Sykes family of Sledmere, East Riding of Yorkshire

There are two competing stories of the origins of the Sykes family. James Legard claims that the Sykes family had land in the parish of Thornhill near Leeds in the thirteenth century. However, the story with official currency is that the family may originally have been from Saxony and were settled in Sykes Dyke near Carlisle in Cumberland during the middle ages. William Sykes (c.1500-1577), a younger son of Richard Sykes of Sykes Dyke, migrated to the West Riding of Yorkshire and settled near Leeds. Here the family built up its wealth in the cloth trade (Foster, Pedigrees; Legard, The Legards, p. 191; Syme, `Sledmere Hall', p.41; Ward, East Yorkshire landed estates, p.13).

William Sykes had at least five sons, one of whom was a Catholic priest who was hanged drawn and quartered at York Castle in 1588. A younger son, Richard Sykes (c.1530-1576) helped his father build up the business in the cloth trade and his son, another Richard Sykes, was a wealthy alderman and joint lord of the manor of Leeds after purchase in 1625. He is said to have built the workhouse in Leeds and he left a vast personal fortune which included 10,000 to each of his daughters. In 1593 he married Elizabeth Mawson and they had six sons and four daughters. Two sons died in infancy and another as a young man. The older surviving sons stayed in and around Leeds. The fifth son, William Sykes (b.1605), established himself in Knottingley and married Grace Jenkinson. William Sykes died a prisoner in York Castle in 1652 leaving his wife with five sons and three daughters all under the age of twenty. In 1684 Grace, who was a quaker, followed her husband to York Castle and she died in the following year (Foster, Pedigrees; English, The great landowners; p.28; Hobson, `Sledmere and the Sykes family').

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