the house of his uncle, John Kitchingman of Chapel-Allerton. In his twenty-fourth year he married the daughter of Henry Marton, esq., merchant, of Leeds, but had no issue. He derived from his father a considerable fortune, most of which he applied to the purchase of land in Leeds. The annual rental, with some of the profits of his own commercial pursuits, he distributed in public charities, alienating large portions of the fee-simple for charitable purposes. The ancient free grammar school having stood in an inconvenient situation, he removed it to the existing building, which he erected in a ‘pleasant field’ of his own. The handsome cross in the market-place was erected solely at his expense. The New Street or New Kirkgate was built by him, and the rents were appropriated to pious and charitable purposes. This street is terminated by St. John's Church, the crowning monument of his beneficence. The edifice was raised entirely by himself at an immense cost; it was endowed by him with an annual revenue of 80l., and was completed in 1634, when it was consecrated by Archbishop Neile. Harrison also erected and endowed a hospital or almshouse near the church for the residence of forty decayed housekeepers.
When the town of Leeds was incorporated by Charles I in 1626, Harrison was elected the first chief magistrate, with the title of alderman; and he was again chosen to fill that office in 1634. He was also one of the eight principal persons of the town who jointly purchased the manor of Leeds from the crown in the same reign. In 1647, at the request of his friends, he printed, at Berwick, some miscellaneous pieces, among which Thoresby mentions a tract entitled ‘The Government of the Town of Leedes before it was made a Corporation’ and ‘A Letter to Baron Rigby.’ Harrison was a staunch episcopalian and royalist, and his estates were consequently sequestrated by the parliamentary commissioners at the close of the civil war. Sickness aggravated his troubles, and for more than twenty months before his death he was bedridden. He died on 29 Oct. 1656, and was interred on 8 Nov. in his own orchard, which occupied the site of the present Kirkgate market; but his remains were afterwards removed to St. John's Church, and buried under a monument of black marble, over which was placed his portrait at full length in his municipal robes. A fine engraving of the portrait, by W. Holl, from a drawing by Thomas Robinson, is in Whitaker's edition of Thoresby's ‘Ducatus Leodiensis.’ There are several other engraved portraits of Harrison.
[Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, Nos. 5016–18; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th edit. iii. 98; Musæum Thoresbyanum, ed. Whitaker, pp. 94, 119; Parsons's Hist. of Leeds; Taylor's Biog. Leodiensis, pp. 91, 652; Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, ed. Whitaker, pp. 13, 19, 27, 28, 30, 34, 55, 83, 105, 263, 265; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete, pp. 34, 61, Appendix, pp. 1, 2, 10, 13, 15, 28.]
HARRISON, JOHN (1613?–1670), presbyterian divine, son of Peter Harrison of Hindley, near Wigan, Lancashire, was born about 1613, and educated at Cambridge. After officiating for some time as curate of Walmsley Chapel, near Bolton, Lancashire, he became rector of Ashton-under-Lyne in the same county before February 1641–2, when he signed the protestation of the inhabitants as ‘minister’ of the town. Walker (Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, pt. ii. p. 244) states that he was inducted, according to the custom of the time, by a party of soldiers; but the story is doubtful. He was one of the most active members of the presbyterian party in Lancashire, as an associate of Heyrick, Angier, Gee, and Hollinworth. He attended the meetings of the Manchester Classis regularly between 1646 and 1660, often acting as moderator. In 1648 his name appears as a signer of ‘The Harmonious Consent of the Ministers of the … County Palatine of Lancaster, with the Ministers of the Province of London, in their late Testimonie to the trueth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant,’ a document directed against the toleration of independents and other ‘sectaries.’ He was imprisoned at Liverpool in September 1651 on suspicion of corresponding with the king and of being in some way implicated in Love's plot (Newcome, Autobiog. p. 33).
In 1658 a controversy about presbyterian church government arose between the Rev. Isaac Allen of Prestwich and other episcopalians and the Manchester Classis, and Harrison was deputed by that presbytery to write in their defence. The volume of papers written on both sides was published in 1659, entitled ‘The Censures of the Church Revived,’ &c., and Harrison's part was done with considerable learning and skill. In September the same year he was imprisoned with other Lancashire ministers for complicity in Sir George Booth's rising for the restoration of the monarchy, but he was leniently dealt with, and liberated in January 1659–60 (ib. p. 111). On the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 he resigned his living. The patron wished to put Harrison's son Maurice, a conformist, in his place; but the father thought the young man was unfit, and recommended
