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

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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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
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

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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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
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1525-6)
The top part of this folio has been transcribed here Collection for the church steeple (part 5).

Commentary
There are many interesting pages within the churchwardens’ account-book and this page has to rank high up the list of intriguing pages – not for what it says, but more what it doesn’t say!

The entries on this page are directly after the parish collection for the church steeple so cover the period 1525-6. Therefore, they are the first receipts for money received by Great Dunmow’s church recorded in the leather account-book. Churchwarden accounts or church records for Great Dunmow prior to 1525-6 have not survived. However, several entries on this folio indicate that the previous churchwardens had also kept careful accounts prior to 1525-6.

Churchwardens – Line 24/25:
fo.2r recorded that the current (ie 1525-6) churchwardens were Thomas Savage, John Skylton, John Nyghtyngale and John Clerke. This folio records that before them, the previous churchwardens were William Saud[e]r (probably ‘Saunder(s)’ – the churchwardens’ scribe had a soft Suffolk-like accent and didn’t pronounce hard ‘n’s , see  The dialect of Tudor Essex), Robert Parker, Raff/Ralph Melbourne, and Thomas Hervy (Harvey?). As Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were often in office for two years, it is likely that these men were churchwardens for the periods 1523-4 and 1524-5. The 14 shillings which the old churchwardens handed over to the 1525-6 set was either their cash-in-hand money left over from their tenure or their own money to make up shortfall in the accounts (or a mixture of both). Medieval and Tudor churchwardens were personally liable for any shortfall in their church’s finances at the end of their period in office. It is because of this personal liability that the accounts of Medieval and Tudor churches were so meticulously documented and recorded.

Plough Monday – Line 26:
The plough-feast was celebrated on the first Monday after the Epiphany (Twelfth Day) in January and was the traditional start to the new agricultural year. The young men of the town dragged a plough from door to door in the parish collecting money. If people did not hand-over money, then a ‘trick’ would have been played on the unlucky house-holder (an event similar to today’s Halloween Trick or Treating). This ‘trick’ was likely to have involved the young men ploughing a furrow across the offender’s land. Money received from Great Dunmow’s plough-feast activities was recorded throughout the Henrician churchwarden accounts. It was likely that this was already a well-established money-making activity for the church within Great Dunmow before this first recording of the event within the leather account-book in 1526. This can be determined by the brevity of this entry which could be interpreted that the churchwardens did not need a full and complete explanation about this particular activity. This was the yearly Plough-Feast – so therefore everyone knew what happened – all that needed to be accounted for was the money received! The churchwardens’ accounts do not record what happened to the money raised from Plough Monday. However, it is likely that the money was used to maintain a ‘plough light’ (candle) within the church. The plough light was one of the many ‘lights’ banned and extinguished by Henry VIII in 1538.

The Wikipedia Plough Monday entry suggests that the Plough Monday customs were revived in the 20^th century in the East of England and are associated with Molly Dancers.  Below are photographs my son took of the Molly Dancers on New Year’s Day 2012 at The Hythe, Maldon.  He’s only aged 8 so the photos are a bit blurry!  All photos are copyright of  The Narrator, 2012.

Dancing money – Line 27:
Unknown what this ‘dancing money’ was for.  Nicholas Parker was one of many Parkers in Great Dunmow but there was only one Parker with the Christian name of Nicholas. In the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy, Nicholas Parker was assessed as having goods to the value of 23s 4d.  In the parish collection for the church steeple, he was recorded as living in Bullock Row and paid 8d towards the collection for the church steeple (fo.2v–fo.3r).  It was likely that Nicholas Parker collected money on behalf of Great Dunmow’s parish church for ‘dancing’ and gave that money to the churchwardens.  The churchwardens were scrupulously thorough in recording which of the many Catholic feast-days money was collected in for the church. Thus, there are receipts for ‘the plough-feast’, ‘Corpus Christi’ and ‘May Day’ on the same page as this entry.  As the entry does not specify a precise feast-day or event, it is possible that this was money collected at some type of ‘general’ dance which was associated with the parish church but not connected with any feast-days within the regular Catholic ritual-year.

