Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

If ever I sit in the porphyry chair I will grant you an indulgence for your otherwise unpardonable compliment of kissing my foot. You writ and unwrit, the while I thank you for nothing. These dividing times may divide our affections if we be such foolish wakelings to be hailed [tugged] by passion and prejudice beyond the medium of reason and judgement. I thank you for your kind invite to York. When the recruiting from Hull stands in competition with my riveted affections to you I doubt not but to have a candid construction of my carriage if I do not see you at York at the time set. If Walkinton could furnish me with a horse, which it cannot, I would not therefore conceive that I had as good friends at Walkinton as at home, nor yet the contrary. Every man is most possessed with his own grievance. I’m sure mine own touches me, and where is my help? The Lord support us all is the desire of him who is though not perfectly yet sincerely.

Comment

Comment

Lots of puzzles here. The porphyry chair is a sign of Rome’s determination never to be fooled again as they allegedly were by Pope Joan:

Succeeding popes were placed in a porphyry-chair with a hole in the bottom, and immediately after the election, their genitals were to be searched by the youngest deacon (Baron 1768).

But here it is just metonymy for the absurd notion that this English Puritan should become pope.

Until the practice was abolished at some point in the 20th century, those granted an audience with the pontiff would kiss his slipper.

I am not sure that “wakeling” is “weakling.”

“You writt and unwritt” may be an allusion to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs re that “viper’s bird,” Bishop Gardiner:

And as touching divinity, he was so variable, wavering with time, that no constant censure can be given what to make of him. If his doings and writings were according to his conscience, no man can rightly say whether he was a right protestant or papist. If he wrote otherwise than he thought, for fear, or to bear with time, then was he a double deep dissembler before God and man, to say and unsay, to write and unwrite, to swear and forswear, so as he did (Foxe 1847)

The editor tells us that “Walkinton” refers to John Nelson, Rector of Walkington, 11 miles northwest of Hull, who married John Sharp’s sister Sarah.

I take Sharp’s “cousin” to be like those of The Huff:

He is a Protector to all distressed Damsels called in our Vulgar Tongue Common Whores, and that he may put a better Gloss on the matter, calleth them Cozens (Head 1673).

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Original

If ever I sit in the porphyry chair I will grant you an indulgence for your otherwise unpardonable compliment of kissing my foot. You writ and unwrit, the while I thank you for nothing. These dividing times may divide our affections if we be such foolish wakelings to be hailed [tugged] by passion and prejudice beyond the medium of reason and judgement. I thank you for your kind invite to York. When the recruiting from Hull stands in competition with my riveted affections to you I doubt not but to have a candid construction of my carriage if I do not see you at York at the time set. If Walkinton could furnish me with a horse, which it cannot, I would not therefore conceive that I had as good friends at Walkinton as at home, nor yet the contrary. Every man is most possessed with his own grievance. I’m sure mine own touches me, and where is my help? The Lord support us all is the desire of him who is though not perfectly yet sincerely.

Your affectionate cozen,

John Sharp

189 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.

• 📌Bradford (72) ·
• Catholic Church (57) ·
• Commonwealth of England (8) ·
• English Civil War (1642-1651) (27), a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of religious freedom ·
• Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (2) ·
• Foxe, John (1516/1517-1587) (2), historian and martyrologist, author of Actes and Monuments (aka Foxe's Book of Martyrs), telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, and particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I, widely owned and read by Puritans ·
• Indulgence (2) ·
• 📌Kingston upon Hull (65) ·
• Papal slippers (1) ·
• Pope Joan (1) ·
• Prostitution (15) ·
• Puritans (15) ·
• Sharp, John (1604-72) (2), Bradford clothier and merchant, financial secretary to Fairfax, father of Abraham Sharp ·
• Walkington (1) ·
• 📌York (164) ·

All tags.

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