Yesterday and today I am publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year. My top 1 to 6 posts were described yesterday – so today I am sharing with you my top posts from 7 to 12.

7. The Medieval Spinsters – The medieval ladies from Raymund of Peñafort’s Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals’)

8. Mappy Monday – My top 7 websites for medieval, early-modern & modern maps of London & Great Britain

9. Tudor tradesmen of Great Dunmow – John Parker, the Fletcher, of Great Dunmow: the richest man in the parish.

10. Primary sources – ‘Unwitting Testimony’ – Research techniques for a trainee historian.

11. Coronation and Diamond Jubilee Goldwork – My time at the Royal School of Needlework mastering the technique of goldwork embroidery.

12. The Dunmow Flitch – Can you prove that you’ve been happily married for a year and a day without a cross word passing between you? Read my account of the 2012 Dunmow Flitch.

Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

A year ago today, I published my first post, Great Dunmow’s Medieval Manors, on this blog.  Originally, I created my blog to publish some of my dissertation research ‘Religion and Society in Great Dunmow, Essex, c.1520 to c.1560′ from my Cambridge University’s Masters of Studies in Local and Regional history awarded to me in January 2012 (sadly, the degree no longer appears to be running).

However, over the year, this blog has evolved into a patchwork of posts all loosely based around the local history of the North Essex town of Great Dunmow, English medieval history, early-modern England and Tudor history. To celebrate my blog-anniversary, today and tomorrow I will be publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year.  Thank you for reading my posts, writing lovely inspiring comments, and ‘talking’ to me on twitter.  I look forward to writing another year of posts and sharing with you my view of England’s rich heritage and history.

Below are my most viewed top 6 posts from the last year.

1. Interpreting primary sources – the 6 ‘w’s – For all historians-in-training – analysing primary sources.

2. Images of medieval cats – Cats, as illustrated on the folios of medieval illuminated manuscripts now in the care of the British Library.

3. Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow – The story of Queen Elizabeth’s I’s Royal Progress through Essex and Suffolk during the Summer of 1561.

4. The clergy in pre-Reformation England – The vicars and ‘Sirs’ of the pre-Reformation Catholic clergy with particular reference to the 1520s clergy to Great Dunmow.

5. Blacksheep Sunday: Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment – The tragic story of a neighbourly conflict in Great Dunmow during the 1560s which exploded into the accusations of witchcraft and bewitchment.

6. Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556 – The story of how an established family from the town of Great Dunmow produced a son who in 1556 was burnt at the stake for his Protestant faith.

Join me next time to discover my next top 12 posts (6-12)

Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!

© 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.

Last week’s Tuesday Tip discussed the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source.  As a former history student of the UK’s Open University, I would be neglecting my training as a historian if I didn’t blog about ‘unwitting testimony’.  This term was invented by the much loved extraordinary Open University professor Arthur Marwick.  To quote this redoubtable historian

The phrase is … borrowed from the distinguished American historian of science, Henry Guerlac … `Witting’ means deliberate or intentional; `unwitting’ means unaware or unintentional. `Testimony’ means evidence. … it is the writer, creator, or creators of the document or source, who is, or are, intentional or unintentional, not the testimony itself … Witting testimony is the information or impression that the person or persons who originally compiled the document or source intended to convey … or record. … Unwitting testimony is evidence which historians find very useful, but which the originator of the document is not conscious might be conveyed to later historians, for it would be known anyway, or taken for granted, by contemporaries.(1)

So, what extra ‘unwitting’ information does your primary source give you that perhaps the source’s author didn’t intend to provide?

Elizabeth I
Let’s take an example of a primary source:  Elizabeth I’s 1588 speech to her troops at Tilbury just before the Spanish were going to invade with their Armada.  Let’s assume that you’ve done the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source and are now trying to squeeze more information out of her speech.  Take this part of her speech (leave aside the queries that there are two versions!)

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field(2)

What testimony was Elizabeth unwittingly giving to future historians?

I’ve got a few ideas – how about you?  Write your thoughts about Elizabeth’s unwitting testimony in the comment box below.

Elizabeth at Tilbury in 1588 after the defeat of the Armada(3)

Henry VIII
Here’s something from Elizabeth’s father – Henry VIII.  These are the opening words of his will.  Very few words but within them, Henry gives his very definite unwitting testimony on his (and therefore England’s) religion.

In the name of god and of the glorious and blessed virgin our Lady Saint Mary and of all the holy company of heaven...(4)

What testimony was Henry unwittingly giving to future historians of the Reformation?  Write your thoughts on Henry’s unwitting testimony in the comment box below.

The Psalter of Henry VIII(5)

Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts(6) and unwitting testimony
In this post The Catholic Ritual Year – Plough-feast, May Day, Dancing Money, Corpus Christi, I said that activities in Great Dunmow for Plough Monday, May Day and Corpus Christi were probably well established before 1525-6 and the arrival of the leather-bound churchwardens’ accounts.  In 1525-6, the churchwardens wrote short, concise entries without explaining each entry – thus giving the impression that these events were already well-established within the parish before the arrival of the churchwardens’ account-book.  This is unwitting testimony.

Likewise, in this post Tudor administration within Great Dunmow there is unwitting testimony that the scribe took great care in recording the collection for the church steeple and collating all this information.  There is also unwitting testimony that each person was documented in the churchwardens’ accounts in strict social-hierarchy order.  In this instance, this unwitting testimony can be confirmed by cross-referencing each entry to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy returns.

However, the unwitting testimony about Plough Monday, May Day and Corpus Christi cannot be confirmed as the churchwardens’ accounts prior to 1525-6 have not survived.

Conclusion
Squeezing as much as possible out of primary sources can be an extremely rewarding experience.  Sometimes what a source  doesn’t state is as equally important as what it does!  Use the technique of unwitting testimony along with the 6 ‘w’s of decoding a primary source to make the very most of your  precious source material.

Footnotes
1) Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, (London, 1989), p 216 and 218, as cited on Marwick on Witting and Unwitting Testimony (accessed February 2012).
2) Elizabeth I’s 1588 speech to her troops at Tilbury (accessed February 2012).
3) Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury in 1588 after the defeat of the Armada. 17^th Century panel in St Faith’s church in Gaywood, Norfolk. ©Evelyn Simak and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
4) Will of Henry VIII, king of England, France, and Ireland (1546), The National Archives, E23/4
5) The Psalter of Henry VIII, (London, between 1530 and 1547), Psalm 53 (52), Shelfmark: MS 2 A XVI, f. 63v. © The British Library Board.
6) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1.

General Note
I learnt some of these techniques for analyzing primary sources via many of the wonderful history tutors from the UK’s excellent Open University.   I owe a debt of gratitude to those tutors in helping me understand how to properly decode historical documents.

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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.