Line 5: Michaelmas Day is 29th September. Originally a medieval Catholic Saint’s day for St Michael, the Archangel, over time Michaelmas become one of the English legal system’s quarter days for paying landlords their rent.
Line 16: Wax for the rood light. The 14 pounds of wax detailed here is probably for the entire year. This is quite a substantial weight so the rood-light (i.e. the candle in front of the rood) must have been quite large. The rood was the cross at the entry to the chancel and often had images of the Virgin Mary on one side and St John on the other side. No evidence survives as to what Great Dunmow’s pre-Reformation rood looked like. As the church was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, it is likely that the pre-Reformation rood also contained the images of St Mary and St John. Sadly, very few English medieval roods survived the Reformation.
Line 21: corpraxis a cloth on which the host and the chalice was placed on during Mass.
Line 26: ob [in the money column] Latin abbreviation – short for obolus. One-half old penny.
Easter week in late medieval Great Dunmow Line 22: The sepulchre represented the tomb of Christ and was used (or created) in many medieval/pre-Reformation English Catholic churches during Easter week. From Good Friday until Easter Sunday, the church’s consecrated religious items were hidden in their sepulchre and a man was set to watch over the sepulchre night and day until Easter morning. During the reign of Henry VIII, in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, there are numerous references to pins, nails, lights and canopies for the sepulchre, along with payments to the sepulchre’s watcher. Watching over the sepulchre was a serious duty for the men of the parish as there are also references for charcoal for the fires burnt by these watchers.
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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Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)
1. Item payde to John Smethe ffor ye scaffalde tymber [Item paid to John Smith for the scaffold timber]
iis vd
2. Ite[m] for iiij day warke of Thomas Ventu[n] & won[e] off lad [Item for 4 days work off Thomas Ventun & one off lad]
ijs iiid
3. Ite to John harvuy & Wylyem barcar for a br\a/yde [Item to John Harvey & William Barker for a braid (rope)]
iijd
4. to helpe to make ye wynlas [to help make the windlass]
5. Item to John Marryou for won day werke [Item to John Mayor for one day’s work]
vid
6. to help make shorye ffor yt vyce [to make shore(??) for its vice)
7. Ite[m] payde ffor a toob & ij bells to fett watte[r] [Item paid for a tube & 2 bells to fetch water]
viid
8. Item payde for xij c [quart] of bykke [Item paid for 12 quarts of bricks]
iiijs viiid
9. Item payde to john smethe ffo carryyng of xiiij fote sto[n] from dytt[o]n [Item paid to 10. John Smith for carrying 14 foot of stone from Duton (Duton Hill – a nearby village)]
iiijs viijd
11. Item payd to More off chemysfford when he have ye bell [Item paid to More from Chelmsford when he have the bell]
viijs iiijd
12. Item payd to Wylla[m] & Arnolde ffor makyng inquer ffor ye ston att dytto[n] [Item paid to Wiliam & Arnold for making enquires for the stone at Duton (Hill)]
iiijd
13. Item payde to john skytto[n] ffor caryyng off sande & scaffald tymber [Item paid to John Skylton for carrying the sand and scaffold timber]
iijs iiid
14. Item payde to ye maso[n] ffor makying off ye steple
vii li vijs vjd [ie £7 7s 6d]
15. Item payde to M kynwelmerche for xij okys & for hardell rodds [Item paid to Mister Kynwelmarshe for 12 oaks & for hardell(??) rods]
xviijs
16. Laydeowte for ye belframe & ffor ye bell [HEADING – Laid out for the bell-frame & for the bell]
17. In primis ffor fellynge of xvj okys pryce [First, for felling of 16 oaks (trees) price]
ijs iiijd
18. Ite[m] ffor fellyng of viij okys in ye downe croft prce [Item for felling of 8 oaks in the Down Croft price]
xd
19. Item to Thomas Weytt ffor takyng down of ye olde belframe [Item to Thomas White for taking down of the old bell-frame]
vs
20. Item payde to harry longe ffor caryynge p[ar]te of ye tymber [Item paid to Harry Long for carrying part of the timber]
xxd
21. Item ffor ye borde ye same day [Item for the board (ie maybe accommodation?) the same day]
iid
22. Item ffor ij t[o]n of ston[e] yt lyis styll att Dyttin [Item for 2 tonnes of stone, it (or ‘which’) lies still at Duton (Hill) (ie it was still at Duton Hill at the time of this entry)]
xvs
23. Ite[m] ffor xiiij fote of ston yt John Smethe browte [Item for 14 feet of stone which John Smith brought]
vs
24. Ite payd to john skylto[n] for a dayes caryynge & a halfe [Item paid to John Skylton for a day and a half of carrying]
iijs
25. to carry tymber for the clotchall to say ye pesyd bell in [to carry timber for the ?? to say the ?? bell in]
26. Item payde to Robard kelynge & john marryou ffor [Item paid to Robert Kelynge & John Mayor for]
viijs
27. viij dayes wark abowte ye ffayde clochall ye su[m] [8 days work about the said clochall(??) the sum]
28. Item to Thom[a]s Savege ffor ix dayes wark [Item to Thomas Savage for 9 days work]
iijd
29. to helpe to cary ye tymber ffor ye bell fframe [to help to carry the timber for the bell frame]
30. & ffor ye clahall & to se ye warkemen have fyche thyngs as was nedfull [& for the clochall?? & to ?? the workman have fetched things as was needful]
31. Item ffor Sawynge to Wellem george [Item for sewing to William George]
viijd
32. Item ffor makynge clene of ye stepell [Item for making clean of the steeple]
vjd
33. Thys Sum xviij li xvii s [This sum £18 8s]
34. S[um]ma All?? xviij li xvs ixd [Summa of £18 15s 9d]
Line 6 – Vyce (or vice). According to A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages(1), this was a winding or spiral staircase. Was it a spiral staircase up the outside of the church, which, along with the windlass, was used in the construction of the building the spire?
