A Church History of Killington and Firbank
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The text below is taken from a church booklet written by Alwyne Amsden in 1989. We are grateful to Sedbergh & District History Society for preserving this booklet in their archives.
It is not known when a church was first established here. Both Killington and Firbank lay in the extensive parish of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland, and it may be that the earliest services held here were occasional ones, taken by a travelling preacher, sent by the ‘minster church’ at Kirkby Lonsdale.
This might, perhaps, be the origin of the Goodie Stone, which had crosses inscribed on it and which stood at the junction of the old Scotch Road and the highway from Sedbergh to Kendal, a stone now lost in the re-routing of the roads around the Motorway.
The Travelling Church
Before Henry VIll destroyed the Monasteries and their foundations, the inhabitants of Killington and Firbank jointly shared one chapel, which lay on the border between them, close to the ancient way over Shap to Scotland. This joint use was to lead to much contention over ownership after the Reformation. That chapel, which possibly belonged to Cockersand Abbey, had a church living of £12. Killington paying £9.6.8 of it and Firbank the rest, which might suggest that Firbank's population was only a third of Killington's. (By the 18th. Cent. Firbank’s share had increased to just over half; and by 1835 they paid £68 against Killington's £75. This may reflect a later land clearance in Firbank than Killington, with an increasing population as new fields were brought into use.)
At what date the monastic chapel was founded we can only guess, but an Adam de Killington, a priest, took seisen of Killington in the early 13th. Cent. He may have been a hereditary priest, like the de Kirkbys of Kirkby Lonsdale. He was outlawed for some unknown crime and never heard of again. Since being outlawed included having to leave England for ever, within forty days, it is unlikely that his was one of the ancient tombstones ploughed up and removed from the old graveyard in the chapel garth around 1850.
By the end of 1540 no monastic foundations were left in Cumbria. After their foundations were dissolved, former monks lived on small annuities and whatever positions they could find, and it is probably one of these former monks that James Wilson of Bendrigg, Killington, refers to, when he names "Sr (Dominus) William Dykonson" as "our Curate" in 1582. Perhaps he may have been a young priest at our chapel, before Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of the monastic foundations.
From the Rushbearing which anciently took place on Whit Sunday, we may presume that this chapel was called St. Martin's. In the 16th. cent. it became the cause of little short of war breaking out between Killington and Firbank.
By 1585, everyone, except the old and the sick, had by law, to attend their parish church every Sunday. Non-attendance being punished quite severely. This law caused difficulties for Killington and Firbank, as some inhabitants lived up to ten miles from their parish church at Kirkby Lonsdale. Travel to their weekly service, or to a marriage, a funeral, a baptism or a churching, meant embarking on a journey that was awkward, inconvenient, difficult and if in storm, flood or ice, downright dangerous.
Therefore in it was petitioned to Bishop Chadderton that the already consecrated private chapel at Killington Hall (formerly belonging to the Pickering family), be licensed for their worship. This was so granted.
In the tiny Pickering private chapel by Killington Hall, the Rushbearing had formerly taken place on St. James's Day (25th. July), so it is likely that it was at this time that the chapel was renamed 'All Saints', which name it bears today.
This new venue presumably was a great improvement, but it must have been dreadfully overcrowded; with the Firbank families possibly getting squashed most, as the chapel was now clearly in the centre of Killington. To Firbank it must have seemed idiotic to have a consecrated building standing empty just over their border and one which for time immemorial had been their very own. Like Killington, Firbank should have it's own chapel!
Not expecting a refusal, Firbank asked Killington if they would object if Firbank applied to have the old chapel near Priestfield re-licensed? ‘Not at all’, replied Killington, ‘we will be happy to see Firbank with it's own place of worship, and after all the chapel half belongs to Firbank anyway. We will gladly give Firbank the Killington half-share of the building. But, of course, there will be a charge for the land it stands on’.
Firbank was outraged. They pointed out that if that was to be the tack, then Killington must owe them a tidy sum of rent for the use of Firbank's half of the building for the last 400 years. However Firbank would charitably overlook this unpaid debt, if Killington made over to Firbank, the land on which the chapel stood.
