William Edward Armytage Axon

“ The neighbouring justices said, 'He is an old man, and will not live long; let us not trouble him.' Wilkins, the new bishop of Chester, so far from desiring to annoy, frequently inquired after the health and welfare of the good old man. Angier had the courage to admit Oliver Heywood to the communion at Denton after his excommunication. The old man was much affected by the death of his daughter, Mrs. Heywood, and by the extravagance and misconduct of his own son, whose ordination had to be preceded by a confession of his youthful wildness. ”

“ His position somewhat improved, and in 1851, when visiting the Great Exhibition, he formed the resolution of founding a chapel for the destitute in Rochdale, but the proposal was so much discouraged by his friends that he abandoned it for a time, and did not put it into execution until 1858. As minister of this chapel he was brought into close contact with the poorest people of a great factory town. He was a vigorous preacher of the orthodox type, and understanding the people's way of life, and speaking a language which they understood, he gathered a great congregation. ”

“ Similar customs are recorded at Whichnor, Staffordshire, and in Germany and France (Andrews, History of the Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Custom, London, 1877) . Probably no more vivid account has been written of the great fire and plague of London than that given in ‘Old St. Paul's.’ The charm of Ainsworth's novels is not at all dependent upon the analysis of motives or subtle description of character. Of this he has little or nothing, but he realises vividly a scene or an incident, and conveys the impression with great force and directness to the reader's mind. ”

“ Ainsworth was a fine type of the Elizabethan puritan—learned, sincere, earnest, and uncompromising. He attached himself to those who were styled ‘Brownists,’ who, under the name of ‘Independents,’ afterwards played so important a part in English history, and who were the ancestors of the ‘Congregationalists’ and other free churches of the present time. ”

“ He was called to the House of Lords as Baron Alvanley, Cheshire, the title being derived from his brother's estate. He was not a man of great oratorical powers, but possessed the qualities of intelligence, readiness, and wit, which are so important to the debater. Mr. James Crossley says that Alvanley's decisions show him to have been a better equity judge than Thurlow, much as Thurlow would have been surprised at being considered inferior to 'little Peppy,' the man he most contemned. Lord Alvanley's poetical trifles were never collected. ”

“ Bruen's second wife died after ten years of married life, and the widower broke up his household with its twenty-one boarders and retired to Chester, where he cleared the debt of his estate, saw some of his children settled, and maintained the poor of his parish by the produce of two mills in Stapleford, whither he returned with his third wife, Margaret. He had an implicit belief in special providences, 'judgments,' witchcraft, &c. He kept a hospitable house, and was kind and charitable to the poor of his neighbourhood and of Chester. ”

“ In dismissing the deputation Sir James told them that if the corn laws were repealed great disasters would fall upon the country, the land would go out of cultivation, church and state could not be upheld, the national institutions would be reduced to their elements, and the houses of the leaguers would be pulled about their ears by the people they were trying to excite. ”

“ In the organisation known as the ‘Band of Faith’ he embodied some of the aspirations of his earlier life. He retained his radical convictions to the last, and in 1867 was the moving spirit of a great meeting held at Wakefield in support of manhood suffrage as the basis of the reform agitation then proceeding. The socialism of his earlier years was replaced by more modified convictions as to the help to be given by co-operation in bettering the condition of the people. ”

“ Their essential distinction was the claim that each church or congregation should be a religious republic, regulating its own affairs in entire independence of state control, whether episcopal or presbyterian. A vigorous persecution was directed against these sectaries, and their founder is said eventually to have reverted to the church of England; but some of his followers went into exile rather than recognise the right of the secular power to dictate in such a matter. Ainsworth, about 1593, entered into the service of a bookseller at Amsterdam as a porter. ”

“ There is a very full rent-roll or custumal of the manor of Ashton in 1422, in which the various names and obligations of the tenants are set forth. Ralph Ashton is mentioned in a passage which Dr. Hibbert-Ware has explained with much ingenuity, though not with absolute certainty. According to this, corn marigold (Chrysanthemun segetum) grew so extensively in the low wet land about Ashton as to be inimical to the crops, and the lord of the manor had an annual inspection and levied fines on those tenants on whose lands it was seen. ”

