Memorials of Old Derbyshire

Memorials of the Counties of England
General Editor: Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A.

Memorials
of
Old Derbyshire

Haddon Hall: “Dorothy Vernon’s Bridge.”
From a water-colour sketch by Mr. Frank E. Beresford.

MEMORIALS
OF
OLD DERBYSHIRE

EDITED BY
Rev. J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A.

Author of
“Churches of Derbyshire” (4 vols.),
“Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals” (2 vols.),
“How to write the History of a Parish,”
“Royal Forests of England,”
“English Church Furniture,” etc., etc.
Editor of “The Reliquary”

With many Illustrations

LONDON
Bemrose and Sons Limited, 4 Snow Hill, E.C.
AND DERBY
1907

[All Rights Reserved]

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SPENCER COMPTON CAVENDISH,
K.G., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.,
EIGHTH DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE,
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,
AND LORD-LIEUTENANT OF DERBYSHIRE,
THESE MEMORIALS ARE,
BY KIND PERMISSION,
INSCRIBED

PREFACE

It has been a great pleasure to accept the request of the General Editor of this Memorial Series to edit a volume on my native county of Derby. In proportion to its size and population, more has been written and printed on Derbyshire than on any other English county. But in these days, when, year by year, the national stores of information in Chancery Lane are becoming better arranged and more fully calendared, when there is more generous access to muniments in private possession, and when the spirit of critical archæology is becoming more and more systematised, there is no sign whatever that the history of the county is in any way near exhaustion. Nor will that be the case even when the four great volumes of the Victoria County History are completed. So abundant are the historical records of Derbyshire, and so rich are the archæological remains, that there would be no difficulty, I think, in the speedy production of a companion volume to this of equal interest and of as much originality, should the General Editor and the publishers desire such a sequel. I say this as an apology for omissions of which I am fully conscious; and, as it is, the publishers have kindly allowed the present pages to exceed in number those of any other volume of the series.

There is one sad subject in connection with the production of this work—I allude to the death of that distinguished antiquary, the late Earl of Liverpool. Many years ago, in the “seventies” of last century, it was owing to his suggestion and friendly encouragement that I first undertook and persevered in the attempt to write on all the old churches of Derbyshire; and when he was known as Mr. Cecil Foljambe, we often visited together such churches as Tideswell, Bakewell, and Chesterfield. Immediately the idea of this volume had been formed, I wrote to Lord Liverpool, and at once received his cordial assent to prepare an article on the Foljambe monuments of the county. In the course of his letter he wrote:—“I accept your proposal all the more willingly as I have recently unearthed certain strong confirmatory evidence as to the two Tideswell effigies, claimed of late years to belong to the De Bower family, and rashly lettered, being in reality Foljambes” (see p. 103). We exchanged several letters on the subject, then his health began to fail, and he begged me to undertake the work, promising to revise it carefully and to give additional matter; but, alas! death intervened before even this could be accomplished.

All the articles between these covers have been specially written, and for the most part specially illustrated for the book, with one exception, namely, the delightfully vivid chapter by Sir George R. Sitwell, on the country life of a Derbyshire squire of the seventeenth century. To almost all the readers of the book, this essay will also be entirely novel. It is reproduced, in a somewhat abbreviated form, by the writer’s kind and ready permission, from the introductory chapter to Sir George Sitwell’s privately issued Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, of which only twenty-five copies were printed.

My most grateful thanks are due to each of the contributors for their valuable papers, as well as to those who have supplied photographs, or who have loaned prints or drawings. It would be invidious for me to particularize where there has been so much ready kindness in contributing the elements of this Olla Podrida.

In arranging this book, it may be well to state that no effort whatever has been made to produce a kind of history of the shire inpetto, which would, in my opinion, be a great mistake in a work of this character and intention. Each essay stands by itself; all that I have done, in addition to my own contributions, is to arrange them in a kind of rough chronological order.

J. Charles Cox.

Longton Avenue,
Sydenham,
November, 1907.

CONTENTS

PLATE ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

HISTORIC DERBYSHIRE

By Rev. J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.

After making due allowance for a natural prejudice in favour of the county of one’s birth and early associations, it may, I think, be reasonably maintained that the comparatively small shire of Derby not only contains within its limits most exceptionally wild, beautiful and varied scenery, but that its social and political history is exceedingly diversified and full of interest. In all, too, that pertains to almost every branch of archæology, Derbyshire is well able to hold its own with any other county that could be named.

The proofs of the residence of early man in the district are afforded by the considerable variety of remains that have been discovered in the bone caves of the High Peak near Buxton, in those of the high lands above Wirksworth, and more especially in the Creswell caves on the verge of Nottinghamshire. In Grant Allen’s remarkable and generally accurate book on the beginnings of county history throughout England, a singular blunder is made with regard to Derbyshire; it is there stated that this county “was almost uninhabited until long after the English settlement of Britain, with the solitary exception of a few isolated Roman stations.” Archæology, however, puts such a statement as this to complete rout. Difficult as it is to understand how such large bands of savage men were able to maintain themselves in so wild a district, it is the fact that the Peak of Derbyshire was, so to speak, thickly populated by prehistoric tribes. A glance at the map of prehistoric remains, given in the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Derby, to illustrate Mr. Ward’s article, will at once show that the whole of that part of North Derbyshire which extends from Ashbourne to Chapel-en-le-Frith on the west, from thence to Derwent Chapel on the north, and then southward through Hathersage and Winster back again to Ashbourne, is peppered all over with the red symbols that betoken the barrows or lows which were the burial places of our forefathers during the neolithic and subsequent ages. Round Stanton-in-the-Peak and Hathersage the barrows, circles and other early remains occur with such frequency that it is difficult to mark even small dots on the map without them running into each other.

When the Romans held Derbyshire they had five chief stations in the county, namely, at Little Chester, near Derby; at Brough, near Hope; at Buxton; at Melandra Castle, on the verge of Cheshire; and near Wirksworth. The chief Roman road, termed Ryknield Street, entered the county at Monksbridge, between Repton and Egginton; crossing the Derwent by Derby to Little Chester, the road proceeded to Chesterfield, and thence into Yorkshire. Another road crossed the south of the county, entering Derbyshire on the east near Sawley, and passing through Little Chester to Rocester, in Staffordshire. A whole group of other roads radiated throughout the Peak from Buxton as a centre.

Doubtless one of the chief reasons why the Romans were so determined to occupy, after a military fashion, the north of the county was because of the lead mining which they so actively pursued. The chief district of this lead mining extended between Wirksworth on the south and Castleton on the north. Between these two places groups of disused mines appear with frequency. Most of those that have been closely examined yield obvious traces of having been worked by our conquerors. Six pigs of inscribed Roman lead have been found in the county. One of them bears the name of Hadrian (A.D. 117–138). The probabilities, however, are strong that the Roman miners were at work in this county half a century earlier, for there is evidence of lead working in western Yorkshire in A.D. 81, and it is most unlikely that mining began in that part of Yorkshire before Derbyshire had been touched.

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the interest and importance pertaining to Dr. Haverfield’s article on Romano-British Derbyshire, as set forth in the first volume of the Victoria History of the county.

When the Romans left this county at the dawn of the fifth century, the first English or Saxon settlement speedily followed. The north of Derbyshire formed the southern extremity of that long range of broken primary hills—termed the Pennine Chain—which extended from the Cheviots down to the district long known as Peakland or the Peak. As the Romans withdrew, Peakland seems to have been overrun by hordes of the Picts; but when the pagan English settled in Northumbria a new element of strife was introduced which affected the line of Pennine Hills from end to end. This range became a boundary between two hostile races dissimilar in habits, tongue and creed. The older British race, Christianized to a considerable extent, took up their position on the western side, and also held their own in certain parts of the actual dividing ridge.

It seems likely that the Peakland, for about 150 years after the first coming of the English—and possibly other parts to the east and south afterwards known under the common name of Derbyshire—was retained by the Celts, or Welsh, after the same fashion as they undoubtedly held the districts round the modern town of Leeds.

With the opening of the seventh century substantial historic data begin. Ethelfrith, the last pagan king of Northumbria, crossed the southern end of the Pennine Chain in 603, and by a notable victory at Chester extended, as Bede tells us, the dominions of the English to the Mersey and the Dee. The actual conquest of Peakland probably soon followed. Mr. Grant Allen’s supposition that it was never actually overrun by a military force, but that the scanty numbers of the Welsh were by degrees absorbed into the surrounding English population, may, however, be the true explanation. The general story of English place-names shows that the majority of our hill and river names are earlier than the English occupation; but in North Derbyshire there is not a single river or hill that does not bear a Welsh name, whilst not a few of the homestead names have a like origin, and even words of Cymric etymology still linger in the fast disappearing dialect.

It is of interest to remember that those Mercians who settled from time to time in small groups throughout the wilder parts of Derbyshire bore the local name of Pecsaete, that is to say, settlers in the Peak; so that the future county, as Mr. Allen remarks, narrowly escaped being styled Pecsetshire, after the fashion of Dorsetshire or Somersetshire.

In the development and Christianising of the widespread Mercian kingdom, South Derbyshire played a very considerable part. Repton, on the banks of the Trent, is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the year 755 in the account of the slaying of Ethelbald, the Mercian king. The same Chronicle also records the visit of the devastating Danes to Repton in 874, when they made that town their winter quarters. The founding of an abbey at Repton early in the seventh century, and the same place becoming the first seat of the Mercian bishopric from 654 to 667, is dealt with in another part of this volume and need not be named further in this sketch.

The Peak seems to have known of no widespread Saxon or English settlement until after the eruption of the Danes. It is also to the Danes that the town of Derby owes its present name, and the importance which gave its title to the surrounding shire. When the marauding Scandinavian bands overran the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, the value of the Derbyshire lead soon attracted their attention. Hence they established themselves strongly and built a fort at Northworthy (the earlier name for Derby), whence the valley of the Derwent branched off in different directions to the lead-mining districts. It was the common practice of the Danes to change the names of the places where they settled; Northworthy was to them an unmeaning term now that settlements of importance had been pushed on much further northward. Deoraby, or the settlement near the deer, was clearly suggested by the close propinquity of the great forests. There is no part of the county where the place and field names are of greater interest than in the Ecclesbourne valley, which leads up from Duffield to Wirksworth. The intermingling of Norse names shows that at least two distinct streams of colonists pushed their way to this valuable mining centre.

In the north-eastern portion of Mercia, five of these Scandinavian hosts, each under its own earl, made a definite settlement; they became known as the Five Burghs, and formed a kind of rude confederacy. In this way Derby became linked in government with Nottingham, Stamford, Lincoln and Leicester. This combination, however, had not long been made before Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians, the sister of Alfred the Great, began to win back her dominions from these pagan Norsemen, building border forts at Tamworth and Stafford. Derby was stormed by Ethelfleda in 918, after fierce fighting, and this victory secured for her for a time the shire as well as the town itself. Six years later Edward the Elder, Ethelfleda’s brother, advanced against the Danes through Nottingham, penetrating into Peakland as far as Bakewell, where he built a fort. In 941–2 King Edmund finally freed the Five Burghs and all Mercia from Danish rule.

The establishment of a mint at Derby during the reign of Athelstan (924–940) is a clear evidence of the advance of civilisation. Coins minted at Derby are also extant of the reigns of Edgar, Edward II., Ethelred II., Canute, Harold I., Edward the Confessor, and Harold II.

The division of Derbyshire among the conquering Normans, together with the social conditions of the times, so far as they can be gathered from the entries in the Domesday Survey, have been admirably treated of at length in the recently issued opening volume of the Victoria History, to which reference has already been made. The number of manors held by the Conqueror in this county was very considerable. He derived his Derbyshire possessions from three sources. In the first instance he succeeded his predecessor, the Confessor, in a great group of manors that stretched without a break across the county in a north-easterly direction from Ashbourne to the Yorkshire borders near Sheffield. The second division of the Kings’ land consisted of the forfeited estates of Edwin, the late earl of the shire, and grandson of Earl Leofric of Mercia. These lay in a widespread group along the Trent south of Derby, and included Repton, so famous in earlier Mercian history. In the north of the county the King also secured a very considerable number of manors which had belonged to various holders, such as Eyam and Stony Middleton, Chatsworth and Walton, and a considerable group round Glossop.

There were two ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief in the county, namely, the Bishop of the diocese, who held Sawley with Long Eaton, and the manor of Bupton in Longford parish, and the Abbot of Burton-on-Trent, who held the great manor of Mickleover and several others which nearly adjoined the Abbey on the Derbyshire side.

By far the largest Derbyshire landholder was Henry de Ferrers, lord of Longueville in Normandy, whose son in 1136 became the first Earl of Derby. He held over ninety manors in this county, but the head of his barony, where his chief castle was, lay just outside the border of Derbyshire, at Tutbury. Just a few of the smaller landholders seem to have been Englishmen, confirmed in their rights by the Conqueror. In one case it can be definitely said that an Englishman not only held land at the time of the survey, under Henry de Ferrers, but became the ancestor of a family which continued for centuries to hold of Ferrers’ successors. This was “Elfin,” who held Brailsford, Osmaston, Lower Thurvaston, and part of Bupton. During the reigns of William the Conqueror and his two sons, Rufus and Henry, genuine historical particulars relative to the county are almost entirely absent. When persistent civil war raged for so long a time over the greater part of England during Stephen’s reign, Derbyshire was but little disturbed, for the leading men of the county adhered loyally to the King and held its several fortresses on his behalf. In the great Battle of the Standard, fought against the Scots at Northallerton in 1138, Derbyshire played the leading part in winning the victory; its chief credit being due to the valour of the Peakites under Robert Ferrers. Ralph Alselin and William Peveril, two other Derbyshire chieftains, were also among the successful leaders of the battle.

Peak Castle, built by William Peveril in the days of the Conqueror, passed to the Crown in 1115 on the forfeiture of his son’s estates. The Pipe Roll of 1157 shows an entry, repeated annually for a long term of years, of a payment of four pound, ten shillings, and two watchmen, and the porter of the Peak Castle. In that year Henry II. received the submission of Malcolm, King of Scotland, within the walls of this castle. There are records of other visits made to this castle by Henry II. in 1158 and 1164.

In this reign a variety of interesting particulars relative to the castles of Bolsover and the Peak can be gleaned from the Pipe Rolls, particularly with regard to their provisioning, garrisoning and repairing between 1172 and 1176, during the time of the rising of the Barons. Richard I., at the beginning of his reign, gave the castles of the Peak and Bolsover to his brother John, who succeeded to the throne in 1199. In 1200, King John was at Derby and Bolsover in March, and at Melbourne in November. This restless King’s visits to the county were frequent throughout his reign, and included a sojourn at Horsley Castle in 1209. During this turbulent reign Derbyshire was again fortunate in escaping any material share of civil warfare. The party of the Barons gained but little support, for the three notable fortresses of Castleton, Bolsover and Horsley were held for the King with but slight intermission.

In any historic survey of Derbyshire, however brief, it must not be forgotten that the Normans, for the convenience of civil administration, linked together this county and Nottinghamshire, giving precedence in some respects to the latter. The Assizes, for instance, up to the reign of Henry III., were held only at Nottingham, and the one county gaol for the two shires was in the same town. From the beginning of the reign of Henry III. up to the time of Elizabeth, the Assizes were held alternately at the two county towns. During the whole of this period there was but one sheriff for the two shires; it was not until 1566 that they each possessed a sheriff of their own.

Derbyshire possessed a fourth great fortress, which has generally been overlooked; it does not appear on the Pipe Rolls, as it was never held by the Crown. Duffield was a convenient centre for the great Derbyshire possessions of Henry de Ferrers. The castle at this place stood on an eminence commanding an important ford of the Derwent, at the entrance of the valley that led to Wirksworth with its lead mines, and hence forwards to the High Peak. Here was erected in early Norman days (as we know from the long-buried remains) a prodigiously strong and massive keep. William, Earl Ferrers, was a stalwart supporter of Henry III. until his death, but his grandson, Robert de Ferrers, soon after he came of age, in 1260, threw himself with ardour into the baronial war against the King. Eventually he was overcome when fighting with his allies at Chesterfield in 1266. Ferrers was taken prisoner, and his life spared; but all his lands, castles, and tenements were confiscated to the crown, and conveyed by Henry to his son Edmund, who was afterwards created Earl of Lancaster. It would be at this period that Duffield Castle was demolished.

The foundations of this castle were accidentally discovered in 1886. The lower part of the walls of a great rectangular keep, 95 feet by 93 feet, were brought to light, the walls averaging 16 feet in thickness. These measurements show that Duffield Castle far exceeded in magnitude any other Norman keep, with the single exception of the Tower of London.

Before taking the next step in this sketch of the political history of the county, it will be well to go back a little in the account of the great Derbyshire family of Ferrers, with special reference to their connection with the Peak Forest. William de Ferrers, the fourth Earl of Derby, was bailiff of the Honour of the Peak from 1216 to 1222. It was charged against him that during that time he had in conjunction with others taken upwards of 2,000 head of deer without warrant. At the Forest Pleas held in 1251, five years after the Earl’s death, formal presentments as to these offences were made, when Richard Curzon was fined the then great sum of £40 as one of the late Earl’s accomplices, and other county gentlemen in smaller amounts. But much more serious matters occurred in the wild region of the Peak later on in the reign of Henry III., when the transgressor was Robert de Ferrers, the grandson of the Earl just mentioned. The Pleas of the Forest were generally held at long and somewhat fitful intervals. It was not until September, 1285, that these pleas were again held at Derby, when all the offences committed during the thirty-four years that had passed since the last eyre were presented by the forest officials. By far the gravest charge at this eyre was that made against the last Earl of Derby (of the first creation), who died in 1278. It was charged against Robert de Ferrers that on three separate occasions, in July, August and September, 1264, he had hunted in the forest, with a great company of knights and others, and had on these occasions taken 130 head of red deer, and had driven a still greater number far away. These illicit hunting affrays were evidently made on a great scale, for thirty-eight persons are named in the presentment, and there were many others, besides the Earl himself, who were dead before the eyre was held. Others, too, were not summoned because they were mere servants of the Earl. Eight out of the thirty-eight were knights, and it is not a little remarkable that hardly any of those who joined in the forest affrays were of Derbyshire families; they came from such counties as Warwick, Leicestershire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, etc. Reading between the lines, though it is not mentioned in the presentments—the originals of which can be studied at the Public Record Office—it becomes clear that these incursions into a royal forest must have been animated by something deeper than a love for wholesale poaching. In May, 1264, the battle of Lewes was fought, when the King’s forces were defeated by those of the barons. For two or three years from that date, as an old chronicler has it, “there was grievous perturbation in the centre of the realm,” in which Derbyshire must have pre-eminently shared, for the youthful Earl Robert was one of the hottest partisans of the barons. There can be no reasonable doubt that these three raids on the Peak Forest in the months immediately following the battle of Lewes, were undertaken by Robert de Ferrers and his allies, issuing probably from his great manor house at Hartington, much more to show contempt for the King’s forest and preserves, and to get booty and food for his men-at-arms, than for any purposes of sport.

