Although John Massey was indeed the last abbot of the Cistercian Abbey at Combermere, and presided over the handover of the abbey to the Crown at the time of the Dissolution, there is no evidence to suggest he hid any of the abbey’s assets, and he retired on a healthy pension, dying, as the book suggests, in the 1560s. The idea of a set of engravings with key words pointing to a hidden treasure, is, of course, a product of my own imagination.
By the time of the English Civil War, the Combermere Estate had been in the hands of the Cotton family for over a hundred years. The estate was awarded in 1539 to Sir George Cotton, who was an Esquire of the Body to King Henry VIII. The octogenarian George Cotton, who appears in The Combermere Legacy, was his grandson. By the 1640s, the original abbey had long since disappeared, and the abbot’s original residence had been converted and expanded into a fine country mansion.
My descriptions of Combermere in the 1640s are largely based on a painting by the Dutch artist Peter Tillemans, which still hangs at Combermere today. Although painted in the 1730s, the layout of the gardens and the rest of the estate are much as they would have been in the 1640s. The farm buildings at the Grange, the stable block, the walled garden, the boathouse, the washhouse with its attendant water tank, and the summerhouse on the island are all described as depicted by Tillemans.
Today, however, the two original lakes have been joined together to form a single stretch of water that extends around where the gardens, statues, and coach turning circle used to be. The wind, however, can still whip across the lake, and I have it on good authority that being out in a rowing boat on a bad day can indeed be akin to being caught out at sea.
As far as the interior of the house in concerned, the servants’ quarters were on the right hand side of the house, with the guest rooms on the left so that they could overlook the lake. The fabulous library with the Tudor paintings on the wall has recently been lovingly restored by current owner Sarah Callander Beckett, and remains much as described in the book.
During the Civil War, the Cottons were staunch supporters of the King and allowed the estate to be used as a base for troops in the build up to the Battle of Nantwich. Both George Cotton and his son Thomas died in 1646, but it is not known whether either’s demise was directly related to the Civil War.
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By mid-1644, Sir William Brereton had increased his control of Cheshire, which he ran with a number of loyal deputies such as Thomas Croxton. By early summer, Brereton had started the process of sequestering the estate of a significant number of royalist supporters. Both Thomas Maisterson and Roger Wilbraham were sequestered during the course of 1644. The Sequestration Committee operated through a number of assessors and collectors, known for their loyalty to the parliamentary cause. The lawyer and diarist Thomas Malbon was one of these. Another was Marc Folineux, a particularly assiduous individual known simply as ‘The Collector’. The attempts made by Folineux to sequester the Cottons in August 1644 are fictional. However, he did sequester the Combermere Estate in October 1644.
Looking further afield, Sir Thomas Myddelton, at the time, was looking to make further advances into Shropshire and the Welsh Marches. Oswestry had been captured, and the governor, Sir Fulke Hunckes, had been thwarted in his attempt to regain the town when one of his officers, Colonel Marrow, was defeated at Whittington. Momentum was very much in parliamentary hands, but much depended on the strategic location of Montgomery, the home of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who despite being a royalist by inclination had already refused Prince Rupert access to Montgomery Castle to establish a garrison there. Herbert, in fact, showed little enthusiasm for supporting either side – of key importance to him was the safety of his valuable library.
There was, of course, never any plan to transport Herbert’s library to Combermere. This is pure fiction, but the eccentric old aristocrat’s collection was to play a further role in developments as Myddelton looked to increase his influence in the region.
Unfortunately, for some unexplained reason, history fails to record the role of a certain Nantwich cheese merchant and wich house owner in what happened next.
Acknowledgements
Once again thanks to Matthew, Tom, and Vanessa at Electric Reads, whose editing and design services I have used for all three Daniel Cheswis novels. Once again they have made a significant difference to the quality of the final product..
I am also indebted to Colin Bissett of the Sealed Knot for checking the historical accuracy of my first draft, and to Dr Steve Hindle, Director of Research at the WM Keck Foundation in San Marino, California, for providing me with a copy of his fascinating paper on the murder of Roger Crockett.
A special thank you is due to Sarah Callander Beckett for allowing me inside her fabulous home at Combermere and to archivist Steven Myatt for showing me around and for his valuable input throughout.
Thanks also to Nantwich Bookshop, BookShrop, National Civil War Centre, Ed Abrams, Kate Lea-O’Mahoney, and Ian Dicker, all of whom have helped me in one way or another during the course of the year.
And, of course, thanks to Karen, Richard, and Louisa for their love and support.
Bibliographical Notes
In researching the historical background for The Combermere Legacy I used a number of resources, which I have listed here.
Invaluable, as always, for information on Nantwich and the structure of local politics in the 1640s, were James Hall’s A History of the Town and Parish of Nantwich or Wich Malbank in the County Palatine of Chester (1883) and JS Morrill’s Cheshire 1630-1660 – County Government and Society during the English Revolution (1974).
For information on the Civil War in Wales I used John Roland Phillips’ Memoirs of the Civil War in Wales and the Marches 1642-49 (1874) and Sir Thomas Myddelton’s Attempted Conquest of Powys 1644-45, which is an abstract from the Montgomery Collections Vol. 57, Part 2 (1962). I also referred to The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, edited by Sidney Lee (1886).
Vital for information on the Crockett murder was Steve Hindle’s paper ‘Bleedinge Afreshe’ – The Affray and Murder at Nantwich, 19 December, 1572 and Foul Deeds around Crewe by Peter Ollerhead and Susan Chambers (2010).
For information on Combermere I used The Book of the Abbot of Combermere 1289-1529 from Miscellanies Relating to Lancashire and Cheshire Vol. 2 (1896) and an article I found on British History Online called Houses of Cistercian Monks – The Abbey of Combermere, which was taken from A History of the County of Chester Vol. 3 (1980). I also used Combermere Abbey’s own website, compiled by archivist Steven Myatt, as well as information provided by Steven himself.
Glossary
Clotpole - Idiot
Corviser - Shoemaker
Kindling - A fixed allocation of time allowed for salt making, equivalent to four days
Lead (relating to wich houses ) - A salt pan
Pinder - An officer charged with impounding stray cattle
Sconce - A star-shaped fortification
Ship (relating to salt making) - A hollowed-out tree trunk used to store brine
Theet - A wooden pipe used to transport brine into a wich house
Waller - A brine worker
Wich house - A salt house
The Combermere Legacy Page 27