The village of Thruscross is about 13 miles west from the town of Knaresborough; within about 20 miles around it are the other well-known towns of Ripon, Ripley, Otley, Keighley, Skipton, Settle, Masham and Aldborough, from several of which Friends came to Pennsylvania.

While John Atkinson might have lived in any part of the township, his residence was most likely in the hamlet or village of the same name, called in one place above Thruscross-Green; for had he lived in some other part, his daughter-in-law would probably have used the name of the nearest hamlet, rather than that of the township. This place we must take to be his residence during the time (or most of it) within his daughter-in-law's knowledge, say from her marriage, 1678, till her Testimony was written, 1687; but from the fact that his son was born at Newby, he must have lived some time at that place; whether this residence was only temporary, or whether John Atkinson himself was born there, we have no evidence now at hand; the latter supposition seems the most plausible. However, from a date given in Besse's Sufferings (see below), he appears to have moved to Thruscross or its vicinity when this son was quite a young child, before 1659; and no doubt continued there till his death.

From our present scanty means of judging, he was seem

3. Killinghall, with its four hamlets, Beckwith, Rosset, Bilton, and Harrogate.

The names of the townships of 1086 have become those of hamlets in 1368, except Fewston, which disappears; but Fewston as both township and parish appears again later. Baines's Yorkshire Past and Present, vol. II, p. 609, says that the Forest was formerly divided into 11 constabularies, of which Thruscross was one. In a list of assessments for 1584, we find Thurscrosse (another spelling), in "Libertat' de Knaresburge," ," assessed at four shillings. (J. Horsfall Turner's Yorkshire Notes and Queries, vol. i, p. 147, year 1888.)

Rev. Francis Hutchinson, D.D., in his Historical Essay on Witchcraft, (London, 1718), p. 35, mentions a prosecution in 1622, by "Edward Fairfax of Fuyston" [Fewston] "in the Forest of Knasborough, Esq." This brings us down to about John Atkinson's time.

ingly in fairly comfortable circumstances. A recent writer1 emphasizes the point that most of the early converts to Quakerism were persons of consideration in their localities, those in the country districts belonging largely to the landholding or "squire" class; the arrangements of the meetings being "only adapted for those having their time at their own command." Our increasing knowledge of those English Quakers who came early to Pennsylvania strongly corroborates this. While in the absence of any record to such effect, the presumption is against his being a squire himself, he may have been a smaller landowner, or a yeoman a generation or two from gentle blood; though his name does not appear on any of the printed pedigrees of the gentle families of Yorkshire.2

1 C. D. Sturge, in Journal of Friends' Historical Society, vol. i, p. 90, (London, 1904).

* If he were grandson, or even son, of a younger son, his name would be unlikely to so appear. The pedigrees of Yorkshire Atkinsons to be found in print are, however, very few; those known to the writer are only four Atkinson of Skelton (Bulmer wapentake, North Riding), in Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, 1665-66, Surtees Society's vol. 36, (1859) p. 364; Atkinson of Leeds, in Ralph Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, 1st ed. (Lond, 1715), p. 80, 2nd ed. (Leeds, 1816), p. 76; Atkinson of Little Cattall, in St. George's Visitation of 1612, (published by Joseph Foster, Lond. 1875), p. 489; and the family descended from Myles Atkinson, buried 1637/8, in J. Horsfall Turner's Yorkshire County Magazine, vol. III (1893), pp. 180-182. Little Cattall, the seat of one of these families, was in the wapentake of Claro, in which John Atkinson lived, but the pedigree ends too early for him, even if he belonged to that family. Joseph Foster's Yorkshire Pedigrees has the names of a number of Atkinson's intermarried with other families, though no Atkinson pedigree; from this and many other references we find that there were quite a fair number of Atkinsons among Yorkshire gentry, whose pedigrees have not been published, one of which might have included John Atkinson. There was a gentle family of Atkinsons at Hatfield-Woodhouse, in township and parish of Hatfield, wapentake of Strafforth & Tickhill, whose heads were, about 1700, Richard, Sr., and his son Robert; no pedigree of this is known. In the same wapentake was Wentworth-Woodhouse, the seat of Sir William Wentworth, and his son the celebrated Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford; Sir William's wife was Anne Atkinson, but she was not of a Yorkshire family, being daughter of Robert Atkinson of Stowell, Co. Gloucester.

John Atkinson was among the earliest converts to the Society of Friends in Yorkshire; his daughter-in-law1 calls him "an honest Friend." The following extract from Besse's Sufferings of Friends, is presumed to refer to him, though there were other Friends of the same name in the vicinity:

Vol. II, p. 97, Year 1659. "In the same Month of November, John Atkinson, of Finston, was summoned to appear at a Manour-Court, at the Suit of Several Impropriators, for Tithe: Accordingly he appeared personally, yet his Appearance was not accepted, but he was fined, and had his Goods taken away to the Value of 4 1. About the same time, Agnes Atkinson, as she was passing about her Business through a Grave-yard, was met by a Priest, who without Regard either to Law or Equity, under Pretence of Tithes due to him took from her six Yards of Cloth by Force, and kept it."