It is interesting to note that in April, 1264, Henry III. came into Derbyshire, and lodged for a time at the castle of the Peak after the subjection of Nottingham.

Definite Parliamentary rule began in England under Edward I. No Derbyshire writs are extant for the Parliaments of 1283, 1290 or 1294. The first Parliamentary return extant for Derbyshire names Henry de Kniveton and Giles de Meynell as summoned to attend the Parliament at Westminster in November, 1295. The county representatives in 1297 were Robert Dethick and Thomas Foljambe; in 1298, Henry de Brailsford and Henry Fitzherbert, and in 1299 Jeffrey de Gresley and Robert de Frecheville. John de la Cornere and Ralph de Makeney represented the borough of Derby in 1295. The maintenance of the knights of the shire when attending Parliament, as well as their travelling expenses, were paid by the county. The scale of payment per day in the fourteenth century varied from 3s. 4d. to 5s., whilst the payment of the borough members varied from 20d. to 2s. a day.

Soon after the accession of Edward I., inquiries were made into the various abuses that had arisen during the latter part of the turbulent reign of his predecessor. A considerable number of official irregularities and illegalities were brought to light in this county, including both the imprisoning and undue releasing from prison at the Castle of the Peak.

Edward I. visited Derbyshire in 1275, tarrying both at Ashbourne and Tideswell, when on his way to North Wales. In the subjugation of Wales, various of the great landholders of Derbyshire, with their tenants, took a prominent part; among them were William de Ferrers, William de Bardolf, Henry de Grey, Edward Deincourt, John de Musard, and Nicholas de Segrave.

Between 1290 and 1293 the King was frequently in the county, coming on more than one occasion for sport amongst the fallow deer of Duffield Frith, at the forest lodge of Ravensdale. Derbyshire was closely concerned in the long dispute as to the succession to the Crown of Scotland, of which Edward I. was made arbitrator in 1291. His decision was in favour of John Balliol, who was most intimately connected with this county. Balliol held for a time the custody of the Peak, with the Honour of Peveril; he was lord of the manors of Hollington and Creswell; and he had served as joint sheriff of the counties of Derby and Nottingham from 1261 to 1264. All the leading men of Derbyshire were engaged from time to time in the prolonged wars with Scotland which resulted in the deposition of Balliol in 1296. This county had its share in the discreditable honours that Edward II. showered on his favourite, Piers Gaveston, for early in the reign he held the custody of the High Peak. In 1322 the Scotch forces entered into alliance with those of the rebel Earls of Lancaster and Hereford. After fierce fighting at the bridge of Burton-on-Trent, the royalists crossed the river by a ford and drove Lancaster’s forces before them into Yorkshire. During the retreat Derbyshire suffered severely. The King, with several of his ministers, tarried for a few days at Derby; from thence he visited Codnor Castle, which was held by one of his ardent supporters, Richard, Lord Grey. Edward II. also, on several different occasions, sojourned at the lodge of Ravensdale, amid the beautiful parks of Duffield Forest.

In the various wars of the reign of Edward III. Derbyshire was often called upon to supply forces for the hastily raised armies of the King. The number of men levied on several occasions in this county were considerably in excess of its due proportion when compared with neighbouring shires, either in acreage or population. This may, we suppose, be taken as a compliment to the valour of the county, and it is by no means improbable that the hardy lead miners of the north of the county would furnish better men, and perhaps more capable archers, than were to be found in purely agricultural districts. Early in 1333, when the Scots were making great preparations for invasion, John de Twyford and Nicholas de Longford were appointed Commissioners of Array for Derbyshire, to call out and have in readiness for the field all men between sixteen and sixty years of age. Soon afterwards they received a definite warrant to send to the front five hundred archers and two hundred light horsemen from within the county. Derbyshire archers to the number of six hundred set forth for Scotland in 1344, and there were frequent levies of them during this reign to proceed to France. Derbyshire, however, considering the fame of its archers and the fighting-men of the Peak, took but a small part in the French campaign of 1346–7, which resulted in the crowning triumph of Crecy and the fall of Calais. The reason for this was that only those counties that were citra Trent received summonses to take part in the French expedition; the forces of Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and other northern counties were kept at home for fear of aggression from Scotland. There were, however, a sprinkling of Derbyshire men in the ranks of the English at Crecy, including Sir John Curzon, Nicholas de Longford, and Anker de Frecheville.

The wide-spread revolt of the peasantry was the great feature of the reign of Richard II.; but Derbyshire, together with most of the west midlands, remained unaffected by these serious disturbances, in which the miners, at all events, had no inclination to take part.

Henry IV. was not unfrequently in Derbyshire in connection with the rebellious movements of that much-troubled reign. In the summer of 1402 the King tarried for some little time at the small town of Tideswell in a secluded district of the Peak, issuing from thence a variety of orders to sheriffs and other officials as to the military preparations against the Welsh. When sojourning about the same time at the royal hunting lodge at Ravensdale, he dispatched thence orders for hastening resistance against serious Scotch invasion.

In the following year, when the Percys and their followers suddenly raised the standard of revolt, the King hastened to Derby with all the forces he could gather. After waiting there a few days to rally the musters, he proceeded through Burton-on-Trent to Shrewsbury, where a terrible battle was fought on July 20th. Early that morning, before the fray began, Henry knighted several of the gallant esquires of Derbyshire. Of these Sir Walter Blount, who bore the King’s standard, Sir John Cokayne, and Sir Nicholas Longford were slain in the fight, whilst Sir Thomas Wendesley died soon afterwards of the wounds he had received. It is not a little interesting to note that the last three of these Derbyshire knights, who held their honour for so brief a period, have their effigies still extant in fair preservation in the respective churches of Ashbourne, Longford, and Bakewell; the fourth, Sir Walter Blount, was buried, in acordance with his will, at Newark. Of the 4,500 men slain or grievously wounded on the King’s side in the Battle of Shrewsbury, a large proportion must have been Derbyshire men. It was, perhaps, out of compliment to this county that Henry, when the fray was over, proceeded yet again to Derby before going north to York to receive the Earl of Northumberland’s submission.

It was under Henry V. that the memorable Battle of Agincourt was fought on October 25th, 1415. In this battle the county played a prominent part. Richard, Lord Grey of Codnor, was at the head of a large contingent of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire retainers and tenants. The list of horsemen under him begins with two Derbyshire knights—Sir John Grey and Sir Edward Foljambe, and it also includes such well-known county names as Cokayne, Strelley, FitzHerbert, and Curzon. Another contingent of Derbyshire men was in the retinue of Philip Leach, of Chatsworth, whilst an important command was held by Thomas Beresford, of Fenny Bentley, as recorded on his monument in that church.

MELBORN CASTLE in the County of DERBY.
Formerly a Royal Mansion, now in Ruins; where John Duke of Bourbon taken Prisoner by K: Henry V^th. in the Battle of Agincourt (An^o. 1414.) was kept Nineteen Years in Custody of Nicholas Montgomery the Younger; he was released by K: Henry VI^th.
This Draught is made from a Survey now in the Dutchy office of Lancaster, taken in the Reign of Q: Elizabeth. Sumptibus, Soc: Ant: Lond: 1733.

The notable triumph of Agincourt must have been long held in remembrance in Derbyshire, for the midland fortress of Melbourne Castle was selected as the place of imprisonment for the most notable prisoner taken on that field of French disaster. John, Duke of Bourbon, was confined at Melbourne for nineteen years; at first under the custody of Sir Ralph Shirley, one of the leaders in the fight, and afterwards in the charge of Nicholas Montgomery the younger.

In the deplorable Wars of the Roses, between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, which extended over thirty years from 1455 to 1485, Derbyshire men took no small part, now on one side, now on the other, whilst occasionally they were found in the ranks of both parties. A commission issued in December, 1461, to Sir William Chaworth, Richard Willoughby, and the Sheriff of Derbyshire, illustrates the disturbed condition of the county in the beginning of the reign of Edward IV. These commissioners were ordered to arrest John Cokayne, of Ashbourne, who is represented as wandering about in various parts of the county with others, killing and spoiling the King’s subjects, and to bring him before the King in council.

A manuscript list of the “names of the captayns and pety captayns wyth the bagges, in the standerds of the army and vantgard of the king’s lefftenant enterying into Fraunce the xvj day of June,” 1513, begins with George, Earl of Shrewsbury, the King’s lieutenant of the vanguard, who bore on his standard “goulles and sabull a talbot sylver passant and shaffrons gold”; the Derbyshire banneret, Sir Henry Sacheverell, with John Bradburne for his petty captain, bearing “goulles a gett buk sylver.” Other Derbyshire gentlemen who were captains in this array, each having his petty captain and his “bagges” (badges) or arms as borne on his standard, were:—Robert Barley with John Parker, Nicholas Fitzherbert with John Ireton, Sir John Leek with Thomas Leek his brother, Sir Thomas Cokayne with Robert Cokayne, Sir William Gresley with John Gresley, Sir Gylbert Talbot the younger with Humphrey Butler, Robert Lynaker with George Palmer, Thomas Twyford with Roger Rolleston, Sir John Zouch (of Codnor) with Dave Zouch (his brother), Arthur Eyre with Thomas Eyre (his brother), Ralph Leach and John Curzon (of Croxall) with Edward Cumberford.

In addition to all these Derbyshire gentlemen, William Vernon bore the banner of St. George, John Leach the banner of the lieutenant’s arms, and Thomas Rolleston the standard of the talbot and chevrons. Derbyshire considerably preponderated in this army of the vanguard, there being twelve companies from that county. Shropshire had nine companies, Staffordshire eight, Nottinghamshire six, and Leicestershire and Cheshire two each; five other counties only furnished a single company.

Into the grievous question of the cruel way in which the monasteries were suppressed by Henry VIII. it is not proposed here to enter, even after the briefest fashion. It may, however, be remarked that although the county had no religious houses of first importance within its limits—the most noteworthy being the Premonstratensian Abbeys of white canons at Dale and Beauchief, and the houses of black or Austin canons at Darley Abbey and Repton Priory—the amount of landed estates, both large and small, held throughout Derbyshire under abbeys or priories situated in other shires, was very considerable. If there is one social or economic fact that is thoroughly established in connection with this great upheaval, whose main object was to secure pelf for the Crown, it is that the condition of the monastic tenantry was far better than that of those under often changing secular rule.

The sternest possible measures were taken to suppress the least disaffection shown against the policy of dissolution. Lives were lost, even of those in high position up and down the country, on the merest hearsay evidence of having indulged in private talk against the King’s policy. At the time when Henry and his Court were seriously alarmed by the Lincolnshire rising on behalf of the smaller monasteries, lists were drawn up on October 7th, 1536, of the names of noblemen and gentlemen to whom it was proposed to write, under privy seal, requiring their aid with men and horses fit for war. The Derbyshire names on this list were: the Lord Steward, Lord Talbot, Sir Henry Sacheverell, Matthew Kniveton, Sir Godfrey Foljambe (Sheriff), Roland Babington, and Francis Cokayne. The rising was, however, so summarily suppressed that there was no necessity for the calling out of any general array.

There are full particulars extant of the Derbyshire musters for April, 1539, giving the exact number under each parish of archers with horses and harness, of billmen with horses and harness, and also of unharnessed archers and billmen. The total for the various hundreds of the county, including the town of Derby, reached the total of 4,510.

As to the various religious changes in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, which affected Derbyshire as much as any other part of the kingdom, it is not proposed here to enter. Suffice it to say that their distinguishing feature under Elizabeth, which was also continued throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century, was the fierce persecution and ruinous fining directed against the recusants of the Roman obedience. The reason for the pre-eminence of Derbyshire in this respect arose from two facts: firstly, that some of the most influential of the old Derbyshire families, such as the Fitzherberts and the Eyres, remained steadfast to the unreformed faith; and, secondly, that the wild districts of the Peak afforded so many places of shelter to those recusants of this and the neighbouring counties who desired to escape the rigorous search of Elizabeth’s pursuivants.

Throughout the long reign of Elizabeth, the county musters were under frequent survey. A few months before the reign began, the old local militia, with its scale of arms (including bows and arrows) as revised in 1285, which had continued for more than four centuries in accordance with the scheme laid down by Henry II., came to an end. The old Assize of Arms had long been found unsuitable to the advance in the art of war. Eventually an Act of Parliament of Philip and Mary “for the having of horse armour and weapon,” which provided that after May 1st, 1558, everyone who had an estate of inheritance of the value of £1,000 or above was to keep at his own cost six horses meet for demi-lances (heavy cavalry), and ten horses meet for light horsemen, with the requisite harness and weapons; also 40 corselets for pikemen, 40 Almayne rivettes (flexible German armour), 40 pikes, 30 longbows, 30 sheaves of arrows, 30 steel caps, 20 black bills or halberds, 20 hand-guns, and 20 morions or light open helms. A sliding scale followed, making due provision for what was required from those having lands of various values down to £10, and these last had to find a longbow, a sheaf of arrows, a steel cap, and a black bill. Another section of the Act provided that the inhabitants of every town, parish, or hamlet, other than those who were already charged in proportion to their landed property, were to find and maintain at their own charges such harness and weapons as might be appointed by the commissioners of the musters.

Within a few months of Elizabeth’s accession, this new legislation was tested by calling out the general muster throughout the kingdom, and by obtaining returns of the number in equipment from each county. The long, interesting return for Derbyshire, dated March 9th, 1558–9, is extant; it is signed by seven justices—George Vernon, Humphrey Bradbourne, Henry Vernon, Francis Curzon, John Frances, Gilbert Thacker, and Richard Pole. Every hundred and township is set forth in detail, both as to the arms and the men. There was only one landowner of sufficient wealth in the county to be called upon to provide all that was requisite for a heavy horseman; but there were ten light horsemen. The total of “the able Footemen harnissed and unharnissed” amounted to 1,211, namely, 56 harnessed archers, 135 harnessed billmen, 236 unharnessed archers, and 784 unharnessed billmen.

A second full certificate of the able men, arms, and weapons throughout the county was forwarded ten years later to the council. With this return a letter was forwarded signed by the Earl of Shrewsbury as lord-lieutenant, as well as by his deputies. A noteworthy paragraph in this letter shows that Derbyshire was not taking kindly to the general substitution of explosive weapons in the place of archery which was then in progress.

“Touching thorders prescribed for thexercise of harquebuziers, the truthe is this shire doth not aptlie serve theretoe for we have very few harquebuziers & they placed so farre from market townes as they shuld nott come to a day of exercise above the nombre of six, & yet their travell further than in the time for the same is prescribed. Indeed we have good plenty of archers & therefore in our generall musters wee thought it best to appoint many of them to be furnished accordingly & nowe if we shuld make a new charge the countrey undoubledy wuld think themselves oversore burdened.”

The Earl of Shrewsbury received orders in November, 1569, to raise the whole force of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and to proceed against the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, “now in rebellion.” It would be wearisome in a sketch of this character to note the various incidents, which can be gleaned from both the public records and the county muniments, as to the several occasions on which the Derbyshire musters were called out when there was no immediate necessity for their use.

The considerable part that this county played in the safeguarding of Elizabeth’s unhappy prisoner, Mary, Queen of Scots, during her repeated sojourns at Wingfield Manor House, together with her visits to Chatsworth and Buxton, are fully dealt with in another paper in this volume. It may, however, be here remarked that the deplorable execution of Mary, in 1587, and the way in which the youthful Babington had so rashly conspired in her favour, made a great impression upon this county, and caused the Council as well as the local authorities to redouble their precautions. Not only was a certain local undercurrent stirred up in Derbyshire through the Fotheringay execution, but it also had the result of hastening the hostilities of Philip of Spain and other of Elizabeth’s external enemies. There was in consequence at this period frequent exercise of the county forces. The Earl of Shrewsbury’s gout prevented his taking any active part, and the work was chiefly supervised by his brother-in-law, John Manners, the senior of the deputy-lieutenants. A certificate of the musters, as viewed by Manners in November, 1587, shows that there were 400 “selected bands armed and prest for present service”; these bands were divided into 160 “shot,” 80 pikemen, 80 billmen, and 80 archers. It is interesting here to note the remarkable way in which the musket had gained ascendancy over the bow in fourteen years. In addition to the selected 400, Manners returned 1,300 men who were available in times of need, namely, 300 for shot, 300 for pikes, 360 for bills, 200 for bows, 80 as carpenters and wheelwrights, and 60 as smiths. The mounted forces consisted of 9 demi-lances and 178 light-horse.

Wingfield Manor.
(From an Indian Ink Drawing by Colonel Machell, 7th August, 1785.)

This return, large as it was, was not, however, a complete one for the whole county, for none of the musters from the hundred of Scarsdale were allowed to be present for fear of infection. A grievous attack of the plague was then raging at Chesterfield and several of the adjacent parishes. The severity of what is termed in the parish register “the great plague of Chesterfield” may be gathered from the fact that the deaths of that town in June, 1587, were fifty-four, in July fifty-two, and yet the average deaths in Chesterfield for several years about that period were only three a month.

Although Derbyshire was perhaps further removed from the sea-coast than any other county, the threatened approach of the great Spanish Armada appears to have made almost as much stir as in the sea-board counties. The gentlemen of the county consented to greatly increase the number of lances and light-horse, provided that such action should not be taken as a precedent; and they further promised to provide an addition of 400 to the number of unmounted troops. The old earl wrote a brave letter to his sovereign, assuring her that the gentlemen of Derbyshire were both ready and well affected, and that, as for himself, the threatened invasion was making him young again, “though lame in body, yet was he lusty in heart to lead her greatest enemy one blow, and to live and die in her service.”

The signal defeat of Spain brought for some years general peace and quiet throughout the kingdom. The musters in Derbyshire and elsewhere were but rarely called out, save in the winter of 1598–9, when renewed threats from Spain caused Sir Humphrey Ferrers, the most active of the Derbyshire deputy-lieutenants, to view the musters of the various hundreds.

Quite irrespective of the part played by the general musters during this reign in preparation for possible emergencies, there was much stir and excitement in the county, accompanied, no doubt, by a great deal of misery, consequent upon the repeated call for troops to take part in the subjection of Ireland. The levies of troops for Ireland were almost ceaseless during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It has usually been understood by historians that these raw troops came mainly from Lancashire and Cheshire; but the Belvoir manuscripts, supported by the Acts of the Privy Council and local muniments, show that Derbyshire—possibly as a compliment to her bravery—was being constantly called upon to supply men for these expeditions entirely out of proportion to the limited area and population of the county. It is not surprising to find that these forcibly impressed levies, utterly untrained in military matters, and suffering severely from poor clothing, insufficient food, the dampness of the climate, and frequent infectious disease, perished in large numbers before they could attain to any proficiency. When the Earl of Essex was granted special powers in 1573 to suppress the Irish rebellion, Derbyshire had to submit to the impressment of a hundred men, and a complaint was lodged at the sessions that some of the best lead-miners had been taken for that purpose. The whole story of these forced levies, of the difficulty of conveying them to the ports of Lancashire and Cheshire, of their frequent desertions both en route and even when they had crossed the seas, of the poorness of the weapons and equipments with which they were supplied by the swindling contractors of the day, is a most sorry and sordid tale. Nor could these Derbyshire troops have presented, even when first called out, a particularly attractive or uniform appearance, for the Belvoir manuscripts tell us that they were to be provided, in addition to convenient hose and doublet, “with a cassock of motley and other sea-green colour or russet.”

