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. Â 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.
Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1526-7)
1. Item ffor ij scaynys of whyte threde ffor ye copys [Item for 2 skeins of white thread for the copys (corpus?) 2d]
iid
2. Ite[m] for lyne & pakthrede & whepcorde when p[ar]nell [Item for line and pack-thread and whipcord when Parnell]
iiiid
3. made the pagantes our corpuscryti daye [made the pageants our Corpus Christi day 4d]
4. Ite[m] payde ffor hornynge of the cherche <illegible crossing out> lanton [Item paid for horning(?) of the church lantern 8d]
viiid
5. Ite[m] for strekynge of ye Rodelyght [Item for striking of the Rood light 13d]
xiijd
6. Ite[m] for a peys lether ffor bawdryk [Item for a piece leather for bawdrick 8d]
viid
7. Ite[m] for mendynge of lede on the new chapell [Item for mending of lead on the new chapel]
iis
8. & on ye gelde on the same syde [and on the gild on the same side 2s]
9. Ite[m] ffor a li of wex for & strykynge a fore owr [Item for a pound of wax & striking before our]
viid
10. lady in the chawnsell [lady in the chancel 7d]
11. Ite[m] payde to dychynge for carryynge of tymber for ye frame [Item paid to Dychynge for carrying timber for the frame [2s]
iis
12. Ite[m] to Wylye[m] blythe for mendynge of ye glase wyndowes [Item to William Blythe for mending the glass windows]
iis iiijd
13. in the new chapell & in other plasys of the cherche [in the new chapel & in other places in the church]
14. Ite[m] pade to burle for the rest of the gyldy of owr lady [Item paid to Burle for the rest of the gild of our lady 6s 8d]
vjs viijd
15. Ite[m] pade to Robart Sturtons wyfe for wasshynge of [Item paid to Robert Sturton’s wife for washing of]
vjs viiid
16. the cherche gere for iij yere [the church gear for 3 years 6s 8d]
17. Item for the bordynge of hynry bode att doscetor & when [Item for the boarding of Henry Bode at Dowsetter & when]
xijd
18. the bell was a perynge [the bell was repairing 12d]
19. Ite[m] laynge of ij shovylls & a mattoke for ye cherche [Item laying of 2 shovels & a mattock for the church 12d]
xiid
20. Ite[m] for wode when the bell was pesyd [Item for wood when the bell was repaired(?) 12d]
xiid
21. Item payde to the belfowder in rernest of ye bargine [Item paid to the bell-founder in ? of the bargain(?) 3s 4d]
iijs iiijd
22. S[u]m[m]a Alloe lvijs ixd & rend ?? xxviijs ixd [Sum of 52s 9d remainder(?) ?? 28s 9d
Commentary Line 1-3: Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi pageant. See the commentary below.
Line 6: Bawdrick –  According to Wikipedia, a bawdrick/baldric was a belt worn over one shoulder which was often used to carry a weapon (such as a sword). (Not to be confused with Blackadder’s sidekick, Baldrick!)
Line 7 & 8 and 12 & 13: Mending of the led, gild and glass in the ‘new chapel’. This must have been a side chapel within the church of St Mary the Virgin. It does not refer to a separate building, such as the small chapel which existed in the town’s centre.
Line 19: A mattock was a tool used for digging. It had a flat blade set at right angles to the handle.
Line 21: The bell-founder. This is possibly the same bell-founder in London which the parish of Great Dunmow commissioned to make their bells in the late 1520s. It is very likely that this is the same bell-foundry in Whitechapel which is still in existence today and cast the magnificent bells for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Bells & the London 2012 Olympic Bell.
Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi Plays Lines 1-3 above record the expenditure for ‘lyne & pakthred & whepcorde when P[ar]nell made the pagantes on Corpus Cryti day’.  It has been suggested that this entry in Great Dunmow’s accounts signifies rope scourges and therefore, Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi plays were Catholic religious set-pieces involving flagellation. (1)  Packthread is very strong thread or twine and whipcord is strong worsted fabric often used for whiplashes. This argument is further enforced by the claim that the P[ar]nell in the churchwarden’s accounts was one John Parnell who was active in 1505 in Ipswich.(2) This John Parnell of Ipswich was given 33s 4d by that town to find ornaments for their Corpus Christi plays for a period of twelve years.(3)  Ipswich’s Corpus Christi plays must have been a magnificent event because of the amount of money given to John Parnell. Therefore, if Ipswich’s Parnell was the same person as Great Dunmow’s Parnell, then this connection could be used to support a supposition that the town of Great Dunmow was trying to emulate the more prosperous town of Ipswich.
