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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Of the forty-two clandestine Catholic schools Beales lists as documented in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, none has been more graphically described or frequently recalled than the Jesuit school at Stanley Grange near West Hallam in south-east Derbyshire. Unmasked by Government in 1625, it survived there for a further decade before its abrupt suppression in 1635.
A few deliberately but tantalizingly vague references show that the school continued to operate on a small scale elsewhere in Derbyshire, under the aegis of the fledgling Jesuit College of the Immaculate Conception (CIC). From that time, and particularly since the foundation of Mount St. Mary’s College at Spinkhill by the CIC in 1842, there has been speculation as to whither this precursor school moved and how it fared after Stanley Grange. The most recent contribution is a significant reassessment by Hendrik Dijkgraaf in 2003 of the anonymous but painstaking editorial article in the Mount St. Mary’s magazine The Mountaineer for 1912, written in rebuttal of a suggestion that the school had remained at Stanley Grange into the mid-1640s.
1 Beales, A. C. F., Education under Penalty, 1963, p. 205.Google Scholar
2 Dijkgraaf, H., A Jesuit Library at Holbeck 1679 [Libri Pertinentes 8]; The Mountaineer, July 1912, pp. 201–204.Google Scholar
3 The information summarised in this section is quoted by many authors, but is based mainly on the following: Dijkgraaf, op. cit.; Foley, H. SJ, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, ser. 3, 1875 Google Scholar; Beales, op. cit.; McCoog, T. SJ, English & Welsh Jesuits 1555–1650, 1994–5 [CRS 74, 75]Google Scholar. Many of the details from the Jesuit Annual Letters and deductions, e.g. as to the date of the plague which led the Simeons to leave London, are taken from Dijkgraaf, chapter 2.2.
4 Beales, op. cit., p. 211.
5 HMC 12th Report, Earl Cowper (Coke MSS ), Appendix 1, 1888: ‘At Stanley Grange, a house standing alone in Appletree Hundred… we found only two women in the house, who gave us to understand that the Grange House belonged to one Mrs Vause, a farmer thereof to Mrs Powtrell of West Hallam, dwelling within a quarter of a mile of the said Grange, both… being notorious recusants. Upon search of the said house we found so many rooms and chambers as I have never seen in so small a content of ground, and amongst other there was two chapels, one opening into the other, and in either of them a table set to the upper end for an altar, and stools and cushions laid as though they had lately been at mass. Over the altar there were crucifixes set, and other pictures about it. There were beds and furniture for them in that little house to lodge 40 or 50 persons at the least’. ‘Mrs Vause' was Hon. Anne Vaux of Harrowden; ‘Mrs Powtrell’, widow of John Powtrell, was the daughter of Edward Stanford of Perry Hall, Staffs., a well-established recusant family related to the Levesons of Willenhall. She held Stanley Grange as part of her jointure and so was able to lease it to Anne Vaux.
6 Meredith, R., ‘The Eyres of Hassop, 1470–1640’: DAJ 84/5 (1964/5)Google Scholar. The wedding was between Rowland Eyre of Hassop, later a Royalist colonel, and Anne, daughter of Sir Francis Smith of Ashby Folville, Leics. and Wootton Wawen, Warws.
7 The term ‘college of…’ in Jesuit parlance relates to the collectivity of members of the Order in a specified geographical district, and should not be confused with any educational establishment run by the Society therein.
8 This and para. following: Beales, op. cit., pp. 100–103, 209–213 quoting Cal. SP Dom. Chas. I, 214 no. 74, 219 no. 36.
9 e.g. Foley, ser. 3, pp. 310 seq. Staffordshire was at that time within the area of the Jesuit College of St. Aloysius.
10 An unpublished typescript of 1951 by R. Baines SJ, Rector of Mount St. Mary’s College 1936–1942, describes it thus: ‘It is now a cowshed, but it will be noticed that the line of the roof’s pitch has been altered in order to make the building broad enough for that purpose. The original building was very narrow. The approach to the first floor by an outside staircase was quite a common feature with schoolhouses (e.g. Giggleswick). The joists of the upper chamber’ (if original) confirm that ‘the chamber had a ceiling. The walls were constructed of regular courses of cut stone’. Quoted by kind permission of Fr. M. Beattie SJ.
11 ed. Kenny, A., Responsa scholarum of the English College, Rome part 2: 1622–1685, 1963 [CRS 55], pp. 490–491 Google Scholar. Simeon’s words gain credibility from their faithful reflection of the school’s ‘mission statement’ as recorded in the Annual Letter of 1634.
