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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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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