The ambitious Radcliffes, who owned the manor for two centuries, rose to become the wealthiest and most prominent Roman Catholic family in the north of England through marriage into the Royal House of Stuart. Everything was lost when James Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, took up arms in support of his cousin Prince James Stuart, in the ill-fated Jacobite Rising of 1715. The Earl was found guilty of high treason, and beheaded on Tower Hill the following year. The untimely death on the scaffold of the kindly young nobleman served to inspire a succession of laments, biographies, historical novels and numerous legendary tales. Long after the demise of the Radcliffes of Dilston, stories of James, the 'Bonny Lord', lived on in local folklore. |