[Curated by Stephen Wilson for the C&DHI ‘Legends & Folklore’ Exhibition held on 16 April at The Lodge in Blackhill & Consett Park.]
The Radcliffe’s of Dilston Hall
The Radcliffe family, originally from Lancashire, acquired the manor of Dilston in Northumberland in the early sixteenth century through the marriage of Edward Radcliffe of Derwentwater in Cumberland to Anne Cartington, an heiress from Dilston.
Dilston
Sir Francis Radcliffe, 1st Baronet, was a noted Catholic recusant and arrested on suspicion of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. His son Edward, 2nd Baronet was a distinguished Royalist who suffered the confiscation of his estates during the English Civil War.
Sir Francis, 3rd Baronet, was the most ambitious of the Radcliffes. He retrieved the family estates and in 1688 was created Earl of Derwentwater by James ll, following the marriage of his son Edward to Lady Mary Tudor, a natural daughter of Charles ll by the actress Moll Davis. This prestigious marriage alliance with the ill-fated Stuarts proved to be the downfall of the Radcliffes, who after the Glorious Revolution were noted as being the most wealthy and powerful Jacobite family in the North of England.
When in 1709, James Radcliffe, the young 3rd Earl of Derwentwater returned from France to take up his family seat, he set about building a grand and stately mansion at Dilston that would rival the other early-eighteenth-century houses in the county.
James Dilston
Contemporary engravings show the imposing mansion set high above the Devil’s Water, with its formal flower gardens and orchards stretching down to the river.
There had been fountains and a forecourt paved in black-veined limestone, with steps leading up into a marble hall. Dilston Hall never reached completion, for at the outbreak of rebellion, work was suspended, never to be resumed. The impeachment of the Earl in 1716 resulted in the sequestration of the Derwentwater Estates and the demolition of Dilston Hall in 1768.
When the Earl’s son John Radcliffe, the titular 4th Earl, died in 1731 at the age of nineteen, the Government conferred the Derwentwater Estates upon Greenwich Hospital. The following year John’s sister, Anna Maria Barbara, married Robert James, 8th Lord Petre, of Ingatestone Hall in Essex. Anthony James Radcliffe, 4th Earl of Newburgh, of Slindon House in Sussex, who died in 1814, was a grandson of Charles Radcliffe, and the last direct male heir of the Radcliffes of Dilston. Most of the existing family portraits and relics were handed down within these two families, and some of these, including the clothes worn by the Earl of Derwentwater at his execution, are now on display at Ingatestone Hall near Chelmsford, which is open to the public.
Today, Dilston Castle is a picturesque ruin and all that remains of the grand family seat of the Radcliffes, Earls of Derwentwater. This ruined, early-fifteenth–century tower house was once incorporated in the western wing of Dilston Hall. Dilston Chapel, which stands nearby, was built c.1616 and is a rare example of a post-Reformation recusant chapel. At the foot of a wooded escarpment beyond the Castle, the Devil’s Water, a lively tributary of the River Tyne, flows beneath an elegant, single-span bridge, built at the same time as the chapel.
The Lord’s Bridge (as it is known) and the chapel are said to have been built with money originally raised for financing the Gunpowder Plot. In days gone by, an ancient deer park was sited on the land beyond the bridge, and the wooded bankside leading up to the castle was landscaped to create the picturesque riverside gardens of Dilston Hall. The site has a history that can be traced back to the twelfth century, when the ancient settlement of Dyvelston was established on the banks of the Devil’s Water, and an earlier mediaeval castle stood on the steep escarpment overlooking the river.
The Self-Styled Amelia Matilda Mary Tudor Radcliffe
Dilston Castle today
In 1868 a stranger arrived in the ruins of Dilston Castle in Northumberland. The unknown Countess of Derwentwater, clad in an Austrian military cloak, had arrived to enforce her right to the Radcliffe family’s Derwentwater Estate. She claimed to be the granddaughter of John Radcliffe, son of James Radcliffe, the 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, an English Jacobite executed for treason in 1716. The countess told authorities that John had not died at the age of nineteen in London as was thought, but had in fact fled to Germany where he had married and had two sons.
Amelia Matilda Mary Tudor Radcliffe presented herself as the only surviving heir to the estate. Amelia assumed the title Countess of Derwentwater soon after coming to public attention. She continued to use it despite having no right to do so, as it was not inheritable by a female line of decent.
Amelia Matilda Mary Tudor Radcliffe
Her occupancy of the ruins of Dilston Castle fuelled her public campaign to re-assert her personal claim to the estate. After the resident cows had been removed from the castle’s ground floor, the countess had tarpaulins stretched across the ceiling to cover the crumbling roof and hung Radcliffe family portraits on the walls to legitimise her presence. At this time the castle and the estate were owned by Greenwich Hospital, having been given to the hospital by the Government after the death of Amelia’s supposed grandfather John, the last heir to the estate.
House of Stuart
On hearing of Amelia’s residence in the ruins of the castle, the Receiver of Rents from Greenwich Hospital Mr Grey arrived to interview his unusual trespasser. In an attempt to maintain cordiality between them, Mr Grey had cooked breakfasts sent over to the countess. But following days of repeatedly requesting her to leave, he was left with little choice but to have the countess forcibly removed from the ruins of the castle. She did not make her ejection an easy one. Amelia declared that she would rather face death than leave Dilston and barricaded herself inside the castle. When Mr Grey’s men started to remove her belongings and the make-shift tarpaulin roof, the countess began thrusting her sword at them. She was quickly disarmed and carried out of the room on the chair from which she had refused to move.
