There were many human pawns and casualties in the conflict now known to history as ‘The War of the Roses’.  As the dynastic feud raged furiously between the Royal houses of Lancaster and York, many died a brutal death.  The most brutal, perhaps, was that of the death of King Richard III – killed in battle at Bosworth in August 1485.  Last week, current news and history were  alive with the news that the body of Richard III had been found under a car park in Leicester.  Since the announcement, much has been discussed about the discovery of his mortal remains and what it means to our understanding of his reign.  I still maintain my original position that it doesn’t change much about our understanding of Richard III, nor our understanding of his life and times.  (See my post Richard lyth buryed at Leicester.)

My post today is about the most important pawn of all in that power struggle: Elizabeth of York.  By 1483, the time of her father Edward IV’s death, Elizabeth was 17 years old.  With her brothers locked away in the Tower of London and her uncle declaring himself to be king, Elizabeth’s position was very precarious.  She became even more vulnerable when in March 1485, Anne Neville, Richard III’s queen, died and rumours spread that Richard intended to marry Elizabeth, his own niece.  The historian Anne Crawford, in her 2007 book ‘The Yorkists: The history of a Dynasty’ comments:

‘… rumours that the king [Richard III] was planning to marry Elizabeth himself.  While a union between uncle and niece was not strictly forbidden by the church, provided dispensation was obtained (and it was later not unknown in European royal circles), the idea caused revulsion among his councillors, Richard was warned by Ratcliffe and Catesby, the men he trusted most, that, unless he abandoned the idea and publicly denied any such intention, his northern supports would rise against him for causing the death of Warwick’s daughter [his dead wife, Anne Neville] in order to enter into an incestuous marriage to his niece.  There is no reason to believe the charge that Richard murdered his wife, but the fact that people, even his loyal northerners, believed it possible indicates the air of unease and suspicion surrounding him.  The threat of their revolt was enough to bring the king to a humiliating position of making the public denial demanded of him.’ (page 146-7)

Elizabeth was most certainly a prize – daughter of the dead Edward IV and sister of the missing Edward V.  A prize that was too much for the victor of Bosworth Field, the new Henry VII, to ignore.  Henry Tudor made his intentions towards Elizabeth very clear even before that fatal day in August 1485 when Richard III was dispatched to meet his maker.  By marrying Elizabeth, Henry Tudor, at one stroke, would pacify both the house of Lancaster and the house of York.  Moreover, any child of theirs would automatically be the heirs to the throne – a fact that could not be disputed by either dynastic house.  In a cunning and an astute move, Henry VII, determined that he was to be king by conquest rather then by the birth-rights of a mere woman, did not marry Elizabeth until January 1486. The marriage took place a few months after his own coronation the previous year on 30 October.  Clever Henry VII! By marrying after his own coronation, he reinforced the point that it was he who was the anointed king: Elizabeth was merely his consort.

Contemporary documents from the period suggest that Henry VII had a loving relationship with his wife.  At her death, he did appear to grieve for her and he did spend his money on a lavish funeral for her.  She also seems to have cared for the education of her own children – very unusual for a high born medieval woman.  The historian, David Starkey, in his 2008 book ‘Henry Virtuous Prince’ strongly argues the case that Elizabeth was an exceptionally well educated woman and it was she who taught her own daughters and her young second son literacy (page 119-120), and therefore to read and write.   That second son, of course, went on to be the highly educated and intelligent Henry VIII.

Elizabeth of York, that pawn of medieval and Tudor history who aided the end of the bloody War of the Roses, was born in the Palace of Westminster on 11 February 1466 and died exactly 37 years later at the Tower of London, nine days after giving birth to her seventh and final child (who had died the previous day).

So on the anniversary of her birth and death, below are some images of Elizabeth of York.
Elizabeth Woodville, queen of Edward IV, and their five daughters (left to right) Elizabeth, Cecily, Anne, Catherine, and Mary. Royal Window, Northwest Transept, Canterbury Cathedral.

Cigarette card from Ogden’s Guinea Gold series, published 1903.

Cigarette card from Player’s Kings and Queens, published 1935.

Margaret Beaufort (born 1443, died 1509) was the mother of Henry VII.  Below is an image for February from her Book of Hours.  This Book was made between 1430 and 1443 and owned firstly by Margaret’s mother, Margaret Beauchamp (born 1405/6, died 1482), and then by Margaret.  Margaret appeared to use her Book of Hours as a calendar to record significant events in the lives of her son and grandchildren.  Thus, she used August to record her son’s landing at Milford Haven and the death of Richard III; and February for the death of Elizabeth of York (we do not know if this is her hand or if a scribe wrote the entries for her).

‘February’ from The Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours
(England, S. E. (London), c. 1430, before 1443)
shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f. 28v.

The first left margin note in black reads

This day wher[e] decessed Quene Elizabeth i[n] the tower of london

Postcard of the Burial chapel of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey.

Funeral effigy of Elizabeth (plate from 1914)

Chapel of Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York

Elizabeth of York: daughter of Edward IV, niece of Richard III, sister of Edward V, wife of Henry VII, mother of Henry VIII, grandmother of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

What do you think about Elizabeth of York?
Please do leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.

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Notes
Images from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Richard III lyth buryed at Leicester
– 28 January: a remarkable date in Tudor history
– British costumes in the time of Henry VII and Henry VIII
– School trip Friday – Of cabbages and kings
– Prince Arthur- Prince of Wales
– Tudor coronations

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Today’s post is about the contents of Tudor wills and how they can be used to inform the modern-day reader about religion during the turbulent reigns of Henry VIII and his three children.  The text below formed one of the chapters within my dissertation Religion and Society in Great Dunmow, Essex, c.1520 to c.1560 from my Cambridge University’s Masters of Studies in Local and Regional history awarded to me in January 2012. The text here is in its entirety from my dissertation so reads more as an academic essay rather than a blog post.  For this blog post, I have included headings (to break up the text) and images, my original was both heading-less and image-less.  If you are wondering why my introduction and conclusion are so short, remember that this is just one chapter in a very lengthy 100 page dissertation and I had a very strict word count to adhere to.  The dissertation’s overall introduction and conclusion was far more comprehensive.  I have also had to re-arrange the two tables on this post from their original positions within my dissertations – so Table 2 now comes before Table 1. The research of wills I undertook for my dissertation is very different to my normal genealogical research. For genealogical research, I am normally sifting through the personal bequests so to find evidence of family relationships. But for my dissertation, I had to totally ignore family relationships and go for the ‘other bequests’.

