Whalton and its Vicinity, by the Rev. J. E. Elliot. 239 



to have been actuated by any bitterness against the Presby- 

 terians, which his long incarceration at their hands might 

 naturally have engendered. His zeal seems rather to have 

 taken an opposite direction ; for rinding, as he says, on his 

 return that " the Romanists had grown more insolently active 

 to bring more grist to their own mill, and list more men in 

 the Pope's service not only by printed books but also by 

 private letters and MSS.," he set himself " to lend his poor 

 endeavours in scouring these northern coasts of those Popish 

 pirates who count all fish that comes to the net." Accord- 

 ingly, he not only published sermons but also wrote a learned 

 work called the " Origo Protestantium," demonstrating Pro- 

 testantcy to be older than Popery ; a piece of learned contro- 

 versy on matters of dispute between the Churches of England 

 and Rome. This was at the time so highly esteemed that the 

 Corporation of Newcastle published it at their own expense, 

 19th December, 1674. Meantime, his opponent, Mr Wicliffe, 

 on his retirement from Whalton, occupied himself in teaching 

 a school, and preaching to a small congregation of Noncon- 

 formists. But he found little comfort or encouragement in 

 this vocation. A Mr Fenwicke, a friend of Mr WiclifTe's, a 

 gentleman of good estate and character, drew up a case of his 

 peculiar discouragements; in which he says, "It was a cause 

 of no small sorrow to him to observe such fickleness and itch- 

 ing humour in some old professors, that if a stranger (a young 

 raw Scotchman) should come and say he was a minister, away 

 some of them would run, by his door, perhaps three or four 

 miles, notwithstanding the hazard he had run by entertaining 

 them in dangerous times." 



The encouragement which the Presbyterian forms of wor- 

 ship had received in the time of the Commonwealth, had 

 caused it to be pretty generally diffused over the northern 

 counties. There were chapels andmeetinghouses at Middleton, 

 Milbourne, Belsay, and Kirkley ; and we have reason to 

 believe that these different congregations maintained a close 

 correspondence with the Scottish Covenanters, and, in part, 

 at least, adopted their extreme views. Some of them objected 

 to the use of the ritual for the burial of the dead, and choose 

 rather to be interred in unconsecrated ground. In 1784, Mr 

 Horseley, an ancestor of the present Lord Decies, directed his 

 body to be buried in his own orchard at Milbourne Grange, 

 and the enclosure where it lies still remains. One of the 