Line 14, 33 & 34 – the text ‘li’ is the abbreviation for the Latin word libra i.e. ‘pound’ £.
Line 25, 27 & 30 – can anyone help me with this? I’m totally stuck on the word ‘clotchall’ or ‘clochall’?
Line 34 – summa Latin word which today is abbreviated to ‘sum’ i.e. total.
Great Dunmow’s church steeple Once again, we return to the fact that Great Dunmow doesn’t appear to have a church steeple in the modern era but the churchwardens’ accounts consistently refers to one. As can be seen on this folio, there was a lot of building work to make this steeple, which was constructed with a large amount of stone, timber and manual labour. Great Dunmow’s church does not have a steeple in the conventional sense of a steeple (i.e. there isn’t a spire). Could our Tudor scribe actually be describing the construction of the tower that is still there today? The Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages describes a steeple as being ‘a lofty erection attached to a church and intended chiefly to contain its bells’. As can be seen on this folio, there are many entries regarding the bell frame, so this definition would fit Great Dunmow’s church. The dictionary continues:
‘Steeple is a general term and applies to every appendage of this nature, whether its form classes it as a tower, or as a spire; or if it exhibits the ordinary arrangement of a tower surmounted by a spire’.(2)
The Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W T Scott, writing in the 1870s certainly puzzled over the steeple-less/spire-less tower at the church and supposed that a wooden spire had been constructed which had subsequently been destroyed. This implies that in his living memory (and the living memory of people purchasing his book), there wasn’t a steeple or spire. If the 1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple resulted in the construction of a wooden spire, if that original wooden spire was destroyed by, for example, fire, then surely that spire would have been rebuilt. Thus, there would be a record somewhere of the rebuilding of that Tudor spire and Victorian Scott most certainly would have known about it. But there isn’t. Nearby Thaxted’s and Saffron Walden’s churches both had their spires rebuilt after damage. Evidence of the rebuilding of both of these church spires survive. However, nothing has been documented about a spire in Great Dunmow. I am beginning to think that there was never a spire and that the building work paid for by the 1525-6 parish collection resulted in the ‘tower’ that can now be seen in the church.
(above) St John the Baptist church, Thaxted.(3): The tower was built in the late fifteenth century.(4) This 1776 engraving shows Thaxted’s original spire. The spire was rebuilt after it was hit by lightning in 1814, and remodelled on the original.(5)
Footnotes 1) John Britton, George Godwin, and John Le Keux, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (2010),p239.
2) Ibid, p221.
3) Robert Goadby, Cooper Engraving of Thaxted Church (1776).
4) James Bettley and Nikolaus Pevsner, Essex, The Buildings Of England (2007), p764.
5) Nikolaus Pevsner, Essex, (2nd edn.,1965), 380.
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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Anyone reading my blog will understand that I have a great love, appreciation, and passion for Tudor England. I can date the start of this passion back exactly to a time in the 1970s when the BBC did a lavish custom drama production of Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince & the Pauper’. I was never quite sure if it caught my imagination so much because Nicholas Lydhurst (later to go onto fame as the much loved Rodney Trotter) was in the starring role, or if it was because of the story of a prince and a pauper swapping places had me hooked.
To Mark Twain (and Nicholas Lyndhurst!), I offer my thanks for starting me on my life-long passion for Tudor England with its plots, intrigues and scheming that no other period in English history has had since.
I’ve just discovered that the BBC production has been uploaded to YouTube. I’m going to spend the rest of my Thankful Thursday watching it! In YouTube, search for “Prince and the Pauper” and ‘Nicholas Lyndhurst’ to find it.
(My other great love of a particular period in history is for the Great War and the trenches of Flanders-field – but my tales of the Great War will have to wait for another day and another blog.)
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Watching Helen Castor’s recent excellent BBC programme on the She-Wolves of England prompted me to write this post on ‘reading between the lines’ of primary source analysis. In my post, I will be considering ‘reading-between-the-lines’ in both the literal and also the metaphorical sense.
My last post on Palaeography and Old handwriting gave some tips on how to tackle the transcription of primary sources. Today’s post is about the benefits of transcribing your source word-for-word, which, coupled with some of the principles of unwitting testimony, can give you (perhaps) unexpected and surprising results.
For this, we will be looking at two ‘features’ of palaeography and primary sources
– Understanding why text has been inserted in your source
– Understanding why text has been deleted or strikethrough
Edward VI and Lady Jane Grey Consider king Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession(1). This is the document that the boy-king, Edward VI, wrote on his sick-bed shortly before he died on 6 July 1553. The Devise is a crucial document in the history of England because in it, Edward attempted to overturn his father’s will (Henry VIII) by making his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, his heir. Thus, Edward was attempting to bypass the royal rights of his two half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and by doing so, was ignoring no less than an act of parliament. In this document, (which we know was written by the dying king himself) if we include the struck-through text (ie the original text before it was deleted) but we ignore the inserted text, Edward wrote
‘To the L[ady] Frau[n]ceses heires masles, for lakke [lack] of such issu[e] to the L[ady] Janes heires masles. To the L[ady] Katerins [Katherine] heires masles. To the L[ady] Maries heires masles’.
