This is the sort of thing that one always hopes for – in 2013 I posted the Whaling Journal 1774 of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham and articles about the Atkinson family of Scaling Dam. And recently I was contacted by Stella Richmond Sterry, a descendant of Thomas's sister Jane Galilee (as I am myself) – but she has the family Bible!
And so, armed with all that lovely information, I've been able to do more research on the family. I hope it's (a) of interest and (b) of use to people who are trying to disentangle their own Cleveland Atkinsons.
An extra bonus for me is that I get to go back again to the Civil Wars, which I left reluctantly after finishing work on Alice Wandesford in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
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The young Thomas Atkinson who took the whaling voyage in 1774 (you can find it here) was the eldest son of Thomas Atkinson (1722-92), Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital at Kirkleatham.
In 1788, towards the end of his life, Thomas Atkinson senior repaired his father's family Bible, which had been damaged after his father's death in 1755. And in it, very wisely, he left a written record which he entitled "From Oral Tradition". He began with the story of his great-grandfather Atkinson, who was a soldier in the Parliamentarian Army during the Civil Wars – the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – and who lived afterwards at Scaling Dam.
Scaling Dam was (and is) a hamlet more or less half way along the moors road between Guisborough and Whitby. Then, the North Riding of Yorkshire was thinly populated and the moors were wide and empty. The antiquarian Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., (1658-1725) took the moors road in November 1682 and didn't like it at all, recording in his diary that he travelled "over the rotten Moors for many miles without anything observable."
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The hamlet's name doesn't come from the reservoir which was built there in the 1950s – it appears, for example, as Skallingdam in the 1675 map of John Ogilby. I suspect the hamlet was given its name to show it was a sort of outpost of the village of Scaling but near the dam – the Dam Bridge can be seen on the map above. It was, of course, a very practical place for a settlement, being on the moors road at the junction with the road to Staithes. It isn't surprising to see that the 1888-1913 map shows both a pub and a smithy, both of which must have been there for very many years. Both Scaling and Scaling Dam were in the parish of Easington in Cleveland.
Atkinson the Parliamentarian Soldier
The family didn't remember the Soldier's Christian name, but knew that he had been at the battles of Marston Moor (1644), Naseby (1645), Preston (1648) and Dunbar (1650). The fact that Marston Moor seems to be his first major battle suggests the Soldier was a Northerner, and the fact that he spent the rest of his life in Scaling Dam seems to me to show that he was almost certainly an East Cleveland man. It's hard to think an outsider would find his way to Scaling Dam in the middle of the 17th century.
The Soldier used to talk of the battle of Dunbar, Oliver Cromwell's miracle victory. The histories say that when the right wing of Scottish cavalry broke under the English attack, Oliver Cromwell and General Lambert didn't allow the English troopers to go in pursuit and, as the troopers regrouped, they sang the 117th Psalm
O praise the Lord, all ye nations:
praise him, all ye people.
For his merciful kindness is great toward us:
and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.
When the Soldier looked back on the battle, Thomas wrote, he used to say of the singing
their Notes were more pleasing to Him who is the Giver of all Victory than the Clashing of Swords and roaring of Canon.
The Soldier was very probably a member of one of Cleveland’s Trained Bands, the local militias made up of householders and their sons, who were obliged to turn out when summoned for training and action. The ability to read and write was spreading fast among the common people at this time, but the sort of family that was liable for Trained Band service would certainly produce a literate man like the Soldier, whose constant reading of Scripture led him to have, as Thomas wrote, "the Bible and Testament almost by Heart".
Soldier Atkinson was in the minority in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which was almost entirely Royalist in sympathy – though many, if not most, people didn't want to choose a side at all and simply wanted to be left in peace. The North Riding gentlemen who supported Parliament had a difficult time raising troops and the troops, when assembled, weren't keen. Sir Henry Foulis reported that a Cleveland foot regiment that had mustered 500 men at Yarm had rapidly dwindled to 80 at the approach of the enemy. (see War in Yorkshire: 1642-1643)
Parliamentarian gentry included the Foulis brothers, whose father Sir David Foulis had been put in the Fleet Prison for several years because he opposed the King’s man, Sir Thomas Wentworth (the story can be found here) but their family estates were at Ingleby on the western escarpment of the moors.
A Parliamentarian gentleman from the close neighbourhood of Scaling Dam was Nicholas Conyers. In fact he came from the parish of Easington itself, being the son of Nicholas Conyers of Boulby, and, like Soldier Atkinson, he was at Marston Moor. Two of his brothers died fighting for the King.
Nicholas Conyers was in the Scarborough garrison under Sir Hugh Cholmley of Whitby when Cholmley changed sides and took the town over to the Royalists in 1643.
Cholmley first made sure that anybody wanting to leave Scarborough before it became Royalist had left the town. Many did, including Nicholas Conyers. If Soldier Atkinson was there with Sir Hugh's forces, he too will have left for the Parliamentarian garrison at Hull.
Atkinson the Soldier was clearly one of the Godly – a Puritan – and committed to Parliament's cause. This makes him an interesting figure in the overwhelmingly Royalist North Riding. Perhaps there were many more like him among the ordinary men of Cleveland, but we only know about the gentry and we don't know how many of the Soldier's neighbours and relatives shared his views. And we don't know what his views were – how ardent a Puritan he was, how radical a Parliamentarian.
Thomas describes the Soldier as a subaltern. I've checked with Phil Philo (do not miss his new blog Of Things Trent-North) and this was not a term used at the time. I think all we can say for definite is that his family remembered that he had men under him. So he could have been a junior officer, or a sergeant or a corporal. Nor do we know if he fought in the foot or the cavalry.
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| Pikemen. Photo by John Beardsworth |
In the same way, Thomas thought that he lived to a very great age "being near a hundred before he died". This isn't any help in identifying him, as the Easington parish registers for the time are fragmentary and don't record the age anyway. But we can certainly say that he was notable in the area, with his past history of bloody and brutal warfare, his command of the Bible and his great age.
After the fighting stopped, everyone must have had to learn to live together and mend the divisions within families and neighbourhoods. It can't have been easy after so many deaths and so much destruction.
We don't know how the Soldier made his living before and after the wars, but we can guess that if his father was a farmer then he wasn't the eldest son, because then he would have been needed on the land. So he would have had a trade. At some point the Soldier married and had at least one son, whose name was John, who was "brought up to the business of a Tanner", so perhaps the Soldier was a tanner himself.
Tanning was a vital industry at this time, with leather necessary for so many things, from boots, shoes and gloves to horse collars, and Scaling Dam was a good place for the tanning process, with water from the Dam Beck nearby. Tanning was done in pits lined with timber. The bark of young coppiced oaks was used, or lime, and the process took time, hard manual labour and skill. Most villages had a leather worker and they were to be found in much larger numbers in towns. Tanners often farmed on the side.
