Hi,
I have some, limited, information on Alice as there is a [very] tenuous link to my own family. As you are no doubt aware records of families - especially Catholics - in the 17th century are hard to find and not always as clear as we might like - so what I have is my best guess based on what I have found.
What follows is in two parts so as to fit in the character limit of this message system:
My distant relative was Ann Swarbrick who was a daughter of George and Margaret. She was baptised on Tuesday the 9th May 1786. Her Uncle, Henry Kitchen, stood as one of her Godparents; the other was an Elizabeth Swindlass. On Saturday the 10th May 1806, which can only have been two or three days after her twentieth birthday, Nancy married Joseph Swarbrick at the church of St Mary and St Michael, Garstang.
Joseph was one of the Swarbrick family of Nateby, not, as far as is known, related to my Swarbrick family. He had been born in 1779, the sixth child of Thomas Swarbrick and Mary Park. [They had eighteen children in all]. One of his younger brothers, Thomas, was baptised in 1791 in St Mary & St Michael’s Church, Garstang, as were the later brothers and sisters of Nancy. No doubt the two families would have been well acquainted with each other.
Joseph’s father, Thomas, had been born in 1747 the son of another Joseph Swarbrick [1698 - 1793] and Ann Threlfall. In 1806 this Thomas bought a property called Nateby House. According to the History of Garstang [Chetham Society] Thomas, together with his partner, a man called John Valentine, bought Nateby House from a local gentleman named Michael Ann. It would seem that this might well have been a speculative, moneymaking venture because very shortly afterwards they conveyed the same to John Birley of Kirkham Esq.
Nateby House was sold again in 1818 to Thomas Butler-Cole, who was George Swarbrick’s [Ann's father] landlord. However the Swarbrick family bought the house back again at some later point in the nineteenth century; this time they bought it to live in. Thomas Newsham Swarbrick, a grandson of the Thomas Swarbrick who had originally bought the house in 1806, was the owner of the property when he died there in 1878.
According to Joseph Gillow, the Catholic historian, this particular branch of the Swarbrick family, who lived at Nateby, derived their origin from Swarbreck House in Weeton-cum-Preese and were well-known recusants throughout the penal times. One of the earliest to figure in the rolls was Edward Swarbreck of Great Singleton, who died in 1622. [Almost certainly this was the Edward Swarbrecke who was buried at St Michael’s, Kirkham on Saturday 7th December 1622]. Edward’s son, John, who was the great-grandfather of the Thomas who first bought Nateby House, appeared in his turn in the roll compiled in the reign of Charles II.
Not only did members of this branch of the family appear regularly in the various recusant rolls and lists of Papists but they also provided the church with a number of priests. One of the first of these was James Swarbreck, a son of the aforementioned John. He was born, probably at Singleton, in 1654. He was sent to the junior seminary at St Omers in Belgium, where he began his studies leading to the priesthood. He was ordained in Rome in 1678 and worked under the alias of Singleton, at Singleton, where he was listed in the 1705 return of known recusants. He had spent some time resident at the home of the Gillow family, who had their own domestic chapel. In or about 1711 he was priest at St Thomas and St Elizabeth’s Church, Thurnham.
Father James was arrested early in 1716 following the abortive Jacobite rebellion of the previous year. According to Dom F O Blundell in Volume 3 of his book, Old Catholic Lancashire, Father James allowed himself to be captured so as to be able to minister to the many Catholics held by the authorities in Lancaster Castle. He was seized at the house of Richard Gillow and tried and condemned as a Catholic priest at the March Assizes. He was duly imprisoned in Lancaster Castle, where he took sick and died in March 1716. He had been condemned to death and would, no doubt, have suffered martyrdom had he not died a natural death.
[part two to follow]
