GELDART, John (1596-1659), of All Saints, Pavement, York, and Askham Bryan, Yorks.

Geldart belonged to a family that had been established in York, trading as craftsmen and retailers, since the late fifteenth century.23York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/1, f. 292. The son of a city butcher, he acquired his freedom by patrimony as a merchant in 1620 and would emerge as one of York’s wealthiest maritime traders. He had prospered sufficiently by the late 1620s to make an acceptable son-in-law to Elias Micklethwaite, one of the city’s most senior and godly aldermen.24York City Archives, Y/FIN/1/2, Chamberlains’ acct. bk. 1619, f. 72v; VCH York, 202; Wilson, ‘York’, 262, 265, 322-5. After serving as city sheriff in 1632, Geldart became an active member of the twenty-four, and in January 1641 he was appointed to the municipal committee that drew up a petition from the corporation to Parliament ‘against episcopacy and ecclesiastical government’.25Supra, ‘York’; York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, ff. 53, 55. In January 1642, he signed a petition to the king from a group of prominent Yorkshire gentry – most of whom would become parliamentarians – protesting at the attempted arrest of the Five Members and expressing support for a ‘perfect reformation in matters of religion’.26Eg. 2546, ff. 23-4. The following month (Feb.), Geldart signed a Yorkshire petition to the Lords, asking that they work more closely with the Commons for the relief of the Protestants in Ireland.27PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55; LJ iv. 587a. He continued to attend meetings of the corporation until October 1642 – a few months before the city became a royalist garrison.28York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 76; D. Scott, ‘Politics and government in York 1640-62’, in Town and Countryside in the English Revolution ed. R.C. Richardson, 49.

In August 1644, a month after York had surrendered to Parliament, Geldart and three other leading citizens petitioned the Commons, requesting that Thomas Hoyle* be appointed mayor and that godly preachers be sent to the city.29CJ iii. 597a. Geldart and Thomas Dickinson* were among the senior office-holders who were appointed aldermen by the corporation in January 1645 following Parliament’s removal of six royalists from the municipal bench.30York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 119; Scott, ‘Politics and government’, 50-1. In March 1645, during Geldart’s first term as lord mayor of York, the corporation resolved to petition Parliament for an ordinance to pay £600 out of the sequestered capitular revenues for the maintenance of four preaching ministers in the city.31York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 129. In August, the corporation introduced measures for enforcing sabbath observance among the citizens on the grounds that the laws on such matters ‘do not, by so express words, forbid sundry profanations frequent and ordinary in this city’.32York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 149; Wilson, ‘York’, 262. Geldart was active on the York branch of the committee of the Northern Association during the later 1640s, and in the summer of 1648 he lent the corporation a considerable sum of money towards the upkeep of the city’s parliamentarian garrison.33SP28/189, pt. 2, unfol.; York City Archives, Y/ORD/4/2, E/63, f. 1 and passim; York House Bk. 36, f. 217v; Scott, ‘Politics and government’, 56. He remained active in local government under the Rump, serving diligently alongside Dickinson and Matthew Alured* on the Yorkshire sequestration commission established early in 1650.34SP28/215, pts. 4 and 5, passim; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xx), 6, 94, 126, 128, 132, 141, 152, 159, 166.

In March 1654, during his second term as lord mayor of York, Geldart signed, and almost certainly helped to organise, an address to Protector Oliver Cromwell*, expressing ‘satisfaction in the present government administered by your Highness’.35York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, f. 55v; OPH, xx. 277-9. A few weeks later, the corporation elected Major-general John Lambert* as the city’s lord high steward.36York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, f. 56. These developments, and Geldart’s appointment that August as a Cromwellian ejector, suggest that he was a firm supporter of the protectoral regime.

Geldart was returned for York to the second protectorate Parliament on 12 November 1656 after the city’s recorder, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, decided to waive his own election for the borough and to sit for Northumberland instead.37Supra, ‘York’. Geldart was named to a total of 11 committees – the majority of them relating to northern affairs, mercantile issues and measures for barring ill-affected persons from public office.38CJ vii. 461a, 470b, 483a, 516a, 516b, 538a, 539a, 542a, 545b, 557b. He also served as a teller in four divisions – of which the most politically significant was that of 20 May 1657 on whether to insert a proviso in a bill concerning the administering of the catechism that this legislation would not compel people ‘to come to the public congregation to be catechised who are, or shall be, members of Congregated churches’. Geldart and the Kent MP Ralph Weldon were majority tellers against giving this proviso a second reading.39CJ vii. 516a, 535b, 565b, 576a. Although not especially vocal on the floor of the House, he was part of a minority on the committee of trade that defended the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly against the ‘free merchants’ early in 1657.40Burton’s Diary, i. 309. Acting on the corporation’s instructions, he was instrumental in securing the passage in June of an Act for improving the navigation of the Ouse – the river that connected York and its commerce with the North Sea.41CJ vii. 516a, 575b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 304. In August, the corporation ordered that he be reimbursed for the money he had disbursed in obtaining this legislation.42York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, f. 101v.

Geldart died intestate early in 1659 and was buried at All Saints, Pavement, York, on 11 January.43Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 281. As well as his property in York, he left an estate at Askham Bryan – a few miles to the south west of the city – where he built ‘a fine house’, and at Wiganthorpe in the North Riding.44F. Drake, Eboracum, 391; Life of Marmaduke Rawdon ed. R. Davies (Cam. Soc. lxxxv), 76. After the Restoration, his widow became one of the city’s first Presbyterian dissenters.45Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 48, f. 640v; D.A. Scott, ‘Politics and Dissent and Quakerism in York, 1640-1700’ (York Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1990), 154, 166. His eldest son John, on the other hand, married a daughter of the dean of York.46Life of Marmaduke Rawdon ed. Davies, 76. Geldart was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.