Now! Then! 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

Excerpt

1638 Richard Brathwait, then of London, has his Drunken Barnaby claim vaguely that he saw the resurrected piper at York during his tour of the provinces:

A piper being here committed,
Guilty found, condemned and titted:
As he was to Knavesmire going,
This day, quoth boys, will spoil thy blowing;
From thy pipe th’art now departing;
Wags, quoth the piper, you’re not certain.

All which happened to our wonder,
For the halter cut asunder,
As one of all life deprived,
Being buried, he revived:
And there lives, and plays his measure,
Holding hanging but a pleasure.

Brathwait is channelling the myth that the philosopher Duns Scotus (hence the bagpipes) was buried alive (see for example the coeval translation by William Rawley of Francis Bacon’s Historia Vitae et Mortis), not to his theology or metaphysics.

1730 York printer and author Thomas Gent imports Brathwait’s poetic tour de farce from London and turns it into a verosimilar anecdote for his History of York, adding a year (1634), creating a rescue scene, and giving names to the principals – John Bartendale, the piper, and Mr Vavasour of Hesselwood, the saviour.

1867 William Knipe in his Criminal Chronology of York Castle invents the day now used – 27 March 1634.

1874 Sabine Baring-Gould elevates Knipe’s tale from penny dreadful to tongue-in-cheek salon literature.

1957 Source-shy Jesuit Philip Caraman says the Catholic priest John Robinson told “as an old man of his days as novice-master in gaol and the story of John Bartendale, the felon whom he had confessed on the eve of his execution on 27 March 1634…”

2003 Sponsored by the The Last Drop Inn, and “using information from secret sources,” ghost/pub walk entrepreneur Mark Graham “discovers” that John Bartendale became a publican and is still toasted in York pubs.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed.

Comment

Sources. Here’s Richard Brathwait’s original Latin and English translation:

Ibi Tibicen apprehensus,
Judicatus et suspensus,
Plaustro cöaptato furi,
Ubi Tibia, clamant pueri?
Nunquam ludes amplius Billie;
At nescitis, inquit ille.
Quod contigerit memet teste,
Nam abscissa jugulo reste,
Ut in fossam Furcifer vexit,
Semi-mortuus resurrexit:
Arce reducem occludit,
Ubi valet, vivit, ludit.

A piper being here committed,
Guilty found, condemned and titted:
As he was to Knavesmire going,
This day, quoth boys, will spoil thy blowing;
From thy pipe th’art now departing;
Wags, quoth the piper, you’re not certain.
All which happened to our wonder,
For the halter cut asunder,
As one of all life deprived,
Being buried, he revived:
And there lives, and plays his measure,
Holding hanging but a pleasure.
(Brathwait 1638)

Bacon:

There have been many examples of men in show dead, either laid out upon the cold floor, or carried forth to burial; nay, of some buried in the earth; which notwithstanding have lived again; which hath been found in those that were buried (the earth being afterwards opened) by the bruising, and wounding of their head, through the struggling of the body within the coffin; whereof the most recent and memorable example was that of Joannes Scotus, called the subtile, and a schoolman, who being digged up again by his servant (unfortunately absent at his burial, and who knew his master’s manner in such fits) was found in that state. And the like happened in our days in the person of a player, buried at Cambridge (Bacon 1638).

Brathwait would probably not have cared about the detailed confutation of Bacon by the Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding in 1636 (Murray 1998).

Gent’s History of York:

1634 … This year one John Bartendale was executed at York gallows for felony. When he had hung three quarters of an hour, he was cut down and buried near the place of execution. A little after, a gentleman of the ancient family of the Vavasours of Hesselwood riding by, thought he saw the earth move: Upon which ordering his man to alight, and alighting himself, both of them charitably assisted to throw by the mould, and to help the buried convict from his grave; who, being conveyed again to York Castle, was by the said gentleman’s intercession reprieved ’till the next assizes, and then pardoned by the judge, who seemed amazed at so signal a providence. And this puts me in Mind, that the said Bartendale was a piper, taken notice of by Barnaby, in his book of travels into the northern parts:

[Latin as above]

Thus paraphrased:

Here a Piper apprehended,
Was found guilty and suspended.
Being led to fatal gallows,
Boys did cry, Where is thy Bellows?
Ever must thou cease thy Tuning!
Answered he, For all your cunning
You may fail in your prediction.
Which did happen, without fiction.
For cut down, and quick interred,
Earth rejected what was bur’ed:
Half alive or dead he rises,
Gets a pardon next assizes,
And in York continued blowing,
Yet a sense of goodness showing.

I have been told the poor fellow turned ostler, and lived very honestly afterwards. Having been demanded, what he could tell in relation to hanging, as having experienced it, he replied, that when he was turned off, flashes of fire seemed to dart in his eyes, from which he fell into a state of darkness and insensibility. (Gent 1730)

William Knipe’s Criminal Chronology of York Castle (which was shamelessly plagiarised by A.W. Twyford, governor of York Castle, who should have known better (Twyford 1880)):

In the reign of King Charles I., and on the 27th day of March, 1634, John Bartendale was executed on the York gallows, without Micklegate Bar, for felony etc. etc. (Knipe 1867)

Sabine Baring-Gould:

… Earth has a peculiarly invigorating and restorative effect, as has been recently discovered; and patients suffering from debility are by some medical men now-a-days placed in earth baths with the most salutary effects. In the case of gangrened wounds a little earth has been found efficacious in promoting healthy action of the skin. John Bartendale was now to experience the advantages of an earth-bath … (Baring-Gould 1874).