In other words, the crown of England should first go to any male children of Lady Frances. If Lady Frances did not have any male children, then the crown would pass to any male children of Lady Jane [Grey]. If Jane did not have any male children, then onto Lady Katherine’s male children. Finally, if Katherine didn’t have any male children, then onto Lady Mary’s male children. Lady Frances Grey (Duchess of Suffolk), was the mother of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, Katherine and Mary. Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France, was Frances’ mother.
However, Edward was dying and time was running out for him and a fledgling Protestant England. Neither Frances nor her children had any male children so Edward wanted to ensure that the crown would go straight to Protestant Jane – so he altered his ‘Devise’. If we now ignore the original (but subsequently deleted) text and include the new inserted text, we have:
‘To the L[ady] Fra[n]ceses heires masles, if she have any such issu[e] before my death to the L[ady] Jane and her heirs masles’.
Edward was specifying that if Frances produced any male children before he died, then the crown would go to them, but without male heirs from Lady Frances, the crown would go directly to the Lady Jane Grey and then to her male children.
If, as historians, we had not transcribed the document properly and not correctly highlighted all the deletions and insertions as such, then our interpretation regarding the position of women in the early-modern period (and Helen Castor’s entire hypothesis on the She-wolves Queens of England!) would be blown out of the water. Edward VI had left his throne and the crown of England to a mere woman!
However, if we transcribe this manuscript correctly, showing all the deletions and insertions, then we get a truer picture as to what had really happened. Thus Edward’s Devise for the Succession should be transcribed as follows (the \ / indicates inserted text):-
‘….To the L[ady] Frau[n](ces ) \thissu [the issue] femal, as I have after declared/ ceses [ie Frances] heires masles , for lakke of \if she have any/ such issu[e] \befor[e] my death/ to the Lady Janes \and her/ heires masles…’
The dying king had no other option but without male heirs, on his death-bed, he had left England to Lady Jane Grey. Transcribing this document properly (by acknowledging the deleted and inserted text) shows just how remarkable the events that had unfolded during the final days of the boy-king’s life had been. And, the benefit of hindsight in history is a wonderful thing, by altering his Devise for the Succession, Edward VI had unknowingly passed the death sentence on poor tragic Lady Jane Grey.
Another example of Edward VI’s handwriting can be seen in this, his diary. Here Edward VI describes how he and Elizabeth learnt of their father’s death from his uncle Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, at Elizabeth’s Enfield residence on 30 January 1547.
Click this link, The Streatham Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, for a recently discovered portrait of Lady Jane Dudley (nee Grey) now in the possession of the National Portrait Gallery, London. (Copyright reasons restrict me from publishing it on my blog. It is a fascinating portrait, do look at it).
The tale of two early Tudor wills The example of Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession is an extreme example of ensuring that primary sources are correctly transcribed. In our own family history or local history research, it is unlikely that you would have to transcribe such as crucial document to history as this! However, when transcribing our own primary sources, we have to use judgement and other evidence to assess why text has been deleted or inserted and thus we have to ‘read-between-the-lines’.
During the research for my Cambridge University’s masters’ degree in local history, I studied a large number of Tudor wills written by the townsfolk of Great Dunmow. Two of these wills, when compared together, showed that the same text (a religious bequest) was included in both wills but had been struck out and therefore deleted from one.
The historian, Margaret Spufford, was one of the first historians to discuss the possibility that early-modern wills had been written by a scribe and that a dying testator could be influenced by such scribes.(2) Two wills from Great Dunmow written in the 1520s have evidence that there was a Henrician scribe active in the parish, and he had used a book containing standard formulaic clauses to create the wills of his clients. This type of ‘precedent book’ was not unusual during the Tudor period. The will of widow Clemens Bowyer, dated February 1526, almost exactly mimics the earlier will of John Wakrell (October 1525) and is in the same handwriting.(3) 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 [mother] holy chyrch of polye [St Paul’s] in London’. Both wills also 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, in Bowyer’s will , the bequest for her trental was entirely crossed through.
Did our scribe copy the wording from his precedent book, and widow Bowyer (or someone else present at her death-bed) make him cross it out after it had been written into the will? Trentals were a series of 30 Masses performed within one year of the person’s death, with three Masses on each of the ten major feast-days of Christ and the virgin Mary. The priest also had to perform other liturgical duties throughout the year.(4) This was a substantial undertaking, as demonstrated by Wakrell’s bequest of 10s to pay for his trental. Maybe widow Bowyer did not have sufficient funds, and so either she or one of her children made the scribe delete the bequest before her death.
So, the various crossings-out in widow Bowyer’s will can be used as evidence that
the scribe in the parish was using a precedent book; and/or
the widow Bowyers (or the people present at her death) did not want the trental said after her death. This could be for either religious or monetary reasons. Because this will was written in the 1520s (when England was still very much a Catholic country), it is unlikely that the crossing-out was for religious reasons (and the other bequests in her will show a very Catholic will). Therefore a more likely reason for the striking through of the text was for monetary reasons.
Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts have a great deal of crossings-out and inserted text – as could be expected in an account-book that was written up maybe once a year when the accounts were tallied up. This post on the Tudor dialect of Great Dunmow has details about a crossing out of the word ‘my’ on one of the folios (folio 5r, line 20). Was the scribe (who wrote up Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts) copying word-for-word various people’s loose receipts into his account book? Were those loose receipts in front of him as he copied them into his book?
Conclusion When you are analysing your primary sources, don’t forget to work out why text has been deleted or inserted into your document. It could be for a very simple reason, but, as in the case of Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession, sometimes the reasons for altered text could be much more complex. As historians transcribing primary sources, we must ALWAYS include any text that has been struck-through or inserted. Our transcriptions MUST show which text has been inserted or deleted.