12 McCoog, op. cit., p. 306.
13 The Mountaineer, Christmas 1912, p. 247.
14 DRO, D1233 Z1/1.
15 Beales, op. cit., p. 210.
16 Kenny, , Responsa part 2, pp. 500–501.Google Scholar
17 The Mountaineer, Christmas 1912, p. 247; Dijkgraaf, op. cit., p. 58.
18 DRO Gell Collection, D258/68/1–3.
19 McCoog, op. cit., Foley, ser. 3; Harleian Soc. NS vol. 8, 1989: Visitation of Derbyshire 1662–1664, pp. 119–120, taken 1663; G. Anstruther, The seminary priests: a dictionary of the secular clergy of England and Wales, vols. 2 and 3, 1968; Bellenger, A., English and Welsh priests, 1558–1800: a working list, 1984 Google Scholar; SA, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments [WWM].
20 Dr.Doughty, M. A. M., ‘Spinkhill Past and Present’, Derbyshire Countryside, vol. 28/2, 1963 Google Scholar, states that: ‘… when the College was being extended in 1843, many graves were discovered. With Government permission the bones were reverently collected together. Their final resting-place is marked by a stone cross under a Weeping Ash. The bones were those of Roman Catholics who had been quietly buried there. When Samuel Pegge, the noted Derbyshire antiquary, visited Spinkhill in the eighteenth century he noted a large monument on the grave of John Pole. Inscribed in Latin it read “Here lies John Pole, armiger, of Spinkhill died 30 May 1724 AD aged 64; may he rest in peace“. No trace of this monument is left.’I am indebted to Vincent and Aileen Hopkinson for this reference.
21 Aveling, H. observes in Recusancy papers of the Meynell family, 1596–1676, 1964 Google Scholar [CRS 56] that the Meynells of North Kilvington, after involvement in the Northern Rising of 1569 and heavy compositions, kept out of the Civil War, but were active in the complex ‘Allertonshire’ network of recusant families. This is reflected in the marriages of the George Pole here referred to: his first wife was Mary Meynell, whom he married in 1613: in the same year her brother Anthony, the Meynell heir, married Mary Thwaites, whose sister Ursula became George Pole’s second wife. Another Thwaites married a sister of Anne Smith mentioned above.
22 Dijkgraaf, op. cit., p. 59, states that Park Hall was bought in 1610 by John and Francis, first and second sons of George Pole. This is a confusion. The early history of the estate is being explored at the time of writing within the Victoria County History and England’s Past for Everyone projects. However, in a nutshell, the tradition is that while the Poles inherited lands at Barlborough at some point as a consequence of a death in 1610, the Park Hall estate itself was bought by John Pole sometime during the reign of Charles I, viz. between 1625 and 1649. He would have been a child in 1610. It is possible that he bought at least part of the estate in or before 1629, as in that year he was assessed for the payment of £6/13/4d per annum composition for lands and tenements, although their location is given as Spinkhill rather than Barlborough. It is a matter for speculation as to what he could afford prior to the death of his father in 1635—the year in which the school at Stanley Grange was closed.
23 Dijkgraaf, op. cit., p. 59. Incidentally the Sir Geoffrey Pole whose mention in The Mountaineer as visiting the VEC in 1582 is echoed by Dijkgraaf was from a different, though related, branch of the Derbyshire Poles.
24 In addition to notes below, see DRO, D2835 Z/1/1 and 2, referring to the ‘capital messuage’ of the Spinkhill estate left in trust by John Pole, last of the senior male line, in declarations made in 1711 and 1718, and to its being in 1756 ‘in the possession or occupation of Joseph Blundell gent.’, viz. Joseph Blundell SJ, for which see Holt, T. G. SJ, ‘A College of Jesuits at Holbeck in Nottinghamshire’, RH vol. 19/4, 1989, pp. 486–489 Google Scholar. Holt relates that Blundell was living at ‘Spinkhill House’ from about 1730.
25 According to an old tradition Fr. Robert Persons SJ, and possibly St. Edmund Campion made a stay at Spinkhill: whether or not that is true, some evidence of priestly activity came to light during demolition of some outbuildings at the Hall in the mid-19th century when a small pewter chalice and paten were found immured, with a reprint of Campion’s Decem Rationes— McArdle, P. SJ, The story of Barlborough Hall, 1979.Google Scholar
26 In addition to the Foljambe houses mentioned in Hodgetts, M., ‘Campion in Staffordshire and Derbyshire 1581’, MCH 7, 1998.Google Scholar
27 Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1581–92 extracted by Dom H. Bowler OSB, ed. T. McCann 1986 [CRS 71]. Lands within several manors including Barlborough, sold by Lady Katherine Slake and her sister Troth Foljambe, later appear in an abstract of title of Francis Pole (Wolley MSS, Add. 6672).