Battle commenced, tempers flared. There was much dispute and argument when local people met. The locals took sides and everyone had their own idea of how the dispute should properly be settled. Then Firbank claimed the land the old chapel stood on, saying the land fell within the Firbank border. This claim Killington most indignantly denied, but had no deeds to prove it. Things might have slid into a minor civil war, if Firbank had not taken matters into their own hands and cut the Gordian knot.
United by their strength of purpose and tenacity, the Firbank inhabitants met together. And with great care and secrecy they planned a remarkable enterprise - they would steal the chapel from the Killington land and re-erect it on Firbank soil. Since Killington would hardly stand by and watch them remove it in broad daylight, it must be taken in the dead of night.
A truly remarkable resolution showing great courage for the 16th. cent., when superstition, fear of the supernatural and of the powers of darkness were rife; and conceived in an age of rush dips, when few people even owned candles. How it was master-minded it we do not know, but it must have been worked out in great detail.
In darkness and stealth, and no doubt, trembling with fear and excitement, folk made their way to the old chapel, carrying ladders, with baskets for moving small stones. Some well-off farmer carefully brought his creaking ox-cart. In pre-arranged groups the people began dismantling the building, stone by stone. With the help of the ox-cart, this midnight harvest was brought home. Carried down across the fields, along the lanes and up the long hill onto Firbank Knott, where the stones were off-loaded and the work of rebuilding the chapel begun.
By morning, high on windy Firbank Knott, the little church stood roofed and complete, to the admiration and relief of it's tired builders.
Killington awoke to fury, but, unable to prove which bits of the chapel were really theirs, accepted the situation. Some were probably relieved, but others with bad grace, as for miles round Sedbergh, Killington would certainly have been the butt for jokes about stolen churches and property for a very, very, long time.
St. Martin's Chapel, Firbank
The little church prospered on Firbank Knott, gaining a small school in its tiny churchyard. Here George Sedgewick, (1618–1685), born at Capplethwaite, Killington, began his education. One that led him via Sedbergh School, to the Court of Charles I, just before the start of the Civil War that was to lose Charles I his head.
After taking his Degree at St. John's College, Cambridge, George's father took him to the Court at Whitehall, where he became, first, a clerk to Lord Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and later, secretary to Lord Pembroke's wife, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Westmorland.
But Firbank chapel's greatest claim to glory has to be the visit of George Fox in 1652. Other local Quakers had preached there in the morning and word had spread (for it was the time of the Whitsun Hiring Fair at Sedbergh) that George Fox would preach in the chapel that afternoon. As Fox waited, seated on the rock by the chapel, he saw "a great multitude dressed in white (the common unbleached garments of the day ), coming towards him - which broke a dream he had had some nights before. That afternoon he preached from the rock, known now as ‘Fox’s Pulpit’, to a thousand people gathered before him.
As Fox spoke he could see, inside the chapel, some old Firbank women, dressed in black, peering at him through the window, though they could not possibly hear him. Were they saying, in the old, indomitable, Firbank spirit, “Well, I'll na shift, tha said he’d speak in tha chapel and tha’s where I be and tha’s where I’m stayin“.
St. Martin's chapel remained on windy Firbank Knott, until finally a huge gale in 1839 blew the roof off the chapel. It was time to move again, this time eastwards, over and down the hill to a new site. Today, the church built in 1842, enlarged and re-christened with the name of ‘St. Johns’s’, is a charming, friendly little church, showing no sign of it's turbulent history.
Did the feud between Killington and Firbank linger on? Perhaps. In his book ‘A Short Economic and Social History of the Lake Counties 1500–1830’, C. M. L. Bouch quotes a court case of 1742, which shows that Firbank's inhabitants could be just as strong-willed as their ancestors. In this case, Killington complained to the Justices that a Firbank man, Robert Davis, with two infant children, had come to live in Killington without a legal settlement. Killington feared the family might become a charge on the Township. The Justices agreed with Killington and ordered Davis and his family back to Firbank. But the Firbank overseers disagreed with this and appealed against the Justices's decision. It was agreed to refer the matter to the Assizes, the loser to pay the costs. Firbank lost. So costs of £22.12.10. were awarded against them. Which they, “being persons of wicked minds and of perverse and obstinate tempers and dispositions, and having no respect for the Justices or the Law”, refused to pay. Obdurate as ever, by September 1743 they still had not paid over the money.
