Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts. In the spirit of one of his Prompts, Follow Friday, my post today contains my top 10 Essex related websites for genealogical and local history research.
2. Ancestor owned or ran a pub in Essex? Try Pub History
Royal Oak pub in Great Dunmow. Left picture has the figure of the landlord, James Nelson Kemp (my grandfather’s uncle), and the right picture is of his son, Gordon Parnall Kemp (my grandfather’s cousin), killed in the Great War and commemorated on the town’s War Memorial along with his brother, Harold.
4. The early-modern witches of Essex: http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/ (This site also contains an essay by me which I wrote when I first started my research into witchcraft in early-modern Essex – see if you can spot it!)
10. Website with links to early-modern and modern Essex: Genmaps – Essex
And, of course, if your ancestor lived in early-modern Great Dunmow, then this website, Essex Voice Past!
Another one to add to my list! Update 9 March 2012 at 19:30: I’ve realised I’ve made a glaring admission in my Top 10. This one is definitely up there amongst my favourite sites.
Was you ancestor in a workhouse? This is an amazing site, be prepared to lose a few hours pouring over it!: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/
Have I missed any of your favourites? Let me know…
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How can contemporary maps help you understand your genealogical or local history research? In this post, I will be considering Christopher Sexton’s 1576 map of Essex(1) and assess its benefit to my historical research on the town of Great Dunmow in the pre-Reformation period. This map was commissioned as part of an atlas of England belonging to William Cecil, Lord Burghley(2), Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State. Click the map below to be taken to the British Library’s zoomable image.
Using maps in local history research Maps may provide not just a town’s geographical infrastructure such as roads and rivers, but also extra detail. For example, Sexton’s map of Essex, with its small pictorial vignette of each church, showed me the precise location of each church in Great Dunmow’s neighbouring villages and towns. Other maps of Essex from a later period give fantastic evidence as to the style, format and floor-plan of the houses depicted. Examine the images of John Walker’s 1591 map of Chelmsford ‘A trew platt of the mannor and towne of Chellmisforde’ and see how each individual house in the town’s centre has been drawn on the map.
Great Dunmow, Sexton’s map and Corpus Christi plays Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts documented many neighbouring Essex villages and towns, and even cities such as Cambridge and London. Sexton’s map of Essex helped me track the various locations documented within the accounts and assess the assertions of various historians. In particular, the claims that during Henry VIII’s reign, a band of travelling players toured Great Dunmow’s neighbouring villages to perform plays on Corpus Christi feast-day and then returned home to Great Dunmow each night. Sexton’s map helped me with my hypothesis that this could not have been the case. Rather people from the neighbouring villages travelled into Great Dunmow to witness one central play on one single day.
Corpus Christi was a mid-Summer moveable feast-day that occurred on one given day. The sheer distance between each village, and the number of locations itemised, would have meant that the players would have travelled to a maximum of 16 villages either on one single day or over a period of days. Even if these players had performed in two villages per day, then the plays would have taken more than two weeks to be performed in all the named villages. A two-week festival was hardly in keeping with a single feast-day that took place during the busy agricultural Summer months! Last year, I tried to drive around the 16 villages named by the churchwardens in the 1530-2 accounts as having contributed money towards the feast of Corpus Christi. Even with my super-dupa modern-sports car, I couldn’t drive to all the villages in a single day – let alone setup and perform a religious play!
Even through Sexton’s map was drawn 50 years after the period under my study, having his map has given more credibility to my supposition that neighbouring villagers travelled into Great Dunmow and not vice-versa.
Villages documented as attending Great Dunmow’s 1530-2 Corpus Christi play
Villages documented as attending Great Dunmow’s 1539-41 Corpus Christi play
I would strongly recommend that whenever possible you use contemporary maps when doing any local history research or any genealogical research.
Many of John Walker’s wonderful maps of sixteenth/seventeenth century Essex have been reprinted in the glorious book:-
A.C. Edwards and K.C. Newton, The Walkers of Hanningfield: Surveyors and Mapmakers Extraordinary, (London, 1985). If you are interested in early-modern Essex or early-modern map making, then I thoroughly recommend this book.
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Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)
1. Layde owte for ye cherche
[Laid out for the church]
2. In p[r]im[s] ffor iiij galuns oyle ffor ye lampe
[In primis (Firstly,) for 4 gallons oil for the lamp]
vijs iiijd
3. Item for iij lampe glassys pryce
[Item for 3 glasses for the lamp, price]
iiid
4. Item ffor mendying of ye ffurnes of ye lampe to scoryar
[John Scoryar – documented as paying ‘nichell’ (nothing) to the church steeple collection. Item for mending of the furnace of the lamp]
iid
5. Item to John bykner for stykynge of ye Rood lyght
[Item to John Bykner for striking of the Rood Light]
xiiijd
6. Item ffor strykynge of ye lyght before owre lady
[Item for striking of the light before our lady]
7. att ye hy alter & ye lyght on the basun \?li <illegible> off wax/
[at the High Altar & the light on the basin]
vijd
8. Item payde to Thom[a]s turner ffor mendynge off ye
[Item paid to Thomas Turner for mending the]
9. ledys in dyvers plasys & ffor ye longe ?? ye stepyll
[leds in divers places and for the long ?? the steeple]
vs viid
10. Item ffor slenynge[??] of ?? new clothe
[Item for sewing? of ? new cloth]
vjd
11. Item for p[ar]te of ye makynge of ye closett for ye Roode
[Item for making part of the closet for the Rood].
