But the great feature of Mitton, and that which most attracts the attention of visitors, is the Sherburn Chapel, the mausoleum of the former lords of Stonyhurst. It is situated on the north side of the chancel, from which it is separated by a parclose screen, and is remarkable as containing an assemblage of recumbent figures and other family memorials such as very few old country churches can boast.
It was erected on the site of the ancient chantry of St Nicholas by Sir Richard Sherburn, of Stonyhurst, who died in 1594, as appears by his will, which expressly directs that his body shall “be buryed at my parish church of Mitton, in the midest of my new quere.” His tomb is the oldest in the chapel, and upon it are the recumbent figures in alabaster, life size, of the knight and “Dame Maude, his wife,” a daughter of Sir Richard Bold, of Bold, who predeceased him. The body of the tomb is enriched with heraldic shields representing the family alliances, and there are some panels of figures. The inscription, which is in old English characters, describes Sir Richard as “master forrester of the forest of Bowland, steward of the manor of Sladeburn, Lieutenant of the Isle of Man, and one of Her Majesty’s Deputy Lieutenants.” He commenced the building of the present mansion of Stonyhurst, or rather the rebuilding, for it stands on the site of an older house, a portion of which still exists, employing in the decoration some of the stone carvings from the neighbouring Abbey of Whalley, among them being noticeable two shields of arms, one bearing the cognisance of the Lacies, the founders of that house. Sir Richard lived during the eventful reigns of the Tudor sovereigns, and he seems to have accommodated himself very happily to the varying circumstances of those stirring times, conforming without scruple to the religious changes which occurred in the days of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, and to have succeeded in making considerable additions to his patrimonial estates the while. His friend and contemporary, Edward, Earl of Derby, told George Marsh, the Bolton martyr, that the true religion was that which had most good luck, and this article of faith Sir Richard Sherburn very rigidly maintained. He succeeded to the family estates on the death of his father, Thomas Sherburn, in 1536, and two years later, being then only 15 years of age, he married his first wife, the daughter of Sir Richard Bold. He was nominated one of the commissioners for the suppression of the religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII., and for the sale of the chantry lands in that of Edward VI., and in 1544 he had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him for his bravery at the burning of Leith. In the first year of Edward VI., when a writ of Parliamentary summons was re-issued to Lancaster, Liverpool, Wigan, and Preston, he was returned as member for the last-named borough, and in the first Parliament of Mary’s reign he was returned as knight of the shire for the county of Lancaster, and shortly afterwards was nominated high steward and master forester of the Forest of Bowland, where he gave evidence of his faith in the excellency of the game laws by “vigorously prosecuting various individuals for unlawfully hunting deer and other game within the forest.” In the reign of Elizabeth he was associated with the Earl of Derby, the Bishop of Chester, Sir John Radcliffe, and Sir Edward Fitton in executing the penal laws against those who adhered to the Romish faith, and in 1581 he was appointed by Cecil, Lord Burleigh, along with other commissioners, to compound with the tenants who had obtained fraudulent leases of the tithes and other properties of the College of Manchester. Four years later he was one of the Lancashire magistrates who promulgated an order against the profanation of the Sabbath by “wakes, fayres, markettes, bayre-baytes, bull-baits, ales, May-games, resortinge to alehouses in tyme of devyne service, pypinge, and dauncinge, huntinge, and all maner of vnlawfvll gamynge.” In 1588, on the occasion of the threatened invasion by Spain, he was one of the eighty loyal gentlemen of Lancashire who formed themselves into an association for the defence of Queen Elizabeth against “Popish conspiracies,” and from the “intolerance and insolence” of the Papacy. Baines says that he was allowed by Elizabeth, as an especial favour, to have his chapel and his priest at Stonyhurst, but the accuracy of this statement may very well be doubted, for it is more than probable, as the late Canon Raines observed in the “Stanley Papers,” that “at this time, and long afterwards, the family held the Reformed faith, nor does it appear when they became absorbed by the Church of Rome.” Under his munificent hand the splendid mansion of Stonyhurst arose, but death overtook him before he had completed his work. He died July 26th, 1594, leaving to his son and heir, Richard, among other things, “all my armor at Stonyhurste, and all my iron to build withall, so that he fynishe the buildinge therewith now already begonne—the leade, buildinge, stone, and wrought tymber.”