All Saints’, Killington
That first squabble with Firbank in the 16th. cent., was not the only time that Killington lost some of its church property. At some point in time, their 1481 font found it's way across the River Lune to a farm ‘The Oaks’, in Marthwaite, Sedbergh, where it was in use as a water trough. How it arrived there is a mystery. Possibly it was thrown out at, or near, the end of the 17th. cent., when the 14th. cent. south wall was taken down and the church enlarged with a new west wall. The tower, which was added on somewhere around 1700, holds the re-set medieval Holy Water stoup. The two bells by Abraham Rudhall, are dated 1711, and the wooden font is probably early 18th. cent. These dates would fit together quite nicely, as I am informed that there is an entry in the Kirkby Lonsdale church records of 1686, stating, “Received for Ye Old Font Stone: 0.0s.6d." But whenever, and however, it arrived at Kirkby Lonsdale Church, it has stayed there as their font, ever since. But a warm welcome still awaits it at home.
In 1259, the manor of Killington was granted by Peter de Brus Ill to Sir William de Pickering (d. c. 1277), who was his Master of the Household and was also the Constable of Kendal Castle. The Pickerings were probably a cadet branch of the de Brus. An Adam de Brus was the brother and heir of a William de Pickering around the year 1300.
The Pickerings held Killington for over 300 years, often producing sons who held high office. Sir William's son, Sir Thomas de Pickering (d. c. 1340), was one of Edward Il's Special Knights and was also twice elected as Knight for Westmorland. He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Thomas, 8th. Baron Greystoke of Greystoke.
His grandson, Sir James de Pickering of Killington (d. c. 1400), was Sheriff of Westmorland twice, and M.P. four times, as well as M.P. for Yorkshire five times (The Pickerings also held Ellerton, Yorks.). Sir James was also the very first Speaker for the House of Commons (at the Gloucester Parliament in 1378), where he expressed his astonishment at the Crown's poverty, after the big subsidy of the previous year, and refused Richard Il's request for more money (Possibly he had knowledge that the Royal Jewels had just been privately sold for £4,000.). Sir James was sent to Ireland as the Chief Justicar for Ireland. There he laid down the Irish Legal Code, still followed to this day, I believe. In Ireland Sir James blotted his reputation. This was not for taking bribes to bring on cases awaiting trial (that was common practice), but for taking the bribes and not delivering. Instead, he left the accused Irish to languish untried in prison where they died, which was considered unsporting. Back in England he was brought before the House for it and was lucky not to lose his head. Later, he arranged the kidnapping of a young widow. None of this seemed to damage his career.
It is most probably this Sir James who built Killington Hall, of which only the ruined south cross-wing of the hall now remains, and also the private chapel, St. James’, (now ‘All Saints’ Church), perhaps naming it for his patron saint. Was Sir James born on St. James's Day, July 25th.?
In the middle window of the north wall of 'All Saints' is the Pickering coat of arms, the glass is 14th. or 15th. cent. In 1692 that shield was reported by Machel to be in the first light of the East window. Can we conjecture that in the middle light of that same East window was depicted St. James?
Later descendants also led colourful lives. Sir James Pickering (1413-1460/1), was a member of the retinue of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, during the Wars of the Roses. He died beside him in the Duke's heroic, but futile, bid to save a small troop of his men from a massive attack by the enemy forces of Margaret, Henry VI's Queen, at the battle of Wakefield, in 1460/1. After the battle, Queen Margaret had the Duke's head, crowned with a paper crown, stuck up on one of the four gates of York. On the other three gates of York, she put up the heads of those closest to the Duke and who had died with him – Sir James Pickering's head was one of these. ( Shakespeare uses this scene in 'Henry VI, Pt. 3'.)
Sir James's son, another Sir James, (b. 1454–1498), married a great heiress, Anne, daughter of Sir Christopher Moresby of Moresby. It is most likely that it would be this Sir James Pickering, who installed the 1481 font at Killington (now in use at Kirkby Lonsdale Church).
