Sidney, than whom no gentler, braver man
His own delightful genius ever feigned,
And whom Spenser, in his “Shepheards’ Calendar,” named—
The President
Of noblenesse and chivalree.
At Manchester he had to deal with a rude, boisterous, and uncultivated people, who openly reviled him—a rough metal that all his incantations and alchemical skill could not transform into refined gold; and withal he had to contend with a body of clergy who abhorred the unlawful arts he was supposed to practice, and who treated him in consequence with implacable hatred. Of a truth his position was not an enviable one.
Lancashire was at that time the great scene of religious conflict—the battle-ground of angry polemics and fiercely-contending factions. It was accounted as more given to Romanism than any other county in England, and in the rural districts the Protestant cause seemed rather declining than advancing. Dr. Chadderton, who preceded Dee in the Wardenship, had carried on a vigorous persecution of those who still adhered to the unreformed religion, the more obstinate of whom he imprisoned in the New Fleet, a building adjoining his residence in the College. He had further hit upon an ingenious way of convincing these recusants of the error of their ways—as they would not attend church to hear the sermons preached by the Puritanical Fellows he gave orders to his clergy to read prayers in the apartments where they were confined, especially at meal times, so that they had the pleasant alternative of taking theological nourishment with their food or going without victuals altogether. Chadderton’s Protestantism had been intensified by his exile during the Marian persecutions, and as Dee had been deprived of his rectories of Upton and Long Leadenham, and had suffered imprisonment at the hands of Bonner, it was not unreasonably believed that he would follow in the steps of his predecessor, and be no less zealous in hunting up seminary priests, and punishing those who resorted to their secret masses. But Dee’s church principles were not particularly pronounced. Devoted to mathematical and scientific pursuits, he did not greatly concern himself with either Popish or Puritan theology; preaching was not in his line, and he cared little for those controversial sermons which only provoked strife between the professors of the old and the new faith, and excited bitterness in the minds of all. He was content to leave the Papists to the watchful care of the powerful Earl of Derby and their opponents to do as they pleased, provided they gave him no trouble. His colleagues were greatly angered at his lack of zeal, and interminable quarrels were the consequence.
Saturday, the 20th of February, 1596, was a great day in Manchester, and one to be held in remembrance. The church bells filled the air with their clanging melodies, and the groups of curious onlookers at the church stile and in the grass-grown graveyard denoted that something unusual was astir. And there was, for the great philosopher whose marvellous skill had astonished half the Courts of Europe, and about whom rumour had told so many curious tales, was come to preside over the ancient College, and direct the ecclesiastical affairs of the parish, and on that raw February morning was to be installed in his office. Manchester had never seen such a Warden before, and has not seen such another since. The ceremony, we are told, was gone through with “great pomp and solemnity.” Of those assisting at it were Edmund Prestwich, of Hulme; Richard Massey, the representative of a family of some consequence living “in the Milnegate, neere unto a street comonly called Toad-lane;” George Birch, of Birch, in Rusholme, the brother of Robert Birch, one of the Fellows, and nephew of William Birch, who at one time had been the Warden of the College; Ralph Byrom and Thomas Byrom, wealthy traders of the Kersal stock; Ralph Houghton, another trader; Henry Hardy, and Richard Nugent, who afterwards became a benefactor to the town, but whose bequest, through the negligence of trustees, has long since been lost. Dr. Hibbert mentions these names, though he does not give his authority. Dee, however, was fond of ostentation and display, and we may be sure would omit nothing that would impart dignity and importance to the proceedings. We are not told which of the Fellows were present. Nowell, who was then in his 90th year, would be too old and infirm to undertake the toil of a journey from London; but the bold and outspoken Puritan divine, Oliver Carter, would of a certainty be in his place; and probably with him would be his equally zealous coadjutor, Thomas Williamson; though both must have been greatly exercised in spirit at the thought of God’s heritage being lorded over by one of such questionable antecedents. Humphrey Chetham had not then amassed a fortune, and acquired fame as a reformer of ecclesiastical abuses. He was only in his sixteenth year; but he may have been, and very likely was, among the spectators, and in his young mind may have wondered how and by what mysterious influences so valuable a preferment had fallen to one who, not having obtained ordination, had not even received authority to preach.