There was much nervousness with regard to Derbyshire when Elizabeth was on her deathbed, in March, 1682–3. The council were alarmed lest attempts should be made to remove Lady Arabella Stuart (who had a certain kind of claim to the throne) by violence from the custody of her grandmother, the old Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick. They dispatched Sir Henry Brounker in haste with a warrant to all the Derbyshire lieutenants, justices, and constables, to give him all assistance in guarding Arabella, and in the suppression of every form of disorder and riot. On March 25th, Sir Henry met a large body of the deputy-lieutenants and justices at North Wingfield, a short distance from Hardwick Hall, when it was arranged that there should at present be no general view of the musters, but that the constables were to see that the armour was in readiness, and to take other precautions. But whilst they were thus debating, death removed Elizabeth, and on the following day James I. was quietly proclaimed King at Derby without any trace of remonstrance.

Early in the reign of James I. the nature of the general musters or local militia was considerably changed, but their special services were never really needed during the time he was on the throne. In 1624, when James was unhappily persuaded to give authority to the Duke of Buckingham to raise 10,000 men in England to proceed to the Palatinate, this county had some share in the general misfortune. Out of the great disorderly rabble collected by impressment at Dover, half of whom died in the overcrowded vessels from the plague ere they could even be landed, Derbyshire contributed 150 men. These troops from the centre of England were allowed 8d. a day whilst marching to Dover, and they were expected to make at least twelve miles daily. It is probable that James was at Derby in August, 1609, when making a progress from Nottingham to Tutbury Castle. He was certainly in the county towards the close of his life, during the summer progress of 1624. On August 10th the King was at Welbeck, when he knighted two Derbyshire gentlemen, Sir John Fitzherbert of Norbury, and Sir John Fitzherbert of Tissington. In the following week he stopped two nights at Derby with Prince Charles, proceeding thence in the following week to Tutbury. In the latter place he knighted Sir Edward Vernon, of Sudbury.

In no other county in the whole of England is the evidence more clear or detailed than in Derbyshire as to the ill-advised proceedings in the opening part of the reign of Charles I., which eventually brought about the misfortunes of the great Civil War. The methods of raising funds for the Crown after an irregular fashion by way of benevolences and loans, was no new invention of this ill-fated Stuart King. Such exactions, though contrary to statute, were resorted to by Henry VII. in 1491, when he took a “benevolence” from the more wealthy folk for his popular incursion into France. Henry VIII. made like cause for an “aimable graunte” in 1528 and in 1548. Elizabeth appears to have always expected and received valuable “gifts” of money or plate during her progresses, and numerous “loans” demanded and obtained from Derbyshire gentlemen by that Queen were considerable, and a frequent cause of friction when it was found that they were scarcely ever repaid. Charles I., however, was so foolishly advised as to begin his reign by pressing for definite sums, which were ridiculously termed “free gifts.” Derbyshire was practically unanimous in its refusal to the demand. The courts of four of the hundreds duly met in 1626, and declined to pay a single farthing “otherwise than by way of Parliament.” The Derbyshire justices met in session on July 18th, and forwarded to the council the answers from all the hundreds. The first signature to this reply was that of the Earl of Devonshire, and in the whole county only £20 4s. was subscribed.

Two years later the King’s consent was obtained to the Petition of Rights, and thus benevolences or forced loans were put an end to in most explicit terms. The next expedient, however, for raising money without Parliament was still more foolish. A well recognised method for getting together a navy in actual time of war, namely, by issuing ship-writs, had become established in Plantagenet days, and proved of great service to Elizabeth in resisting the Armada. There were also later precedents of 1618 and 1626, but in every one of these cases ship-writs were only served on seaports, and were never issued save for immediate warlike enterprise. The ship-writs, however, of 1634 were served when there was no war or fear of attack; and in the following year the grievance was intensified by serving writs on inland as well as maritime counties and towns. Under the writs of 1635, the small county of Derbyshire was called upon to pay the great sum of £3,500—£90 of which was to be contributed by the clergy. Many in the county actively resisted. Sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, flatly declined to pay a farthing, was put under arrest, taken before the council in London, and his goods distrained. A third ship-writ reached Derbyshire in 1636, but the sheriff could only raise £700, and that with much difficulty. A fourth writ in October of the same year, again demanding £3,500, was served on the new sheriff, Sir John Harper. Resistance was general. The King was compelled in 1640 to summon the “Long Parliament,” which speedily declared all the late proceedings touching ship money to be illegal and void. To this the King consented; but it was too late, the mischief was done.

Charles I., in the earlier part of his reign, was on three occasions the guest of the Earl of Newcastle at Bolsover Castle. The record visit of the three was in 1633, when he was accompanied by his Queen. The entertainment, as Lord Clarendon has it, was “very prodigious and most stupendous.” The expenses for hospitality on this occasion reached the huge total of £15,000; it was during the visit that Ben Jonson’s masque of Love’s Welcome was performed.

In 1635 Charles I. visited Derby, and slept at the Great House in the market-place. The corporation and townsmen had very good reason to remember this visit, for they gave the Duke of Newcastle for the King a fat ox, a calf, six fat sheep, and a purse of gold to enable him to keep hospitality, with a further present to the Elector Palatine of twenty broad pieces. The King further improved the occasion by “borrowing” £300 off the corporation in addition to his gifts, as well as all the small arms in possession of the town. At the end of the Scottish War in August, 1641, Charles I. passed through Derbyshire, and was again at the county town on the eleventh of August, when he made Sir John Curzon, of Kedleston, and Sir Francis Rodes, of Barlborough, baronets.

The great Civil War began in the summer of 1642 with the raising of the Royal Standard at Nottingham. The registers of All Saints, the great church of the county town, have the following brief chronicle of this dramatic incident: “the 22 of this August errectum fuit Notinghamiæ Vexillum Regale.—Matt. xii. 25.” The vicar, Dr. Edward Wilmot, who made the entry, was a staunch Royalist, and probably employed the Latin tongue knowing full well the general tendency of the opinions of the townsmen. When the news reached Derby, the response was meagre. Hutton, the historian, tells us that about twenty Derby men marched to Nottingham and entered the King’s service. On September 13th the King marched with his army from Nottingham to Derby, but only made one day’s stay in the town, pushing on from thence to Shrewsbury. Within a few months practically the whole of the counties of Derby, Leicester, Stafford, Northampton, and Warwick were united in an association against the King.

Sir John Gell, of Hopton, at once came to the fore as the local energetic supporter of Parliamentary Government, obtaining a commission as colonel from the Earl of Essex. After rousing the county both at Chesterfield and Wirksworth, he marched with a small force to Derby, which he entered on the thirty-first of October, 1642, where he was joined by one of the leading gentlemen of the south of the shire—Sir George Gresley. It would take far more space than can here be afforded to give even the barest outline of the ups and downs of the sad civil strife that raged throughout Derbyshire, for the most part in favour of the Commonwealth, for the next few years. It must suffice to state that the county, apparently owing to its central position, suffered more in various ways, both in loss of men and property of all descriptions, than any other part of the whole of England. Wingfield Manor House, Bolsover Castle, and such great houses as Chatsworth, Tissington, Sutton, and Staveley, were held first by one side and then by the other; whilst important garrisons at places so near to the county boundaries as Welbeck, Tutbury, and Nottingham, contributed to constant raids over the parts of Derbyshire within easy reach.

In 1645 the plight of Derbyshire was most deplorable, through the frequent marches and counter-marches of the hostile forces through its limits; for, although the Parliament held its own throughout the county during the prolonged struggle, the Royalists now and again gained the victory in a skirmish, and succeeded in maintaining their hold in well-garrisoned places for a few months at a time. Both sides, also, found it essential in their campaigns to cross the county in various directions. In August of this year Sir George Gresley and others wrote to the Speaker as to the miserable condition of the county, which had been successively afflicted by the armies of Newcastle, the Queen, Prince Rupert, Goring, and others, who had freely raided from even the poorest of the people during their transits. The enemy, he stated, had lost all their Derbyshire garrisons, but they had been taken by force and at a great charge to the county. Several garrisons on the confines of the county, such as Newark, Tutbury, and Welbeck, still had power and means to levy contributions on the adjacent parts of Derbyshire, and to ruin those who denied them. Moreover, the Scotch army had been for a time very chargeable to the county, for they not only claimed free quarters, but supplied themselves with what horses they required. And now, to crown all, the King’s army had passed through, and made spoil of a great part of the county. Some of the Parliament forces had come to their help, and more were daily expected; but all of them would at least have free quarters, and the owners of the very few horses left in Derbyshire had now small hope of retaining them. The House of Commons was asked to grant them the excise of the town and county for the present maintenance of their own soldiers.

It must also be remembered in estimating the share that Derbyshire had in this momentous conflict, that it has not only to be gauged from what went on within her borders, but from the prominent share which Derbyshire forces took in the battles and skirmishes that took place in other parts of the kingdom. At the very outset of the struggle, Derbyshire troops played an important part round Lichfield and in other parts of Staffordshire. During the winter of 1644–5, Gell’s forces from this county were busy about Newark, and also in Cheshire. In the spring of the latter year they were engaged before Tutbury Castle; and in July, 1648, Derbyshire horse played an important part in the Parliamentary victory at Willoughby, Nottinghamshire.

In this same month the Derbyshire committee were ordered to send sixty of their horse to Pontefract to help in the siege, and to join in the resistance to the invasion from Scotland. On August 18th came the rout of the great army of the Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, at Preston. The defeated cavaliers disbanded themselves in Derbyshire, dispersing in all directions. Considerable numbers of the Scotch infantry were gradually arrested, having vainly endeavoured to conceal themselves amid the hills and dales of the wild Peak district. One of the most terrible episodes of the strife in the Midlands occurred in the then large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. A vast number of the Scotch prisoners were crowded into the church, with the shocking result thus curtly entered in the registers:—

“1648 Sept: 11. There came to this town of Scots army, led by the Duke of Hambleton & squandered by Colonell Lord Cromwell sent hither prisoners from Stopford under the conduct of Marshall Edward Matthews, said to be 1500 in number put into ye church Sept: 14. They went away Sept: 30 following. There were buried of them before the rest went away 44 persons, & more buried Oct. 2 who were not able to march, & the same thyt died by the way before they came to Cheshire 10 & more.”

Space must be found for a far less tragic incident that occurred in connection with another Derbyshire church in the south of the county earlier in this strife. When the Royalists were making a special effort to regain their hold on Wingfield Manor, Colonel Eyre, with his regiment of 200 men, marching from Staffordshire, passed the night in the church of Boyleston. Major Saunders, a local Derbyshire leader on the Parliament side, heard of this night encampment, and with a small troop of horse surrounded the church, and raising a simultaneous shout at all the windows and doors demanded the instant surrender of all the Royalists under pain of immediate fire. Colonel Eyre’s men, startled from their sleep, were compelled to surrender; they were ordered to come out one by one through the small priest’s door on the south side of the chancel, and as each stepped forth he was seized and stripped of his arms—“and soe,” wrote Major Saunders, “we took men, collours, and all without loss of one man on either side.”

As to the general sympathy of this shire with the Commonwealth proceedings, even after the execution of the King, the Commission of the Peace in 1650 shows how large a proportion of the old county gentlemen were content to accept commissions at the hands of the new rulers. It includes such names as Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Edward Leach, Sir Samuel Sleigh, Sir John Gell, Nicholas Leeke, John Mundy, Robert Wilmot, Christopher Horton, James Abney, Anthony Morewood, and Robert Eyre. Among the High Sheriffs under the Commonwealth after this date were John Stanhope, of Elvaston, George Sitwell, of Renishaw, and John Ferrers, of Walton.

On the other hand there were many staunch loyalists in the county, who compounded heavily for their estates. Such were Sir Aston Cokayne, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Francis Deincourt, Sir Henry Every, Sir John Harpur, of Swarkeston, Sir John Harpur, of Calke, Sir Henry Hunloke, Sir Francis Rodes, Thomas Leeke, Roland and George Eyre, William Fitzherbert, Henry Gilbert, and Jervase Pole, of Wakebridge.

Among the great store of county muniments at Derby, there are few papers that bring before the mind the incidents of the great civil strife more vividly than the petitions from maimed soldiers addressed to the Quarter Sessions for relief. Thus, in 1649, John Matthew, of Loscoe, stated:—

“that yor petitioner was a soldier under the Comand of Captaine Bagshaw at Wingfield Mannour, & was there plundered by the Cavileirs of all the goods he had, since which it pleased God to strike yr petitioner with lamenesse, that he is not able to help himselfe further than hee is carried. That hee hath two small children & his wife, & have sould theire Cow & all theire household goods & apparell to buy them bread & other sustenance etc.”

The petitioner obtained a pension of 12d. a week, which seems to have been the usual rate. After the Restoration the old Parliamentary pensioners were discarded, and their place taken by those who had fought on the other side.

Notwithstanding the Parliamentary convictions of the majority of the inhabitants of Derbyshire, it is scarcely to be wondered that the county returned with some eagerness to the monarchical faith at the time of the Restoration, for its experiences of the evils of civil warfare had been so peculiarly bitter. The Bill of Indemnity dealt fairly generously with the large majority of those who had been in arms against the late King, or active in the administration of the Commonwealth. No one can be surprised that the extreme penalty of the law was exacted on all those who had sat in judgment on Charles I., and who had not fled the country. It is, however, specially revolting to remember that the bodies of the three leading men among the “regicides”—Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton—were dragged from their graves, hung at the three corners of the gallows erected to grace the anniversary of Charles’ death, cut down and beheaded in the evening, and the heads spiked in front of Westminster Hall. The last two of these distinguished men were of good Derbyshire families.

It is difficult to know at what point to bring this historic sketch to a close when dealing with the memorials of old Derbyshire; nor can more than a few more pages be spared for such a purpose. It may, perhaps, be of some interest and permissible to chronicle with brevity three more incidents of importance in connection with the history of the shire, namely, (1) the Revolution of 1688, (2) the invasion of Derbyshire by Prince Charles in 1745, and (3) the “Pentrich insurrection,” as it has been absurdly termed, of 1817.

Derbyshire, in the person of William Cavendish, fourth Earl and first Duke of Devonshire, may be said to have probably taken the most prominent part in the driving of James II. from his throne, and in the bringing to this country as his successor William of Orange. There can be no doubt that Cavendish eventually became thoroughly and conscientiously convinced as to the true patriotism of the course that he took; but it would be idle to pretend that this distinguished nobleman indulged in his first dislike of James for other than personal motives. William Cavendish was one of the four young noblemen who carried the train of Charles II. at his coronation in 1661. In that year he was returned to Parliament for Derby, and remained a member of the Commons until his father’s death in 1684. He was a man of hasty and most vehement temper; becoming embroiled in a threatened duel in 1675, he was committed to the Tower by the majority of the House for a short period for having broken privilege. From that moment Cavendish took an active part against the court party, and advocated the exclusion from the succession of the Duke of York. After James II.’s accession, the Earl had the bad grace to give way to his fiery temper just outside the King’s Presence Chamber, when he felled to the ground one Colonel Colepepper, who was said to have previously insulted him. For this offence Cavendish was brought before the King’s Bench, when he was fined in the gigantic sum of £30,000, being committed to prison until payment was made. It is said that his mother, the Countess, brought to James II. bonds of Charles I. for double that amount, lent to him by the Derbyshire Cavendishes during the Civil War. The King, however, refused to interfere, but the Earl managed to escape, and fled to his house at Chatsworth. So powerful was Cavendish’s influence over his tenantry, that when the High Sheriff and his posse arrived to arrest him, the Earl coolly turned the tables upon them, imprisoned the whole force at Chatsworth, and held them there until he had arranged for his liberty by giving a bond for the gradual payment of this fine.

The earl used his retirement in Derbyshire in furthering the plots for placing William of Orange on the throne, dispatching an agent in May, 1687, to make a direct offer to William on behalf of himself and other malcontent noblemen. The conspiracy came to a head in this county, the leaders choosing for their place of meeting a room in a small hostelry on the edge of Whittington Moor, near Chesterfield, still known as the Plotting Parlour. The name of this humble inn was changed, after William and Mary came to the throne, from the “Cock and Pynot” to “Revolution” Inn; its restored remnants are now named Revolution House. The original scheme was that William was to land in the north, when Cavendish was at once to seize Nottingham. But these plans were changed, and when the news reached the Midlands that William had landed at Torbay on 5th November, 1688, the Earl of Devonshire put himself at the head of 800 armed friends and retainers, and entered Derby on the 21st of November, when he declared for the Prince of Orange. He obtained some support, but the mayor (John Cheshire) refused to sanction the billeting of the earl’s troops. Thereupon Cavendish proceeded to Nottingham, where he met with more general support, and issued a proclamation justifying the raising and drilling of troops. The new sovereign naturally lavished his favours on his chief supporter. The earl was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire in May, 1689, in place of the deposed Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1694 he was created Duke of Devonshire and Marquis of Hartington.

Revolution House at Whittington.

(From “Gentleman’s Magazine,” vol. lxxx, part 2, page 609.)

There was a considerable remnant of Jacobite feeling in the county, particularly amongst the clergy, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. The Stuart rising of 1715, which came to an end at Preston, caused much stir in Derbyshire, and there were several small tumults in the county town. The town of Derby became much distinguished in 1745 as the furthest place in England to which the brave Prince Charles Edward with his little army penetrated, in what has been rightly termed a gallant effort to achieve the impossible. There is no doubt that a very considerable majority of the upper and middle classes of Derbyshire were on the side of the constituted powers as then established; but the local authorities were fully aware that there was a certain amount of faith in a direct monarchical descent still current, and they were in some doubts as to the views of others in a district such as North Derbyshire, where there was still a considerable minority of adherents to Roman Catholicism. They did not dare, therefore, to call out the militia or any general forces of the county; but at a meeting summoned by the Duke of Devonshire on the 28th of September, at the “George Inn,” Derby, it was resolved to raise 600 volunteers in two companies to resist the pretensions of a “Popish Pretender,” of which the Marquis of Hartington and Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the two knights of the shire, were to be colonels. A subscription list for the necessary funds soon reached a sum of upwards of £6,000, and in the course of the next month the number of troops raised was increased to a thousand. On December 12th these troops were reviewed in the forenoon at Derby by the Duke as Lord-Lieutenant. An hour later an express reached Derby that the vanguard of the Scots had entered Ashbourne, whereupon in the afternoon, to the astonishment of many, the local troops were again drawn up in the market-place, and at ten in the evening “marched off by torchlight to Nottingham, headed by His Grace the Duke of Devonshire.” On the following morning the Scots entered Derby, and though they tarried there for two days, the Derbyshire volunteers had no share in their subsequent retreat and dispersion, for they were well out of the way in the adjoining shire of Nottingham. An amusing and bitter skit was written on the behaviour of this Derbyshire regiment, known as the “Blues” from the colour of their uniform, wherein they were upbraided for vanishing at the very moment when they were urgently needed. The following is one of the concluding paragraphs:—

“And when they came to Retford, they abode until word was brought that the young man was returned from Derby by the way which he came. And they returned back, and when they came nigh Derby they gave great shouts, saying, ‘Hail, Derby! happy are we to behold thee, for we greatly feared never to have seen thee.’”

