Act 12

Arrival in the Old Bruce lands around Skelton Castle

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century families of Kirkleatham, Skelton, Moorsholm and Liverton

The story of the family’s arrival in Cleveland

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The Farndale footprint

It’s time for a recap.

The emigrants from Farndale of the early fourteenth century had moved south across the Vale of York to York, Sheriff Hutton and Doncaster. There had been some probing to the area north of the North York Moors, such as De Willelmo de Farndale who settled in Danby and De Johanne de Farendale who ventured as far as Egton, though he later returned to Rosedale and his family were probably those who settled in York. The family of the cattle rustler John Farndale were probably living as far as County Durham in the late fourteenth century. There was a Thomas fyndaille in Lythe on the Cleveland coast in 1524. However the footprint of the family was south of the dales and the main family line seems to have become focused on Doncaster and Campsall.

From the mid sixteenth century almost all records of the family, which by that time were starting to be well preserved in the parish records, were from Cleveland, north of the North York Moors. This continued until a family emerged around Yearsley near Ampleforth, not so far from the family’s ancient homelands around Kirkdale and Farndale, in about 1783, that family moving there via Thirsk.

So when we look at the pattern of the records, it is probable that the line of the family from whom the modern family descends, had moved to the area around Doncaster by the early fourteenth century, stayed there until the mid sixteenth century, and then moved north to Cleveland, where they lived from the mid sixteenth century, with a branch moving to the Ampleforth area in the late eighteenth century.

It’s only a very few royal or aristocratic families who can be sure of family relationships before the sixteenth century. In most cases it’s not possible to be sure how individuals meshed together before parish records started to record births, deaths and marriages from about 1538.

However medieval records of individuals who must have been our ancestors have allowed us to piece the clues together, so that we have some significant evidence as to how these individuals are linked.

We know that before 1572 we don’t find evidence of Farndales in Cleveland, but instead mainly around York, Sheriff Hutton and Doncaster. Kirkleatham. Yet after 1572, we find almost all Farndales in Cleveland, apart from a family that later emerged around Ampleforth in the eighteenth century.

Scene 1 – Moving North

The emigration to Kirkleatham

Parish records began to be kept, by the orders of Thomas Cromwell, from about 1538. By about 1573 there were pretty good records being kept. As we reach the mid sixteenth century we start to emerge from the age of the probable to a modern age of greater certainty. From that date, we benefit from records which allow us to follow family relationships with more certainty. And so it is that we know that Nicholas farndaile was buried in the parish of Kirkleatham, in Cleveland, near Skelton on 6 August 1572.

Assuming that Nicholas might have lived for 60 years, he might have been born in about 1512.

We also know that an Agnes Farndale was buried at Kirkleatham on 23 January 1586. So it’s pretty clear that Agnes was Nicholas’ wife.

Given what we know for certain of the generations to follow, Nicholas and Agnes are likely to be the paternal and maternal grandparents of all modern Farndales. The records are still not good enough for us to be sure about that. However when we piece together some tangible evidence, it seems very likely.

We also know that a Jean Farndale married Richard Fairley, a relatively pedigreed fellow, in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567. As the wedding was in Kirkleatham it seems likely that Jean was the daughter of Nicholas and Agnes.

A William Farndale died on 24 January 1606 and was buried at St John the Baptist Church in Skelton. We don’t have his birth record, but William was likely to have been the son of Nicholas and Agnes in the adjacent village of Kirkleatham. Since we have already identified that a William Farndale married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall, near Doncaster in 1564, it is tempting to deduce that this is the same person. That would mean that Nicholas and Agnes and their children William and Jean were originally from Doncaster or Campsall, but then moved into Cleveland probably in the 1560s shortly after William’s marriage.

Whilst we have no direct evidence of this, it provides us with an explanation as to how the family, with a footprint south of the North York Moors, came to live in Cleveland, to the north of the North York Moors. Before long we will find another clue as to why the family might have made that move.

The Christian names of Nicholas and William. though commonly used, also link the fourteenth and sixteenth century records. It is not unlikely that Nicholas and William Farndale who we find in Cleveland in the sixteenth century are from the same family as Nicholaus and William Farndale who we find in Doncaster in the fourteenth century. Of course that might just be coincidence, but it adds to the picture we have.

This model helps to explain a lot, but it is the main aspect of our history that needs some more research.