iis
12. Item to Marry\ou/ for mendying of ye bells on all hall[o]ws evyn
[John Mayor – documented as paying 4d to the church steeple collection.] [Item to Mayor for mending the bells on All Hallows Eve(ning)]
viijd
13. Item payde to John oltyng for mendynge of
[Item paid to John Oltyng for mending of]
14. the clapers the yere’d ffore thatt we cam on
[the (bell) clappers the years (be)fore that we came on]
vis viijd
15. Item for claperynge of iij letell bells for ye can[n]epe
[Item for ?? of 3 little bells for the canopy]
id
16. Item to kynge for trussyng up of ye bell clapper
[Item to King for trussing up the bell clapper]
id
17. Item to John Scoryar ffor mendynge of ye hutchys
[Item to John Scorya for mending of the hutches]
18. <illegible> and of ye stoles
[and of the stools]
vijd
19. Item for hys borde ye ssame tyme
[Item for his board (ie accommodation/lodgings) the same time]
iiijd
20. Item ffor ij planks ffor ye same hutchys
[Item for 2 planks for the same hutches]
vid
21. Item to wyllem hott for nayles for yeene wark
[Item to William Hot for nails for ?? work
22. for ye same hutchys
[for the same hutches]
xd
23. Item ffor oyl small nale for ye same
[Item for oil??? small nail for the same]
iid
24. Item for ij dayes \warke/ off Thomas Savage ye same time
[Item for 2 days work of Thomas Savage the same time – Thomas Savage donated the largest amount of money for the church steeple £3 6s 8d]
viijd
25. Item payde to burle in yernest off ye gyldynge off Awr lady
[Item paid to burle? in earnest?? of the gilding of Our Lady.
xxd
26. Item for xxijth li of wex for ye Rood lyrite
[Item for 22 pounds (li = libra) of wax for the Rood Light
xijs xd
27. Item to John Scoryar & Rychard hys brother
[Item to John Scoryar and Richard his brother]
28. ffor makynge off iij new stepys in ye vyce off the Rood loft
[for making of 3 new steps in the vice of the Rood Loft]
xd
29. Item ffor xviij ryngs ffor ye nayle & the settyng on
[Item for 18 rings for the nails & the setting on]
iijd
30. Item ffor a poly to hange ye basun on before owr lady of bedlem
[Item for a pole to hang the basin on before Our Lady of Bedlem (Bethleham)]
iijd
31. Item ffor scorynge off ye grate & makynge off ye got?? ye cherch walk? [Item for scoring off the grate & making off the ?? the curch walk?]
ixd
32. Item ffor a parcall lyne & ffor pyns & nalls ffor \ye/ sepolk[er]
[Item for a parcel line & for pins & nails for the sepulchre
iiijd
33. Item ffor a New keye ffor ye stepyll dor
[Item for a new key for the steeple door]
iiijd
34. Item payd ffor a blakk morres coatt
xiid
35. Item payde ffor a sansbell rope
[Item paid for a sansbell (sanctus bell) rope
ijd
Commentary Yet another fascinating page from Great Dunmow’s history with so many interesting items. On this folio, all the items are all expenses i.e. items purchased by the churchwardens on behalf of Great Dunmow’s parish church, as they were ‘Layde owte for ye cherche’.
Great Dunmow’s Black Morris Coat One of the most important items on this folio is the entry 2nd from bottom.
An expense of 12d for ‘a blakk morres coatt’.
This can be transcribed as being a ‘Black Morris Coat’. At some points in my research, I did wonder if this entry was actually a ‘Black Mores Coat’. However, the entry very definitely shows a double ‘r’ and reading the accounts in their entirety many times over helped me hear the voice of the scribe and understand the dialect of Tudor Essex. The double ‘r’ was meant to be pronounced, and this entry was certainly for a ‘Mor-ris’ coat, not a ‘Mores’ coat.
This entry for Great Dunmow’s Morris Coat has been much cited by historians of medieval and early-modern English drama, Morris Dancing, the Catholic ritual year, as well as English folklore. If you have read any of the secondary literature on these topics and themes, then you will invariable find reference to Great Dunmow’s ‘Black Morris’ coat. And this is the primary source entry for it! However, this is the one and only documented reference to ‘Morris’ or ‘Black Morris’ in the entire hundred years of the surviving churchwardens’ accounts. There are no other mentions.
The entry is very short and concise, so by using ‘Unwitting Testimony’, it could be surmised that the coat was not an extraordinary purchase but its cost was significant. According to Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts, a man’s labour for one day cost 4d. Therefore, the purchase of this coat for 12d was a noteworthy sum of money. Moreover, the accounts were very precise that this was just one coat: ‘a blakk morres coat’ (in the singular). This coat must have been quite a spectacular item – full of finery and regalia. Today’s East Anglian modern revival of Molly Dancing is a thought to be a throw-back from English traditions performed at May Day and Plough Monday. Perhaps Great Dunmow’s early-modern Black Morris coat was a very early version of the magnificent robes that now adorn the modern-day Molly Dancers of East Anglia. On the previous folio of the churchwardens’ accounts (fol.4r), both May Day and the Plough-fest were itemised as bringing in revenue into the church. Therefore, it was more than likely that this magnificent Black Morris Coat costing 12d was worn at either (or both) festivities.
