During my research of Great Dunmow’s Tudor past, I have come across quite a few mysteries and conundrums.  One such mystery is that of Griffith Ap Rice, a Welshman who appears in Great Dunmow’s records in the 1520s and 1530s.  I have a lot of circumstantial evidence as to who he ‘might’ be.  But no hard concrete evidence as to who he really was. More to the point, exactly what was a lone Welshman doing in the relatively sleepy backwaters of a small East Anglian town nearly 40 years after the Battle of Bosworth brought many soldiers out of their native Welsh hamlets and villages and into England? Like a medieval ghost, our Welshman flits through the records of Great Dunmow every now and again; and only the mere tantalising hint that he existed can be glimpsed in the records.

So here he is, my unfinished research on Griffith ap Rice, the only Welshman in Tudor Great Dunmow. To help with reading my post, I have Anglicised his name in my commentary but have kept to the many various original spellings for when he appears in the records.

Who was Griffith ap Rice?
He was a stray in Great Dunmow’s Tudor records during the reign of Henry VIII and can be counted as one of the “middling sort” of the town – one of the wealthy elite of the town, but not quite in the upper echelons of the town’s society – and the only person in Tudor Great Dunmow with a definite Welsh name.

Documents/Records where Griffith ap Rice is recorded?

1523 – Great Dunmow’s lay subsidy returns.  Grephyd Ap Rice was assessed for goods to the value of 20 shillings and paid tax of 12d. He was the joint 37th wealthiest man (out of 139 households) listed in the lay subsidy returns. My post on Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy describes this levy – a tax to raise money for the king’s wars with France.

1525-6 – Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts : Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1 folio 2r.  Collection for the Church Steeple – Grefyn Apryce paid 2s (average was 4d per household).  Griffith ap Rice’s entry is the 16th entry in the list of the whole parish.  The list was written-up into the churchwardens’ account book in strict social-hierarchical order – thus the parish’s clergy were first on the list, followed by the elite, then the middling sort.  The person who contributed the most to the collection, Thomas Savage, who gave £3 6s 8d, is listed at number 24 – lower down than Griffith ap Rice.  ap Rice’s entry is amongst the entries for the middling sort.

1527-9 – Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts – collection for the Church Bell:
Grefythe Apryce paid 14d (average 2d or 4d per household).  In this complete list of all the heads of houses in Great Dunmow, Griffith ap Rice is listed in 15th place – amongst all the middling sort of the town.  In this list, a complete list of the entire town, heads-of houses from 19th place onwards are listed alongside the location of their dwelling-place in the town.  So, for example, John Swetynge is listed as living in Windmill Street, and Nycolas Aylett as living in the High Street.  However, the first 18 heads-of-houses listed do not have their location in the town named.  It is as if these people are so important that the church did not need to make a note of these people’s houses.  Griffith ap Rice’s name is within this portion of the list and so his precise location in the town is unidentified but the lack of location gives firm testimony that he was an important person in the Tudor town of Great Dunmow.

1529-30 – Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts – collection for Church Organs:
Gryffeth Appryce paid 12d (average 2d or 4d per household).  In this collection, he is detailed 8th in the list of contributors towards the church’s organs – immediately under the town’s elite and amongst the town’s middling sort.

He did not contribute towards the church’s collection for the ‘New Guild’ (1532-3) – but was almost certainly dead by time of this collection.

1532-3: Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts : Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1 folio 17v.  Gift of money from Griffythe Appryce £3 6s 8d.  ‘Ite[m] resayvyd of John Honwyke [churchwarden] & John ffost[er] off gefte of Greffythe Appryce iijli vjs viijd’ This sum of money was probably a bequest left to the church by Griffith ap Rice in his will. In the nearly ten years between his entry in the 1523 Lay Subsidy returns, and his entry in the churchwardens’ accounts for his bequest at the time of his death, his wealth increased from owning goods to the value of 20 shillings (or £1) to leaving in his will a sum of money over three times that amount.

Apart from the instances noted above, Griffith ap Rice does not appear anywhere else in Great Dunmow’s surviving records for the period.  Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts start in 1525 and numerous local people are named in these accounts – names of churchwardens, the elite of the town, the church’s lay-officials, local builders, the church’s tenant farmers, and labourers appear throughout the accounts – but he is not mentioned anywhere else in the accounts, nor, despite his wealth, was he named as being any of the town’s Lords of Misrule.   Is this unwitting testimony that as a Welshman, even though he was fairly wealthy and one of the middling-sort of the town, he was not allowed to take on one of the more prestigious roles within this Tudor parish?  Or am I reading too much into him being totally missing from the rest of the churchwardens’ accounts?

Do we know Griffith ap Rice’s vital details?
Birth: No later than 1502 (because of entry in 1523 in Lay Subsidy). I do not know the minimum age for contributing towards this tax levied by Henry VIII so am assuming that 21 was the minimum age.  The subsidy was imposed on the heads of households – so by 1523, Griffith ap Rice was the head of his house.  This puts his date of birth more likely to be in the mid to late 1400s.

Marriage: Do not know if he was married or if he had children.  Great Dunmow’s marriage records start in 1558 and baptisms start in 1538 – so theses records are too late to discover details about him or a possible wife and children. However, it would seem that ap Rice either was unmarried at the time of his death, or died a childless widower. His financial bequest to the parish church in Great Dunmow was physically handed over to the church by the churchwardens, John Honwyke & John ffost[er], not by a member of his family. Elsewhere in the churchwardens’ account, monetary bequests of money are stated to have been handed over by the dead man’s widow or kinsfolk to the church. Also, the name “ap Rice” disappears totally from the churchwardens’ accounts: the name is not detailed in any further parish collections, nor in any other context within the accounts.

