Rotherham The Unofficial Website

The Stuart Monarchs

In the reign of the Stuart monarchs 1603 - 1715 the parish church of All Hallows was the most dominant feature of the town. The inside of the church was regularly limewashed. The murals that had decorated the walls had been painted over in the 1500s after the religion of the country changed from Catholic to Protestant. At the top of High Street were the gates leading to the church and the beautiful stone-built rectory, which in 1684 bounded the churchyard on the west side. The church bells chimed out loudly over the town announcing regular services.

Most of the buildings were of timber frame construction filled with lath and plaster. The Town Hall was such a building, of two storeys with a colonnade running around it. In front of the Town Hall was a square containing the Market Cross, the stocks and the pillory. The weekly market was held there. I expect that the buildings of the old College Of Jesus, reported as decaying in 1590 decayed a good deal more in the Seventeenth Century.

In 1617 the family of Talbot, Earls of Shrewsbury failed in the direct male line. The title passed to a distant branch of the family but the three daughters inherited much of the estate. The youngest of these, Alethea married Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Much of the Rotherham and Kimberworth areas therefore passed under to the control of the Howards (as if they didn't control enough already) including the churches and manors.

Rotherham briefly forgot its 'keep your head down and your face clean' stance during the Civil War. Long enough to get involved on the Roundhead side in some very unseemly skirmishes. These led to more unseemly fines which I suspect the town could ill afford. I don't expect that they got the money back when the Parliamentarians won and came to power but I'll bet that they had a damn good try.

Rotherham was not a hotbed, but possibly a lukewarmbed of religious dissent in the Seventeenth Century. In 1652 the Quaker, Elizabeth Hooton, was arrested for preaching to the congregation leaving the Parish Church. Ten years later the Vicar of Rotherham Luke Clayton was imprisoned for refusing to observe the Act of Uniformity and after his release returned to the town to help establish the Non-Conformist Cause.

Iron ore had been mined and forged in the Rotherham area since Pre-Roman times and in 1639 Leonard Copley and his associates leased various sites including the Holmes and Kimberworth for ironworks. This was the beginning of large-scale iron production in Rotherham. For more visit onsite at The History of Rotherham >> Trade & Industry >> Iron & Steel >> The Seventeenth Century.

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