Below are photos my son took of the Molly Dancers on New Years Day 2012 at The Hythe, Maldon.
Lamp – whatever this lamp was, it must have been large as there was a substantial yearly maintenance cost for this particular year (1525-6). This folio documents the purchase of 4 gallons of oil for it, 3 glasses (or panes of glass) to go in it, and the mending of its furnace.
Lights – several ‘lights’ (ie candles) are documented on this folio. These ‘lights’ (or candles) were all placed in front of a religious image or artefact. Henry VIII’s increasingly attacked traditional (Catholic) religion throughout the 1530s and eventually lights were banned before almost all sacred images. In Henry VIII’s 1538 Royal Injunctions (orchestrated by Thomas Cromwell), there were decrees against candles, tapers, and images of wax placed before any image or picture. Lights were only allowed before the rood, sepulchre, and sacrament of the altar.(1) Later folios of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts show that the church had complied with those Injunctions as there are fewer expenses for ‘lights’.
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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35. Ite off John atkynso[n] for a fewe bryks & a letell
36. wete lyme & a tabbe ych [which] thay carryd watt in ye sum
ixd
37. Ite off ye glon?? ffor a ladder pryce
iiid
38. Ite ffor a rope sold to ye good ma[n] fyche pryce
xijd
39. Ite resayvyd ffor \ye/ scaffold off Thom[a]s Savage
iijs iiijd
–
40. Sum xviij li xs vd [£18 10s 5d)
41. Sum ??th rec[eived] ?? Anni xxli ijs jd
Commentary
There are many interesting pages within the churchwardens’ account-book and this page has to rank high up the list of intriguing pages – not for what it says, but more what it doesn’t say!
The entries on this page are directly after the parish collection for the church steeple so cover the period 1525-6. Therefore, they are the first receipts for money received by Great Dunmow’s church recorded in the leather account-book. Churchwarden accounts or church records for Great Dunmow prior to 1525-6 have not survived. However, several entries on this folio indicate that the previous churchwardens had also kept careful accounts prior to 1525-6.
Churchwardens – Line 24/25: fo.2r recorded that the current (ie 1525-6) churchwardens were Thomas Savage, John Skylton, John Nyghtyngale and John Clerke. This folio records that before them, the previous churchwardens were William Saud[e]r (probably ‘Saunder(s)’ – the churchwardens’ scribe had a soft Suffolk-like accent and didn’t pronounce hard ‘n’s , see The dialect of Tudor Essex), Robert Parker, Raff/Ralph Melbourne, and Thomas Hervy (Harvey?). As Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were often in office for two years, it is likely that these men were churchwardens for the periods 1523-4 and 1524-5. The 14 shillings which the old churchwardens handed over to the 1525-6 set was either their cash-in-hand money left over from their tenure or their own money to make up shortfall in the accounts (or a mixture of both). Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were personally liable for any shortfall in their church’s finances at the end of their period in office. It is because of this personal liability that the accounts of Medieval and Tudor churches were so meticulously documented and recorded.
Plough Monday – Line 26:
The plough-feast was celebrated on the first Monday after the Epiphany (Twelfth Day) in January and was the traditional start to the new agricultural year. The young men of the town dragged a plough from door to door in the parish collecting money. If people did not hand-over money, then a ‘trick’ would have been played on the unlucky house-holder (an event similar to today’s Halloween Trick or Treating). This ‘trick’ was likely to have involved the young men ploughing a furrow across the offender’s land. Money received from Great Dunmow’s plough-feast activities was recorded throughout the Henrician churchwarden accounts. It was likely that this was already a well-established money-making activity for the church within Great Dunmow before this first recording of the event within the leather account-book in 1526. This can be determined by the brevity of this entry which could be interpreted that the churchwardens did not need a full and complete explanation about this particular activity. This was the yearly Plough-Feast – so therefore everyone knew what happened – all that needed to be accounted for was the money received! The churchwardens’ accounts do not record what happened to the money raised from Plough Monday. However, it is likely that the money was used to maintain a ‘plough light’ (candle) within the church. The plough light was one of the many ‘lights’ banned and extinguished by Henry VIII in 1538.
The Wikipedia Plough Monday entry suggests that the Plough Monday customs were revived in the 20th century in the East of England and are associated with Molly Dancers. Below are photographs my son took of the Molly Dancers on New Year’s Day 2012 at The Hythe, Maldon. He’s only aged 8 so the photos are a bit blurry! All photos are copyright of The Narrator, 2012.
Dancing money – Line 27:
Unknown what this ‘dancing money’ was for. Nicholas Parker was one of many Parkers in Great Dunmow but there was only one Parker with the Christian name of Nicholas. In the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy, Nicholas Parker was assessed as having goods to the value of 23s 4d. In the parish collection for the church steeple, he was recorded as living in Bullock Row and paid 8d towards the collection for the church steeple (fo.2v–fo.3r). It was likely that Nicholas Parker collected money on behalf of Great Dunmow’s parish church for ‘dancing’ and gave that money to the churchwardens. The churchwardens were scrupulously thorough in recording which of the many Catholic feast-days money was collected in for the church. Thus, there are receipts for ‘the plough-feast’, ‘Corpus Christi’ and ‘May Day’ on the same page as this entry. As the entry does not specify a precise feast-day or event, it is possible that this was money collected at some type of ‘general’ dance which was associated with the parish church but not connected with any feast-days within the regular Catholic ritual-year.
