Today, 27th June, is the anniversary of the burning of thirteen people at Stratford le Bow in 1556, executed in the most horrible manner because of their religion and faith. It was the largest burning of a group of people in Tudor history, and this terrible spectacle was watched by a crowd of over 20,000 people.
Burning of 13 people (11 man and 2 woman) at Stratford le Bow June 1556,
from John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1570 edition), p2135.
The story regarding this terrible burning in London is being retold today by myself on Spitalfields Life blog here. The story of one of those victims who perished in Queen Mary Tudor’s flames, Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow is retold here at Essex Voices Past.
Piecing together details about these men and women is difficult because, apart from John Foxe’s book, there is not much surviving contemporary evidence, particularly as these were not high-profile victims. However, during my research of Tudor Great Dunmow, I have been able to piece together circumstantial evidence regarding the background of Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow.
According to John Foxe’s 1563 version of The Acts and Monuments (more commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs),
Thomas bowyer sayde he was brought before one maister Wiseman of Felsed, and by him was sent to Colchester castel, and from thence was caryed to Boner Byshop of London, to be by him further examined.
Colchester Castle – county gaol of Tudor Essex
Felsted is the neighbouring village to Great Dunmow and Master Wiseman was probably the local JP whom Bowyer was hauled before. It is curious that Bowyer was not taken to the magistrates in Essex’s county town of Chelmsford. However, there is possibly a reason for this (or rather, a person): Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich. Lord Rich, that arch-villain of Tudor history, was an enthusiastic persecutor of Essex Protestant heretics during the Marian years. This enthusiasm was in spite of his earlier zealous support of Henry VIII’s break from Rome (resulting in his betrayal of Sir Thomas More), and his support of Edward VI’s Protestant religious changes. One of Rich’s many manors included his great mansion, Leighs Priory, (located a very short distance from Felsted) a former religious house granted to him by Henry VIII at its dissolution in 1536. Thus, Rich had very strong connections to Felsted and was buried in the parish church in 1567. With the presence of Lord Rich in Felsted, this must have been the reason why Bowyer was taken there, and not to magistrates in Chelmsford. Foxe did record that another victim who died alongside Bowyer, George Searle from White Notley (a village a couple of miles from Felsted), was taken before Rich. So the supposition that Richard Rich was involved in the case of Thomas Bowyer is entirely plausible.
Leighs Priory, Felsted (also known as Lees and Leez),
home of Richard Rich, Lord Rich
That the small North Essex town of Great Dunmow had produced a weaver with such strong and unshakeable Protestant convictions is, on the surface, remarkable. However, the parish of Great Dunmow had already visibly demonstrated that many townsfolk supported Henry VIII’s break with Rome. This evidence is contained within an extraordinary folio of Great Dunmow’s beautifully tooled leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts, now in the care of Essex Record Office.
In the summer of 1546 (the final summer of Henry VIII’s life and reign), the townsfolk of Great Dunmow staged a remarkable anti-papist event involving the entire parish. It is very likely that an impressible 16 year old Thomas Bowyer was also present. This event took place during the parish’s annual Corpus Christi religious play when people from the neighbouring towns and villages came into Great Dunmow for the communal celebration of this Catholic religious feast-day. The churchwardens’ accounts itemise receipts for that year’s Corpus Christi play, followed by the money received from each named local village who attended the play (eleven villages in total).
Entries for Great Dunmow’s June 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day
(Essex Record Office, D/P 11/5/1 f.39v)
[heading] At our playe
[in the margin] Recepte at ye playe Receved at our play & fryste the games of of [sic] the bysshope of saynte andrews and for the shottyng of at the same viijsvijd Rec for the games of our runnyng ijsid Rec for the \games at the/ leapyng ijs Rec for the games of the casell and the shotyng of the same iiijs Rec for the games of the pryke and shotyng of the same xxsxd Rec for the games of the lade pryke and the games of the same vs
Deciphering this entry demonstrates that the people of Great Dunmow and surrounding villages had held an archery competition (the ‘shottyng’) which included shooting bows and arrows against an effigy of the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and at a structure which resembled the Archbishop’s Scottish castle (the ‘casell’). The ‘prykes’ were archery targets set at a specified number of paces away from the archer.
The reason for the staging of this remarkable event was because of a personal grudge of Great Dunmow’s evangelical vicar, Geoffrey Crispe MA, against Cardinal David Beaton. Beaton was the Catholic archbishop of Saint Andrews and the highest ranking cleric in a then Catholic Scotland. He had been murdered by Scottish Protestants in May 1546, three weeks previously to the feast-day of Corpus Christi, and his castle seiged. Beaton’s murder and the storming of his castle in Saint Andrews was in direct retaliation for him burning at the stake the Protestant Scottish martyr George Wishart a few months previously. Prior to his Protestant teachings in Scotland, George Wishart had been a lecturer at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – the same college and university where Great Dunmow’s vicar, Geoffrey Crispe, had studied and had been a fellow. The vicar of Great Dunmow, Geoffrey Crispe, was a contemporary, friend and associate of Protestant George Wishart.
Three weeks after the murder of Cardinal Beaton and 450 miles away, Great Dunmow used that year’s Corpus Christi feast-day to reenact his murder and the storming of his castle. An event which must have been instigated and supported by Wishart’s friend and colleague, vicar Geoffrey Crispe. This very public celebration of the cardinal’s murder demonstrates that by 1546 there was very strong anti-Pope (and probably anti-Scottish) feeling within Great Dunmow. Moreover, as Beaton’s murder was welcomed by the English king, Henry VIII, the town was visibly demonstrating their loyalty to their monarch. This folio within Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts contain the only evidence for this event, so it cannot be determined if the motivation behind the celebrations was inspired by Crisp’s personal affiliations to Wishart, or the parish’s loyalty to their sovereign, or their changing religious theology. It was probably a combination of all three.
George Wishart (b. c1513, d. 1 March 1546)
Cardinal David Beaton,
archbishop of Saint Andrews
(b. c1494, d. 29 May 1546)
Ruins of Cardinal Beaton’s castle in St Andrews, Scotland.
St Andrews’ castle – laid siege by Scottish Protestants in retaliation for the burning of George Wishart. The English parish of Great Dunmow and its neighbouring villages re-enacted the storming of this castle three weeks later.