St Mary the Virgin, the Parish church of Great Dunmow, circa 1910-20.

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Introduction
Historians have studied the wills of many English parishes to gain understanding about the impact of the Reformation.  Eamon Duffy examined the wills of the Yorkshire village of Otley(1)  and Caroline Litzenberger, in her analysis of the Reformation Gloucestershire, studied the wills of approximately 8,000 testators(2).   Therefore, the analysis of wills is a significant methodology employed by historians to provide evidence for the acceptance (or non-acceptance) of religious changes during the Reformation.

Methodology
The methodology used for this article has been to locate, transcribe and analyse all wills for Great Dunmow for the period 1517 to 1565: 40 wills in total.(3)    Litzenberger divided her Gloucestershire wills into elite and non-elite wills, but this division is not possible for Great Dunmow’s much smaller sample.  Table 1 and Table 2 displays the results from this analysis and this article examines those results.

Great Dunmow’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy assessments listed 139 tax-payers and 1525-6 church steeple collection listed 165 donations.  From these figures, it can be deduced many wills have not survived.  Those that have are

• thirty-seven wills proved in the archdeacons’ court of the Commissary of the Bishop of London (originals held by the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford);
• two proved in the London Consistory Court (official copies held by the London Metropolitan Archive in London); and,
• one proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (official copy held by The National Archives in Kew).

The discovery of only two wills proved in the London Consistory Court is particularly disappointing.  However, this has been caused because the registers from 1521 to 1539 are missing.(5)  Moreover, the first surviving Great Dunmow will that was proved in this court, is from 1559.  This demonstrates there are other inconsistencies within the surviving registers from the 1540s and 1550s with the wills for Great Dunmow almost totally missing.  Great Dunmow was in the archdeaconry of Middlesex but many nearby towns and villages (for example, Maldon and Chelmsford) were in the archdeaconry of Essex.  Any testator with land in only one archdeaconry had their will proved in that archdeacon’s court (and therefore, now their original wills are held by Essex Record Office).  However, testators with land in more than one archdeaconry had theirs proved in the London Consistory Court (i.e. the official copies of their wills will be held by the London Metropolitan Archives in London).  Therefore, many wills for the years 1520 to 1559 are missing for parishioners who were the ‘middling sort’ or elite (i.e. they owned land/property in both Great Dunmow and neighbouring villages or towns).  The missing registers almost exactly span the offices of two incumbents of the bishopric of London: Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop 1522 to 1530(6) ; and John Stokesley, bishop 1530 to 1539(7).   It could be speculated that the missing volumes were lost not long after these dates, perhaps handed over to the Elizabethan martyrologist, John Foxe, for his examination of early martyrs within the diocese of London.(8)

There is evidence within Great Dunmow’s Henrician churchwardens’ accounts which can also be used for will analysis.  These accounts document six gifts of money from named parishioners to the church, but the wills from these people have not survived.  However, as these donations were likely to have originated from wills, they have been included within this analysis.  For example, vicar Robert Sturton’s missing will would undoubtedly contain a bequest to the church, as there is a 1528 churchwardens’ accounts entry ‘of[f] wylyem sturton of ye gyfte of M[aster] Sturton sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche…liijs iiijd [53s 4d]’(9).   The churchwardens were diligent in recording bequests and gifts to the church in their accounts.  This can be detected from John Skylton’s will of 1533 in which he left a bequest of 13s 4d to the church.  This exact amount duly appeared in that year’s churchwardens’ accounts, given to the churchwardens by his wife.(10)   Therefore, there is credibility to include gifts recorded within the churchwardens’ accounts within this analysis of wills.

Above, Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (folio 9r) showing the gift from the former vicar. ‘Ite[m] Rec[ieved] of wylyem sturton of ye gyfe of M[aster] Sturton sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche liijs iiijd (53s 4d)‘.

Will of John Skylton of Great Dunmow (January 1533), Essex Record Office D/ABW 8/28.  The Tudor scribe who wrote the will (above) couldn’t write in straight lines! The request to the church starts on the third line… ‘hie awter [high altar – this is the end of Skylton’s tithe bequest] of the church – xxd [20d] also to the rep[er]ations [repairs] of the church of Du[n]mowe xiijs iiijd [13s 4d] also to the church of powles iiijd [4d – this is the bequest to St Paul’s cathedral in London]‘.

And here’s the entry in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts showing that his widow had duly handed over the bequest to the church ‘Ite[m] Rc [Received] of Jone [Joan] Skylton of the gyfte of John Skylton – xiijs iiijd [13s 4d]’.

Analysis of Soul Bequests
[The table below for soul bequests was originally on an A3 sheet of paper.  I have had to shrink it so that it fits this blog post.  Click it to display it within a new window and then use your zoom facility to increase the size of the text.  The wills for Elizabeth’s reign are only up until 1565 as this is the point my dissertation ended.]

