Northamptonshire

“ By long walks and short train-journeys she had, in three months, been able to inspect most of the antiquities of Northamptonshire. Much of the history of the county was intensely interesting: the connection of old Fotheringhay with the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, the beauties of Peterborough Cathedral, the splendid old Tudor house of Deene (the home of the Earls of Cardigan) , the legends of King John concerning King's Cliffe, the gaunt splendour of ruined Kirby, and the old-world charm of Apethorpe. All these, and many others, had great attraction for her. ”

“ When Benjamin Buckler [q. v.] declined in 1755 the labour of preparing for publication the manuscripts of John Bridges (1666–1724) [q. v.] on the history of Northamptonshire, the task fell to Whalley. The first volume of Bridges's ‘History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire’ was brought out by Whalley in 1762, and the first part of the second volume appeared in 1769. A protracted delay then ensued, and the printer made a fresh appeal for money to the gentlemen of the county. Further assistance was found, and the finished work at last came out in 1791 in two folio volumes. ”

“ Northamptonshire has been well termed the county of “Squires and Spires,” and it is probably within its borders that the largest number of really beautiful spires may be found. A journey from Northampton to Peterborough along the Nene Valley is never to be forgotten for the continually recurring spires which greet the eye of the traveller at almost every point. Rushden, Higham Ferrers, Irchester, Raunds, Stanwick, Oundle, Finedon, Aldwinckle S. Peter’s, Barnwell S. Andrew, and many others all combine to render the term “Valley of Spires” peculiarly appropriate to this district. ”

“ In Northamptonshire, was a grant from the crown in the year 1685, to the Duke of Grafton, who was made hereditary keeper. The forest is well stocked with timber, and presents a beautiful variety of groves, lawns, and upland swells, enlivened by numerous herds of deer and flocks of sheep. ”

“ In Wessex and the east the counties are either older kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, and Essex; or else tribal divisions of the kingdom, like Dorset, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Surrey. In Mercia, the recovered country is artificially mapped out round the chief Danish burgs, as in the case of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire, where the county town usually occupies the centre of the arbitrary shire. In Northumbria it is divided into equally artificial counties by the rivers. ”

“ Except for the rapidly-developing production of iron from the Lias, begun by the Romans, there is but one manufacture—that of shoes. It is now centred by modern machinery and labour arrangements in Northampton itself, which has 24,000 shoemakers, and in the other towns, but a century ago the craft was common to every hamlet. For botany and agriculture, however, Northamptonshire was the finest county in England, and young Carey had trodden many a mile of it, as boy and man, before he left home for ever for Bengal. ”

“ As I drove along that morning through Worthorpe and Colly Weston to Duddington, the quaint little old Northamptonshire village within a mile of which lies Tixover Hall, it was, though a trifle chilly after the Riviera, one of those bright days which make even the elderly feel young and sprightly again; days on which even the saddest among us are influenced by the infectious brightness of the atmosphere. At no other season of the year is there that delicious sensation of life, of resurrection in the very air, as the grey old earth awakens from her winter sleep and renews her youth again. ”

“ Then however the Pipe Rolls show that before the end of Henry I.’s reign Leicester has succeeded in largely reducing its geldability. We have seen reason to believe that a similar reduction had been made in Northamptonshire shortly before the compilation of Domesday Book. Derby is under-rated; Nottingham is much under-rated. Lincoln, though under-rated, is an instance of a county in which we long doubt whether the under-rating of some will not be compensated by the over-rating of other estates. ”

“ As she is more apt to notice the presence than the absence of hedges, this, so far as it goes, confirms our conclusions with regard to Bedfordshire; and, with regard to Northamptonshire, this small piece of negative evidence tends to the conclusion that that county also was almost entirely open in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
“Leicestershire,” she says, 201“is a very Rich Country—Red land, good corn of all sorts and grass, both fields and inclosures. You see a great way upon their hills the bottoms full of Enclosures, woods, and different sorts of manureing and herbage” (p. 133) . ”

“ The eldest son, Sir Thomas Parr, was knighted and was sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1509; he was master of the wards and comptroller to Henry VIII. He was rich, owing to his succeeding, in 1512, to half the estates of his cousin, Lord Fitz-Hugh, and also to his marriage with Maud, daughter and coheiress of Sir Thomas Green of Boughton and Greens Norton in Northamptonshire. ”

“ He was returned to parliament for Northamptonshire in 1654, and was a member of the committee for raising funds in aid of the Piedmontese protestants, and helped to draw up the new statutes for Durham College in 1656. In 1657 he received a peer's writ of summons to parliament, but does not appear to have taken his seat. On the secluded members usurping power he was nominated one of the council of state (23 Feb. 1659–60) , and subsequently moved a resolution condemnatory of the execution of the king. At the general election which followed he was again returned for Northamptonshire. ”

“ Essex, edited for the Camden Society in 1840 by Sir Henry Ellis from a MS. at Hatfield (see also British Museum Addit. MSS. 33, 769) ; Northamptonshire, known to have been finished in 1610, but only published in 1720 ”

“ Next he passes through Rutlandshire into Northamptonshire again:—
“From Wiscombe partely through Woddy ground of the Forest of Leefield, and so in Ruthelandshir by Woddy first, and then all champain Ground, but exceeding rich Corne and Pasture, to Uppingham ... from Uppingham to Haringworth (Northamptonshire) 3 little miles, al by Champaine ... Dene to Cliffe Parke 3 Miles; it is partely waullid with stone, and partely palid. From Dene to Coliweston a 5 or 6 Miles, partely by Champaine, partely by Woodde ground” (fol. 25) . ”

