Tudor Local History Archives | Page 3 of 5

Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556

Today, 27th June, is the anniversary of the burning of thirteen people at Stratford le Bow in 1556, executed in the most horrible manner because of their religion and faith. It was the largest burning of a group of people in Tudor history, and this terrible spectacle was watched by a crowd of over 20,000 people.

Burning of 13 people (11 man and 2 woman) at Stratford le Bow June 1556,
from John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1570 edition), p2135.

The story regarding this terrible burning in London is being retold today by myself on Spitalfields Life blog here. The story of one of those victims who perished in Queen Mary Tudor’s flames, Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow is retold here at Essex Voices Past.

Piecing together details about these men and women is difficult because, apart from John Foxe’s book, there is not much surviving contemporary evidence, particularly as these were not high-profile victims. However, during my research of Tudor Great Dunmow, I have been able to piece together circumstantial evidence regarding the background of Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow.

According to John Foxe’s 1563 version of The Acts and Monuments (more commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs),

Thomas bowyer sayde he was brought before one maister Wiseman of Felsed, and by him was sent to Colchester castel, and from thence was caryed to Boner Byshop of London, to be by him further examined.

Colchester Castle – county gaol of Tudor Essex

Felsted is the neighbouring village to Great Dunmow and Master Wiseman was probably the local JP whom Bowyer was hauled before. It is curious that Bowyer was not taken to the magistrates in Essex’s county town of Chelmsford. However, there is possibly a reason for this (or rather, a person): Richard Rich, 1^st Baron Rich. Lord Rich, that arch-villain of Tudor history, was an enthusiastic persecutor of Essex Protestant heretics during the Marian years. This enthusiasm was in spite of his earlier zealous support of Henry VIII’s break from Rome (resulting in his betrayal of Sir Thomas More), and his support of Edward VI’s Protestant religious changes. One of Rich’s many manors included his great mansion, Leighs Priory, (located a very short distance from Felsted) a former religious house granted to him by Henry VIII at its dissolution in 1536. Thus, Rich had very strong connections to Felsted and was buried in the parish church in 1567. With the presence of Lord Rich in Felsted, this must have been the reason why Bowyer was taken there, and not to magistrates in Chelmsford. Foxe did record that another victim who died alongside Bowyer, George Searle from White Notley (a village a couple of miles from Felsted), was taken before Rich. So the supposition that Richard Rich was involved in the case of Thomas Bowyer is entirely plausible.

Leighs Priory, Felsted (also known as Lees and Leez),
home of Richard Rich, Lord Rich

That the small North Essex town of Great Dunmow had produced a weaver with such strong and unshakeable Protestant convictions is, on the surface, remarkable. However, the parish of Great Dunmow had already visibly demonstrated that many townsfolk supported Henry VIII’s break with Rome. This evidence is contained within an extraordinary folio of Great Dunmow’s beautifully tooled leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts, now in the care of Essex Record Office.

In the summer of 1546 (the final summer of Henry VIII’s life and reign), the townsfolk of Great Dunmow staged a remarkable anti-papist event involving the entire parish. It is very likely that an impressible 16 year old Thomas Bowyer was also present. This event took place during the parish’s annual Corpus Christi religious play when people from the neighbouring towns and villages came into Great Dunmow for the communal celebration of this Catholic religious feast-day. The churchwardens’ accounts itemise receipts for that year’s Corpus Christi play, followed by the money received from each named local village who attended the play (eleven villages in total).

Entries for Great Dunmow’s June 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day
(Essex Record Office, D/P 11/5/1 f.39v)

[heading] At our playe
[in the margin] Recepte at ye playe
Receved at our play & fryste the games of of [sic] the bysshope
of saynte andrews and for the shottyng of at the same viijsvijd
Rec for the games of our runnyng ijsid
Rec for the \games at the/ leapyng ijs
Rec for the games of the casell and the shotyng of the same iiijs
Rec for the games of the pryke and shotyng of the same xxsxd
Rec for the games of the lade pryke and the games of the same vs

Deciphering this entry demonstrates that the people of Great Dunmow and surrounding villages had held an archery competition (the ‘shottyng’) which included shooting bows and arrows against an effigy of the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and at a structure which resembled the Archbishop’s Scottish castle (the ‘casell’). The ‘prykes’ were archery targets set at a specified number of paces away from the archer.

The reason for the staging of this remarkable event was because of a personal grudge of Great Dunmow’s evangelical vicar, Geoffrey Crispe MA, against Cardinal David Beaton. Beaton was the Catholic archbishop of Saint Andrews and the highest ranking cleric in a then Catholic Scotland. He had been murdered by Scottish Protestants in May 1546, three weeks previously to the feast-day of Corpus Christi, and his castle seiged. Beaton’s murder and the storming of his castle in Saint Andrews was in direct retaliation for him burning at the stake the Protestant Scottish martyr George Wishart a few months previously. Prior to his Protestant teachings in Scotland, George Wishart had been a lecturer at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – the same college and university where Great Dunmow’s vicar, Geoffrey Crispe, had studied and had been a fellow. The vicar of Great Dunmow, Geoffrey Crispe, was a contemporary, friend and associate of Protestant George Wishart.

Three weeks after the murder of Cardinal Beaton and 450 miles away, Great Dunmow used that year’s Corpus Christi feast-day to reenact his murder and the storming of his castle. An event which must have been instigated and supported by Wishart’s friend and colleague, vicar Geoffrey Crispe. This very public celebration of the cardinal’s murder demonstrates that by 1546 there was very strong anti-Pope (and probably anti-Scottish) feeling within Great Dunmow. Moreover, as Beaton’s murder was welcomed by the English king, Henry VIII, the town was visibly demonstrating their loyalty to their monarch. This folio within Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts contain the only evidence for this event, so it cannot be determined if the motivation behind the celebrations was inspired by Crisp’s personal affiliations to Wishart, or the parish’s loyalty to their sovereign, or their changing religious theology. It was probably a combination of all three.

George Wishart (b. c1513, d. 1 March 1546)

Cardinal David Beaton,
archbishop of Saint Andrews
(b. c1494, d. 29 May 1546)

Ruins of Cardinal Beaton’s castle in St Andrews, Scotland.

St Andrews’ castle – laid siege by Scottish Protestants in retaliation for the burning of George Wishart. The English parish of Great Dunmow and its neighbouring villages re-enacted the storming of this castle three weeks later.

It is likely that an impressionable 16 year old Thomas Bowyer had been present at the reenactment of the shooting of Catholic Cardinal Beaton and the storming of his castle. Furthermore, it is also probable that he was one of those young lads who took part in the ‘games of the lade pryke and the games of the same’. These activities during Corpus Christi 1546 was a clear demonstration of the anti-papist feelings within the parish of Great Dunmow, and its surrounding villages. Moreover, vicar Geoffrey Crispe had embraced these religious changes to such an extent that at some point during his 1540 to 1554 tenure of the living of Great Dunmow, he had married and so had a wife. Many parishioners, led by vicar Crispe, had started to embrace Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the changing religious wind blowing through England. However, in June 1556, ten years after Great Dunmow’s anti-papist Corpus Christi feast-day, Thomas Bowyer was burnt at the stake in Stratford le Bow in punishment for being a Protestant. The winds of religious change (Catholic this time, led by the Pope in Rome), instigated by a Tudor English monarch, had once more blown through England and reached the north Essex parish of Great Dunmow.

The narrative about Great Dunmow’s reenactment of the murder of Cardinal Beaton possibly explains why Thomas Bowyer had such strong Protestant convictions: he had probably learnt some of his faith through the parish’s anti-papist married vicar, Geoffrey Crispe. But who exactly was Thomas Bowyer of Great Dunmow, and how did he come to the attention of Bishop Bonner?

The Bowyer family of Great Dunmow occur within approximately ten legal documents, from 1483 to 1529, now held by Essex Record Office. The majority of these documents relate to land located near the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts also contain numerous entries from the reign of Henry VIII for various Bowyers. These entries include a 1536-7 gift from ‘old Thomas Bowyer’ of 3s 4d (possibly a bequest from his, now lost, will) and entries for Mother Bowyer of Parsonage Downs, and Richard Bowyer of Church End. Parsonage Downs and Church End are two locations within Great Dunmow near the parish church. Richard Bowyer was a tenant of church land from at least the 1530s and paid yearly rent to the church, as recorded in churchwardens’ accounts. The final entry for the payment of his rent occurred in the early years of Edward VI’s reign: Richard Bowyer’s tenancy of church land must have been terminated at the time of the 1547-8 crown investigations into church lands. The Bowyer family are also documented within Henry VIII’s 1523-1524 Lay Subsidy returns for Great Dunmow: Clemens Bower (the ‘Mother’ Bower in the churchwardens’ accounts) had goods to the value of £6 and paid 3d in taxes, and Johanne (or, more likely, John) was assessed at 26s 8d and paid 4d.

The records prove that the Bowyer family of Great Dunmow were of the middling sort and were tenants of church land. No records exist to connect the martyr Thomas Bowyer to these Bowyers and he is not named in the churchwarden accounts. However, it is possible that the ‘Old Thomas Bowyer’ documented in the accounts was the martyr’s close relation (perhaps his father). Moreover, a few hundred yards away from Richard Bowyer’s tenement at Church End and just past the area still known to this day as Parsonage Downs where Mother Bowyer lived, is a bridge over the River Chelmer called ‘Bowyers Bridge’. This is said locally to be so named to commemorate the Protestant martyr, Thomas Bowyer. The date when the bridge became named is unknown. However, its close proximately to the land tenanted by the Bowyer family cannot be coincidence.

