Now! Then! At Pontefract, the new Catholic and Dissenting members of the judiciary send James II thanks for permitting freedom of conscience, leading him to believe it has popular support

24 April 1688: At Pontefract, the new Catholic and Dissenting members of the judiciary send James II thanks for permitting freedom of conscience, leading him to believe it has popular support

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:

Excerpt

I went from York to Pontefract, where the general quarter sessions began that day for the West Riding of Yorkshire. There were four-and-twenty justices of the peace of the principal gentry of the county together; the West Riding not having yet been examined as to their disposition of taking away the test and the penal laws as the East and North Ridings had been before, where the prime of the gentry in both had been put out of commission of justice of peace and deputy-lieutenants for declaring themselves in the negative, and ordinary persons both as to quality and estates (most of them Dissenters) had been put in their room. The popish justices, in number six, and Sir John Boynton, the King’s serjeant, who aspired, I presume, to be made a judge, moved an address might be signed and presented to his Majesty of thanks for his late indulgence for liberty of conscience, not only from the justices there, but the two grand juries. But neither any of the justices, but those I have named, and one Mr Bull, nor any of the grand juries, would join in signing the address. However the Roman Catholics and those two gentlemen sent it up, subscribed by themselves, as the act of the whole sessions. By such acts as these the King was much deceived as to the opinion of his subjects concerning the indulgence; three or four men in diverse places pretending to represent the thoughts of a whole corporation or county.

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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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Original

I went from York to Pontefract, where the general quarter sessions began that day for the West Riding of Yorkshire. There were four-and-twenty justices of the peace of the principal gentry of the county together; the West Riding not having yet been examined as to their disposition of taking away the test and the penal laws as the East and North Ridings had been before, where the prime of the gentry in both had been put out of commission of justice of peace and deputy-lieutenants for declaring themselves in the negative, and ordinary persons both as to quality and estates (most of them Dissenters) had been put in their room. The popish justices, in number six, and Sir John Boynton, the King’s serjeant, who aspired, I presume, to be made a judge, moved an address might be signed and presented to his Majesty of thanks for his late indulgence for liberty of conscience, not only from the justices there, but the two grand juries. But neither any of the justices, but those I have named, and one Mr. Bull, nor any of the grand juries, would join in signing the address. However the Roman Catholics and those two gentlemen sent it up, subscribed by themselves, as the act of the whole sessions. By such acts as these the King was much deceived as to the opinion of his subjects concerning the indulgence; three or four men in diverse places pretending to represent the thoughts of a whole corporation or county.

253 words.