Now! Then! A crowd-pleasing morality play at Candlemas at Gouthwaite Hall in Catholic Nidderdale lands the cordwainer-players and their patron before the Star Chamber

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

G.W. Boddy. 1976. Players of Interludes in North Yorkshire in the Early Seventeenth Century. North Yorkshire County Record Office Journal, Vol. 3. Northallerton: North Yorkshire County Council. Reproduction by kind permission of North Yorkshire County Record Office. Get it:

Excerpt

The apprentice Thomas Pant at first denied that there had been any seditious interlude, but by the time of his trial Pant had left the company and was more vulnerable to pressure than the others. He later testified that there was indeed an interlude, and corroborated the evidence of William Stubbs. The interlude took the form of a disputation “counterfeited betwixt him that played the English Minister and him that played the Popish priest touching matters of religion.” The minister argued on the basis of the Bible but the priest countered that this was not enough and held up the yellow cross. “The minister [did] shew forth his said book or Bible to defend his profession withal, and that it was rejected and scoffed at,” alleged Stubbs. [Sir Stephen] Proctor [the Puritan Justice of Fountains Abbey] described how “he that played the fool [William Harrison] did deride the minister.” When the minister was condemned or overcome “there was flashes of fire cast forth and then he that played the Divell did carry the English minister away.” Another witness, William Browne, a Nidderdale linen weaver, described “the English minister in a black cloak, also a Popish priest in a black [MS. torn] and a cross on his shoulder: one in white like an angel, and more than one or two divells and a fool. And the fool did clap the English minister on the shoulder and mocked and flouted him, and said, ‘Well, thou must away anon.’” The audience, who were practically all Catholics, loved this spectacle. Proctor said they “greatly laughed and rejoiced a long time.” Browne alleged that “the people went after making a merriment and a sport at it.” The story of the interlude spread through Nidderdale. Some said to those who had not seen the play “if they had seen the play as it was played at Gowthwaite, they would never care for the new law or for going to church more.”

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

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.

Abbreviations

Comment

Several years later Sir John Yorke was accused not of “causing a seditious interlude,” and of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot and of harbouring seminary priests. This was finally reduced to “permitting the Simpson players to present an interlude, by which the established religion was brought into derision,” and attempting to bribe witnesses (Howard 1939).

Boddy reminds us of the choice of play offered by the strolling actors in Hamlet. William Harrison, the clown, claimed that in fact two plays were presented, “Perocles, prince of Tire,” and “King Lere,” as “printed in the books.” In the unlikely event that Harrison was not simply trying to misdirect the court, and if the play was not the anonymous 1590s King Leir, then this would be the first performance of Shakespeare’s Lear outside London, an improbability which some academics have gratefully seized.

Boddy suggests that the Simpsons et al might have sprung from the Egton Plough Stots, who appear in Young’s History of Whitby (1816). He also notes the suggestion in Aveling’s Northern Catholics that they might have been coached by seminary priests brought up to the performance of plays at Douai, and one of the boys in the company, Nicholas Postgate, eventually went to Douai to become a priest, returned, and was martyred in 1679.

As part of the creation of the Gouthwaite Reservoir, Bradford Corporation requisitioned Gouthwaite Hall from the Yorke family in 1883, and it was pulled down and [a new Gouthwaite Hall and Gouthwaite Farm were built] on the shore of the lake with some of the stones (Mitchell 1982). “The story goes that the tenants had remained in the old house until the water rose up to the door, which occurred when heavy rain caused a flood in 1899, trapping them on the upper floor of the hall for several days” (Historic Parks and Gardens Study Group 2019/07/20).

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

In the winter of 1609, the Egton players [led by Robert ahd Christopher Simpson] went on a Christmas tour which took them through Pickering, Helmsley, Thirsk, Ripon, Nidderdale, Richmond and Northallerton, before turning for home. They arrived at Sir John Yorke’s house, Gowthwaite [Gouthwaite] Hall in Nidderdale at Candlemas, 1609. They offered a choice of The three Shirleys or St. Christopher, and Sir John chose the latter. The visit must have been the social event of the year in Nidderdale, because a great throng of tenants, servants and neighbours, young and old, turned up for the performance in the hall that same evening. A bailiff supervised the seating, but such was the press in the hall that he did not notice the unauthorised entry of William Stubbs, the Puritan minister of Pateley Bridge.

St. Christopher was a version of an old morality play with a cast of nine. In itself it was quite harmless and inoffensive. It enacted the well-known legend of Reprobus “that neither feared God nor the Divell, nor was of any religion, but would serve the mightiest man upon the earth, and having served two kings and an Emperor, and hearing the Divell was of more might than they were, left them, and betook himself to the Divell his service.” Then Reprobus discovered the Devil feared the crucifix, “whereupon Raphalus (Reprobus) left the Divell saying there was a mightier man than he was, and went to the cross.” The Simpsons [company; after Christopher and Robert Simpson] used a ‘great yallowe coloured crosse’. Reprobus submitted to the cross, received instruction from a hermit, did penance for his sins and received the new name of Christopher.

That was the standard version that might safely be played in a Protestant gentleman’s house. The Simpsons, however, had an extra, Catholic version into which an interlude was interpolated. It was this interlude that caused the scandal that led Sir John Yorke to the Fleet prison in London. The apprentice, Thomas Pant, in his questioning at first denied that there had been any seditious interlude, as did William Harrison, Edward Whitfield and the other players, but by the time of his trial Pant had left the company and was more vulnerable to pressure than the others. He later testified that there was indeed an interlude, and corroborated the evidence of William Stubbs. The interlude took the form of a disputation “counterfeited betwixt him that played the English Minister and him that played the Popish preist touching matters of religion.” The minister argued on the basis of the Bible but the priest countered that this was not enough and held up the yellow cross. “The minister [did] shew forth his said book or Bible to defend his profession withal, and that it was rejected and scoffed at,” alleged Stubbs. [Sir Stephen] Proctor [the Puritan Justice of Fountains Abbey] described how “he that played the fool [William Harrison] did deride the minister.” When the minister was condemned or overcome “there was flashes of fire cast forth and then he that played the Divell did carry the English minister away.”

Another witness, William Browne, a Nidderdale linen weaver, described “the English minister in a black cloak, also a Popish priest in a black [MS. torn] and a cross on his shoulder: one in white like an angel, and more than one or two divells and a fool. … And the fool did clap the English minister on the shoulder and mocked and flouted him, and said, ‘Well, thou must away anon.'”

The audience, who were practically all Catholics, loved this spectacle. Proctor said they “greatly laughed and rejoiced a long time.” Browne alleged that “the people went after making a merriment and a sport at it.” The story of the interlude spread through Nidderdale. Some said to those who had not seen the play “if they had seen the play as it was played at Gowthwaite, they would never care for the new law or for going to church more.”

678 words.