Death: 1532/1533.  We know this because of the gift of money entry in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts and the fact that he is not named in the later church collections raised by Great Dunmow on the entire parish.  Great Dunmow’s burial records start in 1558.

What was Griffith ap Rice’s wealth?
Wealth: Paid more than the average donation to each of Great Dunmow’s church collections levied on the entire parish – he is listed with the three (nearly) yearly collections to buy items for the church and is consistently listed in the section containing the “middling-sort” of the town. In the town’s Lay Subsidy returns, he was the equal 37th wealthiest man in Great Dunmow (out of 139 recorded households – not including the clergy and paupers).  So in terms of wealth, he was in the top 20-25% of the town.

Will: No surviving 1530s ap Rhys will in Essex Record Office, London Metropolitan Archives, or National Archive.  ERO has 10 surviving wills from Great Dunmow for the period 1520s to 1546.  LMA is missing ALL wills for the London Consistory Court from 1521 to approx 1539.  The entire registers are missing and have been probably since the Reformation – see my post on Reformation Wills and Religious Bequests.  Great Dunmow was in the archdeaconry of Middlesex but many nearby towns and villages (for example, Maldon and Chelmsford) were in the archdeaconry of Essex.  If a testator had land in two archdeaconries, then the will would be proved in London Consistory Court.  Lay subsidy and parish collections show that ap Rice was of the middling-sort (top 20-25% in terms of wealth), so very possible that he had land not just Great Dunmow but possibly in two archdeaconries.  So very likely that his will has not survived as it would be in the missing registers.

That’s it!  That’s all I have on my Tudor conundrum –
Griffith Ap Rice, the only Welshman in the village.  Who was he?

Can a link to another person help?
With the little detail I have on Griffith ap Rice, could researching another person help me work out who he was?  To do this, I looked at two Tudor people, Lord Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton and Agnes ap Rice.

Kinsfolk/Linkage to Agnes Rice (aka ap Rhys)
William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton (c1505-1548) of Wiltshire had an ‘association’ (as a Victorian book on the Stourtons so prudishly put it) with Agnes Rice (born circa 1522, died 1574) – who was also known as Agnes ap Rhys.  Lord Stourton bigamously married her whilst his first wife was still alive. On his death in 1548, Lord Stourton left his considerable fortune to Agnes and their child, but his will was ultimately overturned because of the bigamous nature of their marriage, and the small fact that his legal heir was his eldest son, Charles, by his first (legitimate) marriage.

Although the Baron Stourtons’ family home was in Wiltshire, they owned the ecclesiastical living of Great Easton in Essex (about 3 miles from Great Dunmow) and their names are present in numerous records in both Great Dunmow and Great Easton from the 1300s onwards. (See Lord Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton, C., The history of the noble house of Stourton (1899)).  This 1899 book states that the evidence seemed to point that the Lord Stourtons did not live in Great Easton/Great Dunmow.  However, my research shows that the National Archive holds a couple of records proving that, even if the 7th Baron was not living in Great Easton, he had considerable interests in the village and legally defended those interests in the courts of law of the time when the Abbott at nearby Tilty Abbey tried to infringe on his interests at the church in Great Easton.

There is no hard evidence that William, Lord Stourton, nor Agnes ap Rice lived in (or visited) Great Easton but it is a great coincidence that in the town just 3 miles away was a Griffith ap Rice, who, although not the wealthiest of townsfolk, was amongst the middling-sort.  Great Easton had very strong Tudor connections to Great Dunmow – the latter seeing itself as the “mother” town to all the nearby villages – especially when celebrating the Catholic ritual year such as May Day and the community feast-day of Corpus Christi when people from outlying villages came into Great Dunmow to make merry and celebrate.  Moreover, there is a further link between Great Easton and Great Dunmow and the elite of the two villages.  The vicar of Great Dunmow between the 1490s and 1520s was a Robert Sturton.  The town of Great Dunmow was stuffed full of elite Sturtons (including two other men named ‘Robert Sturton’), and, although only one Sturton will has survived from the 1550s, I can loosely connect this vicar to all these Great Dunmow Sturtons (ie they ‘have’ to be related to each other but, because he was an unmarried cleric without children, I’m not sure exactly how).  So this was a long established elite family with various members living in some of the medieval manors of Great Dunmow and one of their own, a Cambridge University educated man, was the town’s vicar.  Therefore, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence linking the Lord Stourtons of Wiltshire to Great Dunmow’s Sturtons and that these Essex Sturtons were a lesser branch of the Wiltshire Stourtons – probably connected in some-way during the 1300s or 1400s. My post on the vicars of Great Dunmow gives more details about the Sturton/Stourton connection.

So why are the links between Great Easton/Great Dunmow and the Sturtons/Stourtons so important when trying to discover who Great Dunmow’s only Welshman in the village was? To answer this, we have to look at the genealogy of the mistress (or bigamous wife) of William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton, Agnes ap Rice.

Agnes ap Rice’s parents were Rhys Ap Griffith (1508–1531) and Catherine Howard (daughter of the Duke of Norfolk)  – making Agnes the first cousin of Henry VIII’s queens, Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn. Her father, Rhys ap Griffith (executed by Henry VIII for treason in 1531) was the son of Gruffydd ap Rhys (c1478–1521). Gruffydd ap Rhys was a prominent knight firstly at the court of prince Arthur and then at the court of Henry VIII and he was at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Henry VIII.

His father was Rhys ap Thomas (1449–1525) who was a fierce supporter of Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.  There is a still current rumour that it was this Rhys ap Thomas who cut down and killed Richard III on the battlefield with a pole-axe (boo, hiss!) When Henry Tudor became King Henry VII, Rhys ap Thomas, the slayer of the anointed king of England, became the most powerful man in south Wales.

