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Captain Cook's Monument, Easby Moor. The Mystery Behind it!

1. By Trev Teasdel

A Pyramid on Roseberry Topping – Pagodas –

Obelisks, Captain Cook and Freemasonry

Captain Cook's Monument - Easby Moor

It sounds like something out of the Da Vinci Code with its mysterious early proposals of pyramids and obelisks but these occurrences happened long before that book was written. That these events happened on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors and not the exotic locations of the Dan Brown novel, make it all the more unbelievable!

I never set out to explore this mystery, it was purely an offshoot of other work, but one thing led to another and I became intrigued. I can’t claim, however, to have got all the answers and proofs, but there’s enough to state a case and provide a reason for further research I believe. It is not the intention of the this article to engage with current conspiracy theories, but rather follows on from local history research connected to Stokesley born Printer Publisher Poet Author People's historian and Freemason - George Markham Tweddell.

(ALSO SEE FEEDBACK FROM CAPTAIN COOK'S SOCIETY AND A COMPARISON WITH STOODLEY PIKE IN TODMORDEN IN THE ARTICLE BELOW)

Captain Cook's Monument - Easby Moor

An obelisk dedicated to Captain Cook sits atop of Easby Moor on the North Yorkshire Moors. This monument, which can be seen for miles around, is a local tourist attraction. The village of Gt. Ayton (Cook’s childhood home) and Airey Holm Farm lie below. Few suspect that there’s anything more to know about it!

Many times I’ve walked up Easby Moor but often felt the monument doesn’t really engage with Cook somehow. Obelisks are fairly common of course and there are two dedicated to Cook in the area. Perhaps if it had a statue of Cook at the top like the one in London or Whitby, I might have felt it made more sense but no – the only thing that relates to Cook is a plaque. Everybody knows it’s dedicated to Cook but there is nothing much up there that is relevant to him (or is there?). That’s not to say, of course, that the monument or the views aren’t impressive in themselves!

The French Enlightenment and Egyptology

While researching the poetry of George Markham Tweddell (the 19th poet, printer, publisher, Chartist and people’s historian from nearby Stokesley) http://www.tweddellpoetry.co.uk/ in 2008, I discovered his poems contained Masonic emblems or symbolism. (Tweddell was a prominent member of the Loyal Cleveland Lodge). During the research I consulted a range of websites and books and one of the books was called Talisman (Sacred Cities, Secret faith) by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. Chapter 1 – Behind the Veils - was a fascinating read in itself.  – the authors describe events in Paris during and after the French Revolution, from the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the dismantling of the prison and its replacement with distinctly Egyptian structures dedicated to Isis. There is not room to go into detail here (you will have to read the book) but as a result of the involvement of the French Masonic Lodges (eg The Lodge of Nine Sisters) – and the prominent ideas of the Enlightenment – those of Rousseau, Voltaire and Thomas Paine, the landscape of Paris took on an increasingly Egyptian look and Catholicism was replaced by the Cult of Reason or The Supreme Being. Benjamin Franklin (being a Freemason) was involved in this too while living in France and there was also a connection with America. Obelisks and pyramids formed a significant part of this.

1827 – A Good Year for Obelisks!

Paris_the_obelisk

Fast-forward to the significant date of 1827 – the monarchy had been re-instated but this time around the Kings were also Freemasons and to quote –

“Louis XVIII ruled for 10 years. He was a Freemason. On his death in 1824 he was succeeded by his brother, The Count D’ Artois – also a Freemason. Both monarchs showed a marked preference for ancient Egyptian symbolism in their public works..”


“In 1827, Jean-François-Champollion (the Father of modern Egyptology who made a breakthrough in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs) was commissioned by Charles X to arrange for the importation to Paris of a 35,000 year old Obelisk – one of a pair that stood at Alexandria in Egypt. The obelisk was destined for the Place de la Concorde, which had personal significance to Charles X. It had originally been named after his father Louis XV and an equestrian statue had once graced it. Here also the guillotine had been erected…”



The authors speculate "that the installation of the obelisk was to commemorate the idea of the reborn and restored monarchy, with the ancient solar symbol of the divine kings of Egypt rising in the heart of the Parisian skyline like a Phoenix"



All very interesting – but how does this relate to Captain Cook’s monument on Easby Moor?

Meanwhile back in Gt.Ayton!

I put the book down and looked out of my bedroom window in Gt. Ayton. I have a panoramic view of Roseberry Topping and Easby Moor. I glanced over at the Captain Cook obelisk and thought – ‘No! – There couldn’t be a connection with the events that were going on in France and America during the Enlightenment surely’. The only French Connection I knew about was that Easby Moor may have been a look out post during the Napoleonic war.

Nonetheless, I recalled that Tweddell had a series of 3 sonnets (to be found in his collected poems - http://www.tweddellpoetry.co.uk/) to Cook and was also a Freemason. Often I had found answers to my queries, embedded in Tweddell’s own work. (Note - I wasn’t taking this Masonic connection seriously at this stage – it was just idle curiosity!). So it was with some surprise that I found Tweddell’s first poem about Cook engaging with both Obelisks and Pyramids! True it doesn’t go much further, but how odd that both pyramids and obelisks were mentioned in relation to Cook!

[Three Sonnets to] Captain James Cook

Whilst obelisks are raised to men of wealth,

And pyramids are tow’ring to the sky

To tell mankind where bygone tyrants lie

Men who in life, flush’d with the joy of health,

And render’d vain by crouching helots’ praise, 5

Imagined they, by slave-piled stones, could raise

A Babel high to reach the Heaven of Fame—

And lo! E’en hoary Time’s forgot their name!

Whilst monuments are raised to men who slew

Their fellow-mortals on the field of strife, 10

England! Shall it be said thou never knew

Thy debt of gratitude to one whose life

Devoted was to arts that dignify

Not COOK alone, but all humanity?

George Markham Tweddell

1827 – A Good Year for Obelisks Revisited!

At this stage I had no idea when the Cook obelisk was erected or if Tweddell was actually involved in its initiation so I did a search on the internet and got a second surprise when I found out that the monument was built by Robert Campion (a Whitby banker) and erected in 1827 – the same year as the French one! Apparently the money came from subscriptions raised in Whitby. As Tweddell was only 3 in 1827, it’s clear he wasn’t involved with it’s planning but may have been privy to its origins through his familiarisation with the historical work of John Graves and or Masonic connections and embedded a clue in the poem. With two ‘coincidences’ under my belt, I was intrigued. Could there be more or was that it?                                                                       

Why an Obelisk?

Captain Cook'sMonument - struck by lightening

I wondered about obelisks – in what way are they relevant as a memorial? How does it relate to Cook? I discovered there are two types of obelisk - tall solid ones such as the Egyptian one transported to France and hollow ones. The obelisk on Easby moor is clearly a hollow one as illustrated by this press cutting below showing it after it was hit by lightening in 1906 – it was built without a lightening conductor! It also appears to have a ‘benben stone’ on top (a pyramid-shaped stone or the capstone of a pyramid or the tip of an obelisk) – although missing in the picture here). The pyramidion shape apparently distinguishes obelisks from other monumental columns.



"Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone, a monolith; however, most modern obelisks are made of individual stones, and can even have interior spaces."



I’m not sure that there is any significance in the style of the obelisk but another website suggested that obelisks –



"...symbolized the sun god Amon Re, and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the Aten, the sundisk.  It was also thought that the god existed within the structure." and "The pyramid and obelisk would have been inspired by previously overlooked astronomical phenomena connected with sunrise and sunset: the zodiacal light and sun pillars respectively."



And…

"Because of the Enlightenment-era association of Egypt with mortuary arts, (and generally with great antiquity), obelisks became associated with timelessness and memorialization."

 

Ian Pearce of The Great Ayton Community Archaeology Project suggested that

“The site for the monument was probably chosen because Easby Moor is the highest ground for miles around and consists of very stable sandstone, suitable for the foundations of an obelisk.  In contrast Roseberry Topping wouldn't have provided a very good base, and is lower.  The site is also visible from miles around.”

Some of this begins to make sense – Easby moor is a wide open space where sunrise and sunset are clearly visible and the ideas of memorialisation and timelessness are relevant. The monument acts like a sundial and as Ian says, it is visible for miles around. Whether a deity lives within its hollow structure is another matter! A great myth could be constructed around this – especially as the monument was dramatically split open by lightening (but we’ll leave that notion for the Creative Writing class!).

 

Talisman


There is a further suggestion that obelisks act as talismans. In History Under the Hammer by Joyce Dixon, published by the North Yorkshire Moors Park in 1996 (about the selling of the Gt. Ayton Cook Cottage to the Australians) Joyce Dixon gives an evocative description of the effect of the monument as they travel through the nearby countryside.

Cook's Monument - Easby Moor

“It was quite late on a winter’s afternoon and the sun was a great sphere of the most vivid shade of orange / red low down in the sky…The colours were intense, different shades of heliotrope, gold, scarlet and lurid pink in an immense sweep of colour all round us. The countryside was getting darker and on the top of Easby, the Monument stood seemingly impossibly large and drawing our attention in a way we had not experienced before –or since.

We drove in silence with our eyes and whole attention fixed on the Monument, stark and black against the vivid skies for mile after mile and we were aware of the huge distances from which it would be visible. It would have been impossible to have given him a more magnificent memorial than this with a feeling of almost reverence at the thought of the man who had inspired the erection of such a simple edifice in his honour.”




Was Captain Cook a Freemason?

James Cook

The above shows that there are plenty of possible reasons for choosing an obelisk to locally memorialise Captain James Cook but is this all there is to it? Still not taking it too seriously I decided to check if Cook himself might have been a Freemason. That might give a more concrete justification for  an obelisk rather than a statue perhaps but I really wasn’t expecting to find any results.

Once again my search was full of surprises!

Apparently it is often claimed Cook was a Freemason – On this site

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/cook_j/cook_j.html

The Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon – A Short History of Freemasonry in Yukon – there are several entries -

"As a matter of interest it is believed that in 1778, Captain James Cook became the first Freemason to set foot in what is now the province of British Columbia."

And on the Biography – Cook page (url above) it says -

“Although no proof of his membership is available, he is often referred to as a  freemason. Claims that he was initiated into Lodge of Industry No 186 do not take into account that this lodge was warranted on 15 January 1788, nine years after Cook died.”


http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/10,000_famous_freemasons/Volume_1_A_to_D.htm

The biographical entry on Cook ends with this sentence –

“Although no proof of his membership is available, he is constantly referred to as a member of the Craft.”

Interestingly, the idea that James Cook may have been a Freemason has already been explored in the book Captain James Cook – Freemason? Roy H. Clemens published by Masonic Public Library, Honolulu in 1980, and is also a source on the above biographical entry on Cook from the 10,000 famous Freemasons. In ten pages he sets out the evidence for and against and comes out firmly against Cook having been a member.

 Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

Whether or not Cook was a Freemason, he certainly seems to be associated and respected by them for his work. In 1766 Joseph Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year he accompanied Commodore Constantine John Phipps (mentioned in Tweddell’s Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham) (available for free download on this site) into Newfoundland and Labrador with a view of studying their natural history.

Another site (in contrast to the claim above) asserts that Joseph Banks (the celebrated Botanist) was the first Freemason to set foot in ‘New South Wales’-

"1770 - The British ship HMS "Endeavour", commanded by James Cook, RN, made the first European exploration of the east coast of Australia.  Cook named the land "New South Wales" and took possession in the name of King George III of Great Britain. Joseph Banks, a passenger aboard the ship, is thought to have been the first Freemason to set foot in the continent as at some date prior to 1768 he had become a member of the Old Horn Lodge No. 4."

Transit of Venus Expedition

Indeed Cook's first expedition for the Royal Society was partly to track the passage of Venus over the Pacific, a

Appearances

 distinctly astronomical mission. He had on board Astronomers and it seems that some of his team, including Banks, were Freemasons and had Lodge meetings on board. That this project was of enormous interest to both scientists and Freemasons might be seen from this site that is researching the Astronomical aspects of Freemasonry http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/alchemy_freemasonry.html

 

Today in New Zealand the Transit of Venus Expedition is partly sponsored by the New Zealand Freemasons http://www.transitofvenus.co.nz/

The site tells us –

“The Transit of Venus: Voyages in Time and Space project is designed to excite New Zealand students about the great 18th century scientific adventure, which literally gave us the measure of the Universe - the expedition led by Captain James Cook was imaginative, daring, risky and hugely productive scientifically! Transits of Venus are rare. In 1768 Cook was hired by the Royal Society of London to go to Tahiti to observe the Transit of Venus on 3 June 1769 in order to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun - there was great excitement about the expedition for such an opportunity wouldn't come again for another 120 years.”

THE DOOR OF DESTINY

Captain-Cook-Monument

Further links between Cook, monuments and Freemasonry have been discussed in Australia where there is a 20th C Cairn monument to Cook in the entrance to one of the bays he landed in - (The Door of Destiny). It has been alleged that there was some Masonic involvement in its initiation judging by the site below. The Compass symbol at the foot of the Cairn is thought to be both a Masonic symbol and to symbolise navigation.

http://www.letsconnect.com.au/captain-cook-monument-the-doorway-of-destiny-r51.htm

The site above says “Sir Raphael Cilento, who was actually the father of Diane Cilento and head of the National Trust, designed the monument. I cannot comment on his being a Freemason, or the symbology on the compass in the root of the monument mentioned in the recent article. However, I do know that he did not choose the spot where the ‘Doorway of Destiny; was built. It was I who chose this magical spot on Round Hill Head next to the most beautiful windswept tree.”