So this allows us to draw up a possible family tree for the Doncaster-Kirkleatham-Skelton Line of Farndales.

If we are correct, the ancestors of the modern family must have emigrated north after William and Margaret’s wedding in St Mary Magdalene Church in Campsall in 1564 and before Jean’s wedding to Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham in 1567.

This emigration occurred in the midst of the Elizabethan age, thirty years after the Reformation during Henry VIII’s reign (1509 to 1547) had fundamentally transformed English society by removing Rome’s supremacy. The First Act of Succession in 1534 had resolved Henry’s marital and succession issues and two Acts of Supremacy confirmed Henry VIII as supreme head of the church of England. This was the first time England had brexited from the European world. To most ordinary folk, these issues were probably remote and caused little to change, but there was a heightened awareness of religious difference which impacted everywhere. This religious difference would have impacted on the Farndales living around Doncaster in 1536 when the Pilgrimage of Grace reached both York and Doncaster. It probably impacted all corners of the nation during the reign of Bloody Mary (1553 to 1558), which brought a devastating Counter Reformation and the burning of protestants, cruel heresy laws, when John Foxes’s Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, known as the Book of Martyrs, compiled the shocking stories of the persecutions.

Elizabeth I (1558 to 1603) brought some calm and toleration back to her realm. The Act of Supremacy 1558 was An Acte restoring to the Crowne its Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall and Spirituall, and abolyshing all Forreine Power repugnaunt to the same, The Act of Uniformity 1559, authorised a book of common prayer which was similar to the 1552 version but which retained some Catholic elements, and the Thirty Nine Articles 1563 provided a compromise return to a new Anglican world. This was the foundation of a new religion which was later called Anglicanism. “It looked Catholic and sounded Protestant.” It was a religious middle way. It was a compromise and perhaps the foundation of the British spirit of compromise. It contrasted to a time of Catholic versus Protestant polarisation in Europe. Elizabeth had little sympathy for hardliners from either wing of the religious divide. She stopped heresy trials. This was a brave new world, though still to be threatened for a while by Spanish invasion plans and a medley of plots.

Over time however, there were acts by her monarchy which supressed Catholicism, which was still popular in Yorkshire.

The mid 1560s were therefore a period of renewed hope, whilst still threatened by opposing ideas. It was in 1568 that Mary Queen of Scots escaped from Loch Leven Castle and fled to England and was interred in a succession of castles, including Bolton Castle in Wensleydale. Soon after Mary’s arrival, a rebellion began in the pro Catholic north of England led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. The Rising of the North of 1569, also called the Revolt of the Northern Earls or Northern Rebellion, was an unsuccessful attempt by Catholic nobles from Northern England to depose Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.

It was at this time that Jean Farndale had married Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567. This was the first event which marked the family’s arrival there. The Fairleys were a Scottish family once known as de Ros who adopted the name Fairlie when they were granted lands at Fairlie (Ayrshire) by Robert the Bruce, that Scottish King of Yorkshire descent. This is a locative name from Fairlie in Ayrshire near the mouth of the Forth of Clyde. By 1881 the later family were centred around Midlothian and Lanarkshire, but also Durham and Northumberland. The family was also in Ireland. The two branches of the Bruce family had lands in Annandale in Scotland and around Skelton.

William Fairlie was referred to in 1306 to 1329 in the Great Seal of Scotland. Wiliam Fayrly or Fayrley was referred to in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland in 1329. William de Fairlie was referred to in Rotuli Scotiae, in 1335.

As well as Richard Fairley, Jean Fayrley in 1571, also Ellen Fayrlay in 1579 appeared in the Kirkleatham records. Germane Fairlye in 1571 and Henrici Fairley in 1609 were referred to in the parish records for nearby Marske in Cleveland.

Jean Farley, who might have been Richard Fairley’s sister, married Christopher Chapman at Kirkleatham on 3 November 1588. There was also a marriage between Jean Farley and Railphe Marcam on 8 March 1602. There was also a Francis Fairlye who was buried at Kirkleatham on 30 August 1568; John Farley who was buried at Kirkleatham on 15 December 1579; an Ellen Fairlie who was buried at Kirkleatham on 3 August 1580; Elizabeth Farley who was buried at Kirkleatham on 8 June 1583; and a Mary Fairley of East Coatham who was buried at Kirkleatham on 17 November 1618.

