This monument is to the sacred and eternal memory of Sir Nicholas Shireburn and his lady. Sir Nicholas Shireburn, of Stonyhurst, Bart., was son of Richard Shireburn, Esq., by Isabel his wife, daughter of John Inglesby, of Lawkeland, Esq. Nicholas Shireburn had by his lady, whose name was Katharine, third daughter and co-heir to Sir Edward Charleton, of Hesleyside, in Northumberland, Bart., by Mary, eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir Edward Widderington, of Cartington, in Northumberland, Bart., three children; the eldest, Isabella, died the 18th of October, 1688, and is buried at Rothburgh, in Northumberland, in the quire belonging to Cartington, where Sir Nicholas then lived; a son named Richard, who died June 8th, 1702, at Stonyhurst; another daughter named Mary, married May 26, 1709, to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk.—Sir Nicholas Shireburn was a man of great humanity, sympathy, and concern for the good of mankind, and did many good charitable things whiles he lived; he particularly set his neighbourhood a spinning of Jersey wool, and provided a man to comb the wool, and a woman who taught them to spin, whom he kept in his house, and allotted several rooms he had in one of the courts of Stonyhurst, for them to work in, and the neighbours came to spin accordingly; the spinners came every day, and span as long a time as they could spare, morning and afternoon, from their families. This continued from April, 1699, to August, 1701. When they had all learn’d, he gave the nearest neighbour each a pound or half a pound of wool ready for spinning, and wheel to set up for themselves, which did a vast deal of good to that north side of Ribble, in Lancashire. Sir Nicholas Sherburn died December 16, 1717. This monument was set up by the Dowager Duchess of Northfolk, in memory of the best of fathers and mothers, and in this vault designs to be interr’d herself, whenever it pleases God to take her out of this world.
Lady Sherburn was a Lady of an excellent temper and fine sentiments, singular piety, virtue, and charity, constantly imployed in doing good, especially to the distressed, sick, poor, and lame, for whom she kept an apothecary’s shop in the house; she continued as long as she lived doing great good and charity; she died Jan. 27th, 1727. Besides all other great charities which Sir Nicholas and Lady Sherburn did, they gave on All Souls’ Day a considerable deal of money to the poor; Lady Sherburn serving them with her own hands that day.
Of a truth man is a noble animal—splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave!
There is yet another inscription from the pen of the dowager duchess, to the memory of her second husband:—
In this vault lies the body of the Hon. Peregrin Widderington. The Hon. Peregrin Widderington was youngest son of William, Lord Widderington, who died April 17th, 1743. This Peregrin was a man of the strictest friendship and honour, with all the good qualities that accomplished a fine gentleman. He was of so amiable a disposition and so ingaging that he was beloved and esteemed by all who had the honour and happiness of his acquaintance, being ever ready to oblige and to act the friendly part on all occasions, firm and steadfast in all his principles, which were delicately fine and good as could be wished in any man. He was both sincere and agreeable in life and conversation. He was born May 20th, 1692, and died Feb. 4th, 1748–9. He was with his brother in the Preston affair, 1716, where he lost his fortune, with his health, by a long confinement in prison. This monument was set up by the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, in memory of the Hon. Peregrin Widderington.
Though careful to record the descent as well as the “good qualities” and “delicately fine principles” of the amiable Peregrin, her grace, whose grammar, by the way, is somewhat obscure, has curiously enough, while perpetuating the fact of her previous marriage, omitted all mention of her relationship to the dear departed, and has thus inadvertently done an injustice to his memory as well as to her own, for ill-natured people have wickedly suggested that their union never had the sanction of a priest, and that, as the old sexton assured William Howitt when he visited Mitton nearly half a century ago, the “accomplished fine gentleman” was only a “tally husband,” a belief that still prevails in many a cottage home in the district. The “Preston affair,” so delicately alluded to, was the occasion when the old Pretender, the Chevalier de St. George, made the rash and abortive attempt to recover the Crown of England by an appeal to civil war, and a portion of the rebel army, headed by the ill-fated Lord Derwentwater and General Foster, penetrated as far south as Preston, where it was met by the King’s forces, under Generals Wills and Carpenter, and compelled to surrender; when no fewer than seven lords and 1,500 men, including officers, were made prisoners, among them being the Hon. Peregrin Widderington and his father, William, Lord Widderington, the latter of whom was impeached before the House of Lords for high treason, but afterwards reprieved and pardoned. The Widderingtons, like the Sherburns, had for successive generations been devotedly attached to the Stuart cause, the Lord Widderington of a former day having lost his life at Wigan Lane on the 25th August, 1651, while bravely fighting by the side of Lord Derby and the gallant Sir Thomas Tyldesley.
As previously stated, Sir Nicholas Sherburn was the last of the name who resided at Stonyhurst. In his time considerable additions were made to the mansion. He rebuilt the principal front, placed the two eagle-crowned cupolas on the summits of the old battlemented towers, dug out the ponds in front of the hall, and laid out the gardens in the stiff fantastic Dutch style then fashionable; but before he had completed the work he had the misfortune to lose his only son, Richard Francis, a youth of nine years, who, as tradition affirms, was poisoned with eating yew berries gathered in the dark avenue at Stonyhurst—the fruit of
Some dark, lonely, evil-natured yew,
Whose poisonous fruit—so fabling poets speak—
Beneath the moon’s pale gleam the midnight hag doth seek.
The untimely death of his heir so affected Sir Nicholas that he abandoned his design, quitted Stonyhurst, and never returned. A monument to the memory of the ill-starred boy adorns the chapel at Mitton, and among the floral decorations upon it is a bunch of yew berries; beyond this there is no evidence of the cause of death save the tradition which has been handed down through successive generations, and is still implicitly believed by the village gossips.