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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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