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Yorkshire's Famous Residents |
Dick Turpin - Highwayman executed in York City
Guy Fawkes - November 5th Gunpowder Plot &
Treason
Adam Sedgwick - Geologist born in Dent in 1785
Adam Sedgwick
- Geologist born in Dent in 1785
Adam Sedgwick was Professor of Geology at
Cambridge University for 55 years during which his work on the subject can only
be described as pioneering. There is a memorial to him at the gate to At
Andrew's Church in Dent inscribed in a lump of granite from the nearby Pennine
Hills of Shap.
John Palmer alias Dick (Richard) Turpin
Born in Hempstead and baptised Richard
Turpin on September 25th 1705, he was apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel,
London where he was caught stealing two oxen.
For a time he earned a living smuggling
and then started robbing farmhouses throughout the Home Counties. His
reputation earned him a bounty on his head of Fifty Pound offered by King
George, this was raised to One Hundred Pounds in February 1736 when his gang
robbed a wealthy Farmer beating his wife and daughter.
He met up with the then most famous
Highwayman a Tom King, who past on his knowledge of the trade hence the start of
career of Dick Turpin the Highwayman. In May 1737 he shot a gamekeeper in Epping
Forest and became a hunted murderer.
After Tom King was arrested in the red
Lion Pub in Whitechapel, Turpin moved north to Lincolnshire where he was
arrested for rustling horses. He escaped into Yorkshire and using the name John
Palmer set up a business in horse dealing around York City.
His lifestyle of a Gentleman was financed
by rustling in the neighbouring counties, but he was finally arrested after
shooting a prize cock which belonged to his landlord and when answering the
charge it was found that John Palmer had other complaints to his name in
Lincolnshire.
While in custody in York Castle he wrote
to his brother for a character reference, the letter was returned to the local
Post Office after his brother refused to pay the postage due. A James Smith
Turpin's former schoolmaster recognised the the handwriting and informed the
local Magistrate.
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Although signed John Palmer, Smith identified the
hand as Richard Turpin's and was despatched for York where he identified
Palmer as Turpin who was convicted on two counts and sentenced to death.
On the 19thof April 1739 Dick Turpin was hung
at Tyburn Gallows where the race course now, he was buried near St Georges
Church York.
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Guy Fawkes - Gunpowder Plot & Treason
Born in York and baptised on the 16th April 1570 at
Saint Michael-le-Belfrey Guy was educated at St Peters School in York City.
Guido Fawkes had an exciting and varied life.
At twenty one he leased a small holding nearby in
Clifton and two years later left England to enlist in the Spanish Army and
serve under the Archduke Albert of Austria, in 1596 he was in Calais
when it fell to King Philip II of Spain.
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Guy Fawkes
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There is a Hotel in York which claims to
be his birthplace, but it is the end of his career for which he is famous. On
November 5th 1605 he was the only member of a gang of thirteen
conspirators arrested in the cellars of the British House of Parliament in
London.
He claimed to be John Johnson a point
clarified when tortured along with there plans, which were to blow up the
Parliament Building along with the King and his Lords. Overthrowing the
Government and install a new monarchy to return England to it's Catholic past.
He was executed for treason on the 31st of
January 1606 in the Old Palace Yard in Westminster, the day of the failed plot
is celebrated each year with fireworks and bonfires. It is tradition to
burn an effigy of Guy on the fires after children have raised funds for
fireworks asking for a "Penny for the Guy"
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