The Victoria history of the county of Hertford

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The Wictoria thistory of the
Counties of England

EDITED BY WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.

A HISTORY OF
HERTFORDSHIRE

VOLUME IV

THE

VICTORIA HISTORY

OF THE COUNTIES
OF ENGLAND

HERTFORDSHIRE

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED

Mm

hea 24

This History is issued to Subscribers only by
Constable &@ Company Limited
and printed by W. H. Smith & Son
London

INSCRIBED
TO THE MEMORY OF
HER LATE MAJESTY

QUEEN VICTORIA

WHO GRACIOUSLY GAVE
THE TITLE TO AND
ACCEPTED THE
DEDICATION OF
THIS HISTORY

o,
ay ala. 2

THE

VICTORIA HISTORY
OF THE COUNTY OF

HERTFORD

EDITED BY
WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.

VOLUME FOUR

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED

1914

CONTENTS OF VOLUME FOUR

Dedication

Contents : ‘ . .
List of Illustrations .

List of Maps : z
Editorial Note 7 : .
Topography . : * .

Edwinstree Hundred—

Introduction . * ‘
Albury . . . .
Anstey . . é 5
Aspenden aéas Aspeden
with Wakeley
Barkway . :
Barley ‘ é
Buckland. F . .

Little Hadham.
Much Hadham
Great Hormead
Little Hormead
Layston .
Meesden

Brent Pelham . §

Furneux Pelham ‘

Stocking Pelham.
Throcking . r

Wyddial .

Celtic and Romano-British Hertford.

shire.

Topographical ade of Renate

British Remains .

Social and Economic History .

Table of Population 1801-1901

Industries—
Introduction . - ‘
Textiles. . ‘i f

‘ —

General descriptions and manorial descents compiled
under the superintendence of Witt1am Pacz, F.S.A.;
Architectural descriptions by A. Wuitrorp ANDER-
son, A.R.I.B.A. ; Héraldic drawings and blazon by
the Rev. E. E. ‘Downe. M.A., F.S.A. ; Charities

from information supplied by J. Ww. Owszey, 1.8.0.,
late Official Trustee of Charitable Funds

By Atice Raven. .

By Mavup F. Epwarps, Oxford aie School of
Modern History . ‘ . : :

By Hexen Dovctas-Irvinz, M. Ae

By Maup F. Epwarps

By Litian J. Repsrong, B.A.

9 ”? > ”

” 2? > ”? « . . .

By Mavup F. Epwarps and Atice fk

”? 9? ” 7” ” * * °

By Exzanor J. B. Rerp, B.A.

” ”? ” *

By Maun F. Epwarps

By Auice Raven ; ‘

By Hexen Douctas- fleet M.A... F : :
” 9 ” ”? . °: * ad
> ” ” ”

By Maup F. Epwarps

> ” ”?

By Witutam Pacg, F.S.A. :

By M. V. Taytor, M.A., Oxford Honours School of
Modern History

By A. F. H. Niemeyer, Oxford Honda Saige of
Modern History - :

By G. S. Mincuin . . F ‘ ‘i é

By C. H. Vetzacotrt, B.A. al i : : .
By L. F. Sarzmann, B.A, FSA, . z : :

ix

100
108
III

114

119

147

173
233

239
248

CONTENTS OF VOLUME FOUR

Industries (continued )—

The Straw Plait, Hat and Bonnet
Industry

Paper-making .
Printing : .
Pottery, Tiles and Bricks .
Plaster Work .
Bell Founding
Water-cress Growing
Forestry
Ecclesiastical History—
Before the Conquest .
After the Conquest
Religious Houses —
Introduction .
Abbey of St. Albans—
Before the Conquest
After the Conquest

Priory of Redbourn .
» 95 Hertford
» 5 Salburn in Standon
99: Sopwell
yy 9, Cheshunt .
» 99 St. Mary de Pré, St.
Albans .

yy a “St. Giles in the Wood,
Flamstead

»» 9, Rowney, Great Munden

» 9 Royston

+» Wymondley

» 95 New Bigging, Hitchin.
Preceptory of Standon

ey » Temple Dinsley

Priory of King’s Langley
Friars Minor of Ware
Carmelite Friars of Hitchin
Trinitarian Friars of Hertford .

College of Thele or Stanstead
St. Margaret’s ‘ ‘

Priory of Ware

Hospital of Sx. oe Begin
Anstey

Hospital of St. eka Bap,
Berkhampstead

Hospital of St. John the Bvaoge
list, Berkhampstead

Hospital of St. Erasmus and St.
Mary Magdalene, Cheshunt .

Hospital of St. une aaa ice
Clothall

By Erner M. Hewitt

By Lewis Evans, J.P., F.S.A.

By H. R. Promer

By L. F. Sarzmann, B.A., PSA.
By J. Murray Kenpatt, F.S.A.
By H. B. Watters, M.A., F.S.A.
By G. Esswortn Butten.

By the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.

By WirttaM Pace, F.S.A.
By Henrtetta L. E. Garnett .

By Munnig Revpay, Hist. Tripos

By Wittiam Pacg, F.S.A.

By Mixnie Reppan, Hist. ‘Tripos, with the assistance of
notes supplied by Nowext Sievers, B.A. .

By Minnie Reppan, Hist. Tripos

” ” ” ?

PAGE

CONTENTS OF VOLUME FOUR

Religious Houses (continued )—
Hospital of St. Laud and St.

Anthony, Hoddesdon .
Hospital of St. John and St.
James, Royston :

Hospital of St. Nicholas, Royston
y» 9»: St. Julian by St. Albans

By Minnie Revpan, Hist. Tripos

PAGE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Tile Paving in Meesden Church. By A. Wuirrorp Anperson, A.R.ILB.A. . . coloured frontispiece
Topography—

Albury : Half-timbered House adjoining the Churchyard
iy Church: Late 14th-century Monument }
es PA East End of the South Aisle . 5 ‘ : , é ‘

Anstey : Lychgate to Churchyard. : , . ¥ . Z : : .
5 Church from the South-east i

full-page plate, facing 6

full-page plate, facing 12

$ » The Nave looking East
3 » l2th-century Font . qi 7 : 3 F 45 55 + 14
s >» Plan . . , 5 . 5 a ‘ ‘ : F 5 15
3 » The Chancel ;
Aspenden Church : The Chancel} a aa So
a Hall: Garden Front. ‘ i ‘ . : : ; : . . 18
» Church: Plan . F ‘ : " : : ‘i é : : > 23
es is from the North-east. A ‘3 3 : ‘ : ‘ » | 24
Barkway : South End of Main Street . ‘ : : . . F : : . 26

35 Village from the South ’ Jull-page plate, facing 28

Old House in High Street
Church: The North Arcade. : ‘ : é $3 53 45 32
Manor House from the South-east

Barley : The Town House from the South-west }

si The Big House, Staircase Wing : b " . - 38

»» Church from the West

>, The Fox and Hounds Inn : , , ? ye
Buckland Church from the South-East

a 5 Plan. ; : : : . ‘ . ‘ ‘ ; . 46

3 » South-east Corner of Nave, showing Junctionof r4thand1sth-century Work 47
Little Hadham, Clintons, Bury Green 50

Fa a 3 9 »» Roof Spandrel in Bedroom
Hadham Hall, Principal Front
a a 2 » Plan. . . ‘ ‘ . . : «facing § 54
Church: Plan. é : : ‘ : ; . . - 56
17th-century House, now Cottages, at Hadham Ford
Church : The Chancel }
35 5 55 The Porch ‘ a é . :
oa sy 17th-century Cottage at the Foot of Ford Hill
Much Hadham Church: North Side of Chancel } :

' Jull-page plate, facing §2

Sull-page plate, facing 56

Sull-page plate, facing 58

»» The Lordship Stables. : F , : : i : j . 59
a a Yew Tree Farm ‘ : 3 ‘ 3 * 5 5 ‘ . 60
pa 55 Buckler’s Farm, Perry Green. 2 ‘ : i e . 65

The Palace from the puna . : 5 fap hate Falta Ga

Church : The North Arcade
Plan . : : : F i: ‘ i : < - 64
xiii

” »” >

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Topography (continued) —

Much Hadham Church: 1$th-century Chair. ; : : . : : . 66
Great Hormead: Cottage East of Vicarage. ‘ : : ; 3 ; . 68

si 5 16th-century House . 5 : 5 5 tull-page plate, facing 68

_ a Hare Street House 3 5 F 3 7 r F : 69

“a 3 Brick House: Plan : . f : : , 4 ‘ 70

55 5 ms 70

BA 35 Bury : Entrance Front ‘ : 2 a ‘ : 71

Church from the arene

” i » The South Arcade

Hormead Hall from the South-west . . : : , é - 93

Little Hormead Church from the eae jull-page plate, facing 74
» The Chancel Arch

Sull-page plate, facing 72

” ” 4 Plan : : : : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ - 76
9 ii » Blocked North oem: : : Suli-page plate, facing 76
Layston Church from the South-east . ; 5 é e : : - 78
»» Buntingford, Ward’s Hospital from the East . : . : ~ 99
” i The Court, originally the Grammar ae 5» Pipaee plat Pbag a
a = View in the High Street
» Alswick Hall: Plan. ; p c ’ ‘ ‘ 2 7 . . 81
es + » from the South-east ; ; : ; : ‘ : a) 83
» Church: Plan. : ‘ : i : ; . : - 85
4 3 The Chancel ee the ies ‘ 4 ‘ . 86
», St. Peter’s Chapel, Buntingford, from the sais west iter 1899) ; : . 87
» Church: The Font :
Meesden Church: The South ae a a
Brent Pelham: The Beeches, Plan . 7 , i : F : : A - 92
ae 3 PF 5 Ceiling of Parlour : A z ; i . - 93
35 oa The Stocks : a ‘ A H 2 - j ; ‘ © 94
Bs 5 Hall, West Front. : ‘ E ; : 5 » 95
Ss a The Beeches, South-west Front . : : . : ‘ . - 96
3 i Church : The South Door. $ ° ‘ : p ‘ : - 98
e3 Pe 5 Shonks’s Tomb . F ‘ ‘ ‘ 5 - - 99
Furncux Pelham Hall: Plan. - : F : 5 ‘ - . . 100
- 3 A from the South-west ;
s 35 Church: 13th-century Piscina and Sedilia j ee sa ll Sa
as 3 The Nave Roof
‘ j _ 49 5 104
‘ss Ss a Fragment of Oak Screen
3 5 ‘5 from the South-west . i F : 3 7 ‘ + 105
ss 3 Roof of the South Chapel . 3 3 ‘3 ‘ ‘ - 106
Stocking Pelham Church from the South-east. 7 ‘ - 5 . s - 109
ey 3 5 Plan . ‘ : . : : F . é - - 110
Throcking Church : Plan 3 ‘ ‘ P ‘ 2 ; P < ‘ « K13
ve 3 from the South-east ;
Wyddial Church from the North-east j UM a a

‘3 »» The Chancel Arch and North Arcade)

Fa » The North Aisle looking East y , ° e a a3 116
Celtic and Romano-British Hertfordshire :
Verulamium : Top of Late Celtic Sword . : : 5 . . 2 ; . 11g

xiv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Celtic and Romano-British Hertfordshire (continued )—
Verulamium : Late Celtic Bronze Helmet
Northchurch : Late Celtic Bronze Helmet found at Northcott Hill
Verulamium and Welwyn, Romano-British mee in the Herts

t Sull-page plate, facing 122

County Museum . a ; 3 ; 3 a iS 126
Romano-British and Gaulish Patiewys in the Hetty County Museum 5 > 5 128
Circular Base of a Column: Plan. é 7 ‘ : ; : , 3 - 131
Verulamium : Plan of Supposed Forum. . z . facing 132

St. Albans: Glass Jug from Worley Road, in the Beas co ty Mien

‘ull-page plate, facing 1
Romano-British Red Ware, in the Herts County Museum "ep i a a

Verulamium : Plan of Theatre : : i ‘ ‘ ‘ . facing 136
Roman Brick Grave found in Verulam Hill Field : ‘ : . 5 ; 2 437
Verulamium: Romano-British Pots, forming an Interment at

St. Michael’s, in the Herts County Museum . ‘ 3 . full-page plate, facing 138
Welwyn : Pair of Silver Vases and Three Bronze Masks : ‘ a - 55 140
Braughing : Map showing Roman Remains : ; j ‘ : ; . - 4!
Romano-British Black Ware in the Herts County Museum . . full-page plate, facing 142

Barkway : Bronze Figure of Mars and Silver Plates with Inscriptions,

in the British Museum . ra 5 55 148

Braughing : Bronze Brooch

re » Enamelled Cup 4 3 ” 150
Verulamium : Bronze and Iron Objects in the Herts County Museum

Hemel Hempstead: Tessellated Pavement at Boxmoor Villa . $5 i 4s 152
#3 95 Plan of Boxmoor Villa é : 5 ; < Fe ¢ - 154

* a Roman Antiquities found ina Villa at Boxmoor,
Plate xiii ; , : : : . full-page plate, facing 154

3 5 Roman Antiquities found in a Villa at Boxmoor,
Plate xiv z . 5 55 5 156
Radlett : Pottery from Romano-British Kilns. : : : : : a . 158
Me Plan and Section of Roman Potter’s Kiln : - z . ‘ . . 160
5 Mortarium from Kiln } Hilgers shi, ope Abe

5 Fragments of Mortaria showing Method of Packing in Kilns
oa Plan and Section of a Potter’s Kiln , F ‘ - ‘ ‘ ‘ . 161
3 Roman Potter’s Kiln . ‘ : ; ‘ F i : 5 . 162
3 Potter’s Stamps of Castus found in a Kiln : ‘ ‘ ‘ 5 ; . 162
% y» Marks foundina Kiln . . : : . ; : - 162
Sarratt: Plan of Roman Building. : : 3 : : : é ' . 163
Welwyn : Models of Fire-dogs and Iron Frame . , d . full-page plate, facing 164
3 Late Celtic Bronze Patella . : ‘ : . : : 3 . 166
PA 999, _+~Cinerary Urns and Tazza . ‘ ‘ . full-page plate, facing 166
‘5 - » Antiquities . ; : 2 . 4 : : ‘ . 167
4 oe » Pottery . : ; : : : . full-page plate, facing 168
_ Great Wymondley : Plan of Roman Holding. : ; : ; , . 170
3 és » oo 9, Willa near Purwell Mil . . full-page plate, facing 170

Industries—

Watermark of John Tate . z ‘ . : . : . : . : | 256

Stamp of Robert Oldfield. : ' ; ‘ ‘ ; ¢ é : ‘ . 270
Religious Houses—

Hertfordshire Monastic Seats: Plate I ‘ - : . . full-page plate, facing 416

3 oe » Plate II 3 F " . 35 Pe * 434

xv

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE
: . I
facing 119
. . . oo» 365

Index Map to the Hundred of Edwinstree : : ; A j .

Roman Map .
Ecclesiastical Map .

xvi

EDITORIAL NOTE

Tue Editor desires to acknowledge his obligations to the following, who
by reading the proofs of this volume have added much to the accuracy
of the work :—The Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Romer, G.C.B., Mr. Edward
E. Barclay, M.A., J.P., the Rev. C. V. Bicknell, the Rev. F. R.
Broughton, M.A., the Rev. Henry F. Burnaby, M.A., the Rev. J. M.
Bury, B.A., Mr. F. A. Crallan, Messrs. Crossman, Prichard & Co.,
the Rev. J. L. Dutton, M.A., the Rev. F. H. Francis, M.A., Mrs.
Gregory, the Rev. H. B. Grindle, Prof. F. Haverfield, LL.D., F.S.A.,
the Rev. A. Howard, M.A., Mr. W. Minet, M.A., F.S.A., J.P.,
Mr. J. Horace Round, M.A., LL.D., the Rev. C. H. Spurrell, M.A.,
the Rev. W. T. Stubbs, M.A., the Rev. J. L. P. Thomas, M.A., the
Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson, M.A., F.S.A., the Rev. F. R. Williams, M.A.,
and Mr. Horace Wilmer, M.I.C.E., F.S.A.

For illustrations and plans, with permission to reproduce them, the
Editor is indebted to :—the Society of Antiquaries, the Hertfordshire
Natural History Society, Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Mr. William
Ransom, F.L.S., F.S.A., the St. Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural
and Archzological Society, Mr. Hugh Seebohm, and Mr. G. A. Wright
(Curator of the Corporation Museum, Colchester).

The manorial descents of the Hundred of Edwinstree have been
compiled under the supervision of Miss Alice Raven, and the drawings
for the line blocks have been made by Miss Jenny Wylie, Mr. Whitford
Anderson, A.R.I.B.A., Mr. Laurence Davies and others.

xvii

A HISTORY OF
HERTFORDSHIRE

TOPOGRAPHY
THE HUNDRED OF EDWINSTREE

CONTAINING THE PARISHES OF

ALBURY LITTLE HADHAM BRENT PELHAM
ANSTEY MUCH HADHAM FURNEUX PELHAM
ASPENDEN with WAKELEY GREAT HORMEAD STOCKING PELHAM
BARKWAY LITTLE HORMEAD THROCKING
BARLEY LAYSTON WYDDIAL}
BUCKLAND MEESDEN

The hundred of Edwinstree occupies the north-eastern corner of

Hertfordshire and borders on the county of Essex.

eastern side, where the two counties
adjoin, seem to have been still in part
thickly covered with woodland in the
11th century.” Probably the early
settlements here were sparse, and this
would account for the subdivision of
areas suggested by the names Brent
Pelham, Furneux Pelham, and Stock-
ing Pelham and Much and Little
Hadham. In the 13th century there
was still a large amount of woodland
in these parishes.

The total assessment of the hun-
dred in 1086 seems to have been for
120 hides. The exact amount, how-
ever, is difficult to estimate, owing to
the doubt that arises about the in-
clusion of several places within it.’
Widford, which is entered under
Edwinstree in 1086 but is now a
parish in Braughing Hundred, lies on
the border of Edwinstree Hundred,
and there is no reason why it should
not have been included in it in 1086.
Cockhamstead also, an estate in the
parish of Braughing, adjoins the parish
of Albury in this hundred and may

The parishes on the

N

Y
a

Mp. ee Cees

La

. anstey <M

& oe ean aoe ae BRENT _
Z ING (e070 9! GREAT 2

pects” “Tayston: HORMEADAL.. oa.
5 pote aol —
- ASPENDEN wHORMEAD:: od Se “PEL

SFURNEUX*
PELHAM

ALBURY

-

Inpex Map to tHE Hunprep or EpwinsTREE

have been originally reckoned within it. An estate in Hoddesdon, however,
which is given under Edwinstree in 1086, can scarcely be entered correctly
under that hundred, as it is separated from it by the hundred of Braughing,
and the other holdings there are given under Hertford Hundred. On the
other hand an estate of 5 hides in Anstey is entered under Odsey Hundred,
but, as Anstey does not adjoin Odsey Hundred and another holding there is

1 Pop. Ret. (1831), i, 246.

2 In the small parish of Meesden the return of woodland was for 400 swine in 1086 (V.C.H. Herts.

i, 3074).

3 The total amount at which Barkway was assessed is also a little uncertain (V.C.H. Herts. i, 329, n. 1).

4

T

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

returned under Edwinstree, it is probable that this is due to the omission of a
heading. With these exceptions the area has remained unchanged since 1086.

Within the hundred there has been to some extent a change of com-
position. Layston is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey, but is evidently
represented by Alfladewyk. In the Subsidy Rolls of the 13th and 14th
centuries it is noticeable that Layston and Alfladewyk do not occur on the
same Roll,* and ‘ the parish of Lestanchurch called Alfladewyk’ was assessed
fora ninth in 1340. Itseems probable, therefore, that after ‘le stan church
was built and Alfladewyk became an ecclesiastical parish, Lestancherch
or Layston gradually superseded Alfladewyk as the parochial name. In the
12th century the church of Alswick acknowledged itself a chapel to this
church and Alswick was thenceforward included within the ecclesiastical
parish of Layston, but as a civil parish it remained separate for purposes of
taxation as late as the 16th century. Wakeley is another ancient parish
which has failed to maintain its entity. In 1307 three persons were
assessed there for a lay subsidy’; at the levy of the ecclesiastical subsidy in
1428 a return of ‘no inhabitants’ was made.’ It was taxed separately as
late as the 17th century, although only one resident was assessed for the
hearth tax.? Berkesden was an ancient ecclesiastical parish, but apparently
had no separate civil existence. In the 13th century Bordesden and Patmore
(both of which are mentioned in the Domesday Survey) appear as townships
with judicial responsibilities,” and in 1307 a subsidy was charged on ‘ Little
Hormead and Bordesden.’" There is no evidence, however, that either of
these ever formed a separate parish. There are none of the small boroughs
in this hundred which are common in Braughing, but by the beginning of
the 14th century the road settlements of Barkway on the Cambridge road
and Much Hadham on the route from Essex into the south of Hertfordshire
are found considerably in advance of the other parishes in size of popula-
tion.” Next to these in 1307 come Albury, Anstey and Barley, whilst
Buckland on Ermine Street stands considerably lower. In 1545 Barkway
was by far the richest township in the hundred.”

The subdivision of holdings in this hundred before the Conquest is
very noticeable. With the exception of the estates of the Bishop of
London and the church of Ely at Hadham and of the abbey of Chatteris at
Barley, nearly every parish seems to have been divided into small holdings
held by the men or sokemen of the king, Earl Harold, Earl Algar,
Archbishop Stigand, Asgar the Staller, Anschil of Ware, Godwin of
Benefel, Almar of Belintone and others.’ After the Conquest these

* cf. Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 5 (24 Edw. I), where Lestancherch is given, but not Alfladewyk ;
bdle. 120, no. 7 (34 Edw. I), where Alfladewyk is assessed; and bdle. 120, no. 8 (1 Edw. II) where
Alfladewyk is given again, Layston not being mentioned in the two latter rolls. See also Assize R. 318 (32
Hen. III), where there is an entry concerning the drowning of a certain Elena near ‘ Lestoneschurch.’
Her brother, the first finder, did not appear, and was attached by Hugh the Clerk of Alfladewyk.

® Ing. Nonarum (Rec. Com.), 432 ; see Assize R. 325 (15 Edw. I), m. 7, where the parish of Alfladewyk

is mentioned.

® Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 120 (16 Hen. VIII). T Ibid. no. 8.
8 Feud. Aids, ii, 457. ® Lay Subs. R. bdle. 248, no. 29.

10 Assize R. 323. 1 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 8 (1 Edw. II)

2 Ibid. no. 7, 8. 18 See Subsidy Roll printed in Herts. Gen. and Antig. i, 163.

In connexion with these holdings of sokemen the occurrence in three cases of the suffix ‘wick’
preceded by a personal name is interesting. Lewarewick had been held T. R. E. by Leware, Alswick is
evidently a contraction of Alsiswick, and Alfladewyk probably took its name from an Ethelflaeda.

2

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

fractional holdings had to a great extent been amalgamated into larger
estates, but even in 1086 the holdings are comparatively small and
numerous, one ‘manor’ at Wakeley consisting of 40 acres, another estate
at Throcking of 12 acres, whilst a hide at ‘ Haslehangra’ was divided into
two thirds and a third.

In the 13th century the hundred court still met on a plot of ground
called ‘Edwynestre, which was held by the sheriff and was worth rd. per
annum. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence as to where this plot
was situated. At the same date, however, there is mention of ‘ the wood of
Edwynesbrugg, and as the vills of Furneux Pelham and Brent Pelham were
presented for not making suit in connexion with a murder in this wood," it
seems probable that Edwinsbridge was in their neighbourhood and perhaps
also Edwin’s Tree.

The hundred of Edwinstree was farmed by the sheriff with that of
Odsey.”” It remained vested in the Crown until 1613, when it was granted
with the hundred of Odsey to William Whitmore and others" in trust for
Sir Julius Adelmare a/as Caesar. It then followed the descent of Odsey.”
The chief private franchise within the hundred was that of the Bishop of
London, who owned either in demesne or in overlordship a great part of the
land within its area. With Much Hadham, a pre-Conquest possession of the
bishopric, where perhaps already at that date the bishops had a residence, as a
nucleus, these lands were acquired by the bishopric before 1086, and with a
few other places in Braughing Hundred formed a barony of which Bishop’s
Stortford in that hundred was the head. By virtue of the extensive liberties
enjoyed by the bishopric throughout its lands, the see at one time claimed a
right to halfthe hundred of Edwinstree.” This, however, it did not attempt
to make good before the justices of Edward I, but claimed quittance of suit
of hundred court for its men and their tenants and assize of bread and ale
and gallows at Hadham.* In 1275 it was presented that the bishop’s
bailiffs would not allow the king’s ministers to enter the bishop’s liberty in
the ‘vale of Hadham’ to distrain for the king’s debts.” At the same date
the Bishop of Ely claimed return of writs, gallows and tumbrel in Little
Hadham.* Gallows and assize of bread and ale were claimed by the
Bishop of Bath and Wells at Newsells and Barkway, by the Abbot of
Colchester at Barley, by the Earl of Gloucester at Popeshall, by Denise de
Monchensey at Anstey, and by Lora de Sanford at Hormead.* The jurors
for the hundred also deposed ‘withdrawals’ made by the Abbots of
Colchester and Chatteris, whose tenants had formerly come by two men to
the sheriff’s tourn twice a year, and by the lord of Popeshall, who had
withdrawn his suit from two ‘general county courts’ and had kept back
5s. for sheriff’s aid and 2s. for fines of default (sursisa). A similar pre-
sentment was made for Andrew le Guys, who held of Geoffrey de Scales.*

15 Assize R. 313 (6 & 7 Edw. I), m. 46. 16 Ibid. m. 44.

17 Thid. 323, m. 46; Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), 193. 18 Pat. ro Jas. I, pt. xxi, no. 7.

19 See Recov. R. East. 15 Chas. II, rot. 135 ; 39 Geo. III, rot. 33.

20 Pluc. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 290; Assize R. 325, m. 7.

1 Plac, de Quo Warr, (Rec. Com.), 290 ; Assize R. 323, m. 46. The bishop’s view of frankpledge was
held at Patmore (Surv. of Albury, MSS. at St. Paul’s, WD. 16, Liber I).

22 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), 193. 23 Ibid. 24 Assize R. 323, m. 46.

26 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), 193.

3

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

ALBURY

Eldeberie (xi cent.) ; Audeburia (xiii cent.) ;
Aldeburi, Aldebery (xiv cent.).

The parish of Albury contains 3,248 acres, of
which over 2,000 are arable and about one-quarter
permanent grass! The district is fairly well wooded,
the more important woods being Patmore Hall Wood
in the north of the parish, Bog’s Wood, Shaw Wood,
Upwick Wood and Salmon Mead Spring in the
east, Albury End Wood and Burrell’s Spring in the
south, Ferrick’s Wood in the west, and Ninno Wood
which lies along the Ash in the centre of the parish.
This part of the river appears to have been known as
Ninno Water in the 17th century.2 The Ash flows
through the middle of the parish, and the land rises
from 251 ft. above the ordnance datum in the valley
to about 374 ft. in the east and to over 400 ft. in
the west. An inclosure award for Albury was
made in 1869 under an Act of 1864.7

Among the place-names in the parish were Chisley
Field Common, Ann’s Common, Mill Field Com-
mon, Patmore Field, Clapgate Common, Parsonage
Field, Great Bushey Ley, Molly’s Chip.4 In the
south of the parish are two greens, Upwick Green and
Walnut Tree Green.

The parish is bordered on the east by the boundary
between Essex and Hertfordshire, and on the south
by the Stane Street.

The village lies nearly a mile to the north of Stane
Street, the church of St. Mary standing on high
ground on its north side. The manor-house of
Albury Hall stands in a park of 200 acres about half
a mile to the north-west. It was built by John
Calvert at the end of the 18th century about So yards
north of the site of the original hall which he had
pulled down. The west wing was added by Richard
Dawson in 1848.5 The house has been restored and
enlarged by its present owner, Mr. M. G. Carr Glyn.

The present vicarage is a modern house built about
1847,° on the south side of the village street. The
Parsonage Farm lies further west on the north side
of the road. Adjoining the churchyard is a 16th
or possibly 15th-century half-timbered house, much
altered in the last three centuries. It is a two-
storied rectangular building with a thatched roof
and is now divided into two cottages. ‘There is
some ancient brick-nogging in the east front and in
the west gable is a 17th-century moulding in low
relief; in the south front is some plaster work
moulded in panels of about 1700.

Albury Lodge, which stands about three-quarters
of a mile to the south-east of the church, was held
in the 17th century by the Brograves,’ and was fos-
sibly built by them about 1597, when they acquired
half the manor. It was built of timber, and during
the rgth century was cased in brick. The plan
of the house is E-shaped, with the main block facing
east. On the west is a projecting staircase wing.
Some of the rooms contain the original panelling
reset, and there is a pilaster with arabesque panels on

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

4 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree

the first oor. A small garden on the east is inclosed
by a 17th-century wall with a moulded brick plinth.

In the middle of the last century the village was
in a deplorable state. There was no resident clergy-
man, and the curate who rode over to take the
services was accustomed, if he found only a few people
assembled, to bribe them to go away. After the
purchase of the Patmore Hall estate by Mr. Hugh
Parnell in 1848 the condition of affairs was altered.
The old vicarage to the west of the church, which
was uninhabitable, was pulled down, and in 1849 a
school was built by public subscription on its site.

Albury contains several small hamlets. Clapgate,
where there is a smithy, lies at the junction of the
village street with the Pelham road. In 1646-7
John Scroggs, lord of the manor of Patmore, com-
plained that John Ginne of Albury had inclosed
part of the common ‘ fayring way’ between Clap-
gate and Albury Church near a water-course, so that
the inhabitants were obliged to plunge into a pit
whenever it rained if they wished to pass that way
either to church or elsewhere.6 Gravesend is a
hamlet on the Pelham road a little north of Clap-
gate. Albury End lies on a road leading south from
the village to Stane Street. Upwick is in the south-
east of the parish on the road to Farnham.

At Patmore Heath is a village built round the
heath, on the east of which is a windmill. In 1683
several people were fined for attending an unlawful
conventicle at Patmore Heath. ‘The preacher was
Thomas Burn, whose malt was seized by the con-
stables, probably in default of the payment of a fine.®
There is now an unsectarian mission chapel here.
Patmore Hall is now a farm. ‘The present house
was built in 1862. A part of the Elizabethan
panelling from the old house, then pulled down,
was found in a fowl-house in 1912 and removed to
Carldane Court, Much Hadham, where it has been
incorporated in a mantelpiece. ‘Traces of a home-
stead moat which remain in the garden suggest that
the hall was once surrounded by a double moat.
There seem to be remains of earthworks also to the
south and south-east of the house.!°

Upwick Hall lies a little over a mile to the south-
east of the church. Most of the house is modern, but
one of the doorways has an oak frame of Tudor date,
and two of the ground floor rooms have 17th-century
panelling. A stone on the east front of the house is
marked with the date 1646 and the initials T. S.,
which probably refer to one of ‘the Staceys. The
gardener’s cottage at Upwick Hall dates from the
end of the 15th century and is part of an L-shaped
building. It has an overhanging upper story. The
walls are of plaster, timber-framed, and the lower
story is weather-boarded. The red brick chimney
stack has square shafts set diagonally and is a 17th-
century addition. There are two large fireplace
openings placed back to back and spanned wih
wooden lintels. The doorway on the north side,

8 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 89.

* Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 228. Hund. 159. 5 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 334, 343.
3 Private Act, 26 & 27 Vict. cap. 6 East Herts, Arch. Soc. Trans. ii, 229. 10 Ease Herts. Arch, Soc. Trans. ii
39. 7 See Chan.Ing. p.m. (Ser.2),ceccxci,18. 238. ;

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

now blocked, has a flat four-centred arch, and there
is a similar arch in the partition inside. Two other
doorways have flat Tudor arches of oak, similar to
the one at the hall.

In the reign of Edward the Confessor
the manor of ALBURY was held of
Archbishop Stigand by Siward." After
the Conquest it was acquired by the Bishop of
London ™ and became part of
the barony of Stortford be-
longing to the Bishops of
London, of whom it was held
by knight service.!8 At the
end of the 13th century the
bishop claimed that his tenants
in Albury and his other vills
in the hundred of Edwinstree
should be quit of suit of hun-
dred court as they had always
been accustomed.!4 The last
record of any rights of over-
lordship found is in 1522.}5

In 1086 a certain Ralf was
tenant in fee of Albury Manor.!® It afterwards
passed to the Baards. In 1166 William Baard held
two knights’ fees of the Bishop of London,!” which
probably represent the manor of Albury, for at the
beginning of the 13th century Simon Baard held
two knights’ fees which are located in Albury.!8
In 1294 Albury was held by Robert Baard,!° who in
1316 settled the reversion of the manor on Geoffrey
de la Lee and Denise his wife for their lives, with
successive remainders to their sons Thomas, John and
Robert.2° The manor had descended to Geoffrey and
Denise before March 1319-20, when Geoffrey de la
Lee received a grant of free warren.21_ There is no
evidence that Thomas de la Lee ever held Albury,
but by 1336 the manor had descended to John de
la Lee, to whom Peter, vicar of Albury, and John de
Vataille released the right of common in the park
of Albury which his father Geoffrey de la Lee had
granted them.”? John de la Lee received a grant of
free warren in Albury and Braughing in 1366 with
licence to inclose and impark 300 acres of land there.”
He died seised of the manor in 1370, at which date
there was a windmill on the manor worth 10,.74
His son and successor Walter 25 had one son Thomas,
who died without issue before his father. On Walter’s
death in 1395 his heirs were his three sisters, Mar-
gery, who married Robert Newport, Joan the wife
of John Barley, and Alice the wife of Sir Thomas
Morewell.?6

In 1396 Sir Thomas Morewell and Alice his wife

MANORS

Bisnopric or London.
Gules two swords of St.
Paul crossed saltirewise.

" V.C.H. Herts. i, 3066.

1? Tid.

13 See Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
5413 Feud. Aids, ii, 431 3 Chan. Inq.
p-m. 44 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 373
15 Edw. IV, no. 37; (Ser. 2), xxxvili, 24.

M4 Plac. de Quo Warr, (Rec. Com.),
290.

15 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxxviii, 24.

16 V.C.H. Herts. i, 306.

Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), i, 186.

18 Thid. ii, 541.

19 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 8; see
Feud, Aids, ii, 431.

2 Feet of F. Herts. 9 Edw. II, no,
231s

21 Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26, p. 4176

20, 21.
nos.), NO. 37.

ii, m. 13, 12,

“was divided among his four sisters.4? In

22 Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of Herts. 147
quoting charter penes Sir T. Brograve).
*3 Chart. R. 39 & 40 Edw. III, m. 7,

24 Chan. Ing. p.m. 44 Edw. III (1st
% Ibid. ; see Close, 50 Edw. III, pt.

26 See Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of Herts.
1473 Berry, Herts. Gen. 74 Morant,
Hist. and Antiq. of Essex, i, 393.

27 Chauncy, loc. cit.

28 Ibid. 151 (from brass in church).

29 See Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

30 Chan. Inq. p.m. 24 Hen. VI, no. 29.

31 Ibid. 15 Edw. IV, no. 37.

32 Parl, R. vi, 5044.

ALBURY

conveyed their share to the vicar of Albury and
others, evidently in trust for John Barley and Joan

Deva Lez. Argent
@ cross azure with five
leopards’ heads or thereon.

Barizy. Barry wavy
sable and ermine.

his wife, who held a court of the manor the same
year.2” Joan died in 1419 and her husband in
1420,°8 and Albury passed to their son John Barley.”
He died seised of the manor in February 1445-6,
when it descended to his son Henry Barley,*° who
held it until his death in January 1475-6.51 His
son William Barley, who succeeded him, was con-
cerned in Perkin Warbeck’s conspiracy and forfeited
his lands for high treason in 1495.32. The bill of
attainder was reversed in 1498 and the lands restored
in 1503,°3 and Barley died seised of Albury in
March 1521-2.5# It descended to his son and heir
Henry Barley,** and on his death in 1529 to his
son William Barley,?° who died before 1563,37 when
the manor was held by his daughter Dorothy and
her husband Thomas Leventhorpe.?® Dorothy died
in 1574.9 and her husband in 1588.49 ‘Their only
son Thomas died without issue in 1594 4! and Albury
i)
Richard Frank, husband of Anne, one of the oe
became possessed of half the
manor by acquiring the share
of Francis Hubberd and Eliza-
beth, another of the heirs,*
and in 1597 John Brograve,
father of Simeon Brograve,
husband of Dorothy the third
heir, bought the quarter of
the manor which was held by
John Longmer and Helen his
wife, the fourth heir.“4 On
John’s death in 1613 this
quarter descended to Simeon,*
who thus with his wife Dorothy
became possessed of the other half of the manor.
The manor remained in these two families during
the 17th century.

BroGRave.
three leopards gules.

Argent

33 Ibid. 5542.

34 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxxviii, 24.

35 Ibid. 38 Ibid, li, §.

37 He levied a fine of the manor in
1558 (Feet of F. Herts. East. 4 & 5 Phil.
and Mary).

38 Ibid. East. 5 Eliz.; see Visit, of
Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 150.

39M. I.

40 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccxix, 133.

41 His will is dated 1594. See New-
court, Repertorium, i, 791.

42 Visit. of Herts. loc. cit.

43 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 36 & 37
Eliz.

44 Ibid. Mich. 39 & 40 Eliz.

4 Chan, Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxxxy, 8.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

In 1617 Simeon Brograve was granted free fishery
and free warren in Albury.4© He died in January
1638-9, and his half of the manor, with a messuage
called Albury Lodge, descended to his son John,‘
whose son Thomas Brograve was created a baronet
in March 1662-3.4% He died in 1670 and was
succeeded by his son John.49 The other half of
the manor, on the death of Richard Frank in 1627,
descended to his son Leventhorpe Frank,°? who had
five daughters, Susan, Anne, Mary, Frances and
Dorothy.*! In 1640 he with his daughters Anne
and Frances levied a fine of two fifths of one half
of the manor of Albury, probably on the marriage
of his daughter Anne with Robert son of Richard
Hale of Tewin,? for Richard Hale appears as a
party to the settlement.°? In 1646 Robert Hale
and Anne his wife, Thomas Pix and Dorothy his
wife and Frances Frank held a court of the manor
with John Brograve.*4 Robert and Anne after-
wards became possessed of half of the manor by the
purchase of the shares of Thomas and Dorothy Pix
and of Frances Frank,°* and in 1661 they sold
it, with the mansion-house called Albury Hall, to
Sir Edward Atkins, baron of the Exchequer.§® Sir
Edward Atkins was one of the most celebrated judges
during the Commonwealth. In 1640 he had been
appointed baron of the Exchequer by the king, but
as the order did not take effect he was created anew
by the Commons in 1645. He continued to hold
his office after the Restoration, and was one of the
judges who presided over the trial of the regicides, but
he took no active part in the proceedings.5”7 After the
purchase of Albury Baron Atkins resided at Albury
Hall,5° and died there in 1669.°9 His half of the
manor descended to his son Edward, who sold it five
years later to Thomas Bowyer, from whom it passed
to Felix Calvert of Furneux Pelham. In 1688
Felix Calvert sold the manorial rights pertaining to
this half to Sir John Brograve, bart.,®! who held the
other half, and the two halves of the manor thus
became united. On the death of Sir John Brograve
in 1691 Albury passed to his brother Sir Thomas
Brograve,®? who suffered a recovery of the manor
in order to bar the entail.“! He died without issue
in 1707, when his heirs were his sisters Jemima
Brograve and Honora wife of John Stevenson.
Jemima died before 1712, when many of her
brother’s estates were sold to one of his creditors,
Ralph Freeman, and in 1713 Honora, with her
husband John Stevenson, Ralph Freeman, jun., and
Robert Elwes, quitclaimed all right in the manor of
Albury to John Ward.®

The manorial rights were afterwards acquired by
Felix Calvert, nephew of Felix Calvert who had

formerly held half of the manor, but this purchase
did not include the lands of the Brograves’ half.®
Felix Calvert died in 1736, and was succeeded
by a son of the same name,
who held the manor ® until
his death in 1755,’° when it
descended to his son John
Calvert,’! who was member
of Parliament for Wendover
in 1754 and afterwards sat
several times for Hertford.’?
On his death in 1808 Albury
passed to his son John Calvert,
who was member successively
for the boroughs of Malmes-
bury, Tamworth, St. Albans
and Huntingdon, and also
secretary to the lord chamber-
lain.73 He died in 1844 and the manor was sold by
his trustees in 1847 to Richard Dawson of Withcall,
co. Lincoln, who died in 1868, when Albury de-
scended to his daughter and heir Fanny, who married
the Rev. E. J. Rogers. The manor was purchased
in 1873 by John Stock Clark, a large copyholder
in it, who wished to enfranchise his holdings. He
died in 1884, when the manor passed to his four
children, three of whom conveyed their shares to
their brother Christopher James Clark in 1898. In
1899 he sold the manor to Mr. H. A. Hare of
Much Hadhan, the present lord.”

In the reign of Edward the Confessor the manor
of PATMORE or PATMORE HALL (Patemere,
xi cent. ; Podmore, Patermere, xiii cent. ; Patesmere,
Padymere, xiv cent. ; Pattemerhall, xv cent. ; Patmer
Hall, xvii cent.) was part of the lands of Earl Algar
and was held of him by Alward. After the Conquest,
like Albury, it became a member of the barony of
Stortford,’® and was held of the Bishops of London 76
by a yearly payment of 6s. 1d. for sheriff’s aid and
castle guard and by suit rendered at the bishop’s
court at Stortford.”7 The yearly rent of 55. for castle
guard seems to be still paid to the lord of the castle
manor.’8

Baldwin was tenant in fee of the manor of Patmore
in 1086,’ and it was afterwards held by a family
which derived their name from the manor. In 1166
William de Patmore was holding one knight’s fee and
a third of a fee of the Bishop of London,® and at the
beginning of the 13th century these fees, which
evidently represent the manor of Patmore, had
descended to Walter de Patmore,®! who gave land in
Upwick and part of a feeding in Upwicksbroom to
the nuns of Holywell (St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch) 8?
The manor was afterwards held by John de Patmore,*?

ha
aN

\

Carvert. Paly or
and sable a bend counter-
coloured.

4° Pat. 15 Jas. I, pt. xv.

“Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccexci, 18.

“8 G.E.C. Complete Baronetage, iii, 272.

Ibid.

50 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ececxlii,
3L 51 Chauncy, loc. cit.

82 Thid.

33 Feet cf F. Div. Co. Mich. 16
Chas. I.

+ Chauncy, loc. cit.

55 Ibid.

58 Close, 13 Chas. II, pt. xxiii, no. 14.
57 Dict, Nar. Bizg.

53 See Cal. S. P. Dim. 1663-4, p. 239
39 Disk Nav, Biog.

© Chauncy, loc. cit.

6 Ibid. Saimon says that this half

descended from Felix Calvert to his son
William, who sold it to his cousin Felix
Calvert (Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 283), but
this can only refer to the lands and not to
the manorial rights which he says the
Brograves purchased of Felix Calvert of
Furneux Pelham.

© G.E.C. loc. cit.

® Close, 3 Will. and Mary, pt. ix, no. 22.

4 G.E.C. loc. cit.

§§ See manor of Hamells in Braughing.

6 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 12 Anne.

& Salmon, loc. cit.

85 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 65.

© See Feet of F. Herts. East. 24 Geo. II ;
Recov. R. East. 24 Geo. II, rot. 53.

0 VCH. Herts, Families, 65.

6

71 See Recov. R. Trin. 30 & 31 Geo, Il,
rot. 198 ; East. 44 Geo. III, rot. 23.

7 VCH, Herts. Families, 67.

73 Ibid.

™ Cussans, Hist, of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 158; information from Mr. W.
Minet.

VCH. Herts. i, 3066.

76 See Chan. Ing. p.m. 24 Hen. VI,
no. 29; (Ser. 2), lx, 147.

7 Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-19 Edw. 7.371

78 Bast Herts, Arch. Soc. Trans. iiy 238.

79 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3064,

© Red Bk, of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), i, 186.

®1 Ibid. ii, 541, 542.

89 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-67, p, 201,

8 See De Banco R. 15, m. 64.

Avsury + Hatr-TimBerED HovusE aDJOINING THE CHURCHYARD

Atpury Cuurcu: Late 14TH-century Monument

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

who died before 1276, when his widow Joan was hold-
ing a third of the manor in dower.®! John de
Patmore had married the daughter of William Baud
of Hadham, and had enfeoffed William of the other
two parts of the manor, but after William’s death
an action to recover them was brought against his
widow Philippa by William Monchensey (who is
said to have had a life grant of the manor from
John de Patmore) ** on the plea that the grant to
William Baud had not been in fee.8& William
Monchensey forfeited before 1291, when the custody
of Patmore was granted to Stephen Fitz Walter,87
and on his death it was granted to Robert Fitz Walter
in 1295.88 Philip de Patmore recovered seisin of
the manor against William Monchensey in 1297,°°
and was holding the manor in 1303.%° He died
before 1313 when his son John and Sarah his wife
were holding the manor.®! In 1321-2 the tenants
of Patmore petitioned Parliament against Sir John de
Patmore, whom they accused of imprisoning them at
will and extorting sums of money for their redemp-
tion.°? There is no evidence of their obtaining
redress ; but as Sir John was an adherent of the Earl
of Lancaster he was obliged soon after to flee the
kingdom, and in 1324 the manor was granted by the
king to Simon de Mountbreton.%? In 1327 it was
restored to Sarah wife of John de Patmore at her
‘suggestion’ that her husband’s lands had been seized
owing to the enmity between himself and Hugh le
Despenser the younger.*#

John de Patmore died before 1361, when the manor
was held by his son John de Patmore,*> whose widow
Parnel was holding in 1366.9° She was wife succes-
sively of John atte Barre and William Rokesburgh.%”
The reversion of the manor was divided between
Margaret wife of Ralph Jocelin, the daughter of John
de Patmore,®® and Alice wife of Richard Plantyng,
probably another daughter. In 1366 Alice, with her
husband Richard Plantyng, sold the reversion of her
half to John de la Lee and Joan his wife,®® and in
Hilary term 1385-6 Thomas Jocelin, son and heir of
Margaret Jocelin,! sold the reversion of the other
half of the manor to Sir Walter de la Lee, kt.,! son
and heir of Sir John de la Lee, who had died in
1370.2, In 1387 Sir Walter received a quitclaim
from William and Parnel de Rokesburgh,® and he

& See De Banco R. 15, m. 9d. 57 Thid.

ALBURY

died seised in 1395, when his three sisters were his
co-heirs.4 In Hilary term 1406-7 Margery Newport
and Joan Barley conveyed the manor to Robert Sewale
and Margery his wife,5 who seem, however, later to
have released their right in favour of Joan Barley,®
for in 1428 the manor of Patmore was held by her
son John Barley.’

On the death of Henry Barley in January 1475-6 8
the manor passed to ‘Thomas Barley (probably a
younger son), whose daughter and heir Katherine
married John Harleston. On her death the manor
descended to her daughter and heir Agnes, who
married Thomas Scroggs. Agnes died before her
husband, who held Patmore until his death in 1538.9
His heir was his son Francis,!° from whom the manor
descended in 1585 to his son John Scroggs,!! who
died seised in 1592.12 Edward his son was aged six
at his father’s death, and during his minority the
manor was held by his mother Mary, who married as
her second husband Sir Thomas Stanley.48 John son
of Edward Scroggs 4 died in 169215; his son John
was holding in 1700,!° and from him Patmore
descended to his son Thomas Scroggs, barrister-at-
law of the Middle Temple, who died unmarried in
1710,!7 when his two sisters Mary !® and Judith were
his heirs. Mary married Charles Dartequenewe, who
purchased the other half of the manor from Judith
and her husband John Lance.!® Charles Darte-
quenewe died in 1737.29 Patmore was sold by his
grandson Charles Peter Dartequenewe?! to Samuel
Cockett in 1775.22 Cockett mortgaged the estate to
Sir Abraham Hume, bart., and finally conveyed it in
1780 to Paul Caldwell, who paid off the mortgage.
Lands included in this sale are Oxlays, the Bowling
Green, the Dovehouse, the Broome, Dyersfield, Stock-
field, Dobin Hall Pasture, Hornbeams, Daniel Meadow,
Onefoin Close, Shawes Reads.

The sale led to disputes,?* and in 1781 Caldwell
conveyed Patmore to John Calvert,” lord of the
manor of Albury. It descended with the manor of
Albury until 1848, when it was purchased from the
trustees of John Calvert’s will by Hugh Parnell of
Much Hadham and Clapton. Hugh Parnell died
in 1861, and Patmore descended to his sons Hugh
and John, barristers-at-law.*° On the death of Hugh
in 1906 the manor passed to his cousin Mr. Franklyn

13 Exch, Dep. Mich. 5 Jas. I, no. 21;

85 Chan. Ing. p.m. 14 Edw. I, no. 27.

86 Assize R. 323, rot. 5d.; De Banco
R.17,m. 62. William Monchensey also
claimed Joan Patmore’s third by grant of
her second husband Ralph de Poley, but
Joan was able to prove a divorce between
herself and Ralph (De Banco R. 15,
m. gd.).

87 Cal. Pat, 1281-92, p. 416 3 Cal.
Fine R. 1272-1307, p. 288.

88 Cal. Fine R. 1272-1307, p. 3623
Abbrev. Rot, Orig. (Rec. Com.), i, 90.

89 Assize R. 1311, m. 111d,

90 Feud, Aids, ii, 431.

91 Feet of F. Herts. 7 Edw. II, no. 143.

92 Parl, R. i, 3892.

98 Cal, Pat, 1324-7, p43 Cal. Close,
1323-7, p. 291.

4 Cal. Close, 1327-30, pp. 38, 153
One-third of the manor was still held by
Alice widow of Philip de Patmore.

% Ibid. 1360-4, p. 275.

% See Feet of F. Herts. 40 Edw. ITI,
no. 571; 9 Ric. II, no. 79 ; Lond. Epis.
Reg. Braybrook, fol. 394.

9% Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), 228.
99 Feet of F. Herts. 40 Edw. III, no.

71.
100 See Visit. of Essex, loc. cit.
1 Feet of F. Herts. 9 Ric. II, no. 79.

2 Chan. Ing. p.m. 44 Edw. III (1st.

nos.), no. 37.

8 Feet of F. Herts. 11 Ric. II, no. 92.

4 See above under Albury.

5 Feet of F. Herts. 8 Hen. IV, no. 42.

® See ibid. no. 53; Close, 9 Hen. V,
m. 5d,

7 Feud. Aids, ii, 446. The manor is
said to have been formerly held by John
Sherborn, who appears to have been a
trustee of Sir Walter Lee’s estates, See
Salmon, Hist. of Herts, 284.

8 See above.

9 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ix, 147.

10 Ibid. ; see Feet of F. Herts. East.
33 Hen. VIII.

11 Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 162 ; see Feet of F. Herts. Mich.
31 & 32 Eliz.

12 Chan, Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccl, 69.

Z

see Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 284.

4 Chauncy, Hist. Antiq. of Herts.
1§1.

16M. I.

16 Chauncy and Salmon, loc. cit.
Cussans says, however, that the younger
John died before his father and was
buried at Albury in 1685. Cussans, loc.
cit.

Y Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of
Herts. iii, 338 (M. I.).

18 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 12 Anne;
Recov. R. Trin. 13 Anne, rot. 31.

19 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 284.

30 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antiq. of
Herts. iii, 338 (M. I.).

21 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 3363; see
Recov. R. Mich. 9 Geo. III, rot. 254.

22 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 336.

38 Com. Pleas D. Enr. East. 20 Geo. III,
m, 201.

24 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

% Feet of F. Herts. East. 21 Geo. III.

26 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
162.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Arden Crallan, who so'd the estate in 1912 to Mr.
Frank B. Debenham, the present lord of the manor.*?

The manor of UPWICK alias UPISICK HALL
(Uppewyk, xv cent.) probably formed part of the
Bishop of London’s holding in 1086, for it was
always held of the Bishop of London’s fee.”* At the
beginning of the 13th century Osbert Masculus was
holding half a knight’s fee of the bishop,’? which may
probably be identified with the manor of Upwick, as
it was afterwards held by Richard Masculus.%? It
descended on his death to his son and heir William
Masculus, aged nineteen in 1244.°! In 1303
William le Madle was holding half a knight’s fee in
Albury, which probably represents this manor.
Upwick afterwards came into the possession of the
Lees, lords of the manor of Albury. In 1370
Sir John de la Lee, kt., died seised of it. His heir
was his son Walter,** but in 1386 the manor was
held by Nicholas Fitz Richard and Alice his wife in
the right of Alice.*4 They conveyed it to Roger
Lambourn and others,*> possibly in trust for Walter
Baud. In 1420 Walter Baud settled Upwick on him-
self for life with reversion to his wife Katherine for life
and successive remainders to the sons of Walter and
Katherine, and in default to Walter son of his brother
John Baud, to whom he had recently stood god-
father, to John son of John Baud, and to William son
of another brother, Thomas Baud, in tail-male.*®
Walter Baud died without issue in that year,*” and his
nephews also appear to have died without issue, as
his brother Thomas Baud became his heir.°* Walter’s
widow Katherine appears to have married as her
second husband Wiliam Godered, for in 1428
William Godered and Katherine conveyed the manor
of Upwick to Thomas Baud the elder, Thomas Baud
the younger and Margery his wife.*?

Thomas Baud died in 1430 and his son Thomas in
1449, when U pwick descended to the latter’s son Ralph,
who died seised of it in 1483.4° His son Thomas
Baud inherited the manor,‘! and mortgaged it with
his other estates in 1503. These were sold in 1504
to Lord Darcy, who redeemed the mortgage.4? He
probably conveyed the manor to the Elliots. In
1519 Thomas Baud’s widow Anne, then the wife of
John Blenarhassett, quitclaimed her right to John
Aleyn and others,43 probably in trust. In 1558
the manor was held by Magnus Elliot, who quit-
claimed al] right in it to John Eliiot.44 It descended
to George Elliot, who with his wife Joan conveyed it
in 1574 to William Parker, citizen and linendraper of

% Information from Mr. F. A. Crallan.

and Hadham Parva,’ Essex Arch. Soc.

London.45 ‘Three years later William Parker con-
veyed it to Humphrey Corbett,*® who died seised of
it in 1609.7 Humphrey’s kinsman and heir Roland
Corbett made a settlement of the manor in 1624 on
the occasion of the marriage of his son Richard with
Jane daughter of Sir Thomas Fowler, kt.4® In
1636 he sold Upwick to William Stacey,*® who died
seised of it in 1660, when it descended to his son
Edward, living in 1695.5 It passed to his son
Edward Stacey,*! and has since remained with this
family,©? Mr. Frank Stacey of Wickham Hall, Bishop’s
Stortford, being the present owner.

The manor of DARCIES (Dacres, xvi cent. ;
Dorses, xvii cent.) in Albury was held of the Bishop
of London.®8 The earliest record of this manor
seems to be in 1376, when it was held by Sir Walter
de la Lee, kt., with the manor of Albury.54 On the
division of Sir Walter’s property among his sisters
and co-heirs*® Darcies descended with Patmore **
(q-v.), but on coming into the hands of the Barleys
it was again united with Albury (q.v.), and from that
time always descended with it. The last reference
found to it as a separate manor is in 1713.

The RECTOR? MANOR of Albury was originally
held by the Bishop of London, and was said to have
been one of the manors which were attached to his
table.5?7 In the reign of Stephen, Robert de
Sigillo, Bishop of London, gave it to Godfrey, the
first treasurer of St. Paul’s.58 There were 6 acres
of demesne land, for which the treasurer had to find
a light in the church every night. These appear to
be the lands which in the 16th century were called
Lampland and Torchland.© ‘There were also 10 acres
in demesne held of the sheriff, to whom an annual
payment was due.®! As ecclesiastical property the
manor was quit of the king’s purveyors.°? The
treasurer was accustomed to lease out the parsonage,
reserving to himself the manorial rights and also the
right to have a stable there for his horses. By a 16th-
century lease the treasurer was bound to repair the
parsonage-house with timber and to keep in repair all
tiled houses, while the lessee was to repair the thatched
houses.? In the 17th century the rectory manor
was leased to the Leventhorpes and afterwards to the
Brograves, lords of the manor of Albury (q.v.).
During the Commonwealth the rectory was seques-
trated as part of the possessions of St. Paul’s Cathedral,®®
but it was afterwards restored to the treasurer, who
held it until the middle of the 19th century, when
the Venerable Archdeacon Jones, the treasurer, sold it

54 Close, 50 Edw. III, pt. ii, m, 13

7

® See Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, 9 ; Chan.
Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cecxiv, 129.

® Red Bk. of Exch. (Roils Ser.), ii,
$41.

*® Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. ITI, 9.

31 Ibid.

38 Feud. ids, ii, 432.

8 Chan. Ing. p.m. 44 Edw. III (1st
bos.), no. 37.

4 Feet of F. Div. Co. 9 Ric. II, no.
55-
3 bid,

8 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 11498.

87 Chauncy, op. cit. 159 (M. I.).

83 For an account of this family see
the manor of Little Hadham.

89 Feet of F. Herts. 6 Hen. VI, no. 33.

“Chan. Ing. p.m. 1 Ric. III, no. 6.

4 Thid.

“ Minet, ‘The Bauds of Coryngham

Trans. ‘New Ser.), x, 145.

48 Feetof F. Herts. Mich. 11 Hen. VIII.

“Toid. East. 4 & 5 Phil. and Mary ;
Recov. R. Mich. 1558, rot. 515.

Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 16 & 17
Eliz,

Recov. R. Hil. 1577, rot. 752.

“Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxiv,
129.
48 Ibid. cecclxxvi, 108; Feet of F.
Div. Co. Trin. 22 Jas. 1; Recoy. R.
Trin. 22 Jas, I, rot. 37.

Inform. from Mr. F,
Chauncy, op. cit. 150, gives
Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 283.

5° Exch. Dep. Trin. 7 Will. III, no. 5 ;
see Chauncy, loc. cit.

51 Salmon, loc. cit.

53 cf. Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 41 Geo. III.

5 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), li, 5.

8

Stacey.
16335

12, 9.

53 See manors of Albury and Patmore.

56 See Feet of F. Herts. 8 Hen. IV,
Hosa 53: ;

auncy, op. cit. 1473 Dugdale,

Hist. of St. Pauls, fol, Bel *Neweourt
Repertorium, i, 791.

5° Newcourt, loc. cit. quoting register
of Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

*9 Newcourt, loc. cit.

6° Pat. 14 Eliz. pt. ii, m. 17.

61 Newcourt, Repertorium, i, 791.

® See Cal. Pat. 1313-17, P-
1321-4, pp. 52, 221.

®8 Lond. Epis. Reg. Stokesley, fol. 50.

®4 See Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 421,
no. 455 Close, 1651, pt. xxvi, no. 25 ;
7 Will. III, pt. vii, no. 233; Feet of F.
Herts. Trin. 4 Anne,

® Close, 1651, pt. xxvi, no. 25.

190 5

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1867 it was
purchased by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster,®°
and has recently been bought from the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners by Mr. Maurice Carr Glyn.%”

The parish church of ST. MARY
stands on a hill at the eastern end of
Albury village. The material is flint
with clunch dressings and modern roofing of tiles or
lead. The church consists of a chancel 28 ft. 6 in.,
nave 52ft. by 15 ft. 6in., aisles g ft. wide, west
tower 13 ft. square, south porch, and a vestry and
organ chamber on the south side of the chancel.

The earliest church of which
any portion remains, consisting of
a nave, aisles and chancel of about
1230, now survives only in the
chancel, but the Purbeck marble
stem and one small shaft of a late
12th-century font are remains of
the r2th-century church which is
known to have stood here.®° The
nave, aisles and chancel arch were
rebuilt about 1360. Ninety years |
later the west tower was built,
and the south porch was added in
the latter half of the 15th cen-
tury. In the 1gth century the
vestry and organ chamber were
added, and the clearstory windows
over the south arcade of the nave
were pierced about the same time.
The church has undergone much
restoration in recent years. The
quoins and window tracery of the
tower are all new, the south wall
of the south aisle has just been
rebuilt, and nearly all the external
stonework of the windows has
been renewed.

The chancel has three modern
lancets in the east wall. On the
north side are four original 13th-
century lancets, of which the
westernmost is a low-side window.
The south side has only two |
lancets, also original, and a piscina
of the 14th century, with an Way
ogee-trefoiled head, and a hood a
mould ornamented with crockets
and a finial. The bow] is modern.
The communion table is of the
late 17th century. There is a
rood screen of 15th-century work
which has tracery in the head,
and the closed panels below the middle rail are
pierced by small round holes. The chancel arch,
which forms part of the 14th-century rebuilding,
is of two moulded orders, with jambs of alternate
shafts and rolls. This type is followed by the
arcades of the nave of the same date, which are
of four bays. The two westernmost bays on the
south side, however, are plainer in detail, and were
probably the last to be finished. The clearstory
lights above the arcade on the south side are modern.

CHURCH

ALBURY

66 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwonstree
Hund, 168; see Lond. Gaz. 28 June
1867, p. 3623.

4

Thomas.
68 See Advowson.

6 Information from Rev. J. L. P.

9

ALBURY

Three of the tie-beams and wall-plates of the roof
are of the 15th century.

In the north aisle, at the east and west ends, are
two original 14th-century windows, much repaired,
each of three lights. The three 15th-century windows
in the north wall have lost their tracery. ‘There was
also originally a 14th-century doorway in the north
wall, but this is now blocked up. In this aisle, and
in the south aisle also, the trusses of the roof are of
the 1sthcentury. The south aisle, which, as already
noted, has undergone extensive reconstruction, has
an original 14th-century east window of three lights,

SS
AW :
AK \ OZ
XG UW B
AN S a
CHR KG (

ANANTH CCN

\

il awa nt

\
- a =

\

Cuurcu: East Enp of THE SouTH AISLE

now inclosed by the vestry and organ chamber, three
windows on the south and one on the west of two
lights each, also of the original structure ; only the
east and south-east windows, however, have escaped
renewal, and the latter is in a very decayed con-
dition. There is a stoup on the east side of the south
door.

The tower of three stages has diagonal buttresses
and an embattled parapet, and is surmounted by a
small leaded needle spire. The west doorway has a

granted to the treasurer of St. Paul’e in
the reign of Stephen.
The church was

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

pointed arch in a square head with tracery and roses
in the spandrels. The jambs are much decayed.
At the foot of the tower staircase is a door with 15th-
century ironwork. The south porch, which has
undergone much restoration, has windows in the
east and west walls. The entrance is a pointed arch
in asquare head. The tower arch is of three moulded
orders with shafted jambs. The font now in use
is modern. Reference has already been made to
the remains of a font of earlier date. The pulpit
is made up of early 17th-century panelling, and has
the arms of Leventhorpe and other families inlaid in
wood.

The monuments include one of especial interest,
that of an unknown knight and his lady, of the late
14th century, probably Sir Walter or Sir John de
la Lee. It stands in the north aisle and is a fine
altar tomb with panelled sides and effigies in clunch,
which afford an excellent example of costume and
armour. The knight is attired in a short hauberk
and a richly ornamented jupon. He wears a
bascinet with the hinge for the visor plainly indicated ;
the aventail, jambs, thigh-pieces and brassarts are
also ornamented, and he wears plate gauntlets. His
head rests on a fine helm with its lambrequin, sur-
mounted by the crest, a kneeling angel. The lady
wears a sideless gown and her hair is inclosed in an
elaborate hair-net. The inscription is lost, and the
arms and hands of the figures are gone, except the
knight’s left upper arm and the tips of his fingers.

There is a brass in the nave of an unknown knight
in armour, his wife and child; there is also a crest
on the brass; the inscription is lost. Also in the
nave are a brass of John Scroggs, his wife and child,
with two shields ®* and a skull above, 1592, and
floor slabs to Sir Leventhorpe Frank, 1657, and John
Scroggs and his wife Elizabeth, 1692. On the
north wall of the north aisle are three detached brass
shields and a brass record of a 16th-century charity
left by Ann Barley. On the south wall of the south
aisle are a brass of Thomas Leventhorpe, 1588, his
wife Dorothy, daughter of William ‘ Barlee,’ and six
children, and two 14th-century roundels with
symbols of the Evangelists.

The bells are three in number : the first and second
are by Henry Jurdens of London, who died in 1470,
and, therefore, date from about the time of the
erection of the tower; the third is by Robert
Oldfeild and is dated 1607.

The plate includes a cup of 1626,

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows :
(i) all entries 1558 to 1657; (ii) 1669 to 1730;
(iii) baptisms and burials 1730 to 1812 and mar-
Tiages 1730 to 1754 (iv) marriages 1754 to 1812.

65a The arms ascribed to Scroggs of bend.

Patmore in Mundy’s additions to Herts.
Pedigrees (Harl. MS. 1546), printed in
Visit. of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), Appendix II,
163, are: Argent a bend azure be-
tween two greyhounds running bend-
wise sable with three peewits or on the

They are entirely different from
those on this brass, which are a cross
engrailed between four cinqfoile. The
second shield on the brass has a cheveron
between three boars’ heads, for Burton.
© Newcourt, Repert. i, 791.
70 East Herts. Arch, Soc. Trans. ii, 229.

| fe)

The church of Albury was granted
ADVOWSON by Robert de Sigillo, Bishop of
London, to the treasurer of St.
Paul’s,°? who appropriated it. The church was a
peculiar of the Bishop of London, exempt from all
jurisdiction except that of the bishop.” The
treasurers of St. Paul’s held the rectory and advow-
son 7! until 1845, when the patronage was transferred
to the Bishop of Rochester, the Venerable Archdeacon
Jones, then treasurer, retaining the right of presenta-
tion during his lifetime.”? After the creation of
the bishopric of St. Albans in 1877 Albury was
transferred to that diocese, and the patronage of
the church is now in the hands of the Bishop of
St. Albans.

There was a chantry in the church of Albury to
which 56 acres of land were attached,’* but nothing
farther is known of it.

In 1587 Francis Gunter, in con-
sideration of a certain devise by will
of Mrs. Ann Gunter, his mother,
charged an estate in Standon with an annuity of £3
for the distribution of 12d. in bread every Sunday,
6s. for a sermon in Easter week, 15. to the vicar, and
6d. to each of the churchwardens. The annuity
is now represented by {100 consols, of which
£387 55. $d. stock has been apportioned to the poor
and {12 145. 7d. stock, producing 6s. 8d. yearly, for
the ecclesiastical payments.

In 1594 Thomas Leventhorpe by his will devised
his interest in certain hereditaments situated in
Whitecross Street, St. Giles Without Cripplegate,
London, one-half of the profits to be for the use of
the poor of Albury and the other half to the use of
the vicar. In 1867 the land was sold to the Metro-
politan Railway Company and the proceeds invested
in £1,425 195. 4¢. consols, of which one moiety
(£712 195. 8d. stock) has been transferred to the
governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty for the benefice
and the other moiety retained for the poor.

In 1822 Thomas Mott by his will left £4 a year
to be distributed in bread or money among twelve
of the poorest families. The legacy is represented by
£150 6s. 10d. consols.

The several sums of stock, except where otherwise
stated, are held by the official trustees. The
annual income applicable for the benefit of the poor,
amounting to £23 15s., is distributed in coals.

The Poor’s Land.—A sum of £3 a year is also
received as rent of an acre of land, of which £1 is
given to the oldest widow and £3 10s. as the rent
of certain cottages, presumably derived from the
charity of the Rev. Marmaduke Bickendyke, a former
vicar, will, 1589, and of Sarah Bishop, 1762.

CHARITIES

7 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 195;
Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 190; Lond. Epis.
Reg. Stokesley, fol. 50 ; Close, 1651, pt.
xxvi, no. 25 ; Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.), 1733,
1804.

7? Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
168. 7 Pat. 14 Eliz. pt. ii, m. 7.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

ANSTEY

ANSTEY

Anestige, Anestei (xi cent.) ; Anastia (xii cent.) ;
Anesty (xili and xiv cent.) ; Anstey-ad-Castrum (xv,
xvii and xviii cent.).

The parish of Anstey has an area of 2,150 acres.
The altitude varies from 444 ft. near Puttock’s End
to 300 ft, near the south-western extremity of the
parish. On the higher land to the east of the village
are Hale Hill, the Rectory, which is surrounded by
a moat, and Hale Farm, near to which is a moated
tumulus, whilst to the south-west is Lincoln Hill,
near Anstey windmill, and south of this Fox Hill.
The soil is clay and chalk, with gravel in small
quantities. Of the woods which figure largely in the
early history of Anstey there remain principally East
Wood, partly in Nuthampstead, which is mentioned
in 1301~2,' and Northey Wood in the north-west
part of the parish.

road from Brent Pelham village, which is eventually
connected with the North Road. At its junction
with the road to the North Road is the hamlet called
Snow End, north of which is the ancient village
containing the church, the school and the hall, the
latter near the site of the castle. At the entrance to
the churchyard is a picturesque mediaeval lychgate.
It is of timber and divided into three bays, one of
which has been built up with red brick to form the
village lock-up.

At the north-western end of the parish is Biggin,
where stood the biggin or hospital of St. Mary.
Here is Biggin Farm, surrounded by a moat. Bandons
is north-west of the village beyond Northey Wood.

Two rectors of the parish were men of distinction.
James Fleetwood, chaplain to Charles II, became

Of other early place-
names Payneshalle,
Payneshallegrene,
and the croft called
Panefeld, which
occur in 1478,* may
probably be identi-
fied with Pains End

near Northey Wood, COTTON,
where is a homestead Le
moat. Burryfelds PE Ry ony

Mentioned at the
same date as lately
part of the demesne
may be connected
with modern Burry
Farm, Hale with
Hale Farm and Hale
Hill, 8nowdon with
Snow End,? and
Ladylye with Lady-
like Grove.‘ In 1610
there is reference to
land called Lon-

dayes,> which may
have been identical
with or situated near
Lundas Grove. There is mention also of the field
called Berdene® (xiii cent.), Westmore,’ Pesecroft
and Leyhegg® (xiv cent.), Burstalfeld, Vorlowfeld,
Wasshedell, Litelmedefeld, Ladyesacre, Oberneflend,
Collefat Mede, Baillyhill, Hungyrhill, and the
suggestive Lymekylnshotte, Chapelgate and Ansty
Galwes® (xv cent.), Puttock End and Parlebiens *
(xvii cent.).

The parish is traversed by the North Road, which
is partly coincident with its western boundary and
which crosses the River Quin at Biggin Bridge and
Stapleton Bridge. The village is situated on a winding

1Mins, Accts. bdle, 862, no 1

5 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxvi, 38.

Anstey : Lycucate To CuurcHyarD

rector of Anstey after the Restoration, and subse-
quently in 1675 was instituted Bishop of Worcester.
In 1671 Robert Neville was presented to the rectory
by Sir Roland Lytton. He was author of a five-act
comedy called ‘The Poor Scholar.’ ”

An award for inclosing the lands of Anstey parish
was granted in 1829" and supplemented in 1830 by
a deed poll.”

Anstey is a good example of the smaller
type of mount and bailey castle." There
are now no masonry works above ground,
but its ‘motte’ is perhaps finer than that at Berk-

CASTLE

Beaucock of Parlebiens occurs in the

Northeyfeld occurs in 1419 (Ct. R. [Gen.
Ser. ], portf. 176, no. 124) and Eastwood
coppice and Northwood coppice in 1544
(L. and P, Hen, VIII, xix [1], 1035
L97])-

2 Rentals and Surv. R. 268.

8 Ibid. Snowen End in Church Reg.
of 1576,

4 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no, 124.

6 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A too.

7 Mins. Accts, bdle. 862, no. a.

§ Ct. R. loc. cit.

9 Rentals and Sury. R. 268. There is
a hill still known as Gallows Hill on the
west side of the North Road. Ladyacre
and Hungyrhill were names within living
memory. ;

92 In 1§60 the baptism of Benedict

Il

register (see also monuments in church
below). Possibly the present rectory was
once known as Parlebiens (inform. from
Rev. F. R. Williams).

10 Dict, Nat. Biog.

11 Com. Pleas D. Enr. Mich, 3 Will. IV,
m. 2. 12 Tbid. m. 40.

13 See description of the earthworks of
the castle, V.C.H. Herts. ii, 112.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

hampstead and its deep moats are still usually filled
with water. At one time it was the head of a small
barony, but it was never more than a manorial strong-
hold and has no history. It followed the descent of the
manor. According to tradition it was built by Count
Eustace of Boulogne, and cither he or one of his
immediate successors may well have thrown up its
formidable earthwork:, upon which buildings of
timber only would at first be erected. The castle
was probably in existence when Geoffrey de Mande-
ville acquired the manor in 1141, for he no doubt
obtained it with the object of strengthening his
position along the valleys of the Lea and Stort, where,
between his stronghold at Walden and London, except
for Bishop’s Stortford Castle, he had complete control."
The Ansteys apparently sided with the barons against
John and added to the fortifications of Anstey Castle
during the Barons’ War. In 1218 Nicholas de
Anstey was commanded to destroy the castle before
mid-Lent, so that no part of it should remain except
what was built before the war.’® It is impossible to
decide what part of the castle was then demolished :
possibly it was the masonry keep, indications of which
have apparently been found.'’® The castle was still,
however, of sufficient importance for the king to seize
it on the death of Nicholas de Anstey in 1225, when
William Fitz Baldwin was ordered to deliver the
custody of it to Robert de Rokele, steward of the
Archbishop of Canterbury.’ Anstey Castle is referred
to in 1304, but by 1314 it had apparently ceased
to be maintained as a castle, for in the inquisition
after the death of Denise de Monchensey there is only
reference to a capital messuage with garden and
curtilage and no mention of the castle." The Hall
probably stands on the site of the capital messuage
just referred to,” which took the place of the castle as
the residence of the manor.
ANSTEY ™ was held before the Con-
MANORS quest by Alward, a thegn of Earl Harold,
who had the right to sell it. In 1086
it was among the lands of Count Eustace of Boulogne,”
and it continued to be held of the honour of
Boulogne.*

The manor was in 1086 held by Eustace in
demesne. It was assessed at 5 hides.** It passed to
the Crown through the marriage of Maud daughter
and heir of Eustace III Count of Boulogne with
King Stephen, and was granted by King Stephen to
Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1141,” but escheated to
the Crown by Geoffrey’s forfeiture before his death
in 1144.

Richard de Anstey, who occurs in the Essex and

Hertfordshire Pipe Rolls for 1165-6 and 1166-7,”
may have been a later tenant of the honour in
Anstey. He was possibly succeeded by Hubert de
Anstey, who held three knights’ fees in Anstey,
Hormead and Braughing early in the 13th cen-
tury *° ; Hubert was succeeded by Nicholas de Anstey,
a minor, whose marriage and custody were granted
to Robert Fitz Walter in 1210.” In 1218 Nicholas
de Anstey was ordered to destroy Anstey Castle
(see above).*° Apparently he was succeeded by his
daughter Denise, a minor, in or before 1225, when the
custody of the castle was committed to the Archbishop
of Canterbury.’ In 1242 there is mention of Isabel
widow of Nicholas de Anstey,” and in 1274~5 Denise,
who had married Warine de Monchensey, held the
manor ™ together with rights of free warren and the
amendment of the assize of bread and ale. She
held the manor and castle by the service of half a
knight’s fee. The manor passed at her death to her
granddaughter Denise wife of Hugh de Vere and
daughter of William de Monchensey,* who held with
her husband in 1305. In 1314 she died seised of
the manor of Great Anstey, which comprised a capital
messuage with a garden and curtilage, 240 acres of
arable land, some meadow land, 20 acres of woodland,
in which were rights of common, and certain services.”
Her heir was her cousin Aymer de Valence Earl of
Pembroke,** son of Joan wife of William de Valence,
her father’s sister.° Aymer granted the manor in
trust to Richard de Wynneferthing, clerk,‘ who in
1325, the year after the grantor’s death, surrendered
it for the purpose of settlement to the king,“! who im-
mediately granted it to Aymer’ s widow Mary, with
reversion to Laurence son of John Lord Hastings and
grandson of Aymer’s sister and co-heiress Isabel, Lady
Hastings, to Eleanor daughter of Hugh le Despenser

Varence. Burelly
argent and azure an orle
of martlets gules.

Hastines. Argenta
sleeve sable.

the younger, at this date betrothed to Laurence, and
to the heirs of the bodies of Laurence and Eleanor.”

MJ. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville,
1640., 174, 175.

15 Rot, Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), i, 350.

16 Excavations were made on the top
of the ‘motte’ in 1903 by Mr. R. T.
Andrews and Mr. W. B. Gerish, but they
were of too slight a nature to give any
very decisive results. The only evidence
of masonry work is the mention of the
great gate in a Ministers’ Account (Hubert
Hall, Court Life under the Plantagenets,
App. 216), but from the appearance of the
* motte’ it probably had a masonry keep.

VW Cal. Pat. 1216-25, p. 543.

18 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 252.

19 Chan. Inq. p.m. Edw. II, file 34, no. 7.

30 This messuage is referred to in the
Ministers’ Accounts already alluded to
(Hubert Hall, loc. cit.).

21 There is a semi-fictitious account of
Anstey Manor in Hubert Hall, Court Life
under the Plantagenets, 1-25, and some
interesting information relative to the
manor in the Appendix to that book,
209-28. Mr. Hall’s pedigree of the
Anstey family differs slightly from that
given here. 2 V.C.H, Herts. i, 3214.

® Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 2734,
2753 Assize R. 3233 Abbrev. Plac.
(Rec. Com.), 252; Chan. Ing. p.m.
Edw. II, file 34, no. 7.

24 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3214.

°5 J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville,
141.

°° Pipe R. 12 Hen, II (Pipe R. Soc.),
124,

Ibid. 13 Hen. II, 154.

% Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 273.

12

Ibid. 270, 275; Pipe R. 12 John,
m. 18 d. Nicholas is wrongly printed
Richard in Testa, p. 2696.

2 Rot. Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), i, 350.

31 Cal. Pat. 1216-25, p. 543.

3? Cal. Close, 1237-42, p. 479.

33 Hund, R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193 3 Anct.
D. (P.R.O.), A 1040; Assize R. 325.

4 Assize R. 323, 325.
85 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 252.
3% Feud. Aids, ii, 439.
Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. II, file 345
ee ay 35 Ibid.

+E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 204 0.
49 Cal. Pat. pe: p- ok hai
“ Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 1658.
” Cal. Pat, 1324~7, p. 153; Cal. Close,
1337-9 p. 27; G.E.C. Complete Peerage,
vi, 208, 209 notes.

no.

ANSTEY CHURCH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

Tue Nave Looxinc East

Anstey CuurcH

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Laurence Hastings, whose marriage to Eleanor Des-
penser never took place, died in 1348 as Lord
Hastings and Earl of Pembroke.43

After the death, in April 1377, of Mary Countess
of Pembroke, Anstey Castle and Manor were said to
include a capital messuage, 410 acres of arable land,
22 acres of pasture, 24 acres of meadow, 30 acres of
wood and underwood, which, owing to the thick
shade of the trees, were of no value.44 The increased
extent of the manor since 1314 must be due to the
inclusion with it of Little Anstey (q.v.). At this
time, since none of the beneficiaries under the grant
of 1325 survived, Anstey escheated to the Crown
and was granted by Edward II in May and by
Richard II in November 1377 to Edmund Earl of
Cambridge and heirs male of his body.48 At Edmund’s
death in 1402 it passed to his son Edward.4® In
1415 Edward, who had incurred great expense in
the foundation of Fotheringhay College, received
licence from the king to mortgage Anstey and other
lands to Henry Bishop of Winchester and others.47
Anstey passed at Edward’s death in 1415 48 to his
nephew and heir Richard Duke of York.“9 The
demesne lands were let in 1454-5 on a lease of
twenty years. On the forfeiture of the duke in
1459 the manor accrued to the Crown,*! but it was
restored before his death in 1460. By Edward IV
in 1461 and by Richard III in 148453 it was
granted to their mother Cicely Duchess of York to
hold for life. It was held similarly as dower land by
Elizabeth, queen of Henry VII,°4 and by Katherine
of Aragon,®° Anne Boleyn *¢ and Jane Seymour.*” The
last granted a lease of the site of the manor and the
demesne lands to Robert Ive, who surrendered it in
1540 and received a Crown lease of the same pro-
perty for twenty-one years at an annual rent of £10.58
In 1544 the site and capital
messuage of Anstey Manor,
together with lands and woods,
all in the tenure of Robert
Ive, were granted in fee to
John Cock and his wife Anne,”
who in 1553 received a grant
of the manor and lordship.®
John Cock, who was master of
requests to Edward VI, died
seised in 1557 and left a son
and heir Henry.®! His widow
Anne married George Pen-
ruddock, with whom she held
Anstey. The site and demesne lands continued in
the tenure of lessees.62 The manor passed after
Anne’s death, in accordance with her first husband’s

Cock. Quarterly gules
and argent.

ANSTEY

will, to his son Henry ® Cock, cofferer of the royal
household, who was a knight in 1572.54 He con-
veyed it in 1593 to Thomas West and others ® for
the purpose of settling the manor on himself, his wife
and his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Robert
West. Sir Henry Cock died seised in 1610, when
his heirs were Henry Lucy, son of his daughter
Frances and of Sir Edmund Lucy, and his daughter
Elizabeth, but by the terms of the settlement Anstey
was inherited by Elizabeth at her mother’s death.§7
Elizabeth Cock in 1610 was the wife of Sir Robert
Oxenbridge, by whom she had a daughter and heiress
Ursula.®8 She afterwards married as her third hus-
band Richard Lucy, who suffered a recovery of
Anstey Manor in 1617 7° and was created a baronet
in 1618.7 In 1627, on the occasion of a marriage
between Ursula Oxenbridge and John Monson, son
and heir to Sir Thomas Monson, bart.,7? the manor
was settled on Sir Richard Lucy for life, with
reversion to John Monson and his heirs.? Later in
this year it was conveyed by Sir Richard Lucy and
his wife Elizabeth and by John Monson to John
Stone,’4 who died seised in 1640, leaving a son and
heir Richard.”> The latter was a knight in 1651,
when with his wife Elizabeth, John Stone, his son
and heir, and others he con-
veyed the manor to his father- :
in-law Richard Bennett and pag pag pay
to Nicholas Francklyn,’® pre-
sumably for the purposes of a |
settlement. In 1666 John
Stone and his wife Katherine
conveyed it to Sir Roland
Lytton, kt.,’7 of Knebworth,
who died in 1674.78 His
younger son Roland inherited
Anstey by virtue of a settle-
ment, by which he held it in
tail with remainder to his
eldest brother William Lytton
of Knebworth. He was unmarried in 1696,’ and
at his death, after 1700,89 Anstey passed to his
brother William, who died in 1705,8! or to the
latter’s heirs. It subsequently descended with Kneb-
worth & until 1795, when it was sold by Richard
Warburton Lytton to Samuel Robert Gaussen of
Brookman’s Park in North Mimms, at whose death
in 1812 it passed to his son of the same name.®
The latter died in 1818, when his executors sold
Anstey to the Right Hon. Sir William Alexander,
lord chief baron of the Exchequer, who died in
1842, having devised it to his sister Isabella wife
of John Peter Hankey for life, with remainder to her

Lytton of Kneb-
worth. Ermine a chief
indented azure with three
crowns or therein.

48 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 209.

44 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 56.

45 Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. 845 1416-22,

47; Feud. Aids, ii, 444.

® chan. Ing. p.m. 3 Hen. IV, no. 36.

47 Campb. Chart. x, 5 3 Cal. Pat. 1413-
16, p. 350-

48 Chan. Ing. p.m. 3 Hen. V, no. 45.

49 Feud. Aids, ii, 453.

50 Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 4.

51 Cal, Pat. 1452-61, p- 551+

52 Ibid. 1461-7, p- 131-

58 Ibid. 1476-85, p. 459.

54 Parl. R. vi, 4632.

55 1. and P. Hen. VIII, i, 155+

56 Ibid. viiy 352.

57 Ibid. xii (2), 975.

58 Ibid. xv, 613 (36).

59 Ibid. xix (1), 1035 (97).

60 Pat. 7 Edw. VI, pt. ii.

61 Chan. Ing. p.m, (Ser. 2), cxi, 82.

6? Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 181,
no. I.
68 Ibid. bdle. 31, no. 68.
64 Visit, of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 5.
65 Feet of F. Herts. East. 35 Eliz.
66 Chauncy, Hist. Antiq. of Herts. 109.
67 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxix,
200.

68 G.E.C. Baronetage, i, 39.

69 Ibid. 113.

70 Recov. R. Mich. 15 Jas. I, rot. 111.

1 G.E.C. Baronetage, i, 113.

a)

72 Ibid. 39.

73 Chauncy, op. cit. 109.

74 bid.

75 Chan. Ing, p.m. (Ser. 2), cccexcv, 85.
76 Feet of F. Div. Co. Mich. 1651.

77 Ibid. Herts. East. 1666.

78 Le Neve, Pedigrees of Knights (Harl.

Soc.), 82. : ;
79 Ibid. 83. Le Neve describes him as
wir admod: inolentus et

80 Chauncy, op. cit. 109.

81 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 199.

8 Recov. R. Trin. 20 & 21 Geo. II,
rot. 273 ; and see account of Knebworth,
VCH. Herts. iii, 116.

83 Cussans, Hist, of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 58.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

daughter Julia wife of the Hon. Seymour Thomas
Bathurst, third son of the fourth Earl Bathurst, for

life, and to Julia’s children in

tail.64 The entail was barred in
1862 by Allen Alexander, son

ees

kk FH

Ak

eke *

of Mrs. Bathurst. In 1873 he

and his mother sold to Charles

Fredk. Adams, who died 1894.
His trustees sold to Henry

Batuurst. Sable two

bars ermine with three

crosses formy or in the

chief.

Edward Paine and Richard
Brettell in 1895, and in 1900
Mr. Paine became soleowner.®

In 1314 a court leet was
said to be held once a year in
Anstey,°6 but in 1470-1 it
was held twice yearly.” In
1301-2, 13d. was rendered of
3s. of ‘Sendyng-pennie’ for a certain way and 14d.
was paid for pannage ®; in 1401-2 6d. a year was
paid as chevage by each of the nativi who lived out
of the manor, which amounted in 1403-4 to 184.59
In 1470-1, 2s. was rendered to Hertford for castle
ward, and in 1508-9, 12d.% In 1301-2 a large
return was made from the dairy.°? The clear profit
derived from the manor was £47 135. 2$¢. in
1358-9,% £24 11s. 9d. in 1403-4,°4 £32 65. 4d.
in 1459-60," and only £6 115. gfd. in 1470-1.

Half a hide of land in Anstey was, like Wyddial,
held before the Conquest by Alward, one of Earl
Algar’s men, who had the right to sell it. At the
time of Domesday it was still, like Wyddial, held in
chief by Hardwin de Scales. The mesne tenant was
then a certain Payn.*%” This holding seems to be
that which subsequently passed with Wyddial. In
1359 it is described as 100 acres of land in Anstey
and Wyddial, which were then held in demesne by
Sir Thomas de Scales of Wyddial for suit of court
at Anstey Manor. In 1382-3 the annual rent
owed for it to the lord of Anstey was ros.,99 and in
1443 it appears that the suit of court at Anstey
was rendered every three weeks. In 1478 the
tenants were returned as Robert [John] Harcourt and
his wife, who was daughter and co-heiress to Sir
John Scales of Wyddial.!_ This holding may possibly
be identified with tenements in Anstey held with
Wyddial Manor in 1621.?

In 1359 there were said to be eight free tenants
of Anstey Manor. These included, as well as Sir
Thomas de Scales, John de Ufford, holder of a

knight’s fee in Braughing, the heirs of William
Tollemache, who held half a knight’s fee in Brockley
in Suffolk, the heirs of William Claydon, who held a
knight’s fee in Sandon, co. Essex,’ and the heirs of
Martin Chamberley, tenants of half a knight’s fee in
Rownho or Littlebury in Stanford Rivers in Essex.‘
These tenants all owed suit of court to Anstey Manor.
Of their holdings, Rownho Manor was again said in
1478 to be held freely of Anstey Manor by military
service and by suit of court and an annual rent of
65. 84.°

A windmill appertained to Anstey Manor in 1314.8
In 1470-1 it was let for a rent of 36s. 8¢.7 and it
was still held by a lessee in 1508-9. In 1547 a
water-mill in Anstey was granted in fee simple to
Sir John Bridges and said to be of the annual value
of 205.9

LITTLE ANSTEY occurs in the early 13th cen-
tury as part of the honour of Richard de Sackville,
and perhaps originally formed part of the lordship of
Aspenden.! In 1303 and later it was said to be held
of Robert Fitz Walter and his descendants,!? who
seem to have been the overlords of Aspenden. The
heir of William de Sackville, successor of Richard, was
Richard de Anstey,!3 and this holding passed with
Anstey Manor. In 1303,!4 and again in 1304,) it
was stated to constitute a knight’s fee, and at the latter
date it was described as a hamlet of Anstey Manor.!®
In 1314 it consisted of 120 acres of arable land,
2 acres of meadow and 2 acres of pasture.” After
the 14th century it appears to have been completely
merged in Anstey Manor.

BIGGIN MANOR probably consisted of the lands
of the hospital of St. Mary Bigging, which existed
in 1287 and held land in Anstey parish in 1291.18
Among their lands was the tenement called Paynes-
hall.18 The chapel and lands of the hospital were
granted in 1589 to William Tipper and Robert
Dawe,” the notorious ‘ fishing grantees.’ The estate
was acquired by the Provost and fellows of King’s
College, Cambridge,?°2 who, according to Salmon,
held a court leet and court baron in Biggin Manor
in 1728.71 Cussans states that in 1873 all manorial
rights had been merged in Anstey Manor.”?

BANDONS was the name given in the 15th cen-
tury to certain copyhold land of Anstey Manor.”
In 1535 a holding so called was sold by William
Hawke of Ely to John Gill, of the family of Wyddial.
The estate was increased by further acquisitions of

$4 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 58.

8 Inform. from Mr. G. F. Beaumont.

86 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. II, file 34,
no. 7.
87 Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 7.

88 Ibid, bdle. 862, no, 1.

9 Ibid. no. 3.

90 Ibid. bdle. 870, no. 7.

9% Tbid. 24 Hen. VII-1 Hen. VIII,
no. 61.

92 Ibid. bdle. 862, no. 1.

98 Ibid. no. 2.

% Ibid. no. 3.

95 Ibid, bdle. 870, no. 4.

% Ibid, no. 7.

97 V.C.H. Herts. i, 340d.

98 Ct, R. portf. 176, no. 124.

99 Chan. Ing. p.m. 6 Ric. II, no. 31.

100 Ct. R. portf. 176, no. 124.

1 Rentals and Surv. R. 268.

? Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccecvii, 95.

% cf. Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-9 Edw. III, 206.

‘Ct. R. portf. 176, no. 124.

5 Rentals and Surv. R. 268. Inquisi-
tions taken in 1330 and in 1478 found
that Aspenden Manor (q.v.) was also held
of Anstey. See Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-9
Edw. III, 210; Chan. Ing. p.m. 18
Edw. IV, no. 28.

® Chan, Ing. p.m. Edw. II, file 34,
no. 7.

7 Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 7.

8 Ibid. 24 Hen. VII-1 Hen. VIII,
no. 61.

9L, and P. Hen. VIII, xxi (2), 770
(83).
10 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270.
In the 13th century Little Anstey was
apparently a separate parish, for there
was a church there (Assize R. 323 [6 & 7
Edw. I7, m. 44 4.).

1! Richard de Sackville was tenant of
Aspenden (q.v.) in 1086.

14

\ Feud. Aids, ii, 431 ; Chan, Ing. p.m.
Edw. II, file 34, no. 73 10 Ric. II, no.
15; Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 2523
Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-9 Edw, III, 127.

18 See account of Aspenden,

M4 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

15 Abbrev. Plac, (Rec. Com.), 252.

16 Ibid.

Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. II, file 34,

no. 7.
18 See account of hospital in article on
Religious Houses, The information
given by Chauncy (Hist. Antig. of Herts.
108) refers evidently to Bigging in
Standon,

19 Rentals and Sury. R. 268.

0 Pat. 31 Eliz. pt. v, m. 37.

30a Cal. S. P, Dom. 1619-23, Pp: 4.09.

31 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 294.

Fe Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
55.
8 Rentals and Surv. R. 268,

TN
SHAN

Anstey CuurcH. 12TH-ceENTURY Font

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

land in Anstey and Nuthampstead, and in 1870,
when it was held by John Williamson Leader of
Buntingford, extended to some 500 acres.*4
The parish church, the invocation of
CHURCH which is traditionally to ST. GEORGE,
stands about a furlong to the south-west
of the village on high ground and a little below the
crest of the hill. It is built of flint rubble, with
dressings of clunch and Barnack stone, and is roofed
with lead. All the roofing, except that of the north
aisle, dates from a restoration of the rgth century.
The church consists of a chancel 37 ft. by 18 ft.
central tower 13 ft. square, north and south transepts,
each 19 ft. 6 in. by 18 ft., nave 46 ft. 6 in. by 13 ft.,
north aisle g ft. wide, south aisle 10 ft. wide and
south porch. A 14th-century north vestry has been
destroyed. The restoration in the 1gth century
included no structural alterations.
The growth of the fabric is interesting. The
earliest church, of the late 12th century, is now

3]

[Se a ZA
South Aisle.

1o c} 10

ANSTEY

last addition to the church is the south porch, of late
15th-century date. The original 14th-century door-
ways in the north aisle and north transept are now
blocked up, only traces of the latter being visible.
The chancel has a modern east window of 15th-
century design in place of the original window, of
which only the internal jambs remain. These are
shafted, like those of the remaining original windows
of the chancel, which are six in number, three on the
north and three onthe south. All these are traceried
and have moulded labels. The seven windows are
linked together by a moulded string-course. Those
on the north have, as already noted, high external
sills to clear the roof of the vestry, which was part of
the 14th-century structure. The sill of the south-
east window is carried low down, with its jamb
shafting, to form the two easternmost of the three
seats of the sedilia, whose third seat is formed by a
niche in the wall. A large piscina, ranged with the
windows and immediately to the east of the sedilia,

SSS Seis: es,

Site of
‘ 7 Vestry.
epee a “i; Y,

circa 1300.
14'*Century.

ps mid 15" Century.

" late IS**Century.
18Cenlury & modem.

so

Pian or Anstey Cuurcu

represented by the central tower and about two-
thirds of the nave. The original chancel and north
and south transepts were superseded at the end of
the 13th century and beginning of the 14th, when
the present chancel and transepts were built outside
them. The destroyed north vestry was built at the
same time, as is shown by the fact that the original
14th-century windows on the north side of the
chancel have high external sills to clear the roof of
the vestry. The carved stalls of the chancel are an
unusually early example of woodwork, being con-
temporary with the chancel itself. The nave was
increased to its present length about the middle of
the 14th century, and the arcades and aisles were
added, and the clearstory pierced with three quatre-
foil openings on either side. In the following
century the aisle walls were heightened and new
windows were inserted. At the same time the arches
leading from the aisles to the transepts were altered
and the top stage of the tower was added. The
34 Cussans, loc. cit.

is of the same date and has a double drain and a
stone shelf. The original splayed door on the
north side, with a hood mould and figure corbels,
leads to the vestry, and another door on the south
side, also of the same date as the rest of the chancel,
leads to the churchyard. At the north-west and
south-west are squints looking into the two transepts.
There are twelve stalls of the early 14th century
with plain ends, except one, which is moulded and
crocketed. Of the seven carved misericordes three
are certainly original, two of the 17th century and
two of uncertain date. ‘The stall-fronts have a rusti-
cated arcade in low relief of 17th-century work. On
the outside of the chancel at the north-east is a wide
and low trefoil-headed niche of the same date as the
fabric.

The chancel arch is the easternmost of the four
semicircular arches which support the tower. It has
the same heavy ringed roll-moulding, jambs with
shafts similarly ringed, and simple capitals as the
corresponding western arch, while those to north and

15

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

south are plain. The square formed by their piers
is much out of the true, which probably caused the
inclination of the chancel to the south and of the
south transept to the east. In the second stage of
the tower are visible small pointed doorways on the
north and south which originally led to rooms over
the transepts. Over the eastern arch the high pitch
of the 12th-century roof can be traced. The ceiling
of the ground stage of the tower is of the 15th century,
with moulded beams and wall-plates.

The north transept had originally a north door,
which is now blocked up, and a window was inserted
over its remains in the late 15th century, probably
at the time when the south porch was built and the
north doors disused. The original window of three
lights in the west wall has been partly blocked and
the rear arch altered. A 1§th-century moulded arch
opens into the aisle. An early 17th-century com-
munion table stands in this transept, and a modern
screen contains remnants of a screen of the 15th
century. A small piscina at the south-east is of the
14th century. In this transept, as in the south
transept, the floor-level of the rooms into which the
doors in the first stage of the tower opened is plainly
visible. The room over the south transept was also
approached by a circular turret stair on the south-
west lighted by a cross loop.

The west window of the south transept, a single
pointed light, is the only original window remaining.
The triple lancet windows on the east and south are
restored, and a modern double lancet has been
inserted over the south window. A 15th-century
arch corresponding to that in the north transept leads
to the south aisle. A small image bracket of the
15th century stands at the north-east of the transept.

The nave is of four bays, and has moulded drop
arches supported on columns of four clustered shafts
with plainly moulded capitals and bases. The clear-
story lights are quatrefoils, three on each side, pierced
through the 12th-century wall at the same time that
the arcades were inserted and the aisles built. Above
them runs a heavy string-course. The tracery of the
14th-century west window was altered in the 15th
century to the prevailing style. The west door,
which is rather wide, is of the 14th century, original
to the westward extension of the nave. It has
moulded jambs and head.

The north aisle had originally a north door, which
is now blocked up, though the jambs and mouldings
remain. Its two-light windows are of the 15th
century, two on the north and one at the west end.
Fragments of white and gold 1 sth-century glass
from the west window are now kept in the vestry.
The roof is of the 15th century, with moulded
principals. The windows of the south aisle corre-
spond to those of the north, but the south doorway
is of later date, belonging to the late 15th century,
when the south porch was built.

The 12th-century tower is considerably altered in
exterior character. The two lower stages are of the
original date, but the bell-chamber has 1 5th-century

two-light windows with tracery, and the third sta,
with its battlements, was added in the same peri
The small slated needle spire is late. On all fo
sides the high-pitched 14th-century roof can
traced.

The south porch is of the late 15th century, wi
two-light windows on the east and west. T
interior walls are ornamented with cusped panellin
It has an embattled parapet, and the entrance is
four-centred arch, moulded and shafted.

The font dates from the building of the rat
century church, and is of a curious type, square wi
rounded corners and decorated with figures of tw
tailed mermen holding up cloths.*®

The monuments are few. There is the indent
a large cross with a marginal inscription in the nor
transept, probably of the 15th century. In the sou
transept, on the south side, stands a tomb with
traceried canopy, now much defaced, and the effigy
an unknown civilian in a long robe, of the early 141
century. The north aisle contains a small mur
monument to Ralph Jermin, dated 1646, and in tl
chancel floor is a slab of Benedict Beaucock |
Parlebiens, 1635.

Two chests are in the church, one—iron-boun
and once covered with skin—is probably mediaeval
the other, which is plain, is perhaps as old as th
13th century. An embroidered purple velvet alta:
frontal, dated 1637, is preserved at the rectory
together with an early glass bottle containing trace
of human blood, which was dug up near the chanc
and is probably a reliquary.

Of the six bells in the tower the first is date
1700, the second and third are of the 18th century
1778 and 1764 respectively, the fourth and fifth ar
both dated 1616, and the sixth, which has th
inscription ‘Sancte Georgie ora pro nobis’ wit
Tudor roses, is probably of the 16th century.

There is no communion plate of a date earlie
than the 18th century.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i
baptisms, burials and marriages 1540 to 1700
(ii) baptisms and burials 1678 to 1792, marriage
1678 to 1753, and also briefs from 1649; (iii
baptisms and burials 1792 to 1812; (iv) marriage
1754 to 17923 (v) marriages 1793 to 1812.

In the Domesday Survey there i
ADVOWSON mention of a priest in Anstey.26 I
1291 Anstey Church was of th
annual value of £10.27 In the same year the pop
granted dispensation to the rector to hold this benefic
together with another.*® The advowson was held b
Denise wife of Hugh de Vere 29 and by her successors
lords of Anstey Manor.30 Further benefices wer
provided to the rectors by the pope in 1330 %1 an
1342,°% and in 136333 at the instance of Lad.
Pembroke. At the time of the Dissolution th
rectory was of the clear annual value of {21 1 35. 44.3
The advowson was sold by Sir Roland Lytton to th
master and fellows of Christ’s College, Cambridge
who first presented in 1694 °° and are still patrons.

% A similar font is in St. Peter’s
Church, Cambridge. The Rev. F. R.
Williams states that there is a ledge
partly destroyed on the east side of the
font, now hidden.

°6 VCH. Herts. i, 3214.

77 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18,

% Cal. Papal Letters, i, 528.

* Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 345
no. 7.
%° Ibid. 3 Hen. V, no. 45; (Ser. 2),
cxi, 82 5 cccxix, 200 ; ccccxcy, 853 Cal.
Pat. 1413-16, p. 350; Recov. R. Mich.
15 Jas. I, rot. 111 3 Feet of F. Div. Co.

16

Mich. 1651; Herts. East. 1666 ; Ins!
Bks. (P.R.O.).

51 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 328.

52 Thid. iii, 56. 88 Cal, Papal Pet, 410

4 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com,), i, 453.

8° Cussans, op. cit. Edqwinstree Hunt
62; Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).

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AsPENDEN CHURCH

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

In 1493 Roger Moos desired in his will to be
buried in Anstey Church before the image of
St. Stephen, and made a bequest to St. Stephen’s
altar there,** which was probably situated in either
the north or south transept. Henry Gynne in
1539 made a bequest to St. Stephen’s gild in this
church.*7

At the time of the dissolution of gilds and chantries
the church received a rent of 6s. 8¢. from a tene-
ment in Barkway, given by William Mores for the
keeping of his obit.38

At the same date rents of 6¢., 14d. and 12d. were
due for the finding of a light in the church, for the
maintenance of three lamps, and for that of the
lamps in general.®9

In 1663 the Rev. Edward

CHARITIES Younge, D.D., Dean of the cathedral
church of St. Peter, Exeter, by his

will directed (among other things) that an annuity of
40s. should be secured for the poor of this parish.

ASPENDEN wits
WAKELEY

The annuity is paid out of a field called Hadley
Field belonging to Baron Dimsdale in the parish of
Barkway and is distributed among the poor at Christ-
mas time.

In 1818 John Stallibrass of Barkway by his will
directed his executors to invest a sufficient sum of
money to produce the clear sum of {10 a year, of
which £5 a year should be applied for the benefit
of the poor of this parish and £5 a year for the poos
of Barkway. The legacy for this parish is repre-
sented by £166 135. 4d. consols with the official
trustees, producing (4 35. 4d. yearly.

It is stated in the Parliamentary returns of 1786
that Arthur Ginn by his will dated in 1705 devised
a rent-charge of 6s. 8d. for the poor, issuing out of 2
farm called Purvis in this parish ; also that an annuity
of ros. out of an estate in Anstey and Barkway was
given by a donor unknown. This charity has not
been paid for many years. The distribution to the
poor was formerly made in coals,

ASPENDEN alas ASPEDEN with WAKELEY

Absesdene (xi cent.); Aspehal, Alpsedene, Absedon,
Apsdene (xiii cent.) ; Aspiden, Appeden, Aspdene
(xiv cent.) ; Aspenhalle (xv cent.) ; Aspesden (xvi
cent.).

The parish of Aspenden contains 1,711 acres,
more than half of which consists of arable land and
about one-third of permanent grass.!_ The country is
very bare of woodland. The soil is clay ; wheat,
barley, beans, oats and peas form the principal crops.
The surface level is for the most part about 400 ft.
above ordnance datum, but rises to 475 ft. in the
north-west and drops to 288 ft. in the valley of the
stream called the Bourne, which rises in the south-
west of the parish and flows into the Rib. There is
a water-mill on the Rib in the east of the parish.
The windmill which gave its name to Windmill Hill
fell into ruins before the end of last century.?

There are several greens in the parish. Berkesden
Green lies on the south-west, Scott’s Green on the
east and Howe Green? on the north. The village
green itself is part of the common field called Rea
Mead* (Remade, xiv cent.). Other place-names
occurring in the parish are Perrydon or Parrington
(Piridone, xiv cent.),° Russewell Made and Russe-
broc,® Sneleswelle,? Chapmanstrat ® and Chapmannes
Grene® and Monemade Feld.

The hamlet of Wakeley, with the site of the
church of St. Giles, lies about a mile to the south-
west of Aspenden village. Wakeley was an extra-
parochial liberty usually included with Aspenden
until added to Westmill by Local Government Board
Order in 1883.

Ermine Street forms part of the eastern boundary
of Aspenden, and the market town of Buntingford,
which is on this road, lies partly within the parish.

36 P.C.C. Wills, 26 Doggett.

37 Ibid. 18 Crumwell,

38 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 30.

8 Tbid. no. 37.

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

2 See Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 35735
East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii, 104.

5 This name occurs in the 16th century
(Herts. Gen. and Antiq. i, 336).

5 Ibid. A 5223.

Odsey Hund.
7 Ibid. A 1123.

9 Ibid. A 5254.

4 17

4Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 52233 cf.
Refeld mentioned in ibid. A 1112.

6 Ibid. A 5215, 1006; cf. Rushden,

8 Ibid. A 5252, 5253.

11 The present road branches off at

At Buntingford a road branches west from Ermine
Street!! and for some distance forms the boundary
line between Aspenden and Throcking, leading finally
to the market town of Biggleswade.

The village of Aspenden is situated a little to the
west of Ermine Street, along the valley of the Bourne.
The church of St. Mary and manor-house of
Aspenden Hall lie close together on the north side of
the village street. Aspenden Hall is a modern
mansion of brick covered with cement. The old
Hall was pulled down about 1850 and the late 17th-
century oak panelling refixed in the hall of the present
mansion. Chauncy gives a picture of the old Hall
built by William and Ralph Freeman at the beginning
of the 17th century. When it was being demolished
many carved stones were discovered, from which it
was supposed that it was built out of the ruins of
Wakeley or Berkesden Church. The Hall was used
as a school at the beginning of the 19th century.
Among those who were educated there during the
eleven years of the school’s existence were Thomas
Babington, who became Lord Macaulay,!? William
Wilberforce, the eldest son of Bishop Wilberforce,
and Henry Malden, who was afterwards Professor
of Greek at University College.4

The rectory which stands a short distance to the
south of the church is a timber-framed_ building
covered with plaster ; the front upper story projects.
The ceiling of the dining room has moulded oak
beams and joists with splayed and stopped arrises,
probably of late 16th-century date. ‘The house has
been much modernized. About forty years ago there
was discovered in one of the walls a double recess,
trefoil-headed, resembling a piscina. The village
school stands to the east of the church. On the same

Buntingford, but evidently the older line
of road followed the course of the foot-
path which branches off a little further
north and is coincident with the line
of the parish boundary which joins the
present road in Thistley Vale.

12 Dict. Nat. Biog.

13 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
96. M Dict. Nat. Biog.

3

10 Tbid. A 716.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

side of the road further east is a 17th-century timber
and plaster cottage with overhanging story.

Seth Ward, successively Bishop of Exeter and
Salisbury, was born at Aspenden in 1617, and re-
sided for some time at Aspenden Hall as tutor to
the sons of Ralph Freeman. After he had obtained
preferment he showed his attachment to his native
place by building almshouses at Buntingford in 1684,
three years before his death.”

Henry Pepys, D.D., Bishop of Worcester (1783-
1860), was rector of Aspenden from 1818 tol 827."

The manor of ASPENDEN alias

MANORS ASPENDEN HALL was held in the
reign of Edward the Confessor by Aldred,

the king’s thegn. After the Norman Conquest it
became part of the possessions of Eudo Dapifer, son
of Hubert de Ryes, and was held of him by Richard
de Sackville.” Eudo died without issue in 1120, and
the overlordship probably passed through his sister

to Nicholas de Anstey,” whose only child and heiress
Denise took them in marriage to Warine de Mon-
chensey.”

By the beginning of the
13th century a subfeoffment
of the manor had been made
to the family of Tany.™ Peter
de Tany, who was Sheriff of
Essex and Herts. in 1236,”
died before 1255, and his
lands descended to his son
Richard de Tany,”° who died
in 1270,” then to the latter’s
son Sir Richard de Tany,”
who died about 1295.” Roger
de Tany, son of Sir Richard,”
who died in 1301, left a son Lawrence, aged two, as
his heir! Lawrence de Tany died without issue in
1317 and Aspenden passed to his sister Margaret.”

After this date there

Tany.
sable,

Or six eagles

is no further trace of
the Tany family
holding any rights
in Aspenden. Their
tenancy was already
amesne onein 1255,
when the manor was
held as a knight’s fee
ot Richard de Tany
by Ralph Fitz
Ralph, whose father
Ralph son of Fulk
had held land in
Aspenden.*

Ralph Fitz Ralph
apparently forfeited
his lands, for his wife
= Maud received a
grant of certain of
them, including 60
acres in Aspenden,
in 1266.% By 1303

odie _

AspenpeN Hartt: Garpen Front

Albreda to the Valognes family and thence to the
Fitz Walters."

Richard de Sackville, who was tenant of this manor
in 1086,'? was succeeded by William de Sackville,”
who was probably his son. On the death of William
his lands descended to his nephew Richard de Anstey.”!
By 1224 the Anstey lands in Aspenden had descended

13 See Dict. Nat. Biog.; East Herts.

Aspenden had de-
scended to Ralph’s
son William Fitz
Ralph.) In 1317”
and 1324 the manor is returned as held by William
Fitz Ralph, and in 1340 his son William Fitz Ralph
settled it on himself and his wife Sybil. This
William died before 1356, when his heirs were his
daughters Margaret and Sybil, who were minors.”
The manor of Aspenden, however, descended to a
William Fitz Ralph, who in 1383 granted all his

Arch, Soc. Trans. iii, 220. A fuller
notice of Seth Ward is given under Bun-
tingford.

16 Dict. Nat. Brog.

VW V.C.H. Herts. i, 3294.

18 See Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.),
270. It is possible that Robert Fitz
Walter held this fee during the minority
of the heir by grant of the king, as he
arparently did Anstey; but, on the
other hand, the overlordship of Little
Anstey, which seems to have been origi-
nally part of the lordship of Aspenden, is
several times returned as vested in the
Fitz Walters.

'9 [°C.H. Herts. loc. cit.

20 V.C.H. Essex, i, 379+

M1 Ibid. ; Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de
Colecestria (Roxburghe Club), i, 163-5.

22 Fine R. 8 Hen. III, m. 5.

3 See Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 144.
For pedigree of the Anstey family see
the manor of Anstey.

*4 See Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 144.
The overlordship descended with the
manor of Anstey.

25 P.R.O. List of Sheriff, 43.

© See Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.),
144.

7 Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, 248.

® De Banco R. 44, m. 223 Assize
R. 325.

2 Chan. Ing. p.m. 24 Edw. I, no. 14.

18

This inquisition does not give the date of
Richard’s death, but he was living as late
as 1295. See Inq. a.q.d. file 25, no. 13.

380 Chan. Inq. p.m. 24 Edw. I, no. 14.

31 Tbid. 29 Edw. I, no. 38. See Feud.
Aids, ii, 431.

32 Cal. Ing. p.m. 10-20 Edw. II, 69.

88 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 144.

34 See Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 7510.

35 Cal. Pat. 1258-66, p. 526.

36 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

¥ Cal. Ing. p.m. 10-20 Edw. I, 69.

38 Thid. 332.

% Feet of F. Herts. 14 Edw. HL
no. 210.

*° Cartae Antiquae of Lord Willoughb
de Broke (ed. J. Ean Bia ii, 7 :

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

right in it to his son William,’ who died before
1426, when his heirs, John Hughessen of Ashwell
and Elizabeth wife of John Clerke, senior, of Ardeley,
conveyed all their right to John Clerke, citizen of
London, and Thomas Clerke, clerk.“ In January
1450-1 the manor was held
by Thomas Smyth, Joan
Wendy and Thomas Pilche,
who sold it in that year to
Ralph Jocelyn, citizen and
draper of London, and Philippa
his wife." Ralph was son of
Geoffrey Jocelyn of Sawbridge-
worth. In 1464 and 1477
he was Lord Mayor of Lon-
don, and in 1465 was made
a knight of the Bath. On
the death of his wife Philippa and sable with four
he married Elizabeth daughter —Aacwhs’ bells or attached
of William Barley. He left — thereto.
no issue at his death in 14.78.”
The manor of Aspenden had been settled on his
wife Elizabeth,“® who married as her second husband
Sir Robert Clifford, a prominent supporter of the
Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, who afterwards obtained
his pardon and a substantial reward by betraying the
names of his fellow-conspirators. He died in 1508”
and his widow Dame Elizabeth Clifford about 1526."
In 1527 their son Thomas Clifford conveyed the
manor to trustees for Agnes Marsh, widow of Thomas
Marsh, citizen and mercer of London,” who died
seised in 1528, when Aspenden descended to her son
William Byrche.**

In 1537 the manor was held by Edward Viscount
Beauchamp, afterwards Duke of Somerset and Pro-
tector, and Anne his wife, daughter of Sir Edward
Stanhope, in her right, and they conveyed it to
Thomas Pope, treasurer of the Court of Augmenta-
tions.* This may have been in trust for Thomas
Lord Audley, for he held at his death in 1544.
It then apparently came to the king, who mort-
gaged it to John Clerke and others. It was re-
deemed shortly afterwards, and in 1549 it was granted
on a sixty years’ lease to John Philpot, groom of the
king’s privy chamber.” In 1553 John Philpot ob-
tained entire possession of the manor, and in March
1579-80 he granted the reversion of it after his
death to Henry Sadleir and Dorothy his wife.”
Dorothy probably died before 1604, for in that year
Henry Sadleir with his wife Ursula conveyed the

Jocetryn. sure a
twisted wreath of argent

41 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 154.

42 See Close, 6 Hen. VI, m. 14.

43 Tbid.

44 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 157.

4 Stowe, Survey of London (ed. J.

. 166 (56).

aq

4 Feet of F. Herts. East. 29 Hen. VIII.
55 See L. and P. Hen, VII, xix (2),

56 Thid. (1), 891 (iv).
57 Acts of P.C. 1547-50, p. 389.

ASPENDEN wit
WAKELEY

manor to Thomas Crouch and George Freeman,”
apparently in trust for William and Ralph Freeman,
who married the two daughters of John Crouch,” and
to whom in 1607 Henry and Ursula confirmed all
their rights in the manor, with remainder to the heirs
of William.” William and
Ralph were merchants of Lon-
don and lived together at
Aspenden Hall.® Ralph Free-
man, who was Lord Mayor of
London, died in 1634. In
1623 William died and his
son Ralph succeeded him.™
He held the manor® until his
death in 1665, retiring from
all public life during the Civil
War.® His son and heir Ralph
was a justice of the peace
and deputy lieutenant of the
county.” During his tenure
of the manor he cased Aspenden Hall in brick.”
He died in 1714 and was succeeded by his son
Ralph,” M.P. for the county in 1722, who died in
1742.” He left three sons, William, Catesby, who
died unmarried the same year as his father, and
Ralph Freeman, D.D.” William died in 1749,
when the manor passed to Dr. Ralph Freeman,”
who had been presented to the rectory of Aspenden
in 1743.4 At his death in 1772 he left no issue
and Aspenden passed by the terms of his will to
Philip Yorke, the son of the Hon. Charles Yorke
and Catherine the only daughter and heiress of Ralph’s
brother William Freeman.”

Philip Yorke sold the manor
in 1785 to John Boldero,” who
already held Aspenden Hall.”
John Boldero died in 1789.”
His son Charles Boldero left
no issue, and Aspenden passed
to his nephew Sir Henry Lush-
ington, bart., son of Hester
Boldero, who had died in
1830.” Sir Henry was suc-
ceeded in 1863 by his son
Sir Henry Lushington, bart.,®

Freeman of Aspen-
den. Assure three
lozenges argent.

LusHincTon. Or a
fesse wavy between three
lions’ heads razed vert
who died in 1897. His son with three ermine tails

or on the fesse.

Sir Henry Lushington only
survived hima year, and Aspen-
den then descended to Maj. Sir Arthur Patrick Douglas
Lushington, bart.," the present lord of the manor.

69 Chauncy, loc. cit.

7 Clutterbuck, Hist. and <Antig. of
Herts. iii, 348.

71 Cussans, op. cit. Braughing Hund.
196 ;M.I. Ralph Freeman’s name appears

Strype), v, 122.

46 Shaw, Knights of England, i, 134 3
see Holinshed, Chron. of Engl. ii, 690,
702 for further facts about him.

47 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), 228 ;
Chan. Ing. p.m. 18 Edw. IV, no 28.

48 Chan. Inq. p.m. 18 Edw. IV, no. 28.

49 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), 228.

50M. I. in church.

51 Her will was proved in 1526. See
P.C.C. 9 Porch.

53 See Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 19
Hen. VIII; Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2),
li, 29; Ct. R. (Gen, Ser.), portf. 176,
no. 126,

53 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), li, 29.

58 Ibid. 1552-4, p. 287; Pat. 7
Edw. VI, pt. xi, m. 29.

59 Pat. 22 Eliz. pt. ix, m. 24.3; Feet of
F. Herts. East. 22 Eliz.

6 Feet of F. Herts, East. 2 Jas. I.

6M. 1.

62 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 5 Jas. I.

6 Chauncy, Hist. Antiq. of Herts,
122.

54 Thid.

6 See Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 13 &
14 Chas. II.

66 Chauncy, loc. cit.

87 Tbid.

68 See Feet of F. Div. Co. Trin. 28
Chas. IT; Hil. 11 Will. III.

19

in the Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.) as presenting
to the rectory in 1743, but this must be
a mistake for William Freeman his son,
72 Cussans, loc. cit. See Hamells in
Braughing Hundred.
78 See Recov. R. East. 23 Geo. II,
rot. 323.
74 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 351.
7 See Close, 25 Geo. III, pt. xxii,
no. 8.
76 Ibid. no. 8, 9.
77 Ibid. ; Clutterbuck, loc. cit.
78M. I. in church.
79 G.E.C. Complete Baronetage, v, 267.
80 Thid.
81 Tbid.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

In the time of Edward the Confessor the manor
of BERKESDEWN (Berchedene, xi cent. ; Berchen-
dena, Barchedene, Berchesdene, Berkedene, xii cent.;
Borkeden, xv cent.) was held by Alward, a man of
Earl Harold.” After the Norman Conquest it
became part of the possessions of Count Eustace of
Boulogne,* and remained attached to the honour
of Boulogne.™

The earliest tenant in fee of this manor was Robert,
who was holding under Count Eustace in 1086.°
At this date there was a mill on the manor worth
2s. 8d. Robert appears to be identical with Robert
Fitz Rozelin, who held Reed under the count,” and
to have been succeeded here as there by the Trikets,
who were probably his descendants.* The first of
these known to have held the manor of Berkesden
was Hugh Triket,* who was living about 1150.°%
He was succeeded by Ralph Triket, who had two sons
Stephen and Robert.” Stephen, with his mother
Armengerda, granted land in Berkesden to the canons
of Holy Trinity in exchange for other lands from
them to hold in fee.” He died before 1197-8 and
was succeeded by his brother Robert, who quitclaimed
the land in Berkesden held of Holy Trinity by Stephen
Triket, and was received into their ‘ brotherhood.’
He was also granted by the canons a corrody for a
servant for life of a loaf, a dish of pottage, and one of
meat or fish and two gallons of ale daily, with 35. a
year for clothes." By 1212 Berkesden had des-
cended to Simon Triket.®

Under the Trikets the manor was held by the
Ansteys.° About the middle of the 12th century
Hubert de Anstey joined with his son Richard de
Anstey in granting it to Gervase de Cornhill,”” who
after holding it for a night and a day granted it to
the Prior and canons of Holy Trinity or Christ
Church, London.*? The manor of Berkesden re-
mained with the canons of Holy Trinity until their
dissolution in 1531." In 1535 Henry VIII granted
the manor to Sir Edward Seymour, afterwards the
Protector Somerset, and Anne his wife,' who in the
following year conveyed it to Sir Thomas Audley,
kt., chancellor of England? This was probably in
trust for the king, to whom Audley quitclaimed his
right two years later.? It remained with the Crown
until 1544, when Henry VIII mortgaged it with
other lands to the Mayor and aldermen of London.*

Berkesden afterwards apparently became the property
of Sir Andrew Judde, kt., one of the aldermen,* for
after his death in 1558° it was held for life by his
widow Lady Mary Judde, who was holding as late
as January 1584-5.’ In 1565 Richard Judde, a
younger son of Sir Andrew Judde,® alienated all
right inthe manor to Thomas Smyth and Alice his
wife? In 1574 the manor seems to have been in
the hands of William Morley and to have been
conveyed by him to Edward Halfhide,” who in 1579
sold the Westmill part of the property to John
Brograve," and in 1581 sold the manor to Andrew
Grey.” On the death of Andrew Grey in 1615
Berkesden descended to his daughtcr Mary wife of
Sir Gilbert Kniveton, kt.,%
who sold it in 1618 to Sir
Stephen Soame, kt., of Thur-
low, co. Suffolk."4 At his death
in 1619 it apparently de-
scended to his younger son
Sir Stephen Soame, kt,'® who
died seised in 1640, when it
descended to his son Peter,
aged five and a half years."
Peter succeeded his cousin as
baronet in 1686.” He died
in 1693 or 1694," and his
lands and title were inherited
by his son Peter, who died in
1709.8 His son Sir Peter Soame, bart.,” sold the
manor in 1782 to John Boldero of Aspenden Hall,”!
who in 1785 purchased the manor of Aspenden
(q.v-). From this date the two manors have de-
scended together.

In 1086 a virgate of land in Berkesden was held
by Peter and Theobald of Hardwin de Scales, who
claimed to have it by an exchange with the Bishop of
Bayeux. It was also claimed by Count Alan of
Britanny.” It is probable that Hardwin retained
possession of this land and attached it to his neigh-
bouring manor of Wakeley (q.v.).

In the time of King Edward the Confessor
IWWAKELEY (Wackelei, xi cent. ; Wakeleia, xii cent. ;
Walkeleya, xiii cent.) was divided into three holdings
of 40 acres each, held respectively by Alward, a man
of Earl Harold,” Edric,a man of Earl Algar, and by
Eddeva the Fair, the last holding only being styled

Soame, baronet.
Gules a cheveron between
three mallets or.

‘b

82 C,H. Herts. i, 3216.

83 Ibid.
“See Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 11967,
$4205 Liber Niger Scacc. (ed. T.

Heame), i, 389; Red Ba. of Exch. (Rolls
Ser.), i, §02, 581; Testa de Nevill (Rec.
Com.), 270, 274.

S I°.C.H. Herts. loc. cit.

86 Ibid. 87 Ibid.

“S$ Dugdale, Mon. vi, 152. See manor
of Corneybury in Wyddial.

89 Liber Niger Scacc. (ed. T. Hearne),
1, 389, 390.

7 See Dugdale, loc. cit.

Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 500, 5915.

2 Thid, A ee pe seas

3 Ibid. A 5grs.

" Ibid. A 5889.

° Red BR. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
5815 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 274,
“See Liber Niger Scace. (ed. Ty
Hearne), i, 389, 390.

* Anct. D. (P-R.O.), A 5420,

Ibid. A 11967, 202 The canons

were afterwards said to hold it of the gift
of Richard de Anstey (Dugdale, Mon. vi,
153). The Ansteys appear as mesne
lords as late as 1303 (Red Bk. of Exch.
[Rolls Ser.], ii, 5815; Testa de Nevill
as Com.], 270, 2743; Feud. Aids, ii,
439).

“See Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.),
51b; Feud. Aids, ii, 432, 446, 4533
Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 1071.

109 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 150.

11. and P. Hen. PIII, viii, g. 481 (13).

? Feet of F, Herts. Trin. 28 Hen. VIII.

3 D. of Purchase and Exchange, box E,
no. 5,m. 6, Audley was apparently only
a go-between, for the king is said to
have purchased the manor of Sir Thomas
[Edward ?] Seymour (L. and P. Hen, VITl,
xix [2], g. 166 [51]).

Land P. Hen. VIII, xix (1), 8913
(2), @. 166 (51).

$ told.

§ See Chan, Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cxvi,
gi. Berkesden is not mentioned in this
inquisition,

20

7 See ibid. ccvii, 70.

8 See ibid. cxvi, gt.

5 Pat. 7 Eliz. pt. vi; Feet of F. Herts.
Hil. 8 Eliz,

10 Recov. R. Trin. 1574, rot. 759.

1 Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. vi, m. 29.

1 Close, 23 Eliz. pt. vii ; ibid. pt. xxiii ;
see Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxlvii, 75.

13 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccexlvii, 75.

M4 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 16 Jas. 1;
see Chan. Proc, (Ser. 2), bdle. 324, no. 34.

5 G.E.C. Complete Baronetage, 8.v.
Soame, iv, 136.

© Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccexciv,
128 ; see Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 1655 ;
Recov. R. Hil. 1655, rot. 106.

1 G.E.C, loc. cit.

18 Ibid,

19 Thid.

9 Ibid. ; see Recov. R, Hil. 31 Geo. II,
rot. 42.

21 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antiq. of Herts.
iii, 351.

"VCH. Herts. i, 3406.

3 Ibid. 3214, 4 Thid. 3405,

pi cent;
holding
rd, amu
Mand
ng 5

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

a manor.*® After the Norman Conquest Alward’s
land had passed to Count Eustace of Boulogne, and
was held of him by Robert.2° This holding cannot
be traced after this time, and it was probably
appurtenant to the neighbouring manor of Berkesden
(q.v-), which Robert held of the count.

Eddeva the Fair’s lands in Wakeley became part
of the possessions of Count Alan of Britanny and
were held of him by Ralph.??7 Count Alan held also
the manor of Munden,” and the overlordship of the
manor of Wakeley appears to have descended with
that manor until the end of the 13th century, when
it was held by the Furnivals, lords of the manor of
Munden, at which suit of court was owed.2® Ralph,
the tenant in fee of this holding in 1086, seems to
be identical with Ralph Pinel the predecessor of the
Lanvalleys,*° for in 1194 his lands in Wakeley had
descended to William de Lanvalley.*! The Lanvalleys
appear to have subenfeoffed their lands to the Fitz
Ralphs before this date,3? and these lands probably
were amalgamated with the Fitz Ralphs’ other holding
in Wakeley. This was the fee which in Saxon times
was held by Edric. In 1086 it formed part of the
possessions of Hardwin de Scales, and was held of
him by 'Theobald,33 ancestor of the Fitz Ralphs. At
the beginning of the 13th century Hardwin’s des-
cendants were holding in service in Wakeley,** but
after this there is no further record of their tenure
here. Theobald, who was holding the manor of
Hardwin in 1086, appears to have had a son Fulk,
who was succeeded by his son Theobald.?° He was
holding the manor of Wakeley with his wife
Amphyllis in 1194 with reversion to his son Fulk and
Eleanor his wife.36 In 1277 Ralph Fitz Ralph of
Broadfield (grandson of Fulk) was lord of Wakeley,
but by this time a tenant had been subenfeoffed.*”

Ralph Muschet was holding the manor of Wakeley
of Ralph Fitz Ralph in 1277.98 His father Richard
Muschet had also held land in Wakeley.3? Ralph’s
heirs appear to have been Joan wife of Luke de
Tany and Sybil wife of John de Montfort, who
were holding the advowson in 1308.42 In 1309
Joan and her husband conveyed all their right in the
manor to Robert de Kendale and his wife Margaret,*!
and in 1311 Robert presented to the church jointly
with Ralph Muschet’s widow Joan.*? Robert was
granted free warren in his manor of Wakeley in

2% V.C.H. Herts. i, 320. This arrange-
ment suggests a sub-division among

For descent of the Fitz Ralphs see the
manor of Aspenden.

ASPENDEN wiry
WAKELEY

March 1317-18, and in 1320 he received a quit-
claim of all right in the manor from Sybil and John
de Montfort.44 Robert died in 1330.1° His wife
Margaret held the manor for
her life,#® and on her death in
134747 it descended to their
son Edward de Kendale. He
died in January 1372-3 48 and
his wife Elizabeth in 1375.49
Her eldest son Edward having
died without issue earlier in
the same year, Wakeley de-
scended to her second son
Thomas Kendale, clerk,®° who
barcly survived his mother a
week, and the manor then
passed to his sister Beatrice
the wife of Robert Turk.5!
Beatrice appears to have died before her husband,
who in 1400 died seised of the manor, which de-
scended to his only daughter Joan the wife of John
Waleys.°? John Waleys died in 1418 8 and Joan in
1420, when her Hertfordshire property, including
Wakeley, descended to her four daughters and co-
heirs, Beatrice the wife of Reginald Cokayn, Joan
the wife of Robert Leventhorp, Agnes Waleys and
Joan Waleys.®4

In 1428 Reginald Cokayn and the other heirs
(unnamed) were holding Wakeley,®> but the manor
ultimately passed to the second
daughter Joan, who married
secondly Nicholas Morley.*®
Joan Morley appears to have
died before 1452, but her
husband was then still living.”
He died apparently before
1454, for in that year Richard
Morley presented to the
church.68 The manor after-
wards came to Robert Morley,
the son of Nicholas and Joan.°?
He died in 1516; his son
Thomas had died before him,
and Wakeley descended to his
grandson Thomas Morley, a minor. He held the
manor until his death in January 1557-8.°! His
heir was his son Thomas, but he appears to have

Kenpare. Argenta
bend vert and a label
gules.

Mortey. Sable a fleur
de lis or coming out of a
leopard’s head argent.

51 Ibid. no. 95; see Feet of F. Div.
Co. 50 Edw. III, no. 146.

brothers ; see ibid. 289.

26 Thid. 3214.

27 Thid. 320.

°8 Ibid. 319.

® Feet of F. Herts. 6 Edw. I, no. 70;
see Assize R. 323, m. 1d.3; Chan. Ing.
p-m. 49 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 743 see
VCH. Herts, iiiy 124.

30 See Morant, Hist. of Essex, i, 440.

31 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 2.

8? Ibid.

33 V.C.H. Herts. i, 34.06.

34 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 98. For
pedigree of the Scales see manor of
Wyddial.

% Dugdale, Mon. v, 369. See manor
of Broadfield, Odsey Hundred, for descent
of this family.

386 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), z.

37 Feet of F. Herts. 6 Edw. I, no. 70.
For the overlordship of the Fitz Ralph
family see Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-9 Edw. IIT,
209 ; Chan. Ing. p.m. 2 Hen. IV, no. 36.

88 Feet of F. Herts. 6 Edw. I, no. 70.
39See Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 5194,

7214.

40 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antiq. of Herts.
ili, 34.9.

41 Feet of F. Herts. 2 Edw. II, no. 28.
Edward de Kendale, who presented to
the church in 1309 (Clutterbuck, loc.
cit.), was probably holding in trust for
Robert.

42 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

43 Cal. Chart, R. 1300-26, p. 379+

44 Feet of F. Herts, 14 Edw. IU,
no. 332.

45 Cal. Ing. pm. 1-9 Edw. III, 209.

46 Ibid. ; see Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

47 Chan. Ing. pm. 21 Edw. III,
no. 19.

48 [bid. 47 Edw. III (1st nos.),
no. 20.

49 See ibid. 49 Edw. III (1st nos.),
no. 74.
50 Ibid.

21

52 Chan. Ing. p.m. 2 Hen. IV, no. 36.

53 Ibid. 6 Hen. V, no. 11.

54 Ibid. 3 Hen. VI, no. 35; see De
Banco R. 651 (2 Hen. VI), m. 128.

55 Feud. Aids, ti, 44.6.

56 Suss. Arch. Coll. xx, 60; Visit. of
Sussex (Harl. Soc.), 473 Berry, Suss.
Gen. 173.

57 See Feet of F. Herts. 31 Hen. VI,
no. 161.

58 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 349. Richard
Morley is not mentioned in any of the
pedigrees. He appears to be the Richard
Morley called in 1470 ‘late of Aspenden,
alias late of London’ (Cal. Pat. 1467-77,
Pp» 203). ie

59 Suss. Arch. Coll. xx, 603 Visit. of
Sussex (Harl. Soc.), 47; Berry, loc. cit.

69 P,C.C. 23 Holder ; Chan, Ing. p.m.
Ser. 2), xxxi, 98.

61 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cxxiv,
160.

® Ibid.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

died without issue soon after his father, and Wakeley
came to a younger son William Morley. In 1574
William sold the manor to Edward Halfhide,* who
with his wife Amy conveyed it to Edward Baesh in
1574-5. In 1577 Edward Baesh and Jane his
wife re-conveyed the manor to Halfhide,®® who in
1577-8 sold it to Edward Hyde.” In 1610 John
Hyde sold it to William Dodi. By 1623 it had
come into the possession of Samuel Bridger and his
wife Mary,®? who held in Mary’s right, and they in
1625 sold it to Ralph Freeman, lord of the manor
of Aspenden.’°

From this time the manor of Wakeley descended
with the manor of Aspenden (q.v.) until 1785, when
Philip Yorke sold the manor
of Aspenden, but retained
Wakeley in his own hands.7!
In 1790 Philip Yorke suc-
ceeded his uncle as third Earl
of Hardwicke.7? He died in
1834 and the manor of Wake-
ley descended to his eldest
daughter Anne the wife of
John Savile third Earl Mex-
borough of Lifford.’? She died
in 1870, and Wakeley de-
scended to her grandson the
Hon. John Horace Savile,
who succeeded his father as
fifth Earl of Mexborough in
1899 “4 and is the present lord of the manor. All
manorial rights, however, have long since lapsed, and
the estate consists merely of a farm-house and a few
cottages.

‘he manor of TANNIS (Tanneys, xv cent. ;
‘Tawnys, xvi cent. ; Tawney, Townis, xvii cent.) was
held in 1424 with the manor of Wakeley by the
four daughters and co-heirs of Joan Waleys.’5 The
name of the manor suggests some connexion with
the family of Tany, and it seems probable that it
was either composed of lands which they held besides
the manor of Aspenden or that it was the part of
Wakeley which for a short time was held by Joan
and Luke Tany, and that during that time it acquired
a separate name. From 1424 it descended with
the manor of Wakeley (q.v.) until Hilary 1577-8,
when Edward Halfhide, lord of the manors of
Tannis and Wakeley, sold Wakeley7® but retained
Tannis. Edward Halfhide also acquired the manor
of Berkesden, and in 1581 he sold the manors of
Berkesden and Tannis to Andrew Grey.”” From
this date Tannis has descended with Berkesden (q.v.).
No manorial rights now exist. There is a farm-house
called Tannis Court to the north-east of Berkesden
Green, but the older house stands a quarter of a mile
away from it and has the remains of a homestead
moat surrounding it. ‘There was a house here in

Savire, Earl of Mex-
borough. Argenta bend
sable with three owls
argent thereon.

1569 when a detailed inventory was taken of all its
Fone This inventory was signed by Edward
Halfhide,”? who appears to have lived in the house,
although he did not acquire the manor of Tannis
from the Morleys until perg.fe Evidently Sir
Edward Capell, Edward Halfhide’s father-in-law,
resided here, for in his will he refers to ‘the hang-
ings in my chamber at Tannes commonly called my
lady Katherine's chamber.’*! The lady who gave
her name to the room was possibly Katherine Morley,
mother of ‘Thomas and grandmother of William
Morley.“ In 1609 Sir Gilbert Kniveton, son-in-
law of Andrew Grey, who afterwards held the
manor in right of his wife, was living at Tannis.

In the r§th century there was a manor called
HACONS in Aspenden, which seems to have taken
its name from a family called Hacon, who were
holding land in Aspenden in the 13th century.
Walter Hacon appears as witness to a grant of land
in Aspenden in 1240~1.83 His daughter Agnes
married William son of John de Hodenho. In 1304
Agnes’s daughter and heir Nichola was claiming
14 acres of land in Aspenden of her mother’s in-
heritance against William de Poley and his wife
Isabel.64 In 1421 the ‘manor called Hacons’ was
released by the feoffees of Robert Chelmsford to other
feoffees to the use of Richard Kirkby.8 After this
date no further record of this manor has been found.

The church of ST. MARY consists of
chancel 22 ft. by 16 ft., south chapel
16 ft. Gin. by 16ft., nave 4o ft. by
19 ft., south aisle 37 ft. by 14 ft. 6in., west tower
11 ft. 6in. square and south porch ro ft. by g ft., all
internal dimensions. The walls are of flint rubble
covered with cement ; the south chapel is of brick,
cemented ; the roofs are tiled except over the south
aisle, which is leaded.

The nave and chancel were probably erected early
in the 12th century, though but little of that date
remains; the chancel was altered and _ probably
enlarged in the early 13th century ; the south aisle
belongs to the middle of the 14th century, and the
west tower was built about 1390. In the 15th cen-
tury the south chapel was added and the nave walls
raised and a new roof put on, and probably the south
aisle widened, and about 1500 the south porch was
erected by Sir Robert Clifford. In 1622 the south
chapel was altered and the arcade next the chancel
inserted ; the chancel arch was probably pulled down
at this time to allow the arcade to be built. The
church was restored in 1873, and has again been
recently repaired.

The chancel has an east window of four lights
with traceried head, originally of 15th-century work,
but most of the stonework is modern. In the north
wall is a single lancet of the carly 13th century,
widely splayed internally ; the adjoining window is a

CHURCH

82 See Berry, Suss. Gen. 1763 Coll.

63 Thomas is not mentioned in any of
the pedigrees of this family. William
was the executor of his father’s will. See
P.C.C. 34 Chaynay.

61 Recov. R. Trin. 1574, rot. 759.

65 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 17 Eliz.

66 Ibid. East. 19 Eliz.

67 Ibid. Hil. 20 Eliz.

68 Ibid. Trin. 8 Jas. I.

69 Thid. East. 21 Jas. I.

70 Recov. R. Hil. 1 Chas. I, rot. 101.

71 Close, 25 Geo. ILI, pt. xxii, no. 8,
m. 21.

7 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, s.v. Hard-
wicke, iv, 165.

73 Tbid. s.v. Mexborough, v, 307.

74 Burke, Peerage (1911).

75 De Banco R. 651, m. 128.

76 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 20 Eliz.

77 Close, 23 Eliz. pt. vii; ibid. pt. xxiii 5
Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxlvii, no. 75.

78 W. Minet, ‘Tannis Court,’ Home
Co. Mag. (1904), vi, 194+

79 Ibid.

80 Recov. R. Trin. 1574, rot. 759+

81 Home Co. Mag. loc. cit.

22

Topog. et Gen, iii, 23 Visit. of Sussex
(Harl. Soc.), 47.
8 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 108,
& De Banco R. 152, m. 49. The
Poleys held lands in Aspenden in the
14th century, which in 1363 were divided
between the daughters and heirs of John
Poley (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 999
6720). For John and William Poley as
jurors see Ing. Non. (Rec. Com.), 433+
8 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), D 748.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

small single light of early 12th-century work. The
external arch is formed in flint rubble, but the
original head may have been of stone. At the west
end of the north wall is a low-side window with
cusped ogee arch and roses in the spandrels ; it is
probably of early 16th-century date. Under the
13th-century lancet is a wide-arched recess, which
may have been used as an Easter sepulchre. The
moulded arch is pointed, the crocketed label forming
an ogee arch above, with carved finial ; the recess is
flanked by pilaster buttresses with crocketed gablets ;
the spandrels are traceried and the top embattled.
It is of early r5th-century work, but has been restored.
In the south wall of the chancel is a 13th-century
lancet window, under which is an aumbry, chiefly
modern, and part of the basin of a piscina with eight-
foiled drain. ‘The arcade between the chancel and
the south chapel consists of two circular arches of two
splayed orders. The piers are octagonal, and on each
face and on the soffit of the arches are sunk panels
carved with arabesques. The arms of Freeman, with
the date 1622, appear over the arcade on the south
side. There is no chancel arch ; the chancel roof is
modern.

The east window of the south
chapel is of three cinquefoiled lights
under a low elliptical head; the
south window has two lights with
similar detail ; they are probably of
1sth-century date altered in the
17th century. In the north-west
angle is the blocked entrance to the
rood stair. The chapel is inclosed

ASPENDEN wirn
WAKELEY

The south aisle has a window in the south and
another in the west wall, each of two cinquefoiled
lights under a low segmental head ; they are of late
15th-century date. Under the south window is a
small recess with a cinquefoiled arch, probably a
piscina. ‘The south doorway is of late 15th-century
date, and has a four-centred arch of two moulded
orders, the inner order continuous, the outer forming
a square head above; the spandrels are traceried.
Over the doorway is a quartered shield of Clifford.
On the outer face of the south wall is a small plain
round-arched recess of brick covered with cement.
The roof of the south aisle has moulded timbers of
late 15th-century date ; the south door is of oak of
17th-century date.

The south porch has an east and west window,
each of two lights with traceried head. The entrance
has a moulded two-centred arch under a square head,
with moulded spandrels ; the jambs are shafted. In
the spandrels are two shields of arms, Clifford
impaling Barley, and Jocelyn quartered with Blount
and Malpas. The west tower is of three stages with
spire, which is

embattled parapet and short leaded

A ee

|

|

Mi3'‘cent

with a 17th-century oak screen,

the lower part of which is close y E

panelled ; the top is pierced with a c1540 G

series of round arches on moulded ZZ. c 1390

balusters. The pews, which are of WV 15 CENT

the same date, are inclosed with E16 CENT 30

[ssenesneess

plain panelled oak, and the doors

[517 CENT

retain their ornamental iron hinges.
The roof is divided into panels by
moulded timbers, and is of late 15th
or early 16th-century date.

In the north wall of the nave are two windows,
each having three lights with tracery under a four-
centred arch. The tracery differs in the two windows,
and has been much restored ; they are both of 15th-
century date. In the east jamb of the easternmost
window is a niche for an image,* elliptical on plan,
and with cusped ogee arch under a square head, the
mouldings of which, and probably a canopy above,
have been cut away; the spandrels are traceried.
The north door, which is blocked, has continuously
moulded arch and jambs much restored. The south
arcade consists of three bays with pointed arches of
three splayed orders, and octagonal piers with moulded
capitals and bases; it dates from the middle of the
14th century. Over the arcade are modern dormer
clearstory windows. The roof is of early 15th-
century date with plain timbers and curved struts.

8 In 1501 John Myles left 16s. 8d.
towards painting the image of our Lady
and to the painting of the rood 6s. 8d.
in Aspenden Church (P.C.C. 16 Moone).
In 1505 John Archer left money for
making a tabernacle of our Iady in the
chancel and for painting of Mary and

37 Holgrave).

John on both sides of the rood (P.C.C.
Thomas Goodriche in
1500 left 20s. for the repair of the church
and a bequest to an honest priest to sing
and pray for his soul and all Christian
souls for the space of a year in Aspenden
Church on Sundays and holy days and

23

Pian oF AsPpENDEN CHURCH

dated 1721. ‘The tower arch, which is of late 14th-
century date, is of two moulded orders; the jambs
have semi-octagonal shafts with moulded capitals and
bases. In the west wall is a small modern doorway.
The west window is almost entirely of modern
stonework. ‘The belfry windows are of single lights
and have been restored.

The font has an octagonal basin, the north, south,
east and west sides of which have traceried panels
containing blank shields. It is probably of late
15th-century work, but has been restored.

On the south side of the chapel is an altar-tomb
of Purbeck marble, the lower part decorated with
square cusped panels placed diagonally, each contain-
ing a shield with indents of brasses. Over the tomb
is a canopy supported on octagonal fluted shafts, and
having frieze and carved cresting and traceried soffit.

in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene
in Buntingford on workdays (P.C.C.
9g Moone). In 1508 Walter Mace left a
cow for painting the image of the crucifix
(P.C.C. 35 Adeane).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

At the back of the recess are brass kneeling figures of
Sir Robert Clifford, 1508, and his wife Elizabeth,
with an inscription underneath. On the knight’s
surcoat and on a shield behind him are his arms,
Checky or and azure a fesse gules quartering Gules
three rings or parted with Sable three crosses formy
or, with the difference of a ring, and on the
lady’s mantle and on the shield behind her Clifford
with its quarterings impaling Barley ; the brasses
retain traces of coloured inlay. Two other shields
below the figures and one on the canopy have dis-
appeared. On the moulded edge of the slab is a
brass marginal inscription, ‘Credo quod Redemptor
meus vivit et in novissimo die de terra surrecturus
sum et in carne mea videbo Deum Salvatorem meum.
Tedet animam meam vitae meae.’? On the east wall
of the chapel are tablets to Ralph Freeman, 1665, and
to Mrs. Elizabeth Freeman, 1634. On the south wall

by Robert Phelps, 1736; the fourth, fifth, sixth and
eighth by George Chandler, 1681; the seventh
recast in 1871.

The communion plate consists of a cup, 1632,
paten and almsdish, 1636, and modern silver paten
and flagon.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i) all
entries 1559 to 1709 ; (ii) baptisms and burials 1707
to 1812, marriages 1707 to 1753; (ill) marriages
1754 to 1812.

In 1237 presentation to the
church of Aspenden was made by
the Prior and brethren of the
Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England,*” who
were holding land in Aspenden in 1217-18.%
The donor of the church is unknown. The Hos-
pitallers held it until their dissolution,®® but do
not seem to have appropriated it. The advowson

ADVOWSON

2 sy al eiesh dy
vere ae aes Ai ; 5A;
Mt 2) Ee Poe A plate A Pep Se st
Fon tea i a ual! id & rep we WM CL rr a os
AC Bee caelts [MCPD per Ae PAT ie ae fic AA BS

AsPENDEN CHURCH FROM THE NorTH-gasT

of the aisle is a mural tablet to Sir Ralph Freeman,
Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1634, and his
brother William Freeman, 1623. On the tablet are
two copper busts ; that representing Sir Ralph wears
the SS collar of the lord mayor. On the north wall
of the nave are brass figures of a civilian and his wife,
with imperfect inscription, dated 1500. On the
south wall of the chapel on the outside is a tablet to
John Ward, 1665, and his wife Martha, 16465 ; it
was erected by Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury and
founder of the hospital in Buntingford, in memory of
his parents. Near the south doorway is an oak
alms-box, probably of early 17th-century date.

There are eight bells: the first, second and third

87 See Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of
Herts, iiiy 351.

83 Feet of F. Div. Co, 2 Hen. III,
no. 3.

59 Clutterbuck, loc.
Misc. Bka. vii, fol. 16
% Clutterbuck, loc.
91 Pat. 2 Jas. I, pt.
% Clutterbuck, loc.

24

was then held by the Crown™ until 1604, when
James I granted it to Sir Roger Aston and John
Grimsdich,®! probably in trust for Sir John Bro-
grave, kt., who presented to the church in 1607.92
It descended with the Brograves and Freemans (see
Hamells in Braughing), and then with the Yorkes
and Saviles (see Wakeley) % until recently acquired
by Mr. Austin E. Harris.

There was originally a church attached to the
manor of Berkesden, the site of which is still visible
in the fields north of Berkesden Green. In 1086 a
priest is mentioned as a tenant of the manor.%* No
record of any presentations remains, and the church
is not mentioned in the Taxatio of 1290 or the

cit.; Land Rey.
4+
cit,
xix, m. 8.
cit.

%® Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxxxv,
8; cccexci, 18 ; Recoy. R. Mich. 1657,
rot. 1265; Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.); Close,
25 Geo, ITI, pt. xxii, no. 8.

4 VCH. Herts. i, 3215.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Valor of 1535. It was probably served by the canons
of Holy Trinity, to whom the manor (q.v.) belonged.
It is said that on the division of the manor the church
remained attached to that part of the manor which
became annexed to Westmill, and that, on account of
its ruinous condition, it was pulled .'own by John
Brograve.®® The site of the church, however, lies
considerably north of Westmill.

The manor of Wakeley had a free chapel of its
own, so that it was extra-parochial of Aspenden.
The first reference to the church occurs towards the
end of the 13th century.°6 In 1291 the church was
valued at £4 135. 4¢.,°7 and at the same amount in
1428, but there were then said to be no inhabitants
in the parish.°8 The advowson always remained in
the hands of the lord of the manor.®? — Richard
Morley presented to the church in 1454, but after
this no further presentation is recorded. In 1535
the free chapel of St. Giles in Wakeley was valued at
£4. It was described in 1547 as being not far from
the parish church, and it was stated that the parson
had for a long time taken its revenues.? The rectory
afterwards descended with the manor (q.v.).

The following charities are regu-
CHARITIES lated by a scheme of the Charity
Commissioners of 30 November 1877,

as varied by a scheme of 21 July 1908, namely :—
1. The charity of John Boldero, founded by will
(date not stated), consisting of a dwelling-house and

BARKWAY

six cottages situate at the Folly in this parish, let on lease
for ninety-nine years from 24 June 1860, at £7 4 year.

2. Charity of William Freeman for bread, will,
1623, originally a rent-cnarge of £10 85., now £416
2% per cent. annuities, with the official trustees,
producing £10 8s. yearly.

3. Charity of Elizabeth Freeman, founded in 1630,
consisting of {£5 a year received from the Haber-
dashers’ Company, London.

4. Joan Sanbach, will, 1605, originally a rent-
charge of {2, now £80 2} per cent. annuities, with
the official trustees, producing {2 a year.

5. The Poor’s Land, consisting of 3 r. 15 p., part
of a field known as ‘Twelve Acres,’ let at £1 a year,
and an amount of tithe.

The distribution of the income derived from these
sources is made in bread and in gifts to the coal and
clothing clubs.

For the Free School see article on Schools. The
school and its subsidiary endowments are now regu-
lated by a scheme of the Board of Education, 5 April
1g10,

"The official trustees hold a sum of £1,460 2} per
cent. annuities, as ‘The Educational Foundation,’
producing £36 tos. yearly, comprising the charities
of Mary Cator (£320 stock), William Freeman and
Ralph Freeman school charity (£370 stock), Ralph
Freeman for clothing (£290 stock), and Bishop Seth
Ward’s charity for apprenticing (£480 stock).

BARKWAY

Bercheweig, Berchewei (xi cent.) ; Bercweie (xii—
xiii cent.) ; Berkwey (xiii cent.).

The parish of Barkway lies on the Hertfordshire
chalk hills in the extreme north-east of the county.
Its northern boundary is the Icknield Way, which
divides Hertfordshire from Cambridgeshire. East of
it are the parishes of Barley, co. Herts., and Langley,
co. Essex.

The soil in some parts is clay. Out of a total of
5,211 acres, about three-fifths are arable land, rather
more than one-fifth is pasture, and there are 555 acres
of woodland.! The names of the woods recall the
history of the parish. Scales Park is named from the
Lords Scaic:, who held a small fee in Barkway in
addition to the manor of Newsells? ; Earl’s Wood
takes its name from the Earls of Hereford, lords of
Nuthampstead ; and Rokey Wood, on the road to
Reed, preserves the name of a manor now held with
the main estate of Newsells.

The village lies on high ground near the River
Quin and forms a single street on the main road from
Ware to Cambridge. ‘The church lies to the west
of the street, and the house formerly known as Church
Farm and now as the Manor House, the residence of
Mr. J. W. Sworder, stands close to it on the south.
The Manor House was originally an L-shaped build-
ing, the main portion running east and west, with a
wing projecting southwards, but a wing added in the
1gth century has made the house almost square on
plan. It is of two stories with attics. It appears to

% Chauncy, Hist, Antig. of Herts. 119.
% Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 7214.

3” Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 425.
%8 Feud. Aids, ii, 457.

99 Clutterbuck, op.
100 Thid.

1 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 278+
2 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 81.

have been built early in the 17th century of timber
framing covered with plaster, part of which remains
on the north and west sides, but about the middle of
the century most of the external walls were rebuilt in
brick. The east end of the main building has a
mid-17th-century curvilinear gable, and in each
story is a five-light window of brick with cement-
covered mullions and square head with moulded
label. The lights to the lowest window have four-
centred arches ; the large window to the attic story
is divided by a transom. The south end of the wing
has a hipped roof; the end windows have brick
mullions, but they are not placed centrally in the
wing. All the roofs are tiled. The modern addition
has a gable on the south front to correspond with the
old east gable. There are two old chimney stacks,
each consisting of a row of detached octagonal brick
shafts united at their moulded bases and at their
capitals, which are plain oversailing courses star-
shaped on plan. The interior of the house has
been much modernized, but in some of the rooms is
early 17th-century panelling. In an upper room of
the south wing is a clunch fireplace with a flat four-
centred moulded arch having a square head over deco-
rated with billets; in the entrance hall is another
stone fireplace with four-centred moulded arch and
carved spandrels. Adjoining the house is an early
17th-century barn of nine bays with boarded sides,
There are several old tiled and thatched cottages in
the High Street of the village, probably dating from

3 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 100.
1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).
2 See below.

cit. ili, 349.

4 25 4

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the late 16th or early 17th century, but they have
been considerably modernized. On the east side,
opposite the entrance to the manor-house, is a larger
building, of timber framing covered with plaster, and
with tiled roof; it is probably of early 17th-century
date. In the front are three large overhanging gables
on carved brackets, under which are wide bay windows
of two stories ; the front porch is modern. There is
a wide late 17th-century staircase at the back of the
house, with heavy moulded and twisted balusters.
The central chimney has three plain octagonal shafts.
The interior has been much altered. At the north
end of the High Street is a Congregational chapel
built in 1886. Of an older chapel built about
1786 nothing remains except the graveyard.

The position of the village on the main road gave
it some importance. In the 16th and 17th cen-
turies it was accounted an intermediate stage between

Ware and Witchford Bridge or Cambridge and

A second fair was held at Nuthampstead on Thursday
before 24 June (St. John Baptist) and the three
following days.!! The market is extinct,!? and the
fairs were abolished in 1883./8 The Gild Hall or
Town House, devoted to the maintenance of an anni-
versary in the church, was purchased by Sir Robert
Chester after the dissolution of chantries.'4

Newsells Park, the seat of Mr. F. W. Woodhouse,
J.P., is situated about a mile north of the village.
The house was probably built towards the end of the
17th century by William or Thomas Newland, but
has later additions. ‘The older part consists of a
rectangular building with wings projecting south-
wards; about the middle of the 18th century an
addition was made on the east side, and in recent
times the space between the wings was inclosed to
form a hall one story in height. The house is of
three stories; the walls are of brick with moulded
stone cornice with brackets at the eaves ; the roofs are

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ScutH Eno or Main Street, Barkway

Hunsdon.’ There is record of several 15th and
16th-century inns, the ‘ Swan,’ the ‘G-orge’ and the
* Antelope.’ ®

The market-house was demolished and rebuilt as
a school-house or market-house about 1638.7 A
market-place existed early in the 13th century,®
and a Tuesday market was granted to the lord of
Newsells in 1270.9 At the same time was granted a
yearly fair to be held for eight days beginning on the
vigil of the feast of St. Mary Magdalene (i.e. 21 July).

slated and are hipped at the ends of the wings. On
the east side of the house is an addition of about the
middle of the 18th century in the Adam style, the
front wall forming a flat ellipse on plan. In the
billiard room in the west wing is some late 17th-
century panelling. In the dining room at the back,
which is a lofty room carried up two stories with an
enriched coved plaster ceiling, are some carved wood
festoons of fruit and flowers in the style of Grinling
Gibbons. Most of the principal rooms have carved

5 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 156.

‘In the 14th century the road was
evidently unsafe. John de Lancaster,
lord of Rokey Manor, was among the
men charged with robbing the Earl of
Pembroke at Barkway by night in 1347
(Cal. Pat. 1345-8, p. 307), and the
servants of Queen Isabella were attacked
at Barkway shortly afterwards (ibid.
1348-50, p. 243).

5 LT. and P. Hen. VII, xvi, 6 ix);
Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1644-5, By 170. mes

® Chan, Ing. p.m. 28 Hen. VI, no. 21 ;
Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 2 Edw. VI ; East.
6 Edw. VI; East. 1 Eliz.; Star Chamb.
Proc. Phil, and Mary, bdle. 6, no. 3;
Early Chan. Proc, bdle. 278, no. 42.

7 VCH. Herts, ii, 102.

® Cart, Mon, S. Johannis de Colecestria

26

(Roxburghe Club), 630, in a charter
as 3 between 1195 and 1238.
Cal. Chart. R. 1257-1300, p. 146.
io Whi, 57-1300, p. 14
" Lond. Gaz. 27 A 88
is pr. 1883, p. 2242.

17 It probably lost its importance with
the growth of the town of Royston.

18 Lond. Gaz. loc. cit.

M Pat. 7 Edw. VI, pt. iii, m. 25.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

chimney-pieces of marble or wood, and all the wood-
work of shutters and panelling has carved and enriched
mouldings. In the library on the east side the
chimney-piece and ceiling are enriched after the
Adam style. A rain-water head at the back bears
the date 1739. Newsells Bury adjoins Newsells
Park ; it is a very plain brick building, probably of
late 17th-century date,

Nuthampstead is a separate civil parish, but is
included in the ecclesiastical parish of Barkway. At
Nuthampstead in the house of Roger Nuers, son of
Ralph Nuers, lord of the manor, a private chapel was
founded in r141-51.!5 The chaplain presented by
Roger was to take an oath to the incumbent of
Barkway not to encroach upon the rights of the
mother church of Barkway.!® Before 1154 Ralph
Nuers gave to Colchester Abbey all right in Nut-
hampstead chapel.!7 It was still existing in 1539
when the farmer of the Rectory Manor paid a yearly
stipend to the chaplain celebrating ‘in the church
of Nuthampstead.’!8 It was excepted from the grant
of the Rectory Manor to William Gery ! and seems
to have fallen into decay. At Nuthampstead in
1617 was a capital messuage called ‘Cayles.’2° At
Parsonage Farm is a homestead moat now almost
levelled.

Arable fields slope away northwards and west-
wards towards the Icknield Way and the town of
Royston, part of which lay in Barkway parish until
1540.21 The common lands were inclosed about
1808.72 East of the village in and beyond the valley
of the Quin lie the woods and pastures of Great
Cockenach and Nuthampstead. Beyond these on the
Essex border are Scales Park and Little Cockenach.
There was a chantry chapel of St. Gunwal at Little
Cockenach in the 12th century. Near Little
Cockenach are brickworks, and chalk has been dug at
Nuthampstead and in the west of the parish near the
border of Reed.

At Periwinkle Hill, opposite Rokey Wood, is a
moated mound with two small baileys, rapidly
becoming level through constant ploughing.4 Near
Rokey was a windmill, now turned into a cottage.
This was probably Rokey Mill, which was standing,
though much dilapidated, in 1595.78 Another mill
(now also turned into a cottage) stood on the other
side of the road. No mill is mentioned in the Survey
of 1086, but a mill at Cockenach was in the custody
of the lord of Newsells about 1271.26

15 Cart, Mon. S. Johannrs de Colecestria

BARKWAY

The ‘hermitage’ in Barkway, held by Sir Robert
Chester at his death,?” may be Royston Hermitage,
which lay within this parish.28 Rushingwell Farm,
in the valley of the Quin, is evidently on the site of
the house called ‘ Rushcenwell’ owned by Sir Henry
Prannell, lord of Newsells.22 The tenement called
“Knyghtshankines’ about 1330 presumably took its
name from Peter Knightshank, a former occupier.%?

NEW SELLS MANOR (Neusela or
MANORS Nieweseles, xi—xii cent.®! ; Newesel or
Neweseles, xiii cent.) lies to the north
of the village on the main road. It was held before
the Conquest by a thegn of King Edward’s named
Aldred and by two sokemen, one of whom was
Aldred’s man and the other Karl Algar’s man. In
1086 Eudo Dapifer held it in demesne.*? Newsells
evidently reverted to the Crown after his death in
1120 and was granted by Henry I to Eustace Count
of Boulogne.*? The overlordship remained in the
honour of Boulogne,*4 the service due being that of
three halves of a knight’s fee.*®

Members of the Merk family were the immediate
tenants of the manor in the 12th century.*® A
Eustace de Merk was witness to the charter of Count
Eustace confirming Barkway Church to Colchester
Abbey,*” and as others of the same family were else-
where tenants of the Counts of Boulogne *8 it appears -
possible that he was already tenant of Newsells under
thecount. A Sir Eustace de Merk, kt., who was living
in the reign of Richard I,3° was styled ‘lord of New-
sells’ and founded a chapel at Royston within this
lordship.*? He is probably identical with the ‘ Eustace
de Oye, son of Henry de Merk,’ living in April 1190.
Sir Eustace de Merk, kt., was also styled ‘de
Rochester’ #? and was succeeded as tenant (apparently
within his own lifetime) by his nephew Ralph de
Rochester.48 This Ralph had been preceded by a
‘Baldwin de Rochester,’ 4* presumably the Baldwin
de Rochester who witnessed a charter of Henry
father of Eustace ‘ de Oye’ # and perhaps a son of the
same Henry. In this case Ralph would be son of
Baldwin de Rochester. Newsells was the ‘caput’
of the barony which Ralph de Rochester held of the
honour of Boulogne.4® Ralph’s son and heir William
de Rochester died shortly before 24 October 1249
and was succeeded by his brother Peter de Rochester,*”
parson of Rivenhall, co. Essex.48 Shortly before his
death Peter took the habit of a Knight ‘Templar.*?
On the Saturday before Ascension Day, 1255, as he

41 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria

(Roxburghe Club), 382.

16 Thid.

WV Thid. 175.

18 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, R. 976.

19, and P. Hen. VIII, xix (1), 610
(52).

20 Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 325,
no. 29.

1 V.C.H. Herts. iii, 253.

22 Under Priv. Act, 41 Geo. III, cap.
98 (not printed). The award is enrolled
on Com. Pleas Recoy. R. Trin. 10
Geo. IV, m. 23.

% See below under Little Cockenach.
For the name cf. ‘Wynnels Grove’ in
Barley.

4 Y.C.H. Herts, ii, 118.

5 Proc. of Ct. of Req. bdle. 33, no. 71.

26 Curia Regis R. 204, m. z.

7 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxx, 51.

38 VCH. Herts, iii, 254.

2 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxliii,
168,
30 De Banco R. 281, m. 32d.

31 For the spelling ‘Senseles’ (Harl.
MS. 7041, fol. 7) see V.C.H. Herts. iii,
260, n. 75.

39 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3294, 3296.

33 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 47; cf. Round, Peerage
and Family Hist. 163.

34 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 2734,
2746; Chan. Ing. p.m. 46 Edw. III (1st
nos.), no. 63.

35 Red Bk. of Exch, (Rolls Ser.), 502.

36 See below.

37 Cart, Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria,
loc. cit.

38 Round, Peerage and Family Hist.
156-7.

39 Rot. Cur. Regis (Rec. Com.), ii, 219.

4 Harl. MS. 7041, fol. 73 cf. V.C.H.
Herts. iii, 260.

27

(Roxburghe Club), 37, 513.

42 See Newberry in Weston, Broad-
water Hundred.

43 Harl. MS. 7041, fol. 7; cf. Red Bk.
of Exch. 502, 576; Testa de Nevill (Rec.
Com.), 2736, 2745.

44 Baldwin ‘de Rouec’ [ Rochester | gave
lands in Newsells to Coggeshall Abbey in
or before the time of Henry II (Cal. Pat.
1388-92, p. 79).

4 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 36.

46 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193. The
barony evidently consisted of five and
a half fees in Barkway and Newsells,
co. Herts., Rivenhall and Lawford, co.
Essex, and Eriswell and ‘ Cocclesworth’
(in Eriswell), co. Suffolk.

47 Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen, IIT, 383 Harl.
MS. 7041, fol. 75.

48 Chan. Ing. p.m. filerg,no.2. Ibid.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

lay on his death-bed he granted Newsells Manor to
his sister Alice widow of Robert de Scales,°° making
her swear to provide a chaplain to celebrate for his
soul, or in case of his recovery to compensate him
from her own lands in Cambridgeshire.*! He died
on the Ascension Day following.®? At the outbreak
of the Barons’ War Alice Scales was residing at
Newsells and was there robbed of goods and chattels
worth {£50 by the bailiff of Gilbert Earl of Glou-
cester.°2> In 1264 she subenfeoffed her youngest
son Roger Scales of Wetherden of the manor *4 ; but
in 1270 it was agreed between Roger and Alice that
the former’s tenure should be for life only. In
the same year Robert son of Roger’s elder brother
Robert, heir to the manor under the new settle-
ment,°© obtained a grant of a weekly market on
Tuesdays and an eight days’ fair beginning on the
vigil of the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.*? This
Robert was the first Lord Scales and married Isabel
Burnell,®* possibly a relative of Robert Burnell, Bishop
of Bath and Wells, the chancellor and adviser of
Edward I. Roger Scales transferred to the bishop
his life interest in Newsells Manor 5? before the end
of the year 1271.°°

In 1275 the jurors of Edwinstree Hundred re-
turned that the whole barony formerly held by Ralph
de Rochester had been alienated since his time, that
the ‘caput’ (Newsells) was in the hands of Burnell,
and that the heirs of the barony had nothing

whereof they could answer to
the king.®! In January 1279-
80 Robert de Weston and his eReees

wife Hawise, who was niece
of Peter de Rochester,® re-
leased to the bishop all their
right and that of Sir Robert
Scales in Newsells Manor.®
In 1292 Burnell conveyed his
interest to Robert Lord Scales
and Isabel his wife.*4 Isabel Pata
survived her husband and held veal ore
the manor for life.°° About
1315 Robert son and heir of
Robert and Isabel reserved Newsells in making settle-
ment of other estates on his wife Egclina.’ His son
Robert third Lord Scales granted a life interest in
the manor to Sir Robert Thorp, kt.’ Upon the
death of the latter, Newsells reverted to Roger Lord
Scales, son of the third baron.®8 He was succeeded

Gules six

by his son Robert fifth Lord Scales, who styled
himself ‘lord of Newsells’ in his will dated 10 May
1400.79 His widow Elizabeth, afterwards wife of
Sir Henry Percy of Athol, kt.,71 had a life interest
in Newsells.7? After her death, 6 January 1439-40,
it reverted to Thomas Lord Scales, younger son and
ultimate heir of her first husband.’* In the follow-
ing September he had protection for his tenants at
Newsells during his absence in France,’4 where he
distinguished himself as seneschal of Normandy.’
His only daughter and heir Elizabeth married Sir
Anthony Wydville (afterwards Earl Rivers), brother-
in-law of Edward IV.76

In 1466 Newsells was entailed on Elizabeth Scales
and her husband,’” who became Lord Scales in her
right.”® She died childless 1 September 1473,79
and Earl Rivers endeavoured to retain in his own
family Newsells and her other lands by bequeath-
ing them to his brother Sir Edward Wydville.8°
The earl was beheaded by the partisans of the
Duke of Gloucester, who as Richard III granted
Newsells to his kinsman John
Duke of Norfolk, at first dur-
ing pleasure,*! later in tail-
male.? The duke was a
descendant of Sir Robert
Howard, kt., grandson of
Margaret Scales, one of the
daughters of Robert third Lord
Scales ; but John Vere, thir-
teenth Earl of Oxford, who
was descended from an elder
grandson of the same Mar-
garet, was co-heir to the
Scales inheritance with
William Tyndall, the repre-
sentative of Margaret’s sister Elizabeth.83 Oxford
had been attainted before the death of Earl Rivers,
but was restored in October 1485.84 With Tyndall
he received the procceds of Newsells ® after the
battle of Bosworth, in which he commanded the
supporters of the Earl of Richmond (Henry VII),®
and Henry assigned this and other manors to him in
a partition of the Scales estate.87 His widow Elizabeth
held Newsells in dower.*® His nephew and heir
male, John fourteenth Earl of Oxford, died without
issue in 1526," and the reversionary right to New-
sells contingent upon the death of the Dowager
Countess Elizabeth was assigned to the heir male,

Vere. Quarterly gules
and or with a molet
argent in the quarter,

*° Chan. Ing. p.m. file 19, no. 23 cf.
Excerpta e Rot. Fir. (Rec. Com.), ii, 79,
326; Feet of F. Herts. 54 Hen. III,
no. 617.

*1 Chan. Ing. p.m. file 19, no. 2; Cal.
Pat. 1247-58, p. 437. At the same
time he granted Rivenhall Manor to her
son Robert (Excerpta e Rot. Fin. [Rec.
Com. ], ii, 326).

82 Chan. Ing. p.m. file 19, no. 2.

§3 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 168.

54 Feet of F. Herts. 48 Hen. III,
no. 575; cf. Chester Waters, Chesters <f
Chicheley, 254.

5 Feet of F. Herts,
no. 617.

56 Ibid. ; cf. Excerpta e Rot. Fin, (Rec.
Com.), ii, -0, 326; Chester Waters, loc.
cit.

57 Cal. Chart, R, 1257-1300, p. 146.

S Evidence in Scales peerage case

54 Hen. III,

quoted by Chester Waters, Chesters of

Chicheley, 254. She is said to have been

niece of the chancellor (Page, Suff.
Traveller, 555).

59 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193 ; Assize
R. 323, m. id. 465.

6° In 1271 Burnell impleaded Ivo le
Messer and others for breaking into
Cockenach Mill, of which he had the
custody (Curia Regis R. 204, m. z, 22).

61 Hund, R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

6 Assize R. 323, m. 1d,

63 Coram Rege R. 51, m. 4d.

64 Feet of F. Herts, 20 Edw. I, no. 281 q
cf. Feud, Aids, ii, 431.

®5 Cal. Close, 1302-7, p. 294.

Ing. a.q.d. file 116, no. 153 Feud.
Aids, i', 439.

® Chan. Ing. pm, 46 Edw. III (1st
nos.), no. 63.

© Thid.

6 Close, 19 Ric. II, m. 34.5 Feud.
Aids, ii, 444.

9 Nicolas, Test, Verusts, LG T

| G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vii, 72.

28

7? Chan. Inq. p.m. 18 Hen. VI, no. 38.
os Ibid, ; cf. G.E.C, loc. cit.

4 Cal. Pat. 1436-41, p. 467.

75 G.E.C. loc. cit. :

76 Ibid.

7 Feet of F. Div. Co. 6 Edw. Iv,

no. 375 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), i, 37.

i G.E.C. loc. cit.

Chan. Ing. p.m. 13 Edw. 1V, no.

© Test. Pak, oo. ii

5! Cal. Pat. 1476-85, Pp. 365.

®2 Ibid. 497.

53 Chester Waters, Chesters of Chicheley,
254-5. 4 Parl. R. vi, 281.

5 Waters, Chesters of Chicheley, 256.

6 G.E.C, Complete Peerage, vi, 168.

87 Waters, loc. cit.; Chan. Ing. p.m.
(Ser. 2), xxviii, 68. His signature exists
at the foot of a lease of the tenement
called ‘Whelers’ in Barkway, 22 July
1509 (Add. Chart. 16572),

® Ct. of Wards D. box 144, 00, a

89 G.E.C, loc. cit.

BarKway VILLAGE FROM THE SOUTH

Barkway : Orv House

IN Hicu Srreer

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Tohn fifteenth Earl of Oxford, in March 1531-2.9
Elizabeth died 6 November 1537.9! John son and
heir of the last-named earl had livery of Newsells
and the other estates of his father in 1540.2 His
son Edward, the seventeenth earl, through whose
extravagance was dispersed a considerable portion of
the Oxford estate, sold Newsells Manor to Henry
Prannell, alderman and vintner of London, in 1579."

Prannell bequeathed two-thirds of the manor to his
wife Anne with remainder to his son Henry. In
1597 the latter made a settlement in favour of the
heirs of his wife Frances daughter of Thomas
(Howard) Viscount Bindon, ‘at the importunity of
her great friends,’ thus disinheriting his sisters Joan
wife of Robert Brooke and Mary wife of John
Clarke.9° With Brooke he had recently been in
dispute as to the lease of a windmill and meadow
called ‘Rookey Meade’ in Barkway.%’ His widow
married Edward Earl of Hertford 8 and later Ludovic
(Stuart) Duke of Richmond and Lennox. Mary
Clarke and the daughters of Joan Brooke attempted
to recover their reversionary interest in the manor,
proving in the Court of Wards a later settlement by
which Henry Prannell had limited the title of his wife
to a life interest.°° After the death of the Duchess
of Richmond in 1639 1 Lord Maltravers, who had
married Elizabeth sister of Ludovic Duke of Rich-
mond and was son of Thomas (Howard) Earl of
Arundel and Surrey, entered upon Newsells ‘by
some gift of the Duchess.’1 His son Thomas Earl
of Arundel, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, was in
possession on 13 September 1652. Apparently in
1653 the manor was in the possession of Robert
Slingsby,’ son of Sir Guildford
Slingsby, kt. In March 1660-1
he was created a baronet and
became comptroller of the
navy.+ He is said to have
married a daughter of Robert
Brooke® and to have pur-
chased the rights vested in the
heir of Mary Clarke. He was
a Royalist, and in compound-
ing for his estates in 1652
had stated that the Earl of
Arundel detained from him
two manors in Barkway.’ His
second wife Elizabeth Rad-
clyffe survived him,’ and is said to have sold the

Ermine a

CHESTER.
chief sable with a griffon

passant argent therein.