It is likely that an impressionable 16 year old Thomas Bowyer had been present at the reenactment of the shooting of Catholic Cardinal Beaton and the storming of his castle. Furthermore, it is also probable that he was one of those young lads who took part in the ‘games of the lade pryke and the games of the same’. These activities during Corpus Christi 1546 was a clear demonstration of the anti-papist feelings within the parish of Great Dunmow, and its surrounding villages. Moreover, vicar Geoffrey Crispe had embraced these religious changes to such an extent that at some point during his 1540 to 1554 tenure of the living of Great Dunmow, he had married and so had a wife. Many parishioners, led by vicar Crispe, had started to embrace Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the changing religious wind blowing through England. However, in June 1556, ten years after Great Dunmow’s anti-papist Corpus Christi feast-day, Thomas Bowyer was burnt at the stake in Stratford le Bow in punishment for being a Protestant. The winds of religious change (Catholic this time, led by the Pope in Rome), instigated by a Tudor English monarch, had once more blown through England and reached the north Essex parish of Great Dunmow.
The narrative about Great Dunmow’s reenactment of the murder of Cardinal Beaton possibly explains why Thomas Bowyer had such strong Protestant convictions: he had probably learnt some of his faith through the parish’s anti-papist married vicar, Geoffrey Crispe. But who exactly was Thomas Bowyer of Great Dunmow, and how did he come to the attention of Bishop Bonner?
The Bowyer family of Great Dunmow occur within approximately ten legal documents, from 1483 to 1529, now held by Essex Record Office. The majority of these documents relate to land located near the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts also contain numerous entries from the reign of Henry VIII for various Bowyers. These entries include a 1536-7 gift from ‘old Thomas Bowyer’ of 3s 4d (possibly a bequest from his, now lost, will) and entries for Mother Bowyer of Parsonage Downs, and Richard Bowyer of Church End. Parsonage Downs and Church End are two locations within Great Dunmow near the parish church. Richard Bowyer was a tenant of church land from at least the 1530s and paid yearly rent to the church, as recorded in churchwardens’ accounts. The final entry for the payment of his rent occurred in the early years of Edward VI’s reign: Richard Bowyer’s tenancy of church land must have been terminated at the time of the 1547-8 crown investigations into church lands. The Bowyer family are also documented within Henry VIII’s 1523-1524 Lay Subsidy returns for Great Dunmow: Clemens Bower (the ‘Mother’ Bower in the churchwardens’ accounts) had goods to the value of £6 and paid 3d in taxes, and Johanne (or, more likely, John) was assessed at 26s 8d and paid 4d.
The records prove that the Bowyer family of Great Dunmow were of the middling sort and were tenants of church land. No records exist to connect the martyr Thomas Bowyer to these Bowyers and he is not named in the churchwarden accounts. However, it is possible that the ‘Old Thomas Bowyer’ documented in the accounts was the martyr’s close relation (perhaps his father). Moreover, a few hundred yards away from Richard Bowyer’s tenement at Church End and just past the area still known to this day as Parsonage Downs where Mother Bowyer lived, is a bridge over the River Chelmer called ‘Bowyers Bridge’. This is said locally to be so named to commemorate the Protestant martyr, Thomas Bowyer. The date when the bridge became named is unknown. However, its close proximately to the land tenanted by the Bowyer family cannot be coincidence.
Bowyers Bridge, on the way to Little Easton c1901-1910
If the martyr, Thomas Bowyer, was related to Richard Bowyer, tenant of church property, and the Old Thomas Bowyer who left money in his will to the parish church, then he would have been well-known to the vicars of Great Dunmow. By the time of Thomas Bowyer’s martyrdom in 1556, anti-papist vicar Geoffrey Crispe had been deprived of the parish of Great Dunmow (because of his marriage). The next vicar of Great Dunmow was Catholic Doctor John Bird – the former Bishop of Chester – who had been deprived of his bishopric because he had married during Edward VI’s reign. Bird, having cast aside his wife, arrived in Great Dunmow in 1554, and became the suffragan bishop (i.e. assistant) to the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. The same Bonner, who was the zealous oppressor and burner of Protestants within his diocese which included the parish of Great Dunmow.
Furthermore, because of an unfortunate incident by the vicar, which took place in front of Bishop Bonner in the parish church of Great Dunmow in July 1555, Bird would have been anxious to show Bonner his Catholic allegiance. For this story, we once again turn to the Elizabethan martyrologist, John Foxe, who gave a heavily biased account of this incident in an unpublished manuscript (Harleian MS 42 f.1r-v). According to Foxe, Bird’s sermon that day in front of Bishop Bonner was about the text ‘Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam’ (‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church’). Bird’s intention was to ‘prove the stability of St. Peter, and so successively of the Pope’s seat; but unfortunately wandered away into the account of St. Peter’s fall’ (W T Scott, Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or Pages from the History of Great Dunmow (1873) p57). Bonner was infuriated by this anti-papist sermon and
stood upon thorns, for he made face, his elbows itched, and so hard was his cushion whereon he sat, that many times during the sermon he stood up looking towards the suffragane, giving signs (and such signs as almost had speaking) to proceed to the full event of the cause in hand. (Harleian MS 42 quoted in Scott, p57.)
The outcome of this disastrous sermon was that vicar Bird broke down to the great distress of the parish’s Catholics and the jubilation of the Protestants (Scott, p58). Vicar Bird must have been an old man in his 60s at this time, and had lived through so many religious changes. So the direction this sermon took was probably caused by the ramblings and forgetfulness of an old man. Therefore, despite Foxe’s insinuations, this sermon was probably not a deliberate attempt to displease Bishop Bonner or to show Protestant beliefs. However, the sermon had displeased Bishop Bonner and vicar Bird probably would have done anything to restore himself to Bonner’s favour.
It is therefore little wonder that Thomas Bowyer of Great Dunmow, whose family had been in the parish since at least the 1480s, came to the attention of the authorities. With Bishop Bonner’s loyal assistant, Dr John Bird, being the Catholic vicar of Great Dunmow, and Lord Rich living nearby in Felsted, Thomas Bowyer would not have been passed over by the anti-Protestant tide of persecution for long. Hence, on 27th June 1556, Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow was burnt at the stake at Stratford le Bow in London alongside 10 men and 2 women.
Modern-day plaque on Bowyers Bridge, on the main road from Great Dunmow to Thaxted by the turning for the village of Little Easton. The age of Thomas Bowyer on the plaque is incorrect: according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Bowyer died aged 26.
