Richard Frankland (tutor) - Biography - Troubles

Troubles

Frankland carried his academy with him back to Rathmell, and during the remaining nine years of his life he admitted nearly as many students as in the whole previous period of over nineteen years. His congregation also throve, and he maintained harmony among its members at a time when many were beginning to relax their hold of the Calvinism to which he himself adhered. 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. Frankland was the senior minister present, and earnestly promoted the union. Next year the clergy of Craven petitioned Sharp to suppress the academy. Sharp wrote to Tillotson for advice. 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. His school was not required in the district, and it was contrary to the bishop's oath to license public instruction in ‘university learning.’ Sharp saw Frankland after a confirmation at Skipton and invited the nonconformist to Bishopthorpe. 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). The archbishop's goodwill did not stop further proceedings. 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. In 1697 he was brought before the spiritual court, but at Michaelmas the case was postponed, apparently by the archbishop's order. Calamy states that his troubles continued till the year of his death, but no further particulars are available. Oliver Heywood's diaries are full of references to the academy and its students, and to Frankland's labours at ordinations.