Act 12
Arrival in the Old Bruce lands around
Skelton Castle
The story of the family’s arrival in
Cleveland. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century families of Kirkleatham,
Skelton, Moorsholm and Liverton
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This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong.
However it does provide an introduction to the themes of this page, which are
dealt with in more depth below. |
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The
Farndale footprint
It’s time
for a recap.
The
emigrants from Farndale of
the early fourteenth century had moved south across the Vale of York to York, Sheriff
Hutton and Doncaster. There had been some probing to the
area north of the North York Moors, such as De Willelmo de Farndale who settled in Danby and De Johanne de Farendale who ventured as far as Egton, though he later returned to Rosedale and
his family were probably those who settled in York.
The family of the cattle rustler John Farndale were
probably living as far as County Durham in the late fourteenth century. There
was a Thomas
fyndaille in Lythe
on the Cleveland coast in 1524. However the footprint of the family was south
of the dales and the main family line seems to have become focused on Doncaster and Campsall.
From the mid
sixteenth century almost all records of the family, which by that time were
starting to be well preserved in the parish records, were from Cleveland, north
of the North York Moors. This continued until a family emerged around Yearsley near Ampleforth, not
so far from the family’s ancient homelands around Kirkdale and Farndale, in about 1783, that
family moving there via Thirsk.
So when we
look at the pattern of the records, it is probable that the line of the family
from whom the modern family descends, had moved to the area around Doncaster by the early
fourteenth century, stayed there until the mid sixteenth
century, and then moved north to Cleveland, where they lived from the mid
sixteenth century, with a branch moving to the Ampleforth area in the late
eighteenth century.
It’s only a
very few royal or aristocratic families who can be sure of family relationships
before the sixteenth century. In most cases it’s not possible to be sure how
individuals meshed together before parish records started to record births,
deaths and marriages from about 1538.
However
medieval records of individuals who must have been our ancestors have allowed
us to piece the clues together, so that we have significant evidence as to how
these individuals are linked.
We know that
before 1572 we don’t find evidence of Farndales in Cleveland, but instead
mainly around York, Sheriff Hutton and Doncaster. Yet after
1572, we find almost all Farndales in Cleveland, apart from a family that later
emerged around Ampleforth in the eighteenth century. The probable explanation
is that the Farndale family moved, sometime in the sixteenth century, from
south to north of the North York Moors.
Scene 1 – Moving North
The
emigration to Kirkleatham
Parish
records began to be kept, by the orders of Thomas Cromwell, from about 1538. By
about 1573 there were pretty good records being kept. As we reach the mid
sixteenth century we start to emerge from the age of the probable to a modern
age of greater certainty. From that date, we benefit from records which allow
us to follow family relationships with more certainty. And so it is that we
know that Nicholas farndaile
was buried
in the parish of Kirkleatham,
in Cleveland, near Skelton
on 6 August 1572.
Assuming
that Nicholas might have lived for 60 years, he might have been born in about
1512.
We also know
that an Agnes
Farndale was buried at Kirkleatham on 23 January 1586. So it’s pretty clear
that Agnes was Nicholas’ wife.
Given what
we know for certain of the generations to follow, Nicholas
and Agnes are
likely to be the paternal and maternal grandparents of all modern Farndales.
The records are still not good enough for us to be sure about that. However
when we piece together some tangible evidence, it seems very likely.
We also know
that a Jean
Farndale married
Richard Fairley, a relatively pedigreed fellow, in Kirkleatham
on 16 October 1567. As the wedding was in Kirkleatham parish it seems likely that
Jean was the daughter of Nicholas and Agnes.
A William Farndale
died on 24 January 1606 and was buried at St John the Baptist Church in Skelton. We don’t have his
birth record, but William was likely to have been the son of Nicholas
and Agnes in
the adjacent parish of Kirkleatham. Since we have already identified that a William Farndale
married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall, near Doncaster in 1564, it is
tempting to deduce that this is the same person. That would mean that Nicholas
and Agnes and
their children William
and Jean
were originally from Doncaster or Campsall, but then moved into Cleveland
probably in the 1560s shortly after William’s marriage.
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The most likely
paternal and maternal ancestors of modern Farndales, who died in Kirkleatham
having probably emigrated with their family into Cleveland |
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William and
Margaret (nee Atkinson) Farndale The couple who
married at St Mary Magdalene Church in Campsall north of Doncaster, and who
emigrated to Cleveland and were buried in Skelton. |
Whilst we
have no direct evidence of this, it provides us with an explanation as to how
the family, with a footprint south of the North York Moors, came to live in
Cleveland, to the north of the North York Moors. Before long we will find
another clue as to why the family might have made that move.
