Six scenes from the life of Christ from The Howard Psalter and Hours (England, c1310-c1320), shelfmark Arundel 83 f.124.

 

Miniature of the Magi from Prayer Book (St Albans, England, c1240), shelfmark Arundel 157 f.4.

 

The Adoration of the Magi from Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (The ‘Neville of Hornby Hours’) (England, (S.E, London?), 2nd quarter of the 14th century, possibly the 4th decade), shelfmark Egerton 2781 f.112.
Adoration of the Magi from Book of Hours (the ‘Harley Hours’), Use of Sarum (England, Last quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Harley 928 f.5v.

 

Adoration of the Magi from Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (England, S. E. (London), c. 1440 – c. 1450), shelfmark Harley 2915 f.33.

 

The Magi from Psalter (England, Central (Oxford), 1st quarter of the 13th century, before 1220) shelfmark Royal 1 D X f.2.

 

Adoration of the Magi from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia?), between 1310 and 1320) shelfmark Royal 2 B VII f.112v.

 

The three Magi before Herod from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia?), between 1310 and 1320) shelfmark Royal 2 B VII f.131.

 

Adoration of the Magi from Breviary, Use of Sarum with Norwich variants (‘The Stowe Breviary’) (England, E. (Norwich), between 1322 and 1325) shelfmark Stowe 12 f.40.

 

Adoration of Magi from Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (‘The Taymouth Hours’) (England, S. E.? (London?), 2nd quarter of the 14th century) shelfmark Yates Thompson 13 f.94v.

All images above are English drawings from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts and are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

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We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts, we traverse afar.
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

O Star of Wonder, Star of Night,
Star with Royal Beauty bright,
Westward leading, Still proceeding,
Guide us to Thy perfect Light.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising, all men raising
Worship Him, God most high

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice
Alleluia, Alleluia
Earth to heav’n replies

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Words by Reverend John Henry Hopkins (1820-1891),
written c1857 (or c1863)

We three kings of orient are,
One in a taxi one in a car,
One on a scooter beeping his hooter,
Following yonder star.

Alternative words remembered from my childhood
author unknown

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You may also be interested in the following

– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Today’s post on the theme of a Christmas in a Tudor Town is about the medieval and early Tudor custom of electing boys as Bishops.   This custom was widespread throughout pre-Reformation Catholic England but was banned by Henry VIII in 1542, revived by Mary 1 in 1552 and then finally abolished by Elizabeth.  There were boy-bishops elected in major abbeys, university colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge, major schools (such as Eton), and wealthy collegiate churches.  Henry VIII appointed St Nicholas Bishops from his choristers at the Chapel Royal.  Usually a boy was elected as a ‘Bishop’ on the Feast of St Nicholas (6th December) and he replaced the authority of the real Bishop until Holy Innocents day (28th December). Records of boy-bishops at King’s College, Cambridge have survived – the Boy Bishop’s costume was especially made for the child, and he wore a white wool coat, with a scarlet gown with its hood trimmed with white ermine.  He also wore knitted gloves, gold rings, a crozier, and a mitre of white damask. (Ronald Hutton, The Rise of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994) p11.)

As well as grand establishments having boy-bishops, many parishes of England also appointed boy bishops for their parish. Although they wouldn’t have worn such grand garments as King’s College.  Unfortunately no records survive as to what they actually did or who these boys were.  Were they the sons of the upper echelons of the parish, or were they the middling sort? As it must have been a great honour for a family to have their son elected bishop, it is unlikely they were the poorer members of the parish.  It is probable that these bishops travelled around their parish during the 22 days of their tenure – maybe even going over the parish boundaries into neighbouring parishes – singing and blessing people and collecting money from them.