James Cook and the Wapping Dundee Arms Lodge

More recently I found an article on the Captain Cook Society website which, although not relevant (so I thought) was interesting. Geoff King tried to find a connection between Commodore William Christopher and James Cook. An apparent association was revealed in a Church in Stockton on Tees -

http://www.captaincooksociety.com/ccsu41159.htm Given the mystery of how they had become friends, I suspected there might be a Masonic friendship link but totally without any evidence. I never mentioned it to anyone but a while later I came across some further develops on the site which were most interesting and this time of some relevancy to this thesis. The bullet points below summerise some of the main points of the article.

On this page http://www.captaincooksociety.com/ccsu41166.htm  Derek Morris and Ken Cozens of the Captain Cook Society reveal (most interestingly) that - that 

•  the link between Cook and Christopher was Francis Holman (1723-1784) a well-known marine painter who lived in Wapping and painted ships associated  with Cook and Christopher.
• He was also a link with Trinity House, William Hammond of Hull, and possibly with other members of Cook's crews and his acquaintances and friends.
• Most interestingly – “Holman was a senior freemason in the Wapping-based Dundee Arms Lodge, whilst we have found that William Christopher was a member of a Masonic lodge in Stockton on Tees.”
• This suggests that there were some social connections, or that recommendations about Holman's paintings circulated through the lodges.
• They tell us “One possibility arises from the fact that Holman was a leading member of the Dundee Arms Freemasonry Lodge in Red Lyon Street in Wapping”
• Holman's painting of Resolution and Adventure was in the possession of the Hammond family from 1772. Hammond was one of the leading ship owners in Hull, and in the Trinity House of Hull is his portrait painted by Lemuel Francis Abbott, in 1792. It is claimed on the portrait that "Hammond sponsored Cook's 1772 Expedition to New Zealand".
• That Hammond was close to Cook is well known, and he was probably the man who commissioned the ships' portrait from Francis Holman.
• Because of his shipping interests and wealth we would expect that Hammond was in contact with Wapping-based shipping interests, such as that of Camden, Calvert and King, who in turn had strong connections with the Dundee Arms Freemasonry Lodge and Holman.
• We are now more than ever convinced that the one constant link between the merchants in Hull, Whitby, Mile End Old Town and Wapping, is the Trinity House connection!
• They would have been using other social networks such as freemasonry, but the strongest link, which encompasses so much, is Trinity House.
• our work has shown the importance of the Trinity Houses in London and Hull, and the unexpectedly strong links through the Freemasonry Lodges in Wapping, Hull and Stockton on Tees.

 

Perhaps it’s still not proven that Cook was a Freemason himself but the strong connections are obvious and the involvement of the Stockton Masonic lodge should be borne in mind for what follows. All of that might be sufficient justification for the lodge to campaign for a local memorial to Cook such as an obelisk.In a recent e mail exchange with Malcolm Chase, Professor of Social History at Leeds University who had been feeding back to us in our research in George Markham Tweddell (GMT), suggested that "that if James Cook was a Mason, I'd be surprised if it hasn't been verified by now" and "Freemasonry had strong support among officers in the armed forces, so in a sense it might be surprising if it could be proved Cook was not a member. And perhaps uniquely among the founding fathers of the imperial project, James Cook still retains a reputation as a scientist and intellectual, which would recommend him to a strong local patriot like GMT, even if there were not a masonic link."

(Note - more on Wapping connections in the follow on article below this)

The Plot Thickens! Obelisks, Pagodas and Pyramids and Roseberry Topping


All of the above (except the piece on Holman and Cook) came together over two days in 2008 and was discussed with

Roseberry_topping2

 various people via e mail, including the Gt Ayton Archeology Project and Paul Tweddell (a descendant of George Markham Tweddell). Next day I ventured down to Gt Ayton library where they have a number of books on Cook. I could find nothing more than I already knew – ie that the monument was built by Robert Campion in 1827. I was hoping to learn more about Robert Campion from Whitby and Lord of the Manor of Easby but nothing came to light. Could Campion have been a Mason? (See a recent comment at the foot of this essay)

Roseberry Topping

Then I pick up the recent publication by the Great Ayton Archeological Project – the gorgeously illustrated Roseberry Topping book. Knowing some of the members, I felt sure that there would be something more substantial here although the book was focused on this area’s other iconic hill – Roseberry Topping. What I found in this book changed the ball game considerably! Although the chapter concerned (p96) focused on the Mystery of the Summerhouse, (a strange pagoda like building on Roseberry Topping misnamed but better known as the Shooting Hut), it was exactly the kind of background material that might give this thesis more validity but oddly enough it didn’t make a  Masonic connection.

What I learned from this marvelous book Roseberry Topping published in 2006 by the Great Ayton Archeological Project was –

• The campaign to get a local monument to Cook had been going from 1787 (8 years after Cook’s demise). Cook died in 1779.
• There was secrecy about it as if emanating from a secret society.  The mysterious character of ‘Cleveland’ who first proposed the idea was recently shown by Cliff Thornton of the Captain Cook society to be John Brewster – author of the History of Stockton on Tees and a member of the Stockton Literary Club.
• That the proposed location changed over the years from Marton (where Cook was born to Eston Nab to Roseberry Topping, finally ending up on Easby Moor.
• Most interestingly for our original thesis – the proposals involved (at various stages) not only an obelisk but a pagoda      and a pyramid on the summit of Roseberry Topping!

 

This was exciting! The idle fancy that there might be a connection between exotic events in Paris and the outback of the North Yorkshire Moors didn’t seem so far fetched now! We are also clearly back to pyramids and obelisks. There was something there!!

John Brewster Proposes a Monument

The book tells us that the Rev John Brewster, in a published letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1787 under the
 name of ‘Cleveland’ first proposed a monument to James Cook to erect near Marton in Cleveland (his birth place).

John Brewster

 

Nothing came of the idea. In 1791 Brewster raised the idea again (still under the name of ‘Cleveland’). This time the memorial was to be on Roseberry Topping from which it would be viewable for 30 to 40 miles around. Among the suggestions was ‘a building with large apertures in its sides, rather like a Chinese Pagoda’ but eventually settled on a pyramid! In 1808 Cleveland historian the Reverend John Graves commented that there had been a plan to erect a monument to Cook in the form of a pyramid or obelisk on the summit of Roseberry Topping. Nine years later in the second volume of History of Whitby, George Young noted in a biographical piece on Cook  that ‘agitation’ had been made more that once to erect a monument to Cook on Roseberry Topping and Major Bartholomew Rudd, the proprietor had cheerfully consented to the proposal. (Ironically Major Rudd built a mansion over the humble Marton birth place of Cook at what is now Stewarts Park!).

The book goes on to tell us that John Brewster, now writing to the Gentleman’s Magazine under his own initials referred to an earlier proposal to build a monument on Eston Nab.

I raise the following points on the idea of a pyramid on Roseberry Topping –

Pyramid on the Summit of Roseberry Topping!

(My Photo-shopped picture below might not be quite how they envisioned it!)

Roseberry Topping

I find the idea of erecting a pyramid on the summit of Roseberry Topping quite bizarre (although interesting!). The
 Topping is kind of that shape anyway – more conical like – but aesthetically doesn’t need any artificial enhancement. In fact that might have spoilt it. As it happens the later landslide might have destroyed it anyway! However the question is - would people be induced to think of Cook if they viewed a pyramid on the Topping? I personally would be more mindful of Egyptology than Cook! That being so, who might want to evoke the idea of Egyptology?

As far as I know, Cook had no involvement with Egypt, so unless there was a Masonic link – surely a pyramid has no relevance to Cook except as some exotic tribute. There surely must have been a more fitting style of monument that would reflect Cook’s travels, for example the Easter Island Moai!

Eastern Island Maoi (would this have been more appropriate?)

A friend offered a possible explanation of how a pyramid might be relevant to cook (although this view is a personal
composite from his wide reading but it raises the point that some kind of Egyptian / Masonic symbology might explain it). (Also inherent in this view is the idea that all religions are interconnected with the mention of Vishnu!) –

"The pyramid might also represent the free masons compass.  Four sides for East, West etc etc.  If  it  also  represents  an  upside  down  V  for  Vishnu  and  a  boat  ferrying  dead  pharaohs to  the  netherworld, then  it  would  be hollowed  out  like  a boat.  And what was Cook, but a sailor and navigator."

Pagoda

The idea of a Pagoda is surprising too. The whole chapter in the Roseberry Topping book is dedicated to the mystery

Summerhouse or Pagoda?

 of the Shooting Hut which has an oriental looking roof – somewhat Pagoda like but not the classical curled edge style found in China. It’s not clear that the pagoda Brewster talked of was ever built and the location seemed to be earmarked for Eston Nab rather than Roseberry Topping but the ‘summerhouse / shooting hut’ on Roseberry Topping does have a strange oriental looking roof. However there is no information to suggest this was in anyway dedicated to Cook and so is probably unrelated. However, seeing as a Pagoda was among the proposals, there does seem to be a surprising link with Pagodas and Masonry (I think!). Pagodas are part of the Buddhist tradition, there’s mention of the Buddha as a Supreme Being  -

“they appear to have derived their form from a tumulus, because ancient religions are partly based on the veneration of the tombs of ancestors. The pyramids of Egypt and the Ming and other Imperial Tombs of China.. The Buddha, as a Supreme Being among all creatures, is entitled to many umbrellas placed one above the other.”

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/theravada/nibbanacom/tawsein1.htm

However the mystery of the Summer House / Shooting Hut / Pagoda may or may not be related (that’s a whole issue in itself) but is interesting.

 

More fruitful to this discussion at the moment is John Brewster -

 

The Reverend John Brewster – Freemason?

• John Brewster’s use of the nom de plume - ‘Cleveland’ presents a sense of something emanating from a secret society. Nom de plumes were common among radicals and reformers however, if we think of Cobbet’s Peter Porcupine and Tweddell’s later use of ‘Clevelandus’ ‘Peter Proletarius’,
• · If you Google John Brewster’s name, up comes the Stockton’s Freemasons Lodgeof Philanthrophy. There is a reference to his Parochial History and Antiquities of Stockton-on-Tees of which the second edition has a goodly section of Freemasonry. This does not prove Brewster was a Freemason of course, but it’s interesting.
• · The Reverend John Graves reinforced Brewster’s proposition of an obelisk or pyramid on the summit of Roseberry Topping in his book The History of Cleveland in the North Riding of the County of York (footnotes P 462 -464) after giving a great tribute to the scientific work of Cook. (Tweddell tell us in his Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham) that the Reverend Brewster married John Graves and his wife before either had become historians and so there was a strong connection between them.). (John Graves book is available for free download on Google books)
• · In the second edition of Brewster’s Parochial History and Antiquities of Stockton-on -Tees (available as downloadable as a Free download (pdf) on Google Books), has a surprising section on Freemasonry. In this second addition Brewster has added notices of societies including ‘a society that although is mysterious, is eminently benevolent – The most Ancient and Honourable Society (No 19) of free and accepted Freemasons – the Lodge now called The Lodge of Philanthropy, constituted in London 1725 at the Swan and Rummer in Finch Lane.
• · The ‘notice’ (p254 bottom of page and onwards) presented by the Lodge of Philanthropy discusses the suppression of secret societies of a political nature bill in 1796 and an inquiry raised by members of the Durham Lodge. The result was that the Freemasons were exempted from the act. This statement was confirmed – the article goes on to say – by His Royal Highness – The Duke of Sussex – to an address of the Lennox Lodge of Freemasons Oct 26th 1827 at Richmond in Yorkshire. It says that his Royal Highness, as a member of the Craft, had intervened to save the Craft from extinction. King George had become a patron. (A further link between royalty and the Craft – this time in England).
• · It’s interesting that that date 1827 comes up again with a significant event a month or so before the erection of the Cook monument on Easby moor and involving the Richmond Lodge and the Stockton lodge of philanthropy in some way. The recent research by the Captain Cook Society regarding Holman reinforces the idea of some involvement here. Brewster, if not a Freemason, certainly had close links with the Stockton Lodge.

There were no local lodges in either Gt Ayton (until 1996) and Stokesley until 1847. The nearest would have been Stockton or Richmond.

Note - Geoff King of the Captain Cook Society has confirmed that The Reverend Brewster was indeed a Freemason but with reservations - see the follow on article below)

Radicalism in Stokesley in the 1820's


Alice Barrigan in an article Radicalism in Stokesley in the 1820’s on the Jakesbarn site  http://jakesbarn.co.uk/content/view/58/36/ gives us a good insight into the political climate of the times.but much of it, I'm reliably informed,  derives from earlier works by Daphe Franks Printing and Publishing in Stokesley 1985 and Malcolme Chase's  'Atheists and Republicans in early nineteenth-century Cleveland', Bulletin of the Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society 47, pp. 29-36, 1984

 

The article describes the first of two Paper Wars in Stokesley (the second occurring in the 1840’s around George Markham Tweddell’s radical paper which you can read about on this site http://www.tweddellhistory.co.uk/

We learn that on Monday 2 June 1822 employer Thomas Mease gave a speech at a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary meeting attacking Robert Armstrong - a radical bookseller. This began the first Stokesley Paper War.

Mease later published his speech and commented "I was exceedingly amused, Sir, by the way in which the birth-day of Paine was lately kept in this Town," He claimed that the principal objects embraced by their vain were probably the subversion of Christianity and Monarchy, and the substitution of a Republican government, together with what they strangely reckon a scientific morality.

Robert Armstrong, a bookseller in Stokesley who stocked radical (and at the time illegal copies of authors such as Thomas Paine, Carlile, Rousseau,) responded with his own newspaper -  'The Missionary; or Stokesley & Cleveland Illuminator' while Thomas Mease responded with The Extinguisher.