28 ed. Kenny, A., Responsa scholarum of the English College, Rome part 1: 1622–1685, 1962 [CRS 54], pp. 295–296 Google Scholar: Henry Pole relates the anguish of his mother at his decision to seek the priesthood, and his uncle Gervase’s moral support.
29 McCoog, op. cit., pp. 268–269; Beales, op. cit., p. 210.
30 DRO Gell Collection, D258/38/2/10.
31 The details lie beyond the scope of this article, but the closest examples are the Rolleston, Babington and Gunpowder plots (Keyes was from nearby Staveley), and those involving the Markhams from the adjoining area of north Nottinghamshire; for much of the time the Talbots, under some pressure from central government, had led the forces of repression.
32 Dijkgraaf, op. cit., p. 57, esp. footnote 26.
33 Book of Recusants 1582–95, p. 352, 1961 [CRS 53].
34 Foley, ser. 3, p. 312.
35 In 1636 the Meynells had no resident priest at Kilvington—Aveling, op. cit., pp. xxiii/xxiv.
36 Aveling, op. cit., p. 5, pp. 73–76.
37 Aveling, op. cit., p. 9.
38 e.g. Burke, J., A Genealogical & Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain…, 1, 1838 pp. 403–4Google Scholar.
39 See note 5 above.
40 Kenny, , Responsa part 2, pp. 544–545.Google Scholar
41 Ibidem, pp. 541, 555, 566–567.
42 Holt, T. G., St. Omer’s and Bruges Colleges: a biographical dictionary, 1979 [CRS 69]Google Scholar.
43 Foley. ser. 3, quoting SP Dom. Eliz., 272/79, 1599, names the Dunston priest ‘Hyacre’— this is here corrected (as in Horn: see below) to Lynacre. Linacre is a not uncommon name locally—was this one a pre-Elizabethan priest? Though the term ‘esq.’ would have been more appropriately used of George Pole of Spinkhill than of his uncle George, Margaret Chaworth’s husband, it is tempting to speculate that the ‘George Poole esq.’ recorded in the Eckington parish register [DRO D750 PI 1/1] as a churchwarden in 1622 was indeed Margaret’s husband, and the ‘John Poole’ so recorded the following year, her son, who bought Park Hall. The only other Pole reference found in the register between 1610 and 1650 is the baptism of George and Margaret’s daughter Anne in 1611.
44 Glover, S., History of the county of Derby, part 2, 1829 Google Scholar; Craven, M. and Stanley, M., The Derbyshire Country House, vol. 2, 1984 Google Scholar. According to a current Barlborough Parish Council leaflet the year 1610 appears over one of the porticos (see Millennium Walk 2 at website http://www.barlboroughparishcouncil.gov.uk/index_2_43.htm). Park Hall has, over the centuries, undergone numerous changes of tenancy and use. In 1839 it was in the occupation of Lord Byron (DRO D2360/3/133); H. Horn SJ, in an unpublished late C19 or early C20 Early History of Spinkhill, described it as ‘now dilapidated’ (1 am indebted to Vincent and Aileen Hopkinson for this reference). Park Hall is currently in private ownership.
45 Dr. D. G. Edwards has kindly drawn to my attention the Introduction to his edition of Derbyshire Hearth Tax Assessments 1662–70 [DRS 1982], in which he states ‘… there are cases in which individual houses expected to be entered for a particular place appear in the lists under a neighbouring place. One example appears to be Park Hall in Barlborough, the home of the Pole family. In the 1670 assessment there is nobody of this name under Barlborough; instead, we find under Eckington both ‘Mrs Poole’ with ten hearths and ‘Mr Frances Poole’ with seven. It seems therefore that Park Hall was taken in with Spinkhill, which was in the parish and constablewick of Eckington. Francis Pole of Park Hall died in 1679 and his probate inventory [LRO, B/C/11, Francis Pole 1679: total value of inventory £459/6/4] mentions Nether Hall at Spinkhill…’ Craven and Stanley, op. cit., comments in regard to Park Hall that seven hearths seem ‘remarkably few… for a house of three full storeys with attics’.
46 LRO B/C/11, probate of German Pole 1687. The total value of the personal estate including net liquid assets covered by the inventory was £1314, nearly thrice that of his father Francis [see preceding note]—assets gained through marriage and/or inherited from childless uncles no doubt having contributed to this.