If you’ve managed to follow these Welsh family with their patronymic names, well done!  I got very lost working out who was who – so I had to draw up a very rough and ready family tree.

The possible links between Great Dunmow’s Griffith ap Rice and Agnes ap Rice are tantalising.  With the Welsh patronymic naming system, was our Griffith ap Rice’s father Rhys ap Griffith?  But if his father was thus named, then our Griffith wasn’t Agnes’ brother as Agnes’ brother, Griffith ap Rice, is well documented in the records.  So if they are related, the links would be further back in time then the 1520s.

I’m so near, but so far from working out who Great Dunmow’s only Welshman in the town really was.

Had our Griffith ap Rice (or his father) come to
East Anglia after the Battle of Bosworth with Henry Tudor’s Welsh army
alongside their kinsman Rhys ap Thomas

(Or am I, as a historian, getting way too much carried away with myself!)

This is still very much work in progress, and maybe one day I’ll discover who Tudor Great Dunmow’s Welshman was.

Postscript
Agnes ap Rice, in her own right was a very interesting character.  After the death of Lord Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton, she went on to marry Sir Edward Baynton.  There is a very interesting account on the Bayntun History website of the death in 1564 of Agnes’ and Edward’s only living son, William, allegedly by witchcraft .

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You may also be interested in the following
– Reformation Wills and Religious Bequests
– Transcripts of Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts – 1526-1621
– Medieval Catholic Ritual Year
– Tudor local history
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– Images of Medieval Funerals
– The dialect of Medieval Essex

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1527-9)

[in the left margin]The churchwardens Choson Anno xxjmc [21st regnal year of Henry VIII sometime between April 1529-April 1530] Thom[a]s Savage John Clark John Cooleyn [Collin?] John Dygby [This margin note appears to be entered by a different set of churchwardens (or scribe) at a later date to the rest of the page. Analysing the churchwardens’ accounts chronologically show that this folio appears to relate to a period sometime between 1527 and 1529]
1. Dely[er]nd to the sayd wardens the s[um]ma aforsayd [delivered to the said wardens the sum aforesaid]	xxviijs ixd [28s 9d]
2. Item in the hands of wyll[ia]m Sturton [Item in the hands of William Sturton]	xs [10s]
3. It[e]m the halfe yere rent remaining  ?? [Item the half year remaining ?]	xvijs jd [17s 1d]
4. Ite[m] res of Thom[a]s wete for the latt payment for hys howse [Item received of[f] Thomas Wete for the late payment for his house]	iijli vjs viijd [£3 6s 8d]
5. Ite[m] resayvyd att the fyrst maye [Item received at the first may]	xviijs xd [18s 10d]
6. Ite[m[ resayvyd att Corpuscrysty feste [Item received at Corpus Christi feast]	xxjd [21d]
7. Ite[m] res of John foster ych was gatheryd wha[n] he was lorde [Item received of John Foster which was gathered when he was lord]	liijs iiijd [53s 4d]
8. Item res of M[ister] Joyner [Item received off Mister Joyner]	vli [£5]
9. Ite[m] res of my lady gatys for washe of ye torchys [Item received off my lady ?? for washing of the torches]	xijd [12d]
10. Ite[m] res of the good ma[n] whale for hawys [Item received off the good man  Whale for house]	xs [10s]
11. Ite[m] res of Nyclas Aylett of ye gyfte of mawde bemysche [Item received off Nicholas Aylett of [from] the gift of Maud Bemysche	iiijs [4s]
12. Ite[m] res of poole for halfe yerys rent of hawys [Item received of Poole (or Paul) for half years rent of house]	iijs iiijd [3s 4d]
13. Ite[m] res \for/ of ye hosker yt was solde of the cherchys [Item received for the ?? it was sold of [from] the church]	xs [10s]
14. Ite[m] res on  Alhalows daye gatharde in the cherchye [Item received on All Hallows day gathered in the church]	xs xid [10s 11d]
15. Ite[m] res of Wylyem Sturton of ye gyfte of M[aster] Sturton [Item received off William Sturton of the gift of Master Sturton]
16. sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche [sometime vicar of this church]	lijs iiijd [53s 4d]
17. Ite[m] res att the laste maye [Item received at the last May]	xxvjs [26s]
18. Item res att corpuschrsti feste nexte folowynge [Item received at Corpus Christi feast next following]	xxs iiijd [20s 4d]
19. Ite[m] res A hole yerye rente [Item received a whole years rent]	xxxiiijs ijd [34s 2d]
20. Ite[m] gatheryd i[n] the cherche for p[ar]te of the cherche fence [Item gathered in the church for part of the church fence]	iijs vd [3s 5d]
21. Ite[m] reseyvyd for the olde tymber of the same fence [Item received for the old timber of the same fence]	iiijd [4d]
22. Ite[m] Res of Thom[a]s Savage towards the same fence [Item received off Thomas Savage towards the same fence]	xiid [12d]
[From here onwards starts the list of names of all the heads-of-households within the parish and their individual contributions towards the church’s bells. This list will be on a future blog]

Commentary
Line 4: Whoever Thomas Wete was, he either hadn’t paid his rent for a long time or rented a large piece of church land/house. £3 6s 8d was a very large sum of money for the time equating to very roughly three or four months wages for a labourer.

Line 5 & 17: This must have been money collected for events held on May Day.  The fact that there are two entries on this page for May Day gives unwitting testimony that the churchwardens hadn’t been as diligent as they should perhaps have been.  They appear to have been  ‘catching up’ on their yearly accounts long after the event.

Line 6 & 18:  This is money collected during the festivities held on Corpus Christi day.  See my post on Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi events.  Again, as per the commentary above on May Day, these two entries for two years show that the churchwardens were writing up the church’s accounts years after the actual event.

