Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

On July 21, 1661, near Sheffield, by the river Don, was seen a great army of white soldiers upon the earth. After them went another great multitude of horsemen, all in white, with white horses. After appearance near an hour they all vanished away, asserted by many credible persons. Mr Bloome, formerly minister at Addercliffe near Sheffield, where the sight was seen, having examined some neighbours, and living in the town, told me of it, and from credible persons. Mr Ferman, hearing it had rained blood, sent to know the truth of it, and a man newly come in out of the field was wet with blood.

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.

Abbreviations:

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

Comment

Comment

The year is transcribed as 1661, which is both impossible (the Act of Uniformity under which the Rev. Bloome was dismissed only passed in 1662) and unlikely (prior and subsequent entries are all for 1666).

Who did the army represent?

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

On July 21, 1661, near Sheffield, by the river Dun, was seen a great army of white soldiers upon the earth. After them went another great multitude of horsemen, all in white, with white horses. After appearance near an hour they all vanished away, asserted by many credible persons. Mr Bloome, formerly minister at Addercliffe near Sheffield, where the sight was seen, having examined some neighbours, and living in the town, told me of it, and from credible persons.

Mr Ferman, hearing it had rained blood, sent to know the truth of it, and a man newly come in out of the field was wet with blood.

109 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Act of Uniformity 1662 (4) ·
• Attercliffe (4) ·
• Bloome, Matthew (-1686) (1), Brotherton-born curate at Attercliffe, ejected 1662 and imprisoned at York, maltster, founded with Hancock a Congregational chapel at Attercliffe ·
• English folklore (17) ·
• Ghost (2) ·
• Heywood, Oliver (1630-1702) (34), Bolton-born nonconformist minister and diarist, active in the West Riding, resident at Northowram, ejected for his beliefs ·
• Procession of the dead (1) ·
• River Don, Yorkshire (10) ·
• 📌Sheffield (72) ·
• Superstition (14) ·
• White horse (3) ·
• White horses in mythology (3) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 10 April 1877: Echoing Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, John Collier tells a meeting at Walkley (Sheffield) that there was an initial local separation between Normans and Anglo-Saxons
• 3 December 1816: A revolutionary bread riot is averted at Sheffield
• 2 March 1665: A sighting of the northern lights at Northowram (Halifax) recalls the eve of the civil war
• 4 November 1857: Completion of the White Horse of Kilburn (Hambleton Hills)
• 5 February 1643: Rioting locals reïnundate Hatfield Chase in protest at flooding and a loss of fishing and fowling caused by Netherlandish colonists and Cornelius Vermuyden’s land reclamation scheme
• 15 August 1805: The Sheffield volunteer infantry depart to fight Napoleon on the beaches, which one man thinks might be in the Peak District
• 14 December 1832: On election day following passage of the Reform Act, the magistrate Thomas Bosville has troops fire on radical rioters outside the Tontine Inn, Sheffield, killing five
• 11 April 1667: A hubristic Sam Mitchell impersonates a gypsy in a Halifax pub, and nemesis follows
• 11 December 1680: The Great Comet is seen at Halifax as a natural event, in London – amid Popish Plot hysteria – as a portent
• 23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68