On this day … 13 September 1688

Two Preston diarists, Thomas Bellingham and Lawrence Rawstorne, penned the following sparse entries, which reveal a wealth of information about gentry life in seventeenth-century Preston:

𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐡𝐚𝐦 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲
Ye 13th. Pretty fayr. We went a coursing. Din’d att Camell’s, and was att night att Rigby’s. One Southern, a German, came to us, who talk’d much of Jamaica.

𝐑𝐚𝐰𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲
& i3 went to Campbells, dyned there, Capt. Bellingham, Dr. leigh, Mr. Lemon, Mr Chaddock Mr Hobson, Mr Houghton & Mr. fferrars came to us

Bellingham always starts his entries with a brief weather report. The entries relating to Preston begin in August 1688 and continue until May 1690, meaning that a Preston weather record for that period can be recaptured.

After deciding that the weather looked ‘pretty fair’, Bellingham took himself off to the marshes for a day’s coursing. The Preston gentry at that period spent many days engaged in field sports, and coursing, involving the hunting of hares with dogs, was one of their favourites.

We know Bellingham was heading for the marshes because he ‘Din’d att Camell’s’ (in the seventeenth century people had their dinner in the middle of the day). Camell’s, or Campbells as Rawstorne spells it, is one of Preston’s lost inns. It was on the bank of the Ribble at Ashton, south west of Ashton Park.

Bellingham was back in town for a night’s drinking at Rigby’s, one of Preston’s many inns at that date. This was possibly the King’s Arms in Church Street, which in the 1680s was kept by a Madam Rigby. We’ll probably never know who Southern the German was, nor what he had to say about Jamaica.

We do know who Bellingham was drinking with that night, because Lawrence Rawstorne, who had been out with Bellingham during the day, was with him again at night, and lists their companions in his diary entry, who included a ‘Mr Houghton’. This would have been Christopher Hoghton, the brother of Sir Charles Hoghton. Christopher would have walked or ridden over from Walton Hall at Walton-le-Dale where he was living at that time (his brother was living at Hoghton Tower).

Also at Rigby’s that night was a ‘Mr Chaddock’. This would have been Daniel Chaddock, the Preston wine merchant, who had a house in Fishergate. In an earlier diary entry, Rawstorne records visiting ‘Mr Chaddocke sellers to tast & buy wine’.

Both diarists refer to Chaddock’s shipment of wines arriving from Bordeaux, the ships unloading at Freckleton or at Campbell’s Inn, where there was probably a quay at that time, with the customs house close by. In another diary entry, Bellingham writes, ‘I rode to Camells to see ye ship wch came from Holland’.

Campbell’s was probably named after the family of that name, who were the toll collectors for the Hoghton family, which owned the Lea and who charged travellers for crossing their land on their way to or from the Fylde.

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Source
The Bellingham and Rawstorne diaries