The Ancient Feudal Manor and Lordship
of Winterborne St. Martin
(Dorsetshire)
The family of Napier
|
On the death of Henry Bindon in 1591 the
Manor together with Middlemarsh Hall was conveyed by Lord Bindon's family to Sir Robert Napier of Middlemarsh.
The Napier's also held Punknowle, Swyre and Crichel in North Dorset. Crichel remains the home of the descendants of
the Napiers who sold the Manor of Martinstowm to the forebares of the present owner. Napier was a member of a
Scottish family who became the Barons of Murchison, now a suburb of Edinburgh. |
The Clan Napier |
John Napier |
One John
Napier was born in 1550 at Mercheson Castle but was but not
directly connected with this manor. In 1563, he was sent to the University of St Andrews but this was the usual age
for young boys to enter universities. He was the mathematician who invented logarithms (1614) and 'Napier's bones',
an early mechanical calculating device for multiplication and division. Napier also found exponential expressions
for trigonometric functions and was the first who used and then popularised the decimal point to separate the whole
number part from the fractional part of a number.
|
He made advances in scientific farming. In 1597, he patented a
hydraulic screw to remove water from flooded coal pits. He died on April 4, 1617 - apparently of gout, with which he
had long been afflicted.
To return to the manor, Sir Robert Napier was the founder of the fortune of this family. Queen Elizabeth made him
lord chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland 1593, and knighted. He was High Sheriff of Dorset in 1606. He died in
1615 and was buried at Minterne Magna. His only son Sir Nathaniel Napier was knighted by King James 1617, and was
sheriff of Dorset 1621. He also served as MP for the county in 1625. He built the house of More Crichel, where his
descendants have lived ever since.
The building was completed by his grandson, Gerard Napier. Nappers Mite passed through the Napier family to
Napier George Sturt who would become the Third Baron Alington.
| Sir Gerrard Napier, was MP for Wareham in 1628 and for
Melcombe Regis in 1641, and was created a Baronet in the following year. He was disabled from being member for
Melcombe, 1643 and, ordered to be sent for as a delinquent, for not attending the House of Commons. He was
distinguished for his loyalty to King Charles 1, in whose service he
spent and lost £10,621.00. As a colonel in arms in the King's army, his estates at Middlemarsh, Wootton Glanville
Martinstown and elsewhere were sequestered in 1645 under Oliver Cromwell and he was exhiled to France. He later
compounded for his estates for £1276. |
Oliver Cromwell |
| He had
three sons. Sir Thomas, squandered his estate and died in prison. The second son, William inherited the manor of
Houghton, in Nottinghamshire, and settled there. The Third son was Denzil Holles who married Dorothy, only daughter
and heir of Sir Francis Ashley, of Dorchester.
Sir Francis who was Sergeant at Law to King Charles I and recorder of Dorchester owned
Ashton Farm at Martinstown
which he left to Dorothy. They had a son named Francis after her father.
|
Denzil Holles |
Ashton was one of the settlements in this manor to disappear and was described at the time by the contemporary
writer, Thomas Gerard as: "nowe soe decayed that there is not one House remaining"
At this time the Winterborne Valley was said to be filled with sheep.
The few occupants were shepherds and customary tenants where absentee landlords who controlled the hillside
manorial holdings.
According to Hutchins, Holles held the manor from
the Napier family. Mr Holles was at one time a governor of Nappers Mite. More importantly, he was the puritan
Member of Parliament for Dorchester and opposed the court of Charles I. In 1629 he came to the fore as a critic of
the king. Whilst in Parliament, when the Speaker tried to leave the chair and refused to read resolutions condemning
the collection of customs duties without parliament's consent, Holles and another M.P forcibly held the Speaker down
in his chair whilst the resolutions were passed. As soon as Parliament was dissolved Holles was one of the
opposition leaders to be imprisoned in the Tower of London. King Charles then ruled without Parliament for eleven
years
During this period the collection of taxes became increasingly difficult. In 1640, resistance to the payment of
taxes came to a head. Attempts had been made in the previous five years to raise taxes and the County became
ever more in arrears. Distrained goods yielded no money for lack of buyers. Offers of 6d (2.5p). were made for
cattle worth £8.00 and people stoned the bailiffs. The sheriff, William Churchill, was only able to raise £300 of
the required £6,000.00. One successful collection would suffice for him as an example to others and he sent his
servants to levy £5.12s.4d. on the goods of Lady Anne Ashley at Ashton Farm. Her servants, William and Roger
Samways, came with some violence, and rescued two of her horses which had been seized. Two days later, the sheriff's
servants once more attempted to distrain horses Lady Ashley kept in Dorchester. William Samways for a second time
violently rescued them saying Denzil Holles would support them for what they had done. Consequently the civil
authorities refused to levy the money. None of the mayors of corporate towns had paid anything at all in five
months and the bailiff refused to levy distress. Parliament was recalled. 