The
Christian names of Nicholas and William. though commonly used, also link the
fourteenth and sixteenth century records. It is not unlikely that Nicholas and William Farndale who
we find in Cleveland in the sixteenth century are from the same family as Nicholaus
and William
Farndale who we find in Doncaster
in the fourteenth century. Of course that might just be coincidence, but it
adds to the picture we have.
This model
helps to explain a lot, but it is an aspect of our history that needs some more
research, and we may never get to the bottom of the riddle.
So this
allows us to draw up a possible family tree for the Doncaster-Kirkleatham-Skelton
Line of Farndales.
If we are
correct, the ancestors of the modern family must have emigrated north after
William and Margaret’s wedding in St Mary Magdalene Church in Campsall in 1564
and before Jean’s wedding to Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham in 1567.
This
emigration occurred in the midst of the Elizabethan age, thirty years after the
Reformation during Henry VIII’s reign (1509 to 1547) had fundamentally
transformed English society by removing Rome’s supremacy. The First
Act of Succession in 1534 had resolved Henry’s marital and succession
issues and two Acts
of Supremacy confirmed Henry VIII as supreme head of the church of England.
This was the first time England had brexited from the
European world. To most ordinary folk, these issues were probably remote and
caused little to change, but there was a heightened awareness of religious
difference which impacted everywhere. This religious difference would have
impacted on the Farndales living around Doncaster in 1536 when the Pilgrimage of Grace
reached both York and Doncaster. It probably impacted all corners of the nation
during the reign of Bloody Mary (1553 to 1558), which brought a devastating
Counter Reformation and the burning of protestants, cruel heresy laws, when
John Foxes’s Actes
and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days,
known as the
Book of Martyrs, compiled the shocking stories of the persecutions.
Elizabeth I
(1558 to 1603) brought some calm and toleration back to her realm. The Act of Supremacy
1558 was An Acte restoring to the Crowne its
Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall and Spirituall, and abolyshing all Forreine Power repugnaunt to the
same, The
Act of Uniformity 1559, authorised a book of common prayer which was
similar to the 1552 version but which retained some Catholic elements, and the Thirty
Nine Articles 1563 provided a compromise return to a new Anglican world.
This was the foundation of a new religion which was later called Anglicanism. “It
looked Catholic and sounded Protestant.” It was a religious middle way. It
was a compromise and perhaps the foundation of the British spirit of
compromise. It contrasted to a time of Catholic versus Protestant polarisation
in Europe. Elizabeth had little sympathy for hardliners from either wing of the
religious divide. She stopped heresy trials. This was a brave new world, though
still to be threatened for a while by Spanish invasion plans and a medley of
plots.
Over time
however, there were acts by her monarchy which supressed Catholicism, which was
still popular in Yorkshire.
The mid 1560s were therefore a period of renewed hope, whilst
still threatened by opposing ideas. It was in 1568 that Mary Queen of Scots
escaped from Loch Leven Castle and fled to England and was interred in a
succession of castles, including Bolton Castle in Wensleydale. Soon after Mary’s arrival, a
rebellion began in the pro Catholic north of England led by the earls of
Northumberland and Westmoreland. The Rising
of the North of 1569, also called the Revolt of the Northern Earls or
Northern Rebellion, was an unsuccessful attempt by Catholic nobles from
Northern England to depose Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with
Mary, Queen of Scots.
It was at
this time that Jean Farndale
had married Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567. This was the
first event which marked the family’s arrival there. The
Fairleys were a Scottish family once known as de
Ros who adopted the name Fairlie when they were granted lands at Fairlie in
Ayrshire by Robert the Bruce, that
Scottish King of Yorkshire descent. Fairley was thus a locative name from
Fairlie in Ayrshire near the mouth of the Forth of Clyde. By 1881 the later
family were centred around Midlothian and Lanarkshire, but also Durham and
Northumberland. The family was also in Ireland. The two branches of the Bruce
family had lands in Annandale in Ayshire and around Skelton.
William
Fairlie was referred to in 1306 to 1329 in the Great Seal of Scotland. Wiliam Fayrly or Fayrley was referred to
in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland in 1329. William de Fairlie was referred to
in Rotuli Scotiae,
in 1335.
As well as
Richard Fairley, Jean Fayrley in 1571, also Ellen Fayrlay in 1579 appeared in the Kirkleatham records. Germane Fairlye in 1571 and Henrici Fairley in 1609 were referred
to in the parish records for nearby Marske in Cleveland.
