Flower of the Month: A Libelous Song in Court of Star Chamber

October’s Flower tells of a scandalous libel case from the villages of West Yorkshire.

One of the main reasons that defamation—libel and slander—became an issue for the civil courts—was to punish those who would undermine the credibility and authority of administrators of justice. Shakespeare captures this idea near the end of Measure for Measure when Duke Vincentio justifies his punishment of Lucio by saying simply: “Slandering a prince deserves it.”

In 1621 Thomas Shilleto of Aberford, High Constable of Barkston Ash in Yorkshire, complained to the high Court of Star Chamber that his good name had been damaged by a libelous song. The principal defendant in this case was George Thomson, the vicar of Aberford. His confederates included William Pollard, an alehouse keeper of Aberford, a man who had been expelled from Rotheram for publishing and singing scandalous and seditious libels, William Goste, George Roades, and two fiddlers, William Potter and John Barrett. Over the course of a year, Shilleto alleges, this group devised, published, dispersed, and sang the defamatory piece in alehouses and inns in Aberford, Sherburn in Elmet, South Milford, Ferrybridge, Knottingley, and Pontefract.

Normally an allegedly libelous poem or song would be transcribed in its entirety into the evidence, but in this case Shilleto could provide only one verse (which I have set as a quatrain), but it is the one that discredits him precisely as an adminstrator of justice :

Would god I weare a head constable
And had a Justice of my name,
Then would I whipp and stocke the poore,
And thinke it neither sinne nor shame.

The verse seems clearly to refer to Thomas Shilleto: he was at the time a high constable, and a George Shilleto, of Seacroft, had considerable local power, being an attorney of Star Chamber, a Justice of the Peace of the West Riding (1608-1614, 1622-1625), and one of the MPs for Pontefract as of 1621. On the surface, the verse seems to be expose social injustice by a person with power, but the religious tensions of the day may lie behind it, for the Shilleto family was associated with, and would later be presented to the courts because they were suspected of being, “Popish Recusants.”

[This month’s Flower has been provided by our West Yorkshire volume co-editor, Professor Ted McGee (https://uwaterloo.ca/english/ted-mcgee-0)]