Judged at the court of God... tales of the
tax evaders, wife abusers and adulterers

IT was a time when the word of God was law indeed – whether the crime was trying to drown your wife, kidnapping a nun, adultery with the servants, or roughing up the vicar.

As far back as the Middle Ages, church courts sat in judgment on thousands of sinners, some guilty of nothing more than failing to pay a share of their income to the ecclesiastical authorities.

But the facts of more sensational cases – still stored in the country’s biggest surviving collection of church court records – would still make headlines today.

For centuries, the lurid details of the affairs of some of the church’s blackest sheep have been among 1,400 cases buried away in a treasure trove of ecclesiastical court records, unseen by anyone but worthy scholars researching the price of grain and turnips.

But now the guilty secrets of the great and the good are being laid bare, because the records have become available for free on the internet for anyone to look up simply using key words such as adultery, murder or vicar.

During a period from the 14th to 19th century, it was not the judges but the bishops who laid down the law on disputes as diverse as church taxes on liquorice, roses, and pigeon droppings to wills, and serious crimes.

The largest archive to survive is the York Cause Papers, which record the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts of York from 1300 to 1858.

Their work consisted mainly of matrimonial, defamation, tithe (the rights of the church to take a tenth of everyone’s income), wills, breaches of faith and boundary disputes.

Once housed in York Minster and latterly in the modern temperature-controlled environment of the hi-tech Borthwick Institute at York University, the collection puts even Canterbury Cathedral’s records to shame.

Academics say it represents a vast slice of English life from anywhere north of the River Trent – including Carlisle, Chester and Durham – to the Diocese of York. It covers all of Yorkshire and as far south as the northern archdeaconries of Nottinghamshire.

Borthwick Institute Keeper of Archives Chris Webb said: “Until 1858 the church courts, under the authority of bishops, had jurisdiction over a wide variety of crimes which we would now consider secular and the business of the state.

“They oversaw cases concerning marriage and separation, and disputes over wills and inheritance.

“They also dealt with cases involving personal reputation and defamation, the maintenance of the Church, the orthodoxy of its services and the regulation of the moral and professional conduct of the clergy, schoolmasters, physicians and midwives.

“The Church of England was supported by a system of taxation known as tithes and the records also show exactly how this taxation was calculated and how people tried to evade it.”

For social historians, the papers will be very useful in researching the more obscure aspects of British life – trawling through tithe cases for example will help to establish exactly when turkey farming became established in Britain.

But those with a less scholarly eye will find even in those churchgoing days there were astonishing depths to which even the most respected members of congregations would sink.

Cases involving scandal in high places include the titled lady who had a fling with her servant, the pillar of the community who beat his wife with a horse whip and the master whose eye for the serving wenches nearly ended in murder.

Armchair detectives can also examine the curious affair of the runaway bride and yobs who beat up members of the clergy and paraded naked women around a market town.

Church courts held sway in many areas of justice until they were suspended by Cromwell after the Civil War.

Although reinstated after the restoration in 1660 their power waned from the late 17th century and a raft of legislation in the 1800s placed justice firmly in the hands of the state.

Scholars including Professor Mark Ormrod from York University’s department of History say digitising the Cause Papers means these valuable documents are set to become one of the most widely-used historical records in the UK.

Alastair Dunning, a Programme Manager involved in the project, said the need to preserve the ageing documents had also restricted access.

He added: “These new digital images can be shuffled around, enlarged, re-ordered and compared in ways that are not possible with the physical items themselves.”

Official ready to cut and paste translations of the cases are so far available for the latter period of the archive, when hand-writing was more legible, and Latin less used.

But for those willing to wade through the digital images of the documents looking for scandal are going to find plenty.

The court was a great leveller, and were often the source of great stories of misbehaviour in high places. The archives hold details of how tender loving husband Sir Peter Vavasour was delighted when his wife Lady Jane developed an interest in watching his throughbred horses race.

Unhappily for his marriage, Lady Jane’s passion was not for the sport of kings but William Parker, her husband’s steward and head of stables.

