Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

Of Old, when Heroes thought it base
To be confin’d to Native Air,
And Glory brought a Martial Race
To breath their towring Eagles here,
The Sons of Fam’d Brigantium stood
Disputing Freedom with their blood;
Undaunted at the Purple flood,
Brigantium honour’d with a Race Divine;
Gave Birth to the Victorious Constantine.
Whose Colony whilst Planted there,
With blooming Glories still renew’d the Year,
The bashful Thames for Beauty so Renown’d,
In hast ran by her Puny Town;
And poor Augusta was asham’d to own.
Augusta then did drooping lye,
Though now she rears her towring front so high.

The Pale and Purple Rose,
That after cost so many Blows
When English Barons fought;
A Prize too dearly bought:
By the fam’d Worthies of that Shire,
Still best by Sword and Shield defended were.
And in each Tract of Glory since,
For their Lov’d Country and their Prince;
Princes that hate Rome’s Slavery,
And join the Nations Right with their own Royalty,
None were more ready in distress to save,
None were more Loyal, none more Brave.

And now when the Renown’d Nassau
Came to restore our Liberty and Law,
The work so well perform’d and done,
They were the first begun;
They did no storms or threatnings fear,
Of Thunder in the grumbling Air,
Or any Revolutions near:
The Noble work large hopes of freedom told,
Freedom Inspir’d their minds and made ’em bold,
And gave them English Hearts like those of Old,
To welcome their Redeemer when he came,
Whose Vertue and whose Fame,
Made our long smother’d Joys burst into brighter flame,
So when the Glittering Queen of Night,
With black Eclipse is shadow’d o’re,
The Globe that swells with sullen Pride,
Her dazling Charms to hide,
Does but a little time abide,
And then each Ray is brighter than before,
CHORUS of all.
Let Musick joyn in a Chorus Divine,
In praise of all, of all, of all,
That Celebrate, that Celebrate,
This Glorious Festival.
Sound Trumpets sound, beat every Drum,
Till it be known through Christendom;
This is the knell of falling Rome,
To him that our mighty Defender has been,
Sound all,
And to all the Heroes invited him in,
Sound all,
And as the chief Agents of this Royal Work,
Long flourish the City and County of York.

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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

The ode is a lovely little thing, and lines like “Of old, when heroes thought it base/ To be confined to native air” might even cause a twitterstorm. A recording. W.H. Cummings’ edition strikes me as an excellent point of departure (Purcell 1878).

The prophecies of Nixon, the Cheshire Merlin, give hope:

London streets shall run with blood,
And at last shall sink,
So that it shall be fulfill’d
That Lincoln was, London is, and York shall be
The finest city of the three.
(Northall 1892)

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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.

• Brigantes (1) W/G ·
• Brigantia (ancient region) (1) W/G ·
• Catholic Church (57) W/G ·
• Constantine the Great (1) W/G ·
• Eboracum (2) W/G ·
• Glorious Revolution (7) W/G ·
• Great Fire of London (3) W/G ·
• Humour (29) W/G ·
• James II (20) W/G ·
• Londinium (1) W/G ·
• London (84) W/G ·
• Mary II of England (2) W/G ·
• Music (26) W/G ·
• Ode (1) W/G ·
• Poetry (75) W/G ·
• Protestantism (25) W/G ·
• Purcell, Henry (1659-95) (2), one of England's finest composers W/G ·
• River Thames (3) W/G ·
• Robert Nixon (prophet) (1) W/G ·
• Roman Britain (occupation AD 43-410) (8) W/G ·
• Thomas d’Urfey (1) W/G ·
• Wars of the Roses (1455-87) (4), a series of civil wars fought for the English throne between two Plantagenet branches, the Houses of Lancaster and York W/G ·
• William Hayman Cummings (1) W/G ·
• William III (9) 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.

Comment

Comment

The ode is a lovely little thing, and lines like “Of old, when heroes thought it base/ To be confined to native air” might even cause a twitterstorm. A recording. W.H. Cummings’ edition strikes me as an excellent point of departure (Purcell 1878).

The prophecies of Nixon, the Cheshire Merlin, give hope:

London streets shall run with blood,
And at last shall sink,
So that it shall be fulfill’d
That Lincoln was, London is, and York shall be
The finest city of the three.
(Northall 1892)

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

23 December 1689: A Danish soldier is beheaded at Beverley for killing a comrade in a duel, inspiring some doggerel

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”

2 October 1800: Part of an obituary to Harry Rowe, Punch and Judy man, trumpeter at the Battle of Culloden and the York assizes, who died today, old and ill, in the York poorhouse

11 September 1666: Nine days after the start of the Great Fire, Margaret Hodgson of Richmond tells a York court that a beggar told her yesterday of a plot to burn London

17 December 1688: Mass mobilisation in Leeds on rumours of an imminent Celtic counteroffensive against the Glorious Revolution

30 January 1650: Alderman Hoyle of York hangs himself at Westminster on the first anniversary of Charles I’s execution, inspiring John Cleveland to verse

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

3 July 1761: John Wesley visits an unjustly bankrupted Yarm liquor smuggler in York Castle

25 September 1880: Thomas Harper reveals to the Leeds Mercury’s young readers a mnemonic song of monarchs (except Oliver) used in the village school at Weldrake (York) in the 1770s

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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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

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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