SALFORD HUNDRED 



MANCHESTER 



Barton," and though the son afterwards disinherited 

 the children of this marriage, the TrafFord share of 

 the Barton estates has descended like TrafFord to the 

 issue of a second marriage — with Mildred daughter 

 of Thomas Cecil, first Earl of Exeter." 



Cecil TrafFord, the eldest son of this union, was 

 made a knight at Hoghton Tower in 1 6 1 7.°* He 

 was at first, like his grandfather, a Protestant and a 

 persecutor, but afterwards, about 1632, embraced the 

 faith he had attempted to destroy." In 1638, ac- 

 cordingly, the king seized a third of his estates 

 and granted them on lease to farmers." Siding with 

 the king on the outbreak of the Civil War, he was 

 seized and imprisoned by the other party and his 

 estates were sequestered." His sons appear to have 

 gone abroad, as they are mentioned as present at Rome 

 and Douay.'* In 1653 Sir Cecil begged leave to 

 contract under the Recusants Act for the sequestered 

 two-thirds of his estates." 



Sir Cecil died in 1672,'° his eldest son Edmund" 

 died twenty years later, and was followed by a brother 

 Humphrey, who was accused of participation in the 



fictitious plot of 1 694,*' and sympathized with the 

 rising of 171 5.*' He was succeeded by his son " and 

 grandson, each named Humphrey. The last of these 

 died in 1779 and left Trafford to his relative John 

 TrafFord of Croston,'" who died in 18 15. During 

 this time, owing to the laws concerning religion all 

 public employments had been closed against the 

 TrafFords, who had therefore to dwell quietly on their 

 estates. John TrafFord, indeed, raised a troop of 

 volunteers in 1 804 ; ^ and his son Thomas Joseph, 

 high sherifFin 1834, was created a baronet in 1841, 

 at which time he altered the surname to De TrafFord. 

 Dying in 1852 he was succeeded by his son. Sir 

 Humphrey de TrafFord, who in turn was in 1886 

 succeeded by his son Sir Humphrey Francis de Traf- 

 ford, the present lord of TrafFord and Stretford, 

 twenty-fourth in descent from the Ranulf or Randle 

 who heads the pedigree. 



The Turf Moss estate and Longford House be- 

 longed to the Mosleys.*' The latter was acquired by 

 the Walkers,™ and in 1855 was purchased by John 

 Rylands, who rebuilt the house. He is commemo- 



rigorouBly ; CaL S.P* Dom. 1547-80, p. 

 656. 



The rhetorical account of his persecu- 

 tion of the Aliens in 1584 in Bridge- 

 water's Concertath reads thus : ' The 

 furious hate of this inhuman wretch was 

 all the more fiercely stirred by the fact 

 that he saw offered to him such a pros- 

 pect of increasing his slender means out of 

 the property of Catholics and of adorning 

 his house with various articles of furni- 

 ture filched from their houses. For 

 though as far as his own fortune went he 

 could scarcely be called a gentleman, still 

 with other people's gold, no matter how 

 wrongfully come by, he might rightly be 

 called and accounted a knight ' ; Gillow, 

 Haydock Papers, 31. This may be bal- 

 anced by the equally rhetorical eulogium 

 of his chaplain, William Massie, who in 

 1586 addressed him as 'a principal pro- 

 tector of God's truth and a great counte- 

 nance and credit to the preachers thereof 

 in those quarters,' who had ' hunted out 

 and unkenneled those sly and subtle foxes 

 the Jesuits and Seminary priests out of 

 their cells and caves to the uttermost of 

 his power, with the great illwill of many 

 both open and private enemies to the 

 prince and the church.' He also says that 

 Sir Edmund had 'maintained still his 

 house with great hospitality, in no point 

 diminishing the glory of his worthy pre- 

 decessors, but rather adding to it ' ; quoted 

 by Crofton, op. cit. iii, 123. His portrait 

 is given ibid. 1Z9. 



S" Ibid, iii, 13 1-3, 265-72 ; the mar- 

 riage led to many disputes and appears to 

 have been unhappy. The parties separ- 

 ated before 1592. 



™ This apparently unjust disinheriting 

 of the elder children was naturally re- 

 lented, and in 1620 the Earl of Exeter 

 wrote to the Council stating that he 

 feared the machinations of the elder bro- 

 thers against Sir Cecil, and begging that 

 they might be ordered to abstain from 

 violence, and that a competent guard might 

 be placed in the chief manor-house ; CaL 

 S.P. Don. 1619-23, p. 146. A settle- 

 -ment of the manors was made in 1622 by 

 Sir Cecil Trafford, acting with Edmund, 

 John, and Richard Trafford ; Pal. of Lane. 

 Feet of F. bdle. 100, no. 22. 



" Metcalfe, op. cit. 171. 



