Medieval East Anglia

MEDIEVAL EAST ANGLIA MEDIEVAL EAST ANGLIA Edited by Christopher Harper-Bill THE BOYDELL PRESS © Editor and Contri...

Author: Christopher Harper-Bill

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MEDIEVAL EAST ANGLIA


Edited by Christopher Harper-Bill

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Editor and Contributors 2005 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of the Contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2005 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 1 84383 151 1

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Medieval East Anglia / edited by Christopher Harper-Bill. p. cm. Summary: “Medieval East Anglia – one of the most significant and prosperous parts of England in the middle ages – examined through essays on its landscape, history, religion, literature, and culture” – Provided by publisher. Includes index. ISBN 1–84383–151–1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. East Anglia (England) – History. 2. Archaeology, Medieval – England – East Anglia. I. Harper-Bill, Christopher. II. Title. DA670.E14M43 2005 942.603–dc22 2005004509

Typeset by Pru Harrison, Hacheston, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire

Contents List of illustrations

vii

Preface

xi

Abbreviations

xii

Introduction

1

THE LANDSCAPE Explaining Regional Landscapes: East Anglia and the Midlands in the Middle Ages Tom Williamson

11

The Castle Landscapes of Anglo-Norman East Anglia: A regional perspective Robert Liddiard

33

Imagining the Unchanging Land: East Anglians represent their landscape, 1350–1500 Philippa Maddern

52

THE URBAN SCENE Understanding the Urban Environment: Archaeological approaches to medieval Norwich Brian Ayers

68

Lawyers and Administrators: The clerks of late thirteenth-century Norwich Elizabeth Rutledge

83

Financial Reform in Late Medieval Norwich: Evidence from an urban cartulary Penny Dunn

99

A Little Local Difficulty: Lynn and the Lancastrian usurpation Kate Parker

115

Health and Safety at Work in Late Medieval East Anglia Carole Rawcliffe

130

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS Hundreds and Leets: A survey with suggestions James Campbell

153

The Rebellion of 1075 and its Impact in East Anglia Lucy Marten

168

East Anglian Politics and Society in the Fifteenth Century: Reflections, 1956–2003 Colin Richmond

183

RELIGION Twelfth-Century East Anglian Canons: A monastic life? Terrie Colk

209

‘Leave my Virginity Alone’: The cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Norwich. In pursuit of a pragmatic piety Carole Hill

225

Swaffham Parish Church: Community building in fifteenth-century Norfolk T.A. Heslop

246

LITERARY CULTURE Battling Bishops: Late fourteenth-century episcopal masculinity admired and decried Andrea E. Oliver

272

Social Contexts of the East Anglian Saint Play: The Digby Mary Magdalene and the late medieval hospital? Theresa Coletti

287

Devotion to Drama: The N-Town Play and religious observance in fifteenth-century East Anglia Penny Granger

302

Two Travellers’ Tales Sarah Salih

318

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Illustrations Explaining Regional Landscapes Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Three maps showing Midland and East Anglian development The landscape around Thaxted, Essex, 1777 Common-edge settlement in mid Norfolk, 1797 Maps showing population and land utilisation, Domesday and c.1940 Fig. 5 Maps showing distributions of seasonally waterlogged clay soils and of ridge and furrow Fig. 6 Map showing the ratio of arable to meadow land, England 1300–49

12 15 16 22 24 29

Castle Landscapes Fig. 1 Map showing sites mentioned in the text Fig. 2 Tithe Award map, 1846, of Clare, Suffolk Fig. 3 Plan showing the landscape context of Framlingham castle, Suffolk Fig. 4 Plan of Castle Acre castle, Norfolk, showing the deviated course of the Peddars Way Fig. 5 Castle Acre from the Peddars Way

35 42 45 47 49

Health and Safety at Work Fig. 1 Map showing the location of Norwich trades

147

Hundreds and Leets Fig. 1 Maps showing the Domesday hundreds in Norfolk and Suffolk

154

‘Leave my Virginity Alone’ Plate 1 St Margaret at All Saints church, Filby Plate 2 St Margaret on the silver paten from St Margaret’s church, Felbrigg Plate 3 St Margaret with the Holy Kin on the south screen at St Helen’s church, Ranworth Plate 4 St Margaret on a screen panel at Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin

232 233 234 236

Plate 5 St Margaret on a wall painting in Norwich cathedral Plate 6 St Margaret depicted in the wall painting of St George at St Gregory’s church, Norwich Plate 7 St Margaret in a window panel at St Mary’s church, North Tuddenham

237 238 242

Swaffham Parish Church Plate 1 Plate 2 Plate 3 Plate 4 Plate 5 Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8

Shelton, nave Litcham, window Carbrooke, window North Elmham, nave Castle Acre, nave Swaffham, exterior Swaffham, interior of nave Swaffham, nave

Fig. A Norwich and Swaffham windows Fig. B Swaffham, south nave aisle

248 251 251 254 255 257 257 258 265 266

Devotion to Drama Plate 1 The Annunciation, Norwich cathedral roof boss Plate 2 The Visitation, East window of East Harling church

313 316

This volume is published with the aid of a grant from the fund established by Miss Ann Ashard Webb’s Bequest to the School of History, University of East Anglia

Preface The Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia is grounded on three principles. First, that although the Centre is now a constituent part of the School of History, it should be committed to an interdisciplinary approach to the region’s past, with due attention being paid to archaeology, art history and literary studies. Secondly, regional and local history should not descend into parochial antiquarianism, but rather should be set in the widest context of England and western Europe. This is particularly important for the medieval period, when East Anglia was one of the most prosperous regions of Latin Christendom. Thirdly, there should be vigorous interaction between the staff and students of the Centre and that wider community of archaeologists and historians, amateurs in the best sense of that word, who have over many years done so much to enhance our knowledge and understanding. The papers printed in this volume represent the bulk of the proceedings of a conference held at CEAS from 8 to 12 September 2003. The majority of the lectures were given by members of UEA, but we are particularly indebted to those scholars from other universities, in Australia and the USA as well as Britain, who responded to our invitation to speak. Among these were Dr Benjamin Thompson and Dr Mark Bailey, whose valuable contributions were not available for publication, although Dr Bailey’s paper will constitute the core of a chapter in his forthcoming book on the social and economic history of late medieval Suffolk. Many valuable comments and questions came from an enthusiastic audience which included many associate members of CEAS. Several of our distinguished visitors commented on the value of such a meeting which bridged the artificial gulf between university departments and the flourishing historical communities of the two counties. I am grateful to the Dean of the School of History, Professor John Charmley, both for his enthusiastic support for the conference and for authorising the subvention of publication costs from Miss Ann Ashard Webb’s Bequest. I received much cheerful support, moral and practical, from the secretary of CEAS, Mrs Jenni Tanimoto. I would also like to thank Dr Lucy Marten for preparing the index. As so often, I am grateful to the publishers, and particularly to Caroline Palmer, for undertaking publication and efficiently executing the task. Centre of East Anglian Studies School of History University of East Anglia

Christopher Harper-Bill

Abbreviations AgHR ANS Antiq. Journ. Arch. Journ. ASC BAA BAR Bates, Regesta BIHR BJRL BL Blomefield, Norfolk

BRUC BRUO Cal. Feudal Aids

CChR CCR CEAS CFR CIM CIPM CPL CPL, Petitions CPR CRR CYS DB DCN DNB

Agricultural History Review Anglo-Norman Studies Antiquaries Journal Archaeological Journal Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (London, 1969) British Archaeological Association British Archaeological Reports Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998) Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research Bulletin of the John Rylands Library British Library F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 11 vols (London, 1805–10) A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963) A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols (Oxford, 1957–9) Feudal Aids: Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, with other Analagous Documents, 6 vols (HMSO, 1899–1921) Calendar of Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (HMSO, 1903–27) Calendar of Close Rolls, 67 vols (HMSO, 1902–63) Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA Calendar of Fine Rolls, 22 vols (HMSO, 1911–63) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, 7 vols (HMSO, 1916–69) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analagous Documents, proceeding (HMSO, 1904– ) Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, proceeding (HMSO and Dublin, 1894– ) Petitions to the Pope, i, 1342–1419 (HMSO, 1897) Calendar of Patent Rolls, 60 vols (HMSO, 1901–74) Curia Regis Rolls . . . preserved in the Public Record Office, proceeding (HMSO, 1922– ) Canterbury and York Society Domesday Book Dean and Chapter of Norwich Dictionary of National Biography

ABBREVIATIONS

EA Arch. EcHR EETS EHR es GDB GEC HMCR Hudson and Tingey, Records JBAA JBS JEH Jocelin of Brakelond KLC LDB LPFD Medieval Norwich Monasticon, NA NCC NCR ND New DNB NRO NRS ns OED os PCC PRO PRS PSIA reg. RHS RO RRAN

RS SCH SR SROB SROI

xiii

East Anglian Archaeology Economic History Review Early English Text Society English Historical Review extra series Great Domesday Book, Library Edition, ed. A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine, 6 vols (London, 1986–92) Complete Peerage of England . . ., ed. G.E. Cockayne, new edn by V. Gibbs et al., 13 vols in 14 (London, 1910–59) Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports W. Hudson and J.C. Tingey, eds, The Records of the City of Norwich, 2 vols (Norwich, 1906–10) Journal of the British Archaeological Association Journal of British Studies Journal of Ecclesiastical History The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. H.E. Butler (London, 1949) King’s Lynn Council Little Domesday Book: A Facsimile, ed. A. Williams and G.H. Martin, 3 vols (London, 2000) Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547, 22 vols (HMSO, 1864–1932) ed. C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson (London, 2004) W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 vols in 8 (London, 1817–30) Norfolk Archaeology Norwich Consistory Court Norwich City Records Norwich Domesday Book New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) Norfolk Record Office Norfolk Record Society new series Oxford English Dictionary old, or original, series Prerogative Court of Canterbury Public Record Office Pipe Roll Society Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History register Royal Historical Society Record Office Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ed. H.W.C. Davis, C. Johnson, H.A. Cronne and R.H.C. Davis, 4 vols (Oxford, 1913–68) Rolls Series Studies in Church History Suffolk Review Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich

xiv SROL SRS ss TEAS TNA TRHS UEA VCH VE

ABBREVIATIONS

Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft Suffolk Records Society supplementary series Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society The National Archives (formerly Public Record Office) Transactions of the Royal Historical Society University of East Anglia, Norwich Victoria County History Valor Ecclesiasticus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, 6 vols (Record Commission, 1810–34)

Introduction THE PUBLICATION of this volume of essays presents an opportunity for a brief and necessarily selective survey of the progress of East Anglian medieval studies over the last quarter century, and to suggest avenues of profitable research for the future.1 The chronological limits of this conspectus are largely limited by the editor’s own knowledge to the long period from the Conquest to the eve of the Reformation, and with a few notable exceptions, it deals only with books and excludes the voluminous, and often very valuable, periodical literature, much of it published in Norfolk Archaeology and Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History. Crucial to the advance of historical knowledge is the publication of primary sources, in editions which combine the highest standards of scholarship with accessibility, which can be achieved by the provision of detailed abstracts of documents in Latin. For the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the most important source for almost every aspect of society is the huge corpus of charters, for the most part title deeds, but revealing far more than merely the transfer of properties. The pioneer in this field in East Anglia was Barbara Dodwell, who in 1985 published the second of two volumes of Norwich Cathedral Charters for the Pipe Roll Society (ns 40, 46). For Norfolk little has been done since, although an edition of the cartulary of Castle Acre priory is in progress. For Suffolk much has been accomplished in the last quarter century in the Suffolk Charters series of the Suffolk Record Society, established by the late Professor R. Allen Brown. Since 1979 the charters of ten religious houses and one lay estate have been published in seventeen volumes.2 Here the mountain of the Bury St Edmunds cartularies remains to be scaled (although all the twelfth-century charters are in print in various places).3 For Norfolk one of the most urgent tasks is the edition of the numerous cartularies and collections of original charters, which have been remarkably little exploited since the work of Blomefield. The charters of the bishops of Norwich, a crucial source for the organisation of the church and religion, are in the course of publication as part of a series which has transformed our knowledge of the church in England in the two centuries after

1 2

3

I am grateful to Brian Ayers, Robert Liddiard, Carole Rawcliffe and Sarah Salih for their contributions to this survey. Suffolk Charters (Woodbridge, 1979–2001). Volumes so far published cover Leiston abbey and Butley priory, Blythburgh priory, Stoke by Clare priory, Sibton abbey, Clare Augustinian friary, Eye priory, Bury hospitals, St Bartholomew’s Sudbury, Dodnash priory, and the Pakenham family. R.M. Thompson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (SRS 21, 1980).

2


the Conquest.4 For the later middle ages, only one of the Norwich episcopal registers has been published.5 It is unfortunate that these volumes contain almost exclusively records of institutions to livings, but there are contained therein a few more interesting entries, which if published along with the many original episcopal documents surviving in various archives would provide a useful insight into ecclesiastical administration in the two and a half centuries before the Reformation. Meanwhile, to compensate for the paucity of material in the Norwich registers, Archbishop Morton’s Canterbury register contains, in its comprehensive record of the 1499 vacancy of the see, perhaps the most detailed picture of any English diocese over a six-month period.6 A particular aspect of episcopal activity, the campaign to eradicate heresy (which may have been seen by medieval bishops and modern historians as more widespread and dangerous than it actually was) is revealed by an edition of Bishop Alnwick’s proceedings against suspected Lollards between 1428 and 1431.7 Orthodoxy, certainly, is the overwhelmingly predominant theme of the wills from the archdeaconry of Sudbury edited by Peter Northeast.8 Such documents are an extraordinarily important source for social and economic, as well as religious, history, and there is a need for further editions from other parts of the diocese; those from the prosperous little ports of North Norfolk might prove particularly interesting. One of the most important contributions to the history of late medieval monasticism in England, which has been curiously neglected in the recent surge of publications on the pre-Reformation church, is David Dymond’s splendid edition of the register of the Cluniac priory at Thetford, which again is a rich source for economic as well as religious history.9 The same may be said of Claire Noble’s calendar of the Norwich cathedral priory gardeners’ rolls and of Martin Heale’s forthcoming edition of the account rolls of Hoxne and Rumburgh priories.10 An edition of the long series of accounts of Mettingham College, which run from 1402 to 1516, would be an extremely useful undertaking.11 Among secular records published are important collections relating to Bishop’s Lynn and to the Holkham estate;12 a miscellany of selected accounts,

4

C. Harper-Bill, ed., English Episcopal Acta, 6, Norwich 1070–1214; 21, Norwich 1215–1243 (British Academy, 1990–2000); two further volumes covering 1244–1299 are in preparation. 5 P. Pobst, ed., The Register of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, 1344–1355, 2 vols (CYS 84, 90, 1996–2000). 6 C. Harper-Bill, ed., The Register of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1486–1500, iii, Norwich Sede Vacante, 1499 (CYS 89, 2000). 7 N.P. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31 (Camden 4th series 20, 1977). 8 P. Northeast, ed., Wills of the Archdeaconry of Sudbury, 1439–1474: Wills from the Register ‘Baldwyne’, i, 1439–1461 (SRS 44, 2001). 9 D. Dymond, ed., The Register of Thetford Priory, 1482–1540, 2 vols (British Academy and NRS, 1995–6). 10 C. Noble, C. Moreton and P. Rutledge, eds, Farming and Gardening in Late Medieval Norfolk (NRS 61, 1997), pp. 1–93; the Hoxne and Rumburgh accounts are fortcoming from SRS. 11 BL, Add. MSS 33985–33990. 12 D.M. Owen, ed., The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey; W. Hassall and J. Beauroy, eds, Lordship and Landscape in Norfolk, 1250–1350 (British Academy, Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales ns 9, 20, 1984–93).

INTRODUCTION

3

extents and inventories of Framlingham,13 and the Dunwich Bailiffs’ Book, which provides a fascinating insight into maritime activity.14 The rich store of information contained in the fourteenth-century court rolls of Walsham-leWillows provides a strong argument for the publication of more such series.15 Obvious desiderata are editions of the scattered charters of the East Anglian tenants-in-chief; we cannot really comprehend major dynasties such as the Bigods, the Clares and the Warennes, whose political stance was crucial to national history, until their documentation is properly presented. Another major need is the publication of some at least of the records of the general eyre in Norfolk and Suffolk,16 and also a continuation of the feet of fines beyond 1216, to replace the mere listing of names of parties provided long ago by Walter Rye.17 Great emphasis has here been placed on the importance of modern editions of medieval Latin texts. Some might question this need, in an age when manuscripts can be electronically reproduced and downloaded. They remain, however, for all but the most expert, difficult to read, with contractions of case endings which often obscure the meaning for those not at ease with Latin, while personal and place names, and often dating limits, will remain obscure. It is, moreover, a comprehensive index of both persons and places and of subjects which will reveal the full significance of any administrative record. A good edition has an almost unlimited shelf life, while some monographs, producing in ever escalating numbers to satisfy the quantitative demands of the university Research Assessment Exercise, can all too often prove ephemeral. It is incumbent upon all medieval historians who through good fortune are blessed with adequate Latinity to produce as many editions as possible, and upon the universities to provide adequate training in the language for research students, who through no fault of their own have not been taught Latin at school. If this cannot be done, we will face soon a situation in which the range of accessible sources will not expand, whereas in fact the untapped manuscript material for medieval East Anglia is almost limitless.18 Despite the caveat above, much valuable work has been published on the ecclesiastical history of the region. Tim Pestell has recently produced a perceptive study of East Anglian monasticism from its origins in the seventh century to 1216, emphasising the continuity of sites and cults over the Norman Conquest.19

13 14 15 16

M. Bailey, ed., The Bailiffs’ Minute Book of Dunwich, 1404–1430 (SRS 34, 1992). J. Ridgard, ed., Medieval Framlingham: Select Documents, 1270–1524 (SRS 27, 1985). R. Lock, ed., The Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1303–1399 (SRS 41, 45, 1998–2002). For listings, see D. Crook, Records of the General Eyre (PRO Handbook 20, 1982). It is hoped that an edition of the first surviving Suffolk eyre roll will shortly be published by the SRS. 17 For fines to 1215, see B. Dodwell, ed., Feet of Fines for the County of Norfolk (1198–1202); Feet of Fines for the County of Norfolk (1202–15) and of Suffolk (1199–1214) (PRS ns 27, 32, 1950–58); for mere listings thereafter, not always accurate, W. Rye, A Short Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Norfolk (Norwich, 1885); A Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Suffolk (Ipswich, 1900). 18 Two recent very useful archival listings are F. Meeres, Guide to the Records of Norwich Cathedral (NRO, 1998), and D. Allen, Ipswich Borough Archives, 1255–1835 (SRS 42, 2000). 19 T. Pestell, Landscape and Monastic Foundation: Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia, c. 650–1200 (Woodbridge, 2004).

4


The architectural history of Norwich cathedral has been expertly treated by Eric Fernie, with a complementary treatment, devoted especially to the use of monastic space, by Roberta Gilchrist,20 while the general history of the mother church of the diocese has been comprehensively surveyed in a collaborative volume.21 Another collection of essays treats the medieval abbey of Bury St Edmunds, although here the emphasis is predominantly architectural and artistic, and there is much more to be said, along the lines charted by Antonia Gransden.22 The study by Carole Rawcliffe of the hospital of St Giles in Norwich is a model of its kind, exploiting a remarkable archive to investigate ecclesiastical, medical and economic history.23 The nunneries of the diocese have been the subject of two recent treatments.24 The wealth of testamentary evidence provides the basis for Norman Tanner’s examination of religion in late medieval Norwich25 and, with emphasis also on architectural and artistic evidence, for Judith MiddletonStewart’s analysis of religious beliefs and aspirations in the rural deanery of Dunwich.26 In recent years the significance of guilds or fraternities as an index of the healthy state of late medieval religion has been strongly emphasised, and those of the East Anglian diocese have been perceptively analysed by Ken Farnhill.27 The brilliant, if controversial, revisionist view of English religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Eamon Duffy is crammed with East Anglian evidence.28 Relatively little has appeared on the political history of East Anglia in the central middle ages, although the way forward is indicated by short but incisive studies of the honour of Eye and of the role of ‘the Easterners’ in the opposition to King John.29 Robert Liddiard’s study of castle landscapes in Norfolk provides a valuable insight into the ethos and mentality of the Anglo-Norman baronage,30 to balance the image of majesty presented in Sandy Heslop’s reassessment of the 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30

E. Fernie, An Architectural History of Norwich Cathedral (Oxford, 1993). R. Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close (Woodbridge, 2005). I. Atherton et al., eds, Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese, 1096–1996 (London, 1996). A. Gransden, ed., Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy (BAA Conference Transactions 20, 1998); cf. Gransden, ‘Legends and Traditions concerning the Origins of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds’, EHR 100 (1985); ‘Baldwin, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds, 1065–1097’, ANS 4 (1981); ‘A Democratic Movement at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, JEH 26 (1975). C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999); see also her The Hospitals of Medieval Norwich (Norwich, 1995). R. Gilchrist and M. Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia (Norwich, 1993); M. Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1998). N.P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984). J. Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370–1547 (Woodbridge, 2001). K. Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia (York, 2001). E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion, 1400–1580 (Yale, 1992). C. Lewis, ‘The King and Eye: A Study in Anglo-Norman Politics’, EHR 103 (1989); B. Feeney, ‘The Effects of King John’s Scutages on East Anglian Subjects’, in East Anglian and Other Studies presented to Barbara Dodwell, ed. M. Barber et al. (Reading Medieval Stúdies 11, 1985). R. Liddiard, ‘Landscapes of Lordship’: Norman Castles and the Countryside in Medieval Norfolk, 1066–1200 (BAR British Series 309, 2000).

INTRODUCTION

5

architectural history of Norwich and Orford castles.31 Much can be extracted from works with a wider focus, such as the studies of the aristocracy by David Crouch and Judith Green,32 while a valuable prosopographical tool is provided by Katherine Keats-Rohan’s survey of persons named in sources from Domesday Book to the carte baronum of 1166.33 Much more has been published for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A major trend in recent historical studies of later medieval English politics has been the in-depth exploration of regional communities of gentry and nobility and their relations with government. East Anglia, with its rich archives and unrivalled Paston correspondence,34 lends itself especially well to this type of research. In a series of articles Roger Virgoe examined the political life and the gentry of the region.35 A remarkable trilogy by Colin Richmond places the Paston family, warts and all, under the historical microscope and provides an intimate account of local politics during the Wars of the Roses;36 he had previously produced a study of the Suffolk gentleman John Hopton.37 The nature of royal power during the earlier part of the fifteenth century has recently been reassessed by Helen Castor, who offers a rather different interpretation to Virgoe.38 Philippa Maddern has explored levels of crime and disorder across the region, both in town and country; much of her work concentrates on the unruly ‘fur collar criminals’ among the gentry.39 There is much of interest for the late medievalist in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s study of Tudor Suffolk.40 Many of the most important advances have been in the field of landscape history. We now have two excellent historical atlases,41 twin investigations of the origins of the shires,42 and two surveys of the landscape which include valuable syntheses of the medieval evidence.43 From these works, and from many specialised articles published over the last quarter century, we now know much more about the nature of settlement in medieval East Anglia, especially concerning 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43

T.A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994); ‘Orford Castle: Nostalgia and Sophisticated Living’, Architectural History 34 (1991). D. Crouch, The Imagery of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992); J.A Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997). K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People (Woodbridge, 1999); Domesday Descendants (Woodbridge, 2002). N. Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1971–6). Many are reprinted posthumously in R. Virgoe, Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. Barron, C. Rawcliffe and J.R. Rosenthal (Norwich, 1997), with full bibliography. C. Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase (Cambridge, 1990); The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Fastolf’s Will (Cambridge, 1996); The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings (Manchester, 2000). C. Richmond, John Hopton: A Fifteenth-Century Suffolk Gentleman (Cambridge, 1981). H. Castor, The King, the Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster, 1399–1446 (Cambridge, 2000). P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992). D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors (Oxford, 1986). P. Wade-Martins, An Historical Atlas of Norfolk (Norwich, 1993); D. Dymond and E. Martin, eds, An Historical Atlas of Suffolk, 2nd edn (Ipswich, 1999). T. Williamson, The Origins of Norfolk (Manchester, 1993); P. Warner, The Origins of Suffolk (Manchester, 1996). D. Dymond, The Norfolk Landscape (Bury St Edmunds, 1985); N. Scarfe, The Suffolk Landscape, 3rd edn (Chichester, 2002).

6


common edge drift. Landscape archaeologists have examined how and why this pattern developed in the first place and have suggested how social and economic forces were shaped by the environment to produce a highly idiosyncratic pattern of intensive settlement.44 For the later period, Bruce Campbell’s pioneering work has extended over decades and reached its fruition in a magisterial work based heavily on regional evidence.45 He has demonstrated definitively that medieval agricultural techniques were not backward and that parts of East Anglia, particularly East Norfolk, were capable of producing yields not matched elsewhere until the agricultural revolution. Campbell, together with Mark Bailey, has given us a much clearer picture of the East Anglian economy in all its diversity.46 Moreover, his article on the impact of successive fourteenth-century crises on the peasants of Coltishall provides an admirable backdrop to the events leading to the Peasants’ Revolt, which has been examined in Suffolk by Chris Dyer.47 Another noteworthy study of peasant communities is Jane Whittle’s study of the development of agrarian capitalism in Norfolk in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.48 Urban life in medieval East Anglia remains under-researched, and we await scholarly histories of Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Yarmouth, while much remains to be explored even at Lynn. The way forward may lie in collaborative volumes, such as the recently published Medieval Norwich, which brings together the work of fourteen contributors.49 There are many opportunities for further research on the cusp of documentary and landscape history.50 Currently we have little knowledge of the nature of urban hinterlands, and not only those of the regional capitals of Norwich, Ipswich and Bury. It would be interesting to examine how the multitude of market towns, spread out at almost equidistant intervals across the region, affected the nature of rural society. On a similar theme, it would be instructive to link monastic, castle and urban studies and to set them in a broader context. Was there a pattern here distinct from the rest of England? It has already been cogently argued that there was a regional style of architecture,51 and this question of distinctiveness should be explored across a wider front. Another fruitful approach might be a project on 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

51

T. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment (Macclesfield, 2003); see the references to the copious literature in his article in the present volume. B.M.S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000); see bibliography therein for his earlier publications. M. Bailey, A Marginal Economy? East Anglian Breckland in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989). B.M.S. Campbell, ‘Population Pressure, Inheritance and the Land Market in a FourteenthCentury Peasant Community’, in R. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984); C. Dyer, ‘The Rising of 1381 in Suffolk’, PSIA 36 (1980). J. Whittle, The Development of Agrarian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (Oxford, 2000). C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson, eds, Medieval Norwich (London, 2004). There are exemplars in the field of ecclesiastical history; e.g. J. Blair, ed., Minsters and Parish Churches: The Local Church in Transition, 950–1200 (Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph 17, 1988) esp. chapters 1, 12, 13; R. Morris, Churches in the Landscape (London, 1989); N. Batcock, The Ruined and Disused Churches of Norfolk (EA Arch. 51, 1991). Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep, pp. 62–4.

INTRODUCTION

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‘charters and the landscape’, combining the expertise of two distinct disciplines to investigate the evolution of the landscape in areas for which there is extensive twelfth- and thirteenth-century documentation. Such a genuine link between archaeology and written sources would be very desirable. On a wider front, the North Sea and Baltic connections of the region – cultural, social and economic – remain very much underexplored, as do the wider commercial activities of East Anglia’s international merchants. The archival deposits for the region are, in fact, so rich that in may respects the surface of an almost limitless resource has barely been skimmed. The state of archaeological research has recently been assessed within the context of an overarching Regional Research Framework, published in two parts in 1997 and 2000 and currently undergoing review.52 This framework explored both urban and rural themes, highlighting the key issues of demography, social organisation, economy, culture and religion, and environment as those where research has had significant impact and may be expected to develop further. It noted successes, such as the work on the origins of towns as exemplified in Norwich, the integrated approach to urban studies adopted in King’s Lynn, and innovative approaches to data collection in rural Norfolk through fieldwalking, extensive area excavation and collaboration with amateur metal-detectorists. It also, however, highlighted extensive lacunae in knowledge and understanding, to which the research agenda and strategy seek to direct attention A wide range of priorities has been established. Work in rural areas seeks to explore population distribution and density, as well as to investigate life expectancy and ethnic origins. Characterisation of settlement forms and functions, leading to the creation of settlement diversity models and testing, is recommended, as is work on the extent and specialisation of agricultural activity. Understanding of changes in land use, of craft production, of the impact of colonists and of the role of the church would all benefit from archaeological research.53 Similarly, in towns there is a need for intensive study of settlement patterns through time, quantification of population density and mobility, correlation of population levels with economic indicators for urban sustainability, analysis of immigration and emigration as factors in development, exploration of commercial and industrial activity, study of the development and dissemination of urban values and assessment of the social and economic impact of the church.54 Research is also developing methodologically. The advent of new technologies has coincided with more holistic approaches to historic environmental study to provide powerful tools for both data collection and analysis. An importent example is GIS (geographical information systems), the deployment of which is allowing the mapping and assessment of historic landscape character, often with 52

J. Glazebrook, ed., ‘Research and Archaeology: A Framework for the Eastern Counties’, i, ‘Resource Assessment’; ii, ‘Research, Agenda and Strategy’, EA Arch. occasional papers 3, 8 (1997–2000). 53 K. Wade, ‘Anglo-Saxon and Medieval (Rural)’, in Glazebrook, ‘Research and Archaeology’, pp. 25–6. 54 B. Ayers, ‘Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Post-Medieval (Urban)’, in Glazebrook, ‘Research and Archaeology’, ii, pp. 29–31.

8


startling results. This character assessment is being combined with more detailed study, such as historic fields survey, to reveal patterns of enclosure, adaptation and change through time which transform understanding not only of rural settlement and land usage, but also of social organisation and even the origins of polities.55 In towns, the particular challenges of the complexity of the urban environment, together with the relative richness of the historic resource, has necessitated the creation of urban archaeological databases, also GIS-based, which enable different types of evidence to be mapped, viewed and compared, revealing connections, patterns and potential. Modelling of past urban landscapes is now becoming possible, updated by new discoveries and enhanced by extant structures, preserved street alignments and data from archaeological excavation, cartography, documents, drawings and photographs. The use of such tools is supplemented by a new awareness of the potential for extracting meaning from relict landscapes and features. One example is the considerable attention now being paid to spatial analysis; another is the close examination of the processes which led to landscaped forms, townscape features and individual structures and sites. The potential of scientific data also continues to grow, increasing understanding of chronology, environmental change, agricultural and industrial processes, domestic life and the consequences of dense social interaction. Archaeological research is now moving rapidly from a concentration upon points within the landscape towards the addressing of more comprehensive questions: who are we, where did we come from, how have we adapted our environment, how have we survived and thrived? Turning finally to literary culture, medieval East Anglian literature is coming into critical visibility; thinking in regional terms has enabled us to see that a substantial proportion of extant literature has ties to this region. In more recent literary criticism historicised and contextualised methods of reading have revealed previously neglected texts. East Anglian material has been to the forefront of reading cultures which examine the whole range of literate practices – not only the writing, but also the commissioning, translating, exchanging and illustrating of texts.56 Such approaches, enabling the study of manuscripts, patrons, readers and non-literary writings, are building up a picture of a lively and varied literary culture. The study of drama has progressed along similar lines. Traditionally, the northern civic cycles have dominated discussion of medieval drama, and the classic analyses have placed the plays in the context of civic records helpfully

55 56

E. Martin, ‘East Anglian Fields’, EA Arch. forthcoming. Important recent studies include R. Hanna, ‘Some Norfolk Women and their Books’, in J.H. McCash, ed., The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Georgia, 1996); R. Beadle, ‘Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Later Medieval Norfolk’, in F. Riddy, ed., Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge, 1991); G.M. Gibson, Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989); R. Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, 2002); S. Delaney, Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints and Society in Fifteenth-Century England: The Work of Osbern Bokenham (Oxford, 1998); G. Lester, Sir John Paston’s Grete Boke (Woodbridge, 1984).

INTRODUCTION

9

collected by Records of Early English Drama (REEDS). More recent criticism has come to recognise the unparalleled richness and diversity of medieval East Anglian drama, consisting of two (idiosyncratic) cycle plays and a clear majority of surviving single plays. Records of dramatic, festive and ceremonial activities are plentiful, but apparently unrelated to the play texts: only a few documents relating to the Norwich cycle can be connected with any extant dramatic texts. REEDS has just begun to edit the East Anglian records, and the results will no doubt enable further work. Criticism of East Anglian drama has placed it in relation to a network of non-dramatic literature, visual arts and religious practice;57 particular attention has been devoted to the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. That remarkable pair, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, feature very heavily in the modern critical landscape, most often in the context of either women’s or mystical writing.58 It is perhaps unfortunate that it is unusual for these mystics to be studied alongside other notable East Anglian literary figures such as John Lydgate, Osbert Bokenham, John Capgrave and John Metham. The sheer size of Lydgate’s canon is daunting, but much of his work has been re-edited in recent years. Critics are interested in his political addresses, post-Chaucerian hagiography and his scripts for ceremonial occasions.59 There has been a detailed and innovative analysis of Bokenham’s saints’ lives.60 Little attention has been paid recently to Capgrave, with the exception of his St Katherine, which is often mentioned in surveys of hagiography, sometimes along with Lydgate and Bokenham, creating a mini-canon of East Anglian vernacular hagiographers. Overall, study of the region’s literature and drama is on an upward curve, and here again interdisciplinary studies seem to offer the best way forward. This survey has necessarily been selective, but enough major work has been noticed to demonstrate clearly the volume of scholarship on medieval East Anglia over the last quarter century. It should also be apparent how much remains still to 57

J.C. Coldewey, ‘The Non-Cycle Plays and the East Anglian Tradition’, and A.J. Fletcher, ‘The N-Town Plays’, in R. Beadle, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge, 1994); Gibson, Theater of Devotion; T. Coletti, Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints: Theater, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2004); V.I. Scherb, Staging Faith: East Anglian Drama in the Later Middle Ages (Madison, NJ, 2001). 58 Margery has recently received more attention than Julian; see L. Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Philadelphia, 1994); A. Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (Harlow, 2002); J.H. Arnold and K.J. Lewis, eds, A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe (Cambridge, 2004). 59 J. Simpson, ‘ “Dysemol Daies and Fatal Houres”: Lydgate’s Destruction of Thebes and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale’, in H. Cooper and S. Mapstone, eds, The Long Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1997), and ‘Bulldozing the Middle Ages: The Case of John Lydgate’, in S. Copeland and D. Lawton, eds, New Medieval Literatures, 4 (Oxford, 2001); A.C. Spearing, ‘Lydgate’s Canterbury Tale: The Siege of Thebes and Fifteenth-Century Chaucerianism’, in R. Yeager, ed., FifteenthCentury Studies (New Haven, Conn., 1984); L. Patterson, ‘Making Identities in FifteenthCentury England: Henry V and John Lydgate’, in J. Cox and L. Reynolds, eds, New Historical Literary Study (Princeton, 1993); P. Strohm, ‘John Lydgate, Jacque of Holland and the Poetics of Complicity’, in D. Aers, ed., Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry (Cambridge, 2000); C. Sponsler, ‘Alien Nation: London’s Aliens and Lydgate’s Mummings for the Mercers and Goldsmiths’, in J. Cohen, ed., The Post-Colonial Middle Ages (London, 2000). 60 S. Delaney, Impolitic Bodies; C. Hilles, ‘Gender and Politics in Osbern Bokenham’s Legendary’, New Medieval Literatures 4.

10


be done, in both editorial and interpretative work. It has become increasing obvious in recent years that one of the major avenues of advance in medieval studies is through regional studies. The prosperity and population density of Norfolk and Suffolk throughout the middle ages is almost a guarantee that work on this region is of wider national, and indeed international, significance. The history of every East Anglian market town or parish church is, of course, worth studying in its own right, but local historians should avoid parochialism and be constantly aware of the wider context, of the western European economy or the development of the common religious life of Latin Christendom, which can be illuminated by their research in microcosm. Christopher Harper-Bill

Explaining Regional Landscapes: East Anglia and the Midlands in the Middle Ages Tom Williamson

Introduction HISTORIANS have long recognised that the medieval settlement patterns and field systems of ‘greater East Anglia’ – here defined as Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and the eastern parts of Hertfordshire – differed markedly from those of the Midlands (Fig. 1).1 The latter was essentially (although with notable exceptions) a ‘champion’ district: by the thirteenth century the majority of people lived in nucleated villages and farmed their land in extensive open-fields of ‘regular’ form, that is, in which holdings were evenly and sometimes very regularly spread throughout the territory of the vill, and in which one ‘field’ – a continuous area occupying a half or a third of the vill – lay fallow each year. The arable usually took up the overwhelming majority of the land: unhedged open-field strips ran all the way to the boundaries of the township and, in many districts, the only grassland was the areas of meadow which occupied the low-lying alluvial soils.2 In greater East Anglia, in contrast, a bewildering variety of agrarian arrangements could be found, all of which deviated, to varying degrees, from this familiar textbook norm.3 In most districts there was a relative abundance of woodland and wood-pasture, grazing and hedges, making for what sixteenth-century commentators described as ‘woodland’ landscapes. Only on the lighter soils extending down the western side of the region – from the ‘Good Sands’ of north-west Norfolk, through Breckland, onto the chalk scarp of south-east Cambridgeshire 1

H. Gray, English Field Systems (Cambridge, Mass., 1915); G.C. Homans, ‘The Explanation of English Regional Differences’, Past and Present 42 (1969), pp. 18–34; A.H.R. Baker and R.A. Butlin, eds, Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973); B. Roberts and S. Wrathmell, ‘Peoples of Wood and Plain: an Exploration of National and Regional Contrasts’, in D. Hooke, ed., Landscape: the Richest Historical Record (London, 2000), pp. 85–96; B. Roberts and S. Wrathmell, An Atlas of Rural Settlement in England (London, 2000). 2 The best discussions of the medieval landscapes of the Midlands are provided by D. Hall, ‘The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture: the Archaeological Fieldwork Evidence’, in T. Rowley, ed., The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture (London, 1980), pp. 22–38; idem, Medieva1 Fields (Aylesbury, 1982); idem, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire (Northamptonshire Record Society 38, Northampton, 1993). 3 M.R. Postgate, ‘Field Systems of East Anglia’, in Baker and Butlin, eds, Studies of Field Systems, pp. 281–324; D. Roden, ‘Field Systems of the Chiltern Hills and their Environs’, ibid., pp. 325–374.

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Fig. 1. The Midland areas of England were, by common consent, characterised by more nucleated patterns of settlement, more regular open-field systems, and later enclosure than the districts to the south-east or west. (a) The boundary of Gray’s ‘Midland System’ (after Gray 1915). (b) Oliver Rackham’s landscape regions (after Rackham 1986). (c) The intensity of dispersion as mapped by Brian Roberts and Stuart Wrathmell from nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps (after Roberts and Wrathmell 1998). Note the low levels of dispersion in the Midland districts of England.

and north-west Essex – could landscapes broadly analogous to those of the Midlands be found, with villages farming extensive areas of open, intermixed arable. But even here there were differences. Settlement was often poorly nucleated, with ‘villages’ resembling loose congregations of hamlets rather than the tight clusters of houses common in many Midland areas. Indeed, in Norfolk the separate identity of these distinct foci was often emphasised by the proliferation of parish churches, with places like Barton Bendish or Ringstead having two, three or even more.4 Moreover, although holdings were often spread evenly 4

T. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment (Macclesfield, 2003), pp. 84–88.

EXPLAINING REGIONAL LANDSCAPES

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through the fields, especially in Breckland, the arable usually occupied a smaller proportion of the land area than in the Midlands.5 Extensive tracts of heathland usually existed on the poorer ground, on which large sheep flocks were grazed. These were systematically folded by night on the arable, when it lay fallow or after harvest, to provide the constant flow of nutrients required to keep this light, easily-leached land in heart. Instead of two or three large ‘fields’, rotations were usually organised around discontinuous areas of fallow – fallowing was by furlong rather than field – an arrangement associated in part with the widespread institution of the fold course. Under this particular version of sheep-corn husbandry, the manure was a manorial monopoly: the tenants might benefit from the dung dropped by the sheep as they roamed over the fallows by day, or immediately after the harvest. But the intensive night-folding or ‘tathing’ was the prerogative of the manorial lord which the tenants could only enjoy in return for a cash payment.6 The sheep were organised into flocks dominated by the stock of the lord and under the care of a manorial shepherd. But because there were usually a number of manors in a vill, each had its defined ‘fold course’ which included both upland heath and arable land, each of which was, by custom, allowed to carry a certain number of sheep. Often there were only two or three courses but sometimes many more: Elveden in Suffolk had eleven, Weeting in Norfolk twelve.7 ‘Courses’ sometimes crossed parish boundaries, for manor and vill were poorly integrated in many East Anglian districts. It is often assumed that the fold course ‘system’ as described in post-medieval documents had remained largely unchanged since early medieval times but, as Mark Bailey has demonstrated, the rather rigid and exclusive arrangements there described seem to have evolved in the later middle ages from something more complex and flexible.8 Elsewhere in East Anglia – on the dissected boulder clay plateau which comprised the majority of the region, on the northern silt fens on which settlement expanded in late Saxon times, on the poor acid soils of the Suffolk Sandlings, and on the fertile loams of north-east Norfolk – in all these areas, both settlement and agrarian arrangements differed more markedly from Midland norms. Open-fields dominated the landscape almost everywhere but they were highly irregular in character, and highly variable in form. In the south and west of the region – in eastern Hertfordshire, Essex, and parts of southern Suffolk – they were most prominent and continuous on the light soils, in the major valleys cutting through the clay plateau, or towards its southern and eastern margins.9 The heavy soils of the plateau itself were characterised by smaller areas of open arable, intermixed to varying extents with enclosed fields, commons, woods and deer parks. Some measure of communal regulation was often applied to both enclosed and open

5 6 7 8 9

M. Bailey, A Marginal Economy? East Anglian Breckland in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989); M.R. Postgate, ‘The Field Systems of Breckland’, AgHR 10 (1962), pp. 80–101. K.J. Allison, ‘The Sheep-Corn Husbandry of Norfolk in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, AgHR 5 (1957), pp. 12–30. Postgate, ‘Field Systems of East Anglia’, p. 315. Bailey, Marginal Economy, pp. 43–5. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes, pp. 101–9.

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arable, but cropping was generally flexible in comparison to Midland practice and fallowing was usually by individual furlongs rather than by fields.10 To the north and east – in northern and north-eastern Suffolk, and across most of Norfolk – open fields generally occupied a much greater area of land, often extending across the territory of the vill regardless of soil type, leaving only areas of common land unploughed. Holdings were seldom evenly scattered and the arable was rarely, if ever, divided for fallowing into two or three continuous ‘fields’. In consequence, field nomenclature was often highly complex. In Hemsby in north-east Norfolk, for example, thirteenth-century surveys make no mention of ‘fields’ as such, but instead record the location of strips in terms of no less than 100 divisions of which the largest covered less than 30 acres.11 On the more fertile soils, most notably in north-east Norfolk, virtually no communal controls were maintained over farming. Cultivators planted what and when they wanted, and even fallowing was a matter for informal agreement between neighbours – when it happened at all, for by the thirteenth century the adoption of a number of innovations, including the widespread cultivation of legumes, had often removed the need for year-long fallows altogether.12 Elsewhere the situation was more complex. Where open fields were of limited extent and intermixed with land held in severalty, regulation might be largely limited to the organisation of fallowing and communal grazing. But where – on the lighter clays of central Norfolk, or in the Sandlings – they were extensive, more detailed controls were often enforced, sometimes involving ‘fold courses’ of the kind we have already met on the light lands to the west. All these various forms of ‘irregular’ field system – and I have, of necessity, greatly oversimplified the complex reality of medieval agrarian arrangements – were associated with settlement patterns which similarly varied but which were everywhere more dispersed than in the Midlands. Variations largely mirrored those in field systems. In southern and western Suffolk, Essex and east Hertfordshire, small nucleations associated with hall/church complexes, and hamlets bearing Old English names and often appearing as distinct vills in Domesday Book, were located beside the more extensive areas of open field on the valley sides. Particular fields were often associated by name with an adjacent hamlet: in Elmdon in north Essex the hamlet of Lea lay on the clay plateau above Lea Field while in Arkesden, even at the time of enclosure, Minchins Field bore the old medieval names of the settlement known for centuries as Becketts, and in Chrishall the field book of 1597 shows that the inhabitants of Buildings End held much of their land in the adjacent ten-acre common field called ‘Bilden Hill Feylde als Bulls Herne’.13 On the heavier soils lying between these ribbons of lighter land a mixture of ring-fence farms and small hamlets, often grouped around diminutive greens, could be found (Fig. 2). To the north and east, in 10 11

Roden, ‘Field Systems of the Chilterns’, pp. 343–4. B.M.S. Campbell, ‘The Extent and Layout of Commonfields in East Norfolk’, NA 28 (1981), pp. 5–32. 12 B.M.S. Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress in Medieval England: Some Evidence from East Norfolk’, EcHR 2nd series 36 (1983), pp. 26–46. 13 Essex RO: Q/RDc26; D/Dyo1; Vm 20, fol. 18.

Fig. 2. The landscape around Thaxted in Essex, as depicted by Chapman and André in 1777. Typical Essex boulder clay countryside, with some large nucleations of settlement like Great Bardfield or Thaxted in the main river valleys, and a scatter of isolated farms, some located beside small greens, on the surrounding clay plateau.


15

Fig. 3. Common-edge settlements in mid Norfolk, as shown on William Faden’s county map of 1797. Most of the commons shown were enclosed by parliamentary act during the following twenty-five years.

16 TOM WILLIAMSON


17

contrast – in Norfolk, and across much of northern and eastern Suffolk – parish churches often stood peripheral to, or quite isolated from, the principal areas of settlement. These were clustered around areas of common land which were usually much more extensive than the small greens and ‘tyes’ found to the south. They occupied damp, peaty areas in the floors of major valleys or – in clayland districts – slightly concave depressions in the plateau surface (Fig. 3). Traditional explanations and their problems How should we explain the differences between the champion Midlands, and the more complex landscapes of East Anglia? To an earlier generation, they were the consequence of ‘ethnic’ factors – that is, they reflected the social habits and agrarian practices of Dark Age settlers. For George Casper Homans, East Anglia’s idiosyncrasies were thus the consequence of Friesian settlement;14 while to Howard Gray they were the consequence of Romano-British survival, mediated to varying degrees by the effects of Scandinavian settlement – in contrast to the Midland counties in which the dominance of the ‘Midland System’ reflected the ‘thorough Germanisation’ of this part of England in the course of the fifth century.15 But there are many problems with these views, not least the facts that – as numerous archaeological surveys carried out over the last three decades have confirmed – nucleated villages in the Midlands were not introduced in the fifth and sixth centuries, but instead developed in the course of the Middle and Later Saxon periods; while the main differences between East Anglia and the Midlands, in terms of settlement at least, seem to have developed even later, in the period between c.1000 and 1200. In all regions of England the immediate post-Roman period saw a marked contraction of settlement, with in particular a retreat from areas of heavier soil. Early Saxon settlement continued to display the essentially dispersed appearance characteristic of the Roman period, but it was also highly mobile, with settlements changing site every generation or so, drifting slowly around the landscape.16 At Witton in north-east Norfolk, for example, eight Romano-British settlements were discovered through fieldwalking, but only four areas of early Saxon occupation; through limited excavation and intensive surface collection it was possible to establish that only one of these sites – the largest – was in use throughout the fifth and sixth centuries. Of the others, one was occupied in the fifth century, one in the sixth, and the third could not be dated accurately.17 At West Stow in Suffolk a spread of settlement covering some 1.8 hectares was

14 15 16

Homans, ‘The Explanation of English Regional Differences’. Gray, English Field Systems, p. 415. C. Arnold and P. Wardle, ‘Early Medieval Settlement Patterns in England’, Medieval Archaeology 25 (1981), pp. 145–9; G. Foard, ‘Systematic Fieldwalking and the Investigation of Saxon Settlement in Northamptonshire’, World Archaeology 9 (1978), pp. 357–74; H. Hamerow, ‘Settlement Mobility and the “Middle Saxon Shift”: Rural Settlements and Settlement Patterns in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991), pp. 1–17. 17 K. Wade, ‘The Early Anglo-Saxon Period’, in A.J. Lawson, ed., The Archaeology of Witton, near North Walsham, Norfolk (EA Arch. 18, Dereham, 1983), pp. 50–69.

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shown, by careful phasing, to have resulted from the gradual eastward movement of three ‘halls’, and associated sunken-featured buildings – probably the residences of three family groups. Each ‘hall’ was rebuilt twice during the period the site was occupied, from the early fifth century to the early eighth, when the area was finally abandoned.18 In all areas – in East Anglia and the Midlands alike – the eighth and ninth centuries were characterised by increasing stability of settlement and, in some places, by the development of sizeable nucleations. Middle Saxon settlements were generally located close to what are now parish churches or – in parts of Hertfordshire and Essex especially – other early manorial foci.19 The principal regional variations in settlement with which we are here concerned seem to have developed rather later – in the period after c.1000. In the Midlands, existing settlements generally expanded in situ as population rose during late Saxon times, often gaining planned additions and sometimes being subject to comprehensive re-planning. But in East Anglia, settlement became increasingly dispersed. In Norfolk, and in adjacent areas of northern and eastern Suffolk, the settlements clustered around parish churches began to break up, and farms and cottages drifted away to the edges of greens and commons. Although Peter Warner’s suggestion that this process had started in north-east Suffolk as early as the ninth century does not appear to be supported by the available archaeological data, a number of field surveys – most notably, Andrew Rogerson’s study of Fransham in Norfolk – leave little doubt that this process had begun before the Conquest.20 Here two large, nucleated late Saxon settlements – associated with the parish churches of Great and Little Fransham – were supplemented by a further sixteen small sites (presumably single farmsteads), twelve of which were certainly and two very probably on common edges. Around 1100, the nucleated settlements were themselves abandoned, leaving their churches isolated within the fields. The move to the commons seems to have accelerated in the post-Conquest period, and by the thirteenth century the majority of farms and cottages in northern and eastern East Anglia lay beside a green or common, or on the roads leading to one. Some, it is true, remained close to parish churches, or manorial halls, but the importance of common-edge settlement was unquestionably the most distinctive feature of the medieval landscape of the region. Towards the south and west of the region late Saxon settlement was already noticeably more dispersed than in the Midlands, with hamlets scattered along the principal valleys, probably already associated with areas of open arable.21 But in 18 19

S. West, West Stow: the Anglo-Saxon Village, vol. 1 (EA Arch. 24, Ipswich, 1985), pp. 151–2. T. Williamson, ‘The Development of Settlement in North West Essex: the Results of a Recent Field Survey’, Essex Archaeology and History 17 (1986), pp. 120–32. 20 A. Davison, The Evolution of Settlement in three Parishes in South East Norfolk (EA Arch. 49, Dereham, 1990); A. Davison, ‘The Field Archaeology of Bodney, and the Stanta Extension’, NA 42 (1994), pp. 57–79; A. Davison and B. Cushion, ‘The Archaeology of the Hargham Estate’, NA 53 (1999), pp. 257–74; A. Rogerson, ‘Fransham: an Archaeological and Historical Study of a Parish on the Norfolk Boulder Clay’ (unpublished PhD thesis, CEAS, 1995); P. Wade-Martins, Village Sites in the Launditch Hundred (EA Arch. 10, Dereham, 1980); P. Warner, Greens, Commons and Clayland Colonisation (Leicester, 1987). 21 Williamson, ‘The Development of Settlement in North West Essex’, p. 129.


19

post-Conquest times numerous new settlements were established on the clay plateaux between them. Some of these new farms stood alone, within their own fields, but others were clustered around green and ‘tyes’ much smaller than the commons found in northern East Anglia. Here, however, there was no wholesale migration to common edges, and churches were, and still are, usually associated with a village or hamlet: dispersion represented an addition to, rather than a replacement of, an existing settlement pattern. Moreover, the margins of green and tyes seem to have been settled slightly later than the larger commons in the north – usually after c.1100 – and often by comparatively low-status farms – moated sites are seldom found beside them.22 In this region, green-edge settlement appears more as a form of ‘overspill’ from the old-established sites in major valleys, socially distinct from most of the ring-fence farms of the surrounding plateau.23 We do not know how far the development of field systems mirrored that of settlement patterns. In the Midlands, ‘regular’ open fields may have been laid out as early as the eighth or ninth centuries, as settlement became more stable and nucleated; but most probably developed in increasingly regular form during later Saxon times – paralleling the replanning to which many villages appear to have experienced.24 If East Anglian field systems had ever displayed regular, ‘Midland’, characteristics then these were comprehensively lost in the course of the later Saxon period, as settlement expanded and drifted across the landscape. Variations in settlement and field systems, both between the Midlands and greater East Anglia, and within the latter region, thus developed during late Saxon times. They were not the consequence of the differing social practices of Dark Age settlers. Partly because of this evidence, but also because of changing fashions in historical explanation, most modern researchers would now argue that variations in the medieval rural landscape were the consequence of more definable social and economic factors, most emphasising the importance of differences in demographic pressure in the later Saxon and early medieval periods. According to ideas originally advanced in the 1960s by the historian Joan Thirsk, rising population was the key factor in the emergence of Midland open fields. Demographic expansion led to the disintegration of holdings and the emergence of a landscape of intermingled strips through the combined effects of partible inheritance and assarting, and to the contraction of reserves of pasture and a crisis in grazing. As pasture dwindled farmers were obliged to make more intensive use of the marginal grazing offered by the aftermath of the harvest, and by the fallows. But where lands lay intermingled in unhedged strips, it was hard to maximise the potential of these resources unless neighbouring cultivators timed their

22

E. Martin, ‘Greens, Commons and Tyes in Suffolk’, in A. Longcroft and R. Joby, eds, East Anglian Studies: Essays presented to J.C. Barringer (Norwich, 1995), pp. 167–78; E. Martin, ‘Rural Settlement Patterns in Medieval Suffolk’, Annual Report of the Medieval Settlement Research Group 15 (2001), pp. 5–7. 23 T. Williamson, The Origins of Hertfordshire (Manchester, 1990), pp. 185–7. 24 T. Brown and G. Foard, ‘The Saxon Landscape: a Regional Perspective’, in P. Everson and T. Williamson, eds, The Archaeology of Landscape: Studies presented to Christopher Taylor (Manchester, 1978), pp. 67–94.

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operations in concert. It would be difficult for one farmer to graze his strips as they lay fallow, if adjacent lands were still under crops. Farmers were thus drawn inexorably into increased co-operation, a process which culminated in the institution of a continuous fallowing sector which occupied a half, or a third, of the land of the village.25 The most recent version of this theory is that proposed in 1997 by Christopher Dyer, Carenza Lewis and Patrick Mitchell-Fox, who argued that subdivision and intermixture of holdings through inheritance and exchange, and dwindling supplies of pasture, together led to a crisis in farming and recurrent disputes amongst cultivators. A peaceful option for a long-term resolution of their difficulties involved the inhabitants reorganising their numerous farms and hamlets into common fields where the problems of competition would be minimised. The animals of the whole community were pastured together on the land which lay fallow or awaited spring cultivation. The land was subject to a cycle of fallowing which gave it a chance to recover some fertility.26

But a number of scholars – starting with Bruce Campbell in the 1980s – have questioned whether population pressure alone would have been enough to bring about such a drastic change in the landscape, arguing that peasant farmers would not in themselves have been able to bring about changes in landholding of sufficient magnitude. For this, the hand of lordship was required, if only to ‘hold the ring’, and act as arbiter of the new dispensation: ‘strong and undivided lordship would have been most favourable to the functional development of the commonfield system’.27 The emergence of open fields and nucleated settlements in the middle and later Saxon period would fit in well with the views of many scholars regarding the disintegration of large estates and the emergence of local, territorial lordship.28 Local lords would have been keen to improve the efficiency of peasant agriculture, for upon its health the viability of their own home farms – demesnes – depended. The corollary of these views, of course, is that where ‘regular’ open fields failed to emerge it was because population growth or strong lordship were lacking: areas like Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex or Hertfordshire were areas of sparse (or late) settlement, weak manorialisation, or both. Yet while these arguments are frequently repeated, there is remarkably little evidence to support them. In the late Saxon period, when the main regional differences seem to have been emerging, East Anglia, Essex and east Hertfordshire were – together with ‘champion’ Lincolnshire – the most densely settled areas in the whole of England. This was

25

J. Thirsk, ‘The Common Fields’, Past and Present 29 (1964), pp. 3–29; idem, ‘The Origins of the Common Fields’, Past and Present 33 (1966), pp. 142–7; H.S.A. Fox, ‘Approaches to the Adoption of the Midland System’, in T. Rowley, ed., The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture (London, 1981), pp. 64–111. 26 C. Lewis, P. Mitchell-Fox, and C. Dyer, Village, Hamlet and Field: Changing Medieval Settlements in Midland England (Manchester, 1997), p. 199. 27 B.M.S. Campbell, ‘Commonfield Origins – the Regional Dimension’, in T. Rowley, ed., The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture (London, 1981), pp. 112–29. 28 R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (Leicester, 1997).


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probably because of environmental circumstances – the relatively dry climate which today ensures that these same districts represent the principal grainproducing region of England. In early medieval times relatively high yields, and dependable harvests, presumably allowed a sustained increase in population, in contrast to the situation in many central and western areas where yields were lower and periodic harvest failures tended to check demographic expansion. Indeed, a comparison of population densities at the time of Domesday with the pattern of arable land use mapped in the 1940s by the Land Utilisation Survey shows a remarkably close correlation (Fig. 4). It might be thought that we would be on safer ground arguing that variations in tenurial organisation was the key factor in the emergence of regional differences, for Suffolk and Norfolk were, after all, the most notoriously ‘free’ areas in medieval England, and at the time of Domesday were characterised by a high density of multi-manorial vills and, in particular, a high density of freemen and sokemen. But these circumstances – again, almost certainly the consequence of a climate ideal for cultivating cereals (reliable harvests retarded the decline of free peasants into debt) – were also shared with ‘champion’ Lincolnshire (Fig. 4), while, more importantly, southern parts of East Anglia – Essex and east Hertfordshire – were often highly manorialised. Indeed, by the thirteenth century many of the vills in these districts were characterised by manors with particularly large demesnes, of 300 or more sown acres, which were heavily dependent on labour services.29 Areas like Hertfordshire or Essex are often seen by historians as districts of ‘late settlement’ because Domesday records substantial quantities of woodland within them.30 But large areas of woodland did not, evidently, preclude the existence in these same areas of populations as dense as those in champion Midland counties, where woodland had often been completely cleared by the time of the Conquest. Indeed, what is particularly intriguing is that the variations in population density recorded by Domesday, and which were maintained throughout the medieval period, appear to have been very poorly correlated with the extent of arable on the one hand, and of woodland and pasture on the other. Northern East Anglia thus retained vast areas of unploughed common land into the eighteenth century, but was nevertheless always a more densely populated district than, say, Northamptonshire, where ploughlands generally extended without interruption to the very boundaries of vills. A high proportion of arable land did not, in other words, necessarily mean a dense population.31 If neither demographic factors nor tenurial ones are sufficient to explain the broad regional variations in landscape and settlement with which we are here concerned, it seems reasonable to seek answers elsewhere – in the natural environment, and in the various farming systems this engendered. Modern historians have neglected such mundane factors, but some earlier researchers saw them as crucial in moulding the medieval landscape and, in particular, in the genesis of open fields. Frederick Seebohm in his English Village Community of 1890 thus 29 30

B.M.S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 86. A view repeated from W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (London, 1955), pp. 86–94; to Roberts and Wrathmell, ‘Peoples of Wood and Plain’ (2000). 31 For a fuller discussion of this point see Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes, pp. 52–61.

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Fig. 4. Top left, Domesday population in England, showing recorded individuals per square mile (after Darby 1977); top right, freemen and sokemen as a proportion of the recorded Domesday population in England (after Darby 1977); left, the distribution of arable land in England c.1940, as mapped by the Land Utilisation Survey (after Stamp 1950).

placed at the centre of his interpretation the practice of co-aration, or joint ploughing. He believed that the large, eight-ox plough was a piece of equipment too large and too costly to be owned in its entirety by individual villagers. They therefore jointly contributed animals to the team and, perhaps, parts to the plough itself, and the arable was shared between them, in strips, in portions which were originally re-allotted each year but which were eventually attached permanently to particular farms.32 The importance of joint ploughing was further emphasised by the Orwins in their book The Open Fields, published in 1938, as part of their more general concentration on practical agrarian factors, and on the necessity for close co-operation amongst farmers in an insecure environment.33 They argued that, because individual farmers were unable to maintain, all the year round, eight ploughing oxen – or could afford the luxury of their own individual plough – they were obliged to combine with their neighbours, supplying parts and beasts to a

32 33

F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (London, 1890), pp. 120–2. C.S. Orwin and C.S. Orwin, The Open Fields (Oxford, 1938), pp. 37–44.


23

shared plough and team. Ease of organisation encouraged joint ploughers to live in close proximity, in nucleated villages. And the equal contribution which each made to the plough was reflected in the equal distribution of their holdings across the landscape, on good and bad, near and distant, land.34 Some historians have doubted whether early medieval peasants really used eight-ox teams to pull their ploughs, in the way these theories assume, but recent reviews of the evidence by Langdon and Hill strongly suggest that, by late Saxon times, heavy ploughs pulled by eight oxen were indeed usual, at least on the kind of heavy clay soils which characterise much of the area under discussion here.35 More importantly, the suggested link between co-aration and ‘champion’ landscapes has been criticised on the not unreasonable grounds that Domesday implies that eight-ox teams – and therefore, presumably, the practice of co-aration – were found throughout England. Why, then, did regular open fields, and nucleated villages, only become the usual mode of agrarian organisation in some districts and not in others? Moreover, as Homans pointed out in the 1950s, farmers could surely share teams, and ploughs, without farming their land in intermingled strips: or living, cheek-by-jowl, in tightly clustered settlements. It was, in his words, ‘a matter of indifference whether a villager had his land as a single parcel or in scattered strips’, a view supported by a number of subsequent writers.36 Farming and the environment: clay soils and co-aration However, these objections fail to acknowledge the possibility that there were circumstances in which the speedy assembly of ploughteams was particularly advantageous to farmers or demesne managers: where the time available to plough the land might be especially short and where, in consequence, a nucleated rather than scattered pattern of settlement might have been necessary, or preferred. The majority of the ‘upland’ area of the Midlands and East Anglia – outside the peat basin of the fens which remained unreclaimed until post-medieval times – is occupied by fertile or moderately fertile clay soils. Indeed, the way in which ‘woodland’ and ‘champion’ landscapes can be found to equal extents on such soils – rather than the former being restricted to acid, clay soils of low fertility, which dominate much of the Home Counties (Fig. 5) – has always presented a problem to those seeking an environmental explanation for variations in the medieval landscape.37 But on closer inspection it soon becomes evident that these clay soils display considerable variation, in structure and

34

Seebohm, English Village Community, pp. 105–25; Orwin and Orwin, The Open Fields, pp. 12–14, 51–2. 35 D. Hill, ‘Sulh – the Anglo-Saxon Plough c.1000 AD’, Landscape History 22 (2000), pp. 7–19; J. Langdon, Horses, Oxen, and Technological Innovation (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 26–66. 36 G.C. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), p. 81; R. Dodgshon, The Origins of British Field Systems: an Interpretation (London, 1979), pp. 31–3. 37 The cause of an earlier, and misguided, excursion into this debate by the present author: T. Williamson, ‘Explaining Regional Landscapes: Woodland and Champion in the South and East of England’, Landscape History 10 (1988), pp. 5–13.

Fig. 5A: the distribution of seasonally waterlogged clay soils, which are seriously affected by compaction and puddling, in East Anglia and the east Midlands.

24 TOM WILLIAMSON

Fig. 5B: the distribution of ridge and furrow in the study area in 1946.


25

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mineral content, variations which are further compounded by significant differences in climate. All suffer, to varying extents, from seasonal waterlogging, and it is this feature which is usually emphasised by historians. But another problem with such soils – one which would have been particularly severe before the advent of the internal combustion engine and under drains – is their tendency to puddle when wet: that is, to form a sticky mass which adheres to ploughs, harrows and other implements, and which dries to a hard, brick-like mass. Where soils are most prone to this tendency they can be almost impossible to cultivate with the kinds of technology available to medieval farmers. Such soils therefore require particularly careful, and carefully timed, cultivation. The aim of the farmer is to encourage flocculation: that is, to get the microscopic particles of clay to coalesce together in larger grains. When this happens the clay is more easily worked, drains better, allows air to get down into it (an essential condition for plant growth), and allows the roots of the plant to penetrate it more easily.38

Exposure to air and frost, incorporation of humus, and improved drainage all encourage the process. Conversely, working clay soils when wet encourages puddling: ‘Clay must be ploughed or dug when in exactly the right condition of humidity, and left strictly alone when wet’.39 There is, in this respect, an important difference between pelo and non-pelo soils. The former are clayey throughout, the latter have upper horizons which are loamy or silty above an impermeable or slowly permeable lower level: the former are much more prone to coalesce into a sticky, intractable mess, and much less ready to flocculate. Pelo soils, and especially the seasonally-waterlogged pelostagnogleys, were the real challenge for the medieval farmer. When we consider the distribution of different kinds of clay soil we immediately see a crucial distinction between the Midlands and the east. Large areas of the Midlands are dominated by soils of the Denchworth Association.40 These are particularly prone to puddling and compaction: Even with drainage improvements there is little opportunity to work the land in spring … Because the topsoil takes a long time to dry out, timing of cultivations is critical and measures to reduce ground pressure, such as cage wheels, are desirable to protect against structural damage.41

Even with modern underdrainage, the number of days on which such soils can be worked without serious damage is around forty-four in autumn in a normal year, and no more than four in the spring, falling in a wet year (one year in four on average) to fourteen and zero respectively.42 It is hard to relate such figures to the 38 39 40

J. Seymour, The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (London, 1975), p. 14. Ibid. C. Hodge, R. Burton, W. Corbett, R. Evans and R. Scale, Soils and their Uses in Eastern England (Harpenden, 1984), pp. 155–8. 41 Ibid., pp. 157–8. 42 Ibid., p. 158.


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medieval situation but there is little doubt that the period of working would have been similarly restricted: ploughs pulled by oxen, even the heavy wheeled plough adopted in late Saxon times, may have caused less compaction than modern tractors and ploughs, but on the other hand the absence of under drains would have increased the problem of surface waterlogging, and hence compaction, considerably. Also prominent in the Midlands are soils of the Ragdale Association, pelostagnogleys which are ‘difficult to cultivate because of their slowly permeable clayey and fine loamy horizons’. More importantly: When cultivations are carried out under wet conditions, the resulting structural damage reduces the already low porosity and causes prolonged waterlogging, often to the soil surface, and the death or retardation of seedlings due to lack of oxygen.43

The period of time available for cultivation is, once again, often severely restricted, particularly as the majority of such soils occur towards the west of the region, in areas of relatively high rainfall. Less important in the Midlands, but locally significant, are a number of pelosols – such as the Evesham 1, 2 and 3 Associations – which, while less prone to waterlogging (and more calcareous) than the pelostagnogleys just discussed, contain component soil series which ‘are sticky and plastic when wet and harden quickly on drying’.44 These various problem soils – the principal pelostagnogleys, and certain pelosols –are largely confined to the Midlands (Fig. 5). In greater East Anglia, in contrast, clay soils are generally of the non-pelo variety. Soils of the Beccles and Burlingham Association, while often subject to seasonal waterlogging, are much less prone to compaction and puddling, partly because of their mineral character but also (though to a lesser extent) because of the drier climate. Large areas of Hertfordshire and Essex are, it is true, occupied by the pelosols of the Hanslope Association but, largely calcareous in character, these are less prone to puddling and compaction than the various Midland stagnogleys. This broad distinction between the character of the clay soils found in the Midlands and in East Anglia is to some extent mirrored in the regional patterns of land use which emerged as a nationally integrated economy developed in the course of the post-medieval period. The Midland clays were progressively laid to grass, the high ploughing costs making them uncompetitive with arable areas to the east, thus preserving under grass the ridge and furrow, marking the former plough ridges of the open fields, which was such a characteristic feature of the landscape until post-War agricultural intensification (Fig. 5). Greater East Anglia, in contrast, became the bread-basket of England (Fig. 4).45 The recognition that classic ‘champion’ clayland landscapes were closely correlated with areas in which relatively few days were available for cultivating the land, especially in spring, throws a shaft of new light on the issue of 43 44 45

Ibid., p. 295. Ibid., p. 187. For an examination of these changes in farming in the post-medieval centuries see T. Williamson, The Transformation of Rural England: Farming and the Landscape 1700–1870 (Exeter, 2002).

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co-aration. Where cultivations needed to be carefully timed, and where full advantage had to be taken of every hour in which the soils are suitable for ploughing or harrowing, ploughteams needed to be assembled with particular rapidity; and this was obviously much easier to achieve where farms were in close proximity, in nucleated villages, rather than scattered across the landscape. In areas of dispersed settlement it might take an hour or more of vital time to send a message to a neighbouring farm, and for the farmer to arrive with his beasts. Co-aration on certain kinds of clay soil was thus more likely to encourage settlement nucleation than on others. If a short ‘window of opportunity’ thus encouraged farmers to dwell together in compact villages, it might well have had additional effects. Where the time available for cultivation was limited it was a matter of some importance whether land was located near to, or far from, the farms clustered in a village. Moreover, variations in slope, aspect, and in the mineralogical qualities of the soil itself ensured that some parts of the farm might be available for cultivation for a longer period of time than others. Where, in early times, bond tenants were being allotted land according to some equitable scheme then intermixed properties, widely and evenly scattered, would be an obvious choice. And where farms were being divided by inheritance there would be an understandable desire to divide the property within each field, rather than by field, again leading in time to the development of intermixed holdings. Such ‘organic’ layouts might themselves be recast in more regular form at a later date, perhaps following a period in which assarting had added further areas of subdivided arable. Such reorganisation, and reallocation, would perhaps usually have been initiated or directed by lords keen to limit disputes between tenants. Intermixture of properties thus reflected the fact that each shareholder expected to benefit as much from the joint teams as his neighbours. In certain environmental circumstances, in other words, it is easy to see how co-aration could have encouraged a nucleated pattern of settlement, extensive areas of intermixed arable, and the eventual re-working of these into more ordered, and regular layouts. Farming and the environment: meadows But there was another feature of the Midland environment which encouraged the nucleation of settlement in the middle and late Saxon periods, and thus the intermixture of properties across a wide area of the vill. Meadows – areas cut for hay, used to feed the livestock (and especially plough oxen) over the winter – had been known in England since prehistoric times but their distribution across the country was always uneven. Domesday suggests that meadow was more strongly concentrated in the Midlands than elsewhere but due to problems of uneven recording their distribution is only clearly apparent in the Inquisitions Post Mortem of the early fourteenth century. As Bruce Campbell noted in his exhaustive analysis of this source, meadows remained in short supply ‘in the east and west of England’ (Fig. 6). By contrast, it was relatively abundant in the Midland Plain: From Somerset and east Devon in the south-west to the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire’s North Riding in the north-east, it was in the clay vales of this broad


29

Fig. 6. The ratio of arable acreage to meadow acreage in England 1300-49 (after Campbell 2000). Meadow was generally much more abundant in the champion Midlands than in areas to the south-east and west. (Thanks to Prof. Bruce Campbell).

diagonal band of country that meadowland was most consistently represented. Except on the wolds, few demesnes were without at least some meadow . . .46

This pattern was largely a consequence of environmental factors. In Ault’s words, ‘In medieval times, meadows were the gift of nature, not the work of man’;47 and in some areas meadows could be made more easily than in others. The light lands of western Norfolk have little meadow recorded in either Domesday or the IPMs: as Campbell noted, ‘with a low rainfall, sandy soils overlying chalk, and no substantial rivers, opportunities for the establishment of meadows were mostly non-existent’.48 But obvious environmental circumstances of this kind do not, superficially at least, apply to many of the other districts in which meadows 46 47

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, pp. 75–6. W.O. Ault, Open Field Farming in Medieval England. A Study of Village By-Laws (London, 1972), p. 25. 48 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, pp. 73–5.

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remained in relative short supply, such as the claylands of East Anglia, Hertfordshire, and Essex. Here other, more subtle circumstances retarded and restricted their development: the character of the deposits found in the floors of river valleys, and the topography of the valleys themselves. Where floodplains were occupied by alluvial soils, or some combination of alluvial and gravel, only minor ditching, and appropriate livestock management, were required to produce good crops of hay. Where, in contrast, valley floors were filled with acid peat and drainage was impaired, coarse herbage was the natural produce and meadows of reasonable quality could only be created, if at all, by cutting extensive networks of drains and dykes. The extent and configuration of alluvial deposits varied greatly across the area with which we are here concerned.49 In the Midlands the flood-plains of the Ouse, Nene, Trent and their major tributaries are wide and filled with alluvium, giving rise to a variety of seasonally waterlogged soils ideal for meadow land. Most champion vills in the medieval Midlands appear to have had between five and ten per cent of their land devoted to meadows.50 At Laxton in Nottinghamshire, for example, there were 130 acres of meadow, compared with 1307 acres of open-field land; while at Sherington in north Buckinghamshire the tenants held 858 acres in the two open fields, and 54 acres of meadow, and the demesne comprised 556 acres of land, of which 20 were meadow.51 In east Hertfordshire, north Essex and south Suffolk, in contrast, the situation was very different. Here there was much less meadow land: on the demesne at Little Maplestead in 1338 there was only a single acre of meadow for every 35 of arable; at Cressing at the same date the ratio was 36:1; while at Writtle in 1328 it was 33:1.52 Moreover, meadow was generally distributed in a myriad of narrow ribbons, along a multiplicity of relatively narrow valleys. On the demesne of the Knights Hospitallers in this district hay was ‘an important commodity’, but it was typically gathered from small allotments: at Great Dunmow in Essex for example in c.1250 the single acre of meadow land which the order owned was in two separate plots.53 In northern and eastern Suffolk, and in Norfolk, the situation was different again. Here meadow land was often in short supply. Many valley floors in this region contain, not extensive spreads of gravel or alluvium, but moist peat, or mixtures of peat and clay, which give rise to acid, peaty soils, principally those of the Mendham, Adventurers’ 1 and 2, Altcar 2, Isleham 2 and Hanworth Associations.54 49 50

51 52

53

54

Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes, p. 170. H.S.A. Fox, ‘The People of the Wolds’, in M. Aston, D. Austin and C. Dyer, eds, The Rural Settlements of Medieval England: Studies presented to Maurice Beresford and John Hurst (Oxford, 1989), p. 121. Orwin and Orwin, The Open Fields, pp. 103–4; A.C. Chibnall, Sherington: Fiefs and Fields of a Buckinghamshire Village (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 92, 111–13. L.B. Larking and J.M. Kemble, eds, The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being the Reports of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Prior, Elyan de Villanova, for AD 1338 (Camden Society os 65, 1857), pp. 87, 168; K.C. Newton, The Manor of Writtle: the Development of a Royal Manor in Essex c.1086–1500 (Chichester, 1970), pp. 26–7. M. Gervers, ed., The Cartulary of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England, Part 2: Prima Camera, Essex (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History ns 23, Oxford, 1996), p. lxxxiv. Hodge et al., Soils and their Use, pp. 83–7, 90–92, 212–13, 231–5, 247–9.


31

In their natural, undrained state the flood plains of most rivers in northern East Anglia would have comprised rough fen vegetation. With an effort, such land certainly could be converted to meadow, and much already had been by the time of Domesday; while various references in later documents attest continuing attempts made to reclaim valley-bottom fens and upgrade them, as at Forncett in Norfolk in c.1300.55 Nevertheless, even in the early nineteenth century many valley floors were occupied by common fens, interrupted here and there by areas of private – usually in origin, demesne – meadows. Even these were often of poor quality, and eighteenth and nineteenth-century agriculturalists like Young make it clear that meadows remained in poor supply, and of poor quality, throughout northern East Anglia.56 The relationship between the quality and quantity of meadow, and the character of settlement, is fairly straightforward, and related once again to bottlenecks in the farming year. When first cut, grass contains around 75% of water, and to ensure good-quality hay this needs to be reduced to about 15% before stacking. The moisture is reduced partly by the action of the wind, and partly by the sun’s heat. To encourage the escape of water vapour the cut herbage has to be repeatedly turned over and shaken out to expose as large a surface as possible to the air, a very labour-intensive operation. Yet stacking the hay while it contains too much sap can cause heating in the stack, leading to loss of digestible protein; while stacking when the cut grass is actually damp can lead to mould and rot. Hay-making with traditional tools thus required good weather, abundant labour, and the careful timing of farming operations: ‘make hay while the sun shines’. In the ‘fickle English climate, haymaking is always a hazardous practice and the produce is always subject to serious losses in feeding values’.57 Hay meadows, it need hardly be said, operated best when large amounts of labour could be turned onto them at short notice: many a crop was saved by rapid carting and stacking. It is hardly surprising, then, that the early and extensive development of meadows and nucleated patterns of settlement tended to go hand in hand. In contrast, areas in which meadow was widely distributed, but limited in area, encouraged the development of a more mixed pattern, with nucleated villages in the major valleys, and smaller hamlets, freehold farms and minor manors beside the thinner ribbons of meadow in tributary valleys – and green-edge settlements on the meadowless interfluves. This, as we have seen, was the classic settlement mix in Essex and east Hertfordshire (Fig. 2). And where very little meadow existed, as in much of northern East Anglia, large areas of pasture and wood-pasture had to be maintained, in order to allow grazing over a longer period than in the Midlands. Such areas formed powerful magnets for settlement as population rose in late Saxon times, and by the twelfth century the majority of farms had come to cluster on the margins of greens and commons (Fig. 3). But the relationship between the availability of meadowland and the character of the medieval agrarian landscape arguably went further than this. Because meadows could be created with ease in the Midlands, there was little incentive to 55 56

F.G. Davenport, The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor (London, 1906), p. 31. A. Young, General View of the Agriculture of Norfolk (London, 1804), p. 370; idem, General View of the Agriculture of Suffolk (London, 1813), p. 159. 57 D.H. Robinson, Fream’s Elements of Agriculture (13th edn, London, 1949), p. 286.

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retain large areas of wood-pasture and other grazing; a growing population could thus be fed through the simple expedient of extending the ploughlands to the horizon. Elsewhere, there was greater need to conserve these resources: most of the woodland recorded by Domesday – strongly concentrated outside the meadow-rich Midlands – was probably used for grazing as well as for wood and timber production, the undershrubs and bushes providing sustenance for the flocks and herds much later into the year than the grass from pastures, the growth of which slows significantly from late summer. The area of meadowland seems to have increased markedly during the middle ages: Rackham has estimated that the proportion of England’s land area managed in this way rose from around 1.2% in the late eleventh century to around 4% in the mid-thirteenth.58 As this occurred, remaining areas of woodland were assarted, degraded to open common pasture, or taken into manorial control as parks or private coppiced woodland. All these features of the landscape, it need hardly be said, were more common in greater East Anglia than they were in the Midlands. Conclusion In a paper as short as this it is only possible to touch on some of the factors that may have encouraged the divergent development of field systems and settlement patterns in East Anglia and the Midlands. I am aware that, reduced to its essentials, the argument has a certain bald, not to say bland, environmental determinism. There is no space here to examine the extent to which the emergence of regional differences was associated with technological change, although the increasing use, in the period between the eighth and eleventh centuries, of larger ploughs and teams was certainly a factor. Nor can I elaborate on how these developments were linked to the kinds of tenurial changes, to the growth of local territorial lordship and the proliferation of demesnes, discussed by scholars like Ros Faith – except to note in passing the importance in all this of lords and estate managers, keen to ensure the smooth delivery of labour services, especially those relating to ploughing and hay-making.59 Nor has it been possible to explore the extent to which regional differences, once established, were maintained and amplified by local custom, including inheritance practices. Some of these issues I have addressed elsewhere.60 Here I have only sought to indicate how the essential frameworks of the medieval rural landscape could have been shaped by the natural environment, and by farming practices, rather than by ethnicity, variations in population density, or vague ‘cultural factors’. Such an approach is an unfashionable one, for most modern historians are obsessed with issues of power, custom, and macro-economics, and show little interest in mundane matters of agricultural practicality. But in a world in which the majority of men were farmers, in which agricultural success or failure was critical to peasants and their lords alike, we should not be surprised to see a close relationship between the character and configuration of human landscapes and the natural environment. 58 59 60

O. Rackham, History of the Countryside (London, 1986), pp. 334–5. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship. See in particular T. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes.

The Castle Landscapes of Anglo-Norman East Anglia: A Regional Perspective1 Robert Liddiard

Introduction THE TOPIC of ‘castles and landscapes’ has seen much fruitful research in recent years, as scholars from several disciplines have sought to examine the impact of the castle on the landscape and vice versa. Research in this field is still in its infancy, but the welcome publication of a monograph explicitly dealing with the ‘landscape approach’ as a way of studying the medieval castle marks a significant stage in a subject still heavily influenced by military determinism.2 This paper considers two aspects of castle-building and the landscape. The first concerns the relationship between castles and the wider pattern of settlement in northern East Anglia (chiefly Norfolk and Suffolk) during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is apparent from studies carried out elsewhere in the country that differences in regional landscapes structured patterns of castle-building, but this phenomenon has not yet been fully explored in an East Anglian context. Thus it has been argued that in the Midlands (an area characterised by village nucleations) and in non-Midland areas, such as the south-west (where dispersed farms and hamlets are the norm) variation in the settlement pattern had a profound effect on the distribution and location of castles.3 In East Anglia there existed an idiosyncratic settlement pattern, characterised, in contrast to elsewhere, by the predominance of farmsteads clustered around the edges of commons and greens. The precise chronology of this development, and the reasons for its occurrence, remain a matter of debate, but the process of ‘common edge drift’ probably started before the Norman Conquest and continued throughout the eleventh century.4 The relevance of this broader process to castle studies relates to the 1

2

3 4

I should like to thank Sarah Harrison, Sandy Heslop and Lucy Marten for references and thoughts on various aspects of this paper. For his extraordinary tolerance in the face of late submission Christopher Harper-Bill deserves special acknowledgement. For an excellent discussion see O.H. Creighton, Castles and Landscapes (London, 2002); for castles generally see now the major work C.L.H. Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society (Oxford, 2003). Creighton, Castles, pp. 193–216. P. Wade-Martins, Village Sites in Launditch Hundred (EA Arch. 10, 1980); A. Davison, The Evolution of Settlement in Three Parishes in South East Norfolk (EA Arch. 49, 1999); T. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment (Macclesfield, 2003), pp. 91–101.

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second theme of this paper: the nature of ‘designed’ or ‘ornamental’ landscapes in Anglo-Norman East Anglia. These landscapes comprise the archaeological remains of features such as settlements, parks, fishponds and religious houses which were originally located around castle buildings and which had been contrived partly to improve the residential surroundings.5 Such pleasure grounds were first identified during the late 1980s at castles and palaces dating to the later medieval period (most famously at Bodiam in Sussex), but scholars have since suggested that their origins may lie as far back as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Although doubts remain over exactly what definition best describes these landscapes, and how they can be recognised archaeologically, the idea that large-scale manipulation of the countryside for ideological purposes occurred at castles sites of Anglo-Norman date is now generally accepted. This paper will suggest that the particular physical and social geography of East Anglia structured a form of designed landscape that was distinctly regional in character. Castles and settlement in East Anglia East Anglia is not a region particularly noted for castle-building (Fig. 1). As David King observed in 1984, East Anglia has the lowest density of castles in England.6 It does, however, boast some notable examples from the AngloNorman period with castles such as Castle Acre, Castle Rising, Norwich, Framlingham and Orford frequently cited in major surveys.7 The chronology of castle-building in the region has also received attention in recent years and broadly corresponds to the national model advanced by Richard Eales.8 A royal castle was founded at Norwich in c.1067 and other urban centres at Thetford and Ipswich were probably provided with castles at a very early date. These were followed by major baronial foundations such as Castle Acre, Eye, Haughley and Clare (probably established during the 1070s), which were themselves associated with the construction of castles by lordly tenants. Castle-building continued after the ‘conquest’ phase of the Norman settlement was over, with a notable burst of activity in the mid-twelfth century resulting in the construction, or substantial re-building, of New Buckenham, Orford, Castle Acre, Castle Rising and Castle Hedingham. Despite being raised at different times by different baronial families, all, to some extent, share common characteristics as far as their landscapes are concerned. Any discussion of the landscape context of Norman castles in East Anglia must 5

6 7 8

For medieval designed landscape see C. Taylor, Gardens from the Air (Edinburgh, 1998); idem, ‘Medieval Ornamental Landscapes’, Landscapes 1 (2000), pp. 38–55; P. Everson, ‘Delightfully Surrounded with Woods and Ponds: Field Evidence for Medieval Gardens in England’, in There by Design, ed. P. Patterson (BAR British Series 267, Oxford, 1998), pp. 32–8; P. Everson and T. Williamson, ‘Gardens and Designed Landscapes’, in The Archaeology of Landscape, ed. P. Everson and T. Williamson (Manchester, 1997), pp. 139–65. D.J. Cathcart King, Castellarium Anglicanum (London, 1983), p. 305. See the classic account in R. Allen Brown, English Castles, 3rd edn (London, 1976). R. Eales, ‘Royal Power and Castles in Norman England’, Medieval Knighthood 3, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 49–78, reprinted in R. Liddiard, ed., Anglo-Norman Castles (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 41–67.

CASTLE LANDSCAPES OF ANGLO-NORMAN EAST ANGLIA

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Fig. 1. Sites mentioned in the text.

begin with the number and distribution of castles in the region.9 As has been noted, castles were established at the key urban centres of the region, but it is curious that the rural hinterland did not see a widespread programme of castle construction, especially given the wealth of the region at the time of Domesday. This can, however, be explained with reference to the small number of major barons who possessed enough land in the region to justify building. Only a handful of tenants-in-chief, such as the Warennes, Bigods or Malets, held sufficient quantities of land in the region to necessitate castle-building. In the case of the Warennes (who held land worth over £500 in Norfolk TRW), a large regional residence was a necessity, but for barons of relatively minor status this was not the case. For men such as Peter de Valognes, the foundation of a monastic house 9

For a more detailed exposition of what follows see R. Liddiard, Landscapes of Lordship: Norman Castles and the Countryside in Medieval Norfolk, 1066–1200 (BAR British Series 309, Oxford, 2000), pp. 20–43.

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(in this case at Binham), rather than a castle, was a more sensible option when it came to his collection of Norfolk manors, which were very much isolated from his caput at Benington in Hertfordshire. The existence of relatively few barons with enough land to warrant construction helps explain why East Anglia saw relatively few castles built in the wake of the Conquest, but it does not explain why some locations, rather than others, were deemed more attractive as castle sites. It appears that castle builders deliberately chose to locate their buildings in accordance with an earlier pattern of high-status settlement. Recent discussions of the nature of the Norman settlement of the region have highlighted continuity from the pre-Conquest period in terms of estate structure; thus the greatest fiefs in 1086 (such as Warenne, Clare, Malet) had at their core a collection of Old English estates that had passed, more or less intact, to incoming lords.10 This is crucial in explaining the precise location of castles within the landscape, as in many instances the tenurial geography and, in a few cases, archaeological evidence, suggests that incoming Norman lords chose to raise their castles over existing high-status buildings. In two cases, Burgh and Walton, castles were placed inside Roman forts, while at Castle Acre, Castle Rising, Middleton and Wormegay in Norfolk, and Clare, Eye and Haughley in Suffolk, castles were apparently raised on the sites of Old English manor houses. The reasons for this are increasingly well rehearsed. When the incoming Norman was the beneficiary of an antecessorial grant there were obviously clear advantages of legitimacy to be gained by exercising power at the seat of the previous lord. Moreover, the arrival of this new power was clearly indicated by the re-building of the original seat; in Coulson’s words ‘to the new Norman ruling-class, slipping into the shoes of Anglo-Saxon thegns . . . grandiose rebuilding compelled obedience and respect – and proclaimed how unworthy those shoes were’.11 The desire to build over an existing high-status structure goes a long way to explain the distribution of castles across East Anglia, but this was not the only factor governing castle siting. Those lords, such as the Warennes, who had manors scattered across the region presumably had a selection of manors that were seigneurially significant from which to choose, and it is clear that other factors influenced the final decision over where, or where not, to build. Those factors resulted in a particular distribution of castles: the majority in Norfolk lie to the west of what is termed the ‘central watershed’ – Norfolk’s major interfluve, which runs roughly north–south across the centre of the county – in an area characterised by large, compact manors with comparatively few free tenures; while in Suffolk, the distribution is more even, but with an absence of castles in the west and south-west.12 In particular, castle builders seem to have deliberately avoided the claylands of south Norfolk and north Suffolk. This area was characterised by a 10

For a detailed exposition, L. Marten, ‘The Feudal Geography of Suffolk’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, 2005; J. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 81–6. 11 C. Coulson, ‘Cultural Reappraisals in English Castle-Study’, Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996), pp. 171–208 at p. 186. 12 T. Williamson, The Origins of Norfolk (Manchester, 1993); H.C. Darby, The Domesday Geography of Eastern England (Cambridge, 1971).


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high population and by large numbers of free tenants. Where the construction of a large regional caput was being contemplated, space was at a premium and the buying-out of freeholders could potentially be a costly and time-consuming operation. Those tenants in chief who were in a position to exercise some degree of choice over where to build seem to have favoured large manors held as bookland, with small numbers of freeholders. In Norfolk, the west of the county fulfilled these criteria admirably; in Suffolk, such locations could only be found away from the liberties of St Edmund and St Etheldreda. Reasons of historical geography, rather than any notions of a strategic defence, go some way to explaining why some parts of East Anglia saw the construction of castles and others did not. It is also the case that landscapes characterised by ‘wastes’ – that is, commons and heaths – were also attractive to castle-builders. In fact, this is one of the most significant features of the siting of Norman castles in East Anglia: a large number of castles stand either on common edges, or are situated on large expanses of heath or woodpasture. Moreover, this trend becomes more pronounced the further north one moves into East Anglia – a direct reflection of the wider settlement pattern.13 Castle Acre, for example, was located in the shallow valley of the river Nar; a valley which, by 1066, had open field arable on its sides, but retained heath on the interfluves. The presence of former heath is attested by the place name – meaning ‘cultivated land within heath’ – some of which had survived unploughed into the eleventh century, as is recorded in charters.14 At Rising, the castle was placed on the edge of a large tract of common heathland, in a landscape that even until the late eighteenth century was largely waste.15 This association between castles and waste is also seen at sites of lower status. At Horsford, a few miles to the north of Norwich, the motte and bailey castle of Walter de Caen, a tenant of William Malet, stood in a landscape comprised of large tracts of heath that shared many of the characteristics of the west of the county, rather than the densely populated claylands to the south.16 An area of poor arable might not perhaps seem the obvious place in which to build a castle but, in an East Anglian context, it is not atypical. The siting of Norman castles was thus closely connected to the general pattern of settlement of East Anglia, one which was dominated by farmsteads aligned on commons. In many cases, this close association can be explained with reference to the fact that incoming Norman lords chose to raise their castles over existing high-status structures, which were themselves situated on common edges. This in itself is of some interest, as it would seem to indicate that some manor houses had ‘shifted’ prior to the Conquest, a useful indication of how castle studies can contribute to wider debates over the nature of medieval settlement.17 Current thinking on common-edge drift suggests that it was a response to wider structural 13 14 15

Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes, p. 93. Monasticon, 5, p. 49. R. Liddiard, ‘Castle Rising, Norfolk: A Landscape of Lordship?’, Anglo-Norman Studies 22 (2000), pp. 169–86. 16 Sibton Abbey Cartularies, Part 3, ed. P. Brown, Suffolk Charters 9 (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 470. 17 Although it could be said that all this demonstrates is that places that tended to have castles built on them after 1066 were also the kinds of places that were prone to shifting at an early date.

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and environmental problems within the East Anglian economy, particularly a shortage of meadow.18 Thus it could be said that by establishing a seigneurial presence on the common edge, Norman lords were not only perpetuating existing lordship, but also making a visible statement about their rights over a resource that was coming under increasing pressure in the face of demographic growth. The construction of castles over existing buildings that were themselves placed on common edges also offered other benefits, particularly where landscape design was concerned. In a region where there were many shallow river valleys, such a location often ensured that castles were prominent landmarks when viewed from the valley bottom and sides. They were also often in close proximity to water, which raised the possibility of creating lakes and ponds. Perhaps more importantly, large tracts of waste also offered tremendous potential for imparkment. An examination of the most important designed landscapes in the region suggests that lords lost no opportunity when it came to taking advantage of the visual opportunities that East Anglia presented. Designed landscapes Enough examples of medieval ‘designed’ or ‘ornamental’ landscapes have now been identified nationally to allow some common characteristics to be observed. The features that surrounded Norman castles in East Anglia are, to a large extent, entirely what we might expect to be found at sites of comparable status elsewhere. In terms of archaeological survival, however, there are significant regional differences: due to post-medieval ploughing, East Anglia has comparatively few examples of well-preserved earthwork remains, and this inevitably ensures that greater weight must be placed on cartographic and documentary evidence, albeit alongside the results of field survey.19 Many of the individual elements that together constituted East Anglian castle landscapes, such as monastic houses, are extremely well known.20 The twinning of castles with religious houses is one of the most familiar relationships of the period and within Norfolk and Suffolk this is seen at Castle Rising, New Buckenham, Horsford, Wormegay, Eye, Clare, Bungay and Castle Acre.21 A close association is also found between castles and towns or settlements, the latter often of planned form, as at New Buckenham, Rising, Acre, Wormegay, Eye, Bungay, Framlingham and Orford. The triumvirate of castle, town and monastery has long been seen as the characteristic imprint of the Norman settlement and Castle Acre in particular is often cited as a classic example of the impact of Normanitas in the English countryside. What is significant, however, is not that these features have never been recognised before, but that their context within 18 19 20

See Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes, and Williamson in this volume. B. Cushion and A. Davison, Earthworks of Norfolk (EA Arch. Report No.104, 2003). M.W. Thompson, ‘Associated Monasteries and Castles in the Middle Ages: A Tentative List’, Arch. Journ. 143 (1986), pp. 305–21. 21 P. Northeast, ‘Religious Houses’, in An Historical Atlas of Suffolk, ed. D. Dymond and E. Martin, 2nd edn (Ipswich, 1989), pp. 70–1; R. Rickett and E. Rose, ‘Monastic Houses’, in An Historical Atlas of Norfolk, ed. P. Wade-Martins, 2nd edn (Dereham, 1993), pp. 64–5.


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wider schemes of landscape design are beginning to be appreciated by scholars. It is increasingly becoming apparent that Norman castle landscapes such as that at Acre were not simply limited to particular kinds of settlements or related to religious patronage. The contribution of, in particular, parkland and water features in particular to landscape design in this period is now fully recognised and East Anglia boasts a number of examples where both were combined to stunning visual effect. Deer parks were almost ubiquitous at castles of any importance. Those baronial families which lacked the resources for a monastic foundation or a planned settlement invariably constructed a park: even modest motte and bailey castles such as Lidgate, Middleton and Wormegay exhibit evidence of parkland. There is the familiar difficulty here of knowing if the park was contemporary with the adjacent residence, but in some cases it can be proved that the relationship between castle and park goes back as far as the eleventh century. At Eye, for example, both the castle of William Malet and the castle park are recorded in Domesday Book.22 It is known from charter evidence that the park at Hundon – one of the parks of Clare castle – was in existence in 1090 when its owner, Richard Fitz Gilbert, granted an oak annually to the monks of Stoke by Clare in order to help the monastic community keep warm over Christmas.23 Charter evidence also attests to parkland adjacent to the d’Albini castles at Old and New Buckenham from at least the mid-twelfth century.24 Parks could also be used to enhance the status of the residence: most minor castles had one park, but the largest residences had more. For example, New Buckenham had two: the little park, that was attached to the castle; and the larger or great park, further to the north. Clare, Framlingham and Hedingham castles each had three parks, again with the pattern being a smaller park close to the castle and large parks some distance from the residential buildings.25 Although in many cases documentary references to castle parks are not forthcoming until the thirteenth century, there is little doubt that the dominant pattern was established in previous centuries and that many castle parks pre-date their appearance in the historical record. ‘Little parks’, such as that mentioned above at New Buckenham, have been the subject of recent discussions within the field of landscape studies, which have drawn attention to the essentially ornamental function of these enigmatic structures.26 They were enclosed areas either attached, or situated in close proximity, to the main residence. Their role was part pleasure ground, part game-preserve, and they also allowed the staging of small hunts, which could be observed from

22 23

LDB, fol. 319v. Stoke by Clare Cartulary, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Mortimer, Suffolk Charters 4 (Woodbridge, 1982), p. 17. 24 For the park at (old) Buckenham, BL Harl. Ch 83. D9 (foundation charter of Old Buckenham priory c.1146); for that at New Buckenham, which was already established in the lifetime of William d’Albini II, P. Rutledge, ‘Two Borough Charters’, NA 43 (1999), pp. 313–17. 25 R. Hoppitt, ‘A Study of the Development of Parks in Suffolk from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century’, unpublished PhD thesis, UEA, 1992). 26 S. Landsberg, The Medieval Garden (London, 1995), pp. 21–5.

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residential buildings. They were quite different from ‘great’ parks, which served the more utilitarian purposes of large-scale game rearing, timber production and grazing. In addition to that at New Buckenham, there is direct documentary evidence for the existence of a little park at Castle Hedingham and there is the strong suspicion, on topographical grounds, that the parks at Castle Rising, Mileham and Framlingham served a similar ornamental purpose. At Hedingham the little park was to one side of the outer bailey and situated close to the main castle buildings. At Buckenham the little park lay immediately to the north of the castle and was specifically referred to as subtus castrum, ‘under the castle’, but this cannot have been meant in any topographical sense as the park occupies slightly rising ground to the north of the site; rather, it is indicative of a particular relationship between residence and park.27 Field evidence supports the suggestion that the visual appearance of the little park was of some importance during this period. At a number of sites the park is located in such a way as to suggest that it was intended to be viewed from the castle buildings. At Buckenham and Hedingham a view of the park could be gained from the donjon, with the finest prospects reserved for the most important chambers at the highest levels of the building. More direct evidence comes from Castle Rising, where there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to manipulate the view of the park from the private chamber and upper levels of the donjon. Here the park occupies higher ground to the south of the castle and creates (even for a shallow valley typical of the East Anglian landscape) something akin to an amphitheatre effect. This is magnified by the shape of the park itself: the line of the pale bows out from the castle in such a way as to give the impression of greater size. Of greater significance in the context of landscape design is the extent of the park, which disappears over the crest of the Babingley valley and then abruptly stops when it was no longer possible to see the pale from the castle. When viewed from the donjon, this creates the effect of making the park appear to run on indefinitely. Moreover, aerial photography reveals what is probably the line of an earlier park pale within the interior of the medieval park suggesting that, at some point, the park was deliberately enlarged in order to create this specific effect.28 Such analyses are necessarily speculative in nature, but there are a growing number of castle sites where similar schemes seem to have been executed. The relationship between castle and park at Castle Rising certainly bears comparison with that at Ludgershall in Wiltshire and Launceston and Restormel in Cornwall, where recent discussions have suggested a similar level of care over how the castle related visually to the backdrop of the park.29 If this is the case at Rising (and the lack of chronological detail is frustrating) then it is a striking example of landscape design of early date in the region. 27 28 29

CCR 1307–1313, p. 58. Norfolk Landscape History, Gressenhall Norfolk AP ref. 71 013 076. P. Herring, ‘Cornish Medieval Deer Parks’, in The Lie of the Land: Aspects of the Archaeology and History of the Designed Landscape in the South West of England, ed. R. Wilson-North (Exeter, 2003), pp. 34–50; P. Everson, G. Brown and D. Stocker, ‘The Earthworks and Landscape Context’, Ludgershall Castle, Excavations by Peter Addyman 1964–1972, ed. P. Ellis (Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Society Monograph No. 2, 2000), pp. 97–115.


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The second major element in medieval designed landscapes was the presence of water. Evidence can be found for the manipulation of water at several castle sites in the region but, due to their location, some major designed landscapes in East Anglia lack substantial water features; Rising may have had the sylvan backdrop of a park, but the porous nature of the soil prevented any attempt to provide a wet moat. At other sites, the desire to envelop part of the castle with water, or at least provide a view over water, is evident. The most obvious example is Framlingham, with its extensive mere, but in other cases it can be demonstrated that water was once a more significant element in designed landscapes than is apparent today. A case in point is Castle Acre, where a medium-sized pond was originally located to the south of the bailey. A series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maps chart the silting and eventual disappearance of this feature that in documentary sources is referred to as the ‘Earl’s Pond’.30 Although the water did not flow up to the castle walls, the earl’s pond must not only have been substantial, but also of some importance, as a number of houses along what is now Bailey Street retain high-status medieval masonry similar to that found elsewhere in the castle. The name given to this pool is significant as it is typical of those given to ornamental ponds in both secular and monastic contexts during this period. At Clare there is more tantalising evidence of landscape design. Here the Tithe Award map of 1846 shows a series of water-filled ditches forming a geometric pattern beyond the main castle bailey (Fig. 2).31 This area was subsequently destroyed by the construction of a railway in the nineteenth century, but a photograph taken before this operation clearly shows the banks and ditches of a substantial earthwork feature.32 The date of this complex is difficult to establish with any certainty; its form suggests a medieval date, as the earthworks do not resemble any kind of post-medieval garden feature. Their closest parallel in the region is the fishpond/garden complex at St Benet’s Abbey in Norfolk, which has attracted a range of possible dates, with the fourteenth century as a strong candidate.33 If the earthworks at Clare represent a garden of this date then the probable context is the occupancy of the aristocratic widow Elizabeth de Burgh during the second quarter of the fourteenth century.34 It is known from documentary sources that there was a substantial garden at Clare at this time including, significantly, a water garden that formed part of the moat. The elaborate nature of this garden is also suggested by enigmatic payments for a ‘fonteyne’.35 If the earthworks at Clare do represent the remains of Elizabeth’s garden then this fourteenth-century 30

31 32 33 34 35

Holkham Hall Archive, Map no. 80 (Castle Acre, 1715); Map no. 81 (Castle Acre, 1751); Map no. 82 (Castle Acre, 1779); Map no. 83 (Map of 1816); Castle Acre Deeds, Bundle No. 7 Doc. no. 56 (Miscellaneous Deeds, Castle Acre). SROB, T146/1,2 (Tithe Award Map); this feature is also shown, albeit in less detail, on a map of 1809, SRO/I/P577/5558. SROI, SPs 9350. ‘The Abbey of St Benet at Holm, Horning, Norfolk’ (unpublished RCHME Report, 1994); T. Williamson, The Norfolk Broads: A Landscape History (Manchester, 1997), pp. 27–32. J.C. Ward, ‘Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (d.1360)’, in Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500, ed. C.M. Barron and A.F. Sutton (London, 1994), pp. 29–45. J. Harvey, Medieval Gardens (London, 1981), pp. 87–8.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 2. Tithe Award map, 1846, of Clare, Suffolk, showing the site of the castle. The cluster of rectilinear ponds to the right of the castle bailey probably represents the remains of a fourteenth-century water garden. West Suffolk Record Office.

design had itself been raised over an earlier structure as an early thirteenthcentury charter refers to the ‘earl’s pond below the castle of Clare’.36 As with the little park, the language is indicative of a particular relationship between castle and landscape. The creation of parks and ponds went alongside the construction of the more familiar settlements and religious buildings. There is also a wealth of evidence for other structures. Gardens are known at Rising and Buckenham, and orchards at Acre are recorded in the late eleventh century.37 Evidence for mills, warrens and dovecotes is also plentiful and in some cases their location can be ascertained. What these landscapes meant to medieval men and women is also increasingly well-understood.38 The economic rationale behind landscape design is clear: parks were used for timber and grazing; ponds had a crucial role in fish management; and towns could generate revenue – in the latter case Domesday Book relates how the Malet’s market at Eye was so successful it had a detrimental effect on that of the bishops of Thetford at nearby Hoxne.39 As well as their fiscal dimensions the elements that made up designed landscapes all in some way pertained to lordly authority: parks had connotations with aristocratic status; dovecotes were the preserve of manorial lords; religious foundations demonstrated piety; settlement 36

The Cartulary of the Augustinian Friars of Clare, ed. C. Harper-Bill, Suffolk Charters 11 (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 32. 37 For gardens at Rising, CPR 1350–1354, p. 443; for Acre, Monasticon, 5, p. 49. 38 R. Liddiard, Castles in Context (Macclesfield, 2005). 39 LDB, fol. 379.


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planning, benevolence. Considerations such as these help explain why such landscapes may have been aesthetically pleasing, but not how castle landscapes were engineered on a local level in order to create a specific visual effect. To date, very little is known about how Anglo-Norman castle builders exploited the physical landscape as a visual and aesthetic resource. The wellknown description of Manorbier castle in Pembrokeshire, given by Gerald of Wales in 1188, amply demonstrates that pleasure could be derived from residential surroundings, but tells us little about how elements such as parkland and water were actively planned in order to create this pleasurable impression.40 In the eighteenth century, this process was described as utilising ‘the genius of the place’: that is, working in conjunction with the existing landscape in order to create a specific visual and aesthetic effect. Quite whether eleventh- and twelfthcentury aristocrats could conceive of the countryside in this way at all is perhaps open to debate. It should be noted, however, that the Anglo-Norman aristocracy did have a highly developed sense of place when it came to the acquisition and use of toponymic names.41 Thus, together with the fact that the head (caput) of the significantly named baronial honour stood for the political and social standing of the lord in question, is it hard to imagine the likes of Gilbert de Clare simply being indifferent to the landscape that surrounded his castle. What is certainly undeniable is the sense of pride that the construction of a castle could engender on the part of the patron. To give one famous example, Richard I was so pleased with the speed with which Château-Gaillard in Normandy was being built that he gathered his entourage on site and harangued them: ‘how fair a child was his, this child but a twelve month old!’ The chronicler William of Newburgh was more scornful of the king’s attitude and related how a shower of blood-red rain drenched Richard and his labourers on site, but such was the king’s desire to see the project to completion ‘if an angel had come down out of the sky to bid him stay his hand, he would have got no answer but a curse’.42 Given the undoubted sense of satisfaction and achievement nobles took in their buildings, there is, a priori, no reason why such sentiments did not extend to the landscapes that surrounded their castles and which the field archaeology suggests were an integral part of the design. There is, in fact, some positive – albeit rather shadowy – evidence from the period suggesting that castle landscapes were developed, at least in part, with a keen eye for aesthetics. Around 1125, when Geoffrey de Clinton was developing his manor at Kenilworth in Warwickshire, the foundation charter of his priory explicitly stated that land was to be reserved for his castle and his park; this certainly gives the impression that he had an idea of how his residence would look, and be experienced, on the ground.43 Such considerations may also have influenced William d’Albini II during the 1140s, when he acquired land from the bishop of Norwich so that he could place his settlement of New Buckenham exactly where he wished.44 In each case, the structures with which Geoffrey de 40 41 42 43 44

Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J.S. Brewer et al., 8 vols (RS, 1861–91), 6, 92. For a summary see Green, Aristocracy, pp. 342–4. K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, vol. 2 (London, 1887), p. 380. Monasticon, 6 (1), pp. 220–1. M. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1967), p. 467.

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Clinton and William d’Albini II chose to surround their castles were broadly similar, but were, of course, placed in very different regional landscapes. The key question is whether the particular characteristics of the East Anglian countryside provided an opportunity for the creation of a specific kind of designed landscape. Regional landscapes The starting point for a discussion of the regional dimension of Anglo-Norman castles in East Anglia is their siting within the landscape. One of the most persistent myths about Norman castles is that they were raised on the tops of hills for defensive purposes. This is not in fact the case; the vast majority lie in lowland locations and a surprising number are overlooked by higher ground. More subtle analyses of castle siting have demonstrated that factors such as access to resources and estates had the greatest effect on the location of castles within the landscape. This said, where the opportunity presented itself, castle-builders were keen to take advantage of dramatic locations, as Corfe in Dorset or Beeston in Cheshire demonstrate. Needless to say, such locations were impossible to find in East Anglia, but of some interest is the way in which Anglo-Norman castlebuilders utilised the regional landscape – in particular shallow river valleys – to create a specific kind of visual effect. As we have seen, most castles in the region were not raised on ‘virgin sites’ but over pre-existing buildings that stood on, or close to, common edges. To some extent this may have been a constraint, but it also provided opportunities. Framlingham provides a good example of the ways in which a distinctly local landscape could be exploited for aesthetic effect (Fig. 3). As a recent English Heritage survey has shown, the original castle motte (later developed into a powerful ringwork and bailey) was situated in a location known as the ‘false crest’.45 This is a position high up on the valley side that maximises visibility from the valley floor. In the case of Framlingham, the castle is situated on a scarp overlooking an area now occupied by the church, market place and the mere. While it might appear that the castle is situated on the highest point of its landscape, it is not: the central ringwork is in fact overlooked (albeit slightly) by the main castle bailey. In the case of Framlingham there is some supporting evidence to suggest that the site of the castle within the landscape was deliberately chosen and that the surrounding landscape was developed with an eye for aesthetics. The manor of Framlingham passed to the Bigod family in 1101; prior to this date the principal Bigod residence was situated at Kelsale, some miles to the east. Rosemary Hoppitt has recently discussed the archaeology of the fossilised Bigod caput of the late eleventh century and it is of some significance that we again see the conjunction of water and parkland.46 The manor house was located on a false crest in close proximity to a park that framed a lodge on three sides. Below the lodge was a stream that was dammed in order to create an ornamental lake. In

45

M. Brown, Framlingham Castle, Framlingham, Suffolk (Archaeological Investigation Report Series 24/2002, English Heritage, 2002). 46 Hoppitt, ‘Development of Parks’, pp. 109–10.