The historian, Ronald Hutton, in his book The Rise of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994), comments

‘At Bristol it was appropriately enough the church of St Nicholas which set forth a Boy Bishop upon its patron’s feast [6^th December], with a procession bearing eight banners.  The corporation came to receive his blessing and then entertained him and his retinue of boys to a banquet.  But at least seven London parish which had no association with the saint paraded robbed and mitred children upon his feast.  The same was true of others in Norwich, Cambridge, Nottingham, Coventry, Leicester, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shorpshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Suffolk.  Records of more have doubtless perished.  The surviving entries make plain, that while going on procession the boys collected money from spectators which was handed over to the churchwardens.’ [page 12]

The north Essex parish of Great Dunmow was another such parish who elected a boy bishop on St Nicholas day. In 1533, there is an entry in the churchwarden accounts for money received on St Nicholas’s Day ‘Item rec[evied] of[f] the offering hon [on] Seynt nycolas daye – iijs iiijd [3s 4d]’ (folio 20v].  This entry makes no mention of a boy bishop, so it is likely that this was a collection within the church on the 6th December which raised 3s 4d.  However, in the mid 1530s, there is the tantalising glimpse that the parish had actually appointed a boy-bishop on the feast-day of St Nicholas.

‘the rec[eipts] of the bisshop at seynt Nicolas tyme iijs iiijd [4s 4d]’ (folio 23v)  [The final few characters appear to be from the margin note running down the right side of the page.]

In all my transcribing of the churchwardens’ accounts, this section is one of the hardest to decipher because there is marginalia notes on both the left and the right side of the page which run into the main text.   Also, this whole section appears to be very hastily scribbled entries into the churchwardens’ accounts from a new set of churchwardens who were trying to tally-up the financial happenings which had occurred during the tenure of a previous churchwardens.  The line above the ‘bisshop at seynt Nicolas tyme’ reads ‘Also the old debt of of [sic] the last acompute [accounts/compute]’ and the two lines underneath appears to be a summing up of other finances.  Or possibly even summing up the boy-bishop’s receipt – I really can’t make head nor tail of these two lines!  Did the receipts of the bishop of Saint Nicholas also include viijli xs ob [£8 10½s]?

The precise year of this Bishop of St Nicholas is also hard to pin-down.  The  folio starts ‘Ann^o pp h viij^th visimo nono’ i.e. the twenty-ninth regnal year of Henry VIII’s reign (1537) – and the first margin note on the left confirm this ‘At Seynt Andrews tyme A^o XXIX ^vn’.  i.e. these are the accounts for the year 1537 recorded during the feast-day of St Andrews (30th November). So the bishop of St Nicholas couldn’t have been in 1537 because his feast-day was after St Andrews day. (Remember, we are dealing with financial accounts which have been recorded after the event.)  Moreover, this is the tallying-up of a previous set of accounts.  So it’s impossible to ascertain the actual year of Great Dunmow’s ‘(boy) bishop of Saint Nicholas’.

Although it is difficult to decode this entry, it does appear that sometime in the mid 1530s, the parish of Great Dunmow did have a boy-bishop appointed on the feast-day of St Nicholas whose purpose was to collect money for the parish church.

(As an aside, intriguingly the final margin note on the left side of this folio reads ‘of the rking [reckoning] sum of xvs id [25s 1d] the owld wardons have payed xjs [11s] & therof ther be ?? dischargdd of ?? ?? xvs jd [25s 1d]’.   I smell some wrong financial accounting by the old churchwardens’!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas was a significant event of great importance for the ordinary people of English villages and towns in the early Tudor Catholic period.  The townsfolk of the North Essex town of Great Dunmow were no exception to this and celebrated with much vigour both the religious and social aspect of this, the most Christian of celebrations.  To discover what Christmas events took place in Great Dunmow, we once more have to turn to the exquisitely tooled leather-bound churchwarden accounts of the town.  In this handsome volume, between the years 1526 to 1621, the churchwardens of Great Dunmow meticulously recorded their expenditure and income of their parish church of St Mary the Virgin.

Buried within this book are the financial accounts for various religious and social activities which took place over the Christmas period between the 1520s and 1550s.  Only the bare-bones can be gleaned from the churchwardens’ accounts but there is enough detail to gather a basic knowledge of the events at Christmas in this Tudor English parish.