" Crofton, op. cit. iii, 136-7. Hollin- 



worth states that in 1632 Daniel Baker, 

 rector of Ashton on Mersey and fellow of 

 the College, having on Good Friday ad- 

 ministered the Lord's Supper and being (as 

 it was feared) somewhat overcharged with 

 drink in Salford, was found dead in the 

 morning in the water under Salford 

 Bridge, no one knowing how he came 

 there ; Dr. Butts, Vice-chancellor of 

 Cambridge, hanged himself on Easter Day 

 afterwards ; and some other ministers and 

 eminent professors came that year to an 

 untimely end ; and that these facts, to- 

 gether with a dispute between two of the 

 fellows of the College as to the nature of 

 sin, * seemed to the papists, especially to 

 those that were then newly revolted to 

 them, as Sir Cecil Trafford of Trafford, 

 knight, and Francis Downes of Wardley, 

 esq. and others, signal evidences of God's 

 anger and wrath and presages of the ruin 

 of the Reformed religion ' ; Maticunicitsis, 

 1 1 5-6. 



'' Crofton, op. cit. iii, 276 ; the lessees 

 paid ;^2oo fine and ^^80 rent. There is 

 a reference to the matter in Cal. S.P. Dom, 

 1648-9, p. 407. 



^^ Crofton, op. cit. iii, 138-9 ; Ci-vil 

 H^ar Tract! (Chet. Soc), 39, 62, 65 

 (where he is styled * that Arch-papist '). 



'8 Foley, Rec. S. J. vi, 626 ; Douay 

 Diaries, 81—2. 



*3 Cal. of Com, for Compounding, iv, 2865. 

 A settlement or mortgage of the manors 

 was made in 1654 by Sir Cecil Trafford, 

 acting with Edmund, his son and heir ap- 

 parent ; Richard Haworth was plaintiff ; 

 Pal. of Lane. Feet of F. bdle. 156, m. 

 194. 



A pedigree was recorded in 1665 ; Dug- 

 dale, Visit. (Chet. Soc), 315-8. 



'" The remainder of this account of the 

 family is taken from Mr. Crofton's worlc, 

 iii, 141-51, where details and portraits 

 will be found. There is a full pedigree in 

 Piccope's MS. Pedigrees (Chet. Lib.), i, 

 303. 



The arms, crest, and motto of the 

 family are discussed by Crofton, iii, 90-4. 



'1 Edmund Trafford and Frances his 

 wife were convicted recusants in 1678 ; 

 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiv, App. iv, 1 10. 



^' About this time Sir John Bland com- 

 plained that the Commissioners for assess- 

 ments were not acting rightly, because 

 they did not assess the tenants of ' Papists ' 



333 



double ; * and for Mr. Trafford's estate it 

 is all assessed single, they pretending the 

 estate is not in him, because of the statute 

 of Bankruptcy ' ; ibid. 289. 



^3 He was buried at Manchester on 

 15 Nov. 1716, being about eighty-eight 

 years old, 



^* A settlement or mortgage of the 

 manors of Trafford, Stretford, Barton, and 

 Whittleswick, with messuages, lands, &c. 

 was in 17 18 made by Humphrey Trafford 

 and Anne his wife ; Pal. of Lane. Feet of 

 F. bdle. 282, m. 99. John Mead was the 

 plaintiff. 



Humphrey TrafFord in 1779 paid the 

 ancient rent of ^s, for * Stretford,' due to 

 the lord of Salford ; Duchy of Lane . Ren- 

 tals, 14/25. 



®s Crofton, op. cit. iii, 147. John 

 TrafFord was son of Humphrey son of 

 John son of John son of Sir Cecil Traf- 

 ford. In 1793 a private Act was obtained 

 enabling John TrafFord and others to grant 

 leases of the estates devised by the will of 

 Humphrey TrafFord for building, also to 

 grant leases of certain waste moss lands ; 

 33 Geo. Ill, cap. 58. 



^^ Crofton, op. cit. iii, 215. Thirteen 

 Stretford men were among the Manches- 

 ter Yeomanry who charged the crowd at 

 *Peterloo' in 1819. 



^7 Roland Mosley of Hough End died 

 in 1 61 7 holding a capital messuage called 

 Turf Moss, with lands belonging to the 

 same in Stretford and Chorlton with 

 Hardy ; * the heirs of Hamon de Mascy ' 

 were the chief lords ; Lanes. Inq. p.m. 

 (Rec. Soc. Lanes, and Ches.), ii, 66, 69. 

 This had probably been purchased from 

 the Lovells, who had bought from the 

 TrafFords. Detailed accounts of the estates 

 will be found in Mr. Crofton's work, iii, 



70* 79- 



68 Ibid. 84. Thomas Walker of Man- 

 chester, a noted Reformer, who had lived 

 at Barlow Hall, purchased Longford, and 

 died in 1817. One of his sons, also 

 Thomas, bom at Barlow in 1784, was 

 known in Stretford and in London as a 

 philanthropist ; he published a weekly 

 scries of essays called The Original. He 

 died in 1836, and there is an account of 

 of him in Diet. Nat. Biog. Charles James 

 Stanley Walker, another son of the elder 

 Thomas, sold Longford in 1855. 



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