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Fig. 3. The immediate landscape context of Framlingham castle, Suffolk.

effect, Kelsale resembled a smaller version of Framlingham and the similarity between the two sites does invite speculation over whether part of the reason why the Bigods chose to develop Framlingham was to take advantage of the natural characteristics of the location. It is frustrating that the documentary evidence for twelfth-century Framlingham is poor but, in comparison with more closely dated examples from the period, the landscape appears to date from before the close of the twelfth century. Even today, it is the sheer scale of the enterprise that impresses. The castle is adjacent to the mere with both enveloped by the deer park, which ran up to the Roman road to the north. Again, we have here an amphitheatre effect like that seen at Rising. The settlement and market were situated on lower ground below the castle with the parish church lying in a liminal location at the edge of the bailey – a classic early arrangement. Although the precise lay-out of Framlingham in the Anglo-Norman period is impossible to establish with certainty, there is no doubt that by the fourteenth century the aesthetic qualities of the site were fully exploited. The great hall on the western side of the ringwork looked out over an outwork that enclosed a garden and two rectangular fishponds, and that itself overlooked the mere. Again it is significant that the mere was referred to as ‘the Great Lake beneath the castle’

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(my italics).47 Access to the mere by boat was via a gate located in the wall of this outwork and this allowed passage to an island on which stood a dovecote. Such an arrangement can only suggest a pleasure ground. It is possible that the western bailey also contained ornamental grounds. In the nineteenth century it was noted that it had been ‘formerly planted as a pleasaunce’, a term which, prior to the sixteenth century, signified ornamental grounds.48 Any explanation of the designed landscape at Framlingham must therefore be rooted in the background of the broader regional landscape of East Anglia. This was a landscape that did not permit dramatic, cliff-top, locations available elsewhere in England, Wales or Normandy. It did, however, allow a castle to physically dominate the skyline by its placement on the false crest of a valley side. Such a location also provided the opportunity for the sylvan backdrop of a deer park on the higher ground. It is locations and arrangements such as these that typify those East Anglian Norman designed landscapes of the highest status and which are seen (with due allowance for individual differences) at Castle Acre, Castle Camps, Castle Rising, Mileham, New Buckenham and Framlingham. Yet the topographical arrangement of a castle and its associated landscape is only part of the story. How both castle and landscape were intended to be experienced was also of importance. This theme has received a great deal of attention from scholars in recent years, but analyses are not without their problems and some are dangerously ahistorical in as much as there is little supporting evidence for the date of buildings or landscape features in question. One castle where there does appear to be some stronger evidence that the approach route, at least, had been contrived is Castle Acre, the country house of the de Warenne earls of Surrey. Castle Acre, Norfolk Castle Acre castle occupies an important place in castle studies. Excavations in the 1970s demonstrated that the unfortified double hall of the Warennes, dating to the 1070s, was radically altered seventy years later when it was converted into a donjon.49 Alongside the castle, the Norman foundation consisted of a planned settlement, a Cluniac priory and a deer park. The castle was located on two significant communication routes: the river Nar and the Roman road known as the Peddars Way. The former constituted a major east–west waterway that eventually drained into the Little Ouse, while the latter was a major roadway running north–south along the western edge of East Anglia. It is known that, prior to 1066, Acre was the site of a manor house; excavations have revealed the postholes of a large wooden rectangular structure that has been interpreted as a hall. This was 47 48 49

J. Ridgard, Medieval Framlingham (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 11. R.M. Phipson, ‘Framlingham Castle’, PSIA 3 (1863), pp. 356–93. J.G. Coad and A. Streeton, ‘Excavations at Castle Acre Castle, Norfolk, 1972–7’, Arch. Journ. 139 (1982), pp. 138–301; J.G. Coad, A.D.F. Streeton and R. Warmington, ‘Excavations at Castle Acre Castle, Norfolk, 1975–1982: The Bridges, Lime Kilns, and Eastern Gatehouse’, Arch. Journ. 144 (1987), pp. 256–307; for a full discussion of the landscape context see Liddiard, Landscapes of Lordship, chapter 5.


47

Fig. 4. Plan of Castle Acre castle, Norfolk, showing the original and the deviated course of the Peddars Way.

undoubtedly that of Toki, a king’s thegn who held lands across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire before the Conquest. Of some interest here is the relationship between the castle and the Roman road (Fig. 4). To the south of the castle, the Peddars Way deviates markedly from its original course. Originally the road ran along what is now the castle bailey ditch but the line of the road is truncated by the substantial flint wall which connected the castle to the settlement defences. Although it is impossible to date this wall with any precision, it is undoubtedly Norman in origin and is of similar construction and proportions to the masonry connected with the 1140s re-building located in the upper ward of the castle. This suggests that either this

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section of the Peddars Way had fallen out of use by this date, or that it had been subject to a diversion at or before the building of the curtain wall. There are a number of indications that the road was diverted as part of an attempt to deliberately manipulate the way in which visitors experienced the castle. An early date for the re-routing is suggested by the fact that the majority of the field boundaries to the south of the castle do not respect the original alignment of the road (the parish boundary might be expected to follow its course, but does not); indeed, at nearby Sporle the parish boundary follows the line of the deviated course. Moreover, the manors over which the diversion runs were all held by the Warennes at the time of Domesday, again suggesting a connection with the castle.50 A reconstruction of the journey into Castle Acre via this route suggests a degree of conscious manipulation of the landscape in order to present a suitably impressive tableau to the visitor. As the traveller approaches from the south, it is the priory that is seen initially. Significantly, the first indication to the visitor that they are entering an elite landscape is not the presence of the seigneurial seat, but rather a statement of piety. The priory then disappears from view as the road drops into a hollow and it is only as the visitor begins to cross the valley floor and climbs onto the opposite slope that the full visual effect becomes apparent. Here the viewer is presented with a vista consisting of the priory, town and castle; despite all the changes in the landscape over nine hundred years the effect today is still dramatic (Fig. 5). The priory occupies the foreground; the planned town sits in the centre, while the castle frames the view in the background. One imagines that this is the point at which the visitor might pause to view the scene before riding on, and if the view from this point showed the observer what was to come, then the rest of the approach made sure the impact was hammered home. After this first part of the journey, travellers were taken directly past the priory, crossing the river Nar immediately under the shadow of the precinct wall and then skirting along the southern side of the town wall. Here, they passed by the castle fishpond – known here as the ‘Earl’s Pond’ – before entering the town via a gatehouse and travelling up the main street before turning right onto ‘Toll Green’ (where anybody on horseback probably had to dismount). They then passed under the bailey gate into the castle’s lower ward. To enter the castle from here it was necessary to cross a ditch and pass through another gatehouse, and at this point the traveller would be standing immediately in front of the great tower. The building was accessed via a staircase. We do not know the exact arrangement of rooms in the tower in the 1140s, but if we take the contemporary donjon at Castle Hedingham in Essex as a possible model, then our visitors would have had to pass through an entrance hall before gaining entry to the upper hall and meeting the lord. Castle Acre represents one of the earliest possible examples (as far as the author is aware) of a deliberately planned approach route to a castle. While the evidence seems to point to a date in the Norman period it is unclear whether the road diversion belongs to the earliest phases of Norman occupation in the 1070s 50

LDB, fols 160v, 167v.


49


Fig. 5. Castle Acre from the Peddars Way.

or the re-modelling in the 1140s. Much depends on the date at which the bank and ditch that connects the castle with the settlement was constructed. Excavations in the 1970s on the northern side of the castle did not provide an answer to this question but there is no reason to discount a date in the eleventh century. Other evidence, however, suggests a later date. Initially, the Cluniac monks brought to England by William of Warenne were housed in the castle bailey and were moved out to their new site by the 1090s at the latest.51 The building of the priory clearly took some decades to complete as the abbey church was dedicated in the mid 1140s, around the same time as the castle was undergoing its transformation. As much of the approach route discussed above only really makes visual sense when the building of the priory was well underway and when the new donjon towered above the landscape it may not be feasible to date this particular approach to an earlier period. Perhaps we should envisage the initial Warenne caput, then, as consisting of William’s manor house, built on the site on its Anglo-Saxon predecessor, with the Roman road running alongside and an embryonic settlement to one side. This site was continually developed and the monastic house was subsequently moved onto a new site. In the 1140s the whole castle was transformed and the priory church neared completion; perhaps it was at this point that it was deemed necessary to divert the main approach road to the castle. The changing social and political context of the 1140s may provide a clue as to why it was felt necessary to alter radically the way in which the castle was experienced. The usual reason given for the re-modelling of Castle Acre at this time is 51

The Honour of Warenne, ed. C.T. Clay, Early Yorkshire Charters 3 (Yorkshire Record Society Extra Series Vol. 6, London, 1949), pp. 1–26; see also BL MS Harley 2110 (Castle Acre Cartularly), fol. 4r for the dedication of the priory (1146 x late spring 1147).

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the military insecurity during the ‘Anarchy’ of Stephen’s reign. This makes little sense in a local context, as Norfolk saw no major campaigning throughout this period. At this time, however, several other baronial families were becoming increasingly powerful within the region, a situation that must have been greeted by the established Warennes with some alarm, particularly at a time of national political disturbance. The late 1130s and early 1140s saw the building of Castle Rising and New Buckenham castles by the D’Albinis and the construction of the donjon at Castle Hedingham in Essex by the newly created Earl of Oxford, Aubrey III de Vere. Given that the banorial caput partly functioned as a visible sign of wealth, ambition and political standing it is easy to see why in the 1140s a major magnate singled out Castle Acre for special attention. Analyses of approach routes are somewhat artificial and are open to a number of criticisms; direct evidence is not forthcoming and there must necessarily be a large measure of speculation. But in what it tries to achieve (some understanding of how people experienced landscape design in the twelfth century) there is evidence from a number of sources that suggests this landscape-based approach to castles is not new. Perhaps the strongest evidence is the Romance literature of the period, which strongly emphasises the ideals which castle builders were striving to achieve. One of the most important is that the castle should be visible from a considerable distance. Usually, the visitors spend a good deal of time simply gazing at the buildings. In the Roman de Waldef (c.1200), for example, visitors stop and gaze at the castle and town that lie before them.52 One is immediately reminded here of the approach to Castle Acre, where the vista of castle, town and priory is situated at a convenient turn in the journey. This comparison may not be too fantastic a claim, as the Roman de Waldef was written with an East Anglian audience in mind.53 Then there is normally a particular route where the town is passed through first, then the castle reveals itself in its full glory, and the visitor then wanders round and is amazed because the rooms have big windows and fireplaces and all seems to be made of marble and precious stones. One instructive encounter comes from literature when the the hero, Partonopeu of Blois, investigates the castle of Melior, the daughter of the king of Constantinople. Melior’s castle is on an island and Partonopeu arrives on a ship that is powered by magic and appears to be on auto-pilot. Like any castle of any pretensions it has an attendant town and the hero gazes up as his boat draws near. Inevitably, Partonopeu then has to go through the city before reaching the castle. What seems to impress here is that the streets were entirely paved, so even when it rained they shone brighter. Having explored the town, Partonopeu then makes his way to the castle and what he sees is worth quoting at some length: He turned the head of his horse/ retraced his steps in the great street/ and went up towards the castle/ There isn’t such a beautiful one in the whole world/ It has great ditches and tall walls/ which do not fear catapults and assaults/ He found 52 53

Roman de Waldef, ed. J. Holden (Geneva, 1984), vv. 4509–19. This is certainly suggested by the references to the castle of Brancaster and the kings of Attleborough and Thetford.


51

the gates open/ there were two towers tall and secure/ From them one can defend the gates/ neither king nor emperor could take them/ He entered in the castle/ there is plenty of wealth/ there is a tower in the castle/ made of brand new polished marble/ the castle is made proportionally/ and is neither too tall nor too low/ the tower is enclosed in the middle/ no one ever saw a nicer thing/ the castle around the tower/ was about a mile all around/ inside there are mills and aviaries/ and large gardens and lawns54

It needs to be stressed, of course, that this example is from a piece of literature and part of the rhetorical function of the castle in such works was to allow the real nobleman to show his true virtue and character.55 Thus Partonopeu needs no guide or messenger to explain to him why the building is so magnificent, or what it represents. The fact that Partonopeu is a true noble not only means that he understands all the nuances of his journey, but his whole experience of the castle demonstrates his intrinsic aristocratic virtues. Perhaps here we can glimpse part of the motivation behind the creation, not just of castles, but also their associated landscapes. Conclusion Sandy Heslop has argued that the similarities between Anglo-Norman secular and ecclesiastical buildings in East Anglia are such as to justify the existence of a regional style.56 Although at an early stage, what is currently known about elite landscapes at this date suggests that here too there are significant regional characteristics. This may not in itself be surprising, but the challenge is to explain the significance of these characteristics within the long-term social and economic history of East Anglia. In this light, it is instructive to end with observations on the region by two scholars from very different backgrounds. In a discussion of the nature of Iron Age society, Richard Bradley has suggested that ‘in East Anglia large monuments draw attention to themselves because they are so unusual’.57 In his mammoth work Castellarium Anglicanum the great castleologist David King noted with curiosity that East Anglia did not have many Norman castles, but those that did exist had unusually large earthworks that marked them out as nationally significant.58 Place the two comments together and they might hint at wider long-term regional characteristics in the way fortifications were constructed and perceived that have yet to be fully explored.

54 55

Partonopeu, ed. J. Gildea (Villanove, 1967), vv. 931–53. W. Van Emden, ‘The Castle in Some Works of Medieval French Literature’, in The Medieval Castle, Romance and Reality, ed. K. Reyerson and F. Powe (Dubuque, Iowa, 1984), pp. 1–36. 56 T.A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994). 57 R. Bradley, ‘Where is East Anglia? Themes in Regional Prehistory’, in Flatlands and Wetlands: Current Themes in East Anglian Archaeology, ed. J. Gardiner (EA Arch. Report No. 50, 1993), pp. 5–13, at p. 8. 58 King, Castellarium, 305.

Imagining the Unchanging Land: East Anglians Represent their Landscape, 1350–1500 Philippa Maddern

IN THE 1380s, John Trevisa, translating Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, produced an idyllic description of English landscape: For [th]is ilond is beest and bringe[th] for[th] trees and fruyt and re[th]eren] and o[th]er bestes, and wyn growe[th] [th]er in som place. [Th]e lond ha[th] plente of foules and of bestes of dyuers manere kynde; [th]e lond is plentevous . . . noble, copious and riche of nobil welles and of nobil ryueres wi[th] plente of fische.1

Higden’s sources, including Bede, Gerald of Wales, Pliny and Isidore of Seville, were equally complimentary about England’s waterways, surrounding oceans, and mineral wealth. The seas allegedly contained ‘margery perles of alle manere colour and hewe’, the land bore ‘salt welles and hote welles’ and ‘plentevous . . . veynes of metals, of bras, of iren, of leed, of tyn, of siluer also’.2 England’s arable and pastoral riches could hardly be over-stated. The countryside was naturally fertile, but super-excellent marl also ensured that ‘[th]e lond is [th]e better foure score [y]ere [th]at [th]ere wi[th] is I-marled’. Good beasts abounded, the bad were almost absent: ‘[Th]ere bee[th] schepe [th]at bere[th] good wolle, [th]ere bee[th] meny hertes and wylde bestes and fewe wolues.’3 In short the English landscape was characterised by a constant plenitude of all resources, agricultural, aquacultural, wild, and mineral. The final poem recapitulates: Wel wyde men speketh of Engelonde Lond, hony, melk, chese.4

Higden’s prose is not a ‘landscape description’ in our terms; it evokes no photographic rural images, but rather a catalogue of useful products. Nevertheless,

1

2 3 4

Polychronicon Ranulphii Higden monachi Cestrensis together with the English Translations of John Trevisa . . ., ed. Churchill Babington and J.R. Lumby, 8 vols (RS, 1865–86) (hereinafter Polychronicon), ii, pp. 13–21, quote from p. 13. Polychronicon, ii, pp. 13–15. Though a ‘brass mine’ sounds intriguing, Trevisa’s original specifies ‘aeris’ – copper. Polychronicon, ii, pp. 15–17. Polychronicon, ii, p. 21.

IMAGINING THE UNCHANGING LAND

53

though the word ‘landscape’ was not coined in his day,5 it is hard to characterise Higden’s series of observations about a countryside and its riches without resorting to the phrase ‘landscape description’. I have therefore made no attempt to avoid the term. How, if at all, does this idealistic view of the land help us to understand late medieval perceptions of Norfolk landscape? Higden, after all, wrote almost entirely before the onset of the Black Death, basing his work on extracts from even earlier classical and medieval sources. Also, he accorded so little significance to East Anglia that Norfolk and Suffolk rate only eleven lines out of his twenty-two chapters of the description of England; while his preoccupation with Roman-founded towns led him to exclude Norwich altogether from his list of noble cities.6 Yet Higden’s text has two noteworthy qualities. First, though almost entirely a pre-plague production, it was enormously popular in the period 1350–1500. Trevisa produced a translation and continuation in the 1380s; another anonymous translator worked in the fifteenth century. Caxton chose the ‘Description of Britain’ to appear as one of his earliest printed works, in 1480 and 1482.7 We know that East Anglian literati admired the text, since Osbern Bokenham produced his own version of the ‘Description’ in his Mappula Angliae.8 Secondly, the conscious classicism of the text, and its correspondingly static picture of England’s countryside, raises intriguing questions. According to the Polychronicon, although England had a long and changing history to which its geographical description was but a prologue, in landscape terms it was always the same. From the days of Pliny to the fifteenth century it was perpetually serene, flourishing, fruitful, well-wooded, generative and industrially productive. Both content and form of the text dictated this conclusion. The good state (implicitly eternal) of England tacitly justified its place in world history; while the repeated reference to classical or late classical writers acted not only to authorise Higden’s work, but to produce the conclusion that England was always England, no matter the date of its description. This picture of a timeless land pertained even when the information composing it was manifestly outdated. It is inconceivable that either Higden or his translators thought that Norwich remained only a fen village surrounding a cathedral. The remark that England had ‘few wolves’ was dubiously relevant in Higden’s day, and by Caxton’s time, when no wolves had been seen in England for two hundred years, must have seemed ludicrously oldfashioned. No doubt retaining such fictional elements was partly an unintended consequence of the text’s heavy reliance on classical and early medieval

5 6 7 8

The earliest use of the word ‘landscape’ in English dates from 1598, and relates to painting (Oxford English Dictionary, landscape). Polychronicon, ii, pp. 52–84. Norwich makes only a cameo appearance (p. 124) as the new diocesan centre under Bishop Losinga. Ranulphus Higden, The Description of Britain (facsimile edn, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Amsterdam; Da Capo Press, New York, 1971); reprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498. See Sheila Delany, Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints and Society in Fifteenth-Century England: the Work of Osbern Bokenham (Oxford, 1998), pp. 5–6. Mappula Angliae was edited by C. Horstmann in Englische Studien 10 (1887).

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authorities. But it is hard to believe that no authorial choice – conscious or subconscious – was involved in producing so lapidary and anachronistic a work. Higden’s (and his continuators’) narrative of English history from 1250 onwards did little to dispel the picture of continuity. Some records of droughts, crop failure, or unusually good or bad weather occur (especially in the MS A continuation),9 but I can find only six instances where the writers observed events which might indicate real environmental change. For 1288–9, Higden wrote that a great rainstorm destroyed crops ‘sicque per quadraginta ferme annos usque ad obitum regis Edwardi . . . secundi extitit caristia bladi’; continuators recorded a three-month frost spell in the 1360s ‘unde dicebatur vulgariter quod hujusmodi gelu a centum annis elapsis et ultra non accidit’ and that in 1382 ‘A grete and mervellous reyne’ fell ‘insomoche [th]at the water was encreasede [th]ro alle Ynglonde by iiij foote moore then ever waters were seen afore’.10 In three sentences the MS A continuator, Trevisa, and the anonymous fifteenth-century translator explicitly comment on landscape trends after the Black Death. Of these, MS A claimed only that after the first outbreak of plague, ‘terra in sterilitatem redacta ob defectum tenentium qui colere ipsam solebant’.11 It was left to Trevisa and the anonymous translator to render the observation (briefly) more allegorical – ‘[th]e see and [th]e lond gan to wexe more bareyne [th]an [th]ey were to forhonde’.12 Thus the Polychronicon’s prologue of a timeless English landscape is matched by the scarcity of its narrative remarks to the contrary. Both discourses look extremely odd when placed in their social and environmental context. Higden’s readers and translators lived through what was arguably one of the periods of greatest landscape change in English history. Despite long and complex debates about the nature and effects of both the mid-fourteenth-century demographic crash and the onset of the Little Ice Age, few scholars would now deny that these phenomena had drastic, and quite sudden, effects on the landscape. In regard to landscape alteration produced by the mid-fourteenth-century demographic crash, even so cautious a scholar as Campbell asserts that the fourteenth century witnessed an ‘economic sea change’.13 Some of the landscape consequences were fairly obvious and rapid. Sown lands of demesne enterprises in Norfolk declined by 20% in the period 1300–1400.14 Relative crop proportions

9

10 11 12 13

14

See, e.g., Polychronicon, viii, pp. 282–3 (dearth of corn and wine); pp. 324–5 (auspicious good weather at Edward III’s coronation); p. 356 (continuation, MS A; dearth of grain, timber and metals); p. 360 (great winds and subsequent floods); p. 430 (continuation, Harleian MS 2261, rain preceding the outbreak of plague); p. 435 (the same windstorm as at p. 360); p. 439 (rain, and subsequent dearth of corn); p. 523 (continuation, Caxton edn, windstorms, apparently as at pp. 360 and 435). Polychronicon, viii, pp. 268–71 (Higden and Trevisa); 362 (MS A continuation) and 463 (Caxton continuation). Polychronicon, viii, p. 355. Polychronicon, viii, pp. 355 and 347. Bruce M.S. Campbell, ‘Matching Supply to Demand: Crop Production and Disposal by English Demesnes in the Century of the Black Death’, The Journal of Economic History 57.4 (December 1997), p. 830. Campbell, ‘Matching Supply’, p. 831.


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of grain to legumes remained roughly the same, but the percentage of different grains grown altered radically, with vetches grown more widely, the share of rye declining by almost a half, and the proportion of barley increasing from 48% to 56.3%.15 The percentage of farms growing the different grains changed: 96.8% of growers grew wheat before 1349, but only 88.8% did so afterwards; 79.8% before 1349 grew rye as opposed to 54.2% afterwards. Somewhere between 1449 and 1584, the proportion of farms growing oats dived from 98.1% to 54.7%.16 At this time Norfolk agriculturalists began to experiment with new crops: buckwheat is first recorded in North Walsham in 1480, and by the late sixteenth century about 14% of farmers were growing it.17 Overall, Campbell suggests that agriculturalists tended to convert marginal lands from growing rye as a livery for farm servants to other uses, such as pasture, or animal-feed crops,18 a theory supported by the distinct rise in livestock numbers per hundred cereal acres after 1350. Particularly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries an apparent ovine population explosion occurred (though this might partly be a misleading impression given by a change from peasant ownership to large and better-recorded demesne flocks).19 The profitable business of fattening cattle on the pastures of East Anglia, wellknown from later centuries, was flourishing before 1500. A Chancery petition of 1465 mentions a drover who took two hundred oxen fattened in the marshes of Ely ‘vnto Wyndh[a]m . . . and lefte hem there in pastures’ for eventual sale in Norwich.20 Eleanor Townshend’s record of her Rainham properties shows, for the year 1498, one of her agents buying ‘xxx Northryn net’, and selling twenty-six ‘Wherof xxiiij come oute of Suff.’21 Enclosure for pastoral purposes followed these changes in livestock husbandry. Wolsey’s great Inquisition found that between 1488 and 1517, 8969 acres in Norfolk had been either converted to pasture, or (if formerly common) had been enclosed for the exclusive pastoral use of the lord or farmer of the manor.22 Envisaging the landscape on this micro-level it seems undeniable that anyone aged over fifty, walking the fields and lanes of late medieval Norfolk, would have seen a landscape markedly different from that of their childhood – more pastoral, less arable, growing different crops at different times of year. These alterations may have seemed even more marked to local inhabitants, since some were very regionalised. The predominance of winter-sown cereals (mainly wheat), for instance, switched between 1449 and 1584 from western to eastern Norfolk, whereas spring-sown cereals (barley) underwent a reverse movement.23 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Bruce M.S. Campbell and Mark Overton, ‘A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming, c.1250–c.1850’, Past and Present, 141, 1993, pp. 38–105, table 2 and pp. 54ff. Campbell and Overton, ‘A New Perspective’, table 3 p. 55. Campbell and Overton, ‘A New Perspective’, p. 60. Campbell, ‘Matching Supply’, pp. 833–5. Campbell and Overton, ‘A New Perspective’, p. 79. TNA, C1 33/58. BL Add. MS 41305, fols 14v–15r. I. Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions of 1517: Inclosures and Evictions, Edited from the Lansdowne MS I. 153, Part II’, TRHS ns 7 (1893), p. 141. Campbell and Overton, ‘A New Perspective’, pp. 63–6, and map p. 65.

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As if economically driven landscape changes were not enough, the current consensus of climatologists appears to be that the climate began to fluctuate wildly from decade to decade in the period 1250–1400, before settling to a generally colder and stormier trend.24 Mark Bailey found compelling evidence of increased flooding in eastern England 1275–1350 caused by raised sea levels and storm surges.25 Later accounts of Norwich Priory for Hemmesby, Winterton and Martham recorded that the reeve was pardoned respectively, for 32 shillings, 3s 4d and 3s 4d ‘pro terra submers[a] in mari’.26 Such floods could transform whole areas. Tom Williamson has argued that it was a combination of rising sea-levels, storm surges, and declining markets for fuel after the Black Death that led to the formation of the Broads in post-Black Death Norfolk.27 Some individual signs of such climate change did not go unnoticed. Damage caused by the ‘unwonted hurricanes’ of the early 1360s is cited in four 1363 petitions from Salisbury, London, Colchester, and Norwich.28 Three references to the same windstorm survive in versions of the Polychronicon, and even a century after the event Capgrave wrote of the ‘grete wynd oute of [th]e south-west, fro euensong tyl mydnyte, [th]at blewe down many a hous’.29 In short, though we can expect no period to be immune from landscape change, the combination in the late middle ages of anthropogenic alterations in land use and climatic shifts arguably exacerbated and accelerated landscape transformation in the years 1300–1500. At times of greatest disruption, houses and villages were abandoned and left to ruin; arable land went untilled; cropping patterns and general land-use altered; the weather became unstable, and increasingly colder and stormier; and parts of the countryside were rendered much more liable to flood. Why then do these changes appear so infrequently in the East Anglian narrative records? Why are they absent even from the works of such prolix and wide-ranging authors as John Lydgate? Why limited to a few sentences in Capgrave, whose fidelity to his chronicle sources led him to include the same abbreviated vignette as in the Polychronicon – that after the first pestilence, ‘because [th]ere were so fewe tylmen, [th]e erde lay vntillid’?30 I can think of only 24

25

26 27 28

29

30

D. Dahl-Jensen et al., ‘Past Temperatures Directly from the Greenland Ice Sheet’, Science 282 (5387) (9 October 1998), pp. 268–71, esp. fig. 4; D.A. Meese et al., ‘The Accumulation Record from the GISP Core as an Indicator of Climate Change throughout the Holocene’, Science 266 (5191) (9 December 1994), pp. 1680–2, esp. fig. 2. Mark Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris: Natural Disaster and Economic Decline in Eastern England, 1275–1350’, in Bruce M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991), pp. 184–208. Although his article focuses on the years 1275–1350, Bailey notes (p. 208) that ‘floods continued to afflict marshlands in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, an observation borne out by my figures in Table 1, below. NRO, DCN 1/1/92, Obedientiary roll, Michaelmas 1468–9. The Norfolk Broads: a Landscape History (Manchester, 1997), pp. 86–7. CPL, Petitions 1342–1419, pp. 423–4, June 1363 (London), 444, August 1363 (Colchester), 445, August (Norwich), and 462–3, October (Salisbury). My thanks to Carole Rawcliffe, who directed me to this source. Polychronicon, viii, pp. 360, 435 and 523. John Capgrave’s Abbreuiacion of Chronicles, ed. Peter J. Lucas (Oxford, 1983), p. 173. The editor notes that the Abbreuiacion was completed c.1462–63. Capgrave, Abbreuiacion, pp. 158 and 166.


57

three explanations of this curious narrative reticence. On examination, two prove radically unsatisfactory. The third is tenuous and difficult to document. I am reluctant to claim it as correct; but it might form a working hypothesis around which to develop further discussion. The first explanation might follow the theory that landscape descriptions were simply not part of pre-Renaissance mentalité. Hence, whether or not fifteenthcentury East Anglians observed their landscape, they lacked the necessary mental and discursive structures to enable them to pen descriptions of landscape change. This is effectively a postmodernist view; it assumes that available discourses dictate what can be written about, or even observed, in any particular era. But while it is true that we do not find, in the fifteenth century, any text like Nathaniel Kent’s magisterial survey of Norfolk farming,31 or even Andrewes Burrell’s sententious pamphlet (1654) on ways to combat the drowning of the fens,32 the suggestion that this explains the lacunae in fifteenth-century works is both solipsistic and difficult to sustain, theoretically or practically. Firstly, in theoretical terms, this ‘explanation’ ignores the fact that changes in generic repertoires are cultural phenomena which should be subject to historical scrutiny. Simply to argue that late medieval English writers lacked a genre of landscape description is to duck the questions of why they did not develop one, and what social or cultural purposes its absence may have served? Secondly, the idea that landscape description is missing from late medieval writing is in fact incorrect, even if we discount Higden and his followers as landscapists. Though real landscape features were admittedly only rarely portrayed in writing (William Worcestre’s description of Wookey Hole caves is an exception),33 vivid images of imaginary landscapes were standard elements in late medieval fiction. Chaucer’s idyllic opening of the Canterbury Tales is only the most famous example of a very widespread trend. Lydgate, in his Temple of Glas, apparently played with audience expectations by replacing the normal springtime opening to a poem on Love with a stark winter scene: Whan [th]at Lucina wi[th] hir pale li[g]t Was Ioyned last wi[th][ Phebus in aquarie Amyd december . . . And derk Diane, ihorned, no[th]ing clere, Had hid hir bemys vndir a mysty cloude.34

John Metham, writing for the Stapiltons of Ingham, produced a more conventional vernal setting for Amoryus and Cleopes: In May, that modyr ys of monthys glade, Qwan flourys spreded, the qwyche wythin the rote In wyntur were clos, that than wyth floure and blade, 31

Nathaniel Kent, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Norfolk, with Observations on the Means of Improvement (London, 1794). 32 Andrewes Burrell, A brief relation discovering plainely the true causes why the great levell of fenns . . . have been drowned . . . (London, 1642). 33 William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. John H. Harvey (Oxford, 1969), pp. 290–91. 34 Lydgate’s Temple of Glas, ed. J. Schick (London, 1891, repr. 1924), p. 1.

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For Phebus exaltyng, wyth sundry hwys smellyd sote; And burdys amonge the levys grene her myrthys made . . .35

Yet Metham’s work contains glimpses of exactly observed landscape features. The ruined wall which simultaneously divides and unites the lovers is so ‘overschadwyd . . . over alle/ Wyth yvy and bowys’ and ‘buschys and brerys’ that Cleopes can hardly find the cranny in it. Amoryus, hearing Cleope’s voice, ‘gan lepe that nowdyr nettyl busche ner thorn/ Myght hym let tyl he was entryd in.’36 This picture of a building collapsing in a tangle of ivy, briars and nettles arguably comprises a pithy and accurate description of the miniature ecosystems surrounding decayed buildings. It raises the possibility that at some level Metham accurately transcribed what he saw in the villages of post-plague Norfolk. Even more interestingly, the fifteenth-century play fragment recorded by Robert Reynes of Acle identifies landscape observation as a principal characteristic of worldly people. In a particularly luxuriant speech, the character Delight expands on the things that delight him: To behelde [th][e firmament lyght, The cours of sterrys to kenne, The sunne with his bemys bryght, [Th]e mone how he refulsyth [th]e nyght, The planetis in her circumferens renne. The skyes in her coloures rake [Th]e therke sladdes of clowdes blake: This reioyceth me above. Than of the erthe delyght I take To se the florent wodis [th]er leves shake . . .

No detail of forest, field or ocean escapes Delight’s enraptured gaze, from the ‘hey hyllys wher is the holsom aye’, to the ‘redolent medowes with ther flowres fayer’, the abundantly fruitful orchards, the sea with ‘fysshes [th]erin swymmyng/ The whawys how they waltyr’, the woods and heaths teeming with foxes, hare and deer, and the ‘swyft flyght of hawkes’.37 His speech does not suggest that landscape observation was thought to be a desirable habit. Delight is presented as counter-example rather than model, too enthusiastic about the joys of this world to be truly religious. But the extract does show that the compilers of the play believed, firstly, that observation of, and joy taken in, the beauty and liveliness of the landscape was a common characteristic of ordinary sinful contemporaries; secondly that the representation of someone so engrossed in landscape observation would be instantly recognisable to an East Anglian audience; and thirdly that such character traits were widespread enough to be worth preaching 35

Amoryus and Cleopes, ed. Stephen F. Page (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/Amor.htm 1999, lines 8–12; see also lines 381–5. 36 Ibid., lines 1063–4, 1076, 1082, and 1109–10. 37 The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle, ed. Cameron Louis (New York, 1980), pp. 69–270.


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against. In the process, they demonstrated that late medieval East Anglians, far from being discursively incapable of landscape description, could produce florid and extensive environmental pictures. Yet such fictional landscape set-pieces were almost always as static and formulaic as the Polychronicon’s. Metham and Lydgate, in different ways, used seasonal descriptions not to refer to real variable weather, but to rework established literary topoi. Delight’s England essentially repeated Higden’s; heavily fictionalised, and distinguished by the same everlasting abundance of flora and fauna. What other factors, then, might account for this apparently deafening narrative silence on real landscape change in Norfolk 1350–1500? Did the post-plague Norfolk landscape, in contradistinction to other parts of the country, in fact alter so little as to cause no remark? It is true that some kinds of change in some Norfolk regions may have been comparatively slight. The East Anglian Breckland, Bailey reminds us, continued after 1450 to do what it had always done best – raise sheep, rabbits, and high-grade malting barley.38 Commentators from K.J. Allison to Alan Davison are cautious about the extent and timing of the disappearance of Norfolk villages. The process was clearly long-drawn-out, both on a county-wide scale, and (often) in relation to individual settlements. The immediate onset of the plague cannot be shown to have had great effect in Norfolk; while rigorous examination of the Norfolk enclosures in the period 1450–1550 disclosed them to be ‘of minor significance’ in village disappearance. Only sixteen of the Norfolk villages in which enclosures were reported in 1517 ultimately vanished, some of them by no means immediately.39 Davison, in his study of six deserted villages, could find only one, Rougham, which declined sharply in the late fourteenth century, and even it hung on in much reduced form until at least 1542. A contemporary observer would have to be exceptionally long-lived and perceptive to appreciate, as one phenomenon, the disappearance of Little Ringstead, which had only seventeen taxpayers in 1332 and probably did not long survive the Black Death as an intact village community, and the gradual fading of Letton, whose church was demolished in the sixteenth century, but which was not finally emparked until the late eighteenth century.40 Enclosure, too, may have been less traumatic in Norfolk than in the Midland counties. If Leadam calculated correctly the areas reported enclosed between 1488 and 1517, then of a total of around 10,500 acres reported, only 8969 (about 0.95% of the area of the reported hundreds) were truly converted from unenclosed to enclosed land, or from arable to pasture. In comparison, in the much smaller midland county of Buckinghamshire, almost the same area of land (8000 acres) was reported enclosed.41 Proportions varied in different Norfolk hundreds; 38

Mark Bailey, A Marginal Economy? East Anglian Breckland in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989). 39 K.J. Allison, ‘The Lost Villages of Norfolk’, NA 31 (1957), pp. 116–62, quote from p. 133. 40 Alan Davison, Six Deserted Villages in Norfolk (EA Arch. 44, 1988). In 1542 there was still a settlement at Rougham, but so small, and so sharply divided between one major landowner and a few very poor tax-payers, as to suggest the loss of a real village community. 41 Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions’, table I, p. 141; I.S. Leadam, ed., The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517–18 (London, 1897), vol. 2, pp. 570–79.

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though local observers may have noticed the 3.2% of total acreage reported as enclosed in Freebridge Lynn, one would have to be very sharp-eyed or very directly involved to spot the 0.07% of lands allegedly enclosed in Deepwade hundred. In any case, since medieval Norfolk was characterised by a much more varied land use, and had undergone earlier and more piecemeal enclosure than the Midlands, some of the Norfolk enclosures of 1488–1517 seem more cosmetic than dramatic. Many were in small parcels of less than 40 acres.42 Famously, in only one instance – at Holt hamlet – was the landowner said to have ‘destroyed an entire hamlet with all its tenements . . . and put the land to sheep pasture’.43 Some landscape changes in Norfolk, therefore, may have been either so longterm or so minimal as to arouse little written reaction. But this argument cannot apply to such easily visible phenomena as cropping patterns, weather surges, and the significant decline in size of villages and settlement cohesion. Furthermore, East Anglian juries in 1517 clearly did take indignant notice even of minor alterations to their local landscape. The issue that most aroused their ire was grazing rights. Though they noted the ruin of tenements they preferred, rather than detailing the hardships of displaced tenants, to note the loss (however small) of common pasture, or their distinctive set of East Anglian rights to graze sheep on arable land at certain times of the year.44 At Walsingham, for instance, the jurors alleged that ‘James Gresham inclosed 2 acres of the common at Walsyngham which is a great damage (nocumentum) to the town’.45 In any case, the argument that landscape change in Norfolk was so slow, localised, and/or minuscule as to be unnoticeable fails on more general consideration. If it were the peculiar landscape circumstances of Norfolk that minimised narrative records of the changes, then we would expect to see extended landscape narratives from the harder-hit Midland counties. Yet descriptions of post-plague landscape change are rare throughout England in this period. Their scarcity cannot, therefore, be explained by provincial variation. What, then, is the third hypothesis? Perhaps accounts of real landscape change exist in late medieval writings, but outside the narrative records where we, with modern literary proclivities, expect to see them. If this hypothesis were sound, the logical place to search for the missing descriptions would be in the most prolific record genres of the era – those bushels of late medieval legal and administrative documents which threaten to overflow even modern archives. Sure enough, in inquisitions, surveys and court cases, designed to determine where changed agricultural or environmental conditions might entail a loss of the landowner’s revenue or rights, some descriptions of serious and/or irrevocable landscape change emerge. Admittedly, the numbers are not great, but they are much more numerous than in narrative sources. Furthermore, there is a clear increase in these 42

Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions’, table XII, pp. 156–8. Average area enclosed was 56 acres, but the figure is skewed upwards by four untypically large examples – 300 acres or more – in the villages of Flitcham and Choseley, in Freebridge and Smithden hundreds respectively. 43 Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions’, p. 191. 44 Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions’, pp. 181–2, 195–6, 200, 202, 209, 214–15; contrast the dramatic tales of enforced beggary which appear in some Warwickshire inquisitions – eg. TNA, C43/28 File 14. 45 Leadam, ‘The Inquisitions’, p. 184.

61


Ruin/serious deterioriation of buildings Large-scale tree felling

1

1

1

1

Diversion/ obstruction of watercourses

Purpresture

1

1

1

Other

4

1

Total

8

5

2

1360–69

1370–79

1380–89

1390–99

Subtotal: 1340–1399

Total

1350–59

1340–49

8

2

1

1 14

28

5 13

4

6 11 13 22 16 72

85

3

2

1

8

2

4

2

4 10

1 23

31

1

4

2

4

1

4

1

3 15

19

4

9 10

4

7

5

4

4 34

43

1

4

1

1

4

1

1

2

1

1

2 20

4

4

3

3

8

1

1

1

1

2

3

1

Enclosure

3 14

3

3

Major storms and floods (sea and river)

Subtotal: 1250–1339

6

1330–39

1310–19

1

1320–29

1300–09

1290–99

2

1280–89

2

1270–79

1260–69

Ruin/serious dilapidation of castle/ palace

1250–59

Table 1. Incidence of records of serious and/or long-lasting landscape change in Inquisitions Miscellaneous and calendars of papal petitions and letters, 1250–1399

4

1

2

3

6

3

5 19

3

7 11 4

5

2 24

44

9 17 73 27 24 33 31 50 28 193 226

accounts, from all over England, from the 1340s onward. The figures in Table 1 were compiled from the calendars of papal registers and miscellaneous inquisitions for the period 1250–1399. They include all instances where individuals or juries reported serious and long-lasting changes in their environment (natural or built): unroofed and/or ruinous buildings, the felling of large numbers of large trees, serious or repeated damage from storms or flooding, the diversion or permanent obstruction of watercourses, purprestures, enclosures, and a variety of other environmental damage (buildings burned down by lightning or enemy action, towns devastated by plague, the silting up of harbours). In terms of charting the history of landscape observation, the significance of these records is unmistakeable. Early in the period, the scribes recorded few instances of indicators of landscape change of any sort (except, perhaps significantly, in the rain-sodden 1310s); in the later fourteenth century the numbers of observations rise dramatically. There is a sharp division between the decades

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before 1340, just before the onset of endemic plague, and those after 1340, encompassing the period at which climatic change became severe and long-lasting. In total, 72.6% of the 266 observations of landscape change were recorded in the period 1340–1399. In all post-1340 decades the total number of observations exceeds that for any decade before 1340. In only one category (dilapidation of royal castles) did the number of reports of major damage in the ninety years before 1340 even equal those made in the sixty years afterwards. For every other category, between twice and six times the number of observations made in 1250–1339 were recorded in the period 1340–1399.46 What do these figures mean? Do they reflect accurately contemporary perceptions of the real problems caused by a worsening climate and changes in post-plague economy and land-use? Perhaps to some extent we can read them so. Bailey is inclined to credit ‘the evidence contained in royal inquisitions and manorial accounts . . . which had passed the scrutiny of sceptical juries and auditors’.47 Certainly poignant and apparently convincing tales appear of reduced communities struggling against storms, flood damage, coastal erosion, and lack of resources to maintain buildings. The starkly detailed stories from Dunwich in 1326 and 1354 are an example. By 1354, said the jurors, the harbour had been blocked and much of the town was submerged; of the remainder, two-thirds was vacant land, ‘the buildings having fallen down’; and half the remaining third was in ruins.48 Short but clear accounts record difficulties even on inland properties. In 1388, a marsh in Saxlingham ‘next Hennale’, was reported to be ‘of no net yearly value on account of inundation (propter fluxum aque)’.49 Reports on the state of buildings from the 1340s onwards comprise a doleful litany of houses, barns, mills and bridges falling into ruin. As early as 1343, Burghersh, Sussex, consisted of ‘a manor, whereof the houses are destroyed . . .; the site of a manor, with a garden the crop of which consists of nettles and fruit’. The accompanying watermill at Byvelham was in ruins.50 The bridge at Newcastle in 1369 had ‘so many defects’ that £1500 would not rebuild it.51 In 1374 Braintree jurors reported that Hugh Fastolf had conscientiously renovated the alien priory of Pantfeld and Welles, but could not repair the ‘building across the east end of the priory hall, which before the priory was committed to him was ruinous and almost fell down’.52 At Marlborough in 1390 the jurors refused to assess damage to the castle’s walls, gates, towers, and ditches ‘because they can hardly be repaired without a complete rebuilding’.53 At Kenninghall, Norfolk, in 1398, the capital messuage was ‘in ruins’.54 Though I have not counted inquisition records beyond 1399, fifteenth-century jurors and petitioners were no less explicit. At 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

I have not inserted row percentages for any category since percentages for figures smaller than 100 tend only to mislead the reader. Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’, p. 189. CIM, ii, p. 226, no. 907; CIM, iii, p. 56. no. 156; cf. also Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’, pp. 195–8. CIM, v, p. 41, no. 56. CIM, ii, p. 462, no. 1858. CIM, iii, p. 271, no. 718. CIM, iii, p. 359, no. 948. CIM, v, p. 167, no. 284. CIM, vi, p. 237, no. 394.


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Bonby, Lincolnshire in 1433, the jurors found that in the late lord’s time ‘all the buildings within the site of the manor except the gatehouse were so rotten and decayed that . . . they fell to the ground’.55 In 1440, the burgesses of Richmond complained that even their common pasture was so overgrown by ‘thorns, ferns and other weeds (aborigines) that the burgesses have been unable to take the herbage and agistment as was previously usual’.56 Some jurors detailed their environmental concerns minutely. In Colchester in 1377 three lengthy separate presentments described the heavily weighted, close-meshed trawling nets which, when used in inshore waters, trapped even the smallest fish and went ‘so evenly over the ground as to destroy the spat (flores) and fry (fetus) whereby the fish should be nourished’. The result, they said, was that ‘the fisheries in those places are almost entirely destroyed’.57 In short, it would seem illogical for historians to complain that late medieval writers left few landscape descriptions and reflections, while ignoring the genres in which such accounts apparently most normally appeared. Within the inquisition records, fifteen Norfolk cases share the same content and chronological pattern as those from other counties. Out of a total of fifteen records – three of serious building deterioration, two of waste of woodlands or turbary, eight of major storms or floods, and two of the growing sandbank at the mouth of Great Yarmouth harbour – only four were made before 1340.58 Many of these cases sound like genuine observations of serious indicators of environmental change, whether anthropogenic or natural. In this light the great 1517 inquisition may be seen as the culmination of a long process by which matters of environmental concern were raised and recorded in administrative forums. However, as Natalie Davis argues, there can be fictions in legal records;59 and a closer look at five environmental tales in legal documents from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Norfolk may find them less transparent than first appearances suggest. The first four are from King’s Bench. To take them in chronological order, an inquisition was recorded on the 12 June 1360 ‘because of a plaint of the men of the towns of Stalham, Brustead, Riston, Barton, Irstead, Catfield and Ludham’ over the state of a stream ‘called Smale’ (the Ant). The river, they alleged, had formerly been navigable from Great Yarmouth to Stalham but was now ‘so obstructed’ that no boats could make their way upstream, to the ‘manifest harm’ of all the named towns. When asked to say who obstructed the river, and whose duty it was to clear it (illam mundare) the jury replied that the deterioration was no one’s fault; ‘in the time of the pestilence, because of the men of the towns not

55 56 57 58

CIM, vii, pp. 28–9. CIM, viii, pp. 85–6, quote from p. 86. CIM, iii, pp. 406–7, no. 1057. CPL, i, 1198–1304, p. 545; CPL, Petitions 1342–1419, pp. 29, 36–7, and 445; CIM, ii, pp. 34 no. 143, 40–41 no. 171, and 389–90 no. 1589; CIM, iii, pp. 5–7 no. 14, 133–4 no. 371, and 335 no. 875; CIM, iv, pp. 54–5 no. 84, 76–7 no. 124, and 168–9 no. 298; CIM, v, pp. 40–42 no. 56; and CIM, vi, p. 237, no. 394. 59 Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France (Stanford, 1987).

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using it and nothing being carried by it, various plants (diuerse herbe)’ grew in the stream, ‘and from that time . . . it is obstructed’. Since ‘no one from time out of mind cleared the river’, they could not say where the responsibility lay.60 In 1414 the prioress of Carrow sued the prior of Holy Trinity Norwich, one of his monks, and two of their servants, for dumping clay and ‘herbam marsidam’ into a stream running from Trowse to the Wensum, so that ‘eodem Riuulo . . . sordida & infecta devenit, ac piscis in eodem Riuulo existens . . . interiit’. The jury ruled in her favour, and allotted £40 damages.61 A lengthy record of 1422 recapitulated a series of indignant inquisition presentments originally taken on 14 December 1401 on the state of the Bishop’s Staithe and the harbour in Lynn. Several juries presented that the staithe, which should have formed a defence ‘contra fluxus & refluxus aque’ had breaches requiring a thousand marks to repair; that the ruined staithe blocked the harbour so that ships which formerly came in safely were liable to be wrecked; that the port was beset with ‘pericula innumerabilia’ because the harbour channels, formerly twenty-eight feet deep, were now only six feet deep; and that in proof of these perils, in 1394 a ship called the Katherine had been ‘confracta & dimersa’ on the broken staithe. The jury, when finally sworn in, decided in 1422 that the staithe was ‘well and sufficiently repaired’ and the harbour clear and of sufficient depth.62 In 1477 a complicated lawsuit arose from the allegation of John Arnburgh of Cantley Bardolf that the sheriffs of Norwich had stolen his barrel of eels. The defence alleged that as an incorporate and ‘ancient city’, Norwich was accustomed to hold a tourn twice yearly to inquire into encroachments on the Wensum from Norwich to Hardley Cross. At the previous tourn, the sheriffs, finding by the oaths of twelve good men that John Arnburgh had set up a weir at Cantley which blocked the river and impeded boat traffic, had fined him 6s 8d. When he failed to pay, they had arranged to distrain his barrel of eels.63 Finally a draft petition survives from c.1481 from the tenants of Castle Rising to the king and Privy Council. Their concerns centred on an obscure quarrel with the bishop of Norwich; but part of their complaint related to the alleged decay of buildings, deer park and warren at Castle Rising: Item to vnderstonde what shalbe don wt the grete berne at Rysyng whiche is in grete decay & is not occupied and the rep[er]acon of it wold coste x m[er]c or more & c. Itm the Kepair of [th]e chace take eu[er]y yere wood wtout assigneme[n]t sum yere xx lood and sumtyme were wont to tak nout but eu[er]y yar iiij lood. Itm that my lord game may be bett[er] kepte and cherisshed for the kepars suffre eu[er]y man to hunte there that will yeue them xxd or xl d and so hath be slayn ther thre yer xx dere and at this tyme [th][er] is nat passed iiij xx dere . . . Itm that [th]e fermo[ur] Rauf Salt be compellid to stor the wareyn whiche he hath with the ferme and make it in as good plight as it was whan he entred into it

60 61 62 63

TNA, KB 27 400 Rex m. 22r. TNA, KB 27 621, m. 28r; ‘herbam marsidam’ may represent ‘marsilium’ (hellebore). TNA, KB 27 644 Easter 1422 Rex, m. 14r. TNA, KB 27 875, m. 34r–d.


65

for sume tyme it was laten by yere for xx li and now ther is asmuche vermyn in as conyes &c.64

Though all of these records arguably present cases where the landscape had been altered, they are not presented in terms of general environmental change; or even (except in the case of the river Ant) in terms of the long-term effects of demographic or economic trends. Instead, all were concerned, explicitly or implicitly, with the remediable faults of individuals in land management. Thus, the inquisition of 1360 was at least overtly intended to pin the responsibility for clearing a failing stream onto some set of persons; Ralph Salt and the keepers of Castle Rising park were blamed by the petitioners for the disappearance of deer, wood and rabbits. Similarly, the whole point of the 1517 Inquisitions was, ostensibly, to turn the landscape clock back thirty years by forcing enclosers to reverse their decisions and plough up their new pastures (though it is hard to find cases where they succeeded.) No doubt this culture of individual blame was in part a product of the legal genre in which these complaints appeared. The law, after all, was there to assign responsibility, and ensure reparation. But the fact that contemporaries chose to bring their complaints of environmental damage to such a forum tells something about contemporary assumptions about landscape change. It appears that litigants believed that if a landscape changed, it was because someone was at fault, and a remedy at common or statute law should apply. Oddly, perhaps, the particular matter in dispute seems most often to have been ownership or rights over the land in question. The matter of the repair of the Bishop’s Staithe at Lynn, for instance, was significantly twinned with the comment ‘And the bishop holds sessions as if by the king’s writ, and keeps a gaol and arrests’. The dispute over the prioress of Carrow’s rivulet was partly decided on the issue of the long-running quarrel over whether, as the defendants claimed, Carrow was part of the hamlet of Brakendale, over which the priory claimed rights, or of the city of Norwich. John Arnburgh claimed that the Wensum at Cantley came under the purview of the manor, rather than that of the city of Norwich. A sceptic might argue that this indicates a typically medieval view of the landscape merely as a web of conflicting rights and responsibilities rather than an observable natural environment. But this view may be oversimplified. Why, for instance, should territorial disputes (a staple of medieval landowning life) manifest themselves, particularly in this period in stories of harbours silting up, rivers becoming choked, buildings falling down, and the disappearance of deer, fish and rabbits? Reading between the lines, one might suggest that to the writers, antisocial behaviour or breakdowns in the scheme of rights and ownership were associated at some unconscious level with deleterious environmental change. The underlying assumption appears to be that the landscape should, ideally, be absolutely stable, and would remain so were it not for the reprehensible actions of individuals. The corollary of such a position is that changes in the landscape acted as a sign of, and could be identified with, social and economic tension, encroachment, and disturbance. 64

TNA, E 163/9/41, m. 4.

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This reading leads to the further speculation that embedded in late medieval legal narratives is an understanding of landscape change referring ultimately to the story of the environmental effects of the human Fall from Paradise. Certainly in East Anglian popular theology Paradise appeared as an ever-fruitful landscape. The N-town plays described Eden as full of: flesche & fysch & frute of prys . . . pepyr pyan and swete lycorys.. both appel & per & gentyl rys’

As in the inquisitions and lawsuits, only the wilfully perverse action of individuals produced change for the worse: Eve and Adam, having eaten the forbidden fruit, are summarily extradited to a very different landscape: In blake busshys my bour xal be . . . / Now stomble we on stalk & ston65

says Eve of their exile. Thus the features of the imagined landscapes of late medieval East Anglia – whether deriving from Higden, spoken in plays, or argued over in courts – can be seen to be eerily optimistic, constructed on the presupposition of an ideal unchanging land, where everybody had their rights, rivers ran clear, streams were full of fish, buildings never fell down, and forests produced deer and wood eternally. As a final manifestation of this idyllic view, let us consider the records of another inquisition; this time from about the 1420s, designed to determine who exactly had rights in Litcham common. The document records the memories of elderly Litchamites as to the uses made of the common in their, or their ancestors’ lifetimes. Thomas Bolewere, for instance, deposed that ‘his fad[er] . . . dede g[ra]ven in þe g[ra]vel pitts on þe south side of þe strem . . . many a score karteful of g[ra]vel’ and ‘mani a karteful of cley in þe pitts on þe south side of Norma[n]nis [y]erd’. All ‘me[n] of luch[am] . . . [th]t wolden schoren & mowen gres scar & reed’ in the stream did so, and paid tithes from their harvest to the parson of Litcham. Turves were dug, hay was dried ‘upon the lyngis’, and beasts, ‘bo[th]e net & Kalve[s]’ pastured there. Thomas North gave his memories of William the cattleherd, deposing that he ‘saugh often times . . . þe fornseyd Williams Wyf . . . beren here husbonde his dyner out at [th]e south syde of East halle whanne here husbonde kepte [th]e fornseyd net’. Leisure activities were recalled – the young men, it was said, played ‘renny[n]g at [th]e fot bal for kak[s]’ on the lings. Former godly landowners had allegedly set up crosses there which in the minds of Litcham’s inhabitants somehow demonstrated their common rights: John Dee wich was iiij xx [y]er old & more of luch[a]m . . . seyn whil he was a litel boy [th]t [th]e gode ladi of Esthalle dede sette [th]e cros on [th]e southside of [th]e hermitage of here deuotion.

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The N-Town Plays: A Facsimile of British Library MS Cotton Vespasian C VIII, intro. by Peter Meredith and Stanley J. Kahrl (Ilkley, 1977), fols 12r and 16v.


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Finally the story was told of negotations between the fourteenth-century manor holder, Sir Hamond of Felton, and the prior of Castle Acre, who gave Sir Hamond a tun of wine, and asked leave for his men to water beasts at Litcham’s stream. Sir Hamond promptly ‘of his grete jentre be cause he was a ma[n] of holi cherche & wel be louyd Wt Jentil of cu[n]tre granted hit al [th]e time [th]t forseyd priour levidde’.66 We should, of course, read this document with an eye to what it tells us of land use and rights. But it may also be read as a partly fictionalised narrative of a remembered past. Viewed in this light, what does it present? A past landscape where endlessly fruitful common lands provided grazing, water, thatching materials, gravel, clay, peat, and hay; where the third order of ideal medieval society – those who worked – carried out wholesome labour, wives dutifully ministered to their husbands, and boys participated in healthful sports; where the two higher social orders (those who prayed and those who fought) collaborated harmoniously. Whatever its immediate legal value to fifteenth-century Litcham people (no doubt it had some), this document also embodies a thoroughly nostalgic view of the countryside – one in which every prospect pleases, and not even man is vile. To sum up: it is difficult to find the narratives in which late medieval East Anglians recorded the transformations their surrounding landscapes undoubtedly underwent in this period. Yet though scarce in any genre, they are distinctly more numerous in inquisitions, petitions and legal records from the 1340s onwards, appearing there intriguingly entwined with narratives of ancient legal rights, communal identity, and social order. Underlying them we may sometimes discern a kind of landscape nostalgia – an intense, and possibly wilful, refusal to acknowledge that landscape change was not confined to the effects of individual and temporary actions; that the climate was deteriorating; and that ultimately both climatic and economic forces acting on the late medieval environment were beyond the power of the observers to halt or reverse. If this were so, it should surprise no one that the elegiac descriptions of Ranulf Higden retained their popularity so far into the late middle ages; and it may explain why we, seeking in late medieval writings the realistic genres of narrative landscape observation we find so easy to construct and interpret, will, I think, continue to search in vain.

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NRO, KIM 1/9/16; my thanks to Paul Rutledge, who directed me to this document and kindly provided me with a much better transcript than my own.

Understanding the Urban Environment: Archaeological Approaches to Medieval Norwich Brian Ayers

Introduction NORWICH has been described as ‘the best case from Britain of archaeologists, in conjunction with historians, elucidating the early development of a town’.1 This passage drew attention to a research policy where hypotheses had been formulated, tested, rejected where necessary and elsewhere developed, in order to increase understanding of the medieval city. It was a policy rooted in the work of the Norwich Survey of the Centre for East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s, and one which has informed much research since. The great walled city that was medieval Norwich by the mid-fourteenth century is particularly well-suited to archaeological analysis. This urban complex had and retains a richness and diversity which facilitates investigation. This is not to say that there is necessarily always a great deal that survives of the physical fabric of medieval Norwich – I have indicated recently that proportionately very little does survive of the built heritage of the medieval city.2 Nevertheless, despite much loss of standing buildings – and much later restoration and adaptation of that which is left – the very environment of the city has a ‘time-depth’ to it. This paper seeks to demonstrate how this can be explored archaeologically in order not only to increase understanding of its physical and chronological development but also to provide a broader understanding of the economic implications of urban growth (and occasional decay) and the social consequences of settlement activity. Approach Initially, it is perhaps necessary to define terms, specifically with regard to ‘archaeological investigation’. Archaeology is the investigation of material culture and the impact of that culture upon the environment – it can involve excavation but need not necessarily do so. This paper will draw upon excavated I am grateful to Carole Rawcliffe for directing me to Kate Giles’ most helpful text and to my wife, Robina McNeil, for reading a draft of this paper and offering useful and constructive comment. 1 J. Schofield and A. Vince, Medieval Towns (London, 2003), p. 73. 2 B.S. Ayers, ‘The Longevity of a City: Medieval Norwich in the Twenty-First Century’ (Helen Sutermeister Memorial Lecture 2002, UEA, unpublished).

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material but it will also utilise information from buildings archaeology, where careful analysis of structures can reveal data concerning utilisation and control of space, social relationships and economic drivers, and the wider urban topography. The intention, however, is emphatically not merely to inventorise the urban environment. Adoption of such an approach would be relatively straightforward, examining as it does the physical geography, the imposition of urban forms and the diversity of monuments in order to reveal complexity and diversity. It is, of course, an approach which has merit in that it can provide snapshots of the urban resource, inviting analysis. Thus, within the central part of the walled area of Norwich alone, it is possible to follow the alignment of an east-to-west Roman road (Bishopgate/ Cathedral Close/Princes Street /St Andrew’s Street/St Benedict’s Street – sometimes called Holmestrete Way) through the historic core and demonstrate how, for the greater medieval period alone, it connects one probable Early Anglo-Saxon cemetery, at least fourteen parish churches (from St Helen in the east to St Benedict in the west), a cathedral, a Benedictine priory, a bishop’s palace, one friary (Dominican), two market places (Tombland and Maddermarket), a ducal palace, dyehouses, bleach-houses and probable fulling mills, numerous medieval tenements, two gates in the city defences, one extant river bridge and one probable but lost bridge across a tributary stream, the Great Cockey. This is a useful data gathering exercise, but it is important that an archaeological appraisal of urban topography should consist of something deeper than historic environment stamp collecting. Data needs to be examined and questioned in order both to extract objective information, which is then used to inform analysis, and to address historical issues. An inquiring, archaeological approach has the potential to inform understanding of both urban society and the urban economy, addressing questions of the interaction of urban groups, as well as the medium- and long-term viability and sustainability of the urban economy, only hinted at in documentation. As an example of the potential for increased understanding of society, recent theoretical developments in archaeology have been utilising and extending the work of spatial analysts such as Hillier and Hanson. Their model, which postulated that ‘there is always a strong relationship between . . . spatial form and the ways in which encounters are generated and controlled’,3 has been criticised by Johnson for relying overmuch upon behaviour and systems, whereas archaeological interrogation of the physical environment (specifically buildings for Johnson) places a greater emphasis upon actions with, it is argued, more tangible and sustainable results. Teasingly, Johnson concludes that it is possible for study of buildings to provide a Marxist approach to society, one where ‘the overt view of a society, as expressed . . . by the layout and form of its architecture, will by definition misrepresent the real nature of exploitative relationships in that society’,4 and that a deeper meaning of those relationships can only be reached through detailed analysis of the buildings and their environmental context. 3 4

W. Hillier and J. Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge, 1984), p. 18. M. Johnson, Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape (London, 1993), p. 30.

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Similarly, in terms of the urban economy, Astill has recently identified as a ‘critical problem . . . [that of] . . . the relationship of economic activity and the fabric of a town’.5 He examines the perceived issue of late-medieval urban decline and is anxious to demonstrate that archaeological data has much to contribute to the debate. Specifically he draws considerable information from Norwich which, along with Northampton, he believes may now be accumulating sufficient data from archaeological sequences in core, intermediate and peripheral urban locations to inform discussion. His thoughts are linked to those of scholars such as Johnson, exploring anthropological concepts such as that of ‘habitus’ for an understanding of urban activities although it is a concept which, as a medievalist, he would prefer to term ‘custom’.6 It follows, therefore, that in order to extract meaning, any archaeological research must be rooted into a wider context than that of pure antiquarian data gathering. Hence the title of this paper – ‘Understanding the Urban Environment’. There is no greater context than the environment and, in the view of the writer, no more complex environment than that which is urban. Towns are places where people have lived in dense community, often for extensive periods of time. They are places which they create, adapt and change in order to reflect their own changing needs or desires. Towns are also locations where perceptions can be dramatised and symbolised. This paper proposes to argue that exploration of these changing requirements and perceptions – the processes which contributed to the development of the physical environment – is a major archaeological contribution to the understanding of urban history. It will be necessary, however, to avoid the ‘processualist premise that . . . archaeological data [is] a physical record of cultural systems which simply require[s] the application of appropriate scientific procedures to recover the “total reality” of past societies’. As Giles has pointed out, such an approach would only serve to reinforce the view of historians that material culture provides a ‘passive’ mirror to ‘past cultures and societies, and thus their perception of the primacy of the written text’.7 Rather, a post-processual approach, one which invokes a ‘contextual archaeology’, views the archaeological record as one which ‘is seen to encode past cultural and ideological meanings which can be read or decoded by the archaeologist through an analysis of associations and differences between it and other aspects of material culture produced within the same cultural context’. Furthermore, it is ‘only through a critical examination and engagement with [textual sources] that the . . . use of material culture to reproduce, negotiate or contest dominant social and political discourses becomes apparent’.8 Archaeology must therefore work within its historical context in order to extract meaning. In summary, the nature of urban living – occupation within a society which is essentially parasitic upon the resources of its hinterland – manifests itself in an 5 6 7 8

G. Astill, ‘Archaeology and the Late Medieval Urban Decline’, in T.R. Slater, ed., Towns in Decline A.D. 100–1600 (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 214–34. Astill, ‘Urban Decline’, p. 225. K. Giles, An Archaeology of Social Identity: Guildhalls in York, c.1350–1630 (BAR Brit. Ser. 315, 2000), p. 3. Giles, ‘Guildhalls’, pp. 3–4.


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environment which is a physical expression of the impact and exploitation of geographic, social and economic factors. It also produces through physical actions, at both a macro- and micro- level, an environment which is an expression of the values of those who lived (and continue to live) there. In addition, it carries within it meanings which, as urban historians and archaeologists, we need to explore if we are to understand urban societies and their development. Such theoretical approaches to archaeological data as spatial analysis and exploration of the urban economy enable an enhanced dialogue between the archaeologist and the historian. This dialogue utilises archaeological observation and information as part of an historical framework which recognises that the evidence of the urban physical environment has much to contribute to consideration of towns as social and economic constructs. This paper seeks to explore, through a study of medieval Norwich, how such an approach informs understanding of the use of space, symbolism in the urban environment, social control and status, and urban change. At the outset, however, it is necessary to examine briefly aspects of the development and use of urban space itself. Urban topography and the use of space The human ingenuity required in order that a ‘fit-for-purpose’ urban environment could be created dictated, as ever, that form followed function. Archaeological investigation is particularly well-suited to defining and characterising functions. The observation of deposits and features within a context frequently demands an understanding of function, bringing with it an appreciation of social and economic imperatives. Such observation can be used to identify sequences, explore urban topographies and institutions, examine social interaction and postulate trends. Sequencing is an important aspect of archaeological methodology as it frequently enables wider observations to be made. Within Norwich, for example, the rich profusion of surviving churches, and the limited data currently available from excavation of lost examples, has considerable potential for increasing an understanding of broad urban sequential development. Carter drew attention to probable pre-Conquest suburban activity along St Benedict’s Street, the regular parishes of St Lawrence, St Margaret, St Swithin and St Benedict all relating back to a putative mother church at St Gregory.9 Follow-up fieldwork in 1997, which made a record of the width of tenement plots – including churchyards – on both sides of St Benedict’s Street, suggested the possibility that much of the detailed tenement pattern here was laid out at the same time. While it was difficult to determine an overall standard unit or parts thereof for the development of the area, shop units east of St Lawrence were found to be generally 22 feet in width (which is one third of a chain) with some shops being double units at 44 feet (or two-thirds of a chain). West of the churchyard, the system also seemed to work, tenements (or groups of tenements) being one and a third chains, one chain, and two-thirds of a chain respectively.10 9 10

See J. Campbell, ‘Norwich’, in M.D. Lobel, ed., Historic Towns II (London, 1975), p. 5. Preliminary fieldwork undertaken by the writer with students. More detailed survey remains necessary before firm conclusions can be drawn.

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In short, a combination of topographical analysis, measured survey and documentary research implies the creation of a planned suburb, perhaps as early as 1040. This in turn implies a degree of urban control which is much more sophisticated than that indicated by the sparse surviving documentation. Domesday Book suggests that an oligarchy consisting of the king, the earl of East Anglia, the bishop of East Anglia, the abbots of Bury and Ely and the bishop’s sister controlled the burgesses of the town in 1066.11 They were probably supported, however, by an affluent class which could afford to import expensive Lindseystyle grave-covers in the later tenth century,12 walnuts in the eleventh century13 and goods for sale from Scandinavia, Germany and the Low Countries by the early twelfth century.14 This class of individuals and others lived in an expanding town, one which seems to have had, as well as an eleventh-century suburb, a core settlement south of the River Wensum for which there is increasing evidence to suggest a reasonably regular grid layout.15 Within this grid, the disposition of churches of known or very probable pre-Conquest date is marked, all occupying either extant or reconstructed street corners, the only two exceptions being the major churches of St Michael and St Martin, both located centrally within open areas (on Tombland and St Martin-at-Palace Plain or Bichil respectively). It is less easy to reconstruct tenemental disposition or to suggest that this too followed an apparently organised format, although small indicators such as the location of sunken-featured buildings imply a degree of standardisation. The establishment of such a large and uniform settlement in a comparatively short period of time implies that its creation, too, was a result of deliberate policy. While it has been demonstrated by excavation that some buildings, such as the church of St Martin, probably existed by the late ninth century and thus, together with geographical features such as streams, had to be respected and incorporated into the plan, there seems nevertheless to have been a conscious decision to lay out a new borough over an extensive area. The historical context for this may have been the shock induced by Swein of Denmark’s sack of Norwich in 1004, but it is perhaps more likely that there was recognition of the importance of Norwich as a regional and national port on a river system which gave ease of access to an exceptionally rich and well-populated hinterland. As a consequence, Norwich underwent deliberate expansion in order to exploit its potential to the full. As already mentioned, Domesday Book indicates the likely six individuals, or 11 12

P. Brown, ed., Domesday Book: Norfolk (Chichester, 1984), p. 61. As located at St Martin-at-Palace Plain – see O. Beazley, ‘Excavations in St Martin-at-Palace Church, 1987’, EA Arch. 96 (2001), p. 39 and fig. 28. Identification to Lindsey subsequent to publication by David Stocker 13 Juglans regia located at Whitefriars Street – see P. Murphy, ‘Plant Macrofossils’, in B.S. Ayers and P. Murphy, ‘A Waterfront Excavation at Whitefriars Street Carpark, Norwich, 1979’, EA Arch. 17 (1983), p. 40. 14 B.S. Ayers, ‘Archaeological Evidence for Trade in Norwich from the 12th to the 17th Centuries’, in M. Gläser, ed., Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie in Hanseraum II: Der Handel (Lübeck, 1999). 15 B.S. Ayers, Norwich: A Fine City (Stroud, 2003), pp. 39–41.


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rather their predecessors, responsible for controlling and perhaps, therefore, also for the development of the town. In addition, the location of substantial landholdings by the bishop in the area of Tombland,16 and probably those of the earl as well (he is said to have had a palace at the south side of the area),17 indicate that Norwich was viewed favourably by these magnates. The earl, with the king, held 180 acres (nearly 75 hectares) of land while the bishop probably held at least 112 acres (45 hectares). Even the abbot of Ely is known to have held at least one house (it was confiscated at the Conquest but returned between 1071 and 1075).18 Research therefore suggests that the pre-Conquest town south of the river was one which grew rapidly and uniformly, on a large scale, within a planned environment and controlled by a small group of influential magnates. The implication is one of growth as a result of deliberate policy. It follows that such policy also led to considerable control, certainly over topographical determinants such as the provision of churches, but perhaps also with regard to the fostering of commercial and industrial activity. Evidence, however, is not yet available as to whether such control was extended to individual tenements within the pre-Conquest town. Nevertheless, detailed analysis of urban topographies can reveal nuances of activity which themselves inform understanding. Thus, the unexpected discovery of evidence for tenth-century goldworking – in the form of a small ingot, litharge and fragments of a crucible – on the site of the Millennium Building in 1999 is of interest, not because it indicates goldworking in the pre-Conquest period (it would be astonishing if there were none) but because the activity was undertaken at a location remote from the known centre of urban settlement, presumably to reduce risk of fire and minimise interference. The discovery was located in Mancroft, hitherto thought to be green fields prior to the Norman Conquest (the magna crofta of the Anglo-Scandinavian town) but clearly in actuality more of a suburb, closely linked to the growing town. Suburban activity could suggest an unplanned approach to urban development and indeed suburbs are often characterised as ‘organic’ which ‘develop’.19 However, it is clear that suburbs could also be planned, as Dyer has noted for successful towns in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,20 and as has been seen for the eleventh century on St Benedict’s Street in Norwich. Such planning gave social and economic control, a control probably also manifest in the surviving topography of Norwich Market Place. Here, houses on Weavers’ Lane, immediately east of St Peter Mancroft church, are frequently viewed as encroachments upon common space, the products of lax control of the public realm leading to private acquisition of open areas. In fact, the reverse may have been the case. Shops and stalls ‘were very profitable investments in a great city like Norwich, generating a useful income from rents’ and the ‘Norwich bailiffs . . . were able to augment the civic revenues by allowing many more stalls to be built in the 16 17 18 19 20

M. Tillyard, ‘The Documentary Evidence, II: The Prior’s Fee’, in B.S. Ayers, ‘Excavations at St Martin-at-Palace Plain, Norwich, 1981’, EA Arch. 37 (1987), pp. 134–6 and fig. 96. Blomefield, Norfolk IV, p. 117. RRAN i, p. 42. D. Nicholas, Urban Europe 1100–1700 (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 62ff. C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages (Yale, 2002), p. 197.

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market-place in exchange for perpetual rent’.21 The extant buildings, therefore, are reminders of considered exploitation of resources, emphasising that those in control took care to manage space as well as structures. This management was perhaps psychological as well as practical. As an example, the apparent ‘loss’ of control of Tombland by the citizens to the power of the prior of the cathedral was probably tolerable until times of stress, such as the incidents which led to the disturbances of 1272. Blomefield’s account of the affair centres the problem on the dispute between the prior and the citizens over the Tombland fair which the prior stated had been granted to the church, in response to which the citizens ‘insisted that the whole city was in their jurisdiction, no part whatever being exempted out of their charter’.22 Here is urban pride manifesting itself, the results still visible in the burnt stone of the side walls of the Ethelbert Gate, while its rebuilt façade is decorated with imagery of a man and dragon in combat which was ‘surely intended to recall’ the rioting.23 Such symbolism and its use now need to be explored across the city. Symbolism The developing urban environment, while dominated by urban tenements, small-scale housing and craft workshops, was also an important focus for the symbolic manifestation of power, either by institutions or individuals. The greatest such manifestation was perhaps that embodied soon after the Conquest in the external fabric of the castle keep, at the time of its construction ‘architecturally the most ambitious secular building in western Europe’.24 Heslop has explored the design aesthetic of this remarkable royal structure and the probable visual and symbolic impact that it was intended to have upon the populace of Norwich and its region. The building was designed to ‘be as lavish and as elaborate as was conceivable within the context of Anglo-Norman architecture around 1100 . . .’,25 an ostentatious display of conspicuous consumption. At the foot of the mound upon which this extraordinary edifice stands is a more prosaic but equally long-lasting example of the influence of the crown: the alignment of London Street, Castle Street and Back-of-the-Inns continues to reflect the edge of the royal liberty, a liberty which vanished as long ago as 1345.26 The demarcation of the boundary between the liberty and the borough seems to have been marked by plaques bearing the royal arms mounted on posts (some plaques have been recovered),27 a fairly subtle indication of the separation of zones but one which would have been obvious to the medieval citizen. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

U. Priestley, The Great Market (Norwich, 1987), p. 9. Blomefield, Norfolk III, p. 57. V. Sekules, ‘The Gothic Sculpture’, in I. Atherton et al., eds, Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096–1996 (London, 1996), p. 201. T.A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994), p. 66. Heslop, ‘Norwich Castle Keep’, p. 64. The area was granted to the city in the second charter of Edward III – see Hudson and Tingey, Records I, p. 23. An example is illustrated in Ayers, ‘Norwich’, fig. 30.


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While more blatant contemporary statements of exclusion and seclusion were also made by the convent walls of the religious – such as those which largely still bound the cathedral precinct – Carole Rawcliffe has pointed out that ecclesiastical space could be positioned in a manner that enabled it to epitomise symbolically the purposes of foundation. Thus, the establishment of the Great Hospital in 1249 on low-lying ground off Bishopgate was an act of deliberate policy, marginal land reflecting the position of hospitals throughout Europe ‘as brokers between heaven and earth’.28 The location near to a bridge across the river was also symbolic of the transition from one life to the next. More prosaic symbolism can perhaps be read into the disposition of friary buildings within Norwich. The extant Dominican friary29 has its preaching yard to the south of the church, rather than its cloister, possibly to ensure that the church was not built on insecure infilled river marsh, but more probably to fulfil the political purpose of direct access to the main centres of population. The recently excavated site of the Carmelite friary revealed a similar situation although here, at a site more remote from the centre but overshadowed by the cathedral church, the political statement made by positioning the great friary church immediately next to the bridge across the Wensum is perhaps directed as much at the Benedictine priory as it is at the citizens.30 Symbolic location of churches can be suggested for other structures. The church of St Peter Mancroft is likely to be the ‘certain church’ founded within the French borough by Earl Ralph in the early 1070s.31 It stands on the Market Place, centrally but towards the southern end in a situation analogous to that of other churches in European planned market places such as the Marienkirche in Lübeck.32 While thus providing a connection between the church and trade, it may also have been aligned on the original primary route from the royal castle, emphasising links between the church and state. St George Tombland stands on the line of a Roman road, cut by the construction of the cathedral church after 1096. The church of St George encroaches upon the earlier Anglo-Scandinavian marketplace on Tombland but its churchyard retains an ancient thoroughfare, now called Tombland Alley, perhaps a deliberate symbolic ‘remembrance’ of the Roman road. Other symbolic locations probably include the churches of St Gregory and St Michael-at-Pleas. The former stands above a Roman crossroads,33 is an early foundation, and is dedicated to a great Roman pope. The latter may well be located on the site of a pre-Christian cremation cemetery and is thus an example

28 29 30

31 32 33

C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: the Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999), p. 33. H. Sutermeister, The Norwich Blackfriars (Norwich, 1977), passim. Excavation by Norfolk Archaeological Unit – report forthcoming. Plan of the cloister and part of the church in Ayers ‘Norwich’, fig. 55. I am grateful to Andy Shelley for the observation concerning the Benedictine priory. Brown, ‘Domesday Book’, p. 61. J. Barrow, ‘Urban Cemetery Location in the High Middle Ages’, in S. Bassett, ed., Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (Leicester, 1992), p. 92. See Ayers, ‘Norwich’, fig. 7 for probable alignment of Roman roads through central Norwich.

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of ‘adoption’ of a previously sacred site.34 St Clement Colegate stands next to the principal river bridge, in common with St Clement churches in other AngloScandinavian boroughs.35 The lost church of St Botolph stood next to a gate in the Danish defences, also in common with pre-Conquest urban churches elsewhere.36 It is likely that many other structures and locations held symbolic meaning to the medieval population, not all of which it is now possible to define. While symbolic location can be identified on occasion, it is also possible to suggest symbolic approaches to usage of buildings and spaces through careful assessment of physical indicators. Such indicators are loud signifiers in Norwich castle keep where the very doorway to the great hall highlights the transition from the everyday world to that of nobility and even royalty. The portals are decorated with scenes from the chase – a royal pursuit – while mythological creatures include a winged horse at the apex of the arch, the same symbol that appears directly above Duke William in the Bayeux Tapestry.37 Within, the building – although much destroyed with the loss of internal walls – was clearly demarcated into public and semi-public space; access to the more private chambers was only possible once progress had been successfully attained across the public hall. Without, the decoration of the structure indicated internal status to the viewer: a workaday ground floor faced with flint supported ostentatious upper levels decorated with an unparalleled array of blind arcading and other motifs. Norwich castle keep is one of the most obvious examples of Gilchrist’s observation that ‘space is the medium through which social relationships are negotiated’.38 She, however, explores space within religious institutions, noting also that ‘space determines how and when men and women meet, work, and mingle’. Symbols were used to assist such determination, Gilchrist citing examples from Lacock, where corbel heads in the sacristy are exclusively male but, in the more private parts of the nunnery, are solely female. Sekules, in examining the Erpingham Gate to the Norwich cathedral precinct, notes an even more private statement but, pointedly, in a most public location. Constructed by Sir Thomas Erpingham, the richly detailed statuary on the gate is linked to Sir Thomas and his wives by heraldry so that they ‘appear together in carefully arranged and ordered registers with representations of the monastery and the episcopate, the Trinity, Christ and symbols of his sacrifice, and Christ’s immediate followers: apostles, disciples and early saints and martyrs. It has the appearance of a personal memorial, emphasising partnership in a benign order of fellowship and community’,39 one designed, however, for all to see. Elsewhere in the cathedral, Rose has made the observation that the image of the Fall in the south walk of the cloister ‘might 34 35 36

37 38 39

Fragments of cremation urn were recovered when a watching brief was undertaken on underpinning works for the chancel (Norwich Castle Museum record). Examples can be cited from Cambridge, Lincoln and London. Fig. 11 in Ayers, ‘Norwich’, locates both St Clement and St Botolph. Other churches dedicated to St Botolph next to defensive gateways include those in Cambridge and Colchester as well as, impressively, four in London (Aldgate, Aldersgate, Billingsgate and Bishopgate). Heslop, ‘Norwich Castle Keep’, pp. 32–7. R. Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994), p. 150. Sekules, ‘Gothic Sculpture’, p. 207.


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have served as a caution to the monks, as they passed under the arch into the refectory, not to succumb to the deadly sin of gluttony’.40 In contrast to the Erpingham Gate, the image here does not so much proclaim in social discourse as suggest patterns of behaviour. Social control and status A major behavioural factor was, of course, that of demarcating social relationships in the city at large, thereby facilitating social control. Here, consideration of building locations and their relationships to streets and open areas can indicate that much public space within the medieval city was, in some senses at least, controlled. The friars welcomed the population to their preaching yards and naves but carefully screened their private choirs and cloisters from public access.41 The river could be approached by public staiths but river frontages were controlled by private individuals or institutions. Markets were necessarily open access locations but the Market Loft and the Cloth Seld were restricted to particular groups within society. This control of space is manifest even more conspicuously with close investigation of extant buildings. A particularly fine example is that provided by the late medieval complex which, with later accretions, is now known as Dragon Hall on King Street. Here, understanding has been assisted not only by detailed structural analysis and documentary research but also by a programme of excavation both within and outside the buildings.42 Excavation revealed a detailed sequence of structures from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries, many of them erected above infilling of the eastward slope from King Street to the river. It also indicated that the form of the extant buildings themselves was dictated by pre-existing routeways to the river and the ability of an individual (or possibly individuals) to control and utilise sufficient capital for the enclosure of one of these routes as a private lane for a newly created urban estate. It is very likely that the individual responsible was a noted textile merchant, one Robert Toppes. The enclosure of a lane linking the street to the river was almost certainly undertaken not only for the macro-functional purpose of privatising river access but also for the micro-functional purpose of facilitating the internal control of the estate itself. Schofield has pioneered archaeological access analysis of buildings,43 and application of his techniques to a complex such as that at Dragon Hall, as it was at the beginning of the second quarter of the fifteenth century (dendrochronological work implies a construction date for the great street frontage building of c.1427), suggests that the main hall, an earlier hall at right angles to the rear, a river-facing arcade, the enclosed road, and buildings within the property to the rear of the main complex either side of the road, all operated as part of a 40 41 42

M. Rose, ‘The Vault Bosses’, in I. Atherton et al., Norwich Cathedral, p. 367. H. Sutermeister, The Norwich Blackfriars. A. Shelley, ‘Dragon Hall, Norwich: Excavation and Survey of a Late Medieval Merchant’s Trading Complex’, EA Arch., forthcoming. 43 J. Schofield, Medieval London Houses (Yale, 1994), pp. 92–3 and figs 100–101.

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system of controlled access. This access can be categorised at various levels: public, semi-public, commercial and storage, semi-private, and private. Public access was facilitated through a dramatic entrance on Old Barge Yard. Potential customers were led via a passageway and a further doorway to a stair which ascended to a great public room, decorated certainly with carved openwork dragons and probably also with effigies of St George. Here the textile merchant could display his wares, albeit in an unheated room, before withdrawing with interested clients through a screen to a heated, semi-public part of the hall to discuss business terms. Downstairs, the commercial business of the complex manifested itself in the ground-floor and basement storage rooms, warehousing accommodation for goods brought to the site by water and carried to the hall via the enclosed lane, and into the main building through the rear arcade and a great arch in the rear wall. Off the lane, to either side, were buildings retained from earlier periods, almost certainly used as kitchens and for other domestic purposes. Access to these was for members of the household, visiting tradespeople and the like and constituted a semi-private part of the complex. The rear hall itself was the truly private area but one through which access to all the other areas was controlled: to the public and semi-public areas via the passage and stairs; to the commercial and storage areas by stairs down or a rear door to the arcade; to the semi-private areas via the rear door. The implied close social control that could thus be exercised by the owner of the building can only be recovered by such archaeological analysis of the extant structures and their setting within the urban environment. This analysis also implies an economic control whereby access could be granted or withheld. It is a pattern which can be seen at other buildings such as the Bridewell. Here changing functions, and therefore changing control requirements, are evidenced in the undercroft level of the building. Detailed work by Robert Smith has shown that this undercroft, or rather suite of undercrofts, the largest in Norwich, was originally designed with access from the courtyard only.44 The implication is one of a semi-public area, controlled by the permitted access of individuals to the courtyard. Subsequently, the importance of the suite changed, with an internal entrance being provided – at some expense as the vault had to be crippled in order to effect a doorway and stair. The new entry linked to a service room above, implying greater private as opposed to semi-public access (an arrangement also seen at Strangers’ Hall).45 In all these buildings, the use of space can be seen as hierarchical, different values being applied to different spaces depending upon function, and individuals or groups associated with that function. Just as the siting and interaction of buildings and access can thereby reveal probable social controls, so the buildings themselves can provide statements by their owners with regard to their self-perception and projection of image to wider society. Thus, at Dragon Hall, the extant dragon, if it was paired with St George,

44

R. Smith and A. Carter, ‘Function and Site: Aspects of Norwich Buildings before 1700’, Vernacular Architecture (1983), p. 14. 45 Smith and Carter, ‘Buildings’, pp. 5–18.


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is almost certainly a reference to the Guild of St George, the most powerful guild in the city and the one with which affluent cloth merchants and members of the ruling oligarchy identified.46 The public space at Dragon Hall was proclaiming the civic importance of its owner to those members of the public affluent enough to be admitted to the space. Such display of status was often more public. Bishop Lyhart, in providing the doors to the Alnwick Gate which gave access to his palace, ensured that they were not only adorned with his carved rebus of a heart lying on its side but also with his mitre. It was an approach mirrored lower down the social scale in merchants’ houses where the merchant’s mark was frequently carved into the spandrel of the principal doorway (Bacon House on Colegate is a good example). Displaying status can mean more than is at first evident. There is a monument in Norwich which seems to be a grand public gesture of benefaction. Gybson’s Conduit in Westwick Street was, as its inscription makes clear, provided by Robert Gybson in 1577 in order to deliver water from St Laurence’s spring to the local population: Gybson hath it soughte From Saynt Laurens Wel And his charg this wrowghte Who now here doe dwel. Thy case was his cost, not smal, Vouchsafed wel of those Which thankful be his Worke to se, And thereto be no Foes.47

A clue that the construction of the conduit might be more than public benefaction is in the last line. Why should Gybson fear foes after such benevolence? Because he had closed a common lane which had been granted to the citizens as right of access to the spring in 1547. Thus his action in building the conduit not only enabled him to trumpet his generosity but it is also consolidated his local status as a man of influence, one who could control an essential element of existence and provide access to it on his terms. His conduit stands today as a physical reminder of the wielding of power amid the social complexity of the sixteenth-century city. Urban change This paper has so far sought to indicate how detailed study of the urban environment of medieval Norwich can help to elucidate sequences within the city, provide a context for activities, enable expression of concepts of social control and status, and even determine symbolism. It remains to investigate how the archaeological approach can also contribute to a broader understanding of urban change. 46 47

I am grateful to Chris Barringer for this observation. Transcribed in M. Knights, ‘St Lawrence’s Well, Norwich, and Gibson’s Conduit’, NA 10 (1888), p. 186.

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The concept of change is particularly important in towns which are locations characterised by dynamic and diverse environments. Change events can be rapid (such as the construction of a castle in the eleventh century) or much more slow (such as the perception of urban decay in the later Middle Ages). Either type of event can be examined by archaeological investigation, although the former is the easier to describe – the construction of a castle is an ideal opportunity for the ‘stamp collection’ approach to data. However, the functioning of that castle over time, within changing political and economic circumstances, can also be examined through archaeological means and, if applied on a large enough scale, can reveal much about the nature of long-term change. In Norwich, the extensive work at Castle Mall, while it has defined the defensive earthworks and uncovered quantities of portable artefacts, is perhaps the more important for the light which it sheds upon the development of the castle precinct over several centuries and the inter-relationship of that precinct with the adjacent borough.48 Archaeological evidence is poor when confronted by requirements for linkage to specific dates and events. It is, however, much more powerful when applied to long-term trends where it has the ability both to complement other historical resources and to question assumptions. Thus, to return to the concept of late medieval decline, it is appropriate to examine a site excavated on Pottergate in 1974.49 Here, a range of buildings was destroyed by fire in 1507 (a rare instance of archaeological discoveries being matched by a dateable event). Most of the structures had cellars into which large quantities of household goods and fittings fell and which were never recovered. The fire date provided a firm terminus ante quem for the material evidence, enhancing its potential for informing the debate about the nature of urban existence in later medieval period. Documentary evidence for this central part of Norwich implies that the area was congested. However, the excavation indicated that development did not really take off until the late fourteenth century and that, in the fifteenth century, far from revealing evidence of economic decline, the buildings were well-appointed, so well in fact that one structure seems to have been furnished with a continental-style tile stove, the earliest such to be recorded in England. This may be merely a localised example, but work elsewhere in the city is indicating that buildings of all types were improving in the fifteenth century. Thus at Alms Lane, heating was being installed and upper floors inserted into clay-walled and simple timber structures.50 At St Martin-at-Palace Plain, a grand bay window was added to a fourteenth-century house.51 On King Street, large hall houses were provided with integral cesspits.52 This diverse activity, taken with the surviving evidence of material culture within churches and clear signs of investment in the

48 49 50 51 52

E. Shepherd-Popescu, ‘Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey 1987–98’, EA Arch., forthcoming. D. Evans and A. Carter, ‘Excavations on 31–51 Pottergate (Site 149N)’, in M.W. Atkin, A. Carter and D. Evans, Excavations in Norwich, 1971–78, II (EA Arch. 26, 1985), pp. 9–85. M.W. Atkin, ‘Excavations on Alms Lane (Site 302N)’, in Atkin, Carter and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, p. 253. Ayers, ‘St Martin-at-Palace Plain’, p. 161. A. Shelley, pers. comm.


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urban friaries, implies a buoyant economy. It can be argued that such evidence is usually insufficiently date-specific to be of value. However, this underestimates the impact of that which Astill terms ‘structural change’ – those slow, almost imperceptible, transitions by society which are marked by gradual cultural shifts rather than by clear event horizons.53 Cultural data, informed by its context, is material recovered by archaeological processes of inquiry and investigation. Decade-by-decade quantification is almost impossible but long-term trends can be isolated and characterised. The urban context of a great and diverse city such as Norwich provides a framework for such cultural investigation – a city responsive to change, with many external connections but also entire of itself, providing a microcosm for study. Conclusions In conclusion, the complexity of urban life, with large numbers of people and institutions of varying degrees of affluence and capacity across an area of diverse potential, necessarily dictates that, for archaeological data to provide a meaningful resource, it must develop the ability not only to characterise settlement through time but also to provide a framework within which to monitor change. The information held within the historic environment contains considerable evidence for long-term trends. It can also enable exploration of variation across urban areas, reflecting spatially changes through time in economic and social conditions. As such, the archaeological approach is a powerful tool. It not only examines the physical environment of the past but also, through study of microscopic flora and fauna, the analysis of bones and coprolites, and the investigation of pottery and small-finds assemblages, it explores the conditions of life itself in towns and cities. This paper has sought to demonstrate that a city such as Norwich, blessed with a rich historic environment resource supported by a tradition of interdisciplinary enquiry, can fashion an investigative framework whereby material culture, far from simply adorning accounts of the past, actively informs the research agenda. This requires movement away from approaches to data such as that mischievously characterised by Ivor Noel Hume when he described archaeology as the ‘handmaiden of history’.54 Rather, as Hodges has recently noted, ‘archaeologists must look beyond the limits of their trenches’ while ‘historians must be aware of being too bookish’ (he goes on to be as cheeky as Noel Hume, arguing that ‘with the considerable publication of reports and essays on medieval archaeology during the last twenty years, there is much for the historian to study in the comfort of the library’).55 Hodges is acknowledging, however, that there is much also to be gained from an interdisciplinary approach. He quotes Patrick Geary who, in discussing medieval religion, summarises the way forward cogently: ‘the archaeologist must 53 54

Astill, ‘Urban Decline’, p. 229. I. Noel Hume, ‘Handmaiden to History’, North Carolina Historical Review 41.2 (1964), pp. 215–25. 55 R. Hodges, Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne (London, 2000), p. 27.

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distinguish the essential structures underlying [his] material and establish, as it were, a model of a system of functional and representational interdependencies among his sources. The textual historian must do the same. The two models must [then] be juxtaposed and combined . . .’.56 Norwich has more than 1500 shelf feet of medieval documentation; it has more than 1500 extant buildings pre-dating 1830; it has over 1500 years of archaeological deposits and features within its urban core. As importantly, it has a tradition of interdisciplinary academic enquiry. It is an ideal location for promotion of an integrated approach to urban history.

56

P. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1999), p. 44.

Lawyers and Administrators: The Clerks of Late-Thirteenth-Century Norwich Elizabeth Rutledge1

TRADITIONALLY the occupational structure of medieval towns has been considered as falling into two main categories, the merchant class and the artisan, with the addition of the ecclesiastical sector. Recently there has been more recognition that major provincial cities would have needed a professional literate class to function but, unlike the merchants and the artisans, the members of this class are difficult to recognise or to quantify.2 However, an intriguing feature of Serena Kelly’s study of the economic structure of Norwich between 1285 and 1311 is the number of men owning property in Norwich who were described as clerici or clerks.3 Apart from obvious ecclesiastics, her sixty-nine clerks made up the largest occupational group after the merchants and mercers combined.4 The same holds true both for Norwich over a longer period and for elsewhere. In Derek Keene’s monumental survey of medieval Winchester clerici form one of the largest occupational groups at this date.5 At Norwich, looking at the whole period 1275–1348, the clerks as property-owners again come second in numbers only to the merchants. Altogether 147 clerks are known from all sources and 111 just from title deeds.6 Clericus, of course, is an ambiguous term. Firstly it is used as a description of status and could be applied to anyone who had taken the tonsure, whether they

1

2

3 4

5 6

I would like to thank the British Academy for helping fund the construction of the database underlying this paper between 1990 and 1992, and the staff of the Norfolk Record Office for their assistance. The principal source used for the database was the series of Norwich enrolled deeds 1285–1340 (NRO NCR Case 1/1–13). Derek Keene makes brief reference to clerical and legal occupations in medieval Winchester while recognising that the part played by the legal profession before the fifteenth century may have been underestimated: D. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, Winchester Studies 2 (Oxford, 1985) (henceforth Keene, Winchester), pp. 252–3, 323, 352–3 (table 26), 437. This point is also discussed by Professor Campbell in J. Campbell, ‘Norwich before 1300’, in Medieval Norwich, pp. 32–3. S. Kelly, ‘The Economic Topography and Structure of Norwich’ (henceforth Kelly, ‘Economic Topography’) in S. Kelly, E. Rutledge and M. Tillyard, Men of Property: An Analysis of the Norwich Enrolled Deeds 1285–1311 (Norwich, 1983) (henceforth Kelly et al., Men of Property), p. 19. Winchester, pp. 352–3 (table 26). General statements about the period 1275–1348 are taken from the database.

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were in holy orders (as priest, deacon or subdeacon) or just in one of the minor orders. This placed such clerks under the jurisdiction of the church and enabled them, for instance, should the occasion arise, to plead benefit of clergy at a criminal trial. From at least the end of the twelfth century the term could also be applied to a literate layman, and this may be what is happening in the case of Alexander Faber, who is described on the Mancroft tithing roll of c.1311–33 as dictus clericus (called clerk).7 On the whole, however, it is apparent that the term clericus is used in the Norwich records, like butcher or baker, not to denote status but as an occupational description. The distinction made in Norwich documents between the secular clergy and those described as clerici shows clearly in any comparison of the two groups. Despite the numbers involved, there is no apparent overlap between the men known as chaplains and those known as clerks.8 The situation with regard to beneficed clergy is slightly different. Two men (John de London and William ate Ston) are described as both clerk and rector in the same document and there are several examples of unmarried Norwich clerici apparently holding benefices.9 Master Simon de Clay, clerk, is almost certainly the Simon de Clay who became dean of the Chapel of St Mary in the Fields, Norwich (a college of priests) during the course of his career in ecclesiastical administration and later dean of Norwich and Taverham;10 Thomas de Depham, clerk, who sold property in the parish of St Clement, Norwich, in 1300, may be the same man as Master Thomas de Depham, rector of Easton and Colton;11 and Master John de Brunham, clerk, was quite possibly the John de Brunham who was rector of the parish of St Augustine, Norwich in 1318.12 Clerks working in diocesan administration were not infrequently beneficed, though this was not allowed if they worked in the ecclesiastical courts.13 It was even quite usual for unmarried clerks in the king’s service to be appointed to benefices at a later stage in their careers. As late as 1388/89 chancery clerks were forbidden to marry so that they could be rewarded with benefices and eminent physicians might also be given ecclesiastical positions.14 There is

7 8

9

10

11 12 13 14

NRO NCR Case 5c/1, m. 2d. The names are known of over 350 chaplains and beneficed clergy in the Norwich enrolled deeds, 1285–1340, with almost two-thirds being chaplains. In just four instances a clerk and a chaplain share the same name but are patently not the same man. William ate Ston, the rector, dead by 1332, cannot be the same man as William Ston of Aylsham, chaplain, alive in 1335: W. Rye, ed., A Calendar of Norwich Deeds Enrolled in the Court Rolls of That City 1307–41 (Norwich, 1915) (henceforth Rye, Enrolled Deeds 1307–41), pp. 107, 161, 175, 194. Blomefield, Norfolk, IV, pp. 64, 170. In Norwich diocese rural deaneries were treated as benefices and Bishop Bateman (1344–55) often granted them to young clerks: P.E. Pobst, ed., The Register of William Bateman Bishop of Norwich, 2 vols, CYS 84, 90 (1996–2000) (henceforth Register of William Bateman), i, p. xxvi. NRO NCR Case 4a, Box 3 (25); Rye, Enrolled Deeds 1307–41, p. 75. The advowson was in the hands of Norwich cathedral priory: Blomefield, Norfolk, IV, p. 477. P. Brand, The Origins of the Legal Profession (Oxford, 1992) (henceforth Brand, Origins), p. 151. R.L. Storey, ‘Gentleman-bureaucrats’, in Profession, Vocation and Culture in Later Medieval England, ed. C.H. Clough (Liverpool, 1982), p. 98; C. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud, 1995), p. 110.

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therefore no reason why some of the Norwich unmarried clerici should not have held livings after, or during, an alternative career and, though a few other examples could be given, it is perhaps more surprising that the number is so limited. This situation is largely explained by the fact that apparently no more than a fairly small minority of Norwich clerks were eligible for this type of preferment. Of the 147 known, seventy-six were definitely married and a further three may have been, though many clerks can only be identified in circumstances in which wives would be irrelevant. A more startling statistic is that no fewer than 85% of the seventy-three clerks selling or quitclaiming Norwich property (the situation in which wives are most likely to be mentioned) had named wives.15 This high proportion of married men in itself says something about the nature of the Norwich clerks. They were not, as a whole, working in an environment in which it was advisable to remain celibate in the hopes of attracting patronage.16 Another distinguishing feature lies in the number of clerks who became freemen of Norwich. It was perfectly possible for a member of the secular clergy to become a freeman, but not usual. However, more than a fifth of all clerks are described as freemen, and more than a quarter of those buying and selling Norwich property. Relatively, these are not particularly high figures. In the case of the merchants, who needed to be freemen to operate, the percentage is 72.5%. On the other hand, the clerks are in this respect not too dissimilar from other non-trading groups such as the barbers, the masons and the tailors and this amount of involvement is symptomatic of a marked degree of identification with the life of the city.17 Another way in which the clerici differ from the secular clergy is in being caught by the tithing system. Apart from those, like Richard clerk of St Peter Parmentergate, Norwich, who are presented for not being in tithing, several clerks appear on the c.1311–33 tithing roll for the leet of Mancroft.18 Accepting that the term is used as an occupational description, what does it mean to say that Norwich had 147 clerks during this period? In the first place, this will be a gross underestimate of the actual number present. Occupations tended to be given only where it was necessary as a form of identification so any such figures can only be taken as a minimum. Moreover there can be no doubt about the scale of the demand for clerical services as a whole. Donaciones made by the master of the cellar of Norwich cathedral priory illustrate the ubiquity of clerks within the highly developed local administration.19 The sheriff had four clerks (who may or may not be the same as the four clerks at the castle), the escheator had clerks, the subescheator had four clerks, the steward of the earl marshal had two clerks, the bailiffs of the hundreds had clerks and, of course, the bailiffs of the City of Norwich had clerks. Within the ecclesiastical establishment the bishop

15

16 17 18 19

For technical reasons, grants tended to be made by husbands and wives jointly, but to husbands alone: E. Rutledge, ‘Property Transfer and Enrolment in Norwich 1285–1311’, in Kelly et al., Men of Property (henceforth Rutledge, ‘Property Transfer’), p. 57. As would be expected, none of the over 350 chaplains or secular clergy known from Norwich records are described as married. 30%, 18% and 23% respectively. Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, p. 370; NRO NCR Case 5c/1. NRO DCN 1/1/2–38.

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had clerks, the prior had a clerk, the Norwich cathedral priory obedientaries had clerks and beneficed clergy had clerks. There were king’s clerks, who were responsible for the royal administration, a clerk of the Exchequer and clerks levying taxes. Some of the individual clerks given gifts by the cathedral priory themselves had lesser clerks. Everyone of any status had clerks. The question remains, just what did the Norwich clerici do? To some extent the answer appears obvious: in a society in which written records were becoming increasingly important, they read and they wrote. They wrote deeds, they wrote letters and they drew up accounts. This was work that could be done with a greater or lesser degree of sophistication and at Norwich it was probably greater. Barbara Dodwell has commented on the high standard of Norwich deeds at this period and the clerks employed by the cathedral priory obedientaries may have been responsible for the introduction of an advanced profit and loss accounting system around the turn of the century.20 But what more can be said? The object of this paper is to consider what a man described in or writing a Norwich document meant by the occupational term clericus, to look at the range of work undertaken and (as far as is possible) to consider the position of the clerici within the city. One group of clerici, the parish clerks, might be barely literate. The duty of a parish clerk was to serve the priest and there must have been a number working in Norwich, connected with the fifty parish churches. A clear example is Richard clerk of the church of St Peter Parmentergate, who was fined 12d for not being in tithing in 1291.21 He was probably the Richard clerk clerk (clericus clericus) against whom the hue and cry was raised in 1289/90.22 Other possibilities are Robert clerk of All Saints, Roger de St Augustine and John clerk of St Clements, all of whom could have taken the name of a Norwich church they served. In fact Roger served as member of parliament for Norwich in 1314 and John is one of only two clerks who definitely contributed to the lay subsidy of 1332, making any such attribution most unlikely. Moreover, the inhabitants of Norwich must have been equally familiar with another type of clerk: one who wrote out their deeds and advised in cases of dispute. Serena Kelly calculated that 3851 people were mentioned in the Norwich enrolled deeds between 1285 and 1311, while over 4700 deeds were enrolled at Norwich between 1285 and 1340;23 a widow challenging a deed granted by her husband in her name, or bringing an action for dower, needed first to know her rights and then how to go about claiming them. None of the known Norwich clerici can actually be identified writing deeds, as usually only the first name of the scribe is given, but they do turn up in the Norwich court rolls acting as attorneys in connection with the acknowledgement of deeds in the bailiffs’ court and as executors of wills leaving property in Norwich.24 Neither of these operations

20 21 22 23 24

B. Dodwell, Norwich Cathedral Charters ii (PRS ns 46, 1985), p. xviii; E. Stone, ‘Profit and Loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral Priory’, TRHS 5th series 7 (1962), pp. 25–48. Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, p. 370. NRO NCR Case 5b/3. Kelly, ‘Economic Topography’, p. 13. For the devise of tenements in Norwich see Rutledge, ‘Property Transfer’, p. 54.


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required specialised knowledge; the grantors of deeds usually turned up in person to acknowledge them and family (including widows) and friends were often named as executors. Nevertheless a trusted and informed third party must have been desirable to deal with the probate (which had to take place in both the ecclesiastical and the city courts) and with the administration of the estate, and chaplains and other clergy as well as clerks appear frequently in this capacity. Where the clerks differ is that two of their number act not just in a single case, or at the most in a couple of instances, but with some frequency. The first, Robert de Lincoln, is only known fairly late in our period but still manages to act as attorney for four men between 1332 and 1337. The second, John de Stanhowe, can be seen working for a variety of clients over more than thirty years. Between 1304 and 1335 he acted as executor or attorney no fewer than eight times. Not all work, of course, involved private clients. When thinking of the position of clerici in a medieval town the group who come most readily to mind are the town clerks. Chapter 25 of the early fourteenth-century Norwich custumal refers to ‘a sworn clerk of the bailiffs’ with the duty of endorsing and enrolling deeds on the city court rolls.25 The basic establishment seems to have been two clerks; Arnold de Staunford is referred to as the other clerk (alter clericus) in 1304 and two clerks of the bailiffs received 2s from the Norwich cathedral priory master of the cellar in 1309/10.26 Not until 1347 and 1348 is W[alter] de Norwich described as the only (solus) clerk of the bailiffs.27 The system, moreover, was probably fairly fluid, with additional clerks standing in when the principal clerk was away. When John de Ely was the chief clerk between 1285 and 1290, both Thomas de Erlham and Roger de Tudenham were mentioned on occasion and Thomas Wisse carried out a single enrolment in 1287. Roger de Tudenham was also in charge of the city records and the common seal for a time and handed them over to the Community in 1290.28 The need for a larger body of city clerks becomes evident on appreciating that the principal clerk must often have been busy elsewhere. John de Ely and Thomas de Erlham were unable to carry out enrolments in 1287 and 1298 respectively because they were in London presenting their account at the Exchequer.29 This was presumably an annual occurrence, though not necessarily always undertaken by the chief clerk. In 1297/8 and again in 1300/01 another clerk, John de Gouthorp, was paid 20s expenses in connection with his account, though he may have been simply drawing up the account rather than presenting it. Another potential reason for absence was the need to claim the exclusive right of the bailiffs’ court to hear Norwich cases. This could involve journeys to the court of Common Pleas at Westminster or York, or elsewhere within the county when the royal justices came to hear civil cases locally at assize. In 1294/5 Geoffrey Kempe 25 26 27 28 29

Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. 163–4. For the process see Rutledge, ‘Property Transfer’, pp. 46–50. NRO NCR Case 1/4 m. 13d; NRO DCN 1/1/22. NRO NCR Case 17c, Old Free Book fol. 33. Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. 243–4. Other references are to the Norwich enrolled deeds, NRO NCR Case 1/1–13. NRO NCR Case 1/2 mm. 2d, 56d.