“The war of words between Mease and Armstrong in Stokesley was a small part of the great conflict then raging between the forces of conservatism in religion and politics and an increasingly vocal radical movement calling for political reform and open religious debate.”

Ill-feeling between the factions of free-thought and religious orthodoxy may have been brewing for some time in Stokesley. Armstrong was a leader of the local Zetetic Society (a society of Freethinkers) and was responding to Carlile's plea from prison for volunteers to carry on disseminating his works to the public. In 1822 and 1823 Armstrong was openly selling 'The Age of Reason' in Stokesley. Carlile was sentenced in November 1819 to a term of three years' imprisonment with a very heavy fine for publishing Thomas Paine's 'The Age of Reason', which had been banned in 1797 for its attack on organised Christianity and its advocacy of a deistic religion based on reason and logic. Robert Armstrong was an anti-clerical deist, democrat and republican, who followed with interest democrat and republican, who followed with interest the latest developments in scientific and political thought.

During the Napoleonic Wars, in Stokesley, Barrigan tells us, ‘many weavers brought to the town the independent and enquiring minds for which they were well-known.’ Some of the characters, such as John Appleton and Henry Heavisides, associated also with Stockton were in Stokesley at this time. Appleton reported – “A few of the lovers of Civil and Religious Freedom, met in this Town, on the Evening of the 29th of January, to celebrate the Anniversary of the Birthday of Mr Paine.” Heavisides was apprenticed to William Pratt – the printers in Stokesley and later in Stockton (as Tweddell notes) was ‘a warm supporter of Reform’. In Heavisides Annals of Stockton it is clear he was also a Freemason. It’s not clear if Heavisides was involved with these events in Stokesley but there are clear social networks between the towns.

Conclusions

From an idle curiosity we have established that there were significant ‘coincidences’ in the date 1827 and its relation to the establishment of obelisks and a ‘coincidence’ of proposals for (or establishment) of Egyptian artifacts such as Obelisks and pyramids both in France, America and the North Yorkshire Moors. Circumstantial evidence at least that Cook was either a Freemason or at least closely associated with them and that John Brewster was too. Clear evidence of a background of political, religious and ideological challenges both locally, nationally and internationally:

More research is obviously needed in many areas but it’s clear from all this that there was more to the establishment of the Captain Cook obelisk on Easby Moor that meets the eye and that there is a fascinating story here. Once again I can’t claim to have all the answers in this essay or that everything is right. Much more research needs to be done, but hopefully this essay will have made a contribution and highlighted what seems to be an interesting story.

Updates to this article in post below - including feedback from the Captain Cook's Society and a comparison with Stoodley Pike above Todmorden.

http://glassorange.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/mystery-of-captain-cooks-monument-pt-2-feedback-additions.html

 

Mystery of Captain Cook's Monument pt 2 - Feedback & Additions

Since writing the article above on this site regarding the mystery of Captain Cook's monument on Easby Moor, North Yorkshire, I have had various discussion via e mail with Cliff Thornton of the Captain Cook Society which have been very helpful and insightful and to whom I'm grateful for taking the time to look at these ideas. This page reflects that feedback as well as additional material regarding Cook's life in Wapping in relation to Emmanuel Swedenborg. This page also includes a comparison to Stoodley Pike in Todmorden. Although not related to Captain Cook, there are similarities there.

Feedback from The Captain Cook Society

The Reverend John Brewster - author of  The History of Stockton.

Cliff Thornton of The Captain Cook's Society kindly sent a link to Geoff King who is mentioned in my article as

John Brewster

 exploring the friendship link between Captain Cook and William Christopher. Geoff King has managed to confirm that The Reverend John Brewster (who under the name of 'Cleveland' first proposed the Cook monument in the form of a pyramid on Roseberry Topping etc.) was indeed a Freemason. However he does have reservations about drawing further conclusions from this. Here are his thoughts -

• " Rev John Brewster was initiated into the Stockton Lodge of Philanthropy 27th Dec, 1781.
• I think it borders on speculation to align the monument of Captain James Cook with freemasonry.There are many symbols within the craft and each has a particular relevence to a degree.  
• Whilst the pyramid is sometimes seen, it is not a common symbol and I have yet to see it quoted in any degree ritual.
• I would have thought to place a cap stone on any obelisk is just good workmanship within a design to let the rain run off and also to maybe reflect light catching the sharp angles from the sun.  
• Yes, a pyramid has a meaning, but a very general meaning.
• Yes, Brewster extended his 2nd edition of the “History of Stockton” to encompass many organisations in Stockton, freemasonry was but one of them.
• Unless we can have sight of more information regarding others who wrote about this pyramid design, I fail to see any connection with our valued Captain.
• So the only Masonic connection that there is at present is via John Brewster, the Stockton cleric.

So the conclusion here seems to be  that although Brewster was initiated into the Stockton lodge of philanthropy and proposed the original idea for the monument in the forms of a pyramid, pagoda or obelisk, it doesn't mean that it was officially sanctioned by the Craft. Perhaps any proof of that would also be in the lodge's minutes or records. As to the to symbols that is a wider discussion elsewhere.

................................

ROBERT CAMPION

Cliff Thornton also made enquiries about Robert Campion, who commissioned the Cook obelisk on his land at Easby Moor.

In the article we wondered if there was a Masonic connection via Robert Campion - 

Cliff's contact, who knows about Robert Campion, gave this feedback -

• Robert Campion was the son of Nathaniel Campion and Margaret nee Holt. He was the oldest, and eventually the only, son and became very rich - indeed at one time he was deemed to be the wealthiest man in Whitby (round about the time he put up the memorial). 
• He had a thriving cotton business (Campionville), was a banker, a ship-owner and a ship-builder. I have no record of his going to sea, though his father and his uncles were all master mariners and his mother's family were all master mariners as well (He was in baking at first in partnership with his mum; there were also shipowners in the family.

 

• The Campion family came from Staithes. They would certainly have known James Cook and I argue that they were probably friends (Nathaniel Campion & James Cook were of an age).

 

• My understanding is that Robert Campion built the memorial because he would have been told about James Cook by his father and uncles from childhood and admired him. He built it where he did because it was on his land, as he was Lord of the Manor of Easby. He built it when he did presumably because no-one else seemed to be doing anything, and he could afford to.

 

Why was it built as an obelisk? I suggest:

Cook's Monument - Easby Moor

1. Obelisks were in fashion

2. If you wish to build a memorial, you really only have a choice of:

          a) A statue (far too expensive)

          b) A rectangular altar-shaped thing. (not visible from afar)

          c) A pillar (unlikely to stay up in a high wind unless very wide and of solid stone)

          d) A pyramid

          e) An obelisk

- if you dont believe me just look in any graveyard, or at any war memorials.

 

3. Of these an obelisk has the advantage of being taller for its width than a pyramid, of being able to be built quite cheaply from bricks as it can be hollow (all builders would know how to do it, not different from a chimney stack, so no need to import expertise from afar), and it has a flat surface for putting an inscription on.

 

None of these have any necessary connection with masons.

 

Having said this, although there is no evidence that Robert Campion (or Capt Cook) were masons it would still be tangential even if that was the case. Campion was a Whitby man born into a maritime family commemorating another Whitby maritime man who was not only a family friend but an example to others. 'End of' - as they say.

.................................

Cliff Thornton also offered some general thoughts of aspects of the essay -

• I believe that the monument was built in that location and in that size so that it could be used as a landmark by vessels sailing past the mouth of the Tees.
• I think that Robert Campion had been a shipowner, so his construction of the monument was both historic and practical.

In deliberating between monument/obelisk and statue, I note that most statues are built where they are readily seen by passing members of the public.

• Easby Moor does not get such a passing trade to warrant a statue, and to become a landmark it would have had to be much larger than life, and therefore be far more expensive than constructing a simple monument.
• But the monument is significant as it was the first public one erected to Cook.
• (There was an earlier one, erected by Palliser, Cook’s patron, but it was in the private grounds of his estate).
• So despite Cook’s fame it is disappointing that there was no national movement to commemorate him in some way. Hence Brewster’s attempts.
• The first statue was erected to him in London as late as 1913 (?) and then only after the Premier of New South Wales had written a letter to the Times and shamed the country into commissioning it!

..............................................................

Captain Cook and Emmanuel Swedenborg

We mentioned in the article the work of Geoff King, Derek Morris and Ken Cozens in establishing a Masonic friendship  link between Captain Cook and William Christopher via Francis Holman in Wapping. Julie Rae, belows reveals more about Cook's Wapping days including some interesting material on Emmanual Swedenborg and Cook's associates. While it doesn't prove that Cook was a Mason, it reinforces the idea that those kind of associations were around him at least.

The following comes from 

“Captain James Cook Endeavours” by Julie Rae published by Stepney Historical Trust 1997"  who explores Captain Cook's time in Wapping.

Julia Rae, in her book Captain James Cook Endeavours published by Stepney Historical Trust 1997, describes Cook’s links with Emmanuel Swedenborg whose ideas later became a strand of Freemasonry. I’m not claiming this to prove that Cook was a Freemasonry, just that its interesting background and shows the deeper elements behind Cook’s work. Here are extracts from Rae’s book -

“Cook would have been familiar with the many nationalities who were residents in the areas. They often had their own

Emmanual Swedenborg

 churches or meeting places. The Swedish Church was a meeting place for the Swedish Community in Princes Square off the highway now known as Swedenborg Gardens) which was named after Emmanuel Swedenborg who was the son of a Swedish Bishop, a brilliant scientist, mathematician, astronomer, anatomist and linguist. 

He produced nearly 100 great works and while here, claimed he was commanded by God in a vision to write about spiritual things. He saw into the spiritual world and described his experience in his book “Heaven and Hell”. His religious teaching were both scriptural and rational and he harmonised religion and science. He loved London and came to publish his writing, which translated into English by William Cookworthy from Plymouth who was one of Cook’s Quaker friends (From Cook’s own scientific curiosity he may have visited Emmanuel Swedenborg along with Dr Solander (the botanist) who was a member of his church. (Dr Solander was buried there in 1782). P81

p97 “ HM Bark Endeavour was a ship with a mission with a galaxy of scientific talent on board, notably the botanist, young Joseph Banks FRS, Daniel Solander, a favourite pupil of Linnaueus, and artist Sydney Parkinson, a Quaker friend of Dr Fothergill…..

William Cookworthy

No doubt these eminent gentlemen discussed the voyage which lay before them, with particular reference to its principal purpose the observation from the most favourable vantage point in Tahiti, of the passage of the planet Venus across the sun’s disc. Cookworthy was particularly interested in the astronomical observations which were to be undertaken by Cook and his companions.

He and Dr Solander had a common friend, Dr Emmanuel Swedenborg, whose cousin was married to Carl Von

The Swedish Church in Princes Square

 Linnaeus, the teacher of Dr Solander. Emmanuel Swedenborg was also an amateur botanist but his main interest was astronomy and mathematics, but because of his religious beliefs he was regarded as a mystic. Solander and Cookworthy were both members of his church in Princess Square, off Ratcliff Highway. It was Cookworthy who translated Swedenborg’s writings into English and for a time became a Swedenborgian, until, as quoted in the Quaker Meeting House minutes, “He came to his senses and returned to Quakerism”.

This connection is very interesting as it shows how the 18thC scientific world worked together. Banks would also have been curious about the contents of Swedenborg writings who, before he turned religious, was one of the brilliant astronomical minds of that century, which may have proved helpful to Banks on the forthcoming voyage.

Naturally Cook would have listened intently to these discussions but at the time was he was principally concerned with provisioning his ships”.

P101 “..for William Cookworthy would have been one of the most avid readers of accounts of Cook’s voyage, (and) therefore would have mentioned the accounts of the voyage to Swedenborg who also would have shown great interest, considering he was a cousin in law to Linnaeus and a friend of Dr Solander, apart from being one of the best scientific minds at the time.

Therefore  was it possible that William Cookworthy advised the scientific team on astronomy before  they sailed in the Endeavour, and after the voyage reported back to Swedenborg of their success?

The question cannot be dismissed, for Swedenborg had many friends and supporters in high society and it would not be unreasonable to presume he gave advice to Cookworthy on astronomy. Swedenborg, as a young man visiting London, had attended lectures by the great scientists of his day. He visited Greewich observatory and was allowed to watch the Astronomer Royal,the Rev.John Flemsteed, doing his observations…It was thus he learnt how to calculate the eclipses of the sun and moon. Of greater importance was the fact that Swedenborg went to Oxford to meet Edmond Halley, with whom he discussed his own method of finding the Longitude at sea by observations of the moon."

While there is no evidence that Emmanuel Swedenborg was a Freemason, the Swedenborg Rite became an associated part of Freemasonry after his death. There is a good account of the influence of the Swedenborg's ideas on the Mason's with advanced degrees on this Masonic page from  - The Grand Lodge of Columbia and Yukon - 

" But non-membership of the Craft does not imply the absence of a relationship of some kind: the episode of the Illumines d'Avignon is clear evidence that Swedenborg had an influence upon Freemasonry, albeit unknown to himself; or, in Mackey’s words: 'it was the Freemasons of the advanced degrees who borrowed from Swedenborg, and not Swedenborg from them⁹.

It would, however, be the best part of a century before they borrowed again. In the interim those Swedenborgians who were drawn to Freemasonry were quite content with the Craft degrees"

More information on Swedenborg can be found on Wikipedia  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg

Interestingly at the foot of the Grand Lodge article is a list of names relating to the Swedenborg Rite which includes poets like William Blake etc but also George Markham Tweddell of Stokesley lodge via whom I began this enquiry.

