Pseudo-Aristotle, Drawing of a sheep in a pen
from De caelo, De anima (England, 1487),
shelfmark: Sloane 748 f.60v, © British Library Board.

Pseudo-Aristotle, Two archers drawing their bows and a man stabbing a lion
from De caelo, De anima (England, 1487),
shelfmark: Sloane 748 f.25v, © British Library Board.

Pseudo-Aristotle,  A pig playing bagpipes, a jester, a man blowing a flute or pipe, & hybrid creatures
from De caelo, De anima (England, 1487),
shelfmark: Sloane 748 f.82v, © British Library Board.

Pseudo-Aristotle, An elephant, a ram, stags, a hare, dogs,
a bucket, & a man blowing a horn
from De caelo, De anima (England, 1487),
shelfmark: Sloane 748 f.131, © British Library Board.

All digital images from the British Library’s Online Images archive appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced © British Library Board.

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You may also be interested in the following
– Early-modern images
– Images of Medieval animals
– Images of Medieval music
– Images of Tudors
– Images of Medieval devils

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

How can contemporary maps help you understand your genealogical or local history research?  In this post, I will be considering Christopher Sexton’s 1576 map of Essex(1) and assess its benefit to my historical research on the town of Great Dunmow in the pre-Reformation period.  This map was commissioned as part of an atlas of England belonging to William Cecil, Lord Burghley(2), Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State. Click the map below to be taken to the British Library’s zoomable image.

 Christopher Sexton, Essexiae Comitat’ Nova Vera ac Absoluta Descriptio (1576)
Shelfmark: Royal MS. 18. D.III. ©British Library Board.

Using maps in local history research
Maps may provide not just a town’s geographical infrastructure such as roads and rivers, but also extra detail.  For example, Sexton’s map of Essex, with its small pictorial vignette of each church, showed me the precise location of each church in Great Dunmow’s neighbouring villages and towns.  Other maps of Essex from a later period give fantastic evidence as to the style, format and floor-plan of the houses depicted.  Examine the images of John Walker’s 1591 map of Chelmsford ‘A trew platt of the mannor and towne of Chellmisforde’ and see how each individual house in the town’s centre has been drawn on the map.

Great Dunmow, Sexton’s map and Corpus Christi plays
Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts documented many neighbouring Essex villages and towns, and even cities such as Cambridge and London.  Sexton’s map of Essex helped me track the various locations documented within the accounts and assess the assertions of various historians. In particular, the claims that during Henry VIII’s reign, a band of travelling players toured Great Dunmow’s neighbouring villages to perform plays on Corpus Christi feast-day and then returned home to Great Dunmow each night.  Sexton’s map helped me with my hypothesis that this could not have been the case.  Rather people from the neighbouring villages travelled into Great Dunmow to witness one central play on one single day.

Corpus Christi was a mid-Summer moveable feast-day that occurred on one given day.  The sheer distance between each village, and the number of locations itemised, would have meant that the players would have travelled to a maximum of 16 villages either on one single day or over a period of days.  Even if these players had performed in two villages per day, then the plays would have taken more than two weeks to be performed in all the named villages.  A two-week festival was hardly in keeping with a single feast-day that took place during the busy agricultural Summer months!  Last year, I tried to drive around the 16 villages named by the churchwardens in the 1530-2 accounts as having contributed money towards the feast of Corpus Christi.  Even with my super-dupa modern-sports car, I couldn’t drive to all the villages in a single day – let alone setup and perform a religious play!

Even through Sexton’s map was drawn 50 years after the period under my study, having his map has given more credibility to my supposition that neighbouring villagers travelled into Great Dunmow and not vice-versa.

Villages documented as attending Great Dunmow’s 1530-2 Corpus Christi play

Villages documented as attending Great Dunmow’s 1539-41 Corpus Christi play

I would strongly recommend that whenever possible you use contemporary maps when doing any local history research or any genealogical research.

You may also be interested in the following posts:
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts

Footnotes
1) Christopher Sexton, Essexiae Comitat’ Nova Vera ac Absoluta Descriptio (1576), Shelfmark: Royal MS. 18. D.III. ©British Library Board.
2) William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (consulted March 2012)
3) John Walker, A trew platt of the mannor and towne of Chellmisforde, (1591), Essex Record Office, D/DM P1 (consulted online March 2012)

Many of John Walker’s wonderful maps of sixteenth/seventeenth century Essex have been reprinted in the glorious book:-
A.C. Edwards and K.C. Newton, The Walkers of Hanningfield: Surveyors and Mapmakers Extraordinary, (London, 1985).  If you are interested in early-modern Essex or early-modern map making, then I thoroughly recommend this book.

