No. IV .
THE CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF SALWICK AND LEA IN THE FYLDE, CO . LANCASTER. 1775-1837. CONTRIBUTED
BY J. P. SMITH.
HISTORICAL NOTES . BY JOSEPH GILLOW.
SALWICK . Clifton-cum -Salwick is situated within the old chapelry of Lund, formerly a chantry founded and belonging to the Cliftons, within the parish of Kirkham, and it was only constituted a parish , with Newtoncum-Scales, in 1840. From time immemorial it has been held by the knightly family of Clifton, save for a brief period after the death of Cuthbert Clifton in 1512 , when the estates passed through his only daughter and heiress to Sir William Molyneux, of Sefton , whose only son by this marriage, Thomas Molyneux, resided at Clifton Hall, and after death was succeeded by his sister and heiress, who in 17th Hen. VIII ( 1525-6) married Henry Halsall, of Halsall. She died in 1589, and her son Richard resided at Halsall, and though vice- chamberlainof Chester and a justice of the peace, was only outwardly " conformable to the new Establishment, being reported to the privy council in 1590 as otherwise of no good note in religion. " His natural son, Sir Cuthbert Halsall, inherited his grandmother's Clifton estates in 1589 , and eventually succeeded to Halsall, which he sold and retired to Salwick Hall towards the close of his life . He was a staunch recusant till his death in 1619 . His widow Dorothy , natural daughter of Henry Stanley , 4th Earl of Derby, by Jane Halsall, of Knowsley, continued to reside at Salwick, Car . (1635-6) . Sir and appears in the recusant rolls as late as I Cuthbert Halsall's daughter and eventual heiress, Ann, married Thomas Clifton , of Westby Hall, son of Sir Cuthbert Clifton, of Westby and Lytham , and thus restored Clifton and Salwick to its ancient lords. Thomas Clifton had a younger brother, Fr. Cuthbert Clifton alias Norreys, S.J. , who spent most of his missionary career in Lancashire , and no doubt frequently said Mass at Salwick Hall. He reconciled to the Church James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, shortly before that loyal and gallant nobleman was executed by the Parliamentary rebels at Bolton in 1651. The good Father eventually died chaplain at Garswood in 1675, aged 64. After Dame Dorothy Halsall's death, Salwick Hall was either occupied by junior members of the Clifton family, or leased to Catholic tenants, and the site of the old chapel in the Wood Meadow, of which considerable remains existed in the early part of last century, is still regarded as " holy ground." It is probable that the chapel at Salwick Hall was regularly served, and the hall rarely without a resident priest, throughout the dark ages of persecution , down to the death of the Rev. Robert Langstaff alias Wilson in 1798 , after which the mission was removed to Lea. Not far from the hall was another residence belonging to the estate called Ward's House, which was long occupied by a younger branch of the Cliftons, of whom were several Jesuits (vide C.R.S. , vi , 194) . There was a chapel in the house, and Mass was frequently said in it . After the Cliftons left it, early in the
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II