Memorials of old Cheshire

by Unknown

(An Epitome of a Paper by the Late J. P. Earwaker, F.S.A.)

By the Archdeacon of Chester

NO book dealing with memorials of old Cheshire would be complete which did not give due prominence to those noted antiquaries of former generations, the Randle Holmes, and acknowledge gratefully and without stint the indebtedness of subsequent writers and students to their research and patient investigations. What follows will show, however inadequately, how great these obligations are. At the outset it may be said that some confusion has arisen from the fact that the name Randle Holme was borne by four members of the family in successive generations, and as a consequence the work of one has sometimes been assigned to another.

The family of Holme is a distinctly Cheshire one, Robert de Holme acquiring by marriage at the end of the fourteenth century a moiety of the manor of Tranmere or Tranmole. The property remained in the family till the reign of James I., when William Holme of Chester, on whom it had devolved, sold it. His uncle Thomas was the first to settle in Chester, and his fourth son was the first Randle Holme. He was born about 1571, dying in 1655, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. By his marriage in 1598 with the widow of Thomas Chaloner of Chester, a distinguished antiquary and herald, he succeeded to her late husband’s papers, and was thus probably led to take up the study of genealogy and family history. Chaloner had held an official position as deputy to the Heralds’ College, and in March 1600–1 he was succeeded by Randle Holme, who was appointed by William Segar, Norroy King-of-Arms, as his deputy, to keep a “regester booke of Funerals in the counties of Chester, Lancaster, and North Wales.” In this capacity he had to truly enter the arms and crests, &c., “of all such persons of Coate Armor and worship as it shall please God to call out of this transitory life”; and to demand and collect the “due fees.” In 1604 he is mentioned as an Alderman of his company, as also is his brother William, “a stationer,” he himself being “a painter.” In 1615 he was one of the two sheriffs of the city, and in 1622 rebuilt his house in Bridge Street, now the “Old King’s Head.” In 1631 he was one of those selected for “obligatory knighthood,” but he compounded by payment of £10. In 1633 he was elected Mayor of the city, and at the same time his son Randle became one of the sheriffs. He was in Chester throughout the whole of the troublous time of the Civil War, and also during the violent outbreak of the plague in 1647. In January 1646 he was charged by the Parliamentarians as having taken the King’s part, and was fined as a delinquent £160. This apparently he did not pay, for after his death his son protested against the payment of this large sum, and some interesting documents are in existence in which it was urged that he was looked upon as the Parliament’s friend. He died in January 1654–55, and was buried at St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill, the interesting memorial tablet on wood, bearing his arms, being unfortunately lost. He was succeeded by his son Randle, born in 1601, who in 1625 had married the eldest daughter of Matthew Ellis of Overleigh, whose widow became ten years later his father’s second wife. In 1629 he was one of the churchwardens of St. Mary’s, holding office for two years; and in 1643 he became Mayor, and as such was the recipient of numerous official letters from the chief commanders of the Royalist side. These and other similar documents were bound up by his son and successor the third Randle Holme, and are preserved in the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. They bear autograph signatures of King Charles I., Prince Rupert, Sir John Byron, Sir Francis Gamul, and many others, and form a most interesting collection. The same description applies to another volume, giving a full account of the siege of Chester, and which was written at the time and derived from papers of the Randle Holmes, the writer in one passage stating that he had “for the most part gathered this history from the study of Randle Holme”—that is, the second Randle Holme. This is a sufficient indication of the historical instinct and practice of the family, and of what we owe to it for the preservation of accurate records of events that happened. Randle Holme the Second did not long survive his father—only a little over four years. A handsome monument to his memory in the Church of St. Mary-on-the-Hill in Chester gives a pedigree of the family, tracing it back to “Peter de Lymme, son of Gilbert, Lord of Lymme, who lived in the time of Edward I.” It also contains three coats of arms, besides crests, and is a good specimen of heraldic knowledge and genealogical research. This Randle Holme, though buried at St. Mary’s, lived after his second marriage, in 1643, in the parish of Holy Trinity, where his name appears in the list as Mayor in 1644. During the siege of Chester the Stationers’ Company could not hold their meetings in the “Golden Phœnix” (the Phœnix Tower), and so they met at “Alderman Holmes junior’s house in Watergate Street.” In the entry of a meeting “at the Alderman’s howse” on October 18, 1645, we are told that “the Golden Phœnix was employed for service for the defence of the garrison of Chester, the enimie in close seidge about the Cittye.” Whether Randle Holme the Second was able to secure the remission of the fine demanded of his father we cannot say. In the Harl. MSS. is a document in which he has left a record of his family, with the dates of their births and baptisms, and the names of their god-parents, designated in some of the entries as “witnesses” and in some as “gossips.” We learn from this that his first-born and eldest son, the third Randle Holme, was born on December 24, 1627, and baptized on the 30th of the same month, and that one of his godfathers was Francis Gamul, the other being his grandfather, the first Randle Holme.