Bowyers Bridge, on the way to Little Easton c1901-1910

If the martyr, Thomas Bowyer, was related to Richard Bowyer, tenant of church property, and the Old Thomas Bowyer who left money in his will to the parish church, then he would have been well-known to the vicars of Great Dunmow. By the time of Thomas Bowyer’s martyrdom in 1556, anti-papist vicar Geoffrey Crispe had been deprived of the parish of Great Dunmow (because of his marriage). The next vicar of Great Dunmow was Catholic Doctor John Bird – the former Bishop of Chester – who had been deprived of his bishopric because he had married during Edward VI’s reign. Bird, having cast aside his wife, arrived in Great Dunmow in 1554, and became the suffragan bishop (i.e. assistant) to the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. The same Bonner, who was the zealous oppressor and burner of Protestants within his diocese which included the parish of Great Dunmow.

Furthermore, because of an unfortunate incident by the vicar, which took place in front of Bishop Bonner in the parish church of Great Dunmow in July 1555, Bird would have been anxious to show Bonner his Catholic allegiance. For this story, we once again turn to the Elizabethan martyrologist, John Foxe, who gave a heavily biased account of this incident in an unpublished manuscript (Harleian MS 42 f.1r-v). According to Foxe, Bird’s sermon that day in front of Bishop Bonner was about the text ‘Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam’ (‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church’). Bird’s intention was to ‘prove the stability of St. Peter, and so successively of the Pope’s seat; but unfortunately wandered away into the account of St. Peter’s fall’ (W T Scott, Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or Pages from the History of Great Dunmow (1873) p57). Bonner was infuriated by this anti-papist sermon and

stood upon thorns, for he made face, his elbows itched, and so hard was his cushion whereon he sat, that many times during the sermon he stood up looking towards the suffragane, giving signs (and such signs as almost had speaking) to proceed to the full event of the cause in hand. (Harleian MS 42 quoted in Scott, p57.)

The outcome of this disastrous sermon was that vicar Bird broke down to the great distress of the parish’s Catholics and the jubilation of the Protestants (Scott, p58). Vicar Bird must have been an old man in his 60s at this time, and had lived through so many religious changes. So the direction this sermon took was probably caused by the ramblings and forgetfulness of an old man. Therefore, despite Foxe’s insinuations, this sermon was probably not a deliberate attempt to displease Bishop Bonner or to show Protestant beliefs. However, the sermon had displeased Bishop Bonner and vicar Bird probably would have done anything to restore himself to Bonner’s favour.

It is therefore little wonder that Thomas Bowyer of Great Dunmow, whose family had been in the parish since at least the 1480s, came to the attention of the authorities. With Bishop Bonner’s loyal assistant, Dr John Bird, being the Catholic vicar of Great Dunmow, and Lord Rich living nearby in Felsted, Thomas Bowyer would not have been passed over by the anti-Protestant tide of persecution for long. Hence, on 27th June 1556, Thomas Bowyer, weaver of Great Dunmow was burnt at the stake at Stratford le Bow in London alongside 10 men and 2 women.

Modern-day plaque on Bowyers Bridge, on the main road from Great Dunmow to Thaxted by the turning for the village of Little Easton. The age of Thomas Bowyer on the plaque is incorrect: according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Bowyer died aged 26.

Notes on the ‘bishop of Saint Andrews’ in the churchwardens’ accounts
Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts has been much examined by historians of the Reformation, Corpus Christi plays and early-modern drama in England. However, the entries on folio 39v for the ‘bysshope of saynte andrews’ and ‘casell’ have been either incorrectly transcribed or misinterpreted. In the secondary literature, ‘casell’ has been transcribed as either ‘tavell’ or ‘tarell’, and then totally ignored, and the reference to the ‘Bishop of Saint Andrews’ has been totally misunderstood. One historian even asserted that the entry to the bishop meant that Great Dunmow was acting the masquerade of a boy-bishop. All historians who have analysed the churchwardens’ accounts have totally missed the connection between the vicar of Great Dunmow to the Scottish Protestant martyr, George Wishart. This connection explains why such an extraordinary event took place in Great Dunmow in June 1546. In the secondary literature, I have found no other references to an English parish celebrating the murder of the Scottish Catholic archbishop. My post today is the first time this connection, and Great Dunmow’s reenactment of the murder of Cardinal Beaton during Corpus Christi feast-day 1546, has been made public. I discovered it in 2011 whilst researching for my Cambridge University master’s degree.

The historian’s craft of teasing evidence from sources
My main break-through came after I had told myself countless times that what I was reading HAD to make sense. The churchwarden accounts were the financial records of a parish church and therefore had to contain information about money either coming in or going out, along with the reason for the income/expenditure. Furthermore, the churchwardens’ accounts were an open record so could be read by any contemporary church or state official so had to make sense in that context. Indeed, Eamon Duffy has argued that it is likely many parishes’ churchwardens read their accounts out loud in front of their parish in a manner similar to a modern-day public meeting. Therefore, the language used in some churchwardens’ accounts imitates the behaviour of the spoken word (Eamon Duffy, Voices of Morebath, p23-4). So I read out-loud the entries about the bishop of Saint Andrews – and, once again, I heard our Tudor scribe’s Essex/Suffolk voice shining down through the centuries. However, I was somewhat startled when the scribe’s soft ‘casell’ came out of my mouth as a loud and clear ‘castle’! By reading the entry aloud, I had cracked the secret of this folio! After that breakthrough, and with a little more research into the men who were the Tudor vicars of Great Dunmow, everything else slotted into place.

The historical analysis techniques I used to decipher Great Dunmow’s 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day are discussed in the posts listed below.

– Interpreting primary sources – the 6 ‘w’s
– Primary sources – ‘Unwitting Testimony’
– Palaeography and reading between the lines
– The dialect of Tudor Essex
– Great Dunmow’s Tudor dialect

Parsonage Downs and Church End, home of the Bowyers of Great Dunmow
The pictures below are of Parsonage Downs (a small area of land located next to Bowyers Bridge) and Church End (a tiny hamlet next to the parish church). (Photos from 2012 and postcards from c1901-1910)

Parsonage Downs

Church End

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

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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
– The Tudor witches of Essex
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year
– The craft of being a historian: Research Techniques

Luttrell Psalter, Psalm 79; Archers practicing at the butts
(East Anglia, England, 1325-35), shelfmark Add. 42130, f.147v, © British Library Board.

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 2

Jun 4,2012 Leave a Reply 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Elizabeth, Tudor Local History 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Castle Hedingham, layer marney, leez priory, lord rich, progresses of queen elizabeth, St Osyth Priory

My post on Elizabeth I’s visit to Great Dunmow discussed Elizabeth’s summer progress through the town on 25^th August 1561. Today’s post is about the route she took and the houses she visited that summer.

Title page from the Bishops Bible (London, 1569),
shelfmark G.12188, © British Library Board

Mary Hill Cole ‘s book The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999) lists the hosts and their houses visited. Looking at that list today, the venues now read as a who’s-who of 21^st Century wedding venues and independent/private schools! I myself married at Layer Marney Towers (nr Colchester). It’s interesting to note that many of those hosts were descendants of Richard Rich, 1^st Baron Rich, that arch-villain of Tudor history.

– London (Robert Dudley), 24 June 1561.
– Charterhouse, London (Lord North), 10-14 July 1561
– Strand, London (William Cecil), 13 July 1561.
– Wanstead, Essex (Lord Rich), 14 July 1561.
– Havering, Essex, 14-19 July 1561.
– Pyrgo, Essex (Lord John Grey), 16 July 1561.
– Loughton Hall, Essex (Lord Darcy), 17 July 1561.
– Ingatestone Hall, Essex (Sir William Petre), 19-21 July 1561.
– New Hall, Essex (Earl of Sussex), 21-26 July 1561.
– Felix Hall (Henry Long), 26 July 1561.
– Colchester (Sir Thomas Lucas), 26-30 July 1561.
– Layer Marney (George Tuke),around 26-30 July
– St Osyth (Lord Darcy), 30 July to 2 August.
– Harwich, Essex, 2-5 August.
– Ipswich, Suffolk, 5-11 August.
– Shelley Hall, Suffolk (Philip Tilney), 11 August.
– Smallbridge, Suffolk (William Waldegrave), 11-14 August.
– Castle Hedingham (Earl of Oxford) 14-19 August.
– Gosfield Hall (Sir John Wentworth), 19-21 August.
– Leez Priory (Lord Rich), 21-25 August.
– Great Hallingbury (Lord Morley), 25-27 August 1561.
– Standon, Hert (Sir Ralph Sadler), 27-30 August 1561
– Hertford Castle, Herts, 30 August – 16 September.
– Hatfield, Hert (16 September?).
– Enfield, Middsex (16-22 September).

Below is a map of Elizabeth’s route.
© Essex Record Office, Map Showing the Royal Progress of 1561 (2008)

The cost of the Queen’s progress
The cost to both the Queen and her hosts was extensive. The cost to Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall was £136, the Earl of Oxford spent £273 and to Lord Rich at Leighs (Leez) Priory was £389.

At its heart, then, challenge of travel for the royal household was a financial one, because the Queen spent more on food, supplies, and accommodation when on progress than when she remained in the London area….. For the 1561 progress into Essex and Suffolk, Thomas Weldon, cofferer of the household, kept a tally of the Queen’s expenses at each of the places she stayed during the seventy-six day trip. The court’s expenses varied from £83 to £146 per day, with a total cost of £8,540.

J. E. Archer, E. Goldring, and S. Knight (ed.),
The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I

Below are 20th century images of the homes of some of Elizabeth’s hosts.