BARKWAY

eldest son of Sir Edward Chester, the lord of Nut-
hampstead.?

Newsells Park and demesne lands were purchased
late in the 17th century by William Newland, who
transferred them to his son Thomas.!0 They were
subsequently purchased by Rear-Admiral Sir John
Jennings, who served under Rooke at Gibraltar
and was for many years Admiral of the White.!?
His son George Jennings reunited Newsells Park
with the manorial rights by acquiring the latter
from Edward Chester, grandson of the former pur-
chaser.13 George Jennings was succeeded by his
daughter Hester Elizabeth wife of John (Peachey),
second Lord Selsey.4 She died 19 April 1837, and

O Ol psa
(\

Jenninos. Argent a
fesse gules between three
plummets sable.

Azure a

Pracury.
lion ermine with a forked
tail and a quarter argent
with a pierced molet gules
therein,

her only surviving son, Henry John third Lord
Selsey, died childless in the year following. The
estate was inherited by his sister the Hon. Caroline
Mary wife of the Rev. Leveson Vernon-Harcourt.
She also died without issue in 1871 and the pro-
perty passed under the terms of Lady Selsey’s will to
Hugh Rose Lord Strathnairn, the eldest surviving
son of Dame Frances Rose, legatee of the contingent
remainder. In 1859 his sister Frances Dowager
Countess of Morton, to whom the reversion after
the death of Lord Strathnairn and his brothers (they
having no issue) belonged, broke the entail and after-
wards by her will left the Newsells estate in trust for
sale, an option to purchase being reserved to her
second son George Henry Douglas. This he exer-
cised in 1886, the year after the death of Field-Marshal
Lord Strathnairn.4® In 1897 the manors were bought
from him by Mr. Alexander Crossman of Orgreave
Hall, Lichfield, who afterwards sold the estate of

manorial rights of Newsells to Edward Chester,

% Ct. of Wards D. box 144, no. 1, 2

91 G.E.C. loc. cit.

*2Ct. of Wards Misc. Bks. dixxviii,
fol. 378; cf. Feet of F. Div. Co. East.
2 Edw. VI.

93 Camden, Elizabeth (ed. 1717), 94.

4 Feet of F. Herts, East. 21 Eliz. ;
Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. v. A settlement had
been made upon the earl’s marriage with
Anne daughter of Lord Burghley (Recov.
R. Hil. 14 Eliz. rot. 704).

"% Pat, 32 Eliz. pt. xxi, m. 27.

% Chan, Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxliii,
168; cf, Recov. R. East. 24 Eliz. rot.
46; Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 398,
no. 148.

7 Ct. of Req. bdle. 33, no. 71.

98 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxliii, 168.

99 Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 398,
no. 148; cf. Feet of F. Herts, Trin. 17
Jas. I.

100 Dict, Nat. Biog.

1 Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2),
no. 148.

2 Cal. Com. for Comp. 1890.

8 Ct. Bk. in possession of Messrs.
Crossman and Prichard.

4 Pat. 13 Chas. II, pt. iii, no. 7.

5 Foster, Yorks. Pedigrees. She is styled
‘Elizabeth.’ Two of the daughters of
Robert and Joan Brooke were Frances
and Katherine (Chan. Proc, [Ser. 2],
bdle. 398, no. 148).

6 Chauncy, Hist. Antsq. of Herts. 102.
In 1682 the Duke of Norfolk made
settlement of the manor (Com. Pleas
D. Enr. Trin. 34 Chas. I, m. 2), but
there is no further evidence of any
claim put forward by the heirs of Lord
Maltravers.

7 Cal. Com. for Comp. 1890.

8 G.E.C. Baronetage, iii, 177.

zy

ddle. 398,

Newsells, Nuthampstead, Berwick,

Hedleys and

® Chauncy, loc. cit.

10 Thid.

1 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts.
iii, 3653; cf. Exch. Dep. Mich. 25
Geo. II, no, 3.

1 Dict. Nat. Bog.

13 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 363; cf.
Recov. R. Trin. 7 Geo. II, rot. 2393 13
Geo. II, rot. 115.

4 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vii, 109 ;
cf. Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 29 Geo. III.
In 1786 a quitclaim of a moiety of the
manor was made by Richard Vachell and
his wife Margaret to William Chamber-
layne with warranty against Margaret’s
heirs (ibid. Trin. 26 Geo, III). It has
not been ascertained what their interest
in the manor was.

18 Abstract of title communicated by
Messrs. Crossman and Prichard.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Water Andrews and the Rectory Manor to Mr.
F. W. Woodhouse, but who still holds the manorial
rights. 16

In 1287 Robert Burnell claimed gallows, amend-
ment of assize of bread and ale and view of frank-
pledge at Newsells.!’ Free warren in Barkway was
granted to Robert first Lord Scales in 1270,)° and in
1299 he complained that Walter de Barley and certain
others, chiefly from the neighbourhood of Barley, had
broken his warren at Newsells and hunted and carried
away his deer.!9 It is not clear whether the warren
made by the first Lord Scales was Newsells Park or
the wood called Scales Park which lies at some distance
from Newsells on the borders of Langley, co. Essex.°?
Scales Park or Wood was alienated from the manor
of Newsells by John sixteenth Earl of Oxford. He
sold it early in 1348 to Robert Chester,?! who had
already acquired Nuthampstead and Cockenach. The
earl reserved to himself an annual rent of £10.”

A small holding in Barkway was in 1086 in the
hands of two men who held of Harduin ‘de Scalers.’
Two sokemen, the one of Earl Algar, the other of
Eldred, had held this land before the Conque:t.?4
Possibly these were the same sokemen who had held
a part of Newsells.-!

NUTHAMPSTEAD BURY or EARLSBURY
(Nothamstede, xii-xiv cent.; Northamstede, xili—xiv
cent. ; Northampstede, xiv-xv cent. ; Nothampsted,
xv cent.; Northamsted afas Erlesbury,?> xvi-xvii
cent. ; Nuthampstead Bury a/as Earlsbury a/ias Nusted
or Nutsted, xviii cent.) lies to the east of Barkway
village. It is identical with the 3 hides in Barkway
held of Geoffrey de Mandeville as a ‘manor’ by a
certain Hugh in 1086. It had previously been held
by two men of Asgar the Staller.6 The tenant in
the fifth decade of the 12th century was a certain
Ralph Nuers (‘de Noeriis’), whose son Roger built
a chapel ‘in his court’ at Nuthampstead between
r1q4t and 1151.77 At this time Ralph was still
living,?® and he apparently survived his son, as in
a grant of pasture-land to the abbey of St. John,
Colchester, he makes mention of his daughters as his
heirs.2® Ralph had also given to the abbey a carucate
of land in the east of the parish abutting on Clavering
Park.2° Ernulph son of Geoffrey first Earl of Essex
deprived the abbey of this land, which was restored
by order of his brother the second earl.3!_ Nuthamp-
stead had probably reverted to the overlords before
this time. It was certainly held by Humphrey de
Bohun Earl of Hereford and Essex, son of Maud
sister and heir of William de Mandeville Earl of

Essex. He gave it with other lands to his younger
son Henry.32 Humphrey Earl of Hereford and

Bonun. dzure a bend
argent cotised or between
sex lions or.

MAnDEVILLE. Quar-
terly or and gules,

Essex, grandson of the last-named earl, warranted
the manor for life to his uncle Henry in 1278.58
In 1315 his grand-nephew Humphrey Earl of
Hereford and Essex gave the manor to Henry the
Chamberlain as a pledge for the surrender of his
manor of Denny, co. Cambs. Nuthampstead was
evidently recovered by Earl Humphrey, who was
killed at Boroughbridge in 1322,°° or by his son
John, who succeeded his father. He let the manor
in 1335 for nine years to the Abbot and convent of
Walden, co. Essex,3® who were lords of Cockenach
Manor (q.v.).

Upon Earl John’s death in January 1335-6 his
right in Nuthampstead Manor descended to _ his
brother Humphrey.3? He obtained from the Prioress
of Campsey release of a rent of 100s. yearly,?8 which
had been charged on the manor since the time of
Earl Humphrey, his great-great-grandfather.2® He
died 15 October 1361, and was succeeded by his
nephew Humphrey,‘? who died 16 January 1372-3,
leaving as heirs two daughters, Eleanor, aged fourteen,
who was already married to the king’s uncle, Thomas
of Woodstock, and Mary,‘*! who afterwards married
Henry Earl of Derby, son of John of Gaunt, but
died in 1394 before his accession to the throne as
Henry IV.4? Earl Humphrey’s widow held one-
third of Nuthampstead in dower.42 Thomas of
Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, held one-third in
right of his wife and the other third from 1396
onwards by grant of Henry then Earl of Derby, who
became Duke of Hereford in right of his wife.46 The
Duke of Gloucester died in Septeniber 1397,!° and
his widow retained her third until her death in 1400.47
In 1407, after Henry’s accession to the throne, he
agreed with Anne formerly wife of Edmund Earl of

16 Inform. from Messrs. Crossman and
Prichard.

W Assize R. 323, m. 45, 325.

18 Cal, Chart, R. 1257-1300, p. 146.

19 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301, p. 462.

20 There was woodland for 100 swine
at Newsells in 1086 (V.C.H. Herts. i,
3296).

41 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 1 Edw. VI;
Pat. 1 Edw. VI, pt. v, m. 21,

73 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 24 Eliz.

33 VCH. Herts. i, 3395.

% Thid. 3294.

35 The name ‘Erlesbury’ was applied
to the manor-house in 1422 (Duchy of
Lanc. Mins, Accts, bdle. 42, no, 820).

% V.C.H. Herts. i, 331.

% Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 382; cf. Red Bh. of
Exch, (Rolls Ser.) 345

% Cart, Mon, S. Johannis de Colecestria,
loc. cit.

™ Ibid. 174. The charter was con-
firmed by Fulk Nuers and Rodbert le
Muine husband of Clarice (possibly one
of Ralph's daughters). Another daughter
may have been Margaret wife of Roger
Bernard (ibid. 175).

89 Thid. 41. 31 Ibid. 176.

* Assize R. 323, m. 1d.3 Hund, R.
(Rec. Com.), i, 193.

3 Assize R. 323, m.1d.; Feet of F.
Div. Co. 7 Edw. I, no. 1.

4 Cal. Pat, 1313-1 - 283-4;
Duchy of Lanc. a D. hor: ae
55 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, iv, 215.
®6 Duchy of Lanc. Anct. D. L 1759.

& Chan. Ing. p.m. 10 Edw. III (1st
nos.), no. 62; Escheators’ Enr. Accts,
(Exch. L.T.R.), 9 Edw. III, no. 2.

30

3 Duchy of Lanc. Deeds in Boxes,
box A, no. 57. It was possibly this Earl
Humphrey who exchanged Nuthampstead
for life with Humphrey de Verdun in
return for Depden Manor, co. Suffolk
(Duchy of Lanc. Anct. D. L 1471).

39 Assize R. 323, m. 1d.

# Chan. Ing. p.m. 37 Edw. III, no, 10.

‘lIbid. 3 Ric. I], no. 12. Their
father had granted a life interest in the
manor to Sir John de Gildesburgh, kt.

*? G.E.C. Complete Peerage, iv, 215.

aoe of Lanc. Misc. Bks. xvi (3),
p- 78.

= Chan. Ing. p.m. 21 Ric. II, no. 29

“© Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 13 3 Close, 21
Ric. I, pt. ii, m. 7; cf. Duchy of Lane.
sari — LS 170,

‘6 Chan. Ing. p.m. 21 Ric. II, no. 29.

4 Ibid. 1 Hen IV, no. 49. : :

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Stafford, and then of William Bourchier, the only sur-
viving daughter and co-heir of Thomas of Woodstock
by his wife Eleanor, that one-third of the manor should
be retained in dower by the Dowager Countess of
Hereford, one-third by William Bourchier, and one-
third by the king in right of his former wife.48 This
arrangement was altered in 1421, when partition of
the Bohun inheritance was made between the Countess
of Stafford and Henry V, as son and heir of Henry IV
by Mary Bohun. The whole manor of Nuthampstead
was then included in the king’s share of the estate,*®
and in November 1422 Nuthampstead was assigned
to Queen Katherine, widow of Henry V, as part of
her dower.5° It formed in succession part of the
jointure of Margaret, queen of Henry VI,®! and

Karaerine of France.
Azure three fleurs de lis

Marearet of Anjou.
OLD FRANCE with a
or. border gules.

EvizapeTHWYvviLte,
Argent a fesse and a
quarter gules.

Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV.5? The latter was
deprived of her dower by Richard III.*%

In the May following his accession Henry VII let
the manor to John Grey for seven years.*4 The
king’s tenants disputed the power of the Prior of
Royston to inclose certain ground over which they
had common rights in 1503.55 In 1545 Robert
Chester and his wife Katherine, who had already
purchased Royston Priory Manor with Cockenach in
Barkway,°® acquired from the Crown the manor of

48 Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. xvi (3),
p- 78; cf. Chan. Ing. p.m. 4 Hen. IV,
no. 41. 49 Parl. R. iv, 1362.

°° Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. xviii
(2), 49. 51 Parl, R. v, 118.

52 Feet of F. Div. Co. Edw. IV, file

- hampstead (q.v.).
76, no. 102.

37 Edw. WI, no. 10. The statement,
made in 1380, that the manor was held
of the Earl of Oxford was probably an
error (ibid. 3 Ric. II, no. 12). The
earl was overlord of Cockenach in Nut-

6 Cart, Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria

BARKWAY

Nuthampstead.*” The latter descended in the Chester
family to Edward Chester (see Royston), son of Sir
Robert Chester who died in 1640.5 His son
Edward bought Newsells Manor. Nuthampstead
passed with Newsells from the Chesters to the Jennings
and has since descended with Newsells (q.v.).

The manor was always accounted a part of the
honour of Mandeville and parcel of the earldom of
Essex.5® A capital messuage existed between 1141
and 1151, when Roger son of Ralph Nuers set up a
private chapel there. A house existed, probably on
the same site, in January 1335-6.% The old hall at
Earlsbury was pulled down and a new hall built largely
of timber grown within the manor in 1422.5 The
lords of Nuthampstead (sometimes styled Nuthamp-
stead Barkway) ® held view of frankpledge in Barkway,
but in 1347 the common fine was paid to the lord of
Nuthampstead, while the lord of Rokey received the
amercements.®4

The manor of BERWICK in Nuthampstead (Bere-
wyk, Berewyke by Barkway, xiv—xvi cent. ; Barwike,
xvi-xviii cent.) was held of Great Hormead,® of
which its name denotes it an outlying member.
Hence it may be the hide and a half of land in
Barkway held of Edgar Atheling by Goduin in
1086,®* since Goduin also held of Edgar the
manor of Great Hormead.*” The holding of John
de Sanford, lord of Hormead, early in the 13th
century included Nuthampstead, held with Hormead
(q.v.) by serjeanty of the Queen’s Chamber." About
1240 the abbey of Colchester made an agreement with
the priory of Blackmore as tothe tithe from the demesne
lands of Sir Gilbert de Sanford, kt., in Nuthampstead.®
Alice daughter of Gilbert de Sanford married Robert
de Vere fifth Earl of Oxford.”? Upon the marriage
of their daughter Joan with William son of John de
Warenne Earl of Surrey they settled the ‘manor of
Nuthampstead’ on William and Joan and the heirs of
Joan, saving to themselves a life interest if William
and Joan should predecease them.”1 William de
Warenne was slain in a tournament at Croydon 15
December 1285 ; his widew died in 1293.7? The
manor then reverted to the Earl of Oxford and his
wife for life, in accordance with the terms of the settle-
ment.”3 His wife survived him and died 7 Septem-
ber 1317.’4 The manor evidently reverted to John
Earl of Surrey, the only son and heir of William and
Joan de Warenne. His heir was Richard Fitz Alan
Earl of Arundel, son of his sister Alice.”®> The Earl
of Arundel granted ‘the manor of Berwick’ for life
to Peter Shank.76 In 1376 the earl’s son Richard
Ear] of Arundel, one of the Lords Appellant, alienated

66 Y.C.H. Herts. i, 34.14.

§7 See under Great Hormead.

88 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 507.

69 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 569.

70 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 164.

Feet of F. Div. Co. 13 Edw. I,

53 Stat. 1 Ric. III, cap. 15.

54 Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. xxi,
p- 170.

55 Duchy of Lanc. Entry Bk. of Orders
and Decrees, iii, fol. 227.

56 See V.C.H. Herts. iii, 260.

57 Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. xxii,
217.
58 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxx, §1 5
elxxxvi, 8 5 ccccxciv, 65.

59 Ibid. 10 Edw. III (18t nos.), no. 62 5

(Roxburghe Club), 382.

6! Chan. Ing. p.m. 10 Edw. III (rst
nos.), no, 62.

6 Duchy of Lanc. Mins. Accts. bdle.
42, no. 820,

6 Duchy of Lanc. Ct. R. bdle. 77,
no. 999. Possibly this was to distinguish
it from Berwick in Nuthampstead.

64 Ibid. bdle. 64, no. 805..

6 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxviii, 69 ;
xxxviii, 25.

31

no. 19.

72 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vii, 328.

3 Cal. Close, 1288-96, p. 336.

74 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 164.

75 Ibid. vii, 329.

76 Cal, Pat. 1396-9, p. 578. Appa-
rently the manor of Berwick held by
Henry Duke of Lancaster (see Chauncy,
op. cit. ror) lay in Wiltshire (Chan.
Ing. pm. 35 Edw. III [1st nos.],
no. 122).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

his life interest in the manor to John Chamberlain,
who transferred his rights to John Boston of Boston.

LY

Warenne. Checky or

and azure.

Firzaran. Gules a
lion argent.

Boston’s title was extended by the Crown to a life
interest § May 1398, shortly after the forfeiture of
the earl’s estates.””7 These were restored in October
1400 to Thomas son of the late earl,’* and he gave
Berwick to his messenger (uncius) John Rygoll for
life.” The latter was still living in July 1416.°°
The earl had died 13 October 1415, leaving as heirs
three sisters.

About the year 1439 Berwick was in the possession
of Sir John Fray, chief baron of the Exchequer, who
acquired a considerable estate
in the county by purchase and
probably bought this manor
also."! It was afterwards held
by Anne wife of Richard
Southwell, who in 1475
joined with her husband in a
conveyance to Henry and
Robert Colet and others and
to the heirs of Henry,*? who
was afterwards Lord Mayor
of London. Sir Henry’s son
and heir John Colet, the
famous Dean of St. Paul’s,®*
gave the manor in trust to 70”
the Mercers’ Company for his
chantry of Our Lady Patroness of Boys near his
school in St. Paul’s Churchyard.**| The manor was
evidently acquired by William Gery of Barkway and
Bushmead after the suppression of Colet’s chantry.
Gery conveyed it in 1552 to William Plattfote of
Beccles,*> who evidently alienated to William Hilling-
ton, since in 1553 the latter sold to Thomas Hanchett
of Albury, a rent of £8 being reserved to the school.8&

Hanchett sold in 1555 to George Hadley and his

Corer. Sable a cheve-
ron between three hinds
tripping argent with three
rings argenton the cheve-

Hadley transferred his rights to Wimond Cary,
who sold in 1595 to Henry Prannell, gentleman.
The manor has since descended with Newsells.
Cockenach (Cochenac, xi cent. ; Cochenach, xii
cent. ; Cokenhache, xiii cent.; Cockenach, xiv—
xvi cent.; Cockenhach or Cockenhatch, xvi—xviii
cent.) is an extensive district lying partly between
Newsells and Nuthampstead, partly to the east of
Nuthampstead on the Essex border. In 1086
Ansfrid held of Geoffrey de Bech 1 hide 12 acres in
Cockenach, and the same Ansfrid held of Geoffrey
zo acres in the neighbouring parish of Barley.®°
Algar, one of Wigar’s men, had held the land at
Cockenach before the Conquest.°! A part of this
land was apparently LITTLE COCKENACH OR
COCKENACH IN NUTHAMPSTEAD.” The
‘manor of Cockenach’ subsequently came into the
possession of Ralph the Butler (‘ Pincerna’), together
with other lands which had been held by Geoffrey
de Bech.®8 Roger Burun held these of Ralph by
service of two knights’ fees. Between 1120 and
1135 the latter subenfeoffed Aubrey de Vere of
them until Robert Burun should have paid to Vere
£32 due to Ralph the Butler. Robert was then to
enter upon the lands and the right of Vere and his
heirs was to be limited to a mesne lordship between
Burun and Butler.4 A Robert Burun, possibly the
Robert mentioned above, with his wife Beatrice,
gave to the Abbot and to the convent of St. Gunwal
at Montreuil 80 acres of land at Cockenach, upon
which was built a chapel, while Robert Levegar and
his son gave to the abbey the croft and house
(mansio) in which the chapel was built.% It is said
that the abbot built (possibly rebuilt) the chapel as a
chantry for the souls of all the faithful departed.%
Robert Abbot of Montreuil acquired lands of the
fee of Earl William (of Essex, d. 1227), lord of
Nuthampstead, and he alienated these with Cock-
enach to the abbey of St. James, Walden, about
1221.97 Roger Burun, son of Robert, in confirming
to Walden Abbey ‘the place called Cockenach with
the chapel of St. Gunwal,’ agreed to keep the chapel
in repair and to provide vestments.%® By 1343 the
chantry had long ceased to exist,®® but the monks of
Walden retained their land in Cockenach and Nut-
hampstead! until the surrender of their house to
the Crown in March 1537-8.! Early in the 16th
century some part at least of their land was let to the
Priors of Royston.? Cockenach was granted with
WaldenA bbey in 1538 to Sir Thomas Audley, kt., lord

wife Mercy.§7

7 Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 578.

73 Thid. 1399-1401, p. 134.

9 Chan. Ing. p.m. 4 Hen. V, no. 54.

8 Tbid.

‘.Y.C.H. Herts. iii, 229, 266, 273 ;
Ing. a.q.d. file 448, no. 22.

Feet of F. Herts. 15 Edw. IV,
no. 43. The identity of Anne Southwell
is unknown. Possibly she was Fray’s
daughter who is elsewhere styled ‘ Agnes’
(cf. V.C.H. Herts. iii, 229, 266, 273).

“Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xix, 31;
Exch. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), file 295, no. 2.

4 L. and P. Hen. VIL, i, 4659 3 Chan.
Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxviii, 69 ; xxxviii, 25.

© Com. Pleas D. Enr. Hil. 6 & 7
Edw. VI, m. 3.

8° Ibid. Mich. 1 Mary, m. 16 d.

87 Feet of F. Herts, East. 1 & 2 Phil.
and Mary. William Sterne and his wife

Early in the year 1584 George

Bridget were parties to this conveyance ;
cf. ibid. Mich. 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary.

88 Ibid. Hil. 26 Eliz.

8 Ibid. East. 37 Eliz. In the same
year John Oliver and his wife Frances
conveyed their right in the manor to
Prannell (ibid. East. 37 Eliz.).

9 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3335.

91 Ibid.

2 cf, Duchy of Lanc. Ct. R. bdle. 775
no. 999, where it is stated that the lands
of the abbey of Walden lay within the
‘leet and lordship’ of Nuthampstead.

% viz. Hailey and Bengeo near Hert-
ford (Harl. Chart. 46, I 30; see V.C.H.
Herts. iii, 417, 425-6),

* Harl. Chart. 46, I 30.

% Dugdale, Mon. iv, 151.

% Cal. Close, 1343-6, p. 1.

% Harl. MS. 3697, fol. 194. In com-

aa

chancellor, by whom a settlement in tail was made

pensation the abbey at Montreuil re-
ceived 15 marks and a pension of ros,
which was afterwards released (ibid.
fol. 13).

*8 Ibid. fol. 194. John Burun gave
to Colchester Abbey land in Cockenach
in a place called Ryshill next the
land of Walden Abbey which ‘Robert
the Chaplain of Bokesworth’ formerly
held (Cart, Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
[Roxburghe Club], 236-7).

*® Cal. Close, 1343-6, p. 1. This
return is probably in error in stating
that Burun held of the Mandeville fee.

100 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 14.

1VACH. Essex, ii, 114.

? Duchy of Lanc. Ct. R. bale. m7
no. 999.

SL. and P. Hen. VII, xiii (1), 1185
(23).

Barkway Cuurcu: Tue Norru Arcade

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

in the same year. It was evidently purchased by
Sir Robert Chester 5 and united to the ‘manor of
Cockenach,’ which had belonged to Royston Priory.

The latter is probably identical with GREAT
COCKENACH or COCKENACH in BARKIF AY.
The Prior of Royston acquired from William de
Notton in 1354 a messuage, land and services in
Cockenach.6 They had been given to Notton by
John Earl of Oxford,’ to whom they had escheated
by reason of the felony of Richard Bromley, a former
tenant.8 They may be identical with the quarter
knight’s fee in Cockenach held by William Berking
in 1303,° since in 1309 William Berking and his
daughter Idonea sought to replevy certain lands in
Barkway against Alan son of Walter Bromley.1°
Possibly the lands acquired by Royston Priory were
that part of the holding of Geoffrey de Bech which
Robert Burun had not included in his gift to the
abbey of Montreuil.!!

The possessions of Royston Priory at the Dissolu-
tion included the manor of Cockenach, lands called
Bermondseyes !? and Margeryes in Nuthampstead and
other lands in Cockenach set aside to the use of the
sacristan.}3 ‘These were purchased, together with the
site of the priory, by Robert Chester in 1540.14
Cockenach Manor then descended with Nuthamp-
stead and subsequently with Newsells (q.v.).

The manor-house or Cockenach Park estate was
separated from the manor about 1780, when it was
purchased by Sir John Chapman, bart.!® His widow
Dame Sarah Chapman bequeathed it to Dame Mary
Willes, wife of Sir Francis Willes, who left it to her
nephew William Henry Clinton, afterwards Genera]
Sir William Clinton, to hold in tail-male.6 His
son Lieut.-Colonel Henry Clinton disentailed the
property, which was purchased from his widow by
Mr. Alexander Crossman, the present owner of the
manorial rights, who resides at Cockenach.”

HEDLEYS or HADLEYS belonged to the college
of St. John, Rotherham, co. York, founded by Thomas
Rotherham, Archbishop of York.18 The grant was
made in 1482, when the estate was conveyed by John
Shuckburgh !® and his wife Clemency, daughter of
John Horne, to the archbishop, William Sheffield,
clerk, and others,?° for the endowment of the college.?!
It was possibly identical with the land held of the
lord of Newsells by Ralph ‘de Handley,’ by service
of a quarter-fee, about 1248.7? The college was

‘L. and P. Hen, VIII, xiii (2), 491 no. 85.

It is noteworthy that a suit-fine

BARKWAY

dissolved under the Act of 1547 and its lands were
seized by the Crown. Hedleys was purchased in
1550 by Robert Chester,”4 and thus became part of
the estate consolidated by the Chesters in Barkway
and its neighbourhood.25

ROKEY (Rokeye, xiii-xv cent. ; Rookey, xvi-
xvill cent.) can be located off the road from Reed to
Barkway. The manor was
held by a certain Robert * de
Hilton,’ who gave it to his
son Alexander?® de Hilton
(or Hutton).2”7 The latter
claimed amendment of assize
of bread and ale about 1287 °8
and subsequently _enfeoffed
Hugh de Lancaster of the
manor.” He was holding it
in 1303,° and in 1306 a
settlement was made on him-
self and his wife Maud and
the heirs of Hugh.#!_ Maud
survived her husband,?? who
was dead in 1327.93 His heir was his son John,
who was in possession of the manor in 1347.2 It
evidently remained in the family ®® until 1415,
when Thomas son and heir of Edward de Lancaster
sold it to John Woodward and others.3§7 Maud
Woodward was holding it in 1428.38 It was subse-
quently acquired by the lord of Newsells Manor.
It is said to have been settled in fee simple on
Thomas Lord Scales.89 In 1483 it was included
with Newsells in the grant to the Duke of Norfolk of
the lands which had lately belonged to Earl Rivers.‘
Its history is coincident with that of Newsells until
1546, when the Earl of Oxford sold it to William
Gery of Barkway.*! By 1560 it had been acquired
by the lord of Water Andrews, William Hyde, and
his wife Elizabeth. At that date they conveyed
both manors to Matthias Bradbury,‘ from whom they
were purchased by Sir William Petre in 1562.48 In
1583 Sir John Petre, kt., sold them to Henry
Prannell,44 who had recently acquired Newsells
(q.v.). He in 1589 bequeathed two-thirds of all
his Hertfordshire manors to his wife Anne for life
with remainder to his son Henry, who also held the
other third at his father’s death. If the son should
die without issue two-thirds of the manors of Rokey
and Water Andrews were to pass to Joan Brooke,

oy
ED

Lancaster. Argent
two bars gules and a
quarter gules with a
leopard or therein.

30 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

(6).
5 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxx, 51.

° Add. MS. 5843, fol. 2473; Cal. Pat.
1354-8, p. 53.

7 Add, MS. 5843, fol. 247.

® Chan. Ing. p.m. 26 Edw. III (2nd
nos.), no. 4; cf. Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec.
Com.), ii, 225 ; Cal. Pat. 1350-4, p. 349-

® Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

0 Cal. Close, 1307-13, p. 1363 cf.
Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 419.

1 Thus the overlordship of the Veres
Earls of Oxford would be explained.
Geoffrey’s holding was z hide 12 acres,
ie. about 132 acres, Burun gave to
Montreuil 80 acres only.

@ Evidently the land from which a
rent of 135. 4d, was due to Bermondsey
Priory (Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.],
14). The land was farmed from Ber-
mondsey Priory by the Priors of Royston
(Duchy of Lanc. Ct. R. bdle. 77, no. 999)-

3 Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII,

4

was due to the Earl of Oxford.

1, and P. Hen. VIII, xvi, g. 379 (60).

15 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 369.

16 Abstract of title communicated by
Messrs. Crossman and Prichard ; Cussans,
Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree Hund. 26.

17 Inform. from Messrs. Crossman and
Prichard.

18 Pat. 4 Edw. VI, pt. ix.

19 cf. the account of Water Andrews
below.

20 Feet of F. Div. Co. 22 Edw. IV,
no, 142.

21 Guest, Hist. Notices of Rotherham, 138.

2 Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, 38.

28 Guest, op. cit. 147.

4 Pat. 4 Edw. VI, pt. ix.

25 See above.

26 De Banco R, 281, m, 324.

27 See Assize R. 325.

28 Ibid. ; cf. the account of view of
frankpledge at Nuthampstead.

29 De Banco R. 281, m. 32d.

Jo

31 De Banco R. 281, m. 324.3 Feet
of F. Herts. 34 Edw. I, no. 426.

33 De Banco R. 281, m. 324d.

33 Ibid. 269, m. 22.

84 Tbid. ; cf. De Banco R. 281, m. 32d.
A John de Lancaster was concerned with
William and John of Rokey in a night
attack on the Earl of Pembroke at Bark-
way in 1346 or 1347 (Cal. Pat. 1345-8,
p- 306).

35 Duchy of Lanc. Ct. R. bdle. 64,
no. 805.

86 This John de Lancaster had a son
John (Cal. Pat. 1345-8, p. 306).

37 Feet of F. Herts. 3 Hen. V, no. 14.

388 Feud. Aids, ii, 445+

39 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), i, 37.

40 Cal. Pat. 1476-85, p. 365. ;

41 Deed printed by Cussans, op. cit.
Edvwinstree Hund, 22.

42 Feet of F. Herts. East. 2 Eliz.

43 Ibid. East. 4 Eliz.

44 Thid, East. 25 Eliz.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

daughter of Henry Prannell, the father, and to her
husband Robert Brooke, with remainder to Henry
Brooke, their son, who was the godson of the elder
Prannell.*® * Rookey Mead’ was occupied by Robert
Brooke in 1595, and was a source of discord between
him and his brother-in-law Henry Prannell.48 In
spite of the will of Henry Prannell the elder, both
Rokey and Water Andrews were retained with
Newsells by the widow of Henry Prannell the
younger and passed to her kinsman Lord Mal-
travers.47 The manor has since descended with
Newsells (q.v.). The freehold of Rokey now belongs
to Mr. J. W. Sworder.

A‘ manor of Barkway’ held with Rokey by Thomas
Lord Scales 48 was possibly acquired by the lords:
of Newsells during the 15th century. With Rokey it
was said to be held of Sir William Say, kt., in 1513.49
It and Rokey may, therefore, have been originally a
part of the Mandeville fee of 1086.59 It descended
with Rokey and Newsells until March 1531-2, when
it was among the lands assigned to the Earl of
Oxford,*! but it is not definitely mentioned either in
the conveyance of Newsells to Henry Prannell *? or in
that of Rokey to William Gery.53 It may, however,
be identical with the ‘other lands’ in Barkway in-
cluded in Gery’s purchase.

The manor of WATER ANDREW'S (Water
Andretys, Water Androws or Walter Andrewes, xvi
cent.) was held about 1519 by John Shuckburgh,
lord of the neighbouring manor of Chamberlains
in Reed (Odsey Hundred).*4 It continued in the
possession of the successive lords of Chamberlains
until 1569, when William Hyde and his wife
Elizabeth sold it with Rokey to Matthias Brad-
bury.*> Its subsequent history is coincident with
that of Rokey *® (q.v.).

The RECTORY MANOR evidently originated in
lands acquired by the abbey of Colchester with the
church (q.v.). The charter of Eudo Dapifer mentions
only ‘the church of Newsells,’ 5” but Ralph Nuers,
lord of Nuthampstead, released to the abbey ‘all his
right in whatever belonged to the church quit of all
service,’ and gave the abbey 11 acres of his own fee.58
Between 1195 and 1238 the ‘fee’ of the church
included land near the market-place.5? The rectory
fee was retained by the abbey until its dissolution.
It was evidently customary for the lessee of the house
and demesnes to entertain the abbot yearly when he
held courts at Barkway.®! In 1544 Wilham Gery
of Barkway had a grant of this manor from the
Crown. He transferred it with Berwick to William
Plattfote,*8 but the latter reconveyed to him and

joined with him in a sale to Henry Ward of Postwick,
co. Norfolk, in 1554.8 Edward Ward of Bixley, son
of Henry, settled this manor on his youngest son
Edward ® and died 1 May 1583.%

Edward the younger entered upon the Rectory
Manor soon afterwards.®” He was constrained to sell it
by reason of a numerous family.®° It was purchased
by Susanna widow of Sir Richard Saltonstall and by
her son Peter, afterwards Sir Peter Saltonstall, kt.6
Anne daughter of Sir Peter married Sir Edward
Chester, kt.,” and the Rectory Manor descended
with the other manors held by the Chesters.

The church of ST. MARY MAG-

CHURCH DALENE consists of chancel 36§ ft. 6 in.

by 16 ft., nave 67 ft. by 20 ft., north and

south aisles each 16 ft. wide, west tower 14 ft. square

and modern south porch and north vestry and organ

chamber, all internal dimensions. It is built of flint

rubble with stone dressings, the whole of the facings
being modern ; the roofs are tiled.

The chancel appears to have been built in the
13th century and the chancel arch rebuilt early in
the 15th century. ‘The nave and aisles are of 15th-
century date. The west tower was almost entirely
rebuilt in 1861. The vestry and organ chamber on
the north side of the church and the south porch are
modern. ‘The church was thoroughly restored in
1861, and a great deal of the internal stonework
reworked or renewed.

The east window of the chancel is of three lights
with modern tracery ; the inner jambs are original.
In the north wall are two blocked lancets of modern
stonework, but probably copies of the original 13th-
century lights ; there is also a three-light window of
modern stonework. In the south wall are a 13th-
century lancet, the outside stonework of which is
modern, a low-side window of two cinquefoiled
lights, all of modern outer stonework, but with old
inner jambs, and a modern doorway. In the same
wall is a double piscina of 13th-century character,
but of modern stonework.”!_ The early 15th-century
chancel arch is of two moulded orders, with moulded
jambs dying on splayed base, and moulded capitals.
The roof is modern.

The north and south arcades of the nave consist of
six bays, with arches of two moulded orders, with
moulded labels on both sides, piers composed of four
semi-octagonal shafts with hollows between, and with
moulded capitals and bases; the labels have carved
grotesque stops. The details of the two arcades are
similar, except for a slight difference in the section of
the capitals. All the work is of 15th-century date.

8 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cexxv, 64.

© Proc. of Ct. of Requests, bdle. 33,
no. 71.

“ See under Newsells.

48 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), i, 37.

49 Ibid. xxviii, 68.

50 cf. the account of Sawbridgeworth
in Braughing Hundred ; see also the fee
of William Odburgville in Barley.

51 See above under Newsells.

82 Feet of F. Herts. East. 21 Eliz.

53 Cussans, op. cit. Edqwinstree Hund. 22.

+ Close, 11 Hen. VIII, no. 2. For the
Shuckburgh family cf. the account of
Hedleys above and De Banco R. 269,
m. 22.

5 Feet of F. Herts. East. 2 Eliz.

56 Tt is perhaps on this account that
county historians following Chauncy

identify Water Andrews with Rokey.
They were certainly distinct in the early
part of the 16th century and are so still
(Ct. Bks. penes Messrs. Crossman and
Prichard).

7 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 3.

58 Ibid. 173.

59 Ibid. 630.

6 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 613; Ct R.
(Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 3.

6! Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976.

8 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xix (1), 610
(52).

© Com. Pleas D, Enr. Hil. 6 & 7
Edw. VI, m. 3

64 Ibid. Mich. 1 & 2 Phil. and Mary,
m.§ ; Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 1 & 2 Phil.
and Mary.

34

% Recoy. R. East. 14 Eliz. rot. 638;
Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccii, 182.

65 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccii, 182.

7 Pat. 27 Eliz. pt. ix, m. 22.

% Ibid. 2 Chas. I, pt. xxiii, no. 11.
Disputes concerning the title may also
have influenced him (Chan. Proc. Eliz.
W xi, 22).

Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 43 Eliz.;
Hil. 44 Eliz.; Hil. 45 Eliz; Pat.
2 Chas. I, pt. xxiii, no. 11 ; cf. Chan. Proc.
(Ser. 2), bdle. 429, no. 33 Pat. 44 Eliz.
pt. xxvi, m. 8.

70M. I. in the chancel.

There was probably an Easter
sepulchre in the chancel; in 1498 Joha
Homsted left money to the light of the
Holy Sepulchre in Barkway Church
(P.C.C. 16 Horne).

Barkway Manor-HousE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

Bartey : THe Town Houst FROM THE SOUTH-WEST

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The clearstory windows are of two cinquefoiled lights
of modern stonework. The roof is modern, but the
carved stone corbels supporting the trusses are of
15th-century date; they comprise figures of angels
with musical instruments and shields and some
grotesques. In the south-east angle of the nave is
the doorway to the rood stairs set in a splay.

The east, west and three side windows of the north
and south aisles and the corresponding windows of
the south aisle are of three lights with traceried
heads ; they are of 15th-century character, but all of
modern stonework. The south doorway has a four-
centred arch with continuous mouldings stopping on
a splayed base; it is of 15th-century date, but the
stone has been reworked. Near the east end of the
south aisle is a small piscina with pointed arch,
wave-moulded on edge. The roofs of the aisles are
modern, but the carved stone corbels under the trusses
are of 15th-century date, and are similar in character
to those under the nave roof. The south porch is
modern. The west tower 7? was rebuilt in 1861, all
but the archway into the nave ; it is of 15th-century
date, with an arch of two moulded orders, the outer
order continuous, the inner on round engaged shafts
with moulded capitals and bases. Leaves are carved
on the angles of the capitals, the upper members of
which are octagonal on plan. The original wooden
ladder to the belfry still exists. The font and all the
fittings are modern.

On the south wall is a brass with figures of a man,
his two wives and four daughters, with inscription to
Robert Poynard, 1561. On the chancel floor is a
brass inscription to Anna wife of John Rowley, 1613.
On the north chancel wall is a tablet to Susanna wife
of Robert Castell. On the floor are slabs to Anna
second wife of John Rowley, 1650, Ann wife of
Sir Edward Chester, 1645, and to Humfrey Boughton
of Warwickshire, 1637. There are several tablets
and slabs of the 18th century in the chancel, and
under the tower is a large monument to Admiral Sir
John Jennings, 1743. In the east windows of the
north and south aisles are fragments of 15th-century
glass, consisting of portions of a Jesse window and a
mixed collection of saints and angels, fragments of
inscriptions and heraldic devices.

There are eight bells: the first to the sixth are all
by John Briant, 1797, the sixth being also inscribed
‘Gloria Deo in Excelsis.’ ‘The above form the ring,
besides which there is a small bell by James Bartlett,
1698, and another bell, not hung, inscribed ‘Ave
Maria Gracia Plena.’ It bears the stamp of the
Bury St. Edmunds foundry, but is undated ; it is
probably of 15th-century date.

The communion plate consists of cup and cover
paten, two plates and a flagon, all of 1714; also a
small silver-gilt cup, 1807, presented in 1901.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i) all

BARKWAY

entries 1538 to 1699 ; (ii) baptisms and burials 1697
to 1810, marriages 1697 to 1753 (iii) baptisms
and burials 1811-12 ; (iv), (v) and (vi) marriages
1754 to 1775, 1776 to 1805 and 1805 to 1812
respectively. There is also a register of banns of
marriage 1776 to 1805. A churchwardens’ account
book is preserved, dating from 4 & 5 Philip and Mary
and kept until 1715.

In the garden of the vicarage were some fragments
of richly carved and crocketed pinnacles of clunch
from the church. These are about to be placed in
the church. The old font of Reed Church, until
recently in a garden at Reed Hall, has been brought
to Barkway, and will also be preserved in the church.
It has five shields carved with flowers and emblems.

There was a priest on the Mande-
ville fee in Barkway in 1086,” but
it was Eudo Dapifer, lord of New-
sells, who gave the church of ‘ Newsells,’ elsewhere
called ‘Barkway,’ "4 to Colchester Abbey,’® and the
gift was confirmed by Henry I and also by Stephen
and his wife Maud as overlords.” A moiety of the
church seems, however, to have been appurtenant to
Nuthampstead Manor (of the Mandeville fee), since
Ralph Nuers, lord of Nuthampstead, granted half the
church to the abbey in the r2th century.”

The right of presentation remained thenceforward
with the successive lords of the Rectory Manor (q.v.)
until the sale of that manor to Mr. Alexander Cross-
man (see Newsells). It was then reserved by the
Hon. G. H. Douglas and is now held by his son
Captain George Sholto Douglas.

The advowson was reserved to the Abbot of Col-
chester in the conventual leases of the demesne lands.”8

Only one-third of the tithes was included in Eudo’s
gift to Colchester Abbey.’? The tithes of Newsells
Manor had been given to the abbey of Sées.®° In
1249, after the settlement of a dispute between the
two abbeys, the Abbot of Colchester became perpetual
lessee of the tithes due to Sées Abbey.*!

At first the profits of the church were appropriated
to the clothing of the monks.®? A vicarage was
ordained by Bishop Gilbert of London (1163-87),
and the rectorial tithes were then appropriated to the
use of the guest-house of the monastery. A house
near the church was assigned to the vicar.*4

There was a gild or brotherhood belonging to the
church which in 1498 is called the gild of St. Mary,
but by 1506 it had become the gild or fraternity of
the Blessed Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr.%

The following charities are ad-

CHARITIES ministered under the provisions of a
scheme of the Charity Commissioners

of 30 August 1907, under the title of the Barkway
Non-ecclesiastical Charities, namely, the charities of

1. Sir Edward Chester, will, 1666, being a rent-
charge of {4 issuing out of 2 a. of land at Barkway.

ADVOWSON

72 The tower seems to have been re-
built or considerably repaired early in the
16th century. In 1517 John Pynnar
left all his timber in Barkway and New-
port to the church of Barkway, so that it
should be used in things necessary as to
the steeple (i.e. the tower) or to the bells
in the steeple. He also left money for
buying a copper cross and making the
‘pulpit,’ possibly the rood-loft and also a
bell for the clock (P.C.C. 35 Holder).
In 1506 William Wilde, vicar of Bark-

way, left £6 13s. 4d. to the repair of the
church where it was most needed (ibid.
20 Adeane).

73 VCH. Herts. i, 3314.

™4 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 48.

7 Ibid. 3.

76 Thid. 11, 49.

7 Tid. 173.

78 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976.

79 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 48.

35

‘0 Ibid. 547, 550.

81 Ibid. 547. The rent was renouncea
by Sées Abbey in 1305 (ibid. 577).

82 Ibid. 71.

8 Ibid. 83.

& Ibid. 93 ; Lond. Epis. Reg. Gilbert,
fol. 200.

% Will
16 Horne).

86 Will of William Wilde, 1506 (ibid.
20 Adeane) and will of John Pynnar,
1517 (35 Holder).

of John Homsted (P.C.C.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

2. Sir Robert Chester, will, 1638, being a rent-
charge of £5 45. issuing out of land known as Rokey
Wood and Lady Grove.

3. Edmund King, will, before 1679, consisting of
20 a. of land known as Upper Crixfield in Clavering,
Essex, let at £14 85. a year.

. — Mills, mentioned in Parliamentary Returns
of 1786, being a rent-charge of 135. 4d. issuing out
of land known as Bull’s Croft in Barkway.

5. William Mores, will, 1526, consisting of two
cottages and their sites, let on lease at {2 a year.

6. Thomas Payne, will, 1763, being a rent-charge
of £2 issuing out of Newsells estate in Barkway. _

7. John Stallibrass, will, 1818, endowed with
£166 135. 44. consols with the official trustees, pro-
ducing £4 35. 4d. yearly.

8. Town Lands, consisting of 2 a. in Barkway, let
at £6 a year.

g. Unknown donor’s charity, mentioned in the
Parliamentary Returns of 1786, consisting of two
cottages in Barkway, let at {4 15s. yearly.

The net income of the charities is by the scheme
directed to be applied for the general benefit of
the poor in such manner as the trustees thereby
appointed should consider most conducive to the
formation of provident habits. In 1911 {5 was
given to the school clothing club, £30 to the coal

club, £3 3s. to hospitals and £2 towards the expenses
of patients.

In 1796 James Andrews, by his will, bequeathed
to the vicar and churchwardens the sum of £300
consols, the dividends to be applied for the benefit of
the poor who should be regular attendants at divine
service in the parish church.

In or about 1820—as appears from an inscription
on the donor’s tomb—Thomas Talbot Gorsuch gave
£300 stock (now consols), the dividends to be applied
by the vicar and churchwardens on the same condi-
tions as directed by the will of his worthy friend, the
said James Andrews.

The sum of £600 consols is held by the official
trustees in trust for these charities. "The annual divi-
dends, amounting to {12 1os., are, under a scheme
of 30 August 1907, made applicable under the title
of the Barkway Ecclesiastical Charity for the general
benefit of the poor regularly attending divine service
in the parish church.

In 1909 three almshouses for women of over sixty
years of age born or living in Barkway, members of
the Church of England, were built by the late
Mrs. Dudding and afterwards endowed by her, to
perpetuate the memory of her great-grandfather John
Stallibrass (see no. 7 above).

For the Free School see article on Schools.87

BARLEY’

Berlai (xi cent.) ; Berle, Berleye (xii-xiv cent.) ;
Berle, Berlee or Barley (xv—xvi cent.).

The village of Barley lies on the chalk hills in the
extreme north-east of the county and is distant about
34 miles from Royston, where is the nearest railway
station. Its eastern boundary is that of Cambridge-
shire and follows for the most part the line of Water
Lane and the deep gully known as Cumberden
Bottom. Its northern limit is the Icknield Way,
which also forms the Cambridgeshire boundary.
The south and west boundary is almost entirely a
field boundary.

The village is built along two roads meeting at
right angles. The eastern arm leads past the church
to Pickenage corner, the northern arm follows the
line of the main road to Cambridge, which enters the
parish from the neighbouring village of Barkway and
traverses Cumberden Bottom to the north of the
viilige. In the village are several thatched and
plastered cottages and the manor-house of Hoares
stands opposite the church. On the same side of the
road is the Town House, formerly called the Gild-
hall, and sometimes styled the Church House,? which
faces the north side of the church. It appears to
have been erected shortly before 1540, and is a two-
storied building of timber framing covered with
plaster ; the roof is tiled, the upper story overhangs,
and at the east end on the south front is a small wing
containing a straight stair with solid steps to the
upper floor. A north wing was added late in the
17th centurs, making the building L-shaped. The
ground story was formerly used as an almshouse,
and is divided into a number of small rooms, the

© V.C.H. Herts. ii, 102.
‘This parish was transferred from

427).
Edwinstree Hundred to Odsey Hundred

in 1841 (Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec, }, ii,

? Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser, 2), cecelxxxi, 60.

outer doorways to which have wood frames with
four-centred arches. At the west end is a heavy brick
chimney with sloping offsets. The upper floor is a
hall with plain trussed roof, having curved ogee struts
and braces. The dormer windows which light the
hall are modern. This house was acquired before
1623 by the lords of Abbotsbury Manor.? The Fox
and Hounds Inn, formerly the ‘Black Swan,’ is
reputed to have had some connexion with Dick
Turpin. It is a small timber-framed and plastered
building standing in the middle of the village on
the west side of the main road. It is of early
17th-century date; the roof is thatched. The
house is L-shaped on plan and has a projecting
upper story ; the old wide fireplaces have been filled
in and the interior has been much altered, but a few
17th-century moulded beams still remain. Across
the road stretches a beam on which are flat wooden
figures of hounds and horsemen in full cry after a
fox. By the side of the main road, about 250 yards
west of the church, is a small wooden building called
the Cage, which was formerly the village ‘lock up.’
It is built of upright timbers placed about § in. apart,
with boarding between ; it is about 7 ft. square and
about 6 ft. 6 in. to the eaves. The slated roof is
pyramidal and is finished at the apex with a
moulded terminal. It is now used as a shed for road-
menders. It was probably not erected earlier than the
end of the 17th century. It is said to have contained
at one time chains attached to a central post. The
Cage may have belonged to the manor of Green-
bury, the site of the manor-house of which is to the
west of the Cambridge Road. The manor-house

8 Ibid.
* See below; Feet of F. Herts. Trio.
44 Eliz.

36

= aa. ie

oe? Moe od

Re Be

eS ea.

Se

{o

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

was apparently standing in 1602. A free school
existed in the parish before 1700.5

Beyond the church Willow Lane, styled in the
1$th century Willow Street,® leads in a south-easterly
direction towards Mincingbury manor-house. It
meets the Bogmoor Road at the hamlet of Shaftenhoe
End, called in the 13th century ‘Scarpenho.’’ Here
a few cottages dating from the early part of the 17th
century are clustered about the Big House or Free-
man’s, built about 1624 and said to be the manor-
house of ‘Burnels.” It is a timber-framed building
covered with plaster and stands on foundations of thin
bricks ; the roofs are tiled. The house is of two
stories with attics and is F-shaped on plan ; the main
building runs east and west and measures about 53 ft.
by 19 ft. 6in. On the south side at its eastern end is
a wing with a brick chimney at the south end; in
the centre of the south side is a small projecting stair-
case wing of two stories. The hall, which occupied
a large part of the main building, is now divided into
rooms, but the wide fireplace remains with carved
wood lintel and bracketed shelf, also a little 17th-
century panelling. The ceiling joists have moulded
edges. ‘The exterior of the house on the east, north
and west fronts has been modernized and the central
chimney on the main block rebuilt. At the end of
the south wing is a chimney built of 2-in. bricks, the
sloping offsets of which are masked by bricks crow-
stepped, in a manner similar to many other chimneys
in Hertfordshire ; the chimney stack has two square
shafts set diagonally. The staircase projection on the
south side has a single window under a projecting
gable with a moulded beam supported at either end
by a carved wood bracket representing a satyr playing
on a long pipe; between the window and the pro-
jecting beam above is the following inscription carved
in raised letters :—

“So God may still me blesse
I care the lesse
Let envy say her worst
And after burst.’

At one end of the inscription are the initials W.L.
and at the other the date 1624, at which date the
house was probably erected. An adjoining timber-
framed and plaster cottage with thatched roof has
worn remains of 17th-century ornamental plaster
bands between the windows of the ground and upper
stories externally ; one band consists of alternate
squares and ovals, another has a row of lozenges with
a half-circle above each.

The farm-house of Mincingbury, about 300 yards
to the east, has been almost entirely rebuilt, but
adjoining it is a large mediaeval barn about 82 ft.
long by 33 ft. wide. It is timber-framed on brick
foundations and has heavy queen-post roof trusses ;
the exterior has been renewed.

Abbotsbury, a fourth manor-house, lies in an

5 See below, under Charities, and
Wilkinson.

BARLEY

isolated position in the south of the parish. It is now
a farm-house, in the occupation of Mr. J. Loder.
‘There are remains of a homestead moat with an
entrenchment on its southern side. It was doubtless
on his demesne lands here that the Abbot of Col-
chester had the ‘chapel in Adgareslawe,’ which was
pomaed to him by Roger Bishop of London in
1237.

Barley is well watered both by Cumberden Bottom
and by a tributary of the Cam called Wardington
Bottom. There are numerous ponds and at Mincing-
bury is a fish-pond. The Mincingbury oak wood
was cut down at the latter end of the 18th century.
The parish is on the border of the Essex woodland,
and an early 13th-century charter mentions assart
called ‘Wydeheye’ within the manor of Mincing-
bury.!? There are, however, only about 99 acres of
woodland out of a total area of 2,725 acres. Rather
more than 400 acres are grass and about 2,160 acres
are arable land. The open fields were inclosed
under an Act of 1809.1! ¢ Eldebury,’ or ‘ Oldbury,’
was an open field appurtenant to Mincingbury.!?

The manor of ABBOTSBURY or
MANORS ROWLETTSBURY} was held by the
abbey of St. John of Colchester.14 It
is evidently identical with the ‘land or manor of
Algareslawe or Aedgareslawe’
in Barley granted to the abbey
by Hamo de St. Clare and his 4
son Hubert in 1137.!5 Hamo
and his son made this gift for
the health of their souls and
those of Gunnora wife of
Hamo and of Eudo Dapifer
and Rose his wife.16 Hamo
de St. Clare had evidently
acquired the manor before
1123, when he assigned the
tithe from ‘his manor of
Adgareslawe’ to Colchester
Abbey, reserving only certain
tithes given to Barley Church
“at the prayer of Uluric the priest.’?!7 Hamo is
elsewhere found as successor of Eudo Dapifer ; it is,
therefore, probable that this holding is identical with
the 2 hides and 20 acres in Barley held by Eudo in
1086. Half of this land was then held by Eudo in
demesne and was worked with the five ploughs on
his neighbouring demesne at Newsells.1® Before the
Conquest half of Eudo’s holding had been held by a
sokeman of the king’s, the other half by his brother
who was a man of Tochi.!*

The Abbot of Colchester obtained papal confirma-
tion of his rights in ‘ Adgareslawe’ in 1179,” and in
1253 had a grant of free warren within the manor.*!
It was possibly in error that the jurors of 1278
returned that the abbot held his manor of Barley of
the gift of Ivo the Seneschal.” In 1315 a messuage,

CorcnestTeR ABBEY.
Gules a cross or and a
border or with eight
molets gules therein.

9 Inform, supplied by Rev. J. Frome- 16 Ibid.

Chauncy, op. cit. 98

® Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 1.
It is probable that this was distinct from
‘Wynewalstrete’ (ibid.), which may be
connected with the chapel of St. Gunwal
in Barkway (q.v.); cf. ‘Wynnels Grove’
on the borders of Nuthampstead.

7 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 2.

8 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 95.

10a Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

Ul Ppriy. Act, 50 Geo. III, cap. 30
(not printed).

2 Cott. MS. Jul. A 1, 140; Ct. R.
(Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 1.

13 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccvi, 3.

4 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976.

18 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria
(Roxburghe Club), 156, 157.

37

10 Cott. MS. Jul. Ai, 141. 17 Ibid.

18 V.C.H. Herts. iy 3294, 3295.

19 Ibid. 3294.

20 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria,
613 for confirmations by the Lanvaleys,
Hamo’s descendants, see ibid. 197, 198,
and for other confirmatory grants see
ibid. 67, 87, 95-7-

21 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 418.

22 Agsize R. 323, M. 45.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

probably the manor-house, a carucate of land and
roos. rent in Barley were let for life to Bartholomew
de Enfield.%3 The courts were probably reserved by
the abbot as they were in the 16th century.** When
each successive abbot entered upon his office he
claimed ‘palfrey money’ from the tenants of this
manor. In 1533 William Grevill and his son John
acquired a thirty-one years’ lease of the manorial lands
and agreed to entertain the abbot and his servants
once yearly for two days and two nights, when they
came to hold courts and to view the manor.”

The abbey was suppressed in 1539,”" and in April
1544 Edward Elrington and Humphrey Metcalf re-
ceived its possessions in Barley in exchange for certain
estates surrendered to the Crown." They were
evidently speculating in land. A court was held in
Elrington’s name in May 1544,°° and on 1 July he
joined with Metcalf in a sale to Sir Ralph Rowlatr, kt.,°
who had recent!y inherited the manors of Mincingbury
and Hoares (q.v.). In 1556 he settled his estates on
himself and his heirs by his wife Dorothy,*! and
afterwards he made a second settlement,*” doubtiess
in favour of his second wife Margaret 8 ; but he died
childless in 1571.°4 He had bequeathed his estate in
Barley to Sir Nicholas Bacon, Keeper of the Great
Seal,’> whose second wife Ann was sister to Rowlatt’s
second wife Margaret.°° The nephews of Rowlatr,
who were his heirs-at-law, released their rights in
favour of Bacon before 1576.°7 The Lord Keeper
died on 20 February 1578-9,°% and was succeeded
in the Barley estate by Anthony Bacon, the elder of
his two sons by his wife Ann.3® He sold it to Sir
John Spencer, ‘the rich Spencer, Lord Mayor of
London,’ *° probably about the year 1593, when he
was seriously embarrassed by his own debts and those
of his brother Francis.*}

At Spencer's death in March 1609-10 the estate
passed to his daughter Elizabeth wife of William Lord
Compton,* afterwards created Earl of Northampton.*?
It was settled on their daughter Anne upon her marriage
with Ulick Lord Dunkellin, son of Richard Earl of Clan-
ricarde and St. Albans, in December 1622.44 Ulick Earl
of St. Albans and his wife were both active supporters
of the royal cause in Ireland.4® Their estates were
sequestrated and the manors in Barley were granted

3 Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 289.

Eliz.; Mich. 17 & 18 Eliz.; Hil. 18

to the Earl of Essex in September 1645 in considera-
tion of his ‘heroic valour, prudent conduct and un-
spotted fidelity’ as captain-gencral of the Parliamentary
forces.6 He died on 14 September 1646,‘7 and by
an order of 1649 Barley was sold to satisfy the claims
of Sir Robert Pye, who with the Earl of Northum-
berland had long had a mortgage on the estates of the
Earl of St. Albans.4® It was acquired by Sir Richard
Lucy, bart., of Broxbourne, and Sir Edward Atkins,
kt., afterwards chief baron of the Exchequer.*? Lucy
died at Broxbourne on 6 April 1667.5° His son
Sir Kingsmill Lucy, bart., and Sir Edward Atkins were
dealing with Abbotsbury and other lands in Barley
in the spring of 1671.5! Atkins afterwards sold to
Thomas Kensey, citizen of London, from whom
the estate was purchased before 1682 by Sir Thomas
Byde ®3 of Ware Park. He gave it to his son Ralph,
whose son John Byde of Hunsdon inherited. John
Byde bequeathed it to John youngest son of Thomas

Lb uy
| NG

Brann. Azure two
crossed swords argent
with their hilts or be-
tween three scallops or.

Bypg. Ora pile en-
grailed azure with three
anchors or thereon.

Byde of Ware Park,®®> who sold it to his eldest
brother Thomas Plumer Byde.** It was purchased
about 1770 by Thomas Brand of the Hoo.5” His son
Thomas Brand married Getrude Roper, who in 1794
became Lady Dacre, and their son Thomas Brand
succeeded to the title on his mother’s death in 1819.
The manor descended with the successive Lords Dacre
until 1901, when Henry Robert Viscount Hampden
and Lord Dacre sold it to Mr. Alexander Crossman,
the present lord of the manor.*8

4 Chauncy, op. cit. 96. In 1658 a

* Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976.

25 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 3,
43 cf. the fine for recognition called
‘sadelsilver’ levied from the customary
tenants of the manor of Bishop's Stort-
ford at the first court held after the
vacancy of the bishopric of London.

36 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976.

PCA, Estee, iy, 100,

%3 DL. and P. Hen. VIIT, xix (1), g. 442
(16).

® Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 5.

30 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xix (1), g. 812
(114, p. 508); Close, 36 Hen. VIII,
pt. v, no. 33 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portt.
177, no. 2.

31 Pat. 2 & 3 Phil. and Mary, pt. v,
m. 22.

32 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cevi, 3.

33 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

% Ibid. ; Bacon obtained pardon for
the alienation in 1580 (Pat. 22 Eliz.
pt. i, m. 13).

38 Dict, Nat. Brog. under * Ann Bacon.’

37 Feet of F. Div. Co. Mich. 13 & 14

Eliz,

% Dict. Nat. Biog.; V.C.H. Herts. ii,
396.
5° Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 34 Eliz.; Recov.
R. East. 3§ Eliz. rot. 42; cf. Chauncy,
op.cit.95. Chauncy’s date for the court held
at Barley in Anthony’s name must be incor-
rect, unless he was holding it for his father.

* Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cecxviii,
165 3 cf. Dict. Nat, Biog. ; G.E.C. Peerage,
vi, 72.

41 Dict. Nat. Biog.; cf. Feet of F.
Herts. Trin. 34 Eliz.; Div. Co. Trin.
34 Eliz. ; Recov. R. East. 35 Eliz. rot. 42.

# Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxviii,
165. 48 G.E.C. loc. cit.

44 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccclxxxi,
60; Recov. R. Hil. 20 Jas. I, rot. 74.

© G.E.C. Peerage, ii, 259; Cal. S. P.
Dom. 1658-9, pp. 237, 238.

46 Add. MS. 5497, fol. 143.

Dict, Nat. Big.

© Cal. Com. for Comp. 146, 1473 Cal.
S. P. Dom. 1658-9, pp. 237, 2383; Feet
of F. Div. Co. Mich. 10 Jas. I; cf. ibid.
East. 8 Jas. I.

38

court was held by James Earl of North-
ampton and Hon. Francis Compton
(Court Bk. in possession of Messrs. Cross-
man and Prichard). Chauncy dates the
conveyance to Lucy and Atkins at ‘about
1657.’ Later a connexion is found be-
tween the Compton and Lucy families,
when Mary Lucy, daughter and heir of
Sir Berkeley Lucy, married the Hon.
Charles Compton (G.E.C. Baronetage, i,
114). G.E.C. Baronetage, i, 113,

5! Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 22 & 23
Chas. II.

°? Chauncy, op. cit. 96 ; cf. Feet of F.
Herts, Trin. 33 Chas. II; Duchy of
Lanc. Misc. Bks. Ixxii, fol. 59.

*3 Chauncy, loc. cit. Sir Thomas Byde
held a court in 1682.

“4 Clutterbuck, op, cit. iii, 382;
of F. Herts. Hin i Anne. tenet

55 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

56 Feet of F. Div. Co. East. 32 Geo. II.

57 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

bad Inform. from Messrs. Croseman and
Prichard ; cf. Recov. R. Trin. 35 Geo. ITI,
Tot. 354.

Lsd AA FHL Woud HOUNHD) AITUVG ONIMA ASVOUIVIS ‘asnop] SIg aH, + AUTAIVG

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The Abbots of Colchester and their tenants at
Barley were free of danegeld, murder and hidage
under a charter of Henry II.8? About 1275 jurors
returned that the abbot had withdrawn his men
from the sheriff’s tourn for twelve years past.° The
abbot laid claim to gallows and assize of bread and
ale.6!

The manor of GREENBURY was formerly in the
possession of the Prior and canons of Anglesey, co.
Camb.® It is evidently identical with land granted
to the priory by ‘Henry de Stikewand.’ The
service from this land was that of one-half and one-
sixth of a knight’s fee, and was due in the early part
of the 13th century to Ralph son of Fulk de Broad-
field.£8 Thus it is clear that this manor originated
in a considerable part of the 4 hides and Io acres of
land held of Harduin de Scales in 1086 by Ralph’s
ancestor ® Theobald.® Before the Conquest Theo-
bald’s holding had been in the possession of five
sokemen ; three of these were Earl Algar’s men, one
was the man of Earl Gyrth, brother of Earl Harold,
and one was the man of Harold himself.°%° Theobald’s
great-grandson Fulk ®? gave a life interest in a half
and a sixth of a knight’s fee in Barley to Alan son of
Theobald. Possibly, therefore, Henry de Stikewand
succeeded Alan as immediate tenant of the manor and
gave it to Anglesey Priory at some time subsequent to
1222, in which year Alan was still living.®® Ralph
de Broadfield afterwards freed the priory from all
obligation to do knight’s service in consideration of
100s. At about the same time Alan de Barley con-
firmed to the priory certain other land in Barley
which had been given to the canons by his mother
Agnes.” In 1291 the rents of the prior in Barley
were assessed at £4 135. 44.7 In the absence of
evidence it is not clear whether the prior kept the
demesne lands in hand, but the court was certainly
held in his name in 1325.78

Anglesey Priory was suppressed with the lesser
monasteries in 1536.7 In 1553 Greenbury was
purchased from the Crown by Sir Robert Chester,
kt.75 He parted with it before his death in 1574,78
probably to John Payne, yeoman, of Newsells in Bark-
way, who was in possession in May 1557 and then
conveyed it to his son Thomas and the latter’s wife
Joan.” Thomas Payne died at Greenbury in 1583
and was succeeded by his son John.’® In 1602 it
was conveyed by John Payne and his wife Dorothy
to Andrew Willett, S.T.P.,7° a controversial divine

59 Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria

(Roxburghe Club), 19, 20. detail on this roll.

The customary, works are recorded in

BARLEY

and author of ‘Synopsis Papismi.’® His father had
been rector of Barley from 1571 to 1598,"! and he
was also rector and lived in the rectory-house.**
He died on 4 December 1621, having bequeathed
Greenbury to his younger son John towards the pay-
ment of his debts.88 The manor afterwards came
by purchase into the Bowes family, In 1681 John
Burscough, clerk, and his wife Hannah conveyed it
to Ralph Bowes,*4 and Robert Bowes was in pos-
session in 1700.85 It is said to have descended to
his daughter, who married into the Feltham family.°¢
A Martha Feltham, spinster, possibly granddaughter
of Robert Bowes, wus dealing with it in 1726.97 It was
afterwards acquired by Hale Wortham and inherited
by his grandson Hale Wortham of Royston. In
1844 he was succeeded by his nephew the late Biscoe
Hill Wortham of Kneesworth House, co. Camb.,%
whose trustees now hold the manor. There are only
two copyholders.

The lords of Greenbury had view of frankpledge,
assize of bread and ale, goods of felons and fugitives °°
and heriots.%

The manor of HOARES was evidently so styled
from the family of ‘ Hore’ residing in Barley from
the 13th to the 15th century. The name Hoares
has first been found in 1539.9? Previously it was
apparently called the manor of BARLEY or BUR-
NELLS.* In 1294 Philip Burnell, nephew and heir
of the great chancellor, died seised of 5 marks rent
due from Walter the Clerk of Barley out of 200
acres there, which were said to be held partly of
Ralph son of Fulk (of Broadfield) and partly of
William de Graveley.* Obviously, then, the holding
of Walter the Clerk included those 40 acres in
Barley which Ralph de Graveley had held for ward
at Dover Castle and had alienated shortly before
1275 to a certain William Burnell (probably the
predecessor of Philip Burnell).%* It was, therefore,
probably part of the ‘fee of Gravelega’ included in
the castle-ward barony of Adam Fitz William % about
1211.97 The holding of Ralph de Graveley included
more than 40 acres,°® and was doubtless identical
with the hide and a half of land in Barley which
Adam was holding of Odo Bishop of Bayeux at
the time of the Domesday Survey.°® The tenant of
this land before the Conquest was a man of Arch-
bishop Stigand.10°

The holding of Walter the Clerk was of consider-

able extent; in 1291 he was assessed towards a

88 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund, 13.
Inform. from Mr. John Balding.

50 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

5! Assize R. 323, m. 45.

69 Pat. 7 Edw. VI, pt. iii, m. 18;
Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 33.

8 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 785.

& V.C.H, Herts. iii, 210.

& Ibid. i, 33955 see also below under
Hoares and Mincingbury.

66 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3395.

67 Thid. iii, 210.

88 Maitland, Bracton’s Note Bk. ii, 127 3
ill, 422.

69 Ibid. ; a part of Theobald’s holding
was granted in sub-fee and became a
part of Hoares Manor (q.v.).

70 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 785 ; cf. Feud.
Aids, ii, 4.30.

7 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 800.

72 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 14.

78 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 33.

™4See L. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 1238;
Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 264.

75 Pat. 7 Edw. VI, pt. iii, m. 18.

76 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxx, 51.

77 Pat. 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary, pt. vi.

78 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cciv, 114.

79 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 44 Eliz.

80 Dict. Nat. Biog.

81 Epis. Reg. quoted by Clutterbuck,
op. cit. iil, 385.

82 Dict. Nat. Biog. M. 1. in church.
Possibly Greenbury was still occupied by
the Payne family (Chan. Proc. [Ser. 2],
bdle. 379, no. 12).

83 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cecevi, 51.

84 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 33 Chas. IJ.

85 Chauncy, op. cit. 96.

86 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 383 ; Salmon,
Hist. of Herts. 296.

87 Recov. R. Hil. 13 Geo. I, rot. 16.

39

89 Pat. 7 Edw. VI, pt. iii, m. 18;
Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccccvi, 51.

99 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 33.

1 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 23 Cal.
Pat. 1292-1301, p. 4623; 1388-92,
p- 485 3 Feud. Aids, ii, 445.

% Feet of F, Herts. Mich. 31 Hen. VIII.

93 De Banco R. 285, m. 2573 Feet of
F. Herts. 11 Edw. III, no. 185 ; Chan.
Ing. p.m. 33 Hen. VI, no. 28, m. fo.

*4 Chan. Ing. p.m. 22 Edw. I, no, 45.

95 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

98 What appears to be another part of
this fee was held by the Fitz Simons (see
below), who were apparently descendants
of Adam Fitz William.

97 Red Bk, of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 615.

93 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193; cf.
Assize R. 323, m. 46.

99 V.C.H. Herts. i, 310. 100 Tbid.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

subsidy at the then large sum of £3 16. 532! He
seems to have been a life tenant only.? ‘lhe lands
which he held of Ralph son of Fulk in 1294 were
evidently a part of the 4 hides and 10 acres held of
Harduin de Scales in 1086 by Ralph’s ancestor
Theobald.? Walter the Clerk may be identical with
the ‘Walter de Barley’ who with his tenants held
one-quarter of a knight’s fee in Barley in 1303.4
The overlord recorded in this case is Edward Lord
Burnell, son and heir of Philip Burnell.> Before his
death in 1315 Edward Lord Burnell gave a life interest
in a messuage and 120 acres of land in Barley to a
certain Walter de Filby.® Walter de Filby was still
holding in 1336 when a settlement of the reversionary
title to this ‘manor of Barley ’ was made upon Maud
wife of Sir John Handlo,’ kt., sister and heir of Lord
Burne'l.8 Consequently Sir John Handlo entered
upon the manor and granted a lease for life to Walter
de Thorp and his wife Avice and to William their
son. Walter de Thorp of Barley was indicted with
Richard le Mare:chal and other robbers of Royston
in 1342 1°; but he was apparently still in possession
of this holding in 1345 when Sir John Handlo settled
his interest in the lands in Larey upon his son
Nicholas in tail.!!_ Nicholas succeeded his father in
1346}? and assumed the name of Burnell.'%

William Martin is said to have held a court for
this manor about 1399,! and to have been succeeded
by Thomas Hore.!§ A Thomas Hore was styled ‘ of
Barley’ in 1391, when he received exemption from
sitting on juries or holding any office under the king.!”
In 1428 Gilbert Hore is returned as holding the
quarter-fee which had formerly been held by Walter
de Thorp.!7_ He is said to have been son of ‘Thomas
and to have been succeeded by his son-in-law John
Ayland.!8 Probably both Thomas and Gilbert Hore,
and possibly also John Ayland, had life interests in the
manor similar to those of Walter de Thorp, his wife
and son. Nicholas Burnell’s son and heir Hugh Lord
Burnell died without surviving male issue on 27 No-
vember 1420,'° and in 1455 the ‘manor in Barley
called Burnells’ was in the possession of Sir William
Lovel, kt.,°° great-great-grandson of Maud Handlo by
a former husband, John Lord Lovel,?! to whom it had
evidently reverted in accordance with the settlement
of 1336.7? William Lord Lovel died on 13 June
1455.2 His younger son William had married
Eleanor Lady Morley, and held the manor of

1 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 2.

7 See below.

8 TCH. Herts. 1, 33963 iii) 210; ef.
the accounts of Mincingbury and Gree: -
bury as to the early descent of this mancr.

‘ Feud. Aids, ii, 430 ; Walter de Barley
may, however, be the ‘ Walter de Filby’
mentioned below.

5 Ibid. ; Chan. Ing. p.m. 22 Edw. I, 45;
G.E.C. Peerage, ii, 82. In a return of 13.46
the service due to the lord of Broadfield
Manor (descendant of Theobald) is re-
corded, but nothing further is found con-
cerning the overlordship of this manor
beyond the fact that it was held of others

18 Thid,

® De Banco R. 274, m. 106.

7 Feet of F. Herts. 4 Edw. III, no.
65; De Banco R. 285, m. 257; Feet of
F. Herts. 11 Edw. III, no. 185.

5 De Banco R. 274, m. 106.

> Add. Chart. 47541.

10 Cal. Pat. 1340-3, p. 555.

1) Add. Chart. 47541.

2 Chan. Inq. p.m. 20 Edw. III, no.
515 Cal. Close, 1346-9, p. 110.

18 GEC; Peerage, ii, 82.

™ Chauncy, op. cit. 95.

16 Cal. Pat. 1388-92, p. 485.
Feud. Aids, ii, 445. This return

Walkern in her right.24 At his death in 1476 he
was said to hold a messuage with 200 acres of land
and certain pasture and woodland in Barley as parcel
of Walkern Manor. It is obviously identical with
the tenement held by Walter the Clerk in 1294,%°
and had probably been settled by Lord Lovel upon
his younger son. It descended to Henry Lord
Morley, son of William (Lovel) and Eleanor Lady
Morley, and at his death passed to his sister Alice,”?
who married as her second husband Sir Edward
Howard, second son of Thomas, afterwards Duke of
Norfolk and Admiral of the Fleet.?8 He died with-
out legitimate children in April 1513,?° and in the
following February the ‘manor of Barley’ together
with Acton Burnell and other manors was granted to
his father Thomas upon his
creation as Duke of Norfolk
after his victory at Flodden
Field.2°. The duke’s eldest
son, Thomas third Duke of
Norfolk, sold ‘the manor of
Barley otherwise Hoares’ to
Ralph Rowlatt in 1539.3
Rowlatt afterwards purchased
Mincingbury, and was suc-
ceeded in March 1542-3 by
his son Ralph Rowlatt,®? who
acquired Abbotsbury. The
whole estate has descended
with Abbotsbury (q.v.) to Mr.
A. Crossman of Cockenach,
the present owner. It is said that in this manor, as
at Cheshunt, the custom of Borough English prevails
below a certain line called the Bank.*3
MINCINGBURY or BARLEY CHATTERIS
Manor was acquired before the Conquest by the
Benedictine nuns of Chatteris, co. Camb. In 1086
their ‘manor’ in Barley was held in demesne and
was extended at 34 hides.*4 In 1268 there were
added by the gift of Ralph son of Ralph son of
Fulk (of Broadfield) the advowson of Barley Church
and 3 acres of land there.8® The land and rents of
the abbey in Barley were valued at £10 25. 10d. in
1291.°° Courts baron with view of frankpledge were
held in the name of the abbess in 1506,7 and the
courts, royalties and advowson were reserved in a
thirty years’ lease of the manor to John Chapman on
20 May 1531.°8 The abbey surrendered to the

Gules a
cheveron coupleclosed ar-
gent with three lions
gules on the cheveron,

Row att.

*3 Chan. Ing. p.m. 33 Hen. VI, no. 28,

m. 10.

VCH. Herts. iii, 154.

* Chan. Ing. p.m. 16 Edw. IV,
no. 73.

*6 This was extended at 200 acres
(Chan. Inq. p.m. 22 Edw. I, no. 45).

7 Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. VII, i, 213.

8 G.E.C. Peerage, v, 372.

9 Nicolas, Test. Vetusta, 533.

30 L, and P. Hen. VILL, i, 4694.

3! Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 31 Hen. VIII;
Recoy. R. Trin. 31 Hen. VIII, rot. 147.
% Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixviii, 40.

% Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 382. In

than the king by diverse services (Chan.
Ing. p-m. 20 Edw. III, 513; Cal. Clo-c,
1346-9, p. 110). The statement made
i 1477 that this land was parcel of
Walkern Manor was evidently an error
arising out of the recent acquisition of
Walkern by the tenant of the Barley
holding (Chan. Ing. p.m. 16 Edw. IV,
no. 733 cf. V.C.H. Herts. iii, 154).

tends to prove that Burnells 18 identical
with Hoares, rather than a distinct hold-
ing, as is suggested by some authorities.

18 Chauncy, loc. cit.

19 G.E.C. Peerage, ii, 83.

% Chan, Ing. p.m. 33 Hen. VI, no. 28,
m. 19.

7) G.E.C. Peerage, v, 164.

® Feet of F. Herts. 11 Edw. IIT,no. 185.

40

Mincingbury also the custom of Borough
English obtains in certain tenements (Ct.
R. penes Messrs, Crossman and Prichard).
VCH. Herts. i, 3166.
35 Feet of F. Herts. 52 Hen. III, no.
5945 Cott. MS. Jul. A i, fol. 140.
% Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 15.
7 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 1.
6 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 266.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Crown on 3 September 1538 ®9 and in May 1540 its
interest in Mincingbury Manor was acquired by
Ralph Rowlatt the elder,#° who had recently purchased
the manor of Hoares. It was inherited by his son
Ralph,*! and has since descended with the Abbotsbury
estate (q.v.).

A part of the fee of Graveley (see above) was pre-
sumably the land held of Hugh Fitz Simon (appa-
rently descendant of Adam Fitz William) 4? by Walter
de Monchensey in 1346.48 Here, as in Radwell, in
Odsey Hundred, the lands of the Fitz Simons passed
before 1428 to John Muslee.44 The subsequent
history of this tenement is unknown.

Among the tenants in Barley in 1086 was William
de Odburgville. He held in demesne 4} hides which
had belonged to Lewin, one of King Edward’s
thegns.4® The history of this holding is obscure.
Possibly it formed part of the manor of ‘Rokey’
in Barkway, since William’s son Peter gave other
lands in Suffolk to ‘William de la Rokele,’4* and
the manor of Rokey extends into Barley.

Twenty acres held by Ansfrid of Geoffrey de Bech
in 1086, and formerly held by Algar, one of Wigar’s
men,*” probably amalgamated with Ansfrid’s holding
at Cockenach in Barkway (q.v.).

The church of ST. MARGARET

CHURCH consists of chancel 34 ft. 6 in. by 21 ft.,

nave 50 ft. by 20 ft., modern north aisle

9 ft. 6 in. wide, south aisle 15 ft. wide and west tower

12 ft. 6in. square, all internal dimensions. The

walls are built of flint rubble with stone dressings ;

portions of the tower are faced with flint and pebbles
laid in herring-bone pattern.*®

The west tower is the earliest part of the building,
the two lower stages dating from the early part of the
12th century. The nave was enlarged, or perhaps
rebuilt, late in the 13th century, when the south aisle
was added ; the south aisle was widened about the
middle of the 14th century. The present bell-chamber
was added to the tower in the 15th century, and
early in the 16th century new windows were inserted
in the south wall. In 1872 the chancel was pulled
down and rebuilt #° a bay further east, thus lengthening
the nave about 11 ft. ; a portion of the south aisle
was lengthened eastwards; a north aisle was built
and the nave widened by adding 2 ft. to the north
side ; a north porch was erected and a timber spire
added to the tower.

The chancel with the vestry and organ chamber
on the south side are modern. ‘The nave, which
originally measured about 39 ft. by 18 ft., has north
and south arcades of four bays. ‘The north arcade,
together with the chancel arch, is modern. The
easternmost bay of the south arcade is also modern,
but the other three are of late 13th-century date,
with arches of two orders, a splay and a hollow next
the nave, and plain splays next the aisle ; there are
no labels. The piers are octagonal with moulded
capitals and bases.

BARLEY

The north aisle is modern. The south aisle
extends to the west face of the tower. This exten-
sion probably took place when the aisle was widened
about 1340. ‘The west end of the aisle is used as a
quire vestry, and a modern wall separates it from the
rest of the aisle. In the south wall are three early
16th-century windows. The central one is a little
later in date than the others and has three cinque-
foiled lights under a four-centred arch ; the other
two are each of three cinquefoiled lights with traceried
head under a four-centred arch. These windows
have been restored. In the west wall is a two-light
window of about 1340, with flowing tracery, which
has been repaired. ‘The south door, which is blocked,
has an arch of two continuous orders, the inner wave
moulded, of about 1340. There is a modern door
to the quire vestry in the south wall. In the south
wall, near the east end of the aisle, is a piscina of
about 1340, which has had continuously moulded
arch and jambs, but the upper part of the arch was
destroyed to make room for the 16th-century window
above. The roofs of nave and aisle are modern, but
under the roof truss in the quire vestry is a carved
grotesque corbel of stone. ‘The wall of the south
aisle is embattled.

The west tower is of three stages with embattled
parapet and modern timber spire. ‘The early 12th-
century tower arch is 8 ft. wide and has a plain
round arch of one square order; the jambs are
square and the impost is splayed. On the south
side, opening into the quire vestry, is a pointed arch
with splayed edges of 14th-century date ; above it is
a small round-headed opening without any rebate for
glass. The west window of two lights with traceried
head is modern. ‘The wooden ladder to the bell-
chamber is probably mediaeval; the side timbers
measure gin. by 4din. with splayed arrises and
are 14 in. apart, the rungs are 3 in. by 12 in. The
ladder is very similar to that in Barkway Church.
The second stage of the tower retains the original
Iath-century belfry windows, which have round
beaded arches ; they have been restored, and on the
west face a clock dial hides part of the arch. In the
third stage, which was added in the 15th century,
are the present belfry windows, each of two cinque-
foiled lights with traceried head.

The font is modern ; the seating is also modern.

On the nave floor near the pulpit is a brass with
the figure of a man and inscription to Andrew Willett,
1621, rector. On the south wall of the organ
chamber is a palimpsest brass with inscription to
Robert Bryckett, 1563 ; the other side has part of a
1th-century inscription. On the same wall is a
brass inscription to Anne Brownrigg, 1630, wife of
Dr. Brownrigg, rector. In the central window of
the south aisle are fragments of old glass, probably
of different dates, with figures and the date 1536.
These are probably portions of the glass put up in
memory of William Warham, Archbishop of Canter-

89 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 616.

40 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xv, g. 733 (42).

41 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xviii, 40.

42 See V.C.H. Herts. iii, 245, where
the ancestor of the Fitz Simon family
appears as Simon Fitz Adam.

43 Feud. Aids, ii, 436.

#4 Ibid. 448.

45 VCH. Herts. i, 328a.

46 Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 728.

4

47 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3335

48 By willdated 1501 Thomas Chapman
desired to be buried in the churchyard of
Barley. ‘I bequethe toward the peyntyng
of Our Lady in the same church xs.’
He left bequests to the light ofthe torches,
to the light of the sepulchre in the said
church, to the gild of St. Katherine and
to the repair of the steeple. To the
leading of the steeple of Barley he left

41

40s., under condition that the same steeple
should be leaded within three years im-
mediately after his decease (P.C.C. 5
Blamyr). In 1516 William Robinson,
parson of the church, left to the church
of Barley an antiphoner, grayle and mass
book in print (ibid. 18 Holder).

49 The work was carried out under
the supervision of William Butterfield as
architect.

6

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

bury and rector of Barley. In the west window of
the tower are some late 14th-century fragments, and
in the rectory is portion of a Crucifixion of the
same period, which has been refixed in the church.

Some remains of open tracery work of a 15th-
century screen have been fixed on the north wall of
the chancel. The pulpit is of oak, richly carved and
panelled, and with a canopy ; it is dated 1626. In
the quire vestry is a large mediaeval chest, 7 ft. in
length, bound with iron.

There are five bells, all recast by Thomas Mears
& Son, 1807.

The communion plate includes an embossed cup
and cover, dated 1612. It bears an inscription indi-
cating that additions had been made to it, probably
in 1612, but the embossed pattern is of earlier date,
probably about 1550; the cover has lost its canopy.
There is also a paten of 1618.

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows :
(i) baptisms and marriages 1559 to 1746, burials
1559 to 1743; (ii) baptisms and burials 1746 to
1776, marriages 1746 to 17533 (ili) baptisms and
burials 1777 to 18123 (iv) marriages 1754 to 1812.

A priest was mentioned in 1086
among the tenants on the land of
Harduin de Scales.59 The church
was evidently in the gift of Theobald, tenant under
Harduin, as his descendant Ralph son of Ralph son
of Fulk (of Broadfield) gave the advowson to Chatteris
Abbey in 1268.5! The benefice was vacant in
1281, and Ralph then confirmed his gift to the
abbey.°? The church remained in the gift of suc-
cessive abbesses until the surrender of the monastery
in September 1538.53 In the following December
the advowson was given in exchange to the Bishop of
Ely.*4 The living remained in the gift of the
Bishops of Ely * until 1852, when it was transferred
to the Bishops of Oxford.5° In September 1854 it
was exchanged with the Crown.®7

Among the notable incumbents were Thomas
Willett and his son Andrew; Ralph Brownrigg,
afterwards Bishop of Exeter; Herbert Thorndike,
from whom the living was sequestered © ; Nathaniel
Ball, his successor in 1657; Thomas Milles, after-
wards Bishop of Waterford ; Edmund Castle, Dean
of Hereford, who was buried at Barley in 17443
William Warham and Thomas Herring, afterwards
Archbishops of Canterbury ; and the theologians
Mark Frank and Thomas Rutherforth.®

Since the time of Nathaniel Ball there has been a
considerable Dissenting congregation in the parish.
The endowment of the present Congregational

ADVOWSON

chapel, to the west of the Cambridge Road, dates
from about 1846.
In 1626 Thomas Chapman, by
CHARITIES his will, left £1 a year for bringing
up young scholars of the name of
Chapman. The legacy is now represented by {£40
consols with the official trustees.

Stephen Peirce, M.D.—as stated in the Parliamen-
tary returns of 1786—by his will gave £3 a year for
the use of the free school. This sum is received from
the bursar of Caius College.

The Poor’s Land charity, comprised in an indenture
of 1704, and the charity of Mrs. Brytchett, founded
by deed 1638, now consist of an allotment of
18a. Ir. 30p., known as Cobdell Field, given under
the inclosure award in exchange for several lands be-
longing to the poor. ‘The land produces £10 163.
yearly, of which £1 a year forms the endowment of
the Poor’s Land Educational Foundation.

In 1621 Ralph Dobson by his will gave £1
yearly to the poor, issuing out of a house in Maiden
Lane, London.

The Parliamentary returns of 1786 likewise in-
clude the five charities next mentioned, namely :-—

Isaac Cowper’s charity, being a yearly sum of
135. 4d. issuing out of land known as Bull Croft;

Lettice Martin’s charity, trust fund, {52 17s.
consols with the official trustees, arising from the
redemption of an annuity of £1 6s.;

Andrew Willett’s charity, consisting of a house and
21., situated near the church, producing £3 yearly;

Blyth’s charity, being an annuity of 45., payable
out of a house and land in Barley ; and

Joseph Wortham’s charity, will, 1689, being an
annuity of ros. issuing out of a house in Royston.

An unknown donoralso gave asum of 10s. tothe poor.

The parish is also in possession of a tenement of
3 r. of land next the Swan Inn, producing about £5
a year, of which 175. a year is given to the poor and
the balance of the net income for church purposes.

The Town House (formerly the workhouse and
afterwards used as the free school), comprised in trust
deed of 1825, is used partly for meetings of the
parish council, &c., whilst the lower part, formerly
used as almshouses, is now used as store-rooms for the
tenants of three cottages adjoining. The origin of
this custom is unknown. The cottages produce
£9 35. yearly.

In 1910 the sum of £5 was applied for educational
purposes, £3 for church purposes, ros. in bread
(Wortham’s charity), and the balance of the income
in the distribution of half-crowns to the poor.

BUCKLAND

Boclande (x-xiii cent.) ; Bochelande (xi cent.) ;
sokeland (xiii-xiv cent.).

The village of Buckland consists of a single street
on the southern slope of the Hertfordshire chalk hills.
It is built on either side of the main road from
Buntingford to Royston. On the east of the street is

9 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3396.

51 Fect of F. Herts, 52 Hen. III, no.
$94; Cott. MS. Jul. A i, fol. 140; see
Mincingbury above.

5? Cott. MS. Jul. A i, fol. 141d.

53 Mins, Accts, Hen. VIII, no. 266,

g. 1182 (19).

Eccl. Com. viii, 193.

4 L, and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (2), 9043

55 Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).
58 Orders in Council ratifying schemes of

58 See under Greenbury above,

42

Buckland House and behind it, near the by-road
leading to Barkway, lie the church and rectory.
There are traces of a circular moat to the south-
west of the church. In the same neighbourhood

is the school, founded about the middle of the 19th
century.

5° Dict, Nat. Biog. ; Hist. MSS. Com.
Rep. vii, App. 1014, 1084.

Dice. Nat. Biog.

6! Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 256, 279,
3633 ii, 493 Urwick, Nonconformity in
Herts. 739. 5 Close, 1846, pt. li, m. 6.

57 Thid. ix, 408.

ye
a a a
BBL ADE ET

Bartey : Tue Fox ano Hovunps Inn

Bucktanp CHURCH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The road descends in a southerly direction into the
valley of the Rib, which it crosses at the hamlet of
Chipping, sometimes styled ‘New’ Chipping or
‘New Cheping,’ probably on account of the market
established there in 1252.! Beyond Chipping Bridge
is the manor-house of Pope’s Hall. A Congregational
chapel at the head of the hamlet was built about
1844.”

The parish is small, including only 1,629 acres.
The boundary between Therfield and Buckland passes
through the village street. The houses on the west
side of the street are in Therfield for civil pur-
poses, but have been in the ecclesiastical parish of
Buckland since 1857.3 The greater part of the
parish is arable land. There are about 220 acres of
grass, and a little woodland lies on the borders of
Wyddial.4 At Burhill Wood near Pope’s Hall is a
dry stirrup-shaped moat entered from the north.

The village probably owed what importance it
had to its position on the high road. The lord of
Buckland had a grant of a weekly market on Tuesdays
and an annual three days’ fair beginning on the vigil
of the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude.® This grant
was made in 1258. In 1252 the lord of Pope’s Hall
had had a grant of a weekly market on Fridays and
a three days’ fair to be held yearly beginning on
the vigil of the feast of St. Gregory.6 The tolls of
the market at Pope’s Hall were farmed at 16s. yearly
in 1322,’ and the market was held at ‘the New
Cheping.’ Elizabeth de Burgh replaced this market
by one at her manor of Buntingford in 1360.8 The
fair was also abolished,® but appears to have been
renewed, since two fairs, one held at Buckland, the
other at Chipping, were abolished in 1883.1 Neither
of the markets is now in existence.

In the time of Edward the Confessor
MANORS BUCKLAND was held by Sailt, a man
of Earl Lewin’s. After the Conquest
it was held by Osbern under Odo Bishop of Bayeux,
brother of William I.1!_ The lands held of the bishop
by Osbern seem generally to have been acquired by
the Ports.1? Knight’s service was subsequently due
from the lord of Buckland to the lord of Tonge
Castle, co. Kent,!3 which had been held of Odo by
Hugh de Port in 1086.14
After the bishop had forfeited his English lands in
1088, the overlordship of Buckland apparently re-
mained with the lords of Tonge Castle, Hugh de
Port and his descendants the St. Johns.1® A fee in
Buckland was held of Hugh’s great-grandson Adam

BUCKLAND

de Port.18 Later Tonge Castle, apparently including
the overlordship of Buckland, was held under Adam’s
direct descendant by Ralph Fitz Bernard, who died
about 1306.17 He was ultimately succeeded as over-
lord of Buckland by his grandson Bartholomew Lord
Badlesmere.!8

During the 13th century the immediate tenants of
Buckland took their name from the manor. Philip
de Buckland had a grant of free warren in all his
Hertfordshire lands and of market and fair at Buck-
land in 1258.19 He was probably the Philip de
Buckland who was the king’s marshal and had accom-
panied Prince Edward in his Welsh expedition in the
year previous to this grant.2° Of his predecessors
little is known.”! Possibly Henry de Buckland, who
was attorney of William de St. John, the overlord of
this manor in 1228, and brought a plea concerning
the wardship of certain lands in Hertfordshire in
1233,22 was lord of Buckland in this county.
Henry son of Henry de Buckland held land here in
1249.74 Contemporary with Philip de Buckland was
a certain Stephen, who was clerk to Bertram de Crioll,
lord of the manor of Pope’s Hall in this parish.2° ‘The
lord of Buckland in 1303 was Henry de Buckland.”®

In 1313 settlement was made on Henry and his
wife Alice in survivorship, with successive remainders
to Henry’ssons Reginald and Richard and his daughter
Eleanor in tail.2” Alice survived her husband and
surrendered her life interest in the manor to the over-
lord Bartholomew Lord Badlesmere for a yearly rent
of £20.°8 Reginald having died childless, Richard
his brother was heir under the settlement of 1313,”°
and as such remitted to Badlesmere all his right in the
manor.?° The latter was implicated in the revolt of
1322, surrendered to the king after Boroughbridge, and
was hanged at Canterbury.*!_ Buckland was seised by
the king with his other lands,3? whereupon Richard
de Buckland petitioned for its restoration, maintaining
that Badlesmere’s interest had lapsed with the death
of Alice widow of Henry de Buckland.*? In April
1323 order was given for the delivery of Buckland to
the petitioner #4; but his deed of release to Badles-
mere was subsequently discovered among the latter’s
muniments,?> which had been taken to the Tower.%
In 1327 Margaret Lady Badlesmere, widow of Bar-
tholomew, whose action in excluding the queen from
Leeds Castle had been the immediate cause of the
disturbances of 1322,” claimed that Buckland had
been settled upon her jointly with her husband.%8
She had restoration of all her lands in 1327,°° and

1 Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), ii,
293 3 Cal. Chart, R. 1226-57, p. 404.

? Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 425.

3 Order in Council, 16 July 1857.

4 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

5 Cal. Chart. R. 1257-1300, p. 12.

6 Ibid. 1226-57, p. 404.

7 Mins. Accts, bdle. 1147, no. 9, m. 7.

8 Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), ii,
293-

9 Ibid,

0 Lond, Gaz, 2 Jan. 1883, p. 33.

Ul Y.C.H. Herts. i, 3105.

2 See V.C.H. Herts. iii, 222. This
was also the case with his Kentish lands.
38 Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-10 Edw. III, 91.

\4 Dom. Bk. Fac. Kent, 17.

Cal, Ing. pm. 1-10 Edw. III, 91;
Chan, Ing. p.m, 12 Edw. III (2nd nos.),
no. 54a. For an account of the Port
family see V.C.H. Hants, iv, 115-16.

16 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270.

W7 Chan. Ing. p.m. 34 Edw. I, no. 53.

18 See below ; cf. Hasted, Hist. of Kent,
ii, 602.

19 Cal. Chart. R. 1257-1300, p. 12.

2 Cal, Pat, 1247-58, pp. 578, 586 5
cf. p. 635 and ibid. 1258-66, p. 54.

21 Possibly Gregory of Buckland, party
to a plea concerning 4 acres in Buckland,
co. Herts., in 1199, was one of them (Rot,
Cur. Reg. [Rec. Com. ], ii, 69). ;

23 Cal, Close, 1227-31, p» 585 Mait-
land, Bracton’s Note Bk. ii, 621.

3 Chauncy (Hist. Antiq. of Herts.) has
confused this family with others of the
same name, and has been followed in this
by more recent historians. It is not
known whether Geoffrey de Buckland,
Dean of St. Martin’s and justice itinerant
in Hertfordshire (Cal. Pat. 1216-25,
passim), came of the family now under

43

consideration, The Nicholas de Buck-
land who built the church in 1348 (see
below) was probably of this family.

24 Cur. Reg. R. 135, m. 10.

25 Excerpta e Rot. Fin. (Rec. Com.), ii,
232.

26 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

27 Feet of F. Herts. 7 Edw. II, no. 132.

28 Cal. Close, 1318-23, ps» 635+

29 Tbid.

30 Ibid. 1323-75 Pp» 53+

31 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, i, 215.

82 Parl, R. i, 4056.

33 Ibid.

34 Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 635.

35 Ibid. 1323-7, pp> 535 I11-

36 Parl. R. ii, 4304.

87 G.E.C. loc. cit.

38 Par], R. ii, 43043 cf. Cal. Ing. pam
1-10 Edw. III, 91.

39 Parl. R. ii, 4224.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

doubtless recovered Buckland Manor.*® Her son
Giles was seised of it at his death in 1338.4! It was
among the manors assigned in dower to his widow
Elizabeth,” and the reversion contingent upon her
death was included in the purparty of Margery wife

Roos. Gules three

Bapiesmere. Argent
water bougets argent.

a fesse between double
cotises gules,

of William de Roos of Hamelak, sister and co-heir of
Giles de Badlesmere.**

From the time of Badlesmere’s acquisition of
Buckland the service due at the castle of Tonge
appears to have lapsed. In all subsequent records
the manor is said to be held of the king in chief.*4

Buckland remained with the Lords Roos for nearly
two centuries. It was entailed on the heirs of Thomas
Lord Roos,*® second son and ultimate heir of William
and Margery,‘® by his wife Beatrice, who married as
her second husband Sir Richard de Burley, kt.47 She
died in the spring of 1415 and was succeeded by her
grandson John son of William Lord Roos.48 Upon
his death on Easter Eve 1421 4? the manor was taken
into the king’s hands during the minority of his
brother Thomas, who was his heir.5° A certain
Thomas Horne, evidently the grandson of Eleanor
sster of Richard de Buckland,®! was then farming
the manor.®? Thomas Lord Roos died seised of it
18 August 1430, leaving an infant son Thomas.*3
Eleanor, widow of Thomas Lord Roos the father and
afterwards wife of Edmund (Beaufort) Duke of
Somerset, held it in dower until her death 6 March
1466-7. The estates of her son Thomas Lord
Roos had been forfeited upon his attainder as a
Lancastrian in 1461,5° and in April 1468 the king

granted Buckland for life to Jaques Haulte, esquire,
one of the ‘kervers’ of the queen. John Horne,
otherwise Littlebury, son of the Thomas Horne
mentioned above, took this occasion to petition for
the restoration of the manor to his family under the
settlement of 1313.57 The grant to Jaques Haulte
was cancelled in December 1468,°° but John Horne
apparently failed to make good his claim. Edmund
son of the last-mentioned Lord Roos obtained the
reversal of his father’s attainder®® and recovered
Buckland Manor.®° Since he was not ‘of sufficient
discretion to govern himself,’ the custody of his lands
was granted for life to Sir Thomas Lovell, kt., his
brother-in-law.®! Sir Thomas died 25 May 1524,
and Buckland then passed to Thomas (Manners)
Lord Roos, great-nephew and heir of Edmund Lord
Roos.®? He was created Earl of Rutland on 18 June
1525,° and in 1529 sold this manor to Idward
Watson.®! The latter died in the following year
and was succeeded by his son Henry.®© Edward
Watson, probably the heir of this Henry,®® with his
wife Dorothy sold Buckland Manor to James Altham,
citizen and clothworker of London, in1552.°" Altham
died at Latton, co. Essex, 28 February 1582~-3.%
In accordance with a settlement of 1577 his widow
Mary, formerly wife of Sir Andrew Judd, kt., held
Buckland for her life, and it then passed to his
second son Edward Altham.®® The latter died in
1605 ; his widow Elizabeth survived” and in 1607
joined in a settlement of the manor on her son
Sir James Altham, kt., upon his marriage with Eliza-
beth Barrington.”! Sir James bequeathed it to his
brother Edward, failing his own issue male. He died
in 1610, leaving an only daughter, an infant named
Joan,’? and his brother Sir Edward Altham, kt., of
Mark Hall in Latton, succeeded.”3 Sir Edward died
at Mark Hall, 28 May 1632.7 His widow Joan
had a life interest in the manor.75 Their son and
heir James was fined as a Royalist in 1645,7¢ and was
created a knight of the Bath at the coronation of
Charles II.’7_ He gave Buckland in marriage with
his daughter Mary to Sir John Tufton, bart.,”® who
sold it to James Hoste.”? He sold it about 1669 to
Samuel Mellish of Doncaster,8° who was still in pos-
session in 1700.8! From him ® it was purchased

See Cal. Inz. p.m. 1-10 Edw. ITI, 91.

“ Chan. Ing. p.m. 12 Edw. III (2nd
nos.), no. $4.

4 Cal. Cisse, 1337-9, p. 498.

43 Thid. 1341-3, p. 146.

“Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Ric. II, 68;
(Ser. 2), li, 13; Cal. Par. 1385-9, p. 57.
Tonge had been assigned to Elizabeth
Countess of Northampton, another sister
of Giles de Badlesmere (Hasted, Hiss. of
Kent, ii, 603).

® Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Ric. I, no. 68.

“© G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 401 3
but it should be noted that the same
work names his widow Margaret and not
Beatrice (see text).

“ Cal. Pat, 1385-9, pp. 57, 1493
Close, ro Ric. II, pt. i, m. 23d. 3 Feet of
F. Div. Ca vo Ric, ID.

48 Chan. Ing. p.m. 3 Hen. V, no. 44 ;
of, GEC. lec, ct.

‘9 Chan. Ing. p.m. 9 Hen. V, no. 58.

++ Mins, Accts. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 1121,
a0. 12, 13, 17.

51 Chan. Ing. p.m. 8 Edw. IV, no. 60.

52 Mins. Accts, (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 1121,
no. 12.

$8 Chan. Ing. p.m. 9 Hen. VI, no. 48.

M Ibid. 7 Edw. IV, no. 20,

$5 Parl, R. v, 4776.

8 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p. 86.

§? Chan. Ing. p.m. 8 Euw. IV, no. 60 ;
Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p. 100. It is note-
worthy that a John Horne was among
the jurors who had returned Buckland
among the lands of John Lord Roos in
1421 (Chan. Ing. p.m. 9 Hen. V, no. 58).

58 Cal, Pat, 1467-77, p. 86.

5° G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi, 403.

© De Banco R. 964, m. 431.

61 Ibid. ; cf. G.E.C. loc. cit. Love'l’s
interest was for life only. It was probably
in error that the manor of Buckland was
included in the grant to Edward Downing
and John Walker in 1579 of lands which
had belonged to Sir Francis Lovell (Pat.
21 Eliz. pt. vi, m. 1).

® Ct. of Wards Misc. Bks. dlxxviii,
fol. 126 d. 63 G.E.C. loc. cit.

* L. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 5624 (20) ;
Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 21 Hen. VIII ;
Recov. R. Trin. 21 Hen. VIII, rot. 336,

® Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), li, 13.

66 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 6 Edw. VI.

®7 Ibid. Apparently he obtained further
assurance of his title from Kenelm

44

Watson in 1556 (Recov. R. Hil. 3 & 4
Phil. and Mary, rot. 546).

6 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccii, 176 ;
cf. Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), 538.

® Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccii, 176.

70 Ibid. ceciv, 74.

71 Ibid. ccexix, 201 ; Recoy. R. East.
5 Ja%s I, rot. 27:

* Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxix, 201.

78 Ibid. cccclxv, 63. A settlement was
made on him by his mother Elizabeth in
1612 (ibid.). 74 Ibid. (Ser. 2), cecclxv, 63.

” Tid. ; cf. Feet of F. Div. Co. East.
12 Chas, I.

76 Cal. Com. for Comp. 879 ; cf. Recov.
R. East. 12 Chas, Sey Hil. 21
Chas. I, rot. 31.

77 Shaw, Knights of Engl. i, 166.

75 Chauncy, op. cit. 11435 ef. G.E.C.
Baronetage, ii, 151.

79 Chauncy, loc. cit.; cf. Feet of F.
Herts. Trin. 17 Chas. II; Recov. R.
Trin. 17 Chas. II, rot. 116,

© Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 21 Chas, IL.

51 Chauncy, loc. cit.

*2 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 304. Possibly
the sale was made by the heir of Samues
Mellish (Recov. R. Hil. 7 Anne, rot. 17)

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

by Ralph Freeman of Hamells in Braughing. It
descended with that estate (q.v.) to Philip (Yorke)

second Earl of Hardwicke. He

was succeeded at Buckland by

his nephew Philip, the third
earl, whose daughter Anne
Countess of Mexborough was
his heir.64 The estate is at
present in the possession of
her grandson the Hon. John
Henry Savile of Arden Hall,
co. York.

The reputed manor of
HORNE evidently originated
in a messuage or mansion-
house called ‘The Horne,’
which was held as of Buckland
Manor.®* Possibly it belonged
to the Horne family during the 14th and rth cen-
turies,®® as it was in the possession of John Shuck-
burgh about 1519,8? who was heir of Thomas son of
John Shuckburgh who married Clemency daughter of
John Horne, great-grandson of Eleanor de Buckland.®$
John Shuckburgh sold it to Robert Dormer, gentle-
man, about 1519,8 and in February 1527-8 he
alienated to Edward Watson,®® who purchased the
main manor of Buckland shortly afterwards.®! The
two estates were thus amalgamated, and by 1700 the
manor of Buckland was sometimes known as the
‘manor of Horne.’ #

*The manor of POPE’S HALL (Popleshall, Popes-
hal or Poppeshal, xiii cent.; Little Popeleshale,®?
xiv cent. ; Popsale, xv cent. ; Popesall or Popleshey,
xvii cent.) was probably included in the holding of
Odo of Bayeux in 1086.9! The fees held of Adam
de Port in the early part of the 13th century included
a quarter-fee in Pope’s Hall in addition to the main
manor of Buckland.9® In 1166 a whole fee was held
of John de Port, Adam’s father,°® by William de
Popleshall (Pope’s Hall).%” This fee doubtless in-
cluded lands at Pope’s Hall in Boughton Malherbe,
co. Kent, held by the Popeshall family.°* Moreover,
it seems possible that Osbern, who held under Bishop
Odo in Buckland in 1086, was identical with the
Osbern son of Letard who held Pope’s Hall in Kent
of the bishop.*° The Port barony was one of those
which owed castle-ward service to Dover, and ward
was due from Pope’s Hall in Buckland to this castle.1
Knight’s service due, as in the case of Buckland, to the
Ports and St. Johns was not apparently attached to
Tonge Castle, but was assigned in dower to Mirabel
widow of Hugh second Lord St. John,! and afterwards

Yorke, Earl of Hard-
wicke. Argent a saltire
azure charged with a
bessant.

83 Clutterbuck, Hist. ana Antiq. of

96 V.C.H. Hants, iv, 116.

BUCKLAND

formed part of the share of one of his daughters,
Isabel wife of Luke de Poynings.2 The service to
Dover Castle was still recorded in 1427.3

In 1249 William de Orleston was holding Pope’s
Hall in right of his wife Joan.4 It is not clear who
she was, but she seems to have been heiress of the
family of Popeshall, since the Kentish manor of Pope’s
Hall also descended to the Orleston family.© The
connexion between the Popeshall family and this
manor is otherwise lacking in definite evidence.
William de Popeshall was among those who viewed
the royal works at Dover Castle in 1170-1.6 Richard
de Popeshall, who appointed Geoffrey son of Anger
his essoin before the king’s justices at Hertford in
1198,’ was probably lord of Pope’s Hall, co. Herts.
Robert son of Richard de Popeshall was hostage to
the king for Adam de Port in 1212-13.8

Joan wife of William de Orleston joined her
husband in a subfeoffment of Pope’s Hall Manor to
Bertram de Crioll in 1249.2 He was to hold by
service of half a knight’s fee, by the ward due from
the manor to Dover Castle, and by a rent of 62,
to be rendered at Pope’s Hall, co. Kent. Free
warren, a market and fair were granted to Bertram
de Crioll in 1252.19 He subenfeoffed his son
Nicholas de Crioll,!! who sold the manor to Philip
de Buckland.” Richard (de Clare) Earl of Gloucester
took possession apparently without any just claim.
Nevertheless it remained with his descendants. His
son Gilbert seventh Earl of Gloucester was in pos-
session in 1278 !4 and died seised in 1295.15 After
the death of Gilbert, son of the last-named earl, at

Crare. Or three

cheverons gules,

Mortimer. Barry or
and azure a chief or with
two pales between two
gyrons azure thereinanda
scutcheon argent over all.

Bannockburn in 1314,!6 the custody of Pope’s Hall
was granted to Ralph de Heron.!7

The manor evidently descended to Elizabeth de
Burgh, one of the sisters and co-heirs of the eighth

7 Rot. Cur, Reg. (Rec. Com.), i, 172.

Herts. iii, 393.

® Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 47.

85 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), li, 13.

86 See above.

87 Close, 11 Hen. VIII, no. 2.

88 See the account of Chamberlains in
Reed; cf. Chan. Ing. p.m. 8 Edw. IV,
no. 60.

89 Close, 11 Hen. VIII, no. 2.

2 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), li, 13.

91 See above.

92 cf, Chauncy, op. cit. 113.

% Cal. Close, 1337-9, P- 20. Evidently
to distinguish it from Pope’s Hall, co.
Kent. 94 See above.

% Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270

97 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 208.

98 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 208 5
cf. Feud. Aids, iii, 24, 25; Cal. Close,
1337-9» Ps 20.

99 Dom. Bk. Fac. Kent, 18.

100 Feet of F. Herts. 34 Hen. III, no.
401; Chan. Ing. p.m. 22 Ric. II, no.
343 Cal. Pat. 1422-9, p. 418.

1 Cal. Close, 1337-9, p- 20.

2 Ibid. 1349-54, Pe 723
Hants, iv, 116.

3 Cal. Pat. 1422-9, p. 418.

4 Feet of F. Herts. 34 Hen. III, no.
4013 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

5 Feud. Aids, iii, 24-5.

6 Pipe R, 17 Hen, II (Pipe R. Soc.),
137, 138.

cf. V.C.H.

45

8 Cal. Rot. Chart. 1199-1216 (Rec.
Com.), 191.
9 Feet of F. Herts. 34 Hen. III, no.

401.

10 Cal, Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 404.

1 Feet of F. Div. Co. case 283, file 13,
no. 291.

12 Hund, R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

18 Ibid. In the inquisition on Richard
de Clare Earl of Gloucester he is said to
have bought the property of Nicholas de
Crioll (Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, 153).

14 Assize R. 323, m. 45-

18 Chan. Ing. p.m. 24 Edw. I, no. 107.

16 Thid. 8 Edw. II, no. 68.

1 Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), i,
216,

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Earl of Gloucester, but was forfeited to the Crown by
Roger Damory, her third husband, a contrariant.1® It
was restored to Elizabeth de Burgh in November
1322,!% and descended to Roger Mortimer Earl of
March, grandson of Elizabeth Countess of Ulster,
who was granddaughter of Elizabeth de Burgh.??
He was holding the tenement called Pope’s Hall
at his death, 20 June 1398.21, His son Edmund
Earl of March gave a life interest in his lands at
Pope’s Hall to William Barowe,”? and died seised
of the reversion in January 1424~-5.°9 The tene-
ment evidently came to the Crown at the accession
of Edward IV, who was grandson of Anne eldest sister
of Edmund Earl of March.** In the June following
his accession he assigned Pope’s Hall in dower to his
mother Cicely Duchess of York,?> and the grant was
confirmed by Richard III.°® She died in 1495.77
The manor afterwards formed part of the dower of
Jane Seymour.”* At her death in 1537 it reverted
to the Crown, and in 1540 was granted to Sir Ralph
Sadleir of Standon, then one of the king’s secretaries,

40

10 20 50
ne n n

Hall about 1592,°5 evidently failed to oust Hamond
from the estate or compounded with him, since he
was still in possession at his
death in 1604.88 His son
John Hamond sold Pope’s
Hall to John Bownest, gentle-
man, in the early part of
1612.37 He bequeathed it to
his wife Mercy with remainder
to his son Thomas Bownest,*®
who was in possession in
1668.59 His son Thomas sold
the estate in 1687 to William
Allen#? of Great Hadham.
From his son Thomas it was
purchased in 1714 by the
governors of St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, West Smithfield,“
in whom it is still vested. During the 19th century
the governors consolidated their estate by the pur-

chase of other lands in Chipping.*?
In addition to court

baron* the lords of Pope’s

St. Bartnotomew’s
Hospitar. Party argent
and sable a cheweron
countercoloured,

SCALE OF FEET

era
SouTH AISLE

Prax or Bucxtann Cuurcu

in consideration of his surrender of certain annuities.“
This grant was in tail-male. In 1544 Sir Ralph had
a regrant of the same lands in fee simple.%° He sold
Pope’s Hall to Edward Hamond, a yeoman of
Buckland, in 1570.5! Edward Hamond settled
Pope’s Hall on his younger son Alexander in 157.8.52
Alexander succeeded his father in February 1579-80,33
and apparently obtained confirmation of his title
from Sir Ralph Sadleir in 1581.44 William Tipper,
a ‘fishing grantee,’ who had a royal grant of Pope’s

‘CHANCEL|-|

pth Peeels if”

Hall claimed to have gallows,
pillory, tumbrel and amend-
ment of assize of bread and
ale.44 Soon after Richard
Earl of Gloucester had seized
the manor he withdrew the
suit of tenants from the
sheriff’s courts and retained
ss. from the sheriff’s aid.15
The church
CHURCH of ST. AN-
DREW * con-
sists of chancel 25 ft. by 16 ft.,
modern north vestry, nave
43 ft. by 18 ft., south aisle
43 ft. by 13 ft., west tower
12 ft. by 11 ft., south porch
10 ft. 6 in. by g ft. ; all the
dimensions are internal. The
walls are built of flint rubble
with clunch dressings ; the
tower is covered with plaster; the roofs are tiled,
except over the south aisle, which is leaded.

Salmon ‘7 records that the following inscription in
the glass of a chancel window existed in his time :
‘Nicholai de Bokeland qui istanc Ecclesiam cum
Capella Beatae Mariae construxit A° Domini 1348.’
The existing chancel, nave and the remains of the
south chapel of St. Mary, now incorporated in the
south aisle, belong to that period ; the west tower
was added about 1400, and about 1480 % the south

|G

ll
il

WZAc1400
15°CENT
(_] Mopern

18 Mins. Accts. bdle. 1147, no. 9.

19 Ibid. See Chan. Ing. p.m. 34 Edw. IIT,
no. $3.

0 G.E.C. Complesz Peerage, ii, 269 ;
Chan. Ing. p.m. 43 Edw. II, pt. i, no.
233; 5 Ric. II, no. 43.

*! Chan. Ing. p.m. 22 Ric. II, no. 34,

D Cal. Pat, 1422-9, p. 418.

® Chan. Ing. p.m. 3 Hen. VI, no. 32.

“ G.E.C. loc. cit. ; cf. Feet of F. Herts.
Mich. 3 Hen. VIII.

% Cal, Pat. 1461-7, p. 131.

% Pat. i Ric. III, pt. v.

7 Dice, Nat. Biog.

8 Land P. Hen. VIII, xvi, 379 (26).

cae Gor Pe

30 Ibid. xix (2), 166 (70).

31 Pat. 12 Eliz. pt. ix. The Hamond
famity had resided at Buckland at least
since 1337 (Cal. Pat. 1334-8, p. 438).

32 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxxxix, 88,

8 Ibid.

* Feet of F, Herts. Mich. 23 & 24 Eliz.

3% Pat. 34 Eliz. pt. vii.

56 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cclxxxiv, 96.

© Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 9 Jas. I.

88 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ceexlvii, 77,

% Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 20 Chas. II ;
Recov. R. Mich. 22 Chas. II, rot. 179.

* Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 3 Jas. Il;
cf. ibid. East. 36 Chas. II; Chauncy, op,
cit. 114.

46

4] Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund,

“2 Ibid. 5 cf. Close, 1862, pt. cli, no.
10; 1864, pt. il, no, 1753 1865, pt.
exxxvi, no. 8,

8 Mins. Accts. bdle. 1147, no. 9.

““ Hund. R. (Rec, Gon) ie
Assize R. 323, m. 45.

‘S Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

46 There was a churchyard cross on the
south side ; see will of Richard Gille in
1504 (P.C.C. 23 & 42 Holgrave).

7 Hist. Herts, (1728), 304.

“6 In 1497 Thomas Galer left 205. to
the fabric of the church when rebuilding
was probably in progress (P.C.C. 6 Horne).

1933

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

aisle and porch were erected and the west wall of
the south chapel destroyed. In the 19th century a
north vestry was added and the whole church was
restored.

The east window of the chancel with three
traceried lights is modern. In the north wall is the
modern arch to the vestry ; in the south wall are
two 14th-century windows, each of two lights with
flowing tracery ; these have been partially restored.
Between them is a doorway of the same date, with
moulded jambs and arch. At the western end of the
wall is a small low-side window with a square head
and a sunk splay on the jambs and lintel outside * ;
the window is 2 ft.2in. in height by 1 ft. 1 in. in
width, and the sill outside is about 3 ft. from the
ground. ‘The window is protected by
iron bars, and on the inner side are
iron hooks on which a casement for-
merly hung. A moulded string-course
under the window sills internally forms
the labels over the south doorway and
the low-side window. The 14th-cen-
tury chancel arch is of two chamfered
orders, the inner one slightly hollowed,
with a moulded label on each side,
moulded jambs and moulded capitals
and bases ; the bases are modern. The
chancel roof is modern.

In the north wall of the nave are
three windows of 14th-century date,
each of two lights with traceried heads.
Under the westernmost window is a
blocked north doorway of 15th-century
date, with low three-centred arch, with
two continuously moulded orders, the
outer of which forms a square head
over the arch. East of the doorway,
in the external wall, is a plain round-
headed stoup. Set in a splay in the
south-east angle of the nave is the door-
way to the rood stair ; the stair itself
has gone, but the upper doorway re-
mains. On the north wall opposite,
between the east wall of the nave and
the first window, are four corbels which
formerly supported the rood-loft ; the
upper two are 11 ft. from the floor
and the other two 2 ft. 6in. beneath
them. They are about 4 ft. apart,
those to the west being set in the inner
jamb of the 14th-century window, the
moulding of which is worked on them.

The south arcade is of three bays
and is of about 1480; the two-centred arches are of
two moulded orders, the outer one continuous and
stopping on a splay half-way down the pier, the
inner resting on semi-octagonal shafts with moulded
capitals and bases. The western arch of the arcade
is about 4 ft. wider than the others and has no
western respond, the arch being carried on a corbel
carved with an angel holding a shield. Partly buried
in the eastern respond of the arcade is a portion of
the 14th-century east respond and arch which
formerly opened into the south chapel ; the details of
arch and jambs with their moulded capitals and bases

48a The Rev. H. F. Burnaby states that when this window
was reopened in 1848 traces of the painting of a figure in red
outline were found on the jambs. cf. p. 48.

47

BUCKLAND

are similar to those of the chancel arch. In the
eastern respond of the 1§th-century arcade are two
shallow niches, one on each side back to back ; these
appear to be the ends of a squint, now blocked. The
nave roof is modern.

The south aisle has a window in the east wall
two in the south wall and one at the west end, all oF
15th-century date, each of three cinquefoiled lights
under a four-centred arch ; much of the stonework
has been renewed. Below the east window is a 14th-
century string-course. The 15th-century south door-
way has a four-centred arch of two moulded orders
under a square head, with traceried spandrels ; much
of the stonework has been renewed. In the south-
east corner of the aisle is a trefoiled 14th-century

Bucxtanp Cuurcu, Souru-zast Corner oF Nave, sHOWING
JUNCTION OF 14TH AND ISTH-cenTURY Work

piscina. The roof over the aisle has some 1 5th-cen-
tury moulded timbers with carved bosses. The south
porch has a flat elliptical arch to the doorway of two
moulded orders under a square head ; the head stops
to the moulded label are much decayed, the inner
order rests on moulded capitals. Above the doorway
is a small niche with cinquefoiled arch. On each
side of the porch is a window with two trefoiled
lights under a square head with moulded label and
grotesque stops. ;

The west tower is of three stages with diagonal
buttresses ; a low pyramidal roof rises behind an
embattled parapet. The late 14th-century tower
arch is of three moulded orders, the two outer con-
tinuous, the inner resting on semi-octagonal shafts

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

with moulded capitals and bases. The west doorway
has a late 14th-century arch and jambs of two con-
tinuously moulded orders, and decayed grotesque
stops to the label. The west window is of two cinque-
foiled lights with traceried head, partly of modern
stonework. The second stage has a narrow loop-light
on three sides. The belfry windows are of two lights
with traceried heads and have been repaired.

The font has an octagonal bowl of Barnack stone,
perhaps of 14th-century date, but, as it appears to
have been recut and its form altered, it is difficult
to assign a date to it; the shaft and splayed base are
of clunch. All the fittings in the church are modern.

In the heads of two north nave windows are some
fragments of 14th-century glass.

On the chancel floor are a brass with the figure of
a priest in a cope, holding a chalice, with inscription
to William Langley, rector, 1478 ; a figure of a man
with six sons and indent of four daughters, to John
Gyll, 1499 ; an inscription only to Joan Gyll, un-
dated ; a female figure with inscription to Alice wife
of John Boteler, 1451. Under the communion table
is a brass inscription to Joan wife of Esdras Bland,
rector, 1648. On the south wall of the aisle is a
mural monument of white alabaster to Susan Clerke,
1634.

In the rectory are preserved tracings of the distemper
painting discovered, during a restoration, on the
sides of the low-side window on the south side of
the chancel; on the east side was the Virgin and
Child and on the west a female figure in the attitude
of prayer. The paintings were destroyed. At the
same time there were destroyed in St. Mary’s chapel,
at the east end of the south aisle, some painted
decorations, with an invocation in Latin to the Virgin.

There are six bells: the two old bells by Chris-
topher Graye, 1656, were recast in 1889 and four
new ones added.

The communion plate consists of a cup of 1810, a
modern paten and a plated flagon.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i)
baptisms 1659 to 1806, burials 1663 to 1806,
marriages 1663 to 1753; (ii) baptisms and burials
1806 to 1812 ; (iil) marriages 1754 to 1812.

There was a priest at Buckland in
1086.49 The advowson was doubt-
less appurtenant to the manor until
Henry de Buckland alienated it in 1283.59 He
then conveyed it to William de Middelton and John
son of Richard de Middelton and the heirs of John.5!
A John de Middelton gave a life interest to Hervey
de Staunton in 1319. At his death it was to
revert to John son of John de Middelton.®8 He
presented a rector in 1336.°4 The subsequent
history is obscure. The advowson seems to have
changed hands very frequently. John Wade and

ADVOWSON

49 VCH. Herts. i, 3106.
50 Feet of F. Herts. 12 Edw. I, no

156. 59 Ibid.
51 Thid. 60 Thid.
52 Thid. 12 Edw. II, no. 316. 51 See above.
58 Thid. 6 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

54 Epis. Reg. quoted by Clutterbuck,
Hist. and Antiq. of Herts. iii, 395.
5 Ibid, 56 Ibid.

7 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 3317.
58 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

®& De Banco R. 964, m. 431.
& V.C.H. Herts, iii, 251.
® De Banco R. 964, m. 431.

others presented for one turn in 1373, and in 1391
the gift lapsed to the bishop.®® Benjamin Cornwall
in the same year and John Newport in 1394 pre-
sented for one turn only.66 John Norwich the
elder, a citizen and grocer of London, conveyed the
advowson to John Curteys and others in January
1405—6.57 Curteys presented a rector in 1409.°
In 1432 and 1433 the living was in the gift of
John Rinsted and others, and in 1445 John Fray
and others presented.*® ‘These were probably trustees.
By 1478 the advowson had been acquired by John
Littlebury a/ias Horne,® who laid claim to Buckland
Manor.®! The advowson is not mentioned in the
records of his attempt to recover the manor, but
Edmund Lord Roos presented ‘for one turn’ in
1487. Sir Thomas Lovell by virtue of his life
interest in the lands of Lord Roos laid claim to the
advowson as an appurtenance of Buckland Manor in
1503.68 The plea which he brought against Thomas
Shuckburgh (probably the grandson of John Horne
alias Littlebury)® dragged on for more than five
years.©° The termination is unknown, but it was
evidently in favour of the lord of the manor, since
the advowson was sold with the manor to Edward
Watson by the Earl of Rutland in 1529.8 It de-
scended with the manor until the time of Samuel
Mellish.67 He sold it in 1702 to the Provost and
Fellows of King’s College,®* in whom it is still vested.

Eminent among the rectors of Buckland have been
Thomas Becon, the Protestant divine, who wrote
under the name of Theodore Basil,°® Thomas Morell,
a classical scholar, who supplied the libretti for
Handel’s ‘Judas Maccabaeus’ and other oratorios,
and William Wigan Harvey, who was transferred to
Ewelme rectory in 1871.77 The Rev. Henry Fowke
Burnaby, who succeeded the Rev. W. W. Harvey,
restored Buckland Church.

In 1663 the Rev. Esdras Bland, a

CHARITIES former rector, by his will gave £2 yearly

for the education of poor children.

This charge issues out of lands in the parish of Therfield
and is paid to the treasurer of Buckland School.

John Clerke’s Charity. —A _ benefaction table
formerly in the church recorded ‘A.D.1772. Rent-
charge on certain lands in Therfield called Money
Crofte by the will of the late John Clerke, Esquire,
for bread to be yearly distributed at Christmas, £1.’
This annual payment is duly received and applied in
accordance with the donor’s wish.

In 1898 William Thorogood, by his will proved
20 August, gave £100, the interest arising there-
from to be distributed in coal to the poor annually in
December. The legacy was invested in {92 115. 10d.
consols with the official trustees, and the dividends,
amounting to £2 6s., are distributed in coal to poor
widows.

6 L. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 5624 (20).
Sir Henry Sapcott, kt., who presented in
1533 (Clutterbuck, loc. cit.), was a co-
feoffee with Edward Watson.

®7 See above.

65 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 395 ; Inst.
Bks. (P.R.O.).

6 Urwick, Nonconf. in Herts. 739.

70 Dict. Nat. Biog.

48

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

LITTLE HADIHAM

LITTLE HADHAM

The parish of Little Hadham has an area of 3,081
acres, of which about two-thirds consist of arable
land! There is now little woodland, but probably
like Much Hadham this parish was once well wooded.?
The River Ash flows through a valley in the
middle of the parish, the ground rising steeply on
each side to an average height of 300 ft. Running
east and west through the parish is Stane Street,
the high road into Essex, and intersecting this is the
road running north from Much Hadham to Albury
and the Pelhams.

The population of Little Hadham is scattered in
hamlets. The church of St. Cecilia is situated a
little to the north of Stane Street, and with a few
cottages, the Rectory, a modern house built in 1875
and rebuilt in 1907, and Church End House, a
17th-century half-timber house to which a plastered
brick front has been added, forms the hamlet known
as Church End. A thatched building which stood
here, once forming three almshouses belonging to the
churchwardens and overseers of Little Hadham, was
pulled down about 1886.

Hadham Hall, the manor-house of Bauds’ Manor,
now the property and residence of Mr. William
Minet, F.S.A., J.P., stands on high ground about a
quarter of a mile east of the church, with which it
is connected by a raised path called the Church
Causeway. It consists of the west wing and part of the
south wing of a large house of the courtyard type; the
other wings have disappeared, but most of the founda-
tions have been traced and a plan of them made. A
modern wing has been built partly on the site of the
former north wing. ‘The house was probably built
about 1570 by a member of the Capell family. There
appear to have been two houses before the present
one; the first on a moated site a few hundred yards
west of the existing house, and another, with which
the present house appears to have been partly incor-
porated, at the south-east corner. In this, as in other
points, Hadham Hall resembles Standon Lordship
about 4 miles away, a house erected a little earlier
in the 16th century. The foundations of the older
house, which was probably built in the 15th century
by a member of the Baud family, still remain; the
orientation of the older building differs 6°20’ from
that of the existing one. The present house is built
of thin 2-in. red bricks. The mullions and dressings
to the windows are of brick covered with cement,
but some of these have been replaced with modern
stonework ; the roofs are tiled. The principal front
faces west, and is about 115 ft. in length by 26 ft. in
width. At its south end a portion of the south
wing projects eastwards ; the end of this is set back
about 14 ft. from the face of the west wing. The
house is of two stories with attics. In the centre of
the west front is one of the two gateways which
formerly gave access to the courtyard; this has been
inclosed to form an entrance vestibule. The semi-
circular archway is of cement with classic entablature
above. On each side of the archway are large semi-
octagonal turrets carried up above the roof with

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).
7See Much Hadham. In the 13th
century the lord of Little Hadham had

meadow in Dene Wood, Westgrove, in
the ‘grava’ called Estwode, &c., which
suggests that at this date woods had been

embattled parapets ; the one to the south formerly
contained a stair; between them is a gable with a
saddle-back coping, close under the apex of which is
a projecting corbel for a finial, which has gone. All
the main front windows are of four lights with moulded
mullions and transoms, set in moulded frames and sur-
mounted by pediments ; the walls now have a plain
parapet with saddle-back coping. ‘The east side of
the block has a modern cement archway in the centre,
but is without the flanking turrets. ‘The windows
are similar to those on the west front, but have no
pediments. There are two small doorways on the
east front, both now blocked ; they probably served
as independent entrances to lodgings occupied by
guests. ‘The doorways have hollow-chamfered mould-
ings and four-centred arches. At the north end is a
modern doorway.

At each end of the west wing of the house is an
original chimney stack of two detached shafts with
octagonal moulded caps and bases ; the western shaft
in each stack is circular, covered with honeycomb
pattern, the other a plain octagon. All the other
chimneys on the west wing are plain and date from
about 1670. The east and west gables of the south
wing are crow-stepped, with square early 1 8th-century
chimney shafts set diagonally at their apexes. The
lower windows on the south front have splayed brick
round-headed arches. The upper windows were
formerly mullioned ; one remains on the north and
one on the west, both blocked, but those on the south
were filled with sashes in the 18th century. The south
wall of the eastern end of the south wing remains, but
all the openings are blocked, with the exception of a
wide archway about the centre of the wing, which was
formerly the south entrance to the courtyard. The
house was in a very bad state when the present owner
obtained possession, but he has thoroughly restored it
in a conservative spirit, retaining all original work
intact where possible. The interior retains many of
the original wooden partitions with the old timbers
showing. Some moulded beams and four-centred
arched doorways of oak remain in the west block,
and some of the rooms contain chimney-pieces and
panelling put in, probably, about 1633. Some good
18th-century panelling is in the south wing. The
staircase, with its semicircular inclosure projecting
from the east front, is of 18th-century date.

To the east of the house was a large formal garden
of the late 17th century, shown in the picture by
Janssen, now at Cashiobury, of Arthur Lord Capell
and his family; the positions of the balustraded
terrace and the fountains here have been traced. A
gate-house stands about 100 yards west of the house ;
it is of brick, with diaper patterns of black bricks. ‘The
central archways are four-centred. 4 portion of the
building is of the 15th century, the remainder, includ-
ing the archway, of the 16th. A little further to the
north-west is a plain late 16th or early 17th-century
brick barn, with modern buttresses added in 1902.

A little to the north of Hadham Hall is a moated

tumulus.

recently turned into meadow (Cott. MS
Claud. cxi, m. 1634).

4 49 z

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

To the west of Church End, at the intersection of
Stane Street with the road to Much Hadham, is the
hamlet of Little Hadham, or, as Norden calls it,
Hadham on Ash,? by corruption Hadham Nash.
The school to the east of the hamlet was built about
1861. At the south end of the hamlet is a smithy.

Little Hadham Place stands in a park to the west
of the Much Hadham road and is now the residence
of Lady Braybrooke. The house was formerly a
farm called the Hull and was copyhold up to 1876.
To the north of the park is a modern windmill.

Hadham Ford, which lies further south on the road,
is the largest hamlet in the parish. There are here
several timber-framed and plastered cottages of early
17th-century date, some having panelled plasterwork
fronts of the early 18th century. The Independent
chapel was built in 1300.6 There was within living
memory a smithy close by the ford.

story with attics. The house is now divided into
three cottages. At the junction of the roofs is a
brick chimney stack with two octagonal detached
shafts with moulded bases ; one of the capitals is gone,
the other is modern. The main block is gabled.
Some of the windows on the north front have their
original moulded oak mullions and transoms ; they
are not arched, the brickwork resting on the window
frames.

At the top of Ford Hill the road forks, one branch,
called Hoecroft Lane, running north-east to Green
Street, and the other, called Acremore Street, south-
east to Bury Green. Acremore Street Farm is a
two-storied rectangular building of timber framing
covered with plaster and tiled roof. The central
brick chimney has square shafts set diagonally. There
are some wide fireplaces in the house, partly inclosed
with modern cupboards.

Cuintons, Bury Grits, Litrte Havuam

On the west side of the main road, at the foot of
Ford Hill, is an early 17th-century cottage, timber-
framed and plastered and with tiled roof. In the
front gable is an oriel window on a curved plastered
bracket. A large chimney of thin bricks at the
south end has wide base and sloping offsets masked
by crow-stepped brickworks similar to many other
houses in the county. The shafts above are square ;
the front gable has an oak barge-board pierced with
a running pattern.

On Ford Hill, which runs east from the village, is
an early 17th-century house,’ built of thin bricks,
and with tiled roofs. The plan is T-shaped. The
main east block, forming the cross to the T, is of
two stories with attics ; the low west wing is of one

3 Norden, Deser. of Herts. 19.

4 C utterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts.
til, 408.

§Toform. from Mr. W. Miset.

® In1643 the Dissenting divine, Thomas
Pakeman, began to minister at Little
Ifadham (Dict. Nar. Biog.).
of Ralph Bayford was licensed for a

50

There are several interesting houses at Bury Green,
which lies about 1 mile south-east of Hadham
Ford. Clintons, south of the Green, the manor-
house of Clintons Manor, is now a farm, part of
which appears to date from the late 15th or early
16th century. It is an L-shaped building, the main
block running east and west, and having a wing at
its west end projecting northwards ; the main block
is in three distinct sections, each containing one room
on the ground floor. It is partly timber-framed and
plastered and partly of thin bricks. The we-t end
is the earliest ; it is narrower than the rest of the
block, and seems to be part of the original late 15th
or early 16th-century hall. On the ground floor is
the dining room, about 17 ft. square, with a wide

Presbyterian meeting in 1672 (Cal. S. P.
Dom. 1672, p. 145).

7 Localiy believed to have been built
as a hospital.

The house

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

fireplace in the east wall; this has been reduced by
the insertion of a modern stove, leaving the ends
with their seats inclosed in cupboards. The hall was
originally open to the roof, but in the 17th century
a floor was inserted, forming it into two stories.
This floor rests on two heavy moulded beams dividing
the ceiling into four equal plastered squares ; in the
centre of each is a square flush-bead panel placed
diagonally containing a plaster escarbuncle of the
usual type. In the bedroom above is one of the
original roof principals. The tie-beam is moulded on
the east side only, the west side having a splay on
its under edge ; this may be due toa later mutilation,
or the truss may formerly have been against an end
wall. At the south end is a heavy curved brace, about
15in. by 4in., with hollow-chamfered edges; the
spandrel is filled with tracery in three panels, each
having a cinquefoiled arch with tracery under the
tie-beam. The brace at the other end has been
removed, but the mortise and pin-holes are visible.
The internal span of the roof is 17 ft. ; it is ceileda
little above the tie-beam. The east end of the block
is of 17th-century work, and is built of thin red
bricks ; the east gable has a large cross and a diaper
pattern, all executed in black bricks. The chimney
stack at the east end over the kitchen is rectangular ;
the central shaft has two square shafts set diagonally.
In the kitchen, at the east end, is a wide fireplace in
which is a modern range ; the old seated ends are
inclosed in cupboards.

Lower Farm is a little to the east of the Green ;
it is of two stories with attics. The plan was origi-
nally L-shaped, but a modern addition on the
south side has made it T-shaped. The north wing
is timber-framed and plastered, with tiled roof, and
has a chimney stack with a row of four engaged
octagonal shafts ; it is probably of early 17th-century
work, The west wing is entirely of brick, and appears
to bea rebuilding of later 17th-century date, although
perhaps not so late as 1665, which is painted in
modern figures on the gable. On the south side is a
projecting chimney built chiefly of thin bricks, but
the rest of the brickwork is later in character ; round
the wing, at the level of the first floor, is a heavy
moulded brick string-course, and in the gable is a
blocked attic window with square brick label over.
The chimney stack has two detached octagonal shafts
without bases, having their capitals united. ‘Two of
the rooms in the west wing have panelled ceilings, with
squares containing plaster escarbuncles (some crowned
as on the house by Albury churchyard), double-
headed eagles and other devices. Bury Green Farm,
on the west side of the Green, now belonging to
Mr. Samuel Betts, J.P., is an early 17th-century
house of two stories, built of timber-framing and
plastered ; the roof is tiled. The chimney stack has a
row of three square shafts set diagonally. In one of
the rooms is a wide fireplace with the seated ends
inclosed in modern cupboards.

Green Street is a small hamlet about 1 mile east
from Hadham Ford. There is a homestead moat
at Green Street Farm. Between Bury Green and

8 See Salmon, op. cit. 281.

8 See below under manor.

10 Blue Bk. Incl. Awards, 63.

11 Cott. MS. Claud. C xi (Reg. of Ely),
m. 1634.

12 Names from tithe map of 1844 and
deeds communicated by Mr. W. Minet.

14 Ibid.

13 V.C.H. Herts. i, 306.

15 Cal. Close, 1237-42, p. 468 ; Plac.
de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 290; Feud.
Aids, ii, 431, 4443 Chan. Ing. p.m.
i Ric. II, no. 63 (Ser. 2), xxx, 25. 541,

16 Chauncy, op. cit. 154.

aI

LITTLE HADHAM

Hadham on Ash lay Mill Field,8 which probably
took its name from the mill of Bauds’ Manor, now
no longer standing. North and north-east of Green
Street lay Hadham Park. After the additions made
by Sir Arthur Capell in 1635 the park extended into
the neighbouring parishes of Albury, Bishop’s Stort-
ford and Farnham. The disparking began after the
removal of the Capells from Hadham at the end of
the 17th century and there are now no traces of the
park left.

On the west of the parish Caley Wood, Castle
Field and Castles preserve the name of the manor
known as the Castle of Cailes. To the north of Caley
Wood is Pig’s Green, one of the small rectangular
greens common in Hertfordshire. There is a hamiet
of a few houses at Westland Green, a little further
north.

An inclosure award was made for Little Hadham
in 1859.19 In 1277 Southfield, Clude (now Clouds),
Westfield, Stocking, Wholmstede, Limstede and
Halmstede (Hempstead ?) are given as names of fields
belonging to the Ely manor and containing appa-
rently both demesne and copyhold lands.! Later
Shirland (Shelland, Shetland), Bugwood, Taskfield
(Tassfield) and Nashfield are found as commons
shared by both manors (as was also Westfield).
Nashfield, adjoining the demesne of Bauds’ Manor,
had one holding only of the Ely manor. Among
other field-names found in the parish are Aury Neck
Mead, Troopers, Foxes Field, Gladdings, Readings,
The Harp, Market Thorns, Oyster End, Juddle,
Great and Little Corny (Conyngery, Conyvers, xvi
cent. ; Conigree, xviii cent.), Hoowaters (Woowaters,
xvi cent.), and Jerveylesfeld (xiv cent., found as
Jerdebill’s Grove, xv cent., Jarveldes, Jardfeyldes,
xvi cent.).}?

The manor of HADHAM HALL or
MANORS BAUDS’ MANOR was divided between
three sokemen in the reign of Edward
the Confessor. Of these one, aman of Archbishop
Stigand, held a hide all but half a virgate, another, a
man of Robert Fitz Wimarc, held 34 virgates, while
the third, a man of King Edward, held only 1 virgate
and paid 1d. to the sheriff.13 In 1086 Little Had-
ham was held by the Bishop of London,} and it is
afterwards found forming part of the bishop’s barony,
of which the head was Bishop’s Stortford.!® In the
16th century the manor was said to owe $s. castle-
guard rent to Stortford, which was still payable,
although the castle was ruinous.1®

A certain William was tenant in fee of the manor
of Little Hadham in 1086.17 ‘The tenants next
found in the manor are the family of Baud, who were
possibly William’s descendants, as they succeeded also
to a William’s lands in Corringham, co. Essex. In
1166 Simon Baud was holding three knights’ fees
of the Bishop of London,}® and these probably in-
cluded Little Hadham. In 1210 Philip Baud was
holding Corringham and 4 hides which are not
located but again probably include Hadham.1*4
Nicholas Baud was holding the manor at the begin-
ning of the 13th century, and by 1242 it had

VW V.C.H. Herts. i, 306a.

18 Red Bk. of Exch, (Rolls Ser.), i, 186 ;
see J. H. Round, ‘Baud Family, Essex
Arch, Soc. Trans. (New Ser.), x, 347+

8a Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

descended to his son William, a minor.!® He died
between 1274 and 1278, and was succeeded by his son
Walter Baud,° whose holding
in Little Hadham was assessed
at half a fee in 1303.71. He
was Sheriff of Hertfordshire
and Essex in 1307 *? and was
still living in 1313.78 William
Baud, apparently his son, for-
feited under Edward II as an
adherent of Thomas Earl of
Lancaster, but his manor of
Little Hadham was restored
to him in 1327.74 In 1331
he joined with his wife Joan
in settling the manor on his
son John,2® who inherited it at his father’s death
about 1343.25 In 1346 John Baud died in Gascony”!
and was succeeded by his son William Baud, kt., who
with his wife Alice made a settlement of the manor
in 1371.28 William Baud is said to have been the
first of this family to reside at Little Hadham,?? and
the family was certainly living there in 1404, when
William’s grandson William Baud was born there.??
William Baud the elder was sheriff for Hertfordshire
and Essex in 1371 and M.P. for the county in 1373.9!
He died before 1388.92 He appears to have been
succeeded by his eldest son Walter Baud, who died
at Little Hadham in 1420,°* leaving no issue. The
manor then probably passed to his brother John,
and on his death in 1422 *4 to John’s son William,
who made proof of age in 1425.°° William died
the following year without issue,*® and the manor of
Little Hadham apparently reverted to his uncle
Thomas Baud, third son of William Baud. In
1427 Thomas Baud settled lands in Stortford called
‘Plantyngs” on his son Thomas in trust to maintain
achantry priest for three and a half years after his
death, to pray for the souls of William Baud and Alice
his wife and Thomas Baud the elder and Mary his
wife. These prayers were to be said in the church
of Little Hadham every Friday and Sunday and on
other days in the chapel of the manor-house there.%7

Thomas Baud died in 1430,38 and the manor
descended to his son Thomas, who was M.P. for the
county in 1432 and sheriff for Hertfordshire in
1446-7.39 On his death in 1449 he left the manor
of Little Hadham to his son Ralph.*? Ralph

Baup. Gules three
cheverons argent.

19 Cal. Close, 1237-42, p. 468.

0 Assize R. 374 A, m. 28 d. ; see grant
by William in 1274 quoted in Stow, Survey
of London (1720), pt. iii, 164.

” Feud. Aids, ii, 431. In 1309 he
presented his son Robert, then under
canonical age, to the church of Corringham

32 Minet, loc. cit.

88 M. I. given by Chauncy.

¥ Chan. Ing. p.m. 1 Hen. VI, no. 532
85 Ibid. 4 Hen. VI, no. 51.

56 Ibid. 5 Hen. VI, no. 29.

37 Chauncy, op. cit. 153.

38M. I. given by Chauncy.

Baud, who was sheriff for Hertfordshire in 1469,‘!
died seised of the manor in 1483.4? His son Thomas
was made a knight of the Bath in 1494.47 He
apparently fell into the hands of Empson, the
notorious attorney of the duchy of Lancaster, and
a heavy fine imposed upon him for the redemption
of his lands compelled him to mortgage his property
in 1503,‘ and in 1504 he sold the manor of Little
Hadham to Thomas Lord Darcy.*® In January
1504-5 Lord Darcy conveyed the manor to Sir
Wilham Capell, kt.,48 son of
John Capell of Stoke by Nay-
land, co. Suffolk, and twice
Mayor of London.*” He died
in 151548 and his son Giles
succeeded him. In 1519 Sir
Giles Capell accompanied
Henry VIII to the ‘Field of
the Cloth of Gold’ and was
one of the challengers there.*®
He died in 1556 and his son
Henry in 1588.59 It was
probably Henry who built the
present house between 1572
(when he was still living at Rayne) and 1578, when
he entertained Queen Elizabeth at Little Hadham.*!
The manor descended to Henry’s son Arthur Capell,
who was renowned for his hospitality.5? Sir Arthur
Capell was constantly in communication with Sir
Robert Cecil, dating his letters ‘from my poor house at
Hadham,’ at one time asking him for some advance-
ment for his son Edward Capell,** and at another
sending him a fat buck or a pair of does from Hadham
Park as a recognition of Cecil’s favours.° His eldest
son Henry died in 1622," and in 1627 he settled
the reversion of the manor on his grandson Arthur
Capell on the occasion of his marriage with Eliza-
beth Morrison, only daughter of Sir Charles Morri-
son, bart.°6 He died in 1632 and was buried at
Hadham, and the manor descended according to the
settlement to his grandson Arthur Capell,*” who re-
presented his county in the Short Parliament of 1639
and again in the Long Parliament of 1640, when he
was one of the first members to present a petition
against ship money.*8 Later, however, he became
one of the most prominent leaders of the Royalists.
In 1641 Charles I created him Lord Capell of
Hadham Parva.®? He raised a troop of men at his

Carett. Gules a lion
between three crosslets

Sitchy or.

{7 Stow, Surv. of London, v, 127, 182.

# Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxx, 25.

49 Stowe, Annals, 509.

50 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cix, 2335
cexvi, 96. It appears that inquisitions
were not taken in either case for the
Capells’ Hertfordshire lands.

(Reg. of Bps. of Lond. [Cant. and York
Soc. ], i, 97).

°2V.C.H. Herts. Families, 281.

®8 Cal. Pat, 1307-13, p. 605.

4 Cal. Close, 1327-22, p. 22.

5 Feet of F. Div. Co. 5 Edw. III,
no. 89. John le Baud, parson of Corring-
ham, was an agent in the settlement.

*8 See Minet, ‘ Baud family of Corring-
ham and Little Hadham,’ Essex Arch.
Soc. Trans. (New Ser.)}, x, 149.

T Ibid. ; Round, loc. cit.

*8 See Feet of F. Herts. 45 Edw. Ill,
ho. 620,

® Morant, Essex, i, 241.

5° Chan. Ing. p.m. 4 Hen. VI, no. Sle

3. VCH. Herts. Famils.s, 282, 290.

39 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 282, 290.

0 P.C.C. 18 Rous,

". V.C.H. Herts, Families, 282.

42 Chan. Ing. p.m. 1 Ric. III, no. 6.

& Shaw, Knights of Engl. i, 144.

“ Deed in possession of Mr. W. Minet.
Richard Empson was one of the mort-
gagees,

*® Deed in possession of Mr. W. Minet.

46 Ibid. In 1506 Thomas Baud and
his wife Anne quitclaimed all right in
the manor to John Holden and John
Barfote, clk., trustees for Sir Wiiliam
Capel (Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 22
Hen. VII; Deed of release by Thomas
Baud to the same to use of Capell in
possession of Mr. Minet).

$2

51'J. Nichols, Prog. of Queen Eliz.
(1823), ii, 222; Glasscock, Rec. of St.
Michael, Bishop's Stortford, 59.

52 Bast Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii, 312.

58 Cecil MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), xi,
103, 457, 5323 xii, 136.

4 Tbid. xi, 103; Cal. S. P. Dom.
1611-18, pp. 49, 88.

55 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxcvi,
148.

56 Ibid. cecclxv, §43; Feet of F. Div.
Co. Mich. 3 Chas. I.

57 Chan. Ing. p.m, (Ser. 2), cccelxv, 54.

$5 F, Skeet, ‘Arthur Lord Capell,’ East
Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii, 314; Dict.
Nat. Biog.

59 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, s.v. Capell.

Hapuam Hatt: PaincipaL Front

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

own expense and stored ‘arms sufficient to arm about
{ooo men’ at Hadham Hall, which were seized by
the Parliamentarians during his absence in August
1642.8 In March 1644-5 Hadham Hall was again
visited by the Parliamentarians and forty-four horses
and other cattle and stores were carried away. After
this time the stables stood empty.®!_ Lord Capell had
been impeached in 1642 for endangering the peace
of the realm by his support of the king. His pro-
perty was sequestrated and in 1643 the manor-house
and park of Little Hadham were among the delinquents’
estates charged with the payment of an annuity of
£10,000 to the Earl of Essex, captain-general of the
Parliamentary forces. Little Hadham was, however,
let to William Capell, uncle of Lord Capell, that he
might preserve the houses and woods there.®24

Lord Capell compounded for his estates in 1646-7,
on the close of the first war, and retired to live
at Hadham Hall. To his influence the outbreak
of the second Civil War was largely due.’ He
again took up arms, and was one of the Royalist
generals besieged in Colchester in 1648.5! While he
was away the Parliamentarians sent a sergeant and two
men to Hadham Hall to seize his son Arthur Capell,
then aged sixteen, whom they took to Colchester and
carried round the town every day, hoping to influence
his father. As this had no effect he was allowed to
return home.®° In June 1648 Lord Capell’s estates
were again seized by Parliament and granted to
trustees for raising £50,000 for the relief of Ireland.%
Colchester surrendered in August 1648 and Lord
Capell was sent to the Tower. In March of the
following year he was beheaded.” His son Arthur
succeeded to his title and claimed his estates. ‘These
were ordered to be restored to him, but the order
taking no effect he again petitioned Parliament in
1651, claiming that by the settlement of his grand-
father Sir Arthur Capell in 1627 the manors of Little
Hadham and others had been entailed on him, and
that his father had only a life interest. ‘The plea
was admitted and the estates restored.®* After the
Restoration Charles II created Lord Capell Viscount
Malden and Earl of Essex in 1661.89 He removed
to Cashiobury about 1668, after which date the
manor-house and demesne lands were turned into a
farm, which was for long held in tenancy by the
Scott family. The manor descended with the Earls
of Essex,”? George Devereux de Vere Capell Earl of
Essex being the present lord of the manor. In 1900
the greater part of the demesne lands were sold
with the manor-house to Mr. William Minet and
now form the Hadham Hall estate. The rest of
the demesne land was sold at the same time, only
the manorial rights being reserved.

In 1275 William Baud had a park and free warren

LITTLE HADHAM

in Little Hadham.”! At the beginning of the 17th
century the park contained 240 acres, Sir Arthur
Capell received licence in
1635 to add to it §00 acres
lying in Hadham, Albury, wie ote
Bishop’s Stortford and Farn- Aes
ham.”?) This was known as 4
Hadham New Park or Wick-
ham Hall and the original
park as Hadham Old Park.7?
In 1661 Arthur Capell Earl
of Essex received a warrant to
preserve game within 1o miles
of Hadham Hall and Cashio-
bury.“ After the earl moved
his residence from Hadham
Hall to Cashiobury the parks
were leased out and_ subse-
quently cut up into the farms of Hadham Old Park
Lodge and Wickham Hall.7> Some of the deer
were removed to Epping Forest and Bagshot Park in
1686.76

The manor of LITTLE HADHAM is said to
have been given tu the church of Ely by Ethelflada
wife of Duke Athelstan,’” and was included in the
charter of confirmation granted to the abbey by
Edward the Confessor.”® In 1086 the Bishop of
London claimed the abbey of Ely’s lands in Little
Hadham,” but the shire moot testified that these
lands had always belonged to the church of Ely and
the abbot retained possession. At this date the manor
was assessed at 4 hides.®° In the reign of William II
Ranulph Flambard, Bishop of
Durham, seized the manor of
Little Hadham. In 1109 the
bishopric of Ely was erected
and Hervey, the first bishop,
obtained a charter of restora-
tion from Henry I.%! The
bishops claimed as their privi-
leges in Little Hadham in
1278 return of writs, gallows,
and assize of bread and ale,®?
and in 1287 they claimed
also view of frankpledge and
pleas of namio verite.°8 Their
lands in Hadham were returned as one-third of a
knight’s fee in 1303.84 In the 12th century a mill
was erected on the manor, to which the customary
tenants paid suit,®° and this in 1356 is described as a
water-mill. At this date the manor included 300
acres of arable land and 6 of meadow, and the lord
was entitled to the labour of four men from August
to Michaelmas worth 64d. each. ‘There was also a
messuage there which was said to be worth nothing

Miner. Or three
ermine tails sable quar-
tered with or three bars
gules.

Bisnopric oF Ery.
Azure three crowns or.

69 A perfect Diurnall of the Proceedings in
Hartfordshire, 1642.

§1 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1625-49, p- 675 ;
Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. ix, 45.

® Add. MS. 5497, fol. 133.

6a Cal. Com. for Comp. i, 17.

63 F. Skeet, “Arthur Lord Capell,’ East
Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii, 312.

4 Thid.; Dict. Nat. Biog.

65 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. ix,

45.

86 Cal. Com. for Comp. 1932, 1934-

57 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, s.v. Capell ;
Dict. Nat. Biog.; East Herts. Arch. Soc.
Trans. iii, 333.

6 Cal. Com. for Comp. 1932, 1934.
See Feet of F. Div. Co. East. 5 Chas. II.

69 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, s.v. Essex.

70 See Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 3 Will.
and Mary; Recoy. R. Trin. 4 Geo. I,
rot. 213 3 G.E.C. loc. cit.

71 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193-

72 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1634-5, p- 5853
Clutterbuck, op. cit. ili, 411.

73 Deeds communicated by Mr. W.
Minet.

74 Cal. §. P. Dom. 1661-2, p. 182.

75 Deeds communicated by Mr. W.
Minet ; Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 281.

76 J. Y. Akerman, Moneys received and

$3

paid for secret services, 1679-88 (Camden
Soc. 52), 135-
7 Hist. Eliensis
Oxford, 1691), 495.
78 Ibid. 510; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. iv,
2443 Dugdale, Mon. i, 4.76.

9 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3075.

80 Ibid. 3122.

81 Bentham, Hist. and Antiq. of Church
of Ely, 131, App. X) P+ 17- :

82 Assize R. 323-

83 Thid. 325.

4 Feud. Aids, ii, 432.

8 Cott. MS. Claud. C xi, fol. 60.

(Gale, Script. xx,

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

beyond reprises.© In 1400 the tenants of this manor
were exonerated from paying the expenses of the
knights of the shire in the
coming Parliame.t.87

In 1600 Bishop Martin
Heton exchanged the manor
with Queen Elizabeth for
other lands,“ and in January
1601-2 Elizabeth granted it
with suit of mill, warren,
court leet and view of frank-
pledge to Thomas Bellot and
Richard Langley * in trust for
Sir Robert Cecil,® principal
Secretary of State, who in
1693 was created Earl of
Salisbury.*1 In 1607 James I
confirmed the grant of Little
Hadham to him and hisheirs,%?
and from this time the manor has descended with the
Earls and Marques-es of Salisbury,®? the present lord
of the manor being James Edward Hubert Gascoyne
Marquess of Salisbury.

There was a park attached to this manor of Little
Hadham, a reference t) which occurs in 1300.% A
grant of free warren had been made in1251.% The
excessive shade caused by the large trees within the
park impoverished the pasturage there, which in 1356
was valued at only 3s, 4..°8 In the 16th century
the parx was leased by the bishops.%” A house or
lodge in it is mentioned in 16th-century grants,%
No traces of this park can now be found.

The manor of WICKHAM HALL Jay fartly in
the parish of Little Hadham. The estate appears to
have been divided in the 16th century, possibly after
the death of Sir William Say (see Bishop’s Stortford
in Braughing Hundred). In 1573 @ quitclaim of a
twentieth part of the manor lying in Bishop’s Stort-
ford, Little Hadham and Albury was made by John
Massingberd and Dorothy his wife, one of the heir.
of Anne Lady Bourchier, to Anthony Crane.%
The following year Crane acquired also the rights
of Thomas Housman, another of the heirs, and con-
veyed two-fifths of one-fourth of the manor to
Andrew Malory,! who finally purchased the whole
of one moiety of the manor.! After the death of
Malory his widow Elizabeth sold this moiety in
1620 to Robert Symonds of Berden, co. Essex,
and Thomas Symonds his son and heir.? In 1629
Thomas Symonds and his wife Philippa sold this half
of Wickham Hall to Edward Atkins,? who with his
wife Ursula conveyed it in 1633 to Arthur Capell,é

Ceci, Marquess of
Salisbury. Barry of ten
pieces argent and azure
six scutcheons sable with
a lion argent in each and
the difference of a crescent,

lord of the manor of Hadham Hall. Arthur Capell
had already purchased the other half of the Wickham
estate (see Bishop’s Stortford), and he threw the whole
into his park at Hadham, which he was enlarging at
the time. Wickham Hall he converted into a lodge
for the keeper of the park.®

The manor of CL/NTONS, called Clyntons alas
Drax in the 17th century, was held of the Bishop
of Ely,’ and appears to represent those lands which
in the 13th and 14th centuries were called Virly-
lands.

At the beginning of the 13th century Geoffrey de
Verly was holding one-fourth of a fee in Hadham
of the Bishop of Ely,® and later in the century this
fee is returned as held by John de Verly.® In
1274-5 the estate was held by Thomas de Verly,
who claimed free warren in Little Hadham.!° Thomas
was living as late as 1287.1! Virlyland was after-
wards held by Matilda wife of Augustine le Parker,
who was possibly an heiress of the Verlys. She
died seised of it in 1349, her heir being her son
Thomas.”

Virlylands afterwards came to Henry Clynton. Ina
grant of his lands in 1401~z his lands in Little Hadham

are described as being all Jands
called Austyns, Virliez and

Scottes,!®> and these lands

formed the manor of Clin-

tons. In 1396 Henry Clynton

enfeoffed John de Baryngton
and other trustees of his lands

Cuinton. Argent six

crosslets fitchy sable and

a chief azure with two

molets or pierced gules

thercin,

in Little Hadham for a settle-
ment on his wife Margaret
for life, with remainder to his
cousin Henry de Fylongley in
fee, that he might find a chap-
lain to celebrate for the souls
of Roger and Roger, priests and
late masters of Henry Clyn-
ton. If Henry de Fylongley
died before Henry or Margaret the lands were to be
sold to the highest bidder and the profits expended
in masses.4 Henry de Fylongley appears to have
died before Henry and Margaret, for the trustees
enfeoffed John Pluknet. He forfeited before February
1407~8 and his lands were granted by the king to
John Rassh for life.1® In 1413 the trustees claimed
the lands,!® and on the death of John Baryngton his
son Thomas Baryngton renewed the claim,!7 but
without success. ‘The king made a grant of the lands
to his surgeon and his usher in 1439,!8 and in 1462
granted them to Richard Jeny for lifc.!

§ Avid. MS. 6165, fol. 231.

“ Ibid. 5847, fol. 125.

* Close, 42 Eliz. pt. xxx 3 Add. MS.
s84-, fol. 125; Gibbons, Ely Epis.
Re.rds, 12.

89 Pat. 44 Eliz. pt. ii, m. 29.

% Cal. S. P. Dom. 1601-3, p. 162.

9 G.E.C. Complete Peeraze, s.v. Salis-
bury. 92 Pat. 5 Jas. I, pt. xvii.

“See Recov. R. Much. 20 Jas. I,
rot. 90; Hil. 7 Anne, rot. 115; East.
9g Geo. II, rot. 1943 Mich. + Geo. IV,
rot. 2233 G.E.C. loc. cit.

“4 Newcourt, Repertorium, i, 829.

® Cal. Chart, R. 1226-37, fF. 367.

% Add. MS. 6166, fol. 231.

* Ct. of Reg. bdle. 44, no. 44.

© Pat. 44 Eliz. pt. ii, m. 29; § Jas. I,
pt. xvil.

® Feet of F.-Herts, Mich. 15 & 16 Eliz.;
Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 412. Anne
Lady Bourchier was one of the heirs of
Sir William Say. After the failure of
her issue she was represented by the heirs
of Thomas Say, brother of Sir William
Say, of whom Dorothy Massingberd was
one (see Berwick in Standon, Braughing
Hundred).

100 Clutterbuck, Hit. and Antiz. of
Herts. iii, 412.

1Ttid.; Deeds in Evidence Room at
Cashiobury.

2 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 18 Jas. 1;
Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

3 Feet of F, Div. Co. Trin. 5 Chas. I.

‘Ibid. Hil. 8 Chas. I.

> Deeds in Evidence Room at Cash.o-
bury.

54

® Chauncy, op. cit. 158.

7 See Gibbons, Ely Epis. Records, 4333
Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixxix, 225.

® Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, §26.

® Cott. MS. Claud. C xi, 20.

! Hund. R, (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

4 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 1013.

Chan. Ing. p.m. 27 Edw. [I (1st
nos.), no. 7,

'S Cal. Pat. 1413-16, p. t11.

™ Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 11508.

Cal. Pat. 1475-8, p. 389 5 1413-16,
p- 111. See Chan. Ing. p.m. 15 Hen. VI,
no. 68 ; 17 Hen. VI, no. 11,

6 Cal. Pat. 1413-16, p. 111.

" Ibid. 1429-36, p. 276; 1461-7,
P- 338.

™ Thid. 1436-41, p. 250,

19 Ibid. 1461-7, p. 107.

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EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Richard Jeny died in 1481,2° when his widow
Elizabeth paid a fine for the custody of his lands,”
His heirs were his daughters Margaret wife of
Randal Lyttelore and Emma wife of Richard Drax
or Drakes.*? Margaret and Randal Lyttelore claimed
the manor as Margaret’s property by settlement,”
but the manor remained with Emma and Richard
Drakes, and on their death descended to their
son Lambert Drakes.2t He probably conveyed it
to Henry Patmore (to whom he sold the manor of
Joyces (q.v.) in 1513), for in 1520 Henry Patmore
died seised of the manor.*® His heir was his son
Thomas, but Clintons appears to have been settled
on his widow Julian for life, for she joined with
her second husband Sir Piers Dutton °° and her son
William Patmore in leasing it to Thomas Brett of
Little Hadham to hold during her life. After the
death of Sir Piers Dutton and William Patmore Dame
Julian Dutton and her son Thomas Patmore entered
into a part of the farm called Exnynges and threatened
to expel Thomas Brett from the rest of the farm
called Clintons Hall.” In 1550 Dame Julian was
holding the manors of Clintons and Joyces jointly
with her son Thomas, and they received a quitclaim
from Edmund Harre and his wife Joan of all Joan’s
right in the manors. From this date Clintons
descended with Joyces (q.v.). In 1612 Roland
Baugh died seised of the capital messuage called
Clintons a/ias Drax, and it passed to his son Edward
Baugh. No further record of the manor has been
found.

Of the manor of JOYV'CES (Jewel, Jeweys, Jowcys)
no early records remain, but in the 14th century there
was a family called Joce living in Hadham,® and it
possibly represents their lands. William Rokesburgh,
in his will proved 1387, left to his son his goods in
the manor of Newgates in Stanstead Abbots and his
‘chest at Joces,’*! which may be this manor.*? In
1513 Lambert Drax and Cecily his wife were
holding Joyces in Cecily’s right and sold it to Henry
Patmore.*? Henry Patmore died in 1520,** and his
son Thomas with Dame Julian Dutton, widow, his
mother, were holding Joyces in 1550 and received
a quitclaim from Edmund Harre and Joan his wife *
(whose interest has not been ascertained) of all Joan’s
right in the manor. The family of Patmore after-
wards took the name of Grimsditch.2® In 1560 *7
and 1566%8 Joyces appears in the tenure of John
Grimsditch and Elizabeth his wife. In 1576 Thomas
Grimsditch made a conveyance to Sir Ralph Sadleir,*°
kt, and another to Henry Sadleir and Richard Bankes
in 1578.49 These were probably only for the

LITTLE HADHAM

purposes of settlement, for in 1585 Thomas Grimsditch
sometime Patmore leased his mansion-house with the
malt-houses and dove-houses to Augustine Steward of
London,‘*! and in 1588 he and his wife Margaret
conveyed Joyces to Roland Baugh.4? In 1595 John
Haynes and Mary his wife conveyed all right in the
manor of Joyces to Thomas Manastye,* but their
interest was probably only a limited one, for in 1612
it was the subject of a fine levied by John Grimsditch
to Edward Baugh.“4 After this date no further
record of the manor has been found.

The manor of the CASTLE OF CAILES (Caylys,
Caldwynes, xvi cent. ; Callis, Calwines, xviii cent.) was
held of the Bishop of Ely as of his manor of Little
Hadham.*® No record of it has been found before
the 16th century, when with the manor of Gatesbury
in Braughing (q.v.) it was divided between the heirs
of Adam de Gatesbury. Land in Hadham was held
by the lord of the manor of Gatesbury in 1320, when
he received a grant of free warren in his demesne
lands of Much and Little Hadham.*® In 1498
Henry Elveden, kinsman and heir of Adam de
Gatesbury,"” died seised of half the castle or manor
of Cailes, and it descended to his granddaughter
Denise, who married Humphrey Fitz Herbert of
Uphall in Braughing.4® The Castle of Cailes together
with a grange called Caldwyns (from which it took its
alternative name) descended with the manor of Gates-
bury #8 until 1559.°° After this date no further record
of it has been found until 1718, when it was held
with the manor of Bromley Hall in Standon by
Edward Elderton and Elizabeth his wife and was sold
by them to Charles Cotton.5! The manor appears to
have been afterwards absorbed in the Bromley Hall
estate in Standon, which is now held by Mr. Grosvenor
Berry.

The church of ST. CECILIA *!8 con-
sists of chancel 26 ft. by 23 ft. 6 in., nave
48 ft. by 23 ft. 6 in., north transept 26 ft.
by 23 ft. 6in., west tower 11 ft. 6 in. square, timber
south porch 12 ft. 6 in. by 11 ft., and modern vestry
north of the chancel; all the dimensions are internal.
The chancel, nave and tower are of flint rubble
with stone dressings, the walls of the nave and tower
are cement covered, the north transept and vestry
are of brick, the south porch is of wood, the roofs
are slated except the transept and south porch, which
are tiled.

The nave walls may be of 12th-century date, as
the north doorway appears to be of that period. The
semicircular inner arch of this remains, but the outer
opening is filled with a brick window of probably

CHURCH

2 P.C.C. 3 Logge.

21 Gibbons, Ely Epis. Records, 433.
Her name is given as Alice in Early
Chan. Proc. bdle. 100, no. 29 and in
Richard’s will dated 14.80(P.C.C. 3 Logge).
In his will he desired to be buried in the
church of Little Hadham.

22 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 100, no. 29 ;
Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, xiii, fol. 77.

% Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 100, no. 29.

*4 Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII,
xiii, fol. 77.

5 Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), lxxix, 225.

°6 Visitation of Chesh. (Harl. Soc.), 260.

2% Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, vi,
fol. 296.

8 Feet of F. Herts. East. 4 Edw. VI.
It is not clear what their interest was,

29 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxxvii, 126.

30See Anct. D. (P.R.O.), B 4014;
Cal, Pat. 1301-7, p. 176.
31 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 394.
32 There were, however, lands called
Joyces at Stanstead Abbots.
33 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 5 Hen. VIII.
34Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixxix,
225.
35 Feet of F. Herts. East. 4 Edw. VI.
36 See Egerton MS. 2599, fol. 101.
37 Thid. fol. 87.
38 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 8 & g Eliz.
39 Recov. R. Trin. 1576, rot. 415.
40 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 20 & 21 Eliz.
41 Egerton MS. 2599, fol. 1o1.
#2 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 30 Eliz.
8 Ibid. Hil. 37 Eliz.
“4 Ibid. Mich. ro Jas. I.
Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxx, 47.

55

46 Cal. Chart, R. 1300-26, p. 431.

47 See manor of Gatesbury in Braugh-
ing for descent. In 1513 ‘land of the
manor of Gaddesbury called Cayle land’ is
mentioned as lying in Westfield (Extent
of that year communicated by Mr. W.
Minet).

48 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxx, 47.

49 See ibid. c, 793 Feet of F. Herts.
Hil. 32 Hen. VIII.

50 Recov. R. Trin. 31 Eliz. rot. 547.

51 Com. Pleas D. Enr. Mich. 5 Geo. I,
m. 27d.

5la The invocation of this church is
given on the ordnance map as St. Edmund,
but is proved to be St. Cecilia by wills of the
14th and 1th centuries (will of Thomas
Potyn, 1349, in Ct. of Husting ; will of
Thos. Baud, 1449, P.C.C. 18 Rous).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

early 17th-century date. The chance] may have been
rebuilt in the 14th century, but most of the stone-
work is modern. The west tower was built in the
latter part of the 14th century. ‘The south porch was
added about 1400, or perhaps a little earlier, and the
north transept was probably erected in the early part
of the 17th century. In the 1gth century the north
vestry was added and the whole chancel restored.
The three-light traceried window in the east wall
of the chancel is modern. In the north wall is a
single-light trefoiled window of modern stonework,
and also a modern doorway to the vestry. West of
this is a small square-headed window of two splayed
orders, which may be of 14th-century date ; it bears
a likeness to the low-side window at Buckland Church.
In the south wall is a single-light window of 14th-
century character, mostly of modern stonework. The
south doorway is of modern stonework. The second
window is of the 15th century, of two cinquefoiled
lights under a square head ; a few old stones remain.

@8 12= Cenrury
14% Century
152 Century
&3 [6= Century
MODERN

=

io 5 O

The north transept is built of 2-in. bricks. In
the north wall is a four-light window with plain
tracery. The east and west walls have cach a three-
light window under a four-centred arch. All the
windows are of brick cemented. On the east side is a
doorway with four-centred arch and splayed jambs of
brickwork. The chancel roof is modern. Over the
nave is a plain 15th-century roof with moulded beams
and traceried spandrels resting on carved stone corbels ;
one represents a knight with sword and shield and
others are grotesques. The north transept has an
elliptical plastered ceiling. The south porch is of
open timber work. On each side are two bays of four
lights each with trefoiled arches ; all the mullions are
gone. The entrance has a segmental pointed arch, on
each side of which is a single trefoiled light. The
barge-board is cusped. ‘The work is much worn and
defaced.

The west tower is of three stages, with diagonal
buttresses, embattled parapet, and slender leaded
spire; the belfry stair
is in the south-west
angle. The tower arch
is of late 14th-century
date and has two
moulded orders; the
jambs have circular
engaged shafts sepa-
rated by hollows and
moulded capitals and
bases. The west door-
way has a pointed arch
of two moulded orders
which die on splayed
jambs. The label is
moulded and has head-
stops. From each stop
is carried a_ vertical
string - course similar
in section to the label,
which stops against
the string-course

OH:

10 20

coor

above, under the win-

Prawn or Litrre Hapuam Cuurcn

Near the eastern end of the wall is a late 14th-
century piscina with splayed and stopped jambs and
cusped arch, The drain is quatrefoiled. There is
no chancel arch. On the north side of the nave is
the four-centred arch opening into the north tran-
sept ; it is of three chamfered orders, the middle one
hollow ; the responds are semi-octagonal and the
capitals are moulded. It is all executed in plaster, and
is probably of early 17th-century date. The outer
arch of the north doorway has been destroyed and
the opening blocked with an early 17th-century
window of two pointed lights of moulded brickwork
covered with cement. In the south wall are two 15th-
century windows, each of two cinquefoiled lights with
traceried heads. The south doorway is also of 1 5th-
century date with arch and jambs of two moulded
orders having a square head and moulded label ; the
spandrels are traceried and contain blank shields.

*? At Standon and Clothall, as well as
here, oolite has been used in conjunction

3 In 1823 a fluted

with clunch in positions liable to be
damaged or weather-worn.