Sir James's eldest son, Sir Christopher Pickering (1485–1517), captained a contingent of Yorkshire men at Flodden Field in 1513. Since the Pickerings also held Barbon and part of the Lordship of Sedbergh, this contingent probably included many local men. They and Sir Christopher fought well and he was rewarded with knighthood after the battle.
Sir Christopher married Jane, daughter of Sir Roger Lewknor of Bodiam Castle, Sussex. As a widow, Jane remarried Sir William Barentyne in 1532. Strangely, her three, orphaned, infant half-sisters were given in wardship to Sir Henry Knevet in 1546, second husband of Sir Christopher's daughter, Anne Pickering. So Anne was foster-mother to three of her own aunts. Anne herself never knew her own father, he died two weeks after she was born. He is buried at Penrith.
As Sir Christopher's sole heir, Anne (1517–1582), was warded to Sir Richard Weston of Sutton Place, Surrey, where he entertained Henry VIII. His son, Sir Francis Weston, was the first of her three husbands. Both Anne and her husband were at Court, where her husband frequently beat Henry VIII at tennis, which they played for money.
Anne and Anne Boleyn were both Maids of Honour to Henry's Queen, Catherine of Aragon. There they wrote a ‘thank you’ letter together to Henry VIII for an outing that he gave them, to see his warship the ‘Great Harry’. When Henry VIII tired of Anne Boleyn, Sir Francis Weston was one of those beheaded by him for misconduct with her. This was a frame-up, as Sir Francis was actually elsewhere at the time. Perhaps beating Henry VIII at tennis was a loser's game.
However difficult it may have been, Dame Anne and her children stayed Roman Catholics, as did the rest of the Pickering family, and married into other papist families.
Anne married as her second husband, Sir Henry Knevet of Charlton, Wilts. He was also a Gentleman at the Court. After his death she took as her last husband, John Vaughan of Sutton upon Derwent, Yorks. High Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1559. It was the son of this marriage, Francis Vaughan, who sold Killington to the tenants in 1584–5. Like his father, he was also High Sheriff of Yorkshire. Sadly, like so many in this century, he died in the troubles in Ireland. Whilst riding with the forces of the Earl of Essex, he was slain in ambush at the River Blackwater in 1597.
All of Anne's children married well, and three of her Knevet grand-daughters made spectacular marriages. Katherine marrying Thomas Howard, the Earl of Suffolk; Elizabeth, the Earl of Lincoln and Frances, the Earl of Rutland.
However several of her granddaughters caused great scandal at Court with their promiscuous behaviour. Katherine who had remarkable beauty, was a spy for Spain, taking a pension of a £1,000 a year from them in return for information, an employment her husband had refused. Their daughter, Lady Frances Howard, who was wife to (1) the Earl of Essex and (2) the Earl of Somerset, went to the Tower for murder.
For lack of space we must leave the Pickerings here, saying only, that Dame Anne bought Killington from her uncle, James Pickering of Crosby Ravensworth, thus breaking the male entail. Which is how she came to leave Killington to her youngest son, Francis Vaughan. When she died in 1582, Dame Anne asked that she should be buried as near as possible to her foster father, Sir Richard Weston, in the Weston chantry in Trinity Church, Guildford, Surrey. Clearly she missed none so much, as the man who had fathered her from babyhood.
Richard Leake (1568–1644/5) and the Plague Sermons (1599)
By 1597, not so very long after Anne died, there came to Killington a new minister, born twenty years before the Spanish Armada sailed and now twenty eight years old. He was the son of Christopher Leake of Dent, and educated at Sedbergh School, under Mr. Mayer, and had received his B.A. at St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge four years earlier.
In the North, plague had broken out spasmodically throughout the nineties. In 1598, during Leake' s ministry at Killington, a fresh and even more virulent outbreak of bubonic plague, ravaged the region. Known locally as' The Pestilence', it is reported to have killed some two and a half thousand people in the Barony of Kendal alone – possibly something like half the population died in the outbreak. But due to some unknown factor, Killington escaped this plague, though the pestilence raged all around it.