Line 7: John Foster had been playing the lord of misrule – possibly during the Christmas celebrations in the parish.

Line 8: Mister Joyner’s gift of £5 was a large sum of money for an unspecified reason.  However, at the bottom of this folio and on subsequent folios, the churchwardens’ document each house-holder in the parish and their individual contribution towards purchases a new church bell.  Mister Joyner is not documented within the list so it is entirely plausible that this entry is his  individual contribution to the collection.  Perhaps he didn’t give money at the time the collection took place, or maybe he didn’t live in the town. Bearing in mind that the entries on this page were written up some years after the events they were recording (as shown by the May Day and Corpus Christi feast entries), it is therefore unsurprising that Mr Joyner’s substantial gift appears separate to the list of the town.

Line 9: I would love to be able to read the missing word in this line! Can anyone help?  Were the ladies washing torches! This line probably relates to torches that were used during the funerals of the great and good of Dunmow.  The elite were buried within the church and torches were kept lit around their bodies on the night before their funeral.  But I’m not sure where the ‘ladys’ come into this – unless the word is ‘lads’?

Line 11: This gift from Mawde Bemysche is probably the result of her bequeathing money to the church in her (now lost) will.

Line 15 & 16: This is money from the old vicar, Robert Sturton’s, now missing will.  William Sturton was possibly Vicar Sturton’s nephew or other relation.  The Sturton family were a very large and important elite family within Tudor Great Dunmow.

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 Catholic Ritual Year
– Unwitting testimony
– Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi events
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Reformation wills and bequests
– The Sturton family of Great Dunmow and Great Easton

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

How is your mental maths? When doing your household budgeting, can you quickly and easily add together pounds and pence (or dollars and cents)? In this modern day and age, the task is relatively easy – especially when using calculators or spreadsheets.

But what if you had to balance your books using pounds, shillings and pence without modern technology? As every-good English Tudor scribe knew, there was
– 240 pennies in every pound
– 12 pennies in every shilling
– 20 shillings in every pound

Then, of course, there’s also half-pennies, half-groats, groat, half angels and angels.

Look at the image above. Would you be able to quickly run down this page mentally summing it up correctly to get the total at the bottom?

Our invisible but ever present Tudor scribe within Great Dunmow couldn’t either! Every few pages within Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts there are very faint seemingly unintelligible scratchings on the page. These are our Tudor scribe’s ‘workings-out’ of his sums – rough calculations before he wrote down his totals.

You may have to zoom in at a high percentage to see the markings – but they are there and they are definitely accountancy ‘workings-out’!

Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts: folio 7r, 1527-1529

Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts: folio 7r, 1527-1529

Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts: folio 19v, 1532-1533

Henry VIII Testoon (shilling) from 1544-1547

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

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

You may also be interested in the following
– Transcripts of Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts – 1526-1621
– Medieval Catholic Ritual Year
– Tudor local history
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– Images of Medieval Funerals
– The dialect of Medieval Essex

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Analysis of other bequests (not family)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Post created 2013 and updated September 2019 © Kate J Cole | Essex Voices Past™ 2012-2019

Detail of a medieval plough (folio 77v) from The Macclesfield Psalter,
probably produced at Gorleston, East Anglia circa 1330
Gold & tempera on vellum, 17cm x 10.8cm,
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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Today, the first Monday after the Christian feast of Epiphany, was traditionally the day of another money-raising celebration in the lives and times of our Catholic Medieval ancestors: Plough Monday.  My posts, Christmas in a Tudor Town, told the story of how the people of the North Essex parish of Great Dunmow celebrated Christmas with a Lord of Misrule who ‘reigned’ throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, collecting money for the church.  In 1538 (or 1539), Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts show that the Lord of Misrule possibly also collected money for the yearly Plough-Feast.

1538 (or 1539) In primo receyvyd of the lord of mysserowell & for the plowgh ffest – xls [40s] (folio 29r).  This entry is ambiguous – did the Christmas Lord of Misrule also collect money for the plough-feast?  Or have the churchwardens simply lumped the two events together in one entry?  As the two events have not been recorded as separate sums of money, it is more likely the former.

In Medieval times, many rural towns and villages of England celebrated the first Monday after the Feast of Epiphany as the start of the agricultural year.  Ancient customs and religious practices were used to protect and safeguard the plough which was so vital for the coming year’s crops. ‘Plough lights’ were kept burning in the parish church and feasts were held to celebrate the plough.  Sums of money received from Great Dunmow’s plough-feast activities were recorded throughout the churchwardens’ accounts for the reign of Henry VIII.   As the accounts were only the financial records of the church, once again the accounts do not explicitly state what occurred during the Plough-Feast.  However, it is likely that the young men of the town dragged a highly decorated plough from door to door of the richest households 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. So that the house-holders could not identify them, the lads probably had their faces blackened with soot. The young lads were often accompanied by someone playing the Fool – in Great Dunmow’s case, this person could possibly have been the Christmas Lord of Misrule (I have made this assumption because of the way the entries in the accounts have been written.)

The accounts do not state what happened to the money raised but possibly the money was used to maintain a special candle (the plough-light) to constantly burn within the church. Henry VIII banned the practice of plough-lights in 1538 – along with other traditional lights maintained in churches.  However Great Dunmow’s plough-feast still continued for a further few years -the final plough-feast occurring during one of the years between 1539 and 1541.

Item Reseyvyd of the lorde of mysrowle at thys Crystmas last wt [with] the plowfest mony at the town declard to the chyrche & all thyngs dyschargyd – xxxviijs jd [38s 1d] (folio 30v, sometime between 1539-1541)

The forty shillings (£2) raised in 1538 and the final 38s 1d  were considerable amounts of money in Tudor times.  According to Great Dunmow’s accounts paid out to various labourers for a day’s work during the 1520s, the average daily pay was 4d.  Therefore, the collection for the Lord of Misrule and the Plough Feast was roughly equivalent to 114 to 120 days labour.

