was settled (with the forced consent of prince Edward) upon the earl of Leicester and his heirs. But fortune soon cancelled this deed; for he was slain the same year by prince Edward, at the battle of Evesham, and all his lands and estates being forfeited, this manor and castle were given by the king to his younger son Edmund, whom he made earl of Lancaster, and gave him all the vast possessions of Simon Montfort, and Nicholas lord Segrave, who had been a partaker with Montfort, in his rebellious actings; all which estates king Edward I. his brother, confirmed to him. His earldom, and his great estate, he left to his eldest son Thomas, who having married Alice, the sole daughter and heir of Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, endowed in the church, at the time of his marriage with her, with this castle and borough, and all the other hamlets belonging to them. This same earl of Lancaster, by the instigation of Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, (who had married the daughter of the king, widow of the earl of Holland,) complaining of the arbitrary proceedings of the Despencers, the king's favourites, drew together many of the nobility, and took arms, under a pretence of reforming what was amiss in the government; but chiefly to oblige the king to remove the Spencers from his councils and person, which they commissioned certain bishops↑ to request he would do. This fighting reformer, like all other reformers, * The occasion of this confederacy against the Spencers was this: William de Berews a baron, proposing to sell part of his estate, called Gowerland, first agreed for it with the earl of Hereford above named, who offered to be the purchaser; but Hugh Spencer, Junior, obtained the king's licence, it being holden of the king in capite, and bought it out of the earl of Hereford's hands; who, being highly provoked at this affront, complained to the earl of Lancaster, and they two engaging a great number of barons into their interests, entered into a confederacy against the Spencers. Walsingham's Historia Brevis, 115. London, Salisbury, Ely, Hereford, and Chichester, who were to come to the confederate barons at St. Albans, to procure accommodation. Walsing ham, Hist. Brev. p. 114. reformers, who take the sword for their own aggrandizement, rather than for the good of the cause which they hypocritically support, was fearfully wroth against the monarch who refused to listen to his menacing message by the bishops; accordingly he marched to London ;* and by the queen's and bishop's advice, the king was induced to promise to grant his request, and the favourites underwent a temporary banishment. But this, it seems, was done only to get a little time, in which an army might be raised to reduce him to submission. The king having easily raised an army, by assuring his subjects, that it was not against them that be marched, but merely to punish the insolence of an individual, made considerable progress, not only against the ostensible object of his attack, but also against many others of the confederate barons. The two Spencers were recalled, and the army put under their command; by which they had soon an opportunity of displaying not their courage so much as their revenge. Many of the barons forsook the standard of the earl of Lancaster; and he was soon so weakened, as to be compelled to withdraw into Yorkshire, where he was ultimately taken at Burrow-bridge. In his retreat, he took the most destructive methods to retard the march of the royal forces. He destroyed the country behind him; but was obliged at length to halt, after passing the Trent over Burton-bridge, in order to oppose the passage of the army, which pursued him across this county, with great rapidity. The battle that ruined him was fought near Burrowbridge, on the sixteenth of March 1322.+ Lancaster, being made prisoner, was attainted of treason; and, being sentenced to death, by a small number of peers, among whom were the two Spencers; and in the presence of the king, who assembled for the purpose in the hall of Pontefract castle, he was beY y y 3 headed * Vid. Act. Pub. III. 478, et seq. Walsingham, Knighton. + Knighton. De la Moor, p. 596. Rymer's Fed. Vol. III. p. 490, et seq. headed on a hill near the town.* Being thus attainted, his estate was confiscated; but upon the deposal of the king, which took place soon afterwards, his attainder was reversed, and his estate restored to his brother and heir Henry, whose son Henry died possessed of this manor and castle, leaving his estate to his two daughters and heirs, Margaret and Blanch, which last proved his sole heir, her sister dying without issue. She was married to John of Gaunt, the celebrated duke of Lancaster. King Henry the fourth was her son, and the heir of her estates, of which this manor was a part, and came to her upon the death of her sister, to whom it fell in the partition. It does not appear who built the castle from which the town takes its name; but whoever built it, it is now almost wholly lost; but very few fragments of it remaining. The town itself was formerly more populous, or more religious : having