Yorkshire Almanac John Reresby, governor of York, refuses to help exempt Sheffield cutlers from the hearth tax because of insufficient rewards for past favours

15 January 1685: John Reresby, governor of York, refuses to help exempt Sheffield cutlers from the hearth tax because of insufficient rewards for past favours

John Reresby. 1875. The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby of Thrybergh, Bart., M.P. for York, etc., 1634-1689. Ed. James J. Cartwright. London: Longmans, Green, and Company. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

An order being issued out from the lords of the Treasury for the collecting of the duty of hearth-money upon the smiths’ forges in Sheffield and Hallamshire, after having made me but bad returns for the favours I had done them before in that case (I mean the cutlers and corporation there), they came to me to desire my assistance, that they might be excused from that duty, if possible, by my means and intercession. I told them it were much fitter they should apply themselves to the interest they had done lately, for I should not concern myself any more in that affair; that as to favour, I doubted not but they thought themselves able to find it by others, or else their application would have been more constant to me; and as for hopes of relief by justice, the law was now much changed since this matter was first in question, by reason of the opinions of the judges given in the case, and of several verdicts both in the Courts of the King’s Bench and of the Exchequer concerning 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.

Comment

The claimed situation in 1680:

In Hallamshire there are above One Thousand Cutlers, Sciser-Smiths, Shere-Smiths, Sickle-Smiths, &c. And at Brimmingham are Sword-Smiths, Cutlers, Spurriers, Bridle-Bit-Makers, Naylers, and divers other Handicrafts Men who live by Manufacturing of Iron and Steel, are very Poor, have numerous Families, most of them Working at 6 d. or 8 d. a day Wages, cannot make any Work without Blowing, and therefore must have Blowing-Forges in their Houses, (as well as Thousands of others in other parts of England😉 some of them (though the poorest Men of all) have Two or Three. These most of them live in poor Cottages, wherein there are not above two Chimneys apeece, and for which there is not above 20 s. per annum Rent paid.
(Cutlers and Smiths of Sheffield etc. 1680)

Apart from concern for their alleged poverty, these were people one would want to have on one’s side in a civil war.

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Comment

The claimed situation in 1680:

In Hallamshire there are above One Thousand Cutlers, Sciser-Smiths, Shere-Smiths, Sickle-Smiths, &c. And at Brimmingham are Sword-Smiths, Cutlers, Spurriers, Bridle-Bit-Makers, Naylers, and divers other Handicrafts Men who live by Manufacturing of Iron and Steel, are very Poor, have numerous Families, most of them Working at 6 d. or 8 d. a day Wages, cannot make any Work without Blowing, and therefore must have Blowing-Forges in their Houses, (as well as Thousands of others in other parts of England😉 some of them (though the poorest Men of all) have Two or Three. These most of them live in poor Cottages, wherein there are not above two Chimneys apeece, and for which there is not above 20 s. per annum Rent paid.
(Cutlers and Smiths of Sheffield etc. 1680)

Apart from concern for their alleged poverty, these were people one would want to have on one’s side in a civil war.

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15 September 1679: The election at York for the Exclusion Bill Parliament is devolved to more convenient locations

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

20 November 1697: Smooth-leaved holly as winter fodder for Pennine sheep

20 October 1676: John Reresby of Thrybergh Hall (Rotherham) hears that the Duke of Norfolk is telling London that he killed a Barbadian slave by castrating him

7 February 1685: Notables at York await the death of Charles II, planning to prevent anti-papists and other dissidents from disrupting the accession of James II

24 June 1687: John Reresby, governor of York, protests James II’s plans to turn his residence into a Catholic school

24 April 1688: At Pontefract, the new Catholic and Dissenting members of the judiciary send James II, a Catholic, thanks for allowing freedom of religion, leading him to believe he has popular support

14 July 1663: Leeds borough returns for the hearth tax, designed to pay for the household of Charles II

10 April 1877: Echoing Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe”, John Collier tells a meeting at Walkley (Sheffield) that local Normans and Anglo-Saxons initially lived apart

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Comment

David Clarke:

[T]he idea of Anglo-Saxon identity exerted a strong influence upon writers who collected folklore in Hallamshire, the geographical region that became the city of Sheffield in the modern county of South Yorkshire… [T]hat identity coalesced around two folk heroes, Earl Waltheof and Robin Hood (Robin of Loxley), who are portrayed in literature and folklore as ethnic Saxon rebels who fought against Norman occupation of the region. Both also came to symbolise the region’s independence of spirit and its rebelliousness. Today they are regarded as distinctly English national folk heroes, but their complex links with the folklore of southwest Yorkshire is less well known. During the nineteenth century, their legends became part of an imagined heritage based upon ideas of Anglo-Saxon indigeneity to Britain. As a result, folklore interacted with history to create a hybrid of fact, story and interpretation that persists to the present day… The rebel traditions of [southwest Yorkshire are] reflected in Victorian literature. Barczewski (2000, 132) notes that, ‘virtually every major fictional text written after 1820 features the conflict between Saxon and Norman as a prominent motif,’ and this division is projected backwards in accounts of the history and folklore of southwest Yorkshire. The most influential example is Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820). His novel is set in the twelfth century, a generation after the Norman Conquest, and the narrative is located geographically in the valley of the River Don… Scott (1820; 2000, 15) says, ‘here flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.’ The plot of Ivanhoe is centred upon an imagined, ongoing struggle between dispossessed Saxons and their Norman lords that post-dated the Norman Conquest. Significantly, the outlaw Robin Hood – ‘Locksley’ – is both a central character and a figurehead for the freedom fighters.

(Clarke 2022)

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