However, by not just looking at Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts in isolation but also analysing other primary sources from Great Dunmow, it can be established that a Robert Parnell was a Tudor resident of Great Dunmow. Whilst he is not listed in any of the parish collections itemised in the churchwardens’ accounts, he is listed in the Great Dunmow’s 1524-5 Lay Subsidy returns.(4) Moreover, a Roberd Parnell is also detailed in John Bermyshe’s 1526 will as living in one of Bermyshe’s houses in Great Dunmow.(5)  Robert Parnell was a resident of Great Dunmow. Therefore, the evidence suggests that Ipswich’s Parnell was not the same Parnell who supplied rope for Great Dunmow’s pageant. Moreover, as the rope was for ‘pagantes’, it is probable the rope was used to support the pageant’s scenery, and not used as rope-scourges.
Footnotes 1) Clifford Davidson, Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain (Aldershot, 2007) p55.
2) Ibid.
3) John Wodderspoon, Memorials of the ancient town of Ipswich in the county of Suffolk (1850) p170.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), E.R.O., T/A427/1/1.
5) Will of John Bermyshe (1527), E.R.O., D/ABW/3/9.
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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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, 1st 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’). Â 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. Â 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.
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). Â (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
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. Â If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Line 5: Michaelmas Day is 29th 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.
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.
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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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?
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Â If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
35. Ite off John atkynso[n] for a fewe bryks & a letell
36. wete lyme & a tabbe ych [which] thay carryd watt in ye sum
ixd
37. Ite off ye glon?? ffor a ladder pryce
iiid
38. Ite ffor a rope sold to ye good ma[n] fyche pryce
xijd
39. Ite resayvyd ffor \ye/ scaffold off Thom[a]s Savage
iijs iiijd
–
40. Sum xviij li xs vd [£18 10s 5d)
41. Sum ??th rec[eived] ?? Anni xxli ijs jd
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 20th 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.
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).
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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Family members mentioned in the churchwarden accounts include:
– Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523
– Robert Sturton, church clerk of Great Dunmow
– Robert Sturton
– William Sturton
– Stephen Sturton
– Alexander Sturton
Robert Sturton – vicar of Great Dunmow 1492-1523 Patron for the living of Great Dunmow:  Dean and Fellows of Stoke College, Clare, Suffolk.
Reason for leaving the living of St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow, 1523: Resigned
University/degree: Described as ‘master’ in the churchwarden accounts indicating he was an M.A. (Master of Arts). Unknown which university.
1514: possibly the same Robert Stourton (described as a ‘Professor of Theology’ i.e. S.T.P.) who was rector of Long Melford, Suffolk.(1) Long Melford is 28 miles away from Great Dunmow.
Long Melford church, Suffolk
19 April 1510: Robert Stourton, clerk, of Great Dunmow, pardoned by Henry VIII.(2)
Died by 1529. The churchwardens’ accounts detail of 53s 4d, a gift from Robert Sturton ‘sumtyme vycar of thys chyrche’. The money was given to the churchwardens by William Sturton.(3) It can be assumed William and Robert were related.
Notes on the Sturton family of Great Dunmow There were many Sturtons within Tudor Great Dunmow. William Sturton was assessed in the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy for goods to the value of £40.(4) Two Robert Sturtons were also assessed, both with goods to the value of 20s. Stephen Sturton was also assessed. As the clergy were exempt from the Lay Subsidy, this implies that, including the vicar, there were three Robert Sturtons in Great Dunmow. Robert Sturton, the church clerk from the start of the churchwardens’ accounts until the mid-1540s was one of them. Throughout the Henrician churchwardens’ accounts, his wife received payment from the churchwardens for washing the church’s linen.
The only Sturton will to have survived is Alexander Sturton’s will of 1553. Alexander Sturton, of Clopton Hall, bequeathed money to the children of Stephen Sturton, Thomas Sturton, Robert Sturton and William Sturton (all deceased).(5) This suggests that Alexander Sturton was possibly the son of one of the three Robert Sturtons. Clopton Hall was one of Great Dunmow’s medieval manors.