The Prince was proclaimed in the market-place, and a sum of £3,000 was seized from the excise offices. On the following morning a French priest celebrated Mass in All Saints’ Church after the Roman use, which is said to have annoyed the English Catholics, who used the Marian missal in their private chapels. The Stuart forces quartered in Derby on the first night numbered 7,098, and on the second night 7,148. A small vanguard pushed on as far as Swarkeston bridge, but on the third day, the 6th December, the prince, disappointed of the expected additions to his forces and war chest, ordered a retreat, and the little army again passed through Ashbourne to the north.

To this county belongs the discredit of being the last place in the provinces where that horrible medley of butchery and torture—“hung, drawn, and quartered”—which our forefathers invented as a penalty for high treason, was carried out, although happily in a somewhat modified form. The actually last instance occurred in 1820, when the five Cato Street conspirators were beheaded after being hung. This shocking form of death fell to the lot of a Derbyshire framework knitter and two stonemasons in 1817. This was the time when the distress amongst the working classes in the Midlands had come to a climax, when every project of constitutional reform was stifled, and when a few half-starved men, deliberately incited by the spies and informers of those in authority, planned an abjectly foolish but riotous and murderous scheme to obtain relief, which was hatched at the “White Horse” Inn, Pentrich. The two or three score of labourers who took part in this rising were almost instantly scattered by the yeomanry; but the policy of the Government seems to have been to use this instrument to terrify the populace at large, and thereby to crush all attempts at reform. Hence everything was done that could be to exaggerate the so-called rebellion, and although the misguided ringleaders richly deserved punishment at the hands of the ordinary authority, it seems monstrous to have charged the offenders with high treason, and with the crime of levying war against the King. However, a special commission of four judges was appointed, and the trials at Derby, which extended over ten days, began on 15th of October. Most of the forty-six prisoners were condemned to transportation, but three of the ringleaders, James Brandreth, William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam, received the capital sentence for high treason. The Prince Regent signed the warrant for the execution of these three “traitors,” drawn from the humblest station in life, remitting that part of the sentence which related to “quartering,” with other absolutely unspeakable details, but ordering the hanging, drawing, and beheading. Two axes were ordered of Bamford, a smith of Derby, the pattern being taken from one in the Tower, which was supposed to have served in like cases.

On the morning of Friday, the seventh of November, the three miserable men, heavily ironed, were jolted round the prison yard on a horse-drawn hurdle or sledge, prepared, like the block, by Finney, the town joiner. On mounting the scaffold in front of the county jail, Brandreth and his fellows briefly testified that they had been brought to this plight by the tempting of Oliver, the degraded Government spy. They hung from the gallows for half an hour. Brandreth’s body was the first taken down and placed on the block. The greatest difficulty had been experienced in finding an executioner, but at last the high fee of twenty-five guineas secured several applicants. The chosen headsman was a Derbyshire collier; he was masked, and his identity was never disclosed. The mutilation was bungled; but when accomplished, the executioner seized the head by the hair, and holding it at arm’s length in three different directions over the crowd, thrice proclaimed, “Behold the head of the traitor Jeremiah Brandreth.” The other two were served in like manner. The scaffold was surrounded by a strong force of cavalry with drawn swords, and several companies of infantry were also present. The dense crowd was quite over-awed, and could utter no other protest than “terrifying shrieks.”

In that crowd was the poet Shelley. The day before the execution, the Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, and Shelley seized the opportunity to write a vigorous and now most rare pamphlet drawing a contrast between the two deaths.

The block on which these three men were beheaded is still preserved in the new county gaol at Derby. It consists of two 2½ in. planks fastened together, and measures 6 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. Six inches from one end a piece of wood 3 in. high is nailed across. The whole is tarred over, but the wood, strangely enough, remains damp in places. A tradition used to be current that the block sweated every seventh of November, on the anniversary of the execution; the writer visited it on that day in 1888, and found no difference in the sweating to what he had noticed in the previous week.

With Derbyshire during the century that has elapsed since the time of this absurdly misnamed Pentrich “insurrection,” we have now no concern. Its history during that period has been on the whole peaceful, and, in the best sense of the word, progressive. When in times to come the story of Derbyshire in the nineteenth century comes to be written, there can be no doubt that one name will stand out in letters of gold above its fellows. Florence Nightingale, now in her eighty-eighth year, was the younger daughter of Mr. William E. Nightingale, of Lea Hurst, near Matlock. It would be impossible to exaggerate the talent, energy, and devotion which that lady displayed in her almost impossible task of mitigating the horrors that overtook our sick and wounded soldiers in the great Russian war. It is not too much to say that this one gentle-born lady has entirely changed the conditions of military and general hospital nursing, not only in England, but throughout the civilised world. The Geneva Convention and the wearing of the Red Cross are but some of the fruits of this Derbyshire lady’s noble example.

May it also be permitted in a single brief sentence to record the fact that Derbyshire of the twentieth century has had the honour of giving Chancellors to each of our two great universities—for the Duke of Devonshire has for some time held the office of Chancellor of Cambridge, whilst Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the late Viceroy of India, was elected Chancellor of Oxford in March, 1907.

PREHISTORIC BURIALS IN DERBYSHIRE

By John Ward, F.S.A.

In prehistoric remains, Derbyshire is singularly favoured, and for two reasons. In the first place, nearly every class of these remains is represented, notably the following: cave-remains, burial-mounds, circles, camps, villages and other habitation sites, and the doubtful rocking-stones and other curious blocks and masses of rock which have been regarded as rock-idols or as otherwise associated with prehistoric man. In the second place, three of these classes—the first three of the above enumeration—are both numerous and important, scarcely surpassed by the corresponding remains of any other county in Great Britain. Moreover, these various remains have received the careful attention of a succession of antiquaries during the last century-and-a-half, and a large number of them have been more or less systematically explored, with the result that their literature is extensive and important. Derbyshire, indeed, has played a prominent part in the elucidation of the prehistoric archæology of our country.

Before entering upon the subject of this article, the distribution of these remains in the county demands a few words. They are most numerous in the mountainous region which lies north of Ashbourne and Wirksworth, and west of Tansley, Darley, and East Moors. They are rarely met with in the more gently undulating country to the east and south. Why this should be is not altogether clear. It is probable that the valleys and the low-lying lands generally, which are now the most populated, were in prehistoric times too swampy for habitation; but this does not explain the general absence of prehistoric remains from the higher tracts of the lowlands of Derbyshire. It has been suggested that the primitive inhabitants clung to the more mountainous regions because of the ease with which they could be defended against the marauding incursions of other tribes. It is more likely, however, that agriculture is mainly responsible for the uneven distribution. The fertile higher tracts of the lowlands have long been under cultivation, whereas many of the Peak uplands still remain in the primal state of nature, and many more of them have only been wrested from that state within the last two centuries. One of the earlier effects of the enclosing of the wastes in the eighteenth century and earlier decades of the following century, was the removal of the large stones of ancient monuments for gate-posts, and the despoiling of stone tumuli for the construction of field-walls and roads. Even on the moors it is rare that these remains have escaped partial demolition for the sake of their materials. If the havoc wrought during two centuries in the sparsely inhabited Peak country has been so great, it is not surprising that few prehistoric remains are to be seen where the land has been for a much longer time under cultivation. Probably the relative abundance or scarcity of stone is also to some extent accountable for the distribution. In the Peak, where stone is plentiful and rock-fragments strew the ground, cairns or stone tumuli abound; but in the south, where clays, marls, and glacial deposits abound, and stone is only obtained by quarrying, the few remaining tumuli are of earth. Earthwork, if left alone, is wonderfully enduring, but is highly susceptible of being levelled, and so obliterated, by the plough. The plough cuts through it as easily as through the natural soil; whereas in the Peak may often be seen the stony bases of cairns, covered with brambles, and avoided by the ploughman.

It is scarcely necessary to say that cairns, barrows, or tumuli, are, archæologically, the names applied to ancient burial-mounds. How the earliest races of men disposed of their dead we do not know; but we know that the earliest stages of civilization were everywhere characterized by a marked consideration for the dead, and this represents the strongest and perhaps ultimate difference between man and beast. When Neolithic man first appeared in our island, he already had an elaborate system of sepulture, and the megalithic chambers he raised are the greatest monuments of his age, and are among the most notable remains of prehistoric times. The Pyramids of Egypt are but barrows on a colossal scale, and constructed with all the engineering skill and refinement of a higher stage of culture than obtained in the west of Europe, and they will probably outlast all the other works of the ancient Egyptians.

It is not difficult to understand why burial under mounds should have preceded burial in the ground. In primitive times, before man possessed metal tools, it was easier to collect stones from the waste or to scrape sand or soil from the surface, wherewith to make a heap, than to dig a hole. Hence it is that in the tumuli of the Neolithic Age, and many of those of the following Bronze Age, interments are found upon or above the old ground level; while in others of the latter age, and many subsequent tumuli, they are found in shallow or deep excavations, over which the mounds were raised. To the early Christians the tumuli savoured of paganism, and soon ceased to be raised, but we have a reminiscence of the ancient mode of burial in our word “tomb.” In our country, as in the west of Europe generally, they range from Neolithic times to the establishment of Christianity, and the study of their contents better enables us to bridge the long interval with the successive advances made by man than does that of any other class of contemporary remains. In Derbyshire this is eminently the case, and perhaps no other English county can furnish so continuous a series of ancient interments.

In this county, as also in the contiguous parts of Staffordshire, a barrow is popularly known as a “low,” from the Anglo-Saxon hlaew, a small hill, heap, or mound, a word which is a frequent component in the place-names, as in Wardlow, Blakelow, etc. The conspicuous barrows at these and many other places so named, leave little room for doubt that they are accountable for the names, and that when absent the names may be regarded as evidence for their former existence. Whether the evidence in the case of hills, so many of the names of which in the Peak end in low, is of the same value is not so clear, as the hill itself may have been regarded as a “low” on a large scale. But it is well known that Neolithic and Bronze man had a decided penchant for burying his dead on the tops and brows of hills, as the pimple-like profile of many a barrow in such situations in the Peak amply proves. It may well have been, then, that the name by which a “low” on a hill was known has become transferred to the hill itself. It is impossible to estimate the number of these ancient burial-mounds in Derbyshire. The experienced eye will often detect on the moors the slight rise on the surface which may represent one, unmarked on the Ordnance Survey, and unrecognised as of possible archæological interest. The large number of low names, where no traces of these mounds are now to be seen, indicates that many have disappeared, as also does the occasional chance discovery of a cist or a cinerary urn where nothing on the surface indicated an interment. The number of prehistoric burial places (the Roman and post-Roman do not come within the scope of this article) which have been discovered in the county and described is little short of 300.

Fig. 1.—Plan and Section of Chambered Tumulus, Five Wells, Derbyshire.

The first impression that the literature of these remains gives rise to is their great diversity, a diversity which the reader will not unnaturally associate with differences of age or of race, or of both combined; but he will soon find their classification a difficult task. Very few of those which have been explored were in a reasonably perfect condition to begin with, and then the explorations have often been insufficient, and the descriptions vague and inexact. In spite of these drawbacks, however, the Derbyshire barrows are susceptible of satisfactory classification into three main divisions: (1) a small number containing megalithic chambers, and with general consent assigned to the Neolithic Age; (2) a large and varied number which belong to the Bronze Age; and (3) a few which are of later age, some of which certainly synchronize with the Roman occupation. These groups, it should be mentioned, merge into one another by transitional characters, and there is a residue which, from insufficient data, cannot be assigned to any particular class.

Neolithic Barrows

Including several more or less doubtful examples, there are or have been within the last century, remains of about a dozen barrows containing “chambers” in the county. Three of these—at Five Wells, near Taddington, and at Mininglow and Harborough Rocks, near Brassington—have yielded good results to exploration. All three were unfortunately in an extremely ruined condition, but by piecing together their evidence a fair idea can be obtained of their original state.

The Five Wells example (figs. 1 and 2) was excavated by Mr. Salt, of Buxton, and the writer, in 1899.[1] The remaining lower portion of the mound was found to be circular, about 56 feet in diameter, and constructed of quarried stones roughly laid in courses, and so disposed at the margin as to form a wall-like podium, which remained in places to the height of three feet. Near the middle are still to be seen the remains of two chambers, each about six feet long, and constructed of great slabs of stone resting on the old natural surface. Each had a paved floor, and was reached by a tunnel-like passage or gallery, of similar construction to the chambers, from a porthole-like entrance in the podium. Each chamber is somewhat wedge-shaped, the wider end being that into which the gallery opened, and immediately within this end are two pillar-like stones, one on each side, which structurally formed the last pair of side stones of the gallery; but they differed in their greater height. The use of these “pillars” is uncertain, but the writer has suggested that between each pair was a dropstone, which when raised, portcullis-fashion, to allow of access to the chamber, was received into an upper space.

The Mininglow example is larger, is also circular, and appears to have had five chambers, of which two (figs. 4 and 5) closely resemble the above, except that they seem to have lacked the “pillars.” Mr. Thomas Bateman, who examined this tumulus in 1843, found that it had a wall-like podium as at Five Wells, and he traced one of the galleries to its orifice in this podium. Had he pushed his investigations further, it is probable he would have found the mound to be of similar built construction.[2] The Harborough Rocks barrow was excavated by the writer in 1889, but it was too ruined to allow of its shape and the number of its chambers to be determined. One chamber (fig. 3), however, remained, and this also resembled those at Five Wells, but it is doubtful whether it ever possessed “pillars.” A portion of the gallery was traced, as also what was almost certainly a fragment of a podium.[3]

Fig. 2. East Chamber at Five Wells. View From the North-East.

Of the other barrows of the type, little can be said of their structure. Several have been opened or destroyed by labourers, and the rest have only been slightly examined. Mr. Bateman examined examples at Ringham-low, near Monyash; Bolehill, near Bakewell; Stoneylow and Greenlow, near Brassington; Smerrill, near Youlgreave; and a second one at Mininglow. They all appear to have been constructed with stone, and their chambers to have been on a megalithic scale. He makes no mention of galleries, but as his efforts were confined to clearing out the ruined chambers, he might easily have overlooked their remains. With the exception of the first-mentioned, they were all circular, but his plan and description of that barrow leave it uncertain whether its curious outline was original or due to additions. The remaining three barrows—the great one near Chelmerton,[4] one near Wardlow,[5] and one on Derwent Moor,[6] have only a doubtful claim to be included in the chambered class. They were broken into a century or more ago, and the accounts of them are very meagre.

Unfortunately, all the chambers in this county which have been searched from scientific motives had already been rifled, but that at Harborough Rocks had suffered least. Here the mound had been almost entirely removed for the sake of its materials, the capstone of the chamber had been thrown over, and many of the skeletons it contained scattered; but, fortunately, six of these remained untouched. These were laid on their sides across the space, in the usual contracted or doubled-up attitude. Mr. Bateman, in 1843, found in the more perfect of the two Five Wells chambers the remains of about twelve skeletons, all in a state of confusion. He also found a similar number in one of the Ringham-low[7] chambers, and in that at Smerrill, and a still greater number at Stoney-low.[8] The chambers at Mininglow and Greenlow had been too much rifled to yield more than a few scattered bones to his spade. In the Wardlow barrow seventeen skeletons were found, “inclosed by two side walls”; and from that on Derwent Moor a “cartload of human bones occupied a large trench above a yard wide.” The skulls in every case, when sufficiently perfect for their form to be made out, have been of the long or dolichocephalic shape; and all the shin bones that have come under the writer’s notice have exhibited the peculiar flattening known as platycnemism. These Neolithic people had a remarkable immunity from dental caries, although the teeth are frequently so worn down by mastication that they must have been almost level with the gums in life. Out of 148 teeth at Harborough Rocks, many of which were excessively ground down, there were only five or six which showed any signs of caries.

In no case has a bronze or other metallic object been found associated with these interments. The few stone implements which have been found are all of flint, and it is significant that these have consisted mostly of thin and delicately-worked arrow-heads of leaf-shaped form. The clayey floor of the gallery at Harborough Rocks yielded several of these, all excessively thin and beautifully wrought, all either broken or calcined, and associated with fragments of charcoal. Several fine examples were found in two of the Ringham-low chambers, and the point of one at Five Wells; and, in addition, a knife of delicate workmanship was also found with the last, as also fragments of coarse pottery, but these may have been derived from destroyed later burials at a higher level.

Figs. 3, 4, and 5.—Plans of “Chambers.” Fig. 3, at Harborough Rocks; Figs. 4 and 5, at Mininglow, Derbyshire.

This association of numerous skeletons, dolichocephalic skulls, and leaf-shaped arrow-heads in Neolithic chambers has been observed elsewhere in Britain. We need only cross the Derbyshire border a few miles for an excellent example of this. In 1849 a large and little disturbed chamber was opened at Wetton, in Staffordshire, which yielded about thirteen dolichocephalic skeletons and several of these arrow-heads. Further afield, at Rodmarton, in Gloucestershire, the arrow-heads were all broken, apparently intentionally, as seems to have been the case at Harborough Rocks. The placing of things which are useful in life with the dead is both ancient and widespread, and has its roots in the belief in man’s continued existence after death, and that somehow they will still be of use to him. The breaking or burning of them may have been partly to render them useless to the living, and partly by thus “killing” them to set their spirits free to join the departed in the world of spirits. Perhaps, too, there was a sacrificial intention of propitiating the ancestral spirits. The presence of the arrow-heads in the gallery at Harborough Rocks is more suggestive of offerings to the dead than the depositing of objects with them at the burial. Some prehistoric man would, perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, crawl into the entrance to the vault of the family or the clan and there make his offering, and with some appropriate formula dedicate it to the dead by breaking or burning the objects, the enduring arrow-heads and charcoal alone remaining to us as witnesses of the act. The thinness and delicacy of these arrow-heads suggest that they were made, not for use, but for this special purpose, like the amber and jet models of implements which have been found in Continental chambers. A further stage, in which the act has become degraded into a purely representative one, is seen in the imitation cardboard money which the Chinaman burns to enrich the soul of his ancestor.

Assuming that the less known examples correspond with the better known, which seems probable, these Derbyshire Neolithic burial-places constitute, in their circular outlines and their abrupt entrances, a strongly marked local type, contrasting in these respects with the more usual elongated forms and incurved entrances elsewhere. The wedge-shaped plans and inward leaning sides of the chambers at Mininglow, Five Wells, and Harborough Rocks, present another peculiarity. The apparent absence of galleries in some of these remains may not be due to oversight or want of investigation, as this means of access has been proved to be absent from some of the barrows of this period; but it seems to be an essential that the chamber should have some means of access, even if it involved digging, for the whole trend of enquiry goes to show that it was designed for successive burials, and herein it differs from the cists of the barrows we next consider.

