Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

5th day [i.e. Thursday] I preached at John Hey’s to a full assembly, God wonderfully helped in prayer, such tears, groans, that sometimes my voice was scarce heard for the noise of people’s cries. I have seldom heard the like – a good sign.

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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

Comment

Unfortunately 17th century charismatic Presbyterian preachers didn’t use YouTube. What rather puzzles me is Heywood’s use of “melt”. Is it OED’s 3.c. – “transitive. To overwhelm, touch, or soften (a person, a person’s feelings, etc.), esp. by appealing to pity, love, etc.; to persuade, bring round; to delight, thrill” – or its 3.e. – “intransitive To become ecstatic; to yield to rapture or delight; spec. to experience sexual orgasm”? OED doesn’t seem to have the noun form, “melting.” Private and public examples in diverse functional contexts ex op. cit.:

1. God wonderfully melted my heart when Jo Lister and myself were at prayer
2. God sweetly melted my heart, helped me in discoursing extempore on Psalm 56.8
3. God helped my heart, melted several others
4. God wonderfully assisted my head in my Lord’s work, melted some hearts when speaking of this work in young men
5. God melted my heart in secret prayer in the morning
6. In the afternoon, my son, wife and I spent some time in prayer, all excercised, wonderfully melted, oh what a flood of tears!
7. Eliezer prayed sensibly, but John exceeded in self-abasings, meltings, tears

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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.

• Altered state of consciousness (1) W/G ·
• 📌Gisburn (2), Lancashire village and civil parish, previously situated in the West Riding of Yorkshire and sometimes referred to as Gisburn in Craven W/G ·
• Heywood, Oliver (1630-1702) (34), Bolton-born nonconformist minister and diarist, active in the West Riding, resident at Northowram, ejected for his beliefs W/G ·
• Lancashire (35) W/G ·
• Nonconformism (47) W/G ·
• Prayer (7) W/G ·
• Presbyterianism (20) W/G ·
• Religious ecstasy (1) W/G ·
• Ribble Valley (2) W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (150) 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.

Comment

Comment

Unfortunately 17th century charismatic Presbyterian preachers didn’t use YouTube. What rather puzzles me is Heywood’s use of “melt”. Is it OED’s 3.c. – “transitive. To overwhelm, touch, or soften (a person, a person’s feelings, etc.), esp. by appealing to pity, love, etc.; to persuade, bring round; to delight, thrill” – or its 3.e. – “intransitive To become ecstatic; to yield to rapture or delight; spec. to experience sexual orgasm”? OED doesn’t seem to have the noun form, “melting.” Private and public examples in diverse functional contexts ex op. cit.:

1. God wonderfully melted my heart when Jo Lister and myself were at prayer
2. God sweetly melted my heart, helped me in discoursing extempore on Psalm 56.8
3. God helped my heart, melted several others
4. God wonderfully assisted my head in my Lord’s work, melted some hearts when speaking of this work in young men
5. God melted my heart in secret prayer in the morning
6. In the afternoon, my son, wife and I spent some time in prayer, all excercised, wonderfully melted, oh what a flood of tears!
7. Eliezer prayed sensibly, but John exceeded in self-abasings, meltings, tears

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Similar

11 December 1680: The Great Comet is seen in Halifax as a natural event, in London – amid Popish Plot hysteria – as a portent

23 August 1681: John Heywood’s is ordained at John Hey’s in Craven

24 June 1679: The world’s oldest wool carders?

27 September 1680: The Rev Oliver Heywood manifests disregard for Calvinist views on fasting, for his horses, and for his wife

27 June 1669: The vicar of Morley fails to persuade the local JP to prevent Oliver Heywood speaking from his pulpit

5 April 1674: An anonymous message to a preacher

27 July 1612: Jennet Preston, the only Yorkshirewoman among the Pendle witches, is found guilty at York of the murder of Thomas Lister of Westby Hall, Gisburn (Ribble Valley)

2 January 1673: Despite Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence, Presbyterians Oliver Heywood and Christopher Richardson are detained while preaching at Lascelles Hall (Kirkburton)

5 February 1691: Approaching 60, Oliver Heywood contemplates his place in the cosmos

29 November 1673: A verse warns Charles II against his brother James, six days after the latter’s marriage to an Italian Catholic

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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

Comment

I take this to be a curious prayer. The context is the 1673 Test Act and suspicion that James was a Catholic – he had married an Italian Catholic, Mary of Modena, six days previously, on 23 November. Is James the “false brother” AND “friend”, or is someone else implicated?

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