Greenhalgh Castle, Garstang

A local blog about our local castle.

It is possibly built on a drumlin from the Ice Age

Greenhalgh Castle

Slavery Connections in Lancaster churches

The church of St Michael’s, Cockerham near Lancaster is often called the church in the fields. Until recently it was some distance from any houses and surrounded by fields which usually had sheep or cattle. The farmland belongs to Cockerham Hall of which parts go back to the 15th century, but most is 16th century or later.

It is a church which keeps falling down! The tower is probably 16th century, but the church had to be replaced in 1814 and then by Austin and Paley in 1910-1. Its list of vicars goes back centuries, but only one concerns us – the Rev John Dodson jr who was vicar from 1835. While he was vicar, or rector then, he built the vast Cockerham vicarage/rectory out of his own pocket in 1843. Fortunately I never had to live in it!

The architect was Edmund Sharpe, who took on Edward Paley as a pupil in 1838. After Sharpe retired Paley took on Austin and the firm was known as Paley and Austin and then Austin and Paley existing until the 1930s. That firm designed a large number of churches and buildings in Lancashire.

Dodson was an evangelical, and probably a Recordite(!) and rejected any idea of regeneration in baptism. He was nearly refused ordination over this. For him matters came to a head after 1847 after Bishop Philpotts of Exeter refused to induct Gorham to a new parish on account of his views on baptism, thus giving rise to the Gorham Controversy. Thirty years earlier he stood as a candidate for the Woodwardian professor of geology at Cambridge but fellow evangelical Adam Sedgwick was elected but that is another story. Anyway Sedgwick said that Gorham’s geology was all wrong! Sedgwick’s geology was all right!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cornelius_Gorham

In 1847 Gorham was presented by the Earl of Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor, to the vicarage of Brampford Speke, a parish in a small Devon village near Exeter,^[6] which has a parish church dedicated to Saint Peter.^[7] Upon examining him, Bishop Henry Phillpotts took exception to Gorham’s view that baptismal regeneration was conditional and dependent upon a later personal adoption of promises made.^{[citation needed]} The bishop argued that Gorham’s Calvinistic view of baptism made him unsuitable for the post.^[8] Gorham appealed to the ecclesiastical Court of Arches to compel the bishop to institute him but the court confirmed the bishop’s decision and awarded costs against Gorham.^[9]

Gorham then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which caused great controversy about whether a secular court should decide the doctrine of the Church of England.^[10] The ecclesiastical lawyer Edward Lowth Badeley, a member of the Oxford Movement, appeared before the committee to argue the bishop’s cause, but the committee (Knight Bruce, V-C dissenting)^[11] [12] eventually reversed the bishop’s and the Arches’ decision on 9 March 1850 and granted Gorham his institution.^[13]

Phillpotts repudiated the judgment and threatened to excommunicate the archbishop of Canterbury and anyone who dared to institute Gorham.^[14] Fourteen prominent Anglicans, including Badeley and^{[citation needed]} Henry Edward Manning, requested that the Church of England repudiate the opinion that the Privy Council had expressed concerning baptism.^[15] As there was not any response from the Church apart from Phillpotts’ protestations, they quit the Church of England and joined the Catholic Church.

By 1849 Dodson had left the Church of England ministry and hived off to his family lands at Littledale above the Lune Valley. He was involved in some expensive building there. He first built Littledale Hall in 1849. The family left years ago and it is now Littledale Hall Therapeutic Community.

It seems that the architect was 1849 E.G. Paley, grandson of William Paley of Natural Theology and the main architect of the design argument. Oddly Paley is not mentioned in Hartwell and Pevsner’s book  Buildings of England – North Lancashire. Thus I am not sure! Hartwell and Pevsner do not ascribe either the hall or the chapel to Paley so a doubt must remain. That year he built Littledale Chapel so he could preach without baptismal regeneration. I first came across twenty years ago while walking in the area. I think there were sheep in it. Little did I realise it was built by one of my predecessors at Cockerham. Much of the building still stands but is used by a different kind of flock! Baa. No mention is made of the architect but I would suggest Paley.

https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/threads/littledale-free-church-and-tomb.38262/

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At about the same time Dodson’s brother in law Rev Joseph Armytage and probably his sister worked on a project to build St Thomas’s Church, Lancaster which was designed by Sharpe

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/physical/view/1995968301

New Evangelical parish church built 1840-1841, a project driven by two members of John Dodson’s family, his son-in-law Rev. Joseph Armytage and Elizabeth Dodson Salisbury, probably his sister.

