Richard Frankland (tutor)

Frankland, like Oliver Heywood, received lasting impressions from the preaching of Samuel Hammond, lecturer (till 1652) at St. Giles'.

'Discouragements' led him to remove to a chaplaincy at Ellenthorp Hall, near Boroughbridge, West Yorkshire, in the family of John Brook (d 1693), twice lord mayor of York, and a strong presbyterian.

Efforts were being made by the nonconformists of the north to secure the educational advantages offered for a short time by the Durham College.

William Pell, who had been a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a tutor at Durham, declined to start an academical institution, holding himself precluded by his graduation oath from resuming collegiate lectures outside the ancient universities.

Frankland, in the divine name, enjoined Charles 'to reform your life, your family, your kingdom, and the church,' adding an impressive warning.

His first student was George, youngest son of Sir Thomas Liddell, bart., of Ravensworth Castle, Durham, head of a family distinguished for its loyalty, though marked by puritan leanings.

It was not till the indulgence of 1672, from which Stillingfleet dates the presbyterian separation, that divinity students connected with that body were sent to Rathmell, and the earliest nonconformist 'academy' (as distinct from a mere school) became an important institution and the model of others.

The ministry of dissent in the north of England was chiefly recruited from Frankland's academy, as the ejected of 1662 gradually died out.

In consequence of the indulgence, Frankland had begun to preach at Rathmell, and though 'no very taking' preacher, his solid discourses gained him a call from a congregation in Westmoreland.

He met with considerable opposition, but the first definite reference to proceedings against him occurs in a manuscript notebook of Oliver Heywood, under date 29 May 1681.

He transferred his academy to Calton Hall, the seat of the Lamberts, in the parish of Kirkby Malham, West Yorkshire, and in 1684 to Dawson Fold in Westmoreland, just outside the five-miles radius from Kendal.

His pupil Timothy Jollie, independent minister at Sheffield, began another academy at Attercliffe on a more restricted principle than Frankland's, excluding mathematics 'as tending to scepticism.

But while the Toleration Act protected him as a preacher, hardly a year passed without some fresh attempt on the part of the authorities to put down his academy.

For not answering a citation to the archbishop's (Lamplugh) court he was again excommunicated; at the instance of Lord Wharton and Sir Thomas Rokeby, William III ordered his absolution, which was read in Giggleswick Church.

Soon after the consecration of Sharp as archbishop of York (5 July 1691) new alarm was excited by the assembling of twenty-four nonconformist ministers at Wakefield (2 September) to consider the 'heads of agreement' sent down from London as an irenicon (a proposition or device for securing peace) between the presbyterian and independent sections.

Tillotson evidently did not like the business, and suggested to Sharp (14 June 1692), as 'the fairest and softest way of ridding' his 'hands of' it, that he should see Frankland and explain that the objection to licensing his academy was not based upon his nonconformity.

Here, with the help of a pipe of tobacco and a glass of good wine, a very friendly interview took place in the library, Sharp courteously declining controversy and inviting confidential hints about the state of the diocese (according to Frankland in a latter to Ralph Thoresby, 6 November 1694).

From a letter of Richard Stretton, presbyterian minister at Haberdashers' Hall, London, to Thoresby, it appears that early in 1695 there was a prosecution against Frankland; on 10 February the indictment was quashed.

The tract is excessively rare; from the state of one of the two known copies, Aspland conjectures that most of the impression was accidentally destroyed; it is more probable that it had a purely local circulation.

The Letter to which it is a reply was published in 1694 (dated 10 December), and is a plea by a churchman for moderation towards unitarians; Heywood's preface suggests that it had got into the hands of Frankland's students.