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The craft of being a historian: Research Techniques
– The craft of being a historian: Analysing primary sources
– The craft of being a historian: Using maps for local history
– The craft of being a historian: Online resources

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)

Commentary
Yet another fascinating page from Great Dunmow’s history with so many interesting items.  On this folio, all the items are all expenses i.e. items purchased by the churchwardens on behalf of Great Dunmow’s parish church, as they were ‘Layde owte for ye cherche’.

Great Dunmow’s Black Morris Coat
One of the most important items on this folio is the entry 2^nd from bottom.

• An expense of 12d for ‘a blakk morres coatt’.

This can be transcribed as being a ‘Black Morris Coat’.  At some points in my research, I did wonder if this entry was actually a ‘Black Mores Coat’.  However, the entry very definitely shows a double ‘r’ and reading the accounts in their entirety many times over helped me hear the voice of the scribe and understand the dialect of Tudor Essex.  The double ‘r’ was meant to be pronounced, and this entry was certainly for a ‘Mor-ris’ coat, not a ‘Mores’ coat.

This entry for Great Dunmow’s Morris Coat has been much cited by historians of medieval and early-modern English drama, Morris Dancing, the Catholic ritual year, as well as English folklore.  If you have read any of the secondary literature on these topics and themes, then you will invariable find reference to Great Dunmow’s ‘Black Morris’ coat.  And this is the primary source entry for it!  However, this is the one and only documented reference to ‘Morris’ or ‘Black Morris’ in the entire hundred years of the surviving churchwardens’ accounts.  There are no other mentions.

The entry is very short and concise, so by using ‘Unwitting Testimony’, it could be surmised that the coat was not an extraordinary purchase but its cost was significant.  According to Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, a man’s labour for one day cost 4d.  Therefore, the purchase of this coat for 12d was a noteworthy sum of money.  Moreover, the accounts were very precise that this was just one coat: ‘a blakk morres coat’ (in the singular).  This coat must have been quite a spectacular item – full of finery and regalia. Today’s East Anglian modern revival of Molly Dancing is a thought to be a throw-back from English traditions performed at May Day and Plough Monday.  Perhaps Great Dunmow’s early-modern Black Morris coat was a very early version of the magnificent robes that now adorn the modern-day Molly Dancers of East Anglia.  On the previous folio of the churchwardens’ accounts (fol.4r), both May Day and the Plough-fest were itemised as bringing in revenue into the church.  Therefore, it was more than likely that this magnificent Black Morris Coat costing 12d was worn at either (or both) festivities.

Below are photos my son took of the Molly Dancers on New Years Day 2012 at The Hythe, Maldon.

Other items of interest on this folio

• Rood and Rood Loft;
• All Hallows Evening (the modern-day contraction of these words is ‘Halloween’);
• The image of Our Lady of Bedlam (Bethlehem);
• Sanctus bell (small hand-held bells)
• Lamp – whatever this lamp was, it must have been large as there was a substantial yearly maintenance cost for this particular year (1525-6).  This folio documents the purchase of 4 gallons of oil for it, 3 glasses (or panes of glass) to go in it, and the mending of its furnace.
• Lights – several ‘lights’ (ie candles) are documented on this folio.  These ‘lights’ (or candles) were all placed in front of a religious image or artefact.  Henry VIII’s increasingly attacked traditional (Catholic) religion throughout the 1530s and eventually lights were banned before almost all sacred images.  In Henry VIII’s 1538 Royal Injunctions (orchestrated by Thomas Cromwell), there were decrees against candles, tapers, and images of wax placed before any image or picture.  Lights were only allowed before the rood, sepulchre, and sacrament of the altar.(1)  Later folios of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts show that the church had complied with those Injunctions as there are fewer expenses for ‘lights’.

Footnotes
1) Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580, (2nd Edition, 2005), p407.

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

John Arderne’s Tudor woman and Tonsured man from Treatise on Surgery
(England, 1532) Shelfmark: Sloane 776, f. 26v & f. 252v. © British Library Board.