Soul bequests within preambles of wills have been used by historians of Reformation England to ascertain religious changes.  A Catholic preamble would include words similar to ‘almyghtie god & to our blyssed lady saynt mary the virgyn & to all the holy company of heaven’(11).   An evangelical or Protestant might include words such as ‘Almighty God and his only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose previous death and passion I hope only to be saved’(12).   Somewhere in between would be other types of soul bequests.  Litzenberger divided her wills into three major categories: ‘Traditional’ [i.e. Catholic], ‘Ambiguous’, and ‘Protestant’, and within these categories, wills were further sub-divided.  Litzenberger’s categories have been used as a framework for the analysis of soul bequests for Great Dunmow’s wills; as demonstrated in Table 2.  Categorising soul bequests have to be handled with caution.  Wills were only ambiguous if there were no other bequests indicating that they were traditional.  Some wills contain either a final stipulation to the executors to provide for the wealth/health of the testator’s soul, or the bequest for ‘tithes forgotten’.  The existence of either clause, it can be argued, was the sign of a traditional will, as discussed below.  Moreover, ambiguity might have been a defence employed by traditionalists against an increasingly hostile environment.(13)    This strategy of ambiguity by traditionalists might account for the eight ambiguous Edwardian wills made during evangelical vicar Geoffrey Crisp’s time.  Furthermore, a Protestant was unlikely to use an ambiguous soul bequest and would almost certainly proclaim their religion in unmistakable language.(14)   Table 2 demonstrates there were no unquestionably Protestant soul bequests within the surviving wills of Great Dunmow.

Analysis of other bequests (not family)

There are other limitations when using wills for the analysis of religious belief.  Duffy comments ‘wills tell us more about the external constraints on testators than they do about shifting private belief.’(15)   External constraints could be the religious policy imposed by the monarch, for example, the Edwardian denouncement of purgatory, trentals and masses.(16)   There were other constraints, including the scribe who wrote the will and the testator’s witnesses.  Margaret Spufford, in her work on sixteenth and seventeenth century wills was the first historian to observe a will could be written by a scribe.(17)   She stated

A man lying on his death bed must have been much in the hands of the scribe writing his will.  He must have been asked specific questions about his temporal bequests, but unless he had strong religious convictions, the clause bequeathing the soul may well have reflected the opinion of the scribe or the formulary book the latter was using, rather than those of the testator. (18)

Some wills indisputably demonstrate the testator had not been influenced by a scribe or witness.  Great Dunmow’s Marian will of Thomas Baker contains a traditional soul bequest along with bequests for tithes forgotten; and, even more revealingly, an obit and a solemnly sang dirge.

A priest providing Extreme Unction (the Last Rites) to a man in bed, from Pontifical; Tabula (England, 1st quarter of the 15th century), British Library’s shelfmark Lansdowne 451 f.234.

There is evidence of a Henrician scribe who was active in two 1520s wills from Great Dunmow, and he possibly used a book containing standard formulaic clauses.  This type of precedent book was not unusual during the Tudor period.(19)   The will of widow Clemens Bowyer, dated February 1526, almost exactly mimics the earlier will of John Wakrell (October 1525).  Both wills have the same soul bequests (Catholic, as would be expected from this period); along with bequests to the high altar, to Saint John’s gild, to the church’ torches, and to the ‘moder holy chyrch of polye [St Paul’s] in London’.  Both wills have a bequest for an ‘honest prest to synge a tryntall [trental] for my sol & all crysten solls yn ye p[ar]rsche churche’.  However this is crossed out in Bowyer’s will.  It is possible the scribe copied the wording from his precedent book, and Bowyer made him cross it out.  Trentals were a series of 30 Masses performed within one year, with three Masses on each of the ten major feast-days of Christ and Mary; the priest also had to perform other liturgical duties throughout the year.(20)   This was a substantial undertaking, as demonstrated by Wakrell’s bequest of 10s for his trental.  Maybe Bowyer did not have sufficient funds, and so made the scribe delete the bequest.  This scribe was probably the parish priest, Sir William Wree who was witness to these and one other will.  Also witness to Wakrell’s will was former vicar, Robert Sturton, described as ‘p[ar]rsche prest’.  Sturton had resigned as vicar in 1523, so he was still performing some of his previous clerical duties.

Will of John Wakrell of Great Dunmow (October 1525), Essex Record Office D/ABW 39/7. The trental bequest reads (from the second word): ‘It[e]m I be q[u]esthe [bequeath] unto an honest prest to synge a tryntall [trental] for my sol [soul] & all crysten [Christian] solls [souls] yn ye p[ar]iche chyrch \of D[u]nmowe a fore sayde xs [10s]’.

Will of Clemens Boywer [Bowyer] of Great Dunmow (February 1526), Essex Record Office D/ABW 3/8. The first crossing out is the trental: ‘It[e]m I bequethe to han [sic] honest prest to sy [n] ge [sing] a try[n]tall [trental] yn ye p[ar]rshe of myche [Much i.e. ‘Great’] D[u]nmow aforsad’.  (Were pre-Reformation priests anything other than ‘honest’?)

Old St Paul’s Cathedral – the ‘moder[mother] holy chyrch of polye [Paul] in London’ mentioned by 7 testators of Tudor Great Dunmow. St Paul’s was the mother church of the Diocese of London, and this diocese included the parish of Great Dunmow. The cathedral was the largest church in England and had the tallest spire in England. The spire was struck by lightning in 1561 and not replaced. St Paul’s was destroyed in 1666 – a casualty of the Great Fire of London. Sir Christopher Wren designed the new cathedral – one of the iconic images of today’s London.

Witnesses to Wills
The vicars and priests of the parish were witnesses to many wills. However, the decline in priests as witnesses demonstrates fewer priests were within the parish after Henry VIII’s break with Rome.  Sir Edmund Clarke was witness to three traditional wills in the 1530s.  Evangelical vicar Crisp, was witness to two Edwardian wills in 1551 and 1553; both with ambiguous soul bequests to ‘almighty god, my maker and redeemer’.  Catholic vicar John Bird was witness to one traditional Marian will.  The vicars must have witnessed many wills and surely influenced some testators by imposing their own beliefs on their dying parishioners.  However, Elizabethan vicar, Richard Rogers, a former Protestant exile who spent Mary’s reign in Frankfurt,(21) did not enforce his beliefs on the wills of his parishioners.  Seven Elizabethan wills were written during his tenure, although he was not witness to any of them.  None of these wills were unequivocally and unmistakably Protestant: indeed the 1563 will of Gilbert Cooke had a traditional soul bequest including ‘the blesyd company of heavne’.

 Priest administering last rites
from The Dunois Hours (Paris, c. 1440 – c. 1450 (after 1436))
British Library’s shelfmark Yates Thompson 3 f.211 .

