Two Halls …. one story and the Young Pretender ... Chorlton meets Ancoats

History is littered with “myths, half-truths and howlers” and in their way they can be as interesting as the real thing.

Hough End Hall, 1849

At which stage it would be easy to become sniffy and pompous about stories of Hough End Hall , which is that Elizabeth mansion much knocked about in its 428 years.

It was built by Sir Nicholas Mosley in 1596, suffered uncertain times during the English Civil War when the family chose the wrong side to support, saw its fortunes recover after the Restoration and was finally sold to settle gambling debts in 1756.

After which it appeared to enjoy a quiet time as a farmhouse until it was sold to a developer who commissioned a very unsympathetic restoration in the 1960s, and passed its time as a restaurant and night club, then briefly flirted with being a suite of offices before eventually becoming an Islamic Centre. 

And for the last half century stood in the shadow of two office blocks which are best described as an “abomination of desolation”. 

With such a long history it is easy to find heaps of stories about the place and the people who lived there, and like a rolling stone has picked up more than a few strange tales.

"Gentlemen" he cried, drawing his sword, "I have thrown away the scabbard"

Like the one shared recently on social media that Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender stayed the night on his way to the battle of Marston Moor.

Sadly the story confuses a battle that took place a century before the Highland army crossed through the area looking for places to ford the Mersey in 1745.

But like all stories there is a hint of something because according to the biography of the Mosley family, James Stuart may have stayed at a local Hall owned by the Mosley’s but this was Ancoats Hall and not Hough End Hall.

“Sir Oswald Mosley was then about seventy-one … but there is no reason to doubt that a secret correspondence had been carried out between him and some of the leaders of the rebellious attempt, in which Ancoats Hall was offered as a temporary asylum to the grandson of King James II.*

Ancoats Hall, 1849

More intriguing is the suggestion that the said James Stuart had been in Manchester the year before in 1744, stayed at Ancoats Hall and frequented “the principle inn at Manchester [which] occupied the site of a house lately known by the sign of the Swan in Market Street and at that time was the only place where a post-chaise was kept, or the London newspapers regularly received, which were brought by the post only three times during the week”.**

And so the story goes “a handsome young gentleman came every post day for several weeks in succession from Ancoats Hall, the seat of Sir Oswald Mosley, where he was on a visit, to [the inn] to read the newspapers.  He appeared to hold no communication with anyone else but took great interest in the perusal of the London newspapers”.***

Market Street, Manchester in the 18th century, 1894

The account was vouchsafed by an elderly woman in 1815 who had been the daughter of the inn keeper and remembered the “handsome young man” who she served on a number of occasions, and remembers recognising him at the head of the Highland army as it marched through Manchester.

Do I believe it?  I don’t know.  

I suspect those who have studied the movements of the Young Pretender in the year before he landed on the west coast of Scotland will have a clear understanding of where and what he was doing.

I know he had been born in Rome spent much of his early and later life in Italy and in 1744 travelled to France from where he left for Scotland.

That said despite the stories that he spoke English with a foreign accent which would have made his presence in Manchester very noticeable, it appears he had no such accent.

"For Charlie" the Highland army at Culloden, 1746

Still it does rather seem a clandestine mission too far to have hidden himself away in Manchester to read newspapers which his spies could have obtained for him.

So, I am left with perhaps another fanciful tale to match the night before he rode out from Hough End Hall to fight a battle which was already a century old.

Of course history  can be messy with plenty of twists and turns, and more than a few surprises.

I bet someone will correct me.

But at least I am confident in writing that the Highland army was defeated at Culloden and  the Young Pretender ran from the battlefield and escaped back to Rome, leaving his supporters to face the wrath of the Hanoverian Government.

An end which was less romantic tosh and more brutal repression.

Location, the 18th century

Pictures; Hough End Hall and Ancoats Hall from Mosley, Sir Oswald, Family Memoirs, 1849, "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, Marshall, H. E. 1907, Market Street, Manchester in the 18th century, from Shaw William, Manchester Old and New, 1894, and The Battle of Culloden, David Morier, 1746

*Mosley, Sir Oswald, Family Memoirs, 1849

**ibid Mosley

***ibid Mosley

So why did the Jacobite’s have the best songs?

Now for those who don’t know, the Jacobite cause was the forlorn attempt  to restore the Stuart royal family to the throne.

And in the process do away with the Hanoverian’s who had assumed the throne in 1714.

There had been two attempts by the Jacobite’s to achieve this reassertion of ownership in 1715 and again in 1745.

The first involved James Francis Edward Stuart, referred to by some as the Old Pretender, and the second by Charles Edward Stuart, variously known as the Young Pretender, or Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Now I was brought up on the romance of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the last Jacobite attempt to regain the throne for the Stuarts, which isn’t surprising since our family only crossed the border into England at the start of the last century, and ours was a long journey south from the east Highlands.

So, I grew up with songs of that Jacobite rebellion, from those chronicling the brave Highland clans to the lament at the defeat at Culloden, and the departure of the Young Pretender.*

They still make wonderful listening but hide the reality of the savage aftermath of the last battle, the feudal nature of the Highlands and the betrayal of the cause by the Prince himself who left the Jacobite’s to their fate and died in Rome in 1788.

And of course, you have to question the whole escapade which was designed to substitute one dynasty for another, but was bound up with the dominance of England and the Lowland Scots, and today by the renewed interest in Scottish independence set against the huge chasm which is Brexit.

But those songs still resonate today, while the anti Jacobite ones have faded from popular culture.

So why is this? 