Miniature of a standing man and woman in a garden from The romance poem Roberte the Devyll (England, 2nd half of the 16th century, probably c. 1564)
Shelfmark: Egerton 3132A f. 2v.  © British Library Board.

Knight from The romance poem Roberte the Devyll (England, 2nd half of the 16th century, probably c. 1564) Shelfmark: Egerton 3132A f. 1.  © British Library Board.

Notes
All digital images from the British Library’s Online Images archive appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced © British Library Board.

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Henry VIII
– Elizabeth I
– Images of Tudors
– Images of Medieval devils

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Last week’s Tuesday Tip discussed the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source.  As a former history student of the UK’s Open University, I would be neglecting my training as a historian if I didn’t blog about ‘unwitting testimony’.  This term was invented by the much loved extraordinary Open University professor Arthur Marwick.  To quote this redoubtable historian

The phrase is … borrowed from the distinguished American historian of science, Henry Guerlac … `Witting’ means deliberate or intentional; `unwitting’ means unaware or unintentional. `Testimony’ means evidence. … it is the writer, creator, or creators of the document or source, who is, or are, intentional or unintentional, not the testimony itself … Witting testimony is the information or impression that the person or persons who originally compiled the document or source intended to convey … or record. … Unwitting testimony is evidence which historians find very useful, but which the originator of the document is not conscious might be conveyed to later historians, for it would be known anyway, or taken for granted, by contemporaries.(1)

So, what extra ‘unwitting’ information does your primary source give you that perhaps the source’s author didn’t intend to provide?

Elizabeth I
Let’s take an example of a primary source:  Elizabeth I’s 1588 speech to her troops at Tilbury just before the Spanish were going to invade with their Armada.  Let’s assume that you’ve done the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source and are now trying to squeeze more information out of her speech.  Take this part of her speech (leave aside the queries that there are two versions!)

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field(2)

What testimony was Elizabeth unwittingly giving to future historians?

I’ve got a few ideas – how about you?  Write your thoughts about Elizabeth’s unwitting testimony in the comment box below.

Elizabeth at Tilbury in 1588 after the defeat of the Armada(3)

Henry VIII
Here’s something from Elizabeth’s father – Henry VIII.  These are the opening words of his will.  Very few words but within them, Henry gives his very definite unwitting testimony on his (and therefore England’s) religion.

In the name of god and of the glorious and blessed virgin our Lady Saint Mary and of all the holy company of heaven...(4)

What testimony was Henry unwittingly giving to future historians of the Reformation?  Write your thoughts on Henry’s unwitting testimony in the comment box below.

The Psalter of Henry VIII(5)

Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts(6) and unwitting testimony
In this post The Catholic Ritual Year – Plough-feast, May Day, Dancing Money, Corpus Christi, I said that activities in Great Dunmow for Plough Monday, May Day and Corpus Christi were probably well established before 1525-6 and the arrival of the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts.  In 1525-6, the churchwardens wrote short, concise entries without explaining each entry – thus giving the impression that these events were already well-established within the parish before the arrival of the churchwardens’ account-book.  This is unwitting testimony.

Likewise, in this post Tudor administration within Great Dunmow there is unwitting testimony that the scribe took great care in recording the collection for the church steeple and collating all this information.  There is also unwitting testimony that each person was documented in the churchwardens’ accounts in strict social-hierarchy order.  In this instance, this unwitting testimony can be confirmed by cross-referencing each entry to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns.

However, the unwitting testimony about Plough Monday, May Day and Corpus Christi cannot be confirmed as the churchwardens’ accounts prior to 1525-6 have not survived.

Conclusion
Squeezing as much as possible out of primary sources can be an extremely rewarding experience.  Sometimes what a source  doesn’t state is as equally important as what it does!  Use the technique of unwitting testimony along with the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source to make the very most of your  precious source material.

Footnotes
1) Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, (London, 1989), p 216 and 218, as cited on Marwick on Witting and Unwitting Testimony (accessed February 2012).
2) Elizabeth I’s 1588 speech to her troops at Tilbury (accessed February 2012).
3) Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury in 1588 after the defeat of the Armada. 17^th Century panel in St Faith’s church in Gaywood, Norfolk. ©Evelyn Simak and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
4) Will of Henry VIII, king of England, France, and Ireland (1546), The National Archives, E23/4
5) The Psalter of Henry VIII, (London, between 1530 and 1547), Psalm 53 (52), Shelfmark: MS 2 A XVI, f. 63v. © The British Library Board.
6) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1.