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(alias the clerk) was paid 5s for his expenses at Thetford and 40s for expenses incurred at London while claiming the liberties. Again this was a job not necessarily undertaken by a city clerk but in 1300/01 John le Graunt (an endorsing clerk) and his companions were paid 26s 8d when claiming the liberty before the justices, and 6s 8d expenses incurred at Thetford. In 1329 both the known city clerks were named as attorneys to defend the liberties for two years.30 The city chamberlain’s accounts 1293/4 to 1304/5 that record these additional expenses include further payments made to other Norwich clerici.31 The most regular of these was a retainer of 13s 4d paid annually to Thomas de Framelingham between 1293/4 and 1297/8. It seems reasonable to equate this Thomas with Thomas de Framingham clericus, who in 1290 retained one of the city charters because he was acting as attorney to defend the liberties.32 In addition to his fee Thomas, together with another clerk, was paid for the purchase of a writ; Geoffrey the clerk and Roger de Tudenham also received considerable amounts in connection with legal business and other payments were made to known clerks for drawing up letters and auditing accounts. Though it is sometimes difficult to disentangle expenses incurred by city officials from paid employment, it is clear that the City made use of a number of additional Norwich clerks, either on a retainer or on a casual basis, with altogether some seventeen clerici known to be occupied in one way or another on behalf of the City (Table 1). A similar pattern of retainers and casual involvement is apparent in the accounts of the master of the cellar of Norwich cathedral priory.33 Despite his rather misleading title, the master of the cellar was the leading obedientary and accounted for the prior’s chamber. Nineteen Norwich clerks are mentioned in receipt of donaciones (Table 1). Six of these, including John de Ely, on occasion worked for the City so it appears that both organisations to some extent used the same pool of experienced men. Many donaciones, of course, were gratuities and there is no reason given for most payments, but John de Midhirst was paid in 1330/1 in connection with a court case and John de Brunham in 1339/40 for pardons.34 In addition to the donaciones, four Norwich clerks received regular retainers of 13s 4d from the master of the cellar. Though the master of the cellar was the principal retainer of legal services, he was not the only obedientary making similar payments, some to known clerks. Both Roger de Ely and Richard de Heylesdon were paid by the cellarer during the 1330s.35 Moreover, three of those receiving 13s 4d a year from the master of the cellar were probably paid until shortly before their deaths, showing the interest the cathedral priory had in 30 31 32

CPR 1327–1330, p. 399. John de Gouthorp may be claiming expenses as bailiff. Hudson and Tingey, Records, II, pp. 30–8. Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. 243–4. Henceforth Thomas de Fram(l)ingham. Both forms are used in other sources apparently relating to the same man and it is not clear whether the toponym refers to Framingham Earl or Pigot, Norfolk, or to Framlingham, Suffolk. 33 NRO DCN 1/1/4–38. I am grateful to Dr Claire Noble for giving me access to her Norwich cathedral priory notes. 34 Pro placito de Wype, NRO DCN 1/1/31; In pardonis, NRO DCN 1/1/38. 35 NRO DCN 1/2/101. The Thurston who was both retained by the master of the cellar and paid by the cellarer for writs was probably William de Thurston and not one of the three de Thurstons who are known clerks.

M M M, magister

Albon, John

Albon, William

Berneye, Richard de

M MP magister

Causton, Hugh de

Causton, Roger de

Clay, Simon de

E, R

M M, bailiff, MP M, magister M M M, dominus, bailiff

Graunt, Adam le

Graunt, John le

Hemenhale, Robert de

Heylesdon, Richard de

Illington, Gregory de

Kempe, Geoffrey

E

C

C

C

C, E

M

magister

Ely, Roger de

Fram(l)ingham, Thomas de

dominus, bailiff

Ely, John de

C

E

E, S

E

C

City

Erlham, Thomas de

M, magister

Elmham, Bartholomew de

Clerk, Richard

magister

Brunham, John de

Berstrete, John de

Style and status

Name

D

D

S

D

D

D, E

D

D

D

D

E D

Cathedral St Giles Priory Hospital

attorney

alias Geoffrey the clerk

manorial accounts

bailiff of Henstead hundred

purchasing writ

notary

parish clerk

archdeacon’s official

purchasing writ

pardons, suit

subdean, writing

proctor

auditing

Norwich Court of bailiffs’ court Common Pleas Further information

bailiff – bailiff of Norwich, C – city clerk, D – received donaciones, E – employed by/acted for, M – married, MP – member of parliament for Norwich, R – retained, S – received stipend

Table 1. Occupations of Norwich clerici 1275–1348

M, dominus, bailiff

Page, John son of Adam

M

Staunford, Arnold de

M M, dominus, bailiff, C MP M

Tudenham, Roger de

Verly, Ralph le D D

Wisse, Thomas

D, R

D, R

D, R

Walsham, William de C

M, bailiff

Thorp, William de

C

C

Thurston, John de

Thursforth, Robert de

Suthgate, Geoffrey de

Ston, William ate

M

Stanhowe, John de

Rollesby, Thomas de

magister

Norwich, William de

D

D, R

Norwich, Walter de

C, R

M, dominus, bailiff

Midhirst, John de

Norwich, Henry de

D

M M

Marlingford, James de

D

D

M

C

dominus

M

Lenn, Ralph de

E

Cathedral St Giles Priory Hospital

London, John de

M

Kyrkeby, John de

City

Lincoln, Robert de

Style and status

Name

attorney

attorney

attorney

attorney

under-bailiff

king’s clerk

sheriff’s receiver

rector

private work

alias John de Norwich/the clerk

not the dominus

alias Henry the clerk

rector

private work

king’s clerk

Norwich Court of bailiffs’ court Common Pleas Further information


91

retaining the services of established local men towards the end of their careers.36 Though operating on a much smaller scale than Norwich cathedral priory, the accounts of St Giles Hospital, Norwich, also include payments to Norwich clerici.37 Thomas Wisse was paid 6d in 1305/6 for his help and John de Brunham 3s 4d in 1322/3 in connection with a (probably) ecclesiastical court case.38 Work for either private or institutional clients might involve the local secular and ecclesiastical courts. On the secular side the Norwich bailiffs’ court dealt with civil actions within the city, including disputes over land; the shire (or county) court, with jurisdiction over a range of lesser civil actions for the rest of Norfolk, was situated in the castle bailey; and from time to time the king’s justices appeared on commissions of general eyre and assize. On the ecclesiastical side were the courts of the dean, the archdeacon and the bishop, with particular cognizance over matrimonial causes and wills. Both the shire court and the bailiffs’ court followed a system similar to that at the Court of Common Pleas, where clients were represented by attorneys while the legal arguments were made by specialised pleaders. Though nothing is known about the Norfolk shire court personnel, the pleaders operating in the Cheshire and Warwickshire courts were mainly experienced lawyers; five to six practised in Warwickshire at a time and a couple of the Warwickshire pleaders also appeared before the justices of assize.39 As with the London city courts, the pleaders or serjeants (servientes narrantes) at the Norwich court were a recognised body, sworn in annually before the bailiffs and under the discipline of the court, though unfortunately none are known by name.40 On the other hand, several attorneys are named in the few surviving records for the court. These include the clerk John de Midhirst (paid by Norwich cathedral priory in connection with a court case), who appeared as attorney on behalf of at least three men between 1329 and 1333.41 Walter Ode, one of the other attorneys, also acted as serjeant (in the sense of officer) of the court.42 The ecclesiastical courts operated in a similar fashion, with the pleaders being known as advocates and the attorneys as proctors. Once again, there is no information on the pleaders or advocates but Richard de Berneye acted as proctor for Norwich cathedral priory in a case held before the dean of Norwich in 1318.43 Of lesser status but also essential to the ecclesiastical procedure was the work of the notaries public, who might deal with a wide range of diocesan business. Roger de Ely, described in a conveyance as both clerk and public notary, was paid 12d in 1336/7 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

Henry de Norwich, John Page alias John de Norwich and Robert de Thursforth. NRO NCR Case 24a, Great Hospital account rolls. NRO NCR Case 24a, Great Hospital account rolls: Thome Wysse pro auxilio suo; Pro lite de Cantelof. R.C. Palmer, The County Courts of Medieval England 1150–1350 (Princeton, 1982) (henceforth Palmer, County Courts), pp. 70–1, 92–3, 97, 101, 103, 112; Brand, Origins, p. 83. Palmer suggests there were 13 or 14 pleaders functioning in the Warwickshire shire court about 1303 (Palmer, County Courts, p. 97) but Brand does not accept that they were all serjeants (Brand, Origins, p. 83 n. 57). Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. 196–7. NRO NCR Case 8a/6–7. NRO NCR Case 8a/7. Blomefield, Norfolk, IV, p. 105.

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by Norwich cathedral priory in proceedings concerning the advowson of Ryston church and 2s for a formal document in 1338/9.44 For purely practical reasons, one might not expect to find Norwich clerks acting as attorneys in the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster. The city bailiffs’ court had exclusive jurisdiction over cases involving land in Norwich and over some other civil matters based there. Though such issues came up from time to time in the Court of Common Pleas the city authorities regularly took steps to enforce their rights and had cases sent back to the bailiffs’ court in Norwich.45 Even more important was the fact that acknowledgement of a Norwich deed before the bailiffs’ court and its subsequent enrolment had the effect of a final concord in the royal courts, enabling married women to convey property and barring subsequent claims of dower.46 The effect of this on final concords was dramatic. There are only four fines solely relating to Norwich property levied during the reign of Edward I, none for the reign of Edward II and none for the reign of Edward III up to 1348.47 The majority of Norwich claimants, therefore, would not only have had no need, but were actively debarred, from taking their cases to the Court of Common Pleas. Theoretically it was only in cases concerning non-Norwich property or agreements made outside the city that the need for access to the higher court arose, though there was an apparent exception in the case of actions for the recovery of debts acknowledged at Norwich under the statutes of merchants.48 A further point is that the law applied in the bailiffs’ court was governed by Norwich custom and so in some respects differed from the common law practised in the Court of Common Pleas. Nevertheless a number of Norwich clerks apparently operated in Norfolk pleas as attorneys at Westminster. Possibilities are John de Thurston in 1285, Thomas de Fram(l)ingham and Thomas de Rollesby in 1305 and John de Midhirst in 1325.49 There are obvious potential problems of identification here, highlighted by the fact that another candidate, Master Bartholomew de Elmham, cannot be the attorney mentioned in 1305 as he is dead by 1300.50 On the other hand it is eminently plausible that Thomas de Fram(l)ingham, paid a retainer by the city, instrumental in the purchase of a writ and attorney of the city in claiming her liberties, should feel qualified to act as attorney in the Court of Common Pleas in a case involving his wife.51 Both Thomas de Fram(l)ingham and Thomas de

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Notarius auctoritate apostolica publicus; Magistro Rogero notario, NRO DCN 1/2/101; Rogero de Ely notario pro instrumento, NRO DCN 1/1/35. NRO NCR Case 8a/5. Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. 163–4. W. Rye, ed., A Short Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Norfolk (2 parts, Norwich, 1885–86) (henceforth Rye, Feet of Fines). For example, TNA, CP40/153 mm. 276, 290d. TNA, CP40/60 m. 147; CP40/153 mm. 525–529d; CP40/258 passim. W. Rye, ed., A Calendar of Norwich Deeds Enrolled in the Court Rolls of That City 1285–1306 (Norwich, 1903), p. 75. TNA, CP40/153 m. 529d. Thomas de Fram(l)ingham is referred to as an attorney at Common Pleas in N. Ramsay, ‘Retained Legal Counsel, c. 1275 – c. 1475’, TRHS 5th ser. 35 (1985) (henceforth Ramsay, ‘Legal Counsel’), p. 101.


93

Rollesby also appeared as attorneys in Norfolk final concords.52 John de Midhirst we have already met as an attorney in the Norwich bailiffs’ court. He appears in the Court of Common Pleas regularly during Michaelmas term 1325, often in cases with a Norwich connection. Two of these involved the sale of worsted cloth in Norwich and in another he represented the dean and chapter of the chapel of St Mary in the Fields.53 Another bailiffs’ court attorney, Peter de Hakeford, though not a known clerk, was also active in the Court of Common Pleas in a rather wider range of cases in 1319 and 1325.54 Though these examples are limited, they illustrate the type of work that some Norwich clerici were prepared to undertake. As well as playing a part in legal affairs, Norwich clerici were involved in both lay and ecclesiastical administration. On the secular side, William de Thorp had been appointed as receiver for the sheriff at Norwich before 1305.55 This may mean that he was the head of the sheriff’s exchequer, with responsibility for all the money received and disbursed.56 A John le Graunt was bailiff of the hundred of Henstead in 1307/08; a William de Walsham was an underbailiff in 1313/14; and Richard de Heylesdon was paid for drawing up manorial accounts in 1335/6 and 1336/7.57 A few were part of the national administration: John de Kyrkeby and Ralph le Verly were both described as king’s clerks in connection with the recognition of debts at Norwich in 1305.58 Others made a career on the ecclesiastical side: Simon de Clay, master of the chapel of St Mary in the Fields, was appointed official of the archdeacon of Norfolk in 1326.59 John de Berstrete seems to have straddled both sectors and acted as subdean of Norwich some time before being employed by the City.60 It is therefore apparent that at the turn of the thirteenth century the term clericus was used in Norwich records (and particularly in Norwich deeds) as an occupational term for men engaged in a wide range of careers. They included parish clerks, accountants, those acting like solicitors who undertook legal work for private clients, practitioners in the local courts, both ecclesiastical and secular, men retained by the City and Norwich cathedral priory, attorneys at the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster and, finally, clerks involved in local secular, ecclesiastical and royal administration. The term clericus is not apparently used, however, for those involved in the specialised business of writing literary manuscripts or even, necessarily, for those just copying deeds. When Norwich cathedral priory bought bibles in 1291/92 it paid a scriptor for them and in 1309/10 it paid William the writer of deeds (scriptor cartarum) 12d.61 At the other end of the 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Rye, Feet of Fines, part 1, pp. 141, 148, 151, 156–8, 166, 169, 171. TNA, CP40/258 mm. 126d, 164d. NRO, NCR Case 8a/5; TNA, CP40/258. TNA, CP40/153 m. 112d. Mabel H. Mills, ‘The Medieval Shire House (Domus Vicecomitis)’, in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J.C. Davies (Oxford, 1957), pp. 264–71. NRO DCN 1/1/18; NRO DCN 1/1/23; NRO DCN 1/2/101. TNA, CP40/153 mm. 33, 276, 290d, 401. Ralph le Verly was granted custody of the smaller part of the seal for the recognisance of debts at Norwich in 1302: CPR 1301–1307, p. 96. Register of William Bateman, ii, p. 158. He is mentioned in the Norfolk Eyre of 1286: Blomefield, Norfolk, IV, p. 63. NRO DCN 1/1/11 and 1/1/21.

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scale there is no evidence that any of the better-educated clerks were being employed to teach the monks at the priory.62 This range of activity would lead us to expect a wide differential in both education and wealth.63 For a parish clerk an elementary education at a song school might be enough. A clerk in private practice involved in conveyancing and similar matters would need a grammar school education to become latinate and then probably entered a term of apprenticeship in an established practice. A combination of apprenticeship and attendance at the court may also have sufficed for those acting as attorneys in the bailiffs’ court and the shire court. In practice, however, attorneys in the Norwich courts may well have been training to become local pleaders or, like John de Midhirst and Peter de Hakeford, intending to operate as attorneys in the Court of Common Pleas. Both roles required a more general knowledge of the common law, which might be gathered from attendance at the central courts or from the informal teaching available in London. At this date the inns of court provided no more than accommodation and common law was not taught at the universities.64 The business schools at Oxford, which included some instruction in the common law, were probably more appropriate for those interested in administration and accountancy.65 Though a university education was of little direct benefit to a common lawyer, it was a requirement for an advocate in the ecclesiastical courts and an advantage for those engaged in ecclesiastical administration.66 It is therefore no surprise that at least nine and possibly eleven Norwich clerks are referred to in the Norwich enrolled deeds as magister, implying that they had completed the university arts curriculum and possibly gone on to study civil and canon law.67 The group includes Roger de Ely, the public notary, Richard de Berneye, the proctor, Simon de Clay, the archdeacon’s official, and John de Brunham the rector, and there must be a strong presumption that most of the other magistri, even when married, were involved in similar work.68 A possible exception, however, is Master John Brun, who may be equated with the John le Brun who was city clerk in 1272 and perhaps with the John de Brunne who acted as attorney in connection with a final concord in 1281/2.69 What is more surprising, considering that this was a period when it was still usual for religious houses to fee canon lawyers, is that none of this group of masters was retained by Norwich cathedral priory.70 While the

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

A suggestion made in B. Dodwell, ‘The Monastic Community’, in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096–1996, ed. I. Atherton et al. (London, 1996), p. 244. For the educational system see W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), pp. 15–23. Brand, Origins, pp. 110–19. H.G. Richardson, ‘Business Training in Medieval Oxford’, American Historical Review 46 (1940–41), pp. 259–80. Brand, Origins, p. 149. In the Norwich enrolled deeds the term magister is only applied to a small number of beneficed clergy, clerici, physicians and surgeons. Marriage was no bar to a career in the ecclesiastical courts. Richard de Berneye the proctor was married. Rye, Feet of Fines, p. 123. Ramsay, ‘Legal Counsel’, p. 98.


95

magistri were mainly involved in ecclesiastical work, they were not necessarily the only Norwich clerks who were university graduates. Five of the men already mentioned in connection with Norwich cathedral priory (including three receiving retainers) are described between 1297 and 1301 in the master of the cellar’s accounts as dominus (Table 1).71 If this had occurred in connection with only one man, it would be a reasonable assumption that a dominus was being distinguished from a clerk of the same name, but not only does this happen during the same short period to five clerks, but two of the five are specified as clerici. One of the men, John Page, is also infrequently described as dominus in Norwich title deeds, as are two other clerks.72 Dominus, of course, is used regularly as a courtesy title for beneficed priests, but four of these seven men were definitely married. It is also possible, though unlikely, that they were considered of sufficient status to be described as knights, on analogy with the serjeants at Common Pleas. However, an alternative use of the term was for bachelors of arts, which would mean that as many as eighteen of the known Norwich clerks may have attended university. There are similar problems in considering the wealth of the Norwich clerks, though the fact that so many clerici owned property in Norwich says something about their financial position as a whole. In addition, certain payments made by the cathedral priory, the City and St Giles Hospital were related to work done. Simple writing skills attracted comparatively little return. 3d was paid for writing two deeds of property in Hemsby in 1282/3 and the clerk’s fee for endorsing and enrolling Norwich deeds was 2d and 4d respectively.73 John de Berstrete was paid the rather better rate of 14d for drawing up letters in 1293/4, though he only received 4d from the City in 1294/5.74 Higher status clerks, however, could be far better remunerated and the clerk of the bailiffs received a fee of 40s in 1350/51.75 Respectable sums also went to accountants. William Albon was paid 6s 8d for auditing in 1297/8, Richard de Heylesdon received 10s in the 1330s for manorial accounts and the clerk drawing up the cathedral priory master of the cellar’s accounts was paid 20s a year.76 Varying amounts might be earned for legal services, from the 2s to John de Midhirst in connection with a case to the 20s 10d paid to Thomas de Fram(l)ingham and Hugh de Causton for the purchase of a writ.77 Warwickshire evidence suggests that contemporary local pleaders might be retained for 6s 8d to 20s a year but could charge 10s or more for acting as attorney in the Court of Common Pleas.78 Slightly lower rates may have applied in Norwich, as Richard de Bernham, not a known clerk but a Norfolk attorney at Westminster, received regular annual donaciones totalling 9s and 10s from the 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

NRO DCN 1/1/14, 1/1/15. Walter de Norwich and John de Wyleby. Neither was bailiff of Norwich. This is not Walter de Norwich, baron of the Exchequer, who has not been included as a Norwich clericus. NRO DCN 1/1/6; Hudson and Tingey, Records, I, pp. cxxii, 164. Even the 4d, when received for an average of eighty-five enrolled deeds a year, made a useful additional income. Hudson and Tingey, Records, II, pp. 31–32. Hudson and Tingey, Records, II, p. 39. Hudson and Tingey, Records, II, 34; NRO DCN 1/2/101; NRO DCN 1/1/21–38. NRO DCN 1/1/31; Hudson and Tingey, Records, II, p. 33. Palmer, County Courts, p. 112.

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cathedral priory between 1314/15 and 1318/19, and another attorney was paid a fee of 8s in the late 1320s.79 A 20s retainer also seems rather high for a local pleader, as this was the amount paid by both the City and the cathedral priory to established serjeants at the Court of Common Pleas. 13s 4d was paid to less experienced central court pleaders and the fact that the five Norwich clerks retained by the City and the cathedral priory received a similar amount underlines their importance and suggests that they may have operated as pleaders locally.80 It is likely that some Norwich clerks were at least as well paid as their medical contemporaries. Neither physicians nor surgeons were retained by the master of the cellar and though some years they received as much as 13s 4d it was not a regular payment. While it is impossible to estimate the final profits of a successful career as a clericus in Norwich, it is clear that some clerks both amassed some degree of wealth and had well-to-do connections. Geoffrey de Wilby was the brother of Letitia Payn, who was notable for setting up a well-endowed chantry.81 When William de Thorp, receiver to the sheriff, married the widow of William Gerveys in 1287, she brought with her property in five Norwich parishes as well as annual rents.82 Thomas de Fram(l)ingham also married an heiress. He held a moiety of a manor at Scottow, Norfolk, in her right and joined with her to oppose a final concord relating to property at Great Hautbois, Norfolk, in 1302/03.83 John son of Adam Page, alias de Norwich, owned property in at least six Norwich parishes and acquired the manor of Bixley, Norfolk, which he settled on himself and his son Nicholas in 1309; partly in connection with this, he levied fines relating to property in the Norfolk parishes of Bixley, Kirby Bedon, Trowse Newton, Caister by Norwich and Markshall.84 One might expect clerici to come from the wealthier strata of Norwich society, both because of the expense of the education required and the potential rewards, but unfortunately the information available on fathers’ occupations is very limited.85 There is a little evidence, however, for clerical families, with three definite pairs of clerical fathers and sons.86 In addition Nicholas the son of John Page is sometimes given donaciones by Norwich cathedral priory at the same time as his father and may be acting as his clerk;87 William de Bedingham is the nephew of John Page; and with some clerici the same surname suggests a relationship that cannot be proved.

79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Thurston; NRO DCN 1/1/24–27, 29, 30. For instance, John de Mutford (paid 20s) was a serjeant by 1292 but John le Claver, who initially only received 13s 4d, is not known as a serjeant until 1305: J.H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law, Selden Society ss 5 (London, 1984), pp. 505, 528. There were several Geoffreys in the family and he is probably being distinguished from Geoffrey de Wilby, rector of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. NRO NCR Case 2 m. 8d. Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 342; Rye, Feet of Fines, p. 158. Blomefield, Norfolk, V, p. 449; Rye, Feet of Fines, pp. 227, 232. Apart from known clerks the possibilities are one fishman, two tanners and a linendraper, all relatively lucrative occupations. Hugh and Roger de Causton, Thomas and Ralph de Erlham, John de Norwich son of Ralph de Thurston and Walter. NRO DCN 1/1/18, 1/1/21.


97

Firmer evidence of the regard in which the leading Norwich clerici were held comes from their involvement both in the city government and as its representatives.88 Norwich at this date was governed by four bailiffs and initially the part played by the clerks does not look impressive. The office appears dominated by members of the mercantile community, with the clerks coming a poor second. However the real situation is more complicated; no known clerk served as bailiff after 1314, but they were regularly chosen earlier on. Indeed, taking the thirtyfive year period 1276 to 1310, there are only eight years when the four bailiffs did not include at least one known clerk. There can be no doubt of the value placed on having a clerk in office. A similar picture emerges in connection with the members of parliament. In view of the known tendency of towns in general, and Norwich in particular, to choose lawyers as their representatives, one might expect clerks to feature among those listed.89 Norwich was indeed represented by a clerk for most years between 1298 and 1318 but after that they disappear completely from the record. This apparent disappearance of the clerici from the ranks of the bailiffs and members of parliament for Norwich is part of a continuing trend. In 1300 the position of the Norwich clerks looks strong but it becomes steadily weaker as the fourteenth century progresses. For the twenty years 1286–1305 eighty-three clerici are known from all sources and seventy from title deeds. By 1320–39 the numbers have gone down to thirty-one and twenty-two respectively. On every count the clerks perform badly. During the same period the average decline in overall numbers for Norwich occupations is 17%. In the case of the clerks it is 63%. Looking just at the numbers known from deeds, the average decline is 12%; with the clerks it is 68%. When Norwich is assessed for the lay subsidy in 1332 only two clerks can definitely be identified as paying, as against thirty-six known subsidy-paying merchants.90 So what is causing this decline? In the first place, it is highly improbable that there was any reduction in the demand for the services that the clerici supplied. Rates of owner-occupation in the city went down sharply over this period and the fall in numbers mentioned in conveyances may indicate that many of the clerks known for the earlier period were only just wealthy enough to own property and were pushed out as the century progressed.91 This does not, however, explain the overall drop in numbers, the sharp decline in the number of clerks serving as bailiffs or members of parliament and the poor showing in the 1332 subsidy assessment of a group that could clearly be of some wealth and influence. Though the evidence is slight, what we may be seeing here is a change in terminology. Apart from John de Midhirst, none of the eight attorneys known to be operating in the Norwich bailiffs’ court between 1329 and 1346 is anywhere described as a clerk, although most of them appear in Norwich deeds by 1340. More significantly, 88 89

For office-holding by lawyers and administrators in Winchester see Keene, Winchester, p. 437. K.L. Wood-Legh, ‘Sheriffs, Lawyers and Belted Knights in the Parliaments of Edward III’, EHR 46 (1931), pp. 378–81. 90 A further three subsidy payers may be either clerks or another man of the same name. 91 E. Rutledge, ‘Immigration and Population Growth in Early Fourteenth-Century Norwich: Evidence from the Tithing Roll’, Urban History Yearbook (1988), p. 26.

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the other local attorney we have already met, Peter de Hakeford, served as member of parliament for Norwich no fewer than nine times between 1322 and 1348, showing that the apparent break in the early fourteenth century is illusory. While those involved in ecclesiastical affairs probably continue to appear in the record, we may be losing both ends of the spectrum as far as the body of lay clerici are concerned. On the one hand poorer clerks, visible as house-owners at the turn of the century, could no longer in the changed circumstances of the 1320s and 1330s afford to purchase property in Norwich. On the other, the rising generation of lay administrators cum lawyers felt that the term clericus no longer accurately reflected their occupation or status, leaving a descriptional problem that lasted well into the modern period.92 It is probably only in the brief interval between the explosion of records in the late thirteenth century and this change in terminology that the full scale and influence of the legal and administrative class in medieval Norwich becomes apparent.

92

The problem is discussed in N.L. Ramsay, ‘What was the Legal Profession?’, in Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. M. Hicks (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 62–3.

Financial Reform in Late Medieval Norwich: Evidence from an Urban Cartulary Penny Dunn

I WAS SURPRISED by something I read recently in the new Cambridge Urban History of Britain.1 In his general survey of towns in Britain between 1300 and 1540 Professor Barrie Dobson made the point that ‘no late medieval British borough seems to have produced a comprehensive cartulary of its holdings of real property’.2 This caught my attention because the source I was working on at the time, the Norwich Domesday Book compiled around 1396, was exactly that: a late medieval urban cartulary.3 In the words of G.R.C. Davis ‘Cartularies are registers of muniments, that is to say of the title-deeds, charters of privilege and other documents which are kept by landowners as evidence of their personal or corporate rights.’4 As a volume made up of copies of all the available deeds relating to property that belonged to the community of Norwich, the Norwich Domesday Book certainly fits this definition. My search for similar volumes for other urban areas has been so far unsuccessful and it appears that I have been working on possibly the only surviving British medieval urban source of this kind. The comment in the Cambridge Urban History highlights the significant problem of the limitations of the available published material on late medieval Norwich. Studies, by Ben McCree (on peacemaking and guilds), Philippa Maddern (on social order), Carole Rawcliffe (on hospitals and health provision) and Norman Tanner (on the Church), for example, have shed much light on the period.5 But Norwich in the late Middle Ages has received relatively little attention, especially 1 2 3 4 5

D.M. Palliser, ed., The Cambridge Urban History of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), i. B. Dobson, ‘General Survey, 1300–1540’, in Palliser, ed., Cambridge Urban History, i, p. 279. NRO, NCR, 17b, Norwich Domesday Book. G.R.C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain: A Short Catalogue (London, 1958), p. xi. B.R. McCree, ‘Peace Making and its Limits in Late Medieval Norwich’, EHR 109 (1994), pp. 835–46; ‘Charity and Guild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies 32 (1993), pp. 195–225; ‘Religious Guilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum 67 (1992), pp. 69–97; P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (New York, 1992); eadem, ‘The Legitimation of Power: Riot and Authority in Fifteenth-Century Norwich’, Paregon 6 (1988), pp. 65–84; C. Rawcliffe, The Hospitals of Medieval Norwich (Norwich, 1995); eadem, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Hospital: St Giles, Norwich, c.1249–1550 (Stroud, 1999); and N.P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984).

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in terms of its social and economic history.6 Understandably, the lack of published material in recent years has led to the Norwich example being somewhat overlooked in the Cambridge Urban History. Fortunately, this situation is beginning to be rectified, with the recent volume of essays on the Medieval Norwich.7 My thesis, on the social and economic history of the late medieval city, 1350 to 1400, also aims to fill part of the void.8 One of the key sources for my research has been the late fourteenth-century Norwich Domesday Book because, as well as recording the city’s holdings of real property, it allows us to see the policies of the late fourteenth-century Norwich government. This paper discusses the source and explores what it can tell us about late medieval Norwich society and the activities of the ruling elite. Norwich Domesday Book was compiled in the late 1390s because, although the book is not dated, the Treasurers’ Account Rolls record that 6s 8d was paid for the transcript of a book called the Domesday in 1394–95 and in 1397–98, a further 3s 4d was spent on the parchment and binding of a book made for the community.9 It is a large volume of ninety-one folios, which were rebound, according to a note in the back cover, at the request of the city chamberlain in 1541. Deeds make up the vast majority of documents in the book, the earliest dated 1285 and the latest dated 1507; so the book provides a reference for property owned by the Norwich government over a period of more than two hundred years.10 There are 271 deeds in total, but, as many of the deeds deal with more than one conveyance of property, my analysis is based on the 324 individual transactions, not individual deeds. It is immediately apparent that the bulk of these deeds were copied into the volume in the same late fourteenth-century hand and date, predominantly, from the period 1378–1380. This body of deeds has not been organised chronologically but appears to have been arranged geographically, starting with deeds for properties in the meat and fish markets situated in the central parish of St Peter Mancroft, and then moving out through various other parishes of the city. Later additions to the original body of material are easily identifiable, dotted throughout the manuscript, and cause the volume to appear more haphazard in organisation than it would have done in its original form. There are some fundamental characteristics of the Domesday Book, which should be pointed to at this juncture. First, it should be noted that numerous deeds relating to the same property are often included in the book, but these are never bound together, and are dotted sporadically within the volume. These deeds were presumably included to provide the title of a certain property or to note the different stages in the acquisition process. For example there are nine separate

6

A notable exception is an unpublished thesis, A. King, ‘The Merchant Class and Borough Finances in Later Medieval Norwich’ (University of Oxford PhD thesis, 1989) (henceforth King, ‘Merchant Class and Borough Finances’). 7 Medieval Norwich. 8 P. Dunn, ‘After the Black Death: Society and Economy in Late Fourteenth-Century Norwich’ (University of East Anglia PhD thesis, 2003). 9 Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 51. 10 NRO, NCR, 17b, ND89; 4. Deeds in the Norwich Domesday Book are numbered consecutively from the start of the volume.

FINANCIAL REFORM IN LATE MEDIEVAL NORWICH

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deeds relating to the purchase of the ‘Common Inn’.11 Secondly, the deeds in the book are not exclusively concerned with the city’s acquisitions of property but also include some deeds in which the city was acting as grantor. During the first half of the fourteenth century the city government made grants of previously common or vacant land and also made grants of the right to built stalls or selds in the market place, in return for a fixed assize rent.12 But, for my present purposes I have focussed simply on the city’s acquisitions and have therefore concentrated on those deeds where representatives of the Norwich government can be identified as purchasers on behalf of the city. The third important point to note is that the book does not just consist of copies of deeds. Other important documents, related to the activities and privileges of the city government, are also included. For example, a royal warrant dated 1378, a licence of mortmain dated 1392 and an extent of the city property from 1397.13 These supplementary documents explain the city’s policies and the actions which led to the book’s compilation. The Norwich Domesday Book is a remarkable document which was obviously intended to record a remarkable event: a revolution in land holding, which took place in the late fourteenth century. The book was to provide an official record of all municipally owned property in the city. The collection of deeds and other documents record the process by which the city government became the chief landlord of commercial properties in Norwich. But it is more than just a revolution in landholding that the Norwich Domesday Book records. Within the various documents are also numerous clues and details of other ways in which the rulers of Norwich were introducing innovative plans for their city. The Domesday Book tells the story of what was evidently an exceptional period in the city’s history, when the government was massively expanding the civic property base and was undertaking various reform programmes to improve and increase municipal revenue. Such developments are of vital importance for an assessment of how the city community responded to the dramatic changes brought about by the plagues and must be seen in the context of the loss of perhaps two-thirds of the city’s pre-Black Death population.14 The very fact that a volume such as the Norwich Domesday was produced reveals the diligence and organisational skills of the city’s ruling elite at this time and a closer look at the material contained within the book reveals how they completely overhauled the city finances in the second half of the fourteenth century. The late fourteenth-century government in Norwich appears to have had two central and interconnected aims at the core of their reform policy: to greatly increase the income of the city and to gain greater control over trade and industry in Norwich. The way in which they went about achieving their first goal was, to a

11 12

NRO, NCR, 17b, ND62, 63, 65, 200, 141, 193, 198, 191, 90. For example, NRO, NCR, 17b, ND103, where previously common land was sold in the parish of St Andrew, and ND74 and 79, where similar land was conveyed in St Peter Mancroft in July 1328. 13 NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23–23d; fol. 90; fol. 36. The warrant of 1378, the extent of 1397 and the Licence in Mortmain are printed in translation in Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 231–54. 14 The population had fallen from perhaps 25,000 in 1333 to around 8000 in the 1370s, see Dunn, ‘After the Black Death’, chapter 1.

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Chronology of city acquisitions in Norwich Domesday Book c.1396

large degree, an extension of their established economic policy and was concerned with greater investment in municipal property to result in a higher income from rents. Such a policy had been in place long before the Black Death and, according to the deeds in the Norwich Domesday Book, Norwich, like York, had been gradually adding to its property base since the late thirteenth century.15 There are at least twenty-three city purchases in the book dating from the first half of the fourteenth century. Many of the city’s acquisitions during the 1330s and 40s seem to have been directly connected to the on-going communal project of the building of the city walls, which was finally completed in 1343. Several of the properties acquired were adjacent to the city walls or were strategically situated next to various gates into the city, at Conesford Gate (King Street) and Pockthorpe Gate.16 So the Domesday Book confirms that the practice of enlarging the pool of city property to increase revenue from rents dated back to the late thirteenth century. The book allows us to see the chronology of the city’s property acquisitions, which remained steady throughout the first three-quarters of the century and then burst into greater activity during the 1370s and 80s.17 After the Black Death, and the subsequent outbreaks of the 1360s and early 70s, there was a discernible intensification of this policy. From the summer of 1378, the deed evidence reveals the city’s decision to buy up the entire market. Before this date the market stalls had been in private ownership of various Norwich traders but forty deeds, comprising sixty-one separate transactions, record the transfer to the city of stalls, selds, and shops during 1378, 1379 and 1380. These properties comprised the main market, which was held on Wednesdays and Saturdays and was situated in the parish of St Peter Mancroft.18 15

R.B. Dobson, ed., York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls 1396–1500 (Surtees Society 192, 1980), p. xx. 16 NRO, NCR, 17b, ND186; 180. 17 See Graph. 18 U. Priestley, The Great Market: A Survey of Nine Hundred Years of Norwich Provision Market (Norwich, 1987).


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A further seven deeds, comprising fourteen more transfers to the city, were made in the parish of St Peter Mancroft between 1381 and 1391. Within three years of the start of the project the bulk of the market property was in the hands of the city government and the entire mission had been more or less accomplished within a decade. By 1392 the city government owned the vast majority of property in the market square, which, according to the licence of mortmain of that year, consisted of three messuages, eighteen shops, forty-two stalls and 52s annual rent owed to the king in burgage.19 Over 56% of all of the city’s acquisitions recorded in the Domesday were in the market parish of St Peter Mancroft, which leaves us in no doubt that this was the target area of their property-acquisition drive. From the time it acquired the properties it was the municipal government who received the revenue from renting out the shops and stalls, and the dates of the deeds demonstrate the speed with which they completed their goal. The market was not, however, the city’s only significant purchase at this time. The largest single acquisition of the reform programme was the group of buildings, situated to the north of the market place, called ‘Geywoods’ or ‘Welbornes’, which came to be known as the ‘Common Inn’ by the first decade of the fifteenth century. The lengthy process by which the city community acquired the building is outlined in the Domesday Book. It appears that John of Welborne, brother and executor of the bailiff and taverner Thomas of Welborne, sold the property to three leading members of the city government in February 1369 and a further eight deeds in the Domesday relate to the acquisition of the Inn.20 According to the 1397 extent of city property, the Common Inn was built around a courtyard and comprised a shop and solar on either side of the great gate and the tavern and stable, which made up the south part of the courtyard.21 The north side of the property was the Worstedseld, which apparently encompassed numerous rooms on ground level with solars above, where worsted cloth in the city was to be bought and sold. The property was ideally situated in the heart of the commercial centre of the city, at the edge of the market, near to the Tollhouse, which was the main government building before the Guildhall was built in 1412. The reasons why the city leaders purchased the Common Inn and Worstedseld were more complex than their aim simply to increase rental income from the market. This purchase, while bringing in income from visiting merchants for lodgings and the use of the rooms in the Worstedseld, was far more concerned with the city’s other aim of greater control of trade and industry in Norwich. The Norwich Domesday is silent as to the government’s intentions for the Common Inn, but it seems that it was as much a political institution as a commercial property. All traders and merchants from outside the city were to lodge at the Inn so as to be under the protection and eagle eyes of the city authorities. By the time it was made law in England, in 1404, for all foreign merchants to lodge in accommodation assigned to them by the civic authorities, this seems already to have been common practice for all strangers visiting Norwich.22 Similarly, the lucrative trade in Worsted 19 20 21 22

NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 90. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND193; 62, 63, 65, 200, 141, 198, 191, 90. NRO, NCR, 17b, Norwich Domesday Book, fol. 36; Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 242–3. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. xxxvi.

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cloths was to be carried out under the supervision of the civic officials in the Worstedseld. Worsted was produced in the villages north of the city, and also in Norwich itself by this date, and the cloth was the principal commodity exported overseas by city merchants at this time.23 An ordinance of 1388 prohibited any worsteds woven outside the city to be bought or sold anywhere other than the seld under a penalty of 40s for the first offence, £4 for the second offence and loss of liberty for the third.24 In the seld presumably the cloths would be inspected and sealed by the city authorities before they could be sold on. Therefore, the government’s first aim was achieved by increasing city revenue from the rents and lodgings. Simultaneously, the activities of all visiting traders and merchants would be under the surveillance of the civic authorities and the profitable worsted industry would be concentrated in Norwich and monitored by city men. The third major acquisition of the late fourteenth-century reforms were the Common Stathes in Conesford. Again, the deeds in the Domesday Book clearly document the process by which the city gained two stathes, or quays. These were located on the bank of the Wensum at the first suitable place for ships to moor as they came upstream into the city. The Old Common Stathe was obviously made up of two parts. Norwich merchants, Hugh and William Holland, transferred their interest in the ‘Old Common Stathe’ to the city in January.25 Other deeds in the Domesday Book provide some history of the property and we learn that the Holland brothers purchased the messuage with buildings, a quay and all commodities at ‘Taperestathe’ from Roger and Johanna Hardegrey in 1361.26 The Hardegreys had themselves acquired the property in 1357 from William of Middleton, thus the detailed and very thorough compilation of the Domesday Book is revealed.27 At the time of the transfer to the city in 1379, Hugh Holland was leasing half of the stathe from the abbot of Wendling, and the city subsequently took over the lease for a term of six hundred years.28 The New Common Stathe was a little downstream from the Old and was acquired by the city in the same year from Walter and Katherine Bixton.29 The Common Stathes were plainly intended to perform a central role in the city government’s dual aims of increased revenue and trade control. They brought in proceeds in three ways: from the tolls customarily charged on all goods brought into Norwich by river, from ‘windage’ (which was the fee charged for the use of the crane) and from storage fees for the use of the community’s warehouses. As with the Worstedseld, ordinances were also made to ensure trade would be channelled through the community’s own

23 24 25 26 27 28

29

See Dunn, ‘After the Black Death’, chapters 3 and 4. Blomefield, Norfolk, iii, p. 113. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND45. A later deed shows two clerks, Ralph of Necton and Richard Lanshull, granting the same stathe to various city men in 1390. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND264. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND260. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND262. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 51, Treasurer’s Roll 21–22 Richard II [1397- 8]. Blomefield says that the city was to hold the whole for six hundred years at 13s 4d yearly rent, but does not reference his source, Blomefield, Norfolk, iii, p. 115. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND47. There is also a quitclaim of Roger Calf to the eight elite commissioners, ND48.


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stathes, and it is to the extent of this new legislation and the ways in which the ruling elite carried out their reforms that we must now turn. Why did the civic government feel that reform was necessary and how they were able to implement their policies? A warrant of Richard II, dated 26 November 1378, provided them with official endorsement of their programme, and is the most useful source for revealing the methods by which they achieved their aims.30 According to the warrant, the reason for the financial reform project was that, ‘. . . the . . . community owing to divers business touching the said community, is greatly oppressed, injured, and brought to ruin, by the taxes and tallages assessed and employed in the aforesaid city’. The evidence from the extant Treasurers’ Account rolls, which date from the mid 1370s, appears to substantiate this claim. In 1375 the Treasurers of the previous three years were still paying the arrears of their accounts and there is evidence of various taxes being levied on the citizens.31 These were both central government taxes, such as the double tenth of 1373, and local tallages, for instance a levy to raise funds for a barge requested by the king in 1372.32 In addition, the assembly roll of 1373 refers to the community’s unwillingness to pay a subsidy to the king of £110 and the citizens’ attempts to gain exemption from payment.33 It was apparent that the city government was struggling to keep up to date with normal outgoings as well as additional costs such as the king’s barge. The Treasurers’ accounts also document the changes which occurred in 1378–9, and they impart how the city gained the capital to facilitate the property acquisitions. Just over £125 was raised from one more levy, imposed on the citizens in 1378–9, and this money was used to buy up the market.34 This meant of course that the repayment of a loan did not diminish their profits and, as soon as the proceeds from rents started to pour in, the common treasure chest benefited immediately. In addition to financial reasons for the reforms, there was also the issue of civic pride. After a half century of plagues and disruption there was a strong sense that the city government wanted to start afresh by revitalising the city in many ways. The acquisition of the Common Inn and the Common Stathes might therefore be perceived as the government ensuring it had the services and facilities which would befit a city of Norwich’s standing. They were desperate to keep up to date with urban developments elsewhere, and this determination is most perceptible in their acquisition of a new charter of liberties in 1380, which will be discussed below.35 New regulations, crucial to ensuring the smooth running and success of the government’s aims, were stated in the warrant. With regard to the markets, the warrant made it patently clear that ‘all kinds of flesh and fish ought to be sold on the common stalls and not elsewhere’, and the butchers and fishmongers were to swear an oath to that effect in the city’s Murageloft.36 The city’s overall control 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 43–4. S. Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 4 vols, i (London, 1965), p. 90. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 270. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 44–6. CChR 1341–1417, p. 264. NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23.

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was established yet further by the clause that stated that no leases were to be of longer than three years and no man was allowed to sub-let his stall. The city leaders thus created a monopoly over the central market and, though it was not stated explicitly, there was clearly no room for negotiation and market stall owners had no choice but to sell their property to the city. The rules concerning the stathes were similarly unequivocal and stated that no ship or boat shall be laden or unladen except at the Stathes belonging to the community, and any boat discovered would be arrested for fifteen days and amerced at 6s 8d to be paid to the bailiffs and community.37 Furthermore, any merchant caught unloading or loading goods anywhere other than at the Common Stathes would face a penalty of 20s. A large part of the warrant is taken up with a comprehensive list of the new tolls introduced on goods entering the city at the Stathes. It is interesting that these tolls, which cover every commodity from herrings to whetstones, are significantly lower than those listed in an undated but earlier list preserved in the Norwich book of customs. A notable omission from the list of tolls was wool, which may have been admitted freely to encourage manufacture. Finally, the importance of contributing to the levy was spelt out, with the statement that if anyone was found ‘rebellious and obstinate beyond measure or negligent in the payment, and in any way hindering the said common aid [they were ordered to be] seized and taken away to the prison of the said city’, so no one could have been in any doubt that opposition to the reforms would be met with a severe punishment.38 The ordinances in the warrant show the strict system that the city leaders adopted to meet their aims. They were careful to ensure everything was legally watertight and supported by royal approval, however the dates of the deeds show that the process of buying up the market was well underway by the time the warrant was received. As early as June 1378 four stalls and one shop in the fish market and one house and two stalls in the meat market had already been purchased.39 Those who were instigating the reforms were apparently not the sorts of men to wait for approval from central government before putting their campaign into action. The next important question to consider, then, is who was in charge of executing this new policy? The 1378 warrant set up a commission of sixteen named individuals who were to act as ‘supervisors of the community’.40 The composition of this commission gives an insight into the nature of government in late fourteenth-century Norwich and provides occasion to explore the scope of control of the governing elite. Regrettably, we have no evidence of how the commissioners were chosen, although it does not appear that they were selected by leet or for their craft affiliations.41 The first eight of the sixteen commissioners listed in the warrant were Bartholomew Appleyard (father of William Appleyard, first mayor of Norwich), Nicholas Blakeney, Walter Bixton, Hugh Holland, 37 38 39 40 41

NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23. NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23. NRO, NCR, 17b, ND18; ND5. NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 23. Norwich was divided into four leets called Mancroft, Wymer, Conesford and Ultra Aquam for administrative and judicial purposes.

1374, 1380

Henry Skye

No Yes No

William Blakehoumore

John Bastwick

Adam de Poringland

1368

1367. 1368, 1369

1365, 1367

1365, 1366, 1367

1365, 1366, 1367, 1368

Elector1

Fuller

Merchant [Local Customs]

Cordwaner

Merchant

Tailor

Fuller

[Customs]

Merchant

[Customs]

Merchant [Customs]

Merchant [Customs]

[Customs]

Dyer (poss.)

Trade

2

10

40

20

30

13

10

15

17

34

215

60

32

20

132

43

Deeds2

List of electors are only available for 1365–1369, 1373, 1382 and 1385. The number of transactions where the individual appears as a grantor, grantee, previous owner or tenant or in abuttals in NRO, NCR 1/14; 15.

Yes

Walter Banningham

1 2

No

Nicholas Corpusty

No No

Roger de Ridlington

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

John de Walsingham

1384

1372, 1380, 1387

Ralph Skiet

Roger de Halesworth

1375, 1381

Thomas Spynk

No

1358, 1366, 1374, 1382 1371, 1379, 1386

Hugo de Holland

1369, 1376. 1383, 1391

Walter de Bixton

Henry Lomynour

Yes

1364, 1372, 1379, 1386

Nicholas de Blakeney

Yes

1355, 1366, 1372

Bartholomew Appleyard

Member of 24

Bailiff

Name

The sixteen commisioners appointed 1378

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Henry Lomynour and Ralph Skiet (all prominent overseas merchants in this period), Henry Sky and Thomas Spynk (son of Richard Spynk, the conscientious citizen who paid for the completion of the city walls in 1343). We will refer to these eight as the ‘elite’ commissioners because, by 1378, these men had all served on at least one occasion as one of the four bailiffs of Norwich.42 The other eight named commissioners were Roger of Halesworth (a fuller), Roger Ridlington, John of Walsingham (a tailor), Nicholas Corpusty (a merchant), Walter of Banningham (a cordwaner), William Blackmoor (a merchant), John Bastwick (another fuller) and Adam of Poringland. Three of these men, Roger of Halesworth, Roger Ridlington and John Bastwick, can be identified in the Assembly rolls as having performed the role of elector of the bailiffs. Roger of Halesworth, Walter of Banningham and John Bastwick were also known members of the city’s council of twenty-four, but none of these men had served as bailiff before 1378 and only Roger Ridlington went on to do so, in 1384.43 The fact that none were of bailiff status means these eight may be described as the ‘common’ commissioners. Their professions and property dealings also reflect the lesser status of these commissioners.44 The eight ‘elite’ commissioners are almost all known merchants and generally their activities in the property market were considerably more prolific than those of the common commissioners. The warrant itself makes absolutely no differentiation between the different members of the commission and all sixteen were vested with the power to collect the common aid from the citizens and to audit the ‘gifts’. They were also granted full power for buying rents and tenements with the gifts and for selling and letting to farm the rents and tenements bought, for the common good. It is not surprising that Ben McCree saw the structure of the sixteen as evidence that the reform programme was meant to be a genuinely bipartisan effort between the balival elite and the common citizens of Norwich. This is certainly the impression that the warrant promoted, however a closer examination of the deeds in the Domesday Book demonstrates that there was in reality no equality between the elite and ordinary commissioners. Of the 116 acquisitions during the period 1370–1399, sixty-two have all eight elite members of the commission of sixteen acting as feofees of the city, receiving property or rents on the city’s behalf. A further thirty transactions show a group of eight or fewer of these same elite commissioners working in the same capacity. In total, therefore, ninety-two transactions have the elite members of the commission acting as the city’s feoffees. Put another way, 79% of the city’s property acquisitions, recorded in the Norwich Domesday book between 1370 and 1399, were undertaken by some or all of the eight elite members of the commission of sixteen. Only four of the eight common commissioners appear receiving property on behalf of the city in this period, and a mere 6% of the city’s property acquisitions involved some or all of these eight 42

H. Le Strange, Norfolk Officials Lists (Norwich, 1890), pp. 96–8. The bailiffs were appointed each year, and stood at the pinnacle of the city government. Norwich did not have a mayor until the city acquired county status in 1404, so the office of bailiff was the highest in the city administration in the fourteenth century. 43 H. Le Strange, Norfolk Officials Lists (Norwich, 1890), pp. 96–8. 44 See Table.


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‘common’ commissioners. These statistics prove that the sixteen commissioners were not equally active in the city government’s drive to acquire property and the reforming commission was far from a genuinely bipartisan effort. Of course the elite commissioners probably dominated the process for purely practical reasons. Compared to the common commissioners they would have been able to afford to dedicate more of their time to working for the city, whereas the less affluent, artisan, commoners may have been more occupied by their personal affairs. It seems very likely that the composition of the commission was intended to give the illusion of equality between the elite rulers of Norwich and the lesser citizens. It was surely no coincidence that equal numbers of bailiff-class citizens and ‘common citizens’ were appointed. The common commissioners’ real role is not exposed. Perhaps they were responsible for the unenviable task of collecting the levy, or working on a more basic level negotiating sales and collecting rents. The name of Nicholas Corpusty, one of the common commissioners, is notable as one of the two tax collectors from the leet of Wymer in the Treasurers’ Roll of 1378–9.45 Predictably, it was the eight elite commissioners who took over the entire accounting procedure in Norwich between November 1381 and March 1384.46 So far the Norwich Domesday Book has divulged details of the various projects in progress in the late fourteenth century, why the financial system needed to be improved, how the plans were implemented and who was in charge. But how successful was the reform programme? The Domesday Book does give some indication of the huge success of the innovations. The 1397 extent of property, copied into the volume, reveals the number of municipal holdings by this time.47 These were extensive, but were clearly concentrated in the commercial sector, and the city invested very little in domestic properties. To avoid the mortmain legislation, extended to boroughs in 1391, the city invested in an expensive licence in Mortmain in 1392.48 That they could find £100 to pay for this indicates that their financial situation had greatly improved. But to see clearly the dramatic effects of the reforms on the city’s revenues it is best to look at the city’s financial records, the Treasurers’ Account rolls and the Chamberlain’s Book. These record the rapid success of the government’s new policies. In the financial year 1399–1400, only two decades after the process of buying up the market had begun, the butchers’ stalls alone brought in £46 16s 8d.49 This is a substantial sum in light of the fact that a quarter of a century earlier rents had apparently only brought in £18 12s 6d, according to the Treasurers’ roll of 1375–6.50 The account roll for 1382–3 recorded takings of £65 16s 3d for the whole market, so it is easy to see how the city was able to afford the £100 for their mortmain licence.51 The acquisition of the market was an immensely successful 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 45. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 46–7. NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 36. Translated in Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 237–49. NRO, NCR, 17b, fol. 90. Translated in Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 253–4. King, ‘Merchant Class and Borough Finances’, Table 10.3. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 43. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 46–7.

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element of the reforms and between 1397 and 1436 the revenue never fell below £74 a year. The city government had wholeheartedly fulfilled their aim and the market was to provide a reliable income throughout the later middle ages. The political success of the Common Inn, as a safe haven for all strangers to the city, is not easy to quantify, but the revenue it brought in provides evidence of its commercial success. The farm of the Common Inn was £5 6s 8d throughout the 1430s and 1440s and the fact that an average of £5 per annum was spent on repairs throughout the fifteenth century is testimony to its continued importance to the municipality.52 The Worstedseld, too, was extremely successful in the short term. In the financial year 1394–5 the seld made £15 1s 8d and revenues remained high throughout the 1390s, bringing in an average of at least £18 a year.53 The real profits of the Worstedseld are not revealed in the records, as it would have been the citizens themselves who benefited from the trade being restricted to Norwich. The financial records show a decline in revenues, however, from 1406 onwards, and this must be a reflection of the city’s failure to sustain its control over the worsted trade. Finally, the revenue from the Stathes did not fall to lower than £22 between 1397, when the records begin, until 1434 and, as with the Common Inn, money was constantly being spent on their repair and upkeep.54 Again, this is overwhelming proof of the success of the late fourteenth-century financial developments. The city leaders certainly achieved their dual aims of greater income and greater control with marked success in the short term. The longer-term success of the late fourteenth-century reforms should not be underestimated either, because the reorganisation in the 1370s and 80s ensured Norwich’s financial stability. The markets were especially important in providing the city with a dependable income throughout the fifteenth century and this undoubtedly contributed to the city’s buoyancy during a period when other urban areas claimed to be experiencing acute financial difficulties.55 This urban cartulary provides a considerable amount of information about the financial policies of the Norwich government but leaves some questions unanswered. The volume is the city government’s own record of the events that took place and therefore, by its very nature, only provides one side of the picture. Those aspects which are not covered by the book, such as the question of opposition to the government’s plans, must be considered. Unfortunately the sources are silent on this matter, and there is no record of any resistance to the enforced levy or comprehensive takeover of the market stalls. The Domesday Book, however, does contain some definite indications that the city leaders anticipated opposition. We have noted the strict regulations, with the threat of imprisonment for anyone who refused to pay the levy, the heavy fines for those who did not comply with the new ordinances and the illusion of equality created by the appointment of eight 52 53 54 55

King, ‘Merchant Class and Borough Finances’, p. 378. King, ‘Merchant Class and Borough Finances’, Table 10.4. King, ‘Merchant Class and Borough Finances’, Table 10.5; p. 375. In contrast to the other major provincial cities, such as York, Bristol and Lincoln, only Norwich and Newcastle did not secure a substantial reduction in their farms during the fifteenth century on grounds of poverty. Norwich did gain a remission in 1444, during the political troubles, because it was not master of its own income at the time: Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 69.


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‘elite’ and eight ‘common’ members of the reform commission. What the Domesday Book does not reveal is that the city leaders actually took matters even further to ensure that their plans would not be thwarted by opposition from the ordinary citizens. In a move seemingly independent of the drive to improve the city’s finances, two Norwich citizens, Henry Lomynour and Walter Bixton, were dispatched to London to petition Richard II for a new charter early in 1378.56 The petition requested better remedies and ordinances of victuals and that the four bailiffs and twenty-four citizens elected each year might have power to make and establish such ordinances and remedies for the good government of the town. They were basically asking for better controls over trade and an extension of their existing liberties to match the privileges London had acquired in a charter dated 26 May 1341.57 They said they needed these new privileges because many of the commune of their town had apparently been ‘greatly contrarious of late’. The distinction from the ‘contrarious citizens’ makes it apparent that the new liberties were being acquired for the good of the ruling elite and not the ordinary citizens of Norwich. The citizens were granted their requests straight away and the response to the petition was then duly ratified in the charter of 1380.58 In response to their first demand, the new charter directed them to the Statute of Gloucester, which said no strangers (in other words, non-freemen of the city) were to merchandise within the liberties of a town or city. The impact of this ruling is clearly visible in the civic records and displays another way in which the city government was raising municipal income. The year 1378–9 saw an exceptionally high number of entrants to the freedom of Norwich, recorded in the Old Free Book (which was the register of men who paid to enter the franchise) and the leet rolls revealed an increase in the number of individuals being fined for trading outside the franchise of the city.59 This shows that the city leaders’ crackdown on traders merchandising outside the regulations was successful and that municipal coffers were boosted by increased income from freedom entry fines and amercements for breaking the rules. In response to the petition, the bailiffs of the city were additionally granted the right with the assent of twenty-four fellow citizens to remedy defects for the welfare of the citizens. The wording of this clause in the 1380 charter is almost identical to that of the London charter of 1341; however there is one notable and extremely significant omission. Whereas the privilege was granted to ‘the mayor and aldermen of London with the consent of the commonalty’, the Norwich charter granted the right to the ‘bailiffs with the assent of the twenty-four’. In Norwich, therefore, the consent of the common citizens had been completely removed. Henceforward, the elite were legitimately allowed to make all governmental decisions and the ordinary citizens would no longer have any right to veto the government’s plans. This must be seen in the context of the reform initiative and appears to represent the ruling elite preparing themselves legally for any 56 57 58 59

Hudson and Tingey, Records, i, pp. 64–6. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 5. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 264. See Dunn, ‘After the Black Death’, chapter 2.

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eventuality. It may have been that the clause in the 1380 charter was no more than a simple recognition of the existing modus operandi in Norwich, as the commons’ real role in government had always been very limited. But the acquisition of the new charter shows the determination of the ruling elite to execute their plans, with or without the consent of the commons. After 1380, if the circumstances rendered it necessary, they had further legitimate powers on which to fall back. Some evidence of previous opposition to the government, over taxation, and dislike of members of the ruling elite, serves to explain why the citizens had been described as ‘contrarious’ in the 1378 petition and why the ruling elite felt so compelled to acquire this extended power. In 1371, seven leading Norwich citizens had been forced to flee the city for fear of their lives.60 These men were Henry Lomynour, John Gynay, Nicholas Blakeney, William Asger, William Blickling, Bartholomew Appleyard and John Pranting. It is disappointing that the details of this dispute are now lost in the mists of time, but it does provide a reason why prominent players in the reform programme, such as Henry Lomynour and Bartholomew Appleyard, would be anxious to have the means to hand to overcome any potential opposition. In 1373 there had been a widespread refusal to pay a tax for the king’s barge and a number of citizens were imprisoned.61 In 1378 the citizens had complained to the king that the merchants were not sharing the tax burden.62 No wonder the city leaders were apprehensive about initiating yet another levy for the purchase of the market in 1378–9. Certain members of the reform commission were evidently unpopular in some quarters and it is notable that the houses of both Henry Lomynour and Walter Bixton were targeted in the uprising of 1381.63 The extended powers in the 1380 charter were clearly acquired to provide an insurance policy, in case the citizens rebelled and refused to let the elite carry out their wishes. There is no evidence that the elite’s plans met with any serious resistance and city business, documented in the assembly rolls, continued as it had done before 1380. A combination of the stringent regulations, the claim that the reform was for the purpose of avoiding further taxation and the involvement of ordinary citizens in the commission of sixteen seems to have successfully prevented any widespread opposition to the plans. The deeds and other documents compiled in the Norwich Domesday Book give an account of a provincial urban government’s financial reform initiative: what they did and how they did it. In this way the source is much more than a simple register of municipal landholdings in Norwich. It is very clear that, when used in conjunction with other city documents, Norwich Domesday begins to reveal a much broader picture of the city leaders’ aims and aspirations. This period saw the preparations for the campaign which led to Norwich gaining county status and a mayor in the charter of 1404, and there is no doubt that the civic governors had plans to elevate the national status of the city, in spite of its much reduced population after the fourteenth-century plagues.64 I have found no 60 61 62 63 64

CPR, 1370–1374, p. 87. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 81. CCR, 1377–1381, p. 57. E. Powell, The Rising in East Anglia in 1381 (Cambridge, 1896) p. 30. See Dunn, ‘After the Black Death’, chapter 5.


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reference to any source comparable to the Norwich Domesday Book, although it is apparent that similar reforming activities were under way elsewhere. Colchester provides the closest comparison, where the new constitutions were introduced in 1372.65 These changed the structure of government in the town but also endorsed new and improved sources of income and tighter regulation of the wool trade and cloth fairs. In Colchester new stalls were built next to the Moothall and the hall’s cellar became a wool market.66 A new crane was constructed at Hythe, and from 1373 there was a successful attempt to raise income from customs, tolls and rents.67 The great success of the innovations introduced in Norwich not only stood the city in good stead to weather the slump of the midfifteenth century, but also paved the way for an extensive building programme. The rejuvenated municipal revenues were ploughed back into investment in the city’s new Guildhall, constructed between 1408 and 1412, a new market cross in 1417 and the city’s New Mills in 1432. These developments mirror those which took place in other towns and cities during the same period. In Exeter, new corn mills were constructed in 1364–5, the Fleshfold, which was the town’s meat market, was rebuilt in 1380–1 and two new fulling mills were built in 1390–1.68 Similarly, in Southampton, a tenement and shops worth £10 rent were newly built in 1381 and two adjoining tenements were added around 1400.69 In Bishop’s Lynn there was a revived municipal investment in property and between 1370 and 1430 Gloucester experienced extensive building and re-building projects.70 The experience of Norwich in the closing decades of the fourteenth century was not unique, but developments elsewhere were not on such a grand scale nor, it seems, were they so meticulously documented in an urban cartulary. One last point remains to be made. The undeniable success of the project was not without a price. The elite leaders’ exclusion of the consent of the commons in the 1380 charter caught up with them in 1414 when it was the major grievance in the official ‘Complaint of the Commons’ of that year.71 The negative effect of the financial reform programme was that the city government’s heavy-handed methods resulted in significant tensions between the commons and the elite in the early fifteenth century. This tension culminated in the lengthy, and no doubt expensive, arbitration of Sir Thomas Erpingham between the commons and the elite, and the eventual grant of a new charter in 1417.72 Amongst other things, it is

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72

R.H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986) (henceforth Britnell, Colchester), pp. 115–30. Britnell, Colchester, pp. 120; 72–3. Britnell, Colchester, p. 122. M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), p. 89. C. Platt, Medieval Southampton: The Port and Trading Community, A.D. 1000–1600 (London, 1973), p. 145. R. Holt, ‘Gloucester in the Century after the Black Death’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 103 (1985), p. 149. The commons claimed: ‘The which liberty was procured by certain persons in especial at the naming and ordering of the said prudeshommes and privily without assent of the commonalty and [they being] nothing cognizant of such procurement until of late that they had a mayor there.’ Hudson and Tingey, Records, i, pp. 66–76. CChR, 1341–1417, pp. 485–6.

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significant that the new charter appointed a common council of sixty ordinary citizens. The financial reforms, outlined in the Norwich Domesday, undoubtedly benefited the city’s economy immeasurably, but the political developments, which had occurred simultaneously, had a detrimental effect on the equilibrium of the Norwich government. The complaints of the early fifteenth century, which stemmed directly from the late fourteenth-century reforms, were to set an ominous precedent for the discord and conflict the city was to experience in the 1430s and 40s.

A Little Local Difficulty: Lynn and the Lancastrian Usurpation Kate Parker

IN 1417 a royal inquisition into the troubles in Lynn described ‘divers dissensions, discords and debates which have continued for no small time and still do so daily’.1 It admitted that King Henry V ‘. . . has so far been unable to induce the parties to compromise, negotiate and make a final agreement . . . or to obtain true knowledge of the cause’.2 These troubles had by then been grinding on for a decade and would continue for another three years. By 1420 the parties had exhausted themselves and a modus vivendi was adopted which finally seemed to suit both sides. However, convincing arguments to explain these upsets have still not been satisfactorily demonstrated. The question that presents itself is why did Lynn suffer from factionalism and unrest in the early fifteenth century when all the evidence points to a unity of purpose and conduct for the previous twenty-five years? This paper offers a theory which unravels this tangle and will explain, for one thing, why both parties were particularly keen that the king should never know the true reasons for the quarrel. Ostensibly, disagreements over money brought the troubles to a head. Sometime between 1406 and 1411 five former mayors, who had been in post between 1399 and 1406, were accused of recklessly spending over £450 against the wishes of the majority and in conspiracy against their lord, Henry Despenser, the bishop of Norwich. Although it is difficult to make monetary comparisons with today’s values, one multiplier indicates that the mayors’ alleged debt was, at least, £1,275,000 in today’s terms.3 Not unexpectedly, the five former mayors vehemently denied the accusation, saying that all the money had been spent on behalf of the borough in their official capacities. On the contrary, they countered, the 1

2 3

I am grateful to Professor Christopher Harper-Bill for his helpful advice and suggestions during the early stages of writing this paper, and to Professor Tony Goodman who many months ago sent me his copy of KB 27/580. The paper is reproduced here as originally delivered, with the addition of footnotes. CIM 1399–1422 (London, 1968), no. 517, pp. 289–92. This is calculated using as a multiplier a priest’s stipend, presently (2003) averaging £17,000 p.a. (I am grateful to Reverend Jan McFarlane, chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, for this information), assuming it to average £6 p.a. c.1400: Archbishop Sudbury’s constitution states that parochial chaplains should have no more than £4 p.a.; sixty years later Chichele stated that vicars should have £8 p.a. English Historical Documents 1327–1485, ed. A.R. Myers (London, 1969), p. 729.

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town owed them around £380 which they had spent from their own pockets for the benefit of Lynn.4 To settle matters the town empanelled eighteen of its inhabitants as arbitrators, specifically including men from the three classes of town society: the powerful, middling and lower orders, or as they described them more precisely in the records, potentiores, mediocres and inferiores non burgenses. These set aside the mayors’ counterclaim, and insisted in future that the mayor should be advised by a fiscal council of nine, comprising members of the three orders. A variant of London’s electoral practice, which ostensibly gave the community a much greater say in nominations than previously, was also instituted.5 These arrangements received the consent of both Henry IV and, initially, Henry V. But far from settling matters, there followed years of wrangling, of more attempted arbitration, the further involvement of Henry V, the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beaufort the Lord Admiral, the duke of Clarence, and three successive bishops of Norwich: Tottington, Courteney and Wakeryng. The progress of the attempted arbitration has been covered in a recent article by Michael D. Myers and is beyond the scope of this study.6 The focus of this paper is the reasons behind the problems, rather than in the progress of their settlement. The aspect that has especially intrigued historians was the presence of non-burgesses in Lynn’s decision-making during these years, possibly a unique occurrence in fifteenth-century England.7 The town clerk, William Asshebourne, was charged with listing all those attending the meetings in the Gild Hall so we have the names of many of the non-burgesses involved. He gives a marvellous flavour of the times by admitting that in the density of people attending he was unable to get down all their names, but reckoned on one particular occasion that there were at least four hundred there in the Gild Hall.8 He was careful to categorize the status of each social group, and the non-burgesses he called ‘inferiores non burgenses’ that is, the non-burgess lower orders. Towns reflected the hierarchic structure of the rest of society, and town governance was almost inevitably reserved to those who had vested interest in the town’s future and had become burgesses. They could do this by buying into the freedom of the borough, and in Lynn this cost 40s. Alternatively, it was possible to acquire it without payment as the eldest son of a burgess, or by working for a burgess as an apprentice for seven years. In all cases, purchased or free, burgess status in Lynn could only be sought with the support of two burgess sponsors, who could vouch for the probity and financial standing of the applicant. The common journeyman or labourer would 4 5

6

7 8

HMCR xi, Appx iii, pp. 191–4. Similar changes were made in Norwich at this period but one cannot assume that Lynn’s model was Norwich. Connections between Lynn and London ran deep: as Dr Richards has pointed out, between 1310 and 1429 at least sixteen Lynn merchants became mayor of London. P. Richards, King’s Lynn (Chichester, 1990), p. 59. M.D. Myers, ‘The Failure of Conflict Resolution and the Limits of Arbitration in King’s Lynn 1405–1416’, in Traditions and Transformations in Late Medieval England, ed. D. Biggs, S.D. Michalove and A. Reeves (The Northern World 2, Leiden, Boston and Cologne 2002), pp. 81–107. Dr Myers has some errors in the addition, saying that the sum demanded in reimbursement by the mayors was £781: it was in fact £379 3s 3½d. A.S. Green, Town Government in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1896), pp. 408–9, 413. K(ing’s) L(ynn)/C(ouncil) 6/3, mb.13v.

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generally not be in a position to avail himself of any of these possibilities. In Lynn, however, for at least a century the oligarchy had been prevented from making the borough freedom a pre-requisite to trading in the town, as will be explained later. For that reason there were non-burgesses in Lynn who were not necessarily either impoverished or without influence. Various theories have been advanced as explanations for the troubles: the editor of the Historical Manuscripts Commission’s report on Lynn’s manuscripts, published in 1887, was to set the tone for later studies by unambiguously blaming the insolence of the ‘greedy and rapacious’, and ‘unbridled élite’ for provoking ‘the more numerous but feeble folk’ into ‘passionate discontent’.9 Seventy years later the doyen of urban history, James Tait, broadly agreed.10 The late Dorothy Owen, who edited the book of medieval documents on Lynn in 1982, was less dogmatic but still saw dissent as essentially the reaction of the little people pitted against the rich, the powerful and, one must infer, the uncaring élite.11 More recently the American historian, Michael Myers, in 1998 dismissed this view, and favoured economic reasons, caused by the collapse of the wool trade, and saw the protagonists as financially straitened old wool merchants challenged by younger cloth merchants, itching for power.12 Stephen Rigby, in the Cambridge Urban History of Britain in 2000, was still of the opinion that the conflict was characterised by ‘pressure from below’.13 On closer scrutiny none of these suggestions seems fully convincing. Some of the non-burgesses were modest artisans, but the main players were men of relative prosperity and education: one had been the bishop’s bailiff, another was a lawyer who became secretary to Bishop Courtenay, and both acted as members of parliament for the borough.14 The wool merchants, on closer inspection, also traded in cloth. There is definitely something in Myers’ discovery that the mayors and their adherents were all old men, and we shall touch on this point again.15 The man who became mayor for the two years when the opposition party was at its most active, between 1411 and 1413, was at the same time elected Alderman of the pre-eminent merchant gild of Holy 9 10

11 12

13 14 15

HMCR xi, Appx iii, ‘Introduction’, pp. xiii–xv. J. Tait, The Medieval English Borough (Manchester, 1936), p. 319. He skated swiftly around the subject of the non-burgesses by reducing mention of them to a footnote, saying that they were semi-privileged episcopal tenants, though how they differed from all the other episcopal tenants in the town he forbore to mention (p. 318 n. 5). D.M. Owen, The Making of King’s Lynn (Records of Social and Economic History ns 9, London, 1984) (hereafter Making of King’s Lynn), p. 40. M.D. Myers, ‘Well-nigh Ruined? Violence in King’s Lynn 1380–1420’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan 1996); idem, ‘The Failure of Conflict Resolution and the Limits of Arbitration in King’s Lynn 1405–1416’, p. 89. S.H. Rigby and E. Ewan, ‘Government, Power and Authority 1300–1540’, in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, 3 vols (Cambridge, 2000), i, pp. 291–312, esp. p. 307. These were, respectively, William Hallyate and John Tilney: see J. Roskell, ed., The History of Parliament: The Commons 1386–1421, 3 vols (Stroud, 1992), ii, p. 275; iii, p. 618. See N.S.B. Gras, The Early English Customs System. A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economic History of the Customs from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), pp. 445–51 in which Edmund Belleyetter, Thomas Waterden, John Wentworth, three of the five former mayors, and John Brandon and Ralph Bedyngham, members of the former mayors’ faction, are all taxed on their cloth exports between 1396 and 1397.

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Trinity, and chosen leader of the borough’s élite.16 It seems that even the upper echelons of Lynn society were divided in their loyalties. Obviously there was something else troubling the good men of Lynn which split them down the middle along some other, as yet undefined, fault line. A brief economic and political history of the town Before pressing on any further into this maze, it would be best to pause here to describe Lynn’s position at the time, and its economic and political context. First of all Lynn was, very unusually in England, an episcopal town. Its founding father, before 1100, was Herbert Losinga, the first bishop of Norwich, between 1091–1119, who founded the cathedral and the Benedictine priory that served it. He established a small township on the western edge of his manor at Gaywood – on the edge of the Lynn, the estuarine lake or pool which lay on the Wash shore. At the time there was successful salt making taking place, and presumably contingent trading. He gave the land to the Cathedral in Norwich on condition that it should build a church and daughter cell there, and manage a market and a fair ‘for his sons around the Lynn’. Perhaps he intended them to plough back the profits into the Priory’s building projects back in Norwich. Within fifty years the third bishop of Norwich had established his own little town on the Lynn, to the north of the first, with its own market and fair. A century after the first monks arrived, in 1204, the two burgeoning townships were linked together under the lordship of the bishop as Bishop’s Lynn, and confirmed by both episcopal and royal charters. The charters confirmed the burgesses’ right to their merchant gild of the Holy Trinity.17 Unfortunately for the Linnets, already by this time, matters had become more complex. To the north of the town is Castle Rising, at this time held by the d’Albini earls of Sussex. At some point they had acquired half the tolls of Lynn.18 Thus the hard-working men of Lynn were subject to tolls to both the bishop and the d’Albini earls and their successors. Already by 1204 Lynn’s obvious trading success prompted King John to levy a fifteenth of its value that year, which netted him over £651.19 From 1275 Lynn was paying customs to the crown as well. By the reign of Edward III Castle Rising, and its tolls, had reverted to the crown. In addition, like many another port, Lynn was periodically instructed by the crown 16 17

KL/C6/3. An overview of these developments and the relevant documentary sources is provided in The Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 1–86. 18 The evidence for this rests on a thirteenth-century copy of a charter of Henry I, calendared RRAN ii, no. 1853 (reprinted in The Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 95–6), which offers no further details; Dorothy Owen proposed an explanation which I find entirely plausible: William d’Albini II (d.1176), married the dowager Queen of England. He began the stone castle which remains today, and in keeping with his ambitious designs would doubtless have liked to have seen a port developed at Castle Rising. Owen suggested that the bishop, in order to keep Lynn as the sole trading port in the vicinity, was forced to give up half its tolls to the earl as recompense. 19 Making of King’s Lynn, p. 42; as early as 1203–5 the custom records show that, after London and Southampton, Boston and Lynn were the wealthiest ports of England: Gras, The Early English Customs System, pp. 221–2.


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or the Admiral to supply shipping, build balingers, barges, galleys, and to provide merchant marine and logistical support for the crown’s various campaigns abroad, all of which inevitably interrupted normal trade.20 Thus Lynn was surrounded by powerful institutions, all of which were anxious to milk her hardwon prosperity. Under these circumstances it had had to devise strategies to support whatever rights, freedoms and liberties it was able to wrest from the bishop. Unlike Norwich or York, Lynn had negligible indigenous industry (the salterns were already in decline by 1086) but relied on trade, and so needed a means to provide capital both to support its commercial ventures and to discharge whatever unexpected imposition might arise, which could not be readily met by local taxation. Initially the town’s success attracted a community of Jews who provided the necessary capital. However, in February 1190 these were massacred by young men passing through Lynn fired up by the Third Crusade, a fact lamented by William of Newburgh who knew one of the casualties personally.21 The town’s answer to this catastrophe seems to have been their merchant Gild of the Holy Trinity. This was so fundamental to the success of the community that its foundation predates the original charter.22 Any man with ambition to succeed in Lynn had to become a member. However, it was as the town’s bank that the Gild held most power: it lent out to men, women, and – most generously – to the mayor and community. The gild members elected their Alderman for life, and swore total loyalty to him; he became simultaneously the chairman of the merchant bank, head of the town’s leading lay religious presence in the town, and first in its society.23 To illustrate further his controlling influence over all aspects of town life, every year he also nominated the first four members of the committee of twelve who elected the mayor – to whom he then became mandatory deputy – and all the other officers.24 Within the town the undoubted first citizen was the Alderman, yet to the outside world, its chief representative, and upholder of its prestige and honour was the mayor.25 It was the latter’s task to manage day-to-day administrative duties, the official response to judicial and crown requests, and the management of home and foreign trading relations. It was also, crucially, the mayor’s task to guard the interests of the borough in relation to those powerful forces that might gain advantage at the town’s expense. It was in this aspect that the famous five mayors fell foul of their fellow burgesses in the early 1400s.

20 21 22 23

HMCR xi, Appx iii, pp. 190, 191; CCR 1377–81, p. 181; KL/C3/5 and many more instances. A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550–1307 (London, 1974), p. 265. KL/C2/1, grant by King John, 14 September 1204. C. Gross, The Gild Merchant, 2 vols (Oxford, 1890), ii, p. 164: ‘he shall promise in the hands of the said alderman on his faith, that he will be obedient to the said alderman and his officers of the gild . . .’. 24 HMCR xi, Appx iii, pp. 195–6. 25 The government of the town was jointly vested in these two personalities, as explained in the Trinity Gild’s return in 1389 ‘et postea dominus Henricus [Henry III] . . . concessit . . . qui quidem maior et aldermannus qui pro tempore fuerint extunc regimen et gubernacionem ville predicte continue habuerunt . . .’, C. Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii, p. 168.

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The ‘composition’: what, when and why During the thirteenth century the trade in the town had been overwhelmingly concerned with wool exports to Flanders, much of which was managed by Hanseatic merchants. At the turn of the fourteenth century Lynn men began to make a concerted effort to take over the shipping interests themselves, coming into direct conflict with the powerful Hanse. In 1303 the Hanseatic League hit back and initiated a boycott of Lynn.26 Economic disaster threatened, fomenting enormous stresses and strains within the community. Internal quarrels over money arose which caused Bishop John Salmon (1299–1325) to impose in 1309 a ‘composition’ or agreement on the town.27 Among many other clauses, it stated that internal taxes should not be imposed by the rich on the poor of the town, but agreed by the whole community, the powerful, middling and lower orders. It also stipulated that resident traders should not be forced to take up the freedom.28 The disputes with the Hanse were settled in the latter’s favour in 1310, but similar problems were to arise exactly a century later when Bishop Salmon’s ‘composition’ came once again to play a prominent role. Relations with their lord Undoubtedly the personality of Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich from 1370 to 1406, contributed to Lynn’s problems. Henry Despenser was the grandson of Hugh Despenser, the younger, who was executed in 1326. At that juncture the Despensers’ main adversary had been Henry, earl of Lancaster, whose grand-daughter Blanche was to marry John of Gaunt, transmitting the antipathy through the generations. Young Henry Despenser was destined for the church from an early age, but was not ordained priest until just before his consecration as bishop. By remaining in minor orders he was able to study civil law, a course of study from which he would have been barred by the decree Super Pecula had higher orders been conferred upon him.29 He became B.C.L. in 1361 and by the time of his preferment to Norwich he was a licentiate, indicating that he had studied law for at least six years. Subsequent events show him to have been both combative and litigious by nature, and inordinately proud of his aristocratic connections – he was distantly related to the royal family. A contemporary later described his conversation at dinner which sounds as if he were a walking Burke’s Peerage.30 His mid-twenties were spent fighting in Italy on behalf of Pope Urban V, who made him bishop of Norwich in 1370 when he was twenty-eight years old. He did not arrive in Norfolk for another year. He seems 26 27 28 29 30

HMCR xi, Appx iii, p. 187; T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A Study of their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991), p. 40. KL/C10/6. It seems the oligarchy were attempting to augment borough income by enforcing purchase of the freedom, a practice Norwich was to achieve by the end of the century. BRUO, pp. 2169–70. College of Arms, London, MS 1, ‘Processus in Curia Constabularii et Marescalli Anglie inter Reginaldum Grey, militem Dominum Hastings et Edwardum Hastings pro Armis familie’, fols 514–19.


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immediately to have resented Lynn’s independent spirit and only two years after that he chose to close the school in Lynn.31 This must have been seen as a direct affront to the middling merchants’ aspirations for their sons. The élite members of Trinity Gild could rely on the services of thirteen gild clerks for the education of their sons, but the grammar school offered opportunities for others as well.32 More practically, its loss would diminish the ability of the next generation of apprentices to run the depots and kontors which were then being developed far away in the Baltic. It was the young men who ran the distant ends of such trading networks as part of their training. By 1377 the town was boiling with resentment, and it needed just one more high-handed action to provoke a riot. This occurred in April of that year, when the bishop arrived with a large entourage, was perceived to slight the mayor and immediately suffered the consequences. There can be few local fracas that have such a wealth of surviving incidental record, testament to the stir it caused far and wide at the time. The oyer et terminer proceedings begun by the bishop name twenty-three individuals who, with others unknown, had assaulted him, chased him into the priory and besieged him there, and meanwhile killed twenty of his horses, and fought with his men and servants. A letter close from ‘the great council’ of King Richard to the sheriff of Norfolk unexpectedly states that there was fault on both sides.33 The community minute book records the award of two pensions of £50 each over five years to two Lynn merchants, as damages for injuries sustained in the melée with the bishop’s household (later entries show these payments being made); the borough accounts itemise the expenses of men riding posthaste throughout the county, calling in favours and drumming up support, even from so powerful an advocate as Joan, Princess of Wales. In the Lynn Greyfriars’ chronicle the writer noted that the bishop put Lynn under interdict for two months.34 He was really cross. The fullest explanation comes from the chronicler of St Alban’s.35 He described how the young and arrogant bishop, against the advice of the mayor and elders of the town, insisted that the mace, which was customarily borne before the mayor, on this occasion should be carried before himself. The undisputed right to the free election of their own mayor had only been confirmed as recently as 1352.36 For the townsmen the mace, the staff of office, was the symbol of their

31 32 33

The Making of King’s Lynn, no. 125, p. 133. Gross, The Gild Merchant, ii, pp. 168–9; Blomefield, Norfolk, viii, p. 515. The letter is dated 12 July 1377, four days before the coronation and five days before the nomination of the first of the young king’s ‘continual councils’. John of Gaunt, as Steward of England, would have exerted a major influence as the young king’s uncle and eldest son of the late king. He had recently effected a rapprochement with London, placing Richard in the role of peacemaker. This may be another example in which Gaunt engineered good will towards the new king from potential financial supporters. Can one also see this as an early example of Lancastrian bias in favour of the town? CCR 1377–81, p. 85. M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1957), pp. 397–8; N. Saul, Richard II (Yale, 1997), pp. 24, 27–8. 34 CPR 1374–1377, p. 502; H. Ingleby, The Red Register of Lynn, 2 vols (King’s Lynn, 1919–20), ii, pp. 134–5, fols 160d and 161; KL/C39/36; A. Gransden, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Chronicle from the Grey Friars at Lynn’, EHR 72 (1957), pp. 270–78. 35 E.M. Thompson, ed., Chronicon Angliae (London, 1874), pp. 139–40. 36 KL/C7/10.

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mayor’s undisputed authority in the town. In a world permeated with symbolism such symbols were imbued with immense power in themselves, and thus it might just as well have been the mayoralty itself which Despenser was usurping. So far as they were concerned, he had attempted to subvert one of their precious liberties. In assessing how highly they valued this right, it is worth noting that in 1415, while Henry V was away in France before Agincourt, his regent, the duke of Bedford, attempted to interfere with Lynn’s choice of mayor and caused another major riot.37 One must not suppose, either, that the bishop was not fully aware of how his actions would be seen. There is no doubt that he was trying to put the men of Lynn in their place, and remind them that he was their lord, and all accoutrements of hierarchy and power in the town rightfully resided in him. The town rallied all available support and by dint of enormous expenditure was able to withstand this threat to its independence and prestige. The borough account for the year amounted to over £800 – £300 was more usual; even so the town could not have afforded the luxury of its principled stand without loans from the Trinity Gild.38 Not one of the rioters was disciplined by the town; those who had suffered in support of its liberties were awarded pensions; all possible well-disposed nobility, gentry and lawyers were brought on-side, and the town was confirmed in its solidarity and common cause against the bishop. When, in 1381, there is evidence for attacks against the élite of other towns in the region, such as at Peterborough, St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, and Norwich, there is no record of similar disturbances in Lynn. A popular stand had been made, and every man persuaded that he had common cause with the rest, rich and poor alike. The man who deserves most of the credit for this brilliant crisis management was John Brunham, otherwise notable as Margery Kempe’s father. He was elected mayor later that year and again the following year. In all his career he was mayor five times and also elected Alderman of the Trinity Gild. This common stance was to last, in the main, for the next twenty-five years. The Lancastrian usurpation – opportunity or crisis? So, what changed things? In 1399 Henry IV usurped the throne. As the eldest son of John of Gaunt he may have inherited a Lancastrian antipathy to the Despensers. The feelings were mutual, of course, and Despenser was one of the few who rallied to the defence of Richard.39 Consequently, in 1400 the king confiscated Despenser’s temporalities, including Lynn, for more than a year and installed his own man, the lawyer Henry of Nottingham, as community clerk to the borough.40 Lynn already had close contacts with the Lancastrian affinity in the county: the town’s retained counsel, Edmund Gurney, was the Duchy’s lawyer too.41 The

37 38 39 40 41

KL/C10/2, fols 105v–109, reprinted in Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 395–401. KL/C39/36. Saul, Richard II, p. 410. KL/C39/43. See, for example, payments made to him in KL/C39/37 and KL/C39/39.


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reaction of John of Gaunt to the riot in 1377 has already been noted.42 The influence of such powerful royal contacts at the hub of borough affairs, must have been significant in the ensuing policy adopted by the oligarchy: between 1399 and 1406 (when Despenser died), Brunham, the Alderman of the Trinity Gild, and the five mayors in office embarked on an expensive anti-Despenser campaign. This cannot have been unwelcome, in view of the previous truculent attitudes of the oligarchy towards the bishop. It is worth saying, as Dr Myers has pointed out, that by this date the oligarchy comprised very old men. Several of them already had royal exemptions from public duty because they were old and infirm.43 Yet time and again they were recalled from retirement to take up the reins of the mayoralty or the aldermanship because they so obviously embodied the wisdom and experience required. Two of them actually died in post during this period. It appears that plague outbreaks, particularly those in the 1360s which were notoriously lethal to young men and boys, had caused a lost generation among those who should have taken up civic posts in the normal course of events. The result was that many in the next generation of men to hold borough offices were of the age of the old mayors’ grandsons. The old men were very experienced, but had grown up in more prosperous times. Moreover, they had forged their expertise during a time when it was an axiom of town policy to extend the town’s liberties at the bishop’s expense, once he had shown himself capable of reneging on their legitimately held rights. One can speculate that the uncharismatic nature of Despenser himself would have made such a policy not only a challenge but a pleasure. In 1399 they must have seen the arrival of Henry Bolingbroke as a heaven-sent opportunity to rid Lynn of the tiresome lordship of the bishop. This was not mere fantasy either, for in 1401 the king asked his lawyers to look into the possibility that Lynn might be his and not the bishop’s after all.44 A series of expensive lawsuits ensued, with the town head-to-head with the bishop. On the brink of financial ruin Unfortunately, the town’s financial security was about to be dangerously threatened. Some twenty years before, Lynn had developed a very successful and profitable market in Prussia at Danzig, and by the 1380s had taken over 80–90% of Anglo-Prussian trade.45 Danzig was the property of the Teutonic Knights and the 42

Subsequently Gaunt’s plans to lead his own crusade in support of his Castilian ambitions were hindered by Despenser’s popular but abortive crusade to Flanders in 1383–4. Gaunt must have resented this hindrance to his own chivalric and political advantage. The tensions were exacerbated by contemporary Wycliffian discourse on whether clerics should undertake such martial exploits at all. 43 E.g. CPR 1405–8, p. 198; KL/C10/2, fol. 78. 44 CPR 1399–1401, p. 67, 6 December 1401. If the king had proved the point he might have avoided handing Lynn back to the bishop on the return of his temporalities, and retained it as ‘parcel of the crown’. 45 S. Jenks, ‘King’s Lynn and the Hanse: Trade and Relations in the Middle Ages’, in Essays in Hanseatic History: The King’s Lynn Symposium, 1998, ed. K. Friedland and P. Richards (Dereham, 2005). I am grateful to Professor Jenks for allowing me to use his paper before its publication.

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old men must later have recalled with interest that in 1392 Henry Bolingbroke and his man, Sir Thomas Erpingham, had equipped an expedition from Lynn to fight with the Teutonic Knights.46 There was one major problem: the town was so inextricably linked to Prussia for its commercial success that when anything interrupted this Lynn was bound to suffer.47 A period of political instability at the turn of the fifteenth century, both at home and in Prussia, was to prove extremely damaging to this mainstay of their prosperity. It had begun badly in 1396 when thirty-two English ships were arrested by the Prussians. Although details are not available, in view of Lynn’s ascendancy in the Danzig market, it is not unreasonable to think that many of those ships were owned by Lynn traders. Under the circumstances the arrival on the throne of Henry Bolingbroke, a known Prussophile, may have led them to anticipate a more favourable trading climate.48 On the other hand, the bishop was not prepared to capitulate without a fight, and the town’s actions soon lead to heavy expenditure in bribes, legal costs, and fines at a time when trade income was becoming increasingly curtailed, and when national taxation was rising steeply.49 The Trinity Gild, that financial bastion of town government for as long as men could remember, failed. The Gild loan account survives for 1409 and totals £1213 18s 7d.50 The largest debtor was the borough, which before 1406 had taken out several loans, amounting to £453 9s 2d. This large sum is remarkably close to the £457 19s 7d which was claimed back by the community from the selfsame five mayors. It does not seem too far fetched to see this claim as the concerted action of the Trinity Gild members to secure repayment of this outstanding debt since the borough treasury was quite unable to meet it. Significantly, the dispute also distanced the majority party from the former actions taken against the then recently deceased Bishop Despenser. The fracture of political unity The earliest indications of dissatisfaction occurred in 1405. By then the town had good cause to have become increasingly jaundiced by Henry’s rule. Foreign and fiscal policy was causing disastrous interruptions to trade with increased imposts on foreign merchants, sudden closure of all ports, summary requisition of shipping for crown purposes and the removal of the wool staple from Lynn to Yarmouth. In June that year a northern rebellion was crushed and two of its leaders, Archbishop Scrope and Thomas Mowbray, the Earl Marshall and son of the former duke of Norfolk, were summarily executed without trial. Both were subsequently regarded as martyrs, and Richard Scrope became the object of a widely popular cult. This revolt had west Norfolk support too: another leader of

46 47 48

49 50

L. Toulmin Smith, Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry Earl of Derby 1390–1, 1392–3 (Camden Soc. ns 52, London, 1894), pp. 151–63. T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 94. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, pp. 73–4; A. Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Chivalry’ in G. Dodd and D. Biggs, eds, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 55–71 (pp. 58–61, 70). See KL/C39/43–45 for the ‘disallowed’ items of expenditure in the accounts for 1401–2, 1405–6. HMCR xi, Appx iii, p. 228.


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the rebellion was Lynn’s neighbouring magnate, Thomas Bardolf, who was forced to flee to Scotland. There was widespread horror and revulsion at Scrope’s execution. Perhaps spiritual justification was added to this reaction by the king’s sudden illness immediately after. Already by September fences had to be erected at York to curb the crowds of pilgrims to Scrope’s allegedly miraculous tomb.51 There is no direct evidence but it is possible that the seismic effects of the events in York reached Lynn where they received a sympathetic audience. There is much circumstantial evidence to support long-standing close trade and cultural connections between York and Lynn which had penetrated religious, personal and commercial aspects of Lynn life. Surprisingly, despite the relative distances, in some ways there were closer links with York than with Norwich.52 A month later, in October of that year, discontent with Lynn’s governors manifested itself in a food riot. However, as the matter was later the subject of a judicial enquiry and an appeal to Parliament there is every reason to suppose that this was regarded as something more than a local crisis in food supply.53 It concerned a shipment of corn, destined for the relief of Bordeaux. The rioters wanted the grain unloaded and sold, allegedly below cost, or they threatened to burn both cargo and ship. They also wanted to depose the mayor and elect another, and showed scant respect for royal authority in disregarding the king’s required support for his Gascon town. What is more, the rioters told the mayor they would make him eat the wax seals of any royal writs he procured against them. The clerk making the legal report was careful to include the fact that the whole riotous rout was led by an outsider (uno extraneo) blowing a strange ‘tuba sufflante’ which evidently frightened the populace with its outlandish noise. Could this instrument, roughly translated as an inflating trumpet, with its strange and frightening tone, have been Yorkshire pipes? This apparently trivial and irrelevant information must have had greater import at the time to have been included in the report. If the man leading the rioters was indeed a Yorkshireman, then there was, indeed, an aspect to the affair, nominally a mere food riot, which would have equally concerned authorities in Lynn and London. The town governors’ loss of control played straight into the hands of Bishop Despenser. In 1406 the king suffered another more severe attack of illness and wrote to his bishops asking them to pray for his health.54 In the summer he travelled north to Lynn to see off his daughter, Princess Philippa, to her marriage in Denmark. His journey slowly progressed by way of monastic houses with reputations for healing, St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, Thetford, Wymondham and Walsingham, and he reached Lynn in late July.55 In view of his poor health he 51 52

53 54 55

J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 305ff, esp. p. 308. For further on this see Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, pp. 65, 68, 305. N.P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich (Toronto, 1984), pp. 57–66; K. Parker, ‘Lynn and the Making of a Mystic’, in A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. J.H. Arnold and K.J. Lewis (Cambridge, 2004), p. 61. KB 27/580; Rotuli Parliamentorum iv, p. 583. C. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud, 1995), p. 92. See D. Biggs, ‘The Politics of Health: Henry IV and the Long Parliament of 1406’, in Dodd and Biggs, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, pp. 185–202 (pp. 197–9).

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would have been keen to enlist Despenser’s prayers and, very probably, in a frame of mind in which he wished to smooth any residual antipathy between them. Consequently in August 1406 Despenser was able to persuade the king personally to endorse a reissue of Bishop Salmon’s composition of 1309. The document formally curtailed the rights of the élite, those men, including John Brunham, who had so relentlessly countered his lordship since 1399, and gave equal power to the so-called ‘mene and poure’ in matters of borough expenditure.56 It is the reissue of this document that explains the presence of non-burgesses in the Gild Hall. Sometime after Despenser’s death, which occurred later that same month, the ‘grete, mene and poure’ of the town assembled, by right of the 1309 composition, to discuss financial matters, that is the repayment of the enormous debt.57 In case anyone should not be completely aware of his right to do so, an English language version of the composition was made.58 The financial health of the Gild was of consuming interest to everyone. Without any other secure means of support, the whole town was involved in the merchant trade, or in what today would be called its service sector. The town’s inhabitants were absolutely dependent on buoyant trade for their livelihoods, and they had been used to high living. For example, between 1408 and 1417 nine different politically active goldsmiths appear in the town records, and this in a town which in 1377 had only 3127 taxpayers.59 Even so, achieving the reimbursement was not to be so easy. The five mayors insisted that they were indemnified against such financial liabilities because all decisions had been made in their official capacity. Their opponents, however, were well prepared and had devised a means of denying this argument once and for all. They took as precedent the decisions of King Richard II’s judges at Nottingham which had been used in the parliament of 1397 to accuse the Appellants of treason.60 King Richard had had a similar problem then as the antimayoral faction had in Lynn later: he had wanted to accuse men of treason when he had already given them full pardons – in other words to over-ride a previously enacted indemnity. The ruse devised by Richard’s legal team was to accuse the Appellants of ‘an accroachment of power’ and actions ‘done without authority and against the will and liberty of the King and the right of his Crown’. So this was the same argument rehearsed in Lynn, and virtually the same wording was used to disallow the expenditures in the borough accounts.61 William Asshebourne made a copy of the judgements of Nottingham in his record book, and added his own opinion: ‘whence it appears the misery arose’. The judgements

56 57 58 59

KL/C10/2 fol. 13. Despenser died on 23 August 1406 (BRUO, p. 2170). KL/C10/6. Statistics culled from J. Kermode, ‘The Greater Towns 1300–1540’, in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, i, pp. 442–3. 60 KL/C10/2, fol. 13; M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307–1399 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 448–9, and 484–7. 61 KL/C39/43–5.


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appear directly following a copy of an indenture between the king and the bishop made in 1406, which reiterates the 1309 ‘composition’, stating that financial decisions should be taken by the whole community. The ‘composition’ gave the anti-mayoral faction the leverage they needed to bring all and sundry to the Gild Hall to force the mayors and their adherents to agree to accept the decision of an arbitration panel of eighteen men, comprising some of each of ‘the grete, the mene and the poure’. At sometime between 1411 and 1413 an auditor was brought in to check over the previous twelve years’ accounts, and it is possibly at that point that the amendments were written on the rolls, which specifically name John Brunham and the five mayors as having ‘dishonestly, unjustly, inordinately and wantonly’ conspired ‘against Henry Despenser, the late bishop of Norwich and lord of the same town, . . . without and against the consent and agreement of the burgesses and non-burgesses of the assembly’, a strikingly similar form of wording to that in the judgements of Nottingham.62 To accuse the five mayors of rash expenditure was one thing, to accuse them of conspiring against Despenser was something else. It not only implied that they had failed in their role of obtaining good governance for their town, it accused them of its exact opposite, of fostering rebellion against their legitimate lord. This was tantamount to petty treason, and was one reason why the quarrel was so intractable and the positions held so adamant. The five mayors could not afford to lose. The rest of the town was desperate to regain Gild solvency, and also determined to mend relations with the new bishop. Despenser’s successor, Bishop Tottington, was not an outsider, he had previously been prior of the Benedictine monks of Norwich. As such he, too, had been locked in a long-standing dispute with Despenser. Once Tottington became bishop, everything changed. The town no longer had any axe to grind with its lord. Indeed, it was obvious that any hope the oligarchy had had of pitting king against bishop was a dead letter. In the event King Henry’s rule had been far from advantageous to the town, it had brought them practically to bankruptcy. The final straw seems to have occurred in 1408. Thomas, Lord Bardolf, the young lord who had been forced to flee to Scotland in 1405, finally died in battle against Henry. Following his death he was quartered and one quarter was sent to Lynn to be hung in a metal contraption above the South Gates for several months. It must be hard to ignore a quarter of someone you know, hanging over the gate, and hard not to ponder on the rights and wrongs of the case. It cost the council 7s 6½d in making the metal framework, taking it down and cleaning it, and in sums to a king’s esquire who came round with two other quarters to collect Lynn’s on his way to reunite the corpse for his widow to bury.63 Significantly, that same year the town appointed William Asshebourne as their town clerk. He had formerly worked for Bishop Despenser. What is more in 1399 he had been accused of saying that Henry Bolingbroke was a false traitor and all who prayed for him deserved hanging.64 It is hard to imagine that Asshebourne, with this known 62 63 64

KL/C39/49. KL/C39/46; CPR 1405–1408, p. 488. S. Walker ‘Rumour, Sedition, and Popular Protest in the Reign of Henry IV’, Past and Present 166 (2000), pp. 31–65, esp. pp. 32–3.

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stance, would under normal circumstances have been selected for the prominent and important administrative role of clerk; it is evident that the borough hoped to build bridges with the episcopacy through this appointment. For there can be little doubt that even in 1408 relations between the town and the bishop’s office were still at a low ebb. When Asshebourne took up his new position, a former colleague, William Castleacre, conjuring a metaphor from the Acts of the Apostles, tartly remarked, ‘Once you were Paul, now you are Saul.’ This anecdote, recorded in Asshebourne’s Book, neatly encapsulates the sour relations between the bishop’s household and the town at the time.65 Several of the leading men among the so-called ‘lower orders’, it has already been noted, were actually professional administrators who had connections either with Despenser, or with later bishops of Norwich. William Asshebourne was another of this episcopal coterie who held central roles in the struggles of the period, and which forged strong links with Bishop Tottington until his death, shortly before the king’s own, in 1413. Thus the former mayors and their adherents were faced with an alliance between their adversaries and their new lord, Bishop Tottington. Dr Myers has described the arbitration and all that followed.66 Eventually, in 1420, Bishop Wakeryng was able to effect a compromise which was acceptable to all. This returned town governance to the status quo, with the addition of a second chamber. Lynn’s comprised twenty-seven men, three from each of the nine town wards. Dorothy Owen saw this as the overthrow of the middling and poor, whom she concluded had made all the running in the previous years’ of struggle. This present reading of the events shows that no one section really won, for the causes of the problems gradually faded away. By 1420 all the old guard were dead, including King Henry IV. The accession of Henry V, and his subsequent successes in France, fostered once again a common, if less idealistic, support for the Lancastrian dynasty. However, it was best not to explain to that famously pious king how the problems had arisen through disagreements between factions either against the bishop or against the king’s father. Bishop Wakeryng, the initiator of the acceptable solution in 1420, had been envoy to the Council of Constance where, in stark comparison with Despenser, he had learned the value of compromise and consent. He was not about to provoke the aspirant townsmen with slights on their liberties. One of the more important conclusions of this study has been that national and international politics had direct influence on local affairs. None of the troubles can be blamed on mere introspective self-interest. It is illuminating to see how external affinities were able to manipulate the town’s aspirations for greater autonomy. Henry of Nottingham in his year as clerk was also servant of the Duchy of Lancaster and Henry IV. He was probably instrumental in encouraging the town to take out a case against the bishop, which in the end was designed to benefit royal income most of all. When commercial collapse threatened the town, and disillusionment and distaste coloured relationships with the crown, it was non-burgesses with close connections to the episcopacy who strengthened the

65 66

KL/C10/2, fol. 18. See n. 5 above.


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opposition against the five mayors. In particular, John Tilney, a lawyer, and later secretary to Bishop Courtenay, was probably the man who thought of using the judgments of Nottingham. He was paid for personally copying many documents in the Tower of London for the borough. The personality of Despenser, and his handling of the town and threat to its liberties can be seen to have forged a long-lasting opposition to him. In this context the Lancastrian usurpation was perceived as a heaven-sent opportunity. In 1401 it could only have been a very wise man who could have foreseen how international affairs would put paid to the relative financial stability of the previous decades. No one could have predicted the shock waves that shook the composure of the town after the execution of Archbishop Scrope. The upheavals which shattered the cohesion of Lynn’s political life during this period were not caused by mere strained class relationships within the borough. The factions all shared a wish to provide the town with ‘good governance’: all of them seem genuinely to have striven to achieve the best for the town and its inhabitants according to their own lights. It was the divergent views as to how this should be accomplished, and in particular, how the liberties of the borough might best be strengthened and supported, that split the town down the middle. And it was the single nature of the town’s economy that prompted so many of its citizens to support efforts to refloat the Gild’s finances, at a time of crisis in the town’s trade. The explanations offered by previous studies have only hinted at the amazing complexity behind the unrest of early fifteenth-century Lynn for which the Lancastrian usurpation provided the catalyst.

Health and Safety at Work in Late Medieval East Anglia Carole Rawcliffe

EVEN at a distance of five hundred years, Alice Dymock emerges from the Yarmouth leet rolls as an unusually colourful character. The litany of presentments made against her begins unremarkably enough, in the mid 1480s with charges of petty larceny, quarrelling with her neighbours and selling ale against the assize, all of which were common misdemeanours.1 Her light-fingered husband, however, was already keeping a disorderly house; and in 1491 she herself was amerced as a procuress. She incurred a similar fine two years later, when her lover, one John Robbins, also ran into trouble for almost murdering her husband. We know that she and Robbins were conducting a liaison, because in the following year they were presented by the leet for adultery. Since she was fined 6s 8d, that is twice as much as he, for the offence, along with a further 6s for harbouring suspicious persons, we can understand why she expressed some free and frank opinions about the ruling elite. For this she subsequently faced accusations of being a common scold. Patience in Yarmouth was clearly wearing thin: in 1496 she incurred exemplary fines of 16s 8d for promoting immorality, scolding and receiving her lover. But Alice remained unrepentant. Still ‘keeping and promoting debauchery and a brothel in her house’ and selling ale without licence, she was back in court in 1498, and again in the following year, this time as a common whore and provoker of quarrels. By 1499 the now familiar catalogue of charges embraced keeping a suspicious house, bawdry and cursing her exasperated neighbours.2 A new century brought a new offensive on the part of the authorities. In 1500 Alice was presented as a leper, who committed a grave nuisance by mixing among adults and children. She was ordered to leave the borough within three months upon pain of £10, by far the highest fine ever imposed by any of the four leet courts up to that date. After a few defiant weeks of brothel keeping and sowing discord she departed, but not before assaulting

1

2

NRO, Y/C4/189, rot. 13v, 191, rot. 16r. One Alice, tenant of John Benselyn, a brothel-keeper, was fined the very heavy sum of 20s in 1486–87 for night-walking in men’s clothes and entertaining suspect visitors. She may possibly have been the same person as Dymock’s wife (Y/C4/191, rot. 16v). R.M. Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford, 1996), pp. 68–9, discusses Alice’s case in the context of prostitution.

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various individuals in her ill-governed house and – as a nice touch of bathos – milking her neighbours’ cows.3 Alice’s history and the striking combination of charges brought against her provide an interesting case study of the way in which medieval men and women perceived health and safety. They also illustrate graphically the measures that urban authorities, as well as the mediocres, or ‘middling sort’, who served on local juries, took to protect the working environment from moral as well as physical contagion. Vigilance in this regard extended to almost everyone who lived in a town, since a life of labour might begin as early as the age of eight and continue, in one form or another, until death or total decrepitude. The Norwich Census of the Poor of 1570 recorded how many elderly men and women were still capable of sedentary occupations, such as spinning; a century earlier, wool was being bought to keep patients and poor sisters in the hospital of St Giles gainfully occupied.4 Nor, at the other extreme of the social hierarchy, were members of the aldermanic bench allowed the luxury of an early retirement. Freedom from the cares of office was accorded only to those who could prove sickness or extreme debility, and even then at a price.5 This essay might, indeed, have been entitled ‘Health and Safety through Work’, since sloth was widely perceived as a cancer destroying the urban body. A horror of idleness and obsession with the virtues of work had long predated the Protestant ethic.6 Royal letters patent of 1352, ordering the rulers of Norwich to repair their streets and remove the piles of filth which had accumulated in the aftermath of plague, drew attention to the army of shiftless idlers who roamed the city in defiance of parliamentary legislation. All able-bodied adults under sixty were to be recruited for these tasks, by compulsion if necessary, thereby eliminating at a stroke the lethal miasmas of sloth and sewage.7 Nor could the deserving poor anticipate a well-earned retirement. The early fifteenth-century statutes of St Mary’s hospital, Yarmouth, required the almsmen and women to cultivate the gardens and perform other light tasks, while those who could still do so were encouraged to pursue ‘hyr craftys that thei han lernyd . . . so it be no slaundyr nodyr to the personys, ne hurt to the hospytall’.8 As we shall see, honest labour brought spiritual as well as material well being, not simply to the

3

4

5

6 7 8

NRO, Y/C4/202, rot. 4v; 203, rots 7r, 9r. For the wider background to many of these charges, see M.K. McIntosh, ‘Finding Language for Misconduct: Jurors in Fifteenth-Century Local Courts’, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. B.A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (Minneapolis and London, 1996), pp. 87–122; and M.K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour in England 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998), passim. M. Pelling, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London, 1998), pp. 141–4; C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999), p. 173. In May 1548, for example, one alderman paid £20, and promised a similar sum on his death, for permission to relinquish his post so that he might ‘kepe in the country for his helthe’: NRO, NCR, 16C, Assembly Minute Book, 1510–50, fol. 243v. See, for example, J.M. Bowers, ‘Piers Plowman and the Unwillingness to Work’, Mediaevalia 9 (1983), pp. 239–49. CPR, 1350–1354, pp. 283–4. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gough Norfolk, fols 28v–31v, quotation at fol. 30r.

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individual but to the community as a whole, while indolence was increasingly defined in pathological terms. Having described the recent fall in population as a kind of consumption, the early Tudor polemicist, Thomas Starkey, observed that Ther ys also in thys polytyke body a nother dysease & syknes more grevus then thys, & that ys . . . a grete parte of thes pepul wych we have ys other ydul or yl occupyd . . . by the reson wherof thys body ys replenyschyd & over fulfyllyd wyth many yl humorys.9

Belief in the therapeutic value of exercise as a means of eliminating corrupt humours constituted a fundamental part of the medieval regimen sanitatis, subsequently invoked by the eminent Norwich physician, John Caius.10 Whereas Starkey tended to blame the idle rich for undermining the physical health of the nation, Caius had ‘good ale drinkers and Taverne haunters’ firmly in his sights. For him it was the feckless poor who ‘heped up in their bodies moche evill matter’, thereby exposing themselves to disease. His treatise of 1552 on the sweating sickness, which almost certainly served as a model for public health measures then introduced by the corporation, recommended ‘honestye and profite of honeste labour’ as the most effective prophylactic.11 This essay will concentrate upon a clutch of East Anglian towns in order to explore the influence of such concepts. It will then examine in more specific detail what practical steps urban authorities were able to take in their quest to achieve a truly salubrious working environment. Few, if any, of today’s social or medical historians share Augustus Jessopp’s gloomy view of life in the medieval town. As a local clergyman, who had worked extensively on the civic records, he was probably thinking of Norwich when he observed, in The Coming of the Friars, that: The sediment of the town population in the Middle Ages was a dense slough of stagnant misery, squalour, famine, loathsome disease and dull despair, such as the worst slums of London, Liverpool or Paris know nothing of . . . What greatly added to the dreary wretchedness of the lower order in the towns was the fact that the ever-increasing throngs of beggars, outlaws and ruffian runaways were simply left to fend for themselves. The civil authorities took no account of them as they quietly rotted and died . . .12

He then proceeds to describe how the Franciscans settled ‘in a filthy swamp at Norwich, through which the drainage of the city sluggishly trickled into the river, 9

Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T.F. Mayer (Camden Society 4th series 37, 1989), pp. 48, 52. For a discussion of these ideas, see J.G. Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 30–40. 10 See, for example, P. Gil Sotres, ‘The Regimens of Health’, in Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. M.D. Grmek (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1998), pp. 291–318, and n. 103 below. 11 John Caius, A Boke, or Conseill against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate, or Sweatyng Sicknesse (London, 1552), fols 20v, 29v. For the rulings of 1552, which closely follow Caius’ recommendations, see Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 127–31. 12 A. Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars and other Historic Essays (London, 1890), p. 6.


