SIR RALPH SADLEIR (1507-1587) AND THE ROUGH WOOING

All things are connected, especially in the matter of family trees. I was writing recently about my Angus ancestors, related to me by marriage through my 3x great uncle Joseph Angus. The Earls of Angus built and lived in Tantallon Castle, which holds a tremendously dramatic position on a cliff-edged promontory on the coast east of Edinburgh.

While I was checking my facts about the castle, the name of my 12x great uncle Sir Ralph Sadleir cropped up. I’m related to Ralph through the grandfather of my paternal grandmother, and to Joseph through the great aunt of my paternal grandfather; so it’s rather nice to see both lines colliding some 376 years earlier than they eventually did at the birth of my father.

Sir Ralph Sadleir (1507-1587) painted on a panel in the Old Hall at Everley House, Wiltshire

In 1543 the Scottish royal court was an ants’ nest of intrigue. James V had died at the end of the previous year, and his daughter the infant Mary, now Queen of Scots, was the focus of frenzied political activity. Henry VIII, king of neighbouring England, wanted to negotiate a marriage between the baby Mary (six days old when her father died) and his son Edward, Prince of Wales, a mature five-year old.

Henry saw an opportunity to consolidate his power in the region and simultaneously neutralise Scotland as a traditional ally of his enemy France. He had a number of aces up his sleeve. A month before James’s death Henry had decisively defeated a Scottish army at the battle of Solway Moss, capturing rank upon rank of Scottish nobility. The Scottish earls and lords were well treated in captivity – Henry gave each one a gold chain for Christmas, for example – and many were released early in 1543 in the expectation that they would support Henry’s match-making.

Henry VIII (1491-1547) depicted in 1542

Meanwhile the Douglas family, Earls of Angus, had been living in exile in England since 1529 after staging an unsuccessful coup d’etat against James V with support from Henry VIII (who had also, years earlier, encouraged their attempt to kidnap the young James  and spirit him away to England). Angus’s affiliation to England should not have been a surprise – the 6^th Earl had married James IV’s widow Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s big sister. Following James V’s death, the Douglas family returned en masse to Scotland and took up residence in Tantallon once more.

Henry had all these potential allies now placed in the Scottish court. But how could he trust them to act on whatever promises they had made while in captivity or exile in England? Enter 12x great uncle Ralph. Sadleir, the English king’s ambassador to Scotland, was to be Henry’s enforcer. He was a seasoned political worker, having learned his craft under Thomas Cromwell.

Ralph spent most of 1543 adroitly moving between the various factions within the Scottish court, sifting out the political traps being laid for him by many of them. In all of it he used one man in particular as a sounding board: Sir George Douglas, the 7^th Earl of Angus’s brother.

Signature of Sir George Douglas, Master of Angus (d. 1552)

It’s clear that the men knew each other well, presumably from Douglas’s time in exile. Sadleir wrote long reports back to Henry which are peppered with references to discreet walks with Douglas in the gardens of Blackfriars in Edinburgh. In his first, of 20^th March 1543, Ralph writes:

I told Mr Douglas that I longed to speak with him and had much to commune with him from your majesty. … ‘Marry,’ quoth he, ‘I have laboured with all my power to do the king’s majesty service, … wherein I have always pretended outwardly the commonwealth of Scotland, and spake not much of England, because I would not be suspected.’

So two of my ancestral lines were in cahoots over the fate of Mary Queen of Scots! And when Ralph Sadleir had successfully negotiated the Treaty of Greenwich that summer (which agreed peace between the two countries and the marriage of Mary and Edward), he left Edinburgh and went to stay at Tantallon Castle to relax after a job well done.