Jean Farley,
who might have been Richard Fairley’s sister, married Christopher Chapman at Kirkleatham on 3 November 1588. There was
also a marriage between Jean Farley and Railphe Marcam on 8 March 1602. There was also a Francis Fairlye who was buried at Kirkleatham on 30 August 1568; John
Farley who was buried at Kirkleatham
on 15 December 1579; an Ellen Fairlie who was buried at Kirkleatham on 3 August 1580; Elizabeth
Farley who was buried at Kirkleatham on
8 June 1583; and a Mary Fairley of East Coatham who was buried at Kirkleatham on 17 November 1618.
Richard
Fairley died in 1584 and was buried on 1 September 1584 at Kirkleatham.
This was a
Scottish family, of some pedigree, who seem to have been well established in Kirkleatham.
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A history of Kirkleatham and Wilton, the place where
our family first settled in Cleveland |
I seems
probable that the Farndales had moved from Campsall to Kirkleatham between 1564, when William had married
Margaret Atkinson, and 1567, when Jean had
married into the Kirkleatham Fairley family of Scottish descent. This may have
been a time of some renewed emigration for new opportunities at the onset of a
time of greater tolerance, after many difficult years of religious tension.
Scene 2 – A Family Established
Sixteenth
century Cleveland
As they
arrived the ancient Bruce
landholdings focused on Skelton
castle were in the hands of the Conyers family.
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The
baronial Yorkshire family from whom later Scottish Kings would derive and who
dominated the early history of our later Cleveland home and their successors
at Skelton |
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A history of Skelton and its old church. The
Farndales arrived in Moorsholm in the Parish of Skelton in about 1588 and
lived there through the tumultuous years of the Civil War |
John, Lord
Conyers had died intestate in 1556 and the estate was divided equitably between
his three daughters, Anne, Katharine and Elizabeth. There was soon tension
between the three families focused on arguments between the three husbands. The
dispute was resolved by the sale of the Skelton
estate to Robert Trotter in 1577. The Trotters held the estates until
the early eighteenth century. So as the Farndales arrived, the overlordship was
in something of a turmoil.
In the
sixteenth century Cleveland was rural and agricultural. It was not dissimilar
to the Farndale lands and the agricultural communities at the edge of the dales
to the south of the moors.
John Walker Ord in his History and Antiquities of
Cleveland, 1846 described
its immense ranges of majestic hills; its far-extending moors, interspersed
with fruitful valleys and picturesque dales ; its embowering groves of beech
and pine, and wide-spreading forests of oak; its calm and peaceful rivers,
clear and musical with the rush of innumerable mountain streams; the beauty or
sublimity of the ocean, girding its romantic shores; the enormous chain of
towering sea-cliffs against which in calm the billows leap with playful sportfulness, or in tempest fiercely hurl their thunders,
all these combined present a majesty and loveliness in Nature, unsurpassed, we
may venture to affirm, within the circuit of the British isles.
The earliest
record of the name Cleveland is in the twelfth century Orkneyinga Saga, which recorded Harald Hardrada of
Norway landing in Kliffland.
These were
ancient lands stretching from the River Tees to the coast at Whitby. Roseberry
Topping, south of Guisborough, is
an area of rich Bronze and Iron Age history. There had been extensive
Scandinavian settlement, evident in place names. Guisborough is the fortified town of Gigr and became an important settlement. After the
Conquest in 1120 Robert de Brus founded the Augustinian Gisborough
Priory. The spelling of the priory is distinct from the town spelling.
The Black Death had swept through
Cleveland just as elsewhere and killed two thirds of the population and Black
Death graveyards at Great Ayton,
Wilton, Seamer were testament to the trauma of plague. The religious tensions
such as the Pilgrimage of Grace
had also reached Cleveland. Sir John Bulmer of Wilton was hanged and his wife
was burnt at the stake. George Lumley of Kilton
was executed.
The Recusancy Acts in 1558
required attendance at Church of England services, returning to Henry VIII’s
Reformation. Those who refused to do so were called Recusants
and were brought to Court to face penalties. In Cleveland, at first Egton, with 9 Recusants, was its visible centre.
By 1586, Brotton had 19 presentations for
Recusancy, Egton 13, Hinderwell 10 and Skelton 8.
There was
strong adherence to Catholicism in northern England and Elizabeth I’s reforms
to purge Bloody Mary’s regime led to the Rising of
the North, led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. It was an
unsuccessful attempt by Catholic nobles from Northern England to depose
Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. Reprisals against the
rebels of 1569 began and 600 rebel commoners were hanged in local towns.
A Poor Law
authorised Counties to establish houses of correction for vagrants in 1576 and
for the Punishment
of the Mother and Father of a Bastard. The Bastardy Laws relieved the
parish from the cost of supporting the child and children born out of wedlock
and put such children at significant risk of infant mortality.
