THE JACOBITE REBELLION

The Jacobite Rebellion

The rebellion was an attempt by the loyal followers of the exiled Stuart Dynasty to regain the throne. The first attempt was in 1715, when the Jacobites came down to England from Scotland. They were defeated at Preston, but not before English Catholics in the north and Staffordshire had shown sympathy to the Jacobite cause. 

On this occasion the Catholic recusants of N. Lincs. do not seem to have been involved. The following Jacobite invasion of England led by Charles Edward Stuart ( Bonnie Prince Charlie) however, did arouse sympathy among Jacobites and Catholic recusants in the north of Lincolnshire.

 On December 1st 1745, the Lincoln Date Book records: “ This city and county round about were all in confusion; a rumour prevailed that the rebels were coming to Lincoln. The drums beat to arms and numbers of people buried their money and other valuables for safety”8 In fact the rebels reached Derby and then decided to return to Scotland, and defeat at the battle of Culloden.

Following the defeat at Culloden, many Jacobites from N. Lincs. were imprisoned at Lincoln. The Lincoln Date Book records: a hundred rebels being brought to Lincoln in four wagons after taking part in the battle.

Among the people arrested and taken to Lincoln was John Rennell, a Catholic yeoman farmer living near Claxby in N. Lincs. His daughter, Elizabeth, then aged fourteen recounts the experience she had when her father was arrested. The pursuivants arrived, searched the house and seized her father’s papers and took them away. Rennell was tried; he denied being a rebel but was sentenced to two years imprisonment and payment of a heavy fine. His daughter mentions that his fine and imprisonment, added to previous misfortunes completed the ruin of the family.

The treatment of Rennel caused the dispersal of his children. Elizabeth went to London where she met John Lingard who had lived in Claxby. They eventually married and went to live in Winchester, where there was a flourishing Catholic community which included several families from N. Lincs and also a Benedictine priest, Placid Metcalfe, also from N. Lincs. It was there that Elizabeth’s son, John Lingard, priest and prominent historian, was born.

The Catholic Heneage family seemed to have been able to avoid government inspection. If this had happened they would have had difficulty explaining the fact that portraits of the Catholic James 11, his Queen, Mary of Modena, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans and Prince Charles Edward were to be seen in Hainton Hall. Marmaduke Constable , the Catholic landowner of the West Rasen estate did not escape persecution after the ’45 Rebellion.

"After Marmaduke’s escape from the castle, officers were dispatched to seize Mr. Champney, who was his steward. He effected a timely concealment beneath a heap of loose hay and through which the officers made many stabs with spiked staves, which entered the body of Mr. Champney. He like a good and faithful steward patiently endured rather than betray his master;” who was probably hidden somewhere in West Rasen.10

After the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 all Catholic landowners were obliged to register their estates with the authorities; a further burden on recusants.