Tantallon Castle, where Angus and Sadleir relaxed in late 1543

In December Sadleir was recalled from Tantallon to London when the Scottish parliament rejected the Treaty (which had been agreed only by Henry’s tame Scottish nobility). Henry was furious at the thwarting of his marriage plans, and there followed seven years of warfare between England and Scotland, known as the Rough Wooing. Ralph Sadleir was appointed treasurer-general of the English army; and some say that as that army marched north into Scotland, it passed Tantallon by instead of ransacking it, in recognition of the services of the Douglas family.

ALICE ANGUS (active 1605) AND HER PUB WITH ROOMS

GENEALOGY ALERT! My use of the word "cousin" in this article is not geneologically accurate, and intended more to reflect general kinship. Richard Angus's father remains unidentified, unfortunately; but the events and people described here are all real. Enjoy the story. For a really thorough Angus genealogy, you can do no better than look here.

My 3x great uncle Joseph Angus came from a noble line, the Earls of Angus who lived in Tantallon Castle near Edinburgh. One ancestor, a contemporary of his 7x great grandfather, was Archibald Doulgas, the 8^th Earl (1555-1588).

Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, built c1350 by William Douglas, 1^st Earl of Douglas and father of the 1^st Earl of Angus

These were turbulent times in Scotland in the late sixteenth century. The Scottish Reformation of 1560 saw the previously Catholic Church of Scotland break with the papacy of Rome. Instead, it adopted the Protestant ideas proposed by John Knox and based on the principles of John Calvin; but the king, James VI, had different ideas and under pressure from some of his nobles his “Black Acts” of 1584 reintroduced the Bishops which Calvinism rejected.

James VI of Scotland aged 20, in 1586; he was crowned king at the age of 13 months, and in his minority his regents included the Earls of Mar, Lennox and Morton

Archibald Angus was profoundly Protestant in his religious thinking, something which brought him into frequent conflict with his king. He even tried to arrange an English invasion of Scotland to rescue his uncle the Earl of Morton. Morton had been imprisoned for his part in the murder of James VI’s father, Mary Queen of Scots’ unpopular second husband Lord Darnley. Morton was beheaded and Angus felt it wise to live in exile in London for a year.

Somehow Archibald survived the association with his disgraced uncle and was allowed to return to Tantallon. But when in 1584 he joined a new rebellion against King James led by the Earls of Mar and Gowrie, which was defeated by the Earl of Arran, he had to leave the country once again.

Archibald fled to Northumberland, along with his cousin Richard (Joseph Angus’s 7x great grandfather) and Richard’s wife Alice. When Archibald continued south to London, Richard and Alice remained in the northeast of England. Perhaps Richard did not share his cousin Archibald’s Protestant position; rather surprisingly he and Alice settled in Dilston in County Durham, which was the stronghold of a staunchly Catholic family, the Radcliffes.

Dilston Castle, built c1417, home since c1480 of the Radcliffes of Derwentwater

Archibald Angus managed to patch things up with James VI, and he, Mar and Gowrie returned to Scotland in 1586 at the head of an army which helped rid James of the Earl of Arran, who had by now fallen from favour. Angus served out his days as lieutenant-general of the lawless country of the Scotland-England border, and died in 1588, allegedly as a result of withcraft.

Archibald was succeeded as Earl by another cousin, William Douglas. Perhaps things were just too hot for comfort in Scotland for less lofty members of the rebellious Angus family: Richard and Alice, who had fled with Archibald, remained in Dilston for the rest of their lives, as tenant farmers of Sir Francis Radcliffe.

They seem to have survived by keeping their heads down. Although removed from Scottish intrigue they found themselves at the heart of another Protestant-Catholic clash when Sir Francis Radcliffe (described, at the time, as ‘an obstinate, dangerous and not unlearned recusant’) was imprisoned for his Catholic faith during the last years of the reign of Elizabeth I. His lands were confiscated.

Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Dilston, built by Sir Francis Radcliffe in 1616, reputedly with funds originally raised to support the Gunpowder Plot (in which Sir Francis was accused of complicity)

Richard and Alice outlived both Archibald and his successor, and saw Sir Francis released in 1603 (his estates were restored to him a few years later), under a general pardon when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.