Layer Marney

Leez Priory

Castle Hedingham

St Osyth Priory

Further Reading
J. E. Archer, E. Goldring, and S. Knight (ed.), The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2007).
Mary Hill Cole , The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999)
F.G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (London, 1961)
John Nichols, The Progresses & Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (3 volumes), (London, 1788-1823).
University of Warwick – Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, The John Nichols Project, (2012)

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Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following:
– Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 1
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Elizabeth I

Church Bells and the Whitechapel Bell Foundry

Jun 3,2012 Leave a Reply 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Tudor Local History 2012 Diamond Jubilee, gloriana, henry iii, progresses of queen elizabeth, spirit of chartwell, thames diamond jubilee pageant, Whitechapel Bell Foundry

Today is the much heralded and awaited day of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames. Ahead of the Royal Barge, Gloriana, and the boat carrying the Queen and her party, The Spirit of Chartwell, will be a belfry barge (the Ursula Catherine) carrying eight church bells specially cast for the Diamond Jubilee Pageant by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in East London. Bells in many of churches along the route of the River Thames’s Jubilee Pageant will be ringing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Many of these churches have been part of London’s rich heritage for hundreds of years.

Each bell on Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee bell belfry barge is named after a senior member of the British Royal Family.

Bell, Name of bell (Donated by) – Musical Note
– Tenor, Elizabeth (Worshipful Company of Vintners) – G#;
– 7^th, Philip (Worshipful Company of Dyers) – A#;
– 6^th, Charles (Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers) – B#;
– 5^th, Anne (Church of St James Garlickhythe) – C#;
– 4^th, Andrew (The Bettinson family) – D#;
– 3^rd, Edward (Joanna Warrand) – E#;
– 2^nd, William (Stockwell family & Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers) – F##; and
– Treble, Henry (Harry) (Nicole Marie Kassimiotis & Worshipful Co. of Musicians) – G#.
(Information from The Royal Jubilee Bells.)

Watch the BBC’s programme Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant Highlights to see the bells on the belfry barge. There’s a good clear shot of the barge and the bells starting at 29:41.

Canaletto’s River Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day 1746, © The Lobkowicz Collections

Church bells ringing to celebrate a British monarch is not a modern-day event but has its roots deep in our history. The image below is from the early fourteenth century and shows Henry III (born 1207, died 1272) on his throne beside Westminster Abbey and the Abbey’s bells.

Henry III, by Westminster Abbey and its bells – below is a
genealogical table of his descendants, (England, c1307-c1327),
shelfmark Royal 20 A II f.9, © British Library Board.

Church bells were not just used to celebrate coronations and jubilees. My post, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow, detailed how the church bells of Great Dunmow rung out as Queen Elizabeth I took her royal progress through Essex and Suffolk in the summer 1561. Of course, the primary purpose of church bells in late medieval England was to call a parish’s Catholic community to prayer and so were significant religious objects. Surviving English churchwardens’ accounts from this period often detail the recasting and mending of their church’s bells, bell clappers and even the ropes. Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts are no exception and the accounts have many entries relating to the mending of bells at St Mary the Virgin. Along with mending their bells, the pre-Reformation parish of Great Dunmow also commissioned the casting a new Great Bell in the 1520s from an unnamed bell foundry in London.

The churchwarden accounts detail that between the years of 1527 and 1529, the parishioners of Great Dunmow collected £7 0s 7d for their new Great Bell to be installed in the parish church. This was a highly organised collection instigated by the parish’s pre-Reformation vicar, William Walton, and the local elite. This was the second in a series of seven collections organised by Walton to raise funds for church and religious artefacts. The first was for the church steeple. For the Great Bell collection, the 153 names of house-of-households, their location within Great Dunmow, and the amount each contributed were carefully and meticulously recorded for posterity within the churchwarden’s accounts. Cross referencing the lists of names for each collection with the returns from the 1520s Lay Subsidy Rolls (a tax enforced by Henry VIII) proves that contributions for the new Great Bell were made by nearly every household within the parish – including the parish’s clergy and paupers. Paupers, who were exempt from Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy tax, paid the unofficial church levy for the parish’s new bell. Many parishioners contributed the equivalent of a day’s pay (4d). The casting of a new church bell was a significant event in the life of this Tudor parish, as can be gleaned from the events surrounding the collection.

After the entries for the parish collection, the churchwardens’ accounts record a great flurry of activity. The churchwardens and local elite went back and forth to the bell-foundry in London to inspect the casting of their new bell. This incurred some expense as the men claimed their expenses for food & lodgings for their numerous trips from the church’s accounts. Finally the bell was ready to be taken back to the parish church. Whilst the accounts’ purpose was only to list the expenditure and receipts received/made by the parish church, they manage to convey the sense of triumph the entire parish must have felt when the elite were finally able to go to London to ‘fett home the bells’. They paid a staggering £10 to the bellfounder. A further £6 13s 4d was paid out by the parish church ‘for makynge a new flower [floor] in the stepell & a new belframe & new wheles & stoke all owre bells redy to go’. The accounts are silent as to whether or not there was a grand opening ceremony for the new bell – but I rather suspect that there was. The serious shortfall between the amount collected for the bell and the amount eventually paid out was not commented upon in the accounts!

‘Man ringing a church bell with another kneeling behind him; to their right, a priest is at an altar’ from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century),
shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f.257, © British Library Board.

The churchwardens’ accounts do not specify the name of the London bell foundry – just that the Great Bell was cast in London. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the makers of the Diamond Jubilee Bells, was founded in 1570 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. However, in recent years a historian has established a link from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to one Master Founder, Robert Chamberlain, who was active in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Thus, this Bell Foundry is thought to have been active as early as the 1400s during the medieval period. During the reign of Henry VIII, there can’t have been too many bell foundries in the London and it is likely that all the bell foundries would have been in the east outside the City walls. The noise, smell and risk of fire would have kept the foundries outside populated area and downwind from the prevailing winds coming from the west. There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the pre-Reformation church bells of Great Dunmow were cast in the same bell foundry that cast the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Bells, The Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

London and Westminster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, anno dom. 1563,
© British Library Board.

It was these same church-bells which rang out the joy of Queen Elizabeth’s summer progress through the parish over thirty years later on Monday 25th August 1561. Griff Rhys Jones, in the BBC’s new series on the Britain’s Lost Routes, charted Elizabeth’s 1570s progresses from Windsor Castle to Bristol. In his programme, he doesn’t comment on the church bells that must have rung out heralding the Queen’s progress. This is probably more because of the scarce survival of primary source evidence, rather than the pealing of the bells didn’t happen. Great Dunmow is lucky to have any surviving evidence – and this was only because the churchwardens meticulously recorded the expense of 8d paid out to the Good Wife Barker for her ale (Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts – folio 45v.)

There are no surviving church records of the churches in village surrounding Great Dunmow. However, it can be assumed that each village’s church rang out to celebrate the Queen’s progress: Felsted, Little Dunmow, Stebbing, Barnston, Great Dunmow, Little Canfield, Great Canfield, Takeley, and the villages of Hertfordshire surrounding Great Hallingbury. The ringing of the church bells would have been heard by all Elizabeth’s subjects during her progress through the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Transcripts of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ account
– Diamond Jubilee
– Queen Elizabeth I’s Progresses through Elizabethan England

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Text in square [brackets] are The Narrator’s transcriptions. Line numbers are merely to assist the reader find their place on the digital image.

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

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

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 1

Jun 1,2012 2 Comments 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Elizabeth, Tudor Local History 2012 Diamond Jubilee, dunmow, edward vi, great dunmow, great dunmow history, henry viii, local history, priests, Primary sources, progresses of queen elizabeth, tudor

This weekend Britain celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of our Queen, Elizabeth II. It therefore seems appropriate that my posts this weekend are about the visit of her Tudor namesake and ancestor, Queen Elizabeth I, who progressed through the town of Great Dunmow in the Summer of 1561. This was mere 20 months after she became Queen on the 17th November 1558 – her East Anglian progress was of vital importance to convey her image of royalty to her subjects.

There is only one very brief reference relating to Queen Elizabeth I’s 1561 visit to Great Dunmow within the Tudor churchwardens’ accounts.

[Itm payd to the the good wyfe barker for ale for those yet dyd rynge when ye Quenes grace cam thorow ye parysshe 8d] Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts – folio 45v.

Previous records from the churchwarden’s accounts show that the going rate in the 1520s for a day’s labour for a man was about 4d to 6d. So the bell-ringers of the church of St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow, consumed the equivalent of nearly 2 days wages in ale! This must have been some celebration…

Unfortunately, no other record survives of Queen Elizabeth’s progress through the town – the church records have no other details. Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, had granted Great Dunmow borough status in 1555. Therefore, any expenses that the town incurred during Elizabeth’s visit would have been entered into the borough records – which have not survived.

However, by examining the primary and secondary sources on Elizabeth’s Summer Progress of 1561, it can be stated with considerable certainty that she progressed through the town sometime during the day of Monday 25^th August 1561. Elizabeth had been a guest at the home of Lord Rich at nearby Leez Priory 21-25 August; and then stayed at Lord Moreley’s estate in the Hertfordshire village of Great Hallingbury on the night of the 25^th. Therefore, she must have come through Great Dunmow sometime during the day of the 25^th.

Her route would have been along the Roman Stane Street (now known most romantically as the ‘Old A120’) from Leez Priory to Great Dunmow and then through the town’s High Street. My map of Tudor Great Dunmow illustrates her likely route through the parish. The postcards below show Great Dunmow in the early 20^th Century – the Edwardian High Street of Great Dunmow looks very much as it does now. (Tudor town hall on left of 1st two postcards and on right of next 2.)