.......................................

STOODLEY PIKE - Todmorden - A Comparison.

On a recent visit to Todmorden in the Calder Valley, I was taken by Stoodley Pike which looked very similar to Captain Cook's obelisk on Easby Moor North Yorkshire. I picked up a couple of local history books in the information centre and looked on the internet. Although Stoodley Pike bears no relationship to Captain Cook, the similarities were striking and there was, in the local history account, an acknowledged Masonic involvement which there isn't for the North Yorkshire counterpart.

The first book was authored by Mrs E.M. Savage and called Stoodley Pike and published by the Todmorden Antiquarian Society.

Mrs Savage tells us that various legends and traditions suggest there had been 'a Cairn of some description' on the spot where the Pike now stands. Whatever the nature and origin, the facts are that there was a structure of some description long before 1814 when the first Pike was erected.

The first Pike was erected in 1814 by public subscription to 'commemorate the surrender of Paris to the Allies in

First Stoodley Pike

 March 1814. The subscription was opened and to this the freeholders in the neighbourhood mainly contributed.

Savage tells us that "In order that the monument could be seen from a distance, a prominent part on Langfield Out-pastures was chosen." Savage lists the five trustees and the freeholders and their occupations.

The first Pike, which wasn't at all the same as the one on Easby moor (see picture)

However the first Pike was erected according to the following terms -

"...to perpetuate and commemorate the achievements which the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland have so gloriously made for the nations of Europe by the Peace concluded in the year of our Lord 1814"

Savage tells us that the foundation stone was laid with full Masonic honours. According to accounts - " A youngster perched on his father's shoulder, leant forward to see all that was going on, and was touched accidentally by the Tyler's sword, and blood flowed freely."

However the incident didn't detract from the enjoyment of the occasion when among other rejoicings and feasting, a whole sheep was roasted. 

John Billingsley, in his book Folk Tales from Calderdale says "the belief that cement mixed with blood - especially human blood - is stronger than standard mortar is familiar in the folklore record and is usually taken as an echo of ancient foundation sacrifices and offerings"

The inscription on the door read " This Monument was erected by Public subscription, to commemorate the Peace. Anno Domini 1814"  However she tells that although work began on the Pike in 1814, Napoleon escaped from Elba on February 20th 1815, hostilities broke out again and building was suspended. When Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, building was resumed and finished in the same year.

Stoodley Pike

Again John Billingsley comments " the cynicism which some have felt over the financing of the peace monument - the major part of the cost was subscribed by local textile manufacturers whohad made considerable sums in supplying uniforms to both side in the long war - was not shared by Tony Hegginbottom who argued for the sincerity of the local desire to for peace and emphasised the active involvement of local Quakers who were relatively numerous in Langfield" 

It would seem that the obsession with Egyptology and the Cult of Reason during the French Enlightenment and the America Revolution were having some effect in England regardless of whatever connections there were in relation to Captain Cook or the defeat of Napoleon. - Discuss!

Like the monument on Easby, Stoodley Pike was also struck by lightening and destroyed and then rebuilt along with a lightening conductor. However, unlike it's Easby moor counterpart (as far as I know), Stoodley Pike had a strange coincidence attached to it -

Mrs Savage tells us that the Halifax Guardian headline on February 11th 1854 ran "Fall of Monument - An Evil Omen" the reported continued " On Wednesday afternoon, February 8th, between 5 and 6 o'clock, the inhabitants of Langfield were greatly startled by a loud rumbling noise, resembling the falling of roacks or a large pile of buildings. It was found that the pillar or monument erected on the height of Stoodley Pike in commemoration of Peace had fallen nearly to the bottom. A few years since, it was struck by lightening which cracked the walls in several places and to that its fall is mainly to be attributed..."

The reference to the Evil Omen, she tells us was due to the coincidence of the Russian Ambassador leaving London on the same afternoon owing the start of the Crimea war.

In 1854 the monument was rebuilt - again by public subscription - but the design this time was similar to the one on Easby more only with more design features involved.

John Billingsley, in his book Folk Tales from Calderdale, tells us 

" Freemasons were certainly actively involved in planning the second monument, and their symbols remain in the architecture. Over the doorway can be seen a crossed compass and square and the six-pointed 'Star of David', whose interlocking triangles represent 'As above, so below'.There was no foundation ceremony as in 1814 but doubtless a masonic rite was performed and Heginbottom suggested it may have been a rite of consecration."

Billingsley goes on to suggest " The chosen obelisk design surely conformed to Masonic predilections (hence its use for Washington Monument in America) originating in Egypt, it was a sacred architectural form associated with the Sun-god Ra and later Osiris. Heginbottom suggests that obelisk adds another layer of meaning to the peace movement -that of the 'symbol of the Masonic God the Architect' .We might add that the obelisk form represents the Axis Mundi or world axis, and note how the current monument does indeed seem to be a fixed point around which the upper Calder valley revolves.  Steve Hanson  has suggested that the design of the Pike, in particular the staircase to the balcony, which one accesses under masonic signs over the doorway, further encodes masonic symbolism into the architecture - "the ascent into total darkness appears to replicate the masonic blindfold ceremony, a trial by ordeal, a leap of faith, after which enlightenment is is received with the removal of the blindfold and acceptance into the order.. the Pike might be designed to replicate this ceremony for the layperson, accent by ordeal followed by a privileged view."

The Cook monument, as far as I know, has none of the design features mentioned above - the symbols of the staircase or the balcony but certainly something was going on around the time of the French and American Revolutions etc that affected the landscapes of this country and perhaps Cook and the defeat of Napoleon were only the outward reasons for their construction. As far as Stoodley Pike is concerned Savage tells us that 

"the carving of the emblems and the inscription was cut by Mr Luke Fielden, whilst it was believed that John Fielding himself drew up the inscription."

Steve Hanson tells us " The obelisk design of the tower is a ‘…reflection of patron Samuel Fielden’s freemasonry’ and of the society of the time’s obsession with Egyptology."

It seems that the Fielden family were largely involved with this project. Savage tells us that Samuel  and J. Fielden of Dobroyd were chief subscribers. This site gives some background to the family http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~todmordenandwalsden/johnfielden.htm

...............................

So - an interesting comparison of ideas there and food for thought!

The Poetry of George Markham Tweddell 1823 - 1903

 

George Markham Tweddell 1823 - 1903

I am working alongside Paul Tweddell to collate and present a new free download book with the full poetical works of George Markham Tweddell. This is my intro to the book as a taster. More information on this fascinating Stokesley printer / publisher / people's historian / poet and author / chartist can be found at -  http://www.tweddellhistory.co.uk/

TWEDDELL HISTORY

 

 

 

 

The new E book is NOW downloadable FREE from

 

http://www.tweddellpoetry.co.uk/.

 

TWEDDELL POETRY

A Poet's View by Trev Teasdel followed by a bio of George Markham Tweddell by Paul Tweddell -

 

 

 

A Poet’s view of George Markham Tweddell (1823-1903)

“What is a modern poet’s fate?

To write his thoughts upon a slate:

The Critic spits on what is done,

Gives it a wipe – and all is gone!”

Thomas Hood 1826 (as quoted by Tweddell’s Bards and Authors)

BARD FROM STOKESLEY

For the first time in history, we present the full collection of poetical works by George Markham Tweddell (or GMT for short by his own wish). A good many of these poems were published during GMT’s lifetime but this collection includes many from his notebooks that remained unpublished until now. With the recent acknowledgement on the internet of various forgotten heroes of the radical tradition we think this new collection provides an ideal opportunity for a reassessment of both GMT’s poetry and his life’s work, which coupled with the recent development of the Tweddell website and relocation of GMT’s extensive notes and correspondence in Cleveland County archives, facilitates a range of resources not previously available.

It is both fitting and a pleasure to publish this collection (albeit 105 years after his demise) because this man spent a lifetime rescuing from obscurity so many of Cleveland’s poets and authors who had passed on.

Indeed without GMT’s dedication to this task, we would now have little or no knowledge of the range of literary figures that lived and wrote in our area. This is no small thing for an area often viewed by literary analysts as a ‘cultural desert’, especially as elements of GMT’s work (and the later author inspired by GMT – William Burnett) alleged that instead of the area being a ‘desert’, the basis of the English literary canon was formed in this general area. A bold claim indeed, but this general area can lay claim to associations with Cademon (Whitby and Lealholm), Beowulf (Boulby and Hartlepool), the Celtic bard Anuerin (Catterick), John Gower, poet and Chaucer’s mentor (Sexhow, Stokesley and Stittenham), and many more. His book (now sadly only available in the local reference libraries and antiquarian shops), along with William Burnett’s book Old Cleveland are beacons of literary enlightenment for an area marginalised as a cultural backwater.

In terms of Tweddell’s own poetry, like many writers, he suffered his share of hack critics who had little understanding of his life’s work and less of the full range of his poetic works. While GMT welcomed objective critical appraisal, he lashed out at some of the mindless reviews he often received. In the dedication to the Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham (1875), GMT says of his critics:

 

 

 

i

 

 

“The ill-natured Critics, – those who dip their pens in gall, – are growing fewer, in proportion to the number of their craft, everyday, and are generally the men with the least grasp of thought. Perhaps some of them may have glanced over my books when suffering from an overflow of bile. I don’t want puffs: all I desire from any Reviewer is candid criticism, to state fairly the object of the book under notice, and to express his own opinion how far that object has been accomplished.”[i]

Recently Paul Tweddell, my fellow editor, showed me some of GMT’s unpublished handwritten note books Sonnets on Trees and Flowers, etc. and (for want of a title from the poet) Rhymes (in Manuscript),[ii] in which, about 1892 in the twilight of his life, GMT had attempted to collate some of his best poems and annotate them with details of where they were written or published. There was no doubt in my mind that GMT was intending these to be published at some stage, even if posthumously.

I was impressed with the range of styles GMT had embraced, from the gentle sonnet to the finger-pointing rants against the ‘Tyrant Oppressors’ who imprisoned Chartist leaders. I suggested to Paul that many of his critics would not have seen many of these poems or have had any idea of this poetic range. It was decided then and there that we should endeavour to publish the complete collection for the sake of history and in the hope of a critical reappraisal of his poetic works.

In recent years, too, there have been judgements made of GMT’s poetry. In 1989 Andy Croft (then lecturer in Literature at Middlesbrough’s Leeds University Adult Education Centre) referred to GMT’s poetry, in the Cleveland Local History Society’s Journal, as being ‘Arcadian’ and not addressing itself to the concerns of the workingman in the newly developing Ironopolis that was Middlesbrough. Andy quotes GMT’s ‘Rosebury Topping’ (p. 28 below):

“Not among smoke of busy, crowded town,

Where manufactures for the world are made,

And man’s best nature seems all trodden down,

To suit vile necessities of trade,

Has my life’s Spring been past: ……”

and was clearly looking for poetry that supported his valid thesis that Middlesbrough never produced the working class writers that other industrial areas produced such as Gaskell, Dickens etc. and that Middlesbrough was only ever represented in literature in a negative way as “a hole like that”. Perhaps GMT, in the poem, was trying to identify himself with the poor workers who spent as much of their spare time contemplating that very view as they could. Indeed his son-in-law was to die prematurely in a house barely yards from the smoke of the North East railway’s locomotive sheds in Middlesbrough leaving six young children fatherless. Ebenezer Elliot, with even more impeccable credentials for radicality than GMT, also wrote about the same vista in John Walker Ord’s History of Cleveland (1846):

ii

 

 

 

“When Cook, a sailor's boy, with aching eye,

Gazed from the deep and oft-climbed Roseberry;

While trembling as she listened to the blast,

The anxious parent sea-ward wishes cast,

And fervent prayer was mute, but not surpressed

Though love was resignation in her breasts.

Why did thou not—thou happiest name of joy—

Bid her cheered spirit see that that deathless boy

Bear round the globe Britannia's flag unfurled,

And from the abyss unknown call forth a world.”

 

Andy’s poem on the same subject, with a very different but telling slant, includes the verse:

On Roseberry Topping you can see for miles

Of shining streets – the Golden City

In an Ironmaster's jangling dreams.

This high up, who could tell the pity

Of a place without choice, without all

But men and women, a life that seems

Windily unwanted, exposed to the fall

Of a sticky rain, a yellow, nuclear smile?[iii]

However, it is only fair to say that Andy never had access twenty years ago to the range of poems by GMT, the growing knowledge of the Tweddell family nor the knowledge of nineteenth century radical history now being made available.

Paul Tweddell has since revealed that GMT, besides producing the city’s best history at the end of the 19^th century, indeed lived and worked in the developing ‘Infant Hercules’ for a decade. His concern for the rural proletariat was strong throughout his life as evidenced from the editorials of the radical newspaper that he produced when he was 19 against the oppressive Corn Laws, to the poem written in his last years and sympathetic to travelling workers, ‘The Poetry of an Old Besom’,[iv] (pp. 52 et seq.) Nor must be forgotten his work as one of the Stokesley Chartists or his support for the Cleveland Ironstone miners’ union in the 1870s.

