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The Last of The Shireburnes: The Art of Death and Life in Recusant Lancashire, 1660–1754

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

John Callow
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Extract

When J. M. Turner came to make his sketches of Stonyhurst Hall and the neighbouring church at Great Mitton, for the first time in 1799, he was immediately struck by the melancholia and faded splendour of that part of ‘darkest’ rural Lancashire. Perched high upon the brow of Longridge, the mansion commanded sweeping views of the valley beneath, of Pendle Hill and of the distant market town of Clitheroe; while the thirteenth century church of All Hallows—almost lost in the folds of the countryside—sat squatly on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, at the confluence of the Rivers Calder, Ribble and Hodder, and served as a stubborn reminder of an earlier and less secular age. Relatively untouched by the forces of industrialisation, these buildings proved a delight to the Gothic imagination of the young artist.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 589 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2003

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References

1 Bullard, F., A catalogue of the engraved plates for picturesque views in England and Wales (Boston 1910), p. 76 Google Scholar; Gerard, J., Stonyhurst College, (London New York & Sydney, 1894)Google ScholarPubMed, frontispiece; Gruggen, G. & Keating, J., Stonyhurst. Its past history and life in the present, (London, 1901), pp. 56–7Google Scholar; Hewitson, A., Stonyhurst College, Present and Past (Preston, 1878), pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

2 Gaskell, Mrs. (Stevenson, E. C.), ‘The Poor Clare’ in The Manchester Marriage, (Gloucester, 1985), p. 178.Google Scholar

3 Lancashire Record Office, Preston, PR3031/1/1–4, Great Mitton Registers, 1700–39, Burials: 15 June 1702. Arundel Castle Archive, T 70-T 71.

Sherborn, C. D., A History of the Family of Sherborn, (London, 1901), pp. 48–52.Google Scholar

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4 Aveling, H., ‘The Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1558–1790’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Vol. X, Part vi (Sept. 1963), p. 261 Google Scholar; G. Brenan, & E. P. Statham, , The House of Howard, 2 vols. (London, 1907)Google Scholar; Miller, J., Popery and Politics in England, 1660–1688, (Cambridge, 173), p. 13 Google Scholar; Walton, J. K., Lancashire: A Social History, 1558–1939, (Manchester, 1987), pp. 36–59, 84–102.Google Scholar

5 Lancashire Record Office, Preston, DDSt, Box 1, items 9–11, 17–18, 27 & 34–36; Box 8, item 11; Box 50, items 31–32; Box 78.

DDSt, Box 101, item 29. Looking out over old clay pits, and with a medieval wayside cross positioned outside its walls, Shireburne House lay close to Deepdale Road. It has since vanished beneath Victorian and contemporary developments, but it was positioned some 400 feet from the present grandstands of Preston North End’s football ground.

See also: Farrer, W. & Brownbill, J. (eds), The Victoria History of the County of Lancashire, Vol. VII (London, 1912), p. 7.Google Scholar

6 DDSt, MS filed simply as ‘Account book of Catherine [sic] Shireburne’ in March 2000—before the subsequent reorganization of the archive—including: ‘An Inventary [sic] taken the 12th day of December … 1705 … Of all the Household Goods Belonging to Sir Nicholas Shireburne’, fols. 193, 195–97, 199, 201, 203.

Un-catalogued abstract, by Fr. F. J. Turner S.J., of ‘An Inventory Taken on the 4th day of Aprill [sic] 1713 Of all the House-hold goods belonging to Sir Nicholas Shireburn’, pp. 1 & 3.

Sherborn, C. D., A History of the Family of Sherborn, 2 vols. of unpublished typescripts (London, 1901, revised 1918), Vol. II, p. 50.Google Scholar

7 Sir Nicholas, like his father before him—though somewhat more happily—was educated at the Jesuit College at Douai from 1674–6, appearing first as a ‘Grammarian’ and subsequently as a ‘Poet’ in the records.

