Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire Family History Guide
Ripon Cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of Ripon in the county of Yorkshire.
Alternative names: Minster of St Peter and St Wilfred, Ripon St Peter and St Wilfrid
Parish church: St. Peter and St. Wilfrid
Parish registers begin:
- Parish registers: 1573
- Bishop’s Transcripts: None
Nonconformists include:
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Adjacent Parishes
Parish History
See also Ripon Yorkshire Family History Guide
RIPON (St. Peter and St. Wilfrid), a city and parish, partly in the liberty of Ripon, and partly in the Lower division of the wapentake of Claro, W. riding of York; containing 15,024 inhabitants, of whom 5461 are in the town, 23 miles (N. W. by W.) from York, and 212 (N. N. W.) from London. This place, which is of considerable antiquity, is supposed to derive its name from the Latin Ripa, on account of its situation upon the bank of a river. The earliest record we find respecting it is of about the middle of the seventh century, when a monastery was founded here by Eata, abbot of Melrose in Scotland, which was subsequently given by Alfred, King of Northumbria, to Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, by whom it was greatly improved, and its church solemnly dedicated. The town at that time consisted of 30 houses; it soon began to increase in extent, and, under the fostering patronage of the monks, grew into distinction. In the ninth century it was plundered and burnt by the Danes, when so complete was the devastation, that only the remaining ruins denoted its former existence; but it regained its importance with such celerity as to be incorporated a royal borough by Alfred the Great, in 886. This prosperity did not, however, long continue. The town shared in the destruction which Edred, in suppressing the insurrections of the Northumbrian Danes, carried through that province; and it had scarcely recovered from this devastation when it suffered from the unrelenting vengeance of William the Conqueror, who, after defeating the Northumbrian rebels, in 1069, laid waste the country, and so effectually demolished this town, that it remained for some time in ruins, and at the period of the Norman survey was still desolate. The monastery, after its destruction by Edred, was rebuilt, chiefly by Oswald and his successors, archbishops of York, and was endowed and made collegiate by Archbishop Aldred.
Profiting by a period of comparative tranquillity, Ripon had again begun to revive, when it was once more exposed to the ravages of war by the progress of the Scots, under Robert Bruce, who, after exacting from the wretched inhabitants all that could be wrung from them, destroyed the town by fire. Aided, however, by donations from the Archbishop of York and the neighbouring gentry, and by the industry of the remaining inhabitants, it so rapidly recovered as to be selected by Henry IV. for the residence of his court, when driven from London by the plague. A similar calamity induced the lord president of York to remove his court hither in 1604. In 1617, James I. passed a night here on his route from Scotland to London, and was presented by the mayor with a gilt bowl and a pair of Ripon spurs; and the town was also visited by his unfortunate successor, Charles I., in 1633. In the civil war it was taken possession of and held for the parliament, by the troops under the command of Sir Thomas Mauleverer, who defaced and injured many of the monuments and ornamental parts of the church; but they were at length driven from the town by a detachment of the king’s cavalry, under Sir John Mallory, of Studley.
Parish Records
FamilySearch
See also Ripon Yorkshire Family History Guide
Administration
- County: Yorkshire
- Civil Registration District: Ripon
- Probate Court: Not Applicable
- Diocese: Post-1835 – Ripon
- Rural Deanery: Not Applicable
- Poor Law Union: Not Applicable
- Hundred: Ripon Borough
- Province: York