Westmorlands and Bulmers too. These mighty men (and women) of a bygone age are all buried here beneath this church.

 

Queen Elizabeth, taking the castle to pay for the cost of suppressing the Rising, also rid herself of the Rector who was much involved, also his successor who hid the last Earl's brother in the Rectory, and she appointed the next Rector herself. The castle was administered by Constables who by the time of King James had allowed the castle to deteriorate. The church too fell into some disrepair until John Cosin (later Bishop of Durham) became Rector in 1625. James gave the castle to Robert Carr his favourite whom he had made  Baron Brancepeth. In love with the Countess of Essex, Carr was suspected of poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury  who opposed the lady's divorce. Soon he fell from favour, the castle reverted to the Crown again, and the title died with him to be recreated at a later date. King Charles sold the estate and 1400 trees were cut down and sent to Woolwich to build the "Sovereign”, the first 3-decker in the British Navy.

 

In 1636 Ralph Cole, mayor of Newcastle, bought the castle. Grandson of a blacksmith, he was a local boy made good. His son became a baronet. But the second Sir Ralph Cole was a man of the arts, a pupil of Van Dyck. He filled the castle with Italian painters and so impoverished himself that in 1701 he was forced to sell the castle to Sir Henry Bellasyse for £16800. The last of the Bellasyse family was Bridget who died in 1774 - she was the love sick girl who sang the famous verse to Bobby Shafto of nearby Whitworth.

 

In 1796 William Russell, a Sunderland broker, bought the castle for £75000. His son Matthew, who re-built the castle, was alleged to be the richest commoner in England - all from coal. He spent £12000 on the rebuilding. In 1828 Emma Russell married the son and heir of Lord Boyne ( as a previous Emma had married a forerunner of the Earls of Westmorland in 1174 ), and the Boyne family lived here until the first World War when the castle became a military hospital. The Boynes restored the chapel in the castle, and also the parish church though mercifully this restoration was slight. A great visitor to Brancepeth in the old days was the poet Tennyson, a relative of the family, who wrote "Come into the garden, Maude" in the gardens here.

 

 

After the 1914-18 war the church continued its uninterrupted round of prayer and worship as it had done down the ages, but for the first time the castle stood empty and its contents were sold - the Great Hall had a suit of armour inlaid with gold, taken from King David of Scotland at the Battle of Neville's Cross:- also a picture 'by Hogarth. But when there are wars it seems that Brancepeth just must be in the thick of it and during the Second World War the castle came to life again as the home of the Durham Light Infantry whose Regimental Headquarters it was until 1960.