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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This blog
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You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation 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.

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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.

Parsonage Downs is an area in the north of the town of Great Dunmow.  As these pictures shows, it is one of the prettiest areas of Great Dunmow.

In medieval times, the area was dominated by the manor of Newton Hall (owned then by Mr Kynwelmarshe).  In more recent times, in the first part of the twentieth century, Newton Hall was owned by Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy.  Lord Byng unveiled Great Dunmow’s War Memorial in July 1921.  Today, many younger Great Dunmowians will know this  area very well as the site of their school – the Helena Romanes Secondary School.

All photos below were taken on Good Friday 2012 by The Narrator. © Essex Voices Past.

 

Edwardian Parsonage Downs, Great Dunmow.  All postcards below are in the personal collection of The Narrator.  Newton Hall postcard was posted in 1905.  The second postcard below is a similar view to the second photo above.

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

Thank you for reading this post.

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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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 iiijthe [Item paid to William Hotte for shorting of the 4th ]
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 iiijthe bell wt mete & drynke [for to stoke the 4th 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 iiijthe bell whane(??) more  wreght [Item for help to turn the 4th 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).

 

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

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

Thank you for reading this post.

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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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.

 

 

The steeple-less/spire-less tower at St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow.
© Essex Voices Past 2012.

 

 

 

(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).

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

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Building a medieval church steeple

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

Thank you for reading this post.

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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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 ??]
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]
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]
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)]
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]
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)]
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]
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]
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.

The beautiful Thaxted church, home of the yearly Thaxted Festival.
© Essex Voices Past 2012.

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.

 

The steeple-less tower at St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow.
© Essex Voices Past 2012.

 

 

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

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

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Medieval Essex dialect

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for reading this post.

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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

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 2^nd from bottom.

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

Other items of interest on this folio

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

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

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

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

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