Note 78 — Chapter XVIII

— To-day (April, 1901) Newby-cum-Mulwith forms one township. Givendale is a township by itself. Along with Skelton they form a separate ecclesiastical parish. Skelton Church, in Newby Park, is one of the most beautiful in the county, having been erected by the late Lady Mary Vyner, of Newby Hall. The Church is dedicated under the touching title of “Christ, the Consoler.”

Formerly the Parish of Ripon included no less than thirty villages. At Skelton, Aldfield, Sawley, Bishop Thornton, Monckton, and Winksley there were Chapels. Pateley Bridge also had a Chapel, but this was parochial. — See Gent’s “Ripon.” — At Sawley, I find from the Ripon Register of Baptisms, there was a William Norton living (described as “generosus”) in 1589. He would be the great-grandson of old Richard Norton, who by his first wife, Susanna, daughter of Neville Lord Latimer, had eleven sons and seven daughters. They were (according to an old writer), these Nortons, “a trybe of wicked people universally papists.” It is reported to this day (Easter Day, 1901), at Bishop Thornton, by Mr. Henry Wheelhouse, of Markington, aged 84, that the Nortons, of Sawley, continued constant in their adherence to the ancient faith till well on into the nineteenth century.

Mr. Wheelhouse’s recollection to this effect may be well founded; because not only has there been a remnant of English Roman Catholics always in the adjoining hamlet of Bishop Thornton, but there was at Fountains, in 1725, a Father Englefield, S.J., stationed there — see Foley’s “Records,” vol. v., p. 722 — and if the Nortons, of Sawley (or some of them) remained Papists, one can understand how it might come to pass that there was a Jesuit Priest maintained at Fountains and a Secular Priest at Bishop Thornton, only a few miles off. The Roman Catholic religion was also long maintained by the Messenger family, of Cayton Hall, South Stainley, and by the Trapps family, of Nydd Hall, both only within walking distance of Bishop Thornton: maintained until the nineteenth century. I think the Messengers, too, owned Fountains in 1725. Viscount Mountgarret now owns Nydd Hall. His Lordship’s family, the Butlers, are allied to the Lords Vaux of Harrowden.

Mass also was said (before the present Roman Catholic Chapel was built at Bishop Thornton) at Raventoftes Hall, in the Ripon Chapelry of Bishop Thornton, once the home of the stanch old Catholic family of Walworth. Then Mass was said in the top chamber, running the whole length of the priest’s present house. Afterwards (about 1778) followed the present stone Chapel. Clare Lady Howard, of Glossop, built the Schools at Bishop Thornton a few years ago.

F. Reynard, Esquire, J.P., of Hob Green, Markington and Sunderlandwick, Driffield, now owns Raventoftes Hall, which has a splendid view towards Sawley, How Hill, and Ripon. It is rented by a Roman Catholic, named Mr. F. Stubbs, who is akin to the Hawkesworths, the Shanns, the Darnbroughs, and other old Bishop Thornton and Ripon families.

Peacock, in his “List,” speaks of William Norton as a grandson of Richard Norton, but, according to Burke’s “Peerage,” he must have been a great-grandson. The Nortons may have saved the Sawley estate from forfeiture, somehow or another, or perchance they bought it in afterwards from some Crown nominee. Francis Norton, the eldest son and heir of old Richard Norton, fled with his father to the continent. His son was Edmund, and his son was William Norton, of Sawley, whose descendant was the first Lord Grantley.

Gabetis Norton, Esquire, owned Dole Bank, between Markington and Bishop Thornton, where Miss Lascelles, Miss Butcher, and others of Mary Ward’s followers, lived a semi-conventual life during the reign of Charles II., previously to their taking up their abode near Micklegate Bar, York. — See “Annals of St. Mary’s Convent, York,” Edited by H. J. Coleridge, S.J. (Burns & Oates). — Sir Thomas Gascoigne, of Barnbow, Aberford, was the benefactor of these ladies, both at Dole Bank and York; Dole Bank probably at that time belonging to this “fine old English gentleman,” who died a very aged man at the Benedictine Abbey of Lambspring, in Germany, a voluntary exile for his faith. Dole Bank came to Gabetis Norton, Esquire, in the eighteenth century, from his sister, who was the wife of Colonel Thornton, of Thornville Royal (now Stourton Castle, near Knaresbrough, the seat of the Lord Mowbray and Stourton) and of Old Thornville, Little Cattal, now the property of William Machin, Esq. (Derived from old title-deeds and writings in the possession of representatives of William Hawkes, yeoman, of Great Cattal.) Dole Bank, I believe, now belongs to Captain Greenwood, of Swarcliffe Hall, Birstwith, Nidderdale. During the early part of the nineteenth century the Darnbroughs rented Dole Bank, the present tenant being Mr. Atkinson.