It is interesting to note that the above two entries on this blog post have nameless Lords of Misrule.  Other ‘Lords’ were explicitly named in the churchwardens’ accounts – see my post here.  I think that this is unwitting testimony that only the Lords who were amongst the middling sort or the elite of Great Dunmow’s social hierarchy were named.  Those Lords of the common sorts were too unimportant and lowly to have their names recorded in the magnificent churchwardens’ accounts!

It is possible that the modern day practice of Molly Dancing derives from the ancient practices of plough-Monday.   My post The Catholic Ritual Year has photographs my son took of Molly Dancers in Maldon on New Year’s Day 2012.

 

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

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

You may also be interested in the following
– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts
– The Macclesfield Psalter
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Medieval Christmas Stories
– Medieval Catholic Ritual Year

Post published: January 2013 and revised January 2019 © Kate J Cole | Essex Voices Past™ 2012-2019

Today’s post on the theme of a Christmas in a Tudor Town is about the medieval and early Tudor custom of electing boys as Bishops.   This custom was widespread throughout pre-Reformation Catholic England but was banned by Henry VIII in 1542, revived by Mary 1 in 1552 and then finally abolished by Elizabeth.  There were boy-bishops elected in major abbeys, university colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge, major schools (such as Eton), and wealthy collegiate churches.  Henry VIII appointed St Nicholas Bishops from his choristers at the Chapel Royal.  Usually a boy was elected as a ‘Bishop’ on the Feast of St Nicholas (6th December) and he replaced the authority of the real Bishop until Holy Innocents day (28th December). Records of boy-bishops at King’s College, Cambridge have survived – the Boy Bishop’s costume was especially made for the child, and he wore a white wool coat, with a scarlet gown with its hood trimmed with white ermine.  He also wore knitted gloves, gold rings, a crozier, and a mitre of white damask. (Ronald Hutton, The Rise of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994) p11.)

As well as grand establishments having boy-bishops, many parishes of England also appointed boy bishops for their parish. Although they wouldn’t have worn such grand garments as King’s College.  Unfortunately no records survive as to what they actually did or who these boys were.  Were they the sons of the upper echelons of the parish, or were they the middling sort? As it must have been a great honour for a family to have their son elected bishop, it is unlikely they were the poorer members of the parish.  It is probable that these bishops travelled around their parish during the 22 days of their tenure – maybe even going over the parish boundaries into neighbouring parishes – singing and blessing people and collecting money from them.

The historian, Ronald Hutton, in his book The Rise of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994), comments

‘At Bristol it was appropriately enough the church of St Nicholas which set forth a Boy Bishop upon its patron’s feast [6^th December], with a procession bearing eight banners.  The corporation came to receive his blessing and then entertained him and his retinue of boys to a banquet.  But at least seven London parish which had no association with the saint paraded robbed and mitred children upon his feast.  The same was true of others in Norwich, Cambridge, Nottingham, Coventry, Leicester, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shorpshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Suffolk.  Records of more have doubtless perished.  The surviving entries make plain, that while going on procession the boys collected money from spectators which was handed over to the churchwardens.’ [page 12]

The north Essex parish of Great Dunmow was another such parish who elected a boy bishop on St Nicholas day. In 1533, there is an entry in the churchwarden accounts for money received on St Nicholas’s Day ‘Item rec[evied] of[f] the offering hon [on] Seynt nycolas daye – iijs iiijd [3s 4d]’ (folio 20v].  This entry makes no mention of a boy bishop, so it is likely that this was a collection within the church on the 6th December which raised 3s 4d.  However, in the mid 1530s, there is the tantalising glimpse that the parish had actually appointed a boy-bishop on the feast-day of St Nicholas.

‘the rec[eipts] of the bisshop at seynt Nicolas tyme iijs iiijd [4s 4d]’ (folio 23v)  [The final few characters appear to be from the margin note running down the right side of the page.]

In all my transcribing of the churchwardens’ accounts, this section is one of the hardest to decipher because there is marginalia notes on both the left and the right side of the page which run into the main text.   Also, this whole section appears to be very hastily scribbled entries into the churchwardens’ accounts from a new set of churchwardens who were trying to tally-up the financial happenings which had occurred during the tenure of a previous churchwardens.  The line above the ‘bisshop at seynt Nicolas tyme’ reads ‘Also the old debt of of [sic] the last acompute [accounts/compute]’ and the two lines underneath appears to be a summing up of other finances.  Or possibly even summing up the boy-bishop’s receipt – I really can’t make head nor tail of these two lines!  Did the receipts of the bishop of Saint Nicholas also include viijli xs ob [£8 10½s]?

The precise year of this Bishop of St Nicholas is also hard to pin-down.  The  folio starts ‘Ann^o pp h viij^th visimo nono’ i.e. the twenty-ninth regnal year of Henry VIII’s reign (1537) – and the first margin note on the left confirm this ‘At Seynt Andrews tyme A^o XXIX ^vn’.  i.e. these are the accounts for the year 1537 recorded during the feast-day of St Andrews (30th November). So the bishop of St Nicholas couldn’t have been in 1537 because his feast-day was after St Andrews day. (Remember, we are dealing with financial accounts which have been recorded after the event.)  Moreover, this is the tallying-up of a previous set of accounts.  So it’s impossible to ascertain the actual year of Great Dunmow’s ‘(boy) bishop of Saint Nicholas’.

Although it is difficult to decode this entry, it does appear that sometime in the mid 1530s, the parish of Great Dunmow did have a boy-bishop appointed on the feast-day of St Nicholas whose purpose was to collect money for the parish church.