Harris, P. R. (ed), Douai College Documents, 1639–1794 (St. Albans, 1972), pp. 50, 54, 60, 62–3Google Scholar See also: Muir, T. E., Stonyhurst College, 1593–1993, (London, 1992)Google Scholar, plates section in-between pp. 48–49; Skeat, F., ‘The Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part I, The Stonyhurst Magazine, no.257 (June, 1925), p. 74.Google Scholar

8 Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850, (London, 1975), pp. 122, 142.Google Scholar

Miller, Popery and Politics, pp. 13–14, 193.

Lancashire Records Office, reston, PR3031. 3/4.

9 It is deeply ironic for a family famed for its devotion to Roman Catholicism, that its fortune was originally founded upon service to a Protestant monarch and profits from the dissolution of the monasteries.

CSPD, (1591–4), p. 159; CSPD (1619–23), pp. 239, 362.

See also: Bossy, English Catholic Community, p. 139; Muir, Stonyhurst College, pp. 48–49; Turner, A. R., ‘Sir Richard Sherburne, knighte deceased’, The Stonyhurst Magazine, no.449 (Spring, 1972), pp. 278–822.Google Scholar

10 Turner, ‘Sir Richard Sherburne’, p. 280; Gerard, J., A Centenary Record. Stonyhurst College: Its Life beyond the Seas, 1592–1794, and on English Soil, 1794–1894, (Belfast, London, New York & Sydney, 1894), pp. 60–67 Google Scholar; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report: Appendix IV. The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon, (London, 1894), pp. 38–39.

11 Green, A. E. (ed), Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1642–56, (Nendeln, 1967), Vol. III, p. 1362.Google Scholar

Harris (ed), Douai College Documents, pp. 4 & 6.

The effigy of Sir Richard, clad in the costume of the late- 1690s—as opposed to that of the early 1660s—was erected as one of the series of monuments in Great Mitton Church. After a long recitation of his noble pedigree, the inscription concluded that: ‘He was an Eminent Sufferer for his Loyal Fidelity to King Charles I. Of ever Blessed Memory’.

12 DDSt, ‘Inventary [sic] … 12th day of December …1705’, op.cit., fol. 202.

See also: Aveling, , ‘Recusants of the West Riding’ p. 235; HMC, 14th Report: Appendix IV, p. 109 Google Scholar; Muir, , Stonyhurst College, p. 51; & Stonyhurst College, MS E.2/4/4 no.6.Google Scholar

13 HMC, 14th Report: Appendix IV, p. 109.

14 DDSt Box 27 passim & Box 115, item 10.

15 DDSt Box 95, item 3. See also: Croston, J. (ed), The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Vol. IV (London, 1891), p. 89 Google Scholar, though the date, here, is wrongly given.

16 Bickley, F. & Cantwell, J. D. (eds), CSPD James II, Vol. II June 1687-Feb. 1689 (London, 1972), pp. 220 & 277.Google Scholar

17 Chadwick, H., ‘Richard Shireburn and his charities’, Stonyhurst Magazine, no.362 (Oct. 1946), p. 286.Google Scholar

18 DDSt Box 94, item 2.

DDSt. 5, ‘Mr. Kemp’s Disbursements from the 1st Jan. 1712–1713 to the 25th March 1713–14, being a yeare and 3 months’, fols. 1–2.

See also: Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England. Lancashire: Vol. II, The Rural North, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969), p. 239.Google Scholar

19 Beamont, W. (ed), The Jacobite Trials at Manchester in 1694, (Manchester, 1853), pp. 16, 30, 37Google Scholar. HMC, 14th Report: Appendix IV, pp. 293 & 302.

20 HMC, 14th Report: Appendix IV, pp. 313–14.

Lancashire Record Office, Preston, PR 3031/1/1–4: Mitton Registers 1655–1699, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials. Richard’s date of death is recorded here as being 8th August 1689. This date is at odds with that given in the inscription upon his tomb. This is given as 16th August, but the dates given on all of the Shireburne tombs are unreliable, with little attention paid by the masons to the texts provided by the family. Squire Richard was buried at Great Mitton after the 25th August, but before 1st September 1689. The exact date, though entered, is now lost in the very worn register. Fortunately, Fr. Gerard had examined the parish registers in the early 1890s and copied the date of burial as being 27th August 1689.

See: Gerard, Centenary Record, p. 67.