The limitations of using wills to determine religious belief
Wills do not always accurately reflect the complete representation of a testator’s religious beliefs.  In an investigation of late Medieval wills for All Saints, Bristol, the author of the study found the wills of some of the elite did not include bequests to the parish church.(22)    However, the parish’s Church Books demonstrate that during these testators’s lifetime, substantial gifts, such as gilding of the Lady altar, and the refurbishment of the rood loft, had been made to the church.  Furthermore, a wife often made donations after her husband’s death but during her lifetime, on behalf of them both.  This generosity would most likely not have appeared in either the husband’s or his widow’s wills.  This discrepancy between a testator’s will and the gifts made during their lifetime is also true within Great Dunmow.  For example, Miles Docleye’s Edwardian will of 1551 has an ambiguous soul bequest and only bequests to his family; there are no religious bequests.  It would appear his will was ambiguous but conforming to Edward’s Protestantism.  However, Docleye, who must have been at least in his 50s when he died, had given money to each of the parish’s seven collections for traditional religious items during the 1520s and 1530s.  It is impossible to determine if his beliefs had changed or if his will was conforming to Edwardian policy. It was probably the latter.  This one example demonstrates that the analysis of wills for religious beliefs has its limitations.  The laity of Great Dunmow had been investing in traditional religious artefacts throughout the 1520s and 1530s, but these donations are not apparent from their wills.

The importance of ‘tithes negligently forgotten’
The bequest to the high altar for ‘tithes negligently forgotten’ clause was an important part of pre-Reformation wills; and all ten Henrician wills have this bequest.  One of the duties of the parish priest was to pronounce the Great Excommunication or General Sentence to his parishioners four times a year.(23)   This proclaimed transgressions against the church; and debts (including unpaid tithes) were such transgressions.  The bequest ensured the testator cleared his or her debt to the church and so their soul could benefit from prayers.  Furthermore, unpaid debts meant the testator’s soul would be longer in purgatory, so this was an important bequest for traditional religion.  Henry VIII banned the reading of the General Sentence in parish churches because it was vehemently against those who appropriated Church property or contested the authority of the Church(24), and, of course,  Henry VIII had unquestionable contested the Pope’s authority in England.

This prohibition, along with the Edwardian theological retreat from the concept of purgatory,(25)  was perhaps the reason why none of Great Dunmow’s Edwardian wills have the tithes to the high altar bequest.  Moreover, the Great Dunmow’s high altar had been destroyed on the orders of Edward VI.(26)   However, four Marian wills do have the clause; of these, three also have a traditional soul bequest.  These four wills were written in 1557 and 1558; so it is possible this bequest was not included in earlier Marian wills because Great Dunmow’s high altar was still to be rebuilt after Catholic Mary came to the throne of England.  In Elizabeth’s reign, Elizabeth Dygbey’s will written in December 1558 (i.e. one month after Mary’s death), also had a traditional soul bequest, along with the tithes clause.  This was before the Marian high altar was taken down sometime between 1559 and 1561.(27)   In 1564, John Byckner used a variation of the tithes bequest for a will which was otherwise ambiguous; the high altar had again been destroyed, so he left his money for ‘tithes forgotten’  to the ‘curate’.  Byckner’s will is unusual because, apart from Dygbey’s will written shortly after Mary’s death, no other early Elizabethan will contains the tithes bequest.  If this John Byckner, a wax chandler, was the same John Byckner, who lived in the High Street in 1525-6,(28)  he would have been at least in his 60s and so perhaps had some of the old, traditional habits.  This confirms the remark, ‘Wills were made usually by the old, who were generally less open to new ideas than the young or middle aged.’(29)

A priest excommunicating a group of people by raising a candle
from Omne Bonum (Ebrietas-Humanus) (London, England, c.1360-c.1375)
British Library’s shelfmark Royal 6 E VII f.75v.

Conclusion
The analysis within this articles has demonstrated that bequests within wills alone cannot substantially confirm the religious faith of a testator.  However, it is clear that collectively the wills of Great Dunmow do demonstrate significant changes over time.  Bequests to the church almost totally stopped after Henry VIII’s reign, in all probability because his attack on traditional religious artefacts made parishioners cautious.  Not a single Edwardian testator made an unequivocally Protestant will, even with evangelical vicar Crisp present.  Mary’s reign demonstrated a shift back towards traditional religion, with bequests to the high altar, and obits.  The early years of Elizabeth’s reign demonstrate that wills had once again started to move away from traditional bequests.  However, external factors could influence a testator’s will, for example, religious changes enforced by the monarch, local vicars, scribes and witnesses, and the age of the testator.  Therefore wills cannot provide the complete account of the parishioners of Great Dunmow’s changing beliefs.  Moreover, Henrician and Marian anti-Catholic events did take place in the parish with the 1546 re-enactment of the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and Thomas Bowyer’s disobedience to the re-established Catholic Church.  Therefore, wills can provide only a limited narrative regarding the changes experienced by this parish during the Reformation.

Details of a funeral
from Book of Hours, Use of Sarum
(England, S. E. (Suffolk, Bury St Edmunds?), 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 15th century)
British Library’s shelfmark Arundel 302 f.77v.

Church End, Great Dunmow, postcard circa 1910-20.

