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).

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

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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Anyone reading my blog will understand that I have a great love, appreciation, and passion for Tudor England.  I can date the start of this passion back exactly to a time in the 1970s when the BBC did a lavish custom drama production of Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince & the Pauper’.  I was never quite sure if it caught my imagination so much because Nicholas Lydhurst (later to go onto fame as the much loved Rodney Trotter) was in the starring role, or if it was because of the story of a prince and a pauper swapping places had me hooked.

To Mark Twain (and Nicholas Lyndhurst!), I offer my thanks for starting me on my life-long passion for Tudor England with its plots, intrigues and scheming that no other period in English history has had since.

I’ve just discovered that the BBC production has been uploaded to YouTube. I’m going to spend the rest of my Thankful Thursday watching it! In YouTube, search for “Prince and the Pauper” and ‘Nicholas Lyndhurst’ to find it.

(My other great love of a particular period in history is for the Great War and the trenches of Flanders-field – but my tales of the Great War will have to wait for another day and another blog.)

Watching Helen Castor’s recent excellent BBC programme on the She-Wolves of England prompted me to write this post on ‘reading between the lines’ of primary source analysis.  In my post, I will be considering ‘reading-between-the-lines’ in both the literal and also the metaphorical sense.

My last post on Palaeography and Old handwriting gave some tips on how to tackle the transcription of primary sources.  Today’s post is about the benefits of transcribing your source word-for-word, which, coupled with some of the principles of unwitting testimony, can give you (perhaps) unexpected and surprising results.

For this, we will be looking at two ‘features’ of palaeography and primary sources
– Understanding why text has been inserted in your source
– Understanding why text has been deleted or strikethrough

Edward VI and Lady Jane Grey
Consider king Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession(1).  This is the document that the boy-king, Edward VI, wrote on his sick-bed shortly before he died on 6 July 1553.  The Devise is a crucial document in the history of England because in it, Edward attempted to overturn his father’s will (Henry VIII) by making his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, his heir.  Thus, Edward was attempting to bypass the royal rights of his two half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and by doing so, was ignoring no less than an act of parliament.  In this document, (which we know was written by the dying king himself) if we include the struck-through text (ie the original text before it was deleted) but we ignore the inserted text, Edward wrote

‘To the L[ady] Frau[n]ceses heires masles, for lakke [lack] of such issu[e] to the L[ady] Janes heires masles.  To the L[ady] Katerins [Katherine] heires masles.  To the L[ady] Maries heires masles’.

In other words, the crown of England should first go to any male children of Lady Frances.  If Lady Frances did not have any male children, then the crown would pass to any male children of Lady Jane [Grey].  If Jane did not have any male children, then onto Lady Katherine’s male children.  Finally, if Katherine didn’t have any male children, then onto Lady Mary’s male children.  Lady Frances Grey (Duchess of Suffolk),  was the mother of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, Katherine  and Mary.  Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France, was Frances’ mother.

However, Edward was dying and time was running out for him and a fledgling Protestant England.  Neither Frances nor her children had any male children so Edward wanted to ensure that the crown would go straight to Protestant Jane – so he altered his ‘Devise’.  If we now ignore the original (but subsequently deleted) text and include the new inserted text, we have:

‘To the L[ady] Fra[n]ceses heires masles, if she have any such issu[e] before my death to the L[ady] Jane and her heirs masles’.

Edward was specifying that if Frances produced any male children before he died, then the crown would go to them, but without male heirs from Lady Frances, the crown would go directly to the Lady Jane Grey and then to her male children.

If, as historians, we had not transcribed the document properly and not correctly highlighted all the deletions and insertions as such, then our interpretation regarding the position of women in the early-modern period (and Helen Castor’s entire hypothesis on the She-wolves Queens of England!) would be blown out of the water.  Edward VI had left his throne and the crown of England to a mere woman!

However, if we transcribe this manuscript correctly, showing all the deletions and insertions, then we get a truer picture as to what had really happened.  Thus Edward’s Devise for the Succession should be transcribed as follows (the \ / indicates inserted text):-

‘….To the L[ady] Frau[n](ces )
\thissu [the issue] femal, as I have after declared/
ceses [ie Frances] heires masles , for lakke of \if she have any/ such issu[e] \befor[e] my death/ to the Lady Janes \and her/ heires masles…’

The dying king had no other option but without male heirs, on his death-bed, he had left England to Lady Jane Grey. Transcribing this document properly (by acknowledging the deleted and inserted text) shows just how remarkable  the events that had unfolded during the final days of the boy-king’s life had been.  And, the benefit of hindsight in history is a wonderful thing, by altering his Devise for the Succession, Edward VI had unknowingly passed the death sentence on poor tragic Lady Jane Grey.

Lady Jane Grey’s Prayerbook, probably used by her
on the scaffold at her execution in 1554.
British Library Harley MS 2342, ff.74v-75, © The British Library Board.

Postcard of Edward VI from Raphael Tuck’s series ‘Kings & Queens of England’
(in the personal collection of The Narrator © Essex Voices Past 2012).