In 1586,
with the threat of war from Spain, there was a degree of mobilisation and the
Wapentake of Langbaurgh, which included the relevant areas of modern Cleveland,
was required to provide 350 men. This was also a year of severe famine.
By the end
of the sixteenth century, the poor, old and sick had no place to go for relief
and many starved to death. In 1601 the new Poor Law
placed a legal obligation on parishes to care for those unable to work. The
Poor Relief Act placed responsibility for local affairs on the Vestry, a
committee of the leading figures of a Church Parish, who ran the daily business
of the area. Each Parish was made responsible for the maintenance of its own
poor. The churchwardens and parishioners had to elect two Overseers of the
paupers in each Church Parish. These men collected Poor Rates, which were
levied in the same way as Church Rates, and this money was applied to the
relief of the local poor in return for useful work if possible. This system for
dealing with the Parish poor continued until the Victorian Workhouses from
1834.
As the
Farndales arrived in the area, there were early signs of the future industrial
revolution which would soon reinvent Cleveland. By 1595, Sir Thomas
Chaloner established alum works at Belman
Banks. The first
profitable alum site in Yorkshire was opened in 1603 at Spring Bank, Slapewath, which was then part of Skelton. The new alum business
was owned by the Athertons and D’Arcys
who had married into the ownership of Skelton Castle. Britain had been an
agricultural nation and wool was its chief export. Alum was used in the dyeing
process as the setting agent and was also needed in the tanning of hides. It
was a highly valued product, which previously had been imported. In 1610, James
I made Alum production a monopoly of the Crown. By 1616 alum production began
at Selby Hagg, near Hagg Farm, Skelton.
Ships anchored off Saltburn to
transport the finished product. They brought with them casks of urine, which
was mixed with the liquid that had been obtained from the calcined shale as
part of the process. This was probably done in an Alum House near Cat Nab in Saltburn. The shale liquid ran
from Selby Hagg by gravity down a trough that followed the course of Millholme Beck.
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The
important alum trade in Cleveland |
Pastoral
scenes were starting to be laced with the smells and the sweat of a future
industrial age.
In 1623, the
estate of Kirkleatham and Kirkleatham
Hall, once traditional Percy lands (rivals of the Nevilles of the Sheriff Hutton
lands), were purchased by John Turner, the brother in law of John Pepys
daughter, Jane.
Nearby Skelton Castle had been the
heart of the Bruce lands. There were close marital links between the House
Bruce and the de Thweng family of Kilton castle.
In 1635 the
Quarter Sessions at Thirsk ordered No person within the North Riding shal be lycenced to keepe an alehouse but by the Justices assigned to performe the services concerninge
alehouses within the division wherein the said person shall dwell, and that all
other lycences granted by any other Justices
otherwise shal be voyde.
It was
also ordered for the better performance of the good and necessary lawes and statutes made for the reliefe
of the poore, and for the punishinge
of such persons as are declared to be rogues, vagabondes,
and sturdy beggars, and for the keeping of order in alehouses, that Constables,
Churchwardens, and Ale-conners within every parish shall make particular
monthly certificates in manner following: That they have none amongst them that
do brew, drink, or sell without lycence, or doe take
above one penny for an ale quart of their best drink, or if they have they must
sett down their names and the tymes
of the offence committed. That they know of noe
person that hath sitten tippling in any alehouse contrarie unto the law, or if they have…That they know of noe vagrant begger that hath
passed through their parish without punishment …
The family
arrival in Cleveland coincided with the first hint of a transition from
pastoral to industrial, and from Catholicism to Protestantism, sometimes tinged
with a puritan streak.
Moorsholm
In a deed of
1592, a George
fferndale of Moorsholm was referred to several times
relating to property at Skelton
as to whether he had purchased it a previous date. Whilst we cannot be
sure, George was probably a son of William and Margaret
Farndale. These were still the early days of parish records, and there
remains some doubt about the exact mesh of relationships. It is George Farndale
and his descendants where the mist clears and inter-relationships become more
certain.
It seems
likely that the early family looked something like this.
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C1512 to 6
August 1572 Probably
moved with their family from the Campsall area
to Kirkleatham in about 1567 |
C1516 to
23 January 1586 |
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c1539 to
24 January 1606 Married
Margaret Atkinson in Campsall on 29 October 1564 before the family moved to
Kirkleatham Buried in
Skelton
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c1540 Married
Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567 |
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c1566 to
c1623 Married
Valentine Wraye, a yeoman farmer, in Skelton in
1588. They had fife children. |
c1570 to 9
March 1607 Married
Margery Nelson from Wilton, near Kirkleatham in 1595 |
c1573 to
c1633 She
married Peter Atkinson at Wilton near Kirkleatham in 1598. Peter might have
been her cousin. |
c1592 to 2
April 1592 She died
at birth |
George
Farndale of Skelton
married Margery Nelson of Wilton in 1595. Wilton is only 2 kilometres south of Kirkleatham. Moorsholm was part of the parish of Skelton, about five
kilometres southeast of Skelton, so it seems likely that the 1592 reference and
his wedding in Skelton mean that George and his family lived in Moorsholm, within the parish of Skelton.
