Among the legends of north-east England is the story of the pickled parson of Sedgefield in County Durham. Telling of the surprising posthumous fate of the parish rector, the tale is traditionally thought to originate in the eighteenth century. This article presents and analyses newly uncovered manuscript evidence which dates it a century earlier, to the period of the English civil war, and suggests that the story of the pickled parson may plausibly have a basis in real events. This article also provides a previously unknown identity for the clergyman (who was also the direct ancestor of two British prime ministers). In the light of this discovery, the article uncovers the political and religious context of a story which provides a remarkable micro-history of the turbulence that affected the English parish during the 1640s and 1650s.
This is the introduction to a special issue of Northern History entitled 'The Radical North, 1779-1914'. The special issue developed from a symposium held at the University of Leeds in November 2024 commemorating the life, work and legacy of the late Professor Malcolm Chase and was supported by Northern History, the University of Leeds and the Social History Society. This introduction discusses the term 'radicalism' and its connections to northern England during the long-nineteenth century, exploring what if anything was distinctive about the 'radical north'. It also deals with key themes relating to radical history over the long nineteenth century and the way that these are developed in the constituent essays of the edition. These include the theme of a society in transition; the role of imagined pasts and futures in radicalism; and the importance of a close attention to the culturally, socially and institutionally situated transmission of ideas to reconstruct the radical culture of the past using the reconstruction of personal and associational networks and a focus on the importance of the spoken and written word. These themes were particularly important in Malcolm Chase's work and are evident in all the essays here to a greater or lesser degree.
This paper focuses on a methodological issue plaguing our understanding of eighteenth-century politics and political theory. It demonstrates the power of academic history to lend intellectual coherence to ideas which did not exist or were only partially formed within particular historical moments. The concept of "radicalism" is an example of this issue. It is a catch-all term applied to diverse movements including the Association Movement of the 1780s and the urban reform societies of the 1790s. This has been motivated by a desire to trace a tradition of nineteenth-century "radicalism" back to the eighteenth century. Yet, any attempt to impose on the politics of the eighteenth century a term charged with normative meaning specific to the nineteenth century is anachronistic. The paper shows that unsympathetic uses of the terms "radical" and "radicalism" in the literature has distorted our understanding. This is undertaken with reference to Christopher Wyvill, the leader of the Yorkshire Association and an advocate for 'moderate' parliamentary reform. Misrepresented as a "radical" throughout the literature, Wyvill's unswerving articulation of the need for "moderation" puts him at odds with his description by biographers. The self-consciously "moderate" Wyvill marks an important figure through whom this methodological issue can be critiqued.
The term 'Old Chartist' was employed regularly in many local press titles of northern England in the later nineteenth century. This article, using newspaper reports, explores the use of the term. It examines obituaries of old Chartists and notes how their Chartist pasts tended to be foregrounded, notwithstanding their later achievements. The reports of old Chartists' deaths often prompted the telling of radical tales. Recounting old Chartists' lives also enabled recollections of radical places within the north to be highlighted. The internationalism of old Chartists is emphasized and an exploration of their later political affiliations is undertaken. During the later nineteenth century, old Chartists are (re)claimed by various political parties and organizations, particularly at key commemorative moments. The article notes how the ongoing political commitment of old Chartists was highlighted and contrasted with the later perceived political apathy of some of the succeeding generation. The article examines how some old Chartists had prominent positions as proprietors, managers, editors and journalists on several northern newspapers during the later nineteenth century. Finally, the absence of newspaper representations of old Chartist women is emphasized, whilst an argument is advanced that the absence of evidence should not be read as evidence of absence.
In 2018 a detailed article was published in this journal that sought to reassess the context, dating and significance of the Malham Pipe: a bone flute made from the tibia of a sheep or goat, found with one of thirteen secondary burials, in a Bronze Burial mound at the summit of Seaty Hill on Malham Moor. Significantly, this (earlier) article challenged the long-held assumption that the Malham Pipe and secondary burials were Iron Age in date. However, since its publication a number of important discoveries and rediscoveries have been made in relation to the Seaty Hill secondary burials, providing new dating evidence and further archaeological parallels. The following short article describes and discusses this new evidence, adding yet further weight to the argument that the Malham Pipe and Seaty Hill secondary burials are more likely to be Anglo-Saxon or early medieval in date.
Sir Thomas More named two men as murderers of King Edward V and his brother, Richard, duke of York, the 'princes in the Tower'. One of them, Miles Forrest, held office at Barnard Castle under King Richard III. This article explores the implications for Teesdale and for the Forrest family of this association with such notorious alleged murders. It establishes that, in spite of the wide currency of More's account, any association between Forrest, the murders and Barnard Castle was rapidly lost. This tendency was reinforced when scholars in the nineteenth century confused Barnard Castle with Baynard's Castle, a palace in London. The article identifies that the association was revived in the early twentieth century by an artist and entrepreneur, Victor Mazzini Walton, at a property known as Blagraves, and boosted by the heightened interest in the princes' fate associated with the examination of their alleged remains in Westminster Abbey in 1933. More recently, scepticism about Walton's claims and more generally about Richard III's guilt has resulted in less prominence being given to the story, but it remains current in Teesdale, an indicator of the power of invented tradition and of the story of Richard III and his nephews.