Old Hall – Line 28:
Unknown what the ‘old hall’ was.  It is possible that this was a bequest in the will of a William Sweeting.  Unfortunately not many Great Dunmow wills from this period have survived and there is no trace of William Sweeting’s will from this date, so it cannot be established if this was a bequest. (A later blog will explain the reason why there are so few surviving wills in Great Dunmow.)  The only William Sweeting to be assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy had goods to the value of 40s (so was of moderate wealth).  However, it is possible that this 1525-6 entry was a gift, rather than a bequest because a William Sweeting is documented regularly in parish collections after this date in the churchwardens’ accounts.
– 1525-6 church steeple collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 6d.
– 1527-9 church bell collection: William Sweeting lived in Bishopswood and contributed 5d.
– 1529-30 church organ collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1532-3 new gild collection: William Sweeting contributed 2d (dwelling-places not recorded).
– 1537-8 great latten candlestick collection: William Sweeting contributed 1d (dwelling-places not recorded).
A William Sweeting, ‘the elder’, was the witness to the 1552 will of Robert Grene(1).

May day – Line 29:
May money 28s 4d. This money received for ‘activities’ held on May-day is a significant amount of money.  Records in Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts show that an average daily wage for a labourer was 4d – thus the money raised for May-day equalled approximately 85 days from a labourer.  This was a much larger event than the yearly Plough-Feast and received more money.  From these scant pieces of evidence, it can be interpreted that the May-day money was collected from possibly the entire parish of Great Dunmow (and probably also other nearby towns and villages – as discussed in later blogs).   Again, the shortness of the entry demonstrates that receiving money from May-day was a well-established practice in Great Dunmow by the time of its first entry in the new leather account book of 1526.

This entry does not explain what happened in Great Dunmow on May Day.  Wikipedia suggests some of the activities that might have taken place at May Day.

Corpus Christi – Line 30:
Corpus Christi feast 23s.  The shortness of this entry is both intriguing and annoying in equal measures!  Once again, this was a substantial amount of money, and the briefness of the entry implies that Corpus Christi was a well established feast within Tudor Great Dunmow.  Regular Corpus Christi entries are documented throughout the rest of the Henrician Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts.  These other entries are much more detailed and thorough, allowing the modern-day reader the most amazing insight into the world of Tudor Great Dunmow and the hierarchical relationship between this small parish and their neighbouring towns and villages.  Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast, as documented in the churchwarden accounts, has been greatly studied throughout secondary literature on medieval English drama and late medieval religious practices.  My own Cambridge University’s master’s dissertation spent over half of the word count discussing and analysing what actually happened during Tudor Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi feast-day.  My own account provides an alternative narrative to the explanation provided by other historians (most of whom do not appear to have consulted directly with the original churchwarden accounts nor have walked the streets of the town).  As this was such a critical part of my masters’ dissertation, my interpretation of Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi plays will be discussed in detail in a later blog.

Detail of a miniature of a bishop carrying a monstrance in a
Corpus Christi procession under an canopy carried by four clerics
The Lovell Lectionary. Harley 7026, f13 (England, c1400-c1410),
© British Library Board

Rent of church land – Line 33:
Total rent received in for various church lands.  In later years, church rent is fully itemised along with the name of each tenant.

Building materials – Line 34-39:
This part of the accounts is still the receipts (money in) for the period 1525-6.  These entries demonstrate that the church (and the churchwardens) were selling items of building materials to some of the townsfolk of Great Dunmow.  John Atkinson bought a few bricks and a small amount of wet lime.  Mr Fyche (Fitch?) bought some rope, and Thomas Savage bought some scaffolding.  This last item by Thomas Savage is interesting for several reasons: firstly Thomas Savage was the man who made the largest contribution towards the church steeple and was ultimately awarded the contract for building the steeple (Henry VIII’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy Tax).  Secondly, this entry demonstrates that there were items of scaffolding within the parish church in 1525-6.  Either this scaffolding was in the church in the years prior to the building steeple or its existence was because of the construction of the new church steeple.  The Victorian vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, in his 1873 history of Great Dunmow narrated that there was extensive building work in the church in the years before the church steeple was rebuilt in 1525-6.(2)  So there were plenty of reasons for scaffolding to be within the church.

The significance of Thomas Savage’s scaffolding will be discussed in a later blog post.

Footnotes and Further reading
1) Will of Robert Grene, husbandman (March 1552), Essex Record Office, D/ABW 16/83.
2) Scott. W.T., Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow (London, 1873) p.20.

For further information on the Catholic religious ritual-year in late medieval/Tudor England, see
– Hutton, R., The rise and fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994).

For further information on the Plough-feast, see the following websites
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough_Monday
– http://www.ploughmonday.co.uk/

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.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

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
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Plough Monday
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.