Bronze Age Barrows

The barrows of this era in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, differ so much among themselves in form, size, construction, and contents, that it is impossible to establish a Bronze Age “type.” They have little in common, except in the relics associated with their interments, which have the impress of a common age. Compared with the chambered class, they are, as a rule, smaller and of less elaborate construction; but more marked is the difference in their internal arrangements. The former barrows suggest the idea that they were erected to receive the dead; these, that they were piled up over the dead. The chamber, being designed to receive successive interments, was provided with a tunnel-like gallery, or other means of more or less easy access; whereas the Bronze Age cist or grave, having received its charge, was permanently closed, and if the mound which was raised over it was used for future burials, new receptacles were made for the dead, which rarely interfered with the primary or original one. Sometimes, however, in digging a new grave the primary was reached, and more often than not the bones were thrown on one side to make way for the new interment, thus indicating how completely the Neolithic procedure had disappeared.

The results of the examination of about 250 of the Derbyshire Bronze Age barrows have been placed upon record, and these represent about three times as many interments which have been described—by “interment” must be understood, not the remains of each separate body buried, but each burial, whether it consisted of one body or more.

So far as can be judged from the usually worn down and mutilated condition of these Derbyshire barrows, the prevailing original form was that of a shallow dome or inverted bowl, but various transitions ending with the disc-shaped types of Dr. Thurnam occur. Their outlines are circular, unless rendered irregular by the addition of secondary mounds or the depredations of a still later age. Their usual diameters range between 30 and 60 feet, and the heights rarely exceed 6 feet; but these dimensions are occasionally less or greater. With few exceptions, the mounds are of stone, or of stone with an admixture of earth; but whether the latter is an original ingredient is often uncertain—it may be merely blown earth and vegetable mould. Broadly speaking, therefore, these Bronze Age barrows are cairns. In most instances they consist of such stones as may be gathered from the surface, simply thrown together. A slight advance upon this is the introduction of a kerb of larger stones to define the margin of the mound (fig. 6). In a further advance, the kerb is formed of one or more rings of large, flat stones set on edge in the ground and inclining inwards. In a still further advance, the whole mound may be built up of concentric rings of such inclined stones. The barrow on Grinlow[9] (on which the tower known as “Solomon’s Temple” stands), near Buxton, showed this construction (fig. 7). In the kerbed barrows, the partial removal of the looser materials of the central portion may result in a table-like mound, the kerb forming a well-marked shoulder; and if the destructive process has gone further, this may stand out verge-like—results which have been mistaken for original designs. Examples of all these are to be met with in Derbyshire.

These barrows, again, are sometimes surrounded with a bank or a ring of stones, or a combination of the two. That known as Hob Hurst’s House, on Baslow Moor,[10] is closely invested with an annular bank, and the writer has seen a similar example on Eyam Moor. In others, the bank is further away, and is usually capped or lined with a row of standing stones, a few feet or yards apart. There was formerly a good example of this variety on Abney Moor, and others on Eyam Moor with rings apparently of stones only. As the ring expanded, the enclosed mound seems to have been smaller, and consequently more easily removed by the accidents of time; and this probably explains the origin of the smaller so-called “Druidical” circles.[11]

Fig. 6.—Section of Barrow at Flaxdale, near Youlgreave.
(From wood-cut by Llewellynn Jewitt.)

Fig. 7.—Section of Barrow at Grinlow, near Buxton.

Fig. 8.—Plan of Burial at Thirkelow, near Buxton.

During the period we are considering, both inhumation and cremation were practised, sometimes together. The placing of the interments was as diverse as the forms and construction of the barrows. For the moment we will confine ourselves to the inhumated class. In the simplest mode of burial, the body was laid on the ground and the mound heaped over it. But often, perhaps usually, something was done to fence it in, or to protect it from the material of the mound. The simplest fence consisted of a row of stones placed round the body (as in the plan of the interment of a barrow at Thirkelow, near Buxton, fig. 8[12]), and between this and the symmetrical enclosure, formed of flag-stones set on edge, has been found every transition. When it was desired to protect the body from the weight of the mound above, a simple device was to place it at the foot of a large stone or a ledge of rock, against which flat stones were reared pent-wise over it; or large stones were made to incline against one another from opposite sides, like a gable roof. From these simple devices we pass through another series of transitions to the box-like cist, formed of slabs on end and roofed with others. Then there was burial in a grave, shallow or deep, large or small, simply filled up with earth or stones, or roofed with one or more flag-stones to form a vault; and the vault, when lined with other flag-stones, became an underground cist. Examples of all these modes of burial have been found in Derbyshire, where, from the abundance of stone, cists are numerous. We know that timber was used for like purposes where stone is scarce, and there is indirect evidence for its occasional use in this county.

What has been said above, will apply in some measure to the cremated interments. Occasionally these are found in cists, graves, and other receptacles, as large as those containing unburnt skeletons; but more frequently they are smaller and better proportioned to the small compass of the remains. Probably the larger receptacles relate to the early days of cremation, when it was a new fashion; to-day, by force of habit, we occasionally transfer the few handfuls of ashes from the crematorium to an ordinary coffin instead of an urn for burial. Generally speaking, however, the disposal of the cremated remains differed considerably from that of unburnt bodies. When the funeral pile was raised on the spot where the burial was to take place, it was the common custom to collect the calcined bones into a little heap on the surface, or to place them in a shallow depression made before or after the burning. In either case, they were sometimes deposited on a flat stone, and there is reason to think that they were often first tied up in a cloth or placed in a basket. This would be especially convenient when they had to be transferred to a different site for burial from that where the body was burned, as seems to have been more often the case in Derbyshire. A more notable receptacle for the burnt remains was the cinerary urn, which may be regarded as the equivalent of both the cloth or basket and of the cist. The urn was usually deposited in a simple hole, and most often, in this county, upright, the mouth being nearly always covered with a thin stone. When reversed, the mouth usually rested upon such a stone.

The regard of the Derbyshire Bronze people for their dead sometimes—and perhaps more often than we suspect—went beyond the mere provision of a protection from the surrounding soil or stones. Occasionally the receptacle was paved, or it contained gravel, clay, or fine earth or sand, on which the body was laid, or in which it was embedded. On Stanton and Hartle moors several cists containing cremated remains were filled with sand, which in one rested on a bed of heather.[13] In a grave at Shuttlestone,[14] near Parwich, the body had been wrapped in a skin, and laid upon a couch of fern leaves. In another, near King’s Sterndale,[15] there was tenacious clay mixed with grass and leaves, which still retained their greenness. The presence of these perishable substances, which under ordinary conditions must have soon disappeared, may represent a general custom.

The dead were evidently buried or cremated, as the case may have been, in their wearing apparel, for the pins, buttons, studs, weapons, and the like, which are frequently found with the unburnt remains, are often in the relative positions they would occupy on the attire; and in case of the burnt, they have almost invariably passed through the fiery ordeal.

Fig. 9.—Dolichocephalic Skull from “Chamber” at Harborough Rocks. Side and Top Views. (Scale = ⅓.)

Barrow burial in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, was not confined to one sex or to any particular age. The remains of women and children are found in graves and cists as carefully constructed and associated with implements and ornaments as varied and elaborate as those which appertain to the men, indicating, surely, that the family tie was strong, and that the lot of the women was not servile. The frequency with which an infant is associated with an adult, usually a woman, and presumably the mother, probably points to infanticide upon the demise of the parent. Similarly, the occasional presence of a woman’s remains with those of a man points to suttee. More frequently a deposit of cremated bones is associated with a skeleton, and this may possibly represent the sacrifice of a slave. These in themselves, however, do not necessarily indicate a state of savagery, as the recent prevalence of suttee in India and of infanticide in China sufficiently prove.

In the unburnt interments, the body was laid in a more or less contracted posture, varying from a slight flexure of the knees to such a doubling up as to bring them close to the chest, and nearly always on the side, very rarely sitting. The contracted posture may be said to be the invariable Bronze Age rule in Derbyshire, for the only exception—a skeleton laid at full length at Crosslow[16]—may possibly have belonged to a later period. The side on which the body was laid, and its orientation, have in themselves no apparent signification, and are irrespective of sex or age. To judge from the recorded instances, about as many were laid on the left side as the right. Their orientation shows a slight predilection for the south, and a more marked aversion to the north-west. The Rev. Dr. Greenwell pointed out many years ago[17] that in the majority of instances in the north of England which came under his notice, the bodies had been so placed as to face the sun during some part of the day, nearly 60 per cent. having their gaze confined to southerly directions between the south-west and the south-east. If we analyse the forty-four Derbyshire cases in which both the orientation and the side are given, we obtain a similar result—the faces of over 60 per cent. looking in directions ranging from west to south-east. It seems clear that no importance was attached to the direction of the body or the side upon which it was laid, except so far as these enabled it to face the source of light and life; but it was not a rule invariably insisted upon.

These skeletal remains throw an interesting light upon the contemporary inhabitants of Derbyshire. Unfortunately, when Bateman was so actively engaged in opening barrows, anthropology was in its infancy. He and his colleagues rarely gave more than the cephalic index and femoral length, and even these not always. The terms used in describing the skulls, as “boat-shaped,” “oval and elevated,” “medium,” “rather short,” “platycephalic,” “evenly rounded,” etc., do not admit of precise interpretation, and probably no exact value was attached to them. From all sources sufficient particulars of about 85 Bronze Age skulls found in Derbyshire are available to allow of the following classification:

This intermixture of skull-forms has long been observed in the barrows of this age elsewhere in the country, and is generally recognized as indicating the intrusion of a round-head people upon the Neolithic long-heads, the intermediate form being the result of intermarriage between the two stocks. The proportion of these different forms in Derbyshire is of peculiar interest, because, as the Rev. Dr. Greenwell pointed out in his British Barrows, the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls are found in about equal numbers in the barrows of the wolds, whereas in those of the south-west of the island the latter very greatly preponderate. Hence, in Derbyshire, the ratio, like its geographical position, is roughly intermediate, and thus naturally confirms his conclusion, “that the earlier long-headed people were more completely eradicated by the intrusive round-heads in Wiltshire than they were in East Yorkshire.” The general experience has been that the brachycephalic skeletons indicate a race of more powerful physique than the people with whom they intermingled. Assuming that the length of the femur or thigh-bone is 27.5 per cent. of the stature in life, the average stature of twenty-one men was 5 ft. 7⅓ ins., and of seven women 5 ft. 0½ ins. The difference between these statures, nearly 7 ins., considerably exceeds that which obtains in England to-day, and must probably be set down to the effects of early child-bearing and hard work on a poor and irregular diet upon the Bronze women.

Fig. 10.—Brachycephalic Skull from Grinlow. Side and Top Views. (Scale = ⅓.)

The various objects associated with the interments have, as already stated, the impress of a common age. The most remarkable are the earthen vessels. Besides the cinerary urns referred to above, there were vessels of other forms, which have received the names of “drinking-cups,” “food-vases,” and “incense-cups.” The first two are with little doubt rightly named, as both in Derbyshire and elsewhere traces indicating the former presence of liquids and of solid foods have been detected in them respectively. The use of the diminutive “incense-cups” is unknown, and the name is a fanciful one. All these vessels are of clay, with an admixture of sand or crushed stone to prevent them cracking in the process of firing, and are shaped by hand and imperfectly burnt. The ornamentation is essentially of the same character in all, but it varies greatly in elaboration, consisting of various combinations of straight lines, produced for the most part by the impression of twisted thongs or rushes or of notched stamps, or, less frequently, of grooves made with a pointed tool. These combinations are extremely varied, consisting of simple bands of parallel lines, parallel lines in alternate series, horizontal and vertical, saltires, zig-zags, “herring-bone” and latticed diapers, etc. Punched dots and impressions of the finger-nail or tip also occur, but sparingly. The forms of the drinking-cups, food-vases, and cinerary urns are tolerably constant in Derbyshire, but the little incense-cups vary very much; these, too, are usually the most carefully made, while the urns are, as a rule, the coarsest and the least decorated. In figs. 11 and 12 are shown Derbyshire examples of each kind, which will convey a better idea of them than any description.

Fig. 11.—Typical Examples of Bronze Age Burial Vessels, Derbyshire.
A—Drinking-Cups. B—Food-Vases. (Scale = 1/5 size of originals.)

Flint implements, flakes, and fragments are the most frequent accompaniments. The implements include all the ordinary forms of the period: arrow, javelin and spear-heads, daggers, knives, scrapers, fabricators, and chisels, of every grade of workmanship down to nondescript-worked fragments of uncertain use. The majority of the flint objects are, however, mere shapeless fragments and chippings, and the frequent presence of these seems to indicate that the placing with the dead of things useful in life had already begun to degenerate into a merely symbolic ceremony.

Bronze objects follow next, but a long way behind. Of these the most numerous by far are knife-daggers, the rest consisting of awls, pins, axes, or celts, etc., and mere fragments. The first are of the early form, in which the blade was attached to the handle by two or three rivets, and the axes are of the early flat or slightly flanged form. Next come objects of bone and deer-horn; the former consisting mostly of pins and borers, and the latter of hammers. Then follow jet and Kimmeridge—coal beads, studs, and necklaces, several of these being of elaborate character. Besides the above, drilled and polished basalt and granite axe-hammers, whet-stones, rubbers, quartz pebbles, red ochre, and iron ore are occasionally met with. The animal remains associated with the interments are those of species still existing in Europe, and they include the present domesticated animals—the ox, sheep, goat, pig, horse, and dog. So frequently has a tooth, described as that of an ox or a horse, been reported that there is little doubt its introduction had some ceremonial import; perhaps, here again, it was a food offering reduced to a representative symbol.

Besides the various objects actually found with the interments, others often occur amongst the materials of the mounds. Some of these may have been unwittingly gathered up with the materials, and thus be of much greater age than the barrows in which they are found; others may have been casually dropped in after times, and have gravitated into the interior. But a more fertile source of the scattered objects is the disturbance of the earlier interments by the introduction of the later ones.

The objects described above fall into two, but not easily separated, classes—those which were introduced with the wearing apparel of the deceased, and those with ceremonial import. The vessels are a good example of the latter, as they differed in a marked degree from those used for domestic purposes. So also the animals’ bones, especially the teeth just referred to, as they evidently (as also the drinking-cups and food-vessels) imply offerings of food to the dead. The absence of Roman influence is noteworthy, as also is the absence of articles characteristic of the later Bronze Age, as swords, palstaves, and socketed axes. The objects indicate in the aggregate a time when stone implements were going out of use, and bronze was confined to a few light implements. But it must not be assumed in consequence that the barrows we are considering were confined to the earlier Bronze Age.

The remarkable differences in the mode of interment, which have been only sketchily described on the foregoing pages, present a highly interesting problem to be solved. The prevailing view is that these different modes were practised simultaneously by different tribes, and even by the same people. The double interments, in which an unburnt skeleton is associated with a deposit of cremated remains, may seem to countenance the latter view, while the distribution of the interments favours the former. For instance, in certain districts certain modes prevailed. On and around Stanton Moor, and throughout the country between Eyam, Castleton, and Sheffield, cremated interments predominate, while in many parts of the west of the county the interments are exclusively unburnt. Then, again, in barrows containing many burials there is a decided partiality for like rather than unlike interments. But if the phenomena are subjected to a careful and systematic study, it will be found that these differences are neither local nor tribal, but in the main consecutive.

The problem is solved by the superposition and other evidences of sequence of the different interments in those barrows which contain several, with the comparison of the associated objects, and then by a general correlation of the results derived from the individual barrows. It is by a similar process that the geologist establishes the sequence of his formations; the fossils playing the part of the associated objects. The pottery is a peculiarly valuable factor in the enquiry, as in spite of the conservatism of half-civilised people, the ease with which the plastic clay can be modelled into any desired shape resulted in comparatively rapid changes in form and decoration. In this respect the pottery contrasted with the flint and stone implements, the intractability of the materials of which limited the workman to a narrow range of forms; hence these forms continued unchanged through long periods. We will now give a few illustrations.

Fig. 12.—Typical Examples of Bronze Age Burial Vessels, Derbyshire.
A—Incense-Cups. B—Cinerary Urns. (Scale = 1/5 size of originals.)

In a barrow at Parcelly Hay[18] Mr. Bateman found a skeleton in a vault, and immediately above its cover-stones was another, accompanied with a bronze knife-dagger and a polished granite axe-hammer. Here is a case of simple superposition, in which the older interment was not disturbed by the later one. But frequently the later introduction disturbed or quite displaced the earlier. At Gray Cop,[19] near Monsal Dale, for instance, the original interment consisted of the skeletons of a woman and a child; but at a later date the cremated remains of another body had been buried so deeply that the woman’s pelvic bones had been dispersed in the process. The havoc wrought by the introduction of secondary interments is sometimes very confusing, and has given rise to erroneous conclusions on the part of the barrow-digger. In the two examples just cited, the earlier interment was the primary one—the one over which the mound was raised in the first instance—and it occupied the normal position, the centre of the site. The secondary interments may or may not be in the centre. In a small barrow at Lidlow,[20] near Youlgreave, for instance, the primary interment was a skeleton in a cist, while near the margin of the mound was a later deposit of burnt bones under a cinerary urn. In another at Blakelow[21] a central grave contained the skeletons of a woman and infant with a drinking-cup, while in a cist at a higher level near the edge were six more skeletons with a food-vase. In another on Hartle Moor[22] was a deposit of burnt bones with a food-vessel in the central cist, and near the margin a cinerary urn with its contents.

It has occasionally happened, however, that no central interment has been recorded. In some cases we may suspect that the explorers had forgotten that the primary interment is sometimes in a deep grave below the natural level. On the other hand, carelessness on the part of those who originally raised the mound may account for the interment being out of the centre. The same result has been brought about by additions to the original mound upon the occasions of new interments, for the Bronze folk were not always content with merely inserting these into an old mound. Sometimes the additional matter formed a capping. A barrow on Ballidon Moor[23] furnishes a good example of this; it had an inner cairn containing several interments, and was surmounted with a thick layer of earth, at the foot of which was an ashy stratum representing the site of a funeral pile, while in the earth above were the cremated remains derived from it. It was evident, therefore, that this capping was added on this occasion. More often the later mound was thrown up against the side of the old one. The smaller chambered cairn at Mininglow[24] was found to have had a mound of earth cast up against its side, and this had been raised over the spot where a man had been cremated, with whose remains were a bronze dagger, part of a bone implement, and some “good flints,” all of which had passed through the fire with their owner; and at Five Wells, Mr. Salt found a secondary interment of Bronze Age type, consisting of a contracted skeleton in a small cist, which had been constructed against the podium of the chambered cairn, and covered with stones and earth—two interesting proofs of the greater age of the chambered tumuli. These additions are not easily detected if their materials are similar to those of the parent mounds, but their effect may be apparent in the superficial irregularities they give rise to. Not a few Derbyshire examples could be given which probably owe their irregularities to this cause.