(As an aside, intriguingly the final margin note on the left side of this folio reads ‘of the rking [reckoning] sum of xvs id [25s 1d] the owld wardons have payed xjs [11s] & therof ther be ?? dischargdd of ?? ?? xvs jd [25s 1d]’.   I smell some wrong financial accounting by the old churchwardens’!)

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Text in square [brackets] are The Narrator’s transcriptions.

The original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced.

Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

My post Christmas in the Tudor town of Great Dunmow – Part 1 told the story of Great Dunmow’s Christmas Day candles (each weighing two pounds) which were bought by the churchwardens in the 1540s and placed in the parish church on Christmas Day morning.  Having analysed some of the religious elements of Christmas in a Tudor Catholic town, it is now time to turn to the social pleasures of Christmas.

Today’s post on Christmas in a Tudor town is about the ‘Lord of Misrule’ and his activities.  A regular occurrence in Great Dunmow’s Tudor churchwardens’ accounts is that of the money collected (or ‘gathered’) each year by these Lords.   During the Medieval and early Tudor period, Lords were appointed yearly by their parish to be the master of ceremonies and thus supervise parish entertainments, revelry and general chaos.   It is difficult to find any clear understanding on what the Lords got up to – some historians say that it was for one day only and others say that it was for the 12 Days of Christmas, starting on Christmas Day.  Moreover, some internet websites mix the ‘Lord of Misrule’ with the medieval practice of the boy-bishops of St Nicholas.  As Great Dunmow’s churchwardens accounts have separate financial entries for money collected for a ‘boy-bishop’, it is therefore unlikely that Great Dunmow’s Lords of Misrule were also ‘boy bishops’.

Unfortunately, the churchwardens’ accounts of Great Dunmow only provide the plainest of descriptions (see below).  So we don’t know what actually took place during the Lord of Misrule’s ‘reign’.  However, whatever happened, we do know that it raised a considerable amount of money for the parish church – so possibly took place over the 12 Days of Christmas, as opposed to just one day.  All the money gathered from the townsfolk by the Lord of Misrule was handed over to the churchwardens to provide funds for the parish church and thus recorded in their accounts.  We can also determine from other information in the churchwardens’ accounts coupled with the Lay Subsidies of 1523-4, that whenever Lord of Misrule was personally named in the records, he was normally of the ‘middling sort’ or a churchwarden.

The majority of Great Dunmow’s accounts specify ‘at Christmas’ alongside the entry for the ‘Lord of Misrule’ and only two entries don’t specify ‘Christmas’  (see below).   Without this extra description, it is impossible to determine if Great Dunmow’s ‘Lords of Misrule’ were all at Christmas-time or were for other times in the year.  The historian Ronald Hutton documents that many English pre-Reformation villages and towns celebrated May-day with a ‘Lord of Misrule (Ronald Hutton, The Rise of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994), p116-7).  In fact, Hutton states that Great Dunmow chose a Lord of Misrule to preside over its May ales (p33) but, as shown below, there is nothing in the original primary source to confirm this assertion.  The entries, as shown below, document that all but two were at Christmas, and none explicitly document that the Lord was at May.  Moreover, the receipts for Great Dunmow’s yearly May festivities are documented separately to the Lord of Misrule.  One of the two entries that doesn’t mention ‘Christmas’ does, instead, mention the Plough Feast (1538-9) and the Plough Feast was celebrated in January, shortly after the activites of the Lord of Misrule.  It seems that there is overwhelming evidence that all Great Dunmow’s Lord of Misrules, as recorded in their Tudor churchwarden accounts, took place during the Christmas period.

The churchwardens weren’t precise or consistent with the dating of their financial records.  See Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts.   Therefore, the dates below show the most likely period in which the events recorded by the entries ‘Lord of Misrule’ took place.  The Lord of Misrule appears for every period recorded by the churchwardens between 1527 and 1542.  The entry for 1541-42 is the last entry in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts for the Lord of Misrule.  It is not known why the custom died out in Great Dunmow before the end of Henry VIII’s reign as it is well documented that the king had a Lord of Misrule in his court, and his son, Edward VI, carried on the tradition.

1527-1529 ‘Item recd of John Foster ytch [which] was gathered whan he was lorde – liijs iiijd [53s 4d]’ (folio 7r).  John Foster was a churchwarden of Great Dunmow from 1530 for two years.  In the Lay Subsidies of 1523-4, he was assessed as having goods to the value of 25s and paid 4d in taxes to Henry VIII’s commissioners.  He paid 12d towards the parish collection for the church steeple.  John Foster was clearly of the ‘middling sort’.

1529-1530 ‘Item rec of the lord of mysrowle [misrule] which was gadred [gathered] at Crystmas – ljs viijd [51s 8d]’ (folio 11r).

1530-1532 ‘ffyrste of the lorde of mysse rule – xxxviijs iiijd [38s 4d]’ (folio 15r).

1532-1533 ‘Itm rd of ye lord of mony at Crystmas – 10l s [£10]’ (folio 17v).  It is interesting that the word ‘of’ is crossed through in this entry.  Was our Tudor scribe about to write ‘Lord of Misrule’ but thought better of it and so wrote just ‘Lord’s Money at Christmas’?

1533-1534 ‘Resayved at Crystmas of ye lorde of mysrewle declard xxxiiijs 10d ob [34s 10½d – the ‘ob’ is the abbreviated form of ‘obolus’]’  (folio 20r)

1537-1538 ‘In primo recayvyd of Wylliam Stuard lord of mysserewle whych he gathered att Crystmas – xl is [£10 1s]’ (folio 24v). William Stuard (possibly ‘Steward’) paid 8d towards the 1530-32 collection for the church’s organ. In the Lay Subsidies of 1523-4, a William Steward was assessed as having goods to the value of 20s and paid 4d in taxes to Henry VIII’s commissioners.

