Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 366 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data

19 August 1728: An elderly gamekeeper at Pilley recalls the extrajudicial execution of a Dodworth man on the orders of young Sir Francis Wortley during the Civil War

John Hobson. 1877. The Journal of Mr. John Hobson, Late of Dodworth Green. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Charles Jackson. Durham: Surtees Society. A (morbid) compendium of everyday England. It is sometimes unclear whether the date given is that of an occurrence or that on which news reached his capacious ears. Get it:

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Excerpt

At Pilley. There was there Mr. Skelton, who has been gamekeeper to the Wortleys for above 60 years. He was born in the year 1642. He knew old Sir Francis Wortley who got the battle at Tankersley Moor… This Mr. Skelton, when he was about eight years, went into the service of young Sir Francis Wortley, who then lived at St. Helen’s Well, nigh Monk Bretton, having for some time before resided beyond sea, but was permitted to come back by the Parliament upon the death of his father, whom he had disobliged upon this account. There was a certain man called Bailie, of Dodworth, who by the Commission of Array had been pressed into the king’s service; this man deserted, and was retaken; whereupon young Sir Francis, without any trial by a court martial, caused him to be hanged upon a tree near Wortley Hall. Old Sir Francis was so much displeased at his son for so rash an action, that, to avoid his anger, he went into Italy, and stayed there till his father’s death.

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.

Abbreviations:

  • ER: East Riding
  • GM: Greater Manchester
  • NR: North Riding
  • NY: North Yorkshire
  • SY: South Yorkshire
  • WR: West Riding
  • WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

At Pilley. There was there Mr. Skelton, who has been gamekeeper to the Wortleys for above 60 years. He was born in the year 1642. He knew old Sir Francis Wortley who got the battle at Tankersley Moor… This Mr. Skelton, when he was about eight years, went into the service of young Sir Francis Wortley, who then lived at St. Helen’s Well, nigh Monk Bretton, having for some time before resided beyond sea, but was permitted to come back by the Parliament upon the death of his father, whom he had disobliged upon this account. There was a certain man called Bailie, of Dodworth, who by the Commission of Array had been pressed into the king’s service; this man deserted, and was retaken; whereupon young Sir Francis, without any trial by a court martial, caused him to be hanged upon a tree near Wortley Hall. Old Sir Francis was so much displeased at his son for so rash an action, that, to avoid his anger, he went into Italy, and stayed there till his father’s death.

180 words.

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