I suppose because the Jacobite cause was lost, and the repression that followed was so savage that there is that nostalgic lament for what might have been tied up by the romantic image of Bonnie Prince Charlie, which was then worked on in the 19th century when the Jacobites were no longer a threat and so it became “safe” to treat them as that romantic and lost cause, which has been sustained by an appeal to Scottish nationalism.

Added to which the tunes are very good and made better by the addition in some cases of the pipes.

That said not all of them date from 1745, or the immediate after years.

I listen regularly to a slew of Jacobite songs, but confess to only humming along to one anti Jacobite son which is the "Ye Jacobites by Name", which attacked the Jacobites  but was rewritten by Robert Burns  around 1791 giving a version with a more general, humanist anti-war, but nonetheless anti-Jacobite outlook.

So that is it …… answers on a postcard care of Rome.***

Pictures; "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, Marshall, H. E. 1907, Manchester in the 18th century, from Shaw William, Manchester Old and New, 1894, and The Battle of Culloden, David Morier, 1746

*Jacobite Songs by the Corries, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAEA7D750B5002C1F

**Lasting resting place of Bonnie Prince Charlie who escaped Scotland ...unlike most of his Jacobite supporters who ended up in the West Indies as indentured labour.

And the footnote, "The Acts of Union (Scottish Gaelic: Achd an Aonaidh) were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. 

They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland—which at the time were separate states with separate legislatures, but with the same monarch—were, in the words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain"

Acts of Union, 1707, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707

Of rebellion, romance and Chorlton’s part in the march of the Young Pretender

Now I was brought up on the romance of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the last Jacobite attempt to regain the throne for the Stuarts, which  isn’t surprising since our  family only crossed the border into England at the turn of the last century, and ours was a long journey south from the east Highlands.

"............ I have thrown away the scabbard"

Added to which uncle George always insisted we were part of the Clan Frazer.

So, I grew up with songs of that Jacobite rebellion, from those chronicling the brave Highland clans to the lament at the defeat at Culloden, and the departure of the Young Pretender.

They still make wonderful listening, but hide the reality of the savage aftermath of the last battle, the feudal nature of the Highlands and the betrayal of the cause by the Prince himself who left the Jacobite’s to their fate and died in Rome in 1788.

The Highlanders, 1746

And of course, you have to question the whole escapade which was designed to substitute one dynasty for another, but was bound up with the dominance of England and the Lowland Scots, and today by the renewed interest in Scottish independence set against the huge chasm which is Brexit.*

All of which means I only gave scant interest to the presence of the Jacobite army here in Chorlton,

And it was only after a discussion with Victoria at Chorlton book shop last week, that I began to ponder on a story.

The route of the Highland army south is well known.  It crossed the border into England on November 8th and arrived in Manchester on the 31st, where “several gentlemen and about 200 or 300 of the common people joined the rebel army, [forming] a separate body which was called the Manchester Regiment, commanded by Colonel Francis Townley, a gentlemen of good family in Lancashire, and a Roman Catholic”.**

Manchester in the 18th century

There is a slight discrepancy in accounts of just when the army arrived and left, with another source recording the entry of the vanguard into the city on November 28th, with  “the main body under the command of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, (the young Pretender) …at about ten o’clock on the morning of November 29th”.***

Either way Manchester and its neighbour Salford, were split over how to react, with some having contributed to a subscription of £1,966 to pay for a troop of soldiers to fight the Jacobite's, and others celebrating the impending arrival of the Highland army.

And it was in Salford, that The Prince’s father was declared James III, followed by public illuminations.

The army remained for two days before setting off for a crossing of the Mersey, which may have been achieved at several points from Didsbury, to the temporarily repaired Crossford Bridge at Stretford.

The Royalist army, 1746

And there is evidence that one unit was here in Chorlton.  Some of this is circumstantial, like the speculation that there was an encampment on the slight rise of land around High Lane, which shows up on maps of the mid-19th century as Scots Hill. But there are also accounts from from several local historians including our own Thomas Ellwood, that Hough End Clough was used by locals as a hiding place for their horses.

The same Thomas Ellwood referred to regular meetings of a Jacobite club in what is now Jackson’s Boat, which included a toast to the “King over the water”. ****

I doubt we will ever know how many in Chorlton and the surrounding townships were supporters of the Pretender’s cause, but there must have been a few, give the numbers in Manchester.

The Battle of Culloden, 1746

And I think we can be fairly confident that some of the army they supported passed through.

All of which is nice, interesting, and a bit twee, but doesn't quite prepare for the final out come at Culloden, the brutal reprisals in the immediate aftermath of the battle or the equally savage repression in the years after that.

The impact of which was reflected in the comments of my uncle, who while he spoke fondly of the young Bonnie Prince Charlie, would also refer to "Butcher Cumberland", the commander of the Royalist forces.

Location; Chorlton, and Culloden

Pictures; "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, Marshall, H. E. 1907, Manchester in the 18th century, from Shaw William, Manchester Old and New, 1894, and The Battle of Culloden,
David Morier, 1746

*That said recent research has shown that the Highland army,included, Lowland regiments such as Lord Elcho's and Balmerino's Life Guards, Baggot's Hussars and Viscount Strathallan's Perthshire Horse as "Highland Horse" along with the English Manchester Regiment, and French and Irish regulars.   Aikman, Christian, No Quarter Given: The Muster Roll of Prince Charles Edward Stuart's Army, 1745–46, 2001

**Home, John, The History of the Rebellion in Scotland in 1745, 1822, page 105

***Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885 page 84

****Ellwood, Thomas, Chapter XX111, Inns April 17th, 1886 from History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy