Each month, we post an amusing, interesting, or noteworthy entry drawn from our discoveries in the archives of the North East.
The Percy family documents seldom provide much information about named performers, but for Thomas Wigen or Wyggen, the references suggest an eventful, perhaps harrowing life. He appears first in 1605 in a menial role, paid 6 s 8 d ‘for taking up foundations in the garden May the 13˹th˺’.[1] More interesting is a taylor’s bill […]
Among the usual records of fornication, adultery, playing cards during service times, marrying without having the banns read properly and similar infringements, the Archbishop of York’s Visitation Book for 1615 has a most intriguing entry1: This is kind of entry REED editors trawl Visitation books in the hope of finding, but what can we make of it? […]
Some of the earliest records of performance in the West Riding provide evidence of the dragon of Ripon Minster. In the accounts of 1439-40, the Chamberlains of this Benedictine monastery note the stipend paid to the man ‘who carried the dragon in processions on the feast of the Ascension and the three Rogation days leading […]
Today is a beautiful sunny Maundy Thursday in Durham. In light of the day, we’re reposting this Flower from a few years back: How did the medieval monks of Durham celebrate Maundy Thursday? A work known as the Rites of Durham – a late 16th-century account of the earlier, pre-Reformation rites and practices of […]
King Henry VIII visited Yorkshire only once in the course of his long reign, in the summer and autumn of 1541, and seems to have been prompted to travel so far only by the perceived need to calm (and possibly threaten) the rebellious North in the wake of the Pilgrimage of Grace and other risings […]
In an update to REED N-E’s earlier ‘Flower of the Month’, we’ve discovered that Durham might have even older evidence for plow ceremonies than those mentioned last week (see Epiphanytide in Medieval Durham). As mentioned in the previous post, accounts from several of the manor houses attached to Durham Cathedral Priory record payments to ploughmen and […]
The Feast of Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God’s earthly presence to the Gentiles, through the revelation of the Christ-child to the Magi: et ecce stella quam viderant in oriente antecedebat eos usque dum veniens staret supra ubi erat puer videntes autem stellam gavisi sunt gaudio magno valde et intrantes domum invenerunt puerum cum Maria […]
‘No No my Lord’ Anyone frustrated by current arguments in the news might benefit from reading the following spirited letter from the ninth Earl of Northumberland to William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury. The subject is negotiations concerning the marriage of Lady Anne Cecil to Algernon Percy, future tenth Earl of Northumberland, and money that […]
A standard search of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for “John Harrison” produces twelve results. Among scientists, artists, a horologist, a naval officer, clergymen, conspirators, one man is identified simply as “benefactor”—John Harrison (1579-1656) of Leeds. The only son and namesake of a successful clothier of the borough, Harrison inherited his father’s business in […]
This month’s Flower comes from the Northumberland border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The borough account book records some youthful shenanigans in the streets of Berwick in the early 1540s. An undated order from 5 Edward VI (1541/42) records that children in the town are ‘suffered’ (allowed) ‘to run abroad and make cryings’ and cause mayhem in […]