So, over the next few days in the lead-up to our 21st Century consumer-driven Christmas, we shall explore together

Christmas in the Tudor town of Great Dunmow

Christmas Day Candle
The expenditure for a special candle, used in the parish church on Christmas Day morning, first appeared in the churchwardens’ accounts in 1544, then again in 1545 and also in 1546 (the final Christmas of Henry VIII’s reign).   It is curious that these Christmas candles do not appear in the early years of the churchwardens’ accounts.  However it is likely that these earlier Christmas candles were bought but not itemised by the churchwardens with such precision as seen in the 1540s folios.

The candles must have been substantial items – probably very large and very long – as the 1544 and 1545 candles weighed two pounds each and cost 3d apiece.  The 1546 candle also weighed two pounds, but cost 4d – had Tudor inflation taken place?  I wonder what our Tudor churchwardens thought of this price increase!  Unfortunately we do not know if they were ornate or a simple candles. It is possible that the Christmas candle was carried in a procession through the church, a procession led by the vicar and priests of Great Dunmow at the Mass held for the entire parish on Christmas morning.

No further mention is made of Christmas candles in the accounts until the reign of Mary I when there are two entries for Christmas Day candles – one which cost 2d but without the weight recorded, and the other weighing the usual two pounds and costing 5d.  The entries for Mary’s reign are not dated, so these Christmas Day candles relate to Christmases in the period 1553 to 1558.  The churchwardens’ accounts are confusing for the period of Henry VIII’s immediate successor, the devoutly Protestant Edward VI.  Therefore, it cannot be determined if the lack of Christmas Day candles during his reign (1547-1553) was because of his religious inclinations and edicts or simply because the churchwardens did not record the entries with their usual meticulous thoroughness.  The Marian entries show that the Christmas candle was enclosed or surrounded by some form of canopy.

There are no further entries in the churchwardens’ accounts for a large candle at Christmas.  Below summarises the entries that are in the accounts.

Entry for 1544 Christmas candle – folio 37v
Entry for 1545 Christmas candle – folio 38v
Entry for 1546 Christmas candle – folio 39r
Entry for Christmas candles in Mary I’s reign – folio 43r

Join me tomorrow to discover about
Great Dunmow’s Christmas Lord of Misrule

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

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

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

On this day in history, 14 December 1542, James V of Scotland died, leaving his only child, Mary, the Queen of Scotland.  She was aged just 6 days.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Poor, tragic, Catholic Mary.  As the grand-daughter of Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret Tudor, she had a strong claim to the English throne – a throne that belonged to Elizabeth I, the Protestant daughter of Henry VIII.  Executed at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was originally buried in Peterborough Cathedral by the gravedigger, Old Scarlett, but her son, James I of England (VI of Scotland), had  her remains removed and reburied in Westminster Abbey in 1612.

‘Mistress of Scotland by law, of France by marriage, of England by expectation,
thus blest, by a three-fold right, with a three-fold crown’

Translation of part of the Latin inscriptions on her tomb,
from Westminster Abbey’s Online History
Mary Queen of Scots

Famous Scots – Mitchell’s Cigarette Cards 1933

The cards below are all from Scotland’s Story – Mitchell’s Cigarette Cards 1928

 

Notes about the Nursery Rhyme, ‘Mary, Mary’
‘Popular tradition has it that the original Mary was Mary, Queen of Scots, who with her gay, French, and Popish inclinations much displeased the dour John Knox.  In this case ‘the pretty maids’ might be the renowned ‘Four Marys’, her ladies-in-waiting, and it has even been stated that the ‘cockleshells’ were the decorations upon a particular dress she was given by the Dauphin.  Such assertions are, of course, the work of the ‘happy guessers’.  No proof has been found that the rhyme was known before the eighteen century.  It is to be remarked, however, that a lost ballad ‘Cuckolds all a row‘ was registered in June 1637, and that there is a tune ‘Cuckolds all a row’ in the 1651 edition of Playford’s Dancing Master.’  From Iona and Peter Opie (Editors) The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd Edition, Oxford 1997) page 355.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Arthur – Prince of Wales
– A Tudor Gravedigger
– History Howlers – Elizabeth I
– History Howlers – Mary I
– History Howlers – Henry VIII
– Tudor Coronations
– Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper

School Trip Friday will return in the New Year.

