SHIRBURNS of Stoneyhurst.pdf - Ingilby History

of secular priests of the Ch[urch] of Rome” 22 . However, witnesses were never called and the case
was unexpectedly dismissed, as Sir Nicholas presented a mass of documentation to prove that at that
time the lands were simply not his to give. They had been, instead, part of the property of his elder
brother, who was now safely dead and could not possibly be called to give an account of his gifting
of the lands in question 23 . It may well have been this skilful defence, coupled with the ignominious
collapse of the Manchester Treason Trials in the following year, which caused the authorities to
subsequently relent in their pursuit of Sir Nicholas. Similar charges, regarding the settling of the
Chipping estate upon “Charles Panket, a Popish priest … [and] at his death in a succession for ever
to Popish priests”, were, however, reactivated in December 1716, when the government sought once
more to clamp down upon the twin threats posed by religious dissent and by Jacobite political
activism. New depositions suggested that the original gift of the property had been made by Sir
Nicholas’ mother, and not by his elder brother as had been previously alleged, and offered
compelling proof that Father Panket had lived openly, and in some considerable, style at a house in
Chipping Lane 24 . Perhaps, more worrying to Hanoverian and Anglican officials, was the contention
of one of Sir Nicholas’ tenants – when accused of ignoring his own “poor relations” and of
subdividing his land so that he might be better able to support the covert activities of the missionary
priests – that his kinsmen “could not do him so great kindness as the Priests”, while affirming that
“all that I ever have shall go for pious uses” 25 . However, just as before, the prosecutions of Sir
Nicholas and his tenants were destined to stall and to fail, not as the result of a lack of compelling
evidence or for the want of potential informers, but on account of the total absence – on the part of
the local authorities - of a sufficiently strong political will and sense of self-assurance with to pursue
22 Beamont, op.cit. p.3.
23 Beaumont, op.cit. p.7.
24 J.O. Payne (ed), Records of the English Catholics of 1715 (London, 1889), p.95.
25 Payne, op.cit. p.106.