Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

So the same day about 9 of the clock, which was the 29 day of March, being Palm Sunday, both the hosts approached in plain field between Towton and Saxton. When each part perceived other, they made a great shout, and at the same instant time there fell a small snyt or snow, which by violence of the wind was driven into the faces of them which were of King Harry’s part. The Lord Falconbridge [Fauconberg – William Neville, 1st Earl of Kent], which led the forward of King Edward’s battle, being a man of great policy and of much experience in martial feats, caused every archer under his standard to shoot one flight and then made them to stand still. The northern men, feeling the shot, but, by reason of the snow, not well viewing the distance between them and their enemies, like hardy men shot their sheaf of arrows as fast as they might, but all their shot was lost, for they came not near the southern men by forty tailor’s yards. When their shot was almost spent, the Lord Falconbridge marched forward with his archers, which not only shot their own sheaves, but also gathered the arrows of their enemies and let a great part of them fly against their own masters. The Earl of Northumberland and Andrew Trolope, which were chieftains of King Harry’s vanguard, seeing their shot not to prevail, hasted forward to join their enemies. The battle was sore fought, for hope of life was set aside on every part, and taking of prisoners was proclaimed as a great offence, by reason whereof every man determined to conquer or die in the field. This deadly battle continued ten hours in doubtful victory, the one part sometime flowing and sometime ebbing ; but in conclusion King Edward so courageously comforted his men, that the other part was overcome and fled toward Tadcaster Bridge to save themselves: but in the mean way there is a little brook called Cocke, not very broad, but of great deepness, in the which a great number were drent and drowned, in so much that common people there affirm that men alive passed the river on dead carcases, and that the river of Wharfe, which is the great sewer of the brook, was coloured with blood.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Archery (2) W/G ·
• Battle of Towton (1) W/G ·
• Cock Beck (1) W/G ·
• Edward Hall (2) W/G ·
• Edward IV (1442-83) (5), reigned 1461-70 and 1471-83, led the Yorkist faction in the Wars of the Roses W/G ·
• Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland (1) W/G ·
• Henry VI (1421-71) (3) W/G ·
• Henry VI, Part 3 (2) W/G ·
• House of Lancaster (1) W/G ·
• House of York (1) W/G ·
• Palm Sunday (2) W/G ·
• River Wharfe (8) W/G ·
• 📌Saxton, North Yorkshire (2) W/G ·
• Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) (14) W/G ·
• Snow (18) W/G ·
• 📌Towton (1) W/G ·
• Trollope, Andrew (died 29 March 1461) (1), Durham-born professional soldier who fought in the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses W/G ·
• Wars of the Roses (1455-87) (4), a series of civil wars fought for the English throne between two Plantagenet branches, the Houses of Lancaster and York W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (150) W/G ·
• William Neville, 1st Earl of Kent (1) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Similar

22 September 1465: A menu for the enthronement at Cawood Castle of George Neville as Archbishop of York

20 December 1697: Disastrous flooding in the lower Don, caused by the failure of the colonist Cornelius Vermuyden’s land reclamation scheme to cope with snow-melt

2 February 1609: A crowd-pleasing morality play at Candlemas at Gouthwaite Hall in Catholic Nidderdale lands the cordwainer-players and their patron before the Star Chamber

5 August 1605: Debauched and ruined, Walter Calverley is crushed to death today at York for the murder of two sons at Calverley Hall (Bradford), but is revived by 1830s schoolboy ghost-raisers as the Rev. Samuel Redhead (age ca. 55)

31 December 1733: John Hobson reviews a pleasant but surprising December

18 December 1642: “Bradford quarter” is given to a Royalist besieger during the First Siege

3 May 1343: Short of cash for his French wars, Edward III asks what the effect on his rental income will be of January storms and coastal erosion at Ravenser Odd (Holderness)

14 October 1769: The poet Thomas Gray travels from Skipton to Otley

14 February 1400: Richard II possibly dies a prisoner in Pontefract Castle, but probably not as described by Shakespeare

6 February 1906: A reporter gains exclusive access to the entombment of Horatio Bright, a Sheffield steel merchant and lapsed Jew, alongside his first wife and only son

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The scan is from Chris Hobbs, who has a great collection of information on Horatio Bright. The mausoleum is at 53.389403,-1.645310, and was robbed in the 1980s, after which the bodies were reinterred at Crookes Cemetery, not at Ecclesfield Jewish Cemetery as Judy Simons claims (Simons 2021). Mary Alice and Samuel Bright had died in 1891. Hobbs says that Mary Alice “was embalmed and placed in a glass sided coffin. The mausoleum was decorated with pictures, statutes and ornaments and fitted with mahogany panelling. He even installed a small hand operated organ so that he could play funeral music to his departed love ones on his frequent visits.” The organ story may or may not be true, but our reporter specifically rebuts the first two claims. Given Bright’s atheism, or agnosticism, or personal faith, I’m curious who paid for the Methodist chapel adjoining the plantation in which he was laid to rest:

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