The Romance of the Charley Family - Appendix III

 Appendix III

The Death of Mrs. Chorley

It is an old local tradition that Mrs. Richard Chorley died of grief on the day of her husband’s execution either at the sight itself, or on the receipt of the news. There are various versions of the story, the best known being given by Mrs. Maclean in her pretty but misleading verses on Richard Chorley. It is misleading because she represents Richard and Catherine as a young couple. Her poem finishes thus:

Tis over, the traitors are left on the tree,

One sits neath their shadow, her head on her knee,

A cloak oe’r the face of the mourner is spread,

They raise it to look – and they look on the dead.

Young Richard of Chorley, she follows thee on.

But thy life was her own, and with thine it is gone.

Both true to their faith, both so fair and so young

Woe, woe for the fate which on this world is flung.

Now for their sake, when summer’s sweet children unclose

Give a moment’s sad thought to the fatal White Rose.

 

From the tenant of Chorley Hall Farm when the writer visited it, she learned the following story. On the day of Richard Chorley’s death on the Gallows Hill Preston, and just before the time of the execution, Mrs. Chorley climbed to the gable end at the top of the old barn, overlooking the fish-pond, whence she had a clear view of the road to Preston. The story goes that when she knew all was over she fell down from the roof and was picked up dead. Her spirit, it is said, still haunts the precincts of the Hall and at times she is seen to flit around in a long flowing grey gown at the bottom of the field under the apple trees! Another story told is that when she heard of her husband’s ruin she put all the gold in the house in a milk “kit” and buried it somewhere about the premises. The old barn was only demolished in the mid 1960s to make way for a housing estate.