General Note
I learnt some of these techniques for analyzing primary sources via many of the wonderful history tutors from the UK’s excellent Open University.   I owe a debt of gratitude to those tutors in helping me understand how to properly decode historical documents.

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The craft of being a historian: Research Techniques
– The craft of being a historian: Analysing primary sources
– The craft of being a historian: Using maps for local history
– The craft of being a historian: Online resources

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)
The top part of this folio has been transcribed here Collection for the church steeple (part 5).

Commentary
There are many interesting pages within the churchwardens’ account-book and this page has to rank high up the list of intriguing pages – not for what it says, but more what it doesn’t say!

The entries on this page are directly after the parish collection for the church steeple so cover the period 1525-6. Therefore, they are the first receipts for money received by Great Dunmow’s church recorded in the leather account-book. Churchwarden accounts or church records for Great Dunmow prior to 1525-6 have not survived. However, several entries on this folio indicate that the previous churchwardens had also kept careful accounts prior to 1525-6.

Churchwardens – Line 24/25:
fo.2r recorded that the current (ie 1525-6) churchwardens were Thomas Savage, John Skylton, John Nyghtyngale and John Clerke. This folio records that before them, the previous churchwardens were William Saud[e]r (probably ‘Saunder(s)’ – the churchwardens’ scribe had a soft Suffolk-like accent and didn’t pronounce hard ‘n’s , see  The dialect of Tudor Essex), Robert Parker, Raff/Ralph Melbourne, and Thomas Hervy (Harvey?). As Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were often in office for two years, it is likely that these men were churchwardens for the periods 1523-4 and 1524-5. The 14 shillings which the old churchwardens handed over to the 1525-6 set was either their cash-in-hand money left over from their tenure or their own money to make up shortfall in the accounts (or a mixture of both). Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were personally liable for any shortfall in their church’s finances at the end of their period in office. It is because of this personal liability that the accounts of Medieval and Tudor churches were so meticulously documented and recorded.

Plough Monday – Line 26:
The plough-feast was celebrated on the first Monday after the Epiphany (Twelfth Day) in January and was the traditional start to the new agricultural year. The young men of the town dragged a plough from door to door in the parish collecting money. If people did not hand-over money, then a ‘trick’ would have been played on the unlucky house-holder (an event similar to today’s Halloween Trick or Treating). This ‘trick’ was likely to have involved the young men ploughing a furrow across the offender’s land. Money received from Great Dunmow’s plough-feast activities was recorded throughout the Henrician churchwarden accounts. It was likely that this was already a well-established money-making activity for the church within Great Dunmow before this first recording of the event within the leather account-book in 1526. This can be determined by the brevity of this entry which could be interpreted that the churchwardens did not need a full and complete explanation about this particular activity. This was the yearly Plough-Feast – so therefore everyone knew what happened – all that needed to be accounted for was the money received! The churchwardens’ accounts do not record what happened to the money raised from Plough Monday. However, it is likely that the money was used to maintain a ‘plough light’ (candle) within the church. The plough light was one of the many ‘lights’ banned and extinguished by Henry VIII in 1538.

The Wikipedia Plough Monday entry suggests that the Plough Monday customs were revived in the 20^th century in the East of England and are associated with Molly Dancers.  Below are photographs my son took of the Molly Dancers on New Year’s Day 2012 at The Hythe, Maldon.  He’s only aged 8 so the photos are a bit blurry!  All photos are copyright of  The Narrator, 2012.

Dancing money – Line 27:
Unknown what this ‘dancing money’ was for.  Nicholas Parker was one of many Parkers in Great Dunmow but there was only one Parker with the Christian name of Nicholas. In the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy, Nicholas Parker was assessed as having goods to the value of 23s 4d.  In the parish collection for the church steeple, he was recorded as living in Bullock Row and paid 8d towards the collection for the church steeple (fo.2v–fo.3r).  It was likely that Nicholas Parker collected money on behalf of Great Dunmow’s parish church for ‘dancing’ and gave that money to the churchwardens.  The churchwardens were scrupulously thorough in recording which of the many Catholic feast-days money was collected in for the church. Thus, there are receipts for ‘the plough-feast’, ‘Corpus Christi’ and ‘May Day’ on the same page as this entry.  As the entry does not specify a precise feast-day or event, it is possible that this was money collected at some type of ‘general’ dance which was associated with the parish church but not connected with any feast-days within the regular Catholic ritual-year.