Old Hall – Line 28:
Unknown what the ‘old hall’ was. It is possible that this was a bequest in the will of a William Sweeting. Unfortunately not many Great Dunmow wills from this period have survived and there is no trace of William Sweeting’s will from this date, so it cannot be established if this was a bequest. (A later blog will explain the reason why there are so few surviving wills in Great Dunmow.) The only William Sweeting to be assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy had goods to the value of 40s (so was of moderate wealth). However, it is possible that this 1525-6 entry was a gift, rather than a bequest because a William Sweeting is documented regularly in parish collections after this date in the churchwardens’ accounts.
– 1525-6 church steeple collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 6d.
– 1527-9 church bell collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 5d.
– 1529-30 church organ collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1532-3 new gild collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1537-8 great latten candlestick collection: William Sweeting contributed 1d (dwelling-places not recorded).
A William Sweeting, ‘the elder’, was the witness to the 1552 will of Robert Grene(1).
May day – Line 29:
May money 28s 4d. This money received for ‘activities’ held on May-day is a significant amount of money. Records in Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts show that an average daily wage for a labourer was 4d – thus the money raised for May-day equalled approximately 85 days from a labourer. This was a much larger event than the yearly Plough-Feast and received more money. From these scant pieces of evidence, it can be interpreted that the May-day money was collected from possibly the entire parish of Great Dunmow (and probably also other nearby towns and villages – as discussed in later blogs). Again, the shortness of the entry demonstrates that receiving money from May-day was a well-established practice in Great Dunmow by the time of its first entry in the new leather account book of 1526.
This entry does not explain what happened in Great Dunmow on May Day. Wikipedia suggests some of the activities that might have taken place at May Day.
Corpus Christi – Line 30:
Corpus Christi feast 23s. The shortness of this entry is both intriguing and annoying in equal measures! Once again, this was a substantial amount of money, and the briefness of the entry implies that Corpus Christi was a well established feast within Tudor Great Dunmow. Regular Corpus Christi entries are documented throughout the rest of the Henrician Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts. These other entries are much more detailed and thorough, allowing the modern-day reader the most amazing insight into the world of Tudor Great Dunmow and the hierarchical relationship between this small parish and their neighbouring towns and villages. Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast, as documented in the churchwarden accounts, has been greatly studied throughout secondary literature on medieval English drama and late medieval religious practices. My own Cambridge University’s master’s dissertation spent over half of the word count discussing and analysing what actually happened during Tudor Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast-day. My own account provides an alternative narrative to the explanation provided by other historians (most of whom do not appear to have consulted directly with the original churchwarden accounts nor have walked the streets of the town). As this was such a critical part of my masters’ dissertation, my interpretation of Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi plays will be discussed in detail in a later blog.
Rent of church land – Line 33:
Total rent received in for various church lands. In later years, church rent is fully itemised along with the name of each tenant.
Building materials – Line 34-39:
This part of the accounts is still the receipts (money in) for the period 1525-6. These entries demonstrate that the church (and the churchwardens) were selling items of building materials to some of the townsfolk of Great Dunmow. John Atkinson bought a few bricks and a small amount of wet lime. Mr Fyche (Fitch?) bought some rope, and Thomas Savage bought some scaffolding. This last item by Thomas Savage is interesting for several reasons: firstly Thomas Savage was the man who made the largest contribution towards the church steeple and was ultimately awarded the contract for building the steeple (Henry VIII’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy Tax). Secondly, this entry demonstrates that there were items of scaffolding within the parish church in 1525-6. Either this scaffolding was in the church in the years prior to the building steeple or its existence was because of the construction of the new church steeple. The Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, in his 1873 history of Great Dunmow narrated that there was extensive building work in the church in the years before the church steeple was rebuilt in 1525-6.(2) So there were plenty of reasons for scaffolding to be within the church.
The significance of Thomas Savage’s scaffolding will be discussed in a later blog post.
Footnotes and Further reading 1) Will of Robert Grene, husbandman (March 1552), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 16/83.
2) Scott. W.T., Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow (London, 1873) p.20.
For further information on the Catholic religious ritual-year in late medieval/Tudor England, see
– Hutton, R., The rise and fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994).
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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Family members mentioned in the churchwarden accounts include:
– Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523
– Robert Sturton, church clerk of Great Dunmow
– Robert Sturton
– William Sturton
– Stephen Sturton
– Alexander Sturton
Robert Sturton – vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523 Patron for the living of Great Dunmow: Dean and Fellows of Stoke College, Clare, Suffolk.
Reason for leaving the living of St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow, 1523: Resigned
University/degree: Described as ‘master’ in the churchwarden accounts indicating he was an M.A. (Master of Arts). Unknown which university.
1514: possibly the same Robert Stourton (described as a ‘Professor of Theology’ i.e. S.T.P.) who was rector of Long Melford, Suffolk.(1) Long Melford is 28 miles away from Great Dunmow.