Between 1842 and 1845 GMT produced his radical newspaper, The Stokesley News and Cleveland Reporter, and, not surprisingly his poems served to reinforce his political purposes as ‘The Muses’ Bower’ (p. 3), ‘Death’ (p. 6), ‘An African Slave’ (p. 6), ‘Superstition’ (p. 11), ‘Oddfellowship’ (p. 11), etc. On Sunday January 1^st 1843 in issue No 3, GMT reacted to the conservative backlash of his time (see the next section for details) by writing an editorial in language that echoes Shelley’s invective in the Masks of Anarchy and predates Marx’s introduction to the Communist Manifesto, A Spectre is Haunting Europe, by 6 years:

iii

 

 

“Notwithstanding the base attempt to crush our little periodical, by the vilest and most ungenerous means, yet we again pay our monthly visit to our subscribers, to amuse and instruct…”

“When The Stokesley News, and Cleveland Reporter first made its appearance in the political and literary world, it was with a firm determination to lash every species of vice, with an unsparing hand; and to be the unflinching advocate of civil and religious liberty. Fearlessly to tear the mask from the sinister deeds of unprincipled legislators and trafficking politicians, of every party……”[v]

Chartism

In defence of one of the Chartist leaders, John Frost (sentenced to decapitation but later commuted to transportation to Australia for his part in the Newport riots), GMT wrote ‘Lines to Tyrants’ of which this is a snatch:

Think not because taxation robs us

Of most the wages that we earn;

Think not because tyrants oppress us

And cause the nation sore to mourn,

That we will ever cease demanding,

The rights that are to us most dear:

The justice of the “People’s Charter”

Does Frost e’en in his dungeon cheer.

[The full poem can be seen on p. 225 et seq. below]

Education

In the following poem extract, written in the 1800’s, GMT’s views on education wouldn’t be out of place in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) where he talks about the ‘Banking Concept of education’ in which the student receives, memorises and repeats ‘deposits of knowledge’ rather than develops a ‘critical consciousness and spirit of enquiry’.

“To educate does not mean pumping in

Knowledge, even to cramming in the brain;

But, by judicious efforts, so to train

The virgin mind, that it must surely win

Wisdom from all it reads or hears or sees;”

(page 158 below)

In his poem ‘A Model Female’ GMT offers what might be seen as a kind of early feminist poem:

“For she is no gay butterfly, but true

To all that elevates humanity;

And much intelligence behind that brow

Dwells in her brain; and none will e’er receive

Unkindness from her, or have cause to grieve.”

[page 170 below]

 

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Andrew Prescott – former Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University – has recently taken GMT’s published book of A Hundred Masonic Sonnets to be the standard of his writing. Written in later life during ill health (published after the persuasion of his friends) these poems are more didactic; instructive to others in the ‘Craft’.[vi] It is clear that this new work containing all the known poems of GMT will provide a more substantial basis for judgement than was hitherto possible.

However an initial look at the Masonic poems shows that they are:

·           Clearly didactic (in accordance with the style of the time) and suited to his intended purpose in instructing his fellow Masons and in the words of the second Masonic poem (p. 99 below)“to elevate his vision...help to warm [at least] one frozen mind to life; show the plan of Masonry to be no useless maze to puzzle fools”.

·           Have a recognisable form – that of the Sonnet. It is clear that GMT is well acquainted with the form and its variants and there’s evidence to suggest that he might even be innovating with the form if you consider the wide variations of the rhyme schemes over the 100 poems including a few with a non-standard number of lines (these are identified after each poem).

·           The diction may not be as ‘elevated’ as in other of his poems however, considering it is a didactic work, the language seems appropriate and nonetheless still contains persuasive imagery with some extended metaphors, etc.

·           Indeed the poems employ a range of Masonic emblems such as ‘The All-Seeing Eye’, ‘The Great Architect’, ‘The Gavel’, ‘The Compass’ and more. Furthermore some of the poems refer directly to the emblematic and symbolic function of his poetry but more on that later!

·           These sonnets treat a wide range of themes both close to his heart and life’s work as well as being pertinent to being a ‘good Freemason’. Among the themes we find ‘justice’, ‘truth’, ‘love’, ‘sincerity, ‘charity’, ‘freedom from ignorance and superstition’, ‘wisdom’, ‘spiritual development’, ‘prudence’, ‘equality’, ‘friendship’, ‘silence’, ‘tyrants’, ‘oppressors and slavery’, ‘symbolism’, ‘Robbie Burns’, the ‘spiritual temple of the soul’ and many more.

A few of the poems read almost as if he is writing alternative (or Masonic) prayers. Sonnet No. 6 in the collection [p. 100 below] certainly seems to read that way, as could the last, prayer-like four lines of the previous sonnet [p. 100 below], ‘Truth, No I’:

“With joy will welcome in the glorious time

When truth alone will reign. Then, as in heaven

God will be truly served; all wars will cease

And Love and Charity for aye increase”?

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In Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham GMT comments, in a chapter on Great Ayton’s poet, William Martin, himself a Freemason, with lines that might explain the purpose of his later A Hundred Masonic Poems:

“Save poor Burns’s ever famous “Farewell to the Brethren of the St. James Lodge, Tarbolton”, …… and few other glorious exceptions, the things miscalled Masonic songs are mere bombast, doggerel, or drunken staves, scribbled by men who have been totally unable to comprehend the beautiful system of Morality, “veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols,” which they have profanely professed to defend and illustrate.”

I think, therefore this work clearly attempted to address those concerns. One might therefore look at this work to see to what extent (in compliance with his wish to be judged by the aim of the work) he achieved those aims. Of course GMT exempted William Martin himself from the above!

The Masonic poems illustrate the point that GMT’s full range of poetry functioned in different ways for his various purposes. Here are some pointers in consideration of this that might be useful to keep in mind while reading the full works.

GMT’s poetry was just one aspect of his wide-ranging work that Paul Tweddell refers to later. Some of the poems are written to supplement other types of work as illustrated below and falls into a number of categories:

·           Poems written to supplement his early editorials in his radical Newspaper Cleveland News and Stokesley Reporter, which fought against the oppressive Corn Laws. GMT would quite wittily add another perspective to his editorial in the form a short poem under the pseudonym Peter Proletarius. These poems are clearly functional, serving the greater political cause rather than poetic affectations.

·           Poems that introduce chapters and themes in some of his books such as the Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham and some of his Cleveland geographical works. These poems are again functional in introducing authors or themes and not meant to be inspired works of art.

·           Poems that are didactic in nature and intended to ‘instruct’. The Masonic poems fall into this category. Again he is employing his skills in the service of a greater cause.

·           Poems that I would consider more personal, sonnets that denote important family occasions. These might employ more poetic conceits and Tweddell is documenting his family history as it evolves, via his poetry.

 

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·           Poems of invective, full of passion, that come from the heart. His early poems hitting out at the tyrants of oppression, against the imprisonment of his Chartist comrades would come under this category.

·           Poems, mainly sonnets, written as a poet rather than as a passionate activist although Tweddell is never far away from his greater concerns even if presented symbolically. His ‘Arcadian’ style poems may be included here and the collection he called Sonnets on Trees and Flowers which are, I believe, symbolic in nature.

·           Biographical poems often (but not always) written as obituaries, usually about Locally Eminent People, friends or acquaintances or well known to GMT through his correspondence.

A RADICAL CANON OF POETS: EBENEZER ELLIOT[vii]

I’d long considered GMT a one-off until a recent discussion Paul Tweddell and I had with the historian Malcolm Chase, of the History Department of Leeds University, whose expertise on Chartism made a valuable contribution to our understanding.

I had a hunch that there was a link between Corn Law Rhymer Ebenezer Elliot and GMT. Both had had work published in the Chartist paper The Northern Star and so at the very least would possibly have seen each other’s work. I thought that if some further connection could be established this might be a more relevant bard with which to establish a comparison. I fed this notion back to Paul Tweddell and Malcolm Chase and Paul searched his Tweddell database and immediately came across the following poem by GMT written in response to Elliot showing a clear awareness of Elliot’s work. Paul also found evidence of correspondence between the two shortly before Elliot passed away in 1849. On p. 186 is GMT’s poem (p. 185):

The Bramble (Rubus Vulgaris)

Brave Elliot loved "thy satin-threaded flowers,"

Dear Bramble! All who appreciate those things

Of beauty which Nature as largess flings

So freely over valleys, plains, and moors,

Must share the Corn Law Rhymer's healthy love.

And who in Autumn does not like to taste

Thy pleasant Dewberries? There is no waste

Throughout the universe; for all things move

In strict obedience to the unchanging laws

Wisely laid down by Him who cannot err;

And He alone is His true worshipper

Who studies to obey them. The Great First Cause

Adorns our very brakes with fruit and flowers,–

As if to teach us all that happiness may be ours.

George Markham Tweddell

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Here is the relevant poem from Ebenezer Elliot:

To the Bramble Flower

Thy fruit full-well the schoolboy knows,

Wild bramble of the brake!

So, put thou forth thy small white rose:

I love it for its sake.

Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow

O’er all the fragrant bowers,

Thou needst not be ashamed to show

Thy satin-threaded flowers;

For dull the eye, the heart is dull,

That cannot feel how fair,

Amid all beauty beautiful,

Thy tender blossoms are!

How delicate thy gauzy frill!

How rich thy branchy stem!

How soft thy voice, when woods are still,

And thou sing'st hymns to them;

While silent showers are falling slow

And, 'mid the general hush,

A sweet air lifts the little bough,

Lone whispering through the bush!

The primrose to the grave is gone;

The hawthorn flower is dead;

The violet by the moss'd grey stone

Hath laid her weary head;

But thou, wild bramble! back dost bring,

In all their beauteous power,

The fresh green days of life's fair spring,

And boyhood's blossomy hour.

Scorn'd bramble of the brake! once more

Thou bid'st me be a boy,

To gad with thee the woodlands o'er,

In freedom and in joy.[viii]

Interestingly, Malcolm Chase commented on the suggested comparison between GMT and Elliot:

“I think Trevor’s right, Ebenezer Elliot is the point of reference against whom GMT should probably be read - rather than the better known chartist poet Ernest Jones who wrote in a more obviously Gothic style. Another point of reference - again replete with classical allusions and similarly very deferential to Shakespeare - is the Chartist Thomas Cooper, whose epic poem Purgatory of Suicides (1846) circulated very widely. There is a very sophisticated but readable LitCrit of chartist poetry by Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1998). But she never notices Tweddell!”

GMT’s use of nom de plumes such as Peter Proletarius, also intrigued me, whilst Malcolm Chase suggested:

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“Nom de plumes and modelling: there may be links and given the overlap of their views and rough geographical proximity, Watkins, Tweddell and Elliot may well have consciously borrowed from each other. On the other hand they could be responding to a common earlier source. "Junius" was an important radical political writer of the third quarter of the C18th, while William Cobbett (who visited Stockton, but that's another story) famously used the pseudonym Peter Porcupine - so Peter Proletarius may well be intended as a silent but knowing reference to Cobbett.”

GMT also created his own ‘national canon’ in the poem on p. 186 below, ‘The Daisy (Bellis Perennis)’, which reinforced his wish to be judged alongside the ‘radical’ poets in the widest sense. These were Chaucer, Burns, Wither (1588-1667)[ix], James Montgomery (1771-1854), with Southey added later as a poet, but not for his politics (see the poem ‘Robert Southey’ – p. 50 below) and ‘William Wordsworth’ (p. 63 below). Montgomery, although a Scot, was a campaigning reformist especially against slavery, spending much of his life in Yorkshire and was imprisoned in 1795 and 1796. Later he responded to Ebenezer Elliot’s request for advice on his poetry, information that strengthens GMT’s links to like-minded poets.[x]

JOHN WATKINS[xi]

Malcolm Chase sent me an article he had written about Whitby Chartist, poet and playwright John Watkins who was imprisoned for sedition after promoting Chartism in Stockton. I felt sure there might be another connection here given the geographical closeness. So far no evidence has come to light in GMT’s work, although Whitby library or the Whitby Philosophical Society archives might have some references of course. However the article did reveal that Watkins married Elliot’s daughter. Nothing conclusive can be judged on this fact, but we have established a trail back to Elliot who knew Tweddell!

More fruitful was a link Paul made with Montgomery, finding a poem that may have influenced GMT’s poem in the Stokesley News and Cleveland Reporter. (Ebenezer Elliott knew James Montgomery who lived mostly in Wakefield.). Compare Montgomery’s poem with GMT’s later poem below:

A Cry from South Africa

On building a chapel at Cape Town

For negro slaves of the colony, in 1828

Britain not now I ask of thee

Freedom, the right of bond and free;

Let Mammon hold, while Mammon can,

The bones and blood of living man;

Let tyrants scorn, the tyrants dare,

The shrieks and writings of despair

An end will come – it will not wait

Bonds, yokes, and scourges have their date,

Slavery itself must pass away,

And be a tale of yesterday.

                               James Montgomery (1771-1854)

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          An African Slave

Ye tyrant fiends! who dare usurp

   Power o’er your fellow man.

You fill all earth with misery,

   The grave you never can.

There ‘tis your pow’r stops short,

   You can no further go:

The tomb’s the last, but sure, retreat

   From tyranny and woe.

Even kings must rot like common men,

   And will return to clay;

And, cheek by jowl, tyrant and slave

   Will by each other lay.

                                     ‘Georgius’ 

[One of GMT’s nom de plumes, see p. 6 below]

JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE

John Critchley Prince, (mentioned further in the next section) could also have been a strong influence on GMT, for they shared similar radical opinions. For a while in the early 1840s Prince worked on a newspaper, The Herald of the Future, that espoused Corn Law repeal and the 1833 10 hour Factory Act. He also worked with the Manchester Odd Fellows in Blackburn. Tweddell and Prince corresponded from 1842 firstly concerning the publication of some of Prince’s poems in GMT’s newspaper (Stokesley News and Yorkshire Miscellany). It continued through their shared circumstances and increasingly warm friendship until 1851 when Prince wrote to GMT, “Your fortunes and mine are very much alike,” referring particularly to their shared poverty. They met up finally in 1855 when the Tweddells moved to Bury. Compare the styles:

The Primrose (Primula vulgaris).

