‘Pleading the Belly’
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‘Why, she may plead her Belly at worst; to my Knowledge she hath taken care of that Security. But, as the Wench is very active and industrious, you may satisfy her that I’ll soften the Evidence.’
- The Beggar’s Opera (1765) Act I, Scene 21
Under English common law ‘pleading the belly’ permitted women in the later stages of pregnancy to be reprieved of their death sentences until after the delivery of the child. The plea did not constitute a defence and could only be made after a guilty verdict had been passed, and verification was determined by a ‘jury of matrons’. If found to be ‘quick with child’ (that is, the movements of the foetus could be detected), a reprieve would be granted. Records indicate that this plea was exercised as early as 1228, but was eventually rendered obsolete with the passing of the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Act in 1931.
Women granted such a reprieve were often subsequently granted pardons or had their sentences commuted to transportation, which naturally left the system open to abuse. The practice of selecting a jury of matrons from the courtroom observers opened up the opportunity for planting sympathetic accomplices in the public gallery, causing one eighteenth-century commentator to complain that female felons would have, ‘Matrons of [their] own Profession ready at hand, who, right or wrong, bring their wicked Companions quick with Child to the great Impediment of Justice.’
In Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, written in 1721, one character successfully pleads her belly despite being ‘no more with child than the judge that tried [her].’ And John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, has the character ‘Flich’ making an extra income as a ‘child getter … helping the ladies to a pregnancy against their being called down to sentence.’
In an attempt to limit the abuse of the system, the law decreed that no woman could be granted a second reprieve on an original sentence passed if she were later found to be with child, even if they were actually pregnant. In addition, the gaoler or local sheriff in charge of any female prisoner falling pregnant while held in their custody was subject to a fine.
Elizabeth Cahill had indulged in a spot of pickpocketing in Leeds Market on New Year’s Eve 1728. After languishing in gaol for some time, she was reprieved on successfully pleading her belly and her daughter Ann was baptised in York Castle on 15 May 1733. However, Elizabeth’s sentence of transportation was reinstated in the summer of 1735.
Naomi Hollings had been sentenced to death at the Lent Assizes of 1739 for the theft of money and goods after breaking and entering into a private dwelling house. Again, she was reprieved of her execution on successfully pleading her belly, and, on 13 June 1739, Naomi’s son was christened Castellus in York Castle, an apt name given the child’s place of birth. Her sentence was, however, reinstated and she was transported the following summer of 1740.
Not all children were left motherless though, as the case of Mary Burgan attests. She was originally convicted in 1705 of killing her first baby, for which she would ordinarily have hanged, and while awaiting trial she became pregnant again, in all probability by the turnkey, Thomas Ward. Mary was allowed to live in the prison with her son Thomas, who grew up in York Castle Gaol supported by payments made by the Three Ridings until 1718, when he was put out to apprenticeship at the age of twelve. Mary had been listed as a ‘reprieve’ in the Calendar of Felons for York Castle 1707, and her sentence was subsequently changed to that of transportation. It appears, however, she was then released locally under Queen Anne’s general pardon of 1710.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REBELS, RIOTERS & REFORMERS
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Viewed as subversive, rabble-rousing, insurgent and insurrectionist, whether the following individuals were all or any of these things they certainly left their mark on York’s history, and they certainly felt the full weight of the law, either at the edge of the executioner’s blade or dangling from a rope.
Rebellious Archbishop of York
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A noteworthy act of rebellion on the part of a Yorkshireman against the reigning monarch was that of Richard Scrope, fourth son of Henry, first Baron Scrope of Masham, who rose to become Archbishop of York. Becoming deeply involved in the rebellion against King Henry IV in the early years, after his usurpation of the throne from Richard II in 1399, the Archbishop made his loyalties clear when he preached against the King in the minster. The response of ‘almost all the citizens of York capable of bearing arms’ saw the armour-clad archbishop heading up an 8,000-strong rebel army, who at the end of May 1405 faced a larger loyalist army on Shipton Moor. Either in the light of peaceful scruples or plain common sense in the face of a greater opposing force, Scrope disbanded his force in exchange for a truce, only to be immediately arrested afterward.
Detail from the east window of All Saints’ Church in Bolton Percy, depicting a canonised Archbishop above the coat of arms of Archbishop Richard Scrope of York.
King Henry IV himself travelled to Bishopthorpe Palace, the seat of the Archbishops of York, for the trial in the Great Hall where Scrope was found guilty of treason. He was executed with a sword in a barley field near St Clements Nunnery, Clementhorpe, which is overlooked today by Bitch Daughter Tower on the section of the city wall between Baile Hill and Victoria Bar. Scrope begged the headsman to strike five blows at his neck in recognition of the five sacred wounds of Christ, and after kissing his executioner three times, commended his spirit to God and bent his neck for the sword. As Scrope’s head fell with the final severing fifth stroke, some claimed to see a smile still over his features. Scrope was buried in the Lady Chapel of the minster and afterwards was somewhat venerated as an unofficial saint, his tomb becoming something of a shrine.