Richard Fairley died in 1584 and was buried on 1 September 1584 at Kirkleatham.

This was a Scottish family, of some pedigree, who seem to have been well established in Kirkleatham.

The Farndales had moved from Campsall to Kirkleatham between 1564, when William had married Margaret Atkinson, and 1567, when Jean had married into the Kirkleatham Fairley family of Scottish descent. This may have been a time of some renewed emigration for new opportunities at the onset of a time of greater tolerance, after many difficult years of religious tension.

Scene 2 – A Family Established

Sixteenth century Cleveland

As they arrived the ancient Bruce landholdings focused on Skelton castle were in the hands of the Conyers family. John, Lord Conyers had died intestate in 1556 and the estate was divided equitably between his three daughters, Anne, Katharine and Elizabeth. There was soon tension between the three families focused on arguments between the three husbands. The dispute was resolved by the sale of the Skelton estate to Robert Trotter in 1577. The Trotters held the estates until the early eighteenth century. So as the Farndales arrived, the overlordship was in something of a turmoil.

In the sixteenth century Cleveland was rural and agricultural. It was not dissimilar to the Farndale lands and the agricultural communities at the edge of the dales to the south of the moors.

John Walker Ord in his History and Antiquities of Cleveland, 1846 described its immense ranges of majestic hills; its far-extending moors, interspersed with fruitful valleys and picturesque dales ; its embowering groves of beech and pine, and wide-spreading forests of oak; its calm and peaceful rivers, clear and musical with the rush of innumerable mountain streams; the beauty or sublimity of the ocean, girding its romantic shores; the enormous chain of towering sea-cliffs against which in calm the billows leap with playful sportfulness, or in tempest fiercely hurl their thunders, all these combined present a majesty and loveliness in Nature, unsurpassed, we may venture to affirm, within the circuit of the British isles.

The earliest record of the name Cleveland is in the twelfth century Orkneyinga Saga, which recorded Harald Hardrada of Norway’s landing in ‘Kliffland’.

These were ancient lands stretching from the River Tees to the coast at Whitby. Roseberry Topping, south of Guisborough, is an area of rich Bronze and Iron Age history. There had been extensive Scandinavian settlement, evident in place names. Guisborough is the fortified town of Gigr and became an important settlement. After the Conquest in 1120 Robert de Brus founded the Augustinian Gisborough Priory. The spelling of the priory is distinct from the town spelling.

The Black Death had swept through Cleveland just as elsewhere and killed two thirds of the population and Black Death graveyards at Great Ayton, Wilton, Seamer were testament to the trauma of plague. The religious tensions such as the Pilgrimage of Grace had also reached Cleveland. Sir John Bulmer of Wilton was hanged and his wife was burnt at the stake. George Lumley of Kilton was executed.

The Recusancy Acts in 1558 required attendance at Church of England services, returning to Henry VIII’s Reformation. Those who refused to do so were called Recusants and were brought to Court to face penalties. In Cleveland, at first Egton, with 9 Recusants, was its only centre. By 1586, Brotton had 19 presentations for Recusancy, Egton 13, Hinderwell 10 and Skelton 8.

There was strong adherence to Catholicism in northern England and Elizabeth I’s reforms to purge Bloody Mary’s regime led to the Rising of the North, led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. It was an unsuccessful attempt by Catholic nobles from Northern England to depose Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. Reprisals against the rebels of 1569 began and 600 rebel commoners were hanged in local towns.

A Poor Law authorised Counties to establish houses of correction for vagrants in 1576 and for the Punishment of the Mother and Father of a Bastard. The Bastardy Laws relieved the parish from the cost of supporting the child and children born out of wedlock were at significant risk of infant mortality.

In 1586, with the threat of war from Spain, there was a degree of mobilisation and the Wapentake of Langbaurgh, which included the relevant areas of modern Cleveland, was required to provide 350 men. This was also a year of severe famine.

By the end of the sixteenth century, the poor, old and sick had no place to go for relief and many starved to death. In 1601 the new Poor Law placed a legal obligation on parishes to care for those unable to work. The Poor Relief Act placed responsibility for local affairs on the Vestry, a committee of the leading figures of a Church Parish, who ran the daily business of the area. Each Parish was made responsible for the maintenance of its own poor. The churchwardens and parishioners had to elect two Overseers of the paupers in each Church Parish. These men collected Poor Rates, which were levied in the same way as Church Rates, and this money was applied to the relief of the local poor in return for useful work if possible. This system for dealing with the Parish poor was the beginning of Local Councils and continued until the Victorian Workhouses from 1834.

