Abraham de la Pryme was born in 1672 at Hatfield in the Isle of Axholme to a family of Dutch extraction who had come to the Isle in the 1630s bringing their expertise in systems of land drainage to drainage proposals in the Isle. After attending St. John’s College, Cambridge he was briefly curate at Broughton but then returned home with an ambition to compile evidence for writing a history of Hatfield. However, before long he was persuaded to take-up a post of ‘reader’ at Holy Trinity church, Hull, by then an independent parish church having been released from being a chapel of ease of Hessle church early in the reign of Charles II. Having a readership was evidence of Holy Trinity’s low church preference. It is a reasonable assumption that in travelling between the Isle of Axholme and Hull Abraham crossed, and re-crossed, the Humber by the Barton to Hessle ferry; that said the land journey from Hatfield to Barton was precarious, particularly when crossing the Ferriby Sluice of the time.
Straight away Abraham decided to focus his antiquarian interests on the town and port of Hull although, when time allowed, he continued to research Hatfield’s history as well.
By April 1701 he wrote that he had ‘gathered and gotten almost all the antiquities that I can relating to this town (Hull)’ and soon he moved to Thorne (also in the Isle of Axholme) as vicar. While in Hull clearly he had access to the town’s archive collection, although where this was housed is not clear. In the Middle Ages and early modern eras Hull Corporation seems to have been careful to look after its archive collection. Abraham’s notes remained as a collection of manuscripts for three hundred years although these were studied by a number of successive local historians. Although elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1702 Abraham died the following year having lived for most of his life in one of the most unhealthy areas of England.
Although he writes of the north Humberside area from Roman times through to, and beyond, the Domesday Survey Abraham dates the development of a settlement at Hull (Myton juxta Hull) to the granting of a royal charter to the settlement by Edward I in 1299. This assumption was adopted by a number of subsequent historians such as Gent and the Rev Tickell. The previous few posts have challenged this assumption.
(to be continued).