Yorkshire Almanac On his way to play with the Muker church band, Richard Guy of Hill Top Farm climbs over a wall to inspect a fertile heifer

30 July 1882: On his way to play with the Muker church band, Richard Guy of Hill Top Farm climbs over a wall to inspect a fertile heifer

Maggie Joe Chapman. 1984. A Swaledale Woman. Country Voices. Ed. Charles Kightly. London: Thames and Hudson. I would very much like to speak to Dr Kightly re permission to use this anecdote. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

We used to walk from our farm, Hill Top; it was right on the top and it was the first house you came to after you left Askrigg on the road to Muker. My grandfather – my father’s father – had been tenant there before my father. His name was Guy, and in them days Muker was full of Guys, same as Askrigg was full of Chapmans. Now my grandfather Guy was killed with a bull, one he’d brought up himself. It was a Sunday morning and me grandfather used to play the bass fiddle in Muker church. There was an orchestra in the church, them days; me grandfather played the bass and there was a fiddle, and I wouldn’t know whether they had drums or not, but they had four or five in the orchestra. Well, me grandfather had put his best Sunday clothes on to go, and he passed this pasture where the bull was and there was some heifers there, and he heard one of them in service and he wanted to see which one it was. That is why he climbed over the wall they think. And they always think that the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday clothes and that is why it gored him. My father said he hadn’t a rag left on him when they found him; it had gored him to death. He was a really good man, my grandfather, one of the best living men there was; everybody said he wouldn’t play a dirty trick on anybody. But the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday best.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

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

Dates. Malise McGuire has discovered a mention in the press (the Northern Echo? I can’t find it) of this tragedy. It is dated 4 August 1882, so Sunday was 30 July: “On Sunday at Hill Top Farm, near Gunnerside, Richard GUY went out to look at some young cattle and was soon afterwards found in a field dead. His clothes were literally torn to shreds.” I haven’t looked on Ancestry, but this is the Richard Guy born in 1833 at Scar House, Muker, and present in the 1881 census:

70. Hill Top Farm
GUY/Richard S/Head/M/47/Farmer 158 Acres/Yks Muker
GUY/Rosomond/wife/M/47/Farmers wife/Yks Muker
GUY/Thomas/son/U/20/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Robert J/son/U/17/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Richard/son//13/scholar/Yks Muker
GUY/Elizebeth/dau//8/scholar/Yks Muker

The anecdote also turns up in abbreviated form, perhaps abstracted from the above, in an outstanding book by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby (Hartley 1982).

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

70. Hill Top Farm
GUY/Richard S/Head/M/47/Farmer 158 Acres/Yks Muker
GUY/Rosomond/wife/M/47/Farmers wife/Yks Muker
GUY/Thomas/son/U/20/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Robert J/son/U/17/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Richard/son//13/scholar/Yks Muker
GUY/Elizebeth/dau//8/scholar/Yks Muker

The anecdote also turns up in abbreviated form, perhaps abstracted from the above, in an outstanding book by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby (Hartley 1982).

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

28 December 1886: James Lonsdale Broderick (45) makes his final journey, from Hawes over Buttertubs Pass to a grave above the family farm near Crackpot (Swaledale)

30 January 1978: A Cumbrian Evensong is rescheduled to accommodate All Creatures Great and Small

13 August 1821: The laments of the adulterous poisoner Ann Barber on the scaffold at York

28 December 1642: Four months into the Civil War, the Puritan John Shawe of Rotherham preaches iconoclasm at St. Mary’s, Beverley

7 September 1874: A bell-ringing contest at All Saints Church, Wath upon Dearne prompts an outraged editorial in the trade journal

16 April 1883: General Booth rebuts the Bishop of Oxford’s claim that the Salvation Army organises mixed darkroom sessions at York

20 September 1319: During the Anglo-Scottish wars, seasoned raiders encounter an improvised Yorkshire home guard of clergy, peasants and officials at Myton-on-Swale

11 March 1864: An inhabitant of Bacon Island survives the Great Sheffield Flood

13 October 1769: The poet Thomas Gray walks from Malham (“Maum”) to Gordale Scar and is horrified at the sight

27 August 1754: The (Tory) Leeds Intelligencer calls on Holbeckers to accept the appointment by Samuel Kirshaw, Vicar of Leeds, of a new curate, Richard Fawcett Snr, to St Catherine’s Chapel

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).

Events

“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:

On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.

On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:

On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.

However, on 22 October we read that

In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.

For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).

In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:

A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.

In the resignation letter he says that he

perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.

Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).

Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.

Something to say? Get in touch