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never a foot lower than its banks’.13 Their initial home was, indeed, marshy, but excavations by the Norfolk Archaeology Unit on the permanent site to which they soon repaired have revealed a very sophisticated scheme of water management. This was ‘clearly planned as an integral part of the claustral layout’, an impressive stone-lined underground drain giving access to the Dallingflete stream, thence to the river.14 Immediately to the north, the subterranean ‘great drain’ at the cathedral priory stood two metres high at the apex of its barrel vault and extended for an estimated 500 metres.15 Its neighbour, St Giles’s hospital, likewise boasted an elaborate system of pipes and culverts.16 Norwich was certainly not unusual in this respect. Religious houses across the region invested heavily in the construction of sewers designed to remove the potentially dangerous accumulation of waste, while also ensuring a regular supply of fresh water. Sometimes these initiatives were partly sponsored by local burgesses, such as John Glovere of Bishop’s (later King’s) Lynn, who left the munificent sum of £40 so that the Austin friars could pipe water through the town to their precinct. He clearly intended to benefit the laity as well as the brothers, since before construction began, in 1386, it was agreed that a cistern, fed by three pipes, would be set up to the south of the convent by the grass market. Residents would be free to draw water there during daylight hours between Easter and Michaelmas, while the prior recognised an obligation to effect whatever repairs might prove necessary.17 Although, as we shall see, works of this kind were heavily dependent upon private philanthropy, urban authorities also took responsibility for maintaining communal utilities. From at least the early fifteenth century the scouring and repair of public latrines and of culverted streams and sewers was financed by the treasurers and chamberlains of Norwich in partnership with residents. The latter could be heavily fined for failing to discharge their obligations in this regard, as well as for occasioning any blockages in the city’s many streams or cockeys. It was far harder to prevent obstructions to the river Wensum, against which the authorities waged a persistent battle throughout the later middle ages and beyond.18 Even so, measures, such as the levying of a rate in 1517 to pay for raking the streets and the weekly removal of ‘muck’ by cart rather than water, went some way to ameliorate the problems of inner city life, and

13 14

15

16 17

18

Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, p. 44. P.A. Emery, ‘The Franciscan Friary’, Current Archaeology, no. 170, vol. xv (Oct. 2000), pp. 72–8, at p. 77. See also, idem, The Greyfriars: Excavations at the Former Mann Egerton Site, Prince of Wales Road, Norwich, 1990–1995 (EA Arch., forthcoming). J. Percival, ‘Summary Report of Archaeological Investigations at Numbers 64 and 63–65, the Close, Norwich’ (Norfolk Archaeological Unit, unpublished report no. 632, 2001). I am grateful to Mr Brian Ayers for providing me with this reference. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, chapter two. D. Owen, ed., The Making of King’s Lynn (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new series 9, 1984), pp. 117–19. The Blackfriars of Lynn also had piped water: V. Parker, The Making of King’s Lynn: Secular Buildings from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century (King’s Lynn Archaeological Survey 1, 1971), p. 163. This paper stands as a companion piece to my chapter on ‘Sickness and Health’, in Medieval Norwich, pp. 301–24, to which the reader is referred for background detail.

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helped to earn Norwich its lasting reputation as a clean and hygienic city, already acquired by the later sixteenth century.19 In short, recent work by archaeologists, palaeopathologists and medical historians suggests that, although in many respects the medieval and early modern urban population was powerless in the face of epidemic disease, chronic pain and pollution, a continuous effort was made to minimise perceived risks to human health. A veritable war of attrition was, for instance, waged in the Norwich courts against vendors of contaminated food, who plied a potentially lethal trade in ‘pokky pigges’, ‘stynkyng makerelles’, shell fish of dubious age and other commodities unfit for human consumption.20 In Ipswich, in 1421 alone, seven butchers were presented for selling ‘corrupt’ meat, which was described as a risk to health, and five other burgesses for hawking rotten and foul-smelling fish.21 Often lacking hearths and cooking utensils of their own, the poor were dependent on the medieval equivalent of the fast food outlet. These shops and their owners shared an unsavoury reputation.22 The cooks of Norwich were subject to close scrutiny by the civic authorities, being frequently in trouble for selling re-heated food and concealing infected meat in their wares. Living, as we do, in an age of sell-by dates and draconian standards of food hygiene, this concern on the part of magistrates and jurors to monitor the victualling trades inevitably strikes us as very modern. Indeed, although some readers might be dismayed by steps, taken in 1471, to prevent Norwich brewers from following the new-fangled craze for beer (hops were pronounced ‘unholsom for mannes body’), we can recognise here, too, a familiar preoccupation with consumer health.23 While acknowledging the uphill struggle they faced in a world without mains drainage, we likewise commend the strenuous efforts of the Ipswich borough leets in the early fifteenth century to prevent the dumping of industrial and domestic waste in the streets, gutters, common ditches and water courses of the port. That neighbours reported as many as twelve people in 1421 for depositing rubbish in one thoroughfare alone suggests a keen awareness of environmental hazards, and a considerable degree of peer pressure against the worst abuses.24 Even so, as the early modernist Mark Jenner has pointed out, attitudes to health, hygiene and dirt are never fixed, being constantly moulded by a variety of cultural, technological and social factors, as well as changing ideas about human 19 20 21 22

23 24

For perceptions of Norwich as a healthy city, see my ‘Introduction’, to Medieval Norwich, pp. xix–xxxvii; and for similar environmental problems in Lynn, Parker, King’s Lynn, chapter 7. Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, p. 316. SROI, C7/1/6 (Ipswich borough leet roll, 9 Henry V). M. Carlin, ‘Fast Food and Urban Standards of Living in Medieval England’, in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, ed. M. Carlin and J.T. Rosenthal (London and Rio Grande, 1998), pp. 27–51. Cooks received a bad press in medieval literature, not least in The Canterbury Tales, where, having praised the culinary skills of the cook who accompanies his five burgesses, Chaucer slyly observes the ulcer on his shin: F.N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1974), p. 21. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 100. Two years later the assembly agreed to the appointment of a serjeant to inspect all consumables sold in the market: ibid., p. 101. SROI, C7/1/6 (Ipswich borough leet roll, 9 Henry V).


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physiology. We should, in his words, avoid ‘the condescension of posterity’ by assuming that the affronted burgesses of medieval Ipswich were blindly groping towards sanitary measures which achieved their glorious apotheosis in the Victorian sewer.25 Just as crucial in framing medieval responses to disease, whether collective or individual, were the teachings of the Church about the origins of human suffering and the best ways to avert it.26 In a society which accepted as axiomatic the physical union of body and soul, it followed naturally that the condition of one would intimately affect the other. In De civitate Dei, which he wrote after the sack of Rome in 410, and which remained hugely influential throughout the middle ages, St Augustine explained that there were two cities, one of earth and the other of heaven. Yet, although all men and women were initially born into the former because of their inherent corruption and selfishness, it was possible through grace to join the elect of the city of God. This was the true Church, the New Jerusalem, ‘now being built in the whole world’ by men who ‘have become like living stones’.27 Salus, which means both health and salvation, was, in short, more seriously at risk from the creeping contagion of sin than from any of the manifold physical threats punctuating urban life. It was the first duty of the magistrate to facilitate the process of transition from the terrestrial to the celestial city, driving out evil and directing the populace in the healthgiving ways of God. A belief that plague and other diseases, such as leprosy, were spread by miasmas, that is the noisome smells arising from sewage, unburied bodies, stagnant water, muckheaps and the like, lies behind the repeated attempts made by the rulers of East Anglian towns to clean up streets and rivers, most notably during, or immediately after, epidemics. In 1439, the year of a pestilence described by Parliament as ‘most infectif’, the North Leet at Yarmouth presented various individuals for depositing rubbish, the blood of slaughtered animals and fish blubber in a public thoroughfare by the gates. The ensuing stench was, moreover, described as a great nuisance (nocumentum) to residents and visitors alike, and a public rebuke to the entire community.28 The rulers of English towns were very sensitive to such issues. It was, no doubt, out of respect for the dignity of their office that future mayors of Lynn were empowered, from 1500, to demand the 25

M. Jenner, ‘Underground, Overground: Pollution and Place in Urban History’, Journal of Urban History 24 (1997), pp. 97–110, at p. 101. Contrast his approach with D. Palliser, ‘Civic Mentality and the Government of Tudor York’, in The Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History 1530–1688, ed. J. Barry (London, 1990), pp. 215–24, where sixteenth-century medical provision is judged by modern biomedical standards. Nor do medievalists always appreciate Jenner’s important point. For example, D.R. Carr argues that health measures in Salisbury do no more than reflect ‘a universal impulse shared by all communities’: ‘From Pollution to Prostitution: Supervising the Citizens of Fifteenth-Century Salisbury’, Southern History 19 (1997), pp. 24–41, at p. 41. 26 For a stimulating discussion of the impact of religious beliefs on urban health measures, see P. Horden, ‘Ritual and Public Health in the Early Medieval City’, in Body and City: Histories of Urban Public Health, ed. S. Sheard and H. Power (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 17–40. 27 St Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. H. Bettenson (London, 1984), book VIII, cap. 24. 28 NRO, Y/C4/147, rot. 16r; J. Strachey et al., eds, Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols (London, 1767–77), v, p. 31.

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removal of any of the town’s ‘official’ dunghills, should they be unfortunate enough to live near one at the time of their election.29 In providing places where waste might be deposited ready for disposal by wagon or barge, the authorities were, however, adopting a pragmatic solution to a real problem, and attempting to localise the dangers of infection. The Lynn authorities appear to have been particularly vigilant on this score, not only ordering butchers to dump their carcasses into the river Ouse at ebb tide from designated spots, but also to use carts, like those in London, which had secure covers, to prevent the escape of poisonous air. Both measures, significantly, were introduced in 1439.30 Fear of miasma likewise explains why contaminated food, which might even, on occasion, be described as ‘leprous’ or ‘measly’, as well as ‘corrupt’, posed another such hazard. So too did stray or unfettered dogs, cats, ducks and pigs, which were routinely driven from the streets of Norwich, Ipswich and Lynn, lest the odour of plague emanate from fur, feather or skin.31 During, or just after, the plague of 1471, for example, fifteen burgesses were presented in Ipswich alone for letting swine run free in defiance of a recent proclamation by the bailiffs.32 As Jeremy Goldberg has argued, pigs and prostitutes were ‘variously associated with the sins of gluttony and lust’, representing, as it were, the extremes of material and moral pollution.33 It was, of course, the stench of sins, such as those so wantonly committed by Alice Dymock and her kind, that incurred divine retribution in the first place, thereby putting the entire community at risk.34 Erasmus’s warning in Enchiridion Militis Christiani that the reader should ‘eschewe as a certayne pestylence the communycacion of corrupte and wanton persons’ was one with which generations of Englishmen and women were all too familiar.35 Minutes recording the interrogation of two procuresses before the mayor of Bishop’s Lynn, in 1312, for example, reek of fire and brimstone, for the pair were said to be plying their evil

29

30

31

32

33

34 35

Parker, King’s Lynn, p. 160. Complaints made in Farringdon Ward, London, in 1422, against a shopkeeper who polluted the highway with ‘odious and infectious’ filth, concluded with the telling charge that his conduct was ‘a great reproof to all this honourable city, because of the lords and other honourable gentlemen and men of the court who pass there’: A.H. Thomas, ed., Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls Preserved in the Corporation of the City of London, 1413–1437 (Cambridge, 1943), p. 129. The penalty for disobedience was a hefty 20s: Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, p. 217. These measures were reiterated in 1446, when the passage of refuse carts through the town was restricted to Mondays and Wednesdays: ibid., p. 218. H. Ingleby, ed., The Red Register of King’s Lynn, 2 vols (King’s Lynn, nd), ii, p. 203; Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, p. 308; M. Jenner, ‘The Great Dog Massacre’, Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. W.G. Naphy and P. Roberts (Manchester and New York, 1997), pp. 44–61. SROI, C7/1/16 (Ipswich Borough leet roll, 11 Edward IV). For a graphic first-hand description of the ‘grete deth’ then sweeping East Anglia, see N. Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1971–76), i, pp. 440–1. P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘Pigs and Prostitutes: Streetwalking in Comparative Prespective’, in Young Medieval Women, ed. K.L. Lewis et al. (Stroud, 1999), pp. 172–93; P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘Coventry’s “Lollard” Programme of 1492 and the Making of Utopia’, in Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities, 1200–1630, ed. R. Horrox and S. Rees Jones (Cambridge, 2001), p. 105. R. Horrox, ed., The Black Death (Manchester and New York, 1994), chapter 3. A.M. O’Donnell, ed., Erasmus; Enchiridion Militis Christiani (EETS 282, 1981), p. 191.


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trade ‘ad damnum et periculum totius communitatis’.36 Epidemics such as bubonic plague were described up to the seventeenth century as a ‘bellum Dei contra homines’.37 The military metaphor is, indeed, both powerful and telling. One can easily imagine a Dominican preacher waxing eloquent in the pulpit of the great Blackfriars church in Norwich: ‘God hath his Quiver full of these arrows, full of the Pestilence of Fevers, and Dropsies and Consumptions, and all manner of diseases; and he shoots these arrows into our families, friends and children: and none but himself can pull them out.’38 A city such as Norwich, which witnessed a fall in population from as many as 25,000 souls in the 1330s to around 8,000 in the late 1370s had good reason to dread the outbreaks of plague which occurred at regular intervals until the 1660s. Initial hopes of recovery after the first, terrifying onslaught of 1349–50 were dashed as successive national and regional epidemics took an especially heavy toll of children and adolescents.39 It is easy to understand why subsequent generations were inclined to exaggerate the effects of the first epidemic. A figure of almost 57,500 deaths (for the regnal year 23 Edward III) appears among the memorabilia recorded in the margins of the Mayor’s Book of Norwich, which was begun in about 1526.40 It was at this time that Robert Jannys, the richest merchant in Norwich, commissioned a window in the guildhall reminding the viewer of the imminence of death. As described by Francis Blomefield in the eighteenth century, the glass painting, now lost, depicted ‘a man in his winding sheet, sitting in order to be shot at with arrows . . . with death seizing him and by his side [the words] Jesu miserere, fili Dei, miserere me’. The accompanying verse, with its emphasis on the transience of earthly possessions and the importance of good works, served as a constant warning to the aldermen assembled below: For all, Welth, Worship and Prosperite Ferce Deth ys cum, and rested me, For Jannys praise God, I pray you all, Whose Acts do remayne in Memoriall.41 36

37 38

39

40 41

Ingleby, Red Register, i, p. 64. Prostitutes were also expelled from Norwich in 1312–13: W. Hudson, ed., Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Selden Society 5, 1892), pp. 58–9. This was probably a regular event, noted only on this occasion because of an assault on the bailiffs. Early fourteenth-century Norwich was, however, intolerant of the migrant poor and other ‘outsiders’: Hudson and Tingey, Records, i, p. 189. R.A. Anselment, The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Newark, NJ, and London, 1995), pp. 96, 119. Edward Lawrence, Christs Power over Bodily Diseases (London, 1662), p. 25. Lawrence was a Shropshire clergyman, preaching just before the great plague of London, but his sentiments are truly medieval. For the arrows of plague, see J.B. Friedman, ‘ “He Hath a Thousand Slain in this Pestilence”: The Iconography of the Plague in the Late Middle Ages’, in Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages, ed. F.X. Newman (Binghampton, NY, 1986), pp. 75–112. Listed in J.M.W. Bean, ‘Plague, Population and Economic Decline in England in the Later Middle Ages’, EcHR 2nd series 15 (1963), pp. 423–37, at pp. 428–9; and P. Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985), p. 61. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. cxx–xxi. The editors suggest that the figure relates to the county as a whole. Blomefield, Norfolk, iv, p. 229. Jannys was later depicted in a posthumous portrait, still hanging

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Meanwhile, during the 1460s, the Yarmouth authorities complained to the crown that the borough had lost around 7,000 inhabitants in 1349 alone, being then greatly ‘replenysshed with people’, in marked contrast to the current headcount of a mere 2,000 souls. Because of the port’s dramatic collapse since its great days as a ‘forte ville de guerre’, it had, moreover, proved impossible to pull out of a worsening recessionary spiral. This, in turn, intensified the collective crisis of confidence so apparent in the voluminous administrative records.42 Yet Yarmouth’s response was not a purely local phenomenon. An abiding sense of moral panic, along with a growing belief that disease was most likely to be spread by the ill-governed and idle poor, had a dramatic effect upon urban elites throughout later medieval Europe, influencing their approach to all issues of health and welfare.43 That immoral conduct, just like an offensive muckheap or the dumping of offal, created a miasma likely to contaminate the entire community emerges quite clearly from the pages of the advice manuals or concilia which proliferated in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Produced in the vernacular, they were specifically designed to offer intelligible advice to the lay public, and thus played an important part in the dissemination of medical knowledge. The rulers of East Anglian towns were undoubtedly familiar with the very popular rhymed Dietary and Doctrine for Pestilence by the Bury St Edmunds monk, John Lydgate, who wrote for just such an urban readership. His advice about the dangers of bath houses and brothels was both moral and medical: sexual activity raised the body’s temperature and thus opened the pores, exposing the individual to whatever lethal miasmas might be wafting through the air.44 But even worse, it invited divine punishment, which put everyone at risk. To the leading residents of Yarmouth, lechery in its manifold forms posed an infinitely greater threat than any of the environmental nuisances associated with disease. Although extreme in its almost tabloid quality, the case of Alice Dymock was by no means unusual. A few examples must suffice. In 1439–40, in the

in Blackfriars Hall, Norwich, with Death as a tipstaff behind his left shoulder, come to arrest him as the verse describes: J. Pound, Tudor and Stuart Norwich (Chichester, 1988), p. 32, plate 11. 42 G. Johnson, ‘Chronological Memoranda Touching the City of Norwich’, NA 1 (1847), pp. 140–66, at p. 141; P. Rutledge, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Yarmouth Petition’, Great Yarmouth District Archaeological Society 46 (1976), unpaginated. 43 The defeat of Venice at the hands of a papal coalition in 1509 led, for example, to an intensive programme of moral and physical cleansing: R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation (London, 1994), pp. 212–15; B. Ravid, ‘Curfew Time in the Ghetto of Venice’, in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, ed. E.E. Kittell and T.F. Madden (Urbana, 1999), pp. 237–75; E. Pavan, ‘Police des moeurs, société et politique à Venise à la fin du Moyen Age’, Revue Historique 264 (1980), pp. 241–88. 44 H.N. MacCracken, ed., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate (EETS 192, 1934, reprinted 1961), p. 702. Such warnings were common. A plague tract recorded in the commonplace book (1422–54) of the Yorkshire gentleman, Robert Thornton, warns that ‘full many for defaute of gud gouernance in dietynge falles in this sekenes, thare-fore that tyme vse none excesse nor surfete in mete & drynke nor bathes nor swete noghte gretly than, for all thies opyns the pores of the body & makes venemous ayere to entre and that febles the body, et super omnia alia nocet coitus & accelerat ad hunc morbum quod maxime aperit poros et destruit spiritus vitales’: M.S. Ogden, ed., The Liber de Diversis Medicinis (EETS 207, 1938), p. 51.


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aftermath of the above-mentioned epidemic, a chaplain named John Leche incurred an exemplary fine of 20s for acts of incest and adultery committed within the liberty, as well as keeping a brothel, to the great harm (magnum detrimentum) of the community. His conduct was further described as both an insult and an act of rebellion, spreading disturbance among the people, an interesting use of language to which we will return.45 His fine was approximately fifteen times that imposed on the most persistent dumper of offal. Twenty years later, as both civil war and epidemic stalked the country, one Thomas Rant was presented for suspiciously and illicitly harbouring the wife of another man in his home by day and night, his offence being regarded as both a great disgrace and nuisance to the entire neighbourhood. The woman was to be removed in seven days, under pain of 40s. As we have seen, the term nuisance (nocumentum) was widely used in these records to denote a threat to communal health, such as the leprosy with which Joanna Fuller was struck at this time (1462–63). She, by contrast, faced a fine only half this size if she remained in the borough.46 The late 1480s were marked by an especially intense bout of physical and moral cleansing, in part sparked by the outbreak of sweating sickness that spread to London from the North in September 1485, causing widespread panic and many fatalities.47 The French physician, Thomas Forestier, who dedicated a treatise on the ‘venymous feuer of pestilens’ to the newly crowned Henry VII at this time, itemised a long list of prophylactic measures, including the removal of waste and elimination of foul odours. Yet, in his view, the first and most important measure was for his contemporaries to knowlech them self to ther maker, leue welle and mende hys euyl, to go a pylgremage and do almesse, leue sweryng, detraccions, coveting of the flesshe and manslaughter, loue god and thy neybourghs and kepe faithfully the commaundementes of the lawe and voyde al thy synnes and be not wyllyng to turne to them agayn . . . and so . . . the best and most profytable medicine to al the realme: to goo yn processions and to say prayers, and to haue [regard] of there neighbours and to kepe ther holydayes solenny, and to leue curses, vsure and coveytesnes.48 45

NRO, Y/C4/149, rot. 19r. It is interesting to compare this case with presentments made in Aldersgate Ward, London, in 1422 against John Scarle, parson, who was charged with being a fomenter of quarrels, a pimp ‘of his owne parischens’ and a ‘perilous Rebaude of his tunge’. He was also accused of disclosing the confessions of women who would not sleep with him and of passing himself off as ‘a surgeoun & a visicioun to disseive the peopl with is false connynge’, thereby killing many: Thomas, Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 1413–1437, p. 127. See pp. 115–41, passim, for a preoccupation with dirt, morality and public safety, similar to that considered here. 46 NRO, Y/C4/165, rot. 7r. Moral and physical cleansing again proceeded apace, as two suspected prostitutes and two more lepers were ordered to depart and live beyond the walls. All faced fines of at least 20s, which were very high indeed: NRO, Y/C4/166, rot. 21r–21v. 47 J.A.H. Wylie and L.H. Collier, ‘The English Sweating Sickness (Sudor Anglicus): A Reappraisal’, Journal of the History of Medicine 36 (1981), pp. 425–45. Four further outbreaks occurred, the last being in 1551 (see above, n. 39). East Anglia was spared on each occasion, but the urban authorities remained vigilant because of their experience of the plague. 48 BL, Add. MS 27,582, fols 70r–77r, at 71r. Printed as Tractatus contra pestilentia thenasomonem et dissenterium (Rouen, 1490).

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While admitting that human agency could tackle the problem of ‘infectable ayre’, Forestier warned that if pestilence came ‘of the wrath of god ther is no medcyne but confession, contriccion and satisfaccion and penans’.49 As we have already seen in the case of Alice Dymock, the Yarmouth authorities were taking no chances in either eventuality (see Appendix).50 They initiated a general crackdown on gambling and loose living, along with the dumping of butchers’ waste, the grazing of sick animals beside healthy ones, and, of course, contact with lepers. John Cook had plumbed the depths of infamy by conducting an adulterous relationship with the wife of a known leper ‘through which’, the leet asserted, ‘infection may happen’.51 This, needless to say, would be spiritual as well as physical. Since it was widely assumed that leprosy was a sexually transmitted disease, spread most notably by prostitutes who themselves enjoyed a degree of immunity, the Yarmouth jurors took a grim view of creatures such as the aptly named Magna Haughoe, who in 1384–85 had broken at least three regulations by living inside the walls, failing to wear the striped hood which distinguished prostitutes from respectable women, and offering hospitality to lepers.52 Whatever its immediate causes, disease, as all good Christians knew, was the product of Original Sin. Before the Fall there had been no pain or mortality in paradise, nor had there been any need of rules and regulations to keep its inhabitants under control. Phillipa Maddern has described the wide net cast by the Norwich magistrates in their attempts to recapture that happy prelapsarian state. For them, the upkeep of order and the preservation of communal health enjoyed a relationship as symbiotic as that of body and soul, both goals reflecting an agenda which was as much religious as political.53 Such an approach, as we shall now see, accorded perfectly with ideas about correspondences between human and civic anatomy then circulating widely among the laity. The secret of health, as explained in the wealth of advice manuals produced for

49 50

BL, Add. MS 27,582, fol. 72r. Nor were the rulers of York. On 16 February 1486 orders were issued that all ‘opyn boldes . . . common chiders and othre misruled people’ were to leave the city for ‘the utter partes of the suburbs’ by the middle of Lent, itself a significant date: L.C. Attreed, ed., York House Books 1461–1490, 2 vols (Stroud, 1991), ii, p. 463. 51 NRO, Y/C4/191, rots 15r–15v. McIntosh, ‘Finding Language’, pp. 90–102, observes a dramatic rise in the prosecution of moral offences at this time, but makes no connection with fear of disease. The political upheavals of the early 1480s must also have intensified feelings of suspicion about outsiders and redoubled the preoccupation with moral vigilance. It is worth noting that the usurper, Richard III, had begun a crusade for ‘the putting down and rebuking of vices’ and the promotion of ‘cleanness of living’: C. Ross, Richard III (London, 1981), pp. 136–8. While he was still protector, in May 1483, he issued an ordinance ‘for to eschew the stynkynge and horrible synne of lechery’ by expelling prostitutes from London and Southwark: J. Hughes, The Religious Life of Richard III (Stroud, 1997), p. 97. 52 NRO, Y/C4/96, rot. 10r. A decade later one Licebet Janpetressen (who probably came from the Netherlands) was ordered to leave Yarmouth, where her ‘wicked and shameful behaviour’ had caused ‘grave murmur and suspicion among the community’. She was henceforth to live on the Denes, to the north of the walls, among the other prostitutes, and not to enter the borough without wearing the striped cap that signified her profession: Y/C4/105, rot. 6v. See Goldberg, ‘Pigs and Prostitutes’, passim, for similar examples elsewhere. 53 P. Maddern, ‘Order and Disorder’, in Medieval Norwich, pp. 189–212.


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the popular market, was the careful preservation of a hierarchy of bodily parts. If each limb and organ performed its allotted task, the whole would function effectively; but, once dissension broke out among the members, sickness, even death, would inevitably follow. Our libidinous Yarmouth chaplain was described as ‘rebellious’; to his neighbours he must have seemed like Lucifer himself. Women such as Alice Dymock were frequently held to be ‘badly governed in their bodies’, which suggests that their flesh had grown dangerously out of control (always a potential risk where the female sex was concerned).54 Discipline and well-being thus marched hand in hand, as St Augustine recognised when observing that ‘the peace of the body and soul is the duly ordered life and health of a living creature’.55 This view of human physiology became a commonplace of later medieval political writing, in which the ‘orders’ or classes of the body politic were compared to appropriate anatomical parts. The choice of metaphors varied from one author to another, and slipped easily into the vocabulary of the ruling elite. If the aldermen of Norwich or the bailiffs of Yarmouth were unfamiliar with the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, they would certainly have been able to quote verses which located them and their social inferiors firmly within the urban anatomy: I likne the thies, flesch and bon, That beren the body quantite, To marchaundes, in perile ride and gon, Bryngen wynnyng, gold and fee, Make highe houses of lym and ston, Mayntene burgh, toun and cyte, Welthe and worschip in here won, And good houshold of gret plente. Manys leggis, likne y may To all craftes that worche with handes, For al the body beren thay, As a tre that bereth wandes.56

It is, however, apparent from these lines that no limb or organ, however noble, could function alone. Each, as medieval surgeons recognised, was bound to the other by ties of mutual solidarity and support.57 In the words of the encyclopaedist, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, . . . a membre that is in good hele helpeth the membre that is sike and sore, and drawith the matere of the euel to itself, and helpith the membre that is sike and sore. And so often the hole membre is ihurt for the membre that was sike.58 54 55 56

McIntosh, ‘Finding Language’, p. 97. St Augustine, City of God, book XIX, cap. 13. J. Kail, ed., Twenty-Six Political Poems (EETS 124, 1904), pp. 64–8. The annual Corpus Christi procession of guilds through Norwich reflected just such a hierarchy: NRO, NCR, 17B, Liber Albus, p. 172. See also, M. James, ‘Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town’, Past and Present 98 (1983), pp. 3–29. 57 M.C. Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1990), p. 115. They were echoing the words of St Paul (I Corinthians 12, vv. 12–16). 58 Bartholomaeus Anglicanus, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of

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A healthy city was thus marked not only by the upkeep of order in the home, workshop, market and guildhall, but also by acts of corporate and individual charity, which constituted the sinews of the body politic. Visitors to Norwich, Lynn, Bury, Ipswich and Dunwich must have been impressed by the hospitals, almshouses and leprosaria on the approach roads, which performed the dual function of accommodating those who could no longer earn their own living and protecting the workforce from people who were considered dangerously infectious.59 That they served to proclaim the Christian compassion and civic pride of the founders was, of course, an added bonus. The parable of Dives and Lazarus was not lost on the mercantile elite of medieval East Anglia. But charity as an expression of civic harmony went far beyond the endowment of hospitals for a cross-section of the deserving poor. To change the metaphor from flesh to bone, the spine of the Christian community comprised the Seven Comfortable Works, that checklist of good deeds itemised by Christ in St Matthew’s gospel as the key to paradise. The final play in the N-Town cycle, which is East Anglian in origin, and may well have been performed in Norwich, deals, appropriately, with Judgement Day. Seated on his throne, Christ rounds upon the damned: To hungry and thrusty that askyd in my name Mete and drynke wolde ye geve non; Of nakyd men had ye no shame; Ye wold nott vesyte men in no preson; Ye had no peté on seke nor lame – Dede of mercy wold ye nevyr don. Vnherborwed [homeless] men ye servyd the same; To bery the deed pore man wold ye not gon. These dedys doth yow spylle! I fynde here wretyn in thin forheed Thu wore so stowte and sett in pryde Thu woldyst nott yeve a pore man breed, But from thi dore thu woldyst hym chyde. And in thi face here do I rede That if a thrysty man com any tyde, For thrust thow he xulde be deed, Drynk from hym thu woldyst evyr hyde.60

During the later middle ages the basic requirement that one should feed, clothe and shelter the poor, give them drink when they were thirsty, bury them when they died, comfort prisoners and visit the sick had expanded to embrace a whole raft of ancillary acts designed to improve the health and welfare of the entire

Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatis Rerum, ed. M.C. Seymour, 3 vols (Oxford, 1975–88), i, p. 168. 59 C. Rawcliffe, ‘The Earthly and Spiritual Topography of Suburban Hospitals’, in Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contrasts, Contacts and Interconnections, ed. K. Giles and C. Dyer (Society for Medieval Archaeology, Monograph 22, 2005), pp. 251–74. 60 S. Spector, ed., The N-Town Play, I: Introduction and Text (EETS ss 11, 1991), p. 421.


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urban body.61 It was to protect this body, as well as to proclaim its strength and authority, that Alderman Robert Spynk dug deep into his pocket during the 1340s to pay for the completion of the Norwich city walls and the fortification of the gates.62 These might be compared to the epidermis which kept the delicate internal organs from harm. Two hundred years later, Alderman Thomas Hemmyng presented the corporation with land outside St Giles’s gate for the disposal of the muck and rubbish which had, to pursue the metaphor, been clogging up the arteries of the urban body.63 Clearly inspired by his visits to the capital, Edmund Wood, who died a decade later, bequeathed £100 for street cleaning ‘after the manner of London’, a further £20 for dredging the river and £40 to repair the walls.64 Less affluent testators, such as Margaret de Coventre of Lynn, also played their part by sponsoring correspondingly modest schemes. She, for example, left her widow’s mite, in 1389, for the repair of a public latrine in the town.65 The provision and upkeep of conduits in Bishop’s Lynn and Ipswich can be seen in the same light, the impetus to charity clearly overlapping with a desire for civic improvement and personal commemoration.66 Built, as we have seen, at considerable effort and expense, the Lynn conduits were regarded as an essential public work, especially for the poor. Such was the pressure of use, however, that by 1390 the stonework of one was badly damaged and the locks or plugs broken. Likewise following ‘the good rule (bonum regimen)’ adopted in London, the mayor and commonality instigated an orderly queue system, to avoid the disputes which had evidently broken out between householders and those needing large quantities of water for industrial use. They also imposed a substantial fine of 12d on anyone attempting to fill large vessels before those carrying jugs or ewers for domestic purposes had taken their turn, and offered immediate remedies for any poor person whose vessel got broken in the scrum.67 Clearly, there had been something of a free for all, in which the most needy had, quite literally, gone to the wall. We should bear in mind that the business of drawing water was potentially hazardous, especially for the poor, whose lodgings, unlike those of the rich, rarely gave access to private wells or conduits. Fights and breakages were by no means the worst of the problem. As was the case in London, the risk of drowning was

61 62 63 64

65 66

67

Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, pp. 314–17. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. xxxii–iii, 217–18. M. Atkin and D.H. Evans, Excavations in Norwich 1971–1978, Part III (EA Arch. 100, 2002), p. 233. He also left £40 to provide the poor with wool to keep them honestly in work, £20 to educate pauper children, a similar sum to provide the brightest of them with scholarships to Cambridge and £100 spread over five years ‘in healing poore diseased personnes’: PRO, PCC, 19 Populwell. Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, p. 214. The system of conduits is mapped by Parker, King’s Lynn, p. 28. As well as the one in the grass market (see above, n. 17), there were medieval conduits in the Tuesday (north) and Saturday (south) markets. Water was conveyed from mills on the river Gay, initially by horsepower and later by pumps. Parker, ibid., p. 162, underestimates the early date of these systems, for which see Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 16, 214. Ingleby, Red Register, ii, p. 50.

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considerable, not least because children and young female servants were often entrusted with the task of hauling heavy pots and buckets out of pits, streams and rivers.68 One such was Horengia, the servant of Benedict Key, who was sent in 1274–75 to fetch water from the pit or pool in the Old Swine Market, Norwich. The cord on her vessel broke, and as she leant forward to retrieve it the weight dragged her to the bottom.69 The Norwich coroners’ presentments of 1264 to 1267 record four cases of accidental death by drowning, and those of 1268 to 1282 a further nineteen. Given the fact that they were found by parents, most of the unfortunates appear to have been children (including two siblings and a girl whose mother met the same fate while apparently trying to rescue her); three men fell out of boats into the Wensum; one poor creature committed suicide while overcome by frenzy; and a drunk jumped off Fye Bridge, breaking his neck as he hit the water.70 It is thus hardly surprising that the late thirteenth-century city customal made specific provision for cases of drowning in wells and pits, along with those in the river, to be heard by an officer of the crown, since there were so many of them.71 Wells were, indeed, almost as hazardous as pits, and not just for those who drew water from them. The deep stone-lined ones owned by the city and a handful of wealthy individuals were expensive to build and tricky to repair.72 One Norwich labourer, who was working on the well owned by Henry de Senges, died in 1278–79 when the rope suspending him in a bucket snapped, plunging him to the bottom. Interestingly, the jurors who gave evidence maintained that he had been killed through the inhalation of corrupt air.73 Another workman was buried alive when digging a well – or perhaps a cellar – in the courtyard of John Bale in Ber Street, as was John de Ranele while sinking a pit in his own courtyard. Whatever the risks, though, the provision of common wells and other accessible sources of fresh water clearly ranked high on the list of charitable deeds.74 The initiative for such philanthropic works generally came from private individuals, although the authorities might step in to impose a rate, which, in accordance with the ideas of Bartholomaeus Anglicanus, fell more heavily upon the 68 69 70

71

72 73 74

D. Keene, ‘Issues of Water in Medieval London to c.1300’, Urban History 28 (2001), pp. 161–79, at p. 173. NRO, NCR, 8A/2, m. 3r. NRO, NCR, 8A/1–2, passim. These hazards changed remarkably little over time and place. See, for example, B.A. Hanawalt, ‘Childrearing among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (1977–78), pp. 1–22; eadem, Growing Up in Medieval London (Oxford, 1993), pp. 62–7, 75, 81–2; H.E. Salter, ed., Records of Medieval Oxford: Coroner’s Inquests (Oxford, 1912), pp. 31, 48, 41–7. Hudson and Tingey, Records, i, pp. 142–3. Since so much of Norwich’s trade came by river, fatalities were inevitable, not least because boats were overloaded. In 1343, for instance, a Blitheburghesbot carrying a mixed cargo of coal, salt, iron, wood, onions, herring and forty passengers capsized on a stormy night, with at least ten fatalities: ibid., i, pp. 222–4. The risk of death by drowning was even greater at Yarmouth; hence the many presentments made by the local leets against people who failed to maintain their quays (see the Appendix). At Lynn the chamberlains spent almost £15 on building a common well in 1366–67 and £9 in 1384–85: Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 214–15. NRO, NCR, 8A/2, m. 3r. NRO, NCR, 8A/2, mm. 2v, 3v.


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rich. At Lynn in 1390–91, for example, the corporation purchased seven new ladders ranging in height from eleven to forty-three feet for fighting the fires which broke out with depressing regularity in all medieval towns. The Norwich assembly instructed each of the city wards to keep a proper supply of equipment for rapid deployment in such emergencies, but soon recognised that ladders were useless without water.75 In 1474, its members proposed to levy a rate for the construction of two new wells, which would not only provide water for domestic and industrial purposes but also help to combat one of the city’s recurrent hazards.76 The major conflagrations that destroyed some 40% of Norwich’s housing stock in 1507 were the worst in a long line of more localised disasters. Occasioned by the widespread use of thatch, as well as the ubiquity of bakers, cooks and brewers, not to mention industries such as smelting, dyeing, limeburning and metal working, fires were feared almost as much as plague.77 Given the scale of building operations in medieval Norwich, the demand for lime mortar must have been unending. The proximity of quarries for the extraction of chalk, its major component, meant that a number of kilns were situated in Conesford, near the river, but still worryingly close to Hildebrand’s hospital and the homes of several leading merchants.78 No systematic attempt was, however, made to relegate such a noxious and unpopular trade to one particular area. Recent excavations have revealed the site of the city’s earliest known limekiln (which was fired by charcoal, rather than smoke-producing coal, but must still have constituted a major pollutant) in the desirable residential quarter of the French borough.79 Pottery making on a commercial scale had moved out of the city by the thirteenth century, but other risks remained. It is apparent from the large quantities of iron-working debris and peat ash used to reclaim land on the north bank of the river Wensum in Coslany that heavy industry was initially relegated to open areas of the city, in convenient proximity to deposits of ore. By the later middle ages, however, it had been subsumed into the urban sprawl, representing one more aggravation for neighbouring households.80 Excavations by the Norwich Survey on the opposite side of the river, in Westwick Street, revealed a dye-works, where, from the thirteenth century onwards, increasingly large

75 76

77

78 79

80

Ingleby, Red Register, ii, p. 134v; NRO, NCR, 16D, Assembly Proceedings, 1434–91, fol. 6r (1437). NRO, NCR, 16D, Assembly Proceedings, 1434–91, fol. 87r. The Dominican friary was, for example, twice devastated by fire, once in 1413 and again in 1449: H. Sutermeister, The Norwich Blackfriars (Norwich, 1977), pp. 21–9. M. Atkin, A. Carter and D.H. Evans, Excavations in Norwich 1971–1978, Part II (EA Arch. 26, 1985), pp. 77–8. See, generally, P. Roberts, ‘Agencies Human and Divine: Fire in French Cities, 1520–1570’, in Fear in Early Modern Society, pp. 9–27. B. Ayers, ‘Building a Fine City’, in Stone: Quarrying and Building in England AD 43–1525, ed. D. Parsons (Chichester, 1990), pp. 220–1. A. Hutcheson, ‘The French Borough’, Current Archaeology, no. 170, vol. xv (2000), p. 68. The prioress of Carrow received rents from another kiln just outside the Conesford gate: L.J. Redstone, ‘Three Carrow Account Rolls’, NA 29 (1946), pp. 41–88, at p. 49. For concerns about atmospheric pollution in medieval London see P. Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London since Medieval Times (London, 1987), pp. 6–11, 15. Norwich Archaeological Unit Annual Review 1998–99 (Norwich, 1999), pp. 40–1.

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furnaces, essential for heating the great lead vats used in the process, were constructed.81 (Fig. 1) For most of the workforce in East Anglia’s towns loss of property, sickness, debilitating injury or a more creeping, but equally invidious, form of incapacity were – like pollution – never far away. We do not today consider brewing to be an especially dangerous activity (at least for those who make the product), but it evidently claimed quite a toll in the middle ages: within the space of less than a decade in the late thirteenth century two Norwich women fell into vats of hot barley malt, one dying within the day, the other taking over a week to expire.82 The former had been carrying a heavy cask with another servant, when she tripped into the scalding mash. The cause of this accident, and many like it, reminds us of the daily wear and tear inflicted on the human body by strenuous labour of this sort. The osteological records of men and women excavated from two Norwich cemeteries, one within the north-east bailey of the castle and the other belonging to the parish church of St Margaret in Combusto, attest to the unrelenting demands of life for the urban, as well as the rural, labouring classes.83 The bones of ordinary men and women provide a history of lives crippled by osteoarthritis, trauma and poorly healed fractures. It is easy to forget that vast quantities of flint, chalk, sand, gravel and clay for use in building and other industries were extracted in Norwich itself during the medieval period.84 Mining almost certainly accounts for much of the skeletal damage identified by Ann Stirland in her survey of these remains. Of course, the human skeleton tells only part of the story. Activities such as spinning, weaving, leather working, carpentry and carving carried with them a high risk of RSI as well as ongoing trauma. Burns, scalds, hernias and respiratory disorders occasioned by the inhalation of dust, smoke and pollutants must have been equally common.85 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, whose influential encyclopaedia, De proprietatibus rerum, reads in part like a catalogue of the perils of urban life, decribes the ‘derknesse and stenche’ of smoke, which ‘by the scharpnesse therof . . . greuyth yghen and maketh hem droppe out teeres and greueth the sight notabelyche, and . . . cometh in by his scharpnesse to the brayne and greueth the spirit of felynge’.86 Nor were the practitioners of noxious trades, such as tanners, who used a combination of bark, alum, ashes, lime, saltpetre, faeces and urine, the only ones at risk from exposure to such dangerous materials. The tanning process required the immersion of hides for long periods in pits of increasingly toxic liquids, which could easily seep into neighbouring wells and streams. The hides had also to be washed at each stage of the procedure, which 81 82 83

Atkin and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, pp. 150–1. NRO, NCR, 8A/2 mm. 2r, 2v. A. Stirland, ‘The Human Bones’, in B. Ayers, ed., Excavations within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle, 1979 (EA Arch. 28, 1985), pp. 49–58; eadem and J. Bown, Criminals and Paupers: Excavations on the Site of the Church and Graveyard of St Margaret in Combusto, Norwich, 1987 (EA Arch., forthcoming). 84 Atkin and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, p. 239; Ayers, ‘Building a Fine City’, p. 220. 85 See C. Roberts and M. Cox, Health and Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to the Present Day (Stroud, 2003), pp. 228–41, for a survey of the problems of urban life. 86 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, i, p. 562.


Map 1. The location of Norwich trades.

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demanded a large and regular supply of fresh water.87 In Ipswich, in 1471 alone, five tanners were fined for soaking their hides in one of the borough’s common wells, and a barker (who prepared the material for tanning) was presented for mixing ‘filth called barkerstan’ in a public water course. Other craftsmen were just as bad. Richard Capmaker got into trouble at the same time for washing his fleeces in the conduit which provided much of the town’s drinking supply.88 A list of fifty-five indictments which begins the Norwich Assembly Minute Book for 1510–55 concerns pollution of the Wensum and its environs. Many tanners were quite flagrant, not only immersing their hides in the river, but actually diverting it into trenches and blocking it with stakes.89 Such offences are more easily understood when we appreciate the close proximity of domestic and industrial activity in the late medieval town. At Lynn, for instance, the Newland Survey of c.1250 shows that fullers and tanners were to be found by the major watercourses leading into the river Ouse, on land that had once been marginal, but was rapidly becoming developed. As Vanessa Parker points out, patterns of zoning constantly shifted, so that by the fifteenth century (as in Norwich) ‘heavy’ industry could be found scattered across the less salubrious parts of Lynn ‘apparently at random’. One of these streams was even known as Barkers’ Fleet, although the tidal flow which emptied them twice daily probably kept the worst pollution in check until silting became such a problem in the sixteenth century.90 A litany of similar complaints might be rehearsed for Norwich. Members of the urban elite removed the more noisome crafts from the very centre of the city, but could not protect either the Wensum or the streams that fed into it from the quantities of industrial waste released in the north and north-west of the city by tanners, skinners, fullers and metal workers (see Fig. 1). In 1390, for instance, three dyers were fined for dumping cinders and other detritus ‘produced by their craft’ into the river and the streets.91 By the early sixteenth century the authorities were feeling their way towards what we might call a pollution tax, requiring the ‘barkers, dyers, calaundrers, parchementmakers, tewers, sadelers, brewers, washers of shepe and all suche gret noyers of the same river to be ffurder charged than other persons shalbe’ when rates were levied for cleansing the Wensum.92 That such disruptive and dangerous activities as lime-burning should continue within the walls was, however, not in question, because of their essential contribution both to the economy and the very fabric of the place. The city depended 87

88 89 90 91

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Atkin and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, p. 234, describe tanneries in the suburbs at Heigham, and there were many within the walls: E. Rutledge, ‘Before the Black Death’, Medieval Norwich, pp. 160, 170. SROI, C7/1/16 (Ipswich borough leet roll, 11 Edward IV). NRO, NCR, 16C, Assembly Minute Book, 1510–50, fols 2r–2v. Parker, King’s Lynn, pp. 36–7, 161, and fig. 7. Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction, pp. 70, 73, 75. In 1288–89, William the skinner was fined for throwing the dead bodies of cats (which he had presumably skinned) into the Lothmere pit, which fed one of the city’s major cockeys: ibid., p. 29. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, 115–16. See for water generally, A.E. Guillerme, The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France, AD 300–1800 (College Station, Texas, 1988); and J.P. Leguay, L’Eau dans la ville au moyen âge (Rennes, 2000).


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upon its cloth-finishing, building and leather trades. They and the artisans who supplied them with vital materials were analogous to those less exalted parts of the body, which might perform an embarrassing function, but – as medieval surgeons and political theorists alike recognised – were none the less vital for survival.93 Perhaps, too, the knowledge that expulsion from paradise had not only brought with it a bitter legacy of death, disorder and disease but also a sentence of ‘ryth gret labour oure fode to fynde’ induced a sense of resignation.94 As they read their St Augustine in the cathedral cloister, the Norwich Benedictines could hear the incessant hammering and smell the acrid smoke of the Holme Street smithies, a constant reminder not only of the Fall, but also of the Last Judgement.95 As so many medieval miracle stories attest, the building industry was especially accident-prone: we can only guess how many men were killed or injured during the construction of Norwich castle and cathedral. The outlook for the disabled was, at best, uncertain. The stone mason who fell from a great height and hurt himself badly while working for the monks in 1420–21 was paid a mere 2d ‘ex gracia’ by the hostilar.96 We hear no more of him and can only assume that, if he survived, fellow parishioners and members of his craft guild would have come to his assistance. Such support was neither automatic nor unconditional. However anxious they may have been to provide physical care for those deserving members who were unable through sickness or injury to earn a living, the guilds and fraternities of medieval East Anglia were primarily concerned with the spiritual health and discipline of the workforce. Brothers and sisters who had fallen on hard times through drink, gambling, fornication or other sinful activities fared no better than the inmates of the region’s almshouses and hospitals, who were threatened with expulsion for similar offences. According to returns made to the government in 1388, many Norwich guilds provided basic support for those who could not work, either at a fixed rate or on the basis of a standard weekly contribution, such as a farthing each from those in gainful employment. These doles were, however, hedged about with caveats. Thus, for example, the pelterers, who were fairly affluent, offered subventions of 14d a week, on the understanding that anyone who had incurred hardship through folly would not be helped. The carpenters referred censoriously to ‘ryotous lyuyng’, while the fraternities of St Christopher, St George, St Katherine and St

93

Interestingly, these organs were commonly classified and described in terms of economic utility rather than nobility: Pouchelle, Body and Surgery, pp. 121–2. 94 Spector, N-Town Play, p. 34. 95 Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, p. 309. As well as those foundries mentioned above, smithies were also located in Alms Lane and Magdalen Street: Atkin and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, p. 239; S. Margeson, Norwich Households: The Medieval and Post Medieval Finds from Norwich Survey Excavations, 1971–1978 (EA Arch. 58, 1993), pp. 174–6, 238; and bellfounders at various parts of the city: Atkin and Evans, Excavations in Norwich, pp. 9, 29, 38, 41–4, 238–9. For further evidence of the problems heavy industry on this scale might cause, and for the idea of noise pollution, see H.M. Chew and W. Kellaway, eds, London Assize of Nuisance, 1301–1431 (London Record Society 10, 1973), pp. 160–1. 96 NRO, DCN 1/7/65. For building accidents in general, see D. Woodward, Men at Work: Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England 1450–1750 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 160–2.

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Botolph were similarly prepared to assist only the blameless.97 The tailors provide an interesting hint of the specific medical problems likely to afflict members who spent hours bent over close work in poor light: anyone who had fallen ‘en pouerte, croked, blyn, be the grace of Godes sonde, out-taken yef [unless] he be a theff proued’ might have 1d a day.98 Blindness was an occupational hazard of many medieval crafts, especially those which made regular use of dangerous chemicals, or (like masonry, flint-knapping, metal working, lime burning and the like) exposed the eye to dust, heat and flying particles. The regulations of Norwich’s elite goldsmiths’ guild have not survived, but we know that their colleagues in London needed extra funds in 1341 to help brothers who had been blinded by their furnaces, or even rendered insane (consternatus) through the accidental ingestion of mercury or other toxic substances.99 As might be expected, guilds (both craft and religious) were aggressively proactive in dragooning their members on the long march towards the heavenly city.100 In 1490, for example, the Norwich shoemakers imposed a hefty fine of 6s 8d each on ‘dyuers jornymen and seruants of the seid craft’, who were ‘gretly disposed to riot and idelnes, whereby may succeed grete pouerte’. Their specific offence was sloping off in the week to enjoy themselves, and thus being obliged to work late as the Lord’s Day approached in order to catch up. And also contrary to the lawe of god and good guydyng temporall, they labour qwikly toward the Sondaye and festyuall dayes on the Saterdayes and vigils ffro iiij of the clock at after none to the depnes and derknes of the nyght foloweng. And not onely that synfull disposicion but moche warse offending in the morowynggs of such festes, and omyttyng the heryng of ther dyuyne seruyce.101

This shocking dereliction of ‘vertuous and true labour’ put at risk the immortal souls, the salus, of all concerned, while – as Forestier pointed out – demonstrably inviting more immediate and deadly retribution. It was for this reason, rather than the possibility of shoddy workmanship, that any master who condoned such practices was also to be punished. It is worth pointing out that Bartholomaeus’s account of the body as a system for mutual support ends with the ominous warning that any infected or useless member ‘is greuous to itself and to al the body; and therefore is none other remedye but kutte it off that he destroye not and corrumpe al the body’.102 This paper began by drawing attention to the connection between body and soul, which provides a key not only to understanding the basic framework of 97 98 99 100

101 102

T. Smith, L.T. Smith and L. Brentano, eds, English Gilds (EETS 40, 1890), pp. 15–16, 17–18, 19–21, 22–4, 28–32, 37–9. Smith, Smith and Brentano, English Gilds, pp. 33–6. T.F. Reddaway, The Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company (London, 1975), pp. 6, 70, 103. B. McRee, ‘Religious Guilds and the Reformation of Behaviour in Late Medieval Towns’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (Gloucester, 1987), pp. 108–22; idem, ‘Religious Guilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Later Middle Ages’, Speculum 67 (1992), pp. 69–97. Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 104. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, i, p. 168.


151

medieval medicine but also many of the prophylactic measures taken by the urban authorities of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. This does not mean that we should underplay the impact of Classical and Arab texts on the regimen sanitatis, which, as we have seen, gained wide currency in the aftermath of the Black Death.103 With their stress upon diet and environment, fresh water and clean streets, they clearly played an important part in arming the rulers of East Anglian towns in their battle against disease and pollution. But we should not forget that these concepts gained widespread currency precisely because they accorded so well with the basic tenets of Christianity. The stress on humoral balance, continence, moderation, and the avoidance of anxiety which emerges from the pages of plague concilia, for example, fits seamlessly into the more overtly religious passages on the dangers of indolence and the importance of prayer. Their pages constitute a veritable polemic for hierarchy and order. It is thus all the more surprising that the subject of public health in medieval and early Tudor English towns has received limited attention from social historians, who still tend to regard medical history as a discipline apart. For the men and women of East Anglia, on the other hand, clean and godly streets paved the way to paradise.

103 It

is interesting to note, for example, that the commonplace book in which the Chronicle of William Gregory, skinner and mayor of London (1451), was transcribed and apparently completed by a fellow citizen also contains, inter alia, ‘a nobylle tretys of medysyns for mannys body’, a poem on the preservation of health and another ‘for bloode latynge’: J. Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London (Camden Society ns 17, 1876), pp. i–iv. The poem warns against ‘slought [sloth] on morowe and slomberyng ydelnys/ whyche of alle vycys ys chyffe’ (BL, Egerton MS 1995, fol. 78r), while the treatise extols exercise, ‘for hyt ys gouernayle of helthe & lengethynge of lyffe . . . pure recreacyon of body and of soule, soo hyt ben done in clene placys’ (fol. 67v).

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Appendix Presentments in Great Yarmouth Leet Courts, 1484–89 Offence Trading as non-burgess Not in tithing Selling ale against the assize Using illegal measures Not repairing quays, roads, etc. Failing to clean gutters, etc. Brothel keeping/ receiving suspects Dumping waste Keeping animals at large Assault, insult, etc. Selling corrupt food, etc. Evading customs Other (larceny, scolding, etc.) Total

1484–5

1485–6

1486–7

1488–9

142 10 39 22

146 81 30 —

36 8 2 13

32 18 27 2

23+ —

20 17

30+ 21

23 11

4 2 — 14 8 —

2 — 7 4 4 —

15 3 8 6 3 6+

12 16 — 1 10 2

7

15

11

117+

148

316+

1 333

Sources: NRO, Y/C4/189, rots 13r–14r (incomplete for northern leets), 190, rots 16r–17v (same), 191, rots 15r–16v, 192, rots 9r–10v.

Hundreds and Leets: A Survey with Suggestions James Campbell

‘In the Domesday county there were twenty four and a half or twenty four hundreds.’ ‘In the modern county of Suffolk there are twenty one.’1 This use of the present tense, in 1911, is noteworthy. The hundredal divisions of Suffolk and Norfolk are first known to us in Domesday Book. As centuries passed there were alterations and rationalisations. Nevertheless most of the divisions were still recognised eight hundred years later. Hundreds had no legal significance after 1879;2 but their boundaries continued to serve for purposes of local government.3 The almost geological durability of such units is a tribute to the creative power, not to say rationality, of the Anglo-Saxon state. The date of the introduction of the hundredal system in East Anglia is known not more than approximately. By consensus it probably dates to the earlier tenth century, but must be later than (or just possibly associated with) the campaigns of Edward the Elder (899–924).4 The earliest references to the East Anglian hundreds come in Libellus Æthelwoldi Episcopi. This early twelfth-century tract is based on contemporary materials and is probably to be relied upon in indicating that hundreds in south-east Suffolk were given to Ely before the death of Æthelwold in 984.5 While the overall pattern of the East Anglian hundreds was orderly, there were complications and anomalies, most strikingly that of Diss, which gave its

1 2 3

4

5

B.A. Lees, ‘Domesday Survey’, VCH Suffolk, i (London, 1911), p. 358. G.J. Turner, ‘Hundred’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn (New York, 1910–11), s.v. F.A. Youngs, Jr, Guide to the Administrative Units of England, i (London, 1979), pp. 652–4, 672–9. For convenient maps of the Domesday hundreds for Norfolk see P. Brown, ed., Domesday Book. Text and Translation (Chichester, 1984); and for Suffolk, A. Rumble, ed., Domesday Book. Text and Translation (Chichester, 1986); the maps can be found before the index of each edition (no pagination). H.R. Loyn, ‘The Hundreds of England in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries’, in British Government and Administration: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes, ed. H. Hearder and H.R. Loyn (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 1–15. E.O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis (Camden 3rd series 92, London, 1962), p. 114. There are difficulties in reconciling the accounts of the grant to Ely of its Suffolk hundreds. The passage in question refers to six hundreds rather than the five and the half which Ely later held. But the veracity of the passage is, up to a point, vouched for by this discrepancy and, more particularly, by its relating to the lease of the hundreds to ealdorman Æthelwine: a forger or embroiderer would hardly reveal such a transaction. Cf. Blake’s commentary, ibid., pp. liii, 421–422.

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Fig. 1. Maps showing the Domesday hundreds in Norfolk and Suffolk. In Norfolk, the boundaries of the Broadland hundreds, to the east, are particularly difficult to define accurately. In Suffolk, I is the half hundred of Ipswich; B is the villa of Bury St Edmunds. From H.C. Darby, The Domesday Geography of Eastern England (Manchester, 1971), Plates 20, 36; by permission of Cambridge University Press.

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name to a Norfolk hundred but was in Domesday surveyed as part of Suffolk.6 Some hundreds in northern Norfolk and southern Suffolk did not comprise a single bloc of territory: the origins of this may be tenurial, agricultural or fiscal.7 Such complications help in understanding the circumstances with which the men who laid the hundreds had to cope. Among these was the existence of large composite estates with scattered lands. Thus it is possible very reasonably to guess that the Norfolk hundred of Forehoe was largely made up of three major estates; but even then did not include all their outlying elements.8 Dr Warner has made a most interesting suggestion relating the hundredal pattern to hypothetical regiones of an earlier period.9 Thus he sees the extensive hundred of Blything as deriving from one such regio. The five and a half Ely hundreds (Wicklaw) had, he believes, once composed another such early unit, but one which had been divided up by Ely’s ‘upgrading’ its constituent leets to hundredal status. Interesting though his hypothesis is, another, simpler, one is preferable. This is that hundredal size was related to population which was in turn an indicator of taxable capacity. The plausibility of this, alternative, hypothesis may be judged by comparing the hundredal maps with those showing recorded Domesday population.10 While Dr Warner is willing to accept an argument of this kind as an explanation for the extensive hundreds of the Breckland, he maintains that it can hardly explain the small size of the ‘similarly poor’ soil of East Suffolk, for example Wilford and Colneis. But the recorded Domesday populations of this area were far greater than those of the Breckland. Within East Suffolk it is interesting to compare the populous small hundred of Colneis with its bigger and less populous neighbour of Samford. The border between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk demonstrates the forcefulness of the Anglo-Saxon imposition of an administrative scheme of which the hundredal system was part. The old East Anglian kingdom had undoubtedly included the south-east corner of what became Cambridgeshire. The diocese of Norwich extended so far until the reign of William IV. A tenth-century author regards one of the great Cambridgeshire dykes as the East Anglian boundary.11 Yet when Cambridgeshire was created it was in disregard of this ancient and major frontier. Here, and elsewhere, the map of the shires and hundreds demonstrates a forceful efficiency, the more remarkable in that those who deployed it themselves lacked maps. The laying out of the hundreds probably bore reference to a scheme of imposition over very wide areas – a scheme in which, for example, 6 7

R. Welldon Finn, Domesday Studies. The Eastern Counties (London, 1967), pp. 51–3. For the Norfolk instances C. Johnson, ‘Domesday Survey’, VCH Norfolk, ii, p. 5; for an important one in Suffolk R.H.C. Davis, ed., The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds and Related Documents (Camden 3rd series 74, London, 1954), pp. xxvi–xxviii. 8 T. Williamson, The Origins of Norfolk (Manchester and New York, 1993), pp. 96–9; cf. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 160. 9 P. Warner, The Origins of Suffolk (Manchester and New York, 1996), pp. 157–9, and ‘Pre-Conquest Territorial and Administrative Organisation in East Suffolk’, in Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. D. Hooke (Oxford, 1988), pp. 22–6. 10 H.C. Darby, The Domesday Geography of Eastern England, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1971), maps 20, 28, 36, 44. 11 M. Winterbottom, ed., Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto, 1972), pp. 69–70.

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the apparently complementary numbers of hundreds, possibly twenty-four for Suffolk and thirty-six for Norfolk, could have been more than accidental.12 All the evidence is that of the urgent activity of a powerful state. The aims of that state’s organisation were in large measure fiscal; and this is obvious in the Domesday account of East Anglia. Individual places are assessed by a statement of how much geld each should pay when the hundred paid twenty shillings. The fiscal element in the hundredal system is fairly plain in the presence of units assessed not as single hundreds but as half hundreds, double hundreds, or one and a half hundreds. Had the raison d’être of the hundred been simply jurisdictional or administrative there would have been little point in such distinctions. The assessment figures for individual vills of a hundred frequently add up to something near twenty shillings, though not always.13 The normal, or common, rate of geld was two shillings per hide. Thus the use of a twenty shilling standard for hundredal assessments could indicate that the East Anglian hundred was seen as the fiscal equivalent of such ten hide units as are found in Cambridgeshire, but a hundred hide equivalence is more plausible.14 It could be that the heaviest obligation imposed via the hundred was military, but of that, in East Anglia, nothing is known.15 The principal continuous role of the hundred was through its court, a key focus for local justice and administration for centuries. The hundred court’s importance in the eleventh century is demonstrated by the some forty Domesday references to Suffolk hundreds’ testifying.16 There is, from the twelfth century, evidence for hundred courts witnessing the grant of land and giving judgement on private disputes.17 Crucial in the organisation of medieval Suffolk was the dominance of two vast franchises: the eight and a half hundreds of Bury in the west, and the five and a half hundreds of Ely in the east. The relatively small part of the shire left under direct royal authority was termed ‘the geldable’, an indication that the two monastic estates concerned were exempt from geld, which would have meant that, when geld was levied, the proceeds went to them.18 They also enjoyed the highest judicial rights. Ely’s franchise seems to date from before 984, though it is impossible to be quite certain that the grant of hundreds then carried with it the fiscal and judicial privileges later documented.19 The grant to Bury of eight and a half hundreds came right at the beginning of Edward the Confessor’s reign, in 1043 or 1044.20 The lands and privileges concerned had previously been held by Edward’s mother Emma, queen successively of Æthelred II and Cnut, and may

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

W.J. Corbett, ‘The Tribal Hidage’, TRHS ns 14 (1900), pp. 210–15. Davis, ed., Kalendar, pp. xv–xvi; Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 118; C. Hart, Danelaw (London and Rio Grande, 1992), p. 84. J.H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), pp. 98–103. Davis, ed., Kalendar, p. xv. P. Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), p. 29. Warner, Origins of Suffolk, p. 180. D.C. Douglas, The Social Structure of Medieval East Anglia (Oxford, 1927), p. 191; Davis, ed., Kalendar, p. xxxi. The details and importance of such geld exemptions have been little explored. Above, p. 153. F. Harmer, ed., Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), no. 9, pp. 154–5, cf. pp. 145–8.

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have represented dower-lands of some antiquity.21 The privileges involved made the eight and a half hundreds virtually a shire on their own; and Ely’s rights were comparable.22 A main advantage for the modern historian is that the Bury records are exceptionally good, in particular the Feudal Book of Abbot Baldwin (compiled between 1087 and 1098),23 and the Kalendar of Abbot Samson (compiled c.1188–1191).24 It has been largely thanks to the Kalendar that the history of that important entity, the leet, alternatively lete, as a subdivision of the hundred for fiscal and other important purposes, is known.25 The Kalendar first achieved print in 1838 when John Gage published part of it.26 It was here that Maitland found what was for him the earliest references to leets.27 In fact they are twice mentioned in the Domesday account of Norfolk, which states that Greenhoe hundred contains fourteen leets, the hundred and a half of Clackclose ten. Johnson in 1906 and Lees in 1911 in their Victoria County History analyses for, respectively, Norfolk and Suffolk made great advances in demonstrating the universality, and elucidating the detail, of the system. Round provided a valuable account of the leet system in 1909.28 Nevertheless historians have treated the leet with considerable diffidence. In his introduction to Douglas’s work on the society of medieval East Anglia H.W.C. Davis categorises the Norfolk leets as ‘an interesting survival’.29 Douglas himself calls them, in a somewhat distancing way, a ‘curious phenomenon’.30 Douglas did, however, do much to bring out the likely significance of the leet as a unit of jurisdiction. His drawing attention to the relevance of a passage in the foundation charter of Wymondham abbey (1107) is very important here.31 Notwithstanding Douglas’s strong case R.H.C. Davis in 1956 denied the existence of leet courts, flatly.32 In recent years leets have been investigated with much more success. Exploration of the detail of the system has indicated the degree of sophistication with which it was managed. And it is plain that

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford, 1997), pp. 111–12, 132–3. Professor Stafford suggests (p. 133) that the five and a half hundreds of Ely had also been a queenly property. Somewhat against this is the statement in Liber Eliensis that the property in question had been held by a comes called Scule before it came to Ely (Blake, ed., p. 11). On the other hand if the reason for the earliest reference to the grant specifying six hundreds indicates that it then included Ipswich, rated as a half hundred, then the queenly associations of that town could be relevant (Hart, Danelaw, pp. 47, 71). H.M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (reprint, London, 1963), p. 55. D.C. Douglas, ed., Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmund’s (London, 1932), pp. 1–44, cf. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 96–104. Davis, ed., Kalendar. Important modern accounts of the East Anglian leet are Hart, Danelaw, pp. 81–93; Warner, Origins of Suffolk, pp. 160–5, but cf. p. 155 above, Williamson, Origins of Norfolk, pp. 131–3. J. Gage, The History and Antiquities of Suffolk, Thingoe Hundred (London, 1838), pp. xii–xvii. F.W. Maitland, ed., Select Pleas in Manorial Courts (Selden Society 2, London 1889 for 1888), p. lxxvi. Feudal England, pp. 98–103. Social Structure, p. vi. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., pp. 194–5. Kalendar, p. xxx. Davis might have been right as to certain areas but as a general statement this is certainly erroneous, cf. pp. 165–6 below.

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not only could leets have courts but that, at least in part of Suffolk, these survive, in however residual a form, into the nineteenth century.33 The implications of detailed analysis of the leet system are considerable. That leets were not always composed of contiguous areas underlines their fiscal role; a likely reason for such an arrangement is the creation of fiscal balance. This by no means need indicate the absence of leet courts: no one would maintain that because hundreds sometimes consisted of discrete parts there were no hundred courts. The number of leets within a hundred varied from four to at least twentyfour.34 This number can be related to the area of a hundred; thus unusually large Blything has an unusual number of leets, twenty-four or twenty-five.35 However, there does not seem to be a consistent relationship between area and number of leets. There is considerable variation in the system on which geld quotas were distributed among the leets of a hundred. Sometimes there was extreme consistency. Thus Thingoe hundred seems to have been composed of twelve leets (as were other hundreds in West Suffolk) each assessed at 20d.36 By contrast the half hundred of Cosford’s eight leets’ assessments vary between 7½d and 20d though they add up neatly to only a farthing short of the formally required total of 120d.37 The variation between the numbers of leets in different hundreds and the nature of the distribution of assessments between leets suggests (though it does not prove) that administrative decisions were taken at lower than shire level, probably at that of the hundred. This likelihood is reinforced by an important conclusion to which Dr Hart has come through his most interestingly detailed reconstructions of leets. These, he suggests, indicate that by 1086 all the leets of a hundred could have had their assessments uniformly reduced: thus each of the ten leets of Clackclose hundred having had their assessment reduced from 36d to 24d. Three other hundreds also had their assessments reduced uniformly; unsurprisingly these had been held by Archbishop Stigand. More remarkably, in Blofield hundred, the assessment of four leets only had been increased by 4d. These are those nearest to Norwich and this seems to reflect the growing prosperity of the city. In Henstead hundred, also adjacent to Norwich, the assessments of all the leets were increased.38 In this area it might be worth notice that the configuration of the hundreds of south central Norfolk suggests that the unusual shape of two of them, Forehoe and Blofield, may be explained by an intention to give them a share of the area immediately surrounding Norwich.39 In both Suffolk and Norfolk there are instances of the rearrangement of leet responsibility to take account of changing circumstances.40 The nature of the rearrangements and reassessments of leets suggests a close management of the tax system, sometimes depending on intensive local information. It is for speculation how far such

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Below, pp. 165–6. See the works cited p. 157 above. Warner, ‘Pre-Conquest Territorial and Administrative Organisation in East Suffolk’, pp. 29–31. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 105. Hart, Danelaw, p. 85. Danelaw, pp. 89–91. See the hundredal map, p. 154 above E.g. Hart, Danelaw, p. 91; Kalendar, p. xxv.

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information was recorded in writing, or how far it rested between the ears of the suitors and officers of shire, hundred and leets. By its very nature Domesday reflects close local order and the extensive availability of local information. Dodwell established the strong possibility of the existence of detailed lists, hundred by hundred, and village by village, at least for part of Norfolk; and these could have antedated, rather than formed part of, the Domesday survey.41 Prominent among the many questions that the leet system raises are two, one relating to the future, the other to the past. First, what might the relationship have been between East Anglian leet courts and the employment from the late thirteenth century of the term ‘court leet’ to manorial courts in one of their aspects: that is to say in dealing with low level public business? The roots of manor courts are obscure and controversial, and a key issue is that of whether the term ‘court leet’ implies a real public as contrasted with seigneurial role. Maitland took very doubting views of the manor court. He regarded such institutions as having been somewhat exceptional at the time of Domesday, and saw the distinction between court leet and court baron as a late artificiality.42 A modern author can deny connection between the leets of Domesday East Anglia and the court leet.43 It is not possible to know from the surviving evidence how far and in what forms predecessors of the manorial courts of the thirteenth century were present in earlier periods. One reference from Abbot Samson’s Kalendar is, however, of special interest. It relates to a place called Troston. There the sokemen gave the substantial sum of 11s a year to the reeves so that in small cases (minutis querelis) they should not be made to plead in the hundred court but that the case should be settled locally and in the same vill.44 This reference indicates how far manorial courts may have had a public element and why the term ‘court leet’ may have come into use. The possibility that manorial courts may have been more than seigneurial in origin is related to the neglected concept of the village community as an institutionalised entity.45 That the term ‘leet’ as in ‘court leet’ ‘seems to have spread outwards from East Anglia’ is an indication of East Anglian weight in the legal world of England.46 What were the origins of the leet? Various indeed are the answers which have been hazarded to this question. Corbett thought that the leets may have originally been small hundreds corresponding approximately to, for instance, the small hundreds of Sussex as they appear in Domesday Book; he seems to imply a notably early origin.47 Douglas suggested that the leet was ‘a folk-division which probably took its origin from the Scandinavian invasions’.48 Elsewhere he saw it as an administrative unit considerably resembling the twelve carucate hundreds

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

B. Dodwell, ‘The Making of the Domesday Survey in Norfolk: the Hundred and a Half of Clackclose’, EHR 84 (1969), pp. 79–84. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, pp. xviii, 41–51; Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 54. Warner, Origins of Suffolk, p. 159. Kalendar, p. 44, cf. p. xxxii. H. Maine, Village Communities in the East and West, 7th edn (London, 1895), pp. 139–40. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. lxxiv. ‘The Tribal Hidage’, p. 213. Feudal Book, p. clxvi. Cf. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 105–8.

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of Lincolnshire and that they represented ‘early hundreds’.49 He suggested that the small hundreds which occur in a Bury St Edmunds survey of 1045–65 would later have been called leets.50 Dr Hart contends that the leets were laid out at the same time as (he believes) the hundreds were: shortly after Edward the Elder’s conquest in 917.51 The problems raised sum up many of those posed by the hundred and leet system as a whole. There is a nest of conundrums here. Could this system, or at least elements in it, in significant measure antedate the Scandinavian assault? Corbett was probably right in putting the hundredal system into a context of the large-scale organisation of renders that extends to include the Tribal Hidage. This need be no more than a matter of general principles of organisation, not of early origins for any specific parts of the system, though inevitably local arrangements from an early date were reflected or incorporated in the system displayed in Domesday Book. The possibility has been aired that the system, or elements in it, were of Scandinavian origin. The arguments for this are: first, resemblances between what is found in East Anglia and what appears elsewhere in the Danelaw with corresponding contrasts with other areas; second, the relationship of Scandinavian words, and, as is thought, units (particularly the 16d ora) to the assessment system; third, the possibility of relating some elements in the Domesday assessment system (though not notably in the main one, the ‘pence in the pound’ assessment) to an arguably Scandinavian system of peasant tenure, based on a unit of 12½ acres, the ‘manlot’; fourth, the contention that there was substantial Scandinavian settlement.52 Per contra, as to the first, these resemblances and contrasts may reflect no more than that these areas were reorganised at about the same time after conquest by English kings. As to the second, governmental vocabulary is a poor guide to the origin of the institutions to which it is applied.53 As to the third, a major difficulty is that there are no sources to show the organisation of government and society in Scandinavia during the period concerned. If the organisation of government and taxation in East Anglia and the remainder of the Danelaw was Scandinavian in origin, then it follows that a major, virtually the only, source for early Scandinavian organisation is Domesday Book. Maybe this is the case, but arguments based on such an hypothesis must have tenuous elements. As to the fourth, the case for fairly extensive Scandinavian settlement in East Anglia, though not entirely implausible, has no substantial evidence in its favour except in Flegg, and maybe in Lothingland. In short, the ‘Scandinavian’ theory could be true to some extent, but it is not possible to say more. What is reasonably certain is that the orderly detail of much of the East Anglian geld system indicates an origin which is at least fairly recent. Indeed it gives the impression that Dr Hart’s suggestion of a date in the immediate aftermath of Edward the Elder’s conquest could well be too early for the geld system 49 50

Social Structure, pp. 191, 214. D.C. Douglas, ‘Fragments of an Anglo-Saxon Survey from Bury St. Edmunds’, EHR 43 (1928), pp. 376–83. 51 Danelaw, p. 93. 52 Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 27, 30–1, 34–7, 48, 50, 59–60, 212–15. 53 E.g. the modern term ‘county’.

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set out in Domesday, though it does not follows that this is too early for the introduction of hundreds.54 It must be that the Domesday system relates to the heregeld famously mentioned in the D-version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as having been abolished in 1052, in the thirty-ninth year after King Æthelred instituted it.55 The abolition proved temporary and this tax became the main and probably normally annual tax into the twelfth century. Was the Domesday assessment system introduced for the levy of this as a heavy new tax? But then, enormously heavy payments of Danegeld had been made in Æthelred’s reign.56 On what bases were the taxes levied which were probably needed to furnish these payments? Was the system of assessment which appears in Domesday for East Anglia not introduced in c.1011, but rather in the 990s? In either case its introduction would have been a major administrative feat, not least for a king and kingdom in dire trouble. To repeat, the apparent up-to-dateness of the system would suggest that one of these dates is, nevertheless, not improbable. Alternatively the geld system might just possibly go back to the tenth century, even to the reign of Edward the Elder. But a further argument is that there is no evidence for, or indicating the likelihood of, general taxation in the tenth century. There is indeed evidence to suggest the imposition of obligations on organised plans from an early date, but these would have related to continuous obligations antedating levies of Danegeld type. The situation is illuminated by Norfolk and Suffolk having been assessed not on one system but on two. The ‘how much the village should pay when the hundred pays a pound’ system is one. The other is one in carucates. Domesday gives carucate assessments for most individual holdings.57 This system usually bears no ascertainable relationship to the other one.58 Thus R.H.C. Davis illustrates his observation that the carucate assessments ‘cannot possibly’ be the same as those for Danegeld by pointing to four villages owing 2s 3d each towards geld, but 4s 1d, 1s 8¾d, 0d and 8s 4¾d on the other assessment.59 On the other hand, sometimes there are fairly clear relations between the two systems. Thus in Lackford hundred, eleven out of seventeen vills were assessed for geld at 20d; of these eight were by the carucage assessment put at six carucates (or a little over, or under).60 The carucage system was strongly related to the organisation of East Anglian

54 55 56 57

58 59 60

Danelaw, pp. 76–93. D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas and S. I.Tucker, eds, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (2nd impression, London, 1965), p. 116. M.K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR 84 (1984), pp. 721–38. The carucate generally comprised 120 acres, Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 111, 117; Douglas, ed., Feudal Documents, p. lx; but cf. Douglas, Social Structure, p. 15. A complicating feature is that assessment carucates could represent actual acres of ground so that tax and field carucates coincide, Hart, Danelaw, p. 95; Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, pp. 201–7. The semper arant formula used in relation to the carucates of the Bury St Edmunds estate is suggestive here, Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 63. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 108–11. Kalendar, p. xxxvii. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 111.

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society, with its outstanding feature of a numerous free peasantry. In most of East Anglia liberi homines and sokemen comprised between a quarter and a half of the recorded Domesday population, in much of it, more than half.61 The renders of free peasants, whether to king or great immunist, were reckoned in assessment acres, 120 of which normally counted to the carucate. An East Anglian free peasant would characteristically owe carrying and guard services, very limited labour services and an annual money rent. The rent appears as standardised at 1d or 2d per assessment acre.62 It is significant that such acres were sometimes described as ware acres. This relates to the term warland, which was used, not only in East Anglia, but widely elsewhere in England, to denote land which paid public dues, by contrast with the inland, more directly exploited by a lord. The distinction is one implied in Domesday’s frequent distinction between what may be termed the ‘manorialised’ part of a village and its freemen.63 The dues of such freemen were commonly paid to the hundred; this is a point at which the ‘carucate’ system meets the ‘how many pennies in the pound’ system. However, another major element in the organisation of free peasants and their dues was the soke, the unit of authority and exploitation centred on a royal or other manor. There was a relationship between sokes and hundreds, yet the area of sokes’ authority could transcend hundredal boundaries, and sokes remained significant units after the Conquest; some may even have been created after the Conquest.64 This is but one of the complications that entangle the student of the assessment systems of East Anglia. These have provoked a cri de coeur from a leading scholar, who writes that if his hypotheses work ‘we can cease to trouble ourselves about East Anglian and village carucates and geld-liability, for the mysterious Domesday figures, to produce intelligible results, would have to be fitted into a system . . . which had long since been substantially altered, and of which Domesday Book yields us few traces’.65 Another complication is this. Although the term ‘carucate’ is fundamental to Domesday’s account of one of the assessment systems, it does not occur in any earlier document; such (few) earlier references as we have to apparent assessment units in East Anglia are to hides.66 On the Bury estates the money renders paid by freemen and sokemen were called ‘hidage’.67 This strengthens the case that the 61

62 63

64 65 66 67

H.C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), p. 67. The distinction, or lack of it, between the two categories can hardly be described here: suffice it to say that though the distinction mattered to contemporaries the same men could be described by both terms; the terms could be regarded as synonymous; and there is a serious possibility that Domesday usage varied from hundred to hundred and/or shire to shire. Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 96–8, 104–5; Douglas, ed., Feudal Documents, p. cxxii. Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 107–8, 186–8, 225–7; P. Vinogradoff, Villanage in England: Essays in English Medieval History (Oxford, 1892), pp. 225–7; R.S. Hoyt, The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History 1066 to 1272 (Ithaca, New York, 1950), pp. 44–5, 49 and especially R. Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (London, 1997). Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 190, 202–3, 210–11; Davis, ed., Kalendar, pp. xliiii–xliv; Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 51. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 00. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 108, 110; Davis, ed., Kalendar, p. xliii; Hart, Danelaw, pp. 81–82. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, p. 118.

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term ‘carucate’ was introduced by the Normans. If so, this could have been an attempt to simplify vocabulary in a complex scheme, comparable to the introduction of the term villanus. It is important that the rents paid by freemen and sokemen were so uniformly related to holdings assessed in ware areas. This has a dual significance. First, it shows an extensive and uniform system for an annual levy from the free peasantry which formed so large a part of the population. Maybe such payments represented commutation of older renders. That they had been in cash from their beginning, whenever that may have been, is suggested by their being accompanied by other renders in kind, notably foddercorn. Another possible use68 of the carucate assessment could have been to determine geld assessment within vills. This is a dark subject because although Domesday tells us what a village paid when the hundred paid a pound, it does not reveal how this contribution was allocated within the village. It may well have been by relation to ware areas. Something which can be added is the frequency with which fractions of a penny appear which suggests that farthings played a role in assessments.69 What is the significance of Norfolk and Suffolk, uniquely among the shires which Domesday describes as having two systems of assessment? Vinogradoff posed the possibilities that ‘either there were traces of a former fiscal arrangement displayed by a new mode of distribution or . . . [the former system] still had some significance for purposes of assessment in regard to one or other kind of service’.70 He might have added ‘or both’. The carucates might indeed be the remains of a system, corresponding to the systems of assessment (whether in hides or in carucates) found in all the other Domesday shires. Had there been such a system, and had it been integrated with that of hundreds, then? Either it had become very seriously worn out by 1086 or/and the hundredal system had been recast at some time between its introduction and 1086 (as Finn suggests).71 Why, if so, should there have been such a root-and-branch reorganisation in our two shires, but not, detectably, in any other? It could, not impossibly, be that the explanation was economic growth. Dr Williamson has suggested72 that the liberi homines (as contrasted with the sokemen) of Domesday represent as class prospering in areas which had been relatively undeveloped, though there are difficulties of definition here. Welldon Finn suggests that assessments within villages may have been affected or distorted by economic expansion.73 Certainly there are areas in East Anglia where there may have been major economic growth in the eleventh century: for example at Norwich, or in the Broadland. It is by no means absurd to suggest that such growth might have been sufficiently general in East Anglia to render the carucage assessment too out-of-date for geld purposes. So it would have been replaced by the ‘pennies in the pound’ scheme. There may appear to be an element of a paradox or even a contradiction in the 68 69 70 71 72 73

Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 430–1; Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 102–3. Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 54–5. English Society, p. 145. Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 108–10, 117. Origins of Norfolk, pp. 119–21. Eastern Counties, p. 117.

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foregoing: on the one hand we see a system, apparently better preserved in East Anglia than in any other large area, of assessment – and one might as well say of government – which recalls a hypothetical system for early England as a whole. This could have been one in which the basis of society was a substantial free population whose contacts with rulers was by no means always mediated through lords. This could seem almost archaic. On the other hand East Anglian society can be seen as very much on the move economically. There is no necessary contradiction. Peasant freedom and economic progress may well have gone hand in hand. Important characteristics of the East Anglian peasant population are these: first, the widespread power to alienate land; second, partible inheritance. The first is abundantly demonstrated in Domesday Book. The second is chiefly demonstrated in sources from the twelfth century and later, but its earlier prevalence can hardly be doubted. Characteristics of important areas of East Anglia which appear by the late thirteenth century, once documentation becomes fairly good, are a rising population, a bustling peasant land market, and an efficient agriculture – and the three were probably connected. The free peasantry came under considerable pressure after the Norman Conquest. Processes which historians term ‘manorialisation’ reduced peasant freedom, particularly by the appropriation of freemen to manors.74 At the same time there were very substantial elements of continuity. Abbot Samson’s Kalendar shows to what a great extent the organisation of the lands of Bury depended on structures inherited from the Anglo-Saxon past. If the Bury estates were exceptional, they were, nevertheless, very wide. Another area which is exceptional, for somewhat different reasons, is Lothingland in the far north-east corner of Suffolk. Domesday Lothingland was nearly all royal demesne. Three of its eighteen vills are distinct from the others: Lowestoft, Gorleston and Burgh Castle appear with a manorial structure of a type commonly found elsewhere.75 The other fifteen are otherwise organised. Each is held under the king by one to five liberi homines. Domesday pays these the compliment of naming nearly all, something it rarely does for liberi homines. A typical village is Fritton.76 Liber homo Godwin has two carucates of land ‘as a manor’ with two villeins, two bordars, three slaves, and two liberi homines, clearly free men less prosperous than Godwin himself. Then we have two liberi homines with eighty acres, two villeins and a bordar. Then liber homo Leofric with eighty acres. In Lothingland as a whole there were thirty of these varyingly substantial freemen, nearly all named, many with Norse names. Thus in 1086 the forty odd square miles of royal demesne in Lothingland were largely in the hands of freemen of sufficient note to be named and most of whom in later centuries would have been categorised as franklins, yeomen, or even, in some cases, gentlemen. Nearly two hundred years later the Hundred Roll account has important 74

Welldon Finn, Eastern Counties, pp. 102, 138–51; Hoyt, Royal Demesne, pp. 74–6; Vinogradoff, English Society, p. 428; Davis, ed., Kalendar, p. xlvi; Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 111–12; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 65–6. 75 A. Rumble, ed., Domesday Book, Suffolk, i, I, nos 39–70: Lowestoft no. 33; Gorleston nos 32, 41, 42, 54; Burgh Castle no. 69. 76 Ibid., nos 49, 58.

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elements of continuity. Lowestoft and Gorleston still appear as exceptional: as manors with substantial demesnes and many unfree tenants.77 Nearly the whole of the rest of the half-hundred of the island of Lothingland was held by some hundred and eighty free tenants. Their tenure was normally described as free socage in chief: in capite socagium liberum. The size of these holdings varied. A very large one could consist of more than a hundred acres of land (terre) and a hundred of pasture.78 Smaller, sometimes tiny holdings, were much more common. It seems that there was a process whereby larger units were breaking up into much smaller ones: for example at Bretheron, a tenement which had paid a rent of 2s ½d was now divided among fifteen tenants, eight holding one rood or less.79 Two conclusions. One, the 180 tenants in free socage are the heirs of the thirty liberi homines of 1086. Two, this area was for the most part unmanorialised, not part of that large part of England that was a mosaic of manors. What gives an added interest to the contemplation of Lothingland is the survival of a remarkable archive from its manors and leets extending from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth.80 Here we see a point at which the endeavour to understand the small sub-divisions of government meets a kind of social reality which has not often been noticed. It is certain that the leet was a judicial as well as a fiscal subdivision. The Lothingland archive documents this circumstance in detail. The earliest (fifteenth-century) documents show the hundred divided into four leets called, tediously enough, North, South, East, and West.81 They must once have had significance in relation to geld. What they retained in the fifteenth century and much later was juridical significance. Each had a court for dealing with various petty business. These courts were fairly busy and left extensive records from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had a flicker of remaining life a century later and retained a shadowy existence well into the nineteenth century, by which time they had become associated into manor courts. The leets were also the channel for the collection of rents from the king’s free tenants. Thus, a rental for the Northleet of 1430/31 contains a list of twenty-one rents from free socages, varying between 2d and £1 11s 4d.82 These must have been the successors of the socage rents of the Hundred Rolls and of the dues of the liberi homines of Domesday Book. The significance of the Lothingland circumstances and documents is multiple. First, we see, yet again, how notwithstanding apparently good sources, AngloSaxon institutions lurked and lived, through centuries, undetectable in any 77 78 79 80

81 82

Lord John Hervey, ed. and trans., The Hundred Rolls and Extracts Therefrom, County of Suffolk, Lothingland (Ipswich, 1902), pp. 2–11, 68 (Lowestoft); 2–11, 50, 54, 66, 72, 82, 116 (Gorleston). Ibid., p. 32. Cf. H.M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (reprint, London, 1963), pp. 196–7. Ibid., p. 20. The Franey Collection, SROL accession no. 194; the introductory note to the handlist in the Record Office provides a good outline of these records. These records also relate to the adjacent hundred of Mutford and present interesting features there, for example (from the fifteenth century) courts of sokymote (for socage tenants) and one for bassa tenuria; e.g. 194/B1/2. Details are in the handlist, based on the court book for Lothingland half hundred October 1594 – August 1612, 194/C1/1/1–4. SROL, 194/A2/1.

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contemporary sources available to us. We can only catch up with the four leets of Lothingland and their very long lives because of an unusual archival survival. Second, a generalisation. In Lothingland we see an area never fully manorialised; one where there was in the eleventh century a direct relation between substantial freemen and the Crown which became progressively transformed into one between many, sometimes very poor, freemen and the Crown without intervening feudal or manorial lords. How common, or normal were such conditions? This is an important question, best posed by Kosminsky.83 An answer to it can hardly be provided until Edward I’s Hundred Rolls yield all their secrets. It was clearly important that Lothingland was royal demesne at the time of Domesday. The shires of the East were most important in early medieval England, disproportionally populous and wealthy. Seventeen per cent of the population recorded in Domesday lived in Norfolk and Suffolk; eighteen per cent of the Domesday estimation of land value lay in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.84 It is the more significant that the East Anglian organisation differed from that of much of the rest of England: its social arrangements contained much that was old, though they were integrated into and controlled by newish institutions of rule. A recent and splendid book by R. Faith has greatly extended and freshened understanding of these matters.85 Dr Faith’s wide analysis emphasises the distinction between inland and warland.86 If the one represented land immediately linked to the needs and demands of lords, the latter reflects the existence of numerous freemen whose relatively light obligations were to a regime better described as governmental than as seigneurial. In much of Domesday England there were fewer such men than formerly. In East Anglia they nevertheless remained numerous to the extent that Dr Faith writes of ‘islands of inland in a sea of warland’.87 Her convincing views amplify and sustain those of historians born in the nineteenth century who saw English society as one founded on the peasant. Strong elements of ‘manorialisation’ and ‘feudalisation’ were at work in East Anglia at least from the eleventh century. But there was major survival of free status: Lothingland’s is an extreme case. If there was a lot of freedom in eleventh-century East Anglia there was also a very great deal of order. The governmental power which laid out the hundreds was not weak. The organisation into hundreds and leets is that of a tight, but somewhat flexible, system. Its controls extended all the way from the area to the individual. How were freedom and order, sometimes sharply oppressive order, reconciled? By participation. It is important that shire, hundred and leet all had courts with real jurisdiction and, so far as we can tell, fairly extensive participation. Consultation, some kind of consultative activity and argument, is very likely 83 84

E.A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England (Oxford, 1956). Darby, Domesday England, p. 336. Corbett, Cambridge Medieval History, V, p. 507. True, the fiscal system may have been such as to ensure that East Anglia’s population was better recorded than that of other shires, but it too was probably under-recorded. 85 The English Peasantry. 86 Esp. chapters 2–6; cf. p. 162 above. 87 Ibid., p. 155.

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to have been necessary for the allocation of geld quotas to leets and within leets. It is interesting that in East Anglia, unlike the rest of Domesday England, allocation of geld within the village was not determined by an assessment system recorded in Domesday.88 It may be that at village level the system resembled that adopted in 1334 and kept for long after.89 Each place had an allocated quota and it was left to the inhabitants to sort out who paid how much. Such a system would imply a degree of institutionalised unity for the village. So too would the meeting of the whole village (which comprised more manors than one) to witness a grant.90 And, although suit to the hundred had early become limited to those with specific holdings, nevertheless, there were occasions with a different representation involving from each village four or more men often with a priest and/or reeve.91 To the extent that the term ‘court leet’ may derive from the development of some or all leet functions to a village level here may be another example of village-based organisation.92 Wide participation in governmental activity came in another way. This was because a noteworthy proportion of the people were involved as executants, part-time administrators, involved in what Dr Faith terms a ‘many-layered ministerial class’.93 The rate-off from administrative activity was, doubtless, a significant economic factor. Another such would have been the economic role of freedom. Dr Williamson suggested that the liberi homines (as contrasted with the sokemen) of Domesday were largely farmers in areas once not notable remunerative, but prospering in the eleventh century.94 Reserve has to greet any attempt clearly to define and to contrast liberi homines and sokemen.95 But it is highly probable that free tenure and economic enterprise went hand in hand. This combination could be integrated into the administrative system; as in the Norfolk marshlands where an association of peasants to organise and maintain draining could form a new leet.96 To examine the administrative system of early medieval East Anglia is to come to three conclusions. One, that the administration of the late Anglo-Saxon state was commandingly effective. Two, that we must not let Domesday Book beguile us into thinking that England was more seigneurialised than in fact it was.97 Three, that we are looking at elements in one of the great economic success stories of medieval England, indeed of northern Europe.

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Cf. p. 156 above. R.E. Glasscock, The Lay Subsidy of 1334 (London, 1975), pp. xv–xvii. Douglas, Social Structure, p. 210; for certain representative appearances those involved might be paid by the vill, ibid., p. 153. Ibid., pp. 154–5. Above, p. 159. Faith, The English Peasantry, p. 155, cf. J. Campbell, ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, Domesday Studies, ed. J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 205–9; 216–17. Origins of Norfolk, pp. 116–21. Cf. p. 162 n.61 above. Douglas, Social Structure, pp. 198–9. Faith, The English Peasantry, p. 125.

The Rebellion of 1075 and its Impact in East Anglia1 Lucy Marten

IN 1075 William the Conqueror faced one of the most serious threats to his kingship of the English people. It was a rebellion that threatened to combine the forces of three of William’s own earls across the breadth of England with a Danish invasion fleet. It was a challenge to the legitimacy of William’s position and it was the occasion for a battle, a long siege and months of troop mobilisation. According to Archbishop Lanfranc, acting in the absence of the king, there were still ‘three hundred heavily-armed soldiers supported by a large force of slingers and siege engineers’ outside Norwich Castle three months after the rebels had been defeated at the battle of Fageduna.2 It is not the intention of this paper to reproduce a narrative of the known events of that year, but to re-examine the way in which these events have traditionally been presented and to utilise the evidence from East Anglia to see how William’s response to rebellion altered the political, administrative and tenurial structure of the region.3 For many historians this is an episode in which the question of individual ethnicity has provided a framework within which the rebellion has been interpreted.4 In part, this emphasis stems from the importance given to it in 1

2

3

4

Grateful thanks are due to Christopher Harper-Bill for his unfailing support, to Rob Liddiard for many fruitful discussions and to Neil Strevett for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. H. Clover and M. Gibson, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford, 1979) (henceforth Lanfranc), no. 35. Medieval statistics are notoriously unreliable but this is not a chronicle account wherein giving a sense of scale was often more important than actual numbers; this is a military report from a subordinate left in charge to his commander and it seems unlikely that Lanfranc would have exaggerated military statistics to William. The fullest and most detailed exposition of the events of 1075 and the major participants can be found in A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995) (henceforth English), pp. 59–65. For more details on Roger of Hereford see C. Lewis, ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, ANS 13 (1991), pp. 207–23; for Waltheof see F.S. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof of Northumbria’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 30 (1952), pp. 149–213; for information on Earl Ralph I am indebted to K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, The COEL Database (henceforth COEL) (1995), person no. 3516. As Ralph held in neither 1066 nor 1086 he does not appear in the printed version of this database, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166 (Woodbridge, 1999) (henceforth Domesday People). Where prosopographical references can be found in this volume they have been cited. D.C. Douglas, for example saw the 1075 rebellion as essentially Breton in nature with Earl Ralph (named as Ralph de Gaël) as the central character and the instigator of a revolt whose significance lay in its continental connections, even suggesting that Ralph’s fellow magnates in Brittany were

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contemporary and near-contemporary sources wherein ethnic descriptions are used specifically to distinguish certain individuals. To Archbishop Lanfranc, in a vivid deviation from his usual written style, Earl Ralph of East Anglia was ‘Breton dung’ (spurcicia Britonum), whilst the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in a unique and important genealogical description, portrayed him as the son of an Englishman from Norfolk.5 As this clearly demonstrates, the concept of ethnicity in this period was not necessarily fixed, but adaptable to specific situations.6 People could, and did, carry different onomastic descriptors that expressed different potential ethnic ties at different times in their lives. They could also be given different onomastic descriptions, and such vivid differences in the portrayal of the same man in the same year suggest that close attention should be paid to how individuals were described within different contexts. The preoccupation with ethnicity as a framework for discussion, although understandable, is untenable when the sources are examined closely. The only strictly contemporary source for the rebellion is the letters of Archbishop Lanfranc written whilst the revolt was being planned and actually in progress. They have a particular relevance because they show Lanfranc acting, not just as a prelate and spiritual counsellor, but also as the representative of the king in his absence, and it is this political role that underpins the content and tenor of the texts. As the rebels prepared, Lanfranc was in correspondence with Earl Roger of Hereford.7 Several letters beg him to desist from his course of action and to remember his father’s loyal and distinguished career. When such appeals failed, Lanfranc finally and publicly excommunicated him.8 Although some have seen a measure of sentimental regard for the son of William’s oldest ally in these appeals, it is just as likely that Lanfranc was motivated by political reality. Unlike Ralph or Waltheof, Roger’s links of kinship in Normandy gave him a measure of

5

6

7 8

ready to rise in support, an assertion that I have been unable to verify, William the Conqueror (London, 1964), p. 232. In contrast, F.M. Stenton, in his Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1971), pp. 610–12, saw both Ralph and Waltheof as ‘survivors from the Old English order’. P. Stafford contrasts the English Waltheof with his ‘Breton and Norman’ co-conspirators and summarises the rebellion as an occasion when the ‘Normans in England revolted and an English bishop, Wulfstan, put them down’, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), p. 105. For M. Clanchy in England and its Rulers, 1066–1272 (London, 1983), p. 47, it is Waltheof’s Danish heritage that is emphasised. Lanfranc, no. 35. The genealogy given for Earl Ralph in the 1075 entry is the only such to appear in any recension of the chronicle for a nobleman and it is fuller in its description than those occasionally given for royalty, such as Queen Emma (1002) or King Edward (1042), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Edition, ed. D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas and S.L. Tucker (London, 1961) (henceforth ASC followed by year), 1075. Lanfranc himself is the clearest personal example of this: born in Lombardy, he spent much of his life in Normandy before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury and describing himself as a ‘new Englishman’ (novus Angelus), Lanfranc, no. 2 He also described Thomas Archbishop of York in similar terms, Lanfranc, no. 3. A vivid description of their preparation is given in M. Chibnall, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80) (henceforth OV) iv, p. 310; Lanfranc, nos 31–3. Lanfranc, no. 33A.

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protection; sentiments clearly expressed a decade later by members of the aristocracy in the aftermath of another rebellion.9 No evidence of any similar correspondence with Ralph or Waltheof exists, and no mention of them is made in the letters to Roger. In fact, Lanfranc does not mention Waltheof at all, and Ralph only in the correspondence with the king himself when the rebellion was underway. Here the tone is very different, distinctly anti-Breton and specifically anti-Ralph. Over the course of his correspondence, and in those parts of the communication that he deliberately committed to the enduring form of parchment, Lanfranc marks the change in Ralph’s status through his use of naming patterns.10 Ralph moves from ‘Earl Ralph’ through ‘Ralph the traitor’ to ‘Breton dung’.11 This is extraordinary language and an extraordinary contraction of events. Not only are the others involved not mentioned, but an important English earl has been reduced to ‘Breton dung’. It is possible that Lanfranc used this kind of ethnic descriptor and strong language in the documentation that must have publicly proclaimed Ralph’s exile. It may even have prompted the writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to produce their unique genealogical description of him in response. It certainly seems to have influenced Orderic Vitalis in his reconstruction of events; his narrative traces the progression of Ralph’s fortunes in a succession of different naming patterns that mirror those in the extant English sources.12 Orderic is also the near-contemporary source that discusses the fates of earls Roger and Waltheof in terms of their ethnicity.13 The difference is highlighted so explicitly in this source that its editor, M. Chibnall, suggested that it reflects an official statement to that effect.14 Lanfranc’s focus upon Ralph and particularly upon one aspect of his ethnicity becomes more explicable when seen as part of the political reality of late eleventh-century cross-channel relations. As will be discussed in more detail below, Ralph’s family links in England were limited, whilst his kin in Brittany were outside William’s sphere of influence or concern. Aside from the wedding of 1075, Ralph had no links or ties to any member of the Norman aristocracy. Indeed, Ralph’s Breton heritage may have made him an easy target for the prelate 9

10

11

12

13

14

After the rebellion of 1088, the Norman magnates tempered William Rufus’s inclination to execute Odo of Bayeux and others, citing family links and their position in Normandy as mitigating factors, OV, vi, pp. 132–4. In common with other medieval letter writers, Lanfranc often referred to further details given orally via the messenger, implying a deliberate selection process for information committed to parchment. See for example, his first letter to William concerning the revolt, Lanfranc, no. 34. In Lanfranc, no. 34, written after the battle of Fageduna, the change is marked: ‘Rodulfus comes, immo Rodulfus traditor’. After the successful conclusion of the siege of Norwich, Lanfranc describes England as ‘purged of its Breton dung’ (spurcicia Britonum), Lanfranc, no. 35. At the beginning of his narrative, Orderic refers to the East Anglian earl as ‘Ralph of Norwich’ (Radulfus Nortiwiciensis). This changes to ‘Ralph the Breton’ (Radulfus igitur Brito) during his recounting of the rebels’ motives for rebellion. After his flight from England, Orderic names him ‘Ralph Guader’ (Radulfus de Guader), OV, ii, pp. 310, 314 and 316–18. In the words that Orderic puts into the mouths of the rebels, Waltheof states that the ‘law of England punishes the traitor by beheading’ (Anglica lex capitas obtruncatione tradiorem multat), OV, ii, 314. Later Orderic relates that Roger was ‘judged by the law of the Normans’ (secundum leges Normannorum iudicatus est), OV, ii, p. 319. OV, ii, p. xxxix.


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based so long in Normandy. The relationship between the Normans and the Bretons was not always an easy one and Lanfranc may have been making use of an accepted, but derogatory cultural stereotype.15 Acting in the king’s absence, Lanfranc may also have used such a designation to isolate Ralph within the context of the serious threat that the rebellion posed. The motives of the rebels have never been fully explained but contemporary sources agree in giving them the political aim of removing William from his throne.16 Orderic Vitalis used the episode himself to question the legitimacy of William’s kingship, employing a biblical analogy with many parallels to the Norman conquest of England to express what are widely believed to be contemporary criticisms of William’s monarchy.17 The arrival of King Swegn of Denmark’s son, Cnut, with a large fleet suggests that restoration of Danish rule was proposed, although Orderic states that post-rebellion authority was to rest with one of the earls.18 In marking the change from ‘earl’ to ‘traitor’ in his letters, Lanfranc was clearly emphasising Ralph’s new status; furthermore, in denying his ‘Englishness’ by describing him as ‘Breton dung’, Lanfranc made him a ‘foreigner’ to both an English and a Norman audience. Thus, he undermined the validity of Ralph’s motives and actions. As Harold had demonstrated, English earls could aspire to the English throne. Breton lords, however, had less of a case. Although part Breton, the family history of Earl Ralph is a story of successful continuity through many changes of regime in the turbulent political world of eleventh-century England. Ralph is named by most as Ralph de Gaël or Ralph Guader, although there are no examples of this form of address being used before the events of 1075 for either him or for his father. This is despite the fact that the name refers to Ralph’s Breton patrimony, a compact lordship of about forty parishes in the area of Montfort-Gaël in central Brittany.19 It is unclear how Ralph’s family first acquired lands in England, but Katherine Keats-Rohan has plausibly suggested that his grandfather, a Breton of the Montfort-Gaël line, had travelled first to Normandy with Judith of Rennes, when she married Duke Richard II, and then moved again to England when Richard’s sister Emma became the wife, first of Æthelred II, and then of Cnut.20 The genealogy in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests that this man settled in England and married an Englishwoman who bore him at least two sons, Ralph and Godwine. The former, later titled ‘Ralph the Staller’, appears in Breton documents c.1031 as ‘Ralph the Englishman’, corroborating the Chronicle’s information.21 Furthermore, the 15

16

17 18 19 20 21

See for example the denigration of Bretons and their supposed lifestyle given in The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R.H.C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), p. 74, concerning the Norman incursion into Brittany in 1064. ASC 1075; OV, ii, 310–11. See also C. Lewis ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, ANS 13 (1991), pp. 221–2 for the view that the rebels intended to restore the bounds of larger pre-conquest earldoms. OV, ii, pp. 320–1. ASC 1075; OV, ii, pp. 310–11. GEC, vol. ix (1936), p. 572. COEL, person no. 3516. Ralph the Staller is so called throughout this paper to avoid confusion with his son, the rebellious earl, also named Ralph. Both men held the earldom of East Anglia in succession but ‘Earl Ralph’ in this context will be used to refer only to the younger Ralph. He is called Radulfus anglicus in

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family’s identification with England can be surmised from familial naming patterns, which served to retain a link with their Breton patrimony, whilst also explicitly embracing and announcing their place in ‘English’ society. Whilst Ralph the Staller bore a continental forename (possibly his father’s), his brother bore the English name, Godwine. He, in turn was probably the father of the insularly named Ælsige, described in Domesday as Ralph’s nephew.22 Ralph the Staller himself had two sons that we know about; Ralph the younger earl and his brother Hardwin. Earl Ralph the younger was also described as an ‘Englishman’ in Breton ducal charters.23 In this case the Chronicle tells of a Breton mother, so the designation must reflect the perceived ethnic status or political affiliations of him and his father despite their Breton connections.24 Even from this limited genealogy, it is clear that the family successfully maintained landholdings and connections in both England and Brittany. Although Domesday records the identities and forfeiture of Ralph’s immediate family in England, the records do not mention any kin links with any other members of the Old English aristocracy. Instead, the family had used English-Breton marriage alliances to strengthen further the links between their two areas of landholding. It was a policy that, despite his own marriage, was eventually to leave Earl Ralph isolated in the post-conquest reality of Norman rule. A link with Queen Emma might explain the geographical spread of the family estates and have provided a measure of security and continuity across the many changes of monarch, four of whom were closely related to her. The family held one estate in Cornwall and extensive lands in eastern England, primarily in East Anglia.25 Emma held dower land in the south-west, and in Suffolk, she controlled the eight-and-a-half hundreds of west Suffolk before their grant to the abbey of Bury St Edmunds.26

22 23 24

25

26

Morice, Preuves, ii, col. 371 as quoted in COEL, person no. 3516. P. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), p. 44 suggested that the Chronicle was ‘mistaken’ in its statement that Ralph the Staller was English-born because the entry was made after the conquest and may therefore have confused his place of birth with his land-holdings. I see no reason to doubt the chronicle on this point, especially as other evidence such as the Breton charters, the extent of the family’s estates and their naming patterns supports it. LDB, fol. 324. Morice, Preuves, ii, col. 371 as quoted in COEL, person no. 3516. ASC ‘D’ 1075; K.S.B Keats-Rohan argues that Bretons in this period were noted for an extremely strong sense of patria and Breton cultural distinctiveness, evidenced specifically throughout the use of ethonyms, ‘The Bretons and Normans of England, 1066–1154: The Family, the Fief and the Feudal Monarchy’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 36 (1992), pp. 54–5. In light of this it could be argued that the appellation of ‘Englishman’ given in Breton documents to both generations of Ralph’s family might have been intended as a signal that this family was perceived to have turned its back upon its Breton heritage. Although Earl Ralph held in neither 1066 nor 1086, his tenure is often recorded in Domesday. See extensive references in COEL, person no. 3516. For Godwine, avunculus of Earl Ralph, see LDB, fols 131, 262 and 127v; for Hardwin see fols 90–90v, 223v, 224, 225–225v, 245, 291v, 353–353v, 338, 382v–383, 389; for Ælfsige see fols 130–130v, 350v, 374, 444v. See also, Williams, English, pp. 61–3. D.C. Douglas, Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (Oxford, 1932) (henceforth Feudal Docs), nos 3 and 18. They were administered on her behalf by a thegn named Ælfric whose son, Wihtgar followed Earl Ralph into rebellion. See below, p. 176.