In Killington church, immediately after this deliverance, Richard Leake preached four sermons. Everyone in Killington would have heard them, for in those days attending Anglican Church service was made compulsory as a sign of loyalty. Those who did not attend ran the risk, a deadly one, of being accused 'Traitor', and were always fined.
These sermons Leake later published, three copies of which survive – one in the Bodleian Library, one in the Cambridge University Library and one in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, U.S. A. (A detailed article on the sermons written by Edw. M. Wilson appears in C. W. 2, Vol. LXXV (75). )
In his sermons, Leake gives us a unique and unforgettable picture of Sunday in Killington in 1598. Writing with fire and brimstone and more than a whiff of hellfire, he exhorts the inhabitants to show gratitude for their deliverance from the plague and God's forbearance towards them by giving up their present disgusting ways, ways which he describes to them with no holds barred.
And it is in this description, that we see the evolution of the inhabitants, moving from their medieval past, still trying to carry out many of their manorial customs. Using their church service, even during the raising of the Host and the Communion, as once they had used their manorial court.
We see people busy collecting tithes and taxes; the churchwardens collecting the fees for baptisms and funerals as well as fines from people who were wearing unlawful headgear on Sunday; then paying out for the smelly heads of the vermin brought to church for counting; deciding on the date the grazing animals should be shut out of the common pasture; settling neighbourly disputes etc., etc.
Over the noise of it all, poor Richard Leake is struggling to make himself heard, with each communicant making a dash for the door after receiving the Host, only to disappear into the ale-house, for a much-desired jar. There a row over some village business, a land sale, or a lease, could degenerate into a brawl, or some idiot drinks too much and throws up.
For this behaviour Leake rebukes the people of Killington in strong terms. But Leake is upset over much more than this. The nature of his complaints suggest that he is ignorant, or at least unsympathetic, to local ways and customs. Which is perhaps surprising in a man born and bred in Dentdale. Testing out a woman's fertility before marriage was a common practice and very important. Children were a vital standby in old age before the time of state pensions. He accuses the people of dispensing with justice, but they presumably had time-honoured rules and preferred to dispense their own rough justice accordingly. He also accuses them of resorting to witches and sorcerers, raising up spirits when in trouble and using enchantment for finding lost things. All of which was not unusual among the common people of the 16th. cent., especially in a time of plague.
They are castigated for ‘whoreing’; for engaging in unlawful pastimes on the Sabbath; for "murmuring against the magistrates" and "ministers"; for making unlawful marriages (there were several Papist families in Killington) and for drinking too much. Not unfamilar problems today. But never found in Killington, of course.
One has much sympathy with Richard Leake. Let us leave him describing life in Killington after the Pestilence had passed by them: “then might be heard amongst us, mirth instead of mourning, songs instead of doleful sighings; gladsome salutations in meetings – ”.
Killington versus the Quakers
After the visit of George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, to the Sedbergh area in 1652, the Quakers gained considerable numbers of converts locally. Meetings were held secretly in each other's homes or barns, to escape the severe persecution of the law, which included imprisonment, and the distraint of goods, working tools and provisions.
In Killington there were a high proportion of leading Quaker families, which included the Hodgsons of Hallbeck, the Alexanders and the Storeys of Bendrigg, the Parrots of Grassrigg, (where the some Quakers married), and the most influential family of all, the Baines of Stangerthwaite. The Baines joined the Society after hearing Fox preach at Firbank in 1652. Their sons, William (d. 1712) and Joseph (d. 1714), helped to build the Brigg Flatts Meeting House in 1675. Joseph later became a travelling preacher. In 1706, after the Toleration Act of 1689 eased the burden of the worst of the persecution, Joseph licensed his house at Stangerthwaite as a Quaker Meeting House.
The Quakers refused to pay all church tithes and taxes for ministers' salaries. They asserted that these were purely voluntary and not payable in law. With such a high incidence of non-paying Quakers in Killington, the minister's salary began to look very thin indeed. One minister left a debt owed to him in this way, as a bequest in his will.