As the Farndales arrived in the area, there were early signs of the future industrial revolution which would soon reinvent Cleveland. By 1595, Sir Thomas Chaloner established alum works at Belman Banks. The first profitable alum site in Yorkshire was opened in 1603 at Spring Bank, Slapewath, which was then part of Skelton. The new alum business was owned by the Athertons and D’Arcys who had married into the ownership of Skelton Castle. Britain had been an agricultural nation and wool was its chief export. Alum was used in the dyeing process as the setting agent and was also needed in the tanning of hides. It was a highly valued product, which previously had been imported. In 1610, James I made Alum production a monopoly of the Crown. By 1616 alum production began at Selby Hagg, near Hagg Farm, Skelton. Ships anchored off Saltburn to transport the finished product. They brought with them casks of urine, which was mixed with the liquid that had been obtained from the calcined shale as part of the process. This was probably done in an Alum House near Cat Nab in Saltburn. The shale liquid ran from Selby Hagg by gravity down a trough that followed the course of Millholme Beck.

Pastoral scenes were starting to be laced with the smells and the sweat of a future industrial age.

In 1623, the estate of Kirkleatham and Kirkleatham Hall, once traditional Percy lands (rivals of the Nevilles of the Sheriff Hutton lands), were purchased by John Turner, the brother in law of John Pepys daughter, Jane.

Nearby Skelton Castle had been the heart of the Bruce lands. There were close marital links between the House Bruce and the de Thweng family of Kilton castle.

In 1635 the Quarter Sessions at Thirsk ordered No person within the North Riding shal be lycenced to keepe an alehouse but by the Justices assigned to performe the services concerninge alehouses within the division wherein the said person shall dwell, and that all other lycences granted by any other Justices otherwise shal be voyde.

It was also ordered for the better performance of the good and necessary lawes and statutes made for the reliefe of the poore, and for the punishinge of such persons as are declared to be rogues, vagabondes, and sturdy beggars, and for the keeping of order in alehouses, that Constables, Churchwardens, and Ale-conners within every parish shall make particular monthly certificates in manner following: That they have none amongst them that do brew, drink, or sell without lycence, or doe take above one penny for an ale quart of their best drink, or if they have they must sett down their names and the tymes of the offence committed. That they know of noe person that hath sitten tippling in any alehouse contrarie unto the law, or if they have…That they know of noe vagrant begger that hath passed through their parish without punishment …

The family arrival in Cleveland coincided with the first hint of a transition from pastoral to industrial, and from Catholicism to Protestantism, sometimes tinged with a puritan streak.

Moorsholm

In a deed of 1592, a George fferndale of Moorsholm was referred to several times relating to property at Skelton as to whether he had purchased it a previous date. Whilst we cannot be sure, George was probably a son of William and Margaret Farndale. These were still the early days of parish records, and there remains some doubt about the exact mesh of relationships. It is George Farndale and his descendants where the mist clears and inter-relationships become more certain.

It seems likely that the early family looked something like this.

	The First Family Tree
	Nicholas Farndale = C1512 to 6 August 1572 Probably moved with their family from the Campsall area to Kirkleatham in about 1567	Agnes Farndale C1516 to 23 January 1586
	William Farndale c1539 to 24 January 1606 Married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall on 29 October 1564 before the family moved to Kirkleatham Buried in Skelton	Jean Farndale c1540 Married Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567
Jane Farndale c1566 to c1623 Married Valentine Wraye, a yeoman farmer, in Skelton in 1588. They had fife children.	George Farndale c1570 to 9 March 1607 Married Margery Nelson from Wilton, near Kirkleatham in 1595	Eln Farndale c1573 to c1633 She married Peter Atkinson at Wilton near Kirkleatham in 1598.	Isabell Farndale c1592 to 2 April 1592 She died at birth

George Farndale of Skelton married Margery Nelson of Wilton in 1595. Wilton is only 2 kilometres south of Kirkleatham. Moorsholm was part of the parish of Skelton, about five kilometres southeast of Skelton, so it seems likely that the 1592 reference and his wedding in Skelton mean that George and his family lived in Moorsholm, within the parish of Skelton.