SCALE OF Feet dow, forming a square
head over the doorway
with traceried span-
drels containing blank
shields. The splayed jambs are chiefly of modern
stonework, the arch is of clunch, and the label and
string-course of a hard oolite.52 The west window
is of three cinquefoiled lights with modern tracery.
In the second stage, on the west and south sides of
the tower, are single cinquefoiled pointed lights
under square heads; that on the south is blocked.
The belfry windows are of two cinquefoiled lights
with traceried heads; they have been restored.
The font is of stone with plain octagonal bowl and
pedestal ; it is probably of early 16th-century date.®3
The oak chancel screen is of five bays on each
side of the central opening; the lower panels are
closed and two on each side of the central opening
have traceried heads. The rail above is carved on the
west side over the four traceried panels with a pome.
granate pattern, the other three on each side being
plain ; these may indicate the pozitions of former

font; this is now in the churchyard.
See J. Nichols, The Progresses of Queen

pillar served asthe Elizabeth (1823), ii, 222.

56

Littte Hapyam: 177TH-century Hovusz, now Corraces, aT Hapyam Forp

Lirrte HapHam Cuurcu: THE CHaNcEL

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

nave altars.54 The space left for each is about 6 ft.
The upper part of the screen is open and the heads
filled with elaborate but somewhat minute tracery,
each arch having similar tracery; the cornice is
modern. The screen appears to be of early 16th-
century date. The octagonal pulpit is of oak with
sounding-board over and is dated 1633. The panels
are all richly carved with arabesques. ‘The pulpit is a
“three-decker,’ but the lower inclosures are later in
date and plain. Round the walls of the north tran-
sept is oak panelling of about the same date as the
pulpit ; the upper panels are carved with arabesques.
Some similar panelling remains at the east end of the
nave. In the nave are some plain late 16th-century
seats. ‘There are some remains of 1 5th-century glass
in the church. In the north-west window of the
chancel are the arms of Robert Braybrook, Bishop of

LITTLE HADHAM

{1461-75]. On the jamb of the vestry door have
been fixed three brass strips said to have been
found under the floor some years ago; the brass
strips are in a perfect state of preservation and have
apparently never been used, as there are blanks
in the dates. The inscription runs as follows:
“cccclxxxiil et Margareta uxor eius que obiit die
mensis anno dfii millesimo cccc quorum anima-
bus propicietur deus amen.’ The date is that of the
death of Ralph Baud, and his widow may have
intended it to be completed after her death, but this
was not carried out. A large slab, probably of 13th-
century date, with traces of a marginal inscription, is
used as a paving stone in the south porch. Within
the communion rails are two slabs, one with inscrip-
tion to Arthur Lord Capell, who was executed in
1649, and his wife Elizabeth daughter of Sir Charles

my °
AE N\\\
van .

+ EEE ogg
Ses *

ie

Cuurcu Porcu,

London (1382-1404), seven voided lozenges, also
some fragments of lettering ; in the south-east window
of the nave are named figures of St. Lawrence and
Isaiah. Under the entrance of the chancel screen are
a few figured tiles probably of 14th-century date.

On the south wall of the chancel is a brass with
figures of a man, his wife and four daughters ; it is of
early 15th-century date and may represent a member
of the Baud family, possibly Walter Baud, who died
at Hadham in 1420. It was removed from a slab
in the nave floor, which has indents of four shields.
On the south wall of the nave is a brass of a priest
in a cope, taken from a slab in the nave floor; the
inscription is almost illegible,5> but it is to ‘Syr
Richard Warriner, somtyme p’son of Corrynghm’

54 Thomas Baud, by his will proved
24 Nov. 1449 (P.C.C. 18 Rous, p. 141),
directed his body to be buried before the
image of St. Cecilia in Little Hadham

4

Church ; he also bequeathed 6s. 8d. to
‘the high altar there.’
55 See W. Minet, F.S.A., ‘ Brassea in

IN i

a

Lirrtz Hapuam

Morrison, d. 1660; the other to Sir Henry Capell,
third son of the above, who died in 1696.

There are five bells: the first by C. & G. Mears,
1855; the second by John Dyer, 1595; the third
inscribed ‘Sancta Gabiel (sic) ora pro nobis,’ pro-
bably of the 15th century ; the fourth by Robert
Oldfeild, inscribed ‘Praise the Lord, 1623’; the
fifth by Philip Wightman, 1693.

The communion plate consists of two silver cups,
two silver patens and one plated flagon, all modern.

The registers before 1812 are as follows®* : (i) bap-
tisms 1559 to 1695, burials and marriages 1560 to
1695 ; (ii) baptisms and burials 1695 to 1776, mar-
riages 1695 to 1753 ; (iii) baptisms and burials 1776
to 1812; (iv) marriages 1754 to 1812.

Little Hadham Church,’ The Home Cos.
Mag. vi, 98. :

56 These registers, ed. by W. Minet,
F.S.A., were printed in 1907.

OY 8

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The patronage of the church of

ADVOWSON Little Hadham was held with the
manor of Hadham Hall by the family
of Baud. In 1276 Sir Walter Baud, lord of the

manor, sold all his rights in the advowson to the
Bishop of London for £20.57 The rectory was soon
afterwards united to that of Much Hadham (q.v.),
and the church of Little Hadham was a chapel to
Much Hadham * until 1875, when Little Hadham
was made a separate parish.

The Bishops of Ely held the tithes of their demesne
lands in Hadham. In 1220 John of Fountains, then
bishop, gave the great tithes to be divided between
the monks and the poor on his anniversary.*® After
the annexation of the rectory of Little Hadham
to the rectory of Much Hadham a dispute arose
between the priory of Ely and the rector of Much
Hadham concerning the tithes payable from the lands
of the Bishop of Ely. The Bishop of London
adjudicated on this dispute in 1300, when he gave
his decision that the great tithes of certain of the
Bishop of Ely’s lands in Little Hadham and half the
tithes of the bishop’s mill and of his deer in his park
in Little Hadham belonged to the church of Ely, but
that the other half of the tithes of his mill and of his
decr, together with the tithes of the remainder of his
lands, belonged to the rector of Hadham.® The
Bishop of Ely’s tithes in Little Hadham were valued
at 20s. in the reign of Henry VIII.°! When the
bishop sold the manor of Little Hadham in 1600 he
retained these tithes, which were still held by the
Bishop of Ely at the beginning of the 18th century,
when he leased them to the rector of Hadham.*?

In 1769 John Hammond, citizen
and haberdasher of London, by his
will directed that a sum of £200 stock

CHARITIES

belonging to his estate should be realized and the
proceeds invested in land, the rents and profits thereof
to be applied for the benefit of poor housekeepers of
Little Hadham. The land comprised in deed 21 Feb-
ruary 1854 consists of 6a., part of Miller's Field,
which is let at £3 a year.

In 1808 Thomas Chapman bequeathed {100
consols, the dividends to be divided on the last
Sunday in January among the poor.

In 1820 John Chapman, by his will proved in the
P.C.C., bequeathed £125 stock, now consols, the
annual dividends to be distributed in bread.

In 1822 Thomas Mott by his will left £4 a year
to be distributed on the third Sunday in January
after divine service at church to the twelve poorest in
bread, money, or both, poor widows and fatherless
children to be preferred. The legacy is now repre-
sented by £133 6s. 82. consols.

In 1837 James Chaplyn by will proved in that
year gave {100 consols, the annual dividends to be
applied in clothing or firing or both in January.

In 1837 Ann Scott by will proved at this date left
£100 consols, the dividends to be distributed in
bread to the poor on Shrove Sunday.

The several sums of stock are held by the
official trustees, producing in annual dividends
£13 195. 11d.

This parish is also possessed of a sum of £300
consols, producing £7 10s. yearly, arising from a
gift of Elizabeth Ann Scott, by deed 26 January
1854, which is standing in the names of Thomas
Mott and three other stockholders.

The poor of Little Hadham also participate in the
charity of the Rev. Thomas Randolph for poor, and

MUCH HADHAM

Hadam (x cent.).

The parish of Much Hadham comprises an area of
4,490 acres, of which 12 are water. Rather less
than half of the parish consists of arable land.!- There
is now little woodland in Much Hadham, but early
records show that there must once have been exten-
sive woods there. In 1086 there was woodland for
330 swine within the area of the two Hadhams.?
A wood is mentioned as pertaining to the Bishop of
London’s manor of Much Hadham in the 13th
century,’ and in the 15th century a part of the
profits of the manor were obtained by the sale of fuel
and charcoal from the lord’s wood of Lytley.4 Of
the few small woods now remaining the Rector’s
Springs and Vineyard Springs,° Horsley Wood and
Nine Acre Wood are in the north-west of the
parish, Jobber’s Wood is on the east of it, and Side-
hill Wood, Culver Wood and Mill Wood, the last
apparently near the site of the ancient manorial

in the charity of George Palmer and others. (See
under Much Hadham.)
mill,® are to the south of the village. The River

Ash flows through the parish, and the stream called
Fiddler’s Brook forms its south-eastern boundary.
In the valley of the Ash the ground averages 200 ft.
above the ordnance datum. This was probably the
‘vale of Hadham’ where lay the Bishop of London’s
liberty into which the king’s bailiffs might not enter.?
To the east and west of Hadham Cross the ground
rises to 300 ft. and in the north-west of the parish
reaches a height of 352 ft.

The road running north to Stane Street and south
to Widford, Hunsdon and Stanstead Abbots passes
through Hadham, and the principal part of the
village called Hadham Cross is built along this road.
Its situation on the main road gave Hadham a certain
importance, and from the 13th century onwards it
appears in the various local assessments as one of the
largest places in the hundred. At the north end of
the village, on the east side of the main road, is the

57 Chauncy, op. cit. 159.

53 See Pope Nish, Tax. (Rec. Com.),
18 ; Cal. Pat. 1345-8, p. 3353 1391-6,
p- 4923 Feud. 4:25, ii, 460; Hist. MSS.
Com. Rep. iv, App. 125; Inst. Bks.
(P.R.O.), 1674; Recov. R. East. 1659,
tot. 84.

5° Bentham, Hist, and Antiz. of Church

of Ely, 131.

© Newcourt, Repertorium, i, $29.

51 Dugdale, Mon. i, 496.

69 Salmon, Hist, of Herts. 281.

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

1V.C.H. Herts i, 305, 306, 312.

3 Cal. Close, 1237-42, p. or.

“Mins. Accts. bdle. 1139, no. 4,
Names such as Westredyng, Richard
atte Wood, Walworth Shot, Blakshot,

5%

Overshot and Dormer Shot perhaps bear
witness to the former extent of woodland
in the parish.

5 cf. Vineyard Croft as the name of a
field (Close, 1649, pt. xlvii, no. 40).

® For the manorial water-mill see
Mins. Accts. bdle. 1139, no. 43 Rentals
and Surv. R. 813.

7 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193.

Mucuw Hapyam Cuurcy: Nortu Sipe oF CHANCEL

Lirtre Hapyam : 17TH-cenTURY CoTTAGE aT THE FooT oF Forp Hixxy

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Lordship, a large house of early 18th-century date,
built of red brick. The cornices have modillions
and carved mouldings and all the window sashes are
flush with the outside. The house has been altered
inside. A range of stables runs up to the main road.
Over the central archway is an elaborate bell-turret
of wood. There is some good wrought-ironwork in
the gates and fencing. South of the Lordship stand
the Palace, once a residence of the Bishops of London,
and St. Andrew’s Church. The Palace is a house of
two stories with attics. The walls are of brick and
the roofs tile-covered. No part of the existing build-
ing appears to be earlier than the 16th century.
The oldest part of the house is H-shaped on plan ;
the connecting block formed the original hall, the
principal rooms being placed in the west wing and
the domestic offices in the east wing. An 18th-

MUCH HADHAM

into five bays. The curved brackets at the ends of
the tie-beams have been removed to give head-room
in the passage, but the mortise: holes in ties and posts
are still visible. ‘The principal staircase is in the
west wing; it is of late 17th-century date, with
square newels with ball tops, heavy moulded balusters
and deep beaded handrail. ‘There is a quantity of
17th-century oak panelling in the house, and some
of the rooms have carved arabesque friezes. Founda-
tions of walls can be traced in the meadow west of
the house, and a bank round the meadow up to the
main road marks the old inclosing walls. An avenue
of trees formerly led from the south side of the
house, where the principal entrance probably was,
to the main road west of the site, but only a few trees
remain. North of the house are 17th-century stables,
the front part of which is built of brick ; the wing

‘ud

MBG fF 6

me ‘al 2
AGO ( hl By
| ine =
ay; N ; ==
H Hae
oon COR
= sade die
be | ;
TE te ll

Tur Lorpsuip Stastes, Mucn Hapwam

century block was added to the east wing and several
modern additions have been made on the north side.
In the 18th century the west front was burned and
rebuilt. The original house appears to have been
timber-framed, but in the latter part of the 17th
century the outer walls were encased in brickwork.
Both east and west wings are gabled and there are
two cross gables over the old hall. All the chimneys
are plain, but two are built of early 17th-century
bricks. The interior of the house has been much
modernized. The hall, which was originally open
to the roof, has been divided into two rooms and a
floer inserted, making it into two stories ; this was
probably done in the early part of the 17th century.
A passage was also formed along the north side to
connect the east and west wings. The old black and
white stone paving of the hall still remains, and on
the first floor, showing in the passage, are the tie-
beams of the 16th-century roof, which was divided

behind is timber-framed and brick-nogged. In the
gables of the dormer windows on the west side are
plaster devices, two of them being the escarbuncle so
common in the district which appears to have been
a stock pattern in the 17th century.

The rectory stands to the south of the church. It
is a timber-framed and plastered building of early
17th-century date, with modern additions on the east
side. The old part is L-shaped, but has been con-
siderably modernized. In the old entrance vestibule,
now disused, on the west front is some 17th-century
oak panelling and carving. On the first floor are
two 17th-century oak chimney-pieces, richly carved
and moulded, and some panelling of the same date.
All the work has been painted.

There are a number of 17th-century houses in the
village, but many have been altered and refaced.
On the west side of the road at the south entrance
to the village is a cottage known as the Marris

59

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

cottage ; 1t is of timber framing plastered between
the timbers and has an overhanging upper story.
On the east side of the road is the Hall, the resi-
dence of Mr. H. Bacon, J.P., a plain early 18th-
century brick house, standing in its own grounds ;
it has good wrought-iron entrance gates. There is
some more early 18th-century ironwork in front of
a small house on the west side of the road near the
north end of the village. The school on the east
side of the road was founded in 1720.°

At the south end of the village stood Hadham
Cross. Near the site of this is Yew Tree Farm,!°
a house of early 17th-century date, timber-framed
and plastered between the timbers. The roof is
thatched. On the front are two small oriel windows
on curved brackets, and in the centre isa roof dormer

house stands in a small park and is the residence of
Mrs. Pasteur. Moor Place, the residence of Mr.
F. H. Norman, D.L., J.P., stands to the west of the
village and appears to be on the site of the park
formerly belonging to the Bishops of London.'8
An earlier park belonging to the see lay at a con-
siderable distance from the Palace on the south-east
of the parish, where the house called Old Park still
marks the site of it. In 1199 the Bishop of London
gave two parts of the ‘Old Park’ at Hadham to
found a chantry for the souls of the Bishops of
London in the lower chapel of the bishop’s palace.}4
The pasture in the Old Park was farmed out by the
bishops in the 15th century !® as well as the lands
and pasture of the demesne.!® Old Hall, to the
south-west of Moor Place, now a farm, was once the

TY

il

}

i

i

i |

with the letters wrs and date 1697 in the gable;
this date probably refers to the dormer only. The two
chimney stacks are of thin bricks, with small pilasters
on their faces. The Congregational chapel close by
was built in 1872. There is a railway station to
the south-west of the village on the Buntingford
branch of the Great Eastern railway.

Culver Lodge, now the residence of Mrs. William
Jowitt, was in 1873 a convent dedicated in honour
of the Holy Child Jesus.1! Further south still is the
house called Wynches, a name dating from as early as
1610, when the ‘tenement called Winches’ was
occupied by Nicholas Brett, yeoman.!? The present

Yew Tree Farm,

§ See Charities. the same name;
® This is mentioned in 1663 (Sess. R. Herts. Edwinstree
(Herts. Co. Rec. ], i, 156). 1 Cussana, loc. cit.
1© There was an earlier house called by

Antiz. ii, 104.

see Cussans, Hist. of
Hund. 171.

Will printed in Herts. Gen. and

CUENNY ViQnie sige’

Mucu Hapuam

property of the Newce family. Close by is Kettle
Green, to the south of which, at Moat Farm,
is a homestead moat. There is another homestead
moat at Brand’s Farm, a little to the north-west.
This farm is connected with the village by a road
called Cox Lane. Carldane Court on the north-
west of the village (see manors) is the residence of
Mr. Franklyn Arden Crallan. It is a 16th-century
house of half-timber on a brick foundation. During
recent alterations a stone bearing the initials ze and
TH 1682 was found. Some of the rooms have 16th-
century panelling and two contain fine open fire-
places

1 See Moor Place under manors.
Chauncy, op. cit. 153.

15 Mins. Accts. bdle. 1139, 00. 14.
16 Tid.

60

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Perry Green is a hamlet about 2 miles south-east
of the village of Much Hadham. The church of
St. Thomas was built in 1853 and is a chapel
of ease to the parish church. The school stands
to the south of it. Hoglands at Perry Green is
a small early 17th-century farm-house of timber, partly
weather-boarded and partly plastered; the roofs
are tiled. ‘The house is of two stories and attics, and
at the end is a projecting chimney stack of thin red
bricks, with two square engaged shafts set diagonally.
The house is gabled, one gable having an original
moulded oak barge-board.

About one-third of a mile north-east is Buckler’s
Farm, a timber-framed house covered with plaster,
a part of it weather-boarded ; the roofs are tiled.
The house was originally L-shaped with a staircase
projection in the angle, but modern additions have
been made to it. The upper story of the east wing
projects on the north and east, and the east gable is

MUCH HADHAM

There is a homestead moat at Exnells on the
north-east of the parish and others at Sherrards and
Mingers Farm.

Anthony Allen, lawyer and antiquary (ob. 1754),
was born in the parish of Much Hadham.!® Of a
branch of the Stopes family settled at Much Hadham
was Leonard Stopes, one of the four original scholars
at St. John’s College, Oxford, and one of the four
first fellows there. He was ejected from his fellow-
ship on his refusal to conform in 1559 and afterwards
suffered imprisonment as a seminary priest. Among
the incumbents of Much Hadham have been several
distinguished divines. Biographical notices of Alexander
Nowell, Peter Hansted, Daniel Dyke, Thomas Paske,
and William Stanley, all rectors of this parish, are
given by Clutterbuck 2° and also by Cussans, who
adds a notice of Thomas Patmore, instituted rector
in 1515.2! Stanley Leathes, the Hebraist, held the
living from 1889 to 1900.

ae
= z ELE Ad
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DYNAN TAA ea CT
nt Tan RAN LUA LN UT A oa
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a WY qu tu (Ut ui nrllt ih was { ngs LE
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Bucxrer’s Farm, Perry Green, Mucu Hapuam

hipped ; on the main roof is a chimney stack of thin
bricks consisting of a row of square engaged shafts
set diagonally on a sloping base ; the other chimney
is plain. The north gable of the main block has a
moulded barge-board with moulded pendant at the
apex. One of the first-floor rooms has plaster deco-
rations on the ceiling, consisting of escarbuncles,
fleurs de lis and other stock patterns of the dis-
trict. In another room is some early 17th-century
panelling.

Green Tye is another hamlet about 14 miles
south-east of the village. On the north side of
Green Tye is an early 17th-century timber-framed
and plastered farm-house, with a plain chimney of
thin bricks. A fair which used to be held at Green
Tye on 23 June was abolished in 1878.17

V Lond. Gaz. 9 July 1878, p. 4043.
18 Dict. Nat. Biog.

18 Thid,

°0 Op. cit. iii, 399.

185.
% Thid.

21 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund,
22 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3055.

%4 Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 290.
61

The manor of MUCH HADHAM
MANORS belonged to the Bishops of London
before the Conquest,?? but there is no
record at what time they acquired it. In 1086 it
was assessed at 74 hides. There was a priest among
the tenants of the manor and there was a mill there
worth 45.23 The manor subsequently formed part of
the Bishop of London’s liberty of Stortford (q.v.). The
bishop’s tenants were quit of suit of hundred court 24
and the king’s ministers were not allowed to enter
the bishop’s liberty ‘in the valley of Hadham ” unless
the bishop’s bailiffs accompanied them.25 Other
privileges claimed by the bishop in Much Hadham
at the end of the 13th century were free warren,”
gallows and assize of bread and ale,?” view of frank-
pledge and waifs.8

35 Hund, R, (Rec. Com.), i, 193
26 Tbid.

7 Assize R. 323+

38 Ibid. 325.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The Bishops of London had a residence at Hadham
where the king was apparently entertained in 1248,
when Letters Patent were
dated there.?? Bishop Roger
Walden, after having been pro-
vided to the see of Canter-
bury in 1397 shared in the
downfall of Richard II, but in
1404 he was provided to
London by the efforts of his
former rival Arundel. He died
at Much Hadham in 1406,
less than a year after his con-
secration.*? At the beginning
of the 15th century the Bishop
of London found that his
revenues were insufficient to
keep up all his manors, and he received licence from
the pope to dispose of several of them, but Hadham
was one that he retained.3!_ Apparently, however,
soon after this the palace was leased or lent, for it
seems to have been occupied for a short time by
Katherine de Valois, widow of Henry V. She
married as her second husband Owen Tudor, and
her eldest son Edmund Tudor Earl of Richmond,
the father of Henry VII, was born at Hadham about
1430 and was styled Edmund of Hadham.*”

Bishop Ridley is said to have made use of the
neighbourhood of the episcopal residence at Hadham
to visit the Princess Mary at Hunsdon House in
1552, in the hope of persuading her to the Pro-
testant religion. She received him graciously, but
was indignant at his suggestion that she should hear
him preach. After she became queen Bishop
Bonner made a visitation in Hertfordshire. At his
own town of Hadham he received a poor welcome.
The bells, it is said, did not ring to greet him, and
in the church the ordinances for the decoration of
the rood-loft and the hanging of the sacrament had
not been obeyed. The rector pleaded that he had
not expected the bishop to arrive so early, but he
appears to have been of Protestant sympathies, and
Bonner left Hadham in disgust and set out for Ware.4
In 1578 during the episcopate of John Aylmer
Queen Elizabeth was at Hadham and held a council
there.*5 Bishop Mountain was entertaining his
friend James Ussher at the palace in March 1625
when the latter heard of his appointment to the
archbishopric of Armagh.**

The bishop’s possessions were confiscated under
the Commonwealth and in 1647 the manor of Much
Hadham was granted to William Collins and Robert
Staunton,37 who in 1649 received a grant of the
warren and game of coneys throughout the manor.38
On the Restoration it reverted to the bishopric, but
after this date the bishops granted it out on lease,
reserving the right of residence.29 In 1868 the
temporalities of the bishopric of London were trans-

Bishopric oF Lonpon.
Gules two swords of St.
Paul crossed saltirewise.

ferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and they
are the present lords of the manor. During the first
halfof the 19th century the palace was used for many
years asa lunatic asylum.4° In 1888 the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners sold it to Mrs. Berry, who conveyed
it in 1893 to Mrs. Wetherall, the present owner.

Among the customs of the manor were a fine of
a year’s quit-rent paid for admission by the copy-
holders and free bench for the widows of customary
tenants.#*

The estate now known as CARLDANE COURT
(Celgdene, xi cent. ; Carle Daines, xvi cent.) was
held in the reign of Edward the Confessor by Eldred,
one of the king’s thegns. After the Norman Con-
quest it was acquired by the Bishop of London and
was held of him by Roderi in 1086, when it was
assessed at half a hide.*! It remained with the
Bishops of London until after
the beginning of the 15th
century.4?_ By the end of the
16th century it had come
into the possession of the Par-
nell family.48 Hugh Parnell
left it by will of 1594 to his
son William, from whom it
descended successively to
Hugh son of William and
Hugh son of Hugh.44 The
latter settled part of his pro-
perty on his son Hyde Parnell
and Sarah Finch his wife and
by will of 1723 left the rest
of it to Hyde’s son Hugh Parnell. Hugh the younger
and Hyde his brother both died without issue and
the e-tate went to their uncle Charles Parnell.
William Parnell son of Charles lived at Lambeth
and Southwark # and his son Hugh James Richards,
a solicitor, owned Hadham House, Upper Clapton.
By his will of 1861 he left his Hertfordshire property
to his sons Hugh and John Parnell as tenants in
common.*® In 1906 Carldane Court passed to their
cousin Mr. Franklyn Arden Crallan, the present
owner (see Patmore Hall in Albury).

In 1086 the Bishop of London held in addition to
his manor of Much Hadham half a hide of land in
Hadham which before the Conquest had been held
by Edric, a man of Asgar the Staller, and which was
held of the bishop by William.4”7 This was possibly
afterwards parcel of the bishop’s manor in Little
Hadham which was held by the same tenant in
1086. Another hide of land which two sokemen
had formerly had was held of the bishop in 1086
by Osbern,*? but its subsequent descent cannot be
traced.

The estate called MOOR PLACE (Mores, xv
cent.) was held of the Bishop of London as of his
manor of Hadham.*® It appears to have taken its
name from a family called More who held lands in

Parne.tt. Gules two
cheverons ae with a
bend sable anda border or.

See Cal. Pat, 1247-58, p. 32. For
letters dated there by the bishops see
ibid. 1340-3, p. 4153; Cal. S. P. Dom.
1581-90, p. 111; 1623-5, p. §92 ; Hise.
AISS. Com, Rep. visi, App. iy 6342.

% Dict. Nat. Biog.

31 Cal. Papal Lezrers, vii, 85.

™ Dict. Nat. Biog.

°3 Fox, Actsand Monument (ed. Towns-
end), vi, 354. ¥ Ibid. 562-3.

® cdess of P.C. 1577-8, p. 324.

36 Dict. Nat. Biog. 6.v. Ussher.

¥ Close, 23 Chas. I, pt. xxxi, m. 20.

Ibid. 1649, pt. xlvii, m. 403 see
Recov. R. East. 1659, rot. 84.

Chauncy, op. cit. 159; Salmon,
Hist. of Herts. 277.

** Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 317.

Ca Cussans, op. cit. Edqinstree Hund.
176. VCH. Herts. i, 3062.

42 Feud. Aids, ii, 432, 446.

SIn 1473 there is the manumission

62

of John Parnell, a tenant of the Bishop
of London (Deed penes Mr. F. A. Crallan).

“ Will of William, 1630; will of
Hugh, 1672.

“ His sisters Honor and Elizabeth
Parnell lived at Castle House, Hadham,

4 Descent communicated by Mr. F. A,
Crallan.

“ VCH. Herts, i, 3064,

48 Thid.

? Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen, VII, i, 189.

Mucu Hapuam: Tue Patace FROM THE SouTH-EFasT

Mucu Hapuam Cuurcu: Tue Norru Arcade

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Hadham in the 15th century. Towards the end
of this century John Threscher and Robert More
enfeoffed various trustees of
lands in Hadham called
“Mores.” ‘These lands in- h ')
cluded in 1488 a messuage,
100 acres of arable land, 6 &
acres of meadow and 6 acres
of wood. After the death of
some of the feoffees the re-
mainder enfeoffed one of their
number Thomas Clerke and
his wife Elizabeth of these
lands.) Thomas Clerke was
holding in 1488,5° and after-
wards mortgaged them to
James Songer.®! At the begin-
ning of the 16th century the
property called ‘ Mores’ was held by Sir John Champ-
neys, kt., from whom it was purchased by John
Haynes the elder in trust for Mary Dalton, widow.
In 1550 John Haynes brought a suit against Mary
Dalton claiming 10 acres of land belonging to her
son Eldred Dalton on account of this transaction.®?
Moor Place remained with the Daltons until about
1620, when they sold it to Edward Nevill Lord
Bergavenny.*4 He died in 1622.°° His son Henry
was living in Hadham as late as 1641.5 The estate
was acquired soon afterwards by Sir John Gore, kt.,57
who in 1648 settled the capital messuage called
Moor Place and the inclosed land called Hadham
Park in which it stood, described as heretofore in
the occupation of Sir Gerard Harvey and at that
time his own residence, on himself and his wife
Katherine in tail-male.5® About two years later he
conveyed it to Sir Richard Atkins,°® who is said to
have made a small park on the estate. He was
created a baronet in 1660.6! He died in 1689,°?
and Moor Place was sold either before or after his
death to James Berners, who died in 1692.6 The
estate was afterwards conveyed by William Berners
to Robert Atkins.“ In 1742 Robert Atkins conveyed
Moor Place to William Mills to be sold for payment
of his debts.6° Lands included in this conveyance
were Hunts Wood, Small Gains Pasture, Langley
Field, Mappleton Garden, Herringley, a farm called
Palmers, and Newclose Brested.°6 Moor Place was
purchased by James Gordon in 1749. He died in
1768, and by the terms of his will it passed to his
nephew James Brebner, who took the name of
Gordon in 1769. It descended to his son James
Gordon and afterwards to James Adam Gordon, who
died about 1854. In 1860 Moor Place was acquired
by Money Wigram,®’ and in 1885 it passed to
Mr. F. H. Norman, the present owner.

[ea

Mors of Moor Place.
Argent sprinkled with
drops of blood two cheve-

rons gules,

50 Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. VI, i, 189.

51 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 89, no. 79.

52 Ct, of Req. bdle. 15, no. 25. The
property consisted of a capital messuage

62 Tbid.

M. I. in church.

61 G.E.C. Complete Baronetage, ili, 39.

63 East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. loc. cit. 5
(See Duchy of Lanc.

MUCH HADHAM

The present house called Moor Place was built
between 1775 and 1779 by James Gordon and is
40 or $0 yards north of the site of the original house.
Over the entrance is a coat of arms in stone. The
stables and some of the walls in the garden are
believed to have belonged to the earlier house.

The capital messuage or farm called OLD HALL
formed part of the property of Gertrude Marchioness
of Exeter, one of the heirs of Sir William Say, and
after her attainder in 1539 ° was granted by the
king in 1546 to Sir Richard Lee.® It was then in
the tenure of John Rawlyn.” The following year
Lee granted his manor of Bigging in Standon to
Clement Newce, and the grant included lands in
Much Hadham 7! which may probably be identified
with Old Hall. Clement Newce was confirmed in
his possession of a tenement in Much Hadham by a
grant from some of the heirs of Sir William Say in
1575.2 In 1579 he died seised of the capital mes-
suage called Old Hall, then in the occupation of
William More.’3 His heir was his son William
Newce. Old Hall afterwards came into the posses-
sion of Mark Mott, who settled it on his son Mark
Mott, D.D., on the occasion of his marriage with
Mercy Dyke, widow. This family also held a mes-
suage in Much Hadham called Watkyns Farm.
Dr. Mark Mott, who died in January 1630-1,
bequeathed half of his lands to his second son Mark
and half to another son, Francis. Mark Mott was
aged thirteen in 1637, when his lands in Much
Hadham were held by his guardians Samuel Wharton
and Adrian Mott.74 After this date the descent of
this estate cannot be traced.

Besides the Old Hall estate the Newces had other
property in Much Hadham. The first of this family
known to have been connected
with Hadham is Thomas
Newce, who in the reign of “je 4
Edward VI sold one of the 4 i
church bells and shared the rss zz
profits with Sir Henry Parker, |
kt. and Eldred Dalton.”5
Clement Newce died at Much
Hadham in 157976 and his
son William died there in
February 1610-11.” In 1623
Thomas son of William died
in occupation of a mansion-
house at Much Hadham.’®
This descended to his son
William, who with his wife Mary and his son Thomas
made a settlement of it and other lands in 1648.”
William Newce was living as late as 1674, when he
was acting justice of the peace.®° By 1678 he had
been succeeded by his son Thomas,®! who died before

Newce of Hadham.

Sable two pales argent
and a quarter ermine.

_ 1 Pat. 1 Edw. VI, pt. viii, m. 8
cf. Biggings in Standon, Braughing Hund.

™ See Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 17 & 18
Eliz. ; Pat. 19 Eliz. pt. iv, m. 25.

and 200 acres of land.
53 Cussans, op. cit. Edwwinstree Hund.
171, 54 Ibid.
55 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, s.v. Aber-
gavenny.
56 Rast Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. ii, 143.
57 Tbid.
58 Add. Chart. 35446. .
59 East Herts, Arch. Soc. Trans. ioc. cit.
See Chan. Enr. Decrees, R. 1870, no. 5.
69 Chauncy, op. cit. 160.

Misc. Bks. Ixxii, fol. 59. A manor of
Morehall, said to lie in Hadham, is here
returned as being held by Thomas Newce
in 1678, but this must refer to the manor
of Morehall in Thorley.)

64 Chan. Enr. Decrees, R. 1870, no. 5.

6 Tbid. 66 Tbid.

6&7 Cussans, loc. cit.

68 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, .v. Devon.

69 F, and P. Hen. VIII, xxi (2), g. 648
(46). 70 Ibid.

63

73 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxxxix, 92.
74 Thid. cccclxxxvii, 164.

15 East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. ii, 139.
76 Chan. Ing. p.m, (Ser. 2), clxxxix, 92.
77 Tbid. dxxvii, 99.

78 Ibid. ccccxxix, 131.

79 Com. Pleas D. Enr. East. 24 Chas, I,

m. 31.
80 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 2454
81 Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. |xxii,
fol. 59 (see note 63).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

1700 leaving no male issue.*? The mansion-house,
which was known as the Hall, came into the posses-
sion of the Rev. Francis Stanley, who appears to have
been holding it in 1725.°* He rebuilt the house in
1745. On his death in 1775 it was purchased of
his executors by Robert Vigne of London, merchant,
from whom it passed to George Palmer of Nazeing,
co. Essex. It descended to his son Col. George
Palmer, who sold it in 1866 to the Rev. Francis
Bacon, and it is now owned by Mr. Henry Bacon,
sPs
; At the beginning of the 16th century there was a
so-called manor of DELAMERE in Much Hadhan,
of which few records remain. This was purchased
by Thomas Ostrich, merchant, of London, who by
his will of 1484 bequeathed torches to the church of
Much Hadham, and left all his ‘levelod’ in Hadham
to his wife Anne for life, with remainder to their son
Thomas.® After his father’s death Thomas brought
a suit in Chancery against his mother in order to

of the north aisle is faced with a chequer of flint
and stone in 6-in. squares ; the main roofs are slated
and the aisle roofs covered with lead.

The chancel is the earliest portion of the existing
building and was erected about 1220; an earlier
nave and chancel probably existed, but no detail
of these remains. The chancel arch is also of about
1220, but it was subsequently widened, probably in
the 15th century About the middle of the 13th
century a south aisle of three bays was added, pro-
bably representing the full length of the original
nave. Later in the 13th century the nave and south
aisle were lengthened two bays westward, and towards
the close of the century a north chapel was thrown
out from the east end of the nave, and about the
middle of the 14thcentury the north aisle was formed
by extending the chapel four bays westward. Windows
were also inserted in the south aisle during the 14th
century, and probably also a south doorway, which
was subsequently transferred to the north side of the

13

14] Century

15! Century
MobERN

20 30 40

ScaLe OF FEET

Pian orf Mucn Hapuam Cuurcu

recover the deeds of settlement of the lands in
Hadham which were described as the manor of
Delamere.*”

The lands with which the church was endowed
formed the RECTORY MANOR of Much Hadham.

The church of ST. ANDREW stand-
ing on the west side of the small River Ash
consists of chancel 34 ft. by 21 ft. 6in.,
nave 73 ft. by 22 ft. 6 in., north aisle 15 ft. wide and
south aisle 12 ft. wide, south porch 13 ft. by 10 ft.,
west tower I4 ft. square, vestry on the north side of
the chancel 11 ft. by 8 ft. 6in. and modern organ
chamber adjoining ; all internal dimensions. The
walls are of flint rubble with clunch dressings ; the
tower is covered with cement ; part of the west end

CHURCH

89 Chauncy, op. cit. 161.

3 See Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 60.

“ Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
172.

§§ Early Chan, Proc. bdle. 152, no. 56. 217, no. 18.

% P.C.C, Will, 21 Logge; cf. Early
Chan. Proc. bdle. 152, no. 56, where the
wife’s name is given as Amy.

& Early Chan, Proc. bdles. 152, no. 56;

chancel as an entrance to the vestry. The west
tower was built about 1400 by Robert Braybrook,
Bishop of London, whose arms are carved over the
west doorway. In the 15th century the walls of the
chancel and nave were raised and new roofs put on
and the nave clearstory formed; the north vestry
was built, the rood-stair was formed, the south porch
was erected and a new south door inserted, the older
one, with its excellent 13th-century hinges, being
probably removed then to the chancel. A number
of windows were also inserted during this period. In
the 19th century the church was thoroughly restored
and much of the stonework renewed, and in 1908 a
large organ chamber was erected on the north side
of the chancel.

% Newcourt, Repertorium, i, 829;
Chauncy, op. cit. 160; Clutterbuck,
Op. cit. ili, 399 5; Cussans, op. cit. Edwins-
tree Hund. 176.

64

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The east window of the chancel is of 1 5th-century
date and has five cinquefoiled lights with traceried
head. In the north wall is an early 13th-century
blocked lancet, and partly under, and cutting into
it, is a large doorway of about 1350, with arch and
jambs of two continuously moulded orders of double
ogee mouldings ; this opens into the vestry, and has
an old oak door formed of planks about 15 in. wide,
with fine early 13th-century iron hinges and scroll-
work, At the western ends of the chancel walls on
each side are lofty shallow recesses about 15 ft. in
width of 13th-century date ; they appear to be of
the full height of the original chancel, and the jambs
have splayed edges. A 13th-century moulded string-
course under the windows inside is returned into
these recesses; they have never been arched, and
were apparently originally recesses to give extra width
to the chancel; there is nothing to indicate their
former depth. They were filled up, probably in the
15th century, when a window of two cinquefoiled
lights with traceried head was inserted in each. The
window on the north side now opens into the organ
chamber. Between the old doorway to the vestry
and the doorway to the organ chamber is a recess,
probably used as an Easter sepulchre, with con-
tinuously moulded arch and jambs and moulded label
forming an ogee arch above, with a mutilated carved
finial and stops with shields; it is of 15th-century
date. The doorway to the organ chamber has a
splayed arch and jambs and is of 15th-century date ;
some of the stonework has been renewed. In the
south wall are two 15th-century windows of two
cinquefoiled lights. ‘The one at the eastern end has a
segmental arched head; the other, in the built-up
recess, is similar to that on the north side. The
south doorway is of 15th-century date and is similar
to that opening into the organ chamber. In the
south wall are two piscinas. The most easterly, which
is of 15th-century date, has a cinquefoiled arch, nearly
elliptical, under a square head; the arch and jambs
are moulded. The adjoining one is double, one
side being a credence ; the arches are trefoiled, and
the jambs, arch and central shaft are moulded. In
one of the openings is a sixfoiled drain; it is of
13th-century date. The chancel arch is of two
chamfered orders, the inner one hollow-chamfered.
The jambs have splayed sides and a central engaged
circular shaft, slightly keel-shaped. The mutilated
capitals are moulded, the bases have gone. ‘The work
is of early 13th-century date, but has been taken
down and rebuilt with a wider span in the 16th
century, the small-sized voussoirs in the upper part
of the arch indicating the extension. The chancel
roof is of 15th-century date, with roses carved on the
soft of the tie-beams at the centre.

The north nave arcade consists of five bays. The
eastern bay, which is wider than the others, formerly
opened into the north chapel. It is of late 13th-
century date and has an arch of two splayed orders,
the inner one hollow-chamfered. There is a moulded
label on one side only; the responds are semi-
octagonal and the capitals and bases are moulded.
The west impost is back to back with the impost of
the four western arches, which are of mid-14th-
century date with two moulded orders and labels on
both sides. The mouldings are enriched with ball-
flowers and leaf carvings placed at considerable
distances apart. The piers are octagonal, with moulded

4 65

MUCH HADHAM

capitals and bases ; the capitals, which are ata higher
level than those of the eastern bay, have human
faces and leaves carved on their bells. The south
arcade is also of five bays. The three eastern arches
were erected about 1240-50, one of two orders, the
outer one splayed, the inner with a hollow between
fillets and a label on both sides. ‘The octagonal piers
have moulded capitals and bases. The two western
arches, of about 1260-70, have two orders, one a
plain chamfer, the inner hollowed, and plain labels ;
the piers are octagonal with moulded capitals and
bases, the clunch capitals being much mutilated.
On many of the stones in the two western arches
are roughly cut mason’s marks in the form of irre-
gularly shaped crosses potent. The 15th-century
clearstory windows have three cinquefoiled lights
under a square head. The nave roof is of 15th-
century date, with moulded trusses and carved bosses,
and with traceried spandrels under the tie-beams
resting on stone corbels, some of which bear the
symbols of the Evangelists, and others are carved
with figure subjects. In the north-east corner of
the nave is the upper doorway to the rood-stair, set in
a splay.

The three-light east window of the north aisle
and the two adjoining two-light windows in the
north wall are all of 15th-century date, with cinque-
foiled lights and traceried heads. Under the east
window is a recess which formerly contained an altar
reredos ; to the south of it, in the east wall, is a
small trefoil-headed piscina with hollow-chamfered
edge. In the south-east angle is the doorway to the
rood-stair, and beside it is a small blocked trefoiled
opening, probably not in its original position. The
west window of three lights and the adjoining two
in the north wall of two lights are of 14th-century
date, with flowing tracery ; under the window sills
in the west and north walls inside runs a 14th-
century moulded string-course, with carvings at
intervals as on the arcade arches. The north doorway
has continuously moulded arch and jambs of 14th-
century date.

The east and west windows of the south aisle are
of 15th-century date, each of three cinquefoiled lights
with traceried heads. There are four windows in
the south wall. The most easterly is a three-light
window of 15th-century date, similar to the east
window but much restored. The second is of 14th-
century date, of two lights, with flowing tracery ; the
inner jamb has a double ogee moulding and label ;
much of the stonework is modern. The third window
is similar in character, but of modern stonework ; the
fourth is a 15th-century window of two cinque-
foiled lights, with traceried head, restored. ‘The
1$th-century south doorway has arch and jambs of
two continuously moulded orders under a square
head ; in each traceried spandrel is a shield, one
bearing St. George’s cross, the other St. Andrew’s.
In the east end of the south wall is a 14th-century
piscina with cusped arch, slightly ogee-shaped, and
carved mutilated finial; the drain is sixfoiled. The
south porch belongs to the 15th century. On each
side are two two-light windows under four-centred
arches ; much of the stonework of these is modern.
The entrance has a moulded two-centred arch with
semi-octagonal shafts in the jambs and moulded
capitals; the buttresses have cusped gablets. The
parapets of the porch and both aisles are embattled,

9

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The roofs of porch and aisles are of 15th-century
tate, the former having carved angel figures.

The west tower is of three stages, with diagonal
buttresses, embattled parapet and slender wood spire
covered with lead. The circular stair is in the south-
west angle. The tower arch is lofty and two-centred ;
the arch and jambs are splayed and moulded ; semi-
octagonal shafts with moulded capitals and bases sup-
port the inner order. The west doorway has a pointed
arch of two moulded orders under a square head and
label with head stops; the spandrels are traceried
with roses in the centre. The doorway has been
repaired ; above is a stone shield carved with the
arms of Robert Braybrook, Bishop of London

has arched panels with trefoiled cusps, the base is
moulded. On the inner sill of the second window from
the east is roughly inscribed ‘ap NOMEN DONI CURVATE
cenua 14—.’ A large stone slab under the com-
munion table is said to be the original altar slab
turned face downwards. In the recess on the north
side of the chancel are some old tiles with geometrical
patterns, probably of the 14th century. The rood-
screen is of 15th-century date with traceried openings ;
the cornice is modern. ‘Traces of colour still remain.
The oak pulpit is made up of 15th-century traceried
panels with pilaster buttresses at the angles. In the
chancel are some 15th-century stalls with traceried
panels and carved poppy-heads to the seat ends.

There are two 15th-century oak chairs

Wa

NNN

nite

F

in the church, one in the chancel, the
other at the west end, with high panelled
and traceried backs with moulded
cornice, curved arm-rests with crocketed
finials and panelled and traceried fronts.
In the nave are some plain 1 5th-century
seats with buttressed ends. On the east
wall of the chancel are some 15th-cen-
tury traceried panels, and on the eastern
responds of north and south arcades in
the nave is some 17th-century panel-
ling. ‘The communion table is of oak
with carved legs of late 16th-century
date. In the east window of the
chancel are some interesting remains
of 15th-century glass. In the upper
= || part are figures of SS. Peter and
Andrew. Under them are figures of
eight female saints: St. Ursula, St.
Cecilia, St. Margaret, St. Mary the
Virgin, St. Catherine, St. Winifred,
St. Barbara and St. Mary Magdalene.®?
In the lower part of the window are
three sacred monograms, two of them
surrounded by the words ‘Hoc est
nomen quod super omne nomen’; one
of the inscriptions is a modern copy.
There are also two coats of arms, one
of Fulk Bassett, Bishop of London
1244-59 (Barry wavy of six argent
and sable), the other of Thomas Kemp,
Bishop of London 1450-89 (Gules
three sheaves and a border engrailed or).

On the jambs of the blocked 13th-
century lancet on the north side of the
chancel is a masonry pattern painted in

my

Mvucu Hapwam Cuvurcw: 15 rH-century Cuatr

(1382-1404), seven voided lozenges and a border.
The west window has three cinquefoiled lights under
a traceried head ; the window has been repaired in
cement. The second stage of the tower has a loop
light on the north, west and south faces and a clock
dial on the west. On the east side is a small square-
headed opening into the nave over the tower arch
which has been blocked with thin 16th-century bricks.
The belfry windows have each two cinquefoiled lights
with traceried head

The octagonal font is of stone and is probably of
late 15th-century date. The sides of the bowl are
decorated with circular traceried panels with blank
shields and foliage in their centres; the pedestal

red lines with sixfoiled ornaments, pro-
bably of 13th-century date. On the
north wall of the north aisle, near the
east end, is part of a painted diaper pattern with
foliage, probably of 1 5th-century date, and under the
clearstory on the north side of the nave are some
small patches of paintings. On the north wall of
the vestry is a band of running ornament of 1sth-
century date.

On the chancel floor is an indent of a floreated
cross with a marginal inscription to Simon Flambard,
rector (1320-32) ; a brass strip on a marble slab
is inscribed ‘Priez pur Valme Alban parsone de
hadhii ’—this is supposed to refer to Alan de Fen,
rector (1369-72) ; an inscription only to Grace
Goodman, 1631; the half-figure of a man in the
® East Herts, Arch, Soc. Trans. iv, 198.

66

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

dress of a serjeant-at-law, without inscription, of 15th-
century date. In the nave: figures of a man and his
wife, without inscription, of the early 16th century ;
inscription only to Joone Goldsmyth, daughter of
Clement Newce of London, mercer, and wife of
F. Frauncys Goldsmyth of Crayford, Kent ; figures
of a man and two wives, six sons and seven daughters,
with arms and crest and inscription to William Newce,
February 1610-11; figures of a man, his wife, eight
sons and nine daughters, i.e. Clement Newce, 1579,
and his wife Mary, 1582 ; inscription only to Dianis
Burton, daughter of John Knitun of Bayford. On
the south wall of the chancel is a mural monument,
with headless effigy of Judith Aylmer, widow of
John Aylmer, Bishop of London, and mother of
Theophilus Aylmer, rector (1589-1626). On the
chancel floor are slabs to John Goodman, rector,
1690, and Catherine wife of Dr. William Fuller,
Dean of Durham, 1668. There are also slabs to the
Parnell family in the floor of the nave.

There are six bells: the first by Samuel Knight,
(S. K.), 1738; second by I. H. (John Hodson), 1654 ;
third and fourth by John Dyer, 1595; fifth by
S. K. (Samuel Knight), 1738; sixth by Lester &
Pack, 1759. There is also a small priest’s bell, marked
with an arrow, but undated, probably of the 15th
century.

The communion plate consists of two silver cups
and standing paten, 1576, another paten, 1811,
and a modern plated paten and flagon.

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows: (i)
baptisms 1559 to 1592 and 1598 to 1682, burials
and marriages 1559 to 1682 ; (ii) baptisms, burials
and marriages 1679 to 1748; (iii) baptisms 1748
to 1804, burials 1748 to 1808, marriages 1748 to
1754 (iv) baptisms 1805 to 1812, burials 1808 to
18123; (v) marriages 1754 to 1807; (vi) marriages
1807 to 1812.

The advowson of Much Hadham

ADVOWSON has always been held by the Bishops

of London. The living of Little

Hadham was annexed as a chapelry to Much Hadham
in the 13th century.

By will of 1389 Sir Thomas Strete, rector of
Much Hadham, founded a chantry in the church for
his soul and the souls of his father, mother, sisters
and Dom John atte Lee and his wife Joan. He
died in 1390.9

The charities of Mary Hales (will

CHARITIES dated in 1720) and John Some (will

dated in 1772) are regulated by a

scheme of the Charity Commissioners of 8 August

1905, whereby the trust funds were divided into
two branches :

(2) The educational foundation, endowed with
£991 155. 2% per cent. annuities, £315 Bank of
England stock and £100 consols, producing together
about £57 a year, of which £25 a year is under the
scheme made applicable in the maintenance of public
elementary schools in Much Hadham and the balance
towards the cost of apprenticing children from such
schools or in training pupil teachers or in prizes or
exhibitions for higher education ;

(2) The eleemosynary charity, endowed with
£352 5s. 24 per cent. annuities, £105 Bank of

90 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18; Cal. Pat, 1381-5, p. 48 5
Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).
91 London Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 398.

67

MUCH HADHAM

England stock and £41 135. 4d. consols, producing
together about £20 yearly, which is made applicable
for the general benefit of the poor in one or more of
the modes prescribed by the scheme.

The several securities are held by the official
trustees.

In 1689 William Pigott by his will charged his
two tenements at the Town’s-end and a field called
Garret’s with an annuity of {1 45. for providing
eight 3¢. loaves for the eight poor people living in
the almshouses of the parish, which are occupied by
poor widows rent free.

In 1772 Charles Baron Deer by his will bequeathed
£50, one-twelfth part of the interest to be given
away every first Sunday in the month equally to
four poor widowers and four poor widows. The
legacy is represented by £53 16s. 82. consols.

In 1799 Hugh Parnell by his will bequeathed
£100 consols, the dividends to be applied for the
benefit of twelve poor persons on Christmas Eve.

In 1808 Honor Parnell bequeathed £50, the
income to be distributed on the last Sunday in
January among twelve industrious poor. The legacy
is represented by {59 65. 1¢. consols, which has been
augmented by £50 consols given upon the same
trusts by Elizabeth Parnell.

In 1822 Thomas Mott, by will, left £2 a year to
be applied partly in money and partly in bread on
the third Sunday in January after service in the
morning in the parish church to the twelve poorest
families. The legacy is now represented by £66 135. 4d.
consols. ‘The several sums of stock are held by the
official trustees, producing altogether £8 45. 8d. in
yearly dividends, which are allocated to the respective
charities.

In 1827 James Wildman by his will, proved in
the P.C.C., bequeathed £200 stock, now repre-
sented (less duty) by £180 consols, the annual
dividends, amounting to {£4 I10s., to be applied for
the general purposes of a school of industry or Sunday
school or any future school to be substituted.

In 1863 Miss Mary Emily Mott by her will, proved
at London 7 December, bequeathed £166 135. 4d.
consols, the annual dividends, amounting to £4 35.4d.,
to be applied towards the education of poor children
residing in or about Green Tye, Perry Green and
South End districts.

In 1875 the Rev. Thomas Randolph by his will,
proved at London 23 June, bequeathed £200
consols, the annual dividends of £5 to be applied in
the repairs, maintenance or decoration of fabric and
church furniture of the chapel of ease at Perry Green.

The same testator bequeathed £100 consols, the
annual dividends of £2 10s. to be applied in gifts of
from 5s. to tos. to the poor of Much Hadham and
Little Hadham, preference being given to those who
most regularly attend church and holy communion.

In 1878 William Rolph Thornell by his will,
proved 23 October in that year, bequeathed £100,
now represented by {£106 4s. 10d. consols, the
annual dividends, amounting to £2 13s., to be dis-
tributed immediately before Christmas in tea and
cake or otherwise for the refreshment of poor scholars
and children of the public school.

Charity of George Palmer and others.—In 1820 a
sum of money was raised by voluntary subscriptions
‘for the encouragement of industry and good conduct
in the labouring poor of the two parishes during

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

their youth by affording them additional comforts in
their old age beyond the parish allowance.’ The trust
fund now consists of £218 8s. consols, producing
£5 9s. yearly, which is administered for the benefit

of the aged poor under the provisions of a scheme of

the Charity Commissioners of 13 August 1897.
The several sums of stock are held by the official

trustees.

GREAT HORMEAD

Hormede (xi cent.).

The parish of Great Hormead is a sparsely wooded
district consisting for the most part of fields and
meadows. It has an area of 1,968 acres, the pro-
portion of arable land being about two-thirds.}
The parish has an elevation of from 300 ft. to 400 ft.
The soil is mixed, the subsoil mainly clay and the
chief crops are barley, wheat and beans.

church runs south-westward as Worsted Lane and
crosses the Cambridge Road, on the other side of
which it is known as Stonecross Lane. A little to
the north-west of the church is the manor-house,
Great Hormead Bury, formerly the residence of the
Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Romer, P.C., G.C.B., F.R.S.,
now of Mr. William H. Evans. It appears to have
been a half-timbered house, possibly of the 17th

Cottace East or Vicarace, Great Hormegad

The River Quin flows through the parish at the
western end, and parallel with the river and at a
small distance from it is the main road from London
to Cambridge. Grouped along either side of this
road are the houses which form the hamlet of Hare
Street. The village of Great Hormead itself is in a
more isolated position. It lies some distance east of
the main road, from which it is separated by the
river. The greater part of the village clusters about
a winding road leading north-east to Brent Pelham
and west to Hare Street, whence after cutting the
main road it leads due west to Buntingford. The
church stands on a wooded hill-crest just off the road
from Little Hormead and about a quarter of a mile
south-west of the village. It is connected with the
village by Horseshoe Lane, which after passing the

' Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

century, modernized early in the 1gth century by
Colonel Stables, who was killed at Waterloo. A
17th-century door still remains. On the north side
of the road running through the village, adjoining
the vicarage on the east, is a timber-framed cottage
of late 16th-century date. Part of the timbers at the
west end of the upper story are exposed, with plaster
between, but the building generally is covered with
plaster. The upper story on the south front over-
hangs; the roof is tiled. Near the centre of the
roof is a brick chimney stack with detached octagonal
shafts with moulded capitals and bases. At the east
end is a stack with two similar shafts, partly rebuilt.
The entrance door on the south front has narrow
panels and inside are some old doors and a little
panelling. About 100 yards further east is a late
16th-century timber-framed house, now divided into

68

ity

| ta ln eid “a

Great Hormeap: 16TH-centuryY House

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

cottages. It is L-shaped on plan and has all the
timbering exposed. The lower story of the north
wing is of brick ; the upper floor on the south front
projects. The roofs are thatched and the east and
west gables are hipped ; all the chimneys are plain.

_ On the south side of the road, nearly opposite the
vicarage, is a timber-framed and plastered cottage,
with part of the front upper story overhanging ; the
roof is tiled. The front has flush panels of plaster
filled with combed work ; in one panel is a lozenge
pattern with moulded ribs and the date 1 724.

At Hare Street, three-quarters of a mile west of
the village, is a cottage, for-
merly the Swan Inn, now a
private house. It is of timber-
framing plastered in front and
weather-boarded at the end.
The roofs.are tiled and the
chimney stacks are plain. At
each end of the front the
gabled upper story overhangs,
and beneath are oriel windows
on plastered brackets. It is
of early 17th-century date.
Hare Street House, a farm at
the north end of the hamlet,
is probably of early 17th-
century date, with an 18th-
century brick front. The old
walls are timber-framed and
plastered. The two chimney
stacks have detached octagonal
shafts with moulded bases ;
the capitals, which appear to
have been rebuilt, are of over-
sailing courses. The house
contains in one room some
17th-century panelling with
fluted frieze, also a little
panelling of later date.

Hormead Hall, the manor-
house of Hormead Redeswell,
now a farm-house, stands near
the east end of the village.
The site is moated, portions
of a wet moat remaining on
the north, south and east sides.
The house is L-shaped on
plan; the walls are timber-
framed and plastered and the
roofs are tiled. It is probably
of late 16th or early 17th-
century date, but has been
altered and modernized and
one-story buildings have been
erected on the north side. The main block runs east
and west, and at its western end is the kitchen wing
projecting northwards; the wing has been much
modernized. On the roof of the main block is a
chimney stack of thin bricks with detached octagonal
shafts with moulded capitals and bases ; a projecting
stack against the west gable has two similar shafts,
but without the moulded bases. The windows are
modern. In the east room of the main block is a

2 Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. viz; see also 28
Eliz. pt. xiii; 29 Eliz. pt. xxviii. For
the various extravagant legends connected

with the origin of the Brick House—
namely, that it was built by Alfred the

690

GREAT HORMEAD

fireplace of stone with moulded four-centred arch.
In the carved spandrels are two shields with arms :
one bears a cheveron and a label of five points, the
other the same arms impaling a cheveron between
three water bougets. There is a little early 17th-
century panelling in the house.

Brick House Farm stands in an isolated position
about 1 mile north-east of the village. It is of
two stories with attics, and is built of thin 2-in.
bricks, with tiled roofs. It was probably built a little
before 1579, when Michael Brand granted ‘le New
Brick House’ to James Grymshawe.2 The plan is

Hare Street Housz, Great Hormeap

very unusual and is unique in Hertfordshire. The
principal block, which measures externally about
28 ft. Gin. by 23 ft. 6 in., is divided into two rooms;
the south room, probably originally the hall, measures
16 ft. 6 in. by 14 ft. 4 in. A modern staircase
occupies a part of it, but the original stair was prob-
ably formerly in a projecting wing on the west side
of the hall and opened directly into it. On the same
side is a plain wide fireplace; the kitchen at the north

Great or Edgar Atheling—see article by
W. B. Gerish in Home Counties Mag. iii.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

end of the block has a wide fireplace on the west side
with external oven. At the south end of the main

: LarpeRE
en]: KITCHEN 1!

CL fies
tt Bt 1
ah 1

i Room

E3160 Cent. Late

MoDERN
5 O ie) 20 30

SCALE OF FEET

Pian or Brice House, Great Hormeap

PARLOUR

TT

are two large projecting chimney stacks with brick
weathered offsets; the plain shafts are L-shaped on
one stack and rectangular on the other. There is not
much of interest inside the building. Part of the
inclosure of the modern staircase is made up of 17th-
century panelling ; all the window sashes are modern.
About half a mile west of Brick House, on the
same road, are the remains of Parsonage Farm. Most
of the building was taken down a few years ago. A
large chimney stack of early 17th-century date still
stands ; the shafts are square, set diagonally. On the
ground floor is a wide fireplace with wood lintel ;
some remaining outbuildings are timber-framed and
plastered. ‘
In 1086 the manor of HORMEAD
MANORS formed part of the lands of Edgar
Atheling and was held by Godwin.

The manor had been increased since the Conquest,
the Norman sheriff having annexed to it in all 3 hides
and 1 virgate which had been held by Ulwin, one of

nu

—_——

Tue Brick Housz, Great Hormezap

block is a wing, about 12 ft. square externally, which
projects about 2 ft. west of the main building, and on
the east side of the main block is a similar wing pro-
jecting about 2 ft. beyond the north face ; the former
is entered from the hall, now a dining room, the
latter from the kitchen. The main block and all the
wings have crow-stepped gables, but the copings have
disappeared. The entrance doorway on the east side
of the hall has been modernized. The windows are
mostly original, with splayed brick jambs and square
heads with labels over; a number of them are
blocked. There are a number of curious little window-
openings in the walls of the upper stories measuring
about 8 in. by 3 in. and having splayed jambs and
square heads; they appear in the wings as well as in
the main block. One or two are glazed, but most of
them are built up. On the west side of the house

3 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3416
$ Dict, Nat. Brog.

5 Morant, Hist. of Essex, ii, 56 ; see
Dugdale, Mon. vi, 552.
8 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,

Asgar the Staller’s men, Alward, a man of Almar of
Belintone, and seven sokemen of King Edward.®
After the battle of Tenchebrai in 1106 Edgar
Atheling spent the remainder of his life in obscurity,
‘perhaps,’ says Dr. Hunt, ‘on his Hertfordshire
property.’4 As he died without heirs, it is probable
that Hormead with the rest of his property reverted
to the Crown.

At the beginning of the 13th century the manor
was held by the family of Sanford. They held it of
the old feoffment, that is from the time of Henry I.
Morant says that it was held with some Essex manors
by John de Sanford about 1165.5 In 1210-12 John
de Sanford was lord of Great Hormead, which he
held by serjeanty as chamberlain to the queen.®
Gilbert de Sanford, probably his son,’ performed the
office of chamberlain to the queen at the coronation

5075 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270,
279 ; see Round, The Queen's Serjeanty, 132
et seq, 7 Coll. Topog. et Gen. v, 199.

70

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

of Eleanor wife of Henry III in 1236,® and was
holding the manor in 1247.9 Gilbert de Sanford
apparently died in 1250, for in that year the king
granted the wardship and marriage of his heirs to the
Bishop of London.!© The manor of Great Hormead
formed part of the dower of Lora !! wife of Gilbert,!?
who in 1287 claimed gallows, view of frankpledge
and amendment of assize of bread and ale in Great
Hormead.!8 Lora de Sanford was succeeded by Alice
daughter of Gilbert de Sanford and wife of Robert de
Vere Earl of Oxford.'4 Alice and her husband held
the manor jointly of the barony of Sanford in 1295.18
The extent of the manor at this date included a
water-mill.16

In 1297, after the death of Robert, Alice made a
life grant of the manor to her daughter Hawise,
with remainder first to Alfonso, a brother of Hawise,
and finally to Alice herself and her heirs.!?_ Alfonso
appears to have been holding Great Hormead when
he died in 1329, and the manor is described in the
inquisition as being held of the king in chief by
service of guarding the queen’s

GREAT HORMEAD

manor to Walter Hayward for twenty-one years and
that the latter in 1586 granted his interest and term
of years to the complainant. The reversion of the
manor, the petition states, then belonged to Daniel

Cage, ‘a very covetuous and
froward fellowe seekinge by <7

all means possible to inriche

himselfe by wranglinge sutes

agaynst his pore neighbours.’

The lease being conditional

upon the payment of the rent

within a certain period, Daniel

Cage, it was complained, ‘hath

nowe of late sought by dyvers

lewd practyces’ to overthrow

the oa "The result of the eA a a
in 5 Party azure and gules a

petition is not stated,” but — saltire or with the differ-

amongst the claims for offices ence of a martlet.

at the coronation of James I

in 1603 are those of Edward Earl of Oxford and

Daniel Cage, each of whom claimed, as seised of the

bedchamber on the night fol-
lowing the day of coronation.!
His heir, who was his son
John, received a grant of free
warren in 1329.) He suc-
ceeded his uncle Robert de
Vere as Earl of Oxford in
1331. Great Hormead was
held by the Earls of Oxford *°
until 1471, when John de
Vere forfeited by rebellion
and the manor was granted to
Richard Duke of Gloucester
and his male heirs.24 Four
years later it passed by grant
to Sir William Stanley,”? prob-
ably as a reward for his loyalty
to Edward IV. In 1485, when
the Earl of Richmond became
king, John de Vere Earl of
Oxford was restored by him
to all his honours and estates”
and died seised of the manor
of Hormead in 1513.24 The
Earls of Oxford appear to have held the manor until
179,25 when it was the subject of a fine between
Edward Earl of Oxford and Anthony Cage.2® From
the evidence of a suit in Chancery in 1588 it seems
probable that in 1579 the manor was already leased
and that it was the reversion that was conveyed to
. Anthony Cage. In his petition to Chancery in 1588
Thomas Hammond of Great Hormead declared that
Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford had demised the

8 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 759 3
Cal. Rot, Pat. (Rec. Com.), 231.

9 Assize R. Herts. 318, m. 203 Testa
de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 2664.

10 Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), i, 11.

11 Assize R. 323-

L Coll. Topog. et Gen. ¥, 199+

13 Assize R. 325.

M4 G.E.C. Complete Peerage ; Coll. Topog.
et Gen. Vv, 199-

15 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301, p. 141.

16 Chan. Ing. p.m. 24 Edw. I, no. 62.

17 Cal, Pat. 1292-1301, p. 2533 Feet
of F. Herts, 25 Edw. I, no. 340.

18 Cal, Ing. p.m. 1-10 Edw, III, 1005

Edw. ITI, no. z.

p- 632.

Esch. Enr. Accts. (Exch. L.T.R.), 3

19 Cal, Chart. R. 1327-41, p. 123.

20 See Feet of F. Div. Co. 10 Edw. III,
no. 15 3 16 Edw. III, no. 15 3 Chan. Inq.
pm. 34 Edw. III, no. 84 ; 40 Edw. II,
no. 38; 45 Edw. III, no. 453 20
Ric, II, no. 625 14 Hen. IV, no. 173
4 Hen. V, no. 533 Cal. Pat. 1429-36,

2 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p» 2973 Chan.
Ing. p.m. 15 Edw. IV, no. 28.

22 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p- 556»

33 G.E.C. Complete Peerage.

24 Chan, Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxviii, 68.

NM 8:
MEAD

manor of Hormead, to be chamberlain to the queen.
The claim was left unexamined,” owing probably to
the curtailment of the coronation ceremonies on
account of the Plague.”9

Daniel Cage died in 1634, leaving the manor of
Great Hormead to his son Philip.2° The latter
married Elizabeth daughter of Robert Thornton, and
their eldest son Robert 3! was probably the father of
Thornton Cage, who was holding the manor in 1662.2

28 Ct. of Wards Misc. Bks. dixxviii, fol.
378 ; Feet of F. Div. Co. East. 2 Edw. VI;
Recov. R. Mich. 1571, rot. 1265.

26 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 21 Eliz;
Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. v.

37 Chan, Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle, 225, n0. 94.

38 Coronation R. Jas. 1; Cal S. Pe
Dom. 1603-10, p. 24.

29 cf, Chauncy, op. cit. 136.

80 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccelxxiv, 77.

31 Visit. of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 36.

32 Recov. R. Trin. 14 Chas. II, rot.
1033 cf. Chauncy, op. cit. 1363; and
pedigree in Cussans, Hist, of Herts
Edwinstree Hund. 66.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The matrimonial troubles of Thornton Cage form
the subject of a pamphlet published in 1685.33 In
it he complains of the extravagance of his wife and
her mother, who, however, laid out the grounds at
Hormead Bury with great taste. Asa result, probably,
of their extravagance, Thornton Cage in 1680 sold
the manor of Great Hormead to Bernard Turner,*4
who died in 1696, leaving the manor to his son
John. The latter was succeeded by his son Anthony,
who was lord of the manor in 1728.36 Anthony
Turner appears to have conveyed the manor in 1733
to Thomas Turner,*’ who held it in 1737.38 The
descent for some time after this is obscure. In 1751
the manor had passed into the possession of Lyde
Browne,*? by whom it was sold in 1770 to James
Haughton Langston, together with woods called
Anney Wood, The Park, Eden
Grove and The Frith.*? The
latter in 1792 conveyed it to
Thomas Welch,4! by whom
it was sold in 1810 to Colonel
Edward Stables. He was killed
in 1815 at Waterloo, and on
his death the manor passed to
his brother Colonel Henry
Stables, who was the possessor
in 1827.47 After the death
of the latter the manor was
bought by his cousin Robert
Trotter of Crawley, by whom
it was sold shortly afterwards
to James White Higgins of
Furnivall’s Inn. The latter died in 1854, leaving
the manor to his daughter Harriet wife of Arch-
deacon Allen. John Higgins Allen of 48 Lensfield
Road, Cambridge, is the present lord of the manor.
The manor of REDESWELL (alias Clarkes or
Hormead Hall), which in later documents is de-
scribed as held of the manor of
Brooks in Stevenage, probably
originated in the half knight's
fee in Great Hormead held
in 1303 by John Marshal of
Laurence de Brok,# who also
had the manor of Brooks in
Stevenage.*® Its name sug-
gests that it was identical with
the half knight’s fee which
William Hilton held in Great
Hormead in 1428 and which
was formerly held by John
Redeswell.#® It appears first
described as a manor in a fine
levied in 1462 by which John
Clarke and Alice his wife
acknowledged the right of
William Pyke in the manor
of Redeswell and warranted it
to William and his heirs against the heirs of Alice.4?

Stapres. Gules a
bend engrailed or between
a molet in the chief and
a hart’s head caboshed in
the foot both argent,

Wrywxpvovut. Party
Sfessewise gules and or a
lion parted fessewise
argent and azure and
sprinkled with drops
countercoloured between
two scallops or in the
chief and a scallop gules
in the fist,

£9 Com. Pleas D. En
m. 124.
4] Feet of F. Herts.

8 See Misc. Tracts, B.M.

* Feet of F. Herts. Trin, 32 Chas. II;
Chauncy, op. cit. 136.

3 Chauncy, loc. cit.

$6 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 310; Feet of
F. Herts. Mich. 2 Geo. IL

* Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 6 & 7
Geo. II.

% Ibid. Hil. rr Geo. II.

* Recov. R. East. 24 Geo, II, ret. 8.

” Feet of F. Herts.

72

42 Clutterbuck, Hise.
‘8 Cussans, op. cit. 68.

“ Feud, Aids, ii, 431.

#8 Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-20 Edw, DO Ae
“ Feud. Aids, ii, 445.

S Ioid. Trin. 16 Hen. VII, no, 22.

By 1501 the manor had passed to Hugh Braban and
Margaret his wife, who conveyed it to John Wynger,
Bartholomew Rode, John Style and Thomas Baldry,
all citizens of London, and the heirs of Bartholo-
mew.*8 In 1521 Bartholomew Wyndout died seised
of the manor of Redeswell, described in the inquisi-
tion as held of William Node as of his manor of
Brooks in Stevenage by fealty and rent. Richard
Wyndout, son of Bartholomew, succeeded his father.*®
Subsequently the manor passed by marriage to John
Delawood, who held it by knight service in right of
Katherine his wife. They were succeeded by their
son Francis Delawood,®® who in 1614 died seised of
the manor of Redeswells a/ias Clarkes, held of Ralph
Radcliffe as of his manor of Brooks. His heir was
his grandson Francis Delawood the younger,®! and the
family appears to have held the manor? until it
came by the will of William Delawood (dated 1694)
to Abraham and Isaac Houblon.53 It descended in
the Houblon family ** until a few years ago. The
present lord of the manor is Mr. G. B. Oyler of
Cheshunt.

The church of ST. NICHOLAS con-
sists of chancel 27 ft. 6 in. by 16 ft. 6 in.,
nave 39 ft. 6 in. by 17 ft., north and
south aisles each g ft. wide, west tower 14 ft. from
north to south and 11 ft. from east to west, organ
chamber and south porch; all the dimensions are
internal. The walls are of flint rubble with stone
dressings ; the roofs are partly lead-covered and partly
tiled.

The nave is the oldest part of the church. A
north aisle with an arcade of three bays was added
towards the end of the 13th century. Not long
afterwards, about 1300, the south aisle was built with
an arcade of at least four bays and at the same time
the north arcade was lengthened westwards to corre-
spond. About the middle of the 14th century the
west tower was built and the nave shortened toa
little over its original length of three bays. The
upper part of the tower and the nave clearstory are
of 1sth-century date. In the 19th century the
chancel was practically rebuilt and an organ chamber
and vestry added on the south side, a south porch
was built and the whole church thoroughly restored
and much of the stonework renewed.

The chancel, vestry and organ chamber, with the
chancel arch, are all modern.

The nave has a north arcade of three bays with
arches of two chamfered orders with a label next the
nave ; the piers are octagonal with moulded capitals
and bases. At the west end of the arcade are two
semi-octagonal responds back to back, with capitals
and bases to each, and the springing voussoirs of the
western arch added about 1300 and taken down
when the tower was built about the middle of the
14th century. The sections of the capitals vary
slightly in detail. The details of the south arcade
differ but slightly from those on the north. The

CHURCH

r. Hil, 10 Geo, III, 4? Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxxvi, 76.

°° Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 264,
no. 2.
*! Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ceelvii, 5 ;
Ct. of Wards, Feod. Surv. 17%

5? See Feet of. F. Herts. Hil, 20 & 21
Chas. II. °3 Inscription in church,

4 Recov. R. East. 31 Geo. II, rot.
304; 10 Geo. III, rot. 59; Hil. 8 & 9
Geo. IV, rot. 289 ; Cussans, op. cit. 68,

Trin. 32 Geo. III.
of Herts. iii, 419.

2 Edw. IV, no. 4.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

western respond was originally a detached pier of
the destroyed bay ; the springing of its arch still
remains against the west wall. The original east
responds of both arcades consisted of a short length
of walling; these have been pierced with modern
arches and the old responds replaced by modern
piers. ‘The clearstory windows are each of two lights
of modern stonework, only the inner jambs being old.
The nave roof is of 15th-century date with moulded
beams, under which are traceried brackets resting on
grotesque stone corbels.

The north aisle has an east window of three
cinquefoiled lights and three north windows of two
lights, all of modern stonework except the inner
jambs, which are original ; the north doorway is also
of modern stonework. At the east end of the south

GREAT HORMEAD

recesses being about 1 ft. in depth. In the south-
west angle is a blocked doorway formerly opening to
the turret stair; a modern doorway for access has
been inserted in the wall outside. Over the ground
story is a wood ceiling of 1sth-century date with
moulded beams, having carved bosses at the inter-
sections. The cornice is moulded and embattled. In
the centre of the ceiling is a circular opening for the
bells with carved spandrels. The west window of
three lights with a traceried head is of modern stone-
work. In the second stage is a modern two-light
window with a clock dial above it; the belfry
windows are of two cinquefoiled lights under traceried
heads, all of modern stonework externally.

The 12th-century font has a plain octagonal bowl
with splayed upper and lower edges; it rests on a

== Zz

Hormeap Harr, Great Hormzad, FRoM THE SOUTH-WEST

aisle is a modern archway to the organ chamber. In
the north wall are three two-light windows of modern
stonework with old inner jambs ; the south doorway
has continuously moulded arch and jambs, chiefly of
modern stonework. The roof over the north aisle is
modern ; that over the south aisle is of 15th-century
date, with moulded beams and some grotesque stone
corbels. The south porch is modern.

The west tower is of three stages with diagonal
buttresses, embattled parapet and short tile-covered
spire. The tower arch, which dates from about the
middle of the 14th century, is of three splayed
orders with moulded labels and head-stops ; the jambs
are moulded, having engaged shafts with moulded
capitals and bases. The north, south and west walls of
the tower are recessed on the ground story, the arched

4 73

large circular central shaft, with a smaller shaft at each
angle; the shafts have neither capitals nor bases. On
the north aisle wall is a brass inscription to William
Delawood of London, merchant, 1696.

There are six bells: the first by Richard Keene,
1701; the second by C. & G. Mears, 1845; the
third inscribed ‘Sonora sono meo sono Deo,’ 1606
(by Robert Oldfeild) ; the fourth by Miles Graye,
1626 ; the fifth and sixth by Miles Graye, 1623.

The communion plate consists of a cup, 1740,
another cup, 1748, two modern silver patens and
two brass almsdishes.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i) bap-
tisms, burials and marriages 1538 to 1724 ; (ii) bap-
tisms and burials 1725 to 1812, marriages 1725 to

55 See article on Bell-founding in Industries, p. 271.

1ge)

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

1753; (ill) and (iv) marriages 1754 to 1783 and
1784 to 1812 respectively.
A member of the Sanford family
ADVOIWSON founded the priory of St. Laurence
of Blackmore in Essex before the
end of the 12th century, and it was probably by the
founder or one of his immediate descendants that the
church of Hormead was granted to the priory.*
After the priory had been suppressed under the bull
of 1524 the rectory and advowson of Hormead were
amongst its possessions *” which were granted for the
foundation of Wolsey’s colleges,®*® and in the same
year Wolsey received a mortmain licence to appropriate
the rectory for Cardinal’s College, Oxford.5® In
1528 the Dean and canons of Cardinal’s College
leased the rectory and advowson of Great Hormead
to Sir John Jenkinson, vicar of Hormead, and one of
his parishioners for twenty-one years, stipulation being
made that the dean or any canon sent to receive the
rent should have ‘honszome honest lodging mete
and drynke good and sufficient with hey provender
and litter for their horses by the space of one daye
and one nyght in every yere.’?® In 1530, after the
attainder of Wolsey, the rectory of Hormead was
assigned by the Crown to the college at Windsor,®!
but in 1532 the Abbot and convent of Waltham
Holy Cross received a grant of the advowson of the
church with power to appropriate the rectory.”
After the Dissolution the rectory and advowson
were granted in 1543 to John Sewester,® who in 1545
conveyed them to Thomas Brand, senior, and Thomas
Brand, junior.** They remained with the family of
Brand for some years, but some arrangement seems to
have been made before 1593 with regard to a
division of the right of patronage. George Brand,
who died in 1593, held one-third of the rectory and
advowson,™ whilst in 1609 Thomas Brand settled
two-thirds of the rectory and advowson and all the
mansion-house of the rectory called ‘le parsonage
house’ on his son Thomas on the marriage of the
latter.66 The younger Thomas Brand died in 1640,
leaving two-thirds of the patronage and of the rectory
to his son Thomas. The owner of the right of

presentation for two turns apparently sold his right
to Bernard Turner, lord of the manor, in 1687.
The right of the latter, according to Cussans,
descended to Thomas Turner, who sold it to Abraham
Houblon, from whom the right of presentation was
bought by the Master and fellows of St. John’s
College, Cambridge, before 1728.8 The rectory
apparently remained with the lords of Redeswell, for
John Archer-Houblon suffered a recovery of it in
1828.70 The other third of the advowson was vested
in a branch of the Brand family as late as 1797, in
which year the Hon. Thomas Brand presented,’ but
it was apparently bought finally by St. John’s College,
Cambridge, in the gift of which the living is at the
present day.”?

In the reign of Henry III a grant was made by
John Fitz Warren, on behalf of Lora de Sanford,
of a lamp to burn day and night before the cross
in the church of Great Hormead and a wax candle
before the altar for a mass of the Blessed Mary for
the souls of Lady Loretta de Sanford and of her
predecessors and heirs.78

In 1694 William Delawood of

CHARITIES London, merchant, born at Hormead

Hall, the seat of his ancestors, gave

£10 a year for the poor, to be distributed at

Christmas by the lord of the manor of Hormead Hall

and the minister and churchwardens, as recorded on

a table in the church. The annuity is paid by
Mr. G. B. Oyler, owner of Hormead Hall.

The Poor’s Land consists of 5 acres in this parish and
§ acres in the parish of Layston. ‘The rents, which
amount to about {10 a year, are applied in the
distribution of money.

Unknown donors’ charities.—It is stated in the
Parliamentary returns of 1786 that a donor unknown
gave a rent-charge of £1 per annum for the poor ;
also that an annuity of £2 was given to the poor
by a donor unknown.

The annuity of £1 1s paid out of the parsonage
by Mr. G. B. Oyler, owner of Parsonage Farm,
under the title of Brand’s charity, but the annuity of
£2 does not appear to be received.

LITTLE HORMEAD

Little Hormead is a thinly populated parish con-
sisting mainly of arable land?! with little woodland.
It has an area of 1,065 acres. ‘The parish lies at
an elevation of from 300 ft. to 400 ft. The soil is
mixed, the subsoil chiefly clay. The chief crops are
wheat, barley and beans. On the south-east of the
parish is a detached part of Great Hormead parish,
and again on the east of this is a small piece of Little
Hormead.

The Cambridge Road passes through the western

62Tbid. v, g.

56 See Dugdale, Mon. vi, 552. The hice od
epert. 835.

founder was either Jordan de Sanford or
John de Sanford.

57 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixxvi, 1
(Cambridge) ; Exch. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2),
file 309, no. 11.

58 TL, and P. Hen. VIII, iv (1), 1833.

59 Ibid. iv (2), 2167.

60 Aug. Off. Convent. Leases (P.R.O.),

m. 2.

127.

Oxon. bdle. 4.
1p, and P. Hen. FVIII, iv (3)
6516.

766 (2); Newcourt,
8 LL, and P. Hen. VILL, xviii (2), g- 327
(19).
64 Com.Pleas D. Enr. Hil.36 Hen. VIII,

65 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cclxxviii,
6 Ibid. ccccxxxiv, 95.

6? Ibid. declxxxvi, 69. 289.

68 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 310.

69 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
70; Salmon, loc. cit. Charles Crowch,

74

end of the parish, parallel with the River Quin. The
village lying at some distance from the river and
from the main road consists of a few houses scattered
along the road from Great Hormead which, after
winding through the parish, leads to Furneux Pelham.
On the west side of this road, and about a third
of a mile south of Great Hormead Church, stands
St. Mary’s Church, which by reason of its proximity
to the church of Great Hormead is used but occa-
sionally. Close to St. Mary’s Church is the manor-

grandson of Bernard Turner, appears as
vouchee in a recovery of two parts of
the advowson of the vicarage suffered in
1720 (Recov. R. Mich. 7 Geo. I, rot. 55).
He probably had a term of years, for he
presented in 1721 (Inst. Bks. P.R.O.;
cf. advowson of Little Hormead).

70 Recov. R. Hil. 8 & 9 Geo. IV, rot.
71 Tbid.
72 See Cussans, loc. cit.
73 Harl. Chart. 50 C. 17.
1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

Lirrte Hormeap CuurcH FROM THE SOUTH-WEST

Lirrte Hormeap Cuurcu : THe Cuancet, Arcu

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

house, Little Hormead Bury. At Stonbury Farm in
the extreme south-west of the parish and at Mutford’s
Farm there are fragments of homestead moats. A
tumulus on Bummer’s Hill near the east bank of the
Quin is in fairly good condition.

Ballons Farm lies a little to the south-east of the
church. It is a timber-framed and plastered build-
ing of early 17th-century date with thatched roof ;
the house is now divided into three dwellings. The
plan of the main block is rectangular and at each end
is a wing projecting northwards. The chimney
stacks have plain square shafts set diagonally. The
original entrance was on the north side, but it has
been much altered ; inside the house are some wide
fireplaces, one having a three-centred arch, which has
been considerably altered.

One of the rectors of Little Hormead, Stephen
Nye, was a theological writer of some note. He was
instituted to the rectory in 1679. As the living was
a small one, he read the service ‘once every Lord’s
Day’ and had ‘an opportunity very seldom lacking of
supplying also some neighbouring cure.’ In 1712 he
drew up a manuscript account of the glebe and tithes
of Little Hormead, about which there had been dis-
putes.”

Bordesdon, now represented by Bozen Green in
the parish of Braughing, was returned under Edwins-
tree Hundred in the Survey of 10863 and in 1386
was said to be generally assessed with the parish of
Little Hormead.* It is found asa separate vill in the
14th century 5 and was probably once a hamlet of
some size.

The two Hormeads are not distin-

MANORS guished by name in the Domesday
Survey. The manor of LITTLE
HORMEAD was apparently the estate in Hormead
which formed part of the lands of Count Eustace of
Boulogne, of whom two Englishmen held 3 hides and
I virgate in Hormead.® The overlordship descended
with the honour of Boulogne. By the beginning of
the 13th century Little Hormead had come with the
manor of Anstey (q.v.) into the hands of Hubert de
Anstey, who in 1211 held three knights’ fees of the
honour of Boulogne in Anstey, Hormead and Braugh-
ing.’ It descended with Anstey to the family of
Monchensey. In 1260 William de Monchensey
granted the manor to his mother Denise and Robert
le Botiller her husband,® evidently by a second
marriage. In 1268 Denise made a life grant of the
manor to Richard le Botiller, her brother-in-law.®
Denise daughter and heir of William de Monchensey,
who in 1290 had married Hugh de Vere,!° eventually
succeeded to the manor of Little Hormead, which in

LITTLE HORMEAD

the inquisition taken at her death in 1314 1s described
as held of the honour of Boulogne. Aymer de
Valence Earl of Pembroke, son of Joan de Valence
daughter of Warin de Monchensey, father of William,!?
was thenearestheir. After the death of Aymer, Richard
de Wynneferthing, clerk, who had been enfeofted by
him of the manor of Little Hormead without a
licence in mortmain, surrendered it to the king in
1325. Thekingthen granted it to Mary de St. Paul,
widow of Aymer, with remainder to Aymer’s heir,
Laurence son of John de Hastings, and Eleanor
daughter of Hugh le Despenser, to whom he was
betrothed.!8 In 1376, however, the reversion of the
manor after the death of Mary de St. Paul was
granted to the Abbot and convent of St. Mary of
Graces by the Tower of London, the grant being
confirmed by the pope in 1403,!° by Henry VI in
1433 }© and by Edward IV in 1461.17

The monastery continued to hold the manor of
Little Hormead until the Dissolution. In August
1540 it was granted to Thomas Barbour of London,!8
who in November of the same year received licence
to alienate it to Thomas Lord Audley of Walden, then
Chancellor.!® Lord Audley died seised of the manor
in 1544, leaving two daughters, Mary and Margaret,
both under age.2® On account of their minority
Lord Audley’s lands were in the hands of the king,
who in 1545 granted to Sir Anthony Denny an
annuity of £50 out of Little Hormead and other
manors with the wardship and marriage of Margaret
Audley.21_ Margaret married (secondly) Thomas
Howard fourth Duke of Norfolk. He survived her
and held the manor for life, the reversion belonging
to their son (Lord) Thomas Howard. In 1572, by
reason of the attainder of the duke for high treason,
his property was in the hands of the queen.”? In
1592 Lord Thomas Howard sold the manor of Little
Hormead, which had been restored to him, to Edward
Newport.23 It descended with the manor of Furneux
Pelham (q.v.) until 1806, when John Calvert sold it
to Richard Wyman.?4 Wyman’s executors sold it to
William Williamson, on whose death in 183g it passed
to his grandson J. Williamson Leader of Buntingford.
He left it to his sister Miss Leader, after whose
death it was bought in 1909 by Mrs. William Thomas
Rayment Patten, who is now lady of the manor.”

The descent of the manor of STONBURY is very
obscure. It has been identified with the Domesday
Stanes held by Peter de Valognes in 1086, It first
appears under the name of Stonbury in the middle of
the 13th century.2° In 1286 Walter de Nevill died
seised of a manor in Little Hormead held of the manor
of Boxe in Walkern, Broadwater Hundred.?’ He left

3 Dict. Nat. Biog.

3 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3224, 3244, 3314.

4 See return of jury in 1386 quoted by
Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree Hund.
753 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 8
(1 Edw, II).

5 Assize R. 323, m. 44 (6 & 7 Edw. I),

6 V.C.H, Herts. i, 3220.

a Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
579.
§ Feet of F. Div. Co. 44 Hen. III,
no. 56.

9 Ibid. 52 Hen. III, no, 14,
Botillers see Meesden.

0 Cal, Pat. 1281-92, p. 376.

Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-9 Edw. II, 268-9.

Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls
Ser.), v, 504.

For the

13 Cal. Pat. 1324-7, pp. 108, 153;
Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 1658. (This deed
is dated 19 Edw. I for 19 Edw. II in the
Calendar.)

M4 Pat. 50 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 16 ; Cal.
Pat. 1429-36, p. 415.

15 Cal. Papal Letters, v, 547.

16 Cal. Pat. 1429-36, p. 415.

V7 Thid. 1461-7, p. 162.

181. and P, Hen, VIII, xv, g. 1027
(6). Margaret Countess of Kent appears
to have had a lease of the manor, since
payments were made by the Council in
1541 and 1543 as compensation for a
three years’ term (ibid. xvi, 745, fol. 39 ;
xviii [2], 231, p. 123).

19 Thid. xvi, g. 305 (12).

2 Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixxxvi, 100.

75

21 L. and P, Hen, VIII, xx (1), g. 465
88).
22 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxi, 79.
% Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 34 & 35
Eliz.
*4 Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. iii, 424.
25 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.
75; inform. from Mr, W. T. R. Patten.
26 Feet of F. Herts. 26 Edw. III, no.

I.
ae Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-19 Edw. 1, 356.
Boxe had also been held by Peter de
Valognes in 1086, which accounts for
this mesne lordship being attached to it.
The overlordship descended with the
Valognes family and their successors the
Benstedes; see Cal. Ing. p.m. 10-20
Edw. II, 285, 286.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

a son John, who died in 1313 and was succeeded by
his son Walter.22 The latter was holding the manor
in Little Hormead in 1325 by knight service.?? He
died in 1329, leaving a daughter Agnes, who married
Thomas Fytlyng.3° In 1352 a settlement was made
with regard to the manor of Stonbury, which was held
for life by Katherine formerly wife of Walter Nevill.
It was arranged by fine that the reversion of the
manor, which was said to belong to Reginald de
Cobham after the death of Katherine, should go to
Thomas de Fytlyng and Agnes his wife. In case of
failure of heirs on the part of Thomas and Agnes the
manor was to revert to the heirs of Reginald.#!_ In
1408 Reginald son and heir of Reginald Cobham
granted the manor of Stonbury to Thomas Colepeper
and others who were probably acting as trustees.°?
There is no evidence of the descent during the next
hundred years from this date, but the manor appears
to have pa:sed by 1513 to the family of Bolnes.*? In
that year it was the subject of a fine between Agnes
Bolnes, widow, Robert Bolnes and others on the one
part and Katherine Bolnes, widow, on the other.*
A member of the same family probably held the
manor in 1$61, in which year Thomas Bolnes was a
frecholder in Little Hormead.*® In 1612 William
Bownest died seised of the manor of Stonbury, which

M@iclI4050
M0 13% Cent

AMAA A

no spot in Hormead comparable to it, and indeed
very few in the County, especially if we esteem
Retirement, as the Owners for some Generations have
done.’

There is no trace of the descent of the reputed
manor of BALLONS until the 17th century, when
it belonged to the Provost and fellows of King’s
College, Cambridge, to whom in 1622 a recom-
mendation was made for a lease to Lady Lewin.*8
The site of the manor appears to have lain near the
church and manor-house of Little Hormead and
somewhat to the south-east of them, where the estate
known as Ballons is situated at the present day.

The church of ST. MAR? consists
of chancel 24 ft. by 12 ft. 6in., nave
27 ft. 6in. by 15 ft. 3 in., south porch
and wooden bell-turret on the west end of the nave ;
all dimensions are internal. The walls are of flint
rubble with stone dressings; the nave walls are
covered with cement; the roofs are tiled. The
chancel inclines slightly to the north.

The nave dates from about 1140-50 ; the chancel
appears to have been entirely rebuilt early in the
13th century. In the 17th century a buttress was
built against the south wall of the nave and in the
18th century the brick south porch was added. In
1888 the church was restored and
the chancel shortened by rebuilding
the east wall a few feet further west.

The three lancet windows in the

CHURCH

EARLY | CHANCEL east wall of the chancel are modern.

RSS 15'Crent ye There is no opening in the north
72C ieee tH wall. In the south wall are two
: ENT SA lll 13th-century lancets; they differ
18¢ Cent slightly in their heights and external
CLC) MoperRn ‘ae Te 16 20 widths, and the westernmost, which
SCALE OF FEET is probably a little later in date, has

Pian or Litrte Hormeap Cuurcu

is described as held of Francis Delawood as of his
manor of Hormead Redeswell in Great Hormead
by suit of court.2° The manor remained with the
descendants of William Bownest,*” one of whom,
William Bownest, was lord of the manor in 1725.3
By 1758, however, it had come into the possession of
Jacob Houblon, who in that year settled it on his
son Jacob,*® and it was held by John Archer-Houblon
in 1826 # and has apparently since descended with
the manor of Redeswell in Great Hormead.*!
Salmon, writing in 1728, says of the manor-house
of Stonbury : ‘Stonebury hath been also a Manor,
but sunk for want of Tenants. It was probably the
Residence of some great Man before and after the
Conquest. If we consider the beautiful Situation of
it upon a rising Ground, towards the South East Sun,
well wooded and watered, the Land all enclosed and
entire, intermixed with none, between and ata Froper
Distance from both of the great Roads, we may admit

%8 Cal. Inz, p.m. 1-9 Edw. II, 252.

* Ibid. 10-20 Edw. IJ, 286.

8° See King’s Walden in Hitchin Hund.
VCH. Herts. iii, 35.

®1 Feet of F. Herts. 26 Edw. III, no. 391.

® Close, 10 Hen. IV, m. 32.

3 Probably the name was an older
form of Bownest.

™ Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 5 Hen. VIII.

1$7.

m. 124,

See list of freeholders cited in
Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund. 9. 203
%6 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccexxxix,

37 See Recov. R. Mich. 20 Chas, ql,
rot. 179; East. 7 Geo. I, rot. 23.

35 Ibid. East. 11 Geo. I, rot. 297.

5 Com. Pleas D. Enr. East, 31 Geo. II,

its inner jambs much more widely

splayed than the other. Between the

windows is a modern doorway in

cement. In the western end of the
wall is a 15th-century window of two cinquefoiled
lights under a square head. At the east end of the
south wall and partly covered by the modern east
wall is a plain pointed piscina with splayed edges ;
it may be of 1¢th-century date. The chancel arch
is of r2th-century date, with round arch considerably
flattened. The arch is of two orders, the inner one
square, the outer with a large bead. The jambs are
square with engaged circular shafts, scalloped capitals
and moulded bases. The roof may be of 18th-
century date,

In the north wall of the nave is a 12th-century
round-headed window placed high up in the wall.
The blocked north doorway is also of 12th-century
date ; it has a round arch with mouldings similar to
the chancel arch. The tympanum is of cement ; the
jambs have circular shafts with scalloped capitals and
moulded bases much decayed. The doorway still
retains the original plank door of oak covered with

‘9 Recov. R. Hil. 6 & 7 Geo. IV, rot.

“! Ibid. Hil. 8 & g Geo. IV, rot. 289.

“2 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 311.

8 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1619-23, p. 409.
See Chauncy, op. cit. p. 311. Biggin,
which also belonged to the college, had
been the endowment of the hospital of
St. Mary Biggin in Anstey.

76

Littte Hormeap Cuurcu: Brocxep Nortrn Doorway

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

fine 12th-century ironwork. It is of two square
panels in height, each panel filled with interlacing
work formed of strip iron, with tendrils in the spaces.
The designs differ slightly in detail and in the lower
panel is the figure of a bird; on each side is a
vertical border with tendrils and above are fragments
of similar ornament. Portions of the ironwork have
gone, but most of it remains and is being protected
as far as possible from the weather. In the south
wall is a window of 15th-century date of two cinque-
foiled lights with tracery under a square head. The
wall east of this may contain another blocked window,
as there are indications of a disturbance in the plaster.
The south doorway is of rath-century date, with
plain round arch and square jambs with splayed
impost. ‘The two-light west window is modern ;
above it in the gable is a circular opening with
quatrefoil cusping. The nave roof retains some old
plain tie-beams and portions of brackets beneath them.
Over the chancel arch are the royal arms of Charles II,
dated mpcix. The south porch is a very plain
structure of brick erected in the 18th century. In
the north-east angle is a plain round-headed stoup
with splayed edges. The wooden bell-turret is
modern.

The font is of oolite and dates from the early part
of the 14th century. It has an octagonal bowl
moulded underneath; on each face are circular
cusped panels containing roses or leaf ornament
alternating with arched panels filled with tracery,
that on the east face containing a fleur de lis.

There are two bells: one, now on the floor of
the church, is inscribed ‘Sancta Margareta ora pro
nobis’; it is undated. The other bell is in the
belfry, and bears neither date nor inscription.

The communion plate is used at Great Hormead
Church and has already been described.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i) bap-
tisms, burials and marriages 1588 to 1679 ; (ii) bap-
tisms and burials 1679 to 1812, marriages 1679 to
1753 (ili) marriages 1754 to 1811.

LAYSTON

The advowson as a general rule
ADVOWSON was held with the manor.*4 It was,
however, excepted from the life
grant of the manor made by Denise de Monchensey
to Richard le Botiller in 1268,4 and in 1517 pre-
sentation was made by Robert Shirton and others,
in 1555 by John Gibbs and others, in 1646 by
Katherine Young, in 1678 by Roger Woodcock
and Stephen Broughton, and in 1719 by Charles
Crowch,‘® none of whom, apparently, held the manor.
By 1730 the advowson had been bought by St. John’s
College, Cambridge.” In 1886 the rectory of
Little Hormead was amalgamated with the living of
Great Hormead by Order in Council. It is in the
gift of St. John’s College, Cambridge, at the present day.
In 1665 Pierce Powel by his will
CHARITIES devised an annuity of 205., whereof
he willed 155. to be given to the poor

and $s. for keeping his grave covered with turf.

The Town Acre.—In an old register of the parish,
under date 1713, it is stated that there is an acre of
arable land lying in Jeffries’ Field given for the use
of the poor, the rent issuing therefrom to be given at
the communion table in the church on the Sunday
after Michaelmas Day in every year. The land is
let at ros. a year, and the rent, less tithe, is accumu-
lated and applied from time to time in the distribu-
tion of bread.

In 1824 John Wall Porter, by his will proved in
the P.C.C. 21 January, directed his residuary estate
to be invested in consols and the dividends to be
applied at Midsummer and Christmas in the distribu-
tion of bread and clothing among poor and needy
persons, inhabitants of the parish, with power to apply
£10 a year in putting out a poor boy apprentice to
any trade or business. ‘The trust fund amounted to
£13,932 18s. 11d. consols, producing £48 65. 42.
yearly, which is administered under the provisions of
ascheme of 24 May 1881. By an order of the Charity
Commissioners of 12 July 1904 the sum of £400
consols has been set aside as an educational foundation.

LAYSTON

Leofstanechirche (xii cent.) ; Lestoncherche (xiv
cent.) ; Leyston (xv cent.).

At the time of the Domesday Survey the area now
comprised by the parish of Layston appears under the
names of Alswick, Ichetone and Alfladewick. In
1086 Alswick probably already had a church of its
own. The building of another church a little to the
east of Ermine Street at some date before the middle
of the 12th century seems to have made Alfladewick
an ecclesiastical parish (to which Alswick was after-
wards subordinated as a chapelry) and to have obtained
for it the alternative name of Lestanchurch.! In 1341
the name of the parish is recorded as ‘ Lestanchurch
called Alfladewyk.’2 Gradually the earlier name was
entirely superseded by the other, and Lestanchurch
corrupted into Layston remained the name of the
parish.

44 See references under manor.

45 Feet of F. Div. Co. 52 Hen. III,
no. 14.

46 See Cussans, op. cit. p. 78.

7 Thid. ; see Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.). church,

1 It may be suggested that the original
church at Alswick was of timber and the
masonry church of Alfladewick therefore
became known in distinction as the stone

The parish of Layston now contains 1,433 acres,
having been diminished by the Divided Parishes Act
of March 1883, under which detached portions of
the parish were transferred to Wyddial, Aspenden
and Throcking. It consists chiefly of arable land.
About one-quarter only is permanent grass and there
is very little woodland.4

The River Rib flows through the parish, entering
it in the north-west, and for a short distance forms
its western boundary. In the valley of the Rib the
land averages 300 ft. above the ordnance datum,
rising in the east to a height of 407 ft. Ermine
Street forms the western boundary of Layston, except
for a short distance where the boundary line makes a
detour to the west and follows the River Rib. At
the point where Ermine Street crosses the river it is
joined by the road from Great Hormead, which,

2 Ing. Nonarum (Rec. Com.), 432.

3 See also above under account of
hundred.

4 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

77

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

after crossing Ermine Street, runs north-west to join
the Great North Road at Baldock. At the junction
of these two roads is situated the town of Bunting-
ford, which extends into the four parishes of Layston,
Throcking, Aspenden and Wyddial.

The older settlement in the parish lay near
St. Bartholomew’s Church, which stands about half a
mile east of Ermine Street alone in the fields,> almost
hidden by the thick trees which surround it.

Records of Buntingford are found in the early 13th
century.® It was described as a hamlet in 1288.’ In
1292 there was a chapel there, which stood where the
present chapel of St. Peter stands, on the west side of
Ermine Street, north of the point where it crosses the
river. “She rector of Aspenden is said to have built
an oratory near the king’s highway about 1333. Five
years Jater there was complaint that this was an
inconvenience to travellers who passed through the
town on foot in winter time, and the oratory was

the lord of the manor, Elizabeth de Burgh, received
licence to transfer her market to the king’s highway
in Buntingford, to be held on Friday in the main
road by the chapel of St. John and in the two roads
which crossed that road east and west. She received
also the grant of a fair to be held in the same place
every year on the day and morrow of the Invention
of the Holy Cross.

In 1367 Lionel Duke of Clarence, then holding
the manor of Pope’s Hall by inheritance, obtained a
revocation of the grant of the market and fair at
Buntingford, on the ground that they were harmful
to his manor of Standon, and at the same time obtained
a grant of a market and fair to be held at Standon.!?
The people of Buntingford, however, protested
against the revocation of the grant, and claimed that
the market and fair had been granted to them by
Elizabeth de Burgh, and they petitioned against their
removal.}3 Accordingly the king granted them the

right to holda market

Layston CuurcH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

taken into the king’s hands. It was found by inquisi-
tion, however, that it was to the benefit of the
town.§ Buntingford must have been growing rapidly
at this time, and as a centre for trade it had become
more important than the neighbouring villages. From
1252 a market had been held every Friday at New
Chipping,® which lies on Ermine Street, only half a
mile north of Buntingford. This market was attached
to the manor of Pope’s Hall in Buckland (q.v.). The
manor included lands in Buntingford,!° and in 1360

in Buntingford every
Saturday and a fair
there every year on
the day and morrow
of the Apostles Peter
and Paul.!4 = This
grant was confirmed
to the lords and
tenants of Bunting-
ford by Richard II
in 1378,!5 but in
spite of this in 1385
Richard gave the
dues from the market
and fair of Bunting-
ford to Thomas
Stout, groom of the
buttery.!®The people
of Buntingford again
petitioned the king,
urging their rights,
and in 1387 the
grant to Thomas
Stout was revoked.}7
The market and fair
were confirmed to
the inhabitants of
Buntingford by
Henry IV}8 and
Henry V.1® In 1542 a fresh grant was made by
Henry VIII, when Thomas Audley, lord of the
manor of Corneybury, the tenants of that manor and
the inhabitants of the town of Buntingford received
licence to hold a market in Buntingford every
Monday and two annual fairs there on the day and
morrow of SS. Peter and Paul and on the day and
morrow of St. Andrew.?? John Crouch, lord of
the manor of Corneybury, who died in January
1605-6, bequeathed 20s. a year from his stalls in

5 Clutterbuck says that at the beginning
of the 19th century it was possible to
trace the foundation of houses which had
once stood near the church.

® Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 1027, 1109.

7 Ibid. B 813.

8 Chan. Ing. p.m. Misc. file 135, no. 3 5
Cal. Close, 1337-9, p- 565. The descrip-
tion suggests that it is the above-
mentioned chapel that is referred to.

The chapel, however, was built as early
as 1292 (see Advowson).

9 See Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 404.

10 See below for the fee of Osbern
Bishop of Bayeux in Layston.

11 Chart. R. 34 & 35 Edw. III, m. 6,
no. 22; Abbrev, Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.),
ji, 262.

12 Chart. R. 41 Edw. III, m. 2, no. 7 ;
Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), ii, 293.

78

13 Plac, in Canc. file 4, no. 26.

M Chart. R. 41 Edw. III, m. 2
no. 5.
18 Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. 283.

16 Thid. 1385-9, pp. 22, 3g.

1 Thid. p. 287.

15 Ibid. 1408-13, p. 293.

19 Thid. 1413-16, p. 173.

( . L. and P. Hen. VIII, xvii, g. 137
4).

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Buntingford market-place for the repair of the high-
ways and of Corney Bridge?! and in 1738 the tolls
of Buntingford market are again mentioned as
attached to the manor of Corneybury,®? but this
seems to be the last reference to a market being held
in Buntingford. One fair is still held there every
year on St. Peter’s Day, 29 June.”

The justices of the peace for Hertfordshire were
holding sessions at Buntingford in 1631,?4 and there
was a house of correction there as early as 1638,
which remained in use until the beginning of the
1gth century.2® A small brick lock-up probably of
18th-century date stands on the road to Layston
Church. Buntingford is now the head of a petty
sessional district consisting of parts of the hundreds
of Edwinstree, Odsey and Braughing. In 1835 it
became the union town for the district, the work-
house being built in 1836.

The town of Buntingford begins north of the bridge
across the Rib and extends for about half a mile up
the ascent of Ermine

LAYSTON

two dwellings, formerly the Angel Inn, with late
17th-century plastered fronts, tiled roofs and plain
brick chimneys. The ground story has rusticated
quoins and an entrance door with moulded and
rusticated jambs and moulded pediment above. The
upper story projects on a plain coved cornice with
foliated brackets at intervals; the upper story is
ornamented with flush plaster panels filled with
combed work, much worn. At the north end of the
house is a large gateway to the yard.

Another house, now partly a butcher’s shop, has a
plain plastered front, part of which has an overhang-
ing upper story ; the roofs are tiled. Adjoining it is
a large gateway of late 16th-century date, with low
three-centred wooden arches with carved spandrels.
A rain-water head bears the date 1741, but the house
itself is older. A house nearly opposite the George
and Dragon Hotel has a plain plastered front with
overhanging upper story ; the roofs are tiled. The
adjoining gateway has a gable over; it is probably

Street. At the south Eas
end of the town
Ermine Street
broadens out into
Market Hill. There
are a number of old
houses in High
Street, Buntingford.
Beginning at the
south end, on the
west side, adjoining
the chapel of St.
Peter, is Ward’s
Hospital, founded
and built by Seth
Ward, Bishop of
Salisbury, in 1684.
The buildings form
three sides of a quad-
rangle, being open
on the east side next
the street. They are
of two stories and
are built of brick

a oh 2 =~

with rusticated
quoins and dressings
of Portland stone. A
wooden cornice with modillions and carved moulding
is carried round the building. ‘The roofs are tiled
and the wing gables are hipped. The central part
of the east face of the main block projects slightly
and has a pediment with the modillion cornice
carried round. Underneath is the principal door-
way, of stone with moulded architrave and cornice
with carved brackets, over which is a broken pedi-
ment with a shield containing the arms of the
founder. Over the door is an inscription commemo-
rating the foundation of the hospital. The buildings
consist of eight separate dwellings, each having two
rooms on the ground floor and two on the upper
floor. The doorways to these dwellings have shouldered
stone architraves with small moulded cornices above.

Further up the street, beyond the Market Hill, are

31 P.C.C. 22 Stafford,

72 Ibid. 354 Trenley.

3 East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. ii, 1.
™ Cal. S. P. Dom. 1631-3, p. 18 ; see

ibid.

1633-4, PP.

p- 272 5 1625-49, p- 583 ; Sess. R. (Herts.

Co. Rec.), ii, 180, 289, 300, 347, 352+
35 Cal, S, P, Dom. 1625-49, p- 583-

Warp’s HospitaL, BuNTINGFORD, FROM THE East

of early 17th-century date. The fronts of the adjoin-
ing houses have their original gables, but the facings
have been modernized.

The Clock Turret, which is built over a yard
entrance next a stationer’s shop, has modern facing of
wood and plaster, but the main timbers are old and
are said to date from the 16th century. A house
next the Globe Inn probably belongs to the latter
part of the 17th century; it has a plastered front
with shallow bay window. Beside it is a low gate-
way, over which is a small oriel window. Over the
doorway is a wooden pediment on brackets. The
White Hart Inn 2? has been much modernized, but
the north gable is of early 17th-century date. It is
of timber and plaster and the upper story over-
hangs. The Cock Inn has a timber and plastered

°6 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ti, 82, go.

133, 165, 2145 233, 290, 344, 413, 418.
2 Tt was held by John Bownest in 1615
(Chan. Ing. p.m. [Ser. 2], cccxlvii, 77).

232, 3055 1637;

79

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

front and overhanging upper story; it is of 17th-
century date.

There are several cottages at the north end of
High Street, on the west side, of late 16th and early
17th-century date; they are chiefly of timber
framing plastered, with portions weather-boarded.

On the east side of High Street, at the south end,
in a yard behind a china shop, is a two-storied
building of timber and plaster with tiled roof; it is
probably of late 16th-century date and is in a poor
state of repair. The wooden doorway has a moulded
four-centred arch under a square head. There are
some good plain roof trusses. The oak mullioned
window frames with diamond quarries are original.

The Court, originally the Buntingford Grammar
School, founded about 1625, is now a private house.
The building is L-shaped and is probably of early
17th-century date. The wing running north and
south is the old school building and originally con-
sisted of one room of one story ; a modern floor has
been inserted and attic windows added and the front
considerably modernized. The front is plastered and
the entrance doorway has a semicircular arch with
shallow pediment over; the jambs are rusticated.
On the north gable is a chimney stack with two
octagonal shafts. Some of the windows have the
original plastered brick mullions and transoms ; some
plain old queen-post roof trusses still remain. The
north wing is a plain plastered building of 18th-
century date. The property was sold in 1902, after
the failure of the school, and the endowments were
used to found a technical school opened in 1903 in
Baldock Lane.

A house next the George and Dragon Hotel is a
plain timber and plaster building with overhanging
upper story and tiled roof. The George and Dragon
Hote] ** has a modern front, but the interior is prob-
ably of 17th-century date. On the front is an
elaborate wrought-iron sign-bracket of early 18th-
century date.

Towards the northern end of High Street, on the
east side, is a cottage, now divided into two dwell-
ings, which may be of early 16th-century date. It
is a rectangular building of two stories with a plain
central chimney ; the walls are of timber framing
with plaster between the timbers. In the centre of
the front is a blocked doorway of oak with three-
centred arch ; the upper story projects on the ends
of the floor joists. The windows with diamond
quarries are original.

The boys’ elementary school at Newtown was
built in 1845 and the Adams Memorial School for
girls and infants in 1879. Buntingford Congrega-
tional Chapel was founded in 1776.27 Hope’s Chapel
in Farrington Yard, High Street, belongs to the
Particular Baptists.

The railway station of Buntingford is on the west
side of Ermine Street, about half a mile south of the
bridge across the Rib. It is a terminal station on
the Ware and Buntingford branch of the Great
Eastern railway.

#8 The ‘George’ is mentioned in 16¢5
(Chan. Ing. p.m. [Ser. 27, cexciv, 18).
Other names of inns are the ‘ Bell,’ men-
tioned in 1545 (L. and P. Hen. VIII,
xx [17, p. 681), the ‘Chekere of the
Hoope’ of an earlier date (Early Chan.
Proc. bdle. 11, no. 533) and the ‘ Falcon
of the Woore,’ i.e. the Falcon on the

no. 48).

3) Thid,

hoop or barrel (Ct. of Req. bdle. 77,

319, 320, 331, 342).
8° P.C.C. 60 Wallopp.

The house called Littlecourt which stands on the
east bank of the Rib, on the north side of the Cause-
way, is on the site of a house built at the end of the
16th century by John Gyll.°° By will proved in 1600
John Gyll left this house to his wife Joan, with the
provision that his younger son John Gyll was to have
the use of it during her life as her farmer and that
after her death he was to occupy it for seven years.*!
John’s elder son Sir George Gyll died seised of it in
1619.°? His son John 33 died without issue in 1651,*4
when Littlecourt was probably sold. It was after-
wards acquired by Bernard Turner, who died in
1696, and it descended through his son Thomas to
Anne Turner, who took it in marriage to Thomas
Crouch of Layston.*® Littlecourt passed from the
Crouches about 1726 and finally came to Viscount
Falkland, who sold it in 1760 to Butler Chauncy, son
of the historian.*6 After his death in 1766 the
estate passed through many hands until it finally
became the property of Captain Henry Harman
Young in 1819. Captain Young pulled the old
house down. On his death he left the estate to his
two daughters, Matilda wife of John Dendy Pilcher
and Mary Heathfield, wife of Andrew Walls.57 Little-
court has recently been bought and is now occupied
by Mr. Pinckney.

Sir Frederick Abbott (1805-92), = major-
general in the Royal (late Bengal) Engineers, was
born at Littlecourt in 1805. He had a distinguished
Indian career, taking part in the forcing of the
Khaibar Pass and in the occupation of Bengal. For
some years he was superintending engineer of the
North-West Provinces and was in charge of the
military bridging establishment. He retired in 1847
and was appointed lieutenant-governor of the military
college of East India, which was closed in 1861.38

Beauchamps stands on a moated site about 1
mile north-east of the church ; it is now a farm-
house, Three arms of the moatare wet. The house
is E-shaped on plan, and was originally built of
timber-framing covered with plaster. The wings con-
sist of two storics, the central part of one only. The
roofs are tiled ; the wings have plain gables, and at
each end of the central block isa brick chimney stack
of three square shafts, the centra] shaft being larger
than the flanking ones. The front is of modern
brickwork, but the house itself dates from the early
part of the 17th century. The house contains some
17th-century oak panelling and a panelled door with
carving.

Alswick Hall, the old manor-house, now a farm, and
the site of the chapel of Alswick are situated about 1
mile east of Buntingford. The hall stands on a
moated site, but only a small part of the moat remains
on the west side. The house, now divided into two
dwellings, is of two stories. It is T-shaped on plan,
the south arm of the cross being much shorter than
the north ; the east wing forms the vertical portion
of the cross. The walls are timber-framed and
plastered, with foundations of thin bricks ; the roofs
are tiled. The house is of early 17th-century date.

32 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cecevii, 95.

83 Ibid.

® Conventicles were held in the house 4 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
of a family called Gates in 1675 and Hund. 82.
later (Sess. R. [Herts. Co. Rec.], i, 257, 8 Thid.
36 Thid.
¥ Tbid.

8 Dict. Nat. Biog. Supplement.

80

Buntincrorp : THe Court, oriGINALLY THE GRamMMarR SCHOOL

t ay a a
in ad Tg
(aaa HH} |

il

Buntincrorp: View in THE HicuH SrreeT

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The main block, which faces west, is 71 ft. 6 in.
long, exclusive of a lean-to at the north end, in which
is a modern stair; the width is 17 ft.89 The door-
way is nearly central and opens into a modern passage
leading to a doorway on the east front ; this passage,
which is not now a through passage, occupies the
position of the former screens. On the south side is
the stone-paved hall, with a wide seated fireplace on
the east side ; beyond is the parlour, also with a wide
fireplace, partly blocked. On the north side of the
entrance is a large kitchen with a wide fireplace at
the north end. A short passage from the hall leads
to the east wing, which contains the old brew-house,
&c. ; a small inclosed staircase projecting in the
angle between the east wing and the shorter arm of
the cross is entered from this passage. The ends of
the main block, east wing and stair inclosure are
gabled. The brick chimney stacks have groups of
plain square shafts set diagonally ; the windows have
plain wooden mullions and frames and appear to be of
17th-century date. The fireplace in the hall has a
three-centred arch; two of the
rooms on the upper floor have fire-
places with four-centred moulded
arches, In several of the rooms is
panelling of 17th-century date and
also some of the early 18th cen-
tury, bolection moulded ; some of
the panels over the fireplaces in-
close old oil paintings.

Layston House, to the south of
the village, is the residence of
Mrs. A. E. Tollemache.

171 Century EARLY
EES Later anp MopeERN

LAYSTON

1662 and in 1667 was translated to Salisbury. He
built the almshouses in Buntingford five years before
his death in 1689.4

Another bishop who was
connected by birth with Bunt-
ingford is James Henry Monk
(1784-1851), who was born
there in 1784. In 1809 Monk
became Regius Professor of
Greek at Cambridge. He was
appointed Dean of Gloucester
in 1822 and in 1830 became
Bishop of Gloucester.‘

Sir John Watts, son of
Thomas Watts of Bunting-
ford, was a famous merchant
and shipowner in the 16th century. He owned a
ship that fought against the Spanish Armada and
served on her himself. In 1590 he successfully en-
gaged with Spanish ships near Madrid. To the King
of Spain he was described as one of ‘the greatest

Warp. Azure across

paty or.

an

In the south of the parish is

OLD H
BREW
105 0 io 20 30 _sd| HOUSE

Hailey Hill (Heylee, xiii cent.),
which gave its name to a family
holding lands in the parish in the

SCALE OF FEET

13th and 14th centuries.4° Further
east is the farm called Owles, a
name which seems to be a phonetic

=i
I
i
Ses
= camgcoety
‘ ,
> ees
a : +,
:
tC t Pie
r + +t.
oO
a
Ghz: =
Ke.
Ho.
tH a
>
Ul \
a

KITCHEN FARLOW

le

rendering of the first syllable of |
Alswick. The house has been re- i | | i
built and no ancient features

remain.

In 1623 there is record of a
house called Bolton Hall in Layston, which at that
date was sold by William Wood of ‘Thrist,’ co.
Kent, surgeon, to Benjamin Henshawe of London.*!
On the south it abutted on Baldock Lane and on
the east on the way leading from the Bell Inn to
Baldock Lane.

Seth Ward (1617-89), the founder of Ward’s
Hospital, was born at Aspenden in 1617 and was
educated at the grammar school in Buntingford.
He was expelled from Cambridge for contributing to
a book against the Solemn League and Covenant,
and he then returned to his native place and was
tutor for some years to the sons of Ralph Freeman of
Aspenden Hall. In 1649 he became a professor at
Oxford and was one of the original members of the
Royal Society. He was made Bishop of Oxford in

Pian oF Axswicx Hatt, Layston

pirates that ever had been in this kingdom.’ He was
one of the founders of the East India Company, of
which he was elected governor in 1601, and was also
a member of the Virginian Company. He was Lord
Mayor of London 1606-7 and died in 1616.
Thomas Hobson (1544 ?-1631), the carrier of Cam-
bridge, whose business methods are said to have given
rise to the proverb ‘Hobson’s choice,’ was also born
at Buntingford.*®
Daniel Langhorne, the antiquary, was appuinted
vicar of Layston in 1671 and held the living until
his death in 1681.*°
The manor of BEAUCHAMPS alias
MANORS ALFLADEWICK (Alfledawiche, xi
cent.; Alflatesworth, Alfladewyk, xii
cent.) was held by Godid, a ‘man’ of Asgar the

59 These are external dimensions,

40 Robert de Hailey was assessed for
subsidies in 1296 and 1307 (Lay Subs. R.
bdle. 120, no. 5, 8). Nicholas son of
Robert de Hailey, called of Epping,
granted his lands in the parish to Robert
atte Water of Ware for life in 1348 (Cal.

4

Close, 1346-9, p» 513). Joan widow of
John Hotoft died seised of a tenement
called Heylees near Buntingford in 1446
(Chan. Ing. p.m. 24 Hen. VI, no. 31).
41 Com, Pleas D.Enr.Hil. 21 Jas. I, m. 1.
42 Dict, Nat. Biog. ; East Herts. Arch.
Soc. Trans, iii, 220.

8I

48 Dict, Nat. Biog.

44 Ibid. In 1602 he conveyed the rent
of a house in Buntingford to trustees for
the poor of the town (Close, 45 Eliz.
pt. xii).

4 Dict, Nat. Biog.

46 Ibid.

Il

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Staller, in the time of Edward the Confessor.47 In
1086 it had become part of the large possessions of
Count Eustace of Boulogne, and was held of him by
Rumold.#® Count Eustace appears to have granted
this fee with other lands either to his illegitimate son
Geoffrey or to Geoffrey’s son William of Boulogne,*?
who appears as overlord of Beauchamps shortly before
his death in 1130.50 He was succeeded by his son
Faramus of Boulogne,®! whose daughter and heir
Sybil married Ingelram de Fiennes.®? Ingelram de
Fiennes was killed in battle in 1189. His son
William de Fiennes was his heir *3 and appears as
overlord of Beauchamps early in the 13th century.*4
After this date there is no further record of this family
holding any rights in Beauchamps. ‘They had appa-
rently granted the services from this fee to one of the
Vere family,®> for Aubrey de Vere Earl of Oxford
was returned as holding a fee in Alfladewick of the
honour of Boulogne in 1210 © and his successors are
found as overlords of the manor.*”

In 1129 Alfladewick was held in demesne by
Rumold, either the Rumold of 1086 or his son.58
This Rumold had two sons, Payn and Bernard, one
of whom, apparently Bernard,®® married the sister of
Hugh son of Wulfgar, and half Alfladewick and half
the mill with the land attached to it were granted to
Hugh by Rumold and his sons as his sister’s dower.®°
The manor appears to have remained in Rumold’s
family for some time, though the descent is difficult
to trace. In 1191 Robert Rumold was holding one
knight’s fee in Alfladewick,*! and in the 13th century
reference is made to the mill of Rumold,® but there
is no evidence to show if this family ® was then hold-
ing the manor, the history of which cannot be traced
until the end of the 13th century, when it was held
by the family of Beauchamp. Henry de Beauchamp
styled of Alfladewick was living in 1278,° and
in 1303 the manor was held by Peter de Beau-
champ.® His son John de Beauchamp was assessed
at 18d. for his goods in Alfladewick in 1307—8,° but
the greater part of the Beauchamps’ lands appear by
this time to have been conveyed to William de Poley,
who was assessed at 35. at the same date. In 1325
Margery widow of Peter de Beauchamp quitclaimed
to William Poley of Buntingford all right in the lands
which he held in Alfladewick of the gift of Peter de

‘tenement called Beauchamps’ had come to Joan
Waleys, widow of John Waleys of Glynde. She died
seised of it in that year and her lands descended to
her four daughters and co-heirs, Beatrice, Joan, Agnes
and Joan. Beauchamps was inherited by Agnes,
who was holding it with her husband John Burgh in
1434 7° and with her second husband John Patington
in 1452.’! Agnes died in that year and the manor
descended to her daughter Joan the wife of Ralph
Grey, jun.,”? of Brent Pelham. Joan was left a
widow and became the wife of Edward Goldes-
borough.”4 She died in 1496 and Beauchamps
passed to her granddaughter by her first marriage,
Elizabeth Grey.”6 Elizabeth married Anthony the
third son of Sir William Walgrave, kt., of Smallbridge,
in Bures St. Mary co. Suffolk.7® She died before
15§2, in which year her husband and her second
son Julian were holding the manor,’” the reversion
of which was settled on Julian.78

In 1567 Anthony Walgrave conveyed the manor
to William Naylor for the purpose of a grant to

Edward Baesh,’® William Wal-
grave, eldest son of Anthony
and Elizabeth, quitclaiming BY

his right to Edward Baesh and
Thomasine his wife.®° Edward
with his second wife Jane, the
daughter of Ralph Sadleir,®!
settled the manor in 1579 on
their second son William, with
remainder to their eldest son
Ralph.*? Edward Baesh died
in 1587.8 His son William eau ine Aras
: ronwise argent and gules
probably predeceased him, as with two moorcocks sable
he was succeeded by Ralph, — in the chief and a saltire
who held Beauchamps until — argent in the foot.
his death in 1598, when it
descended to his son Edward Baesh.85 The latter
died without issue in 1653, and the manor apparently
passed to his cousin Ralph Baesh °° and was sold by
him to John Taylor, afterwards rector of Westmill,®”
who was holding it in 1669.° A conveyance of that
date to Edward Smith may have been in trust for
Bernard Turner, who is said to have bought it from
Taylor.®® At Turner’s death in 1696 Beauchamps
descended to his son John, who gave it to his
daughter Anne on her marriage with Thomas Crouch

7] See ibid. 31 Hen. VI, no. 161.

61 Pipe R. 3 Ric. I, m. 12d., Essex

Beauchamp and his son John. By 1420 the
“7 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3216. Godid was 6 Ibid.

a woman,
# Ibid. and Herts.

49 Gen. (New Ser.), xii, 145 et seq.

50 Add. Chart. 28346 ; see Gen. (New
Ser.), xii, 151.

51 Gen. loc. cit.; Add. Chart. 28345 ;
see Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 576.

52 Gen, loc. cit.

53 Ibid.

54 Red Bh. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 576 ;
Testa de Nevitl (Rec. Com.), 273.

55 Aubrey de Vere appears as witness to
a settlement of the manor about 1130
(Add. Chart. 28344).

56 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 502.

57 See Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.),
270; Feud. Aids, ii, 4313; Chan. Inq.
p-m. 34 Edw. ITI, no. 84; 45 Edw. III,
no. 45; 1 Hen. IV, no. §2; 3 Hen. VI,
no. 353 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xii,
yoa; cecclxxiii, 15; G.E.C. Complete
Peerage, s.v. Oxford.

58 Add. Chart. 28346, 28345, 28344.

5° Ibid,

® Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 5232, 5233.

68 In 1285 an inquisition was held on
a Robert Rumold who died seised of lands
in Springfield, co, Essex, which he held
in right of his wife Sybil de Boseville
(Chan. Ing. p.m. 13 Edw. I, no. 118).
He left no male heirs. His widow
married as her second husband Geoffrey
de Beauchamp, but this connexion of the
two families appears to be a coincidence
and does not explain the descent of the
manor of Alfladewick.

4 Assize R. 323, m. 44.

8 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

6 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 8
(1 Edw. II).

& Tbid.

8 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 9913; see
A 1170.

69 Chan. Ing. p.m. 3 Hen. VI, no. 35.

70 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 13 Hen. VI,

no. 74.
82

72 Chan, Ing. p.m. 31 Hen. VI, no. 17.

18 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), i, 122.

™ See Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xii,
Joa.

% Ibid.

7 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), i, 122,

309.

7 Feet of F. Herts, East. 6 Edw. VI.

78 See Com, Pleas D. Enr. Mich. 9 &
10 Eliz. m. 23.

7 Ibid. Julian’s interest disappears.

80 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 9 & 10 Eliz.

81 Visit. of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 125.

83 Com. Pleas D. Enr. Trin. 21 Eliz.
m. 7d.

53 Chan. Ing. p.m, (Ser. 2), ccxv, 269.

& Tbid.

§ Ct. of Wards, Feod. Surv. 17.

86 For descent of the family of Baesh
see the manor of Stanstead Abbots,
Braughing Hundred.

& Chauncy, Hise. Antiq. of Herts. 133.

§ Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 21 Chas, IL.

® Chauncy, loc. cit.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

of Corneybury.” On Anne’s death the manor passed
to her son Charles,” who sold it in 1726 to Francis
Goulston.” In 1731 Francis succeeded his father as
lord of the manor of Wyddial * (q.v.) and from this
date the two manors have descended together.™
Beauchamps has no longer any manorial rights.

In the reign of Edward the Confessor the manor
of ALSWICK (Alsieswiche, xi cent. ; Ayshesaldwyk,
Alseswick, xiii cent. ; Alstwyk, xiv cent. ; Alcewyk,
xv cent.; Alwilcewike, Alesborne, Alleswike, xvi
cent. ; Awlswick, xvii cent.) was held by Almar of
Earl Gyrth, the brother of Harold. After the
Conquest it became part of the possessions of Ralph
Baynard and in 1086 was held of him by his tenant
William. It was then assessed at
6 hides. The honour of Baynard
escheated to the Crown in the reign
of Henry I and was granted to
Robertson of Richardson of Gilbert
de Clare, founder of the house of
Fitz Walter.” The overlordship
of Alswick Manor descended with
the family of Fitz Walter,’ whose
rights in Alswick can be traced
down to 1328.”

William, the tenant of 1086,
was succeeded before the middle
of the 12th century by Richard
Fitz William, who granted the
chapel of Alswick to the Prior and
convent of Holy Trinity. This
grant appears to have accompanied
a gift of the whole or part of the
manor, for in 1291 the prior’s
lands in Layston with services
and a mill there were assessed at
£19 105. 7$¢.' In 1397 Geoffrey
Cornhill of Springfield and Mar-
garet his wife were holding a
manor of Alswick,’? possibly as
farmers or mortgagees, andin 1432
John Olyver and Ida his wife levied
a fine of the manor.® In 1531
the priory of Holy Trinity was
dissolved * and its lands in Alswick
and elsewhere were granted to
Sir Thomas Audley.’ The manor
of Alswick appears to have passed

LAYSTON

in 1712." John Crouch, son of Pike, conveyed the
manor in 1720 to Jacob Houblon,” who appears to
have been one of the executors of Charles Houblon."
Jacob son and heir of Charles Houblon came of age
in 1731 and inherited the manor.“ It descended to
his son Jacob in 1770," to John Archer-Houblon,
son of Jacob, in 1831, and at the latter’s death to his
son John Archer-Houblon of Hallingbury, co. Essex.’
It has recently been bought from Colonel G. B.
Archer-Houblon by Mr. J. R. Russell, farmer, of
Westmill Bury.

The manor of GIBERACK (Gyvcrake, Gibcracke,
xvi cent.), the earliest reference to which by name
occurs in the 16th century, appears to represent the

9)
vets
Nau
seit

ae
to William Ayloffe and Alice his ASA oe
wife, who sold it to John Crouch.° Y MR Were -

In February 1605-6 John Crouch
died seised of the manor, which
descended to his son John.’ He
died in 1615.8 His son John
suffered a recovery of the manor in 1662,” and on his lands held by the nuns of Holywell. In 1217 the
death it descended to his son Pike Crouch," who died Prioress and nuns of Holywell claimed from Holy

Auswick Hart, LaysToN, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

50 Cussans, Hist, of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund, 122.

91 Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. iii, 431 5
see Recov. R. Mich. 7 Geo. I, rot. 55 5
Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 7 Geo. I.

5? Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 33 Tbid.

%4 See Recov. R. Mich. 2 Geo. III,
rot. 1493; 8 Geo. IV, rot. 220.

% Y.C.H, Herts. i, 326a. 8 Ibid.

7 See ibid. Essex, i, 3463 G.E.C.
Complete Peerage, s.v. Fitz Walter for the
descent of this honour.

%8 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 284 3
Feud. Aids, ii, 4313 Cal. Ing. p.m 1-9

Edw. HI, 1293 Cal. Close, 1327-40,

P- 340.

99 Cal. Close, 1327-40, P. 340.

100 Dugdale, Mon, vi, 152.

1 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 145;
see Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 284 5
Feud. Aids, ii, 431, 446.

2 Feet of F. Herts. 21 Ric. II, no. 178.

3 Ibid. Mich. 11 Hen. VI.

4 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 150.

2 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (2), 1037.
There are so few records of Alswick
Manor that it cannot be certainly proved
that Holy Trinity held it, but the pre-

83

sumption is that the manorial rights
went with their estate.

6 See Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccclvii, 50.

7 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cexciv, 86 j
P.C.C. 22 Stafford.

8 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccclvii, 50.

9 Recov. R. Mich. 14 Chas. II, rot. 185.

10 Chauncy, Hist. Antiq. of Herts. 132 5
see Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 8 Will, II.

11 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig, of Herts.
iii, 436.

2 Recov. R. East. 6 Geo. I, rot. 226.

3Cussans, Hist, of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 82. “Ibid. Ibid. 38 Ibid.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Trinity an eleventh part of a knight’s fee in Alswick,
and in 1239 the prior granted them certain lands
with a mill in Alswick to hold
of him and his successors.”
These lands remained with
Holywell until the 16th cen-
tury,'* when they were farmed
of the convent by Holy Trinity
for £5 6s. 8¢..° The lands of
Holy Trinity passed to Sir
Thomas Audley after its dis-
solution in 1531, and he con-
tinued to farm the manor of
Giberack of the nuns of Holy-
well until 1537, when he
purchased it of the convent.”
From this date Giberack de-
scended with Sir Thomas’s
manor of Corneybury in
Wyddial” (q.v.). It is mentioned in conveyances of
that manor as late as 1811.”

In the 17th century there are records of a manor
called DOWNHALL in Layston. This was held by
John Crouch with the manor of Alswick in 1605,”
and it is possible that it consisted of lands held by
the convent of Holy Trinity in the neighbourhood of
St. Bartholomew’s Church.* Downhall descended
with the manor of Alswick,™ the last reference to it
occurring in 1720, and it is probable that after that
date the two manors became merged.

In the 13th century certain lands in Alswick were
held by Gilbert de Sanford, lord of the manor of
Great Hormead.” They descended through his
daughter to the Veres,” and in 1328 were assessed
at one-third of a knight’s fee.”® No record of this
as a separate holding occurs after this date and it was
probably included in the manor of Great Hormead.

In the Domesday Survey several holdings are
recorded in HICHINTON (Ichetone, xi cent. ;
Hitchentuna, xii cent.; Ykinton, Hygenton, xiii
cent.), which apparently lay within the area comprised
by the later parish of Layston.”

In the reign of Edward the Confessor 1 hide of
land in Ichetone was divided among four sokemen,
one a man of Archbishop Stigand, two the men of
King Edward, who paid by custom 2d., and the fourth
a man of King Harold.® By 1086 this land had
become the property of the Bishop of Bayeux and
was held of him by Osbern.*' This holding appears
afterwards as a half-fee belonging to the Ports,” and
apparently descended with the manor of Pope’s Hall
in Buckland (q.v.). It is lost sight of after the 14th
century and was probably absorbed into the manor of
Buckland, which, according to later entries, lay partly
in Layston.* It was probably on account of this

Avprey. Quarterly
palewise indented or and
azure a bend azure
charged with a fret be-
tween two martlets or
with two eagles or in the
azure quarters.

holding that Elizabeth de Burgh, lady of Pope’s Hall,
was able to transfer her market from New Chipping
to Buntingford in 1360.

Another Saxon holding at Ichetone was the half
hide of Godid, a ‘man’ of Asgar the Staller. After
the Conquest this land came into the hands of Count
Eustace of Boulogne and was held of him by Rumold,™
the tenant of Alfladewick, and it appears with Alflade-
wick in the settlement made by Bernard son of
Rumold * (see above). In the 13th century it appears
with Alfladewick among the fees of the honour of
Boulogne.*%® No separate record of it occurs after
this time.

Twenty acres of land in Ichetone, which had been
held by Godid, also came into the possession of Count
Eustace, but were held of him separately by two
knights.”

Another half hide which had been held by the
Saxon Ethelmer of Benington passed with his other
lands to Peter de Valognes after the Conquest and
was held of him by Humfrey.** This holding was
probably attached to the neighbouring manor of
Stonbury, which was also held by Peter de Valognes,”
for it cannot be traced in Layston after this date.
A small holding of 3 virgates and 6 acres, which had
been held by two sokemen, who paid the sheriff 3¢.
yearly, had passed by 1086 to Hardwin de Scales and
was held of him by Theobald.’ It was probably
part of the Scales’ holding in Throcking, of which
Theobald was also tenant in 1086,"' for at the begin-
ning of the 15th century Geoffrey de Bermingham
was holding land in Ichington near Buntingford of
the manor of Throcking.“? Six acres of land also in
Ichetone were held under Edward the Confessor by
Aldred, one of his thegns, and after the Conquest
passed to Eudo Fitz Hubert and were held of him by

L

cmt

Kwyicats Hosrrrar-
ters. Gules a cross
argent,

Knicuts Trmpiars.
Argent a cross gules and
a chief sable.

Walter.@ These small holdings probably were
absorbed into neighbouring manors.

In the 13th century the Knights Templars held
land in Buntingford. In 1296 Robert de Gone-
wardby granted them 8d. rent there which was held

1 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 394.

18 See Feud. Aids, ii, 431 3 Valor Eccl.
(Rec. Com.), i, 394.

18 Valor Eccl. loc. cit.

90 L, and P. Hen. VILL, xii (2), 1027.

*1 Feet of F. Herts. East. 32 Hen. VIII;
Hil. 14 Geo. II ; Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2),
clxi, 79 3 elxii, 167.

22 Feet of F. Herts. East. 51 Geo. III.

33 Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccclvii, 50.

34It is improbable that the convent
would have the advowson of a church
surrounded by alien territory. Its appear-
ance at such a late date suggests that it
was monastic land.

25 See references under that manor.

36 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 284
Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

37 For this descent see manor of Great
Hormead.

8 Cal. Ing. pm. 1-9 Edw. IIT, 129.

9 See Cal. Pat. 1225-32, p. 368, from
which it is apparent that Hichinton was
close to Corney. In the 12th century a
branch of the Hakun family lived at
Hichinton and took their name from it
(Rot. Cur. Reg. [Rec. Com.], i, 160,
165; Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 994):

80 V.C.H. Herts. i, 310.

31 Ibid,

84

8 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
506 ; Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270.

33 Pat. 12 Eliz. pt. ix; Chan. Inq.
p-m. (Ser. 2), cclxxxiv, 96.

34 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3216.

85 Add, Chart. 28344.

86 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 502,
5763; Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 270,
273.
i VCH. Herts. i, 3216.

38 Ibid. 3374, 268.

59 Ibid. 3375.

© Ibid. 3404, “ hid.

“2 Chan. Inq. p.m, 12 Hen. IV no. 37.
43 Ibid. 3294.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

of the Templars with suit at their court of Bunting-
ford.44 This holding passed with the ‘Templars’
other lands to the Knights Hospitallers in 1309.4
After the Dissolution part of the Hospitallers’ lands
in Buntingford were granted with the preceptory of
Shingay 46 and part was attached to the manor of
Standon 4? in Braughing Hundred (q.v.).
The church of ST. BARTHOLO-
CHURCHES MEV consists of chancel 30 ft. 3 in.
by 17 ft., nave 52 ft. by 27 ft., west
tower 14 ft. square and south porch 10 ft. by 9 ft. 6 in.;
all internal dimensions. The walls are of flint rubble,
partly cemented ; the base-course of the tower has a
chequer ornament of flint and stone in g-in. squares.
The nave roof is slated and the chancel roof tiled.
The chancel belongs to the early part of the 13th
century ; the nave and west tower appear to have
been built in the 15th century—14oo-20. The
moulding on the base-course round the tower appears
also at the north-east and north-west angles of the
nave. The south porch probably dates from the
early pert of the 16th century ; it was formerly built
of brick with stone dressings, but the church having
fallen into a bad state of repair, from disuse, it was

N

N
N

1m 5 O Io 20

N

LAYSTON

arch; the inner jambs have a wide casement
moulding. At the east end of the south wall is a
13th-century piscina with rebated jambs, much
broken, and shouldered head similar to the aumbry
in the east wall. Set in the south wall is a stone
corbel carved with a grotesque face and with remains
of colouring. It is of 15th-century date and probably
supported an image ; it is not in its original position.
The chancel arch is slightly four-centred and is of
two moulded orders without a label ; the jambs have
round engaged shafts with moulded capitals and
bases.

In the north wall of the nave are two three-light and
one two-light window of the 1sth century, having
cinquefoiled lights under four-centred arches, with wide
casement mouldings to the inner jambs; the outer
stonework of the two three-light windows is modern.
The north doorway is blocked; it has a pointed
arch and a moulded square label inside. In the
south wall are three windows similar to those in the
north wall ; some of the external stonework has been
renewed. The south doorway is of 1§th-century
date with moulded arch and jambs; over the door-
way inside is a square moulded label, as on the north.

\

[M1 [3% Cenr. erty
154 CENTURY
E [6" CEnrT garry
MopERN

Pian or Layston Cuurcu

in 1906 thoroughly repaired. Much of the old
stonework was renewed, the porch was faced with
flint and the walling generally repaired.*

In the east wall of the chancel are three single
lancets of the 13th century; underneath them,
inside, is a moulded string-course of the same period.
Under the string-course, at the north end of the
communion table, is a small aumbry or niche with
shouldered head, probably of 13th-century date. In
the north wall are two blocked lancets; the stone-
work of the western one has been renewed. In the
south wall are two 13th-century lancets ; below the
westernmost is a narrow doorway with pointed
splayed arch of 15th-century date. Near the western
end of the wall is a 15th-century window of three
cinquefoiled lights with tracery under a four-centred

“4 Chan, Ing, a.g.d. 24 Edw. I, file 25,
NO. 3.

See Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 1313
1327730) P. $31.

of the Holy Apostle St. Bartholomew of
Layston (P.C.C. 26 Maynwaring). In
1494 Ellen Barbour left to the making
of a glass window in Layston Church

In the north-east angle of the nave is the doorway to
the rood-stair turret ; the stair is gone.

The south porch has an entrance archway of two
moulded orders, the inner one forming a four-
centred arch, the outer carried over square with
moulded label ; the spandrels are traceried and carved
with foliage. Above the entrance is a niche with
cinquefoiled ogee arch with carved crockets and
finial and crocketed pilaster buttresses on either side ;
the niche is embattled above. On either side of the
porch is a two-light cusped window, mostly of modern
stonework. All the roofs throughout the church are
modern.

The west tower is of three stages, with diagonal
buttresses, embattled parapet and small leaded spire.
The turret stair is in the south-east angle. ‘The tower

ford and 6s. 8d. for making a cross in
Buntingford (ibid. 18 Vox). In 1524
John Sawyer directed that his body
should be buried in the church of

L. and P. Hen, VIII, xv, g. 613

1).
* Thid. xvi, g. 26)3 xix (2
ees” 379 (26)3 xix (2),
‘In 122 James Pole directed that
his body should be buried in the church

£3 or as much money as the window
should cost. She directed that four
timber crosses should be erected over
her husband’s and her own sepulchre.
She left 26s. 8d. for the repair of the
bridge ‘in the chapel end’ in Bunting-

85

St. Bartholomew of Layston and left as
much money as it would cost to make
a buttress on the north wall of the church
(ibid. 31 Bodfelde). An action arose as
to the building of the buttress (Town
Depositions, 26 Hen, VIII, bdle. 1).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

arch is of 15th-century date of three moulded orders,
the outer two continuous, the inner resting on a
semi-octagonal shaft with moulded capitals and bases.
The west door has a pointed arch of two orders under
a square head and moulded label; the cusped
spandrels contain blank shields. Above the doorway
is a string-course, of which the label forms the lower
member, carried along the west face of the tower ; it
1s carved with leaves at close intervals. Beside the
south jamb of the doorway externally are the remains
of a stoup, elliptical on plan, with four-centred
cinquefoiled arch. Thorley is the only other example
in the county of a stoup at the west doorway. The
west window has three cinquefoiled lights with
tracery under a pointed arch ; on each of the north,
south and west sides of the second stage is a narrow
loop light. The belfry windows are of two cinque-
foiled lights with quatrefoil in the head.

The font is of 15th-century date The bowl is

nt

I
is

Layston CuurcH: THe CuanceL From THE Nave

octagonal with a circular quatrefoiled panel on each
face. The octagonal pedestal has traceried panels, in
some of which are small shields carved with emblems
of the Passion, much worn ; several shields have dis-
appeared.

The pulpit is made up of panelling of the 16th
and 17th centuries; in the front is a linen panel.
Most of the seating is of 15th-century date with
buttressed ends and moulded rails.

In the north-west angle of the nave is a slab with
indents of two men, two women and children, On
the north chancel wall is a mural monument of
marble and alabaster to John Crouch, 1605, with
the arms of himself, his wife and the alliances of his
ten children. On the south wall of the nave is a
tablet to William Slatholme, Doctor of Physics, 1665.

There are five bells, four of them dated 1633,
the fifth by Pack & Chapman, 1776.

The communion plate which is used at St. Peter’s

chapel of ease in Buntingford consists of silver-gilt
cup, 1681, silver-gilt paten and large salver, 1683.

The registers before 1812 are as follows : (i), (ii),
(iii), and (iv) baptisms and burials 1563 to 1800,
marriages 1563 to 1753; (v) baptisms and burials
1801 to 18123 (vi) marriages 1754 to 1812.

The chapel of ease, dedicated to ST, PETER,
consists of chancel 21 ft. by 13 ft. with apse, nave
39 ft. 6 in. by 21 ft., east and west transepts each
11 ft. 6 in. deep by 24 ft. wide, modern vestry and
north porch ; all dimensions are internal. The walls
are of red brick and the roofs are tiled.

The chapel was built about 1614 by the Rev.
Alexander Strange, as is recorded on the brass within
the chapel.#8* It is in the form of a cross with the
chancel and apse on the south. In 1899 the building
was thoroughly restored, a vestry was erected west of
the chancel, a new north porch was added, the walls
of the apse were raised and a new roof put on, new
brick windows were
inserted throughout,
the original pews
with carved backs
were removed and
modern seating sub-
stituted.

The chancel opens
into the semicircular
apse by a modern
arch of red_ brick.
There is a modern
window on the east
side. There is no
chancel arch.

The nave has
modern windows and
a modern north door-
way and porch. In
the west transept is
a gallery with plain
panelled front, of
about 1615, sup-
portedon smal] round
wooden columns
with Ionic capitals
and bases. In the
west wall is a door-
way with the original
four - centred brick
arch ; the jambs are of modern brickwork. The
windows in both transepts are modern. Over the
north gable is a small brick bellcote and in the east
gable is a stone inscribed pomus oRATIONIS, 1615.
All the roofs are modern, but several plain tie-beams
of the original roof remain. The pulpit is made up
of panels from the old pews, with arabesque carving
in the upper panels. Some of the chancel seats also
contain old panels, and some have buttressed ends
similar to those at Layston Church, from which they
probably came. On the south wall of the east
transept is a brass engraved with a view of the
interior of a small Renaissance chapel during service ;
it, however, bears little resemblance to the existing
building. The preacher in the pulpit and the con-
gregation are also shown. It is to Alexander Strange,
vicar of Layston and builder of the chapel ; it bears
the date 1620. In the north window is a shield of

48a See also below under advowson.

86

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

arms: quarterly, 1 and 4, Argent a cheveron sable
between three rooks ptoper, each holding an ermine
tail in its beak sable; 2 and 3, Or a leopard gules,
‘with the crest of a rook. Underneath is the in-
scription : ‘This windowe was mad & ... . ed at
the only Charges of William and Mary Reynolds the
sonne and daughter of Lewes Reynolds sometyme
Vicar of Laist[on]e. 1622.’

The earliest reference to the
church of St. Bartholomew occurs in
the reign of Henry II when Hugh
Triket gave the manor of Corneybury in Wyddial to the
Prior and canons of Holy Trinity, London, and also
remitted them all right in the church of Layston
which they had formerly held of him and his ancestors.*?
They received licence to appropriate the vicarage
from Richard Fitz Neal,*° Bishop of London 1189 to
1198.51 The advowson and rectory of St. Bartho-
lomew descended after the Dissolution with the
manor of Corneybury.*? By the beginning of the
17th century it was found that the position occupied
by the church was incon-

ADVOWSONS

LAYSTON

chapel was never restored, but its site may still be
traced on the south side of Alswick Hall.

The advowson of the chapel of St. John the
Baptist, Buntingford, belonged to the lord of the
manor of Throcking and was attached to the part of
the manor called Vabadun’s fee. In 1292 Roger
Brian, lord of the manor of Throcking, founded
a chantry there and granted 2 acres of land and
1oos. rent in Hinxworth, Throcking, Clothall and
Aspenden for the support ofa chaplain.*! By theend
of the 15th century the chapel was evidently in want
of repair, for Leonard Hyde, by his will proved
February 1508-9, left 40s. for its ‘ fynysshing . . .
if the parson of Throcking or any other well dis-
posed man will it edify.’®? By this it is probable
that at this date the chapel had no chaplain of its
own, but was served by the rector of Throcking.
By the end of the following century the chapel
had fallen into such decay that it could no longer
be used.®§ The loss of it was much felt by the people of
Buntingford, who had been accustomed to attend the

venient. The River Rib r 7
flowed between the town of : :
Buntingford and the parish
church, and although there
was little more than half a
mile between the two, the
road was sometimes rendered
impassable by floods.*> It
was therefore determined to
build a chapel of ease in
Buntingford, and from this
time St. Bartholomew’s,
although the mother church,
became of diminishing im-
portance. At the end of the
1gth century services were
only held there in the
summer months* and its
condition was described as
deplorable.®>

The patronage of the

church of St. Mary Magda- 3 — nal ho ;

lene, Alswick,®® was origi-
nally in the hands of the lord
of the manor of Alswick,
but when in the reign of
Henry II the church of Layston was granted to the
Prior and canons of Holy Trinity, Richard Fitz
William, lord of the manor of Alswick (q.v.), made a
grant to the prior of all his right in the church *” and
acknowledged it to be a chapel to the mother church
of Layston. After the dissolution of Holy Trinity
in 1531 °8 the king sold the chapel to Sir Henry
Parker, who took for his own use the church plate,
which was valued at £6,and sold the bells and all
the timber, lead and stone of the chapel to William
Hammond and Henry Grave of Buntingford.5? The

Bunrincrorp: St. Perzr’s CuapzL FRoM THE SouTu-wesr (before 1899)

chapel and who were frequently cut off from the
church of Layston by the floods of the River Rib.%
The difficulty was met by the Rev. Alexander Strange,
the vicar of Layston, who, taking as his motto ‘ Begg-
hard or beggard,’ exerted himself to collect money to
rebuild the chapel. In 1614 the present chapel was
begun and in 1628 it was completed and rededicated
to St. Peter. From the time of its rebuilding the
advowson of St. Peter’s Chapel has descended with
Layston Church, to which it has been a chapel of

ease.

9 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 152.

50 Newcourt, Repert. i, 843.

51 Stubbs, Reg. Sacrum. Anglicanum,
51.
5? See references under that manor.

53 Lond, Epis. Reg. Grindall, fol.
396.

: 54 Cussans, op. cit. Hund. of Edwinstree,
4

55 Rast Herts. Arch, Soc. Trans. ii, 84.

56 In 1500 John Donne directed that
his body should be buried in the church
of Layston and left 12d. to the altar
of our Lady of Alswick (P.C.C. Wills,
5 Moone). It would appear from this
that the dedication was formerly to
St. Mary the Virgin and the church had
not the right of burial.

37 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 152+

58 Thid, 1506

87

59 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks, ccccxcvii, fol. 1.

60 De Banco R. 273, m. 75d. (East.
2 Edw. Ill).

61 Chan. Ing. p.m. 20 Edw. I, no. 119 5
Cal. Pat. 1281-92, p. 486. ;

6? Cussans, op. cit. Hund. of Edwinstree,
ISI.

68 Lond. Epis.
396.

6 Thid.

Reg. Grindall, fol.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

A house belonging to the brotherhood of the
Blessed Virgin Mary in Buntingford was granted in
1561 to Thomas Paynell.*

The parochial charities are adminis-
tered together by a body of trustees
appointed by an order of the Charity
Commissioners of 8 June 1877. They include the
charities of :—

Henry Skynner, founded by will 1558, endowed
with houses (including the Angel Inn) and land of
the annual value of £140 or thereabouts.

Sir John Watts, deed 1603, consisting of a rent-
charge of £4 issuing out of land in Buntingford.

Joan Sandbach, will 1605, trust fund, £80
24 per cent. annuities arising from the redemption
in 1899 of a rent-charge of £2.

Bishop Seth Ward for apprenticing poor boys, will
1687, trust fund, £106 35. 7d. 24 per cent. an-
nuities, being part of a sum of £480 stock arising
from the redemption in 1899 of a rent-charge
of £12, the balance having been expended in
1907 in the rebuilding of a house belonging to the
charities.

William Bigg, will proved in the P.C.C. 2 July
1847, trust fund, £179 55. 1d. consols.

The several sums of stock are held by the official
trustees, producing together {9 2s. 4d. in yearly
dividends.

John Crouch, deed 12 September 1631, being an
annuity of £5 now charged upon land at Alswick
Hall and applied in the distribution of bread.

CHARITIES

The net income of the parochial charities is
applied mainly in the distribution of bread, coal and
other articles in kind.

Charities connected with Buntingford Chapel.—
In 1642 the Rev. Alexander Strange, a former vicar,
by deed granted to trustees land in Great Hormead
and Layston, the rents and profits to be employed in
the repairs of the chapel. In 1911 the sum of £3 16s.,
being the net rents of 6a. 21r., was so applied ; and the
Rev. Charles Heaton, by will proved in the P.C.C.
13 March 1754, devised an annuity of {£2 charged
upon land in Snayles Mead for a similar purpose.

The hospital founded and endowed by Seth Ward,
Bishop of Salisbury, for four poor men and four poor
women is regulated by orders and constitutions made
and ordained by the founder by deed, 4 December
1684, as modified by a scheme of the Charity Com-
missioners of 21 June 1910.

The endowments consist of certain fee-farm rents
payable out of lands and hereditaments in the counties
of Leicester and Lincoln, in respect of which
£89 1s. 11d. was received in 1911 ; also
£274 9s. 11d. India 3 per cent. stock with the
official trustees, producing £8 4s. 8d. yearly, and
£1,000 consols, derived under the will of the late
Miss Mary Leader, proved at London 5 February
1909, producing £25 a year. Each of the inmates
receives $s. a week and 1s. at Christmas and an
allowance for coals,

The Buntingford Grammar School has already
been dealt with.

MEESDEN

Mesdone (xi cent.) ; Mesdun, Misedon, Miesdun
(xiii cent.) ; Mysendon, Meseden (xvi cent.) ; Messen-
don, Meesden (xvii cent.).

Meesden is a small parish in the north-east corner
of Edwinstree Hundred, separated from the county
of Essex by the River Stort. On the east of the
parish near the river the ground is about 350 ft. above
the ordnance datum, rising to 400 ft. near St. Mary’s
Church and to about 450 ft. further west at Meesden
Green. The area of the parish is 1,008 acres, of
which about four-fifths are arable land.’ In the 11th
century the parish was thickly wooded, yielding
woodland, according to the Domesday Survey, for 400
swine.? Court rolls for the 15th century show that
quantities of oaks and ashes were then being cut
down on the manor. Meesdenhall Wood to the
south of the church and White Hill and Smaley
Wood in the north-west of the parish are now the
only woods remaining.

No main road runs through the parish. The
church of St. Mary is situated a little to the east of
a road running north from Brent Pelham to Langley.
Meesden Bury, the manor-house, now a farm, lies
nearly a quarter of a mile to the north of the church,
with which it is connected by a footpath. At Mees-
den Bury is a homestead moat. The moated manor-
house is mentioned in 1418, when it was presented

65 Pat. 3 Eliz. pt. x.

66 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 94 3 and see above.

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

2 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3070

8 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 2.
In 1418 it was presented that an oak

which lay in the waste was needed for
the ‘groundsell’ of the church porch,
but could not be taken until licence for
its removal was given by the lord (ibid.).
Another presentment made in 1424 shows
that bees were taken out of an oak

at the court that a chamber within the moat was
ruinous and had fallen to the ground and that the
timber of the chamber and of the bridge over the
moat had disappeared.‘ In the same year it was
presented that the dairy-house, the wheel-barn,
the hay-barn and the stable were out of repair.*
The present house is modern. ‘To the south of the
church is the rectory and a little to the west the
Rectory Farm. The glebe is a large estate of 100
acres. Baron C. R. S. Dimsdale lives at Meesden
Manor, formerly called Smaley Lodge.

The village of Meesden, which is very small, is
situated round Meesden Green, about half a mile west
of the church. The school was built about 1874.
From the village Willoughby Lane and the footpath
its continuation run south to the old windmill near
Cole Green in Brent Pelham parish. This perhaps
replaced the manorial mill mentioned in the 14th
century and later. A road running west from the
village towards Anstey passes Lower Green, where are
one or two houses.

An inclosure award was made for Meesden in
1841.° Millfield, Westfield, Southfield, Longland,
Chittoksleye and Romstedefield were among the field-
names.’ Other place-names occurring are Pourtes-
heigh, Cryspyscroft, Balardscroft, Gallowcroft, Rem-
sakyr, Warewykis, Fykeysiswick, Chalcroftmede,

belonging to the lord in Bury Wood and
the oak was bummed for the honey and
the wax (ibid.).

4 Ibid, 5 Ibid.

© Blue Bk. Incl. Awards, 64.

7 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no, 6, 7.

88

HOWOg HLAOSG qHL + HOWAHD) Naas ayy LNOY FHT, : HOUNHD NOLSAWT

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Wyntonesfield and Coldsinethescroft.6 Peppercorn
appears as the name of a family of villein tenants on
the manor in the rth century,® and in 1570 there
was a house called Peppercorns in the parish in which
Andrew Kyng of Meesden, yeoman, lived.'°
Before the Conquest MEESDEN was
MANOR held by Alward, a man of Archbishop
Stigand. It was one of the manors
acquired under William I by the Bishop of London,
of whom it was held in 1086 bya tenant Payn." It
was then assessed for 1 hide and comprised land for
five ploughs.”

As one of the Bishop of London’s manors Mees-
den formed part of the barony of Bishop’s Stortford
and paid a rent of 2s. to the castle there." ~The Bishop
of London claimed quittance of suit of hundred court
for his men and their tenants at Meesden before the
justices of Edward I."

Payn’s immediate successors are unknown, but at
the beginning of the 13th century Aubrey de Vere
Earl of Oxford was holding Meesden as half a knight’s
fee of the bishop.* In the middle of the same
century the manor was held under the Earl of Oxford
by a sub-tenant, the mesne lordship thenceforward
descending with the successive Earls of Oxford.’
These earls seem to have been peculiarly tenacious of
their feudal rights of overlordship.” A letter from
John de Vere Earl of Oxford to the Abbot of
St. Mary Graces, tenant of the manor, in 1514
reminds the abbot that he owes the service of a
knight’s fee and relief of 1oos. for his lands in Mees-
den and summons him to appear at the earl’s castle
of Hedingham at the following Easter, threatening
the penalty of the law should he fail to appear.” As
late as 1634 a return of knights’ fees held of Robert
Earl of Oxford was made, Meesden being among the
number.” Between the Earls of Oxford and the
immediate tenant of the manor there seems to have
been a further mesne tenancy held by the family of
Gedding. What interest they had in the manor or
how they acquired it is not clear. Ina fine of the
manor levied in 1265 it is recorded that Maud
widow of Henry le Eveske and Richard son of
William de Gedding ‘put in their claim.” In

1304 the manor was said to be held of Robert de
Gedding.”" These rights over the manor, whatever
they were, were remitted by Sir John de Gedding to
the Abbot of St. Mary Graces in 1383.”

MEESDEN

In 1253 the immediate tenant of the manor was
Robert le Botiller, who in that year received a grant
of free warren.” Robert le Botiller died seised of
the manor in 1262, when Richard le Botiller his
brother succeeded. The extent
of the manor then included a
windmill.“ In 1265 Richard
le Botiller conveyed Meesden
to Denise de Monchensey,”
widow of his brother Robert.”°
The manor descended with
the heirs of Denise de Mon-
chensey in the same way as
the manor of Anstey (q.v.) to
Aymer de Valence Earl of
Pembroke,” and in 1325 was
granted for life to his widow
Mary Countess of Pembroke,
with remainder to her heir
Laurence de Hastings.% In 1368 the countess had
licence to grant the reversion of this manor with that
of Little Hormead and Westmill to a Carthusian
monastery to be founded in one of them.” With the
same manors the reversion of Meesden was finally
granted by Letters Patent to the abbey of St. Mary
Graces in 1376.

The manor remained with the abbey until the
Dissolution." In 1543 it was granted to John Gates
of Garnets in High Easter, co. Essex, together with
woods of 33 acres called Hall Wood Coppice and
Small Wood Coppice.” The grantee was the Sir
John Gates who in 1553 was beheaded as a supporter
of Lady Jane Grey,* but the manor was probably sold
by him before this date to William Bradbury, who in
1550 bought the manor of Langley in Clavering, co.
Essex, from him.** William Bradbury died seised in
1550, his son Robert being his heir. Robert died
in January 1576-7.% The manor descended to his
brother Henry and on Henry’s death in February
1596-7* to his son William. In 1601 William
Bradbury of Littlebury and Margaret his wife con-
veyed the manor to Richard and Anthony Luther.”
The Luthers were a family who held considerable
estates in Essex, but there seem to have been several
branches of the family in which the same Christian
names constantly recur, which makes their pedigree
dificult to trace.%* Chauncy states that Richard
Luther was succeeded by a son and heir Thomas,

Moncuensey. Or

three scutcheons barry
vair and gules,

5 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 6, 73
Harl. Roll N 18; Rentals and Surv.
portf. 8, no. 33.

9 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 2, 3.

10 Will printed in Herts. Gen. and
Antiq. i, 36. Wills of other inhabitants
are printed in ibid. i, 369, 374 ; ii, 9, 10.

NY.C.H. Herts. i, 3075.

'2Tbid. The difference between the
hidage and the possible extent of arable
here is probably accounted for by the
large amount of woodland.

18 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 5, 6;
Chan. Ing. a.q.d. file 365, no. 18.

4 Plac, de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 290.

1 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 541.

16 Chan. Ing. p.m. 35 Hen, III, no. 32 ;
Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 177, no. 36, and
below.

In several other cases (see Little
Hormead in Edwinstree), and perhaps
in this case also, the mesne lordship of
the Earls of Oxford was not acquired in
the usual way by virtue of a grant from

é

a tenant above and of a grant to a
tenant below, but was a tenancy acquired
in between an overlord and a tenant
already holding.

18 T, and P. Hen. VIII, i, 4766 (printed
in full by Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree
Hund. 131).

19 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccclxxiii,15.

2 Feet of F, Herts. 49 Hen. III,
no. 578.

21 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 252+

22 Close, 6 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 16 d.

33 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 5446.

24 Chan. Ing. p.m. 47 Hen. III, no. 14.
Richard is called son of Robert le Botiller
in Assize R. 325.

% Feet of F.
no. 578.

26 See Little Hormead.

7 See Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 252 3
Feet of F. Diy. Co. 1 Edw. II, no. 4.

38 Cal, Pat. 1324-7, Pp. 153+

29 Ing. a.q.d. file 365, no. 18.

30 Pat. 50 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 16; see

89

Herts. 49 Hen. III,

Chan, Ing. p.m. 51 Edw. III (1st nos.),
no. 28; Feud. Aids, ii, 446 ; Cal. Papal
Letters, Vv) 547 3 Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 162.

31 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 398. At
the time of the Dissolution it was leased
to John Hagar of Clavering, yeoman
(Aug. Off. Decr. xi, 86).

32.1, and P. Hen, VIII, xviii (2), 327
(11). 82a Dict. Nat. Biog.

83 Morant, Hist. of Essex, i, 614.

84 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xc, 123+

35 Tbid. clxxvii, 54.

36 Ibid. cexlix, 54.

87 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 43 & 44
Eliz. ; Hil. 44 Eliz. ; Feet of F. Div. Co.
Hil. 7 Jas. I. .

88 cf. Morant, Hist. of Essex, i, 186 j
ii, 1915 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), i,
439- None of these branches seem to
correspond with the Hertfordshire one.
Langley in Clavering was held by the
Luthers who held Meesden (Morant,
op. cit. i, 614), but the Essex historian
has not traced their pedigree.

12

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

but in 1610 Anthony Luther with Thomas Luther
received a quitclaim of the manor from Francis

Joselyne and his wife Mar-

garet® (probably widow of
William Bradbury), and in
1643 Thoma; Luther died
seised of the reversion of the
manor after the death of

Bridget Luther,’ who in 1662
presented to the church as
Bridget Herys, widow of
Anthony Luther.’ It there-
fore seems probable that the
Anthony whom Chauncy gives
as the son of Thomas was in
reality his father. Thomas
was succeeded by his brother
Anthony. This Anthony seems to be the Anthony
Luther, junior, who in 1651 took part with his wife
Dorothy in a settlement of the manor, the other
parties being Edward Herys and his wife Bridget,
Anthony Luther, senior, and Thomas Luther.” In
1674 Anthony Luther presented to the church and
in 1694 Dorothy Luther, widow.® In 1711 another
Anthony Luther presented,“ and it was this Anthony
apparently who sold the manor in 1730 to Jacob
Houblon.”

Jacob Houblon settled Meesden in 1758 on his
eldest son Jacob,“ who married Susanna Archer."
Their son John Archer Hou-
blon sold the manor in
1801-2 to Samuel Robert
Gaussen of Brookman Park
in North Mimms.® It was
bought about 1814 by his
brother the Rev. Armytage
Gaussen,” who died without
issue in 1859, leaving the
manor to his wife Sarah Eliza-
beth Gaussen. After her death
in 1865 the manor was sold
by her executors to Baron
Charles John Dimsdale of
Essendon,*' and is now held
by his grandson Baron Charles
Robert Southwell Dimsdale.

The priory of St. Bartho-
lomew, Smithfield, had a small estate in Meesden.”
The prior is called rector of the church in 1509,*
probably by virtue of a lease of the rectory from the
Abbot of St. Mary Graces.

Some detailed extents of the manor of Mecesden for
the 14th century and later still remain and illustrate
fully its domestic economy.‘ Among the profits of
the manor in the 14th century were those from the
sale of underwood in Smaley Wood, of pasture on
the ‘hedge rows’ of the common fields and of
the multure of the mill. The custom called
‘schereneschot’ amounted to 35. 4d. in 1346.

LutHer. Argent two
bars sable with three
round buckles azure in

the chief.

Dimspare. Argenta
fesse dancetty azure be-
tween three molets sable

with three bexants on
the fesse and the augmen-
tation of a scutcheon or
with an cagie’s wing

sable.

59 Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 7 Jas. I.

4° Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), dccxliv, 43.

41 Cussans, op. cit. 133.

© Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 1651.

“3 Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).

“4 Thid.

4 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 4 Geo. II.

48 Com. Pleas D. Enr. East. 31 Geo, II,
m. 124.

7 Berry, Essex Gen. 163, 164.

rot. 159.

iii, 439.

Hen. VIII).

“8 See Recov. R. Trin. 37 Geo. III,

49 Cussans, op. cit. 131.
5° Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts.

51 Cussans, loc. cit.
53 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 152.
$3 Harl. Roll N. 18 (Court held 1

4 See Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 4-9 ;

Besides the home farm (grangium) the lord held shots
in the common fields, one of which, Valencesrode in
Houndsdichfield, preserved the name of the Earls of
Pembroke. In the 15th century several ‘ molmen’
are mentioned among the tenants of the manor.”

The church of ST. MARY stands
about half a mile east of Mecsden Green
and consists of chancel 20 ft. 6 in. by
15 ft. 6 in., nave 4o ft. 6 in. by 15 ft. 6 in., small
north and south transepts each 13 ft. wide by 6 ft.
6 in. deep, south porch 8 ft. 3 in. square and wooden
bellcote over the western end of the nave; all the
dimensions are internal.

The walls are of flint rubble with stone dressings ;
the porch is built of brick ; the roofs are tiled. The
nave belongs to the early part of the 12th century ;
the chancel and transepts date from about 1270-80.
The transepts were subsequently pulled down and
the arcades filled in. In 1876 the transepts were
rebuilt on the old foundations and the arcades re-
opened. The south porch was added about the
middle of the 16th century. Much of the external
stonework is modern, as is also the wooden bellcote.

The east window of the chancel is of three cusped
lights under a pointed head ; the moulded inner
jambs and arch are original, but all the outer stone-
work is modern. The north and south walls have
each a window of two lights, the outer stonework of
which is modern, but the inner jambs and arch are
similar to the east window. In the south wall is a
piscina with a pointed trefoil head, the edges of
which are moulded with a filleted hollow, with
moulded stops on the jambs; the drain is eight-
foiled. Adjoining the piscina is a single trefoil-
headed sedile with similar detail; they are both of
1270-80. There is no chancel arch.

In the north wall of the nave are two traceried
windows, each of two lights and all of modern stone-
work. In the south wall is one similar window, but
with inner jambs and moulded rear arch of 15th-
century date. At the east end of the nave walls, on
the north and south sides, are the late 13th-century
arcades to the small transepts; they are of clunch,
and each consists of two bays with a width of about
4 ft. between the piers. The arches are of two
moulded orders, the mouldings being filleted hollows
similar to the piscina and sedile ; there is a moulded
label next the nave with mask stops. The piers are
octagonal with moulded capitals and bases. The
south doorway is of 1ath-century date with plain
flattened semicircular arch and square jambs; the
abaci are hollow-chamfered ; the doorway is of
oolite. The 14th-century west doorway is of Bar-
nack stone with pointed arch and moulded label ;
arch and jambs are chamfered. The west window
is of two traceried lights of modern stonework. The
south porch is built of 2-in. red bricks ; the entrance
archway is four-centred with a moulded label. The
arch is of two continuous orders formed of square

CHURCH

Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 33; Ct
R. (Gen. Ser.}, portf. 178, no. 1-3,

52 Mins. Accts. bdle. 86-, no. 4-9.

56 Rentals and Surv. portf. S, no. 33.
In Millfield the lord had Madsot and
Eidewellshot (Mins. Accts. bdle. 867,
no. 6).

57 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867,n0. 7. ‘Ine
works of the tenants are here given in
detail,

go

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

oversailing courses of brickwork; at the angles are
diagonal buttresses, on which are set lofty hexagonal
turrets with ogee heads. Over the archway is a brick
corbel table of cusped arches, above which is an em-
battled parapet, the central part of which is stepped
and contains a shallow niche with pointed arch ; in
the niche is set a small brick star in a circle and
beneath are bricks with cusped circles and other
devices. In the face of each buttress is a shallow
trefoil-headed niche ; in the east and west walls are
two-light windows with square labels over. In the
north-east angle is a rough cavity which contained a
stoup.

The stone font is of 17th-century date; it is
octagonal with panelled and moulded bowl and stem.

Surrounding the communion table is a very inte-
resting pavement of glazed tiles; it has a width of
g ft. 8 in. and projects 7 ft. from the east wall. The
space under the communion table is not tiled. A
few of the tiles of each colour used in the design—
dark green, brown and yellow—are in a perfect
state, but most of the tiling is much worn. A wide
outer border, consisting chiefly of circles conjoined,
is the principal feature of the design, but within is
part of a large circular pattern with tiles radiating to
acentre. Many of thetiles forming the border have
conventional flowers stamped on them, the sunk out-
lines of which are sharp and clean cut ; in the central
part the stamped ornaments consist of circles contain-
ing two birds face to face and various geometrical
figures. In each of the two spandrels at the angles
is a roughly executed shield of arms, apparently one
of the little scutcheons—barry vair and gules—from
the arms of the Monchensey family, a member of

BRENT PELHAM

which held the manor at the end of the 13th century.
The tiles date from about 1300.

On the north wall of the chancel is a mural monu-
ment to Robert Younge, 1626. His bust is in a
niche and above are his arms.

There are two bells: the first is marked ‘C. G.
1666’ ; second, blank.

The communion plate consists of a cup and
standing paten, 1621.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i)
baptisms and burials 1737 to 1812; (ii) marriages
1797 to 1812.

The advowson of Meesden Church
ADVOWSON _ followed the descent of the manor 58
until the death of Mrs. Gaussen in
1865. It then came by will to her nephew Mr. W. G.
Whatman," and is now held by Mr. Pembroke S.
Stephens, K.C. The living remained a rectory after
the acquisition of the manor by St. Mary Graces, no
appropriation being made by the abbey. The church
was a valuable one for so small a place. In 1535 it
was assessed at £12, and a return of 100 acres of
glebe belonging to it was made in 1610.®
In 1663 Edward Younge, D.D.,
CHARITIES dean of the cathedral church of
St. Peter, Exeter, by his will gave
205. a year to the poor of this parish. In the result
of certain proceedings in Chancery a close containing
Ia. Ir., known as the Town Close, was purchased
and conveyed by deed, 23 May 1693, to trustees for
the poor.

The close is let at £2 15s. a year, which, less Jand
tax, is distributed among the poor on or about
29 May in each year.

BRENT PELHAM

Pelham de Sarneriis (xii cent.) ; Pelham Arsa,
Pelham la Arse, Barndepelham, Brende Pelham (xiii,
xiv and xv cent.) ; Pelham Combusta, Brent Pelham,
Burnt Pelham (xvi, xvii, xvili cent.); Pelham
Sarners! (xviii cent.).

The parish of Brent Pelham has an area of 1,6364
acres, of which rather more than half is arable land.?
The altitude varies from 300 ft. to 450 ft., reaching
its lowest point in the southern part of the parish
beside the banks of the River Ash and its highest
near the north-western boundary. The soil is heavy
and the subsoil clay.

At a point midway in the southern boundary of
this parish the road which connects Furneux Pelham
parish with the Hadham road divides into two, one
of which leads through Brent Pelham and to the
north-east into Essex and has on its north side, not
far from the Essex boundary, the house called
Beeches, now occupied by the farm bailiff to Mr.
E. E. Barclay. It is a timber-framed and plastered
house with tiled roofs. The walls are on founda-
tions of thin 2-in. bricks; the chimney stacks are

58 Chan, Ing. p.m. 47 Hen. III, no. 14 ;
Feet of F. Herts. 49 Hen. III, no. 578;
Div. Co. 1 Edw. II, no. 4; Chan. Inq.
aqd. file 365, no. 18 (42 Edw. III);
list of patrons given by Cussans, op. cit.
Edwinstree Hund. 133 ; Newcourt, Repert.
i, 847.

5° Cussans,op. cit. Edwinstree Hund. 132.

i, 847.

