Chapter 6
Chorley Hall is acquired by Abraham Crompton
“The Tale of Beatrix Potter” a biography by Margaret Lane came into the writer’s hands by chance and her delight was unbounded when she discovered that Chorley was bought by Abraham Crompton the great-grandfather of Beatrix Potter, and a banker of Derby, after the tragic beheading of old Richard Chorley of Chorley.
The following extracts throw an interesting light on subsequent events in the old Chorley homestead.
From The Tale of Beatrix Potter, a biography by Margaret Lane
The earlier Abraham Crompton of Chorley Hall, “Old Abraham” as he was known in the family, was a far greater figure in the Crompton legend than Grandmama’s father. Even Rupert Potter, who disliked exertion but inherited his mother’s passion for dwelling on the obscure details of their genealogies, spent a good deal of time in writing letters and consulting Unitarian Chapel registers to find out more about this interesting ancestor. He was always spoken of as if he were the originator of the Crompton character, of which they were all so proud; as if, at least, the stamp of his peculiar nature had been so deep that the impress, now fainter, now sharper, could be traced and recognised in all succeeding generations, and might even, or so Beatrix believed, throw up a shadowy suggestion of pattern in herself. “I am a believer in breed” she wrote in old age, looking back over her own life and taking pleasure in those rugged features of personal landscape which she believed were due, even at this distance of time, to eruptions of Old Abr’am, “I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations. In the same way we farmers know that certain sire-bulls, stallions and rams have been prepotent in forming breeds of shorthorns, thoroughbreds, and the numerous varieties of sheep. The most remarkable old character amongst my ancestors was old Abraham Crompton.”
Neither Rupert Potter nor his mother, nor even Beatrix herself when she was old enough to inherit the genealogical passion, was ever able to find out very much about him. Yet the legend of his personality was still strong enough after a hundred years, which would seem to support their conception of him as a forceful, crusty, out-spoken, common sense eccentric. The important thing about the Crompton legend, so far as it affected Beatrix, was that she grew up with an admiration for these qualities. For in spite of the paralysing conventiality of Bolton Gardens and the absolute rigidity of their lives, the Potters had an almost eighteenth-century respect for wealthy eccentricity, and liked to find unexpected quirks of behaviour here and there among their ancestors; liked to think for instance, that a Potter had married a daughter of Bradshaw the regicide (there was a table-cloth belonging to Bradshaw somewhere in the family) and that Chorley Hall itself had been involved in two rebellions.
Old Abr’am’s connection with the ‘rt Rebellion provided the most amusing story that was known about him, and it was all the more fascinating to a child because it was a story about relics which might be seen and handled, a few large linen table napkins with the Royal arms of Scotland woven into them and ‘CP’ embroidered in cross stitch near one of the borders. The first Abraham Crompton, who was a banker and lived in Derby, had bought Chorley Hall from the Crown in 1718, thus taking his initial step into the landed gentry. “He bought if for something over five thousand pounds. I had imagined that the Chorley Hall estate was more important and expensive” Rupert Potter wrote with some disappointment when his researchers brought the financial detail to light; its cheapness was perhaps partly due to its being forfeited property, Richard Chorley, owner, having been taken at Preston and beheaded for his support of the Old Pretender in 1715.
The Cromptons were rebel-fanciers, but not of the Royalist order; they had no sentimental weakness for the Stuarts, and indeed as dissenters and non-jurors had a special abhorrence of Catholics, divine right of kings, oaths of allegiance, romantic emotion, French influences, gallantry, dressing up, and everything connected with that most poetic and hopeless of lost causes. Old Abra’am may well, therefore, have felt some virtuous satisfaction in acquiring cheaply the property of a gentleman so very justly disgraced, briskly bringing Chorley into line with the Crompton tradition and reclaiming the place with the stamp of Puritan respectability. In 1745 however, the Young Pretender landed in the Hebrides, and with what at first seemed supernatural success made his bold way south, capturing Carlisle and arriving eventually at Lancaster. Here, remembering very probably that his father had kind treatment from Richard Chorley who had fought and died for him, he rode at once with his army to Chorley Hall and clattered up to the gate with the Royal standard flying and supported by a retinue of famished Highlanders. The Chorley villagers, respectful wary Dissenters though they most were, had no option than to receive them, and Crompton dared not refuse hospitality to the Prince, who stayed the night and dined in excellent spirits, providing his own silver and table linen.
One cannot help wondering how the honest Radical conducted himself during that memorable evening. One would like to hear that he had been bidden to the Royal table, and to know how he emerged from the struggle between vanity and principle. But there is no family tradition that he sat down with Prince Charlie, nor is there any Cromptonish anecdote of refusal; so that the most probable conclusion is after all that he was not asked, but simply instructed to place his kitchen and cellar at the Pretender’s disposal, and then left to mutter in the passage. That there were grounds for muttering seems undeniable, for the Presbyterian minister at Chorley, on whom thirty-six of the rebels were quartered, has left it on record that they consumed fourty-one pounds of his best cheese while waiting for their dinner – a cri de Coeur from the manse, which still has power to move us after two centuries. The only known gesture of retaliation which was made at Chorley was the theft of a handful of spade guineas and the Prince’s marked table napkins, which were hidden under a loose floor board at the Hall by whom or for what purpose nobody knows. They were found many years later, when the floor was taken up in the course of some repairs, and the presumption was that they had been hidden by a dishonest servant. One exonerates Crompton himself without a second glance; he would have scorned the theft, however much of his cheese was eaten; and one cannot see him collecting Stuart relics.
It was very puzzling, and the Potters never quite knew how to account for the napkins and the guineas. The napkins alone might have suggested a secret attachment to the Pretender’s cause, a laundry maid’s liking for a bonny face or hidden Stuart loyalties in the breast of a footman. But the presence of the spade guineas destroys this idyll. Guineas are rarely prized for their sentimental value, and one can accept the romantic explanation only by admitting as well, as one certainly should, that motives are generally mixed. That the napkins and guineas were stolen for different reasons seems the likeliest theory, and in support of it there is the curious fact that the guineas vanished soon after their discovery, while the napkins remained as relics in the Potter family.