47 LRO B/C/11, probate of Gervase Pole 1666. The total value of the inventory was £416/ 10/-.
48 McCoog, op. cit., pp. 26–28; Foley, ser. 3, p. 315.
49 Beales, op. cit., p. 167.
50 Beales, op. cit., pp. 107–108.
51 Holt, , ‘A College of Jesuits…’, p. 484 Google Scholar; Dijkgraaf, op. cit., ch. 2.3.
52 Dijkgraaf, op. cit., pp. 60–61 note 42.
53 DRO D1867 Z/Z1. I am indebted to Vincent and Aileen Hopkinson for bringing this item to my attention and for some of the information in the next note.
54 Ibidem: the notebook includes various references to the Poles, of which one of 1661 shows him receiving payments due on bond from Francis Pole; for some time after that Marshall appears to have been involved in building work—it seems reasonable to surmise that this was the rebuilding of Park Hall referred to above. Other entries suggest that Marshall had some knowledge of or interest in apothecaryship, and his son John became a surgeon at Killamarsh who was regularly presented as a recusant from 1694 to 1732; he appears in Cosin’s List as ‘surgeon of Spinkhill’ with property valued at £18. His will of 1749 left 24s. to the poor of Killamarsh, ‘as well papists as protestants’.
55 Beales, op. cit., pp. 272–3; Williams, J. A., Catholic Recusancy in Wiltshire 1660–1791, 1968 Google Scholar [CRS Monograph 1].
56 S. O. Addy, ‘A List of the Vills and Freeholders of Derbyshire 1633’, DAJ vol. 6, 1884. A copy may be seen online at http://www.roulstone.net/records/derbyfree1633.html
57 The Hewitts of Shireoaks were themselves cousins of the Rodes family of Barlborough, of whom Francis, a functionary of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, built the imposing Barlborough Hall in 1583. As a Justice of the Common Pleas, those condemned to death by Francis Rodes included St. Margaret Clitherow and Mary Queen of Scots. In 1641 his grandson Francis Rodes was made baronet. Kin or not, a ‘blind eye’ would be the most that local recusants could hope for from such a family, whose proximity would be one factor in the need for maintaining discretion. The Hall, which in 1670 had 21 hearths, is barely a mile from Park Hall. By a quirk of fate, it has since 1938 housed the preparatory school for Mount St. Mary’s College.
58 LRO B/C/11, probate of John Hewitt 1666. The total value of the inventory, taken by Mr Francis Pole and others, was a little over £405. Only four years later a John Hewitt of Beightonfields, possibly the nephew just mentioned, left very modest assets including school books, and some £40 in the hands of a trustee. It reads not unlike the will of a priest or postulant, though he is not listed in the usual compilations, and his age is not stated—LRO B/C/11, probate of John Hewitt 1670—total value of the inventory a little under £60.
59 The steady rise of the Bowden family is of interest. The 1705–6 Papist Returns refer to ‘Mr Boden of Barlborough, yeoman’ as a widower of small estate worth about £16 pa; in 1717 Henry Bowden registered his estate at something over £36 pa ( Clark, R., The Derbyshire Papist Returns of 1705–6, 1983)Google Scholar. A few generations later, the family having acquired also Southgate House some four miles to the east, made successive marriages into the Erdeswick and Ferrers families, which in turn heralded alliances (as Butler-Bowdons) with the Throckmortons, Blounts and Arundells.
60 Harl. Soc. vol. 94, Yorkshire Pedigrees, 1942.
61 Documents concerning the Northern Commission 1627–42, ed. C. Talbot and H. Aveling, 1961 [CRS 53].
62 SA, WWM, Strafford Correspondence, 12(b)/78.
63 The Remembrances of Arthur Mower of Woodseats 1558–1610, transcr. R. Lockie, 1992: available online at http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DBY/
64 e.g. ERY DDRI/35/43, 1635 lists among the parties (1) Thomas Mychelborne, Carleton [Carlton], esq.; (2) Edmund Eltofts, Brampton, Derbyshire, gentleman, wife Dorothy (sister of Thomas Mychelborne)—this seems clear enough even though Edmund’s wife’s Christian name here differs from that in the pedigree mentioned above. Quoted from Access to Archives website http://www.a2a.org.uk/search/records.asp?cat = 047- ddri&cid = 43–4
65 This would be curiously reminiscent of the incident reported by the informer Barnard to Walsingham in 1577: ‘I biyinge at the olde lady Foljambes at Tupton in darbyshyre there was ij priestes and biynge desyrous to seeke some meanes to have taken them I wente to Chasterfeld markette and fy[n]dyng these Gascoyne and Tanyar both pursyvauntes to whom I thought to have comytted this case, but I was told that the same weeke they hadd bene with Mr Barlowe, and Mr Eare of whom they had Recevyde xls’—SP Eliz. 1/175, 110 quoted in Book of Recusants 1582–95 [CRS 53].