Old Hall – Line 28:
Unknown what the ‘old hall’ was.  It is possible that this was a bequest in the will of a William Sweeting.  Unfortunately not many Great Dunmow wills from this period have survived and there is no trace of William Sweeting’s will from this date, so it cannot be established if this was a bequest. (A later blog will explain the reason why there are so few surviving wills in Great Dunmow.)  The only William Sweeting to be assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy had goods to the value of 40s (so was of moderate wealth).  However, it is possible that this 1525-6 entry was a gift, rather than a bequest because a William Sweeting is documented regularly in parish collections after this date in the churchwardens’ accounts.
– 1525-6 church steeple collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 6d.
– 1527-9 church bell collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 5d.
– 1529-30 church organ collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1532-3 new gild collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1537-8 great latten candlestick collection: William Sweeting contributed 1d (dwelling-places not recorded).
A William Sweeting, ‘the elder’, was the witness to the 1552 will of Robert Grene(1).

May day – Line 29:
May money 28s 4d. This money received for ‘activities’ held on May-day is a significant amount of money.  Records in Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts show that an average daily wage for a labourer was 4d – thus the money raised for May-day equalled approximately 85 days from a labourer.  This was a much larger event than the yearly Plough-Feast and received more money.  From these scant pieces of evidence, it can be interpreted that the May-day money was collected from possibly the entire parish of Great Dunmow (and probably also other nearby towns and villages – as discussed in later blogs).   Again, the shortness of the entry demonstrates that receiving money from May-day was a well-established practice in Great Dunmow by the time of its first entry in the new leather account book of 1526.

This entry does not explain what happened in Great Dunmow on May Day.  Wikipedia suggests some of the activities that might have taken place at May Day.

Corpus Christi – Line 30:
Corpus Christi feast 23s.  The shortness of this entry is both intriguing and annoying in equal measures!  Once again, this was a substantial amount of money, and the briefness of the entry implies that Corpus Christi was a well established feast within Tudor Great Dunmow.  Regular Corpus Christi entries are documented throughout the rest of the Henrician Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts.  These other entries are much more detailed and thorough, allowing the modern-day reader the most amazing insight into the world of Tudor Great Dunmow and the hierarchical relationship between this small parish and their neighbouring towns and villages.  Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast, as documented in the churchwarden accounts, has been greatly studied throughout secondary literature on medieval English drama and late medieval religious practices.  My own Cambridge University’s master’s dissertation spent over half of the word count discussing and analysing what actually happened during Tudor Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast-day.  My own account provides an alternative narrative to the explanation provided by other historians (most of whom do not appear to have consulted directly with the original churchwarden accounts nor have walked the streets of the town).  As this was such a critical part of my masters’ dissertation, my interpretation of Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi plays will be discussed in detail in a later blog.

Detail of a miniature of a bishop carrying a monstrance in a
Corpus Christi procession under an canopy carried by four clerics
The Lovell Lectionary. Harley 7026, f13 (England, c1400-c1410),
© British Library Board

Rent of church land – Line 33:
Total rent received in for various church lands.  In later years, church rent is fully itemised along with the name of each tenant.

Building materials – Line 34-39:
This part of the accounts is still the receipts (money in) for the period 1525-6.  These entries demonstrate that the church (and the churchwardens) were selling items of building materials to some of the townsfolk of Great Dunmow.  John Atkinson bought a few bricks and a small amount of wet lime.  Mr Fyche (Fitch?) bought some rope, and Thomas Savage bought some scaffolding.  This last item by Thomas Savage is interesting for several reasons: firstly Thomas Savage was the man who made the largest contribution towards the church steeple and was ultimately awarded the contract for building the steeple (Henry VIII’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy Tax).  Secondly, this entry demonstrates that there were items of scaffolding within the parish church in 1525-6.  Either this scaffolding was in the church in the years prior to the building steeple or its existence was because of the construction of the new church steeple.  The Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, in his 1873 history of Great Dunmow narrated that there was extensive building work in the church in the years before the church steeple was rebuilt in 1525-6.(2)  So there were plenty of reasons for scaffolding to be within the church.

The significance of Thomas Savage’s scaffolding will be discussed in a later blog post.

