The Story of the East Riding of YorkshireBrowne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
History
The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Browne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
Yorkshire (England) -- History
Thus William Wilberforce and Viscount Milton became the two members for
Yorkshire. The defeated candidate owed his position at the bottom of the
poll largely to the fact that his father owned slaves on his West Indian
estates, and one of the election cries against him was ‘No Yorkshire
votes purchased with African blood!’ The election cost Wilberforce
£28,000, and each of the other two candidates about £100,000—a striking
example of the difference that has come over our political life during
the last century.
In 1812 Wilberforce retired from his old constituency, and thenceforth
sat for a small borough in Sussex until 1825, when he withdrew from
Parliament. But the good work which he had helped to start was continued
by others, and two weeks after his burial in Westminster Abbey—August
5th, 1833—an Act of Parliament was passed for the Abolition of Slavery
in the British Colonies, the sum of money paid as compensation to
slave-owners being £20,000,000.
The memory of our great philanthropist has been perpetuated at York by
the building of the Wilberforce School for the Blind, and at Hull by the
erection of the Wilberforce Monument near Whitefriargate Bridge, and the
opening of his birthplace in High Street as a Public Museum of Local
Antiquities. The Wilberforce Monument, which towers up 102 feet above
the roadway, bears on one of its sides the simple yet effective
inscription:—
NEGRO
SLAVERY
ABOLISHED
I. AUGUST
MDCCCXXXIV.
From William Wilberforce we turn to SIR TATTON SYKES—‘t’owd Squyer’ of
Sledmere. Sir Tatton was born in 1772, the second son of Sir Christopher
Sykes, and succeeded to the title and the family estates on the death of
his brother, Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, in 1823.
Before this he had become widely known as a breeder of sheep and
racehorses, and as a fearless sportsman. At the age of twenty-three he
rode his first race at Malton, at the age of sixty he rode his last; and
on both occasions he came in the winner.
Under Sir Christopher Sykes the cultivation of the bleak, desolate Wold
country was successfully begun, and under Sir Tatton Sykes great
improvements were wrought by the introduction of bone manure. Sir Tatton
was for forty years a master of fox-hounds, and the discovery of the
usefulness of bone manure was due to his observing that on the places
near his kennels at Eddlethorpe where the hounds were fed, the grass
grew more luxuriantly than it did elsewhere.
Throughout his long life of ninety-one years Sir Tatton Sykes continued
to dress in the fashions of his early days—‘a long frock coat, drab
breeches, top-boots, and a frilled shirt.’ And such was his reputation
that sixty years ago the three things best worth seeing in the county
were said by Yorkshiremen to be ‘York Minster, Fountains Abbey, and
t’owd Squyer.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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