Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

March 16, 1675-6. Before Sir Richard Osbaldeston, Kt., Charles Chauncy, of Burlington, gent., saith that, upon the first of this instant, he went by the command of his captain, Andrew Hayes, to search the house of John Constable, Esq., being a Papist, for horses… And upon his search he seized two geldings, … mare, and two fowling pieces. And in his search … one who was set in a room ne … to another room, where there was a table spread with a linen cloth: and at one end a surplice, and at another end a vestment, which he believed belonged to a Popish priest. And this informant returned with Mr. Constable to his cap … at Burlington, who then … that he had seized the said person. Whereupon this informant took horse immediately and went to Mr. Constable’s house again, and there found and seized the said person, who then called himself John Acklam, with the surplice and vestments, and carried them all to his captain at Burlington. And then he searched the said party who called himself Acklam (and found) a ring of brass, with ten small notches and a large one; a tin box, wherein was several wafers or parts of wafers with impressions upon them, with two written letters, and some notes about paying of mild moneys for guineas [?], with some other papers. But afterwards he was told that the said party who called himself Acklam was one John May, and was looked upon to be a Popish priest.

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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.

• Act of Uniformity 1662 (4) W/G ·
• Bridlington (10) W/G ·
• Catholic Church (57) W/G ·
• Charles II (1630-85) (27), King of Scotland 1649-51, King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration until his death W/G ·
• Corporation Act 1661 (1) W/G ·
• Eucharist (2) W/G ·
• Horse (72) W/G ·
• Sacramental bread (2) W/G ·
• Test Act (5) W/G ·
• 📌York Castle (37) W/G ·
• 📌York (165) W/G ·

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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

11 September 1666: Nine days after the start of the Great Fire, Margaret Hodgson of Richmond tells a York court that a beggar told her yesterday of a plot to burn London

9 July 1680: The Protestant Robert Bolron says that William Battley of Leeds lied in saying that Bolron had falsely accused the Catholic Sir Thomas Gascoigne of treason, and was fussy about almanacs

7 January 1397: On the longest of the 42 days of his carnivalesque reign, boy-bishop John de Cave of York goes on a 200-mile begging spree

7 February 1685: Notables at York await the death of Charles II, planning to prevent anti-papists and other dissidents from disrupting the accession of James II

31 August 1651: John Wilks (Thompson, Smith…), of Knaresborough gives a York court a glimpse of the life of a Catholic hedge priest

18 March 1650: Dorothy Rodes of Bowling (Bradford) blames witchcraft by Mary Sykes for the postpartum illness of her daughter

2 August 1680: William Dolben, perhaps reluctantly, condemns Thomas Thwing to death at York for his part, without co-conspirators, in a fictitious conspiracy – the Popish Plot

26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits

23 June 1413: Walking from York to Bridlington on a hot Midsummer’s Eve, the husband of the Christian mystic Margery Kempe suggests a resumption of sexual relations

25 August 1662: Following Charles II’s purge of Presbyterian ministers, Roundhead Captain John Hodgson of Coley Hall (Halifax) is again harassed as a suspected plotter

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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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Does Hodgson’s black Bartholomew also invoke for him the French Catholic St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Huguenots?

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