This article re-examines the Grelley family, during the reigns of King John and Henry III, focusing on the careers of Robert Grelley II (d. 1230) and his son Thomas Grelley I (d. 1262). It argues that the actions of the Grelleys in the thirteenth century were shaped by three key factors: their social and political networks, their financial entanglements with the crown, and their service to the crown. By integrating both overlooked primary sources and recent scholarship, this study moves beyond early twentieth-century genealogical treatments to situate the Grelleys more firmly within the broader political landscape of the period. In doing so, it offers new insight into the careers of the two Grelleys, who were significant figures in some of the key political developments of the thirteenth century.
Thomas Water led a seemingly uneventful life as an ecclesiastical lawyer in early sixteenth century York. What is extraordinary about him is the Latin will which he composed on 5 September 1539 four months before his death. At this period after dedicating their souls to God and very often paying for requiem masses testators normally concentrated on the disposition of their goods. The balance of Water's will is quite different. With scarcely any reference to material possessions the greater part is given over to the provision of masses and prayers, two temporary chantries, and an annual or daily memorial for the souls of Water, his parents and five deceased priests. The will then concludes apparently without precedent with the bequest to three recipients of a Sixfold Prayer. In addition to commenting in detail on various aspects of the will itself this communication also identifies Water's associates within the Minster community.
This paper brings together the reflections by three historians who knew Malcolm Chase, presented at the Northern History memorial conference in Leeds on 29 November 2024. It shows how integral Malcolm Chase's work was to nineteenth-century political and labour history of Britain. It explains his impact and legacy on the study of history, especially in and of northern England, and ends with a call for more work on regional and working-class history.
When the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence moved to London in 1788 he is said to have claimed that the capital 'was the only place where a man of talent could display his powers'. This may have been the case, but Spence had already formed his ideas - and his innovative methods for disseminating them - before he left. The unusual periodical format he deployed in Pigs' Meat, his interest in language and linguistics, and his emphasis on making written works accessible to ordinary people, were all products of the distinctive political culture of north-east England in the late eighteenth century. Moreover, as the case of the less well-known Newcastle printer John Marshall indicates, that culture survived Spence's departure. Like Spence, Marshall exploited the periodical format, encouraged the debate and dissemination of political ideas - including in local dialects, and sought to make such ideas accessible to the lower orders. The development of these radical ideas and methods was pioneered in north-east England meaning that some innovations that came to characterise nineteenth-century plebeian radicalism had northern roots.
This article compares two competing visions of Northumbria in the latter half of the nineteenth century, conceived of as a distinct region within England, and encompassing both Northumberland and County Durham. Building on the research of Robert Colls in Northumbria: History and Identity, which examines the romantic regionalism of the antiquarian movement he terms the 'New Northumbrians,' it explores how sentimentalism, primitivism, and historicism shaped their interpretation of the region's past, setting this vision against that of the pitman poet Lewis Proudlock. While both perspectives framed Northumbria as a land of historical ruins and fading grandeur, Proudlock recast this narrative of decline as the consequence of feudal-like exploitation by coal owners, a condition imagined as one day being reversed by pitmen, and which stood at odds with the antiquarian idea of Northumbria as an archaic land, made anachronistic by the progress of modernity, its decline irreversible.
This article develops academic literature on the history of the Hospital League of Friends, using the Halifax League as a case study. The League of Friends of the Halifax Hospitals was one of the first Friends groups to be newly founded in the wake of the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). At the outset, its predominantly middle-class membership and Conservative and Liberal leadership sought to safeguard the perceived benefits of the voluntary hospital system within the new Service. By providing amenities and personal service they contributed strongly to the care provision in Halifax, particularly in the former Public Assistance Institutions used to house the elderly. In doing so, the group sought to maintain continuities between the previous period and the new National Health. This article charts their work during the first phase of the NHS (1948-1974) primarily using local newspaper sources to do so. It argues that the Friends offer a window into both middle-class opposition to the NHS in the early period, and into hospital care more widely.
Medieval sources providing direct evidence of English glass manufacture are extremely unusual, yet an important group of late thirteenth and fourteenth-century references to glassmaking have hitherto been neglected by historians of the glass industry. These records relate to production by the Cheshire abbey of Vale Royal and contain unequalled information on the medieval industry, including describing the raw materials and fuel used in glassmaking, and recording the use of the glass produced. Furthermore, some of these records contain topographical information showing the locations of the Cheshire glass furnaces. One late thirteenth-century source refers to a 'glassworks', the site of which can be accurately located in Little Budworth. This is the earliest known record of English glass production. That the site referred to can be identified is exceptionally important, for no other medieval furnace sites in the country can be tied to documentary sources.