once had four churches,† but the barons' wars reduced them to one. The Dissenters are here numerous, particularly the Wesleyan Methodists. Dr. Plot mentions an instance of a stone having been found in a place called Gallows Field, near the town, being the place where malefactors were formerly hung, in which stone was an entire skull of a man, with the teeth, &c. in it. Of this fact, an alderman of Newcastle assured the doctor, that he had such an one long in his possession. This curious circumstance Plot endeavours to account for by saying, that it is probable, that the place, when it was used for executions, was nothing else but a sandy land, in which they used to bury the bodies of the persons executed, which, in process of time, turned into stone, about the head of a man, inclosed it in it. . His sentence was to be hung, drawn, and quartered; but the king, out of respect to his birth, saved him the infamy of that punishment. Evesham, Chron. Magna Brit. Vol. V. p. 65. it. This is not at all unlikely; it being well known that sands have been observed to petrify. This same writer also, in mentioning several instances of men of extraordinary strength living in this county, adduces one in Godfrey Witrings, a butcher of this town, whom he saw take up a form six feet and ten inches long, and fifty-six pounds in weight, by one end in his teeth, and, holding both his hands behind him, lifted up the other end the whole height of the room, striking it thrice against the floor of the chamber over it; which the doctor says, by computation according to the centre of gravity, will prove that he lifted up, with his teeth, about one hundred and sixty-eight pounds weight.* But what in this way, perhaps, confers greater notoriety, if not even greater honour on the town of Newcastle, than its men with strong necks and firmly set teeth, is the circumstance of its having given birth to Major-general Thomas Harrison, and to the celebrated John Goodwin, two of the infamous but extraordinary Cromwell's admirers; the one aidY y y 4 ing "R. W. saw a negro, in the year 1717, lift 224lbs. with his teeth, from the ground, and stood upright with them. They were four weights with rings." MS. note in the margin of p. 65, of Vol. V. Magna Brit. in Dr. Williams's library, Red Cross Street. We knew a person some twenty years ago, at Chawbent, near Bolton in Lancashire, named Osbaldeston, who could easily lift much greater weights than these in a similar manner; but these may, perhaps, yield in point of wonder, to the extraordinary strength, or rather hardness of bone, in the head of a person of the name of Nightingale, a dyer, (no way related to the writer of this,) at Macclesfield, we believe now living, who can readily break through a strong house door, or the slab of a stone or marble chimneypiece, by suddenly running against it bead foremost. Of this man's extraordinary exploits in this way, the whole town of Macclesfield can bear ample testimony. He is rather a low man in stature; and otherwise does not appear to possess any extraordinary strength. Had Plot met with such a person, he would have assigned him a dignified niche, in his catalogue of natufal wonders, with which his History of Staffordshire but too much abounds 7 ing the usurper's regicide purposes with his sword, and the other with his pen. * These Major-generals, as the usurper called them, were, according to some, only eleven in number; according to others twelve; but Bates says, the districts over which Cromwell appointed these Major-generals were fourteen. These officers were to keep a strict and vigilant eye over the jarring parties of the Presbyterians, the Independents, and cavaliers, as the loyalists were called; but particularly to watch the proceedings, and curb the factious spirit, of the rigid republicans, whom Cromwell had the greatest reason to dread and suspect. The Major-generals had almost absolute power; and they exercised it, as might naturally be expected from the nature of their characters, and the upstart innovations of their master, of whose turbulent spirit they largely partook. So tyrannical did they at length become, that, to prevent worse consequences to himself, Cromwell was compelled to reduce their authority within much narrower bounds. Before this reduction of their power, they could commit to prison all suspected persons; and they chose to suspect, whoever they disliked, (viz.) all moderate, loyal, good, men: they moreover levied money, sequestered those who refused to pay; had power to enlist horse and foot upon any occasion they might think proper to make, or any emergency they might themselves create. From their decisions no appeal lay, but to their regicide master himself, Of this honourable fraternity was Harrison, the son of an attorney of this town. Not having any relish for his profes sion, he enlisted into the Parliament's army; and, being a person of great volubility of tongue, he soon insinuated himself into the favourable opinion of the army, and became Cromwell's confidant. The Protector knew how to make use of such a person * Whitelock's Memorials of English Affairs, &c. p. 634. |