Don’t forget to read-between-the-lines of your primary source!
Footnotes 1) Edward VI My devise for the succession (July 1553), held at The Inner Template Library’s Manuscript Collection, London.
2) Margaret Spufford, ‘The Scribes of Villagers’ Wills in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and their influence’, in Local Population Studies (1972), 28-43 at 29.
3) Will of Clemens Boywer [Bowyer] of Great Dunmow (26 February 1526), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 3/8; Will of John Wakrell of Great Dunmow (19 October 1525), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 39/7. Both wills available online via subscription to Essex Record Office’s Essex Ancestors.
4) Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580 (2nd Edition, 2005) p370-371.
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London 1) Map of early modern London (1560-1640) Fully zoomable (using an experimental google-style layered map) and searchable: Map of Early Modern London.
2) Tallis’s London Street views (1838-1840) The nineteenth century’s equivalent of a modern-day street directory. This website doesn’t contain zoomable images but because Tallis’s maps are incredible resources for genealogists and local historians, I’ve included it: Tallis’s Street Views of London (and this link shows some of Tallis’s drawings for Bishopsgate). The Street View of Bishopsgate (below) is in my own personal collection. To my great delight, it contains the drawing of my ancestors’ factory (Robert and William Parnall) at 100 Bishopsgate.
Tallis’s Street View of Bishopsgate Without.
3) Richard Horwood’s Map of London (1792-1799) Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster,the Borough of Southwark, and Parts Adjoining (includes ‘every House’): Horwood’s Map of LondonUpdate June 2012: sadly this is now a broken link as the website no longer exists. If anyone finds another online map of Horwood’s London, please can you email me.
4) Locating London’s Past (using John Rocques’ 1746 map) The map uses a GIS interface to enable researchers to plot and chart data relating to London in the 17th and 18th century: Locating London’s Past.
5) William Newton’s London and Westminster in the time of Henry VIII (pre 1530) This map was made in 1855 and was compiled from documents and sources by Newton. The map is pre-Reformation and the 1530’s dissolution of the monasteries: London and Westminster in Henry VIII’s time. Update June 2012: sadly this is now a broken link as the website no longer exists. If anyone finds another online map of William Newton’s London, please can you email me.
Great Britain 6) The Gough Map of Great Britain (medieval c1360) Fully zoomable and searchable map of medieval England, Scotland and Wales. Searchable by using either the modern-day names or the medieval names of towns: Gough’s Map
Great Dunmow (Donemowe)
according to Gough’s Map of Great Britain.
7) John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain & counties (1611-12) John Speed’s Map of Great Britain and Ireland. The site is Cambridge University’s online zoomable website containing all John Speed proof maps including one of Great Britain and Ireland , and also images every 1600s county of England, Wales, Scotland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, and Ireland: John Speed’s proof maps.
There are plenty more websites out there which use modern-day technology on old maps. If you know of any others, please let me know.
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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.
Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)
1
Item to Rychard scoryar for pavynge in ye cherche[Item to Richard Scoryar for paving in the church]
xd
2
&ffor mendyng of a hole on ye fuvll(??)[& for mending a hole on the ??]
3
Item payde ffor ye reste of ye gyldyng of owr ladye[Item paid for the rest of the gilding of Our Lady’s]
xijs iijd
4
tabarnakyll & all ye yrynwark yt longye ye to[tabernacle & all the ironwork it belongs to]
5
Item for curtan ryngs for ye same tabernakyll[Item for curtain rings for the same tabernacle]
iijd
6
Item \payde/ ffor parte off ye dore yt is sett on ye owte syde off ye new warke[Item paid for part of the door which is on the outside of the new work]
xijd
7
Layd owte ffor ye stepyll [heading][Laid out for the steeple]
8
In primis – ffor ij tun off ston wt ye carryynge[Firstly, for 2 tons of stone with the carrying (ie carriage)]
xxvis viijd
9
& Amd(??) all other costs & charge ye sum[& along?? all other costs & charges the sum]
10
Item payde to John Atkynson ffor viij dayes warke & halfe[Item paid to John Atkinson for 8 and a half days work]
ijs xd
11
to fett ye scaffalde tymber & to gay(??) roddye[to fetch the scaffold timber & to ????]
12
ffor to make ye hardylls wt dyvers oyr besynes[for to make the hardalls (handles?) with divers (ie sundry other) our business]
13
Item ffor ij dayes warke off henry longe & hys cart[Item for 2 dayes work from Henry Long & his cart]
iijs iiijd
14
to fett home tymber for ye scaffawde & ye bryke from ayston[to fetch home timber for the scaffold & the brick from Easton (ie either Great or Little Easton –nearby Essex villages)]
15
Item ffor ye borde thee(??) ij dayes[Item for the bord(er?) 2 days]
viijd
16
Item to Thomas Savage ffor xv dayes wark to[Item to Thomas Savage for 15 days work to]
vs
17
purvey pyce(??) stufe As ye workmen showelde need[?? ?? stuff as the workman should need]
18
Item& to sett them a werke & helpe to stage wt oyr[& to set them to work & help to stage with our]
19
Item ye same tyThomas for ij dayes jornay to camrege[Item the same Thomas for 2 dayes journay to Cambridge]
ijs
20
& to dyttun to seke for ye ston my hys costs for myhys horse & hyme\selfe/[& to Duton (Duton Hill, nearby Essex village) to seek for the stone his costs for his horse & himself]
21
Item ffor goynge to haddam to speke for ye lyme[Item for going to Haddam (a village in Hertfordshire – probably Much Haddam) to speek for the lime]
iijd
22
Item ffor goynge ij tymye to thaxsted for buttoll[Item for going 2 times to Thaxted (a nearby Essex town) for ??]