Many of today’s shops in Great Dunmow originate from medieval and Tudor houses. Therefore, the town of Great Dunmow probably looked very similar 400 years previously in the Elizabethan era. The Town/Guild Hall was built during the 16th century so was probably there in 1561 when Elizabeth progressed through the town. The pale (white) double-roofed building 2nd from the left in the two postcards below is thought to have been a pre-Reformation Catholic priest house which served the town’s small pre-Reformation Chapel. This Chapel was probably closed and destroyed as part of Edward VI’s reforms but it’s priest-house remains and is now a clothes shop.

The town must have extensively and jubilantly celebrated their Queen’s progress. Was there the equivalent of today’s bunting and streamers be-decking the streets of Tudor Great Dunmow? How did the ordinary towns-folk of Great Dunmow celebrate the exciting event of their monarch’s presence in their town?

‘Every spring and summer of her 44 years as queen, Elizabeth I insisted that her court go with her on ‘progress’, a series of royal visits to town and aristocratic homes in sourthern England. Between 1558 and 1603 her visits to over 400 individual and civic hosts provided the only direct contact most people had with a monarch who made popularity a cornerstone of her reign. These visits gave the queen a public stage on which to present herself as the people’s sovereign and to interact with her subjects in a calculated attempt to keep their support.’

Mary Hill Cole, The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999), p1.

Griff Rhys Jones, in the BBC’s new series on the Britain’s Lost Routes, has charted Elizabeth’s 1570s progresses from Windsor Castle to Bristol. Rhys Jones re-enacted the queen’s progress with modern-day people and their cars. He states that accompanying the queen were

– Court Officers
– Ladies in Waiting
– The Privy Chamber and the Privy Councillors
– Servants
– Other ranks

All told, according Rhys Jones, there were 350 people in hundreds of wagons, carts and on horseback. The whole procession was about one mile in length and included all that a fully mobile queen required – from her kitchen to her court documents. This procession travelled at approximately 3 miles per hour as it wound its way through the Elizabethan countryside. The queen often rode ahead of this procession in the type of litter shown in the first picture above. But before her went her ‘Habingers’ who rode ahead to prepare her subjects (and her hosts!) for her presence.

The distance from Leez Priory to Great Dunmow is approximately 6 miles – so it would have taken Elizabeth’s procession two hours just to get to the town. After that was her slow and steady progress through the town. It must have been a day of great celebration for the townsfolk of Great Dunmow! Do watch Griff Rhys Jones’ Britain’s Lost Routes about the west country progress of Elizabeth to understand how she might have progressed through Essex and Suffolk in 1561.

Images
– All postcards on this page are in the personal collection of The Narrator and may not be reproduced without permission.
– Procession portrait of Elizabeth I of England (Robert Peake the Elder, 1551–1619).
– ‘A hermit sitting outside a tavern drinking ale; the alewife approaches him with a flagon’ from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, last quarter 13^th century or 1^st quarter 14^th century), shelfmark Royal 10 EIV f.114v, (c) British Library Board.
– John Nichols, The Progresses & Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, (London, 1788-1823).

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You may also be interested in the following:
– Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 2
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Elizabeth I

Tuesday’s tip – When one person’s theory turns into a ‘true’ fact

Apr 10,2012 Leave a Reply Research techniques, Tudor Local History corpus christi pageants, corpus christi plays, dunmow, dunmow carnival, dunmow flitch, dunmow local history, great dunmow, great dunmow history, great dunmow local history, Medieval drama, Mepham

My post today is about trusting your own judgement when you researching – whether your research is for a local history topic or is a genealogical project. Just because you have read something by someone else – even if it is in a published book by an academic – if you don’t agree with others’ interpretations and theories, then have the courage to follow your own line of thorough and comprehensive research. Because, unfortunately, sometimes the suppositions of one historian (or genealogist) can, overtime, become the established ‘truth’.

Secondary literature interest in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
When I was researching my dissertation, I spent a great deal of time tracking down, reading and researching all the secondary sources that had cited Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts. Because the accounts are such a rich and fruitful source, there are countless academic books and journal articles whose authors have used them. The secondary source interest had started in the 1870s when the then vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, wrote a small book on the history of the church of St Mary the Virgin. At that time, the accounts were still in the parish chest in the church at Great Dunmow. I have in my minds’ eye a vivid picture of our Victorian vicar, Scott, night-by-night sitting in front of the blazing vicarage fire, reading and scrutinizing each folio by candle-light and puzzling over the writings of his predecessors from 350 years earlier. During my research, I found his book, Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow(1), to be one of the most accurate in terms of using the churchwardens’ accounts in building a reasonably correct history of both Great Dunmow’s church and the parish. However, unfortunately there are some incorrect suppositions in his book that, over time, have been picked up and reused by other researchers.

My own, much-loved and much-read, copy of
W T Scott’s 1873 history of Great Dunmow

Whilst Scott’s book was a local history book, other commentators and historians have also used the churchwardens’ accounts for their own research too. In particular, because of the accounts’ extensive entries for Corpus Christi plays, historians of medieval drama have much cited and quoted the accounts for hypothesises on early English drama and pre-Shakespearean plays.

During my own research phase, I daily read folios from the churchwardens’ accounts alongside reading the secondary literature. To my surprise, I found that I very rarely agreed with any modern-day interpretations of the accounts. I read section after section of the accounts directly from the originals written 500 hundred years ago. Then I read the secondary literature. The originals simply did not tie up with secondary sources. I was puzzled and baffled by this. It took me some time to realise that I should trust my own reading of the primary sources. Just because the secondary sources were in published books and academic journals, it didn’t necessary mean that these historians interpretations were correct – particularly as only a few of the historians had gone back to the original primary source. Unfortunately, the suppositions of Scott had, over time, become the hard-facts of others.

The church steeple’s scaffolding
For instance, in Clifford Davidson’s 2007 book Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain, Davidson cites the entries in the churchwardens’ accounts regarding Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi Plays and quotes the earlier research of both W. A. Mepham, (a 1930s/1940s historian of Essex drama) and the 1972 research of John C Coldeway. Davidson comments:

‘Already in 1526-1527 there is a mention of a scaffold that may have been used for playing [ie Corpus Christi plays](2), perhaps in a single location in the village since, as W.A. Mepham notes, Great Dunmow “was not sufficiently extensive to warrant the use of moveable pageants.(3)”’(4)

Leaving aside that the date is slightly incorrect – the entries for the scaffolding was in 1525-6 (folio 4r and folio 5v) – by only examining the drama elements within the churchwardens’ accounts, the entries for scaffolding have been taken out of context. As we have seen on folio 4r, there was an entry for money received in by the church for scaffolding, not paid out by the church – which it would have been if it was scaffolding used for the church’s regular Corpus Christi plays. On folio 5v (still in the same year) we have also seen that there were several items for the making of scaffolding and the building of a windlass. Putting the entries for scaffolding back into context, we know that a great deal of scaffolding was used to help the construction of the new church steeple. The same steeple which had been paid for by the entire parish in the 1525-6 parish collection (fos. 2r–4r Thus, any entries in the churchwardens’ accounts for scaffolding cannot be used to support a hypothesis that the Corpus Christi plays were played in one fixed place in the town.

This doesn’t mean to say that there wasn’t a fixed ‘playing area’ (or stage) of sorts assembled in the town. Indeed, my own hypothesis (to be explored in later posts), is that there was most certainly one central area in the town where the plays were performed – and this could quite possibly have been on a fixed scaffold/stage. Moreover, my hypothesis is that villagers from the surrounding villages from miles around came into Great Dunmow to watch the Corpus Christi plays in this one central area (which directly conflicts with both Scott’s and Mepham’s interpretations). However, putting the entries for the scaffolding properly back into their original context means that any entries for scaffolding in the 1520s churchwardens’ accounts must not be used to support a hypothesis of a fixed playing area or stage for Corpus Christi plays within Great Dunmow. The scaffolding documented in the churchwardens’ accounts was, quite simply, just for the construction of the new church steeple.

Corpus Christi Moveable Pageants
In the extract above, 1930s historian Mepham (whose work, as can be seen above, is still quoted today) said that Great Dunmow was not big enough to have a moveable pageant. I don’t know where Mepham lived in the 1930s but he almost certainly could not have paid a visit to Great Dunmow! If he had, he would have known that Great Dunow was (and always has been) large enough to have had moving pageants passing through the town. As we have seen from the 1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple, several areas of the parish are identified. Then, as it is now, the parish church in Church End was nearly one mile distant from the town’s High Street. Ample room for a moving pageant, if there was one, to pass through from the starting point of the town’s small pre-Reformation chapel (located in the High Street), moving through the ancient Causeway (the road is still there today) and down through Church End via Lime Tree Hill (again, this road is still there) and onto the church. When my son was a baby, I walked this precise route (from the town to the church) many many times trying to get him to go to sleep. I can assure you there was/is certainly room enough for any size of moving pageant whether a walking pageant or one on horseback and horse-drawn wagon!

Indeed, in modern times, every year the same route is used by the September Dunmow Carnival with movable (and very large) lorries and floats. Moreover, every four years there is a very large moving walking procession around the entire town area of Great Dunmow when the ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch is performed. Again, all the roads used by the modern-day September Carnival and Dunmow Flitch procession existed during the Tudor period – as demonstrated by the entries in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts for the 1520s parish collections.

Conclusion
So the moral to my post is that sometimes peoples’ suppositions and theories unfortunately end up becoming the historical truth. Trust your own instincts when you are conducting your own research. Always research others’ theories, but if they don’t ‘add-up’, then, provided you have performed your own high-quality, thorough and diligent research, believe in your own work.

The other morals to this story is,

If possible, always always always go back to any original primary sources; and
If your research is connected to local history (or the genealogy of a family based in a certain location), always physically walk the area you researching – particular if the geography of the area has been used in any secondary literature or someone else’s research. If you can’t physically walk it, then use Google maps and/or a contemporary map to help research your area . Or, better still, make contact with someone that does live in the area and ask them to walk the high-ways and by-ways for you!