Footnotes
(1) Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (2^nd edn., 2005), pp.515-21.
(2) Caroline Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540-1580 (Cambridge, 1997), pp.168-178.
(3) (n/a to this blog)
(4) This includes six monetary gifts, as documented in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, but a corresponding will has not survived.
(5) London Metropolitan Archives, Diocese of London Consistory Court Wills index (2011), (At the time of writing my dissertation, these indexes were in pdf file format and online at http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk.  However they do not appear to be there at present.)
(6) D. Newcombe, ‘Tunstal, Cuthbert’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online Edition, May 2011), http://www.oxforddnb.com
(7) Andrew Chibi, ‘Stokesley, John’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online Edition, May 2011), http://www.oxforddnb.com
(8) Personal correspondence, Richard Rex, Cambridge, March 2011.
(9) Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, fo.7r.
(10) Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, fol.18v.
(11)  Will of Katherine Smythe (1558), Essex Record Office, D/ABW/33/335.
(12) Margaret Spufford, ‘The Scribes of Villagers’ Wills in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and their influence’, Local Population Studies (1972), pp.28-43 at 29.
(13) Correspondence, Rex.
(14) Correspondence, Rex.
(15) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, p.508.
(16) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, p.505.
(17) Margaret Spufford, Scribes of Villagers’ Wills, pp.28-43.
(18) Margaret Spufford, Scribes of Villagers’ Wills, p30.
(19) Correspondence, Rex.
(20) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp.370-371.
(21) Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, 1966), p.273.
(22) Clive Burgess, ‘”By Quick and by Dead”: Wills and Pious Provision in Late Medieval Bristol’, The English Historical Review, 102 (October 1987), pp.837-858 at p.842.
(23) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp.356-7.
(24) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp.356-7.
(25) Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp.504.
(26) Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, fo.40v.
(27) Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, fo.44v.
(28) Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, fo.2v.
(29) Robert Whiting, Local Responses to the English Reformation (Basingstoke, 1998), p.130.
(30) The first two columns of Table 2 have been taken from Caroline Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540-1580 p.172

Notes
Great Dunmow’s original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced.  Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

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Richard ye was sonne to Richard Duwke of yorke & brother un to kyng Edward ye iiijth Was kyng after hys brother & raynyd ij yeres & lyth buryed at leator [Leicester]

So the council car park in Leicester has yielded up its secret.  The body discovered by archaeologists in September 2012 is that of King Richard III.  The analysis by today’s live conference at the University of Leicester was remarkable – there can be absolutely no doubt that they have got their man.  Science, genealogy and history all brought together with DNA analysis, wound analysis, genealogical and historical analysis to prove this.

The discovery is one of the most exciting historical events to happen in living memory.  Not because the discovery adds more to our historical understanding of Richard III: it doesn’t.  Or because it informs us of something that we didn’t already know: it doesn’t.  The discovery of his body merely confirms what we already knew: that Richard died a brutal death on the battlefield of Bosworth, and in death was not treated with dignity.

But more staggeringly, his re-interment in Leicester Cathedral will be a never to be repeated link from our modern-day present to our past: the burial of a king of England.  King Richard III – the last of the Plantagenets, the last truly medieval king, the last king of England to die in battle.  Or the child-murderer hunchbacked bogeyman of Shakespeare and English history?

With all that will be written and said about Richard III in the coming days and weeks, let us return to contemporary documents written during Richard’s life – along with snippets written afterwards by his nemeses, the Tudors.

Signature of Richard, Duke of Gloucester – future King Richard III

King Richard III

Royal arms of England supported by boars and surmounted by a crown from De re militari (the Book of Vegecye of Dedes of Knyghthode), (London, England, c1483-c1485), shelfmark Royal 18 A XII f.1

Royal arms Anne Neville (wife of Richard III) from De re militari (the Book of Vegecye of Dedes of Knyghthode), (London, England, c1483-c1485), shelfmark Royal 18 A XII f.49

The Genealogy of Richard III
The image at the start of this post is a small portion of The Biblical and genealogical chronicle from Adam and Eve to Edward VI, a remarkable document now in the care of the British Library. The chronicle is thought to have been written and illustrated circa 1511  (i.e. shortly after Henry VIII succeeded his father to the throne of England) with additions added by another hand after Edward VI’s death in 1553.  The book stayed in the possession of the kings and queens of England until it was given to the British Museum by King George IV in 1823. Below is the full image of the kings – a stupendous display of Tudor propaganda proving that they were the rightful monarchs of England.
The genealogy of the kings of England, including Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII from Biblical and genealogical chronicle from Adam and Eve to Edward VI (England, S. E. (London or Westminster), c. 1511 with additions before 1553) shelfmark King’s 395 ff.32v-33

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Book of Hours
Margaret Beaufort (born 1443, died 1509) was the mother of Henry VII.  Below is an image of the entry for August from her Book of Hours.  This Book was made between 1430 and 1443 and owned firstly by Margaret’s mother, Margaret Beauchamp (born 1405/6, died 1482), and then by Margaret.  Margaret appeared to use her Book of Hours as a calendar to record significant events in the lives of her son and grandchildren.  Thus, she used August to record her son’s landing at Milford Haven and the death of Richard III (we do not know if this is her hand or if a scribe wrote the entries for her).

‘August’ from The Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours (England, S. E. (London), c. 1430, before 1443) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f. 31v.

The first left margin note in black reads

The day landed king harry the vijth at milford have[n] the yere of o[u]r lord vijth cccc lxxxv [1485]

The second left margin note reads

The day king harri the vijth won[n] the feeld [field] wher was slayn ki[n]g Richard the third Ao Do[m] 1485

Postscript
Has the revival of interest in Richard III already started?  At a Christie’s auction of Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts held on 13 June 2012, a rare manuscript with Richard’s signature fetched £109,250 against an estimate of £10,000 to £15,000.  Two manuscripts signed by his usurper  Henry VII, fetched £7,500 and £8,750; whilst one signed by Henry VIII only managed £20,000.

Henry VII may have won the battle and the crown but Richard III will be the king that will experience a renaissance with the next generation of modern-day historians.

Tuck’s postcard Richard III from Kings and Queens circa 1902

Richard Plantagenet – Duke of Gloucester, Knight of the Garter, Lord High Constable of England, Lord High Admiral, Governor of the North of England, Chief Justice of North Wales, Chief Steward and Chamberlain of Wales, Commander in Chief, Lord Warden of the West Marches, Lord Protector of England,. King of England, France and Lord of Ireland

What do you think about the search and discovery of Richard III? Please do leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.

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Notes
Images from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Richard III – ‘I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not’
– School Trip Friday – Of cabbages and kings
– Shakespeare’s version of King Richard III

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

One more sleep until we find out if the body retrieved by University of Leicester’s archaeologists is that of King Richard III. In the meantime, here are some words and images of Shakespeare’s (and Tudor England’s) version of this much maligned king.

