of the town,” and he adds, “the house
was obviously intended to be the first of a row. Mr. Byrom preferred
that it should stand alone, arranging also for the preservation in
perpetuity of the meadow in front, which served as a playground for
the children.” The house was Mr. Byrom’s own, and in all probability
its erection was begun by his uncle, Edward Byrom, shortly before his
death, for in the “Shorthand Journal” there occurs the entry:—
1741.—Thursday, August 11th or 12th. Dined at new house in Quay
Street; ... We came from Macclesfield yesterday—Mrs. Byrom, Beppy,
Dolly, David and I.
The neighbourhood was then unbuilt, and formed a pleasant suburb of
Manchester, but with the increase of trade the tide of population
spread in that direction; new streets were laid out, houses were built,
and the locality became what might be called the “Court-end.” The house
has survived the mighty changes that time has wrought; it stands alone,
as it did in Byrom’s days; the remnant of the old garden and orchard
are there, and the “meadow” in front still struggles to look green, but
its sylvan beauties are only a memory of the past.
With the increase of the population came the necessity for a new
church, and on the 28th April, 1768, Edward Byrom laid the foundation
stone of St. John’s—so named in compliment to his father—which was
consecrated on the 7th June in the following year. Little more than
two years later he joined Messrs. Sedgwick, Allen, and Place, in
establishing the first bank in Manchester, the doors of which were
opened on the 2nd December, 1771, under the style of Byrom, Sedgwick,
Allen, and Place. It occupied the site of Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s
shop in St. Ann’s Square, and the name is perpetuated in Bank Street,
leading from it. Less than seventeen months after, Edward Byrom was
laid to rest, his death occurring on the 24th April, 1773, at the early
age of forty-nine. Under his will the Quay Street property passed to
his daughter Ann, who became the wife of Henry Atherton, of the Middle
Temple, the issue of the marriage being an only daughter, the estimable
and much-honoured Miss Eleanor Atherton, the foundress of Holy Trinity
Church, in Hulme, and the last representative in a direct line of the
Byrom family, who died at the old home in Quay Street, on the 12th
September, 1870, at the age of eighty-eight. In accordance with the
provisions of her will, the greater portion of her property, including
the Kersall estates, passed to her godson, Mr. Edward Fox, who, in
accordance with her expressed desire, assumed the name and arms of
Byrom—the arms John Byrom was so proud of, and of which he made such
frequent mention in his Journal:—
Some sire of ours, beloved kinsfolk, chose,
The hedge-hog for his arms; I would suppose
With aim to hint instruction wise, and good,
To us descendants of his Byrom blood.
I would infer, if you be of this mind,
The very lesson that our sire design’d.
* * * * *
At last the hedge-hog came into his thought,
And gave the perfect emblem that he sought.
This little creature, all offence aside,
Rolls up itself in its own prickly hide,
When danger comes; and they that will abuse,
Do it themselves, when their own hurt ensues.
[Illustration]