Bibliography and Further reading
1) Scott. W.T., Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow (London, 1873).
2) Coldewey, J. C., ‘Early English Drama: A History of its rise and fall, and a Theory regarding the Digby Plays’ Unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Colorado, 1972).
3) Mepham, W.A., ‘Villages Plays at Dunmow, Essex, in the sixteenth century’, Notes and Queries, 166 (May 1934), 345-348 and 362-366.
4) Davidson, C., Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain (Aldershot, 2007), p.55.

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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
– The craft of being a historian: Palaeography/handwriting

Kentwell Hall, Suffolk – Easter Monday during Queen Mary’s reign

Apr 9,2012 2 Comments Mary I, Tudor Local History kentwell hall, medieval easter, Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year, tudor easter

All photographs are © Essex Voices Past 2012 and may not be reproduced without permission.

Transcript fo. 6r: Easter celebrations in late medieval parish

Apr 8,2012 Leave a Reply Great Dunmow 1526-1621, Tudor Local History Augsburg Sacramentary, corpraxis, Dominican Antiphoner, dunmow, dunmow local history, Epistolary of the Sainte-Chapelle, great dunmow, great dunmow history, great dunmow local history, great dunmow medieval manors, May day, medieval easter, Michaelmas Day, Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year, The Stowe Breviary, tudor easter

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

1. The mony & the renttys ych we Thomas Savage & [The money & rents which we Thomas Savave &]
2. John clerke John skylton & john nyghtyngeale [John Clerke John Skylton & John Nightingale]
3. hath resyvyd the seconde yere thatt we were cherche wardens [hat received the second year that we were church wardens]		xxvjs viijd
[margin note] summa iij li ijd [sum £3 2d	4. In primmis we resayvyd att owre maye [First, we received at our May]	xxxiiijs ijd
	5. Ite for a hole yerys rente endyd att mycaelmas last past
6. [heading] layde owte [laid out]
7. Layde owtte the same yere for the same cherche [Laid out the same year for the same church]
8. Item payde to Wylyem hotte for shortynge of the iiij^the [Item paid to William Hotte for shorting of the 4^th ]
9. bell clap[er] & for makynge of a coler for the samel bell [bell clapper & for making of a collar for the same bell]		iijs id
10. Item for nayles of John owltynge for to stoke ye same bell [Item for nails of John Owlting for to stoke the same bell]		iijd
11. Ite[m] to john maryou for iij dayes warke & a halfe [Item to John Mayor for 3 and half days work]
12. for to stoke the iiij^the bell wt mete & drynke [for to stoke the 4^th bell with meat & drink]		xxid
13. Ite[m] to Robartt kelynge for iiij dayes warke & a halfe [Item to Robert Keling for 4 & a half days work]
14. to helpe to stoke the forsayde bell & fenyscheynge [to help stoke the aforesaid bell & fetching(??)]
15. of the clothall wt hys mete & drnke [of the clothall with his meat & drink]		ijs iiid
16. Ite[m] for xiiij li wex for the rodelyght [Item for 14 pounds wax for the rood light]		vis viijd
17. Ite[m] for oyle ffor the lampe the hole rs v galons pryce [Item for oil for the lamp the whole year(??) 5 gallons price]		vjs viijd
18. Ite[m] ffor helpe to torne ye iiij^the bell whane(??) more wreght [Item for help to turn the 4^th bell one(??) more ??]
19. on ill last torne her of & on all dyvers tymys [on ? last turn here off & on all divers times]		vd
20. Ite[m] for ij li & a half of whyght sope to wasshe the [Item for 2 & a half pounds of whight soap to wash the]
21. corpraxis & recedew of the chercherche ger ye pryce [corpraxis & residue of the church gear the price]		xd
22. Ite[m] for pyn[n]es & nayles for the can[n]ape & for ye sepelc [Item for pins & nails for the canopy & for the sepulchre]		iiijd
23. Ite[m] ffor a new keye for the dore on the lede on the chapell [Item for a new key for the door on the led(?) on the chapel]		ijd
24. Ite[m] ffor mendynge of ye letell clokke bell of ye clokke [Item for mending of the little clock bell of the clock]		ijd
25. Ite[m] for mendynge off ye Organ belys [Item for mending of the organ’s bellows]		iid
26.Ite[m] for a li of wex for the bason a for owr lady & scrykyng [Item for a pound of wax for the basin afore Our Lady and striking(??)]		vid ob
27. Ite[m] payde to kelynge ffor trussynge up of ye bell [Item paid to Keling for trussing up of the bell]		iid
28. Ite[m] for nayles for ye same warke [Item for nails for the same work]		id
29. Ite[m] for slewynge of an awle for the cloth & makynge [Item for sewing of an awl(??) for the cloth & making]		vid
30. Ite[m] payde to wylyem hynry lownge for caryynge off [Item paid to william henry Long for carrying off]
31. vij lode of tymber for the belframe [7 load of timber for the bellframe]		iiijs iid
32. Ite[m] for mendyng of ye scanttus bell		ijd

Commentary
Line 1: We are now in the next year of the churchwardens’ account i.e. 1526-7.

Line 4: The May i.e. May Day.

Line 5: Michaelmas Day is 29^th September. Originally a medieval Catholic Saint’s day for St Michael, the Archangel, over time Michaelmas become one of the English legal system’s quarter days for paying landlords their rent.

Line 16: Wax for the rood light. The 14 pounds of wax detailed here is probably for the entire year. This is quite a substantial weight so the rood-light (i.e. the candle in front of the rood) must have been quite large. The rood was the cross at the entry to the chancel and often had images of the Virgin Mary on one side and St John on the other side. No evidence survives as to what Great Dunmow’s pre-Reformation rood looked like. As the church was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, it is likely that the pre-Reformation rood also contained the images of St Mary and St John. Sadly, very few English medieval roods survived the Reformation.

Line 21: corpraxis a cloth on which the host and the chalice was placed on during Mass.

Line 26: ob [in the money column] Latin abbreviation – short for obolus. One-half old penny.

Line 32: Sanctus bell (small hand-held bells).

Easter week in late medieval Great Dunmow
Line 22: The sepulchre represented the tomb of Christ and was used (or created) in many medieval/pre-Reformation English Catholic churches during Easter week. From Good Friday until Easter Sunday, the church’s consecrated religious items were hidden in their sepulchre and a man was set to watch over the sepulchre night and day until Easter morning. During the reign of Henry VIII, in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, there are numerous references to pins, nails, lights and canopies for the sepulchre, along with payments to the sepulchre’s watcher. Watching over the sepulchre was a serious duty for the men of the parish as there are also references for charcoal for the fires burnt by these watchers.

‘Three Holy Women at the Tomb, facing the text used to celebrate Easter mass’ from the Augsburg Sacramentary (Augsburg, Germany, 2^nd or 3^rd quarter 11^th century),
shelfmark Harley 2908 fos. 53v-54, © British Library Board.

‘Resurrection of Christ, at the beginning of Easter prayers’ from The Stowe Breviary (Norwich, England, between 1322 and 1325), shelfmark Stowe 12 f. 87,
© British Library Board.

‘Resurrection of Christ, from a liturgical text for Easter’ from A Dominican Antiphoner (North France, 1^st quarter of the 14^th century),
shelfmark Yates Thompson 25 f. 1, © British Library Board.

‘Resurrection of Christ, at the reading for Easter’ from Epistolary of the Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, 2^nd or 3^rd quarter 14^th century),
shelfmark Yates Thompson 34 f. 84, © British Library Board.

Volvelle for calculating Easter and other movable feasts (England, 2^nd half of 15^th century), shelfmark Harley 941 f. 29v, © 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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Thank you for reading this post.

Transcript fo. 5v: Building a late medieval church steeple

Apr 4,2012 Leave a Reply Great Dunmow 1526-1621, Tudor Local History dunmow, dunmow local history, great dunmow, great dunmow history, great dunmow local history, great dunmow medieval manors, medieval church architecture, medieval church steeple

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

1. Item payde to John Smethe ffor ye scaffalde tymber [Item paid to John Smith for the scaffold timber]	iis vd
2. Ite[m] for iiij day warke of Thomas Ventu[n] & won[e] off lad [Item for 4 days work off Thomas Ventun & one off lad]	ijs iiid
3. Ite to John harvuy & Wylyem barcar for a br\a/yde [Item to John Harvey & William Barker for a braid (rope)]	iijd
4. to helpe to make ye wynlas [to help make the windlass]
5. Item to John Marryou for won day werke [Item to John Mayor for one day’s work]	vid
6. to help make shorye ffor yt vyce [to make shore(??) for its vice)
7. Ite[m] payde ffor a toob & ij bells to fett watte[r] [Item paid for a tube & 2 bells to fetch water]	viid
8. Item payde for xij c [quart] of bykke [Item paid for 12 quarts of bricks]	iiijs viiid
9. Item payde to john smethe ffo carryyng of xiiij fote sto[n] from dytt[o]n [Item paid to 10. John Smith for carrying 14 foot of stone from Duton (Duton Hill – a nearby village)]	iiijs viijd
11. Item payd to More off chemysfford when he have ye bell [Item paid to More from Chelmsford when he have the bell]	viijs iiijd
12. Item payd to Wylla[m] & Arnolde ffor makyng inquer ffor ye ston att dytto[n] [Item paid to Wiliam & Arnold for making enquires for the stone at Duton (Hill)]	iiijd
13. Item payde to john skytto[n] ffor caryyng off sande & scaffald tymber [Item paid to John Skylton for carrying the sand and scaffold timber]	iijs iiid
14. Item payde to ye maso[n] ffor makying off ye steple	vii li vijs vjd [ie £7 7s 6d]
15. Item payde to M kynwelmerche for xij okys & for hardell rodds [Item paid to Mister Kynwelmarshe for 12 oaks & for hardell(??) rods]	xviijs