Act 1, Scene 2
Gloucester: Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have.
Some patient leisure to excuse myself.
Lady Anne: Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make
No excuse current, but to hang thyself.

Act 1, Scene 4
First Murderer: Offended us you have not, but the king.
Duke of Clarence: I shall be reconciled to him again.
Second Murderer: Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.

Act 2, Scene 1
Duke of Gloucester: Why, madam, have I offer’d love for this
To be so bouted in this royal presence?
Who knows not that the noble duke is dead?
You do him injury to scorn his corpse

Act 3, Scene 7
Duke of Buckingham: Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity:
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
True ornaments to know a holy man.

Act 5, Scene 3
Ghost of Anne: Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife,
That never slept a quiet hour with thee,
Now fills thy sleep with perturbations
To-morrow in the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!

Act 5, Scene 4
Richard III: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

English text taken from OpenSource Shakespeare online History of Richard
III (1592).  Images from Liebig’s Extract of Meat advertising trade cards series Richard III by Shakespeare published 1899.

What do you think about the search and possible discovery of Richard III? Please do leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.

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You may also be interested in the following posts
– Richard III lyth buryed at Leicester
– Richard III – ‘I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not’
– School Trip Friday – Of cabbages and kings

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

On the first day of each month, to each person you greet, it is traditional to give a (small!) pinch and punch whilst you recite the above ditty.  At the end, you must say ‘and no returns’ or ‘white rabbits’ to stop your poor victim from assailing you in return. At my school, it was tradition to return the compliment by saying – with the appropriate (gentle) actions: ‘Here’s a kick for being so quick’.

Instead of such extreme actions, how about you calm any such thoughts down by viewing the medieval calendar for February from the Macclesfield Psalter?

‘February’ folio 2v from The Macclesfield Psalter,
probably produced at Gorleston, East Anglia circa 1330
Gold & tempera on vellum, 17cm x 10.8cm,
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

If you want to read more about The Macclesfield Psalter from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the ‘Subscribe via Email’ button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do ‘Like’ it with the Facebook button below.

All digital images from the Macclesfield Psalter appear by courtesy of The Fitzwilliam Museum and may not be reproduced (© The Fitzwilliam Museum).

Further reading
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter: A Complete Facsimile (2008)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter Book (Cambridge, 2005)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter (PDF format on CD)(Cambridge, 2005)

My book

Please click the link below to purchase my local history book on historic town of Bishop’s Stortford

You may also be interested in the following
– January from The Macclesfield Psalter

– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts
– The Macclesfield Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

History is full of coincidences and ironies.  The date of 28th January is one such coincidence – 28 January 1457 and 28 January 1547 – two dates 90 years apart.  The former the date of birth of the first Tudor despot, the later the date of his son’s death, the most tyrannical Tudor monarch of all.

Calendar page for January with additions from three different handwritting: 1. the obit of Catherine de Valois and the date of marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (black ink); 2. the date of birth of Henry VII (in Latin – faded brown ink); and 3. the obit of Henry VIII (brown ink at bottom of folio), from Book of Hours (The ‘Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours’), Use of Sarum,  (England (London), after 1401, before 1415) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f.28 January

Below are close-ups of the entries for the birth of Henry VII and the death of Henry VIII.

Natale d[omi]ni Henrici filij Emundi comitis Richemondie ac d[omi]ne M[ar]rgarete vxoris sui filie Joh[ann]is nup[er] duc[?is] Somersete anno d[omi]ni millio cccc quinquagesimo sexto. Born Henry son of the Earl of Richmond and Margaret his wife daughter of John, Duke of Somerset 1456.  (Latin text kindly transcribed by Rob Ellis of Medieval London)

The xxviijth [28th] daie of January deceassd the noble prynce Henry the eight the yere of owr lorde 1546.

Although Henry VII’s date of birth was 1457, and Henry VIII’s date of death 1547, the years above of  1456 and 1546 are correct because these are contemporary entries written at times when the old Julian Calendar was still in use in England.  Until 1752, the 1st January was not the start of the New Year, but instead the change to a new year started on Lady Day (25th March).  Thus English documents written prior to 1752 will have any dates between 1st January and 24th March written in the Old Style.  Modern historians either have to adjust these dates to the New Style or ‘double date’ the entry to show both old and new date (e.g. the above dates would be dated ‘1456/7’ and ‘1546/7’).

Henry VII from Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons of York
(England, N. (York?), 2nd half of the 16th century)
shelfmark Egerton 2572 f.7.

Henry VIII from Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons of York
(England, N. (York?), 2nd half of the 16th century)
shelfmark Egerton 2572 f.8.

Henry VII giving the manuscript to the monks of Westminster
from Indenture for Henry VII’s Chapel (England, S. E. (London), 1504)
shelfmark Harley 1498 f.98.

Henry VIII praying in his bedchamber
from The Psalter of Henry VIII (England, S. E. (London), c1540-1541)
shelfmark Royal 2 A XVI f.3.

All images on this page are from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts and are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the ‘Subscribe via Email’ button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do ‘Like’ it with the Facebook button below. Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Prince Arthur, Prince of Wales
– Tudor Coronations
– Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 1
– Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 2 Henry in Love
– Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 3

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Last year, I posted my first article on Medieval and early Tudor trade: a series of posts which uses images to illustrate the trades that were predominant and powerful in medieval England.  Today’s post continues that theme – although some of the images have very loose connections to the trade which they are illustrating – but I hope you enjoy viewing the pictures anyway!

Bowyers (longbow makers)

An archer sitting on a grotesque creature shooting a hapless rabbit (folio 143v) from The Macclesfield Psalter, (East Anglia, England, circa 1330), © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Brewers

A sinful hermit sitting outside a tavern drinking ale; the alewife approaches him with a flagon from The Smithfield Decretals (France, Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century) shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f. 114v.

Broderers (embroiders)

Plaque on the wall of Gutter Lane, London, EC2 – the original site of Broders Hall which was destroyed in 1940 during The Blitz. The Worshipful Company of Broderers are now located in East Moseley and are strongly associated with The Royal School of Needlework who are based at Hampton Court.