These illustrations will have given the reader an idea how the sequence of interments is determined. Many years ago the writer tabulated the sequences in all the Derbyshire (including the Staffordshire) barrows containing more than one interment each, of which reliable information was obtainable. When those associated with vessels, other than cinerary urns, were classified, some significant results were obtained. The distribution of the vessels was as follows:

Twenty-nine drinking-cups, all associated with unburnt interments;

Sixty-five food-vases, of which forty-eight were associated with unburnt and seventeen with burnt interments, but none of these in cinerary urns; and

Eleven incense-cups, all with burnt interments, and nearly all in cinerary urns.

It is a question whether the smaller food-vases associated with the burnt interments should not be classed as incense-cups, as the two forms often approximate; but this does not vitiate the general results.

That this table represents a sequence is proved by the fact that in no barrow containing a number of interments has one associated with a drinking-cup been found under conditions to suggest that it may have been of later introduction than a neighbouring food-vase or cinerary urn, nor is there an example of a food-vase interment succeeding an inurned one; whereas the contrary has frequently been noted.

If we apply the test of horizontal position, we find that, compared with the other interments, a much larger proportion of those with drinking-cups were central, while those in urns were as markedly lateral, indicating that the first were predominantly primary interments, and the last secondary. But the vertical position gives even more definite results. The normal position of a primary interment is on or below the old natural surface; that of a secondary, on or above that level.

The following table gives the percentages of these positions when ascertainable:—

It will be observed that in descending order the proportion of those below the natural level decreases, and of those above increases, the inference being that the ratio of primary to secondary interments decreases.

These groups are further differentiated by the implements and other objects associated with them. These are, as a rule, more numerous in the drinking-cup interments and least so in the inurned. The flint implements of the former are usually the more carefully wrought. Two other peculiarities of the drinking-cup interments may be noted. With five of them was an instrument described as a mesh-rule or a modelling tool, made from the rib of some animal; but these instruments have not been found with other Bronze Age interments in the county. The other peculiarity is that in all these interments, the body, when it has been recorded, lay on its left side. Both these peculiarities are also characteristic of the drinking-cup interments of Staffordshire.

From these various data it is evident that very early in the Bronze Age inhumation was the normal mode of sepulture. The body, probably clad in the clothing of life, was laid on its side in a contracted attitude on the natural surface or in a grave, with or without a fencing or protection of some sort, which in its highest development took the form of a cist. Food was certainly often, if not invariably, placed with it; but all we know of this, as also any other articles which were present, are the less perishable portions that have survived the withering hand of Time—the bronze blade of a dagger-knife, the head of an axe, or the flint point of an arrow. Now and again a vessel of clay was also placed with the deceased—the vessel familiar to us as the “drinking-cup.” Later, but still early in the age, and while as yet the mode of burial was unchanged, this gave place to the food-vase. Whether this vessel was derived from the former is uncertain. Derbyshire provides no intermediate forms, and this seems to be general throughout the country. But the period of transition may have been short, and transitional forms may yet be forthcoming.

We have guardedly spoken of inhumation as the normal mode of sepulture at this early period, for cremation was both known and practised, perhaps from the very first. The occasional presence of a deposit of burnt human bones with these contracted interments has already been noticed. Whether, as was then suggested, it represents the immolation of a slave on the occasion of the burial or not, there is little doubt that it should be regarded as a subordinate feature, and the skeleton, as the interment proper. Fire certainly played an important part in these early funerals, as the frequent presence of a little charcoal indicates. Why? We can only guess. It must have had a religious import—the ceremonial purification of the grave, perhaps; and this might well have now and again included a human sacrifice.

There is little doubt that the drinking-cup was introduced from the Continent,[25] and one is tempted to connect its introduction with the brachycephalic newcomers, as also the introduction of bronze. The immigration seems to have been of a peaceful nature, and however much the powerfully-built “round-heads” may have influenced and even dominated the native population, they were numerically only a small element in it, and were ultimately—perhaps before the close of the Bronze Age—absorbed by it.

Before the food-vase ran its course, cremation, in the proper sense of the term, made its appearance, and soon became the general fashion. Perhaps it would be going too far to say that it supplanted inhumation. For anything we know to the contrary, the latter still continued in vogue in some parts of the country to the Roman period. At first, it would seem, the cremated remains were deposited in cists, or otherwise entombed after the manner of unburnt bodies; but soon the more appropriate cinerary urn made its appearance, as also the changeful and enigmatical little incense-cup. That the cinerary urn was derived from the food-vase is almost beyond doubt, for although Derbyshire has not supplied examples bridging the two, vessels of intermediate form and associated with burnt remains, but not containing them, have been found in the north.

Meanwhile, the objects placed with the dead became fewer and more meagre in character, until at length they were reduced to little more than fragments of flint, representing a rite, perhaps, with a lost meaning. Less care was expended on the sepulchral vessels as time went on, but the delicacy of some of the incense-cups proves that this was a rule with exceptions. The general trend of evidence goes to show that the later mounds raised over the dead were smaller and less stereotyped in form than those of old. Ringed barrows and the smaller “circles” are associated with cremated interments, especially those of the cinerary-urn stage, in Derbyshire.

“Late” Prehistoric Barrows.

The interval between the last barrows and the Roman period presents many difficulties to the student of the ancient sepulchral remains of Derbyshire. A few—barely two dozen—barrows have been opened in the county which had certain features in common that markedly differentiated them from those of the Bronze Age on the one hand and from the post-Roman or Anglo-Saxon on the other. Some of these, perhaps most, can certainly be assigned to this interval; and of the rest, several seem to as conclusively belong to the Roman period. As these differ much from the typical Romano-British barrows, they may be held to prove that the Romanization of the natives of the district was a slow and retarded process. From the extremely ruined condition of these barrows and their usually meagre contents it is only by comparing them together, and especially with the larger number of the same type in the adjacent parts of Staffordshire, that anything conclusive can be learned of their original characteristics.

The mounds are sometimes of considerable size, and are wholly or largely built up of fine materials, as earth, clay, sand, and gravel; and if large stones enter into their composition, they are not intermixed with the finer constituents, but form a platform or pavement, a layer, or a capping. Occasionally they disclose the curious constructional feature of two or more different materials arranged in alternate layers. Such a barrow was opened at Gorsey Close,[26] near Tissington, in 1845; its soil was found to be interspersed with alternate layers of moss and grass. Another at Roylow,[27] near Sheen, gave very similar results. It is also noticeable that these barrows are often found in comparatively low-lying places.

In every known instance, the interment over which the mound was raised had undergone cremation, and this applies to the few secondary interments which have been noticed. The bodies had invariably been burned on the spot, and the hard-baked floors, strewn with charcoal and ashes, are a notable feature of these “late” barrows. The excessive heat of the funeral pile has so completely reduced the bones that they have often escaped detection altogether. There is reason to think that these calcined remains were sometimes left as they were deposited by the fire; but in a few instances they were found occupying a shallow circular hole in the natural surface into which they had been swept after the fire was extinguished. This may have been a common practice, for the presence of a small depression of the kind might easily be overlooked by the explorer. On the other hand, there was evidence that in some of these barrows the human ashes had been collected and placed near the summit of the mound; and the large stones which have occasionally been observed in this position may have been the relics of the receptacle which contained them. We thus seem to have a “low-level” and a “high-level” type, but whether this indicates a difference of period is by no means certain. The general trend of evidence shows that some effort was made to seal down, so to speak, the site of the pyre and its contents by a layer of puddled clay or earth, which was hardened by a fire upon it, or by a layer of large stones instead.

The articles associated with the interments, or, rather, the sites of the piles, consist mostly of potsherds and rude implements and chippings of flint, which are usually described as burnt. The potsherds appear in every case to have been introduced as potsherds, and they also appear to have belonged to the ordinary domestic vessels of the time. That the introduction of these and the flints, together with the pebbles which have occasionally been observed, had a religious significance can hardly be questioned; and doubtless it is to this custom, which was widespread and not confined to our shores, that the passage in Hamlet refers, anent the burial of Ophelia, that “sherds, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.” Ophelia was supposed to have perished by her own hands, and this pagan rite, reversed under the Christian regime into a symbol of execration, was deemed more fitting in such a case than “charitable prayers.”

Other objects than these rarely occur in these barrows, and they mostly relate to the personal attire of the deceased. Two bronze daggers and a pin, and a bone pin or two, have been found—all burnt; but the most remarkable “find” consisted of twenty-eight convex bone objects, marked with dots and described as draughtsmen, and two ornamented bone combs, which also had passed through the fire. Fragments of iron, a coin of the lower Empire, and the upper stone of a quern, have also been found. The coin is a valuable link in the chain of evidence as to the age of these barrows. It was found associated with wheel-made potsherds and calcined bones on the site of the funeral pile, under a small mound, near Mininglow, under conditions which left no room for doubt that it had passed through the fire with the body and the potsherds. The terms in which the potsherds found in these barrows are invariably described, as “wheel-made,” “hard,” “firmly-baked,” “compact,” and “Romano-British,” all suggest the period of the Roman occupation or its near approach. Querns and the use of iron are admittedly of late introduction. The bone combs referred to above have a distinct Iron Age facies. The two bronze dagger-blades, one of which was found in the earth extension of the smaller Mininglow chambered cairn, are both of later type than those associated with the Bronze Age burials.

On the other hand, a notable “find” near Throwley,[28] in Staffordshire, provided a link between these “late” barrows and the inurned interments of the Bronze Age. The barrow there, “wholly composed of earth of a burnt appearance throughout,” was of the “low-level” type previously referred to, and its cremated deposit was in a circular depression in the natural soil. Among the burnt bones were two pieces of flint and a quartz pebble; below them, the shoulder blade of some large animal; while resting upon them were a small bronze pin and “a very beautiful miniature vase of the incense-cup type, ornamented with chevrons and lozenges, and perforated in two places at one side.” This is the only complete vessel hitherto recorded as from these “late” barrows of the two counties, and in its shape, decoration, and other particulars it is a thoroughly typical Bronze Age incense-cup. The circular depression was “of well-defined shape, resulting from contact with a wooden or wicker-work vessel, in which the bones were placed when buried, the vestiges of which in the form of impalpable black powder intervened between the bones and the earth.” Clearly, we have here a wooden or a basket-work equivalent of the cinerary urn. It is probable that these circular holes were generally similarly provided with such receptacles, for in another example, under a barrow of the type we are considering, at Cold Eaton,[29] there were indications that its contents had been “deposited in a shallow basket or similar perishable vessel.” It was from this interment that the bone draughtsmen and combs already alluded to were obtained, as also some fragments of iron. It is interesting that in two barrows which resemble one another too closely to be dissociated by more than a short lapse of time, there should be objects which, per se, would be relegated to two different archæological ages, for apart from the iron, the combs were of a type found with Late-Celtic, Romano-British, and even Anglo-Saxon remains. The inference, therefore, is that these two barrows belonged to the overlap of the Bronze and Pre-Roman Iron Ages.

If the various conclusions which have been arrived at in the preceding pages are correct, Derbyshire is fortunate in her sepulchral remains illustrating the succession of burial customs from Neolithic to Roman times without a serious break. But there is still a difficulty to be faced. The barrows which we have classed as of the Bronze Age are usually ascribed to the Earlier Bronze Age, upon the evidence of the bronze implements associated with their interments. While the socketed axe, which is characteristic of the Later Bronze Age, is perhaps found in greater abundance than all its forerunners put together, it has rarely, if ever, been found in association with these interments.[30] But this proves nothing, when it is considered that it has never been found with any other interments. The earlier forms of the axe have occurred, but only sparingly, with the drinking-cup and food-vase interments; but of the hundred or more recorded inurned interments of Derbyshire and the adjacent parts of Staffordshire, not one has yielded a bronze axe of any kind, and this appears to be generally the case throughout the country. These inurned interments certainly succeeded them, so there is no reason to doubt that they represent the Later Bronze Age among our sepulchral remains.

Having brought the burial customs and remains of our ancient predecessors in Derbyshire well within the bounds of authentic history, we here conclude. The few remains of Roman sepulture, and the many and varied burials of the early Anglo-Saxon period, are outside the scope of this article, and would involve many pages to adequately describe them.

THE PREHISTORIC STONE CIRCLES OF DERBYSHIRE

By W. J. Andrew, F.S.A.

Scattered over the world, from India to Peru, from Southern Africa to Northern Europe, wherever it may be, the megalithic circle marks a grade in the advance of civilization, for it is man’s earliest attempt at geometrical architecture. As such, although so uniform in design, its age must vary by thousands of years, according to the intelligent progression of the early inhabitants of the country in which it is present. Old as our stone circles seem to us, those on the shores of the Mediterranean were probably grey with antiquity when ours were yet unbuilt; indeed, so far as the old world is concerned, it may be assumed that the megalithic monuments of the British Isles are amongst the latest in date.

The circle is but an elaboration of a monolith surrounded by stones. There is, however, every indication that it was introduced into this country after it had passed through all its stages of evolution and assumed its final form. Its builders made their way hither from the south, spreading more especially over Spain, Brittany and Denmark on the mainland, and on arriving upon our southern coasts, branching northward through England and Scotland, even to the Orkneys, on the one side, and by sea to Ireland and the Western Hebrides on the other. Thus the date of its advent must have been subsequent to the mastery of navigation. It has been assumed that because Stonehenge represents the finished design, it must be the latest of our English examples, and, therefore, the evolution of those rude, and often unhewn, monuments of which so many examples have weathered more than two thousand winters on the high-lands of the Peak. But the very opposite proposition probably represents the truth. In the whole of our isles there is no other example of a trilithic design, so the theory of local evolution must fail. On the other hand, we trace it without a fault from India, through Arabia, along the north coast of Africa, in Malta and Minorca, and finally on the coast of Brittany, on its way to this island. Again, the curious architectural joint of mortice and tenon, which is so interesting a feature of Stonehenge, is unknown here, but present in the trilithons of the Mediterranean shores.

Arbor Low: General View of the Southern Half.

We may, therefore, infer that the builders of Stonehenge were of a race which originally came from the south, and that the monument was erected under the direction of men who had seen or had, at least, been thoroughly instructed in the architecture of the earlier trilithons. This was their work, but after them came the copyist and the invariable deterioration. A parallel case is that of the introduction of the art of coinage into this country about B.C. 200. It found its way to us over nearly the same route, and in its earliest stages was, therefore, an imitation of the Greek and Phœnician money then current; but before many years had passed many of the designs had degenerated into conventional figures, often of a distinctive character, yet evolved by the exaggeration of some minor detail upon the prototype. Another comparison may be made with the customs of burial about the period we are considering. At first the useful and valuable flint implements of the deceased were, with a praiseworthy unselfishness, interred or cremated with his remains; but later, this sometimes became a mere matter of ceremony, and it was thought sufficient to substitute flint chippings for these offerings.

Assuming Stonehenge to be the prototype of our rude stone circles, it may be well to remember its general features, and particularly the dimensions of its plan. Its architecture consisted of an outer circle of ditch and earthen bank of an approximate diameter of three hundred feet, broken at the entrance from the north-east, where the banks are continued in that direction, and form an avenue of approach fifty feet in breadth. Within was a concentric circle one hundred feet in diameter, of upright stones supporting a continuous lintel. These stones are roughly squared, and the pillars now measure about fourteen feet above ground, whilst the lintels are about eleven and a half feet long. Ten feet within was a minor concentric circle of pillar stones, a few feet in height, arranged in pairs. Again, within were five huge trilithons arranged in the plan of a horse-shoe with a diameter of about fifty feet, and composed of stones similar in form to those of the outer peristyle, but varying in height to nearly twenty-five feet above the turf; one stone, for example, measuring, when exposed by excavation, twenty-nine feet eight inches in length. Finally, within the whole is the “altar-stone,” some sixteen feet by four, lying prone and within a broken, or horse-shoe shaped ellipse of a diameter of forty feet, composed of pillar stones about five or six feet high. Without the whole, and at a distance of two hundred and fifty feet from the centre, is a monolith, or “pointer,” sixteen feet high, known as the Friar’s Heel. It stands to the north-east and a fraction to the south of a line drawn from the altar-stone along the centre of the avenue. Another stone, now fallen, lies on the line just within the enclosure.

From this very superficial description it will be noticed that there is a certain geometrical proportion to scale. The diameter of the outer bank is three times that of the peristyle, which, in turn, is twice that of the trilithons. The space betwen the peristyle and the outer bank equals the diameter of the former. The diameter of the outer circle of small pillar stones is twice that of the inner ellipse of pillar stones, and the distance of the Friar’s Heel from the peristyle is twice the diameter of the latter. Even admitting a wide margin for inaccuracy, the impression must remain that there is ground for the suspicion that some attempt at a decimal system prevailed in the general plan of this mysterious monument.

These proportions are so obvious that it seems unlikely that they have escaped the attention of those who have studied the plan of Stonehenge. It was not, however, in relation to the great monument of the south that a possible system of geometrical mensuration suggested itself; but in the survey of our own hill-circles of Derbyshire, when it appealed so forcibly to observation that it prompted a reference to the prototype for possible confirmation.

No other county in England is so prolific in prehistoric circles as that of Derby. Many, probably, are still undiscovered, for the writer has been able to add several to the list. Yet at least twenty can be visited with the assistance of an Ordnance map, another dozen have disappeared in modern times, but are recorded by old authorities, and, no doubt, as many more lie hidden by the heather on our little-frequented moors. All are in the north-west quarter of the county, within a space of less than twenty miles square, and at an altitude of not less than a thousand feet.

Although differing much in dimensions and details, there was a common purpose, and consequently there is a uniform character in all. Commencing with the smallest, and measuring the diameters from stone to stone, we find: (1) a plain circle of standing stones, ten feet across, and with either a single stone or heap of stones at a short distance outside the circle, which, for convenience of reference, may be called the “pointer”; (2) similar, but with a diameter of twenty feet, and an encircling mound, or vallum, of earth, in the inner edge of which the stones are usually set; (3) the same, but with diameters of thirty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred, and one hundred and fifty feet. It is probable that, originally, all had a cromlech of some description in the centre, or, as at Ford, a small circle in the north-eastern quarter. At Park Gate this remains as a central cone of stones; at Arbor Low as three great stones, which, with the rest, have fallen; on Offerton Moor it was four stones, and at the Wet Withens a single stone. Outside the circle at Arbor Low is a raised causeway of earth extending in a curved line from the circle towards its artificial mound, Gib Hill, a thousand feet away, which once it probably joined. At Stadon a similar causeway leaves the circle, but returns to it again in the form of the lower half of a triangle, and at the Wet-Withens Mr. Trustram called attention to the remains of what was, very possibly, an avenue of stones arranged in parallel lines at equal distances towards the south-west. These alignments must be considered with reference to the avenue at Stonehenge.