16. Laydeowte for ye belframe & ffor ye bell [HEADING – Laid out for the bell-frame & for the bell]
17. In primis ffor fellynge of xvj okys pryce [First, for felling of 16 oaks (trees) price]	ijs iiijd
18. Ite[m] ffor fellyng of viij okys in ye downe croft prce [Item for felling of 8 oaks in the Down Croft price]	xd
19. Item to Thomas Weytt ffor takyng down of ye olde belframe [Item to Thomas White for taking down of the old bell-frame]	vs
20. Item payde to harry longe ffor caryynge p[ar]te of ye tymber [Item paid to Harry Long for carrying part of the timber]	xxd
21. Item ffor ye borde ye same day [Item for the board (ie maybe accommodation?) the same day]	iid
22. Item ffor ij t[o]n of ston[e] yt lyis styll att Dyttin [Item for 2 tonnes of stone, it (or ‘which’) lies still at Duton (Hill) (ie it was still at Duton Hill at the time of this entry)]	xvs
23. Ite[m] ffor xiiij fote of ston yt John Smethe browte [Item for 14 feet of stone which John Smith brought]	vs
24. Ite payd to john skylto[n] for a dayes caryynge & a halfe [Item paid to John Skylton for a day and a half of carrying]	iijs
25. to carry tymber for the clotchall to say ye pesyd bell in [to carry timber for the ?? to say the ?? bell in]
26. Item payde to Robard kelynge & john marryou ffor [Item paid to Robert Kelynge & John Mayor for]	viijs
27. viij dayes wark abowte ye ffayde clochall ye su[m] [8 days work about the said clochall(??) the sum]
28. Item to Thom[a]s Savege ffor ix dayes wark [Item to Thomas Savage for 9 days work]	iijd
29. to helpe to cary ye tymber ffor ye bell fframe [to help to carry the timber for the bell frame]
30. & ffor ye clahall & to se ye warkemen have fyche thyngs as was nedfull [& for the clochall?? & to ?? the workman have fetched things as was needful]
31. Item ffor Sawynge to Wellem george [Item for sewing to William George]	viijd
32. Item ffor makynge clene of ye stepell [Item for making clean of the steeple]	vjd

33. Thys Sum xviij li xvii s [This sum £18 8s]
34. S[um]ma All?? xviij li xvs ixd [Summa of £18 15s 9d]

Commentary
Line 4 – Windlass – a device used for moving heavy weights. This link shows a reconstruction of a Medieval Builders’ Windlass.

Line 6 – Vyce (or vice). According to A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages(1), this was a winding or spiral staircase. Was it a spiral staircase up the outside of the church, which, along with the windlass, was used in the construction of the building the spire?

‘Tower of Babel showing an external staircase used during the construction of the Tower’ from Egerton Genesis Picture Book (England, 3rd quarter 14th century),
shelfmark Egerton 1894 f.5v, © British Library Board.

Line 14, 33 & 34 – the text ‘li’ is the abbreviation for the Latin word libra i.e. ‘pound’ £.

Line 25, 27 & 30 – can anyone help me with this? I’m totally stuck on the word ‘clotchall’ or ‘clochall’?

Line 34 – summa Latin word which today is abbreviated to ‘sum’ i.e. total.

Great Dunmow’s church steeple
Once again, we return to the fact that Great Dunmow doesn’t appear to have a church steeple in the modern era but the churchwardens’ accounts consistently refers to one. As can be seen on this folio, there was a lot of building work to make this steeple, which was constructed with a large amount of stone, timber and manual labour. Great Dunmow’s church does not have a steeple in the conventional sense of a steeple (i.e. there isn’t a spire). Could our Tudor scribe actually be describing the construction of the tower that is still there today? The Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages describes a steeple as being ‘a lofty erection attached to a church and intended chiefly to contain its bells’. As can be seen on this folio, there are many entries regarding the bell frame, so this definition would fit Great Dunmow’s church. The dictionary continues:

‘Steeple is a general term and applies to every appendage of this nature, whether its form classes it as a tower, or as a spire; or if it exhibits the ordinary arrangement of a tower surmounted by a spire’.(2)

The Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W T Scott, writing in the 1870s certainly puzzled over the steeple-less/spire-less tower at the church and supposed that a wooden spire had been constructed which had subsequently been destroyed. This implies that in his living memory (and the living memory of people purchasing his book), there wasn’t a steeple or spire. If the 1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple resulted in the construction of a wooden spire, if that original wooden spire was destroyed by, for example, fire, then surely that spire would have been rebuilt. Thus, there would be a record somewhere of the rebuilding of that Tudor spire and Victorian Scott most certainly would have known about it. But there isn’t. Nearby Thaxted’s and Saffron Walden’s churches both had their spires rebuilt after damage. Evidence of the rebuilding of both of these church spires survive. However, nothing has been documented about a spire in Great Dunmow. I am beginning to think that there was never a spire and that the building work paid for by the 1525-6 parish collection resulted in the ‘tower’ that can now be seen in the church.

(above) St John the Baptist church, Thaxted.(3): The tower was built in the late fifteenth century.(4) This 1776 engraving shows Thaxted’s original spire. The spire was rebuilt after it was hit by lightning in 1814, and remodelled on the original.(5)

Footnotes
1) John Britton, George Godwin, and John Le Keux, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (2010), p239.
2) Ibid, p221.
3) Robert Goadby, Cooper Engraving of Thaxted Church (1776).
4) James Bettley and Nikolaus Pevsner, Essex, The Buildings Of England (2007), p764.
5) Nikolaus Pevsner, Essex, (2nd edn.,1965), 380.

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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Transcript fo. 5r: Great Dunmow’s Tudor dialect

Mar 18,2012 1 Comment Great Dunmow 1526-1621, Tudor Local History dunmow, dunmow local history, essex dialect, great dunmow, great dunmow history, great dunmow local history, great dunmow medieval manors, medieval essex dialect

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

1	Item to Rychard scoryar for pavynge in ye cherche[Item to Richard Scoryar for paving in the church]	xd
2	&ffor mendyng of a hole on ye fuvll(??)[& for mending a hole on the ??]	xd
3	Item payde ffor ye reste of ye gyldyng of owr ladye[Item paid for the rest of the gilding of Our Lady’s]	xijs iijd
4	tabarnakyll & all ye yrynwark yt longye ye to[tabernacle & all the ironwork it belongs to]	xijs iijd
5	Item for curtan ryngs for ye same tabernakyll[Item for curtain rings for the same tabernacle]	iijd
6	Item \payde/ ffor parte off ye dore yt is sett on ye owte syde off ye new warke[Item paid for part of the door which is on the outside of the new work]	xijd
7	Layd owte ffor ye stepyll [heading][Laid out for the steeple]
8	In primis – ffor ij tun off ston wt ye carryynge[Firstly, for 2 tons of stone with the carrying (ie carriage)]	xxvis viijd
9	& Amd(??) all other costs & charge ye sum[& along?? all other costs & charges the sum]	xxvis viijd
10	Item payde to John Atkynson ffor viij dayes warke & halfe[Item paid to John Atkinson for 8 and a half days work]	ijs xd
11	to fett ye scaffalde tymber & to gay(??) roddye[to fetch the scaffold timber & to ????]
12	ffor to make ye hardylls wt dyvers oyr besynes[for to make the hardalls (handles?) with divers (ie sundry other) our business]
13	Item ffor ij dayes warke off henry longe & hys cart[Item for 2 dayes work from Henry Long & his cart]	iijs iiijd
14	to fett home tymber for ye scaffawde & ye bryke from ayston[to fetch home timber for the scaffold & the brick from Easton (ie either Great or Little Easton –nearby Essex villages)]	iijs iiijd
15	Item ffor ye borde thee(??) ij dayes[Item for the bord(er?) 2 days]	viijd
16	Item to Thomas Savage ffor xv dayes wark to[Item to Thomas Savage for 15 days work to]	vs
17	purvey pyce(??) stufe As ye workmen showelde need[?? ?? stuff as the workman should need]
18	Item& to sett them a werke & helpe to stage wt oyr[& to set them to work & help to stage with our]
19	Item ye same tyThomas for ij dayes jornay to camrege[Item the same Thomas for 2 dayes journay to Cambridge]	ijs
20	& to dyttun to seke for ye ston my hys costs for myhys horse & hyme\selfe/[& to Duton (Duton Hill, nearby Essex village) to seek for the stone his costs for his horse & himself]	ijs
21	Item ffor goynge to haddam to speke for ye lyme[Item for going to Haddam (a village in Hertfordshire – probably Much Haddam) to speek for the lime]	iijd
22	Item ffor goynge ij tymye to thaxsted for buttoll[Item for going 2 times to Thaxted (a nearby Essex town) for ??]	iiijd
23	to a made ye stagynge becawce he was expert in ye making[to make the staging because he was expert in the making (of this)]	iiijd
24	Item ffor a load of lyme from haddam pryce[Item for a load of lime from Haddam (a village in Hertfordshire – probably Much Haddam), price	viijs
25	Item ffor a fewe of lyme fett att haddam wt ye cost[Item for a few(??) of lime fetched at Haddam with the cost]	xixd
26	Item ffor xij bosshall off shalnerd lyme[Item for 12 bushalls of ?? lime]	xviijd
27	Item ffor qrt naylle \and/ to john brewer of tayclay[Item for quart of nails and to John Brewer of Takeley (nearby Essex/Hertfordshire village)]	ijs ixd
28	Item payde to Thomas Averell fo nayle[Item paid to Thomas Averell for nails]	jd
29	Item ffor iij ston off scaffalde lyne <illegible> a half[Item for 3 stone(??) of scaffold line a half]	iiijd xd
30	Item for ij ropys to wynd up ye tymber & ston pryce[Item for 2 ropes to wind up the timber & stone, price]	iijs vd
31	Item to robarde kelynge ffo xxij dayes warke & half[Item to Robert Kelynge for 22 dayes work]	xis
32	for to make ye stagynge wt oyr besynes wt mete & drynk[for to make the staging with our business with meat & drink]	xis
33	Item to Thomas dygby for iiij dayes warke &[Item to Thomas Digby for 3 days work &]	xixd
34	for to make hardell for ye stagynge[for to make the hardall(??) for the staging]	xixd
35	Item for mete & drynke \when we/ wente to choce ye okye[Item for meat & drink when we went to choose the oak	iiijd
36	Item ffor wex & for Rofyn for to mak syme(??) for ye stayer[Item for wax & for Ruffin(??) to make ?? for the stairs.	xiid

