Bolton and the bloody massacre

IF you visit Bolton Parish Church and walk off to the right from the main doors, skirting round the building, you will find an extraordinary document of Bolton history carved on a man's gravestone.

It chronicles his life, and the life going on around him. John Okey was a Puritan, which is to say he was an extreme Protestant and thus prone to see the sinister hand of the Pope and his minions behind any disaster.

Many Protestants were murdered in Ireland, but then again many Catholics were murdered by Protestants.

John Okey certainly did live in interesting times. But what was a London man doing in Bolton in the first place? What sort of town did he come to?

The population of Bolton at the start of the civil war in 1641 was probably between 1,500 and 2,000, with another 5,000 living in the villages round about.

We saw last week that Bolton in the 16th century had become noted for the manufacture of cotton and coarse yarns. By 1620, the emphasis had changed to fustians, which are a combination of cotton and flax. George Arnold, a fustia weaver, is recorded as operating in Bolton as early as 1601.

These fustians were manufactured by cottage industry in the area round town and then sold in the weekly Monday market, which assembled where the memorial cross stands in Churchgate today.

The principal dealer at the market was Humphrey Chetham, founder of the Blue Coats Hospital in Manchester, and also of the world's first public lending library. As well as being a philanthropist, Chetham was a canny businessman and was able in 1628 to buy Turton Tower from the Orrels.

The incumbent in the Parish Church in 1641 was William Gregge, BA, Brasenose College, Oxford. We can perhaps get some idea of his religious views by looking at the brothers-in-law he acquired when he married Alice Crompton of Breightmet -- Richard Goodwin was a vicar who was kicked out of the Church of England for excessive Presbyterianism in 1662; Oliver Heywood was a Nonconformist minister with a national reputation; the third in-law was none other than Mr John Okey.

Gregge wasn't the only clergyman in Bolton at the time. John Harper of Halliwell was the town's Lecturer, appointed by an endowment to preach the good word every Sunday and Monday. He, too, was a Puritan.

So were most of the town's leading men of business -- the Cromptons, Bradshaws, Foggs and the Levers. Many of the last named family lived in London and one of them, Robert Lever, left the bequest which was used to re-found the Bolton Free Grammar School in 1646.

What was Robert Lever doing in London? Business, probably. By 1641 the financial leaders of Bolton were trading with the capital on a regular basis. Fustians went out and money and Puritanism came back. We have seen this process working in the 16th century. It transformed Bolton into the "Geneva of the North", a town known for its strict religion, a natural ally for Parliament against the Crown.

But was it that simple? Not all the local notables were Puritan Parliamentarians. The Andertons of Lostock, the Janions and Norrises of Blackrod, all supported the King. Not all ministers were godly, clean living preachers of the good word. James Pendlebury, vicar of Deane from 1597 to 1637 was described as a "lewd minister" and charged with "drunkenness, fornications and other offences". Nor were the ordinary people a bunch of long-faced killjoys -- in 1637-38 no less than 38 ale houses were closed by magistrates' order in Bolton and Deane.

Puritan, and Parliamentary, ideas were most popular among the upwardly mobile commercial middle classes. As for the rest of the people, for the fustian weavers and the farmers in their small crofts, the argument about who ran the country -- the King alone by God's appointment, or King in Parliament, was less important than earning a crust.

They were not going to be educated at the Grammar school and Brasenose College, they were not going to become rich merchants and marry one of James Crompton's daughters. They didn't have the vote -- many of them wouldn't get one until 1832 or 1919. They certainly didn't want a civil war.

But they got one anyway, even though an attempt was made to broker a local ceasefire.

At the start of the war Bolton was fortified with a mud wall. The Royalists attacked twice, on February 18, and March 28, 1643, and were each time driven off with heavy losses.

By 1644, the King's efforts in Lancashire were failing and only Lathom house, home of the Earl of Derby and commanded by his formidable French wife, held out for the Royalist cause.

Bolton men were among its besiegers. Then nemesis arrived in the shape of the King's nephew. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, with an army of 12,000. They relieved Lathom House. Many of the besiegers retreated to Bolton. Rupert followed and attacked on May 28.

The first attack was beaten off. The second broke in through the mud walls. What followed was a massacre.

No quarter was given: "Nothing was heard but kill dead, kill dead . . . killing all before them without by their horsemen pursuing the poor amazed people, killing, spoiling and stripping all they could meet with . . . denying quarter to any till the sword, drunk with blood, was sheathed".

A dreadful hacking slaughter in the narrow streets and the little houses, while the rain beat down, spreading into the country beyond until perhaps 1,000 people were dead and Bolton, the Geneva of the North, a "sweet Godly place" had turned into a "nest of owls and a den of dragons".

Even for a civil war the slaughter was dreadful and unprecedented. Why did it happen? Did Bolton's Puritan reputation make it a target? Were the attackers taking revenge for the siege of Lathom?

Or was it just a matter of the soldiers running out of control, fired by bloodlust and not behaving like human beings any more? We are all too familiar with such stories. But it happened here.

The massacre was the most awful thing that ever happened to our town, and left it "bleeding, dying and undone".

But the survivors rebuilt and soldIered on. When the Earl of Derby, blamed by the authorities for the massacre, was beheaded on Churchgate on October 15, 1651 -- after spending his last hours in the Man and Scythe public house -- the assembled crowd sympathised with him to the extent that the Parliamentary soldiers on duty indulged in a little massacre of their own, killing some and wounding many. From his scaffold, Derby pleaded for their lives, but to no avail.

Eventually the killing stopped. Bolton recovered. By 1673 a visitor could describe "a fair, well built town, with broad streets, hath a market on Mondays, which is very good for clothing and provisions; and it is a place of great trade for fustians".

John Okey was still around in 1673. Doubtless he welcomed the town's rising fortunes and he probably made a few bob from the fustian trade. But the events of his long life had changed him.

There is a note of resignation in the message on his grave stone. Rest, joy and happiness were to be found only in holiness. And so he went quietly to his rest.