Oh! sweet youth; how soon it fades;
Sweet joys of youth, how fleeting!
The road home was beguiled with clod-battles, "Frog-leap," and "Bob Stone," finishing with "Trinel," and "High Cockolorum," as they drew near their quarters. The old hedge and the nursery have been cleared away, and now the fertile meadows lie open to the view, upon each side of the way.
On arriving at the entrance which leads to Heywood Hall, we turned in between the grey gate-pillars. They had a lone and disconsolate appearance. The crest of the Starkies is gone from the top; and the dismantled shafts look conscious of their shattered fortunes. The wooden gate—now ricketty and rotten—swung to and fro with a grating sound upon its rusty hinges, as we walked up the avenue of tall trees, towards the hall. The old wood was a glorious sight, with the flood of sunshine stealing through its fretted roof of many-patterned foliage, in freakish threads and bars, which played beautifully among the leaves, weaving a constant interchange of green and gold within that pleasant shade, as the plumage of the wood moved with the wind. The scene reminded me of a passage in Spencer's "Faëry Queene:"—
And all within were paths and alleies wide,
With footing worne and leading inward farre:
Faire harbour that them seems: so in they entred ar.
We went on under the trees, along the carriage road, now tinged with a creeping hue of green; and past the old garden, with its low, bemossed brick wall; and, after sauntering to and fro among a labyrinth of footpaths, which wind about the cloisters of this leafy cathedral, we came to the front of the hall. It stands tenantless and silent in the midst of its ancestral woods, upon the brow of a green eminence, overlooking a little valley, watered by the Roch. The landscape was shut out from us by the surrounding trees; and the place was as still as a lonely hermitage in the heart of an old forest. The tread of our feet upon the flagged terrace in front of the mansion resounded upon the ear. We peeped through the windows, where the rooms were all empty; but the state of the walls and floors, and the remaining mirrors, showed that some care was still bestowed upon this deserted hall. Ivy hung thickly upon some parts of the straggling edifice, which has evidently been built at different periods; though, so far as I could judge, the principal part of it appears to be about two hundred years old. When manufacture began greatly to change the appearance of the neighbouring village and its surrounding scenery, the Starkies left the place; and a wooded mound, in front of the hall, was thrown up and planted, by order of the widow of the last Starkie who resided here, in order to shut from sight the tall chimneys which were rising up in the distance. A large household must have been kept here in the palmy days of the Starkies. The following passage, relative to the ancient inhabitants of Heywood Hall, is quoted from Edwin Butterworth's "History of the Town of Heywood and its Vicinity:"—
A family bearing this name flourished here for many generations; but they were never of much note in county genealogy, though more than one were active in public affairs. In 1492 occurs Robert de Heywode. In the brilliant reign of Elizabeth, Edmund Heywood, Esq., was required, by an order dated 1574, to furnish "a coate of plate, a long bowe, sheffe of arrows, steel cap, and bill, for the military musters."[28] James Heywood, gent., was living before 1604. Peter Heywood, Esq., a zealous magistrate, the representative of this family in the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, was a native and resident of Heywood hall, which was erected during the sixteenth century. It is said that he apprehended Guido Faux coming forth from the vault of the house of parliament on the eve of the gunpowder treason, Nov. 5, 1605. He probably accompanied Sir Thomas Kneuett, in his search of the cellars under the parliament house. In 1641, "an order was issued that the justices of the peace of Westminster should carefully examine what strangers were lodged within their jurisdiction; and that they should administer the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to all suspected of recusancy, and proceed according to those statutes. An afternoon being appointed for that service in Westminster hall, and many persons warned to appear there, amongst the rest one —— James, a Papist, appeared, and being pressed by Mr. Hayward (Heywood), a justice of the peace, to take the oaths, suddenly drew out his knife and stabbed him; with some reproachful words, 'for persecuting poor Catholics.' This strange, unheard-of outrage upon the person of a minister of justice, executing his office by an order of parliament, startled all men; the old man sinking with the hurt, though he died not of it. And though, for aught I could ever hear, it proceeded only from the rage of a sullen varlet (formerly suspected to be crazed in his understanding), without the least confederacy or combination with any other, yet it was a great countenance to those who were before thought over apprehensive and inquisitive into dangers; and made many believe it rather a design of all the Papists of England, than a desperate act of one man, who could never have been induced to it, if he had not been promised assistance by the rest,"[29] Such is Lord Clarendon's account of an event that has rendered Peter Heywood a person of historical note; how long he survived the attempt to assassinate him is not stated.
It is highly probable that Mr. Heywood had imbibed an undue portion of that anti-Catholic zeal which characterised the times in which he lived, and that he was the victim of those rancorous animosities which persecution never fails to engender.