The Voice of Great Dunmow’s scribe
This blog has many readers from the North Essex and Suffolk area. To them (and, of course, to my other readers too) I say… can’t you just hear the Suffolk accent shining through this folio! Say the names of the following villages and towns out loud and you will hear that scribe from five-hundred years ago! Remember, the scribe was writing phonetically, so pronounce each word out-loud phonetically and you will hear our long-dead, invisible, but always present, scribe.

Ayston (ie Great Easton or Little Easton)
Camrege (ie Cambridge – I love saying this one out loud… to start with, a nice hard ‘cAM’ and then growl out that ‘r’ to get the soft Suffolk burr to the ‘rege’! Wonderful!)
Dyttun (ie Duton Hill)
Tayclay (ie Takeley. This town is now pronounced ‘Take-Leigh’. So try out you best Tudor accent: try the ‘Tay’ and then sound out that ‘clay’!)
Thaxsted (ie Thaxted, everyone I know still pronounces this town’s name as Thaxsted, despite its modern day spelling! Thaxted is one of Essex’s jewels-in-the-crown of beautiful villages. The town has many medieval buildings still standing including the beautiful medieval church (pictured below) which is more like a cathedral in its dramatic size and dimensions and the town’s medieval guildhall. This town is well worth a visit to tourists visiting Great Britain. If anyone is visiting this area during June or July, then I strongly recommend the Thaxted Festival for an evening of beautiful music in a remarkable location.

Being able to ‘hear’ the sound of our Tudor scribe is the very reason why this blog is called Essex Voices Past and also why my pseudonym is ‘The Narrator’. I can only merely narrate the stories from Great Dunmow’s past, the Tudor scribe can speak perfectly well for himself.

Unwitting Testimony
There are several items on this folio that we can use unwitting testimony to interpret the entry. For example:

Line 3: ‘paid for the rest of the gilding of Our Lady’s Tabernacle’. Although we are now five folios into the leather-bound churchwardens’ book, we are still on in the first year of the accounts recorded within it. Therefore, this entry implies a couple of things, firstly the initial gilding was done (or paid for) prior to the start of the account-book (so perhaps in the years 1524-5), and secondly that the tabernacle must have been large because the payment was in (at least) two parts and this instalment was for 12s 4d (a significant sum).
Line 6: ‘New work’. What new work? It’s not itemised in the accounts and so must have occurred prior to the start of the churchwardens’ accounts in 1525-6. The very way it’s described implies that this was an area of the church that everyone knew as the ‘new work’.
Line 20: the crossed out ‘my’. This is intriguing. Was Thomas Savage the unknown scribe? Unlikely, as he was the churchwarden. Also, the entries on this folio imply that he was the builder commissioned to build the steeple (and the person who contributed the largest amount towards the same steeple!) Maybe the scribe was copying entries into the leather-bound account-book from various people’s loose receipts and he was busy word-for-word copying Thomas Savage’s receipt and accidently wrote ‘my’.

Church Steeple
Finally we are into the expenses for the building of the new church steeple. Anyone who has seen Great Dunmow’s beautiful church will know that there is certainly not a steeple in existence now (and the church hasn’t had one in living memory). However, here we have costs for the timber, the scaffolding, stones and limes. Perhaps the Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, was correct in his assessment that this merely for repairs, new windows and a wooden spire.

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Blacksheep Sunday: Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment – Part 2

Mar 11,2012 4 Comments Tudor Local History Agnes Waterhouse, Alice Prestmary, Elizabeth Francis, essex witches, Joan Cunny, Joan Prentice, Joan Upney, John Prestmary, tudor witches

Click the picture of Hatfield Peverel’s witch (below) to read Part 1 of the story of Great Dunmow’s Elizabethan witches.

1566: The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde

There were two sets of husbands and wifes accused of witchcraft in the Elizabethan era in Great Dunmow: Alice & John Prestmary (1567), and Richard & Joan Prestmary (1578). The calendars of the Assizes and the Queen’s Bench Indictments containing the Prestmary trials have survived and are now held by Essex Record Office. These contain the only surviving official records of these two cases. The authorities did not directly accuse John Prestmary of witchcraft and so isn’t named in any of the Assize trials. However, as will become clear in this post, there is enough circumstantial evidence to support my theory that he must have been involved in some way with his wife’s actions.

The Prestmarys of early-modern Great Dunmow have not been comprehensively researched by other historians. This is probably because it was previously thought that there was no other surviving evidence regarding the Prestmarys, such as contemporary pamphlets. Contemporary pamphlets are much used by historians as resources to be analysed for the causes, consequences and responses to witchcraft in early-modern England. Two such pamphlets are: The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde (1566) and The apprehension and confession of three notorious witches. Arreigned and by iustice condemned and executed at Chelmes-forde, in the Countye of Essex, (1589). Therefore, with such limited sources available to historians for their research, this is perhaps why the Prestmarys have not been comprehensively documented in the secondary literature before now.

However evidence regarding the Prestmarys have survived in the form of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts and the town’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns. Part 1 of this story discussed the surviving 1567 legal documents around Alice and John Prestmary. To recap the official documents:

On the 1st February, Alice Prestmary of Great Dunmow, wife of John Prestmary, bewitched Robert Parker’s son, Edward ‘putting him peril of his life, so that his life is despaired of’.(1) At her trial at the Brentwood Assizes on 13 March, she pleaded not guilty but was found guilty. However, she died of ‘a fever’ (possibly gaol fever) in Colchester gaol on 7 May, which, according to the official Inquisition into her death, was a ‘visitation of God’.(2)
On the same day as the bewitchment of Edward Parker, the inquest into Alice’s husband’s suicide took place. John Prestmary, aged 60 years old, had hanged himself from a walnut tree in his garden on 30 January. Two days later, 1 February, his inquest took place.(3)

Suicide in early-modern England would have been considered an act of ‘self-murder’ and only something that could have occurred if the Devil himself had been involved. It is very likely that the inquest into John Prestmary’s suicide took place somewhere in the town of Great Dunmow itself. It cannot be coincidence that John Prestmary killed himself on 30 January and a two days later, his wife had bewitched a neighbour’s child. The official records are silent on the events in Great Dunmow so we can only guess at what had taken place during that January. Had Joan, the newly bereaved wife, attended her husband’s inquest? Did she blame the Parkers for the death of her husband? Was the mutterings and ramblings of a grief-stricken old woman taken to be the curses and incantations of a witch? Had there been a neighbourly dispute between the Prestmarys and the Parkers resulting in John’s suicide and Alice being tried as a witch? The official records are silent on all of this.

However, we can establish is that there had probably been some form of neighbourly dispute or ill-will between the Parkers (the accusers) and the Prestmarys (the accused). The evidence discussed below shows that both the Parkers and the Prestmarys were established families in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years before the 1567 trial.

The accused: the Prestmarys of Great Dunmow
That John Prestmary was recorded in the legal records as being about 60 years old is crucial to constructing more background information about him. Taking his age-range to have actually been between 50 to 70 years old, this would give him a (wide) date of birth of between 1497 to 1517. Therefore, by the time of the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy and the first parish-wide church collection of 1525-6, John Prestmary would either have been too young to have paid the Lay Subsidy tax in 1523-4, or he was a young man in his twenties.

A John Prestmary is not recorded in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns(4) but he is in the 1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple. In the parish collection, John Prestmary was recorded as living in the Bishopswood Quarter (an area to the south of the parish) and contributed 4d towards the church’s steeple. As has been discussed in previous posts, 4d was the equivalent of one day’s wage for a labourer and this was the amount that the majority of parishioners paid towards their church’s new steeple. There were no other ‘Prestmary’ families recorded in either the Lay Subsidy or the collection for the church’s steeple. As John Prestmary was not levied in the Lay Subsidy returns, this could mean that:

- He was a pauper and therefore exempt from the tax. Or,
- He was too young to pay the tax. However if this was the case, where (or with whom) was he living? No-one with the Prestmary name was recorded in Great Dunmow as paying the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy. Or,
- He was not a local man but had arrived in Great Dunmow sometime between 1523 and 1525. According to Peter Higginbotham’s excellent website on English Workhouses, part of the Origins of the Old Poor Law (1601), was the statue passed in 1495: The Vagabonds and Beggars Act (11 Henry VII c.2), which stated

‘Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid.’

My interpretation of this Act is that if John Prestmary was a pauper from another parish, and that parish was in the Hundred of Dunmow, he would not be returned to the parish of his birth. (This earlier Act was slightly different to the later 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor (the Old Poor Law), when a pauper would have been sent back to the parish were they were born.) I have not yet searched the Lay Subsidy returns for the other towns and villages in the Hundred of Dunmow. If I can’t find him listed elsewhere on other villages’ Lay Subsidy returns for the Hundred, then it is credible that he was a pauper and so exempt from Henry VIII’s tax.

