Whatmore Family History

There were Watmoughs at Burnley in Lancashire since very early times and from  their use of ‘Alexander’ and ‘Lawrence’ as Christian names, it seems very likely that they were closely related to the branch of the family at Prescot, from which I descend.

Geoffrey Whatmore, our family historian, spent a lot of time looking through the available records of the early Watmoughs who lived at Burnley and he uncovered some fascinating information. This is set out in his book ‘ Watmough People’ ( please contact me at rhyswhatmore@btinternet.com  if you are interested in acquiring a copy) and in his history of the family ‘Wat’s Brother-in-Law’ which is available on CD ROM (for details go to www.genfair.com and look under ‘Suppliers’ for ‘Whatmore Family History’.)  

A few days ago Geoffrey sent me a fictitious ’testament’  which he had just written about the Watmoughs at Burnley. Whilst the ‘testament’ is fictitious, the people and the incidents described are all real and Geoffrey’s story brings to real life those ordinary folk who struggled to survive in Burnley nearly five hundred years ago. Geoffrey readily agreed that I could place the ‘testament’ on this blog and I feel sure that you will enjoy it just as much as I did.  I suggest that you read the ‘testament’ in conjunction with my earlier post of  ‘11 August 2008 - ‘Alexander Watmough and the Riot on Broadhead Heath’.

 The testament of a widow of Burnley

I remember the day, like a sword in my heart, when Towneley’s little rat-faced steward rode up to Broadhead Moor to demand a fee from our family’s coal diggings. His lands, maybe, but our coal, discovered and sweated for by generations of the Watmoughs. The bogs are the Lord’s but the coal is ours, and he has no right to it.

So great, so merciless the fee and the fine with it, that we could not, should not pay. So we must depart from this place, where we have laboured for so long, and leave the mine to Towneley, who has done nothing to earn it.

Before we go I, Grace Watmough, widow of Hal, will write this down, since I am not permitted to speak of it. Many times I have been arraigned as a harridan and a scold and told to hold my tongue. Once they shaved my head, but the hair grew again – red as the sunrise. So, if I cannot speak, I will write, in the words that Father Hugh taught me, from the new Bible in English, though there was much that seemed contrary.

Old print of  Burnley church  reproduced from ‘History of the Parochial Church of Burnley’ by T.T. Wilkinson  published in 1856 by Longman and Co. London

My tale begins some ten hard years ago and more, to 1513 when Henry Clifford, Marshall of Skipton, called a muster by knight’s fee of Burnley men to march with him to Flodden to punish the Scots. For cattle raiding, they said, but seeking vengeance and rich booty, more likely. A herald arrived with banners, a haughty, plumped-up knave in a gilded surcoat. All the young men of the town were to go, with my brothers – Alexander, Rob, dear gentle Lawrence and my Goodman Hal with the rest of the company of archers.

Fools! They marched away in high excitement, proud before their friends, deluded by glory. How little they knew. I broke my fingers fitting goose feathers to their arrow flights.

Then the long silence. We heard nothing, no word; folk walked very quietly, with good wives hugging their worries to their breasts. Till one day a travelling pedlar from Clitheroe came by and said there had been a fight and the Scots were slain. Only weeks later a pathetic bedraggled band returned up the trackway from Haggate, so weary, so few  of the men who marched away. Alexander was with them, thank God, but no Lawrence, no Rob, nor Hal, my lovely yellow-haired husband with the blue eyes of his Viking ancestors. The battle was won, they said and the Scots destroyed, but they saw only killing, and bloody limbs and so many fine men cut down.

The tale came out only slowly, and some would not speak of it. Hal and his archers stood fast and sent a storm of arrows into the Scottish ranks, and turned the fight some said. But I had only ears to hear of Hal, who was pierced through the breast by a long Scottish spear. Alex who was with him told me so. His body lies with his friends in a stinking ditch by the Til Beck. No glory, no gain to us who made the victory, just the sound of widows weeping and a dumb anger at those who forced us to fight. I call a plague on those earls and princes who destroyed our sons and wrenched the bowels from our community.

During that sad and starveling winter, with so many empty hearths, the town lost heart for a while. The summer’s harvest went unreaped. It was Alexander who gave us hope and stirred us to work again. Since Rauffe was gone his window set up a new chandlery. There were ditches to be cleared and rutted ways. Alice Watsdaughter trained orphaned children as weavers. New walls were built across the fell side, trailing like white fingers across the heather, though there were some mighty boundary contentions between peevish farmers.

Above the town the diggings were grass-grown and fallen in: the coal too deep for ladders to reach. Alex it was who devised a new way, with ropes and wheels called pulleys, to build beams across and a machine called a windlass. Neighbours worked willingly with us, and more coal was cut, we built bullock carts to bring fuel to the fires, and we prospered – for a while. But God and his angels, it seemed, were busy elsewhere.

Old Father Hugh left us when the King abolished the chantries in the church, and the chapel on the high fell at Holme was deserted. There was a feeling, just a whisper in the south wind, that the old ways were changing. A new priest came amongst us, Friar Benedict, he of the crimson cassock who proved quite as ready with a quip as a psalm. The friar spoke of new ways of worship, we should pray to the King, not the Pope, and in our own tongue. All men were equal in the sight of God. Was this not heresy? Many feared for their souls in peril, but there was much plain sense in his vision, although there are not many who dare share it. Ever since the great gathering here that they called the Pilgrimage of Grace folk have been uneasy. They know not to whom to kneel or to whom to pray.

