A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



Meynell are names which recur in various lists. Another district in which 

 large presentations were normal was the neighbourhood of Hovingham ; 

 Hovingham and its hamlets and Brandsby were seldom without their quota." 

 Places like Thornton-le-Street varied considerably in numbers." Cleveland, 

 however, abounded in recusants, Stokesley, Guisborough, Crathorne, Brotton, 

 Skinningrove and Egton, presenting numbers which suggest the stimulating 

 effect of persecution. Fifty-five are named at Egton in 1604™: at the 

 quarter sessions of July 1614, 137 were presented"; in April 1674 the 

 number had risen to 227, while 113 were reported from Lythe." The 

 Cleveland recusants were principally of the poorer classes, fishermen and 

 labourers from Brotton and Skinningrove, tradesmen and labourers from 

 Egton, pewterers and other tradesmen from Stokesley. Propagandists were 

 not wanting : men and women are noted as dangerous seducers from Ug- 

 thorpe, Yarm, Newland near Hull, and other places." Companies of players, 

 apprehended under the Vagrancy Act, were suspected of popish tendencies ; 

 one of these, consisting of labourers, weavers, and others, was presented at 

 Helmsley in January 161 5-16, with various gentlemen and farmers who had 

 given them entertainment in Cleveland and on the Richmondshire border." 

 2^1,100 in fines were levied at Malton in October 1625 from gentlemen 

 suspected of harbouring recusants ; >ri,3oo in the following October at 

 Richmond." Earlier in October 1626 large sums were levied in the same 

 way, and letters from the king and Archbishop Abbot were read, asking 

 Archbishop Matthew and his suffragans for returns of Papists in the diocese 

 and province.^' Under Matthew's rule no year is without its long list of 

 recusants, non-churchgoers, and suspected marriages and baptisms. 



Neile's successor at York (1641) was a man of very different 

 sympathies, John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln. The enforcers of conformity 

 were now themselves to feel the pressure of intolerance. The resident 

 Yorkshire clergy, at the time of the Civil War, seem to have been pious and 

 industrious. Pluralism was still a crying evil ; and vicars and curates in 

 many places felt the sting of poverty. Cosin held his archdeaconry with the 

 deanery of Peterborough, a prebend at Durham, the rectory of Brancepeth, 

 and the mastership of Peterhouse." John Neile, nephew of the archbishop, 

 was Archdeacon of Cleveland, prebendary of North Newbald, and rector of 

 Beeford in Holderness, and held stalls at Southwell and Durham." Williams, 

 while at Oxford with Charles I, preferred a Welshman, vicar of Ruabon, to 

 a stall at York." We can hardly expect to find pluralism unaccompanied by 



« Quarter Sess. Rec. (N. R. Rec. Soc), iii, 17+ seq. (i Oct. 1623 ; long list from Brandsby) ; 207 

 seq. (30 Sept. 1624, Brandsby, Hovingham, &c.) ; 293 (2 Oct. 1627, Brandsby) ; 338 seq. (3 Oct. 

 1632, Brandsby, Hovingham), &c. &c. 



^ Fair lists from Thomton-le-Street occur ibid, iii, 192 (7 Oct. 1623) ; and 247 seq. (12 Oct. 1625; 

 specified from North Kilvington), fifty-nine were presented 20 Jan. 1673-4 ('bid. vi, 195 seq.), when sixty 

 were presented from Aldbrongh in Sunwick (as note 67 above), and sixty from Eryholme. 



" Peacock, op. cit. 97-100. 



" Quarter Sess. Rec. (N. R. Rec. Soc), i, 63-5. 



" Ibid, vi, 204 seq. Ugthorpe, to the neighbourhood of which we have seen Bishop Pursglove 

 confined, is in Lythe parish. 



''Peacock, op. cit. 109, 104, 137. The seducers at Ugthorpe and Newland were women. At 

 Melsonby (ibid. S7) is mentioned ' Marke a milner a great persuader of the people to recusancie.' 



" Quarter Sess. Rec. (N. R. Rec. Soc.), ii, no, in. " Ibid, iii, 241, 276, 277. 



" Ibid. 2-0-72. " Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy (1714), pt. ii, 58. 



"Ibid 11,83. "Ibid. 84. 



60 



