John Harrison (Leeds)

There is a tale that when the King was imprisoned in Leeds, Harrison called upon Charles I at Red Hall on the evening of his arrival and wished to present his Majesty with a cup of ale, which he had brought in a silver, lidded tankard.

The King accepted Harrison's hospitality, and lifting the lid of the tankard, found it filled, not with liquor, but with gold coins, "which", says one of the retailers of this story, "his Majesty did, with much celerity, hasten to secrete about his royal person".

Amongst the British Museum manuscripts is the following Memorandum, which enhances knowledge on events of that time:[1] Whereas by Ordinance of Parliament bearing date the 24th day of November, 1642, The right honble Ferdinando Ld Fairfax (or whom he should appoint Treasurer for that purpose) was enabled to engage the public faith of the Kingdom for all such Plate, Money, Armes and Horse as should be voluntarily lent or raysed for the service of the State in the Northern Counties.

That he was regarded within a short time after his death as a munificent patron of the Grammar School is proved by the fact that Ralph Thoresby speaks of him, in connection with it, as "the Grand Benefactor ... never to be mentioned without Honour, the ever famous John Harrison".

Harrison is kept in mind by his statue in City Square, but his real and abiding memorial is in his church of St. John at the head of Briggate, which he built and endowed and saw consecrated by Richard Neile, Archbishop of York, on 21 September 1634.

At the morning service the sermon was preached by John Cosin, then Archbishop's Chaplain and later Bishop of Durham; in the afternoon, by the first incumbent, Robert Todd, who was highly inclined to the Puritanical and Presbyterian notions.

Thomas Dunham Whitaker, in his Lyoidis and Elmete (1816: a revised edition of Ralph Thoresby's famous Ducatus Leodiensis), goes out of his way to pour scorn upon it, declaring that it "has all the gloom and all the obstructions of an ancient church without one vestige of its dignity and grace".