Notes on the ‘bishop of Saint Andrews’ in the churchwardens’ accounts Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts has been much examined by historians of the Reformation, Corpus Christi plays and early-modern drama in England. However, the entries on folio 39v for the ‘bysshope of saynte andrews’ and ‘casell’ have been either incorrectly transcribed or misinterpreted. In the secondary literature, ‘casell’ has been transcribed as either ‘tavell’ or ‘tarell’, and then totally ignored, and the reference to the ‘Bishop of Saint Andrews’ has been totally misunderstood. One historian even asserted that the entry to the bishop meant that Great Dunmow was acting the masquerade of a boy-bishop. All historians who have analysed the churchwardens’ accounts have totally missed the connection between the vicar of Great Dunmow to the Scottish Protestant martyr, George Wishart. This connection explains why such an extraordinary event took place in Great Dunmow in June 1546. In the secondary literature, I have found no other references to an English parish celebrating the murder of the Scottish Catholic archbishop. My post today is the first time this connection, and Great Dunmow’s reenactment of the murder of Cardinal Beaton during Corpus Christi feast-day 1546, has been made public. I discovered it in 2011 whilst researching for my Cambridge University master’s degree.
The historian’s craft of teasing evidence from sources
My main break-through came after I had told myself countless times that what I was reading HAD to make sense. The churchwarden accounts were the financial records of a parish church and therefore had to contain information about money either coming in or going out, along with the reason for the income/expenditure. Furthermore, the churchwardens’ accounts were an open record so could be read by any contemporary church or state official so had to make sense in that context. Indeed, Eamon Duffy has argued that it is likely many parishes’ churchwardens read their accounts out loud in front of their parish in a manner similar to a modern-day public meeting. Therefore, the language used in some churchwardens’ accounts imitates the behaviour of the spoken word (Eamon Duffy, Voices of Morebath, p23-4). So I read out-loud the entries about the bishop of Saint Andrews – and, once again, I heard our Tudor scribe’s Essex/Suffolk voice shining down through the centuries. However, I was somewhat startled when the scribe’s soft ‘casell’ came out of my mouth as a loud and clear ‘castle’! By reading the entry aloud, I had cracked the secret of this folio! After that breakthrough, and with a little more research into the men who were the Tudor vicars of Great Dunmow, everything else slotted into place.
The historical analysis techniques I used to decipher Great Dunmow’s 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day are discussed in the posts listed below.
Parsonage Downs and Church End, home of the Bowyers of Great Dunmow
The pictures below are of Parsonage Downs (a small area of land located next to Bowyers Bridge) and Church End (a tiny hamlet next to the parish church). (Photos from 2012 and postcards from c1901-1910)
Parsonage Downs
Church End
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept 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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It has often been said that women are hidden from history because it is, in the main, only men who figure prominently in historical narratives. So my post today contains images of Medieval women at their daily work – spinning wool. The modern term ‘spinster’ comes from this medieval female occupation but it is now used when referring to an unmarried woman.
Royal 10 E IV f. 139 An amorous encounter – Woman spinning
Royal 10 E IV f. 142 Woman with spinning wheel
Royal 10 E IV f. 147 Woman at a spinning wheel
Royal 10 E IV f. 147v Man and woman by a spinning wheel
You may also be interested in the following books
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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.
I have long resisted the temptation to publish any stories from my own non-Essex family history on my blog. But today, because of this post with images of Spitalfields Market and Brushfield Street on the delicious Spitalfields Life blog and the recent BBC programme about the market traders of New Spitalfields Market, I can resist no longer. For the first time on my blog, I will be publishing a non-Essex story from the Victorian period. Although, if you persevere to the end of this post, you will see how this post is most definitely related to my interest in the local history of Great Dunmow.
I must be among a very rare number of 21st Century Londoners who can visit the East London home of my ancestors and walk in their steps. Many of my Victorian ancestors lived in the street of Bishopsgate in the City of London and its neighbouring street, Brushfield Street. Whilst I can no longer visit my ancestors’ substantial Victorian Bishopsgate home and factory, as it was compulsory purchased and swept away in the 1880s by the powerful Great Eastern Railway so they could build the mighty Great Eastern Hotel in its place, I can still visit my ‘ancestral’ home in Brushfield Street on the edge of Spitalfields Market. This market is an ancient market that lies on the edge of City of London and for centuries, was THE fruit and veg market of London. Sadly, now, as is the fate of many other ancient markets, it is the home of swanky boutiques, shops and posh eateries with house-prices to match. If you want to read about the history of the area, then I do recommend the Spitalfields Life blog.
One of the major roads next to Spitalfields Market is Brushfield Street. Up until the 1870s, Brushfield Street’s name was ‘Union Street East’. Halfway down, on the right-hand side is a parade of shops all dating from the 18th century. Many readers of my blog may be familiar with the restored lovely Victorian frontage of the food shop A Gold and the next door women’s fashion shop, Whistles.
Restored shop front of A. Gold, Brushfield Street
Brushfield Street
If you do know these two shops, have you ever looked up above their signage and spotted a small plaque on the wall in between the two? This is a plaque from 1871 marking the Christchurch Middlesex parish boundary.
Christchurch Parish Boundary marker in Brushfield Street
And here is the same plaque from a photo I took about 20 years ago before the area was redeveloped.
Brushfield Street
Brushfield Street in the late 1990s
There on the wall for all of London to see, is the name of my great-great grandfather, R. A. Cole!
Robert Andrew Cole was a grocer and tea-dealer – living above his shop and trading from the shop which is now Whistles. Robert Andrew, along with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth (nee Ollenbuttel) and their five children, William, Sarah, Margaret, Robert and Arthur, all lived in Brushfield Street/Union Street East for some 30 years from the 1850s until the 1880s when the market was redeveloped and Robert Andrew Cole retired to Walthamstow. As an aside, I do find it ironic that today’s swanky redeveloped Spitalfields Market is now known as Old Spitalfields Market. In Robert Andrew Cole’s day, it was a brand spanking new, and perhaps an unwanted market with posh new buildings! Its very existence and construction was probably one of the reasons why the Coles gave up their shop and retired to the countryside of Walthamstow.
For many years, Robert Andrew Cole was also a churchwarden of the nearby stunning Hawksmoor church, Christchurch, Spitalfields and also the Governor and Director of the Poor of the parish of Christchurch Spitalfields. So he must have been amongst some of the wealthiest of this poor east London parish. In circa 1869-1870, Union Street East was renamed to Brushfield Street, and it is possibly the renaming of this street which lead to the church boundary being marked in the wall in 1871. Hence churchwarden R. A. Cole’s name was recorded for posterity in the brick-work and fabric of Brushfield Street. He must have been a very proud man when his name was unveiled!