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It was during the reign of Emma’s son, Edward the Confessor, that Ralph gained the office of ‘Staller’.27 Although it is difficult to define clearly the exact nature of this important royal office, Ralph was one of only seven individuals named as such during the 24-year reign of Edward.28 In her study of the men who held this position, Katherin Mack concluded that King Edward deliberately used already wealthy landholders who held outside Wessex in this capacity, in an effort to draw these outlying regions more firmly under royal control.29 If so, then the basis of Ralph’s wealth in England is likely to have been founded before King Edward added to his already established fortune.30 After the 1066 conquest, William recognised his position, wealth and status; the presence of men such as Ralph helped to legitimise the new regime. Ralph appears in early documents of William’s reign supervising the redemption of lands by the English, and a number of writs from Bury St Edmunds dated before 1070 record his elevation to the earldom of Norfolk and Suffolk.31 On his death in around 1069x1070 his son, Ralph, succeeded him, with one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle implying that this was because of his perceived local connections.32 By the time of his succession to the earldom, Ralph was thus the representative of a family that had survived and, indeed, benefited from numerous regime changes. They had successfully negotiated the political and social transitions between the reigns of Æthelred II, Cnut, Harold I, Hardecnut, Edward, Harold II and William, gaining land, status and control of an earldom in the process. That all changed in 1075. The events of that year began with the wedding of Earl Ralph to Emma, the daughter of William FitzOsbern and sister to Earl Roger of Hereford. An alliance with a family historically close to King William was potentially an astute political move on Ralph’s part.33 Yet FitzOsbern’s death in 1071 had prompted the king to split his inheritance between his surviving sons; William, the elder, received all the patrimonial lands in Normandy whilst his younger brother, Roger, was granted his father’s English acquisitions.34 Thus, by 1075 Roger held no land or

27

28 29 30

31

32 33 34

K. Mack, ‘The Stallers: Administrative Innovation in the Reign of Edward the Confessor’, Journal of Medieval History 12 (1986), pp. 123–34 (henceforth ‘Stallers’), pp. 125 and 131 where she names Ralph as attesting four charters of Edward’s given as nos 1028, 1031, 1033 and 1034 from P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968). He is consistently named as such (Radulfus stalre) in Domesday Book. See for example GDB, fols 348v, 377v, and LDB, fols 134v and 293. The others were Osgod Clapa, Ansgar, Robert fitzWimarc, Ælfstan of Boscombe, Eadnoth and Leofing. Mack, ‘Stallers’, p. 125. Mack, ‘Stallers’, p.132. LDB, fols 119 and 144 for the manors of Sporle and Swaffham in Norfolk held by Ralph the Staller in 1066 but which had belonged to the royal demesne and are therefore likely to have been the gift of King Edward. D. Bates, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087 (Oxford, 1998) (henceforth, Bates, Regesta) no. 35, and LDB, fol. 360v. Douglas, Feudal Docs., nos 1, 3, 4, 5; Bates, Regesta, nos 35–8. ‘. . . Ralph his father was English, and was born in Norfolk, and the king therefore [my emphasis] gave the earldom there and Suffolk as well to his son’, ASC ‘D’ 1075. Both William and his father, Osbern, were close followers of Duke/King William as well as being related to the ducal house, COEL, person no. 4746; Domesday People, pp. 487–8. OV, iv, pp. 282–4.

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explicit rights outside of England and Ralph was actually entering into an alliance with a fellow ‘new Englishman’, as Lanfranc might have described him. The wedding of Ralph and Emma was, according to the English sources, the occasion for plotting rebellion. In fact it may have been the formal cementing of an alliance already formed and an occasion for drawing others into the planned revolt.35 What is a matter for dispute is the location of this ‘bride ale that was many men’s bale’.36 In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, its setting is given as Norwich, a logical choice as the administrative centre of Ralph’s earldom, the location of East Anglia’s only royal castle and the site of his new French borough and church.37 Nevertheless, historians have generally followed John of Worcester in his naming of the otherwise obscure manor of Exning in Cambridgeshire.38 This relatively large thirteen-and-a-half-hide manor was not a geographical or jurisdictional centre of authority, nor a traditional family holding. Belonging to Eadgifu the Fair in 1066, it is likely that it was in Ralph’s hands by the 1070s, as it is recorded in Domesday as being administered for the king by Godric dapifer who controlled much of Ralph’s former estate.39 Locating such a prestigious wedding at Exning would have virtually guaranteed the presence of Cambridgeshire’s earl and many others. Indeed, it may have been chosen for that purpose; John of Worcester makes special mention of the ‘chief men of Cambridgeshire’ who were at the feast.40 If Ralph and Roger’s plan to raise forces in their own earldoms and then combine in the Midlands was to succeed, they needed Earl Waltheof.41 In the extant sources, it is the splendour of the wedding that made an impact.42 As the only non-royal wedding mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the eleventh century, its inclusion is significant and the sources’ preoccupation with the splendour of the occasion is probably in retrospective recognition of the event’s importance. As well as the earls, the Chronicle talks of the presence of bishops and abbots. This may simply be a literary motif to enhance the magnificence of the feast, although it should be noted that lands surrounding Exning and within the same hundred were held by the abbeys of Bury St Edmunds,43 Ely,44 35 36 37

38

39 40 41 42 43 44

ASC 1075; P. McGurk, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, 3 vols (Oxford, 1995–98) (henceforth Worcs), 1075. ASC 1075. ASC 1075. As B. Ayers notes in this volume, Ralph held considerable property there, ‘Understanding the Urban Environment: Archaeological Approaches to Medieval Norwich’, above, p. 00. Although Exning is now located within the county of Suffolk, it was listed in the Cambridgeshire folios of Domesday and the ICC notes that jurors such as Hugh of Exning swore in the Cambridgeshire hundred of Staploe: Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton (London, 1876), p. 1. The case for Cambridgeshire being part of Waltheof’s earldom is made by F.S. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof of Northumbria’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 30 (1952), pp. 162–3. GDB, fol. 189v. Worcs 1075. Worcs 1075. John of Worcester for example described it as a ‘splendid wedding’ (nuptiasque per magnificas), Worcs 1075. GDB, fol. 192. GDB, fol. 190v.


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Ramsey45 and the nunnery at Chatteris,46 so the presence of some prominent ecclesiastics is feasible. Following his father’s example, Ralph was a benefactor of the Norfolk abbey of St Benet, Holme, and entries in Domesday suggest that he may, with his wife, have given or confirmed gifts to the monks.47 More significant is the possibility that another Cambridgeshire landholder, Remigius, bishop of Lincoln, was involved.48 There are two separate extant sources which implicate him in treason. The chronicler Henry of Huntingdon (himself an archdeacon in the diocese of Lincoln) told of how the bishop had been accused of treason and cleared through the use of the ordeal of hot iron by a member of his household.49 This reference is unfortunately undated, as is a letter from Lanfranc to the bishop inviting him to come and talk personally to the archbishop concerning slanderous remarks being made about him.50 This letter is, however, grouped within the collection together with the other letters of Lanfranc concerning the rebellion of 1075.51 Remigius’s possible involvement remains speculative but intriguing.52 His fellow ecclesiastics from East Anglia are notable only by their absence in reports of the rebellion. Lanfranc used Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, and Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, to oppose the rebels in Herefordshire, but there is no mention of Erfast, bishop of Thetford, or any of the great abbots of East Anglia being employed in a similar fashion, although the Domesday holdings of the bishop show lands gained from rebels, perhaps as a reward for his loyalty.53 The rebellion was, of course, a failure; Ralph fled to Brittany, Waltheof was executed, whilst Roger, with his important kinship links in Normandy (in particular his brother, William of Breteuil) was imprisoned for the remainder of King William’s life.54 As to the fortunes of the others involved, the Chronicle states that ‘all the Bretons who were at the marriage feast’ were blinded, driven from the land or put to shame.55 Once again, an ethnic description has been used in what a 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55

GDB, fols 192v and 197v. GDB, fol. 193. It is difficult to distinguish between the two Earls Ralph in these entries; if the younger is meant (as the entry for Tunstead, fol. 244, would indicate) then the donation must have taken place either at or very soon after the 1075 wedding. J.R. West, The Register of St Benet, Holme, 1020–1210, NRS 2 (1932), pp. 3 and 32–3, and LDB, fols 158, 216 and 244–244v. For his Cambridgeshire holdings see GDB, fols 189, 190v. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenaway (Oxford, 1996), pp. 410–11. Lanfranc, no. 37. Lanfranc, pp. 12–15. A possibility also considered by D. Bates, Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, 1067–1092 (Lincoln, 1992), p. 14. John of Worcester gives the names of Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, and Odo, bishop of Bayeux, as leading the forces against the rebels in the east (Worcs 1075). Orderic Vitalis adds those of William de Warenne and Richard fitzGilbert (OV, ii, pp. 316–17). In one of his letters, Lanfranc notes that Robert Malet was also active at the siege of Norwich (Lanfranc, no. 35). Although no mention is made of him, the holding of the bishop of Thetford (William de Bellofago by 1087) includes lands previously held by Earl Gyrth and Earl Ralph which may have been granted to the bishop after the rebellion. See below for more on the post-rebellion distribution of Earl Ralph’s lands. OV, ii, 318–19, and iv, 96–7; ASC 1076. ASC 1075.

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closer look at the evidence from Domesday reveals to be an overly simplistic statement. It ignores the participation of Roger, Waltheof and their men, but adds to the historiographical perception of Ralph as a ‘Breton lord’ and the rebellion as primarily Breton in nature. It has always been known that many Bretons, such as the son of Count Eudo of Brittany, Count Alan, remained loyal and indeed were well rewarded with the lands of those who fell in the rebellion. Evidence from Domesday suggests that many of the Bretons close to Ralph actually survived his fall, and that, even in East Anglia, many of those who joined the rebellion and consequently lost their lands were native English landholders from before the conquest. Unlike that in the Chronicle account, the picture that emerges from the administrative documentation, is not one of division along ethnic lines, but a glimpse into the governmental needs of post-conquest England and William’s strategy in filling the political and administrative vacuum in East Anglia left by Ralph’s fall. In the case of many of the individuals who disappear from English sources after 1075, Breton roots can be assumed, and extensive work undertaken by Katharine Keats-Rohan into the Bretons in England has uncovered East Anglian landholders such as Humphrey of Saint-Omer, Lisios de Moutiers and Walter of Dol amongst others, who almost certainly forfeited their lands in that year.56 The toponyms of the latter two place their origin within the modern French département of Ille-et-Vilaines in Brittany, and charter attestations suggest that two other probable candidates for forfeiture in this year, Wihenoc and Eudo, son of Glamahoc, also came from here, the same district as Ralph’s lordship of Montfort-Gaël.57 It should not be assumed, however, that the close tenurial relationship between Norman lords and their tenants exemplified in the English estates recorded in Domesday was necessarily replicated in these cases.58 Even when within the same large département, the known lands of all these individuals lay well outside the compact lordship of Gaël, implying that other ties and forms of patronage lay behind their presence in England.59 Amongst those who probably forfeited as a direct result of the rebellion was an important local thegn named Wihtgar. He was the son of Ælfric, the thegn once described as a ‘comes famosus’ who had administered the hundreds of west 56

For Humphrey, see LDB, fols 115v, 158v (where his forfeiture is recorded) and 172v, 172v; for Lisios see Bates, Regesta, no. 117; OV, ii, p. 194; COEL, person no. 5885; GDB, fols 197v, 212v; LDB, fols 49, 49v, 187v, 239v, 279v, 403. Walter of Dol does not appear in the COEL database but is named as such in LDB, fols 299v, 321v, 322, 371, 377, 407v. 57 For Wihenoc see COEL, person no. 5888; Domesday People, p. 466 and LDB, fols 116v, 161v, 190v, 214, 230–2, 234v, 275–6. For Eudo see Bates, Regesta, no. 117, COEL, person no. 5889, and LDB, fols 111, 138v, 225v–226v, 229v, 235v, 278, 279. 58 See for example J.C. Ward, ‘The Place of the Honour in Twelfth-Century Society: the Honour of Clare’, PSIA 35 (1983), 191–5; C. Lewis, ‘The Norman Settlement of Herefordshire under William I’, ANS 7 (1985), pp. 205–7; R. Mortimer, ‘Land and Service: the Tenants of the Honour of Clare’, ANS 8 (1986), pp. 119–41; J. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), esp. pp. 45–7. 59 The bounds of Ralph’s ‘compact lordship’ are given by D.C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1064), p. 23. Other individuals with possible Breton connections include William son of Gorhan, who was mentioned in the Ely plea of the early 1070s but whose lands were held by Hervé bituriencis in 1086. Bates, Regesta, no. 117, and LDB, fols 386, 386v, 387b, 388, 441.


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Suffolk for Queen Emma before their grant to the abbey at Bury.60 He held a compact and wealthy estate in west Suffolk and north-east Essex containing manors, lands and men worth over £200 in 1066.61 Two entries in the ‘Annexations’ section of the Suffolk Domesday demonstrate that Wihtgar was active in annexing men ‘after King William came’ and state explicitly that, at some point, he forfeited his lands.62 This implies a form of action against the king for which he was punished, and in fact all the uses of this term in Little Domesday that relate to an individual’s forfeiture can be shown to have been concerned with the 1075 rebellion.63 The estate of Wihtgar and his father Ælfric was in the hands of Richard, son of Count Gilbert of Brionne, by 1086, when it formed the nucleus of the estate later known as the Honour of Clare. An analysis of this composite estate reveals several features which support the supposition that Richard did not receive the East Anglian portion of his large estates until after the 1075 rebellion, and probably as a direct result of his part in quelling it. The vast majority of Richard’s East Anglian lands came to him from two pre-conquest antecessores; Wihtgar and Fin. The name ‘Fin’ is an unusual one and there is only one occurrence of it in the whole of Domesday that cannot be confidently ascribed to this individual.64 Domesday reveals that Fin, too, was active in annexing men after the conquest, whilst in Essex in particular he was known as ‘Fin the Dane’.65 An Ely legal plea dated between 1072 and 1075 names ‘Fin the Englishman’ as unjustly holding their demesne land and one sokeman in Hitcham, Suffolk; in 1086, Richard held one sokeman with forty acres there.66 There is an obvious but not, I believe, insurmountable difference in Fin’s ethnic descriptor which itself demonstrates how wary we should be of what appear to be clear-cut contemporary distinctions. The English jury of presentment for the Domesday inquest may well have accurately named Fin as a man originally of Danish descent, whilst the clerk who drew up the Ely plea may have distinguished him from the other named aggressors as the only ‘native’ Englishman. His is the only non-French or Breton name in the Ely text and, if the identification is accepted, the only man to hold both before the conquest and at the time of the plea. Fin’s appearance in the early 1070s, and his disappearance by the time of 60 61 62 63

64

65 66

F. Hervey, The Pinchbeck Register Relating to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, vol. II (Oxford, 1925), p. 290. R. Mortimer, ‘The Beginnings of the Honour of Clare’, ANS 3 (1980), pp. 128–30. ‘. . . Wisgarus tenet quando se fore fecit’, LDB, fol. 448 Saibamus (Babergh hundred). R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law (Cambridge, 1998), references on pp. 535 and 538. An analysis of the 117 entries in LDB recording forfeiture reveals that 28% of entries refer to either the hundred, borough or soke forfeitures, or to land forfeited because of a legal case. 72% refer to the forfeiture of lands by individuals without further qualification; of these, over 89% mention Earl Ralph whilst the other 11% is comprised of entries relating to Ralph’s brother, Hardwin, Humphrey of Saint-Omer, Walter of Dol and Wihtgar. GDB, fols 149v, 153 (Buckinghamshire, where ‘Fin the Dane’ held), and LDB, fols 41–41v, 98, 98v (for the holding of Wulfgifu, wife of Fin), 352, 391, 392v–395v and 418. The only occurrence that cannot be ascribed to this person is GDB, fol. 362 where ‘Fin’ was one of three named holders of 7 bovates of land in Lincolnshire. For his activities ‘in the time of King William’ see LDB, fols 393, 393v, 394; for ‘Fin the Dane’ see LDB, fols 41 and 41v. Bates, Regesta, no. 117; LDB, fol. 385.

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Domesday, makes 1075 the most likely date for both him and Wihtgar to have forfeited or lost their lands. The timing of the rebellion in between the two sets of data required by the Domesday inquest (information was given for the time of King Edward or 1066 and that of King William in 1086) can obscure intermediate tenure and changes. Yet, in the cases of all those English thegns mentioned here, their manorial holdings have a value for a third point in time, the time at which the named 1086 holder acquired these lands, which may indicate that the change in tenure occurred at a point removed from the immediate aftermath of the 1066 conquest.67 An additional piece of evidence to support 1075 as the date at which Richard gained his East Anglian lands lies in his tiny, one virgate holding in Whaddon (Cambridgeshire). Domesday tells us that this ‘. . . did not pertain to the predecessor of Richard, nor was he ever seised of it, but Ralph Guader [interlined] held it on the day on which he offended against the king’.68 Whaddon has been identified as the site of Fageduna, the battle at which Richard led the king’s forces. It looks as if Richard wished to possess the very ground of his victory and that his lands in this region were a classic case of ‘. . . to the victor, the spoils’.69 One of the few of Richard’s Suffolk holdings that did not come from either Wihtgar or Fin had previously been held by Farthir, described as a ‘thegn of King Edward’.70 In 1066 he held a modest estate totalling just over ten-and-a-half carucates of land predominantly in Norfolk.71 Again, all the manorial entries have a third value given in Domesday, but unlike the majority of East Anglian holdings, Fathir’s estate did not descend to one successor but to those known from other information to have benefited from Ralph’s fall in 1075. Aside from that granted to Richard,72 two manors in Norfolk went to William d’Ecouis73 who also gained the lands of Ralph’s brother, Hardwin, and land in Herefordshire. Fathir’s remaining manors were granted to Ralph de Bellofago who also gained the lands of Eudo, son of Glamahoc.74 Such a distribution indicates that Fathir was another English thegn and landholder who forfeited after joining the rebellion. A close examination of the diplomatic of Domesday, as well as clues within the entries themselves, can thus reveal the identities of both Breton and English landholders who, in all likelihood, were dispossessed as a direct result of their participation in the 1075 rebellion. The involvement of wealthy English thegns such as Wihtgar and Fin is worthy of note. Both men had survived the 1066 conquest with their lands virtually intact, and indeed their annexations ‘in the time of King William’ indicate that they were able to take advantage of the tenurial confusion that followed that event. As with Ralph, the family of Wihtgar 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74

A detailed statistical analysis and explanation for the ‘third value’ is given in L. Marten, ‘Lordship and Land: Suffolk in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 2005). GDB, fol. 196v. B. Dickins, ‘Fageduna in Orderic’, in Otium et Negotium: Studies in Onomatology and Library Science Presented to Olof von Feilitzen, ed. F. Sandgren (Stockholm, 1973), pp. 44–45. LDB, fol. 226. LDB, fols 222v, 226, 226v, 391. LDB, fol. 391. LDB, fol. 222v. LDB, fols 226 and 226v.


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had evidently survived other many changes in monarch and regime.75 Nevertheless, nine years after William’s conquest they chose to risk all in revolt against an anointed king. The possibility of historical links between the family of Wihtgar and Earl Ralph has already been noted, although there is no evidence in Domesday of any tenurial connection or link of commendation – a fact usually recorded in the Suffolk folios. Indeed, both men are described as king’s thegns in their own right and Wihtgar himself was the commended lord of many men. Their involvement should be seen as a reflection of the political situation of the 1070s, rather than simply a delayed consequence of the 1066 conquest. Despite the assertion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, not all the Bretons associated with Earl Ralph lost their lands and position in the aftermath of rebellion. Both Bretons and Englishmen close to him can be identified, still holding land and official appointments in 1086 and beyond. All had one thing in common – administrative expertise. One of the Bretons who can be identified is Mainard, described as a miles of Earl Ralph in the early 1070s.76 He was, by the time of Domesday, a man of the abbot of St Benet Holme, and holding from the Breton who benefited most from Ralph’s downfall, Count Alan.77 It is likely that he held a ministerial position under Ralph, as one Domesday entry has him claiming knowledge of whom Ralph was seised of a year before his forfeiture.78 According to a Sibton abbey tradition he gained the manor of Sibton through his marriage to Count Alan’s former wet-nurse and acted as the count’s chamberlain.79 In 1087 he held this manor from Count Alan, together with Wickford (Essex), which had previously belonged to Godric dapifer. Elsewhere, land that he had appropriated in Fincham (Norfolk) was held by Reginald fitzIvo in 1086.80 The only holding of his that can be traced across the conquest is his house in Norwich.81 The Domesday entry for Kalletuna in the Suffolk hundred of Carlford names its pre-conquest holder as Isaac, holding of the abbey of Ely.82 He is another who, it would appear, took advantage of the post-conquest situation; he was named in the Ely plea of the early 1070s as a despoiler of abbey lands and had enough status for the same plea to mention a ‘Peter, the knight of Isaac’.83 Domesday makes his connection with Earl Ralph explicit and the nature of some of the entries in which his name is mentioned has led to the suggestion that he served in a ‘shrieval or quasi-shrieval capacity’.84 In 1086, Isaac was still holding in Suffolk, but by then 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

A list of benefactors to Bury St Edmunds notes that his father, Ælfric, had survived the reigns of Æthelred, Cnut, Harold, Hardecnut and Edward. Cambridge University Library, MS Ee 3 60, fol. 323r. Bates, Regesta, no. 117 LDB, fols 117, 292v–293. LDB, fol. 318, and 185v for another example of him testifying as to Ralph’s holding. Sibton Abbey Cartularies and Charters, vol. I, ed. P. Brown, SRS Charters Series 7 (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 97–8, and vol. III, no. 516. LDB, fols 292v–293 (Sibton), 43 (Wickford) and 276 (Fincham). LDB, fol. 117. LDB, fol. 386v. Bates, Regesta, no. 117 dated 1072x1075. COEL, person no. 870; Domesday People, p. 281.

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as a minor tenant-in-chief in his own right and with new lands gained from English pre-conquest holders. Some of these are noted in the Domesday folios as being the subject of an exchange with the then sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, Roger Bigod.85 This may be an attempt to break the tenurial bonds to the lordship of his disgraced lord, and for Roger to forge his own relationship with an experienced official whose expertise and local knowledge made him valuable.86 Another example of the survival of administrators is Ralph’s former steward, Godric dapifer. In 1086 this Englishman was still administering much of his former lord’s land, but on the behalf of the king. It has been suggested that he was an English relative of the earl; whether or not that was the case, he was married into a prominent local family whose pre-conquest wills are still extant and whose lands Godric held in 1086.87 Like both Ralph the Staller and Earl Ralph, Godric (together with his wife, Ingreda) was a benefactor of the Norfolk abbey of St Benet, Holme.88 He was made sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk by William II.89 The post-rebellion criteria for forfeiture or survival was thus not determined along ethnic lines as the Chronicle suggested, but rested upon individual’s usefulness to the new regime and the need for administrative continuity. The granting of new lands, to replace those previously held from the now-disgraced earl, forged new ties and helped to ensure loyalty. Landholders could be replaced, skilled administrators could not, and the need for them was evidently as acute in 1075 as Ann Williams has shown it to have been after 1066.90 The departure of Ralph from England and King William’s response to the rebellion changed the administrative and tenurial geography of East Anglia. At a functional level, there was some continuity of personnel with individuals such as Godric, Isaac and Mainard continuing to use their skills and expertise in the administration of English customs and law. Nevertheless, there were great changes and even for these individuals there was little tenurial continuity across the rebellion. In the absence of any replacement East Anglian earl, they held new lands from either the king or from Roger Bigod. The exact timing for the accumulation of Roger’s vast East Anglian fief is not known, but his links with the administration of late eleventh-century Norfolk and Suffolk are evident from his Domesday entries and it is likely that the events of 1075 played a part in his success.91 As well as his tenurial connections with those mentioned above, he

85 86

87 88 89 90 91

LDB, fols 179, 331. Isaac probably ended his life as a monk of Eye Priory: V. Brown, Eye Priory Charters, vol. I, SRS Charters Series 12 (Woodbridge, 1992), no. 13. In 1166 his grandson still used the ethnic appellation brito, although a century after the conquest this had more of a memorial function in the recording of family history rather than acting as a natal toponym. COEL, person no. 870; Domesday People, p. 281. COEL, person no. 281; Domesday People, pp. 219–21; D. Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 31–4; Williams, English, pp. 108–9. J.R. West, The Register of St Benet, Holme, nos 6, 119 and 135. J. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 (London, 1990), pp. 60 and 76. Williams, English, especially chapters 4 and 5. See LDB, fol. 337v, Stonham, where Roger of Rames claimed that he held men ‘before Roger Bigod acquired land in Suffolk’. A. Wareham, ‘The Motives and Politics of the Bigod Family, c. 1066–1177’, ANS 17 (1994), pp. 223–42 suggests that Roger’s fortunes may have been based


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held men formerly commended to Toli, and land and men of Northman and Æthelwig of Thetford – all former sheriffs.92 By 1086, both Northman and Æthelwig’s son, Stanheard, were holding a fraction of their former estates as tenants of Roger. As sheriffs both before and immediately following the conquest, both men would have worked closely with Ralph the Staller and possibly Earl Ralph. There is no evidence for the date of Æthelwig’s fall and Roger Bigod’s acquisition of his lands (and possibly office), but it is interesting to note that Stanheard’s only holding-in-chief in 1086 was land in Ousden (Suffolk) which had previously been held by Wihtgar, and is likely, therefore, to have been granted as a new holding to Stanheard after 1075.93 As both a landholder in his own right and an earl, Ralph’s lands were extensive. As well as his inherited estate, they incorporated comital lands held by Earl Gyrth in 1066 and gains made on the fall of the former East Anglian bishop, Stigand, in 1070.94 One of William’s responses to rebellion was not to leave this concentration of lands and men in the hands of one person, but to divide them. Much remained in the king’s hand, administered by Godric dapifer or William de Noyers, but the landed base of loyal subjects in the region was strengthened through additional grants. Individuals such as Count Alan were well rewarded, those named as leading the troops against Ralph also benefited, and many of the Domesday entries of landholders such as William d’Ecouis, Ralph de Bellofago, Rainald son of Ivo and Eudo dapifer amongst others contain lands probably gained in the aftermath of rebellion. The lands of several minor tenants-in-chief identified in Domesday through their occupational by-names may also have come to them as a direct result of the events of 1075. The holdings of Berner ‘the Crossbowman’, his colleagues, Gilbert, Ralph and Robert, and Rabel ‘the Engineer’, all contain lands and men previously held by Earl Gyrth followed by Earl Ralph, or Ralph the Staller.95 It tempting to think that they may have been rewarded for their involvement at the siege of Norwich Castle. Another response to the rebellion was to bring one of William’s most trusted

92

93 94

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upon royal office-holding, noting that he served as sheriff from 1081 to 1087. There are no extant documents that can exactly date the identities of those holding shrieval office in either Norfolk or Suffolk during the 1070s, although Robert Malet’s presence at the siege of Norwich Castle in 1075 may be relevant. See also J. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 84–5. Lands gained by Roger from Ralph’s fief can be seen in LDB, fols 185v, 333, 335. See for example LDB, fols 299v, 334, 334v, 338 for Toli who was active in Suffolk in the 1050s and 1060s; 332, 333, 334, 339v for Northman, active after the conquest, and 141v, 142, 173, 174–175v, 177–179v, 180, 181v, 182, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 190v, 331 for Æthelwig, for whom the evidence of his shrieval office-holding dates from the 1040s and the immediate post-conquest period. J. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 (London, 1990), pp. 60 and 76. LDB, fol. 445v. Although intermediate tenure of estates is rarely explicitly recorded in Domesday, examples of Gyrth’s comital lands passing through Ralph’s hands include LDB, fol. 269 (Brundall) and 287 (Bentley). See LDB, fols 173v, 331, 339 for examples of Stigand’s land and men held by Roger Bigod in 1086. LDB, fols 267v–269v and 444–5. Lanfranc, in one of his letters, mentions the presence of siege engineers at Norwich, Lanfranc, no. 35.

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and closest advisors, Richard fitzGilbert, into the region.96 As a result of his new acquisitions, the founder of the Honour of Clare moved the focus of his lordship from his castle at Tonbridge in Kent, to Suffolk, where the castle complex at Clare was built and from whence the family adopted its toponym. Lanfranc’s deliberate phrasing in the documents concerning the rebellion and the use of ‘legal ethnicity’ as the technicality that determined the fates of earls Roger and Waltheof, demonstrates a contemporary awareness and use of ethnic constructs. Nevertheless, the evidence from administrative sources highlights a more complex political situation in the England of the 1070s, than the analysis of these events within the framework of ethnicity suggested by the chronicle accounts has hitherto acknowledged. This was a widespread rebellion that drew together William’s earls with members of the English thegnage who had survived and even profited from the 1066 conquest. The rebellion threatened William’s legitimacy on the throne of England and his response changed the political and tenurial landscape of East Anglia.

96

See J.C. Ward, ‘Royal Service and Reward: the Clare Family and the Crown, 1066–1154’, ANS 11 (1988), pp. 263–4 for details of Richard’s closeness to William.

East Anglian Politics and Society in the Fifteenth Century: Reflections 1956–2003 Colin Richmond

Once a man has seized power, his love of money displays exactly the same characteristics as gangrene, for gangrene, once established in a body, never rests until it has invaded and corrupted the whole of it. (Anna Comnena: quoted by Donna Leon, Uniform Justice (London, 2003), p. 175)

NOT 1952 as advertised I should say. In 1952 I was far too occupied with a first experience of unrequited love to spare a thought for East Anglian politics and society; indeed I had no idea where East Anglia was. The girl by the way was called Audrey Brewster and I have attempted to commemorate her and the dramatic summer of that year in a paper published in The London Philatelist of 1992–93 entitled ‘Audrey Brewster, Rosa Luxemburg and Me’. The year ought rightly to be 1956, when in my first term at the then University College of Leicester I came upon The Paston Letters and realised that I was destined to be an historian of the fifteenth century. Realization of my destiny to be an historian tout court had come before 1956. On that score if no other I am able to echo Edward Gibbon: ‘I know by experience that from my earliest youth I aspired to the character of an historian.’1 Unlike Gibbon, who tells us that his fourteen months at Magdalen College, Oxford, ‘proved the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life’, my short stay at that college was industrious and, because I was often in the company of K.B. McFarlane, inspirational. Add Bruce McFarlane to The Paston Letters and my fate was sealed: England in the fifteenth century it had to be.2 The ‘character of an historian’: what did Gibbon mean? For the historical character standing before you, what history means is what painting meant for John Constable: it is both a moral undertaking and a way of ordering and transmitting perception. In Constable’s case the subject was the English landscape, in mine it is the English past, most often the fifteenth-century English past.3 A love of East Anglia is something that intrepid explorer and vivid interpreter of a social, a

1 2

3

Memoirs of My Life (Penguin edn, 1990), p. 130. I have also attempted a summary description of this, another formative period in my life: K B McFarlane: Letters to Friends 1940–1966 (Magdalen College, Oxford, 1997), pp. 149–51. Gibbon’s comment on Magdalen is in Memoirs of My Life, p. 76. Michael Rosenthal, John Constable (London, 1987), pp. 123, 130.

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peopled, landscape and this humdrum historian also share. Alas, I do not have his great soul. If I have a soul it is more like that of Immanuel Kant, or rather of the ageing soul Kant describes. He wrote:4 the age at which we obtain the complete use of reason may be determined as follows: [1] as far as the facility to use it competently is concerned it is approximately the twentieth year, [2] as far as calculation to use other human beings is concerned, it is the fortieth year, and [3] the age of wisdom begins at sixty. The latter age is entirely negative. We are finally able to recognize all the foolish mistakes we made in the first two.

Kant also said that ‘after forty we cannot learn anything new, though we can expand our knowledge’; accordingly, we will have to have collected all the materials for thinking before that year.5 The outlook for this lecture, therefore, does not look promising. The soul of an historian, nevertheless, is not quite that of the philosopher. I cannot guarantee any original thought, although I do believe I have had one new idea since I was forty, even if I have forgotten what it is, but I am sensible enough, having achieved the Kantian age of wisdom, to admit to having made mistakes, for example those set right in the second of my appendices. I also know that I continue to collect material. Some of it will feature in this paper. What I have made of it you will have to decide for yourselves. It is time to drop a fifteenth-century East Anglian name – rather than an eighteenth-century East Prussian one. I woke up one morning two or three months ago and instantly knew what Sir John Fastolf must have felt like in the years either side of 1450. Roughly, the feelings are those of an elderly man watching impotently as his country goes to the dogs. Misgovernment at any time is hard to take; if as a young man one has lived though stirring times, it then becomes more than a sorry spectacle: it induces passionate rage. Fastolf had played an active part in Henry V’s miraculous conquest of France and had been in the very forefront of the valiant English endeavour under the duke of Bedford to further and then defend Henry’s achievements. By the mid-1440s William, duke of Suffolk, was the effective head of English government, peace not war was being promoted, and England itself appeared to be at sixes and sevens. Even if that old standby, economic decline, might be invoked by certain historians to account for England’s rapid descent from the heights of Henry V’s reign to the depths of Henry VI’s, and the government’s reliance on credit (rather than taxation) by others, there was no doubt in Fastolf’s mind as there is none in mine, that it was the duke of Suffolk’s want of a principled approach either to war or to peace, as well as his inability to meet a complex reality with a realistic sense of purpose, which was to be blamed. A gathering of nerve and a revival of energy on the part of the French also had much to do with the nadir reached in English fortunes in and after 1450. Yet, it was the terrible failure of those who governed England under Henry VI that Fastolf and his circle found hard to forgive, and, as the phoney civil war of the 1450s took its inevitable course, found impossible to

4 5

Cited by Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge, 2001), p. 95. Ibid., p. 145.

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forget. The duke of Suffolk was murdered in May 1450; his former affinity, led by his intelligent and abrasive widow, Alice Chaucer, survived to plague Fastolf, his friends, and successors for another twenty-five years. I do not think it is too wide of the mark to suggest that from 1440 or thereabouts William, duke of Suffolk headed a mafia in East Anglia. After his death in 1450 it had not the same power; Alice Chaucer, nonetheless, ensured that it was very far from becoming a spent force. In this paper I shall not deal with the years after 1450. I have done so before. Besides, to Rowena Archer I leave the task of documenting Alice Chaucer’s defining role in East Anglian politics down to the old dragon’s death in 1478. She was never a power in the country at large as her husband had been, and it is that nodal point where local and central politics coalesce that needs our particular attention. The crisis of 1450 was the crisis of fifteenth-century England. The other national crises of 1459–61, 1469–71, and 1483–87, it could be argued, were only a little less important; they were not, however, as important for East Anglia as that of 1450, unless one believes that at Bosworth John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford, was as concerned about wresting dominion over East Anglia from John Howard, duke of Norfolk, as he was in helping Henry Tudor win the English crown. I hope, too fondly, that I shall have time to say something about these later crises towards the end of this paper; meanwhile, back to William, duke of Suffolk, in the 1440s. Historians have sought to rationalise his conduct from the age of Charles Lethbridge Kingsford until our own. I do not think they have succeeded. We begin with a Paston paper: Davis 872.6 William Burgeys of Swafield, Norfolk, reported that during his persecution by Reginald Rous of Dennington, Suffolk, a lawyer who was making a career in de la Pole service, Judge William Paston had counselled him to ‘make an end qwat so ever thou pay, for he xal elles on-do the and brynge the to nowte’. The reason for such defeatism was simple. Reginald Rous, being ‘feid wyth’ William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, ‘and mech . . . of hese consel’, was unassailable, there being not a single lawyer in Norfolk and Suffolk who would take up Burgeys’s cause against someone so well connected, said Judge William, as he himself had discovered when he ‘had a ple agens hym’. The document itself could date from after Judge William’s death in 1444; the incident it describes clearly has to be before that. If William Burgeys had been persuaded to record his grievance by those mounting the post-1450 campaign to bring down the de la Pole mafia, his tale might have lost nothing in the telling, but that Reginald Rous was bent on chicanery, which involved William Burgeys having to purchase the manor of Swafield Hall on uncongenial terms and against his will, is, I believe, not to be questioned. One reason for regarding William’s story as genuine is that his unusual will of May 1466 suggests that he was an honest man. Perhaps all wills are suggestive of such a thing; nonetheless, the will of William Burgeys is singular enough to

6

Norman Davis, ed., The Paston Letters and Papers (Oxford, 1971–6), ii, pp. 517–19. The document (BL Additional MS 27443, fol. 90) is damaged so that the sense is not always readily graspable.

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reveal a man of integrity as well as individuality.7 It is especially remarkable in that William stated that Swafield Hall, his only manor, was to be sold by his executors so that a priest might sing for his soul for seven years in the church of St Nicholas at Swafield, where he wished to be buried beside the grave of his wife Alice. It was the property Reginald Rous had wished upon him; now, some twenty or thirty years later, William wished it away again. What he called his messuage in Swafield with all his other property there and in the surrounding area he left to James, his son and heir, but James too had to find a priest to sing in the church of St Nicholas – for three years. There was another son, Henry, and a married daughter Beatrice; they were only left sheep, as were a whole host of other folk. The poor were kindly remembered, notably those of Mautby, Margaret Paston’s home town. Every pauper of Swafield and of five other adjacent townships was left a penny, and the thirteen poor men who were to attend William’s funeral were to have gowns and food and drink. Twenty marks was to be spent on new tabernacles for the images of the Blessed Virgin and of St Nicholas in Swafield church, and a hundred masses were to be celebrated for him by the four orders of friars at Norwich. William Burgeys undoubtedly believed in the efficacy of prayer, the prayers of the poor in particular. Some might say that he had a bad conscience. I am not among them: in his dealings with Reginald Rous I detect only a good man badly treated. It could be countered that that is what I want to believe, because of my belief that William, duke of Suffolk, his followers and familiars, of whom Reginald Rous was one, were a thoroughly bad lot who ‘governed’ East Anglia for a decade or so entirely to their own advantage. Such a belief only demonstrates that I have swallowed the Fastolf case against the duke, hook, line and sinker. Yet, as Anthony Smith has demonstrated, Fastolf was treated even more high-handedly by the duke (with whom he had been at odds since 1437) over his Essex estate of Dedham in the later 1440s than was William Burgeys by Reginald Rous over Swafield Hall.8 Dr Smith writes unequivocally of the duke’s ‘illegal actions’. Whether the de la Pole group acted illegally or simply ‘leaned’ on people to get what they wanted, they ignored both law and conventional morality. If it is counterfactually argued that had the earl of Oxford, or the duke of Norfolk, or indeed Fastolf himself, been in a similar position of authority at Westminster each of them would have behaved no differently, lording it over the region as did the duke of Suffolk, that in other words contemporary criticism of the de la Pole faction was merely sour grapes, the historian’s short answer has to be that he or she has enough trouble interpreting what did happen without having to consider what did not. The longer answer, one that engages with the capacity of all members of fifteenth-century upper class society to be un- or anti-social, cannot be tackled here. To profess my belief that, whatever the mid-century earl of Oxford and duke of Norfolk were capable of, Sir John Fastolf, who in his dealings 7 8

The will is NRO, NCC, 41 Jekkys. Dated 12 May 1466, it was proved on 22 December of the same year. Anthony Smith, ‘Litigation and Politics: Sir John Fastolf’s Defence of his English Property’, in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. A. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 66–7.


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with his neighbours, tenants, and servants was the spitting image of Dickens’ Sir Leicester Dedlock,9 had too strong a feeling for the welfare of the country to behave as did the duke of Suffolk, will not, I fear, convince the doubters. Moreover, the evidence that indicts the de la Poles does not all emanate from the Fastolf circle. Others outside it suffered too. Those abuses of power were no doubt as familiar to Fastolf and his friends as they are to us: the duke’s dubious role in the business of the Clifton inheritance, his and Alice’s far from disinterested involvement in the dispersion of the Kerdiston landed estate (and the dowager duchess’s subsequent high-handed treatment of Sir Terry Robsart, husband of Sir Thomas Kerdiston’s daughter and heir Elizabeth), and the pair’s decisive intervention in the marriage arrangements of John Fitzralph and Alice Whalesborough. All of these ‘abuses’, apart from Alice Chaucer’s ignoble behaviour to Sir Terry Robstart, date to the 1440s. What such threateningly wanton behaviour induced in many landed East Anglians outside the charmed circle of the de la Pole orbit was outrage bordering on panic, an emotion not unlike that aroused in the English landed class generally in the last few months of the reign of Richard II: the ground seemed to be shifting beneath its feet. Property was sacred. One might fight tooth and nail to acquire and keep it in the Sir Leicester Dedlock/Sir John Fastolf fashion, yet when a tyrant, local or national, who stooped to everything and stopped at nothing, came along, there was little one could do to resist him. Such a figure, it seems to me, was William, duke of Suffolk, who with his redoubtable wife tyrannized East Anglia in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. A measure of the duke’s overbearing position and criminal attitude is the paralysis of the two other great men of the region, the duke of Norfolk and the earl of Oxford.10 9

Readers of Bleak House will recall the exchange between Sir Leicester and his legal man of business: ‘He [Mr Boythorn] is obstinate,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘It is only natural to such a man to be so,’ says Sir Leicester, looking most profoundly obstinate himself. ‘I am not surprised to hear it.’ ‘The only question is,’ pursues the lawyer, ‘whether you will give up anything.’ ‘No, sir,’ replies Sir Leicester. ‘Nothing. I give up?’ ‘I don’t mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you would not abandon. I mean any minor point.’ ‘Mr Tulkinghorn,’ returns Sir Leicester, ‘there can be no minor point between myself and Mr Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe that I cannot readily conceive how any right of mine can be a minor point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual, as in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.’ The role and attitudes of the landowning classes perfectly put. For Mr Tulkinghorn read Reginald Rous, esquire. I am not the only one who subscribes to the idea that fifteenth-century lawyers were a thoroughly bad lot, whichever lordly patron they served. Here is an eminent East Anglian of our own age on the subject: ‘Thomas Rolf, sergeant-at-law, built chancel and nave c. 1435: he appears in his robes in brass on a Purbeck altar-tomb with a Latin inscription saying what a flower he was among lawyers. What kind of flower is not specified here, but evidently he was a pretty poisonous plant cultivated in the Earl of Oxford’s garden.’ This is Norman Scarfe, Essex: a Shell Guide (London, 1968), p. 108, sub Gosfield. 10 For the Clifton inheritance, see Roger Virgoe, ‘Inheritance and Litigation in the Fifteenth Century: The Buckenham Disputes’, The Journal of Legal History 15 (1994), pp. 23–40, esp.

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It would be naïve to think that a local ‘boss’of the duke of Suffolk’s sort had no notion of serving his country. Here a distinction needs to be made. Or at any rate an observation. William owed his local power to the power he had at Westminster. William could exert his power in such a high-handed manner in East Anglia because those whom he mistreated, as William Paston had told William Burgeys, had no recourse in either the central or local courts of law and no one able to stand up for them at the royal court. This does not mean that William and those who did his bidding in central government were bad men, politicians either without any idea of how to govern the realm, or politicians whose policy was ineffective. The first alternative is simply impossible: politicians sometimes have the appearance of drifting aimlessly, reaching for one policy after another as drowning men are said to clutch at straws, but even if their minds are an ideological blank they dream of efficiency and managerial success. For example, they go to war and believe that there is a moral imperative to do so. In the 1440s the duke of Suffolk, whether or not peace was more energetically the policy of Henry VI than it was his own, was committed to bringing war to an end. Making peace is almost infinitely more complicated than making war: starting a war is relatively easy; ending one is immensely difficult. Henry V had found it so. If Henry, and after him his capable brother, the duke of Bedford, and the equally capable and devoted Lancastrian Cardinal Beaufort had found it so, there was every reason to suppose that William, duke of Suffolk, would also. In fact and in every conceivable way he made an absolute pig’s ear of it. Politics is all about success, having a policy that works; the duke of Suffolk failed lamentably. He had to go. Henry VI and the lordly politicians at Westminster, many of them the duke’s own creations, were understandably reluctant to see him depart. He was, after all, their man. On the other hand, the political community at large demonstrated in June 1450 that the duke’s government was no longer to be tolerated. As Isobel Harvey and others have shown, Jack Cade and his followers were responsible members of their local communities; they came to London to protest the failure of a regime and to do something about it. By then some of their number had dispatched the duke of Suffolk, whom even Henry VI and the lords of parliament, under pressure from the Commons had been obliged to dismiss. One wonders what the gentlemen of Suffolk were thinking when on 30 April 1450 at Ipswich on the eve

27–9; it should be added to Roger’s footnotes that assignment of dower to Joan, widow of Sir John Clifton, was made in February 1448: NRO, HIL 2/27, a miscellaneous bundle of fifteenth-century accounts for the Knyvett manor of Hilborough, Norfolk. For the Kerdiston affair, I am grateful to Charles Moreton for sending me his unpublished History of Parliament biography of Sir Thomas Kerdiston (d.1446); see also GEC, VII, pp. 196–8, and Roger Virgoe’s extensive notes on the family, now deposited at CEAS. In the case of Alice Chaucer and Sir Terry Robsart (d.1496), Charles Moreton’s biography of Sir Thomas Kerdiston and Roger Virgoe’s notes on the Robsart family need to be consulted. What were the contents of the red book that Sir Terry Robsart gave Sir John Paston (Davis, i, p. 517)? I have dealt with the FitzralphWhalesborough marriage in The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings (Manchester, 2000), pp. 234–7. The de la Poles also appear to have used sharp practice to protect their own inheritance: Rowena Archer, ‘Jane with the Blemyssh: A Skeleton in the De La Pole Closet?’, Tant D’Emprises – So Many Undertakings: Essays in Honour of Anne F. Sutton, ed. Livia Visser-Fuchs (London, 2003), pp. 12–26.


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of his forced emigration, the duke swore on the sacrament that he was innocent of the charges levelled at him in the Commons’ bill of impeachment. Which gentlemen were they (one would dearly like to know)? No doubt some of them thought him ill used, some that he was the dupe of Fate, while others talked about the dreadful pass things had come to and the possibility of mob rule. Still others, if they had bothered to attend what they might plausibly have regarded as an empty gesture, considered the duke a liar, a fraud, and a cheat. Whether there should be peace and how it should be obtained, or whether there ought to be war and how it ought to be conducted had been no less part of their thinking than it had been that of the politicians at Westminster. In other words, the crisis of 1450 was a national one; it was not only about, it was not principally about, the abuse of local power in East Anglia. How the country was being run, as well as (if not more than) how the shires were, was what men and women cared about, talked about, and wrote to one another about, as the Paston Letters so abundantly affirm. Political redress was in one respect easier in fifteenth-century England, including East Anglia, than it is now. The duke of Suffolk was not allowed to retire gracefully abroad with what amounted to a fat pension. His political peers wished him to evade the responsibility that accompanies power (after all it might be, as in the Wars of the Roses it turned out for many of them it was, their turn next), but the commoners of England, never shy of taking responsibility into their own hands, saw to it that the duke and a number of his followers did not get away with failure. Politics counted in the fifteenth century, passions were engaged, those who had been found wanting were compelled to suffer the consequences of failure. What happened to the parson of Alderton, Suffolk, in 1450 is paradigmatic. His parishioners murdered him. It was not because John Squyer was a priest they did not like that they killed him; it was because he was William duke of Suffolk’s chaplain and his Receiver General.11 Poor John Squyer’s assassination is a perfect example of the way in which local and central politics were inseparably bound together. It is only for convenience that the historian distinguishes

11

For the killing of John Squyer see TNA, C1/19/144: it is a reference I owe to Roger Virgoe. For John Squyer as the duke’s unruly chaplain, see Anthony Smith, ‘Litigation and Politics’, p. 70. For him as the duke’s Receiver General, see NRO, JER 259, the account of Richard Wood, bailiff of Costessey, for 1443–44, under liveries. The account is wrongly dated to 1442–43 in The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase, pp. 239 and 240. I have also miscalculated the liveries on p. 239: they were not over £100. John Squyer was delivered £20 on 8 April 1444 and a further £20 on 21 June 1444; William Harleston had £20 on 3 October 1444. More importantly, I am now able to recognise how slipshod were the accounting and auditing of this Costessey account; all was not as well as suggested on pp. 239 and 240 of The First Phase. Is it significant? Was the duke too busy with affairs of state to give much attention to estate management? Was his forty-year-old duchess too occupied with her two-year-old son, her only child? At a late stage I came across what is undoubtedly another reference to John Squyer of Alderton. He was involved as the duke’s Receiver General in an exchange of lands at Saxmundham, Suffolk, in April 1450: John Blatchly, A Famous Antient Seed-Plot of Learning: A History of Ipswich School (Ipswich, 2003), p. 15 n. 1, where the author cites Bodleian Library, MS Top. Suffolk b. 2 as his source. The John Squyer who was the petitioner to the Chancellor in C1/19/144 is almost certainly revealed as the far more famous John Squyer, schoolmaster of Ipswich School 1479–1524 (Blatchly, Ipswich School, pp. 15–25); he describes himself in his petition as the son of John Squyer, brother of Richard Squyer, father of the John Squyer murdered in 1450.

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between them. The good folk of Alderton did not, anymore than did Fastolf and his circle, or the Commons in parliament, when they roundly condemned the duke and duchess of Suffolk for misdemeanours great and small, and (as we would say) local and national. That bonding of the local and the national is also how John Heydon and Thomas Tuddenham came to be so heartily disliked by the Pastons. Is it sufficient in attributing political attitudes to state that John Paston and John Heydon were rivals for land and power in North Erpingham hundred? Does a provincial feud between families, however petty the province, however fierce the feud, amount to more than the sum of its parts? It is not to be gainsaid that the details, the nuts and bolts of landlordism, count for something, for the spirit of Sir Leicester Dedlock was as manifest in north-east Norfolk in the fifteenth century as it was in Midland England in the nineteenth. Yet, Dickens at no point encourages his readers to believe that Sir Leicester allowed animosity towards Mr Boythorn to determine his political thinking; rather the reverse: such political thought as Sir Leicester entertained determined his stance towards the Laurence Boythorns of his limited world. No more, it seems to me, should we regard the unease of the Pastons at the intrusion of John Heydon into what they considered ‘their patch’ as the motive for their opposition towards William, duke of Suffolk’s foreign policy and their resentment towards his and his followers’ corrupt practices nearer home. Those who joined the duke of Suffolk in the abuse of power require further attention. As does the nature of the criticism levelled at them by the Pastons. What is interesting in this regard is that so little attention was paid to the marital difficulties of John Heydon and Thomas Tuddenham. Tuddenham had been married in 1418 or thereabouts; he was seventeen. His wife, Alice, was a daughter of ‘one of the most powerful men in east Anglia, indeed in England’, John Wodehouse, esquire, of Roydon near Castle Rising, Norfolk.12 Thomas and Alice lived together until about 1425, when the marriage not having been consummated, and Alice having had a child by her father’s chamberlain, the couple separated. Alice became a nun at Crabhouse before 1429: she was still there in 1475. There was a well-publicised divorce in 1436, five years after John Wodehouse’s death in 1431. Possibly, Tuddenham at that time wished to remarry, the bishop of Norwich’s court, where the divorce proceedings were heard and the annulment was granted, giving him permission to do so. He never did remarry, but he did father a bastard, for Henry Tuddenham, who plays an exiguous role in The Paston Letters, was certainly his son.13 None of this appears to have raised a Paston 12

The quotation is from Roger Virgoe, ‘The Divorce of Sir Thomas Tuddenham’, NA 34 (1969), pp. 406–18. Unless otherwise noted, what follows is from that paper. 13 Davis ii, pp. 46, 186, 213–14. Henry was also involved in a law case against William Paston II in King’s Bench: TNA, KB27/795, placita 52d, Hilary 1460, a reference I owe to Roger Virgoe. In 1969 Roger had no proof that Henry was Thomas’s son; he subsequently acquired it and the following evidence was among his notes at his death. In a will of 1480 Lawrence Fincham, citizen and fishmonger of London, left £13 6s 8d for the maintenance of two young scholars at Oxford or Cambridge; they were to pray for his soul, the souls of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, Henry his son, and for the soul of Thomas Norwood, who had been Lawrence’s master. It is possibly significant that he also left a jewel to the nunnery at Crabhouse. The will is TNA, PCC 3 Logge. I notice that J.C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament, Biographies 1439–1509 (London, 1936), p. 880, has


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eyebrow, nor was any of it used as ammunition against one of the two men the family held chiefly responsible under the duke of Suffolk for their troubles before 1462, when Sir Thomas Tuddenham, on the slightest of grounds, was tried and executed for treason. Not even the curious incident of Sir Thomas’s gallivanting with Alice Chaucer in fancy dress in Lakenham Wood immediately outside the walls of Norwich seems to have caught the Pastons’ attention sufficiently for them (or anyone else) to have commented on what seems to us, as it seemed to the authorities at Norwich, an incident of remarkable impropriety.14 Sex had no part to play in the politics of fifteenth-century East Anglia: the distinction between private and public was well understood and sex was a private matter. It was when that distinction was not observed in the vital area of property that trouble for public servants loomed large. It was that Thomas Tuddenham and the other de la Pole minions had used public office (in East Anglia the offices of the Duchy of Lancaster as well as those of Justice of the Peace, Sheriff, and Escheator) for private gain, that made the crisis of 1450 different in kind and scale from the later crises of the Wars of the Roses which affected the region. An enduring myth is that for Englishmen, though not necessarily English women, it is property that is arousing; sex comes a distant second. As with all myths, a truth of some sort is to be discerned. It is one that seems to be passing. Once the Englishman’s home was his castle, where he might have sex with security, whereas now sex is just as much a public business as is real estate. In the fifteenth century that was not the case. To us it seems that the unconventional married lives of Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon ought to have made them more vulnerable to their critics, the butt of public ridicule. It was not so. John Heydon was as unlucky in marriage as was Thomas Tuddenham. His wife too had a child by another man. There was, however, no divorce; Heydon simply separated from her and took a mistress. Probably because he already had a son and heir by her, and because she came from the Winters, one of the leading families in north-east Norfolk, where the upstart Heydon was creating a patrimony, annulment was not an option. It is true that Margaret Paston did write with some glee to her husband in July 1444, when the news broke of John Heydon’s discomfiture, but it was only in the last paragraph of a letter in which she had

Henry unequivocally as the bastard son of Thomas Tuddenham, his source being a reference in the Ipswich Corporation Records to ‘Henry Tuddenham son of Thomas Tuddenham’ receiving the freedom of the town in 1450. It is odd that Roger missed this. Perhaps he did not often use the volume: however, in Wedgwood’s biography of Sir Thomas Tuddenham (Biographies, pp. 880–1) his court connections, especially in the later 1440s, are well brought out. 14 Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, pp. 344–5. Alice was ‘disguised lyke an huswife of the countre’. There were two other persons with her and Tuddenham; the date was sometime between 1431 and 1444; it was undoubtedly an unforgettable incident: the document in which the account is found was drawn up many years later. Was Alice’s cavorting about in the woods dressed as a woman of the people an instance of the acting out of pastoral themes, imported from royal circles in France? Sir Thomas was a particularly complicated character, being what John Heydon was not, a religious man: ‘The English Gentry and Religion, c. 1500’, in Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 133 n. 29. One wonders what was inscribed on his tomb in the church of All Hallows by the Tower: John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908), i, p. 131.

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already disposed of more pressing business, John having sent her ‘cappys’ for the children that were too small and not sufficiently fashionable: shopping came before scandal. Margaret wrote:15 Heydonnis wyffe had child on Sent Petyr Day. I herde seyne that herre husbond wille nowt of here, nerre of herre child that sche had last nowdyre [neither]. I herd seyn that he seyd gyf sche come in hesse precence to make here exkewce that he xuld kyt of here nose to makyn here to be know wat sche is, and yf here child come in hesse presence he seyd he wyld kyllyn. He wolle nowt be intretit to have here ayen in no wysse, os I herde seyn.

So far as we know, only once did John Heydon come in for a quasi-public reprimand. In October 1450 James Gresham reported to John Paston that Chief Justice Markham on encountering Heydon in London told him ‘that he levid ungodly in puttyng awey of his wyff and kept another, &c; and therwith he turned pale colour and seid he lyved not but as God was pleased with’.16 Margaret did on one occasion call Heydon ‘the fadre of the Bastard’; the context, however, demanded private language, in a letter written to John in March 1461, when, fearful for John Paston’s safety in that most dangerous of times, she used a coded form of words he was sure to recognise.17 At a time of dire emergency and in a letter that displays Margaret’s serious concern for her husband’s safety, the code she used had lost whatever light-hearted tone it may have had when it was used, if it had been used, in the Paston household for more than fifteen years. John Heydon’s private life may have been a joke, his public one was no laughing matter: John Paston must, wrote Margaret, not return to Norfolk and should in London ‘be more ware of your gydyng for your persones sauf-gaud’. In the same letter Margaret also deploys a second coded identity when referring to Heydon. She uses his original name, Baxter, calling him ‘the sone of William Baxter that lyeth beryed in the Grey Freres [of Norwich]’. John Heydon, like his friend John Wyndham (alias John Deye), changed his name to a toponym in a bid for respectability. Judge William Paston had not needed to do so. Nevertheless, the lowly origins of both Pastons and Heydons meant that the competition between the two families in north-east Norfolk was so much the sharper.18 When

15

Davis, i, p. 220. The wording of the second sentence suggests that Heydon had doubts about the legitimacy of his first child Henry, who had been born about 1440. 16 Davis, ii, p. 51. 17 Davis, i, pp. 264–5. 18 For John Baxter of Heydon, see NRO, Bradfer Lawrence V, K 3/30, dated 12 June 1428: John Heydon alias Baxter of Heydon; TNA, KB9/265/44–5, 17 September 1450: John Heydon alias Baxter of Baconsthorpe; Magdalen College, Oxford, MS Hickling 140: Thomas Howes writing to Sir John Fastolf in 1447 says that Reginald Eccles, a lawyer killed by the rebels of 1381, ‘come up of poverté, as Heydon doth’. For William Baxter of Heydon, see BL Add. Charter 14131, dated 16 June 1424, and as a tax collector in 1432, CFR 1429–36, p. 105. William Baxter of Heydon also features in a final concord of 1412: TNA, CP 25(1)/169/184, no. 154. All these references are from Roger Virgoe’s copious notes on John Heydon. For the Winters, see The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 66–77; for John Wyndham, see ‘What a Difference a Manuscript Makes’, in Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed Felicity Riddy (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 129–42.


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recent arrivals to gentility set about making their mark with all the brashness traditionally ascribed to the nouveaux riches, and they were in close proximity, indeed were immediate neighbours as the Heydons at Baconsthorpe and the Pastons at Gresham were, the contest was likely to be bitter.19 It could have been explosive. It never was. That ought to be noticed. Pride, covetousness, resentment are all natural vices. They were not the reason for John Paston’s antagonism towards John Heydon after Judge William’s death in 1444; that had more altruistic causes, those we have outlined above, those that had to do with the unnatural use of power in East Anglia and the unusual and unsuccessful abuse of authority at Westminster. John Heydon was no doubt as complex a personality as the complicated Thomas Tuddenham. We can only know a part of him.20 Moreover, some men are all things to all men. They are often lawyers, to whom the word wily is almost inevitably appended. Certainly John Heydon was a survivor: being slippery (another word that elides so nicely with solicitor) he evaded retribution in 1450 and ever after. His will of March 1477 is indicative of a man adept at covering his tracks and insuring against risk. For example, he commended his soul to the Blessed Virgin, to John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, to St George, to St Thomas Becket, to Mary Magdalene, and finally to the eleven thousand virgins. Unlike James Hobart, John does not detail in the will how he came by the properties he acquired, let alone stating how much he paid for them.21 Moreover, no archive, if there ever was one, survives to tell us. He was buried in a chapel he had built in Norwich cathedral, thus going one better than Judge William Paston who was interred in the Lady Chapel. He had been a devoted servant of the prior and convent since his early defection from the service of the City; they, nonetheless, were not forgiven the debts they owed him; on the contrary, out of them they were to pay for his tomb and the candles that were to stand around it.22 The rest of the story I will leave to Roger Virgoe; an unpublished lecture he gave to the WEA at Fakenham on 2 February 1976 is offered as a first appendix. Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon were the biggest names in the de la Pole entourage before 1450. They were certainly big enough to ride out the loss of their leader in that year, and in the case of John Heydon to shrug off the change of regime in 1461. The almost immediate revival of de la Pole influence after 1450 under the dowager Duchess Alice, and her astute switch to Yorkism in 1458, facilitated Heydon’s survival. The halcyon days were over: Duchess Alice was not powerful at Westminster, she only commanded respect there, but in East Anglia she was an immovable force and one beyond reckoning with, as the

19

I owe the point about Paston and Heydon rivalry in North Erpingham hundred to a conversation with Helen Castor. I am not sure whether she has discussed the issue, but it strikes me that John Heydon’s house building at Baconsthorpe was a riposte both in style and pretension to the mansion William Paston had acquired at Gresham. The relation of the Bacon family (earlier owners of Baconsthorpe and Gresham) to the Heydon purchase of an estate at the former has eluded me. 20 I have barely touched on this matter in Endings, pp. 176–8. 21 James Hobart’s will is summarily dealt with in John Hopton (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 190–2. 22 John Heydon’s will is NRO, NCC, reg. 49–50 A Caston.

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Pastons found to their cost. Thus, the lesser lights in the de la Pole firmament also continued to shine in their dim way. A few of them should delay us here, if only to show how humdrum were their lives after the heady pre-1450 days. With them also a further point can be made. I have said they were dim as well as lesser lights: lesser yes, dim on second thoughts I think not. It is only to us that they seem shadowy. These county gentlemen led rich lives, a true narrative of which would display a density of interest and connection largely irrecoverable.23 The fortuitous discovery of a few documents can and does alter one’s perspective. The following are examples of what to me has been a continuing theme since I stumbled across John Hopton nearly forty years ago, a theme eloquently enunciated by James Campbell: the historian as someone who is always learning that he or she does not know.24 The multi-dimensionality of the lives of the gentry is a subject I have tackled before: in a variety of ways and on numerous occasions. One such was a painstaking footnote in the first volume of The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. In it I took as a prime example of a man of many lives John Timperley, esquire, of Hintlesham, Suffolk. Even so, I was rash enough to term him ‘undoubtedly a “Mowbrayite” . . . friendly to John Paston over the Gresham affair in 1451’.25 At the East Suffolk Record Office recently I discovered in an account for 1443–1446 of the ministers of the Earl of Oxford for East Bergholt and other de Vere estates in south Suffolk and north Essex that John Timperley was retained by the earl with an annuity for life of £6 13s 4d.26 There is no question of John’s close, even intimate, association with John Mowbray, the third duke of Norfolk, at this very time: it is comprehensively documented. His marriage to Margaret, daughter and heir of William Pettistree (a marriage that brought him Sutton Hoo), was probably arranged by the duke, and in the 1450s, if not before, he was one of the duke’s

23

On this topic a recent East Anglian writer has something to say (W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (Penguin Books, 2002), pp. 30–1): ‘. . . the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on’. 24 I have always thought the report of the Milanese ambassador in Burgundy that Henry VI had said his son Edward (born 13 October 1453) must be the son of the Holy Ghost shows how little the historian knows. If Henry was being serious he must have been the Holy Fool John Blacman took him for; if he was not he was displaying a hitherto unsuspected facet of his personality. Even if the ambassador had picked up what members of the royal court were retailing to amuse one another, the joke is revealing of the mentality of courtiers of the 1450s and therefore of inestimable value in demonstrating the catastrophic decline of English kingship since the days of Henry V (and therefore of the degree of difficulty with which English politicians had to cope after 1435). For the report, see Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France and Burgundy 1450–1483, II: 1460–1, ed. Paul Murray Kendall and Vincent Ilardi (Athens, Ohio, 1971), p. 232. 25 The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase, p. 248 n. 199. 26 SROI, HA/51/4/5.3. The accounts contain interesting material about the earl’s ship, which in 1444–45 was being readied to sail to St James of Compostella. It was almost certainly the Jesus of Orwell and this was its maiden voyage: C.F. Richmond, ‘Royal Administration and the Keeping of the Seas, 1422–1485’ (unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1963), p. 254.


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councillors.27 It was perfectly possible to serve two (or even more) masters in fifteenth-century East Anglia, so long as they were not at daggers drawn, and so long as one of them was not William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk.28 The Tymperleys were newcomers to the region. John Tymperley had to make his way. He did so by being useful to a duke and an earl, although I have the suspicion that once he had found his feet and proved his worth he devoted himself more assiduously to the service of the duke. That is another aspect of the lives of such serviceable gentlemen: not only could they choose whom they served (for their services were much in demand), but they also could and, if they were so minded, did chop and change. There were, however, many kinds of gentleman. Some were either out of the ruck, as I have suggested was John Hopton, while others were above it. Sir Thomas Brews, far more influential in the Woodbridge area than John Tymperley, was from a knightly family which had owned land in East Anglia since the thirteenth century. Sir Thomas, the patron of Woodbridge priory, where in due course he would be buried beside his ancestors, had no need to stoop to anyone.29 Nonetheless, Thomas is to be found giving his support to the de la Poles from the 1440s to the 1470s. It would be wrong, however, to define him as ‘a de la Poleite’; such support as he gave the family was intermittent and of his choosing. In other words he was a free agent. Thus, he is to be found in August 1450, along with John Paston and Sir Miles Stapleton, acting as a sort of liaison officer between the earl of Oxford and the duke of Norfolk on the one hand, and disaffected East Anglians on the other; this was the time when the two noblemen were acting in concert to coordinate the complaints of the political community against the ‘rule’ of the lately murdered duke of Suffolk. Thomas Brews was, we might say, a man of independent position in that community. Whether he had ability or character is a different matter. The always outspoken twelfth earl of Oxford in August 1450 did not think much of him. ‘Make Brewes to send over a man to me with th’entent of my lord of Norfolk’, he wrote to John Paston, ‘and with th’effect of your deligens, with a more credible message than Brewes ded to my wif; for I had never a wers iurney for a iape in my lif, ne a lewder, as ye shal wele conceive.’30 The Pastons may not have thought much of him either, for he was miserly about the marriage portion of his daughter Margery during the negotiations for her betrothal to John Paston III in 1477, while Elizabeth Hopton, the wife of William Brews, Thomas’s son by his first marriage, had to endure with her husband the consequences of a father-in-law’s excessive generosity to his second wife. Perhaps Thomas Brews was the Colonel Blimp of fifteenth-century East Anglian gentry society.31 27

28 29 30 31

G.H. Ryan and Lilian J. Redstone, Tymperley of Hintlesham: a Study of a Suffolk Family (London, 1931), pp. 3–10. He seems to have sold Sutton in 1455 in order to pay for Hintlesham, purchased the year before: ibid., pp. 8–10. On what he called ‘ambidexters’, McFarlane has some pertinent observations: K.B. McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (London, 1981), pp. 251–3. Robert Loder, Notes on Woodbridge Priory (Woodbridge, 1796), p. 2; he lists the names from a long vanished register and says they were also ‘on a table of those to be prayed for’. Davis, ii, pp. 42–3. I have benefited greatly from Charles Moreton’s biography of Sir Thomas Brews, which awaits

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Simon Wiseman, on the other hand, was a fool, or so we are led to believe. John Paston III wrote to John Paston II in 1471 that he had heard Sir William Yelverton was on the point of making an agreement over the former Fastolf manor of Guton Hall in Brandiston, Norfolk, either with the dowager duchess of Suffolk or with the duke of Norfolk, ‘whyche[ever] he may get fyrst’; his informant, wrote John III, was Simon Wiseman, ‘otherwyse callyd foole’.32 Yet, is it a fool who cultivates those delicate and almost unmanageable plants, crocuses, and sells their product, saffron, at a considerable profit? Perhaps it is, but this is what Simon Wiseman was doing on his home estate, Thornham Magna, Suffolk, in the early 1490s. Fool or not, he evidently had an eye on the local and expanding market in cloth.33 Evidently too, John Paston III was playing with words. We are face to face here with the major problem of The Paston Letters: their one-dimensionality. Marvellous source though they are, views of the world and opinions about people expressed in them are mainly those of one family, its servants and associates. Simon Wiseman would have been designated a fool by the Pastons because he followed his father George into exclusive de la Pole service.34 To others less prejudiced he might have seemed a sensible fellow. Discovering Simon to be a saffron grower does at the very least make one stop to think. With Simon Wiseman on that hot afternoon at Hellesdon in May 1478, when John, duke of Suffolk, after too good a dinner stormed about like Herod in a Corpus Christi pageant, was another de la Pole supporter: Nicholas Ovy.35 As a young student of the law in the mid-1440s Nicholas had been closely involved (or perhaps we should say deeply implicated) in the transfer of the Kerdiston estate to William and Alice. By May 1478, therefore, he had been a committed de la Pole partisan for over thirty years. He became Recorder of Norwich, so did not go without reward for his service, but Nicholas (and his many Ovy relatives) I have

32 33

34

35

publication by the History of Parliament. I am grateful to him for sending me a copy of it. See also, John Hopton, pp. 142–3 (where Elizabeth’s dowry ought to be 500 or 700 marks, not 1200 marks), pp. 253–4, and Endings, pp. 52–4. Davis, i, p. 570, lines 35–7. SROI, HD 1538/384/1, 2: accounts of the ministers of Thornham Magna and other of his estates in north-east Suffolk, for various dates between 1483–4 and 1493–4. Simon made enough money to buy a modest property, Boyland Hall in Morningthorpe, Norfolk, paying £271 for it in 1479: CCR 1485–1500, no. 80, another Roger Virgoe reference. Davis, ii, pp. 426, 428. Simon was granted an annuity of £20 for life by John, duke of Suffolk, in 1479: BL Harleian Charter 54/I/22, a reference I owe to Roger Virgoe’s notes. For George Wiseman as a feed retainer of Alice Chaucer in 1454, see BL Egerton Charter 8779. Simon’s will of 1497 (TNA, PCC 11 Horne) is unrevealing, although he did leave £10 to a priest to go on pilgrimage to the holy places in Rome, 5 marks of which sum was ‘to be gevynne in the popes Werrys’. As for the characters of Alice and her son, the first seems to fit perfectly the description of a woman unknown to me, communicated by an elderly Woodbridge electrician of my acquaintance: ‘She was a lady [weighty pause] so far as you can be if you’re a member of the gentry’, while the second took after his mother in his haughty bearing towards his social inferiors: see his autograph postscript in a letter to the farmer of his manor of Moundevilles in Sternfield, Suffolk (James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters (Library Edition 1904), vi, no. 997: BL Add. MS 43490, fol. 49). The elaborate S of the signature is also indicative of an overbearing personality. Davis, ii, p. 426, lines 21–3.


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not so far been able to pursue to any useful purpose. Richard Dogget, on the other hand, I have trailed about as far as I want to go. This has turned out to be the great brick barn at Copdock, which he may have built and which the expanding retail slums of Ipswich are presently poised to engulf. Richard Dogget was an important estate officer of Alice Chaucer’s in the 1450s, nearly thirty years after he had bought Copdock, which he did in 1423 from Margaret, sole daughter and therefore heir of Bartholomew Baron, and her husband Robert Fitz Ralph.36 Richard Dogget, who died in 1459, also left a single daughter, Alice. Alice married Roger Rookwood, esquire, of Euston, Suffolk, and the Copdock estate went with her, to be settled as jointure on her grandson Edmund Rookwood and his wife Anne, daughter of John Appleyard of Bracon Ash, Norfolk, when they were married in 1493.37 Copdock did not stay much longer with the Rookwood family: in 1505 Edmund sold it to William Spencer.38 Thus, this small, unprepossessing property passed through the hands of four families in eighty years. Such estate migration (as we might call it) was far from uncommon in fifteenth-century East Anglia. A fluid and flexible market in land is a feature I drew attention to some years ago; it engendered the sort of upper-class society we have noticed above, one into which William Paston, Sir John Fastolf, John Heydon, John Tymperley, and Richard Dogget could and did readily buy their way. Another who did so, Thomas Dereham of Crimplesham, Norfolk, I am compelled by lack of time to relegate to an appendix. For I want to end this excursion with a gentleman of East Anglia notorious for his involvement with national history at its nadir, the usurpation of Richard III in 1483. The gentleman is Sir James Tyrell of Gipping, Suffolk. The brutalisation of English political behaviour between 1460 and 1483 is a theme that cannot be explored here: the decline in political morality during the third quarter of the fifteenth century was a Westminster matter, not an East Anglian one. In this region, as in others, the usual level of murder and mayhem was maintained and Professor Philippa Maddern is the one to talk about it. While it is possible that Richard of Gloucester imitated the carelessness towards legal form of his erstwhile guardian Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, where his complexly immoral character came from who can say? The straightforward answer is probably the correct one: that he had reached manhood during the worst of times. Richard’s murder of William, lord Hastings, and of those Woodvilles on whom he could lay his hands in 1483 is more than ample evidence of a mind warped by civil war and 36

For Richard Dogget, see The First Phase, p. 240 n. 144, and Endings, pp. 190–1 (where the reference in n. 66 ought to be to The First Phase, p. 240 n. 144). The Fastolf circle considered him an ‘Ambidexter’ in the heady days of 1451: Davis, ii, pp. 525–8. For the purchase, see NRO, WLS xxxii/9. 37 The marriage agreement of 6 January 1493 is NRO, WLS xxxii/10/5. During their lives Roger Rookwood (the father of Edmund) and his wife Elizabeth were to have the use of the chapel, the chapel chamber, and the room over that in the manor house at Copdock with sufficient fuel for their needs. Roger was not to dispose of property to the disinheritance of Edmund: for a discussion of this curtailing of a father’s freedom when he married off his son and heir, see ‘Two Late Medieval Marriage Contracts from Staffordshire’, in Staffordshire Studies: Essays presented to Denis Stuart, ed. Philip Morgan (Keele, 1987), pp. 53–60. Anne Appleyard’s marriage portion was £100. Other documents relevant to the marriage contract are WLS xxxii/10/1–4. 38 NRO, WLS xxxii/11.

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its consequences. In June 1460, at Risbank in the Calais Pale, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had the Norfolk gentleman Osbert Mountford summarily executed for doing his duty to the Crown; in June 1483 Richard III dispatched his nephews without the least ceremony. That is a measure of the descent from the decency of the first battle of St Albans in 1455.39 Was Sir James Tyrell sucked willy-nilly into the spiralling violence of the Wars of the Roses? And how was he? Was he also, like Osbert Mountford and Sir Thomas Tuddenham, to be a victim of the brutality he seems to have accepted and may have perpetrated? How impossibly difficult those questions are. The few items of evidence I have collected over thirty years, which display the conventional Sir James Tyrell, do not provide answers. They will, I hope, make us think more profoundly about the relation between private and public life, about the corrosive effect of the latter on the former, and in consequence about how decent men come to commit crimes. Look at Sir James Tyrell’s chapel at Gipping. It is one of the beauties of Suffolk. It is in perfect perpendicular taste. Was that taste his wife’s? Or was it his? What did he think when he worshipped in such a place?40 He must have thought something, for in a will of 31 May 1475 Sir James left 120 marks to the friars at Chelmsford ‘for to sey a masse in perpetuite atte xj of the Clok of the day . . . for my soule and all my frendes soules’. At 11 o’ clock: why such precision in a will that generally lacks it? Why also the enormous sum of 120 marks (his only specific religious bequest), and why the friars of Chelmsford? At the foot of the will Sir James has added in his own hand the names of his executors: ‘my wyfe my cosyn Sir Robert Chambyrleyn m[aster] W[illiam] pykenam anne mongomery John clopton Jamys hobarde R gowle’. It is a roll call of the best and the brightest of the locality, and the inclusion of a woman, his aunt Anne Montgomery, is striking.41 What impact might Cecily Neville duchess of York’s guardianship have had on James Tyrell the boy? It was not until 1462, when James was either seven or seventeen, that Cecily sold (for a token £50) his wardship and marriage to his widowed mother.42 What also about the more routine aspects of a gentleman’s life: the marriages of his son and daughter, the negotiations for which ran into the usual difficulties over dowry and jointure; a dispute with his intriguing Welsh neighbour Thomas Lucas, esquire, of Little Saxham, Suffolk, about how much was to be paid for the purchase of a manor, which had to be arbitrated in 1501 by none other than the earl of Oxford; the tribulations and rewards of cattle farming on the home farm at Gipping.43 How are we to fit these random facts into an 39

40

41 42 43

There might (after all) have been a local dimension to Osbert Mountford’s killing: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Fastolf’s Will (Cambridge, 1996), p. 27 n. 71. For the murder and a characteristically sagacious comment on it, see Cora L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward IV (London, 1923), p. 76. W.H. Sewell, Sir James Tyrell’s Chapel at Gipping, Sufffolk, first printed 1871 (and reprinted 1981 by the Tyrell Family History Society by kind permission of the Trustees of Gipping Chapel), is still useful. SROI, HA 79/611/3 (T 276/3). BL Add. Charter 16564, dated London 6 March 1462: I owe this reference to Dr Rosemary Horrox. For the marriages, see TNA C1/228/47 and 68. For the arbitration, see BL Add. Charter 16570, a


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overall assessment of one of Richard III’s principal henchmen? I do not know, but the attempt has to be made. Most of the foremost henchmen of Adolf Hitler lived very ordinary home lives, loving their children, petting their dogs, cheating on their wives, yet they undertook unspeakably cruel tasks in the name of their country. Are we to see Sir James Tyrell in such a light, or am I being incorrigibly anachronistic? It is time to draw to a close. I have not had time here to discuss the crisis of 1469–71: from the point of view of the Pastons and the earl of Oxford I have done so elsewhere.44 As for the crisis of Richard III’s reign, too much has probably been said, some of it by me.45 In East Anglia, after the Usurpation and its inevitable corollary the Buckingham Rebellion, it was a time of waiting, of suspended animation: something else was going to happen, but what? What happened was the battle of Bosworth. In what state of mind did the contingents of John Howard duke of Norfolk’s soldiers march out of Halesworth, Woodbridge, and Framlingham in August 1485? Not surely in the mood of those who marched away in August 1914. Did Thomas Steward, the only man enrolled at Monewdon, actually march away at all?46 Who went and who, like John Paston III, stayed? I suspect John Howard felt as desperately let down as did his sovereign, but we shall never know: those who did go and did not return have no village memorials. There is a final point to be made. The anticipated defeat of Richard at Bosworth, his well-managed downfall, his predictable death, brought John de Vere, earl of Oxford, back from exile, back from the dead we are tempted to say, if we believe his leap into the moat from imprisonment at Hammes in the Calais

reference I also owe to Rosemary Horrox. The manor was Faconnys Hall in Rickinghall and Botesdale; this was an area of the county where Sir James held a number of other manors. He evidently had been occupying Faconnys Hall, as the arbitration of 8 January 1501 stipulated that he leave within a week, by 15 January 1501. After various legal formalities had been undertaken, Sir James was to pay Thomas Lucas 650 marks for the purchase of the estate, exact terms of payment being set out in the arbitration document, which was signed and sealed by the earl, by Sir James, and by Thomas Lucas. It is interesting to find Thomas Lucas of Little Saxham at odds with his near neighbour in Suffolk, because it is likely that they had encountered one another in South Wales when Tyrell was a royal officer there, Thomas Lucas being (it seems) a South Walian: Endings, p. 246 n. 29. For the beef cattle at Gipping, see the account of John Lopham, the farmer, for 1487–88: SROI, HD 58/465/3. There had been a herd of seventy-one cattle at Gipping in 1439: SROI, HD 1538/236/23, an account of John Balle, Receiver General of William Tyrell, esquire, for thirty-four weeks from 2 February to 29 September 1439. 44 Endings, pp. 136–45. 45 Ibid., pp. 162–8. 46 For ‘the names of the M. men that my Lord hath graunted to the Kyng’, see The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–1471, 1481–1483, introduction by Anne Crawford (Stroud, 1992), pp. 480–92. For the Halesworth contingent, see also Colin Richmond, ‘Halesworth Church, Suffolk, and its Fifteenth-Century Benefactors’, in Recognitions: Essays presented to Edmund Fryde, ed. Colin Richmond and Isobel Harvey (Aberystwyth, 1996), p. 263 n. 4. At least we know that Edmund Lee and John Barker of Eye served with John, duke of Suffolk, at Loosecoat Field, and in the West Country on Edward IV’s campaign of spring 1470: James Gairdner, The Paston Letters (Library Edition, 1904), v, p. 86. John Howard had soldiers from Suffolk with him at the siege of Alnwick in 1462–63; the list of where they came from is an interesting one: The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, pp. 181–3.

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Pale in 1478 was an attempt at suicide rather than escape.47 There is no better example of the spinning of the Wheel of Fortune than the earl’s recovery of his lands and return to authority in 1485. The Wars of the Roses had a happy ending in East Anglia, not only for the Pastons. That, however, is not my final point. The one that is takes us back to the cause of the 1450 crisis in the region. What more telling way is there of demonstrating the corrupt rule of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, in East Anglia in the 1440s, than to indicate its good governance by John de Vere, earl of Oxford, between 1485 and 1513?

Appendix I Roger Virgoe: The Heydon Family [3 February 1976] The Heydon family of Baconsthorpe played an important part in Norfolk politics and society for two hundred years, their heyday being roughly contemporary with that of the Pastons from the 1430s to the English Civil War. Unlike the Pastons their line did not culminate in a peerage, but for most of that period they were the equals of that family in wealth and local power. They helped to govern Norfolk as sheriffs, deputy lieutenants, and justices of the peace; they organized and led its militia, protected its coast, and represented it in parliament. And their activities outside the region were of increasing importance, as lawyers, counsellors and retainers to great lords, courtiers and military commanders. They attended national ceremonies such as the Field of the Cloth of Gold and royal marriages, they campaigned in France and Spain, they protected Puritans and then turned against them, they fought duels, rebelled against Queen Elizabeth, wrote treatises on astrology and, of course, they built castles, houses, churches and tombs. The wealth they acquired by the practice of the law and the patronage of great men, they invested in land and buildings, and these in turn gave them the income and status to play a great part in local and central administration and politics. In the end excessive ambition, the extravagance necessary to win support and friends, financial incompetence, family quarrels, and sheer bad luck overcame them. They were already selling lands under Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of Charles I, for whom Sir John Heydon acted as Lieutenant General of the Ordnance, sealed their fate. The last of their estates – at Baconsthorpe, already heavily mortgaged – was to be sold in the 1670s, and the last male Heydon died while living with his sister at Eye in 1689. The family parted from history. It lives, 47

John Paston II wrote to John Paston III from London on 25 August 1478 (Davis, i, p. 512): Item, as for the pagent that men sey that the Erle of Oxenforde hathe pleyid atte Hammys, I suppose ye have herde theroff, itt is so longe agoo. I was nott jn thys contré when the tydyngys come, therfor I sent yow no worde ther-off; butt for conclusion, as I here seye, he lyepe the wallys and wente to the dyke and in-to the dyke to the chynne, to whatt entent I cannot telle – some sey to stele awey and some thynke he wolde have drownyd hym-selfe, and so it is demyd. The doctoral thesis of James Ross on the fifteenth-century de Veres is eagerly awaited, not only in East Anglia.


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ironically enough, mainly in the private papers of its main opponents, the Pastons in the fifteenth century and the Bacons in the late sixteenth. No Heydon family papers and very few estate records appear to survive – although I am not without hope that one day some will turn up, there having been so many staggering discoveries of Norfolk family papers. Even without any family papers so much information survives for the 200-year history of the family that I have to be selective. I am only going to speak about the fifteenth-century founders of the family – John and Henry, the main builders; and then, if there is time, to say something about the third Sir Christopher (d.1622), astrologer and rebel. When William Harvey, Clarenceux King at Arms, made his heraldic visitation of Norfolk in 1563 the then head of the family, Sir Christopher, put in an elaborate pedigree which took the family back to the thirteenth century, gave a hereditary justification for the lands they owned, and included several knights. Blomefield and others have further elaborated on this, but with little success, inevitably so, because the early pedigree is almost certainly and entirely fictitious. The arms Christopher bore and registered – quarterly argent and gules, a cross engrailed counter changed – and the crest – a Talbot statant, ermine – were very close to those borne by an unrelated Hertfordshire family of the same name; but as their early pedigree is even wilder than the Norfolk Heydons it is uncertain whether there was any blood connection, or whether this pedigree, too, was a fiction created to ensure respectability. The origins of the Norfolk Heydon family are as obscure as those of many others of the leading county families of the sixteenth century, including the Pastons. And for the same reason: the founder of the family fortunes was a man of low birth, and by the time heraldic visitations began in the sixteenth century his wealthy and powerful descendants had every motive in a status conscious society for disguising this. They found no difficulty in persuading some of the less scrupulous heralds and pedigree-makers to create an honourable ancestry. In fact, like so many of the leading Norfolk families of the sixteenth century – Townshends, Pastons, Spelmans, Southwells, Yelvertons, Hobarts, Wyndhams, Jenneys, Gawdys – the Heydons owed their fortunes and status to a successful fifteenthcentury lawyer of mediocre or humble origins. This, of course, was John Heydon. Heydon first appears in records in 1428, when he was acting for a group of Norfolk men, among them his future father-inlaw, Edmund Winter of Town Barningham. But by 1431, and probably earlier, he was recorder of Norwich: there is no doubt from this and later evidence that he was a lawyer and consequently no doubt that he was trained at an Inn of Court – unfortunately the early records are lost. But where had he come from and how had he reached this position? A few pieces of evidence throw light on the matter. In 1450 he fell from power and numerous indictments were brought against him and his friends. In a number of these he is called ‘John Heydon of Baconsthorpe, alias John Baxter of Heydon’. Here is clear indication that he had changed his name, not for criminal reasons but to claim status he had no right to (and possibly to shed unwelcome connections): a toponymic surname was both safer and more suitable to his aspirations. Ten years later, also in a hostile context, Margaret Paston adds further detail. Rather cryptically she calls him ‘the son of William Baxter that lies buried in the

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Grey Friars’. Although William Baxter is difficult to trace, if Margaret is right John’s father is probably the William Baxter of Heydon who was acquiring lands at Sheringham in 1413 and who had been a feoffee at Heydon a year earlier. The connection is not proved, but John’s chief residence was Heydon until the late 1430s; it is not until 1443 that he is first styled ‘of Baconsthorpe’. Let us assume, anyway, that he was a man of fairly humble origins – his father perhaps a substantial freeholder – who, rather like William Paston, through patronage of a relative or a local lord – possibly the Winters – made his way into the upper ranks of the legal profession, and by his talents and good fortune obtained not only a good practice but a salaried position with the great city of his region. Undoubtedly, he must have been assisted by his marriage to Eleanor, daughter of the powerful Edmund Winter, another lawyer. The marriage was not altogether a successful one. John’s son and heir, Henry, must have been born about 1440, but when his wife bore a second child in June 1444 there was trouble. Margaret Paston wrote to John Paston in July 1444 (before the great quarrel): ‘I herde seyne that herre husbond wille nowt of here, nerre of here child that sche had last nowdyre. I herd seyn that he seyd gyf sche come in hesse precence to make here exkewce that he xuld kyt of here nose to makyn here to be know wat sche is, and yf here child come in hesse presence he seyd he wyld kyllyn. He wolle nowt be intretit to have here ayen in no wysse, os I herde seyn.’ Heydon seems to have suspected that he had been treated as his friend Sir Thomas Tuddenham had been treated by his wife: during their marriage she bore a son by another man. Thomas Tuddenham’s marriage ended in divorce; this does not seem to have happened in Heydon’s case – no grounds. And in October 1450 Justice Markham was reported to have told Heydon that ‘he levid ungoodly in puttyng awey of his wyff and kept another, &c and therwith he turned pale colour and seid he lyved not but as God was pleased with, ne dede no wrong to no person’. Unfortunately this is virtually all we know of John Heydon’s private life. He did not lose his father-in-law’s friendship. When Edmund Winter died in 1448 he did not mention his daughter Eleanor, but he left ‘a book of Chronicles and a piece of silver’ to John Heydon and made him overseer of his will. By 1448 John Heydon was a very powerful man and had moved out of Edmund Winter’s influence. He did not achieve this by legal service to Norwich. Indeed, the opposite. Norwich was going through an unruly time of internal feuds and disputes with the cathedral priory, and John Heydon was later accused, very plausibly, of betraying the trust of the City, for whom he should have been leading legal counsel, by advising the prior and convent in a lawsuit against the City. He was dismissed from his civic office and was said to be hostile thereafter to the City, again very plausibly. By 1436 at the latest he was counsel to the prior and convent and a little later he became chief steward of their estates. Yet, even before this, as early as 1431 at least, he had connections that made his City post expendable. He had become councillor (and possibly local steward) to William Phelip, lord Bardolph of Dennington, a very powerful courtier and one of the most influential East Anglian magnates. He often acted on William Phelip’s behalf with the Suffolk lawyer Reginald Rous, later a member of the de la Pole ‘covey’ and Heydon’s consistent ally. In 1438 both men were executors of


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their patron’s will. It was probably through William Phelip that sometime around 1434–5 Heydon became connected with another lord and group of men with whom he was to become a dominant figure in East Anglia until 1450: this was William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Suffolk, after fifteen years campaigning in France had returned to England in 1431, married an heiress, and immediately taken a place in the political life of England, which was to grow continuously until in the later 1440s he virtually governed the country under a weak king. His main ancestral estates were at Wingfield, Eye, and elsewhere in East Anglia, and though his favoured residence was at his wife’s manor of Ewelme in Oxfordshire, he built up in Norfolk and Suffolk a group of supporters who controlled both counties, particularly Norfolk, in the 1440s. Among them the most prominent were the knight and courtier, Sir Thomas Tuddenham, and the lawyer, John Heydon. Heydon appears to have joined the de la Pole circle by 1435, and thereafter, though he had other patrons and clients, it was this connection that brought him power, status, and wealth – at any rate until 1450. From 1435 he began to sit on a variety of local commissions and from 1441 was a JP in Norfolk. Though never sheriff – perhaps his social standing was insufficient or he thought the office would interfere with his legal practice – he was MP for the county in 1445. He held the powerful and lucrative position of steward of the Duchy of Lancaster (jointly with Sir Thomas Tuddenham) from 1443. His social connections and legal skills put him much in demand: he was chief steward of the their lands to successive bishops of Norwich, to the prior and convent, to the prior of Butley and to Mettingham College in Suffolk, to Isabel, lady Morley, and for the Norfolk lands of the duke of Buckingham; he was counsel to Lynn, to Lord Bardolph, Lord Cromwell, Lord Willoughby, Sir John Clifton, and doubtless numerous others. As his power and wealth increased he was able to acquire more land and to rebuild his principal manor house at one end of the county, as his friend Sir Thomas Tuddenham was almost certainly doing at the other. It is impossible to put precise dates to the building of Baconsthorpe, but perhaps there is a clue in the royal grant to him in 1446 of forty oaks from the royal woods at Gimingham, of which incidentally he was steward. Days of trial were, however, approaching. John Heydon, like Thomas Tuddenham, made many enemies in the days of his prosperity, among them the duke of Norfolk, the City of Norwich, the Pastons and their patron Sir John Fastolf. The Pastons were particularly bitter over his encouragement of Lord Moleyns’ claim to Gresham – ‘he is not your good friend nor well-willer’, writes a friend to John Paston in 1448 – and in the following year Margaret Paston was more direct: he is ‘a false shrew’. Suffolk’s fall and death in 1450 left all his faction dangerously exposed as its opponents looked to the duke of York and the duke of Norfolk for justice – and revenge. Immediately Suffolk’s fall was known, Sir John Fastolf wrote to one of his servants to send a list of the wrongs John Heydon had done to him in the previous thirteen years, and by October 1450, though Tuddenham and Heydon ‘laboured hard’ to get friends in the new regime and would spend £1000 to have a favourable sheriff, they could not prevent a powerful commission being issued to hear complaints in East Anglia and to try offenders.

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It is from indictments then drawn up that we learn details of the behaviour of Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon over the previous fifteen years. But note: it is a biased source, much of it having been generated by Sir John Fastolf, John Paston, and the City of Norwich, although it is likely that much of the shire was hostile to the pair of them. There is no time to go into details here. In any case, in spite of all that Fastolf, Paston, and their friends could do, finding witnesses, influencing jurors, organizing women to demonstrate tearfully before the duke of York, nothing much happened. By March 1451 the political situation had changed again, the dukes of York and Norfolk had lost power, and Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon were safe. Heydon’s power was never so absolute again. He was left off the commissions of peace until March 1455 and was never again MP for Norfolk. Yet by 1452 he was back on important commissions and he retained his lucrative stewardships and other offices. No doubt his legal practice also flourished. In the late 1450s there was a revival of his local authority and he was once again on numerous government commissions. It was bad news for John Paston, particularly when he became embroiled in the Fastolf will dispute, that Heydon and others of ‘the cursed covy’ had the ear of powerful men. Paston and his friends hoped that the overthrow of the Lancastrians in 1460–61 would destroy Heydon, who had been committed to them. But, though Sir Thomas Tuddenham was executed in 1462, Heydon survived. Helped by the continued patronage of Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, he made his peace with the Yorkist regime at a cost of 500 marks. Nonetheless, apart from the brief interlude of the Readeption when he curried favour with the earl of Oxford and was put on two important commissions, his period of activity in public affairs was over. During the last eighteen years of his life he must have been chiefly engaged in legal practice, in managing his and others’ estates, and perhaps in building. He died in September 1479. He had made his will eighteen months earlier. Much of it is concerned with funeral arrangements and religious and charitable bequests, as was quite normal. He had arranged to be buried in Norwich cathedral, which he had long served. He left £20 to the monks, and made bequests to all the houses of friars in Norwich, to St Giles’ Hospital, to lepers, to prisoners, to the anchoress at Carrow (the successor of Dame Julian), and to the poor. A will of lands does not survive, and I have not seen his Inquisition Post Mortem; some idea of the extent of his lands, however, can be gained from his grants to the poor among ‘my tenants and farmers’ in fourteen named villages and ‘for tithes forgotten’ to the churches of sixteen villages (not all of the them the same). They included Baconsthorpe, Heydon, Oulton, North and South Repps, Hempstead, Salthouse, and in the south of the county Banwell, Tibenham, and Carleton. The only kinsmen he mentions are his son Henry, an executor and leading legatee, and the children of Edmund Moor, ‘my kinsman’. His wife was probably dead, and if her second child had survived it was clearly not recognised. He asked his executors to make gifts to his special friend Lady Boleyn, his son’s motherin-law, and to other friends. Probate was obtained by Henry in 1480. John Heydon had founded a landed gentry family on the basis of law and politics. In doing so he had made himself unpopular with many individuals. He had created a more than respectable landed estate and had embarked upon building a


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house commensurate with both that estate and his ambitions. He was fortunate, therefore, that the inheritance could pass undivided to his only son. The later Heydons were not so lucky. Henry Heydon, allegedly the principal builder of the family at Baconsthorpe, West Wickham in Kent, and at Salthouse church, was born about 1440. Judging from the relationship of his parents, he must have had a disturbed childhood; he surmounted it and was sent by his father possibly to university and certainly (afterwards) to the Inns of Court, where he trained as a lawyer. Henry first appears in public affairs during the 1460s and he also married sometime in that decade. It was a marriage undoubtedly arranged by his father and it was a good one: to a daughter of Geoffrey Boleyn, a friend of John Heydon’s since the early 1450s, the purchaser, apparently on John’s advice, of Blickling. Anne Boleyn was not an heiress, but she probably had a good dowry. Perhaps it was owing to the Boleyn connection that Henry Heydon bought the manor of West Wickham and built there a house that still remains, an interesting example of a late medieval small unfortified brick house, a contrast with Baconsthorpe. He also rebuilt the church at West Wickham and clearly was mainly resident there in the 1460s and 1470s, possibly to be nearer his London legal practice but also because at this time he entered the household of the king’s mother, Cecily Neville, becoming its controller until her death in the 1490s. After his father’s death he probably moved to Baconsthorpe, where he was living in the 1480s, and he is said to have been responsible for much of the building there as well as at the church of Salthouse, where the Heydons had considerable property. ‘Young Heydon’ appears a few times in the Paston Letters – as an enemy – but after his father’s death relations appear to have improved sufficiently for Henry to have marred his youngest daughter Bridget to John Paston III’s son and heir William. Henry Heydon was active and important in Norfolk in the latter part of the fifteenth century, surviving changes of regime without any problems. He was a JP from 1473 until his death and was almost as frequently in demand as his father as an executor. He succeeded his father as steward of the lands of Norwich priory and retained close links with the duke of Suffolk. He bought a number of new estates in East Anglia: his will mentions ten Norfolk manors, some of which his father did not have. Thus he consolidated his father’s wealth and considerably improved the family’s social status. His connection with the royal family enabled his son to become a courtier while he himself was knighted in 1485. He did not obtain an heiress for any of his sons, but he did marry his heir into the lesser baronage and secured (no doubt at a high price) very good matches for his daughters: with the families of Paston, Gurney, Lestrange, Hobart, and Broke. His numerous children and his building projects were a drain on resources; he could, however, afford it, and the marriages of his children, along with his firm friendship with his brother-in-law, Sir William Boleyn, brought his family firmly into the ranks of the county elite. When Sir Henry died in 1504 the future of the Heydons was assured: his will, with gifts to the distinguished front runners of East Anglian society – Thomas Lovell, James Hobart, William Boleyn, John Paston, Robert Fermour and others – indicates this. The great bulk of his estates went, after his widow’s death in 1509, in tail to his first son John.

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John Heydon II was born about 1468; he was therefore into middle age by the time he inherited. John was an active soldier, a courtier, and was made a knight banneret in 1509: he gave the gloss of court culture and connection to a family whose local position had been created ex nihilo by his grandfather and consolidated by his father. He was active at court under Henry VIII and for a brief period in the 1530s shared in a minor way in the triumph of his second cousin Anne Boleyn: he added her arms to those in the windows of the house at West Wickham. He survived her fall as smoothly as he rode out the numerous religious changes of the 1540s and 1550s. His final years were spent in Norfolk, where he built a new house at Saxlingham, Baconsthorpe presumably having passed out of fashion, and where he was also active in local affairs. Although he did not gain greatly at the Dissolution and spent freely, he was able to hand over to his grandson Sir Christopher an undiminished estate. His own son, also Christopher, had predeceased him. When he died in 1550 aged eighty-two his will provided for numerous masses for his soul, but the religious climate had changed, and his prudent executors, among whose number was to be found his younger son, recognising this proclaimed their intention to use the money so bequeathed ‘to the exhibition of poor scholars and the marriage of poor maidens’. The downfall of the duke of Suffolk exactly one hundred years before had made no difference to the family in the longer term. They had had a very good century.

Appendix II Thomas Dereham of Crimplesham (d.1444) appears fleetingly in The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings, p. 235. I had mentioned him before: ‘Margins and Marginality: English Devotion in the Later Middle Ages’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Nicholas Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies IV (Stamford, 1994), p. 245. In the brief discussion of the Dereham Book of Hours undertaken there I have confused that volume with another: one should never make notes of two manuscripts on a single piece of paper. The Dereham Book of Hours is BL Harleian MS 1688; the manuscript I confused it with is BL Sloane MS 2633. The final paragraph of p. 245 ought, therefore, to have opened in the following fashion: ‘Many births in the Derham Book of Hours are recorded precisely. This was not uncommon. The unknown owner of British Library, Sloane MS 2633 recorded the birth on 13 January 1489 of ‘Thomas my son, God make him a good man, on a Tewesday at night between 8 and 9, that day was called St. Hilary’s day’, and on 22 June 1492 of ‘Frawnses my son, God make him his servaunt, on a Friday at night between 6 and 7, that day was called St. Alban, the first martyr of England’. The births of daughters were no less exactly noted than those of boys. In Sloane MS 2633 the birth of ‘my daughter’ Anne on the last day of February 1482 was


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put at six ‘a clok’ in the morning, while Thomasin Derham’s arrival in 1529 was elaborately set out in Harley 1688: The birthe of Thomasyn Derham dowghter of Thomas Derham the yonge[r] son of Thomas Derham the elder, in the xxti yere of the regn of kyng h the viij and in the yere of our lord god mdxxix in the xvij day of may on the sonday [sic] in the morning betwene v of the cloke and vj of the cloke.

Exactitude was necessary for the construction of horoscopes; these, in turn, were essential for medical prognoses. Similar examples are to be found in our third manuscript, British Library, Harleian MS 2887 . . .’ And footnote 9 on p. 245 should have been extended thus: ‘The jottings on the first folio of Harley MS 1688 are immediately below ‘a Rule to know every monyth what tyme the sonne shal arise’ and are headed by the word ‘Memo’: anno j Richard iijrd 3 April my wiff owith for qwete xxx quarters and x combys of wette and xvij combys mestlyone and cccc schipe and lxxvj lambis and xl Newte and Kyne and viij horsis. and vij li xs for scheps and for my J [sic] rydyng to London xvs and for sege xvs and xxxiijs iiijd in lawfull mony.

There are not only obits. Births and marriages are also recorded, enabling one to construct a comprehensive Derham pedigree for the fifteenth century.’ Here is that pedigree: Thomas Dereham (d. unknown) m. Alice (d.1438), maidservant to Anne of Bohemia and Isobel of France. Their son and heir was Thomas Dereham of Crimplesham (d.1444) who m. Elizabeth (d.1468), daughter of Baldwin de Vere of Great Addington, Northants, and Denver, Norfolk (d.1424) and his wife Eleanor (d.1445). Thomas and Elizabeth’s son and heir was Thomas (b.1433, d.1474, and buried beside his mother in Crimplesham church) who m. first in 1460 Alice (d.1468), one of the two daughters and co-heiressess of Gilbert Holcroft, Baron of the Exchequer (d.1457) and his wife Margaret (d.1461), and secondly in 1470 Jane [daughter of John Bennett of Bunwell, Norfolk, according to Roger Virgoe]. By Alice Holcroft Thomas had John (d. unmarried in 1468, the same year as his mother and grandmother) and Elizabeth (b.1464), who m. John Fincham of Outwell, Norfolk. By Jane Thomas had Thomas the Elder (b.1471), Baldwin (b.1472, d.1528), and Thomas the Younger (b.1473). Which of these later Thomas Derehams of Crimplesham was it leasing the sheep pasture and meadow at nearby Boughton from George Monoux in 1517? George Monoux, citizen and lord mayor of London, had bought the two manors of Overhall and Netherhall in Boughton from John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, for £356 in November 1512. One does not think of the saintly Fisher as a profiting

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land marketeer, yet he made £50 on this particular deal, having purchased the two manors from Elizabeth, the widow of David Orell, and their son Lewis in August 1512 for £306. Elizabeth had every right to sell Overhall, having inherited it from her father Alexander Marchal (Blomefield, Norfolk, IV, p. 65); ownership of Netherhall was disputed with the Lovells of neighbouring Barton Bendish. In October 1519 a panel of arbitrators headed by Sir Roger Townshend made an award in a dispute between George Monoux and Sir Thomas Lovell concerning the use by the villagers of Boughton and Barton of the common pasture that lay between their open fields. These documents were copied into a portion of the mid-sixteenth-century Monoux Cartulary or Ledger Book to be found in the William Salt Library at Stafford: Salt Original MS 249, fols 1–8v and 232–234v. A far better-known part of the divided Ledger book (with its map of Walthamstow and coloured drawing of the Monoux almshouses and school) is to be found in the British Library: Additional MS 18783. For the celebrated George Monoux see the relevant volume of the History of Parliament and a whole host of Transactions of the Walthamstow Antiquarian Society. Was he Norfolk born and bred?

Twelfth-Century East Anglian Canons: A Monastic Life? Terrie Colk

THE TWELFTH CENTURY was a time of reform and renewal: a renaissance, which some historians believe changed essential conceptions of a Christian life.1 For monasticism, it was a time of new reforms, new writings and a new challenging of old practices. In this desire for change, new religious orders, splintering away from main groupings, grew in number and variety. In this paper, I intend to consider a regional dimension of one of these new orders, the Augustinian canons regular, which flourished in the eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. This region is representative of Augustinian England in its mix of royal and local influences, its larger houses and tiny establishments, the houses’ sources of income and its setting within a European context. The region also has many unique features, containing over a quarter of all English houses under St Augustine’s Rule, whilst houses of more ascetic orders, such as the Cistercians, were very thin on the ground; and being one of the most heavily populated areas of twelfth-century England with many settlements and towns, and numerous parish churches. I intend to show how the Augustinian canons of East Anglia led a full monastic life, combining the essentials of traditional Benedictine monasticism with new beliefs and ideas similar to those found in other new houses that flourished in the twelfth century. I wish further to suggest that the adoption of a contemplative apostolic life tended naturally to move the canons away from the original concept of pastoral care being central to their lives, and towards high monastic ideals. To state that Augustinian canons led a full monastic life goes against a long history of opinion and tradition, for there is an underlying perception of canons somehow not being equal to those in monastic orders in their religious intentions. Erasmus provided a succinct view of Augustinian canons when writing of his pilgrimage to Walsingham in 1511, in that it was served by a college of canons, but of those which the Church of Rome terms regular, a middle kind between the monks and those termed secular canons. . . . amphibious animals, such as the beaver.2 1 2

G. Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in Religious Life’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R.L. Benson and G. Constable (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 37–67. J. Gough Nichols, ed., Pilgrimages to Saint Mary of Walsingham and Saint Thomas of Canter-

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Bishop Thomas Tanner continued the theme in his Notitia Monastica of 1695, noting that canons ‘lived under some Rule; [and] were a less strict sort of religious than the monks’;3 this was quoted by the nineteenth-century editors of Dugdale’s reprinted Monasticon Anglicanum, who were of a similar view. The work of J.C. Dickinson and H.M. Colvin, whilst forming the standard for twentieth-century historians, did not fully dispel these perceptions.4 From the 1970s well-respected historians, such as R.W. Southern, whilst arguing that the canons were a very important phenomenon, still chose to add: The Augustinian canons indeed, as a whole, lacked every mark of greatness. They were neither very rich, nor very learned, nor very religious, nor very influential. . . . Like the ragwort which adheres so tenaciously to the stone walls of Oxford, or the sparrows of the English towns, they were not a handsome species.5

Counter-arguments have emerged from time to time, possibly reaching their height at the Milan conference in 1959, where continental historians, such as Charles Dereine, continued to highlight the distinctiveness of the canons, advocating that they led a more vocational pastoral life than the monks. From the late 1970s, Carolyn Walker Bynum essentially shifted discussion away from the practices of the canons, such as pastoral care, to differences in their spirituality,6

3

4

5 6

bury by Desiderius Erasmus (Westminster, 1849), p. 12. J.C. Dickinson provides a similar translation, The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduction into England (London, SPCK, 1950), p. 197. Monasticon Anglicanum: A History of the Abbies & other Monasteries, Hospitals, Friaries and Cathedral & Collegiate Churches, with their dependancies . . . from the Latin text by William Dugdale, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 volumes of 8 (London, 1830–46) [hereafter Monasticon], VI(i), p. 37. J.C. Dickinson said they were ‘the most neglected religious order of the medieval church’, Origins, p. v. H.M. Colvin saw the Premonstratensian order as far more than ‘a pale imitation of Cistercianism’, The White Canons in England (Oxford, 1952), p. 19. R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 248. See C. Walker Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth Century Spirituality (Harvard, 1979); C. Walker Bynum, ‘The Spirituality of Regular Canons in the Twelfth Century’, in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 22–58. Caroline Walker Bynum provides a revisionist argument that a unique canonical motif, docere verbo et exemplo, existed in the twelfth century, emphasising that: ‘What distinguishes regular canons from monks is the canon’s sense of a responsibility to edify [improve the minds and morals of] his fellow men both by what he says and by what he does’ (Bynum, Jesus, p. 36). However, Bynum often reveals her own doubts through many clarifications, and little of the literature considered first for her research contains the essence of this motif. When discussing De Questionibus by Richard of Saint-Victor, she notes that because of its practical nature, the treatise gives almost no sense of a responsibility to edify (Bynum, Docere, p. 55). Bynum sees Richard as ‘possibly an exception to the canonical outlook, . . . for he wrote of teaching being a form of instruction’ (ibid., p. 36). It is significant that Richard of Saint-Victor, a major figure at the canonical school in Paris, saw teaching in a similar way to many monks. Without fully debating this, Bynum concludes that, like Adam of Dryburgh’s, his treatises reflect a ‘fading or wavering of the canonical self-conception in the later years’ (ibid., p. 36). This indicates that a canonical motif, if it did exist in the form of docere verbo et exemplo, was disappearing on the continent as early as the 1170s.

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attempting to counter Jean Leclerq’s persuasive arguments against the existence of a separate canonical spirituality in the twelfth century.7 Notwithstanding these debates, the older perceptions still prevail, such as in Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England, where Colin Platt writes In effect, St Augustine’s Rule was better than none. It knit together communities with no other allegiance, and took its place in the contemporary monastic reform. But . . . the regular canons who followed St Augustine never made comfortable bed-fellows with the ascetics.8

To demonstrate the extent to which East Anglian canons led a full monastic life, this paper considers the relationship of the convent to the world outside its walls, as well as the claustral life and spiritual environment. The canons regular were essential and valued participants in the economic and social life of the region. They were held in as high esteem as monks by aristocratic patrons such as William III de Warenne, who, on the eve of departing for the Second Crusade, not only secured the dedication of the family Cluniac monasteries, of Lewes and Castle Acre, but also founded an Augustinian house for canons of the Holy Sepulchre at Thetford.9 Other influential and powerful families, such as the Clares, never considered the canons, of Walsingham and other houses as anything less than a full monastic order of high status and worthy of their patronage.10 Still outside the monastery, this paper considers in detail the issue of the Her argument is unpersuasive when extended to English Augustinian canons. Late eleventhcentury treatises provide Bynum with her strongest evidence (Regula Canonicorum, MS Ottoboni Lat. 17, fols 1–70); however, these were written at a time of quiet experimentation before St Augustine’s Rule was adopted. Copies may not have crossed the Channel, for like Philip de Harvengt’s treatises, which Bynum also uses, none appear on existing library lists for canonical houses. This is in contrast to copies of Hugh de Folieto’s De Claustro Animae, a text she first decides is not suitable for her argument, possibly because it was written for both canons and monks (Bynum, Docere, p. 9). Turning to English canonical treatises, Bynum says of the Bridlington Dialogue (The Bridlington Dialogue: An Exposition of the Rule of St Augustine for the Life of the Clergy, ed. Religious of C.S.M.V. (London, 1959)), written in the 1140s, that ‘although there is enough awareness of the canon’s effect on his neighbour . . . concern for edification is not a major characteristic of the Bridlington author’s spiritual teaching’ (ibid., p. 57). Robert of Bridlington’s views are monastic, tutoring others by instruction and encouragement, for a teacher ‘must comfort and cherish them with kindly words’ (Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 183/183a). Little in English writings suggests that canons or monks had an inner compulsion to be exemplars, or that a motif of docere verbo et exemplo ever became a major signifier of the English canonical order. It is more likely that a phrase or two, concerning edification by example, is a glimpse of a larger whole: an indicator of the sense of spiritual community and fraternity common to all cloistered religious of the twelfth century, as argued by Jean Leclercq. 7 Bynum, Jesus, pp. 25–6. J. Leclercq, ‘La Spiritualité des Chanoines Reguliers’, La Vita Comune del Clero nei Secoli XI e XII. Atti della Settimana di Studio, Mendola, Septembre 1959 (Milan, Pubblicazioni del’ Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1962) [hereafter La Vita], pp. 117–34. 8 C. Platt, Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England, 2nd edn (London, 1995), p. 32. 9 Early Yorkshire Charters, viii: The Honour of Warenne, ed. C.T. Clay (Yorkshire Archaeological Society es 6, 1949), nos 32, 45; BL, MS Harley 2110, fol. 4r. 10 For a study of the Clares, see J.C. Ward, ‘Fashions in Monastic Endowment: the Foundations of the Clare Family 1066–1314’, JEH 32 (1981), pp. 427–51. These matters are considered more fully in T. Colk, ‘Augustinian Canons: Monks by Another Name’ (unpublished MA thesis, UEA, 2001).