Sweet, modest flower, so gentle in its mien,

I ever love to gaze upon its form.

Full oft in childhood I’ve the Primrose seen,

Hiding its fragrant head from Borean storm,

In sheltered copse, by side of verdant hill,

On where to crystal river whimples still

Through scenes as lovely as the banks of Rhine;

What time the blackbird whistled till the green

Old gnarlêd woods re-echoed back the strain

And I have felt a glory truly mine

When I in primrosed walks have loitering been;

For earth seem’d free from every spot or stain

Of Sin and Care, which make the world a Hell,

And demons roam where angels fain would dwell.

                                    George Markham Tweddell

[This poem was written c. 1849. See p. 179 below]

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Spring.

I pause and listen, for the Cuckoo's voice

   Floats from the vernal depths of yonder vale,

        Whose aspect brightens at the gaze of morn.

Green woods, free winds, and sparkling waves rejoice—

    Sweet sounds, sweet odours freight the wanton gale,

        And April's parting tear-drops gem the thorn.

Through field and glade the truant school-boy sings,

And where in quiet nooks the primrose springs,

        Sits down to weave a coronet of flowers;

From hill to hill a cheering spirit flies,

Talks in the streamlet—laughs along the skies,

        And breathes glad music through the forest bowers:—

God of Creation! on this mountain shrine,

I praise, I worship thee, through this fair world of thine!—

John Critchley Prince [in The Poetic Rosary, 1850]

Praise to John Critchley Prince.

Hail, Prince 'mongst modern Poets! Thou whose song

So oft hath cheered me in dull Sorrow's hour;

To grasp thy gifted hand I ofttimes long,

As few, like thee, have gained the magic power

Of charming heart and mind. It is a dower

Which Nature only on a few bestows,

For fear that she the honour due should lose

Which from her sons she claims. For Poets are

Nature's first favourites; and their only care

Is for their mother; knowing well that she

Is no cross step-dame, but a parent kind,

For ever striving to endow mankind

With Peace; and Love, and Health, and Liberty,

Whose pioneers are Poets—such as thee!

George Markham Tweddell

[Written in 1846 (see p. 30 below) and also appears in The

Life of John Critchley Prince, R.A. Douglas Lithgow, 1880]

EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS

After reading GMT’s poem for Elliot ‘The Bramble (Rubus Vulgaris)’ (on p. 185 below) I wondered why many of these radical poets also had a strong interest in flowers and plants. Was it purely botanical or was there some kind of esoteric symbolism going on? This was reinforced by finding a Masonic reference in the GMT poem about The Great First Cause (‘The Volume of the Sacred Law’, p. 107 below). In the Alchemist book The Secret of the Golden Flower, the golden flower is thought by some to be the Emerald Tablet and in the spiritual side of Alchemy part of the process of purifying the spirit. Symbols of flowers, colours, suns and moons are part of the symbolism. Freemasonry derives is symbolism from the Hermetic tradition and has its own path towards spiritual enlightenment. Could there be a deeper level to some of these poems, especially in GMT’s sequence of sonnets under the heading Sonnets on Trees and Flowers I wondered?

xi

 

 

A clue came when Paul sent me a link to some poems by Wither whom GMT had mentioned in his sonnet The Daisy ‘(Bellis Perenis)’ on p. 186 below. Wither’s ‘Marigold’:

When with a serious musing I behold

The graceful and obsequious marigold,

How duly every morning she displays

Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays.

took my attention as GMT had a poem called ‘The Marsh Marigold (Caltha Palustris)’ immediately before ‘The Daisy’. The Wither poem seemed to be using natural imagery in a symbolic way. Scrolling down I found a footnote that gave the first clue to the mystery:

“The first Emblem book (or book containing pictorial representations whose symbolic meaning is expressed in words) was the Emblematum Libellus of Alciati 1522. This was widely imitated, Quarles and Wither being the best known English emblem writers.”

Since then I’ve found plenty of evidence of GMT’s knowledge and use of emblems in his work. He mentions it in Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham in relation to the work of poet John Riley Robinson and both the word and the technique is used in some of the 100 Masonic Poems and Sonnets on Trees and Flowers at least. The Masonic poems are replete with known Masonic emblems such as the two poems, ‘The All-Seeing Eye’ (p. 119 below), ‘The Gavel’ (p. 108 below), ‘The Compasses’ (p. 118 below), as mentioned above, but the symbolism in the Sonnets on Flowers and Trees is more naturalistic and it’s possible the poems also symbolically reflect a spiritual path of development, that can be understood by those who can read the signs. Soon after I found these poems among the 100 Masonic Poems that may add credence to that thesis. First was ‘Symbols’, (p. 118 below):

Nature abounds in Symbols for the Wise!

Sunset and sunrise; Phoebus in his pride;

Luna, as she does in her glory ride,

With all her starry train; the watchet skies,

Fleckt with all-gorgeous Clouds; the whimpling Rill,

The rushing River, and the booming sea;

Birds of all hues and songs; all seems to me

Pregnant with potent Teachings. Every hill

And Valley, Tree, Flower, Grass, Moss, Lichen; all

The Insect tribes that there have their brief day;

The very Dust we tread on; each, all may

Form Symbols to a thinking Mind, and call

On Masons here to read them. Oh, that we

May think and Work with God through all eternity!

Then, in ‘The All-Seeing Eye No 1’, there were further significant lines (p. 119 below):

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To picture forth the Great All-Seeing Eye,

As symbol meet of watchful Deity

‘Twas used in Egypt's far antiquity

Greece, Rome and every ancient mystery.

Wisely preserved the Emblem ....

The poem ‘Skillet’ (p. 109 below) talks about stone masons, building temples, “Lets build our spiritual temple…” while in ‘Legends of the Craft’ the closing lines read (p. 117 below):

But we must have the key

To Unlock Symbolic teaching in the mind

Or allegories ne'er can benefit

The sluggish brain of country clown or cit.

He who knows how to search, will surely Find

Truth hidden in her well; but they who boast

Sole love of literal facts, too oft Err the most.

However the imagery is far more naturalistic and poetic in the Sonnets on Trees and Flowers, with some of the flowers (perhaps like Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’) possibly symbolising the sun and gold is mentioned quite a lot too. Could Wordsworth, who had forged a new attitude in poetry towards nature, favouring the more intuitive and non-mechanistic outlook, have influenced Sonnets on Trees and Flowers? Certainly GMT mentions him a few times in relation to flowers such as The Daisy for instance.

In Alchemy the aim is to transmute base metals into gold. In spiritual Alchemy (or its embodiment in the rituals of Freemasonry), the chemical process is a symbolic and spiritual path and the sun (or flowers that look like the sun) are emblematic and reflect the precipitation of the spirit to the ideal.  GMT could  also be thinking of the Cabbala (The Tree of Life), which is the spiritual path to God in his reference to trees in these poems. In the following poem (which follows on from Wither’s Marigold) imagery such as ‘Burnish’d gold’ are interesting in this context I think. And here too is GMT’s ‘The Marsh Marigold (Caltha Palustris)’ (on p. 187 below):

Bonnie Marsh Marigold adorns the brook

In clumps like burnish’d gold. The earth is now

Not vile, but fit for angels. We must sow

The seeds of virtue broadcast, and may look

For happiness when we obey the laws

Of Nature, which are God’s: when we rebel

In our own minds we carry the real hell,

Which burns to punish all who may oppose

The great Creator’s will. ‘T was never meant

Mankind should be unhappy. Earth and sky

Unite to ask us the real reason why

Such misery is ours: for God has sent

All that is needful for our happiness,—

Only we hate each other when we should caress.

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Hopefully this all serves to indicate that there might be more going on in GMT’s poems than may have been previously suspected by some of his past critics and this new full collection will hopefully help to transform our understanding of his work. The poems all together tell the story of his life, his quest for justice, peace and enlightenment, his joys and sorrows, his wit and cunning and much more besides. This commentary only takes into account a small proportion of the poems here. What might a proper in-depth study find in these poems?

Trevor Teasdel, 2008, Great Ayton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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An Outline of the Life of George Markham Tweddell

“On Saturday last was laid to rest in Stokesley cemetery nearly

the last of the veterans of Cleveland.”

So wrote the writer of the obituary in November 1903 of George Markham Tweddell in the North East Daily Gazette about one of the prominent representatives of the literary network that spanned the North of England during the nineteenth century. This group of writers, printers and publishers, their patrons and supporters embraced a wide range of interests and a diversity of social backgrounds. It has only recently begun to receive its justifiable attention, as Tony Nicholson the Teesside University historian comments: [these] ‘cultural encounters’ …… played a key role in shaping a new sense of place [for Cleveland and the North].[xii] It is likely that research into Victorian intellectual activity in Yorkshire and the North East would find Tweddell’s life and work serving as a paradigm for its study. Tweddell's work in North Yorkshire and South County Durham, for example, is part of a network of interlinking clusters of radical thinkers (or men sympathetic to their ideology) and interested in literature. Tweddell could be a candidate for Cleveland’s representative; Andrews in Hull, Elliot in South Yorkshire, Montgomery in West Yorkshire, Prince and Swain over the Pennines in North East Cheshire and South East Lancashire (respectively), Burnett in Blackburn; all of whom could be shown to know each other. Nor would it be surprising to find one in Newcastle upon Tyne, perhaps Joseph Cowan (1831-1901)[xiii], the local newspaper owner and radical M.P. who harassed Gladstone about the unsatisfactory agreement between his administration and politically-aware working-class men toward the end of the 19^th century.

Despite personal difficulties, Tweddell established and maintained his position amongst this group by:

·           corresponding extensively with friends and colleagues;

·           keeping a large number of notes on local matters. (Towards the end of his life, he stored them in the basement of his house and office, Rose Cottage, 3 Bridge Street, Stokesley and some of these are still extant in the Tweddell Collection of Teesside Archives. But many were destroyed after his death during one of the town’s frequent floods);

·           receiving guests at his home and visiting friends, who respected him for his knowledge, enthusiasm and reminiscences of past acquaintances, as well as access to his notes;

·           offering encouragement to fellow writers and, in return, accepting their support for his endeavours, even their money, too, when he needed it (see the poem ‘Snilesworth’, p. 67 below);

 

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·           serving on the committees of many worthy organizations, including his local branch of the Freemasons and Odd Fellows, sometimes serving as a regional representative;

·           advocating the works of fellow writers who shared his proud vision of the region through his writings and publications on local history, dialect, and, particularly, poetry. He also often embedded political issues in the commentaries he submitted to newspapers;

·           involving himself in national discussions that aimed to bring about constitutional change. When young he supported the Chartist movement, and, towards the end of his life, articulated the disappointment felt with the failure of Gladstone’s Liberal administration to live up to the expectations of working people and their middle class supporters after the expansion of the vote in 1884 (see p. 41 below in Note 6).

·           being a paid-up member of a large number of literary and learned societies, the total of which printed on his title pages at its zenith about 1870 was twelve.[xiv]

As Trevor Teasdel has already demonstrated above, Tweddell’s dominant purpose in writing his poetry for his Victorian audience was to use its most persuasive and popular method to disseminate his ideas and principles. But the other means he used, commentaries he made in local newspapers, await publication and they should soon become available with the completion of an electronic version in progress by the Humanities Department of Teesside University. In the meanwhile his poems may help to understand why Ebenezer Elliott held Tweddell in such high esteem writing:

“I declare I feel honoured by receiving a letter from such a man.”[xv]

*  *  *  *  *  *

George Markham Tweddell was born in March 1823 into a local family of yeoman farmers and shopkeepers in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, and baptised as George Tweddell. He was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Tweddell (1800-1841), and George Markham (1797-1834), a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and probably on leave in 1822 after being seriously injured during an affray on board a ship the previous year. He was staying with his father, also George Markham (1763-1822), who had been rector of Stokesley since 1791 and, as an able administrator, added the duties of looking after the personnel and fabric of York Minster as Dean of York in 1802. Dean Markham was the third son of William Markham, Archbishop of York (1719-1807), who is now remembered best for saving the city walls of York from destruction, along with the author Sir Walter Scott. George Tweddell never met any of these three Markham ancestors although one of his father’s younger sisters, Frederica Haviside (1798-1863) kept up a correspondence with her nephew before her death.

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Although most of Elizabeth Tweddell’s siblings lived in relative comfort, she in contrast was expected to work as an assistant in her father’s shop. When George was young much of her free time was spent wandering the fields with her boy at her side, for George was unquestionably the favourite and brightest of her three sons. She had an extensive knowledge of country lore, especially about plants, which she imparted to her son, as well as the family’s recent ancestry, that hints at his paternity in his poem ‘My Mother’ (p. 162 below). Although George was put forward as a scholar to Stokesley’s Preston Grammar School, the governors refused him a place. This disappointment proved to be  a  great  advantage  to  the  boy,  for  his school days, coincided with the brief period when the inspirational teacher, William Sanderson (c.1796-1864), held the post of head teacher at the National Board School in Stokesley. In the 1820s, Sanderson had left his native Hutton Rudby (three miles west of Stokesley) to set up a private school in Whitby. During the 1832 Reform Parliament election he had voted for the radical, but unsuccessful candidate (Sanderson’s choice inevitably being widely known, there being no secret ballot at this time) and, in revenge, another failed candidate persuaded the parents to withdraw their children thus forcing the closure of the school. Taking up the Stokesley vacancy, Sanderson soon recognised George’s abilities, and set about extending the formal learning of the school by introducing discussions with George over a wide range of subjects, either on long walks during the summer or at his fire in winter. In particular he inculcated a deep love of poetry. The boy’s earliest poem found identifying a date was ‘Lines written early in Spring in 1837’ (p. 141 below). Sanderson’s account of his treatment in Whitby was an powerful influence on his student’s adoption of radical-leaning politics, although the boy may have already had a predilection in this way as his grandfather, John Tweddell (1770-1850), had supported the Liberal candidate in the 1805 election. A few years later, hearing Peter Bussey, the Chartist missionary who used Stokesley as a base for his work in spring 1839 when George was 17, could have reinforced these opinions, although there is no documentary evidence for this.