Moorsholm is a Scandinavian name, the settlement on the moors.
Originally Great Moorsholm was where the modern village lies, and there was
also Little Moorsholm.
George
Farndale and his sister, Eln, both married spouses
from Wilton near Kirkleatham and Eln’s husband had the same surname, Atkinson, as her
mother, so is likely to have been a cousin. This might suggest that when
William had married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall, the
Atkinson family came from Wilton near Kirkleatham. The reason why the family
moved from Campsall
near Doncaster to Kirkleatham near
Wilton might therefore be that the whole family chose to live near Margaret
Atkinson’s family.
George ffarnedayle of Moorsome was
mentioned in the Inspeximus in Skelton Church
Records in 1602.
George Farndayll was buried, seputs
at Skelton on 9 March
1607. In 1609 the administration of the
Goods of George Farndale, late of Moorsome, deceased
was granted to Margerie Farndaile and Isabel
Pinckney, for their own benefit and for Susan, George and Richard Farndaile, children of the deceased. In the same year, the
Dean of Cleveland granted guardianship of William Farndaile,
Susan, George and Richard Farndaile, children of
George Farndale, deceased, together with administration of their affairs,
goods, rights and portions to Margery Farndale by choice of the said children.
This suggests that George and Margery’s children had to make a choice as to who
they would live with. Perhaps this was something to do with George’s interest
in the mysterious Isabel Pinckney.
On 3 April
1611 George’s brother in law, Valentine Wraye, a yom'n, was fined 20s at Skelton for uttering
contemptuous words and threats against certain men - viz. Will. Gedge, Anth.
Hutton and Nich. Harker, bound as witnesses in the
matter of a certain felony committed by Chr. Hobson and Henry Robinson, late of
lastingham, in contempt &c.
The records
then provide us with certainty about the evolving shape of the family.
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c1570 to 9
March 1607 Married
Margery Nelson from Wilton, near Kirkleatham in 1595
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Margery
Nelson |
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22 January
1599 to 24 January 1697 |
c1601 to
c1660 |
16 March
1602 to 17 August 1693 |
4 January
1603 to 4 January 1603 |
3 February
1604 to c1685 |
It was at
this point that the family would start to split into separate families around
Cleveland from the early seventeenth century. In the early eighteenth century,
some moved back south of the North York Moors around Yearsley near Ampleforth.
Broadly, the
family started to diverge along four main branch lines, which in time would
further diverge into smaller family lines. The four main groups were a family at Kilton,
a second family
focused on Kilton, Brotton and Loftus, a number of families at Whitby
and the Yearsley family. We
will explore these four hubs of the family in more detail in the following Acts
of the Story.
The Act of Settlement
in 1662 attempted to prevent anyone from settling elsewhere than their
place of birth. It was intended mainly to prevent paupers moving to be
maintained by a Parish other than their own, as each Parish had to collect a
Poor Rate to maintain their own poor. Removal orders were made returning people
to their own Parish right up to the 1840s and the start of the Workhouse.
The Act
of Uniformity 1662 prescribed the form of public prayers, administration of
sacraments, and other rites of the Established Church of England and included
laws for preventing mischiefs and dangers that may arise by certain persons
called Quakers, and others refusing to take oaths. The act declared it altogether
unlawful and contrary to the word of God to refuse to take an oath, or to
persuade another person to refuse to do so. It was also an offense for more
than five persons, commonly called Quakers, to assemble in any place under pretense of joining in a religious worship not authorized
by the laws of this realm.
To help
raise over a million pounds for the Royal Household a
Hearth Tax was imposed in 1662, whereby each household was compelled to pay
2s per annum for every fireplace that they owned.
William Farndale
continued to live in Moorsholm in Skelton Parish and in 1674 he had
two hearths, for which he was taxed.
Civil War
William Farndale
(1599 to 1697) moved to Liverton
by 1685 and died in Great Ayton, where he
left his will. He had four children and lots of grandchildren. We have a lot of
information about his family, which can be explored in the Skelton 1 Line and his
grandchildren were the Moorsholm
1 Line and the Great
Ayton 1 Line. His grandson William Farndale
was sworn in for Jury Service at Loftus in
1700.