Butchers

Smithfield Meat Market – London’s traditional livestock market for 900 years. ‘Smithfield, or “Smoothfield”, a plain, grassy space just outside the City Walls, was well known in the Middle Ages for its horse Market. In 1173 William FitzStephen, clerk to Thomas Becket, describes the area as “a smoth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendevous of fine horses to be sold.” There was also trading in sheep, pigs and cattle. In 1305 oxen were being sold for 5s 6d each. In 1400 the City of London was granted the tolls from the market by charter. Bartholomew Fair was held here from 1123 until its suppression for rowdiness and debauchery in 1855.’ (Ben Weinreb & Christopher Hibbert, ed, The London Encyclopaedia, (London, 1983) p.789.)

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All digital images from the Macclesfield Psalter appear by courtesy of The Fitzwilliam Museum and may not be reproduced (© The Fitzwilliam Museum).

All images are from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts and are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Image of Medieval and early Tudor trades – part 1
– My time at the Royal School of Needlework
– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts
– The Macclesfield Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

As an IT professional with over 25 years experience, I am almost ashamed to admit that the professional diligence I display during my working day wasn’t being applied in the evening to my blog.  So keen have I been to write stories of our past, that I hadn’t attended my blog’s housekeeping.  However, an enforced spell at home because of a post-New Year bout of flu for my son (and to a lesser extent, for me) has meant that I’ve had a chance to redress this.

So today’s post is tips about your WordPress blog’s housekeeping and security by using WordPress Plugins.  If your blog uses anything other than WordPress, then the principles will still be the same but the methodology different.   For all the security issues I mention below, I use WordPress Plugins.  Plugins are just little computer programmes (Apps) which can be easily installed onto your WordPress blog.  They are often written by third-party developers (i.e. not by the makers of the WordPress software) so there is sometimes a baffling amount out there.  The plugins you choose are very much down to your personal preference.  But before you install any plugin, ensure that your version of WordPress is up-to-date with the most current version – unless, of course, you are supa-techie and have customised your installation of WordPress.

Installing a WordPress Plugin
Let’s say that, for example, you want to find a plugin that stops the endless stream of spam to your blog. Follow the steps on the screenshots below (click on the screenshots to open them in new windows).

For each plugin you’re interested in, click its ‘Details’ hyperlink on the search screen (as above) to view the details of the plugin (see below).

When I select a plugin, I use the following criteria before installing it:

• Does is support my version of WordPress?  Your WordPress dashboard will show your version of WordPress.  The Plugin’s ‘Details’ page will show you if it will support your version.  Do not install any that are not for your version of WordPress – you may introduce a problem into your blog.
• Is the developer regularly maintaining the plugin?  If it is being regularly maintained then the developer has a vested interest in their plugin.  Therefore, they will be ensuring that it works correctly and will be improving it all the time to cater for new technology and new security breeches.
• Has it got good ratings from other people?
• Does it (seemingly) do what you want the plugin to do?
• If you are still unsure about the plugin, then use google to search out reviews for that particular plugin.  All the best plugins should have reviews somewhere on google.  I reviewed every plugin I installed – knowledge is power!

So now onto the type of plugins you should have installed.  I won’t tell you exactly what I have installed because it’ll be an open invitation to be hacked.

1. Backup your blog
You must backup your blog.  On the front-end, you blog appears to be a series of posts you have lovingly crafted.  But at the backend it is a complex database with entries for your posts, categories, pages, comments and a 101 other things! If the worst comes to the worst and you are hacked or your database corrupts, having a backup will ensure that you won’t have lost all your hard work.

Because I’m paranoid about being hacked (and you’ll see why further down my post), I use two Plugins to backup my blog to the Cloud, I also backup the entire blog to my computer and I print all my posts out so I have hard copies. Yep, I know the last stage is probably me being over paranoid  but a lot of hard work and research has gone into my posts.

How frequently you backup is down to you and how frequently you update your blog.

2. Stop spam comments
During the lifetime of my blog, I have received thousands of spam comments – normally goods purporting to be from well-known designers (but more likely fake).  The majority of spam can be stopped by adopting two or three methods.

a) Make sure your comments are moderated, i.e. they are not published to your blog until you have read them and approved them.

b) Install a plugin that forces a human response when writing a comment.  For example, my plugin for comments will force you to complete a simple maths question before you can leave your comment.  No computer-bot will be able to answer these questions.

c) The above two options will stop the majority of spam, but you will still get computer-generated spam.  So to stop it all, install an anti-spam plugin – I use the most commonly used one and it stops dead all my spam.  It has occasionally trapped a real comment so you will have to regularly check it to ensure everything there is really spam.

I must admit that every-now-and-again I do read my spam.  Some of the comments really do make me laugh-out-loud – they are so clever and so finely crafted by the spammers. But, sadly, have no place on my blog.

3. Beware of hackers
I always had the above two points covered on my site.  But this part I didn’t until very recently – and it scared me silly – hence today’s blog post.  Do you know who is trying to hack into your site?  Mine is a history hobby blog, surely noone would hack me? WRONG! I installed a plugin which fires an email to me if anyone tries to hack into my blog.  Within a the very first 48 hours, I received over 300 emails alerting me that ‘someone’ was trying to log into my blog.  Of that number, over 50 emails were generated because of a single sustained attack on my blog over a 10 minute period.   ‘Someone’ (or rather someone running a computer-generated script) sent a stream of requests trying to login into my site.  Another sustained attack came from a well-known company who used about 20 different IP addresses.  Googling this company showed many many complaints on the internet all dating from January 2013.  One person complained to the MD, only to receive a ‘denial of service’ attack on his website.  So for obvious reasons I won’t name them here.