Brushfield Street with Hawksmoor’s Christ Church in the background
However, despite their standing in the community, the Cole’s time in Brushfield Street was not an entirely happy time. Two of the Cole children, Sarah Elizabeth and William Henry, succumbed to a devastating outbreak of scarletina– at that time a deadly infectious disease for many who caught it. Both children were buried in Tower Hamlets Cemetery on 2nd August 1857. William was aged only 22 months and Sarah was a month short of her 4th birthday. One can only imagine the pain and horror of their parents along with their fear and hope that their only surviving child, Robert, then aged 5, wouldn’t also fall victim to this terrible disease. This must have been an awful time for this one Victorian family living in the shadows of Christchurch Spitalfields and the fruit and veg market. However, their son Robert, didn’t become another victim (for, if he had, I wouldn’t be writing their story, as he’s my great-grandfather). Eight months after burying their two children, a new child, Margaret was born, and a further year later, Arthur was born. Sadly, Margaret also didn’t survive childhood and once again, in 1869, this small family of Union Street East buried one of their own in one of the two Cole family graves in Tower Hamlets Cemetery.
I have often pondered the fate of this small east-end family. Of the five children, only two survived into adulthood, and of those two, only one had children of his own. Arthur Cole died a bachelor in his 50s and was buried in the second Cole family grave in Tower Hamlets cemetery alongside his mother, grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles – true Londoners who had worked, lived and died in the eastend of the 18th and 19th century. Robert Andrew Cole, grocer and tea-dealer of Spitalfields Market, was buried in the same grave as his three children who hadn’t survived childhood. Robert Cole, the only child of Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth Cole who went on to marry and father his own children, married Louisa Parnall. Louisa was a member of a fantastically successful Welsh family of industrialists and philanthropists who had a substantial Victorian clothes-making factory on Bishopsgate: the Parnalls of Carmarthenshire and Bishopsgate.
As I said at the start of this post, it is not often a 21st century person can visit the home their Victorian ancestors within the East End of London. However, not only can I visit my ancestors home, but I can also see them and almost feel and touch them. Here are three members of the Cole family of Spitalfields Market in their Sunday-best finery, captured forever through the lens of the east-end photographer, Elias Gottheil, sometime in the mid 1860s.
Robert Andrew Cole, born 10 February 1819, Anthony Street, St George in the East, east London, baptised 7 March 1819 in the parish church of St George in the East. Married 25 December 1850 St Thomas’ Church, Stepney to Sarah Elizabeth Ollenbuttel. Died March 1895 in Walthamstow. Buried in one of two Cole family graves in Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Grocer and tea-dealer of Spitalfields Market for over 30 years. Upper churchwarden of Christchurch Spitalfields c1870-74, member of several parish committees such as the committee founded by G. Fournier in the 1840s to carry out charity-work, and Governor and Director of the poor of the parish.
Robert Cole – eldest child of Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth (nee Ollenbuttel) Cole, born 4 May 1852 in Tunbridge Wells (I have no idea why he was born here). Married 11 January 1880 in St Thomas, Mile End Old Town to Louisa Parnall (great-niece of Robert and Henry Parnall of Bishopsgate). Died 17 June 1927 in Raynes Park, South London. Buried in Putney Vale Cemetery, London. Grocer and teadealer.
Margaret Cole, baptised 28 March 1858 at Christchurch Spitalfields. Buried 20 January 1869 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery aged 11 years. The child in this photo looks to be about 7 or 8 years old, which dates all three photos to approximately the mid 1860s.
Robert Cole
Louisa Parnall
Robert Cole and Louisa Parnall. Tintype photos possibly taken at their betrothal, before their January 1880 marriage. It was Louisa Parnall’s sister, Alice Parnall, who along with her husband, James Nelson Kemp, left East London to live in Great Dunmow, first in the White Horse and then the Royal Oak. And, whilst I was researching the Parnall family and the Kemps of Great Dunmow in the Essex Record Office, I stumbled across the town’s Tudor churchwarden accounts and thus sparked the flame of my passion in discovering the lost voices of Tudor Great Dunmow.
If you are ever fortunate enough to be in the Spitalfields Market area of East London, take a stroll down Brushfield Street and look at the plaque there marking the parish boundary of Christchurch, Middlesex. Then look into the windows of Whistles women’s clothes shop and imagine the Victorian tragedy and triumph that went on between those four walls and the drama of the daily family life of the grocer and tea-dealer, Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth Cole.
My post Coronation and Diamond Jubilee Goldwork described how technically difficult and time-consuming it is to embroider the incredible goldwork that can be seen on royal, religious, ceremonial and military robes.
Above are some of the heraldic and religious ceremonial robes (many at least a hundred years old) from Tuesday’s Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. All robes are heavily embroidered with goldwork and must have been extremely heavy and uncomfortable to wear.
Day 8 – chip work. The dents in all the yellow felt are where I’ve started or finished a thread. A new thread is started by doing several tiny stab stiches (starting on top of the work) in an area that is going to be covered up later with stiches. No knots and no starting or finishing on the back of the fabric! In fact the only time you turn the fabric over is when securing plunged gold thread
Day 8 – Not too much fluff on the work – although there’s a couple of areas where there’s beeswax in tiny smudges
Day 8 – my working area. The metal object that’s part way on the purple velvet cutting board is called a mellor. It helps you to stop touching the gold and also to manovre the thread into exactly the correct place
Day 8 – the spots on the purple cutting board are a few gold chips ready to be sewn down
Day 8 – pins marking out the exact place where the spangles are going to be sewn down
Day 8 – first set of spangles. Each are sewn down with a tiny gold chip of bright check placed in the middle
Day 8 – both sides with spangles & gold chips
Day 8 – so much tissue paper to protect my work!
Day 8 – more chipping needed! However, the race is on because the gold threads already embroidered will start to tarnish (particularly in the chipping area) but the new bright check thread to be turned into chips will be all bright and shiny. It all needs to tarnish at the same rate.
Day 8 – all goldwork will eventually tarnish – some areas faster then others depending on the alloy in each type of metal thread. This is accelerated the more the threads are touched as moisture, grease etc from hands are transfered onto the threads and will spead up the tarnishing process. All gold thread should be kept in glycerine bags and then kept in a dark box/cupboard. Plastic bags should not be used because of moisture in the bags will attack the thread.
Day 8 – looking good! Although according to the RSN by the end of day 8 my work should be finished and mounted ready for marking. However I had to do a lot of work at home and completed all the chipping areas during several lengthy sessions of sewing just the bright check beads. This was surprisingly very therapeutic and I did the embroidery whilst listening to the audiobook of Hilary Mantal’s Wolf Hall on my iPod!
Day 8 – RSN trestles used for resting the slate frame on. These trestles are hand made for the RSN and are nearly £400 per set!!
Homework – Crown all done in bright check chips. The two ‘leaves’ above both sets of ‘spangled’ leaves are now fully bright check chipped. This all took about 7 hours to do
Homework – Only two areas of yellow felt now left to be sewn with bright check chips
Full of Essex girl bling!
Nearly finished – all the bright-check chip work is finished
Only the gold cut-work to be done on over the yellow soft-string padding
Still in it’s embroidery frame. The work has to be cut from the frame and then properly mounted.