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canons’ pastoral vocation. This calling was noted in a number of twelfth-century treatises as being the essential difference between canons and monks.11 Papal pronouncements from the time of the Gregorian reforms, and monastic treatises, advocated that canons should follow the patterns of the apostles to preach, baptise, and give communion. A few continental canonical houses had difficulties with this concept, such as the abbey of Premontré in France, which was ‘destined to become a refuge for ascetic clerics’.12 However, for some historians, such as Giles Constable and Charles Dereine, the more positive examples13 provide evidence of continental canons combining a regular monastic life with a predisposition towards cura animarum, the cure of souls.14 When considering English canons, can an orientation towards pastoral care be found? To assess this more easily some duties are discounted, such as the pastoral care of a fellow-religious and chaplain service for patrons and their families, for these services were freely carried out by priest-monks and canons alike. The continental treatises appear to have narrow parameters and relate to canons serving parish churches for the faithful who attended. Parish churches proliferated throughout the continent; however, according to Christopher Brooke, there was nothing to parallel the number of tiny parishes in England. Numerous small parish churches built in towns and cities by local landowners or groups of citizens became the ‘social centre, the status symbol, of their communities, as well as the centre of cult and devotion’.15 However, as J.C. Dickinson concluded, after much thought, ‘English regular canons probably served fewer parish churches proportionately than their Continental contemporaries.’16 This was mainly because their motherhouses were less well staffed, and a good proportion of their dependent churches were less able to support the two or three brethren who were required to travel and stay together.17 East Anglia, with its abundance of parish churches and 11

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15 16 17

For a discussion of some of these treatises see G. Constable, Monastic Tithes from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1964), pp.150–65. Writers on this subject included the author of Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus (Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus et Professionibus qui sunt in Aecclesia, ed. G. Constable and B. Smith (Oxford, 1972)), Idung of Prufenung, Ivo of Chartres and Peter the Venerable. Colvin, White Canons, p. 8. Constable, Monastic Tithes, p. 154. He states that canons at Springiersbach, St Quentin at Beauvais, Prato and Saint-Victor at Paris performed some pastoral work, along with those of individual houses in Germany where parish priests were scarce. Dereine argued that promoters of the canonical life such as Anselm of Havelberg and Arno of Reichersberg rejected the absolute primacy of contemplation and underlined the value of apostolic action, i.e. cura animarum. See La Vita, pp.136–41 for Dereine’s debate on this subject with J. Leclerq. The Premonstratensians have not been considered separately in this paper. As Richard Mortimer says, ‘it is not easy to see exactly what was different about the Premonstratensian version of the apostolic life as practised in late twelfth-century England. Whatever its beginnings, the Premonstratensian order by this time was an enclosed, monastic one.’ R. Mortimer, ‘Religious and Secular Motives for some English Monastic Foundations’, Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, ed. D. Baker SCH, 15 (Oxford, 1978), p. 83. C.N.L. Brooke, ‘The Churches of Medieval Cambridge’, History, Society and the Churches: Essays in honour of Owen Chadwick, ed. D. Beales and G. Best (Cambridge, 1985), p. 52. Dickinson, Origins, p. 240. Ibid. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 sought to overcome dangers inherent in sending single


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small Augustinian houses, provides ample evidence to substantiate Dickinson’s view. The Taxatio Ecclesiastica for the diocese of Norwich records 134 churches being appropriated to Augustinian priories, with just twenty-one houses holding 110 of these;18 each priory held the rectories of an average of 5.2 churches.19 Although the author of Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus wrote fondly of his fellow brethren living away in dependent parishes,20 this would have been rare in East Anglia; the only example may be distant Llanthony Secunda’s provision, in around 1163, of two canons for St Augustine’s church in Norwich.21 With many small East Anglian houses having less than six canons, their own church and monastery would have been greatly depleted had any large number of pastoral undertakings taken place. In fully accepting the obligation of providing the daily round of prayer for parish churches gifted to them, East Anglian canons showed their concerns and interest by providing for pastoral needs of the parish, but in absentia. The recently edited English Episcopal Acta record occasions of appropriation from the 1170s which indicate that vicars, rather than canons, may have previously served certain churches. An example from the diocese of Norwich shows how Blythburgh priory, on becoming corporate rector of the church of Claxton, was required to provide a vicar on the death of Archdeacon Geoffrey, the current rector.22 This seems to indicate that a canon had not been provided from the priory in the past, and was unlikely to be in the future. The first appropriations for Waltham abbey were very similar.23 It seems only where parish churches were within travelling distance of the motherhouse, such as Wormegay, or on a lord’s manorial estate, occasional arrangements for a serving canon were made. When Theobald de Valognes granted the church of Hickling to the priory of the same name it was to be served in perpetuity by the canons themselves: ‘ut in eadem ecclesia canonici beati Augustini regulam professi perpetuo maneant et ministrent’.24 In contrast, the bishop only required sound and honest priests to be provided to minister at the churches of Hacheston and Parham, ‘salva honesta sustentatione sacerdotum in predictis ecclesiis ministrantium’.25 The placing of priests or vicars in parish churches became the main response to a situation in which many in East Anglian Augustinian houses found themselves; the canons of the house did not necessarily

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canons away from the mother-house to serve a parish church. English houses may not have observed this practice before 1179; Robert of Bridlington writes that two canons were always sent on journeys together, as one could not travel ‘without a guardian and a witness of his modesty’: Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 128/128a. Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P. Nicholai IV (Record Commission, London, 1833), pp. 78–123 passim. D.M. Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, Part 1 (BAR 80, Oxford, 1980), p. 201. Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus, pp. 80–5. C. Harper Bill, ed., English Episcopal Acta 6, Norwich 1070–1214 (Oxford, 1990) [hereafter EEA Norwich], no. 114. Dated 1161x1168. The appropriation is dated 1188x1200. EEA Norwich, nos 173–4. Ibid., nos 307–10. For other priories, where vicars or priests were to be provided, see ibid., no. 426 for West Acre and nos 427–30 for West Dereham. Ibid., no. 227. Ibid.

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perform the appropriate pastoral services, especially where the priory had many appropriations or the churches were some distance away. Accepting an overall picture of canons serving few of their parish churches, some houses nevertheless require further consideration, especially those founded in the early years after the Council of Nimes in 1096, and Urban II’s pronouncements on their pastoral role. The first Augustinian house, in Colchester, was a community of priests established in the church of St Botulph,26 who all resolved to adopt the Rule of St Augustine, almost certainly to enhance, not to detract from, their service to God as priests. In adopting the customs of Beauvais, the English house may have been influenced by the continental canons’ pastoral calling, receiving in 1116 Paschal II’s confirmation of this role.27 Similar to Colchester, West Acre priory was first ‘in all probability . . . a community of priests, living in and around the parish church of All Saints, bound together by common devotion’.28 Their priory and dedicated church were not finished until the 1130s or 1140s, and until then some of the community possibly continued serving as parish priests. Christopher Brooke notes that the canons at St Giles in Cambridge enjoyed the tithes of parishes north and west of the river Cam and that their ‘founders reckoned that the canons would have pastoral responsibility for the townsfolk on that side of the river, and also for the castle’.29 This may have changed within twenty years with the re-foundation of the priory at Barnwell in around 1112. The question is perhaps how far into the twelfth century did individual canons continue to perform pastoral services for the faithful; especially once the priories became well established, or had adopted the monastic Rule of St Augustine, or the numbers of churches and their accompanying responsibilities grew. This pastoral role may have lasted somewhat longer at Little Dunmow priory in Essex. Founded in 1104 and having a stated commitment to cura animarum,30 the priory’s patronage was taken up by the Clares, and the canons received many gifts from local Clare tenants. It may not have been until the rebuilding of the church in the late twelfth century that the physical separation of space presented an opportunity for them to become less involved in the everyday pastoral care of the faithful. This separation was not unusual: priories such as Butley eventually provided a separate church for parishioners, turning the original church and priory into a more suitable place for contemplation and the ‘quiet of religion’,31 replicating the shifts elsewhere, where the adoption of an apostolic life increasing took canons closer to contemplative monastic ideals. When discussing their pastoral role, the Augustinians need to be placed within the monastic landscape of East Anglia; for, despite contemporary contentions, pastoral vocation was not the sole province of the canons. Cluniac houses were granted many churches, and in accepting the church, likewise fully accepted

26 27 28 29 30 31

See J.A. Round, ‘The Origin of St. Botulph’s Priory, Colchester’, TEAS ns 3 (1889), pp. 267–72. ‘The dispensation of the Word of God, the offices of preaching, baptising and reconciling penitents have always been a function of your order.’ Monasticon, VI(i), pp. 106–7. N. Vincent, ‘The Foundation of Westacre Priory (1102x1126)’, NA 41 (1994), p. 490. C.N.L. Brooke, ‘The Churches of Medieval Cambridge’, p. 56. Monasticon, VI(i), pp. 308–9. Dickinson, Origins, p. 149.


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responsibility for the pastoral role. A small indication of this is when Prior Angwus and monks from Castle Acre travelled eight miles from their monastery with the sole intention of being with the parishioners of Tattershall at the presentation of their new priest.32 Castle Acre and its motherhouse, Lewes,33 as well as traditional Benedictine houses such as Ely and Norwich cathedral priories, were well favoured by patrons of churches, and fared well from the same system of appropriation, receiving the tithes and providing perpetual vicars.34 Some houses had numerous churches, such as Benedictine Walden abbey in Essex, whose founder endowed it with nineteen churches from the outset, causing great consternation to his heirs.35 Between 1146 and 1164 St John’s abbey at Colchester provided four monks to serve the church of Wickham Skeith, at its patron’s request.36 Some of the small Benedictine houses looked after just one or two manorial parish churches, such as Aldby, a cell of Norwich founded c.1090– 1100, where the prior and three monks never acquired a separate church but shared the parish church, maintaining the east end. Other early twelfth-century dependencies and cells such as Sporle, West Wretham, Heacham and Tofts Monks were all within close proximity to their parish churches and, given the smallness of their communities and their limited incomes, priest-monks may well have performed divine service for their local community, who in turn serviced their houses. Toft Monks is given particular credit for the duties performed by the black monks who lived there.37 It might be argued that monks and canons still differed in their intentions; the canon of Liège considered that monks had no choice but to perform the required services because ‘their churches are frequented by the faithful, whether they desire it or not’38 and a monks’ house within a wider community was like ‘the hill of the Lord next to the garrison of the Philistines’.39 This does not, however, seem to fit with the situation found in East Anglia. The managing of churches and pastoral care would have been a part of daily outward life for those religious ‘living close to laymen’,40 and in this sense cannot be seen as being unique to Augustinian canons. Moving from the world outside the monastery, the inner life of the houses is next considered. In the cloister and chapter-house, whether monastic or canonical, a monastic Rule shaped the inhabitants’ daily lives. By the twelfth century,

32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40

‘Per presentationem domini Angwi prioris de Acra et aliorum monachorum atque parrochianorum . . .’, EEA Norwich, no. 27. Dated 1121x1145. Castle Acre, see EEA Norwich, nos 185–206 passim, dated 1175x1200, and Lewes priory, ibid., no. 256, dated 1178x1189. Bury held the advowsons of sixty-five parish churches, the abbot holding thirty-six and the convent twenty-nine: Jocelin of Brakelond, p. xviii. In 1167, William de Mandeville was recorded as being hostile to Walden’s monks because they held all the churches of his fee and he was unable to grant any to his clerics: The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999), pp. 46–7. EEA Norwich, no. 81. VCH Norfolk, p. 464. Libellus, pp. 26–7. Libellus, pp. 24–5. Libellus, pp. xxiv, 44–5. According to the author of Libellus, canons and Benedictine monks lived near laymen whilst Cistercians were categorised as living far away from lay society.

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some monks, such as Cistercians, had returned to the strict precepts of St Benedict’s Rule, whilst other religious and clergy, perhaps searching for a similar purity, chose to adopt St Augustine’s. Originating in part from a simple letter addressed to devout women, this Rule was far less precise in its directive qualities, although still ultimately concerned with the salvation of one’s soul. The two Rules, whilst having the same outcome in mind for the monk or the canon, the nun or the devout woman, differed in their essence. The traditional Rule of St Benedict tended to consider the outward qualities of the monk; the early Cistercians, in following the Rule scrupulously, found a different sense of spirituality within it. Yet, St Augustine’s was a Rule truly of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, being refined and re-adopted after centuries of lying dormant. More free-flowing, almost nebulous, it appears this Rule complimented the mood and introspection of the new spirituality that was dawning. In addition to the Rule, all religious houses, whether Benedictine or Augustinian, evolved observances or customs, providing amplification and clarification for the conduct of their daily lives. For the new canonical houses, it seemed natural to draw upon proven practices that had already assured the success of the Benedictine form of monasticism. Observances in European Augustinian houses had a monastic familiarity about them, such as at Beauvais, which Dickinson maintained ‘owed not a little to Benedictinism’, adding that the Beauvais Custumal indicates its first abbot, Ivo of Chartres, ‘borrowed many things from the rites of monks’.41 The observances of the first Augustinian English house, in Colchester, were copied directly from the Custumals of Beauvais and Chartres, and these were copied for other houses. Firmly based on familiar Benedictine observances, everyday customs resonated with the Augustinian theme of moderation, rather than strict discipline or ascetic extremes. This could be mistaken as reflecting outwardly a less severe Rule. However, Augustinian canons believed that even if their way was of moderation,42 living faithful to their Rule and monastic observances would bring them to salvation.43 Familiar monastic practices can be found throughout the canons’ extensive observances, in the Barnwell Custumal,44 ranging from the canonical hours of the day and their liturgy to particular rituals, such as the presentation of books at the beginning of Lent. Some observances were designed to elicit important qualities in a monk or canon. Practices to do with poverty, silences, manual work or otherwise, were particularly designed to engender obedience and humility, with the Augustinian practices falling somewhere between those of traditional and reformed Benedictine houses. 41 42

Dickinson, Origins, p. 165. Robert of Bridlington calls this ‘ne quid nimis’ meaning a moderation in all things: Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 127/127a. 43 See The Observances in Use at the Augustinian Priory of Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, ed. J. Willis Clark (Cambridge, 1897) [hereafter Barnwell Custumal], pp. 32–3. 44 In addition to the Barnwell Custumal and West Acre’s foundation charter of 1108–1120, another canonical text is utilised to confirm the findings and analysis: Robert of Bridlington’s dialogue on St Augustine’s Rule, written in the 1140s. The Barnwell Custumal dates from the 1230s; however, the author makes it clear he has recorded those customs of long standing and traditions of ancient date. See Barnwell Custumal, pp. 36–7.


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Obedience was a virtue that an overriding number of monastic customs were designed to engender. In traditional Benedictine houses, any disobedience to the wishes of the abbot, as Christ’s representative, still required customary public punishment. In his Monastic Constitutions of 1070–1089, Lanfranc instructed that light offences committed by his monks were to be punished by eating alone or lying prostrate in the church, whilst serious offences incurred the ritual of stripping and scourging in the chapter-house.45 In twelfth-century Bury St Edmunds, exile was one of the possible punishments. In his Chronicle, Jocelin wrote of Samson’s early days as a cloister monk, of his being imprisoned and sent to Castle Acre; and how on his return he stayed silent on many matters, for he was as ‘a child who has recently been burned [and] is afraid of fire’.46 Yet on becoming abbot, Samson had the same high expectations of obedience in all things, sometimes to his own regret and that of his monks.47 Obedience was a quality a traditional monk learnt through modifying his external behaviour. In Augustinian houses, traditional Benedictine practices of obedience were moderated. Barnwell priory did have forms of public discipline that could, at first glance, be seen as characteristic of traditional monasticism, such as the daily chapter-house rituals of confession and penance. However, there was far more empathy within the canons’ rituals: visitors were purposely excluded, and the extent to which brethren should humiliate themselves was only for the community to know. So intent on this, the compiler at Barnwell declined to write anything on the matter in his Custumal, ‘lest a sight of this book should make known to strangers the secrets of the chapter’.48 Obedience in Barnwell, completely monastic in its form, fell somewhere between traditional and new interpretations of monastic practices. More charitable than many traditional Benedictine houses, Augustinian houses nevertheless did not try to live up to the high ideals of the Cistercians, such as found at Rievaulx in Yorkshire, where obedience and discipline was less mechanical and ritualistic, coming from within rather than from without.49 The quality of humility could present itself in numerous ways including the performance of work, which Benedict saw as a balance to sacred reading and a guard against idleness.50 In a Yorkshire commentary on the Rule, written in the 1140s for Augustinian canons, Benedict’s sixth degree of humility was amended by Robert of Bridlington.51 In shunning all mention of work, he avoided what was still something of a contentious issue, for heavy manual toil as part of the monastic calling was no longer seen as necessary by Cluniacs or traditional Benedictines, but was advocated by the early Cistercians. Like their continental 45 46 47 48 49

50 51

The punishment for carelessness in looking after the Host: The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles (London, 1951), pp. 90–1; also ibid., pp. 111–13, 145–6. Jocelin of Brakelond, p. 5. The quarrel of 1199 may be seen in this light. Jocelin of Brakelond, pp. 102–6. Barnwell Custumal, pp. 142–3. One example is Ailred’s ice-cold water-bath that he entered ‘when alone and undisturbed . . . [to] quench the heat in himself of every vice’. The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx by Walter Daniel, ed. F.M. Powicke (Oxford, 1950), p. 25. J. McCann, trans., The Rule of St Benedict (London, 1976), p. 53. Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 55/55a.

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counterparts, English canons tended to concur with the black monks, although, as Geoffrey of Saint-Victor stressed, in living the regular life canons were now free to proceed to manual labour.52 Robert of Bridlington notes that a canon might choose manual work but cautions that Jesus favoured Mary, who had chosen the stillness of repose, over Martha who busied herself with work.53 Similar conventions and ideas appear to have prevailed in Cambridgeshire, at Barnwell, and are vividly expressed in a chapter regarding lay-brothers, which states that, ‘as regular canons ought to be occupied day and night in things spiritual, so laybrethren ought to labour for the profit of the Church in things corporeal’.54 Uninfluenced by Cistercian views, Augustinian houses followed more mainstream conventions and did not take up manual work to any great degree. In common with other monastic houses, the primary purpose of the canons’ daily routines at Bridlington and Barnwell was ‘the offering of an unbroken round of communal sacrifice to God by men who had given up all for that purpose’.55 Mary’s work was valued more that Martha’s. Mary’s repose was taken to be meditative reading, and the Custumal from Barnwell reveals a passion equal to that of Bridlington, in that the compiler placed great importance on detailing minutely the care of the books. The precentor was required to know the collection thoroughly and needed to make provision for easy access and selection, with each canon being assigned a book for his own private reading within the cloister.56 Barnwell priory was not out of step with traditional Benedictine houses,57 for at Bury, where Jocelin may give an impression, sometimes, of being preoccupied with administrative duties, there was still a calm air of meditative reading in the cloister during the hours after Sext.58 Having shown how priories like Barnwell were imbued with an atmosphere of contemplation, may this argument be extended to other Augustinian houses in East Anglia? Certainly, houses like Barnwell and Colchester were interested in other convents’ customs from the first, just as it is known that Llanthony Secunda priory obtained copies of the Custumals of Merton, Saint-Victor in Paris and, most significantly, even of Cluny.59 Without general chapters in the twelfth century to direct matters, it is thought that observances, developed in the important early houses, were translated to and adopted by the later ones as they were founded, as with Hickling, Pentney, Great Buckenham and Waltham.60 With this cross-fertilisation of practices, it would seem reasonable to suggest that the lives 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Quoted in G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), p. 11, taken from Fons Philosophaie, ed. Pierre Michaud-Quantin (Namur, 1956), lines 745–72. Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 155/155a. Barnwell Custumal, pp. 222–3. According to J.C. Dickinson, Monastic Life in Medieval England (London, 1961), p. 60. Barnwell Custumal, pp. 62–5. Lanfranc’s Constitutions, pp. xxxv–vii, 19. Jocelin of Brakelond, p. xxi. T. Webber and A.G. Watson, eds, Corpus of the British Medieval Library Catalogues 6, The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons (London, 1998), p. 93. Hickling followed the observances of St Osyth’s, Great Buckenham those of Merton, Pentney the observances of West Acre. Waltham’s first canons came from Cirencester, Oseney and St Osyth’s. Monasticon, VI(i), pp. 57, 68–70, 419.


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of many Augustinian communities fell into the traditional patterns of the Benedictine horarium. It cannot be said with the same certainty, however, that they all achieved the same level of contemplative life. Canons in smaller houses may have found that, whilst having the Opus Dei uppermost in their lives, their other time was perhaps filled with administrative responsibilities. This would be especially so if their house had a heavy commitment to hospitality, such as Hempton or Chosley, or was part of the Orders of the Holy Sepulchre as at Thetford, or the Sisters or Knights Hospitallers, where assisting clerics in the collection of alms or even military exercises was seen as work.61 Just as in Benedictine houses, Augustinian customs varied in accordance with the frame of mind of the people who lived there and the local circumstances in which they found themselves. David Knowles recognised Benedictine houses as: ‘an unmistakable family and yet wholly distinct in individuality’,62 and East Anglian houses of the Augustinian order need to be viewed in a similar light, whilst also acknowledging that all belong to the same canonical community. The third part of this paper steps further into the monastery, for below the veneer of customs and observances lies a deeper spiritual level. It is well accepted by historians that the twelfth century saw the emergence of a new spirituality, a novel introspection within Christian life, which stemmed from, and conversely influenced, contemporary religious writings. Jean Leclercq put forward persuasive arguments to show that the canons’ spirituality echoed perfectly that found among other twelfth-century cloistered religious, and his arguments are relevant to the monastic situation in England and specifically in East Anglia. In treatises such as Hugo de Folieto’s De Claustro Animae, written around 1160, Jean Leclercq found a firm foundation for his arguments. He contended that Hugo, a canon regular, made it explicitly clear that he wrote his treatise not only for canons of his own order but for all cloistered religious, whilst acknowledging freely his use of Benedict’s Rule.63 The canon characterised the monastic cum canonical vocation as being a question of giving up the world and of desiring poverty.64 He drew heavily on the writings of St Bernard, who believed that monks might imitate ‘by a virtuous and orderly life, the way of life of the Jerusalem above’,65 and that their spiritual progression from monastery to Heaven might be a continuation from one to the other. Leclercq notes from this chapter that this is far from what would set monks against canons or convent against convent.66 Leclerq’s views on this common spirituality become especially relevant when considering the spirituality of monks and canons living in England, for copies of

61 62 63 64 65

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E. Puddy, A Short History of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in Norfolk (Dereham, 1961), pp. 12, 25. D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1940), p. 300. J. Leclercq, ‘La Spiritualité des Chanoines Reguliers’, La Vita, p. 130. Ibid., p. 129. St Bernard, Super Cantica, 55.2 (Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris 1841–64), 183: 1045) printed in J. Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 3rd edn (New York, 1982), p. 55. J. Leclercq, ‘La Spiritualité des Chanoines Reguliers’, La Vita, p. 131.

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De Claustro Animae not only circulated throughout France but also crossed the Channel.67 Whilst no library lists exist for East Anglian canonical houses, Augustinian library lists of later centuries show three copies being held by Llanthony Secunda priory and eight copies held by the canons of Leicester.68 Three early Cistercian lists indicate that within twenty years of the treatise being written copies had made their way to Flaxley, Meaux and Rievaulx.69 The canon’s treatise can even be found in thirteenth-century library lists for Benedictine monasteries, which might be seen as bastions of tradition. A particularly nice example is Bury St Edmunds, where De Claustro Animae was one of only seventeen books carefully chosen for the refectory, to be read aloud and repeated as part of a three-yearly reading cycle.70 This treatise, with its ideas of inner spirituality and the monastery as a prelude to heaven, was accessible for English monks and canons to read and contemplate. Hugo de Folieto’s treatise was one of many circulating in England that explored new avenues of thought on spirituality, the ideas intertwining and complementing each other. From the limited number of library lists it can be determined that many treatises would have become familiar to monks and canons, unconcerned by the order from which the writings originated. The occasional compendia clearly illustrate this. A compendium held at Meaux indicates how a Cistercian monk combined the popular treatises of Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugo de Folieto and Hugh of Saint-Victor into one volume, possibly for ease of reading and studying.71 A Benedictine house renowned for its learning, St Albans, held copies of all Hugh of Saint-Victor’s works following a special request by its abbot,72 as well as English canonical writings such as Robert of Bridlington’s Expositiono in Apocalipsim.73 Augustinian canons and Cistercian monks of Yorkshire regularly exchanged manuscripts, to judge by copies of Robert’s manuscripts found at Rievaulx and copies of Ailred’s writings at Bridlington.74

67 68 69 70

71

72 73 74

Leclerq notes that an incomplete list for France totals sixty manuscripts, of which eighteen were Benedictine and eight Cistercian. Ibid., p. 128. Augustinian Libraries, pp. vi, 512. Llanthony Secunda’s lists were compiled 1355–60, Leicester’s in the late fifteenth century. Most of the listed books are twelfth-century in origin. D. Bell, ed., Corpus of the British Medieval Library Catalogues 3, The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians (London, 1992), pp. 31, 180–1. R. Sharp and J. Carley, eds, Corpus of the British Medieval Library Catalogues: English Benedictine Libraries, The Shorter Catalogues (London, 1998), pp. 87–9. The choice of books may have remained unchanged from the mid-thirteenth century to the late fourteenth century. Another example is the list of borrowers for Thorney abbey dated 1329 showing Richard and Hugh, and then their prior, personally borrowing De Claustro Animae in turn. Cistercian Libraries, pp. 56–7. The following appear as one volume: a. Opuscula Bernardi in quo; b. Bernardus de consideracione; c. Hugo de anima Christi; d. Hugo de arca anime; e. Hugo de religione, de claustro materiali, de claustro anime, de contemplacione. (The last may be Richard of Saint-Victor’s Beniamin maior.) See Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 502. Benedictine Libraries, pp. 550–1. Robert of Bridlington’s writings appear on the lists for the Cistercian houses of Byland, Meaux, Rievaulx, Revesby and Kirkstead as well as for the Gilbertine houses of Lincoln and Bullington: Cistercian Libraries, p. 312. In addition, his treatises probably had a much wider circulation than scant library lists for Augustinian houses are able to show. Copies of Ailred’s writings were held


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Familiarity grew through the acquisition and copying of manuscripts, and through subsequent readings during contemplative hours spent quietly in English cloisters. As they were exposed to similar writings and influences, and were open to new ideas, it is perhaps unsurprising to find a similar sense of spiritual progress among canons and monks of the newer orders. At Rievaulx, Walter Daniel’s writings provide graphic images of Ailred’s inner progress in his final years of life towards salvation and the attainment of a higher spiritual plane. Robert of Bridlington was well acquainted with these allusions, seeing the Augustinian house as a desert place, being ‘near to Jerusalem and far from Babylon’.75 By the thirteenth century, the idea of a spiritual journey was so much part of the canons’ lives that it influences the opening paragraphs of the Barnwell Custumal: Let all who have taken upon themselves the religious life . . . of whatever habit, profession, district, region, dignity, or order – let them find out, I say, and walk steadily, in the way that leads to their city . . . to the holy city of Jerusalem above the heavens76

The new English houses not only accepted continental ideas of inner spirituality and spiritual progress – the ideas became very compelling for them. Central to many ideas of an individual’s inner spiritual progress was a renewed emphasis on the value of community. Hugo had seen the monastery as prefiguring a community of angels in heaven; complimenting ideas expressed by other twelfth-century writers on community, which they often linked with the revitalisation of the earliest form of Christian Life. The sense of an apostolic community can be found as early as 1102–1126 in the confirmation charter of Ralph de Tosni’s gift to West Acre priory, in Norfolk, where the priest, Olivet, explains the reason for the foundation, in that the apostles had bequeathed to us true teaching on how to live well . . . as can be read of in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul . . . [and] they had all things in common.’ The holy fathers called this the canonical rule, and whoever shall follow it shall become the consort and the fellow citizen of the apostles.77

The words of Olivet the priest highlight a twelfth-century interpretation of Vita Apostolica. He and his fellow brethren were not adopting the life of the apostles for its virtues of preaching or evangelising, but for the inner life that the model of the first Christian communities offered, in its strong sense of fraternity. This particular interpretation of apostolic life perhaps explains why the centrality granted to pastoral service in some of the continental houses was not apparent in those of East Anglia. These apostolic ideals were not unique to the canons and Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings often contained references to community at Thurgarton, Leicester and Llanthony as well as included in the late twelfth-century lists for Bridlington: Augustinian Libraries, p. 487. 75 Bridlington Dialogue, pp. 4/4a. 76 Barnwell Custumal, pp. 34–5. 77 The biblical quote comes from Acts 4:32. Vincent, ‘Westacre’, p. 492.

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advocating that ‘Grace and asceticism must replace this “selfish will” with a “communal will” ’.78 As Bernard’s writings reflected his aspirations for Cistercian houses, so the nature of the texts chosen by Olivet reflects the aspirations to re-create the apostles’ community within his own house. Olivet’s reliance on texts in this fashion highlights how alike some Augustinian houses were to Cistercian houses in being ‘textual communities’.79 This phenomenon was relatively new to religious houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with a more intensive use of texts to shape their lives than ever before. As Brian Stock indicates, the essence of these textual communities was not the written text, ‘but an individual who, having mastered it, then utilised it for reforming a group’s thought and action’.80 The text’s interpreter might, like St Bernard, remain a charismatic figure in his own right, whose power to motivate groups derived from his oratory, gestures and physical presence. In seeking out a new sense of fraternity, Olivet the priest of West Acre mastered the Acts and Psalms, with the intention of turning the texts into the canons’ rituals of everyday life, so fulfilling his desire of making his apostolic community a reality. Likewise, once the priests of Colchester had ‘all resolved with one accord to adopt the garb of religion’,81 Norman gave these intentions definite form and direction, having first become ‘duly learned in the canonical order’ of Augustine.82 Certain other figures come to mind from the smaller houses, such as dominus Tobias,83 who was exceptional enough for his priory to have perhaps been named after him, and William of Guist, the first master at the hospital at North Creake, who asked for the foundation to be changed into an Augustinian abbey.84 Whilst it is not known which texts these priors may have read beyond their chosen Rule, nor much about their personalities, one can gain a sense of their houses being led in the same new spiritual direction. In Cambridge, and then Barnwell, Geoffrey of Huntingdon may also have desired an apostolic community; regrettably all that is known is that he ‘ruled the church for twenty years and after the removal to Barnwell died old and full of days in great sanctity’.85 However, the completion of a cycle can be seen, for Barnwell’s Custumal shows how ideas, originally coming from texts, went beyond them to be re-absorbed and internalised to become quite natural. Ostensibly a simple practical book of observances and customs, it is infused with a sense of spiritual community. The difference is quite noticeable between the Custumal and Lanfranc’s eleventh-century Monastic Constitutions, where he simply prescribes the functional duties individual monks were to perform, such as the arrangements to be made for a dying monk.86 At Barnwell, the master of the 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

J. Leclerq, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit (Michigan, 1976), p. 77. See B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (New Jersey, 1983), chapter 2: ‘Textual Communities’. Ibid., p. 90. J.H. Round, ‘The Origin of St Botolph’s Priory, Colchester’, TEAS ns 3 (1889), p. 268. Ibid., p. 271. Thoby priory in Essex. Monasticon, VI(i), pp. 553–4. Monasticon, VI(i), pp. 486–7; VCH Norfolk ii, pp. 370–2. Quoted from the Liber Memorandum Eccelsiae de Bernwelle in Barnwell Custumal, p. xiii. When an infirmary monk ‘perceives a sick man is now nearing his end, it is his duty to instruct his


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infirmary was to be gentle and compassionate and behave in a spirit of fraternal sympathy.87 Similarly, the sub-cellarer must be obliging and temperate when answering his fellow brethren.88 For ‘a dying brother, on hearing the bell, all the brethren ought to hasten in a spirit of sympathy’,89 almost like the brethren at Rievaulx who gathered around Ailred during his last days.90 Barnwell’s author first describes St Augustine’s Rule as being simple and easy to live by, but then reveals the deeper spirituality contained within, saying, On the other hand it is deep and lofty, so that the wise and the strong can find in it matter for abundant and perfect contemplation. An elephant can swim in it, and a lamb can walk in safety.91

The author of the Custumal, almost unconsciously, focuses upon the spiritual rather than worldly qualities required for his community to be of one accord. This sense of inner spirituality and apostolic community seems apparent in Augustinian houses in East Anglia, perhaps more than in its traditional Benedictine houses, whose abbots would have had the natural inertia of a long-established house to overcome, and long-established obligations to discharge.92 As with Cistercian houses, there was something in the very newness of these Augustinian communities, and their initial desires and hopes, that would have allowed the new sense of spirituality to catch hold more readily. This paper has shown how Augustinian canons of East Anglia encapsulated the spirit of the twelfth century, their lives being a synergy of traditional and new monasticism. The pastoral aspects of their lives were different from that first intended, and from those of their continental counterparts. Like monks, canons willingly provided divine services and sacraments for their patrons; however, as the twelfth century progressed they appear to have served fewer parish churches. Even with exceptions, such as Little Dunmow, the canons’ pastoral role may have eventually ceased, as the adoption of a contemplative apostolic life naturally moved them away from the concept of pastoral care as central to their lives. Their practices and observances were imbued with a sense of Augustinian moderation, and subtly different from those in traditional convents, being more charitable and having an interior dimension, whilst still being completely monastic in form. In the performance of work, as a guard against idleness, Augustinian canons followed traditional Benedictines in valuing meditative reading above that of Martha’s work, likewise Mary’s repose above a pastoral calling. It may be considered that the canons’ sense of spirituality echoed perfectly that associated with other twelfth-century cloistered religious. Monks of the new

87 88 89 90 91 92

servants to heat water to wash the body’. The infirmarer also was required to accuse, in chapter, any monk he thought was negligent for lying in the infirmary too long. Lanfranc’s Constitutions, pp. 89–90. Barnwell Custumal, pp. 202–5. Ibid., pp. 184–5. Ibid., pp. 214–15. Life of Ailred, pp. 59–61. ‘In ipsa enim atque elephans natat, atque agnus secure ambulat’, Barnwell Custumal, pp. 230–1. Jocelin seems to have remembered Abbot Samson’s accent more than the content of his oration. Jocelin of Brakelond, p. 37.

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orders and canons shared a search for the spiritual dimension within the temporal, for the sanctity inherent in community, and were united by a set of beliefs and ideas that went deeper that the particular order by which the houses were designated. Cistercian and Augustinian houses were alike in being ‘textual communities’,93 and this suggests that the sense of inner spirituality and community was not only present at Rievaulx or Bridlington, but, through individuals, in some of the smaller Augustinian houses in East Anglia, and at Barnwell. There were obvious variations between the houses of canons, but these were a natural part of the monastic landscape. In conclusion, I would return to a few misconceptions that still crop up when one reads of twelfth-century canons. Erasmus’s view of 1511, of Augustinian canons being ‘amphibious animals, such as a beaver’,94 perhaps truly reflects what he thought they had become. A fair reflection or not, the monastic nature of the twelfth-century canons becomes lost in this description. Late medieval views such as this seemed to assist in setting the mould of ‘the canons being a less strict sort of religious’95 for centuries to come. This paper offers a different insight showing how twelfth-century East Anglian canons led a life of contemplation and possible introspection, which could not be counted as less religious or spiritual than that of other monastic orders. Another misconception is that the canons were a kind of monk who followed a Rule of brevity and vagueness,96 so taking a superficial view of the meaning of St Augustine’s Rule. The canons looked to many Benedictine observances to provide the structure of their daily lives, seeing their Rule as their inner spiritual guide, being ‘deep and lofty so that . . . an elephant can swim in it and a lamb can walk in safety’.97 Though only complete in its essentials, the Rule complemented the mood and introspection of the dawning new spirituality, and canons believed that in following the Rule they equally would come to salvation. Their fidelity to this moderate Rule may have been one of the reasons for contemporaries judging them less harshly than other orders.98 I believe that Jean Leclercq’s arguments are hard to refute and hold true for both continental and English monasticism. Not only did Hugo de Folieto write for all cloistered religious; his texts could be found in English houses, irrespective of their Rule. Leclercq’s arguments against the existence of separate canonical spirituality in effect bring the canons back into the mainstream of monasticism, and this reflects more fairly the place the houses actually held. I hope this paper dispels Southern’s contention of the canons being a ‘less than handsome species’, or the ‘sparrows of English towns’.99 Modest, contemplative, pious – more song-thrushes than sparrows, perhaps?

93 94 95 96 97 98

Stock, Implications of Literacy, p. 90. Note 2 above. Note 3 above. Robinson, Augustinian Settlement, p. 9. Barnwell Custumal, pp. 232–3. For example, the views of Ranulf de Glanvill as reported by Gerald of Wales; cf. R. Mortimer, ‘Religious and Secular Motives’ (as in note 14 above), pp. 77–85. 99 Note 5 above.

‘Leave my Virginity Alone’ The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Norwich: In Pursuit of a Pragmatic Piety Carole Hill

THE LATE MEDIEVAL period was a dangerous time, physically and spiritually, for women in childbirth. Naturally, they took this risk very seriously and the time of confinement was approached with some trepidation and spiritual preparedness. That is, they confessed their sins and were absolved, and they invoked suitable spiritual intercessors, the better to ensure the physical safety of their child and their own survival; or if the worst should happen, they at least died shriven. Wemen that here wyt chyld al-so, Thu mot teche how thai sall do, Wen ther tyme es nere to comme. Byd tham do thus all & summe. Teche tham to cumme & schryfe tham clene, And housyll tham all be dene . . . For drede of paryll that may be-fall, In ther trawallyng that cumme schall.1

Even that was not quite sufficient, because a woman dying in childbed was still considered spiritually at risk if she died with a dead or moribund infant, or any part of it, still in utero. John Mirk’s early fifteenth-century instructions for parish priests make clear the teaching to be conveyed to local midwives: And yf the woman than dye Byd the mydwyf scho that hye For to vndo hyre wyt a knyf, And so to sawe the chyldys lyfe.2

In extremis, the child was to be baptised by the midwife: And if the chyld be half bore Hede and nec and no more 1 2

G. Kristensson, ed., John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests (Lund, 1974) (hereafter Mirk’s Instructions), p. 179, lines 77–83. Kristensson, Mirk’s Instructions, p. 180, lines 97–103.

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Byd hyre spare, neuer the latter, To crysten yt and cast on water.3

While the imperative here focused, if any flicker of life remained, on the infant’s baptism and consequent salvation, the secondary objective was removal of the baby, dead or alive, from the mother’s pelvis, so that she, too, all contaminants voided, was released from the burden of Original Sin, and fit for burial in sanctified ground. For greater assurance, a mother needed to survive beyond her baby’s baptism until her churching some weeks later, when she would be restored to her community ‘cleansed’ and ready for action. As Mirk advised in his sermon for the feast of the Purification, when a woman cometh to the chyrche-dyrre tell the pryst come and cast holy watyr on hyr, and clansuth hur, and so takyth hyr by the hond, and bryngyth her to the chyrche, euyng hur leue to come to the chyrch, and to goo to hur husbandys bed.4

In that order. If she had been remiss enough to indulge in any sexual activity during this official ‘stand-off’ period, she would need absolution once again, and her husband with her. Mirk emphasises that the Virgin mother of Christ needed no such cleansing, but that the rest of womankind carried a heavy burden requiring special arrangements. His sermon outlines that ‘clerkes techen’ that the female embryo takes double the time of the male to take on human shape in the womb, before it is ‘quickened’ by God.5 This was because ‘the forme woman Eue vexude God more then dyd man’.6 As part of God’s justice, therefore, women are doomed by their bodies from conception. For this reason, a longer period of exclusion was, in theory, required following the birth of a daughter: ‘And yf a woman wer delyuerd of a mayden-chyld, scho schuld dowbull the dayes of comyng to chyrch.’7 The neo-natal period continued to be full of danger for both mother and child, especially in the crowded and often noxious locations of intra-mural city accommodation. Access to clean water and the means to wash and cook remained problematic, especially for the impoverished family sharing cramped, inadequate sub-divided tenements, or those sharing their domestic space with their livestock. Archaeological evidence from the eleventh- to twelfth-century churchyard in the north-east bailey of Norwich Castle reveals a mean age at death for women of about thirty-three.8 Their bones show signs of parietal osteoporosis, indicative of poor early nutrition and skeletal trauma consistent with heavy manual labour,

3 4 5 6 7 8

Kristensson, Mirk’s Instructions, p. 180, lines 91–94. T. Erbe, ed., Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, EETS es 96 (London, 1905) (hereafter Mirk’s Festial), p. 58, line 36 – p. 59, lines 1–4. Erbe, Mirk’s Festial, p. 57, lines 26–8. Erbe, Mirk’s Festial, p. 57, line 32. Erbe, Mirk’s Festial, p. 57, lines 23–5. A. Stirland, ‘The Human Bones’, in B. Ayers, ed., Excavations within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle, 1979, EA Arch. 28 (1985) (hereafter ‘Bones’, EA Arch. 28), pp. 49–58, p. 50.

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making a safe and successful pregnancy less likely, and a young child’s thriving improbable.9 Certainly, by the end of the fourteenth century, successive waves of plague, other endemic disease, and famine-related impoverishment of the autoimmune system of the survivors, can have done nothing to improve the medical status or expectations of the child-bearing.10 This is confirmed by later work on the excavated burial ground of St Margaret in Combusto, near the Magdalene Gates, an area north of the city once occupied by the poor and the marginalised and near the public gallows.11 The dedication of this church brings us to the virgin-martyr who was believed to give her protection and support, physical and spiritual, to women pregnant and in labour: St Margaret of Antioch, believed to be an adolescent victim of the Diocletian and Maximian persecutions in the early fourth century.12 Why would such women find solace in the intercession of an adolescent virgin-martyr? This paper attempts to explore possible interpretations by examining the layers of meaning in the saint’s legend, how they were utilised and what signs this cult has left in Norfolk. A quotation from an Old English life of St Margaret, its imagery strongly redolent of later gild enactment or tableau, may provide some clues: There came then out of the corner of the prison a most terrifying dragon of many different colours. His hair appeared golden, and his teeth were just like cut iron, and his eyes shone like strange gems, and from his nose there came a great amount of smoke, and his tongue breathed out and he caused a tremendous stench in the prison . . .13

In these highly ambivalent terms is described the dragon confronting the virgin-about-to-be-martyr, making it difficult for the reader to see the horror so much as to feel the overwhelming of the physical senses: the golden hair, the eyes shining like gems, the lascivious tongue breathing out the odour of perdition. But then St Margaret herself is explicit: she fears the size, power and uncontrolled energy of this creature: God Almighty, extinguish the power of this huge dragon and have mercy on me in my need and hardship and never let me perish, but defend me against this wild beast . . .

The holy Margaret then grabbed the devil by the hair and threw him to the ground. She put out his right eye and shattered all his bones and she set her right 9 10

Stirland, ‘Bones’, EA Arch. 28, pp. 54, 56. G. Stroud, ‘Human Bones’, in A. Rogerson et al., eds, Three Norman Churches in Norfolk, EA Arch. 32 (1987), pp. 42–8. Cribra orbitalia were found in five excavated skulls of children who died aged less than five years, suggestive of chronic infantile anaemia, possibly associated with poor maternal health during gestation, as well as inadequate diet of the infant. 11 J. Bown and A. Stirland, ‘Criminals and Paupers: Excavations of the Site of the Church and Graveyard of St Margaret in Combusto’, unpublished report of the Norwich Archaeological Unit (1987). 12 M. Clayton and H. Magennis, eds, The Old English Lives of St Margaret, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 9 (Cambridge, 1994) (hereafter OE Lives of St Margaret), p. 3. The editors date such an event c. AD 305–13. 13 Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, para. 12, p. 123 (BL MS Cotton Tiberius A iii).

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foot over his neck and said to him, ‘Leave my virginity alone! Christ is helping me, for his name shines for all eternity.’14 Perhaps like the dragon’s eyes. This very physical engagement with ‘the dragon’ and the injuries inflicted on it mirror Margaret’s own later destruction, and should perhaps be read as its spiritual precursor. Her inward battle becomes externalised and waged on the battleground of her own body. Margaret was venerated possibly earlier than the eighth century, when her passio was recorded in a Latin text derived from the Greek.15 This became the source of a number of vernacular accounts of the legend, including the Old English version. Ninth-century manuscripts are known, as are two eleventhcentury versions, one of which was of Anglo-Saxon origin. Although St Margaret was believed to have been an early martyr of Roman imperial persecution, the legend in its redactions lays no emphasis on the saint’s historicity or date, perhaps because of its purpose as an allegory or parable. Its fantastical elements place it in another realm of meaning and power altogether. This Old English life of St Margaret makes clear the nature of her battle. The devil to be overcome and which attempted to consume her was her vulnerability to the strength of her own sexual impulses. In this battle, her virginity has become coterminous with her Christian faith, and she is required to lay aside both by Olibrius, the Roman prefect, who offers her marriage. ‘If you obey me and believe in my god . . . I will take you as my wife.’ And, what is more, he says, it would ‘be as well for you as it is for me’, which could be interpreted as assurance of sexual satisfaction as much as threat.16 Olibrius has recognised Margaret’s ambivalence, which is confirmed by her response to his sexual innuendo: ‘I give my body to torments in order that my soul may rest with the righteous souls.’ Margaret is the personification of the struggle that must exist between human physical responses and appetites and the pursuit of a highly developed and dedicated inner spirit that was the goal of the religious or the pious lay person. The encounter with the devil-dragon, by which St Margaret is almost always identified in medieval iconography, occurs when Olibrius has her thrown into prison for resistance to his advances. In this version she is ‘swallowed’ or overwhelmed by the dragon, whom she then causes to explode or burst open by making the sign of the cross, thus escaping from his ruptured belly entire and unscathed. Her power as a virgin martyr, and, more particularly, her potency as the protector and patron of pregnant and labouring women who were not virgins, rested on this ‘escape’, or vanquishing of the devil. Margaret’s deliverance from the belly of the dragon tells of her triumph over her own ‘lower nature’.17 The

14 15 16 17

Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, para. 14, p. 125. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, p. 7. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, p. 117. St Jerome’s letter to Eustochium, a consecrated virgin and daughter of his Roman disciple and patron, Paula, warned her that she carried her worst enemy ‘shut up inside herself’. Her ‘hot little body’ should avoid certain food and the danger of close male company. P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Columbia, 1988) (hereafter, The Body), p. 376, Letter 22.8: 399. Brown remarks that for Jerome, the human body remained a dark forest ‘filled with the roaring of wild beasts’.


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vivid metaphor speaks of overwhelming evil literally annihilated by dependence on Christ. The temptation is represented so dramatically because Margaret has pledged her virginity to a heavenly Bridegroom. Spiritual deliverance through sexual integrity, and thus empowerment of the female flesh, was a major theme of St Margaret’s legend and, indeed, one could argue, of Christ’s. While this legend superficially upheld the negative views of women expressed by the early Fathers of the Church, in particular about female lustfulness and susceptibility to moral corruption, it could also be understood in a much broader and more ambiguous way as a means by which women could gain control over their own bodies and ‘stand on the neck’ of often life-threatening odds.18 Pregnancy was, for most women, a constantly recurring, often annual, danger, which did not diminish, but rather increased through repeated pregnancies.19 St Margaret’s triumph could be understood at many levels. She offered an icon of protection, strengthened resistance to sexual temptations, and, more subtly, represented the struggle for a higher integration of mind, body and intention. The continuing popularity of bestowing her name on daughters at baptism (and Tanner shows it was by far the most common name among female testators between 1370 and 1532),20 and the ubiquity of her name and image in Norwich and Norfolk churches show that, however men and women interpreted her cult, when little practical help was at hand, she was embraced with some vigour. The sexual theme is diffused throughout this early version of the saint’s life. When, in a vision, God speaks to Margaret through a dove, the connection is clear: ‘. . . you who through virginity desired the eternal kingdom . . . it will be granted to you with Abraham . . . Isaac and Jacob (who were not virgins or martyrs). Blessed are you, who have overcome the enemy’.21 For a woman to overcome her innate concupiscence under extreme temptation was reckoned to bestow superior standing among the spiritual elite and render her worthy of veneration. She had ‘won her spurs’, to use a male metaphor, in that she had joined the celestial hierarchy as a woman who had become a spiritual ‘male’, escaping the highly dangerous threat, both physical and spiritual, of her own body.22 Because of this, Margaret became empowered in a way unknown even to the patriarchs, not least because of her resolute dependence on Christ, whom she praises as ‘. . . you who condescend to reveal to your servant that you are the one hope of all who believe in you’.23 Even of women. Indeed, one might say especially 18 19 20

21 22

23

Brown, The Body, p. 242. See also pp. 305–22 for the views of St John Chrysostom. Most women experiencing frequent pregnancy could also suffer occasional spontaneous abortion, which, in the circumstances, might also be life-threatening. This was far and away the most popular woman’s name among Norwich testators between 1370 and 1532. See N.P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984), Appendix 9, p. 211. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, para. 15, pp. 125 and 127. Jean Gerson (d.1429), writing against women teaching, said: ‘they are easily seduced and determined seducers . . . it is not proved that they are witnesses to divine grace’. De examinatione doctrinum, pt. 1, considerations 2a and 3a. L. Ellies-Dupin, ed., Joannis Gersonii . . . omnia opera, 5 vols (Antwerp, 1706), i, pp. 14–26, quoted by C.W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (California, 1982) (hereafter Jesus as Mother), p. 136 n. 85. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, para. 15, p. 127.

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of women. This God had condescended to take on human flesh, with which, according to Aristotelian medical theory and the early Doctors of the Church, the female sex was especially associated.24 In this early legend, the devil’s confession to St Margaret, and its explicit conflation with involuntary aspects of human sexuality, brings to mind Margery Kempe’s dramatic opening of her book, which describes a difficult first pregnancy and a yet more traumatic birth ‘. . . what for labowr sche had in chyldyng & for sekenesse goyng be-forn, sche dyspered of hyr lyfe, wenyng sche myghth not leuyn’.25 The efficacy of the sacrament of confession as a means of redemption and healing for sinful flesh, especially that of women, is apparent in Margery’s first chapter. Her post-partem psychotic behaviour, with its demonic hallucinations and attempts at self-harm, which lasted in excess of eight months, she attributed to an unconfessed, therefore unshriven, sin, probably sexual. Her healing, she thought, was due to the direct intervention of Christ, who appeared to her, and, significantly, sat on her bed. Immediately, she felt better ‘in alle hir spyritys’. The introduction describes how the rewriting of Margery’s text (that is the definitive version of her vita) commenced, portentously, the day after the feast of St Mary Magdalen.26 That the priest, who had been unable to decipher the earlier transcription for four long years, is suddenly able to read it, as it ‘was mech mor esy than it was a-for tyme’, marks Margery’s state of grace, and supplies a modest opening miracle for her attempt at personal hagiography.27 The OE legend concludes its theme of salvation through renunciation of the flesh when Margaret’s final ordeal ends and she is summoned by God to her heavenly reward with the words: ‘Blessed are you who have desired virginity: for this reason you are blessed in eternity’.28 Not, therefore, for her steadfastness or endurance, nor even for promulgating the faith to many thousands in the face of martyrdom, but for the desire for virginity, St Margaret gains her spiritual crown. Fleshly longing has been integrated and transformed into a spiritual desire that is consummated in death. While such aspirations may have appealed to Margery Kempe, was this entirely how St Margaret was understood by other medieval pregnant suppliants in and around Norwich? Or by those women who eagerly watched the pageant of the gild of St George every April, where ‘the Margaret’, though splendidly accoutred and jewelled, became little more than a decorative and quiescent accessory to the sword-wielding George and his dragon?29 Clearly, devotion to the saint and the reasons that inspired it had evolved over time. East Anglian veneration of her was well established by the mid-eleventh century, at

24 25 26 27 28 29

Bynum, Jesus as Mother, pp. 110–25. S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen, eds, The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS os 212 (reprint Woodbridge, 1997) (hereafter Book of Margery Kempe), i, ch. 1 p. 6, lines 29–32. The feast day was 22 July, therefore begun on the 23 July. Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, Proem and i, ch. 1, pp. 5–7. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, 18, p. 131. M. Grace, ed., The Gild of St George, Norwich 1389–1547, NRS 9 (1937) (hereafter Gild of St George), p. 17. Grace argues that the inclusion of ‘the Margaret’ was a late development, as she is not named in the account roll before 1532. But, as she states, much finery was often borrowed, so this late dating is not conclusive in my opinion.


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both Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds, as liturgical manuscripts show.30 The mid-sixteenth century saw her still vividly represented, mounted on a horse, an icon of lavish raiment, if subordinated, in the civic pageantry of Norwich.31 She survives now on only six rood screen panels in the county, but may also still be seen in several fifteenth-century windows and wood-carvings. The finest of the carvings must be that on a nave pew-end in St Helen’s church at the Great Hospital, Norwich, which bears the initials of John Hecker, Master of the hospital from 1519–32, who commissioned it. She appears, too, on a boss in the roof of Bishop Goldwell’s chantry, a few yards away. At All Saints church, Filby, St Margaret is pictured on the screen with an ornate crozier, symbol of episcopal authority, which she thrusts into the dragon’s throat (Plate 1). Such a depiction could be an attempt to abrogate her power and appropriate it to the patriarchal authority of the Church. Equally, it could symbolise the intrinsic authority she was believed to wield. On the screen at St Nicholas’s, North Walsham (then dedicated to the Virgin), St Margaret is grouped with St Barbara and St Mary Magdalen, reinforcing, through their Eucharistic associations, her own standing as purveyor of divine power and conduit of redemption, rescue and resurrection.32 Such attributes are clearly demonstrated in an engraving of her in the centre of the fifteenth-century silver paten from St Margaret’s church, Felbrigg (Plate 2). As Ellen Ross has indicated, and in this at least, she agrees with Elizabeth Robertson and Caroline Bynum, St Margaret is simultaneously a representative of humankind and a Christ-like advocate of humanity through suffering.33 Just such a close association with the Eucharistic Body seems to be indicated here. Margery Kempe, who in the early years of her vocation had aspirations to be a bride of Christ, describes her three years of temptation, during which she repeatedly encountered what she defines as the snares of lechery. It may be indicative of the understanding that the laity in general had of the iconography of St Margaret, but is certainly indicative of Margery’s, that she describes her narrow escape from adultery with a man to whom she felt attracted, as happening on St Margaret’s Eve. She recounts that, after a disturbing exchange, they both went to hear evensong, ‘for her cherch was of Seynt Margaret’. It was thus the vigil of her parish church’s patronal festival, and Margery identified herself with the plight of its patron and her name-saint, sorely tempted by the devil in her own flesh. But feeling abandoned by God, Margery, unlike the virgin-martyr, decided to succumb, only to be rejected and scorned, and thereby saved from herself.34 Margery, in this appropriation of her patron’s legend, is presenting her own 30 31 32 33

34

Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, pp. 75–7. Possibly copied from a German source. Grace, Gild of St George, p. 140. W.W. Williamson, ‘Saints on Norfolk Rood-Screens and Pulpits’, NA 31 (1957) (hereafter Williamson, ‘Saints’), pp. 299–346, pp. 326 and 342. E.M. Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1997), p. 99. E. Robertson, ‘The Corporeality of Female Sanctity in The Life of St Margaret’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell (Cornell, 1991), pp. 268–87, especially p. 272. C.W. Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), p. 25. Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, i, ch. 4, p. 15.

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Plate 1. St Margaret on the rood screen at All Saints church, Filby.

problematic spiritual journey as a hagiographical parallel, as her own bid for sanctity. This is a recurring theme of her book, with the saint changed to suit the stage of Margery’s spiritual odyssey, and the nature of her current pious aspirations. Whether she is emulating St Anne, St Bridget of Sweden or St Mary Magdalen, non-virgins all, Margery competes with them to stand first with Christ, with at least the status of a virgin-martyr, like her parish patron. In this, St Margaret is singular among Margery’s revered saints, and signifies the virginity from which Margery feels so distant after fourteen pregnancies, and a selfconfessed lasting predilection for sexual pleasure that in the early days of her ‘conversion’ she felt would distance her from Christ.35 35

Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, i, ch. 22, pp. 51–2.


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Plate 2. St Margaret: an engraving in the centre of the fifteenthcentury silver paten from St Margaret’s church, Felbrigg.

St Margaret appears crowned, with the Holy Kin, on the south screen which forms the Lady altar, at St Helen’s, Ranworth (Plate 3). This iconography speaks of, and to, young women, their childbed experience, and their small and vulnerable children. Both the Holy Kin and their suppliants unite under the guardianship of the devil-defeating Margaret, who by association and merit shares the Incarnational power of Christ’s extended earthly family.36 It seems very likely that mothers of the parish would come with their babies to this Lady altar, to offer a candle in thanksgiving for a safe delivery, and for purification. Women, in the post-partem period after birth, were considered ritually unclean for a period of thirty-three days following the birth of a male child, and up to sixty-six after that of a female.37 By the late Middle Ages this customary sequestering of the mother, rooted in Old Testament laws of purification, placed a mother in some spiritual jeopardy should she sicken and die.38 To such, specifically, the screen offered a complex icon of support, protection and reassurance. It is no surprise, in such a context, to read in the late fourteenth-century commonplace book of that wellknown family man and church reeve, Robert Reynes of Acle, that an image of St Margaret graced the high altar alongside that of the Virgin Annunciate, ‘alle clene

36

Williamson, ‘Saints’, p. 336. See also E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), p. 181. 37 Leviticus 12. 38 Erbe, Mirk’s Festial, p. 57, lines 14–30.

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Plate 3. St Margaret (far right) with the Holy Kin on the south screen which forms the Lady altar at St Helen’s church, Ranworth.

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gold’, at the Walsingham shrine to holy motherhood.39 Pilgrims went there to offer thanksgiving (as Reynes may well have done) as well as to pray for the saints’ intercessions. The ritual of thanksgiving, cleansing and welcome back into the full fellowship of the parish was resonant of Mary’s Presentation at the Temple and the purification rites of Candlemas on 2 February.40 Such a ceremony was described with some emotion by Margery Kempe in her book, and probably also took place in St Margaret’s, Lynn. She, like the thirteenth-century beguine and mystic, Marie de Oignies [d.1213] before her, claimed, in ‘hir gostly vndirstondyng’, to see Mary presenting Christ to Simeon in the Temple, during this ceremony.41 So overcome was she that she could barely offer up her candle to the priest, but went ‘waueryng on eche syde as it had ben a dronkyn woman, wepyng & sobbyng’, and, as usual, disturbing her fellow-worshippers and attracting widespread disapproval.42 This parish church belonged to the Benedictine priory of Lynn, which was a cell of Norwich cathedral priory, and was the singular place of worship of the élite in Lynn, since it alone offered the full range of sacraments.43 Disapproval was, therefore, coming from Margery’s influential erstwhile peers.44 St Margaret: the personalisation of patronage Screen images of St Margaret may also be seen at Walpole St Peter (in very poor condition) and Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin (a beautiful panel, with a dragon that seems to have been bred from a Gloucester Old Spot pig) (Plate 4), but it must be emphasised that these few survivals do not reflect the great popularity of this saint, especially with women. Other images do remain on painted wall and in glass. She appears in the western segment of the vault of the ante-reliquary chapel of Norwich cathedral, paired with her more bookish peer and protector from sudden death, St Katherine of Alexandria, both in the company of the Virgin and Child (Plate 5).45 The Virgin holds an apple to which the Infant Jesus extends his

39

40 41 42 43 44

45

L. Cameron, ed., The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle (Bodley, Tanner MS 407, Bodleian Sc 10234) (New York and London, 1980), p. 323. Robert and Emma Reynes had five sons. Emma died eight years into the marriage, in May 1479, possibly in childbirth. Unusually, Robert seems not to have remarried. See C.L.S. Linnell, ‘The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle’, NA 32 (1961), pp. 111–27, p. 111. Luke 2, vv. 22–4. A Middle English life of Marie de Oignies was in circulation and was read to Margery. See C. Horstmann, ed., ‘Prosalegenden: Die Legenden des MS Douce 114’, Anglia 8 (1885), p. 173. Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, i, ch. 82, p. 198, lines 15–17. Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, i, ch. 25, pp. 58–60. R. Swanson, ‘Will the Real Margery Kempe Please Stand Up!’, in Women and Religion in Medieval England, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 2003), pp. 141–55. Swanson suggests Margery’s book reflected some of the tensions felt by the mercantile élite during a time of major demographic shift. See p. 147. For further political analysis of this interpretation, see also K. Parker, ‘Lynn and the Making of a Mystic’, in Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. K. Lewis and J. Arnold (Cambridge, 2004). D. Park and H. Howard, ‘The Medieval Polychromy’, pp. 379–409 in Norwich Cathedral, ed. I. Atherton et al. (London, 1996), give a date for this scheme of 1300–50. See p. 393.

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Plate 4. St Margaret on a screen panel at Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin.


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Plate 5. St Margaret (left, with dragon) on a wall painting in the western segment of the vault of the ante-reliquary chapel of Norwich cathedral. She appears with St Katherine of Alexandria (right, with wheel) and the Virgin and Child (centre).

hand, emphasising this group’s corporate rôle in the work of redemption made necessary by Eve’s failure.46 At the parish church of St Gregory in Norwich, ‘the Margaret’ features in an extensive and lively wall-painting of St George, who appears splendidly arrayed on a prancing mount, giving battle to the dragon, just as he might have been seen portrayed in the gild day pageants in the 1520s.47 Unlike the George, this Margaret is immobile and marginalised, isolated in the background on a ledge with sheep, an image of resigned docility (Plate 6). She has become conflated with the rescued Maiden-Princess in St George’s legend, who is offered to the dragon along with sacrificial sheep as the ransom price for the town’s physical security.48 The association with the paschal lamb is obvious; that the Maiden is used as a substitute for the sheep in St George’s legend, implies again the perception of St Margaret as a mirror of the Passion. Numerous dedications of churches in St Margaret’s honour in Norwich 46

E.W. Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London, 1955), p. 230. A good reference, but some dates have now been revised by more recent scholarship, for example the retable in the Lady chapel, which Tristram dates at c.1380, is now dated to c.1420. See Plate Va between pp. 368 and 369 and Fig. 142, p. 395 in Atherton et al., Norwich Cathedral. 47 Hudson and Tingey, Records, ii, p. 379, no. CCCCLXV. ‘Item a sword covered with velvett with gilt harnys for the George . . . a helm gilt with crest, and 3 ostreche fetheres . . . a peyre [of] gloves gilt . . . Item a dragon’. A mid-fifteenth-century inventory shows the George getting even grander. See pp. 399–400, no. CCCCLXVII. 48 W.G. Ryan, ed., The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, 2 vols (Toronto, 1978) (hereafter Golden Legend), i, ch. 58, pp. 238–9. It is notable in this version that the dragon is kept at a distance because it has plague-infested breath which the Maiden is meant to ‘contain’, and thus safeguard the city.

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Plate 6. St Margaret depicted (with sheep on the ledge to the right) in the wall painting of St George at St Gregory’s church, Norwich.


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diocese alone attest to the high esteem in which she had long been held. Many of these churches are of ancient, some possibly pre-Conquest foundation, such as Breckles, near Croxton, Hardwick, Hales, Hardley, Seething and Worthing, all round-towered, and thus relatively early.49 Even now, hers is the fifth most frequently found dedication in the diocese of Norwich, where forty-eight parish churches or ruins of churches dedicated to her remain.50 Many churches in Norfolk had altars or lights of St Margaret, usually signifying the possession of a venerated image. Blomefield notes that after 1349, when the Norwich parish church of St Margaret Newbridge united with St George Colegate, its principal image of St Margaret was transferred there, thus foreshadowing the ‘appropriation’ of her legend in Norwich by the cult of St George in a very material way.51 St Stephen’s church, to the south of the market, possessed an image of her; Alice Carre, widow of Norwich, asked in her will of 1523 that her best rosary beads be put on it on the saint’s feast day, 20 July.52 It is significant that the images of saints Alice selected to be so honoured all had a special rôle in the protection of women in childbed, and in women’s lives generally. The others were St Anne, the Virgin, and St Katherine, who offered protection from sudden, that is unshriven, death. On the other side of the city, another venerated image was to be found at St Michael Coslany, as is known from bequests for lights there.53 According to Bokenham’s legend of St Margaret, lights in the saint’s honour carried penitential significance: ‘if they . . . lyght or launpe fynde of deuocyoun/ To me-ward: lord, for thy gret grace/ Hem repentaunce graunte er they hens pace’.54 The parish church of St Peter Mancroft possessed and possesses a significant and unusual fifteenth-century alabaster featuring a group of nine female virgin-saints, local as well as legendary, with St Margaret and her dragon in the centre foreground. Any specific connection with the women of the parish must, however, remain a matter of conjecture. Portable alabasters of a similar size were hired out elsewhere to aid the labour of elite female parishioners. Yet it may be that Margaret’s cult flourished here because so many of the parishioners belonged to the gild of St George, which, as we have seen, appropriated ‘the Margaret’ for its own pageant. The men and women who worshipped at St Peter’s dominated the hierarchy of this gild, the wealthy merchant and businessman, Alderman Robert Toppes and his wife, Joan, being a prime example. It may be argued with some confidence, though, that the actual survival of the alabaster is a testament to its importance in the life of the parish, and possibly of deep-seated attachment to its central figure as patron of safe childbirth.55 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

The other round towered churches of this dedication are: Burnham Norton, Old Catton, Topcroft and Witton. L. Stilgoe and D. Shreeve, The Round Tower Churches of Norfolk (Norwich, 2001). Figures calculated from the Diocesan Directory, 2000, published by the Norwich Diocesan Board of Finance, Norwich. Blomefield, Norfolk, iv, p. 474. NRO, NCC, Reg. Groundsburgh fol. 8 (Carre) 1524. Blomefield, Norfolk, iv, p. 499. M. Serjeantson, ed., Legendys of Hooly Wummen by Osbern Bokenham, EETS, os 206 (London, 1938) (hereafter, Bokenham, Legendys), p. 23, lines 836–40. As with the Long Melford alabaster, this too was buried, it is said, in the churchyard of St Peter

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The magnificent surviving glass of St Peter Mancroft includes a panel featuring St Margaret. In this particular context, the offer of aid implicit in the iconography of the saint’s triumph gives way to an overtly political interpretation. David King postulates that the commissioning and installation of the St Margaret window (and perhaps the Elisabeth of Hungary series) was deliberately timed to honour a pregnant Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI, who was visiting Norwich in 1453.56 The gift of panels depicting these saints could be construed as a deft political move by the many members of the ruling élite in this congregation.57 Such a reconciliatory gesture on behalf of the previously disunited civitas (a broken body politic indeed) was judged to bring nothing but credit to the city of which the queen held the fee-farm.58 Robert Toppes, a prominent parishioner, had been mayor for the third time the previous year and was now the leading alderman of the prestigious gild of St George.59 Parish sponsorship of this window, which complimented the queen by choosing her name-saint and implicitly bestowed a blessing upon her first and only pregnancy,60 might have been read differently, I would argue, by supporters of the house of York. For them, the queen not only needed divine intervention successfully to produce an heir to the English throne after a childless eight years of marriage to a feeble husband, but also supernatural help in rising above her own alleged misconduct with the Duke of Somerset. It was, in the circumstances, fortunate that she was delivered of a healthy son later that year. The new prince was also, in a sense, to Norfolk’s credit, since the less cynical could attribute his conception and birth to the patronage of Our Lady of Walsingham, to whom Queen Margaret had made sumptuous oblations whilst on pilgrimage.61

56

57

58 59

60 61

Mancroft. P. Lasko and N.J. Morgan, eds, Medieval Art in East Anglia 1300–1520 (Norwich 1973) (hereafter Medieval Art in East Anglia), pp. 55–6. Margaret of Anjou’s father was titular king of Hungary. DNB, xxxvi, p. 138. D.J. King, ‘A Glazier from the Bishopric of Utrecht’, in Utrecht: Britain and the Continent, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, ed. E. de Bievre, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 18 (1996), pp. 220–3. Robert and Joan Toppes had personally sponsored a window panel, a ‘Name of Jesus’ window. This featured portraits of themselves and Robert’s first wife as donors, and thereby not only promoted new liturgical trends, but themselves as avant garde sponsors of them. See R.W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 62–83. King Henry VI issued a new charter to the city in March 1451/2, granting the citizens their liberties and customs, ‘as in London’. Hudson and Tingey, Records, i, pp. 37–40, no. xxi. Toppes was mayor in 1435, 1440, 1452, and 1458, and burgess in parliament (MP) in 1437, 1439–40, 1445–6, 1449, 1459, and 1461–2. J.C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies of Members of the Commons’ House, 1439–1509 (London, 1936), p. 863. D.J. King, The Medieval Stained Glass of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Great Britain 4, forthcoming. See also King, ‘A Glazier’, p. 220. Margaret gave the shrine a jewel-encrusted tablet of gold, having at the centre an angel with a cameo head, bearing a ruby and pearl cross, a pragmatic and aesthetic conflation of the Annunciation (emblem of Walsingham) as the precursor of the Passion (for redemption). It was valued at £29, and remained one of the queen’s most expensive purchases. See also C. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society (Stroud, 1995), pp. 178–9.


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Painted panels, prayers and purgatory Relative to the number of standing city churches, very few painted screen panels survive in Norwich. An image of St Margaret may still be seen on just one, a large panel (101cm x 43.8cm) originally housed at St Michael at Plea, no longer part of a screen, and unlikely to have been so.62 This fine panel, painted c.1420–30, and perhaps part of an earlier retable, usually stands in the Lady chapel at the cathedral.63 That Margaret remains on some exceptionally fine screens in what were once the prosperous weaving hinterlands servicing Norwich, such as Ranworth and North Walsham, may convey an idea of how ubiquitous she once was and how much parishioners were prepared to invest in her patronage. At Martham St Mary she appears twice in the windows at the north-east end looking pregnant with power. North Tuddenham church boasts an even more splendid window in her honour emphasising the pastoral location in which Margaret was first espied by Olibrius’s messenger (Plate 7). That she is shown with spindle in hand, very finely dressed for a shepherdess, must have flattered those members of this congregation whose commercial success was so dependent on wool; indeed, it raises product promotion to new heights. Aside from honouring a saint, such as Margaret, and securing intercession among one’s friends, having a panel painted or gilded was a very effective way of promoting a person or a family in a visible and immediate medium. It was also a means of advertising material success and prosperity. The practice of depicting the donor(s) in the act of supplicating the saint on the screen panel is apparent in Norfolk, though, as Eamon Duffy reminds us, it was never common.64 Rarely are donors found on panels depicting virgin-martyrs; in Norfolk the Doctors of the Church did attract such suppliants. This is at first puzzling in a location where both seemingly disparate categories of saints were venerated. What links may be established between the veneration of St Margaret and, for example, that of St Jerome? Are they connected by ties other than their virtual contemporaneity? The theme of Margaret’s legend and the emphasis of much of the writing of Jerome combine in their mutual elevation of virginity, and sexual continence in general, as a means of obtaining integrity and thereby union with God. For eastern women of the fourth and fifth centuries (including, presumably, the young St Margaret and her peers), raised in an Aristotelian culture that defined women as morally weak and sexually voracious, virginity or abstinence offered a measure of control and personal freedom, in addition to liberation from the dangers of childbirth.65 The cults of these two saints, as revealed in Norfolk iconography of the fifteenth

62 63

Williamson, ‘Saints’, NA 31, p. 335. Lasko and Morgan, Medieval Art in East Anglia, p. 40 (57). In this connection the fine Thornham Parva retable (dated 1310–20), featuring St Margaret, should also be mentioned: p. 26 (32). See also Tristram, English Wall Painting, p. 301. 64 E. Duffy, ‘The Parish, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval East Anglia: the Evidence of Rood Screens’, in The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, ed. K. French, G. Gibbs and B. Kumin (Manchester, 1997), pp. 133–62, at pp. 144–5. 65 Brown, The Body, ‘Asceticism in the Eastern Empire’, pp. 264–7.

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Plate 7. St Margaret in a window panel at St Mary’s church, North Tuddenham.


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century, I would argue, define a female aspiration toward autonomy in women’s own challenging and often dangerous lives: St Margaret for the childbearing woman, and St Jerome, that ‘louere of wydewis’, for the chaste, pious, often much-married, widow.66 Among the fifteenth-century followers of St Jerome were likely to be those same women whose repeated experience of marriage had earlier in their lives found affirmation and inspiration in the apocryphal life of St Anne and her trinubium.67 Anne’s legend, confirmed by the writings of another married saint, St Bridget of Sweden, had shown that marriage and motherhood were not incompatible with female piety and chastity, nor even dynastic ambition.68 Jerome’s teaching could be interpreted as encouraging a more single-minded pursuit of penitential devotion among those now free to follow such a vocation: widows who aspired to be, in spiritual terms, ‘born-again virgins’. The priest, Symon Wynter, who wrote Jerome’s vita at Syon, the prestigious Bridgettine foundation, for Margaret, duchess of Clarence, in the 1440s, tells of St Bridget’s revelation from the Virgin. Doughtir, haue thou in mynde how I toolde the that Ierome was a lovere of wydous, a folewer of parfyt monkis and an auctour and defensour of trouthe that gate the by his meritis that prayere that thou sayest? And I adde to and say that Ierome was a trompe by whiche the Hooly Gooste spake. He was also a flaume inflaumyd by that fyre that come vppon me, and vppon the appostelis on Pentecost day. And therfore blessid are thay that here (t)his trompe and floew therafter [my italics].69

Like their sisters devoted to the Magdalen, their pursuit of a contemplative spirituality also encouraged the charitable practice of the Seven Comfortable Works. Norwich widow, Margaret Purdans (d.1481) and her extensive network of mainly well-connected female friends in Norwich, described by Mary Erler, exemplify such a model.70 In a sense, this group of Norwich women, all connected with the governing class, had their own ‘Jerome’, in the person of the hermit, Richard Fernys (d.1464), who may have acted as their spiritual director.71 On the evidence of his and their wills he certainly stood at the centre of this circle of interchange.72 Choosing the Doctors as screen subjects could also be seen to be a very public, perhaps even corporate, statement of affiliation and loyalty to traditional religion, a decision reached collectively by the parish, or influenced by parish priest. St Margaret’s iconography was, in a sense, made more powerful by her ability to 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

C. Waters, ed., ‘Symon Wynter: The Life of Saint Jerome’, in Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, ed. A.C. Bartlett and T.H. Bestul (Ithaca, 1999), p. 249. P. Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship: Gender and Family History’, in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St Anne, ed. K.Ashley and P.Sheingorn (Georgia, 1990), pp. 169–98. R. Ellis, ed., The Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden (Oxford, 1987) (hereafter Liber Celestis), iv, ch. 67, p. 311. Waters, ‘Symon Wynter’, p. 249. See also Ellis, Liber Celestis, vi, ch. 50, p. 448, lines 11–19. M.C. Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002) (hereafter Women, Reading), pp. 68–84. NRO, NCC, Reg. Caston fols 163–5 (Purdans) 1481/1483. Erler, Women, Reading, pp. 71–2. NRO, NCC, Reg. Jekkys fols 15–16 (Fernys) 1464; NRO, NCC, Reg. Multon fols 89–91 (Katherine Kerre) 1498, for example. Katherine’s sister and executrix, Christine Veyl, held a special place in the estimation of Fernys.

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transcend the perceived limitations of female flesh, and may not, therefore, have been perceived or utilised in the same way. Again, caution must be observed in any inference drawn about the few survivors of iconoclasm and changing fashions of worship.73 St Margaret’s main attraction, confirmed by contemporary texts, ultimately, reposed in her offer of personal empowerment to women in the time of their greatest physical and spiritual vulnerability: childbirth. Such individual sponsorship was perceived as a contract that could be entered at need, as Margaret Paston, pregnant with her first child, indicated when, in 1441, she requested her absent husband to wear the ring she had given him, bearing an image of the saint, her patron and namesake.74 This was no mere love-token. By wearing it John became a suppliant and co-client of St Margaret and involved in his wife’s ante-natal care. Attributes of encouragement and confidence were aspects of Margaret’s cult that were to be found, too, in the cult of St Anne. Similarly, both saints were invoked for infertility.75 Interpreting St Margaret Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend assigns to St Margaret the attributes of the pearl: shining white, small and potent: ‘. . . white by her virginity, small by humility, and powerful in the performance of miracles’.76 As the gem was said to be effective against bleeding and ‘passions of the heart’, so to Margaret was accorded the ability to control effusions of blood, including her own, a skill sought by women, pregnant or not, but especially before, during and after parturition.77 The capacity to prevent haemorrhage could also be understood to include the ability to control menstruation. This is implicit rather than explicit in her legend. Female health, according to humoral theory, depended on a proper balance obtained by regular, but not excessive, menstruation.78 Part of this theory 73 74

75

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77 78

In Norfolk, eighty screens bearing images survive; in Suffolk, thirty-nine. Duffy, ‘Parish, Piety and Patronage’, p. 134. N. Davis, ed., The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1971 and 1976) (hereafter Paston Letters), i, 125, p. 217, lines 28–9. ‘I pre yow that ye wyl were the reyng wyth the emage of Seynt Margrete that I sent yow for a rememrav(n)se tyl ye come hom’. Serjeantson, Bokenham, Legendys, pp. 57–8. Bokenham invokes St Anne’s aid on behalf of Katherine Denston, Suffolk heiress, desperate for a son and heir, who commissioned him to write the saint’s life. Interestingly, St Anne’s vita is preceded by that of St Margaret. Ryan, Golden Legend, i, p. 368. The anonymous poem, ‘Pearl’, written by c.1400, with its emphasis on sexual purity, should be considered in this context. It is thought by some scholars to have been written as an elegy on the death of Margaret, daughter of John Hastings, earl of Pembroke, and granddaughter of Edward III. See J.M. Bowers, The Politics of Pearl (Cambridge, 2001), p. 9. As noted above (n. 61), an abundance of pearls was a significant feature of the angel jewel given to Walsingham by Margaret of Anjou. The pearl, in a sense, was her personal rebus. M.H. Green, The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 90 (136) On Immoderate Menstruation. This remedy recommends a fumigant made of a mixture of old soles of shoes, penny royal and laurel leaves, used in conjunction with a pessary made of hot ashes and hot red wine wrapped in clean linen. According to the condition thought to be causing the haemorrhage, such as excess of black bile or phlegm, so was the remedy selected to redress the humoral balance. Juicy violets, prickly lettuce, pomegranate, oak apples, nutmeg, eglantine, brambles, agrimony were among the ingredients used.


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embraced preparation for successful conception, an aspect well within St Margaret’s provenance, and requiring adherence to a personal regimen for good health. In view of the limited options available to a medieval woman experiencing a complicated, dangerous birth, perceived support from a heavenly patron might be the only accessible aid or hope.79 Women in labour understandably identified very readily with a female icon of transcendent physical endurance. At another level, as suggested by Ross, St Margaret’s tortured and torn body was understood as a mirror or text of Christ’s Passion, like him, being ‘fecund’ in bearing and saving the world. ‘I ask you’, she says to the onlookers in her final minutes, ‘in the name of our Lord and Saviour Christ that he give you forgiveness of your sins and bring it about that you reign in the kingdom of heaven’.80 After her martyrdom, the angels reassure Margaret ‘do not be sorrowful concerning your holy body . . . [for] whoever touches your relics or your bones will have their sins wiped out at that moment and their name written in the book of life’.81 Redemption through transcendent, if broken, female flesh, as well as by Christ’s Passion, is dramatically signalled here. A concern with female well-being and fertility, it could be argued, inverts the general perception of Margaret’s chaste iconography. But does it? The thrust, so to speak, of her legend is that a virgin who refused surrender both to her own sexual nature and to those in authority over her, and suffered in imitation of Christ, elected to intercede for women who had done none of these. Her inviolate virginity gave her the power to do so. Her appeal had many facets. But St Margaret of Antioch was never a one-dimensional icon to her pragmatic medieval female clients. As, in Lydgate’s words, she petitioned God: Suffre no myschief tho wymmen, lorde, assaile. That calle to me for helpe in theire greuaunce, But for my sake save hem fro myschaunce.82

Margaret offered practical help and spiritual protection to child-bearing women and their infants: the former during parturition and the neo-natal period, the latter to those who died, in or after childbirth: Now, gloryous lady, lete thy pyte habounde, Oure soulys to brynge wher thy soule ys

writes Bokenham.83 Heaven was much more than any earthly accoucheur, or perhaps even the parish priest, could hope to offer.

79

80 81 82 83

See also pp. 69–71 of the above. Fumigants were also popular to aid a difficult birth, as were scented baths and the anointing of the affected parts with rose or violet oil. See pp. 79–81. It should be remembered that even a woman of the standing of Margaret Paston was dependent on a midwife disabled by sciatica, perhaps to some extent accounting for her ‘commissioning’ of St Margaret. See Davis, Paston Letters, i, no. 125, pp. 216–17. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, p. 135. Clayton and Magennis, OE Lives of St Margaret, p. 137. H.N. McCracken, ed., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate (Oxford, 1911), ‘The Legend of Seynt Margarete’, p. 190, lines 466–9. Serjeantson, Bokenham, Legendys, p. 24, lines 864–5.

Swaffham Parish Church: Community Building in Fifteenth-Century Norfolk T.A. Heslop

Introduction THE REBUILDING of the nave and west tower of Swaffham parish church in the second half of the fifteenth century was an ambitious project which is also very well documented. The aim of this paper is to explore it from two perspectives, broadly speaking architectural and historical. In doing so, I seek to bring out the particularities of the building aesthetically and as a community enterprise. The first section introduces some key issues in the historiography of fifteenth-century architecture in England in order to question some assumptions which, I suggest, still bedevil the subject. The second section focuses on Swaffham itself: both the building of the church and the circumstances in which the work was undertaken. This section is necessarily longer and more detailed than the first as it seeks to integrate complex documentary and physical evidence in order to relate these to the tastes and loyalties of named individuals. Although the practicalities of construction, aesthetic preferences and the ‘politics’ of motivation can be viewed as discrete, separable fields of enquiry, they shed light on each other and we gain a richer understanding if they are considered together.1

Part 1: ‘Perpendicular’ in Norfolk Shelton is a village ten miles south of Norwich. In his entry on the church Pevsner writes the following: ‘Apart from the great fenland churches and St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, Norfolk has hardly more than half a dozen Perp churches of the first order. Shelton is one of them. It was built for Sir Ralph Shelton, who in his will made in March 1497 ordered his executors to “make up completely the church of Shelton aforesaid, in masonry, tymber, iron and leede, according to the form as I have begun it”.’2 There are two points of particular note here in relation to this 1

2

My reasons for choosing Swaffham to make these points are in part opportunistic: it is close to where I live, we have quite a lot of information about it, and it is thus available for me to study in the short gaps between university teaching and administrative duties. In undertaking the research I have been helped by friends and colleagues, especially Professor Carole Rawcliffe, Dr Natasha Hutcheson and Dr Richard Fawcett. My thanks also to Professor Eric Fernie and Rosie Mills for help in reshaping the paper for publication. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson, Norfolk 2: North-West and South (2nd edn, London, 1999), p.

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paper. The first is that Shelton appears to be a single patron building. The specificity of Ralph Shelton’s will, mentioning four media, suggests he really had a controlling hand over a range of operatives – plumbers, smiths, carpenters, masons – and that the form of the church was that which he had initiated and he wanted it adhered to. This was a squire who may well have been personally very interested in building and indeed it shows. There are eight ‘portraits’ of members of the Shelton family in the surviving glass, the top lights of the aisle windows contain the Shelton rebus, and this appears again, alternating with Shelton heraldry, held by angels on corbels supporting the roof. With the family burials either side of the altar, the impression is of a private chapel rather than a parish church. This degree of patronal control was unusual; church building projects were often communal and resulted from agreement and interaction between several, sometimes many, different interest-groups and tastes.3 It may be significant that Shelton is modest in size, only five bays in length including the altar bay, and thus not requiring the widespread fundraising exercise that might have divided control of the project.4 The second point is Pevsner’s ostensibly surprising opinion that in a county with over six hundred medieval parish churches, many of them large and splendid and perhaps a quarter with substantial parts built in the fifteenth century, there are only half a dozen first class Perpendicular buildings. As will be argued, the problem lies more with the tyranny of the style term Perpendicular than in the quality or quantity of architecture from the period. The Perpendicular style was devised as a category of Gothic architecture in the early nineteenth century to characterise building, especially church building, in England from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century.5 In common with many other cultural taxonomies in the post-Napoleonic era, it was nationalist in ambition. Work for the king or his close associates or by masons who worked for the household was at its heart. In some histories it has been represented as quintessentially English in spirit and, always allowing that there may be regional variations, the notion that architecture of the period might not be Perpendicular in principle is tantamount to an unpatriotic sentiment.6 As regards the symptoms of Perpendicularity, the style as generally defined since the 1830s has specific

3 4 5

6

641. In his first edition, Pevsner dates the will (PCC Horne 33) to 1487; this was corrected by Paul Cattermole and Simon Cotton, ‘Medieval Parish Church Building in Norfolk’, NA 38 (1983), pp. 235–79, at p. 264. Colin Platt, The Parish Churches of Medieval England (London, 1981), pp. 88–146. Birkin Haward, Norfolk Album: Medieval Church Arcades (Ipswich, 1995), pp. 112–13, gives a plan, mouldings and elevations, accompanied by a brief discussion. John Harvey, The Perpendicular Style 1330–1485 (London, 1978), contains a history of the term (pp. 27–32) and a list of identifying characteristics of the style. See also the essay by Christopher Wilson, ‘ “Excellent, New and Uniforme”: Perpendicular Architecture c.1400–1547’, in Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, eds, Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547 (London, 2003), pp. 98–119. Harvey, The Perpendicular Style, p. 98: ‘Consultancy and advice, amounting to architectural dictatorship by remote control, were increasingly responsible for the spread of a single style over the whole country.’ For Harvey, Perpendicular was not only quintessentially English but inextricably Plantagenet – hence the terminus of 1485 he gives for his study (pp. 13–19 and passim): ‘Perpendicular was an art expressing to the full the national form taken by the aspirations of the ruling dynasty.’

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Plate 1 Shelton, nave interior looking east, showing Perpendicular motifs in arcade, wall and window tracery articulation.


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hallmarks such as four-centred arches, the use of rectilinear frames which surround motifs and articulate surfaces, and tracery which favours horizontal ‘transoms’ and vertical mullions, the latter often rising straight to the arch (Plate 1). At the level of general aesthetic the overall ‘look’ preferred combines openness, thinness and lightness – the lightness referring both to weight and illumination. Pevsner’s approbation for Shelton probably results from its combining both the motifs and general aesthetic of Perp. For what follows, however, it will be as well to bear in mind the distinction between style defined by design details as against its characterisation in terms of proportions and window area. There is no particular problem about amalgamating these traits into a package and regarding it as a style provided we do not assume either that it was demonstrably thought of as a style at the period or that the whole package constituted the preferred option. So far as I can see the evidence is lacking for the former assumption and the latter is demonstrably false. Pevsner’s claim for Shelton only has substance if Perpendicular motifs are regarded as necessary to achieve the Perpendicular aims of height and lightness. It is impossible to sustain his claim if we accept that there were other ways to achieve those ends which people at the time found just as acceptable. Designs and designers Who was responsible for the choice and appearance of the design features in a building? There are a number of ways of answering this. The one that is most often assumed is that a designer, often called a master mason or architect by modern historians, had control of the process.7 There is rarely any documentary evidence in support of this association of designer and mason; it is deduced from characteristics of the buildings which a single person is thought to have masterminded. The model here is that of the individual ‘artist’ or craftsman of note, and much effort has been devoted to reconstructing the supposed careers of such men. Significantly, John Harvey invokes Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in the first sentence of the ‘Introduction’ to his own English Medieval Architects. However, as Ralph Shelton’s will implies, patrons were also inclined to see themselves as the determining agents of architecture. This is hardly surprising, for whether as individuals or corporations, patrons controlled expenditure and thus such things as the building materials and 7

For example J.C. Fox and Charles Bradley Ford, The Parish Churches of England (London, 1935), p. 7: ‘The senior craft was generally that of the mason, and the master-mason supervising the work as a whole was thus the nearest approximation to the modern architect.’ The most balanced account remains Douglas Knoop and G.P. Jones, The Medieval Mason (Manchester, 1933), but even they (e.g. pp. 20–24) slip from magister cementarius or magister operacionum to ‘architect’ (when referring to Walter of Hereford and Henry Yeveley). John Harvey, English Medieval Architects: a Biographical Dictionary down to 1550 (revised edn, London, 1984), p. xlviii, notes the difficulty of awarding to masons the status of architect as we now understand the term: ‘reasonable certainty has been reached in a number of instances . . . a mere score out of the thirteen hundred names included in the following pages’ (though he adds another fourteen names in a footnote). It remains questionable just how reasonable this certainty is.

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degree of elaboration of the design. Both of these have a fundamental impact on the look as well as the cost of the building. There may well also be a trade-off between expenditure in these respects and that other major determinant of cost: sheer size. In what follows a small selection of related church building projects in early fifteenth-century Norfolk will be briefly discussed in order to indicate the range of design processes available and to explore the attribution of work to particular masons. The nave of Litcham seems to have been constructed in the early years of the fifteenth century.8 It is a four-bay, aisled structure, modest in size by the standards of the period, especially when one considers that Litcham was a significant small town. However, it makes up in sophistication what it lacks in scale: the mouldings of its main nave supports are of some complexity and the tracery of the nave windows is distinctive and ambitious (Plate 2). Both elements are very close in style to contemporary work at St Nicholas, King’s Lynn, and have been plausibly attributed to the same designer.9 Both buildings exhibit Perpendicular motifs, and in that sense can be taken by us to represent the ‘modern’ architecture of the period. There is however a distinction in cost between the two works, evident not only in size but also in elaboration. At Lynn the window tracery designs have an extra framing element, and the mouldings of the arcade arches are brought down the nave supports to within five feet of the ground whereas at Litcham they stop just below capital level. Perhaps most curiously, while Lynn is an entirely new structure, Litcham (re)uses an octagonal column of apparently much earlier date in the westernmost bay of the southern arcade. The comparison demonstrates the extent to which a single designer seems to have been allowed to follow his aesthetic predilections in a large, elaborate and thus expensive building on the one hand and a smaller, simpler and cheaper one on the other. But, for all the similarity of design authorship and quality of execution, there is no direct evidence that the masons who cut the stones for Litcham also worked at St Nicholas, King’s Lynn. The masons’ marks found in the two buildings indicate that though the individuals involved knew each other, and worked together on other projects, they did not do so on these two buildings. Although it cannot be demonstrated, it is reasonable to infer from the consistency of the stone cutting and the exactness with which the realisations of the designs tally that one designer had a supervisory role over both buildings.10 8

There was, supposedly, a consecration on 17 June 1412, B. Cozens-Hardy, ‘The Lavile and Curson Families of Letheringsett’, NA 30 (1952), pp. 338–52 at 339 (citing TNA C139.67/56). The nave accords well with work at St Nicholas, King’s Lynn, where Blomefield, Norfolk, VIII, p. 512, recorded a date of 1413 in the window next to the north door. Money was bequeathed to St Nicholas in 1399. It was described as newly built and constructed in 1419, E.M. Beloe, Our Borough, Our Churches: King’s Lynn (Cambridge, 1899), pp. 83, 149–50. 9 Drawings of the Litcham mouldings are in Haward, Norfolk Album, pp. 66–7 and of St Nicholas, King’s Lynn, in his Suffolk Medieval Church Arcades (Ipswich, 1993), pp. 412–13. Litcham and Lynn became something of a cause célèbre thanks to the fantasy of G.G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation (Oxford, 1928), pp. 222–41; see also R.H.C. Davis, ‘A Catalogue of Medieval Masons’ Marks as an Aid to Architectural History’, JBAA 3rd series 17 (1954), pp. 43–76, and Haward, Norfolk Album, p. 38. 10 Davis, ‘Medieval Masons’ Marks’, p. 45, rightly emphasises the distinction between design and execution. It seems likely, given the distribution of marks, that the masons were all based in


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Plate 2 Litcham, east facing window of the north nave aisle.


Plate 3 Carbrooke, window in south wall of chancel. The design is essentially that of the Litcham window in Plate 2, but with thicker and less carefully aligned tracery.

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The singularity of the Litcham designer’s tracery patterns makes them easy to identify elsewhere, such as in the chancel at Carbrooke (Plate 3). There are, however, distinctions to be made: the symmetries and equilibrium of the Litcham tracery are skewed at Carbrooke and the execution is coarser. Although the design follows Litcham, it seems that the detailed setting out and the cutting of the stones for Carbrooke was done by a different workforce or under different supervision, or both. There are a number of ways this might have come about, such as that the Litcham designer contracted the work to another or, and perhaps more probably, the Carbrooke patron specifically asked his own mason to adopt the model of the Litcham tracery. It is a feature of some of the few surviving contracts from the period that artisans of all kinds are asked to make their work ‘like’ another. The contract of 1434 for the nave of Fotheringay (Northants) is perhaps the best example. The late fourteenth-century east end was to be the model for the width and height of the nave: ‘And in each aisle shall be windows of free-stone, agreeing in all points to the windows of the said choir, but they shall have no bowtells at all.’11 In terms of style what was wanted was a close approximation to a design that was about fifty years old. When this happens it is in practice difficult to distinguish either the date or the work of one artisan from another without the help of documentation.12 Equally, in a case such as Carbrooke, a very different quality of execution alerts us to the danger of using design alone for sustaining an attribution to a particular ‘master’.13 Caution is thus advisable. Ideally both design principles and quality of execution need to be consistent before we suppose that a supervising (master) mason originated the design which is being realised in a building that he is constructing. King’s Lynn, as Davis’s two Litcham masons (GG14 and S4) also worked respectively at St Margaret’s, Lynn, and at East Winch and Walpole St Peter. His two masons from St Nicholas, Lynn (GG13 and YY27) also worked at East Winch. The design of East Winch is however quite independent of Litcham and St Nicholas, Lynn. 11 This lengthy contract is printed by Knoop and Jones, The Medieval Mason, Appendix II.4, pp. 245–8, and in modern English by Elizabeth G. Holt, A Documentary History of Art, I: The Middle Ages and The Renaissance (New York, 1957), pp. 115–20. A similar process seems to have occurred at Attleborough in the 1370s, where the tracery of the north transept derives closely from that of the nave aisles. Subtle differences in the geometry of the tracery layout suggest different authorship based on one design. The most convincing account of the chronology of the building remains that of Richard Fawcett, ‘Late Gothic Architecture in Norfolk’, pp. 192–226 (contra Haward, Norfolk Album, p. 24 and Pevsner and Wilson, Norfolk 2, p. 186). 12 See for example the case of the eastern extension to St Andrew’s, Wingfield, Suffolk, undertaken by Hawe of Occold in the 1460s in very close imitation of earlier work there of pre-1415: John A. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth-Century Almshouse (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 57–62 and Appendix IV. This discussion supersedes that of Birkin Haward, Master Mason Hawes of Occold and John Hore, Master Carpenter of Diss: a Tribute to Two Fifteenth-Century Master Craftsmen (Ipswich, 2000), and Harvey, English Medieval Architects, p. 132. 13 As noted by Pevsner and Wilson, Norfolk 2, p. 239, the windows in the north and south walls of Carbrooke’s chancel are inserted into earlier fabric. The likely date of work here is the period 1420–35. Fawcett, ‘Late Gothic Architecture in Norfolk’, p. 233, notes that the vicarage of Little Carbrooke was consolidated with Great Carbrooke in 1424 and the former church demolished. Cattermole and Cotton, ‘Medieval Parish Church Building in Norfolk’, p. 242, note the donation of 4 marks in 1434 to glaze the east window on the south side of the church (i.e. the nave?). The details of nave and chancel are very different, but quite possibly contemporary.


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Old and new fabric Before proceeding to the church at Swaffham, there is another aspect of church building we need to elaborate on: the reuse of existing fabric. This can include the resetting of existing windows in new walls or building on top of standing masonry. In many contemporary projects, such as Cawston or North Elmham (Plate 4), the nave supports are unmolded and in a tradition going back to the twelfth century.14 Indeed, in their lower parts the actual fabric of the columns in these two churches long predates the fifteenth century. What has happened is that the major fifteenth-century campaign reused earlier material in situ. The process involved taking down the arches and adding to the height of the columns following the original form. The general desire for a taller, and thus proportionally thinner and lighter aesthetic that we associate with Perpendicular is thus evident. Yet, we would be hard put to call Cawston or Elmham a fifteenth-century building, let alone a Perpendicular-style building in any pure sense, since they manifest aspects of fabric and design that were already two centuries old. So if the people who amplified Cawston or Elmham were not seeking to meet the stylistically purist expectations of architectural historians half a millennium later, what were they doing? A simple answer would be that they were being expedient: retaining some of the old and thereby saving money to devote towards increased size. The problem with such a formulation is that it implies and assumes they would have seen a disparity between the unmoulded columns and their fifteenth-century clerestory windows and hammerbeam roof – that ‘old’ features were undesirable or incompatible with ‘new’. We have no way of knowing that this was the case, and should question the grounds they would have for thinking in this way. For example, if patrons were conscious of recent church building in the Low Countries, then unmoulded arcade supports could well have seemed very ‘modern’.15 So far as I can see, the only reason we might think otherwise is that our received model for categorising later ‘Gothic’ architecture is an essentially nationalist one, in which English architecture is equated with the Perpendicular style. If that is a false equation, or only partially true, then the apparent anachronism need not be anomalous.16 14

The original late twelfth-century elevation of North Elmham is preserved in the bay just east of the present chancel arch. This confirms the original height of the arcade and shows that a series of low clerestory windows was situated above the arcade spandrels rather than above the arch apexes. Successive alteration to the roof height and pitch have left their marks on the east face of the west tower. At Cawston too, similar changes to the roof can still be seen on the tower that was built after the collapse of an earlier tower in 1412 (B. Cozens-Hardy, ‘The Lavile and Curson Families of Letheringsett’, p. 339, citing TNA C139.67/56). It is possible here that the arcade was heightened as the new tower was being built (under de la Pole patronage to judge by the heraldry over the west door). 15 The links between East Anglia and the Burgundian Netherlands were very close throughout the period as regards commerce, politics and culture, e.g. M. Thielemanns, Bourgogne et Angleterre: Relations politiques et ecomoniques entre les Pays-Bas Bourgignons et l’Angleterre, 1435–67 (Brussels, 1966); Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul, eds, England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1995). 16 The issues of nationalism and archaism, local continuities and contemporaneous continental paradigms are thoughtfully discussed by Richard Fawcett, ‘Reliving Bygone Glories?: The

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Plate 4 North Elmham, nave interior looking west, showing the fifteenth-century heightening of the nave supports of c.1200.


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Plate 5 Castle Acre, nave interior looking east, showing the alternation of reused thirteenth-century and early fifteenth-century arcade supports.

However, there are also grounds for regarding compositional ‘hybridity’ as desirable in the eyes of some patrons. Local enthusiasm for varied arcade supports goes back at least to the twelfth century, and within this aesthetic straightforward alternation was the most popular option.17 Variety, and especially alternation, of window tracery was also a recurrent feature of architecture in Norfolk, embodied at the heart of the diocese in the cloister of Norwich Cathedral.18 That said, there is probably a significant difference between alternations for which two new designs are made and executed and those, such as the nave of St James, Castle Acre, where old and new are combined (Plate 5). At Castle Acre six ‘new’ style piers alternate with six quadrilobes; five of which are reused from an earlier building, but the sixth has had to be made up to match in the fifteenth century. It is thus apparent both that older forms could be imitated and that the decision to alternate old and new could be deliberate. Even more significantly, it suggests that the patrons would have regarded it as a solecism to disrupt the alternation of supports by mixing seven ‘new’ style piers with five ‘old’ quadrilobes: a replica quadrilobe was produced in order to equalise the numbers of each kind. As well as this aesthetic parameter, we can suppose an element financial expediency here, especially in a region where there was no freestone locally available and all new ashlar work involved substantial transportation costs.19 But perhaps other Revival of Earlier Architectural Forms in Scottish Late Medieval Church Architecture’, JBAA 156 (2003), pp. 104–37. 17 Bridget Cherry, ‘Romanesque Architecture in Eastern England’, JBAA 131 (1978), pp. 1–29. 18 Eric Fernie, An Architectural History of Norwich Cathedral (Oxford, 1993), pp. 166–73 and pls 51–4. 19 See Andrew Harris, ‘Building Stone in Norfolk’, in David Parsons, ed., Stone: Quarrying and

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concerns played a part. Three are worthy of mention. Where walls or piers are left in place, there can be some confidence that the existing foundations had proved reliable over a period of time and this could explain the decision to retain them. When old material is relocated to another part of the site, for example a doorway is reused, there may be a conscious desire for historical continuity between old and new structures. Finally, there is the possibility of materialising a Christian allegory, well expressed in 1 Corinthians 3 at verse 10: ‘I have laid the foundations, and another buildeth thereon’; and verse 14: ‘If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.’ This final option need not exclude one or other of the first two, indeed it reinforces notions both of the firm foundation of faith and of the interplay between spiritual and material church wherein successive generations constitute its ‘living stones’ (1 Peter 2.5). It is in the light of these concerns and priorities that we must attempt to understand the decisions to retain and augment designs from earlier periods when buildings were extended in the fifteenth century. The aim is to deduce aesthetic concerns from built fabric and to see the buildings as representing the real decisions of discerning historical individuals. In arguing that this is historically a more productive way of looking at church architecture in Norfolk than an approach which privileges nineteenth-century categories of Gothic, however, it is important to acknowledge that this taxonomy forms an essential catalyst for what follows. For having a construct such as Perpendicular at our disposal makes it possible to identify processes at work precisely because they fit so poorly with some of the assumptions that lie behind this style category. In order to exemplify this point, I will concentrate for the remainder of this paper on the reconfiguration of the parish church of SS Peter and Paul at Swaffham.

Part 2: Swaffham The church at Swaffham (Plates 6–8) is both one of the grandest and best documented building projects of fifteenth-century Norfolk. Blomefield commented that it was ‘built in the form of a cathedral . . . a lofty magnificent Gothick pile’ and Coulton thought ‘the proportions of a great church like Swaffham . . . very finely conceived’. Colin Platt concurred: ‘Among the many handsome rebuildings of the fifteenth century, an outstanding example is . . . Swaffham’.20 As has been pointed out, the five easternmost bays of the nave of the church are, at least in their lower parts, remnants of an earlier (probably mid-thirteenth-century) structure.21 This is apparent from the profiles of the bases and capitals, and from the clear signs that the nave supports were subsequently extended upwards by

Building in England, AD 43–1525 (Chichester, 1990), pp. 207–16, and Brian Ayers, ‘Building a Fine City: the Provision of Flint, Mortar and Freestone in Medieval Norwich’, ibid., pp. 217–27. 20 Respectively Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 227; Coulton, Art and the Reformation, p. 223; Platt, Parish Churches of Medieval England, p. 94. 21 E.g. Williams, ‘The Black Book of Swaffham’, p. 251, and Pevsner and Wilson, Norfolk 2, pp. 678–9, notice the distinction in date, but not apparently that the early columns have been heightened.



Plate 6 Swaffham, exterior from the south-east.


Plate 7 Swaffham, interior of the nave, looking west.

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Plate 8 Swaffham, south side of the nave showing aisle and clerestory windows and Corpus Christi chapel.


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about three feet, in a different stone from that used in the lower parts. Confirmation of this process can be found in the residual mouldings on the western face of the chancel arch which show the original height of the springing of the arcade arches. It is only when we come to the two westernmost free-standing supports in each arcade that we encounter fifteenth-century versions of the earlier piers, created to extend the nave to meet the new west tower. Clearly an early five bay nave has been heightened and lengthened into the present seven bay format, but following the pier profiles established two centuries earlier. This extension was roughly contemporary with the building of the great west tower, new aisles to north and south, and the clerestory and roof. The documentation for the rebuilding comes from a number of sources of which the most important is the so-called ‘Black Book’, begun in 1454 by the then rector of Swaffham, John Botwright.22 He is generally regarded as the prime mover in the reconstruction of the church. His splendid tomb, though disturbed and remade, is back on its original site in the chancel, against the north wall close to the high altar, in what is often regarded as the ‘founder’s’ position. He certainly had the right credentials. Born in Swaffham in 1400, he went to Cambridge at the age of sixteen and clearly did well there. In addition to being chosen as rector of his native town in 1435, he subsequently held another benefice alongside it (as a canon of the cathedral of Clontarf in Ireland) and became a royal chaplain in 1447. His time as Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 1443, is documented largely through the extant ‘White Book’. His administrative capacity is further suggested by his appointment as controller of the royal mines in Devon and Cornwall in 1451 – confirmed in 1453.23 However, the Black Book itself provides the evidence which calls into question Botwright’s role in initiating the remodelling of his church. The ‘Black Book’ The current literature on the church at Swaffham suggests that rebuilding began in 1454, but that simplifies and misrepresents the history of the building.24 The earliest phases of the Black Book show that the priority at that moment was repairing damage, particularly to a bell tower and the area around the chancel arch, rather than to new building.25 The bell tower cannot be the present west 22

Partially transcribed by Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, pp. 217–22, and by W.B. Rix, The Pride of Swaffham: being a Synoptical History of S.S. Peter and Paul, Swaffham, from A.D. 1454 (Swaffham, 1954), pp. 3–26, and see J.F. Williams, ‘The Black Book of Swaffham’, NA 33 (1965), pp. 243–53. 23 There is a brief autobiographical sketch by Botwright in his ‘White Book’ at Corpus Christi College: E.C. Pearce, ‘College Accounts of John Botwright, Master of Corpus Christi, 1443–74,’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 22 (1919), p. 76. For the grant of the mines see CPR 1446–52, pp. 494 and 533 – grants of 16 and 23 Sept. 1451, and CPR 1452–61, p. 110, of 20 June 1453 at a wage of £40 a year. 24 Rix, Pride of Swaffham, p. 3, asserts that the new church was commenced in 1454. Pevsner and Wilson, Norfolk 2, assert that the Black Book states that the church was built in that year. This is an error. 25 For example ‘Mending the bell tower in timber, iron and work . . .’. John Plumer was paid 1

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tower of the nave.26 An entry in a section of the Black Book written fairly soon after 1474 noted that Richard and Catherine Crosse had donated money for the repair of the ‘old steeple’, a designation that suggests there must have been a new one then in prospect, if not begun.27 But certainly by the early sixteenth century the ground plan and fabric of the church was already much as we see it today, with the impressive new west tower complete at least to the height of the nave roof.28 So when was it begun? The Black Book reveals that in 1457 strenuous efforts were being made to place the finances of the church on a sound footing. Debts were renegotiated or called in, perhaps so as to determine how much money would be available for a major building project. I suggest this was preliminary to work beginning to replace the old nave and tower. But even if outstanding debts and obligations were intended to provide a useful source of funding, no-one can have thought the sums realised would have been anything like sufficient, and we may suppose that a number of direct donors had already agreed to make very substantial contributions. Thanks to the Black Book we know who they were: John Chapman and his wife Catherine, Simon Blake and his wife Jane, John Bladsmith, John Walsingham, Robert Payn, and Walter Taylor and his wife Isabel.29 In addition there were about fifty lesser benefactions, ranging from a few shillings up to ten pounds or more, as well as several donations in kind. This was clearly a community enterprise involving at least a tenth of the adult population, and one may surmise that there would have been social pressures on all the people of Swaffham of any substance to help as much as they could.30 Strikingly absent from the lists of

26

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29 30

shilling for ‘mending the cross above the bell tower’. This ‘cross’ is possibly also what is referred to in the entry paying 2 pence to John Pope for mending the crest at the foot of the crucifix. However, this could relate to separate damage in the church itself, since Simon Blake and his wife Jane were remembered for repairing the organs ‘broken with the fall of the church’ (Rix, Pride of Swaffham, p. 22). William Couper and Robert Soppe accounted for £21 5s ‘to the work of the bell tower’ perhaps in 1456–7, which could be taken as a continuation of repairs to the old tower. There is certainly no hint that this is money for a new tower. The only entries from the period 1454–7 which might be taken to indicate new work are 2s spent on ’4 coombs of lime for work on the north wall’ and a donation of 3s to ‘the church fabric fund’ (Rix, Pride of Swaffham, p. 14). Rix, Pride of Swaffham, p. 2, claims on the basis on an entry in the churchwardens’ accounts (NRO, Parish deposit 52/7) that the ‘old steeple’ was pulled down in 1507, implying it was a free-standing edifice. However, he seems to mistake the removal of protective thatch from the new tower for the demolition of the old, interpreting ‘thack’ as rubble. The section of the Black Book which records the bulk of the donations to the new work begins on fol. 22r and postdates John Botwright’s death in 1474 as he already ‘lies before the effigy of St Peter’ (Rix, Pride of Swaffham, p. 18). The notion that the present tower dates from 1507 is a misinterpretation of the documentary and physical evidence (see note 26 above). Major donations to it are made at least as early as 1480 (the death date of John Walsingham) but it was started perhaps twenty years earlier. Next in value are probably the gifts of £20 each from Robert Fuller, vicar of Swaffham 1465–88, and Thomas Pepyr. Ken Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c. 1470–1550 (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 104 and n. 13 notes ‘almost 600 communicants in 1548’. Husband and wife donations to the church fabric are not necessarily recorded as such, so the sixty or so benefactions to the building known from wills and the Black Book underrepresents the number of benefactors.


