Where Papists lodge?

At eleven o’clock at night, a fight broke out on Petergate, one of York’s main thoroughfares. Two men of the City Watch had run into seven cavaliers returning to their lodging. Tempers were running hot at the end of June 1642. The country was on the brink of civil war and York was rammed with those rallying to King Charles. _I

Petergate, York, from a 1921 postcard.

The blow-by-blow account we have of the fight comes from a pamphlet printed in London’s Pope’s Lane for Benjamin Allen, a well known Puritan propagandist. Outnumbered, one of the Watch had “his cheek almost cut off”; the other suffered a broken nose. The cavaliers escaped into their lodging, the house of a tailor named Kitchingman. ₂

The pamphlet alleges that this Kitchingman’s house was where it was “notoriously known that Papists and popishly affected people lodge”, including Sir Thomas Metham. It went on to claim that the master of the house, one Kitchingman, “saith that they are the Kings faithfullest and best subjects”. This was a serious accusation. Political crisis had resulted in sporadic panics about Papist plots and fears of an Irish invasion. Two Jesuit priests had been hung three months earlier on the Knavesmire, outside York. Doubtless, the pamphlet’s equation of violent Cavaliers with Catholicism was intended to feed such anxieties. ₃

The Kitchingman in question was William, born about 1597. Like his father William before him, he was abled to the Merchant Taylor’s Company and a Freeman of the City. Both father and son had also been elected Searchers, an office which included monitoring quality control standards for the guild. ₄

Is there any other evidence to support the claim that William was a friend to Papists?

In the month before the affray, William took on an apprentice. He was yet another William, the orphaned, eldest son of Henry Kitchingman, Vicar of Marton in Cleveland. He was ordained at York in 1621 and educated at St John’s, Cambridge – unlike say Caius, which had been known as a College especially sympathetic to Yorkshire Catholicism. Assuming that Henry was William’s kinsman, and possibly even his brother, this does not support Papist leanings. ₅

Beyond living memory, there were suggestions that Kitchingmans may have remained faithful to the old religion.

In 1576-78 , Christopher Kitchingman, carpenter, was repeatedly fined by the City Council for the refusal of his wife Anne to attend church “for what cause we canott learn”. Church attendance had been mandatory for all since the Act of Uniformity of 1559. Anne’s silence may have saved her. The next name on the Council’s list and her neighbour in Christ’s parish was Margaret Clitheroe, pressed to death for her faith. However, neither William nor any other Kitchingman appears on the lists of recusants in the seventeenth century. ₆

During the brief Marian revival of the York Mystery Plays in 1554, William Kitchingman, cordwainer, along with the merchant Edward Rayncoke, paid 3s 4d for the lease of the Corpus Christi play at the corner of Petergate, Goodramgate and Girdlergate. It may be that this was a display of status as much as a sign of particular piety, what Eamonn Duffy has called “the sacramental embodiment of social reality”. ₇

Earlier still, at the dissolution of the monasteries, Dame Margaret Kytchynman, 36, was one of twelve Benedictine nuns put out of the wonderfully-named Thikhed Priory, about nine miles from York. In a letter of 1536 from Thomas Cromwell, they were described as “all of good liffyng and conversation”. Margaret received a reward of 10s and a pension of 26s 8d, which was still being paid in 1556. ₈

Could memories of these events of fifty, one hundred years before have helped shape the behaviour of William Kitchingman on the eve of the Civil War? It seems unlikely. More probably, any support for the Royalist cause was depicted as proof of Popery. It is also possible that William did not have any choice in the officers billeted on him.

In any case, the accusations do not seem to have harmed William’s civic career. In 1642 (probably on September 21), he was chosen as one of the Chamberlains, who managed the financial side of the City’s affairs. In 1644, he became Master of the Merchant Taylor’s Company. Finally, in April 1660, he was elected Sheriff of the City of York. Robed, on horseback, he was at the front of the procession for the proclamation of Charles II “with the greatest Expressions of Joy that possible could be imagined”. Fifteen months later he was buried in the North Quire of St Michael le Belfry, a few yards from his house that had been the scene of the affray on the eve of Civil War. ₉

Does this incident reveal anything of the religious beliefs of the middling sort in York in this period? Or help “make windows into men’s souls”, as Elizabeth I put it? It seems that William was probably responding to the particular circumstances in that time and place. Over the next century or so, other Kitchingmans in other places were variously Presbyterian, Quaker, non-conformist and Anglican. From the view point of our more secular age, faith appears to have been contingent. That is not to question the sincerity of their beliefs but may help explain how ordinary English men and women so readily adapted to the changes in religion from the Reformation onwards.

Postscript

One advantage of a blog is the ability to correct errors.

A recent visit to the York Civic Archives revealed dating errors in William’s civic career. He was chosen as Chamberlain on 20 January 1643 rather than September 1642. He was elected Sheriff on 27 April 1661, so sadly would not been have in office for the celebration of the Restoration.

