‘Incarnate Rogues and Vile Jacobites’: Silvertop V. Cotesworth, 1718–1723

Extract

THE PERPETUAL Curate of Allendale, an active participant in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 who later turned king's evidence, said of William, fourth Lord Widdrington, a leading rebel, ‘it had been happy for him, and so we thought would have been better for us, if he had stayed at home’.’ The comment referred both to Widdrington's military incompetence and to the ruin of his house consequent upon his attainder. For Widdrington was one of the wealthiest Northumbrian Catholics, with estates in Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Durham, none of which was heavily mortgaged or encumbered with major debt, as so many northern Catholic estates were. Moreover, his estates at Stella and Winlaton (in the north-west Durham parish of Ryton) incorporated coal-bearing lands which were ripe for development. The shallow coal seams in Whickham and Gateshead, east of Ryton, were virtually worked out and, in order to satisfy the increasingly demanding London market, northern coal-owners were about to extend operations. Widdrington's estate in north-west Durham lay in the middle of the expanding coalfield and would undoubtedly yield substantial profits. As a result of his involvement in the, ‘Fifteen, however, Widdrington forfeited what was described by an acquisitive coal-owning competitor as this ‘very improvable estate’, and, of course, any future profits its coal-mines might earn. Widdrington was fortunate, even so, in having agents in Durham who were prepared to do all in their power to ensure that he did not lose everything. Albert Silvertop and Joseph Dunn, fellow-Catholics and experienced colliery managers (or ‘viewers’), rightly supposed that whoever took over the Stella estate would work quickly to exhaust its coal reserves before the property could be restored, for the entailed estate would revert to Widdrington's heir at his death. Silvertop and Dunn therefore embarked on a remarkable campaign to deprive the new ownership of the benefits the estate promised. The struggle that ensued was long, and often bloody; it became a trial of strength between the powerful coal magnates and independent entrepreneurs, but it also developed into a contest between Protestants and Catholics in which the Catholics were conspicuous for their aggression in defence of their property and reckless in their defiance of possible repercussions under the penal laws.