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benefactors are any great lords. The implication is that the money came from those of middling degree, the townspeople and local farmers. Apart from the ‘old steeple’, the other work to which the Crosses gave money was ‘the vestry that is now’, presumably that which still survives, added in the angle between the chancel and the north transept.31 It is likely that this augmented an earlier campaign of work on the chancel apparently built under John Botwright’s predecessor as rector, John Bury. Bury paid for the choir stalls, a missal, vestments and the chancel ceiling and was himself buried in the chancel, suggesting that the eastern arm was largely finished by his death in 1434.32 This would not be out of line with either the architectural or documentary evidence. Dr Richard Fawcett has suggested to me that the present south chancel windows are close in style to the eastern windows of the aisles in the Blackfriars, Norwich. Building there began soon after a fire in 1413 and the Dominicans moved back into the church in 1449, by which time it was presumably roofed.33 Work at aisle level at the Blackfriars is thus likely to have been in progress in the 1420s so the design used for Swaffham’s chancel windows was available from that period. Further, we are told in the Black Book that Thomas and Cecily Styward gave two windows in the choir, presumablyand the matching pair on the south side, but also two more in the ‘old church’. The implication of the text is that their contribution to the choir was extant, whereas that to the old church (that is the nave) was not. It is unlikely that the new nave was being actively considered at the point at which their donation to its predecessor was made, since the latter would have been doomed to a short life. We may thus envisage a lapse of time between the completion of the chancel around 1434, the repair and maintenance of the ‘old church’ up to at least 1456, and the decision to build the new nave and tower. A likely reason for the hiatus is outlined below in some detail. My aim is to provide a quantity and quality of information sufficient to allow the reader to assess the likely motivation for rebuilding the nave and tower and how far this had an impact on the architectural decisions that were taken. The Honour of Richmond The right to appoint the rector of Swaffham belonged to the lord of the manor, the earl of Richmond. In 1435 (until September of that year when he died) this was John, duke of Bedford, uncle to King Henry VI and sometime regent of France. It is not clear whether Botwright was directly or indirectly known to the duke, given

31

The sum of 50 marks the Crosses gave for the old steeple and the vestry was presumably made at one time since in other cases separate donations are individually itemised and 50 marks is a nice round figure. 32 Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 223, notes that Bury’s will of 30 May 1434 provides for the ceiling of the chancel with ‘estrych board’. His vicar, William Cross (perhaps a relative of Richard Crosse), who died in the same year, also sought burial in the chancel (ibid., p. 224). 33 Helen Sutermeister, The Norwich Blackfriars: an Historical Guide to the Friary and its Buildings up to the Present Day (Norwich, 1977), pp. 21–4. This documented chronology is to be preferred to the stylistic one, 1440–70, favoured by Haward, Norfolk Album, p. 92, and Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson, Norfolk 1: Norwich and the North-East (2nd edn, London, 1997), p. 265.

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Bedford’s protracted absences from England, but either is possible.34 A number of powerful men with strong Norfolk connections were close to Bedford, of whom Sir John Fastolf is the most notable. The picture as it emerges around 1450 suggests that the interests of the ‘men of Swaffham’ and their ‘parson’ were closely tied to Fastolf’s connection, and it may be that this association had existed for many years through the person of the rector.35 The reversion of the Honour of Richmond to the Crown after Bedford’s death, provides a context for the letters patent of 25 October 1436, by which the then vicar of Swaffham, John Walpole, was moved to Shipdham on an exchange of benefices with John Moresburgh, who was to remain the vicar of Swaffham through much of the period we are considering.36 This transfer coincides with the grant by John Walpole of the manor of Haspalls, on the south-western side of Swaffham, to Sir Thomas Tuddenham (of Oxborough), and others.37 Tuddenham was to remain a major, and unpopular, figure in the affairs of the town for fifteen or more years. From the point of view of the inhabitants of Swaffham, however, probably of more immediate importance was the royal decision to transfer two thirds of the manor of Swaffham itself into the hands of the earl of Suffolk, William de la Pole, in November 1438.38 It is not clear how much personal interest Suffolk took in Swaffham.39 The implications of subsequent events are that much of his involvement was deputed to Tuddenham.40 It was certainly Sir Thomas who bore the brunt of the criticism after the murder of Suffolk in May 1450 provided an opportunity for those with a grievance against his adherents to claim redress.41 The Paston Letters of the period testify to this because of John 34

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41

A coincidence which may be significant is that Bedford had held the farm of the silver-yielding mines of Devon and Cornwall, and it remained as part of his estate long after his death, until 1445. That Botwright was thought of as a suitable administrator of this valuable asset (some six years later the annual yield averaged 4,000 ounces) might be taken to suggest that he was already familiar with the mines. In a letter of 20 Dec. 1450 to Sir Thomas Howys, Fastolf refers to Botwright as ‘my welbelovyd frende’ (James Gairdner, The Paston Letters 1422–1509 A.D., 4 vols (1872, repr. Westminster, 1900), i, p. 172). CPR 1436–41, p. 24. Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 225, implies that Moresburgh was Botwright’s appointment. In the Black Book, Walpole is credited as having helped with the repair of the old church and given 40 shillings, perhaps after his move to Shipdham. Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 202 CPR 1436–41, p. 133, ‘the lord Bardolf, the king’s chamberlain, having surrendered the grant made to him . . . of the keeping of the same manor for 10 years from michaelmas last at the yearly rent of £50’. The other third was part of the dower of Jaquetta, widow of John duke of Bedford, but remained with her into her second marriage to Lord Rivers in 1461 (CPR 1441–46, p. 0; CPR 1446–52, p. 174; CPR 1461–67, p. 170). CPR 1441–46, p. 382, 30 Nov. 1445, ‘John Langman of Swaffham, husbandman, for not appearing to answer William Earl of Suffolk touching a trespass’. However, the memorandum of 1451 refers to the imprisonment of John Langman as a crime of Tuddenham or his faction. Langman later occurs in the Black Book with his wife Agnes, providing seating in the nave. On Tuddenham’s career see Roger Virgoe, East Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late Medieval England, Caroline Barron, Carole Rawcliffe and Joel Rosenthal, eds (Norwich, 1997), esp. pp. 53–5, 117–19, 267 and n. 53. From 1446 Tuddenham was Keeper of the Great Wardrobe. In their petition to Parliament drawn up in 1451, the people of Swaffham are explicit that ‘Tuddenham . . . this 16 years last passed [i.e. since 1436] . . . hath occupied and governed the


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Paston’s own complaints against Tuddenham and his associates, but they also include much information about other potential plaintiffs. Among them is the bailiff of Swaffham, Simon Blake. Blake, otherwise Keeper of the Seal in the Court of the Marshalsea, had been appointed bailiff by letters patent within weeks of Suffolk’s death, and Edmund Blake, ‘clerk of the king’s secrets’ and Simon’s brother, was made steward soon after.42 It is not clear how far they were put in to correct any perceived abuses by the late duke’s supporters, who were still strong and active in the town. Whatever the case, Simon responded positively to the complaints of ‘the men of Swaffham’ after he arrived. It seems that, like Botwright, he was from a local family and may well have been appointed for his knowledge of the situation.43 William Wayte’s letter to John Paston of 6 October 1450 suggests that the duke of York would also be sympathetic to the men of Swaffham: ‘be warned to meet with my said lord on Friday next, coming at Pickenham on horseback in the most goodly wyse, and but some bile unto my lord about Sir Thomas Tuddenham, Heydon and Prentys . . . and cry out against them and call them extortioners and pray my lord that he shall do sharp execution upon them’. By the time of Wayte’s letter of 3 January 1451, Lord Scales had written a ‘gentle letter unto the parson, the bailiff and the inhabitants of Swaffham and says that he will do his part to set them at rest and peace’. The attempt at reconciliation failed.44 It was probably this which prompted the drafting of a petition to Parliament on behalf of the town of Swaffham. The commission of oyer and terminer which followed in May of that year failed to bring down Tuddenham and his associates, and Sir Thomas remained closely involved with the administration of justice in the county for almost another decade, and was MP again in 1453. However, by then the dispute between him and the men of Swaffham had faded into the background. This may have been helped by the appointment of King Henry’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, as earl of Richmond in1452. The new earl seems to have taken an interest in his Norfolk lands, for he was in Norfolk in April the following year in the company of Simon Blake, still called bailiff of Swaffham.45 We have no indication that Edmund Tudor was himself a benefactor to the church of Swaffham, though his early death, in November 1456, probably preceded the start of work on the nave. A year after Tudor’s death, in December 1457, the king appointed Edmund Blake to the office of warrener of Swaffham and immediately afterwards made

42 43

44 45

lordship of this manor of Swaffham . . . and committed the trespasses, offences, wrongs, extortions . . . etc.’ Tuddenham was deprived of the Keepership of the Great Wardrobe in December 1450, suggesting his star was (temporarily) on the wane (CPR 1446–52, p. 408). CPR 1446–52, p. 329, 9 June, and p. 334, 26 July 1450. John Blake farmed in the Northfield c.1454, and with his wife Elizabeth was a donor to the church. Thomas Blake paid for paving in the old church. Simon names his parents as Thomas and Elizabeth (Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, pp. 202–3). There were two later Thomas Blakes. One, the son of Edmund (note 48 below), had wives Jane and Elizabeth; the other married Cecily, and they paid £5 for glazing the tower window. Norman Davis, The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1971–6), ii, nos 460, 471 and 472, pp. 48, 61–63. Davis, Paston Letters, i, no. 146, p. 249.

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him ‘receiver general of the lordship of Richmond’.46 From December 1451 to May 1456 Edmund Blake had been Clerk of the King’s Works responsible for overseeing the king’s houses across the realm.47 Even if he was not a mason, his day to day experience of building must have given him a good working knowledge of the practice, and it is quite possible that this was at the disposal of John Botwright, Simon Blake and the other major players in the work at Swaffham itself, if they needed it.48 Botwright himself had other experience of commissioning buildings in his role as Master of Corpus Christi College, though the evidence for this comes only from after 1457, when he began the White Book in which he recorded College accounts.49 I suggest that the key players in the project were now all in place and this coincided with an effective vacancy in the Richmond title, which remained unfilled for four years. Thereafter, in rapid succession, in late summer 1461 it passed from Richard of Gloucester to George of Clarence. There is no indication that either of them took any interest in the church. We need now to turn to those who demonstrably did and see how their contributions impacted on the building. The church and its contributors According to the Black Book, John Chapman and Catherine his wife built the north aisle (‘with glasing, stooling and paving of the same with marble’) and gave £120 for the new steeple. This squares well with the physical evidence. The north aisle, with the exception of its easternmost bay, is of uniform fabric as regards foundations and walling, mouldings and window tracery.50 Small details, such as the framing of the putlog holes, indicate a consistent building practice. Distinctive traits in the window tracery make it as certain as these things ever are that the great west window of the new tower at Swaffham was also designed by the person responsible for the north aisle windows (Fig. A).51 We may thus infer that 46

47

48

49 50

51

CPR 1452–61, pp. 399 and 397, 15 Dec. 1457 and 24 Jan. 1458 respectively. The latter continues ‘to hold by himself or by deputy with the usual wages, fees and profits by the hands of the farmers of the manor of Swaffham’. R. Allen Brown, H.M. Colvin and A.J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works: the Middle Ages, 2 vols (London, 1963), i, pp. 195, 199–200 (listing a dozen of so places visited by Blake in this capacity), and ii, pp. 1024, 1025, 1045. Edmund Blake of Hale (Holm Hale, some two miles distant) was dead by 1487 when named in Simon Blake’s will to be remembered in his chantry (Blomefield, Norfolk, VI, p. 203). Although Edmund was not himself a benefactor to the church, his son Thomas further endowed his uncle’s chantry (Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, p. 123). Pearce, ‘College Accounts of John Botwright’, pp. 88–9, and see Harvey, English Medieval Architects, under Martin Prentice, Thomas Sturgeon, John Loose and John Nottingham. The easternmost window of the north aisle was part of All Saints Chapel. The ‘archaeology’ of this bay of the church is complex: there are two blocked doors, one connecting the churchyard and the chapel, the other from the church to a rood stair formerly in the angle between the chapel and the north transept. The relative dating of the chapel window and the north aisle is unclear. The tracery of the north aisle and west tower of Swaffham compares closely with the upper storeys of the west towers of St Giles, Norwich, and Swanton Morley. A bequest to lead the nave roof of Swanton Morley in 1440 suggests the tower was reaching its belfry stage by that date. St Giles’ tower was in prospect and perhaps begun by 1424 but it is uncertain when the belfry stage was reached (Cattermole and Cotton, ‘Medieval Parish Church Building in Norfolk’, pp. 268 and


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Fig. A (i) Swaffham, windows in south wall of chancel. (ii) Norwich Blackfriars, east facing window of the north nave aisle. (iii) Norwich Blackfriars, north nave aisle windows. (iv) Swaffham, north nave aisle windows. (v) Norwich, St Giles, belfry opening in tower. (vi) Swaffham, west window, in tower. (vii) Swaffham, clerestory windows

258 respectively for the documents). The Swaffham north aisle windows are a close variant of the tracery in the north aisle of Norwich Blackfriars of c.1420 (Fig. A), suggesting a Norwich origin for the designer.

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Fig. B Left: Swaffham, south nave aisle, window fifth bay west of transept. Centre: Swaffham, south nave aisle, window third bay west of transept. Right: Swaffham, south nave aisle, window first bay west of transept

Chapman chose him. However, it is evident that tower and aisle are not part of a single build. The western return of the north aisle is very obviously superimposed on the tower buttress. The tower clearly pre-existed the north aisle being closed at the west. Indeed, the same is true for the south aisle, and all in all it is evident that the tower was begun as a free-standing element, though given its huge western arch always with the intention of its being attached to the nave as it now stands. The south aisle is much more diverse, and I suggest this is because it was paid for by several different donors. This is clearest in the window tracery: no two windows match. One follows the Chapman windows for the north aisle in size, design and execution. The other four are variations on another pattern, similar to the original south aisle of Great St Mary’s in Cambridge.52 Despite sharing a common overall design, however, the Swaffham windows vary among themselves in the mouldings, whether measured in cross-section or viewed face on (Fig. B). The implication is that each was paid for by a different person, with different tastes, or means, or both. Given the variable qualities of ‘realisation’, it is also likely that each approached a different mason. The record of the Black Book supports the possibility of window by window patronage. Though this is specified only for the glazing, it may well relate to the masonry supporting it. Thus we read that John Angere, parson of South Acre, ‘did glasen a wyndowe on the south syde of the new chirche’ and Jeffrey and Joan Baxter paid for ‘glazing of one window in the south part of the chirch’. It is important to note, however, that the wall into which this collection of windows was incorporated was of one build, to judge by the fabric and mouldings of the plinth and dado levels. The unity of construction (as opposed to design) includes the chapel projecting from the aisle. This, almost certainly, is the Corpus Christi Chapel paid for by John and Catherine Payn. It seems that the south aisle foundations were laid out after the sponsorship of this chapel had been agreed, and that one builder constructed it, 52

Perhaps designed in 1478. As represented in Loggan’s engraving, see Francis Woodman, The Architectural History of King’s College Chapel (London, 1986), pp. 178–9. Other windows of this basic pattern, e.g. at St Mary’s at the Quay, Ipswich, for which money was bequeathed in 1448 (Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Suffolk, edition revised by Enid Radcliffe (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 293), suggest a more southerly distribution than for Chapman’s design.


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but that disparate windows, commissioned and made independently and quite probably bought from different suppliers, were put in.53 It is possible that the builder is the one paid for by Simon and Jane Blake (‘in fynding of a free mason to the making of the chirch by the space of a yere’).54 Looking at the construction of the nave as a whole, its two aisle walls are different in fabric and execution, the rubble walling as well as the ashlar details being quite distinct. The windows in the north aisle are formed under two-centred arches to one pattern (with the exception of All Souls Chapel) with few ‘Perpendicular’ elements. The windows in the south aisle were (with one exception) formed under four-centred arches, of a generally Perpendicular aspect, with mullions rising to the arch and utilising a transom across the central two out of four lights. At aisle level, although everyone was apparently working to an agreed groundplan, considerable variety was thus acceptable. Higher up the building the situation is different. It is evident from even a casual glance that the clerestory tracery is absolutely uniform, as is generally the case in other churches of the period. Yet both the Black Book and the subsequent antiquarian record make it plain that the glazing was the contribution of individuals, marriage partners or families.55 At this level, quite literally, patrons were not asked to commission both a mason and a glazier. Regardless of what they paid for, the tracery followed an agreed scheme, while the glass allowed for individual commemoration. To judge from the tracery and mouldings of the clerestory, the windows here too were designed by Chapman’s mason (Fig. A). Certainly the proportions of the shouldered ogees are identical, and the central foil combines generous swelling forms which fit snugly into place with smaller cusped elements, very like the north aisle windows. The effect of unity in the interior, about which Pevsner is strangely disparaging (‘a little disappointing in its uniformity and reasonableness’), may derive in part from several contributions by a single designer. Another site of aesthetic unification is the roof, the form of which is unvarying from the west tower to the chancel arch. Although most of this (from the chancel to the ‘cross alley’) was paid for by Walter and Isabel Taylor, it was not apparently all funded from this source.56 An executive decision was made that the roof 53

The comparison with the building of the chancel at Hardley, Norfolk, is instructive (Francis Woodman, ‘Hardley, Norfolk, and the Rebulding of its Chancel’, in David Buckton and T.A. Heslop, eds, Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture presented to Peter Lasko (Stroud, 1994), pp. 203–10). In 1458–9 the traceried windows were cut in Norwich (the stone having been bought in Yarmouth), but the actual flint rubble wall construction incorporating them was constructed only in 1460–61. The personnel involved in the latter stage included one mason from Robert Everard’s shop in Norwich where the stone was cut, plus two others not previously employed on the project who may have been specialists in flint rubble walling. 54 Though the designation ‘freemason’ might imply cutting stone rather than setting it, it seems unlikely that this would be paid for by the year. 55 Blomefield gives names from three of these windows and heraldry from two others. It is possible that the donor panels now in the north aisle, dated c.1460 by David King (pers. comm.), are Thomas and Cecily Styward and Walter and Isabel Taylor whose inscriptions Blomefield records. 56 The ‘cross alley’ cannot be the transept. At Swaffham the north and south chapels forming the transept are immediately east of the chancel arch. Hence chancel to transept is not a distance at all. Other contexts of the phrase at Swaffham, such as ‘cross alley between the old doors’, suggest

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should take a certain form and a husband and wife were found to pay for most of it. Furthermore, the roof had to fit the clerestory, so regardless of the patronage, the coherent design indicates community acquiescence, if not direct consultation.57 The nave supports, despite the mixture of old and new piers, are harmonised to a degree so that bay by bay, roof, clerestory and arcading follow a single design. Such variety as exists requires analysis close up to become an issue. Internally, there is an image of what a great parish church might aspire to look like in the mid-fifteenth century which was widely shared, not only in Norfolk, not even just in England. In broad terms, the aesthetic objectives are clear enough. The lightness and sense of spaciousness of the building was made possible by elongating shafts and replacing masonry wall with tracery and glass, in both aisles and clerestory. We do not know who was co-ordinating or directing the decision making. Much of the architectural history written in the past fifty years would want it to be an architect or master mason, even though the carpenter’s contribution is documented as primary in at least one case locally.58 There is no absolute need to locate the overall conception in the mind of a craftsman of any kind. Even though we need not doubt that some craftsmen could both design and oversee the construction of an entire building, we should be cautious about assuming this generally happened. Certainly the variety evident in the aisle windows at Swaffham argues against thinking that this was regarded as essential, or even desirable. This is borne out in other ways too. Externally, the contrast between tower and nave is marked, particularly as the former is ashlar and the latter largely flint rubble. Swaffham’s west tower makes the point in another way. The west window was probably designed by Chapman’s mason c.1460 and is quite different in style from the belfry openings higher up, which relate to projects elsewhere in Norfolk c.1490–1510, such as the new, free-standing belfry at East Dereham. Further, the parapet of the tower at Swaffham, built in the mid-1530s, is clearly a variant of that made for Bell Harry at Canterbury Cathedral from the mid-1490s.59 Looking at this wonderful set piece it does not immediately strike us that the tower is a composite of three or more design stages.60 One reason is that the masonry technique is so consistent. It was all built from ashlar blocks of

57 58

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it was between the north and south nave doors. The remainder of the work may have been funded by Robert Payn who ‘did make a part of the chirch with all charges from the nether cros aley to the stepyll’. Birkin Haward, Suffolk Medieval Church Roof Carvings (Ipswich, 1999), pp. 144–7 discusses the roof and places it in the context of other hammerbeam roofs. At Hardley the roof was the first element to be commissioned, and the church seems to have been built to fit round it: Woodman, ‘Hardley, Norfolk, and the Rebuilding of its Chancel’, pp. 204, 209. The mason ‘Cobbe’ who made the parapet in the 1530s may well be Robert Cobbe who worked largely at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. There he worked with Robert Antell (mason, of Norwich) who is recorded at Swaffham as early as 1507. Richard Fawcett (pers. comm.) has suggested that the mouldings of the tower arch to the nave are comparable with those at Happisburgh, and Norwich St Lawrence, both datable to the late 1460s (Cattermole and Cotton, pp. 249, 258). Work at this level seems unrelated to the window tracery, or belfry openings and parapet.


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similar sizes, of stone from a single quarry, and to a consistently high standard of execution. If the designer of the lowest stage had a master plan for the whole, it was superseded as new tastes, new models, new designers and new donors took over the project. So to any qualms about coherence in the edifice as a whole should be added concerns about the stylistic unity of even a single element of the building such as the tower. We are very far, here, from architectural coherence based on the unchanging vision of one architect or even one period style. What we have is consistency primarily of materials, techniques and quality: we should avoid imposing the unifying aesthetic of a single designer. Community and motivation It is also too simple to regard lavish church building and furnishing as indicative of piety per se, although they clearly support the conventions of established religious practice. As far as Swaffham (or anywhere) was concerned, reformation was not an issue in the 1450s, although heresy, in the form of Lollardy, could well have been.61 There were doubtless many people who wished to be seen as beyond suspicion as regards their orthodoxy. They contributed to the making of seven sacraments fonts, they gave money for lights to burn before images of the Virgin, or they joined guilds of the Trinity.62 But also, given the povertistic inclinations of most ‘Lollards’, by spending on buildings and their embellishment the orthodox differentiated themselves from the heterodox. Whatever one’s subsequent high or low church sympathies, the signs are that to be seen as ‘regular folk’ in the fifteenth century meant closing ranks against heresy by conspicuous expenditure on religion. How far there were people who might have contributed but did not, perhaps for ideological reasons, remains an area of possible enquiry, and Swaffham probably provides documentation as good as any with which to supply an answer. There were other acceptable and orthodox ways of remaining within the fold than buying into upgrading the parish church: charitable donations to the aged or to repairing roads and bridges, for example,63 but an issue at Swaffham and elsewhere once a rebuilding had been undertaken is likely to have become that the 61

Eamon Duffy’s contention that ‘late medieval Catholicism exerted an enormously strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over the imagination and loyalty of the people up to the very moment of Reformation’ (The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), p. 4) seems to play down the extent to which heterodoxy may have strengthened Catholicism, because of the ‘relatively small numbers of Lollards’ (ibid., p. 2). I would contend that perceptions are more significant than numbers, witness the impact of a small number of terrorists on present day thought and behaviour. 62 Ann Nichols, Seeable Signs: the Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350–1544 (Woodbridge, 1994), esp. chapter 2, pp. 90–128, argues for the importance of art patronage as an index of orthodoxy. The most concerted evidence for Lollardy in East Anglia comes from the mid-1420s and the eastern and coastal parts of the region. However, five cases in the spring of 1457 (the year I argue Swaffham nave was begun) around Cambridge and the southern Fenland (John A.F. Thomson, The Later Lollards 1414–1520 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 132–3) are likely to have set alarm bells ringing in surrounding areas. 63 Judith Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370–1547 (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 79–86.

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good name and reputation of the community was bound up with its capacity to complete the project. So, a significant factor is the ambition and expense of the prospective work, and for how long it was likely to require support. In the event, finishing the tower at Swaffham took between fifty and seventy years, depending on one’s view of the start date. Some forty people contributed often substantial sums of money to this focal enterprise. But it was distinct from the funding of towers at churches such as Salle or Cawston, with their shields of the great and the good who must have given some kind of sanction and probably also donations. Swaffham’s tower is a heraldry–free zone, with all that might imply. It is big and grand, but there is no outward sign that big, grand people contributed. It is perhaps significant of attitudes in the town that as ‘guardians of the church’, John Chapman and Jacobus Norman, presented their accounts on 26 September 1462 ‘before the honourable people’ of Swaffham Market (my italics).64 In the context of the history of Swaffham, from the death of the duke of Bedford in 1435 onwards, it would not be surprising if the townspeople sought to demonstrate their independence. The lordship of Swaffham changed hands so many times, it must have been clear that dynastic continuity and investment at this social level was likely to remain uncertain and that depending upon it would be disadvantageous. Would a half-finished project begun by one lord be continued by his successor, especially if the first man’s heraldry was all over it? No, far better to rely on the reliable, on the enduring presence and civic pride of the local merchants and craftspeople. What other visible means of displaying the prosperity and community of the town was available to the ‘men of Swaffham’ than the rebuilding of their church? If we were going to use parish church architecture as an index of piety, we would surely have to demonstrate that ‘civic’ motivations had available alternative modes of expression. What the Black Book says about Simon Blake’s Chantry may be significant: ‘he assigned [an]other £5 to be delivered to the said chirchreeves to the help and relief of poor men of the town . . .’. It was this element of the bequest which informed Swaffham’s claim during the sixteenth century that his was not a purely religious foundation which could be wound up as though it were simply adherence to the ‘old religion’. It was clearly conceived as serving disadvantaged townsfolk: as a social amenity for the community. This may be a reason why, against the odds, it survived, and why the community sought to preserve it and invested a huge sum of money in its survival.65 Conclusions Swaffham was in no sense a backwater. As we have seen, control over the town was exercised and contested by a number of wealthy aristocrats, ‘courtiers’ and government officials, some of whom, such as John Botwright, were involved in building projects elsewhere, and one of whom, Edmund Blake, had been Clerk of 64 65

Black Book, fol. 18v. Rix, Pride of Swaffham, pp. 70–78, and Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 122–6. In the sixteenth century a new community project was initiated, to provide the town with almshouses.


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the King’s Works. If Perpendicular purity, as the nineteenth century came to conceive it, combining diagnostic features and overall aesthetic, had been an issue in the fifteenth century, the ‘men of Swaffham’ had the expertise and experience to commission it, as no doubt did patrons elsewhere in Norfolk. Another argument that cannot be used is that Swaffham fails some notional test of architectural purity because it is not a completely new build. This is, for example, also the case of the east end of Gloucester, long regarded as an early testing ground for Perpendicular. It is indeed a fact of English architectural history that patrons and builders are as inclined to augment and transform existing fabric as they are to knock it down and start again. How far this is expediency or symptomatic of ‘a respect for the past’ remains a moot point, and should be assessed on a case by case basis. What can be generally argued is that an aesthetic of height and lightness that had been technically and financially accessible only to a few great institutions in the thirteenth century had become very generally available by the fifteenth. Thus it was that a group of traders and artisans in a market town could aspire to a monument of the quality and with the characteristics of Swaffham parish church,66 but they did not insist on Perpendicular motifs That groups of people contributed to church building projects is clear from the evidence of hundreds of late medieval parishes. Working together in this way is a behavioural resource that could serve, or be put to, many purposes, such as demonstrating affluence and unity as well as piety. The process might involve many individuals with different motivations from civic ambition, through conventional devotion, to deeply held religious conviction. The issue that historians face is how to assess their relative importance.67 The strategy adopted here has been to examine the local historical context, which in this case suggests that constructing togetherness might well have been as important as religion and even that these are not usefully separable, each being a means to reinforce both. If that is a justifiable position, it demonstrates the importance of balancing the immediate circumstances of a project such as building the nave of Swaffham against perceptions about the longue durée trajectory of Christian or architectural history.

66

John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England, ed. J. Chandler (Stroud, 1993), p. 317, notes that Swaffham ‘owes its livelihood mostly to craftsmen and grain dealers’ (cited by Farnhill, p. 104). 67 Eamon Duffy, ‘The Parish, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval East Anglia: the Evidence of Rood Screens’, in Katherine L. French, Gary C. Gibbs and Beat A. Kumin, eds, The Parish in English Life 1400–1600 (Manchester, 1997), pp. 133–62, at 133: ‘Who gave to the church and why, and what was the balance in pious giving between devotion, conspicuous consumption, and the desire for influence or prestige in the community? The answer to these questions can only ever be conjectural . . .’.

Battling Bishops: Late Fourteenth-Century Episcopal Masculinity Admired and Decried Andrea E. Oliver

TWO battling bishops – one real and one imaginary, one East Anglian and one not – feature in this paper. The former is the somewhat bellicose Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich 1370–1406, whilst the latter is Bishop Turpin, the epitome of muscular Christianity and the hero of the Sege off Melayne, a latefourteenth-century Middle English verse romance. The aims of this paper are two-fold – to consider Despenser’s portrayal in the chronicles in the light of Turpin’s characterisation in the romance, and to explore the possibility that the Sege off Melayne could have served a purpose as propaganda for Despenser’s ill-fated Flanders crusade of 1383. One of thirteen texts usually classified as Middle English Charlemagne romances, the Sege off Melayne opens with the Saracens overrunning Rome and Lombardy, destroying Christian images and replacing them with their own idols, before capturing the city of Milan. The Lord of Milan is advised in a dream to seek help from Charlemagne and, at the same time, an angel appears in a dream to Charlemagne urging him to revenge this attack on Christendom. The knight Roland is sent to the relief of the city with a French force but is defeated. Dismayed by Charlemagne’s failure to respond to the Saracen threat, Bishop Turpin excommunicates him and raises an army of clerics to march on Paris, thereby forcing the king to take action. Turpin is a fiery and unflinchingly aggressive member of the clergy who seems to be more comfortable wielding a sword than holding a crozier. An unswerving defender of the faith, he demands the same commitment from those around him and is in the vanguard of the Christian forces which subsequently engage the Saracens. Defeated, the infidels retreat into Milan. Although the narrative is incomplete, breaking off at the point where Charlemagne’s forces are massing before the walls of the city in a second attempt to retake it, the dynamics of the poem’s structure are such that a Christian victory, prompted by the example of a truly heroic, and Christ-like, Turpin, is inevitable.1 1

See editions of the poem in Sidney J. Herrtage, ed., ‘The Sege off Melayne’ and ‘The Romance of Duke Rowland and Sir Otuell of Spayne’ together with a fragment of ‘The Song of Roland’, EETS es 35 (London, 1880); Maldwyn Mills, ed., Six Middle English Romances, 2nd edn (London, 1981); Stephen H.A. Shepherd, ed., Middle English Romances (New York, 1995); Alan Lupack,

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The single extant version of the Sege off Melayne is found in one of two manuscripts compiled by Robert Thornton during the first half of the fifteenth century.2 Melayne’s first editor ascribed its date of composition to the end of the fourteenth century, but added the caveat that the work was difficult to date or locate accurately.3 Furthermore, although Thornton’s version was copied by a southern scribe, Herrtage argued that it was originally written in a northern dialect.4 Given the unusually central role allotted to its ecclesistical hero, Melayne’s unknown author is likely to have been a cleric – an argument which is given weight by the poem’s references to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.5 Athough the narrative is a reworking of the Charlemagne material originally popularised by the chansons de geste, no specific source has yet been found for the poem. Despite its use of French material, however, its editors agree that the piece is undoubtedly an English composition.6 The lack of an original source for the poem has meant that, until recently, it has attracted very little scholarly attention, meriting no more than a few paragraphs in general medieval literary studies.7 However, it is possible to open up the text in other ways. Considering a work against actual historical events can often prove illuminating, which is why I want to try to locate the poem within the political situation of late-fourteenth-century England by reading it through an exploration of the chroniclers’ accounts of Bishop Henry Despenser. Despenser belonged to a politically ambitious aristocratic family. His brothers pursued military careers but at an early age Despenser went into the Church. Both his brother, Edward, and his kinsman, King Edward III, were instrumental in his advancement since they petitioned the pope for placements for him. In 1354, ‘his tenth year’, Despenser was given a canonry in Salisbury cathedral; in 1361 he was made rector of Bosworth; in 1364 he became archdeacon of Llandaff and in 1366 he was given a canonry at Llandaff.8 Then in 1370, ‘he being in his twentyseventh year’, he was granted the bishopric of Norwich by papal provision.9 Throughout his episcopal career, Despenser was a controversial figure.10 He provoked a riot in Bishop’s Lynn in 1377; his actions may also have provoked an insurrection centred around Blofield in 1382 when he became the subject of a ed., ‘The Siege of Milan’, in Three Charlemagne Romances (Kalamazoo, n.d.), TEAMS, 1993, 18/07/02, . 2 The ‘London Thornton’ manuscript (London, BL Additional MS 31042, fols 66v–79v). 3 Herrtage, Sege off Melayne, p. xiii. 4 Ibid., p. xii. 5 Phillipa Hardman, ‘The Sege of Melayne: a Fifteenth-Century Reading’, in Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, ed. Rosalind Field (Cambridge, 1999), p. 86. 6 Herrtage, Sege off Melayne, p. xiii; Shepherd, Middle English Romances, p. 388. 7 Exceptions being S.H.A. Shepherd, ‘ “This grete journee”: The Sege of Melayne’, in Romance in Medieval England, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge, 1991) pp. 113–31; Hardman, ‘The Sege of Melayne’ and the introduction in Maldwyn Mills Six Middle English Romances (London, 1973). 8 CPL, Petitions, 1342–1419, i, pp. 261, 364 and 490–1; Registrum Simonis Langham, ed. A.C. Wood (CYS 53, 1956), p. 61. 9 CPL 1362–1404, p. 83. 10 Richard Allington-Smith, Henry Despenser the Fighting Bishop: a New View of an Extraordinary Medieval Prelate (Dereham, 2003) provides a recent reassessment of Despenser’s career.

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(failed) murder plot, and he was frequently in dispute with his own clergy.11 He was also a figure at the centre of Ricardian politics, serving on parliamentary committees and the royal council.12 Through his political machinations, he was deprived of his temporalities twice, his spiritualities once and briefly imprisoned. But it is for his military exploits that Despenser has gained notoriety. He is the episcopus martius of Thomas Walsingham’s history, Henry Knighton’s valens episcopus and the Westminster Chronicler’s ‘far-sighted bishop’. The author of the Eulogium Historiarum considers him ‘more of the mind of a light-weight and frivolous knight’, and in John Wyclif’s Cruciata sive contra bella Clericorum, he is potentially an agent of the anti-Christ.13 Despenser’s bellicose reputation is based mainly on his roles in the 1381 Great Rising and the Flanders Crusade of 1383, although he also took part in Richard II’s Scottish campaign of 1385, the Earl of Arundel’s naval campaign of 1386–7, and was practically the only Ricardian loyalist to lead an armed force against Bolingbroke’s supporters during the 1399 usurpation. According to Froissart, the ‘young and courageous’ Despenser had his first taste of military action in Lombardy. With his brother, Edward, he was part of the papal forces fighting there in 1369.14 John Capgrave records that ‘Ser Herry Spenser’ was ‘a grete werrioure in Ytaile’ at the same time as ‘Ser John Haukwood, a mervelous man of armes’.15 In his later biography of the bishop, written as part of a series of exempla for Henry VI and composed around the time that Robert Thornton was putting together the manuscript containing the Sege off Melayne, Capgrave recalls that the young Despenser ‘delighting in warfare’ had deliberately sought active service in Italy because ‘England was then at peace’.16 Norman Housley has concluded that Despenser probably took part in the papal crusade against Bernarbo Visconti.17 Capgrave also comments that the gift of the bishopric of Norwich was a papal reward for Despenser’s military service.18 Stephen Shepherd has suggested the series of fourteenth-century conflicts between the northern Italian city-states and the papacy as one of a number of possible historical scenarios which could have provided the inspiration for the Sege off Melayne.19 The area around Milan in particular had gained a reputation

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

For a local perspective on the revolt in Lynn, see Kate Parker’s paper in this volume; for 1382 see Herbert Eiden, ‘Norfolk, 1382: A Sequel to the Peasants’ Revolt’, EHR 114 (1999), pp. 370–77. DNB, p. 860. Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. H.T. Riley, 2 vols (RS, London, 1863–4), ii, p. 7; Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. G.H. Martin (Oxford, 1995), p. 226; The Westminster Chronicle 1381–1394, ed. L.C. Hector and Barbara F.Harvey (Oxford, 1982), p. 45; Eulogium Historiarum sive Temporis, ed. F.S. Haydon, 3 vols (RS, London, 1863), iii, p. 356; DNB, p. 862. Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners, Berner’s Froissart, 6 vols (London, 1901–3), iii, p. 421. John Capgrave, The Chronicles of England, ed. F.C. Hingeston (London, 1858), p. 226. John Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, ed. F.C. Hingeston (RS, London, 1858), pp. xiv, 170. Norman Housley, ‘The Bishop of Norwich’s Crusade, May 1383’, History Today (May 1983), p. 16. Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, pp. xiv, 170. Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, p. 117 n. 17: iii.

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for being a place associated with (antipapal) heretics.20 Despenser’s connection with the region enables a reading of his career in conjunction with the poem. Turpin is obviously first and foremost a warrior. Most particularly, as a staunch defender of the Christian faith, he is Christ’s warrior, a position which he pursues with vigour and zealousness. The author creates the bishop as a man of action, rather than words. This is clear from the moment he enters the narrative. Turpin tells Charlemagne and his advisors to ‘Hafe done!’ (164) with their debating, assemble the troops and get on with destroying the Saracen host. And we are told that in donning his armour the bishop is ‘als blythe als birde one boughe’ (921).21 He tuke his helme and sythen his brande, Appon a stede, a spere in hande Was grete and gud ynoghe (922–4)

Leading his men into battle (925), he is a war-leader who also takes part in single combat against the enemy (955ff), berates his squire for attempting to loot the enemy dead (985–90), surpasses Roland in skill and courage on the battlefield and refuses to let anyone see to his wounds (1591) until the city is retaken. Otherwise, he vows, he will die in battle. At one point, he sees a host of some thirty thousand advancing towards him. Determined to rid the field of all Saracens, the blood-spattered bishop seizes a lance and, unaided, charges fearlessly at them (1450ff). They are not, however, the enemy but an allied relief force mustered by the duke of Brittany. At the last moment, one of Brittany’s heralds manages to decipher Turpin’s device beneath the blood and dust of battle, thereby averting disaster. This episode often provokes hilarity amongst a modern, and possibly a medieval, audience. But the incident does have a serious side. Turpin’s action is a mirror of the berserker behaviour which, Stephen Shepherd points out, has characterised crusade accounts – both imaginary and factual – since the time of the First Crusade.22 It was seen as a way of gaining entry to Paradise. Displaying powers of endurance and inspiration Turpin strongly advocates, and performs, a code of correct Christian behaviour, even when this involves his coming into conflict with a higher authority. He not only takes Charlemagne to task for his ‘heretical stance’ in refusing to take up arms against the infidel – I sall hym curse in myddis his face. What! sall he nowe with sory grace Become ane Eretyke? (670–2)

– but also castigates the Virgin Mary. When news of the loss of the French forces led by Roland is received, Turpin lashes out against her for allowing ‘thi men’ to die, arguing that had she never been born these men would never have died 20

Michael E. Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago, 1995), pp. 18, 163 n. 64. 21 Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the Sege off Melayne are from Herrtage’s edition. 22 Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, p. 126.

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(547–58). It is at this point that he casts off the symbols of his episcopal office – his staff and mitre – swearing never to use these, nor any other habit only armour, again. He does not, however, neglect his spiritual duties. There is a strong hagiographical element in Turpin’s characterisation – he is as much a saint as he is a soldier.23 In celebrating a mass for the fallen (883ff) he performs a minor miracle when bread and wine suddenly appear on the altar (893–4); he sustains a spear wound in his side (1303–5) as Christ did on the cross and he draws on Christ’s example in his refusal to seek medical aid when badly wounded. Criste for me sufferde mare; He askede no salve to His sare, Ne no more sall I this tyde (1348–56)

This link between Turpin’s wounds and those of Christ is a type of imitatio Christi and employed in the poem to show ‘warfare depicted as a form of Christian sacrifice and worship – a transformation of the worldly institutions of warfare into a means of serving, and reflecting, the presence of Christ’.24 In their accounts of the 1381 Great Rising, the chroniclers give us a Henry Despenser who is an heroic figure and a divinely appointed saviour.25 They do, however, stop short (just) of giving us a Christ-like bishop of Norwich. When the social unrest which had begun in Kent and London manifested itself in East Anglia in the early summer of 1381, accounts indicate that most landowners were caught unawares by the mob violence and that it was Despenser who took the lead in putting down the revolt in the area. He was on one of his manors in the Midlands when news of the uprising reached him and he immediately set out to quell it. Assuming the role of war-leader he moved through the eastern counties, gathering forces as he went, dispersing the rebels gathered at Peterborough and Norwich and engaging in a bloody skirmish at North Walsham. It was an image of inspirational leadership which enticed out of hiding those who had previously feared to engage the rebels.26 Entries in the court rolls for Witton and North Walsham testify that he actually took part in the fighting and record that one John Buk was said to have been slain by the bishop.27 Despenser meted out swift justice, acting as judge and jury and overseeing immediate executions.28 So determined was he to stamp out rebellion that he pursued, and sentenced those who had sought refuge in a church.29 Nor did he

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

D. Childress, ‘Between Romance and Legend: “Secular Hagiography” in Middle English Literature’, Philological Quarterly 57 (1978), p. 316. Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, p. 129. Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, p. 170; Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, pp. 6–9; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 226–7. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, pp. 5–8. Translation in The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R.B. Dobson, 2nd edn (London, 1983), p. 260. NRO, MS 6152 16D2 (court 31 Oct. 1381) quoted in Herbert Eiden, ‘Joint Action against “Bad” Lordship: The Peasants’ Revolt in Essex and Norfolk’, History 83 (1998), p. 21, n.76. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, pp. 6–8. Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 224–7.

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neglect his spiritual duties – he heard the confessions of the condemned. And, when he accompanied Geoffrey Litster – the self-styled King of Norfolk – to the gallows, ‘he held up the rebel’s head to prevent it knocking on the ground while he was being dragged to the place of his hanging’.30 Despenser’s prompt and zealous action in dealing with the rebels was received favourably by several writers. John Capgrave, for instance, portrays him as the only landowner prepared to stand and fight ‘when the lords, knights and other nobles fled on account of their fear’.31 In his version of events, Henry Knighton records that at the abbey at Peterborough ‘the abbot’s neighbours and tenants rose against [it] and would have destroyed it if God had not unexpectedly interposed his restraining hand between them’.32 The abbey’s salvation lay in the appearance of Henry Despenser who ‘sent by the divine mercy upon high, appeared with a strong armed force’ to disperse the rebels.33 Knighton goes on to say that because the rebels had threatened Church property ‘for that reason it was fitting that they should die at the hands of a churchman’.34 Wherever, he continues, the ‘valens episcopus’ (valiant bishop) could encounter rebels in the eastern counties, he was quick to dispense ‘absolutionem gladialem episcopalis’ (the absolution of the bishop’s sword).35 Knighton’s portrayal of the bishop is interpersed with scriptural quotations which both justify Despenser’s actions and interpret the mob as a heathen enemy. This image of the sword-wielding bishop meting out justice and absolution draws heavily on an Old Testament tradition of individuals appointed to wreak God’s vengeance. It also highlights the dual nature of the bishop’s role – he is both lord and priest. The sword is traditionally seen as a signifier of knightly masculinity. Special swords, in particular those which are named – such as Durendal and Excalibur – have functioned as signifiers of the invincibility of the hero.36 And Knighton’s description is a reminder that Despenser was fulfilling a duty which the other lords were considered to have neglected – defence of the realm. But there is also a tradition in which the divine bestowal of a sword is seen to provide validation for a militaristic defence of the Christian faith.37 It is possible that this belief owes its origin to an incident in the second book of Maccabees (xv.15, 16), where Judas recounts a dream in which the spirit of Jeremiah gives him a sword which he was to use against the enemies of the people of Israel.38 In effect, the gift of the sword is a signifier of a just war. This is an association which 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 261. Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, p. 170. Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 224–5. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 226–7. Ibid. Emma Mason, ‘The Hero’s Invincible Weapon: an Aspect of Angevin Propaganda’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, III, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge, 1990), p. 121. In the Chanson de Roland, Archbishop Turpin wields a sword called Almace. 37 Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, pp. 119–20. 38 Herrtage, Melayne, p. x.

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is made explicit in the Sege off Melayne. Soon after the Saracens begin their incursions into Christian territory, Charlemagne receives a vision (a sweun) in which an angel appears and gifts him a sword, commanding him to lead an army of vengeance on Christ’s behalf (111–32). . . . Christe sende the this swerde Mase the his werryoure here in erthe, He dose the wele to weite (118–20)

As well as acting as a reminder of a lord’s defence role, it is likely, therefore, that Knighton’s reference to Despenser’s ‘sword of absolution’ also draws on this militaristic defence of the faith tradition. Thomas Walsingham creates a similar portrait of Despenser. The bishop is again a hero and an avenger of justice in the tradition of the Old Testament. According to Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana, the bishop was ‘a man ideally suited for fighting and himself armed to the teeth’.39 His description of Despenser ‘dressed as a knight, wearing an iron helm and a solid hauberk impregnable to arrows and wielding a two-edged sword’, recalls an exhortation from Psalms to ‘let high praises of God be in the mouths [of the saints] and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon the people’.40 At North Walsham – close to the heart of his diocese – Despenser fought a hand-to-hand battle with the insurgents. According to Walsingham, the bishop ‘seized a lance in his right hand’ and headed straight for the heart of the action.41 ‘The war-like priest, like a wild boar gnashing its teeth, spared neither himself nor his enemies. He chose to fight where the danger was greatest, stabbing one man, knocking down another and wounding a third.’42 Much attention has been focused on the way in which the rebels are mis-represented in the narratives of 1381. Making use of what Paul Strohm labels ‘stigmatising strategies’, the chroniclers portray them as rustici, a term referring to the lowest order of agricultural workers but also a term of abuse.43 The social misfits, oath-breakers, rabble-rousers and hooligans were, in fact, members of the village elite, merchants, townsfolk, minor members of the nobility.44 Walsingham’s ‘glorious host’ of audacious insurgents whose makeshift defences are composed of domestic paraphernalia – a ditch piled high with table tops, windows and doors – are juxtaposed with the ‘juvenis . . . et audax’ Despenser.45 It has been pointed out that in conflicts in which the governing body appeared to have lost control, there was frequently resort to intercession by divine agency for resolution.46 Both Knighton’s and Walsingham’s accounts cast Despenser in 39 40 41 42 43

Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, p. 6, translation from Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 259. Psalms 149.5–7. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, p. 7. Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 260. Paul Strohm, ‘ “A revelle!”: Chronicle Evidence and the Rebel Voice’, in Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992), p. 34. 44 Ibid., p. 37. 45 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, p. 7. 46 Goodich, Violence and Miracle, p. 28.

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the role of upholder of law, justice and the status quo – filling the vacuum created by the inability of other landowners to respond quickly to the insurgents’ threat. The portrait of the avenging bishop is an empowering image for the clergy. The Church has been defended by one of its own. The chroniclers wield language as Despenser wields a sword – language becomes the weapon of the militarily impotent. In the myth-making process which records the events of 1381, the portrayal of the ‘episcopus Martius’ owes as much to narrative strategies as it does to Despenser’s own actions. Two years later, the bishop was again leading armed forces, this time in the form of a crusading army against the followers of the anti-pope in Flanders.47 The Great Schism of 1378 had seen Urban VI established as pope at Rome and Clement VII at Avignon, with England supporting Urban VI and the French, Clement VII. Each pope regarded his rival as the anti-Christ. Amongst the attempts to resolve the Schism, crusading against the rival obedience was considered to be a practical application of the via facti – the achievement of the goal by military means.48 From the end of 1378 the need for a crusade against the anti-Christ had been preached in England.49 Despenser was apparently already in negotiations with the Roman papacy concerning such an undertaking when the social unrest of 1381 put his plans on hold.50 Bulls appointing Despenser nuncio and authorising him to ‘rise in arms against the French as schismatics’, and granting ‘the same indulgence as is given to those who go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land’, reached England in 1382.51 The bishop promoted the venture with enthusiasm. The papal bulls were to be posted on every church door and on monastery gates.52 Those who opposed the crusade could be excommunicated as heretics.53 Ordinances were issued to promote the enterprise. These stipulated that enough preachers were to be ‘sent into every district, both here and overseas’ to preach crusade.54 Moreover, each preacher or confessor was to be assigned a clerk to register penitents and their monies. The mendicant orders, in particular, were to assist and for their efforts were to receive sixpence in the pound of the funds they raised during the process of dispensing absolution.55 In this the friars proved to be extremely successful and continued their work after Despenser had left for Flanders.

47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54 55

Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 324–5. Norman Housley, The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992), p. 247. Michael Wilks, ‘Roman Candle or Damned Squib: The English Crusade of 1383 [inaugural lecture 1980]’, in Wyclif: Political Ideas and Practice – papers by Michael Wilks, intro. Anne Hudson (Oxford, 2000), p. 269. Margaret Aston, ‘The Impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, BIHR 38 (1965), pp. 133–4; the first of the three bulls is dated 22 March 1381; Wykeham’s Register, ed. T.F. Kirby, 2 vols (Hampshire Record Society, 1896–9), ii, p. 198. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 30–31; Wykeham’s Register, p. 199. Walsingham, Historica Anglicana, ii, p. 72; translation in Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1580, ed. Norman Housley (Hampshire, 1996), p. 90. This was a standard aspect of crusade ideology. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, p. 74. Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 330–1. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ii, pp. 78–9; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 330–33.

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Both Walsingham and Henry Knighton noted that ‘an incalculable and unbelievably large sum of money . . . especially from ladies and other women’ was raised.56 ‘For the bishop had wonderful indulgences, with absolution from punishment and from guilt . . . by whose authority . . . both the living and the dead were absolved. . . . [and] some of his commissaries asserted that angels would descend from the skies at their bidding, and snatch souls in purgatory . . . and lead them to heaven.’57 So ‘fired by devotion and faith’ were people that ‘many gave more than they could afford’ to the extent that the ‘hidden treasure of the kingdom which is in the hands of women was put at risk’ by their need to secure absolution for themselves and their friends.58 Walsingham also stated that ‘almost nobody could be found . . . who did not volunteer’ or offer something for the enterprise. Despite this enthusiastic account, however, there were dissenting voices. For John Wyclif, the crusade epitomised the abuses of papal power. Soon after the bulls were received in England, he produced pamphlets which seem to have been intended to promote anti-papal feeling, whilst his later De Cruciata was an outright condemnation of the crusade itself.59 In some places, sermons were preached against the crusade. One such instance occurred at Gloucester, where it was stated that ‘bishops who accept money for sins are sons of the devil . . . that of all things ever done the conduct of a crusade is the most evil . . . [and] that those who promote a crusade induce Christians to give their goods to kill men’.60 Despenser continued his preparations regardless. He took the cross in a solemn spectacle staged at St Paul’s in December 1382.61 He applied to parliament for men and financial support. Factional politics, however, ensured that his request received a rough passage in the Lords, especially as John of Gaunt was also seeking aid to lead a crusade into the Iberian Peninsula. Gaunt’s proposed venture was aimed at taking the throne of Castile which he claimed in right of his wife. Since the Castilians were supporters of Clement VII, the campaign would also meet papal requirements for a crusade against schismatics. The Lords were inclined to support Gaunt whilst the Commons favoured Despenser.62 Amongst the objections which the Lords raised against Despenser were the issue of his role as papal nuncio and the problems posed by a bishop fighting. According to the Westminster Chronicler, the Lords argued that if the expedition were to be successful then the English monarch’s rights in France would be 56 57 58 59

Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 324–5; also Westminster Chronicle, pp. 36–7. Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 324–5. Ibid. John Wyclif, Polemical Works in Latin, ed. R. Buddensieg, 2 vols (London, 1883), ii, pp. 567–8, 582; Elizabeth Siberry, ‘Criticism of Crusading in Fourteenth-Century England’, Crusade and Settlement, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 127–8. 60 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 288–9. 61 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 32–3. 62 Colin K. Paine, ‘The Bishop of Norwich’s Crusade, its Origins and Participants’, unpublished M.Litt. thesis (Oxford, 1995), pp. 38 and 99, argues that Gaunt’s unpopularity with the Commons resulted from his dereliction of duty in 1377 in failing to adequately defend the south coast from French invasion. For a different aspect of the Lancaster/Despenser conflict, see Kate Parker’s paper in this volume.

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effectively replaced by those of the Church, since Despenser was potentially acting on the pope’s behalf and not the king’s.63 It was an issue which remained unresolved – although the chronicler adds that the objection was only made in the first place ‘from motives of base jealousy’. Despenser was later to argue that he tried to fulfill his duties to both king and pope. When he took the town of Gravelines, he demanded its surrender in the name of ‘our illustrious king of England and France’.64 On the question of the bishop fighting, the Lords stated that it was not permissible for him to do so.65 His response was that in the cause of the Lord and the pope (in causa Domini et papae), it was justified (bene potuit). The author of the Eulogium Historiarum, who notes this exchange, found the idea of fighting clerics problematic. He describes Despenser as magis militari levitate dissolutus quam pontificali maturitate solidus – ‘more the light-weight, frivolous knight than a mature, responsible prelate’.66 Later, he denigrates those clerics who took part in the Crusade as ‘false priests’ (falsis religiosis).67 The issue of clerics fighting was problematic throughout the medieval period. In theory, churchmen were barred from practising violence. Canon law laid a proscription against the clergy taking part in warfare or shedding blood, and dictated that severe penalties were to be imposed on those who actively engaged in military duties.68 In reality, there are numerous examples of fighting clerics, some of whom – according to the chroniclers – come to a sticky end for breaking this law. Such examples occur mainly on the continent, although the duties of the bishops of Durham encompassed a defensive, military role. Phillipe Contamine has found evidence which suggests that for a time the fourteenth century witnessed a larger number of clergy taking up arms, sometimes in a less than holy cause.69 In 1356 Pope Innocent VI issued a condemnation of ecclesiastical participation in warfare in a letter addressed to the kings of England and France.70 However, despite the papal pronouncement, state necessity imposed an obligation to bear arms on the clergy in late-fourteenth-century England. From entries in the Rolls of Parliament, it has been concluded that Edward III deliberately instituted a royal policy of arming the clergy for the defense of the realm during the Hundred Years’ War.71 Bruce McNab notes a number of writs of array

63 64

65 66 67 68

69 70 71

Westminster Chronicle, pp. 36–7. W.A. Pantin, ‘A Medieval Treatise on Letter-Writing, with Examples, from the Rylands Latin MS. 394’, BJRL 13 (1929), pp. 326–82, at pp. 360, 363. Letter 34 relates the early part of the crusade. Eulogium, iii, p. 356. Ibid. My translation. Ibid., p. 357. Bruce McNab, ‘Obligations of the Church in English Society: Military Arrays of the Clergy, 1369–1418’, in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages, ed. William C. Jordan, Bruce McNab and Teofilo F. Ruiz (New Jersey, 1976), p. 293. Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Oxford, 1984), p. 172 nn. 92–3; McNab, ‘Obligations’, p. 294. McNab, ‘Obligations’, p. 294; Contamine, War, p. 171. Rev. William Hudson, ‘A commission to Arm and Array the Clergy in 1400’, quoted in McNab, ‘Obligations’, p. 296.

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issued during the period 1369–1418 which give specific instructions for ‘all abbots, priors and men of religion and other ecclesiastical persons . . . to be armed’.72 It also transpires that the prelates agreed to penalties being imposed on those clergy refusing to comply with the king’s command.73 Although the records of the writs and the summonses cannot be taken as direct evidence of the clergy actively participating in fighting, there are several chronicle accounts which so portray them. Recording the sudden death of the abbot of Battle in 1382, the Westminster Chronicler notes that it was an ‘occasion of deep and widespread regret for beneath his monkish habit he was a soldier of mark and the stout defender of home, neighbours, and coast against the attacks of pirates’.74 The abbot in question had been part of the clerical home-guard which took part in repulsing the attempted French invasion of the south coast on the accession of Richard II in 1377. Crusade bulls attempted to address the matter by including dispensation for clerics to go as soldiers.75 The fact that the papal registers for 1390 record a dispensation for Despenser and his role in 1383 suggests that, even so, further clarification was necessary.76 The author of the Sege off Melayne addresses this contemporary issue in a symbolic way when he portrays Turpin casting off his bishop’s staff and mitre. It serves as a reminder both to those whom Turpin is addressing and to the poem’s audience that a militaristic defence of the faith is justified if God so wills it. In showing the nobility where their duty clearly lies, Turpin is also reflecting the chroniclers’ image of Despenser in 1381. In spite of the Lords’ objections, in February 1383 support for Despenser was granted, the measures being pushed through by the Commons on what was, basically, an anti-Gaunt vote.77 Walsingham considers the groundswell of popular support gathered by Despenser – whom he describes (somewhat inaccurately) as ‘the poorest bishop in the kingdom’ – to have been instrumental in ultimately ensuring parliamentary support.78 In mid-May 1383 Despenser was in Calais with his forces. This is the background which I consider to be conducive to a reading of the Sege off Melayne as propaganda for Despenser’s enterprise. The possibility that Melayne may have functioned as a crusading poem has been explored in some detail by Stephen Shepherd.79 Indeed, he speculates that the lost French original of Melayne (if one existed) may have been written to persuade people to join the

72 73 74 75 76

McNab, ‘Obligations’, p. 295. Ibid., p. 296. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 34–5. Wykeham’s Register, ii, p. 208. CPL 1362–1404, p. 325. This dispensation makes particular reference to Despenser’s ‘having put to death’ numbers of the followers of the anti-pope. 77 Froissart states that ‘all the comontie of Englande more enclyned to be with the bysshop of Norwiche, than to go with the duke of lancastre’; Berner’s Froissart, iii, p. 420. 78 Housley, Documents, pp. 91–2. 79 Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, pp. 113–31.

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crusade preached against the Visconti by the pope in the early 1320s.80 He has not, however, considered an English crusading context for the work. The Charlemagne narratives, in general, have a history of being exploited by the Church as a means of promoting faith and solidarity amongst the nobility.81 In the twelfth century the depiction of Charlemagne underwent a transformation and he became seen as a prototype crusader, ultimately coming to figure as a saint of the Church militant. Such material lent itself to appropriation by English writers because Edward III, in assuming the arms and title of ‘King of France’, in effect declared himself to be Charlemagne’s heir. In what seemed to be the increasingly fragmenting world brought about by the Great Schism, the Middle English Charlemagne romances could have served a purpose as crusading propaganda by offering hope of a united Christendom.82 The Sege off Melayne has been classified as a popular (rather than an aristocratic) text on the basis of its subject-matter and outlook.83 This suggests that it was intended to promote faith and solidarity amongst a wider audience than the early Charlemagne narratives. In his analysis of the origins of Despenser’s crusade, Colin Paine argues that the expedition was aimed at the gentry rather than the higher nobility, since the latter were deemed to have failed in their duty of defending the realm against the French invasion attempts of 1377.84 Moreover, of the 231 known individuals who took the cross, he identifies a number of northern participants, both gentry and clergy, from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumbria.85 Paine’s work confirms the existence of an audience drawn from across the social spectrum with an interest in crusade to whom the Sege off Melayne would have appealed. From its opening lines, the Sege off Melayne’s narrator seeks to draw his audience into the action. He addresses them directly and makes frequent references to ‘oure Cristyn knyghte’ (244, 367, 429). The French troops are clearly meant to represent a Christian Every(knight) rather than the traditional English enemy. The poem seeks to persuade its audience into a spirited defence of the faith and focuses on promoting the idea of a religious cohesion which can only be achieved through the authority of the church, and in particular papal authority. For almost two-thirds of the work, the narrative centres on Turpin. The choice of the bishop as hero is unusual for the Charlemagne romances and is one of the ways in which the work gives prominence to its religious themes – and a potentially contemporary context. I mentioned above that Turpin’s construction as a Christ-like figure is an illustration of ‘warfare depicted as a form of Christian sacrifice and worship’.86 As

80 81 82

83 84 85 86

Ibid., p. 118 n. 17: iii. W.R.J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (London, 1987), p. 92. Robert Warm, ‘Identity, Narrative and Participation: Defining a Context for the Middle English Charlemagne Romances’, Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, ed. Rosalind Field (Cambridge, 1999), p. 88. A. McIntosh Trounce, ‘The English Tail-rhyme Romances’, Medium Aevum 1 (1932), p. 102. Paine, ‘The Bishop of Norwich’s Crusade,’ chapter 2. Ibid., pp. 183, 203, 267, 291, 302. Melayne was written in a northern dialect. Shepherd, ‘This grete journee’, p. 129.

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such, the work functions to promote the concept of via facti – it advances the use of force as a valid Christian solution whenever and wherever the faith is threatened by non-Christian elements, whether these enemies are Saracens, heretics, schismatics or even the king himself. In heeding the advice of his councillors, Charlemagne gives priority to the interests of France rather than those of Christendom, when he decides not to take up arms in the holy cause. This is in direct contravention of the divine commandment received in his dream. Turpin upbraids him roundly, calls him a coward and excommunicates him. Goddes byddynge hase thou broken; Thurghe the traytour speche spoken, Alle Cristendom walde thou schende When Criste sent the a suerde un till Thou myghte wele wiete it was his will That thi seelfe solde thedir wende (745–50)

This outburst places emphasis on the prince’s duty to Christendom as the utmost priority of the ruler. When Charlemagne subsequently finds himself besieged in Paris by an army composed of ‘monk, canon, priest and friar’ (620), the bishop makes it clear that his assumption of military command comes specifically from papal authority: Of the pope I haue pouste Att my byddynge sall thay bee Bothe with schelde and spere (616–18)

The poem, therefore, would have been ideally suited for the promotion of Despenser’s enterprise, especially since precedents for such a use of Middle English poetry already existed – The Simonie, for instance, dating from Edward II’s reign, exhorted Christians to settle disputes and take the cross.87 The emphasis I have been placing on the Sege off Melayne as a crusading poem does not mean that it was only intended to incite its audience into actually taking up the cross or donating funds. Narratives such as this offered their audiences an experiential opportunity. By drawing the listeners into the action, addressing them directly, the story-telling became a performance in which the audience could participate in crusade experience. This, in itself, may have been regarded as an act of crusade. By the fourteenth century, there were several options which offered those faithful unable to make the physical journey the chance to participate in crusade. Those who donated money were promised identical benefits and remissions to those who fought. It was possible to fulfil a crusade vow by sending someone else in one’s place. The 1333 papal bull Ad comemorandum recentis extended remission of penance to include not only those participating financially and physically in crusade but also to those who listened to its preaching.88 The shared experience of participating in oral narrative could reinforce the idea of a 87 88

Siberry, ‘Criticism of Crusading’, p. 131. W.E. Lunt, Studies in Anglo-Papal Relations during the Middle Ages, II: Financial Relations of the Papacy with England: 1327–1534 (Cambridge, MA, 1962), p. 529.

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united Christian community, and it is possible to envisage the Sege off Melayne operating in this way. Initially Despenser enjoyed successes which were seen by some – including the bishop himself – to have been divinely sanctioned.89 The chronicles record that he fought a force of thirty thousand schismatics with an army of only five thousand. However, whilst some seven thousand of the enemy perished there was a loss of only seven men on his own side.90 And as the English knelt on the battlefield singing a Te Deum, the Lord provided ‘tranquil weather and a gentle breeze’ over them, whilst thunder and lightning raged over the area to which the defeated enemy fled.91 Flushed by this success at Gravelines and Dunkirk, and in a move which mirrors Turpin’s denigration of Charlemagne, Despenser wrote to the king of France, Charles VI, condemning him as a ‘schismatik’ and affirming papal authority for his (Despenser’s) actions.92 But the venture subsequently failed and the bishop returned to England to face impeachment proceedings in the autumn parliament of 1383. He was indicted on four counts in particular – that he had failed to maintain his levy of troops in the field for a year as agreed; that he had failed to raise and muster the requisite number of troops; that he had failed to appoint a secular leader for the force and that he had pre-empted plans for a force to be led either by Richard II himself or John, duke of Lancaster.93 In the speech which opened the trial the chancellor, Michael de la Pole, castigated Despenser for his assumption of a secular role. ‘My lord bishop, you have your sword borne before you everywhere like a temporal lord . . . the temporal lords are loud in their murmurs of complaint about it . . . for the future conduct yourself according to what is proper for a bishop.’94 These proceedings resulted in his being stripped of his temporalities by the king. Although he subsequently regained them, it was an official reprimand for what was seen as Despenser’s continuing usurpation of aristocratic military leadership throughout the undertaking. Despite the ignominy of Flanders and the (brief) loss of his temporalities, there were continuing associations between Despenser and crusade. The Polychronicon records his presence during the Scottish campaign of 1385 – ‘dressed like a crusader’ and carrying the banner of St Cuthbert.95 And, in the years subsequent to 1383, Despenser commissioned a manuscript which has recently been described as ‘a book of martial belligerence’ and ‘almost a mythology of the

89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Westminster Chronicle, pp. 40–1; Pantin, Medieval Treatise, p. 361; Capgrave, Chronicles, p. 329. Capgrave, Chronicles, p. 239. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 40–1. ‘Scripsitque Regi Franciae vocans eum schismaticum et regni Franciae injustum occupatorem . . .’, Eulogium, iii, p. 357. Rotuli Parliamentorum, ed. J. Strachey and others, 6 vols (London, 1767–77), iii, pp. 152–6; Aston, ‘Impeachment’, p. 128; Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), p. 106. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 54–5. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, ed. J.R. Lumby, 9 vols (RS, London, 1865–86), ix, p. 62. Thomas Edward Carson, ‘A Socio-Economic Study of East Anglian Clergy in the Time of Henry Despenser 1370–1406’, unpublished PhD (University of Michigan, 1972), p. 18.

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crusade of 1383’.96 The manuscript is in a style which suggests it may be from one of a group produced and decorated in Norwich, and amongst its illustrations it features Despenser’s arms with a small cross in the first quarter – a remembrance of Despenser’s having taken the cross. The texts include a poem of the first crusade cycle concerning Godefroi de Bouilion and Urban II, the Roman d’Eneas, the Roman de Thèbes, a dream vision known as Le Songe vert and part of the Ordene de Chevalerie.97 It is a series of works which not only links with the events of 1383 – through the names of the popes, for instance – but which also holds an obvious interest for one who styled himself the conqueror of West Flanders.98 As far as I can determine, the Sege off Melayne is unique in referring to Turpin consistently as ‘bishop’ whereas in other narratives in which he appears the terms ‘archbishop’ and ‘bishop’ are used interchangeably. This, along with Turpin’s central role, the idea of crusade and the setting of Milan allow the possibility that the martial career of Henry Despenser provides a late-fourteenth-century context in which to read the poem. The issues of papal authority, the duty of a Christian king, fighting clerics, threats to Christendom and the necessity for crusade which surface in the romance acquire contemporary resonances when compared with the Despenser narratives. At the same time, it is clear that the chroniclers’ depictions of Despenser draw on a variety of literary devices in their recording of his exploits – the ‘stigmatising strategies’, which Strohm identifies, work against the rebels but in favour of the bishop. If Melayne did have a function as propaganda for the Flanders crusade, its popularity survived the failure of Despenser’s enterprise, probably because there continued to be interest in the idea of crusade.99 Its inclusion in Thornton’s mid-fifteenth-century anthology linked Melayne with The Siege of Jerusalem and Richard, Coeur de Lyon, both of which are romance narratives concerned with crusade.100 And a reference to it in the mid-sixteenth-century Complaynt of Scotland indicates that its subject matter remained current for at least a century.

96 97

98 99

100

Christopher Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, in New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton and Wendy Scase (Oxford, 2002), p. 53. Despenser also possessed manuscripts incorporating Flores Historiarum and the Chronicle of Adam Murimuth, and a fourteenth-century copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Baswell, ‘Aeneas’, pp. 45, 47. Eulogium, iii, p. 357. Maurice Keen, ‘The Wilton Diptych: the Case for a Crusading Context’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas and Caroline Elam (London, 1997), pp. 189–96 considers interest in crusading in England in the mid-1390s. See John J. Thompson, Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS Additional 31042 (Cambridge, 1987) for a discussion of Thornton’s compilation; also Hardman, ‘The Sege of Melayne’, for a fifteenth-century reading of the poem in the manuscript.

Social Contexts of the East Anglian Saint Play: The Digby Mary Magdalene and the Late Medieval Hospital? Theresa Coletti

UNLIKE the late medieval biblical dramas of Chester, York, and Coventry, whose textual survival is accompanied by a rich documentary record of the contexts and occasions of their performance, extant dramatic texts representing the varied theatrical traditions of East Anglia are not so conveniently situated in historical and social frameworks.1 Although records of medieval performative activities in the region yield evidence of local habits of staging and theatrical organization, such as theaters in the round and multi-community productions, no surviving notices of East Anglian theatrical endeavor can be linked to extant East Anglian dramatic texts. Paradoxically, the richest regional tradition of late medieval English theater has left the fewest documentary traces. The contextual problems encountered in the contemporary study of late medieval East Anglian theater, then, must come to terms with numerous frustrations: texts that float free of their regional and institutional auspices; dramatic collections such as the N-Town Plays that laconically bear witness to the processes of their own complicated

This essay develops material culled from the Introduction and chapters 1 and 2 of my Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints: Theater, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2004). I am deeply grateful to Christopher Harper-Bill for giving me the opportunity to present this work at the conference he organized at UEA in September 2003. 1 For documentary evidence of dramatic and festive performances in late medieval East Anglia, see David Galloway and John Wasson, eds, Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, Malone Society Collections 11 (Oxford, 1981); David Galloway, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Norwich (Toronto, 1984); Richard Beadle, ‘The Medieval Drama in East Anglia: Studies in Dialect, Documentary Records and Stagecraft’, 2 vols (PhD thesis, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, 1977); Richard Beadle, ‘Plays and Playing at Thetford and Nearby, 1498–1540’, Theatre Notebook 32 (1978), pp. 4–11; Robert Wright, ‘Medieval Theatre in East Anglia: A Study of Drama and the Community in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, 1200–1580, with Special Reference to Game, Interlude and Play in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century’ (PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 1971); Robert Wright, ‘Community Theatre in Late Medieval East Anglia’, Theatre Notebook 28 (1974), pp. 24–38. The only East Anglian play that can be tied to specific records of performance is the early sixteenth-century Norwich Grocers’ Play. See Norman Davis, ed., The Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, EETS ss 1 (London, 1970), pp. xxii–xl; and Lawrence M. Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (Chicago, 2001), pp. 155–7.

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genesis; and long-lost traditions of dramatic production that possessed the requisite theatrical know-how and material resources to mount the ambitious spectacles of a Castle of Perseverance or a Mary Magdalene. Reflections on the losses that characterize the late medieval East Anglian ‘theater of devotion’ can draw our attention to theoretical frameworks and methodological strategies that might be invoked to recuperate it.2 Contemporary medieval studies have exhibited a determined interest in pointing out parallels between the losses that constitute the founding condition of studying the medieval past and recent theories of cultural representation and the formation of subjectivity.3 Paul Strohm has argued that postmodern theoretical formulations underscoring the instability of knowledge and truth claims nonetheless make a space for historical inquiry, not ‘to probe the . . . depths but to restore . . . the fully contradictory variety . . . of the historical surface’.4 The pursuit of historical meaning in postmodern medieval studies posits neither the total recoverability of the past event nor the certitude of fully rendering up the past to present understanding.5 Debates about the prospects for historical inquiry in the practice of inevitably postmodern medieval studies have transpired at some remove from the immediate concerns of medieval English drama scholarship; yet they nonetheless impinge on methodological strategies employed in the study of East Anglian theater to confront the sorts of palpable losses that I have invoked. This essay employs a variety of materials and modes of analysis to ‘solicit’, in Gabrielle Spiegel’s phrase, ‘[the] fragmented inner narratives’ emerging from the silences that attend the ‘once material existence’ of East Anglian dramatic artifacts.6 It focuses on the play known as Mary Magdalene, preserved in Bodleian Library MS Digby 133. I invoke features of the late medieval East Anglian cultural environment to hypothesize conditions of intelligibility for an elusive dramatic text that has been notably resistant to historicizing. This essay also places central emphasis on dramatic texts as historical resources in their own right, capable of localizing the cultural performances to which they bear witness, if not in relation to an institutional site, at least with respect to the dialogues they conduct with the ‘extratextual world’.7 It will be helpful to review the evidence establishing the Digby Magdalene as an East Anglian dramatic text. The play contains all the identifying characteristics of the region’s dialect, with many inflections specific to Norfolk. Its unique text 2 3

4 5 6 7

Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989). Such parallels frequently formulate a link between historicism’s effort to recover a lost past and the psychoanalytic modeling of subjectivity in loss and mourning. For examples, see Louise Fradenburg, ‘ “Voice Memorial”: Loss and Reparation in Chaucer’s Poetry’, Exemplaria 2 (1990), pp. 169–202; and ‘ “So That We May Speak of Them”: Enjoying the Middle Ages’, New Literary History 28 (1997), 205–30. Paul Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text (Minneapolis, 2000), p. 153. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, 1997), p. 53. Spiegel, The Past as Text, p. 43. Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text, p. xv.

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was probably copied in the first quarter of the sixteenth century (c.1515–30), though dialectal evidence may point to composition in the late fifteenth century.8 Mary Magdalene appears in an eclectic manuscript that also contains the sole surviving copies of the Conversion of Saint Paul and Candlemas Day and the Killing of the Children of Israel, and a substantial fragment of Wisdom, which is preserved in its entirety in the Macro manuscript (Folger MS V.a.354). The plays of Digby 133 are all the work of East Anglian scribes; three of the four – including Mary Magdalene – bear the initials or signature of Myles Blomefylde, the sixteenth-century book collector, alchemist and churchwarden of Chelmsford, Essex who is believed to have inscribed the initials himself. Blomefylde’s signature on the Magdalene manuscript constitutes the single piece of codicological evidence from which we might construct an East Anglian paper trail for the play. This paper trail is intersected by many paths that link the plays in the Digby manuscript with each other and with the Benedictine monastery at Bury St Edmunds.9 Bury St Edmunds may have provided a common point of contact for the textual transmission of all of the Digby plays, but the geographical location and cultural auspices of Mary Magdalene nonetheless remain an utterly vexed issue. The play’s panoramic scope and ambitious theatricality have inspired speculations that it hailed from a city ‘of major size and considerable dramatic experience’, or a ‘prosperous market town’ capable of gathering the mixed audience to which it seems to appeal.10 Chelmsford, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Ipswich and Lincoln have all been proposed as possible homes for the play.11 Although fraught with practical as well as theoretical dangers, speculations about origins are heuristically useful because they can direct attention to the kind of cultural environment, as well as the kinds of audiences, to which the text seems to bear witness. One attribute of that cultural environment may be discerned in the Digby saint play’s promotion of an image of holiness that highlights the congruence of

8

Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall, eds, The Late Medieval Religious Plays of MSS Digby 133 and e. Mus.160 (henceforth LMRP), EETS os 283 (Oxford, 1982), pp. xxx–xxxiii, xxxvi–xl. All quotations from Mary Magdalene, cited by line numbers, refer to this edition. For discussion of East Anglian dialectal features in a larger cultural and literary context, see Richard Beadle, ‘Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Late Medieval Norfolk’, in Felicity Riddy, ed., Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 89–94. 9 LMRP, xii–xv. See also Gail McMurray Gibson, ‘Bury St Edmunds, John Lydgate and the N-Town Cycle’, Speculum 56 (1981), pp. 56–90. 10 Harry M. Ritchie, ‘A Suggested Location for the Digby Mary Magdalene’, Theatre Survey 4 (1963), p. 52; Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘Wisdom and the Records: Is there a Moral?’ in Milla Riggio, ed., The ‘Wisdom’ Symposium: Papers from the Trinity College Festival (New York, 1986), p. 94. 11 John Coldewey, ‘The Digby Plays and the Chelmsford Records’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 18 (1975), pp. 103–21; Davidson, ‘The Middle English Saint Play and its Iconography’, in Davidson, ed., The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, Early Drama, Art and Music Monograph Series 8 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1986), pp. 74–5; Jacob Bennett, ‘The Mary Magdalene of Bishop’s Lynn’, Studies in Philology 75 (1978), pp. 1–9; Glynne Wickham, ‘The Staging of Saint Plays in England’, in Sandro Sticca, ed., The Medieval Drama (Albany, NY, 1972), pp. 113–15; Ritchie, ‘Suggested Location’.

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religious and economic discourses and practices in late medieval society. More specifically, the Digby Magdalene examines the compatibility of spiritual values and economic interests pursued by prosperous lay groups, exploring the relationship of contemplative piety, religious poverty and charity to a dynamic social world that embraced the opportunities of the market, the worthiness of commerce and the responsible use of inherited wealth. As I have argued elsewhere, the play represents ways in which economically powerful aristocrats, gentry and burghers of late-medieval England sought an accommodation between such spiritual values and active pursuit of their own material interests.12 These are the social groups whose affiliations with East Anglian theatrical performance are consistently registered in dramatic texts that position themselves rhetorically by appealing to ‘honorable’ and ‘wursheppful souereignes’ or the ‘wurshypfull congregacyon’ that they address.13 These intersecting material and spiritual values in Mary Magdalene furnish an avenue for informed speculation about the play’s cultural auspices, on which prominent themes of the saint’s vita and cult can also be brought to bear. One hitherto unremarked possibility for such speculation involves the congruence of these dramatic values with late medieval ideologies of poverty and charity, particularly as these were expressed for and by lay society in practices of almsgiving and care of the indigent. From its representation of the saint’s preaching on the theme ‘paupertas est donum Dei’ to its modeling of charitable practices by the king and queen of Marseilles, to its heroine’s embrace and then sacrifice of her worldly ‘lyflode’, the Digby Magdalene is saturated with discourses and images associated with conceptions of poverty and charity. In late medieval England and elsewhere, ideologies of charity and the cult of Mary Magdalene converged in the hospital, the cultural institution most devoted to fostering charitable values and practices and to promoting, through its liturgical ceremonies and its daily rounds of prayers and almsgiving, the spiritual well-being of its benefactors while also attending to the bodily and spiritual needs of its inmates.14 12

See my essays, ‘ “Paupertas est donum Dei”: Hagiography, Lay Religion, and the Economics of Salvation in the Digby Mary Magdalene’, Speculum 76 (2001), pp. 340–41; and ‘ “Curtesy doth it yow lere”: The Sociology of Transgression in the Digby Mary Magdalene’, English Literary History 71 (2004), pp. 1–28. 13 All of the Digby plays establish such a rhetorical stance. At the end of Mary Magdalene the hermit priest addresses the dramatic audience: ‘Sufferens [sovereigns] of þis processe, thus enddyt þe sentens/ That we have playyd in yower syth’ (2131–2). The Poeta figure of the Digby Conversion of Saint Paul recognizes his audience as an ‘honorable and wurshypfull congregacyon’. The Poeta of the Digby Killing of the Children addresses ‘Honorable souereignes’ who have witnessed the play’s performance. See LMRP, 13, line 361 (Paul); 114, line 551 (Killing). Other instances of rhetorical address to ‘sovereyns’, i.e. ‘masters’, ‘sirs’, or ‘excellent people’, appear in Mankind, the N-Town Plays, the Play of the Sacrament and the Brome Abraham and Isaac. I thank Douglas Sugano for calling this rhetorical feature of East Anglian drama to my attention and for providing me with his inventory of examples. 14 Roberta Gilchrist, ‘Christian Bodies and Souls: The Archaeology of Life and Death in Later Medieval Hospitals’, in Steven Bassett, ed., Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (Leicester, 1992), p. 101; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987); Miri Rubin, ‘Imagining Medieval Hospitals: Considerations on the Cultural Meanings of Institutional Change’, in Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones, eds, Medicine


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This convergence of physical and spiritual care-giving in the activities of the hospital was shaped by medieval understandings of the holistic relationship between body and soul. Because physical illness was considered a sign of deeper spiritual affliction, ‘medical treatment was closely bound to spiritual health’.15 As a central ideological component of the hospital as a social institution, the symbolic and theological construction of illness afforded benefits to both hospital patrons and the recipients of hospital care. Whereas involvement in charitable work by a hospital’s founders and patrons was considered a reflection of the donor’s piety, the indigent received basic necessities for sustaining life through these efforts. The interlocking spiritual and material economies of the late medieval hospital clearly illustrate a social principle that Pauper articulates in the fifteenth-century spiritual compendium Dives and Pauper: ‘The ryche man and the pore been too thynggys wol nedeful iche to othir.’16 Mary Magdalene was a frequent dedicatee of the medieval hospital because of associations with healing, cleansing, and anointing that figured prominently in her conflated scriptural vita. She was the profligate woman linked with leprosy, the disease of lechers; the sinner purged of seven demons; the sister of the dead and resurrected Lazarus; and the follower of Christ who sought to anoint his body at the tomb.17 Hospital foundations dedicated to Mary Magdalene were established in the major urban centers of late medieval Norfolk, including two of the towns – Norwich and King’s Lynn – suggested as possible locales for the Digby saint play.18 Thematic preoccupations and theatrical images of Mary Magdalene stunningly resonate with the spiritual ideology and practical concerns of the late medieval hospital. Dramatic representation of the saint’s life seems designed to underscore the fundamental congruence of physical and spiritual health that medieval religio-medical discourse articulated through the concept of a ‘heavenly

15

16 17

18

and Charity before the Welfare State (London, 1991), pp. 14–25; Nicholas Orme and Margaret Webster, The English Hospital, 1070–1570 (New Haven, 1995). Gilchrist, ‘Christian Bodies and Souls’, p. 116. See also Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999), pp. 1–8; Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud, 1995), pp. 1–28; and John Henderson, ‘Healing the Body and Saving the Soul: Hospitals in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Studies 15 (2001), pp. 188–216. Priscilla Heath Barnum, ed., Dives and Pauper, vol. 1, part 1, EETS os 275 (Oxford, 1976), p. 63. On Mary Magdalene’s association with leprosy, see Gilchrist, ‘Christian Bodies and Souls’, pp. 114–15; Carole Rawcliffe, The Hospitals of Medieval Norwich, Studies in East Anglian History 2 (Norwich, 1995), pp. 42–3. A leprosarium dedicated to Mary Magdalene was established outside the city walls at Norwich before 1119. From 1286 to the end of the Middle Ages, the hospital held an annual three-day fair around the time of the saint’s feast on 22 July, but there is little evidence of its late medieval activities. See Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Medieval Norwich, pp. 41–7. A leprosarium that also served other sick poor, the Mary Magdalene hospital at King’s Lynn, was an important institution of the town through the end of the Middle Ages. See Dorothy M. Owen, ed., The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey (London, 1984), pp. 106–116. There were also hospitals or leprosaria dedicated to Mary Magdalene at Yarmouth, Thetford, and Wormegay in Norfolk; and at Beccles, Eye, and Wentford in Suffolk. See Elaine Phillips, ‘Charitable Institutions in Norfolk and Suffolk c. 1350–1600’ (PhD thesis, UEA, 2001), p. 4.

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medicine’ whose premier practioner was Christus medicus, Christ the physician.19 The play consistently articulates the dramatic saint’s conversion and repentance through metaphors of illness and healing.20 Mary Magdalene presents her sinful condition as a spiritual sickness whose treatment is the ‘helth and medsyn’ of Jesus (681). After she anoints him in the home of Simon the Pharisee, he pronounces her ‘hol [healthy] in sowle’ (677), and she affirms her recovery of ‘[s]owle helth’ (693). The converted Magdalene praises Jesus as the ‘oyle of mercy [that] hath helyd myn infyrmyte’ (759). Martha echoes the idiom of this praise, declaring Jesus ‘sokour’ ‘[t]o alle synfull and seke’ (763). When Lazarus is stricken with illness, his sisters promise to seek ‘leches’ (787) for his ‘cure’ (793), namely, the ‘Prophe[t] [that] to hym hatt grett delectacyon’ (791). Divided by notice of Lazarus’s death and split between two speakers, one telling stanza picks up the Christus medicus trope that also punctuates Mary Magdalene’s conversion and repentance: LAZARUS. A! In woo I waltyr as wawys in þe wynd! Awey ys went all my sokour! A, Deth, Deth, þou art onkynd! A! A, now brystyt myn hartt! Þis is a sharp showyr! Farewell, my systyrs, my bodely helth! Mortuus est. MARY MAGDALEN. Jhesu, my Lord, be yower sokowre, And he mott be yower gostys welth! (819–25)

Even the rhyme plays on the metaphoric congruence of physical and spiritual wellness, Lazarus’s farewell to ‘bodely helth’ finding acknowledgment in his sister’s hope for his ‘gostys welth’. Tropes of physical and spiritual sickness and healing recur in the Marseilles episode, in which the spiritual experience of the converted king mirrors that of Mary Magdalene herself. Whereas her repentance is prompted by the Good Angel’s admonition to seek ‘salue’ for her soul (594), the king suddenly ‘wax[es] all seke’ (1574) when Mary’s god spectacularly triumphs over his own fallen idols, a condition that drives him ‘to bed in hast’, fearful of death’s onset (s.d. after 1577). His conversion and pilgrimage ameliorate his spiritual affliction and win praise from Mary Magdalene because he sought ‘salve’ for ‘sowle helth’ (1952). Reprising Christ’s raising of Lazarus, Mary Magdalene preserves the queen who is left to die in childbed, an outcome that prompts the king to praise the spiritual ‘sokore’ furnished by Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene: ‘Heyll be þou, Mary! Ower Lord is wyth the!/ The helth of ower sowllys, and repast contemplatyff!’ (1939–40). The Digby saint play’s investment in figuring sin and repentance as spiritual illness and healing extends even to the comic, yet sinister, dramatic elements of 19 20

Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, pp. 1–28; Rawcliffe Medicine for the Soul, pp. 103–8. The relationship between the play’s use of this figurative language and the medieval medical paradigm is analysed by Linda Migl Keyser, ‘Examining the Body Poetic: Representations of Illness and Healing in Late Medieval English Literature’ (PhD thesis, University of Maryland, 1999), pp. 145–58.


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Mary Magdalene’s temptation and fall. The King of Flesh’s claims to possess ‘grett domynacyon’ over ‘deyntys delycyows’ (335) that promise ‘comfortatywys . . . aens alle vexacyon’ (338, 340) make him the carnal foil of Christus medicus. His invocation of the metaphoric register of the medieval medical paradigm announces the excessive attachment to physical solicitude that he represents, offering an inverted image of the ‘sowlys confortacyon’ (1901) that Mary Magdalene later provides for the newly Christianized king and queen.21 The exotic spices and medicinal substances over which the King of Flesh asserts his power – ‘[d]ya galonga, ambra, . . . margaretton/ . . ./ Clary, pepur long, wyth granorum paradysy,/ Zenzybyr and synamom’ (339–40, 342–43) – constitute a virtual catalog of pharmaceutical ingredients, many of foreign origin, for making of the cordials, electuaries, and comfits that were an important part of medieval medical treatment.22 Flesh’s assertion of jurisdiction over these substances turns him into a sort of diabolical apothecary, thereby providing a quasi-scientific rationale for his attachment to the natural remedies to which the vexacious ‘flesh’ could have recourse.23 His misdirection of the language of healing, as Keyser observes, is reproduced in Mary Magdalene’s temptation and fall, in which Mary recognizes the Flesh’s ambassador Luxuria as her ‘hartys leche’ (461).24 Carrying out the King of Flesh’s directive to offer ‘servyse’ and ‘atendavns’ (424) to Mary Magdalene, Luxuria encourages her pursuit of ‘comfort’ and ‘sokower’ (481) of an entirely physical nature. She leads the vulnerable woman directly to a tavern, where she offers consumption of a ‘good restoratyff’ that promises relief from ‘hevynes’ (486, 488) and other discomforts.25 If the King of Flesh’s commitment to the physical properties of healing contributes to an image of sin that ironically underscores the theological construction of illness, the Digby saint play’s elaboration of other legendary episodes from Mary Magdalene’s late medieval vita reinforces the spiritual ideology of medieval charitable institutions governed by that construction. The values and practices of such institutions provide a social and spiritual rationale for the early scene elaborating Mary Magdalene’s domestic comfort in the home of her worldly father Cyrus, who, as specified in the saint’s traditional vita, is shown 21 22

On the medicinal ‘comfortative’, see Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 60. Rawcliffe notes the late medieval popularity of such commodities as ‘cloves, ginger, cinnamon, galinga, . . . and nutmeg’ and the ‘enthusiastic, if limited, market for . . . seed pearls and ambergris’. See Medicine and Society, pp. 151–2. 23 Baker, Murphy, and Hall note a resemblance to lists in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and John Heywood’s Play Called the Four PP. See LMRP, p. 201, note to lines 339–43. The monastic infirmary at the cathedral priory in Norwich processed pharmaceuticals on the premises and had its own medicinal herb garden. See Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Medieval Norwich, p. 28. For a discussion of aromatics, healing plants, and herbs cultivated in a walled garden for St Giles’s Hospital, Norwich, by the sisters who served there, see Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, pp. 51–2. 24 Keyser, ‘Examining the Body Poetic’, pp. 149–50. 25 The idea that Mary Magdalene’s seduction is encouraged by Luxuria’s promotion of wine as a ‘restoryatyff’ finds reinforcement in the act of physical consumption with which Mary seals her fate: she readily accepts Curiosity’s offer of ‘[s]oppys in wynne’ (536). Earle Birney argues that the sop in wine itself was believed to have medicinal properties, especially to aid digestion; ‘The Franklin’s “Sop in Wyn” ’, Notes and Queries ns 6 (October 1959), pp. 345–7.

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dividing his properties among his children in anticipation of his inevitable ‘dysses’ (80). Cyrus’s wealth is sufficient to set ‘all . . . [his] posteryte’ ‘in solas from al syyng sore’ with the gift of a ‘lyfelod worthy’ (63–64, 87), a gift that promises, according to Lazarus and Mary Magdalene, deliverance from ‘all nessesyte’, release from ‘peynys of poverte’, and a ‘preseruatyff from streytnes’ (88, 96–97). Unparalleled in the Middle English Magdalene literature, this exchange is punctuated by familiar terms of the medieval discourse on poverty that underwrote charitable endeavors: Mary Magdalene and her siblings will be spared the physical want or ‘need’ whose amelioration sanctioned the mechanisms for, and promised spiritual benefit to, persons performing acts of charity. The worldly generosity of Cyrus’s bequest is intended to ensure that none of his children will require such charitable ministrations. Later in the play, when Mary Magdalene’s spiritual transformation places her in precisely the position that her father’s bequest sought to avoid, the king and queen of Marseilles demonstrate a different kind of generosity by providing the fledgling apostle with the sustenance and shelter (‘mete and mony, and clothys for þe nyth’ [1652]) that the concept of the ‘comfortable works of mercy’ enjoined upon those who would assist poor, hungry wayfarers.26 Whether employed to provide comfort and solace for family or strangers, such demonstrations of generosity were believed to secure the heavenly insurance policy that late medieval ideologies of charity had established as the desirable reward for such gestures. Although inspiring his family’s momentary celebration of ‘joye wythowtyn weryauns’ (92), Cyrus’s generous gesture also prompts Martha’s reflection upon its long-term consequences: the father’s effort to ‘meyntyn’ his children on earth inspires the daughter’s hope that Cyrus will be ‘[h]ey in heuen awansyd . . ./ In blysse, to see þat Lordys face/ Whan ye xal hens passe!’ (107–9). The saint play wastes little time in delivering on Martha’s expectation. After an abrupt switch of scene that takes the dramatic action to the courts of Caesar, Herod, and Pilate (114–264), the play returns just as abruptly to Cyrus as he ‘takyt hys deth’ (s.d. 264), gasping for help and expressing hope that ‘[d]eth wyll aquyte me my mede’ (267). Occurring without warning in the space of two brief stanzas, Cyrus’s end epitomizes the horror of the mors improvisa, the unforeseen death that caught both body and soul unaware and, it was feared, unprepared: ‘Her avoydyt Syrus sodenly’ (s.d. 276).27 Yet the play’s representation of Cyrus’s material bequests has furnished a framework, in social ideology, for interpreting the demise that both father and daughter have anticipated. Providing for the ‘proper distribution of wealth at death’, as Paul Binski observes, ‘defined (in part) what it meant to die well’.28 The afflicted Cyrus’s ‘drede’ of death’s approach (264) and his expressed

26

For the concept of the comfortable, or bodily, works of mercy, see W. Francis Nelson, ed., The Book of Vices and Virtues, EETS os 217 (London, 1942), pp. 204–11. 27 Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, pp. 1–28; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 310–13. 28 Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1996), p. 34. In the play’s commingled scriptural and legendary chronologies, the representation of Cyrus’s death in terms of contemporary Christian values is hugely anachronistic. If Cyrus makes a good death, he does so in a social and spiritual though not a sacramental sense. Withheld from Cyrus, sacramental


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desire for the ‘mede’ with which death might reward him expeditiously figure his passing as an example of the ‘good death’ about which the ars moriendi instructed late medieval dramatic audiences. As a dramatic event, Cyrus’s demise also provides the opportunity for graphic portrayal of death’s physical realities. Mary Magdalene’s traditional vita may have called for the mortal passing of Cyrus and Lazarus, but in the Digby saint play they expire only after displaying symptoms that appear to indicate identifiable illness. The sudden onset of Cyrus’s ‘[s]yknes’ renders him ‘trobyllyd, both bak and syde’. ‘Now . . . help me to my bede’, he asks, lamenting the pain that ‘rendyt . . . [his] rybbys’ (269–71). A little later in the play, Lazarus dies almost as quickly but presents a different set of symptoms. He is struck at the ‘hart’ (777) and complains of weakness, dizziness, buzzing in his head, and what seems to be the approach of unconsciousness: ‘A, I faltyr and falle! I wax alle onquarte!/ A, I bome above, I wax alle swertt!’ (779–80).29 The many representations of death in the Digby Magdalene – no other medieval English play stages more – render the stark physicality of human passing with notable variety of emphases. Whereas concern for the sudden onset and symptoms of illness figures prominently in the mortal demise of Cyrus and Lazarus, the deaths of the queen of Marseilles and Mary Magdalene alternatively prompt acknowledgment of the flesh’s vulnerability to decay. The queen’s passing is distinguished by its triumph, through the blessing of Mary Magdalene, over the customary fate that Lazarus also had anticipated: ‘I xuld a rottytt, as doth þe tondyre,/ Fleysch from þe bonys a-consumyd away!’ (915–16). Having abandoned his dead wife on a ‘rokke’ at sea (1880), the king of Marseilles marvels at finding her and their child ‘[p]reservyd and keptt from all corrupcyon’: ‘my wyff lyeth here, fayer and puer!/ Fayere and clere is hur colour to se’ (1889, 1891–92). The priest who attends the dying Mary Magdalene declares his intention to ‘cure’, or protect, her body ‘from alle maner blame’ (2127), evoking both the prospect of deliberate harm as well as the inevitable ‘blame’ to which even her mortal flesh is susceptible. As it inflects the saint’s life with representations of physiological and spiritual processes of death and dying, the Digby Magdalene pursues dramatic images that resonate with the ritualization of these processes in late medieval social and liturgical practices. The interment of Lazarus exhibits all the hallmarks of late medieval funerals for the prosperous urban laity. Mary Magdalene articulates the ceremonial requirements for such a burial: ‘As þe vse is now, and hath byn aye,/ Wyth wepers to þe erth yow hym bryng./ Alle þis must be donne as I yow saye/ Clad in blake, wythowtyn lesyng’ (834–37). Like the wealthy late medieval townspeople who used the public spectacle of burial to express their status in the community, Lazarus is accompanied to his grave by a procession of family, friends, and black-attired mourners enlisted for the occasion. The soldier who introduces the group to Mary and Martha emphasizes the mourners’ social identities: ‘Gracyows ladyys of grett honour,/ Thys pepull is com here in yower syth,/ blessing of death is reserved for Mary Magdalene, who receives the eucharistic viaticum before she dies. 29 Keyser discusses the representation of these deaths in light of medieval medical knowledge; ‘Examining the Body Poetic’, pp. 145–58.

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Wepyng and weylyng wyth gret dolour,/ Becavse of my lordys dethe’ (838–41).30 In the play’s final moments, Mary Magdalene’s approaching death is similarly marked by familiar late medieval rites, as she receives the eucharistic viaticum from a priest and angelic acolytes who exhibit concern for the proper sacerdotal attire and visible illumination that were to accompany such a ceremony. Echoing the directive of a fourteenth-century episcopal ordinance that chided priests who ‘negligently fail to carry the venerable sacrament to the sick wearing surplice and stole, with light and bell before them’, the dying saint’s houseling priest puts on his clerical vestments (2090), and the angels who ‘take mynystracyon’ with him declare that they will ‘bere lyth before hys body of worthynesse’ (2087–88).31 Mary Magdalene’s final words in the saint play further the association of dramatic images of death and late medieval ritual: she expires uttering portions of the liturgical rite for the dying: ‘In manus tuas, Domine –/ . . . Commendo spiritum meum! Redemisti me,/ Domine Devs veritatis’ (2115, 2117–18).32 Such preoccupation with spiritual meanings and ritual processes associated with the health and sickness, life and death, of the physical body should hardly be surprising in a dramatic text whose saintly subject had established her sacred identity through her corporeal intimacies – anointing, washing, touching – with the human and the resurrected deity. Yet the multiple ways in which Mary Magdalene takes thematic and specular advantage of such narrative provisions in the saint’s vita nonetheless adumbrate the compatibility of this set of dramatic choices with the cultural discourses and material practices of late medieval establishments for physical and spiritual care-giving. Dramatic spectacles of illness and death and articulation of the salus that signified both health and salvation in the medieval medical paradigm constitute a meeting ground for the symbolic and spiritual preoccupations of the Digby Magdalene and the cultural values and social activities of the late medieval hospital. To be sure, no documentary records connect the saint play to the hospitals of late medieval East Anglia, nor can any late medieval hospital or charitable foundation be linked to the performance of saints’ or any other type of play.33 But as an institution whose spiritual functions – its maintenance of worship supported by and for its benefactors – were often 30

See Robert Dinn, ‘Death and Rebirth in Late Medieval Bury St Edmunds’, in Bassett, ed., Death in Towns, pp. 151–69. The 2003 production of the Digby Mary Magdalene by Poculi Ludique Societas at the University of Toronto, directed by Peter Cockett, demonstrated how resonantly late medieval Lazarus’s funeral procession could be. 31 ‘Reverenciam debitam non exhibent . . . ad infirmos idem deferentes venerabile sacramentum, superpellicium ad stolam induere, lumen et tintinabulum ante se.’ Quoted and translated from a 1335 ordinance by Bishop Grandisson of the diocese of Exeter in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 81. 32 Sister Nicholas Maltman, O.P., ‘Light in and on the Digby Mary Magdalene’, in Margaret H. King and Wesley M. Stevens, eds, Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Charles W. Jones (Collegeville, Minn., 1979), p. 274. 33 The only specific invocation of medical activity and lore in East Anglian drama is the quack doctor episode in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament; see Davis, ed., Non-Cycle Plays, pp. 74–8, lines 525–652. See also Gibson, Theater of Devotion, pp. 36–8. Early sixteenth-century charges of riotousness against the residents of the hospital of St Mary’s in the Newarke, Leicester, give notice of Robin Hood pageants and spectacles staged within the hospital precinct. See Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Medieval Norwich, p. 68.


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given priority over its responsibilities for patient care, the hospital as a locus of liturgical and ceremonial activity merits our attention, if not as a space for scripted drama at least as a place where performative aspects of religious expression found a venue in a more broadly conceptualized late medieval theater of devotion. Devotional theater is, in fact, an apt metaphor for the activities and rituals that characterized these late medieval institutions of spiritual and physical caregiving. Liturgical requirements of medieval hospital foundations could turn the inmates’ hall into performance spaces. ‘[M]edieval hall hospitals’, as Miriam Gill and Helen Howard note, ‘were designed so that patients could see the elevation of the host from their beds and lavish altarpieces were often commissioned to heighten the liturgical spectacle.’34 The visual splendours of hospitals such as the Hôtel Dieu at Beaune, Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and, in late medieval England, St Mark’s in Bristol, as well as the integration of their iconographic programs with these institutions’ dual mission of caring for body and soul, underscore the role of sacred represention in the hospital’s symbolic and physical work.35 Carole Rawcliffe’s magisterial history of the Hospital of St Giles, or Great Hospital, in Norwich has established the wealth, cultural sophistication and artistic excellence of one such East Anglian foundation, where a string of university graduates served as master and an important late-fourteenth-century expansion of the church fabric, including the building of a magnificent chancel, widened the scope and opportunity for ceremony.36 The richest hospital in the county, St Giles’s rivalled major collegiate churches, with provisions for prayer, service and ceremony; by 1397 it was home to twelve chaplains and at least seven choristers. Some vestige of this ceremonial life is conveyed in the hospital’s late-fourteenth-century illuminated processional, which contains nine unique diagrams that show how liturgical processional activities were to be conducted, including the positions of their participants and the location of their liturgical props.37 The processional affords a rare glimpse of the taste for ritual and spectacle that enlivened the performance of the ideology of charity and religiomedical discourse in one prosperous late medieval East Anglian urban hospital. The late medieval hospital was an institution whose spiritual pursuits epitomized the convergence of material practice, religious intention, and worldy

34

Miriam Gill and Helen Howard, ‘Glimpses of Glory: Paintings from St Mark’s Hospital, Bristol’, in Laurence Keen, ed., ‘Almost the Richest City’: Bristol in the Middle Ages, BAA, Conference Transactions 19 (1997), p. 102. On liturgical performance as theater in a Florentine hospital of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Henderson, ‘Healing the Body’, pp. 215–16. 35 See Henderson, ‘Healing the Body’, pp. 212–14; Gill and Howard, ‘Glimpses of Glory’, pp. 102–4; and Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, p. 5. 36 Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, pp. 103–32; and her ‘ “Gret crynge and joly chauntynge”: Life, Death and Liturgy at St Giles’s Hospital, Norwich, in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Carole Rawcliffe, Roger Virgoe, and Richard Wilson, eds, Counties and Communities: Essays on East Anglian History (Norwich, 1996), pp. 37–55. 37 One of two belonging to St Giles’s, the processional is now British Library MS Add. 57534. Looking rather like minimalist set designs, some of these illustrations and other visual splendours related to the expansion of the church fabric are reproduced in Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, between pp. 110 and 111, and 206 and 207.

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motivation that proved anathema to reformers. Perhaps we can attribute to reformist animus the destruction of records that might have indicated how developed or extensive the performative activities of these institutions may have been, or how they may have made formal or informal alliances with their wealthy, influential lay benefactors to pursue modes of ritual performance that would look more like what we would consider ‘drama’.38 Hence, this hypothesis linking the Digby Mary Magdalene to the charitable ideologies and religious values of the late medieval hospital is likely to remain exactly that, and in offering it I by no means want to conflate documented uses of liturgical ceremony, such as those at St Giles’s, with performance of narrative dramas in Middle English. Nonetheless, I have explored this hypothesis at some length because it adds a new prospect to the inventory of cultural auspices invoked as possible venues for the Digby Magdalene. More important, it localizes the articulation of a late medieval question – ‘why and how need one provide for the material and spiritual needs of body and soul?’ – to which Mary Magdalene appears to tender an answer. Still other features of the Digby saint play reinforce this hypothesis, further pointing to resemblances between the values and cultural practices it represents and those of late medieval charitable institutions. As I have argued elsewhere, the scriptural admonitions that Mary Magdalene pronounces to an unspecified audience of ‘dere fryndys’ in Marseilles (1923–36) articulate the ideology of poverty that informed medieval practices of charity, especially on the part of the moneyed classes who were the principal guarantors of such institutions.39 Paraphrasing the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew, the saint’s homiletic counsel on the blessing of upholding ‘charyte both nyth and day’ (1928) and remaining ‘meke and good’ (1931) parallels directives given to inmates of late medieval almshouses and hospitals whose upright moral condition was believed to contribute to heavenly merits accumulated by their founders because these sick poor were ‘meritorious in God’s eyes’.40 Echoing cultural discourses that accompanied late medieval practices of charity, these verbal cues are rendered even more provocative in light of the stage direction that signals the appearance on stage of Mary Magdalene and her companions after the Crucifixion: ‘Here shall entyr þe thre Mariis arayyd as chast women, wyth sygnis of þe passyon pryntyd ypon þer brest’ (line 992). The stage direction simultaneously captures the moment preceding the discovery of Christ’s Resurrection in all the gospels and emphatically moves the dramatic agents of that discovery into the late medieval world, foregrounding the narrative and symbolic complexity of the Magdalene figure whom the gospels pre-

38

Hospital records report performances by players at wealthy venues such as St Giles’s. See Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, p. 120. Destruction wrought upon the records of hospital foundations is illustrated by Rawcliffe’s notice that new accounts prepared by the post-Dissolution keepers of St Giles’s were wrapped in pages torn from medieval service books; see Medicine for the Soul, plate 42. 39 Coletti, ‘ “Paupertas est donum Dei” ’, pp. 357–69. 40 Ibid., p. 362. On expectations for the residents of the leper hospital dedicated to Mary Magdalene in Gaywood near King’s Lynn and the moral requirements of the poor, see Phillips, ‘Charitable Institutions in Norfolk and Suffolk’, p. 8; quote at p. 140.


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eminently identified as anointer of Christ’s body.41 The stage direction’s notice of the ‘sygnis of þe passion’, or arma christi, emblazoned on the breasts of the three Marys invokes that body with an incisive iconic condensation of events that the play does not stage.42 A straightforward simile articulates a cluster of cultural codes that appear to require no elaboration: the three Marys are to be ‘arayyd as chast women’. The phrase assumes common knowledge about who such women are and what they would look like, and in so doing aligns the biblical Marys with late medieval modes of living and constructions of social identity. Mary Erler’s important work on intersecting religious and social identities available to late medieval women illuminates the social classification and the attire recognized by the Digby stage direction.43 In England, the term ‘chaste woman’ most commonly designated the vowess, a lay woman, often but not always a widow, who had chosen to pursue a life of chastity in the world by taking a formal vow in the presence of a bishop or other ecclesiastical authority. But seen in light of the variety of formal and informal female religious vocations that Roberta Gilchrist and Marilyn Oliva have identified in the late medieval diocese of Norwich, the descriptor just as readily evokes the ‘sisters’, also vowed to chastity, who provided care in many medieval hospitals while receiving from those institutions alms and other types of support.44 For example, the foundation charter of the Hospital of St Giles, Norwich, stipulates that there ‘shall . . . be three or four women . . . of good life and honest conversation, . . . being fifty years old or a little less, to take good care of all the infirm’. The ‘array’ of these ‘chaste women’ included ‘white tunics and grey mantles and . . . black veils’. In addition to vowing continence, the sisters observed the monastic life of the hospital foundation.45 Gilchrist and Oliva cite evidence of women 41

42

43

44

45

The play identifies the women as Mary Magdalene, Mary Jacobe, and Mary Salome. The gospels vary in their reports of who approached the tomb to anoint Christ’s body. See Matthew 28.1; Mark 16.1; Luke 24.10 and John 20.1. Gertrude Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols (Greenwich, Conn., 1971), ii, 189–97; Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 206–10. The ‘sygnis of the passion’ could designate either the instruments of the passion or the image that Eamon Duffy also calls by the name ‘arms of the Passion’, ‘in which the hands, feet, and side-hole or pierced heart of Jesus were heraldically displayed against the cross’. See Stripping of the Altars, p. 246. Duffy includes (fig. 99) a devotional woodcut from Sheen that shows both the five wounds and the more conventional symbols of the Passion. Mary C. Erler, ‘English Vowed Women at the End of the Middle Ages’, Mediaeval Studies 57 (1995), pp. 155–203. Evidence of the attire of vowed widows from monumental brasses, including three from Norfolk, appears in J.L. André, ‘Female Head-dresses Exemplified by Norfolk Brasses’, NA 14 (1901), pp. 241–62. Roberta Gilchrist and Marilyn Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia, Studies in East Anglian History 1 (Norwich, 1993), pp. 9–11, 13–22, and tables 1–6, pp. 93–101. See also Joel T. Rosenthal, ‘Local Girls Do It Better: Women and Religion in Late Medieval East Anglia’, in Douglas Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove, and A. Compton Reeves, eds, Traditions and Transformations in Late Medieval England (Leiden, 2002), pp. 1–20. Bishop Walter Suffield’s second foundation charter for the hospital; DCN 43/48, quoted and translated by Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, pp. 242, 244; and, for the life of hospital sisters, see pp. 169–76. See also Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Late Medieval Norwich, pp. 69–77; and ‘Hospital Nurses and their Work’, in R. Britnell, ed., Daily Life in the Middle Ages (Stroud, 1998), pp. 43–64, 202–6.

