NORTHERN JOURNEYS OF BISHOP RICHARD

POCOCKE

INTRODUCTION.

Richard Pococke, Bishop of Meath, was born at Southampton in the year 1704, being the son of the Reverend Richard Pococke, master of the Edward VI. Grammar School of that place. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 13 July, 1720, and graduated B.A. 1725; B.C.L., 1731; D.C.L., 1733. Having influence in the Church of Ireland through his maternal uncle, Thomas Milles, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, he took holy orders and settled in that kingdom. At the earliest canonical age he was made Precentor of Lismore; he was appointed Vicar-General of Waterford and Lismore in 1734, Precentor of Waterford in 1745, and, in the same year, Archdeacon of Dublin. He was appointed Bishop of Ossory in 1756 and was translated to Meath in 1765.

The Irish bishops of the eighteenth century have fallen under the lash of Macaulay, but their shortcomings were largely due to the ecclesiastical and political system of the period under which the Government of the day maintained its position and power through the purchase of votes in both Houses of the English Parliament by the distribution of titles and sinecure offices in Church and State. A close examination and study of the engraved portraits of Irish bishops fails to suggest that they were otherwise than learned and respectable men. Their misfortune was to draw an official income with no opportunity to render corresponding service. Between the years 1733 and 1742 Pococke made several tours on the Continent of Europe and in the East, the result of which he gave to the world in two volumes, published respectively in 1743 and 1745, entitled, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries, a work which Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, cap. fifty-one, note 71, ed.

Milman, characterizes as a pompous folio. His journeys in England and Wales in the years 1750, 1751, 1754, 1756, and 1757, as recorded in letters addressed to his sister, Miss Elizabeth Pococke of Newtown, near Newbury, Berkshire, have been printed by the Camden Society and form vols. 42 and 44 of the second series of their publications. His tours in Scotland in 1747, 1750, and 1760, edited by Mr. D. W. Kemp for the Scottish History Society, were printed in 1887. When in Scotland in 1760, and at the request of the Episcopal community, who had been destitute of bishops for some generations, he confirmed in the Episcopal Chapel at Elgin. (See Cotton, Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae, vol. ii., p. 287.) In his own diocese Bishop Pococke did much useful philanthropic work; he was also the founder of the institution now known as the Incorporated Society for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland.

In the garden at Ardbraccan of what (until the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland) was the seehouse of the diocese of Meath, there are still fine cedars grown from seed brought by Bishop Pococke from the Lebanon.

Bishop Pococke, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 11 February, 1741/2, died at Charleville when on an episcopal visitation in the month of September, 1765, and was buried at Ardbraccan.

His portrait in oils by an unknown artist is preserved at the office of the Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools in Ireland, 48, Kildare Street, Dublin; it is a three-quarters length, seated in episcopal robes and wig; and in the unmatched collection of engraved portraits of Irish Bishops belonging to Mr. William Chamney of Dublin, there is a small print of another portrait.

It is believed that the following letters relating to the Bishop's journeyings in the North of England in the year 1760, preserved in the British Museum, are now printed for the first time.

LETTERS.

DEAR MADAM,

DARLINGTON IN THE BISHOPRICK OF DURHAM,
May 14th, 1760.

On the 13th I went to Easby Abbey.2 The church is an oblong square and singular, with handsome Gothic windows. It seems to have been built on an old church; the arches of which are fallen in, but the old Saxon windows remain. The site of the cloyster to the north was large, and adjoyning to it was the refectory, and a building that was probably the chapter-house; over another arch'd building on the north side of the cloyster was another large room and several buildings adjoyning which seem to have been the abbot's lodgings. The old mill wall remains and part of a very grand barn.

I went on two miles to Cataric-bridge over the Swale where are remains of a chapel; within a hundred yards of the bridge to the south is the north rampart of the old Roman town called Cataractonium3; which is about 200 yards wide: from this northern rampart it extends about a quarter of a mile mostly by the ditch for a little more than the length of two fields. The farmer told me he discovered the old town wall in ploughing, as they did in the third field about twenty yards from the ditch; but no walls are to be seen, except about the middle of the east side, where the foundations of a building within the wall do appear; but the wall is visible in several places to the west on the hanging ground, probably over the river at that time, which is now gone about 50 yards further west, and he told me that they took up what appear'd to have been an old gateway, and us'd the stone in the cornice of the house. They find a great deal of old coin which they all carry to Brugh-hall to Sir 4 Lawson. I

got two or three of the lower Empire and a fine Tragan (sic) of Middle Brass. The legend of the reverse is S P Q RO OPTIMO PRINCIPI S.C. But the figure is so much eaten out that I cou'd not discern what it is. I saw two small barrows at some little distance to the west, and there is

2

1 Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 14256.

A valuable plan of the Praemonstratensian abbey of St. Agatha at Easby may be found in the Archaeological Journal, vol. lxv., p. 332. 'See plan of Cataractonium in MacLauchlan, The Watling Street, map no. 1.