Long Melford church, Suffolk
19 April 1510: Robert Stourton, clerk, of Great Dunmow, pardoned by Henry VIII.(2)
Died by 1529. The churchwardens’ accounts detail of 53s 4d, a gift from Robert Sturton ‘sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche’. The money was given to the churchwardens by William Sturton.(3) It can be assumed William and Robert were related.
Notes on the Sturton family of Great Dunmow There were many Sturtons within Tudor Great Dunmow. William Sturton was assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy for goods to the value of £40.(4) Two Robert Sturtons were also assessed, both with goods to the value of 20s. Stephen Sturton was also assessed. As the clergy were exempt from the Lay Subsidy, this implies that, including the vicar, there were three Robert Sturtons in Great Dunmow. Robert Sturton, the church clerk from the start of the churchwardens’ accounts until the mid-1540s was one of them. Throughout the Henrician churchwardens’ accounts, his wife received payment from the churchwardens for washing the church’s linen.
The only Sturton will to have survived is Alexander Sturton’s will of 1553. Alexander Sturton, of Clopton Hall, bequeathed money to the children of Stephen Sturton, Thomas Sturton, Robert Sturton and William Sturton (all deceased).(5) This suggests that Alexander Sturton was possibly the son of one of the three Robert Sturtons. Clopton Hall was one of Great Dunmow’s medieval manors.
Two William Sturtons from Great Dunmow were educated at Cambridge University. In 1526 William Sturton, aged 18, a scholar from Eton, of Dunmow, Essex, matriculated at Kings. He became a fellow of Kings College 1529-30, ordained Deacon of Lincoln 1530, and Precentor of Kings College 1541-9.(6) The other William Sturton of Great Dunmow matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1564 aged 16 and was the son of Alexander Sturton.(7)
Thus, there is both circumstantial and solid evidence linking these Sturtons together. The evidence demonstrates they were an elite and well-established family. It is likely they were related to the Lord Stourtons of Stourton, Wiltshire.
Stourton, Wiltshire
In the early fifteenth century, Sir John Moigne held the Manor of Great Easton along with the advowson of the village’s church. Sir John’s heirs were his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Sir William Stourton. Sir William was presented to the rectory of Great Easton on the 3rd January 1408. Sir William’s Inquisition Post Mortem took place in Great Dunmow in the regnal year I Henry V. (1413-4). His son, John Stourton (who later became 1st Lord Stourton), was presented to Great Easton’s rectory on 5th January 1427. Throughout the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, the House of Stourton held the Manor of Great Easton, and also the Manor of Blamster in the same village. Great Easton remained part of the Stourton estate until William, 7th Lord Stourton, sold the Manor and advowson in 1536.(8) Great Easton is a village 2.5 miles from Great Dunmow.
Henry VIII’s Pardon Rolls of 1509-14 documented William Stourton, knight, Lord Stourton, as the tenant of the manor of Estaynes ad Montem, Essex [Great Easton].(9) It has been suggested the true phonetic spelling of the name ‘Stourton’ is ‘Sturton’.(10) The scribes who wrote the churchwardens’ accounts used phonetic spellings for many names and places.
Therefore, it is probable Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow, and the other Sturtons of Great Dunmow, were distant relations to the House of Stourton.
Great Easton, Essex, 1904
Footnotes: 1) William Parker, The History of Long Melford (1873), 35.
2) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 1’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 203-216, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102632 .
3) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1, fo.7r.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), E.R.O., T/A427/1/1.
5) Will of Alexander Sturton(1553), E.R.O., D/ABW 33/226.
6) John Venn, ‘William Sturton’ in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV (Cambridge, 1927), 181.
7) Venn, ‘William Stoorton’. in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV, 181.
8 ) Lord Mowbray, Segrave, and Stourton, The history of the noble house of Stourton (1899), 105-7 and 151.
9) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 3’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 234-256, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102634 .
10) Mowbray, Stourton, 2.
Postcards displayed on this page in the personal collection of The Narrator.
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1. All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.
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1566: The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde
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The county of Essex, England, is notorious for the high number of sixteenth and seventeenth century witchcraft trials which took place at its regular county Assizes (courts) in Brentwood, Chelmsford and Colchester. There is not a consensus of opinion why it was that Essex had such a high number of these witchcraft trials. It could be simply be that a higher number of trial records survive in Essex then in other counties, thus distorting the figures. Other reasons could include the fact that Essex seemed to be particularly unlucky in having at least two very active ‘witchfinders’ who took it upon themselves to root out so-called ‘witches’. These ‘witchfinders’ included the magistrate of St Osyth, Brian D’Arcy, who in 1582 contributed to at least 10 women being tried and hanged for murder; and Matthew Hopkins, the infamous ‘Witchfinder General’ who rampaged through the eastern counties of England in 1645.
The mandate for these trials were the Elizabethan witchcraft statute of 1563 (an “Act against Conjuracions Inchantments and Witchecraftes” (1)) and the harsher 1604 Jacobean witchcraft act (an “Act against Conjuration Witchcrafte and dealinge with evil and wicked Spirits(2)”) which was finally repealed in 1736. Contemporary people throughout England and Europe were fascinated by witches and the perception of malicious harm caused to both people and animals by people practising witchcraft. It seems that all levels of society believed in “witches”, from King James I of England (who, as James VI of Scotland, wrote “Daemonologie” (1597), an influential treatise on the subject), to the victims and witnesses who reported their former friends and neighbours as witches to the authorities.
