SHIRBURNS of Stoneyhurst.pdf - Ingilby History

ebellion, around whom supporters of the fallen Stuarts could rally and seek direction. The
reluctance of Sir Nicholas Shireburne to commit himself to the, admittedly, high-risk strategy of
open rebellion, reflects the wider failure of the Jacobite movement to transform vocal support into
firm action among those recusant, Tory and dissenting elites, which it desperately needed to win
over if it was ever to effect a second Restoration through a force of arms, alone. Moreover, the
rejection of armed struggle by the most powerful and vociferous champion, in the North-West of
England, of the conjoined causes of Jacobitism and Roman Catholicism, stood in stark contrast to
the bold actions of his Whig neighbours, and of Sir Henry Houghton – in particular – who had
raised the local militia for the Crown and had attempted to seize several artillery pieces from a
vessel lying just off the Lancastrian coast, at Sunderland Point 58 . However, if Sir Nicholas had
chosen to abandon a military route to securing a return to greatness for his House, in favour of
diplomatic alliances, fashioned about marriage treaties and the creation of a single – predominant –
noble dynasty, upon which the hopes of the English Catholics might be fastened, then the exterior
threats to the Shireburnes posed by Whig magistrates and mayors were soon to be as nothing when
compared to the internal pitfalls created by the genetic imperfections and the strained marital
relationship of his daughter, and her new husband. Ironically, it was to be the crowning achievement
of Sir Nicholas’ life - the Norfolk marriage - that led to the final eclipse of his line.
However great the sums spent upon feasting and hunting with the Howards and their
dependents, nothing could disguise the failure of the Duchess Mary to provide an heir, or hide from
public view the gradual – but total - disintegration of her marriage. There is little evidence to
suggest that the couple were ever particularly close and Mary, following the death of her father in
1717, maintained a peripatetic existence, continually in motion between her Shireburne estates in
58 C. Hardwick, History of the Borough of Preston, (Preston, 1857), p.219.