Who are these nameless people of Great Dunmow who stare into the middle-distance of their 1860s photographs?  Only a few bare facts are known about them – their photos all purchased from that well-known internet auction-house.  The first five photos came from a single house-clearance in Sussex, so were all related to each other; whilst the sixth photo came from Ireland.

The ladies from Sussex are all wearing the same head-dress.  Are they grandmother, two daughters, and grand-daughter?  The small child (boy or girl?) has been photographed against the same background as the two younger women.  The lady from Ireland is sitting on the same chair with the same table as the two older ladies from Sussex.  Their clothing dates all of them to the first half of the 1860s.

Who are these ladies and child?  All frozen for a moment in time through the lens of the photographer and nurseryman, William Stacey* of Great Dunmow.  Nameless people to add to the local history of Great Dunmow.

*Even today, there is still a flower/plant shop in Great Dunmow’s High Street called ‘Stacey’s Flowers of Great Dunmow’.

You may also be interested in the following post
– The Cole family of Spitalfields Market

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake, Songs of Experience (1794)

Knight on horseback and a tiger with a mirror.  The knight throws down a mirror so that the tigress will stop to look at its own reflection, thinking it is her cub, from Bestiary, with extracts from Giraldus Cambrensis on Irish birds (Salisbury, England, 2nd quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Harley 4751 f.3v.

Hunter distracting a tiger from the capture of its cub by casting a mirror onto the ground in front of it from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia?), between 1310 and 1320), Royal 2 B VII f.123.

Hunter capturing a tiger’s cub by distracting its mother with a mirror from Bestiary (England, 1st quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Royal 12 C XIX f.28.

Man capturing a tiger cub by leaving a mirror to distract its mother from Bestiary (England, 2nd quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Royal 12 F XIII f.6v.

Slaying of the tame tiger from Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (Naples, Italy, 2nd quarter of the 14th century), shelfmark Royal 20 D I f.17v.

Tiger from Bestiary (England, 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Sloane 3544 f.2.

Tiger of Thebes from Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (Paris, France, 1st quarter of the 15th century), shelfmark Stowe 54 f.20v.

Man riding away on a horse with a tiger cub from Theological miscellany, including the Summa de vitiis (England, 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 13th century, after c. 1236), shelfmark Harley 3244 f.36v.

Note on the British Library’s copyright
Nearly a year ago, I first started to use on my blog digital images from the British Library’s catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.  As all the images were in copyright, I (quite rightly) had to request permission to use these images.  This permission the British Library very willingly and quickly granted me, as my blog is a non-profit hobby blog. However, just recently the British Library has marked all their images from their catalogue of illuminated manuscripts as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions.  This is fantastic news for both professional and amateur historians alike.  I have gained much pleasure from sharing my ‘finds’ from their catalogue with you.  The decision to remove their copyright will hopefully encourage more people to use some of the most exquisite images in existence, thereby giving us modern sophisticated(?) digital-age folk a fleeting glimpse into the medieval world.

You may also be interested in the following posts with images from the British Library’s Medieval Manuscript collections:
– Images of Tudor people
– Wild Animals and Early modern England
– Images of the Devil in the Medieval/early-modern period
– Images of medieval cats
– Images of medieval cats – part 2
– Images of medieval dogs
– The Medieval Spinsters
– The sinful hermit
– The Snail and the Knight
– Jousting snails
– Medieval Marriages

According to Monty Python’s view of the Romans, they didn’t do an awful lot for anyone – except, of course:
– Aquaducts
– Sanitation
– Roads
– Irrigation
– Medicine
– Education
– Wine
– Public Baths
– Safe to walk in the streets at night
– Keeping order
– Brought Peace

Whilst our School Trip Friday to Hadrian’s Wall and its surrounding forts didn’t let us confirm or disprove all of Monty Python’s suggestions listed above, we were able to consider some.  So here are our final batch of photos from our trip to Hadrian’s Wall which we visited as part of my son’s programme of home education.  And here is our view of What did the Romans ever do for us?