Agnes may have been John's wife, of whose name we have no other record. The name Finston is probably a slip of the pen (or type) for Fewston (spelled Fiuston; compare Fuyston above); no such place as Finston having been found. Besse, in volume II, chapter on Yorkshire, mentions a number of Atkinsons, among them a John several times, but it is doubtful if any of these were our subject or his relatives.2

1 In her Testimony; see previous footnote.

' Page 101. Among the names of 229 persons imprisoned in the West Riding in 11th and 12th months, 1660, for refusing to take oaths, were those of Edward, George, John and Robert Atkinson. Page 110. Among 20 committed to York Castle in 1664, was Edward Atkinson; these were taken from a meeting at Thomas Taylor's in Sedbergh. In the same year, among those fined for not contributing to the charges of the county militia, were: John Atkinson, 6 s., and Edward Atkinson, of Bradley, £2. In 1665, Robert Atkinson suffered distress of tithes, £10. Page 120. In the year 1668, Edward Atkinson of Sedbergh, had goods worth about £1, 1 s. taken for "steeple-house-rates." The places mentioned, though all in the West Riding, were a considerable distance apart, so even those of the same name may not have been the same persons. Sedbergh is 40 miles northwest from Thruscross; Bradley (or Bradleys Both) is 12 miles southwest from Thruscross.

Some years later, when the persecutions died down and meetings were regularly established, John Atkinson belonged to the Knaresborough Monthly Meeting. The meeting house was in the town of that name, which Lewis (3rd ed.) describes :

"KNARESBOROUGH, a borough, market-town, and parish, partly within the liberty of ST. PETER'S, East Riding, and partly in the Lower Division of the wapentake of CLARO, West Riding." Allen's History of Yorkshire says: "The parish and borough town of KNARESBOROUGH is situate in the liberties of St. Peter, York and Knaresborough." Baines's gazetteer says the town is in the parish of Knaresborough, wapentake of Claro, and liberty of Knaresborough and St. Peter's in the West Riding. The town which is 18 miles west from the city of York, is situated on the northeast bank of the river Nidd. Knaresborough Forest (mentioned above as including Thruscross), is to the southwest, across the river.

The

A word as to Yorkshire topography, (to use the English term), may not be amiss, as well as some explanation of the designations of its subdivisions. In England the counties are divided primarily into hundreds; in the northern counties, once occupied by the Danes, their term wapentake (originally a division for military purposes) survives, and is used instead of hundred. Yorkshire, the largest county in England, has first three grand divisions called ridings (North Riding, East Riding and West Riding), which in turn are divided into wapentakes. latter are then subdivided into parishes, originally ecclesiastical divisions, but soon falling into place in the civil scheme; parishes however, probably on account of this origin, did not always fall within hundred bounds, some overlapping from one hundred into another. Large wapentakes were sometimes split into divisions, (as that of Claro mentioned above, into the Upper and Lower Divisions); this did not interfere with the parishes, each division containing certain parishes. The parishes were composed of groups of townships, which consisted of a small town or village with the surrounding land, including other smaller villages or hamlets contained therein.1 Besides this com

1 In Pennsylvania and other American States, the township is the primary subdivision of the county, with well defined boundaries, and not dependent for its existence on the villages within it, being in fact identical with the English hundred. In some states, for instance

paratively simple system of division, there were others more complicated. Liberties are tracts of land either excluded from parishes or superimposed upon them, and whose limits were frequently uncertain;1 they are districts "within which certain privileges are granted, or whose inhabitants have special rights or immunities;" each liberty had its special court, and in this was independent of the parish government, which came under the manor court. The unions, (Lewis's 5th edition mentions Thruscross as in the "union of Pateleybridge"), are amalgamations of parishes for administrative purposes; they were formed early in the 19th century, long after John Atkinson's time.

Some facts concerning Knaresborough may serve to elucidate the above explanations, as well as to present something of its history: The name Knaresborough has covered a (1) manor, (2) honour, (3) castle, (4) forest, (5) parish, (6) liberty, and (7) borough-town. (An honour is composed of several manors, or a principal manor exercising jurisdiction over subordinate manors, the honour-court supplanting the several manor-courts. Wills were formerly filed in the honour-courts. The Yorkshire Archæological & Topographical Journal, vol. 10, p. 444, states that the wills in the Honour Court of Knaresborough, from 1640 to 1858, have been transferred to the Wakefield District of Her Majesty's Court of Probate). From Allen's History (vol. III, p. 395 et seq.) and

Delaware, the counties are divided into hundreds as in England, and the term township not used. In this country we have nothing to correspond with the English township idea. Parishes have no status in the civil scheme here; where they exist they are the private limits of jurisdiction of the several churches. But in some states, formerly French territory, as Louisiana, parishes take the place of counties.

1 See Lewis's description of Knaresborough, above, which was partly in the liberty of St. Peter's, East Riding, and partly in the wapentake of Claro, West Riding; and compare Allen, who places the town in three separate liberties, those of St. Peter, York and Knaresborough. Pepys's Diary (April 7, 1669), mentions a case at law as to "whether the Temple be within the liberty of the City or no (London); inferring uncertainty as to limits.

The term liberty is familiar to students of early Philadelphia local history, as applied to lands ("the liberty lands'' or "liberties of Philadelphia") laid out immediately surrounding the city proper, but not included in it, nor in the townships composing the rest of the county. The liberties in Yorkshire were somewhat, but not altogether the same, for we have not only the liberty of Knaresborough, a town, and that of York, a city, but the liberty of St. Peter's, a church, and the "Forest liberty."

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