23 December 1689: A Danish soldier is beheaded at Beverley for killing a comrade in a duel, inspiring some doggerel
The memorial plaque to the Danish soldiers is currently outside St Mary’s, Beverley (Craven 2023).
Thomas Allen. 1828. A New and Complete History of the County of York, Vol. 3. London: I.T. Hinton. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
In the churchyard [of St. Mary’s], against the south side of the nave, is an oval tablet with the following doggerel rhyme:
Here two young Danish soldiers lie,
The one in quarrel chanced to die;
The other’s head, by their own law,
With sword was severed at one blow.
In the register of the parish are the following entries:
1689. Dec. 16, Daniel Straker, a Danish trooper, buried.
Dec. 23, Johannes Frederick Bellow (beheaded for killing the other,) buried.
The above event occurred upon the occasion of some Danish soldiers having been landed at Hull, for the service of William III; they were marched to Beverley, and the sick, as well as the ammunition and ordnance, were forwarded at the expense of the corporation. During their short stay, two young men belonging to one of the regiments, having had a quarrel on the passage, which could not be decided on board the vessel, sought the first opportunity of a private meeting to settle their differences by the sword; and their fate is recorded in the above epitaph.
Comment
Comment
Probably apocryphal:
A writer in a Hull paper a few years ago, Mr. Empson, Hessle road, Hull, an old freeman of Beverley, still living, spoke of the story of the actual execution as related to himself, by only the third transmission, from an original eye-witness. This was a girl named Mary Hopwood, who was taken by her mother to see the execution. This Mary Hopwood lived to be 104 years of age, and passed the story to her daughter, who lived to 80, passing it to her daughter, Mrs. Southeran, Westwood Road, who, at the age of 86 (in 1830), told the brief tale to Mr. Empson. A scaffold was erected on the Cornhill (the middle of the large open space where the gas standard now is). Two cartloads of gravel were strewn below the scaffold to absorb the blood which fell. Lines of cavalry were drawn up all round the scaffold, and a great crowd filled the market place, strangers as well as townsmen. The bells of the churches tolled, but with that exception all was silent, till a dull sounding stroke severed the head from the culprit’s body, when a fierce and simultaneous shriek from the females present broke the air.
(Bulmer 1892)
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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.
- Beverley (22) W/G ·
- Catholic Church (57) W/G ·
- Decapitation (5) W/G ·
- Denmark (7) W/G ·
- Duel (4) W/G ·
- East Riding of Yorkshire (67) W/G ·
- Glorious Revolution (7) W/G ·
- Jacobite rising of 1689 (1) W/G ·
- Protestantism (25) W/G ·
- Scotland (38) W/G ·
- St Mary’s Church, Beverley (2) W/G ·
- William III (9) W/G ·
Comment
Comment
Probably apocryphal:
A writer in a Hull paper a few years ago, Mr. Empson, Hessle road, Hull, an old freeman of Beverley, still living, spoke of the story of the actual execution as related to himself, by only the third transmission, from an original eye-witness. This was a girl named Mary Hopwood, who was taken by her mother to see the execution. This Mary Hopwood lived to be 104 years of age, and passed the story to her daughter, who lived to 80, passing it to her daughter, Mrs. Southeran, Westwood Road, who, at the age of 86 (in 1830), told the brief tale to Mr. Empson. A scaffold was erected on the Cornhill (the middle of the large open space where the gas standard now is). Two cartloads of gravel were strewn below the scaffold to absorb the blood which fell. Lines of cavalry were drawn up all round the scaffold, and a great crowd filled the market place, strangers as well as townsmen. The bells of the churches tolled, but with that exception all was silent, till a dull sounding stroke severed the head from the culprit’s body, when a fierce and simultaneous shriek from the females present broke the air.
(Bulmer 1892)
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Similar
5 March 1829: Henry Burton of Hotham tells a rowdy public meeting at Beverley to petition parliament against Catholic emancipation and preserve “the Protestant constitution”
3 January 1638: On the eve of the civil war, Henry Slingsby witnesses Royalist cavalry exercising near Wetherby on Bramham Moor, scene of the defeat of the Percy Rebellion in 1408
Comment
Comment
Although Mary Magdalene’s feast is conventionally 22 July, the Maudlin Fair was celebrated on and around 2 August on Magdalen Hill, Hedon. In 1820 the Sabbath preceding the fair was 30 July. John Nicholson, 70 years later, seems to suggest that it might not have been as unpleasant as the Methodist killjoys suggested:
As the Fair became of less importance, the tenant of the field tried to prevent anyone entering on the day appointed for the fair, and though sometimes unsuccessful, by dint of bribing and giving a shilling each to those desirous of entering, the fair was finally abolished about 1860. The following is a reprint of a song, descriptive of the fair in its best days:
Let lords in their bag wigs, and ladies in gauze,
At court strut and stare, or at balls seek applause,
Can such create envy, can aught give us care?
While pleasures invite us like Magdalen Fair.No plotting ambition, no polished deceit,
No patches or paint, at this revel we meet;
Our greetings are blessings not purchased by wealth,
The smile of content, and the rose bloom of health.Maidens long wishing for this happy day,
Pray old father time to pass quickly away;
To reach this gay scene, all contrivance they try,
And those who can’t get there – they sit down and cry.Here damsels all beauty, enlivened by youth,
With eyes full of lightning and hearts full of truth;
Impelled by dame nature in spite of their dads,
Parade in their finest! and skyme [squint] at the lads.And gallant young yeomen, our nation’s chief pride,
For such can be found in no country beside;
Each anxiously striving from notice apart,
To catch a kind look from the girl of his heart.All sports and diversions for old and for young,
A medley of frolic is this jovial throng;
Shrill whistles and trumpets, bagpipes and gewgaw
Pots boiling, dogs fighting, and game of E.O. [badger-baiting].Here’s wrestling and vaulting, and dancing on wire,
With fiddling, and juggling, and men eating fire,
Bold sergeants recruiting, lads ‘listing for life,
And family lessons from Punch and his wife.Stalls hung with fine trinkets, before and behind,
Rich sweets for the palate, and books for the mind,
Famed singers of ballads, excelled by none,
And tellers of fortunes, who don’t know their own!Huge giants, dwarf pygmies, wild beasts and wise ponies,
Rough bears taught to dance, with arch pug-macaronies!
Raree shows and safe horses, a penny a ride,
With grand entertainments, a thousand beside.In words all the wonders would never be told,
The way to enjoy, is to come and behold;
The king’s coronation could nothing compare
To half the delights of the Magdalen Fair.The badgers were obtained from the woods at Burton Constable, and were housed in barrels on the Fair ground. Sometimes there would be a dozen or more present at once. The man, who wished his dog to try conclusions with the badger, paid the owner of the badger sixpence; but the attempt to draw the badger not unfrequently ended in the death of the dog (Nicholson 1890).
How does “the game of E.O.” (evens and odds, an early form of roulette) come to be used for badger-baiting?
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