The monument perpetuating the names of this Richard, the “fynisher” of Stonyhurst, and his first wife, Katharine, daughter of Charles, Lord Stourton, is affixed to the north wall of the chapel. The pair are represented as kneeling before a faldstool or litany desk, with their hands uplifted, as if in prayer, the figures strongly thrown out and gorgeously coloured. The man wears a full skirted jerkin and the Elizabethan ruffs, and his wife is habited in a long gown with a hood falling over the top of her head. The inscription records that he was Captain of the Isle of Man for fifteen years, and that his wife died there in childbed of twins, “and their lieth intomb’d.” In the panel beneath is a carving in alto relievo, representing the twins in bed with their nurses watching over them.
Richard Sherburn again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Ann, daughter of Henry Kighley, and widow of Thomas Hoghton, of Hoghton Tower; but this lady, who died at Lea, October 30th, 1609, bore him no issue. He died in 1629, at the advanced age of eighty-three, and was in turn succeeded by a son, also named Richard, whose altar-shaped tomb, on which are the recumbent figures of himself and his wife, bears a lengthy inscription recording the family history for four generations. “He was,” it states, “an eminent sufferer for his loyal fidelity to King Charles I. of ever blessed memory.” He lived to see the restoration of the Stuarts, and died February 11th, 1667, aged eighty-one years.
Another altar-tomb, on which lie the recumbent effigies of a knight and his lady, is to the “pious memory” of Richard Sherburn, son of the last-named, and his wife Isabel, daughter of John Ingleby, of Lawkeland, in Yorkshire. The inscription, among other things, records that “he built the almshouse and school at Hurst Green, and left divers charitable gifts yearly to the several townships of Carleton, Chorley, Hamilton, and Lagrim, in Lancashire; Wigglesworth and Guisely in this (York) county; departing this life (in prison for loyalty to his sovereign), at Manchester, August 16th, A.D., 1689, in the 63rd year of his age. He, like many other of the Catholic gentry of Lancashire, being devoted to the family of the expatriated James by hereditary attachment and personal affection, looked upon the exiled monarch as a martyr to his religious convictions, and could not therefore be persuaded that he was absolved from his allegiance or at liberty to transfer it to the Prince of Orange.” The inscription on his tomb adds—“The said Isabel (his wife), by whom, at her own proper charge, these four statues were erected, died April 11th, 1663, whose mortal remains are together near hereunto deposited.”
As the “four statues,” i.e., of Richard Sherburn and his wife, and his father and mother, were not erected until 1699, thirty-six years after the lady’s death, it may be assumed that she bequeathed the funds “necessary to defray” the cost of their erection. Whitaker, in his “History of Whalley,” remarks that the two male figures on these tombs are probably the latest instances (that is, of former days) of cumbent cross-legged statues in the kingdom, and this is probably so, as it has been commonly supposed that the latest recumbent monumental figure is that enshrined in Westminster Abbey, and erected in 1676, to the memory of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. The effigies at Mitton were executed by Stanton, the well-known lapidary, at a cost, it is said, of £253.
There is another monument to the memory of Richard Sherburn, eldest son of the Richard just named, who succeeded on his father’s decease, but enjoyed the estates only for a few months, his death occurring April 6th, 1690, when, having no issue, the Stonyhurst possessions devolved upon his brother Nicholas, who had had the dignity of a baronetcy conferred upon him by Charles II. during the lifetime of his father. He was the last of the name who resided at Stonyhurst, and died without surviving male issue December 16th, 1717. His monument was placed beside those of his ancestors by his only surviving daughter and heir, Maria Winifred Francesca, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. The inscription, which is said to have been written by the duchess herself, is perhaps unsurpassed in prolixity and extravagant adulation, and deserves to be noted as a specimen of the way in which great families were wont, a couple of centuries ago, to glorify themselves in their own charnel houses, forgetting that of the long laudatory inscriptions which family pride had made fashionable,
One half would never be believed,
The other never read.
Here it is:—