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No. IIIB.
THE CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF STONECROFT , NORTHUMBERLAND , KEPT BY THE DOMINICANS AFTER ITS SEPARATION FROM HEXHAM , FROM 1737 TO 1821. The previous registers of Stonecroft are mixed with those of Hexham , as paper IIIA of this volume. FROM A TRANSCRIPT BY THE LATE JAMES CANON STARK LENT BY THE REV. THOMAS HARTLEY
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EDITED BY JAMES RAE BATERDEN . HISTORICAL NOTES ON STONECROFT. About four miles west of Hexham, close to the picturesque village of Newbrough, stands the homestead of Stonecroft. Stanecroft was its former name , as it lies close by the Roman road , Stanegate , which connected the camp at Warden with the Roman wall. In the first half of the seventeenth century William Errington , second son of John Errington , of Beaufront, by Dorothy , daughter of Edward Widdrington , of Great Swinburne, devised Stonecroft_and Nunbush to his sister Dorothy, who left them, by will dated 13 Sept. 1643, to her mother Dorothy . The mother left the property to her nephew John, son of her brother, Ralph Widdrington , and he, by will dated 4 June 1664, bequeathed it to his sister Ursula, widow of Thomas Mountney. John Widdrington died 6 July 1664. Mrs. Ursula Mountney, by her will of 16 July 1680, devised Stonecroft, Nunbush, and other property to her " Honorable friend and kinsman," William , 3rd Lord Widdrington , subject to a rent -charge of £32 a year payable to Ralph Clavering, of Callaly. By a document dated 21 August the same year ( 1680 ), wherein she says " the malignancy of the times " prevented her declaring by her to be applied, requests will the uses to which this £32 per annum ,was see her friend and kinsman, Lord Widdrington to that Stonecroft and Nunbush should always be let to farm to " some discreet Catholic, qualified to keep a priest for the help of poor Catholics in the parishes of Warden and Hexham, and places adjoining ; and because her dear brother, Mr. John Widdrington ," from whom she derived the estate, had by his will ordered that a Dominican or Franciscan priest should always be kept at Stonecroft, she ordered that this priest should be paid £20 per annum out of the rent- charge , the remaining 12 to go to the benefit of the poor in the neighbourhood, viz. £3 per annum to the parishes of Warden and Hexham, £2 to Chollerton, I each to St. John Lee and Corbridge, and £2 to Benoni Carr, of Hexham, and his successors for the distribution of these charities. * This will of John Widdrington and the statement left by Mrs. Mountney, who died 3 Jan. 1685-6 , was the cause of great trouble and dispute between the Dominicans and Franciscans extending over fifty
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Hist . of Northumberland, vol . iii , pt . 2, by Rev. John Hodgson, 1840. Report of Commissionersof Education and Charities, 1830.