Rather than accept this defeat, or the carriage that was offered to transport her to wherever she wished to go (presumably so long as it was away from Dilston), she instead chose to camp in a roadside ditch close to the ruins. Her temporary tent became a popular attraction for all classes of local society, those drawn to it ranging from the likes of the vicar of Newcastle and Northumberland gentry to villagers from the local pits. It was reported that the road adjoining the tent was sometimes impassable due to the crowd. After a week in her tent a wooden hut was erected for her use, which concerned the local magistrates as it obstructed the road. They fined the countess ten shillings and ordered her removal.
Roadside camp
She was as inclined to move from her ditch as she had been to leave the castle. The hut was soon dismantled around her and she eventually left with her belongings. Amelia was well-treated by residents around Dilston, even selling them personal items when she became short of money. Charles Herbert Lawrence Alder was sold a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in prison, a Waterford cut glass toilet jar with stopper and pieces of cut Rock Crystal.
Soon after her removal from the ditch a new phrase in the countess’s agitation began. The farm tenants on the Derwentwater estate, who paid their rents to the hospital, were encouraged to stop paying their rent to Mr Grey and start paying it to the countess, as the rightful owner of the estate. When rents were not paid to Amelia, one of her supporters rounded up the livestock from the farms and sold them at auction, with all profits going to the countess. Another farm auction for Amelia’s benefit, in which she intended to sell farm equipment and property, descended into a riot when two thousand of her sympathisers arrived at the sale. Despite the swell of public support that bolstered her cause when she first came to public attention, sympathies waned when it was found that Amelia refused to give a penny to support those who had been reprimanded or fined for their part in the auction. Innocent supporters were beginning to suffer for her cause.
Her public campaign had a financial impact too. In 1871 Newcastle County Court declared the Countess bankrupt and her possessions, which she claimed were Radcliffe family heirlooms, were put up for auction at Mr Sutton’s Sale Rooms in Newcastle. The sale attracted very little attention, partially due to Amelia’s dwindling popularity and the dilapidated and dubious condition of her belongings. Several bankruptcy examinations followed in which Amelia either refused to attend or refused to answer any questions. In 1872 she was imprisoned in Newcastle for contempt of court and in less than a year was released. In a wonderful act of consistency, the Countess of Derwentwater refused to leave her cell and had to be carried out of prison.
Amelia died in February 1880 aged 49 of bronchitis, still rallying against the authorities and claiming to be the rightful heir of the Derwentwater estate. She died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave in Blackhill Cemetery.
Northumbrian Jacobite Society
In 2012 the Northumbrian Jacobite Society erected a small plaque on her grave to recognise the final resting place of the eccentric and determined Countess. The real identity of Amelia has never been uncovered. Ralph Arnold, a biographer of the Radcliffe family, has suggested that Amelia was a schoolteacher from Yorkshire who was able to forge documents to support her claim in Latin and French and produce an imaged Radcliffe pedigree. Others have suggested that she may have been a governess in Germany to a noble family. Some have said that she was simply an emboldened West Country servant girl with knowledge of the Radcliffe family. Whoever she may have been, the story of the Countess of Derwentwater remains a fascinating mystery that continues to intrigue today.
Final resting place of the Countess of Derwentwater
What were the Jacobite Risings?
The First Jacobite Rebellion is usually considered the 1715 Rising, but in fact the whole movement can be traced back to the deposition of Catholic King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Worried about the possibility of a Catholic dynasty, British Protestants turned to James’ son-in-law William of Orange, who led a successful invasion of England. James panicked and fled to France, with the English Parliament replacing him with William and his wife Queen Mary, the Protestant daughter of James. James then tried to reclaim his throne, with what was effectively the first Jacobite rising in 1689.
This led to violence in Ireland, where James’ (largely Catholic) supporters were finally beaten at the Battle of the Boyne. In Scotland military conflict proved inconclusive, despite a victory at Killiecrankie,
Further challenges to the British throne were mounted in 1708, 1715 and 1719. Recognised as the first Jacobite rebellion, 1715 was like no other rising since Killiecrankie. It was the only occasion when a sizeable rebellion also broke out in England — in heavily Catholic Lancashire — but again ended in failure for the movement.
Upon the death of James II of England and VII of Scotland in 1701, the French king Louis XIV had recognised his son as James III and VIII, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. However, this was not a title King William acknowledged, and following the failure of the 1715 rebellion, James was obliged to leave France, settling in Rome in 1719.
His son Charles Edward Stuart, nicknamed ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, was born there the following year. Bonnie Prince Charlie would go on to lead the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Believing the British throne to be his birthright, he planned to invade Great Britain along with his Jacobite followers and remove the Hanoverian ‘usurper’ George II.
Charles launched the rebellion on 19 August 1745 at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands and was successful in capturing Edinburgh. In November his army crossed the border and captured Carlisle, before marching south through Lancashire in the hope of attracting English support.
Charles got to Derby but was forced into retreat. This ultimately led to the Battle of Culloden, which was the final confrontation in the Jacobite rising of 1745. More than 1,200 people were killed in just an hour as the Jacobite forces took their final stand in what would end as a brutal and bloody defeat. Charles was forced to make a dramatic escape to France, but his fleeing soldiers were ruthlessly hunted down and killed.
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