A space is left here. The statement, no doubt, refers to Sir Henry Lawson, fourth baronet, who succeeded his father in 1739 and died in 1781.

a large tumulus at Cataric a mile to the west. Going half a mile further I came to the lime-kilns in a quarry of a kind of freestone in which there is much spar; especially in several cavities of it in which it forms round the cavities as christal does in hollow stones.

I went to Appleton within a mile of Holdenby5 Castle, where I had been in 1747. I returned to Cataric-bridge, and went about 5 miles in the road towards Peircibridge, and turning to the north came in three miles to the Tees, which we forded into the Bishoprick of Durham, and came in two miles to Darlington, situated on a rivulet which is famous for bleaching; they make here huckabacks of all breadths down from 2 yards and a half, and, of late, woollen tamies for women's ware. They have a church here built in the cathedral manner. It was collegiate with a dean and four prebendaries, founded by Hugh Pusar, or Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, their walls remain in the choir, which within is a mixture of Saxon and Gothic architecture. The transept is very handsome Gothic within; the outside of the body and choir and west end are in a beautiful light Gothic style consisting of arches supported, or rather adorned, with slender pillars of one stone; a few of them have narrow windows with large sweeps from the pillars, which wou'd have been much more beautiful if they had been of the full size of the arches. To the south of the church is a large court which might be a cloyster and contain the buildings for the chapter and choir; at the south-east corner is an hospital, which was the Bishop's house, in which there are some Saxon windows.

The copper and lead mines here destroyed most of the fish in the Tees in these parts, and they have had a sute to hinder the water running into the Tees that comes from the washing of the ore, but have been cast.

In Richmondshire they are great breeders of horses, every farmer is a courser, which I believe has greatly corrupted the morals of that rank of people. They have also here, and in the Bishoprick, a very fine race of black cattle. They have short horns1o like the Alderney kind,

5

Hornby, North Riding of Yorkshire, five miles south-west of Catterick.
The Skerne.

'It is stated that at one time there were upwards of 1,500 (hand) looms in Darlington and the neighbourhood. See Longstaffe, Darlington, p. 333.

Tammy of obscure derivation; a fine worsted cloth of good quality often with a glazed finish, much mentioned in the seventeenth and eighteenth century but apparently obsolete before 1858; revived circa 1858, see New English Dictionary.

See Mr. (afterwards Sir) G. G. Scott's paper: St. Cuthbert's Church, Darlington,' in the Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, vol. i., p. 9; and the Rev. J. F. Hodgson's paper on 'Darlington and Hartlepool Churches,' Arch. Ael., ser. II, vol. xvii., p. 145.

10 For an account of the development of the shorthorn which originated in this district, see Bates, Thomas Bates and the Kirklevington Shorthorns, chapter ii., where the subject is fully investigated.

but are the largest cattle in Britain, and beautifully marked, most commonly with spots of either red, black, or liver colour on a white ground, and some only mixed with white. They say it was a cross with the Dutch breed. They are far beyond any cattle I ever saw in any part of the world; the Hungarian come the nearest to them.

ALSTONMORE11 IN CUMBERLAND.

May 16th, 1760.

DEAR MADAM,

We left Darlington on the 14th in the afternoon and came in four miles to Gunsley.12 The church is curiously situated on an eminence, and the rock is cut away on three sides so as to form a perpendicular precipice, and this has been done to come at a vein of limestone, which is hard and like marble, but there is under it a great bed of fine freestone. In a mile we came to Peircebridge on the Tees. A small stream13 falls into the Tees; and to the west of it was the ancient town; there seemed to have been considerable buildings just at the meeting of the rivers where there is a farm house called Cornburry14; but a little to the west is a barn which I thought was at the fossee of the town the old Magi. They told me formerly a road went there to a ford15 over the Tees, but going on I discovered at the back of the town, to the east of the street, a rampart running east and west about 80 yards long, and that is turned on the east towards the river. I cou'd not follow it by reason that the houses are built in that direction, but it seems to have inclosed the part near the bridge and might be between 2 and 300 yards in length from north to south. I at first thought this might have been the square citadel and that the rivers might have gained to the south. Near the bridge are ruins of a large chappel. They find coin here both silver and copper, of the former a Julia Soemia (sic). We came on four miles in the turnpike road towards Bernard Castle and turning near to the rivulet Garnlees,16 on which Staindrop stands, we turned out of the road to the north, having seen what they call Belset17 on an eminence lower down, over the Tees, where there are large ruins which seemed to be of a church. 18

"Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 14256.

12 There can be no doubt that Coniscliffe is the church and place referred to it is pronounced locally Cunscley.

13

14

Query, the Dyance-beck.

Query, Carlbury, where lime-stone was formerly extensively quarried. See Hutchinson, Durham, vol. iii., p. 219.

15 Shown in MacLauchlan's The Watling Street, map no. 1.

16 The Gaunless.

"Barford, or Barforth, opposite Gainford.

18 On the ordnance map is marked the ruins of a chapel dedicated to St. Lawrence. Cf. Proc. Newcastle Soc. of Antiq., 3 ser., vol. II., p. 351.