Richard Farndale (1604 to about 1685) moved to Liverton,
where he married Emme Nellice on 29 July 1632. He
became a church warden at Liverton church. Richard and Emmie had five children,
the Liverton 1 Line. One of
his children was John
Farndale, who moved to Whitby, and we
will pick up his story in a
later chapter. Another was Richard Farndale,
a yeoman farmer who married Matha Sawer in Brotton.
His family, the Brotton 1 Line,
included the ancestors of one of the Kilton Line of descendants, and we will
also pick up their story in a later chapter. It
was also probably from this line that the family who moved to Yearsley
near Ampleforth descend.
All other
lines of the modern Farndale family descend from George Farndale
(1602 to 1693). Like his brothers, George had moved to Liverton by 1623, but by 1642, as the English
Civil War started, he moved back to Moorsholm,
where he had one hearth in 1673 and two hearths in 1674.
The English Civil War which began in 1642 was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639 to 1653. Parliament voted on 12 July 1642 to raise a force under the command of the Third Earl of Essex and required an oath of allegiance. The King issued commissions of array to allow the raising of militias and raised his flag at Nottingham on 22 August 1642. Each side seized towns, strongpoints and military stores. The King was locked out of the largest military depot at Hull. Counties petitioned for compromise. Counties such as Yorkshire dragged their feet.
It is too
simplistic that the war was just a fight between liberty on the part of the
Parliamentarians against the tyranny of Stuart absolutism. Nor was it primarily
about class struggle. The ancient peerages tended to back the Parliamentarians
as they disliked the novelties of Stuart government. Religion was the clearest
dividing line, but religious spectrums were fluid and nearly everyone belonged
to the Church of England. A third of Puritans in 1643 were Royalist. Instead
there was division everywhere and every town and village and many families were
divided. Most fought because they were conscripted. Families split. There were
shifting coalitions and people changed sides.
Early in the
Civil War there was a campaign
for the north in 1643. When the first great battle of the Civil War, at Edgehill
on 23 October 1642, failed to deliver the expected resolution, both Royalists
and Parliamentarians rushed to take control of extensive territories as the
basis from which to support a long campaign. In the north the King gave this
task to the Marquis of Newcastle. By November 1642 the Royalist city of York was coming under increasing threats from the
Parliamentarian forces of the Hothams and Cholmley
from the north east and the Fairfaxes from the west.
The Royalist
Marquis of Newcastle raised an army some 6,000 to 8,000 strong and marched to York. He initially swept away the
Parliamentary opposition and took York as a
key strategic hub. Parliamentarian opposition in Yorkshire was led by
Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas. The heartland of their power
was in the cloth towns of the West Riding. They had become cut off from their
main port at Scarborough. However they
were able to recruit a significant force of musketeers from their cloth towns
base.
The
Parliamentarian strategy was to interrupt the Royalist supply of arms. In mid January Sir Hugh Cholmley led a small Parliamentarian
army from Malton to Guisborough.
A
small skirmish took place somewhere between Skelton
and Guisborough, in the
immediate vicinity of the new Farndale homes of Moorsholm and Liverton, on 16 January 1643 between
Royalists under the command of Colonel Guildford Slingsby and Parliamentarians
under Sir Hugh Cholmley and Sir Matthew Boynton. The Parliamentarian army of
about 380 men seem to have approached the battlefield from the moors and they
were met by Slingsby’s force of about 400 foot and 100 horse, who were being
drilled in Guisborough.
Slingsby took the initiative by charging his cavalry against Cholmley’s horse with some success. However, his foot
soldiers were forced back by the Parliamentarians, and he withdrew to rally his
inexperienced recruits. As he was doing
so, he was caught by case shot from the parliamentarian artillery and mortally
wounded. The Royalist force crumbled and many were captured.
George Farndale
was 41 in 1643, living at Moorsholm and
his brother Richard
Farndale was 39, living at Liverton.
They were both about eight kilometres from the battle. It is difficult
to find lists of civil war soldiers. Loyalties were divided. It is quite
possible that one or more of the brothers were part of the newly recruited army
of Colonel Guildford Slingsby who were being drilled in Guisborough. This was a pretty chaotic
period of time. Whether the brothers took part of the battle, it must have been
a significant event. They must have smelt it, heard it, seen it perhaps.
Cholmley
returned over the moors to Malton and later defected to the Royalists, but he
had sent his force on to a bridge crossing over the River Tees at Yarm,
south of Stockton, to try to stop a large
Royalist munitions convoy travelling from Newcastle to York on 1 February 1643.
