94 History of the 



In the person of its Greave, Rossendale had a veritable exis- 

 tence in the days of Guy Fawkes and the " Gunpowder Plot ;" 

 and in all likelihood the balls of the New Church, by order of the 

 Greave, swelled the rejoicings of the people on the discovery of 

 the " hellish conspiracy." 



I know not how it may be with others, but I confess to experi- 

 encing a feeling akin to reverential awe, in reading over the names 

 of those of the district who flourished in the troublous times of the 

 great Revolution in the days of Charles I., that poor, deluded, and 

 unfortunate monarch, the victim of his own and his father's belief 

 in the "divine right of kings" — their right to do wrong — to disa- 

 buse his mind of which false notion the harshest of arguments was 

 used in the end. 



How much it is to be regretted that no local chronicler took the 

 pains to register the events of the time, as they affected the 

 district in which we live ; so that we might now have known 

 whether the inhabitants as a whole continued loyal to their unfor- 

 tunate sovereign ; or whether, preferring to obey the laws of their 

 country, rather than yield an unquestioning obedience to the hallu- 

 cinations of royalty, they approved of the rough, but effectual 

 measures adopted by Cromwell and his compatriots for the purifi- 

 cation of the state. 



But, indeed, there can be little doubt that during the civil war 

 the inhabitants of Rossendale were, as a rule, favourable to the 

 Parliament, and opposed to the king. In the following account, 

 by an eye-witness, of a skirmish which took place at Leigh and 

 Loaton Common, between the Earl of Derby's troops and the 

 country people, the writer refers to the " sturdy churls " of the two 

 Forests — Pendle and Rossendale, and the part which they bore in 

 strife : — 



" The last Sabbath, as we were going towards the church, a post 

 rode through the country informing us that the earl's troops were 

 coming towards Chowbent ; whereupon the country people rose, 

 and before one of the clock on that day we had gathered together 

 3000 horse and foot, encountering them at Chowbent aforesaid. 