Now this is a remarkable amount of building by one family, so we may ask “Where did the money come from?”

John Dodson Sr was a wealthy businessman from Lancaster and in the late 1830s he received much money form the Slave compensation Act of 1837. That notorious act was to pay off slave-owners who had lost their slaves after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833  1st August 1834. About £20 million was allocated for it. The Slavery Compensation Act can been seen as either horrendous  – paying off immoral slave-owners – or a necessary compromise to ensure the emancipation of slaves. I incline to the latter and wonder whether Abolition  would have got through parliament without it. Maybe it was the best possible solution, but very far from perfect.

Like so many rich people in Britain, Dodson Sr claimed compensation and here are the details in the University College London website on beneficiaries;

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/45433#:~:text=The%20Robert%20Dodson%20who%20had,father%20was%20John%20Dodson%2C%20Esq.

John Dodson Sr

Biography

Mortgagee of Lancaster, awarded compensation in that capacity in British Guiana, and also one of the trustees and executors of Thomas Gudgeon (q.v.) for Plantation Litchfield in Berbice.

1. Will of John Dodson Esq. proved 27/10/1842. His death was registered at Lancaster Q3 1842. He left his estate of Tongue [or Tonge] Moor in the township of Littledale and £8000 to his son John; he left £7000 each to two other sons, Thomas Gudgeon Dodson (also godson and legatee of Thomas Gudgeon) and Charles Potter Dodson in addition to the money they had already received. He left sums of £13,000, £13,000 and £15,000 on trust to his three sons and his sons-in-law John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage, the first two sums to support the marriage settlements of John Dodson’s daughters Margaret and Harriet with John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage respectively, and the third to be held for the benefit of his daughter Mary Ann.
2. Probably the John Dodson of Lancaster, merchant, eldest son and heir of John Dodson late of Ulverston, deceased, shown 13/02/1798 as trustee of a lease and release of Spark Bridge Ironworks in Cumbria.
3. Robert Dodson of Robert Dodson and Jacob Ridley, who were individually bankrupt in 1811, was probably John Dodson’s brother. The Robert Dodson who had been a slave-captain and slave-trader out of Lancaster 1757-1771 was probably their uncle.
4. Marriage of Harriet Dodson spinster St Leonard Gate Lancaster with Joseph North Green Armytage clerk of Castle Park, father was John Dodson, Esq. 06/12/1837.

Sources

T71/885 British Guiana claims no. 196, no. 219 (Plantation Hampshire), and no. 289. T71/1610 letters from JD Lancaster dated 18/11/1835 and 9/1/1836: setting out claims as mortgagee on British Guiana 196, 262 [?], 219 and 289.

1. PROB 11/1969/138; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online].
2. Release of Sparkbridge Ironworks Z/70 http://www.archiveweb.cumbria.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=Z%2f70&pos=71 [accessed 23/02/2014].
3. London Gazette, Issue 17540, 30/11/1819, p. 2157; www.slavevoyages.org.
4. Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Lancaster/stmary/marriages_1837-1841.html accessed 15/11/2010.

Dodson was awarded about £25,000 which is worth about £4,000,000 today  and that was just for  about 250 slaves attached to Plantation Hampshire and Williamsburg situate on the West Sea coast of Corentyne. As Dodson was a rich businessman it was probably a fraction of  his wealth and when he died a few years later Rev John Dobson Jr Rector of Cockerham received a bequest of  £8000 (£1,250,00 today) plus the  Littledale estate above Caton in the Lune Valley. So thus when he was theologically offended by Philpotts over Gorham and baptismal regeneration he could afford to walk out of the church and settle into his lovely estate and build another lovely house.

From my sketchy researches I cannot conclude that Dodson was pro-slavery, but some in the Church of England were. An example is that in 1833 a vicar sent a pro-abolition article to the very evangelical journal The Record. It was rejected but then published in the evangelical journal The Christian Observer with a note to that effect. William Wilberforce was one of the founders of the CO thirty years previously and thus the journal was pro-abolition. It also supported the new science of geology.

However it does show how at least two churches, one thriving and one defunct, near Lancaster directly benefited from slavery and at least one fine building also.

Perhaps I can conclude with a quote from the most well-known member of a family of strong abolitionists going back to the 1780s. I absolutely agree with his last sentence.This he put at the end of the 2nd edition of The Voyage of the Beagle in  1845 as he had just had an argument with the geologist Charles Lyell over American slavery. And some even accuse him of being a racist.

On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of;—nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears.

It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.

Was Darwin right is saying expiation has been made?

Am I not a man and a brother

Grandpa Josiah Wedgwood