Moorsholm is a Scandinavian name, ‘the settlement on the moors’. Originally Great Moorsholm was where the modern village lies, and there was also Little Moorsholm.

George Farndale and his sister, Eln, both married spouses from Wilton near Kirkleatham and Eln’s husband had the same surname, Atkinson, as her mother, so is likely to have been a cousin. This might suggest that when William had married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall, the Atkinson family came from Wilton near Kirkleatham. The reason why the family moved from Campsall near Doncaster to Kirkleatham near Wilton might therefore be that the whole family chose to live near Margaret Atkinson’s family.

George ffarnedayle of Moorsome was mentioned in the Inspeximus in Skelton Church Records in 1602.

George Farndayll was buried, seputs at Skelton 9 March 1607. In 1609 the administration of the Goods of George Farndale, late of Moorsome, deceased was granted to Margerie Farndaile and Isabel Pinckney, for their own benefit and for Susan, George and Richard Farndaile, children of the deceased. In the same year, the Dean of Cleveland granted guardianship of William Farndaile, Susan, George and Richard Farndaile, children of George Farndale, deceased, together with administration of their affairs, goods, rights and portions to Margery Farndale by choice of the said children. This suggests that George and Margery’s children had to make a choice as to who they would live with. Perhaps this was something to do with George’s interest in the mysterious Isabel Pinckney.

On 3 April 1611 George’s brother in law, Valentine Wraye, a yom'n, was fined 20s at Skelton for uttering contemptuous words and threats against certain men - viz. Will. Gedge, Anth. Hutton and Nich. Harker, bound as witnesses in the matter of a certain felony committed by Chr. Hobson and Henry Robinson, late of lastingham, in contempt &c.

The records then provide us with certainty about the evolving shape of the family.

	George Farndale = c1570 to 9 March 1607 Married Margery Nelson from Wilton, near Kirkleatham in 1595	Margery Nelson
William Farndale 22 January 1599 to 24 January 1697	Susan Farndale c1601 to c1660	George Farndale 16 March 1602 to 17 August 1693	Infanta Farndale 4 January 1603 to 4 January 1603	Richard Farndale 3 February 1604 to c1685

It was at this point that the family would start split into separate families around Cleveland from the early seventeenth century. In the early eighteenth century, some moved back south of the North York Moors around Yearsley near Ampleforth.

Broadly, the family started to diverge along four main branch lines, which in time would further diverge into smaller family lines. The four main groups were a family at Kilton, a second family focused on Kilton, a number of families at Whitby and the Yearsley family.

The Act of Settlement in 1662 attempted to prevent anyone from settling elsewhere than their place of birth. It was intended mainly to prevent paupers moving to be maintained by a Parish other than their own, as each Parish had to collect a Poor Rate to maintain their own. Removal orders were made returning people to their own Parish right up to the 1840s and the start of the Workhouse.

The Act of Uniformity 1662 prescribed the form of public prayers, administration of sacraments, and other rites of the Established Church of England and included laws for preventing mischiefs and dangers that may arise by certain persons called Quakers, and others refusing to take oaths. The act declared it altogether unlawful and contrary to the word of God to refuse to take an oath, or to persuade another person to refuse to do so. It was also an offense for more than five persons, commonly called Quakers, to assemble in any place under pretense of joining in a religious worship not authorized by the laws of this realm.

To help raise over a million pounds for the Royal Household a Hearth Tax was imposed in 1662, whereby each household was compelled to pay 2s per annum for every fireplace that they owned.

William Farndale continued to live in Moorsholm in Skelton Parish and in 1674 he had two hearths, for which he was taxed.

Civil War

William moved to Liverton by 1685 and died in Great Ayton, where he left his will. He had four children and lots of grandchildren. We have a lot of information about his family, which can be explored in the Skelton 1 Line and his grandchildren lived in the Moorsholm 1 Line and the Great Ayton 1 Line. His grandson William Farndale was sworn in for Jury Service at Loftus in 1700.

Richard Farndale moved to Liverton, where he married Emme Nellice on 29 July 1632. He became a church warden at Liverton church. Richard and Emmie had five children, the Liverton 1 Line. One of his children was John Farndale, who moved to Whitby, and we will pick up his story in a later chapter. Another was Richard Farndale, a yeoman farmer who married Matha Sawer in Brotton. His family, the Brotton 1 Line, included the ancestors of one of the Kilton Line of descendants, and we will also pick up their story in a later chapter. It was also probably from this line that the family who moved to Yearsley near Ampleforth descend.

