A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



With these irregularities he combined the practice of reading Common 

 Prayer in his house, calling people together with a bell, preached and read 

 prayers in Leeming Chapel, and healed the king's evil on the 30th of every 

 month, dressed in a long w^hite garment." Ashton was fined ^80 in October 

 1 65 I, and jri2 for practising physic contrary to law^, and was to be kept in 

 York Castle until he entered on a bond for ^^200, with sureties bound in 

 ^150 each.'^ A clergyman at Pocklington prayed publicly before his 

 sermon for Charles II." Lay Royalists disturbed congregations. In 1650 a 

 man brought ' a pockitt dagger with two large knives ' to Fishlake Church, 

 and boasted that he ' hoped to doe his King more service therewith than any 

 Cropp did the Parliament with his longe sword.''* At Little Ouseburn a 

 Royalist named Watters came into church one Sunday, passed by his own 

 pew, and climbed into that of a Roundhead gentleman over the locked door, 

 so that the constable had to sit in the pew all sermon time.'' Suspicious 

 persons were arrested near Malton, and charged with being seminary priests.*" 

 A man was charged at Malton in 1651 for keeping crucifixes in his house 

 without acquainting the justices ;" and in 1656 an order was made for the 

 public burning of popish articles, confiscated by a body of searchers, in the 

 market-place at New Malton.*' 



The most severe menace to the new order of things, however, came from 

 the new sect of Quakers. 'The truth,' says George Fox, 'sprang up ... to 

 us, so as to be a people to the Lord ... in Yorkshire in 1651.'" In that 

 year Fox, preaching at Balby, convinced two of his chief lieutenants, William 

 Dewsbury and Richard Farnsworth.** Fox travelled into the East Riding, 

 meeting with encouragement from leading Puritan laymen. His appearance 

 at Beverley Minster gave rise to the report that an angel or spirit had spoken 

 in the church.*^ A minister near Hutton Cranswick, ' a great high-priest, 

 called a doctor,' was preaching on Isaiah Iv, i, when Fox cried out to him, 

 ' Come down, thou deceiver, dost thou bid people come freely, and take of 

 the water of life freely, and yet thou takest ^300 a year of them for 

 preaching the scriptures to them.?'*' From York, where he attempted 

 to controvert ' priest Bowles,' and was thrown out of the minster, Fox 

 journeyed into Cleveland. A large meeting of Friends vyas started at 

 Borrowby.*^ He was opposed by parish ministers and by the Cleveland 

 ranters, but ' the Lord's everlasting power was over the world, and 

 reached to the hearts of people, and made both priests and professors tremble 

 ... so that it was a dreadful thing to them, when it was told them, 'The 

 man in leathern breeches is come.' *' He was sometimes offered the use of 



" Depositions from the Castle of York (Surt. Soc), 36 seq. 



" Quarter Sesi. Rec. (N. R. Rec. Soc.), v, 88 : see also pp. 61 seq., 85. Ashton apparently was not in 

 holy orders. 



^' Depositions from the Castle of York (Surt. Soc), 24. See also pp. 9, 10, for the refractory conduct 

 of Mr. Dunwell in administering baptism at St. Mary's Bishophill Senior (1647). 



" Ibid. 31. » Ibid. 62, 63. •» Ibid. 44 seq. 



"Ibid. 98. "Ibid. 220, 221. 



" George Fox, Journal (3rd ed. 1765), 662. 



" Ibid. 49 : see also J. W. Rowntree, Essays and Addresses (ed. Joshua Rowntree, 1905), I seq. for three 

 valuable chapters on ' The Rise of Quakerism in Yorkshire,' with notices of early Friends, and an illustrative 

 nirp. Dewsbury followed up Fox's work in the North and East Ridings, and convinced Thomas Thompson 

 of Skipsea, a famous East Riding preacher. 



" Fox, op. cit. 50. « Ibid. 51. •' Ibid. 52. 



" Ibid. 52-55. He tells us that the ranters ' took tobacco, and tasted ale in their meetings.' 



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