Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

I received notice from my lieutenant at York that the day the Countess of Strafford’s body came there to be buried (being attended by several gentlemen of the country, and a guard out of my company), the rabble, to tear off the escutcheons from the hearse, had made an assault upon them, when the soldiers endeavouring to beat them off were driven and pursued into the minster, where the quire being hung with black cloth and escutcheons, was plundered of them, several of the soldiers hurt as well as those of the rabble, so that a greater riot had not been known in that place. That he (meaning my lieutenant) had complained to my lord mayor [John Thompson, a goldsmith] of some of the leaders of this fray, and that he refused to punish them as he ought. At the same time I had a letter from my lord mayor, who complained of the lieutenant and the soldiers, and denied but that he was ready and active to inflict such punishments upon the offenders as the law allowed in that case.

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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.

• Escutcheon (heraldry) (1) W/G ·
• Funeral (25) W/G ·
• James II (20) W/G ·
• Reresby, John (1634-89) (23), Thrybergh-born, politician and diarist, governor of York 1682-88, 2nd baronet W/G ·
• Riot (22) W/G ·
• Stanley, Henrietta Mary (-1685) (2), Countess of Strafford through her marriage to William Wentworth W/G ·
• William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1) W/G ·
• 📌York Minster (28) W/G ·
• 📌York (165) 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.

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Similar

21 February 1688: On Shrove-Tuesday, cock-throwing York apprentices break a Catholic window, and the militia intervenes, torturing citizens and violating their civic rights

2 September 1686: John Reresby describes his organisation of the York garrison

15 September 1679: The election at York for the Exclusion Bill Parliament is devolved to more convenient locations

28 October 1683: York’s governor fails to provoke a duel with someone who borrowed his cushion at the minster

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

17 October 1688: York on the eve of the Glorious Revolution: “an archbishopric without a bishop, a city without a lord mayor, a garrison without a soldier”

25 March 1685: The York apprentices ask John Reresby to lead their new militia troop

24 June 1687: John Reresby, governor of York, protests James II’s plans to turn his residence into a Catholic school

7 April 1687: James II’s declaration of freedom of conscience arrives in Yorkshire, but fails in its alleged underlying intention – to drive people into the arms of the Catholic church

12 May 1687: Royal humour

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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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