All other lines of the modern Farndale family descend from George Farndale. Like his brothers, George had moved to Liverton by 1623, but by 1642, as the English Civil War started, he moved back to Moorsholm, where he had one hearth in 1673 and two hearths in 1674.

The English Civil War which began in 1642 was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639 to 1653. Parliament voted on 12 July 1642 to raise a force under the command of the Third Earl of Essex and required an oath of allegiance. The King issued commissions of array to allow the raising of militias and raised his flag at Nottingham on 22 August 1642. Each side seized towns, strongpoints and military stores. The King was locked out of the largest military depot at Hull. Counties petitioned for compromise. Counties such as Yorkshire dragged their feet.

It is too simplistic that the war was just a fight between liberty on the part of the Parliamentarians against the tyranny of Stuart absolutism. Nor was it primarily about class struggle. The ancient peerages tended to back the Parliamentarians as they disliked the novelties of Stuart government. Religion was the clearest dividing line, but religious spectrums were fluid and nearly everyone belonged to the Church of England. A third of Puritans in 1643 were Royalist. Instead there was division everywhere and every town and village and many families were divided. Most fought because they were conscripted. Families split. There were shifting coalitions and people changed sides.

Early in the Civil War there was a campaign for the north in 1643. When the first great battle of the Civil War, at Edgehill on 23 October 1642, failed to deliver the expected resolution, both Royalists and Parliamentarians rushed to take control of extensive territories as the basis from which to support a long campaign. In the north the King gave this task to the Marquis of Newcastle. By November 1642 the Royalist city of York was coming under increasing threats from the Parliamentarian forces of the Hothams and Cholmley from the north east and the Fairfaxes from the west.

The Royalist Marquis of Newcastle quickly raised an army some 6,000 to 8,000 strong and marched to York. He initially swept away the Parliamentary opposition and took the key strategic hub of York. Parliamentarian opposition in Yorkshire was led by Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas. The heartland of their power was in the cloth towns of the West Riding. They had become cut off from their main port at Scarborough. However they were able to recruit a significant force of musketeers from their cloth towns base.

The Parliamentarian strategy was to interrupt the Royalist supply of arms. In mid January Sir Hugh Cholmley led a small Parliamentarian army from Malton to Guisborough.

A small skirmish took place somewhere between Skelton and Guisborough, in the immediate vicinity of the new Farndale homes of Moorsholm and Liverton, on 16 January 1643 between Royalists under the command of Colonel Guildford Slingsby and Parliamentarians under Sir Hugh Cholmley and Sir Matthew Boynton. The Parliamentarian army of about 380 men seem to have approached the battlefield from the moors and they were met by Slingsby’s force of about 400 foot and 100 horse, who were being drilled in Guisborough. Slingsby took the initiative by charging his cavalry against Cholmley’s horse with some success. However, his foot soldiers were forced back by the Parliamentarians, and he withdrew to rally his inexperienced recruits. As he was doing so, he was caught by case shot from the parliamentarian artillery and mortally wounded. The Royalist force crumbled and many were captured.

George Farndale was 41 in 1643, living at Moorholm and his brother Richard Farndale was 39, living at Liverton. They were both about eight kilometres from the battle. It is difficult to find lists of civil war soldiers. Loyalties were divided. It is quite possible that one or more of the brothers were part of the newly recruited army of Colonel Guildford Slingsby who were being drilled in Guisborough. This was a pretty chaotic period of time. Whether the brothers took part of the battle, it must have been a significant event. They must have smelt it, heard it, seen it perhaps.

Cholmley returned over the moors to Malton and later defected to the Royalists, but he had sent his force on to a bridge crossing over the River Tees at Yarm, south of Stockton, to try to stop a large Royalist munitions convoy travelling from Newcastle to York on 1 February 1643. The Parliamentarians, who may have set up barricades, were quickly overwhelmed, losing over 30 men killed and many wounded and captured, others fled. The prisoners were marched to Durham. The defeat may have helped influence parliamentarian Sir Hugh Cholmley to change sides a few weeks later.