1538-1539 ‘In primo receyvyd of the lord of mysserowell & for the plowgh ffest – xl s [£10 0s]’ (folio 29r). The medieval English tradition of the Plough Feast is discussed in this post Transcript fo. 4r: The Catholic Ritual Year – Plough-feast, May Day, Dancing Money, Corpus Christi

1539-1541 ‘Item reseyvyd of the lorde of mysrowle at thys Crystmas last wt [with] the plowfest mony at the town declard to the chyrche & all thyngs dyschargyd – xxxviijs jd [38s 1d]’ (folio 30v).

1541-1542 ‘Receyvyd of Skyngle the lord of myserule that he gatheryd at Crystmas there to ye cherche – lijs id [52s 1d]’ (folio 32r).  It’s very difficult to determine the social status of this ‘Skyngle’.  There was a Thomas Skyngell  who gave 1d towards the 1537-1538 collection for the Great Bell Clapper and 1d for the 1537-1538 collection for the Great Latten Candlestick – but he doesn’t appear anywhere else in the churchwardens’ accounts and doesn’t appear in Great Dunmow’s Lay Subsidy of 1523-4.

Join me next time to discover about
Great Dunmow’s St Nicholas and the boy bishop

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Text in square [brackets] are my transcriptions.

The original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced.

Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

Christmas was a significant event of great importance for the ordinary people of English villages and towns in the early Tudor Catholic period.  The townsfolk of the North Essex town of Great Dunmow were no exception to this and celebrated with much vigour both the religious and social aspect of this, the most Christian of celebrations.  To discover what Christmas events took place in Great Dunmow, we once more have to turn to the exquisitely tooled leather-bound churchwarden accounts of the town.  In this handsome volume, between the years 1526 to 1621, the churchwardens of Great Dunmow meticulously recorded their expenditure and income of their parish church of St Mary the Virgin.

Buried within this book are the financial accounts for various religious and social activities which took place over the Christmas period between the 1520s and 1550s.  Only the bare-bones can be gleaned from the churchwardens’ accounts but there is enough detail to gather a basic knowledge of the events at Christmas in this Tudor English parish.

So, over the next few days in the lead-up to our 21st Century consumer-driven Christmas, we shall explore together

Christmas in the Tudor town of Great Dunmow

Christmas Day Candle
The expenditure for a special candle, used in the parish church on Christmas Day morning, first appeared in the churchwardens’ accounts in 1544, then again in 1545 and also in 1546 (the final Christmas of Henry VIII’s reign).   It is curious that these Christmas candles do not appear in the early years of the churchwardens’ accounts.  However it is likely that these earlier Christmas candles were bought but not itemised by the churchwardens with such precision as seen in the 1540s folios.

The candles must have been substantial items – probably very large and very long – as the 1544 and 1545 candles weighed two pounds each and cost 3d apiece.  The 1546 candle also weighed two pounds, but cost 4d – had Tudor inflation taken place?  I wonder what our Tudor churchwardens thought of this price increase!  Unfortunately we do not know if they were ornate or a simple candles. It is possible that the Christmas candle was carried in a procession through the church, a procession led by the vicar and priests of Great Dunmow at the Mass held for the entire parish on Christmas morning.

No further mention is made of Christmas candles in the accounts until the reign of Mary I when there are two entries for Christmas Day candles – one which cost 2d but without the weight recorded, and the other weighing the usual two pounds and costing 5d.  The entries for Mary’s reign are not dated, so these Christmas Day candles relate to Christmases in the period 1553 to 1558.  The churchwardens’ accounts are confusing for the period of Henry VIII’s immediate successor, the devoutly Protestant Edward VI.  Therefore, it cannot be determined if the lack of Christmas Day candles during his reign (1547-1553) was because of his religious inclinations and edicts or simply because the churchwardens did not record the entries with their usual meticulous thoroughness.  The Marian entries show that the Christmas candle was enclosed or surrounded by some form of canopy.

There are no further entries in the churchwardens’ accounts for a large candle at Christmas.  Below summarises the entries that are in the accounts.

Entry for 1544 Christmas candle – folio 37v
Entry for 1545 Christmas candle – folio 38v
Entry for 1546 Christmas candle – folio 39r
Entry for Christmas candles in Mary I’s reign – folio 43r

Join me tomorrow to discover about
Great Dunmow’s Christmas Lord of Misrule

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Text in square [brackets] are my transcriptions.

The original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced.

Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1526-7)