60 Valor Eccl. (Ree. Com.), 1, 452.
61 Terrier quoted by Newcourt, Repert.

1The present name of the parish,
which occurs as early as 1230 (Cal. Pat.
1225-32, p. 368), is traditionally derived
from a fire which took place in the reign
of Henry I (Home Cos. Mag. [1902], iv,

gI

also of thin bricks. The house, it is said by Chauncy,*
was built by Philip Allington, who died in 1595, but
there appear to have been considerable alterations
during the latter part of the 17th century and also in
the 19th century. The plan was originally L-shaped.
The main block faces south-west, and the wing at
its south-east end, projecting north-east, contains the
kitchen offices ; at the re-entering angle is a square
newel staircase inclosed with timber-framing and
weather-boarded. At the other end of the main
block is a short wing which was probably added later
in the 17th century ; originally it was much longer,
but many years ago some six rooms at the end were
demolished, tradition says because they were haunted.
It now contains a stair to the first floor and has a
cellar beneath ; a modern brick passage, on the ground
floor only, connects this wing with the main entrance
lobby about the middle of the main block. At each
end of the main block is a projecting chimney stack
with a row of three plain octagonal shafts with
moulded bases; the capitals have corbelled projections
making them star-shaped on plan. About the centre

289). ‘Some fragments do yet appear,’
wrote Norden in 1593, ° of the founda-
tions of sundry buildings which were con-
sumed by that fire, whereof it taketh the
adjunct arsa’ (Norden, Speculum Brit
21).

} Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

3 Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of Herts. 142.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

of the main block a similar chimney stack projects at
the back. Against the south-east side of the wing is
a wide projecting stack from the kitchen fireplace ; it
has sloping offsets masked in front by stepped
brickwork. The head is plain. The main entrance
is near the centre of the south-west front, and the
rooms at each end have splayed bay windows on the
ground floor only, probably of late 17th-century
date. The external plaster work is ornamented with
flush-bead panels filled with late 17th-century combed
work of different patterns, but patched and in poor
condition. The original hall was in the centre of
the main block ; the stone fireplace has been removed
to Brent Pelham Hall, together with a quantity of oak
panelling from two of the bedrooms and a room, now
the parlour, at the south-east end of the main front.
This room retains a mid-17th-century plaster ceiling,

and under the collars of the roof; the sloping part
was formerly decorated with moulded plaster ribs
forming a pattern of large hexagons with plaster roses
where the ribs crossed, portions of which remain.

In 1595 the capital messuage or farm called Shonk
in Brent Pelham was held with Beeches Manor.‘
Chauncy in 1700 describes ‘an old decayed house
well moated . . . called O Piers Shonks,’® and in
1743 an old moated barn known as Shonks Barn
stood near Beeches Manor House, but was ‘in a very
tottering condition,’ ® and a neighbouring wood was
called Shonks Wood,’ now apparently Beeches Wood.
Shonks Moats can still be seen near Beeches House about
a mile to the south-east of Brent Pelham Church and
inclose two islands. Popular tradition connects these
place-names with a tomb in the church, which an
18th-century inscription ascribes to O Piers Shonks,
who died in 1086. But the tomb dates only
from the late 13th century.8 The name Shonks
has been more plausibly derived from the early
tenancy of Gilbert Sanke (see below under
manor of Beeches) or others of his family, of

whom may have been Matthew Shanke® and
William Shanke of Pelham,!® who occur in
1324 and 1353 respectively, and Peter Shank,

Traces of dormer windows

who later in the century was lessee of the manor
of Barwick in Barkway !! (q.v.).
The second road into which the Furneux

ee) 10 20 30 4
SCALE OF FEET

4

F317 Century f

EJLaTER AND MODERN

ear

Swwikl
roll

PASSAGE

wh
ans
tl

Pian or THe Beecues, Brent Peruam

the moulded ribs of which form a square and hexagonal
pattern ; the ceiling goes into the bay window. The
wide kitchen fireplace has a three-centred arch, partly
blocked ; there is a small cellar under the kitchen.
On the first floor is a stone fireplace with four-centred
arch and frieze carved with roses and leaves ; it is of
mid-17th-century date. The attic floor over the
main block is one long gallery the whole length of
the building ; it is 66 ft. long by 1o ft. 6 in. wide,
and is now lighted only by a small brick-mullioned
window pierced through the chimney stack at each
end. Near the centre, in a recess, is a stone fireplace
with splayed four-centred arch. The gallery was
formerly lighted by dormers on both sides, traces of
which still remain. It is ceiled on the sloping rafters

4 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cexliii, 71.
> Chauncy, Hise, .fnsiz. of Herts. 143.
6 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 18.

* Ibid. fol. 19.

® Hist. Monum. Com. Rep. Herts. 70.
9 Cal. Pat. 1324-7, p. 38.
10 Cal. Close, 1349-54, p. 523.

Pelham road divides leads north and north-
west through Brent Pelham village, at a point
beyond which it also divides, one road going
to Meesden parish, with Chamberlain’s Moat
(probably marking the site of the old manor-
house of Chamberleyns) on its west side, and
the other by a winding route to Anstey. The
buildings which form the village lie somewhat
scattered ; several new dwellings have been
erected by the present owner. In the village
are the kennels of the Puckeridge Foxhounds.
The church is in the middle of the village
and the stocks and whipping-post are by the
south gate : the iron wrist holders of the latter,
fastened with padlocks, still remain.

To the east of the church is Brent Pelham
Hall, the manor-house, the residence of Mr.
i. E. Barclay, lord of the manor. It is of two
stories with attics and has tiled roofs. A lintel
dated 1608 is over one of the doors in the wall
of the garden, and the house was probably
erected at that date. It was originally a timber-
framed building, but was encased in brick towards
the end of the 17th century. The plan was roughly
L-shaped ; the main block, about 80 ft. in length,
faces west, and at its south end is a wing projecting
eastwards ; there is a modern north wing. At each
end of the west front is a slightly projecting wing
with hipped roof, and in the centre is a bay of still
less projection with pediment over; in the centre is
a porch. The view of the house (1698) given by
Chauncy is practically identical with the present view
of the front. Moulded modillion cornices of wood are
carried round the eaves and pediment. The level of
the first floor is marked by a plain brick string-course.
In the centre of the pediment is an oval sunk panel.

"Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 578. There
was also a family of Knightshank in Bark-
way. See p. 27.

g2

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

The front of the porch is modern. All the windows
have flush moulded frames without brick reveals.
The chimney stacks belong to the original house of
1608 and are built of thin bricks. On the south
wing is a group of four detached plain octagonal
shafts standing on a square base; the bases are
moulded. At the north end is a projecting stack
with two similar shafts. About midway between is a
stack with two circular shafts with moulded capitals
and bases; one of these is ornamented with fish-
scale pattern, the other with a cheveron. The
interior has been much altered and added to, but
the old hall still remains ; it occupies the whole of
the front between the wings. The hall has a stone
fireplace with moulded four-centred arch and an
early 17th-century oak mantelpiece. The panelling
on these walls and also on those of the dining room is
of the same date. In the dining room, north of the
hall, is a late 17th-century stone fireplace bearing the
Floyer arms. There
are several other
stone fireplaces in
the house made of
clunch, two of them
brought a few years
ago from Beeches.
One of these, now in
the study, is of mid-
17th-century date
and has a four-sided
moulded arch with
carved spandrels and
a frieze above carved
with roses and other
flowers. The arch,
like the fireplaces at
Queenhoo Hall,
Tewin, is formed of
four straight lines in-
stead of segments of
circles. On the stairs
at the north end of
the house are the
arms of Floyer im-
paling Boothby. In
an ante-room at the
south end of the
house and also in the study and one of the bedrooms
is a quantity of mid-17th-century oak panelling
brought from Beeches.

A large number of fragments of Roman pottery
have been dug up from time to time in the fields
surrounding the house ; many of these are preserved
at the Hall, including a perfect specimen of a large
Roman water-jug.

The Bury, now a farm-house, stands in the village
north of the church; it is a T-shaped building of
early 17th-century date. The roofs are tiled. The
house has been much modernized ; it is of two
stories, ‘There are two chimney stacks of thin brick
on the roofs with square shafts set diagonally on
sloping bases ; they have been partly rebuilt. Over
the back door is the date 1677 moulded in the
plaster.

2 Dict, Nat. Biog. See under Bartho-
lomew Young,

1B Thid,

4 Add, MS, 5806, fol. 23 4.

15 Thid. fol. 15 d.

W.D. 16, Liber i.

93

16 Doc. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s,

BRENT PELHAM

Near Cole Green is a moated tumulus.

OF the inhabitants of the parish Francis Young
gained some distinction by the dedication to him in
1602 of Anthony Munday’s Palmerin of England.
The divine Charles Wheatley was instituted to the
vicarage in March 1726, but transferred in April to
Furneux Pelham.}8

Place-names which occur in Brent Pelham are
Bradecompe,!* Burstouwe,!5 Fleslond, Bedewelle and
Presteslond 1® (xiii cent.) ; Boyle and Newclose,!”
both field-names (xvi cent.).

There is in the Domesday Survey no

MANORS distinction between the three Pelhams.
All the lands in them are described as

in Pelham, with the exception of one holding said to
be in Hixham, a manor included in what became
Furneux Pelham. The Survey makes mention of
13 hides and 3 virgates of land in the Pelhams,
divided into eight holdings. Of these, three, con-

Tue Beecues, Brent PerHam: CEILING oF PaRLour

taining in all 3 hides and 3 virgates, were held by
men of Asgar the Staller, probably identical with the
Sheriff of Middlesex who was prominent in the
defence of London against William I.18 A fourth
holding, having a hide and a virgate of land, had two
tenants, a man of Asgar and a man of the Abbot of
Ely. Two more, of which the total assessment was
3 hides, were in the tenure of men of Godwin of
Bendfield ; and of the two remaining, one, which
had 24 hides, was held by a man of Godwin and a
man of Anschil of Ware, and the other, assessed at
3 hides 1 virgate, by a thegn who was Anschil’s man
and a thegn of Ailmar of Benington, together with
five sokemen of the king who held 5 virgates. Thus
the tenants of the Pelhams in Anglo-Saxon times
owed allegiance to six overlords, including the king.
In 1086 all their territory was held of the Bishop of

7 Chan.

no. 49. .
18 Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii, 424,

501, $25, 544, 729-

Proc (Ser. 2), bdle. 192,

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

London. The mesne tenants were changed in
number in three cases : a holding of 1 hide 1 virgate,
held formerly by two brothers, men of Asgar, had
only one tenant; another of 14 hides, which one
man of his had held, had passed to William and
Ranulf; and that holding which had been in the
tenure of men of Anschil and Godwin was held by
Ranulf only. Moreover the five sokemen of the
king had disappeared. The two thegns of Anschil
and of Elmar had given place to two knights.!® All
the three Pelhams continued to be held of the
Bishops of London.

The division between them was probably estab-
lished in the 12th century. There is separate
evidence of Brent and Furneux Pelham in 1181,”
of Stocking Pelham in 1278.7!

was said to hold of the bishop half a knight's fee in
the parish.2°. He may be identified with a Nicholas
le Grey who made his will in 133427 and who was
succeeded before 1363 by Thomas le Grey. The
latter with his wife Agnes at this date settled his
manor of Brent Pelham on himself and his heirs by
Agnes.28 He still held in 1373, but in 1378 the
manor had passed to John Grey,*° probably his son,
who in 1405 #! settled it on himself and his wife
Joan in tail. In 1418 *? and 1428 %9 Joan was sole
tenant. She was succeeded, according to the settle-
ment, by her son Ralph, who was knighted and who
died in 1464, leaving a son and heir Ralph.*4 The
latter, who was one of the barons of the Exchequer,
died in 1492 and left a daughter and heiress Eliza-
beth,#5 who married Anthony Waldegrave or Walgrave,

wots a ae i} wid
Sy ie Z~ ~deufencelavies
Pee Ae ‘ f.

Tue Srocxs, Brent PerHam

Between 1210 and 1212 Richard le Grey held part
of a knight’s fee of the Bishop of London, evidently
the manor of BRENT PELHAM or GREYS,” and
about the year 1230 he again occurs as a tenant in
the parish.*? His probable successor was Nicholas le
Grey, who in 1254 received a grant of free warren
in Brent Pelham.*4 This Nicholas was probably
father to Nicholas grandson of Richard le Grey, who
was tenant of the manor in 1278 %° and who in 1303

19 T°.C.H. Herts. 1, 288, 3074, 3075.

20 Newcourt, Repert. i, 852, 854.

21 Assize R. 323.

#2 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 541.

28 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 23d.

*4 Cal. Pat. 1247-58, p. 318.

°> Herts. and Hants Assize R. Edw. I
(Agarde’s Index), fol. 45 d.

46d,

no. 523.

3 Ric. II, m. 20d.

94

26 Feud. Aids, iiy 431.
™ Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i,

78 Feet of F. Herts. 37 Edw. III,

29 Cal. Close, 1369-74, p. 587.
3° Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. 2193 Close,

of the Friers in Buers, Suffolk. The eldest son of
Anthony and Elizabeth was William,** who in 1556
conveyed the manor and lands in Brent Pelham and
Stocking Pelham * to trustees for the use of himself
and his wife Katherine for their lives with power of
appointment. ‘The reversion of the mansion-house
or manor-place, with its closes and 24 acres of arable
land, meadows, pasture and wood, was settled sepa-
rately after the deaths of William and Katherine upon

3! Feet of F. Herts. 7 Hen. IV, no. 34.

32 Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Hen. V, no. 375.

33 Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

54 Chan. Ing. p.m. 5 Edw. IV, no. 27.

3 Ibid. (Ser. 2), xii, 108.

36 Visit. of Essex (Harl. Soc.), i, 515.

37 Some of this land belonged to
Chamberleyns Manor.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

their daughters Elizabeth and Margaret for their
lives.38 Katherine after the death of William married
John Brooke, with whom she held the manor.?? In
1563 it was conveyed by Katherine, William Wal-
grave her son, and Margaret her daughter to Henry
Parker Lord Morley.‘° Brent Pelham Manor after-
wards passed for some years with that of Furneux
Pelham *1 (q.v.), being acquired by Edward Newport
in 1597."

By Newport’s son and heir John the manor was sold
to Francis Floyer,*? a Turkey merchant, who, being
elected Sheriff and Alderman of London, submitted
toa fine that he might retire to this property. Here
he occupied himself with the improvement of the
manor-house until ‘ nothing was wanting to make it
pleasant and delightful.’44 He was High Sheriff of
Hertfordshire in 16484 and died in 1678. ‘He
was very grave in his Deportment, reserved in his
Discourse, excellent at accounts in Merchandise,
punctual to his Word
and just in his Deal-
ings, which gave him
a great Reputation.
He loved Hospi-
tality, was noble in
Entertainments,
bountiful to Stran-
gers, and liberal to
the Poor. He was
very strict in all his
Acts of Religion,
always valuing a
clergyman by the
severity of his Duty
and the rules of his
Life. He observed
an excellent Method
for the Government
of his Family, and
kept great order in
this parish.’45* His
grandson Francis, son
of Thomas Floyer,
succeeded him and
became a captain of
the militia in 1685—
6, sheriff of the
county in the follow-
ing year and a justice of the peace in 1688-9.4% At
his death in 1722 the manor passed to his second son
Thomas, who died in 1743 #7 and left a daughter
and heiress Mary. The sisters of Thomas, Elizabeth
wife of John Gibbs, grocer of London, Anne wife of
Angel Chauncy, clerk, and Judith and Katherine
Floyer, settled the manor in 1746.48 Mary Floyer
married Thomas Halden,*® with whom she held
the manor in 1767.59 She died in 1773.51 The

BRENT PELHAM

manor was held by her descendants © until 1839.
when after the death of John Halden it was sold to
George Hallam of Whitebarns

in Furneux Pelham. On the

death in 1859 of the latter’s
son and heir, George Walsh

Hallam, it was bought by

William Heygate, who sold it

in 1865 to Joseph Gurney ,
Barclay of Leyton in Essex,53

whose son Mr. Edward Exton

Barclay, M.A., J.P., M.F.H.,

is the present lord.

CHAMBERLEYNS. — In Frover. Sable a
1181 Brent Pelham parish is — <Aeveron ermine betaveen
called Pelham of W.de Sar- — ‘@/#¢ a/voms argent.
neriis,°4 and between 1210
and 1212 Robert le Sarneres held of the bishop with
Richard le Grey one knight’s fee, in which it is

Brent Pernam Hari: Wesr Front

evident that the two manors of Brent Pelham were
included.55 Another member of this family may
have been Geoffrey Sarvors or Sarnors, who before
1252 endowed the lights of the church.5® In the
first half of the 13th century, however, the rights of
the Sarners family passed to the family of Chamber-
leyn, who possibly were descended from the ancient
holders but had acquired a new surname in right of
an office held by one of their number. The first of

58 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 2 & 3 Phil.
and Mary; Recoy. R. Trin. 2 & 3 Phil.
and Mary, rot. 432 ; Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2),
bdle. 192, no. 49.

39 Chan. Proc, (Ser. 2), bdle. 7, no. 11 ;
Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, bdle. 20,
mei 18, 353+

Feet of F. Herts. East. 5 Eliz. ;
Recov. R. Hil 5 Eliz. rot. 503.

“| Recov. R, East. 25 Eliz. rot. 87;
Trin, 25 Eliz. rot. 157.

“’ Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 39 Eliz.

43 Recov. R. East. z Chas, I, rot. 17 ;
Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccccxxxv, 125.

44 Chauncy, op. cit. 141. His arms
impaling those of Martha Boothby his
wife are on the stairs at Brent Pelham
Hall, as is mentioned above.

45 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 283.

45a Chauncy, op. cit. 142.

4 Ibid. ; Recov. R. Hil. 8 Anne, rot. 10.

47 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 18.

48 Feet of F. Herts. East. 19 Geo. II;
Recov. R, East. 19 Geo. II, rot. 142.

95

49 Cussans, Hist, of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 137.

50 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 7 Geo. III.

51 Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. iii, 450.

52 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 27 Geo. III ;
Mich, 1 Will. IV.

58 Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 136.

54 Newcourt, Repert. i, 854.

55 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 541.
See above.

56 See below.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

them who occurs is Walter le Chamberleyn, who
received small grants of land in the parish from Peter
Fitz William le Grey,’’ John Prior of Berden in
Essex, and Agnes de Wancy, widow.5® In 1240 a
contract was made for the marriage of his eldest son
Henry to Agatha niece of Alexander, Treasurer of
$t. Paul’s Cathedral,®*? and in 1278 a presentment
was made to the justices in assize as to the encroach-
ment committed by him in arching the king’s high-
way. His son may be identified in Henry le
Chamberleyn, who made a grant of land in Brent
Pelham to be held of himself for a yearly rent ! and
who in 1303 was the tenant of the bishop in the
fourth part of a knight’s fee in the parish.°? He
probably had for his heir John Chamberleyn of Brent
Pelham, who in 1345 bequeathed to Sir Alan, vicar
of the parish, a red cow to go before his own corpse on
the day of his burial. His will makes mention of his
late wife Alice, his wife Joan and his son Robert.

was made by Sir John de la Lee of Albury; for in
1361 Thomas le Grey went to Albury and asked
counsel of Sir John, promising to be guided by him
only. Subsequently he re-entered the manor, at this
date called Chamberleyns, and furnished it with goods
and chattels to the value of {10. In 1364, however,
Sir John with his brother Robert and others of his
servants expelled him. Sir John’s successor, Sir Walter
de la Lee, settled the manor of Chamberleyns in
1376, but in 1406 his sister and co-heir Joan with
her husband John Barley and Robert Newport and
his wife Margery, another sister, released the manor
to John Grey and Joan his wife,°® on whom it had
already been entailed in 1405 together with Greys
Manor ® (q.v.), the descent of which it afterwards
followed.®8

BEECHES (Beches, Beaches, Batches), a manor in
Brent Pelham held by Simon de Furneus in the reign
of Edward I, had probably been part of the 2 hides
and I virgate of land
in Pelham of which

Ralph de Furneus
was tenant in 1210—
11.6 In 1278 Simon
had free warren in
Brent Pelham.” In
1287-8 hedistrained
Gilbert Sanke for his
homage and service
and the rent of
40s. 6d. which he
owed, together with
fealty and suit of
court every three
weeks at Simon’s
court of Brent Pel-
ham.” In 1306 an
inquisition was taken
to discover whether
Simon might grant
to the priory of
Thremhall in Essex
certain two messu-
ages, 1674 acres of
arable land, 4 of

EE

<< lannce Daves

Tue Begcues, Brent Petuam: SouTu-west Front

In 1355 this manor of Brent Pelham had passed to
Sir Thomas Chamberleyn, kt., and Alice his wife,
who then settled it on themselves, Stephen son of
Thomas and the heirs of his body.“ At his death
soon afterwards Thomas was succeeded by Thomas le
Grey as kinsman and heir of Stephen Chamberleyn.
It appears, however, that a claim to the inheritance

meadow, 16 of pas-
ture and 2 of wood,
together with rents
worth 21s. 54d. a
year, in Brent Pelham and Furneux Pelham, held
partly of Nicholas le Grey and partly of the bishop.
In return the prior and convent would maintain
chantries for the souls of Simon and his ancestors
within their house and in Furneux Pelham Church.7?
In the same year the bishop intimated to the king
that he had consented to the proposed grant,’ and it

57 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 23 d.

88 Ibid. 15 d.

59 Ibid. 23 d.

60 Herts. and Hants Assize R. Edw. I
(Agarde’s Index), fol. 88.

61 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 15 d.

® Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

68 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i,
39. His funeral expenses amounted to
63s. 73d., of which sum only 33d. was
spent on his coffin.

64 Feet of F. Herts. 29 Edw. III,
no. 441 ; see Add. MS. 5806, fol. 14.4.

® Close, 50 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 9,
12, 13.

% Feet of F. Herts.
no. 43.

7 Ibid. 7 Hen. IV, no. 34.

8 Feud. Aids, ii, 446; Chan. Ing.
pm. 5 Edw. IV, no. 273 (Ser. 2),
ccccxxxv, 125; Feet of F. Herts. Trin.
2 & 3 Phil. and Mary; East. 5 Eliz. ;
Trin. 29 Eliz. ; Trin. 39 Eliz. ; East. 19
Geo. II; Recov. R. Trin. 2 & 3 Phil. and
Mary, rot. 4323 Hil. 5 Eliz. rot. 503 ;
East. 25 Eliz, rot. 87 ; Trin. 25 Eliz. rot.

96

8 Hen. IV,

157 ; East. 2 Chas. I, rot. 17; Hil. 8 Anne,
rot. 10 ; East. 19 Geo. II, rot. 142 ; Chan.
Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 192, no. 49.

9 See account of Furneux Pelham.

70 Assize R. 323.

71 Chauncy, op. cit. 140. A marginal
reference to the Exch. R. for Trin. 16
Edw. I cannot be identified.

7? Chan. Ing. p.m. 34 Edw. I, no, 224.
See account of Furneux Pelham Church.

73 London Epis. Reg. Baldock and
Gravesend, fol. 43; Hist. MSs. Com.

Rep. ix, App. i, 394.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

was authorized by Letters Patent.“ In 1536 the
manor of Beeches in Pelham, which had lately be-
longed to Thremhall Priory, was granted in tail-male
to John Cary and to Joyce Walsingham, to whom he
was betrothed.” In 1566 it was regranted in tail to
Wymond Cary” of Hackney, son and heir of John
and of Martha daughter of Edmond Denny,” and
Wymond in 1587 conveyed it to Philip Allington.”
Chauncy states that Philip built a ‘fair house’ on the
manor,” which at his death in 1595 passed to his
son Christopher, who was only six years old.’ A
conveyance in 1616 between Thomas Draver and
others and Thomas Byshopp, kt., and his wife Jane®!
was probably for the purposes of a settlement.
According to Chauncy, Beeches was bought about
the year 1640 by Adam Washington of Lincoln’s Inn,
who married Elizabeth eldest daughter of Francis
Floyer of Brent Pelham Manor, and who devised it
by will to his executors to be sold for the benefit of
his children.” It was thus acquired in 1672 by
Felix Calvert,® who afterwards held Furneux Pelham
Hall,“ and was conveyed by him to his daughter’s
husband, William Wright, who was holder in 1700."
He in 1743 had been succeeded by his son Captain
William Wright, an eccentric who had been crippled
by a fall from his horse and who occupied the
remains of Beeches Manor House, ‘together with his
horses, hogs and viler animals.’ He had made it a
rule that no repairs should ever be undertaken and
he shifted from one room to another as each reached
an inconvenient stage of decay. The outhouses were
all demolished and, for lack of stables, the horses
were lodged in the dairy, which had neither doors
nor windows. ‘The first time I ever saw him,’
William Cole wrote of Captain Wright, ‘was by his
fireside upstairs in a sort of a dog kennel, for I can
compare the room where he was to nothing better,
being littered with everything conceivable in it. He
sat without shoes, stockings or breeches, in a nasty
greasy greatcoat, and nightcap and hat one would
not have picked off a dunghill, and a shirt not
changed I suppose since it was first bought. There
was no other room glazed in the house but this and
the next where his brother Felix and son lay, and
the hogs and horses walked about as freely as the
maidservants which were in plenty, no less than four
strapping wenches who had nothing to do but obey
their master and play at cards with him.’ Captain
Wright died unmarried in 1745, but his brother
Felix, who succeeded him, did not comply with his
request that he should be carried to the churchyard
in his carrion cart. Cole, writing in this year, said
that the new lord of the manor was ‘a degree better
than the deceased’ and was ‘going to fit the house
up.’ He left the estate to his nephew George
Wright, who died without issue in 1768 and whose
widow Mary married Stephen Martin Leake.” His
successor William Wright married Margaret Calvert,
daughter of Felix Calvert of Furneux Pelham Hall.
William Wright had two daughters, Susanna, who
married Calvert Bowyer, and Honor, who married

4 Cal. Pat. 1301-7, p. 459.

7 L, and P, Hen. VIII, xi, 202 (44).

7 Pat. 8 Eliz. pt. i.

7 Visit. of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 135.

78 Pat. 29 Eliz. pt. xili; Feet of F.
Herts, Mich, 29 & 30 Elir.

79 Chauncy, op. cit. 142.

% Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccxliii, 77.

85 Chauncy, op.
Hist. of Herts. 289-

81 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 14 Jas. I.

8? Chauncy, op. cit. 142.

83 Feet of F. Herts. Trin, 22 Chas. II ;
Hil. 23 & 24 Chas. II.

84 See account of Furneux Pelham.
ci. daa:

86 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 18, 19, 27+

BRENT PELHAM

Charles Parnell of Much Hadham.* In 1772 the
manor was conveyed by fine by Calvert Bowyer and
Hugh Parnell, son of Honor and Charles, and his
wife Mary, and by Stephen Martin Leake and Mary
his wife, who probably had an interest in it for the
latter’s life, to Francis Buxton.” In 1774 Hugh
devised his moiety to his son Hugh, of whom it was
bought by Calvert Bowyer. The latter in 1796 sold
all the manor to John Woodley, by whose trustees it
was sold to Samuel Smith of Woodhall Park, Watton.”
After the death of Mr. Samuel George Smith of
Sacombe Park in 1900 the property was sold to
Mr. E. E. Barclay of Brent Pelham Hall.”
The church of ST. MARY THE
CHURCH VIRGIN consists of chancel 26 ft. by
18 ft. 6Gin., nave 51 ft. 6 in. by 28 ft.,
west tower 12 ft. by 10 ft. 6in., and modern south
porch and north organ chamber ; all the dimensions
are internal. The walls are of flint rubble with stone
dressings, the roofs are tiled.

The nave and chancel were built about the middle
of the 14th century and the west tower about the
middle of the following century. In the 19th century
an organ chamber was added on the north side of the
chancel, a south porch built and the whole church
restored.

The chancel has a modern east window of three
lights with traceried head. In the north wall is a
modern arch to the organ chamber, in the north wall
of which has been reset a mid-14th-century window
of two lights with flowing tracery. In the south wall
is a similar window and beside it is a plain doorway
with pointed arch, much restored. In the north wall
near the east end is a small niche with pointed arch,
all of modern stonework. The chancel arch is of two
moulded orders with label on the west side. The
jambs are moulded and have three engaged circular
shafts ; the capitals and bases are moulded, the latter
having moulded sub-bases.

There are three windows in the north wall of the
nave and three in the south wall. The central
window in each wall is of three lights, the others are
of two lights. They have all traceried heads of 14th-
century character, of modern stonework ; the inner
jambs are original. The north and south doorways
are of two continuous wave-moulded orders, with
moulded labels with returned ends; they are of
mid-14th-century date. The north doorway is
blocked, the south door is coeval with the doorway.
The arched head is filled with flowing tracery, much
worn ; the door has been rebacked. On the faces
of the two central buttresses on the north side of the
nave are three crosses cut in the stonework ; they each
bear the form of a cross paty and are cut to a depth
of about 14in.; they are from 7 in. to 9 in. across.
One buttress has two crosses, one about 6 ft. from the
ground, the other about 7 ft. higher ; the other but-
tress has only one cross, about 4 ft. 6in. from the
ground. They may be consecration crosses.

The west tower is of three stages, with embattled
parapet and slender lead-covered spire. The western

87 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antiq. of
Herts. ili, 447+

Sia Deeds in possession of Mr. F. A-
Crallan,

88 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 13 Geo. III.

89 Clutterbuck, Hist. ad Antig. of
Herts, ili, 447+

90 Information from Mr. E. E. Barclay.

Salmon,

4 97 “

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

buttresses are diagonal and under one of them is a
large block of flint conglomerate or ‘ pudding-stone.’
In the nortb-west angle of the tower is a newel stair
entered by a four-centred arched doorway from the
inside. The tower arch is of two moulded orders,
the outer order continuous, the inner resting on round
engaged shafts with moulded capitals and bases ; it is
of 15th-century date. The west doorway is of two
moulded orders with square head and blank shields
in the spandrels. Over the doorway is an embattled
string-course. The doorway is very similar to the
west doorway at Layston. The west window is of

three cinquefoiled lights with traceried head. The

Brent Peruam Cuurcu: Tue Soutu Door

belfry windows are of two cinquefoiled lights with
traceried heads, partly of modern stonework. The
whole tower was thoroughly restored and bells rehung
a few years ago by Mr. Edward Barclay.

Under the tower arch is a modern oak screen, in
which are incorporated some traceried heads from a
screen of 15th-century date.

On the floor at the west end of the nave is a brass
with two female figures and inscription to Mary,
1625, and Anne, 1627, wives of Francis Rowley. In
an arched recess in the north wall of the nave is a
tomb, on the top of which is a black marble slab,
5 ft. 6 in. long, decorated with carvings in high relief
of 13th-century date. It represents a richly floreated

98

cross issuing from the mouth of a dragon; at the
centre of the cross is a winged figure bearing a soul
in the form of a small figure, around which are the
symbols of the Evangelists, all winged. Nothing is
known about the tomb, which is ascribed to Piers
Shonks, but a legend recounts that by the help of
the miraculous flight of an arrow Piers found a place
for his tomb which should cheat the devil, who,
offended by the slaying of a dragon, had vowed
to have his soul whether he were buried inside the
church or out.

There are four bells: the first and second by
Miles Graye, 1634; the third by J. Briant, 1792 ;
the fourth by Miles Graye, 1637.

The communion plate includes a
cup of 1628.

The registers before 1813 are as
follows : (i) baptisms 1539 to 1690,
burials 1539 to 1689, marriages 1551
to 16893 (ii) baptisms and_ burials
1690 to 1773, marriages 1690 to
1754; (iii) mixed entries 1539 to
17733 (iv) baptisms and burials 1773
to 1812, marriages 1754 to 1813.

The church of

ADVOWSON Brent Pelham is said
to have been granted

to the Treasurer of St. Paul’s with that
of Furneux Pelham by Bishop Richard
de Beames of London between 1152
and 1162." In 1181 it was stated
to have been appropriated to the
treasurer's office, to pay 13d. annually
to the archdeacon and 12d. as Peter's
Pence and to have appurtenant to it
40 acres of land held in demesne and
rents to the value of 85. 44. It was
visited among other churches of the
cathedral in 1252. The churchyard
was then found to be very ill-inclosed.
The steps before the altar were of mud,
without stone, wood or cement. On
the walls of the chancel there were no
designs in plaster, and two panes of
glass were missing in the place where
the psalms were sung. The church
had only five books, of which all but
one were stated to be in bad condition.
The treasure consisted of a silver chalice
partly gilded, a chrismatory of tin and
two old tin candlesticks, a small tin pyx
insecurely hung in a bag above the
altar, three old phials of tin, a small
censer, two little bells for use at
funerals, a little banner, red and yellow, and several
vestments and cloths. There was a single crucifix
over the high altar. Geoffrey Sarvors or Sarnors
had granted 2 acres of land to be held by the
Treasurer of St. Paul’s in demesne for the finding
of two candles on the high altar, but his foundation
had not always been effectual. A collection of one-
fourth from each messuage was customarily made for
the Easter candle, and the lights otherwise depended
on votive offerings. The ministers were a chaplain
and his clerk, of whom the chaplain had his lodging
near the graveyard and within thechurch’s land. The
church was said to be of the Blessed Virgin, but had

91 Newcourt, Repert. i, 853. " Ibid. 852.

.

MF. vex

Ake. S&S

si

F
3
4

ig
s
:

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

not been dedicated.** In 1291 it was returned as of
the annual value of £5.% It was with Furneux
Pelham among the seven benefices held in 1294 by
Robert de Drayton. It was again visited by officers
of St. Paul’s in 1297. They found the graveyard ill-
inclosed, unclean and not consecrated, with all its
entrances open ; an unthatched belfry in a bad state
of repair, in which were two ill-tuned bells ; a church
still unconsecrated and ill-thatched with straw, having
weak doors without good locks or bars. The windows
were also in need of bars and some of them in the
chancel lacked glass. ‘The church had four unconse-
crated altars. A painted crucifix in the middle of the
nave, which had on either side images of the Virgin
and of St. John, had been injured by rain, and here
were also images of St. Nicholas and St. Katherine.
The seats, lecterns and forms were sufficient. The
church had eight books, including an ordinal of
St. Paul’s use. The treasure and vestments had in-
creased since 1252.

In 1314 this church, like that of Furneux Pelham,
was exempted from the sphere of the king’s pur-
veyors.” In 1458 it was visited by the Dean of
St. Paul’s and one of the canons. They found that

BRENT PELHAM

dissolution of religious houses the vicarage was of the
annual value of £7. An inventory of the goods of
the church made in 1552 mentions only one silver
chalice partly gilded, a copper cross, four vestments of
red, blue, white and green satin, three corporales and
two handbells, as well as three bells which were in
the steeple.’ At the date of the dissolution of gilds
and chantries a rent of 6¢. was received from each of
2 acres of land for the maintenance of a light.! The
advowson continued to be held by the Treasurer of
St. Paul’s.? In July 1771 the vicarage was consoli-
dated with that of Furneux Pelham.® The two parishes
became in 1845 part of the diocese of Rochester and
the patronage was given as from the time of the
death of the existing Treasurer of St. Paul’s to the
Bishop of Rochester. The treasurer presented for the
last time in 1864.4 The rectory of Brent Pelham
was vested in 1858 in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,’
who in 1859 were authorized to sell it.6 In 1877,
when the two parishes were included in the diocese of
St. Albans,’ the Bishop of St. Albans became patron.
The charity of Francis Floyer,
CHARITIES founded by will 1678, formerly under
the management of the Mercers’

ri f Prest

Brent Peruam Cuurcn: Suonxs’s ‘Toms

the roof had been removed in order that it might be
renewed. The roofing of the chancel with shingles
was defective and so were its corner stones and the
stonework of a northern window. Complaint was
made that the vicar kept his horse in the graveyard,
that he frequently preached discreditably, that he
did not publish sentences of excommunication and
that during the solemnities of canonical hours he
chatted with his parishioners, both men and women.
Only six books of the church are mentioned, but
the store of vestments was considerable and appa-
rently valuable. The treasure had otherwise been
increased by two silver chalices and several articles of
copper-gilt and brass, and by two alabaster tablets
showing the Trinity and the five joys of Mary, and a
third tablet, not said to be of alabaster, having on it
the figure of St. Anthony.” At the time of the

%3 Camden Masc. (Camden Soc.), ix,
20.

“4 Pope Nich, Tax. (Rec. Com.), 15, 13.

® Cal, Pat. 1292-1301, p. 118. ‘

% Visit, of Churches of St. Paul’s(Cam- den Soc.), 120.
den Soc.), 42-5.

% Cal, Pat. 1313-17, P+ 190.

den Soc.), 103-5.

ce,

98 Visit, of Churches of St. Paul’s (Cam-

99 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 452.
100 Visit. of Churches of St. Paul's (Cam-

1 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 35.
? Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).

Company, London, is endowed with £184 12s. 34.

consols and £312 24 per cent. annuities, arising from
the redemption in 1893 by the said company of a
early payment of £7 16s.

’ Phe vharity of ie Catherine Floyer, founded by

will 1758, is endowed with £226 18s. 2d. consols.

The several sums of stock are held by the official
trustees, and the annual dividends, amounting together
to £18 15. 8d., are applied under the provisions of a
scheme of the Charity Commissioners of 18 April 1884,
in the distribution of bread and coal.

The official trustees also holda sum of £54 5s. 11d.
consols, arising in 1860 from a legacy of £25 bya
codicil to the will of the late Mr. G. W. Hallam and
an addition of £25 by the testator’s widow.

The dividends, amounting to £1 75. yearly, are
applicable for the repair of the National school.

3 Clutterbuck, op. cit. ili, 449.
4 Lond. Gaz. 20 Aug. 1845, p. 2541 3
Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree Hund.

143.
5 Lond. Gaz. 11 June 1858, p. 2879.
6 Ibid. 27 Sept. 1859, p. 3524-
7 Ibid. 4 May 1877, p. 2933+

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

FURNEUX

Pelham or Pellam, Furnell, Furneus, Furnaus,
Forneus, Fourneaus (xiii and xiv cent.).

The parish of Furneux Pelham has an area of
2,585 acres, of which 7 are water. Rather less than
half the parish is arable and about one-fifth per-
manent grass.' The altitude varies from 300 ft. to
400 ft., the highest ground being at the northern
end of the parish. The soil is mixed, the subsoil
clay and chalk.

The village surrounds the church and has at one
end Furneux Pelham Hall, the manor-house. This
was probably built by Edward twelfth Lord Morley
late in the 16th century, and is almost entirely of
brick, the only part timber-framed and _ plastered
being the north gable of the west wing; the roofs
are tiled. The building is L-shaped on plan, the
main block facing south and having a wing at its

PELHAM

story, the marks of which still remain on the front ,
they were altered in the 17th century, and have all
square moulded labels and modern casements. The
windows on the east and west fronts have no labels ;
they retain their 17th-century flush window frames.
On the east front are two plain projecting chimney
stacks ; the tops have been rebuilt, but the bases of
octagonal shafts are left. Between the chimney stacks
was a gable with a large circular opening or panel in
the centre, but the upper part is gone ; the chimneys
and gable were part of the 17th-century alterations.
The east side of the west wing has two small crow-
stepped gables and between them is a semicircular
gable of 17th-century date. The plan of the house
appears to have undergone considerable alterations
late in the 17th century. The entrance hall or
corridor, which is 12 ft. wide and has an old wall on

western end projecting northwards. During the each side, was carried through to the back, where it
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YARD

SCALE OF Peer

Prax or Ferneux Peryam Hati

latter part of the 17th century, probably after it
was purchased by Felix Calvert in 1677, it under-
went considerable alterations and was partly refaced ;
in the 1gth century additions were made north and
east of the west wing. The house is of two stories
with attics, and beneath the drawing room at the
south-east angle is a small cellar. The south and
west fronts have each three curvilinear gables added
in the 17th century ; the original gables were crow-
stepped, traces of which can be seen. The gables on
the north side of the main block and on the east side
of the wing still retain their steppings. The attic
windows in the gables are original ; one of those on
the north side has three round-arched lights. They
have all square moulded labels over ; those on the
east front retain their original oak moulded frames
and mullions, the others being modern. The main
entrance is in the middle of the south front ; it is of
late 17th-century date with wooden pilasters and flat
hood above. The windows of the ground and first
story of the south front are arranged in pairs, except
in the central gable, which has only one, but originally
there was only one wide mullioned window to each
1 Statistics from Bd, of Agric. (1905).

communicates with the west wing; the principal
stair occupies the central portion. To the east is the
drawing room ; it was originally two rooms, but the
division wall has been removed and the door from
the north room to the corridor blocked. The stair
is of late 17th-century date. Its plan is peculiar. It
is placed between the two doors of the rooms con-
verted into the drawing room; the first six steps
lead to a square landing, where the stair turns to the
left, but across the landing are six steps down to
the former level at the blocked doorway to the
drawing room. The reason for this is not clear, as
there is sufficient headroom to pass under the upper
landing. The stair has plain moulded balusters. To
the west of the corridor is a lounge (until recently
the dining room) with a wide modern opening into
it. Behind the lounge and separated from it by the
substructure of an original chimney stack is the
dining room (formerly the kitchen); at the east end
of the brickwork of the chimney is a small private
stair, now disused, opening into the corridor. The
kitchen in the west wing has a portion of the original
four-centred arch over the fireplace. In an ante-room
on the first floor is a stone fireplace with moulded

100

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

four-centred arch and moulded cornice above ; it is
of late 17th-century date. There is another of plainer
character in the dining room, but it has been brought
from elsewhere. The drawing room is panelled
with large bolection-moulded oak panels of Jate 17th-
century date. In the dining room and in some of
the first-floor rooms is early 17th-century panelling,
also some pilasters, friezes and mantelpieces with
arabesque carving. A dressing room over the entrance
hall has an original heavy oak moulded door frame
with a square head. In the cellar under the south
end of the drawing room is a blocked fireplace of
stone with plain four-centred arch ; in the walls are
several small brick recesses with splayed round-arched
heads.

The Yew Tree Inn, east of the vicarage, is a late
16th-century building of two stories ; it is timber-
framed and weather-boarded, with tiled roof, but
has been modernized. A room on the ground floor,
now divided into taproom and passage, has a wide
fireplace with ingle seats ; the lintel is of wood. The
ceiling has some well-moulded beams and all the
joists are hollow-chamfered on their lower edges and
have carefully worked stops. The chimney stacks are
of thin bricks but quite plain. ‘There are several late
16th or early 17th-century cottages in the village,
nearly all timber-framed and plastered ; some of the
plaster work is panelled and filled with combed work.
Many of the cottages are thatched.

At East End there is a mission church connected
with the parish church, and in the village itself there
are Congregational and Primitive Methodist chapels.
There is a brewery at Barleycroft End. There are
outlying houses at Barleycroft End, where the road
through the village meets Violets Lane,’ at its junction
with the road to Stocking Pelham,® and, further east,
at East End. St. John’s Pelham, where there is a
large moat, and Whitebarns, both the property of
Mr. E. E. Barclay of Brent Pelham, stand on high
ground in the northern part of the parish, the former
west of the latter. Hixham Hall, now a farm, is
in the south-eastern corner of Furneux Pelham, near
the boundaries of Albury and Essex. Of early place-
names Sininecroft occurs in the 13th century. The
meadows called Songeres and Upheas were held
between 1558 and 1579 by the Master and fellows
of Queens’ College, Cambridge.* Field-names in
Whitebarns in 1651 are Mowgrave, Bridgefeild,
Springe Croft, White Barne Feild and Lammasmeadow
in Sillymeade.® In 1813 Hitchfield, Pristol, Bushey
Leys and Burnt Ground were among the fields of
Hixham Hall.’

FURNEUX PELHAM cannot be
certainly distinguished in the Domes-
day Survey from the other Pelhams, all

MANORS

FURNEUX PELHAM

of which were held of the Bishop of London in
1086° and afterwards.” Since, however, it was in

the 14th century in the same tenure as Hixham
Hall, it may be conjectured that in 1086 it was
comprised by the holding of Ranulf, then a tenant of
the bishop in Hixham (q.v.) and in Pelham.”

In 1175-6 there is mention of Ralph de Furnell
Again Ralph

in the Pipe Roll for Hertfordshire"!
de Furneus or Furnell occurs
in 1197 as a tenant in the
county and is mentioned in
1199-1200." In 1210-11
he or another tenant of this
name held of the Bishop of
London z hides and 1 virgate
of land for the service due
from a knight’s fee and three
parts of one." It is likely that
he was succeeded by Simon

son of Ralph de Furneus, Furneus. Argent a
receiver of scutage in Hert- sl ai sis martlets
gues.

ford in 1235 and holder of
a vill of Pelham, of whose
court in Furneux Pelham there is mention between
1229 and 1241.’° This tenant was probably followed
by Simon de Furneus, who held the park of Furneux
Pelham in 1274~5' and who claimed in right of a
grant by Henry III to have free warren in the
manor.'’® In 1303 he was said, with his tenants, to
hold of the bishop half a knight’s fee in the parish."
In 1309 he granted his manor of Furneux Pelham
to William le Gros. The latter’s heir was probably
Hugh le Gros, whose widow Alice died in 1366 as
tenant of the manor, which had been settled on her
and her husband and the heirs of their bodies. It
was then said to be held of the bishop, with Hixham
Hall (q.v.), by the service due from one knight’s fee
and a rent of 7s. 6d. It passed to William le Gros,
son of Hugh and Alice,” who died in 1368, while
yet a minor, and left a son and heir William, who
was only a year old.” ‘The latter was succeeded by
his uncle John, who was knighted,“ and who was
dead in 1384.% In 1387-8 Sir Richard de Sutton,
kt., and Ralph Aynell, parson, who were probably
John’s executors, conveyed the manor to Thomas
Bideford in exchange for that of East Tilbury in
Essex,” and in 1406 John son and heir of Thomas
Bideford released all his right to Robert Newport
and his wife Margery and their heirs.” Robert was
returned to Parliament as a member for Hertford-
shire in 1400-1 and 1411.” He died between
1414" and 1428. At the latter date the tenant of
Furneux Pelham was Margery, then widow of John
Duram.® In 1431 she and Henry Hert, apparently
her third husband, conveyed the manor to William

? To be identified possibly with Phyllot
Lane mentioned in 1651 (Close, 1651,
pt. xxiv, m. 27).

3In 1651 a lane called Cut Throat
Lane from the vicinity of Whitebarns to
Bishop’s Stortford is mentioned (ibid.).

‘Doc. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s,
Liber A. Pilosus, fol. 185.

® Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 202, no. 37.

5 Close, 1651, pt. xxiv, m. 27.

7 Com. Pleas D. Enr. East. 53 Geo. III,
m. 28, 8 V.C.H. Herts. i, 307a, 3075.

® For the bishop’s overlordship of Fur-
neux Pelham see Feud. Aids, ii, 431, 446 ;
Chan. Ing. p.m. 40 Edw. III, no. 16;

42 Edw. III, no. 25; 12 Hen. VI, no. 36 5
(Ser. 2), xxiii, 61; xxxiv, 96.
10 See Brent Pelham.
11 Pipe R. 22 Hen. U (Pipe R. Soc.), 6.
19 R. of the King's Ct. Ric. I (Pipe R.

Soc. 24), 212.

13 Palgrave, Rot. Cur. Reg. (Rec. Com.),

ii, 275.

M4 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 541.
18 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 2655.
16 Doc. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s,

Liber A. Pilosus, fol. 184.

7 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 193-
18 Assize R. 323, 325+
19 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

IOI

20 Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 2 Edw. IJ, no. 22.

21 Chan, Ing. p.m. 40 Edw. III, no. 16 5
Cal. Close, 1364-8, p. 318.

29 Cal. Close, 1364-8, p- 451 3 Chan.
Ing. p.m. 42 Edw. HI, no. 25. The
elder William is called John in the writ
for the inquisition, but nowhere else.

23 Close, 10 Ric. II, m. 27-94.

% Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Ric. U, no. 156.

25 Close, 11 Ric. II, m. 18, 204.

26 [bid. 8 Hen. IV, m. 363 Feet of F.
Herts. 8 Hen. IV, no. 49.

27 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 290.

28 Feet of F. Herts. 2 Hen. V, no. 9.

® Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Newport,” who was presumably son of Robert, and
who represented Hertfordshire in Parliament in 1427
and 1433 and died in 1434. The manor was then
surveyed as consisting of a messuage and other houses,
400 acres of arable land, 100 acres of meadow and
1o acres of wood, a garden, rents of assize of the
annual value of 40s. and a view of frankpledge and
a court worth 12d. a year in addition to the steward’s
fees and expenses. The heir of William was his son
George,” who died in 1484 and left a son and heir
Robert,* Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1496, who in
1518 was succeeded by his son John.* The latter
at his death in 1523 left a daughter and heir Grace,
who a week previously, when only eight years old,
had married Henry the son and heir of Lord Morley.*

OO YY

Newport. Argenta
fesse between three cres-
cents sable,

Parker, Lord Mor-
ley. Argent a lion pas-
sant gules berween two
bars sable with three
bezxants on the bars and
three harts’ heads ca-

boshed sable in the chief.

In 1538 the manor was settled on her and her hus-
band, then Sir Henry Parker, kt., with successive re-
mainders in tail-male to their sons Henry, Thomas
and Charles, to their own heirs male and to the heirs
of Grace.”

Sir Henry Parker, who was Sheriff of Hertfordshire
in 1536,” died in 1551 in his father’s lifetime. His
son and heir Henry became eleventh Lord Morley
in 1555 and died in 1577, when in right of the
settlement of 1538 Furneux Pelham passed to his
son and heir Edward, twelfth baron. The entail
was barred by Lord Morley and his son William by
settlements of 1583“ and 1600.7 Soon after the
latter date the manor was alienated to Edward
Newport, Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1622, on
whose son and heir John and the latter's wife Mary
Sulyard it was settled in 1614. John succeeded to
the manor at his father’s death in 1624. He was
an ardent Royalist, and Salmon relates of him that
he led out all his four sons to fight for the king.
He died in 1646 from the effects of a wound

received in a skirmish near Figheldean in Wiltshire”
and his lands were forfeited. In 1650, however, his
widow Mary received leave from the committee for
compounding to enjoy his mansion-house at Pelham
and one-third of his estates.“ At the Restoration
his eldest son John * entered on his inheritance. He
died without issue and was succeeded by his brother
William, who was lord of the manor in 1700.” He
also died childless, and, in accordance with a settle-
ment made by him, the manor passed to the son of
his brother Thomas, John Francis Newport. The
latter’s son and heir John held in 1728." In1760"
and 1766** the holder was William Newport. He
in 1780 conveyed the manor to John Calvert,™ at
whose death in 1804 it passed to his son John,”
who died in 1859 and by the trustees of whose
will it was sold to Captain Brown. He soon
afterwards conveyed it to George Shaw of Barne-
parks in Teignmouth, Devon, who was lord of the
manor in 1870. It is now the property of Mr. Amos
Gilbert Pembroke of Ford Heath Chislet, near Canter-
bury.”

Furneux Pelham Hall, the manor-house, was not
conveyed with the manor at the beginning of the
17th century to Edward Newport, but was sold about
the same time * by Lord Morley to Richard Mead.
According to Chauncy, Mead pulled down a great
part of the house as being too large for his estate and,
having sold the materials, made of the rest a con-
venient habitation for himself. It passed at his
death to his son Thomas, who in 1614 sold it to
Edward Cason of the Middle Temple. In 1615 it
was settled on Edward and his wife Susan daughter of
Sir Robert Oxenbridge, with successive remainders to
their second son Edward and others of their sons in
tail-male. The elder Edward died in 1624.9 His
widow married Sir Thomas Cecil, kt.,*’ younger son
of the Earl of Salisbury. ‘She was a proper comely
lady, endowed with a most rare and pregnant wit, a
florid and ready tongue, very sharp, but witty in her
repartees ; her common discourse did much exceed
the ordinary in her sex.’ She lived to a great age.°
Chauncy states that in 1641 she joined with Sir
Thomas Cecil in conveying her life interest in
Furneux Pelham manor-house to her son Edward,
the reversionary heir. He in 1677 sold the house
and the parks, lately paled and stocked with deer,
to Felix Calvert,® son of Felix Calvert of Little
Hadham.” Felix is said to have died in 1699, and
he was succeeded by his eldest surviving son William,
who died in 1749. From him Furneux Pelham
Hall passed to his eldest son Felix, who owned a
house and a share in a brewery in Thames Street
and who at his death in 1755 was succeeded by his

30 Feet of F. Herts. 9 Hen. VI, no. 47.

31 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 290.

83 Chan. Ing. p.m. 12 Hen. V1, no. 36.

33 Ibid. (Ser. 2), xxiii, 61.

4 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 282.

35 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxxiv,
96.
36 Tbid. xlii, 96.

87 Feet of F. Herts. East. 30 Hen. VIII.
38 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 283.

39 G.E.C. Peerage, v, 372-

40 W. and L. Ing. p.m. xix, 91.

‘| Feet of F. Herts. East. 25 Eliz. ;
Recov. R. East. 25 Eliz. rot. 87.

42 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 42 & 43
Eliz. ; Recov. R. Trin. 42 Eliz. rot. 75.

8 Visit, of Herts. (Harl Soc.), 793
VCH. Herts. Families, 223.

44 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 12 Jas. I.

45 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccexxxv,
125. © Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 286.

47 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 86.

48 Cal. Com. for Comp. 2663.

49 Thid. 2616.

50 Chauncy, Hust, Antig. of Herts. 144.

51 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 286.

52 Recov. R. East. 33 Geo. II, rot. 41.

83 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 6 Geo. III.

+4 Ibid. Trin. 20 Geo, III. The con-
veyancy at this date was apparently in-
complete, for in 1782 William Newport

102

and his son William were vouchees in a
recovery of the manor (Recov. R. East.
22 Geo. III, rot. 188).

55 Recoy. R. East. 44 Geo, III, rot. 23.

* Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund. 150.

57 Information communicated by Mr.W.
Minet.

58 Before 1618 when Edward Lord
Morley died,

9 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), dxxxii, 4.

60 Chauncy, op. cit. 144.

®1 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), decxlviii, 4.

® Visit. of Herts. (Harl. Soc.), 37+

a Chauncy, op. cit. 145.

83 Ibid,

4 V.C.H. Herts. Families, 55.

Furneux Peryam Hai From THE SOUTH-WEST

'

Furnevx Petnam Cuurcu: 13TH-cENTURY Piscina AND SEDILIA

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

son Nicolson Calvert of Hunsdon, Sheriff of Hert-
fordshire in 1749 and member for Tewkesbury in
1754, 1761 and 1768. ‘In
his political career he was an
ardent friend to public liberty
. . . affable in his manner he
naturally conciliated esteem ; IN
lively in his conversation and N
well acquainted with general N
history he could not fail to

render himself an agreeable >
companion, ... he has left -
behind him a character which
is highly worthy of imitation
and which must ever be re-
spected.” He died childless
in 1793 and had for heir his
brother Felix of Portland Place and Thames Street,
an eminent brewer, who shot himself in Don Salteno’s
coffee-house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the even-
ing of 23 March 1802. His landed estate passed to
his eldest son Nicolson, who was member for Hert-
ford borough in 1802, 1806, 1807, 1812, 1818 and
1820, and for the county from 1826 to 1834. He
married Frances youngest daughter of Edmond
Sexten Lord Pery and died in 1841. His eldest
son, Lieutenant-General Felix Calvert of Hunsdon,
of the 72nd Regiment, served in the Peninsula and
at Waterloo and died without issue in 1856. Edmond
Sexten Pery, second surviving son of Nicolson Calvert,
succeeded to Furneux Pelham and was a justice of
the peace and a deputy-lieutenant for Hertfordshire.
He died in 1866 and Furneux Pelham Hall passed
to his eldest son, Felix Calvert, J.P., who died in
1gto. It has been recently purchased by Mr. C.
Woodall.

In 1086 a hide of land in Pelham, previously in
the tenure of Alured, a man of Asgar the Staller, was
held of the bishop by Payn.® It is possible that
this holding constituted the alleged manor of PAYN-
STON,® which was held with Furneux Pelham Manor
in 1434. and which was probably identical with the
messuage and land called Payston Ende which were
held with it in 1557. The latter presumably now
bears the name of Patient End.

HIXHAM HALL (Tedricesham, xi cent. ; Hideris-
ham, Thiderisham, xiv cent.; Tedresham, Thethirs-
ham, xv cent.; Hedsham, Teddersham, Tettersham,
xvii and xviii cent.) was before the Conquest in the
tenure of Wlwi, a man of Asgar the Staller, who had
the right to sell. It was held of the bishop in 1086
by William and Ranulf, and was then assessed at a
hide and a half and had arable land for three ploughs,
woodland to feed 60 swine and pasture for the live
stock.” The manor was discovered at the death in
1366 of Alice widow of Hugh le Gros to have been
settled on her and her husband on the same terms as
Furneux Pelham,” with which manor it subsequently

Carvert. Paly or and
sable a bend counter-
coloured.

8 V7.C.H. Herts. Families, 55-61.

8 Y.C.H. Herts. i, 3074.

& Otherwise Paynottis.

68 Chan. Ing. p.m.12 Hen. VI, no. 36.

8 Com. Pleas D. Enr. Mich. 4 & 5
Phil. and Mary.

10 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3076. no, 36

7 Chan. Ing. p.m. 40 Edw. III, no. 16.

72 Ibid. 42 Edw. III, no. 25; Close,
11 Ric, II, m. 18, 20 d.; 8 Hen. IV,
m. 36; Feet of F. Herts. 8 Hen. IV,
no. 49; 2 Hen. V, no. 9; 9 Hen. VI,

Geo. II, rot. 41.

7 Com. Pleas
Geo, III, m. 28.

no. 47; Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxiii,
61 3 xxxiv, 96 3 xlii, 96 ; ccccxxxv, 125 ;
Feet of F. Herts. East. 30 Hen. VIII ;
East. 17 Jas. I; Recov. R. East. 33

73 Chan. Ing. p.m. 12

14 Reet of F. Herts. Trin. 6 Geo. III.
D. Enr.

76-7 Chan. Inq. p.m. 21 Edw. I, no. 39 5
cf. Cal. Fine R. 1272-1307, p. 326, where

FURNEUX PELHAM

passed.” It was surveyed in 1434 as containing a
messuage and other buildings, 100 acres of arable
land, 6 acres of meadow and 10 acres of pasture,’
In 1766 it was separated from Furneux Pelham
Manor, being sold by William Newport and _ his
wife Mary to Lee Steer,” who in 1785 and 1794
settled it on his grandson Lee Steer Witts, with
remainder to the latter’s son Lee Steer in tail-male,
subject to an annual rent-charge for the benefit of
the devisor’s daughter Martha wife of Richard Witts
and mother of the elder Lee Steer Witts. The
latter, in compliance with his grandfather’s will,
assumed the surname of Steer in place of Witts.
In 1813 he with his mother broke the entail of
Hixham Manor and sold it, with the exception of
32 acres of wood called the Home Wood and one or
two fields, to George Dyer. The property conveyed
had an area of more than 168 acres and was almost
entirely arable land.”

Hixham Hall is now a farm held by the executors
of the late Mr. Bowman.

ST. JOHNS PELHAM (Jonys of Pelham,
xv cent.; Jonnespelham, xvi cent.). Walter Fitz
William de Pelham, who died in 1292, held in
Furneux Pelham of the Bishop of London 664 acres
of arable land, on which was a dovecote, and
3 acres of wood by military service and suit of
court every three weeks and by rendering a yearly
rent of 40d. and homage, scutage and reliefs. He
also held of Simon de Furneus 88 acres of arable
land, 44 acres of wood, 4 of meadow and 6 of
pasture, as well as rents of assize to the annual value
of 255. §¢. and customary works worth 12s. 54d. in
Furneux Pelham Manor, all by military service and
suit of court every three weeks and by rendering
44d. a year to Simon and homage, scutage and reliefs
and 9d. yearly to the ward of Stortford Castle. His
heir was his son William.”*’ In 1303 his heirs were
said to hold a fourth part of a knight’s fee in Furneux
Pelham of the Bishop of London.” It is possible
that the lands of Walter Fitz William constituted the
alleged manor of Johns Pelham, all right in which
was released in 1408-9 by Robert Newport, who
had lately acquired Furneux Pelham Manor, to
Thomas son and heir of Walter Kilee, late citizen
and fishmonger of London and holder of Johns and
its appurtenant lands in this and neighbouring
parishes.” In 1428 the fourth part of a fee once
in the tenure of Walter Fitz William was held by
William Rook. Johns Pelham was afterwards held
by Ralph Grey, tenant of Brent Pelham Manor, who
died in 1492, and was inherited by his infant
daughter Elizabeth." It probably passed afterwards
with Brent Pelham and with that manor came to
the owners of the manor of Furneux Pelham,” for
at some date before 1577 it was in the tenure of a
lessee of Lord Morley ® and the latter at his death
was holder of the capital messuage called Johns-a

Walter is erroneously called a tenant in
chief. 78 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

79 Close, 10 Hen. IV, m. 10, 22, 25.

80 Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

81 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xii, 108.
VI, 82 See account of Brent Pelham.

8 Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 138,
no. §9. A fine of the manor was levied
by Andrew Grey and Anne his wife in
1583 (Feet of F. Herts. East. 25 Eliz.).
By this Andrew may have relinquished an
hereditary right to the manor.

Hen.

East. 53

103

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Pelham. So long as the family of the lords of Morley
were tenants of Furneux Pelham Manor, Johns was
treated as held by them separately from that pro-
perty and was called a manor. ‘The property now
belongs to Mr. E. E. Barclay of Brent Pelham.

WHITEBARNS ot RECTORY MANOR probably
formed a part of the original endowment of the
parish church and was the holding of the priest men-
tioned in the Domesday Survey.** The church of
Furneux Pelham was, according to Dugdale and Le
Neve, given to the canons of St. Paul’s and annexed
to the office of the cathedral treasurer by Richard de
Beames,*® Bishop of London from 1152 to 1162,
and this grant must have included part of the lands
which constituted the rectory manor. In 1181
there were appurtenant to the church, which belonged
to the treasurer, 80 acres of land held in demesne,
customary works for four days in the week and rent:
to the value of 4s. 34.87 The greater extent of the
later rectory manor may have been due to the inclu-
sion in it of lands which pertained in 1181 to Brent
Pelham Church, also held by the treasurer,®* or to a
grant of land made in the early 13th century by
Simon de Furneus to his mother church of Furneux
Pelham and the rectors there.“? The manor was
surveyed in 1297. It then included a capital mes-
suage and a garden, a dovecote, 7 acres of wood in
le Haye, 14 acres of pasture and 111 acres of arable
land, and there were two tenants at the will of the
lord.

In 1314 the king’s purveyors were forbidden to
take anything from the churches of the canons of
St. Paul’s at Pelham and elsewhere which pertained
to the brew-house of the cathedral and the susten-
ance of the canons and other ministers,% and such
exemption probably included the rectory manor.
The dean and chapter in 1322 received protection
for two years in their manor of Furneux Pelham.®?
In 1334 the king granted to his clerk, Thomas
de Asteley, whom he had appointed Treasurer of
St. Paul’s, that the dwelling-house in Pelham appur-
tenant to his office should be quit of the livery of the
stewards, chamberlains and marshals, or any royal or
other minister, so that none such might there lodge
or lodge others.°? In 1651 the trustees for the goods
of cathedral churches sold the rectory manor ot
Furneux Pelham, otherwise called ‘White Barnes,’
to Richard Cutts of Arkesden in Essex and Anthony
Knightsbridge of Gray’s Inn. The lands of the
manor were less than in 1297, for they comprehended
only some g3 acres of arable, meadow and pasture
land and a copse of § acres 2 roods.% At the
Restoration the rectory manor returned to the Trea-
surer of St. Paul’s, under whom it was held on lease
in 1728. The endowment of the treasurership
became vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in
1858.9 Whitebarns now belongs to Mr. E. E.
Barclay of Brent Pelham.

The church of ST. MAR?’ THE

CHURCH VIRGIN consists of chancel 27 ft. by
19ft., south chapel 26 ft. by 20 ft.,

nave 47 ft. by 19 ft., north aisle 11 ft. wide, south

™ Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 20 & 21
Eliz.; East. 25 Eliz.; Hil. 42 Eliz. ;
Recoy. R. Hil. 41 Eliz. rot 24. 394.

VCH. Herts. i, 307.

% V.C.H. London, i, 423.

. den Soc.), 39-42.
** Newcourt, Repert. i, 852.

‘8 See account of Brent Pelham.
89 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i,

8a Visit. of Churches of St. Paul's (Cam-

aisle 11 ft. 6in. wide, west tower g ft. 6 in. square,
south porch 12 ft. 6 in. by 11 ft. ; all the dimensions
are internal. The walls are of flint rubble with
oolite dressings, except to the porch, which has
clunch dressings ; the north aisle is cement covered.

The chancel is of late 13th-century date. The
west tower was added about 1370-80. The north
and south aisles with the arcades and clearstory belong
to the early years of the 15th century. ‘The south
chapel is said to have been erected by Robert New-
port, who died in 1518. The church was restored
in the 1gth century and most of the windows
renewed.

The east window of the chancel is of three lights
with modern tracery. The rear arch is moulded and
has shafted jambs; it is of 13th-century date. In
the north wall are three 13th-century lancet windows,
the westernmost of which is a low-side window,
blocked ; it is about 12 in. wide, and the sill outside
is 3 ft. 6 in. from the ground. The hooks for the
casement hinges still remain. ‘The easternmost lancets
on each side of the chancel have shafted inner jambs
and moulded rear arches, and mask stops to the
labels. There are two lancets in the south wall.
In the north wall is a small recess with trefoil-arched
head, all of modern stonework, possibly an Easter
sepulchre. In the south wall is a piscina with pointed
moulded arch and jambs. Beside it are three sedilia
with moulded trefoiled arches and triple engaged
shafts with moulded capitals and bases. The piscina
and sedilia are of 13th-century date. A modern
archway opens from the chancel into the south chapel.
There is no chancel arch, but the lower roof of the
chancel marks its western limit.

The three-light window in the east wall of the
south chapel is of modern stonework, only the inner
jambs and rear arch being old. The two windows
in the south wall and the south doorway are all of
modern stonework. The chapel is partly occupied
by the organ. In the south wall is a piscina with
continuously moulded arch and jambs.

The nave has north and south arcades of three
bays of early 15th-century date, with pointed arches
of two hollow-chamfered orders. The piers are of
four semi-octagonal shafts separated by hollows. The
capitals and bases are moulded. The moulded labels
mitre with the string-course under the clearstory
windows. The label stops on the side next the
north aisle have never been carved. There are three
clearstory windows on each side, each of two lights,
much defaced. A small opening of modern stone-
work with cinquefoiled arch is pierced through the
eastern respond of the south arcade; it opens into
the south chapel, which extends westwards beyond
the chancel.

The north aisle has east, west and two north
windows, each of three traceried lights, all of modern
stonework. The north doorway is of 15th-century
date ; it is of clunch, with moulded arch and jambs,
the outer order forming a square head over the arch.
The spandrels are traceried. The west label stop is
carved with a head; the east one is uncarved. The

91 Ibid. 1321-4, pp. 52, 221.
% Ibid. 1330-4, p. §31-

%3 Close, 1651, pt. xxiv, m. 27.
% Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 287.
98 VCH. London, i, 430.

% Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 190

C4

Furneux Peruam Cuurcu: THe Nave

Furnevx Peruam CuurcH . Fracment of Oak SCREEN

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED gypneux petyam

stonework is defaced. In the south-east angle is a
hollow-chamfered four-centred doorway to the rood
stair, which still exists, as does also the upper doorway
to the loft. In the south wall of the eastern respond
of the arcade is a 15th-century piscina with cinque-
foiled arch, continuously moulded, with stopped
jambs.*° The head is square and the spandrels are
carved with roses and cusping.

The south aisle has two windows in the south wall
and one window of three lights in the west wall, all
of modern stonework, except the hollow-chamfered
inner jambs of the easternmost window, which are
original. The south doorway has continuously moulded
arch and jambs, with square head

at their intersections ; the cornice is embattled. At
the feet of the principal rafters are figures of angels ;
those on the north side bear musical instruments or
blank shields, those on the south side have shields
all blank except the two most easterly, which bear
emblazoned arms, but the colouring is indistinct.
One bears quarterly, (1) and (4) a chief indented,
(2) and (3) three birds. These arms also appear on
John Newport’s slab in the south chapel ; the other
shield bears a cheveron between three crosslets fitchy
impaling three birds as on the quartered shield. The
roof timbers show many traces of coloured decoration.
The roofs over the aisles are also of 15th-century

over the arch. The traceried span-
drels contain blank shields. A little
to the west is a small doorway
with pointed arch opening from
the aisle to the stair leading to the
room over the porch. The south
porch has an east and west win-
dow, each of two cinquefoiled
lights under a square head. The
entrance archway is of modern
stonework. In the north-east angle
is a stoup with arched and cusped
head, mutilated. The turret con-
taining the stair to the room over
the porch is on the west side. All
the external stonework is modern.
On one of the quoins of the porch
is a roughly-cut sundial, about g in.
in diameter, with Roman numerals.
The room above the porch has a
south window of three lights and
a single west window, all of modern
stonework. The single-light east
window is original. The embattled
parapet to the south aisle is badly
mutilated and broken away. The
north aisle has projecting eaves.

The west tower is of three stages
with embattled parapet and slender
leaded spire. The stair to the
ringing chamber is in a circular
turret at the south-west angle and
is entered by a modern doorway
on the west outside. The tower
arch has two chamfered orders
dying on square jambs. ‘The west
window is of three lights with
traceried head; it has been re-
paired with cement. On the south
wall in the second stage is an old
clock dial with the figure of Time
above, and underneath is the legend ‘Time flies mind
your business.’ The belfry windows are each of two
lights with traceried heads, partly of modern stone-
work.

The steep open roof of the chancel has a few old
timbers in it. The nave roof is of 15th-century
date. The tie-beams are moulded and rest on
traceried brackets ; the stone or wood corbels have
gone. ‘Two at the east end appear to be modern.
The main timbers are moulded and have carved bosses

K ish tt it

% It may have served for the altar of St. Katherine, which
possibly stood at the east end of the north aisle, at which chan-
tries were founded ; see under advowson.

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——————

Furneux Peryam CuurcH FROM THE SouTH-WEST

date and have traceried brackets under the trusses.
The roof over the south chapel dates from about 1500.
The timbers are moulded and have carved bosses at
their intersections and have also figures of angels.
The spandrels are carved and rest on wood corbels,
the cornice is embattled. ‘The whole roof has been
richly decorated in colour, the rafters still retaining
red, white and blue colours, arranged in alternating
cheverons.

The font has a 13th-century octagonal bowl of
Purbeck marble. On each face are two shallow
sinkings with pointed arches. The panelled clunch
pedestal is of 15th-century date.

4 105 os

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Lying loose in the church is a fragment of an oak
screen; it is about 3 ft. 6 in. long and 13 in. high,
and consists of portions of traceried heads of three
panels of late 15th or early 16th-century date. In
the centre of each is a carved shield with nondescript
animals as supporters. The arms belong to the
Newport family. The first bears a fesse between three

crescents ; the second, party a lion; the third, on a
cross five leopards’ heads. All these appear on John
Newport’s brass.

In the east window of the north aisle are some

SSS

Furneux Peryam Cuurcu: Roor or THE SoutrH CHAPEL

fragments of 1§th-century glass. On a modern screen
inclosing the vestry at the west end of the south aisle
are the royal arms, carved in wood, bearing the dates
1634, 1660 and 1831.

At the west end of the south aisle is an altar tomb
of Purbeck marble. The front and east end are
panelled and traceried ; each panel contains a shield
with the indents of a brass. On the top are brasses
of a man and his widow under a canopy, parts of
which remain. There are indents of one daughter,
four shields and inscription, probably of 15th-century
date, and they possibly refer to William Newport

ly
WAN i} |
|

WA Ff
WALLA

(ob. 1434) and Cecilia his wife, the latter of whom
died in 1477 and desired to be buried beside her
husband in the chantry aisle of the church.” In the
south chapel is an altar tomb of white stone with
a black marble slab on the top; on the north side
and west end are three shields of arms. On the
wall above is a brass inscription to Edward Cason,
1624. On the floor of the chapel is a slab with
indent of a knight in armour, and part of a marginal
inscription to John Newport (1523) and a shield of
On the north wall of the north aisle are a
Purbeck marble tablet with small
brasses of a man in armour, his
wife, two sons and three daugh-
ters, all kneeling ; a shield of
arms: Party gules and azure a
lion argent (Newport) impaling
a bend engrailed between six
billets (Alington) ; traces of
colouring remain. There are
also indents of the Virgin and
Child, two shields and a scroll.
The inscription is given by
Weever®: ‘Here lyeth Robert
Newport Esquy’, founder of this
chapel, and Mary his wyf,
whych Robert dyed xvi of
November, mcccccexvi.’ On
the floor of the south chapel
are three slabs with indents.
On a bracket on the wall of
the chapel is a helmet of late
15th-century date.

There are six bells: the first
by J. Warner & Sons, 1875;
the second by T. Newman,
1723; the third by John Hods,
1662; the fourth a 16th-cen-
tury bell inscribed ‘Sancta
Katerina Ora pro Nobis’; the
fifth by Miles Graye, 1618;
the sixth by J. Briant, 1792.

The communion plate con-
sists of a cup and paten, 1835,
and a flagon, 1876.

arms.

i

.
i

y

|

WN The registers previous to
| 1812 are as follows: (i) bap-
tisms, burials and marriages
| 1560 to 17383 (ii) baptisms
and burials 1739 to 1812, mar-
riages 1739 to 1753; (ili) mar-
riages 1754 to 1812.
The advow-
ADVOWSON son of Furneux
Pelham Church
belonged to the Treasurer of
St. Paul’s from the date of the endowment of his
office with the church (see above). The church was
visited among others belonging to the cathedral in
1252. The ministering chaplain was then in receipt
of all the altarage and the small tithes and rendered
20s. a year to the treasurer. The church was found
to be well thatched, but the graveyard was very ill-
inclosed with old thorn bushes. Glass was wanting
in two windows in the chancel. Within there were
a high altar, four altars outside the quire and an altar
of St. Nicholas. A stone font was sufficiently lined
% P.C.C. Wills, 28 Wattys. % Funeral Monum. 548.

106

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED guaneux peLHam

with lead. Only six books belonged to the church ;
one of them, an ill-bound volume, included certain
offices of the saints which were proper to the use
neither of Sarum nor of St. Paul’s. The treasure
consisted of a small chalice of white metal having a
gilded cup, a tin chrism, an old and vile pyx of bone,
a little censer, four tin candlesticks and as many old
phials, a small portable crucifix and several vestments,
frontals and other cloths. There was a chest for the
safe keeping of books and vestments. No rents of assize
were received for lights and the church had no rowel-
light. For the Easter waxlight a halfpenny was due
from every 18 acres in the parish, but this money was
collected fortuitously. The lights before crucifixes and
altars depended entirely on offerings.” In 1291 the
value of this poorly furnished church was £6 135. 4.1%
The parson in 1294 held with the benefice six
others.!. The church was again visited by the officers
of the cathedral in 1297, when improved conditions
were discovered. It was found to be consecrated to
the Virgin. The graveyard was sufficiently inclosed
and was clean, the windows adequately glazed and
the nave and chancel well thatched, but the great
staircase in the body of the church was defective.
In the belfry there were two well-tuned’ bells.
There were separate seats, having suitable forms and
lecterns. The altars were four or five in number,
but one of them, which was of stone, had not been
consecrated. In the nave there were images of the
Crucifix, of the Virgin and of St. John, of two
angels, St. John the Baptist, St. Michael, St. Thomas
of Canterbury, St. Andrew, St. James, St. Mary
Magdalen, St. Katherine and St. Margaret. The
books, which were well bound, were eleven in num-
ber and included an ordinal of the Sarum use and
a psalter, together with a legenda of the saints and a
statute of Fulk, presumably Fulk Bassett, Bishop of
London from 1244 to 1259. The treasure had
since 1252 been increased by a chalice of silver-gilt,
an ivory pyx, an enamelled portable crucifix, a copper
sconce and several less valuable articles, including a
vessel in which to burn charcoal in winter. The
vestments and frontals were richer and more numerous.
By Simon de Furneus the lights of the church had
been endowed ; the tenant of 54 acres provided a
lamp and three candles at St. Katherine’s altar ; two
rents of 18¢, were received, of which one maintained
two torches to burn daily in the chancel at the
elevation of the Host, and a rent of 2s. paid for a
candle which was always kept burning in the chancel
when the other lights had been extinguished? A
third visitation made in 1458 found that the vicar of
this date had in the time of his prosperity refused to
visit sick parishioners, that the vicarage pigs had dug
up the earth in the graveyard, that the chancel was
partly unroofed owing to defective tiling and that
the altar was worm-eaten. The books, far less various
in character than in the 13th century, were four
missals, three antiphoners, one ordinal, two manuals,

% Camden Misc. (Camden Soc.), ix,
18-20.

100 Pope Nick. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18.

1 Cal, Pat. 1292-1301, p. 118.

? Cordatis.

3 Visit. of Churches of St. Paul’s (Cam-
den Soc.), 39-42. 4 Ibid. 105~6.

5 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 453.

5 Visit. of Churches of St. Paul’s (Cam-
den Soc.), 120.

Brent Pelham.

den Soc.), 106,

7 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1654, pe 209-

8 Inet. Bks. (P.R.O.).

2 See account of Brent Pelham.

10 See account of Beeches Manor in

1 Cal. Pat. 1301-7, Pp. 459»

L Ibid. 1381-5, p. 406, and see below.
18 Feet of F. Herts. 8 Hen. IV, no. 49.
16 Visit. of Churches of St. Paul's (Cam-

one grail, one legenda and two processionals. Vest-
ments and frontals were few. ‘The treasure included
two alabaster tablets representing the Passion of our
Lord and that of St. Christopher. In 1535 the
vicarage was of the annual value of £L9° In 1552
the church still possessed no plate beyond a silver
chalice, parcel-gilt, possibly that which existed in
1297. It had at this time four bells.® Under
the Commonwealth the income of Mr. Ball,
minister of Furneux Pelham, was increased by £ 34,
but such augmentation ceased when he was trans-
ferred to another living.’ The Treasurer of St. Paul’s
continued to be patron of the vicarage® until it
was united in 1771 to that of Brent Pelham.®

In 1306 Simon de Furneus received licence to
grant certain lands in Brent and Furneux Pelham"
to the Prior and convent of Thremhall, who should
in return maintain not only a chantry within their
house, but also a chaplain to celebrate for the souls of
Simon and his ancestors in Furneux Pelham Church."
The endowment was augmented in 1384 by a rent-
charge on Furneux Pelham and Hixham Manors,”
It was established in 1406 at St. Katherine’s altar
and its advowson was then conveyed with the manor.'®
It is the only chantry in the church mentioned by
the visitors of 1458, who stated that it had been
founded for the souls of Ralph, Simon, Alice and
Simon Furneus.“ In 1535 Furneus Chantry was
of the annual value of £4. No certificate of it was
returned in the following reign, presumably because it
did not survive Thremhall Priory.

About the year 1237 William de Fauconberg,
Treasurer of St. Paul’s, with the consent of the
Bishop of London and of the Dean and Chapter of
the cathedral, granted that Simon de Furneus might
build and have a chapel in his court at Furneux
Pelham. All rights of baptism, burial and bells were
safeguarded to the mother church. Soon afterwards
there is reference to the chapel as built.” It is
probably that of which the advowson was afterwards
held by the Bauds of Hadham Hall. In 1324 the
king granted to Matthew Shanke the chantry of
Furneux Pelham, forfeited by the rebellion™of
William Baud ® ; in 1327 the advowson of Furneux
Pelham chapel was restored to William Baud,” to
whom, moreover, it was conveyed in 1331 by Simon
Flambard, parson of Furneux Pelham, and John de
Baud, parson of Corringham,” probably trustees for
the purpose of securing William’s right. There is
no later reference to an advowson in Furneux Pelham
held by the Bauds. The chantry may be one of the
three all described, perhaps by an error, as situated
at St. Katherine’s altar in Furneux Pelham Church,
of which the advowson was conveyed with the manor
in 1406.7 This chantry appears soon afterwards to
have become obsolete, if indeed it had at this date an
existence which was more than traditional. In 1384
Richard de Sutton, kt. (see manor), and others received
licence to found a chantry of one chaplain who should

18 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 453.

16 Newcourt, Repert. i, 854.

7 Doc. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s,
Liber A. Pilosus, fol. 184.

18 Cal, Pat, 1324-7, p- 38.

19 Cal, Close, 1327-30, P- 22+

20 Feet of F, Div. Co. 5 Edw. III,
no. 8.
21 Ibid. Herts. 8 Hen. IV, no. 49.

107

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

celebrate daily at the altar of St. Katherine in Fur-
neux Pelham Church for the souls of Sir John le Gros,
his ancestors and benefactors and for all the faithful
departed. The endowment was to consist of half an
acre of land and its appurtenances in the parish and
of an annual rent of £8 and 100 faggots of wood from
the manors of Furneux Pelham and Hixham. The
advowson was granted to the holder of Furneux
Pelham Manor, with provision for the case of his
default. An additional rent-charge of 40s. and of
200 faggots of wood was laid on the same two
manors in order to increase the revenue of this
chantry and also of that already existing in the
church.” This latter payment, however, seems to
have been devoted entirely to the Gros Chantry and
the rent-charge of 40s. to have lapsed at the Dissolu-
tion. The total rent of £10 payable to chantries was
again granted by Thomas Bideford when he acquired
the two manors in 1387-8.”

It appears that the chantry thus founded in 1384
was soon afterwards transferred to a chapel outside
the church, probably that built by Simon de Furneus.
In 1387-8 the chantry of Sir John le Gros was in
the chantry chapel of Furneux Pelham.* ‘The de-
scription of it, therefore, in 1406, when its advowson
was conveyed with the manor, as situated at the
altar of St. Katherine in the church,” seems to be an
outcome of the terms of its foundation. ‘The Gros
Chantry was in 1535 said to be worth £8 a year.”
When it was dissolved in the following reign it was
described as situated in a chapel distant by more than
a furlong from the parish church. Its endowment
then consisted of a yearly rent of £8 from the
manors of Furneux Pelham and Hixham, of four
loads of wood granted annually from those manors

for the priest’s fuel and worth 3s., and of a tenement
and half an acre of land known as the Chaumbre
Howse and occupied by the incumbent.” The tene-
ment called Le Chantry House was granted by the
Crown to Robert Wood in 1549,” and in 1617 John
Gray received a grant of two chantries called Gros
Chantry and Le New Chantry.” The latter term
probably referred rather to an appurtenance of the
chantry chapel than to Furneus Chantry. The
income of Gros Chantry continued to be reserved in
conveyances of the manors burdened with it. Edward
Newport in 1678 rendered four loads of wood from
Furneux Pelham Manor to the trustees for the pay-
ment of pensions. A separate conveyance of the
rent of £8 was made in 1689." It was in 1813
held to be payable from Hixham Manor only and
was reserved in the sale of that date.”
In 1724 Mary Wheatly, by her
CHARITIES will, devised 2 acres and three cottages
adjoining of copyhold tenure for the
support of a charity school. The rents, amounting
to £9 a year or thereabouts, are applied for educa-
tional purposes in connexion with the school.

Mrs. Sarah Yarrington, who died in 1746, left the
interest of £100 Old South Sea Annuities for the
putting out of poor boys as apprentices. The
legacy, with accumulations, is now represented by
£149 125. 4d. consols, producing yearly £3 145. 8¢.,
which is paid to the school account.

In 1774 Francis Caryl bequeathed £200, the
interest to be expended in the distribution of bread.
The legacy is now represented by £259 16s. consols,
producing £6 gs. 8d. yearly, which is distributed in
bread.

The sums of stock are held by the official trustees.

STOCKING PELHAM

Pelham Parva, Stoke Pelham (xiii cent.) ; Stokkene-
pelham (xiv cent.) ; Stocking Pelham (xv, xvi and
xvii cent.).

This small parish has an area of only 647 acres, of
which nearly three-quarters are arable land, just over
one-quarter permanent grass and 14 acres woods and
plantations.'_ The soil is heavy and the subsoil clay.
The highest ground is near the church and Stocking
Pelham Hall, where it is 4114 ft. above the ordnance
datum, and the lowest, which is 323 ft. above the
same datum, is at the southern end of the parish.

The most important road branches off in Furneux
Pelham parish from the Hadham road and after
passing through the village crosses Stocking Pelham
diagonally and leads north-east into Berden parish in
Essex. From a point in this road another and
winding way leads north-westwards into Brent Pel-
ham parish. On the north side of this road are the
church and moated manor-house known as Stocking
Pelham Hall, now the property of Mr. E. E. Barclay
of Brent Pelham. The Cock Inn is a timber-
framed and plastered house of two stories ; the roof is

tiled. It is of late 16th or early 17th-century date.
The chimney stacks are plain and are built of thin
bricks. In the taproom is a plain wide fireplace
and the ceiling has splayed and stopped beams and
floor joists. The rectory lies north-west of the
village and is surrounded by a moat. There is also a
fragment of another moat on the north-east side of
the church.

In the 1$th century Wildenwodes, Nydelys and
Renelys occur as names of places in Stocking Pelham
Manor,’ and in the 16th century a tenement is
described as near Este Rood,’ which may perhaps be
rendered East Road.

The lands of Stocking Pelham as sur-

MANOR veyed in Domesday cannot be distin-

guished from those of the other Pelhams.

All the lands in this parish were held of the Bishop
of London in 1086 and afterwards.‘

Between 1210 and 1212 Thomas de Bideford held
2 hides and 16 acres of land, presumably in STOCK-
ING PELHAM, of the Bishop of London for the
service due from one knight’s fee.> His successor later

2 Close, 12 Hen. IV, m. 8.

22 Chan. Inq. p.m. 7 Ric. II, no. 1565
Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 406.

23 Close, 11 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 19 d.

% Ibid. 10 Ric. II, m. 27, 28, 294d.

25 Feet of F. Herts. 8 Hen. IV, no. 49.

26 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 453-

97 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 71 3 27, no. 10.

38 Pat. 3 Edw. VI, pt. vii.

29 Ibid. 15 Jas. I, pt. xiv. .
30 Duchy of Lanc. Misc. Bks. lxxii,

fol. §9 d.

Y Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 1 Will. and
Mary.
32,Com. Pleas D. Enr. East. 53

Geo. III, m. 28. :
1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).

108

3 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 36.

4 See account of Brent Pelham; Plac.
de Quo Warr, (Rec. Com.), 290.

5 Red Bk, of Exch, (Rolls Ser.), 541.
Thomas’s surname is wrongly given as
Widiford,

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED 6 rocxine petHam

in this century was Jordan de Bideford,® whose heirs
were said in 1303 to hold half a knight’s fee in
Stocking Pelham of the bishop.’ The actual tenant
was probably Richard de Bideford, who with his
wife Agnes niece of Thomas de Wauncy occurs in
1278.8 He may have had for his successor Richard
de Bideford, who settled Stocking Pelham Manor in
1331 on himself and his wife Alice in tail-male, with
remainder to his brother Henry.? In 1350 Richard
de Bideford and Richard his son were amongst the
trustees for a settlement of Chamberleyns Manor
in Brent Pelham.” The younger Richard probably
succeeded to the elder and was identical with Sir
Richard Bideford, kt., from whom before 1411 the
manor of Stocking Pelham passed to his daughter
Joan." She married Henry Hert, citizen and cloth-
maker of London, to whom and herself John son and
heir of Thomas Bideford, perhaps the heir male of Sir

Between 1483 and 1485 the legality of this transac-
tion was disputed by Richard son and heir of Thomas
Rous, who claimed to be reversionary heir under
settlements made by Richard Bideford, Joan Hert and
his father. He stated that John and James Songer
had taken advantage of his father’s ‘great and feeble
age of eighty years’ to the undoing of himself and of
his children, ‘which be many in number.’"* Richard
Rous lost his case and James Songer held the manor
as late as 1499." In 1509 the holder was Anne
Songer and in 1518 Richard Songer,'® who were
probably James’s widow and heir respectively. In
1541 Richard son and heir-apparent of Richard
Songer seems to have conveyed his reversionary
interest to Jeremy Songer.'? The manor was settled
in 1542 on the elder Richard for his life, with
remainder to Jeremy and Mary Grene, probably his
betrothed wife, and to Jeremy’s heirs.” Further

Strocxinc PetHam CuurcH FRoM THE SouTH-EAST

Richard, released the manor in 1410-11. Henry
Hert held the lands in Stocking Pelham in his wife’s
right in 1428 and in 1436." Her heir was Thomas
Rous, who within her lifetime and about the year 1443
married a certain Joan. At this time or afterwards
Joan Hert devised to him the reversion of the manor,
and some time after 1456'° he duly succeeded her.
From about the year 1450 the manor was in lease to
John Songer, whose son and heir James bought the
reversion in fee after the death of Thomas Rous.

settlements were made by Jeremy Songer and Mary
his wife in 15467 and 1553.” In 1551 Jeremy
leased the manor to John Growte for fifty years” and
apparently again settled it in 1555 and 1557.7
In 1570 the manor of Stocking Pelham had come to
an heiress, Dorothy wife of Edmond Huddleston,
who with her husband settled it on their son John
Huddleston. Edmond Huddleston, who was knighted
in 1579,” settled the manor in 1593 8 and died in
1606. In accordance with various settlements the

§ Jordan held the fifth part of a knight’s
fee in Thameworth, Oxon. (Testa de Nevill
[Rec. Com. ], 1064).

7 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

8 Herts. and Hants Assize R. Edw. I
(Agarde’s Index), fol. 52.

9 Feet of F. Herts. 5 Edw. III, no. 77.

10 Add. MS. 5806, fol. 14d.

ll Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 65, no. 54.

12 Close, 12 Hen. IV, m. 8.

13 Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

44 See account of chantry.

15 Newcourt, Repert. i, 866.

16 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 65, no. 54.
17 Newcourt, op. cit. i, 867. 8 Ibid.
19 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 33 Hen. VIII.
20 Ibid. Trin. 34 Hen. VIII.

41 Tbid. Trin. 38 Hen. VIII.

10Q

2 Thid. East. 7 Edw. VI.

23 Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 170, no. 59.

4 Recov. R. Hil. 2 & 3 Phil. and
Mary, rot. 457.

2 Peet of F. Herts. East. 3 & 4 Phil.
and Mary. ,

36 [bid. East. 12 Eliz.

37 Metcalfe, Book of Knights, 133.

38 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 35 Eitz.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

manor devolved on his wife Dorothy for life, and
afterwards on his son Henry and Henry’s wife
Dorothy for their lives, with remainder to Henry’s
heirs male.¥2 Henry with his son and heir, Sir
Robert Huddleston, kt., made settlements of the manor
in 1613 and 1621, probably for the purpose of barring
the entail.” In 1627 Henry Huddleston conveyed
the manor to Thomas Nightingale, who was created
a baronet in 1628 and died m 1645.% In accord-
ance with his will the manor was sold in 1649 to
William Webb of Gray’s Inn, who was succeeded by
his son Richard. The latter in 1681 bequeathed it
in tail-male to his brother Jonathan.” Further
settlements were made and the entail barred by
Jonathan Webb and Elizabeth his wife and their son
Christopher in 1704,% 1707% and 1708." Chris-
topher with his sister Jane Webb, their father being
dead, conveyed the manor in 1709 to William Calvert
of Furneux Pelham Hall, and for the succeeding
century and a half it was held with Furneux Pelham
Hall* (q.v.). In 1859 the executors of General Felix
Calvert of Furneux Pelham Hall sold Stocking Pelham
to John Mott Richardson of Much Hadham, who was
lord of the manor in 1859 *? and whose rights have
descended to Mr. Charles Board Richardson.
The church of ST. MARY THE
CHURCH VIRGIN consists of chancel 26 ft. by
15 ft. 6in., nave 34 ft. 6in. by 23 ft. 6 in.,
with bellcote on the west end of the roof and modern

SS

SS

UQN

{
jl,

Pian oF Stocxinc Petnam Cuurcu

south porch, all the dimensions being internal. The
walls are of flint with stone dressings, except the east
wall of the chancel, which is of brick. Parts of the
walls are cemented ; the nave roof is slated and the
chancel roof tiled.

The north walls of chancel and nave are in the
same plane, the extra width of the nave being all on
the south side. The earliest details belong to the
middle of the 14th century, and as work of that
period exists on the north and south walls of both
chancel and nave it is not easy to determine the
steps by which the church arrived at its present

that a small earlier building existed, the walls of
which were partly made use of in the 14th century.
That the additional width on the south side of the
nave was never an aisle seems evident, as the west
window is central and the north and south walls are
of equal height. In 1864 the east and part of the
south walls were rebuilt in brick.

In the east wall of the chancel is a modern three-
light traceried window. In the north wall is a
single-light window with cinquefoiled head and
with wave-moulded inner jambs and arch ; it is of
mid-14th-century date. In the same wall is a door-
way of clunch, which appears to have been the entrance
to a former vestry, as the rear arch is on the outside.
In the south wall is a window of two lights under a
square head, with tracery of 14th-century date ; it
has been repaired with cement. Adjoining it is a
south doorway, now blocked. The chancel arch is a
modern one of wood.

The nave has a mid-14th-century north window
of two lights with flowing tracery, partly restored ;
the blocked north doorway is of the same date,
but much of the stonework is modern. In the
south wall are two windows of modern stonework,
each of two lights with tracery of 14th-century
character. The south doorway is of modern stone-
work, except the inner jambs, which are original.
In the south wall, near the east end, is a 14th-century
piscina with cusped arch. At the west end of the
nave is a timber framework which partly supports
the wooden bellcote on the roof. The west window
has three traceried lights, all of modern stonework ; the
inner jambs and rear arch are original. The ceilings of
chancel and nave are plastered.
The porch is modern.

In the nave is a slab with
a brass shield bearing a 15th-
century merchant’s mark ™
and the indent of an inscrip-
tion; on the south side, under
the seats, is a slab with indent
of the half-figure of a priest. WS
In the south window of the
chancel are a few fragments
of old glass.

There is one bell inscribed
‘Vincencius Reboat ut Cuncta Noxia Tollat,’ early
15th century.

The communion plate is modern.

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows:
(i) baptisms and burials 1695 to 1812, marriages
1695 to 1753; (ii) marriages 1754 to 1812.

The advowson of Stocking Pelham
rectory passed with the manor from
the earliest times on record until the
1gth century.” In 1556 and 1557 John Growte,
who was lessee of the manor,“ presented, and pre-

=,

IS TH-CENTURY
Mercuant’s Marx

ADVOWSON

somewhat unusual plan.

28a Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxxix,
174.
es Feet of F. Div. Co. Hil. 10 Jas. I;
Div. Co. Mich. 19 Jas. I; Recov. R,
Mich. 19 Jas. I, rot. 11.

30 Recoy. R. Hil 2 Chas. I, rot. 75 ;
G.E.C. Baronetage, ii, 53.

31 Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. iii, 459.

32 Recoy. R. Trin. 3 Anne, rot. 264.

83 Com. Pleas D. Enr. Mich. 6 Anne,
m. 6d.; Recov.R. Mich. 6 Anne, rot. 147.

It is probable, however,

4 Com. Pleas D.
m. 11.

35 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

86 See account of Furneux Pelham;
Recov. R. Hil. 33 Geo. II, rot. 183.

37 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 156.

35 This was probably the mark of
Henry Hert (Heart). See above under
manor and under advowson. The flag
is suggestive of a clothmaker.

TIo

Enr. East. 7 Anne,

sentments by Robert Marshal in 1370 and by Thomas

39 Feet of F. Herts. 5 Edw. III, no. 77;
Trin. 33 Hen. VIII; Trin. 34 Hen. VIII;
East. 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary; East. 12
Eliz.; Trin. 35 Eliz.; Div. Co. Hil 10
Jas. 1; Mich. 19 Jas. 1; Close, 12
Hen. IV, m. 8; Early Chan. Proc. bdle.
65, m0. 54; Recov. R. Mich. 19 Jas. I,
rot. 113; Hil, 2 Chas. I, rot. 753 Inst.
Bks. (P.R.O.).

© See above.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Melman and his wife Joan from 1451 to 14524
must have been in right of leases or other limited
conveyances. The right of patronage was exercised
for the last time by the lord of the manor in 1832.”
Mr. J. Chalmers-Hunt is the present patron.

In 1291 this church was of the annual value of
£3 6s. 8¢d.% and at the time of the dissolution
of religious houses the rectory was worth £7 10s. 7d.
a year.“ In 1610 the glebe consisted of about
106 a, 15 1r. of land, besides certain lands in
Waxted within the parish.“© In 1650 the Parlia-
mentary Commissioners reported that the yearly
value of the rectory was £50.

At the date of the dissolution of gilds and chantries
a yearly rent of 2s. was paid to the church for the
. keeping of an obit and of a light about the Easter
sepulchre.”

THROCKING

A perpetual chantry was founded in 1436 by
Henry Hert in a chapel in Stocking Pelham about
2 furlongs distant from the parish church. Its clear
annual value at the time of the dissolution of religious
houses was said to be £5 6s. 80."° When itself
dissolved its endowment was declared to consist of a
rent of £5 13s. 4d. received from certain lands in Brent
Pelham held with Stocking Pelham Manor, and of a
rent of 12s. from a tenement called the ‘Chaumbre
Howse’ and an acre of land which were occupied by
the incumbent, an aged man who depended entirely
on the income of the chantry. Its goods and
chattels were worth 25. 104. In 1549 the tene-
ment in Stocking Pelham called the Chauntry House
and the garden which adjoined it were granted to
John Perient.®!

There are no endowed charities in this parish.

THROCKING

Trochinge (xi cent.); Trocking (xii cent.) ;
Tockringe, Throkinge (xiii cent.) ; Throkking,
Thorking (xiv cent.) ; Throcking afias Thorling
(xvi cent.).

The parish of Throcking contains 1,048 acres.
About one-half of this is arable land and one-sixth
permanent grass. ‘There is very little woodland.'
The soil is mixed, generally stiff, on a subsoil of clay
with some gravel, and this again stands on gravel.
In the west of the parish the land rises to nearly
500 ft. above ordnance datum, falling to 333 ft. in
the north-east, where the River Rib for a short
distance flows through the parish.

The village of Throcking is very small. In 1428
there were only eight inhabitants.” Ermine Street
forms the eastern boundary of the parish, and the
village church lies south of a road which branches
west from this and passes through the parish to
Cottered, where it joins the road to Baldock. It
is on the high ground in the west of the parish
and close to it is Throcking Hall. The rectory
was built about 1841 on a site given by John Ray,
lord of the manor. For some years before this date
there had been no house belonging to the rectory in
the parish, the one built by Robert Elwes about the
beginning of the 18th century having disappeared
before 1808.3 The road from Buntingford to Baldock
forms for some distance the southern boundary of
Throcking.

In the time of Edward the Confessor
1 hide and a virgate of land in Throck-
ing were held of Archbishop Stigand by
two sokemen.‘ After the Conquest this holding was
acquired by Hardwin de Scales and was held of him

MANOR

by Theobald.’ The Scales overlordship appears later
when in the early 14thcentury the manor of Throcking
was said to belong to the fee of Challers or Scales.®

Before 1217-18 a subfeoffment of the manor had
been made by the Fitz Ralphs, the descendants of the
Domesday tenant Theobald.’ Ralph Fitz Ralph
appears as lord of the fee at the end of the 13th
century,° and in 1303° and in 1328" his son
William Fitz Ralph was overlord. After this date
there is no further record of this family holding rights
in Throcking.

The earliest known sub-tenant in the manor of
Throcking is Roger Fitz Brian, who was holding the
advowson of Throcking in 1217-18." With his
wife Maud he granted 2 carucates of land in Throck-
ing and Hoddenhoo (in Therfield, Odsey Hundred)
to the priory of Holy Trinity or Christchurch,
London, and this grant was confirmed by Henry III
in February 1226-7." Brian de Throcking appears
as witness to deeds about the middle of the same
century.’ By 1292 the manor had descended to
Roger Brian, who granted 2 acres of land and
1oos. rent in Hinxworth, Throcking, Clothall and
Aspenden to found a chantry in the chapel of
St. John the Baptist of Buntingford.* He was
holding the manor in 1303,’° but he must have
died before 1307, when John de Argentein, the
husband of his daughter and heir Joan,” received a
grant of free warren in Throcking.” John died in
1318 and his wife Joan apparently predeceased him.”
Her two daughters, Joan and Elizabeth, were her
heirs.° ‘They were married before 1326 to John and
William Boteler, the sons of Ralph Boteler of Pulver-
batch and Norbury,” who presented to the church in

157:

1 Newcourt, op. cit. i, 856.

3 See Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.

“2 Cussans, op. cit. 158. 114. :
48 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 20. 4 V.C.H. Herts. i, 34.02.
4 Valor Eccl, (Rec. Com.), i, 452. 5 Ibid.

45 Newcourt, op. cit. i, 856.
46 Cussans, op. cit. Edwinstree Hund.

‘7 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 36.

48 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 4.53.

9 Chant. Cert. 27, no, 11.

50 Tbid. 20, no. 69.

51 Pat. 3 Edw. VI, pt. vii.

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).
2 Feud. Aids, ii, 454, 458.

6 De Banco R. 273, m. 75d. Another
part of the manor consisted of the fee of
Vabadun, see below.

7 For the descent of the Fitz Ralphs see
the manor of Broadfield in Odsey Hundred.

8 See De Banco R. 273, m. 75 d.

9 Feud. Aids, ii, 431.

10 De Banco R. 273, m. 75 d.

11 Feet of F. Herts. 2 Hen. III, no, 2.

13 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 153.

III

13 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 1175, 1028.

14 Chan. Inq. p.m. 20 Edw. I, no, 119 ;
Cal. Pat. 1281-92, p. 486.

15 Feud, Aids, ii, 431.

16 Wrottesley, Ped. from Plea R. 64.

W Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26, p. 107.

18 Cal. Ing. p.m. 10-20 Edw. II, 104;
Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 50

19 Wrottesley, Ped. from Plea R. 64;
see De Banco R. 273, m. 75d. The
daughters are here called Joan and
Matilda.

20 Wrottesley, loc. cit. ; Chester Waters,
Chesters of Chicheley, 139-

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

that year. Joan and Elizabeth were stil] minors
in 1328.7 In 1336 Elizabeth Boteler with her
husband William made a settlement of the manor.”
William Boteler died before his wife, who took as
her second husband Gilbert de Elsfield, who held
the manor and presented to the church in 1349."
Elizabeth survived this husband also, and in 1376 as
Elizabeth de Elsfield she presented to the church
herself.?® She must have died shortly afterwards,
leaving no issue,” and her lands passed to the heirs of
Joan her sister. Joan had two sons, Ralph, who died
while still a minor in 1348, and Edward,” who was aged
twenty-one in 1360” and was holding the manor in
1379, when he presented to the church.” Edward
Boteler is said to have conveyed the manor to William
Hyde, citizen and grocer of London, about 1395.”
In 1414 William Hyde presented to the church a
and he was still holding the manor with his wife Joyce
in 1437.7? By 1462 it had
descended to George Hyde,*
who was living as late as
1470.4 His widow Agnes
Hyde presented to the church
of Throcking in 1472." Robert
Hyde is mentioned as lord of
the manor of ‘Throcking in
1486.% It descended to
Leonard Hyde, who left it by
his will, proved in February
1508-9, to his son George.”
George had a son Leonard,
who died before his father in
1549,°° and on George’s death
in 1553°% the manor descended to his grandson
William, the son of Leonard. In 1561 William
Hyde conveyed it by lease and release to his uncle
William, another son of George Hyde." A claim
was made on the manor by Thomas Wiseman, who
appears to have had a mortgage onit. Although the
elder William retained the manor, he felt it necessary
in his will to declare that the deeds of sale were
no forgery.” He died in 1580 and his son Leonard,
who inherited his lands, received a quitclaim of all
right in Throcking Manor from his cousin William
Hyde“ and from Thomas Wiseman® in 1583.
William Hyde died in 1590“ and his widow Mary
immediately claimed dower from the manor of

ee ae

FF

Hype of Throcking.
Gules a saltire engratled
or and a chief ermine,

21 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig, of
Herasiii, 466:
22 De Banco R. 273, m. 75 d.

38 See Clutterbuck, loc. cit.
4 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), D 519.
35 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

Throcking. An annuity of £60 was granted to her
and also an annual payment of {£20 to her son
Nicholas.7 Leonard Hyde was knighted by James I
before his coronation in 1603." Chauncy accuses
him of paving his kitchen at Sandon with the grave-
stones from Throcking Church and of sequestrating
all the church property. It is a curious fact that
no memorials to the Hydes now remain, although
they were all buried in Throcking Church.” By Sir
Leonard’s will, proved in 1624, the manor descended
to his son Robert,*! who sold it to Thomas Soame in
1630. Thomas Soame was knighted in 1641." In
1670 he sold the manor to Robert Raworth,™ whose
daughter Francesmarried Jeremy Elwes* and inherited
the manor on her father’s
death. Frances Elwes died
in 1678,°° when Throcking
passed to her son Jeremy
Elwes.” The latter died with-
out issue in 1683,°° when his
brother Robert succeeded to
his lands. In 1731 Robert
Elwes died and Throcking
descended to his son of the
same name,® who held it

oaks : Erwus. Or a fesse
until his death in 1752, when — azure with a bend gules
it passed to his son Cary ower all,

Elwes.” In 1781 Cary Elwes

with his only son by his first marriage, Cary Elwes
the younger,” settled the manor. This son died
in that year and on the death of Cary Elwes the
elder in 1782 the only son of his second marriage,
Robert Cary Elwes, was his heir.“ In 1799 Robert
Cary Elwes sold the manor to George Wood,® by
whose executors it was sold to John Ray of Finchley
in 1817. After the death of John Ray in 1840
his lands in Throcking were sold in separate parcels
by his executors and the manorial rights were allowed
to lapse.”

There was a mansion-house on the manor of
Throcking in 1549, when it is mentioned in the
will of George Hyde.® In 1692 Robert Elwes,
then lord of the manor, built a new house, which
Chauncy describes as ‘a curious and neat fabric.’
Robert (ob. 1731) left it by his will to his grandson
Cary Elwes, son of his son Robert, in tail-male.”
Robert the father of Cary endeavoured to persuade

51 Cussans, loc. cit.

5? Recov. R. Trin. 6 Chas. I, rot. 43.
53 Shaw, Knights of England, ii, 211.
54 Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 22 Chas. II.

® Feet of F. Herts. East. 10 Edw. III,
no. 161,

24. See Clutterbuck, loc.
Aids, ii, 446.

35 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

26 R, E. C. Waters, loc. cit.

7 Chan. Ing. p.m. 34 Edw. III (1st
nos.), no. 39; see R. E. C. Waters,
loc. cit.

°8 Chan, Inq. p.m. 34 Edw. III (1st
nos.), No. 39.

29 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

30 Chauncy, Hist. Antig, of Herts.
117. Cussans gives 1398 as the date of
this sale (Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwins-
tree Hund. 109).

31 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.; see Feud.
Aids, ii, 446. Chauncy mentions a
Lawrence Hyde living in 1433, but he
does not appear to have held the manor.
See Chauncy, loc. cit.

8? Feet of F. Div. Co. East. 15 Hen. VI,
no. 9.

cit.; Feud,

36 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxiii, 65.

57 Cussans, Hist, of Herts. Odsey Hund,
151.

38 Thid. 153.

39 His will was proved in 1553, see
Cussang, loc. cit.

49 See Chan. Proc. (Ser. 2), bdle. 211,
no. 27.

41 Tbid.; see also Chan. Ing. p.m.
(Ser. 2), cxciii, 693 Ct. of Req. bdle. 63,
no. 54 (34 Eliz.).

#2 Cussans, loc. cit.

43 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cxciii, 69.

4 Feet of F. Herts. Trin. 25 Eliz.

4 Ibid.

46 See Ct. of Req. bdle. 63, no. 54
(34 Eliz.).

47 Thid.

48 Shaw, Knights of England, ii, 120.

49 Chauncy, op. cit. 117.

50 Ease Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii,
1543 see Cussans, loc. cit. for wills of
Hydes.

112

65 MI.

56 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig, of Herts.
iii, 465.

7 Chauncy, loc. cit.

58 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

59 Chauncy, loc. cit.; Recov. R. Hil.
4 Geo. I, rot. 43.

60 M.I.; Recov. R. Mich. 16 Geo. II,
rot. 177.

61 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

63 Ibid.

63 Recov. R. Hil. 21 Geo. III, rot. 347.

6' Clutterbuck, loc. cit.; Recov. R.
Mich. 34 Geo. III, rot. 373.

® Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

66 Thid.

7 Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 108.

65 Ibid. Odsey Hund. 153.

69 Chauncy, loc. cit.

7 Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 109.

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

his brother Jeffrey to bar the entail, as Cary had no
children. Jeffrey’s refusal gave rise to a quarrel, and,
to spite Jeffrey, in 1744 Robert and his son Cary
pulled the house down.?! They were, however,
premature, for subsequently Cary married twice and
had two sons.”2 The foundations of the old house
may still be traced in a meadow called the Pightle,
which lies to the south of the church. There are
the remains of an old brick wall, and a deep depres-
sion in the ground appears to denote the position of
the cellars. Near by is a moat, which probably
ran round the house, but it is very much overgrown
and nearly dry in summer-time.’3 Traces of a path
which led from the house to the south porch of the
church are also to be found.”4 The modern house
known as Throcking Hall or Hall Farm stands a little
to the east of the foundations of the older house.
Two carucates of land in Hoddenhoo and Throck-
ing were granted to the priory of Holy Trinity,
London, by Roger Fitz Brian, lord of the manor of
Throcking, and confirmed by Henry III in February
1226-7. In 1287 the prior’s men in Throcking
and Sandon were charged with the repair of the
bridges of Corneybury and Pope’s Hall on the one
side of the river, the other side being undertaken by
his men in Alfladewick.7®
Before the Conquest two
men of William Bishop of
London held land in Throck-
ing which was assessed at 14
hides and was of the king’s
soke. One virgate of it
was in mortgage.”” In 1086

ue

| [Tower ‘

Nyt Ly!
ace eds mre held of eS A
tenant Humphrey.”® One SSSsac

virgate of it was still in
mortgage. Humphrey paid
the king’s geld on it, but
was not in possession.”? The
Bishop of London’s lands in
Throcking are mentioned in
1278, when the bishop claimed that his tenants there
and elsewhere should be free from suit of hundred
court, but no further record of them occurs after
that date. It is possible that part of the bishop’s
lands had been granted to the family of Vabadun,
for in 1217-18 Richard de Vabadun had rights over
half the advowson of Throcking, which he conveyed
to Roger Fitz Brian, lord of the manor of Throck-
ing.8! The lands of the Vabaduns were also appa-
rently acquired by the Fitz Brians, for in the early
14th century part of the manor of Throcking was
known as the fee of Vabadun in distinction to the fee
of Challers.82

Besides the lands of the Bishop of London and
Hardwin de Scales, there were two other small hold-
ings in Throcking in 1086. One of these comprised
18 acres. It had been held of Archbishop Stigand
by Alric.88 At the Norman Conquest it was added
to the possessions of Count Eustace of Boulogne, of
whom it was held by Rumold.* Nothing further

Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree
Hund. 109.
72 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 463.

WWI AG

75 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 153 5 sce above.
76 Assize R. 325, m. 30d,
71 VCH. Herts. iy 395+

THROCKING

can be traced of this holding under Throcking and it
was possibly attached to Rumold’s manor of Beau-
champs in Layston (q.v.). There was another small
piece of land, comprising 12 acres, which in the time
of Edward the Confessor was held by Alvric Scova.%5
In 1086 it had been acquired by the Bishop of
Bayeux and was held of him by Osbern.8¢ This fee
also cannot be traced after 1086 and it was probably
appurtenant to a larger holding.

The church of HOLY TRINITY
consists of chancel 19 ft. 6in. by 18 ft.,
modern north vestry, nave 31 ft. by
18 ft., south porch 8 ft. by 6 ft. 6 in. and west
tower 8 ft. gin. square; all the dimensions are
internal. The walls are of flint rubble covered with
cement and with stone dressings. The upper half
of the tower is of red brick. The roofs, which are
continuous over chancel and nave, are slated.

The lower half of the tower is the earliest part of
the building and dates from early in the 13th cen-
tury. The chancel and nave appear to have been
rebuilt early in the 15th century, though there is a
window of earlier date in the chancel. The south
porch belongs to the latter part of the century ; the
upper half of the west tower bears the date 1660.

CHURCH

MopERN

S
y

WWF

10
SCALE OF FEET

Pran or Turocxinc CHuRCcH

The north vestry was added and the church re-
roofed and restored in the 19th century.

The east window of the chancel is of three cinque-
foiled lights with tracery under a four-centred arch ;
it has been restored in parts; it is of 15th-century
date. Inthe north wall is a doorway of the same
date, now opening into the modern vestry and organ
chamber. The arch is four-centred and it and the
jamb are splayed; on the vestry side is a moulded
label. Adjoining the doorway is a modern stone
traceried opening to the organ chamber. In the
south wall is a single narrow light, apparently a
14th-century window reset ; the pointed head is
blocked and 15th-century tracery has been inserted
beneath it. At the east end of the wall is a 15th-
century piscina with a four-centred moulded and
cusped arch under a square head and moulded label ;
it contains a stone credence shelf. The sill is modern.
There is no chancel arch, a single step being the only
division between chancel and nave.

81 Feet of F. Herts. 2 Hen. III, no, 2.
8? De Banco R, 273, m. 75 d
8 V.C.H. Herts. iy 3215

ed . 84 Ibid.
3 Bast Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii, 154. 78 Tid. ifs hid sil
% Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree 7 Ibid. % Thid.

Hund. 109.

80 Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 299.
4 113

15

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The nave has a north and a south window, each
of two lights with traceried heads under four-centred
arches. They are of 15th-century date, but have
been restored. ‘The south doorway is of the same
date ; it has chamfered jambs and four-centred arch
with moulded label. The south porch dates from
the second half of the 15th century ; it has a single
pointed light on the east side only. The arch and
jambs are splayed, but have no rebate for glass. The
entrance has a four-centred moulded arch, the mould-
ings dying on splayed jambs. The head is square with
a moulded label and in the spandrels are blank shields.

The tower arch has chamfered jambs and moulded
bases of 15th-century date and a four-centred moulded
arch and moulded capitals of 1660. In the lower
stage of the tower, in the north and south walls,
are narrow lancet windows widely splayed within ;
they are of 13th-century date. The west window
is of three lights with trefoiled heads under a four-
centred arch; it is of 15th-century date, but has
been restored. The upper part of the tower is
of red brick; a heavy brick string-course separates
the upper and lower portions. At the south-west
angle is an octagonal turret on an ogee-shaped corbel.
The belfry windows are single lights with round
arched heads. That on the east face now shows inside
the church ; in a panel on the south side is the date
1660. The parapet is plain, but at each angle is the
lower part of a former pinnacle.

The roofs are modern, but a few carved figures of
winged angels holding books, probably of 17th-
century date, have been refixed under the trusses.

The font is of clunch with octagonal bow] and stem,
the sides of which are panelled and cusped ; the base
is of cement. The font is of 15th-century date.

On the south wall of the nave, beneath the white-
wash, are visible three crosses paty, within circles,
about g in. in diameter, painted red. They vary in
height from the floor from 4 ft. to § ft. 6 in.

Nearly all the seating is of 17th-century date with
heavy moulded rails and panelled ends. In the
chancel is a poppy-head, probably of the same date.
It shows a man holding another man by the leg,
while a third is balanced upside down on the first
man’s head ; a large bird completes the group.

On the chancel floor is a large slab with inscription
to Sir Thomas Soame, kt., 1670.

There is one bell by C. & G. Mears, 1855.

The communion plate consists of cup, 1606, cover
paten without date or inscription and a modern
flagon.

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows:
(i) baptisms 1612 to 1812, burials 1616 to 1809,
marriages 1612 to 17533 (ii) marriages 1754 to
1810.

The earliest reference to the
advowson of Throcking occurs at
the beginning of the 13th century,
when Richard de Vabadun released to Roger Fitz
Brian, lord of the manor of Throcking, all right in a
half of the advowson in exchange for an acre of land
in Throcking.” From this date the advowson de-
scended with the manor® (q.v.) until on the death
of John Ray in 1840 it was sold to the Rev. William
Adams,® who presented himself and held the
living until his death in 1878. It was then acquired
by the Rev. Charles Wigan Harvey, who died in
tg1r. It is now held by the Rev. A. W. B. Higgens.

There do not appear to be any endowed charities
in this parish,

ADVOWSON

WYDDIAL

Widihale (xi cent.) ; Withiale (xii cent.) ; Wide-
wale (xiv cent.) ; Wydeale, Widyale (xv cent.) ;
Wythyall, Whetteall, Widdyall (xvi cent.) ; Wydd-
wyall (xix cent.).

The parish of Wyddial contains 1,542 acres. It
consists chiefly of arable land, only about one-sixth of
the parish being permanent grass! There is little
woodland and what there is lies chiefly in the north
of the parish, where College Wood in Wyddial
adjoins the larger Capon Wood in Buckland. The
soil is heavy on a subsoil of clay. The chief crops
are wheat and barley. ‘The parish lies for the most
part about 400 ft. above ordnance datum, reaching a
height of 441 ft. in the extreme north-west. In the
north-east and south-west the land falls in the valleys
of the Quin and Rib, which flow through the parish.
In the south of the parish the boundaries between
Wyddial and Layston are much intermixed. ;

Wyddial lies between two important roads, Ermine
Street? forming its western boundary and the main
road to Cambridge its short eastern boundary. ‘The
village, which is very small, lies on the high ground
in the centre of the parish. The church stands to
the north-west, close to Wyddial Hall. This house
was burnt down in 1733 and rebuilt of brick plastered.

& Feet of F. Herts. 2 Hen. III, no. 2. 9% Thid.

83 See above.
89 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree

Hund. 114.

1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905).
2 There is a reference to Ermine Street

The 16th-century cellars still remain ; they are built
of thin brick. In the walls are several niches with
triangular brick heads similar to those in Wymondley
Bury and other old houses in the county. Some early
17th-century panelling remains in the house.

The school, which was built about 1864, is on the
same side of the road, further south. The greater
part of the population of Wyddial is at Buntingford,
which lies partly within the parish.

Corney Bury stands on the east side of the main
road about a mile north of Buntingford. It is a
17th-century building with 18th-century additions.
Remains of a moat exist on the south-east side. ‘The
building is E-shaped, with the wings projecting to
the north-west ; it is of two stories with attics. The
walls are of brick and the roofs partly tiled and partly
slated. The north-west end of each wing has a curvi-
linear gable and there is another in the centre of the
main block. The central porch is of early 1 8th-century
date with Ionic columns and pediment. The windows
are plain. Two lead rain-water heads bear the initials
and date ‘C.C. 1681.’ The initials are for Charles
Crouch, who owned the property at that date.

At Cave Gate there is a shaft which is said to be a
denehole.

as a boundary of a tenement in Wyddial
in 1438 (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 5208).

td

‘THROCKING CHURCH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

Wyoppia, CuurcuH From THE Nortu-rasT

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

Before the Conquest Wyddial was
MANORS divided among nine sokemen.2 Of
these, Sired, a man of Earl Harold, held
a manor there, and Alward, a man of Earl Algar, held
another.“ The remainder of Wyddial was held by
seven sokemen of King Edward, who found for the
sheriff yearly gd. or the carrying service of 24 loads
(averae).© By 1086 Hardwin de Scales had obtained
all these holdings, which together formed the manor
of WYDDIAL.° The manor was always held in
chief.”
On the death of Hardwin de Scales his lands were
divided between his two sons Richard and Hugh.
Hugh obtained his manor of Wyddial® and from him
it descended to his son Henry de Scales." Henry
was succeeded by his son Hugh"; in 1195 Hugh’s
claim to Wyddial and various other lands was dis-
puted by William de Scales, the grandson of Hardwin’s
son Richard mentioned above."? The case was
adjourned in 1199 for so long as Henry son of Hugh
should be in the service of the king beyond the sea."
But later it was adjudged that Richard was not
seised of the lands which Hugh held at the death of
Henry II and judgement was given in favour of
Hugh.* On Hugh’s death Wyddial descended to
his son Henry, who settled it on his wife Maud
before starting on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In
his absence Maud was troubled in her possession by
certain Jews, who endeavoured to obtain payment of
her husband’s debts out of the manor of Wyddial.®
Henry died abroad and as he left no issue his lands
passed to his brother Geoffrey, who did homage for
them in 1221.'° Maud, however, held Wyddial in
dower until her death.” It then reverted to Geoffrey
de Scales and he in 1257 leased it for twelve years to
the queen.’® The following year, at her instance,
Henry III granted to Geoffrey de Scales that his son
Geoffrey should perform the services due from his
lands, as Geoffrey was at this time too old to perform
them. In consideration of this Geoffrey granted his
son his lands in Reed and Wyddial.'? The queen
also conveyed to Geoffrey de Scales the younger and
Eleanor his wife all rights in her lease of the manor.”
In 1260 Geoffrey de Scales received a grant of free
warren in his demesne lands of Wyddial and else-
where.” Geoffrey the younger died before 1267 and
the custody of his son Thomas, a minor, was granted
to his mother Eleanor, the tenants of his lands
being allowed quittance of suit at the hundred and
county court during the minority of the heir.”
Eleanor de Scales held in custody for her son * until

8 V.C.H. Herts. i, 3402.

9 See Dugdale, Mon. v, 3.

WYDDIAL

1283, when Thomas came of age,”' and the following
year his mother and her husband Robert Angot quit-
claimed his lands to him.” They received a grant of
Wyddial, however, for the term of their lives.® It
reverted to Thomas de Scales before March 1 304-5,
probably on the death of Eleanor, for Thomas de
Scales then granted £10 rent out of another of his
manors to Robert Angot.” Thomas de Scales died
seised in 1341. The manor then included four
customary tenants who were bound to reap 12 acres
in the autumn when their labour was worth 3s. From
the Feast of St. Michael to the beginning of August
their labour was worth }¢. a day.” Thomas de
Scales was succeeded by his son Thomas, who in
1355 settled the manor on his son Thomas and
Katherine his wife with remainder to his son John.”
Thomas died before his father, and on the latter’s
death in 1364 Wyddial descended to his grandson
John son of Thomas. He held the manor until
1388, when he died and was succeeded by his son
Thomas.** Wyddial was held in dower by his widow
Margery, who took as her second husband Sir John
Heveningham, kt." The manor reverted,to Thomas
de Scales before 14.28 * and he held it until his death
in February 1442-3. His son John inherited it,%”
and at his death in 1467 ® the male line of the Scales
family ended. His lands were divided between his
three daughters and Wyddial descended to the
youngest of these, Anne the wife of John Harcourt.”

On the death of John Harcourt Anne married as her
second husband Giles Wellisbourne, who died before
January 1493-4, when she was again a widow. By
her second marriage she had one daughter Margery,
her heir, for whom she arranged a marriage with
Humphrey Wellisbourne, a velation of her husband,
who had helped her in settling her debts. By the
marriage settlement she gave the manors of Wyddial
and Reed to Humphrey and Margery, reserving for
herself only an annual payment of 20 marks if she
made her home with them or 40 if she lived else-
where. Owing to a contract of marriage said to
have been arranged between Margery and a certain
John Rushton, Anne decreed by the settlement that
if Rushton prevented the marriage of Margery and
Humphrey, Humphrey should hold Wyddial for life,
and that if Margery married Rushton, at Humphrey’s
death Wyddial should revert to the other heirs of
Sir John Chalers or Scales, kt. This appears to have
put an end to Rushton’s claims, for the marriage
between Margery and Humphrey took place, and on
Anne’s death in March 1493-4 they inherited the

25 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 206;
Coram Rege R. 88, m. 1 (Hil. 13 Edw. I).
See Reed in Odsey Hundred.

4 Ibid, 10 Tbid.
5 Ibid. 11 Ibid.
6 Ibid.

See Assize R. 3233 Cal. Ing. p.m.
I-19 Edw. I, 309; Chan. Ing. a.q.d.
file 52, no. 123; 6 Ric. II, no. 413
ur Ric. II, no. 153 Cal. Ing. p.m.
Hen, VII, 427. Part of the manor of
Wyddial extended into Anstey (where
Hardwin held land in 1086) and was
held of the manor of Anstey. See Chan.
Ing. p.m. 13 Edw. II, no. 75 3 Cal. Close,
1323-7, p. 273 3 also above, p. 14.

8 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 99; see
Dugdale, Mon. v, 3. Hugh is here called
the son of Richard, but apparently with-
out any evidence, for the reference given
is to Dugdale’s Baronage, where there is
No mention of Richard,

12 Abbrev, Plac. (Rec. Com.), 99 ; Rot.
Cur. Reg. (Rec. Com.), ii, 199.

13 Rot. Cur. Reg. (Rec. Com.), iy 410.

4 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 99-

5 Close, 4 Hen. II, m. 11.

16 Excerpta e Rot. Fin, (Rec. Com.),
i, 69.
; Close, 4 Hen. III, m. 11; Feet of
F. Div. Co. 12 Hen. III, no. 15.

18 Cal, Pat, 1247-58, p- 549.

19 Ibid. p. 626.

® Cal. Ing. p.m. 1-19 Edw. I, 309.

11 Cal. Pat. 1258-66, p. 117.

32 Close, 51 Hen. III, m. 6.

3 Assize R. 323, m. 41 3 Hund. R, (Rec.
Com.), i, 188.

24 Cal. Ing. pm. 1-19 Edw. I, 309.

I1é

26 Assize R. 325.

27 Ing. a.q.d. file 52, no. 12.

28 Chan. Inq. p.m. Edw. III, file 64,
no. 20.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Cal, Pat. 1354-8, p. 3013 Feet of
F, Herts. 29 Edw. III, no. 446.

34 Chan. Inq. p.m. 6 Ric. II, no. 31.

33 Ibid. 11 Ric. II, no. 15.

34 Tbid. 12 Ric. II, no. 104.

35 Feud. Aids, ii, 446.

36 Chan, Ing. p.m. 21 Hen. VI, no. 20.

37 Tbid.

38 Ibid. 7 Edw. IV, no. 28.

39Tbid. See Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen, VI,

427.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

manor.” Humphrey died in 1516 and Margery, in
exchange for other lands left her by his will, settled
Wyddial on their eldest son Arthur Wellisbourne in
tail-male. She afterwards married Thomas Cheyne.
In 1522 she quitclaimed Wyddial to Robert Dormer,”
to whom Arthur Wellisbourne sold his interest in the
manor.”

In 1528 Robert Dormer and Joan his wife con-
veyed the manor of Wyddial to George Canon and
John Gill. George Canon built the chapel of
St. George in the parish church of Wyddial * and there
he willed he should be buried, providing for a priest,
four clerks and four children to say masses for him
for twenty years.“ He had one daughter and heir
Margaret, who married John Gill,“ and on his death
in 1534 the manor became vested in John and
Margaret.“® Their son George inherited the manor
on the death of John in March 1545-6." He held
it until his death in 1568, when he was succeeded by
his son John.*' In 1600 the manor descended to
John’s son and heir George Gill,” who was knighted
at Whitehall in 1603.% In 1619 he died and his
son John Gill inherited Wyddial.“ He sold it in
1627 to John Goulston.*

On the death of John Goulston in 1643 the manor
descended to his son Richard,* who during his tenure
of the manor made a park
round Wyddial Hall.” In
1686 Richard Goulston died
and was succeeded by his son
James,* who died in 1704,
when Wyddial descended to
his son Richard. Richard
died in 1731.% His son
Francis inherited the manor“
and sold it in 1772 to Stephen
Comyn, barrister-at-law and
bencher of the Inner Temple.”
Stephen Comyn died the fol-
lowing year and the manor
of Wyddial passed to his two
sons Stephen and Robert, who
sold it shortly afterwards to Brabazon Ellis,” who came
of an ancient Welsh family.“ He died in 1780 and
his son John Thomas Ellis, M.P., who married Mary
Anne, the only daughter of John Heaton of Bedfords
in Havering atte Bower, co. Essex, succeeded him.®
At his death at Milan in 1836% the manor passed

Goutston of Wyd-
dial Argent three bars
wavy gules with a tend
sable over all and three
roundels argent upon st.

to his son Charles Arthur Hill Heaton-Ellis,” who
died in 1865.% His widow held it for life, and at
her death in 1880 it descended to her grandson
Lieut.-Col. Charles Henry Brabazon Heaton-Ellis,
son of Edward Henry Brabazon, second son of
C. A. H. Heaton-Ellis,” who is the present lord of
the manor.”

The manor of CORNEY BURY (Cormei, xi cent. ;
Cornheie, Corneia, xii cent. ; Courneybury, xvi cent.)
was formed from two small holdings which in the
reign of Edward the Confessor were held by Alward,
a man of Harold, and Gode, a man of king Edward,
the former having 1 virgate and the latter 3." By
1086 these two estates had become united in the
possession of Count Eustace of Boulogne and the
whole was held of him by his tenant Robert. The
overlordship remained with the honour of Boulogne,”
which came to the Crown through the marriage of
Maud daughter of Count Eustace III of Boulogne with
King Stephen and was resumed by Henry II after
the death of Queen Maud’s two sons.”

In the early part of the 12th century the manor
was held by Hugh Triket, who had inherited it
from his father,”* who was possibly the Robert of
1086. Hugh granted all his lands in Corneybury
to the church of Holy Trinity, London.” In 1212
Simon Triket had rights of overlordship in Corney-
bury.’®

The canons of Holy Trinity held the manor”
until the dissolution of their priory. In 1253
Henry III granted them free warren in all their
demesne lands of Hertfordshire and a market to be
held every Tuesday in their manor of Corneybury
and a fair there every year on the vigil and feast of
St. Bartholomew and the six days following.” The
bridge over the Rib between Corneybury and Throck-
ing was broken in 1287 and the Prior of Holy
Trinity was ordered to repair it by his men in
Throcking and Corneybury.” The priory of Holy
Trinity was dissolved in 1531 and in 1534 its site
and lands were granted by Henry VIII to Sir Thomas
Audley." In 1538 Sir Thomas settled the manor
of Corneybury on himself and his wife Elizabeth in
tail.’ He was created Lord Audley de Walden the
same year.* At his death in 1544 he left two
daughters and co-heirs, Mary and Margaret.“ The
wardship and marriage of Margaret were granted to
Sir Anthony Denny, together with an annuity of

# Cal. Ing. pom. Hen. VII, 427.

Close, 7 Hen. VIII, no. 41.

@ Ibid. 14. Hen, VIL, no. 24.

& Tbid. no. 25.

“ Feet of F. Herts. East. 2¢ Hen. VIII.

43 Chauncy, Hise. Antiz. sf Hert, 112.

46 P.C.C. Will, 18 Hogan.

47 Coll, T:p:g. et Gen. viii, 275.

4 Tbid.; Berry, Herts. Gen. 56.

49D, and P. Hen. IU, xii (1), g- 795
11).

. 50 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), Ixxxvi, 97.
51 Tbid. cli, 58. 53 Ibid. cclxv, 77.
58 Shaw, Knights of Enziand, il, 122.

54 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ceccvii, 95.
55 Recov. R. East. 3 Chas. I, rot. 62;

Com. Pleas D. Enr. Mich. 3 Chas. I,

m. ~3; Trin. 7 Chas. I, m. 1.

56 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), dccxlili, 16.
§7 Chauncy, loc. cit.
88 Ibid. ; Recov. R. Trin. 12 WilL ITI,

rot. 88.

58 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 471 ; Recov.

R Trin. 8 Geo. I, rot. 71.

6 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

61 Ibid. ; Recov. R. Trin. 28 Geo. II,
rot. 205.

@ Cussans, Hist. of Herts, Edwinstree
Hund. 120.

® Clutterbuck, loc, cit.

* Burke, Landed Gentry (1906), 8.¥.
Heaton-Ellis of Wyddial Hall. Brabazon
Eliis was son of Dr. Ellis, author of Ellis
on Divine Things. ® Ibid.

% Cussans, loc. cit.; Burke, Landed
Gentry (1906).

& cf. Recov. R. Mich. 8 Geo. IV, rot.
220.

6 Burke, Landed Gentry (1906).

°9 The elcest son Charles John Heaton-
Ellis died before Delhi in 1857.

“© Information from the Rev. F. R.
Broughton.

7. VCH. Herts. i, 3214.

71 Liter Niger Scacc. (ed. T. Hearne),
i, 389 ; Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
581; Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 274;
Cal. Close, 1343-6, p. 516.

116

73 Round, Studies in Peerage and Family
History, 172.

74 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 152. 78 Thid,

76 Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
581; Liber Niger Scacc. (ed. Hearne), i,
389. For descent of this family see
manor of Berkesden in Aspenden.

7 Anct. Chart. (Pipe R. Soc.), 104;
Pipe R. 6 John, m. 3d.; 12 John,
m. 18; Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
5815 Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), 274;
Feud. Aids, ii, 432, 446, 453; Abbrev.
Plac, (Rec. Com.), 344 3 Cal. Close, 134 3--6,
P- 510; Ct, R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177,
No. 29.

78 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 427.

79 Assize R. 325, m. 30 d.

® Dugdale, Mon. vi, 150.

8 L. and P. Hen. VIII, viiy g. §87 (10),
1601 (35).

® Ibid. xiii (2), 491 (6).

8 G.E.C. Complete Peerage, 0.v. Audley
of Walden.

* Chan. Ing. p.m, (Ser. 2), lxxxvi, 100.

Tue Cuancer Arcu and Nortru -ArcaDE

WyppiaL Cuurcu :

Wyopprat Cuurcu: Tue Norra Arste tooxinc Easr

EDWINSTREE HUNDRED

£50 from various manors of her inheritance including
Corneybury. Margaret married first Lord Henry
Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland,®* who
was killed at St. Quintins in 1557," and secondly
Thomas Duke of Norfolk. She died seised of
Corneybury in January 1563-4. Her husband
survived her and held the manor until January
1571-2, when he was attainted for high treason, and
it then passed to her son Thomas Lord Howard.”
In 1583 he sold it to John
Crouch.” John Crouch died
in February 1605-6 and left
Corneybury to his second son ha
Thomas Crouch,” who held
it until his death in 1616." Ba
The manor then passed to his
son John™ and at his death ba
in 1649 to his third son
Charles.° Thomas Crouch,
second son and heir of c
6 rover of Corney-
Charles,* raised a company of bury. Argent three crosses
soldiers at his own expense in —_formy between two pales
1688 to support the king in within a border engrailed
Ireland. After an unsuccess- ‘2/
ful campaign, in which he lost
most of his men,” he returned to England and in
1690 sold the manor of Corneybury to Ralph
Hawkins, brewer, of London.® Ralph died in 1696
and the manor descended to his son John Hawkins.°*
Thomas Hawkins, son of John,’ died in 1742 and
by his will left Corneybury to his niece Catherine,
the wife of William Woolball of Walthamstow, co.
Essex, with remainder to their issue.' Their daughter
and heir Catherine married Sir Hanson Berney of
Kirby Bedon, co. Norfolk, bart.,” and in 1790, after
her husband’s death,’ joined with her son Sir John
Berney in selling the manor of Corneybury to William
Butt. He held it until his death in 1806, when it
descended to his son William Butt,* who in 1841
was succeeded by a son of the same name.® The
estate has lately been sold, after the death of the
latter, by his sons.
The church of ST. GILES stands on
CHURCH high ground about 14 miles north-east
of Buntingford and consists of chancel
23 ft. by 15 ft., north chapel 18 ft. by 12 ft., nave
39 ft. by 19 ft., north aisle 10 ft. 6 in. wide, west
tower 10 ft. by g ft. 6 in. and south porch ; all the
dimensions are internal. The walls generally are of
flint rubble ; those of the north chapel and aisle are
of brick ; the roofs are tiled.

Owing to the extensive restoration of the church
it is difficult to assign a date for its erection, but it is
probable that the chancel, nave and west tower
were all built during the 15th century. The north
chapel and aisle were built by George Canon in
1532, as appears from a brass inscription from his

WYDDIAL

tomb now preserved in the rectory. In 1865 the
chancel, nave and aisle were practically rebuilt and
a south porch was added.

The three-light window in the east wall of the
chancel and the two windows in the south wall are
modern. In the north wall is the brick archway to
the north chapel. The arch is pointed and has two
hollow-chamfered orders; the responds are semi-
octagonal with roughly moulded brick capitals. The
chancel arch is of 1s5th-century date and is of two
moulded orders, the outer order continuous, the
inner resting on engaged circular shafts with moulded
capitals and bases ; it has been repaired. The east
window of the north chapel is of three cinquefoiled
lights with tracery under a four-centred arch ; it is
all of brick with moulded arch and label. The two
windows in the north wall are each of three lights,
with moulded brick jambs and arches. A screen
marks the division between the chapel and the north
aisle. ‘The chapel was dedicated to St. George’; it
is built of thin bricks.

On the north side of the nave is an arcade of three
bays of 1532; all the work is of brick, which has been
artificially coloured red and tuck-pointed with black
lines. The pointed arches are of three chamfered
orders, the centre one hollow-chamfered. The piers
are formed of four semi-octagonal shafts separated by
hollow chamfers ; the moulded capitals are crude in
execution, the bases are of cement. The three windows
and the doorway in the south wall are all modern ; the
south porch is also modern. In the aorth-east angle
of the nave is the turret containing the rood stair, the
doorways to which are blocked. The north aisle has
two windows in the north wall, each of three lights
with moulded jambs and arch. Another window
near the west end is of 15th-century date, reset ; it is
of stone with two cinquefoiled lights with a square
head and moulded brick label. The west window of
the aisle is also of 15th-century date, reset ; it is of
stone with two cinquefoiled lights under a traceried
head. This window is not central with the aisle,
and externally, between the window and the west
tower, is an apparently solid mass of brickwork about
g ft. wide and projecting about 20 in. ; it has splayed
sides and is carried up to the wall-head and finished
with a tiled roof. It has no connexion with the
tower and is too wide for a turret stair; as it is
directly behind the west impost of the nave arcade, it
acts as a buttress and may have been intended as
such. All the roofs are modern.

The west tower is of three stages with short leaded
spire and embattled parapet. The tower arch is of
two chamfered orders, the outer one continuous, the
inner resting on semi-octagonal shafts with moulded
capitals and bases ; it is of 15th-century date. The
west window is of two cinquefoiled lights with quatre-
foil in the head; it has been repaired with cement.

8 L. and P, Hen. VIII, xx (1), g- 465
(88).

56 G.E.C. loc. cit.

& Ibid.

88 Thid.

89 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), clxii, 167.

99 Ibid. and also clxi, 79.

91 Feet of F. Herts, East. 25 Eliz.

%2 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccxciv, 86.

8 Ibid. ccclxi, 14.7.

% Tbid.

%§ Chauncy, Hist, Antig. of Herts. 127.

96 Close, 2 Will. and Mary, pt. vii,
no. 10.

97 Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of Herts. 130.

98 Close, 2 Will. and Mary, pt. vil,
no. 10. 99 Chauncy, loc. cit.

100 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antiq. of
Herts. iii, 427.

1P.C.C. Will, 354 Trenley. Mary
wife of Charles Walmsley made a claim
on the manor as the executrix of Japhet
Crook, late of the parish of St. Margaret’s,
co. Herts., but the Court of Delegates

117

gave judgement against her, and in 1740
she quitclaimed all right in the manor.
See Feet of F. Herts. Hil. 14 Geo. II.

2 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.; G.E.C. Com-
plete Baronctage, i, 143.

3 G.E.C. loc, cit.

4 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

5Ibid.; Feet of F. Herts. East. §1
Geo. III.

6 Cussans, loc. cit.

7 Will of George Canon, 20 Oct. 1534
(P.C.C. Wills, F 18 Hogan).

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The north, south and west belfry windows are each
of two cusped lights, much defaced and repaired with
brick. On the east side is a single square-headed
light.

The font is modern. The oak screens between
the north chapel and the chancel and north aisle
and under the tower arch are of 17th-century date ;
the lower parts are panelled, the upper panels being
carved and pierced. The upper part consists of a
series of round-headed openings separated by pilasters ;
over each opening is a semicircular open panel with
moulded radiating bars; the top is finished with
moulded architrave, swelled frieze and moulded
cornice. In the aisle are three inclosed pews with
carved and panelled sides to match the lower part of
the screens ; they are of the same date. In the
nave are some old reeded panels incorporated with
modern seating. The communion table is of late
17th-century date, with turned and moulded legs.
In two of the north aisle windows are panels of late
16th-century glass, probably Flemish; the scenes
painted include Peter cutting off the servant’s ear,
Christ before Pilate, Christ being scourged and bear-
ing the Cross, and some others.

On the north wall of the nave is a board with
painted inscription to Margery wife of Anthony
Disney, 1621. On the north wall of the chancel is
a brass with half-length figure of a lady, with arms
and inscription to Dame Margaret only daughter of
Sir Thomas Nevyll, widow of Sir Robert Southwell,
kt., Master of the Rolls, and wife of William Plumbe ;
she died in 1575. On the floor is a brass to John
Gill, 1546, with the figures of a man and his wife,
eight daughters, arms and inscription, and indent of
sons ; another to George Gill, 1568, partly hidden
under the flooring, with inscription and arms; a
third to John Gill, 1600, and Joan his wife, with in-
scription. On the south wall of the chapel isa monument
of marble and alabaster, with twisted columns support-
ing a broken pediment, to Sir William Goulston,

8 V.C.H. Herts. i, 34.02.

9 Dugdale, Mon. v, 3.

10 See list of patrons, Clutterbuck,
Hist. of Herts, iii, 473.

(74).

1) Feet of F. Herts. Mich. 29 Hen. VIII.
127, and P, Hen. VIII, xiii (1), g- 384

1687; on the cornice are marble busts of Sir
William and Frediswide, his wife. On the east wall
is a tablet to Richard Goulston, 1686, with brass on
floor beneath, on which is a punning Latin inscrij-
tion. On the north wall is a tabl.t to Jane
Goulston, 1630. On the floor is a brass to Helen
daughter of John Goulston and wife of John Joscelyne,
d. 1640 ; also a brass with the lower part only of a
figure of a civilian, supposed to be that of George
Canon, 1534, the founder of the chapel ; the inscrip-
tion is preserved at the rectory.

There are four bells : the first by J. Warner & Sons,
1866 ; the second inscribed ‘ Sancta Katerina Ora Pro
Nobis,’ probably of the 14th century; the third
without inscription ; the fourth by C. Graye, 1666.

The communion plate is modern. A chalice and
paten of silver gilt were given in 1727 by Richard
Goulston. They were melted down in the great fire
at Wyddial Hall, a small part of the material which
was recovered being converted into the chalice and
paten (with date 1734) in use at the present day.

The registers previous to 1812 are as follows:
(i) baptisms 1666 to 1812, burials 1669 to 1812,
marriages 1666 to 1810 ; (ii) marriages 1756 to 1805.

There was a priest in Wyddial
in 1086.° The advowson was ori-
ginally attached to the manor, but
early in the 12th century it was granted by Hugh
de Scales, lord of the manor, to the priory of Lewes.’
It remained with this priory until 1537, when the
prior surrendered it to the Crown." In 1538 the
site of the priory and many of its possessions, includ-
ing the advowson of Wyddial, were granted by the
king to Thomas Lord Cromwell." On his attainder
in 1540 the advowson again came into the king’s
hands and in 1544 was granted to John Gill, lord
of the manor of Wyddial."* From this date the
advowson has descended with the manor "‘ (q.v.)

There do not appear to be any endowed charities
in this parish.

ADVOWSON

18 Ibid. xix (1), g. 610 (27).
14 Inst. Bks, (P.R.O.)

118

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Map sHowinc Romano-British Remains in HErtrorDSHIRE

CELTIC AND ROMANO-
BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

EFORE the Roman occupation and indeed till long afterwards the

B south-eastern part of Hertfordshire, lying on the London clay, and
a little to the north and west of the clay, was a part of a dense
woodland which also covered Middlesex and the south-west of

Essex." Few Roman remains have been found in this district, and, except
along the line of Ermine Street, it probably remained comparatively
uninhabited till it was cleared and settled two or three centuries before
the Norman Conquest.’ The rest of the county is on chalk, which on
the north-eastern side is covered with boulder clay and to the west, on the
Chiltern Hills, by ‘clay with flints.’ Both these surface-soils, but particu-
larly the former, are known for their
fertility, and consequently these districts
have long been famed as corn-growing
lands. This may be the reason why they
were selected for settlement by the Belgic
tribes who overran the _ south-eastern
quarter of Britain about B.c. 200 and are
known to have been agriculturists.° This Pies Hien So es
people came from Gallia Belgica, which geom VEnuveurun
covered the northern part of Gaul, from
Paris to the Rhine, and seem to have settled here by tribes. They
continued an intimate intercourse with their kinsmen across the Channel
and had a higher standard of civilization than the other inhabitants of this
island. They were the first to introduce into Britain a coinage such as
was in use in Belgic Gaul, and certain elegantly-shaped cordoned urns
seem to be confined to the district settled by them. In general, they shared
with the rest of Britain the Late Celtic art, principally in bronze, showing
elaborate designs of the returning spiral of which that on the top of a
sword scabbard lately found at Verulamium is a good example. The orna-
ment on it is characteristically Late Celtic, possibly of the earlier part of
the first century a.p.*

The tribe that inhabited the district now known as Hertfordshire, up
to the Lea, was the Catuvellauni, miscalled by Ptolemy the Catyeuchlani.

LAUT TNT TTA NT
2 en ee a ee

1 At the present day in driving along the Great North Road the scenery changes a little north of
Welwyn from woodland to the south to open country to the north.

2 No Roman remains are recorded as having been found in the area bounded approximately by
Watling Street on the west, Sandridge to Digswell and the River Mimram to Hertingfordbury on the north
and an imaginary line from Hertingfordbury southward to the county boundary.

3 The Trinovantes supplied Caesar with corn, and a wheat-ear appears on many of the British coins.

* Proc. Soc. Antig. (1911-12), xxiv, 132.

11g

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Their territory probably included the present counties of Middlesex and
Hertford and extended into Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire
and Northamptonshire. According to Ptolemy their chief towns were
Urolanium or Verulamium (near St. Albans in Hertfordshire) and Salinae.‘
Besides these towns they had in Hertfordshire settlements at Welwyn,
Hitchin and Braughing, and it is probable that the county is richer in
remains of this race than is generally supposed.

Caesar’s first invasion in B.c. 55 did not affect the inland part of
Britain, but the second in the following year had more far-reaching
effects. The Belgic tribes in Britain, as was their custom, were constantly
engaged in internecine warfare, but appreciating the seriousness of the
Roman attack they determined to combine for the purpose of defence.
The chief men of the tribes met and gave to Cassivellaunus, Prince of the
Catuvellauni, the supreme command of the British forces.6 We know little
of this prince. It has been suggested that he succeeded to the chief rule of
the Belgic tribes in Britain by hereditary right from Divitiacus,’? King
of the Suessiones, a tribe whose territory lay to the north-west of Paris.
Caesar states that Britain, by which possibly he meant that portion occupied
by the Belgic tribes and best known to the Gauls, was brought under the
rule of this Divitiacus at a period before his time.’ The fact, however,
mentioned by Caesar that Cassivellaunus was elected general seems to
dispose of the suggestion that he succeeded by inheritance to that office.
It is probable, however, that he was the most powerful king in Britain in
his time. He had apparently waged war on his neighbours the Trinovantes,
who inhabited what is now the county of Essex, and had slain their king "
Imanuentius. Mandubracius, son of Imanuentius, escaped to Gaul and
invited Caesar’s aid probably before the first invasion of Britain. He
accompanied Caesar on his second invasion, when he evidently persuaded
the Trinovantes to submit, and was probably the means of securing the
submission of other tribes. In his second invasion Caesar landed near
Sandwich in July, B.c. 54."° The route he took and the place at which he
crossed the Thames do not concern us with regard to Hertfordshire." The
Romans reached the Thames about a week after commencing their march,
and the Britons, having failed in preventing the Roman army from crossing
that river, seem to have lost heart.’ Cassivellaunus seeing no prospect of
success by a general engagement disbanded the greater part of his army,
retaining only some 4,000 charioteers.”*

The laconic language of Caesar gives us no clue as to his route north of
the Thames. It was apparently along a recognized track, for he states
that Cassivellaunus moved a little way ex va and hid himself in impenetrable
woodland, so that with his intimate knowledge of the ground he might cut
off foragers and harass the Roman army. It would seem probable that the

5 The site of Salinae is unknown. Its identification with Sandy in Bedfordshire is uncertain.

8 De Bello Gallico, v, 11.

7 Guest, Origines Celticae, 394; see also T. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, 299, 300.

8 De Bello Gallico, ii, 4.

9 Ibid. v, 11, 20. The provision by Caesar for the safety of Mandubracius and the Trinovantes from
molestation by Cassivellaunus (ibid. 22) implies that war had been waged between the tribes.

10 [bid. v, 20, 21; T. Rice Holmes, op. cit. 333.

V.C.H. Surr. iv, 343.3 Proc. Soc. Antig. xxiv, 137 et seq.
12 De Bello Gallico, v, 18. 18 Tbid. 19.

120

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

track referred to followed the line of Watling Street, north-west of London,
which would have as its objectives the lowest safe ford across the Thames
and Verulamium. It passed through a district then and for long afterwards
dense woodland,” such as would have concealed the army of Cassivellaunus
and would have been adapted to the tactics pursued by the British.

After beginning his march north of the Thames, Caesar received
envoys from the Trinovantes, who submitted to him, giving hostages and a
supply of corn.* In return he sent them Mandubracius their prince and
gave them protection from the Roman soldiers.’° The example of the
Trinovantes was followed by five other tribes who sent envoys and
surrendered. These negotiations must have occupied some days and would
necessitate a halt. It was at this time and from these latter envoys that the
exact position of the stronghold (oppidum) of Cassivellaunus was ascertained.
Caesar writing in the third person states ” :—

He learnt from the envoys that the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, which was protected by woods and
marshes, was not far off, and that a considerable number of men and of cattle had assembled in it. The
Britons apply the name of stronghold to any woodland spot difficult of access and fortified with a rampart
and trench to which they are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid. Caesar marched to
the spot indicated with his legions and found that the place was of great natural strength and well fortified ;
nevertheless he proceeded to assault it on two sides. ‘The enemy stood their ground a short time, but could
not sustain the onset of our infantry and fled precipitately from another part of the stronghold. A great
quantity of cattle was found in the place, and many of the garrison were captured as they were trying to
escape and killed.

The site of the stronghold of Cassivellaunus has long been a matter of
dispute. Verulamium, London, Camulodunum or Colchester, Cassiobury
Park, Pinner and Harrow have each been claimed for it.* As regards the
three last there seems to be no valid ground for a claim. Camulodunum
was in the territory of the Trinovantes and could not therefore have been
the stronghold of Cassivellaunus.” The claim of London has been strongly
urged,” but the evidence mainly lies in the supposed existence of a Late
Celtic stronghold on Ludgate Hill of which no indications remain and of
which there has been found no evidence of a rampart and ditch such as,
according to Caesar, existed at the stronghold of Cassivellaunus. Professor
Haverfield, the most recent authority on Roman London, states that ‘ either
there was no pre-Roman London or it was a small and undeveloped settle-
ment which may have been on the south bank of the Thames.’” It is
clear that London was of little importance before the Claudian invasion.
No British coins were struck there and only one such coin is recorded as

4 In Gesta Abbatum Mon. 8. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 43, reference is made to a lease of about 1066 of
the manor of Aldenham ‘ubi frequentius, propter sylvarum abundantiam, transeuntibus et Londoniam
adeuntibus, imminebant pericula.’ Watling Street passes through the parish of Aldenham and is the main
thoroughfare to London. See also as to the clearing of this district by Abbot Leofstan (ibid. 39).

15 Some authorities state that on crossing the Thames Caesar marched towards the land of the
Trinovantes (Essex), but he himself gives no hint of this, and if his goal was the stronghold of Cassivellaunus,
which there can be little doubt was Verulam, it is highly improbable he would have gone so far out
of his way.

16 De Bello Gallico, v, 20.

17 Ibid. 21. The translation is taken from T. Rice Holmes, Caesar’s Commentaries (1908), 141.

18 The claims of all these sites have been dealt with by T. Rice Holmes (Ancient Britain, 701).

19 Tbid. 702.

20 T, Does in Arch. xl, 65 ; Sir Lawrence Gomme, Making of London, 17-23, 36. There were pile
dwellings at Finsbury and at the Fleet outside the site of Roman London, and possibly hut dwellings at
Cheapside ; Gomme, op. cit.

21 Journ. of Roman Studies (1911), 146.

4 121 16

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

having been found on the site.” Had London been the stronghold of
Cassivellaunus, Caesar would not have omitted from his description of the
site the all-important fact that it stood on the Thames.

So far as the evidence at present goes the only place that was
undoubtedly a Late Celtic stronghold fulfilling the requirements of Caesar’s
description, is Verulamium, near St. Albans. It was surrounded by wood-
land on its east, west and south sides, which then would be difficult of
access, it had a marsh on its north side and was fortified by a formidable
earthen rampart and ditch. Besides, we know that it was the stronghold
of the immediate successor of Cassivellaunus, and numerous coins and other
objects of the Late Celtic period have been discovered on its site (PI. i).™

Caesar must have arrived at this British stronghold about the beginning
of August. Cassivellaunus was at that time away planning an attack on the
Roman naval camp on the Kentish coast, but the attack failed, and shortly
afterwards being deserted by several of the confederated tribes he sued for
peace.* Caesar was glad to bring to an end a somewhat inglorious and
unprofitable campaign, and having arranged for hostages, tribute and the
independence of his allies, the Trinovantes, he returned with his army to
the coast. After some delay at the naval camp his fleet started for Gaul
about the middle of September. Caesar’s invasions of Britain must have
been extremely costly and the results cannot have been commensurate with
the outlay. It is true they put a stop to British interference in Gaul, but
it is unlikely that the Romans obtained much booty, and it is more than
doubtful if the tribute imposed upon the Britons was regularly paid. On
the other hand the invasions had a lasting effect on the Britons themselves.
They opened up the country to Roman commerce and admitted higher ideas
of civilization.

Cassivellaunus continued to rule over the Catuvellauni with his seat of
government probably at Verulamium, apparently leaving the Trinovantes
under the rule of Mandubracius. He died about B.c. 47, and was succeeded
by Tasciovanus, possibly his son, who continued to make Verulamium the
seat of government. We know little of his reign, but it would seem that
towards the close of it he acquired the dominion of the Trinovantes either
by conquest, succession, or election. There seems to be some evidence that
during his lifetime he appointed his son Cunobeline or Cymbelene to rule
over this latter tribe with his seat of government at Camulodunum.* On
the death of Tasciovanus about a.p. 5, Cunobeline continued to make the
seat of his government at Camulodunum, owing to which Verulamium
lost its position as chief town in Britain. He seems to have reassumed the
sovereignty which Cassivellaunus held over the Belgic tribes in the south-
east of Britain and the gradually increasing intercourse with the continent
and Rome brought him considerable wealth and power.”

22 The records of the discovery of objects in London are so scattered that it is difficult to speak
positively as to what has been found, but it seems certain that very few objects of the Late Celtic period have
been discovered actually on the site of Roman London.

23 Y.C.H. Herts. i, 238-42. Verulamium was of sufficient distance from the Thames to allow for the
tactics of Cassivellaunus and the other occurrences as described by Caesar.

24 De Bello Gallico, v, 22. 25 Evans, Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864), 289.

26 Ibid. The objects found with the burials at Welwyn in 1906 are of this period, and some of them

must have been very costly importations from Italy. See also remarks as to the indications of wealth as
shown by the late Celtic coinage, infra.

122

Veruramium : Late Cettic Bronze Hexmet (noce in the Colchester Museum)

Norrucuurcu: Late Crrtic Bronze Hetmer rounp at Norrucotr Hii

Prats I

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

A little before his death, which occurred about a.p. 41, dissensions
arose among his sons Adminius, Togodumnus and Caratacus, and possibly a
fourth, Bericus. The dissensions led to an insurrection?” on account. of
which Adminius was banished by his father. He fled to the Emperor
Caligula and persuaded him in a.p. 40 to start on an expedition to invade
Britain.” The army got no farther than the sea shore opposite Britain,
where, as the story goes, the mad Caligula drawing up his troops suddenly
ordered them to gather shells as * the spoils of the ocean,’ and then retired.”
The confusion in Britain continued after Cunobeline’s death when Togodumnus
and Caratacus either divided their father’s dominion or ruled jointly.

In a.p. 43 the Emperor Claudius, at the instigation of Bericus, who
had fled to Rome,® sent an army under Aulus Plautius to subjugate Britain.
The Romans met with little opposition till they reached a river, probably
the Medway, where Togodumnus and Caratacus vainly attempted to stop
their progress. Similar tactics were tried at the Thames without result,
but at one of these engagements Togodumnus was slain. There was then
a pause in the campaign in order that Claudius might bring up reinforce-
ments and take part in the conquest of Camulodunum or Colchester.
The defeat of Caratacus by Claudius and the capture of Camulodunum
do not belong to the history of this county, but they marked the subjuga-
tion of all south-eastern Britain including the lands of the Catuvellauni and
Trinovantes.

The Romans having thus established themselves, the army was formed
into three divisions, the Second Legion going south-west to Somerset and
Devon, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions north-west to Shrewsbury
and Chester and the Ninth Legion north towards Lincoln. All the eastern
side of Britain up to the Humber was occupied probably by a.p. 47, when
Britain was annexed to the Roman Empire, and in a.p. 48 or a little later
the subjugation of the more hilly country to the north and west began
under Ostorius, who succeeded Plautius.

About a.p. 49 Ostorius founded a colony of veterans at Camulodunum
with the twofold object of overawing the district and giving the Britons an
example of Roman civilization." The result, however, was unsatisfactory,
for the veterans were overbearing and the Roman officials avaricious and
tactless.* The unrest which consequently arose culminated in the rising of
the Iceni, a tribe occupying the eastern part of Britain, under their Queen
Boudicca or Boadicea in a.p. 62. They were joined by the Trinovantes, in
whose territory Camulodunum lay, and to these, we are told, there were
added the neighbouring tribes, among which was probably the Catuvellauni.
Taking advantage of the absence of Suetonius the governor with the Roman
army in North Wales, the confederated British tribes fell on Camulodunum
and overwhelmed the garrison. Suetonius hastened south, but not being
strong enough to save Verulamium and Londinium, he marched back from
London towards Chester. Having collected what troops he could he
determined to engage the Britons under Boadicea in the open. The site of
their engagement is unknown, but as Tacitus states that there was a forest
at the rear of the Romans who came from London and an open plain in

27 Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. lib. Ix. 28 Suetonius, De xii Caesaribus. __% Thid.
2 Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. lib. Ix. 31 Tacitus, Annals, xii, 32. 32 Ibid. xiv, 31.

123

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

front, it may very well have been fought on the verge of the forest district
in Hertfordshire, all Middlesex being then forest. The Britons were
defeated with great slaughter and peace was gradually restored in south-east
Britain.”

In the Flavian epoch the governors—amongst them Agricola—began
to encourage the general adoption of Roman civilization, which hitherto,
judging from the causes of the revolt under Boadicea, had been mainly
confined to the larger towns. In Hertfordshire the places inhabited in the
Roman era, Verulamium, Welwyn, Braughing and Hitchin, are all apparently
on the sites of British settlements and the association of British and Roman
objects points to a gradual Romanization of the district which had begun
probably before the Claudian invasion.

The Roman settlements in Hertfordshire follow the lines of the rivers
and roads, and are therefore not usually on the highest lands. In the
valley of the Chess there were ‘villas’ at Sarratt and at Latimer just over
the county boundary. In the valley of the Gade there were ‘villas’ at
Abbot’s Langley, Boxmoor and Hemel Hempstead, while Roman objects
have been found at Great Berkhampstead, Northchurch and Wigginton,
and a cemetery at Tring gives indication of a settlement. Along Watling
Street, which traverses the valleys of the Colne and Ver, were the town of
Verulamium and a little settlement possibly near Aldenham. Along the
Lea cemeteries mark the sites of settlements at Hoddesdon and Ware, and
some way further up the stream remains at Harpenden suggest habitation.
On the Mimram was the settlement at Welwyn. In the valley of the Rib
there are a ‘villa’ at Youngsbury in Standon parish, a station at Braughing
and a cemetery at Westmill indicating a settlement. In the north of the
county there is a considerable group of settlements around Hitchin which
belongs to the watershed of the Cam. Here the cemeteries at Pirton,
Hitchin, Willian, Norton and Letchworth and the ‘villa’ at Purwell Mill
in Great Wymondley indicate settlements. At Baldock, where Roman
remains have been found, there was possibly a small station at the crossing
of Stane Street and Icknield Way and another for the like reason at Royston
at the crossing of Ermine Street and Icknield Way. At Ashwell and
Hinxworth there were cemeteries also which may imply settlements. It
seems clear from the disposition of these settlements that the waterways as
well as the roads were used as lines of communication by the Romans.

In this fertile district probably most of the settlements were composed
of the so-called ‘villas, the properties of large landowners, sometimes
Romans, but more often Romanized Britons. These landowners lived in
comfortable houses and caused the lands immediately round them to be culti-
vated by their slaves and let the rest of their land to the half-serf co/oni.%

The Romano-British houses are mainly of two types which were
suitable to the climate and are only to be found in Britain and northern
Gaul, namely, (a) the corridor type, showing in plan a row of rooms with a
passage or corridor running along one side, or occasionally on both sides,
and (b) the courtyard type, having three rows of such rooms with corridors
running along three sides of a square with an open courtyard in the middle.

33 Tacitus, Annals, xiv, 33-8. 4 F. Haverfield, The Romanization of Roman Britain (ed. 2), 53.
124

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

In both types the houses were seldom, if ever, carried higher than the
ground floor, and were usually built on a foundation of masonry, above
which were timber and plaster, the roof being covered with tiles. They
were often fitted with hypocausts and bath-rooms, their floors were
decorated with mosaics and their walls with paintings. These types occur
in both town and country, though eminently unsuited to the former, as they
do not adapt themselves for arrangement into streets. Such were the
dwellings in Verulamium and the villas at Boxmoor and Purwell Mill.
The remains of the other villas found in the county are too fragmentary to
show their type.

Very different, however, was the building discovered at Sarratt, which
was oblong in plan, and was, apparently, divided longitudinally into three
parts by two rows of timber posts. At one end there was an apse or room.
Similar buildings have been found at Spoonley Wood in Gloucestershire,
Ickleton in Essex, Clanville, Carisbroke, Castlefield near Andover, and
Petersfield in Hampshire and Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire.*
In certain instances, as in the case of the building at Sarratt, this type
of house apparently bears some relation to a larger dwelling or villa
adjoining and may have been the residence of the bailiff.

The hoards found in the county tell us little. An early hoard found at
Kimpton, so far as the coins have been identified, covers the period from
B.C. 43 to A.D. 15, and a number of coins discovered at Hemel Hempstead,
possibly not a hoard, date from B.c. 144 to a.p. 75. No reason for the
depositing of either of these can be assigned, but a hoard found at Ashwell
which ends about a.p. 180, a recognized hoard period, may have been
hidden on account of the Pictish raids of the time of Commodus and the
subsequent mutiny of the Roman army in Britain. The hoard discovered
at Brickendon, which ends about a.p. 250, and that at Aldbury, which ends
about a.D. 272, are probably connected with the troublous times of the
latter part of the 3rd century. The later of these dates is perhaps the
commonest for hoards in this country and refers to the period of disturbance
about a.p. 260-80. Another hoard from Cheshunt dates to about a.p. 365,
again a disturbed time in Britain by reason of the incursions of the Picts
and Saxons.

The only vestige of anything like an industry of which evidence has
been discovered is the manufacture of pottery. Kilns have been discovered
at Radlett, where the name of the potter ‘Castus’ can be assigned and the
type of pottery, principally mortaria, and the mode of firing could be
distinguished. Kilns are thought to have existed also at Aldenham, Great
Amwell and Hitchin. These, however, were merely local provisions for
local needs and cannot be dignified with the name of an industry.

VERULAMIUM

The site of Verulamium,*” which lies a little to the south-west of
St. Albans, has not been systematically explored and so the history of the

35 cf. V.C.H. Hants, i, 296, 316 ; V.C.H. Notts. ii, 30; Arch. lii, 651. a8 V.C.H. Leics. 1, 180.

37 The variants in spelling are: (1) from the coins of Tasciovanus, Verlam or Virlam, Verlamium,
possibly Verolamium (V.C.H. Herts. i, 239-42) ; (2) Tacitus gives Verulamium (Annals, xiv, 33) ; (3) Ptolemy
has Urolamium ; (4) The Antonine Itinerary, Verolamium, Verolamum.

125

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

town has yet to be written. If such an exploration should ever be under-
taken, there is little doubt it would disclose much history of the Late Celtic
and Romano-British periods. No object earlier than the Late Celtic age
has as yet been found on the site ; consequently it may perhaps be suggested
that the town was established by the Catuvellauni, a tribe that arrived in
Britain about B.c. 200, whose chief stronghold it certainly became. As has
been already stated,** there can be little doubt that Verulamium was the
‘oppidum’ of Cassivellaunus, Prince of the Catuvellauni, to which Caesar
led his troops in B.c. 54. We know the town was then taken and probably
sacked by the Romans, but from the evidence of coins and other objects it
must have quickly recovered its prosperity. It was during the reign of
Tasciovanus, who succeeded Cassivellaunus about B.c. 47,° that Verulamium
seems to have reached the height of its wealth and importance. It remained
the seat of his government and from his mint here were issued the earliest
known inscribed British coins.” The issue was so large as to indicate
wealth, and the Latin inscription on the coins suggests a strong Roman
influence.* After the death of Tasciovanus, about a.p. 5,° Cunobeline
seems to have made Camulodunum the chief town of the two tribal
territories, and thereafter, so far as we know, no further coins were struck at
the Verulamium mint.*

After the death of Cunobeline, about a.p. 41, Camulodunum apparently
remained the seat of government of the Catuvellaunian and Trinovantian
princes, for it was by its capture by Claudius in a.p. 43 that the whole of
south-eastern Britain was brought under Roman rule.* The Romans
apparently adapted the native system of administration in Britain as they
had done in Gaul, and governed each Celtic canton or tribal area from its
cantonal town. From Verulamium and Camulodunum the territories of
the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes were respectively ruled until possibly the
government of the two tribes was merged in the time of Tasciovanus.
The Catuvellaunian dynasty seems, however, to have assumed an over-
lordship over the Belgic tribes of south-east Britain, and therefore the chief
administration over all these tribes was probably conducted from whichever
of these two towns happened to be the seat of government for the time
being. The Romans, therefore, at once seized and Romanized these towns,
their policy being to subjugate the country through them by the then
eas NB organizations. Hence it is that Camulodunum was made a

* colonia,’ about A.D. 49, and Verulamium probably received the rank of a
mein about the same time, remaining the ony town in Britain
created a‘ municipium " during the Roman occupation.*

The ‘ municipium ’ was of civil development and, as Professor Haverfield
states, was a status given in the early Empire ‘ especially to native provincial
towns which had become Romanized without official action or settlement
of Roman soldiers or citizens, and which had as it were merited municipal
privileges.’* It seems probable, as he suggests, that Verulamium had

38 Ante, p. 122. 39 Evans, Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864), 288.
40 V.C.H. Herts. i, 238-42. 41 Haverfield, Camb. Medieval Hist. i, 371.
42 Evans, op. cit. 289. 43 Ibid. 287, 289. 4 Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. Jib. Ix.

45 Verulamium is first referred to as a ‘municipium’ by Tacitus (Annals, xiv, 23) in regard to the
insurrection of Boadicea, but it had probably attained this rank some time before
48 Haverfield, Romanization of Roman Britain (ed. 2), 55.

126

6 7 8
VeRULAMIUM anD Wetwyn: Romano-Brirish Porrery in THE Herrs County Musrum (4)

Nos. 1, 3, 5. From St. Michael’s. No. 2. From Church Crescent, St. Albans. No. 4. From the Grange, Welwyn.
Nos. 6, 7. From St. Stephen’s. No. 8. From Worley Road, St. Albans.

Pratt II

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

become Romanized before the Roman Conquest, and so justified the early
grant of such privileges. The ‘colonia’ was of military formation for
securing conquered territory by the establishment of time-expired soldiers in
provincial towns.” In both, the inhabitants had the rights of Roman
citizenship. They were self-governed and were ruled by duoviri or presi-
dents of the local assemblies, quaestors and other magistrates, each town
having its ordo or senate.* Like other cantonal towns each had its forum,
basilica, baths, temples, amphitheatre, and Verulamium its theatre.

It was on account of their Romanized condition that during the
insurrection of Boadicea the Britons wreaked their vengeance on Camulo-
dunum and Verulamium in a.p. 60. ‘Tacitus dismisses the matter as
regards Verulamium by the entry that the inhabitants were put to the
sword.” Without accepting the figures of the number of Romans and
loyalist Britons massacred in these towns, London and elsewhere, namely,
70,000 as given by Tacitus® or 80,000 by Dio Cassius, it would seem
that each town had a large population of Romans and Romanized Britons.
It probably took Verulamium and the other towns some time to recover
from the destruction which they must have suffered in this revolt, and it
would seem likely that in re-establishing them opportunity was taken to
introduce the improvements of Roman civilization. Agricola we know made
an attempt about a.p. 80 to Romanize the country more completely, and it
was possibly about this period that Verulamium was laid out in Roman
fashion on a definite street plan.” The excavations on the site of the forum
suggest a rearrangement of plan and the earlier plan of that building may be
of the Flavian period.

Before the end of the 1st century London on account of its position
began rapidly to develop on purely Roman lines till it became the greatest com-
mercial city of the country and the centre of the Roman road system in Britain.
Thus, although it never attained municipal or colonial rank, nor was even a
cantonal town, it soon entirely overshadowed the more ancient tribal towns of
the province in wealth and importance. It would seem that towards the end
of the 1st century or during the 2nd century the seat of the central authority of
the Roman government in Britain was transferred to it from Camulodunum
or Verulamium and the position of these latter towns fell in consequence.

We know practically nothing of the subsequent history of Verulamium.
So far as the slight excavations indicate, its buildings were on a larger scale
than those found on other Romano-British town-sites, and the existence of
a theatre points to wealth. The inhabitants were official and commercial,
and so far as the slight evidence we have goes there is nothing to indicate
any military life within the town. If conclusions may be drawn from the
evidence of burning in the forum and other buildings, it would appear that
the town experienced some disturbance at a date not yet fixed, possibly in
the 4th century, when Picts and Saxons were devastating the country.

47 There were four ‘coloniae’ in Britain, viz. Camulodunum (Colchester) established by Claudius
about a.p. 49, Lindum (Lincoln) about a.v. 70-80, Glevum (Gloucester) in a.p. 96-8 and Eburacum
(York) in the late 2nd or early 3rd century (Haverfield, The Romanization of Roman Britain [ed. 2], 48).

48 Ibid. 50 ; Camb. Medieval Hist. i, 371-3.

49 Annals, xiv, 33. 50 Ibid. 51 Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. lib. lx. ;

52 Haverfield, Romanization of Roman Britain (ed. 2), 56; cf. evidence as to the lay out of Silchester
and Bath in ibid. 56, note 2; Annals, xiv, 21 ; Camb. Medieval Hist. i, 371.

127

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The accumulation of rubbish in the corridors over the burnt débris, on the
top of which a fresh floor level was made, suggests that the town took long
to recover itself and the meanness of the repairs certainly denotes poverty.

The episode with which Verulamium is associated in most English-
men’s minds is the alleged martyrdom of St. Alban about a.p. 303. This
event is treated elsewhere, but the traditions connected with it and the
subsequent visit of St. German in 428 suggest that this town contained an
element of Christianity in the 4th century.

Verulamium continued to be inhabited for some time after the
withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain.“ What little evidence
has been afforded by excavation seems to show that the final ruin of
both the forum and theatre was caused by neglect and by the hands
of the mediaeval despoiler.* Ealdred and Eadmar, Abbots of St. Albans
during the early part of the 11th century, destroyed much of what
then remained above ground, for the purpose of obtaining material for
rebuilding their abbey and preventing the ruins from continuing a resort of
robbers and evil-disposed persons, one of whose barbaric hearths was
found on a tessellated pavement in the recent excavations. Thus Verulamium
became a quarry for the builders of St. Albans Abbey and the churches and
houses of the neighbourhood. Some of the Oolite stones at the base of the
tower-piers of the abbey church would fit the beds in the sleeper walls
of the forum, and the stone used in the Saxon baluster shafts in the
transepts corresponds to stone found in the same Roman building. A great
part of the abbey church was built of Roman bricks and some of the relics
of St. Albans Abbey were Roman cameos and other ornaments found at
Verulamium.*”” The destruction of the remains did not cease with the
mediaeval despoilers. Dr. Stukeley writing in 1724 states that three years
before, a good part of the wall was standing, but since then it had been
pulled down to the foundations to mend the highways. He adds, ‘I met
hundreds of cart loads of Roman bricks, &c., carrying for the purpose as I
rode through the old city though they have stone cheaper.’ * The destruc-
tion continued through the first half of the 19th century, so that now except
for certain blocks of the city walls nothing remains above ground.