Randle Holme the Third is the most distinguished of the four who successively bore that name. He was the author of a most extraordinary book, entitled The Academy of Armoury; and he was also a prominent Freemason. He took up the business of his father and grandfather, and in due course was admitted a member of the same company, of which, on the death of his father, he was duly elected an alderman. He served the office of churchwarden of St. Mary’s for two years from Easter 1657, and was instrumental in the erection of a new tower or steeple and the provision of a new peal of four bells, the initials of the churchwardens (George Chamberlain and Randle Holme), as well as those of the bell founder, John Scott of Wigan, appearing on them. The peal has now been enlarged into one of eight. In 1664 he was appointed to the office of “sewer of the chamber in extraordinary to his Majesty King Charles II.” A “sewer” was an officer whose function it was to place the dishes on the table and to remove them afterwards, and some think that it was also his duty to taste them. It almost looks as if the title had arisen from the mis-spelling of the word, and as if the “sewer” really was the “server.” However, the word is to be found in Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and others. In the Harl. MSS. we have the certificate of Randle Holme’s appointment, which shows that under it he was exempt from “bearing any publick office whatsoever.” This will account for the fact that, unlike his father and grandfather, he never held any office in the corporation of his native city. We do not know by what Court influence he obtained this appointment, which, though it contained certain privileges, must have been purely honorary, and we do not read of his being called upon on any occasion to fulfil its duties.

A dispute arose about this time between Randle Holme and the Heralds’ College, whose powers he was charged with usurping, by preparing coats of arms and hatchments, and receiving fees for so doing. The controversy was sharp and took a very practical shape, for we learn from the diary of William Dugdale, Norroy King-of-Arms, that he pulled down or defaced some “Achievements which Holmes, the Paynter, of Chester had hung up.” This he did at Budworth, Nether Peover, and Eastham, and other places in Cheshire. The dispute had nothing to do with his heraldic knowledge and skill, which cannot have been disputed, but probably arose from the fact that he had not then (as he subsequently was) been officially appointed deputy to the Norroy King-of-Arms. It would have been a dangerous precedent to allow any unauthorised person, however competent, to undertake such functions, and might have led to much confusion and to many mistakes, so that the action of the Norroy King-of-Arms is easily accounted for. The difficulty, which lasted some five years or thereabouts, was apparently solved by the appointment of Randle Holme as deputy to the Norroy King-of-Arms (as his father had been before him), though there is no record of the date of his appointment. He had probably acted for his father, and continued the same practice after his father’s death without waiting for the requisite authority.

It was in 1688 that he issued his extraordinary book—The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon. From the title it might be supposed that the work was entirely on heraldic matters, whereas it treats of almost every subject under the sun, and is a kind of encyclopædia, arranged, it must be confessed, in a most awkward form. He began collecting materials for it at a very early age, when he was only twenty-two; and it was forty years later before the book was printed. Whilst there can be no doubt that much of what it contains might well have been omitted, it stands out as a monumental evidence of the industry of the author as a collector of out-of-the-way information which he was anxious to preserve, and of his desire to make the work as complete as possible. The information thus gathered together is sometimes very valuable, and often very quaint; whilst specimens of Cheshire dialect, now obsolete, are to be found in words and phrases which were evidently in common use when the book was written. The title-page, which is very long, prepares us for the variety which the book contains, as the following sentence from it will show: “Very useful for all gentlemen, scholars, Divines, and all such as desire any knowledge in arts and sciences.”

The chapters are dedicated to various personages or classes of persons, and some of these lengthy dedications are interesting compositions. The Fourth Book was never set up in type, and of the latter portion of the Third Book the only printed example is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Other copies end with the first part of Book III., concluding with a valedictory address, explaining how the vast expense entailed and the inadequate return made him “resolve to go no further.” The book was printed at Chester, and is the earliest work printed there, and as such has, of course, a special interest for the city and county. It is rather remarkable that on the site of his house in Bridge Street (engraved by Cuitt as Lamb Row, the house having subsequently been converted into a hostelry, “The Lamb”) now stand the printing works of Mr. Griffiths. In his will his son Randle referred to a “Room in his dwelling in the Bridge Street formerly made use of as a Printing House or place.” Dr. Ormerod describes the book as “the strangest jumble on natural history, mineralogy, and surgery, occasionally diversified by palmistry, hunters’ terms, the cockpit laws, an essay on Time, and on Men punished in Hell.” The description is not inaccurate, yet there can be no doubt that in its eleven hundred folio pages are to be found many valuable pieces of information, and that in this respect they form “a storehouse” not only of “Armory and Blazon,” but also of many other subjects, so that the student who has the patience to explore them is sure to learn something. They show, too, what an inquiring mind the author must have had, and how he noted down and kept ready for use the knowledge he obtained.

Old Lamb Row.