The court papers record their secret liaisons at York’s Falcon Inn, which still exists. She wined and dined him and stole gold and money from Sir Peter’s safe to plan a new life together. But before they could set up home under a false name in another part of the country the truth came out.

Parker was dismissed by Sir Peter and Lady Jane was hauled and before the church court for adultery.

The records show that Sir Peter wanted a separation. No verdict in the case has survived, but both Lady Jane and the steward are of course now in a place where she will be judged by a much higher court.

Anyone thinking of writing historical crime novels might seek inspiration in the archive, where murders and attempted homicide abound.

Wealthy Robert Hodgson had an eye for the ladies – and when he was caught out marital strife nearly led to murder.

The husband with a violent streak was well known in the village of Cherry Burton, near Hull, for not being able to keep his hands off his female servants.

When Hodgson was called as a witness in a tithe case his credibility came under attack and details of his own domestic disharmony were noted for posterity even though he had not originally gone to court as an accused man.

The court heard how he had already been caught by his daughter committing adultery with another man’s wife in a patch of woodland. On that occasion he apparently got away with it by bribing his daughter to keep her mouth shut. Mrs Hodgson was not to be so easily fooled when she later spied her husband “keeping suspicious company”.

Caught out by his wife over his affair with housemaid Alice Owster, Hodgson hurled his spouse into the back yard well and left her to drown.

But luckily her cries were apparently heard by her man servant John Clarke, who pulled her to safety. In some cases, like this one, details of the punishment meted out by the court have not survived.

Instances of domestic abuse stretch back to time immemorial, but in 1846 one particular scandal rocked the village of Lythe, north of Whitby, when local yeoman’s wife Mary Ellerby sued her husband William for separation on the grounds of cruelty and adultery.

Details of the case record that they were out riding near Newbiggin Hall when he dragged her from her horse and rode over her before striking her with the whip.

William fled to Scotland to 
avoid giving evidence, but one Elizabeth Surr did come to 
court to confirm the allegations were true.

In some cases, there is enough detail of the story to prick the curiosity but not enough to satisfy it – as in the story of the kidnapped nun.

Little information of this curious case survive from the hearing by York’s flagship Curia Ebor Court which ruled the church’s Northern Province with a rod of iron.

In 1424, three West Riding men – Robert Arthington, Richard Castelay and John Ross – 
together with Agnes Haldenby from York, were accused of abducting a nun called Isabel Durham from a Priory at Carlton in Lindrick in Nottinghamshire. Faced with an army of witnesses, they were convicted of violation of church rights and excommunicated.

Website: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers/ For any questions or difficulties in using the website, contact the Borthwick Institute for Archives on 01904 321166 or by e-mail [email protected].

Revellers who
tortured vicar

In 1596, Vicar Roland Taylor vicar of the East Riding parish of Kirby Grindalythe, petitioned the Archbishop of York for justice against revellers who ran riot in the town and assaulted clergy.

The court heard that one of Roland’s fellow ministers was forced into a small room by the thugs who rubbed salt in his eyes and blackened his face.

They then ridiculed him, saying he looked like he had come from hell.

Roland told the court the men then went around town breaking windows with their rapiers. He said they grabbed other men’s wives and paraded naked strumpets in front of a crowd of people who had gathered to see what the fuss was about.

It was also alleged that the group had also set on Roland, violently assaulting him with a range of weapons before leaving him in a bloody heap.

The runaway bride ‘kidnap’

York alderman’s son John Harrison was determined not to be cheated out of his bride even if his betrothed may have faked her own abduction to get out of marrying him. But Harrison was convinced his beloved had been abducted and held against her will – and she did not turn up in court to set the record straight.

Isobel Frere had been promised to John from the age of 13 under an agreement between John’s father Thomas and Isabel’s father Henry. When the time came for him to come to Hull to collect his bride she had been removed from the Harrison household by three other men.

John accused his rivals William and Richard Marston, and Christopher Garthome of conspiring to take Isabel away from him in the battle for her affections.

It was alleged they took her from the house and shut her away against her will at William’s house in Castle Milnes but records suggest she may have been in on the ‘crime’ and Isobel was named as one of the defendants in her own ‘abduction’.