Verulamium covers an area of nearly 200 acres, and its circumference
is almost 2 miles. Its shape is irregular but approaches an oval form, the
length being nearly double its width. The site, which is on the slope of a
hill rising about roo ft. from the Ver, which flows on its north-east side, presents

53 Minimi, possibly of the 6th century, have been found on the site.
54 R. Grove Lowe, Description of the Roman Theatre of Verulam, 16.
55 Gesta Abbatum Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 24-8. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account ot the defeat

of the Saxons at Verulamium at the end of the Sth century by the fabulous Uther Pendragon has probably
no foundation (Geoff. of Monm. Hist. Brit. bk. viii, cap. 23, 24).

58 Corroborative evidence of this was found in the excavation of the theatre, which, it was noticed, had
been filled up with artificial soil brought to the site to a depth of g ft. (R. Grove Lowe, Description of the
Roman Theatre of Verulam, 16). By the time that the Saxon part of the chancel of St. Michael’s Church was
built the Roman level must have been almost at its present depth (some 7 ft. or 8 ft. from the surface), as
the foundations of this part of the church are a very little below the existing ground level.

57 Wright, Essays on Arch, Suljects, i, 275 ; Cott. MS. Nero, D 1.

58 Stukeley, Jin. Curiosum, i, 116.

59 The area of Roman London was 330 acres, of Cirencester about 240, of Wroxeter 170, of Colchester
and Leicester 110, and of Silchester 100 acres (Haverfield, Roman London: Journ. of Roman Studies [1911],
152). Mr. J. W. Grover compares its shape and size with Pompeii (Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 0).
Such resemblance, however, must be quite fortuitous.

128

4 5 6

Romano-British and GavuLtisH Pottery in THE Herrs County Museum

Nos. 1, 3. Castor Ware from Verulamium. No. 2. Painted Ware from Verulamium.
No. 4. Samian Ware from Worley Road, St. Albans.
Nos. 5, 6. Imitation Samian Ware from Verulamium and the Grange, Wekeyn.

Prare III

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

no peculiar advantages. It does not stand on a commanding position, being
dominated on its south side by the land outside where its defences had
to be strengthened by double and deeper ditches. It is on no important
river, for, although the Ver may have been larger than it now is, it could
never have been navigable for more than quite small boats. It was more
or less surrounded by uncultivated forest land and must have drawn its
supplies of corn from the fertile lands on the north and north-east of the
county. It is true it lies at the crossing of what were two important
roads, but whether the site was selected by reason of the roads or the roads
made to suit the town is unknown. Such deficiencies of position were the
reason why Verulamium, Calleva and other Romano-British walled towns,
which had no water communication and were unsuitable as trading centres,
were never re-settled after their abandonment by their Romano-British
inhabitants. Most of those Romano-British walled towns which had water
communication like London, Winchester, Chichester and others were
re-settled or some of them were perhaps never entirely abandoned.

The town of Verulamium was surrounded by ramparts and ditches,
which are slight on the north-east side, where there was sufficient protection
from the lake formed here by damming up the waters of the River Ver.
The great dam was later used as a causeway and ran up to the south-east
wall. These earthworks, which were thrown up before the Roman period
but afterwards perhaps partially remodelled, have been already described.”
There is no evidence when they were surmounted by a wall, but Professor
Haverfield has pointed out that town walls seem to have been erected in
the western provinces of the Empire after about a.p. 250, when barbaric
invasions were becoming frequent.” On the southern, western and northern
sides the wall has a considerable ramp of earth against it on the inside to
strengthen it against siege engines and otherwise, while on the outside,
where the ground level is about 4 ft. lower than that on the inside, there is
a berm or platform some 15 ft. to 20 ft. wide between the wall and the
ditch. Both the ramp and the berm are particularly visible on the south
side. The wall itself is of flint rubble with bonding courses of tiles
varying in the number of tile courses, generally from two to three, but at
St. Germans block there is a course of four tiles. These courses do not
pass through the wall, being only one tile deep on each side. They are
not laid level, but follow the slope of the land. The distance between them
varies from 2 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. The thickness of the wall is from g ft. to 10 ft.
except at one point on the west side, where it is apparently 134 ft., but it
may be here broken down to the footings. The original height of the wall
is not now ascertainable, but the greatest height above ground is ro ft.
Along the east or river side, where there was a lake, the earthworks are
slight and the thickness of the wall was apparently only 6 ft. with 2 ft.
footings.” The most important pieces of the wall now standing are
St. Germans block” 115 ft. long and 10 ft. high near the south-east “

60 Y.C.H. Herts. ii, 110, with plan showing earthworks. 81 V.C.H. Somers. i, 228.

82 Journ. of Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, §2, and plan ; Sz. Albans Arch. Soc. Trans. 1893-4, pp. 51-2.

63 A large hole at the ground level of this block which seemed to imperil its safety was filled up with
concrete by the St. Albans Arch. Soc. some years ago.

64 In this piece of the wall there are some holes about 2 in. in diameter, clearly made while the wall
was being built. Possibly they were for ring belts for mooring baats an the lake outside.

4 129 17

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

angle ; a piece about 400 ft. long and in parts 7 ft. to 8 ft. high along the
course of the wall on the south side in the Verulam Woods and some five
small pieces in the west wall in the same woods; a piece 58 ft. long and of
varying height in a field to the north of Blue House Hill Lane; and
Gorhambury block on the west side of Gorhambury Drive 125 ft. long
and 1o ft. high. ‘The foundations of a bastion are said to have been found
in the Verulam Woods on the southern section of the wall, but otherwise
no evidence of bastions has been discovered.

There were apparently four city gates. The principal of these pro-
bably was that by which Watling Street entered the town from the south,
at the north-east end of the Verulam Woods where the causeway over the
fosse is clearly marked. The road from the south-west entered the town by
a gateway between the footpath from King Harry Lane to St. Michael’s
Church and Blue House Hill, where again the causeway to the gate can be
seen in the meadow here.® The gate by which Watling Street left the
town in its north-westerly direction is not exactly known, but it was
apparently on the site of the present road to Gorhambury at Gorham block.
The site of the gateway by which the road to Colchester on the north-east
left the town is also uncertain, but it was probably near the point where
St. Michael’s Street crosses the line of the Roman wall. Dr. Stukeley in
his plan of Verulamium gives a fifth gate at the south angle of the wall and
Mr. Grover follows him in his plan,” but an examination of the site seems
to show nothing to indicate this.

Within the town no Roman masonry remains above ground and little
systematic excavation has been undertaken to disclose what lies below the
surface. Sufficient, however, has come to light to suggest that like other
Roman towns it was laid out with streets about 18 ft. wide intersecting
each other at right angles.” The principal buildings of which at present
we have evidence lie in the middle of the town. Of these that which may
perhaps with some confidence be called the forum is in the garden and
glebe of St. Michael’s vicarage. To the north-west a little way along the
Gorhambury Drive on the south side stood the theatre. Fragments of the
foundations of other buildings and tessellated pavements have from time to
time been discovered, but have been planned or described in a manner that
is of little service to the archaeological student.

The partial excavation of the forum of Verulamium (PI.iv) was undertaken
by the writer of this article andthe Rev. C. V. Bicknell at intervals between
1898 and 1902." The site had evidently been built upon before the forum
was erected, as it was found that part of the wall of a masonry building at a
lower level was cut through by the corridor on the south-west side, showing

65 Dr. Stukeley notes in his plan of 1721 that the gate was ‘formerly visible,’ and Mr. Grover states
on his plan that the gate was visible in 1700 (Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 48 and plan). Excavations
were made in 1895 by the author on the spot shown in Mr. Grover’s plan, and it was found that the wall
had here been grubbed up and it appeared that the gateway was westward where there were indications of
the causeway over the ditch.

8° Verusta Monum.i; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 44-5, plan.

67 Mr. J. W. Grover in his plan of the Roman town shows the intersections of the street at acute
angles (Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 45), but the excavation on the site of the forum indicated the usual
plan of intersection at right angles.

® For the fuller account of these excavations see Reports by W. Page in Trans. St. Albans Arch. Soc.

1899-1902.
130

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

that it had existed before the forum (see a in plan). This earlier wall was
of a substantial character. It was decorated on its south-east side with
coloured wall plaster of a red colour with a black band. The existence of
this wall suggests that the Roman type of building had been adopted at
Verulamium at a very early date.

The forum as originally designed must have been a very handsome
building and its high colonnades would have had a very imposing effect.
It is the largest that has been discovered in this country, the total external
length being 373 ft. The surrounding buildings instead of being shops as
at Silchester and Caerwent appear to have been public offices and courts or
temples. The original building consisted of an open courtyard of rammed
gravel, 308 ft. by about 205 ft. surrounded by a corridor 26 ft. wide with
an opus signinum floor, and entered by a gate on the south-east side and
another probably on the north-west. In the middle of the courtyard
are remains of some masonry which have not been explored. On the
south-west side beyond the corridor was a series of large chambers; the
opposite or north-east side could not be explored on account of the church-
yard, but there was a large building here, possibly the basilica. The
south-east and north-west sides of the corridors bordered on streets. The
inner wall of the corridor on the south-west side was broken by two
openings 65 ft. and 67 ft. respectively. Each open-
ing was filled by a colonnade of five columns
with an intercolumniation of 13 ft. 6 in. centre
to centre, as was shown by the beds for the stones
supporting the bases of the columns.” The circular
base of one of the columns was found in position built
over by later work and showed a peculiar construc-
tion. It was 2 ft. 10 in. in diameter and was com-
posed of Roman bricks, triangular in shape, with one Ld
side curved to form the outside of the base. A Pian OF THE CIRCULAR
similar base, now in the Herts. County Museum, was Bask oF « CoLumn
found near, and many other triangular tiles with one
face curved were met with during the excavations. A fragment of a
fluted column the diameter of which would be about 2 ft. g in. was also
found not far off.

The intervening spaces between these openings were apparently built
up with walls, the upper parts of which were 2 ft. 6in. thick. At each
end of these walls inside the corridor were pilasters corresponding to like
pilasters on the opposite side for withstanding the thrusts of the walls of the
chambers beyond. In the wall at the south-eastern end of this corridor,
between the pilasters, were the remains of the lower part of a doorway
4ft. 6in. wide (at Bon plan). The jambs were extremely solid and of
carefully laid brickwork 4 ft. 4 in. thick with a deep chamfer on the inside.
The bricks were set in pink Roman mortar.

So far as the inner wall of the corridor on the north-east side has been
uncovered it seems to correspond with the wall last described. The corridor
on the south-east side was 26 ft. wide and bounded by walls 3 ft. 4 in. thick.

69 These beds here showed the use of blocks of Barnack stone 4 ft. to 6 ft. in length and 1 ft. thick.
131

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Its inner wall was formed by a colonnade corresponding with the other
colonnades having an intercolumniation of 13 ft. 6in., the opus signinum
floor of the corridor passing over the sleeper wall of the colonnade between
the bases of the columns. The outer wall of the corridor bordering on the
street has a smooth and level surface as though it had formed a bed for a
continuous line of large blocks of stone. If this were so, it probably carried
a colonnade also. ‘The entrance to the courtyard which cut through this
corridor was 22 ft. wide and was flanked by walls 5 ft. thick which supported
the entrance arch. The corridor on the north-west side was not explored,
but it possibly corresponded to this.

The buildings opening on to the south-west corridor were elaborate.
In the middle was a large chamber 62 ft. gin. by 40 ft. (internal measure-
ments), having rubble walls 3 ft. ro in. thick with brick bonding courses.
The south-west (outer) end was apparently square, but the walls here were
not followed through. The floor seems to have been tessellated but lay too
deep below the surface to be properly examined without considerable
expense. The chamber itself was entered from the corridor by a doorway
5 ft. wide, and at its north-east corner was another doorway 8 ft. 6 in. wide
which led down by three steps of about 8 in. deep into a smaller chamber
39 tt. by 15 ft. 6in. The walls of this chamber were 3 ft. thick ; its floor
was paved with coarse red sesserae in good condition and it had an entrance
from the corridor 3 ft. 8 in. wide on its north-east side. On its south-west
side stood a semicircular apse 15 ft. diameter, which seemed to have been
added at a later date, as it was not bonded into the wall of the chamber and
a space sufficient to run a knife existed between the two walls. The apse is
solid and the existing surface is 5 in. below the floor level of the chambers.
Both these chambers were plastered and coloured inside in the usual way.
There were indications of a corresponding chamber on the other side of the
middle chamber, remains of the doorway and the offset of the south-west
wall being found, but were not followed out.

The outer wall of the corridor, 3 ft. 6 in. thick, was between the
chambers possibly a sleeper wall for a colonnade. It continued south-east
32 ft.. where there was another large chamber 63 ft. gin. by 34 ft. 6 in.
(internal measurements). At the south-west end of this chamber was a large
apse, 20 ft. wide, which was raised some 4 ft. 8 in. above the floor of the room,
but no approach to it by steps or otherwise now remains. The upper
surtace of the floor of the apse is broken away. The side walls of the
chamber were 8 ft. 6in. thick, ending at the corridor in pilasters. The
thickness of the walls suggested that they supported a vault, possibly a
barrel vault, and corroborative evidence of this was found by the discovery
of some curved pieces of painted wall plaster.” In places the walls were
2ft. above the floor, and here there remained on them some painted wall
plaster with the usual roll at the junction of the wall and floor. From the
quantities of painted plaster which was found, it was clear that the whole of
the interior walls and vault were painted mostly in floral designs in dark
olive green and other colours, while the evidence of some fragments of

For further evidence of a vaulted building here it may be mentioned that little or no charcoal was
found, as was discovered in the corridor, where the roof was apparently of wood, and the pavement was
much damaged by masonry embedded in it which had arparently fallen from some height.

132

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Pian oF Supposep Forum

Pirate IV

VERULAMIUM :

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

drapery indicated that there were also figures. The entrance to this
chamber must have been from the north-east side, where the wall has been
destroyed to a foot below the floor level, and from its present appearance
seems to have been a sleeper wall for a continuous course of blocks of stone
upon which was possibly a colonnade. On account of the depth of soil little
of the floor of tessellated pavement could be examined. From what was
exposed, however, it was ascertained that it had an outer border of coarse
drab fesserae (the tesserae being about 1 in. by 14 in.) which extended from
the side walls about 5 ft. 6in. and rather more from the end walls. Within
there was a border of a scale pattern in smaller black and white sesserae, and
within this again was a very pretty wide braid-work design in black, red,
drab and white, and then lines of black and white. Within these borders
was the main part of the pavement, which was much mutilated owing to the
fallen masonry having become embedded in it, but it appeared that the design
was geometric, made up of a series of bands of a scroll pattern in very small
red, white, yellow and black fesserae. It is difficult to suggest a purpose for
this chamber. It may, perhaps, have been a court connected with the forum,
the raised apse forming the tribunal.

South-east of this chamber was a narrow passage 3 ft. 2 in. in width,
at the bottom of which about 6 ft. or 7 ft. down was a deposit of black
mud; but as each end of the passage was blocked by very solid walls it is
dificult to understand how it can have been a drain or waterway. Beyond
this is a coarse red tessellated pavement 6ft. 6in. wide and 76 ft. long,
bounded on its north-western side by a roughly built wall 2 ft. 6in. at the
footings and 1 ft. 6in. above and on its south-eastern side by a sleeper wall
2ft. 8in. wide. Beyond this again is another pavement of coarse red
tesserae, in a good state of preservation, 8in. above the level of the last-
named pavement. It is 21 ft. wide and 76 ft. long, and is bounded on its
south-east side by the sleeper wall adjoining the street.

The fact that the inner wall of the south-west corridor, which has been
fully excavated, is in its north-western half practically an exact duplicate
of its south-eastern half, with foundations for pilaster buttresses in the same
position, suggests a duplication of the plan.

At an uncertain date, possibly in the latter part of the Roman occupa-
tion, the whole or nearly the whole of the corridors, at all events those on
the south-west and north-east sides, were burnt and ruined. Over the
corridors on these sides was a layer of charcoal, and at one spot was a
considerable quantity of molten lead, which must have melted at a high
temperature and fallen in a molten state from a considerable height,” while
numerous flints and bricks showed evidence of the action of fire. The
building must have remained in a half-ruinous state for some time, for over
the layer of charcoal is an accumulation of rubbish a foot deep, on the top os
which a fresh floor level was made and the corridors were patched and altered.
At this time apparently the south-east and north-west corridors were cut off
by low walls 1 ft. 2 in. above the old level, possibly to allow for the change
of level of the south-west corridor. That on the south-east side has two
channels paved with bricks, which, on comparison with similar work at

71 Information from Professor Gowland, who kindly analysed some of the lead.

133

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Silchester, appear to have contained beams which supported the timber
framework of double doors. The corresponding wall on the north-west
side has no channels, and sags 5 in. in the middle. The colonnades on the
south-east and possibly the north-west sides were repaired and remained
much as they were, but the north-western of the two colonnades in the
south-west wall was apparently taken down and a rubble wall built up in
its place, but the evidences at this spot are so complicated that it is difficult
to state exactly what was then done. It would seem that the south-
eastern colonnade in this wall remained. From the slight excavations on
the site of the north-eastern corridor it appears that there are here also
similar evidences of fire and alterations.

Among the objects found in the course of the excavation were several
pieces of Purbeck marble, some with mouldings and some with a few letters
of inscriptions probably of an early type, and one piece of white marble.
All these fragments seem to have belonged to the original building of the
forum. There was the usual accumulation of potsherds and coins varying
from the Ist century to the end of the Roman occupation and five British
imitations of Roman coins, probably of the sth century, two of which
might be even of the 6th century.” The evidence of the masonry,
particularly that of the chamber with the supposed barrel vault, the
fine tessellated pavement in the same chamber and the type of lettering
on the fragments of the inscriptions, points to the original building
of the forum being of an early date, probably of the latter part of the
Ist century A.D.

On the north-east side of the forum portions of the foundations of a
large building which apparently ran the full length of the forum (979 ft)
have from time to time been found when digging graves in the churchyard.
A length of about 10 ft. of the north-west wall of this building was lately
uncovered by the Rev. C. V. Bicknell at a depth’ of 8 ft. or g ft. from the
surface in the north-west corner of the vicarage garden, which slightl
projects into the churchyard. Here was found a carefully laid wall with a
smooth surface 4 ft. 6in. wide which may have been a sleeper wall for a
colonnade or a bed for stones. There was apparently a return wall at the
south-west end going south-eastwards, but owing to the roots of trees it
could not be examined. On the south-east side were the foundations for a
pavement. The immense amount of Roman building rubbish above the
foundations indicates a big masonry building, and a layer of charcoal running
through the fallen débris points to a fire after the building was wholly or
partially a ruin. When St. Michael’s churchyard was being made tidy
after the rebuilding of the west end of the church in 1897 excavations were
made by the Rev. C. V. Bicknell and the writer in the pathways of the
churchyard, and 8 ft. from the surface three lines of wall 4 ft. 6in. to it
thick parallel to the walls of the forum were found which ran under the
church. The middle wall passed diagonally under the north-west corner
_ of the new tower of the church. The wall on the south was about 29 ft.
distant from it and that on the north about 28 ft. Five drums of circular
columns of Oolite stone were found detached on the top of the middle wall

a All the coins were identified by Mr. H. A. Grueber, F.S.A., of the British Museum, and lists of
them will be found in the Reports on the excavations in the St. Albans Arch. Soc. Trans. 1899-1902.

134

Giass Juc rrom Wor.ey Roap, St. Avgans (+) 1n THE Herts Counry Museum

I 2 3
Romano-British Rep Ware (}) in THE Herts Counry Muszum
Nos. 1, 3. From St. Michaels. No. 2. From the Grange, Welvyn.
Pirate V

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

at the west end of the church.” They varied in diameter from 2 ft. 1 in. to
2 ft. 2in. and in height from 1 ft. 8in. to 2ft. 2in. These drums were
reddened on one side by the action of fire and charcoal was found under
them. They lay with their lewis holes to the north. It seems probable
from what can be recovered of the plan of the building, which had apparently
a nave and one or two aisles and from its position, that it may have been the
basilica. It does not seem, however, to have been attached to the forum as
in the cases of Silchester and Caerwent, but the width of a road or rather
more seems to have existed between them. Unfortunately the excavations
had necessarily to be very fragmentary as, except for the small piece of the
wall lately excavated in the vicarage garden, the whole of the building is in
the churchyard so that the site cannot be further explored.

The site of the Roman theatre is to the north-west of the forum, about
327 ft. up the Gorhambury Drive from Blue House Hill on the south side
of the road. It was discovered in 1847 and excavated in the autumn of
that year by the late Mr. R. Grove Lowe, who gave a good report of his
work to the St. Albans Architectural Society ™ in the following year, from
which the following details are mostly taken. The theatre consisted of a
rectangular stage and adjuncts called the scema and an orchestra and seats,
comprising 240 degrees of a circle, 1go ft. 3in. in diameter, called the
cavea (Pl. vi). It was composed of a stage 46 ft. by 8 ft. g in. deep at one side of
which was a block of masonry, possibly for an altar. Behind the stage was
the postscenium or place into which the actors made their exits. On the east
side of the stage was a chamber paved with coarse red ‘esserae about 1 in.
square, probably for the use of the performers. There was possibly a
corresponding room on the west side, but it was not found. In front of the
stage was a space 16 ft. 6in. wide and about 5 ft. below the level of the
stage, the purpose of which is uncertain.” It may have been devoted to the
chorus so as to give the whole of the limited area of the stage to the actors
or, as Mr. Lowe suggests, it may have formed a lower stage for mimes,
musicians and dancers or the seats of persons of the highest rank. The plan
of the inner wall of the orchestra was uncertain as it was found only at the
ends of two of the entrances and about midway between them, and was
6 ft. 6in., 6ft. and 1 ft. roin. respectively from the third inner wall (see
plan). The orchestra, which was on the same level as the space just referred
to, usually contained in the Roman theatre the seats of the most distinguished
spectators. Behind it were the rows of seats, probably of wood, raised one
above another and behind them an arched corridor containing the stairs to
the upper part of the theatre, which stood probably where the foundations
are shown on the south-east side. Over the corridor were more seats.
There were probably three entrances or staircases (sca/ae) leading to the
seats, one opposite the stage 7 ft. wide and one on each side 10 ft. wide ;
only that on the eastern side was, however, excavated. Mr. Lowe estimated

73 On account of adjoining burials only one complete drum could be brought to the surface, and this is
now in St. Michael’s Church,

4 A Description of the Roman Theatre of Verulam, by R. Grove Lowe, printed by the St. Albans
Arch. Soc, as a separate pamphlet 1848. The theatre was re-opened in 1869 when the British Archaeo-
logical Association visited St. Albans, but no fresh discoveries were then reported nor any further account

rinted.
eet The walls shown on the north-west side of the space form only a covered sewer.

135

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

that the space over the corridor, which was 12 ft. wide including the
thickness of the inner wall, would accommodate three or four rows of seats
and there would be room for sixteen rows of seats between the corridor and
the orchestra, making a total of twenty rows.” This he reckoned would
require an elevation of about 25 ft., and allowing the orchestra to be ro ft.
below the level of the corridor the highest seat over it must have been
15 ft. above such level. This would give a building of some height as
might be expected from the thickness of the outer wall, which was 5 ft. 9 in.
The inner wall of the corridor was 3 ft. 6in. and the other walls varied
from 2 ft. 6in. to 2ft. All the walls inside the theatre were plastered and
painted chiefly in red and blue verditer; the prevailing patterns ran in
broad lines, some of which were imitation of porphyry and formed compart-
ments or panels. The walls were of the usual Roman construction of flint
rubble with bonding courses of tiles and tile quoins. Pink mortar was
partly used. The Roman theatres were roofless and there would probably
be a difficulty in covering the large space of the Verulamium theatre with
the materials available without some system of columns, of which there
appears to be no evidence. The drain from the orchestra also supports the
view that the building had no roof. The discovery of many fragments of
rvofing tiles may, however, suggest that the stage and rooms attached were
roofed. The front of the theatre facing the road was discovered in the
following year” (1850), and two fragments of a column of Oolite stone,
24% in. diameter, are suggestive of a portico with a colonnade usually found
with Roman theatres. Some slabs of white marble +$ in. thick were found.

A portion of the foundations of another important building was at the
same time found on the opposite side of the road. The fragment excavated,
which is too slight to suggest its purpose, is shown to the north-east of the
theatre in the accompanying plan.

The only objects found during the excavation were a brass brooch
with apparently an enamelled centre, some fragments of green glass and
many potsherds, including two fragments of Samian ware bearing the makers’
names ‘ Donat’ and ‘ Sev.’ One hundred and seventy-one coins were picked
up ranging from Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) to Arcadius (a.p. 383-408), which
covered the whole period of the Roman occupation.

Dr. Stukeley marks on his plan of Verulamium made in 1721 vestiges
of a large building on the opposite side of the street bordering the south-
east side of the forum. He also marks various other vestigia, as he calls
them, and pavements.

Mr. J. W. Grover made some excavations in 1869, but he seems
only to have dug trenches here and there without attempting to trace out
the plan of any building which his trenches happened to cross, hence his
excavations and the very meagre record of them are almost valueless except
for the section of the river wall and the positions of the roads, which his
trenches showed. The Rev. B. Hutchinson, the late vicar of St. Michael’s,
excavated three rooms of a house on the east side of Blue House Hill, one
of which had a tessellated pavement.” In building St. Michael’s schools in
1853 a Roman wall and a coarse tessellated pavement 21 ft. by 10 ft. were

76 These with the orchestra would accommodate probably about 2,000 persons.
™ Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. vi, 91. 78 St. Albans Arch Soc. Trans. 1893-4, p. 60.
136

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THE THEATRE OF VERULAM.
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awn by R Grove Lowe J. RJobbins

VeruLaMiuM : Pian or THEATRE

Puate VI

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

found.” In 1905 Mr. Charles H. Ashdown excavated a fragment of a
house in the north-west corner of Vineyard Field which showed portions of
two pavements, one plain red and the other red with a lighter red band.”
Numerous fragments of walls and pavements have been found from time to
time in ploughing and digging, but no further excavations have been
systematically attempted.

Innumerable coins have been found on the site from British to early
Byzantine and mediaeval. Of Roman coins perhaps the commonest are
those of the 3rd century.

Antiquities of various kinds have frequently been discovered, but records
of them have seldom been kept. Roman pottery is of course constantly
being turned up but has not been systematically classified. Two small bronze
female figures some 3 in. high have been found (Pl. xi), and Dr. Stukeley
mentions ‘a little brass lar or genius alatus’ from Verulamium, in the collec-
tion of Sir Robert Cornwall.”

According to Roman practice the cemeteries lay along the roads
outside the towns. In the case of Verulamium three groups of burials have
been discovered, one along the line of Watling Street, a second to the

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south-west of St. Albans Abbey, unconnected as far as we know with any
Roman road, and a third associated with the road going north-east from
Verulamium, probably to Braughing and Colchester. There is, as yet, no
record of the discovery of burials outside the town along the roads leading
north-west and south-west. With regard to the first group, both cinerary
urns and burials by inhumation have been found in the field called Verulam
Hill Field belonging to Mr. Charles Woollam, J.P., to the south-east of the
Roman town. In 1877 there was discovered a rectangular brick grave
6 ft. ro in. long and 1 ft. 10 in. wide internally with the long axis running
north and south.” The floor was of mortar on a bed of chalk and the sides
were composed of a course of hollow hypocaust tiles double at the ends and
above them ordinary Roman tiles set in mortar to a height of about I ft.
The roof was formed by an arrangement of overlapping tiles, above which
was a line of flanged roofing tiles having on either side a coping of sloping

1 Arch. Journ. v, 357 3 Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. v, 360. : .

80 St. Albans Arch. Soc. Trans. 1905-6, p. 167. 81 Stukeley, Itin. Curiosum, i, 117.

82 Times, 10 Nov. 1877. ‘The skull was given to Professor Rolleston and is now in the Department of
Comparative Anatomy, The Museum, Oxford. The pot is in the possession of Mr. Charles Woollam
and the remainder of the burial was re-interred. The discovery was examined by the Rev. H. Fowler,
from whose sketch the accompanying drawing is made.

4 137 18

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

roofing tiles. Within the tomb was the well-preserved skeleton of an adult
male. On the right-hand side of the skull were the bones of a bird, and
near the right hip the fragments of a small pot with some pieces of burnt
matter. The presence of numerous iron nails and some decayed wood
indicated that the body had been interred in a coffin. What was possibly
the foundation of a similar grave was opened by the writer in the same field
in 1893. It consisted of a layer of ordinary Roman tiles covering about
6 ft. 6in. by 3 ft., about 2 ft. from the surface, upon which lay a number of
smaller tiles. Some hypocaust and roofing tiles were also found, together
with an iron nail and many bones, none of which, however, appeared to be
human. At one end were discovered the nether stones of two Roman
querns or hand mills 15 in. in diameter, some fragments of pottery, one of
which was ornamented with a human mask.* In digging for the founda-
tions of the houses along the east end of King Harry Lane, and in laying
out their gardens, numerous cinerary urns (PI. vii) were discovered on either side
of Watling Street, the paving of which was here found. On the opposite side
of St. Stephen’s Hill several cinerary urns have also been found in St. Stephen’s
churchyard. In 1848 a Roman grave was discovered in the churchyard
containing a greenish glass hexagonal jug or bottle (14 in. high, 93 in.
diameter) with reeded handle, used as a cinerary urn and containing calcined
bones, a small glass unguentarium (6 in. high), a one-handled jug of ordinary
Romano-British ware (6%in. high, 43in. diameter), a Samian patera and
two pots and an earthenware lamp of ordinary Roman type.™ A skeleton
was discovered about 1850 outside the south side of Verulamium and around
it were seven pots containing ashes. At the left shoulder was a bronze
fibula of open-work design but much corroded.®

With regard to the second group of interments, Mr. Roach Smith in
1847 exhibited to the Archaeological Association some drawings of Roman
cinerary urns, filled with burnt human bones, in the collection of Mr. George
Gwilt, which had been discovered some years previously in a meadow lying
‘from one to two furlongs’ from the south-west angle of the nave of the
abbey church. Other cinerary urns were discovered about the same time
by the Rev. Dr. Nicholson, rector of St. Albans,” and some of them are
now preserved in the Watching Loft in the abbey church. Fragments of
Roman pottery have been found in the town of St. Albans, but there is not
sufficient evidence to show whether they were associated with burials.”

Of the third group of burials a stone coffin, now preserved in
St. Michael’s Church, was found in 1813 at a considerable depth in a field
behind Kingsbury Manor House. Within it, besides the skeleton, were
three greenish glass vessels of the usual square jug shape with handles, which
are now in the possession of the Earl of Verulam.” Not far from this spot

83 The objects found are now in the Hertford County Museum, St. Albans.

8 Pamphlet published by the St. Albans Arch. Soc. On Same Roman Sepulchral Remains discovered
in the Churchyard of St. Stephen’s, near St. Albans (1849), by Mr. H. Bloxam. The vessels are now
preserved in the vestry of St. Stephen’s Church.

85 Arch, Journ. 1850, p. 398.

86 Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1847), iii, 331 3 Arch. xxxili, 262.

87 Tn Dagnall Street numerous fragments of pottery have been found. In George Street many
potsherds and pieces of Roman brick were apparently carried with earth from the Roman site of Verulam to

fill up a hollow.
88 Arch. xvii, 336.

138

WaasATAl

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ALNNOD SLUT GHL NI () 8 TAVHOTTA] “LO LY LINFNUALNT Nv ONIWNUOd SLOG HSILIYg -ONVWOXY : WOINVING A

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

an arched vault was found in 1799 containing a lead coffin inclosing the
skeleton of a youth. Many other bones were found at the same time.”
During the excavations made at the time of the drainage works at St. Albans,
about 1885, many cinerary urns and potsherds were found in Mud Lane,
now Harley Street, and about 1900 in cutting the road called Kingsbury
Avenue from the Verulam Road to Mud Lane a skeleton was found just
under the surface lying north and south with several nails and the outline
in the chalk soil of a wooden coffin. Near the head was a coin of
Diocletian. Roman urns, apparently cinerary, have been found adjoining
Branch Road, Verulam Road, and Church Crescent. In building the houses
in Worley Road several cinerary urns were found, and in putting in the
drains to ‘ Fairlawn’ in that road two Roman greenish glass jugs (PI. v)
and a patera of Samian ware with the mark ‘ Advocisi,’ apparently parts
of a burial, were found.”

It is unknown whether there was an amphitheatre outside the walls of
Verulamium. Various sites have been suggested for it, including a hollow
in the field on the south of King Harry Lane opposite the south corner or
the Roman city, which seems to be the most probable.”

Various earthworks adjoining and near to Verulamium are thought to
mark the defences of suburbs, but without excavatioa it is useless to speculate
on the subject.

WELWYN

It would appear from the evidence of burials that there was a Late
Celtic settlement at Welwyn. Its exact position is not known, but as the
Romans usually Romanized British sites it may perhaps be assumed that it
was where the Roman settlement stood, namely, at the crossing of the
River Mimram by the supposed road from Verulamium to Camulodunum
or Colchester. The Late Celtic burials of the first century B.c. recently
discovered are clearly those of some important and wealthy family
who, it has been suggested by Sir Arthur Evans,” were possibly members
of the royal house of Cassivellaunus. In any case the existence of such
burials at Welwyn implies that it was a favoured spot either of venera-
tion if the bodies were brought to it or of wealth if the occupants of the
graves had lived in the neighbourhood. The objects associated with two of
the burials are of a costly nature (Pl. viii) and some of them had undoubtedly
been imported from Italy.”

The Roman site appears to have been on the north-west side of the
existing road from Hatfield to Stevenage and to have extended to both sides
of the river. Evidence of a house of some size has been found at the
rectory and remains of a building near the Grange, while potsherds, coins of

89 Gent. Mag. 1799, pp. 363-4. ‘The skull was taken to St. Albans Abbey and the lead coffin sold
to a plumber. :

90 One of the jugs and the patera are now in the Hertford County Museum, St. Albans ; the other jug
was broken. ;

81 There are also hollows in the field behind ‘Campbellfield,’ Mr. A. MclIlwraith’s house, and in the
field to the north of St. Stephen’s churchyard, which have been proposed as the site, but the former and
possibly the latter have been gravel-pits within living memory.

92 Times, 28 Feb. 1911, p. 15. : : ;

8 The burials nee fally reported upon by Mr. R. A. Smith, F.S.A. ; see his paper ‘On late Celtic
Antiquities discovered at Welwyn Herts.’ in Arch. \xiii s see also Topographical Index under Welwyn.

139

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

all dates of the Roman occupation, except the latest, and other objects have
been found scattered over this side of the town. ‘The cemeteries of the
Roman period which lay chiefly to the north and west of what was presumably
the inhabited area are well filled, showing possibly that the settlement was
fairly populous. The burials so far as they have come to light are all after
cremation, a mode which was changed for inhumation in the latter part of
the Roman era in this country. It may perhaps be gathered from the
present evidence that Welwyn in the Roman period was a fairly prosperous
village. It appears that the remains of the two buildings discovered show
signs of fire. This together with the evidence of the coins and burials may
possibly indicate that the settlement did not survive till the end of the
Roman occupation. Perhaps it was destroyed like other settlements else-
where in the latter part of the 4th century when the country was infested
by marauding bands of Picts from the north. Some outlying settlements
seem to have existed within a few miles of the town, as for instance at the
Frythe, Mardleybury and elsewhere where burials have been found which
suggest the proximity of villas or other dwellings.”

BRAUGHING

The Roman village or posting station of Braughing lay at the crossing
probably of three important roads. The oldest of these may have been the
road from Verulamium to Camulodunum, which apparently took this route,
but no visible trace of it now remains for some way westward of Ermine
Street; the other roads are Stane Street from Colchester to Baldock and
northwards and Ermine Street. Possibly there was also a road going
north-east to Great Chesterford. The large number of British coins which
have been found shows that there was a Late Celtic village here before the
Roman occupation. This station has been identified with 4d Fines, the first
station out of London in the seventeenth Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester.
This itinerary, however, was certainly in part forged by Bertram and
Richard, and the name 4d Fines is not to be found in the Antonine Itinerary
nor in the list of the anonymous Ravennas.

The exact site of the settlement has not been discovered. The
crossing of the roads, at or near which it probably stood, was apparently at
the village of Puckeridge (see Roads). North of this in Wickham Field,
near the railway station, numerous remains of cinerary urns, coins and other
objects indicative probably of a Roman cemetery have been found. The
only evidence of a house was a tessellated pavement found in 1799 at
Larksfield within what is supposed to have been some earthworks. This
position, however, is too far distant from the road to have been a posting
station and the remains may have been those of a villa or country house
outside the station.”

Roaps

The sources of information with regard to roads of the Romano-British
period are archaeological and written. The evidence of the former is

% For details of the finds see under Welwyn in the Topographical Index at the end of this article.
% For details of the finds see under Braughing in the Topographical Index at the end of this article.

140

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(Scale 6 inches to 1 mile.)

141

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

obtained by the actual remains of ancient metalling or milestones and occa-
sionally by the persistent straightness with which a still existing track rung
from one Roman site to another. The chief written evidence is the
‘Itinerarium Antonini,’ a Roman road-book which gives the distances and
‘stations’ along various routes in the empire. Its exact date is uncertain,
though it is supposed to have been compiled in the early part of the 3rd cen-
tury. The only itinerary route which passes through Hertfordshire is Watling
Street, which forms a part of the second, sixth and eighth itineraries.

Watling Street.—The considerable traffic which must have existed
between Verulamium and the Kentish ports to Gaul and Italy long before
the Claudian invasion would require a definite trade route. It is probable
that this route followed generally the course which Watling Street after-
wards took, particularly over the section between Verulamium and the
Thames. Here the British track seems originally to have had for its
southern objective the lowest safe ford across the Thames and not London,
which would have been its goal had the route been purely a Roman one.
After the Romans had established themselves here, probably towards the
close of the rst century, the British trackway may have been straightened
and metalled and adapted as a Roman road.”

Watling Street starts at Richborough near Sandwich in Kent and
passes in a north-westerly direction, eventually reaching Wroxeter. Its
course has always been so important that it has continued in use for the
greater part of its length to the present day. It enters the county from the
south in the middle of Elstree village just after diverging to avoid Brockley
Hill. As it passes through the village of Elstree it curves round to take up
its straight north-westerly direction again. It forms here the boundary
between Aldenham and Elstree parishes and follows the existing road which
skirts the east side of Aldenham Park and continues through Aldenham
parish and the hamlet of Radlett. A little to the north of Radlett it forms
the parish boundary between Aldenham and St. Stephen’s” for about half a
mile. It then continues through the parish of St. Stephen’s, passing through
the hamlet of Colney Street, about half a mile north of which it makes a
slight curve to the north-east to avoid the River Ver and the marsh land
adjoining. It then takes up its north-westerly course again through the
hamlets of Frogmore and Park Street. From Park Street it runs in a fairly
straight line to St. Stephen’s Church where the present road diverges in a
north-easterly direction to St. Albans. The Roman road, however, has
been found paved with flints in the usual way with burials on either side,
continuing in a straight line through the garden of the house opposite
St. Stephen’s Church and the field beyond to the south-east of the Roman
town of Verulamium. The causeway for the road over the ditch of the
town is here quite distinct, and the site of the gateway at the north-east end
of the Roman wall in the Verulam Woods can be discerned. The road
passes through the town of Verulamium, its course being marked for part
of the way by a line of trees.” It passed out of Verulamium on the north-

8 Proc. Soc. Antig. (Ser. 2), xxiv, 137.

*7 Some fifteen years ago the eastern side of the road here for more than a mile was excavated in places
to a depth of 15 ft. for drainage works, but no sign of the Roman road was discovered.

*8 The road was found in the town and said to have been 18 ft. wide (Norden, Speculum Brit. 25).

142

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CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

east side of the piece of the Roman wall still standing known as Gorhambury
Block, and a little north-westward from this point its line can be traced
across the fields by a row of trees which formed the boundary of the road
which existed till 1833, when it was displaced by the Verulam Road. Its
junction with the existing high road to Redbourne on the north-east side
of Bow Bridge is still quite distinct. From this point Watling Street
follows the line of the existing road through Redbourne towards the hamlet
of Markyate Street. Before reaching this hamlet, however, the present road
diverges to the west for a mile and a quarter at Friars Wash, forming a loop.
The Roman road, however, still exists here as a lane and the two roads
re-unite at the point where the boundary between the parishes of Flamstead
and Markyate crosses them. Watling Street forms the county boundary
between Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire through Markyate and so on till
it passes into Bedfordshire.

Akeman Street seems to have been independent of the general scheme
of Roman roads in Britain,” and possibly existed as a British track before
the Roman occupation. It came from Bath through Cirencester and
Alchester (near Bicester) to Aylesbury and so possibly through Verulamium
to Colchester. It enters the county from Aylesbury in the parish of Tring,
where it deflects from its straight course in order to avoid Hastoe Hill. It
passes through the town of Tring by Park Road to the lodge of Tring Park.
Here its line is lost, but a little further east it approximately followed the
line of a footpath in the park, to the lodge on the east side where it meets
the main London Road, forming the parish boundary between Tring and
Wigginton, and runs in an easterly course to the south lodge of Pendley
Park. Here it turns in a south-easterly direction for about half a
mile where the present road diverges from the straight course to a point
about half a mile north-west of Northchurch. It then follows the line of
the present road through Northchurch to Berkhampstead for a short
distance, forming the boundary between those parishes. It forms the
High Street of Berkhampstead and continues in a fairly straight line to
about a quarter of a mile north-west of Bourne End. The present road
continues in a south-easterly direction to Watford and eventually joins
Watling Street a little north of Edgware. From Bourne End, however,
the present road loses all characteristics of a Roman road, and it appears
possible that from this point Akeman Street may have taken a direction
almost due east which would bring it to the south-west gate of Veru-
lamium.

A road going west or south-west and north-east from Verulamium
apparently existed from the evidence probably of the gates of the Roman
town and a street between them. It would seem possible that this road
connected Akeman Street with Verulamium, as suggested above, and passed
on from that town to join Stane Street to Camulodunum. This route must
have been of considerable importance as a line of communication between
Verulamium and Camulodunum at the time these were the chief towns
in southern Britain. When London, however, took their place and
became the centre of the road system of Britain the traffic was probably

99 Camb. Medieval Hist. 1, 376.
143

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

diverted to it and this road became of less importance. No indication of it
can now be traced on the south-west side of Verulamium. Mr. Grover
gives to this part of it the fanciful name of the Camlet Way,™ but without
authority, and marks it on his plan as coming from Silchester but without
suggesting its route.’ A road passed out of the north-east gate of Veru-
lamium but its course is immediately lost, though it seems by the evidence
of burials to have gone over the site of Kingsbury Castle, then across the
Worley Road towards Sandridge and so to Coleman Green. From Coleman
Green to the River Lea there is a straight road for a mile and a half pointing
straight to Welwyn, where there was a Late Celtic and afterwards a Roman
settlement. After passing through Welwyn there is another straight piece
of road towards Stevenage about a mile long. There is then a piece of
straight road to Watton at Stone, where by tradition stood a Roman mile-
stone from which the place is said to have taken its name. From thence
probably the road went to Braughing where it joined Stane Street to
Colchester. This route from Verulamium would skirt the forest area on
the south of the county.

Stane Street can be traced for the greater part of its course through
the county, but only the section of it from the Essex border to Horse
Cross in Braughing parish now goes by this name. In the 14th and
15th centuries, however, we find Stane Street given as a boundary to
lands in Cottered and Hinxworth from which it may possibly be inferred
that it was then used and known by this name.” It enters the county at
Bishops Stortford from Colchester and first appears as a road near Cradle
End on the road to Little Hadham, passing through that village on to
Horse Cross where the existing road forks to Braughing and Standon.
For a part of its course here it forms the parish boundary between Albury
and Much Hadham and Braughing and Standon. From Horse Cross the
line of the Roman road is lost, but the parish boundary between Braughin
and Standon continues in a straight line for nearly a mile and a half to the
River Rib as a field boundary. Stane Street crossed Ermine Street
probably where that road changes its course to a more northerly direction
in Puckeridge. At or near this spot was a Roman posting station (see
Braughing, p. 140). The line of the road is lost for about 14 miles, but it
can be picked up again near Furtherfield Spring in the parish of Westmill,
where it forms the parish boundary between Westmill and Great Munden
and Westmill and Ardeley and is here called Back Lane. It again forms the
parish boundary between Ardeley and Cottered and passes through the
village bearing the significant name of Hare Street in Cottered parish. It
is lost a little further on, but is picked up again near the north of Clothall
village and joins the road from Buntingford to Baldock. Here it forms the
parish boundary between Weston and Clothall, passing through Baldock by
Pest House Lane where it forms the parish boundary between Clothall and
Baldock. At Baldock it forms the road to Biggleswade in Bedfordshire,

100 Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 48, 50.
1 The district between Abbot’s Langley and the Thames was dense woodland and would be an
unlikely course fora Roman road. Such a route would also be too near to Watling Street.

* Tt is given as a boundary in 1346 (J. Harvey Bloom, Cart. Antig. Lord Willoughby de Broke, 6).
It is also referred to in Hinxworth.

1g

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

which is for about 2 miles the county boundary. It passes out of the
county from the parish of Hinxworth.

Ermine Street, which was known by this name or Arning Street in
the 14th and 15th centuries,* comes out of London in a direction almost
due north. It enters Hertfordshire in the parish of Waltham Cross and
forms the western boundary of Theobalds Park. A little to the north of
Bull Cross Farm it is lost in the grounds of Theobalds Park, but is found
again at the north-west of the park and approximately follows the line of
Burygreen Road to Cheshunt cemetery. It then follows the line of Dark
Lane to Goffs Lane, on the opposite side of which it is lost for a short
distance in the grounds of Cheshunt Great House; it then follows the
western boundary of those grounds to Andrews Lane, on the opposite side
of which it follows Stockwell Lane till the lane reaches the brook here.
From this point through Cheshunt Park northward through Wormley
parish the line of the road is lost and is not found again till the east end of
Coldhall Green in the parish of Broxbourne is reached. Here it follows
the line of the lane through the grounds of Broxbourne Bury till that lane
diverges to the north-west. It can then be traced through the woods to
Martins Green, and so northward through Hoddesdon Park Wood by the
road called Red Hills, and so northward past Box Wood where under the
name of Elbow Lane it forms the parish boundary between St. John’s,
Hertford and Hoddesdon and Great Amwell. For a short distance it is
lost as a road, but its line is carried on by a field boundary. At Hertford
Heath it is joined by the road from Hoddesdon and for a little more than
a quarter of a mile becomes the main road from Hoddesdon to Hertford.
At Little Amwell it again becomes a lane, although still continuing for a
little distance as the parish boundary. On reaching the road from Hertford to
Stanstead St. Margarets the line is lost, but it followed the boundary on the
east of Barrow Field, where it was found in excavating upon the golf links
at Chadwell‘ in 1902. Northward it followed the line of a piece of the
parish boundary between Ware and St. John’s, Hertford. It probably
crossed the Lea a little to the east of the Lock House, where on the north
side of the river there was a Roman settlement. Its course is not traceable
till it becomes the main road northward to Buntingford where the parish
boundary between Ware and Thundridge crosses that road. It then
changes its course to a north-easterly direction and follows the existing road
to Wadesmill village, thence with a slight deflection eastward through
Standon parish to the east side of the grounds of St. Edmund’s College,
where it again deflects slightly more to the eastward and so on to
Puckeridge. At the north end of Puckeridge it probably crossed
Stane Street, and near here was a Roman station (see Braughing, p. 140).
The existing road loses its straightness for about a mile and a half, and on
passing through the village takes a northerly direction, inclining eastward
to a point where it crosses the River Rib, there it again becomes straight
and goes in a north-easterly direction to Buntingford. For the greater part
of the distance from Puckeridge to Buntingford it forms parish boundaries.
It forms the Market Hill and High Street of Buntingford and so on in a

3 Cott. MS. Nero E vi, fol. 1224; Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A. 5208.
4 Herts. Mercury, § April 1902.

4 145 "9

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

straight course to Corney Bury in Wyddial parish, where the course deviates
to an almost due north direction and passes in a straight line through
Buckland on to Flint Hall in Royston parish, where it again deflects to the
north-west. From Corney Bury to Royston it forms parish boundaries
nearly all the way. It passes through the town of Royston, in the middle
of which it is crossed by Icknield Way and so passes out of the county on to
Lincoln and northward.

Icknield Way, though probably of British origin and having few
characteristics of a Roman road, yet in places evidently formed a part of
the Roman system of communication. It passes from Akeman Street in
Drayton Beauchamp parish and enters the county at Tring, which it leaves
about 2 miles on its way to Dunstable, where it crosses Watling Street. It
enters the county again at Lilley and passes thence through Offey to
Hitchin and on to Baldock, where it crosses Stane Street, then on to
Royston, forming the county boundary for a part of its course. East and
west of Royston it runs in a straight line. It crosses Ermine Street at
Royston and so eastward into Cambridgeshire.

There are other roads in the county which have been attributed to the
Roman period, such as Ashwell Street, running some 8 miles on the north
side and approximately parallel to Icknield Way, which from its straight-
ness has the appearance of being Roman, but does not lead from or to any
known Roman site. The road from Baldock to Graveley and Todds
Green and from thence to Stevenage and southward has been considered
Roman. It runs in a straight line and forms a parish boundary for part of
its course. South of Stevenage are the six well-known tumuli beside it
called the Six Hills. A Roman road has been suggested from Braughing
in a north-easterly direction to Great Chesterford from the evidence of
pieces of straight road, burials beside the road at Braughing, and parish
boundaries.” Besides these there are numerous old roads which bear the
name of Street, such as Hare Street in Braughing, Silver Street, Theme
Street, Sapwick Street, Hay Street and many others, but beyond their
names there is no reason to assign them to the Roman period.

® Codrington, Roman Roads in Britain, 134.

146

TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX

Aspots Lanciey.—The remains of a ‘villa were found about 1825 on the borders of this parish
about 200 yds. north-west of the station’ (i.e, King’s Langley station on L. & N.W.R. line).
According to the account, it stood on the eastern bank of the River Gade, somewhere quite
close to Home Park Mill (Dickenson’s Paper Mills). Cussans, our only authority, states
that ‘ within the walls, a tessellated pavement was found, and also a coin of Hadrian, but
the excavation appears to have been conducted without much scientific ability.’ No plan
was published and nothing further has been recorded of this building. . A gold coin of
Claudius (a.p. 41-54), perhaps Cohen type 43 [but pm instead of GERM], was picked up
here some time in the 18th century; [Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Cashio Hund. (1881), 86;
Stukeley’s Letters and Diaries (Surt. Soc. 1883), ii, 212; Camden’s Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789),
i, 349]. The villas at Boxmoor lie about 3 miles north-west and further up the same valley.

A.tpgpury.—A hoard, or perhaps two, consisting of 118 coins, some metal objects, potsherds and
animal remains, were dug upin making a road a few hundred yards south of Moneybury
Hill, Pitstone Common, and close to the column to the Duke of Bridgewater, in the spring
of 1870. The site may be just over the Hertfordshire border, in the parish of Pitstone (Bucks.).
The coins were of the following dates :

1 bronze Cunobeline R/Tascro [a.p. 5-41] 1 first brass Verus Rev. Prorecr. ave s.c. Cos 111
1 den. Vespasian (Cohen, 574) [a.p. 72-3] [c. ap. 167]
4 second brass Vespasian [a.p. 69-79] 1 35 » Lucilla [a.p. 164-83]
2 55 »» Domitian [a.v. 81-96] 5.4 ,, Commodus [a.p. 180-93]
Co 5 »; Nerva (Cos 1) [a.p. 96-8] 1 second ,, Crispina [a.p. 180-2]
dio) Sy » Trajan [a.p. 98-117] 1 den. Sept. Severus (Cohen, 205) [a.p. 201]
I first » Hadrian [a.p. 117-38] 1 first brass Julia Domna (like Cohen, 186)
3second ,, Hadrian (1 Cohen, 369) [a.D. 193-211]
' [a.p. 117-38] 2second ,, Alex. Severus I (1 Cohen, 505)
2 first »» Pius [a.p. 138-61] [a.D. 222-35]
4 second ,, Pius (1 Cohen, 408) [a.p. 140-3] Bi es », Gordian III (Cohen, 112, 255)
1 first » Faustina I (Cohen, 125) [a.v. 238-44]
[a.p. 138-61] ty > Philip I (Cohen, 111) [a.p. 244-~9]
2second , Faustina I [a.p. 138-61] 1third ,, Gallienus [a.p. 253-68]
6 first , Marcus (Cohen, 805, 796, 186) 3.) 55 », Claudius Gothicus (Cohen, 129, 302)
[a.p. 164-79] [a.p. 268-70]
4second ,, Marcus (Cohen, 576, 268) T 43 », Quintillus [a.p. 270]
[a.D. 145-71] 45 » Tetricus I [a.p. 268-73]
2 first » Faustina II (Cohen, 142, 100) Bos » Tetricus II (1 Cohen, 88) [a.p. 268]
[a.p. 161-80] 17 second ,, Uncertain
6 second ,, Faustina II (Cohen, ror, 209) 2third ,, Uncertain
[a.p. 161-80]
and included ancient forgeries of the following :
1 second brass Vespasian [a.p. 69-79] 1 second brass Commodus (Cohen, 151) [a.p. 186]
Te as -, Domitian [a.p. 81-96] I) 4 »> Julia Mamaea [a.p. 222-35]
AS ows ,», Pius (Cohen, 36, 117, 1083) i 55 » Maximinus (Cohen, 15) [a.p. 235-8]
[a.p. 140-55] I ,, »» Maximus (Cohen, 8) [a.p. 236-8]
A » Marcus (Cohen, 670, 808) Ain “ies » Gordian III (Cohen, 123, 406)
[a.p. 154-66] [a.v. 238-44]
Aan 25 », Faustina II (1 Cohen, 143) 1 yy », Otacilia Severa (Cohen, 11)
[a.p. 161-80] [a.D. 244-9]
1 », Verus [a.p. 161-80] 45 » Uncertain

Cast coins of Pius (Cohen type 497) have been found at Richborough and Verulam.
Sir John Evans suggests that this find included two hoards—one of the larger coins ending

147

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

about 249 a.v., the other of small brass, partly of the Thirty Tyrants, and ending about
270 a.D. The earlier coins were much worn by circulation. The only one of interest is that
of Verus. The forgeries were probably cast under Otacilia Severa (a.p. 244). The metal
objects included two bronze fibulae, one originally tinned and of bow shape, ‘ with its front
plate in the form of a leaf’ ; the other was circular, 1} in. diameter, and set with dark green
glass and decorated with a bird * deeply moulded on the flat face of a low truncated
cone,’ and probably originally filled with enamel, and an @-shaped pattern punched around
the edge between two concentric ribs; also part of a bronze ring, small fragments of thin
brass plate, and a penannular ring of silver wire. [Sir J. Evans, Numis. Chron. (new ser.
1870), x, 125 seq.; Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1888-90), v, xxiv]. Some Roman coins have
been found at Patmore Hall and in Stocks Field, while a number of skeletons were discovered
in Longfield, associated with which was a small Roman coin [East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans.
ii, 240]. For finds close to, see Northchurch, Tring and Wigginton.

AtpenHam.— An immense quantity of broken Roman tiles and pottery at a uniform depth
of 4 or § ft. from the surface’ was found in 1878 in excavations for a swimming bath
on the north side of the Grammar School on Boyden’s Hill, a mile and a half south-east of
Aldenham and three-quarters of a mile west of Watling Street. It was thought to indicate
the site of a pottery, a suggestion not altogether impossible, since the Radlett kilns lie only
half a mile north-east. [Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Dacorum Hund. (1879), 277 n. See also
Radlett].

wok number of urns, said to be Roman, and quantities of Roman coins were found in
1847 near Great Amwell Vicarage, which stands in the centre of a mound or other earthwork,
formerly known as Barrow or Bury Field, above the valley of the New River. This was
excavated in 1848, and as no burials or other objects were found in it, it was thought to be
merely a beacon hill. Cussans states in 1876 that little then remained of it, the north and east
sides having been recently destroyed. It must not be confused with the Barrow Field near
Rush Green in Little Amwell parish, on the line of Ermine Street, 14 miles west. [Yourn.
Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1848), il, 324; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hertford Hund. (1876), 120].
‘Extensive remains of urns, amphorae, &c., together with some of the moulds used,’ were
found in digging for gravel in 1900, and were thought to indicate the site of a pottery kiln,
the necessary clay being found quite close. The exact site in the parish is not given. [Gerish,
East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i (2), 185-6]. For other finds near, see Hoddesdon, Stanstead
Abbots and Ware.

Anstey.—Many small fragments of pottery, thought to be Roman, but perhaps mediaeval, were
found on the site of Anstey Castle, and some are now in the possession of Mr. R. T. Andrews
of Hertford. [East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans, ii (2), 116; Inform. from Mr. Bullen].

Arsury Banxs.—See Ashwell.
AsuweELt.—Several small finds have occurred at different times at Ashwell and in the neighbour-

hood. (1) The earthwork at Arbury Banks, half a mile south-west, is not Roman, though
Roman objects have been found in and near it. In the course of excavations undertaken here
much coarse pottery was turned up out of some circular pits in the centre. Camden and others
mention coins from here ; in 1820 were ploughed up Roman coins and pottery, and from one
vessel a bone die §-in. cube, with the pips marked by two concentric circles round a dot;
and, lastly, an iron object—a lampholder or hippo sandal—from a pit 15 ft. deep near Arbury
Banks. For the earthwork, see Proc. Soc. of Antiq. (ser. 1), iv, 285-90, hence V.C.H. Herts.
ul, 105-6; Camden, Brit. (ed. 1607), 290; Stukeley’s Letters and Diaries (Surt. Soc. 1883),
ii, 192; Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728), 342-3; hence Camden, Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789), i,
342; and Reynolds, Itin. Antonini (1799), 421. For pottery &c., see Journ. Arch.
Inst. xili, 287; xxii, 84. (2) Cussans mentions coins found in Caldecote Field, close to
Hinxworth and to the north-west of Arbury Banks, but this may refer to the burials, for which
see Hinxworth [Hist. of Herts. Odsey Hund. (1873), 23]. (3) In the autumn of 1876 at the
coprolite works at Ashwell End, close to the River Rhee and three-quarters of a mile north
of Ashwell, a hoard of over 500 well-preserved silver coins from Nero (A.D. 54-67) to Marcus
Aurelius (A.D. 161-80) was found. They were encrusted with rust, and were therefore
thought to have been inclosed in an iron vessel which had corroded (perhaps wood with iron
nails and bands). The earth around was full of calcined animal bones, pottery and
potsherds, a stone quern and some small copper coins extending to the end of the
Roman occupation. ([Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Addenda to Odsey Hund. 316]. (4) Some
burials were turned up in 1824 in digging for gravel at Foxley Hill, near Slip End, close to
Icknield Street, 2 miles south-east of Ashwell. They included several skeletons six or
seven Roman vessels, several black urns, one filled with bones and with a handle, 2 patella
stamped ‘micvivs’ (perhaps Macrinus, Miccius or Miacnus), three lachrymatories and a

148

war. HERTS

FOUND near BARK
BEQUEATHED by Lorna S$

Y

Bronze Figure of Mars anp SiLver PLATES WITH INSCRIPTIONS IN THE British Museum

Barkway :

Pirate X

U

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

‘polished wood’ armilla 4 in. in diameter, all found near the skeletons. Coins were also
turned up near here. [Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1815-27), iii, 483 n.; Cussans, Hist. of
Herts. Odsey Hund. (1873), 23]. Lastly, a gold coin of Trajan (perhaps one of the above) is
recorded from here by Sir J. Evans [Arch. liii, 253]. A Roman burial was found 1879 at
Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire, a mile east of Ashwell.

Avot St. Lawrencre.—There seems no reason for describing as Roman the stone coffin mentioned
by Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Broadwater Hund. (1876), 241, and apparently so considered in
Arch. lili, 253. For the hoard in Prior’s Wood, see Kimpton.

Barpocx.—Several Samian saucers, one stamped ‘ rascituim’ (which is also found in the Low
Countries, London and Colchester), and a coin of the Urbs Roma type (ex. P.t.N.) were found
some years before 1742. The same authority also mentions a coin of Constantine (a.D. 306-37),
ashes, bones of men, horses and fowls from a barrow opened about the same time, but which
probably belong to a post-Roman burial. An iron object—a hippo sandal or lampholder—
8 in. long and 4} in. at its greatest width, was discovered some time before 1865 near Icknield
Street, which runs through the town. [MS. Letter from the Rev. George North, vicar of
Codicote, to Ducarel, 4 November 1742, at p. 147 of Gough’s copy of Salmon’s Hist. now in
the Bodleian (Gough, Herts. 18); Journ. Arch. Inst. xxii, 84]. For Wilbury Hill, see Norton ;
see also Letchworth.

Barxway.—A curious and interesting find of bronze and silver objects, now preserved in the
British Museum, was made in digging a chalk-pit in Rokey or Rookey Wood, three-quarters of
a mile west of Barkway and a mile east of Ermine Street, about 1743. These objects were:
(1) a bronze figure of Mars, nude and helmeted, with his right hand up, probably holding a
spear, and left down, probably for a shield, but both hands and feet were broken off ; it was
about 3 in.long(pl.x). (2) Aroundandmoulded handle ofa knife orvessel. (3) Seven thin plates
of silver, leaf-shaped, three of them having inscriptions pricked or punched on them
(pl. x). They measured 3 in. to 8 in. long and 2 in. to 44 in. wide. On four of them was
carved a figure of Mars, helmeted, with spear and shield, standing before a temple. Two bore
a figure of Vulcan with his attributes, also before a temple. The seventh, which was much
larger, measuring 21 in. by 4 in., had only the following inscription in five lines: ‘marti
TOVTATI, TI(BERIVS) CLAVDIVS PRIMVS, ATTII LIBER(TVS), V(OTVM) S(OLVIT) L(IBENS) M(ERITO).”
‘To Mars Toutatis (or Toutates) Titus Claudius Primus, the freedman of Attius, pays his vow.’

The Celtic god Mars Toutates is sufficiently well known. ‘Toutates’ occurs among
other names for Mars in an inscription found in Norica [Corp. Inscr. Latin. iii, 5320] and
on another at Rome [ibid. vi, 31182]. Less certain ones have been found in England at
Chesterton [ibid. vii, 79], Old Carlisle [Ephem. Epigr. iti, 128] and at York [ibid. 313,
no. 1815]. It seems to be another form of Teutates (or Tutates), the Celtic deity wor-
shipped by human sacrifice mentioned by Lucan [i, 444-5] and Lactantius [Divin. Inst.
i, 21] and whom Holder connects with Mars rather than with Mercury [Alt-Celtischer Sprach-
schatz : it is derived from teuta, people or state; cf. Old Irish wath]. The freedman’s name,
the arrangement of which is unusual, suggests an early date. The nomen ‘ Attius’ occurs
more than once on inscriptions in England [Corp. Inscr. Latin. vii, 386, 390, 394; Haver-
field, Cat. of Chester Mus. (1900), no. 20] and is also used as a cognomen [Corp. Inscr.
Latin. vii, 27; cf. also Ephem. Epigr. vii, 844].

(2) The second inscription, which was punched on a plate measuring 8in. by 4 in. below
a representation of Mars before a temple, ran ‘D(E0) MARTI ALATORI, DUM(?NONIVS)
CENSORINVS, GEMELLI FIL(Ivs), V(OTVM) s(OLVIT) L(IBENS) M(ERITO).’? ‘To the God Mars
Alator. ? Dumnonius Censorinus, the son of Gemellus, pays his vow.’

An altar to Mars Alator was found at South Shields [Ephem. Epigr. vii, 999] and is
evidently a local deity. Holder suggests the same interpretation of the word “alator’ as
occurs in mediaeval Latin—that is, a huntsman with particular duties [see Ducange].
‘Dum’ is expanded into Dumnonius by Hibner, and this reading is accepted by Holder. It
is hitherto unknown, but it is possible that a provincial (not, of course, a Roman citizen,
but one desirous of appearing Roman) might make a nomen for himself from the name of his
tribe, in this case the Dumnonii, who dwelt in south-west Britain. ‘Censorinus’ occurs as
a cognomen as well as a nomen. ;

(3) The third inscription is only a fragment punched on a plate measuring 63 in. by
3 in. below a figure of Vulcan in front of a temple: Nv vico—perhaps numini Vulcono, ‘to
the God Vulcan.? ‘Numen Volcanus’ is to be found on an altar at Maryport [Corp. Inscr.
Latin. vii, 398], and apparently ‘numen Aesculapius’ on another in Gallia Narbonensis
[ibid. xii, 354]. vi

It is difficult to assign a use to these fragments of metal. Lysons’ idea that they are
parts of legionary standards is not borne out by the pictures of standards nor by the inscrip-

149

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

tions themselves. A freedman could not be a legionary, and the name in the second inscrip-
tion is evidently not that of a Roman citizen. Some inscriptions on similar objects—part of a
hoard found some 50 miles west at Stony Stratford in Bucks.—make it clear that they are
all to be connected with temples and in our case with the worship of the Celtic representatives
of Mars and Vulcan. M. Homolle [Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. des Antig. s.v. Donarium, fig.
2539] considers that they were votive leaves for hanging up round a shrine. Somewhat similar
leaves, but uninscribed, were found at Dodona [Carapanos, Dodone et ses ruines (1878), 1,
pl. xlix] and elsewhere [Bulletin de Corres. Hellenique, xii (1884), p- 49, fig., p. 50]. The British
Museum possesses three silver plaques dedicated to Jupiter Dolichenus, from Heddernheim,
near Frankfort, which are not unlike the Barkway plates in shape and ornament, and they
are certainly votive objects. One piece has two little holes for riveting it to a wood or
other tablet, and no doubt the Barkway plates were also fastened or applied to something
more substantial. [Zangemeister, Bonner Fabrbiicher, cvii, 61-5, pl. vi, 2; also Brit. Mus.
Guide illustrative of Greek and Roman Life (1908), 40, fig. 26]. It is interesting to observe
that, while the Hertfordshire hoard was found only a mile from Ermine Street, the
Buckinghamshire find lay close to Watling Street, and it seems probable that both had
been stolen or taken from wayside temples or shrines now destroyed and hidden a little
distance away by thief or priest [MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. (1745), v, 23 xxxili, 303; Royal Soc.
Letters and Papers, Decade 1, no. 356; Phil. Trans. xliii (1746), p. 349, plates i and ii;
hence Camden, Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789), 1, 341; hence Brayley and Britton, Beauties of Engl.
and Wales (1808), vii, 184; Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1827), iii, 361; Cussans, ibid.
Edwinstree Hund. (1872), 24; Figured in Lysons, Relig. Brit. (1813), ii, pl. xl, xli, xhi, 1-3;
Daremberg and Saglio as above. See also Core. Inscr. Latin. vii, 84-6; V.C.H. Bucks.
ii, 11; and Corp. Inscr. Latin. vii, 80-2].

Benincton.—Roman coins found here [Ransom in ./rch. liii, 254].

BerKHAMPSTEAD, GreAT.—Stukeley records Roman coins from the castle, and especially from
the court within it, and concludes it is a Roman site [Jtin. Curios. (1724), 109, (1776), 116;
hence Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728), 119, who, however, suggests that they belonged to a
collection of a mediaeval lord of the castle and came originally from Verulam]. A later
record mentions quantities of Roman coins found here at various times [MS. Min. Soc.
Antiq. 1813, xxxili, 233], while recently a Roman lamp was found at the gasworks.

Bisunop’s STORTFORD.—Salmon quotes ‘Roman coins of the Lower Empire’ found in the castle
garden ; he saw one of Marcus (a.p. 161-80). Gough was told that some copper coins had
been sold some time before he visited the town. Coins of Vespasian, Trajan and Hadrian
found here were exhibited in 1867. Bishop’s Stortford lies on the road from Colchester to
Braughing and at the crossing of the River Stort [Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728), 271; hence
Gough’s Tours in the Bodleian (MS. Gen. Topog. e. 19), fol. 300; and Camden’s Brit.
(1806), ii, 70; Brayley and Britton, Beauties of Engl. and Wales (1808), vii, 214; Reynolds,
Itin. Antonini (1791), 464; Essex -froh. Soc. Trans. (1st ser.), iv, 185].

A small chamber about 6 ft. square, drained by a square hole in the floor just below the
centre of one of the walls, was found extending a considerable depth below the surface when
excavations were undertaken at the castle and prison about 1850. It was considered Roman
because some Roman bricks were found in the wall at the drain-hole, and ‘a few pieces of
rude Roman vases’ mixed up with many mediaeval objects, but the evidence would do
equally well for a mediaeval structure. It is just possible that it belongs to some Roman
bath buildings (Clarke, East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i (1), 54].

Bovixcpox.—See Hemel Hempstead.

Boxmoor.—See Hemel Hempstead.

Braucuinc.—On the east of Ermine Street and Braughing, a little to the north-east of the junction
of the Quin and Rib streams, the ground rises steeply, making a little cliff some 50 ft. high,
running north and east. Some 15 yds. to 20 yds. within this ‘ promontory’ Salmon in 1728
records in a field called ‘ Larksfield’ the south-west corner of a ‘camp.’ He observed two
ramparts, Io yds. apart, running west from the road to Barkway, making a rounded corner at
the south-west, and triple ramparts running north again to the end of the field. He could
trace it no further, but the configuration of the ground suggested an oblong shape,
extending as far as ‘ Down Field’ and the road and including ‘Saffron Ground,’ an area of
some 40 acres, cut into two from east to west by Hull Lane. A gateway existed on the
south side, which was defended by further earthworks.

Leman about 1815 noticed * the remains of a vallum of regular shape.’ Cussans states
that in 1870 ‘a wide and deep ditch was still visible for a great part of its course.’ He
supposed Salmon’s earthwork to be the mound on Lark’s Hill now covered with trees. The
bounds of the fields as shown on the O.S. map are rectangular and might have followed the

150

Braucuinc: Bronze Broocu BravucHinc : Bronze Enamettep Cup

Verutamium: Bronze ano Iron Opsects in THE Herts Country Muszum

Prare XI

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

line of the earthwork. Terraced earthworks, descending in a series of steps, still exist on
the south and west, but are not easily discernible, since they lie in a densely-wooded game
preserve. Professor Haverfield is inclined to connect them with agriculture.

Within this area, according to Clutterbuck, a tessellated pavement of a diamond pattern
in various colours was found in July 1799, together with a white marble sarcophagus with a
head carved in the centre of one side, and containing a glass vessel and part of the spiral
handle of another, a piece of carved bone (? a handle), silver imperial coins, &c., also three
amphorae with pointed ends, containing ashes, two ornamented earthen lamps, one with a
dismantled trophy and stamped ‘ mem,’ the other with a priestess at an altar on it. There
is still a tradition of the finding of a pavement beneath the plantation.

In 1725 two large stones were ploughed up in a field called ‘ West Attick’ (adjoining
Down Field), and apparently outside the rectangular area, on the north, and ‘in the upper
corner’ of this field ‘ the earth lies in holes and hillocks, as if some foundations had been dug
up’ [Salmon, op. cit. 227], or perhaps they were only gravel-pits. Another site, 700 yds.
south of Lark’s Hill, near the Great Eastern station, has yielded more remains. An immense
quantity of oyster shells and a few pieces of pottery were turned up in the centre of the road
where it is crossed by the railway line, and in making the cutting, extending 100 yds. to the
north of the road, ‘ perhaps thousands of coins ’ from Augustus (B.c. 31—A.D. 14) to Constantine
(A.D. 306-37) in first, second and third brass—including one gold Cunobeline, thirty-two of
Cunobeline and Tasciovanus, twenty silver Augustus-Postumus, a fine bronze of Caracalla
(A.D. 212-17), thirty ‘third brass’ of Carausius (A.D. 286-93) and Allectus (a.p. 293)—burial
urns, many small objects and quantities of potsherds of all kinds, including Samian. Only
one piece with a hunting scene on it is figured or described. Wickhams Field, in which the
station is built, is rich in coins, some turning up in every furrow in ploughing, and bones,
pottery and coins are still constantly found. Only one find has been described in detail.
A bronze enamelled cup, presented by the Rev. Charles Puller to the British Museum in 1870,
was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries in that year (pl. xi). It was 24 in. high and 34 in.
in diameter, and in shape resembled the Samian bowl, Dragendorf type 37. It was decorated
in two bands, with a border. The first band has a wreath pattern in pale blue-green enamel,
the lower a scroll and foliate pattern in green on a blue ground, and the border at the bottom
consists of a row of vandykes in blue and green. The edges of the bronze were serrated to
hold the enamel, which was inserted in the champlevé manner. The base was flat and had
been soldered on originally, but when found had separated. Similar bowls have been found in
Britain and N. Europe. One almost exactly like it came from a peat-bog at Maltbek in
Denmark, another with a handle from Linlithgowshire and a third with the same ornament,
but different shape, from the Bartlow Hills, Essex, associated with objects dated to the
middle of the 2nd century, and this date has, therefore, been suggested for these bowls.
Similar enamel work, however, has also occurred on a vessel found with coins of Tacitus
from Ambleteuse, N. France. None have been found in Italy or Southern Europe, and
they are to be classed with other enamelled objects to be found all over Celtic districts.
In December 1892, during the widening of Braughing station, the following Romano-British
objects were found and are now preserved in the Board Room Museum, Liverpool Street
station, London: A bronze fibula (23 in. by 12 in.) ribbed on the back, with spiral spring
and pin (pl. xi) ; a child’s bronze bracelet (2 in. diam.) ; a bronze ear-pick (34 in. long) ; a bronze
pin in two pieces (34 in. long); an iron ring with fragments of possibly a chain; a bone
in (2 in. long); some small pieces of Samian ware and the following coins: A small
uninscribed British bronze coin; Augustus Caesar, rev. great altar of Lyons (B.c. 27—a.D. 14),
Claudius (a.p. 41-54), Pius (a.p. 161), Tetricus the Younger (a.p. 267), Claudius Gothicus
(a.p. 268-70), Carausius, Rex, Pax Aug., local British issue (a.p. 290), Constantine II
(A.D. 337) and Constantius or Constans (4th century) (kindly submitted for inspection by
Mr. H. Wilmer, F.S.A., M.I.C.E.). The presence of so large a number of finds at this spot
indicates something more than a dwelling-house—probably a small posting station or village
at the crossing of two roads and a stream, which was occupied at an early date, and perhaps
was built on the site of a pre-Roman village. The earthworks at Larksfield are of a too
uncertain and unsatisfactory character to be identified as the ramparts of a Roman town or
village, and in any case the area as given by Salmon seems impossibly large, though he may
have been mistaken in his identification of the north and east sides. [Salmon, Hist. of Herts.
(1728), 226-7; Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1815-27), i, p. xvi (Leman’s article), iii, 149, with
figs.; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Braughing Hund. (1870), 18 5-6. From these Gerish, East Herts.
Arch. Soc. Trans. i (11), 174-5, who adds that a large collection of coins, urns, mortarta,
amphorae, &c., was formerly in the possession of Mr. Newman]. For earthworks, see
V.C.H. Herts. ii, 108-10, with plan from O.S. Map and sections; the 25-in. O.S. Map, xiv,

151

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

14 (1878), marks the site as ‘ Ad Fines,’ and the 6-in. Map (1896), xiv, S.W., as a ‘camp.’
The name ‘ Ad Fines’ is from the forged Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester; the name of
this station seems to occur neither in the Antonine Itinerary nor in the list of the Anonymous
Ravennas. For the enamelled bowl, see Proc. Soc. Antig. (ser. 2), iv, 514, fig. and references
there given; the cup at Maltbek is figured in Mémoires de la Soc. des Antiquatres du Nord
(1868), 151, plate; at Linlithgow, Proc. Soc. Antig. Scotland, xix, 46; and Bartlow Hills,
Arch, xxvi, 307, pl. xxxv.; cf. also Bonner Fabrbiicher, xxxvili, 58, and R. Allen, Celtic Art
(1904), 137. The site of a house lies about five miles south-west at Standon. See also
Westmill. For the supposed Roman milestone between Braughing and Hare Street, see
Little Hormead.

Brent PerHam.— Many fragments of vessels, cinerary urns, and a very fine water bottle, with
horse-shoes, coins, and other objects,’ were found half a mile north or north-west of Chamber-
lain’s Moat [Andrews, East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii (1), 58-60] and are now at Brent
Pelham Hall.

Bricxenpon.—A hoard of rather more than 450 Roman denarii was found in 1894 in digging
a flower-bed 10 yds. east of Brickendonbury, 14 miles south of Hertford and a mile west of
Ermine Street. They lay on an old surface in a recess cut in the virgin soil, covered with
8 in. of made-up ground+—clay and natural soil which is believed to have come from a moat
close by. They were for the most part of base metal and of the following dates :

1 Commodus [a.p. 180-93] 144 Severus Alexander [a.p. 222-35]
1 Pertinax [a.p. 193] 3 Sallustia Barbia Orbiana [a.p. 222-35]
33 Septimius Severus [a.p. 193-211] 30 Julia Mamaea [a.p. 222-35]
1§ Julia Domna [a.p. 193-211] 19 Maximinus [a.p. 235-8]
20 Caracalla [a.p. 198-217] 1 Maximus [a.p. 236-8]
2 Plautilla [a.p. 202-5] 1 Pupienus [a.p. 238]
8 Geta [a.p. 211-12] 25 Gordian III [a.p. 238-44]
2 Diadumenianus [a.p. 217-18] 9 Philip I [a.p. 244-9]
67 Elagabalus [a.p. 218-22] 1 Philip II [a.p. 247-9]
§ Julia Paula [a.v. 218-22] 2 Trajan Decius [a.p. 249-51]
2 Aquilia Severa [a.p. 220-2] 2 Herennia Etruscilla [a.p. 249-51]
15 Julia Soaemias [a.p. 218-22] 1 Herennius Etruscus [a.p. 250-1]

23 Julia Maesa [a.p. 218-23]

Sir John Evans, who describes them, considers that they were therefore buried about
250 or 251 A.D. Many hoards of similar date have been found in Britain, and were probably
deposited in the troublous period of rebellion in the middle of the 3rd century. [Account
in the Numis. Chron. (ser. 3, 1896), xvi, 191-208; Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1896-8),
ix, 169-74. The site is marked on the 6-in. O.S. Map, sheet no. xxxvi, N.E.].

BroxBouRNE.—Two pieces of a grey urn were found within 2 ft. of and a piece of an Andernach
lava quern beneath a barrow in a plantation adjoining Broxbournebury Park, on the south
side of Cock Lane, opposite Hoddesdon Bury. The barrow was opened in 1go1 by Sir John
Evans and was thought by him to be post-Roman [Proc. Soc. Antiq. xix, 8]. See also
Hoddesdon.

Cappincton.—For the inscribed tessera at Markyate Street, see V.C.H. Beds. ii, 7.

CaLpEcoTe.—See Hinxworth and Ashwell.

Cuesuunt.-—The Ordnance Survey (6-in. no. xli, N.E.) marks the western side of a ‘ Roman
camp’ in a field called ‘ Kilsmore,’ to the north of Church Lane and west of the New River.
Salmon describes it in 1728 as consisting of a ‘ high vallum with a deep Fosse . . . it seems
to have been square or oblong, of which one angle only is left at the north-west, and a part
of the west side, the fortification of which is lost in the New River against Church Field.’
He refutes the tradition that the origin of the ditch was a channel for the New River, afterwards
abandoned for the present line. Stukeley mentions coins of Hadrian (a.p. 117-38), Claudius
Gothicus (a.p. 268-70) and Constantine (a.p. 306-37), apparently found in digging gravel
for the road. Leman at the end of the 18th century notices ‘ part of a vallum with its regular
fosse, of an oblong figure for an hundred yards . . . which marks the site as originally British,
and thence afterwards occupied by the Romans.’ Since this date the site has always been
held to be Roman on the combined evidence of the earthwork, the name ‘ Cestrehunt ’ and its
position on Ermine Street, midway between London and Braughing, but no remains other
than coins and a pig of lead have been recorded. The site has never been excavated for
scientific purposes, and it is now a reservoir. A hoard of about 280 ‘ third brass’ coins,
Gallienus—Constantine, placed in a blue-grey urn 8 in. high, was found somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Cheshunt (the precise site being unknown) about 1904. The urn and

152

Centre Line or Room

Hemet Hempsreap: TEsseELLaTED Pavement aT Boxmoor VILLA

Pirate XII

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

twenty-four of the coins are now in the Hertford Museum and are of the following

emperors :

5 Gallienus [a.p. 253-68) 1 Constantine I [a.p. 306-37]
t Salonina [a.p. 253-68] 2 Crispus [a.p. 317-26]

g Claudius Gothicus [a.p. 268-70] 1 Constantine II [a.v. 317-40]
1 Aurelian [a.p. 270-5] 3 legible

1 Probus [a.p. 276-81]
The earlier coins were very well preserved, the later in bad condition ; the three illegible
coins were thought tobe Constantinian (a.p. 306-37), and one perhaps Valentinian (a.p. 364—75).
; Petnapey (A.D. 364-75)

The coin of Constantine I bore the London mint mark ‘r.ton?” A pig of lead (23:2 in. long),
now in the British Museum, was found in 1885 in draining a field at Theobalds Park, not far
from Ermine Street. In a sunk panel it bears the following inscription in raised letters :
“IMP CAES HADRIANI AVG,’ and on the side in smaller letters is another inscription, probably of
some dozen letters, of which the beginning ‘Lav’ and the end ‘vx’ or ‘xx? only can be read
[Prof. Haverfield in Ephem. Epigr. ix, 12644]. Other pigs of lead of the time of
Hadrian (a.p. 117-38) have been found in Derbyshire [V.C.H. Derb. i, 230] and in Shrop-
shire [V.C.H. Shrops. i, 264-5] and at Bath [V.C.H. Somers. i, 342]. This was probably lost
on its way from the Derbyshire lead mines to London. Cheshunt has also been identified
as Caesaromagus and Durolitum of the Antonine Itinerary, but both these places occur on
the road to Colchester and not on Ermine Street. [Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728), 7; Survey
(1731), ii, 418 ; Leman, in Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1815), i, p. xvi; hence Clutterbuck,
op. cit. ii, 77; Stukeley, Jtin. Curios. (1776), 77 n.; and MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. 22 April 1724 ;
and a copy of Chauncy, Hist. of Herts. in the Bodleian (Gough, Herts. 19), p. 297, hence
Camden’s Brit. (ed. Gough, 1806), ii, 71; Brayley and Britton, Beauties of Engl. and Wales,
vil, 232; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 104]. Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hertford Hund. 206, seems to
misquote Salmon as to ‘coins, urns and other relics’ being found in abundance here. For
the account of the hoard we are indebted to Mr. Bullen of the Herts. County Museum.
Correrep.—Stukeley was told of the discovery of coins of the later Empire in a barrow near here.
The village lies to the north of the road from Colchester and Braughing to Baldock and Sandy
[Stukeley’s Letters and Diaries (Surt. Soc. 1883), ii, 210].
FLamsteap.—There seems no reason for assigning this as the site of Durolitum. Nothing has
ever been found or recorded from here, and the mileage from London and Verulamium does
not agree with that of the Antonine Itinerary.
HarpenDEN.—A barrow about 50 ft. in diameter at the base and 20 ft. high, close to Pickford
Mill on the River Lea, about a mile north-east of Harpenden (and three of Watling Street),
was opened in November 1827 or 1829 and was found to contain a rude and massive cist, in
the shape of a round box with an internal diameter of 2 ft. roin. and 1 ft. 6in. deep, resting
on a rectangular base, rising slightly at each end, 5 ft. 3 in. long, 3 ft. wide and 11 in. thick, the
whole being cut out of one block of hard calcareous grit. It was covered by a rectangular lid
of the same size as the base, with a circular groove in the centre to fit on to the box. Within
this had been deposited a square pale green glass bottle with reeded handle, 142 in. high and
stamped on the bottom with a pattern precisely like that in the Youngsbury barrow (see
Standon), four small shallow cups of Drag. type 33, stamped ‘aTEntam’ 2 in. high,
‘.ENIA.M’ Ifin. high (Aten[aet] manu or Atinianus or Ateneacus—the last two found at
Rheinzabern), ‘ svrrvrri’ 2in. high, ‘Bv..vrRi’ 2in. high (Butturri, found also at Vichy)
[Birch, Arch. Fourn. ii, 251 seq. figs.; Gent. Mag. (1829), ii, 549 ; MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. xxxvi,
104; Arch. xxiv, 349; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Dacorum Hund. 349; Walters, Cat. of Roman
Pottery in Brit. Mus. (1908), no. M. 2040, 2041, 2057, 2058; see also Corp. Inscr. Latin.
xiii, 10010-374 ; Ludowici, Rémischer Tépfer in Rheinzabern (1905-8), iii, 4], the objects
being presented to the British Museum in 1843. The site is marked on the 6-in. O.S. Map sheet
no, xxvii, N.E., but with a wrong date. ‘ Remains of Roman interments’ were also found in
1867 a little south-east of Harpenden station in making the G.N.R. Luton and Dunstable line.
They lay 4 ft. deep and were destroyed at the time. The only objects described are wood
buckets with brass bands and handles, consisting of loose rings 2 in. diameter hanging from
the mouth of rams, whose nostrils were painted (or enamelled) red. They are not figured, but
from the description they would appear to have late Celtic affinities, if they are not actually of
that period. Lastly, two silver coins of Gallienus and Salonina (a.p. 253-68) and a ‘ third
brass’ of Postumus (?259-69) were turned up in the churchyard about 1860. [Cussans, H. ist. of
Herts. Dacorum Hund. 350]. In the foundations of Top Street Farm, three-quarters of a mile
south of Harpenden station (Midland line), are large blocks of stone from an older building,
and in the chimney some half-columns and a carved fragment, thought to be Roman. They
have been there for the last sixty years, and the farm itself was built in 1650. No similar

4 153 20

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

finds have been made in the neighbourhood, nor even in recent excavations for building, &c. ;
but it may be noted that the stone cist described above lay for a considerable time in this
yard and was used as a trough. [Inform. from Mr. Spencer Pickering and Mr. Liebert for
the Hist. Monum. Com. ].

Himer Hempsteap.—Portions of two dwelling-houses and a cemetery have been uncovered
at Boxmoor on the south bank of the Bulbourne stream, about a mile south-west of Hemel
Hempstead. The houses lie some 350 yds. apart and are separated now by the L. & N.W.R.
station of Boxmoor.

(1) The first was excavated in 1851 by Sir John Evans, but traces of it had been observed
previously. It lay beneath a lawn on the east side of Boxmoor House, 300 yds. south of
the L. & N.W.R. line and 40 yds. east of Box Lane (Boxmoor-Bovingdon Road), and
just within the parish of Bovingdon. The plan below shows a line of four rooms running
south-east and north-west at right angles to Box Lane. They were all 234 ft. long and
their respective widths (1) 15} ft., (2) 18 ft., (3) 6} ft., (4) 17 ft. The floors, which lay
2 ft. below the surface, were paved in (1), (3) and (4) with ordinary red tesserae in a fairly
perfect condition ; (3) had a short piece of a rude red and white border on one side of the
room and (1) had been repaired with fragments of tile. It also showed traces of a cross
wall or ‘pier of bricks.’ But the paved floor of (2) was ornamented with an elaborate
geometrical design, in black, white, blue-grey, red and yellow (pl. xii), of limestone, calcareous
shale and terra-cotta nearly 16 ft. square, lying not in the centre of the floor, but abutting
on one wall and almost overhung by its plaster, the remainder of the space being filled in
with a border of common red tesserae. Much of this pavement had perished. Its position
suggested to the excavators a rebuilding at some date. The pavements were laid on a bed

Oo 5 10 20 30 40 sO

(Viveeeewee A

Pian oF Boxmoor Vitra, Hemet Hempsteav

of pounded chalk, and that on gravel. One room only—apparently (2)—bore traces of a hypo

caust, connected with a passage measuring 20 in. by 24 in. pierced right through the wall
at (A), but ‘tothe right’ of the line of rooms were many fragments of flue tiles, and a fifth
room (75) ‘to the left’ of them contained the remains of a flue. A detached corner of wall—
apparently (B)—was laid open 37 ft. west of these rooms and lay in line with them, and
part of another wall, which apparently had no connexion with them. Near this last wall
was a deposit of black mould which contained many small objects and was perhaps a rubbish
pit. The walls were 2} ft. to 2} ft. thick, and were built of rough local flints and mortar
imperfectly burnt and not very hard; no bonding courses of tiles were observed, but the
wall remained to no great height. The foundation walls did not extend below the level
of the pavements. The wall plaster that occurred in the line of rooms was mostly white,
but in other parts of the garden there were pieces in many colours in striped and arabesque
patterns, and also tiles of all kinds—flue, flange (some of these being used in the foundations)
and ridge, many being scored and stamped with a variety of curious patterns. The smaller
objects (pl. xiii) included, in bronze, a small round bell with an incised pattern cast on it anda
heart in low relief at the bottom near the slit, the head of a hind or fawn with a hollow
neck and a small hole on the top of the head, part of a vessel; several strips, one inlaid with
ribs of silver or other white metal, perhaps part of a belt or furniture ornament; a finial, a
circular fibula enamelled in millefiore glass, a ring set with greenish glass and part of another,
part of an armilla ornamented with dots; two ornaments, one perforated with a spiral pattern,
the other a star-like object with a hole in the centre, both probably harness ornaments; a
pin 44in. long; a spoon 4 in. long; a pair of broad tweezers with serrated edges, perhaps for
domestic use, needle, &c.; two iron knives with blades 5 in. long; a jet pin with faceted
head ; part of a Kimmeridge coal armilla decorated with transverse lines cut on two mould-

154

LOL a NE ALS TOTES ALA Sia

BL AV oo) Jraretel

Hemet Hempstead: Roman ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN A ViLLa aT Boxmoor

Pirate XIII

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

ings, and part of another with a different ornament and a long cylinder-shaped bead ; several
bone pins ; greenish window glass ,9, in. thick, the bottom of a brown glass vessel with a bluish-
white spiral pattern (PI. xiv, no, 47), and part of a green glass rim. In pottery a Samian
mortarium, probably Drag. shape 6 (no. §2) ; some imitation Samian, glazed, with wheel patterns,
semicircles and semicircles with radial lines stamped on them, rather like Dech. ii, 327, pl. xiii,
and of a late character [one shown in Walters, Cat. of Roman Pottery in Brit. Mus. no. M. 2475];
the lip of a pale-red unglazed urn with indentations on it; pieces of a large red urn about
11 in. in diameter, with its rim set back for a lid and ornamented with engine-turning, probably
an ointment or other pot resembling that shown by Artis [Durobrivae (1828), pl. xlix, 4];
part of a lid of an engine-turned vessel with bronze slip and coloured black inside [Walters,
Cat. of Roman Pottery in Brit. Mus. no. M. 2733), probably the lid of a vessel similar to the
last ; several other pieces in red and black, many painted in red and white [Walters, ibid.
no. M. 2593], one on the bottom of a patera (no. 46), some with white slip in foliate and hunting
patterns ; a chocolate-coloured thumbed vessel with engine-turning; a vessel of the same
colour decorated with overlapping scales [cf. Ludowici, Rémische Tépfer in Rheinzabern,
ii, 261, fig. 72]; light grey ware with lattice-work ; a red frilled incense cup (no. 48), a type
supposed to be early ; some flat saucers of grey ware (nos. 50-1); three red-prey mortaria after
the style of Drag. type 38, with white scroll pattern on the flange (nos. 53-5); and two stone-
coloured mortaria, one with a thick and the other with a wide flange just below the lip
(nos. 56-7). Two fragments, one red glazed black with a circular mark in the centre, and
the other grey and perforated, were probably chess or draughts-men; the horns of cervus
elephas, boars’ tusks, oyster and mussel shells, &c. The coins from this site are not recorded
separately from the others, except that ‘a barbarous imitation’ was found above the orna-
mented pavement, which would seem to show that it was still in existence, if not occupied,
at the end of the period, while the pottery is of all dates, though there is nothing very
early. The building appears to have fallen into ruins rather than to have been destroyed
by violence ; the accumulation of flint and mortar-rubbish from the walls made it difficult
to trace even the foundations. But, unless this represents only a small part of a much
larger building not yet opened, it can never have been anything but a very small and poor
sort of dwelling, planned, however, after the corridor type of house and furnished with
ornamental pavements and frescoed walls. It is just possible that it is to be connected with
building No. 2, and that both belonged to a very large courtyard type of house; but if so,
it is curious that so little of it has been hitherto found or noticed. [Sir John Evans in Arch.
xxxv, 56, extra copies of which, with plan and additional illustrations, were published for
private distribution ; notice in MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. xxxvii, 203 ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ser. 1),
ii, 191, 295; Journ. of Arch. Inst. x, 4; site marked on the 6-in. O.S. Map, sheet
xxxiii, §.E.]. Some of the pottery is in the British Museum.

(2) The second building, or part of it, was also opened in the same year in the station-
master’s garden at Boxmoor, north of the railway line and in the parish of Hemel Hemp-
stead. It consisted of a small room with flint walls, plastered inside and coloured red.
More of this building could not be traced because it extended beneath the road leading to
the station and on the opposite side of it, where the ground had been raised for the railway
embankment. Trial trenches were dug on the southern side of the railway line, but no
trace of any building could be found here. A few yards from the foundation a rubbish pit,
14 ft. deep, was opened. Its upper part consisted of a thick black mould, its lower part
of a chalky marl with layers of vegetable matter, the bottom 8 ft. being below water-level.
It contained (PI. xiii, nos. 1-14) a denarius of Nero, rev. saLvs (A.D. 54-67) ; a bronze bolt ; five
small studs for leather ; part of an armilla ; an iron knife with a hollow shank and some bits
of sheet iron; parts of two handles of light green small glass vessels; a piece of greenish
glass and two light blue ribbed beads; two bits of Samian bowls, Drag. shape 37, one
with a hunting pattern on it (no. 2), a cup 2 in. high of Drag. shape 27 (no. 16) and parts
of twenty cups unstamped; a saucer 6 in. in diam. of Drag. shape 18 (no. 18) ; two bowls
with turned-out rims decorated with barbotine, Drag. shape 35 (nos. 15,17), 4 in. and §}in. in
diameter, and five or six other barbotine vessels and much more Samian; part of a grey
urn, 5 in. diameter, ornamented with panels of rows of dark brown roundels slightly in
relief (no. 5), resembling an Upchurch vase shown in Walters, Cat. of Roman Pottery in
Brit. Mus. no. M. 26443; pieces of wood and stick; the sole of a sandal 8 in. long ; a bone
pin [Sir John Evans, 4rch. xxxiv, 394, with figs.; xxxv, 56, and more figs. in the privately
published copies; Proc. Soc. Antig. (ser. 1), ii, 191]. Some of the pottery is now in the
British Museum. . .

(3) Some burials were dug up in August and September 1837, most epee in
the burial ground of the Independent chapel, Box Lane, about 50 yds. due west of the first

ee)

A ge ee

vm me

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

villa at Boxmoor House. The first group of objects occurred at 3 ft. to 4 ft. below the surface,
and consisted of a Roman green glass globular urn, 14in. high, 12 in. in diameter, containing
bones and small bits of gold fringe, &c., a small, narrow-necked earth jug with a handle
and a bronze lamp-stand much burnt, with variously ill-shaped nails, much corroded, lying
around them, as if they had held together a box or chest. The second group was 4 ft. distant
and 4} ft. deep, and consisted of a square blue-green glass bottle with reeded handle, and
stamped on the bottom with two concentric circles round a figure, expanding at each end like
a dice-box, and filled with bones and nails, and above them a small portion of black ashes mixed
with chalk. [Gent. Mag. (1837), ti, 409 ; Arch. xxvii, 434, fig., xxxiv, 392; Sir J. Evans, Boxmoor
Villas (1853), plate]. The lamp, glass bottle and bronze fragments of a box are now in the
British Museum.
Lastly, the coins from both sites and the vicinity include the following :

denarius of Pomponia or Claudia 3 third brass Tetricus II [a.p. 268-73]
» of Nero [a.p. 54-67] 2. Ns » Carausius [a.p. 286-93]
second brass Vespasian [a.p. 69-79] 1 second ,, Constantius [a.p. 305-6]

- »» Domitian [a.v. 81-96} 7 third ,, Constantine I [a.p. 306-37]

a » Nerva Bi 5s », Constantinopolis
first », Hadrian [a.p. 117-38] I. 5 », Urbs Roma
second ,, ee - + Dae », Crispus [a.p. 317-26]
first » Marcus Bas », Constans [a.p. 337-50]
denarius Caracalla [a.p. 212-17] E43 .. Constantius II [a.p. 337-61]
first brass Severus Alexander [a.p. 222-35] 3 second ,, Magnentius [a.p. 350-3]

5 »» Maximinus [a.p. 235-8] 1 third ,, Valentinian [a.p. 364-75]
third =,,_ Valerian [a.p. 253-61] ian », Walens [a.p. 364-78]

3 .. Gallienus [a.p. 253-68] Lt hsy », Gratian [a.v. 375-83]
plated Postumus [?a.p. 259-69] Te og » Arcadius [a.p. 383-408]
billon a 6. 5 » barbarous—1 struck from Constan-
third brass Victorinus [a.p. 265-8] tius IT

" » Claudius Gothicus [a.p. 268-70] DBS hoy », Uncertain

”

» Tetricus I [a.p. 268-73]

(Sir J. Evans, Arch. xxxv, 66-8].

We have thus a series of coins extending from the beginning to the end of the Roman
occupation, with rather more of the third and fourth centuries than of the earlier period.
This more or less agrees with the objects found. One or two of the Samian vessels and the
incense cup are early, while others are late ; the greater number, as far as one can tell, belong
to the middle and later period.

Lastly, a small rude bronze figure of Mercury (pl. xiii, no. 6) turned up in a field on the
northern side of the Bulbourne valley, and a field a little to the south-west of the town has
yielded the following denarii at various times :

Baebia (Babelon), no. 12 [n.c. 144] 1 Junia (Babelon), no. 37 [n.c. 54]

Fonteia__,, » 9 [B.c. 88] 1 Scribonia_,, o 55

Sulpicia ,, » 6[B.c. 69] 1 M. Antonius (Babelon), no. 113 [B.c. 31]
Cornelia __,, 5, 62 [B.c. 64] 1 Petronia 35 5 9 [B.c. 20]

Cassia 35 » 9 [B.c. 60] 3 Augustus (Cohen), nos. 43, 47,137 or 141 [B.c. 12]
Acilia #5 .. 8 [Bc. 54] 1 Vespasian (Cohen), no. 84 [a.p. 70]

Aemilia ___,, » 10 4s 3 Vespasian (Cohen), nos. 387, 561 [a.p. 72-5]
Hosidia_ _,, »y 102 +

(Sir J. Evans, Arch. xxxiv, 397].
The sites of three other houses lie within a radius of 3 miles—at Abbots Langley to the
south-west, Sarratt to the south and Latimer, co. Bucks., to the south-east.

Hertrorp.—Five Roman earthen vessels were found separately, but within a radius of 16 ft.,

at a depth of 3 ft., west of a house on the brow of Mangrove Hill as it slopes towards Queen’s
Road, in 1899-1900. They included one imitation Samian saucer, with a broad rim round the
middle of it, 4 in. in diameter; two Castor vases, 4in. and 4}in. high, one decorated with
arches in white clay, the other with raised spots; two coarse vases, one in grey, the other in
red, 4 in. and 44in. high. In one was a ‘rusty nail.” About a hundred fragments of unglazed
black ware also were turned up in pulling down the Turk’s Head Inn in Railway Street in
May 1899. [East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i (2), 181-4].

Hexton.—‘ Quantities of gold and silver coins, principally Roman and Saxon, have been found’

[Lewis, Topog. Dict. (1831), s.v. Hexton], perhaps thus interpreting a reference to ‘coins’
being found about Ravensburgh Castle and Wayting Hill (both pre-Roman earthworks)
and in the barrows between there and Leagrave, co. Beds. [Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728), 170,
and Camden, Brit. (ed. Gough 1789), i, 342].

156

LiEvans 1952,

Hemet Hempsteap. Roman ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN A Vitta at Boxmcor

Pirate XIV

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

Hinxwortu.—Some Roman burials were dug up in a gravel-pit between Caldecote and Hinxworth
in 1723-4. They consisted of large urns full of burnt bones, and near them large and
small urns, Samian paterae, one or more stamped ampullae, glass lachrymatories, handle
and neck of simpulum and green glass beads, bronze fibulae, ‘ two long glass beads,’ a ‘ stone
sword handle.? Near them skeletons had been buried 1 ft. beneath the surface with
head to the south-east [Stukeley, tin. Curios. (1724), 74, hence Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728),
339; Lewis, Topog. Dict. (1831), s.v. Hinxworth. Some shown to Soc. Antiq.; see MS. Minutes,
8 May 1723; 10 March 1724~5, hence Camden’s Brit. (ed. Gough 1789), i, 342; Brayley and
Britton, Beauties of Engl. and Wales (1808), vii, 176; Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1815-27),
iii, 523]. Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Odsey Hund. 23 probably refers to the same find when he
mentions ‘coins found in Caldecote Field adjoining Hinxworth parish.’ See also Ashwell.

Hitcuin.—A variety of finds have been made at Hitchin and in the immediate neighbourhood.
(1) A Roman kiln is said to have been discovered beneath accumulated rubbish in an old
brickfield on Hitchin Hill, near Stevenage Road, about a quarter of a mile south of the town
{Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hitchin Hund. 5, 6]. (2) Several skeletons, one nearly 7 ft. long
and another with traces of an iron weapon with it, and west of them a great number of cinerary
urns, lying in a curved line east and west, and around them many pieces of Samian ware, a
bronze armlet and ornaments, knives, &c., a silver denarius of Septimius Severus (a.D. 193-211),
small base metal coin of Julia Domna (a.p. 193-211), and small brass of Allectus (A.D. 293)
and Constantine II (a.p. 337-40), were dug up 2 ft. below the surface in the kitchen garden of
Foxholes, Tilehouse Street, a mile west of Hitchin [Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Addenda to Hitchin
Hund. 317; Seebohm, English Village Community (1884), 430; Ransom, Herts. Nat. Hist.
Soc. Trans. (1886), iv, 47; Journ. Arch. Inst. xxxix, 426, probably refers to this find].
(3) Many Roman urns containing burnt bones and several Samian paterae, coins of Septimius
Severus (a.D. 193-211), Gallienus (a.p. 253-68), Tetricus (A.D. 268-73), Diocletian (a.p. 284-
305), Maximian (a.p. 286-308), Carausius (A.D. 286-93), Allectus (a.p. 293) and Constantine
(a.D. 306-37), were found in drainage works at the sewage farm, Bury Mead, a mile north of
Hitchin, shortly before 1881 [Cussans and Ransom as above]. (4) Two burial urns came from
Taylor’s Hill [Cussans, op. cit. Hitchin Hund. 5, 6]. (5) Small coins of the Lower Empire
near Wellhead, Charlton, and many Roman coins and potsherds have been found in the
neighbourhood of Hitchin. In the Hertford Museum is a biscuit-coloured urn, § in. high,
from here [Inform. from Mr. Bullen and the same references]. Cussans [op. cit. Hitchin
Hund. (1874), 33] also mentions a carved white marble stone, part of a frieze representing a
triumphal procession, found built into the walls of the Red Lion Inn when it was pulled
down for the site of the Corn Exchange in 1852. It was thought to have come from a
dwelling-house in the neighbourhood—perhaps Wymondley—but it might just as easily
have been brought from abroad at some time. The house at Wymondley lies only 1} miles
east and the cemetery 2 miles south-east. For Wilbury Hill, see Norton and the find of
Late Celtic urns near there, probably in Walsworth parish [V.C.H. Herts. i, 236], and the
cemeteries at Danesfield and Pegsdown, see Pirton. Cf. also Willian and Ickleford. ;

Hopprspon.—Some Upchurch urns were dug up in a gravel-pit in Paul’s Lane, about 1} miles
east of Ermine Street, in the early part of 1862. One of them—an olla—was § in. high, of grey
earth and scored with two bands of ornament in trellis-work and diagonal dots, and another
urn-shaped vessel with wide mouth and bulging side. More were discovered in 1873 in the
centre of a gently rising mound a quarter of a mile from the above, and in 1874, at 2 ft. from
the surface, a trench 8 ft. long, cut east and west and containing a number of cinerary urns,
was opened in laying out a new road (now called Roman Road) from Barford Street to the
Ware Valley, just above Woollens Brook. With them was an iron spear-head about 9 in.
long, and near by many animal bones and two Roman coins [Fourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xviii,
268, 369; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hertford Hund. (1876), 173; the Times, 18 August 1874 ;
Herts. Mercury, 5 April 1902]. Most of these objects are preserved in the room of the
Hoddesdon Mutual Improvement Society. A plain fibula was found in January igo AH somie
excavations made in Roman Street, and in July 1899 ‘a stone-paved trackway’ 4 ft. below
the surface of Ware Road, which was considered Roman partly because three odd horse-
shoes thought to be Roman were found near it. In January Igol also an ‘inverted tile, said
to have been stamped ‘ Lz.1x,‘ was turned up in Hoddesdon, the precise site not being given
[East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i (3), 363, (2), 187], but on further examination it was dis-
covered that the tile was modern and bore the stamp of a local tilemaker. A cinerary urn
g in. high and 12 in. in diameter, decorated with six horizontal lines in two groups, —
containing calcined bones, was found with pieces of two other vessels ina sand-pit in West
Hill Field, near the Hertford Road and west of Hoddesdon [ibid. 1 (2), 184]. sea
a bronze coin of Pius (Cos. mm) [a.p. 138-61] with reverse ‘ Britannia” was discovere

157

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

in May 1899 near Rye House station, three-quarters of a mile north-east of Hoddesdon

ibid. i (2), 186].
sae vss small finds suggest that a building may some day turn up at Hoddesdon,
aps even a pottery kiln.

ities eed te! seems no reason for assigning a Roman date to the granite stone
mentioned by Salmon as standing near the junction of Stonecross Lane and Ware Road,
near Hare Street, and in 1900 among some nettles inside a field by a broken-down gateway
at the top of the hill exactly opposite Little Hormead Church [Salmon, Hist. of Herts. (1728),
312, hence Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1815-27), ili, 423; Herts. Mercury, 13 Oct., 10 Nov.
1900].

ed ee coins are frequently found here and at West Mill on the R. Oughton
(in Pirton) [Arch. liii, 257]. Some pottery is said to have been found here some few years
ago, but no precise site is given. A black urn 33 in. high, decorated with two incised
lines round the shoulder and below the rim, is now in the Hertford Museum [Inform. from
Mr. Bullen]. ; ;

KersHatt.— A large quantity of Roman pottery, cinerary urns, Samian ware, &c.,’ was found
among some gravel a foot below the surface, with two skeletons, in 1877-8 [Herts. Mercury,
6 Sept. 1902]. Burials here occurred in the chalk further to the north-east near Therfield
and Royston (q.v.).

Kimpron.—A hoard of 230 silver republican and imperial coins had been deposited in a dark-
coloured urn and were found in May 1851 in widening a road in Prior’s Wood a quarter of
a mile west of St. Lawrence’s Church, Ayot, but in the parish of Kimpton. The majority
of them were in a fair condition ; twenty of them have been described by Sir John Evans

as follows :
1 Valeria (Babelon), no. 11 [B.c. 104] 1 Julia (Babelon), no. 10 [c. B.c. 50]
1 Cipia - » 1 [Be. 94] 1 Cordia ,, » 1 [B.c. 49]
1 Coelia 4“ » 2{[B.c. 94] 1 Accoleia ., » (Be. 43]
1 Vibia a 4, 1-5 [B.c. go] t Antonia ,, » 125 [B.c. 31]
1 Calpurnia ,, » 11 [B.c. 89] 6 Augustus (Cohen), no. 64~5, 21-3, 42-3
2 Fonteia as » II [B.c. 88] [B.c. 2]
1 Furia 5 52223 [B.cs 53] 2 Tiberius 5 no. 16 [B.c. 2-a.D. 35]

[Numis. Chron. (1851-2), xiv, 83; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1852), vii, 176].

KneBwortu.—The barrow here when opened was found to contain no urns and only a few
bones and was full of flints [fourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xxvi, 260].

Letcuwortu.—Various finds, chiefly of burials, have been made in laying out and draining the
Garden City. ‘A quantity of pottery,’ thought to be Roman, was found near some post-
Roman burials on Norton Common in 1905 and ‘ a burial vase’ in excavating for a gasometer
the same year [Herts. Express, 25 Mar. 1905]. More were noted in 1g10 in Letchworth Lane
and seem to consist of burial urns about 2 ft. below the surface. Animal bones also occurred
here and near the ‘ Pix’ [The Citizen, Letchworth, 3 Dec. 1910]. The record of these finds
is so scanty that it is not even certain they are Roman. For other Roman finds in the neigh-
bourhood, see Norton, Baldock, Willian and Ickleford.

MarkyaTE STREET.—See Caddington.

Munpen.—See Watford.

Nortucuurcu.—A bronze helmet was found in excavations for the Grand Junction Canal near
Northcott Hill in 1813 and is now in the British Museum (pl.i). It is almost circular (measuring
internally about 8 in. by 7} in.), has a plate for the neck or neckpiece about 2} in. at its
widest, with a rivet for a strap underneath to hang it up, and a circular knob about 1 in.
high on the top where the crest should come; inside on the left a plate had been fastened
with two rivets and turned up on to the rim, on the right a hook also fastened with a rivet,
both doubtless belonging to some arrangement for keeping the helmet on the head. Some
helmets resembling it are shown by Lindenschmidt in Das Rémisch-Germanische Central
Museum (1889), Taf. xxvii, 7, and also in Daremberg and Saglio, but they all have a piece
cut out to allow room for the ear and some have a cheekpiece, while the Northchurch example,
which is small in the head, is quite straight round and probably cleared the ears. Sir
Augustus Franks suggests that it is early Roman or Gaulish, and Sir John Evans considered
it possibly Late Celtic, but the drawing of it does not confirm this view. There seems to be
no reason why it should be called ‘ Late Celtic,’ and it may possibly be Roman. Mr. ffoulkes
suggests that had it been of iron it might be dated at about 1640, but being bronze it is
probably Roman. [Drawing published by the Soc. of Antiquaries, 1819, Vetusta Monum.
(1835), v, plates xxvi, xxvii; Lewis, Top. Dict. s.v. Tring; Franks, Proc. Soc. Antig. v, 362 ;
Sir J. Evans, ’.C.H. Herts. i, 236, where also he states that the provenance of a similar helmet

158

AX FLVIg

() NIVy Hs1wrig-oNvWOY Wowd AYALLOg : LLaTavY

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

was Hitchin and not St. Albans, as other writers assert]. Roman fibulae and British coins have
been found near the Cow Roast Inn at the bottom of Northcott Hill, and are marked on the
6-in. 0.8. Map, sheet no. xxv, S.E., east of the canal and a quarterof a mile east of the Cow Roast
Inn in this parish, and therefore probably near the helmet [Arch. liii, 262, s.v. Wigginton].
See also Wigginton and Aldbury for the coins on Moneybury Hill, 2 miles north.

Norton.—A silver coin of Faustina II, Cohen type 190 (a.p. 161-80), was found on the earth-
work at Wilbury Hill, and near the same place human bones and three coins of Constantius
(a.D. 305-6) in 1806, while ‘a great variety of coins of the Roman emperors have turned
up... of late years in the adjacent lands’ [Clutterbuck, as below]. According to another
authority, coins from Julius to Constans (A.D. 337-50) still occur here {Salmon, Hist. of
Herts. (1728), 160, hence Brayley and Britton, Beauties of Engl. andW ales, vii, 176; and Camden,
Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789), i, 342 ; Reynolds, Itin. Antonini (1799), 472 ; Clutterbuck, Hist. of
Herts. (1827), ili, 13 n., hence Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Odsey Hund. (1873), 74]. Asmall Roman
bronze figure 3 in. high was found close to Wilbury Hill at the intersection of Icknield Way
and a road that runs south-east [Cussans, op. cit. Hitchin Hund. (1874), 5]. Roman inter-
ments have been found half a mile west of Wilbury Hill LArch. liii, 257, s.v. Hitchin]. For
an account of the earthwork, see East Herts. Arch. Soc. ii (3), 279; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 111;
and the Late Celtic Cemetery, ibid. i, 236. See also Hitchin, Willian and Letchworth.

PenLowE Parx.—‘ Much Samian ware, urns, &c.,’ were dug up in ‘ Penlowe Park, Herts.,’ June
1845, and are described by Mr. Inskip of Shefford (co. Beds.). ‘ Penlowe Park’ is perhaps a
mistake for Henlow Park, between Shefford and Astwick, Bedfordshire, or Pendley Park in
Tring parish. The Samian included a ‘ vase’ ‘ of diminutive size’ (perhaps Drag. shape 67),
decorated with medallions (stags browsing), and two dishes, one with graffiti scratched on
the bottom [Fourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1845), i, 340].

Pirton.—(1) A large number of burials were found in 1835 close to the surface in a field called
Dane’s Shot on Pirton Hill, half a mile from Icknield Street. Some thirty skeletons lay in
two rows, one of which was carefully arranged, the skeletons lying 14 yds. apart, with heads
to the north-east, the other carelessly, three or four being thrown into one grave. With
them were many ‘ dull black’ urns of moderate size containing bones, and also a ‘ curiously
ornamented’ brass armlet, some buckles and twisted pins. [Gent. Mag. (1835), i, 305;
Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hitchin Hund. 15, quoting County Press, 14 February 1835]. Ransom
[Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1886), iv, 40] adds that forty-five years previously a large number
of skeletons, and also those of horses with several fragments of iron and bronze, were found
here, which he concludes were post-Roman burials. But if he refers to the same find the
contemporary accounts do not mention horses, and the burials as described in them might
as well be Roman as Saxon. Mr. Ransom also records an amphora, 3 ft. high, dug out at a
short distance, and ‘a variety of other vessels have since been found there.’ (2) We may
also include here another cemetery in the adjoining parish of Pegsdown in the county of
Bedford. It lay at the foot of the chalk downs on Pegsdown Common, half a mile from
Icknield Street and about four miles from Hitchin. It was opened in 1879 by Mr. Ransom
and found to contain ‘ a considerable number of broken urns of brown pottery’ with cremated
human bones in some of them, and several pieces of Samian. Beneath them an earlier
cemetery was revealed, containing ruder and hand-made urns, 3 in. thick, with human
ashes mixed with charcoal and iron nails in them. [Ransom, Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans.
(1886), iv, 39]. See also Hitchin, Ickleford and Norton.

Rapvtetr.—Two kilns were found in the autumn of 1898 on the property of Sir Walter Phillimore
in a sand-pit on the east side of Loom Lane in this parish. The first was much destroyed
before its nature or date was realized, but it was circular, about 3 ft. in diameter, with
walls about 5 in. thick, made of baked clay with bits of brick irregularly inserted. The
floor of the flue, about 2 ft. below the original ground level, consisted of the natural sand
burnt red for an inch or more. A projection was traced, extending from the wall of the
kiln to the middle of the flue, where it formed a pedestal g in. high to support the kiln floor,
of which nothing remained. ;

The second kiln, lying 10 ft. south-east, was also excavated and planned. The remains
lay 34 ft. below the present surface; it was of horseshoe shape, its greatest length being
6 ft. and width 5 ft. 1 in. measured internally. It had been made by digging a hole 4 ft. deep
in the sand, against which had been built a wall 6 in. thick of brickbats set in clay, and
afterwards baked. It was heated from a furnace 3 ft. 9 in. long and 1 ft. 7in. wide, con-
nected with a flue which ran all round the kiln, and was constructed by filling in the centre
of the kiln with a block or pedestal of masonry, 1 ft. gin. high, which also served to support
the oven floor, about 7 in. thick, made of clinkers and burnt clay covered with a layer of sand.
The flue was covered by a flat arch. The kiln, when deserted, was evidently full of pots,

199

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Rapierr: Fracments or Morraria sHowinc Meruop oF PackiNG IN Kitys (4)

Puate XVI

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

which had been destroyed by the fall of the dome of the oven, but the furnace had been
damped down by covering the mouth with puddled clay which still remains. Roman ovens
of circular shape with floors supported in a similar fashion to that of the Radlett kiln have
been found at Castor (Northants.), Shoebury (Essex) and under St. Paul’s Cathedral (London).
The pots found in the kilns were mostly whitish-red coarse mortaria, but also included jug-
shaped amphorae, urn-shaped pots and perhaps their covers and various forms of paterae
(Pl. xv, xvi), some of these having sand mixed with the clay, which gave them a bright appearance.
Twenty-two of the mortaria were stamped on the rim ‘ castvs,’ ‘CASTVS FECIT’ or ‘ FECIT CASTVS.”
On one was ‘ ALBINVS’ and on two

‘reciT’ spelt backwards, and four Present Ground Level
bore illegible inscriptions. The = Zjiie Aint ge on
name ‘ Castus’ has not been found
on mortaria before, but there was
a potter of that name at La Grau-
fesenque in Gaul (and maker of
form 29), and this name also occurs
at Rheinzabern. But many mor-
taria have been found stamped
‘ Albinus,’ and some showing there
was a Lyons potter of that name.
It is also said to have been found
on La Graufesenque plain saucers
and on some from Rheinzabern. It
is evident that the potter to whom
the kiln belonged was called Castus.
Perhaps the ‘ Albinus ’ mortarium
had been imported from Gaul to
be used as a model. [Account by
Mr. Page the excavator in St. Albans
and Herts. Arch. and Archit. Soc.
Trans. (New Ser. 1899-1900), i,
176-84, with plans, hence Journ.
of Arch. Inst. lviii, 95, and Proc.
Soc. Antig. xvii, 261]. For the
potters see Walters, Cat. of Roman
Pottery in the Brit. Mus. (1908),
no. M. 124, 609, 978 (Castus) pp. ....:
liv, 428; Cat. of Guildhall Mus.23y
(1903), 103, 104 (Albinus) ; Déche-
lette, Les vases céramiques ornés —
(1904), i, 81-2 ; Ludowici, Rémischer a 8 ee
Tépfer, Stempel-Namen, and Stem-
pel-Bilder in Rheinzabern (1901-8). \
See also the last volume, pp. I51- H
64, Artis, Durobrivae (1828), Proc.

|

cies 7Purnace Floors agus (i a"

Soc. Antiq. xvi, 42, for ovens.
Roysron.—Stukeley mentions Roman
coins from here and states in one
place that ‘this very year (1724) Scale of Feet
they found Romancoins near there,’ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
and describes one of brass plated
over silver of Agrippina and Nero
(A.D. 54-9), Cohen no. 7, but this

does not seem sufficient evidence for :
the site of a Roman town, as he supposed, at the crossing of the two roads, Icknield Street,

which just here has a Roman appearance, and the road from Colchester to Sandy in Gea
shire [Stukeley, Itin. Curios. (1724), i, 76; and Paleographia Britannica, a I, p- 23 co
Reynolds, Itin. Antonini (1799), 460; &c.]. The bust of a Roman lady in ian 3 in. : et :
with hair dressed in the style of the 3rd century, was found at Royston [ 7 aes 7 I
Two brass coins of Pius (a.p. 138-61) and Verus (A.D. 161-9) were turned up in p ous oe

Long Field, Tadlow (co. Cambs.), early in 1907 [Ibid. in (New Ser. ie oo e
News, 27 Feb. 1907]. A small green glass bottle with two reeded handles, 5 in. high,

5 21
4 101

Pian anp SECTION oF a PorTeR’s KILN FOUND AT
Raptztt (No. 1)

Present Ground Level

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Porter’s Stamps of Castus rounp in a Kity at Rapiert

pres

Potter’s Marks rounp in a Kitx at Rapietr

162

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

broken at the neck, is supposed to have been found at Royston and is now in the Hertford
Museum [Inform. from Mr. Bullen]. Some of the barrows in the neighbourhood—especiall
on Royston Heath, west of the town—have yielded Roman coins and pottery, but for ieee
see Therfield and Kelshall. The really important finds occur over the Cambridgeshire
border, but only a mile or two away, at Litlington (villa and cemetery) and Limloe Hill
(cemetery). No evidence of Roman occupation has been found in the cave here.

Rusupen.—Mr. Seebohm records Roman coins from Cumberlow Green [English Village Communit
(1884), 434]. :

St. ALBANs.—See p. 125.

Sarratt.—Foundations of a building were excavated in October 1907 in a field called Church
Field, 200 ft. north of Sarratt Bottom Farm, which slopes southwards from Rosehall Wood to
the River Chess. The building was rectangular in plan and measured 48 ft. from east to west
and 33 ft. from north to south. It had an apse, 17 ft. across the chord, added on to the west
end and built not quite in the centre of the wall, the two rooms being connected by a gap
git. or 10 ft. wide in the separating wall. The east wall of the rectangular room ran further
south, but the end of it was not found. In this wall traces of a post were observed,
which the excavators thought might possibly be the last of a row. The walls were
24 ft. thick, lay 9 in. below the surface and extended 3 ft. deep into the ground, They were
built of flint and pure lime cement that was quite soft and wet Some plaster still remained
on the inside of the walls. Many bricks, flue tiles, pottery and glass lay about and two
illegible coins were found. More buildings exist further north up the hill, but they have not
been opened. The upper part of the tower of Holy Cross Church, nearly half a mile south-east
of the farm, is almost entirely built with
Roman bricks and tiles, and many tiles and
pieces of rough conglomerate (plum-pudding
stone) occur in the lower part of the walls,
probably from the Roman building. Frag-
ments of urns frequently turn up in the
churchyard, and an iron key and bronze
fibula were found there before 1881, also a
large heavy brass ring about 1840.

A building of somewhat similar plan,
but with a square, instead of a circular, in-
closure at the end, was found at Castlefield,
near Andover (Hants). It had, in addition,
two rows of bases for pillars running down
the centre, and two open hearths and three Pian or Roman Buiupinc aT Sarratt
sunk furnaces within it. More elaborate
buildings of the same type have been opened at Clanville (in Weyhill), Thruxton and
Holbury (in Lockerley) in Hants, at Hartlip in Kent and Ickleton in Cambridgeshire, and
elsewhere, and are all evidently examples of a primitive type of Romano-British house,
which resemble neither the Celtic hut nor the Italian house, nor even the corridor houses of
Britain and North Gaul. This building at Sarratt, as that at Clanville, may possibly be
connected with others further north by a courtyard, all forming part of one house of a type
known as the ‘ courtyard.’ [For these see V.C.H. Hants, i, 302, and references there given;
inform. from Mr. A. Whitford Anderson ; Estates Gazette, 2 Jan. 1909; and St. Albans Arch.
and Archit. Soc. Trans. Jan. 1909, with plan; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Cashio Hund. 111].
Another dwelling-house near Latimer lies 2 miles west and further up the valley, but in the
county of Buckinghamshire, and another at Abbots Langley in the Gade Valley, 4 miles
north-east.

SAWBRIDGEWoRTH.—‘ Roman pottery has been found in considerable quantity’ on Stonards
Farm, about half a mile east of the stream called Fiddler’s Brook and 2 miles west of Saw-
bridgeworth [Yourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1888), xliv, 116]. Two urn burials were found in
March 1908 near the River Stort, in a wood called Ashplant, 170 yds. east of the Harlow
Road, but within Pishobury Park. They were deposited 6 ft. below the surface on a layer of
ashes 3 in. thick, were 2 ft. apart and contained calcined bones and ashes. Each stood on a
saucer, and over the mouth of one was a small inverted cup, apparently Samian, 2 in. high
and 4 in. in diameter at the top, with a rose-shaped potter’s mark stamped on the bottom. One
of the urns was of hard, dark grey ware, the other of buff colour, decorated with a small
indented pattern; there was also part of a small brown jug or vase, stained black on the
outside and decorated with two parallel lines [Glasscock, East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i.

(2), 191]. Cf. Widford.

SCALE oF FEET

163

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Stavnon,---.\ tessellated pavement 12 ft. 9 in. square, with a plain square design in black, white
and red, was found in 1756 at Thundridge. This is described in 1827 as lying near to two
barrows in a field called Hilly Field at Haven End. These lie just outside and east of
the shrubbery of Youngsbury in Standon parish, on a hill above the River Rib, on the
opposite and southern bank of which stands Thundridge Church, and about half a mile east
of Ermine Street. The same authority adds that ‘no part of this pavement is now visible,
yet many of the tesserae of which it was composed may still be picked up in the shrubbery
at Youngsbury, where it was situated ; and within the last fifty years there were in existence
parts of it which had not been disturbed, and were apparently perfect.’ Nothing of the
villa now remains above ground. Part of the villa site was excavated about 1890 by the late
Mr. Charles Giles Puller, and foundations of walls and a circular pit were found, together
with a bone pin and many tesserae. In 1905 a rubbish pit containing charcoal, animal bones
and potsherds was found by Mr. F. C. Puller about 70 yds. south-west of the villa site [Inform.
from Mr. F. C. Puller]. The more eastern of the barrows was opened about 1788 and was
said to contain spear-heads, coins and pottery thought to be Roman. The other was excavated
in June 1889 by Sir John Evans. It was about 12 ft. high, with a diameter of about 60 ft.,
and was constructed with layers of local gravelly subsoil mixed in places with a heavier clay
soil. At the bottom of it a cavity 3} ft. long and 3 ft. wide was found about 8 ft. below the
apex of the mound; it was roofed with hard and stiff clay soil, and had evidently contained
a wood cist 3 ft. long and 1 ft. 11} in. wide, with a lid attached by four rough hinges.
In this had been deposited a well-burnt grey urn 174 in. high, 8} in. in diameter at the
mouth with a rim nearly 1 in. deep [somewhat resembling plate xlix(a), fig. 5, of Curle,
A Roman Frontier Post (1912)], ornamented with transverse markings round the body and curved
lines round the neck, and containing much charcoal and calcined bones and nearly 200 nails ; a
small, wide jug-shaped vessel of light-coloured ware, 63 in, high ; a large square glass bottle
1§ in. high, with a thick lip and flat reeded handle, stamped on the bottom with a kind of
star pattern in the centre and the segment of a circle in each corner (the same as that on
the Harpenden bottle), and nearly full of burnt bones and a little resinous matter, probably
incense ; some large iron nails, probably part of the wood chest. Some bones of a roe-deer
were found mixed with some of the human bones. Sir John Evans dated the burial to the
latter half of the 2nd century. [MS. note in a copy of Chauncy, Hist. of Herts. (1700), 213,
once the property of Mr. George North, vicar of Codicote, and now in the Bodleian Library
(Gough, Herts. 19), hence Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1827), ili, 277, but misquoting the date
of the find, and hence Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Braughing Hund. (1870), 164; Arch. lii, 287,
plate vi for the barrows. Braughing lies about § miles north-east].

SIANSTEAD AnBpots.—The site of the villa mentioned in Arch. lili, 261, as found here is really
in the parish of Stansted Mountfitchet, Es-ex, on the eastern bank of the River Lea and
about 12 miles north-east of Stanstead Abbots. Roman bricks are said to occur in the tower
and the north wall of the nave of Stanstead Abbots Church, where they are placed in herring-
bone fashion, and Roman pottery in the churchyard [MS. note in a copy of Salmon’s //ist.
of Herts. 250, now in the Bodleian Library (Gough, Herts. 18) ; Last Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans.
ii (1), 28]. Roman remains have been found in the neighbourhood at Ware, Hoddesdon
and Amwell (q.v.).

THERFIELD.—Gough mentions a ‘ Roman camp, a quarter of a mile from Royston, on the road
to Baldock,’ of which a drawing was shown to the Society of Antiquaries in 1744. Cussans
also states that ‘ from the number of coins and other remains found’ in a valley west of the road
joining Therfield and the Baldock Road, it * seems to have been the site of a Roman camp,
but all traces, if such existed, have been destroyed by the plough.’ Stukeley also mentions
earthworks here, but gives no reason why they should be considered Roman. Cussans refers
to a barrow being opened near the ‘ Thrift’ in 1833, which was said to contain Roman
pottery, but that may possibly be the barrow at Limloe Hill, Cambridgeshire, which was
excavated that year. Other barrows on Royston Heath have been cut through, but their
contents do not seem to be of Roman date, except perhaps one which seems to have stood
not far from the ‘ Thrift.’ It was removed in March 1852, and there was found in the centre
of it a grave 54 ft. long and 2} ft. deep, containing a skeleton, small bits of flint and chalk,
bits of glass and a ‘Roman buckle.’ [Camden’s Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789), i, 341; Cussans,
Hist. of Herts. Odsey Hund. (1873), 98, 116; Fourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1853), viii, 371;
Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ser. 2), i, 306.] See Royston and Kelshall.

THUNDRIDGE.—See Standon.

Top Street.—See Harpenden.

Trinc.—A cemetery was found in making the L. & N.W.R. line ‘ where it crosses Icknield Street,’
presumably at Folly Bridge, 14 miles north of Tring and on the Buckinghamshire border.

164

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CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

Sixteen skeletons had been buried by the side of the road and with them was ‘ an immense
quantity of Roman pottery and oyster shells.’ Much of the pottery was broken when
found, but there were several perfect cinerary urns, two being in the possession of the Society
of Antiquaries in 1879. [Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Dacorum Hund. (1879), 13.] For other
finds near here see Aldbury, Northchurch and Wigginton.

VERULAM, see p. 125.

WALDEN, és Paut’s.—Roman coins have been found at Whitwell, south-west of Walden [Arch.
lili, 262].

Watswortu.—See Hitchin. For the find of Late Celtic urns in a chalk-pit half a mile from
Icknield Way and 1} miles from Wilbury Hill, and probably in this parish, see Norton and
V.C.H. Herts. i, 236.

Ware.—Two burials were discovered in building a new lock on the River Lea in Priory Street,
400 yds. north-west of the Priory, August 1831. They lay in a stratum of peat, 50 yds.
from the left bank of the ancient river course, and must have been at the side of Ermine
Street. The first was found lying east and west at a depth of 3 ft.; 9 in. below the skull part
of asteelyard turned up, the weight and a brass coin of Domitian (a.p. 81-96) being 9 in. below
it again (i.e. 44 ft. deep). Near it also were ‘a brass candlestick of curious workmanship,’ an
iron axe-head and a finger-ring. The second skeleton was a little to the south, also in the
peat, and near it were a pin, a key, two millstones of Hertfordshire concreted gravel, fragments
of a large earthen vessel with a base and rim 33 in. circumference, and a brass coin of Didius
Severus (a.D. 193), Cohen, no. 17-19. [Arch. xxiv, 350, hence Cussans, Hist. of Herts.
Braughing Hund. (1870), 155; Gent. Mag. (1831), ii, 454]. Four stone coffins were discovered
in a field called Bury Field, just to the north of the above, in February 1802. No small objects
are recorded, and from their shape they may equally well belong to a post-Roman as to the
Roman period, and Ware Priory lies quite close. A small copper coin of Constantine I (a.p.
306-37) occurred ‘in the mould’ (i.e. the soil) near them, however ; and in 1899 finds of Roman
pottery and coins were made in the site of Messrs. Allen & Hanbury’s factory in the same
field, and probably indicate a burial-place along the side of Ermine Street. Among the
vessels were part of a large Samian patera, about Io in. in diameter, stamped ‘ consTANs F,’
other fragments of Samian, pieces of Castor ware, a colander in grey ware 44 in. diameter at
the bottom, pieces of white and fine black ware and rough grey ware, including two urns 14 in.
and 8 in. high and 6in. and 3$in. in diameter at the mouth respectively, which may possibly
not be Roman. The coins were a ‘ second brass’ of Vespasian (Cos. 111) (A.D. 69-79), another
of Commodus (a.D. 180-93), a ‘ third brass’ of Constantine I (a.p. 305-6) in poor condition, and
two others illegible. A small bronze spear-head also appears to have been turned up at the
same time. A skeleton, ring, Roman key, steelyard and coins of Domitian and Severus were
found also in 1830 near the same field [MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. xxxvi, 151; Gent. Mag. (1802),
i, 393, plate i, and 6-in. O.S. Map, xxix, $.E.]. A house or village may have existed some-
where near the bridge or ford across the river [Andrews, East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i
(2), 187-90]. A section of Ermine Street was opened in Barrowfield on the golf links at
Chadwell, but for that see Roads, p. 145.

Wartrorp.—Cussans mentions a ‘ Roman interment’ from a barrow which was levelled about
1860 in digging for gravel beneath it. It stood south-west of Munden House, on the banks
of the River Colne. Some ‘Roman tiles which probably surrounded the interment’ were
in his day at Munden House, and he knew of a tradition of ‘ several gold things and copper
coins and a lot of pickle jars with burnt bones in them.’ [Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Cashio
Hund. (1881), 181]. Boyden’s Hill lies about 2 miles to the south-east, where tiles have been
found (see Aldenham), and the Radlett kilns about 13 miles east.

Warron aT Stone.—Roman coins were found here in the 18th century, according to a MS.
letter from the Rev. Geo. North, vicar of Codicote, to Ducarel, 4 November 1742 [now in a
copy of Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 147, in the Bodleian (Gough, Herts. 18)]. He also mentions
the so-called Roman milestone, ‘a large weather-beaten stone with all the signs of a great
age,’ at the parting of the Stevenage and Walkern Roads. In Cussans’ day it supported a
horse-trough outside the Wagon and Horses Inn, near the River Beane, but it may as well
be prehistoric as of Roman date. It is said to have given its name to the parish. [From
North but misquoting the reference, Clutterbuck, Hist. of Herts. (1829), ii, 4725 Cussans,
Hist. of Herts. Broadwater Hund. (1877), 167].

We.twyn.—Welwyn was the burial-place of some family of importance in the latter part of the
Ist century B.c. Two vaults and two separate burials were discovered in the autumn of
1906 during the diversion of the station road by the late Mr. G. E. Dering of Lockleys. The
actual site of the graves was in the new road, some 500 ft. to the east of the London Road.
The objects, several of which must have been of a costly nature for the period to which they

165

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

are assigned, were given by Mr. Dering’s daughter, Mrs. Neall, to the British Museum.
Unfortunately, no accurate observations were made at the time the burials were found. In
the first vault were an amphora of Greek type and origin, angular at the shoulders and pointed
below ; two fire-dogs or andirons (53}in. wide at the top and 46in. below and 38 in. high),
the uprights of which (2 in. by }in. in section) stand on arched feet and terminate at the
top in what are apparently intended for bulls’ heads having knobbed horns, and a cross-bar
(2 in. by 1} in. in section) between the uprights 6in. from the ground (PI. xvii); some fragments
of a bronze bow] (124 in. diameter and 4,3, in. high) of classical design, with a base (64 in.
diameter and 1,4, in. high) having an edge moulded with egg-and-tongue pattern, and with
drop handles and a lip formed by bending back the metal ; three heavy bronze masks of purely
Celtic origin (1} in. long), curved at the back to fit a circular object, the faces showing straight
hair and heavy moustaches (PI. viii); handle of bronze jug of Italian manufacture, possibly
from the Capua district ; a cordoned pottery tazza of Late Celtic type and the base of a pedestal
urn. The second vault contained five amphorae similar to those in the first vault ; two similar
fire-dogs ; an iron frame (42 in. high, 28? in. long and 22} in. wide), possibly used for sacrificial

Late Certic Bronze Patetta rounp at WeELWwyn (restored) (4)

purposes, comprised of four uprights (4 in. wide) ornamented with twisted bar iron and two
horizontal bands (2in. wide) (PI. xvii); a bronze patella (24 in. long, 11}in. diam.) with long handle;
the handle and a part of the body of a bronze jug of Italian type, similar to the handle in the
first vault but larger; the bronze handle and lower edge of a Late Celtic tankard ; a bronze
ring (14%, in. long) with rivet or knob, possibly for lifting pail by attachment to the handle ;
a pair of silver vases (4 in. high, 4} in. diam.) of classical origin (Pl. viii), each ornamented with
egg-and-tongue pattern round the lip, with a guilloche pattern between beaded borders below,
and round the foot is a beaded edging below egg-and-tongue border; a pair of silver kylix
handles (3 in. long) of classical workmanship ; bronze domes, two 1} in. diameter and about
fifteen ,% in. diameter, probably for covering rivet heads; a pedestal cinerary urn and a
cordoned pottery tazza. The separate burials contained pottery only; the one held a
pedestal cinerary urn, a barrel-shaped vase and two bowls with burnt bones, and the other
a small pedestal urn, a vase with oval body and a small tazza. It is an interesting fact
that the amphorae and all the bronze and silver objects of classical design show distinctly
the influence of Greek craftsmanship. [Arch. Ixiii, 1-30].

(1) ‘The most important building which has been discovered is the remains of a house in the
rectory gardens. Flint walls, forming an angle, were found in 1906 facing the north-east

166

. WAX 491d

VZ2¥ T, GNV SNU() AUVUANIT) OLLTED) FLV] + NAMTA AA

Woopven Tanxarp (restored) anp Bronze
Hanpte (Fronr anv Sipe Views) (4)

Bronze Ring witu Knop (j) Bronzs Jue (restored) (4)

Sitver Hanpies, wira Specimen Kyuix (4

Lare Cetric ANTIQUITIES FOUND aT WELWYN

167

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

corner of the rectory, which lies on the western bank of the River Maran or Mimram, between
a croquet lawn and the house, 6} ft. from the former. The walls were 2} ft. thick and were
well built with lime and mortar, the flints being laid in courses, but no tiles occurred in situ.
A space measuring 10} ft. by 4} ft. was opened up, but revealed no trace of the floor. Many
brick and roofing tiles were turned up, only one hypocaust tile, a coarse dark urn, 8 in.
high, from just inside the angle, bits of thin bronze plate and wire, three brass coins of
Constantine I (a.p. 306-37), many oyster shells and animal bones, and some evidence of fire
was observed. When the lawn itself was being made in the autumn of 1906 no masonry
occurred, but a number of hard, round pebbles, bedded on chalk and burnt lime, and burnt
bright red, also a great quantity of Roman bricks and roofing tiles (all broken), numberless
pieces of pottery, including Samian, one bit stamped “‘sEcvnDINAA” (stc —? MA. Secundinus
is a Lezoux potter of the first half of the second century ; see Curle, Roman Frontier Post, 240),
and Castor ware, broken glass, handle of a blue-green vessel with a wavy line of blue glass
on it, a bead of the same colour; in bronze, a piece of a brooch, a ring 1 in. in diameter, a signet
ring engraved with a winged female (? Victory), an ornamented pin 4 in. long, a bit of twisted
band (? bracelet) tweezers, an object like a jew’s-harp, &c.; a barbed iron arrow-head, many
nails and bits of iron, and over forty bronze coins including two Pius (a.p. 138-61), one
Faustina II (a.p. 161-80), one Tetricus (A.D. 268-73), one or two Carausius (A.D. 286-93),
three Constantine I (a.p. 306-37), eight illegible. There was also a rubbish pit, but it was
not cleared to the bottom.’ (Mayes, Bedfordshire Express, 15 December 1906]. A ‘second
brass’ coin of Decentius (A.D. 351-3) was found in the rectory grounds in May 1gol, and
later a ‘ third brass ’ of Gratian [East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i (3), 3643; Antig. Jan. 1911,
pp- 7, 8]. (2) A denarius of Hadrian and a brass of Gratian were found in 1908 at Guessens
on the east bank of the River Mimram, just west of and opposite to the church. Numerous
fragments of pottery and a silver denarius of Titus (a.p. 79-81) have been found in the
churchyard [.4ntig. loc. cit.j, and during the recent alterations at Welwyn Church it was
discovered that Roman bricks were largely used in the west front and the foundations of
the tower [ibid. 9 n.]. These bricks may have come from the house at the rectory or from
a building at the Grange, where much pottery has been found on rising ground north of the
church (PI. ii, iii, v). In July 1908, in making a lawn at the back of the house, a number of
Roman tiles were found with a large quantity of flints and mortar, showing the action of fire,
and heavy metallic clinkers, perhaps indicating a pottery kiln. A hundred yards away, to the
north-east of the Grange, in a strip of meadow measuring 10 ft. by 35 ft., also at the back
of the Grange, and 1$0 yds. north of the church, a burial place was opened. It contained
the remains of over 150 vessels of Samian, Castor, Upchurch, so-called Salopian, and other
wares of the Romano-British period. Many of them were cinerary urns in grey, red and
white ware, varying in height from 7 in, to 11 in., and in many cases the calcined bones
were covered with Samian and other saucers, the burials being arranged 3 ft. or 4 ft. apart,
2 ft. to 3 ft. from the surface. Many of the vessels seem to have been damaged before
burial, and two of the Samian paterae were mended with rivets. The pottery is now in
Mr. Andrews’ Museum, Hertford [R. T. Andrews in Antig. Feb. 1911, p. §3 ; Mayes, Kast Herts.
Arch. Soc. Trans. iv (1), 117-18]. Amongst the fragments of Samian ware was a complete
example of a type dredged from the Puddingpan Rock, 4 miles off Herne Bay. It agrees
in shape, colour and quality with Form 3 of that series. It bears the stamp maroris hitherto
confined to Forms to, 11 and 13. It was apparently made at Lezoux in the 2nd century.
A Samian cup of lighter colour resembling others found at Bayford (Kent) ; a ‘ thumb-pot ’”
with seven indentations of pale yellow ware with black slip 4} in. high ; a vase of hard buff
ware with egg-shaped body 7} in. high ; another with white slip, 5} in. high; a pot of hard
reddish ware with broad vertical band on the lip 4 in. high; and an elegant carinated vase
with dark grey surface, 54 in. high [Proc. Soc. Antig. xxiv, 134. For account of Puddingpan
examples, ibid. xxi, 280; xxii, 403, where Genitor’s Form should be 10, 11 and 12, not 9,
to and 11.] A little Samian pot ornamented with stags and trees was found in a gravel-pit
near the cemetery, and is now in the possession of Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty. Two urns were
found at Myrtle Hall, now the Hall, on the Danesbury estate in 1907, to the south-east of the
burial place L4ntig. Jan. 1911, p.g]. (3) Samian, Upchurch and New Forest ware, three
coins, bracelets and brooches, some set with light blue stones, and an enamelled handle
(sic) were found in making a new road from Mill Lane to the Hertford road and the railway
station, just south of Welwyn [Antig. Jan. 1911, p. 7].

Coins of Pius (May 1903), Faustina wife of Constantius II (a.p. 337-61) (March 1904),
and Gratian (a.D. 375-83) (March 1904), also some of Trajan (A.D. 98-117) and Marcus Aurelius
(a.p. 161-80), and other coins have been found in Welwyn and the neighbourhood, and lastly
the following burials: (1) In a meadow at the back of the Frythe, three-quarters of a mils

168

XIX aLVTIg
AYTLLOG OILTID) aLVT + NAMTT AA

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

south-west of the rectory, five urns very imperfectly burnt, 8 in. diameter, containing ashes,
and a small bent bronze plate about 1886; (2) an amphora without handles, 2 ft. 4 in. high
and 11}in. diameter, full of brown dust, and apparently another was found in October 1904
in a gravel-pit in the Mardleybury grounds north of the Great Northern tunnel, nearly two
miles north-east, now in the Hertford Museum ; a third has since been found [Antig. loc. cit. ;
Rev. A. C. Headlam, Herts. Mercury, 13 May 1905 ; East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii (1), 32];
(3) two urns containing bones and a bronze fibula from the side of a chalk-pit at Welwyn
were shown to the Society of Antiquaries on 8 August 1742 [MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. 8 Aug.
1742]. At Harmer Green, about 1} miles from Welwyn, some foundations of uncertain
date, possibly Roman, were found in 1904 [Antig. Feb. 1911, p. 54]. The buildings and
numerous burials and small finds testify to the existence of a village here, or settled site
of some kind, in Roman and perhaps pre-Roman times. The straight piece of road running
north-east out of Verulamium and traced to within about 2 miles of Welwyn, probably
connected the town and village. For this see Roads.

Westmitt.—Some labourers in hollow-ditching in a field called ‘Lemmonfield adjoining the
parish of Westmill’ in May 1729 came across three amphorae in a row ‘a little inclining’
18 in. below the surface. They were pale red, 40 in. long, pointed at the bottom, narrow-
necked and two-handled, and full of dust and chalk. Two were said to be inscribed: on
the rim of one there was said to be ‘ p.r.a.’ which is perhaps a misreading of ‘rarna’ figured
by another writer. The neck of the last-mentioned was 12in. long. Horsley read the stamp
as Farnia and Hiibner as perhaps ‘P-Ar... Va...’ An amphora thus inscribed was found at
Colchester and another at Etampes [Corp. Inscr. Latin. vii, 1331, 17, 18; xiii, 10002, 3504],
the last being read ‘ P-Arva.’ Many bones are said to have been found in the neighbourhood.
Westmill is on Ermine Street and Braughing is only 14 to 2 miles south-east. [Salmon, Surv.
(1731), i, 423; Gough’s copy of Horsley, Britannia Romana (Bodl. Lib., Gough Gen. Topog.
128); Camden’s Brit. (ed. Gough, 1789), i, 345, pl. xvii, fig. 2, quoting Ward’s MS. additions
to Horsley, hence Brayley and Britton, Beauties of Engl. and Wales, vii, 206; and Cussans,
Hist. of Herts. Braughing Hund. (1870), 202, also quoting Ward’s Excerpta Misc. ii, now in
Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 6229, fol. 106].

Weston.—Mr. Seebohm mentions Roman coins found here [English Village Community (1884), 434].

Wiprorp.—According to Cussans, there were ‘two Roman barrows, one of which was partially
opened . . . in 1851, when a few objects, but none of great archaeological interest, were
discovered’ in a field on the eastern side of the River Ash [Hist. of Herts. Braughing Hund.
(1870), 55; cf. Sawbridgeworth]. No trace can now be discovered of these finds, which
apparently were made by Lord Braybrooke [Paper by E. E. Squires].

Wiccinton.—Tiles and coins which have been discovered here may indicate the presence of a
building of some sort in the neighbourhood [Gent. Mag. (1811), i, 388]. Coins and a gold
ring were found at the Cow Roast Inn, half a mile east, but in the parish of Northchurch
(q.v.) as marked on the 6-in. O.S. Map, sheet no. xxv, S.E. See also Northchurch, Tring and
Aldbury. Akeman Street begins to run in a fairly straight line a little to the north-west of
Wigginton.

Witzury Hiti.—See Norton.

Wittian.—A Roman interment and coins are recorded by Mr. Ransom in Arch. liii, 262 ; Seebohm,
English Village Community (1884), 434. See also Royston.

Wymonp ey, Great.—This parish has been very productive of Roman finds. (1) ‘Lines of stone
about 2 ft. deep, running at right angles to one another,’ without mortar, were found in
the field that contains the two mounds to the east of St. Mary’s Church, while a line of
black earth, which turned out to be a ditch full of Roman objects, was observed running from
north to south, across the field east of that last mentioned, and also in the field opposite it
on the north side of the Graveley Road. It contained a quantity of Roman brick and roofing
tiles, ‘heaps of Samian ware, several pieces of Castor, some of Upchurch, and also pieces
of New Forest pottery, strainers and parts of 6 mortaria,’ pieces of Andernach querns, hones,
stone weights, fragments of glass, a strigil and pieces of bronze, a key, knives, horse-shoes,
many nails and spikes, a large number of knuckle-bones used as dice, cores of ox-horns (pro-
bably bos longifrons), bones of horse, sheep and hog, oyster shells and the following coins :—

Vespasian [a.p. 69-79] Tetricus I [a.p. 268-73]
Nerva [a.p. 96-8] Tetricus II [a.p. 268-73]
2 Pius [a.p. 138-61] Allectus [a.p. 293]
Marcus Aurelius [a.p. 161-80] 2 Constantine I [a.p. 306-37]
2 Gallienus [a.p. 253-68] Crispus [a.p. 317-26]
Salonina [a.p. 253-68] Constantine II [a.p. 317-40]
Postumus [a.p. 259 i-69 ?] Julian [a.p. 360-3]

4 169 22

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

About 150 yds. east of this find, in the north-east corner of a field at the junction of the Great
and Little Wymondley and Graveley roads, a cemetery was found in 1882. Forty-three urns
containing burnt bones, charcoal and iron nails, each with a Samian saucer and ‘ wine bottle,’
and sometimes other small vessels were turned up within a space measuring § yds. by 7 yds.
The pots were all of different shapes, sizes and colour, and forty-five different varieties were
observed, many of which are figured. The drawings are not very good, but one of the urns
or ‘ cooking pots ’ seems to resemble those figured in Pl. z.B. (3) of Curle, 4 Roman Frontier
Post, which are dated to the late 2nd century ; two like Ludowici, Rémischer Topfer in Rhein-
zabern (1905-8), iii, 264, P. 14, 265 V. 7, both apparently also of the 2nd century. One Samian
cup Drag. shape (33) and eight Samian paterae are also shown, three of which are stamped
‘ANELLI . OF? (? ‘Anailli of, which occurs mostly on the Rhine and in the Low Countries),
‘poccivs . F’ (found at Caudebec-les-Elbeuf and Vichy, London and York), ‘ Romvit . oF’
(found in the Allier and Rhone Valleys, Aosta and at Colchester). The first-named might
possibly be the ‘viertel-rund’ type, usually an early one, but the character of the drawing
makes it impossible to be certain.

‘Fragments of pottery and Samian ware were turned up in almost every part of the
quadrangular inclosure, which can be distinctly traced from the raised ground and trenches
encircling it, measuring about 20
acres ’ and included the ceme-
tery (see map). These finds are
noteworthy because they, to-
gether with the square shape of
the two fields adjoining the
mounds, ‘still distinctly sur-
rounded by a moat,’ are con-
sidered by Mr. Seebohm as evi-
dence of the continuity of
occupation from the Roman
period. He held that the in-
closure and its contents were the
remains of a ‘little Roman hold-
ing,’ forming a rough square
and containing about twenty-five
Roman jugera (17-18 acres) if the
corners were filled in. While it
seems incredible that the field
divisions should never have been
altered since the Roman occu-
pation, yet it cannot be denied
that a Roman settlement of some
kind existed here during almost
the whole of the Roman period,

From English Village Community, by F. Seebohm and therefore probably a Roman
holding of some type. But it
is dangerous to state precisely what character this assumed, especially as it is not even
known whether the occupation took the form of a ‘ villa’ or village. The remains seem to
indicate the latter, since no actual structure has yet appeared or been recorded. The whole
question must remain in doubt until the site has been carefully excavated and our know-
ledge is a little more definite on the subject of land tenure in the Roman provinces. The
mounds belong to the * moated and bailey’ type and were inserted into the corner of a
larger and apparently earlier rectangular work, while the small cross ditch is a modern
field division. Many of the earthworks shown on Mr. Scebohm’s plan are now merged
in field banks and ditches and are not clearly traceable. [Ransom, Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc.
Trans. (1886), iv (2), 40-2, with plates; Seebohm, English Village Community (1884),
431-2, with plan and same plate; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 119, and plan; and I, Chalkley Gould,
East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii (1), 10, 11].

(2) Part of a dwelling-house was excavated in the autumn of 1884 by Mr. Ransom and
Mr. Hillin a field close to Purwell Mill (Pl. xx). The exact site is not given, but is described as
3 furlongs from the cemetery noticed above. Some six rooms were opened and planned,
covering an area that measured 113 ft. by 41 ft. Three of them (1-3) were provided with
pillared hypocausts, 13 in. high, connected by flues with two or three furnaces, one of these
being added at a later date and its entrance paved with roof tiles. A small chamber (4)

170

Prax or Roman Ho rpixc, Great WyMonpiey

Beso

" apoye ea tpUr apg

Q°9 4NI7 NO NOILO3S

J] 3NI.No NolLoas.

\ PRR vere eo

CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE

measuring 7 ft. 7 in. long, 3 {t. 8 in. wide, and paved with a floor of mortar was built into
one room (3) and was probably a bath, for the rooms adjoining it (1-3) appear to have been
the bath buildings of the house. A later partition wall divided the originally large room
into two (2 and 3). They were separated from the rest of the house by a room (5) with walls
4% ft. thick, one end of which had been worked into an apse. It was ro} ft. wide and
13} ft. long, and was paved with a very hard rammed-concrete floor 14 in. thick. Outside
the apse pieces of stone paving occurred. Adjoining it was a room (6) 21 ft. 7 in. long,
to ft. 2 in. wide, and its floor a foot higher than (5) and covered with a tessellated pave-
ment in red and white parallel lines with a ‘ gridiron pattern’ in the centre. Beyond it
were two other rooms, one with a rounded fillet on two sides and containing a deposit of
charcoal and many animal bones on the centre of its ‘mortar’ floor, which was 6in.
above (6). More rooms were traceable in this direction, but were not planned, for the floors
were here level with the present surface and had been destroyed by the plough. The walls
varied in thickness from 1 ft. 9 in. to 2 ft. 10 in., and everywhere were very close to
the surface. They were built of flint and mortar with tiles at the quoins and sometimes in
bonding courses, and in the face of the divisional wall of (3) was ‘ herring-bone walling
with radiating bricks.’ Painted wall plaster occurred and a rubbish pit full of bones and
pottery outside the big furnace. ‘ Many cart-loads of broken roofing, flooring and flue tiles’ and
faced flints were removed. The small objects found in the débris included Upchurch ware,
white mortaria, a perforated lid, glass ‘ vessels of fine quality,’ thick bottle glass and window
glass, a bronze steelyard, pieces of bronze, an iron gouge, a key, a style, nails, bone pins
and a ‘ band for ladies’ hair,’ bones of ox, sheep, red-deer, swine, goat, fox and birds, and
quantities of oyster shells—the bones and shells found on the floor of room (7) and the
following coins :

Gallienus [a.p. 253-68] Allectus [a.p. 293]

2 Victorinus [a.p. 265-8] Constantine [a.p. 306-37]
Tetricus [a.p. 268-73] 2 Valentinian II [a.p. 375-92]
Tetricus IT [a.p. 268-73] 3 Barbarous imitations

Carausius [a.p. 286-93]
The field in which the building stood yielded the following :

Severus [a.p. 193-211] Crispus [a.p. 317-26]
Gallienus [a.p. 253-68] 2 Constantine II [a.p. 337-40]
Salonina [a.p. 253-68] 2 Constans [a.p. 337-50]
Victorinus [a.p. 265 -8] Constantius II [a.p. 337-61]
Tetricus I [a.p. 268-73] Magnentius [a.p. 350-3]
Tetricus II [a.p. 268-73] Valentinian [a.p. 364-75]
Claudius Gothicus [a.p. 268-70] Valens [a.v. 364-78]
Carausius [a.p. 286-93] Gratian [a.p. 375-83]
Allectus [a.p. 293] Several barbarous imitations

4 Constantine I [a.p. 306-37]

It is obvious that here we have only a small part of a building, and too small even to
discover to what type of house its plan belonged. To judge from the coins, it was not built
till the beginning or middle of the 3rd century a.p., like many of the houses in Britain.
It was occupied for some time, as the excavators observed many traces of structural alterations,
and it was still standing in the late 4th or early 5th century, when no doubt it formed a
shelter to some members of a more uncivilized race, unused to baths or kitchens, who
cooked their food on an open fire made in the middle of the large room, leaving split
marrow and other bones as traces of their habitation. Charcoal and ashes also occurred
in the centre of most of the rooms and were thought to be the remains of primitive fire-
places, not of the burnt roof. If this is so the large amount of building débris lying above
the foundations and other lack of evidence of fire (unless it has not been recorded) suggest
that the house was allowed to fall into ruins and was not destroyed by violence. [Ransom,
Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1886), iv (2), 43-6, with plan].

Wymonptey, Lrrrtz.—A cemetery was found about 5 ft. below the surface about 1847 in
excavating a river 2 miles long near Little Wymondley, apparently not far from Stotfold
Mill, but the site is not precisely described. It contained many plain vases or urns
of rough yellow clay, some containing bones and smaller vessels. One jug-shaped bottle
at least was found. Near them lay a few small iron nails with thick heads and bent and
arranged in a semicircle and equal distances apart, probably binding some wood or leather
object. No other details are given. [Yourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. (1849), iv, 72-3]. See also
Hitchin, where many Roman finds have been made, and Willian.

Youncspury.—See Standon.

CFT

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

APPENDIX ON THE NAME ‘COLDHARBOUR.’

It has been shown in other volumes of the Victoria County History (see especially V.C.H.
Hants, i, 349) that the name ‘ Coldharbour’ does not necessarily indicate a Roman site, as
is often supposed and stated. This is particularly true of Hertfordshire, where the name
occurs eight times, but only in one case (in Hemel Hempstead parish) near a known site of
a Roman dwelling-place. Some burials have been found close to another ‘ Coldharbour,’
but otherwise the name cannot be said to have any connexion with Roman finds in this
county, as the following list will show: (1) In Sacombe parish, 6-in. O.S. Map Sheet No. xxi,
S.E.; (2) Berkhampstead Common, Little Gaddesden parish, O.S. Sheet No. xxvi, S.W.;
(3) Harpenden parish, O.S. Sheet No. xxvii, N.E.; (4) Stanstead Abbots parish, O.S. Sheet
No. xxx, S.W.; (5) Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead parish, O.S. Sheet No. xxxiii, S.E.; (6)
Bishops Hatfield parish, O.S. Sheet No. xxxvi, $.W.; (7) St. Stephen’s parish, O.S. Sheet
No. xxxix, $.W. ; (8) in Bushey parish, O.S. Sheet No. xliv, N.E.

172

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
HISTORY

HE economic history of Hertfordshire is singularly constant to its

original interests, namely, agriculture, the malt trade and the corn

trade. It has been made by two factors, the one natural, being the

suitability of the soil for tillage, and the other artificial, being the
neighbourhood of London. During the 13th and 14th centuries there were
found an activity and an ambition in the towns which have not had their
due continuation.

The trade out of the county was small. Corn was already an export in
1247, when ships came up the Lea to fetch it from Hertford. Already the
influence of the London market was felt. The men of London had begun a
capitalist enterprise against the local merchants. They built a granary for
Hertfordshire corn at Thele, to which they sent their own ships instead of
employing the ‘king’s ships of Hertford.’* This is an early instance of the
economic attraction of London, which is a constant feature in Hertfordshire
economic history.

In 1086 burgesses are found at Hertford, St. Albans, Berkhampstead,
Ashwell, Stanstead, and at Cheshunt we hear of ten traders (mercatores).
Hertford, the county town, had rights of toll at certain passages on the
Upper Lea. At Stanstead some trade and industry gathered round the
bridge of Thele at the junction of the Stour and the Lea. The modest
prominence of Cheshunt may be due to its near neighbourhood to the Lea
and London and a favourable situation at the junction of the Ermine Street
with an old trackway running east and west. St. Albans was fostered by
the abbey and Berkhampstead grew up under the shelter of a powerful lord.
Ashwell on Ashwell Street and not far from the main track of the Icknield
Way was, before the rise of Baldock, the chief centre of the rich corn lands
of northern Hertfordshire.

With regard to Hertford it may well have outlived its greatest prosperity
by 1086*; and in the 12th century it was evidently a poor place.* It could
not buy exemption from the jurisdiction of the sheriff,’ its aid was low and
in 1177 one-ninth of the whole aid was remitted altogether.®

The town suffered in the wars of King John,’ but after this time the
burgesses began to buy privileges. They farmed the borough, for a time at
least, and bought a fair during the minority of Henry III. A certain

| Assize R. 218, m. 6d. 2 Thid. 3 See under Hertford Borough.
4 Ibid. 5 Hunter, Great R. of the Pipe 1 Ric. I (Rec. Com.), 19, 20.
8 Pipe R. 23 Hen. II (Pipe Roll Soc.), 154. 7 See under Hertford Borough. 8 Ibid,

173

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

amount of trade was beginning to creep along the great roads and along
the rivers again, and the ancient commercial privileges of the borough
were worth reviving.

Hertford had possessed the monopoly of the passage of the Lea from Ware
to Hatfield,’ and had also certain rights of passage at St. Albans and at Barnet.
These last are hard to understand and probably refer back to a date when
Hertford as the administrative and military centre of the county was the only
town in which trade was permitted.” But at Hatfield and Thele the burghal
privilege probably amounted to a literal locking up of the ford, so that all
traffic should pass through Hertford. At Ware the bridge end was barred,
unless the king’s bailiff came to unfasten the padlock." Thus Hertford had
a highly artificial monopoly of the passage of the Lea, and the king received
large sums taken as tolls.

It is unknown when this monopoly was broken down at Hatfield and
Thele, but in 1247 the men of Ware were accused by the burgesses of Hertford
of passing freely with carts and on foot as well over the bridge of Ware as
through the ford; and the beginning of the abuse was referred to the end of
the civil war in 1216-17.% But as late as the early years of Edward I the
bailiff of Hertford was still taking toll of goods passing over the bridge
at Thele."

The natural position of Ware, on the line from Royston to London, is
better for trading purposes than that of Hertford, and the royal borough
seems in the end to have lost its control over its neighbour.’* As early as
1247 the men of Ware began to forestall the market at Hertford by
holding unlawful markets on the same days (Wednesday and Saturday), as
well as their legitimate one on Tuesdays.’ Not content with this encroach-
ment on the rights of Hertford, in 1275 they made weirs in the Lea, so that
ships could not come to the borough, and at the same time diverted the king’s
highway which used to go from Ware to Hertford."

Ware, which showed such vitality after the reign of John and the
eclipse of Hertford, had received even earlier an impulse towards burghal
organization from the 12th-century charter’? of Robert Earl of Leicester.
Other Hertfordshire mesne boroughs date from the same period or a little
later. Stortford was from its position bound to become a trading centre,
and its privileges were fostered by the Bishop of London. Baldock, a borough
of the Templars, dates from the last years of the 12th century. Standon,
Hemel Hempstead and Sawbridgeworth may have acquired the burghal
status with their markets. Watford is designated a borough even in the
Quindecima Roll"® of 19 Edward I, and its trade was probably of long
standing, since it lay on the water-way from Staines to St. Albans where the
road from Aylesbury and the Midlands crosses the Colne.

Hitchin was originally a manor of the ancient demesne, but in 1268,
besides other rents, there was due to the lord 84 marks ‘of the farm of the
borough.’ The borough had evidently an element of agricultural service,

® Assize R. 218, m. 6d.; Pipe R. 25 Edw. I, m. 23 ; see under Hertford Borough.

10 See account of Hertford, V.C.H. Herts. iii, 490-511. 11 Assize R. 318, m. 6d. 12 Thid.

3 Ibid. 328, m. 13. M4 See under Hertford Borough. 15 Assize R. 218, m. 6d.
16 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 1944. Y Cal. Pat. 1446-52, p. §1.

18 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 2. Chan. Ing. p.m. 53 Hen. III, no. 43.

174

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

as its boon days were worth ros. 6d." At the same time the tolls of the
market amounted to 1o marks, which shows that it was well attended.”
There were also a malt-mill and a fulling-mill.”

In the time of Henry VI the manorial court was called ‘the Portman,’
and this seems to strengthen Hitchin’s claim to burghal privilege. In 1290,
however, ‘ the farm of the borough’ no longer appears in the extent, and the
assized rents are all grouped together The amount of the demesne arable
had been increased.* ‘The agricultural element evidently prevailed over that
of trade and industry, to which the privileges and standing of a borough
would have been valuable.

Hertford and Hitchin and Ware met with little recorded interference
from their lords, but St. Albans deserves to be the classical instance of
hatred between a lord and his townsmen.

The market at St. Albans was established in the middle of the roth
century under the shadow of the wealthy abbey. Its site lay a little off
Watling Street, but the road was diverted in order to bring the traffic along
it toSt. Albans. The town gradually increased in prosperity, and in the fifty
years after 1216 it must have been as flourishing as any in the county.
The inhabitants showed the true spirit of burgesses ; but they could not aim
at such privileges as Hertford held until they had proved, to the confusion of
the Abbot of St. Albans, that they were freemen. ‘The abbots, however,
successively governed the estates of the abbey on two principles. They
wanted to round off their immunity by buying out other immunists within
their precinct. Thus the abbot purchased from Edward I the tolls at Barnet
and at St. Albans which had belonged to Hertford.* Secondly, they stoutly
maintained the villein estate of the townsmen with the consequent economic
and legal rights over them.

In 1261-2 the jurors at the assizes complained that the ‘ abbot’s steward
put the freemen of the town to an oath without special royal warrant,’ **
thus tacitly denying their free status ; the steward also forced them to answer
in a foreign hundred, against the custom of the town,” thus ignoring the
borough court.

The abbot naturally took the view that the men were his villeins born.
In 1275 the vill again complained that the abbot claimed a weekly toll on
brewing and on the merchandise of the burgesses.* He had also distrained
the burgesses to do suit at his mill, which they used not to do; nor did he
allow the hand-mills in their own houses, which they were accustomed to
have.* The disputes, however, at first at all events, centred mainly round the
question of multure. At Easter 1275 a jury was summoned to decide
whether Michael son of Richard Brid ought to grind corn at the abbot’s
mill, and whether Henry de la Porte ought to full his common and thick
cloth at the abbot’s fulling-mill or in his own house.” The jury decided
against the burgesses, and their verdict was confirmed in the following
year.”

20 Chan. Ing. p.m. 53 Hen. III, no. 43. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

23 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 40. 24 Exch. Proc, bdle. 144, no. 133.

25 See under Hertford Borough.

26 Assize R. 321, m. I. 27 Thid. 28 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 192. 2 Ibid.
30 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 1, no. 15. 31 Thid.

175

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Henry and Michael had a counterplea pending against the abbot, his
steward and others for breaking into their houses and carrying off from
Michael a bowl and the upper stone of a hand-mill, and from Henry a russet
cloth worth 30s., and doing damage to the value of {100.% The steward
claimed the bowl and justified the stone as a distraint ; to which Michael
answered that he and his ancestors were of such condition that they could
grind where they pleased. Henry’s plea was similar ; but both men lost
their case, the jury saying that Henry had himself had the abbot’s fulling-
mill at farm and had taken fines from those who fulled privately.*

For one or more generations the quarrel between the abbot and his men
rested on the question of suit at the abbot’s mill, which being an incident of
unfree tenure meant much to them. ‘Time after time judgement seems to
have been given against the townsmen. In 1312 the abbot sued Simon de
Ickleford and Luke de Nedham™ and in the following year he sued Robert
de Limbury * and Benedict Spichfat,** who were supported by Richard de
Tring, Geoffrey le Dyestre and Henry Spichfat. All these were apparently
men of substance and leading tewnsmen. Benedict Spichfat was undoubtedly
well off and paid 3s. to the subsidy of 1322-3.%7 But the question of
the hand-mills was not the sole point of dispute. In 1313 Peter le Keu,
Benedict Spichfat and others were indicted for entering the abbot’s close and
cutting down his timber to the value of £60," which indicates probably an
organized demonstration in claim of common rights. In this dispute the
name of Henry Grindecobbe, which later became so prominent, occurs as a
pledge.*

Soon after the abdication of Edward II, in October 1326, the men of
St. Albans began to bind themselves together with oaths, and after Epiphany
rose against the abbey. On 23 January some of the townsmen met the
citizens of London, and entered into a solemn compact of mutual help.”
The upper class in St. Albans are said by the monastic chronicler to have
connived at this embassy * rather than joined init ; but this is hardly consistent
with what we know of Benedict Spichfat and what we suspect of Gilbert
de Hertford, one of the richest men in the town.“ Although the richer
inhabitants were probably slower in action than the others, the townsmen
seem to have shown great solidarity at this time. The only case of inde-
pendent action was on 25 January, when twelve‘ of the richest’ went to the
abbot and begged him not to mention his difficulties to the Earl of Lancas-
ter, who was passing through and resting at the abbey on the way to
London.*' This was so obvious a precaution that the twelve may well have
acted for all.* On 28 January the villeins presented their supplication to the
abbot. They asked, first, that the abbot should deliver to them the charters
of their liberties, by which they were made as free as any borough and
burgesses might be ; liberties which they had enjoyed from the Conquest,
until debarred by the abbot and his predecessors, as the charters themselves
and Domesday Book testified. Further, they sought the right to elect two

32 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 1, no. 15. 33 Thid.

34 Walsingham, Gest. 4bbat. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 154-5. 35 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 1, no. 15.
36 Thid. 37 Lay Subs. R. Herts. 120, no. 11. 38 Assize R. 331, m. 1.

39 Thid. m. 3d. 40 Walsingham, 9p. cit. ii, 155 et seq. 1 Tbid. 42 Ibid.

45 Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 120, no. 11. “ Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 156.

© Tbid. The chronicler puts another colour on the matter.

176

sed -——

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

burgesses to send to Parliament, like other boroughs, and to answer before
the justices, as they had been used, by twelve burgesses of the vill, without
the interposition of foreigners. They asked that twelve burgesses should
keep the assize of bread and ale as of old. Then they came to recent
troubles ; they required the right of common in the abbot’s woods and
fisheries (and for this they appealed to Domesday Book),* the right to have
their hand-mills, with damages for the recent suppressions, and the right to
have all executions in the town made by the bailiff of St. Albans instead of
the bailiff of the liberty.”

These demands were presented ‘at prime’; the chapter deliberated, and
the abbot gave verbal answer, presumably to a deputation, while the crowd
was gathering and waiting outside. The abbey had been in a state of
defence since 22 January ; the monks gathered in the church and their men-
at-arms stood to their posts. By the sixth hour it was known in the town
that the abbot refused to give a written answer. The townsmen made an
assault upon the Holywell gate, but were driven off. The town leaders appa-
rently restrained their fellows, acting possibly on advice from London, where
they must have had agents, as they retained serjeants of law in these next

days. There also came down from London a royal proclamation which had

some effect in sending the townsmen home. Meantime at St. Albans six
of the ‘better’ townsmen went to the abbot to propose a conference; he
agreed that each side should send procurators to a meeting in the cathedral
church of St. Paul, in London, on 23 February. The townsmen procurators
must have gone to London at once, for by 8 February they had obtained * a
royal writ commanding the abbot and his bailiffs to abstain from disquieting
the burgesses in their liberties, if they were entitled to them.® Another
writ was issued to the barons of the Exchequer for a search to be made in
Domesday Book.”

At the meeting the parties agreed to elect twelve worthy lawyers and
knights of the neighbourhood on each side to arbitrate. Quickly chosen, they
went to work at once, and their meetings were attended by three nobles,
sent by the king to make a report to the Council. On 6 March they held
their last meeting in St. Alban’s Church. It had been proved that the men of
St. Albans were called ‘ burgenses’ in Domesday.” The charter of Henry II
was read, and the villeins appealed to the word ‘burgus’ applied to their
town to be confirmed as burgesses. The arbitrators seem hardly to have
hesitated in drawing up their award, and adjourned for a final discussion
with the king’s Council on 10 March.

On this same day, at St. Albans, the townsmen gathered again to attack the
church, swarming round the abbey, shouting and reviling the monks as ‘ribald
thieves.’ They were easily dispersed by the men-at-arms, but for five nights
the abbey was surrounded by bands some eighty strong, and the monks expected
the worst, but were determined to defend their church to the last.

The crisis ended when news came from London. On the 1oth the
three representatives of the abbot had agreed to the arbitration, which was
embodied in an indenture. Twenty-four of the ‘most faithful’ burgesses,

46 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 157. 47 Thid. 157-8.
48 « Not sparing expense,’ says the chronicler. Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 161.
4# Ibid. 162. 50 Tbid. 51 [bid. 163.

4 177 23

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

among them Benedict Spichfat and Henry Grindecobbe, were to perambulate
the bounds of the vill, which was recognized asa borough ; all the tenements
being burgages and all the people burgesses. They were to elect two bur-
gesses to send to Parliament, and their juries were to be composed of towns-
men only ; moreover, they were only to come to the hundred court when
impleaded by writ. The assize of bread and ale was to be kept by burgesses,
and the town bailiff alone was to make executions. The only concession to
the convent was that the burgesses should grind at the abbot’s mills. To
this the burgesses set their seals on 12 March, with imaginable alacrity.
But the chapter protested and refused until the king ordered them to seal
likewise. On 14 April the indenture received confirmation by Letters
Patent.”

The townsmen were thus established as burgesses. "They improved the
victory by demanding common rights in Barnet Wood, as well as rights of
fishing and rights of taking game, all of which the abbot conceded. But
they were charged with breaking the charter by making and maintaining
eighty hand-mills. As to this there is no evidence. For five years the
men of St. Albans lived under the new conditions.