The attempt to disrupt the Royalist army moved its focus to the Tadcaster area and there was another Parliamentarian defeat at Seacroft Moor near York on 30 March 1643.

The Battle of Marston Moor took place west of York on 2 July 1644. During the summer of 1644, the Parliamentarians had been besieging York. Prince Rupert had gathered a Royalist army which marched through the northwest of England, gathering reinforcements to relieve the city. The convergence of these forces made the ensuing battle the largest of the Civil War. Rupert outmanoeuvred the Parliamentarians to relieve the city and then sought battle with them even though he was outnumbered. Both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, an expanse of wild meadow west of York. Towards evening, the Parliamentarians themselves launched a surprise attack. After a confused fight lasting two hours, Parliamentarian cavalry under Oliver Cromwell routed the Royalist cavalry from the field and, with the Earl of Leven's infantry, annihilated the remaining Royalist infantry. After their defeat the Royalists effectively abandoned Northern England, losing much of the manpower from the northern counties which were strongly Royalist in sympathy and also losing access to the European continent through the ports on the North Sea coast. The loss of the north was to prove a fatal handicap the next year, when they tried unsuccessfully to link up with the Scottish Royalists under the Marquess of Montrose.

In December 1644, a New Model Army of 22,000 men was formed by the Parliamentarians under Lord General Sir Thomas Fairfax. This was the nation’s first professional army. There was a new officer corps. The Self Denying Ordinance removed Members of Parliament from military command, though with the notable exception of the MP Oliver Cromwell, who was given command. The army was detached from civilian society. Harsh discipline was imposed with penalties for drunkenness and blasphemy. Sir Thomas Fairfax came from came from a Yorkshire gentry family. The Fairfaxes were among Parliament's leading supporters in northern England.

The Royalist forces suffered painful defeats in 1645. Nevertheless, there was factionalism amongst the Parliamentarians. The Scottish Alliance had brought with it the threat of an authoritarian system based on Scottish Presbyterianism. A faction of Independents emerged within the Parliamentarians who sought liberty of conscience. Many in the Army supported the Independents.

The New Model Army was becoming a problem. Its cost and the need for taxation was causing resentment. The army was coming to be hated by the civilian population. But disbanding was also a problem with significant arrears of pay, amounting to £3M. The army itself was seeking their own terms including protection from being sent to fight in Ireland and indemnity from prosecution for acts during the war.

By 1645, it seems that many clergy who could not agree with the Puritan beliefs were removed from their livings and Marske Parish records of this time show a number of entries of Skelton folk.

In July 1647, the army commanders offered conciliatory terms, Heads of Proposals, which included tolerance for the Anglicans. Charles was initially conciliatory, but eventually rejected the terms. Charles was taken to Hampton Court. Active political debates were started in political instability following the end of the civil war.

The Putney Debates were held from 28 October to 8 November 1647 which discussed such ideas as every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.

The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the Civil War, led by John Lilburne, and were most influential immediately before the start of the Second Civil War (1648–49). Leveller views and support were found in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model Army. The Levellers wanted limited government, though Lilburn denied that he wanted to ‘level all men’s estates’.

The Civil War restarted in 1648. In June 1648 Royalists sneaked into Pontefract castle, only a few miles north of the old Farndale home of Campsall, and took control. The Castle was an important base for the Royalists, and raiding parties harried Parliamentarians in the area. Oliver Cromwell led the final siege of Pontefract Castle in November 1648. Charles I was executed in January 1649, and Pontefract's garrison came to an agreement and Colonel Morrice handed over the castle to Major General John Lambert on 24 March 1649. Following requests from the townspeople, the grand jury at York, and Major General Lambert, on 27 March Parliament gave orders that Pontefract Castle should be totally demolished & levelled to the ground and materials from the castle would be sold off. Piecemeal dismantling after the main organised activity of slighting may have further contributed to the castle's ruined state.

George’s first son William Farndale, lived at Liverton and had a daughter, Ane Farndale born in 1625 with his wife, Ellin. George had two daughters, Jane and Isabal born in 1636 and 1637.

The family story though, follows the fortunes of George’s second son, Nicholas Farndale. Nicholas continued to live at Liverton, where he was christened on 6 July 1634. In about 1660, Nicholas married Elizabeth, who died on 10 February 1670. Nicholas and Elizabeth had a son and three daughters. Their eldest son George Farndale moved to Loftus and was fined 1s in 1700 by the Jury of the Manor Court of North Loftus for letting his horse go on the North Loftus Common. George’s son William moved to Kilton, ad we will pick up his story in a later chapter.