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engaged in this quasi-religious capacity in thirteen different hospital establishments in the diocese of Norwich.46 The situation at St Paul’s or Norman’s Hospital in Norwich sheds light on the social roles and functions of these hospital sisters, with special relevance to the Digby Magdalene. The sisters were a vital focus of charitable giving in the late medieval city; nearly one-third of the citizens making wills between 1370 and 1532 left them at least a small bequest.47 St Paul’s was the only hospital in Norwich that catered to pregnant women and nursing mothers, groups often excluded by statute from other charitable establishments because they were imagined to carry with them the threats of defilement elaborated by misogynist discourses.48 In the overlapping religious and medical ideologies of these institutions, the requirement for chastity and continence on the part of hospital sisters also was bound up with traditional views about women as sources of physical pollution and temptation.49 Making that institutional environment a rich locus for female experience and feminine symbolism in late medieval Norwich, the ‘chaste women’ at St Paul’s and the pregnant women and mothers for whom the sisters furnished care provide a perfect social corollary to a dramatic situation in which a reformed, chaste Mary Magdalene serves as spiritual and physical guardian for the pregnant queen of Marseilles. Teasing out the cultural semiotics of the Digby saint play’s ‘chaste women’ enables us to see how East Anglia’s rich traditions of female piety offered occasions in which the conditions of women’s religious experience could be assimilated to the figure of Mary Magdalene, whose example ‘bound together’ the penitence and asceticism that were central attributes of late medieval women’s traditional and alternative religious vocations, including that of the hospital sister.50 The overlapping values of these vocations echo in the spiritual portrait of the Digby play’s saint, the daughter of a wealthy family who eventually embraces a quasi-religious life in herimo, dedicating herself to humility, patience, charity, and ‘abstynens, all dayys of my lyfe’ (1994). The Digby play’s stage direction thus urges attention to the embedding of dramatic iconography and saintly identity in the signs, discourses and social formations of late medieval East Anglian religious culture. As a theatrical gesture, the stage direction is apposite to other dramatic attributes that bear witness to the play’s investments in social and spiritual themes and practices associated with late medieval institutions and ideologies of spiritual and physical caregiving. These include adaptation of the saint’s traditional vita to elaborate discourses of illness and healing, creative representation of death and its rituals, and emphasis on the ethical values enjoined upon those who gave and received care in late medieval charitable foundations. Calling

46 47

Gilchrist and Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia, p. 94. Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Late Medieval Norwich, pp. 73–4. See also E.H. Carter, ‘The Constitutions of the Hospital of St Paul (Normanspitel) in Norwich’, NA 25 (1935), pp. 342–53. 48 Rawcliffe, Hospitals of Late Medieval Norwich, p. 68. 49 Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, pp. 21, 169–70. 50 Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Medieval Religious Women (London, 1994), pp. 186–7.


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up the outlines of the cultural world to which the Digby Magdalene once spoke, these compelling features of the dramatic text provide material for the work, and the pleasures, of a historical understanding that can make East Anglian drama and its social contexts newly available.

Devotion to Drama: The N-Town Play and Religious Observance in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia Penny Granger

IT IS SOMETHING of a commonplace that the N-Town Play is the most liturgical of the four Middle English cycle plays.1 In what follows I examine the liturgical material in the play, assess its likely impact on the play audience, and suggest the extent to which it can inform our knowledge of religious observance in late medieval East Anglia. This is part of a larger project on the liturgical content of the N-Town Play and other fifteenth-century dramatic works. The present article focuses on why the liturgical material was there – both in terms of what pieces were used and their assumed function in the play – and how familiar those liturgical pieces would have been to the audience. The N-Town Play is a mystery, in the modern rather than medieval sense, with no surviving records of either authorship or performance of either the whole play in its present form or any of the four originally separate parts of the text.2 It is certainly well established, through records and extant texts, that East Anglia had a high concentration of dramatic performances of single plays in its towns and villages, especially in the general area of the south-west Norfolk-Suffolk border around Thetford; it is also well established that the N-Town text belongs to that area.3 So it can be argued that any record of a ‘game’ in that area of East Anglia is

The paper presented at the conference was illustrated with two scenes – Annunciation and Magnificat – from a video produced at Lancaster University by Professor Meg Twycross. The illustrations I have chosen to accompany the published article represent video ‘stills’ of liturgical moments. I am grateful to Daniel Wakelin, and to Teresa Coletti, Sarah Salih, Christopher Harper-Bill and others at the conference for comments and suggestions for the improvement of the paper. 1 Quotations from and references to the play are from The N-Town Play, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols, EETS ss 11–12 (Oxford, 1991). Latin biblical references are taken from the Vulgate. 2 For the history of the compilation of the text, see Stephen Spector, ‘The Composition and Development of an Eclectic Manuscript: Cotton Vespasian D viii’, Leeds Studies in English 9 (1977), pp. 62–83, and Alan J. Fletcher, ‘Layers of Revision in the N-Town Marian Cycle’, Neophilologus 66 (1982), 469–78; see also Fletcher, ‘The N-Town Plays’, in Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 163–88. 3 John Coldewey, ‘The Non-cycle Plays and the East Anglian Tradition’, in Cambridge Companion, pp. 189–210; John Wasson and David Galloway, eds, Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330–1642, Malone Society Collections 11 (Oxford, 1980); and Richard

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a candidate for a possible performance of the N-Town Play or of its constituent parts. The two parts of the play dealing with the early life and Assumption of the Virgin Mary, both of which include a large amount of set piece singing, could have been produced as show-cases for a collegiate or monastic establishment, much as the Christmas Eve Nine Lessons and Carols is today for the choir of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Thetford priory and Bury St Edmunds abbey are two possible sponsors or venues that have been canvassed.4 However, as Lawrence Clopper firmly states, ‘there are no unequivocal references to nonliturgical dramas in English monasteries and cathedrals . . . up to the Reformation’.5 Accordingly, another writer regrets that the Assumption pageant cannot be linked with Ely, ‘for a performance of that play on a sunny 15 August under the great lantern of St Etheldreda’s cathedral would have been a wonderful experience’.6 At a less exalted ecclesiastical level, ‘the coincidence of interest and information’ between the St Anne poem in Robert Reynes’s Commonplace Book and the N-Town Mary Play may suggest ‘a devotional audience of the kind that a gild or parish would provide; one that has come together for the particular celebration of a saint’s day or a gild feast’.7 In the absence of hard evidence the theory is attractive and seems plausible; however, as we shall see, there is more to the N-Town Play than pure devotion. It must also be borne in mind that Reynes came from Acle in East Norfolk, situated between two known Lollard strongholds, whereas there is no record of Lollard activity in south-west Norfolk; the N-Town Play is not, and did not need to be, overtly anti-Lollard. If the N-Town Play as preserved in BL MS Cotton Vespasian D viii may be described as an anthology, then the liturgical material within it is an anthology within that anthology. And, since the principal source of liturgical texts is the Bible, liturgy itself may be described as an anthology of scripture. The question of which liturgical pieces were incorporated into the N-Town Play is one that is relatively easy to answer. The material ranges in length and formality: there are some fifty Latin sung pieces lifted straight from church services and performed in the play by priests; vernacular paraphrases of psalms, canticles, and the Ten Commandments; and short vernacular evocations spoken by minor, lay characters, often female. Liturgical material is to be found in all the four originally separate parts of the play, but with a particular concentration of formal, sung items in the Marian sections. Some texts have been adapted to fit their new context, giving evidence of the author’s facility with Latin. And there are a few items, notably in the Assumption, that appear to be liturgical, but on closer inspection turn out to

4 5 6 7

Beadle, ‘The Medieval Drama of East Anglia: Studies in Dialect, Documentary Records, and Stagecraft’, 2 vols (D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1977). By, respectively, Wasson and Galloway, Records, pp. 103–4, and Gail McMurray Gibson, ‘Bury St Edmunds, Lydgate, and the N-Town Cycle’, Speculum 56 (1981), pp. 56–90. Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (Chicago and London, 2001), p. 112. Richard Rastall, The Heaven Singing, Music in Early English Religious Drama vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 298. Peter Meredith, ed., The Mary Play from the N-Town Manuscript (London, 1987), p. 12.

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have been written by Jacobus de Voragine and lifted by the N-Town compiler from the Legenda Aurea. The function of the liturgical set piece may be practical, accompanying a procession or ‘covering’ a scene change; it may be dramatic, to increase the spectacular effect or introduce a reflective pause in the action; it may be traditional, or underline a theological point, or be any combination of those. Where the narrative action is brought to a halt by the liturgical piece, the effect can be to freeze-frame the scene visually and temporally.8 But at the same time it heightens the action, even though in narrative terms that action has been suspended. It can be argued, therefore, that the insertion of a liturgical set piece into the action of a play immediately destabilises the written text and its performance. The liturgy is something ‘other’, whether it is introduced by a principal speaking character or by a choir in the background. The effect of this will be seen later in the discussion of Magnificat. Arguably the most important feature of bringing liturgical material into a play is that even if a liturgical piece is used in a dramatic context similar to that for which it was written, its very transplantation changes both the piece and its effect. A piece of liturgy, for example the psalm In Exitu Israel, is not the same when sung at the funeral of the Virgin in the Assumption pageant as it is when sung at a funeral in church. Margot Fassler’s description of the interaction of music with text can thus be applied to the incorporation of a piece of liturgical music into a play: it can bear symbolic meanings both through its association with the genre and style, and through the power generated by well-known melodies ‘which, charged with the sense of their texts and positions in the liturgy, could be reused with new texts and offer symbolic meanings to new words through past associations’.9 This would have been the case with the N-Town Assumption versicles and responses taken from Legenda and set to plainsong (41/318–29); more generally in the play liturgical texts, with or without music, are incorporated into a new context which enables them to be seen simultaneously as both new and familiar. Incorporating liturgical material into drama may also serve to bring ‘church’ out of doors and into the street or playing place, thus transforming the audience into a congregation. They are arguably witnesses rather than watchers as the child Mary, dressed in white, is formally blessed by her parents and received into the temple in a ceremony that is dramatic in itself, and owes much to that of the taking of monastic vows. But the effect on the drama of each use of liturgical material will naturally vary, depending on both its new and original contexts. It must also be said that the converse is true: when a liturgical item is sung in a play, it will take that new association back with it into church. There is little evidence as to how or by whom the liturgical pieces were performed in the drama, and whether the cast would have included professional singers. In N-Town much of the liturgical material is incorporated into the play 8 9

Where stage directions are in Latin, particularly in continental drama, e.g. the Middle Dutch Bliscapen, the stage direction indicating a non-specific musical item is often ‘pausa’. ‘Composer and Dramatist: “Melodious Singing and the Freshness of Remorse” ’, in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and her World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998), p. 162.

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text and performed by the appropriate actors rather than being simply an add-on performance by an angelic choir as is more the case in, say, the York Play. So some of the N-Town cast would have had to be solo singers and be able to act as well. If the cast were recruited locally, then the same people who sang the liturgy in church could well have performed it in the play, thus ensuring parity of standard, but blurring the distinction between drama and ritual yet further. However, even the effect of bringing church into the street is not necessarily straightforward. In the Joachim and Anna pageant, versicles and responses, which in the Mass follow Confession and Absolution, have been incorporated by the N-Town author into a story-line which otherwise follows the content and sequence of its source in Legenda Aurea closely. It is difficult to see precisely what the liturgy is achieving here. As he feared, the barren Joachim has had his offering rejected and been thrown out of the temple; he is about to rant, rail, and go off to seek solace with the shepherds. They greet him cheerfully, commenting ironically that the sheep are ‘lusty and fayr, and grettly multyply’ (8/136). Meanwhile, Anna is distraught. Thus the principal, though humble, heroes are spurned by the ecclesiastical hierarchy; later, the hierarchy are shown for what they are, as Joachim and Anna are blessed by God via an angel. But for the time being the service goes on as if nothing has happened, with familiar words, the comfort of a blessing, and everyone sent home. The liturgical material has made the temple into a church, but its priests are shown to be unsympathetic tyrants.10 Either this makes a mockery of the liturgy, or it puts the fear of God into the audience. Is this how fifteenth-century folk approached church-going? Like Joachim, with dread, afraid the priest will despise them and their offerings, but nonetheless trusting in the mercy of God? Certainly the play suggests the possibility of an alternative reading to the ‘remarkable degree of religious and imaginative homogeneity across the social spectrum’ of which Eamon Duffy has written so eloquently.11 One important question is how familiar the audience would already have been with the Latin liturgical items when they heard them performed in the play. This is, of course, impossible to answer without first admitting some basic assumptions, of which the most important is that the liturgy was performed correctly at all times and in all places. Since it is reasonably safe to assume that Sarum Use was universal in East Anglia by the late fifteenth century,12 we know how services should have been organised, at least in monasteries, cathedrals, and at the east end of parish churches. That is not to say that, particularly in parish churches, things necessarily went according to the book. For a start they had to have the book – in 10

Here I disagree with Peter Meredith’s view, that Ysakar ‘is not a vindictive representative of a hypocritical power soon to be superseded, but one concerned with the seriousness of the position he holds and with maintaining its dignity’. ‘Performance’, p. 210. 11 The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 2nd edn, 2005), p. 3 and passim, see also new Preface, p. xv. 12 The liturgical observances followed in Salisbury cathedral were adopted by most dioceses over the course of the fifteenth century. See Katherine L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 182. For technical information on this and other aspects of liturgy, see John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991).

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practice, several books – and records indicate that while most churches did, some did not.13 But, perhaps more important, they also had to have clergy who had had proper grounding in what is nowadays referred to as liturgical formation, who knew what they were supposed to do and when. Assuming that all was in order in the chancel, there is but circumstantial evidence of what the laity got up to in the nave. Keith Thomas has argued that what was important for most people was the church’s occasional rites, an essential accompaniment to the important events in their lives: pre-Reformation religion was a ritual method of living, not a set of dogmas.14 More recently Katherine French has put it thus: ‘for most of the laity, religion was not so much a set of ideological concepts as it was certain sets of activities and prescribed behaviour’.15 Her evidence, taken from churchwarden’s accounts in the diocese of Bath and Wells, tells of ‘the parish’s growth as a forum for lay initiative and religious expression’;16 she includes, for example, church ornamentation and religious observance in general, but circumstantial evidence suggests that people’s attention was not always on the altar. For example, in a study of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century wall-paintings, Miriam Gill argues that ‘the selection of the Warning to Gossips for frequent public representation must surely relate to the fact that it confronts misbehaviour in church’.17 Of thirteen such paintings still visible, several are to be found in Norfolk, including one at Eaton parish church, near Norwich, depicting devils farting or defecating – a strategy, Gill suggests, that is ‘based on revulsion and aversion’.18 John Blacman’s admittedly hagiographic Memoir of King Henry VI tells us that in church the king was never pleased to sit upon a seat or to walk to and fro as do men of the world; but always with a bared head . . . kneeling one may say continuously before his book . . . he was at pains to utter with the celebrant (but with the inward voice) the mass-prayers, epistles, and gospels.19

Later, Blacman comments that King Henry spent Sundays and feast days hearing the office and praying, ‘and he was earnest in trying to induce others to do the like’.20 These examples suggest that some people were not particularly devout, though as Gill points out, a priest standing at the altar – with his back to the congregation – is not in the best position to tell whether murmuring from the nave

13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20

At the archdeacon of Norwich’s visitation in 1368, nearly all parishes had the eight service books required. Norman P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984), p. 5. See also French, People of the Parish, pp. 182–6. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England, 1st edn 1971 (London, 1997), p. 76. French, People of the Parish, p. 17. French, People of the Parish, p. 176. ‘Female Piety and Impiety: Selected Images of Women in Wall Paintings in England after 1300’, in Gender and Holiness: Men, Women, and Saints in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Samantha J.E. Riches and Sarah Salih (London and New York, 2002), pp. 101–20; p. 109. ‘Female Piety’, pp. 101, 110. John Blacman, Henry the Sixth, trans. M.R. James (Cambridge, 1955), p. 6; my italics. Blacman, p. 15.

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comes from people deep in prayer or deep in conversation.21 However circumstantial the evidence therefore, it cannot be assumed that personal devotion was universal and uniform. Despite this, we do know what an N-Town Play audience should have been familiar with. For example, the Sarum Manual instructs godfathers and godmothers to say the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Creed ‘to the pleasure of almighty god and confusyon of our gostly enmy’; furthermore, they are to ‘lerne [their godchild] or se yt be lerned the Pater Noster, Ave Maria and Credo after the lawe of all holy churche’.22 John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, described by its latest editor as ‘the best-known fifteenth-century manual of religion instruction in English’,23 tells clergy to preach two or three times a year on the need of the congregation to say, ‘[w]yþ gode entent euery day’, the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, and Creed (404–53). Mirk also includes an instruction to people at work: when they heard the mass bell they were to pray to God ‘wyþ herte stylle’ as if in church (1599–1610). What was expected of late medieval laity regarding church attendance has been summarised thus by Eamon Duffy: ‘Ecclesiastical law and the vigilance of bishop, archdeacon, and parson sought to ensure as a minimum regular and sober attendance at matins, Mass, and evensong on Sundays and feasts, and annual confession and communion at Easter.’24 Duffy’s list indicates that, as a minimum, canticles and the Ordinary (unchanging parts) of the Mass would be heard by an N-Town audience weekly, and material from psalms monthly, while Propers (variable texts) from the Mass or material from feasts came round annually.25 However, since antiphons for major feasts were sung several times during a week-long celebration of that feast, and some material was used for more than one annual feast, congregational exposure to both words and music may be guaranteed. Some Marian pieces in particular appeared on several of her feasts, as did material common to all feasts of, say, virgin martyrs. Occasional offices – baptisms, marriages, funerals – were held as necessary, certainly in most communities several times a year. What is important is that since most of the liturgical material incorporated into the N-Town Play appears more than once in the annual liturgical calendar, it is probably safe to suggest that the liturgical pieces in the play, even in Latin, would have been familiar to audiences as sounds and music, even if comprehension was shaky. For instance, the canticles Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis would have been heard weekly, and the Gradual Psalms monthly. The invocatory hymn Veni 21 22

‘Female Piety’, p. 109. Manuale ad Usum Percelebris Ecclesiae Sarisburiensis, ed. A. Jeffries Collins, Henry Bradshaw Society 91 (1960), pp. 31–2. 23 John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, edited from MS Cotton Claudius A II and Six Other Manuscripts with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. Gillis Kristensson, Lund Studies in English 4 (Lund, 1974), p. 9. It is unclear whether ‘best-known’ refers to the fifteenth or twentieth century. 24 Stripping, p. 11. By the fifteenth century the term evensong was synonymous with vespers; post-Reformation evensong being an amalgam of vespers and compline. 25 The Ordinary of the Mass comprises Kyrie, Gloria (except in Lent and Advent), Credo, Sursum Corda, Sanctus and Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and Ite Missa Est. Sung Propers include Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion antiphon.

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Creator Spiritus, a Pentecost hymn, is also traditionally sung at confirmation and ordination services to this day. It is performed in the N-Town Marriage of Joseph and Mary as the bishop considers his dilemma over Mary. That the congregation was present in church is actually more important than whether or not they were wholly attentive: even if music is merely a background accompaniment to another activity it seeps into the subconscious and is remembered when heard again. The Latin set pieces in the play have particular dramatic and narrative functions, linking ritual with drama in different ways. But there is also the function of didacticism, particularly claimed by commentators for the N-Town Play. It may be fair to say that the less formal devotional material is there because it either teaches or reflects lay practice, or maybe both. At the heart of medieval doctrine lay an emphasis on the seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, ordination, communion, penance, extreme unction, and marriage. All late medieval teaching material, for example John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests and Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne, included sections on the sacraments and how to administer them. In the N-Town Play, baptism, confirmation, and extreme unction are referred to briefly, while penance and particularly marriage and communion receive rather more extensive treatment. There are no references in the play to ordination: this is not surprising since, as already noted, lay people were chiefly concerned with what are still referred to as the occasional offices, baptism, marriage and funerals, with the addition of penance and communion. The Baptism pageant is based on the biblical accounts, not the rite of baptism, which was in the Middle Ages generally administered to infants and therefore not relevant here. That the word ‘confirm’ appears twice in the Baptism pageant but not in the gospel accounts, suggests that it is a sacramental pun: Jesus:

Baptym to take I come to the And conferme þat sacrament þat nowe xal be. (22/63–4)

And a few lines later: Jesus:

Baptym confermyd now xal be; Me to baptyze take þu no dwere. (22/78–9)

The only other reference to Confirmation comes in the Pentecost pageant, when Thomas prays to Jesus to ‘[c]onferme in us þi vertu’ (40/11); again, it is a scene involving the descent of the Holy Spirit, invoked in the confirmation rite. The Baptism pageant actually says less about baptism than about the sacrament of Penance, beginning and ending as it does with sermons by John the Baptist based on the gospel exhortation to repent (22/1–26 and 132–83). He reinforces this teaching at the beginning of the Passion Play (26/125–64). The inclusion of these, somewhat long, speeches is not surprising: penance was an essential element of the church’s teaching and a common subject for sermons and tracts; more than half of Mirk’s Instructions is given over to hearing confessions. The N-Town John the Baptist stands in the literary tradition of Langland’s Reson and Chaucer’s Parson.26 26

See The Vision of Piers Plowman, passus V, and The Canterbury Tales, fragment X.

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Two burial sequences are included in the N-Town Play: of these, Christ’s burial is hurried and secret, with no liturgical observances except that of anointing his body (34/140–1). The Assumption, on the other hand, while using Legenda as its principal source, has Latin set pieces and other elements taken from funeral rites. Candles are taken by the apostles as they watch over the dying Virgin, at her request (41/299–309);27 after she dies, her body is ritually washed by virgins (41/348–55 s(tage) d(irection)). Then the body is carried in procession ‘in gret aray’ (41/386); the apostles kiss the body, as earlier Mary had kissed the body of Jesus (41/451; 34/126–33); singing, they cense and bless the body as they lay it in the sepulchre (41/449–55 s.d.). The N-Town Marriage of Mary and Joseph, uniquely among the cycle plays, dramatises the wedding ceremony, a typically realistic scene. The (mostly) solemn liturgy stands in contrast with the various problems and fabliau-type exchanges preceding it, including the entirely understandable reluctance, for different reasons, of both parties to be married at all. Mary, who had been dedicated to live a monastic life in the temple at the age of three, argues, in a manner familiar to readers of female hagiography: This is þe cawse, as I ow tell, Þat I with man wyll nevyr mell! In þe servyse of God wyl I evyr dwell – I wyl nevyr haue other make. (10/75–8)

Meanwhile, Joseph is adamant that he is too old to get married: Benedicité! I cannot vndyrstande ... But I am so agyd and so olde Þat both myn leggys gyn to folde – I am ny almost lame! (10/175, 226–8)

Their protestations notwithstanding, the marriage service opens with a repeat of Benedicta sit beata Trinitas, first heard at the beginning of the ceremony in the temple when Joachim’s offering was refused: this might seem an odd reminder at this point, except that it was part of the marriage service, and here follows an instruction from the bishop to praise the Trinity.28 As the vows are exchanged, Joseph continues to protest against his fate. Mary then makes her vows: Mary:

In þe tenderest wyse, fadyr, as I kan, And with all my wyttys fyff. (10/316–17)

The use of English for the vows was customary; it was also common practice for couples to make the vows in their own words.29 Joseph gives the ring, and the 27

The miraculous appearance of the apostles to comfort the Virgin and witness her dormition may be seen as a personification of the saying of the Litany during the ceremony of Extreme Unction. Sarum Manual, p. 115. 28 See Sarum Manual, p. 50, where the hymn follows the exchange of vows rather than preceding them as in N-Town. 29 Sarum Manual, p. 478, and n. 23, p. 47.

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bishop declares that Mary has taken Joseph as her spouse (10/318–23). Mary replies that she will indeed never forsake him, but emphasises that she wishes to ‘levyn as a clene mayd’ (10/328), to which the bishop exclaims ‘Here is þe holyest matremony þat evyr was in þis werd!’ (10/331). The question not raised by any commentator is whether the marriage would be valid under those circumstances; that, however, is a question which has to do with law, not with liturgy. The festival of Corpus Christi emphasised the centrality of the Eucharist and, whether or not the N-Town Play was intended to be performed around the time of the festival, its Last Supper pageant underlines that centrality, becoming in effect a First Eucharist, as has been observed by Teresa Coletti and Miri Rubin.30 Here, religious ceremony seems to take over from biblical re-enactment just as the story reaches its climax: salvation is at hand. The N-Town action takes the audience from the Old Law to the New. Christ and the disciples go into Simon’s house and eat the paschal lamb while Annas, Caiphas and the others deliberate what to do about him ‘astat lych as it were a convocacyon’ (27/76 s.d.). Mary Magdalen anoints him, Judas slips away from the table to conspire with the priests, and only then does Christ explain what they have done and are about to do: he himself is the paschal lamb that must be sacrificed. He takes ‘an oblé [communion wafer] in his hand lokyng vpward into hefne’ (27/372 s.d.) and, in the vernacular, says a long prayer of consecration including Agnus Dei, then giving the bread and wine to the disciples with the traditional words of institution. He also asks them to ‘come forth seryattly [in turn]’ (10/440) to receive communion, as in church, not as in scripture and traditionally depicted, sitting around the table. The scene is thus a rare departure from the normal, and therefore expected, synthesis of drama with iconography, changing its register from abstract art to concrete experience. A chilling reminder of the consequences of taking the sacrament unworthily is given to the audience as a demon says to Judas: ‘Thow hast solde þi maystyr and etyn hym also!’ (27/470). The foot-washing that follows is also part of the Maundy Thursday rite, conflating the synoptic Gospel accounts with that of St John. Arguably more intriguing are two further aspects of the Last Supper pageant not previously discussed. First, the pageant presents the Eucharist in the vernacular, and secondly the author uses the future tense in Christ’s words of institution. The use of the vernacular has the effect of bringing the central act of worship, normally separated from a church congregation both spatially and linguistically, clearly and unequivocally right in front of the audience whose members, maybe for the first time, are taken step by step through its significance for them. There are no records of audience reaction, but my guess is that the pageant would have had a powerful impact, eclipsing their weekly sight, through clouds of incense, of the elevation of the host – or even the spectacle of a Corpus Christi procession. Christ as host at the meal, albeit played by a ‘base fellow’,31 would be closer to the 30

In, respectively, ‘Sacrament and Sacrifice in the N-Town Passion’, Mediaevalia 7 (1981), pp. 239–64, 242; and Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 300. 31 Stephen Gosson, one of the most outspoken sixteenth-century critics of drama, argues that it would be better to read the Corpus Christi plays rather than see them performed, ‘where some

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real thing than the host held up by his representative in the church. It could have been a risky business on the part of the author and producers of the pageant to unfold the mystery and strip it bare. Again this suggests that anyone putting on this play would have had to be very sure of what they were about in terms of handling this material with all its ambiguities, not to mention the tension set up by this meeting of liturgical ritual and drama at the most dramatic moment of the ritual itself. Meanwhile the second intriguing aspect of this scene is the use of the future tense. Christ says ‘This is my body . . . þat for þe xal dey’ and ‘þis is my blood þat . . . xal renne’ (27/449–50; 490–1, italics added). Though odd to ears familiar with the Book of Common Prayer phrase – ‘which is given/shed’ – N-Town is here consistent with both the Vulgate and the Sarum Missal. For audience, as for congregation, the crucifixion has not yet happened, and if they stay to watch they will see their host elevated on the cross before their very eyes. It can be seen from these examples that the author’s treatment of the sacraments continues the play’s realism. The reality experienced by the audience in their daily lives and yearly religious observance becomes an essential part of the process of the play; a triangle is formed, and held in tension, of reality, liturgy, and drama, each feeding into – and going out through – the others. At a rather more basic level, the liturgy, taken out of church and brought into the play, bridges the gap between stage and scripture. An example of this was seen in the Joachim and Anna pageant. A second example can be seen in the treatment of the Compline canticle Nunc Dimittis, said by Simeon in the temple at the Purification. It is the central feature of the church festival and the dramatic representations of the biblical story in both N-Town Purification and Digby Candlemass. In both plays the canticle is sung in Latin; in Digby just by a choir, whereas the N-Town Simeon also gives a vernacular paraphrase – and in a rather homely touch he plays with the child (19/146 s.d.). Other instances of bridging the gap include the singing of the hymn Gloria Laus by ‘a serteyn of chylderyn’ at Christ’s entry into Jerusalem; again the scene derives directly from scripture, whence it was transplanted into the Palm Sunday liturgical processions that continue to this day (26/453 s.d.).32 Gloria in Excelsis, as part of the Ordinary of the Mass, was performed throughout the year except during Advent and Lent. It is particularly associated with the Nativity, being sung by angels to the shepherds in scripture and in N-Town (16/1st s.d.; 16/61 s.d.). An interesting side-issue to the questions of liturgical familiarity and standard of performance is the N-Town shepherds’ inability to grasp the significance of the base fellowe that plaide Christe, should bring the person of Christ into contempt’. Arthur F. Kinney, Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan Studies 4 (Salzburg, 1974), p. 178. 32 Presumably taking their cue from the reference in the hymn to ‘the children of the Hebrews’. The effect of this would have been greater in York, symbolising New Jerusalem. For more on this, see Sarah Beckwith, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays (Chicago and London, 2001), esp. pp. 100–3; and Craig Wright, ‘The Palm Sunday Procession in Medieval Chartres’, in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography, Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner, ed. Margot Fassler and Rebecca Baltzer (Oxford, 2000), pp. 344–71.

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angels’ Gloria: ‘It was “Gle, glo, glas, glum.” ’ (16/69). Yet a few minutes later they go to meet the Christ-child happily dashing off the plague hymn Stella celi extirpavit – which, incidentally, is the only piece of liturgy in the play not to appear in any of the Sarum rites.33 The Archangel Gabriel’s salutation to the Virgin Mary is an important example of overt didacticism. As mentioned earlier, Ave Maria was on the list of texts that lay people were supposed to know by heart and to pray daily. The N-Town author has used the Annunciation scene as a revision course for the audience: Gabriel sings ‘Ave, gracia plena’ (11/216a), and then he speaks of the typological connection between Mary and Eve: ‘þis name Eva is turnyd Aue’ (11/219). Later on, the expositor Contemplacio also notes that whoever says the rosary (which includes 150 Hail Marys) daily for a year can claim 10,800 years’ indulgence (13/156–7A). The archangel’s singing, rather than holding up the action unduly, refocuses the audience after the relatively obscure and theologically challenging debate of the Four Daughters of God. Opening the new scene with the familiar line of plainsong provides an aural analogue to the visual cue of the pot of lilies. It also puts down a liturgical and dramatic marker: this is a vital scene, and one that the audience should recognise from their religious observance. Iconography tends towards presenting staged tableaux but, more than that, it often captures what I would describe as ‘liturgical moments’. Thus in most iconographic representations of the Annunciation, Mary is depicted surprised by Gabriel as she reads or prays (Plate 1). As the primary intercessor between humanity and God, she is of course an important role-model. In the previous pageant, The Marriage of Mary and Joseph, she has already emphasised the importance of the psalter, which was central to daily monastic observance, and commonly used in lay devotions: Þe song of psalmus is Goddys deté [song], Synne is put awey þerby. ... With these halwyd psalmys, Lord, I pray the specyaly For all þe creatures qwyke and dede, Þat þu wylt shewe to hem þi mercy, And to me specyaly þat do it rede. (10/437–8; 449–52)

In that very domestic scene, the contrast between the stillness of Mary’s reading and the offstage activity of Joseph, out finding them somewhere to live, could not be more marked. It seems to present itself as a simultaneous outworking of the ‘Martha and Mary’ principles adopted by Walter Hilton in his concept of the ‘mixed life’.34 As is common in late medieval literature, whether or not overtly religious in character, there are numerous other references throughout the play to prayer. 33

See Rastall, Heaven, p. 353, and Gibson, ‘Bury St Edmunds’, 88–90. Gibson uses the translation of Stella celi into Middle English by John Lydgate in support of her theory of Lydgate’s authorship of the N-Town Play. 34 English Mystics of the Middle Ages, ed. Barry Windeatt (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 108–30.

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Plate 1 The Annunciation: a fifteenth-century roof boss from the nave of Norwich cathedral, in a sequence which, like the cycle plays, tells the creation to doom story. Mary’s book is tossed aside as Gabriel surprises her. The letters A M for Ave Maria are visible on the scroll; there is a pot of lilies in the background. Photo copyright Julia Hedgecoe 1997

N-Town mentions both the offices and other formal devotions, and examples of shorter vernacular prayers derived from official liturgy. In the very first pageant, angels sing the ancient hymn Te Deum at the dawn of Creation as sung in medieval religious houses at the dawn of each day (1/39 s.d.). Familiar to the audience from their attendance at Matins, Te Deum also appears in the Digby Mary Magdalen (line 2139) and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament (line 1007). Vernacular prayers fall mainly into the four categories outlined in Origen’s Treatise on Prayer: praise, thanksgiving, confession, and intercession.35 The trinitarian formula is used frequently (and anachronistically), in invocation and blessing. What is particularly striking about the examples of prayer in the play is that they involve lay people, almost all of whom are women. Mary and Joseph pray to God the Father as she prepares to give birth, a risky occurrence with which most 35

De Oratione XXXIII.

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women in the audience would be able to identify. Here, though, as Mary points out, ‘His sone in my wombe, forsothe, he is’ (15/87). And Salomé, the unbelieving midwife, prays for forgiveness to the infant Jesus, on stage: O gloryous chylde and Kynge of Blysse, I ask ow mercy for my trespace. (15/282–3)

The reaction of Anna to her miraculous pregnancy is not to go back to the temple, but she says: Now homward, husbond, I rede we gon, Ryth hom al to oure place, To thank God þat sytt in tron, þat þus hath sent us his grace. (8/250–3)

This is paralleled in Osbern Bokenham’s longer account of the same events in his Life of St Anne.36 Both versions of the story are based on Legenda, but these domestic details have been added by their respective authors. The response of an ordinary person to extraordinary events is often to come to terms with them and with God in the privacy and security of her own home: Anna is portrayed here as the model of a devout layperson. The examples of the Virgin Mary and her mother are unsurprising. Mary is the unattainable paradigm par excellence for the faithful, both male and female, to follow, and Anna is virtuous by association with her daughter. The legendary accounts of St Anne teaching the Virgin to read are not overtly referred to in the play but by the age of three Mary displays her knowledge of the Gradual Psalms. This might well have struck a chord with mothers in the audience who also taught their daughters at home. The daughters-in-law of Noah also pray frequently, and thus present an intriguing range of possibilities. They are practically extra-biblical, with walk-on parts only and mentioned collectively, almost as an afterthought, in the Genesis narrative on which the pageant is based (Genesis 7:13; 8:16). By contrast, in the play they are individual, speaking characters, though still without names: are they representative of ordinary wives with whom those in the audience could identify? In the N-Town Play, Noah’s daughters-in-law stand as credible role-models, in addition to St Anne and the Virgin Mary, as women who played a significant part in the story of salvation. What seems like an automatic prayer response to unusual or stressful situations incorporated into their speeches may also indicate that ordinary women either did or were encouraged to offer up brief prayers of intercession and thanksgiving from time to time, within the ordinary domestic context of their lives. It has been suggested that ‘ordinary women also derived a kind of authority in their lay roles as mothers through the images seen in churches’, especially while on pilgrimage.37 In the play, the elderly Virgin Mary is said to have made a pilgrimage to the holy places where Christ had been (41/14–23): that East 36

Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS os 206 (London, 1938), lines 1401–2098. 37 Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Performance (London and New York, 2000), p. 33.

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Anglian women should be encouraged to make pilgrimages to her holy place, ‘England’s Nazareth’, as Walsingham was known, would not be surprising, given that Thetford was on the route. The practice of Henry VI notwithstanding, was church-going and particularly private religious devotion considered to be then, as now, mainly a women’s concern? Certainly what documentary evidence there is of lay people following the offices at home in their books of hours seems to support this; that it includes Margaret Beaufort and Cicely Neville, duchess of York would suggest, unsurprisingly, that following a quasi-monastic timetable was mainly the preserve of noble women, who had the time and literacy to do so.38 Robert Reynes was a churchwarden, yet his Commonplace Book, an invaluable survival of a medieval man’s equivalent of a filofax or palmtop computer, contains very few items that relate to devotion: the mantra Lord Ihesu Cryst, Goddes Sone on lyve, Haue mercy on vs for Thy woundes fyve

is one of only two short prayers; other entries relating to religious observance consist mainly of data such as a list (in Latin) of the sacraments.39 The climax of the early Marian section of the N-Town Play, and a liturgical and dramatic tour de force, is the performance of the vespers canticle Magnificat. It is performed in a domestic setting, during the visit of Mary to Elizabeth immediately after the Annunciation (Plate 2). In the biblical source, Luke’s gospel (1:46–55), Mary recites the canticle – her longest speech in scripture – but does not mention her pregnancy directly. It has been noted that according to some early accounts it was not Mary but Elizabeth who recited Magnificat.40 The N-Town version has the two pregnant women in a macaronic double act which simultaneously transforms it into a teaching aid and, on page and stage as in iconography, mirrors monastic antiphonal performance. We see them as if looking from the east end of the choir: Mary is on the decani side while Elizabeth is cantoris.41 In the manuscript, Mary’s Latin is written in Textura, whereas Elizabeth’s paraphrase, like the rest of the vernacular text of the play, is in Anglicana.42

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39 40 41

42

See Claire Sponsler, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England, Medieval Cultures 10 (Minneapolis, 1997), p. 110. For evidence of a lay man’s piety, see W.A. Pantin, ‘Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson (Oxford, 1976), pp. 398–422. The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle: An Edition of Tanner MS 407, ed. Cameron Louis (New York and London, 1980), pp. 180–1. By Marina Warner, Alone of All her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1976 (London, 2000), p. 366 n. 9. In a cathedral or monastery, the two sides of the choir are named after the dean or abbot, whose stall is on the right, and the precentor or cantor, whose stall is on the left as you face east towards the altar. Latin written in Textura (‘Gothic’ script) is a feature of the early Marian section of the N-Town Play, indicating its higher register.

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Plate 2 The Visitation: one of the Joys of Mary depicted on the fifteenthcentury stained glass East window in East Harling church, near Thetford. Mary and Elizabeth are both visibly pregnant; Mary’s scroll has on it the opening phrase of Magnificat (Luke 1:46), while Elizabeth’s reads ‘Unde hoc mihi ut veniat’ (Luke 1:43). Photograph © Crown Copyright NMR

Maria: Elizabeth:

Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est, Et sanctum nomen eius. For grett thyngys he made, and also myghtyest, And ryght holy is þe name of hym in vs. (13/90–3)

The fact that Mary speaks (or sings) Latin demonstrates the subtle hierarchy of the two pregnant cousins: the younger Mary who carries the Son of God is superior, not inferior, to the older Elizabeth who carries the prophet John the Baptist. By contrast, in the later Assumption pageant Mary shows both her learning and her status by quoting from Magnificat conversationally in English and liturgically

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in Latin (41/169, 324–5, 329). In the East Harling window, Elizabeth’s ‘Why me?’ underlines her humility, and echoes Mary’s own response to the Archangel Gabriel. What is particularly striking in the N-Town scene is the contrast between ordinary conversation and liturgical performance. The preceding speeches of the two women, swapping pregnancy stories, gives the audience Mary’s version of the Annunciation event that they would have seen earlier. And the canticle takes about six minutes to perform: a surprisingly long time to be essentially static on stage. Mary describes Magnificat as a psalm of prophecy; it can also be described as a protest song. That it is performed here by two women – whether or not the actors playing them were male or female – could be the starting-point for feminist or queer readings of the N-Town Play were one minded to pursue such analyses. What is relevant in this context is the impact on the audience of these two women enacting liturgy, at home, and on stage. In a church setting the saying or singing of the canticle would have been in Latin, led by (male) clergy. In a domestic setting such as the N-Town scene, educated lay women following their devotions in a Book of Hours would say the office in either Latin or English on their own or possibly in a group. This performance in a dramatic setting effectively brings private devotion into public worship, blurring the distinction between the two media and between liturgy and drama, and demonstrating to the audience that men do not have a monopoly on prayer. There is a marked contrast between this performance and that of Simeon who, although in the temple, merely glosses the wholly liturgical performance of Nunc Dimittis. The women on the other hand make the worship their own and bring the audience into it with them. I suggest that Magnificat is the core scene which seems to push orthodoxy to its outer limits, and against which the other devotional aspects of the play must be set. So, in conclusion, what are we to deduce from this about the practice of religion in late medieval East Anglia? From the evidence presented in the N-Town Play text, it seems that a considerable body of liturgical material was either already familiar to a likely audience, or the author was concerned that it should become familiar. This concern could have been his own, or on behalf of someone else: a sponsor perhaps, who might or might not have been clerical. And a large proportion of the running time would have been taken up with essentially static set pieces, performed on stage by the principal characters. Audiences, particularly women, were also confirmed and encouraged, through a variety of play characters using vernacular prayers and paraphrases, in their personal devotional lives. Not that the play presents a monochrome picture of religious observance: the example of Joachim and Anna shows the church hierarchy to be heartless tyrants. And the centrepiece of the play is a protest song, Magnificat, performed on stage by women before a male-dominated church. But what we can say is that this unique liturgical anthology adds an extra dimension to the play: it takes the liturgy out of church, into the open, and back into its scriptural context, presenting the audience with a fresh view of it to take back with them into church.

Two Travellers’ Tales Sarah Salih

AMONGST the basic interpretative strategies of cultural studies is the principle that, in Albrecht Classen’s words, ‘the examination of [the] highly problematic clash between self and other represents a major vehicle to gain deeper insight into a people and its culture’.1 In recent studies of medieval history and culture, this examination has typically been undertaken with reference to extremes of otherness, either to the pagans, werewolves and monsters who inhabit the edges of the world or to the enemies within, in the shape of lepers, sodomites and Jews.2 However, a study of encounters with more mundane forms of otherness can be equally informative. Geographical writing, ‘the textualization of territories and the territorialization of texts’, is a literary genre of obvious value for such an investigation of localised identities.3 This chapter attempts to map some of the contours of East Anglia’s distinctive and dynamic late medieval culture by examining how a few of its denizens read and wrote of places which were regular foreign destinations, in particular the city of Rome. East Anglians were well placed to learn about the wider world. The region’s literary culture included an interest in geographical writing, evident in the existence of a manuscript such as BL MS Harley 3954, a fifteenth-century East Anglian collection in a portable holster format which includes an illustrated version of Mandeville’s Travels. Such textual knowledge would be supplemented by the reports of travellers. East Anglia’s ports, cities, monastic houses and

1

2

3

Thanks to all who listened to and commented on versions of this material at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2003; All Saints’ Festival, King’s Lynn, July 2003, and Medieval East Anglia conference, Norwich, September 2003. Albrecht Classen, ‘Introduction: The Self, the Other, and Everything in Between: Xenological Phenomenology of the Middle Ages’, in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. Classen (New York and London, 2002), pp. xi–lxxiii, p. xxiv. For example, the collections The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (Cardiff, 2003), and Marvels, Miracles and Monsters: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger (Kalamazoo, 2002). On enthusiasm for the grotesque medieval, see Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Wonder’, American Historical Review 102.1 (1997), pp. 1–26, and Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, ‘Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies’, American Historical Review 103.3 (1998), pp. 677–704. Sylvia Tomasch, ‘Introduction: Medieval Geographical Desire’, in Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, ed. Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 1–12, p. 5.

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shrines were popular destinations for merchants and pilgrims from elsewhere in England and in Europe.4 Pilgrims from northern Europe heading for Walsingham landed at Lynn, and both Norwich and Lynn had settled communities of ‘strangers’.5 John Metham thought it plausible to claim that ‘as yt fortunyd, ther come rydyng/ To Norwyche a Greke’, and that this visitor helped him with the translation of the romance Amoryus and Cleopes.6 When East Anglians themselves travelled, as they often did, they might become all the more conscious of their regional loyalties when away from home. Derek Pearsall suggests that Londoners such as Chaucer and Langland regarded Norfolk people as ignorant parvenus: if so, the East Anglian visitors were capable of recognising and resisting such prejudice.7 John Paston I, imprisoned in the Fleet in London, wrote to his wife to ask for two ells of the finest worsted of local manufacture, ‘for I wold make my doblet all worsted for worship of Norffolk’.8 William Worcestre, travelling in the West Country, noted East Anglian connections whenever possible, mentioning twice, for example, that an apparently western saint was in fact ‘born in the city of Norwich’.9 Rome was perhaps the best known and most textualised location in Europe. It was a complex place, the paradigm of cities, the seat of earthly and heavenly powers, which had been written and rewritten over the centuries. Visitors to the city responded variously with awe, nostalgia for lost glories and cynicism about ecclesiastical politics.10 A site of Christian pilgrimage since the second century CE, fifteenth-century Rome was still ‘þe Roote/ [of] Pardoun’, and, the Stacions of Rome adds, so much more conveniently located than Jerusalem.11 The Stacions offers a pilgrimage-specific tour of the city, its churches, relics and altars, logging the immense amounts of pardon available – three thousand years, for example, for a sight of the vernicle, trebled for visitors from overseas and doubled again during Lent.12 Not all perspectives on the city were so pious: a twelfth- or thirteenthcentury cleric, Master Gregorius, wrote an account of the city notable for its enthusiasm for classical monuments and its indifference to Christian history and 4

On visitors to East Anglia’s miracle-working shrines, see Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Curing Bodies and Healing Souls: Pilgrimage and the Sick in Medieval East Anglia’, and Eamon Duffy, ‘The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in Later Medieval England’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 108–40 and 164–77. 5 Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford, 1978), p. 182. 6 John Metham, Amoryus and Cleopes, ed. Stephen S. Page (Kalamazoo, 1999), lines 66–7. 7 Derek Pearsall, ‘Strangers in Late-Fourteenth-Century London’, in The Stranger in Medieval Society, ed. F.R.P. Akehurst and Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden (Minneapolis, 1997), pp. 46–62, pp. 51–2. 8 Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century: Part 1 (Oxford, 1971), letter 77. 9 William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. John H. Harvey (Oxford, 1969), p. 125. 10 Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (London, 1975), p. 221. 11 Debra J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 6; Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., The Stacions of Rome, EETS os 25 (London, 1867), p. 1, lines 4–5, p. 10, lines 286–94. 12 Furnivall, ed., Stacions of Rome, p. 3, lines 59–70.

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architecture.13 The Mirabilia urbis Romae, a guidebook originally compiled in Rome in the mid-twelfth century, also presents a detailed description of the classical city and its history, but indicates too its transformation into the centre of western Christianity: Nero’s palace, for example, has become the Pope’s residence.14 As Jennifer Summit argues, pilgrims’ and antiquarian guides to the city shared an interest in ‘topography as a repository of material history’ and were engaged in complementary projects of ‘theorizing Rome as a religious and political center where earthly and heavenly power came together’.15 Rome was a site of multiple histories, alongside and overlaying one another; to go there was to travel in time as well as space. Its visitors and correspondents, however, were not necessarily overawed. Its mundane aspects are apparent in its appearances in the Paston Letters, as the location where ‘the Lorde Ryverse was robbyd off all hys jowellys and plate’, and which, though it might be the ‘welle of grace and salve’, charged a heavy price for its spiritual services.16 It was accessed routinely enough for there to be a name, ‘Rome-rennere’ for those who were accustomed to do business there.17 I am concerned here with two narratives of journeys to Rome from fifteenthcentury Lynn. The Book of Margery Kempe, a multi-generic narrative written in c.1438, which tells, amongst other things, of Margery Kempe’s pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Compostela and other sites, is now perhaps the best known of all medieval East Anglian texts.18 As a travel book, it has had a poor reputation ever since Donald Howard excluded it from the category altogether, on the grounds that Margery was ‘quite mad’, wrote only of her visions and weeping, and that ‘There is not in her book a scintilla of traveller’s curiosity, so we get no bananas, giraffes or elephants from Margery.’19 Lynn Staley argues that ‘Kempe did not need to visit Jerusalem to write an account of Margery’s experience there; she could easily have drawn upon written accounts of journeys to the Holy Land.’20 The resulting combination of scorn and scepticism appears to have dissuaded many students of the Book from investigating its treatment of travel.21 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Master Gregorius, The Marvels of Rome, trans. John Osbourne (Toronto, 1987). Francis Morgan Nichols, trans., Mirabilia urbis Romae: The Marvels of Rome (London and Rome, 1889), p. 19; Herbert Bloch, ‘The New Fascination with Ancient Rome’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Oxford, 1982), pp. 615–36, p. 632. Jennifer Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography: Petrarch, Chaucer and the Making of Modern Rome’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.2 (2000), pp. 211–46, p. 215. Davis, ed., Paston Letters 1, letters 298, 282. Davis, ed., Paston Letters 1, letter 282. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, eds, The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS os 212 (London, 1940). Further references will appear in parentheses. Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and their Posterity (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 34–5. Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1994), p. 76. Exceptions, however, include Terence N. Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, Studies in Philology 97.1 (2000), pp. 1–28; Leigh Ann Craig, ‘ “Stronger than Men and Braver than Knights”: Women and the Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History 29.3 (2003), pp. 153–75; Dee Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English


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The second narrative is a considerably less controversial, and less studied, text. John Capgrave, an Augustinian friar of Lynn and a prolific if now neglected writer, in his Solace of Pilgrimes combines translations of portions of the standard guidebooks with first-person commentary and reminiscence of a journey to Rome of 1449.22 The two writers, natives of Lynn born twenty years apart, must have known each other: Margery attended sermons at Capgrave’s friary, where one of the friars sympathised with her tendency to sob when he preached (167). Capgrave probably shared his brother’s goodwill to pious laywomen, for he wrote a life of St Augustine at the request of a ‘noble creatur, a gentill woman’ and refused to credit scurrilous tales of women pilgrims in Rome (77).23 The backgrounds and interests of the two writers overlapped. Nevertheless, setting out from the same place within twenty-five years of each other, Margery and Capgrave produced almost entirely different accounts of Rome, their common destination. M.C. Seymour regards Capgrave’s Solace of Pilgrimes as a missed opportunity, arguing that his production of ‘an English translation of an antiquarian guide-book’ was evidence of the ‘deadening conservatism’ of Capgrave’s intellectual milieu and of the friar’s own ‘lack of imagination’.24 This dismissal misrepresents the Solace, which is, like Rome itself, an assemblage of translated and local fragments. In it Capgrave builds up a picture of a Rome which encompasses all times and places, having imported numerous key items of Christian history from the Holy Land. The first book, on ‘the disposicioun of rome fro his first makyng’ (2) is based on the Mirabilia urbis Romae, but cuts and adapts freely, interspersing material from other sources, such as a catalogue of the rulers of Rome and an account of naked philosophers derived from Mandeville’s Travels.25 This second book ‘tretis of þe cherchis in rome and of þe spirituale tresour conteyned in hem’ (60), though in fact some Christian material had already appeared in the first book. The second book describes the fittings of the main churches of Rome, and then performs a textual progression around the Stations, though in a completely different order from that in Stacions of Rome.

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23 24 25

Literature, 700–1500 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 220–6; Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (London, 2002), pp. 152–203; James P. Helfers, ‘The Mystic as Pilgrim: Margery Kempe and the Tradition of Non-Fictional Travel Narrative’, Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 13 (1992), pp. 25–45; Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Performance (London and New York, 2000), pp. 128–41; Hope Phyllis Weissman, ‘Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Hysterica Compassio in the Late Middle Ages’, in Acts of Interpretation: The Text in its Contexts, ed. Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk (Norman, Oklahoma, 1982), pp. 201–18. John Capgrave, Ye Solace of Pilgrimes: A Description of Rome, circa AD 1450, ed. C.A. Mills (London, 1911); further references will appear in parentheses; M.C. Seymour, ‘John Capgrave’, in Authors of the Middle Ages, III, ed. Seymour (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 195–256, pp. 237–8. J.J. Munro, ed., John Capgrave’s Lives of St Augustine and St Gilbert of Sempringham and a Sermon, EETS os 140 (London, 1910), p. 1. Seymour, ‘John Capgrave’, p. 235. Capgrave, Solace of Pilgrimes, p. 30; comparison with Nichols, trans., Mirabilia, pp. 39–40 and Paul Hamelius, ed., Mandeville’s Travels, Translated from the French of Jean d’Outremeuse, Edited from MS. Cotton Titus C. XVI in the British Museum, EETS os 153 (London, 1919), pp. 196–7 suggests that Mandeville is the source of the additional information about gymnosophists.

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Capgrave’s aim is to conflate his sources to produce a completist account of the city, supplemented with his own eyewitness notes (1). The scheme initially outlined, of successive books on Rome’s classical past and Christian present, proves to be inadequate to the complexity of the material, so by his third description of St Mary Maggiore, Capgrave begins to express exasperation: ‘Now for to reherse ony þing þat is seide be fore but if haue sum newe circumstaunce or sum newe addicion is but veyn’ (150). He then tells a miracle of the Virgin rather than attempt yet another account of the church and its relics, and adds an unplanned third book for fear that ‘þis secund part schuld a be ouyr prolix’ (156). It is not the material city of Rome which causes this redundancy, but the multiplicity of textual Romes, as Capgrave attempts to unite his disparate source materials into a single account. Capgrave’s understanding of the purpose of his journey is equally multiple. He introduces his text by establishing that writing about travel is an ancient and authoritative practice: ‘Many men in þis world aftyr her pilgrimage haue left memoriales of swech þingis as þei haue herd and seyn’ (1). Such travellers include Pythagoras, Plato and Titus Livius, and Capgrave then goes on to outline a canon of travel writers, consisting of St Jerome, Marco Polo and John Mandeville, and to make a humble petition to join their ranks: ‘Aftyr all þese grete cryeris of many wonderfull þingis I wyl folow with a smal pypyng of swech straunge sitis as I haue seyn and swech straunge þingis as I haue herd.’ His conception of pilgrimage, then, is by no means exclusively Christian or even religious: indeed, his attitude tends to confirm the justice of the Lollard critique of pilgrimage, that ‘summe men don it of her owne grett wille rather to se faire cuntreys þan for ony swete deuocioun in her soule to God’.26 A stern moralist would define Capgrave’s attitude as curiositas, ‘morally excessive and suspect interest in observing the world, seeking novel experiences, or acquiring knowledge, for its own sake’, a vice to which pilgrims were known to be susceptible.27 Capgrave’s enthusiasm for the strangeness of foreign lands, and his confidence that the desire to encounter such strangeness is sufficient justification of his journey, is far closer to Mandeville’s belief that ‘many men han gret likyng to here speke of straunge thinges of dyuerse contreyes’ than to any strictly religious or even more generally ritualistic conception of pilgrimage.28 If, as Darlene Juschka argues, there is little empirical difference between pilgrimage and tourism, Capgrave’s example indicates that there is sometimes very little subjective difference either.29 Nor does he make any distinction between genres of travel writing. Although his text is less complicated than Marco Polo’s romance/ travel hybrid or Mandeville’s combination of pilgrimage, wonders and vernacular theology, it is by no means a pure pilgrimage text, and his combination of sources suggests that he considered a guide to Rome’s antiquities entirely 26 27

Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Toronto, 1997), pp. 86–7. Christian Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England (Baltimore, 1976), p. 4. 28 Hamelius, ed., Mandeville’s Travels, p. 30. 29 Darlene M. Juschka, ‘Whose Turn is it to Cook? Communitas and Pilgrimage Questioned’, Mosaic 36.4 (2003), pp. 189–204, pp. 194–5.


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compatible with a guide for pilgrims.30 He describes his book as a textualisation of a visual genre, the mappa, and like a mappa it combines historical and geographical information (2). The various relationships which Capgrave models between classical and Christian Romes are in keeping with the multiplicity of his sources and his tendency to inclusivity. The basic relationship, as one would expect, is that of the supersession of pagan error by Christian truth: Capgrave explains the continuous primacy of Rome with the argument that ‘it was conuenient þat þere schuld god be principaly honoured wher he was principaly despised and þat cyte whech was heed of all errour schuld be mad aftirward heed of all lernyng’ (60). The supersession of Church over Empire, then, does not eliminate Rome’s past, but preserves it in memory: Jennifer Summit describes this historical understanding as ‘a form of conversion that did not so much destroy or supplant the past as conserve its outward forms while assigning them new meanings’.31 The process is analogous to the individual’s simultaneous acknowledgement and renunciation of their sins in confession. The conversion of Roman buildings from pagan to Christian use is a concrete synecdoche of the Redemption. The pagan past may also be appropriated as having been crypto-Christian all along, as Virgil is made to prophesy the Nativity (27). Compared to the preserved and reinterpreted forms of the classical past, the Judeo-Christian past appears in fragments. In the second book Capgrave continually encounters dismantled and relocated sacred objects: half of St Paul ‘saue ye bones’; crumbs of the miraculous loaves and fishes; part of the Virgin’s kerchief; coals fused with the flesh of St Laurence ‘rith as þei fried in his passioun’ (63, 73, 77). Although Rome’s architecture actually has numerous examples of scraps of classical material re-used in churches, such as the beautiful thirteenth-century cloister of St John Lateran, Capgrave does not mention them: the aesthetic of the fragmentary appears in the Solace only in connection with Christian relic-culture. The survival of the classical past into the Christian present, however, causes some problems. The coliseum, we are told, once was roofed with a kinetic jewelled zodiac, but mech cristen puple come to rome in pilgrimage and whann þei seyn þis gay bilding and þis meuyng of þese planetis as I haue declared þei left mech of her deuocioun and stood and gased on þese uanities rith for nouelte of þe site. Tho mad seint siluester þis maunmentrie to be broke and spent in to betir use. (35–6)

The basic narrative is derived from the Mirabilia, but Capgrave elaborates nostalgic details of the lost ‘fayre werk’ and the reactions of the pilgrims.32 His

30

On Polo’s genre, see Jennifer R. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration 1260–1630 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 83–103; on Mandeville as vernacular theology, see Nicholas Watson, ‘Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.2 (1997), pp. 145–87, pp. 151–3, and A.C. Spearing, ‘The Journey to Jerusalem in Mandeville and Hilton’, Proceedings of the 2003 Odense Medieval Symposium, forthcoming. 31 Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography’, p. 214. 32 Nichols, trans., Mirabilia, pp. 62–4.

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adaptations indicate an identification with the curious pilgrims who are seduced from a devotional to an aesthetic response. This seduction allots considerable power to surviving pagan artefacts, a power which is also at work in the description of a statue of a woman entwined with a serpent. Looking at this object, Capgrave consults his guidebook for its interpretative caption, that it ‘be tokneth þe soules whech were in þe deueles daunger with errour in her feith’ (31). Summit argues that the historiography of conversion requires ‘turning the visible signs of pagan Rome into vital evidence for a material history of Christianity’: Capgrave’s response to the statue both confirms this analysis and points to the difficulties of such an interpretative practice.33 The accepted interpretation, that a pagan artist has ironically and unknowingly produced an artefact which speaks of the futility and eventual defeat of paganism, is produced by allegoresis, a widespread medieval response to pagan material.34 Yet Capgrave himself is evidently less than fully convinced of its validity, for he adds that: ‘This same exposicioun is touchid in þe eld cronciles of rome and not neuly feyned be us.’ Looking into the face of the strangeness he set out to seek, the Norfolk friar has difficulty maintaining a consistently Christian interpretative standpoint. Medieval gaze theory allows for the possibility of active objects of the gaze; this statue, which looks back at its viewer and unsettles his preconceptions, is one of them.35 The pagan artefact exceeds the allegorical Christian meaning which has been aggressively imposed upon it. It refuses to stay temporally distanced, but continues to make and unmake meaning, unpredictably, in the modern world. Faced with a difficult pagan artefact, Capgrave thus allows the material city to interrogate its textual representation. Christian as well as pagan objects are subjected to such dialogues between text and city. It would be an overstatement to describe Capgrave as a sceptical pilgrim, but he is an enquiring observer. He sometimes refuses to endorse claims made for relics, reporting only, for example, that ‘summe sey þer’ that the ancient Bible displayed in St Paul’s Church is St Jerome’s original autograph of the Vulgate (67). Having seen several fragments of the Cross, he notices that they are of various woods, which he explains by referring to the belief that it was made of four different trees (152). When ‘[s]umme men sey’ that a set of pillars in St John Lateran are those made for Solomon’s temple, he compares material world with sacred text to reject the claim outright: ‘þis be leue I nowt for þat descripcioun whech is mad in þe book of regum accordith rith nowt with þe shap of þese pileres’ (73). Although he does not generally emphasise the interior dimension of pilgrimage, Capgrave acknowledges devotional emotion in his reflection on text’s reinforcement of memory: ‘for it is grete counfort on to our deucioun þat whan we rede of [holy places] we may remembr þat we sey hem’ (21). His narratorial interventions amount to a performance of a particular style of pilgrimage: pious, yet also curious, scholarly 33 34

Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography’, p. 214. Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography’, p. 219; Rita Copeland and Stephen Melville, ‘Allegory and Allegoresis, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics’, Exemplaria 3.1 (1991), pp. 159–87. 35 Emma Campbell and Robert Mills, ‘Introduction: Troubled Vision’, in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, ed. Campbell and Mills (London, 2004), pp. 1–14, p. 4.


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and aesthetically susceptible. He is a constant, if understated, presence, a visible guide rather like the figure of Mandeville in some of the Harley manuscript illustrations, standing self-effacingly at the edge of the page to guide the reader’s attention to the sights of the world. On several occasions, Capgrave’s encounters with the foreign reveal a distinctively East Anglian perspective. His journey was rooted in local conditions, for he travelled under the protection of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, a controversial participant in East Anglian politics, accused by his neighbours of being a ‘common extortioner’ (1).36 Capgrave envisages his patron as the primary reader of his book, and the surviving manuscript may indeed have been his presentation copy.37 Perhaps Tuddenham felt in need of the pardon that he could expect to acquire vicariously in exchange for supporting the pilgrimage. Capgrave’s desire to make the sights of Rome explicable to his readers leads him to make comparisons which bring East Anglia into focus. The most detailed contemporary description of the regional playing place – ‘a place in whech men stand to se pleyis or wrestilingis or swech oþir exercises of myth or of solace . . . a place all round swech as we haue her in þis lond’ – occurs in this text, prompted by the sight of Roman amphitheatres (17). Some of Capgrave’s responses to Rome can be connected to regional culture. Although not generally credulous, he vigorously defends the historicity of St George, dragon and all, noting that ‘þe region of ynglond hath þis seynt in so special reuerens þat þei make him a principal capteyn in her batayles’ (88–9). George, especially in his patronage of travellers and merchants, was a saint greatly favoured in East Anglia: in Lynn and Norwich guilds dedicated to him were influential in local affairs.38 Capgrave’s audience, ‘men of my nacioun’ would thus have had an interest in defending the saint’s historicity and honour, and so, paradoxically, his encounter with George in the centre of Christendom enhances his sense of the saint’s local affiliation (1). Margery Kempe’s account of her travels is likewise marked by her East Anglian background, but her Rome, and her conception of pilgrimage, are otherwise very different from Capgrave’s. Ignoring the various underground dragons, demoniac princesses and wicked emperors which Capgrave heard of in Rome, she represents pilgrimage as a more strictly religious experience. It is simultaneously a geographical and an interior journey: as Dee Dyas remarks, ‘The tension between interior pilgrimage and place pilgrimage simply does not seem to exist for her.’39 Margery represents herself as a lone devout pilgrim in a world full of impious tourists – no doubt, like Capgrave, looking for strange things – who are hostile to her devotion and will not hear her talk of God. Although she visited famous relics and images, the Book notoriously ignores the concrete specifics of

36

R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (2nd edn: Stroud, 1998), p. 303: for a reassessment of Tuddenham’s career, see Helen Castor, ‘The Duchy of Lancaster and the Rule of East Anglia, 1399–1440: A Prologue to the Paston Letters’, in Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Rowena E. Archer (Stroud, 1995), pp. 53–78. 37 Peter J. Lucas, From Author to Audience: John Capgrave and Medieval Publication (Dublin, 1997), p. 262. 38 Samantha Riches, St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth (Stroud, 2000), pp. 127–39. 39 Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, p. 223.

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travel in favour of her visions and revelations. As her scribe remarks when recounting her travels in Germany, he might have misspelt the names of the places Margery visited because ‘sche stodyid mor a-bowte contemplacyon þan þe namys of þe placys’ (233). Even Julian of Norwich, generally regarded as an abstract writer, is more concrete than Margery when she describes ‘the holy vernacle of Rome’ as a surprisingly dark and unattractive portrait, which prompts the viewer to wonder ‘how might this image be so discolouring and so far from feire?’40 Julian must either have been to Rome herself prior to her enclosure, and noted the difference between her expectations and the actuality, or spoken to someone else who had. Margery, however, barely mentions Rome’s great storehouses of holy objects. A comparison between Margery’s and Capgrave’s accounts of the Apostles’ Church in Rome, for example, neatly encapsulates the different agenda of the two texts. Capgrave notes that it is the station for the Friday of the first week of Lent and that it has relics of many martyrs, its prize specimen being ‘þe arme of seinte philippe al hool’ (102). Margery underwent a mystic marriage with the Godhead, obscuring the material location as she describes the busy scene which takes place ‘in hir sowle’ (87). The presence of the apostles to witness her wedding to God may have been prompted by the location, but saints Katherine and Margaret are more likely to have accompanied Margery from East Anglia, where both flanked the Virgin at Walsingham and Margaret was the patron of Lynn’s parish church.41 Margery’s primary sense throughout the scene is the visionary eye of the soul, indicating that even in Rome she usually accessed saints though vision rather than through their many place-specific relics. Margery’s account of Rome, however, is not solipsistic, and she represents herself as engaging with aspects of the locality. Summit comments that texts such as the Mirabilia and Solace of Pilgrimes produce ‘a kind of history without people’.42 This is not entirely true of Capgrave, who includes numerous historical anecdotes and occasional observations of present day Romans going about their business, but his Rome is still largely a city of monuments and institutions. He observes, but Margery interacts: her Rome is a network of encounters with people, English, Roman and ‘Dutch’. As Staley remarks, ‘Kempe’s account of Rome is a story about the persons Margery encounters, not a tour of the city.’43 This accords with a general tendency in the Book to assess the strangeness or familiarity of places with reference to personal relationships, referring, for example, to Margery’s daughter-in-law as having ‘left hir frendys and hir cuntre’ (229). In Rome, Margery set about making contacts: she interviewed St Bridget’s maid, was given wine in a stone cup by a poor woman, and, having given away all her money, walked out into the street where a good man gave her more (93–5). Scraps of vernacular Italian, such as ‘malendrynes’, for highwaymen, entered her 40

Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1986), p. 12. Capgrave confirms its darkness (64). 41 Gail McMurray Gibson, Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989), p. 141. 42 Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography’, p. 239. 43 Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, p. 77.


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vocabulary, and a confessor was miraculously enabled to understand her (85, 82). Visionary and contemporary perspectives converged when she saw Christ’s likenesses in Rome’s streets in the forms of handsome men and babies (86). Capgrave does not mention the circumstances of his journey, but it is likely that he was travelling with a party and lodging at his order’s house in Rome at St Maria de Populo, where, he notes, the best of St Luke’s many portraits of the Virgin can be found (164–5). He thus had no pressing need to engage with the contemporary inhabitants of Rome. Margery, as a solitary traveller, abandoned by her party and her maid and expelled for a period from the hostel of the English, could afford no such detachment, and had to build up a temporary support network of advisors and benefactors if the place was to be habitable. The circumstances of her visit demanded that she overcome any strangeness in the city. Terence N. Bowers argues plausibly that the Book’s ulterior motive in this section is to demonstrate that Margery’s vocation, though controversial at home, was validated in the centre of Christendom. Such a demonstration requires the representation of Margery as a brave and inquisitive traveller, who indicates no expectations of strangeness in Rome, and records no culture shock.44 As Carolyn Dinshaw observes, Margery is ‘an anachronism even in her own (temporally heterogeneous) time’.45 Geographical travel in Margery’s Book occasionally turns into time travel: certain places, such as Jerusalem, are so thick with sacred history that they function as time machines, which can transport Margery into what Susan Signe Morrison names ‘Gospel Time’ to witness the earthly lives of Christ and the Virgin.46 The effect is not specific to any one place: it can happen in sacred spaces of all kinds, including the familiar surroundings of Lynn, and is also associated with liturgy and religious art. Rome, however, despite the richness of its pasts, is not one of the primary locations of such time travel. There is very little chronological depth to Margery’s perception of the city, which temporally comprises the present day, the living-memory of St Bridget’s maid and the sacred time of the visionary. The only piece of the distant Christian past explicitly noticed is the tomb of St Jerome, which prompts a brief narrative of the translation of his relics, but the climax of the incident brings the saint into the present day as he appears to Margery to commend her tears (99). The encounter thus also refers back to the day in Norwich some years previously when Julian of Norwich had assured Margery that Jerome authorised weeping (43). It is remarkable, in fact, how little textualised Margery’s Rome is. She mentions the Stations, but deferred following them when Jesus warned her of bad weather, characteristically privileging direct contact with the divine over outward observation (95–6). She was not in any case in need of the pardon, having previously been assured of her salvation when she was ravished in spirit (16). Margery’s Rome had no access to the pre-Christian period. In the course of her stay, she apparently never saw any remnants of classical Rome, though they were more plentiful than they are today, and must have looked arrestingly foreign to an 44 45

Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, p. 22. Carolyn Dinshaw, ‘Margery Kempe’, in Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, ed. Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 222–39, p. 236. 46 Morrison, Women Pilgrims, p. 132.

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eye accustomed to East Anglia’s flint-knapped Gothic architecture.47 Jonathan Sumption comments that ‘Few pilgrims, even in the obdurately anti-classical mood of the “dark ages” could look on the city of the apostles and blind themselves to the capital of a lost civilization.’48 Margery was apparently one of the few, so unseduced by curiositas that she never noticed any evidence of paganity. It could be that, lacking a classical education, she had no expectations of seeing classical objects and buildings. However, it is more probable than not that one of her confessors and advisors would have had access to the Mirabilia, perhaps the very copy which Capgrave was later to consult, and could have discussed it with her in advance of her trip. Her Latinate priest-scribe could also have filled in authorising detail during the writing of the Book: since the spelling of proper names presents no problems in this section, it is possible that he had access to a textual source. It is likely, then, that classical Rome was deliberately excluded from the Book rather than simply not perceived. Morrison argues that Margery, aware of satirical writings about women pilgrims, deliberately wrote herself as an ideal of pilgrim virtue.49 If, then, the comparison between Capgrave and Margery’s writings of Rome appears on the surface to be a contrast between lay female experience and male clerical authority, this may be because it suited Margery’s purpose to present herself as innocent and unlearned, trusting to faith alone. On closer examination, Margery’s Rome is not so much untextualised as indirectly textualised. The Book uses locality to categorise her piety, taking Rome as an experimental space where she could explore to the full forms of behaviour which marked a departure from her usual practices in Lynn. Such pieties were generally based on the models of continental holy women, and Margery had initially encountered them as text.50 In Lynn she was well-placed to keep in touch with the latest trends in continental devotion.51 By performing them in Rome, she both embodied them and took them home. Many of the most characteristic features of her piety – her crying, her mystic marriage – are authorised by being initiated during one or other of her journeys. In Rome, imitating St Bridget, another woman in her forties who had been recently freed from the constraints of marriage, Margery experimented with poverty by giving away all her money so that she was reduced to begging.52 She had known of Bridget’s life and writings for many years previously, and had already imitated her visionary access to Jesus,

47 48 49 50

Andreas Petzold, Romanesque Art (London, 1995), p. 142. Sumption, Pilgrimage, p. 220. Morrison, Women Pilgrims, p. 128. I have discussed the connections between Margery’s travels and her behaviours from a different perspective in ‘Margery’s Bodies: Piety, Work and Penance’, in A Companion to Margery Kempe, ed. John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 161–76. 51 On her similarities to continental holy women, see Susan Dickman, ‘Margery Kempe and the Continental Tradition of the Pious Woman’, and David Wallace, ‘Mystics and Followers in Siena and East Anglia: A Study in Taxonomy, Class, and Cultural Mediation’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1984, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 150–68 and 169–91. 52 lyfe of seynt Birgette in The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS es 19 (London, 1873), pp. xlvii–lix, p. lii.


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but imitation of her pursuit of poverty is located in the appropriate place, the city where Bridget herself had begged (47). Finding it possible to live on charitable donations in return for holy tales, Margery then adopted this practice on her return to England in order to finance her journey back to Norfolk (93, 102). In Rome she also took up domestic service as an exercise in humility, perhaps following the example of St Elizabeth of Hungary. She seems to have decided to leave that particular practice behind in Rome, for she later accepted the task of nursing her aged husband only under protest (179–81). Relinquishing her class privileges was a temporary exercise which was not intended to compromise her membership of Lynn’s elite. Other behaviours adopted during her journeys, however, were retained. Margery’s controversial white clothes are first mentioned when Jesus instructed her to wear them as they discussed her plans to visit Jerusalem and Rome, clearly implying that they were to be her travelling outfit (32).53 Refused permission to wear white by the bishop of Lincoln, she finally adopted the clothes in Rome, where it was easier to manipulate ecclesiastical authority ‘& so weryd sche white clothys euyr aftyr’ (35, 80, 92). Her mystic marriage in the Apostles’ Church left her with the lifelong bodily affects of heavenly music, angelic presences and the fire of love (88). If, as Victor and Edith Turner argue, pilgrimage is a liminoid phenomenon, it provides an opportunity to engage in behaviours unacceptable in everyday life.54 This analysis has been frequently contested, and it is certainly an overstatement to claim that all pilgrimage is inherently liminoid.55 However, the model is relevant to, though not completely explanatory of, Margery’s pilgrimage activity, for having once enacted these behaviours, she then persisted with most of them to some degree on her return home. Travel was a crucial stage in the development of her mature style of piety; her journeys enabled selftransformation. Before her journeys she heard of and contemplated various behaviours; on her journeys she experimented with them; on her return home she continued them, modified as necessary. The interplay of home and abroad was a necessary ground of the development of Margery’s distinctive style, and her travels were thus incorporated into a continuous narrative of her life. Bowers likens Margery’s cryings, which began in Jerusalem, to a pilgrim badge which proved that she had travelled to the holy sites.56 It was not unusual for pilgrims to Jerusalem to express extreme emotion: Felix Fabri wrote with admiration of the pilgrims who wept and prostrated themselves before the holy places.57 It was, however, unusual for the pilgrim then to carry that emotion home with them: the logic of place pilgrimage ensures that the emotional effect is usually considered to remain keyed to the site. Between Jerusalem and Rome,

53 54 55

56 57

I have previously argued that the white clothes are associated with spatial mobility: Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 223–4. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, pp. 1–39. For critiques, see Duffy, ‘The Dynamics of Pilgrimage’; Colin Morris, ‘Introduction’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience, pp. 1–11; Jennifer Stopford, ‘Introduction’, in Pilgrimage Explored, ed. Stopford (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. ix–xv Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, pp. 25–6. Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, pp. 244–5.

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Margery gave ‘many neyborwys’ the measurement of Christ’s grave, perhaps to enable the production of replica sepulchres (78).58 As a Norfolk woman, who visited the Holy House at Walsingham, Margery was familiar with the idea that holy sites could be multiplied by replication (227). In continuing her behaviours after leaving the pilgrimage sites, she produced replica sites whenever she cried, or begged, or wore white: her later appearance made continual reference to her experience of travel. Her response to travel was to break down the distinctions between places, to make the liminality of pilgrimage her permanent condition. She herself became a kind of contact relic, living testimony to the efficacy of the holy places. Capgrave’s Rome is full of miraculous images of Christ, of which the vernicle and the Turin shroud are only the best-known (63–5), but Margery herself was the blank sheet which was imprinted by her experiences at the pilgrimage sites, so that ever after she was liable to function as an image of a woman witnessing and mourning the Passion. As Bowers notes, Margery is unusual in narrating the journey home, for ‘Pilgrimage is all about the sacred space, not about returning to one’s profane existence.’59 It is precisely because the Book is more than a pilgrimage narrative that it can tell of the effects of pilgrimage on the future development of a life. Like Capgrave, Margery notes the devotional value of being able to contemplate one’s memories of the holy places after visiting them (75), but her memory of them was first embodied in her performed piety, then later textualised in the Book. The changes brought about by the experience of travel were highlighted in Margery’s uncomfortable homecoming. On Margery’s return, England had become a foreign land: she and it had changed in different directions.60 Former sympathisers turned against her; an anchorite, making the common association of female travel with sexual immorality, accused her of having borne a child in her travels (119, 103). Santha Bhattacharji points out that anxiety about heresy had increased sharply during Margery’s absence: it was thus an unwise moment to display her new behaviours, for her Jerusalem-style cryings and the white clothes from Rome attracted intense hostility (105, 116).61 Travel had alienated her from her native land. In some respects the difference between Capgrave’s and Margery’s Romes is just what might be expected of the difference between the perceptions of a devout but uneducated laywoman and of a learned and urbane friar. Capgrave sought, found and enjoyed strangeness; Margery, worried about ‘what xal I þan don whan I am fer fro hom & in strawnge cuntreys’ and accompanied by Jesus throughout her journey, found Christian community and charity (44). Though their journeys covered the same geographical spaces, they occupied different cultural positions.

58

On replica sepulchres, the appearance of which could vary considerably, see Richard Krautheimer, ‘Towards an Iconography of Medieval Architecture’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), pp. 1–33, pp. 3–20, and Veronica Sekules, Medieval Art (Oxford, 2001), pp. 17–19. 59 Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, pp. 16–17. 60 Thanks to Phillipa Maddern for this suggestion. 61 Santha Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (London, 1997), p. 74.


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However far they went, they did not abandon the preconceptions and expectations they had acquired at home and brought with them; their encounters with the world were informed, though not determined, by textually formed expectations. Gender and education were key factors which differentiate the purposes and genres of these travel texts and thus produce the radical difference of these two East Anglians’ accounts of Lynn, Rome and the journey between them. Capgrave’s text presents information on Rome which would be of use to anyone planning to repeat the journey: Margery’s is an account of an individual refining her saintly vocation as she travels, which may be admired, but is not imitable.

Index Adam of Poringland, 106 Ælfric, father and son of Wihtgar, 176–7 Ælsige, son of Godwine, 172 Æthelred II, king of England, 156, 173 Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, 175 Æthelwig of Thetford, 181 Stanheard, his son, 181 Alan, Count, 176, 179, 181 Albini, family, 50, 118 William II d’, 43–4 Albon, William, 95 Alderton (Suffolk), 189–90 Angere, John, parson of South Acre, 266 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174 Angwus, prior of Castle Acre, 215 Appleyard, Bartholomew, 106, 112 architecture, ‘Gothic’ style, 247, 253, 256 Perpendicular style, 247–9, 250, 267, 270 Asgar, William, 112 Asshebourne, William, 116, 126, 127, 128 Augustine, St, 135, 141 Rule of, 209, 210, 211, 215, 223, 224 Augustinian Canons, 209–14, 223–4 Baconsthorpe (Norfolk), 193 and n.19, 200, 203, 204, 205, 206 Banningham, see Walter of, Banwell (Norfolk), 204 Bardolf, Lord Thomas, 124, 127 Barnwell Priory (Cambridgeshire), 217, 218, 222 Barnwell Custumal, 215 and n.44, 217, 218, 221, 222–3 Bastick, John, 106 Baxter, Jeffrey, 266 Joan, his wife, 266 John, see John Heydon William, 202 Beaufort, Lady Margaret, 315 Bedingham, William de, 96 Bellofago, Ralph de, 178, 181 Benedict, St, Rule of, 216 Benington Castle (Hertfordshire), 36 Bernard of Clairvaux, St, 221–2

Berner the Crossbowman, 181 Berneye, Richard de, 91, 94 Bernham, Richard de, 95 Berstrete, John de, 93, 95 Bigod, family, 35, 44 Roger, 180, 181 Binham Priory (Norfolk), 36 Bishops Lynn (Norfolk), 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 135, 136, 143, 145, 148, 273, 289, 291, 319, 331 Bishop’s Staithe, 64 Gild Hall, 116, 126, 127 Gild of St George, 325 grammar school, 121 harbour, 64 mayor of, 136 priory, 235 St Margaret’s church, 326 St Nicholas’ church, 250 South Gates, 127 Bishops of East Anglia/Norwich, see under individual names Bixton, Walter, 104, 106, 111, 112 Katherine, his wife, 104 Black Book of Swaffham, The, 259–61, 264, 266, 267, 270 Blackmoor, William, 106 Bladsmith, John, 260 Blake, Edmund, 263, 264 n48, 270 Simon, 260, 263, 267, 270 Jane, his wife, 260, 267 Blakeney, Nicholas, 106, 112 Blickling (Norfolk), 205 Blickling, William, 112 Blofield (Norfolk), 273 Blomefylde, Miles, 289 Blythburgh Priory (Suffolk), 213 Bodiam Castle (Sussex), 34 Boleyn, Anne, 205 Anne, queen of England, 205 Geoffrey, 205 Lady, 204 Botwright, John, rector of Swaffham, 259, 261, 263, 270 Brandiston (Norfolk), 196 Guton Hall, 196 Breckles (Norfolk), 239

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INDEX

Bretherton (Norfolk), 165 Bretons, 169, 170, 175–6, 179 Brew, Sir Thomas, 195 Margary, his daughter, 195 Brews, William, 195 Elizabeth Hopton, his wife, 195 Bridlington Priory (Yorkshire), 218, 220 Brunham, John, 122, 123, 126, 127 Brunham, John de, 84, 88, 91, 94 Bungay (Suffolk), 38 priory, 38 Burgeys, William, 185–6, 188 Alice, his wife, 186 Beatrice, his daughter, 186 Henry, his son, 186 James, his son, 186 Burgh Castle (Suffolk), 36, 164 Burgh, Elizabeth de, 41 Bury, John, rector of Swaffham, 261 Bury St. Edmunds (Suffolk), 125, 173, 231 abbey, 174, 218, 220, 289, 303 liberty of St Edmund, 37, 155 see also; Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, John Lydgate, Samson, abbot Butley Priory (Suffolk), 214 Cade, Jack, 188 Caen, Walter de, 37 Caius, John, physician, 132 Cambridge (Cambridgeshire), 231 Church of Great St Mary’s, 266 Cambridgeshire, 155, 156, 174 Capgrave, John, 325, 327, 330 Solace of Pilgrimes, 321–6 Capmaker, Richard, 148 Carbrooke (Norfolk), 252 Carleton (Norfolk), 204 Carre, Alice, 239 Carrow Priory (Norfolk), prioress of, 64, 65 carucate, 161, 162, 163 Castle Acre (Norfolk), 38, 46, 48 castle, 34, 36, 48, 49 deer park, 46 ‘Earl’s Pond’, 41, 48 orchards, 42 landscape, 39 site, 37 church of St James, 255 priory, 38, 45, 48, 49, 211, 217 monks, 215 prior, 67 see also, Angwus, prior Castleacre, William, 128 Castle Hedingham (Essex), castle, 34, 48, 50

park, 40 Castle Rising (Norfolk), 38, 64–5, 118 castle, 34, 36, 50 site, 37, 45 gardens, 42 park, 40, 65 monastic house, 38 castles, 62, see also individual sites siting of, 36–7 Causton (Norfolk), 253 Causton, Hugh de, 95 Chambyrleyn, Sir Robert, 198 Chapman, John, 260, 264, 266, 268, 270 Catherine, his wife, 260, 264 Chatteris Abbey (Cambridgeshire), 175 Chaucer, Alice, 185, 187, 188 n.10, 191 and n.4, 193, 197, 204 Chelmsford (Essex), 289 friars of, 198 Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, 217, 218, 223 Cistercians, 216, 220–1, 222 Clare (Suffolk), castle, 34, 36, 39, 182 gardens, 41 park (Hundon), 39 priory, 38 Clare, family, 211, 214 Gilbert de, 43 Richard fitzGilbert of, 39, 177, 178, 181 Clay, Simon de, 84, 93, 94 clerks, 83–5 see also, Norwich, clerks of climate change, 54, 56 Clopton, John, 198 Cnut, king of England, 156, 171, 173 Colchester (Essex), 56, 63, 113 Priory of St Botolph, 214, 218 St John’s Abbey, 215 Cook, John, 140 Copdock (Suffolk), 197 Corpus Christi, feast of, 310 Corpusty, Nicholas, 106, 109 Courtney, bishop of Norwich, 117 Court of Common Pleas, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95 Coventre, Margaret de, 143 Crimplesham (Norfolk), 197 Crossbowman, see Berner, Gilbert, Ralph, Robert Crosse, Richard, 260, 261 Catherine, his wife, 260, 261 Danzig (Prussia), 123 De Claustro Animae, 210 n.6, 219–20 deer parks, 39, 42, 46, see also individual sites Depham, Thomas de, 84

INDEX

Dereham, Thomas, 197 Despenser, Henry, bishop of Norwich, 272, 273–5, 276–81, 282, 285–6 Edward, his brother, 273, 274 Deye, John, see John Wyndham Diss (Norfolk), 153–4 Dogget, Richard, estate officer of Alice Chaucer, 197 Alice, his daughter, 197, see also Alice Rookwood Domesday Book, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 179, 180 dovecotes, 42, 46 Duke of Norfolk, see John Howard, John Mowbray Duke of Suffolk, see William de la Pole Dunwich (Suffolk), 62 Dymock, Alice, 130, 131, 136, 138, 140, 141 Earls of East Anglia, see Gyrth, Ralph, Ralph the Staller East Anglia, 31, 32, 33, 36, 44, 51, 53, 153, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168, 176, 182, 183, 185, 189, 193, 212, 215, 276, 288, 300, 302, 318 Breckland, 59 Broadland, 163 castle building in, 33, 34 settlement patterns, 11–17 dispersed, 28 Late Saxon, 18–19, 20–1 Middle Saxon, 18 nucleated, 20, 23, 28 post-Roman, 17 tenurial factors in, 21 East Bergholt (Suffolk), 194 East Dereham (Norfolk), 268 Easton (Norfolk), 84 Eaton (Norfolk), 306 Ecouis, William d’, 178, 181 Edward the Confessor, king of England, 173 Edward the Elder, king of England, 153, 160, 161 Elmham, Bartholomew de 92 Ely Abbey (Cambridgeshire), 174, 215, 303 abbot of, 73 liberty of St Ætheldreda, 37, 155 Ely, John de, 87, 88, Ely, Roger de, 88, 91, 94 Emma, daughter of William fitzOsbern, 173, 174 Emma, queen of England, 156, 171, 172, 177 enclosure, 55, 59–60, 61 Erasmus, 209, 224 Erfast, bishop of Thetford, 175

335

Erlham, Thomas de, 87 Erpingham, Sir Thomas, 76, 113, 124 Essex, 166 Eudo dapifer, 181 Eudo son of Glamahoc, 176, 178 Euston (Suffolk), 197 Ewelme (Oxfordshire), 203 Exeter (Devon), 113 Exning (Cambridgeshire), 174 Eye (Suffolk), 38 castle, 36, 39 park, 39 market, 42 Priory, 38 Faber, Alexander, 84 Fageduna (Cambridgeshire), 168, 178 Fastolf, Sir John, 184, 186, 187, 190, 197, 203, 204, 262 Fathir, 178 Felbrigg (Norfolk), St Margaret’s church, 231 Fernys, Richard, hermit, 243 field systems, 19, 20 ‘champion’, 11, 17, 20, 23, 27 open, 13, 14, 20 ‘regular’, 11, 19 Filby (Norfolk), All Saints church, 231 Fin, 177–8 Fincham (Norfolk), 179 fishponds, 45 Flanders, 120 Forestier, Thomas, 139–40 Framelingham, Thomas de, 88, 92, 95 Framlingham (Suffolk), 38, 45, 199 castle, 34 fishponds, 45 gardens, 45 park, 40, 45 site, 44 church, 44 market place, 44, 45 Mere, 41, 44, 45 Fritton (Suffolk), 164 Fuller, Joanna, 139 geld, 156, 160–1 Geoffrey of Huntingdon, 222 Gilbert the Crossbowman, 181 Gimmingham (Norfolk), 203 Gipping (Suffolk), 197, 198 chapel, 198 Gloucester (Gloucestershire), 113, 280 Glovere, John, 133 Godric dapifer, 179, 180

336

INDEX

Godwine, brother of Ralph the Staller, 172 Godwin, liber homo, 164 Gorleston (Suffolk), 164, 165 Gouthorp, John de, 87 Gowle, R, 198 Great Rising of 1381, 274, 276, 278–9 Great Yarmouth (Norfolk), 124, 135, 138, 140 harbour, 63 leet rolls of, 130 St Mary’s hospital, 131 Gresham (Norfolk), 193 Guerney, Edmund, 122 Gynay, John, 112 Gyrth, earl of East Anglia, 181 Hacheston (Suffolk), 213 Hakeford, Peter de, 93, 94, 98 Hales (Norfolk), 239 Halesworth (Suffolk), 199 see also Roger of, Hanseatic League, 120 Hardecnut, king of England, 173 Hardegray, Roger, 104 Johanna, his wife, 104 Hardewick (Norfolk), 239 Hardley (Norfolk), 239 Hardwin, son of Ralph the Staller, 172, 178 Haughley Castle (Suffolk), 34, 36 Haughoe, Magna, 140 Hellesdon (Norfolk), 196 Hempstead (Norfolk), 204 Hemyng, Robert, 143 Henry IV (Bolingbroke), king of England, 116, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128 Henry V, king of England, 115, 116, 122, 128, 184, 185 Henry VI, king of England, 274, 303 Henry VII, king of England, 139 Henry of Nottingham, 122, 128 Heydon (Norfolk), 204 Heydon, Christopher, 206 family, 200, Appendix I John, alias John Baxter, 190, 191–2, 193, 197, 200, 201–5, 263 Bridget, his daughter, 205 Henry, his son, 202, 204, 205 John II, 206 Heylesdon, Richard de, 88, 93, 95 Hickling (Norfolk), church, 213 priory, 213, 218 hide, 156, 162, 163 Higden, Ranulf, Polychronicon, 52, 53, 54, 66, 67 see also, landscape descriptions in,

Hintlesham (Suffolk), 194 Hitcham (Suffolk), 177 Hobarde, Jamys, 198 Holland, Hugh, 104, 106 William, 104 Hopton, John, 194, 195 Horengia, servant of Benedict Key, 144 Horsford (Norfolk), castle, 37 hospitals, 142, 291, 296, 297, 299 see also Great Hospital, Norwich; Hildebrand’s, Norwich; North Creake; St Mary’s, Great Yarmouth; St Paul’s, Norwich Howard, John, duke of Norfolk, 185, 186, 199 Hoxne (Suffolk), 42 Hundon Park, see Clare (Suffolk) hundreds, see under Norfolk, Suffolk Ipswich (Suffolk), 56, 134, 135, 136, 143, 148, 289 Isaac, 179–80 see also Peter, knight of Isaac Jannys, Robert, 137 Jerome, St, 241, 243 John, duke of Bedford and earl of Richmond, 261, 270 John of Gaunt, 280 John of Welbourne, 103 Julian of Norwich, Dame, 326, 327 Kalletuna (Suffolk), 179 Kelsale (Suffolk), 44 Kempe, Geoffrey, 87 Kempe, Margary, 122, 230, 231–2, 235, 325, 331 crying, 329 Book of Margary Kempe, 320, 325–6, 327, 330 use of time in, 327 St Bridget, 328–9 St Bridget’s maid, 326 white clothes, 329, 330 Kerdiston (Norfolk), 187, 196 Kings Lynn (Norfolk) see Bishops Lynn Kyrkeby, John de, 93 landscape: agrarian, 11–17 changes, 54–7, 59–60 descriptions, 52–4, 57–9, 61–5, 67 in Polychronicon, 52–4 woodland, 11, 23 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 168, 169, 170, 171, 175, 182 Letters of, 168, 169, 175, 182

INDEX

Monastic Constitutions, 217, 222 Launceston (Cornwall), 40 Le Brun, John, 94 Leche, John, 139 leets, 155, 157, 158, 159–60, 165, 166 see also, Suffolk, Lothingland le Graunt, John, 88, 93 Leofric, liber homo, 164 lepers, 130, 140 leprosy, 135 le Verly, Ralph, 93 Lewes Priory, 211, 215 Lidgate (Suffolk), 39 Lincoln (Lincolnshire), 289 Lincoln, Robert de, 87 Lister, Geoffrey, 277 Litcham (Norfolk), 66, 250 Little Dunmow Priory (Essex), 214, 223 Little Saxham (Suffolk), 198 Llanthony Secunda Priory (Wales), 213, 218, 220 Lollardy, 269, 303, 322 Lomynour, Henry, 106, 111, 112 London, John de, 84 Losinga, Herbert, bishop of Norwich, 118 Lowestoft (Suffolk), 164, 165 Lucas, Thomas, 198 Lugershall Castle (Wiltshire), 40 Lydgate, John, 56, 59, 138, 245 Temple of Glas, 57 Lyhart, Walter, bishop of Norwich, 79 Mainard, 179, 180 Malet, family, 35, 42 William, 37, 39 Mandeville, John, 325 Mandeville’s Travels, 318, 320 Manorbier (Wales), 43 Margaret, duchess of Clarence, 243 Margaret of Antioch, St, 225, 227–31, 232, 243–4, 245 images of, 231, 233–41 Life of St Margaret, 228–30 Mary Magdelen, St, 231, 232, 243, 291, 300 feast of, 230 Mary Magdelene, 288, 298, 300, 301, 313 provenance, 289 representations of death in, 294–6 theme of charity, 298 themes of poverty and chastity, 290 themes of spiritual and spiritual health, 291–3 Mautby (Norfolk), 186 meadow, 29–32, 38 Meaux Abbey (Yorkshire), 220 Metham, John, 57–8, 59

337

Amoryus and Cleopes, 57, 318 Middleton (Norfolk), castle, 36 park, 39 see also William of, Midhurst, John de, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97 Midlands, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33, 60 Mileham (Norfolk), park, 40 Mirk, John, 226 Instructions for Parish Priests, 307, 308 Monewdon (Suffolk), 199 Montfort-Gael (Brittany), 171, 176 Montgomery, Anne, 198 Mountford, Osbert, 198 Moresburgh, John, vicar of Swaffham, 262 Moutiers, Lisios de, 176 Mowbray, John, duke of Norfolk, 194 Thomas, 124 Neville, Cicely, duchess of York, 198, 205, 315 Neville, Richard, earl of Warwick, 198 New Buckenham (Norfolk), 38 castle, 34, 50 gardens, 42 park, 39, 40 site, 43 Norfolk, 21, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 153, 154, 158, 161, 162, 166, 167, 169, 178, 180, 227 dialect, 288–9 hundreds: Blofield, 158 Clackclose, 157, 158 Flegg, 160 Forehoe, 155, 158 Greenhoe, 157 Henstead, 158 North Erpingham, 190 see also, sheriff of Norfolk Norman Conquest, 164 Norman, Jacobus, 270 Northampton (Northamptonshire), 70 North Creake hospital (Norfolk), 221 See also William of Guist North Elmham (Norfolk), 253 Northman, 181 North Repps (Norfolk), 204 North Tuddenham (Norfolk), 241 North Walsham (Norfolk), 55, 276, 278 Norwich (Norfolk), 53, 56, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 136, 140, 145, 148, 158, 163, 174, 179, 181, 231, 239, 276, 286, 289, 291, 319

338 Norwich (Norfolk), cont. Alms Lane, 80 Alnwick Gate, 79 Back-of-the-Inns, 74 Ber Street, 144 Bishopgate, 75 Blackfriars, 69, 75, 133, 137, 261 Bridewell, 78 castle, 34, 74, 75, 76, 149, 168, 226 Castle Mall, 80 Castle Street, 74 Cathedral, 69, 85, 118, 149, 204, 215, 235–6, 241, 255 Erpingham Gate, 76 Lady chapel, 193 Priory, 56, 69 prior of, 74 churches: All Saints, 86 St Augustine, 84, 86, 213 St Benedict, 69, 71 St Botolph, 76 St Clement, 84, 86 St Clement, Colegate, 76, St George, Colegate, 239 St George, Tombland, 75 St Gregory, 71, 75, 237 St Helen, 69, 231 St Lawrence, 71 St Margaret, 71, 146 St Margaret Combusto, 227 St Margaret, Newbridge, 239 St Martin-at-Palace, 72 St Mary-in-the-Fields, 84, 93 St Michael, 72, 75 St Michael-at-Plea, 240 St Michael, Coslany, 239 St Peter Mancroft, 73, 75, 239, 240, 246 parish of, 100, 102, 103 St Peter, Parmentergate, 85, 86 St Stephen, 239 St Swithin, 71 clerks of, 83 clerk of the Sheriff, 83 of the bailiff of the hundred, 85 of the bailiffs of the City of Norwich, 85 of the beneficed clergy, 86 of the Bishop, 85–6, of the Escheator, 85 of the Exchequer, 86 of the King, 86 of the Prior, 86 of the Subescheator, 85 of the steward of the earl marshal, 85 of the cathedral priory obendientaries, 86 ‘Common Inn’, 101, 103, 105, 110

INDEX

Conesford, 145 ‘Common Stathes’, 104, 105, 106, 110 Conesford Gate, 102 Dragon Hall, see King Street ‘French Borough’, 145 Fye Bridge, 144 Greyfriars, 192 Guildhall, 103, 113, 137 Guilds: St Botolph, 149–50 St Christopher, 149 St George, 79, 149, 230, 239, 240, 325 St Katherine, 149 Holmestrete Way/Holme Street, 69, 149 hospitals: Great Hospital, 75, 91, 131, 133, 204, 231, 297, 298, 299 Hildebrand’s, 145 St Giles, see Great Hospital St Paul’s, 300 King Street, 80 Dragon Hall, 77–8, 79 London Street, 74 Maddermarket, 69 market, 75, 101, 102, 105–6 ‘Murageloft’, 105 Pockthorpe Gate, 102 Pottergate, 80 St Benedict’s Street, 71, 73 St Giles Gate, 143 St Martin-at-Palace Plain, 80 Strangers’ Hall, 78 ‘Taperestathe’, 104 Tollhouse, 103 Tombland, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75 Weavers Lane, 73 Wensum, River, 72, 133, 144, 145, 148 Westwick Street, 70, 145 Great Conduit, 79 ‘Worsteadseld’, 103, 104, 110 Norwich Domesday Book, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112, 113 Norwich, Walter de, 87 Noyers, William de, 181 N-town plays, 66, 142, 288, 302 audience, 307 ‘Baptism’ pageant, 308 composition of, 303–4 ‘Joachim and Anna’ pageant, 305, 311 liturgical elements of, ‘Assumption’, 303, 309, 316 Ave Maria, 307, 312 Magnificat, 304, 307, 315–16 Nunc Dimittis, 307, 311, 317 ‘Marriage of Joseph and Mary’, 308, 309, 312

INDEX

shepherds in, 311–12 women in, 313–17 Ode, Walter, 91 Old Buckenham (Norfolk), park, 39 Olivet, priest of West Acre priory, 221, 222 Orford (Suffolk), 38 castle, 34 Oulton (Norfolk), 204 Ousden (Suffolk), 181 Ovy, Nicholas, 196 Page, Adam, alias de Norwich, 96 John, 95 Nicholas, 96 Parham (Suffolk), 213 Paston Letters, The, 183, 190, 205, 262, 263 Paston, John I, 190, 193, 194, 195, 204, 319 John II, 196 John III, 195, 199 Margaret, 186, 191–2, 201, 202, 203, 244 William, 205 Payn, John, 266 Catherine, his wife, 266 Letitia, 96 Robert, 260 Peddars Way (Norfolk), 45, 47, 48 Pentney Priory (Norfolk), 218 Peterborough (Northamptonshire), 276 Peter, knight of Isaac, 179 Phelip, William, lord Bardolph of Dennington, 202–3 plague, 137–8, 151 Pranting, John, 112 Prussia, 123, 124 Purdans, Margaret, 243 Pykenham, W[illiam], 198 Rabel the Engineer, 181, Ralph, earl of East Anglia, 168 n.4, 169, 170–1, 172, 173, 178, 179, 180, 181 wedding of, 173–4 Ralph the Crossbowman, 181 Ralph the Staller, earl of East Anglia, 171, 172, 173, 180, 181 Ramsey Abbey (Huntingdonshire), 175 Ranele, John de, 144 Rant, Thomas, 139 Ranworth (Norfolk), St Helen’s church, 233, 241 Reginald fitzIvo, 176, 178 Remigius, bishop of Lincoln, 175 Restormel (Cornwall), 40 Reynes, Robert, 58, 233 Commonplace Book, 303, 315

339

Ridlington, Roger, 106 Rievaulx Abbey (Yorkshire), 217, 220, 221, 223 Robbins, John, 130 Robert of Bridlington, 211 n.6, 217–18, 220, 221 Robert the Crossbowman, 181 Roger, earl of Hereford, 169, 170, 173–4, 175, 176 Roger of Halesworth, 106 Rollesby, Thomas de, 92, 93 Rome (Italy), 319, 328, 329, 331 classical remains, 323–4, 327–8 see also Stacions of Rome Rookwood, Roger, 197 Alice, his wife, 197 Edmund, his grandson, 197 Anne, his wife, 197 Rous, Reginald, 185, 186, 202 sacraments, 308 St Benet, Holme, abbey, 175, 179, 180 Saint-Omer, Humphrey de, 176 Salmon, John, bishop of Norwich, 120, 126 Salthouse (Norfolk), 204 church, 205 Samson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, 217 Sarum Liturgical Manual, 305 Saxlingham (Norfolk), 206 Scrope, Archbishop Richard, 124, 125, 129 Seething (Norfolk), 239 Sege off Melayne, 272, 273, 278, 282–4, 286 Bishop Turpin, 272, 275–6, 282, 283–4, 286 sewers, 133–4 Shelton (Norfolk), 246 church, 246–7, 249 Shelton, Sir Ralph, 246, 247, 249 Sheriff of Norfolk, 85 Sibton Abbey (Suffolk), 179 Skiet, Ralph, 106 Sky, Henry, 106 Spencer, William, 197 Sporle (Norfolk), 215 Spynk, Robert, 142 Thomas, 106 soke, 162 Southampton (Hampshire), 113 South Repps (Norfolk), 204 Squyer, John, 189 and n.11 Stacions of Rome, 319, 320 Stanhowe, John de, 87 Starkey, Thomas, 132 Staunford, Arnold de, 87 Steward, Thomas, 199 Stigand, bishop of Elmham, archbishop of Canterbury, 158, 181

340 Stoke-by-Clare (Suffolk) monks of, 39 see also, Clare (Suffolk) Styward, Thomas, 261 Cecily, his wife, 261 Suffolk, 21, 53, 153, 154, 158, 161, 162, 166, 180 hundreds: Blything, 155, 158 Carlford, 181 Colneis, 155 Cosford, 158 Lackford, 161 Lothingland, 160, 164–5, 166 leets, 165–6 Samford, 155 Thingoe, 158 Wilford, 155 Swaffham (Norfolk), 260, 262, 269 SS Peter and Paul church, 246, 247, 268 bell tower, 259, 268, 270 chancel, 259, 261, 267 choir, 261 clerestory, 267, 268 Corpus Christi chapel, 266 nave, 267, 268 ‘new steeple’, 264 north aisle, 264, 267 ‘old steeple’, 260 roof, 267–8 south aisle, 266 vestry, 261 west window, 268 see also; Black Book of Swaffham, John Botwright, John Bury, John Walpole, John Moresburgh Swafield (Norfolk), church of St Nicholas, 186 Hall, 186 paupers of, 186 sweating sickness, 139–40 Tanner, Thomas, bishop of Norwich, 210 Taverham (Norfolk), 84 Taxatio Ecclesiastica, 213 Taylor, Walter, 260, 267 Isabel, his wife, 260, 267 Thetford (Norfolk), 88, 302, 315 priory, 125, 303 Holy Sepulchre, 211, 219 Thomas of Welbourne, 103 Thornham Magna (Suffolk), 196 Thorp, William de, 93, 96 Thurston, John de, 92 Tibenham (Norfolk), 204 Tilney, John, 128

INDEX

Timperley, John, 194, 195, 197 Margaret, his wife, 194 Toft Monks (Norfolk), 215 Toki, king’s thegn, 46 Toppes, Robert, alderman of Norwich, 239, 240 Joan, his wife, 239 Tottington, bishop of Norwich, 127, 128 Tribal Hideage, 160 Troston (Suffolk), 159 Tuddenham, Thomas, 190–1, 193, 198, 202, 203–4, 262, 263, 325 Alice, his wife, 190 Henry, his son, 190 and n.13 Tudenham, Roger de, 87, 88 Tudor, Edmund, earl of Richmond, 263 Tyrell, Sir James, 197–9 his will, 198 Valognes, Peter de, 35, Theobald de, 213 Vere, Aubrey III de, earl of Oxford, 50 John de, earl of Oxford, 185, 186, 194, 199, 204 Wakeryng, John, bishop of Norwich, 128 Walden Abbey (Essex), 215 Walpole (Norfolk), St Peter’s church, 213 Walpole, John, vicar of Swaffham, 262 Walsham, William de, 93 Walsingham (Norfolk), 60, 125, 209, 319 Holy House, 330 Our Lady of, 240, 315, 326 Walsingham, John, 260 Walter of Banningham, 106 Walter of Dol, 176 Waltham Abbey (Essex), 213, 218 Waltheof, earl, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176 Walton (Suffolk), 36 Warenne, family, 35, 36, 46 William I de, 49 William III de, 211 Welbourne, see John of, Thomas of West Acre (Norfolk), All Saints church, 214 priory, 214, 216 n.44, 222 see also Olivet, priest West Wickham (Kent), 205, 206 West Wretham (Norfolk), 215 Whaddon (Cambridgeshire) see Fageduna Wickford (Essex), 179 Wickham Skeith (Suffolk), 215 ‘Wicklaw’ (Suffolk), see Ely: liberty of St Ætheldreda Wiggenhall (Norfolk), St Mary the Virgin church, 235

INDEX

Wihenoc, 176 Wihtgar son of Ælfric, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181 Wilby, Geoffrey de, 96 William I, king of England, 168, 171, 173, 175 William II, king of England, 180 William ate Ston, 84 William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, 184–5, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 195, 200, 203, 262 William of Guist, master of North Creake hospital, 222 William of Middleton, 104 William scriptor cartarum, 93 Wingfield (Suffolk), 203 Wiseman, George, 196 Simon, 196

Wisse, Thomas, 91 Wodehouse, John, 190 Woodbridge (Suffolk), 199 priory, 195 Wood, Edmund, 143 Wormegay (Norfolk), 38 castle, 36 park, 39 priory, 38, 213 worstead cloth, 103–4 Worthing (Norfolk), 239 Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, 175 Wyclif, John, 280 Wymondham (Norfolk), 125 priory, 157 Wyndham, John, alias John Deye, 192

341

Medieval East Anglia

The Castles of East Anglia

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Medieval East Anglia

The Castles of East Anglia

The Castles of East Anglia

Lords and Communities in Early Medieval East Anglia

The Origins of Beowulf: and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia

Medieval Arabic Historigraphy (Soas Routledgecurzon Studies on the Middle East)

Landscapes of Monastic Foundation: The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia, c.650-1200 (Anglo-Saxon Studies)

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Medieval Animals

Medieval Handgonnes

Medieval castles

Medieval Thought

Medieval Mereology

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Medieval Castles

Medieval Warfare

Medieval Russia, 980-1584 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks)

Medieval Mereology

Medieval Norwich

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