Today, these witchcraft cases are much studied by eminent historians and anthropologists, for example, Alan MacFarlane(3), Keith Thomas(4), Robin Briggs(5) and James Sharpe(6). Historians consider both official public records such as the Assizes and Quarter Sessions accounts, along with “unofficial” accounts, such as contemporary treatises and pamphlets. Studying these records can provide a picture of life, relationships and tensions within sixteenth and seventeenth century communities of England. An explanation for witchcraft that modern historians such as Thomas and MacFarlane have put forward is that the accusations occurred when there were disputes between people. Thomas observed: “[this was a] tightly-knit, intolerant world with which the witch had parted company. She was the extreme example of the malignant or non-conforming person against whom the local community had always taken punitive action in the interests of social harmony.”(7) He further remarks that when there was a breakdown of the mutual help that many English villagers relied on during this period, accusations of witchcraft often followed.(8)
The apprehension and confession of three notorious witches. Arreigned and by iustice condemned and executed at Chelmes-forde, in the Countye of Essex, (Joan Cunny, Joan Upney and Joan Prentice) (1589)
This breakdown of previously good, neighbourly relationships can be observed by analysing Great Dunmow’s Lay Subsidy returns, the churchwardens’ accounts, together with Assize trial records to determine how neighbours Robert Parker and John Prestmary fell out to such an extent that the cry of ‘witchcraft’ was heard in Great Dunmow. The first Prestmary husband and wife witches to appear in the court records are in 1567:
Alice Prestmary “on 1 February 1567 Alice PRESTMARYE of Great Dunmow, wife of John PRESTMARYE spinster, bewitched Edward Parker son of Robert Parker “tanner”, putting him in peril of his life, so that his life is despaired of.” (9)
She pleaded not guilty but was found guilty. The Judgement was according to the Statute (which meant 1 year in prison with quarterly appearances of 6 hours in the pillory). However, she died of the plague in prison on 7 May.
“INQUISITIONS: Taken on 7 May 9 Eliz., at Colchester, before John and rob. Myddeton, coroners for the town of colchester, on view of the body of Alice PRESTMARY a prisoner in Colchester Castle. the jurors say that she languished for a month of on illness called `a fever’ from 1 to 6 May and then died. Visitation of God.”(10)
Colchester Castle, Tudor county gaol and prison for many Essex women (and men) accused of witchcraft
John Prestmary John Prestmary was Alice’s husband. Sadly, he committed suicide shortly before his wife’s trial. The records are very sparse and we can now only guess why he was driven to such an act.
“INQUISITIONS: Taken on 1 February 9 eliz., at Great dunmow, before tho. Knott, coroner, on view of the body of John PRESTMARYE of Great Dunmow lab. aged 60 years. The jurors say that John on 30 January hanged himself from a `walnute tree’ in his garden with a halter. Felo de se.” (11)
Alice’s husband’s suicide (the felo de se in the inquisition records) would probably have been taken as further prove that Alice was a witch. “In England, Satan was frankly cited as an accessory in case of felo-de-se and homicide, and the coroner’s inquisition taken upon view of the body of a suicide formerly followed the wording of the indictment for murder, the jurors presenting that the deceased ‘not having God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, did murder himself’”(12)
The Parkers and Prestmarys had been neighbours since at least the 1520s. However, forty years later, Alice was accused of bewitching Robert Parker’s child, Edward. Part 2 of this story explores the Parkers and the Prestmarys of Great Dunmow and examines the circumstances surrounding the first Prestmary husband and wife tried for witchcraft.
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’.
Postcards displayed on this page in the personal collection of The Narrator.
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1. All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.
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If you want to learn more about Essex’s witches, then you may be interested in my online course about the Witches of Elizabethan and Stuart Essex. Click the “Learn More” button below for full details.
The post Tudor vicar William Walton’s arrival in Great Dunmow explained how one of the drivers for the 1525-6 collection for the church steeple (and the establishment of the beautiful leather account-book), was the arrival of the new vicar, Master William Walton. Another driver for the parish collection must have been the tax imposed by Henry VIII two years prior to the church steeple collection. This tax, known as the Lay Subsidy, was imposed on England by the king to levy money for his expensive wars with France.
Tent design for the 1520 Field of Cloth of Gold (Henry VIII’s meeting with the king of France) (1)
Each village, town and parish throughout England had to keep meticulous records as to the amount that had been levied on each head-of-household. The tax levied was based on a person’s income from their land or moveable good. John Josselyn, from the nearby parish of High Roding, who also owned a manor within Great Dunmow(2), was responsible for collecting the tax within the Hundred of Dunmow.(3) It is possible that the elite and clergy of Great Dunmow, who probably helped Josselyn administer the parish’s 1523-4 collection of the Lay Subsidy, used methods from this tax’s administration to facilitate their own parish collection in 1525-6.
The returns for Great Dunmow’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy are in The National Archives (T.N.A.).(4) These returns detail a) the house-holder’s name (first name and surname), b) whether they had been assessed for income based on goods or land, c) the Valor (value assessed), and d) the tax payable. These returns would have been written down and recorded by John Josselyn or one of his men, resulting in the detailed manuscript that is now in the care of the T.N.A. Thus, a list of all the house-holders (and, more importantly, their wealth) could have been made available to vicar Master William Walton when he instigated the collection for the church steeple.
