SHIRBURNS of Stoneyhurst.pdf - Ingilby History

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the explicit link made between all of their endeavours and their rigid adherence to their faith in adversity. These themes of consistency and virtue, displayed in times of the greatest ordeal, had gone some way to offset and to explain the loss of influence occasioned by the family's change in status, after the 1620s, from “Church papists”, inclined to trim their sails in accordance with the dictates of the times, to irreconcilable and overt recusants 9 . Thus even though he might not be able to ride to war against marauding Scots, as had his great-great grandfather, or sit upon official county commissions, as had his great-grandfather, Sir Nicholas Shireburne had nevertheless been bequeathed a powerful counter-tradition of service and self-sacrifice to the cause of English Roman Catholicism, which had been dramatically charted by the careers of both his father and grandfather 10 . Despite earlier tales of family members stuffing up their ears so that they might not have to hear the recitation of the Anglican rite, the roots of this tradition really became established during the civil war years. Though he had only given tacit support to King Charles I, Richard Shireburne (1586-1668) had witnessed the passage of both the Scottish and English armies across his estates during their running battles over Longridge, before the decisive encounter at Preston in August 1648, and had twice that month been forced to play the unwilling host to Oliver Cromwell and his staff captains from the New Model Army. Threatened with heavy fines, though less for his Royalism than for his decision to provide a Roman Catholic education for his heir at the English Lancashire Records Office, Preston, PR3031. 3/4. 9 It is deeply ironic for a family famed for its devotion to Roman Catholicism, that its fortune was originally founded upon service to a Protestant monarch and profits from the Dissolution of the Monasteries. CSPD, (1591-4), p.159; & CSPD (1619-23), pp.239 & 362. See also: Bossy, op.cit. p139; & Muir, op.cit., pp.48-49; A. Turner, “Sir Richard Sherburne, knighte deceased”, The Stonyhurst Magazine, no.449 (Spring, 1972), pp.278-282. 10 A.R. Turner, op.cit. p.280; J. Gerard, A Centenary Record. Stonyhurst College: Its Life beyond the Seas, 1592-1794, and on English Soil, 1794-1894, (Belfast, London, New York & Sydney, 1894), pp.60-67; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14 th Report: Appendix IV. The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon, (London, 1894), pp.38-39.
College at St.Omers, he compounded his estates in 1649 and - with his health failing – self- consciously adopted the persona of the “Eminent Sufferer”: that of one had sacrificed everything that was dear to him, in order to be of service to his cause. This image of the devout patriarch, a gentleman brought low and reduced to the status of an invalid through the adherence to his religious principles, was a potent one which was consistently perpetuated by his descendants and was afforded the fullest expression in the funerary monument raised to him, by his daughter-in-law and grandson, a quarter of a century after his death 11 . Indeed, even though the Restoration brought about the rapid resurgence of the family's fortunes, the concept of their willing sacrifice for the conjoined causes of the Stuart monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church in England, was continually appealed to and successfully reactivated at times of grave crisis - whether in 1678, 1688- 89, 1694 or 1715 - up until their eventual eschewal of active involvement in Jacobite politics during the 1740s. Titus Oates' fevered revelations of a “Popish Plot” found a strong echo in eastern Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire in the winter of 1678-9, with the evidence submitted to the authorities by Robert Bolron. The hall at Stonyhurst was subjected to a thorough search, but its windowless chapel went undetected and its altar remained hidden from prying gaze behind thick curtains and drapes 12 . Although the family's Jesuit chaplains had either fled or taken refuge in one of the many priest-holes that honeycombed the house; the damage done to the Church's operation in the North was considerable. Furthermore, the local Protestant elites who served as the Justices of the 11 A.E. Green (ed), Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1642-56, (Nendeln, 1967),Vol. III p.1362. Harris (ed), op.cit. pp.4 & 6. The effigy of Sir Richard, clad in the costume of the late-1690s – as opposed to that of the early 1660s – was erected as one of the serious of monuments in Great Mitton Church. After a long recitation of his noble pedigree, the inscription concluded that: “He was an Eminent Sufferer for his Loyal Fidelity to King Charles I. Of ever Blessed Memory”. 12 th DDSt, “Inventary [sic] … 12 day of December … 1705”, op.cit., fol.202.
Page 1 and 2: The last of the Shireburnes: the ar
Page 3 and 4: Shireburnes had been the exemplars
Page 5: for redress, Felgate was unable to
Page 9 and 10: agents in Ireland, liased with Talb
Page 11 and 12: West were quickly and quietly aband
Page 13 and 14: and to ultimately convict their tro
Page 15 and 16: only one of the group not to be sho
Page 17 and 18: Spelling and grammar books, togethe
Page 19 and 20: patrimonies, Sir Nicholas had place
Page 21 and 22: schemes, Sir Nicholas made over one
Page 23 and 24: Even though they had systematically
Page 25 and 26: opened up in the name of the King.
Page 27 and 28: one of active assistance in the pre
Page 29 and 30: the North and the manors owned by t
Page 31 and 32: “marriage” to Widdrington nulli
Page 33 and 34: through the blind operation of fate

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