iiijd
23
to a made ye stagynge becawce he was expert in ye making[to make the staging because he was expert in the making (of this)]
24
Item ffor a load of lyme from haddam pryce[Item for a load of lime from Haddam (a village in Hertfordshire – probably Much Haddam), price
viijs
25
Item ffor a fewe of lyme fett att haddam wt ye cost[Item for a few(??) of lime fetched at Haddam with the cost]
xixd
26
Item ffor xij bosshall off shalnerd lyme[Item for 12 bushalls of ?? lime]
xviijd
27
Item ffor qrt naylle \and/ to john brewer of tayclay[Item for quart of nails and to John Brewer of Takeley (nearby Essex/Hertfordshire village)]
ijs ixd
28
Item payde to Thomas Averell fo nayle[Item paid to Thomas Averell for nails]
jd
29
Item ffor iij ston off scaffalde lyne <illegible> a half[Item for 3 stone(??) of scaffold line a half]
iiijd xd
30
Item for ij ropys to wynd up ye tymber & ston pryce[Item for 2 ropes to wind up the timber & stone, price]
iijs vd
31
Item to robarde kelynge ffo xxij dayes warke & half[Item to Robert Kelynge for 22 dayes work]
xis
32
for to make ye stagynge wt oyr besynes wt mete & drynk[for to make the staging with our business with meat & drink]
33
Item to Thomas dygby for iiij dayes warke &[Item to Thomas Digby for 3 days work &]
xixd
34
for to make hardell for ye stagynge[for to make the hardall(??) for the staging]
35
Item for mete & drynke \when we/ wente to choce ye okye[Item for meat & drink when we went to choose the oak
iiijd
36
Item ffor wex & for Rofyn for to mak syme(??) for ye stayer[Item for wax & for Ruffin(??) to make ?? for the stairs.
xiid
The Voice of Great Dunmow’s scribe This blog has many readers from the North Essex and Suffolk area. To them (and, of course, to my other readers too) I say… can’t you just hear the Suffolk accent shining through this folio! Say the names of the following villages and towns out loud and you will hear that scribe from five-hundred years ago! Remember, the scribe was writing phonetically, so pronounce each word out-loud phonetically and you will hear our long-dead, invisible, but always present, scribe.
Ayston (ie Great Easton or Little Easton)
Camrege (ie Cambridge – I love saying this one out loud… to start with, a nice hard ‘cAM’ and then growl out that ‘r’ to get the soft Suffolk burr to the ‘rege’! Wonderful!)
Dyttun (ie Duton Hill)
Tayclay (ie Takeley. This town is now pronounced ‘Take-Leigh’. So try out you best Tudor accent: try the ‘Tay’ and then sound out that ‘clay’!)
Thaxsted (ie Thaxted, everyone I know still pronounces this town’s name as Thaxsted, despite its modern day spelling! Thaxted is one of Essex’s jewels-in-the-crown of beautiful villages. The town has many medieval buildings still standing including the beautiful medieval church (pictured below) which is more like a cathedral in its dramatic size and dimensions and the town’s medieval guildhall. This town is well worth a visit to tourists visiting Great Britain. If anyone is visiting this area during June or July, then I strongly recommend the Thaxted Festival for an evening of beautiful music in a remarkable location.
Being able to ‘hear’ the sound of our Tudor scribe is the very reason why this blog is called Essex Voices Past and also why my pseudonym is ‘The Narrator’. I can only merely narrate the stories from Great Dunmow’s past, the Tudor scribe can speak perfectly well for himself.
Unwitting Testimony There are several items on this folio that we can use unwitting testimony to interpret the entry. For example:
Line 3: ‘paid for the rest of the gilding of Our Lady’s Tabernacle’. Although we are now five folios into the leather-bound churchwardens’ book, we are still on in the first year of the accounts recorded within it. Therefore, this entry implies a couple of things, firstly the initial gilding was done (or paid for) prior to the start of the account-book (so perhaps in the years 1524-5), and secondly that the tabernacle must have been large because the payment was in (at least) two parts and this instalment was for 12s 4d (a significant sum).
Line 6: ‘New work’. What new work? It’s not itemised in the accounts and so must have occurred prior to the start of the churchwardens’ accounts in 1525-6. The very way it’s described implies that this was an area of the church that everyone knew as the ‘new work’.
Line 20: the crossed out ‘my’. This is intriguing. Was Thomas Savage the unknown scribe? Unlikely, as he was the churchwarden. Also, the entries on this folio imply that he was the builder commissioned to build the steeple (and the person who contributed the largest amount towards the same steeple!) Maybe the scribe was copying entries into the leather-bound account-book from various people’s loose receipts and he was busy word-for-word copying Thomas Savage’s receipt and accidently wrote ‘my’.
Church Steeple Finally we are into the expenses for the building of the new church steeple. Anyone who has seen Great Dunmow’s beautiful church will know that there is certainly not a steeple in existence now (and the church hasn’t had one in living memory). However, here we have costs for the timber, the scaffolding, stones and limes. Perhaps the Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, was correct in his assessment that this merely for repairs, new windows and a wooden spire.
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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Click the picture of Hatfield Peverel’s witch (below) to read Part 1 of the story of Great Dunmow’s Elizabethan witches.