Perhaps, after a service in the church, when the parish clergy, churchwardens and church clerk were collecting each person’s contribution to the church steeple, the returns from the Lay Subsidy were used to assess how much each parishioner should pay towards their new steeple. This would explain the distinct connection between a person’s wealth and the amount they paid to a seemingly voluntary collection. This correlation is demonstrated in the graph below, which illustrates the distribution patterns of amounts paid to the Lay Subsidy compared to the steeple collection: the trends are remarkably similar. According to entries within the churchwarden accounts, the cost of labour per day was 4d, therefore the majority of householders were contributing an amount roughly equal to one day’s pay for both the Lay Subsidy Tax and the church steeple collection.
1523-4 Lay Subsidy versus 1525-6 parish collection
The returns for the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy records 139 tax-payers, whereas just over 160 house-holders were recorded for the 1525-6 church steeple collection. This discrepancy can be accounted for by the exemption of clergy and paupers from the Lay Subsidy. Therefore, allowing for the parish’s four clerics (as detailed in the post Late medieval clergy), and a small number of deaths which might have occurred between the two events, it can be assumed there were approximately 20 paupers within the parish. With a greater number contributing to the parish collection, some of the poorest residents, exempt from Henry VIII’s tax, had paid the parish church’s informal levy. Perhaps, for the paupers, it was for spiritual, pious and religious reasons that money was paid to their church rather than to their lord sovereign, the King.
The elite of the parish have also been examined by comparing their wealth, according to the Lay Subsidy, against their generosity to the church steeple collection. From this comparison, it is apparent that at least five lords of the manors from Great Dunmow’s medieval manors paid the highest contributions. This comparison also confirms the men listed at the start of church steeple collection were the elite and from the upper echelons of Great Dunmow’s society. Eamon Duffy has argued that investing in parish projects was one way in which the elite could establish and promote their place in local society.(5) This self-promotion is apparent in Great Dunmow. The largest contributor to the church steeple collection in 1525-6 was the builder and churchwarden, Thomas Savage, who, at £36s 8d, paid over £1 more then the next closest contribution and, according to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy, was the tenth wealthiest parishioner. In spite of his wealth and generosity, he was only listed twenty-fourth in the list – his wealth and generous contribution were not enough to push him up the social rank. But, it did win him the contract to assist the building of the church steeple (as documented in a later folio within the churchwarden accounts).
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1. All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.
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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts. In the spirit of one of his Prompts, Shopping Saturday, my blog today is about shopping (or rather tradesmen) in Tudor Great Dunmow.
The list of names for the 1525-6 collection for the church steeple contains some of the trades of Tudor Great Dunmow. It should be noted that the list is not a census in the modern terms of a census, and so the trade of a person was only recorded if two people had the same name. Thus the three John Parkers had their trade recorded alongside their name distinguish them from each other – John Parker the tiler, John Parker the wheeler and John Parker the fletcher. Trade (and occupations) within the parish, as documented within the 1525-6 collection for the steeple include
– church clerk
– dyer
– wheeler
– fletcher
– parish priest
– vicar
– retired vicar
– haberdasher
– butcher
– glover
(Obviously, this is not a complete list of the occupations of Tudor Great Dunmow, just a list where someone’s occupation had been recorded).
A ‘fletcher’ was an arrow-maker – a trade that evidently made John Parker, the Fletcher, a very wealthy man. His contribution to the church steeple was 26s 8d – a substantial amount of money. In further parish collections he contributed 18s 10d for the Great Bell, and 13s 4d for the church organ. In the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns for Great Dunmow, John Parker was assessed as having goods to the value of £105 13s 4d which resulted in him paying tax of 105s 8d. The Lay Subsidy returns show that he was the wealthiest man in the parish. However, despite his great wealth, in the list for the church steeple collection, John Parker, the fletcher, appears below the clergy and two lords of manors. Wealth wasn’t everything in this Tudor parish: the status of the elite meant more than the wealth and piety of tradesmen.
Being a fletcher in Tudor England was a very important trade. Throughout his reign, Henry VIII was, at various times, at war with either France or Scotland. Both Henry, and his father Henry VII, passed legislation to enforce that the men of Tudor England were reasonably proficient at the longbow. In 1515 Henry VIII imposed a Statue that all men, except ‘spiritual’ men, Justices and Barons, should practice shooting long bows. Bows and arrows had to be bought for all male children between the ages of 7 and 17. Henry also dictated that every city and town should have butts so that the men could practice their shooting their long bows at them.
Luttrell Psalter, Psalm 79; Archers practicing at the butts (1325-35) (1)
Throughout the Henrician churchwarden accounts there are numerous receipts for sums of money which was received for ‘shooting’ i.e. shooting longbows and arrows at a target. These ‘shooting’ games held in Great Dunmow and surrounding villages will be discussed in detail in future blog posts. For John Parker, fletcher of Great Dunmow, business must have been flourishing and profitably. We can only guess at how John Parker sold his arrows to his customers. Did they come ‘shopping’ to his workshop, and if they did, in the spirit of Geneabloggers’ Daily Prompt, was it on a Saturday?
