Archives and Special Collections: Subject guides - Religious Archives

Hotham family papers

The Hotham family are long-established in East Yorkshire with estates in Scorborough and South Dalton. Their papers contain a wealth of religious manuscripts and printed materials. The pamphlet literature collected by Sir John Hotham (1589-1645) and his son, Captain John Hotham (1610-1645) includes several anti-Catholic tracts such as John Bastwick's A learned useful and seasonable discourse concerning the Church of England and the Church of Rome (1643) and four tracts by William Prynne including Romes master-peece (1643) and The popish royall favourite (1643). Some of these are rare such as John Taylor's Mad verse, sad verse, glad verse and bad verse (1644) and the anonymous tract Sampsons foxes agreed to fire a kingdom: or the Jesuit and the Puritan (1644). There is also the Westminster Assembly's Directory of public worship (1644) [DDHO/2]. Sir John Hotham (1632-1689) was involved in the anti-Catholic politics of the 1670s and 1680s and was forced to flee England during the Exclusion Crisis. His letters and papers throw light on the religious politics of the period and include letters sent when he returned to England with the Protestant successors to the throne, William and Mary of Orange [DDHO/13/1-2]. There is an original bundle of papers relating to the restoration of South Dalton church 1844-97 [DDHO/48/234-243] and papers relating to the union of the benefices of South Dalton and Holme on the Wolds in 1857 [DDHO/48/244-250]. There is the mandate for induction of the Reverend Stephen Thompson in 1691 [DDHO/49/1] and sequestration papers for the living of Scarborough in 1676 [DDHO/57/54]. There are also notes about the external and internal fabric of several East Riding churches [DDHO(3)51/5]. There is an original bundle of papers dated 1871-6 about a dispute related to the maintenance of Hutton Cranswick parsonage [DDHO(3)/16/2] and an original bundle of abstracts of the tithe estates of Sir Michael Warton [DDHO/48/49-52].