MASTER OF THE GILD - MR R. Helstrip
(GILD YEAR – AGM July 2011 - AGM June 2012)

MASTER’S SPEECH TO THE FREEDOM COURT 3-10-2011

It is said that the “Price of Freedom is eternal vigilance” but I would like to paraphrase that to read “The price of the Freedom is eternal vigilance”.

Some, maybe all of you who are sitting here tonight would not be doing so if it were not for the efforts of the Gild of Freemen and an organisation known as the Freemen of England and Wales which is an association of gilds of freemen throughout England and Wales committed to ensuring, among other things, the rights of freemen are not eroded or dismissed.

A Parliamentary bill to completely reorganise local authorities in 1972 omitted all mention of freemen, and had the bill been enacted, then freemen may well have ceased to exist as legal bodies. Fortunately, however, the Freemen of England and Wales noted this omission and were able to persuade the government to make the necessary provisions.

From at least the middle of the 19 th century, the City authorities here in York did not allow the admission of women as freemen but when the York Gild was able to show that women had been admitted in certain circumstances since the 14 th century, they were at last readmitted. But there seems to be no good reason as to why they had been barred in the first place.

My father would dearly have loved to have been a freemen of his City like his ancestors but when he made enquiries, he was told that as his father had been born before his father had taken up the freedom, he could not be admitted even though his grandfather and great grandfather had been freemen, and there the matter rested.

When in a spare moment many years later I made enquiries as to whether I might be entitled, I was also told that I could not be admitted.

Some years later when I was researching my family tree and looking at the freemens rolls in the City archive I was asked by the Archivist if I was a freeman. When I told her I was not, and told her the reason why, she said that this was incorrect and that I could be a freeman. And so it proved. I claimed the freedom through my great grandfather.

The gild had researched the records and had been able to prove that it was possible to claim through ones grandfather and great grandfather. The point I am making is that if the City authorities had known what they were doing both my father and I, my sons, my sisters children and her grandchildren would have been able to become freemen. And the same must apply to a great many other people. How many people have been denied their rights through incorrect information, it is impossible to know.

And ladies and gentlemen misinformation continues to this day. In 2009 a bill was passed by Parliament that granted women in all places that admitted freemen the right to become freemen in exactly the same way as men. It also stated, and I quote ‘The son or daughter of a freeman of a city or town shall be admitted as a freeman whether born before or after the admission as a freeman of his or her parent and wherever he or she was born’.

The city Legal Department flatly refuses to admit that this law refers to York, even though it has been accepted by such places as Leicester, Carlisle, Newcastle upon Tyne, Pembroke and Norwich among many others.

Its refusal to accept that the law does refer to York like everyone else, was that the freemen had been set up in York by Royal Charter of 1272 and not by Act of Parliament. Ignoring the fact that an Act of Parliament overrules a Royal Charter, when asked to produce this Charter it was forced to admit that no such Charter existed.

So, to close I would encourage anyone here tonight who has been refused the right to claim because he or she was born before his or her parent became free and could not claim through their grandparent or great grandparent or you know of any such person, to claim their right under the terms of the 2009 Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act.

R. Helstrip

Master of the Gild of Freemen.