After Richard died in 1604, his widow Alice was awarded a license to brew ale and run a lodging house in Dilston - what today would be called a pub with rooms. It was a far cry from Tantallon Castle (where Richard had been born in 1523), but from Richard’s farm and Alice’s inn the family rebuilt its fortunes and became by the mid-nineteenth century pillars of the Northumbrian community. Sadly there’s no trace of the Dilston inn today.

LEONARD DE PILKINGTON (active 1066-1110) AND THE WRONG KINGS

Do you ever feel as if you always back the loser in any sporting fixture? Never pick the winner in the office sweepstake? Spare a thought for my unlucky Pilkington forebears. 

King Harold II (c1022-1066) died at the Battle of Hastings

With a bit of a push and a shove my 3x great uncle William Windle Pilkington (1839-1914) could trace his ancestors back to his (approximately) 15x great grandfather Leonard de Pilkington. Leonard, according to family tradition, fought on the side of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Unlike Harold, he survived not only the fighting but the arrival of the new Norman ruling class. Remarkably he retained the lordship of the manor of Pilkington in Lancashire, midway between Bolton and Manchester, despite being on the wrong side at Hastings.

But over the next few centuries, a pattern emerged of poor choices in battle. In 1322, for example, Leonard’s great great grandson Sir Roger de Pilkington (d. 1347) joined the Earl of Lancaster who was leading rebellious opposition to the weak king Edward II. But rebel support evaporated as the two sides headed for confrontation at Boroughbridge, north of York; and in a one-sided battle there on the 16^th March 4000 royal troops easily defeated 700 of the rebels.

King Edward II (1284-1327) won the battle of Boroughbridge

Sir Roger was captured at the battle; but he was later pardoned , thereby avoiding the fate of his rebel leader Lancaster, who was beheaded outside Pontefract Castle less than a week after his defeat.

150 yers later, Sir Roger’s great great grandsons were friends of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. One of them, Sir John Pilkington (1425-1478) entrusted the execution of his will to Richard. It was the time of the Wars of the Roses between rival claimants from the houses of York and Lancaster for the English throne; and perhaps the Pilkingtons thought they had learned the lesson of history by siding this time not with Lancaster but with Richard, a Yorkist. 

King Richard III (1452-1485) died at the Battle of Bosworth Field

When Richard assumed the throne of England in 1483 as Richard III, Sir John’s brother Sir Charles Pilkington (c1430-c1485) was given the great honour of being the new king’s swordbearer. But only two years later Richard’s reign came to a violent end. At the Battle of Bosworth Field, he was conclusively defeated by his challenger, Henry Tudor.

Richard was killed on the battlefield, and over the next two years his supporters were stripped of power and property. John and Charles Pilkington’s cousin Sir Thomas, who had fought for Richard at Bosworth Field, had to surrender his Lancashire estates, including that of Pilkington. Sir Thomas died in 1487 at the Battle of Stoke Field, a last unsuccessful attempt to unseat the new Tudor dynasty of Henry, now Henry VII.

King Henry VII (1457-1509) won the Battles of Bosworth Field and Stoke Field

Sir Thomas’s death was symbolic of the political upheaval of the time. On the larger political stage the Plantagenet dynasty, which had reigned in England since 1133, disappeared. The loss of the Pilkington estate which gave the family its name must have been a morale-sapping blow. The family regrouped around a minor branch which had retained lordship of the little manor of Rivington a few miles to the north.

For the next 150 years the family kept its head down; and at the start of the seventeenth century the Rivington estate was broken up – some say, through defaulting on a debt. But at the outbreak of the Civil War the Pilkingtons took sides once more, when Richard Pilkington (1634-1711) backed King Charles I against his opponent Oliver Cromwell.

