The Henson Journals

[342]

Saturday, September 30th, 1916.

789th day

This is an account of Muggleswick in Hutchinson's Durham ii 426.

"The first mention of this place is in the time of Bishop Pudsey, who granted it to the convent of Durham, in exchange for Hardwick: and in the middle of the 13th century, Hugh, prior of Durham, enclosed a park here, and built a camera, consisting of a hall, chapel, and lodgings: the remains of those structures yet appear, part of the park wall & the east end of the chapel; the whole camera has had underground apartments for securing cattle during the incursions of the Scots".

The church includes the grave of one Rowland Harrison (ob. 1702) of whom tradition reports that he was a notorious moss–trooper, and of so evil a character, that, when he died, the parson refused to bury him in consecrated ground. Accordingly his grave was outside the churchyard. The church was built over it, and thus the malefactor came to have a more honourable place of sepulture than that which had been refused him! Truly it is not easy for the rod of ecclesiastical discipline to keep the wicked out of the Lord's vineyard! The name of Rowland Harrison appears among the conspirators of 1662 who "did mutually take an oath of secrecy not to discover their design, wh. was to rise in rebellion against the present government, wh. had made a law against liberty of conscience, & to murder all bps, deans & chapters, & all ministers of the church, & to break all organs in pieces, to destroy the common prayer–books and to pull down all churches, & farther to kill the gentry that shd either oppose them, or not join with them in their design". This seems to be a thorough going programme: of course the business was betrayed to the government.

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