1566: The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde
There were two sets of husbands and wifes accused of witchcraft in the Elizabethan era in Great Dunmow: Alice & John Prestmary (1567), and Richard & Joan Prestmary (1578). The calendars of the Assizes and the Queen’s Bench Indictments containing the Prestmary trials have survived and are now held by Essex Record Office. These contain the only surviving official records of these two cases. The authorities did not directly accuse John Prestmary of witchcraft and so isn’t named in any of the Assize trials. However, as will become clear in this post, there is enough circumstantial evidence to support my theory that he must have been involved in some way with his wife’s actions.
The Prestmarys of early-modern Great Dunmow have not been comprehensively researched by other historians. This is probably because it was previously thought that there was no other surviving evidence regarding the Prestmarys, such as contemporary pamphlets. Contemporary pamphlets are much used by historians as resources to be analysed for the causes, consequences and responses to witchcraft in early-modern England. Two such pamphlets are: The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde(1566) and The apprehension and confession of three notorious witches. Arreigned and by iustice condemned and executed at Chelmes-forde, in the Countye of Essex, (1589). Therefore, with such limited sources available to historians for their research, this is perhaps why the Prestmarys have not been comprehensively documented in the secondary literature before now.
However evidence regarding the Prestmarys have survived in the form of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts and the town’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns. Part 1of this story discussed the surviving 1567 legal documents around Alice and John Prestmary. To recap the official documents:
On the 1st February, Alice Prestmary of Great Dunmow, wife of John Prestmary, bewitched Robert Parker’s son, Edward ‘putting him peril of his life, so that his life is despaired of’.(1) At her trial at the Brentwood Assizes on 13 March, she pleaded not guilty but was found guilty. However, she died of ‘a fever’ (possibly gaol fever) in Colchester gaol on 7 May, which, according to the official Inquisition into her death, was a‘visitation of God’.(2)
On the same day as the bewitchment of Edward Parker, the inquest into Alice’s husband’s suicide took place. John Prestmary, aged 60 years old, had hanged himself from a walnut tree in his garden on 30 January. Two days later, 1 February, his inquest took place.(3)
Suicide in early-modern England would have been considered an act of ‘self-murder’ and only something that could have occurred if the Devil himself had been involved. It is very likely that the inquest into John Prestmary’s suicide took place somewhere in the town of Great Dunmow itself. It cannot be coincidence that John Prestmary killed himself on 30 January and a two days later, his wife had bewitched a neighbour’s child. The official records are silent on the events in Great Dunmow so we can only guess at what had taken place during that January. Had Joan, the newly bereaved wife, attended her husband’s inquest? Did she blame the Parkers for the death of her husband? Was the mutterings and ramblings of a grief-stricken old woman taken to be the curses and incantations of a witch? Had there been a neighbourly dispute between the Prestmarys and the Parkers resulting in John’s suicide and Alice being tried as a witch? The official records are silent on all of this.
However, we can establish is that there had probably been some form of neighbourly dispute or ill-will between the Parkers (the accusers) and the Prestmarys (the accused). The evidence discussed below shows that both the Parkers and the Prestmarys were established families in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years before the 1567 trial.
The accused: the Prestmarys of Great Dunmow That John Prestmary was recorded in the legal records as being about 60 years old is crucial to constructing more background information about him. Taking his age-range to have actually been between 50 to 70 years old, this would give him a (wide) date of birth of between 1497 to 1517. Therefore, by the time of the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy and the first parish-wide church collection of 1525-6, John Prestmary would either have been too young to have paid the Lay Subsidy tax in 1523-4, or he was a young man in his twenties.
A John Prestmary is not recorded in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns(4) but he is in the1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple. In the parish collection, John Prestmary was recorded as living in the Bishopswood Quarter (an area to the south of the parish) and contributed 4d towards the church’s steeple. As has been discussed in previous posts, 4d was the equivalent of one day’s wage for a labourer and this was the amount that themajority of parishioners paid towards their church’s new steeple. There were no other ‘Prestmary’ families recorded in either the Lay Subsidy or the collection for the church’s steeple. As John Prestmary was not levied in the Lay Subsidy returns, this could mean that:
He was a pauper and therefore exempt from the tax. Or,
He was too young to pay the tax. However if this was the case, where (or with whom) was he living? No-one with the Prestmary name was recorded in Great Dunmow as paying the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy. Or,
He was not a local man but had arrived in Great Dunmow sometime between 1523 and 1525. According to Peter Higginbotham’s excellent website onEnglish Workhouses, part of theOrigins of the Old Poor Law (1601), was the statue passed in 1495: TheVagabonds and Beggars Act (11 Henry VII c.2), which stated
‘Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid.’
My interpretation of this Act is that if John Prestmary was a pauper from another parish, and that parish was in theHundred of Dunmow, he would not be returned to the parish of his birth. (This earlier Act was slightly different to the later1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor (the Old Poor Law), when a pauper would have been sent back to the parish were they were born.) I have not yet searched the Lay Subsidy returns for the other towns and villages in the Hundred of Dunmow. If I can’t find him listed elsewhere on other villages’ Lay Subsidy returns for the Hundred, then it is credible that he was a pauper and so exempt from Henry VIII’s tax.
At the moment, my evidence does point to John Prestmary being a pauper in the 1520s and so was exempt from paying the Lay Subsidy. However, he did pay the church’s unofficial tax: the levy for the church steeple – as seemed to have been the case with many other pauper donors. Of course, the John Prestmary recorded in the 1525-6 parish collection may not be the same John Prestmary who killed himself in 1567: the former could have been the latter’s father.
Prestmary evidence from within Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts is as follows:
1525-6 John Prestmary of Bishopswood Quarter contributed 4d towards the church’s steeple.(5)
1527-9 John Prestmery of Windmill Street contributed 2d towards the parish collection for the new bells. (6) Windmill Street is in the middle of town about a mile away from Bishopswood Quarter (Windmill Street’s modern day name is Rosemary Lane/The Downs.)