Sanitation and latrines

Housesteads Roman Fort latrines in 2012

The latrines in use by the Roman soldiers.  Wooden boards with holes in them were placed over the gullies.  In the centre were stone water-troughs and sponges for the soldiers to use to clean themselves.  This looks to be very much a communal manly event!

Roman Baths

The bath-house at Chesters Roman Fort

The Romans placed their bath-house well-away from the main fort because it had to have furnaces capable of producing the high temperatures required for the baths, saunas and hot rooms.   Therefore the risk of fire was great and so the bath-house was built separate from the fort.

Chesters’ bath-house is on the river-bank alongside the River Tyne.  Hadrian’s Wall continues to snake through the countryside on the other-side of the river.  There was a Roman bridge across the river, but this was washed away during the Roman times and not rebuilt.

The waiting/relaxing area in the baths.  Statues of various Roman gods and godesses were probably in each of the alcoves.

How many sandalled Roman soldiers walked on this step into the next room whilst relaxing and enjoying their baths?  Although they were naked in the baths, it is very likely that they had wear sandals because of the heat and high temperatures pouring from the floors.

What else did the Romans do for us?
I could show you many more photos from our time at Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman Forts – including all the underfloor heating systems, the large stores built to hold all the grain in the fort, and the Roman town of Corbridge.  However, so I don’t bore you, instead I’ll show you what else we learnt during our trip.  Now, strictly speaking the Romans didn’t do this for us, but during our trip we had a maths lesson and so learnt the complex calculations needed for flying a kite.  Easy-peasy, you may think, but flying a kite is very mathematical with factors such as wind speed, length of the kite’s tail, thickness of the material and weight of the kite.  At the end of our kite-flying session, we wrote a report about our experiences.

Birdoswald Roman Fort – Hadrian’s Wall is the stone-work on the right side of the photo

Flying high!

Our second kite – this one was too small and too light.  This was the highest we got it.

Once we got home, our learning about the Romans continued by making a Roman mosaic.  We cheated and didn’t do it the good old-fashioned Roman way of individually cutting each piece but, instead, bought a kit from Vindolanda’s wonderful gift-shop.

Mosaic half finished.  This is more difficult than it looks!  The tiles were already pre-cut into small squares but then we had to trim them into shape.  Not easy for a child with severe developmental coordination disorder!  Because of the risk of him losing fingers, the task of cutting and shaping the tiles fell to me.  This is still work-in-progress and will hopefully be completed over Christmas.

We also bought a (modern-day) Roman dice game ‘Quinquereme‘ – an ideal introduction into the complexities of calculating with Roman numerals.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our School Trip Friday to Hadrian’s Wall
and here is a photo of your guides,
taken when we were at Housesteads Roman Fort.
Venimus Vidimus Vicimus

All photos are © Essex Voices Past 2012 and
may not be reproduced without permission.

 

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past

Tonight (5th December) and tomorrow (6th December) are times of much celebration for the excited children (and parents!) of many countries within continental Europe. For Saint Nicholas is due to make his arrival and give presents to the children of Europe.  Parts of France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Poland all celebrate, in different ways, this saint – known as the protector of children.  However, in England, as a consequence of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the English Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, it is no-longer the modern-day English custom to celebrate Saint Nicholas.  But in the pre-Reformation medieval/early Tudor period, the feast of Saint Nicholas was celebrated in many towns and villages of England (including the North Essex town of Great Dunmow) as part of the Catholic festivities of Yuletide and Christmas.

The stories and legends of St Nicholas made their way into the exquisite and breath-taking illuminated manuscripts of the medieval England.  One such legend is the tale of three children who had wandered away from their homes and got lost.  A wicked butcher lured the children, by now cold and hungry, into his shop where he attacked and murdered them, then pickled them in a large tub.  Fortunately Saint Nicholas saved them and brought them back to life – thus forever taking his place in legends as the protector of children.