Bling!
The remaining area to be embroidered
Spangles and bright-check chips
More spangles and chips
Day 9 – Cutwork – This part was by far the hardest to do. The few stiches in this picture took me nearly 3 hours! The gold splits and cracks very easily. If that happens, the stitch has to come out and a new piece of gold has to be cut and sewn in.
Day 9 – Cutwork – The gold has to be cut to the exact length – 1mm too long and the gold will crack & split as it is sewn in. 1mm to short and you will be able to see a gap. Both not allowed and will be marked down. So it’s precise work. The angle has to be perfect to. I have the habit of flipping my angles (I’m dyslexic and dyspraxic) and I find it very difficult to keep the correct degrees
Day 9 – Embroidery finished.
Day 9 – Cutwork – another problem is that you very easily loose your bearings on where the needle is going to come out (as you can’t “feel” the needle from the top side). Quite a few times, my needle came out exactly in the middle of a piece of gold – which, of course, then splits it and wrecks the stitch. So out comes the stitch! For every stitch you see on my dialgonal cut work, at least 3 others had to be ripped out and resewn. These 2 strips of cutwork took me 6 solid hours to do!
Day 9 – Top section
Day 9 – Bottom section
Day 9 – The debris from doing my cutwork. Lots and lots of pieces of gold that I’d either a) sewn in and then had to rip out (too short, too long, cracked, split, uncoiled) or b) had cut but never got to sew them in because they were wrong (eg split when they went on the needle or cracked because I looked at them the wrong way!)
Part of the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery is to learn how to properly mount a piece of fine embroidery (without glue,cello-tape or staple gun!!). This part of the course was just as hard as the embroidery and required brut force at many stages to force my embroidery to come together properly.
Day 10 – Mounting. My work is still in it’s embroidery frame. So here I’m using paper to meausure out how big the mount is going to be
Day 10 – Mounting. A running stitch is sewn all along the edge of the paper to give guidelines. This photo shows the running stitch on the right hand side of the work
Day 10 – Mounting. The running stitch is now marking out where the mount is going to be
Day 10 – Mounting. Measuring and cutting out the carrdboard mount. This is extremely thick conservation cardboard (either class 1 or Class A – can’t remember which)
Day 10 – Mounting. Underneath the cardboard is wadding. I can’t remember it’s name but it’s a type of wadding that I’ve never seen before – it looks a bit like a very soft baby’s wool blanket. Then a piece of calico is glued into place. Only a tiny bit of glue is used in strips just on the back of the cardboard. Of course it’s conservation glue!
Day 10 – Mounting. The top of my work is being pinned into place. But first it had to be very carefully unpicked from the slat-embroidery frame. The grain has to be even all the way around and no lumps or bumps anywhere. This was very time consuming and took over an hour just to get the fabric correctly placed with the grain exactly right and the pins all put in. The photo here shows only half the pins that the work ultimately had to have!
Day 10 – Mounting. Yikes. My work has had to be placed on a cushion of well-bundled up bubblewrap so that I can put it face down to work on it. The outside white fabric (with the black stitches) is the calico that my work was original stitched onto back on Day 1 and is the backing. There are hundreds of pins are all around the edge of the work attaching the work to the calicoed-board
Day 10 – Mounting. Excess fabric has been removed. This photo shows the start of the mitring of the corners – all of which are being pinned into place. The hands aren’t mine but my tutors (I needed help with this!)
Day 10 – Mounting. Look closely and you will see black herringbone stitches along the edge. The corner is about to be mitred using slip stitches.
Day 10 – Mounting. This particular corner was a nightmare as the stitches have to be pulled really taut and my thread snapped twice doing this which meant I had to unpick and start the corner again. As it was 5pm, I gave up had to start again the next day/ This has to be done all the way around and then a nice backing of a material called “sateen” slip-stitched onto the back.
Day 11 – Mounting. Using black double-threaded-waxed gutermanns thread didn’t work as it kept snapping on the corners. So instead I had to use white button-hole thread- much much stronger. The herringbone stitch shown on the back was covered up so it didn’t matter that it’s highly visible. The corners are slip-stitched and pull together so no thread is visible at all
Day 11 – Mounting. Corners and excess fabric being cut back
Day 11 – Mounting. Slip stiching the corner
Day 11 – Mounting. The white backing folded to size and then pinned to the back. I could have used black silk backing material but as it was my first marked piece, I was advised to use a white backing material
Day 11 – Mounting. Working from right to left, the area between the black pin and the red pin has been stitched into place with slip-stitches. Yeah – you can’t see my stitches!!!
Day 11 – Mounting. The backing has been slip stiched on
Day 11 – Mounting. Yeah – pins removed and the backing is all there! It’s taken so much effort to get the mounting and back done to perfection that I think I’ll frame it with glass on the back of the picture as well as on the front. That way I can flip the picture over onto the back so that people can admire my beautifully tiny stiches on the back!
Day 11 – Mounting. That’s it!! All done and finished. The final task was to remove all the pin holes around the edge of the work and remove any fluff etc on the work. My work was handed handed in and marked by 2 RSN-trained graduates and an external marker. (I got in the mid 70s%)
I finished this work sometime in 2010 but unfortunately have not been able to get back to the Hampton Court because of personal commitments. During 2011, in the days immediately after the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Royal School of Needlework was in the media spot-light because they made the beautiful lace in Kate’s dress. The course director of the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery (who, along with many other extremely talented tutors, had personally embroidered & made the lace for Kate’s wedding dress) contacted me and asked if the RSN could use my work in their display cases to show off the work of their students. I am very proud to say that my William Morris Flower is now in the display cases in the studios at the Royal School of Needlework in Hampton Court for visitors to look at.
My posts over the last couple of days have, I hope, shown the story of just one piece of goldwork. The next time you look at military, religious or royal robes embroidered with gold, think of those ladies (and men) of the Royal School of Needlework busy embroidering in their beautifully historic William and Mary apartments at Hampton Court. The RSN may not have been totally responsible for the craftsmanship in the ornate robes you saw in all the pageants that were part of this weekend’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. However, most likely one or more hardworking and extremely skilled craftsman responsible for those spectacular robes was probably trained at this incredible school.
The Lord Chancellor’s Purse for the Queen’s Speech
The Lord Chancellors Purse.