The circles are never present on the actual summit of a hill, but are almost invariably on the hillside near the highest point. Hence on one side they have a sharp and near horizon and on the other a distant view. All have, or presumably have had, a “pointer” outside the circle; that is, an artificial mound of earth or stones or a smaller circle to the larger examples, and a single upright stone to the smaller.

It will have been noticed that the diameters of the circles have evidently been planned according to a geometrical scale, of which the unit seems to have been equivalent to ten feet of our measure. A reference, for example, to the plan of Arbor Low will again demonstrate this point. The average diameter of the circle of the stones is one hundred and fifty feet, the width of the fosse is twenty feet, and that of the vallum on the ground level is thirty feet, and its height above the excavated fosse is ten feet; the total diameter of the monument is two hundred and fifty feet, and Gib Hill, its pointer, stands one thousand feet away south-west by west. But the stones at Arbor Low, and, indeed, those of all the other examples, do not form a true circle; there is always an elliptical variation. At Arbor Low this variation is about ten feet; at the Wet-Withens it is only three or four feet. At the former there are in the centre three fallen stones, which in all probability formed a dolmen, of which the capstone measures fourteen feet in length; it may be assumed, therefore, that its supporters occupied a space of about ten feet. At the Wet-Withens we read that there was originally a single large stone in the centre, which we may assume was not more than three or four feet in diameter. If, therefore, the central cromlech was first erected, and the radius of the circle of stones measured from its outside walls instead of from the true centre, we have the probable explanation of the elliptical variation in every case. The variation, in turn, should give us some idea of the central cromlech when, as in so many instances, it has been destroyed.

This suggestion is supported by another distinctive feature in the plan of stone circles, of which, also, no explanation has been offered. Nearly every circle has two entrances, or an entrance and exit, cut through the mound, and when a fosse is present it is broken at the causeways; but these entrances, although on opposite sides of the circle, and usually towards the north and south, are never directly opposite each other. If, therefore, the central cromlech was the dominant purpose, the roadway would pass alongside it, and not have to deviate around it, as it certainly would if it truly bisected the circle.

The three principal examples in the county are Arbor Low, the Bull Ring, and the Wet-Withens. Arbor Low is situate on the hillside, 1,200 feet above the sea, a mile to the east of Parsley Hay Station, eight miles south-east from Buxton. It has been termed the Stonehenge of the Midlands, and as a megalithic monument, the very grandeur of its loneliness appeals to memories of the days of old and the race that is gone. Its dimensions have already been given, but its general features are a circular plateau, averaging about one hundred and sixty feet in diameter, and surrounded by a broad fosse, enclosed, save at the two entrances, within a high vallum of earth. In the centre of the plateau are three limestone blocks, of which one is fourteen feet in length, and another, now broken, about twelve feet by eight feet six inches; these, before destruction, probably formed a dolmen, or trilithon, similar to those of Stonehenge. Arranged around the edge of the plateau, and seemingly in pairs, which also allows the possibility of a trilithic formation, are forty-six similar stones, all, with one exception, lying prone, and measuring from thirteen feet by six to comparatively small dimensions—the exception referred to, however, lies at a very low angle. They seem to have been selected from the surface limestone of the district, which explains the many weathered and holed stones amongst them; and it must be remembered that a holed stone has always claimed a superstitious veneration. It is present in the circle at Stennis, in our chambered barrows, and in the dolmens of France, Russia, and India. The trilithons of Stonehenge may be its elaboration, and in later times King Alfred caused the Danes to swear their treaty according to their most solemn custom upon the holy ring. Even in mediæval days the superstition connected with St. Wilfred’s Needle at Ripon may probably have been but a survival of this archaic tradition.

Although not shaped in the usual sense of the word, some of the stones at Arbor Low show indications of rough dressing, particularly at the base, which was, no doubt, for the purpose of stability when they were originally set upright. That once they were erect there can be no doubt, for it is essential to a stone circle that they should be so placed. As they lie, it will be noticed that, with very few exceptions, the top of every stone points to the centre of the plateau, whereas the natural fall of the stones would be towards the ditch, on the edge of which they were placed, for their foundations on that side would be the weaker. The obvious explanation must be that they were pulled down by ropes, and as the vallum would impede the process on the outside, it followed that the crowd of haulers necessarily required the full width of the plateau, and so caused the stones to fall inwards, like the radii of a circle. Similarly the central stones were hauled down in a straight line with the entrance to the circle, which thus gave the necessary leverage of length. When and by whom was this done? It is unlikely that the Romans would interfere with customs which in no way clashed with their own. When, however, the first waves of Christianity passed over the land, and Christian stone crosses were erected throughout our county, it is unlikely that the stone monuments of a pagan race would be tolerated amongst them; and in the seventh century an edict of the Church was passed in France exhorting the clergy to stamp out the idolatry of stone-worship. In Northumbria, which country then included the county of Derby, King Edwin, upon his conversion to Christianity in A.D. 627, authorised Paulinus to destroy “the altars and temples, with the enclosures that were about them,” at which he had previously worshipped.[31]

We may, therefore, assume that the great circle of Arbor Low was too prominent a monument to be allowed to remain, but the lesser circles, no longer frequented by the people, would pass unnoticed by the Reformers; yet the circle on Harthill Moor, only four miles away, was left standing, although some of its stones were nine or ten feet high, and nine stones still stood a century ago, but now only four remain, varying in height from about four feet to eight or nine feet. Perhaps the late interment, discovered by Mr. St. George Gray during the excavations at Arbor Low in 1902, may have dated from the time of its destruction, for its selection as a place of sepulture would naturally offend the tenets of a Christian people, and call attention to the superstitions still associated with this mysterious monument. It was not the first interment there, for built upon the vallum adjoining the southern entrance are the remains of a large tumulus, which yielded to Mr. Bateman, its excavator, urns of coarse clay and other evidence of cremation, with relics of flint and bone. Again, the summit of the great mound of its satellite, Gib Hill, had been selected for a similar interment in the days before the shadow of mystery was cast over Arbor Low.

The Bull Ring almost adjoins the modern church at Dove Holes, three and a half miles north-north-west from Buxton. So far as the ground plan of the circle is concerned, it is identical with that of Arbor Low, save that the vallum is now, perhaps, not quite so high. No doubt it is the work of the same architects, and originally contained a similar arrangement of great stones. Unfortunately these were entirely removed nearly two centuries ago for building purposes, and its very existence is to-day threatened by approaching lime works. With the circle itself its similarity to Arbor Low ends, for instead of lying on a northern slope it faces south-east, hence as the natural conditions are varied, so are its adjuncts. Instead of a high mound a thousand feet away, its pointer is brought close to it, and, therefore, lower in height, although a mound of about the same circumference; but its direction is nearly the same, namely, to the south-west.

The Wet-Withens is on the northern slope of Eyam Moor, 1,002 feet above sea-level, and is the best example of the type in which the fosse is absent. To-day it is represented by a circular mound of earth, one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, and about ten feet broad by two feet six inches high, broken for the entrances in the usual positions, namely, due south and nearly north. Set in the inner margin of the mound remain ten stones of millstone grit, most of which are upright, and probably fifteen or sixteen originally completed the arrangement, and some may be hidden by the heather. They stand at nearly equal distances, but the largest only measures, as exposed above the turf, four feet three inches long, one foot nine inches broad, and nine inches deep. It has already been mentioned that a monolith once stood in the centre, and there is still a considerable depression in the ground whence it was excavated—for the hand of the quarryman has been ruthless amongst the prehistoric monuments of our county. Forty feet due north of the circle are the remains of a great cairn, or tumulus, with a base seventy feet by forty feet, composed entirely of stones averaging over a foot in length. This may have served the purpose of the pointer, or, like the tumulus on the vallum at Arbor Low, may merely have been a sepulchral mound, for it also yielded a half-baked urn containing cremated remains and a flint arrow-head. If Mr. Trustram’s theory be correct, the stone-marked avenue leads to the south-west, and thus conforms with the pointers of Arbor Low and the Bull Ring; also with the general direction of the avenue or causeway of the former.

The relative position of these three circles is certainly curious. They form an inverted isosceles triangle, of which the base line from the Wet-Withens to the Bull Ring is nearly due east and west; to be accurate, it is almost the true magnetic orientation, and the apex at Arbor Low is due south. The Ordnance map discloses the length of the base line to be nine miles, and that of each of the sides ten miles; in fact, the compasses pivoted in the centre of Arbor Low bisect both the circles of the Bull Ring and Wet-Withens. It is needless to remark that the megalithic builders had not the knowledge nor the appliances to measure distances otherwise than on the ground level; but as the valleys run north and south, and the line east to west is therefore much more broken and undulating, it is not impossible that there was a measured intention to construct these three circles as nearly as possible in the form of an equilateral triangle, of which the circle of Arbor Low was to be due south, according to the sun’s then apparent meridian. Indeed, it is an interesting question of fact whether, if measured on the ground level, these three circles would not prove to be equidistant one from another.

Reduce the compasses to the equivalent to eight miles, and a series of coincidences follows. They exactly span Arbor Low and Stadon; Arbor Low and an unmarked circle near Park Gate on East Moor; the latter and the double circle on Abney Moor, and, again, the same circle and two others on Brassington Moor; the Nine Ladies on Stanton Moor and the circle on Froggatt Edge; that on the Bar Brook and the most northern of the two on Bamford Moor; the southern circle on Bamford Moor and the double circle on the Ford estate near Chapel-en-le-Frith; the latter and the circle on Abney Moor, and so on, until it would seem to be worth one’s while to follow the eight miles radius from any given circle in search of its colleague. If there is any variation in the distances quoted above, it is so slight as to be scarcely perceptible on the one-inch scale Ordnance map. This is, at the least, tentative evidence of that careful system of mensuration which seems to pervade the mystery of these interesting memorials.

Arbor Low: General View of the Southern and Western Part.

The triangular arrangement of the three chief circles calls attention to that of Stadon, situate a mile and a quarter south-east from Buxton. Its stones, like those of its neighbour, the Bull Ring, have been confiscated, and for centuries, perhaps, it yielded to the plough; nevertheless, its mounds, though almost levelled, are quite distinct, and disclose a plan probably unique in its design. It comprises an annular vallum, forming three-quarters of a circle, the fourth quarter being straight-sided for one hundred feet, and from the corners of this side expand two straight causeways or mounds for a distance of about one hundred and, presumably, one hundred and twenty feet respectively, when they then turn at an acute angle and unite in a straight line, of probably one hundred and twenty feet, almost parallel to the side of the circle. Thus they form the base of an isosceles triangle, bisected horizontally by the straight side of the circle. Unfortunately, the south-west corner of the base line is now cut off by the London and North Western Railway line from Buxton to Ashbourne, and therefore its measurements can only be estimated. If continued, the apex of this triangle would correspond with the nearest quarter of the horizon, namely, on the ridge of Stadon Hill at a point nearly due east. On the inside of the mounds, both of the circle and of the triangular adjunct, are indications of a ditch, and the usual entrances are north by west and south-east respectively. The average width of the circle from the outside of the mounds is now two hundred feet, but owing to the straight side it is subjected to more than the usual elliptical variation; the width of the mounds and ditch are twelve and ten feet respectively. These latter dimensions probably indicate that originally it must have had a fosse and vallum of no mean importance. One hundred and twenty feet north-by-east from the circle seems to be the base of what was probably a large mound or “pointer,” about forty feet by twenty feet, but this also has been levelled.

Although lacking the grandeur of Arbor Low, the small circles have an interest only secondary to it in any attempt to determine cause from effect. Many of them, fortunately, have suffered from the hand of time alone, and are to-day as the race that is gone left them. No better examples could be desired than some in the Baslow district, particularly that near Park Gate; but those by the Bar Brook and on Froggatt Edge are nearly as well preserved, and the double circle at Ford is perfect.

Selecting the Nine Ladies on Stanton Moor as a typical example, its description will suffice for its class. A circular vallum ten feet wide and two feet high at the crest, with diameter varying from forty-five to fifty feet, measured from its outer edge, and broken for the usual entrances, which, however, in this instance are east-by-north and south-west. Within the inner margin of the mound are arranged nine stones, all, with one exception, still upright, and the largest measuring, above the heather, three feet high, two feet three inches broad, and nine inches deep. In 1848 there was a cone of stones in the centre, but this has been destroyed; the Park Gate circle, however, shows this in a complete form. Exactly at a distance of one hundred feet west by south of the circle stands a single stone as the pointer, measuring above the turf thirty inches high, twenty-two wide, and eleven deep. It is known as “The King Stone,” and the nine stones of the circle have given the name of “The Nine Ladies” to the monument as a whole. This is, of course, a complimentary variant of the general term “maidens” so often applied to the stones of circles in all parts of the country, and for which so many derivations have been offered.

A circle of this class which has hitherto escaped observation has an interesting deviation from the usual lines. It stands 1,050 feet above sea level on the hillside at Cadster, near Whaley Bridge, but in Chapel-en-le-Frith parish. Its vallum has an elliptical diameter, varying from thirty-five to forty feet, with entrances north-north-east and south-west. The stones are of the same arrangement and size as those of The Nine Ladies, and the diameter of their circle varies from thirty feet to thirty-three feet six inches. The centre is nearly level, but some large stones below the turf may have supported a monolith, which, perhaps, was a large pointed stone, measuring four feet long, two feet six inches wide, and one foot deep, now lying at the foot of the vallum. Ninety feet nearly south by west of the circle, almost prostrate, is the “pointer,” a block of millstone grit measuring three feet six inches high, two feet six inches broad, and two feet deep. In these particulars the monument closely resembles the last described, but it lies on a hillside with a declination to the west of one in ten, and to obtain the required plane for the western vallum and stones, the builders have lowered the height of the vallum on the east to about one foot high, and raised that on the west to four feet. Hence it is nearly, but not quite, level. Although there is a very extensive view to the north-west, the horizon is within two or three hundred yards on the north and east. A line of sight taken over the stones west and east within the circle exactly touches the eastern horizon, where there is a small artificial mound of stones, and this system of levelling the vallum and stones of a circle to the plane of the horizon seems to be general, and is especially in evidence at Ford.

For the purpose of these notes, and to ascertain that the vallum had not been raised by an interment, a partial excavation has been made. A narrow trench cut from east to west disclosed that the entire monument is composed of loose stones, seemingly hand-laid, upon the natural soil. On the west side the raising of the vallum was an example of careful and permanent work. Commencing from the outside there was a foundation of large stones sloping inwards, and acting as a retaining wall for the stones above, and a similar foundation marked the inside margin. In the centre of the vallum was a core of stones about two feet high leaning towards each other, and filled in with horizontal stones, thus forming the base of a solid triangle. Above this the loose stones were built up to the required height and form. An examination of some of the principal stones of the circle disclosed that they were supported by or resting upon others of large size. As it was not desirable to disturb more than was necessary to disclose the general construction, and to remove turf which had overgrown some of the pillars, a very small proportion of the whole was searched, and this did not yield a single relic of the work of man.

So far, we have dealt with the effect of circles as we see them; let us look to the cause. Imagine an agricultural people without any knowledge of the seasons or months of the year, save from the gradual changes from cold to warm weather, and from long to short days; without the means of estimating the length of the latter, and without even the power of numbering the years or knowing whether they themselves were young or old, for except, perhaps, in the calm pools of water, their very appearance would be strange to them. A few treacherously warm days in December, and they would sow their corn to the winds. Preparation for winter needs or summer work would be impossible, and all would end in famine and waste—all would be confusion. No wonder that, like nature, they turned to the sun—the almanac of all time. No wonder their chief astronomer became the chief priest of the tribe. So is it to-day with uncivilized races of mankind. So, also, is the superstition of astrology in civilized races but a survival of the days when the seer alone cast his horoscope and foretold to the people the coming of the seasons, the time for preparation and all that was necessary for their continued existence. Sun worship followed, and religion and astronomy were blended for ages to come.

Sir Norman Lockyer and the late Mr. Penrose have scientifically demonstrated the relation of Stonehenge with the rising of the sun over the Friar’s Heel at the summer solstice, where tradition still gathers people together on the morn of Midsummer day; but it is with the more primitive and varied circles of our hilly county that we are concerned, and these may be treated, as indeed they probably were by their designers, in a more primitive method.

We read a sundial from the outside, and therefore the gnomon is in the centre and the numerals are on the outside. If, however, we stood in the centre of a vast dial, a series of gnomons would be required to replace the numerals. This is the stone circle. As a primitive example, the Cadster circle will suffice for its class. When the circle was constructed, the “pointer,” instead of being a point to the west of south as it is now, a variation owing to the obliquity of the earth’s axis, stood exactly due south; therefore the seer, sighting from the point of the central monolith, knew that when the sun was directly over it the time was mid-day—the greater distance assisting the accuracy. Similarly the east stone is now a point to the southward, so when the sun rose over the horizon in line with it and the central monolith, it was the May festival, and so on for every phase of the sun. Obviously, the northern stones would be useless for this purpose; but the object of the vallum was to enable the line of sight to be also taken across the circle from the outside, and over any stone and the central dial, or over any two stones, thus subdividing the then equivalent to the hours and the months. The slope of the vallum lent itself to any level required by the observer whilst taking his observations, and the entrances enabled the people to pass through the circle to make their obeisance, whilst the arch-astrologer stood by the central monolith giving his instructions and advice. To them his simple predictions would seem to be the greatest of miracles. As the “pointer” is not always in a southerly or northerly position, for the latter would serve the same purpose if the point of observation were transposed, it follows that various monuments were dedicated to or were specially required for various seasons or times; the winter or summer solstice and the spring or autumn equinox being the most popular. The points of the stones would be accurately notched or, perhaps, surmounted with a wooden stile or pierced disc.

In the larger circles the same system would be carried out with greater accuracy. The ditch and vallum enabled the sights to be taken from either the foot or the top of the stones, and the mound would, if required, itself form the horizon. The ditch was certainly not for any processional ceremony, for that at Arbor Low was found to be broken across by faces of natural rock three or four feet in height; but the curved causeway leading towards the great pointer, Gib Hill, may have served that purpose when the seer left the circle to take his observations, and probably to invoke the rising sun from the mound. The central dolmen would be the inner temple of the priest, and the greater distance of the circle of stones would increase the accuracy of his observations.

Let those who question this simple origin for these circles study any one of them with as many or as few scientific instruments as they wish; then, after allowing for the variation of the obliquity, nature’s almanac is there to be read within the oldest astronomical observatory known to man.

A word as to the age of the circles. Sir Norman Lockyer deduced from the variation of the obliquity in relation to the avenue and the Friar’s Heel at Stonehenge, that the temple must have been erected about the year 1680 B.C., or within a margin of 200 years of that date. Professor Gowland, as the result of the excavations conducted by him in 1901, arrived at practically the same period, when he inferred that it was constructed by “the men of the Neolithic or, it may be, of the early Bronze Age.”

The assumption in these pages is that Stonehenge was the first and not the last of its series. If that be correct, it follows that the design must have been introduced by the new race, that of the Bronze Age, when they invaded this country from the south. The Neolithic tribes had been here for thousands of years before B.C. 1500, and it is unlikely that they, to whom metal was unknown, attained the architectural skill to erect a colossal and uniform temple. It is true that with one possible exception no trace of metal was found during the recent excavations at either Stonehenge or Arbor Low; but on the other hand, all the interments (with again one exception, and that of late date) found in circles are of the Bronze Age. These interments, of which one instance was in a small circle on Stanton Moor, do not necessarily indicate any sepulchral purpose for these monuments, but rather suggest that sometimes the priest himself would be laid to rest in the shrine of his order. Again, the general character of the numerous tumuli usually surrounding the momuments is of the Bronze period, and there seems to be some affinity between the “cup and ring” designs of the rock carvings and the plan of these circles. One fact is certain—that as a class they are not of any later times, for upon the vallum of Arbor Low stands the great “low” which yielded clear evidence of a burial of one who worked with bronze, and similar proof was furnished by the discovery of a like interment in the summit of Gib Hill.

It does not, however, follow that our Derbyshire circles date from the commencement of the Bronze Age; it is more probable that some of them are hundreds of years later than Stonehenge, and there is every likelihood that their use was continued through the Roman even to early Christian times, only to be stamped out when their original purpose had been forgotten in their mystic pagan rites. There is evidence that the great circles of the country were centres of native population at the time of the coming of the Romans, for the roads of the invaders were driven straight for them, as the maps of Avebury and Stonehenge in the south, and of Arbor Low and the Bull Ring in our county, clearly indicate. In the Anglo-Saxon language the phrase for astrology was circol-crœft, and to-day the horoscope of the fortune-teller is but a survival of our subject.

We who look upon these temples of a bye-gone people are still the slaves of Time, and though we measure it with the science of to-day, it is but a question of degree, for the cause and effect is still the same. True, we no longer worship in the Temple of Time, but we can ill afford to sneer at those who knew no better religion than the praise of the heavenly bodies and the admiration of nature’s handiwork as viewed over the distant scene. Nor can we pride ourselves in our science, which for centuries has failed to read the story of these mystic signs, which the rude workers in bronze could yet devise and set up, to—

“Observe days, and months, and times, and years.”

SWARKESTON BRIDGE

By William Smithard

The deservedly famous old bridge of Swarkeston situated a few miles south of Derby, where in a beautiful verdant and fertile vale the noble Trent sweeps towards the sea in a series of majestic curves.

The river, than which there are but two longer in the country, was of old a convenient rough-and-ready dividing-line across the middle of England; and the frequency with which the phrases “north of Trent” and “south of Trent” were used, shows that the stream was a recognised and familiar boundary to the monarchs and nobles who parcelled out shires and counties for themselves or friends in the Middle Ages.

Its general direction is from west to east, but its course is made up of large bends composed of small ones. In the first part of King Henry IV., Act III., Scene I., Shakespeare makes Hotspur complain of the windings of the Trent, thus:—

“Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours:

See how the river comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land

A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up;

And here the smug and silver Trent shall run

In a new channel, fair and evenly.”

It is not known where or how, if at all, the Romans permanently bridged the Trent hereabouts; probably they were content with fords and ferries. In the Middle Ages, however, several fine stone bridges were erected over the river; there was a very long one of thirty-six arches at Burton in the twelfth century, and most likely there would then be no other between that town and Nottingham, some twenty miles distant. At any rate, the first record we have of Swarkeston Bridge is in the year 1276, and the oldest parts of it remaining—which appear to be the original work—appertain to the thirteenth century.

Swarkeston is about eight miles below Burton, and the bridge, which is nearly a mile in length, lies north and south. It takes its name from the village of Swarkeston at its northern end, though most of the bridge, being south of the Trent, is in the parish of Stanton, which latter place is indebted to the bridge for the title that distinguishes it from the multitude of Stantons elsewhere.

The portion of the structure which actually spans the Trent is a shapely, well-designed and very substantial modern bridge on five round arches, put up at the close of the eighteenth century; but the special feature about Swarkeston Bridge is that, after crossing the river proper, it is continued as a raised causeway right across the low-lying meadows of the Trent valley. It is in this long causeway that all interest centres, for there—although the bridge has been widened, and at different times repaired and renewed incongruously—we have the true route-line of the causeway, and much original work still remaining.

The necessity for this extension is very obvious to anyone who has seen, as I have several times, the river in flood, when Hotspur’s “smug and silver Trent” becomes a turbid, surging sea, many miles in extent, completely covering all the meadows within range of vision. The causeway is provided with culverts and archways to let the roaring waters pass through at such periods.

Swarkeston Bridge.

It has been conjectured, with some degree of probability, that the Trent was first spanned by a bridge at Swarkeston to accommodate the advance of King John’s army to the north towards the end of the year 1215. If this was the case, it must have been one of wooden piles, provided it was erected in a hurry. A temporary erection of this kind, in the place of a treacherous ford, would prove so useful that it would soon be followed by one of stone. At all events, records show that a bridge had been established here a long time before the accession of Edward I. In 1276, when inquiries were made throughout the kingdom as to exactions and irregularities during the much-troubled latter years of Henry III., it is entered on the Hundred Rolls that the merchants of the soke of Melbourne had not for some three years paid toll for passage over Swarkeston Bridge, which toll had been assigned by the King to the borough of Derby.

Now and again, during the next century, apparently whenever the bridge needed serious repair, the Crown diverted the toll from the town of Derby and assigned it to local commissioners, as entered from time to time on the Patent Rolls. On 12th January, 1325, when Edward II. was at Melbourne, he granted, under privy seal to the bailiffs and good men of the town of Swarkeston pontage (bridge toll) for three years for the repair of the bridge across the Trent; the toll was to be taken by the hands of William Grave, of Swarkeston, Richard de Swarkeston, Thomas Davy, of Stanton, or their deputy, and the whole proceedings were to be under the supervision of the Prior of Repton.

Before this time of three years had expired, namely, in December, 1327, Edward III., at the request of Robert de Stanton, granted to the bailiffs and men of Stanton and Swarkeston pontage towards the repair of the bridge between the two towns—it must have been considerably damaged, possibly of set purpose during the baronial disturbances towards the end of Edward II.’s reign—local commissioners being nominated to receive the toll, and the Prior of Repton being again appointed as supervisor.

In 1338 pontage for four years was again assigned for repair purposes to the good men of Swarkeston. Eight years later the pontage was granted for three years to the bailiffs and good men of the town of Derby, to be taken by the hands of John, son of Adam de Melbourne the elder, and John, son of Adam de Melbourne the younger, on things for sale passing over Swarkeston Bridge, for the repair of the said bridge.

There is little more written history of the bridge than that here cited, but it would not be right to omit the romantic legend as to its origin, which is so widely current and so generally believed that it is perhaps worthy of a qualified acceptance until some historical fact is found to take its place. The legend bears the stamp of probability, and it seems too good to be entirely an invention—at any rate, of modern times.

Once upon a time, then, according to this dateless tradition, a large and gay party was celebrating at Swarkeston Hall the betrothal of the two daughters of the lord of the manor. Tilting, hunting, hawking, and other mediæval sports had been enjoyed freely for several days, when the festivities were abruptly disturbed by an urgent summons for the lord of the manor and the two knightly lovers forthwith to join an assembly of the barons who were engaged in a hot dispute with a tyrannical King. Never, perhaps, did public spirit clash more disagreeably with personal preference; but the call of national duty was promptly answered.

At that time there was no Swarkeston Bridge, but in fair weather the Trent could be forded quite easily, as it can now. I have, in a recent summer, seen a foal walk across without wetting its knees; but the route is devious, and the river at Swarkeston notoriously treacherous; bright weedy shallows give way precipitately to great dark pools difficult to fathom, and eddying whirlpools alternate with powerful headlong currents of surprising swiftness.

Their task accomplished, runs the tale, the two knights set off for Swarkeston at full speed, leaving the earl to return more leisurely with his esquires and pages. In the meantime heavy rains had fallen, and on reaching the Trent valley after sunset, the knights found the green sward covered by surging muddy waters, through which, with true lover-like ardour, they spurred their tired horses in the growing darkness, unwilling, now so near, to let even such alarming floods prevent their reunion with the fair ladies of their choice.

The level meadows were crossed safely, but in the gloom the gallant knights either missed the ford across the river itself or were swept off it by the raging torrent; by the cruellest of mischances they were washed away and drowned within sight of the lighted windows of the hall, where all their hopes lay, and which they had striven so heroically to reach.

This tragic event was indeed a crushing blow for the earl and his family, but out of private grief came public joy. The bereaved ladies, so says the legend, looked on themselves as widows, and, in keeping with the spirit of the times, devoted the rest of their lives to the memory of their deceased lovers. Neither was their devotion mere sentiment, but it took a thoroughly practical form; determined that no one in future should suffer owing to the circumstances in which their own keen sorrow had arisen, they devoted all their substance to the building of the now historic bridge, and died in a cottage as poor as the humblest peasant.

On the bridge there was formerly a chantry chapel. From an inquisition held at Newark, October 26th, 1503, we learn that a parcel of meadow land, valued at six marks a year, lying between the bridge and Ingleby, had been given in early days to the priory of Repton, on the tenure of supplying a priest to sing mass in the chapel on Swarkeston Bridge; but that there was then no such priest nor had one been appointed for the space of twenty years. (Add. MSS. 6,705, f. 65.)

The Church Goods Commissioners of 1552 say under Stanton:—

“We have a chappell edified and buylded upon Trent in ye mydest of the streme anexed to Swerston bregge, the whiche had certayne stuffe belongyng to it, ij desks to knele in, a table of wode, and certayne barres of yron and glasse in the wyndos, whiche Mr. Edward Beamont of Arleston hath taken away to his owne use, and we say that if the Chappell dekeye the brydge wyll not Stonde.”

The report of the Commissioners shows that the chapel was evidently an integral portion of one of the bridge piers, as was often the case, and was probably coeval with its first building.

The chapel was demolished altogether when the spans over the river were rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and there is now no trace of it remaining, nor does there appear to be any drawing of the sacred place; though, of course, anyone familiar with other such Gothic buildings can easily picture for himself what this chapel would be like.

For six centuries has the bridge been a popular highway for all classes of the community, and it is linked closely with at least two important epochs in English history.

In the great Civil War of 1642–1646, the bridges at Nottingham, Swarkeston, and Burton were regarded as the keys to the North. In the winter of 1642–3, Col. Sir John Gell, the able commander of the Derbyshire regiment, heard that the Royalists were fortifying Swarkeston Bridge, so he marched thither, stormed the works and dismantled the same, after driving away the enemy with a loss of seven or eight killed and many wounded. The date of the “Battle of Swarsen bridge” is given in the register of All Saints’, Derby, as 5th January, 1642–3. The towns of Nottingham and Burton, along with their bridges, were taken and retaken several times during the war; but Derby was never in the hands of the Royalists, and this immunity Sir John Gell attributed to his having in his holding Swarkeston Bridge during the whole of the troublous period.

At this bridge occurred also the climax of the latest invasion of England, i.e., that by the “Young Pretender” in 1745. By the time Charles Edward Stuart had reached Derby, he realised that his project was hopeless. His army had increased scarcely at all since he left Scotland, and his mountain warriors, who had marched all the way from their native Grampians, found, when they got to the end of the Pennine Chain, their way barred by the great plain of England. They never crossed the Trent, and although their advance guard reached Swarkeston Bridge, that was only a movement to kill time while the courageous Highlanders braced themselves to endure the humiliation of a retreat.

The Prince had traversed half the length of England, only to find the people were too prosperous and contented to wish to disturb the ruling dynasty; and the King’s two armies, more powerful than his own, were rapidly approaching the invader’s troops. So the 7,000 clansmen, with their tartans and pipes, did not march over the bridge, and the people of Swarkeston were thus deprived of a fine spectacle, doubtless much to their relief. Since then the repose of the bridge has never been disturbed by wars or rumours of wars.

The viaduct over the meadows is delightfully irregular, and its course varies sympathetically with the neighbouring river. The general direction is north and south, but the whole length may be said to form a gentle arc. The surface rises and falls, and the parapet walls are full of unexpected nooks—first a corner and next a curve, now an angle and then a bend; here a concavity and there an inward bulge. In and out and up and down the bridge winds gently, and at intervals, near the arches, are dark, glistening pools, fringed with the sword-like leaves and heavy-scented yellow blooms of the iris, while on the glossy surface of the water are spread the delicate palette-like leaves and golden ball flowers of the water-lily.

There are still remaining in the bridge fifteen old arches; two very beautiful ones are near the northern end, and at the other extremity is a fine group of six. In places, too, are stretches of very old and weathered masonry, pathetically irregular, with parts of a bold string course showing at intervals. The soffits of the old arches are lined with ribs, which increase both their beauty and strength, and there are some very interesting buttresses. It is a matter for regret that the Derbyshire County Council found it necessary in 1899 to make this romantic old bridge strong enough to carry steam-rollers. By the lavish use of blue bricks to underpin a number of the old arches, the utilitarian purpose was achieved, but much of the bridge’s peculiar beauty has been sacrificed thereby; yet in spite of this mischance, there is still enough charm left to make a visit to Swarkeston always a pleasure.

DERBYSHIRE MONUMENTS TO THE FAMILY OF FOLJAMBE[32]

By Rev. J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.

All that can be attempted in this article is to give an outline account of the succession of the family of Foljambe during the six centuries that they were numbered among the chief landowners of Derbyshire, with more particular reference to their burial and tombs in the three churches of Tideswell, Bakewell and Chesterfield.

The Foljambe family were connected with Tideswell and Wormhill from very early times. One of them was enfeoffed as a forester of fee (that is an hereditary forester) by William Peverel in the days of the Conqueror. William Foljambe, who was probably his grandson, died in 1172. Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell, is mentioned in 1208, and again in 1214, when he was a knight. He had three sons, whose names appear as witnesses to various charters between 1224 and 1244; John and Roger are described as being of Tideswell, and Thomas of Little Hucklow. John died in 1249.

Sir Thomas Foljambe, son of the above-mentioned John, was of Tideswell and Wormhill; he was living throughout the reign of Henry III., and for the first ten years of Edward I. He was also of some position in Yorkshire, for in 1253–4 he was seized of a knight’s fee in the Wapentake of Osgoldown; in 1282 he had the manor of Tideswell from Richard Daniel. He died on the Saturday next after the feast of St. Hilary in 1283. One of his brothers, Henry Foljambe, was bailiff of Tideswell in 1288.

It matters but little what class of old records connected with North Derbyshire is studied, the name of Foljambe is certain to occur in important matters, and usually with some frequency. Some serious attention has lately, for the first time, been given to the history of the Peak Forest (Victoria County History of Derby, i., 397–425), though the mass of documents relative to its administration yet awaits thorough study. In these records members of the family are continuously mentioned. Thus, at the Forest Pleas of 1251, the heaviest vert or “greenhue” fine (damage to or illicit appropriation of timber) was that of twenty marks imposed on Roger Foljambe for a variety of transgressions; and his two pledges for future observance of the forest assize were John Foljambe and Walter Coterell. At these Pleas, too, Thomas Foljambe was returned by the jury as one of the foresters of fee for the Campana division of the Peak Forest. The next Forest Pleas were not held until 1285. The rolls of the successive bailiffs or stewards of the forest since the last session were produced, from which it appeared that Thomas Foljambe had been bailiff for the year 1277, and again in 1281. In the latter year he was also constable of Peak Castle; his total official receipts for that twelvemonth amounted to the then great sum of £260.

Sir Thomas Foljambe was succeeded by his eldest son, another Sir Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell, who was a knight of the shire for the county of Derby in 1297, and died in the following year. He was succeeded by his son, yet another Sir Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell; he represented his county in Parliament in 1302, 1304–5, 1309, and from 1311 to 1314. He was one of those Derbyshire knights who in 1301 were summoned to the muster at Berwick-on-Tweed to do military service against the Scots. He died in 1323, and was succeeded by a fourth Sir Thomas Foljambe, who married the heiress of the family of Darley in the Dale, and so acquired considerable estates in that neighbourhood, which passed to his younger son, Sir Godfrey.

There is interesting information with regard to the Foljambes in the rolls of the Forest Pleas of 1285, from which it appears that the family at that date held two of the hereditary foresterships of the Peak.

The Campana foresters of fee of that period were John Daniel; Thomas le Archer; Thomas, son of Thomas Foljambe, a minor in the custody of Thomas de Gretton; Nicholas Foljambe, who had been a minor in the custody of Henry de Medue, but was then of full age; and Adam Gomfrey. Of these foresters, Adam Gomfrey and Thomas Foljambe held jointly the same bovate, which had formerly been divided between two brothers. Also Thomas Foljambe and John le Wolfhunte held another bovate in the same way, John holding his half by hereditary descent, whilst Thomas Foljambe, senr., had acquired his half by marriage with Katherine, daughter of Hugh de Mirhand. This sub-division of serjeanties became burdensome to the district, as each forester of fee endeavoured to have a servant maintained at the expense of the tenants; but the jurors confirmed a decision of the Hundred Court of 1275 to the effect that there could be only four such servants or officers, according to ancient custom, for the Campana bailiwick.

The bovate of land held by Wolfhunte and Foljambe was a serjeanty assigned for taking of wolves in the forest. On the jurors being asked what were the duties pertaining to that service, the following was the highly interesting reply:—

“Each year, in March and September, they ought to go through the midst of the forest to set traps to take the wolves in the places where they had been found by the hounds: and if the scent was not good because of the upturned earth, then they should go at other times in the summer (as on S^t. Barnabas Day, 11 June,) when the wolves had whelps (catulos), to take and destroy them, but at no other times; and they might take with them a sworn servant to carry the traps (ingenia); they were to carry a bill-hook and spear, and hunting-knife at their belt, but neither bows nor arrows: and they were to have with them an unlawed mastiff trained to the work. All this they were to do at their own charges, but they had no other duties to discharge in the forest.”

Wolves abounded in Derbyshire to the end of the thirteenth century. They were troublesome in Duffield Forest as well as in the Peak. There are two highly significant entries on the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. as to the devastation then caused by wolves in this county. In 1160–1 25s. was paid to the forest wolf-hunters as an extra fee. So great was the value set on the skill and experience of the Peak wolf-trappers, that Henry II. in 1167–8 paid 10s. for the travelling expenses of two of them to cross the seas to take wolves in Normandy. The accounts of Gervase de Bernake, bailiff of the Peak for 1255–6, make mention of a colt strangled by a wolf in Edale, and of two sheep killed by wolves in another part of the district.

Reverting to the descent of the eldest line of the Foljambes of Tideswell, John Foljambe succeeded his father, the last named Sir Thomas Foljambe, in 1323. This John Foljambe had a younger brother, Thomas, who had two sons, John and Thomas, of Elton, both of whom appear to have died childless. John Foljambe entailed the family estates in 1350, and a second entail was made in 1372, whereby on the extinction of the male descendants of the elder line, the estates of Tideswell and Wormhill passed to the younger branch of the family.