William was not first choice as Sheriff: Sir Metcalfe Robinson had been fined £300 for refusing to take the oath. Clearly, this was a scam to raise revenue by the Corporation, as Metcalfe was already serving as the City’s Member of Parliament.

These corrections are based on the Corporation’s Minute Book rather than Torr’s Antiquities published almost 60 years later. They show that the historian’s preference for primary over secondary sources is entirely warranted. ₁₀

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References

1. ‘Civil War Proceedings in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. VII, (London, 1882), p376-8. https://archive.org/details/YAJ007/page/n1/mode/2up?q=kitchingman&view=theater
   This is one of the British Library’s Thomason Tracts: ‘An Abstract from Yorke of Seven Dayes Passages from 24 June to 1 July’, E. 154 2.
   
2. For a brief flavour of Benjamin Allen, see J. Saunders, ‘Meet the Howes: A Family of Puritan Booksellers’, The International John Bunyan Society, (August 2021), https://johnbunyansociety.org/2021/08/06/meet-the-howes-a-family-of-puritan-booksellers/
   
3. ‘Civil War Proceedings in Yorkshire’, op. cit.. . See R. Clifton, ‘The Popular Fear of Catholics in the English Revolution’, Past & Present, 52.1 (1975), pp. 23-55.
   For biography of Sir Thomas Metham, a well known Catholic, see P. R. Newman, ‘The Royalist Army in Northern England 1642-45’, Volume 2 Appendices , unpublished Ph.D. thesis, (University of York, 1978), p. 376. Newman argues that Royalist officers were disproportionately likely to be Catholics, compared to their population in the North, p. 23. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9926/1/467034_vol2.pdf
   
4. Birth date of 1597 inferred from Borthwick Institute of Archives, University of York, Cause Papers CP.H.2265, 1638, WK, tailor aged 41, witness for George Cater of Petergate, York;
   D. M. Smith. The Company of Merchant Taylors in the City of York: Register of Admissions 1560-1835, (University of York, 1996), p. 56.
   
5. D. M. Smith., op. cit., p56; J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, (London, 1922-54), Pt 1 Vol III, p. 26, admitted sizar 1615, B.A 1618-19 https://archive.org/details/p1alumnicantabri03univuoft/page/26/mode/2up;
   J. C. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: the Catholic Recusants of North Yorkshire 1558-1790, (London, 1966);
   C. Law, Contested Reformations in the University of Cambridge, 1535-1584, (London, 2018), p.159; Clergy of the Church of England Database, Person ID 119207, https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/jsp/persons/index.jsp
   
6. A. Raine (ed.), ‘York Civic Records Vol VII’, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series Vol CXV, (York, 1950), pp. 133, 150 https://archive.org/details/YASRS115;
   J. C. H. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy in the City of York 1558-1791, (Cambridge, 1970).
   F. E. Smith, ‘The Origins of Elizabethan Recusancy Reconsidered’, The Historical Journal, (August, 2016) https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/254115/Smith%202016%20Historical%20Journal.pdf?sequence=1
   
7. E. N. White, ‘The Social and Topographical Context of Drama in York’, unpublished PhD thesis, (University of Leeds, 1984), pp. 234-237.;
   E. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, (New Haven, 1992), pp. 11, 44.
   
8. Yorkshire Archaeological Society, ‘Monastic Rentals and Surveys’, Miscellanea Vol 3, (Wakefield, 1931), pp. 87-90 https://archive.org/details/YASRS080/page/86/mode/2up?q=thikhed;
   J. W. M. Cay, Yorkshire Monasteries Suppression Papers, (1912), pp.161-162;
   C. Cross and N. Vickers, Monk, Friars and Nuns in sixteenth Century Yorkshire, (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1995), pp. 540-542;
   W. Brown, ‘Twelve Small Yorkshire Priories’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, vol IX, p. 201.
   
9. See Surtees Society, York Memorandum Book Part 2, (London, 1915), pp. ix-xi and Victoria County History, A History of the County of York: the City of York, pp. 173-186, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/city-of-york/pp173-186 for the ordering of civic affairs;
   Surtees Society, Register of the Freemen of the City of York, Vol II, 1669-1759, (Durham, 1900); D. M. Smith, op. cit., p56;
   J. Torr, The Antiquities of York City and the Civil Government Thereof, (London, 1719), pp. 115-116 for the election of WK and description of celebrations for proclamation of Charles II https://archive.org/details/antiquitiesofyor00hild/page/116/mode/2up;
   Yorkshire Parish Register Society, The Registers of Parish of St Michael le Belfry, Vol III, (York, 1901), buried 4 October 1661.
   
10. York Civic Archives, City of York Corporation Minute Book 1638-1650, Y/COU/1/1/36, f.81.
    York Civic Archives, City of York Corporation Minute Book 1650-1663, Y/COU/1/1/37, f. 154.