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The Quakers Of Embsay & Eastby

The Quaker movement was founded by George Fox following a revelation on Pendle Hill in the Spring of 1652, during the Commonwealth period.

From there he made his way to Sedbergh where a group called the ‘Westmorland Seekers’ had been meeting. On Sunday 13th June 1652 he preached to over 1,000 ‘Seekers’ on Firbank Fell near Sedbergh and from there the Quaker movement, known as ‘The Society of Friends’, spread rapidly.

George Fox

By 1653 Quakers were meeting in the Skipton area as revealed in their earliest Register of Births which records Quakers in Bradley, Addingham and Steeton. By 1654 Quakers were speaking to public gatherings in Skipton market place, and George Fox himself visited Skipton in 1658.

There were Quaker converts in Embsay as early as 1656 when John Walsh of Embsay is recorded, and by at least 1660 Quaker Meetings were being held at The Heugh, Eastby, the home of the Stott family. When Thomas Stott of The Heugh died in January 1661 the Holy Trinity Parish Registers record that “ye Quakers” were taking his body “to their burying place at Rillstone, but his neighbours prevented it”, and he was buried at Holy Trinity. Quakers had been meeting at Scale House, Rylstone from about 1658.

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 led to systematic persecution of Quakers, and the Act of Uniformity of 1662 enforced the use of the Book of Common Prayer.

Today we think of Quakers as benign but in the 17th century they were seen as a threat to the established church. They refused to pay Tithes (a tenth of their produce) to the church, and it was illegal to attend a Quaker meeting. In 1680 Charles Bradford and Francis Demaine, tithe collectors of Embsay, were ordered to seize 7 shillings worth of corn from Richard Thompson of Embsay, in lieu of tithes.

Richard Thompson and his wife Ann held Quaker Meetings at their house in Embsay, and in 1682 Robert Myers, Henry Killinall and William Tennant were arrested at Embsay along with Richard Thompson and all four were fined 10 shillings. As they refused to pay they were imprisoned at York Castle. William Tennant was released after a neighbour paid the fine but the other three were held there for four years, as were 48 other Quakers from the area. They were only released when the newly crowned James II issued a warrant on 15th April 1686 to release them, except four “who had been released by death”.

Richard Thompson survived the imprisonment and continued to have his goods and produce seized for non-payment of tithes which, as a penalty, were usually at least twice the value of the original tithe. In 1693 he had corn worth 10 shillings seized, but the vicar of Holy Trinity Skipton thought that was not enough, and the tithe collectors returned and seized a “Web of Cloth” worth 17 shillings.

Following the overthrow of James II and the installation of William of Orange as King, the Act of Toleration was passed in 1689 which allowed Quakers, Roman Catholics and other non-conformists to worship freely. But tithes still had to be paid to the established church. Farfield Quaker Meeting House, near Addingham (pictured) was one of the first Quaker Meeting Houses to be built in 1689, with Skipton Quaker Meeting House following in 1693.

Farfield Quaker Meeting House built 1689

In 1696 Jonathan Baynes, a Quaker from Killington near Sedbergh purchased the lease to Embsay Kirk from the Earl of Burlington for £600, and in 1700 he applied to the West Riding Quarter Sessions to register Embsay Kirk as a Quaker Meeting House. The difference between his wealth and that of Richard Thompson is revealed in the 1702 tithe collections when Richard Thompson had corn worth 2s 6d seized, whilst Jonathan Baynes, who also refused to pay his tithe, had corn worth £4 seized.

Tithe collection continued to be a contentious issue and in 1742, forty years later, the tithe collectors visited George Baynes of Embsay Kirk (son of Jonathan Baynes) where he accused the Constable Thomas Wigglesworth, and three others, of assaulting his wife Elizabeth. The case was upheld at the Quarter Sessions and each of them was fined 6 shillings.

As the 18th century progressed more non-conformist groups emerged. William Baynes of Embsay Kirk, the grandson of Jonathan, built the first textile mill in Embsay Gill in 1792, later the site of Primrose Mill. In the following years six more textile mills were built in Embsay and Eastby which led to significant immigration. The population increased from no more than 350 in 1792 to nearly 1,000 by 1841 and with these immigrants came other non-conformist groups including Congregationalists, Wesleyan Methodists, Roman Catholics, Primitive Methodists, and Swedenborgians.

NEXT TIME: PART 3 – THE SWEDENBORGIANS

David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group