Career
Thought to have been born in the West Indies, Redhead was brought up at Little Eaton, in Derbyshire. In Paris in 1792 he witnessed Louis XVI"s appearance before the convention, and was close to the Sheares brothers, and others of the so-called "British ClubW. He fell out with the British radicals over revolutionary politics, getting into disputes with John Oswald. He baulked at a clause in a proposed and defeated resolution of 11 January 1793 encouraging an English insurgency.
And as a result was denounced by the economic writer Robert Rayment.
Redhead was then the target of an arrest warrant made out by Jacques-Louis David, and left France. From this time Redhead added Yorke to his name.
On his return to England Yorke joined a radical society at Derby, which sent him in 1793 to Sheffield to assist another such society. He was arrested for the expression of revolutionary sentiments, and at the York spring assize of 1795 true bills were found against him for conspiracy, sedition, and libel.
On 23 July 1795 Yorke was tried at York before Sir Giles Rooke for conspiracy, in the absence of his co-defendants, including Joseph Gales, who had absconded.
Yorke, advocated parliamentary reform, but declared himself opposed to violence and anarchy. On 27 November 1795 he was sentenced by the King"s Bench to two years" imprisonment in Dorchester Castle, fined, and required to give sureties of good behaviour for seven years. Yorke was released in March 1798.
He was a student of the Inner Temple from 1801, and revisited France in 1802.
In 1806 he was near having a duel with Sir Francis Burdett, both parties being bound over to keep the peace. Yorke suffered periods of serious illness, and died at Chelsea on 28 January 1813.
Yorke married, in 1800, the daughter of Mr. Andrews, keeper of Dorchester Castle, and had four children.