Abbot Hugh died before September 1327," and Richard of Wallingford,
his successor, cannot have settled down in St. Albans much before the early
summer of 1328.% He must have known that he was embarking on a
struggle with the burgesses when he began to exercise his spiritual jurisdiction
in the town. He cited one John the Marshal, apparently an innkeeper, and
one of the most considerable burgesses, on a charge of adultery.” On
13 May 1328 his officer went to arrest the man, was attacked, struck back,
fought his way to the market-place, and fell there under the blows of the
townsmen. Meantime John the Marshal had died of his wound. Both
sides thus had a casus be/li; but the men of St. Albans took the offensive,
and indicted® the abbot before the coroner. The burgesses obtained a royal
mandate, in pursuance of their charter, that no foreigners should be joined
with them on their jury before the justices. But this precaution did not
help them, for when the time came the abbot and his servants were
acquitted by the verdict of three other hundreds—an infringement of the
borough charter.”

Then, in November 1328, the abbot made a counter accusation
against the townsmen of the death of his man. At the ensuing conference
the abbot was represented by many lawyers and others; the burgesses only
by one serjeant of the King’s Bench and by a notable Londoner, Simon
Francis, then a sheriff and later mayor.” But the assembly broke up over
the first subject of debate, the question of hand-mills.”

No Abbot of St. Albans with a 14th-century conscience could have
any other object than the destruction of the borough charter. The same
process occurred in such other monastic towns as Bury St. Edmunds,
Sherborne and elsewhere. Abbot Richard must have been well able to see

52 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 166-70. 53 Tbid.

54 Cal. Pat. 1327-30, p. 93. 55 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 175. 5° Ibid. 176.
*” Tbid. (see below). Seven years, as stated on p. 215, is an exaggeration.

58 Cal. Pat. 1327-30, p. 167. 59 Tbid. 184. °° Ibid. 272.

61 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 216-17. ® Ibid. 218, 221. %3 Ibid. 219.

64 bid. 6 [bid. 222. 8 Ibid,

178

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

how time and experience were playing into his hands. The townsmen
had appointed borough officials and instituted a common chest, with the
accompaniment of heavy collections from the greatest to the least, for their
common purposes,” such as the payment of the members. These collec-
tions are described later as unendurable taxes®; and no doubt the men of
St. Albans felt their elevation to the burgess-ship rather as increased liability
than as increased prosperity. Like a wise man, Abbot Richard apparently
let experience accumulate for some years. During this time, too, the attitude
of the king to the borough must have changed, for when the abbot began
to act he received the royal support strongly enough. In September 1331
the townsmen were indicted before the justices of Traylbaston for the
extortion of a charter. In due course a royal writ ordered the justices to
inquire,® and, probably in connexion with these proceedings, the king ordered
a report to be made on the whole proceedings of 1275 and 1313.” The abbot
further charged the burgesses as a body with having besieged the abbey, and
accused individuals of conspiracy and breaches of the peace.” Eighteen
confessed their guilt, and forty-two were judged guilty by the verdict of the
country.” The final charge of withdrawing suit to the abbot’s corn and
malt-mills was preferred first against thirty-six burgesses. On the jury
finding that the abbot was seised of the right in the time of Henry III
the king issued a ‘ praecipe’ to the townsmen that they should restore the
suit

These cases were followed by another similar series, in which judgement
was given for the abbot. Some of the burgesses made claim to their hand-
mills, but they seem to have been unsuccessful.* The litigation was very
expensive, and this apparently was the cause of the destruction of the
commune. Representatives came to the abbot and offered the following
terms: the villeins should surrender their charters, should pay 200 marks as
damages within five years, and give security 5 ; they were to hold the malt-mill
at farm for £48 a year and to recognize due suit.” These terms were
accepted; they represent indeed the complete victory of the abbot. The
charters were handed in, the indenture, the confirmation by Letters Patent,
and the charter of Edward II enforcing the privilege of Henry III.”

The king’s Council authorized the concordat. But the agreement was
made so secretly that the ‘community of the town’ would not believe then
or later that the charters had been surrendered.”

However, many of the villeins were evidently frightened ; they brought
in their querns, their seal and keys and common chest. The abbot took
obligations” from many of them, of which an example has survived. In the
Trinity term 1332 Gilbert de Hertford, Richard de Tring, William son of
John the Marshal and many others came into the king’s court at Westmin-
ster, and caused their charter to be enrolled there; they bound themselves to
grind their corn and full their common cloths at the abbot’s mill, and to pay
all dues as well in these matters as in stallage and tolls, for which distraint

67 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 215. 88 Ibid. 248. 69 Ibid.

7 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 1, no. 15. 71 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 229, 233-7.

” Tbid. 3 Ibid. 237. 7 Ibid. 248. ™ Ibid. 250.

7 Ibid. The indenture was surrendered by Adam the Usher and others 13 April 1332 (Close,
6 Edw. III, m. 26 d.). 17 Walsingham, loc. cit. 8 Ibid. 255-6.

179

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

might be made, nor would they ever claim these rights in future.” In 1341
the jury indicted the abbot and others, both monks and laymen, on the
ground that in 1331 they had imprisoned William son of John the Marshal,
and John his son and many others, until they promised to give these
bonds under penalties of 20 marks or £10."

One or two of these men are notable. Richard de Tring had been one
of the pledges of Robert de Limbury®; perhaps he was important enough
to be worthy of a specific bond. Gilbert de Hertford was one of the richest
burgesses; prosperous too was William son of John the Marshal, presumably
the victim of about 1328." If these men represent the leaders of the
burgesses, the movement for the charters had money behind it.

The most remarkable part of the affair is the villein organization. If
one employs a superficial likeness, one may compare it with that of a modern
strike. The paid leaders conducted it with inspiration from London. London
was closely connected with the solid union of the townsmen in 1327.% In
1338 it was a sheriff and future mayor who appeared for them. To whom
in London the villeins applied for advice we cannot know, but there is strong
indication that the Londoners deliberately helped the deliberate attempt of
the men of St. Albans. We know from the history of Lollardry the capacity
of mediaeval popular organizations to disappear. How much is certain as to
the working of the Peasants’ Revolt or of the Lollards?

The villein organizers were backed by acommon fund. ‘The commune
eventually sank under the charges and collections for common business and
‘for remunerating their helpers and organizers’ (_fautoribus et conductoribus).®
The whole story shows the villeins as astonishingly able for organized action.

Political consciousness was the result, but the motive was economic.
To be tree men or free burgesses was necessary to merchants and craftsmen.
From this need flow all the demands of the townsmen: the appearance of
the town as a community before the justices, the common fund and council
and officials * ; above all, the representation by two members of Parliament.

The economic claim has another interesting aspect. The villeins wanted
much that applied to a rural community—the rights of common and the
grinding of corn—and these are the articles which were common to Barnet
and Watford. Industrial and commercial questions were also involved in the
question of status, but these were raised only at St. Albans. The fulling of
cloth is one instance. Payment of tolls and stallage were probably also
disputed at St. Albans; in 1332 the burgesses bound themselves to pay.

The failure of the burgesses, like their success, was a matter of money.
The case of St. Albans helps to show why other tenants of the abbey were
equally at variance with the abbot.

Wherever the tenants of the abbey were strong enough they struggled
with the abbot. At Watford, in 1313, the tenants ‘ forcibly ’ fished in the
abbot’s private waters, and were duly sued for it.* In 1300 a bad affair
occurred 2t Barnet. The abbot charged his tenant with throwing down his
ditch and burning hishedge. One defendant said that the abbot had inclosed

79 Chan. Misc. bdle. 64, file 5, no. 198. 6 Assize R. 337, m. 7.

81 See above. *? Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 120, no. 11; cf Assize R. 337, m. 7.
83 See above ; Walsingham, op. cit. li, 155, 222. 4 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 215.

85 [bid. 86 Pat. 7 Edw. II, pt. i, m. 7d.; Walsingham, loc. cit.

180

pal 16 een ogee ee eee 5 iaaccacasinal

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

the common pasture. This case illustrates the way in which the townsmen
in all except the largest towns, and even there to some extent, were at one
with the country men.

The most unusual feature of the country population in 1086 is the ‘ fan-
shaped’ distribution of socmen from Lilley to Hoddesdon.” Of this element,
under this particular name at least, it may be said at once no trace can be
found in later times. The people were freemen or villeins, in one or other of
the economic subdivisions of that class. For example, at Caddington, in
1222, there were twenty-six free tenants, thirty tenants who held freely of the
demesne, thirteen tenants holding of the demesne in villeinage, eight cottari
with five tenements, and eight tenements held of the new assart, besides one
free tenement cut up into eight holdings.* All the freeholders paid rent
and ploughed twice in each season, besides hoeing and reaping thrice a year,”

: which was quite a typical early form of free service.

But commutation among the freemen came quickly. At Aldenham,
not long after this time, the freeholders paid rent only.° At Newsells,
at the other side of the county, the free tenements were entirely arrented in
1249,” and this, of course, became usual. It is exceptional when the free
tenants find men to reap the lord’s corn, as two out of twenty-eight did at
Shenley in 1276.% Many of these twenty-eight did not even owe suit of
court,* and lords began to bind their tenants to this service by deed.™

The classification of the unfree at Caddington gives first the thirteen
holding in villeinage of the demesne, half virgaters or less.** The service of
the half virgater is thus described :

He has to work twice a week for the whole year, except Christmas, Easter and Whitsun ; and in each
sowing season to plough 14 acres, or if he has no plough to do two works. If he ploughs he is quit of one
work at that time in each week. He must also plough one day as love earth in each season. Each virgate
which does not plough ought to prepare six quarters of malt or to pay 6d., and it shall be quit of six works, and
shall have fuel for the malt of the lord ; those who do not plough shall do the service of carrying five capons
or ten hens to London at Christmas.%

This was a true villein tenure, hardly touched by commutation.

The next class, the eight cotter, illustrate the criss-cross economic
divisions of the villeinage, for they seem to have been richer than the others ;
some of them held a whole virgate.*” The distinction probably rested on the
heavier week work ; ata time when week work was the mark of villeinage
a man who did three works a week was naturally deeper in servitude than
the man who did two.

[The cottarius] has to work thrice a week from Michaelmas to 1 August, except Christmas, Easter and
Whitsun, and from 1 August to Michaelmas every day but Saturday.

They owe eight carryings of loads a year to London or elsewhere. They also pay garsavese [pannage],
viz. 44d. for a virgate which does carrying on foot, and if they do not . . . they give pannage by custom for
every pig above one year, and they pay 7$d. land gavel and woodsilver, and 1 qr. oats for fodder corn, and
seed corn for 1 rood,%8

This tenure has the usual heavy harvest work, and, like the first class,
has the Hertfordshire carrying service. These services may be compared with
those of Aldenham :

These are the customs due from each virgate. Each plough . . . ploughs thrice a year without food
[from the lord]. If the lord wants more ploughs, he must find them food. Each man with a plough owes

87 V.C.H. Herts. i, 266. 88 Dom. Bk. of St. Paul’s (Camd. Soc.), 1 et seq.

89 Tbid. 90 Add. Chart. 3739. 91 Chan. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, file 8, no. 12.
92 Rentals and Surv. R. 296. 93 Tbid. % Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 6050.

95 Dom. Bk. of St. Paul’s (Camd. Soc.), 1 et seq. 96 Ibid. 97 Thid, 98 Tbid.

181

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

one work. Each man who has a horse must harrow without food twice. Each man must hedge [sepire]
3 virgates. Each virgate must carry two loads of wood . . . and gives two hens. At Michaelmas and
Advent each man must [? give] 24 sheaves. Each virgate owes sixteen eggs. Each man must hoe twice
without food, and reap once, and send from each house one man for the hay. Each virgate carries two loads
of hay, and at the reaping they have of the lord [food and 6¢.]. | Each virgate owes eight men at two boon-
days without food, and at the dry boonday four men, and at the great boonday one servant. If the lord
wants men at reaping, the virgate must find a man to reap at the lord’s food. Each man finds one man to
bind. Each virgate carries eight loads of grain . . . . and six men work once a week. Each virgate owes
6s. 4d. at four terms.%

At Aldenham, except in the case of the six odd men, the week work is
conspicuous by its absence. It is represented probably by the 6s. 4d.
Possibly this early command of money by the men of Aldenham is due to
their proximity to London. Even then their corn may have found markets
at Watford or at Barnet.

The commutation of services was beginning throughout Hertfordshire
in the 13th century ; so much is certain, but generalizations are difficult and
dangerous. The following statement may perhaps approximately cover the
facts. By the end of the 13th century commutation of the week work had
taken place in the southern part of the county ; the case in point at Aldenham
has been cited. In 1276 the villeins of Shenley did no week work (except.
in harvest), but paid a rent. By 1291 neither the villeins nor the coterelles
of Langley did week work.’ In 1297 a new stage had been reached ; while
the ploughing custom was still performed, the harvest works were sold to the
custumaries.” Beyond the southern area commutation of week work is found
distributed rather fantastically.

In some cases it seems to have taken place in centres of population. All
services were apparently commuted at Hemel Hempstead as catly as 1222,°
At Sawbridgeworth about 1263 ‘the homage’ paid £6 16s. in money,
besides their uncommuted hens, capons, fodder corn and other services.* By
1271 the villeins and two cotmen paid £5 125., and apparently nothing
further.’ The men of King’s Walden had attained the same position in
B70"

At Hitchin in 1268 the serfs paid £7 55. and did ploughing works’;
this looks like commutation of the week work and some of the other dues.
But there was another group of villeins there who still did week work, and
the boondays and carryings were still performed. In 1290 the one class of
serfs seems to have commuted their services entirely, while the others, now
twenty-four in number, still did carrying service and two works a week.®
But the commutation of the week work was taking place even on small and
rural manors. At (Little) Gaddesden in 1284 the custumaries paid 315. 10d. in
rent, and did heterogeneous works, ploughing 22% acres, harrowing one day
each in Lent, tossing and carrying hay, hoeing for one day, doing two boondays,
and giving fowls, eggs, loaves and carrying service.”

At Wigginton the villeins paid 30s. 7d. and performed various services,”
The men of Munden Furnival (Great Munden) were apparently free from
week work in 1290, but were probably still ploughing and carrying and
giving autumn boondays.¥

99 Add. Chart. 3739. 10 Rentals and Surv. R. 296; cf. R. 279. 1 Ibid.
2 Nlins. Accts. bdle. 40, no. 740. 3 Chan. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, file 42, no, 1.
4 Ibid. file 29, no. 2, m. 9. 5 Ibid. file 42, no. 6. 8 Ibid. 5 Edw. I, file 17, no. 16,

7 Ibid. 53 Hen. III, no. 43. 8 Ibid. ® Exch. Proc. bdle. 144, no. 133.
10 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 38, no. 8. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. file 57) NO. 9.

182

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

In these places all the custumaries seem to have achieved the same
degree of commutation. But the process went on by individual agreement
with the lord, as well as by the arrangement of the whole vill. At Codi-
cote, a manor of St. Albans, the reeve came into court in May 1247 and
paid 2s. gersuma for g acres, for which he was to pay 30d. at the four terms
of the year for the ‘works which used to be done for it, viz. one work in
each week’; the commutation was to be at the will of the cellarer.’ The
reeve did not immediately find many imitators,“ but forty years later the
community was awake to the advantages of commutation.

In 1248 at Tyttenhanger (which belonged to the same church) T. Baker
took 6% acres at a rent of 20d. for all service, except one man for the great
boonday.”*®

From Codicote comes an instance of commutation en masse. In 1293
the whole vill granted to the lord that it would do the two usual boondays at
Bradeway, as it did in the land of Cisseverne, for which they had before agreed
to give certain money ; during the term of the lord abbot the payment should
cease, but afterwards the money was to be paid again, as had been agreed."*
This case speaks for itself, but it is not a very common one.

The ordinary services were still only partially commuted forty years
later. In many courts, between 1330 and 1336, villeins came to obtain a
verdict, apportioning the due service on lands acquired.” These were generally
small pieces and plots, fractions of a former tenement, and most carried rent
and a few outstanding services.

Below complete commutation and the commutation of week work is
the stage where the works of the villeins are valued in money. How much
actual service this covers is often uncertain. At Newsells in 1239 the villein
customs were worth 12 marks, their hens and eggs 3s.°*° We may feel sure
that the hens and eggs were actually rendered into the reeve’s hands, but such
certainty does not extend to the works.

At Hunsdon, ten years later, the customary works were worth 445. 2d.
In 1262 the works at Meesden were valued at 20s. 8d. from 29 September
to 1 August ; during August and September at 16s.” At Sacombe, as late as
1282, the customs, pannage, cocks and hens are valued.”

Finally come the instances where the services remained uncommuted.
At Therfield they may well have been the same in 1171 as they were in
1271. Possibly this case is due to the absence of the lord and the
remoteness of the village. At Wyddial, in 1284, the custumaries did 488
works between 29 September and 1 August and 120 works in the remaining
eight weeks.* Much later, in 1324, the services at Watton are detailed in
a way that suggests that they were performed.” At Walkern, in 1313,
ploughing and g60 works and 240 autumn works were due.” At Greenbury
in 1325 the jury gave a full account in court of the customary works done.”
In 1341 the four custumaries at Reed still appear to have been doing their
weekly works.”

13 Stowe MS. 849, under date quoted. 14 Tbid, 15 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger.

16 Stowe MS. 849, under date quoted. 17 Tbid. 18-20 Chan. Inq. p.m. Hen. III, file 8, no. 12.
21 Ibid. 33 Hen. III, no. 70. Ibid. Hen. III, file 27, no. 20. Ibid. 11 Edw. I, no. 49.
* Chart. Ramsey Abbey (Rolls Ser.), i, 45-8. 25 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 38, no. 4.

26 Thid. 17 Edw. II, no. 39. 27 Ibid. 6 Edw. II, no. 58.

2% Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 33. 29 Chan. Inq. p.m. Edw. IIE, file 64, no. 20.

183

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

About the end of the 13th century, then, it seems safe to say that most
of the Hertfordshire lords were receiving rent and autumn services and minor
dues from their villeins. This implies the hiring of some regular farm
labour from Michaelmas to the end of July ; but during the harvest months
the villeins would still come more or less willingly to the lord’s demesne
strips and meadows. But the steward was often willing to take money in lieu
of the harvest work; and from the beginning of the 14th century an
opportunist commutation of the harvest work set in. The steward
would sell the autumn works to the custumaries, if both parties wished it.
Thus at Langley in 1307-8 the custumaries paid 68s. 4d. for their autumn
works and ros. gd. for their three boondays.* As the lord’s autumn expenses
were 76s. 14d.," he made a profit. In 1312-13 the custumaries performed
their autumn boonday, but redeemed their reaping (which the steward notes
as unusual), besides their threshing and other autumn works.” In 1316-17,
after the year of disaster, the villeins bought very few autumn works,®* and
in 1324 some did the boonday and most redeemed their harrowing, but only
two and a half reapings were sold, while thirty-eight men came in person to
reap,”

The custumaries of Temple Dinsley seem to have bought up all their
harvest works, except the ploughing custom, in 1312-13. At Stevenage,
in 1308, the custumaries and the cotters reaped 293 acres, against 33 acres
reaped by hired labourers ; but the threshers were hired, and 806 harvest
works were sold.*®

Later the commutation of the harvest works became more complete
and more regular. In 1338-9 the threshing, reaping, binding and hoeing
were all done by hired labour,” and at Ashwell, about the same time, the
villeins only did the hoeing and stacking of the hay. Standon was still
exceptional. In 1347 the custumaries were still doing two weekly works,
reaping, mowing and ploughing, and there were two who did one work a
week.

Thus long before the Black Death agricultural labour was undergoing
a change.

A class of hired labourers was growing up, whose mere existence told
against the continuance of labour service on the demesne. When times were
not too hard both the lord and the villein found their interest in commutation.
It was prosperity that was lifting the Hertfordshire villein. There are
certain rather vague indications of this, besides the facts of commutation.
The activity of the villeinage in letting, transferring and acquiring land is
witnessed by the Court Rolls.* The same impression is given by the rolls
of Codicote from the time of Henry III to that of Edward II,* in the
rolls of Croxley,” of Ashwell,* and indeed in all those inspected. These
transactions in land cost money, and could not have been indulged in unless
they brought profit. One may almost say that there was some competition

30 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17. 31 Tbid. 82 Ibid. no. 19. 53 Ibid. no. 21.
34 Ibid. no. 29. 35 Ibid. bdle. 865, no. 13. 38 Ibid. bdle. 870, no. 20.
37 Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 5. 38 Tbid. bdle. 862, no. 6. 39 Tbid. bdle. 869, no. 8.

*° One Abbot of St. Albans (1260-90) attempted to enforce forfeiture of the purchase on villeins buying
free land ; of course this came to mean merely a fine (Walsingham, op. cit. i, 453).

41 Stowe MS. 849. # Add. MS. 6057.

43° Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 127.

184

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

for land among the custumaries. The rolls and accounts give no evidence
of a deficiency of tenants until about the year 1315.

While these changes incident to tenure were going on the personal]
condition of the villein was changing. This shows itself, in the first
place, in the occasional separation of tenure and status. As early as 1222
we find a reeve at Caddington, who held a free tenement.* At Codicote,
in 1278, two tenants exchanged their tenements, one of which was free, so
that this one should do villein service and the other do free service.“ Either
this tenant was a villein holding freely or he was dealing with his free land
in a way which the king’s courts might not have approved. The change
must have been fairly recognized by 1300,“ or a citizen of London would not
have been holding villein land in Ashwell.” In 1333 land in Codicote was
held in villeinage, ‘in whatever hands it might be.’ *

The right of the villein to demise his land seems to have been generally
recognized, subject to the buying of licence from the lord.” Moreover, the
wider right of making a surrender of land to the use of a person named was
developed early, and it became common at Codicote about 1260.° Such
conveyances became quickly as elaborate and elastic as free men’s deeds. In
1295, at Sawbridgeworth, R. Pete surrendered his land ‘to R. atte Brynehe,
who pays 2s. . . . so that Richard shall do due service . . . and shall give
R. Pete # quarter of wheat and 4 quarter of beans all his life,’ at Michaelmas
and All Saints." A contingent reversion was created on a surrender at
Ashwell in 1299.”

These elaborate transactions needed record. In 1274 a villein
‘enfeoffed,’ as the roll has it, by the lord, paid 25. pro rotulo habendo.* Seven
years later one Walter atte Strete paid 2s. for licence to search the rolls as to
his title to a plot of land.** There are many cases of villeins with charters, the
possession of which, to a legal purist, might have been a presumption of
freedom. The earliest of these is from 1296.*

The villeins were evidently growing more independent or insubordinate ;
this seems to be on the increase after about 1320. For example, the men of
Codicote began to have difficulties with the Abbot of St. Albans exactly like
those of the men of St. Albans. From 1330 there are many presentments of
those who have not ground at the lord’s mill. In the same year the lord
granted John Dolitel a hand-mill for grinding oats, to be held in villeinage
at the rent of 2d. a year.” Some of the tenants used hand-mills against the
lord’s prohibition,® and the cases connected with grinding became a recurrent
item in the Court Rolls.

At Codicote from about 1288 the lord occasionally took specific recog-
nitions of liability to tallage from new tenants.” Tallage was paid on the
manor of Langley apparently every year,” but the obligation was very

“4 Dom. Bk. of St. Paul’s (Camd. Soc.), 1 et seq. 4 Stowe MS. 849, under date quoted.
46 cf. the rules of Abbot Roger of St. Albans, 1260—go (Walsingham, op. cit. i, 453).
47 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 128. 48 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq.

49 Add. MS. 6057; Stowe MS. 849.

50 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. ; cf. also Ashwell Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 127.

51 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 24. 52 Ibid. portf. 176, na 128.

53 Stowe MS. 849. 54 Tbid.

55 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 24 3 cf. also Add. MS. 6057; Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177,
no. 33. 58 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 57 Tid,

58 Thid. 59 Tbid. 80 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17, 19, 21, 29.

4 185 24

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

irksome, especially in the hard times about 1315." The impost was at the
will of the lord, and must have been levied on the whole estate of the
villein, both personal and real, for about 1326 the men of Redbourn were
assessed toa tallage; each villein holding half a virgate paid sums varying from
12d. to 6s. 84.2 The remaining villeins paid from 6d. to 40d. This arbitrary
assessment raised a rebellion among the tenants, who offered a composition of
40s., which the abbot refused. The villeins thereupon forged a charter pur-
porting to be of pre-Conquest date, but with a natural ingenuousness worded
it in their own English. This charter did not help them, for they were
tallaged again soon after, and forced, first to recognize that they were villeins
and tallageable, and then to pay the tax.

Cases of fugitive villeins are not very rare even in the 13th century, for
as commutation for services increased there was less necessity to bind the
tenant to the soil. In one court at Codicote in October 1239 there is
entered 2s. ‘ of a fugitive,’ and 1 lb. of pepper paid by a villein for permission
to live outside the lord’s liberty.“ At Tyttenhanger in 1267 ‘Robert son of
Robert Adger, native of the lord, remains at London, and William his brother
at St. Albans, John son of Stephen is at London or elsewhere, Stephen son
of Henry the Porter at London, Philip his brother near Staines.’ Cases
occur in which the villein fled cum omni sequela sua.’ About the same time
similar instances are to be found at Codicote,* but they become more numer-
ous after about 1330. In 1331 the wife of one fugitive paid 12d. to hold
her husband’s lands,” and John Haleward gave six capons for licence to go
to the ‘clerical schools.’ In 1335 Robert the Smith took licence to serve
where he would for the next twelve years.” In 1340 Hugh de Thickenhay
having fled, his wife took his lands, although they were waste.

The value of arable land in Hertfordshire changed very little from the
middle of the 13th to the middle of the 14th century. The values given
are drawn from the demesne estates, on which the valuations are probably
nearer to the economic worth than those of tenant land. Position and the
nature of the soil must, doubtless, have had some influence on the value, but
this is not very marked, and it is of interest to note that the values of the
13th century show more variation than those given after 1315. In 1313
arable was worth 6d. an acre, both in Hormead” and in King’s Walden.”
In the north of the county at Standon the acre was worth 6d. in 1263 and
4d. at Hitchin in 1268." Between 1280 and 1290 the value was 3d. at
(Little) Gaddesden and Wigginton™ (the lowest rate mentioned) and 64d. at
Wyddial.” It was 4d. at Stevenage in 1275.% The zone of high prices
extends from Sawbridgeworth to Langley. In 1276 some of the arable at
Shenley was worth 6d. an acre.” In 1291 380 acres were still worth 6¢., and
450 acres at Langley sd. each.” At Sawbridgeworth the acre was worth
8d.9 (the highest sum met with in the county), and in 1302-3 the arable
of Pishobury, in the same vill, was valued at 6d. to 8d. an acre.” But apart

“l cf, the agitation against tallage. 62 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 263. 83 Ibid. 262.
64 Ibid. 263. 5 Stowe MS. 849. 86 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger.

7 Ibid. 8 Stowe MS. 849. 9 Ibid. 70 Tbid. 71 Ibid.

72 Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Edw. II, no. 26. 73 Thid. 74 Thid. Hen. III, file 27, no. 5.
7 Ibid. 53 Hen. III, no. 43. 76 Ibid. Edw. I, file 38, no. 8. 7 Thid. no. 4.

78 Ibid. 3 Edw. I, no. ro. 79 Rentals and Surv. R. 296. 8 Tbid. R. 279.

81 Chan. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, file 29, no. 9, m. 2. ®2 Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 43.

186

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

from these high figures an average over the county would perhaps give 4d.
an acre as the usual value.

The general trend of value seems to be higher in the southern part of
the county. This was the region where commutation was earliest, and it is
tempting to regard this as more than a coincidence; even to seek as the
efficient cause a connexion with London and its markets.

After about 1315-18 the result would be more definite, the 4d. rate
became almost the rule, and there are very few advances above it. It held
at Great Wymondley and Weston in 1318," at Benington in 1324, and
at King’s Walden from 1329 to 1337; at Kimpton in 1337 “ and at Reed
in 1341. During the same period the acre was worth 3d. at Watton and
Little Wymondley * and only 2d. at Hoddesdon.”

These figures suggest a fall in the value of arable land ; and this is con-
firmed from other sources, for murrain and droughts had scarcely left the
cultivators the means to farm the arable. In 1341 a large part of it lay
unploughed at Hatfield, Totteridge, Datchworth and Welwyn, and in the
north-east at Barkway, Barley, Reed, Cottered, Buckland, Wyddial, ‘ Alflade-
wyk’ (Layston), Great and Little Hormead and Meesden.” At Braughing,
Royston and Therfield the fields were in the same condition.” Ware and
Hertford and their neighbourhood seem to have escaped, but Benington,
Westmill, Aspenden, Walkern, Wakeley, Rushden and Wallington were all
half desolate. So, too, were Sandon, Ashwell, Bygrave and Clothall.” What
the condition of the rest of the county was is not known,” presumably it was
not much better.

Under such circumstances land values naturally fell. It is noticeable that
from about this time there is mention of inclosed arable land, in which the
land in the common fields is rated as much less valuable. In 1327 at Codicote
the acre of villein land in the open fields was worth 42d. and 6d. to 8d. an
acre inclosed.* Inclosures were a possible remedy for agricultural depression.
To tie the culture of the fields to the well-being of the plough beasts of the
whole village was obvious folly in the years of murrain.

The extent of meadow-land in Hertfordshire is small, and its value
proportionately high ; it was worth 2s. an acre at Standon in 1296,” at
Hormead in 1313 %; at Hitchin (1268), Langley and Shenley (1291). At
Sawbridgeworth between 1260 and 1270 its value was 2s. to 3s. an acre™ ;
in 1302-3 other meadows there in Pisho Manor were worth 2s. 6d. to 35.”
The lowest value mentioned is 18d. an acre at Sacombe’™ in 1282-3, and
Wigginton in 1284.1 Nor do these prices vary much in the first half of
the 14th century. Meadow-land had a natural protection from its very
restricted amount.

83 Chan. Ing. p.m. 12 Edw. II, no. 43. 84 Ibid. 17 Edw. II, no. 43.

8 Ibid. 3 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 53 ; 11 Edw. II, no. 20. 86 Tbid. 3 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 53.
87 Ibid. Edw. III, file 64, no. 20. 88 Tbid. 17 Edw. II, no. 39; 12 Edw. II, no. 43.

89 Ibid. 16 Edw. II, no. 42.

90 Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 120, no. 22 ; Ing. Nonarum (Rec. Com.), 431 et seq. 91 Tbid.

2 Tbid. 93 Ibid. ‘The original returns are now illegible in large part.

4 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 95 Chan. Inq. p.m. 24 Edw. I, no. 107.

9% Ibid. 7 Edw. II, no. 26. 7 Tbid. 53 Hen. III, no. 43; Rentals and Surv. R. 279.

98 Chan. Inq. p.m. Hen. III, file 29, no. 2, 9; 56 Hen. III, no. 37.

89 Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 43. 100 Chan. Ing. p.m. 11 Edw. I, no. 49.

1 Ibid. Edw. I, file 38, no. 8.
187

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Of pasture-land also there was no excess. Its value seems to have aver-
aged about 1s. an acre, but at Sawbridgeworth in 1271° and at ‘Vyddial in
1284 it was as low as 6d. At Shenley in 1276 50 acres of several pasture
were worth only 3d. an acre.“ By 1291 the extent was reduced to 18 acres,
and the value had risen to 4d. an acre.‘

The commutation of week work created, or at least increased, the
demand for ordinary farm labour ; the farm-houses began to be occupied by
a permanent staff of labourers, sufficient for the everyday work of the farm.

At Langley in 1296-7 a carter, four ploughmen, a shepherd and two
farm servants, one of whom acted as cook, were kept. Ten years later we
find also a parker and two gardeners worked there for part of the year.°
At Temple Dinsley in 1312 there were a resident bailiff, a carter, four
ploughmen and four other labourers, besides a cook-gardener.’

Ploughing apparently remained steady in value throughout the county
during the period from 1260 to 1347. The price was 6d. an acre at
Langley in 1291,° Watton in 1324,’ and Standon in 1347.° Harrowing
likewise remained at the same value throughout the period. One day’s work
was worth 1d." The villeins, however, often performed this service, instead
of paying for it. The general field and farm work of the villeins grouped
as week work shows no deviation in price from the customary standard of
gd. a day.” Compared with the wage of the agricultural labourer, this
was beneath the ordinary wage. Commutation was, however, often an
economy to the lord, because he received $¢. from perhaps half a dozen
villeins, and in their place probably only needed to pay his hired labourer 2d.
for one day’s work.

Hedgers and thatchers had 2d. a day. Ploughmen and carters were
usually paid by the year, the value of board and lodging being considered in
the amount of the wages. A portion also was often paid in corn at the
harvest.

The cowherd, more often called the ‘ Daye,’ or dairyman, received high
wages. He had 22d. in winter and corn in the fields in the autumn at
Hormead in 1261. This method of payment gave way before 1338, when
he took ss. a year.* These high wages were given at Standon in 1347";
35. a year seems to have been more usual.” Shepherds’ wages were equal to
those of the cowherd.”

In the case of harvest work the contrast between the sum paid by the
villeins in redemption of their works and the labourer’s wage becomes sharper,
because we have more and more detailed evidence. The usual value of a

3 Chan. Ing. p.m. 56 Hen. III, no. 37. 3 Ibid. Edw. I, file 38, no. 4.

4 Rentals and Surv. R. 296. 5 Ibid. R. 279.

6 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17.

7 Ibid. bdle. 865, no. 13. This list is incomplete, as some of the wages are erased.

8 Rentals and Surv. R. 279; Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17, 21.

9 Chan. Ing. p.m. 17 Edw. II, no. 39. 10 Mins. Accts. bdle. 869, no. 8.

U1 Thid. bdles. 40, no. 740 ; 866, no. 17, 19; 869, no. 8; Chan. Ing. p.m. 20 Edw. III, no. 23.

12 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 38, no. 4 ; Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 20; Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. II,
file 47, no. 12; 16 Edw. II, no. 42; 17 Edw. II, no. 39; Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 4 ; Ct. R. (Gen.
Ser.), portf. 177, no. 33; Chan. Ing. p.m. zo Edw. I, no. 23; Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq.; Chan.
Inq. p.m. Edw. III, file 64, no. 20.

13 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17, 21. 4 Tbid. no. 1. 16 Tbid. no. 5.

16 Tbid. bdle. 869, no. 8. 1 Thid. bdles. 867, no. 4; 862, no. 6; Add. Chart. 28737.

18 Add. Chart. 28737 ; Mins. Accts. bdles. 869, no. 8; 40, no. 74 ; 866, no. 21, 29.

188

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

day’s work in harvest varied from 1d. to 2d. At Wyddial in 1284,” and at
Shenley in 1291,” the amount was 13¢. At Langley from 1307 it was 2d. (and
1d, for a smaller work)." A penny was evidently considered the customary
amount by the men of Standon in 1324.”

The hay harvest brought with it the works of reaping, tossing, binding
and stacking. Reaping was highly paid, and the custumaries’ day’s work
was usually valued at 2d. This was the valuation at Langley from 1297 to
1317.% In 1324 the villeins did most of the work ; but the 2% acres reaped
by hired labour cost 6¢. an acre.* At Meesden in 1316 the hired reapers
were paid $d. an acre”; if, as is sometimes estimated, half an acre was a day’s
work,” this would be a good wage. In 1325-6 the reaping at Symondshyde
in Bishop’s Hatfield was done by hired labourers at 6¢. an acre and the
lifting and other helping by the villeins.*”” About twenty years later the
reapers at Standon took sd. an acre, while the mowing of the custumaries
was only valued at 2d. a work.

At Hormead the wage paid in 1262 was a loaf and 4d. an acre for corn,
a loaf and 5d. for wheat, a loaf and 3d. for oats.% The 4¢., 5d., and 6d.
rates seem to have been usual. Thus the discrepancy between the rates of
hired labour at different times and places is not as great as that between
hired and customary labour. ‘The numerous and early cases in which reaping
was given out ad tascham suggest the economy of the dearer form of labour.

Threshing was the other important harvest work. It was usually paid
by the quarter and sometimes by the nine bushels. Wheat and peas were
charged 2d. a quarter at Langley in 1307-8,” at Stevenage in the next year
2id. for the nine bushels. 23d. a quarter was the rate at Dinsley in 1312";
a few years later it had risen. At Langley it was 4d. for wheat and 3d.
for peas in 1316-17,” and at Meesden wheat cost 3¢.*° Possibly this was a
temporary effect of the bad year 1315; for in 1326 wheat, peas and beans
had fallen to the old rate of 2d. at Symondshyde,™ and twenty years later, at
Ashwell, the nine bushels were threshed for 2$d.,* and the quarters of wheat
and peas for 2d. at Standon and Pré.* The rise in the wheat price was
naturally accompanied by a rise in barley. The usual rate was 13d.,°7 which
increased in 1316-17 to 2zd.% The 14d. rate must have set in again about
the same time as the reduction in corn.”

Drage was threshed at 1¢¢. a quarter and oats at $d. at Langley in 1307-8."
At Stevenage the prices were 14d. and 1d. the nine bushels.*! About
1312-13 the prices seem to have risen.

At Dinsley oats were at 1¢.% and drage rose at Langley to 13d. and oats to
1d. In 1316 oats were 14d. at Meesden.*

19 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 38, no. 4. 0 Rentals and Surv. R. 279.

21 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17, 19, 21, 29. #2 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 38.

23 Mins. Accts. bdles. 40, no. 740 ; 866, no. 17, 21. *4 Ibid. bdle. 866, no. 29.

2 Tbid. bdle. 867, no. 4. 76 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), port 177, no. 33.

27 Add. Chart. 28737. 28 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 1. 29 Tbid. no. 17.
30 Ibid. bdle. 870, no. 20. 31 Ibid. bdle. 865, no. 13. 32 Tbid. bdle, 866, no. 21.
33 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 4. 34 Add. Chart. 28737.

35 Mins. Accts. bdle. 862, no. 6. 36 Ibid. bdles. 869, no. 8; 867, no. 22.

37 Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 17. 38 Tbid. no. 21.

39 Ibid. bdles. 866, no. 5 ; 862, no. 6; 869, no. 8. 40 Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 17.

41 Tbid, bdle. 870, no. 20. #2 Ibid. bdle. 865, no. 13. 43 Ibid. bdle. 866, no. 19.

44 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 4.
189

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Peas and drage were threshed together at 13d. a quarter in Bishop’s
Hatfield in 1326, and the higher rate seems to have held for a long time,
for in 1338—g drage was still 14d. and oats 1d. at Little Hormead,“ and at
Ashwell.” A little later at Standon drage cost 13d.,“° and at Pré drage and
oats were charged 14d. Thusa slight increase on the wage at the beginning
of the century prevailed by about 1340.

Hoeing was often done by the villeins in person, and its value was low.
At Gaddesden in 1284 the customary day’s work was only worth $4.%; at
Langley Church it was let out in 1277 at about $d. an acre, which is
comparable with the villein’s hoeing valued at $¢. at Standon in 1347 ° and
at Ashwell in 1340."

The labourers must usually have been inhabitants of the villages where
they worked or of the immediate neighbourhood. The local supply of
Jabour was probably about equal to the demand. In 1324 the men of
Standon made a by-law that ‘no one who can reap or work to the value of
1d, 2 day shall give lodging to any stranger or suspect, to harvest the lord’s
grain in the fields,** which implies that labour was beginning to circulate
sluggishly, and that the circulation was resented by those who stayed at
home.

The history of agricultural prices differs a little from that of wages, and
this difference is one of the greatest importance.

As Hertford was and is a tillage county, in virtue of its soil, grain was
its most important product. We have seen that as early as 1247 its corn
was exported to London.® In the period from 1297 to 1314, after allowance
for the difference of price at the different seasons, the average seems to be
about 8s. or 7s. 4d., 6s. 8d. or 6s. at the dear times of the year, and 45., or
once in 1313, 35. 4d. a quarter after harvest.”

But in 1315 there was a disastrous change. ‘In the summer,’ probably
just before the harvest, when grain stood highest, corn was selling at Meesden
for 205.7 the quarter, and at Langley for 16s., 175. 4d. and 20s. These
prices must have been prohibitive to the small farmer and _ labourer.
The population must have lived upon barley or mixtil or oats. At these
prices even the lord must have been hard put to it for seed corn.

By 1324-5 prices at Langley had come down to the average variation
between 8s. 8¢. and 4s. 8¢.% At Hormead in 1323 the summer corn was
cheap, 5s. 4d. the quarter,” and this is paralleled at Symondshyde in 1326,
when wheat was 4s. 6d. in July, falling later to 3s. 42. From this time
the 8s, to 45. cycle of prices seems about the average, with a tendency to the
lower level.” Oats were less affected than wheat by the bad years. Their
prices had ranged between 3s. 4d. and 2s. 8d. a quarter,” and in 1316 their
highest recorded price was 5s. 6¢.%; after this the amounts sink down

4 Add. Chart. 28737. 48 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 5.

47 Tbid. bdle. 862, no. 6. 48 Ibid. bdle. 869, no. 8. 49 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 22.
50 Chan. Ing. p.m. Edw. I, file 38, no. 8. 51 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 7.

52 Ibid. bdle. 869, no. 8. 53 Ibid. bdle. 862, no. 6. 4 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 38.

55 See above.
56 Mins. Accts. bdles. 40, no. 740 ; 870, no. 20; 865, no. 13; 866, no. 19.

57 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 4. 58 Ibid. bdle. 866, no. 21. 59 Tbid. no. 29.
60 Ibid. no. 3. 61 Add. Chart. 28737.

62 Mins. Accts. bdles. 866, no. § ; 869, no. 8; 867, no. 22.

83 Ibid. bdles. 40, no. 470; 866, no. 1, 17; 870, no. 20, * Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 4.

190

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

apparently slightly below the former level. At Little Hormead in 1338-9
the quarter cost 1s. 2d. only, and at Ashwell was only 15. rod. as late in
the agricultural year as February.”

Peas and drage seem to follow the same lines of price. In 1297 peas
stood at 5s. a quarter at Langley.“ Presumably they rose higher towards
1315-16; in 1324-5, in autumn, they were worth 6s, a quarter. Within
the next few years their price seems to have fallen, like that of other cereals,
over a long period. In 1338-9 the quarter at Little Hormead was only
2s.™; at Standon in 1347-8 the price was 3s. in June, falling to 25. 8¢., and
after harvest time to 2s. 4d." Similarly in the neighbourhood of St. Albans
in 1342-3 the Lent price was 3s. and the November price 2s. rod.”

Drage was about equal to peas in value. In 1297 the quarter cost 45.”
At the same place, Langley, the price was doubled in 1316-17." After this
time it shows a steady fall. It was down to 5s. 4d. at Langley in 1324-5,”
and at Symondshyde in 1326 only 35. to 3s. 2¢.% From 1339 to 1349 the
prices mentioned are 25. 4d., 25. 8d. and 4s.”

The prices of barley and of malt naturally keep close together. Barley
was about 4s. the quarter before 1315 and malt 4s. 6¢.% In 1356-17 malt
rose to ros. 3d.,” and barley presumably with it. By 1323 at Little
Hormead barley had fallen to 3s. 4¢.,° and at Symondshyde in 1326 seed
barley was 45." ; at Standon in 1347-8 the price in June was 55. 4d. a quarter,”
and malt was 5s. at the beginning of summer, falling in August and September
to 4s. 6d. a quarter. The prices of barley and malt, perhaps, did not share
the general fall after about 1320; they seem only to have dropped to their
former level.

It is important to notice that the rise of prices which occurred about 1316
was not followed by a corresponding increase of wages, the reason being
probably that the rise was sudden and temporary. There was, however, a
tendency towards higher wages about 1340, although prices were low. The
class of labourers was growing, but the small freeholder and the villein alike
were willing to take up the land which the lord was pleased to part with.
In this period rents are more significant than wages.

The cattle trade did not hold a very great place in Hertfordshire. On
some few manors there were dairies, or the cows were let out at farm, but
usually the cows only supplied the domestic need and sometimes not even
that. Where murrain was endemic cattle farming cannot have been an
engaging pursuit. The price of cows varied in 1250 to 1340 from 5s. to
1os., while that of oxen went up to 16s."

From the 13th century large flocks of sheep were kept in the county.”
Endemic murrain seems to have become violent in 1274, and to have lasted

85 Mins. Accts. bdle. 869, no. 8 ; Add. Chart. 28737. 86 Mins. Accts. bdle. 866, no. 5.
67 Ibid. bdle. 862, no. 6. * 68 Ibid. bdle. 40, no. 740.

89 Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 29. 70 Ibid. no. 5.

71 Ibid. bdle. 869, no. 8. 72 Thid. bdle. 867, no. 22.

® Tbid. bdle. 40, no. 740. 7 Ibid. bdle. 866, no. a1. 7 Tbid. no, 29.
78 Add. Chart. 28737. 77 Mins. Accts. bdles. 866, no. 5 ; 869, no. 8; 867, no. 22.
% Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 19. 79 Tbid. no. 21. 80 Tbid. no. 3.

81 Add. Chart. 28737. 82 Mins. Accts. bdle. 869, no. 8. 83 Thid.

84 Thid. bdle. 866, no. 1; Exch. Proc. bdle. 144, no. 133; Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq.; Mins.
Accts. bdle. 866, no. 17.
85°6 e.g. at Caddington 60, Hitchin 128 ; Exch. Proc. bdle. 144, no. 133, co. Herts.

IQI

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

twenty-eight years, according to the St. Albans chronicler” ; his statement may
have been accurate locally. The price of wool by the fleece may have
averaged about 8$¢. This was the rate at Stevenage in 1308” and at
Standon in 1347. In gross the price was lower. Fourteen and a half fleeces
were sold for 8s, at Stevenage,” and at Pré in 1342-3 six were sold for
2s. 2d., at the weight of eighty-seven to 15 stone.” Possibly these were
poor skins. At Langley in the bad year 1316 sixty-eight fetched 6d. each.”

This wool was worked up for the most part in the villages, where the
lord’s fulling-mill finished the homespun, and in the 13th century the
burgesses of St. Albans—Henry de la Porte and his companions—seem to
have been clothmakers rather than wool dealers. Their market was presum-
ably among the townsfolk and the richer people of the shire. They may well
have gone the round of the manor-houses at shearing time, combining the
functions of the dealer and manufacturer. From such a condition the St.
Albans man could easily decrease his handwork and devote himself to wool
dealing, as the London buyers were willing to take more. The markets along
the great road would naturally be the meeting-place of the Londoner and the
local man. In 1286, at Royston Market, one Robert Jukes was selling
ninety fleeces to a merchant, when Walter Ulgate came up and told the
merchant that it was marsh-grown wool and not worth his buying, so that
the sale was broken off, to Robert’s loss of 30s.% Early in the 14th century
this increase seems to have begun. In a list of the time of Edward III,
dealing with the trades of Watford, two ‘sellers of cloth’ * are mentioned and
six wool merchants.* In 1326 William Persone of Watford and J. Baret ot
Baldock were shipping wool from Sandwich to Antwerp for Brabant.”
These merchants dealt directly with the landholders ; but probably many of
the latter bought up supplies from the small freeholders and villeins and
dabbled in the trade.

In 1341 at Hemel Hempstead fifty-one persons, including many
women, had a stock of 17 stone 3 1b.” At Berkhampstead there was the
same amount. At Bushey thirty-eight capitalists, of whom the Countess of
Kent was one of the biggest, had nearly 20 stone. At Great Gaddesden the
two men who held 132 Ib. were probably lords of manors. The eleven
men and women mentioned at St. Albans were apparently dealers rather
than producers. The total for St. Albans is 15 stone, and at Childerwick
77 stone.”

The monk of St. Albans writes in 1349: ‘A pestilence came which
almost halved all flesh.” The prior and sub-prior died with forty-seven
monks, besides those who died in the cells of the abbey.” Another St.
Albans chronicler writes less accurately that hardly one-tenth of the people
was left alive ; more than forty monks died.”

The Plague reached London by the beginning of November 1348,
Norwich by the New Year.' The first cases in Herts. may well have

87 Walsingham, Hist. Ang/. (Rolls Ser.), i, 14. 88 Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 20.

89 Ibid. bdle. 869, no. 8. % Ibid. bdle. 870, no. 20. 51 Tbid. bdle. 867, no. 22.
82 Tbid. bdle. 866, no. 21. % Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 62, no. 765, m. 5.

84 Distinguished from the ten tailors. 8 Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 242, no, 17.

96 Cal. Cisse, 1323-7, P» 594. 7 Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 242, no. 68. 8 Tbid.
99 Walsingham, Gest. 4éat. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 369. 100 Chron. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 27.

LW. J. Ashley, Econ. Hist. pt. ii.
192

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

occurred in the autumn, especially in the districts on the Great North Road.
At Codicote early in November 1348 there is a suspicious mortality of five
tenants.” The outburst was not at its worst until the spring. In May 1349
at Tyttenhanger thirty-one tenants died,® at Codicote fifty-nine before
19 May and later twenty-five more.“ At Stevenage the worst was after
February 1349,° and at Standon, where the disease remained from March
until Midsummer, the highest number of deaths, sixteen, occurred in April.°

The evidence is clearer as to the dates of the Plague than as to the
death-rate. In our ignorance of the population before the outbreak we
cannot estimate the numerical or proportionate loss. The study of its effects
in particular cases is safer and more impressive.

The Black Death has usually been made a cause of labour trouble, as
distinct from trouble among villeins and freeholders, but precise examples
and the delimitation of the share of the landless and the landholder in the
revolt are somewhat less common. In Hertfordshire there is material for an
attempt.

Clearly customary labour would continue at the old price, and this the
manorial rolls attest.

The change was great in wages of hired harvest labour. At Pré in
1350 the threshing of wheat cost 4d. a quarter, beans 3¢. and drage 29d.”
Eight years before prices for wheat and drage had been 2d. and 14d. respec-
tively.6 The reapers in 1350 had some 4¢., some 2d. a day; they had
formerly been paid 3¢. to 5d. an acre. A man mowing received 55. a
month, presumably 2d. a day and his board.?

The figures from Ashwell show a similar rise. In 1352 an acre of
wheat was reaped for rod. and food, an acre of peas for 6d. Threshing
cost 3d. a quarter for wheat and peas, 23d. for drage. ‘The corresponding
wages for 1340-1 were 64d. and 4d. for reaping, for threshing 2¢d. and 19d."

At Meesden in 1355 reapers were paid 8¢. an acre ; wheat was threshed
at 3d. a quarter, peas at 2d., oats at 19d." In 1346-7 reaping of peas cost
sd. the acre, oats 4d., the threshing prices were 2¢., 13d. and 1d.

These figures are above the statutory rate of 1351. Under the Act
reapers received sd. an acre, or $d. a day, hoers or haymakers 1¢., threshers
of wheat 23d. a quarter, and of other crops 14d. Customary works remained
at the customary sum. At Ashwell in 1352 and Pré in 1350 the day’s
work in harvest was still sold to the villeins at 1¢. and a hoeing work at 3d."
These may stand as typical of many other manors. At Meesden the bailiff
adopted the alternative plan. In 1355-6 the hoeing and part of the reaping
were actually done by the villeins, and 263 men still came to seven boondays."®
But the lord who sold these works at 1d. each evidently made a loss.

The rise in agricultural wages in the rest of the year is hard to estimate.
The ordinary workman seems to have had about 2d. or 3d. a day, rising later
to an average of 4d. a day.”

2 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 3 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger.

4 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 5 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 48.

6 Ibid. no. 41. 7 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 23. 8 Ibid. no. 22.
° Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 23. 10 Ibid. bdle. 862, no. 6. 1 [bid.

12 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 8. 13 Tbid. no. 6. 14 Par,, R. ii, 233-4.

15 Mins. Accts. bdles. 867, no. 23; 862, no. 6. 16 Tbid. bdle 869, no. 8.

17 At Hatfield, Essendon and Hertford (Mins. Accts. bdles. 58, no. 1079 ; 873, no. 25).
4 193 25

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The cowherd’s yearly wage, which had been about 45.,!8 seems to have
risen 1s. At Pré in 1350 and at Ashwell in 1352 5s. is the sum.” But
this had been given at Little Hormead in 1338.

The average shepherd’s pay, 3s. a year, tended upwards, sometimes to
ss. The carter’s daily wage rose of necessity after the cattle plague. Instead
of 8d. a day,” the usual rate by 1381 was 15. 4d. to 2s,a day.” The plough-
man’s wage was most frequently still paid in corn, but 85. at Pre was paid for
the year, or 3s. for the winter half-year and ss. for the summer.” This may
also, perhaps, imply a rise of rs.

The wages of the craftsman would be expected to rise as much as those
of the labourer. The crafts were so simple and so necessary that the
demand was not very elastic, and the decrease of population would only
decrease the demands on the crafts proportionately.

But the rise was apparently less marked in the trades than in farm
work. A tiler took 3¢. a day,” a tiler and his boy sd. a day at Meesden,
against 32/. in 1346-7, but 3d. had been a not uncommon rate in other
parts of the country. In another case the pay is much higher, the man and
his helper having 8¢. and another pair 1od.** Carpenters were still working
in 1350 for 2d. or 3d. a day,” approximately the rates allowed by the Statute
of Labourers. But many must have asked more. About thirty years later
the almost invariable rate was 4d. or 5d.*° A master carpenter had 6d. a day
at Hertford in 1381.” In 1351 the Commons granted three-tenths and
three-fifteenths on condition that all fines of the Statute of Labourers should
be in aid of it.* The fines paid in the half-hundred of Hitchin show that in
1351 the statute was being enforced in the little places, where the offenders
must have been mostly agricultural labourers. At Meppershall the fines
came to 2s., at Stagenhoe to qs., at Lilley to 175. and at Ickleford to 1os. 3d.
In the larger places many fines must have come from artificers. Kimpton paid
1gs., King’s Walden 25s. 1¢., Offley 255., Dinsley 335. 14., Pirton 36s. 9d.
and Hitchin with its foreign £4 45. 4d. The total is £13 75. 6¢. The
towns are so pre-eminent that the artificers must have been pretty general
contributors.

Berkhampstead paid sos., Rickmansworth 30s., Cheshunt 535. 4¢.,
Baldock £4 65. 6d., Ware £5 and St. Albans £10. The total for the county is
£122 6s, 30."

This is enough to show that the labourers were a rising class with a
rising wage and one which was fighting the statute law. The manorial
courts had threatened them too, in so far as they included the fugitive villeins.”
This was an old trouble ; we cannot tell how far the Plague actually increased
it, but the increase of presentments of fugitive villeins at the manorial
courts after 1349 is very significant. The stewards registered the present-
ments on the rolls, and the same order for the return of the same men occurs
year after year for ten or twelve years; such an order was all the power the lord
had. In fact, villeins had for long been allowed to live away if they paid a small

18 See above. 19 Mins. Accts. bdles. 867, no. 23 ; 862, no. 6.

*0 See above. *1 Mins. Accts. bdles. 58, no. 1078 ; 873, no. 25.

*2 Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 23. 23 Tbid. *4 Ibid. bdle. 873, no. 25.
5 Thid. bdle. 867, no. 23. °6 Thid. bdles. 58, no. 1079 ; 873, no. 25.

27 Thid. bdle. 58, no. 1079. *5 Parl, R. ii, 238.

*9 Lay Subs. R. Herts. bdle. 120, no. 29. 3° See above,

194

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

chevage. The chevage rather than restraint of the person was the lord’s aim.
At a court in 1351 the Codicote jury presented four villein fugitives, who
were in London, Baldock, Weston and Knebworth." Two years later three of
these were still away, and four other fugitives were presented. The order to
take them was repeated as late as 1357. In Michaelmas of that year three
villeins undertook that the son of one of the fugitives should remain within
the manor.* One escaped villein might well draw away his proper successor
and leave the tenement empty. In some cases the wife of the fugitive was
allowed to take up the lands, obviously a poor substitute.

In 1362 five other men and one woman were presented, one of them
being the son of a fugitive previously referred to. Again, in 1373 nine
fugitives were presented, two of them being women and two apparently of
the same family, showing how one member of a family followed another, or
a couple went together. The kinds of employment, domestic service or the
crafts, are indicated.

At Benington in 1362 a villein and half-virgater made fine ‘that he
may dwell where he likes as a trader (ad mercandizandum)’ doing the
services due from his tenements and paying four capons as chevage for respite
of suit of court except at the view.®

At Tyttenhanger in 1369 one villein was living ‘at the manor of
Mimms,’ another had crossed the sea, and two others dwelt in Kent.
The two latter had not come back four years later.* But the rolls of
Stevenage and Standon about this time are clear of similar entries. Being to
some extent industrial, they probably attracted fugitives.

The immediate effect in 1350 was the emptiness of the land and the
poverty of the survivors. At Martinmas 1350 at Codicote fifteen tenements
were still in the lord’s hand.* Sixteen tenements were neither given nor
leased at Ashwell in 1352.*° The lord of Stevenage granted a virgater who
had been paying 22s. for all service to pay 135. 4d. for three years from 1353.
The lords were poor too ; unoccupied houses were allowed to decay or were
pulled down, dovecots fell down, underwood was cut and not replaced.
As late as 1375 three water-mills were ruinous.” They were unrepaired
two years later.* So too was the water-mill of Ayot St. Lawrence.® The
manorial courts were busy admitting heirs and providing minors with
guardians.” In one case the whole homage was made the guardian, as they
say ‘that none of them alone is sufficient.’ The courts were busy too at
old work, reporting and fining those who did not come to do their labour
services. In the Plague summer August 1349, at Standon, thirty-two men
of the commonalty of the vill of Bury failed to come to mow the lord’s hay,
which was destroyed by their neglect.” The bailiff of Codicote sent certain
tenants to St. Albans to show by what services they held certain lands. But
other tenants of the same manor subtracted thirty works a year in the three
years following the Plague.* Six of the villeins of Tyttenhanger stayed away
from the boondays and were fined for it in 1357. In 1366 P. Beedel

31 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 32 Thid. 33 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 8.
34 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger. 35 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq.

36 Mins. Accts. bdle. 862, no. 6. 37 Chan. Ing. p.m. 49 Edw. III, pt. i, no. 74, m. 4.
38 Ibid. 1 Ric. II, no. 30. 39 Thid. pt. ii, no. 28. 49 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger.
“1 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 48. “2 Ibid. no. 41. 43 Stowe MS. 849.

195

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

withdrew thirty men from one boonday, Richard atte Chapel six men,
J. Pope seven, J. Cropin six, R. Shepherd three and J. Derham sixteen.“
It was, no doubt, better to take money from the villeins beforehand and hire
labour than to run the risk of being thirty or forty men short, and possibly
recovering no fine from the tenant afterwards. The labour problem would
of course take different form in different villages. Where commutation had
become a custom it could hardly be reconverted, but where it was a matter
of convenience both the lord and the villein probably preferred a labour rent
to cash for a year or two after the Plague. Thus at Meesden in 1346
the custumaries bought 324 winter week works at $d. each. In 1355 the
591 works due (two tenements were empty) were seemingly all performed.”
Of 325 autumn week works only twenty-five were sold, but at the earlier date
the villeins seem to have done the autumn week works and the boon works,
though the reapers were hired. At some places the recovery was quicker.
At Ashwell in 1352 the autumn boondays were redeemed, just as they had
been in 1340, and three works of hoeing and stacking were sold. At Pre
in 1351 all the autumn labour was hired. There was clearly no violent
reversal. Such immediate adaptation to circumstances would have required
enlightened self-interest and independence of custom quite foreign to
mediaeval habits of mind.

If the lords had wanted labour service they might have stipulated for
it in grants. Hired labour, we know, was an expense of the economical
kind, and further, the lords wanted money in a time of a rising standard of
comfort, and the tenants, after a year or so, were more willing to give money
than labour.

The grants made in a few manors show in how small a number labour
services were involved; a large amount of the old villein land, now empty, was
passing into the class of land held at a rent, villein only in name and in certain
legal consequences. Economically this class of unfree land was equal to free-
hold. Of three grants in villeinage made by the lord in the court of Codicote
in November 1350 two were for rent (in one case of 4d. an acre) and suit of
court, the others for the autumn boonday and suit of court. These show,
incidentally, how cheaply land was selling. Other examples are of one grant
for rent only and one more grant at a rent of 4d. an acre. On the other
side are three grants in villeinage for the customary services.”

At Tyttenhanger, also a manor of St. Albans, the commonest grant seems
to be for rent and the due customs. Possibly St. Albans vills may have been
distinguished by this form of grant from those of other lords. If so, their
share in the Peasants’ Revolt is to a great extent explained. At Munden
Furnival in 1351 the lord granted villein tenements for rent for ‘all service
except common scot,’ or for rent only. In one instance the villein heir
claimed and received his inheritance, doing the due and accustomed service.
He then surrendered it, and the lord regranted it to another man for 245. a
year for all service, clearly preferring money to labour. When the lord gave
terms of life also, he accepted rent for all service.“* At Standon in 1352 in
five instances villein tenements were granted at will for rent only. So, too,

# Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger under date.
4° Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 6, 8. 4° Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 134.
47 Stowe MS. 849, fol. 50 et seq. 48 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 7.

196

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

in nine cases of tenements held at will for life.” About twenty years later,
in the court of Stevenage, a villein took of the lord for life a messuage and
virgate, paying gs. rent. ‘The same rent had been paid by another life tenant
since 1314. The size of the tenement suggests that it was a typical villein
holding, possibly empty since 1349. In these cases the emphasis put on
money is stronger than in Codicote or Tyttenhanger.

It must be realized how large a proportion of villein land was beginning
to be held on lease, to which the lords of Codicote and Tyttenhanger tacked
on little labour services. Of five leases given at one court two were for rent
only, two for rent, common suit and heriot, one for rent, common suit and the
autumn boonday." There are many other examples of both kinds in the
Court Roll of Codicote. In 1351 the lord granted to Stephen May all the
lands late of Robert atte Strete, all the lands of Reginald Alleyn, Edward
atte Hacche and J. atte Strete for eight and a half years for 20s. a year. ‘And
Stephen shall do all the service and customs belonging to the said lands, and
he may remove one house.’ Here one sees, incidentally, how the lease
was convenient to the lord, as it could deal with any fraction or addition of
holdings in clear terms. Most commonly it is small portions of land, the
debris of the villein holdings, that are thus conveyed.

Five leases for nine years made in 1361 bear rent, suit of court and
the autumn boonday.* At Standon and Munden the lease for rent only is
most frequent ; so also at Ashwell in 1351.

The effect on villein status is obvious, especially as the leases, short at
first, were granted for long periods. Here was another means by which the
differences between villein and free were obliterated. In practical life the
economic difference between the cultivator of freehold and the cultivator of
an arrented copyhold was negligible. The change from the lord’s point of
view is equally clear. The estate was becoming a more commercial, more
manageable affair, as regarded unfree tenants. The lease brought in what
was wanted—money—and gave the lord a command of the villein tenements
at the end of short terms if he wanted them.

In the years between 1349 and 1380 the Hertfordshire villein had his
opportunity. Land was cheap, and there was a considerable market for the
produce ; in fact, the villeins took land from the lords in large quantities.
The yeoman class, economically, not legally differentiated, was in the making,
and the villeins of higher standing were aiming at a rent-paying tenure.
How conscious they were of its advantages they showed in the Peasants’
Revolt.

As soon as freemen and villeins began to hold villein and free land
indifferently (and this had begun long before 1350) villeinage was foredoomed.
But the cheapening of land and the spread of leasehold made this condition
a very general one.

The question for the lord was, should he throw the empty tenements
into his demesne. This would perhaps have paid under an immediate
extension of sheep farming, but he still thought tenants the most paying
agricultural produce. In Hertfordshire the arable of the tenements was not
converted into sheep pasture. Sheep farming was probably on the increase ;

49 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 42. 50 Tbid. no. 52. 51 Caledon D. Ct. R. Tyttenhanger.
52 Stowe MS. 849, under date given. 53 [bid.

197

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

but what it brought with it was an attempt on the part of the lord to over-
burden or inclose the common pasture. The demesne was not increased by
the empty tenements either in arable meadow or pasture. At Walkern there
was a difference of 7 acres between the extent of arable in 1313 and 1379,"
and this may well be accounted for by lack of accuracy in surveying. The
340 acres of the arable in the great demesne of Hitchin was unchanged
between 1290 and 1361. The Court Rolls make it very clear that lords
were not anxious to farm as capitalists.

Prices must have risen for a year or two after the Plague. At Pré
in 1350 the quarter of wheat ranged from 6s. 8d. to 10s. Later the
average price was lower than the 4s. to 8s. range, but the change is slight.
It is true that Lent corn was 12s. at Meesden in 1356, but in other parts
of the county the price in that year was only 5s. to 6s. At Ashwell a little
earlier it was 6s. 8d.

Barley remained unchanged ; 35. 8¢. and 35. was the price of a quarter,
against 3s. 4d. and 4s. in the earlier period. Drage appears to have been
rather higher ; 5s. and 6s. are quoted.

Oats, dear in 1350, seem to have dropped below the old level, which
varied from 2s. 8d. to 3s. 4d. At Ashwell in 1352 the quarter was 4s. to
4s. 6d.° Four years later it was 2s. at Kelshall, Little Hadham and
Bishop’s Hatfield and rd. dearer at Meesden.®

Peas were 65. 8d. at Ashwell in 1352," 6s. in August and 2s. in Lent at
Meesden in 1356,” 2s. 6d. at Kelshall and 4s. at Little Hadham.* The
former price had been about 2s. rod. to 3s.

Many rumours, carried perhaps by some wandering priest or prosperous
clothmaker from London or the Kentish shore, must have reached Hertford-
shire in the early part of June 1381. On Corpus Christi Day, Thursday,
13 June, the insurgent villeins of Kent and Essex, being encamped on Black-
heath, marched down into London under John Ball, Jack Straw and Wat
Tyler.“ They fired the Savoy and surrounded the Tower, where the king
was.” On this day they sent messengers to St. Albans, who arrived in the
evening. During the celebration of matins on Friday morning the townsmen
went to the abbey to speak with the abbot. Men had come in great haste
from Barnet, who said that the commons ordered the best armed men of
‘the communes’ of Barnet and St. Albans to hurry to London,” adding that
in the event of refusal the Londoners would come 20,000 strong and burn
the town.” On this the abbot commanded his villeins to go to London at
once, dispatching them with a band of his own men-at-arms.

The men of St. Albans went straight to the rebels’ head-quarters in Bow
Church and began to treat for their enfranchisement.” It was proposed that
new bounds should be fixed round St. Albans, within which the townsmen
could pasture their beasts freely ; burgesses should have free fishery in certain

54 Chan. Ing. p.m. 6 Edw. II, no. 38; 2 Ric. II, no. 34.
55 Ibid. 35 Edw, III, pt. i, no. 3 ; Exch. Proc. 144, no. 33 (Herts. 18 Edw. I).

56 Nlins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 23. 57 Tbid. no. 8. 58 Ibid. bdle. 862, no. 6.

59 Tbid. Harl. MS. 6165, fol. 230-2 ; Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 8.
61 Mins. Accts. bdle. 862, no. 6. ® Ibid. bdle. 867, no. 8. 3 Harl. MS. 6165, fol. 230-2.
64 Froissart, CAron. (ed. Marzials), 117. 65 Ibid.

8 Walsingham, Hist. Ang/. (Rolls Ser.), i, 454-5 3 Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Ser.), iii, 289~90.

§ Walsingham, Gesta Abdatum, iii, 296. °8 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 467.

198

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

waters and free hunting and fowling in certain lands; they should have
hand-mills at their will; the bailiff of the liberty was to have no powers in
the town ; the monks should be made to surrender all the bonds made by
townsmen in and after 1332, all charters prejudicial to the townsmen, and
other documents so numerous that Walsingham calls them ‘all the muni-
ments, to put it briefly.’

At this meeting leaders of different opinions began to stand forward.
One invited Wat Tyler to come to St. Albans and to burn the abbey and
kill the monks if they refused the demands. One, perhaps William
Grindecobbe, who had something of the mind of a statesman, advised the
villeins to obtain a royal writ ordering the restoration of the burghal
privileges of the time of King Henry.” Grindecobbe is mentioned by
name at this point as accusing the monks to Wat Tyler of oppressing the
commune of the town and keeping back the wages of poor men and
servants. ‘Tyler, it was reported, promised to come to St. Albans. Appa-
rently Grindecobbe prevailed. Walsingham says that he obtained the writ.
Like others, he probably went to the places in London where the king’s
thirty secretaries” were drawing up the Letters Patent at the villeins’ dicta-
tion. The St. Albans writ was evidently inspired by one of the townsmen.
It ordered the abbot to give the burgesses the charters of King Henry as to
common pasture and common fishery and other commodities. Grindecobbe
probably began the business and left it to be finished” by Richard de
Wallingford, for Grindecobbe, with W. Cadington, a baker, reappeared in
St. Albans that evening.

All that day, from matins to nones, the great household at the abbey
had waited for any news. The prior and one or two others fled. The
townspeople prepared now to act for themselves ; they came to the abbot no
longer. John Eccleshall, the ‘first rebel,’ made proclamation to the men
of St. Albans, who now took their old title of burgesses, to rise, and thereupon
they summoned the vills around to send their representatives, who were to
bring gentlemen with them if they could.” Inflammatory speeches and
threats were made. John Wayt declared ‘they would never have their
liberties until they had pulled down all the manors round the abbey and half
the abbey’; another, Gilbert Tayleour, said that if any man were killed
through this rebellion the abbot’s manors should be burnt and the abbey
pulled down.”

On the following day representatives of the neighbouring vills were
coming in.” Men were there from Cashio,” Rickmansworth, Tring, Abbot’s
Walden, Redbourn,” Norton, Northaw and South Mimms, Abbot’s Langley,
Sandridge, Tyttenhanger, Codicote, Shephall, Westwick, Newnham ™ and
Berkhampstead.” The men of Redbourn ‘dragged along with them’ three
gentlemen called William Grescy, William Erle and Thomas Norton.”

89 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 467-8. 70 Froissart, op. cit. 123.
11 cf. the king’s words at Mile End as reported by Froissart, loc. cit.: ‘ Now therefore return to your
homes . . . leaving two or three men from each village to whom I will order letters to be given, sealed

with my seal, which they shall carry back with every demand you have made fully granted.’

72 Walsingham, Hist. Angl.i, 471. The chronicler uses the word ‘ procuratores,’ with which he must
have been familiar in connexion with Parliament.

na Coram Rege R. 482, m. 27; 485, m. 33. 73 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 471.
7 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 325. 7 Ibid. 326-8.
7 Ibid. 330. 7 Ibid. 287. 78 Tbid. 328-30.

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A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The leaders threatened to destroy the conventual buildings and the
granges of outlying manors of the abbey,” and the house of the sub-
cellarer in the market place was pulled down by the mob.® William
Grindecobbe and William Cadington incited the people to break into the
abbot’s warrens, and on Saturday, 15 June, crowds went out and tore down
the gates and palings of the warrens at Shropshire Lane, Sopwellbury,
Monewood and Faunton Wood.” At the same time the abbot’s prison was
broken open and ‘a certain unknown man’ was beheaded, the only act of
bloodshed committed by the insurgents.”

All this happened in the time of waiting. Nothing could be done
until the royal writ could be delivered to the abbot. Before midday,
however, Richard de Wallingford, with William Berewick and J. Garlek,
bearing the king’s flag, brought the writ to the abbot, the terms of which
left the abbot no alternative but to grant the demands of the villeins. He
surrendered the bonds given by the burgesses in 1332 and the archdeacon’s
records, containing, perhaps, the suit against John the Marshal, all of which
were burnt at the beautiful Eleanor cross which stood in the market place.
In accordance with the king’s letters, fresh charters were granted to the
townsmen. At this point, however, a strange demand was made. The
oldest men, those who could remember the troubles of 1327 and 1332,
maintained that there was an important charter of liberties of King Offa,®
written on parchment in letters of blue and gold, which was withheld by
the abbot. The monks denied the existence of the document, probably
well knowing that such a grant could not have been made, as St. Albans
town did not then exist. But the townspeople repeated their demand,
and to pacify them the abbot promised them a new charter in its place.*

In the meantime the crowd had attacked the abbey buildings. The
parlour in which the millstones seized in 1332 were used as a pavement *
was wrecked, and the houses of some of the abbey officials obnoxious to the
townsmen were destroyed.”

The villeins procured flags as symbols of royal authority.” The king’s
words at Mile End must have been known: ‘ You, my good people of Kent,
shall have one of my banners, and you also of Essex. . . . Suffolk and
Cambridge shall each have one ; and I pardon you all for what you have
hitherto done, but you must follow my banners, and now go home.’ ®

Richard de Wallingford brought such a banner from London, and
Thomas Payntour, one of the St. Albans villeins, painted a flag with the
royal arms and gave it to one John Dene to carry.” Under this royal flag
the villeins made proclamation that watches should be kept round the
abbey. They issued a further proclamation, possibly inspired by William

79 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 27; 485, m. 33.

“0 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. i, 470; Gesta Abbatum, ili, 288-90.

51 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 288-90.

® Coram Rege R. 483, m. 18. Walsingham accuses the villeins of beheading others, but does not
sulstantiate his accusation (Hist. Ang/. i, 471 ; Gesta Abbatum, iti, 288, 304).

83 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. i, 472. 4 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 26d, 28.

85 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 365. 86 Ibid. 292 ; Hist. Angl. i, 475.

87 Walsingham, Gesta dbbatum, ili, 294, 370; Hist. Angl. i, 476-7. * See above.

° Walsingham, Gesta bbatum, ii, 292; Hist. Angi. i, 4753; Coram Rege R. 484, m. 18;
482, m. 26, 28; 485, m. 23d., 33.

* See above. 91 Froissart, op. cit. 123. % Coram Rege R. 482, m. 26.

200

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

Grindecobbe, to all men of the county to come armed ‘to reinforce them in
the maintenance of the rights of the king and the commons.’ ”

About dawn on Sunday the news reached St. Albans that Wat Tyler
was dead and the king’s letters had been annulled.“ A troop of the king’s
knights rode in early in the morning to proclaim his peace and to give
letters of protection to the abbot. Nevertheless the townsmen came at
the due time to seek for the charter. The ‘greater villeins’ were admitted
to the abbot’s chamber,®* where their demeanour was more conciliatory than
it had been on Saturday.” The abbot then sealed the charter, dated
16 June, granting to the burgesses of the borough of St. Albans the liberties
which had been claimed at Bow Church.

The villeins had won their cause and had obtained pardon for the
means they had used. They went round the town in procession with
cart-loads of bread and ale, which they consumed at the bounds.” Stopping
at the Cross, they proclaimed the new charter, the Mile End conditional
pardon and the royal protection to the abbey.”

The abbot inspected the general charter of freedom granted by the
king.'° Then the various ‘representatives’ of the outlying vills had to be
dealt with. To the people of Rickmansworth the abbot granted that all
tenements within certain bounds in the vill should be free, and that the
tenants should be able to give, sell or assign them freely, paying the annual
rent then paid for all services. The tenants should have free fishing and
free common of pasture in certain places, paying 3d. a head yearly. But on
the same day the villeins ‘extorted’ a new charter, enlarging the boundaries
of their liberties and commuting suit of court.1 The tenants of Barnet and
South Mimms were granted all their liberties and free customs, as in the
charter of King Richard, and the right to sell their lands freely by charter
without licence.» The men of Redbourn demanded a charter like that of
Rickmansworth and freedom from all servile dues to the manor. The abbot
promised the charter of manumission, but for the rest they were to return on
the following Thursday.* The charter of Tring merely freed the tenants
from all tolls within the liberty.“ The men of Abbot’s Walden, Norton,
Northaw, Abbot’s Langley, Sandridge, Tyttenhanger, Codicote, Cassio,
Watford, Westwick and Newnham also received charters.®

In the country the rebels, especially those on the demesnes of the
monastery, were evidently closely connected with the men of St. Albans.
These latter boasted that they had compacts with thirty-two vills,° and
2,000 country people are said to have been in the town on the Saturday
morning. ‘The demesne seems only to have risen after the town. ‘The
men of Watford probably began to riot on Friday. They attempted to get
the justices’ files of warrants, evidently with the intention of burning them.’
Many men at Barnet went off to St. Albans. Those who remained
demanded the Court Rolls,? no doubt with the intention of destroying

3 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 294 et seq. 54 Froissart, op. cit. 128-30.

% Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 479. 98 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, ili, 318.

97 Walsingham, Hist. Ang/. i, 481. 9 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 320.

99 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 482-3. 100 Ibid. 484.

1 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 326. 2 Dugdale, Mon. i, 240.

3 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 328-30. 4 Ibid. 317. 5 Ibid. 317, 325, 330.
§ Ibid. 330. 7 Coram Rege R. 485, m. 33. 8 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, ili, 328.

4 201 26

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

them. At Redbourn the villagers broke down the ditch of the prior’s
meadow, which they claimed as their common pasture.’ At Tring dis-
order seems to have spread from the abbey tenants to those of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.” The men of Abbot’s Walden used the opportunity
in the same way, and ejected a widow from a tenement in Bishop’s
Hatfield." Outside the abbot’s demesne the revolt can be traced along the
Colne and along the Lea. The part taken by the men of Berkhampstead
at St. Albans is already known. But on the Sunday, while these men were
away, others ‘rebelled’ and went to Ashridge and burnt the books and
muniments of the rector of that monastery; then, going on to King’s
Langley, they ejected a certain J. Marlere from his free tenement.” King’s
Langley was far from peaceful. A crowd of the most considerable villeins
assembled and burnt the Court Rolls. At Puttenham also there were dis-
orders and at Aldenham some of the Court Rolls were destroyed.”

On the other side of the county the lead of St. Albans was naturally
not felt. There was trafic along the Lea with London, Essex and Kent,
and here news of the revolt must soon have arrived. Disturbances occurred
at Cheshunt on Friday. At Waltham Cross on the same day riots took
place and a man was beheaded."

The judges came to St. Albans with fifty lances on 28 June.” The
villeins had now to show what passive strength they had, to stand by one
another. William Grindecobbe was still intrepid. He argued with the
others: ‘ We are bound by pact with the vills round about and they will
help us in need.’

Sir Walter atte Lee summoned the townsfolk to meet him, calling
them ‘ lords and friends.’ He impanelled a jury for the next day, but they
refused to accuse anyone."® Even when he ordered them to return the
charters they excused themselves. When he met them again they were
strengthened by 300 bowmen from the vills round, especially Barnet and
Berkhampstead. Grindecobbe was deceived, not in the faith of his allies,
but in their effectiveness. For Sir Walter atte Lee had given secret orders
to the abbot’s squire, Richard Perers, and three others, who arrested Grinde-
cobbe himself, William Cadington and John Barber, and quietly carried
them to Hertford jail, whither the judge betook himself. When this was
known excitement and fear spread through the town. The king recalled
the letters of manumission on 2 July,’7 and it must have been about this
time that the country vills surrendered their charters and put themselves in
the abbot’s mercy.” The villeins began to meet secretly in places outside
the town” from this time until Friday, 12 July, when the king arrived.”
Grindecobbe was released on bail and came to St. Albans. He met his
friends and addressed them. This time his insight was clear. He told
them to behave as though he were already executed." But the townsmen

® Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 328-30.
10 Coram Rege R. 485, m. 10; cf. the farmer of Kingsbury, infra. 1! Coram Rege R. 485, m. 24d.

12 Thid. 482, m. 34. 8 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 47.

M4 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 345 484, m. 18. 18 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. ii, 22.
16 Ibid. 23-5. 7 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 27.

18 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. ii, 29. 19 Thid. 26.

* Thid. 28; Réville, Le Soulevement des Travailleurs d Angleterre en 1381.
*1 Calling them ‘concives’ (Walsingham, Hist. Angi. ii, 27).

202

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

were acting on plans which were not Grindecobbe’s. He was sent back to
Hertford on Saturday, 6 July, and the villeins went to make their offer to
the abbot on the same day.” They would give back the charters and an
old book of pleas between the townsmen and the abbot, and would pay
£200 damages.* The villeins even employed a lawyer, Sir William
Croyser, to plead with the abbot that they should be allowed to replace the
parlour pavement and rebuild the destroyed houses.** Many of the greater
villeins bound themselves under seal to pay. ‘They tried to excuse them-
selves for not restoring the charters by their fear of the men of the country-
side. The abbot promised to make no complaint of them to the king, and
the charters were given up to him and the parlour repaved.

On Friday, 12 July, the king came into St. Albans with Sir Robert
Tresilian and his other judges. The sessions began in the Moothall on
the 13th.” John Ball was executed in the town on the 15th.* ‘Tresilian
called upon the jury of the townsmen to indict, but at first they would not
do so. Their resistance must have held over the Monday, but at last they
gave way. A second and a third jury were afterwards called up. The
leaders were apparently indicted at once. During this space the king issued
his commission to John Ludwiche, Richard Perers, the abbot’s squire, and
others to make proclamation in Hertfordshire to all tenants of the abbey,
bond and free, that they should do their old service as before the disturbance
and to arrest those who did not. Then he took fealty of all men.” On
Tuesday, 16 July, presentment was made that Grindecobbe and others
seized to themselves the royal power and broke and threw down the house
of the abbot called the Thwarthoverhouse, and also the houses of three
others, and broke the abbot’s prison. Grindecobbe pleaded he was not
guilty, but the jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to be drawn
and hanged. There were condemned also William Cadington, J. Barber
and fifteen others.”

Many of the greater townsmen were imprisoned, including Richard
de Wallingford, W. Berewick, T. Payntour and others. A certain number
from the countryside, given as eighty by the chronicler, were also im-
prisoned. The trials of the townsmen were concluded at Westminster
during the autumn. Wallingford, Berewick and Payntour were pardoned
on 28 October. A carpenter accused of pulling down the houses was
acquitted, and others received their pardons one by one through the winter
and spring.”

But the juries were not quite tamed by Tresilian. They indicted the
abbot of a charge of having ordered them to join the rebels at London.”
The judge ruled that, though the fact was true, the motive saved it from
being indictable. The villeins had no vent but in complaints to the men of
the royal household who were quartered upon them that the abbot had

22 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 28.

23 Tbid. 28-9. 4 Thid. 30. 2 Tbid. 31. On the first day of the Dog-days.

2 Dict. Nat. Biog. 27 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 38.

28 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 3, no. 95. The chronology of the chronicles appears to be wrong when
compared with the dates given in the judicial records. But in the presentments of the juries, sometimes
made months later, the events of the different days are often confused.

29 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 36. 30 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 26-26 d.

31 Tbid. 482, m. 27-8; 484, m. 18; 485, m. 23d. 32 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. ii, 37-8

203

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

oppressed them, who were free men, so that no one might have a hand-mill
in his house, but, as villeins do, they were forced to grind at the abbot's
mills. Proclamation was made against this talk as a ‘slander against the
Abbot.’

Of the country people imprisoned on the indictment, all seem to have
been pardoned.* Even the manslaughter at Waltham Cross was forgiven.
The rebels at Langley were dealt with by the manorial court. Their villein
tenements were seized into the lord’s hand in January 1383. But by the
next Whitsuntide they seem to have been restored. The chief rebels were
then heads of tithings, and later one or two held offices, like that of rent-
collector.

In all this certain classes and individuals stand out. Grindecobbe is the
most vivid and the most interesting. Presumably he came of the burgess
and rebel family of this name.*? His brother was a cloth-dyer in London.
He doubtless had some education at the grammar school, and he is said to
have had kinsmen in the abbey, though he quarrelled and even came to blows
with the monks. He must have been a man of some property. He held a
house in Holywell Street, and another with a garden and dovecot in ‘Eywode
Lane,’* worth 135. 4d. a year, and these his widow was allowed to hold
after his execution.” His other possessions were a house and garden on
Holywell Hill, a cottage called Copped Hall and 2 acres of land,” appa-
rently let for 7s." Grindecobbe evidently knew something of the earlier
revolts. But his organization was on a larger scale and his plans show
political ability. They are marked by his faith in class combination.
So far as our information goes, and it comes from his bitterest enemies,
Grindecobbe endeavoured to keep his followers within the law and had
the true instincts of a leader in his willingness to sacrifice himself for
his cause.

Richard de Wallingford is only known by repute as the richest villein.”
Both these leaders may have learnt something from the ‘old men’ more
valuable than the tale of Offa. Benedict Spichfat was one of them, just
possibly the Benedict Spichfat of 1313." Henry ‘de Porta’ was probably a
descendant of the fighting Henry de la Porte of 1274-5; Richard Bude and
William atte Halle were two other elders who stirred up the memory of the
charter.* These men were the leaders, but the whole town from the
highest to the lowest was evidently alive with discontent.

In the country there was the same readiness to rise at the call of the
town. The men who rebelled seem to have been tenants of standing and
substance. At King’s Langley hardly one of those mentioned but was a
chief-pledge. John Marlere, a leader, held both free and villein lands.*®
Four years after the revolt John Carter set up a plea in the lord’s court that
he was not of villein condition. The homage had a day to inquire, as it was
witnessed that Carter had acknowledged himself to be a villein on oath ;
the question was whether this was before a judge of record. The homage

33 Coram Rege R. 484, m. 18; 485, m. 23d. 34 Ibid.

3° Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 47. 36 Ibid. *7 See above, the rising of 1313.
3 Cal. Pat. 1388-92, p. 22. 39 Chan. Inq. p.m. 7 Ric. II, no. 93-

4° Cal. Pat. 1388-92, p. 22. * Pat. 7 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 1.

42 Walsingham, Hist. Angi. i, 472. 8 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 365.

# Ibid. 4° See above.

204

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

did not know, and successive adjournments for three years did not enlighten
them. He must have been fairly prosperous, for in 1386 he took a
tenement of the lord on a year’s lease, paying 1os.**

The disputes between the abbot and the townsmen of St. Albans throw
a light on the conditions of the tenants of mesne boroughs. There was in
the 13th century no definite tenure or custom which exactly distinguished a
borough from an ordinary vill,*’ but the legislation of Edward I tended to a
greater exactitude in legal definition. Burgesses, lawyers of the day would
probably argue, must be entirely free ; those who were not so in all the
incidents of their tenure were unfree and came under the general term of
villeins. At St. Albans multure claimed by the abbot was a base service “ ;
hence the contentions that the inhabitants were villeins, and for this reason
the battle raged so furiously around this particular point. St. Albans had
been established as a market town in the roth century, was called a
borough* in the Domesday Book, had four Frenchmen and_ forty-six
burgesses in 1086, and had been confirmed to the abbot as a borough * by
Henry II. Further, in 1253 a charter, addressed by the king directly to
the ‘good men’ of St. Albans, practically acknowledged their burghal
rights. Yet when the borough had attained a considerable degree of
prosperity by the latter half of the 13th century, greatly by the encourage-
ment of the abbey, its progress seems suddenly to have provoked the
intense disapproval of the abbots as overlords, who opposed every symptom
of independence with all the vindictiveness they could exercise.

The restraint the abbots attempted to impose was harmful to trade
and was opposed in spirit, if not in deed, to the treatment the early
burgesses had received. There seems also to be evidence that the friction
caused by the abbot’s jealousy of the increasing independence of the towns-
men was accentuated by their opposition to the penitential discipline
and probate jurisdiction of the Church. We know that in 1381 the
bitterest complaints were made against the archdeacon’s disciplinary jurisdic-
tion, and his records were eagerly sought out and destroyed by the mob.”
Similar difficulties were being experienced at many other towns formed
under the shadow of a great church. Bury St. Edmunds particularly is a
case in point, but at Sherborne, Rochester, Wells and elsewhere disputes
and disturbance of almost, if not quite, equal importance had arisen.

Discontent spread from the towns to the country, and all the disturbing
factors gathered strength with the dearth of labour after the Black Death,
and only awaited an opportune moment to show themselves. In the
rebellion of 1381 it was the rural population that was mainly aggrieved.
The townsmen had their grievances, which in the Hertfordshire market
towns were mostly agrarian. Their better education and business training,
however, enabled the townsmen to play the part of leaders and organizers,
and it is this organization which is perhaps one of the most interesting
features of the rebellion.

46 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 47.

47 Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law, i, 635 et seq. The editor is responsible for this and the
two following paragraphs.

47a Compare case in Maitland, Bracton’s Note Bk. ii, 131-2. Here it was decided in 1222 that, the
defendant being a free man, multure was not due from him. 48 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 477.

49 Ibid. 478. 50 Tbid. 51 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, i11, 308.

205

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The summons by the St. Albans townsmen to the country vills must
have asked for representatives if ‘ procuratores’™ is to be taken literally, and
of course the procedure of election was familiar. Actually the countrymen
came in troops, not as representatives; about forty came from Berkhamp-
stead. There may have been secret arrangements with the representatives
of the vills beforehand. ‘ We have pacts with thirty vills’ *; the villeins of
Barnet were bound to them by oaths (foederati).* Possibly the oath was to
maintain the rights of the king and of the Commons, as the proclamation
made by the townsmen ran. This ‘ federating’ extended not only to vills in
the liberty of the Abbot of St. Albans, for Berkhampstead and King’s
Langley at least were outside. It would be interesting to know whether
Cheshunt and Waltham Cross had any communication with the rebels on
the western side of the county, but it is more probable that they were in
touch with the Essex rising.

The revolt was not quelled without reprisal. There were mysterious
fires in St. Albans. A certain Bidwell made a false confession that Henry
Grindecobbe, William’s brother, had suborned him to fire the abbot’s
prison. But after this the resistance of the townsmen grew weaker and
weaker. Barnet was the first to act, and that not until nearly forty years
after the revolt. In the summer of 1417 Johne atte Mille and John Penne
and other copyholders entered into a confederacy binding themselves to
resist the abbot and his servants. On the plea that they held land freely
they withheld certain services—suit to the abbot’s court, heriot on death or
surrender, the determination of pleas of tenements and contract in the
abbot’s court, and the buying of a licence for all alienation of land on demise
for a term. These are obviously the ordinary villein dues. The demand was
for freedom of tenure, and was in effect and partly in wording the same as
that of 1981°? 3 and in this case, too, the demand came from the
prosperous. One John Beauchamp, the builder of all the ancient part of
Barnet Church which now remains and a London merchant, had a large
holding of a house and a cottage with gardens, 30 acres arable, 29 of
meadow and 4 of wood. He paid 19s. gd. a year and carried half a cart-
load of fuel to the abbot’s hospice in London. The services of the other
tenants were similar. Many of the tenants lived away—one, indeed, in
London. The case was tried at the autumn assizes, and the villeins were
judged guilty and imprisoned until October 1427, when they paid a fine of
6s. 8d. each.®

At St. Albans in 1434 there was a recrudescence of the old spirit of
resistance. Abbot John of Wheathampstead had just returned from the
Council of Siena. A ‘great crowd’ of the villeins came to him to accuse
the monks of withdrawing the bare rights of the town as to boundaries ‘ and
other liberties justly due.’ A day was appointed (not without references by
the abbot to the downfall of the men of Barnet and to Dathan and Abiram)
and the villeins brought their ‘ supplication.’ They asked for common of
pasture to certain points round the town, and in Barnet Wood, Frithwood

" Walsingham, Geste 4d"atwn, iii, 287. 53 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 28.
54 Walsingham, Gesta Absatum, ili, 380. 55 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. i, 472.
56 Walsingham, Gesta Adbatum, ili, 362, 364. 57 See above.

58 Assize R. 340, m. 3-6. 59 Ibid.

206

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

and other places and along the high roads; also for right of way through
Eywode in two places and through Faunton Wood. The abbot’s coun-
cillors found this petition to be identical with that of 1381 (as it is, with
very significant omissions), and with this discovery they struck terror into
the villeins, who stood amazed and said no more for that time.” The
important feature in both these cases is that the demands had been growing
less and less ever since 1274. They had now reached the lowest stage—
freedom of tenure and preservation or perhaps extension of common rights.
These, too, are rights more useful to the agriculturist than to the merchant,
suggesting that the towns were already suffering from the decay which is
very apparent at Hertford at this time.

In the 15th century the Hertfordshire towns were not buying privi-
leges. Possibly the wars affected them. They were poor and half-populated.
It was not until the 16th century that they began to seek charters again, this
time from the king. After 1563 economic advantages under the Statute of
Artificers were obtained from incorporation. This was probably one of the
reasons why the men of Berkhampstead procured a charter in 1616."

At the beginning of the 15th century the population was very scanty
both in urban and in rural districts. In 1428 Codicote, Graveley, Chesfield,
Ayot Montfitchet and Digswell each had less than nine householders.” At
Bygrave there were seven, at Clothall six, at Radwell seven, and eight at
Throcking.® Bramfield and Wakeley were apparently depopulated.“ Of
urban parishes Stapleford had only nine householders, Eastwick seven, and
even around St. Albans, in the district of St. Julian’s Hospital, there were
very few.* The parishes of St. Mary and St. Nicholas at Hertford had not
twenty householders between them.” Hertford did not recover its prosperity
until far into the 16th century, as the decay of the markets and fairs shows.
The same tale is true of Hitchin. In 1526 the tolls were let for £2 125. 84."
Thirty years later they only fetched 20s.% Hitchin was a ‘ great thorough-
fare and scattered parish with over a thousand houselyng folk.” At
Berkhampstead the May Fair died out”; at Markyate, too, from 1480-1
no fair was held, and in 1526 the market tolls were worthless.” In 1548
the market town of Baldock was much decayed.” The towns on the east
of the county seem to have struggled along better than those on the west.
Owing to the traffic on the Great North Road, in 1545 Ware was ‘a great
parish to the number of 1,200 houselyng people.’™ At Stortford there
were 500 housling folk, being a great thoroughfare.”

In the 15th century one would look for gilds in the town records, and
there were plenty in Hertfordshire. In most instances, however, we only
find reference to their religious side. There may have been a gild merchant
at Berkhampstead from the 12th century ; but it is merely surmised from

8° Amundesham, 4a. Mon, 8. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 187. As late as 1601 the men of St. Albans still
ground at the ‘Abbot’s mill.’ In 1556 ten men had set up mills of their own, to the queen’s loss
£16 135. 4¢., although in the abbot’s time they had ground at his mill. ‘Let it be well looked to’
(Herts, and St. Albans Archit. and Arch. Soc. Trans. ii, 15 ; Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 244 et seq.).

61 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 172. 82 Feud. Aids, ii, 454. 63 Thid.

64 Tbid. 65 Thid. 456, 459. 86 Ibid. 461 ; v.s. borough.
87 Mins. Accts. 18 & 19 Hen. VIII, no. 1584. 68 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 384.
69 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 145 20, no. 72. 10 V.C.H. Herts. ti, 173.

1 Mins. Accts. bdle. 1123, no. 6. 7 Chant. Cert. 27, no. 14.

8 Thid. 20, no. 66. 7 Ibid. no. 67.

207

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

some functions of the religious fraternity of St. John the Baptist.” The
inquiry of 1388 found a few gilds in Hertfordshire. At Barkway the
fraternity of the Blessed Mary had existed before 1303. As its brethren
and sisters agreed to pay 3d. a week for masses in honour of the Virgin, to
find lights for her image and to attend one another’s funerals, it seems to
have been religious in purpose. At Hertford there was a fraternity of
St. John the Baptist founded about 1375 by twelve pious men, of whom
seven were still alive in 1388. They kept tapers burning before the image
of St. John on feast days, but otherwise had no duties or funds. The gild
of Holy Trinity at Codicote had an alderman and ‘bedell,’ so that it may
have been fairly large ; but we know no more of its objects. At Waltham
Holy Cross the ‘two masters of the little company ordained to the honour
of God and Our Lady’ declared their purpose to be the maintenance of
tapers at holy seasons and the sustentation of a chaplain in the Lady Chapel.

The wool trade of Hertfordshire was small. Before the year 1396 and
the first quarter of 1397 the king’s ulnager only accounted for 139% cloths.”
In 1398, among the sixteen men of Royston who had thirty-eight cloths,
there were three drapers, perhaps the merchants’ middlemen.” The wool
trade must have gone through phases like those of the corn trade—the
struggle of merchants for free buying. In the 16th century the justices had
to restrain the broggers and engrossers of wool, like the badgers and
engrossers of grain.” But the cloth merchants can never have been a very
strong body. In the 15th century, or early in the 16th, the drapers,
mercers and haberdashers of St. Albans seem to have formed a company or
gild. But we know nothing of this body until after its amalgamation with
others, possibly before 1556.” It became one of the four companies of the
17th century and of the two companies surviving after 1664.

There is much evidence as to the corn and malt trade, which was
probably the most important in the county. Formerly corn and malt had
been carried on pack-horses along the great roads of eastern and western
Hertfordshire and by the Lea and other rivers. The trade increased all
through the 16th century, because of the increasing demand in London.
It was extremely difficult to keep the capital supplied, and when this
was done the home counties were sometimes starved and provincial prices
always raised. The problem of a remedy puzzled the Privy Council.
The corn trade had been in the hands of travelling country dealers called
‘badgers,’ who bought in the country markets and sold to the London
brewers and bakers. About the middle of the 16th century some of the
badgers had created a very strong position. ‘They had the London brewers
in their pockets ; to some they had lent £1,400 or £1,500 worth of grain,
so that the debtor dared deal with no one but the creditor. They had also
laid hands on the transport ; some had a hundred hired horses carrying to
London along the Great North Road daily.” As they thus controlled
supplies both in London and the country, they controlled prices." They
bought quantities of corn in advance of delivery, so that the country markets
were very small and the supply for London very limited. If they kept

- VCH. Herts. ii, 171. 76 Exch. Accts. bdle. 342, no. 11. 77 Tbid. no. 12.
‘© Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1547-80, p. 555. 9 A. E. Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 14, 17.
* Lansdowne MS. 32, fol. 104. 5! Ibid. fol. 107.

208

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

back as much as 4,000 horse-loads (the load being reckoned at five
Winchester bushels) ® it served their turn to raise the price in the City.
This monopoly was at the expense of the baker, the brewer and the
consumer. But the whole trade was disturbed. The improved navigation
of the Lea under the Act of 1571“ had transferred the freights from the
road to the river, and the carrying branch of the trade had taken a fresh
form. The trade was so profitable that millers and speculative buyers were
drawn in. Finally the rich brewers and bakers of London were invading
country markets and leaving off dealing with country agents.

In 1573 the council charged the justices to see that corn was brought
to market, that no deceit was used to raise prices and that no farmers or
unlicensed badgers bought™; they were even to call in and revise the
licences of those badgers who bought up corn to sell it dearer in other
markets.* In 1580 they forestalled the market of Hertford by buying
up all the corn. The badgers infected others with their habit of buying
outside the market. At Hoddesdon in 1581 the people were forbidden to
sell corn out of their shops or in any place but the market, and a licence
was required of every purchaser for resale. Anyone offering more than
the usual rate was to be brought before the justices.”

There was a second type of grain merchant, the loader or carrier.
His real business was to carry the corn from the market to London, but he
often bought and dealt as well. But most were poor and used old horses
and carried for other men. The special area of the carrier was from Ware
southward; those of Enfield and Cheshunt had the whole carrying trade to
London for the counties of Essex, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.”
Cheshunt was the entrepét for the grain of those counties.”

When the Lea was practically reopened for navigation the corn traffic
deserted the road between Cheshunt and London. ‘The water-way was
quicker.” The water carriage was in the hands of twenty-two owners—
three of Hertford, three of Waltham, one of Braughing, two of Stanstead,
two of Broxbourne, six of Ware, two of Enfield and three of London—and
they maintained over one hundred men,®* ‘strong and skilled to do the
Queen good service by land or sea’; a little later the bargemen had
increased to 150. The barge-owner superseded the carrier. ‘The badgers’
control was broken.

The road carriers tried to prove that the traffic on the Lea did not
improve the London corn supply. They said that a few men at London *—
four or five brewers—monopolized the increase.* The other side answered
not only could all the London brewers buy malt much more reasonably,
but the reverse traffic from London cheapened coal and iron in Hertford-
shire.” The final advantage told against the badgers. ‘The trade on the
Lea is the only and safest means of keeping the price of meal and malt
reasonable in London.’ ®

82 Duchy of Lanc. Dep. 6 Jas. I, no. 60. 83 Stat. 13 Eliz. cap. 11.

84 4ers of P.C. 1571-5, pp. 108, 111. 85 Ibid. 197. 86 Ibid. 1580-1, p. 301.
87 Lansdowne MS. 31, no. 28. 88 Ibid. 32, fol. 104. 89 Ibid. 38, no. 32.
Tbid. 32, fol. 104. 91 Thid. 82 Tbid.

98 Tbid. fol. 105.

4 Ibid. 38, no. 32. % Ibid. 32, fol. 104. 96 Ibid. fol. 107.

97 Ibid. fol. 105. % Ibid. fol. 107.

4 209 a}

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The facilities for the transport of grain did not lower the price in the
county. London drew it in and the London men came down and bought
the country market away from the country dealer. In 1595 the country
markets were ‘so troubled with the higglers (or badgers) of Middlesex and
other purveyors for London’ that the shire was almost starved.” The
brewers and bakers of London gave up their dealings with the country
badgers, whom they reduced to be mere carriers. They bought great
quantities and paid high prices, often privately, and were protected by their
freedom of London. Local badgers could not compete with them. The
badgers had to buy at such a price that they could sell profitably in London
at a reasonable rate. Moreover, they were bound by their licences to buy
only in the market. Nevertheless, the badgers survived to carry on
nefarious practices and to vex the justices of the county. In 1600 two
‘loders’ of Cheshunt bought corn in one market and sold in another, and
went from barn to barn buying at the doors, so that corn could not be had
in the market for ready money.’

Farmers and millers were buying up for resale and no orders would
prevent them.’ The millers were protected by their landlords, for if they
could grind and carry much meal to London they would pay rack-rents.
The country was stocked beyond its needs with mills working for London.’
In one instance a London capitalist built a mill near St. Albans.®

The noticeable points are, of course, the development of sale outside the
markets, the appearance of the capitalist employer of labour and the
capitalist merchant, especially the Londoner, and the development of com-
petition in the breaking of the corn ring.

The cloth-making industry in Hertfordshire is just traceable from time
to time and no more. At the beginning of the 15th century it was carried
on at Ashwell, Berkhampstead, Hunsdon, Royston (which seems to have
been a centre), Baldock, Knebworth, Hitchin, Codicote, Bishop’s Stortford,
Hertford and Ware.* But the output was very small. Presumably the
domestic system crept in by degrees, for there were clothiers in St. Albans
in the 16th century.’ But, as has been already mentioned, no craft gild
existed save at St. Albans. By 1554 the victuallers, mercers, shoemakers
and innholders® had become pre-eminent. This list shows incidentally that
St. Albans was much more a thoroughfare than an industrial centre. The
bakers’ and brewers’ companies survived until after 1586.’ But by the
middle of the 17th century all the crafts were grouped under one or other
of these four. Clearly the crafts had no very strong organization. In
1563 the Statute of Artificers, in enforcing seven years of apprenticeship,
permitted merchants of corporate towns to take boys with a smaller property
qualification than those of market towns.’ In Hertfordshire, where there
were so few boroughs and so many market towns, this must have worked on
the whole disadvantageously.

In the 16th century the decay of the towns gave a corresponding
benefit to the rural districts. The hundred of Edwinstree affords some

99 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1595-7, pp. 107-8, 126. 100 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 30.

1 Lansdowne MS. 76, no. 39. 2 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1595-7, p. 336. ° V.C.H. Herts. ii, 393-
4 Exch. Accts. bdle. 342, no. 11, 12. 5 Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 17. 6 Ibid.

7 Tbid. 15. 8 Ibid. 78. 9 Prothero, Stat. and Doc. 1558-1625, p. 507.

210

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

evidence on this point. The figures available illustrate, first, location of
wealth in the county, and in a secondary way the location of the people.
Between 1545 and 1599 the taxpayers of Buckland diminished from twenty-
five to three, those of Wyddial from twenty-eight to seven, of Aspenden
from twenty-six to eight, of Great Hormead from thirty-seven to nine,
and of Barkway from eighty to twenty-two.” Between 1599 and 1640 the
decrease occurred at Stocking Pelham from six to two, at Anstey from fifteen
to ten, at Barkway from twenty-two to sixteen, at Barley from seventeen
to thirteen, at Wyddial from seven to two, and at Layston from thirteen to
nine. The numbers were maintained or increased at Meesden from five to
five, at Great Hormead from nine to seventeen, at Little Hormead from
three to five, at Buckland from three to four, at Aspenden from eight to
nine, and at Throcking from three to three.

The movement indicated in this hundred is then as follows. Between
1545 and 1599 there was a startling decrease of property owners, especially in
the large places, some of which, like Great Hormead, became mere villages,
from the taxable point of view. After 1599 there was a distinct increase in
the wealth of the small places, but some of the market towns and larger
places continued to decay. That this was true in other parts of the shire we
know from the case of Berkhampstead.” Statistics for St. Albans have not
been worked out, but there was a decrease of fifteen taxpayers in the middle
ward between 1545 and 1599." Parts of Cashio Hundred can be contrasted
between 1599 and 1663, with the following results. There is a marked
increase in the case of Watford, from thirty-six taxpayers to seventy-five.
Elsewhere there is nothing to parallel this. At Ridge the increase was
sixteen, and at Sleap with Smallford ten. Additions from two to six are
found at Shephall, Sandridge, Windridge, Hexton, Codicote, St. Michael
and Park, but none of these places had as many as thirty taxpayers even in
1665. The large places—Redbourn (thirty-nine names in 1599) and
Aldenham (forty-six names)—decreased slightly." The conclusion as to
this hundred must be that the small places were prospering and the large
ones were only just maintaining their level.

Part of Odsey Hundred seems to have a similar history between the
same dates. Of the places with more than ten taxpayers in 1599 Ashwell
declined from twenty-seven to seventeen, and so did Sandon from eleven to
nine, Royston from sixteen to fifteen, Ardeley from nineteen to fourteen ;
but at Therfield the numbers rose from seventeen to twenty-one. Where
the number in 1599 was under ten there was decrease at Kelshall from nine
to seven, at Rushden from six to four, at Wallington from seven to four, at
Cottered from seven to five, at Clothall from six to five, and at Radwell
from two to one. At Hinxworth, from four to eight; at Reed, from fifteen
to six; at Bygrave, from one to three; and at Bradfield, from one to one,
the numbers keep up or increase."

The impression left is that there was a startling decline in the larger
villages between 1545 and 1599, and that this proceeded very slowly

10 Herts. Gen. and Antig. i, 163 ; Lay Subs. R. bdle. 121, no, 264.

Y.C.H. Herts. ii, 172, 173.

2 Herts. Gen. and Antig. i, 225 ; Lay Subs. R. bdle. 121, no. 265.

13 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 121, no. 266, 346. 44 Ibid. no. 264, 339.

211

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

between 1599 and 1640 and was accompanied by an increase in the smaller

laces not noticeable in the earlier period. The explanation may be con-
nected with the method of assessment, which was partly on freehold lands
and partly on goods. The 16th-century shrinkage is probably due to the
concentration of property in a few hands, while the accumulation of goods
was not sufficient to make itself felt in the tax returns. In the 17th century
the subsidy on goods touched the rich farmers.

The lease for rent only was the most active agent in the relief of the
villein. Take a little group of cases just after the revolt. At Wormley one
tenant paid 7s. 63d. assize rent, and for the farm of various tenements ‘ late
of various men’ 135. g$d. and 3s. for meadow. Twenty-seven other tenants
held similar holdings.’ The lord of Stevenage granted thirty-three parcels
of villein land on terms of life or years.° In 1461 Richard Huchin, one of
a progressive villein family of Bengeo, surrendered villein land and received
it again on lease for sixteen years.'7 Presumably the exchange was
profitable.

By the middle of the 16th century the usual tenures on a manor were
free, customary or copyhold, and tenancy by indenture. On five out of ten
manors the records of which have been examined tenants at will are also
found.'"* In some manors the old varied tenures still survived. At King’s
Langley, for instance, there were freeholders, copyholders, tenants by a
commuted rent of movables, tenants by a commutation for works executed
and tenants by indenture who were obviously destined to become copy-
holders. The progressiveness of the copyholders is proved by the nature of
their quarrels with the lords. They wanted to handle their lands freely
and to be able to grant leases as freely as the freeholders. The lords tried
to check or contro] this. At Rickmansworth in 1520 proclamation was
made in the court that all who had let occupied villein land and all persons
having rights in such lands should come to take licence to lease their lands.”
Near by, at Croxley, all customary tenants were ordered to show their
copies, and in 1535 all persons holding or demising villein land without
licence against the custom of the manor were threatened with the loss of
the tenement.” From about 1500 the tenants of King’s Walden had been
granting parcels of their land under cover of their usual rents in fee-simple
at ‘ undersell rents so that the lord did not know his tenants and lost reliefs
and fines for the undersells. In 1556 he made inquiries and cut off the
undersell rents altogether.’ *

At the manor of Wallington one copyholder, hearing that the lord had
very few Court Rolls, changed his limited estate into a fee-simple and broke
all the customs and encouraged the other copyholders to cut their wood.”
The custom of some manors was favourable to the tenants. An example
can be given from the custom of Hexton. Copyholders might alienate
their tenements, and if they divided them the rent was divided propor-
tionately. They might lease their tenements without licence from three

15 Rentals and Surv. R. 300, held on similar conditions.

16 Mins. Accts. bdle. 872, no. 73 cf. also Weston, ibid. bdle. 873, no. 25. W Add. MS. 27976.

18 Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII, no. 85 ; Misc. Bks. Ld. Rev. ccxvi, 1 et seq. ; Aug. Off. Misc. Bks.
cecexci, fol. 1-92 ; Mins. Accts. 31 & 32 Hen. VIII, no. 71, m. 37.

19 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 5. 20 Add. MS. 6057.

31 Add. Chart. 35428. 22 Chan. Proc. Eliz. bdle. 6, no. 6.

212

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

years to three years up to seven years. They also had the right to cut
down trees.”

At Bishop’s Hatfield the copyholders might sell any part of their
tenements by a surrender ; but if they occupied any customary land without
copy and without licence the lord could seize it. ‘They were not allowed
to grub up bushes and fell timber at their discretion, although they not
infrequently did so. They might let their copyholds on the same condition
as the men of Hexton.* The lord and his copyholders were quarrelling
over these points at the same time that the lord was fighting the whole
tenantry on the question of commons.

The prevalence of leases is important. The long lease gave a stable
under-tenure, of particular importance at such a crisis as the dissolution of
the monasteries. That long leases were common, and perhaps specially on
monastic land, there is a good deal of evidence, or when the holding was
large and the rent high. In 1516 the manor of Bushey, the mill and
warren were leased severally for thirty years.* The Prior of Royston
leased two of his manors for sixty years from 1511.% As early as 1515 the
Abbot of St. Albans let his manor of Norton for fifty years’ and gave other
long leases in 1516 and 1523.% The Abbot of Waltham let property to
a Londoner for sixty-one years in 1526, and twenty-one, thirty-one and
forty-one years were favourite terms. From about 1531 religious houses
made rapid grants of their property in leasehold for political reasons.
Clearly in Hertfordshire the Dissolution meant rather the change of ground
landlord than of occupier.

Leases also gave the tenants their opportunity, in so far as they made
land a commodity easily to be obtained and easily left. The result was a
concentration of holdings in the tenant’s hand.

The letting of the demesne shows clearly that some lords were not
sheep-farming even in the early 15th century. At Weston the whole
demesne, arable, fallow and pasture, was let.” So was the demesne at Baas
in 1390.%° At Ware, as late as 1429, 70 acres of arable were leased to a
tenant, with 80 acres of poor meadow and 36 acres of pasture.” At
Shenley and at Bushey the manors were leased in the same way in 1429.”
The manor of Cockenach (in Barkway) is a contrast, where the Prior of
Royston kept the demesnes in the open fields with folding for 200 sheep.”*

Sheep-farming was not as yet a source of agrarian trouble. Inclosures
had been begun, especially on the demesne, in the 14th century. These
inclosures seem to have been of meadow, and possibly of pasture, but above
all of arable, of which the value was quadrupled if it were several.* In
the southern part, where the attraction of the London corn market might
have been strongest, the inclosure of arable seems not to have been excessive
by the middle of the 16th century. In the manor of Moor, in Rickmans-

3 Chan. Proc. Eliz. (Ser. 2), bdle. 225, no. 102. 24 Misc. Bks. Ld. Rev. ccxvi, 1 et seq.

25 Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 22. 26 Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII, no. 85.

37 Thid. 32 & 33 Hen. VIII, no. 71, m. 37. 28 Tbid. m. 5 ; Pat. 25 Hen. VIII, pt. i, no. 44.
29 Mins. Accts. bdle. 873, no. 25. 30 Rentals and Surv. R. 300.

31 Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Hen. VII, no. 57, The meadow and pasture had been let for ten years in
1423 ; Add. MS. 27976, fol. 17 et seq.

32 Chan. Ing. p.m. 7 Hen. VI, no. 57. 32a Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII, no. 85.
33 Misc. Chan. Ing. p.m. file 228, no. 177 (King’s Walden).

213

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

worth, among thirty-seven copyholders, only five inclosures of arable are
mentioned.

The thirty-eighth copyhold is the pseudo ‘ manor ’ of Hampton Hall.
This estate had no resemblance to a manor save that its lands were all
inclosed. These inclosures were held under copies dating from 1536
to 1563.

With the inclosure of the strips went a certain amount of inclosure of
the waste for arable, and hence an increase in the corn-land of the county.
Taking the waste as a whole, presumably the inclosures of arable were
progressing among the copyholds as well as on the demesne.

So eager was the Hertfordshire farmer for corn-land that even in the
15th century land was ploughed up for arable, and land-grabbing was
common. In this direction it is that the influence of the wars was felt in
the shire. They gave an opportunity to such men as Sir Robert
Whittingham of Pendley in Tring. In 1448 he had ploughed half an acre of
land in the tenure of Richard Gomme, one acre in the tenure of H. Russel
and one acre in the tenure of Richard Clement, and had also ploughed up a
common way. Such methods, no doubt, saved Sir Robert Whittingham
much trouble in rounding off his estate. This conversion on a small scale
went on. Common lands were ploughed up*; tenants inclosed half-acres
and three or four roods.*®

In 1591 the homage of Astwick ordered that R. Apryce should lay
open and cast down a hedge and ditch upon a common cartway, and reported
that Apryce had hedged in a garden and hemp-land.” The Sawbridgeworth
saffron grounds were used for grain, so that the saffron trade perished.
In 1598 the queen gave licence to a tenant of Watford to convert part of
Oxhey Park into tillage.”

Pasture was more difficult to handle than arable, just because the rights
over it were common and indefinite. Some pasture-land was of course
inclosed from of old—for example, such old parks as Berkhampstead. But in
other old parks like that at Bishop’s Hatfield commoners had rights. Some
manors show a considerable increase in their pasture-land. At Little
Wymondley the pasture had increased from 60 acres in 1424 to 100
acres in 1460. But this was a large amount for Hertfordshire. There was
not a large amount of natural pasture, except in the woodlands on the west.
The thinness of the population and the small size of holdings had
prevented a difficulty until the latter part of the 15th century. Before 1471
Sir Robert Whittingham had depopulated the hamlet of Pendley in Tring.
It had been a place maintaining thirteen ploughs and many craftsmen. But
Sir Robert cast down the houses, laid the land to pasture and built himself a
great house where the town once stood.** Having thus driven off the people,
he would of course hold the pasture in severalty. The treatment of the
pasture was negotiated between lords and tenants. In 1427-8 the Abbot of
St. Albans persuaded the tenants of Tyttenhanger who held the manorial

34 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portfi 176, no. 121. 35 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 20-5.
36 Thid., 7. 37 Add. MS. 33575, fol. 13.

38 Doc. of D. and C. of Westminster, 4, shelf 1, Sawbridgeworth, parcel ii.

39 Cl, S$. P. Dim. 1598-1601, p. 70.

40 Chan. Ing. p.m. 2 Hen. VI, no. 27; 38 & 39 Hen. VI, no. 42.
41 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 120. See V.C.H. Herts. ii, 285.

214

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

meads and pastures in copyhold to surrender them in return for compensation
and inclosed the lands as a deer park. He had also inclosed half of
Tyttenhanger Heath and converted the other half into a fertile pasture.”
Before 1448 Sir Robert Whittingham, aiming at increasing not his arable
only, had shut out the tenants from common in 80 acres which he held.*

In 1576 some of the copyholders of Aldenham complained that the lord
meant to inclose half of the 2,000 acres of common land. The lord
contended that the plaintiffs indeed had pasture on the waste, but the tenants
had never had rights of common there. He wished to use 50 acres for his
house and had made an offer to the tenants. The lord was awarded the
tight to put 150 sheep on the common land.* A few years after, at Rushden,
the freeholder inclosed 14 acres on which the inhabitants had had pasture
with all their cattle.*

The Countess of Bedford, farmer of the demesne meadows of the manor
of Rickmansworth, withheld from the queen’s poor copyhold tenants their
parcels of land lying among the demesnes. The great Park and the little
Park were presumably demesnes.*

At Clothall in 1551 the lord had had 452 acres of several meadows and
pasture, but his arable still lay partly in the open field.” At Croxley, too,
the demesne pasture was all several.* At Northaw 140 acres of pasture
had been inclosed as early as 1521. But the tenants had common in the
wood for all beasts. In the little estate at Stanstead Abbots in 1556, 65 acres
of the pasture were apparently common and 3 inclosed, but of the 8 acres of
meadow 5 were several. At King’s Langley the lord had 51 acres several
meadow in 1556, and he disparked the rest of the park, above 600 acres
of waste, for which the tenants offered 12d. an acre, its market value.”

In the manor of Wallington the custom was either falsely alleged or
unusually favourable to the lord. No copyholders had common for sheep
or cattle in the lord’s demesnes or in the common fields, except in harvest
time on their own ground. Nor might any copyholder have a fold; the
common of feeding in the fields and the general foldage belonged to the
lord. But in 1598 one copyholder led an attempt to take commons. He
claimed for the copyholder the right to have a fold on his arable for the
bettering of his land and common for sheep up to 120, and for great cattle
in the commonable times both in the demesnes of this manor and the
common fields. Tenants might be guarded by the customs as at Hexton,®
Bishop’s Hatfield * and Tring.* But their weakness was that these customs
were only enforced by the manor court. ‘The men of Hemel Hempstead
vested the commons in trustees in 1596.

According to John Hales, the insurrection against the inclosures, which
spread over all southern England, began by riots at Northaw and Cheshunt
in 1548.” The tenants of these manors had risen against the inclosure of

#2 Amundesham, Azz. (Rolls Ser.), i, 261. 4 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 121.

# Chan. Dec. R. 66, no. 18. 45 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 13.

46 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 1 et seq. 47 Add. MS. 33582, fol. 4.

48 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 1 et seq. 49 Ibid. fol. 184.

50 Tbid. fol. 934. 51 Ibid. fol. 40-54.

52 Chan. Proc. Eliz. bdles. 6, no. 6; 14, no. 7. 53 Ibid. (Ser. 2), bdle. 225, no. 102.

54 Ld. Rev. Misc. Bks. ccxvi, fol. 1 et seq. 55 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 55.

52 VCH. Herts. ii, 215-16. 57 Hales, Discourse of the Common Weal (ed. Lamond), p. lviii.

215

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the commons some years before this date. The peculiarity of the manor of
Northaw in 1556 was the number of tenants by indenture and the large
amount of land each of them held. The farmer of the manor, the Earl of
Pembroke, had common with all beasts in the wood of Northaw, and every
tenant of the manor had the same right. The cause of the riot was
probably an attempt by the farmer to limit the tenants’ stint. In 1579 a
similar case happened in the same villages. The men of Northaw and
Mimms destroyed the pales put by the Earl of Warwick upon the commons.
The rioters were sent home by Sir Christopher Hatton. Two men were
hanged in consequence of this affair.**

The inclosure of lands in the 15th century marks the beginning of the
change from the cultivation of the land for subsistence to commercial
farming. In the 16th century there was a struggle between them, and in
Hertfordshire the London buyer almost ousted the country consumer from
the country markets. London wanted grain and meat, and this sharpened
the tenants’ desire to preserve their commons. Wool was needed locally and
sheep pasture plays a small part, but the real aim of the tenants was to
trade in corn and stock.

The term ‘capitalist farmer’ suggests men like Sir Robert Whitting-
ham,” but they did not come from that rank alone. Most significant are the
Londoners who took farms in Hertfordshire. In 1551 a clothworker of
London held the chantry lands of Bishop’s Hatfield. At the same time
one Edward Kimpton of Westminster held a lease of the meadows, feedings
and pastures of Clothall, Yardley and Rushden. In 1552 he sold them to
William Kimpton, a London merchant tailor. A connexion between sheep-
farming and the London cloth trade is hinted at here.

There are many other small signs that in the Tudor period much
London capital was invested in land in Hertfordshire. In lower grades men
took holdings which required some capital. In 1438 Richard Huchin, a
villein of Bengeo, together with Henry Bargoyn, took from the lord
804 acres on an eighteen years’ lease at a rent of 135. 4¢.% On the
termination of this lease in 1456 he joined with T. Birch to take the
warren for fifty years for 8s. a year.” In 1453 he took another small
tenement and another in 1465.% The partnerships look as though the
villeins were combining their capital. These men were farmers in the
modern sense, usually lessees, economically superior to the small freeholder
or copyholder.

The Elizabethan poor law did not lay a heavy burden on the Hertford-
shire ratepayers. There was apparently very little pauperism in the county.
The maintenance of tillage was probably giving sufficient occupation.
Pauperism was small until the Civil War at least. About the Restoration
there are signs of an increase. The overseers of Great Gaddesden complained
that they were very hard charged with a numerous poor.* The poor began to
petition the justices for increased allowances.* At Hertingfordbury the over-
seers wished to escape extra charges even by dishonest means. Nevertheless

58 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 18 et seq. 56a Harris Nicolas, Christ. Hatton, 43.

59 Cr. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 121. 8 Ld. Rev. Misc. Bks. ccxvi, fol. 1 et seq.
61 Add. MS. 27976, fol. 17 et seq. 82 Tbid. 83 Ibid.
6 Sess, R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 174. 85 Ibid. 258.

216

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

the parish officers of Great Wymondley could still certify in 1687 that the
parish had provided for all its own poor for the last thirty years. The
increase of population inevitably led to increase of pauperism. Complaints
of the heavy rate had been made in 1741. The first record of the cost to
the county is the average for three years ending 1750; the sum was
£16,452."

By 1776 it increased to £25,241.% After 1782 the rise was more
rapid. By 1785 the amount was {35,512.” The rate was highest in the
towns and along the great road, where the expense of passing vagrants was
heavy. At Chipping Barnet it was 2s. to 2s. 6d. in the pound about 1797.”
Redbourn showed the effects of the Act. From 1773 to 1777 the rate
varied between 1s. 5d. and 1s. 11d. From 1783-9 it was never below 2s.
and reached 2s. 3d. in 1791."

In 1783 the three years’ average was {°56,380 and in 1815 £88,952,
although the population was only 115,400 in 1811.% The rise went on:
£91,164 in 1818, £99,934 in 1821. The actual annual amount spent was
highest in 1818, when it was £101,146.% By 1821 it had sunk to
£98,000." Only twelve of the forty counties paid less.” Compared with
some districts, the rate was ‘not very high,’ although it had admittedly
increased about one-third within five years.” The officers of St. Albans tried
to assess personal property, but this had to be given up. When men were
rated who could not pay the justices simply told their officers not to insist.”

Some of the rural parishes abandoned the Speenhamland system long
before 1834. At Hatfield the rate had been about 6s. to 8s. about 1819.
The growth of unemployment was so alarming that in 1819 the workhouse
test was rigorously applied. Allowances according to the number of
children were forbidden and out-relief was only given in food or necessaries.
The saving in the ten years from 1821 over the previous ten years was
£14,000. It was no wonder that neighbouring parishes adopted the same
regulations, even when they had to build a workhouse, as at Welwyn.”

After 1834 the expense dropped to nearly half. In 1842 the total
was £53,494 for a population of 176,173.° By 1847-8 there was a rise,
perhaps on account of agricultural depression, to £99,583." In the
following years the rate sank rapidly ; between 1850 and 1851 there was
a decrease of 8:6 per cent.,” and these figures meant a decrease in
pauperism as well as an increase of economy. The rate was sinking in
1860," but in the next decade it rose quickly. The year 1868 had an
increase of 8:2 per cent. over 1867, and the expenditure was £116,789."
The increase was maintained up to 1879.*

The methods of relief were various. In 1623 the justices provided
corn in every parish to be sold at half-price to the poor,” a kind of out-

88 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 370. 87 Ibid. ii, 78.

68 Poor Law Rep. (1822), 24-5. 69 Ibid. Thid.

71 Sir F. M. Eden, State of Poor, ii, 271 et seq. 7 Tbid. 275 et seq.

3 Poor Law Rep. (1822), 24-5. ™ Ibid. 20-1. 7 Ibid. 8. 78 Ibid.
7 Ibid. (1818), 87 et seq. 78 Ibid. 9 Ibid. (1831), 266-70.

80 Accts. and Papers, 1844 (42), xl, 123. 81 [bid. 1849 (1024), xxv, 36.

82 Ibid. 1851 (1461), xxili, 84. 83 Ibid. 1860 (2675), xxiii, 54-8.

84 Thid. 1868-9 (4197), xxviii, 60, 246. 85 Ibid. 1878-9 (2372), xxviii, 198.

86 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1619-22, p. 540.
4 217 28

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

relief without the test of destitution. In the parishes of Odsey and
Edwinstree Hundreds in 1631 the able-bodied were relieved with corn at
reasonable prices, so that they did not lose their day’s work to go to market.
Out-relief seems generally to have been by bread or money.” The
impotent seem mostly to have been relieved in their own homes. This was
true of St. Albans in 1632."

At East Barnet in 1639 there was but one pauper, Widow Chambers,
to whom the overseer gave 25. a week. The seven cases at Elstree also
received small allowances and so did the poor of Northaw. At Chipping
Barnet there seem to have been no paupers.*® One reason for this treatment
of the impotent was the small number of poor-houses. One had been built
at Waltham in 1593 and another in 1639 at Hunsdon.” But the rarity
of notices of them suggests that Hertfordshire was not well stocked with
workhouses until after Gilbert’s Act.

An alternative plan used in the 17th century was the boarding out of
paupers. Until 1639 the poor at Hunsdon were ‘housed in private
houses.’ The demand for labour made the treatment of the able-bodied
and of the children fairly easy. In parish after parish between 1630 and
1640 the justices report ‘our poor are set to work’; ‘our able poor are set
to work and our children apprenticed’ ™ ; ‘ we have bound 66 apprentices in
St. Albans and 136 in the hundred, and are raising parish stocks to set the
poor on work’* ; ‘our poor are relieved and all our children at work ; our
stock remaining is 40s.’ ; ‘there is a stock of £8 for setting the poor to
work’ *’; ‘we have no poor children to put forth.’ ®

The Poor Law system was on a very small scale. But after the Civil
War and in the 18th century conditions changed. The number of deserted
families who came on the parish was increasing, in spite of the Act of
1662.% Hertfordshire, however, offered a fair amount of employment to
the agricultural labourer. The poor rate was steadily rising. Neverthcless
such figures as we have do not seem excessive. At St. Albans in 1797
there were seventeen men and women and twenty-two children in the
workhouse and fifteen out-pensioners."° At Redbourn there were thirty
people in the workhouse and the farmer was allowed to give ‘pensions to
twenty-two paupers whom he could relieve’ more cheaply outside. This
seems to indicate more pauperism in the country than in the town. About
this time the justices were obliged by the dearness of food to adopt the
17th-century method of out-relief in corn. In 1795 some parishes bought
flour and bread for the use of the poor, and parish funds were started. In
1817, in the agricultural district round Hitchin, those who lived ‘on the
rates’ were better off than the paupers who paid them.’ As Gilbert’s Act
had abolished the workhouse test, the justices were perplexed to know where
their tests of relief began. The idle poor were saved from selling their
furniture, but rates were taken by distress. Poor relief had become a

87 §. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccxxxi, 19. 88 Thid. 89 bid. ceccxvili, 21 (i-ix).
90 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vili, App. i, 4324. 91 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 62.
% Tbid. 83S. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccxxxi, 19. %4 Ibid. 20. % Tbid. clxxxviii, 43.
8 Cal. $. P. Dom. 1637, pp. 267-9. 87 §. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccccxviii, 21 (i).

*4 Ibid. (v). 99 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 78.

100 Sir F. M. Eden, State of Poor, ii, 271. 1 Tbid. 275 et seq.

2 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 180. 3 Pror Law Rep. (1818), 87. 4 Ibid. 94.

218

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

paradox. The justices had fixed no minimum subsistence rate, so that
there was a wide margin for discretion. Possibly this was better than a
rate fixed too high, like that in Cambridgeshire, where in consequence
wages were 20 per cent. higher than in the adjoining parts of the county of
Hertford.§

The Poor Law of 1834 caused indoor relief to shrink even faster
than outdoor relief. At the end of the Lady Day quarter of 1843 there
were 4,334 indoor paupers and 13,735 out.6 On 1 July 1851 1,431 paupers
were in the workhouses and 9,014 received relief outside.” From this time
the figures remain fairly constant until about 1877, when the number
shrinks.’ In 1878 the indoor paupers were 1,661 and the outdoor 7,114.”
Ten years later the outdoor relief had increased slightly in comparison with
the indoor ; the figures were 1,275 and 7,325." In 1899 there were 1,272
indoor paupers and 6,218 relieved outside the workhouse.”

After Gilbert’s Act came into force the burden of the poor rate made
economy the one aim of the parishes. Presumably this suggested the
farming of the poor, of which we find mention first about 1790. At
St. Albans both indoor and outdoor relief was farmed before 1793. In
1774 after a brief space of parish management the farm was {400 a
year.” The parish provided house and furniture, and the contractor fed
and clothed the thirty-nine inmates, relieved the out-pensioners and dealt
with the casuals; the farmer lost {100 a year in spite of the paupers’
earnings.’ At Barnet the poor were farmed for £23 a month.“ At
Redbourn the sum was £25 a month from 1796; but the system had been
used earlier. There is no evidence that it was continued after the reform
of the Poor Law.

Pauperism in Hertfordshire was small in degree in the 17th century.
But from its position the county was certain to suffer from vagrancy,
passing in and out of London. Along the great roads the parishes were
heavily burdened. The constables of Barnet in 1639 returned that they
had ‘ whippt and past 8 men and 3 women in the last month to Bedford,
Stokenchurch, Maidstone and ye Strond.’’* At Northaw one vagrant was
punished in March and one in February.”

The general increase of vagrancy led to the Act of 1662, which made
poor people removable from a parish which they had newly entered within
forty days on the warrant of two justices. This must have increased the
poor rates of the Hertfordshire parishes and thrown much work on the
parish officers. By the end of the 17th century the figures of vagrancy had
risen to something more like the modern scale. Seventy or eighty casuals
passed through the St. Albans workhouse in a year.” ‘The roads were
infested not only by the trampers of the county, but by the out-of-works,
the casuals and the criminals of London. In 1834 Hoddesdon was
‘oppressed with vagrants in a measure scarcely credible owing to the strict

5 Poor Law Rep. (1818), 22. 8 Accts. and Papers, 1844 (42), xl, 123.
7 Ibid. 1852 (1461), xxiii, 39.
8 Ibid. 1860 (2675), xxvii, 176 et seq. ; 1868 (4197), xxvili, 260.

9 Ibid. 1878-9 (c.), 2372, 296 10 Parl. Papers (1887) (77 A), lxx, 129.
U1 Tbid. (1899) (100 a Ixxxiii (1), 619. 12 Sir F. M. Eden, Stave of Poor, ii, 271.
18 Tbid. 4 Thid. 274. 15 §. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccccxviii, 21 (vi).
16 Tbid. (viii). 17 Sir F. M. Eden, State of Poor, ii, 271-4.

219

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

attention of the London police.’ The parish established a night patrol, and
paid a special constable in winter and erected a double cage for temporary
confinement.”

The expense of the system set up in 1662 became very heavy after
1782. Parishes used the most economical system—that of contracting for
the removal of vagabonds. The proposals for contracts for 1784 have
survived. The farmer offered to undertake the parishes of Sawbridgeworth
and Bishop’s Stortford for £34 a year, to take all vagrants from the
Hertford road for £60, and to clear the road from Waltham Cross to
Royston for £85 a year. But this last offer must have been risky, as the
passes carried in the last six weeks numbered 104.”

When the Hertfordshire vagrant was ‘ passed’ back to his parish he
had to be employed in a house of correction, according to the Elizabethan
statute. For the support of these houses or bridewells the different parishes
and hundreds united. There was one such at Buntingford,” and one for
Hertford, Braughing and Broadwater Hundreds.” By 1656 this last was in
great decay and required repairs to the value of £50.” This union seems
to have been divided about 1693, when {20 was raised within the
half-hundred of Hitchin and part of Broadwater Hundred to set up a
bridewell.* It is probably from this time that there was one house at
Hitchin and one at Hertford. As late as 1763 there was no house of
correction for the hundred of Dacorum, though one was needed.”

By the end of the 18th century the justices thought it better to send
all vagrants to a central county bridewell than to treat them in_ local
establishments. One was in building next the county jail in Hertford in
1790.* But some of the country justices cannot have agreed to this, as the
local houses were maintained in use. In 1807 the bridewell of the hundred
of Edwinstree and Odsey was still used.** In 1833 a committee reported to
the quarter sessions that the bridewells at Buntingford, Great Berkhampstead
and Hitchin should be abandoned *” as expensive and inefficient, but no
action can have followed, for in 1836 the justices declared that the
Berkhampstead house was of the greatest service.* The opinion of the
committee of 1833 that vagrants could be better dealt with at the county
bridewells finally prevailed. In 1843 the old houses at Buntingford,
Hitchin and Berkhampstead were disposed of.”

The employment of the workhouse and of the bridewell inmates was
usually the same. The earliest information about it comes from St. Albans
in 1618. One Stephen Langley, a clothier, made proposals to teach the
poor to manufacture ‘curious woolwork and excellent yarns.’* Even
earlier a scheme was drawn up under which eight towns were to unite to
have their poor instructed in cloth-making by a teacher from Hatfield.”
In 1630 J. Hockley, a flax-dresser from Ware, who was apparently also
keeper of the house of correction, contracted with the borough overseers to
teach wool and flax dressing, the spinning of woollen and linen threads
and the making of straw hats both to the paupers and to those in the house

18 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 353. 19 Thid. 153. 20 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1625-49, p. 585.
21 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 117. 22 Thid. 23 Thid. 409. *4 Thid. ii, gy.
35 Ibid. 168. 6 Ibid. 214. 7 Thid. 344. 28 Ibid. 363. 29 Thid. 418.
90 A. Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 282. 31 Tbid.

220

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

of correction. The overseers advanced £100 for a stock of flax and wool,
but this was to be repaid within seven years.” Possibly there was a
speculative element in the undertaking. Clearly, when the poor were
farmed the farmer could only make his profit by their earnings, and their
employment in textiles and straw went on into the 19th century. Until
1830 the parish children of Hatfield earned enough for their support at the
silk mills of a Mr. Woollam at St. Albans. The parish gave a shed, in
which the work was carried on; the children supervised the silk winding
and tied the threads when they snapped. The old men were employed on
the parish roads, earning 4s. to 4s. 6d.a week. This more than covered
their keep, which was reckoned at 35. 1d. a week, including all expenses.”
The straw-plaiting was still made by the St. Albans paupers under the
farmer in 1797, when they also made mops, but the cloth-work had ceased.

The housing of the poor came under the cognizance of the Privy
Council. The commissioners in 1630 ordered the justices to report on the
numbers of cottages newly built with a view to limiting the increase, and
the returns show that in the district of St. Albans there was practically no
building *; yet the want of cottages was great, owing to the working of the
Act of 1589* forbidding the erection of cottages without assigning 4 acres
of land to them, which was not repealed until 1775. That some standard of
comfort was maintained by public opinion is clear from presentments made
at the sessions of houses ‘unfit for a Christian to inhabit.’ Additional
accommodation could be made under the Act of 1589 by agreement between
the justices of the peace and the lord of the manor for the erection of
habitations for paupers on the waste.** In 1665, for example, the church-
wardens and overseers of Great Gaddesden petitioned the justices for an
order for cottage-building, as they ‘were exceedingly straithened for the
providing of habitations for the poor at exceeding dear rates as inmates with
other persons, whence they are frequently removed, and the petitioners
much troubled to replace them again.’ This limitation of cottage-building
led to great public dangers, especially in the towns. Overcrowding caused
fires * and the infection of many families with plague or pestilential fevers.
This seems to have been realized about the end of the 17th century. The
county juries were on the watch for the division of tenements.®

Early in the 19th century building had apparently not kept pace with
the population. At Hatfield in 1831 carpenters bought land and put up
cottages with no gardens, which let at the ‘very high rent’ of 25. to 2s. 64.
a week; but even those who disapproved of this speculative building
admitted that without it the poor could not have been housed at all.”

The inclosure of arable was unlikely to lead to quarrels, as each man’s
amount of arable was definite and the advantages obvious. It went on
steadily in the 17th century. Large part of the arable at Barnet was inclosed
before 1640." This was true at Aldenham and North Mimms.” Round

32 A. Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 282. 33 Poor Law Rep. (1831), 272.

348. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccccxviii, 21. 35 Stat. 31 Eliz. cap. 7; 15 Geo. III, cap. 32.

36 Many cottages erected in this way on the roadside waste may still be seen.

37 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 174. 38 Ibid. 347. 99 Ibid. ii, 23, 27. 4° Poor Law Rep. (1831), 273.

41 Chan, Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cclxxxiv, 15 ; cccix, 189 ; cccvii, 95 ; cccliv, 136.

#2 Ct. of Wards, Feod. Surv. 17; Cal. S. P. Dom. 1638-9, p. 2743; Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2),
cccclxxxi, 14.

221

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

St. Albans, too, the common fields were being cut up.* In this direction
round Bushey and Watford the inclosure of the common lands was probably
fairly complete by the end of the 17th century. Defoe looked from Bushey
Heath across a great parterre of inclosed cornfields.“ Higher up the Colne
Valley, at Berkhampstead, much of the arable had been lately sold as separate
parcels to the tenants.“ In the middle belt of the county, at Welwyn and
at Sacombe, the arable was in closes.“ Even in the north, in the manor of
Hoddenhoo (in Therfield), the demesne included closes of 28 acres, 16 acres
and ro acres.*7 At Ardley the arable was partly inclosed, partly in the
common field.#* Some inclosures had been made at Puttenham.** The
inclosure was sometimes made without the concurrence of the other open-
field farmers. Complaints of this are specially common in the last quarter of
the 17th century. A yeoman of Benington had inclosed land in the
common field, so too in Aston, Welwyn and Hoddesdon,” and a little
later in Weston." The slowness of the process, long after the advan-
tages were realized, proves how limited was the economic freedom of the
farmer.

The inclosure of meadow and pasture was usually made by parishes instead
of plot by plot, as in the case of the arable. The stint on common pastures
was constantly being regulated by manorial by-laws, for, as the commons
were broken into, the feeding became more valuable.” Lords, even
corporations, desired to have the commons apportioned, as being the gainers.
In no case has it been noticed that the other commoners were the petitioners,
and in very many cases they resisted with violence. In 1637 the Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul’s inclosed part of Caddington Wood ; the commoners
destroyed the palings and turned cattle into the sown parts.” Some of them,
however, had accepted the parts allotted. The difficulty may have been
that the chapter claimed common in the rest of the wood after the inclosure,
which the adjudicators only granted until the expiry of existing leases.“ At
Aldenham, about 1640, Lord Falkland tried to inclose, and twenty-seven of
the tenants bound themselves together to maintain their rights.* Part of
the common woods of Tring were inclosed before 1642, but during the Civil
War the inclosure was destroyed. At Great Berkhampstead the demesne
was to be farmed for profit. The park of 1,132 acres was leased as two
estates and the lord agreed with the commoners that he should inclose 300
acres of the common heath and leave the rest to them.” At Great
Berkhampstead and Little Gaddesden the Earl of Bridgewater was continually
disputing with the parishioners. In 1654 his plan to sell his wood on
common land was opposed by the commoners.” Some common lands at
Harpenden were inclosed before 1667"; the process was going on in
1728,® and there are still some open fields there.

43 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxvii, 101 ; cccxvi, 35 ; ccxcviii, 63 ; decxliv, 27 ; ccclxiii, 189.

44 Defoe, Tour through Gt. Britain, 1 (Letter iil). 4 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxv, fol. 1.

48 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccclxxvii, 13 ; Ct. of Wards. Feod. Surv. 17.

47 Add, MS. 36233, fol. 171 et seq., 195. 48 Close, 1649, pt. 1, no. 15.

49 Chan. Ing. p.m. (Ser. 2), cccxl, 8.

50 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 309. 51 Ibid. 395.

52 eo, Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 189, no. 30. 53 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1637, p. 448.

54 Ibid. 1639, p. 309. 55 Doc. in possession of Lord Aldenham.

56 Parl. Surv. Herts. no. 29. 57 Tbid. no. 7. 58 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Ree.), i, 109.
59D, and C. of Westm. Ct. R. of Wheathampstead. 6 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec ), ii, 66.

222

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

The scientific farmers of the 18th century pleaded against the common
fields. In 1795 the twenty-one years’ lease of inclosed land was held up by a
Herts. farmer as preferable to tenancy in the common fields"; he pointed to
the case of Ashwell, where the farmers sowed clover on the common ™® field
and fenced it off until wheat-sowing time, thus obtaining inclosure in
effect. He maintained that inclosures of the waste and common did not
decrease the population in Hertfordshire, as they were made for tillage, and
said that the commons and waste still open * were mostly sheep-down skirting
Cambridgeshire.“ This was not a wide enough estimate. Inclosures
proceeded slowly in the first half of the 18th century. Acts were passed for
Barnet and Chipping Barnet in 1728 and 1731. In the second half it
was quicker throughout the county. Between 1766 and 1776 Acts were
passed for Elstree, Hexton, Walsworth (Hitchin), Lilley, Offley and
Ickleford %; for almost twenty years there were no further Acts, but after 1795
they followed one another rapidly. To connect this with the Corn Law of
1791 is hardly fanciful. Kelshall, which was already partly inclosed, Norton,
King’s Walden, Tring, Weston, Kensworth, Cheshunt and the parishes of
St. John’s and All Saints in Hertford obtained Acts before 1801. The total
area inclosed since 1766 was 20,524 acres.

Between 1802 and 1820 Inclosure Acts were passed for Hinxworth,
Cottered, Tring, Offley, Barley, Bushey, Codicote, Welwyn, Knebworth,
Pirton, Wymondley, Ippollitts, Braughing, Westmill, Great Hormead and
Bishop’s Stortford.* In 1826-30 Anstey and in 1830 Standon and Reed
were inclosed,® making a total of 8,464 acres inclosed between 1802 and
1845."

For the twenty-five years after the general Hertfordshire Inclosure Act
of 1845 inclosures proceeded pretty steadily. Awards were made for Little
Gaddesden,” Therfield,” Walkern, Bengeo, Sacombe, Stapleford, Great and
Little Munden, Buckland, Stevenage,” Ware and Bengeo,” Watford Field,
Hoddesdon, Widford, Aston, Benington, Little Hadham, Ashwell, Little
Hormead, Layston,” Northchurch,” Datchworth, Knebworth, Throcking,
Albury, Aspenden and Wyddial, an extent of over 11,000 acres. Hitchin was
inclosed in 1877 and 1886.” There is still a good deal of uninclosed land in
the county, and in the cases of Bygrave, Wallington and Clothall the entire
parishes remain uninclosed and the open-field system can there be seen. The
importance of these inclosures can hardly be overestimated. Because they
were for tillage, they did not injure the labourer as some of the 1 5th-century
inclosures had done. They represented the farthest limits to which tillage
could be extended under the stimulus of war prices, an extension which peace
could not support.

Between the 17th and the end of the 18th century there was a change
in the size of the Hertfordshire holdings. In 1618 there were tenements in
Tewin, of which five were of 100 acres and upwards, five of 50 acres and

61D, Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 62 Tbid. 83 Tbid. 64 Tbid.

85 Priv. Act, 2 Geo. II, cap. 19. 86 Tbid. 16 Geo. III, cap. 28.

87 Slater, Engl. Peasantry and Encl. of Common Fields, 280-1. 88 Ibid. ; V.C.H. Herzs. ii, 180, 281.
89 Slater, loc. cit. ; Com. Pleas Recov. R. Mich. 3 Will. IV, m. 2; 10 Geo. IV, m. 23.

7 Slater, loc. cit. 11 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 208.

72 Com. Pleas Recov. R. East. 12 Vict. m. 2. 73 Slater, loc. cit. 74 Blue Bk. Incl. Awards, 63.
7 Slater, loc. cit. 8 W.C.H. Herts. ti, 285. 7 Blue Bk. Incl, Awards, 64.

223

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

eight between 20 and 49 acres. In 1738 twenty-nine men held land at Ridge,
the largest estate being 682 acres; of these six farmed on a four-course
rotation including clover. The new farmers preferred to have about
100 to 200 acres.™ Round Redbourn in 1797 farms ranged from
15 acres to about 300.” But in general less than 100 acres was hardly
profitable.

Another change was taking place. This is apparent in a list of
freeholders and copyholders with estates worth £10 a year in 16yg.” This
list shows what a large number of the landowners did not belong to the
parishes. At Datchworth there were seventeen estates, only four of which
belonged to Datchworth men. At Yardley only six out of fourteen were
local men; at St. John’s, Hertford, four out of five, the fifth being a
Londoner. Indeed, the number of Londoners is a further illustration of the
investment of London capital in Herts. The extreme cases are at Buckland,
where none of the seven owners belonged to the parish ; Ashwell, where six of
the twenty-one landholders were the tenants of one man ; and Radwell, where
‘Mr. Bell owns the whole parish.” The farmer was often a tenant. The
landlord let instead of farming. Hence capital in agriculture was partly in
the hands of the landlords, who advanced to their tenants, and partly in the
hands of the farmers themselves. The need for capital became specially
acute after 1795, when poor land was taken into use. At Tyttenhanger in
1800 a large amount of pasture was improved at great expense by the
tenant on capital borrowed from the owner, Lord Hardwicke. Round
Hatfield improvements were overdone; land was tilled which could only
give a profit at famine prices.

Copyhold tenure in Hertfordshire was losing its old incidents, such as
heriot and the fine on alienation or letting,” and many farms were probably
held in this way. The tenants at will were held to be dangerous, as they
racked the land.” In 1795 one expert advised landlords to grant their
inclosed lands on twenty-one years’ leases.™

Rents were not high even at the end of the prosperous 18th century. In
rural districts arable was about 12s. an acre. At Redbourn it was 155., and
near St. Albans, where the situation was an advantage, as much as 50s."
Meadow fell in value before 1732 in consequence of the use of artificial
grasses. It was worth £3 at Redbourn in 1797. Even in the year
1810-11, when agricultural rents in general reached their highest point, they
were untouched in North Hertfordshire, and the farmers in this district
were solvent, though not rich, after fifteen years of peace. Possibly farming
in Hertfordshire was less speculative than in other parts, even after the
Corn Law of 1815, as the soil was naturally tillage ground. But speculative
farmers were probably more plentiful near London in South Hertfordshire.
This is the district where in 1795 many farms were insufficiently stocked
with plough teams.”

The council and the justices watched over the corn market in the
17th century as carefully as in the 16th. The chief markets were

78D. Walker, op. cit. 79 Eden, op. cit. ii, 275. 89 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 4 et seq.
81 e.g. Hitchin Parl. Surv. Herts. no. 22, and Notebook of the manors of the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster. 82D. Walker, op. cit. * Tbid. 4 Eden, op. cit. ii, 271, 275.
< Ellis, Practical Farmer. 6 Eden, op. cit. ii, 275. 7 D. Walker, op. cit.

224

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

Hertford, St. Albans,® Royston,” Hemel Hempstead” and Ware.” The
markets were ruled by the justices. In April 1631 ‘we of St. Albans do
continually look that the market be served and that no corn be sold
privately in shops.’** Although the market was very great, there were so
many buyers for the provision of London that the price rose daily till the
justices frightened the ‘ chiefest’’ away, when the price fell to 4s. a bushel.”
In January 1633 the market was well supplied, but the price was 5s. 6d. a
bushel. In 1631 the justices of Edwinstree and Odsey made a complaint
which seems to show that the London merchant was widening the area
within which he bought. ‘Our great corn market at Royston is still stored
with corn out of Cambridgeshire insomuch that our own farmers are forced
to send their corn upward to Hertford market.’ The harvest had been so
plentiful that the justices wisely said that the less they interfered the more
the prices would fall. New wheat was 5s. a bushel, old wheat 6s. a bushel,
in August.*° This was about the rate at Redbourn and Tyttenhanger in
1637” and in the district round Hertford and Ware in 1655. ‘Ten years
later at Standon the bushel was worth 4,.,° and, indeed, the price remained
stable to the end of the century.’

Besides the fixing of prices, the justices supervised sales through the
licensing of dealers. Unlicensed higglers were as plentiful in the 17th
century as they had been in the 16th. Sometimes these outside dealers were
men interested in other branches of the trade attracted by the profits of the
sale, as when a maltman and two mealmen of Watford and Elstree bought
up grain in Watford market for resale." Sometimes gentlemen or yeomen
bought and sold as badgers of grain.” Nor was much capital necessary
for labourers engaged in the trade.’ In very many parishes there was one
of these illicit traders, in some, such as Hatfield or King’s Langley, three
or four. Unlicensed merchants increased in numbers in spite of the work
of the sessions.

Moreover, the justices could not prevent the increase of sales outside
the market. A yeoman with a little money would buy up the supply of his
village.* The farmer was willing to sell at his barn doors contrary to the
statute. Even a clerk would lie in wait on the roads leading to the great
markets and engross 100 quarters of wheat and 200 of barley.” Possibly
this was commoner in the south and west of the county than in the poorer
north-east, where the justices stated in 1631 that they had no engrossers of
corn.’ In the last half of the 17th century buyers forestalled the crop before
it was cut.®

The peculiarity of the trade was the struggle between the London and
the local markets, which raised prices in Hertfordshire. But after the time
of Elizabeth this difficulty seems to have been mitigated. In the 18th
century the country bakers kept the coarser kinds of grain almost entirely ;

88 Duchy of Lanc. Dep. 6 Jas. I, no. 60. 89S. P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 43.

9° Ibid. cxcviii, 39 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. xi, 274.

1 V.C.H. Herts. ti, 217-18. 82 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 24.

8 §, P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 43. %4 Tbid. 9% Ibid. ccxxxi, 19.

96 Ibid. cxci, 39. 97 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1635-7, p. 274. 98 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 109.
9 Ibid. 166. 100 Thid. 237. 1 Ibid. 50. 2 Ibid. 278, 28; ii, 2.

3 Ibid. i, 329; ti, 28. 4 Thid. i, 329. 5 Ibid. 61. ® Ibid. 315.

T Ibid. rog. 8S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cxcvili, 39.

® Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 140, 1443 cf. 166 and 171.

4 225 29

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the fine went to London, but the dealers tried to keep the same prices in
both markets. In 1770 the justices of St. Albans even tied the bread prices
together. The assize of bread was to be regulated by the London assize,
the wheaten peck loaf being 2d. less in St. Albans than in London and other
loaves in proportion.” London was drawing supplies always from more
distant counties. Nevertheless this stimulus made the corn trade and corn-
growing for the market the employment on which the county depended.

The golden age of the Hertfordshire corn dealer began about 1750.
Prices were rising. The quartern wheaten loaf, which was 53d. at St. Albans
in 1751, was 7d. in 1768 and the household loaf had risen 2d." in 1772,
when wheat was 7s. a bushel.’ When the great rise came in the local
buyers were outbid. Scarcity began to approach famine. In September
1795 crowds besieged the bakers’ shops at Baldock, demanding that bread
should be lower. One baker told them from a window that he could not
lower it without consulting the other bakers.’* But the remedy did not lie
in their hands, for bread could not be cheaper until the London corn
market was glutted for some time. The shortage prompted the justices to
reduce their household consumption of wheat by one-third until the bushel
had come down to 8s.* They were binding themselves, without knowing
it, for twenty years. The allowances to prisoners had to be increased and
the misery of the debtors induced the justices to grant them bread at the
felons’ rate.* But year after year prices remained up. In 1801 the quartern
loaf was 15. 33d. in October and rose steadily to 1s. 834. in the following
January.” It sank 1d. in February, but reached 1s. rod. by the end of
March. By the end of May it had come down to 1s. 44d., the price until
the end of July.” The harvest must have been good, for in 1803, in the
Easter quarter, the loaf was but 83d. to 84d." The next year’s prices were
also low,” 7#d. to 8d. in July and 113¢. at Michaelmas ; afterwards, while
they ran up to 15s. 4d. at Christmas 1805,” they never dropped below 1s.
until after the harvest. ‘They hovered about 1s. for the rest of 1806”! and
this cheapness seems to have lasted till the end of 1808. From 1809 to
1812 the rise is perceptible. In June 1813 the loaf was 1s. 7#¢.” The
quality of the grain was often poor. In 1815 the rent of the tolls of
St. Albans market was reduced because of its inferiority * ; but the price of
the loaf did not fall. The average price of the bushel from - 1799 to 1820 was
1os. 23d.* But the war time and war prices were over and the price of corn
came down. In 1830 the average for the country was 7s. 6d. a bushel.”

The corn trade was flourishing in the 17th century and with it the
malt trade with London expanded.

Malting was an ancient occupation, but it now began to be of
commercial importance in the whole area of the Lea Valley and up to the
borders of Cambridge. The change was accomplished about the end of
the 16th century.”

10 A. E. Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 137. "4 Ibid. 126, 136. 1? Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 23.

1 Tbid. 179. M4 Tbid. 183. 1 Ibid. 195, 243. 16 Tbid. 196, 200. 17 Thid.

18 Ibid. 251. 19 Thid. 204. 20 Ibid. 206~7. 21 Ibid. 273. 22 Thid. 220, 233-4, 239.
23 Gibbs, op. cit. 166. 34 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 259, 281. 25 Ibid. 330.

°6 cf. W. Harrison, Deser. of Britain (1587). ‘Our malt is made all the year long in some great

towns, but in yeomen’s and gentlemen’s houses the winter half is thought the best. They make sufficient
for their own expense only.’

226

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

Between Royston and Ware the great malt-wagons tore up the roads.”
The sessions order that in winter malt must be conveyed on pack-horses was
probably ineffective.* Maltsters were beginning to make for the London
consumer. They were growing rich.” With characteristic dread of a rapid
growth of production for distant markets, the council endeavoured to suppress
these unnecessary persons. In 1631 the justices of St. Albans and Cashio
promised to deal with them at the next sessions.”

The ‘restraint of malt making’ continued for five years, and in 1637
the harm involved was set forth on behalf of Baldock, Stortford, Hitchin,
Ashwell and Royston. ‘Most maltsters are employed by gentlemen and
others, who send them barleys to be malted for provision for their houses.
Also widows and others with some small stock buy barley and hire the
malting. These poor maltsters are very useful to the county and pay good
rents ; but being restrained must turn day labourers, of whom many already
want work.’*' The effort to repress the trade was probably unsuccessful,
for complaints of the mialt-wagons were raised throughout the eastern side
of the county in 1646. The increase of maltsters in Ware was also
pointed out.

By the end of the 18th century the maltsters of Stortford had something
like a monopoly of the supply to London porter brewers. They received
their corn from Cambridgeshire and Essex as well as Hertfordshire.*
Malting has remained one of the principal trades of the shire. Forty years
ago Ware was said to make more malt than any other town.*

In the 17th century the Hertfordshire labourer may have been
occasionally a landholder. At Tewin, for instance, in 1618 among the thirty
holdings in the parish there were four of 5 acres, which suggests that their
owners did not live entirely by farm produce.* But these landed labourers
were an ever-dwindling number. In 1794 the Ashwell cottagers still had the
right to put two cows each on the common, but they were mostly too poor
to keep one.** The only way in which they obtained the use of a little land
was by such a custom as that of the Hatfield farmers, who used to give their
labourers little plots to cultivate.”

The labourers’ earnings did not vary much between 1600 and 1700.
In 1591 the rates were fixed as follows: mowers received 8¢. to 12d. an
acre for wheat or grass, and other halms proportionately down to oats at $d.
an acre; raking and cocking was 5d. or 4d. an acre. Men reaped for 6d. a
day with food and rod. without, and women for 5d. or 8d. ‘Threshing was
paid by the quarter and varied, according to the grain, from 6d. to 12d. Day
labourers earned 4d. a day with food or 8¢. without from March to
September; the winter wages were probably a little less. For a servant hired
by the year the highest wage was £2 a year with a livery, or £2 65.
without ; shepherds 335. 4¢. with a livery. These wages may be compared
with those current in 1632. Mowers then had 10d. to 14d. (a day ?) ; or if
paid by the acre, from 2s. to 1s. for the toughest sorts of grass to 8d. for oats.

1 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1631-3, pp. 66, 404, 409-10. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 1636-7, p. 404.
80 §, P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 43. 31Ca/. §. P. Dom. 1636-7, pp. 323-4.

32 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 86; cf. also ii, 24. 33 Rep. on Public Breweries (1819), 9-13.
34 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. i, 131. 35 Add. MS. 33575, fol. 97. 36 Walker, op. cit.
37 Poor Law Rep. (1831), 276. 38 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 8-12.

227

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Raking and cocking was 6d. to 7d. Reaping corn was worth 8d. a day
with food or 12d. without. Labourers earned daily in the winter 4d. or
sd.** But this rate seems to have been commonly exceeded.” Thus it
will be seen that there was a rise from 1d. to 2d. in the pay for most kinds
of harvest work since 1591. The prescribed rate of wages for the rest of
the year was less changed.

We have a table of wages for the year 1677 which is unfortunately less
detailed, but it nevertheless indicates a change in the manner of hiring. It
shows that labourers’ pay was given by the week or year instead of the
former payment by the day. Ploughmen had 5s. to 6s. a week and shepherds
had 35. 4d. a week or £3 105. a year to 4s. a week or {5 a year, more than
double the rate of 1632. Labourers at large had from £4 to £5 a year or
from 32d. to 53d¢.aday."" There is thus a great rise in the yearly wages since
1632. This may mean a rise since the Civil War, or that farm servants even
when hired for a year lived out and provided their own food. The last
interpretation seems the more probable. During the 18th century wages
rose, but the state of the labourers was not as much improved as might be
expected. The increased mobility of labour told against them. The ease
of travel round London allowed labourers from other counties to come for
the harvest, which was the most profitable time for them. At the end ot
the 18th century these outsiders harvested most of the crops in the south of
the county. The pay for the harvest month was two guineas a week with
food and lodging,” or if by the piece 5s. to 7s. for reaping an acre of wheat,
or 8d. to 1s. for mowing an acre of oats and barley. A quarter of barley
or oats or a load of corn was threshed for 1s. or 18¢."° Harvest work was
better paid than in 1677, in spite of the increased supply of labour.

The ordinary work of the farm was done chiefly by the farm servants,
so that the married labourer living in his cottage was hard pressed for a
living. The rise was greater in the yearly wage than in that of the day
labourer. Carters and ploughmen had from 6 to g guineas, the thresher 6
or 7 guineas. Day labourers employed throughout the year by the same
farmer had 7s. a week and small beer except for the harvest month, when
they had gs.a week. There was a rise here above the rates of 1677, though
not so large as in the other case. Seven shillings was probably about the
average rate, for in 1796-7 it was the wage of the roundsmen at Hinxworth
and the average at Redbourn.“ A good labourer could sometimes get work
on an agreement for some weeks at a time for 10s. or 125. a week, but this
could not be kept up. The father’s earnings could rarely be above ros. a
week for the winter half-year.* The rest of the family might earn a little.
In the 17th century the clothier or draper might still make his rounds to
the cottages for yarn. Even in 1795 the cottagers’ wives spun 1 1b. of wool
at prices from 6d. to gd. according to the quality. But as a source of income
the spinning was negligible, as the women rarely spun more than 1 Ib. a
week in winter.“ About 1785 the place of spinning was being taken in
the northern part of the county towards Dunstable by straw-plaiting.” This

39 A, E. Gibbs, op. cit. 287. 49 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 233, 130. 41 Ibid. 292.
42D. Walker, op. cit. 8 Thid.
44 Eden, State of Poor, iii, 342; ii, 275 et seq. 45 Tbid.

48 Ibid. ili, 342. 47D, Walker, op. cit.

228

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

manufacture spread from this point and was practised at Hatfield before
1812. At this work the women and children could earn between them as
much as the men. Round Hitchin in 1817 the result was that the girls
were kept from school and knew nothing but how to plait.* Cobbett saw
the straw-plait on sale at Tring in 1829, but commented on the use of Tuscan
straw, when, as he said, English straw was as good.“*

The wonder was that these families could live at all. By the end of
the 18th century their food supplies were largely drawn from an area outside
the county ; groceries and other victuals passed through London even when
they came from the north, and the prices were higher than in London. The
labourers bought their inferior bacon at the little village chandlers’ shops,
where even bread was dear.“ The hardship was so great that parish
provision stores were suggested.” At Hinxworth in 1796 pork was
10d. a pound and meat 6¢., and fully half the family income was spent on
bread, flour or oatmeal, and 3d. or 6d. a week to the baker for heating his
oven.” At St. Albans the meat prices were much the same and bread
114d. the quartern loaf.” In spite of the appearance of great poverty, some
saving was possible. At St. Albans there were two friendly societies with
about 100 members altogether before 1797.% At the same time at
Redbourn, a rural district, there were three societies.™

The conditions of the labourer’s life did not change much during the
time of high corn prices, except so far as he felt the scarcity almost more
than anyone else. Possibly wages may have risen a little under this
pressure, for they tended up to gs. or ros. to 125. a week.” From about
1820 the prices of food began to fall,” and, although the farmers suffered,
the labourers’ wages remained steady, a fact which implies that it was
practically a minimum wage relative to the supply of labour and the cost
of living, for labour had been fully employed on all the land taken into
cultivation. In 1830 at Hitchin people still believed that unemployment
was accidental and due to the farmers’ lack of capital. ‘There is more than
sufficient employment if the farmers had capital enough.’” But at Hatfield,
at least, the fall in the price of food more than balanced any contraction of
the labour market. Moreover, the women earned 8s. to tos. and the
children 3s. to 5s. by their straw-work, which was sold in the open market
at St. Albans or to dealers who came round to the cottages.” Often, too,
capitalists gave out the plait as piecework, paid on delivery.” In addition
the rector and the parish authorities of Hatfield encouraged thrift in every
way. A Sunday bank started about 1820 had £100 in the first year, and
in 1830 £375 from 142 depositors, of whom 111 were labourers.” Nearly
all the inhabitants of the parish were in benefit societies.” At Hertford in
1817 even the poorest labourers subscribed to a savings bank.” There
was 2 friendly society at Wheathampstead earlier, in 1812," and the now
famous Buntingford Society dates from the early part of the century.

48 Poor Law Rep. (1818), 94. 48a Cobbett, Rural Rides, 23 Sept. 1829.

49 Walker, op. cit. 50 Tbid. 51 Eden, op. cit. ili, 342.
52 Tbid. ii, 271. 53 [bid. 54 Thid. 275.

55 Poor Law Rep. (1818), 84; (1831), 276. * Thid. 87 Ibid. (1831), 273+
58 Ibid. 278. 59 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 410.

60 Poor Law Rep. (1831), 276-7. 81 Ibid. 278.

8 Ibid. (1818), 122. 83 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 234.

229

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

About 1830 agricultural unemployment in the southern counties was
said to have reached its maximum. But in 1848, in spite of repeal, the
increase of population and the increased use of agricultural machinery, the
Hertfordshire labourers were in good and steady work.”

In 1846 Feargus O’Connor acquired Heronsgate, or Herringsgate, near
Chorley Wood, for £2,344 in the interest of the future National Land
Company.” After 1g acres of coppice had been grubbed up for arable the
whole 103 acres were laid out for agriculture on O’Connor’s plan. The
thirty-five allotments varied from 2 to 4 acres. Thirty-five cottages were
built ; at first the 2-acre houses were built with three rooms, the 3-acre
houses with four and 4-acre houses with five.” Later all the cottages were
built on the same plan; each had a flagged day-room with a bedroom on
each side,” a back kitchen, dairy, cowhouse, henhouse and pigsty." They
were well built. The schoolhouse built by the company had 2 acres of
ground attached ; in addition, the master was paid by the parents.” The
cost of these buildings and the clearing and manuring of the ground was
about £6,700.”

The directors expected to ‘reproduce’ this sum by the profits of the
sales of the allotments, the prices of which would rise through the labour
put into the ground by the tenants.” In the meantime the tenants were to
pay as rent 4 per cent. on the outlay, or £9 105. rod. on a 3-acre holding.”
But after some had been settled for twelve months the calculations necessary
to fix the cottage-rents had not been begun.” The allotments were to be
cultivated by hand labour. Herringsgate, or O’Connorville, was fully settled
in about a year. The mistakes of the promoter were at once revealed.
The men who came to take up the holdings were small tradesmen, merchants
or weavers from the manufacturing towns. They understood the ground as
little as their wives understood the henhouse or dairy ; they even had to buy
bread because they knew not how to bake. After nearly a year’s settlement
they had made no provision of manure, except in so far as a landowner allowed
them to collect rotten leaves in the woods. They put in their potato harvest,
saying that they must take their chance. They could not bear an out-of-
door life and hired at 12s. a week labourers to whom the farmers paid 8s. to
gs.“ The prospect for the poor settlers was rather the workhouse than the
idyllic homestead.

This mistake was a gross one, but the next was ironically near the truth.
The settlers were engaged to cultivate the land, by spade and fork, for
the same crops as farmers of 100 acres. Evidence taken before the
committee proved that vegetables were profitable on such holdings. The
proximity to London was another argument in favour of what we should
call French gardening or intensive culture. But it was madness to put men
who were not even labourers into competition with farmers, spade work into
competition with the plough in arable farming, handwork into competition
with the best machinery.” Moreover, Herringsgate was pasture land.”
What the scheme represented in the country-side is shown by the attitude of

64 National Land Co. Rep. iv, 33. 85 Ibid. i, 1847-8. 86 Ibid. ii, 42.
67 Ibid. iv, 24. 68 Thid. ili, 27. 69 Ibid. 70 Tbid.
7 Ibid. 72 Thid. iv, 23. 3 Tbid. iii, 27. 7 Ibid.

% Ibid. iv, 31 et seq. 78 Ibid.

230

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

the labourers. They would have liked, they said, to try to make a living on
the holdings if they were able to plough.” The cottages were exactly what
was needed in Hertfordshire.” If the scheme had been planned for the
agricultural labourer, with greater experience of farming, it might have been
prosperous and beneficial. It represented, however, ‘the townsman’s dream
of country life.’

In the crafts wages seem to have remained fairly steady over a long
period.

The rating of the justices in 1591-2 puts the carpenters, masons, joiners,
plasterers, wheel and plough wrights, bricklayers and tilers into one class.
From March to September masters or the best journeymen took 8d. a day
and their meals, or 12d. in all. The scale for the worst workmen was
4d. or 8d. For the winter the highest rate was 6d. with food or 11d. a
day, and the lowest 3¢. or 72." Tailors and shoemakers’ journeymen, hired
by the year, received from 30s. to 535.”

These wages are lower than those fixed at St. Albans in 1632.
Artificers of the best sort took 1s. a day and food or 15. 4d., those of the
worst sort 5¢. with food or rod." The 15. a day was paid to labourers some
twenty-five years later.”

In 1677 the crafts are grouped rather differently. Carpenters and
bricklayers were getting the highest wages, ranging from 15. 10. to Is. a
day ; tailors and ‘all artificers’ received 8¢. and food or 1s. 2d.% In 1682
builders and carpenters were earning Is. or Is. 2d. a day.“ The rise in the
hundred years is not great. Apparently the wage was a sufficient one until
the rise in the price of food about 1790. It is not until this time that
labour troubles appear. But then several cases suggest that even in
Hertfordshire industrial labourers grasped at the idea of combination. In
1790 eleven journeymen paper-makers employed by one Vallance at his
mill in Bishop’s Hatfield joined to compel him to raise their wages 1s. a week.
They threatened to leave if he would not do so.” In 1796 some labourers at
Ware struck work. They tried to force four barge-masters and maltsters,
their employers, to raise their wages, and attempted to frighten the black-
legs away.” In such cases the labourers must always have lost, as the
‘ conspiring’ was an indictable offence.

From the end of the 17th century labourers and yeomen and artificers
were gradually being drawn into retail trading. Men of the most diverse
callings ‘ practised the mystery of a grocer without apprenticeship. The
grocer is the commonest case.” Higglers of dead victual were also becoming
very numerous.” This growth of retail trade corresponds in time with the
development of the corn and malt trades, of which it was probably the
effect.

The same period shows signs of capitalism among the workmen. ‘The
evidence is clearest as to carpenters. In 1663 two carpenters and four masons
estimated for the repair of Welwyn steeple. They undertook the carpenters’

1 National Land Co. Rep. iv, 31 et seq. 78 See above.

79 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 8-12. 80 Tbid.

81 Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 281. 82 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 130.
83 Ibid. 292. 84 Thid. 339. 85 Ibid. ii, 167.

86 Ibid. 1825 cf. also 249 and 277.

87 Tbid. i, 45, 155, 183, 244, 254, 329. 88 Ibid. 62, 230, 350, 368; cf. 373.

231

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and masons’ work, the water carriage and the casting of bells.” In 1682 a
single carpenter paid the carpenters and masons and supplied the materials.”
At Ayot St. Lawrence in 1772 a ‘workman and artificer’ estimated for the
work of carpenters, plumbers, glaziers, blacksmiths and painters.”

Modern Hertfordshire has accepted much from the past. The shire is
still mainly agricultural. Much land is let in arable farms averaging about
250 acres. Fifteen years ago the acreage under wheat and corn was
shrinking, but the cultivation of oats was increasing.” Easy transport to
the London markets protected the Hertfordshire farmer to some extent ; but
the fall in the price of grain has not been balanced by decreased cost of
production. Declining profits have enforced considerable reductions of
agricultural rents.”

Nevertheless, in 1908 50,661 acres were under wheat, 21,381 under
barley and 39,316 under oats.”

The innovations in agriculture have taken place in the south and along
the railways. Dairy farms have been begun, but the want of pasture can
only be overcome by growing the feed on the arable.” Poultry and pigs
and vegetables are also raised for the London market.

Agricultural labour is said to be fairly plentiful and good, but it bears
a smaller ratio to the population than it must have done formerly. In 1861
the agriculturists were only 25 per cent. of the whole.”

In 1895 wages in the northern part of the shire were 125. a week and
had been as high as 14s.” In the next few years the winter wages rose
about 1s. to 13s. The summer wages rose by about as much ; they varied
from 11s. round Royston to 15s. round Watford.”

The Hertfordshire towns have grown but very little in size in the last
forty years. The population of Hertford has increased by 2,153 persons
only.” Hitchin has now 10,072 inhabitants, Barnet and Bishop’s Stortford
a little above 7,000. Hemel Hempstead, on the other hand, has over
11,000, and St. Albans has more than doubled the 8,200 inhabitants of
io7i;"

d London is affecting Berkhampstead, St. Albans, Bushey, Watford and the
_ Lea Valley, and will probably do so more and more. It is in these regions
that the population is increasing most rapidly. But the garden city, in the
extreme north, shows how long the arm of London is. Planned for those
who work in town, Letchworth is an interesting antithesis to Herringsgate.

Hertfordshire has developed in one new direction. ‘The comparative
cheapness of land and the ease of transport have fostered various new
industries. There are many factories in the southern part of the shire. It
may be with these that the future of the county will lie.

89 Sess, R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 159 5 cf 264. ® Ibid. 339. 91 Tbid. ii, 125.

92 Parl, Papers (1895), C. 7691, xvi, 79. % Tbid. 4 Accts. and Papers (1908), CxXi, 130-1
95 Par). Papers (1895), C. 7691, xvi, 79- % Accts. and Papers (1868-9) (4197), xxvili, 245.
87 Parl. Papers (1895), C. 7691, xvi, 79. % Acts. and Papers (1899), xci, 127.

99 Par). Papers (1878-9), C. 2372, xxvill, 409. 100 Tbid.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

TABLE OF POPULATION, 1801 to 1901

Introductory Notes
AREA

The county taken in this table is that existing subsequently to 7 & 8 Vict., chap. 61 (1844).
By this Act detached parts of counties, which had already for parliamentary purposes been
amalgamated with the county by which they were surrounded or with which the detached part
had the longest common boundary (2 & 3 Will. IV, chap. 64—1832), were annexed to the same
county for all purposes ; some exceptions were, however, permitted.

By the same Act (7 & 8 Vict., chap. 61) the detached parts of counties, transferred to other
counties, were also annexed to the hundred, ward, wapentake, &c., by which they were wholly o1
mostly surrounded, or to which they next adjoined, in the counties to which they were transferred.
The hundreds, &c., in this table also are given as existing subsequently to this Act.

