The redemption of captives in Algiers

Records of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials at Haworth date back to 1645.  This is about as early as anywhere, although it isn’t unusual (for example, my direct line Mullins ancestors can be traced back in similar records at Box in Wiltshire to the mid seventeenth century but not any earlier). These sorts of records predate registers with standard formats and take the form of annual lists submitted to the Bishop.

The early records at Haworth only survive because in 1786 John Shackleton, the local schoolmaster, made a proper copy in a single volume of the deteriorating, occasionally jumbled and partially lost records.  Twenty years ago Steven Wood, indefatigable local historian, transcribed Shackleton’s work, and has now given me a disc with his transcription.

An interesting feature of the early Haworth records is the notes which appear at the end of each year’s list.  There is nothing systematic about them, simply being what someone like the Parish Clerk at the time thought remarkable – beginning with a huge thunder storm in July 1646 and the Battle of Preston, thirty miles away, in August 1648 (the Parliamentary victory there being welcomed by the writer).

The feature of seventeenth century church and community life which stands out for me is the regular collections made for churches and individuals in need around the country.  Specific references to ‘collectors’ and ‘letters patent’ indicate that someone travelled round the country and turned up with a licence (I discover elsewhere that the term 'church brief' was used) to request or make each collection.

The first reference in 1663 is to supporting the repair of what might be Harwich church and steeple in Essex.  In 1666 there is the first reference to supporting an individual (one shilling for Jo. Osborn, Russian Merchant - for a ransom?).  Ten years later some collections begin to be named for what may be a poor community (two shillings nine pence for the inhabitants of Newent in Gloucestershire) as the poor of Towcester and Wem are named as such two years later.

Different bits of national history emerge.  In 1680 contributions are made for the ‘redemption of captives in Algiers’ and the following year a much larger sum than usual (ten shillings and six pence) for ‘the relief of French Protestants’, so slavery on the North African coast and Louis XIV’s ramping up the persecution of Huguenots would have been well known  in Haworth, and both reappear in subsequent collection lists.

Ten separate collections (a quite unusual number) are recorded in 1683, one in October ‘according to Order for the relief of the poor of the Parish of Newmarket, in Suffolk, impoverished by fire’.  I cross referenced this to a local history site there which records the Great Fire of Newmarket which destroyed half the town five months earlier; the King (who had been staying locally) issuing a ‘fire brief’ which brought in £20,000, to which Haworth records show we contributed four shillings and one penny.

The Virgin and Child is in Venice.