Yorkshire Almanac Walking from London to Edinburgh, Ben Jonson drives a parson and an innkeeper into an alcoholic frenzy at Tollerton (York),

17 August 1618: Walking from London to Edinburgh, Ben Jonson drives a parson and an innkeeper into an alcoholic frenzy at Tollerton (York),

Ben Jonson. 1618. Ben Jonson’s Walk to Scotland. Online: Records of Early English Drama. The purchase link is to the published edition, which I hope to be able to afford one day. Here is the editors’ blog. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

…But as we travayled hearing it was out of our way and desiring to take advantage of the fairnesse of the weather we resolv’d to go one and so bayted at Tollerton, where Parson Rogers hearing of our passing by rydd after us and recoverd vs at Tollerton where at myne host Thorntons, where my gossip dischargd two borrachoe bottles vpon the myne host and the parson, to the down fall of the one, and soe elevating the other that Master Parson would needs bring vs one the way, where to shew his love to my gossip he fell of his horse and after ran leaping and dancing before vs half way to Topliffe, where we went to Mistres warcups the famous good Hostesse, where we stayed till wensday being shut vp with rayne.

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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.

Comment

As I’m sure you know, borracho is Spanish for “drunk,” and here it means “a great Dutch leathern bottle.”

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Comment

As I’m sure you know, borracho is Spanish for “drunk,” and here it means “a great Dutch leathern bottle.”

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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)

12 April 1706: The first four-day stagecoaches from York to London and vice versa depart from the Black Swan in each city

16 November 1827: John Nicholson, “the Yorkshire Poet,” an “uncouth clownish-looking man,” appears at Bow Street charged with creating a disturbance at Drury Lane

25 January 1859: John Lumsden, Hull-based Scottish steam entrepreneur and future mayor, addresses the local Robert Burns centenary dinner

14 May 1604: One of the compensatory “northern poems” registered today by Dr John Favour, Vicar of Halifax, to celebrate the union under James of Scotland and England a year ago

27 March 1634: In commercial Gothic urban legend, John Bartendale, a piper, is hung and buried at York, but awakes, is rescued and pardoned, and returns to the music business

3 January 1638: On the eve of the civil war, Henry Slingsby witnesses Royalist cavalry exercising near Wetherby on Bramham Moor, scene of the defeat of the Percy Rebellion in 1408

25 May 1728: King Jessop, the fighting rector of Treeton (Rotherham), is buried at Sheffield, and remembered for his punch and his parody

3 November 1694: Leeds’s borough treasurer is mandated to pay goldsmith Arthur Monjoy £61 for making the ceremonial mace

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Comment

I suspect Wardell’s real pleasure is in his footnote:

This person was found guilty and executed at York in 1696, for counterfeiting the current coin. The attic story of his dwelling-house in Briggate, was the place he used for this purpose, and was discovered in 1836, by some workmen engaged in repairing the premises. The apparatus used by him, together with a few silver coins were also found at the same time therein.

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