Earl Shilton - The Stuarts

The Stuarts

Earl Shilton’s freeholders, or principal landholders, in 1630 were Richard Churchman, Richard Veasey, Samuel Wightman, and Sampson Goodall. The crown also held some land in the village, but during the reign of Charles I, the crown sold Earl Shilton’s farm to the Earl of Ilchester, whose rents were given up to Guy’s Hospital, London, which received them for many years.

In 1636, John Wightman gave £50 for the poor of Hinckley and a field in Earl Shilton was also let, earning £3 5s per year. By 1711 Peter Cappur was the steward of the manor in Shilton and John Wightman's legacy was in dispute. At the Court Baron for that year, on 13 October, Francis Thompson a tenant of Studford Close, Earl Shilton, surrendered a field of 2½ acres to Nathaniel Ward and Thomas Sansome, held in trust, for the poor of Hinckley. This charity ran for some time for in 1809, Rob Thompson and Thomas Sansome were the trustees.

The Purchase of Shilton Park at Tooley

Henry Morrison was knighted at Whitehall in 1627, and he and his wife purchased Simon de Montfort's old hunting park of Tooley. Their daughter, Letticia, married Luis Carey, Viscount Falkland and they resided for a time at the Park. Back in 1608, Tooley contained 3,500 trees worth nearly £1000.

During the crisis of the English Civil War, Viscount Falkland fought for the King in the Royalist army. At the failed siege of Gloucester in 1643, many times he exposed himself fearlessly. But later that year his luck ran out at the First Battle of Newbury. On 20 September, he met his death leading a suicidal charge against a hedge lined by the enemy's musketeers.

From 1642 onwards the broad tract of country between Ashby de la Zouch, Leicester and the Watling Street became the buffer zone between the rival garrisons of Royalists and the Parliamentarians. One of the first shocks that the war had in store for the civilian population was the sudden increase in the number of new taxes that had to be raised for the support of these new garrisons. Records show that the Parliamentary tax for the combined parishes of Burbage and Sketchley was £2-8shillings and 4 pence per month.

Clergymen who openly sided with Parliament were easy targets for Royalist raiding parties. Colonel Hastings, with four troops of horse ‘coursed about the country as far as Dunton Bassett and Lutterworth, and took near upon a hundred clergymen and their sympathisers, carrying them as prisoners to Hinckley.

On the other side Parliament listed nine clerks from the Market Bosworth and Hinckley area who suffered sequestration for supporting the king. Thomas Cleveland, of Hinckley, and John Lufton, rector of lbstock, had offered money or prayers for the king. William Holdsworth, the curate of Earl Shilton, openly reviled the Parliament and stood accused of reading a Royal Protestation in the middle of a sermon.

Parliaments Captain Flower, while temporarily billeted at Stoney Stanton, ordered the delivery of twenty strikes of provender for his horses by the inhabitants of Burbage and Sketchley. On another occasion his troop ordered two quarters of provender from Stapleton. The largest claim for free quarter was for a force of two hundred and eleven troops and seventy two horses under Colonel Purefoy and Colonel Bosseville, when they set up camp at Hinckley in the summer of 1643. The townspeople of Hinckley also provided quartering for twenty three horsemen for a single night in 1644. While Parliamentary troopers from Astley House stood accused of taking a rapier, a swordbelt and ‘a snapsack’ worth 8 shillings, from old Sampson Goodhall when they passed through Earl Shilton. (Alan Roberts 2001)

Following the Civil War the Parliamentarians began to take revenge on their old enemies. Earl Shilton’s Richard Churchman was listed among the gentry who in 1645 "compounded" for their estates with the Parliamentary Sequestration Committee, along with Thomas Crofts, another royalist. This meant he had to pay a heavy fine to restrieve his estates.

Also the local curate William Holdsworth was accused of being a royalist or "malignant". John Walker, who wrote about the Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion, records that Holdsworth was hauled before the County Committee in 1646 for "reviling" Parliament (see also the Committee for Plundered Ministers). His offences included ignoring the Directory set by Parliament to enforce puritan reforms, refusing sacraments to those not kneeling, allowing Sunday games and reading a royalist Protestation in the middle of a sermon. He was also accused of being "several times drunk" and using "old notes as new sermons" for the past twenty years.