“ During the course of the Owenite socialist agitation his fine form, considerable knowledge, ready speech, and power of devising astonishing placards and proclamations made him a notable man. A boy whom he had adopted was publicly ‘named’ by Owen. He was believed to have amassed a fortune as a foreign spy, and his mysterious ways added to his reputation. For several years Baume resided in Manchester, where he organised Sunday lectures, but in 1857 he paid a visit to the Isle of Man, and was so pleased with the place that he took up his residence there in a house in the Archway, Douglas. ”

“ There was a congregation of independents and paedo-baptists meeting in Deadman's Place, London, the majority of whom, in consequence of persecution, followed their minister, John Hubbard, to Ireland, about 1621. On his death the church returned to London and chose Canne as teacher. After a year or two he went to Amsterdam, and there became the successor of Henry Ainsworth as pastor of the congregation of English independents there. ”

“ Bernard tells us that the father of Atherton had foretold the shortening of life as a penalty for disrespect to his mother. He had, when a youth, threatened her that he would hang himself with his horse's bridle on a common gallows by which they were riding. On the day of his execution he read the morning service to his fellow-prisoners, and was then escorted by the sheriff of the county, a Roman catholic, who is said to have behaved with much unnecessary harshness. ”

“ ASTON, Sir THOMAS (1600–1645) , royalist, was the heir of an ancient Cheshire family which had been settled at Aston in that county for many generations, and showed undoubted descent from the time of Henry II. Several of these early Astons were knighted, and one of them was treasurer to Philippa, the wife of Edward III, and joined in the wars in Spain. Thomas Aston was born on 29 Sept. 1600. His father, John Aston, who had been sewer to the wife of James I, died in 1615, and presumably his children remained under the care of his widow. Thomas was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. ”

“ Whilst not agreeing with Ainsworth's ‘preposterous zeale in the point and practise of Separation,’ yet as an eye-witness of his life in Amsterdam he praises his ‘humility, sobriety, and discretion,’ and declares that ‘hee lived and died unblameable to the world,’ except in one point, which to many is a strong testimony of Ainsworth's love of the truth. ”

“ Catharine Hutton, who wrote a sketch of the dwarf, says: ‘I never saw a more graceful man, or a more perfect gentleman, than Boruwlaski.’ He had several children, who were of the ordinary size, but in his ‘Memoirs’ is almost silent as to his family affairs. His pride led him to keep up the fiction that he did not exhibit himself for hire—the people merely paid a shilling to his valet to open the door! He was terribly afraid lest George IV, to whom the last edition of his ‘Memoirs’ was dedicated, should offer him money in a direct fashion. ”

“ He declined opportunities of entering various professions, and became an ardent radical. When only sixteen he would harangue small audiences of agricultural labourers. At seventeen he went to London, and became associated with a group of revolutionists, and in 1840 he visited Paris, living in the students' quarter, and examining for himself the social organisation of the French capital. Here he claimed to have originated the now famous word ‘communism’ in the course of a conversation with a French celebrity. ”

“ When asked to take command of the rearguard, Calveley begged that another post might be assigned to him. Sir John Chandos protested with tears that no other man was equal to the post. Calveley accepted, and by his steadiness of discipline kept the army firm during a desperate charge of the foe. ”

“ There were other exiles in the city, and Ainsworth, together with Francis Johnson, founded an independent church, and in 1596 was the author, wholly or in part, of the ‘Confession of Faith of the People called Brownists.’ The task of organising the new church was not an easy one. Amsterdam was a city of refuge for the persecuted and the destitute, and the three hundred members of the church included some who did not reflect much credit upon it. ”

“ John Robinson, the pastor of the American pilgrim fathers, retired to Leyden to escape from the contentions of the faithful in Amsterdam, where a further secession was headed by John Smyth, a former minister of a separatist church in Lincolnshire, whose Arminian views led to an animated controversy. The third separation in the Amsterdam society was the result of a controversy between Johnson the pastor and Ainsworth the teacher of the church. ”

“ She lies buried in the family chapel at Aston Hall, with an epitaph which may have been the work of her husband, and is certainly characteristic of the period. In 1639 Sir Thomas took as his second wife Anne, the heiress of Sir Henry Willoughby, and his only son was named Willoughby.
Sir Thomas was a staunch churchman and loyally attached to the monarchy, and in the civil and ecclesiastical troubles he took his part. The portentous rise of nonconformist sentiment excited alike fear and anger. ”

“ Baines he travelled on foot through nearly every town and village in the county. His own notes and those of his father formed a large mass of manuscript material. So extensive was it that in 1847 he conceived the idea of issuing a history of the county in fifty volumes, each of which, while part of the general series, should also be complete in itself. This project was encouraged by the Earl of Ellesmere. Overtures were made to Samuel Bamford, as it was thought that his pleasant style and Butterworth's facts would make a popular combination. ”

“ In 1650 he was at Hull, and acted as chaplain to the governor, Colonel Robert Overton, whose curious book, 'Man's Mortalitie,' he had printed at Amsterdam in 1643. Canne was in such favour with the soldiers that they obtained leave from the council of state to have the chancel of the parish church for their meeting-place, and they walled up the arches between it and the church, where John Shawe, another famous puritan, had, as he boasts, 'constantly above 3,000 hearers.' Canne's friends obtained a grant for him from the council of state of 65l. ”

“ He was apprenticed to the cotton trade, and began business as a cotton merchant in Manchester, but against the wishes of his friends he abandoned commerce for art and became a landscape-painter. He was one of those instrumental in the foundation of the Manchester Royal Institution (which has since become the City Art Gallery) , and he gained the Heywood gold medal for a landscape in oil, and the Heywood silver medal for a landscape in water colour. ”

“ He was a practical preacher of christian socialism; and he attempted to realise in his own household the scheme of universal brotherhood. His socialistic home was known as the Morville Communitorium at Hanwell. The form of socialism which Barmby advocated adopted the Church of Jerusalem as its model, but the ‘orthodox’ views of Christianity were largely modified by pantheism. ”

“ The students of Lady Huntingdon's Connexion went forth in streets and market-places as preachers, and were sometimes roughly handled. On one occasion Clayton rode post from Wales to London to convey a message from his patroness, countermanding an order which she had given for the building of a new chapel. He became a popular preacher, and on account of symptoms of pulmonary disease was sent to take charge of her chapel at Tunbridge Wells. He also preached frequently in London. ”

“ ARDEN, RICHARD PEPPER, Baron Alvanley (1745–1804) , born at Bredbury, Cheshire, in 1745, was the son of John Arden of Stockport, and was educated at the Manchester grammar school. His two brothers received their earlier instruction at the same institution. The eldest, John, became a country squire, and was resident at Harden and Utkinton Halls in Cheshire, and at Pepper Hall in Yorkshire, and was a feoffee of the grammar school and of the Chetham Hospital at Manchester. The other, Crewe Arden, A.M., of Trinity College, 1776, became rector of Tarporley, and died there in 1787. ”

“ At the sale of Fillingham's collection, in 1862, were sold some scarce portraits of Boruwlaski, autograph letters, the handbill for his public breakfast, and the sale catalogue of his effects. One of his shoes, the sole of which is five inches and seven-eighths long, and a glove are now in the Bristol Philosophical Institution. In March 1786 Rowlandson published a caricature representation of Boruwlaski playing on the fiddle before the ‘Grand Seigneur’ and his wives. A full cast of Boruwlaski was taken by Joseph Bonomi shortly before the death of the dwarf. ”

“ ARDERNE, JAMES, D.D. (1636–1691) , dean of Chester, belonged to the family of Arderne, which is one of great antiquity in Cheshire, and whose forty-five quarterings are sufficiently indicative of estate and consideration. The seat of the family was at Harden Hall, near Stockport, and at that mansion, now a ruin, James, son of Ralph Arderne of Harden, was baptised 12 Oct. ”