The Parliamentarians, who may
have set up barricades, were quickly overwhelmed, losing over thirty men killed
and many wounded and captured. Others fled. The prisoners were marched to
Durham. The defeat may have helped influence parliamentarian Sir Hugh Cholmley
to change sides a few weeks later.
The attempt
to disrupt the Royalist army moved its focus to the Tadcaster area and there
was another Parliamentarian defeat at Seacroft
Moor near York on 30 March 1643.
The Battle
of Marston Moor took place west of York on
2 July 1644. During the summer of 1644, the Parliamentarians had been besieging
York. Prince Rupert had gathered a
Royalist army which marched through the northwest of England, gathering
reinforcements to relieve the city. The convergence of these forces made the
ensuing battle the largest of the Civil War. Rupert outmanoeuvred the Parliamentarians
to relieve the city and then sought battle with them even though he was
outnumbered. Both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, an
expanse of wild meadow west of York. Towards
evening, the Parliamentarians themselves launched a surprise attack. After a
confused fight lasting two hours, Parliamentarian cavalry under Oliver Cromwell
routed the Royalist cavalry from the field and, with the Earl of Leven's
infantry, annihilated the remaining Royalist infantry. After their defeat the
Royalists effectively abandoned Northern England, losing much of the manpower
from the northern counties which were strongly Royalist in sympathy and also
losing access to the European continent through the ports on the North Sea
coast. The loss of the north was to prove a fatal handicap the next year, when
they tried unsuccessfully to link up with the Scottish Royalists under the
Marquess of Montrose.
In December
1644, a New Model Army of 22,000 men was formed by the Parliamentarians under
Lord General Sir Thomas Fairfax. This was the nation’s first professional army.
There was a new officer corps. The Self Denying Ordinance removed Members of
Parliament from military command, though with the notable exception of the MP
Oliver Cromwell, who was given command. The army was detached from civilian
society. Harsh discipline was imposed with penalties for drunkenness and
blasphemy. Sir Thomas Fairfax came from a Yorkshire gentry family. The Fairfaxes were among Parliament's leading supporters in
northern England.
The Royalist
forces suffered painful defeats in 1645. Nevertheless, there was factionalism
amongst the Parliamentarians. The Scottish Alliance had brought with it the
threat of an authoritarian system based on Scottish Presbyterianism. A faction
of Independents emerged within the Parliamentarians who sought liberty of
conscience. Many in the Army supported the Independents.
The New
Model Army soon became a problem. Its cost and the need for taxation caused
resentment. The army came to be hated by the civilian population. But
disbanding was also a problem with significant arrears of pay, amounting to
£3M. The army was seeking its own terms, including protection from being sent
to fight in Ireland and indemnity from prosecution for acts during the war.
By 1645,
many clergy who could not agree with puritan ideals were removed from their
livings and Marske Parish records of this time shows evidence of this amongst Skelton folk.
In July
1647, the army commanders offered conciliatory terms, Heads of Proposals, which
included tolerance for the Anglicans. Charles was initially conciliatory, but
eventually rejected the terms. Charles was taken to Hampton Court.
Active
political debates were started in the period of political instability following
the end of the civil war. The Putney Debates were held
from 28 October to 8 November 1647 which discussed such ideas as every man
that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put
himself under that government. The Levellers
came to prominence at the end of the Civil War, led by John
Lilburne, and were most influential immediately
before the start of the Second Civil War. Leveller views and support were found
in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model
Army. The Levellers wanted limited government, though Lilburn denied that he wanted to level all men’s estates.
A Second
Civil War restarted in 1648. In June 1648 Royalists sneaked into Pontefract
castle, only a few miles north of the old Farndale home of Campsall, and
took control. The Castle was an important base for the Royalists, and raiding
parties harried Parliamentarians in the area. Oliver Cromwell led the final
siege of Pontefract Castle in November 1648. Charles I was executed in January
1649, and Pontefract's garrison came to an agreement and Colonel Morrice handed
over the castle to Major General John Lambert on 24 March 1649. Following
requests from the townspeople at a grand jury at York,
on 27 March 1649 Major General Lambert was ordered by Parliament that
Pontefract Castle should be totally demolished & levelled to the ground
and materials from the castle would be sold off.
George Farndale’s
first son William
Farndale (1625 to 1677) lived at Liverton
and had a daughter, Ane
Farndale who had been born in 1625 with his wife, Ellin. George also had
two daughters, Jane
and Isabal born in 1636 and 1637. The family story though,
follows the fortunes of George’s second son, Nicholas Farndale
(1634 to 1693). Nicholas continued
to live at Liverton, where he was
christened on 6 July 1634. In about
1660, Nicholas
married Elizabeth, who died on 10 February 1670. Nicholas and
Elizabeth had a son and three daughters. Their eldest son George Farndale
moved to Loftus and was fined 1s in 1700 by
the Jury of the Manor Court of North Loftus for letting his horse go on the
North Loftus Common. George’s son William moved
to Kilton, ad we will pick up his story in
Act 14.
