At last the name became worn down to Bolton: “Bolton-le-Moors,” to distinguish it from Bolton-le-Sands, on Morecambe Bay; but it is many a long year since this distinguishing mark was last used.
THE “OLD MAN AND SCYTHE.”
END OF THE EARL OF DERBY
There was once a time when Bolton was a cleanly little town that manufactured woollen cloths, fustian, and dimities, under idyllic conditions. Those industries were in full progress when the quarrels of King and Parliament broke rudely in upon the scene, in 1644: the Parliamentary party having garrisoned the place, which, unfortunately for itself, was a walled town. On came Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, from Wigan, with a force to take it by assault, but he was repulsed with heavy loss, and withdrew; the garrison being afterwards reinforced from Manchester, and its strength brought up to 3,000. Again the assault was pressed, and this time the Lord Strange was aided by Prince Rupert with 10,000 men. Two hundred devoted Cavaliers crept up under the walls, while treachery, it was said, admitted the cavalry. The storming of Bolton that ensued was one of the bloodiest affairs of the war, and few were spared from the fury of the Royalists. More than seven years later, the then Earl of Derby suffered for the excesses he, with Prince Rupert, permitted on this occasion; for, having been captured at the Battle of Worcester, he was brought to Bolton and beheaded on October 15th, 1651, at the Market Cross in Church Gate, opposite the “Old Man and Scythe” inn: with a grim fitness on the scene of the bloodshed himself had approved. An inscription on the front of the house narrates how “In this ancient hostelry James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, spent the last few hours of his life previous to his execution.” The house, built in 1636, was indeed a portion of his extensive Bolton property. Whatever the original sign of the house, the present is doubtless an allusion to the famous exploit of William Trafford of Swithamley, whose pretence of being an idiot saved his property from being plundered by the Puritan soldiery. They discovered him wielding a flail in his barn, and monotonously repeating “Now thus,” and so, unable to make him comprehend anything, they left. Beneath the threshing-floor where this supposed “natural” was gibbering lay his chief valuables. His trick is alluded to in the sign of the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton, near Manchester, where he is represented in a counter-charged suit, alternately red and white, and with his flail, inscribed “Now thus.” Here at Bolton, while the chequered red and white dress, somewhat resembling that of a jester, or fool, is retained, and while he wears a similar fool’s cap, his flail has in the course of years become a scythe.
The “original” heading-axe that decapitated the bloody Earl, who richly deserved his fate, is shown in the inn, which is merely a public-house, together with the chair he sat upon. But a chair also purporting to be the identical one is among the relics at the Earl of Derby’s seat at Knowsley, where there is probably another heading-axe. The only way out of this awkward impasse, to please every one, is to suggest that, being an important personage, he was given two chairs to sit upon and was executed twice, by two executioners! One can say no fairer than that.
BOLTON
The “Old Man and Scythe,” it should be added, looks in the illustration a highly picturesque half-timbered building: but it is really commonplace brick, and the “timbering” is but a product of the house-painter’s brush.
At “Bowton,” more than anywhere else along the road, you hear the Lancashire talk, and the people of the town are as rough-and-ready as any in the county, both in manners and in appearance. Even in Lancashire they talk of a “rough Bolton chap,” and as less refined than the people of Wigan, St. Helens, or Widnes; which is very like Walworth reflecting upon the lack of culture in Whitechapel. A good deal of this apparent brusqueness and rudeness is, however, more apparent than real. The Londoner, come from a place where a great deal of insincerity, and even callousness, is hidden by the veneer of conventional behaviour, is startled and shocked by the forthright manners and the very frank speech of Bolton and other manufacturing towns, but there is a heartiness about the people there is no mistaking. That typical character, “John Blunt,” has certainly peopled Lancashire with his kin.
The clogs still clatter on the pavements of Bolton, and shawled girls are yet to be seen going to and from the mills, but even in the last fifteen years Bolton has grown enormously, not only in population but towards a higher standard of life. Yet, to this writer at least, the thought of Bolton will ever recall the odour of fried fish; for it was on a winter’s evening, long ago, that he first came into the grim town. Fried-fish shops filled the air with a revolting reek, and everywhere along the pavements walked those who without ceremony ate their suppers out of newspapers. High above, yellow in the dark sky, like bilious eyes, glowered the illuminated dials of the Town Hall clock, while ever and again the quarters chimed and the hours growled out.