At the moment, my evidence does point to John Prestmary being a pauper in the 1520s and so was exempt from paying the Lay Subsidy. However, he did pay the church’s unofficial tax: the levy for the church steeple – as seemed to have been the case with many other pauper donors. Of course, the John Prestmary recorded in the 1525-6 parish collection may not be the same John Prestmary who killed himself in 1567: the former could have been the latter’s father.

Prestmary evidence from within Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts is as follows:

1525-6 John Prestmary of Bishopswood Quarter contributed 4d towards the church’s steeple.(5)
1527-9 John Prestmery of Windmill Street contributed 2d towards the parish collection for the new bells. (6) Windmill Street is in the middle of town about a mile away from Bishopswood Quarter (Windmill Street’s modern day name is Rosemary Lane/The Downs.)
1529-30 Richard Prestmary contributed 1d towards the collection for the organs. (7) It is interesting that John Prestmary was not documented in this collection for the organ. This was the 3rd (and final) parish-wide collection conducted by the church. However, this collection recorded approximately 20 less names than the first collection and 10 less names than the second collection. There had been a devastating outbreak of the lethal sweating sickness in the late 1520s which had claimed many lives within England (it almost claimed the life of Anne Boleyn). So this could account for the drop in the total number of contributors to each collection but it doesn’t explain why John Prestmary’s name was missing. As the list of contributors to the parish collections only documented the heads-of-households, it is possible that John Prestmary (and family) were living with Richard Prestmary at the time of this collection.
John Prestmarie paid church rent of 10s – an amount that was for two years rent owed at the Feast of St Michael (Michaelmas – September) during the 5th and 6th year of either Edward VI’s reign or Mary’s reign (either 1551-2 or 1557-8).(8) For John to have paid rent at 5s per year means that by this time, he was certainly more effluent then he had been in the 1520s/1530s.

This all leads to the conclusion that by the time of the 1567 trial, the Prestmarys had been living in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years.

The accusers: the Parker families of Great Dunmow
Now onto the Parker family, whose child, Edward, Alice Prestmary was accused of bewitching. This is harder to analyse and evaluate as there were so many Parkers in Great Dunmow between the 1520s and 1560s. Contributing towards the many parish collections were several John Parkers, a Richard Parker, two Robert Parkers, and a Mother Parker. Because there were so many Parkers in Great Dunmow, their trades were recorded alongside the majority of their names. Their recorded trades were fletcher, sawyer, butcher, tiller, labourer, tanner, brewer, and wheeler. From a distance of 500 years it is impossible to determine if (or how) they were all related to each other. However, it can be established that one of the John Parker’s almost certainly had at least two sons: Nicholas and Robert: ‘rec of Rbt Parker and Nycolas Parker for the buriall of olde Parker in the churche’(9). The many Parkers of Great Dunmow were also recorded in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns.

Therefore, by amalgamating the Parker evidence (from the Lay Subsidy returns, their trades, and the contributions to the various church collections) it can be shown that the various Parker families were certainly not amongst the poor of the parish. Indeed, John Parker, the Fletcher, was extremely wealthy and, according to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy was the richest man in the entire parish. His burial, costing 6s 8d, within the church building itself (i.e. not outside in a grave in the churchyard) also indicates that he was one of the elite of the parish. It was Robert Parker who accused Alice Prestmary of bewitching his son. There were two Robert Parkers assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy:

one who was assessed as having land to the value of 40s (the thirteenth wealthiest man in the parish);
and the other who was assessed as having goods to the value of 20s.

Throughout the 1520s to the 1560s, various Parkers were recorded as helping out with church business:

John Parker who played the fool at Christmas and gathered in money from the merry-making parishioners,(10);
Richard Parker who sold 24 paving slabs from recently dissolved Tilty Abbey to be laid in Great Dunmow’s church(11). (Is this the very first documented evidence of the infamous Essex man on the make with his equally infamous van?);
Mother Parker, widow of Thomas Parker, tenant of church land(12);
Parker who was paid by the churchwardens for destroying and removing the High Altar in Edward VI’s reign(13).
Several Parkers had been churchwardens, including Robert Parker, who had been one of the churchwardens prior to the start of the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts, and then again in 1537-8 and 1538-9 (or was this the other Robert Parker?).

Whilst it cannot be pinpointed with any great certainity who exactly was the Robert Parker whose son was bewitched by Alice Prestmary, the evidence does establish that the Parkers had been in Great Dunmow for at least 40 years before the witchcraft trial of 1567. Moreover, in such a small parish of approximately 160 households, most of the Parkers were probably related to each other and they were either relatively well-off or amongst the top elite of the parish.

The tensions of early-modern communities
Many historians of early-modern witchcraft have put forward the hypothesis that there were significant tensions within parish life during early-modern England. If previously good relationships broke down between neighbours, often the cry of witchcraft was heard in the village. There is also the premise that witchcraft accusations often resulted because of ‘charity denied’. That is, Person A (normally a poor woman) requested charity or help from Person B. Person B refused to help so Person A bewitched either them, their family or their livestock. Or conversely, Person B having refused to give help or charity to Person A, then accused Person A of witchcraft to expunge their guilt at denying the needed charity. Tensions between neighbours could be highly charged!

This hypothesis of neighbourly tensions exploding into witchcraft accusations had happened in 1567 in Great Dunmow. We will never know the precise details. However, what can be ascertained is that two families, who had lived in close proximity to each other in a small rural town for at least 40 years, ended up in a neighbourly dispute that caused one man to commit suicide, the imprisonment of his nearly bereaved widow in terrible gaol conditions, and her death from a disease caught whilst imprisoned. The Parkers, the richer and better connected family, had accused the Prestmarys, who were amongst the poor of the parish, of witchcraft. John Prestmary’s suicide and Alice’s death in prison from a ‘visitation of God’ no doubt confirmed to the Parkers (and other parishioners) the guilt of this pair of witches. Their deaths must also have conveniently obliterated any remorse that the Parkers might have felt at pointing the finger of accusation at their long-standing neighbours.

Death and burial of the Prestmarys
I have yet to examine parish registers (births, deaths, and marriages) for Great Dunmow for this period to find all the Prestmarys and the Parkers. I would not expect to find any record of John Prestmary’s burial. As a suicide, he probably was buried at midnight, in unconsecrated land in the darkest corner and most isolated part of the parish church’s large graveyard (probably the most northern part). Alice, having died in Colchester gaol, would obviously not have been buried in Great Dunmow: her body was probably cast into an unmarked massive paupers grave within the castle’s grounds.

Digital images of the Great Dunmow’s parish registers are all online from the Essex Record Office’s website. One day, when time allows, I want to look through them to see if I can find any more Prestmarys. Unless, of course, any of my blog readers has already done so or could help me? Searching the parish registers could give an answer as to how John & Alice were related to Richard Prestmary.

Richard and Joan Prestmary of Great Dunmow
In the next part of this series, I will consider the second Prestmary couple accused of witchcraft: Richard and Joan Prestmary. To be continued…

Note on the Prestmary spelling
So far in the records I have seen the name spelt as below. For uniformity my posts (unless quoting directly from primary sources) will use the most consistent spelling – ‘Prestmary’.

Prestmary
Prestmarye
Prestmery
Prestmarie
Presmary
Presmarye
Presmere
Presmere
Preistmarye
Prestmare
Preasmary

Footnotes
1) Calendar of Essex Assize File [ASS 35/9/2] Assizes held at Brentwood (13 March 1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 418/11/5. This case is detailed in J. S. Cockburn (editor), Calendar of Assize Records: Essex Indictments, Elizabeth I (London, 1978), p52. In Cockburn’s book, the citation is that the bewitchment took place on the 1st February. The E.R.O. record implies that the date of the Indictment (i.e. the date she was charged of the crime) was 1st February. I suppose it was possible that Alice was charged on the same day that the bewitchment took place.
2) Calendar of Queen’s Bench Indictments Ancient 619, Part I, (1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 428/1/14A.
3) Calendar of Queen’s Bench Indictments Ancient 617,Part I, (1567), Essex Record Office, T/A 428/1/12A.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), The National Archives, E179/108/161.
5) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P11/5/1 – folio 4r.
6) Ibid, folios 7r-9r
7) Ibid. folios 12v-14v.
8) Ibid, folio 42r. Dating entries on this folio is extremely difficult. Although this folio contains entries relating almost entirely to Mary’s reign, it was not written into the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts until the first year of Elizabeth’s reign. The clergy and churchwardens of Great Dunmow had been very lax in keeping their accounts formerly documented during the last few years of Edward VI’s reign and the whole of Mary’s reign. Thus, the accounts for Mary’s entire reign were written retrospectively on this and the following folios in 1558/9 (i.e. during Elizabeth’s reign). To add to this confusion, the 1558/9 scribe or churchwardens also mixed up entries from the final years of Edward VI’s reign. The entry for the John Prestmary’s rent states that the rent was for the 5th and 6th year but does not explicitly state which reign. The preceding entry explicitly states Edward’s reign but the following entry states Mary’s. So other entries on the same page cannot be used to fix the date of John Prestmary’s rent. Hence the uncertainty of about the precise date that he was tenant of church-land. A later blog post will explain in more details the difficulties analysing the Edwardian and Marian accounts.
9) Ibid, folio 39v
10) Ibid, folios 29r-30r.
11) Ibid, folios 24v-28v.
12) Ibid, folio 42r.
13) Ibid, folio 40v.

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Category ArchiveTudor Local History