SHIRBURNS of Stoneyhurst.pdf - Ingilby History

ebellion and that he had little wish to be personally associated with the rising until the Pretender
was already installed in Whitehall. His caution was well founded, for as local government slowly
regained its footing in the North West, following the surrender of the Jacobites at Preston, he was
rapidly called to account. His political sympathies were only too well known: his servant – William
Scott – had been prominent in the recruiting of men and in the seizure of arms for the rebels, and his
own kinsmen – the Widdringtons – had been captured in the battle and were facing the possibility of
a trial for high treason. At the same time, his near neighbours had chosen to turn king’s evidence on
those collateral members of his family who had narrowly escaped being taken in the rout and who
were now either on the run, or were desperately trying to protect their property and estates from
sequestration 50 . Worse still, prisoners interrogated after the battle clearly implicated “Sir Nicholas
Sherburne, a Roman Catholic of a very great estate” in the rising and it was reported that a letter had
been found on the Earl of Derwentwater, at the time of his capture, in which Sir Nicholas explicitly
wished the famous – and soon to be martyred – rebel lord “good success to their undertaking” 51 .
Under the pretext of searching for William Scott, the erstwhile servant of the Shireburnes
who had escaped from the battlefield, Thomas Molyneux and Sir Henry Houghton, M.P., swore in a
pose of twenty townsmen, and – after a week’s delay - dispatched them on the road to Stonyhurst
under the command of Thomas Watson, the Constable of Aighton, Bayley and Chaidgley. They
arrived after dark, on the evening of 27 December 1715, and after gaining entry to the walled
parkland, presented a search warrant at the gates of the house and demanded that the steward
49 Payne, op.cit. pp.145-47.
50 Payne, op.cit. p.144.
Writing shortly afterwards, Daniel Defoe commented upon the impact of the “late bloody Action with the Northern
Rebels” upon the mindset of the local gentry families: “not that the Battle hurt many of the immediate Inhabitants, but so
many Families there and thereabout, have been touched by the Consequences of it, that it will not be recovered in a few
Years, and they seem still to have a kind of remembrance of Things upon them still”. D. Defoe, A Tour Thro’ the whole
Island of Great Britain, ed. G.D.H. Cole (London, 1927) Vol.II p.678.