In 1676, Nicholas, still living at Liverton with a property with one hearth, married again and with his second wife they had two sons. Their younger son John Farndale married Elizabeth Bennison on 5 February 1705 at Brotton and they were the parents of an important hub of the family, the Kilton 1 Line, and their story too will be told in a later chapter. There is still a place called Bennison Banks in the woodland to the west of Brotton.

In 1658, the North Riding Quarter Sessions sitting at Thirsk ordered That the Sheriff of the County of Yorke do forthwith cause the following rates of Artificers, Labourers and Servants wages to be proclaimed in and throughout the N Riding and especially in every market towne in the said riding

By day with meate By day without meate

Carpenter 6 d 12 d

His Apprentices 4 d 8 d

Mason 6 d 12 d

His Apprentices 4 d 8 d

Taylor 4 d 8 d

His Apprentices 2 d 4 d

Theaker [Thatcher] 6 d 12 d

Mower 6 d 12 d

Corn Reaper 4 d 8 d

Woman Corn Reaper 3 d 6 d

Woman hay worker 2 d 4 d

Ordinary labourer, summer 3 d 6 d

Labourer, winter 2 d 4 d

A manservant in charge of husbandry £4 for the yeare

Ordinary manservant £3 for the yeare

A maidservant in charge of dairy £2 for the yeare

Ordinary maidservant 30s for the yeare

Maidservant between 14 and 21 yrs 20s for the yeare

So, by the end of the seventeenth century, the family’s centre of gravity was around Whitby and Kilton, where we will soon pick up their story.

Between 1649 and 1653, they lived in Republican England. This was a time of religious fervour, Diggers, Fifth Columnists, and of the world Muggletonians and Adamites. In 1649, Thomas Hobbes, a Royalist in exile in Paris, wrote Leviathan, which he presented to Charles II. Its premise was that humans originally lived in a barbarous state of nature, but emerged by yielding individual rights to an all powerful sovereign. In practice he upset both camps and copies of Leviathan were burned in Oxford. Political philosophers refer to it as a statement on the sovereignty of the state and the law rather than the person of a prince. On the Parliamentary side of the argument, John Milton (including Paradise Lost), Sir Henry Vane, the Younger and Algernon Sidney wrote their treatises.

From 1655 Cromwell ordered that each County in England be governed by a Major-General. This was a form of military government which was an attempt to provide better law enforcement in the country as well as to reform the nation’s morals. One of their responsibilities was to punish those who had fought for the King. They were to punish all manner of vice. Including drunkenness, wearing and fornication. It was a repressive regime. Racehorses, fighting cocks, bears and dogs were banned.

1066 and All That, Yeatman and Sellers, 1930

John Lambert was the Major General for Yorkshire and other areas. Owing to his other responsibilities on the Council of State, day to day matters in his region were overseen by Lambert's two deputies, with Robert Lilburn responsible for Yorkshire.

A Decimation Tax (10% of income) was imposed on former royalists.

Matters were not much less confused with the Restoration of Charles II, which is perhaps best summarised in satire.

1066 and All That, Yeatman and Sellers, 1930

These were frightening times to live through. Perhaps the family were sufficiently tucked away in the lands around Skelton Castle, to continue their lives in much the same way as they had always done. It may well be that, whilst the headlines portrayed grim news, the ordinary folk of the countryside just ignored the trauma and just pressed on, as they had always done, with the everyday hurdles they faced.

Return to the Contents Page

or

Go Straight to Act 13 – The Lost Village of Kilton

or

Read about Nicholas and Agnes Farndale and William Farndale

Read about Kirkleatham and Skelton.

You could also read a bit more.

The Skelton-in-Cleveland History by the late Bill Danby, is maintained by the Skelton History Group.

The Cleveland Family History Society is probably more useful for later periods.

You might also be interested in John Walker Ord’s History and Antiquities of Cleveland, 1846. You can get a copy from Yorkshire CD Books.

There is also the History of Cleveland Ancient and Modern by Rev J C Atkinson, Vicar of Danby, 1874, to be found in many libraries.

The History of Cleveland by Rev John Graves, 1808.

The Victoria History, 1923.