Novel that revives slice of Leeds forgotten history
The tale of Arthur Mangey is a curiously little-known piece of Leeds history. In just two years, he went from being a feted, highly-paid goldsmith to being hanged as a traitor. Leeds native Chris Nickson used the tale as the foundation for his new novel, Them Without Pain.
In 1694, Mangey was commissioned to fashion the Leeds Mace. Made of silver and gilt, it weighed six kilos and stood a metre and a half tall, crafted for official ceremonies and processions. He was paid £60 for his skill – about £10,000 today.
Yet in 1696, Mangey was accused by a neighbour named George Norcross of coin clipping. It was a crime that involved sharing a tiny amount of silver off the edge of coins, melting it down and stamping it with a forged die to make fake currency. As it debased the coinage, it was treason, and the sentence was death. Mangey was fighting for his life.
The testimony was circumstantial at best. Norcross, a shoemaker, had spent time in Rothwell prison, and would go on to accuse others in Leeds of different crimes, including one who would end up as mayor.
Mangey had his workshop in Middle Row, a series of buildings behind the Moot Hall (Town Hall), which stood in the middle of Briggate. Norcross insisted that Mangey clipped coins in a hidden room inside the workshop. Yet nobody ever searched for it.
In spite of the lack of hard evidence, Mangey was found guilty and hanged on October 2, 1696.
That might have been the end of the story, except…when the Moot Hall and Middle Row were demolished in 1825, workmen discovered Mangey’s secret workshop. Inside were two pairs of metal shears and an Elizabethan coin. Planted? Left by Mangey? Impossible to know.
In Them Without Pain, thief-taker Simon Westow is present when the workshop is uncovered. He’s hunting some stolen silver cups made by…Arthur Mangey. And inside the hidden room along with the shears and the coin, he finds the body of the man believed to have taken the cups.
What connection could Mangey have to a murdered thief? Westow had to search for the connection in a twisted story of family history.
“For any writer, something like this is too perfect a gift to ignore,” author Nickson says.
“Arthur Mangey’s story is a remarkable slice of Leeds history. Trials were conducted in different ways back then, but the conviction seems dubious. Some believed the verdict was engineered, although there’s nothing to prove it.
"You’d imagine the family of a traitor would be shunned, but Mangey’s son achieved high office in the church and married the Archbishop of York’s daughter. For me, the real shame is that so few people know about this; I hope the book can change that. And the story of the workshop’s discovery fitted perfectly with the Westow series timeline.”
Them Without Pain is published by Severn House on September 3, 2024.