Philip Caraman:

It was probably at [the March 1630 assizes] in York that Fr. Robinson was condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered outside Micklegate. The sentence was not carried out, but he lay in York Castle for another eleven years, providing for the relief of Catholic prisoners. No longer in need of disguise, he ministered openly to the condemned malefactors. As an old man he told of his days as novice-master in gaol and the story of John Bartendale, the felon whom he had confessed on the eve of his execution on 27 March 1634. Bartendale had been a strolling piper. After he had hung on the gallows three-quarters of an hour he was cut down for dead and buried near the place of execution. The hangman had not reckoned on the strength of Bartendale’s throat muscles. Shortly afterwards, Sir Thomas Vavasour of Haslewood, passing on his way to the city, saw the freshly-turned soil heave close to his path. At once he dismounted, and with his servant’s help, ‘dug up the convict all alive’. At the next Assizes the Judge mercifully ruled that Bartendale was legally dead. He was released through the intercession of his deliverer, who took him into service at Haslewood: but in intervals of work he went into town,

And in York continued blowing
Yet a sense of goodness showing.

(Caraman 1957)

One two non-sources for the Caraman anecdote.

Mark Graham ventriloquising in The York Press:

For many years there has been a curious custom in York of making a toast to Honest John for good luck. Now Mark Graham, of the Original Ghost Walk of York, which leaves from the King’s Arms nightly, has uncovered the tale behind the toast. According to Mark, Honest John was John Bartendale, a young piper, who was hanged for theft on March 27, 1634 despite a clear lack of evidence. The judge behind the sentence was a notorious hanger who ignored John’s pleas that he was an honest man. John was hanged near Micklegate Bar, cut down and buried. But several hours later, travellers spotted John’s burial mound moving and watched in amazement as the piper emerged naked from the pile of soil. No sooner had John escaped his grave when he was arrested and brought before the judge who condemned him. But this time the entire city petitioned his release and an eminent gentleman argued on John’s behalf that God had passed his judgement when he allowed him to survive. The story says that Honest John was freed by the judge to rapturous cheers from the crowd. Mark said: “Honest John, as he became known, led a long and happy life as a publican in the city. People travelled from far and wide to hear his story and drink to his health, hoping to share a drop of his good fortune.” He compiled the story, using information from secret sources, for the York Brewery pub, The Last Drop Inn. The pub intends to display the tale and encourage customers to drink a toast to Honest John (York Press 2003/04/21).

Duns Scotus trivia:

A poem, found I know not where:

Mark this man’s demise, o traveler,
For here lies John Scot, once interr’d
But twice dead; we are now wiser
And still alive, who then so err’d.
Who would be in your medieval supergroup? Malcolm Guite replies:

Albertus Magnus: Bass
Thomas Aquinas: Multiple keyboards
Duns Scotus: Bagpipes
Bonaventure: Lead Guitar
Dante: Vocals (triple tracked)

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Original

1638 Richard Brathwait, then of London, has his Drunken Barnaby claim vaguely that he saw the resurrected piper at York during his tour of the provinces:

A piper being here committed,
Guilty found, condemned and titted:
As he was to Knavesmire going,
This day, quoth boys, will spoil thy blowing;
From thy pipe th’art now departing;
Wags, quoth the piper, you’re not certain.

All which happened to our wonder,
For the halter cut asunder,
As one of all life deprived,
Being buried, he revived:
And there lives, and plays his measure,
Holding hanging but a pleasure.

Brathwait is channelling the myth that the philosopher Duns Scotus (hence the bagpipes) was buried alive (see for example the coeval translation by William Rawley of Francis Bacon’s Historia Vitae et Mortis), not to his theology or metaphysics.

1730 York printer and author Thomas Gent imports Brathwait’s poetic tour de farce from London and turns it into a verosimilar anecdote for his History of York, adding a year (1634), creating a rescue scene, and giving names to the principals – John Bartendale, the piper, and Mr Vavasour of Hesselwood, the saviour.

1867 William Knipe in his Criminal Chronology of York Castle invents the day now used – 27 March 1634.

1874 Sabine Baring-Gould elevates Knipe’s tale from penny dreadful to tongue-in-cheek salon literature.

1957 Source-shy Jesuit Philip Caraman says the Catholic priest John Robinson told “as an old man of his days as novice-master in gaol and the story of John Bartendale, the felon whom he had confessed on the eve of his execution on 27 March 1634…”

2003 Sponsored by the The Last Drop Inn, and “using information from secret sources,” ghost/pub walk entrepreneur Mark Graham “discovers” that John Bartendale became a publican and is still toasted in York pubs.

338 words.

Now! Then! A Yorkshire Almanac for 2024

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

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