I wish I could say I embroidered this! But I didn’t. But I did get to touch it (gently and carefully) when I was at the RSN. This is a beautiful piece of State goldwork that the RSN first embroidered in 1984. It was brought to the RSN in 2010 for repair work before that year’s State Opening of Parliament. The top left tassel was very worn and needed repairing. Some of the embroidered goldwork needed replacing. The whole piece was very dusty and needed a good spruce up. What this photo doesn’t convey is that it is very large (for a purse!) and is in 3D. It’s about 3 foot square. It is also very heavy and the back shows a lot of wear and tear because whoever held it, had to balance it because of its weight (there is a much-worn handle on the back). The Lion and the Unicorn are both gold-stump work figures – ie heavily padded figures (padded with carpet-felt) that were made separately and then sewn onto the purse. The figures down the edges are the heads of angels and have the most beautiful faces. Again these are padded figures created separately and then sewn on. The stumpwork figures are about 2-3 inches in depth. The coat of arms uses a fabric called “Cloth of Gold” which, as the name implies is fabric woven with gold and is about £200 a metre. It is used by the Lord Chancellor to hold the Queen’s speech during the State Opening of Parliament.
Have you ever wondered how the beautiful Coronation robes were embroidered with such magnificent goldwork? Or how Kate Middleton’s dress was embroidered so beautifully for her wedding to Prince William? Or how was the amazing goldwork done on robes of the Herald’s of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant? Embroidery on royal or military robes and garments are incredible works requiring great skill and craftsmanship.
The only people able to embroider to such a high level of excellence are, of course, those trained by the remarkable Royal School of Needlework based in Hampton Court Palace.
Whilst I can never claim to being as skilled and as experienced as the embroiders (known as ‘apprentices’) who made the Queen’s Coronation Robes, I can claim first-hand knowledge of how difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery – and how rewarding it is. In 2010-2011, before my dissertation took hold of all my time and attention, I was fortunate enough to attend my first (out of four) embroidery techniques that comprise the Royal School of Needlework‘s Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery. The technique I choose to be my first (and to date, only technique) was goldwork.
To celebrate the final day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend, my post today is images of my time at the Royal School of Needlework. I hope these photos convey how technically difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery.
Day 1 – Finding a source for my work. I love the work of William Morris, so chose this pattern
Day 1 – the tiny portion of the amazing William Morris pattern which will form the basis of my work
Day 1 – Framing up. Attaching calico to a “slate” frame (which isn’t made of slate!)
Day 1 – Still framing up – this took hours!
Day 1 – My stitches aren’t very neat but it doesn’t matter because when I’d finished the work, I cut these stitches to remove the work from the frame
Day 1 – My design – this has been “pricked” so I can “pounce” it with white powder made from cuttlefish. The tracing is covered all along the design with
tiny pin-pricks about 2mm apart.
Day 1 – My black silk has been sewn to the calico backing (this took a couple of hours to do). Then the pricked tracing is placed over the black silk and “pounced”. The pounce is made of finely ground cuttle-fish which is then smeared over the tracing so the pounce falls through the tiny holes and leaves an outline on the black silk
Day 1 – All ready for the outline to be painted on.
Day 1 – This was so tricky as I don’t have a steady hand. Using a very fine paint-brush, the outline of the design is painted onto the black silk. It’s a bit too thick in place and too fine in others. When the goldwork is embroidered onto the fabric, it has got to cover all the paint lines so no lines are showing.
Day 1 – All framed, painted and ready to start…
Day 1 – My first bit of padding – a lot of the goldwork has padding underneath the metal threads to raise it up from the surface. This strip has 4 pieces of felt sewn down one on top of the other.
Day 1 – Some of the yellow padding. Most of this work has padding all over it before the gold can be applied.
Day 2 – It took me all day to sew the felt padding.
Day 2 – The 2 far out leaves have 2 layers of felt padding. The middle (of 3) long down felt padding is 4 layers, either side of this, it’s 1 layer. The 2 leaves on top/next to the down felt is also 4 layers. The top triangles are 3 layers. The upside down “crown” at the top has 3 layers of tiny circles and the 1 layer of upside down crown.
Day 2 – Urgh. I can’t believe how much fluff is on my lovely black silk!
Day 3 – Soft string padding. This is about 15 strands of thick soft string, heavily waxed with bees wax and then twisted together and tightly sewn down. It was a pain to do!
Day 3 – The beginnings of the 2nd section of waxed soft string
Day 3 – By the end of this day, a lot of my beautiful paintwork had started to brush off. Under the 2nd section of soft string, it had disappeared totally so the yellow lines you can see are from the tacking lines I’ve had to sew in to get back the outline
Day 3 – Lots and lots of tissue paper surround my work so it doesn’t get dirty! I get marks deducted if it is dirty or has wax marks on it. My little pin keep I made myself – it’s so handy.
Day 4 – On this day, I got to couch down some Japanese gold thread
Day 4 – All those little “tails” of gold thread had to be taken through the black silk and secured to the back of the picture. Taking the threads through the background fabric is called “plunging”
Day 4 – 2 sides of the stem are now done
Day 4 – The camera doesn’t really show the couching stiches. They are done in a “brick” stitch pattern
Day 5 – Middle section all couched down. Loads of tails that all need plunging
Day 5
Day 5
Day 5 – middle wavy section is three different threads – rocco, Japanese and twist
Day 5 – Bottom of stem have been plunged. Gold threads have been taken through to the back of the fabric by using a lasso of strong button-hole-cotton. The gold thread is threaded through the lasso and then the lasso is pulled tight from the other side of the fabric and with any luck the gold thread will pop through to the other side.
Day 5
Day 5- The back of the work with lots and lots of gold threads
Day 5
Day 5 – Every thread has been plunged (this took about 4 hours to do them all)
Day 5 – The back of the fabric. Now all these threads had to be securely sewn down in little bundles and the ends snipped off.
Day 6 – back of the fabric – top section of threads have been sewn down. Bottom section awaiting to be done
Day 6 – the only way to sew these little bundles of gold thread down is by using a curved needle. Using a straight normal needle is nearly impossible as the fabric is so taught and the gold threads so thick
Day 6 – Last few bundles to be done
Day 6 – All done
Day 6 – Sewing down the bundles took about 4 hours. Great care has to be taken where each bundle is sewn down to – its got to be on areas that doesn’t have to be sewn over later on. If I got it wrong, I’d be pushing a needle through fabric and the thick bundles of gold thread (ouch!)
Day 6 – Back to the top of the fabric. I’ve now outlined the left side leaves in pearl purl (or is it purl pearl?) Each leave is indiviually done and I had to work out which line belonged to which leaf
Day 6 – Close up of the pearl purl. My camera shows all the tiny piece of beeswax and fluff from the felt. The felt “leaks” fluff all the time. The pearl purl is sewn down with heavily bees-waxed cottom to make it stronger. It leaves tiny traces of bees-wax behind on the fabric. The next day’s job was to remove all the fluff and bees-wax from my work.