Feelings began to harden in Killington. Young George Harrison, the son of Mr. Henry Harrison of Killington, despite much opposition from his family, turned Quaker and became a travelling preacher. In 1656 when he was 26 years old, he was stoned to death by an Essex mob after preaching to them. In 1664 John Hodgson (d. 1697) of Hallbeck, was arrested with fifty other Quakers at a meeting and committed to York Prison. In 1675 John was imprisoned for non-payment of Easter Offerings, for thirteen weeks in Kendal Jail. And continual distraints were being made on Quakers's goods.
In Killington, the minister's purse grew thinner. A new man, John Wood, priest of Killington 1674–1675, determined to start as he meant to go on. He took the Killington Quakers to court. The case for his claim for wages was due to be heard at Richmond Court (the Diocesan Court was held at Richmond in the WR. of Yorks.) in 1675, but John Wood was taken ill and died prior to the hearing of his case. The Quakers were over the moon, saying it was "the judgement of God".
The incoming minister, William Sclater, made the best of a bad job. In Feb. 1679, he signed an indenture together with certain yeomen of Killington, who were governors of certain moneys given for the maintenance of a Preaching Minister at Killington. The total sum was £90, and with it they purchased a messuage and tenement with appurtances, and three closes belonging to it, called Sowerflatts, Browthwaite and Myer Close, each of approx. 2 acres (approx. 10 acres Modern), also a close called Lord's Holme of approx. 5 acres (approx. 8 acres Modern).
It took another seventeen years for a test case against the leading Killington Quakers to come before the Church Commissioners in 1696/7. And then it dragged on until 1701. The Commissioners agreed that the minister had a legal right to his wages and that the Quakers must pay. They appealed and the case went to the Court of Chancery, where the appeal was denied. Altogether it was a very messy business, with lots of Killingtonians giving evidence and saying derogatory things about the Killington Quakers, or how their aged father, dead nine years, had said " there'd always been a Chapel Salary."
The Killington Quakers wouldn't pay, they went on being fined and having their goods taken, right down to the year 1809.
Killington’s Millionaire
In 1743 a Dr. William Stratford LL. D. (1679–1753), bought a house at Hallbeck which he kept until he died. The son of a Northampton shoe maker, who died when Stratford was three, leaving a widow, three children and £300. Stratford went to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He afterwards entered the law, becoming secretary to the Bishop of Chester and was afterwards appointed Commissary of the Archdeaconry of Richmond. He amassed great wealth; it was recorded of him that he gave away £1,000 a year, a fantastic sum in those days. He had a house in Chester, another in Lancaster and a country house at Hallbeck. He painted miniatures, wore a diamond ring and a gold watch and had lots of silver including a silver writing desk. He collected many paintings, had a chaise and coachman and a chariot with a pair of horses. He kept a saddle horse at Hallbeck as well as a clock and many books.
When he died he left legacies of about £6,000 plus his houses and lands. He bequeathed £200 to Killington. He is buried in the chancel of Lancaster Church, on the north side of which is a monument with his arms.
The Killington Need-Fire
In November, 1840, there took place in Killington, an ancient ceremony that had much to do with magic and pagan superstition. This was the last time that the Need Fire was ever lit in Westmorland or, I believe, in England. In the previous year a bad cattle murrain, an attack of foot and mouth, had infested the county, causing great suffering to livestock and farmers. All efforts to conquer the outbreak had failed, so it was decided to turn to the ceremony of the Need Fire as a last resort.
This practice was thought to protect the cattle from the murrain. In it, cattle are driven repeatedly through fire and smoke until they are almost suffocated. This ceremony had to be carried out with strict accordance with certain precepts. First, the fire must be lit by friction. Then the wood must have never been in a house, as that would have totally destroyed it's power. It had to be lit in the open air and covered with damp straw and such materials, to make a thick smoke and then the cattle were driven through it again and again. When this had been done, a fast messenger took a brand from the fire, rushing quickly to the next farm with it.
The brand must not be allowed to go out, nor can it be re-lit. The next farm lit their fire with the brand, and carried out the same ritual of smoking their cattle. Then a fresh brand was lit and the fire carried on to it's way.
In 1840 the fire was lit at Killington and passed from hand to hand through all the county. On the 15th. November it was burning at Kirk Lane, Crosthwaite.
© Copyright Alwyne Amsden, 1989.