1. Item ffor ij scaynys of whyte threde ffor ye copys [Item for 2 skeins of white thread for the copys (corpus?) 2d]	iid
2. Ite[m] for lyne & pakthrede & whepcorde when p[ar]nell [Item for line and pack-thread and whipcord when Parnell]	iiiid
3. made the pagantes our corpuscryti daye [made the pageants our Corpus Christi day 4d]
4. Ite[m] payde ffor hornynge of the cherche <illegible crossing out> lanton [Item paid for horning(?) of the church lantern 8d]	viiid
5. Ite[m] for strekynge of ye Rodelyght [Item for striking of the Rood light 13d]	xiijd
6. Ite[m] for a peys lether ffor bawdryk [Item for a piece leather for bawdrick 8d]	viid
7. Ite[m] for mendynge of lede on the new chapell [Item for mending of lead on the new chapel]	iis
8. & on ye gelde on the same syde [and on the gild on the same side 2s]
9. Ite[m] ffor a li of wex for & strykynge a fore owr [Item for a pound of wax & striking before our]	viid
10. lady in the chawnsell [lady in the chancel 7d]
11. Ite[m] payde to dychynge for carryynge of tymber for ye frame [Item paid to Dychynge for carrying timber for the frame [2s]	iis
12. Ite[m] to Wylye[m] blythe for mendynge of ye glase wyndowes [Item to William Blythe for mending the glass windows]	iis iiijd
13. in the new chapell & in other plasys of the cherche [in the new chapel & in other places in the church]
14. Ite[m] pade to burle for the rest of the gyldy of owr lady [Item paid to Burle for the rest of the gild of our lady 6s 8d]	vjs viijd
15. Ite[m] pade to Robart Sturtons wyfe for wasshynge of [Item paid to Robert Sturton’s wife for washing of]	vjs viiid
16. the cherche gere for iij yere [the church gear for 3 years 6s 8d]
17. Item for the bordynge of hynry bode att doscetor & when [Item for the boarding of Henry Bode at Dowsetter & when]	xijd
18. the bell was a perynge [the bell was repairing 12d]
19. Ite[m] laynge of ij shovylls & a mattoke for ye cherche [Item laying of 2 shovels & a mattock for the church 12d]	xiid
20. Ite[m] for wode when the bell was pesyd [Item for wood when the bell was repaired(?) 12d]	xiid
21. Item payde to the belfowder in rernest of ye bargine [Item paid to the bell-founder in ? of the bargain(?) 3s 4d]	iijs iiijd
22. S[u]m[m]a Alloe lvijs ixd & rend ?? xxviijs ixd [Sum of 52s 9d remainder(?) ?? 28s 9d

Commentary
Line 1-3: Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi pageant.  See the commentary below.

Line 6:  Bawdrick –  According to Wikipedia, a bawdrick/baldric was a belt worn over one shoulder which was often used to carry a weapon (such as a sword). (Not to be confused with Blackadder’s sidekick, Baldrick!)

Line 7 & 8 and 12 & 13: Mending of the led, gild and glass in the ‘new chapel’.  This must have been a side chapel within the church of St Mary the Virgin.  It does not refer to a separate building, such as the small chapel which existed in the town’s centre.

Line 19: A mattock was a tool used for digging. It had a flat blade set at right angles to the handle.

Line 21: The bell-founder.  This is possibly the same bell-founder in London which the parish of Great Dunmow commissioned to make their bells in the late 1520s.  It is very likely that this is the same bell-foundry in Whitechapel which is still in existence today and cast the magnificent bells for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Bells & the London 2012 Olympic Bell.

Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi Plays
Lines 1-3 above record the expenditure for ‘lyne & pakthred & whepcorde when P[ar]nell made the pagantes on Corpus Cryti day’.   It has been suggested that this entry in Great Dunmow’s accounts signifies rope scourges and therefore, Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi plays were Catholic religious set-pieces involving flagellation. (1)  Packthread is very strong thread or twine and whipcord is strong worsted fabric often used for whiplashes. This argument is further enforced by the claim that the P[ar]nell in the churchwarden’s accounts was one John Parnell who was active in 1505 in Ipswich.(2)  This John Parnell of Ipswich was given 33s 4d by that town to find ornaments for their Corpus Christi plays for a period of twelve years.(3)  Ipswich’s Corpus Christi plays must have been a magnificent event because of the amount of money given to John Parnell.  Therefore, if Ipswich’s Parnell was the same person as Great Dunmow’s Parnell, then this connection could be used to support a supposition that the town of Great Dunmow was trying to emulate the more prosperous town of Ipswich.

However, by not just looking at Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts in isolation but also analysing other primary sources from Great Dunmow, it can be established that a Robert Parnell was a Tudor resident of Great Dunmow. Whilst he is not listed in any of the parish collections itemised in the churchwardens’ accounts, he is listed in the Great Dunmow’s 1524-5 Lay Subsidy returns.(4)  Moreover, a Roberd Parnell is also detailed in John Bermyshe’s 1526 will as living in one of Bermyshe’s houses in Great Dunmow.(5)  Robert Parnell was a resident of Great Dunmow.  Therefore, the evidence suggests that Ipswich’s Parnell was not the same Parnell who supplied rope for Great Dunmow’s pageant.  Moreover, as the rope was for ‘pagantes’, it is probable the rope was used to support the pageant’s scenery, and not used as rope-scourges.

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

Detail of a miniature of Corpus Christi, with two kneeling angels holding a chalice with the host above.  The Gospel Lectionary, Shelfmark Royal 2 B XIII f. 22 (England, c1508),
© British Library Board

Detail of a historiated initial ‘C'(orpus) of ciborium carried in a Corpus Christi procession.
The Omne Bonum, Shelfmark Royal 6 E VI f.427v (England, c1360-c1375),
© British Library Board

Footnotes
1) Clifford Davidson, Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain (Aldershot, 2007) p55.
2) Ibid.
3) John Wodderspoon, Memorials of the ancient town of Ipswich in the county of Suffolk (1850) p170.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), E.R.O., T/A427/1/1.
5) Will of John Bermyshe (1527), E.R.O., D/ABW/3/9.

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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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 Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Many Tudor Essex men and women spent their final days in terrible conditions in this prison including many poor souls from Great Dunmow.

• Protestant martyr, Thomas Bowyer, was thrown in here in 1556 before being taken to prison in London. Read his story here: The weaver of Great Dunmow.

• Alice Prestmary, witch of Great Dunmow, died here of gaol fever on 7 May 1567. Read her story here: Witchcraft in Tudor Great Dunmow.

 

Sketch by Thomas Dugdale, c1848

Postcard c1901-1910

Postcard c1901-1910

Postcard c1901-1910

Ground plan c1807

                              Plan of the castle c1780

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Post updated April 2020 Post created: 2012 © Kate J Cole | Essex Voices Past™ 2012-2020