Yorkshire Almanac Perhaps violating the discriminatory Test Acts, James II replaces Protestant justices of the peace by Catholics in the West Riding

6 January 1687: Perhaps violating the discriminatory Test Acts, James II replaces Protestant justices of the peace by Catholics in the West Riding

John Reresby. 1875. The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby of Thrybergh, Bart., M.P. for York, etc., 1634-1689. Ed. James J. Cartwright. London: Longmans, Green, and Company. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

I had an account that several gentlemen in this Riding were put out of commission of the peace, to the number of nineteen, and ten papists put in their room; that my Lord Rochester, Lord High Treasurer, was laid aside from that office, and that it was put into the hands of five commissioners, of whom two were papists.

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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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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

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

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

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

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

22 October 1674: Barbara Lee dies and – says her epitaph – is then buried upright under the fireplace of St James’ Church, Norton, Sheffield

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

1 November 1643: Sam Priestley of Soyland (22) saves a Royalist enemy from drowning in Hebden Water at the Battle of Heptonstall, and himself dies later of pneumonia

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

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This is a Jesuit hagiography, and I don’t know to what extent the source reflects the substance of Dolben’s remarks. Wikipedia takes a more benevolent view of him:

In the aftermath of the Popish Plot, Dolben tried many of the accused, including Sir Thomas Gascoigne, 2nd Baronet and Sir Miles Stapleton; due to his impartial trait of pointing out inconsistencies in the prosecution’s evidence, both were acquitted.[4] At the trial of Mary Pressicks, who was accused of saying that “We shall never be at peace until we are all of the Roman Catholic religion”, Dolben saved her life by ruling that the words, even if she did speak them, could not amount to treason.[5] As a result of this and his opposition to Charles II’s removal of the City Corporation’s writs, he was “according to the vicious practise of the time” dismissed on 18 April 1683. Again working as a barrister, Dolben prosecuted Algernon Sidney in November 1683 before being reinstated as a Justice of the King’s Bench on 18 March 1689. Records from 29 April show him “inveighing mightily against the corruption of juries [during the Glorious Revolution]”,[1] and he continued sitting as a Justice until his death from an apoplectic fit on 25 January 1694,[6] and was buried in Temple Church.

Vulgar almanacs glory in death sentences and executions, but I suppose one (1) is called for.

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