Another example of Edward VI’s handwriting can be seen in this, his diary. Here Edward VI describes how he and Elizabeth learnt of their father’s death from his uncle Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, at Elizabeth’s Enfield residence on 30 January 1547.

Edward VI’s diary, Shelfmark: Cotton Ms. Nero C x, f.12,
© British Library Board.

Click this link, The Streatham Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, for a recently discovered portrait of Lady Jane Dudley (nee Grey) now in the possession of the National Portrait Gallery, London. (Copyright reasons restrict me from publishing it on my blog.  It is a fascinating portrait, do look at it).

The tale of two early Tudor wills
The example of Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession  is an extreme example of ensuring that primary sources are correctly transcribed.  In our own family history or local history research, it is unlikely that you would have to transcribe such as crucial document to history as this!  However, when transcribing our own primary sources, we have to use judgement and other evidence to assess why text has been deleted or inserted and thus we have to ‘read-between-the-lines’.

During the research for my Cambridge University’s masters’ degree in local history, I studied a large number of Tudor wills written by the townsfolk of Great Dunmow.  Two of these wills, when compared together, showed that the same text (a religious bequest) was included in both wills but had been struck out and therefore deleted from one.

The historian, Margaret Spufford, was one of the first historians to discuss the possibility that early-modern wills had been written by a scribe and that a dying testator could be influenced by such scribes.(2)  Two wills from Great Dunmow written in the 1520s have evidence that there was a Henrician scribe active in the parish, and he had used a book containing standard formulaic clauses to create the wills of his clients.  This type of ‘precedent book’ was not unusual during the Tudor period.  The will of widow Clemens Bowyer, dated February 1526, almost exactly mimics the earlier will of John Wakrell (October 1525) and is in the same handwriting.(3)  Both wills have the same soul bequests (Catholic, as would be expected from this period); along with bequests to the high altar, to Saint John’s gild, to the church torches, and to the ‘moder [mother] holy chyrch of polye [St Paul’s] in London’.  Both wills also have a bequest for an ‘honest prest to synge a tryntall [trental] for my sol & all crysten solls yn ye p[ar]rsche churche’.  However, in Bowyer’s will , the bequest for her trental was entirely crossed through.

Did our scribe copy the wording from his precedent book, and widow Bowyer (or someone else present at her death-bed) make him cross it out after it had been written into the will?  Trentals were a series of 30 Masses performed within one year of the person’s death, with three Masses on each of the ten major feast-days of Christ and the virgin Mary.  The priest also had to perform other liturgical duties throughout the year.(4)  This was a substantial undertaking, as demonstrated by Wakrell’s bequest of 10s to pay for his trental.  Maybe widow Bowyer did not have sufficient funds, and so either she or one of her children made the scribe delete the bequest before her death.

So, the various crossings-out in widow Bowyer’s will can be used as evidence that

• the scribe in the parish was using a precedent book; and/or
• the widow Bowyers (or the people present at her death) did not want the trental said after her death.  This could be for either religious or monetary reasons.  Because this will was written in the 1520s (when England was still very much a Catholic country), it is unlikely that the crossing-out was for religious reasons (and the other bequests in her will show a very Catholic will).  Therefore a more likely reason for the striking through of the text was for monetary reasons.

Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts have a great deal of crossings-out and inserted text – as could be expected in an account-book that was written up maybe once a year when the accounts were tallied up.  This post on the Tudor dialect of Great Dunmow has details about a crossing out of the word ‘my’ on one of the folios (folio 5r, line 20).  Was the scribe (who wrote up Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts) copying word-for-word various people’s loose receipts into his account book?  Were those loose receipts in front of him as he copied them into his book?

Conclusion
When you are analysing your primary sources, don’t forget to work out why text has been deleted or inserted into your document.  It could be for a very simple reason, but, as in the case of Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession, sometimes the reasons for altered text could be much more complex.  As historians transcribing primary sources, we must ALWAYS include any text that has been struck-through or inserted.  Our transcriptions MUST show which text has been inserted or deleted.

Don’t forget to read-between-the-lines of your primary source!

 Frontispiece with the arms of Edward VI, Shelfmark: Royal 16 E XXXII f.1v,
© The British Library Board

Footnotes
1)  Edward VI My devise for the succession (July 1553), held  at The Inner Template Library’s Manuscript Collection, London.
2) Margaret Spufford, ‘The Scribes of Villagers’ Wills in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and their influence’, in Local Population Studies (1972), 28-43 at 29.
3) Will of Clemens Boywer [Bowyer] of Great Dunmow (26 February 1526), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 3/8; Will of John Wakrell of Great Dunmow (19 October 1525), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 39/7.  Both wills available online via subscription to Essex Record Office’s Essex Ancestors.
4) Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580 (2^nd Edition, 2005) p370-371.

Further reading/watching
1) Watch on BBC’s iPlayer Helen Castor’s brilliant BBC programme ‘She Wolves: the women who ruled England before Elizabeth’ (Available in the UK on iPlayer until Tuesday 3^rd April 2012) Dr Castor starts talking about Edward VI’s ‘Device for the Succession’ at timing 8:20, and then at 10:11 we can see the original manuscript.
2) Helen Castor, She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, (2011)

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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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.