Manchester had oftentimes been the scene of conflict. Roman and Saxon, Dane and Norman, had each in turn striven for supremacy; but well nigh six hundred years had elapsed since the tranquillity of the inhabitants had been disturbed by the presence of contending armies. The day, however, was near at hand when the sounds of war were once more to be heard, and that of war the most unnatural; when members of the same family, and often the same blood, were to contend with each other in deadly strife. When the storm burst, and the struggle between Charles and the Parliament began, the Byroms of Salford and the Byroms of Manchester, with whom the recollection of the vexatious lawsuits of Lawrence Byrom had not yet died out, ranged themselves on opposite sides. The Byroms of Salford, like those of the parent house, took up arms on behalf of the King, John Byrom receiving a commission as sergeant-major in the regiment of Lancashire militia commanded by Colonel Roger Nowell, of Read, for which, and other acts of delinquency, his estates were seized by the Commissioners of Sequestration, when he was obliged to compound for them by the payment of £201 16s. 6d.; his brother, Edward Byrom, being at the same time required to pay £2 6s. 8d.
Edward Byrom, the representative of the Manchester stock, though in earlier life a contributor to the building of Trinity Church, in Salford, and accounted a moderate Churchman, was strongly inclined to Presbyterianism, and, with two of his sons, William and John, took an active part in promoting the cause of the Parliament. Manchester was at the time the great stronghold and rallying point of the Puritan party, and it is worthy of note that it was here the first blood was shed in that unhappy conflict. When the town was in peril of assault from Lord Strange’s (afterwards Earl of Derby) forces, Heyricke, the Puritan warden, engaged the services of a German engineer, John Rosworm, who had served in the Low Countries, and happened at the time to be in the town ready to be employed by either party, and bargained with him to superintend the defences for six months for the modest sum of thirty pounds. Edward Byrom, “Sergeant Mr. Beirom the elder,” as he is called, served under Rosworm, and it is recorded that he was the means of discovering a villainous plot of certain individuals to seize and plunder the town, through which the chief conspirators were apprehended and their designs frustrated.[42] At a later date, when Cromwell had been appointed “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,” and had summoned a Parliament to meet on his “fortunate day,” September 3, 1654, the anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, we find “Sergeant” Byrom among those of the witnesses to the return of “Charles Worsley, of Platt,” his wife’s kinsman, as the first member for Manchester. This appears to have been his last official act, and his death occurred shortly after. His wife, Ellen Worsley, bore him three sons and eight daughters. John, the second son, was a zealous Puritan, and held a lieutenant’s commission in the Parliamentarian army; his military experiences were, however, cut short by an accident which cost him his life, almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, and which is thus recorded in a chronicle of the time:—
1642, October.—The two and twentieth day store of powder came in (to Manchester) and the foure and twentieth day some (more powder) coming was stayed. The joy of this last supply was sadly tempered with the accidentall, but mortall, wound of a skilful and active souldier.[43]
The “skilful and active soldier”—John Byrom—who was in his twenty-second year, was buried in the Collegiate Church, October 31, 1642.
William Byrom, the eldest son, who succeeded as heir to his father, was an active Presbyterian, and an elder in the Manchester Classis. In 1656 he was one of the chief inhabitants who elected Richard Radcliffe, of Pool Fold, as the representative of Manchester in the Commonwealth Parliament in the place of Worsley, who was then dead. Edward Byrom, the youngest of the three sons, was twenty-eight years of age at the time of his father’s death, and had been then married only a few months, his wife being Ellen, the daughter of John Crompton, of Halliwell. He inherited the Puritan principles of his father and grandfather, and was one of those who, on the death of Richard Hollinworth, signed the invitation to Henry Newcome to supply the vacancy, and, with his brother William, accompanied the deputation to Newcome’s quiet little parsonage at Gawsworth to entreat the famous preacher to comply with the wishes of the Church at Manchester.
This Edward was the first of the family who resided at Kersall Cell, a house occupying the site of a religious settlement that originally formed part of the possessions of the Cluniac monks of Lenton, and which had been confiscated to the Crown in the reign of Henry VIII. After its suppression the place, with the manor, had been granted to Baldwin Willoughby, who, in 1540, sold it to Ralph Kenyon, of Gorton, and he in turn conveyed it, eight years afterwards, to Richard Siddall, of Slade Hall, an old black and white house still standing in Burnage-lane, Rusholme. The estate remained in the possession of the Siddals until 1613, when it was alienated by Richard Siddal’s great grandson, George Siddal, who seems to have been the spendthrift of his family.
Edward Byrom made his will on the 14th June, 1668, being then, as he states, “sick and weak of body,” and he must have died within a day or two, for on the 18th June in the same year he was laid to rest with his fathers in the Collegiate Church. By his wife he had a family of six children, four of whom died in infancy, two sons only surviving, Edward and Joseph Byrom.
Joseph Byrom, the younger son, was largely engaged in trade, and, in 1703, served the office of borough reeve. He acquired considerable wealth in his business, and with the profits thus made he, on the 10th July, 1710, purchased from Samuel Byrom, of Byrom, the “Beau Byrom” before referred to, “the manor, demesne and hall of Byrom,” the ancient house of his progenitors, and it has continued in the family ever since.