In 1836, at the earliest opportunity and much to his disappointment, George was taken away from school and joined his mother as an assistant at his grandfather’s shop. In contrast, his younger cousin was sent to a private school and was extremely indulged, so much so that in 1844 this difference in treatment between branches of the family seems to have created tensions mentioned in the poem ‘Address to a Cousin’ (p. 14 et seq. below).

 

 

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The year 1841 was an important one in Tweddell’s life. On 19^th February, to his great distress, his mother died of consumption aged 41, which he immediately made the subject of a poem, detailing the circumstances of her death in ‘On the Death of my Mother’ (p. 9 below), one he was to revisit poetically throughout his life. On 7^th June Tweddell paid half a guinea to join the Stokesley branch of the Loyal Cleveland Lodge of the Manchester Oddfellows, (technically an illegal organisation until 1850, like all mutual friendly societies, but from the 1830s officially tolerated), and the next day, 8^th June, was elected a committee member. By the 24^th December he was recorded as the corresponding secretary to the local Chartist Society in the national Chartist newspaper the Northern Star. The next year, in November, ‘Brother Tweddell’ had also joined the Cleveland Lodge of the Freemasons. These were the earliest of the many praiseworthy organisations on which he served, many of which received commendation in poetic form.

Sometime in 1841, Tweddell began to acquire skill in what was to become his life’s work. A local printer and publisher, William Braithwaite (c.1810-1873), who was noted for encouraging local talent, took on Tweddell as an apprentice. Braithwaite had also been a long-serving governor of the grammar school, and may have been redeeming his involvement years earlier in his refusal to accept Tweddell as a pupil. Whilst working there, Tweddell took the opportunity to make the acquaintance of many of the prominent authors whom Braithwaite published.  One of these, John Walker Ord (1811-1853), became a close friend, and, despite their differing political opinions (Ord was a Conservative), offered material for George’s later literary enterprises. Through Ord, Tweddell probably started corresponding with the well-known radical poet, Ebenezer Elliot, and the poem of that name (p. 62 below) expresses Tweddell’s sorrow that Elliot died in 1849, before they could meet.

All started well, with Braithwaite supporting George in setting up and printing a monthly newspaper, The Stokesley News and Cleveland Reporter, the first edition of which appeared in November 1842. As well as writing trenchant editorials, Tweddell filled the pages with poems, many his own – albeit using a variety of pen names, and was one of the earliest persons outside the north west of England to publish poems of the Lancashire poets, John Critchley Prince (1808-1866) and Richard Wright Proctor (1816-1881) who wrote under the name of “Sylvan”. Unfortunately the local Tory establishment soon took offence at the radical stance of the editorials of The Stokesley News and persuaded Braithwaite to withdraw his support and sack Tweddell after only two editions. Tweddell was able to find alternative funding, so Braithwaite then commenced the production of a rival paper, The Cleveland Repertory and Stokesley Advertiser, with editorials more in keeping with his colleagues’ own political views. Thus for the next two years the news-

 

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papers rivalled each other until Tweddell’s paper folded in September 1844, and the other, its purpose completed, folded in 1845. Even before the collapse of his project, Tweddell was planning a new one, which proved to be the first of the two major books by which he is best remembered, Tweddell’s Yorkshire Miscellany (the second was Bards and Authors). It was published in monthly parts during 1845 and 1846 in magazine format and contained essays written by diverse authors, including a few poems. It created, too, the earliest of the many financial problems that littered his life. His loss at this time was further worsened by a month’s imprisonment in autumn 1846 and provoked the defiant ‘Sonnet Written in York Castle’ (p. 227 below and for details of the circumstances see p. xxv, bullet #1.)

On the last day of 1843, George had married Elizabeth Cole, one of the daughters of the Stokesley parish clerk and artist, Thomas Cole (1787-1867), who had helped set up the Odd Fellows in the town as well as proposing Tweddell as a member. The long partnership between Elizabeth and George Tweddell was to prove a creative one, for, besides being interested in literature, Elizabeth had a firm but sympathetic personality  upon  which  her husband was to rely through- out his many tribulations. (See ‘The Love to His wife Lady Love’, p. 8 below.) During the early years of their marriage she undertook a number of editorial roles on behalf of her husband, but it was only later, when their older daughters had become old enough to supervise the younger ones, that she was able to write on her own behalf. This development took place around 1862 when one of Tweddell’s best friends, walking companion and benefactor, John Reed Appleton (c. 1825-1889), persuaded Elizabeth to develop her poetic skills. The results were to bring her local fame as a regional writer with poems and stories in the Cleveland dialect under the name of Florence Cleveland. The equality with which they treated each other, so contrary to the conventions of the time, suggests it may be an early example of feminism. Interestingly, this feature in their partnership was remarked upon at the time. For example, William Andrews (c.1854-c.1920), instigator of the Hull Literary Club, a freemason, local historian and author, wrote in 1884:

“The common, but erroneous idea, that a woman of literary habits must be thereby unfitted for her domestic duties, is best corrected by an intimate knowledge of the life of such a woman as the wife of George Markham Tweddell, whose devotion to all that is womanly, as daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, and friend – if those who know her best may be allowed to judge – has through life been as marked as the purity of her writings, a subject on which all agree.”[xvi]

In the following ten years the principled standpoint adopted by Tweddell in  the  books  he  wrote  and   edited  brought  his  reputation  to  a  wider

 

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audience. In 1855 the Government Inspector of Reformatories, Rev. Sidney Turner (fl.1840-60), and the prison philanthropist, Thomas Wright (1789-1875), invited him to be the pioneering headmaster of a new-styled ‘Industrial School’ in Bury, Lancashire, with his wife acting a s matron. This move, with the opportunity to attend the Manchester Literary Club, brought him into direct contact with three of the poets with whom he had previously published but so far only corresponded, John Critchley Prince (1808-1866), Richard Wright Proctor (Sylvan) (1816-1881) and Charles Swain (1803-1874). Prince stayed with the Tweddells in Bury and intrigued his hosts with eccentric behaviour when saying his bedtime prayers. The last poet, Charles Swain, besides being one of the wealthy, local-landowner members of the Society and a generous patron of the arts, was also an admired poet. The Romantic poet, Robert Southey (1774-1843), observed that, “He was born to be a poet”, whilst a reviewer of the Yorkshire Miscellany (1845), “Liked especially the song of Charles Swain” [i.e. ‘Stanzas for Music’], and Tweddell himself wrote of him, “The ever-treasured Memory of my beloved old friend, who lived Poetry as well as wrote it.”[xvii]

Obviously Tweddell made new acquaintances too, one of the most prominent being Mark Philips (1800-1874), who for 15 years had been the radical Liberal Member of Parliament for Manchester and manager of  a  factory  that  manufactured the then universally known ‘Philips’s Tape’. Tweddell had been particularly interested in the charitable origin of this business. Mark’s father, Robert (1760-1844), had set up the first mill in the Staffordshire village that his family owned in order to give the village farm workers an income when times were hard. The naming tape, used on clothes, was sold in the locality but not really commercially viable. To make it so, he had expanded the business with a factory in Manchester, but still run on benevolent lines. The son took over the company on his father’s retirement and maintained its charitable policy, or, as Tweddell wrote ‘In Memoriam of the Death of Mark Philips, Esq.’, quoting what had been said of Tennyson, “He dared be honest in the worst of times” (p. 42).[xviii] It was in the Bury period that Philips first welcomed Tweddell to his manor near Stratford on Avon, these visits being times of good meals and intense conversations.

In 1860 the industrial school reached a crisis when its key supporter left Bury and the governors lost their initial enthusiasm when funds became difficult to find. Although the couple had found their roles at the school satisfying, albeit extremely arduous, especially for Elizabeth who had found the work had weakened her constitution. Nevertheless, they must have had mixed feelings when the governors closed down the school in August 1860, for, even then, Tweddell was sufficiently unhappy to make a bid to take over the school at his own financial risk. His proposal, however, received no local support and by September the family was back in Stokesley.

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Shortly after arriving in Bury, Tweddell took the opportunity to add Markham as his middle name; the first recorded mention being written in his hand: ‘Bury, December 15th, 1855’,[xix] (and from then on often appears abbreviated to ‘GMT’). Despite publicising the change in the national Freemason newspaper and what it signified, the Markham family seems to have accepted it. The reason why was to appear shortly after his return northward.

By 1861, as soon as he could set up a new printing and publishing company, the family moved into premises in Commercial Street in the nearby, rapidly expanding town of Middlesbrough. Fortuitously then, in 1863, a younger sister of GMT’s father, Frederica Haviside (née Markham), died leaving him a generous annuity, which gave him the opportunity to move the business into a better location at 87 Linthorpe Road. Between 1864 and 1876 the company of Tweddell & Sons reached its apogee and expanded with a branch opened in Stokesley before 1870. He put his second son and apprentice, Horatio John Tweddell (1848-1918), in charge of the long-established printing press his father had bought. This was situated on the north side of the High Street in Stokesley but is now demolished.

This period saw the publication of a series of impressive literature works. The first was a combined magazine and directory for his new town, Tweddell’s Middlesbrough Miscellany of Literature and Advertisements (1870-71), a useful facility for the townspeople.[xx] Around the same time he started to publish a series of booklets called The North of England Tractates, in order to print:

“a collection of small Treatises . . . relating to the North of England; offering them to the general Public at the lowest Prices which will clear the necessary expenses of Publication.”[xxi]

This series became one of the most important places in which regional writers could put their works before the public, including Tweddell’s own in particular. The series reached No. 36 by the time it ended in 1890. No. 1 commenced with a poem by Appleton in pride of place, followed by one by GMT, a grateful obituary to Frederica Haviside (née Markham) as ‘Cleveland Sonnet No. X’ (p. 37). Soon, too, was begun A People’s History of Cleveland and its Vicinage,[xxii] taking a new, radical stance, but ceased after only four completed instalments of the 16 planned. His notes, set out by location and historical aspects, exist in Teesside Archives.[xxiii]

GMT’s second major book, mentioned earlier, was Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham (1872),[xxiv] but only the first volume of the three intended appeared. The lack of its two unpublished volumes or their notes is still regretted as a lost source for further literary research.

 

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This period also saw GMT honoured by the Royal Old North Germanic Language Society, Copenhagen that awarded him a diploma in 1867, probably for his work on the Cleveland dialect, signed by its president, the King of Denmark.[xxv]

As early as the end of 1871 financial problems resurfaced and new ways were tried to find more income without compromising the quality of the work published. At this time the Middlesbrough office was closed down and GMT with his wife and their younger children returned to live and work in Stokesley. They chose Rose Cottage in Commercial Street (now known as 3 Bridge Street), using the ground floor as an office, the back cellar to store books, stationery, notes, etc, and with the living quarters above. Horatio John Tweddell’s growing family (he had married Jane Elizabeth Clark (1850-1934) from Thirsk in Middlesbrough during 1870) lived in an apartment across the road. Associated with the family business was a shop somewhere in the Market Square area in direct competition with the shop of Tweddell’s half-brother, Thomas. The young Jane Elizabeth brought her skills to the business as a dressmaker employing assistants and attempted a short-lived employment agency for domestic servants. An advertisement for the Tweddell shop, reprinted in the 1982 book, Stokesley Selection (edited by A. Wright & J. Mawers) shows: “George Tweddell, Hatter & Bookseller, Commercial Row; Books, Stationery, Teas, Coffees, Snuff, Patent Medicines, gloves, brushes, hats etc.” and also an agency for a fire insurance company. Slaters Yorkshire Directory (in both 1876 & 1879) identifies Jane Elizabeth Tweddell as managing a bakers and confectioners shop in Market Square, and Horatio John Tweddell as a newsagent and bookseller besides a printer.

By 1876, despite these efforts, Tweddell & Sons remained in financial crisis and was bailed out a second time, this time by numerous admirers with a Purse of Gold arranged by William Andrews. These funds, however, were soon lost after being invested in ill-advised shares, as the introduction to A Hundred Masonic Sonnets explains. Inevitably, financial  stress  remained  and  Horatio  John  Tweddell’s need for a greater income to support his growing family became a serious burden on the company’s costs and from 1878, the younger Tweddell sought alternative employment further and further away from Stokesley. It took him four years to find it, first briefly in Goole (further south in Yorkshire), then as a compositor in Mold, North Wales. Fortunately, the esteem he lost in Yorkshire was soon retrieved in Wales when he became one of the few Englishmen to be crowned a Welsh bard in 1886. He adopted the name ‘Efrogid’ (in English meaning ‘Man of York’).

For the older Tweddells, now into their late 50s, illness and tragedy began to stalk  them  causing the  postponement of a number  of  projects.