1529-30 Richard Prestmary contributed 1d towards the collection for the organs. (7) It is interesting that John Prestmary was not documented in this collection for the organ. This was the 3rd (and final) parish-wide collection conducted by the church. However, this collection recorded approximately 20 less names than the first collection and 10 less names than the second collection. There had been a devastating outbreak of the lethal sweating sickness in the late 1520s which had claimed many lives within England (it almost claimed the life of Anne Boleyn). So this could account for the drop in the total number of contributors to each collection but it doesn’t explain why John Prestmary’s name was missing. As the list of contributors to the parish collections only documented the heads-of-households, it is possible that John Prestmary (and family) were living with Richard Prestmary at the time of this collection.
John Prestmarie paid church rent of 10s – an amount that was for two years rent owed at the Feast of St Michael (Michaelmas – September) during the 5th and 6th year of either Edward VI’s reign or Mary’s reign (either 1551-2 or 1557-8).(8) For John to have paid rent at 5s per year means that by this time, he was certainly more effluent then he had been in the 1520s/1530s.
This all leads to the conclusion that by the time of the 1567 trial, the Prestmarys had been living in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years.
The accusers: the Parker families of Great Dunmow Now onto the Parker family, whose child, Edward, Alice Prestmary was accused of bewitching. This is harder to analyse and evaluate as there were so many Parkers in Great Dunmow between the 1520s and 1560s. Contributing towards the many parish collections were several John Parkers, a Richard Parker, two Robert Parkers, and a Mother Parker. Because there were so many Parkers in Great Dunmow, their trades were recorded alongside the majority of their names. Their recorded trades were fletcher, sawyer, butcher, tiller, labourer, tanner, brewer, and wheeler. From a distance of 500 years it is impossible to determine if (or how) they were all related to each other. However, it can be established that one of the John Parker’s almost certainly had at least two sons: Nicholas and Robert: ‘rec of Rbt Parker and Nycolas Parker for the buriall of olde Parker in the churche’(9). The many Parkers of Great Dunmow were also recorded in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns.
Therefore, by amalgamating the Parker evidence (from the Lay Subsidy returns, their trades, and the contributions to the various church collections) it can be shown that the various Parker families were certainly not amongst the poor of the parish. Indeed,John Parker, the Fletcher, was extremely wealthy and, according to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy was the richest man in the entire parish. His burial, costing 6s 8d, within the church building itself (i.e. not outside in a grave in the churchyard) also indicates that he was one of the elite of the parish. It was Robert Parker who accused Alice Prestmary of bewitching his son. There were two Robert Parkers assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy:
one who was assessed as having land to the value of 40s (the thirteenth wealthiest man in the parish);
and the other who was assessed as having goods to the value of 20s.
Throughout the 1520s to the 1560s, various Parkers were recorded as helping out with church business:
John Parker who played the fool at Christmas and gathered in money from the merry-making parishioners,(10);
Richard Parker who sold 24 paving slabs from recently dissolved Tilty Abbey to be laid in Great Dunmow’s church(11). (Is this the very first documented evidence of the infamous Essex man on the make with his equally infamous van?);
Mother Parker, widow of Thomas Parker, tenant of church land(12);
Parker who was paid by the churchwardens for destroying and removing the High Altar in Edward VI’s reign(13).
Several Parkers had been churchwardens, including Robert Parker, who had been one of thechurchwardens prior to the startof the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts, and then again in 1537-8 and 1538-9 (or was this the other Robert Parker?).
Whilst it cannot be pinpointed with any great certainity who exactly was the Robert Parker whose son was bewitched by Alice Prestmary, the evidence does establish that the Parkers had been in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years before the witchcraft trial of 1567. Moreover, in such a small parish of approximately 160 households, most of the Parkers were probably related to each other and they were either relatively well-off or amongst the top elite of the parish.
The tensions of early-modern communities Many historians of early-modern witchcraft have put forward the hypothesis that there were significant tensions within parish life during early-modern England. If previously good relationships broke down between neighbours, often the cry of witchcraft was heard in the village. There is also the premise that witchcraft accusations often resulted because of ‘charity denied’. That is, Person A (normally a poor woman) requested charity or help from Person B. Person B refused to help so Person A bewitched either them, their family or their livestock. Or conversely, Person B having refused to give help or charity to Person A, then accused Person A of witchcraft to expunge their guilt at denying the needed charity. Tensions between neighbours could be highly charged!
This hypothesis of neighbourly tensions exploding into witchcraft accusations had happened in 1567 in Great Dunmow. We will never know the precise details. However, what can be ascertained is that two families, who had lived in close proximity to each other in a small rural town for at least 40 years, ended up in a neighbourly dispute that caused one man to commit suicide, the imprisonment of his nearly bereaved widow in terrible gaol conditions, and her death from a disease caught whilst imprisoned. The Parkers, the richer and better connected family, had accused the Prestmarys, who were amongst the poor of the parish, of witchcraft. John Prestmary’s suicide and Alice’s death in prison from a ‘visitation of God’ no doubt confirmed to the Parkers (and other parishioners) the guilt of this pair of witches. Their deaths must also have conveniently obliterated any remorse that the Parkers might have felt at pointing the finger of accusation at their long-standing neighbours.