|
Two years later in 1642, the king stormed parliament to arrest his
five main critics. Holles was one of these but
escaped. It was this event that triggered the civil war. He did not sit well with the Royalist Lord of the Manor,
Gerard Napier who later was to change sides and move over to the Parliamentarians. In September a parliamentary
army, 7000 strong commanded by the Earl of Bedford and including Holles, besieged Sherborne Castle but they failed
to take it from the Royalists on that occasion. This may be because Lady Digby, wife of the owner of Sherborne
Castle, was the sister of the Duke of Bedford who could do her no harm. It was later laid to ruin. |
Ruins of
Old Sherborne Castle |
By 1643, Corfe Castle was the only remaining royalist stronghold left in Dorset. In the following year the
Parliamentarians captured Abbotsbury and the house of Sir John Stranways. There, a fire was started and upon
reaching a store of gunpowder, killed thirty or so parliamentary plunderers and wrecked the stately home of the
Strangways family. It is believed that most of the manorial records of this manor and those of the abbey were
lost in this event as they were held by the Strangways family after the dissolution of the Abbey lands in 1538.
As was the case with Napier, Holles's fortunes fluctuated - including impeachment by the Army and sequestration of
his estates and he eventually fled to France in 1648.
Two years later, following a Parliamentary Survey, Saint Martin's church was to benefit still further from income
reserved from tithes and pensions totalling £20.00 a year were payable to the Vicar.
Meanwhile, Holles returned in 1660, was readmitted to Parliament and his estates returned. He was one of the
Commissioners sent to Holland to negotiate the return of Charles II. For his part in the Restoration of the
Monarchy, Holles was elevated to the peerage 20th April 1661 as Baron Holles of Ilford in Sussex . He became a
member of Charles II's Privy Council.
| By his second marriage and his wife's dowery,
Holles become Lord of the Manor of Cerne Abbas where he lived in his retirement. Hutchins suggests it was Hollis who
may have caused the cutting into the nearby hillside of the Cerne Giant as an insult to Oliver Cromwell.
There are others who suggest it was an insult to the Abbot of Cerne whose lifestyle was said to be less than holy.
Holles died in 1679 and his tomb is in St Peter's Church in Dorchester. |
Cerne Giant |
He was succeeded by his son, Sir Francis Holles, Baronet of Winterborne St Martin,
whose title was created on 27th
June 1660, as the second Lord Holles. According to Hutchins, Francis Holles built "a large house " in the village
in 1654 and sometimes resided there. This Jacobean House was demolished in 1851 but the original stone marked
"F.H 1654" was replaced over the back door of a new "handsome and commodious residence" built by Charles
Hawkins on the same site. Charles Hawkins provided twelve hand written pages of instructions for the building of
his new manor house. They were simple, succinct and very effective and read as follows:
"To take down the whole of the old manor house clean and stack away the whole of the old materials and take away
all to some convenient place." He then gave instructions to the mason "Build all walls with the whole of the old
materials on the site finding labour, scaffolding, lime the walls to be grouted every two feet all stone and brick
to be found by Mr Hawkins for building the whole of the walls with the exception of the free stone drefings for
doors and window string...".
These instructions continued in similar vein for all trades and a "handsome" house
was indeed built that lasts so well to this day.
Oh that such simple instruction would suffice in this litigious age.
The title of baronets became extinct on the death of his brother, Sir Danzil Holles who died in 1694.
The family of Napier continued
Sir Robert's only surviving son, Sir Nathaniel Napier, was educated at Oriel College, Oxford. He much beautified
and adorned the house and gardens at Crichel, and rebuilt great part of Middlemarsh Hall, the ancient seat of the
family.
In 1676 he was elected knight of the shire, and he was chosen as Member of Parliment of Poole in several
Parliaments in the reigns of Charles II and James II. At the Revolution, he obtained the charter for the
town of Poole, which had been forfeited to King James II. He was elected as Member of Parliament for
Dorchester in 1701, in the first Parliament of Queen Anne, with his son Sir Nathaniel. In April 1706, following a
long illness, he died, and was buried at Minterne.
His fifth son Nathaniel succeeded him in the title and estates, and was Member of Parliament for Dorchester
throughout the reign of King William and all but the final year of Queen Anne.
| 1742 was a bad year for the manor and its lord. The hard life of farming was
made harder by a very dry summer when
little hay could be made and a particularly harsh winter. This led to great mortality of livestock and many thousand
sheep were lost in the area. In the December of that year the lord's mansion at Crichel was burned by an accidental
fire and much personal property and many records were lost. The house was rebuilt in great style and perhaps a
little ostentation by Sir William Napier. Indeed, it was said that the new house had the appearance of a mansion of
a prince more than that of a country gentleman. |
Crichel House |
The Napier baronetcy expired when his grandson, Sir Gerard Napier, died childless in 1765, and the estates came to
his only surviving daughter Diana, who married Humphrey Sturt of Horton. He immensely enlarged Crichel House at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
The Crichels have a complex manorial history. There were two manors in each parish, which remained separate until
modern times. Two families of Norman origin shared Long Crichel in the early Middle Ages. They were those of de
Goviz and Lucy. The de Goviz family link back to the Manor of Winterborne St Martin with Robert fitz Pain in the
thirteenth as does the family of the Lucys who were also related to the de Lincolns.
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established soon after the great fire of Dorchester in 1613. The fire was said to be seen as a scourge sent from God
to chastise the uncharitable population.