Peter Heywood, of Heywood, Esq., was one of the gentlemen of the county who compounded for the recovery of their estates, which had been sequestrated 1643-5, for supporting the royal cause. He seems to have been a son of the Mr. Heywood that was stabbed; he re-obtained his property for the sum of £351.[30]
The next of this family on record is Peter Heiwood, Esq., who was one of the "counsellors of Jamaica" during the commonwealth. One of his sons, Peter Heiwood, Esq., was commemorated by an inscription on a flat stone in the chancel of the church of St. Anne's-in-the-Willows, Aldersgate-ward, London, as follows:—
"Peter Heiwood, that deceased Nov. 2, 1701, younger son of Peter Heiwood, one of the counsellours of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John Muddeford, Knight and Baronet, great grandson to Peter Heywood, in the county palatine of Lancaster; who apprehended Guy Faux with his dark lanthorn; and for his zealous prosecution of Papists, as justice of peace, was stabbed in Westminster hall, by John James, Dominican friar, anno. domini. 1640.
"Reader, if not a papist bred,
Upon such ashes gently tread."[31]Robert Heywood, of Heywood, Esq., married Mary Haslam, of Rochdale, Dec. 20, 1660; and was probably elder brother of Peter Heiwood, of London.
In the visitation of 1664, are traced two lines of the Heywoods, those of Heywood and Walton; from the latter was descended Samuel Heywood, Esq., a Welch judge,[32] uncle of Sir Benjamin Heywood, Baronet, of Claremont, near Manchester. The armorial bearing of the Heywoods, of Heywood, was argent, three torteauxes, between two bendlets gules.
The property of this ancient family, principally consisting of Heywood Hall and adjoining lands, is said to have been purchased by Mr. John Starkey, of the Orchard, in Rochdale, in the latter part of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century. Mr. Starkey was living in 1719; his descendant, John Starkey, Esq., married Mary, daughter of Joseph Gregge, Esq., of Chamber Hall, Oldham. John Starkey, Esq., who died March 13, 1780, was father of James Starkey, Esq., of Fell Foot, near Cartmel, Lancashire, the present possessor of Heywood Hall, born September 8, 1762, married, September 2, 1785, Elizabeth, second daughter of Edward Gregg Hopwood, Esq. In 1791, Mr. Starkey served the office of high sheriff of the county. From this family branched the Starkeys of Redivals, near Bury.
Heywood looks anything but picturesque, at present; but, judging from the features of the country about the hall, especially on the north side of it, this house must have been a very pleasant and retired country seat about a century and a half ago.
Descending from the eminence, upon the northern edge of which Heywood Hall is situated,—and which was probably the first inhabited settlement hereabouts, at a time when the ground now covered by the manufacturing town, was a tract of woods and thickets, wild swards, turf moss, and swamps—we walked westward, along the edge of the Roch, towards the manufacturing hamlet of Hooley Bridge. This valley, by the water-side, has a sylvan and cultivated appearance. The quiet river winds round the pastures of the hall, which slope down to the water, from the shady brow upon which it stands. The opposite heights are clad with woods and plantations; and Crimble Hall looks forth from the lawns and gardens upon the summit. About a mile up this valley, towards Rochdale town, in a quiet glen, lies the spot pointed out in Roby's "Tradition" of "Tyrone's Bed," as the place where the famous Irish rebel, Hugh O'Niel, Earl of Tyrone, lived in concealment some time, during the reign of Elizabeth. Even at this day, country folks, who know little or nothing of the tradition, know the place by the name of "Yel's o' Thorone"—an evident corruption of the "Earl of Tyrone." This was the Irish chieftain who burnt the poet Spenser out of his residence, Rathcormac Castle. It was dinner time when we reached the stone bridge at Hooley Clough; so we turned up the road towards home.
The youngsters and the dinner were waiting for us, when we got back to the house. The little girl was rather more communicative than before; and, after the meal was over, we had more music. But, while this was going on, the lad stole away to some nook, with a book in his hand. And, soon after, the master of the house and I found ourselves again alone, smoking and talking together. I had enjoyed this summer day so far, and was inclined to make the most of it; so, when dinner was over, I went out at the back, and down by a thorn-edge, which divides the meadows. I was soon followed by mine host, and we sauntered on together till we came to a shelving hollow, in which a still pool lay gleaming like a sun among the meadows. It looked cool, and brought the skies to our feet. Sitting down upon its bank, we watched the reflection of many a straggling cloud of gauzy white, sailing over its surface, eastward. Little fishes, leaping up now and then, were the only things which stirred the burnished mirror, for a second or two, into tiny tremulations of liquid gold; and water-flies darted to and fro upon the pool, like nimble fancies in a fertile mind. And thus we lazily enjoyed the glory of a summer day in the fields; while