[43] — The promoters of the Rising of the North wished: —
(1) To restore to her kingdom Mary Queen of Scots, who simply fascinated Francis Norton, and every other imaginative, romantic, Yorkshire heart that she came in contact with.
(2) To depose Elizabeth, whom they regarded as morally no true claimant for the throne, until dispensed from her illegitimacy by the Pope.
(3) To place Mary Stuart on the throne of England.
(4) Above all, to restore “the ancient faith,” which they did in Durham, Staindrop, Darlington, Richmond, Ripon, and some of the churches in Cleveland, for a very brief season.
It is to be remembered that the Rising of the North in 1569 was not joined in by all the Catholics of Yorkshire, nor by any of the Catholics of Lancashire. This latter fact, together with the influence of Cardinal Allen, of Rossall, partly accounts for the circumstance that Lancashire (especially the neighbourhood of “Wigan and Ashton-on-Makerfield,
and, above all, the Fylde, that region between Lancaster and Preston, whence “the great Allen” sprang) is “the Rome of England” to this day. It is said that the Parish Church of Bispham (near which the well-known sea-side resort, Blackpool, is situated) was the parish church where last the parochial Latin Mass was said publicly in Lancashire, the priest being Jerome Allen, uncle to the Cardinal. In the white-washed yeoman dwellings of the Fylde have been reared many of the sturdiest and most solidly pious of the post-Reformation English Catholic Priests. William Allen’s plain, honest, finely-touched spirit seems to have brooded over this fruitful, western, wind-swept land which is well worthy of exploration by all philosophic historians that visit Blackpool.
Also, all who travel in Yorkshire, either by road or rail, from Knaresbrough and Harrogate to Ripon, and thence to Topcliffe, Thirsk, Darlington, Durham, and Alnwick, pass through a part of the North of England whose very air is laden with historic memories of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. And how often, when visiting Bishop Thornton (an idyllic hamlet betwixt Harrogate, Pateley Bridge, and Ripon, that is still a stronghold of “the ancient faith,” which, as in a last Yorkshire retreat, has there never died out), has the writer recalled the following lines from the old “Ballad of the Rising of the North”: —
“Lord Westmoreland his ancyent [i.e., ensign] raisde,
The Dun Bull he rais’d on hye;
Three dogs with golden collars brave,
Were there set out most royallye.
Earl Percy there his ancyent spred,
The half moon shining all so fair;
The Nortons ancyent had the Cross
And the Five Wounds Our Lord did beare.”
Norton Conyers, in the Parish of Wath, near Ripon, was forfeited by the Nortons after the Rebellion of 1569. It is now, I believe, the property of Sir Reginald Graham, Bart. If the Grantley estate belonged to the Nortons in 1569, it was not forfeited, or else it was recovered to the Norton family. Grantley, however, may have possibly belonged to the Markenfields, and, being forfeited by them, granted to Francis Norton, the eldest son of old Richard Norton. — See “Sir Ralph Sadlers Papers,” Ed. by Sir Walter Scott. — The present Lord Grantley is descended from Thomas Norton, who was sixth in descent from old Richard Norton, and fifth in descent from Francis, the eldest of the famous “eight good sons.” The Grantley property belonged to Lord Grantley until it was recently disposed of to Sir Christopher Furness, M.P. Lord Grantley’s ancestor, Sir Fletcher Norton, was created Lord Grantley and Baron Markenfield in 1782. Sir Fletcher