So tighten up your security.  Most hackers are like normal thieves – they are opportunist in nature so if your security is tight, they might give up and go away to the next poor person. Again, for obvious reasons I am not going to tell you what I’ve done to my security.  If you use any of my points below, ensure you do it calmly and not in a panic.  Take your time over each step.  Remember, you may end up locking yourself out of your own website (I did… Several times!) so ensure you have plenty of uninterrupted time to resolve any problems as they arise.  And backup your blog first.

a) Ensure that any passwords for your blog are super-tight.  No password is unbreakable but you can use very strong passwords to thwart hacking attempts.

b) If you are setting up a new WordPress blog, DO NOT use the username ‘admin’ – 90% of attacks will be aimed directly at this out-of-the-box name.  If you have already set up your blog, then you won’t be able to change the name.  Google the steps that you can take to secure your ‘admin’ user.

c) Install a plugin which will give you an extra layer of protection on the login-form to stop a human trying to login.  This won’t stop the computer-bots, but it will stop humans hacking.  Make your human-hacker work hard and have to guess at more than just the username and password before they can attack your blog.

d) Install a plugin that will send you an email when an attempt is made to login into your blog.  Your chosen plugin has to alert you both to the fact that the login-form has been reached (for human-hackers) and that at attempt has been made to login (the computer-bot will not reach the login page).   This part is the scary one because you will probably receive a stream of emails in your first 48 hours.  So set aside some time when you do this calmly without panicking that you are under attack!  Studying the emails will show you that sometimes the login-form has been reached but then no attempt was made to login (a human nosy-parker scared off from actually logging in?).  Other emails will show that the login page was never reached – the computer-bot hacker went straight in for the kill.

For each email you get, you will be given the IP address of the hacker.  An IP is a unique string of numbers separated by periods which identifies each computer attached to the internet.  So knowing the IP address can sometimes give you information such as the location and company of the hacker.  Google ‘whois ip’ to find a list of online apps that will give you free-of-charge full details about your hacker.  Once you find out more details, you can see if you are under attack by one hacker using several different IP addresses, or if IPs from a particular company are attacking you.  The ‘whois’ will also show you if your hacker has a range of sequential IP addresses.  My most frequent hacker uses a large range of IP addresses (some sequential, others not) but they are all registered to the same company. Once you have the IP addresses (or the sequential range), you can either block them by using WordPress plugins or by using your web-hosting Security software – most web-hosting companies will provide this free of charge.  If you are getting a lot of hacking attempts from one particular country, you may decide to stop access of your blog from anyone in that country.   A drastic step, especially if your blog appeals internationally, but if needs must…

e) Obviously the above (blocking IP addresses) is almost after the event – the attempt has been made and even if you’ve blocked the IP, the hacker can often quickly move onto another IP and restart their attack on your site.  So install a plugin which will shut down your hackers access to your blog if ‘unusual’ behaviour occurs.  For example, you may wish to restrict the number of login attempts.  I caught one computer-bot hacker sending a continuous stream of login attempts.  So limiting the login attempts to a very low number cut them short and gave me their IP address so they’re now blocked.  Of course, limiting the number of logins may mean that you lock yourself out, so be careful with this (but at least you know now that your tighter security has worked!).  Plugins can also show unusual behaviour if ‘someone’ is trying to access an ‘adminy’ type page i.e. one that a normal visitor shouldn’t be accessing.  Once again, you’ll have the IP address so you can block them – obviously if it’s a real blog visitor then you’ve blocked them too but they shouldn’t be hunting around your website.  Plugins could also help you block activity if ‘someone’ is hitting a large number of pages over short time-period.  Again, you could be blocking genuine visitors or spiders (I managed to block a few search-engine spiders !Doh!).  If it’s a genuine visitor then they should have spent more than a nano-second reading your finely crafted post!!

(f) Install a plugin to scan your blog for any issues or problems.  These type of plugins should show up any successful hacking attempts or viruses on your blog. Run the scan regularly and make sure you action any security points it highlights.

For all the points I’ve covered above, I managed to block and lock myself out of my own blog countless times.  Remember, do this calmly and with plenty of time so you can undo any damage… One plugin I installed managed to lock out my ability to upload media files (images) to my blog – I just uninstalled and then reinstalled the plugin and everything worked fine again.

I hope today’s post has been helpful to you and, at the very least, has made you think about your blog’s security.   Remember, the above steps are PREVENTATIVE which is far better than cure (i.e. at the worst starting all over again, at the very least spending hours to restore your blog).

Have I missed anything out?  
Have you had to take additional steps to secure your blog?  
Please do email me and let me know if I’ve missed anything.
thenarrator[at]essexvoicespast.com

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Disclaimer:  If you decide to action any of these points on this post, you do so entirely at your own risk. The author and Essex Voices Past expressly disclaims all liability for actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the contents of this blog. This blog is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, security, accuracy and non-infringement.

Sometimes when I look through facsimile folios of the Macclesfield Psalter, I feel as though I’m playing a weird medieval game of ‘Where’s Wally?’.  There is so much to discover and so many creatures hiding on each folio!  At first glance, today’s image from the psalter is seemingly very plain (or plain by the standards of other folios within the psalter).  But look closer….

On this folio, see if you can discover
– a beautiful song-bird
– the heads of red devils
– a two-legged creature with the body of a bird but the head of floppy-eared dog
– two strange creatures with long snake-like necks and sharp claws
– the head of a bearded man growing in a flower

Click on the image to open a new window where you can use your browser’s zoom to see the illustration in its full glory (300-400% works best for me).

If you do spot Wally, please do let me know where he is!

Folio 19r from The Macclesfield Psalter,
probably produced at Gorleston, East Anglia circa 1330
Gold & tempera on vellum, 17cm x 10.8cm,
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

 If you want to read more  from my blog about The Macclesfield Psalter or about a life in a Tudor Essex town, please do subscribe either by using the ‘Subscribe via Email’ button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do ‘Like’ it with the Facebook button below.

All digital images from the Macclesfield Psalter appear by courtesy of The Fitzwilliam Museum and may not be reproduced (© The Fitzwilliam Museum).

Further reading
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter: A Complete Facsimile (2008)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter Book (Cambridge, 2005)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter (PDF format on CD)(Cambridge, 2005)

You may also be interested in the following
– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts
– The Macclesfield Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.