Yorkshire Almanac The Rev Hopkins of Kirkheaton castrates himself to prevent further mischief

2 December 1726: The Rev Hopkins of Kirkheaton castrates himself to prevent further mischief

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:

Unedited excerpt

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

23rd, Friday. At Wakefield. That day three week last past, Mr. Hopkins, minister of Kirkheaton (formerly of Wooley), aged 56, emasculated himself with a razor. He had taken the precaution to make ligaments about his body and thighs, to prevent bleeding, and had a chirurgeon (Mr. Horncastle, of Huddersfield), ready in the house to assist him, though not privy to his design. He managed the cure so well that he read prayers last Sunday, and designed to preach on Christmas Day. The reason was not melancholy, he being in his perfect senses, but he did it by way of punishment upon himself for being so foolish as to have had criminal conversations with his housekeeper.

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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

OED: criminal conversation n. unlawful sexual intercourse with a married person, adultery; a tort action based on this.

The editor points to Matthew 5:29-30 (“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell…”), Matthew 18:8-9, and Mark 9:43-47 (both similar).

Did the housekeeper stay on? Did she approve of the modification? The reverend died a couple of years later, on 4 April 1728.

I think I have the date right.

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Comment

OED: criminal conversation n. unlawful sexual intercourse with a married person, adultery; a tort action based on this.

Did the housekeeper stay on? Did she approve of the modification? The reverend died a couple of years later, on 4 April 1728.

I think I have the date right.

Something to say? Get in touch

6 March 1684: The highwayman and racketeer John Nevison is captured at an alehouse near Sandal Castle, Wakefield

27 January 1830: William Cobbett rides from Leeds to black Sheffield

29 February 1824: Prophet John Wroe is baptised on the Leap Day in the Aire near Apperley Bridge before an audience of 30,000

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

31 October 1674: Riding home to Pontefract from Wakefield fair, a sozzled Silvanus Rich enters the River Calder in flood at Wakefield bridge

12 September 1731: Edward Garner of Dodworth dies, perhaps the victim of his runaway horse

29 May 1732: Old William Lindley of Dodworth tells various marvellous stories from his youth

24 March 1733: Several couples ensure their marriage licences are Latin

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

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Comment

When was St. Mary’s iconoclastically cleansed?

Later Shawe recounts England’s blessings:

Means to break our hearts, is the consideration of God’s works; even these may help us this way (2 Chron. 33. 12; Psalme 119. 71; Luke 15. 16, 17). And because this is verbum diei [the word of the day] most suitable to the present times, lend me so much patience as a little to enlarge it in some particular considerations relating to our own case; and here consider, 1st. What great mercies England hath had; mercies positive, great peace, great plenty, great store of gospel; comparative mercies (give me leave so to speak); great peace, gospel, and plenty, than any other nation in the world, since the first light darted from above. Before the fall of Adam, he had never that great mercy of Christ to die, etc. (having no sin, needed no Saviour); he had a covenant of works, we of grace; he (as the angels now) justified by inherent righteousness (though then no merit), we by the righteousness of another imputed; 2nd. From the fall of Adam till Christ, the Church was in its swaddling clothes, under dark types and shadows, Moses’s pædagogy; but now the veil is rent, types fulfilled, Christ is come, and all things cleared. 3rd. After Christ, during primitive times, what raging ten persecutions, many hundred Christians slain every day in the year, save the first day of January? And what hellish heresies did the dragon belch up? especially four, that occasioned four general councells; 4th. Since then, how hath God cleared up the gospel in these parts? and for peace; admirable! It’s thought worthy the registering in scripture that twice the Jews had peace and rest forty years (Judg. 3. 11, and 5. 31). But once for a wonder it’s chronicled that God’s church had peace eighty years together (Judg. 3. 30). But we beyond them, above eighty years peace; our fathers would have given whole cart-loads of hay and corn, in King Henry the Eighth his time, for a few chapters of St. Matthew’s gospel, or St. James’s epistles; yea bibles in English not permitted; yea latter; in the beginning of that virgin queen Elizabeth’s reign; we have heard such a man was one of the third or fourth preachers in the shire, now more good sermons in one city in a month than was in all England in a year; and for plenty, admired by our friends, envied by our enemies, tell me of any nation in all points the like, Et eris mihi magnus Apollo [And you’ll be to me a great Apollo].

Nay, let me add, superlative mercies, above all men’s expectation, who would have said (Gen. 21. 7) that Sarah should give suck; so who would have said, three years ago, that we should have a parliament, a triennial parliament, and that not to be broken up without mutual consent? etc. Who would have said such great things should be done or endeavoured thereby? Nay, mercies above the ordinary course of God’s providence and dealing with others, a promise in the Bible; we have such natural sins for which God plagued and threatened other nations, yet we exempted by special prerogative (as a godly divine said well). Nay, mercies above all the plots of devil and devilish men; have we not had formerly and lately against us French plots, Spanish plots, Irish plots, English plots, and a plot, a plot, a plot, and still a plot, yet God hath soared us above all, as on eagle’s wings?

Add to these also privative mercies; hath not God delivered us from heathenism when this poor island worshipped every several day a several God; the moon on Monday, Tuisco on Tuesday, etc.? But God delivered us: after this came Egyptian darkness of popery, but God gave the beast a blow in King Henry the Eighth his time; brought him on all four in King Edward the Sixth time; gave him a deadly blow in famous Queen Elizabeth’s days, and still more and more doth (and I hope will) his head and horns and heart perish; did not God miraculously deliver us both in fire (that hellish powder-plot, the devil’s masterpiece) and in water (in 1588) (Isa. 43. 2). Did He not do as much three years ago when two Israelites were contending together, two sister nations but I might in these be infinite, if I looked on these two years last past; years (not as formerly of mercies but) of miracles.

And goes on to recite God’s warnings to us, our sins, etc. etc.

Shawe tells how he ended up in Beverley:

The nation then being full of turmoils and dangers I, with my wife, fed by night to Hull, leaving my children with my dear mother at Rotherham; but when I came to Hull, and preached there, Sir John Hotham being the governor for the parliament, in Hull, being privy to his own intentions, and conceiving, as he said, that I would oppose him, would not suffer me to tarry in Hull. As he had kept the King out of Hull when he demanded entrance thereinto on April 23 before, so dealt he now with me, and put me out; whereupon, I was forced to retire with my wife for a while to Beverley … where, on a fast day I preached a sermon on Psalm 51. 16, 17. December 28, 1642, which is since printed, by the name of “a broken heart” (Shawe 1824).

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