In 1658, the
North Riding Quarter Sessions sitting at Thirsk ordered That the Sheriff of
the County of Yorke do forthwith cause the following rates of Artificers,
Labourers and Servants wages to be proclaimed in and throughout the N Riding
and especially in every market towne in the said
riding
By day with meate By day without meate
Carpenter 6 d 12 d
His
Apprentices 4 d 8 d
Mason 6 d 12 d
His
Apprentices 4 d 8 d
Taylor 4 d 8 d
His
Apprentices 2 d 4 d
Theaker
[Thatcher] 6 d 12 d
Mower 6 d 12 d
Corn Reaper 4 d 8 d
Woman Corn
Reaper 3
d 6 d
Woman hay
worker 2 d 4 d
Ordinary
labourer, summer 3 d 6 d
Labourer,
winter 2 d 4 d
A manservant
in charge of husbandry £4 for the yeare
Ordinary
manservant £3 for the yeare
A
maidservant in charge of dairy £2
for the yeare
Ordinary
maidservant 30s for the yeare
Maidservant
between 14 and 21 yrs 20s for the yeare
In 1676, Nicholas,
still living at Liverton with a property
with one hearth, married again and with his second wife they had two sons.
Their younger son John
Farndale married Elizabeth Bennison on 5 February 1705 at Brotton and
they were the parents of an important hub of the family, the Kilton 1 Line, and their story
will be told in Act
13. There is still a place called Bennison Banks in the woodland to the
west of Brotton.
So, by the
end of the seventeenth century, the family’s centre of gravity was around Whitby and Kilton, where we
will soon pick up their story.
Between 1649
and 1653, the family lived through Republican England. This
was a time of religious fervour, Diggers,
Fifth
Columnists, and of the world Muggletonians
and Adamites.
In 1649, Thomas Hobbes, a Royalist in exile in Paris, wrote Leviathan,
which he presented to Charles II. Its premise was that humans originally lived
in a barbarous state of nature, but emerged by yielding individual rights to an
all powerful sovereign. In practice he upset both the
mid seventeenth century camps and copies of Leviathan were burned in
Oxford. Political philosophers refer to it as a statement on the sovereignty of
the state and the law rather than sovereignty
by the person of a prince. On the Parliamentary side of the argument,
John Milton, including Paradise Lost, Sir Henry Vane the Younger and
Algernon Sidney wrote their treatises.
From 1655
Cromwell ordered that each County in England be governed by a Major-General.
This was a form of military government which was an attempt to provide better
law enforcement in the country as well as to reform the nation’s morals. One of
their responsibilities was to punish those who had fought for the King. They
were to punish all manner of vice including drunkenness, wearing and
fornication. It was a repressive regime. Racehorses, fighting cocks, bears and
dogs were banned.
1066
and All That,
Yeatman and Sellers, 1930
John Lambert
was the Major General for Yorkshire and other areas. Owing to his other
responsibilities on the Council of State, day to day matters in his region were
overseen by Lambert's two deputies, with Robert Lilburn
responsible for Yorkshire.
A Decimation
Tax (10% of income) was imposed on former royalists.
The
instability of the age continued with the Restoration of Charles II, which is
perhaps best summarised in more satire from Yeatman and Sellers.
1066
and All That,
Yeatman and Sellers, 1930
These were
frightening times to live through. Perhaps the family were sufficiently tucked
away in the lands around Skelton Castle, to continue their lives in much the
same way as they had always done. It may well be that, whilst the headlines
portrayed grim news, the ordinary folk of the countryside just ignored the
trauma and pressed on, as they had always done, with the everyday hurdles they
faced.
or
Go Straight to Act 13 –
The Lost Village of Kilton
or
Read about Nicholas and Agnes
Farndale and William Farndale
Read about Kirkleatham and Skelton.
You could
also read a bit more.
The Skelton-in-Cleveland History by
the late Bill Danby, is maintained by the Skelton History Group.
The Cleveland Family History Society is
probably more useful for later periods.
You might
also be interested in John Walker Ord’s History and Antiquities of Cleveland,
1846. You can get a copy from Yorkshire
CD Books.
There is
also the History
of Cleveland Ancient and Modern by Rev J C Atkinson, Vicar of Danby,
1874, to be found in many libraries.
The History
of Cleveland by Rev John Graves, 1808.
The Victoria
History,
1923.