Echoes of old Lancashire. Axon William Edward Armytage

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СКАЧАТЬ and on his death on July 10th, 1873, Mrs. Gardner took out letters of administration to his estate, and her correspondence, she being then in her 97th year, rather astonished the legal gentleman with whom she had to confer on that business.”

      What was the First Book Printed in Manchester?

      The answer to this question is not so obvious as might at first be expected. There were in the Lancashire of Elizabeth’s days two secret presses. From one there issued a number of Roman Catholic books. This was probably located at Lostock, the seat of the Andertons. The other was the wandering printing-press, which gave birth to the attacks of Martin Marprelate upon the Anglican Episcopate. This was seized by the Earl of Derby in Newton Lane, near Manchester. The printers thus apprehended were examined at Lambeth, 15th February, 1588, when Hodgkins and his assistants, Symms and Tomlyn, confessed that they had printed part of a book entitled, “More Work for the Cooper.” “They had printed thereof about six a quire of one side before they were apprehended.” The chief controller of the press, Waldegrave, escaped. In these poor persecuted printers we must recognise the proto-typographers of Manchester. No trace remains of “More Work for the Cooper.” The sheets that fell into the hands of the authorities do not appear to have been preserved. Putting aside the claims of this anti-prelatical treatise, we have to pass from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Many tracts and books by local men, and relating to local affairs, were printed before 1719, but that appears to be the date of the first book printed in Manchester. The title page is here reproduced: – “Mathematical Lectures; being the first and second that were read to the Mathematical Society at Manchester. By the late ingenious Mathematician John Jackson. ‘Who can number the sands of the Sea, the drops of Rain, and the days of Eternity?’ – Eccles. i., 2. ‘He that telleth the number of the Stars and calleth them all by their Names.’ – Psalm cxlvii., 4. Manchester; printed by Roger Adams in the Parsonage, and sold by William Clayton, Bookseller, at the Conduit, 1719.” (Octavo.)

      The claims of Jackson’s “Lectures” were stated by the present writer in Notes and Queries (see fourth series, iii., 97, and vii., 64), and in his “Handbook to the Public Libraries of Manchester and Salford.” Some further correspondence appeared in Local Gleanings (vol. i., p. 54), and an extract was given from one of William Ford’s catalogues, which, if accurate, would show that there was a local press at work in 1664. Ford has catalogued a book in this fashion: – “A Guide to Heaven from the Word; Good Counsel how to close savingly with Christ; Serious Questions for Morning and Evening; Rules for the due observance of the Lord’s Day. Manchester, printed at Smithy Door, 1664. 32mo.”

      Apparently nothing could be clearer or less open to doubt. After a careful look out for the book, a copy has been secured, and is now in the Manchester Free Library. The title reads: – “A Guide to Heaven from the Word. Good counsel how to close savingly with Christ. Serious Questions for Morning and Evening; and rules for the due observation of the Lord’s Day. John 5, 39. Search the Scriptures. Manchester: Printed by T. Harper, Smithy Door.” (32 mo, pp. 100.) There is no date, but the name of Thomas Harper, printer, Smithy Door, may be read in the “Manchester Directory” for 1788, and the slightest examination of the “Guide to Heaven” will show that its typography belongs to that period. From whence, then, did Ford get the date of 1664? If we turn to the fly-leaf the mystery is explained, for on it we read, “Imprimatur, J. Hall, R.P.D. Lond. a Sac. Domest. April 14 1664.” The book, in fact, was first printed in London in 1664, and Thomas Harper, when issuing it afresh, reprinted the original imprimatur, which Ford then misconstrued into the date of the Manchester edition. The book is entered as Bamfield’s “Guide to Heaven” in Clavell’s “Catalogue,” and the publisher is there stated to be H. Brome. Either Francis or Thomas Bamfield may have been the author, but the former seems the more likely. Thomas Bampfield – so the name is usually spelled – was Speaker of Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1658, and he was a member of the Convention Parliament of 1660, and was the author of some treatises in the Sabbatarian controversy. Francis was a brother of Thomas, and also of Sir John Bamfield, and was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. in 1638. He was ordained, but was ejected from the Church in 1662, and died minister of the Sabbatarian Church in Pinner’s Hall. He wrote in favour of the observation of the Saturday as the seventh day, and therefore real Sabbath, and whilst preaching to his congregation was arrested and imprisoned at Newgate, where he died 16th February, 1683-4. His earliest acknowledged writing was published in 1672, and relates to the Sabbath question.

      The first book printed in Manchester, so far as the present evidence goes, was Jackson’s “Mathematical Lectures,” but it was the fruit of the second printing-press at work in the town.

      Thomas Lurting: a Liverpool Worthy

      Quakerism has a very extensive literature, and is especially rich in books of biography; which are not only of interest from a theological point, but are valuable for the incidental and sometimes unexpected light which they throw upon the history and customs of the past. One of the early Quaker autobiographies is that of Thomas Lurting, a Liverpool worthy, who has not hitherto been included by local writers in the list of Lancashire notables.

      Thomas Lurting was born in 1629, and, in all probability, at Liverpool. The name is by no means a common one, but it is a well-known Liverpool name, and many references to its members will be found in Sir James Picton’s “Memorials and Records.”1 From 1580 to the close of the seventeenth century they appear to have been conspicuous citizens. John Lurting was a councillor and “Merchant ’Praiser” in 1580. A John Lurting was bailiff of the town in 1653; but three years earlier had so little reverence for civic dignity as to style one of the aldermen “a cheating rogue.”

      From his own narrative we learn that in 1646, at the age of fourteen, Thomas Lurting was “impressed,” and served in the wars against the Irish, Dutch, and Spaniards. He gives a graphic account of the sea-fight at Santa Cruz in 1657, by our great English admiral Blake, in which the Spaniards came off second-best. At the time of his conversion he was boatswain’s mate on the Bristol frigate. There were two young men on board, who had some conversation with a soldier who had been present at a Quaker’s meeting in Scotland. The soldier soon after left the ship; but what he had said came back to the minds of the young men, and presently they refused to listen to the chaplain, or to take their hats off to the captain, who added to his seafaring functions the quality of a Baptist preacher. The chaplain complimented Lurting as “an honest man and a good Christian,” so long as, in his capacity of boatswain’s mate, he persecuted the two youthful Quakers. Great was the amazement when Lurting joined himself to those despised children of light. The chaplain and the captain in vain tried to convince him of the errors of his new theological associates. The Quakers increased, until instead of two there were fourteen in the ship. There was an epidemic of sickness, and the Quakers were known by the care they took of each other and their brotherly sympathy. When he got well the captain allowed Lurting to have his old cabin – which had the reputation of being haunted – both for a sleeping room and for a meeting-place.

      At this time the Quaker mariners did not object to take their share of fighting, but when going into an engagement at Barcelona, it came into Lurting’s mind that it was unlawful to slay. The Quakers having decided to “bear their testimony” against war, had an unpleasant time. Off Leghorn, in 1655, the preacher-captain drew his sword to run one of them through.

      Thomas Lurting was several times impressed after the Restoration of Charles II., but he refused either to do the King’s work or eat the King’s victual. On one of these occasions, after five days’ fasting, he was put ashore.

      But the most remarkable incident in Lurting’s life was one which occurred when, after he had become a “harmless Christian,” he was mate of a ship that was captured by an Algerine pirate. The English sailors, following Lurting’s instructions, managed to turn the tables and make the Turks their prisoners; but, instead of selling the pirates for slaves, as they had the opportunity to do, they put them on shore not far from an Algerine town. СКАЧАТЬ