Two William Sturtons from Great Dunmow were educated at Cambridge University. In 1526 William Sturton, aged 18, a scholar from Eton, of Dunmow, Essex, matriculated at Kings. He became a fellow of Kings College 1529-30, ordained Deacon of Lincoln 1530, and Precentor of Kings College 1541-9.(6) The other William Sturton of Great Dunmow matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1564 aged 16 and was the son of Alexander Sturton.(7)
Thus, there is both circumstantial and solid evidence linking these Sturtons together. The evidence demonstrates they were an elite and well-established family. It is likely they were related to the Lord Stourtons of Stourton, Wiltshire.
Stourton, Wiltshire
In the early fifteenth century, Sir John Moigne held the Manor of Great Easton along with the advowson of the village’s church. Sir John’s heirs were his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Sir William Stourton.  Sir William was presented to the rectory of Great Easton on the 3rd January 1408. Sir William’s Inquisition Post Mortem took place in Great Dunmow in the regnal year I Henry V. (1413-4).  His son, John Stourton (who later became 1st Lord Stourton), was presented to Great Easton’s rectory on 5th January 1427. Throughout the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, the House of Stourton held the Manor of Great Easton, and also the Manor of Blamster in the same village. Great Easton remained part of the Stourton estate until William, 7th Lord Stourton, sold the Manor and advowson in 1536.(8) Great Easton is a village 2.5 miles from Great Dunmow.
Henry VIII’s Pardon Rolls of 1509-14 documented William Stourton, knight, Lord Stourton, as the tenant of the manor of Estaynes ad Montem, Essex [Great Easton].(9) It has been suggested the true phonetic spelling of the name ‘Stourton’ is ‘Sturton’.(10)Â The scribes who wrote the churchwardens’ accounts used phonetic spellings for many names and places.
Therefore, it is probable Robert Sturton, vicar of Great Dunmow, and the other Sturtons of Great Dunmow, were distant relations to the House of Stourton.
Great Easton, Essex, 1904
Footnotes: 1) William Parker, The History of Long Melford (1873), 35.
2) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 1’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 203-216, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102632 .
3) Great Dunmow, Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office D/P 11/5/1, fo.7r.
4) Hundred of Dunmow: Calendar of Lay Subsidy Rolls (1523-4), E.R.O., T/A427/1/1.
5) Will of Alexander Sturton(1553), E.R.O., D/ABW 33/226.
6) John Venn, ‘William Sturton’ in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV (Cambridge, 1927), 181.
7) Venn, ‘William Stoorton’. in Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Volume IV, 181.
8 ) Lord Mowbray, Segrave, and Stourton, The history of the noble house of Stourton (1899), 105-7 and 151.
9) J.S. Brewer (ed.), ‘Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 3’ in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1: 1509-1514 (1920), 234-256, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=102634 .
10) Mowbray, Stourton, 2.
Postcards displayed on this page in the personal collection of The Narrator.
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. Â If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts. His prompt ‘Thankful Thursday’ is all about expressing gratitude for someone/something connected to your own personal family history.   My own ‘someone’ was Great Dunmow’s 1960s & 70s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.
No local history of Great Dunmow is complete without reference to her work. She was a lifelong resident of Great Dunmow and had vast knowledge about her home town which she shared in her local history books and articles in the local magazine, Essex Countryside. I owe Dorothy Dowsett’s work a debt of gratitude both for my academic research on my dissertation into Tudor & Reformation Great Dunmow and also for her work on Edwardian and early 1900s Great Dunmow.
Amazingly, in one of her books on Great Dunmow, Through all the changing seasons, I found a photo of my grandfather’s aunt, uncle and their children (my grandfather’s cousins), the Kemps of the White Horse pub and the Royal Oak, Great Dunmow.  She was a contemporary of my grandfather’s cousins, and I would have loved to have sat and talked to her about them. Particularly to hear her memories of Gordon and Harold Kemp, two sons of Great Dunmow, tragically killed in the Great War.
So my own ‘Through all the changing Seasons’ is dedicated to the memory of Great Dunmow’s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.
Great Dunmow local history books
Dowsett, D., Dunmow Through The Ages (Letchworth, 1968).
Dowsett, D., Through all the changing seasons (1975).