“ Greens-Norton, Northamptonshire.—This, so named of the Greens (persons famed in the sixteenth century for their wealth) , called before Norton-Dauncy, was held of the King in capite by the service of lifting up their right hands towards the King yearly, on Christmas day, wheresoever the King should then be in England.
Hawarden and Bosele, Cheshire.—The manors of Hawarden and Bosele, with the appurtenances in the county of Cheshire, are held of the King in capite by Robert de Monhault, Earl of Arundel, by being steward of the county of Cheshire, viz. ”

“ Of personal incident, apart from his mission to Scotland in 1560, there is little. He represented Lincolnshire in the parliament of 1559, and Northamptonshire in that of 1563, and he took an active part in the proceedings of the House of Commons until his elevation to the peerage ”

“ In the 17th century the weaving industry declined in the Northampton district, but became very flourishing about Kettering. Other early industries were charcoal-burning, brick and tile manufacture and brewing. The industries of whip-making, pipe-making, silk-weaving and paper-making were introduced in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1290 Northamptonshire returned two members to parliament, and in 1295 Northampton also returned two members. In 1547 Brackley and Peterborough returned each two members, and in 1557 Higham Ferrers returned one member. ”

“ Immediately after Edward VI's death (6 July) he went down to Oxfordshire, and on the 15th news reached London that he was proclaiming Mary. A few days later he was said to have six or seven thousand men ready in Northamptonshire to maintain her cause. Northumberland's speedy collapse rendered their employment unnecessary, and on 22 July Williams was ordered to disband them. On the 29th he conducted the Princess Elizabeth through London to Somerset Place, and on 3 Aug. ”

“ But as another illustration of the changes which occur in this mutable world, there resided, 180 years ago, in some part of that abbey, a man who would not conform to the dictates of his fellow men in the things of God—"a man of worth, a man of letters too;" one eminent for learning, talent, piety, usefulness; who laid the foundation of two Dissenting interests in the county of Northampton, and kept a Dissenting academy at Sulby, or a seminary for the education of young men, several of whom became eminent Dissenting ministers. ”

“ Northampton—with its snow-white dwellings, its spires and turrets, its hill—the sides of which are occupied with delightful mansions—and its top surmounted with a lovely grove, forms a panorama, the beauty of which must be seen to be realized. ”

“ Our beautiful Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over it like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were its tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines, robing themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the soil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and frowns. ”

“ Amidst all this quiet and beauty one forgets the dark problems that threaten England and thinks only of her ineffable charm. Little Brington is not less attractive than its neighbor—the thatched structure above the well in the village green and the two hoary firs overshadowing it forming a picture as quaint as pleasing. We leave the lovely villages regretfully, and winding out of the maze of byroads, take the highway that leads toward the ancient city of Northampton, whose chief distinction should be that a Washington was once its Lord Mayor. ”

“ Each style seems quaint to those who favour the other.
The stranger would expect to find Northampton, as a factory town, a place of squalor and grime; but coming here, and emerging into the market-place from the not very pleasing entrance, his expectations are utterly shattered. There are few towns of the size of Northampton—whose186 population is now considerably over 89,000—that are so bright and clean, and prosperous-looking, as this; and the stranger, to whom its Radical politics are familiar, and to whom its choice for many years of such Parliamentary representatives as Mr. ”

“ Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (and is, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. ”

“ Of all the abundance of treasure which Northumberland possesses, from a historical point of view—of all its wealth of interesting relics of bygone days—ancient abbey, grim fortress, menhir and monolith, camp and tumulus—none grips the imagination as does the sight of that unswerving line which pursues its way over hill and hollow, from the eastern to the western shores of the north-land, visible emblem, after more than a thousand years, of the far-flung arm of Imperial Rome. ”

“ Grey was a good soldier, but he had been a friend of Somerset, and the Duke had tried hard to involve him with Arundel and Paget in Somerset's ruin. [26] Northampton's truth could have been depended upon, but Northampton four years before had been defeated by a mob of Norfolk peasants. Northumberland, the council said, must go himself—'there was no remedy.' No man, on all accounts, could be so fit as he; 'he had achieved the victory in Norfolk once already, and was so feared, that none durst lift their weapons against him:' [27] Suffolk in his absence should command the Tower. ”

“ Look at Northampton, with a franchise more democratic than even the scot and lot franchise. Northampton formerly returned Mr Perceval, and now returns gentlemen of high respectability, gentlemen who have a great stake in the prosperity and tranquillity of the country. Look at the metropolitan districts. This is an a fortiori case. Nay it is—the expression, I fear, is awkward—an a fortiori case at two removes. The ten pound householders of the metropolis are persons in a lower station of life than the ten pound householders of other towns. ”

“ NORTHAMPTON, on a hill on the banks of the river Nene, is a remarkably pleasant town, with several fine old buildings, an ancient church, an open market square, neat clean streets, and suburbs of pretty villas, overlooking, from the hill top, fat green meadows, flooded in winter. Shoemaking on a wholesale scale, is the principal occupation of the inhabitants. For strong shoes Northampton can compete in any foreign market, and a good many light articles, cut after French patterns, have been successfully made since the trade was thrown open by Peel’s tariff. ”

“ Thus the Nen has its sources quite on the western side of the county—thence each feeder flows through a pleasant rolling region, where pastures alternate with cornfields, and both with copses, broadening its valley, as it proceeds, until they join and reach the chief town of the county, by which time the water meadows bordering its banks are of considerable extent. Northampton is a town which has increased rapidly in size, and in consequence diminished rapidly in attractiveness. ”