Shotley Bridge swordmakers

[Peter Hudson]

The association of this individual with the fortunes and subsequent downfall of Catholics and thus the eventual outcome of The Jacobites are mysterious indeed.

Popular feeling ran very high against the Earl, and the King, though he had assured Strafford that his life should be spared, abandoned him when it came to the point, and on the 10th signed the commission for giving the royal assent to the Bill. The Earl was beheaded on Tower Hill, 12th May 1641, and met his death with dignity and composure. He was 48 years of age. In private life the Earl of Strafford was a devoted husband and father, a true friend and a man of high cultivation and feeling. Many of his faults of temper arose from his shattered health, the result of agonizing accessions of inherited gout. His personal habits were naturally simple, but to sustain the honour of the King "before the eyes of a wild and rude people," he maintained almost regal magnificence, with a retinue of fifty servants and a body-guard of one hundred horse splendidly mounted and accoutred. The ruins of a princely mansion, begun by him, but never completed, may still be seen near Naas. In fact further research reveals 1633-1640
Thomas Wentworth (Black Tom) Earl of Strafford and Lord Deputy of Ireland builds his great house at Jigginstown, it would be an Irish Residence for Charles I, but alas Wentworth is recalled to London and loses his head before the roof goes on his great house. He was long known in the traditions of the Irish peasantry as "Black Tom."
Peter Hudson.