March of the Archers, Moorfields, City of London 1530 (2)
Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1. All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.
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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Within the 1525-6 collection for Great Dunmow’s church steeple, two vicars and two parish priests are recorded at the start of the list. The two priests can be detected from the suffix ‘Sur’ [Sir] alongside their names. ‘Sir’ was a courtesy title given to medieval parish priests and should not be confused with the title ‘Sir’ as given to knights. This use of ‘Sir’ for the parish priest was widespread throughout pre-Reformation England and only died out during the Elizabethan era with the end of Catholicism as the recognised church within England. Thus, the Tudor parish priest of Eamon Duffy’s The Voices of Morebath was ‘Sir’ Christopher Trychay (pronounced ‘Tricky’).
According to the 1525-6 returns for the church steeple, the two parish priests in Great Dunmow were
– Sur John mylton
– Sur Wyllyem Wree
Other priests are named in the other parish collections as recorded in the church warden accounts between 1526 and 1539:
– Sir Gutfraye [Godfrey]
– Sir George
– Sir Nicholas
– Sir Thomas
Within the churchwarden accounts, both the vicar ‘mayster vycar thatt now ys’ (William Walton) and the retired vicar (Robert Sturton) ‘sumtyme vycar of a late tyme’ have the suffix of an ‘M’. This is not a contraction of ‘Mister’ but is an abbreviation of ‘Master’ i.e. they both had a Master of Arts degree from a university – most likely either Cambridge or Oxford. My own research, as will be explored in later blogs, concluded that they were probably Cambridge men. So the two principal clerics in Great Dunmow were university educated men and Master of Arts.
A previous historian of Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts, W.A. Mepham who was active in the 1930s and 1940s, mis-understood this ‘M’ suffix. He highlighted what he termed a ‘curiosity’ from the corporation records of the Essex town of Maldon(1):
‘11 July 1540, Relick Sunday, Received of Mr. Vykar, by hym gathered
at Moche Dunmowe vjs [6s]’(2)
The puzzle over why the vicar of Great Dunmow gave money to the town of Maldon can only be solved when it is understood that this was not ‘Mister Vicar’ but rather ‘Master Vicar’ and that Master William Walton was the vicar of both Great Dunmow and All Saints, Maldon. Unfortunately, Mepham had totally missed that the vicar of Great Dunmow was William Walton, a pluralist vicar (i.e. he held the living of more than one parish). Walton had gathered money from his flock in one of his parishes (Great Dunmow) and gave this money to the borough of his other parish (Maldon). The reason behind this will be explored in a later blog.
All four clergy documented in the 1525-6 collection appear as witnesses to various Great Dunmowian wills from the 1520s and 1530s. These clergy, ever present at death-beds, included Robert Sturton, who had resigned by this time, but was still administering to his flock in his retirement. So, in 1526, Great Dunmow had four religious clerics active in the parish to administer to their flock of at least 165 houses – approximately just under 1,000 parishioners.
A Priest Administering the Last Rites(3).
A priest giving communion to a sick man, with an acolyte, carrying a bell and a candle(4).
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.
Between 2009 and 2011, whilst I was researching for my master’s dissertation, on a daily basis I read the Tudor churchwarden accounts from my digital images. This reading of each page over and over again resulted in me hearing the voices of people long dead. No, not literally! But in my head I started to understand and ‘hear’ the dialect of the Tudor scribe who had written up a particular set of accounts. The scribes wrote their entries exactly as spoken. Thus the nearby city of Cambridge became ‘Camrege’, the parishioner, Thomas Ingram, became ‘Thomas Iggrom’, ‘our’ became ‘owr’, and ‘off’ (meaning ‘from’) became ‘of’.
Eamon Duffy, in his seminal book, The Voices of Morebath, indicated that many Tudor churchwardens read their parish’s accounts out aloud before the congregation gathered within the church. This would have been in a manner similar to a modern-day public meeting and was to ratify the parish’s accounts. Therefore, the language used in many accounts imitates the behaviour of the spoken word.(1) So, it is likely that the list of all the contributors to the church steeple was read out aloud before the entire parish after the church service on the Dedication Day (feast-day) of St Mary the Virgin 1526. (I wonder what the parishioners thought of those who had contributed ‘nichell’ and those whose amount had not been properly recorded!)
If you are interested in the accents and dialect that our ancestors had, go back through my blog and read all the names of the contributors to the church steeple. Read each name out aloud exactly is it was written by the Tudor scribe (ignore my translations).
For anyone familiar with the accents of England, the scribes of Great Dunmow appear to have had a most definite soft Suffolk ‘burr’! Hard ‘n’s and hard ‘d’s seemed to have almost totally disappeared from each scribe’s dialect. Hard ‘t’s have become soft ‘d’s – Robard instead of Robert. From now on, if you can’t understand the Tudor text when you read my transcriptions, read the entries out aloud and you will be taken into Tudor Essex and will have the key for unlocking Great Dunmow’s past.
Sadly, today’s Great Dunmowians no longer have the soft Suffolk accent but instead sound more like the characters from EastEnders or The Only Way is Essex (TOWIE).
Miniature of a scribe with a knife,
shears, a pen-case, and an inkpot (2)
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.
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A Priest Administering the Last Rites(3).
A priest giving communion to a sick man,