The Manchester as Dee saw it must have presented a very different aspect to the Manchester of to-day. Leland, who had visited the place sixty years previously, described it, in his “Itinerary,” as “the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town in Lancashire,” which, by the way, was not saying very much, seeing that, as compared with other parts of the kingdom, the county was thinly-peopled and ill-cultivated, and the neighbourhood of the town little else than extensive moors, mosses, and quagmires, where the stranger rarely adventured himself, and so “very wild and dangerous” that Bishop Downham pleaded its inaccessibility as a reason for seldom or never visiting it. The extent of the town proper could have been little more than that of an inconsiderable village of the present day, for though, unfortunately, there is no plan of it as then existing, the enumeration of the streets in the old Court Rolls of the manor enables us to form a tolerably accurate estimate of its limits. Within a few hundred yards of the Church the whole of the business of the place was located, and what was then town was but a congeries of crooked lanes and devious by-ways, with quaint black and white half-timbered dwellings standing on either side in an irregular, in-and-out, haphazard sort of way, and some very much inclined to “stand-at-ease,” yet rendered picturesque by their very irregularity and their innumerable architectural caprices and fantasies, their queer-looking and curiously-carved gables, their oddly-projecting oriels and cunningly-devised recesses, and the varied and broken sky-lines of their roofs, so different to those dull, dreary uniformities of brick the present generation is compelled to gaze upon. Deansgate, Market Sted Lane, and Long Millgate were the principal streets. These stretched irregularly towards the open country, and from them a few narrow intricate lanes branched off in the direction of the Church and the College. On the east and south sides of the churchyard were then, as now, several public-houses, where the bride ales and wedding feasts were held, and to restrain the extravagances of which numerous sumptuary laws had to be enacted. Round the Market Sted were the shops and “stallings” of the principal traders, who, clad in their own fustian, measured out their manufactured wares and sent out their pack-horsemen, with tingling bells, to sell them wherever and whenever they could find a buyer. Here also were located the “booths” in which the Portmotes and the Courts Leet and Baron of the manorial lords were held, and contiguous thereto were the Pillory, the Whipping Post, and the Stocks, where rogues and dishonest and drunk and disorderly townsmen were punished. On the north side of the church—Back o’th’ Church, as it was called—between the churchyard and the College gates, stood the bull oak, where bulls were usually baited. The butts for archery practice, where every man between 16 and 60 had to exercise himself in the use of the good yew bow, were on the outskirts of the town, one being on the south side, where Deansgate merged into Aldport Lane, and the other, at Collyhurst, on the north. The cockpit stood on what was then called the “lord’s waste,” the vacant land in the rear of the Market Sted, which still retains the name of Cockpit Hill. Hanging Ditch was, as its name implied, a ditch, part of the old moat or fosse connecting the Irwell and the Irk, down which the water still flowed at a considerable depth below the footway, Toad Lane and Cateaton Street being but a continuation of it. Over this old and then disused watercourse was a stone bridge, the arch of which may still be seen—the Hanging Bridge, so named from the drawbridge which had preceded it, where officers were stationed to see that horses and cows did not pass over into the churchyard. Near the bridge was the smithy, which gave the name to Smithy Door and Smithy Bank. In Smithy Door, near the entrance to the Market Sted, was the town pump or conduit, fed from a natural spring, near the top of the present Spring Gardens, where the good wives of the town went for their water, and waited their “cale” till they got it, gossiping and quarrelling with each other the while. At the foot of Smithy Bank was Salford Bridge—the only bridge over the Irwell connecting the two towns—a structure of three arches, and so narrow that foot-passengers had occasionally to take refuge in little recesses while vehicles passed along. In the centre of it was the dungeon, which in earlier days had served the purpose of a chapel. Withy Grove was in truth a group of withies, the old “Seven Stars,” and a few other dwellings, being all that existed to give the character of street. At the higher end was Withingreave Hall, the town house of the Hulmes of Reddish, progenitors of William “Hulme the Founder,” with its gardens, orchard, and outbuilding, and beyond a pleasant rural lane led on to Shudehill. Market Sted Lane, a narrow and tortuous thoroughfare, extended no further than the present Brown Street, Mr. Lever’s house, which occupied the site of the White Bear, standing in what was then the open country. The picturesque old black and white houses that bordered each side had their pleasant gardens in rear; and beyond, towards Withy Grove in one direction and Deansgate in the other, were meadows and pasture fields. In one of those fields, on the south side, was the mansion of the Radcliffes, surrounded by a moat that gave the name to Pool Fold, and which was oftentimes the scene of much mob-justice and very much misery, for here was placed the ducking-stool for the punishment of scolds and disorderly women,—