21 PR 3031/1/1–4: Mitton Registers 1655–1699. The younger Richard, described as being ‘of Stonyhurst, Esq.’, died on 6 April 1690 and was buried at Great Mitton on 15 April 1690.

22 Beamont, Jacobite Trials, p. 3.

23 Ibidem, p. 7.

24 Payne, J. O. (ed), Records of the English Catholics of 1715 (London, 1889), p. 95.Google Scholar

25 Ibidem, p. 106.

26 Hardy, W. J. (ed), CSPD, William III, 1693 (London, 1903), p. 327)Google Scholar; Hardy, W. J., CSPD, William III, July 1-Dec. 31, 1695 (London, 1908), p. 77.Google Scholar

27 Lofthouse, J., Lancashire’s Old Families, (London, 1972), p. 153 Google Scholar; & Skeet, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’ Part I pp. 73–74.

28 DDSt, ‘Account book of Catherine [sic] Shireburne’, fols. 3–4, 6, 8–10, 12, 15, 18–19, 21.

DDSt. 5, ‘Mr. Kemp’s Disbursements’, fols. 1–2.

29 Isabella’s daughter-in-law, Ann Shireburne (nee Cansfield), was not accorded an effigy of her own, even though she died before the monuments were finally finished and set in place. She was merely recalled in the inscription upon her husband’s tomb. The incongruous depiction of the Shireburne family group certainly excited the interest of antiquarians, though they were often incorrectly described.

See: the tombs at Great Mitton Church; Gerard, Centenary Record, p. 68 fn.; & Gough, R., Sepulchural Monuments in Great Britain, (London, 1796), Vol. II Part I p. cvii.Google Scholar

30 DDSt Box 97, item 4.

31 DDSt, Box 94, item 1.

Gerard, Centenary Record, pp. 70–75.

32 Gruggen & Keating, Stonyhurst, pp. 56–57; Lofthouse, Lancashire’d Old Families, p. 152; & Pevsner, Buildings of England. Lancashire: Vol. II, pp. 20, 22, 22fn, 239–40, 242.

33 Sherborn, Family of Sherborn, unpublished typescript, Vol. II p. 51.

DDSt, Box 101, item 35.

34 PR 3031/1/1–4, Great Mitton Registers, 1700–1739. The burial register records only that on 15 June 1702, ‘Richard the son of Sir Nicholas Shireburne of Stonyhurst’ was buried. His tomb, on the west wall of the Shireburne Chapel, was sculpted by one of William Stanton’s sons.

For a discussion of the legends surrounding his death, see: Entwistle, J. A., ‘A brief history of All Hallows’ Church, Mitton, Lancashire’, (no place, 1979), p. vi Google Scholar; Gerard, Centenary Record, p. 76; Hewitson, Stonyhurst College, p. 162; Muir, Stonyhurst College, pp. 73–74; & Skeet, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part 1 p. 72.

Sir Nicholas recorded only his grief and affection in a note for an inscription for his child’s tomb, which was later pruned to exclude his affectionate phrasing, and that ‘God’s Almighty Holy Will be done’ beside an accounts entry for the sum of £237 12s. Id. for the burial. See: DDSt, Box 101, item 35; and Skeet Ibidem.

The tomb itself is Italianate in both conception and execution, combining all of the essential elements of the traditional Roman wall-tomb—such as a portrait, the presence of angels, a skeleton and an inscription—with a strong narrative theme, relating to the life and death of its owner. See: Weston-Lewis, A. (ed), Effigies and Ecstasies. Roman Baroque Sculpture and Design in the Age of Bernini, (Over Wallop, 1998), p. 157.Google Scholar

35 Gerard, Centenary Record, pp. 74, 76; Hewitson, Stonyhurst College, pp. 8, 162; Lofthouse, Lancashire’s Old Families, p. 152.

36 DDSt, Box 94, item 1; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk”, Part I p. 74.

37 G., P., ‘Apropos of an Account Book’, Stonyhurst Magazine, no.368 (April, 1948), pp. 126–127 Google Scholar; Muir, Stonyhurst College, p. 50; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part I p. 74; Stonyhurst College Archive, MS E.2/4/4 no.3.