Footnotes and Further reading
1) Will of Robert Grene, husbandman (March 1552), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 16/83.
2) Scott. W.T., Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow (London, 1873) p.20.

For further information on the Catholic religious ritual-year in late medieval/Tudor England, see
– Hutton, R., The rise and fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994).

For further information on the Plough-feast, see the following websites
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough_Monday
– http://www.ploughmonday.co.uk/

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Plough Monday
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

 Illuminated Initial And Border, In The Prayerbook Of John Northewode,
Shelfmark: Additional MS 37787, f.75r, © British Library Board.
The smudged text in red are the words ‘Pope John’ and have been smudged in accordance with Henry VIII’s order that the names of popes and Thomas Beckett should be obliterated.

Deed granted by Henry VIII for the dowry for
Anne of Cleves upon their marriage, © British Library Board.

Notes
All digital images from the British Library’s Online Images archive appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced (© British Library Board).

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You may also be interested in the following
– Henry VIII
– Henry VIII & Anne of Cleves
– Harley Manuscripts
– Henry VIII Manuscripts
– Henry VIII Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Family members mentioned in the churchwarden accounts include:
– Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523
– Robert Sturton, church clerk of Great Dunmow
– Robert Sturton
– William Sturton
– Stephen Sturton
– Alexander Sturton

Robert Sturton – vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523
Patron for the living of Great Dunmow:  Dean and Fellows of Stoke College, Clare, Suffolk.

Reason for leaving the living of St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow, 1523: Resigned

University/degree:  Described as ‘master’ in the churchwarden accounts indicating he was an M.A. (Master of Arts).  Unknown which university.

1514: possibly the same Robert Stourton (described as a ‘Professor of Theology’ i.e. S.T.P.) who was rector of Long Melford, Suffolk.(1)  Long Melford is 28 miles away from Great Dunmow.

Long Melford church, Suffolk

19 April 1510: Robert Stourton, clerk, of Great Dunmow, pardoned by Henry VIII.(2)

Died by 1529.  The churchwardens’ accounts detail of 53s 4d, a gift from Robert Sturton ‘sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche’.  The money was given to the churchwardens by William Sturton.(3)  It can be assumed William and Robert were related.

Notes on the Sturton family of Great Dunmow
There were many Sturtons within Tudor Great Dunmow.  William Sturton was assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy for goods to the value of £40.(4)  Two Robert Sturtons were also assessed, both with goods to the value of 20s.  Stephen Sturton was also assessed.  As the clergy were exempt from the Lay Subsidy, this implies that, including the vicar, there were three Robert Sturtons in Great Dunmow.  Robert Sturton, the church clerk from the start of the churchwardens’ accounts until the mid-1540s was one of them.  Throughout the Henrician churchwardens’ accounts, his wife received payment from the churchwardens for washing the church’s linen.

The only Sturton will to have survived is Alexander Sturton’s will of 1553.  Alexander Sturton, of Clopton Hall, bequeathed money to the children of Stephen Sturton, Thomas Sturton, Robert Sturton and William Sturton (all deceased).(5)  This suggests that Alexander Sturton was possibly the son of one of the three Robert Sturtons.  Clopton Hall was one of Great Dunmow’s medieval manors.

Two William Sturtons from Great Dunmow were educated at Cambridge University.  In 1526 William Sturton, aged 18, a scholar from Eton, of Dunmow, Essex, matriculated at Kings.  He became a fellow of Kings College 1529-30, ordained Deacon of Lincoln 1530, and Precentor of Kings College 1541-9.(6)  The other William Sturton of Great Dunmow matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1564 aged 16 and was the son of Alexander Sturton.(7)

Thus, there is both circumstantial and solid evidence linking these Sturtons together.  The evidence demonstrates they were an elite and well-established family.  It is likely they were related to the Lord Stourtons of Stourton, Wiltshire.

Stourton, Wiltshire

In the early fifteenth century, Sir John Moigne held the Manor of Great Easton along with the advowson of the village’s church.  Sir John’s heirs were his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Sir William Stourton.   Sir William was presented to the rectory of Great Easton on the 3rd January 1408.  Sir William’s Inquisition Post Mortem took place in Great Dunmow in the regnal year I Henry V. (1413-4).   His son, John Stourton (who later became 1st Lord Stourton), was presented to Great Easton’s rectory on 5th January 1427.  Throughout the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, the House of Stourton held the Manor of Great Easton, and also the Manor of Blamster in the same village.  Great Easton remained part of the Stourton estate until William, 7th Lord Stourton, sold the Manor and advowson in 1536.(8) Great Easton is a village 2.5 miles from Great Dunmow.