As is well known, the famous statute of Queen Elizabeth for the relief of the poor took the
then-existing ecclesiastical parish as the unit for Poor Law relief. This continued for some
centuries with but few modifications; notably by an Act passed in the thirteenth year of the
reign of Charles II which permitted townships and villages to maintain their own poor. This
permission was necessary owing to the large size of some of the parishes, especially in the north of
England.

In 1801 the parish for rating purposes (now known as the civil parish, i.e. ‘an area for which
a separate poor rate is or can be made, or for which a separate overseer is or can be appointed ’)
was in most cases co-extensive with the ecclesiastical parish of the same name; but already there
were numerous townships and villages rated separately for the relief of the poor, and also there
were many places scattered up and down the country, known as extra-parochial places, which paid
no rates at all. Further, many parishes had detached parts entirely surrounded by another
parish or parishes.

Parliament first turned its attention to extra-parochial places, and by an Act (20 Vict.,
chap. 19—1857) it was laid down (a) that all extra-parochial places entered separately in the
1851 census returns are to be deemed civil parishes, (4) that in any other place being, or being
reputed to be, extra-parochial, overseers of the poor may be appointed, and (c) that where, however,
owners and occupiers of two-thirds in value of the land of any such place desire its annexation to
an adjoining civil parish, it may be so added with the consent of the said parish. This Act was
not found entirely to fulfil its object, so by a further Act (31 & 32 Vict., chap. 122—1868) it was
enacted that every such place remaining on 25 December 1868 should be added to the parish
with which it had the longest common boundary.

The next thing to be dealt with was the question of detached parts of civil parishes, which
was done by the Divided Parishes Acts of 1876, 1879, and 1882. The last, which amended the
one of 1876, provides that every detached part of an entirely extra-metropolitan parish which is
entirely surrounded by another parish becomes transferred to this latter for civil purposes, or if
the population exceeds 300 persons it may be made a separate parish. These Acts also gave
power to add detached parts surrounded by more than one parish to one or more of the surrounding
parishes, and also to amalgamate entire parishes with one or more parishes. Under the 1879
Act it was not necessary for the area dealt with to be entirely detached. These Acts also declared
that every part added to a parish in another county becomes part of that county.

Then came the Local Government Act, 1888, which permits the alteration of civil parish
boundaries and the amalgamation of civil parishes by Local Government Board orders. It also
created the administrative counties. The Local Government Act of 1894 enacts that where a
civil parish is partly in a rural district and partly in an urban district each part shall become a
separate civil parish ; and also that where a civil parish is situated in more than one urban district
each part shall become a separate civil parish, unless the county council otherwise direct.

Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical parishes had been altered and new ones created under entirely
different Acts, which cannot be entered into here, as the table treats of the ancient parishes in
their civil aspect.

PopuLaTIoN

The first census of England was taken in 1801, and was very little more than a counting
of the population in each parish (or place), excluding all persons, such as soldiers, sailors, &c., who
formed no part of its ordinary population. It was the de facto population (i.e. the population
actually resident at a particular time) and not the de jure (i.e. the population really belonging

to any particular place at a particular time). This principle has been sustained throughout the
censuses.

4 233 3°

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The Army at home (including militia), the men of the Royal Navy ashore, and the registered
seamen ashore, were not included in the population of the places where they happened to be,
at the time of the census, until 1841. The men of the Royal Navy and other persons on board
vessels (naval or mercantile) in home ports were first included in the population of those places
in 1851. Others temporarily present, such as gipsies, persons in barges, &c., were included in
1841, and perhaps earlier.

GENERAL

Up to and including 1831 the returns were mainly made by the overseers of the poor, and
more than one day was allowed for the enumeration, but the 1841-I901 returns were made under
the superintendence of the registration officers and the enumeration was to be completed in one
day. The Householder’s Schedule was first used in 1841. The exact dates of the censuses are as
follows :—

10 March 1801 30 May 1831 8 April 1861 6 April 1891
27 May 1811 7 June 1841 3 April 1871 1 April 1901
28 May 1821 31 March 1851 4 April 1881

Notes ExpLaANATORY OF THE TABLE

This table gives the population of the ancient county and arranges the parishes, &c., under
the hundred or other subdivision to which they belong, but there is no doubt that the constitution
of hundreds, parishes, &c., was in some cases doubtful.

In the main the table follows the arrangement in the 1841 census volume.

The table gives the population and area of each parish, &c., as it existed in 1801, as far as
possible.

The areas are those supplied by the Ordnance Survey Department, except in the case of those
marked ‘ e,’ which were calculated by other authorities. The area includes inland water (if any),
but not tidal water or foreshore.

T after the name of a civil parish indicates that the parish was affected by the operation of
the Divided Parishes Acts, but the Registrar-General failed to obtain particulars of every such
change. The changes which escaped notification were, however, probably small in area and with
little, if any, population. Considerable difficulty was experienced both in 1891 and 1go1 in tracing
the results of changes effected in civil parishes under the provisions of these Acts ; by the Registrar-
General’s courtesy, however, reference has been permitted to certain records of formerly detached
parts of parishes, which has made it possible approximately to ascertain the population in 1901
of parishes as constituted prior to such alterations, though the figures in many instances must be
regarded as partly estimates.

* after the name of a parish (or place) indicates that such parish (or place) contains a union
workhouse which was in use in (or before) 1851 and was still in use in 1901.

t after the name of a parish (or place) indicates that the ecclesiastical parish of the same name
at the Igor census was co-extensive with such parish (or place).

§ after the name of a parish (or place) indicates that the civil parish of the same name at the
IgOI census was co-extensive with such parish (or place).

o in the table indicates that there is no population on the area in question.

— in the table indicates that no population can be ascertained.

The word ‘ chapelry ’ seems often to have been used as an equivalent for ‘ township ’ in 1841,
which census volume has been adopted as the standard for names and descriptions of areas.

The figures in italics in the table relate to the area and population of such subdivisions of
ancient parishes as chapelries, townships, and hamlets.

234

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

TABLE OF POPULATION

1801—I901
_ ee r8or | r8x1r | r82r | 183x | 184r | 185x | 1861 | 1871 |} 1881 | 1891 | Igor
a (or Geographical) 405,141 | 97,393|108,428]129,222/142,844|156,660|167,298|173,280|192,226|203,069|220,074|2 50,080
unty
Acre-
PaRISH age r8o0r | 181 | 1821 | 1831 | 1841 | 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 IgOI
Braughing i
Hundred
Bishop’s 3,285 | 2,305 | 2,630 | 3,358 | 3,958 | 4,681 | 5,280 | 5,390 | 6,250 | 6,704 | 6,595 | 7,143
Stortford * * §f
Braughing ft § 4 4,368] 972 | 1,029 | 1,228 | 1,266 |1,358 | 1,246 | 1,180] 1,076 | 1,022 974 930
Eastwick ff. . 822] 153 176 212 169 173 170 116 104 95 71 86
Gilston{§ . . 985] 186 197 | 213 | 233 246 263 270 270 272 260 281
Hunsdont{. .| 1,975] 569] 512] 584] 502] 430 481 516 518 526 532 498
Sawbridgeworth .} 6,639 [1,687 | 1,827 |2,071 | 2,231 |2,394 | 2,571 | 2,701 | 2,832 | 3,049 | 3,025 | 2,846
Standon§. . «| 7,745]1,846 | 1,889 | 2,135 |2,272 |2,2909 | 2,462 | 2,245 | 2,259 | 2,069 | 2,153 | 2,240
Stanstead 2,628 861 832 950 966 | 1,017 914 980 | 1,057 | 1,219 | 1,322] 1,484
Abbots 8 ¢ {
Thorley $§ . .f 1,536] 269 307 386 414 396 402 388 423 415 546 538
Thundridge $§ .[ 2,206] 437] 517] 520] 588] 535] 572} 489] 455] 467] 45°] 396
Ware*t . . J 4,705 12,950 | 3,369 | 3,844 | 4.214 | 4,653 | 5,088 | 5,397] 5,403 | 5,745 | 5,686 | 6,097
Westmill f . J 2,207] 328 365 415 418 425 380 353 337 361 302 355
Widford $§ . .| 1,168] 361 427 461 506 539 519 4506 450 511 461 418
Broadwater
Hundred|
Astont{t. . .f 2,073] 416] 403| 509] 494]! 556 626 639 662 571 541 543
Ayot 751} 115 149 160 134 134 147 122 I51 112 137 99

St. Lawrence f §

Ayot St. Peter t § 1,093] 168 176 | 233 | 271 240 282 234 232 219 215 221

Baldock + _ 2004 1,283 |} 1,438 | 1,550 | 1,704 |1,807 | 1,920 | 1,974 | 2,036] 1,901 | 1,918 | 1,798
Beningtont{t .| 2,049] 487] 529] 658] 631 | 605 676 637 581 578 617 515
Datchworth ¢$~ .[ 1,960] 410] 447] 494] 593 | 581 648 635 606 626 672 650
Digswellt $ . .f 1,656] 178 187 | 204 | 196| 187 239 243 255 227 240 242
Graveley{§ . .] 1,838] 260 276 316 331 403 412 422 443 380 406 409
Hee ‘ “ 12,884 ] 2,442 | 2,677 | 3,215 | 3,593 |3.646 | 3,862 | 3,871 | 3,998 | 4,059 | 4.330] 4,754
ishop’s
Knebworth f+ {¢ | 2,737] 225 | 182] 266] 259] 253 290 250 245 250 382 548
Letchworth t § 1,131 67 70 76 76 | 108 76 68 95 108 79 96

Munden, Great + i 3,402] 306 | 457] 515 | 550| 477 554 457 447 439 439 310
Munden, Little + tf] 2,247] 453 | 430] 464) 521 | 612 628 601 581 468 415 372

Sacombe $§ . .f 1,534] 255 | 308] 341 360 | 325 313 314 304 260 250 210
Stevenage ft § | 4,545 [1,254 | 1,302 |1,664 |1,859 |} 1,725 | 2,118 | 2,352 | 2,909 | 3,116 | 3,309 | 3,957
Totteridge{§ .| 1,604] 280] 368 | 490] 595] 469 595 573 474 657 785 844
Walken {t§ . .| 2,992] 501] 554] 631 | 771] 718 738 823 799 843 849 788
Watton at 3,579] 602 644 812 830 | 920 976 864 866 809 817 710
Stone f f
Welwyn * ¢ ft | 3,082 | 1,015 | 1,130 | 1,287 | 1,369 |1,395 | 1,557 | 1,612 | 1,634 | 1,742 | 1,754 | 1,703
Westont{t . «| 4,530% 729 708 927 |1,046 |1,123 | 1,186 | 1,196] 1,123 969 876 841
Williantt . .f 31,8544 176] 198 | 269 | 313 | 201 322 281 344 299 231 257
bi dancias I,49r]| 200] 212] 329|] 321 | 263 335 314 276 270 255 279
teat §
Wymondley, 1,007] 169] 188] 227] 226; 288 300 318 356 401 411 337
Little t §

' Ancient County.—The county as defined by the Act, 7 & 8 Vict. chap. 61, which affected Hertfordshire to the
following extent, viz. the Hamlet of Coleshill (Amersham Ancient Parish) was transferred to Buckinghamshire. There
were also one or two other small changes under the Act; the parts so transferred had, however, previously been treated
as belonging to the County to which they were now legally added. ,

The population in 1811 is exclusive of 2,797 Militia, who could not be distributed to the places to which they
belonged, and in 1821 is exclusive of 509 Militia. (See also note to Royston.)

? Bishop’s Stortford Parish._—The increase of population in 1871 is chiefly attributed to the temporary presence of a
large number of workmen engaged on sewerage works. ee

3 Stanstead Abbots Parish.—The increase of population in 1841 was almost entirely due to the fair being in progress at
the time of the Census.

235

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

TABLE OF POPULATION, 1801—1901 (continued)

Acre-

PaRISH
age

1801 r8rr | 1821 1831 | 1841 | 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901

Cashio Hundred,
or Liberty of

St. Albans
Abbots Langley §| 5,281] 1,205 | 1,331 | 1,733 | 1,980 |2,115 | 2,384 | 2,400 | 2,638 | 2,989 | 3,230 | 3,342
AldenhamԤ. .| 6,114 ]1,103 | 1,127 | 1,399 |1,494 |1,662 | 1,656] 1,769] 1,929] 1,833 | 2,085 | 2,457
Barnet, 1,489 11,258 | 1,579 | 1,755 | 2,369 |2,485 | 2,380 | 2,989 | 3,375 | 4.283 | 4,563 | 5,190
Chipping * *
Barnet, East§ .| 1,697] 353 | 406] 507] 547] 598 663 851 | 2,925 | 3,992} 5,128 | 6,839
Braintfield, or 1,609] 192 214 232 204 201 210 IgI 230 249 213 188
Bramfield { §
Codicote$§ . -| 2,531] 584] 655] 795 | 805] 906] 1,039 | 1,227 | 1,214] 1,191 | 1,123 | 1,145
Elstree § - .f 1,510} 286] 292] 309] 341 360 396 402 525 662 805 | 1,323
Hexton}§ . .f 1,485] 239] 314] 338] 204] 2905 278 234 241 200 167 155
sel ey t§ 3 975 72 79 II2 157 161 150 135 113 113 125 116
° Ww, OF 3,305] 440 6 66 | 600} 609 I 8 82 66
Northall t 405) 5' 545 55 559 593 5 4
Nortont{ . .| 1,7809 248 | 264] 313 364 | 403 399 352 400 331 282 213
Redbourn t§. -[ 4,563 1,153 | 1,333 | 1,784 | 2,047 |2,024 | 2,085 | 2,043 | 2,162 | 2,177 | 2,016 | 1,932
Rickmansworth +] 10,021 [2,975 | 3,230 | 3,940 | 4,574 | 5,026 | 4,851 | 4,873 | 5,337 | 5,511 | 6,974 | 8,232
Ridge®§ . . J 3,615 266) 311 | 390 | 347] 409] 366] 437] 448] 406] 459] 478
St. Albans, 6,558} 807] 840] 917 ]|1,010! 859] 1,157 | 1,050 QoI | 2,256] 2,437 | 3,088
St. Michael
(part of) 7 *
St. Albans, 8,1409 1,266 | 1,394 | 1,580 | 1,746 | 1,826 | 1,802 | 1,786 | 1,979 | 1,980] 2,196 | 2,085
St. Stephen f
St. Paul's 3.720] 758 | 767] 906 |1,058 | 1,113 | 1,175 | 1,123 | 1,154 | 1,020 946 929
Walden t §
Sandridge t . .| 5,753] 581 649 | 823 | 810] 851 864 833 820 841 | 1,458] 2,250
Sarrattt§ . | 1,540] 334] 378| 397] 452] 542 613 736 654 700 704 630
Shephall $§ . .| 1,156] 120] 131 187 | 217 | 265 242 243 216 221 206 194
Watford®* . .) 10,777] 3,530 | 3,976 | 4.713 | 5.293 | 5.989 | 6,546 | 7,418 | 12,071 | 15,507 | 20,269 | 32,559
Dacorum Hundred
Aldburyt{ . 2,058] 457] 566| 676] 695 790 820 848 854 912 894 812
Berkhampstead, | | 4353] 2-590 | 1,963 | 2,310 | 2,369 |2,979 | 3,395 | 3,585 | 3,940] 4.485 | 5,073 | 5,600
rea
Berkhampstead 3,908] 735 864 | 1,028 | 1,156 | 1,265 | 1,383 | 1,638] 1,886] 2,135 | 2,312 | 2,455
St. Mary, or
Northchurch t :
Bushey . . 3,219] 856 | 1,264 | 1,507 | 1,586 | 2,675 | 2,750] 3,159 | 4,543 | 4,788 | 5,652 | 6,686
er ae 9: ‘) 2,996 754 896 | 1,170 | 1,177 | 1,294 } 1,299] 1,259] 1,162 | 1,146 | 1,055 | 1,017
(part o
Flamstead . 6,004 | 1,018 | 1,205 | 1,392 | 1,462 | 1,492 | 1,852 | 1,919] 2,005 | 1,846] 1,701 | 1,666
Gaddesden, 4,149] 794 941 | 1,096 988 | 1,109 | 1,161 | 1,147 | 1,106 938 871 746
Great{ ¥
Gaddesden, 925 | 388) 506; 531 | 492] 454 374 386 383 373 312 326
Little t t
Harpenden t . .| 5,112} 1,112 | 1,386 | 1,693 |1,972 |1,872 | 1,980 | 2,164 | 2,608 | 3,064 | 3,916 | 5,067
Hemel 12,061 } 3,680 | 4,222 | 5,193 | 6,037 | 7,268 | 8,508 | 9,347 | 10,100 | 10,358 | 10,915 | 12,490
Hempstead :—+
Hemel 7,184] 2,722 | 3,240 | 3,962 | 4,759 |5.901 | 7,073} 7,948 | 8,720] 9,064 | 9,678 | 11,264
Hempstead *
Bovingdon 3,958] 779 794 | 954 | 962 !1,072 | 1,130 | 1,155 | 1,162 | 1,054 | 1,056 | 1,047
Chapelry ¢ §
Flaunden 919 179| 188 | 277 | 316) 295 305 244 218 240 I8I 179
Chapelry
Kensworth i § «| 2,553] 510 522 615 732 842 | 1,033 925 891 655 605 516
Kings Langley § .} 3,481] 970 |1,108 | 1,242 | 1,423 |1,629 | 1,599 | 1,509 | 1,495 | 1,464 | 1,629 | 1,579
North Mimms § .] 4,966] 838 | 1,001 | 1,007 | 1,068 | 1,118 | 1,128 | 1,095 | 1,157 | 1,266 | 1,511 | 1,568
Puttenhamt{ . 744] 130] 153 112 130 136 142 135 123 121 105 97
Shenley§ . . .f 4,091] 729 990 | 1,132 | 1,167 | 1,220 | 1,297 | 1,304 | 1,380 | 1,321 | 1,425 | 1,509
Studham 1,449] 205 | 220] 238 | 231! 237 231 219 198 173 128 125
(part of) 9
Tringt . « «| 7,846 12,156 | 2,557 | 3,286 | 3,488 | 4,260 | 4,746 | 4,841 | 5,076 | 5.357 | 5,424 | 5,054
Wheat- 5,187 | 1,043 | 1,250 | 1,584 |1,666 |1,871 | 1,908 | 1,960 | 2,188 | 2,319 | 2,371 | 2,405
hampstead ¢ §}
Wigginton $§. | 1,674] 339) 373 | 477] 536] 635 643 | 641 661 709 7°7 669

‘ Aldenham Parish is partly in Dacorum Hundred; none shown there.
; 5 Chipping Barnet Parish—tThe population included in 1841 226 strangers haymaking, and in 1861 118 persons attending

a fair.

6 Ridge Parish._—The population in 1841 included a number of haymakers temporarily present.

7 St. Albans, St. Michael Parish is situated partly in Cashio Hundred and partly in fhe Borough of St. Albans. The
entire area and population, 1881-1901, are shown in Cashio Hundred.

8 Watford Parish—The increase of population in 1871 was due largely to the opening since 1861 of the Leavesden
Asylum and the St. Pancras Industrial Schools.

® Caddington Parish.—The remainder is in Bedfordshire (Flitt Hundred).

© Studham Parish—The remainder is in Bedfordshire (Manshead Hundred).

236

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY

TABLE OF POPULATION, 1801—1901 (continued)

PaRISH rs r8o1 | 1811 | 1821 | 1831 | 1841 | 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901
Edwinstree
Hundred
Albury $§ . 3,248] 557] 519 | 596] 631 | 641 668 700 673 621 563 505
Anstey }{§. 2,150] 387 | 371 | 449] 417] 497 405 473 412 391 396 364
Aspenden f }. 1,407] 364] 367] 455] 559 | 529 508 577 667 | 613 485 480
Barkway :— 5,211] 851 858 993 [1,108 | 1,291 | 1,288 | 1,221 | 1,188 999 968 829
Barkway§. .| 3,252] 699 | 686 771 |. 859 | 1,002 986 940 934 782 761 661
Nuthampstead } 1,959] 152] 172 | 222] 249 | 289 302 281 254 217 207 168
col 6 8 8 714) 615 | 574 | 505
Barley { 2,725] 494 | 593 95 | 704 | 792 70 09
Buckland shes 300 | 288 343 373 435 386 385 362 358 376 244
Hadham, 3,082] 685 670 787 878 890 878 864 869 853 733 655
Little ¢
Hadham, a 4,490] 980 | 1,081 | 1 208 | 1,268 |1,318 | 1,264 | 1,172 | 1,318 1,298 | 1,274 | 1,199
Much ft §
Hormead, Great t| 1,919] 467 513 564} 576| 595 601 660 631 519 436 376
Hormead, Little {| 1,067] 103 94 I12 107 121 87 103 143 127 116 128
Layston * + ¢ 2,2421 799 | 907 | 1,014 | 1,093 | 1,187 | 1,220 998 | 1,086 | 1,071 | 1,091 983
Meesden{§ . 1,009} 122] 138 | 164] 158] 181 185 163 181 189 178 132
Pelham, Brent es 1,637] 208 242 280 271 285 298 286 284 232 215 207
Pelham, 2,585] 529 | 533 | 566] 619 | 682 688 620 618 571 540 449
Furneux
Pelham, ] 647} 109] 122] 150] 158] 160 138 126 185 173 144 138
Stocking { §
Throcking f } gio} 58 45 69 76 | 66 85 97 63 74 79 50
Wakeley 463 7 8 9 7. 7 9 4 4 pas) 46 24
Extra
Parochial" +
Wyddialt t . 1,224} 181 175 | 225 | 243] 248 245 213 199 202 241 221
Hertford
seman |
Amwell, Great ¢t .J 2,482] 772 | 1,003 | 1,110 |1,321 | 1,545 | 1,652 | 1,660 | 2,245 | 2,517 | 2,612 | 2,954
Bayford + } 1,745] 235 | 224] 307] 332 | 357 353 297 352 273 349 330
Bengeo¥. . 3,054] 584] 536] 732 | 855 |1,14I | 1,520] 1,791 | 2,044 | 2,335 2,586 | 2,726
Berkhampstead, | ' 1,694] 314] 305] 439] 450] 555 556 450 408 424 430 420
ittle ¢
Broxbourne and 4,535 11,598 | 1,668 | 1,888 | 2,144 | 2,386 | 2,571 | 2,663 2,872 | 3,466 | 4,192 | 4,810
Hoddesdon f;
Cheshunt § 8,479 | 3.173 | 3,598 | 4.376 | 5.021 | 5,402 | 5,579 | 6,592 | 7,518 | 7,735 | 9,620 | 12,292
Essendon t § . 2,331] 545 | 506 | 595| 672| 690 739 672 645 594 540 565
Hertford, All 2,060] 866} 695 | 903 |1,133 |1,218 | 1,208 | 1,341 | 1,361 | 1,638 | 1,868 | 2,062
Saints
(part of) 18 :—
Amwell, Little 526] 403| 243| 256| 368 | 46r 458 500 618 704 861 853
Liberty f
Brickendon 1,534] 463 | 452) 647| 765 | 757 750 841 743 934 | 1,007 | 1,209
Liberty 4
Hertingford- 2,645] 625 | 653] 827] 753 | 737 752 799 828 823 797 733
bury ¢ §
Stanstead St. 408 65 85 97 | 107 92 97 93 107 96 139 192
Margarets T§
Stapleford } . -| 1,355] IIL 131 212 237 259 289 226 249 200 216 216
Tewin t§ . 2,695] 494] 438 | 477] 474 | 522 522 547 513 530 35° 492
Wormley ¢ § . 946] 445 | 433] 492] 471] 500| 511 572 692 735 871 | 1,018
Hitchin and
Pirton
Hundred
Hitchin * . 6,420] 3,161 | 3,608 | 4,486 | 5,211 |6,125 | 7,077 | 7,677 | 8,850 | 9,070 | 9,510 10,788
Ickleford{ . 1,035} 337] 351 442 | 502] 570 574 546 589 563 529 577
Ippollitts § 2,930] 464 | 541 | 671 | 874] 919 965 952 994 | 1,008 894 840
Kimpton $§ . 3,077] 6441 746] 866] 944 | 945 992 | 1,014 952 936 991 944
King’s Walden t $ 4.392| 727 779 | 926 | 1,004 | 1,034 | 1,164 | 1,183 | 1,156 | 1.135 | 1,124 | 1,026
Lilley ¢ - .f 1,849] 315] 305 | 427| 452 | 475 528 480 520 505 526 438
Offley f . 5,515] 602 754 873 967 |1,140 | 1,208 | 1,215 | 1,346 | 1,302 1,268 | 1,066
Pirton ¢ ¢ . 2,701f 481 | 558 | 630] 758] 764 897 | 1,023] 1,081 | 1,125 | 1,016 goo

1 Wakeley seems to have been anciently a Parish.

12 Bengeo Parish is partly in Hertford Borough ; none shown there.
'8 Hertford, All Saints Parish is partly in Hertford Hundred and partly in Hertford Borough.

"| Brickendon Liberty is partly in Hertford Borough; none shown there.

237

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

TABLE OF POPULATION, 1801—1901 (continued)

PaRISH = 1801 | r8rr | 1r82r | 1831 | 1841 | 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901
Odsey Hundred
Ashwellt§ . 4,109] 715 | 754] 915 |1,072 |1,235 | 1,425 | 1,507] 1,576] 1,568 | 1,556 | 1,281
Broadfield § . 375 31 26 23 10 6 8 19 26 19 16 7
Bygravef. . 1,8094 52 61 107 145 154 221 195 IQI 239 195 202
Caldecote $§ . 326| 44] 40] 46] 39 41 49 44 36 31 31 25
Clothall ¢ $ 3.4444 184] 216 | 358] 444] 495 535 492 486 417 402 335
Cottered § 1,832] 339 | 343 | 410] 436] 465 437 470 456 379 357 339
Hinxworth f § 1,463] 228] 243 247 | 205 328 347 320 313 297 289 230
Kelshall ft § . 2,360] 179| 180] 208] 251 | 276 326 318 286 249 241 217
Radwell [§ . 743 58 72 oI 103 98 88 102 103 IOI IOI 90
Reed § + « | 13,4774 164 158 | 214 | 232 260 277 224 224 189 206 183
Royston (part of) 315] 975 | 1,309 | 1,474 | 1,272 | 1,436 | 1,529 |} 1,387 | 1,348 | 1,272] 1,262] 1,272
Rushden ¢§ . 1,509} 253 287 333 342 318 321 291 277 270 225 195
Sandont§ . 4,061] 595 | 580] 646; 716] 804 770 771 810 763 728 578
Therfield aD) a 4,833] 707 | 692 872 | 974 |1,224 |] 1,335 | 1,222 | 1,237 | 1,175 996 856
Wallington t § 2,043] 224] 219] 210] 213 274 254 238 250 191 133 152
Yardley, 2,424] 484 | 563] 617) 599] 633 630} 574 563 495 464] 392
or Ardeley { §
Hertford Borough
All Saints 22] 872 |1,088 |1,120 | 1,287 |1,254 | 1,273 | 1,175 | 1,175 | 1,127 963 846
(part of) 19
St. Andrew . «J 1,179 ]1,277 | 1,421 | 1,601 | 2,120 |2,135 | 2,148 | 2,184 | 2,275 | 2,481 | 2,121 | 2,094
St John *y . 2,138] 1,211 | 1,391 | 1,544 |1,840 |2,06r | 2,282 | 2,388 | 2,756 | 2,987 | 3,357 | 3,506
St. Albans
Borough
St. Albans 166] 1,911 | 2,152 |2,819 | 3,092 | 2,904 | 3,371 | 3,679 | 3,946 | 4,097 | 4,434 | 4,467
St. Michael —_ 287 | 382 | 453 517 /1,140 | 1,091 | 1,253 | 1,214 _ _ —
(part of) y
St. Peter Sf . 5,745 1,674 | 1,828 | 2,461 2,973 | 3,701 | 3,746 | 4,158 | 5,261 | 6,562 | 8,044 | 11,714

18 Royston Parish_—The remainder is in Cambridgeshire (Armingford Hundred), The entire population, however, is

shown in Herts, in 1811 and 1821.
16 See note 13 above.
17 See note 7 above.
St. Albans, St. Peter Parish is partly in Cashio Hundred; none shown there.

GENERAL NOTE

The following Municipal Borough and Urban Districts were co-extensive at the Census of 1901 with one or more places
mentioned in the Table :—

Municipal Borough or Urban District. Place.

BrisHop’s StorTFORD U.D. . : x ; r . Bishop’s Stortford Parish (Braughing Hundred).

CuHEsHunT U.D. ‘ p ra a e ‘ ‘, 5 Cheshunt Parish (Hertford Hundred).

Hemet HeEMpsTEAD M.B. * m . é ‘ e Hemel Hempstead Township (Dacorum Hundred).
¥ , . * ‘ * Stevenage Parish (Broadwater Hundred).

STEVENAGE U.D. . r

238

INDUSTRIES

INTRODUCTION

XCEPT malting, a natural outcome
of its dominant agriculture, medi-
aeval Hertfordshire had few indus-
tries of note. There was brewing,
of course, in every village, largely

a domestic trade, while tanning, a neces-
sary craft, flourished in the towns. Besides
malt, meal and fuel were carried to London;
simple woodware, tiles, pottery? and rough
cloth? of local manufacture supplied the home-
steads. Later straw-plaiting? on a considerable
scale, paper-making! and lace gained a footing,
and brewing became an organized trade, as
less and less ale was made by private persons.
There also developed a considerable activity
in the growing of water-cress} for the London
market, and of late years an extension of
nursery gardens. Our own day has seen the
creation, especially at Watford, St. Albans,
Barnet and Letchworth, of a factory industry,
distributed among various trades, and drawn
to the county by cheaper labour and greater
opportunities of expansion than crowded cities
can afford.

As regards land communications, there can
be little doubt that most of the Roman roads,
as Watling? Street, Ermine Street, Akeman
Street and the prehistoric Icknield Street,
continued to be the great arteries of traffic
during the Middle Ages, but the Roman Way
from St. Albans to Colchester was probably
early disused. The direction of the London
to St. Albans road was changed in the Tudor
period? The Great North Road was also in
all likelihood of considerable antiquity. Arthur
Young, at the beginning of the 1gth century,
speaks of six great leading turnpikes, and adds
that there were ‘many cross-roads nearly as
good as turnpikes. The worst are found in
the country between Pelham and Welwyn.’
Before the days of Macadam, however, even
the great trunk roads were sometimes in a
deplorable condition from the continuous traffic
and occasional floods. In 1680 Thoresby had
described? the road between Hoddesdon and

1 Treated separately.

3 It may also be remarked that since the original
Roman Road ran to the west of the Ver, a portion of
the modern road was made early in the second quarter
of the 19th century in order to enter the city.

3 Diary, i, 68.

Ware as most pleasant in summer but ‘ bad in
winter because of the depth of the cart-ruts.’
Even in May the same traveller 4 in 1695, when
riding to London, speaks of some showers at
Ware ‘which raised the washes upon the road
to that height that passengers from London
that were upon the road swam; and a poor
higgler was drowned.’

In respect of railway communications the
county is well supplied as far as access to
London is concerned, but the cross-country
facilities leave much to be desired. This con-
dition of affairs is easily understood when we
consider the history of the early trunk lines.
One of the earliest railways opened in Hert-
fordshire was that of the London and Birming-
ham line, for the construction of which an Act
of Parliament was obtained in 1833. The
original terminus was fixed at Camden Town,
but removed to Euston® under the authority
of a further Act of 1835. The first section
between Euston and Boxmoor was opened in
1837. According to a contemporary descrip-
tion, the first train on 13 July 1837 ‘ proceeded
very slowly to Camden, but soon accelerated
its progress and was seen sweeping along like
a meteor at the rate of 30 miles an hour.’ The
ordinary public traffic began a week later. On
16 October in the same year a further 7} miles
were opened from Boxmoor to Tring, and on
9 April 1838 the line from Tring to Denbigh
Hall was ready for use. By an Act of Parlia-
ment passed on 16 July 1846 the London and
Birmingham and the Grand Junction Com-
panies finished their separate existence under
these names, and the amalgamated company
was henceforth known as the London and
North Western.™ On 5 May 1858 a branch line
from Watford to St. Albans was opened for
passenger traffic.®

The Great Eastern Railway has a lesser
mileage actually within the County of Hertford
than the other great trunk lines running north
and south. The nucleus from which the present
Great Eastern main line sprang was the old
Eastern Counties line, incorporated in 1836

4 Diary, i, 295.

5 C. E. Stretton, Hist. Lond. and Birmingham Rail-
way (ed. 2), 1 et seq.

5a Local and Personal Act, 9 & 10 Vict. cap. 24.

6 See original official advertisement.

239

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and partially opened three years later.? This
was intended to be an Essex line. The Hert-
fordshire portion of the Great Eastern, how-
ever, was principally formed from the old
Northern and Eastern from Stratford to
Cambridge, which had been granted the use of
the Eastern Counties terminus at Shoreditch.
In 1840 the Northern and Eastern line was
open to Broxbourne, and soon after reached
Bishop’s Stortford on its way to Newport;
thence the Eastern Counties extended the line
to Cambridge.

The third great trunk line to be constructed,
which passed through Hertfordshire with a
terminus in London, was that soon to be known
as the Great Northern. The London and York
Railway Bill passed in June 1846, but the line
from Werrington to Maiden Lane was not
completed until 1850. Some delay had been
occasioned during the winter of 1849-50 by
keen frost, which stopped work on the Welwyn
viaduct, and after this by the collapse of an
arch of the North London Railway viaduct
near the tunnel at Copenhagen Fields. By
5 August 1850, however, all difficulties were
overcome, and the directors and their friends
made a trial trip ® to Peterborough in four and
a half hours, a considerable time having been
lost at Welwyn, where the party went down to
the valley to secure a better view of the viaduct.
The first public train was three days later.
The Royston, Hitchin and Shepreth Branch
was opened in 1850 by the Great Northern
Company, which guaranteed {15,000 a year to
the Royston and Hitchin shareholders, but
from 1 April 1852 the working of this line was
taken over by the Eastern Counties for a term
of fourteen years. In 1853 an independent
company had been formed to build the Welwyn
and Hertford Railway, 7 miles in length, to
join the Great Northern and Eastern Counties
lines. Originally it was worked by both these
companies. By 1860 the Hertford and Welwyn
line had been extended westward to Luton
and Dunstable, and in 1861 it was absorbed by
the Great Northern, which guaranteed the
dividend ® on the shares of the local company.
In 1864, in view of the approaching lapse of the
agreement under which the Great Eastern was
working the Shepreth and Hitchin line, the
Great Northern obtained running powers from
Shepreth over the Great Eastern, On 11 June
1866 took place the memorable accident in the
Welwyn tunnel when three trains took fire.
As regards the later development of the line
in Hertfordshire, branches to Edgware and
Barnet were opened up in the early ‘ seventies,’
and under an Act of Parliament in 1883 the

1 Official Guide to the Great Eastern Railway, 17.
8 Grinling, Great Northern Railway, go et seq.
9 Tbid. 204.

Hatfield and St. Albans line was acquired.1°
At the present time the Great Northern Com-
pany is constructing a new line from Cuffley to
Stevenage, the section from Enfield to Cuffley
having been opened in April 1910.

At the time when companies operating in
the Midlands were amalgamated and incor-
porated as the Midland Railway in 1844, it
had obtained no foothold in Hertfordshire. In
1847 an Act of Parliament had been obtained
for the making of a line from Leicester to
Hitchin, but this lapsed since the Midland were
promised facilities on the North Western line
from Rugby, and it was only under a later Act
of 1853 that the Midland line through Bedford
to Hitchin was constructed The Leicester
to Hitchin line was opened for mineral and
goods traffic in April 1857 and for passenger
trafic the following month, running powers
over the Great Northern being obtained to
King’s Cross early in the next year. The
Midland, however, found themselves entirely
in the power of their hosts, and the situation
soon became impossible. A climax was
reached in June 1862 during the Exhibition,
when the Great Northern evicted the Midland
from their sidings at King’s Cross and dis-
located their traffic. Accordingly in June
1863 the Midland Company obtained Parlia-
mentary powers to make a line from Bedford
to St. Pancras, but before this was opened
built a goods station at St. Pancras and ran
into it from Hitchin from January 1865. The
Bedford line to the goods station at St. Pancras
was opened on 7 September 1867. On
1 October of the following year the new passen-
ger station at St. Pancras was opened and
Midland trains were no longer run to King’s
Cross.

The Hemel Hempstead Company had ob-
tained an Act in 1863, amended by sub-
sequent Acts, to make a short line beginning at
Boxmoor on the London and North Western
system, passing through Hemel Hempstead
and Redbourn to the Midland and Great
Northern systems at Harpenden. On con-
sideration, however, they determined to commit
the working to the Midland, and on 16 July
1877 the line, in a modified form, from the
junction near Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead
was opened and worked by the Midland. In
1886 the Hemel Hempstead Company was
absorbed by the Midland Company.

The extension of the Metropolitan Railway
was opened as far as Harrow in 1880. From
this station it was gradually carried forward
until the line between Chalfont Road and

10 Grinling, Great Northern Railway, 366.
C, E. Stretton, Hist. Midland Railway, 155.
12 Thid. 186.

1 Ibid. 159.

240

INDUSTRIES

Aylesbury was in working order in 1892. Two
of the stations on this line, Rickmansworth
(opened in 1887) and Chorley Wood, lie in
Hertfordshire.

The chief mediaeval waterways in Hertford-
shire were those of the Lea, the Stort and the
Colne. By an Act of 1571,14 ‘An Acte for the
brynging of the Ryver of Lee to the north side
of the Cite of London,’ the Corporation of
London were empowered to make a new cut or
river within the space of ten years. Nothing,
however, was then done, and on the lapse of
the Act a Statute* was passed authorizing
‘the bringing in of a freshe stream of running
water’ from the springs of Chadwell and Am-
well and their vicinity. An amending Act!
empowered the grantees to convey the New
River through a trunk or vault of brick or stone
where requisite. William Inglebert, Captain
Edmund Colthurst and Edward Wright sub-
mitted schemes, but nothing practical seems to
have been done until Hugh Myddelton under-
took the task. On 28 March 1609 the Corpo-
ration agreed to his proposal and transferred
their rights to him. His chief difficulties arose
from the selfish opposition of the local land-
owners, which lengthened the task and increased
its cost. The king, however, came to his aid in
return for a share in the undertaking, and on
Michaelmas Day 1 1613 the citizens of London
celebrated by a public pageant the arrival of
the New River water at Islington. A few years
after, in the winter of 1621-2, James I narrowly
escaped death by drowning in ‘ Myddelton’s
Water’ when it was thinly coated with ice.

The reign of Charles I saw extensive building
in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
Holborn, Covent Garden and the parishes of
St. Martin, St. James and St. Giles. In con-
sequence an increased water supply was
desirable, and Edward Forde of Harting in
Sussex published a ‘Designe for bringing a
navigable river from Rickmansworth in Hert-
fordshire to St. Giles in the Fields.’ The
water was to be derived from the Colne, and
greater employment, cheaper carriage, relief
to the highways and other benefits were con-
fidently promised. London would enjoy more
abundant supplies of food and water, and
would send back manure in return. The
water, too, would be fit for all uses, ‘ all land
floods and foule waters which frequently
occasion the muddinesse of Sir William Middle-
ton’s water being by artificiall conveyances
diverted and kept wholly out of the stream.’

Sir William Roberts, however, had a rival
scheme for an aqueduct from Hoddesdon to a

14 Stat. 13 Eliz. cap. 18.
14a Thid. 3 Jas. I, cap. 18.
15 Ibid. 4 Jas. I, cap. 12.
16 Smiles, Lives of Engineers (ed. 1904), i, 92.

‘Conserve’ at Islington. When his proposals
were brought before the Court of Aldermen
they agreed, after some debate, ‘ that the close
aqueduct would be far more usefull and bene-
ficiall to them than an open river (as Myddel-
ton’s was) could be, since they wanted not
water, so much as good water.’ Roberts was
particularly sarcastic in regard to Forde’s
assurance that the water of his navigable
tiver would be always clear. His rival could
not imagine that any understanding man
could ‘ beleeve it, that is not a Catholique and
led by an implicite faith.’ But a larger quarrel
was to hush minor wrangles. In the turmoil
of the Great Rebellion both schemes were lost
and Edward Forde rode forth to fight for the
king. Later schemes for improving the London
water supply from Hertfordshire were watched
with jealous eyes” by mill-owners and farmers
and successfully opposed on more than one
occasion.

The Grand Junction Canal connecting London
with the Midland waterways was authorized ¥
in 1793. It enters Hertfordshire near Tring
and is generally in good condition, though
there are reasonable complaints of its slight
width and occasional sharp bends. Barges
use the main waterway between Brentford,
Uxbridge and Rickmansworth and occasionally
reach Boxmoor and Berkhampstead.® Narrow
boats only can be employed on the Wendover
branch, which to the length of 62 miles was con-
structed mainly as a feeder under the Act of
1794. Early in the present century, however, the
Canal Company closed ®® this branch for navi-
gation from Tring Stop Lock, and only a mile
and a half are still open for boats of shallow
draught. Besides the coal brought down from
the Midlands, the Grand Junction Canal still
carries much of the raw material and finished
products of the Hertfordshire paper-mills.

The navigable portion of the River Stort,
some 13 miles in length, begins at Bishop’s
Stortford and passing Sawbridgeworth, Harlow,

17 B.M. Single Sheet, 816, m. 8 (36), of the date
?1700.

18 The principal Statutes respecting the canal are
the public Acts, 33 Geo. III, cap. 80; 34 Geo. III,
cap. 24.3 35 Geo. III, caps. 8, 43, 85 ; 36 Geo. III,
cap. 25; Local and Personal Acts, 41 Geo. III,
cap. 713 43 Geo. III, cap. 8; 45 Geo. III,
cap. 68.

19H. R. De Salis, Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable
Rivers (1904), 132 et seq. Esparto, wood pulp and
other material brought up in Thames lighters to
Brentford must be transhipped there into boats of
smaller size. cf. Canal Com. Third Rep. v (2),
Minutes of Evidence, 235 et seq.

20 A law-suit followed, initiated by local landowners,
to test the right of the Grand Junction Canal Co. to
effect this closure. ‘The action of the Company was,
however, allowed.

4 241 31

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Parndon and Roydon joins the Lea at Fieldes
Weir about 2 miles above Broxbourne. The
narrow and winding water-course is at present
much silted-up and impracticable for barges of
greater burden than 50 to 60 tons, while the
locks are mainly of old pattern and occasionally
in poor repair. Malt is the chief cargo, but
agricultural produce, bricks and coal are
carried in small quantities. If larger barges
drawing more water could be used, the cost
would be much less. Some years ago the Stort
Navigation was acquired by Sir Walter Gilbey,
and is now in the hands of a small company.

The River Lea becomes navigable at the
Town Mills,” Hertford, and then passes Ware,
Stanstead Abbots, Broxbourne and Waltham
on its course to Limehouse, Bow Creek and the

‘Thames. From very early times it was the
highway by which the produce of Hertfordshire
reached the great city. On this account care
has been taken® to keep it open for traffic,
though even in the Middle Ages there were
complaints of silting and of obstructions caused
by mills, weirs and kiddles. At present the
28 miles of navigable river between Hertford
and the Thames are in good condition and can
be used by barges and lighters. But this
trafic suffers from the competition of steam
and motor lorries as well as of the Great Eastern
Railway. It has been suggested of late that
the Rivers Lea and Stort should be connected
by canal with Cambridge, and that thence by
means of the Cam and Ouse a line of inland
navigation between London and King’s Lynn
might be secured. This scheme is really a
revival of a former project of the London and
Junction Canal, for the making of which an Act
of Parliament was obtained on the eve of the
early railway activity, and probably on that
account allowed to lapse. The enterprise, if
carried out, would call for a thorough recon-
struction of the Stort Navigation as well as for
the making of the new linking canal. Until
1869 the Lea Navigation was under the control
of the River Lea Trust, but on 1 April of that
year the Lea Conservancy Board took over
this responsibility.

From a consideration of the chief means of
communication within the county we can now
pass to the industries themselves. Of these
malting is one of the oldest and most per-
sistent, and allusions to it are frequent in legal

21 H.R. De Salis, loc. cit.

22 Thid. 191. .

23 The principal Acts concerning the Lea Naviga-
tion are as follows: 3 Hen. VI, cap. 5; 9 Hen. VI,
cap. 9; 13 Eliz. cap. 18; 12 Geo. Il, cap. 323 7
Geo. III, cap. §1 ; 19 Geo. III, cap. 58 5 45 Geo. Il,
cap. 69; 13 & 14 Vict. cap. 109; 18 & 19 Vict.
cap. 196; 31 & 32 Vict. cap. 1543 37 & 38 Vict.
cap. 96; 57 & 58 Vict. cap. 205 5 and 63 & 64 Vict.
cap. 117. cf. Canal Returns (1907), App. 301.

records. In 1339 we hear of a royal writ™ to
the bailiffs of Ware ordering the restitution
of 12 quarters of malt which Master Reymond
Peregrine, an Italian merchant and financier,
had caused to be provided at the prebend of
Leighton Bromswold for the expenses of his
house in London, since these had been seized
at Ware en route by John de Tebdych, a royal
purveyor. The trade in malt between Hert-
fordshire and London was considerable. About
1478 William Symmes, ‘a comon cariour of
malte,’ appealed * to the Court of Chancery for
redress. One John Pratte had hired him to
carry 6 quarters of malt to Stratford-le-Bow
to William Whitehead, brewer, who refused it
as ‘not gode nor holesum for man.’ The next
market-day Pratte met the carrier at Ware
‘and ther arestid hym for the said malt, and
wolde condempne hym ther in 38s. contrarie to
all right and conscience.’ The appellant begged
a writ of certiorari directed to the steward of
Ware. About the same time malting was an
industry at Aldenham,” for Robert Mascall, a
maltman of that place, found himself accused
of abducting Joan Smythe, the apprentice of
Alexander Eldwolde, a London citizen. The
girl had already been in Mascall’s service two
years, when on a visit to London, ‘as he must
nedys do wekely by cause of his occupacion,’
her new master, who had engaged her at first
from ‘ compassion for goddys love and in way
of almes more than for any other cause,’ was
arrested, Eldwolde affirming against him a

plaint of trespass. Apparently Mascall refused

to put himself on a verdict of a London jury

‘in a mater of which by no possibilite of the

lawe the[y] myght have verrey notice,’ and he

now applied for redress and enlargement to

the Chancellor. Another action of the same

period introduces Harry Hewet, maltman, who

in an action of debt brought by Matthew

Baldok, maltman, in the St. Albans Piepowder

Court, had been prevented from waging his law

by the abbot’s steward.” A rather later case

than these, which may be assigned to about
the year 1510, shows us Edward Wylson*
proceeding against John Archer of Ware for
the balance of a sum due for 20 quarters of
malt. It was alleged that the defendant in
the Common Pleas had waged his law ‘ for-
sweryng hymself upon a boke with xij other
vntrue men called knyghtes of the post that
he owed not the said residue.’ Ware, Alden-
ham and St. Albans were only a few of the
Hertfordshire places noted for malt. In 1514
Christopher Warde,?® a brewer, was appealing

% Cal. Close, 1339-41, p- 135-

5 arly Chan. Proc. bdle. 46, no. 218.
26 Ibid. no. 387. 7 Thid. no. 463.
28 Ibid. bdle. 369, no. 92.

29 Ibid. bdle. 376, no. 63.

242

INDUSTRIES

for redress in Chancery against Thomas Paryse
of Hitchin, who had refused to compensate
him for many years’ delivery of short measure
of malt. The case was flagrant. For eight
years Warde had bought weekly of this dis-
honest trader * vij quarters malte and therfor
well and truely contentyd and payd wekely to
the said Thomas Paryse.’ But Paryse ‘all the
said vij yeres vsed such sleight and deceytfull
measures that your said Oratour lakked euery
weke a pek of euery quarter malte, the which
malt the said vij yeres amountith to 94 quarters
malte for the which your said oratour hath
contentyd and paide to the saide Paryse
£21 18s. 8d. and had therefor noo thyng.’ The
results of these cases do not appear, but the
facts recited are sufficiently suggestive of a
considerable trade in malt between Hertford-
shire and London.

In the 17th century the trade was still
strong. Norden* reports malting in 1616 as
the chief business of Great Berkhampstead.
At Hitchin * there existed a mill called ‘Le
Maltmilne.’? Occasional entries in the Sessions
Papers introduce us to maltsters offending
against the ecclesiastical or civil regulations of
the time. In 1615 it was presented ® that
‘Thomas Maunsell of the parish of Muche
Monden, maltman, standing excommunicate
did upon the 9 July inst. disturb the minister
and congregation in the parish church there,
during the service time, so that the minister
was enforced to break off his sermon and leave
the church.” Some twenty-five years® after
Isaac Fuller, late of Ware, maltster, was charged
with keeping and using an illicit measure—to
wit, a bushel contrary to the assize. But the
chief concern of the justices with the maltster’s
trade was as to its effect on the roads. So
active was the traffic that the justices *4 in
1631 advised that between Michaelmas and
May malt brought from Royston to Ware
should be carried on horseback to save the
roads, since that part of the country was clay.
But the maltsters appear to have done their
best to evade the order. In 1646-7 the men of
Ware presented *5 that ‘the great decay of all
the ways arises through the unreasonable
loads of malt brought into and through Ware
to Hodsdon from remote parts, and the
bringing of great loads of malt from both the
Hadhams, Alburie, Storford all the Pelhams
and Clavering through Ware Extra and the
excessive loads from Norwich, Bury and Cam-
bridge weekly, the teams often consisting of

30 Sseculum Brit.

31 Pat. 7 Jas. I, pt. xxxiii.

32 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 44.
33 Ibid. 65.

34 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1631-3, p. 66.
35 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 86.

seven or eight horses.’ They further noticed that
there had been a great increase of maltsters
in Ware and suggested that if the maltsters
would carry lighter loads with only four
horses as they used to, and each person would
duly perform his work, the ways could be
sufficiently amended. Attempts would seem
to have been made to discourage malting in
Hertfordshire during the reign of Charles I,
possibly on the advice of economic theorists
in London, and in consequence about 1636
the Hertfordshire justices drew up a state-
ment *¢ of the inconveniences and damages
which are discovered to arise in that county
from the restraints of malt-making and chiefly
in the towns of Stortford, Hitchin, Baldock,
Ashwell, Royston and other of the champaign
parts of the county. ‘The most maltsters in
that county,’ according to this memorial, were
‘of mean ability, and are chiefly employed by
gentlemen and others who send their barleys
to them to be malted for the provision of their
houses ; also widows, the portions of orphans,
servants who have some small stock and
others who like not to put their money to
usury buy barley and hire the making of it by
the quarter. These poor maltsters are very
useful to the county, pay good rents and have
borne all taxes. So in the villages many petty
maltsters make malt for themselves and
supply the markets ; they bear offices and pay
taxes, but being restrained, must turn day-
labourers, of whom many already want work.
So again malt making continued little more
than half a year; many mechanics and men of
small trades employed their wives, children
and servants in malt making whilst them-
selves followed other callings.’

Large quantities of malt continued to be
made in Hertfordshire during the 18th century,
especially round Ware and Hertford, for
consumption in London,’? and the improved
water communication of the Stort Navigation
gave fresh life to the industry at Bishop’s
Stortford. From Ware no less than 5,000
quarters of malt and corn used to be sent in a
week to London by barges.*8

Even in the middle of the last century
malting remained the most important of the
industries of the county. At Ware there
existed no less than seventy malt-houses, and
most of the London breweries were still sup-
plied from this town®9 In northern Hert-
fordshire the excellent barley grown in the
neighbourhood was largely used at the malt
kilns of Ashwell and Baldock.4° In fact,

36 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1636-7, p. 323 et seq.

37 Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. (1791), 73.

38 Samuel Simpson, The Agreeable Historian (1746),
263. 39 Lewis, Topog. Dict. (1849), iv, 464.

40 Ibid. i, 96, 133.

243

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

these two towns together with Hitchin and
Hertford were famous for the high quality of
this commodity. Malting is still, in the zoth
century, one of the prominent industries of
the shire.

In the Middle Ages brewing was a universal #!*
and necessary industry, and hardly any series
of manor or borough rolls but contains refer-
ences to its conduct, to local rates levied on
the trade or fines for infraction of regulations
which were rarely observed. It is of interest
to inquire when ‘ beer’ or hopped ale was first
brewed in the county, but little evidence exists.
But this may be said, it was probably intro-
duced by aliens. In a will of 1504, connected
with Ware, is a bequest to ‘the Dutchman
(the beer brewer).’ #

One of the earliest public breweries in Hert-
fordshire was the Cannon Brewery at Watford.
It was certainly in existence “ in 1750, and
for two generations belonged to the Dyson
family, by whom it was sold to Mr. Joseph
Benskin in 1868. By him the trade was ener-
getically developed and a new _brew-house
built. On Mr. Benskin’s death in 1877 the
business passed to his widow and his son
Mr. J. P. Benskin, and in 1884 Mrs. Benskin
retired from the firm in favour of her younger
son Mr. Thomas Benskin. In the following
year his elder brother also retired, owing to
ill-health, and the younger son was joined by
a member of a famous Dorsetshire brewing
family, Mr. J. A. Panton, who had made a
scientific study of his craft under Professor
Graham at University College, London. The
trade of the Watford Brewery was now rapidly
extended and the latest improvements in the
craft introduced. In July 1894 Benskin’s
Watford Brewery Company, Ltd., was registered,
and in January 1898 was reorganized to
acquire the King’s Langley Brewery, the Kings-
bury (St. Albans) Brewery and Healey’s King
Street Brewery, Watford. In the autumn of
the same year the further capital was raised in
order to take over the brewery of Hawkes
& Co. of Bishop’s Stortford, which had been
originally established in the 18th century.
The famous ales of this great brewery have a
well-deserved reputation far beyond the county
boundaries, and at the Brewers’ Exhibition of
1912 the company obtained a first prize of a
silver medal for a naturally matured India
pale ale in bottle. Quite lately a thoroughly

41 G. A. Cooke, 4 Topog. and Statistical Descr. of the
County of Hertford (1825), 69, 74-

41a In 1355 no less than 79 brewers were fined at
St. Albans, most of them being engaged in other
industries as well. At Royston among the delinquents
was Master Thomas ‘Scolemaistre’ (Coram Rege
R. 377):

#2 Will, P.C.C. 4 Holgrave.

43 Barnard, Breweries of Great Britain, 85.

modern installation of bottling machinery has
been added to the plant.

Another important Hertfordshire brewery
amalgamation was that of the Hatfield and
Harpenden Breweries in 1902, by which the
firms of Glover & Sons, Ltd., of Hatfield and
Messrs. Pryor, Reid & Co., of Hatfield and
Hertford, were joined. Among other Hertford-
shire brewery firms or companies may be
mentioned such well-known names as Christie
& Co., Ltd., of Hoddesdon, E. K. & H. Fordham,
Ltd., of Ashwell, Locke & Smith, of Berk-
hampstead, McMullen & Sons, of Hertford,
Messrs. J. & J. E. Phillips, Ltd., of Royston,
T. W. Kent & Son, and M. A. Sedgwick & Co.,
to mention only a few out of many. Some
Hertfordshire brewers also manufacture mineral
waters and other beverages, as, for example,
Barley’s Brewery at Bishop’s Stortford. At
the present day no material differences have
been made in the chief ingredients employed
in brewing from those in use a century ago.
A noticeable feature lies in the fact that beer
of much lighter gravity is now preferred to
the dark, heavy variety in general vogue
fifty years ago. There is also a strong demand,
which seems to be on the increase, for all
‘beers’ (including stout and porter) supplied
in bottle. There is, however, no regular
production of lager beer from any of the
Hertfordshire breweries.“

In the Middle Ages cider was occasionally
made on Hertfordshire manors, but less com-
monly than in the counties south of the Thames.
At the manor of La Hyde “ in Sawbridgeworth
in 1284 we hear of 205. received for two casks
of cider, the produce of the garden. In the
year following, four casks of cider were made
of 40 quarters of apples, and the liquor sold
at 8s. the cask. Again in 1288, 24 quarters of
apples, less the tithe, furnished 604 gallons
of cider. About the middle of the 18th century,
however, William Ellis was obliged to confess
‘In Hertfordshire ** we are bad cyder makers,
and therefore are not so curious as we ought
to be in planting the Redstreak, Gennet Moyle
and those trees that are most fitting for this
purpose.” He also names‘? the Holland
Pippin as ‘one of the farmer’s best apples,
supplying his cellar with cyder and pome-
pirk,’ and the Parsnip Apple ‘to make a
cyder for present drinking.” The Lemon
Pippin could also be used, and even the Golden
Rennet made a ‘tolerable cyder, but not so
fine a sort as the pippin produces.’ The
best Holland Pippin cider, however, which he
had ever tasted was made just outside the

#4 Inform. from Mr. F. Eaton.

45 Mins. Accts. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 868, no. 1.
48 Ellis, Husbandry, i, 140.

47 Thid. 138 et seq.

244

INDUSTRIES

borders of the county at Ivinghoe Arson (Aston),
in Buckinghamshire. Perry was also occa-
sionally made in Hertfordshire in the 18th
century. Ellis declared 48 that with his fine
golden-coloured orange pears in a_ plentiful
year he made a ‘most charming perry.’ His
procedure was as follows: ‘For Perry * we
stamp or grind the orange pears in August, or
September at farthest ; and if we can then get
some ripe, sharp apples, wildings or crabs we
mix them with the pears, and press all together
to lessen the extraordinary luscious taste of
this fruit, which, with right management,
afterwards will become an agreeable perry for
early drinking.’ By further racking and proper
ingredients it could be kept for a winter liquor
* which as soon as in the cask yields a scent so
much like an orange that few can believe it
that never proved it.’ By the beginning of the
19th century, however, whatever industry may
have existed appears to have died out. G. A.
Cooke, writing in 1825,®° in describing orchard
cultivation, states that no apples grown in
Hertfordshire were then used for cider.

The county possesses no historic quarries,
though a little grey limestone of the Totternhoe #
type has been got for local buildings. Beds of
phosphatic modules and worn Gault fossils,
whether belonging to the Upper Greensand or
the Chalk Marl, were largely worked in the
past, as in the neighbourhood of Hitchin and
Ashwell. The digging of gravel for road-
metal is also a decreasing industry, since
Leicestershire syenite has been brought to
the south. The chalk * obtained from quarries,
of sufficient size to be liable to Government
inspection, amounted in IgII to 29,335 tons.
One thousand five hundred and eighty-one tons
of flint and 12,516 tons of clay were also re-
turned for that year.

Medicinal springs, which apparently were
fitfully exploited, have been discovered at
East Barnet, Hemel Hempstead and other
places.

The woodlands *4 of Hertfordshire furnished
in the Middle Ages excellent timber, and
then, as now, Berkhampstead was an im-
portant centre of the trade. In 1591-2 wages 55
were fixed under the Statute of 1562-3 °° for

48 Husbandry (1750), vii, 147.

4 Tbid. 141.

5 Op. cit. 32.

51 cf. V.C.H. Herts. i, 8 et seq.

52 Gen. Rep. Mines and Quarries, pt. iii (1912),
214 et seq.

3G, A. Cooke, op. cit. 91, 164 et seq.

54 Hertfordshire is described as ‘ ful of wode’ in an
early MS. entitled the ‘Characteristics of Counties,’
published in Hearne’s edition of Leland’s Jtin. v,
Pp. Xxvi.

55 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 11.

55a Stat. § Eliz. cap. 4.

woodmen, and the following rates were en-
joined :—

‘Cleaving of lathe by the hundred not above
3d.
‘Cleaving of pale by the hundred not above 6d.

‘Felling and hewing of colewood by the
dosin not above 12d.

‘Fellinge, makeinge and buynding of baven
by the hundred, accomptinge six score to the
hundred, every baven beinge fower foote in
lenghte, not above 14d.

‘And for every lode of talewood 4d.

*Makinge and buyndinge of brushe baven by
the hundred, after six score in the hundred
made of ramell left of colewood, not above 8d.’

Charcoal-burning was a widespread industry
from the earliest times, and this fuel not only
found a local market, but was probably carried
to London. Even toward the close of the
15th century the charcoal produced on certain
manors was a source of considerable profit.
In an account ®* of 1475 for Sir John Say’s
manors of Bedwell, Little Berkhampstead
and Lowthes we find that 62 cartloads of
charcoal made from underwood cut in Bedwell
Park and elsewhere brought in {2 185. 4d.
The trade long continued, and in 1606-7 the
inhabitants of Stanstead 5? were greatly annoyed
by ‘ the making of wode,’ so that not only the
inhabitants but strangers were ‘ constrained to
stope their nosses as they go bye, the stinke is
so greate.’ Much later, in 1804, Arthur
Young, in his account of the Earl of Clarendon’s
park at Grove, speaks of beeches burnt for
charcoal.

Woodware, as might be expected, was always
a local industry in the forest regions.*** In the
18th century the trade was still brisk in the
county. William Ellis writes in enthusiastic
terms of the fine long hedges of alder in the
water meadows between Hemel Hempstead
and Watford. Their large high poles were
turned to great account among ‘the Berk-
hampstead and Cheshunt turners of hollow
ware, who in this commodity make more
consumption of this wood and beech than
any other two towns in Great Britain, as is
allowed by good judges; for with this wood
they make dishes, bowls, and many other
serviceable goods that are lighter and softer
than the beech or elm, and will bear turning
thinner than most others; so that to please

56 Fast Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iv (2), 193. cf.
the ‘puteos carbonum’ at Knebworth (Harl. Roll
13).

57 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 37.

58 Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 146.

58a In this connexion we may notice the number
of wheelwrights in south-western Hertfordshire in
the 14th century. In 1355 eight were fined at
Rickmansworth, four at Wheathampstead and six in
the liberty of Berkhampstead (Coram Rege R. 377).

245

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Harkness & Son, of Hitchin, are but a few of
the important growers.

In connexion with this industry, however,
it may be stated that in the first half of the
1gth century, at Munden and at Brookmans,
both in Hertfordshire, were formed two of the
earliest and most important rose gardens in
England, a fact which may have had a
material influence upon the present industrial
aspect of this type of horticulture. Reference
may also be made to the extensive orchid

nursery of Messrs. Sanders at St. Albans, which
has now been in existence for over a quarter
of a century.

The industrial position of Hertfordshire is
probably at the present time stronger than
ever before. The absence of coal and mineral
wealth renders it unlikely that any exceptional
development can be looked for, but the prospect
of a lower wages bill and the provision of cheap
electric power may do much to attract manu-
facturers from the great towns.

TEXTILES

Although a certain amount of cloth was
produced in this as in all other counties, Hert-
fordshire has never been a great cloth-making
district. It did not even take a prominent
place in the production of the raw material,
wool, though St. Albans was amongst the
religious houses from which the Italian mer-
chants bought wool in the late 13th and early
14th centuries.! At that time the price of the
St. Albans wool was set at 10 marks the sack.
In 1337, when prices were fixed for wool pro-
duced in different districts? that grown in
Hertfordshire and Essex was put at 74 marks,
rather below the average price. The two
counties are here classed together, but, while
Essex became one of the greatest centres of
the cloth trade, Hertfordshire never attained
eminence in this direction.

The chief centre of the industry in this
county was in early times St. Albans, where it
was clearly well established by the end of the
12th century, as in 1202 the men of that borough
paid 2 marks to King John to have the right
to buy and sell dyed cloth as they used to do
in the time of Henry II.3 Hertford was another
centre, but at Ware there were no dyers or
weavers before the war between John and his
barons, though some settled there immediately
after that war.‘ For the most part the early
history of cloth-making in this county consists
of isolated references to individual craftsmen
and fulling-mills. John, Abbot of St. Albans,
granted a fulling-mill at Cassio, in Watford, to
Petronilla de Ameneville in 1255,5 and a fulling-
mill in Hemel Hempstead was confirmed to
the canons of Ashridge in 1290, and continued
in use for at least three centuries, being referred
to in 1540 and again in 1580, when there were

81 See Will. Paul, F.H.S., The Rose Garden (ed. 10),
26.

1 Cunningham, Hist. of Industry and Commerce, ii,
626.

3 Cal. Close, 1337-9, p. 149.

3 ).C.H. Herts, ii, 457.

‘ Assize R. 318, m. 64.

5 7’°.C.H. Herts. ii, 452.

two mills under one roof. There was one such
mill at King’s Langley in the time of Edward I,’
and there was another at Standon at least
as early as 1337, when ‘ a cord of bast ’ and other
things were bought for the fulling-mill,® which
was leased next year for 26s. 84.2 At Gilston,
near Sawbridgeworth, Gilbert le Fulur held a
fulling-mill in the last quarter of the 13th
century ; this he granted to Thomas le Chalu-
nour (the maker of chalons or coverlets), who
had married one of his daughters, but its
possession was disputed in 1286 by his other
daughters, one of whom had married John le
Deghere (the dyer).2°

At the assizes of 1247 Robert Stanhard was
convicted of stealing woollen cloths from the
fulling-mill below Eywood, near St. Albans,4
and the importance of the industry in that
town is shown by the appearance of the name
Fullerstrete in the 13th century.2 In one case,
in 1266, land in ‘the street of the fullers’ is
said to adjoin the ‘ tentorium’ (tenterground,
or place for stretching cloths) of Richard son
of Robert.4 It was just about this time that
the question of the fulling of cloths led to
serious disputes between the abbot and the
townsmen of St. Albans.44 The abbot claimed
that all cloth made locally, and especially all
thick and coarse cloth, must be fulled at the
abbey mill. This claim was resisted, and in
1274 the townsmen began setting up mills in
their own houses and fulling their own coarse
cloth. The abbot retorted by sending his
officers to distrain the refractory townsmen,
taking from one of their leaders, Henry de
Porta, who had set up a fulling stock in his

5 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 221.

7 Ibid. 237.

8 Mins. Accts. bdle. 868, no. 22.

® Ibid. no. 23.

10 Assize R. 328, m. 35.

UD Ibid. 318, m. 26d.

1 e.g. Cott. MS. Jul. D iii, fol. 1, 55, 58.

1 Tbid. fol. 55.

M Walsingham, Gesta Adbbatum (Rolls Ser.), i,
410-17.

248

ai Pa lille tao

INDUSTRIES

house in Fullerstrete, a russet cloth worth 3os.
The townsmen made a general levy to raise
funds for litigation, and also assembled in a
body to meet Queen Eleanor when she came to
visit the abbey. The abbot endeavoured to
outwit them by bringing the queen round by a
different way, but the townsmen and the
women, ‘whose attack was formidable since
it is hard to put reasonable bounds to the
anger of women,’ forced their way in and
appealed to her. The queen rebuked the
abbot for trying to keep the people from her,
but, whatever her feelings may have been in
the matter, the law was on the side of the abbot,
and although the townsmen appealed against
the first verdict the retrial resulted in the
confirmation of the abbot’s claim. The dispute
broke out again early in the reign of Edward III,
when the townsmen succeeded in extorting
from the abbot a charter giving them the right
to full their cloth elsewhere than at the abbey
mill. This, however, they soon had to relin-
quish.1®

A list of tradesmen?® drawn up for some
purpose in the reign of Edward III gives twelve
weavers, six fullers and five dyers in St. Albans
and three weavers and three fullers in Hert-
ford. Another list of persons fined for infring-
ing various trade regulations in 1355 names at
St. Albans eleven weavers, five fullers and two
dyers and at Hertford three fullers; two dyers
are mentioned at Buntingford and a fuller at
Ware. There were also nine wool merchants
at Baldock." In the next reign the number of
the Hertfordshire clothworkers was small, and
their output insignificant compared with many
counties. The accounts of the subsidy of 4d.
on every broadcloth for the year 18-19
Richard II? show the names of twenty-seven
producers in St. Albans, of whom the chief were
Thomas Carter, with fifteen cloths; Robert West,
with ten; John Halgate and John Hawkwode,
with five each. Hertford had only five names,
Berkhampstead thirteen, but all responsible
for very small amounts, Ashwell and Hitchin
fifteen, of whom none produced more than four
cloths, and Buntingford with Royston thirty-
six names, of whom William Serle had six
cloths, but no one else more than three. The
total amount of cloth produced for sale in the
county during the year was 198 cloths, or the
equivalent, for a considerable part of the
output consisted of narrow ‘ dozens,’ of which
four were equal to one whole cloth. In the
similar account for 21-2 Richard II 1® there are
thirty-two makers of whole cloths, averaging

1 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 5, no. 198.
16 Exch. K.R. Accts. bdle. 399, no. 14.
16a Coram Rege R. 377.

” Exch. K.R. Accts. bdle. 342, no. 8.
8 Tbid. no. 11.

two each, not assigned to any particular towns,
but of the three largest producers—John Sextry,
with ten cloths, John Hawkewode and Thomas
Carter, with nine each—the two last-named
occurred in the earlier list as belonging to St.
Albans. In the same list, under ‘narrow
cloths,’ Royston had sixteen names (four of
whom, including William Serle, produced twelve
‘ dozens’ or upwards), Baldock three, Bunting-
ford two, Hitchin and Codicote ten; Stortford,
Hertford and Ware, together, eight. In the
account for 3-4 Henry IV? only nine names
are given for the whole county, the largest
amount, nine ‘dozens’ of narrow cloth, being put
down to Simon Sebern of Hitchin, which town
Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary (1849)
says was ‘celebrated at an early period for
woollen goods.’ His further statement that
‘many of the merchants of Calais resided in
the place prior to the removal of that branch
of business from the towns on the continent’
cannot be verified.

Some idea of the cloths manufactured may
be gleaned from cases in which pieces were
forfeited for neglect of the regulation by which
all cloth exposed for sale had to be sealed by
the ulnager, or for other reasons. At St. Albans
in 1423 were seized ®° 6 yards of red cloth worth
5s.. 11 yards of ‘lyght blew medley’ worthgs.,
15 yards of ‘ persed blew’ worth 1§5.,12 yards
of green worth 12s., 4 yards of light blue worth
2s. 8d., 8 yards of white russet cloth worth 5s.
and 4 yards of black russet cloth worth 2s. 4d.
In 1440 the forfeitures returned were nine
pieces of woollen cloth of divers colours called
‘remenaunts’” belonging to John Panfeld of
Stortford, and two pieces of narrow russets of
Walter Helder of Buntingford. Rather earlier,
in 1396, the ulnage accounts” include a payment
from John Stowe for ‘ a dozen of broad cloth of
stout blanket (de robusto blanketto). John
Studley of St. Albans is described as a ‘ strayl-
wever’ in 1438, ‘strayle’ being apparently a
coarse sort of blanketing used for bedclothes.
Almost the only other reference to material
occurs in a long list of cloths forfeited in London
in the early years of Elizabeth. Hopkin Albre,
clothier, of Hertford (the only Hertfordshire
name in the list), was fined for a ‘ fryse,’ or
frieze cloth, lacking one pound in weight.”

Whether the absence of other Hertfordshire
names from this list of defaulting clothiers was
due to their greater honesty or the smallness of
their output may be left uncertain, but it would
seem that even the small amount of cloth-

19 Exch. K.R. Accts. bdle. 342, no. 17.

20 Tbid. no. 20.

21 Tbid. no. 21.

22 Ibid. no. 11.

23 Herts. Gen. and Antig. ii, 238.

24 Memo. R. (Exch. K.R.), Hil. 7 Eliz. m. 331

4 249 32

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

making which had formerly existed in the
county was dying out, for in 1588, when the
authorities at St. Albans wished to set the
unemployed to work at spinning, they put the
matter into the hands of Anthony Moner,
‘Dutchman’ or German. It is also note-
worthy that the necessary machinery ‘ for
spinning and weaving worsted’ was obtained
from Hertford. The articles bought are de-
scribed as ‘a new great loom and two flayes, one
for silk and the other for cruell, and all that
belongs to them—{3 15s.; two little looms, one
for silk and the other for cruell, 215.; seven
wheels, 36s.; wheels to wind yarn, 20d. ; three
blades, 16d.; things to lay on the warp, 84d. ;
the warping pins that belong to them and
four dozen of quills, 6s.; one hartle, 8d.; two
keeles, 16d.; a pair of combs, 1§d.’ The
references in these details to silk are rather
puzzling, as the cloth made seems to have been
mainly, if not entirely, woollen. In September
1588, three months after the machinery had
been bought, the constables were ordered to
report as to how many poor children might be
spared to be taught spinning by the Dutchman.”®
In November Mr. Thomas Woolley was com-
missioned to expend {10 on wool to be retailed
to the Dutchman by 2 tods at the time.” Then
in January 1589 Anthony Moner entered into
a formal agreement” to teach children to spin
in six weeks, after that time paying them for
their work, and next month he undertook to
teach four men to comb and dress wool. He
was to pay to ‘the Company’ (? of Mercers)
3d. for every pound dressed, and to pay the
children for spinning 2s. a pound for the best,
1s. 4d. for the second sort, and 8d. for the third
sort. The further history of this experiment
is unfortunately not recorded.

Twenty years after this experiment at St.
Albans the Earl of Salisbury, who had just
obtained the Hatfield estate, inaugurated a
similar scheme at Hatfield, the following agree-
ment being made with Walter Morrall, of
Enfield, in December 1608 : °°

The said Walter Morrall will, at his own cost, at
all speed after the date hereof, for the term of ten
years diligently teach within the parish of Hatfield,
Herts., in the art of clothing, weaving, spinning,
carding, or any other such-like commendable trade
which the said Walter shall think good, fifty persons
to be chosen by the earl within the said parish of
Hatfield but of no other place ; out of which fifty
persons the said Walter is to take apprentices for seven
years not under the number of twenty persons, pro-

25 Gibbs, Corp. Rec. of St. Albans, 28.

26 Tbid. 32.

27 Tbid.

28 Thid. 34.

29 Thid.

30 Trans. St. Albans Arch. and Archit. Soc. (New

Ser.), i, 350-1, from S. P. Dom. Jas. I, xxxviil, 73.

vided always that if by death or otherwise there shall
at any time be less than the full number, the rest
shall be supplied by the direction of the said earl and
the number of apprentices shall always be fully main-
tained. And also the said Walter Morrall shall find
stuff and work enough to set all these fifty persons at
work, so as to avoid idleness and also for the education
and teaching of them in skill and knowledge of the
said trades for the better getting of their honest
livings afterwards. And shall also pay to the said
fifty persons (except such as he shall take apprentice)
for their work such rates as are usually given in Essex
and elsewhere for the like work. And that the said
Walter shall pay the said wages after the rates afore-
said to each of them at the end of each week during
the term of ten years without fraud.

In return the earl agreed to give him a house
in Hatfield rent free, and to pay him yearly
{100 during the ten years, arrangement being
made for certain deductions in the event of
Walter Morrall allowing the number to fall
below fifty. Further stipulations were made
that the persons employed should be well
treated, should attend the parish church on
Sundays, and should not teach the trade to
any other until they had themselves practised
it three years, and also that Morrall should
always keep ten looms in his house. Beyond
the fact that this scheme was actually put into
operation nothing more appears to be known
of it.

Little remains to be said of the textile
industry in the county. Casual references show
that it existed in various parts ; for instance, at
Elstree we find the marriage of Thomas Fenn,
silk weaver, in 1667,8! and in 1669 Thomas Bigg,
of Chipperfield, issued a token bearing the
weavers’ arms. At Watford the name of
Jeremiah Smith, weaver, occurs in 1676, and
at St. Albans we have mention of Thomas
Reynolds, dyer, and John Mathew, weaver, in
1672,33 Henry Andrews, weaver, in 1676," and
Thomas Morgan, dyer, in 171425 In 1801
Young ** noted an inconsiderable amount of
spinning from Hockerill to Ware, Hadham and
Buntingford, and added that it was not
increasing.

About this date a silk-mill and a flock-mill
were built at Rickmansworth,?? and a fair
amount of horsehair chair seating appears to
have been made there during the next half-
century2® In 1824 a silk-mill was set up in
Brook Street, Tring, which was in the hands of

31 Herts. Gen. and Antig. i, 362.

32 Tbid. ii, 167.

33 Ibid. 95.

%4 Thid. 141.

36 Ibid. iii, 377.

36 Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 222.

37 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 372.

38 Osborne, Guide to the Gd. Junction Rly. (1838),
107; A. Freeling, The Rly. Companion from Lond. to
Birm. (c. 1842), 61.

250

INDUSTRIES

David Evans & Co. in 1873, but is no longer
worked. In 1838 this factory engaged 500
hands, and a contemporary writer states that
steam and water power were employed, the
weekly wages bill being as follows: superin-
tendent, {1 ; men, I2s. to 155. ; women, 55. 6d. ;
children, 3s. From the same source we know
that the maximum number of hours daily for
infant labour was fixed at ten, and twelve for
adults. In the same town and at Ware #
there appears to have been a fairly considerable
manufacture of canvas. At Tring there were
four manufactureré employing I00 people. In
this industry hand-looms were used, and the
rate of wages appears to have been somewhat
higher, the men receiving 16s. per week. The
Tring people claimed to have commenced this
trade prior to any other town in England. At
Watford there were three silk-mills in 1838,%
and in 1849 three mills for throwing silk,4* one
of these being presumably the Rookery Silk
Mill, which was closed before 1881,4° and at

THE STRAW PLAIT, HAT

The county of Hertford probably owed its
former high repute for the industry of straw-
plaiting to soil peculiarly favourable to the
growth of the varieties of wheat-straw known
as Nursery and Red Lammas, both of which
were in great, and, indeed, in almost exclusive,
demand amongst straw-plaiters1 Tradition
assigns the introduction of the industry into
this and the adjacent counties to the patronage
bestowed by Mary Queen of Scots on a colony
of Lorraine immigrants whom she established
in the first instance in Scotland, and who were
afterwards brought to England by her son,
James I. Mr. Thomas G. Austin, of Luton,
an expert historian of the handicraft, gives the
following account of its beginnings :—

The fair and ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, when
travelling in her mother’s country, Lorraine, found
numbers of women and children employed, some in
plaiting straws and others in working the straw plait
into hats. Noticing that these poor people seemed
better off than their non-plaiting fellow country folk,
she took some of them with her, settled them in Scot-
land in or about the year 1552 under her immediate

39 V.C.H. Heris. ii, 281.

40 Osborne, op. cit. 124.

41 Tbid.

42. G. A. Cooke, 4 Topog. Deser. of the County of
Herts. 44.

43 Osborne, op. cit. 106.

“4 Lewis, Topog. Dict.

45 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 453.

1/.C.H. Herts. ii, 135. Straw suitable for plait-
Ing was never grown, says Arthur Young, on stony or
heavy land. ‘Weak straw grown under hedges and
near trees was best’ (Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 224).

St. Albans a silk-mill occupying the site of the
abbey mill employed 300 young persons,**
which still continues, while there was also a
mill for spinning cotton wicks; possibly the
same mentioned in 1795.47 According to a
writer in 1838 this factory was formerly devoted
to lapidary work." There are also at the
present time the St. Edmundsbury Weaving
Works at Letchworth, and mention may also
be made of the Nicholson Rainproof Coat
Company at St. Albans.

At the Ickleford Industries of Applied Arte
of Mr. Walter Witter a successful attempt has
been made to revive artistic craftsmanship in
a country village. At the present time about
ninety persons, all from the neighbourhood,
are regularly employed.4 The work is by no
means confined to textiles, but special attention
is given to the reproduction and restoration of
old needlework, and the enterprise has won
not only in Great Britain, but on the Continent
and in America, an excellent repute.

AND BONNET INDUSTRY

protection, in order that the handicraft might be
learnt by her own subjects. Before, however, her
laudable projects could bear fruit, cruel destiny over-
took her. ‘The Lorrainers, however, were not
deserted, for her son, James VI of Scotland and I of
England, brought them to England, finding a suitable
shelter for them under the Napier family, who were
personal friends of the Anglo-Scottish king, and at
that time (1600) owners of Luton Hoo.?

Straw plaiting, however, must have been an
industry of the English countryside, wherever
suitable material was available, in Elizabethan
times, if not earlier. Shakespeare writes of
maidens wearing ‘ platted hives of straw,’3 of
the ‘ sheav’d hat,’ # and the ‘ rye-straw hat’ 5;
whilst in 1530 letters of denization were granted
to one Martin Johnson, a native of Guelders,
who is described as ‘a strawen hat maker,’ or
‘splyter hatmaker.’® By Stuart times the
industry was firmly established in Hertfordshire,
the fame of St. Albans, still a thriving seat of
the trade, being, at that epoch, chiefly derived
from ‘straw, tankards and pots.’? Pepys,
while staying at Hatfield in 1667, relates that

46 Lewis, Topog. Dict.

47 Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 73.

48 Osborne, op. cit. 110.

49 From inform. kindly furnished by Mr. Walter
Witter.

2 Austin, The Straw Trade, 15.

3 Shakespeare, 4 Lover’s Complaint (1597).

4 Ibid.

5 The Tempest, Act tv, Sc. i, 136.

6 Page, Denizations and Naturalizations (Huguenot
Soc.), 136.

7 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. il, 274.

251

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the ladies of the house-party ‘ had the pleasure
of putting on some straw hats, which are much
worn in this country, and did become them
mightily, but especially my wife.’® The 18th
century was the golden age of the straw plait
industry. ‘ Several thousand plaiters,’ states
Oldmixon, in his Critical History of England,
‘found profitable employment’ in this century
in the counties of Bedford and Hertford.
According to the testimony of Arthur Young ®
and other travellers in the district where the
industry flourished, the earnings of straw plait
workers were very great and its effect upon the
rates very beneficial. By the farmers, however,
this cottage handicraft was viewed with any-
thing but favour, in spite of the good account
to which, in consequence of the demand for
straw, they were able to turn this part of their
wheat. They considered, says Young, ‘ that it
did mischief, making the poor saucy, rendering
the women averse to husbandry, and causing a
dearth of indoor servants and field labourers.’ 1°
This state of things was not to be wondered
at. Women found the ‘ straw work,’ as it was
called, no less profitable than it was pleasant.
At St. Albans women could earn §s. a day at the
close of the 18th century and the opening of
the 19th. A guinea a week could be earned by
mere children. This, indeed, was the weekly
wage of a girl of thirteen at Gorhambury.4
Women at Redbourn earned a guinea a week ;
at Berkhampstead a good hand could earn from
14s. to 18s. a week. Mrs. Munns, of Market
Street, was a great buyer of ‘ twist,’ which she
bought at 4s. the score, or 30 yards, from the
poor of the neighbourhood, making it up into
bonnets.2 The work was almost exclusively
in the hands of the female population—women,
girls, and children, the men taking but a small
part in the work, their share being chiefly
confined to buying the straw from the farmers
and bringing it home to the women.* One
shilling a head was paid for binding wheat straw
into bundles for market.4 In 1813 John
Arnold, employed by Mr. Benjamin Kitchener,
of King’s Walden, who sold for plaiting such of
his straw as was suitable for the purpose, was

8 Pepys, Diary, vii, 64. Pepys also speaks of a
certain actress ‘like a country maid, with a straw hat
on’ (ibid.). It was not until the 18th century that,
we are told, the milkmaid, or chip hat, was rescued
for a time from old women and servant girls to adorn
the heads of the first fashion. Ben Jonson writes to
Lady Mary Wroth :

“He that saw you wear the wheaten hat

Would call you more than Ceres, if not that.’

9 Young, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 32.

10 Tbid. 222.

U1 Tbid. 223.

12 Ibid.

13 Tansley, Soc. Arts. Trans. (1860).

14 Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 83.

charged with drawing straw for themselves
with two others. The custom was for the
buyer to draw straw from the sheaf, paying Ss.
for a bundle weighing about 601b.5 At a
later date Lydia Badricks was charged with
making away with 2 score and a half of the
value of 25.6428 The actual art of plaiting was
taught in plaiting schools, of which there was at
least one in every village where the industry was
established. The school was presided over by
an elderly dame, who charged the modest fee
of 2d. or 3d. a week for imparting her know-
ledge to the small scholars, who, after about
five weeks’ training, could earn, it was said,
from 8s, to 14s. a week.” The plait, after having
been made up into lengths of 20 yards, known
as scores, each yard forming one link or coil of
plait, was offered for sale in the plait markets
which were held in the open streets or market-
places of the chief towns of the county. Strict
municipal regulations governed the conduct of
these markets. In the plait market of Tring,
once famous for the industry, sale of plait was
restricted, in the reign of Charles II, to the
morning hours, the afternoon being reserved
for the sale of corn® At Hemel Hempstead,
where the plait market was held in Collet’s
Yard, afterwards the site of the ‘ King’s
Arms,’ none might buy or sell plait before
7 a.m. from Michaelmas to Lady Day, or before
8 a.m. during the rest of the year. No plait was
to be offered for sale on the general market day.’
The opening of the market was announced to
buyers by the ringing of a bell. The purchased
plait was not only disposed of locally. Essex
village plaiters made use of Hertfordshire cut
straw, which they bought in Hitchin market.
Prior to the invention of the straw splitter,
which gave a great impetus to the trade, the
straws were laboriously cut with a knife. The
informant of a contributor to the Penny
Cyclopedia (1842) told the writer that his
father, Mr. Thomas Simmons, residing about
1785 at Chalfont St. Peter (Bucks.), was
amusing himself one evening by cutting pieces of
wood, when he made an article upon which he put
a straw, and found that it divided it into several
pieces. A female who was present asked him to give
it to her, observing that if he could not make money
of it shecould. . . . He was subsequently apprenticed
to a blacksmith, and, on visiting his friends, he found
them engaged in splitting straws with a penknife.
Perceiving that the operation might be much better
performed by an apparatus similar to that which he

15 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 237.

16 bid. 410.

17 Austin, op. cit. 17.

18 Y.C.H. Herts. i, 281.

19 Borough Archives, Bailiwick Ree. 1 74-1256,
pp. 169, 194, 329-

20 T, Chalkley Gould, Stratu Plaiting: a Lost Essex
Industry, 5.

252

INDUSTRIES

had made some time before, he then made some
machines of iron on the same principle.

Mr. Tansley, in the paper to which reference
has previously been made, claims the invention
of the splitter for some French prisoners at
Yaxley Barracks, near Stilton, in 1803-6,
who first made it in bone.

It was about 2 in. long, brought to a point,
behind which a set of cutters was arranged in a circle.
The point entered the straw pipe separating it into
so many equal-sized splints. Some were arranged to
cut a straw into four parts, others five, and so on up
to nine. This instrument was soon imitated, and
being of such surprising agility, numbers were speedily
made, and fetched as much as from one to two guineas
each. A blacksmith of Dunstable, named Janes, made
them in iron, and turned the end downwards at right
angles with the stem, the cutters being placed imme-
diately above the point. . . . A few years afterwards,
about 1815, others were made like wheels and inserted
in a frame, the points projecting in front of each.
By this arrangement four or five splitters could be
fixed in one frame.

To this invention may be attributed the
success which, in after times, has attended the
manufacture of straw plait in England

When straw-plaiting was a thriving industry,
north Hertfordshire farmers who laid them-
selves out for the trade saw to it that their
wheat was reaped carefully by hand, as the
breaking action of the machine would have
ruined the stems. In the next process the
flags or leaf growths were separated from the
straw, which was then cut into equal lengths
between the joints, the most usual length
employed being about 9 in. The straw was
then tied up into bundles” for the markets,
where the plaiters bought it.

The splitting was in the early 19th century
done originally by bone ‘ engines,’ but these
were afterwards replaced by brass splitters or
iron splitters in wooden handles. The earlier
bone engines were made from the shank-bone
of an ox. The hardest part was sawn into
small cubes, and from these the engines were
chiselled. In the centre was a sharply-pointed

21 Austin, op. cit. 16.

22 T. Chalkley Gould, loc. cit.

22a Mr. G. E. Bullen states that there has recently
been brought to his notice at Redbourn a somewhat
elaborate and unusual ‘straw sorter.” It consists of
a woodwork frame, at the top of which were placed
sections of wire gauze with mesh of varying diameter.
The several sections were kept separate below by
‘means of pieces of fabric, the compartments thus
formed communicating with a removable trough again
divided into compartments. Apparently the operator
took hold of a bundle of cut straws and started to
shake it- loosely over the mesh of finest diameter,
repeating the operation throughout the whole series
of ‘sorters’ until the bundle was disposed of. In this
way the various divisions of the trough became filled
with straws of equal diameter.

cone from which, a little below, radiated the
‘cogs’ or cutting edges. These engines were
then fitted into wooden handles, or, as we have
already seen, inserted in a frame. Their use
was as follows: the plaiter thrust the straw
over the cone and pressed it against the edges
of the cogs, thus dividing it into as many splints
as cogs. The splints now required flattening,
and this was effected by wetting them and
passing them under a hand-roller or between
the rollers of a mill. This latter was made with
two rollers of beechwood, the pressure being
regulated by a screw above acting on loose
chucks, which pressed upon the axle of the
upper roller.

The plaiter often held the splints thus
prepared in her mouth, and taking them one
after another as required rapidly plaited them,
fresh splints being added to the plait till some
twenty yards had been made. The projecting
splint-ends were then cut off, and the plait
was again flattened by the mill or simple roller.
Occasionally, to produce a whipcord edge to
the plait, the upper roller of the mill was made
with a slight rebate or groove on one end.
When the bleaching # was done by the plaiters
themselves the process was extremely simple.
The bleaching box was of wood a foot or two
square with a few bars within at about half the
height of the box. On these the plait was laid
while a little sulphur was placed beneath on a
pan of live charcoal or glowing embers. After
two hours’ exposure to the fumes the plait
could be removed thoroughly bleached and
ready for sale.

In 1823 ‘ the small but bustling market town
of Redbourn’ owed much of its prosperity to
the plait trade. From this centre plait was
carried to Dunstable, St. Albans and Luton.*4
About 1830 Hertfordshire straw was actually
sent to Switzerland, where it was plaited and
returned to England and there sold, notwith-
standing the import duty of 17s. $d. a lb., for
ss. per Ib. less than the plait produced in
England.

The population returns of 1831 point to no
diminution in the trade. A great number of
females were engaged in the industry in Berk-
hampstead and a number of women and boys
in St. Albans. In 1861, 603 men and 8,598
women were employed in straw plaiting, 147
men and 1,874 women in hat and bonnet-
making.** Each of the plaiting districts pro-
duced a peculiar plait. Thus Hitchin was
known for its ‘broad twist’ and all kinds of
medium twist plait, also for ‘ plain improved,’

23 Occasionally the bleaching was done before the
plaiting.

% Pigot, Dict. Herts. (1823), 360.

35 Pop. Ret. 1831, p. 246.

76 Austin, op. cit. 8.

255

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

partly by outside labour. They also buy and
finish work already sewn. The outdoor hands
mainly do trimming and finishing at their own
homes. Gentlemen’s hats are the principal
articles made at St. Albans, but the small
factors, especially at Markyate, sew ladies’
hats for manufacturers at Luton, the chief seat
of this branch of the trade. Many of the St.
Albans manufacturers block and trim a quantity
of imported goods. In St. Albans alone over
eleven hundred persons are employed in the
trade at the height of the season.”

Several of the firms at St. Albans are of
old standing“? The present firm of T. H.
Johnson & Sons was founded in 1834 by the
late Mr. Thomas Johnson. Other manufacturers
then existing in the town were Heywood &
Harris, W. Johnson, T. Richardson, G. Slade
and J. Morris. Mr. Thomas Johnson first
began business in weaving by hand looms, the
materials used being cotton, straw and Senneck
horsehair (Lima) which were made up into a
kind of plait or trimming in 1o-yard lengths.

This was employed for making ladies’ hats and
bonnets. In or about 1836 an American of the
name of Smith introduced the Brazilian hat
industry to St. Albans. The material used
was a kind of palm grass, which had to be
washed and cleaned and then bleached or
dyed to any required shade, being afterwards
reduced and split into various widths for direct
plaiting into hats. Other manufacturers to
take up this trade were G. Slade, S. West,
T. Harris, J. Morris, W. Keightly, J. Webdale
and Thomas Johnson; but, as already men-
tioned, the French hat makers produced finer
goods to compete with the St. Albans manu-
facturers, and thus obtained the bulk of their
trade of that kind. Hand sewing was largely
superseded by the invention, about 1875, of a
machine for stitching hats by Mr. Bland, of
Luton. It was called the ‘Fifteen Guinea
machine.’? Further improvements have since
been made, and the best stitching machine in the
market is that known as the ‘Thirty-two
Guinea machine.’

PAPER-MAKING

The chief manufacturing industry with the
history of which Hertfordshire has been promi-
nently associated in modern times is paper-
making. The manufacture of paper was prob-
ably introduced into Europe from the East by
four routes: in the 6th century through Greece,
and early in the 7th century through Italy
from Arab sources, by the Moors to Spain in
the 8th century and through Venice into Ger-
many in the 9th; but it is certain that the
manufacture of white paper was not established
in England until almost the end of the 15th
century, though possibly the coarser grades of
paper might have been made in this country at
a somewhat earlier date.

The first English paper-maker of whom we
have any definite record was John Tate the
younger, son of Sir John Tate, Mayor of London
in 1496, who had a mill at Hertford, probably
“Sele Mill.” Of this mill no record now remains
beyond the names of ‘ Paper Mill Ditch’ and
‘Meadow,’ applied to a channel and field not
far from the old Hertford water-works.

That the making of fine paper in England
was considered a matter of national importance
is shown by the fact that in the household book
of Henry VII appear the following two entries.
On 25 May 1498, when staying at Hertford
Castle, the king visited Tate’s mill, and an
item appears in the accounts, ‘ For a rewarde
geven at the Paper Mylne, 16s. 8d.’ ; and in the

42 Inform. from Mr. G. E. Bullen.
43 Inform. from Mr. T. H. Johnson and Mr. G. E.

Bullen.

following year a somewhat similar entry, ‘Geven
a rewarde to Tate of the Mylne, 6s. 8d.’

In an edition of the De Proprictatibus Rerum
of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, printed by Wynkyn
de Worde about 1495, occur the following
words : ‘ And John Tate the younger Ioye mote
he broke | whiche late hathe in Englond doo
makes this paper thynne | that now in our
Englysshe this boke is prynted inne.’ Tate’s
paper was also used for an edition of Chaucer
in 1498, and for the ‘ Golden Legend’ in 1498,
also for a large bull of Alexander VI of 1494,
now in the Lambeth Library, and for the
supplement to it of 1495, now in the British
Museum and the Bodleian Library.

The water-mark Tate used was a two-line
circle, the outer ring just over 1} in. in diameter,
and the inner, which
is slightly oval,
IZ, in. to 14 in. con-
taining an eight-
pointed star,
possibly represent-
ing St. Katherine’s
wheel. The illustra-
tion of this mark
is taken from a
blank leaf after the
eleventh book of the
De —Proprietatibus
Rerum. This early ; on
Hertford paper-mill had a short life, and it is
likely that the output could not compete suc-
cessfully with cheap foreign paper from abroad.
Tate died in 1507, and his will contains definite

Warer-mark or Joun Tate

256

INDUSTRIES

references to the enterprise. To Thomas Bolls
he left ‘as moche whit paper or other paper as
shal extende to the somme of 26s. 8d. . . . owte
of my paper myll at Hartford’ But it is
perhaps significant that, while the bulk of his
estates in Essex and Hertfordshire went to
the eldest son, the executors were directed to
sell the mill and its appurtenances ‘to moste
advantage. In itself this direction is not
conclusive as to the commercial failure of the
business, but in a Discourse of the Common Weal
of this Realm of England, published in 1549, a
distinct statement is made that an English
adventurer in paper-making, who, though not
named, must certainly have been Tate, had
given up owing to foreign competition. Thus
there seems to be no doubt that to Hertford-
shire belongs the honour of having possessed
the first English paper-mill making white paper.
But beyond this, the first mill making paper by
machinery was also established in the county.

In the year 1798 Louis Robert, a workman
employed in the large mills of Francois Didot,
at Essonne, in France, devised a plan for
making paper in endless webs, and, having
demonstrated his idea experimentally, he
obtained a patent in 1799 for fifteen years ;
owing, however, to the disturbed state of the
country the invention was not then worked
in France. In 1801 John Gamble patented
Robert’s invention for him in England, and,
after some improvements on it had been
patented, Mr. Bryan Donkin completed a
machine at the end of 1803. Messrs. Henry
& Sealy Fourdrinier, who had bought an
interest in the English patents, got this machine
to work at Frogmore Mill, on the River Gade,
near Boxmoor, in the year 1804.

Fourdrinier’s machine essentially consisted
of an endless web of woven wire cloth, moving
forward slowly over a series of small rollers
in a horizontal plane, the paper pulp flowing
on to one end of the level part of the wire,
water being drained off from it as the wire
moved forward, and the partially-drained
pulp, after consolidation between two rollers,
being drawn away from the surface of the wire
as a continuous web of paper. Owing to
defects of detail, want of experience, and the
many difficulties incidental to the establish-
ment of a new industry, it was several years
before this machine proved successful in
practice, though its principle is the one still
employed by nearly all paper manufacturers
in the world. In the only rival machine the
paper web is formed on a revolving cylinder
covered with wire cloth. This machine, which

1 These new facts are brought forward by Mr. Rhys
Jenkins in his article ‘ Early Attempts at Paper-mak-
ing in England,’ in Library Assoc. Rec. ii (2), 481
et seq.

was invented by Mr. John Dickinson, of Nash
Mills in this county, and patented in 1809, was
originally devised to obviate some of the diffi-
culties experienced with Robert’s machine,
or, as it is more commonly called, Fourdrinier’s
machine, and Mr. Dickinson succeeded in
making good saleable paper on his machine
while Messrs. Fourdrinier were being gradually
ruined in trying to perfect that of Robert.
The cylinder machine is still in use for certain
purposes, more especially for making mill-
boards and thick composite papers consisting
of several webs of paper superimposed on one
another in the course of manufacture.

The result of the introduction of paper-
making machinery has been the concentration
of manufacture in a few large mills and the
closing down of many small mills scattered over
the country ; and, although at one time there
were probably at least twenty paper-mills ?
working in Hertfordshire, there are at the pre-
sent moment only three firms actually at work.
In spite of this large numerical reduction the
quantity of paper made in the county is now
larger than it ever was. The total weight of
paper made in England in 1721 was about
3,600 tons. In 1800 this had increased to
8,000 tons, and the quantity now made in
Hertfordshire alone is about 20,000 tons
annually.

There is one other development of paper-
making in this country which is of some his-
torical interest. On the adoption of Rowland
Hill’s suggestion of the penny post the Govern-
ment on 30 April 1840 issued three varieties
of stamps—namely, stamped covers, stamped
envelopes, and adhesive stamps. The first
two of these were the Mulready envelopes and
covers, which were printed on a special safety
paper, in the body of which very thin silk
threads were imbedded at fixed intervals.
This paper was invented by Mr. John Dickinson,
and was all made by him at Apsley Mills, near
Hemel Hempstead. The adhesive stamps were
the black 1d. stamps, practically identical with
the red penny stamp in use during the greater
part of the reign of the late Queen Victoria,
except that they were not perforated. The
Mulready design, which was drawn by William
Mulready, R.A., and covered the whole face of
the envelope, met with a great deal of criticism
and ridicule, and was abandoned in the year
1841, but Apsley Mill continued to supply the
Government with silk-thread paper for the

2 Besides the localities mentioned in the text,
Harpenden, Rickmansworth, Standon and Sarratt, all
possessed paper-mills in the 18th or early 19th century.
Two Waters, Sarratt, Poles Bridge, Mill End, Home
Park, Apsley, Loudwater and Rickmansworth mills
have all ceased working within the memory of the
writer.

4 257 33

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

embossed envelopes and wrappers until the
year 1860, and also for the octagonal Is. stamp
first issued in 1847 and the Iod. stamp issued
in 1848.

Among the paper-mills now working in Hert-
fordshire are the Croxley Mills and Nash
Mills, of John Dickinson & Co., Ltd.; the
Hamper Mills, Watford, belonging to Mr.
Joseph Gutterage Smith; and the Frogmore
Mills, of the British Paper Co., Ltd., at Apsley
End.

Apsley Mill, converted from a corn-mill in
the 18th century, was bought by Mr. Dickinson
in 1809, and supplied the paper for cannon
cartridges used in the Peninsula and at Water-
loo. In 1888 paper-making at Apsley was
discontinued. Cards were first made at Apsley
about 1831 and envelopes some years later, but
the manufacture has since been enormously
extended, the old mill having been reconstructed
and enlarged to meet modern requirements.
In 1911, 2,000 persons were employed at Apsley
Mill, and the envelope and card factories here
are now the largest in Great Britain.

Croxley Mill, built by Mr. Dickinson, was
opened as a paper-mill in 1830. In 1886 it
was decided‘ that this mill should prepare all
the materials and make all the paper formerly
made at Two Waters, Frogmore, Apsley, Home
Park, Batchworth, and the Manchester Mill.
Very comprehensive schemes of enlargement
were thereby rendered necessary, and constant

improvements in machinery and methods have
since kept the mill well up to date.

In 1811 the Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead,
were bought by Mr. Dickinson from Messrs.
A. Blackwell and E. Jones, and only two years
afterwards suffered serious damage from fire.
Here in 1830 Mr. Dickinson set up his machine
for making fine plate and duplex papers. This
mill was practically rebuilt in 1879, and here
in 1888 one of the paper machines was first
driven by an electric motor. The mill is
specially adapted for producing composite and
duplex papers and can turn out some 100 tons
a week.

Home Park Mill was built by Mr. Dickinson
in 1825, and later much enlarged. In 1878
the first colouring machine was put up, paper-
staining having been done here previously by
hand. Since 1888 no paper has been made
here, and in 1890 a large colouring mill was
built and turbines were installed in place of
the old water-wheels. Hand colourers are still
employed for special work, but the mill is fitted
with improved colouring machines for the pro-
duction of chromo, enamelled, coloured, and art
papers and cards.5

Owing to the favourable position of the
Hertfordshire mills, water carriage is still
largely employed, although the main line of the
London and North Western railway passes
close to three of the mills and there is a siding
into Croxley Mills.

PRINTING

Modern research is responsible for the over-
throw of many time-honoured beliefs. Is it
destined to rob St. Albans of the honour of
being one of the first places in England in which
the art of printing was exercised ? There exist
at the present time copies of eight works which,
from their typographical resemblance or the
statement in their colophons, claim to have
been printed at St. Albans, in Hertfordshire,
between the years 1479 and 1486. In none of
them is the name of the printer mentioned, and
the only clue to his identity that has ever been
discovered is a statement made by Wynkyn de
Worde, William Caxton’s successor, in the
colophon to the 1497 edition of the Chronicles of
England, that the work was printed in the
first place by ‘one sometyme scolemayster of
St. Albons.’ This statement would seem plain
enough, and the Grammar School at St. Albans,
which, according to the latest historian, Mr.
A. F. Leach, had been established since the
gth century, has always been taken as the home

3 L. Evans, The Firm of John Dickinson &9 Co. Ltd.
fe)

4 Ibid. 25. 1 Y.C.H. Herts. ii, 47.

of this printing press, a belief which has been
further strengthened by the statement found in
the colophons to some of these books that they
were printed ‘ apud villa Sancti Albani.’

It is true that no contemporary record exists
of any printing having been carried on in the
St. Albans Grammar School. Neither the
registers of Abbot Wallingford nor those of his
successor? mention that the schoolmaster was
printing books; but neither is there any con-
temporary mention of Caxton or his work at
Westminster, except such as appear in the rent
rolls of the abbey, for the rent of the Red Pale.
Since Wynkyn de Worde’s day nothing has come
to light to reveal the name of the schoolmaster
printer at St. Albans, and Mr. Leach has re-
cently expressed the opinion that it will never
be discovered until one of the account rolls of
the almoner of the abbey for the years 1480-6
shall be found.

And now, to deepen the mystery and thicken
the shadows that surround the St. Albans

5 L. Evans, The Firm of John Dickinson &9 Co. Lid. $4.
2 Reg. Abbat. Joh. W'hethamstede (Rolls Ser.), ui, 140-
291; B.M. Arundel MSS. 34.

258

INDUSTRIES

printer, Dr. Edward Scott has found amongst
the muniments at Westminster Abbey a
deed or deeds relating to a manor there called
* Little St. Albans,’ which, he says, stood on the
green outside the chapter-house, between it and
the present House of Lords, and which was
occupied by one Otnel Fullé (presumably
Fuller), the ‘ magister scolarium’ of the West-
minster School.8 Mr. Scott was unfortu-
nately unable to lay his hand on these docu-
ments when the writer visited him at the
muniment room with the object of examining
them, but he produced two deeds—one* an
account by John Esteney, warden of the ‘ new
work’ at Westminster for the year 1482-3,
in which mention is made of a gift of Ios. from
“Otnel Fullé late master of the scholars at the
Almonry’; the other® undated, but assigned
to the year 1509, an account of the collectors of
the rents of Westminster Abbey, which mentions
the Earl of Shrewsbury as renting two tenements
in ‘seynt albonys.’? This last would seem to
indicate that the manor was known to the
inhabitants of Westminster as ‘St. Albons,’
rather than ‘ Little St. Albons,’ and assuming
Dr. Scott’s statement to be correct, that it
was at one time occupied by Otnel Fullé, the
‘magister scolarium,’ it would exactly fit
Wynkyn de Worde’s statement, ‘sometyme
scolemayster of St. Albons.’

The discovery made by Dr. Scott is an attrac-
tiveone. The arrival of Caxton with a printing
press at Westminster must have aroused much
curiosity amongst the clergy and others con-
nected with the abbey, and we can readily
believe that amongst the earliest visitors to the
new printing office at the Red Pale would be
the ‘magister scolarium.’ It is quite possible
that a friendship may have sprung up between
the two men, and that Otnel Fullé may have
been the ‘friend and gossip’ at whose instiga-
tion, as Caxton tells us himself, he printed the
Boethius.

But, beyond what has been stated, nothing
whatever is known about Otnel Fullé or Fuller.
There is no evidence that he ever printed any-
thing or that he ever spoke a word to Caxton
in his life. It is true that we are in the same
case as regards the Hertfordshire schoolmaster ;
before attempting to decide between the
claims of these two shadowy claimants we had
better look at the books.

Of the eight works printed at the St. Albans
press six were of a scholastic character. The
first to appear is believed to have been the
Elegancie of Augustine Dactus, a small quarto
of thirty-two leaves, without date, with the
colophon, ‘Impressum fuit opus hac apud Scth

3 Letter of Dr. Edward Scott to the writer.
4 No. 23558.
5 No. 22872.

Albani.’ A facsimile of this book has recently
been published by the University Press of
Cambridge, under the editorship of Mr. F.
Jenkinson, from the unique copy in the Univer-
sity Library.®

The type is quite remarkable, a small Gothic
letter, unlike anything in use either at West-
minster or Oxford at that time, and noticeable
not only from the variety of sorts, but for the
regularity of the casting and the neatness of
the press work, which makes it difficult to believe
that it was the work of a beginner in the art of
printing. Mr. E. G. Duff, in his Early English
Printing,’ expresses the opinion that this type
was modelled on Caxton’s, but there is no
evidence on the point. No other book was
printed with it, and it was never used again
except for signatures; hence the belief that it
was the first type used by this printer about
the year 1479.

Two books are found with the date 1480, each
in a different fount of type. The first is a
quarto without title-page or pagination, but
having the colophon, ‘Impressum fuit hoc
presens opus Rethorice facultatis, apud villa
sancti Albani. Anno domini M.CCCCL.XXX.’

The type, which may be described as Type 2
of the St. Albans press, is a larger and more
striking letter than its predecessor. Mr. Duff ®
tightly describes it as bearing a ‘ superficial
resemblance’ to Caxton’s Type 2*. It was
this ‘superficial resemblance’ that led Mr.
H. G. Allnutt, when describing the work of this
press,® to say: ‘The type used in printing the
Saone in 1480 bears so remarkable a likeness
to a fount used by Caxton about the same time,
and called by Mr. Blades Type 2*, that there
may well have been some connection between
the two men, and why, indeed, may not the_
schoolmaster have learned his art in Caxton’s
office?” But ‘superficial’ is entirely the
right word to describe the resemblance that
strikes the eye between this type and Caxton’s
Type 2*. A close analysis shows first that it is
smaller in body than Type 2", measuring only
122 mm. to twenty lines of text, as against
134 mm. to twenty lines in Caxton’s type. It
was also more clumsy and irregular than
Type 2", it reveals the presence of a lower case
‘y,’ which is not found in Type 2*, and is more-
over not found in any of Caxton’s books, while
the looped letters, so marked a feature of
Types 2 and 2”, are not met with in the Saone.
This type may have been modelled on Caxton’s,
or it may have been some of the type from his

8 A series of photogravure facsimiles of rare 15th-cent.
books printed in Engl. now in the University at Cambridge
(ed. F. J. H. Jenkinson, 1905).

7 E.G. Duff, Early English Printing (1896).

8 Op. cit.

9 See also Blades, Life of Caxion, ii, 75.

259

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

office trimmed up or recast. It is a curious
thing that Caxton did actually print this same
work in Type 2* between July 1478 and the
early part of 1480.

The second book of the year 1480 was Albertus,
Liber Modorum Significandi, only known from
a copy in the Bibliothéque Nationale. It
was printed in a third type of Gothic, slightly
smaller than that in which the Rethorica was
printed, making but ninety mm. to twenty
lines, and noticeable from the large number of
contractions with which it abounds, and in
which respect it somewhat resembles the type
of Lettou and Machlinia, although it was
clearly cut by the same hand as the second
fount. Three other books were printed in this
type. Two of these were issued in 1481. One
is Joannes Canonicus, Jn Aristotelis Physica, a
folio printed in double columns, the handsomest
book that came from this press. One leaf said
to belong to a copy of this book is now in the
Herts. County Museum, and has capitals rubri-
cated (by hand apparently), also the margin
of the paper with the numbers of the pages
written inink. These were probably added at
a later date, as the perfect copy in the Bodleian
has none of these features. The second work
is Exempla sacra scripture, a quarto without
Pagination or catchwords, and having the
colophon, ‘Imprsaq3 apd uilla Sancti Albani.
Anno dni m°® cccc® lxxxi®,’ a copy of which is
preserved in the library of the Middle Temple.
The third book, Andreas Antoninus, Super
Logica Aristotelis, a quarto, appeared in 1482,
and is only known from fragments.

The last two books that came from the St.
Albans press were both in English, and, apart
from their printing, have other connexions with
St. Albans, which add largely to their interest.
The exact date of the appearance of The
Chronicles of England is unknown, but in the
opening lines of the prologue (sig. a ij) the
author says: ‘ Therfoor i the yeer of our lorde
M. iiij® Ixxxiij, And in the xxiii yeer of the
regne of kyng Edward the fourth at Saynt
Albons so that all men may knaw the actys
naemly of our nobull kyngys of Englond is
cOpylit together thys book.’ So that it could
not have been printed earlier than that year.
But, although the compiler claimed this as an
entirely new work of his own, the only part
that was original appears to have been the
general history of the world from the time of
Adam until the days of Brute, the first twenty-
six pages of the book. From that point down
to the year 1460 the text followed was the
same as that used by Caxton when printing the
earlier edition of 1480. The book has two
other peculiarities not found in previous issues
from this press, the use of red ink, and the
signing of all the leaves of every sheet, a thing
rarely met with, and arguing the work of a

novice. The type used to print this book was
mainly that found in the Rethorica, but other
sorts were introduced, notably a fount of English
black letter, which all bibliographers have
accepted as being Caxton’s Type 3. If they are
right, a point that seems open to considerable
argument, it forms another link between the
St. Albans printer and the Westminster press
that has to be accounted for. The Chronicles,
in spite of the clumsy and uneven casting of the
type, was fairly well printed.

The second English book, and the last book
as far as is known, that came from this press
was the Books of Hawking, Hunting, and also of
Coat Armours (now popularly known as the
Book of St. Albans), which bears the colophon :
‘Here in thys boke afore ar contenyt the bokes
of haukyng and huntyng with other plesures
dyuerse as in the boke apperis and also of
Cootarmuris a nobull werke. And here now
endyth the boke of blasyng of armys trans-
latyt and compylyt togedyr at Seynt Albons,
the yere from thincarnacion of our Lorde
Jhu Crist. M.CCCC.Ixxxvi.’ On the last page
of text are the words Sanctus Albanus, below
the arms of St. Albans, in red, as in the
Chronicles. Indeed, with the exception that
the type is more worn and the presswork worse
than in any other book from this press, the two
English books agree typographically in all
particulars. Not only do they agree typo-
graphically, but in closely similar language we
are informed that they were ‘compiled ’ at
St. Albans. Of the Chronicles of England it is
said that ‘in the xxiij yeer of the regne of Kyng
Edward the fourth at Saynt Albons so that all
men may know the actes naemly of our nobull
Kynges of England is copylyt together thys
book.’ On the colophon to the Books of
Hawking, Hunting, and also of Coat Armours,
we read, as we have just seen, that last section,
“the boke of blasyng of armys’ was ‘ trans-
latyt and compylyt togedyr at Seynt Albons’
in 1486.

Now the name of a strip of land between
Westminster Abbey and the House of Lords
might be given as an address by a printer
without further explanation, though we should
certainly have expected some additional help
towards localizing it, but to use such a curt
and misleading description to indicate the place
of literary composition would be much more
extraordinary. It is true that a prophecy that
Henry IV should die at Jerusalem was supposed
to be fulfilled by his dying in the Jerusalem
Chamber at Westminster, but the methods of
interpretation open to prophets and to bibli-
ographers are not the same. Thus the state-
ments that these two books were compiled at
St. Albans must be taken to refer to St. Albans
in Hertfordshire. This carries with it the refer-
ence to St. Albans as the place of printing,

260

INDUSTRIES

since it is impossible to conceive of the name
being used in two different meanings by the
same printer, and thus, despite the attractive-
ness of Dr. Scott’s theory, the St. Albans press
must still be credited to Hertfordshire.

The second St. Albans press was that of John
Hertford, Harford, Herford or Hereford. In
the year 1534 appeared a small quarto with the
title: ‘Here begynnethe ye glorious lyfe and
passion of Seint Albon, prothomartyr of
Englande, and also the lyfe and passion of Saint
Amphabel, whiche conuerted saint Albon to the
fayth of Christe,’ of which John Lydgate was
the author. This title is above a woodcut of a
figure holding a cross, and on either side are two
border pieces which are recognized as having
formed part of the plant of a London printer,
possibly Wynkyn de Worde. The type is
ordinary black letter, not new, but in very fair
condition. Neither printer’s name nor place
occurs on it. This book was printed at the
request of Robert Cotton, abbot of the monas-
tery, and it would seem as if Herford’s press
was situated within the abbey precincts.

His next venture, ‘The confutacyon of the
first parte of Frythes boke . . . put forth by
John Gwnneth, clerke, 1536,’ 8vo, was the work
of one of the monks of the abbey, who in the
previous year had signed a petition to Sir
Francis Brian on the state of the monastery.!°
This again has no printer’s name, but has at
the end a device containing the letters R.S.
intertwined, standing no doubt for his patron
Richard Stevenage, who was at that time
chamberer of the abbey, and was created abbot
on the deprivation of Robert Cotton in 1538.

Of the three books printed by Herford in
that year two were expressly printed for Richard
Stevenage. These were, ‘ A Godlye disputation
between Justus and Peccator and Senex and
Juvenis,’ written by Dionysius de Leeuwis,
and ‘ An epistle agaynste the enemies of poor
people,’ both octavos, of which no copies are
now known. The title-page of the first is
among the Bagford MSS. and bears the im-
print: ‘Imprinted at St. Albans by me Jo.
Hereford for M. Richard Stevenage.’™ The third
work bearing the date 1538 was ‘ The Rule of
an honest Life,’ written by Martin, Bishop of
Dumience.

The reign of Richard Stevenage as abbot was
a short one, for on § December 1539 he delivered
the abbey over to Henry the Eighth’s com-
missioners. Shortly before that event, on
12 October, Stevenage wrote to Cromwell, and
in this letter occurs the following passage:
‘Sent John Pryntare to London with Harry
Pepwell, Bonere [i.e. Bonham] and Tabbe of
Powles Churchyard, stationers, to order him at

10 [. and P. Hen. VIII, ix, 1155.
1 Ames, Typographical Antig. (ed. Herbert), 1436.

your pleasure. Never heard of the little book
of detestable heresies till the stationers shewed
it me.’ The John Pryntare here referred to
can be none other than John Herford, and the
book which caused the trouble is probably one
entitled ‘A very declaration of the bond and
free wyll of man. The obedyence of the gospell,
and what the very gospell meneth.’ The book
has no name of printer or date, but only the
name of the place. A copy of it is in the John
Rylands library at Manchester.8 In all, seven
books were printed at this second St. Albans
press. What punishment was inflicted on
Herford is unknown, but the suppression of the
abbey prevented him from returning to St.
Albans, and he accordingly set up in London in
1544, where he remained until his death in 1548.

After the cessation of this second St. Albans
press an interval of nearly 130 years elapses
before we again meet with printing in Hert-
fordshire. The reason is to be found in the
successive Acts and decrees which, beginning
with the Star Chamber decree of 1583 and
continuing until the close of the 17th century,
forbade any printer to set up a press in any part
of England except London and the two Univer-
sities. The city of York was added to the
privileged places by an Act of the Common-
wealth passed in 1649, and during the period
of the Civil War printing was carried on in a
few towns such as Bristol, Exeter, Shrewsbury
and York, but this was done by the represen-
tative of the King’s Printer and by Royal Com-
mand. After the fire of London the repressive
Acts fell into abeyance, and very slowly through-
out the 18th century printing became general.

The following account of the third Hertford-
shire press, that of Stephen Austin of Hertford,
from which has developed the well-known firm
of Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Oriental
printers, is from notes kindly supplied by the late
Mr. Vernon Austin, the descendant of Stephen
Austin, and Mr. Harrison, the managing
director. The firm was founded in 1768 by
Stephen Austin, who was apprenticed to George
Kearsley, of Ludgate Hill, London, the printer
and publisher of the newspaper known as the
North Briton, which was started by John
Wilkes, M.P. for Aylesbury, and Alderman of
London, in opposition to the administration of
Lord Bute, an opposition which was continued
against the successive representatives of his
policy, and which eventually culminated in the
celebrated letters of ‘ Junius.’ In the notorious
No. 45 of the North Briton, published in April
1763, the speech of King George III, with
which the session of Parliament had been
closed, was severely criticized to the extent of
asserting that the ministry had made the king

12 [. and P. Hen. VIII, xiv (2), 315-
1 Duff, Century, 70.

261

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

utter falsehood, and thereupon, under a ‘ general
warrant ’ issued by Lord Halifax, Wilkes and
Kearsley were arrested and lodged in the Tower,
charged with a libel on the king ; but on being
brought before the Lord Chief Justice on a writ
of habeas-corpus their arrest was declared
illegal and they were discharged, and each of
them subsequently recovered damages against
Lord Halifax for illegal arrest and seizure of
papers. Stephen Austin was on the premises
when the officers came to make Kearsley’s
arrest, and while they were knocking for
admission he hurried to the office and, locking
the door, gathered the copy which was being
set for No. 46, thrust it into his pocket, upsetting
the type that was on the ‘ galleys,’ and putting
his foot through the ‘formes’ in ‘chase,’ he
got out of the window and on the roof just
before an entrance was effected by breaking
open the door. Subsequently, during Kears-
ley’s detention in the Tower, he carried on
the business, and for some time after his dis-
charge remained with him, until he came to
Hertford and commenced business on his own
account as a printer and schoolmaster in 1768.
In 1772 he started a paper called the Hartford
Mercury (some of the earliest copies of which
are in the possession of his descendants), pub-
lished weekly at the price of 244d. Subsequently
the paper developed into the H artford, Bedford
and Huntingdon Mercury, and being the only
newspaper published in those counties was
widely read. The sparseness of the population,
however, together with the difficulties of loco-
motion and the expense of bringing out a
sheet at that time, proved insurmountable
obstacles to its financial success, and after some
years the venture was discontinued.

Stephen Austin, however, continued to carry
on the business of a printer, and in due time
was joined by his son, another Stephen Austin,
born in 1776, who ultimately succeeded to the
business, and from whom it passed to his son
Stephen, the father of Mr. Vernon Austin.

Mr. Vernon Austin’s father and grandfather
were the appointed printers and booksellers to
the East India Company’s College, the work of
which, while Haileybury College was being
built, was carried on at Hertford Castle. This
position was retained until the Company was
dissolved in 1858 ; and it was under the auspices
of the authorities of that institution that the
printing and publishing at Hertford of works
in various Oriental languages was commenced.
Up to that time great difficulty had been
experienced in procuring the different Oriental
books required by the students in their studies ;
those that were obtainable were only to be had
at great cost, while the type used was so bad
and the paper of such indifferent quality that
the books were oftentimes almost illegible. It
was somewhat of a revolution, therefore, when

The Hitopadesa was printed with new Sanscrit
type at Hertford in 1847, as at that date there
were not more than one or two Oriental printers
in England, and thenceforward during successive
years a great number of books printed in
Sanscrit, Bengali, Arabic, Persian, Pushto,
Hindustani, Hindi, Hebrew, and other Eastern
languages, as well as in Greek, Latin, German
and French, were issued from the Hertford
Press of Stephen Austin, the name by which
the firm was known at that period. One of the
best examples of its work at that time is to be
seen in a sumptuous edition of the Indian
drama Sakoontala, or the Lost Ring, translated
by the Rev. Monier Williams, and published in
1855. Each page and every woodcut was
surrounded by decorative borders taken from
MSS. in the British Museum and the library
of the East India Company, designed by T.

Sulman, jun., and engraved by George Meason,

and printed in gold and colours, while the

typography and press work were of the highest

order. In his introduction the editor pointed

out that the press of Stephen Austin of Hertford

had issued some of the most perfect specimens

of decorative Oriental printing that this country

had ever produced. In short, the firm acquired

a world-wide reputation for Oriental printing,

and many of the finest specimens of Oriental

typography now extant bear that name. The

skill and taste displayed in these productions

were acknowledged by the presentation of

gold medals by the late Queen Victoria and

the Empress of the French, by the award of

medals of the first class at the International

Exhibitions held in London and Paris, &c., and

by testimonials from many of the most eminent

Oriental scholars of Europe and India; and in

the year 1883 the Congrés International des

Orientalistes presented their diploma for services

rendered to Oriental literature.

In the year 1834 Mr. Austin, at the request
of the leading members of the Whig party in
the county, including Lord Dacre, Mr. Rowland
Alston, Mr. H. G. Ward, M.P. (afterwards Sir
Henry Ward, Governor of Madras), and others
who were stirred to action by the circumstances
which shortly afterwards led to William IV
abruptly dismissing Lord Melbourne’s ministry
—started the journal which is now known as
The Hertfordshire Mercury. At that time it
was called The Reformer, and in the early days
of its existence it numbered amongst the
contributors to its columns Mr. H. G. Ward,
M.P., Sir Culling Eardley Smith, bart. and
many other persons distinguished in politics,
literature and art, including Dr. Arnold, of
Rugby, whose letters to the Editor, signed
‘F. H. during the years 1837-40, were after-
wards collected and published in the Miscel-
laneous Works of Thomas Arnold, D.D., by Dean
Stanley.

262

INDUSTRIES

For upwards of fifty years—until his retire-
ment in 1884 from active business pursuits—
Mr. Austin continued to carry on this journal,
advocating through good and ill report the
established principles of Liberalism, and render-
ing loyal support to the Governments of Lord
Melbourne, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Russell, Lord
Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone, to the last
named of whom he was an unwavering adherent
up to the last hours of his life.

In 1854 the present premises were commenced
and were added to in1gog. This was the third
and last move of the business.

In January 1871 Stephen Austin took his
two sons, Stephen and Vernon, into partnership.
Stephen Austin, sen., continued to take a very
active part in the affairs of the business until
he retired. Even then he would not let a copy
of the newspaper he founded go to press without
seeing the final proofs. His energies in this
respect made The Hertfordshire Mercury the
respected paper it is. The two sons worked in
partnership until 4 September 1903, when the
elder of the brothers died.

On ro June of the following year the business
was turned into a limited company, and Vernon
Austin was made governing director. During
the long period the business has been in exis-
tence it has always kept abreast with the times.
Old machinery has been replaced again and
again to keep pace with the other improve-
ments, so as to be able to produce and keep up
the splendid record of good printing.

Until 1906 the firm had in its possession one
of the old original steam flat-bed platen printing
presses. These machines until about twenty
years ago were considered to produce the finest
work. Since that time the cylinder machines
in their many forms have been so perfected that
they supersede them both in speed (such a
necessary quality to-day) and good printing.
One veteran machine is still on the premises
and also in use, and good use; this is the
hand-press on which The Hertfordshire Mercury
was originally printed.

In 1905, feeling the need of assistance and
wishing to enjoy more leisure, Mr. Vernon
Austin turned to his old friend, Mr. Edgar
Harrison, of the well-known firm of Harrison &
Sons, of St. Martin’s Lane, London, with the
result that the only son of this gentleman came
down in 1906 with the twofold object of
increasing his knowledge of the art of printing
—which he had acquired in the first instance in
the country where printing was invented—and
giving his personal assistance to Mr. Austin.

In November 1906 Mr. Victor Harrison
became a recognized member of the firm.
Owing to Mr. Harrison’s extensive knowledge
of machinery, Mr. Austin placed in his hands
entirely the installation of the present new
and up-to-date plant, which is now keeping

up the firm’s untarnished reputation of always
being abreast with the times. In 1909 Mr.
Vernon Austin decided to place the active
management of the business in the hands of his
old friend’s son, and appointed him managing
director. This is how the old-established busi-
ness stands to-day, still pursuing its increasingly
prosperous career.

In addition to the press of Stephen Austin
at Hertford there were a few other printers at
work in different parts of the county during the
latter part of the 18th century. In 1778 a
printer at Cheshunt, named T. Baldwin, printed
an auction hand-bill by John Parnell for
1 January 1779,!4 a copy of which is in the
Bodleian. In 1793 the Rev. Nathaniel May’s
Sermons on the History of Foseph, preached by
him in the parish churches of Hemel Hempstead
and Great Gaddesden, were printed for him by
William McDowall, a printer at Berkhampstead,
in a small octavo form. Copies of these
Sermons are in the British Museum and Bod-
leian15 In 1800 a printer at Hitchin, named
J. Bedford, printed Regulations for a Review at
Hatfield, presumably a broadside.'®

Coming to the 19th century, the first press
that calls for notice is that of Richard Gibbs,
sen., of St. Albans, who in 1826 obtained a licence
under the old Act to prevent sedition to set up
a press in the town. This licence runs as
follows :—

St. Albans. Story C.P. I John Samuel Story,
Clerk of the Peace for the Borough of Saint Alban,
in the County of Hertford, do hereby certify that
Richard Gibbs of the said Borough of St. Albans hath
delivered unto me a notice in writing appearing to
be signed by him and attested by George Lawson as
witness to his signing the same, that he the said
Richard Gibbs hath a Printing Press and types, which
he proposes to use for printing within the Borough of
St. Albans, and which he has required to be entered
pursuant to an Act passed in the thirty-ninth year of
his late majesty’s reign intituled, an Act for the more
effective suppression of societies established for seditious
and treasonable purposes, and for better preventing
treasonable and seditious practices. Witness my hand
this twentieth day of April 1826. Story C.P.

There was another small printer in the place,
named William Langley, of whom, however,
nothing is known. Both he and Richard Gibbs
the elder carried on business in the High Street.
Richard Gibbs’s first printing rooms were ina
passage, now disappeared, off the High Street,
and he used as an office the little shop attached
to the Clock Tower, which was removed when
the tower was restored about 1858. In old
prints of the period the name ‘ Gibbs’ appears
on the building, but it is believed that the real

“4 W. H. Allnutt, Library, July 1901, p. 250.
16 Thid. 256.
16 Ibid. 259.

263

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

tenant was George Washington Gibbs, the
printer’s brother. Subsequently Richard Gibbs
took the shop, No. 21 High Street, an old gabled
house now pulled down. Here he carried on
the business as a printer and bookseller. Soon
after the new: Town Hall was built Richard
Gibbs removed his business into that part of
the old Moot Hall situated at the corner of
Market Place and Dagnall Street. This historic
building is still a part of the firm’s premises,
and was purchased from Samuel Crowley,
grocer, on 16 December 1837. In 1855 Richard
Gibbs the younger succeeded his father in the
Proprietorship of the business, and on 7 July
of that year he printed with his own hand the
first copy of the St. Albans Times, subsequently
called The Herts Advertiser and St. Albans Times,
which has had a prosperous existence ever since.
By a happy coincidence he assisted in printing,
on very different machinery, the Jubilee number
of the paper on 1 July 1905. Richard Gibbs
the younger died in January 1910 at the age
of seventy-six, and was succeeded by his son
Mr. A. E. Gibbs, who has kindly supplied the
information given above. The firm is now
Gibbs & Bamforth, Ltd.

Printing is now the chief industry of St.
Albans, in that more hands are employed in it
than in any other business. The Salvation
Army have large works there, and among other
firms are Smith’s Agency, Dangerfield & Co.,
Taylor & Co. and several smaller concerns.
During the life of the Herts Adnertiser several
other papers have been started: The St. Albans
Dial, The St. Albans Illustrated Telegraph, The

St. Albans Herald, not printed in St. Albans,
but sold in Market Place, The County Chronicle,
The St. Albans Reporter, The Herts Standard and
The Hertfordshire Post.

Two large firms, Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons
and Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, have during
the present century started printing works at
Letchworth. Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son’s
bookbinding workshops were originally estab-
lished near Drury Lane in 1904, and Mr.
Douglas Cockerell, the distinguished pupil of
Mr. Cobden Sanderson, was appointe. con-
troller. As the premises in London proved too
small new workshops were built at Letchworth,
and opened in October 1907. Every kind of
bookbinding is done, from simple wrappering in
paper covers to costly leather bindings for
valuable manuscripts and printed books, about
150 men, women and girls being employed in
the workshops. The Arden Press had its origin
in the private press established by a Benedictine
monk at Stratford-on-Avon about the year
1880. It was then called St. Gregory’s Press.
A few years later the Press was acquired by
Mr. Alfred Newdigate, who moved it to Leam-
ington. In 1904 its name was changed to the
Arden Press, and the business was formed into
a limited liability company, which Mr. Alfred
Newdigate and his son controlled. In 1907 the
Press was moved to Letchworth to occupy the
new premises built for it by Messrs. W. H.
Smith & Son, who purchased the business from
the company the following year. About 120
persons are employed, chiefly on fine book and
commercial printing.

POTTERY, TILES AND BRICKS

The presence in Hertfordshire of extensive
deposits of a suitable clay has resulted in the
establishment of the manufacture of pottery
and the allied products, tiles and bricks, as one
of the most important county industries, and
almost the only one with a continuous history,
or at least a continuous existence, from Roman
times to the present day. That pottery of a
crude type, but probably of local manufacture,
was produced in pre-Roman times appears to
be indicated by the finding of numerous frag-
ments, generally classified as ‘ Early British’ in
various parts of the county. Roman pottery
kilns have been found at Radlett and also at
Aldenham. Details of these discoveries are
given in the section on Roman remains, and it
is here sufficient to note that the kilns were of
the usual type, consisting of a more or less
circular pit containing a mushroom-shaped
pedestal on which the clay vessels were piled in
layers to bake. The heat from the furnace in
the base of the pit reached the vessels through

and round the edges of the pedestal, and the
smoke escaped through a central vent in the
clay dome, built up anew at every firing, over
the kiln. The Victoria Playing Fields, St.
Albans, is said to be the site of the Roman
brickfields which supplied Verulamium with its
bricks and tiles. These clay-pits were possibly
in use before the existing pre-Conquest earth-
works at Kingsbury were thrown up, and
washed clay and gravel such as might be
expected on brickfields have been found here.

Although no actual evidence exists of the
manufacture of pottery in this district for
a hundred years after the Conquest, there is no
reason to doubt that it continued here as else-
where.

The prevalence of the industry is shown by
such place-names as Potters Bar, Potters
Crouch, Potters Green in Little Munden,
Potters Heath between Welwyn and Datch-
worth, Potten End in Berkhampstead, ‘ Pot-
terereshegge’ in St. Albans, mentioned in a

264

INDUSTRIES

deed of 1465, and Potterswick in Sandridge?
The first documentary reference appears on the
Pipe Rolls of Henry II,3 where from 11 58 to
1167 the Sheriff of Hertfordshire accounts for
a yearly payment to William ‘ Pottarius’ of
305. §d. This, it may be pointed out, is equiva-
lent to a penny a day, and it is tempting to
infer that Wiliam was employed at that rate
of wages to supply the royal household with
earthenware. No hint is given of the where-
abouts of his kilns, and the earliest mediaeval
pottery kilns of which we know anything in
Hertfordshire appear to be those of which
traces were found in 1892 at Gustard Wood
Common, near Wheathampstead.* The earthen
vessels and potsherds found, some of which are
now in the County Museum at St. Albans, show
the thumb-pressed base and other characteris-
tics of 14th-century pottery. The manufacture
of earthenware continued in this neighbourhood
for several centuries, a potter being presented
for taking clay on Harpenden Common to make
pots in 1573, and one Torpen, a potter, being
in the same way presented as late as 1733 for
taking clay from Balmwell Wood in Harpenden.®
At the end of the 14th century, in 1397, we find
John Potter amerced for digging in the lord’s
warren at Great Munden,’ and next year the
same man was attached for debt by the seizure
of divers earthen pots.®

The commonest type of domestic earthenware
of the 17th to early 18th century, numerous
fragments of which are found in many parts of
the county, is that having a red earthenware
body covered with a thick lead glaze, coloured
dark brown or almost black by the addition of
manganese oriron. Although Staffordshire was
the chief seat of its manufacture, it is possible,
as Professor Church ® points out, that much of it
was produced wherever a small potter’s kiln
existed. At a disused brickfield near Kens-
worth numerous fragments and a few perfect
examples of this ware have from time to time
been found, the colour and nature of the clay
approximating in character very closely to that
of thesoi].° In the County Museum, St. Albans,
are to be seen certain examples of mediaeval
and later pottery found in the county which
have been moulded by hand (not turned on the
wheel), and in these there is noticeable the same
fine red clay body as employed in the local
manufacture of tiles One is almost tempted

1 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 754.

2 Occurs 1585 (Herts. Gen. and Antiq.), ii, 58.
3 Pipe R. Hen. II (Pipe R. Soc.), passim.

* Proc. St. Albans Arch. Assoc. 1892, p. 7.

5 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 295. 8 [bid.

7 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 175, no. 11.

8 Ibid.

9 «English Earthenware,’ S. K. Handbook, 20.
10 Inform. from Mr. G. E. Bullen.

1 Tbid.

to assign such occasional and crudely ‘fashioned
specimens to local origin.

Possessing abundant supplies of brick earth,
and having always before them the object
lesson of the great abbey church of St. Albans,
built largely of Roman tiles, or bricks, from the
ruins of Verulamium, it was only natural that
the men of Hertfordshire should practise tile-
making from an early period. There is evidence
that roof tiles were made at Berkhampstead in
the early part of the 13th century,” and it is
probable that most of the elaborate decorated,
so-called encaustic, paving tiles used in St.
Albans Abbey Church were made locally. No
place of origin is assigned for the tiles bought
in 1282 and 1286 at 3d. the hundred for repairs
at Shenley, but they were probably made
locally, as there was a ‘ tylhouse’ here in 1386.14
For building operations at King’s Langley the
chief source of the tiles was ‘ Botelee.® In
1362 as many as 123,500 tiles were bought from
Roger ‘ Tiller’ and his partners, with which to
roof the buildings injured by the great storm,16
and also a new mill and barn. The price of
these tiles was 5s. 6d. the thousand, while 1,150
‘ riggetill and hepetill’ (i.e., ridge and hip tiles)
bought at the same time cost §s. the hundred.”
Four years later 3,000 flat tiles were bought of
Richard Tielere, of ‘ Botelee,’ at 4s. 6d. the
thousand and 200 hollow tiles at 4s. 6d. the
hundred, but at the same time 3,000 flat tiles
were bought from Simon Molder, of Ruislip (co.
Middlesex), at only 3s. the thousand.1# In 1369
more tiles were bought of John Rod, Richard
Tyler and Walter Ordwy, of ‘ Botelee,’ and 500
Flemish tiles were bought in London for 35., a
price which suggests that they were bricks, for
which Flemish tiles was the common term,
rather than ornamental paving tiles, which are
sometimes so called. Tiles were also bought at
this time from John Rede of le Leyhull at 4s.
the thousand, and 5,000 tiles, as well as a large
quantity of broken tile for making a road, were
obtained from Rickmansworth.

At Sacombe, in Broadwater Hundred, there
was attached to the manor-house in 1420 ‘a
building for the making of tiles,’ and in 1475
Sir John Say had a kiln at Bedwell, 500 ‘ tiles
called Breks’ being sold that year for 35.29 It

2 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 162, quoting Close Roll of 1224.

13 Mins. Accts. bdle. 868, no. 13, 15.

14 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), R 297.

15 The identity of this place is uncertain, and it is
possible that it was outside the county.

16 This was the storm of 8 January 1362, which
caused such a demand for tiles that a special order was
given against tilers charging extra for their tiles or
labour (Riley, Mem. of Lond. 308).

17 Exch. K.R. Accts. bdle. 466, no. 2.

18 Tbid. no. 3.

19 Chan. Ing. p.m. 15 Hen. VI, no. 2.

20 B, Herts. Arch. Sec. iv (2), 193.

4 265 34

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

is probable that Hitchin was another centre of
the manufacture at this time, as the 15th-century
house known as the Coopers’ Arms Inn was
formerly the hall of the Tilers’ Gild,”! and the
survival of the name Tilehouse Street ” suggests
that the gild were concerned not only with the
affixing but also with the making of tiles,
‘tilehouse’ being the common name for a
tilery. At Napsbury, shortly before the Dissolu-
tion, the last Abbot of St. Albans when making
a lease of the manor reserved the Tylehouse
and the land where clay was dug for making
tiles and bricks. Somewhat earlier, in 1508,
the Prioress of Sopwell leased the manor of
Corsers in Ridge to Agnes Brook at a rent
of {4 Ios. and a yearly render of 4,000 tiles
and 2 quarters of stone lime, and in 1532 the
reversion of the manor was granted to the Duke
of Norfolk on the same terms. In the lease
to the duke was included a tile kiln, which passed
to St. Albans Abbey and was afterwards
annexed to Tyttenhanger. The kiln was said
to be in decay when it was granted to Sir
Thomas Pope after the Dissolution, but was
leased by Sir Thomas Pope Blount to Harry
Brocke in 1594 and still belonged to Sir Thomas
at his death in 1639.

From the 1§th century onward bricks occupy
a position of increasing importance, either in
conjunction with tiles or by themselves. They
were made as early as 1425 at Rickmansworth,
2,000 ‘ breks’ being bought from John Flete
of that place for chimneys at King’s Langley at
6s. 8d. the thousand.2 Another 500 bricks
were bought at the same time in St. Albans.
The bricks used at Hatfield both for the bishop’s
palace in the r5th century and for the house
erected by the Earl of Salisbury early in the

17th century were probably of local manufac-
ture, as were those used for Tyttenhanger
House.2?_ Little of interest can be said about
this industry, important though it undoubtedly
was and is as a source of employment. A
brickfieldis mentioned at Shenley in 1614, and
there are occasional references to brickmakers,
as, for instance, Edward Marshall of Kempton
in 1668,° Oliver Maine and Thomas Deely of
Winslow ®° in 1708, Joseph Sanders of Hemel
Hempstead and John Hays and William
Hutchins of Rickmansworth in 1714% and
George Humberstone of Graveley in 1746."
During the 18th century Harpenden was one of
the chief centres; in 1728 and again in 1742
several persons were presented for digging chalk
and clay to make bricks on Harpenden Common
and Nomansland, and in 1759 there were brick
kilns on the common.® G. A. Cooke,* writing
in the first quarter of the last century, describes
an elaborate railway drawn by a horse for the
conveyance of bricks from Cheshunt Park to
the Lea. Originally large quantities of furze
were burnt in the kilns, and these were con-
structed so that the flame came into direct
contact with the bricks. The bricks themselves
were packed in such a way that the ‘ heads’ or
ends were exposed, and owing to this system of
firing a slight amount of true homogeneous glaze,
together with a darkening of the surface, was pro-
duced.35 At the present time the chief centres
of brick and tile-making are Hemel Hempstead
and Hitchin, but the industry is widely dis-
tributed over the whole county, with fields at

Watford, Elstree and Barnet in the south, Tring

and Berkhampstead in the west, St. Albans,

Welwyn and Stevenage in the centre, and

Buntingford and Bishop’s Stortford in the east.

PLASTER WORK

Examples of ornamental plaster work, or
pargeting, are more commonly met with in the
eastern half of the county and are really allied
to what may be called the Essex plaster crafts.
The most usual form, often called * combed
work,’ was produced by the use of an instrument
resembling a comb with short teeth, by means
of which the surface of the wet plaster was
scored with a variety of simple patterns
resembling basket-work, scales, &c. This form
of ornament may have had an early origin, and
many examples occur on houses of late 16th-
century date, but it is often impossible to be

1 V.C.H. Herts. ili, 5.

32 [bid. 3.

23 Ibid. ii, 416.

24 Tbid. 390.

25 [bid.

36 Fxch. K.R. Accts. bdle. 466, no. 11.

certain that the plaster is original. Moreover,
the method continued in use down to the middle
of the rgth century and has recently been
revived. The earliest form would appear to be
that in which the whole surface of the external
plaster was covered with one pattern, only
interrupted by the openings made for doorways

27 A quantity of what seemed to be refuse from
brick kilns was found in the grounds of Tyttenhanger.
(Inform. from the Editor /.C.H.)

28 Y.C.H. Herts. ii, 265.

29 Herts. Gen. and Antig. ii, 1668.

30 Tbid. iii, 311.

41 Tbid. 375, 377+

32 Tbid. ii, 142.

33 V.C.H. Herts. il, 295.

¥4 4 Topog. and Statistical Deser. of the County of

riford (1825), 62.
eS ml information obtained at Kensworth

by Mr. G. E. Bullen.

266

INDUSTRIES

and windows. Of the remaining examples of
this none appear to be earlier than the end of
the 16th century.

About this date a more elaborate form of
plaster ornament appeared in Bishop’s Stort-
ford and the neighbourhood. This consisted
of rectangular and diamond-shaped panels cast
in low relief from moulds giving such ornamental
forms as a lion rampant, a crown, a fleur de lis,
a two-headed eagle, a species of carbuncle, and
others. These appear to have been inserted in
plain or combed plastering, but in all the ex-
amples which remain the surrounding plaster
is of doubtful antiquity and in many has been
covered with rough-cast up to the margin of
the panels. Cases occur at Bishop’s Stortford,
Braughing, Albury, Stanstead Abbots, and
elsewhere. At Much Hadham is a small house
where some of these forms are used internally
as ceiling decoration. It would appear likely
that these are all the work of one craftsman
or ‘shop’ with head quarters in Bishop’s Stort-
ford. Plaster is also used at this period to
represent stone dressings on brick buildings ;
the grammar school, Buntingford, provides an
example of this.

At St. Michael’s Manor House, St. Albans, is
a moulded plaster ceiling with moulded panels,
foliate ornament and the initials I.G. (for Sir
John Gape), and the date 1586. Another
ceiling in No. 54 Holywell Hill, perhaps a little
later in date, is ornamented with moulded ribs
and circular plaques containing heads of a crude
classical character. Similar heads to these
appear to have existed, originally, in the ceiling
of the hall of Hatfield House, c. 1611, but were
replaced in the Igth century by paintings.
Hatfield House contains many elaborate plaster
ceilings, for the most part of doubtful antiquity,
but the ceiling of the long gallery retains its
original form and is a good example of the
elaborate interlaced strap and arabesque work
of the 17th century. The sequence of examples
of internal work is continued in a house at Ware,
on the south side of the High Street, in which
is a room on the first floor, with a plain barrel
ceiling of plaster and lunettes at each end
decorated with elaborate arabesques in low
relief. These bear the initials I.H.S. and the
date 1624.

By the middle of the century a new form of
external decoration in plaster came into use.
The wall surfaces were cut up into panels of
rectangular, L-shaped, circular and oval form,
and of comparatively small size, by raised
mouldings in a manner which closely corresponds
to the woodwork of the period. A shop in the
High Street, St. Albans, which is dated 1665, is
an example of this type of decoration. Internal
work of about the same date occurs in the back

rooms of a shop in the High Street, Ware; the
ceilings here have square and round panels,
formed by flat-reeded mouldings, containing
shields with a lion passant between three
crosslets; the same shield appears in plaster
over the fireplace in one of the rooms.

Toward the end of the century the tendency
to increase in size which is shown in the car-
penters’ panelling appears also in the plasterers’
house fronts, but the heavy bolection mouldings
of the wooden panelling were not attempted in
the plaster work. In their place the panels
were marked off by narrow bands of running
foliate ornament in very low relief. The combed
work also appeared, or reappeared, and was
much used for the decoration of the panels
themselves, the styles and rails being left plain.
The outside of St. Michael’s Manor House at
St. Albans is a good example of this style. At
the same time other and quite different forms
of plaster work appeared. A house in Hitchin,
No. 17 Tilehouse Street, has quoins of plaster
and rough-cast walls, and there is similar work
at The Causeway, Braughing. Elaborate
modelled work in relief was also used. A small
house at Ashwell, dated 1681, has ornament of
this type in the form of dolphins and acanthus
foliage. An example of more elaborate work
of this kind is provided by a house of consider-
able size in Fore Street, Hertford. In this case
the ornament is mainly in the form of acanthus
volutes, originally designed to cover the whole
wall surface; later alterations have caused
considerable damage.

During the early part of the 18th century
the panelled plaster fronts with combed panels
and plain styles and rails continued, but the
strips of running ornament went out of use and
plain beadings took their place. A dated
example of this occurs at Hitchin, where a
15th-century house was refronted with plaster
in 1729. The use of timber for building became
less and less common at this time, and in con-
sequence external plaster work of the 18th
century is usually in the nature of repairs to
earlier buildings.

The internal plaster work of the 18th century
offers no features of local peculiarity, but at
Moor Park, Rickmansworth, are examples,
possibly the finest in England, of elaborate
modelled work in high relief. The ceiling of
the white drawing room carries the plasterers’
art, perhaps, to the highest possible point of
elaboration and richness.

In recent years, following the revivalist
movement of the end of the 19th century, the
local ‘combed’ work has been essayed again
with some success. Some examples of this,
as of most other styles, may be found at
Letchworth.

267

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

BELL-FOUNDING

Neither in mediaeval nor in later times did
the county of Hertford contain any bell-
foundry of long standing or extended reputation,
like those of Nottingham, Reading, Gloucester,
or Bristol, yet bells were cast from time to
time within its borders, and in the 17th and 18th
centuries temporary foundries were set up in at
least four different centres.

The records of the abbey of St. Albans afford
more or less definite evidence that the bells of
that church were more than once cast on the
spot, and moreover that the founders in these
cases were not ordinary tradesmen, but actual
members of the monastic foundation. The
earliest record of this kind goes back to the
13th century, a period when we have little or
no evidence of the existence of regular bell-
founders such as we hear of in London and other
towns during the 14th and succeeding centuries.
Although very few remaining church bells can
be traced back to that early date, the existence
of towers built to hold them is sufficient proof
that they were in general use as far back as the
11th century at least. Yet the names of known
founders before 1300 are exceedingly few, and
it seems probable that the art of bell-founding
was largely practised by the monastic orders
before it was organized into a trade. Ata later
time we find occasional evidence of ecclesias-
tical bell-founders, and therefore this need
excite no surprise.

We read then in the Chronicles of St. Albans
that in the days of Roger Norton, the twenty-
fourth abbot (1260-90), some important work
was carried out in connexion with the bells,
together with other improvements associated
with his rule. Previously there were four bells,
given in 1077-93, and for these were substituted
three of larger size. ‘A great bell truly and a
most sonorous one, called by the name of
St. Amphibalus, he caused to be made for
tolling the curfew daily, other two bells in
honour of St. Alban and St. Katherine being
made at the same time, under the super-
intendence of Sir John de Marins, then prior of
this church, out of four old bells broken up,
without adding the smallest quantity of metal.”!

We are not, of course, definitely told that
Sir John de Marins actually took part in the
casting or designing of the bells, but it seems
pretty clear that they were made by ecclesias-
tical and not secular craftsmen under the direc-
tion of the prior himself. More direct evidence
of monastic achievements in this line appears in
the tme of Michael Mentmore, twenty-ninth
abbot (1335-49). The great bell called Amphi-
balus (mentioned above) was broken while

1 Gesta Abbat. Mon. $. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 483.

curfew was being tolled, and was recast by
Friar Adam de Dankastre in the hall of the
sacristy.2 It seems likely that he was also the
maker of a successor to the St. Alban bell about
the same time, as there is a record of the
consecration of these two bells by Lord Hugh,
Archbishop of Damascus. About 1370 a new
bell was made and named ‘ Christ,’ and in 1485
another was christened ‘ John,’ but there is
apparently no record of their maker. The
five old bells of the abbey, which survived the
Dissolution, were recast by Philip Wightman,
of London, in 1699, and in that form four still
remain.$

There appears to be no trace of any secular
bell-founders in the county during the period
preceding the Reformation. Of the thirty
mediaeval bells still remaining in the county,
no less than twenty-one were cast in London
and five at Toddington in Bedfordshire (by
John and William Rufford). There is one
example from each of the foundries at Bury
St. Edmund’s, Reading, and Wokingham.4 But
there remains one bell of unique character,
which cannot be assigned to any known foundry,
viz., the second at Little Berkhampstead. The
inscription

+AVE MARIA GRACIA PLENA DOMINVS TECVM

BENLDICTA TV IN MVLIERIBVS

is in small Gothic capitals, rather rough and
carelessly stamped, and placed closely round
the upper part of the bell, without the usual
intervening stops between the words. The
initial cross has plain trefoils at the ends of the
arms, Ncither cross nor lettering has been
found on any other bell, and it is quite probable
that it is the work of a local (? Hertford)
craftsman, dating from about the middle of the
14th century.

There is an early bell at Clothall, near Baldock,
with the curious inscription

+CALIT: ME IOANNES

of which no satisfactory interpretation has as
yet been given. The lettering is also found on
a bell at Rawreth, in Essex, and was originally
in the hands of the London founder, Richard
Wymbish (about 1300-20). Subsequently it
reappears, with the same plain cross as at
Clothall and Rawreth, on a bell by Robert
Rider, of London (1350-86), at Ridgewell, in
Essex. The two first-named bells have, in
common with the Wymbish bells and others

? Gesta Abbat. Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Ser.), ii, 363.

3 For the history of the St. Albans bells see Stahl-
schmidt, CA. Bells of Herts. 98 ff.

* Two others, formerly at Sawbridgeworth, were
cast just over the Essex border about 1540.

268

INDUSTRIES

known to be by London founders of this time,
a peculiar flat moulding above the inscription.
This small point seems to be sufficient justifica-
tion for assigning them to a founder in the
metropolis. It is further probable that they
date from the intervening period between
Wymbish and Rider. Now, there was a founder
of this period who, though working in London,
was probably a Hertfordshire man, one John
de Hadham, whose name occurs in records
between 1330 and 1339.8 The Clothall and
Rawreth bells may fairly be assigned to him,
and as ‘Johannes’ on the former probably
denotes the founder, not the donor, this supplies
additional evidence.

It is not until after the middle of the 16th
century that we meet with any definite evidence
as to bell-founding in Hertfordshire. In 1557
the name of a bell-founder, Clarke, living at
Datchworth, occurs in connexion with some
bells at Graveley, brought from the priory of
Wymondley. Among the Land Revenue papers
at the Record Office is a certificate of their
weight made 26 May 1557: ‘The weyght of
the said iiij belles by estimacion of a bell funder
woos name is Clarke dwellyng at Thesthewurth
in the Count’ of Hertf’? . . . dowth wey xviij
hundryth weyght,’? &c. Thesthewurth is
obviously intended for Datchworth (near Wel-
wyn), which was formerly spelled and is still
sometimes pronounced Thatchworth. Stahl-
schmidt? identified as this founder’s work a bell
(the fifth) at Braughing, which is inscribed

DEUS IN ADIUTOUIR MEU INTENDE IC 1562

the date being placed on the crown above. The
Datchworth registers unfortunately only begin
in 1570, and yield no information about this
Clarke, whose Christian name may be assumed
to have been John, but between 1572 and 1587
there was a John Clarke living there, probably
the bell-founder’s son, and the baptism of seven
of his sons is recorded. One of the latter,
baptized in 1575 by the name of John, may
possibly be identical with a bell-founder who
flourished between 1599 and 1621. The bells
by this later John Clarke are, however, very
widely scattered, and he is more likely to have
been an ‘itinerant ’ than to have had a settled
home, like many other founders of the period.
One of his bells occurs in Hertfordshire, at
Eastwick, dated 1601. There are six in Essex
and solitary specimens in Bedfordshire, Bucking-
hamshire, Hampshire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk
and Sussex.

There are two or three other itinerant founders

5 Jt occurs on the treble at Little Hallingbury,
Essex, which has no inscription, but is probably by
the same founder as Clothall.

6 See Stahlschmidt, Surrey Bells, 73 ; Deedes and
Walters, Ch. Bells of Essex, 6.

7 Ch. Bells of Herts. 32.

who have left their traces in Hertfordshire about
this period, the best known of whom is John
Dier (1577-98), twelve bells by whom remain in
the county. Five of them being dated 1595,
it is probable that he was at that time tem-
porarily residing somewhere in the neighbour-
hood of Hitchin, where they are chiefly found.
The others range between 1580 and 1597, and
one at Hemel Hempstead is undated. Dier’s
work is found in most of the neighbouring
counties.

John Grene cast bells for Harpenden in 1571
and 1574, both now unfortunately recast. He
is otherwise only known in Huntingdonshire
and Essex. There are also specimens of the
work of a nameless founder in three towers
round Baldock (Clothall, Newnham and Norton),
which belong to the same period. His bells
occur in Bedfordshire,® Buckinghamshire, Cam-
bridgeshire and Northamptonshire, and are re-
markable for their unintelligible inscriptions, a
meaningless jumble of crowns, fleurs de lis, and
odd letters; none of them are dated.

When we reach the 17th century we find
ourselves on firmer ground, and the first genuine
local founder appears on the scene. This is
Robert Oldfield, probably an offshoot of the
famous bell-founding family at Nottingham,®
though of this there is no proof. Little is
known about him except that he was a resident
in the parish of St. Andrew, Hertford® Here
in St. Andrew’s Street, exactly opposite the
church of that name, is an inn, known in 1624,
as at the present day, as the Little Bell Inn.
In 1625 it is mentioned in the Corporation
Archives as the ‘ Bell Mould,’ and from 1628 to
1726 as the ‘Golden Bell,’ and the name has since
varied, but always retained the word ‘ Bell’ in
some form. Here we learn from the archives
that Oldfield was resident until 1640, when the
name of the tenant is given as John Oldfield
(probably a son), who held it till 1660. At the
back of the inn are workshops and a yard in
which the founder probably carried on his
business. There is no record in the parish
registers either of St. Andrew or All Saints of
Oldfield’s birth, marriage, or burial, but in 1622
a son of his was buried, and another shortly
after, both at St. Andrews. If he came origi-
nally from Nottingham or elsewhere this might
explain the absence of birth or marriage records ;
of his death we have other evidence. His
administration bond, dated 7 May 1650, is at
Somerset House, and he is there described as of
the parish of St. Andrew." In the registers of

8<John Bunyan’s bell’ at Elstow is one of this
group. 9 See V.C.H. Notts. ii, 369.

10 For most of the following particulars the writer
is indebted to the kindness of Mr. W. F. Andrews, of
Hertford. See also Herts. Mercury, 31 March and
21 April 1888.

11 Cocks, Ch. Bells of Bucks. 163.

269

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

that parish ‘ old widow Oldfield’s’ burial occurs
on 16 May 1673, and it is quite likely that she
was the relict of the founder. His name also
occurs in the churchwardens’ accounts of the
parish of Shillington (co. Beds.), for which he
cast a bell, still existing, in 16381; he is there
described as located at Hertford.

The last-named bell bears a shield with an
arrow in pale and the letters R.O., which has
made it possible to identify as his work nearly
eighty bells, the majority of which bear this

Sramp oF Rosert OLprigLp

stamp. They cover the period from 1605 to
1640, and there are two in Bedfordshire, three
in Cambridgeshire, one in Lincoln, twenty-four
in Essex, and forty-eight in Hertfordshire, of
which two have been recently recast. They are
inscribed in plain Roman letters, with an initial
cross, of which there are three varieties—a
plain one, a cross crosslet, and a floreated cross.
They fall into two distinct chronological divi-
sions: in the earlier (1605-16) the letters are
thick and the cross crosslet is used, in the later
(1616-40) the lettering is thin and somewhat
larger, the plain cross being used down to 1621,
and then the floreated cross. His stock of in-
scriptions is somewhat limited; the favourites
are

GOD SAVE THE KING
and

PRAYSE YE THE LORD
We also find

GOD SAVE HIS CHURCH

IESVS BE OVR SPEDE

and in Latin
SONORO SONO MEO SONO DEO

The seventh at Hemel Hempstead is inscribed

SANA MANET CHRISTI PLEBISQVE RELIGIO VANA
Four of his bells remain at Broxbourne, three at
Tring, and three at Kimpton. As Stahlschmidt
has pointed out, the number remaining, especially
in this county, clearly shows that he had a
steady and profitable business. On his retire-

12 North, C4. Bells of Beds. 69, 190.

ment in 1640 the foundry was closed, and bell-
founding in the county town ceased for some
140 years.

In 1656 a ring of six bells was cast for Waltham
Abbey in Essex by a founder of the name of
Wiliam Whitmore at Wollford (sic), Hertford-
shire18 The only reasonable interpretation of
the name ‘ Wollford’ is Watford, and, as there
are three or four bells by the same founder in
the immediate neighbourhood of that town, this
is additional confirmation. Like many other
founders of the period he was an ‘itinerant,’
coming originally from the West. The bells
of Frocester, in Gloucestershire, were cast by him
in 1639, but these are the only specimens of his
work in that part, and shortly afterwards he
appears to have migrated to Watford. Here
in 1647 he cast the priest’s bell at Aldenham,
followed by three bells for Langley Marish
(co. Bucks.), in 1649, two for the curfew tower
of Windsor Castle in 1650, and one for Epping
town, Essex, in the latter year. Next we hear
of him in 1653, which year he apparently spent
in Essex, probably at Chelmsford, in the
neighbourhood of which town eight bells bear
that date and his initials or lettering. Here,
however, he was not working independently,
but undertaking commissions for a newly-
established London founder, John Hodson.
At Boreham we find on the treble the initials
W.W., on the tenor the names (in full) of both
founders. Similarly at Good Easter the first
bore the initials I.H., the fifth W.W. At
Steeple Bumpstead only Hodson’s name appears,
and at Sandon and Springfield it is accompanied
by a single W. for Whitmore, but it is worth
noting that in all cases the lettering is Whit-
more’s. In 1654 he was back again at Watford,
and has left a bell at Bovingdon. Others in
Bedfordshire and Middlesex are dated 1656,
with his initials, and his latest effort was at
King’s Langley in 1657. The fifth at Hert-
ingfordbury is interesting as showing that
he renewed his connexion with Hodson; it is
inscribed

ICEPE DVLCE SEQVAR W WHITMORE FOR
IOHN HVDSON 1656

The fourth bell in the same tower is also his
work and of the same date. His bells are very
plain, the only ornament being a lozenge-shaped
stop, varied during the Essex period by one in
the form of a x with a lozenge above and below.

In or about the year 1699, according to
tradition, Richard Keene, a founder who had
been working for many years at Woodstock, in
Oxfordshire, set up a temporary foundry at
Royston. There is no actual evidence of his
residence there, except the testimony of the
bells themselves, all of which are in the neigh-

18 Deedes and Walters, Ch. Bells y Essex, 112,
430.

270

INDUSTRIES

bourhood of that town; his name does not
occur in the parish registers, though, as he must
have been an old man of over sixty when he
came, he probably ended his days there. His
career in these parts only extended over five
years (1699-1703), but he was extraordinarily
active during that time, and left over fifty bells,
of which only one bears his name, though they
are easily recognized by the lettering. They
were, however, more remarkable for quantity
than quality, as a dozen at least have since been
recast. Of five complete rings in Essex (Arkes-
den, Hadstock, Heydon, Langley, and Wendens
Ambo) none now remain complete. There are
eighteen of his bells in Cambridgeshire and
about thirty in north-west Essex, but only two
can be traced in Hertfordshire, the trebles at
Anstey and Great Hormead. Many bear the
date alone, often in very rough figures, the
rest usually churchwardens’ names. All are
quite devoid of ornamentation.

The latest of the itinerant founders, John
Waylett (1703-31), was not only a Hertfordshire
man by birth, but spent the greater part of his
active career there in his native town of Bishop’s
Stortford. He first appears in 1703 as the
founder of a bell for Stanford le Hope, in Essex,
and for the next ten years produced a fair
number of bells for Essex, Hertfordshire, and
Cambridgeshire, also one for Middlesex. In 1712
he migrated temporarily to Sudbury and cast
two bells in Suffolk, in conjunction with John
Thornton of that town. Though most of his
earlier bells are in its neighbourhood, we get no
evidence of his connexion with Bishop’s Stort-
ford before 1715, in which year he cast a bell
for Meldreth (co. Cambs.), and is described as
‘ John Waylett of Bishop’s Stortford.’ In 1716
he cast another bell there for the same parish of
Meldreth. It is worth noting that when the
Bishop’s Stortford bells were recast by him in
1713 there is no item for carriage in the parish
accounts. Meanwhile in 1714 he had begun
another migration to Sussex, where he remained
for a year or two, casting nine bells in the
neighbourhood of Hastings, and establishing a
connexion which lasted for ten years. In 1716
he appears to have entered on a_ business
arrangement with another founder, Samuel
Knight, of London. Two bells of that year at
Redbourn bear his name, but the lettering is
Knight’s, whose name appears on a third.
Probably he executed commissions like Whit-
more. In 1721 the initials of the two men
appear on a bell at Stowting, in Kent, cast by
Waylett while at Hythe, as may be learned
from an existing agreement. Apparently he
was at Bishop’s Stortford working for Knight
for five years; he then set out on a tour over
the Home Counties, and we find his bells in
Surrey in 1718, in London in 1721, in Kent
between 1717 and 1727, and also as noted in

Sussex. All his Kent bells between 1721 and
1724 are in the neighbourhood of Hythe.
Finally in 1727 he took up his residence in
London, and cast ten bells between that year
and 1731, seven of which bear the words 10HN
WAYLETT, LONDON. It is curious that the tenor
bell of Bishop’s Stortford should belong to this
period, being dated 1730, but it may well have
been cast by him on a temporary visit to his
old home. We do not know the date or place
of his death, but his name occurs in the records
of the Founders’ Company in 1740, when he was
an honorary member, having long retired from
business. In all he appears to have spent
rather more than half of his active career at
Bishop’s Stortford, from 1703 to 1721, with the
exception of occasional migrations in 1712 and
1714-15, and perhaps during the next five
years ; it is not likely that he cast any of the
Kent, Surrey, or Sussex bells on the far side of
London. There are altogether twenty-six bells
by him in Hertfordshire, out of a total of 130,
of which four are at Sandon and four at Stort-
ford. There are also twenty-four in Essex
which belong to the Bishop’s Stortford period,
and about eighteen in Cambridgeshire. Com-
pared with other itinerant founders his work-
manship is decidedly good, and it is clear from
his career that he had established a widespread
reputation.4 His bells seldom bear anything
but the words 10HN WAYLETT MADE ME, or the
same in Latinized form, with the date, and
sometimes a fleur de lis as a stop.

The last, but by no means the least, of the
Hertfordshire founders is John Briant (1782-
1825), who after a period of 140 years re-
established this industry in the county town,
and is described by Stahlschmidt as ‘ the Herts
founder par excellence.’ He was born at Exning,
in Suffolk, and sent to school at Newmarket,
with a view to his taking holy orders, but his
mechanical tastes, and in particular his interest
in clocks and chimes, turned him in another
direction. His first work at Hertford was the
recasting of the bells of St. Andrew’s into eight
in 1782, and his success soon established a large
connexion. Stahlschmidt says he was noted
as a ‘ splicer,’ and particularly in adding trebles
to a ring of bells, as at All Saints, Hertford, and
St. Peter’s, St. Albans. The same writer!
gives a list of bells cast by him, from a book in
the possession of the College Youths of Hertford,
and claims as his masterpiece the tenor of
St. Michael’s, Coventry. The list, which was
probably compiled about 1807, is naturally
incomplete, but includes six rings of eight bells,
eleven of six, and five of five, besides about
120 additions to rings. In Hertfordshire he
cast rings of eight for Hatfield and Hertford,

14 See Deedes and Walters, C+. Bells of Essex, 120
15 Ch. Bells of Herts. 65.

271

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

rings of six for Barkway and North Mimms,
and rings of five for Codicote, Rushden, and
Wallington. Other famous specimens of his
work are the rings of eight at Waltham Abbey
and Saffron Walden; at St. Alkmund, Shrews-
bury, and Condover (Salop); Adderbury (Oxon.),
and St. Ebbe’s, Oxford; and others at Barn-
staple (Devon); Soham (Cambs.); St. Giles,
Cripplegate, London, &c. His latest bell in
Hertfordshire is at Hinxworth, dated 1825.
His foundry was near Castle Lane, subsequently
occupied by Mr. Simpson, printer.

His bells are usually inscribed in a small neat
type:

JOHN BRIANT HERTFORD FECIT

with the date, the name of the town being
sometimes spelled ‘Hartford.2 He seldom
breaks out into poetry like some of his contem-
poraries, but examples may be seen at Little
bury (Essex), Shrewsbury, St. Alkmund, and
High Ercall (Salop), the effusions in the two
latter cases being the work of a well-known
local poet. He is fond of introducing small
ornaments in his inscriptions, such as a calvary
cross, a cross paty, and a double triangle. That
he was also a successful clockmaker the present
clock at Hertford Town Hall bears witness.
His skill as a founder and his conscientiousness
in business are well evidenced by a correspon-
dence with the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln,
who applied to him about the bells of their

Cathedral, and in particular about ‘Great
Tom,’ then (1827) being cracked. The corre-
spondence is preserved among the cathedral
documents, and is given in extenso by Stahl-
schmidt.® His advice was unfortunately not
followed for some time, and, after several abor-
tive attempts to mend ‘Great Tom,’ it was
finally recast in London in 1834. At the time
of this occurrence Briant was nearly eighty
years of age, and he states that he has ‘ declined
bell-founding,’ but is ready and willing to give
disinterested advice. It appears that in spite
of his reputation for mechanical skill and
integrity in business his trade had for some
years been declining, partly, perhaps, on account
of advancing years, partly from the competition
of the great firm of Mears, of Whitechapel.
However this may be, he fell into pecuniary
difficulties, and was compelled to end his days
in an almshouse at St. Albans, where he died
27 February 1829, aged eighty. His business
had been sold not long before to his successful
rival Mears. A contemporary writer, Lewis
Turnor,!’ attributes his misfortunes to his gene-
rosity and liberality of disposition, and to the
fact that he had a great aversion to pressing for
the discharge of money owing to him. He was
buried in All Saints’ churchyard at Hertford,
and a muffled peal was rung at that church
by the Hertford College Youths. He was
twice married, and left two daughters, but no
son.

WATER-CRESS GROWING

The culture of water-cress for table use,
although practised extensively for many years
previously in Germany and elsewhere on the
Continent, does not appear to have been intro-
duced to this country prior to the first quarter
of the rgth century.

Hertfordshire, on account of the abundance
and purity of its water supply, was one of the
first counties in which the industry was at
first largely prosecuted, and the crops produced
in certain areas, notably around Welwyn, were
considered to be of very high quality.

One has to consider the fact of a decreasing
water supply in the county to realize that at
the present day the industry is no longer
in the prosperous condition of former years.
Many of the beds, or ‘ditches’ as they are
locally called, which originally were fed by small
rivulets and streams, are now unworkable during
the summer months, and it may almost be
stated that only those areas of cultivation ad-
jacent to the larger watercourses of the county
yield regular and profitable crops. Moreover, a
diminution of water during the summer months,

1 See Encycl. Brit. (ed. 10).

when the best season for production is at its
height, causes a greater amount of impurity in
the beds, chiefly due to the decomposition of
diatomaceous and other protophytan matter ;
and, whereas suitable precautions are taken to
exclude impure matter of a larger description,
this may be cited as a further deterrent factor
in the full development of the industry.
Although water-cress is grown throughout the
county wherever suitable conditions exist, the
most extensive areas of production are those
which occur naturally below the level of an
adjacent waterway. A large acreage of what
would otherwise be damp pasture is thus
utilized along the margin of the Grand Junction
Canal and the Rivers Lea and Colne with their
tributaries. At Rickmansworth and Boxmoor
Mr. Chas. Sansom owns beds of consider-
able extent. Two other members of the
family, Mr. A. Sansom of Welwyn and Mr. T.
Sansom of Redbourn are also large growers.

16 Ch, Bells of Herts. 57 ff.

1 Hist. of the Borough of Hertford, 407. He gives
a biography of Briant as one of the town’s notab.e
men.

272

INDUSTRIES

Other important areas of cultivation occur at
Berkhampstead, Hoddesdon, Hemel Hempstead,
and Boxmoor, Wheathampstead and St. Albans.
Three distinct varieties of the plant are culti-
vated—namely, the green-leaved, the small
brown-leaved, and the large brown-leaved ; the
first two apparently more extensively than
the latter, which grows best in deep water.

The trenches vary in extent in different parts
of the county, but as a rule they are not less
than Io ft. broad by go ft. in length. The
bottom is made slightly sloping, and in such a
way that a regular depth of about 4 in. of water
can be maintained.

In the planting of a bed a small quantity of
water is first allowed to enter in order to soften
the ground. Slips or cuttings, each bearing
roots, are then planted at a distance of about
3 or 4 in. apart in rows parallel to the direction
of the current. A slight dressing of manure is
applied at the end of four or five days, and this
is pressed down by means of a heavy wooden
board, to which a long handle is obliquely
attached. Water is then allowed to enter the
trench in full volume to the depth already
mentioned.

Each bed furnishes about twelve crops

4 273

annually, the cresses being cut during the sum-
mer about every twenty days, and less fre-
quently in winter. Two-thirds of a bed are
usually cut at once, manuring being performed
after each gathering. Owing to this treatment
the level of the bottom of the trench is gradually
heightened, and at the end of twelve months
the bed is cleared and the refuse removed, a
fresh planting being effected. In many places
the soil removed and thrown on to the margins
separating adjacent beds is utilized for the
growing of vegetables.

The cresses are packed for market in
specially constructed baskets, in double rows,
with the leaves toward the interior. The
greater proportion of the produce is sent to
Covent Garden, but, although there are no pub-
lished returns showing the extent of acreage
under cultivation for water-cress in the county,?
it is generally considered by those engaged in
the industry that more than one-third of the
total amount marketed in London is derived
from Hertfordshire.

? No records in this respect are kept by the Board
of Agriculture, and the weekly market reports of
trade journals are insufficiently particular to be of
accurate service.

35

FORESTRY

LTHOUGH there is no evidence of the presence at an early time of a true royal forest,

under forest law, within the bounds of Hertfordshire, there is no doubt that the greater

part of the district abounded in timber and underwood from the earliest days of which

there is any record. Indeed, the place-names of the county bear particular witness to the
great extent of woods and woodland. Frith, the old name for a forest or woody place, is found
in Frithsden, to the north of Hemel Hempstead, and also at Great Berkhampstead, Welwyn and
other places. There is no doubt that the greater portion of western Hertfordshire, which lay in
the Chiltern region, was at one time densely wooded. As late as 1064, the thickness of the
Aldenham Woods’ rendered the road to London dangerous for travellers. The gradual and
deliberate clearing of the great manor of Wheathampstead can be traced in the charters and
grants of the abbey of Westminster.”