King Charles I (1600-1649) was beheaded after the English Civil War

Another poor choice, another wrong king. Cromwell established the Commonwealth he was fighting for. Charles was beheaded. And Richard Pilkington (only 15 at the time) persisted for some years in his support of the monarchy and was therefore stripped of his remaining estates. He fled to Ireland to start afresh, and no further stances for or against a king by a Pilkington are recorded.

WILLIAM HENRY CASTLE (1810-1865) AND THE STOKES CROFT BREWERY

For Bristol Beer Week in October 2013, the Ashley Down microbrewery rustled up a special brew, Stokes Croft IPA (that’s India Pale Ale for the uninitiated). The brewery is in the St Andrews district of Bristol, and Stokes Croft is the road that leads to it from the city centre.

Stokes Park IPA, specially brewed by Ashley Down microbrewery for Bristol Beer Week 2013

The road was also the site until the second world war of the Stokes Croft Brewery, which stood at the corner of Stokes Croft and City Road. In the 1830s it was run, under the name of Castle & Rees, by two brothers in law: my Carmarthen-born 3x great uncle Thomas Rees and my Bristol-born great great grandfather William Henry Castle. Thomas had married Susannah Capel Jennings and William her younger sister Caroline Collins Jennings.

(A third sister, Henrietta Collins Jennings was the wife of the engineer Thomas Richard Guppy of whom I have written here; and a fourth, Margaret Collins Jennings married William Lambert and inherited a house belonging to her uncle Thomas Collins, about which I wrote last year.)

The last remaining buildings of the Stokes Croft Brewery survive as Bristol’s Lakota Nightclub

William and Thomas also ran, under the name Rees & Castle, the Nursery Brewery on Kent Street in Liverpool, where Thomas had by 1837 made his home. I don’t know when they entered into partnership together. William was already a brewer when he married Caroline in Liverpool in 1837; and perhaps they met through her sister, the wife of his business partner. Thomas Rees was among the witnesses at William and Caroline's wedding.

There was a second brewery on Kent Street, the Mersey Brewery, in which William and Thomas were joined by a third Jennings brother in law, Thomas Richard Guppy. They brewed Mersey porter ale, and had traded as Guppy, Rees and Co since at least 1838 (when Guppy brought a court case against a carpenter for late completion of work on the brewery). But Guppy withdrew on 2^nd March 1840 to concentrate on his engineering career. Castle too dropped out of that operation exactly two years later, leaving Rees in sole charge there.

The brothers in law formally dissolved their Stokes Park and Nursery partnership on 10^th August 1842, but I don’t think there was any crisis. Two small breweries in two cities 180 miles apart probably had little to gain from shared ownership when one partner lived in each city. Thomas concentrated on the Liverpool sites and William took on sole ownership of Stokes Croft.

Stokes Croft at the junction with City Road, c1918 (brewery just out of sight on the right)

The families on the other hand remained very close. William and Caroline Castle’s daughter Emily was visiting her uncle Thomas and aunt Susannah Rees at the time of the 1861 census, and a year later there was a Rees-Castle partnership of a different kind when Emily married their son Lambert Thomas Rees, her first cousin.

By then both men had moved out of brewing and into grain processing. Thomas was a corn merchant and William a rice dresser – cleaning up imported rice to prepare it for sale. The Stokes Croft Brewery went through a series of owners. Foll & Abbott had it in the 1860s when they sold F&A pale bitter ale for a shilling a gallon. In the early 1880s it was owned by Hereford company Harvey & Co, who sold it on to Arnold, Perrett & Co in 1889. R.W. Miller & Co took it on only four years later, and Georges & Co bought it in 1911. Having survived Bristol’s blitz in the second world war it finally closed down in 1948.

Avonmead, postwar shops and flats on the site of the Stokes Croft Brewery

At 6.1% Stokes Croft IPA is not a beer merely to quench your thirst with, and no doubt much stronger than the ale produced by its eponymous predecessor. But it has strength too in the history carried in its name.