John Harrison (Leeds) - Memorials

Memorials

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. An incident occurred at this consecration day which shows the peculiar temper of those times. 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. Todd made a fierce onslaught on the sermon to which he had listened in the morning. Neile immediately suspended him from his living for twelve months, and only forgave him at the direct intercession of founder Harrison and Sir Arthur Ingram. It is somewhat curious that no great beauty was attributed to St. John's in its youth nor, indeed, for a long time afterwards. 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". Such, however, is not the opinion of later experts. Mr. J. E. Morris, in his "West Riding of Yorkshire", declares Harrison's church to be "a singularly interesting example though far less pure, of course, in its architecture than Wadham College Chapel of the last, faint flickering of the Gothic spirit; it is interesting, also, as affording us, in its sumptuous fittings, a good example of the Laudian revival".