Article 4 [1724]
Return to The Early Angus History by Elsdon Watson
Life at Bywell after the Rebellion of 1569 until 1653
After 1569, Alexander and most of the farmers at Bywell become Anglicans, in order to be pardoned and avoid being executed. This did not mean that they had done so with any enthusiasm. This is shown rather well by the Muster of 1595 at Stagshaw (1), when they were mustered under the banner of Queen Elizabeth and their new religion. It was almost 30 years after the rebellion. They were supposed to attend with a good horse and harness. Out of 76 light horsemen who attended, no less than 74 had their horses disallowed. 83 others who should have been there did not attend. My brother was in the army as an NCO for 25 years and was brought up on one charge. This was for the sin of “dumb insolence”. The soldiers/farmers who attended the Muster of 1595 seem to have been guilty of the same sin.
Information regarding Sir John Forster
In 1597 another event showed that the Protestant bailiff at Bywell, Sir John Foster, was not popular with some of the Bywell residents. This is also the first time that the Newton family comes into the story. The tale concerns salmon. The River Tyne was a great salmon river. Who could fish where was a matter of great concern. The row between Sir John and the Newton family went on for over a decade (25).
Sir John Foster became immensely rich during his time in the border region. His funeral is reputed to have cost over a hundred thousand pounds. (£500 at 1700 prices)
Part of his plan to enrich himself was to buy or lease land cheaply at Bywell after the Rebellion. He planned to buy or lease land (or fishing rights) that had previously been owned or leased by John Swinburne. The fishing deal was contested by the Newton family who claimed they also had fishing rights, due to land they owned that bordered the Tyne. This finally came to a head one night when the Newton family, with drawn swords and staves, invaded the fishing rights claimed by Sir John Forster. The claim seems to have been sorted out eventually when the long lease acquired by Sir John expired.
The Newton family was probably the most populous family in the Bywell area. They had presumably started out in the village of Newton which was within the Bywell boundaries. Hodgson contains no record of anyone called Newton in the village of Newton itself until after the Civil War when Mathew and Charles Newton bought a one third stake in Newton Hall (31). Mathew will reappear later in this article when he was apprenticed in Newcastle; Charles was his brother. The name Newton occurred all over the rest of the Bywell area, particularly in Broomley and Stocksfield . The family were obviously wealthy and even had their own coat of arms (26).
“Two shin bones in saltire, the sinister surmounted on the dexter, a crescent for differences; crest; an arm enbowed habited holding in the hand a thin bone”
Newton tombstone (1668) in St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle
The first time the surname Newton appears in Hodgson is at Broomhaugh in 1336 when Johannes de Neuton and Thomas de Neuton are found (27) on the Broomhaugh Subsidy Roll. In 1464 we find Reginald Newton who was bailiff and forester in the towns of Ovingham and Prudhoe (28). In the same reference there is mention of many other members of the Newton family. Hodgson produced family trees for the Newtons at Stocksfield and Broomley. Unfortunately neither of these contains the branch of the Newton tree that contains Alice, the wife of George Angus. All we know of her family apart from her husband and children is from the will of Gilbert Newton, her brother, who died in 1682 (9). The will also mentions a sister Jane. Also in this reference (9), there is a will of a John Newton who might have been a brother of Alice and Gilbert. John died in the same year in the same area.
By the time Alexander Angus appeared in 1566 there were numerous members of the Newton family living around him especially at Stocksfield Hall and Merrishields. In about 1628 George Angus married Alice Newton. This proved to be a very good match. The Angus family now became interlocked with the Newton family. The Newton family appears to have started the system of sending their children to Newcastle as apprentices. This scheme was later adopted very successfully by the Angus family. It seems to have started about 1621 (29) when Richard Newton was apprenticed to William Killingworth of Newcastle who was a mercer. Richard’s father Mathew sent three of his sons, Richard, Francis and Mathew to be apprenticed in Newcastle between 1621 and 1626. The Angus family seem to have adopted the same plan a bit later. William was born in 1622 and George in 1635. If the apprenticeships started when the boys were about 15, they would have been apprenticed about 1637 and 1650. The price of the apprenticeship seems to have been somewhere between £50 and £200.
A list of the activities involved in setting up apprenticeships is found in the article below.
The Merchant Community in Newcastle on Tyne 1660-1750
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13021/1/l_robinson_thesis.pdf?DDD17
The Newton family had another scheme that was also well ahead of its time. The first time anyone in my family went to University was in the late 20th Century. The Newton family started in 1673 when Jonathon Newton graduated from Baliol College, Oxford (29). It appears that this was a result of the efforts of his father Mathew. His third son, also Mathew Newton, gained an apprenticeship. This Mathew (the Younger) became a member of the Merchant’s Company of Newcastle in 1649. In due course his son also became a member in 1689 after graduating in Law.
The son of Jonathon, also called Jonathon, went to Queen’s College, Oxford and became a barrister in 1715 (29).
As the children of George and Alice grew up, they must have heard many times about the disastrous uprising organised by the Catholic Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland and the subsequent reluctant conversion to Anglicism demanded by Queen Elizabeth. The 600 or so deaths in nearby Durham after the Rebellion of 1569 would also have been known to them. Both the Newton and the Angus families had been in the Rebellion. The Newton family had also leased farms in 1566 from the Earl of Westmorland as well as Alexander Angus (30). Both Robert and Cuthbert Newton had farms at Ridley in 1566.
The Interregnum
The Interregnum was the period of time from 1649, the execution of Charles I, till 1660 the restoration of Charles II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregnum_(England)
On the 14th of May 1653 Henry and Mary Angus decided to change their religious affiliation. They became Baptists.
They chose a time during the Interregnum when “new” religions were being established and receiving popular support. They had lived through the Civil War. The king had been executed. Parliament, the army, Cromwell and the Puritans had all won. The Angus family must have thought that the New Regime (the Interregnum) was the future. Just two months after the conversion of Henry and Mary a new Parliament in London was set up. This consisted of the various religious groups that had been victorious in the Civil War. The Parliament of the Saints as it was called only existed from July 1653 till December 1653. In fact, it was only seven years later, after the death of Cromwell in 1658, that Charles II would be restored to the throne in 1660.
The Civil War produced great changes all over the country. The North East of England had been occupied by the Scottish Army for long periods of time (31). At first the area had been Royalist but this changed as the war progressed. (See article below). During the war and after, there was a great increase in what were called dissenters or nonconformists. There was a brief period during the Interregnum when there was full religious liberty (except for Catholics) and there were a wide variety of sects that took advantage of this freedom. I think the Angus family and the Newtons were part of this process.
When Henry and Mary became Baptists, the Civil Wars had only recently finished. The army at this time was largely made up of Baptists. The Commonwealth of Cromwell was welcomed by the Baptists and vice versa. The first Baptist Church in Newcastle was set up between 1647 and 1652 when Cromwell’s’ army occupied the city. Cromwell himself died in 1658. This was a period when many religious and political changes were taking place.
The article below looks at the involvement of Northumberland in the Civil Wars
https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/northumberland-in-the-british-civil-wars/
When members of a family change their religious allegiance, this sometimes causes problems, which can go on for years. I suspect that in the case of the Angus family, the conversion of Henry and Mary from Anglicanism to the Baptist faith, was not bitterly opposed nor caused severe family problems. Other members of the family remained Anglican. One example was Ralph Angus who was Anglican until his death in 1691 (23). The religious conversions were part of a process that was going on all over the country. Henry and Mary were the first of many
Baptists in the Angus family. They were also among the first of many nonconformists in the North East of England.