Day 6 – I did the gold swirlie bit on the right of the picture last minutes on day 5. But then I realised I hadn’t done it properly because I tried to loop around in curves at the top of swirlie bit but it just looked awful. So I had to unpick this entire section.
Day 7 – the re-sewn embroidery so that the swirls follow round and round in a spiral. It still wasn’t perfect – too much space between each swirl – but had to do.
Day 7 – both sides are now done in swirlie loops using gold passing thread.
Day 7 – from this close up you can see the swirls are by no means perfect. After I took this photo, the tutor had a good prod and poke arouond and evened up my swirls. The long gold thread hanging off to the left of the picture is pearl purl – used to outline things. Hard work couching it down as you have to pull the waxed thread through the little tiny gaps (pearls). The stitches end up being about 1mm in length
Day 7 – all the pearl is done. And 2 arches of rocco gold thread added to the black part at the top
Day 7 – so the 2 sides aren’t symmetrical! But it’s a flower and not supposed to be symmetrical.
Day 7
Day 7
Day 7 – This thread is called bright check. It’s cut into tiny tiny little beads that are then sewn down over the felt
Day 7 – this was to be cut into tiny tiny beads and then sewn down over the remaining yellow felt
Day 7 – half way down the thread is a bead cut from the bright check. The bead is about 2mm in length. That whole tiny area has to be full of hundreds beads with no spaces of yellow left
Day 7 – by the end of each day, my eyes were so tired that I just couldn’t see my goldwork anymore! The tiny gold mark towards the right (by the tissue paper) is where the bright check has very slightly frayed as it’s being cut leaving behind a tiny trace of gold wire and it has bounced onto my work (it brushed off)
Day 7 – as the bright check is cut into beads, it shatters and jumps all over the place. This is the lid of a jam pot so that when the beads jump, it’ll stay within the lid and not disappear. I should have put the lid on tissue paper, instead of straight onto my black silk – everything has to be protected so that no dirty marks are left behind.
My post on Elizabeth I’s visit to Great Dunmow discussed Elizabeth’s summer progress through the town on 25th August 1561. Today’s post is about the route she took and the houses she visited that summer.
Mary Hill Cole ‘s book The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999) lists the hosts and their houses visited. Looking at that list today, the venues now read as a who’s-who of 21st Century wedding venues and independent/private schools! I myself married at Layer Marney Towers (nr Colchester). It’s interesting to note that many of those hosts were descendants of Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich, that arch-villain of Tudor history.
– London (Robert Dudley), 24 June 1561.
– Charterhouse, London (Lord North), 10-14 July 1561
– Strand, London (William Cecil), 13 July 1561.
– Wanstead, Essex (Lord Rich), 14 July 1561.
– Havering, Essex, 14-19 July 1561.
– Pyrgo, Essex (Lord John Grey), 16 July 1561.
– Loughton Hall, Essex (Lord Darcy), 17 July 1561.
– Ingatestone Hall, Essex (Sir William Petre), 19-21 July 1561.
– New Hall, Essex (Earl of Sussex), 21-26 July 1561.
– Felix Hall (Henry Long), 26 July 1561.
– Colchester (Sir Thomas Lucas), 26-30 July 1561.
– Layer Marney (George Tuke),around 26-30 July
– St Osyth (Lord Darcy), 30 July to 2 August.
– Harwich, Essex, 2-5 August.
– Ipswich, Suffolk, 5-11 August.
– Shelley Hall, Suffolk (Philip Tilney), 11 August.
– Smallbridge, Suffolk (William Waldegrave), 11-14 August.
– Castle Hedingham (Earl of Oxford) 14-19 August.
– Gosfield Hall (Sir John Wentworth), 19-21 August.
– Leez Priory (Lord Rich), 21-25 August.
– Great Hallingbury (Lord Morley), 25-27 August 1561.
– Standon, Hert (Sir Ralph Sadler), 27-30 August 1561
– Hertford Castle, Herts, 30 August – 16 September.
– Hatfield, Hert (16 September?).
– Enfield, Middsex (16-22 September).
The cost of the Queen’s progress The cost to both the Queen and her hosts was extensive. The cost to Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall was £136, the Earl of Oxford spent £273 and to Lord Rich at Leighs (Leez) Priory was £389.
At its heart, then, challenge of travel for the royal household was a financial one, because the Queen spent more on food, supplies, and accommodation when on progress than when she remained in the London area….. For the 1561 progress into Essex and Suffolk, Thomas Weldon, cofferer of the household, kept a tally of the Queen’s expenses at each of the places she stayed during the seventy-six day trip. The court’s expenses varied from £83 to £146 per day, with a total cost of £8,540.
J. E. Archer, E. Goldring, and S. Knight (ed.), The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I
Below are 20th century images of the homes of some of Elizabeth’s hosts.
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept 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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Today is the much heralded and awaited day of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames. Ahead of the Royal Barge, Gloriana, and the boat carrying the Queen and her party, The Spirit of Chartwell, will be a belfry barge (the Ursula Catherine) carrying eight church bells specially cast for the Diamond Jubilee Pageant by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in East London. Bells in many of churches along the route of the River Thames’s Jubilee Pageant will be ringing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Many of these churches have been part of London’s rich heritage for hundreds of years.
Each bell on Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee bell belfry barge is named after a senior member of the British Royal Family.
Bell, Name of bell (Donated by) – Musical Note – Tenor, Elizabeth (Worshipful Company of Vintners) – G#;
– 7th, Philip (Worshipful Company of Dyers) – A#;
– 6th, Charles (Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers) – B#;
– 5th, Anne (Church of St James Garlickhythe) – C#;
– 4th, Andrew (The Bettinson family) – D#;
– 3rd, Edward (Joanna Warrand) – E#;
– 2nd, William (Stockwell family & Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers) – F##; and
– Treble, Henry (Harry) (Nicole Marie Kassimiotis & Worshipful Co. of Musicians) – G#. (Information from The Royal Jubilee Bells.)
Watch the BBC’s programme Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant Highlights to see the bells on the belfry barge. There’s a good clear shot of the barge and the bells starting at 29:41.
Church bells ringing to celebrate a British monarch is not a modern-day event but has its roots deep in our history. The image below is from the early fourteenth century and shows Henry III (born 1207, died 1272) on his throne beside Westminster Abbey and the Abbey’s bells.
