Palmes, William, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson of St. Anthony's near Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Northumberland

(Newcastle-upon-Tyne :  Imprinted by George Bouchier Richardson, at the sign of the River-god Tyne, Clayton-treet-west; printer to the Society of antiquaries, and to the Typographical society, both of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  1851.)

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HOW SHE LIVED AT HETON.                           17

London occasions did not permit him to give at¬
tendance to that affair, he commended the ordering
and executing of the business to her discretion and dili¬
gence, which shee undertook willingly and performed
prudently.

Shee did not (as worldlings do) range temporal re¬
spects in the first place of her thoughts, spiritual in the
last; but after an exact survey of the whole work, and
idea how to make the manner of living sute with the
proportion of their present lively-hood, her prime inten¬
tions were to prepaire a house for God, whichshee did in
a decent garbe, and had every month a priest secretly ;
tho' to cloak the matter for her husband's satisfaction,
who comply'd with the times, shee went monthly abroad,
as if shee had wanted the conveniencys at home. Her
second care and solicitude was to provide Catholick ser¬
vants : the which shee did so dexterously by little and
little, hiering one after another, and never two att once,
that her husband, between jest and earnest, tould her, his
family was become Papists ere he perceived it. Never¬
theless shee was forced to convey the priest into the house
by night, and lodged him in a chamber, which, to avoid
suspicion, was appointed by grant from her husband only
for his children to say their prayers. These children,
through her sedulous industry, were all bred Catholicks,
solidly instructed in Christian doctrine, or principles of
faith, and had the company of a priest so freely, her bus-   I
 

sir Henry Constable, of Burton Constable, knt., of the other part;
after reciting that since the marriage of Roger Lawson and Dorothy
his wife the manor of Burne Hall, assured for the jointure of the
said Dorothy Lawson, had been sold; it is witnessed that in recora-
pence of the jointure so alienated, sir Ralph and his wife, and Roger
awson, convey one moiety of the manor of Heton, and so much of
the manor of Byker as is situate on the east side of one water, called
or known by the name of the Ewes Burne, excepting to sir Ralph
and his heirs the coal and coal mines, to hold unto said Fairfax and
Constable, their executors, administrators, and assigns, for the term I
of one hundred years, if the said Dorothy should so long live.— W.L.   \
  Page 17