Meanwhile, our Lord Richard died. He who had cared for us – sometimes. It was to him that we looked for bread that hungry year. When the plague came to Wycoller down by the well it was Lady Margaret who ventured into the hutments when others had fled and brought solvents and possets for the sores. They died anyway within three days.

Now this pea-pod of ours by the Ribble is being twisted and forced out of shape. We have a new Lord, Thomas Towneley, from whom we feel the lash of a vain and selfish man. Our greedy governor has one passion only, to rebuild in stone his father’s house, and it is we who must pay for it. The old oaks by the Haggate brook are cut down to provide panelling and teams of carts churn up the ways to bring stone from the Syke quarry.

My pig-headed people can be hard to govern, but they will work if they see sense in it, though unwillingly for the extra days the Lord demands. Often fractious and quick to take offence, they grow resentful, jealous of their rights and customs. For sure, the new hall gives employment to joiners and masons but what he pays in wages he takes back in taxes. We stay poor as bats in the church.

When the Lord Thomas erected a new corn mill, none would take their grain there, out of sheer cussedness, as my friends were apt to do. Disputes grew from small matters: cattle grazing in the Saxfield, dues from heriots, rentals, work days for the manor. He slapped a fine on  John Cartwright, just for playing cards one winter night when there was nowt else but a smoky fire and rushlight.

Folk were sore provoked when our arrogant Lord sought to block the byway to the church, to build new stables there. With Alex leading them a crowd gathered in anger to force a way through, joined by Frair Benedict, who proved a doughty fighter, laying about him with his staff and putting the constable’s men to flight. He had influence too. When the affair was heard before the Duchy Court by a Halmote judge our trespassing Thomas was bested and we kept the pathway open. We won, just one time, the good people of the town, but the holy angels still had their backs turned from us.

  Click to enlarge

Burnley church  Copyright: Phillip Tomlinson and reroduced here by his kind permission  Further piuctures of this magnificent church are available at this link: http://www.stpetersburnley.com/page12.htm

Brian, the tanner’s son, was cutting peat on the Chat Moss when the whole side of the brae slid down upon him, soil, mud and rock in an unstoppable deadly avalanche and he disappeared into the morass. So he was lost to us, a sweet and sinless boy, and for what? Neither Father Hugh nor Friar Benedict could tell me.

Though I sometimes dwell in sadness I should tell of better times when our labours were rewarded and the pit prospered. The new hoist brought rich seams of coal and there was at last fuel for the fire and ale in the pot. Alex built a new house for us and became prominent in the counsels of the town. Many a time he supported his neighbours against our greedy Lord who rested sore after the affair of the church pathway.

So he bided his time, Lord Thomas, and then struck at us with his demand for the lion’s share of the coal – coal that we scratched up on our hands and knees. When his creature appeared at the mine head that day with the King’s warrant edged in gold Alex would have none of it, chained the gate and sent him packing.

And why not? More than fifty years before, grandfather William Watmough found coal when he was seeking iron on the moor. Since then Henry his son mined it and now Alex by his energy and ingenuity had created an industry for the town. The charge would take all our earnings and we would work as slaves while Towneley sat in his mansion with hands as soft as whey.

Perchance, Alex should have sought to parley, but Lords do not speak with common folk. Instead, passionate as always, he called his neighbours and those who earned a living with him at the mine and told them of the threat to the fuel. So when a bailiff and constable arrived to enforce payment or surrender the mine he was met by a crowd of furious townsfolk. I was there, Jacob the tanner and his sons, with Ethan the miller’s son, who had already had a brush with the Towneleys, and Friar Benedict, ready as ever to lay about him with his staff.

The bailiff was haughty and hard words were spoken, the people much riled, not to be driven by lofty commands. There was a scuffle, and the bailiff was unhorsed and fell on his arse in the mire. The young ones pissed themselves in glee. I daresay a few old scores were paid off, though not much harm was done. But the puffed up prig had no belly for a fight and the craven crew retreated down the fell.

Afterwards, some dolts damaged the coal beds so that, if we could not have the coal the Lord and his vassals should not have it either. And this was wrong, but crassly stupid as they were, it took but a spark to start a fire.

There was a long standoff. No coal, no fee, and the town froze that winter. At last came the summons and Alex and his neighbours were called before the Duchy Court where when it came to the trial, the judge was his old adversary our Lord Thomas himself.

 Click to enlarge

Burnley church: Copyright Phillip Tomlinson and reproduced here by his kind permission

There the charge set out that Alex of ‘his devious and cruel mind that he craftily and subtly influenced his neighbours to resist the King’s warrant’, which surely blackened the character of the accused before the trial started. A trial? It was a travesty. At the hearing Towneley’s man, no doubt seeking to excuse his cowardice, showed his bruises and gave false testimony. He claimed that Alex struck at him with a sword but this cannot be true, for I know that Alex left his father’s sword at Flodden and there was no other.

Though Alex spoke out stoutly the case was lost and the Watmoughs forfeited their ancient right to take coal from the moor. The fine so vindictive and our living gone we cannot afford to pay.

Now we must leave these hillsides where the bones of our fathers lie and seek a new life in a new world. We go with Alexander to join our prosperous cousins in Prescot where they say the land is kinder and there is coal. So, with trust in God, if not in treacherous man, and with hope for the future, we will begin again.

May dear Jesus and St Christopher keep vigil on our way.