Yorkshire Almanac A hurricane hits the church at Hornsea (Holderness), revealing the parish clerk’s relationship with a noted smuggler along the coast

23 December 1732: A hurricane hits the church at Hornsea (Holderness), revealing the parish clerk’s relationship with a noted smuggler along the coast

George Poulson. 1840. The History and Antiquities of the Seigniory of Holderness, in the East-Riding of the County of York, Vol. 1. Hull: Robert Brown. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

The following curious account is given in the words of the writer [William Dade], relative to the crypt, described in the account of the church:-

The vault has been open time immemorial, and, sorry am I to tell you, has been used formerly as a place to conceal smuggled goods in. I have heard that the late parish clerk was concealing prohibited goods there in the night of the 23rd December, 1732, the very time when the violent hurricane came and unroofed the church, the door having been opened by the clerk for that bad design.[] George *****’s ship was certainly near the beck that night, and was laid flat on her side during the time the tempest continued, which was only two minutes. The parish clerk was suddenly afflicted with a paralytic stroke, which deprived him of the use of his speech, and confined him to his bed some months before his death. We are not fully authorised to declare the causes of God’s judgments, but this hurricane, a few centuries ago, would have been deemed so. ***

The remainder of the letter is worn away with mildew, but the reader may easily conclude it.

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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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23 January 1640: Andrew Marvell’s father drowns in the Humber at Hull

18 May 1734: The epitaph on the tombstone of the prolific William Strutton of Patrington, buried this day

18 February 1889: An effigy of Jack Nelson, wife-beater, is paraded with rough music through Hedon (Holderness) by a furious crowd

30 July 1820: Primitive Methodists try to disrupt the traditional Maudlin Fair football match between Hedon and Preston (Holderness)

18 March 1650: Dorothy Rodes of Bowling (Bradford) blames witchcraft by Mary Sykes for the postpartum illness of her daughter

5 July 1858: The view from the tower of Beverley Minster

26 August 1600: Following the Restoration, powerful local Catholics invade the Hackness (Scarborough) home of Sir Thomas Hoby, Puritan commissioner and newcomer

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

1 January 1151: Monks from Fountains move into the half-finished mud predecessor of Meaux Abbey (East Riding), built for them by Count William the Fat

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Who were the simple people who met the monks? Were there any local memories of the Harrying of the North 70 years before, or had the area been left tabula rasa? James Boyce on the supposedly grim conditions in which monasteries further down the coast were created at the time:

The mythology that the Fens were an inhospitable and unpopulated land after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in AD 410 was created by the Church. Accounts of the men and women who founded the region’s great monasteries were focused on inspiring piety and pilgrimage, and this required that the saints moved into a harsh and empty wilderness. Nevertheless, there are sufficient clues within even the most fabulous fables to reveal that the new colonisers were not the pioneers penned by the scribes (Boyce 2021).

Count William the Fat founded the abbey because of his size – I’m not being facetious. Here’s editor Bond’s summary of the great backstory:

The story of the foundation of Meaux abbey is very graphically told by the author of our chronicle. He relates how William le Gros, earl of Albemarle, a powerful nobleman, lord of Holderness and of other broad lands in the county of York, had made a vow to go to Jerusalem, which from age and corpulency he felt indisposed to fulfil. The earl was of a liberal as well as devout turn of mind, and had already exhibited his zeal for religion by founding in France the Cluniac abbey of St. Martin, near Aumale [> Albermarle], and in England the abbey of Thornton on Humber, of the order of Augustinian canons, and the Cistercian abbey of Vaudey, or Vallis Dei, in Lincolnshire. In the erection of the buildings of Vaudey the earl seems to have employed the architectural talents of Adam, a monk of Fountains, who had already proved his ability in the construction of the works at Kirkstead and Woburn. In his interviews with the earl, Adam detected his uneasiness on the subject of his unfulfilled vow, and so far played upon it for his own purposes as to suggest to him the foundation of a monastery of the Cistercian order, to which he belonged, as a means of obtaining the pope’s absolution from his engagement. Under the stipulated condition of this being secured to him, the earl pledged himself to the erection of a Cistercian house. Adam had recourse to the great Bernard, father of the order, for assistance in procuring the required dispensation from pope Eugenius III, with complete success, and was invited to survey the earl’s estates for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for the promised foundation. Coming to a place called Melsa, or Meaux, in Holderness, between three and four miles to the east of Beverley, he found just the situation he desired, in a country, it is stated, well planted with woods and orchards, surrounded with rivers and waters, and favoured with a rich soil. In the midst of it was a rising ground, known as St. Mary’s hill; ascending which, the enthusiastic monk struck a staff he carried in his hand forcibly into the ground, exclaiming “Let this place be called a palace of the eternal King, and a vineyard of heaven, and gate of life! Here be established a family of worshippers of Christ!” And turning to a group of followers, he added, “Have you not heard, my dear brethren, what the prophet promised respecting the building of the Lord’s house? ‘In the last days,’ he said, ‘it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains.’ These words, not knowing why, I have been repeating all this day; and now I see it was by the providence of God, whose will it is that his temple should be erected on this hill.” Unfortunately the good earl of Albemarle had an objection to giving up this particular property for the monk Adam’s purpose. He had taken a strong liking to it, and had obtained it only a few days before from Sir John de Melsa in exchange for his manor of Bewick, near Aldborough, with six carucates of land. The deed of exchange had not so much as been executed; and already the earl had planned to impark the estate, and had actually begun to enclose it on the west side with a raised bank and broad ditch, still bearing the name of Parkdike. He tried hard to induce the monk to be satisfied with some other situation, offering him liberty of selection from all his property. Adam, however, was not to be diverted from his first choice; and eventually the earl solemnly devoted the whole estate to God and the blessed Virgin Mary, for the foundation of a monastery of Cistercian monks.

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