“The sole right of presentation to the incumbency of Haworth is vested in the Vicar of Bradford.  He only can present.  The funds, however, from which the clergyman’s stipend mainly proceeds, are vested in the hands of trustees, who have the power to withhold them, if a nominee is sent of whom they disapprove.  On the decease of Mr. Charnock, the Vicar first tendered the preferment to Mr. Bronte, and he went over to his expected cure.  He was told that towards himself they had no personal objection; but as a nominee of the Vicar he would not be received.  He therefore retired, with the declaration that if he could not come with the approval of the parish, his ministry could not be useful.  Upon this the attempt was made to introduce Mr. Redhead.

“When Mr. Redhead was repelled, a fresh difficulty arose.  Some one must first move towards a settlement, but a spirit being evoked which could not be allayed, action became perplexing.  The matter had to be referred to some independent arbitrator, and my father was the gentleman to whom each party turned its eye.  A meeting was convened, and the business settled by the Vicar’s conceding the choice to the trustees, and the acceptance of the Vicar’s presentation.  That choice forthwith fell on Mr. Bronte, whose promptness and prudence had won their hearts.”

In conversing on the character of the inhabitants of the West Riding with Dr. Scoresby, who had been for some time Vicar of Bradford, he alluded to certain riotous transactions which had taken place at Haworth on the presentation of the living to Mr. Redhead, and said that there had been so much in the particulars indicative of the character of the people, that he advised me to inquire into them.  I have accordingly done so, and, from the lips of some of the survivors among the actors and spectators, I have learnt the means taken to eject the nominee of the Vicar.

The previous incumbent had been the Mr. Charnock whom I have mentioned as next but one in succession to Mr. Grimshaw.  He had a long illness which rendered him unable to discharge his duties without assistance, and Mr. Redhead gave him occasional help, to the great satisfaction of the parishioners, and was highly respected by them during Mr. Charnock’s lifetime.  But the case was entirely altered when, at Mr. Charnock’s death in 1819, they conceived that the trustees had been unjustly deprived of their rights by the Vicar of Bradford, who appointed Mr. Redhead as perpetual curate.

The first Sunday he officiated, Haworth Church was filled even to the aisles; most of the people wearing the wooden clogs of the district.  But while Mr. Redhead was reading the second lesson, the whole congregation, as by one impulse, began to leave the church, making all the noise they could with clattering and clumping of clogs, till, at length, Mr. Redhead and the clerk were the only two left to continue the service.  This was bad enough, but the next Sunday