38 DDSt Box 1, items 9–11, 17–18, 21; Box 94, item 2; Box 95, items 2, 4.

DDSt. 5., ‘Mr. Kemp’s Disbursements’ op.cit. fols.1, 7 & 9.

Stonyhurst College, E.2/4/4 no.3, b.

Gerard, Centenary Record, pp. 81–83; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part I p. 74.

39 Funerary monument to Sir Nicholas Shireburne, Great Mitton Church, Lancashire.

See also: Berry, A. J., The Story of Lancashire, (London, no date, c.1890–1900), pp. 240–41.Google Scholar

40 Ibidem.

41 DDSt. 5, ‘Mr. Kemp’s Disbursements’, fol.l.

Gerard, Centenary Record, p. 82 fn.3.

42 DDSt. 5, ‘Mr. Kemp’s Disbursements’, fol.l.

43 Chadwick, ‘Richard Shireburn and his charities’, p. 286.

44 Muir, Stonyhurst College, p. 51.

45 The building was moved, stone-by-stone, to its present position on the High Street at Hurst Green, from 1945–48. It had lain unoccupied since 1910, on account of its insanitary position next to a pool of copper sulphate.

DDSt Box 95, item 29.

46 Ibidem.

47 DDSt, ‘An Inventary [sic] … 12th day of December … 1705’, fols.196, 198.

48 Monod, P. K., Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788, (Cambridge, 1993), p. 313.Google Scholar

49 Payne, English Catholics of 1715, op. cit., pp. 145–47.

50 Ibidem, p. 144.

Writing shortly afterwards, Daniel Defoe commented upon the impact of the ‘late bloody Action with the Northern Rebels’ upon the mindset of the local gentry families: ‘not that the Battle hurt many of the immediate Inhabitants, but so many Families there and thereabout, have been touched by the Consequences of it, that it will not be recovered in a few Years, and they seem still to have a kind of remembrance of Things upon them still’. Defoe, D., A Tour Thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain, ed. Cole, G.D.H. (London, 1927) Vol. II, p. 678.Google Scholar

51 Payne, English Catholics of 1715, op. cit., p. 86.

52 Ibidem, pp. 146–47.

53 Gerard, Centenary Record, pp. 77–78; Payne, English Catholics of 1715, op. cit., p. xii.

54 Payne, English Catholics of 1715, op. cit., p. 152.

55 Ibidem, p. 152.

56 Ibidem, pp. 86–87.

57 Ibidem, pp. 145–47.

58 Hardwick, C., History of the Borough of Preston, (Preston, 1857), p. 219.Google Scholar

59 Brenan, & Statham, , House of Howard, Vol. II, pp. 499, 616Google Scholar; Farrer, & Brownbill, (eds), Victoria History of the County of Lancashire, Vol. VII, p. 7 Google Scholar; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part II p. 119. See also: Callow, J., ‘Mary Shireburne, eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, New DNB, (forthcoming 2003).Google Scholar

60 See: British Library, Add. MS. 28252, ff.96–97.

61 Brenan, & Statham, , House of Howard, Vol. II pp. 616–17, 619Google Scholar; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part II pp. 118–19.

62 It is notable that, with her last sickness pressing upon her, Lady Katherine Shireburne chose to make a new—verbal—will on 16 January 1727–8, in which she left ‘to Gilbert Talbot, of Cork Street, in the p[arish] of St. James, my whole personal estate, and declare him my executor’. Her daughter, it would seem, was excluded from this final settlement.

See: Payne, English Catholics of 1715, op. cit., p. 26.

63 Callow, ‘Mary Shireburne, eighth Duchess of Norfolk’; Skeat, ‘Eighth Duchess of Norfolk’, Part II pp. 11–92 Part III, pp. 17–37.

64 Though they were accorded pride of place within the side chapel, flanking the altar on the east wall, the monuments to the last of the dynasty—Sir Nicholas, Lady Katherine, Peregrine Widdrington and the Duchess Mary—are not only architecturally distinct and modest in their composition, but are also physically removed from the earlier family groupings. Indeed, there is nothing to alert the casual observer to the connection between Widdrington and the dowager duchess of Norfolk, and very little to link explicitly the duchess with the rest of the Shireburne dynasty.

65 Hewitson, Stonyhurst College, p. 9.