Death and burial of the Prestmarys I have yet to examine parish registers (births, deaths, and marriages) for Great Dunmow for this period to find all the Prestmarys and the Parkers. I would not expect to find any record of John Prestmary’s burial. As a suicide, he probably was buried at midnight, in unconsecrated land in the darkest corner and most isolated part of the parish church’s large graveyard (probably the most northern part). Alice, having died in Colchester gaol, would obviously not have been buried in Great Dunmow: her body was probably cast into an unmarked massive paupers grave within the castle’s grounds.
Digital images of theGreat Dunmow’s parish registers are all online from the Essex Record Office’s website. One day, when time allows, I want to look through them to see if I can find any more Prestmarys. Unless, of course, any of my blog readers has already done so or could help me? Searching the parish registers could give an answer as to how John & Alice were related to Richard Prestmary.
Richard and Joan Prestmary of Great Dunmow In the next part of this series, I will consider the second Prestmary couple accused of witchcraft: Richard and Joan Prestmary. To be continued…
Note on the Prestmary spelling So far in the records I have seen the name spelt as below. For uniformity my posts (unless quoting directly from primary sources) will use the most consistent spelling – ‘Prestmary’.
Prestmary
Prestmarye
Prestmery
Prestmarie
Presmary
Presmarye
Presmere
Presmere
Preistmarye
Prestmare
Preasmary
Footnotes 1) Calendar of Essex Assize File [ASS 35/9/2] Assizes held at Brentwood(13 March 1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 418/11/5. This case is detailed in J. S. Cockburn (editor), Calendar of Assize Records: Essex Indictments, Elizabeth I (London, 1978), p52. In Cockburn’s book, the citation is that the bewitchment took place on the 1st February. The E.R.O. record implies that the date of the Indictment (i.e. the date she was charged of the crime) was 1st February. I suppose it was possible that Alice was charged on the same day that the bewitchment took place.
2) Calendar of Queen’s Bench Indictments Ancient 619, Part I, (1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 428/1/14A.
3) Calendar of Queen’s Bench Indictments Ancient 617,Part I, (1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 428/1/12A.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), The National Archives, E179/108/161.
5) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P11/5/1 – folio 4r.
6) Ibid, folios 7r-9r 7) Ibid. folios 12v-14v. 8) Ibid, folio 42r. Dating entries on this folio is extremely difficult. Although this folio contains entries relating almost entirely to Mary’s reign, it was not written into the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts until the first year of Elizabeth’s reign. The clergy and churchwardens of Great Dunmow had been very lax in keeping their accounts formerly documented during the last few years of Edward VI’s reign and the whole of Mary’s reign. Thus, the accounts for Mary’s entire reign were written retrospectively on this and the following folios in 1558/9 (i.e. during Elizabeth’s reign). To add to this confusion, the 1558/9 scribe or churchwardens also mixed up entries from the final years of Edward VI’s reign. The entry for the John Prestmary’s rent states that the rent was for the 5th and 6th year but does not explicitly state which reign. The preceding entry explicitly states Edward’s reign but the following entry states Mary’s. So other entries on the same page cannot be used to fix the date of John Prestmary’s rent. Hence the uncertainty of about the precise date that he was tenant of church-land. A later blog post will explain in more details the difficulties analysing the Edwardian and Marian accounts.
9) Ibid, folio 39v
10) Ibid, folios 29r-30r.
11) Ibid, folios 24v-28v.
12) Ibid, folio 42r.
13) Ibid, folio 40v.
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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If you want to learn more about Essex’s witches, then you may be interested in my online course about the Witches of Elizabethan and Stuart Essex. Click the “Learn More” button below for full details.
Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts. In the spirit of one of his Prompts, Follow Friday, my post today contains my top 10 Essex related websites for genealogical and local history research.
2. Ancestor owned or ran a pub in Essex? Try Pub History
Royal Oak pub in Great Dunmow. Left picture has the figure of the landlord, James Nelson Kemp (my grandfather’s uncle), and the right picture is of his son, Gordon Parnall Kemp (my grandfather’s cousin), killed in the Great War and commemorated on the town’s War Memorial along with his brother, Harold.
4. The early-modern witches of Essex: http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/ (This site also contains an essay by me which I wrote when I first started my research into witchcraft in early-modern Essex – see if you can spot it!)
10. Website with links to early-modern and modern Essex: Genmaps – Essex
And, of course, if your ancestor lived in early-modern Great Dunmow, then this website, Essex Voice Past!
Another one to add to my list! Update 9 March 2012 at 19:30: I’ve realised I’ve made a glaring admission in my Top 10. This one is definitely up there amongst my favourite sites.
Was you ancestor in a workhouse? This is an amazing site, be prepared to lose a few hours pouring over it!: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/
Have I missed any of your favourites? Let me know…
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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.
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‘Three Holy Women at the Tomb, facing the text used to celebrate Easter mass’ from the Augsburg Sacramentary (Augsburg, Germany, 2nd or 3rd quarter 11th century),
‘Resurrection of Christ, at the beginning of Easter prayers’ from The Stowe Breviary (Norwich, England, between 1322 and 1325), shelfmark Stowe 12 f. 87,
‘Resurrection of Christ, from a liturgical text for Easter’ from A Dominican Antiphoner (North France, 1st quarter of the 14th century),
‘Resurrection of Christ, at the reading for Easter’ from Epistolary of the Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, 2nd or 3rd quarter 14th century),
Volvelle for calculating Easter and other movable feasts (England, 2nd half of 15th century), shelfmark Harley 941 f. 29v, © British Library Board.
Edward VI’s diary
Frontispiece with the arms of Edward VI, Shelfmark: Royal 16 E XXXII f.1v,
Tallis’s Street View of Bishopsgate Without. 
Great Dunmow (Donemowe)
The beautiful Thaxted church, home of the yearly 
