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I was driving into Ilkley the other day when the traffic came to an abrupt halt.   Nothing particularly remarkable about that, you might think, given that Ilkley can be a busy place.  On this occasion, however, there was only one car in front of me, one coming towards me, and the traffic lights were green.  Then, marching steadily out from the housing estate on my right, and continuing straight across the A65, came the reason: Mother Duck, with eight little ducklings, each barely more than a little ball of brown and yellow fluff, bobbing along behind her.

This week 470 years ago, there were riots in Devon and Cornwall. The rest of the country wasn’t very happy either. The Act of Uniformity had been passed by Parliament, requiring sole use of Thomas Cranmer’s new prayer book in all of England and Wales’ churches. The men of the southwest were fond of the popish superstitions it had sought to replace. No more were Englishmen to invoke saints at times of need, no longer was the communion wafer to be held aloft that those present might ‘adore’ it and no more would the priest heard mumbling in Latin.