Riot Over the Red Tower
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Built in 1490, after a rebellion against King Henry VII, the Red Tower forms the only section of York’s city wall to be constructed from brick. The use of such building materials did not sit well with the local stone masons, however, who usually undertook the majority of the construction work on the city’s walls and buildings. Subsequently, a dispute erupted between the tilers who were employed to build the tower, and the masons, who resented being done out of the job. In retaliation, the riotous masons smashed the tools and kilns of the tilers and attempted to sabotage the construction of the tower. Their violent actions eventually culminated in the murder and mutilation (including his emasculation) of the master tiler, John Partick. The masons were prosecuted, including York Minster’ master mason William Hindley, however, after seeking sanctuary in the minster precinct, all those accused escaped conviction.
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‘murder and mutilation’
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The Red Tower.
In Search of His Head: The 7th Earl of Northumberland
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The Rising of the North of 1569, also called the ‘Northern Rebellion’, was an unsuccessful attempt on the part of Catholic nobles from the north of England to replace the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I with her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Many English Catholics supported Mary’s claim, especially in view of the religious persecutions they were suffering under Elizabeth’s rule, and the feeling ran especially strong in the north, where several of the most powerful nobles were Catholics.
Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland was one such powerful noble, and as a staunch Catholic led the rebellion in collusion with Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland. By November 1569, the rebels were in occupation of Durham and, flouting the laws prohibiting Catholic worship there, celebrated Mass at Durham Cathedral.
On hearing that a large force had been raised to oppose them the rebel leaders abandoned their plans to besiege York, and while they successfully captured Barnard Castle, in the face of diminishing popular support, they retreated northward and finally dispersed before fleeing to Scotland.
Percy was, however, betrayed and captured. He was dragged to York in chains and both the Pope and King Phill
ip of Spain failed to buy Percy’s stay of execution, so he was beheaded on York’s Pavement on 22 August 1572. The venue for a higher class of execution, a new scaffold was built at the Pavement especially for the occasion – 25ft long by 15ft broad and 12ft high. Mounting the scaffold with a firm step, Percy looked about him for a short time, spoke to the Sheriff and Chaplain of the Castle and addressed the spectators for about 15 minutes. After praying for a short time he silently shook hands with those on the scaffold then knelt down, facing east, and after laying his head on the block he signalled to the executioner, who struck off his head with one blow of the axe. Percy’s sword had been symbolically broken at the altar of nearby St Crux Church, and his body was carried there by his servants and buried in the churchyard in an unmarked grave. However, as befitted the fate of a convicted traitor, his head was set upon a spike at Micklegate Bar, where it remained as a grim reminder for two years until it was stolen and allegedly buried by a sympathiser to Percy’s cause in an unknown city churchyard. It is said that the final resting place of the Earl’s head is in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, and that after nightfall the ethereal spectre of Thomas Percy can still be seen vainly searching for his severed head.
The Pavement was the venue for commercial, civic and communal activities, as well as public publishments and executions.
The Jacobite Rebellion
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York’s involvement with the Jacobite rebellions between 1715 and 1745 was limited. After the first rebellion in 1715 some of the prominent rebels were held at York Castle, but overall the prevailing feeling within the city was one of anti-Jacobitism. In 1745, the Archbishop of York preached in the minster against ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’s’ attempt to seize the throne, and preparations were made to defend York against an attack by Stuart forces. A group of volunteers called the Yorkshire Association formed and measures were taken to strengthen the city walls, although these precautions were never actually put to the test.
After the rebels were finally defeated and crushed in 1746 by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, also known as ‘The Butcher of Culloden’, the City of York sent its congratulations to his father, King George II, and the Duke of Cumberland was invited to accept the Freedom of the City, as well as being awarded with a hundred guineas in a gold box.
Of the Jacobite prisoners brought down to York Castle Gaol from Scotland for trial, seventy were sentenced to death. However, at the last moment a reprieve came through for most, but not all of them, and it was decided that lots were to be drawn. Those with the luck of the draw escaped the death penalty and were transported to the Colonies. Twenty-two men, however, were left to suffer execution, but even then in some cases a reprieve was given, and in one instance it was offered so late that John Jellons was actually being dragged toward the gallows along Castlegate when it came through. The rest were hanged, drawn and quartered, and while York’s sympathies for the rebels were not apparently strong, the barbarity of their punishment so appalled many that this was the last time it was carried out in the city. In spite of public sensitivities though, two of the rebel heads were still put up for display on Micklegate Bar, and though this was also the last instance of a traitor’s head being paraded over the primary entrance to the city, the severed heads of William Connolly and James Mayne’s remained on spikes for eight years, until they were stolen in 1754 by two Jacobite sympathizers – William Arundel and an unnamed Irish tailor. Arundel was fined and imprisoned in the gaol on Old Ouse Bridge, and while York City Council offered a large reward for their return, the missing heads were never recovered. In a later macabre twist to the Jacobites’ fate, when workmen were digging a new drain at the back of York Castle Gaol they discovered the remains of about twenty bodies, some of the skeletons were minus skulls and the bones were disjointed; it is believed that the remains were those of the executed rebels.
