Town's rebels with a cause

IN 1688 a great storm hit Bolton. Torrential rain made the Croal flood and the narrow old footbridge, which stood at the bottom of Church Bank, was badly damaged. The total cost of repair was £3 4s 6d (£3.22). Bear in mind, in those days, you could buy a pound of beef for 2d, a whole goose for 1s 6d, and 40 eggs for 1s.

In 1688 a great political storm hit Britain and swept away forever the old order. King James II of England and VII of Scotland, a devout Roman Catholic who wanted to establish his own absolute rule, was deposed by the leaders of Parliament and replaced by his daughter and son-in-law who reigned jointly as William and Mary.

Many people did not accept this Glorious Revolution and hoped for a return of the Stewart family to the throne. They backed in turn the exiled King James, then his son James, known as the Old Pretender, and then his grandson Charles Edward Stewart, the Young Pretender.

These people were known as Jacobites because James is "Jacobus" in Latin.

We tend to think of Jacobites as being Highland Scotsmen, but in fact Jacobites came from all walks of life and all parts of Britain.

Some of them even came from Bolton.

Take Sir Francis Anderton, Baronet, for example. He was squire of Lostock, a major landowner and very wealthy by local standards.

His various estates -- he owned property in Yorkshire as well as Lancashire -- brought in an income of £4,000 per annum, which would be worth £1m in modern money.

But Sir Francis was a Roman Catholic and a supporter of the exiled King James. In November 1715 Sir Francis rode to join the rebel Jacobite army led by the Earl of Derwentwater, which was occupying Preston.

He arrived just in time to join in the general surrender.

The hoi polloi among the rebels were shot or strung up locally but a Baronet was a bigger catch.

Sir Francis was tried for High Treason.

He was found guilty, and the judge pronounced the terrible sentence:

"It is adjudged by this court that you, Sir Francis Anderton, return to the prison whence you came, from thence you must be drawn to the place of execution; when you come there you must be hanged by the neck, but not until you be dead, for you must be cut down alive, then your bowels must be taken out and burnt before your face, then your head must be severed from your body, and your body divided into four quarters and these must be at the King's disposal."

Sir Francis was lucky in the end. Instead of being hung, drawn and quartered he was in fact released by a General Amnesty in 1717 and lived to a ripe old age.

Sir Francis's forfeit estate was claimed by his brother Laurence who had been educated in France and who was, at the time of the rebellion, a Benedictine Priest.

To get his hands on the family acres he renounced not only his priesthood but also the religion of his fathers, and accepted Anglicanism and the Protestant settlement.

In 1745 the Jacobites tried again.

Under the charismatic leadership of Bonnie Prince Charlie an army came down from Scotland and marched through Lancashire.

To pay their way they confiscated customs duties in all the towns on their path. And so it was that in 1745 Jacobite cavalrymen tied up their horses outside the inn at the sign of the Swan. It is of course still there, on the corner of Bradshawgate and Churchgate.

How did the people react? Did they bolt their doors? Did they come out to stare? Did they come out and cheer? Alas there is no record but we might imagine a mixed response.

All of Britain was split, and the same would have been true of our town.

Some would favour the new dispensation; others would support the old regime.

What sort of town did the Jacobites ride into in 1745? The great novelist Daniel Defoe had passed through a few years earlier but he "saw nothing remarkable in this town, but that the cotton manufacture reached hither."

As we have seen the cotton manufacture had been thither for over 200 years but not even Defoe knew everything.

He also remarked on the local production of high quality cannell or Candle Coal that was found on the estates of Sir Roger Bradshaw.

Again coal production was nothing new in Bolton -- the earliest accounts of it date from the 14th century.

By 1750 the population of Bolton was around 5,000. The market still took place every Monday in Churchgate, and there was a cattle fair every fortnight.

The Grammar School was well established -- in 1745 the headmaster, Henry Escrick, died and was replaced Joseph Hooley at a salary of £40 per annum. A Court Baron was set up in town in 1746 to help with the recovery of small debts under 40s (£2).

Some of the richer citizens of Bolton felt a social responsibility -- there was a charity school for poor children on Churchgate, established by money left in the will of Thomas Marsden in 1714.

The poor of the town also benefited from a bequest of £180 left by Jane Astley in 1734, which went towards clothes for the poor and a yearly sermon to be preached at the town's Presbyterian meeting house. And in 1744 Susannah Brooks left £100 in trust for poor children.

The state also played its part in the shape of the Poor Law. Local worthies acted as overseers administering relief to the needy.

The fact that so much action was taken against poverty seems to indicate that there was plenty of it about.

It was still a cruel hard life for the majority but there were compensations and amusements. Cock fighting was a popular spectacle and the big mains drew large crowds and attracted heavy gambling.

Less brutal and just as popular was horse racing, which was big business by the middle of the 18th century.

A surviving advertisement announces a race to be held "at Bolton in the Moors in the county of Lancaster" with a purse of gold for the winner and stakes to go to the second best.

The entrance fee was 6s and horses were weighed and measured at the Boar's Head Inn. Local entrepreneurs set up food and drink stalls to cater to the punters' needs and every evening, when the racing was done there was an "assembly of ladies", with boozing, dancing and jollity all round.

John Wesley would not have approved. The great Methodist reformer visited Bolton several times around this period and it sounds as though he discovered complete anarchy.

On August 28, 1748, while preaching at the Market Cross he was pelted with stones. On his return visit in 1749 a huge mob of drunkards, swearers, Sabbath-breakers and sinners' milled around the house where he was staying. In 1751 Wesley's fellow Methodist George Whitfield was heckled by drunks while preaching.

But the Methodists were valiant and plenty of people wanted to hear their message.

In 1751 a Meeting House was built in what is now Hotel Street, near the present TSB, and a split in the Methodist camp resulted in the building of another, in Dukes Alley, in 1754.

Bolton had sober God-fearing citizens as well as drunken sportsmen, in the same way that it had rich and poor, and Whig and Tory.

But as Wesley preached, as the horses raced, as the Court Baron sat in judgement and the poor man went cap in hand for outdoor relief, something new was on its way.

An industrial revolution which would change the world more than 1688, more than the Jacobites, more even than John Wesley.

It came to Bolton early. Some of it came from Bolton.