Church bells were not just used to celebrate coronations and jubilees. My post, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow, detailed how the church bells of Great Dunmow rung out as Queen Elizabeth I took her royal progress through Essex and Suffolk in the summer 1561. Of course, the primary purpose of church bells in late medieval England was to call a parish’s Catholic community to prayer and so were significant religious objects. Surviving English churchwardens’ accounts from this period often detail the recasting and mending of their church’s bells, bell clappers and even the ropes. Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts are no exception and the accounts have many entries relating to the mending of bells at St Mary the Virgin. Along with mending their bells, the pre-Reformation parish of Great Dunmow also commissioned the casting a new Great Bell in the 1520s from an unnamed bell foundry in London.
The churchwarden accounts detail that between the years of 1527 and 1529, the parishioners of Great Dunmow collected £7 0s 7d for their new Great Bell to be installed in the parish church. This was a highly organised collection instigated by the parish’s pre-Reformation vicar, William Walton, and the local elite. This was the second in a series of seven collections organised by Walton to raise funds for church and religious artefacts. The first was for the church steeple. For the Great Bell collection, the 153 names of house-of-households, their location within Great Dunmow, and the amount each contributed were carefully and meticulously recorded for posterity within the churchwarden’s accounts. Cross referencing the lists of names for each collection with the returns from the 1520s Lay Subsidy Rolls (a tax enforced by Henry VIII) proves that contributions for the new Great Bell were made by nearly every household within the parish – including the parish’s clergy and paupers. Paupers, who were exempt from Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy tax, paid the unofficial church levy for the parish’s new bell. Many parishioners contributed the equivalent of a day’s pay (4d). The casting of a new church bell was a significant event in the life of this Tudor parish, as can be gleaned from the events surrounding the collection.
After the entries for the parish collection, the churchwardens’ accounts record a great flurry of activity. The churchwardens and local elite went back and forth to the bell-foundry in London to inspect the casting of their new bell. This incurred some expense as the men claimed their expenses for food & lodgings for their numerous trips from the church’s accounts. Finally the bell was ready to be taken back to the parish church. Whilst the accounts’ purpose was only to list the expenditure and receipts received/made by the parish church, they manage to convey the sense of triumph the entire parish must have felt when the elite were finally able to go to London to ‘fett home the bells’. They paid a staggering £10 to the bellfounder. A further £6 13s 4d was paid out by the parish church ‘for makynge a new flower [floor] in the stepell & a new belframe & new wheles & stoke all owre bells redy to go’. The accounts are silent as to whether or not there was a grand opening ceremony for the new bell – but I rather suspect that there was. The serious shortfall between the amount collected for the bell and the amount eventually paid out was not commented upon in the accounts!
The churchwardens’ accounts do not specify the name of the London bell foundry – just that the Great Bell was cast in London. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the makers of the Diamond Jubilee Bells, was founded in 1570 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. However, in recent years a historian has established a link from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to one Master Founder, Robert Chamberlain, who was active in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Thus, this Bell Foundry is thought to have been active as early as the 1400s during the medieval period. During the reign of Henry VIII, there can’t have been too many bell foundries in the London and it is likely that all the bell foundries would have been in the east outside the City walls. The noise, smell and risk of fire would have kept the foundries outside populated area and downwind from the prevailing winds coming from the west. There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the pre-Reformation church bells of Great Dunmow were cast in the same bell foundry that cast the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Bells, The Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
It was these same church-bells which rang out the joy of Queen Elizabeth’s summer progress through the parish over thirty years later on Monday 25th August 1561. Griff Rhys Jones, in the BBC’s new series on the Britain’s Lost Routes, charted Elizabeth’s 1570s progresses from Windsor Castle to Bristol. In his programme, he doesn’t comment on the church bells that must have rung out heralding the Queen’s progress. This is probably more because of the scarce survival of primary source evidence, rather than the pealing of the bells didn’t happen. Great Dunmow is lucky to have any surviving evidence – and this was only because the churchwardens meticulously recorded the expense of 8d paid out to the Good Wife Barker for her ale (Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts – folio 45v.)
There are no surviving church records of the churches in village surrounding Great Dunmow. However, it can be assumed that each village’s church rang out to celebrate the Queen’s progress: Felsted, Little Dunmow, Stebbing, Barnston, Great Dunmow, Little Canfield, Great Canfield, Takeley, and the villages of Hertfordshire surrounding Great Hallingbury. The ringing of the church bells would have been heard by all Elizabeth’s subjects during her progress through the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside.
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts Text in square [brackets] are The Narrator’s transcriptions. Line numbers are merely to assist the reader find their place on the digital image.
The original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1. All digital images 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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Sketch by Thomas Dugdale, c1848
Postcard c1901-1910
Postcard c1901-1910
Postcard c1901-1910
Ground plan c1807
Plan of the castle c1780
Burning of 13 people (11 man and 2 woman) at Stratford le Bow June 1556,
Leighs Priory, Felsted (also known as Lees and Leez),
Entries for Great Dunmow’s June 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day
Modern-day plaque on Bowyers Bridge, on the main road from Great Dunmow to Thaxted by the turning for the village of Little Easton. The age of Thomas Bowyer on the plaque is incorrect: according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Bowyer died aged 26.
Day 8 – chip work. The dents in all the yellow felt are where I’ve started or finished a thread. A new thread is started by doing several tiny stab stiches (starting on top of the work) in an area that is going to be covered up later with stiches. No knots and no starting or finishing on the back of the fabric! In fact the only time you turn the fabric over is when securing plunged gold thread
Day 8 – looking good! Although according to the RSN by the end of day 8 my work should be finished and mounted ready for marking. However I had to do a lot of work at home and completed all the chipping areas during several lengthy sessions of sewing just the bright check beads. This was surprisingly very therapeutic and I did the embroidery whilst listening to the audiobook of Hilary Mantal’s 
Day 10 – Mounting. Yikes. My work has had to be placed on a cushion of well-bundled up bubblewrap so that I can put it face down to work on it. The outside white fabric (with the black stitches) is the calico that my work was original stitched onto back on Day 1 and is the backing. There are hundreds of pins are all around the edge of the work attaching the work to the calicoed-board
Day 11 – Mounting. Using black double-threaded-waxed gutermanns thread didn’t work as it kept snapping on the corners. So instead I had to use white button-hole thread- much much stronger. The herringbone stitch shown on the back was covered up so it didn’t matter that it’s highly visible. The corners are slip-stitched and pull together so no thread is visible at all
Day 11 – Mounting. That’s it!! All done and finished. The final task was to remove all the pin holes around the edge of the work and remove any fluff etc on the work. My work was handed handed in and marked by 2 RSN-trained graduates and an external marker. (I got in the mid 70s%)
The Lord Chancellors Purse.
Day 7
Title page from the Bishops Bible (London, 1569),
© Essex Record Office, Map Showing the Royal Progress of 1561 (2008)
Canaletto’s River Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day 1746, © The Lobkowicz Collections