Micklegate Bar.
While the city walls had been strengthened and guarded in anticipation of a Jacobite attack in 1745, they were again defended for the last time in 1757 when rioters protesting at taxation to support the militia threatened the security of the city. Enforced conscription by the Militia Ballot in the face of insufficient volunteers was almost universally detested by the civilian population and also the cause of widespread rioting. Of those imprisoned in York Castle charged with treason, some died before even reaching trial at the Lent Assizes in 1758, and some of the survivers were sentenced to transportation but one rioter, Robert Cole, was executed at York on May Day 1758 for ‘levying war against the King’, which is a charge connected with a riotous breach of the Militia Act.
Luddites
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In the early nineteenth century, the English cloth trade was in a depressed state due to the war with France. In an economic climate where unemployment often meant destitution and starvation, the further threat of mechanisation, the undermining of wages and the use of unskilled labour – while a driving factor in the Industrial Revolution – had a hugely detrimental impact on the lives and livelihoods of skilled artisans, such as the textile workers in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire. With trades and communities facing extinction, in an attempt to halt the changes in the textile industry the Luddites came into being. It is generally thought that the term ‘Luddite’ alluded to their apocryphal leader, known as General Ludd or King Ludd, in whose name their demands and proclamations were issued, however, the name is also said to derive from an apprentice weaver called Ned Ludd who some years earlier had been beaten by his master for smashing a loom in a rage.
The catalyst for the transition from demonstration to organised violence came in 1809 when, under pressure from manufacturers, Parliament repealed legislation that had formerly protected textile workers from ‘gig mills’ (machines invented in the sixteenth century that could perform some aspects of woollen finishing work). The Yorkshire Luddites were led by the highly skilled finishers of woollen cloth, known as croppers, who were able to command a much higher wage for their work.
Unable to redress their grievances by legal or democratic means, the Luddite uprising began in November 1811 in Nottingham, spreading to Yorkshire and Lancashire in early 1812. The usual tactic was to demand the removal of the mechanised frame from the workplace and if this was ignored the Luddites would use large sledgehammers to smash the machinery in nocturnal raids.
Although there were already plenty of laws on the statute books that made such an act a capital crime, in February 1812 the Government passed the Frame Breaking Act, specifically introducing the death penalty for those found to have broken frames. The Act was passed just in time to charge the sixty-four men involved in the attempted destruction of Cartwright’s textile mill at Rawfold, near Brighouse, in April 1812. Held until they could come before a special judicial commission at York Castle at the beginning of January 1813, twenty-four men were convicted and seventeen sentenced to hang, while the remainder were sentenced to transportation.
The first of the Luddite executions was scheduled for Friday, 8 January. At 9 a.m., three of the convicted men, including the Yorkshire Luddite’s leader George Mellor, were hanged for the murder of mill owner William Horsfall. It was reported in the press that, ‘Every precaution had been taken to make a rescue impracticable. Two troops of Cavalry were drawn up at the front of the drop and the entrances to the castle were guarded by Infantry.’ Executed in their irons, the ropes of the gallows were suitably adjusted to ensure the entire body of each executed man would be visible to the spectators.
Just over a week later, on 16 January, the remaining fourteen condemned Luddites were executed for their part in the raid on Cartwright’s Mill – seven were hanged at 11 a.m. and the other seven at 1.30 p.m., proving a double spectacle for the mass of people assembled on St George’s field to witness this multiple execution. These executions left fourteen wives widowed and fifty-seven children fatherless, eight of whom were ‘turned upon the world helpless’. Of the number of children left fatherless, seven were orp
haned when widower William Hartley was executed after being convicted on the evidence of an informer in the company of fellow Luddites, had raided the house of wool-stapler George Haigh for weapons held on the premises.
Frame breakers, 1812.
On display at York Castle Museum, the inscription on this sawn-off shotgun states that it was found in a wood near Halifax, hidden with many other guns ‘stolen & cut down by Luddites’. All of the firearms were taken to York Castle when found in 1830, and this piece is the only weapon left unclaimed by the rightful owner – incidentally the house that Hartely was accused of raiding was only a mile from the woodland hiding place. (Courtesy of York Museum Trust)
Hartley admitted his involvement in the raid, but denied being a ringleader or demanding and receiving any firearms. This poor tailor from near Halifax, whose wife had died some six months previously, may have escaped with a lesser sentence in other circumstances, but unfortunately the authorities’ vehement determination to completely crush Luddite subversion necessitated the brutal and final punishment of all those involved.
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