Great Easton, Essex, 2012
© Essex Voices Past 2012.

Henry VIII’s Pardon Rolls of 1509-14 documented William Stourton, knight, Lord Stourton, as the tenant of the manor of Estaynes ad Montem, Essex [Great Easton].(9) It has been suggested the true phonetic spelling of the name ‘Stourton’ is ‘Sturton’.(10)  The scribes who wrote the churchwardens’ accounts used phonetic spellings for many names and places.

Therefore, it is probable Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow, and the other Sturtons of Great Dunmow, were distant relations to the House of Stourton.

Great Easton, Essex, 1904

Footnotes:
1) William Parker, The History of Long Melford (1873), 35.
2) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 1’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 203-216, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102632 .
3) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1, fo.7r.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), E.R.O., T/A427/1/1.
5) Will of Alexander Sturton (1553), E.R.O., D/ABW 33/226.
6) John Venn, ‘William Sturton’ in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV (Cambridge, 1927), 181.
7) Venn, ‘William Stoorton’. in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV, 181.
8 ) Lord Mowbray, Segrave, and Stourton, The history of the noble house of Stourton (1899), 105-7 and 151.
9) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 3’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 234-256, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102634 .
10) Mowbray, Stourton, 2.

Postcards displayed on this page in the personal collection of The Narrator.

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Great Dunmow’s Medieval manors

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts.  His prompt ‘Thankful Thursday’ is all about expressing gratitude for someone/something connected to your own personal family history.   My own ‘someone’ was Great Dunmow’s 1960s & 70s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.

No local history of Great Dunmow is complete without reference to her work.  She was a lifelong resident of Great Dunmow and had vast knowledge about her home town which she shared in her local history books and articles in the local magazine, Essex Countryside.  I owe Dorothy Dowsett’s work a debt of gratitude both for my academic research on my dissertation into Tudor & Reformation Great Dunmow and also for her work on Edwardian and early 1900s Great Dunmow.

Amazingly, in one of her books on Great Dunmow, Through all the changing seasons, I found a photo of my grandfather’s aunt, uncle and their children (my grandfather’s cousins), the Kemps of the White Horse pub and the Royal Oak, Great Dunmow.   She was a contemporary of my grandfather’s cousins, and I would have loved to have sat and talked to her about them.  Particularly to hear her memories of Gordon and Harold Kemp, two sons of Great Dunmow, tragically killed in the Great War.

So my own ‘Through all the changing Seasons’ is dedicated to the memory of Great Dunmow’s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.

St Mary the Virgin and Church End, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Dr’s Pond, Great Dunmow,
December 2010, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Lime Tree Hill, leading down to Church End, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Overlooking Merks Hall and Stebbing, from The Causeway, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

On the road between Bigods and the church at Church End, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Bigods (Alfrestons) Farmhouse and spring lambs, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Great Dunmow local history books
Dowsett, D., Dunmow Through The Ages (Letchworth, 1968).
Dowsett, D., Through all the changing seasons (1975).

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– The Tudor witches of Essex
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Great Dunmow’s Medieval manors

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

On Valentine’s Day 2012, it seems appropriate to blog images of Henry VIII’s love affair with Anne Boleyn.

Margin note from Anne Boleyn to Henry VII, 1528
Shelfmark: MS King’s 9, f. 66v., © British Library Board.
‘Be daly prove you shall me fynde / To be to you bothe lovynge and kynde.’

Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours
Shelfmark: Kings Ms. 9, f.231v & f.66, © British Library Board.
Henry wrote in the margin (in French) ‘If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours. Henry R. forever.’

The noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne,
wyfe unto the moost noble kynge Henry the viij, Wynkyn de Worde, for Johan Goughe (London, 1533),  shelfmark: C.21.b.24, © The British Library Board

Signature of Anne Boleyn
Click on her signature to be taken to a British Library podcast on her
Book of Hours.

Notes
All digital images from the British Library’s Online Images archive appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced (© British Library Board).

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Henry VIII
– Henry VIII & Anne Bolyen
– Harley Manuscripts
– Henry VIII Manuscripts
– Henry VIII Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.