66 Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1581–92 [CRS 71]; Foley, H. SJ, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. 3, 1878 p. 746.Google Scholar
67 Foley, H. SJ, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. 7 (Collectanea), 1882 p. 396.Google Scholar
68 In 1735 the vicar of Tickhill near Doncaster in the West Riding reported that ‘we have no Popish Priest, or any to be Suspected such that dwells in the parish, but one Blandall Comes from Spinkhill in Derbyshire. This Blandall comes once a Month as I (am) inform’d to Mr Francis Gill’s house to perform mass…—’Archbishop Blackburn’s Visitation Returns of the diocese of York, 1735’, 1932 [CRS 32]. ‘One Blandall’ was Joseph Blundell SJ, of the Blundells of Crosby: see earlier note. The suggestion about Francis Jackson SJ (about whose work in Yorkshire McCoog, op. cit. and Foley, ser. 3, p. 183 have no details) is at present highly speculative, despite the suggestiveness of two male surnames being referred to over a period as sharing one house. A quite different possibility is hinted at in that in 1632 a Thomas Ellottes—Eltofts? and a John Jackson witnessed the bargain and sale of a substantial parcel of land in Spital called The Horse Croft to John Rolleston of Welbeck in Nottinghamshire; by 1648 the holding was apparently in the tenure of a Richard Jackson, gent., ‘of Chesterfield’ and his wife Margery, with a covenant reserved to Anthony Eyre, a member of the Rampton, Nottinghamshire branch of the Eyres— Hall, T. W., Descriptive Catalogue of… Deeds forming part of the Wheat Collection…, Sheffield, 1920, pp. 168, 178 Google Scholar. Indeed a Thomas Jackson, gent. of Knayton, barely a mile from North Kilvington, was active in assisting the Meynells as ‘Catholic conveyancer’ (Aveling, op. cit., passim). Doubtless there are other possibilities: again, further jigsaw puzzle pieces are needed.
69 Cox, J. C., Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals vol. 1, 1890 pp. 287–290 Google Scholar (the originals appear to be missing).
70 Simpson, R., Edmund Campion: a biography, new edn. 1896, p. 264.Google Scholar
71 e.g. Hodgetts, op. cit.
72 Meredith, op. cit., quoting MS Lansdowne 30 no. 78; R. Simpson, op. cit.; and the administration granted to Robert’s mother Alice, sister of Bishop Robert Pursglove of Hull, on 16 April 1599—LRO B/C/10/1/9 fol. 251.
73 See also Recusant Roll No. 1 (1592–93): Exchequer… Pipe Office series, 1916 [CRS 18].
74 Cal. M. Walton, Chesterfield Parish Church Register 1558–1600.
75 e.g. Ushaw College, Eyre MSS, D 489/Z.
76 Book of Recusants 1582–95 p. 352, 1961 [CRS 53].
77 It was this Thomas’s grandson, the lawyer Vincent Eyre (d. 1761) who was to play an heroic part in rescuing Spinkhill for the CIC when the trusts mentioned above failed—see Holt, ‘A College of Jesuits…’, pp. 489–490 and DRO D2835 Z/1—and the property had to be repurchased from the Morphy heirs-at-law: see also Wolley MSS, Add. 6670 f. 232–233, 6675 ff.394d–395. Baines, op. cit., concluded that ‘Vincent Eyre’s forecast that, in spite of all, the Society would enjoy possession continuously of Spinkhill has been fulfilled…it was saved, it would seem certain, thro’ Eyre’s determination that it should be. He was the ‘man on the spot’ to whose opinion all finally agreed’.
78 For the Hunlokes and their alliances see Edwards, D. G., The Hunlokes of Wingerworth Hall, 2nd edition 1976.Google Scholar
79 See note 4 above.
80 For an illustration of a single (though not normally at that time a Jesuit) missioner covering the Hunloke estates at both Wingerworth and West Hallam, see Turner, R. H., ‘The 1737–1755 Register of the Mission at Wingerworth, Derbyshire’, MCH vol. 10, 2004.Google Scholar
81 See for example Walsham, A., Church Papists—Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England, 1993 Google Scholar; M. B. Rowlands et al., Catholics of Parish and Town 1558–1778, 1999 [CRS Monograph 5]; Questier, M. C., Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
82 See T. Brighton’s article on Sir John Gell in DNB.