 

xxii

 

 

The first event was caused by the typhoid fever that struck down both their first grandson followed by their oldest daughter, Elizabeth Georgina Hodgson (1845-1880), a minor poet, at the age of 33 within the month of March 1880. GMT’s grief lasted many years for eight years later he was still writing to assuage his distress with the poem ‘My First Grandchild’ (p. 216 below). Inevitably, with death becoming increasingly frequent among his ageing colleagues, GMT wrote a considerable number of obituaries at this time often as poems. Sometimes he sent them uninvited, as with The Royal Leamington Spa Courier, January 3^rd 1874, with one to celebrate Mark Philips’ life. In other cases he was commissioned (probably by a local newspaper in Batley, West Yorkshire) for the death of Isaac Binns (p. 214 below), the Borough accountant who died on August 6^th 1884. The Hanley Directory invited GMT to open its 1889 edition with an obituary to Alderman Matthew Wardaugh (1813-1888), actor manager and a recent mayor of Longton, Staffordshire. GMT will have taken on this request with a particularly strong sense of duty, for Wardaugh had materialized in his life at a number of crucial times. The first time was when the impressionable George was a youth in Stokesley and Wardaugh arrived as a travelling actor playing various Shakespearean roles and helped to inculcate a love of the bard in the young boy. Wardaugh’s Travelling Theatre turned up again in Bury shortly after the family had moved there. It is thought, too, that Wardaugh’s support gave two of Tweddell’s artistic sons the opportunity to flourish in the theatre. Unfortunately, GMT’s obituary task proved difficult though, as his health continued to decline after a blood vessel in his brain had broken in 1885. (An apology for the late publication of A Hundred Masonic Sonnets appears giving the precise date of the event on p. viii – “15th October, 1885”. He was 62 years old at the time.) Evidence of this can be observed in the loss of his writing’s former precision, and sentences now became even longer than previously. He also suffered increasingly from may have been rheumatism, what he called “paralysis”.

Another example of his difficulties can be seen in the Hundred Masonic Sonnets of 1887. With one eye almost blind, he had turned to writing poetry during long evenings when sleep did not come easily. Being without his printer son, GMT was obliged to be his own compositor, an awkward task to set up type for someone with arthritis.

During this period two visitors turned up at Rose Cottage. The first, on 29^th September 1878, was the author, R. A. Douglas Lithgow who was preparing a biography of GMT’s departed friend, John Critchley Prince. Lithgow must have been delighted to glean more than GMT’s reminiscences, for he was able to make copies of the letters Prince had sent to his host.  These would complete the correspondence from GMT to

 

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Prince, which Lithgow had received from Prince’s surviving relatives. This was placed side by side in the biography two years later. In gratitude Douglas gave his interviewee a copy of his Pet Moments, signing it “with the author’s kind regards”.[xxvi]

About ten years later another biographer, John Horsfall Turner of Bradford, turned up to feature Tweddell at the beginning of his second volume of the Yorkshire Genealogist . Horsfall Turner sat opposite his interviewee by the fire in Rose Cottage making notes about GMT’s long life and ancestry.

1892 signalled the final act of Tweddell & Sons, closing with a second edition of Elizabeth Tweddell’s Dialect Poems as illness overwhelmed both poets. They had the help of a female neighbour who tended Elizabeth when bed-ridden while two granddaughters handled daily domestic duties (one being the daughter of their oldest daughter who died of typhoid fever in 1880) under the oversight of the old couple’s only offspring who had stayed in Stokesley, Thomas Cole Tweddell. Money was still a problem, as the value of their annuity must have become considerably deflated, so a number of sons contributed to their parent’s upkeep, especially the childless George (Junior), by this time a successful scenic artist in London.[xxvii]

Sadly GMT wrote nothing for his wife’s death in 1899 (at least nothing survives). At his burial, Oddfellows & Freemasons followed the family in a long cortège to lay his body to rest next to his beloved Elizabeth in Stokesley new cemetery. Although there are two extant obituaries of his death, neither mentions this gathering, but is only available from the Tweddell family tradition.

Posthumously, it was only Tweddell’s historical works that were valued during most of the 20^th century. It was only in the 1980s when interest in him revived with the publication of Stokesley Selection[xxviii], which contains a trail of GMT documents, and Daphne Franks’ 1984 Printing and Publishing in Stokesley[xxix], where Tweddell has his own chapter. Even later, another compendium of local history, etc, Roseberry Topping (Great Ayton Community Archaeology Project), published in 2006, quotes him quite frequently including the story that may explain why GMT went to prison in 1846 for contempt of court for carrying beer to the Trinity Fair against the magistrates’ express instructions.[xxx]

As for GMT’s poems, tastes were changing and Tweddell’s poetry was judged pedantic and old fashioned. As early as 1908 opinions were being expressed publicly that his poetry was ‘boring’ and his son Horatio John wrote from Canada to challenge the idea,[xxxi] quite the opposite to that of his wife’s poetry that was often favourably quoted, often in travel guides and the works of the Yorkshire Dialect Society. Cowley (Honarary Treasurer of the Society[xxxii]) for example, commented in 1963: “She stuck

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to the easy rhythms, genuine dialect and a sound homely social philosophy”, whereas he wrote of Tweddell: “[His poetry] was neither – most of his writings are tedious in the extreme”.[xxxiii] When the internet became widely available in the 1990s it was Elizabeth’s poems that were first given an airing there, but recently, GMT has caught up with his wife.

Finally, Tweddell’s contemporaries held conflicting opinions about him, which caused the grief mentioned above. His professional and mostly middleclass friends admired him, but many of his fellow citizens of Stokesley found him troublesome and his opinions ambiguous, an opinion which may still be active in the twenty first century. Whereas William Andrews, GMT’s Hull friend, preferred to describe him as: ‘A many-sided man—poet, historian, public speaker, and a painstaking collector of local lore’,[xxxiv] the anonymous author of a recent brief guide to Stokesley neatly sums up the attitude of many of George Markham Tweddell’s 19^th century neighbours with an adaptation of Andrew’s portrayal: ‘A man of many interests, poet, historian, stirrer-up of controversy and publisher’.[xxxv] Some reasons for the penultimate description would still be obvious today:

·           He was very antagonistic to capital punishment and hunting (e.g. Halifax Gibbet, p. 64 below and Poetry of an old Besom, “…… poor grouse which sportsmen seek/ to slaughter for amusement”, p. 52 below, line 34);

·           His own family life-style, so admired by his professional colleagues, made a strong challenge to those who adhered to conventional views of family life;

·           He opposed corporal punishment supporting what now would be known as ‘pupil-centred education’, even less understood then than at present. It appears in a number of poems (e.g. The Birch–Betula Alba p. 192 below), whilst Tractates No. 30 (a prose pamphlet) outlines his educational principles and recounts a fierce argument between him and some anonymous townspeople about his suitability as a school governor of the National School (which, incidentally, he, his wife and his children had attended);

·           He occasionally expressed fierce comments about marriages among the upper classes:

“But as long as these mock-marriages continue in vogue – these weddings of wealth, not of heart, of rank and title, not of mutual love, will undoubtedly prevail, for legal prostitutions are they and not true marriages, where two hearts are melted into one”;[xxxvi]

·           Although slavery had been banished in the British Empire, Tweddell continued to criticise the British cotton industry, especially the port of Liverpool. He recognised that this city’s trading supported slavery indirectly by ignoring New York’s exploitation of the slaves of the South of the United States.

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Other issues lying behind Tweddell’s motives may have been too ambiguous for ‘the man in the street’ to understand: how could he have:

·           Served on the committee that opposed the Stokesley, agricultural hiring fair (a notoriously drunken affair),[xxxvii] and made a close friend (John Appleton), who traded as a wholesaler in drinks. Yet he carried alcoholic drinks to the top of Roseberry Topping for the long-standing Trinity Fair to challenge the authorities who wished to close down a similar event that they felt had developed into alcoholic disorder. For this act of defiance GMT was imprisoned.

·           Supported the publication of the broadly humanistic, religious beliefs held by Freemasons, but disliked the Established Church, for its support for the wealthy and the Methodists for their excessive sobriety (in his introduction to the poems of John Castillo), yet counted many clergymen among his friends. What moved GMT spiritually, according to one of his obituarist, was a Unitarian service;[xxxviii]

·           Counted as friends a number of the yeomen who had benefited from the agricultural Enclosures, which had caused great distress to ordinary agricultural labourers, a change still in the memory of many older people in Cleveland at Tweddell’s time. (See the conflict between The Poetry of an old Besom [p. 52 et seq.] and the introduction to his edition of the poetry of John Castillo, which he dedicated to a prominent yeoman farmer – p. 205.)

Finally, here is a quotation from a 17-year-old boy in Edwards Blishen’s 1969 book, The School that I'd like, which GMT would have surely approved:

“If I am studying a book by Molière, I ought to be able to place it in its social, historical, literary and artistic context; I should study it not only in the light of Moliere's other work but in the light of the social and political pressures and artistic and philosophical ideas that formed it. A work of art may be universal in its application, but it is temporal in its expression; to understand it completely I must understand the epoch that formed it. A knowledge of four books does not make up a knowledge of French literature; a study of four books, and their authors taken in their literary and historical context, may at least help to.”

Paul M. Tweddell, 2008, Canterbury

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Endnotes

[i] Footnote in the Dedication of The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham, 1875, p. 5 (Tweddell and Sons, Stokesley). Teesside Archives, U/TW/1/18

[ii] Teesside Archives, U/TW/1/2 & U/TW/1/2

[iii] The Bards of Cleveland by Andy Croft written in 1989, and read on the BBC 2 Open Space - Breaking the Ice – For Arnold Rattenbury, 1990

[iv] Middlesbrough Public Library, Tweddell Collection Listed, Tractates # 32

[v] Ibid, CO52

[vi] Teesside Archives U/TW/1/21. The comment in brackets is deduced from the book’s introduction.

[vii] Ebenezer Elliot (1781-1849) was an iron founder of Rotherham and Sheffield and briefly supported the Chartist cause. Like GMT, he shared his poetic labours between his political causes and his love of plants. See http://www.tilthammer.com/bio/elliott.html

[viii] From www.judandk.force9.co.uk/elly.htm

[ix] www.englishverse.com/poets/wither_george

[x] see: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/361.html &

        www.poemhunter.com/james-montgomery/

[xi] John Watkins features in Malcolm Chase’s Chartism: a new History (Manchester University Press) 2007, pp. 117 et seq.

[xii] A new sense of Place; Cleveland in:

        www.mrch.mmu.ac.uk/confer/regid/tn.htm

[xiii] www.dmm.org.uk/archives/a_obit08.htm

[xiv] In both Tractates Nos. 10 & 12

[xv] Middlesbrough Library, Tweddell Collection C 920T and another version in Teesside Archives, U/TW/2/15

[xv] In William Andrews’ Modern Yorkshire Poets (1885), pp. 49 et seq.

 

[xvii] Tweddell (1872), p. 137; Stokesley News, Vol. II No. 20 1^st August 1844, A favourable review of Tweddell’s Yorkshire Miscellany, p. 33;  (1887 & 1888) in Tractates No. 29

[xviii] Tractates No. 15

[xix] On the fly-leaf of The Oddfellows’ Reciter (1852), Tweddell Collection U/TW/1/7

[xx] Middlesbrough public library, Tweddell Collection CO52 4207

[xxi] Advert for Tractates series in Paul Tweddell’s archive Doc.139

[xxii] Middlesbrough public library, Tweddell Collection C942

[xxiii] Teesside Archive U/TW/4/2 to U/TW/4/9, inclusive

[xxiv] There are two copies annotated by GMT. The archive copy (U/TW/1/16) came through Horatio John Tweddell; the Middlesbrough public library copy (C1 928) through the widow of the artist George Tweddell (Junior).

[xxv] U/TW/6/1-3. The Society is called in Danish Det Kongelge Nordiske Oldskrift Selska. The translation in the text above is fairly precise, but GMT preferred to use the term Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries.

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[xxvi] In Teesside Archives U/TW/2/6. Prince’s biography is:

    domain1041943.sites.fasthosts.com/prince/b_biog.htm

[xxvii] Letter from George Tweddell (Junior), U/TW/5/3/5

[xxviii] Wright, A. & Mawer, J. (1982) Stokesley Selection  (Studio Print, Great Ayton, North Yorkshire)

[xxix] Franks, D. (1984) Printing and Publishing in Stokesley (Stokesley & District Local History Study Group)

[xxx] See Pearce (2006), p. 86-87 and GMT’s poem Sonnet written in York Castle (see endnote xxxvi below)

[xxxi] The article is undated, but may be from the Stockton and Hartlepool Mercury. It can be read in Teesside Archives U/TW/3/3-1.

After emigrating to Brandon Manitoba, John Horatio Tweddell (as a jounalist) with his wife Jane Elizabeth and all but one of their surviving children, the parents retired to Melville, Saskatchewan to join their youngest daughter and family. They returned briefly to England (Barnstaple) staying with the family of their only son left in Britain. They went back (alone) to Brandon as WWI broke out. During the war they moved to Hamilton, Ontario, and died there in 1918 and 1934 respectively.

[xxxii] http://www.lykewake.org/cowley.php

[xxxiii] Cowley, William (1963) A Cleveland Anthology (Yorkshire Dialect Society) 1963, p. 11

[xxxiv] Under ‘Stokesley’ in Andrews, William (c. 1918) Picturesque Yorkshire: The Shires Series (Valentine & Sons Ltd, London)

[xxxv] Stokesley Society (2002), Stokesley Trail, p. 29

[xxxvi] Cooper’s Journal, or unfettered thinking and plain speaking for Truth, Freedom and Progress, 1850, p. 85 in Brotherton Library, Leeds University

[xxxvii] Stokesley Selection, p. 65 (see endnote xxviii above)

[xxxviii] Teesside Archives, Tweddell Collection, U/TW/3/3-1

 

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