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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. Â If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
The post Tudor vicar William Walton’s arrival in Great Dunmow explained how one of the drivers for the 1525-6 collection for the church steeple (and the establishment of the beautiful leather account-book), was the arrival of the new vicar, Master William Walton. Another driver for the parish collection must have been the tax imposed by Henry VIII two years prior to the church steeple collection. This tax, known as the Lay Subsidy, was imposed on England by the king to levy money for his expensive wars with France.
Tent design for the 1520 Field of Cloth of Gold (Henry VIII’s meeting with the king of France) (1)
Each village, town and parish throughout England had to keep meticulous records as to the amount that had been levied on each head-of-household. The tax levied was based on a person’s income from their land or moveable good. John Josselyn, from the nearby parish of High Roding, who also owned a manor within Great Dunmow(2), was responsible for collecting the tax within the Hundred of Dunmow.(3) It is possible that the elite and clergy of Great Dunmow, who probably helped Josselyn administer the parish’s 1523-4 collection of the Lay Subsidy, used methods from this tax’s administration to facilitate their own parish collection in 1525-6.
The returns for Great Dunmow’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy are in The National Archives (T.N.A.).(4) These returns detail a) the house-holder’s name (first name and surname), b) whether they had been assessed for income based on goods or land, c) the Valor (value assessed), and d) the tax payable. These returns would have been written down and recorded by John Josselyn or one of his men, resulting in the detailed manuscript that is now in the care of the T.N.A. Thus, a list of all the house-holders (and, more importantly, their wealth) could have been made available to vicar Master William Walton when he instigated the collection for the church steeple.
Perhaps, after a service in the church, when the parish clergy, churchwardens and church clerk were collecting each person’s contribution to the church steeple, the returns from the Lay Subsidy were used to assess how much each parishioner should pay towards their new steeple. This would explain the distinct connection between a person’s wealth and the amount they paid to a seemingly voluntary collection. This correlation is demonstrated in the graph below, which illustrates the distribution patterns of amounts paid to the Lay Subsidy compared to the steeple collection: the trends are remarkably similar. According to entries within the churchwarden accounts, the cost of labour per day was 4d, therefore the majority of householders were contributing an amount roughly equal to one day’s pay for both the Lay Subsidy Tax and the church steeple collection.
1523-4 Lay Subsidy versus 1525-6 parish collection
The returns for  the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy records 139 tax-payers, whereas just over 160 house-holders were recorded for the 1525-6 church steeple collection. This discrepancy can be accounted for by the exemption of clergy and paupers from the Lay Subsidy. Therefore, allowing for the parish’s four clerics (as detailed in the post Late medieval clergy), and a small number of deaths which might have occurred between the two events, it can be assumed there were approximately 20 paupers within the parish. With a greater number contributing to the parish collection, some of the poorest residents, exempt from Henry VIII’s tax, had paid the parish church’s informal levy. Perhaps, for the paupers, it was for spiritual, pious and religious reasons that money was paid to their church rather than to their lord sovereign, the King.
The elite of the parish have also been examined by comparing their wealth, according to the Lay Subsidy, against their generosity to the church steeple collection. From this comparison, it is apparent that at least five lords of the manors from Great Dunmow’s medieval manors paid the highest contributions. This comparison also confirms the men listed at the start of church steeple collection were the elite and from the upper echelons of Great Dunmow’s society.  Eamon Duffy has argued that investing in parish projects was one way in which the elite could establish and promote their place in local society.(5)  This self-promotion is apparent in Great Dunmow. The largest contributor to the church steeple collection in 1525-6 was the builder and churchwarden, Thomas Savage, who, at £36s 8d, paid over £1 more then the next closest contribution and, according to the 1523-4 Lay Subsidy, was the tenth wealthiest parishioner. In spite of his wealth and generosity, he was only listed twenty-fourth in the list – his wealth and generous contribution were not enough to push him up the social rank. But, it did win him the contract to assist the building of the church steeple (as documented in a later folio within the churchwarden accounts).
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. Â If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
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Detail of a medieval plough (folio 77v) from The Macclesfield Psalter,
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.
Burning of 13 people (11 man and 2 woman) at Stratford le Bow June 1556,
Colchester Castle – county gaol of Tudor Essex
Leighs Priory, Felsted (also known as Lees and Leez),
Entries for Great Dunmow’s June 1546 Corpus Christi feast-day
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.
The beautiful Thaxted church, home of the yearly 