For your delight, below is a selection of images of Saint Nicholas, the saviour of pickled children and storm-lashed boats, from the British Library’s Illuminated Manuscripts collection.

Consecration of Nicholas as a bishop of Myra from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia), between 1310 and 1320), shelfmark Royal 2 B VII f.317, © British Library Board.

Nicholas stilling a storm and saving a boat from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia), between 1310 and 1320), shelfmark Royal 2 B VII f.318, © British Library Board.

Nicholas as a bishop addressing three children in a tub from The Queen Mary Psalter (England (London/Westminster or East Anglia), between 1310 and 1320), shelfmark Royal 2 B VII f.317v, © British Library Board.

Bishop saint Nicholas of Bari resurrecting three murdered children from a pickling vat, at the beginning of the reading for 6 December from The Stowe Breviary (Norwich, England, between 1322 and 1325), shelfmark Stowe 12 f.225, © British Library Board.

Of course, over the centuries the tale of Saint Nicholas has morphed from a saintly bishop in clerical vestments, into the Father Christmas/Santa Claus we know today. And, thanks to a well-known gigantic soft-drinks company, is now a little fat fella with white hair and full beard, resplendent in his red clothes trimmed with white fur.
Nicholas of Bari (or Myra) enthroned and dressed as a bishop, holding a crozier and three golden balls, his hand raised in benediction (Italy, N. (?Lombardy), 2nd half of the 15th century), shelfmark Additional 61734, © British Library Board.

Nicholas of Bari (Italy, N. (?Lombardy), 1st decade of the 16th century), shelfmark Additional 39636 f.49, © British Library Board.

Coca-Cola^® Santa December 1940. Artist Haddon Sundblom had first created this very familiar image of Santa in the 1930s.  Above is “Somebody Knew I Was Coming” and the basis for advertising material during Christmas 1940.  Looking at this image and the ones above, it occurred to me that six hundred years after the beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, Santa’s right hand is still raised in a form of benediction.

A future post, to be published over this Christmas, will retell the
story of Great Dunmow’s 1530s festivities of Saint Nicholas.

 

Note on the British Library’s copyright
Nearly a year ago, I first started to use on my blog digital images from the British Library’s catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.  As all the images were in copyright, I (quite rightly) had to request permission to use these images.  This permission the British Library very willingly and quickly granted me, as my blog is a non-profit hobby blog. However, just recently the British Library has marked all their images from their catalogue of illuminated manuscripts as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions.  This is fantastic news for both professional and amateur historians alike.  I have gained much pleasure from sharing my ‘finds’ from their catalogue with you.  The decision to remove their copyright will hopefully encourage more people to use some of the most exquisite images in existence, thereby giving us modern sophisticated(?) digital-age folk a fleeting glimpse into the medieval world.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Medieval Christmas Stories

I am looking for amateur historians to share their passion for history and contribute guest posts to my blog. I am open to anything as long as it sort-of-fits with the posts already on my blog. If you would like to submit something, here are some (very loose) ideas.  I have put links to my own posts alongside each idea to help you decide if you can contribute:-

• The local history of a village or town within Essex and its Medieval and/or Tudor past
  The pre-Reformation Catholic ritual year

• The Great War and its impact on a town/village/family within Essex
  Memorial Tablet – I died in Hell

• The impact of the Reformation on any town/village in England
  Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556

• Witchcraft in early modern England (any county)
  Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment

• Research techniques for being a historian
  Interpreting Primary Sources

• Tudor trades
  Medieval and early Tudor Trades

• An English custom celebrated today which originates from our medieval/Tudor past
  The Dunmow Flitch Trials 2012

 

Please email me at thenarrator[at]essexvoicespast.com with your ideas/posts.  The pay is lousy (none!) but the reward is sharing your historical knowledge with readers from all over the world.