The Domesday Survey proves that this was a county abounding in timber to an exceptional
extent at the time of the Norman Conquest. It is but rarely that the Survey gives the extent
of the woods or underwood of the manors by acres or by miles and furlongs as in Lincolnshire
and Derbyshire. The chief value of the woods consisted in affording acorns and beechmast for
the swine. Hence it came about that the woods were usually set down by the commissioners
in accordance with the number of hogs they were capable of fattening. In some counties the
woodland estimate was formed from the tale of pigs that it yielded to the lord in return for
pannage licence, but in Hertfordshire the estimate was formed from the number of pigs that it
sufficed to feed. The numbers of the swine afford a rough estimate of the size of the woods; but
it is, of course, idle to attempt to form any scale of their area, as their swine-feeding capacity
would depend not only on the density of the woodland area, but also on the nature of the
trees. The oak and beech no doubt very largely predominated, but there were also other trees.
Thus at Lilley, a large manor of nine plough-lands on the Bedfordshire border in Hitchin
Hundred, in the midst of other manors furnishing provision for hundreds of pigs, the Survey
states that it only supported six swine. It would be quite rash, however, to assume that the
woodland area of Lilley was in consequence very small. The group of manors in the north-west
of the county, which belonged to the king, were well supplied with pannage woods. Walden
Regis supported 800 swine and Hitchin 600. The total of swine in the king’s woods was 3,155,
or an average somewhat less than 300 a manor. The lands of the abbey of St. Albans were
chiefly around the monastery in the south-west of the county, where the manors were of great
extent. The woodlands of Rickmansworth supported 1,200 swine and those of St. Albans,
Hemel Hempstead and Cassiobury 1,000 each. The total in the abbey woods amounted to
6,710; the average per manor was over 400, but Shephall had only 10, and the two manors of
Newnham and Norton, in the extreme north of the county, none. By far the greatest lay
tenant of Domesday manors was Eustace Count of Boulogne; his comparatively small manors
lay in a group to the north-east of the county, save for Tring at the extreme west and
Hoddesdon at the south. Tring had woodland to feed 1,000 swine; but the woodland of the
other twelve manors was apparently quite small, for they only averaged 17 swine apiece.°

Mention is made in the Survey of three parks in this county—namely, at St. Albans,
Benington and Ware. In each case the descriptive term is parcus bestiarum sylvaticarum,
which may be best rendered ‘a park for beasts of venery.’ The four beasts of venery were the
hart, wolf, wild boar and hare, which were all termed sylvestres ; they spent their days in the
woods and coppices, and were taken by what was considered true hunting, being roused by
lymer hounds or tufters, and afterwards pursued by the pack. Contrariwise, the beasts of the
chase were campestres, or found by the day in open ground, and therefore required none of the
Niceties of tracking and harbouring, but were roused straight away by the pack ; these beasts

of the chase were also four in number—namely, the fallow and roe deer and the fox and
marten.°

1 VCH. Herts. ii, 149. 2 Thid. 298. 3 See Domesday map, /.C.H. Herts. 1, 300.
* Thirty-one of these deer parks are mentioned in Domesday.
® Cox, Royal Forests, 62, 63 and cap. iv.

275

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The manor and liberties of Therfield were confirmed to Ramsey Abbey by Edward the
Confessor, and subsequently by the Conqueror. Particulars as to the customs and services of
this manor, as set forth in 1271, show various references to the woodland of the estate. Each
customary tenant had to maintain a rood of fencing round the wood, to cut two faggots of
sticks before Hockday and three faggots afterwards, and also to cut three faggots of under-
wood before Hockday and five afterwards.®

In this county, as elsewhere, the woodlands suffered severely through the dissolution of the
monasteries. The new owners or Crown tenants endeavoured, as a rule, to make all they could
out of their new possessions without much thought for the future; whereas the monasteries,
save in the case of an occasional corrupt superior, regarded their woods as a precious heritage
to be handed on unimpaired from generation to generation. As a check on this and other evils,
an Act was passed in 1541 establishing a Court of General Surveyors of the king’s lands, one of
the officers being termed Master of the Woods, without whose assent no sales could be made.’
In 1541 the Crown appointed under this statute Geoffrey Chambers, John Peryn, gentlemen,
and four others to serve as commissioners to sell, by the acre or otherwise, to the greatest
advantage, ‘all the underwood and wood of Connes Grove (18 acres), and Hyllys Grove (4
acres), parcel of the manor of Hatfield lately belonging to the bishop of Ely, but saving all
manor of greate tymbretrees and saplyng oykes lyke to be tymbre and certyn standers in
every acre of the promisses according to the Custome of the Country.’ Open proclamation of
the sale of the same to the highest bidder was to be made ‘in the Church of the Town next
adjoynyng to the saide woode.’*® At the same time other commissioners were charged with
the sale, under like ;estriction, of 36 acres of wood of the manor of Abbots Walden, late
parcel of the possessions of the abbey of St. Albans.* At the close of the reign of Henry VIII
the Court of General Surveyors was dissolved, and its powers over wood sales transferred to the
Court of Augmentations.!” This legislation, however, only applied to Crown lands, and the
king’s best advisers soon saw that woods in general were so speedily disappearing under the new
conditions of ownership that wider restrictions were requisite. Accordingly in 1543 an Act was
passed for the Preservation of Woods. The preamble sets forth that

The King our sovereign lord perceiving and right well knowing the great decay of timber and woods
universally within this his realm of England to be such, that unless speedy remedy in that behalf be provided,
there is great and manifest likelihood of <carcity and lack as well of timber for building, making, repairing and
maintaining of houses and ships, and also for fewel and fire-wood for the necessary relief of the whole com-
monalty of this his said realm, &c.

It was thereby enacted that in every copse of underwood felled at twenty-four years’
growth twelve standrells or store oaks (or in default of oak, elm, ash, asp or beech) be left
standing on each acre; when cut under fourteen years the ground was to be inclosed or pro-
tected for four years; when cut from fourteen to twenty-four years to be inclosed for six
years ; cutting trees on waste or common land to be punished by fine of 6s. 8d. for each tree."
This Act of 1543 was strengthened and confirmed by Elizabeth in 1570, when the period for
inclosing copses against damage by cattle after felling was extended.”

After this date various steps were taken during Elizabeth’s reign to check the spoiling of
the woods of Hertfordshire. In 1575 a special commission was issued to inquire into the
wastes and spoils of wood on lands belonging to Colney Chapel”; this district, now known as
Colney Heath, lay about 3 miles to the east of St. Albans, and its woods were of considerable
value. In 1577 another special commission was appointed concerning Her Majesty’s park, called
Innings, in Bishop’s Hatfield, as to the moss which caused the deer to die."* The spoils of the
woods in the manor of Hatfield formed the subject of a commission of 1591, and in the following
year there was a further inquiry relative to the woods of the late priory of Dunstable."

Saxton’s map of 1577 shows a large number of well-wooded parks in Hertfordshire, and
Norden’s Survey of 1590 marks about thirty. The latter authority states that: ‘This shire at
this day is and more hath been heretofore, much repleate with parkes, wooddes and rivers.’

A report on the agriculture of Herts. drawn up in 1795 for the consideration of the Board of
Agriculture includes references to the woodlands. It is remarked that
independent of the woodlands contiguous to the seats of gentlemen, nearly the whole county is interspersed
with small woods and coppices, and these generally occupy the most barren and gravelly spots, which are well

8 Cart. Mon. de Rames. (Rolls Ser.), i, 47.

7 Stat. 33 Hen. VIII, cap. 39. 8 Exch. K. R. Accts. bdle. 148, no. 28.

9 Ibid. no. 29. 10 Brown, Forests of Engl. (1883), 225.

MI Stat. 35 Hen. VIII, cap. 17. 1 Stat. 13 Eliz. cap. 25.

13 Exch. Dep. Spec. Com. Eliz. no. 1020. M4 Tbid. no. 1026.

1 Ibid. no. 1035, 1036. 16D. Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 68, 70.

276

FORESTRY

adapted to the quick growth of underwood. The woods are well fenced in, when cut, and preserved from
the bret of cattle, and also drained if necessary. As the growth of hop poles is not attended to, the woods are
cut in succession about every ten years, and the straight saplings of oak, ash, beech, sallow, birch, poplar,
hornbeam, or any other woods, either from stub or seed, are preserved till the succeeding fall, and then a due
succession of the oak, ash and beech seedlings are preserved ; the rest are cut down and split for sheep
flakes. Great part of the underwood is hazel, and a conversion of the straight hazel rods into smart hoops
for the West India trade would be more to the advantage of the growers than into charcoal and firewood ; but
this conversion is not much understood or followed in Hertfordshire. A good plant of thriving underwood
may be averaged at 20s. per acre per annum.

Mr. Walker also noted that the county possessed a considerable quantity of timber fit for
the Navy and inferior shipping, and anticipated that a large supply would be brought to London
by the Grand Junction Canal. He had seen naked oak timber recently sold near Berkhamp-
stead, and in the line of the canal, at £3 tos. per load, which would be worth at least {5 tos.
at any of the king’s or merchants’ yards.

A more elaborate report on this county was presented to the Board in 1804 by their
secretary, the celebrated Arthur Young; the tenth chapter is devoted to the consideration of
woods.” It is therein remarked that the woods of Hertfordshire between Hockerill, Ware and
Buntingford were generally rented at about 12s. an acre and cut at twelve years’ growth, when
the produce was about {9 an acre. Fifteen hundred acres of the Marquess of Salisbury, on poorer
soil, did not yield more than 7s. an acre. There were then about 2,000 acres of woodland to
the south of Hertford towards London. When let to tenants they were cut at nine or ten years’
growth, and might be cut twice in a twenty-one years’ lease; but they were mostly in the land-
owners’ hands, and were then generally cut every twelve years, when they produced from {4 to
{12 an acre; the sallow and willow were used for hurdles and the remainder for faggots.

Any survey of forestry is necessarily concerned with parks, as they are always more or less
well timbered. Mr. Harting in an article of the year 1881 '® enumerates thirty-four old parks of
the county that have either ceased to exist or are now no longer deer parks. They are as
follows: Aspenden, Bedwell, Benington, Berkhampstead, Brockett Hall, Cheshunt, Eastwick,
Furneux Pelham, Hadham Parva, Hamells, Hertingfordbury, Hunsdon, King’s Langley, New
Place (Gilston), Offley Place, Panshanger, Penley Park, Pishobury, Ponsbourne, Roxford, Rye,
Sawbridgeworth, St. Albans, Shenley, Stagenhoe, Standon, Theobalds, Thorley, Tyttenhanger,
Throcking, Ware, Walkern, Widford and Wyddial. The existing deer parks of the county are
ten in number—namely, Ashridge, Cassiobury, Gorhambury, Grove, Hatfield, Knebworth, Moor,
Rickmansworth, Tring and Woodhall.

Ashridge Park (Earl Brownlow), which is partly in the parish of Little Gaddesden, has an
area of 986 acres, and is stocked with about Ioo red deer and 300 fallow deer. Within the 5-mile
circumference is a considerable stretch of wild and forest-like ground, and there is an abundance
of fine timber, chiefly oak, beech and ash. The greater part of this park used to be in Bucking-
hamshire, but a recent readjustment of county boundaries gives it to Hertfordshire. It was
anciently in two divisions, one stocked with fallow and the other with red deer, the latter
situated north-west of the house.”” The first park! at Ashridge dates from before the grant of
the manor to the college of Ashridge. Large additions were made by the Earl of Bridgewater ”
in the 17th century.

Cassiobury Park (the Earl of Essex), in the south-west corner of the county, near Watford,
is of considerable size, having an area of 735 acres. The park is divided into two parts, the
Home Park and the Upper Park, by the placid stream of the Gade. It is stocked with a herd
of about 150 fallow deer. This undulating and picturesque park is splendidly timbered. There
are good avenues of limes, much old oak, many well-grown cedars, and some exceptionally fine
firs to the north-east of the house. There does not seem to be any mention of this park extant
before 1632, but it was probably made by Richard Morrison in the 16th century.” Arthur
Capell, Earl of Essex, resided there in the time of Charles II on his return from Ireland ; he
not only rebuilt most of the house, but laid out the gardens and grounds, after the formal style
of those at Versailles, and did much planting in the park. Most of the planting was done under
the direction of Moses Cook, whose volume on ‘Forest Trees,’ published in 1676, was dedicated to

17 A. Young, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 145-8.
18 Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc. ii, 97-111. ;
18 The short accounts of these parks are taken from Shirley (1867) and Whitaker (1892) Deerparks, and

from special information and observation. ;
20 Lipscomb, Bucks. iii, 447. The county boundary used to run right through the centre of the house.

21 Cal, Pat. 1281-92, p. 231.
22 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 209 et seq. 23 Tid. 454.

277

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the Earl of Essex.% In the dedication the writer compliments the earl on the improvements
he had effected at Cassiobury: ‘To your eternal praise be it spoken there is many a fine tree
which you have nursed from seeds sown by your own hands, and many thousands more which
you have commanded me to raise. . . . The large plantation you have made will abundantly
testify your ability and promptitude in promoting the planting and improving of Forest Trees.’
Throughout Moses Cook’s book there are various particular references to the woods at
Cassiobury that must have been planted more than a century before his time. Thus, when
writing of the cherry tree (chap. xvii), he says that the fine and stately trees of the wild cherry
are of such a size as to warrant its inclusion among forest trees, and mentions one that had
attained to the exact height of 85 ft. 5 in.

‘Where they like the ground they make a glorious show in the spring, their white blossoms
showing at a distance as though they were clothed with fine white linen; their blossoms are a
great relief to the industrious bees at that season.’

In the interesting account given by Evelyn under date of 18 April 1680 of this house
and grounds and park occur the following remarks: ‘No man has been more industrious than
this noble lord in planting about his seate, adorn’d with walks, ponds and other rural elegancies.
. . . The land about is exceedingly addicted to wood, but the coldnesse of the place hinders
the growth. Black cherry trees prosper even to considerable timber, some being eighty foote
long; they make also very handsome avenues. There is a pretty oval at the end of a faire
walke, set about with treble rows of Spanish chestnut trees.’

In the noble large folio volume on Cassiobury Park, issued by John Britton, F.S.A., in
1837, beech is said to predominate amongst the timber, though there was an abundance of fine
oak, elm and fir. Particular mention is made of the plantation of firs, north-east of the house,
which is said to resemble * an old Norway forest.’ A coloured plate gives representations of a
silver and a spruce fir, which had attained to the respective heights of 114 ft. and 120 fet.

Gorhambury Park (Earl of Verulam), 2 miles west of St. Albans, includes about 500 acres,
in which there are at present no deer. The park is well wooded with oak and beech. The exact
date of the laying out of the park is not known. A plan of the manor of Gorhambury, as
surveyed in 1634, shows that the whole estate was then divided into fields.% A little to the
south of the house is the fine old tree, having a girth of 21 ft., known as the Royal or Queen
Elizabeth Oak, traditionally associated with the several visits of Queen Elizabeth to Verulam
House.

Grove Park (Earl of Clarendon) lies to the north of Watford, and immediately adjoins the
park of Cassiobury. It has an area of about 230 acres, and is stocked with about 75 fallow
deer. This beautiful park is exceptionally well timbered with a great variety of forest trees
and different kinds of conifers.

Hatfield Deer Park (the Marquess of Salisbury) has an area of 530 acres, and is stocked with
about 200 fallow deer. The park, as a whole, extends in round figures to 1,500 acres. On this
estate there is fresh planting every year; the average for the last ten years is 1§ acres per
annum. The plantations are mixed, but consist chiefly of oak and ash.” When Robert Cecil,
first Earl of Salisbury, obtained Hatfield from James I in 1607 in exchange for Theobalds, he
stocked two parks, one with red and the other with fallow deer.’ These two parks were united
by the seventh Earl and first Marquess of Salisbury, who died in 1823. The present park is
7 miles in circumference and the largest in the county ; it is beautifully undulating, well timbered,
and includes various game coverts. The ancient oak tree under which Queen Elizabeth is said
to have been reading when the news of her accession was brought to her is still standing.

Knebworth Park (Earl of Lytton) has now an area of 1554 acres. It was much larger in
the early part of'last century, three different parts being fenced off containing respectively 30,

24M. Cook, The manner of Raising, Ordering and Improving Forest Trees, €Sc. Printed for Peter
Parker at the Leg and Star . . . Cornhill, 1676. This treatise of upwards of 200 pages is a remarkably
good work on arboriculture for the time it was written, and might with advantage be studied at the present
day. For instance, in his chapter On Raising and Ordering the Hornbeam, now so rarely planted, he
strongly recommends it for parks, ‘ for a deer will starve before he will so much as taste the bark of the horn-
beam.’ In the third edition printed in 1724 the author is termed ‘Gardiner to the Earl of Essex at
Cassiobury.’

25 Evelyn, Memoirs, 517. Bird’s-eye view of Cassiobury, engraved by Kip, after a drawing by L. Knyff,
displays the house with park and gardens, as they appeared about the date of Evelyn’s visit, laid out in
regular avenues, ovals and circles.

26 Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Cashio Hund. 252.

27 From information kindly supplied by the Hatfield Estate Office.

88 Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of Herts. (1700), 308. As to royal sport at Hatfield and Theobalds see V.C.H.
Herts. i, 346-8.

278

FORESTRY

40 and §0 acres. The usual number of deer kept in this park for a long time averaged about a
hundred, but they have much increased during the last few years; they now (January 1913)
number about 200. There have been planted on the Knebworth estate within the last eleven
years 8} acres of poor meadow land and 134 acres of very poor stiff clay arable land. The
trees planted were mostly oak, ash, Scotch fir, larch, spruce and Spanish chestnut.” This
park, which is well timbered and undulating, is not marked on the older surveys of Norden and
Saxton, but Chauncy (1700) describes this seat as ‘a large pile of brick with a fair quadrangle
in the middle of it, upon a dry hill in a fair park, stocked with the best deer in the county,
excellent vob and well wooded, and from whence you may behold a most lovely prospect to
the east.’

Moor Park (Lord Ebury), in the parish of Rickmansworth, was imparked as early as the
reign of Henry VI,” and apparently enlarged by Cardinal Wolsey,®* but the present inclosed
area of 473 acres dates from the time of Charles II. It is stocked with about 150 fallow deer,
and is heavily timbered, more particularly with a large number of very old oaks. The large
lime tree engraved in Strutt’s Sylva Britannica (1826) was blown down during a heavy gale in
January 1860.¥

Rickmansworth Park (Mrs. Birch), to the north of the town, includes 200 acres, and is
stocked with fifty fallow deer. It contains various fine old trees. In a deed of sale of the
Fotherley family, dated 7 December 1685, various closes of this estate are stated to be ‘now
impalled in and lately made a parke.’ *4

Tring Park (Lord Rothschild) incloses over 225 acres, and is stocked with about eighty
head of fallow deer, as well as with kangaroos, emus and rheas. The park stands on high
and undulating grounds, and is surrounded by woods which are chiefly of beech.

Woodhall Park (Mr. Abel Henry Smith), in the parish of Watton-at-Stone, incloses an area
of 428 acres, including the mansion, gardens and home farm; it is stocked with 150 fallow
deer. It is nobly timbered with forest trees, as well as with firs and cedars. There was a park
here in Elizabeth’s days, as shown in Saxton’s survey. The present park was much enlarged
and improved at the end of the 18th century.

Of the parks that have disappeared or lost their deer the most famous is that of Theobalds,
which lay to the north-east of Enfield Chase. Much has been already said elsewhere of this
favourite hunting seat of James I, which need not be here restated.** The present much reduced
park of Theobalds (Sir Hedworth Meux) incloses about 200 acres.

Panshanger Park (Lady Cowper), in Hertingfordbury parish, the most important of the
deerless parks, was inclosed by the fifth Earl Cowper in 1801, when the former family mansion
at Cole Green was pulled down. The extensive park of close upon 1,000 acres, watered by the
River Mimram, includes much splendid timber. To the west of the house stands that singularly
grand old tree known as the Panshanger Oak. By a measurement taken in 1719 this tree was
found to contain 315 cubic ft. of timber, and Arthur Young in 1804 gave its girth as 17 ft.
at a height of 5 ft. from the ground. A further measurement taken in 1805 showed the
marvellous vigour of the tree, for it then contained 796 cubic ft., but this second detailed
measurement included those branches which were sufficiently large to be considered timber.
Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne, named this tree as ‘ probably the finest and
most stately oak now growing in the south-east of England.’ It has now a girth of 21 ft.
4 in. at a height of 6 ft. above the ground.

Hamells Park, in Braughing parish, covers about 200 acres; it is well timbered in parts,
and contains some ancient oaks, hornbeams and thorns. The stock of deer died out about 1850.

Tyttenhanger, south of Hatfield, was formerly a deer park of the Abbots of St. Albans ; it
was disparked at the dissolution of the monasteries.

At Berkhampstead there was an ancient royal deer park attached to the castle, which is
mentioned as early as the reign of Edward I and on various subsequent occasions.” A small
portion of the original park of the castle is now attached to Berkhampstead Place.

The ancient deer park at King’s Langley was probably formed* in the 13th century.
According to a survey of 1556 it contained a little less than 700 acres. The actual area of
Langley Bury Park is now about 220 acres.

The largest of the more modern parks are those of Albury, 500 acres, and Aldenham, 400

acres,

29 From information kindly communicated by Mr. J. Milne, the estate agent.

30 Chauncy, op. cit. 356. 31 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 375. 32 L. and P. Hen. VILL, vi, 426.
33 Cussans, op. cit. Cashio Hund. 129. 34 Thid. 145. 35 V.C.H. Herts. i, 346-8.
36 Clutterbuck, Herts. ti, 193. 37 Cobb, Hist. of Berkhampstead (1883), 18, 22, 28.

38 V.C.H. Herts. il, 237-
279

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

According to the official agricultural returns there were 22,844 acres of woodland in Hert-
fordshire in 1891, excepting plantations; 307 acres had been newly planted since 1881, giving
a total for the county of 23,151 acres. The woodland returns of the year 1895 show an increase
of about 1,400 acres, the total of woods and plantations having risen to 24,543. It is satis-
factory to notice that the increased attention given to arboriculture during the past decade
shows a further large increase of some 2,000 acres. The latest return (§ June 1905) gives a
woodland total for Hertfordshire of 26,568 acres. This total is divided into coppice 8,167,
plantations 1,104, and other woods 17,297. Coppice in this return means woods that are cut
over periodically and reproduce themselves naturally by stool shoots; plantations mean land
planted or replanted within the last ten years.

280

mie |

ECCLESIASTICAL
HISTORY

BEFORE THE CONQUEST

HE early ecclesiastical history of the district now known as
Hertfordshire centres round the saint and martyr Alban, the
influence of whose name still survives in the county. By the
beginning of the 3rd century, or perhaps a little earlier, Christianity

had penetrated to Gaul, and, considering the relations then existing between
that country and Britain, it is probable that it reached this island shortly
afterwards. There is no reason to doubt that small bodies of Christians were
established in Britain before the middle of the 3rd century,’ and that Paganism
and Christianity for long existed peaceably side by side.

Doubts have been cast by historians upon the existence of Alban,”
principally on account of the stories as to his life and martyrdom which grew
up at a date when miracles were an essential part of the passzo of any saint.
The probabilities in favour of Alban being an authentic character are, how-
ever, strong. The earliest evidence we have of him is in the Vita Sancti
Germani, compiled about 480 by Constantius* of Lyons, in which St. German’s
visit to the tomb of St. Alban in 429 is referred to. It is clear from this
and from the reference to Alban in a poem by Venantius Fortunatus of
Poictiers, composed at the end of the 6th century,* and from Gaulish legends
of the beginning of the 6th century, hereafter referred to, that the story of
Alban was well established at an early date, not only in Britain, but in Gaul.
Gildas writing in 564 supplies the following account of Alban and his
martyrdom :—

Though these precepts (of Christianity) 5 had a lukewarm reception from the inhabitants, nevertheless
they continued unimpaired with some, with others less so, until the nine years’® persecution of the tyrant
Diocletian. . . . He (God) of His own free gift, in the above-mentioned time of persecution as we conclude
(ut conicimus)™ lest Britain should be completely enveloped in the thick darkness of black night, kindled for
us bright lamps of holy martyrs. . . . I speak of St. Alban of Verulam, Aaron and Julius, citizens of
Caerlleon, and the rest of both sexes in different places, who stood firm with lofty nobleness of mind in
Christ’s battle.

1 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Eccl. Doc. i, 3, 4, quoting Tertullian (Adv. Jud. vii), writing about
208, and Origen (Hom. vi in Luc. i, 24, and Hom. xxviii in Matt. xxiv), writing about 239-46 to show
that Christianity was in their days established in Britain. See also Williams, Christianity in Early Brit.

8 et seq.
: 2 cf Smith and Wace, Dict. of Cérist. Biog. under St. Alban ; Biographia Brit. (ed. A. Kippis, 1778),
i, 114. 3 Printed in L. Surius, De Prodatis Sanctorum Historiis (1570, &c.), iv, 405.

4 De Laude Virginum, Poem, viii (iv), 155, quoted in Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. i, 6

§ Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae (ed. Williams, Cymmrodorion Rec. Soc.), i, 23.

6 That is from 303 to the Edict of Milan in 312. th

7 Another text gives ut cognoscimus, but Williams considers this merely a gloss (Gildas, op. cit. i, 24).

4 281 36

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The former of these, through love, hid a confessor” when pursued by his persecutors, and on the point
of being seized, imitating in this Christ laying down His life for the sheep. He first concealed him in his
house, and afterwards exchanging garments with him, willingly exposed himself to the danger of being
pursued in the clothes of the brother mentioned. Being in this way well pleasing to God, during the time
between his holy confession and cruel death, in the presence of the impious men, who carried the Roman
standard with hate.ul haughtiness, he was wonderfully adorned with miraculous signs so that by fervent
prayer he opened an unknown way through the bed of the noble River Thames, similar to that dry little-
trodden way of the Israelites, when the ark of the covenant stood long on the gravel in the middle of
Jordan ; accompanied by a thousand men, he walked through with dry foot, the rushing waters on either
side hanging like abrupt precipices, and converted first his executioner, as he saw such wonders, from a wolf
into a lamb, and caused him together with himself to thirst more deeply for the triumphant palm of
martyrdom, and more bravely to seize it.

The narrative given by Bede, writing about 731, comes from another
source and is much more detailed than Gildas. He gives an account of the
persecution of Diocletian in the eastern empire and of Maximian in the west,
‘more lasting and bloody than all the others before it.’ ‘ At length,’ he says,
‘it reached Britain also, and many persons with the constancy of martyrs died
in the confession of their faith.’ He continues? :

At that time suffered St. Alban. . . This Alban being yet a pagan, at the time when at the bidding
of unbelieving rulers all manner of cruelty was practised against the Christians, gave entertainment in his
house to a certain clerk, flying from his persecutors. This man he observed to be engaged in continual
prayer and watching day and night ; when on a sudden the Divine grace shining on him, he began to
im:tate the example of faith and piety which was set before him, and being gradually instructed by his
wholesome admonitions, he cast off the darkness of idolatry, and became a Christian in all sincerity of heart.
The aforesaid clerk having been some days entertained by him, it came to the ears of the impious prince that
a confessor of Christ, to whom a martyr’s place had not yet been assigned, was concealed at Alban’s house.
Whereupon he sent some soldiers to make a strict search after him. When they came to the martyr’s hut,
St. Alban presently came forth to the soldiers, instead of his guest and master, in the habit or long coat
which he wore and was bound and led before the judge. It happened that the judge, at the time when
Alban was carried before him, was standing at the altar, and offering sacrifice to devils. When he saw
Alban, being much enraged that he should thus, of his own accord, dare to put himself into the hands of the
soldiers, and incur such danger on behalf of the guest whom he had harboured, he commanded him to be
dragged to the images of the devils, before which he stood, saying, ‘Because you have chosen to conceal a
rebellious and sacrilegious man, rather than to deliver him up to the soldiers, that his contempt of the gods
might meet with the penalty due to such blasphemy, you shall undergo all the punishment that was due to
him, if you seek to abandon the worship of our religion.’ But St. Alban, who had voluntarily declared
himself a Christian to the persecutors of the faith, was not at all daunted by the prince’s threats, but putting
on the armour of spiritual warfare, publicly declared that he would not obey his command. ‘Then said the
judge, ‘Of what family or race are you?’ ‘What does it concern you,’ answered Alban, ‘of what stock I
am? If you desire to hear the truth of my religion, be it known to you that I am now a Christian and free
to fulfil Christian duties.’ ‘I ask your name,’ said the judge, ‘tell me it immediately.” ‘Iam called Alban
by my parents,’ replicd he, ‘and | worship ever and adore the true and living God, Who created all things.’
Then the judge, filled with anger, said, ‘If you would enjoy the happiness of eternal life, do not delay to
offer sacrifice to the great gods.’ Alban rejoined, ‘ These sacrifices, which by you are offered to devils,
neither can avail the wor:hippers, nur fulfil the desires and petitions of the suppliants. Rather, whosoever
shall offer sacrifice to these images, shall receive the everlasting pains of hell for his reward.’

The judge, hearing these words, and being much incensed, ordered this holy confessor of God to be
scourged by the executioners, believing that he might by stripes shake that constancy of heart, on which he
could not prevail by words. He, being most cruelly tortured, bore the same patiently, or rather joyfully,
for our Lord’s sake. When the judge perceived that he was not to be overcome by tortures, or withdrawn
from the exercise of the Christian religion, he ordered him to be put to death. Being led to execution he
came to a river, which with a most rapid course ran between the wall of the town and the arena where he
was to be executed. He there saw a great multitude of persons of both sexes, and of divers ages and con-
ditions, who were doubtless assembled by Divine inspiration, to attend the blessed confessor and martyr, and

8 A name was not given to the confessor sheltered by Alban till Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his
Historia Britonum in the middle of the 12th century. Archbishop Ussher and others suggest that the name
Amphibalus given to the converter of St. Alban was an alternative word for caracalla, the garment which
Bede states Alban put on to impersonate his guest (cf. also Epistola Gildae, a.p. 547, printed by Haddan
and Stubbs, op. cit. 49,1, 11, and note 54, where two readings are given, one showing the use of the
word Amphibalus as a cloak, and the other less authentic as a Christian name). A few years after Geoffrey of
Monmouth compiled his history a barrow was opened at Redbourn in 1178, which from the minute
description of its contents was clearly a pagan Saxon burial. Abbot Simon, however, desiring to add glory
to his church assigned the bones to the newly invented saint whose life was composed to suit the occasion
(T. Wright, Essays on Arch. i, 285). ® Bede, Hist. Eccl, (transl. A. M. Sellar), 14.

282

erase ee re

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

nad so filled the bridge over the river that he could scarce pass over that evening. In truth, almost all had
gone out, so that the judge remained in the city without attendance. St. Alban, therefore, urged by an
ardent and devout wish to attain the sooner to martyrdom, drew near to the stream, and lifted up his eyes to
heaven, whereupon the channel was immediately dried up, and he perceived that the water had given place and
made way for him to pass. Among the rest, the executioner, who should have put him to death, observed
this, and moved doubtless by Divine inspiration hastened to meet him at the appointed place of execution, and
casting away the sword which he had carried ready drawn, fell at his feet, praying earnestly that he might rather
be accounted worthy to suffer with the martyr whom he was ordered to execute, or, if possible, instead of him,

Whilst he was thus changed from a persecutor into a companion in the faith and truth, and the othe
executioners rightly hesitated to take up the sword which was lying on the ground, the holy confessor,
accompanied by the multitude, ascended a hill, about half a mile from the arena, beautiful, as was fitting, and
of most pleasing appearance, adorned, or rather clothed, everywhere with flowers of many colours, nowhere
steep or precipitous or of sheer descent, but with a long, smooth natural slope, like a plain, on its sides, a
place altogether worthy from of old, by reason of its native beauty, to be consecrated by the blood of a
blessed martyr. On the top of this hill St. Alban prayed that God would give him water, and immediately
a living spring, confined in its channel, sprang up at his feet, so that all men acknowledged that even the
stream had yielded its service to the martyr. For it was impossible that the martyr, who had left no water
remaining in the river, should desire it on the top of the hill, unless he thought it fitting. The river then
having done service and fulfilled the pious duty, returned to its natural course, leaving a testimony of its
obedience. Here, therefore, the head of the undaunted martyr was struck off, and here he received the
crown of life, which God has promised to them that love Him. But he who laid impious hands on the holy
man’s neck was not permitted to rejoice over his dead body ; for his eyes dropped upon the ground at the
same moment as the blessed martyr’s head fell.

At the same time was also beheaded the soldier who before, through the Divine admonition, refused to
strike the holy confessor. Of whom it is apparent that, though he was not purified by the waters of
baptism, yet he was cleansed by the washing of his own blood, and rendered worthy to enter the kingdom
of heaven. Then the judge, astonished at the unwonted sight of so many heavenly miracles, ordered the
persecution to cease immediately, and began to honour the death of the saints, by which he once thought
that they might have been turned from their zeal for the Christian faith. The blessed Alban suffered death
on the twenty-second day of June, near the city of Verulam, which is now by the English nation called
Verlamacaestir, or Vaeclingacaestir, where afterwards, when peaceable Christian times were restored, a church
of wonderful workmanship, and altogether worthy to commemorate his martyrdom, was erected. In which
place the cure of sick persons and the frequent working of wonders cease not to this day.

It is obvious that these narratives are taken from different sources.
That of Gildas lacks all the detail given by Bede, which has been traced to
a foreign origin.° It may perhaps be suggested that as the early British
legends were not so much given to the miraculous as those of the Continent,
Gildas may have drawn his information from some British legend then
surviving in Wales or Britanny."

The interesting discoveries of Professor W. Meyer have lately thrown
considerable light upon the sources of Bede’s account of St. Alban.” He
clearly shows that Bede drew his narrative almost word for word from a
passio, of which a gth or 1oth-century copy is preserved at Paris, and this is
again drawn with variations in details from an earlier passio, of which an 8th-
century copy isnowat Turin. He further shows that these two passtones were
compiled, as regards details, from excerpts taken from lives of other saints, a
practice common at the time. By means of these borrowed sources he is
able to prove that the date of the original compilation of the Turin passto
was between 500 and 540, and that it came from mid-Gaul. He suggests
that German brought the legend to Auxerre, where, after his return from
Britain, he built a church in honour of St. Alban, and that the life of German,
written by Constantius about 480, stimulated the compilation of the passio."*

10 W. Meyer, Die Legende des H. Albanus des Protomartyr Angliae in Texten vor Beda, 22.

11 Dr, Williams calls attention to the fact that the miracle of Alban crossing the river on dry ground is
the only miraculous incident introduced by Gildas into the De Excidio (op. cit. 103, 106). ;

12 W. Meyer, op cit. passim.

18 The confusion in the Turin text as to the person that tried Alban and authorized his execution, who
is called indifferently Caesar and judex, points to its having been compiled from still earlier texts. This
same person in the Paris text and Bede is named indifferently princeps and judex.

283

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The two points upon which there has long been dispute are the date
and place of the martyrdom. The dates which have been suggested vary
between 208 and 305. The Turin passio gives the period as the time of the
Emperor Severus, before whom the trial of Alban is laid," which would
therefore be during the stay of Severus in Britain between 208 and his death
at York in 211. This date, however, is discredited by Meyer as being the
invention of a Frenchman who prefaces the account of the passio of St. Alban
with the story of the persecution of Severus at Lyons and Aachen, which
occurs in no other legend of this saint. Dr. Williams in Christianity in Early
Britain urges strongly that Alban suffered either under the seventh persecu-
tion of Decius, which began in 250 and probably continued till 253, or the
eighth, under Aurelian, which lasted from 257 till the relaxation of Gallienus
in 260. He points out that Gildas only conjectured that Alban suffered under
the persecution of Diocletian and upon the evidence of Eusebius and Lactan-
tius, he contends that the persecution never reached Britain.’ There seems
to be little warrant for the date 286" that has been accepted by some. At
this date, so far as it is known, there is no evidence of persecution in Britain,
which was then ina disturbed condition owing to the usurpation by Carausius.
The adoption of this date probably originated through an error of the com-
pilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, who base their story upon Bede’s Eccle-
siastical History where book i, cap. 6, begins with the accession of Diocletian
in this year and deals with events of his reign, including the persecution,
and cap. 7 gives the account of the martyrdom in the time of the persecution
without intervening date.

The generally accepted time, and that suggested, if not asserted, by
Gildas, adopted by Bede, and implied by the Paris passio, is the persecution
of Diocletian. The first edict for this was issued at Nicomedia, about
March 303. It ordered the destruction of all churches and the burning of
all copies of the Scriptures. Christians in honourable positions were to be
degraded and Christian freedmen were to be deprived of their liberty.
This edict was followed by others, under the last of which a general persecution
was proclaimed against the Christians.* The persecution lasted till the
abdication of Diocletian on 1 May 305, and seems to have been carried out
with the utmost severity in the eastern parts of the Empire, where according
to Eusebius great numbers suffered martyrdom. In the west, however, where
Spain, Gaul and Britain were under the mild rule of Constantius Chlorus,
we learn from Eusebius and Lactantius that persecution was less rigorous.
Constantius, although not a Christian, was favourably inclined to the Church,
and is said to have protected its members.” lLactantius states that Constan-
tius destroyed the Christian churches, but * preserved intact the true temple

14 W. Meyer, op. cit. 35, 46.

8 Tbid. 18. The Turin text, as Professor Meyer points out, has some connexion with Lyons and was
compiled by a Gallic scribe, for it is prefaced by an account of the persecution under Severus there. It is
possible there may have been some confusion with the general Albinus, who usurped the authority of Severus
for three years in Britain, and was beheaded at Lyons in 197 after the rout of his British army there.

16 Williams, op. cit. 101, 102, 109, III, 114, IIS.

7 See Williams as above, citing Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, iv, 508; Allard, La Perstcution de
Diocletien, 40, 41 5 Gorres, Zeitschrift fir Wissenschaft. Theologie, 1888, xxxi, 83. See also Ussher, Primordia,
cap. vii, p. 174. 18 Eusebius, Eccl Hist. bk. viii, cap. 2. Alban, it is supposed, was a priest.

WTbid. cap. 13. Sozomen, Hist, Eccl. bk. i, cap. 6. Sozomen only conjectures that there was no
persecution in Gaul, Britain and Spain.

284

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

of God, which is man.’ Eusebius goes further and says that he did not
destroy the churches or devise any mischief against the Christians, and that
Christians of the Western Empire at this time enjoyed peace.”

There is much to be said for Dr. Williams’s arguments in favour of the
date of the martyrdom being in the period of persecution under Decius or
that under Valerian. At the same time, it must be remembered that Eusebius
and Lactantius, upon whom he relies, were historians of the Church in the
Eastern Empire, who dwelt in Asia and Africa, and could have had little or
no knowledge of what was taking place in Gaul or Britain. Constantius
was much away from Britain. It is true he died at York in July 306, but
he had only arrived in Britain at the beginning of the year.” There is
evidence, however, that in Spain, which was equally under the rule of Con-
stantius, there was persecution at this time by the local governor Dacianus,
and that St. Vincent there suffered martyrdom.* It is conceivable, therefore,
that during the absence of Constantius on the Continent in 304 or 305 there
may have been a slight persecution in Britain. Its slightness may perhaps
account for the prominence which Alban’s name has maintained, and it
would seem that he, and possibly Aaron and Julius, were the only martyrs
who suffered at the time in Britain. Had there been more their names
would have been preserved to us, for martyrs were held in high estimation in
the early Church. The evidence of Gildas, probably relying upon an earlier
passto, and the statement of Bede cannot be lightly discarded in favour of
somewhat vague and negative evidence of historians nearer in date but far
distant in locality, and consequently in direct knowledge of the facts.

With regard to the place of the martyrdom, as to which question has
been raised,** Gildas describes Alban as of Verulamium, but gives the name
of the river he crossed on the way to execution as the Thames. This, how-
ever, is a pardonable error for one who was probably entirely ignorant of
eastern Britain, and to whom the name of the Thames was more familiar
than that of its tributary the Ver. Bede definitely states that the martyrdom
occurred at Verulamium. Whoever originally compiled the topographical
details of the passio, from which the stories in the Turin and Paris texts and
Bede were taken (for they are almost word for word the same) must have
known Verulamium and the site of the martyrdom where St. Albans Abbey
now stands, and had them in his mind when he wrote the passio. Anyone
acquainted with the neighbourhood of St. Albans cannot fail to be struck with
the accuracy of his description *: the river (the Ver) outside the walls of the
Roman town and spanned by a bridge, probably on the site of the present
St. Michael’s Bridge, which carried the Roman road to Colchester ; the
approach to the place of execution about 500 paces or half a mile distant up
a gentle incline to the summit of the hill, and the view from the hill, ‘sloping
down to a beautiful plain,’ can even now be enjoyed at the time of the com-
memoration of the saint’s martyrdom in June. This description is carried
back by Professor Meyer to the beginning of the 6th century, some fifty

20 «De Morte Persecutorum,’ 15, 6.

21 Eusebius, loc. cit. See also the Appendix to bk. viii ; ‘The Martyrs of Palestine,’ cap. 13.

22 Williams, op. cit. 115, citing Panegyricus, vii ; Eusebius, Vita Constantini, i, 21, and other sources.

23 Prudentius, Peristephanon, Hymn v; Acta Sanctorum (ed. Bollandist), tii, 7; Gibbon, Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, cap. xvi. 24 Williams, op. cit. 103.

25 The rapidity of the Ver is the only point of inaccuracy, and this may be poetic licence.

285

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

years before the time of Gildas. It seems, therefore, likely that it formed a
part of the legend which was carried back by those who accompanied
St. German to Britain in 429 and saw the spot themselves. The existence of
a church built by the early Celtic Christians on the site of the martyrdom is
hinted at by Gildas, and Bede states that it was standing in his day (731), when
miracles were performed there. The tradition persisted at the end of the
8th century, when Offa founded the monastery of St. Alban, and so the abbey
has kept it alive to thisday. There seems no reason, therefore, to doubt the
tradition which connects St. Alban with Verulamium.”

After the accession of Constantine the Great in 306, persecutions ceased
in the West and Christianity appears to have spread rapidly in Britain. The
Church became organized under bishops, three of whom, York, London and
probably Lincoln, attended the Council of Arles in 314. Professor Zimmer
places a Celtic bishopric at Verulamium,” but there is no evidence of such a
see, although the importance of the town, the tradition of the martyr Alban,
and the existence of an early Christian Church would well adapt it for a centre
of ecclesiastical organization.

As the connexion between Britain and Rome relaxed at the beginning
of the sth century the isolated position of the country caused the British
Church to become liable to the influence of heretical doctrines. It is said to
have been tainted with Arianism,” and about 422 the heresy of Pelagius, a
Briton, was introduced by his disciple Agricola.™ Pelagius denied the doctrine
of original sin and asserted the power of free will, whereby a man was in
himself enabled ‘to sin or not to sin,’ thus bringing into question the foun-
dation of the doctrine of grace.” The number of Pelagians quickly increased
in Britain, so that the orthodox members of the Church had to appeal to the
Continent for assistance to refute the heresy. According to one story, which
is perhaps the more probable, at the intercession of Palladius, afterwards, as it is
said, the first bishop in Ireland, Pope Celestine in 429 sent German or Garmon,
Bishop of Auxerre, to Britain to confute the heretics.” According to another
narrative the British Church sent to the Gallic bishops for aid, and a council®
was called at which German and Lupus Bishop of Troyes were selected to
go to Britain. In either case German and Lupus came to Britain to preach
the orthodox faith throughout the country, and at a place not named, a great
multitude of people being brought together with their wives and children,
the bishops with much eloquence entirely confounded the Pelagians.* When
the disputation was over, after curing a girl of her blindness, the bishops
hastened to the tomb of St. Alban, in which German deposited relics of all
the apostles and divers martyrs and took away some of the earth still, as it
is asserted, stained with the blood of the saint.

26 Rey. A. W. Wade-Evans is anxious to attach Alban to Wales, and suggests that the site of the
martyrdom was at Mount St. Alban, about 2 miles from Caerleon on Usk. His arguments are ingenious
but not convincing, and he wishes to rely upon the discredited authority of Geoffrey of Monmouth (‘ Site of
St. Alban’s Martyrdom,’ Arch. Cambr. [Ser. 6], v, 256 et seq.).

37 Zimmer, The Celtic Church in Brit. (translated by A. Meyer), 58. He calls the seat of the bishopric
St. Albans, obviously an error. 8 Zimmer, op. cit. 5, quoting Gildas.

29 Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. i, 15, quoting Prosper of Aquitaine.
30 The doctrine of the Pelagians is still disputed in the Ninth Article of the Thirty-nine Articles.

31 «Chron. of Prosper,’ Gallia Christ. xii, 263 ; Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. i, 16.
32 Nothing is known of this council, and grave doubts are entertained as to its having been held.
33 Constantius, ‘Vita Sancti Germani,’ cap. xix (De Probatis Sanctorum Historiis, iv, 416) ; Haddan
and Stubbs, loc. cit. %4 Tbid.
286

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Bede in narrating this incident cites Constantius, and does not mention
any locality, but Matthew Paris, quoting Bede, adds a gloss to the effect that
the disputation, or synod, as he calls it, was at Verulamium.” Assuming, as
it is here contended, that the martyrdom of St. Alban was at Verulamium,
the tomb and blood-stained earth were there and consequently the disputation
must also have taken place there, besides which there has been a local tradi-
tion to this effect from mediaeval days, a hermitage and chapel being succes-
sively built on the supposed site of the disputation and a piece of the Roman
wall still bears the name of St. German’s Block.

The introduction of monasticism into Britain has been attributed with
some probability to St. German and Lupus on the occasion™ of this visit.
So far as is known there were no monks or monasteries here till after the
first quarter of the 5th century. Before that date the Church consisted only
of missionary communities, each being ruled by a bishop, under whom were
priests and deacons. The only churches were the bishops’ churches and the
only priests were those who served in them. It may be, therefore, that
the church built at Verulamium on the site of the martyrdom was one of
these churches. But Celtic enthusiasm took keenly to monachism, and
monasteries sprang up in the sth century throughout the land, soon becoming
the centres of ecclesiastical organization and learning.

The greater part of the 5th and all the 6th century are entirely blank
as regards the history of the Church in the district now known as Hertford-
shire. Whether the story of the fall of Verulamium™® about §12 contains
even a grain of truth is very doubtful, but with the abandonment of that town
Christianity probably disappeared from the west of the county, which
became depopulated and reverted to the condition of forest land. Watling
Street probably continued as a line of communication, and so the little
church on the site of the martyrdom of St. Alban, which was near it, may
have been visited by travellers and its tradition preserved. The eastern parts
of the county had succumbed to the pagan Saxon earlier. Indeed, so com-
pletely were the Celtic inhabitants wiped out of this district that probably
not a town nor a village exists in the county that bears a Celtic name.

The eastern side of what was later the county became a part of the
kingdom of the East Saxons, whose king, Saebert, was converted to Chris-
tianity early in the 7th century.” In 604 St. Augustine consecrated Mellitus
as their first bishop with his see at London.“ Some twelve years later,
however, after the death of Saebert, his sons caused the people to relapse
into paganism and Mellitus retired into Gaul.

The East Saxons continued to be heathens till 654, when their king,
Sigebert, became a Christian, and his people were reconverted by the saintly
Cedd, brother of St. Chad. Cedd was then only a priest, but was shortly
afterwards consecrated bishop of the East Saxons. The monasteries at
Tilbury and at the Roman town of Othona or Ythanceaster, the site of which
is now under the sea, were his missionary stations, from which he sent out
his priests and deacons to preach to and baptize the people. He also built

35 Bede, Hist. Eccl. bk. i, cap. 17. 36 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), i, 186.
37 Williams, op. cit. 260 ; Dom Louis Gougaud, Les Chrétientés Celtiques, 65, 346.

38 Williams, op. cit. 456. 39 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hist. Brit. bk. viii, cap. 23, 24.
40 Bede, Hist. Eccl. bk. ii, cap. 3. 41 Tbid. cap. 5. 42 [bid. bk. iii, cap. 22

287

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

churches, probably in the nature of oratories or chapels dependent upon the
larger monasteries, for ministering the rites of religion.” There was again a
relapse into heathenism by some of the East Saxons, probably in the western
parts, including Hertfordshire, which were removed from the influence of
Cedd’s ministration, when the plague swept over the land between 664 and
666. Those who relapsed, however, were brought back to Christianity
very shortly afterwards by Bishop Jaruman of Lichfield."

The see of the bishops of the East Saxons was not restored to London
till 666,° when Wine is said to have bought the bishopric from Wulfhere,
King of Mercia, then overlord of the East Saxon kingdom. It is to Wine’s
successor Earconwald, consecrated in 675, that the reorganization of the East
Saxon diocese is due. The church of St. Paul became the centre of eccle-
siastical activity on the western side of the diocese, and it was from it that
the parts of the diocese in the county of Hertford were served.

Theodore, who was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in 668,
attempted to improve the organization of the Church, and for this purpose
introduced the meeting of canonical synods. The first of these was held
at ‘Heorutford’ or ‘ Herutford,’ on 24 September 673.“ It treated of
the date of Easter, the distinction of bishoprics, the exemption of monasteries
from episcopal jurisdiction, the duties of monks, clergy and bishops when
away from their own districts, the holding of synods, the precedence of bishops,
the increase of dioceses and marriage and divorce. The place of this synod
has usually been identified with Hertford in Hertfordshire, but Hertford
does not undoubtedly appear in history for some 240 years later under
circumstances which may suggest its foundation at that date.” The council
was held before Theodore Archbishop of Canterbury and Bisi Bishop of the
East Angles, with whom also were Wilfrid Bishop of the Northumbrians (by
proxy), Putta Bishop of Rochester, Leutherius Bishop of the West Saxons,
and Wynfrid Bishop of the Mercians, each one sitting according to his
order. Theodore as metropolitan would naturally preside, but Bisi, who is
mentioned with Theodore and separate from the other bishops, is taken out
of his order of precedence * of consecration. The inference is that the
council was held in Bisi’s East Anglian diocese of Dunwich, when he would
naturally take precedence after the archbishop.” Wine Bishop of London,
in whose diocese Hertford in Hertfordshire probably lay, was not present
at the council.

The next important council in England was in 680 and dealt with the
orthodoxy of the English Church. It was held under the presidency of
Archbishop Theodore at ‘ Haethfeld,’ which has usually been identified with
Hatfield in Hertfordshire. In a decree, however, said to have been issued at
the same time dividing the country into the two provinces of Canterbury and
York, which formed a part of the arrangement with Wilfrid as to the sub-

43 Bede, Hist. Eccl. bk. ili, cap. 22. 4 Ibid. cap. 30. 4° Tbid. cap. 7.
4© Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. iii, 118. 7 V.C.H. Herts. iii, 492.

‘8 Wilfrid, and possibly Putta, were of earlier consecration. ‘The order of consecration was the order
determined at this council.

* See V.C.H. Herts. loc. cit. Miss A. Raven suggests that possibly the identification of ‘Heorutford’
may be Hartford near the Ouse, about 2 miles from Huntingdon and Ermine Street, which was apparently
at the time of the council in the diocese of Dunwich (Geoff. Hill, The English Dioceses, 63). In 1086 it
was ancient demesne of the Crown, and a place of importance at which there were two churches:and a
priest (Dom. Bk.).

288

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

division of the latter diocese, Egfrith King of Northumbria, who was present,
preceded the Kings of Mercia, East Anglia and Kent in giving his consent.
It would therefore seem that ‘ Haethfeld’ can with more probability be
identified with Hatfield in Yorkshire, in the kingdom of Northumbria and
diocese of York.”

Of the western and southern parts of the county we hear little or nothing
till the end of the 8th century, when they formed part of the kingdom of
Mercia. They were forest land which could have supported few families
and like other great areas of waste were largely granted to religious bodies
for settlement. The greater part was given to St. Albans Abbey at its
foundation in 793, and Ely and Westminster afterwards received large tracts.
The settlement of the district was probably late, for we know that the
clearance of it continued into the 12th and 13th centuries and possibly
later. Such inhabitants as there were would obtain the ministrations of
religion from the monks of St. Albans Abbey. But this monastery cannot
have ministered to the whole county before the introduction of the parochial
system in the roth and 11th centuries. There must have been other smaller
communities of priests to supply religious service in the districts distant from
St. Albans, whose existence has long been lost. These small monasteries or
minsters of priests, being impoverished by the Danish invasions and
discountenanced and suppressed by /Ethelwold, Oswald and Dunstan, in their
endeavours to establish the stricter Benedictine rule, possibly became mother
churches, the matrices ecclestae parochiales mentioned in the laws of William
the Conqueror, retaining in many cases their title of minster. We have
perhaps some evidence of this development at Braughing and Welwyn
and possibly at Hitchin. With regard to the two former places it would
appear that in 944-6 Ethelgiva left her land at Munden to Ealfwold for life,
subject to the yearly payment to each of the minsters (monasteria) of Braughing
and Welwyn of six bushels (modios) of barley together with flour and fish at
Lent and four pigs at the feast of St. Martin, and at his death the land was
to be divided between the two minsters.*

Such bequests as these would seem more appropriate to communities or
small minsters than to single parish priests, besides which all these places
lay on important roads, a matter so essential to early monasteries on account
of the periodical attendance at them of the people of the district.
Braughing was at the intersection of several Roman roads, almost on
the site of a Roman station ; it was the head of the deanery of Braughing,
which comprised all the lands in Hertfordshire that lay in the diocese of
London, and thus its church was one of importance. It had always been held
in alms of the king and supported a priest in 1086." Welwyn was at a ford on
a Roman road and had been an important Late Celtic and Roman settlement.
The priest there in the time of Edward the Confessor and probably long
before held the manor in alms of the king, and the rector still holds it. It
was also the head of a later deanery. Hitchin lay on an important early
road and the church is described in the Domesday Survey as a minster

50 cf. Hardy, Monumenta Hist. Brit. i, 227 with variants. A council was held at ‘ Bergamysted ? in 696
to treat of ecclesiastical matters connected with Kent. This place has been identified with Berkhampstead in
Hertfordshire, but the probable identification is Bearsted near Maidstone (Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. 1,
233, 238n.). 61 Birch, Cart. Sax. ii, 571. 82 V.C.H. Herts. i, 322.

4 289 37

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

(monasterium), being also endowed with the unusually large glebe of 2 hides.
It was likewise the head of an early deanery, and was the mother church of
a large district including Great Wymondley, Little Wymondley and
Ippollitts. The endowments of both Welwyn and Hitchin sugvest that their
original foundations were for establishments larger than manorial churches, and
this, coupled with the fact that these churches are described in the roth and
11th centuries as minsters, points possibly to the existence of communities of
priests at them before the introduction of the parochial system into the county.
The Danish invasions of the gth and roth centuries had probably dis-
located ecclesiastical organization. In France and other parts of the Con-
tinent the modern parochial system had been for some time adopted,® partly
as a consequence of the reforms then being carried out in the Benedictine
monasteries. It was naturally found that the restriction of the monks to
the cloister hampered their ministrations to the people. Oswald and
Dunstan had seen the modern parochial system at work in France and
recognized its advantages with regard to their scheme of ecclesiastical
reform at home. The earliest evidence of its introduction into Hertford-
shire arose apparently out of the reforms at St. Albans Abbey. Here
the imposition of a stricter rule and the increasing population of the recently
established market town at St. Albans necessitated other accommodation for
the lay folk of the neighbourhood. As a result in the latter part of the
1oth century the abbot built the churches of St. Peter, St. Michael, and
St. Stephen * on the main roads on the outskirts of the town of St. Albans.
These churches were probably served from the abbey, and had no separate
glebe, consequently their priests are not mentioned in the Domesday Book.
St. Peter’s ministered to the district on the north and north-east of the
abbey, St. Stephen’s to that on the south and south-east, probably to the
county boundary, and St. Michael’s to that on the west and south-west to
the county boundary. These churches seem to have been mother churches, and
their districts were gradually subdivided, St. Peter’s with the later chapelries
of Sandridge (where the chapel was consecrated about 1100), Ridge and Nor-
thaw remained as it was originally formed till the 14th century, when the
chapelries became parishes. St. Stephen’s and St. Michael’s districts from
architectural evidence were possibly subdivided during the 12th century.“
The same process went on perhaps a little later in other parts of the
county. The Saxon thegns and Norman lords were in the roth and rith
centuries building churches on their demesnes adjoining their houses.” In
the eastern and middle parts of the county the church next the manor-house
is the usual type of development,” while in the west on the lands of

53 Lord Selborne, Ancient Facts and Fancies concerning Churches and Tithes, 60.

54 Matt. Paris, Gesta Abbat. (Rolls Ser.), i, 22. See below, p. 369, n. 32.

55 Abbots Lang'ey, Sarratt, East Barnet and Watford have 12th-century churches. We have definite
evidence that Bushey Church was buiit by Geoffrey de Jarpenville about 1166. Except in the case of Bushey
there may have been early churches which were rebuilt in the 12th century, but it is quite likely in this late
settled district that the churches now standing are the earliest which were built on the sites.

56 Selborne, op. cit. 293.

5° Some notable instances are at Hatfield, where the church adjoins the remains of the old palace of the
Bishops of Ely ; at Pirton, Benington and Anstey, where the churches were probably within the earthworks of
the Norman castles; at Bygrave, Wallington, Reed, Barkway, Hormead, Meesden, Cottered, Aspenden,
Sacombe, Much Hadham, Thundridge, Hunsdon, Thorley and other places where the churches adjoin the

manor-houses or the sites of such houses. At Stevenage, Digswell, North Mimms and elsewhere the villages
have migrated tothe roads and left the churches and manor-houses standing alone.

290

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

St. Albans Abbey and Westminster Abbey, where there were no resident
lords, it is the exception.

The Domesday Survey affords evidence of the adoption of the parochial
system in Hertfordshire. It may perhaps be assumed that an entry of a priest
in the Domesday Book usually among the tenants of the demesne generally
implies the existence of a manorial church endowed with glebe.* To
understand the references to priests in the Hertfordshire Domesday com-
parison must be made with the fuller entries of the same nature which will
be found under Essex. ‘There the formula as to the priest is usually ‘ then
as now ’ a priest was holding, ‘then’ in this formula carrying the conditions
back to the time of Edward the Confessor. In the shortened form of the
Hertfordshire text only the conditions of the time of the Survey (1086) as
regards priests are as a rule given ; but it is evident that the existence of the
priest went back to the earlier date, for, if a reconstruction of the holdings
at the time of Edward the Confessor be made, it can be shown that most of
the resident thegns or other tenants provided for priests on their demesnes
at the places where they lived. Thus thelmar of Benington, a thegn of
King Edward, had lands at Benington, Sacombe, Layston, Ashwell, Hinx-
worth, Radwell and Bengeo, but there was only a priest on his lands at
Benington ® where we know he lived, and a clerk is mentioned on his land
at Sacombe ; Wlwin of Eastwick, a thegn of Earl Harold, had lands at
Hailey and Eastwick, but it was on his land at Eastwick where he lived
that we find a priest ; Anschil of Ware had lands at Ware and Knebworth,
but it was on his lands at Ware where he resided that there was a priest ® ;
Osulf son of Frane had lands at Tring and Studham, but it was on his land
at Studham where he lived,” and where we know that he and his wife built
a church in 1064,” that a priest is mentioned; Alwin Horne, a thegn of
King Edward, had lands at Watton, Walkern and Sacombe, but there was
only a priest on his lands at Walkern where he probably lived.” In the
same way other tenants provided land for a priest at one of their holdings,
presumably where they lived, as, for instance, Aldred, a thegn of King
Edward, who had lands at Widford, Layston and Aspenden, but there was a
priest only on his lands at Aspenden™; Alfric Blac, a man of Archbishop
Stigand, who had lands at Watton, Shephall, Libury in Little Munden,
Sacombe, Langport and Throcking, but it was only on his lands at Watton
that there was a priest” ; Alward, a man of the same archbishop, who had
lands at Widford, Meesden and Libury, but it was only on his lands at
Meesden that there was a priest ® ; Wulfward, a man of Asgar the Staller, held
lands at Hormead and Wormley with a priest on his lands at Hormead.”
Some who held only one manor had provided a priest, such as Anand, the
houscarl of King Edward at Bengeo,” or Sailt, a man of Earl Lewin at Buck-
land.” The cases, however, of Alward, a thegn of Earl Harold, who had

58 It must not, however, be thought that the absence of a reference to a priest indicates that there was
no church, as provision may have been made for the incumbent in some other way than by the endowment
of glebe, or the church may have been served from a monastery (see Round, in /.C.H. Berks. 1, 300).

59 There were a good many landowners who were non-resident besides ecclesiastics ; such, we may

presume, was Alestan of Boscombe. 80 V.C.H. Herts. i, 336-8. 61 Ibid. 335. Ibid. 327, 328.
83 Tbid. 324, 325. 4 Thorpe, Dipl. Angl. 374. 65 V.C.H. Herts. i, 342. 86 Ibid. 306, 329.
87 Ibid. 305, 320, 321. 68 Ibid. 306, 307, 309. 69 Tbid. 322, 342.
0 Ibid. 334. 11 Ibid. 310.

291

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

priests on his lands at Anstey and Barksdon in Aspenden,” and had lands
also at Layston and Wakeley; Lemar, a man of Archbishop Stigand, who
had priests on his lands at Bygrave and Caldecot, and had lands also at
‘ Hamstone’ and Graveley,” and some others would tend to show possibly that
there was beginning to be a rearrangement of estates. The evidence, how-
ever, of the existence of a priest on one holding only of a thegn or other
tenant, presumably his residence, is so regular that the system of building
and endowing manorial churches by such Hertfordshire thegns and others
on their demesnes cannot have been in force for very long before the time of
Edward the Confessor. The only date for the building of a pre-Conquest
manorial church by a layman in Hertfordshire is that for Studham in 1064,
but the architectural details of the churches at Northchurch, Walkern, West-
mill, Little Munden and Reed suggest a date of building some thirty or forty
years earlier. It is, therefore, safe to suppose that the system of the erection
and endowment of manorial churches by thegns and others began in the
county towards the end of the roth century and was most active in the rith
and 12th centuries.

We may perhaps see something of what Professor Maitland refers to
as ‘the communal action’ in the ownership, and consequently in the erection
and endowment of churches on the holdings of the sokemen of Hertford-
shire. At Boreson in Little Hormead,” and at Wyddial,” which were each
held in the time of Edward the Confessor by nine sokemen, and at Barley,”
which was then held by five sokemen, there were priests, and therefore
apparently churches,” possibly founded by the communal action of these
independent sokemen.

The following table shows the number of churches in each deanery in
Hertfordshire, according to Pope Nicholas’s Taxation of 1291, and in like
manner the number of priests entered in the Domesday Book (1086) :—

Churches in 1291.7? Priests in 1086,
Deanery of Braughing . é ‘ : 31 22
3 » Hertford , Z F 3 17 11
5 », Baldock ‘ : ‘ ; 24 13
Pe », Hitchin . ; 4 ‘ 11 6
5 », Berkhampstead “ 15 2
Archdeaconry of St. Albans. A A 16 °

This table shows a diminishing proportion in the number of priests entered
in the Domesday Book going from the north-east of the county to the
south-west. In the deaneries of Braughing, Hertford and Baldock on
the eastern side of the county the lands were held principally by laymen,
while in the west in the deaneries of Hitchin and Berkhampstead much of
the land was held by monasteries, and in the archdeaconry of St. Albans all
the land was so held. Although in the western side of the county the land
was far less settled than in the eastern part,” and some churches in the west
were probably served by the monks of St. Albans—in fact, we know that
the three churches at St. Albans probably so served, then existed—yet there

72 V.C.H. Herts. i, 321. 3 Ibid. 311, 325, 336.

™ Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 144. 7 V.C.H. Herts. i, 322. 7 Ibid. 340. 77 Ibid. 339.

78 Compare the Domesday of Essex, where under Stifford it appears that 30 acres of land were given to
the church by the neighbours in almoign (V.C.H. Essex, i, 458).

79 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18, 20, 36. 8 See Domesday Map, V.C.H. Herts. i.

292

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

is little doubt that the foundation of manorial churches received more
favour among the thegns and other laymen than among the monks of
St. Albans, Westminster and Ely who owned the greater part of the western
side of the county." A feeling probably existed with the monks that these
manorial churches would withdraw the offerings of the people, and hence an
endeavour was made to obtain the control of them and their endowments.

As has already been stated, the manorial churches founded by Saxon
laymen had substantial endowments of glebe. At Hitchin this amounted
to 2 hides, at Ware to 2 carucates, at Welwyn to 1 hide,” at Sawbridge-
worth ® to 1 hide, at Stanstead Abbots to 1 carucate, and at Hatfield to half
a hide.* The endowments of the Domesday priests apparently became the
rectory manors at Hitchin, Welwyn, Cheshunt, Sawbridgeworth, Bishop’s
Stortford, Standon, Broxbourne, Northchurch, Great Gaddesden, King’s
Walden, Pirton, Therfield and Wheathampstead.* The churches of all
these places except Welwyn, Great Gaddesden and Wheathampstead, together
with the churches of some twenty other places, where priests are mentioned
in Domesday, were a little later acquired by religious houses to which they
became appropriated. Thus the endowments, so liberally given by the Saxon
thegns, were largely lost to the parish churches.

Besides the profits from the glebe, the Saxon parish priest received a
third of the tithes of the ‘ shrift district,’ which he served under the ordinance
of Edgar of 970. The right to dispose of the tithes arising from his lands
to any religious foundation remained with the lord of the soil till the third
Lateran Council in 1179-80. It is doubtful if those serving the churches
on the lands of St. Albans Abbey ever received any tithes till the ordi-
nation of vicarages was enforced at the end of the 12th century and later.
Tithes were frequently granted away from the church of the parish in
which they arose, by lords of the manors and others. ‘Thus Geoffrey de
Mandeville granted the tithes of Shenley to Hurley Priory in 1136, but the
advowson of the church was given to Walden Abbey.” The tithe of Hemel
Hempstead was granted by the Count of Mortain to St. Mary of Grestein in
Normandy, and the church to St. Bartholomew’s, London.” Hamo de Villiers
in the 12th century gave two parts of the tithe of Walkern to St. John’s,
Colchester, and it was not till later that the church was granted to the same
monastery.” At Bushey Geoffrey de Jarpenville apparently built the church
about 1166 and endowed it with a virgate of land. He then agreed with
the Abbot of St. Albans to allot to it the tithe of half his lands, while Watford
took the remaining tithe, an arrangement which remains to this day.” The
foregoing evidence with regard to Hertfordshire seems to indicate that the
eficient organization and endowment of the parochial clergy, which had
been growing up under the Saxon rule independent of the monasteries, was

81 OF the ecclesiastical arrangements in the 11th century on the vast estate of the Abbot of St. Albans
we know little, but in the time of Edward the Confessor there were probably only the three churches
already mentioned. Westminster had priests only at Wheathampstead (where it never had the advowson of
the church, which was probably founded before the lands were granted to it in 1065) and Ashwell, and
estates there and at Titberst in Shenley, Aldenham, Stevenage, Tewin, Datchworth, Watton and Ayot
St. Lawrence. Ely had a priest at Hatfield for that great manor and lands at Kelshall and Hadham (V.C.H.

Herts. i, 311, 312, 313). 8 Ibid. 343. 83 Tbid, 264. © Ibid.
8° See under the topographical description of these parishes (V.C.H. Herts. ii and iii).
0 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 273. 87 Ibid. 227. 88 Ibid, ili, 157. 89 Thid. ii, 185 and 132 n.

293

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

seriously crippled by the Normans in their desire to increase the power of
the monks.

AFTER THE CONQUEST

St. Albans and other religious houses in this county acquired the
patronage and tithes of many churches. In these cases the parishes may
possibly have received proper ministrations, but when the patron of the
church was a foreign abbey such as Grestein, Fougeéres or St. Ebrulf, all of
which houses had churches in Hertfordshire, difficulties were bound to
arise. An attempt to meet the situation was made by the appointment of
stipendiary priests whose pay appears to have been a matter of individual
arrangement. At Walkern a vicar was in charge before the Abbot and
convent of Colchester were admitted parsons in 1204, and his status seems
to have been permanent.” Many of the stipendiaries, however, held a tempo-
rary position, such as that of ‘Master Geoffrey, whom the Abbot and
convent of St. Albans placed in charge of the church of Bramfield upon
the understanding that he was possessed of no _ ecclesiastical benefice.”
Throughout the 13th century there was a struggle between the religious
houses and the bishops who were striving to secure for the stipendiary parish
priests at once permanence of tenure under episcopal control and a competent
livelihood.

The first object of the bishops was to secure the presentation of the
incumbents. The rule was apparently insisted upon with some strictness.”
Presentation involved institution, which of itself made the vicarage perpetual,
in that the incumbent became directly dependent on the bishop and was no
longer amovable at the whim of his patron. Hugh of Wells as Bishop
of Lincoln was particularly active in the work of securing to these priests
adequate support, and the Hertfordshire vicarages of St. Peter’s in St. Albans,
Pirton, Weston, Great and Little Wymondley, Hitchin, Kimpton, Sandon,
Bengeo, Little Gaddesden and St. John and All Saints, Hertford, were all
ordained in his episcopate (1209-35).% No registers for the diocese of
London are extant for this date, but it is known that the vicarages of Bark-
way,” Great Hormead,** Ware and Cheshunt were ordained in the first forty
years of the 13th century. In either diocese the general practice was for
the tithes to be divided, the lesser tithes being assigned to the vicar, who
as the officiating priest received the oblafions and obventions of the altar.
Both these sources of income were, of course, extremely variable. What
obventions and oblations meant in a town parish may be gathered from the case
of St. John’s, Hertford, where the church belonged to the prior and convent
of that place. The vicar derived his income from all offerings made in the
name of tithe, mass pennies and altar bread (7 toto pane altaris), an offering
of 3d. on Christmas Day, the entire offering at the first mass on Easter
Day morning, all offerings made at confessions, annual and triennial dues
and half the offerings at marriages. In addition to this the vicar had daily

9° Colchester Chartul. fol. 126. 91 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 29 ; cf. 21
82 Tbid. ili, 35, 42. 93 Gibbons, Liber Antiquus de ordinationibus Hugonis de Welles, 26-9.
4 See p. 35, above. % Newcourt, Repert. i, 834. 9 V.C.H. Herts. iii, 394, 455-

294

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

a loaf, 3 gallons of beer, the mess of a monk of the house, and an annual
stipend of 85. 8d." At Bygrave the vicarage appears to have been originally
endowed with oblations and small tithes, and in or about 1223 a return was
made showing that the total value of the vicarage was {4 35. 5d., made up
of offerings: on All Saints’ Day 15., on Christmas Day 7s., on the Purification
3s., confessions and Palm Sunday 2s., offerings on Easter Day 6s. 8d., on
St. Margaret’s Day 16s.; cartage at All Saints was valued at gd., bread at
Christmas at 8¢., eggs at Easter at 15., bread at 8¢., the tithes of lambs, wool
and flax yielded 20s., those of cheese 8s. and small tithes and all other
obventions 10s. Besides these the vicar received 2 quarters of wheat and
3 quarters of oats from the parson’s grange. The fact of inquiry being
held seems to indicate that there was some uncertainty about this arrange-
ment, and shortly afterwards these payments were commuted for a stipend
of 5 marks.”

The wish to obtain a regular income was not confined to the vicars ; the
rector or appropriating house was equally desirous of the same thing, and the
fluctuating value of the tithes resulted in the arrangement by which a pension
or fixed charge was paid by the actual incumbent. In the case of
vicarages the pension was recognized by the bishop and set out in the
ordination. It varied in amount from the mark chargeable on the vicarage
of Layston’ to 13 marks paid by the vicar of Hitchin to the Abbess and
convent of Elstow.’ The bishops looked on these pensions with jealous eyes,
and that they were unfair in some cases seems undoubted. At Ware the
church was served by a vicar provided by the priory there, a cell of the
Norman abbey of St. Ebrulf. This vicar was ‘insufficient,’ as a result of
being required to pay to the prior not only the tithes of all mills in the
parish and of the park and wood of the lord, but also a pension of 10 marks.
Ware was a place of importance, anda petition was promoted to Gregory IX.
As a result a papal commission of inquiry was issued in 1228-9 to the
Bishop of London and the Dean of St. Paul’s; the pension was remitted and
a competent portion secured to the vicar by the ordination of a vicarage.’
This was not the first case of interference by the higher authorities. In or
about 1224 Bishop Hugh of Wells had demanded proof of the existence of
a pension of 3 marks, said to be due from the vicar of All Saints, Hertford,
to the prior and convent of that place.* The system was frequently adopted
by religious houses where no vicarage was ordained, and at the same time as
the Hertford inquiry was taking place the bishop forbade the newly insti-
tuted rector of St. Peter’s, Berkhampstead, to pay any pension to the patrons,
the Abbot and convent of Grestein, until they should have proved it due and
customary.“ The arrangement was not unusually made in cases where an
alien house had received the grant of a church. The Prior and convent of
the Breton house of Fougéres made an agreement at the beginning of the
13th century with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, whereby the latter
were toreceive a pension of 8 marks*; in a similar way Warner, Prior of the

* Gibbons, Liber Antiguus, 29. °8 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), iii, 40. °° Ibid. 42.

100 Newcourt, Repert. i, 843. 1 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 191.
? Newcourt, Repert. i, goo. 3 Ibid. iii, 46.
; 4 Ibid. cf. 41. For pensions paid in the diocese of Lincoln see Salter, 4 Suds. collected in the Diocese of
Linc. 173-9. 5 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 33-

295

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England in 1190 granted the church of
Broxbourne to the Bishops of London in return for a yearly payment of
4 marks. The system presented so many advantages that it was inevitable
that it should be adopted by the rector whose cure was served by a resident
and perpetual vicar.’

Whatever may have been the financial position of the average curate or
stipendiary priest, there is evidence that the parson or vicar was frequently
a man of means. Thus in 1350 the vicar of Codicote had £20 stolen from
a chest in his chamber.’ Three years later the vicar of Weston seems to
have had in his pocket 30s. which was stolen from him when he went out
to supper with one of his parishioners.” The rector of Lilley, who
contracted a debt of £40 in about 1464, must have been able to give
adequate security for so large a sum.”

Strong as was the tendency for the priest to live the ordinary life of his
fellows, there was, at least in theory, one point on which he was diffe-
rentiated from the layman and that was by his celibacy. There can,
however, be no doubt that the rule was only enforced by the bishops with
the greatest difficulty and incomplete success. Throughout the 13th century
the bishops were strenuous in their efforts, which were seconded by the
papal see.” Alan, the vicar of Ashwell, was married, but Bishop Hugh or
Wells only gave him the parsonage on his entering into a bond in 30 marks
to have no dealings with the woman Annora.* In 1237 the declaration of
Otto provided that all married clerks should be deprived of their preferment,™
but it seems probable that this extreme step was only taken in cases of
public scandal, the strictness with which the rule was observed depending
greatly on the vigilance of the diocesan and his officials. Grossteste made
a rigorous inquisition on this matter throughout his diocese in 1251, and
deprived transgressors," but unfortunately the returns have not been preserved.
During the 14th century concubinage was apparently not uncommon. Nor was
it apparently regarded as reprehensible. John, chaplain of Ayot St. Lawrence,
found no objection to complaining of having been robbed of a linen shirt, a
belt and purse when visiting his mistress one June night in 1367. In very
bad cases deprivation was carried out ; thus in 1313 Bishop Ralph Baldock
deprived Nicholas de Hadham, vicar of Ardeley, but here the guilt was
deepened by three of the four women involved being his penitents.'7_ Thomas,
the rector of Kelshall, when cited for dilapidations of the goods of his church
and for incontinence was merely suspended by Bishop Sutton for three years.”

The 14th century was an age of violence ; the number of murderous
assaults was doubtless increased by the habit of carrying weapons, which, in
spite of episcopal injunctions, was common to clergy and laymen alike. The
basilard formed a part of the cleric’s ordinary dress and was worn by Robert
de Maddingley on Trinity Sunday, 1358. For some reason he had fault to find

® Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. 1, 32.
7 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 94.
8 cf Add. Chart. 24065 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 30-1, 39 3 Cal. Pat. 1391-6, p. 543.

® Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 38, m. 13d. 10 Tbid. m. 27. ™ Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 318.
12 Cal. Papal Letters, i, 90. 13 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 79.
14 Lea, Hist. of Clerical Celibacy, i, 350. 15 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. (Rolls Ser.), v, 256.

16 Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 37, m. 13. :
17 Reg, Radulphi Baldock (Cant. and York Soc.), ii, 160. 18 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 121,

296

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

with Ralph, the clerk ; out in the street the vicar upbraided him and drawing
his basilard would have struck him. Ralph took to his heels, the vicar
following basilard in hand. In his excitement Ralph rushed down a lane
which proved blind. He drew his knife, struck at Robert and killed him.
This carrying of weapons doubtless accounts for many of the cases of assault
which appear so inexplicable to the modern mind. John, vicar of Stanstead
Abbots, attacked one of his parishioners and wounded him grievously.”
Nicholas Turvey, parson of Loughton, similarly attacked one William
Austyn at Berkhampstead in 1371,” while in the following year the parson of
Caldecote was outlawed for his assault on Richard Clerk.” Again and again
the clergy are found side by side with their parishioners in the affrays that
enlivened the country life of the 14th century. Though most frequently
these collisions were the result of poaching expeditions, yet sometimes they
seem to have been political in character. It was doubtless resentment at
the action of the Crown against the Templars* that induced the parson of
Clothall to join a nocturnal expedition of over seventy persons to Baldock in
the autumn of 1312. Ona different plane was a crime perpetrated at Sarratt
one Sunday in 1462, when James Roche, the vicar, with Roger Witton, an
esquire, and others set on Richard Gloucester, a man at arms of the place,
murdered him and buried the body in a field.* The affair was discovered
and Roche took to flight.”

Such a story inevitably leads to a questioning as to the punishment of
the mediaeval criminous clerk. The clerk in trouble with the civil
authorities generally found himself imprisoned in Hertford Castle, and thence
he would appeal to his bishop to be claimed as an ecclesiastical person and
exempt from the jurisdiction of the lay courts. Thus in 1287 William de
Aston, Walter the chaplain of Leighton and Robert the barber of Wycombe
were accused of burglary in the church of St. Peter, Berkhampstead, but
Walter and Robert were claimed as clerks by the vicegerent of the Bishop of
Lincoln and freed as innocent. The secular authorities seem to have viewed
the process with dislike at a very early period, and in 1248 the sheriff of the
county was fined for releasing the chaplain of Hertingfordbury to the Bishop
of Lincoln without warrant.” The usual proceeding was then for the bishop
to issue a commission of inquiry such as that held in 1306 on the conduct of
John son of Henry de la Fen of Clavering, clerk, who was imprisoned for
trespasses against Ralph the Tanner of Hatfield.* In the ecclesiastical
courts the ancient test of purgation still survived and was probably employed
in the case of John.”

The prison of the Bishops of London was at Stortford, and thither came
criminous clerks from all parts of the diocese.” In September 1344 there
were fifty prisoners in this gaol and seven were received during the following

19 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 2, no. 6g. Ralph was to receive the king’s pardon as the jury declared

he killed Robert in self-defence. 20 Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 38, m. Io.
*1 Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 4, no. 153. 2 Ibid. no. 175. 23 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 539.
% «Reg. Whethamstede,’ Reg. Adbbatum Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Ser.), ii, 11. No coroners’ rolls for
Hertfordshire at this date are preserved in the P.R.O. 5 Tbid.

6 Assize R. 325, m. 36. For the hanging of a parson of Buckland see ibid. 323, m. 44.

# Tbid. 318, m. 25d. Richard was accused of confederacy in the murder at Hertingfordbury of
Basilia de Rocheford and Ralph her son.

38 Reg. Radulphi Baldock (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 38.

% cf. ibid. 1. 30 cf, Exch. K.R. Eccl. Doc. bdle. 8, no. 1.

4 297 38

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

year, while no less than twenty-nine died during this period.” At Michael-
mas 1347 there were twenty-five prisoners, twelve were received in the
course of the year and nine died.” It appears possible that here there was
some such free prison as that attached to certain of the civil gaols.” It seems,
moreover, that extra liberty was occasionally allowed to clerics imprisoned in
Hertford Castle, for in 1363-4 Walter, a criminous priest, was given into
the charge of the rector of St. Nicholas, Hertford ; he escaped, much to the
annoyance of the gaoler, who promptly clapped the rector into gaol.”
Besides these misdemeanours occasional instances are found among the
parochial clergy of what was known as apostasy—the deliberate desertion of
the life of a cleric for that of a layman. In the 13th century the military
orders opened a life of adventure to the churchman, and it was perhaps as a
Templar that the parson of Bygrave in 1219 assumed the knightly sword.*
In the 15th century there was no such way of escape, and several instances
of apostasy may be found. Roger Caldecott, vicar of Norton, deserted his
cure about 1478 and was deprived’; at Sarratt in 1485 Thomas Hemyng-
ford, who had held the living since 1476, was similarly dealt with.*
Deprivation does not, however, seem to have been frequent, and the lists of
prisoners at Stortford * suggest that the majority of criminous clerks
imprisoned there were not in full orders. Some of them were probably
drawn from the class of chaplains and chantry priests which was becoming
important at this date. The impulse towards founding monastic establish-
ments had almost failed by the beginning of the 14th century, even as the
sacrificial aspect of the mass had grown in popularity. The chantry was
of course no new thing ; as far back as 1247 the rector of Eastwick had
obtained papal confirmation of an ordinance directing that in Eastwick Church
there should be three priests—the rector, a priest to say daily the office of the
Blessed Virgin, and a priest to say daily that of the dead.” Chantries were
founded in almost every church in Hertfordshire and were frequently associated
with the cult of our Lady.®
According to modern ideas one of the greatest scandals of the Church

of the 12th and 13th centuries was the holding of benefices by persons totally
incapable of fulfilling the duty of their office and incapable from voluntary
causes. The deacon, the sub-deacon, the acolyte, would seek and obtain
benefices with no intention of taking full orders, for the mediaeval mind had
an inveterate tendency to consider the rector, as it has well been put, rather
as ‘the tenant of the church property than the pastor of the people.’* In
practice this idea was adopted by the papacy, the Crown, and occasionally
by the episcopate. In theory the church required every beneficed person
to be in priest’s orders, and a constitution to this effect was issued by the
Council of Lyons in 1292.”

31 Mins. Accts. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 1140, no. 1. 32 Tbid. no. 3.

33 For the escape of clerks from the gaol of St. Albans see Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 38, m. 13.

4 Ibid. file 37, m. 15. For outlawries of clerks see Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, passim.

3° Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 35.

38 Reg. Abbatum Mon. 8. Albani (Rolls Ser.), ii, 188. 37 Tbid. p. xlv.

38 Mins. Accts. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 1140, no. 1-3. One ‘ priest’ was received there in each of the years
1344-5 and 1347-8.

39 Cal. Papal Letters, i, 235. 49 See Topographical section, passim.

41 Stocks and Bragg, Market Harborough Rec. 21.

* Fleury, /nst. du droit canonigue, cap. ili, viii ; Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 55.

298

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The bishops doubtless did their best, and it is of interest to note that of
the four Hertfordshire incumbents collated by Bishop Hugh of Wells “ two
were described as ‘clerks,’ while the others were graduates and presumably
in full orders. The view of Edward I may be judged from rather later
examples: John de Sandale, sub-deacon, held the living of North Mimms
in 1309, he was afterwards Lord Chancellor ; Robert de St. Albans, deacon
and king’s clerk, was presented by Edward I to the living of Essendon, but
made no attempt to take further orders.* It was only to be expected that
the less important patrons should follow the royal example.“ In 1297
Archbishop Peckham issued constitutions by which a rector in minor orders
was forbidden to retain his benefice,7 but a dispensing power had been
reserved to the bishops * by the Council of Lyons, and what could only be
obtained with difficulty in England was much more easily acquired at the
Papal Court. In 1309 William de Langley was a notable pluralist with
livings in East Anglia, Yorkshire and at Eastwick. He was ‘molested’ by
the Archbishop of York for neglecting to take holy orders, applied to the
pope and received dispensation to retain his benefices.*

One cause for dispensation from taking orders admitted by the bishops
in the 13th century was the desire to study theology. The Council of
Rouen in 1231 gave the beneficed clerk the alternative of ordination or study.
The necessity for this provision and the vigilance required of a bishop may
be judged from the difficulty of Bishop Hugh of Wells in obtaining an
efficient parish priest for Shenley. The patroness, Joan le Blunt, had sent
her son Richard into the church. Richard in 1221 was described asa clerk,
but his learning made no favourable impression on Bishop Hugh, who
thought, however, that ‘there was hope of him.’ So the young man was
instituted, but ordered to the university under pain of deprivation, while the
cure was placed in the hands of Hugh de Rof, chaplain. Richard
evidently failed to reach the required standard, and the bishop perhaps carried
out his threat, for in the following year Joan was again presenting to the
living. This time her nominee was Matthew son of Waleran, clerk, but
the bishop seems to have made inquiries and to have been suspicious of his
acquirements, for, though Matthew was instituted, the bishop insisted on an
oath being taken in his presence that he would attend the university for
study. A note was added, somewhat grimly, to the record of these doings
that ‘if, as is said, he do not attend the schools, his benefice shall be
sequestered into the hands of the bishop.’ Bishop Hugh was evidently
well informed, for another rector was instituted a year later.” That the
bishop’s requirements were not excessively high may be judged from the
constitutions of Grossteste. According to these * ‘each shepherd of souls and
every parish priest’ was required to know the commandments, the nature of
the seven deadly sins and of the seven sacraments. Those who were priests

43 Rot. Hugonis de Welles, i, 126, 127. 44 Newcourt, Repert. i, 40.
45 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 56.

48 cf, Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), ili, 45, 47.

47 Lyndewode, Provinciale (ed. 1679), 22, 24.

48 For Hertfordshire examples see Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 55, 56.

49 Cal. Papal Letters, li, 51.

50 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), ili, 37.

51 Tbid. 39. 52 Ibid. 41. 53 Epistolae (Rolls Ser.), 155.

299

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

were required to know especially the requisites of true confession and baptism
with a simple understanding of the faith.

In the 14th century it was usual to reverse the modern practice, and
the student acquired his benefice before attending the university, and frequently
with the express object of maintaining himself there.™ If the complaints of
the University of Oxford are to be believed, it was a wise precaution to secure
a benefice and with it a regular income before proceeding to the university.
Once there, a living was only obtained with difficulty, even men with
established reputations seeking ecclesiastical preferment in vain.” The
estimate of academical attainments held by the officials of the London
diocese may, perhaps, be gathered from the entire absence of any entries
against the names of Hertfordshire incumbents instituted before 1390."
From this time, however, the possession of degrees is carefully noted, and
the modern reader is struck by the comparative scantiness of graduates among
the parochial clergy. At Albury, Amwell, Anstey, Little Hormead, Meesden,
Thorley and Widford no graduate held the living in the 14th or 15th
century. Yet Albury belonged to the Treasurer of St. Paul’s Cathedral,
Amwell to the Prior and convent of Hertford, Anstey to the Dukes of York,
Hormead and Meesden to St. Mary de Graces, London, Thorley to the
Bishops of London, and Widford to the Prior and convent of Bermondsey.
Perhaps Oxford had cause to complain. The greatest patrons of learning,
according to this test, were the Abbess and convent of the Cambridgeshire
house of Chatteris, who presented two Masters of Arts, two Doctors of Law,
and one Bachelor of Divinity between 1394 and 1495 to their living of
Barley out of a total of ten incumbents for the period.” The Carthusians of
Sheen presented graduates continuously to the vicarage of Ware from 1451
to 1480, but this town must have been especially attractive to a man of parts
from its facilities for communication. The scholar was receiving extended
patronage in the second half of the 15th century, but it must be remem-
bered that he was a pluralist whenever possible.

Against the prevalent abuse of pluralities the Church had made an official
pronouncement at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. This Peckham
strove with all his might to enforce, and the constitutions of Ottobon also
dealt with the subject.” As usual a dispensing power was reserved to the
papacy. As early as 1219 a note appears against the record of the institution
of a rector of Aldenham to the effect that the presentee had licence from
the papal legate to hold a second living in plurality.” The modern excuse
of poverty was not adduced, and no difficulty in obtaining dispensation seems
to have been experienced by John de Fleburth, who desired to acquire the
living of Stubton in Lincolnshire, valued at 25 marks, in addition to his
rectory of Hadham, which was worth £40 the year. Some forty years
later the living was valued at too marks, but this was no obstacle to the

54 For licences of absence to rectors about to study at the universities see Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton,
Memo. fol. 206-7. The practice was continued until the late 16th century, when it was attacked by the
Puritans and fell into disfavour. In 1559 Cranmer granted a dispensation to Thomas Butler, aet. 14, a
scholar, to hold the living of Watton at Stone. This was confirmed by Elizabeth (Harl. MS. 7048, fol. 252).

55 Anstey, Epistolae Academicae Oxon. 168. 58 See Newcourt, Repert. i, passim.

57 Ibid. 799. 58 See Capes, The Engl. Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, 22.

59 Rot. Hugonis de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 137 ; see also Cas. Papal Letters, i, 245.

89 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 35.

300

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

rector from obtaining other preferment." The granting of dispensations was
a distinct source of income and was jealously guarded by the papacy. Hugh
de Nottingham held the rectory of Hatfield in plurality in about 1318, and
was proceeded against and forced to resign ; the living, valued at £37, was
then granted in plurality to William de Steeping, warden of the hospital of
St. Andrew, Denhall, co. Chester, in the diocese of Lichfield. It must be
conceded that except in the case of a few men such as Grossteste or
Peckham mediaeval public opinion was not shocked by pluralism. The king
and the great lord were apt to pay their secretaries in livings rather than
ready money. Thus in 1343 John Earl of Warenne sought a canonry of
Exeter for John, son of William Pippard, rector of Aspenden,® and in 1363
Mary Countess of Pembroke begged for her clerk John de Audelliers a
canonry of Chalons in addition to his church of Anstey and a canonry of
Lincoln for her clerk Philip de Melrith, rector of Westmill.“ More
acquisitive than these men was John de Saucey, B.C.L., who persuaded his
patron in 1351 to apply for a licence to enable him to hold the churches of
St. Magnus, London, and Cheshunt as well as a prebend of Glaseneye and
a promised prebend of Wells.®

The non-resident or pluralist rector was, of course, faced with one very
real difficulty. His revenues, paid partly in kind, were generally agricultural
in origin, and it would seem to have been no easy matter to find a reliable
steward.” It was natural, therefore, that the system of composition, that
universal solvent of mediaeval difficulties, should be adopted. The arrange-
ment took the form of a lease of the rectory for a fixed annual rent or farm
to the incumbent. Abuses were bound to follow, and in 1321 Bishop
Burghersh issued a mandate to all archdeacons in the diocese of Lincoln for-
bidding the letting of any rectories to farm without episcopal licence.” The
matter was also regulated by various constitutions, though these were always
liable to be superseded by papal action. ‘Thus in 1437 the powerful pluralist
Robert Fitz Hugh, vicar of St. Michael’s, Wood Street, rector of Kelshall,
canon of St. Martin-le-Grand, and prebend of ‘ Buoghes,’ obtained licence to
let to farm for any term and to any person, laymen not excepted, the fruits
of any or all benefices in his hands.” The difficulty raised by the prohibition
of lease to a secular person was occasionally overcome by associating the
stipendiary priest with the farmer in the grant. At Clothall the rector in
January 1485—6 was Richard Woodward, clerk in the King’s Chancery ; he
leased the tithes, lands of the rectory and the glebe-house to William Frank,
chaplain, and Simon Wright, of Baldock, yeoman, for three years.” A some-
what similar lease made in March 1543-4 by the rector of Hinxworth led
to some disorder, for the rector complained that when at the end of the term
he refused to renew the lease, the farmers cut down ‘forty great Elmes and
Asshes’ in the churchyard and carried them away.” It was to be expected
that the farmer, while responsible for the charges incidental to the possession
of the rectorial tithes,” should avoid expense as far as possible. The result

81 Cal. Papal Pet. 149. 82 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 172.

88 Cal. Papal Pet. 19. 64 Ibid. 410. % Ibid. 219.

8 See the numerous cases of pardons recorded in the Patent Rolls for failure to render accounts,
87 Linc. Epis. Reg. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 27.

88 Cal. Papal Letters, viii, 636. 6 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 2887.

7 Star Chamb. Proc. Edw. VI, bdle. 5, no. 81. 71 i.e. the repair of the chancel, &c.

301

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

was that in 1518 when the rectories of Hertford, Bengeo, ‘ Herefield,’ Pirton,
Ashwell and Aspenden were all let to laymen, the chancels of ‘ Herefield,’
Pirton and Ashwell were in a state of serious disrepair.” It is known that in
1543 farmers were in possession of the churches—i.e. rectorial tithes—of
Bygrave, Little Munden, Throcking, Ardeley, Wheathampstead, Lilley,
King’s Walden and Harpenden,” and the frequency of the practice shows
that the lease of a rectory was profitable to the lessee. That it was equally
advantageous to the absent rector may be gathered from the instance of
King’s Walden, where the farm of the ‘rectory’ brought in £16 135. 4d. to
the priory of Old Malton, Yorkshire,” which paid the ‘curate’ £5 6s. 8d. as
stipend.” This was a very usual sum for a ‘ curate’ to receive at this date ;
but the stipends were not always liberal, and the farmer of the church of
Watton at Stone himself granted an annuity to the curate to enable him the
better to sustain the burdens.” Ata later date the salary seems to have been
usually paid by the farmer.” A curious example of the results of such an
arrangement was seen at St. Albans soon after the Dissolution. The abbey
had granted to Thomas Chadsley the chapel of St. Andrew at farm at a rack
rent ; as long as the abbey was occupied he drew his profit from the tithes
and offerings of the servants and household, but these disappeared with the
Dissolution, and the cure was unserved as Chadsley could no longer afford to
pay a curate his stipend.” The practice of farming rectories survived the
Reformation, the rectory of Hatfield, ‘ esteemed one of the best in England,’
being a notable example of the abuse.”

Closely connected with the abuse of pluralities was that of non-residence.
And what non-residence meant may be judged from the ironical remarks of
Bishop Porteus made to the clergy of the diocese of London in his charge of
1791, ‘much too large a proportion’ of whom were non-resident. ‘The
instrument of dispensation,’ he says, ‘requires 13 sermons a year and
hospitality for two months.’ The church of the early 19th century was in this
respect in much the same case as six hundred years before, and nothing more
scandalous can be imagined than the case of Mr. George Pretyman, who then
held the rectory of Wheathampstead,” with the living of Chalfont St. Giles,
&c., and derived from his livings a net income of £1,697, exclusive of
cathedral endowments. The bishops of the 13th century recognized the
evil. In several cases, as at Throcking, Bishop Hugh of Wells instituted a
rector on condition that he was resident and served the cure in person.®
Grossteste felt strongly on the subject, but the practice grew and was, of
course, inevitable in the case of rectors who had failed to take full orders or
were engaged in theological study.®

In the 14th century the bishops would take action in flagrant cases.
John de Penrith deserted his cure of Baldock and in 1359 Bishop Gynwell
gave a commission to William rector of Holywell (Holwell) to minister in

72 Visit. of the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon (Linc. Epis. Reg.).

3 Ibid. sub anno. 7 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 4618, m. 9.
75 Salter, 4 Subsidy . . . 1526, p. 176.

7 Linc. Epis. Reg. Buckingham, Memo. fol. 104 d.

77 Visit. as above, 15.43. 78 Ct. of Aug. Proc. bdle. 31, no. 68.

78 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 213. * Porteus, Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of London (1791), 8-10.
81 Cussans, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. Dacorum Hund. 346 n.
82 Rot. Hugonis de eles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 59. 83 See above.

302

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

the parish church.“ The negligences of Gilbert de Murself, rector of
Benington, were corrected.” In 1420 Richard Field, the vicar of North
Mimms, was deprived; it was proved in July of that year that he had
administered the sacraments in the church from Pentecost to the following
Lent but had not been seen since.” From the wording of the depositions
in this case it seems that the real cause of his deprivation was not, however,
non-residence, but the fact that he had made absolutely no provision for
serving the cure, which had been neglected ever since his departure.” The
prevalence of the custom, indeed, apart from the remarks of Porteus, shows
that the bishops were generally ready to grant dispensations for non-residence
provided that a competent curate was supplied. Until the end of the 16th
century, indeed, if not later, the curate was essentially one placed in charge
of a parish by or for the absent incumbent,® though the term might also
be used for a coadjutor during the illness of the incumbent, and very
occasionally for a chantry priest ; the application of the word to the assistant
of a resident parish priest is a later use not found generally before the close
of the following century. The number of ‘ curates’’ employed should therefore
give the actual, though not the legal, number of non-resident incumbents.
For the early years of the 16th century the evidence on this point is very
full for the diocese of Lincoln, though deficient for that of London. The
visitation of the archdeaconry of Huntingdon in 1518-19 shows that there
were non-resident incumbents at Welwyn, All Saints Hertford, Letchworth,
Kelshall, Aspenden, Therfield, Ashwell, Radwell, Westmill and Wallington.”
In only one case is any indication of the cause for non-residence given, but
the rector of Kelshall was away on the queen’s service. AA similar visitation
made in 1530 gives a similar result, non-residence being the rule at Welwyn,
Gaddesden, Aldenham, Ayot St. Lawrence, Great Munden, Kelshall, Ther-
field and Wallington.” By a fortunate coincidence a clergy list of but four
years earlier has been preserved, and a comparison of these two documents
brings to light the actual non-residence of the sixty-six Hertfordshire
benefices of the diocese of Lincoln assessed in 1526"; no less than thirty-five
were served by curates who are found in charge of all the livings said to be
held by non-residents in 1530 except Kelshall, Therfield and Wallington,
where the duty was apparently discharged by stipendiary priests. ‘The
practical result of non-residence was seen in the report in 1518 that at
Radwell the chancel was in ruins. At Welwyn both rectory and chancel
were badly in need of repair, while at Letchworth the curate was
‘insufficient.’ The state of affairs at Ashwell was particularly scandalous ;
the curate would seem to have followed his vicar’s example of non-residence,
for he was beneficed elsewhere and the vicarage-house was let to farm. In
1530 the report was rather better, but the chancel at Aldenham and the
churchyard wall at Therfield were both in a ruinous state. ‘These numbers
may be compared with those furnished by a similar list made in 1543,”
when the Reformation was in its earlier stage. At only twelve places 1s

84 Linc. Epis. Reg. Gynwell, Memo. fol. 134.
85 Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 111.

86 Ibid. Fleming, Memo. fol. 241d. 87 Tbid. 88 Salter, op. cit. Introd.
89 Atwater’s Visit. (Linc. Epis. Reg.). :
90 Visit. of Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, 1530 (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 91 Salter, op. cit.

92 Visit. of Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, 1543 (Linc. Epis. Reg.).
393

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

any reason for non-residence assigned. Richard Coches, rector of Kelshall,
was chaplain to Henry VIII, Master Edward Langton, rector of Flamstead,
was clerk of the King’s oratory, while the rector of Little Munden and the
vicar of Great Gaddesden were chaplains to Lord Douglas and the Countess
of Derby respectively. As usual pluralities accounted for a large propor-
tion of the non-residence: Dr. Pomell, vicar of Ashwell, was rector of
St. Katharine Coleman and lived in London. ‘Mr. Cordall’ was rector of
the valuable living of Welwyn, but lived far away at Brancepeth in co.
Durham; Dr. Cooke of Bygrave was at St. Stephen’s, the rector of
Graveley at Ayot St. Lawrence, the vicar of Hitchin at * Northam in Suffolk ’
and the rector of Wheathampstead at Salisbury. But while these incumbents
were recognized as non-resident, it is evident that a still further number only
visited their Hertfordshire benefices on occasion, for in the sixty-three
parishes visited forty-one curates were employed.

At atime when the central authorities were enforcing their views on
clergy and laity alike, when the whole of the royal policy was bent towards
unity of control, it was impossible that the authoritative pronouncement on
affairs should be left in each parish to the curate. Non-residence was
objectionable not on the grounds of ethical principle but of public policy.
In 1542 Bonner insisted on the royal dispensation being obtained for
plurality and non-residence,” but no further steps seem to have been taken.
Elizabeth followed a surer plan and, under the pretext of a clerical subsidy,
mulcted the holders of benefices in 6s. 8¢. for every year in which a curate
was employed.” The returns made in 1575 show how greatly the practice
had decreased, and this evidence is supported by the clergy lists. Thus in
1586 in the archdeaconry of St. Albans and deanery of Braughing only
eight curates were employed,” while at about the same date only ten appear
for the whole of the Hertfordshire parishes in the archdeaconry of
Huntingdon.”

The most casual observer of the village churches of Hertfordshire can
hardly fail to be struck by the very large amount of 14th and 1§th-century
work they still display. It seems as though the whole people had been seized
with impatience at the old things, and as far as wasin their power had swept
them aside in their endeavour after what seemed the newer and more desirable
way. In addition to this longing for reform there seems reason to believe
that some of the churches had fallen into disrepair during the late 13th and
early 14th centuries when the drain of men and money to the Scottish
and French wars must have diverted much ready money abroad. The bishops
seem to have done all in their power to maintain the churches in reasonably
good condition, and mention has already been made of the sentence of three
years’ suspension passed by Bishop Sutton (1280-99) on Thomas, rector of
Kelshall, for incontinence and dilapidation of the goods of the church.” The
responsibility of keeping the chancel in good repair fell, of course, on the
rector, but the duty of maintaining the nave rested with the parishioners.
That there was sometimes difficulty in enforcing this obligation is evident from
various entries in the episcopal registers. The church of Hitchin had been

3 Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 38. % Exch. Spec. Com. 12 Eliz. no. 3268.
% Visit. 1586 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). % Lambeth MS. xii, no. 2.
7 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 121.

304

F

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

rebuilt shortly before 1301, when the tower was in ruins and was said to be in
a dangerous condition.” The energy of the parishioners was exhausted and
they refused to do more. The archdeacon failed to bring them to a better
state of mind, and finally he reported the matter to the Bishop of Lincoln,
who issued a commission to the Archdeacon of Bedford to compel the people
to begin repairs.” The work, however, proceeded but slowly, and apparently
unwillingly, for in 1314 public opinion seems to have made no outcry against
certain persons who kept in their own hands goods left towards repairing the
fabric, and the bishop proceeded against them by sentence of excommunica-
tion. At Stapleford, also, an episcopal injunction was needed and issued
in 1301 before the parishioners would finish their belfry.! That this state
of affairs was not confined to the early years of the 14th century is evident from
the fact that in 1382 Bishop Buckingham warned the people of St. Mary’s,
Berkhampstead, that he would proceed to excommunication unless they would
contribute to the repairs of their church.?

The money for these repairs and rebuildings was probably collected by
the churchwardens, who with the parson were the parties to the contract with
the master mason.’ In many cases special parts of the work were undertaken
by individuals whose memory was preserved by inscription or achievement.
In 1728 the steeple and east window of Knebworth Church still bore the
arms of Sir John Hotoft, lord of the manor in 1428,* while at East Barnet
a small stone in the middle aisle besought prayer for the soul of John
Beauchamp, the builder.’ Gifts such as these could only, however, have
been made by the man of comparative wealth ; but the custom of leaving at
least a small sum to the fabric of the parish church appears to have been
well nigh universal, and innumerable cases might be cited.*

All these were local means of raising money, but there was a natural
desire, then as now, to appeal to a larger public. The system of indulgences
for this purpose was in favour throughout the 14th century. One of the
earliest Hertfordshire indulgences was that obtained from the pope in 1291
for penitents who visited Norton Church on the four feasts of the Blessed
Virgin Mary and their octaves.’ Such a pilgrimage was rewarded by the
relaxation of a year and forty days of enjoined penance and was bound to bring
many to make offerings in the church. Under Bishop Dalderby (1300—20)
indulgences became numerous; they were obtained in aid of the funds of
the churches of Puttenham and Tewin, the conventual church of Ashridge
and the priory of Hertford. Two like indulgences were issued by Bishop
Bek (1342-7) for the churchyards of St. John the Evangelist of Aldenham
and St. Nicholas of Great Munden.°

In two of the four returns made for gilds in Hertfordshire in 1346”
there is express mention of the chaplain of the fraternity, and in the third
his existence is implied. A comparison of the names of places at which

88 Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 44 d.

9 Tbid. 100 Tbid. fol. 166. 1 Ibid. fol. 24d. 2 Ibid. Buckingham, Memo. ii, fol. 248.

3 cf. De Banco R. g21, m. 271. 4 Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 261 ; V.C.H. Herts. iii, 115.

5 Salmon, op. cit. 56 ; cf pp. 11, 95 ; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 174.

® e.g. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. 46. Sharpe, Cal. of Wills proved in the Court of Hustings, ii, 296 ;
P.C.C. 4 Luffenam, 31 Stoneham, 11 Stokton, 22 Godyn, 1 Wattys, 1 Milles. 7 Cad Papal Levters, i, 531.

8 Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 12, 44, 51, 317, 399- ® Ibid. Bek, Memo. fol. 6 d.

10 Chan. Misc. file 39, no. 64-7.

4 305 39

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

gilds are known to have existed with the returns of the 16th century makes
it probable that many of the stipendiary priests were really in the employ of
the gilds. Reference has already been made to the status of these super-
numerary priests, and it may well be imagined that their independence of
the incumbent and peculiar relationship toa select body of parishioners might
lead to difficulties. At Berkhampstead in the early 16th century dissensions
arose between the parson and George Prior, ‘brotherhood priest.’ The
parson complained to the Bishop of Lincoln that Prior was ‘ a comyn baratur
and breker of the kynges peas .. . a comyn goar and seker of susspessyus and
baudy howsys ...a pleyer at cardes and alle un lawfull gamys.’ Prior was
summoned before the bishop, and with thirty-one of his ‘neyburs genttyll-
men and other substantial men’ rode to Woburn to refute the charge. The
bishop bound him over, but this did not satisfy the parson, and Prior finally
appealed to the Crown for redress," though what he hoped to gain thereby is
not very clear.

The earliest known gild in Hertfordshire was simple in character. In
or about 1333 twelve men of Hertford agreed to maintain twelve candles
to burn before the image of St. John the Baptist in the church of All Saints
during all service hours on feast days. Two wardens managed the affairs of
the brotherhood and probably made the collections, which were its sole
source of revenue. The association was perhaps one of friends, for in 1346
five of the brethren were dead and no effort had been made to fill their
places, nor were the survivors bound by any oath.” The contemporary gild
of the Blessed Mary of Barkway was also devotional in character, but was
joined by both men and women. Here, too, continuity was evidently not
anticipated, for five lights before the image of the Virgin in the parish church
were to be maintained only while ten brothers and sisters remained alive.
The great aim of the gild was not, however, the support of these lights, but
the provision of masses in honour of our Lady, and for this each member
paid 1d. each Sunday. The gild also undertook the ordering of the funerals of
ity members, paying all expenses if the dead brother or sister had left no goods,
and collecting pence among the members for the celebration of a requiem
mass." At Waltham Cross the members of the gild of St. Mary also main-
tained a chaplain, but they had abandoned the system of weekly payments
for an annual subscription of 6d. They maintained torches as well as
fifteen tapers to burn before the image of our Lady in her chapel there on
all Sundays and feast days."*

The fourth and last Hertfordshire gild for which the 14th century
return has been preserved was that of the Holy Sepulchre at Waltham
Cross."* The brothers and sisters maintained a chaplain to celebrate divine
service in the charnel, paying him a yearly salary of 8 marks; the money
was raised by a yearly subscription of 13d. The charnel seems to have been
wholly in the care of the gild, for the members kept it in repair and main-
tained there fifteen tapers and two torches burning during service on feast
days and Sundays throughout the year. But this was not the end of their
activities ; they found fifteen tapers to burn about the Easter sepulchre in
the parish church, and eight torches at the elevation of the Host at the

1] Exch. M sc. file 12, no. 4. 2 Chan. Misc. file 39, no. 65.
1B [bid. no. 64. 4 Tbid. no. 66. 18 Thid. no, 67.
306

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

high altar on all Sundays and festivals. For members of their own company
fifteen tapers were burnt at the death-bed and in the church at the funeral,
while alms were given to a number of poor."

Curiously enough no further reference to any of these gilds has been
found, and possibly they, like the gilds of St. Alban, the Holy Trinity and
St. John the Baptist at St. Albans,'’ were suppressed by the authorities for
actual or suspected dealings in sedition.

Little is known of the Hertfordshire gilds during the first half of
the 15th century. A good instance of the incorporation of a gild is
found in that of the Blessed Virgin in the church of St. Andrew, Hitchin,
constituted under a master and two wardens by licence of 1475.8 At Hitchin
this corporation did not apparently become the centre of town life as did the
gild of All Saints at St. Albans under pressure of the struggle between the abbey
and the town,” and indeed at no other place in the county were conditions
favourable for the development of the gild into the municipality. At
Bishop’s Stortford, where the gild of St. John the Baptist was founded in
1484-5, the Reformation brought no loosening of the authority of the
Bishops of London, while at Hatfield, Berkhampstead and Ware the gilds
seem to have been comparatively unimportant.

The difficulty of estimating the number of gilds and fraternities exist-
ing in the 16th century is considerable. Many had no endowments and
were maintained by collections and the casual bequests by which their
names have been preserved. At Tring, for instance, there was in 1533 a
gild of the Blessed Trinity.” St. John the Baptist was the patron of the
gild of Ashwell” and of that at Berkhampstead, which was endowed with
the lands afterwards granted to Dean Incent for his grammar school there.”
At Stevenage the gild of the Holy Trinity had, in common with most gilds,
a ‘ brotherhood-house’™ ; the fraternity of the Name of Jesus at Baldock”
also had lands and was of some importance.

Harmless as these associations may appear they were undoubtedly viewed
with suspicion by the State, and in 15th-century licences for the formation
of gilds it was usual to insert clauses intended to prevent the use of the
fraternity for political ends. The nature of the connexion between the
political and religious movements of the late 14th and early 15th centuries
has long been the subject of debate, and it is not proposed to enter into the
subject in this place. The fact that John Ball had incurred excommunica-
tion and had refused to come into obedience within forty days* on at least
three occasions is no proof of Lollardy,” though it points to a stirring and
disdainful state of mind such as might be expected in a leader of rebellion.

To the townsfolk of St. Albans, struggling to obtain borough liberties,
the contrast between the profession of the head of that Benedictine house
and his actual position as a great landlord can hardly have failed to bea

16 Chan. Misc. file 39, no. 67. 17 See V.C.H. Herts. ii, 480.

18 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p. 542. 19 See V.C.H. Herts. ii, 480-1.

20 Glasscock, Rec. of St. Michael's, 118. 21 P.C.C. 3 Hogen (Will of William Tattorne).
22 Archd. of St. Albans Wills, Wallingford, 118, 120. 23 Salmon, op. cit. 124.

4 P.C.C. 15 Horne (Will of William Matthew) ; Pat. 5 & 6 Phil. and Mary, pt. ili, m. 11.

3 Archd. of St. Albans, Wills, loc. cit. ; P.C.C. 11 Adeane (Will of Robert Stanford) ; Aug. Off. Misc.
Bks. lxviii, fol. 270d.

36 Chan. Significations of Excommunication, file 10. 27 cf, Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 26.

207

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

subject for sarcasm. Oldcastle had friends in the place, and rumour went
that the Lollards designed to destroy this abbey with that of Westminster,
the canons of St. Paul’s and all the friars of London.* In confirmation of
this it was reported in 1414 that among the belongings of William Murlee,
of Dunstable, who was burnt in that year, was found a list of the names of
all the monks of St. Albans,” obtained with a view to wiping them out.”
Stories and suspicions such as these were bound to strengthen the public
uneasiness, which was increased rather than lessened by the action of the
Church. Archbishop Arundel issued a mandate for the making of pro-
cessions and litanies on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the suppression
of heresy, and this was promulgated by the Bishop of London at Much
Hadham in January 1413-14." Those in the diocese of Lincoln were
admonished soon afterwards to abstain from being present at preaching at
unaccustomed places and times.” With such advertisement it was not
surprising to find a widespread curiosity as to the tenets of the Lollards, and
this, more than actual acceptance of their views, may account for the
distribution of their tracts ‘in every large house or inn’ of St. Albans,
Northampton and Reading.* At St. Albans, Oldcastle certainly had definite
adherents, for he hid in the house of a countryman and tenant of the abbey.
News of his presence leaked out, and the abbot’s household made an attempt
to arrest him, but merely succeeded in capturing his companion. At the
house they found various books, in some of which the illuminated figures of
the saints had been defaced.* There were, moreover, English books among
them such as those found at a later date among the belongings of John
Galewey, of the exempt jurisdiction of St. Albans.* Galewey was a parch-
ment maker, a trade which seems to have numbered many Lollards among
its members * ; he was cited before the spiritual court and excommunicated ;
possibly he abjured, for no further record of the case has been found.’7 In
the beginning of 1426-7 rumour was busy with the names of various
persons dwelling within the abbot’s jurisdiction and said to be enemies of
the faith. A synod was accordingly held in the church of St. Peter at
St. Albans. Ordinances were issued against false preachers, and incum-
bents were warned against permitting any to preach unless licensed or
expressly sent for the purpose.” A further ordinance was directed against
the reading or possession of suspicious books in the vulgar tongue.” The
three suspected persons were then examined. ‘Two sought purgation ; the
third, William Redhed, ‘malt man’ of Barnet, had owned the books and
made public abjuration.*

How solemn a thing abjuration was made can be gathered from that of
Thomas Hulle of Hertford. There in the church of All Saints one day in
June 1457 he appeared before the bishop himself and confessed that he had

38 Walsingham, Hist. Ang. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 298. 29 Ibid. 299.

30 «Quos ut fertur eliminasse proposuerat.’ 31 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. 57.
3? Linc. Epis. Reg. Repingdon, Memo. fol. 158.

33 Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 317. 34 Thid. 326.

35 Wills of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, Stoneham, fol. 73d. The document is not dated, but is
found with others of 1428-30.

38 cf. Gairdner, Lollards and the Reformation in Engl. i, 93 and n.; Devon, Issues of the Exch. i, 330-2.

37 His name does not occur among the Chancery Significations of Excommunication within the abbot’s
jurisdiction. 38 Amundesham, Annales Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 222. 89 Ibid. 224.

40 Ibid. 224-5. 41 [bid. 227.

308

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

‘ geven ayde, consell, help and favour unto oon Thomas Curteys to thentent
that he exercised and used nigromancy and heresy. Wherefore,’ he went on,
“TI abiure and forswer alle maner of heresies and errors and promyt that I
shal never in tyme to come gef ayde help favour nor socour nor counsell to
any that holdeth heresies or useth nigromancy in tyme tocome.’* Although
almost equal stress is here laid on magic and on heresy,* it is probable that
Hulle and Curteys were wizards rather than Lollards, their sin lying in
practice rather than opinion. How distorted the doctrines of the Lollards
might become in the rural mind may be judged from the views of a butcher
and a labourer of Standon who in 1452 were indicted for heresy. Accord-
ing to their neighbours, John Gable and John Curteys on 20 July of that year
voiced opinions against the Catholic faith and Holy Church. ‘There was
no god, they maintained, but the sun and the moon; the child born of
human parents had no need of baptism, nor should any Christian pay honour
to any image in a church.* The fate of these men is not known, but no
intimation has been found of their failure to render obedience to the bishop
of the diocese. Although the heretics might abjure when brought before
the courts, there must have been many cases of unorthodoxy that passed
unnoticed. Nor can the records be complete, for no cases are found as
having come before William Albone, William Wallingford and John
Werdale, whom Wheathampstead in August 1464 appointed commissioners
for the examination of heretics within the jurisdiction of the abbey of
St. Albans.“ In March 1476-7 Wallingford, as abbot, himself appointed
the prior, the archdeacon, the cellarer and two other officials to examine
heretics, and especially Henry Dyer of St. Albans.*”

The only other instance of heresy found in the western half of the county
was that of William Barou of Walden in the diocese of London. He was
accused of heresy, confessed, abjured and then again fell into error. Bishop
Kemp thereupon declared him a relapsed heretic, and in July 1467 notified
the Crown to this effect, calling on the civil power to execute judgement * ;
Barou must have been burnt. Such, also, must have been the fate of three
men ten years later ; John Hoddesdon of Amwell, William Browne of Ware
and Peter Boore, who had moved from Ware to Brentford, were declared to
be relapsed heretics and as such worthy of death in July 1477.” It would
seem from the form of the notification that they were associated in their
heresy, but no further mention of them has been found, though they, too,
doubtless paid the full penalty for their error.

Fragmentary as is the evidence, it seems to point to the conclusion that
Lollardy never became widespread in Hertfordshire. At St. Albans, the
most favourable centre, civil and ecclesiastical authority were united in the
hands of the abbot, who had every interest in its suppression and was loyally
served by his officials. From over the Buckinghamshire border, where
heresy was strong, infection was bound to spread, but the cases were

42 Linc. Epis. Reg. Chedworth, Memo. fol. 14. 43 cf. ibid. Alnwick, Memo. fol. 76.
44 Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 40, m. 4.
45 Tbid. 46 «Whethamstedes Reg.’ Reg. of St. Albans (Rolls Ser.), ii, 22.

47 Tbid. ii, 164. No further details concerning Dyer have been found. His name does not occur
among the Chancery Significations of Excommunication.

48 Chan. Significations of Excommunication, file 125. This and the following instance have been
kindly communicated by Miss E. J. B. Reid. 49 Tbid.

399

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

sporadic. Similarly, also, the instances at Ware and Standon should prob-
ably be traced to the activity of the Lollard teachers of Essex. It is notable
that, except for some parochial gossip at Hitchin in 1518-19," no more
is heard of heresy in Hertfordshire until the Reformation period.

The 16th century brought with it those changes that eventually pro-
duced the Church of England as it exists to-day. What various causes
contributed to the success of the movement towards reform, how much
influence can be ascribed to Lollard and Humanist, how much to economic
conditions, are points as difficult to determine as the extent of popular
acquiescence or movement in the change. Difficult as it is to ascertain the
general attitude towards the Church on the eve of the Reformation, the
condition of the churches themselves in one part of Hertfordshire can be
determined with some precision.

The articles of the inquiry made by Bishop Atwater in 1518-19 ® do
not seem to have been preserved, but they would appear to have dealt mainly
with the residence of the clergy, the letting of benefices and the condition
of the fabric and ornaments of the parish churches. At Hertingfordbury,
where the rectory was let to a layman, the obligation of the rector to repair
the chancel had been ignored just as it had been at Pirton, where, too, the
churchyard, the rector’s freehold, was not properly inclosed. At Ardeley
the chancel was ruinous, but the rector seems to have been resident.® It
may be that the word ‘ruinous’ has in these returns a purely technical
meaning, but that something more than repairs was needed in these cases
seems evident from other entries. Thus at Little Wymondley the glass
windows in the chancel were broken, at Bayford the windows were ruinous
and at Ickleford the glass windows of the nave were broken and the lead of
the chancel roof defective. At Knebworth the tiling of the chancel was in
bad repair. Much the same tale is told with regard to ornaments. At
Offley the almost incredible statement is made that the vicar had no vestment
in so far as alb, chasuble and fannel were concerned ; the cause of this
deficiency is perhaps implied in the remark that ‘ the vicar for the most part
serves at a hospital.’ That this was not a unique instance is shown by
the fact that at Graveley there was no alb, alb cloth, or portiforium, but the
cure was not served by the rector in person. At King’s Walden, where
the incumbent was perhaps non-resident,* they had no ‘ reasonable’ albs ; at
Ickleford the surplice was not asit should have been. Much the same story
was told of Letchworth, where the rector was non-resident, the curate
inefhicient and the books in need of repair.

With this report may be compared that made in 1530." The parishioners
of Gaddesden presented that their rector resided on another benefice in
Bedfordshire, and that the chancel was ruinous. The church of Aldenham
belonged to the Abbot and convent of Westminster, but they too had failed
to fulfil their obligations and the chancel was much ruined; that it was

50 Among those who abjured in 1511 were Andrew Randel of Rickmansworth, his wife and father,
Thomas Clerke and his wife of Ware, and ‘one Geldener about Hertford’ (Foxe, Acts and Monuments
[ed. 1846], iv, 226). :

51 Atwater’s Visit. 1518-19 (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 52 Thid.

§3 Thomas Bray was resident vicar here in 1526 (Salter, op. cit. 178). 54 « Usque.’

55 In 1526 it was in charge of a curate (Salter, op. cit. 176).

67 Visit. of Archd. of Huntingdon, 1530 (Linc. Epis. Reg.).

310

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

otherwise neglected according to modern ideas seems evident from the fact
that Robert Marshall," the vicar, had been non-resident for the past ten years.
The abbey of Westminster, impropriator of Ashwell, in spite of the return of
1518-19, cannot have undertaken any considerable repairs to that church,
for the parishioners now complained that the chancel was in such a state
that the rain dripped down upon the high altar. The rector of Therfield
was non-resident and a wall was in ruins. The chantry chapel at Albury
was badly in need of repair, but the duty probably devolved on the patron,
and at Totteridge, where the parishioners were responsible, the church-
wardens were ordered to repair the ruinous chapel against Michaelmas
following.

Presentments such as these seem to have had good results, for only one of
the churches needing repair in 15 30 was so returned in 1543. The exception
was Aldenham. The rectory had passed into the hands of a ‘ farmer,’ Robert
Duncombe, who apparently did nothing for the church, for the chancel was in
great ruin and need of repair, and the churchyard was badly inclosed so that
the beasts got in, nor would he repair ‘les mowndes’ there. The neglect of
Ardeley Church by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s was perhaps due to the
uncertainty of the times; moreover, the chancellor had sequestrated the issues
and the vicar was non-resident. The churchwardens described the chancel
as in the greatest ruin. Perhaps it was politics, too, that were responsible
for the neglect of the chapel of Flamstead. The chantry priest at this date
was Stephen Garrett, but he had let it at farm, and neither lived there nor
celebrated mass within its walls. It is, perhaps, allowable to anticipate at
this point and to compare these returns with that made at Cardinal Pole’s
metropolitical visitation of the Lincoln diocese in 1556. The chancels of
the churches of Rushden, Great Wymondley, Kensworth and Gaddesden
were all ruinous, and the priestsin each case were sequestrated. ‘The chapel
at Bayford was also in great need of repair.“ It is, indeed, only by side-
lights such as these that any estimate can be made of the effect of the religious
changes of the reign on the people at large. Even these were exceptional
cases of want of parochial care, and in the absence of complaints from the
much larger proportion of churches it may be assumed that they were
satisfactorily served.

The suppression of the religious houses led in Hertfordshire to no out-
break of rebellion such as that in Yorkshire or Lincolnshire. Between 1536
and 1539 the religious left their old homes without riot, and it seems probable
that many of the Hertfordshire religious houses had been quietly dissolved
before this date.” In July 1537 St. Albans and Hertford were considered
suitable resting-places for Henry VIII and his train on their way to Hunsdon,®
and no mention of discontent in the county has been found. ‘The Crown had
taken the place of the Papal See as supreme authority in matters ecclesiastical,
and in February 1538-9 Henry issued his proclamation concerning the
rites and ceremonies to be used in the Church of England.“ That the
changes of this time were looked upon as the excuse for relaxation of

58 cf, Salter, op. cit. 171. This return shows that there were a curate and two stipendiaries serving in

the church. 59 Visit. of Archd. of Huntingdon, 1543 (Linc. Epis. Reg.).
60 Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii (2), 404. 61 Tbid. 82 See above.
63, and P. Hen. VIII, xii (2), 275. 64 Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 28 d.

311

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

ecclesiastical discipline seems probable, for in April 1541 measures were
taken in the diocese of London to discover those who had failed to make the
usual confession to their parish curate during Lent.* The Government
attitude towards religious observances at this time may be judged from the
injunctions to the clergy issued by Bonner in 1542. One article deals with
the habit of ‘ persons of naughty life’ of confessing to priests who had no
cure of souls ; henceforth no testimonials of confession issued by unbeneficed
clergy were to be accepted, and the delinquents were to be refused the
communion until they had made confession to their own curates. Other
clauses forbade privy contracts of marriage, and this must have formed the
basis of one of the articles in the diocesan visitation of the following year,
when two persons at Graveley were presented for having married ‘de verbo.’ ”
The injunctions also provided that the marriage of persons previously married
should only be performed on the production of a certificate of the death of
the former spouse, and for the teaching of children ‘to reade Englysshe.’
No plays or interludes were henceforth to be given in a chapel or other
place where the sacraments were administered, and information was to be
given to the bishop’s official if any parishioners should enforce such games,
interludes or plays. The people were also warned against indulgence in
fleshly sins, against swearing and slandering, and ‘ from talking and Jangelinge
in the churche specyally in the tyme of dyvine servyce.’ This last fault
seems to have been not uncommon. In 1518-19 the churchwardens of
Kimpton had actually complained at the visitation that many babies ‘laugh,
cry and sing in church’ in service time,” and in 1543 three men of Stevenage
were presented as common chatterers in church.” Finally, the injunctions
declared that there was ‘a detestable and abhomynable custume universally
Reynyng in your parysshes the younge people and other yll desposed personnes
dothe use upon the Sondayes and hollydayes in tyme of dyvine service and
preaching the worde of God to resorte unto Alehouses, and theyre exercyseth
unlawfull games with greate swearyng, blasphemye and drunkennes and other
enormyties.” Persons were not to be admitted to taverns at such seasons
nor ‘to boulling and drynking.’ While the conduct of the laity was thus
passed in review, that of the clergy was also prescribed. Priests were not to
go in unseemly habit ‘ with unlawful tonsures, wearing armour and weapons,’
nor were they to play unlawful games or frequent alehouses with light
company. Every week the curate was to study a chapter of the New
Testament,” and he was also to ‘exercise himself’ in the ‘Institutions of a
Christian Man.’ The non-resident incumbent was required to procure royal
licence for plurality and non-residence, and no unlicensed priest might keep
the cure in his absence.

The Government was having ample demonstration of the power of the
pulpit in London,” and the regulations now laid down were particularly
stringent as to preaching. Every preacher must have royal or episcopal
licence. Twice a quarter curates were to declare what were the seven
deadly sins and the nature of the Ten Commandments. The injunctions

85 Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 19. 86 Ibid. fol. 38 ; this is partially printed in Wilkins, Conci/ia, iii, 864.
87 Visit. of Archd. of Huntingdon, 1543 (Linc. Epis. Reg.).

68 Atwater’s Visit. 1518-19 (Linc. Epis. Reg.).

69 Visit. of Archd. of Huntingdon, 1543 (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 70 cf. below, p. 323.

71 See V.C.H. London, i, 283, &c.

312

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

seem to imply frequent if not weekly preaching. ‘The subjects were to be
the value of the sacraments, the meaning of the service and prayers, and, on
feast days, the teaching of the particular festival. The preacher was to
expound the gospel or epistle of the day, affirming nothing for which he
could not show authority in some ancient writer and avoiding rehearsals of
any opinion not allowed for the intent to reprove the same ; especially was
he warned against preaching sermons made by other men during the last
200 or 300 years. The injunctions finished with a list of prohibited books,
for the civil and ecclesiastical authorities were striving busily to prevent the
spread of reformed doctrines of the Continental type. A proclamation of
May 1541 had required all churchwardens to supply themselves with a Bible
of the largest and greatest volume to be had in every church by All Saints’
Day.” For every month’s delay after that feast the penalty was to be 4os.,
divided equally between the Crown and the informer.” At least one
prosecution for neglect was started, for William Snowe of Aspenden laid
information that Percival Lago, the rector, and Thomas Bele, the church-
warden of that place, had, for the period of one whole month, failed to have
in the church any Bible in English written or printed. The defendants
maintained that the prosecution was vexatious and seem to have established
their case. Although there is nothing in the pleading to indicate that
Snowe was of reforming tendencies it is possible that Lago was of the older
school of thought, for he was rector of Aspenden in 1526.”

Parties were evidently forming even in country parishes by 1543, but
there is nothing in the Lincoln visitation of that date to show that the
reformers were in favour. At Stevenage a Richard Lawton was presented
for not attending service on Sundays and festivals, but only one other case
can be put down to what may be called the ecclesiastical politics of the day.
On Thursday in Whitsun week Christopher Falconer (Fokencr) was cele-
brating mass in his church of Little Munden. For some reason there was a
great disturbance, talking and tumult among the congregation at the most
solemn moment of the service, and such was the uproar that his attention
was distracted and he failed to elevate the sacrament above his head for the
devotion of the people. At the visitation he was charged with this and sub-
mitted himself to correction. His public penance was fixed for the following
Sunday ; after the procession or litany he was to carry in his hand a candle
1 lb. in weight, and then at the time of mass to place it upon the candlestick
on the high altar before the elements.”

Such monitions show how the old forms of service were still retained
in 1543. In June of the next year Henry VIII began his imposition of a
new liturgy and ‘set forthe certayne godly prayers and suffrages in our
natyve Englishe tonge’ to be used as a litany.” In 1545 an Act was
passed dissolving the chantries,” and in January 1546-7 Henry died. The
churchwardens’ accounts of Bishop’s Stortford throw some light upon the
happenings of the next few months. At Easter the usual ceremonies seem

72 Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 856.

73 Ibid. 7 Memo. R. (Q.R.), Mich. 36 Hen. VIII, m. 21 d. 7 Salter, op. cit. 178.

76 Visit. of Archd. of Huntingdon, 1543 (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 7 Wilkins, Concilia, iti, 870.

78 The clergy list appended to the Visitation of the Archd. of Huntingdon for 1543 gives the names of
all chantry priests in the Hertfordshire parishes of the Lincoln diocese.

4 313 40

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

to have been performed, the Easter sepulchre was erected and taken down
and the common lights tended.” Then came the time of questioning,
perhaps coincident with the publication in July of the Injunctions of
Edward VI. The clause providing for the removal of all shrines, pictures
and monuments of superstition was somewhat vaguely worded ; it lett, a6
was perhaps intended, a good deal to the discretion of the churchwardens
and local feeling. At Bishop’s Stortford the churchwardens in perplexity
commissioned John Laxton to hire a horse and ride to London ‘for to vew
and se other churches ther.’ ® The result was that on his return men were
employed for two days in ‘ takyng downe of the thyngs in the Roode loft.’
With great foresight the churchwardens then sold not merely their two
‘tabernacles’ but a silver-gilt pax, two pairs of silver-gilt censers with their
incense-boat, two massive silver cruets, a silver-gilt cross and stand and two
chalices and a paten of silver. The vestments were sold in the follow-
ing year and made the large sum of £6. The Prayer Book was issued
under a royal proclamation of 8 March 1547-8, and the churchwardens
bought two copies. The Government contended that the book was no new
service, but ‘none other but the old . . . the self-same words in English,
which were in Latin, saving a few things taken out’™; at Stortford, where
there was a choir, the careful churchwardens kept their old books, and with
the vicar’s consent altered ‘the servys hought of lattyne in to Ynglys.’®
This practice was probably widely adopted, for in December 1549 a royal
mandate was issued for all the old service books to be called in, burnt,
defaced and destroyed.“ At Stortford the transposition was unsatisfactory,
and in 1550 at least three attempts at a successful rendering were made by
the command of the vicars and others, the last being completed in time for
use on Trinity Sunday. Marbeck’s The Booke of Common Prater Noted
appeared in this year, and may have been the ‘bowke of the last servys’
bought in London; the churchwardens also acquired two psalters, two
‘newe bokys . . . calleyd the kyngs boke of the last settyng fourth,’ and four
manuscript ‘ bookes for to have in the choire.’ *

Meanwhile royal commissioners were busy in the diocese of London,
but only fragmentary notices of their activities have been found." The
commission which sat at Ware on 19 March 1549-50 was no doubt
that issued to the sheriffs and justices of the peace for the county on
15 February 1549 to make inventories of the goods of every church and
chapel, and was preliminary to the general commission of April 1552."

Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, and on 3 August Queen Mary entered
London. One of her earliest acts was to restore Bonner to the see of
London, Ridley being lodged in the Tower. The Latin service, though
adopted in some cases at an earlier date, was officially brought back into use
on 21 December of the same year. The churchwardens’ accounts of Bishop’s
Stortford may again serve to illustrate the changes effected in the church

79 Glasscock, Rec. of St. Michael's, 46. 80 Ibid. 47. 81 Thid. 49.

82 Foxe, Acts and Monum. (ed. 1846), v, 734. ®3 Glasscock, op. cit. 51.

84 Cardwell, Doc. Annals, xx; Stat. 3 & 4 Edw. VI, cap. 10. 5 Glasscock, op. cit. 51.
86 Thid, 87 Ibid. cf. p. 50.

*8 dts of P.C. 1550-2, pp. 228, 467; 1552-4, p. 101. The inventories of 1552 are printed by
Cussans, Invent. of Furniture and Ornaments remaining in all the parish churches in Hertfordshire.

314

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

before March 1553-4. The altar had to be ‘ made up,’ the rood made,
two crosses, perhaps of wood, were bought, and a cross shaft painted. Both
a holy water stoup and a pix were provided, and also ‘an elle of cloth
for the pixe’; an incense boat cost 16d., and two ‘staundes at the highe
aulter, 12¢. Possibly the vicar himself had the necessary vestments,” for
the only other purchase of stuff was of seven ells of holland for the priest’s
surplice. The prices given for the various articles indicate that no attempt
was made to provide more than the cheapest materials, and the only adorn-
ment attempted was ‘the coloring of the walle’ (6¢.) and the providing of
4 yards of fringe ‘and the sowing of y' apon the sacrament cloth.’ Books
were, of course, an expensive item: 12s. were given to ‘Mr. Vicar for a
mas bok,’ 22s. for ‘3 bokes more,’ and 4s. 6d. for a ‘manuell and a
proossesioner.’ *

There was doubtless much to be done in the diocese of London before
it could be restored to any semblance of its old condition. In the diocese
of Lincoln Mary’s advisers saw that their policy would be ineffective as long
as it remained under the guidance of Taylor, and he was accordingly deprived
on 15 March 1553-4.” In this same month Mary issued her Injunctions™
directing the bishops to declare deprived ‘all such persons from their benefices
or ecclesiastical promotions who... have married™ .. . or otherwise
notably and slanderously disordered or abused themselves.’ The profits of
their promotions were to be sequestrated, but the bishops were desired to
use more lenity and clemency to widowers and to such as agreed to a
separation by mutual consent.” This last would séem asomewhat precarious
arrangement, and it certainly proved so in the cases of John Yngvey and
Thomas Goldere, priests living at Kensworth in 1556. According to report
the separation was not complete ; they were accordingly suspended and fled.”
It was perhaps under this rule that four more deprivations in Hertfordshire
parishes of the London diocese were made in the first half of 1554. John
Synge was deprived at Bushey ; his successor Thomas Bentley was instituted
on 5 May,” but must have himself died, resigned, or been deprived before
the autumn, when George Chapman was rector.“ At Broxbourne, also,
Thomas Banister, vicar since 1549, was deprived, and the same fate- met
James Lodge, vicar of Braughing, and Richard Freman, rector of Stocking
Pelham.” Before September Thomas Butler, M.A., vicar of Barkway, and
Alexander Stooks, vicar of Royston since 1540, had been deprived.’®
Nicholas Browne, B.A., who had been rector of Little Hormead for thirty-
seven years, was deprived of this living and allowed to resign his vicarage at
Great Hormead.’ In the diocese of Lincoln the same thing was going on ;
in May Robert Manners and John Smarte were admitted respectively to the
livings of Datchworth and Wallington, both vacant by deprivation? In
August Richard Preston was instituted to Rushden, which was ‘ by lawful

89 Glasscock, op. cit. 50-3. 80 « A cloth for the pryst hed’ was bought in 1554 (ibid. 53).
91 Thid. 50-3. 92 Rymer, Foedera, XV, 370. 93 Wilkins, Concilia, iv, 89.

* The marriage of the clergy was legalized in Feb. 1 548-9 (Stat. 2 & 3 Edw. I, cap. 21).

%5 Wilkins, loc. cit. % Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii (2), 404. 97 Newcourt, Repert. i, 816.

8 Visit. of Archd. of Middlesex, 1554 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

99 Newcourt, op. cit. i, 812, 808, 867. Only one resignation is shown in this period (ibid. 864).
100 Tbid. 803, 867. This date is supplied by the Visitation of 1554.

1 Newcourt, op. cit. i, 836, 838. 2 Linc. N. and Q. v, 228, 229.

315

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

means vacant.’® In the late autumn there were more deprivations ; Robert
Nebbe was turned out of his living of Ayot St. Lawrence,* the rector of
Puttenham was deprived, and Thomas Chambers was instituted rector
of Westmill, which is merely described as ‘ vacant.’ * Thomas Casse of
Digswell was also deprived in this year.® ——

In September 1554 Bonner began his visitation of the diocese of London.
The injunctions issued to the clergy provided that no married or heretical
priest might hold a benefice, that no priest from another diocese might
serve a cure without first producing letters testimonial under the epis-
copal seal, and that every non-resident must supply a ‘sufficient, honest
and able Priest’ to serve his cure.’ While such regulations were aimed
at the suppression of the new doctrine among the clergy, provision was
also made for the instruction of the parishioners. The desire for sermons
was to be met by the reading of homilies on every Sunday and holy day,
and at least four times a year the clergy were to ‘declare set forth and
instruct the proper the true meaning of the ceremonies of the Church ’__i.e.
of the giving of bread and of holy water, the bearing of candles on Candlemas
Day, the giving of hallowed ashes by the priest to the people on Ash
Wednesday, the bearing of palms on Palm Sunday, the creeping to the cross
on Good Friday, and the bearing of the pax in church during the cele-
bration of mass.° The articles of inquiry® were very minute and
postulated that the state of the churches and clergy was the same as in
the days of Henry VIII, the legislation of his son’s reign being ignored.
Unfortunately no return has been found, but some details can be learnt from
the clergy list drawn up at this time.” The rector of Buckland and the
curate of Sawbridgeworth were ordered to produce their letters testimonial,
and at this last place John Johnson, priest and schoolmaster, and one Peverell,
a priest, were found to have married.

The visitation list is notable as an official statement of the number of
livings vacant in this part of Hertfordshire in the last months of 1554. The
livings of Barkway and Royston remained vacant until January 1554-5,
while that of Little Hormead was not filled until April." A vicar of Great
Hormead, however, was instituted in October.” The vicarage of Hexton
was vacant, and the churchwardens of Norton presented that they had had
no vicar since Midsummer. Queen Mary’s ordinances had provided that
‘ where priests do want ’ the bishops were to take order for the parishioners ‘ to
repair to the next parish for divine service,’ or to arrange for one curate to
serve several parishes in turn. How far this was carried out in Hertford-
shire was not known, but the total number of vacancies was not great and
no very serious inconvenience can have been caused. ‘The deprivation must,
however, have caused much ill-feeling, and this seems to have been
strengthened by Bonner’s inquiries and conduct at the visitation. The story
told by Foxe’ of his progress through the county has been frequently
repeated and may well represent, even if it does not reproduce, the facts.

8 Linc. N. and Q. vi, 9. 4 Ibid. v, 206. 5 Ibid. 205, 206, perhaps by resignation.
6 Ibid. 174. 7 Iniunctions geven in the visitation of . . . Edmunde Bishop of London.
8 Ibid. 9 The articles are printed in Strype, Ecch Mem. iii (2), 217.

10 Visit. of the Archd. of Middlesex, 1554 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). no.
11 Newcourt, Repert. i, 803, 838, 867. 12 Tbid. 836. 8 Visit. cit.
14 Wilkins, Coacilia, iv, 90. 1 Foxe, Acts and Monum. (ed. Townsend), vi, 562-4.

316

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The ancient heresy laws, abolished by Somerset, were revived in
December 1554, and in 1555 the punishment of death by burning was
again enforced. Hertfordshire was singularly free from these dreadful
spectacles ; it may be that its general conformity with the religious fashion
was considered warranty of orthodox faith. On 31 August ‘whent out of
Nugatt a man of Essex unto Barnett for herese, by the shereyff of Medyllsex,
to borne ther’'*; he was William Hale of Thorp,” and had no apparent
connexion with this county. Inthe same month Thomas Fust was burned
at Ware.” Of George Tankerfield, their fellow-martyr, more is known.
He was a Yorkshireman under thirty, who had settled in London as a
cook.” He was arrested on a charge of heresy in February 1555, and was
examined and condemned with Hale and Fust.% He was sent down to
St. Albans for execution and was lodged at the Crosskeys Inn. A ‘great
concourse of people’ had come from curiosity to see him, but opinion was
divided in his favour." The execution was not until the afternoon of
26 August, and Tankerfield met death with great resolution; ‘there was a
certain knight by, who went unto Tankerfield, and took him by the hand
and said, ‘Good brother, be strong in Christ” ; this he spake softly ; and
Tankerfield said, “‘O sir, I thank you, I am so; I thank God.” ‘Then fire
was set unto him.’*” The government could not hide from itself the
unpopularity of its religious policy and redoubled its efforts at repression.
In 1557 royal injunctions were issued to Bonner and his fellow-commissioners
to search for heretics and heretical books, to deal with persons who would
not attend mass or the litany, and with those withholding goods and lands
from the Church.* How easy it was to excite suspicion or fall a victim to
malice is evident from the order issued to all vicars and curates in April of
this year.* The clergy were directed to make ‘the beste and mooste
diligente searche ye canne concerninge all and singular persons within every
your severall parisshes who obstinatelye at any tyme hearetofore have or
heareafter shall commonlye absente thereselves from there severall parisshe
churches and in comminge thither doo not heare mattens, masse and even-
songe, goo in procession, make there confession to the preiste, receave the
blessed sacramente of the altare at any time appointed and accustomed for the
same or doo not reverently use the ceremonies of the churche as in takinge
hollye breade, hollye water, kyssinge the paxe,’ &c. Delinquents were to
appear before the bishop.”

On 22 March 1556 Cardinal Pole was consecrated Archbishop of
Canterbury,” and at Easter he began his metropolitical visitation of the
diocese of Lincoln. The discovery of the Dudley conspiracy to kidnap the
queen and set Elizabeth on her throne was serving to emphasize the danger
of obscure meetings such as the heretics were forced to frequent. All the
articles of Pole’s visitation,” with but three exceptions, were accordingly
bent towards the discovery of heretics, malcontents, or those disobedient to
the ecclesiastical law. The remaining inquiries dealt with the condition of
the fabric of the church, chancel and dwelling-house, the insistent question

16 Machyn, Diary (Camden Soc.), 94. 7 Foxe, Acts and Monum. (ed. 1847), vii, 370.
18 Tbid. 19 Thid. 343. 0 Ibid. 370. "1 [bid. 345. 2 Ibid. 346.

23 Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 425-6. 24 Thid. fol. 419. 75 Thid.

26 Stubbs, Reg. Sacrum Angl. 27 Printed by Strype, Eec/. Mem. ii (2), 411.

317

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

of residence and the number of vacant cures.” The presentments for Hert-
fordshire are neither numerous nor important. If they are to be believed as
the whole truth the people of this district practised the old religious manners
and devotions with little hesitancy. At Hatfield, indeed, Agnes Mery had
not received the sacrament at Easter and was put to penance. There was
more difficulty about the observance of Candlemas. At Hemel Hempstead
Robert Rosse had stayed away from church on that day; at St. Andrews,
Hertford, Robert Webbe refused to carry a candle; at Abbots Langley
Anthony Bonning did the same, while Alexander Allison told the vicar
roundly ‘that a wiser vicar than yee will not require them.’ .

In the face of presentments such as these it is curious to find that a
parish church in December 1557 could lack alb, surplice, light before the
rood, the image of the patron saint and a lantern, and that the archidiaconal
court imposed the comparatively light penalty of 40s. should these not be
obtained by Christmas Day. Yet this was the state of affairs at Bushey.
At Newnham ™ even more necessary things seem to have been wanting, but
both here and at Norton the churchwardens were given until the Annun-
ciation to make good the deficiencies.”

Queen Mary did not live another year, and with her death came the
restoration of the English service and the reformers’ triumph. By Elizabeth’s
Injunctions * issued in 1559 no altar was to be ‘ taken down but by the over-
syght of the curate of the churche, and the churchwardens, or one of them
at the least, wherein no riotous or disordred maner to be used’; moreover,
‘the holy table in every church’ was to ‘ be decently made and set in the
place where the altar stood, and there commonly covered as thereto belongith,
and as shall be appointed by the visitors.’ At Bishop’s Stortford the altars
stood until at least March 1558-~—g, and the rood-loft remained for another
year. Indeed, although many of the rood-lofts were then destroyed, the
general order for their destruction was not given until 1561, when the
archdeacon directed that the rood-loft at Bushey must be destroyed before
the following September.*

On the question of the clerical deprivations at the beginning of the
reign of Elizabeth the evidence is unfortunately inconclusive. It has been
recently remarked ” that owing to the break in the registers for the diocese
of Lincoln no less than thirty-five Hertfordshire parishes ‘ show lacunae in the
lists of their incumbents just for this period’ of 1559-71, but the estimate
of the number of deprivations must necessarily be imperfect.

The Act of Supremacy received the royal assent on 8 May 1559,”
while the Act of Uniformity ® passed its third reading on 28 April and came
into force on 24 June of that year. To these as an exposition were added
the Royal Injunctions drawn up by Cecil.*° The visitation at which these
were promulgated followed the precedent of 1547, and was essentially civil

28 For the reports on the fabric see above, p. 311; the last two questions seem to have been ignored
(Strype, op. cit. ii [2], 404, &c.). 29 Strype, loc. cit. ;

30 Hale, Precedents in Causes of Office, 78. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 77.

33 Iniunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie, 1559.

34 Glasscock, op. cit. 54.
35 Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, 175 n., 186. 36 Hale, Precedents in Causes of Office, 78.

37 Birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 199. 38 Stat. 1 Eliz. cap. 1. 39 [bid. cap. a.
40 Iniunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie, 1559; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 41-70.

318

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

in character. It was conducted by commissioners ; those for the diocese of
London included eighteen laymen, local interest being represented by Sir
Ralph Sadleir of Standon. For Hertfordshire the visitors sat at Bishop’s
Stortford." Dealing with the Church from the point of view of order the
questions put were not generally concerned with doctrinal points, the most
important in this respect being that which inquired whether the clergy
ministered ‘the Holy Communion in any other wise than after such form
and manner as is set forth by the common authority of the queen’s majesty
and the Parliament.’* The form of the question opened up serious difficulties,
but the recent course of events had made even the Marian clergy recognize
the power of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical. Nevertheless, only nineteen
out of twenty-nine beneficed clergy in the parishes within the archdeaconry
of Middlesex subscribed.* These results show that the clergy were not
prepared for the changes wrought, had not indeed yet decided as to their
import. Such a result was not satisfactory to the Government, and William
Chedsey, who had been made Archdeacon of Middlesex in 1556, was
deprived in 1560. Chedsey had from the first been strongly opposed to the
new movement, and in 1559 had taken part in the Westminster Disputation,
the other representatives of the old learning being Watson, Bishop of Lincoln,
Scott, Bishop of Chester, Bayne, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield,“ White,
Bishop of Winchester, Henry Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, Nicholas Harpsfield,
Archdeacon of Canterbury, and Alban Langdale, Archdeacon of Lewes.
The removal of John Dugdale, Archdeacon of St. Albans since 1557, and
of Anthony Draycott, Archdeacon of Huntingdon since 1543, placed the
clergy throughout this county under men whose sympathies were with the
reformers. The new Archdeacon of Middlesex was Alexander Nowell,
son of a Lancashire squire and one of the best scholars that Oxford had
given to the advanced school of the day. Asa prebendary of Westminster
he had received licence to preach in 1551, and had soon been forced to
leave the country. Though an exile in Strasburg and Frankfort he did not
join the extreme party,* and on Elizabeth’s accession he returned to England.
His moderation and scholarship recommended him to Cecil, and in 1559 he
was one of the two clerics who with twenty-nine laymen visited the dioceses
of Lincoln, Oxford, Peterborough and Coventry and Lichfield.” Thus when
appointed archdeacon in 1560 he had a full knowledge of current opinion
among the local clergy.

One of his first proceedings must have been the deprivation of Richard
Kingston, pluralist rector of St. Anne and St. Agnes, London,” and of
Aldenham. Kingston had not subscribed in 1559, but he alone of the
Hertfordshire clergy seems to have been deprived immediately. The next
victim was John Bartlett, vicar of Bishop’s Stortford. Bartlett was probably
well known as an adherent of the old forms, for he had been collated to the
living by Bonner in 1559 on the deprivation of Richard Fletcher.” He

41 Gee, op. cit. 96. # Ibid. 67.

43 Tbid. 102 et seq., where the lists for the dioceses of London and Lincoln are printed. That for
London is probably complete, that for Lincoln is certainly defective. There are, however, ninety-five
subscribers whose preferment is not specified.

# Strype, Annals, i (1), 128-9.

45 cf. A Brief Discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford in Germany.

46 Strype, Aunals, 1 (1), 247. 47 Hennessy, Novum Repert. 95. 38 Newcourt, Repert. i, 896,

319

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

subscribed in 1559," but must have repented, for his successor, Thomas
Sympson, was instituted in March 1560-1.% To these names must be
added that of G. Bullock, whose successor was instituted to Munden in 1560,

Later in this year a visitation was held in the deanery of Braughing,"
where the old learning appears to have been particularly strong. Of the
thirty-two livings within the deanery three were vacant ; there were thus
twenty-nine incumbents answerable, and of these three were absent,” pre-
sumably for reasonable cause, and four refused to put in an appearance.
These four were John Bendall, vicar of Ware, Richard Cotton, vicar or
Braughing, John Hopper, rector of Reed, and Robert Yngham, rector of
Stocking Pelham. ‘The position of Ware on the Great North Road and its
commercial activity made the living of considerable importance, and it was
obviously necessary that the incumbent should conform with the laws.
The living belonged to Trinity College, Cambridge, which had presented
Bendall in 1559. He subscribed in the same year," but in 1561 he
refused to make an appearance. Pressure was probably brought to bear upon
him, and he must have conformed, for in November he was instituted to
the vicarage of Latton, and in 1563 became rector of St. John the Baptist,
Dowgate.® The case of Richard Cotton of Braughing proved more serious.
In July 1554, on the deprivation of James Lodge, the cure was given to
Nicholas Aspinall. He subscribed in 1559,” but resigned this living at the
end of the year, possibly on promotion, for in 1562 he was instituted to
the living of Stepney, of which he was deprived two years later.® His
successor at Braughing was probably much of his way of thought. Richard
Cotton was instituted in December 1559,” though his name appears on none
of the extant lists of subscriptions. No comment appears in the visitation
list,” but his name has been crossed out and that of William Lyon written
above. William Lyon was instituted 14 October 1562 on the deprivation
of Richard Cotton. He was probably well known as a ‘safe’ man, and
already enjoyed important preferment, having been rector of Mile End since
August 1560 and of Holy Trinity, Colchester, since February 1561-2."
John Hopper, unlike Cotton, was a graduate ; he was instituted to the living
of Barkway in January 1554-5 °' on the deprivation of Thomas Butler, and
was thus probably strong in his opposition to the new movement. In
1556 he became rector of Reed, holding both livings. He subscribed in
1559, but failed to put in an appearance at the visitation of 1561," when
he was noted as a pluralist. His deprivation followed, but it is noteworthy
that here as at Braughing no institution was made until the autumn of 1562,”
and it is possible that pluralism rather than recusancy was the cause, for

49 Gee, op. cit. 103, where the name is given as ‘’T. Bartleton.’ 50 Newcourt, Repert. i, 896.

61 Visit. of Grindal, 1561 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). No indication of the actual date is given.

52 Those absent were John Barnes of Wymondley, — Dobbinson of Barley and William Preston of
Hunsdon ; they all retained their livings. Preston was instituted in 1557 and Dobbinson in 1559 (New-
court, Repert. i, 800, 840).

53 Tbid. ii, 904. 54 Gee, op. cit. 103.

55 Newcourt, Repert. ii, 367.

58 Ibid. i, 372. Robert Kaye was instituted to Ware in December 1567. .

57 Gee, op. cit. 124. 58 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. iil, 157.

69 Gee, op. cit. 253. Nicholas Aspinall was rector of Little Hormead and of Ealing in 1576 (Lambeth
MS. xii, no. 1). 60 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 81 Visit. of Grindal, 1561 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

€2 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 63 Newcourt, Repert. ii, 420, 182. 64 Thid. 803. :

6° Gee, op. cit. 105. 66 Visit. of Grindal, 1561 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). 687 Newcourt, Repert. ii, 862.

320

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Hopper seems to have retained his living of Barkway for some time longer,
as his successor there was not instituted until March 1563-4 ‘on the
resignation of John Hopper.’ It seems probable, however, that the patron
of Barkway was in favour of the old rather than the new learning, for the
new vicar, Thomas Chambers, was deprived, his successor being instituted in
1565.% The only other recalcitrant person was Robert Yngham, who was
instituted to the living of Stocking Pelham in 1559,” but evidently hesitated
in 1561 ; that his objections were overcome may be inferred from the fact
that he retained the living until his death some eighteen years later." To
these five deprivations must be added that of Robert Manners, parson of
Watton at Stone and prebendary of Lincoln. In 1562 he was described as
an ‘unlearned priest” and was confined to Baldock ‘or within twenty miles
compass about the same’”; but of his case, as possibly of others in the
archdeaconry of Huntingdon, no details are procurable owing to the gaps in
the Registers. While such returns as exist lack many of the details
supplied from other archdeaconries, the return of vacant livings made in
1565 mentions only three Hertfordshire benefices ® ; the rectory of Throcking
had been vacant for four years and was served by a curate ; the vicarage of
Little Munden had been vacant for two months, the patron was not known
and the fruits were yet untaken ; while at St. Ippollitts the vicarage, in the
gift of Trinity College, Cambridge, had been vacant for a year, and the
parishioners were taking the fruits for the use of the curate. In no case is
the cause of vacancy stated.

In the absence, therefore, of evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed
that the majority of the Marian clergy in this county accepted the Elizabethan
settlement. That there was a great deal of ‘movement’ at this time is
undeniable,” but its cause should probably be sought in directions other than
that of sympathy with the old order. From 1564, indeed, the non-conformist
generally looked to Geneva for guidance, though Whitehall was the only
authorized director. From the beginning Elizabeth and her councillors
recognized the danger of the advanced views advocated by the returned
exiles, who on their part took full advantage of the popular reaction. The
growth of Puritanism in Hertfordshire during the first twenty years of
Elizabeth’s reign is not easy to trace owing to the lack of visitations for that
period, but Puritanism was probably the cause of certain deprivations. The
rector of Radwell was deprived and Benjamin Chambers admitted in March
1571-2; in March 1573-4 the church was again vacant by the deprivation

88 Newcourt, Repert. ii, 803.

69 Gee, op. cit. 290. Thomas Chambers, rector of Westmill some year: later, refused to subscribe to
the Articles (Lambeth MS. xii, no. 2). 7 Newcourt, Repert. i, 867.

1 Ibid. In 1576 he was described as grave, a priest, of no degree and but slightly acquainted with
Latin or theology (Lambeth MS. xii, no. 1).

72 Gee, op. cit. 182.

73 §. P. Dom. Eliz. Add. xii, 108. Of the seven other vacancies in the archdeaconry six were in the
patronage of the Crown.

74 A list of 1592 for the archdeaconry of St. Albans (Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 82-8) shows
that of its twenty-three clergy one had been instituted in each of the years 1560, 1572, 1574, 1581, 1582,
1584, 1586 and 1587, two in 1588, 1589 and 1590, three in 1591 and 1592. The only representative
of the old order was John Amery, vicar of Codicote, instituted 1546. The vicar of Redbourn would
produce no instruments. Of the twenty-nine clergy in the deanery of Braughing in 1561 (Visit. of Grindal,
1561 [Lond. Epis. Reg.]) ten were returned as beneficed in 1576 (Lambeth MS. xii, no. 1).

7 Linc. Epis. Rec.—Bp. Cooper—(Linc. Rec. Soc.), 327.

4 321 41

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

of the Puritan ® Thomas Hewlet” (sic) or Hewett. The rectory of Cottered
ed in April 1574 on the deprivation or cession of Blorencius
Stephenson.” The rector of Aspenden was deprived before May 1575.
In January 1579-80 the vicarage of Hemel Hempstead was vacant through
the cession of John Gibson,” and the living was given to Richard Gawton,
afterwards well known as a Puritan leader." In March 1582-3 Thomas
Noble, M.A., was admitted vicar of All Saints’, Hertford, then vacant by the
cession of George Turner.” Ina visitation of the archdeaconry of St. Albans
in 1574 Thomas Holden, vicar of St. Peter's, 1s the only incumbent
stigmatized as a ‘schismatic.’ That he was merely a Puritan of somewhat
advanced views may be adduced from the fact that in 1586 he was a com-
missioner for the examination of unlearned ministers. The other schismatics
mentioned in this return were Nicholas Colborne of Watford and Philip
Golde of Rickmansworth, neither of whom appears to have been a member
of either university or in orders. Philip Golde denied the accusation. The
very fact of their presentment seems to demonstrate, however, that Puritanism
had not yet gained a general hold upon the people.

But though this part of the country seems to have been little disturbed,
elsewhere the new ideas were causing much anxiety to the authorities of
both Church and State. The advanced party had quickly put the Govern-
ment on the defensive. Though the Puritans in the Lower House of
Convocation had been defeated in 1563 on proposals in various matters of order,
their denunciations were by no means confined to the signing with the cross
at baptism, the kneeling at the administration of the communion or vestarian
matters. One of the defeated proposals had been for the abolition of
dispensations for pluralities and non-residence.* A ‘supplication’ to the
queen made at the beginning of her reign complains also of cures being held
by those that ‘yet be of perverse and corrupt judgement and not hitherto
reformed,’ *’ of ‘the placing and admittance of Parsons, Vicars and of other
Ecclesiastical ministers to have special cure and charge of our soules which be
so ignorant in all the holie scripture . . . that they cannot instruct and
teach us,’ and further of ‘the admittance of such to have cure of soules,
which be learned onelie in the Civill and Canon Lawes.’ * There can be
no doubt that dispensations and clerical ignorance were serious evils, and
the Puritans were probably backed by public opinion in their efforts at
reform, for it is noticeable that while at the beginning of the reign questions

was sequestrat

7 Strype, Annals, i (1), 512.
7 bid. 67. ‘There is, perhaps, some confusion here.

‘8 Ibid. 67, 110. He had been instituted in April 1567 (ibid. 328 n.). 79 Thid. 68.
80 Ibid. 70. 81 Tbid. ; Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 426.
82 Linc. Epis. Rec—Bp. Cooper—(Linc. Rec. Soc.), 72. 83 Visit. 1574 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

84 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 53.

“5 A curious incident at Watford throws some light on the general feeling at this time. In November
1575 the churchwardens, schoolmaster and sacristan were summoned before the archdeacon to explain how
the font had been pulled down. They declared that they had not noticed it. The case was adjourned for
inquiries, which were especially to be made by Nicholas Colborne ‘because he kept the schole in the church.’
One witness declared that ‘ beinge in the church with the vicar he perceyved that the font was ryven and in
decay where upon he tould the same unto the vicar, then the vicar came to it and stirred it with his hand.’
Before 24 November 1575 the font had been restored (Hale, Precedents in Causes of Office, 79). Henry
Edmunds was then vicar (Urwick, op. cit. 348 ; cf Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 142).

°° Strype, Annals, i, 335; Burnet, Hist. of Reformation (ed. Peacock), vi, 480; Morrice MS.
(Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 149. 87 For this charge in relation to Hertfordshire see above.

88 Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 149.

322

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

of order held the first place in episcopal inquiries, by 1576 much more
attention was paid to the personnel of the clergy.

Difficult as it is to trace the early history of the various incumbents,
the official figures make it clear that the standard of learning was not high.
In 1576 but nine of the twenty-nine beneficed clergy in the deanery of
Braughing were graduates; of the rest three knew no Latin, while eleven
had but a slight or middling knowledge of the language. Still more serious
was the fact that eighteen had only a middling or slight knowledge of
theology.” In the archdeaconry of St. Albans in 1583 the proportion of
graduates to non-graduates was five to twelve, twelve of the whole twenty-
three being learned in the Latin tongue.” A return made somewhat later
for the archdeaconry of Huntingdon shows that thirty of the seventy-seven
incumbents in this part of the country were graduates, but gives no particulars
of their learning.” Such figures were ample justification of the Puritan
outcry, and the authorities were bound to seek a remedy.

For one part of the diocese of London very full particulars of the
remedial measures have been preserved, and it is evident that the action
taken in the archdeaconry of St. Albans must have been common to the rest
of the diocese, though of course no such inference is possible in the case of
those parishes within the diocese of Lincoln. A visitation was held at
Barnet in April 1582, and an order was made ‘that every minister of this
Jurisdiction being no preacher or mr. of Artes shall monethly geve under his
owne hand an exposition of one Chapter of St. Pawle to the Romans begenninge
at the first Chapter and so goeinge forwarde monethly, unto the next preacher
adioyneninge unto him of this Jurisdiction, and so to be delivered quarterly
unto the Judge . . . to thatend that it may appeare how they have profyted
in their studyes.’* The order seems to have been repeated in 1583, but
does not appear to have been very effectual, for in April 1585 the bishop
required the archdeacon to send him “a list of all such as shall be notoriously
negligent or wilfully disobedient’ thereto.”

In July 1586 the bishop went on visitation through the archdeaconry
of St. Albans and deanery of Braughing, and some sort of examination of the
clergy was made.* In Braughing, though the majority were preachers,
eight were ordered to appear for further examination before ‘ Mr. Sterne,
Mr. Bishop, Mr. Bland’ and another at Bishop’s Stortford on 6 and
7 September following. For the archdeaconry of St. Albans that place was
the centre, and the examination was fixed for 4 October. In August the arch-
deacon received the necessary instructions from Doctors’ Commons together
with the list of ‘the inferior sort of Ministers not being allowed Preachers,
and under the degree of Master of Arts’ who were required to attend.
The archdeacon was to sit in person on the first day with Roger Williams,

89 Lambeth MS. xii, no. 1.

90 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 35~7. Two of those with no degrees are said to be ‘of Oxford’
and four ‘of Cambridge.’

91 Lambeth MS. xii, no. 2. A bill introduced into Parliament in 1588 provided that no preacher be
admitted to a benefice with cure of souls unless he be a B.D. or a M.A. of five years’ standing ; that none be
admitted to a parsonage with cure of souls of the value of £20-{30 unless an M.A. or preacher ‘allowed
before,’ and that none be admitted to a cure of the value of over 20 marks unless a B.A. or licensed preacher
(Morrice MS, [Dr. Williams’s Lib.], B, fol. 197).

92 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 21, 38. 98 Ibid. 45.

84 Visit. 1586 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). %5 Ibid.

323

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

parson of St. Albans, as assessor. The actual work was entrusted to four of
the younger clergy *: Roger Williams, B.D., parson of St. Albans, William
White, M.A., B.D., curate of Northaw, Edward Spendlove, M.A., vicar
of Redbourn, and Thomas Holden, M.A., vicar of St. Peter's.” Those
summoned for examination were Thomas Longley, vicar of Norton, Thomas
Weatherhead, vicar of St. Michael’s, Edward Warren, vicar of Hexton,
William Mote, vicar of Newnham, Richard Lightfoote, vicar of St. Stephen’s,
Henry Edmonds, vicar of Watford, William Haylock, vicar of St. Paul’s
Walden, and John Graunte, the curate of Bushey.” Of these men both
Longley and Weatherhead were old. Thomas Weatherhead had received his
orders about forty-nine years before from the Suffragan Bishop of Dover® ; he
was a man of some standing among the clergy of the archdeaconry, and in
1580 was one of the five delegated by the Bishop of London to act as
ordinary. In 1583 he was returned as ‘able to render an account of the
faith in the Latin tongue,’' and, though no graduate, his examination in
1586 was probably actuated not by doubt of his learning but by suspicion
of his views. Like his fellows he had contributed a small sum towards the
relief of Geneva in 1582,’ but two years later he was presented in the arch-
deacon’s court for railing at his churchwardens during divine service. There
was probably a good deal of friction between him and the authorities; he
evidently would not brook examination ; he was negligent in performing
the exercises set him; he did not certify the recusants in his parish and he
never preached.’ He died at some time between March and October 1590,
aged about eighty.* Another somewhat pathetic figure was that of Edward
Longley. He was ordained in or about 1543 by the Bishop of Worcester,'
and seems to have favoured the new ideas, for his churchwardens presented
in 1583 that though using the Book of Common Prayer he did not wear
the ecclesiastical habits there prescribed, though he was ‘ willing and ready to
wear them.’® The living was worth but £5 a year, and the parishioners
regarded him as ‘ sufficient,’7? though the examiner of 1586 in great disgust
declared that both he and the curates of East Barnet and Sandridge were
ignorant of Latin, ‘ nor able to decline a noun substantive or to discern the
parts of speech, and further to be unable to answer unto easy questions in
the grounds of faith or religion, or to allege aptly any Scripture for proofs
of any Article of Religion.’* So badly, indeed, did he acquit himself that
he was suspended, apparently for the inadequate performance of the exercise
appointed him.’ What afterwards became of him is not known, but his
name does not occur later in the records of the archdeaconry.

The other examinees in this archdeaconry, though younger than Longley
and Weatherhead, were yet among the older clergy. Butler had been ordained
by Jewell at the beginning of the reign’ and Haylocke in 1560." Galling
as must have been the instruction, both these men so satisfied the archdeacon as
to their attainments that they were allowed as preachers before the visitation
of 1588,” as was also Richard Lightfoote.’’ With Edmonds there was

8 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 52-3.
7 Thid 36, 37, 69, 84; Boase, Reg. of the Univ. of Oxford, i, 265.

°8 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 50. 99 Ibid. 37. 100 Thid. 12.

1 Ibid. 37. 2 Ibid. 23. 8 Thid. 51, $2, 53, 69. ‘ Ibid. 74, 77, 69.

5 Ibid. 36. 6 Ibid. 33. 7 Ibid. 33, 36. 8 Ibid. 53.

* Ibid. 52. 10 Ibid. 36. 1 [bid. 86. 13 Tbid. 68, 69. 1 Tbid. 68.

324

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

probably no difficulty, as he satisfied his examiner as to his sufficiency ** ;
Mote and Graunte had not prepared themselves for examination,’ and were
probably suspended as their names do not again appear in the records of the
archdeaconry. Warren, who was ordained by Bullinger about 1568, was
reported by the examiner to be unable to answer anything in Latin, yet to
have some mean knowledge of the principal points of religion, but not
sufficient to discharge the office of a minister.’ He seems to have escaped
sequestration, though he had not obtained a preacher’s licence by 1588,
when, however, he was described as * an old sickly man.’
It was probably in the autumn of 1586 that instructions were issued

‘for the better increase of learning in the inferior Ministers, and for more
diligent Preaching and Catechizing.’* These provided that ‘ every minister
having cure and being under the degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelors of
Law and not licensed to be a public Preacher’ should by 2 February obtain
a Bible, a copy of Bullinger’s Decades and a note book. Daily notes were
to be made on a chapter of Scripture and weekly notes of a sermon of
Bullinger, the notes being forwarded each month to a preacher appointed by
the ordinary. Such exercises were closely connected with the ‘ prophesy-
ings’ that were so troublesome to the Government. These ‘clerical
meetings’ were first heard of in 1571, and were generally modelled on the
form adopted by the clergy of Northampton.” The meetings received
episcopal approval, but ‘divers mynisters, deprived from their livings or
inhibited to preach, for not obeying publique orders and discipline of the
church of England, have intruded themselves, in sundry places to be speakers
in the saide exercises, and being excluded from pulpits, have in the saide
exercises usuallie made their invection against the orders, rites and discipline
of the church of England, which hath been a cause to move divers to mislike
of the saide exercises’ ; in the spring of 1574, therefore, Elizabeth ordered
the archbishop to suppress them. Parker sent the required notice to his
suffragans,” but nothing was done in the matter by Sandys as Bishop of
London. Whether or no such meetings were taking part in the Hertford-
shire parishes of his diocese is not known,” but there can be little doubt that
they had been adopted in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, for in October
of the same year the Hertfordshire clergy obtained the approval of the
Bishop of Lincoln’s ‘ regulations with regard to prophesying.’* The clergy
were to meet from g to Ir a.m. on every alternate Thursday, the members
being appointed by the ordinary and bound to accept the constitution laid
down by the bishop with whom rested the choice of the moderator. The
proceedings were opened with a prayer by the first speaker, who was allowed
three-quarters of an hour for his exposition, successive speakers being limited
to fifteen minutes ; then came a summing up by the moderator and prayers
for the queen’s majesty, for grace and for ‘truth, unitie, reverance, discretion

14 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, §2. 15 Tbid. 53. 16 Tbid. 52.

1 Tbid. 69. 18 Ibid. 53.

19 The Orders and Dealings in the Church of Northampton; cf. Order of the Prophesy at Norwich (Morrice
MS. [Dr. Williams’s Lib.], B, fol. 263).

20 Cott. MS. Cleop. F ii, fol. 261 ; Morrice MS. B, fol. 267-8.

21 Frere, Engl. Church in the Reigns of Eliz. and Jas. I, 186-7.

22 No documents of this date exist among the records of the archd. of St. Albans.

23 Lansd. MS. 19, fol. 47-9. Bp. Cooper seems to have encouraged the exercises (Linc. Epis. Rec.—
Bp. Cooper—[Linc. Rec. Soc.], p. xi).

325

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and diligence in our ministerie.”” The form of prayer was prescribed, and
the manner of the discourse ordered with the warning that ‘all the speakers
ought carefully to keepe them to the text, abstainynge from hepynge uppe
of manie testimonies, allegations of prophane histories, exhortations, appli-
cations, common places and divisions not aptly grounded uppon the Text ;
not falling into controversies of our private tyme or state, nether glancynge
closely or openly at anie persons publique or private, much lesse confutyng
one a nother.’ At the close of the meeting the first speaker went out and
those present delivered their criticisms to the moderator. ‘This done, the
first speaker must be contented to be admonished by the moderator and the
rest of the brethren of such things as shall seem to the company worthy of
admonition.’?* The moderators appointed in 1574 were Horne, vicar of
Hemel Hempstead, Hammon, rector of Letchworth, John Potkins, rector
of Lilley, and Thomas Mountford, vicar of Tring. Little more is known
of the Hertfordshire prophesyings. In spite of Grindal’s defence of the
exercise as ‘a thing profitable to the Church ’* it was held in distrust by
the Government and in 1576, finding that the archbishop would not quash
the meetings, the queen sent letters to the bishops individually ordering their
suppression.”* The ‘ godly exercises’ were, however, restored by Convocation
in March 1585, and probably played an important part in the furtherance of
Puritan methods and ideals.

It will be noticed how closely the order of these ‘ prophesyings ’ followed
the course still adopted for training the preacher. And this, indeed,
was the main object of the work, for the attention of every party in the
State was at this time concentrated on preaching. ‘The growth of education
and of the cheap press has lessened both the popularity of sermons and the
influence of preachers, but in the 16th century when politics and religion
stood in such close relationship, when the press was censored and expensive
and the ability to read not universal, the spoken word was a force which
cannot be overestimated. The power of the pulpit in the formation of
popular opinion was fully recognized by Elizabeth and her advisers, and in
December 1558 * the queen issued a proclamation forbidding ‘ any person,
whether papist or gospeller, to preach to the people.’ In 1559, however,
the Injunctions of 1547 were again promulgated with certain alterations and
additions, one of which provided that the clergy ‘shall preach in their own
persons, once in every quarter of the year at least, one sermon, being licensed
especially thereunto, as is specified hereafter ; or else shall read some homily
prescribed to be used by the queen’s authority every Sunday at the least,
unless some other preacher sufficiently licensed, as hereafter, chance to come
to the parish for the same purpose of preaching.’*® Licences were to be
issued by the queen, the archbishops, the bishop of the diocese or the royal
visitors.” From the return made for the deanery of Braughing® in 1561
no indication of the number of preaching ministers there can be obtained,
and in 1565 all existing licences were revoked.” Doubtless the Crown would

% Lansd. MS. 19, fol. 47-9. 25 Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 261.
*° Frere, op. cit. 193. For the letter see Cott. MS. Cleop. F ii, fol. 287.

*7 Strype, Annals, i (1), 59. % Zurich Letters, 1558-79 (Parker Soc.), 7.

9 Gee, op. cit. 48. 80 Ibid. 49. 31 Visit. of Grindal, 1561 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

32 Frere, op. cit. 127.

326

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

have suppressed preaching entirely but for the force of public opinion.* In
December 1576 Elizabeth appears to have protested to the archbishop, who
replied that he had given charge to the bishops to exercise care in the issuing
of licences, adding that ‘we admit no man to the office of preaching
that either professeth papistrie or puritanisme ; generallie graduates of the
universities are onelie admitted to be preachers, unlesse it be some few which
have excellent giftes of knowledge in the scripture ioined with good utterance
and godlie perswasion.’** With these rules in mind special interest attaches
to the list of preachers furnished by the visitation lists of the same year for
the deanery of Braughing.* The only royal licence was that held by
Alexander Nowell, rector of Much Hadham and Dean of St. Paul’s. Of the
eight other graduates ** two only had licence to preach, these being Robert
Key, B.A., vicar of Ware, and Christopher Tatham, M.A., rector of Thorley.
Thomas Tunstall, vicar of Broxbourne, was also licensed ; he is described as
a ‘grave’ man knowing no Latin and but slightly versed in theology. The
only other preacher was the vicar of Standon, Hugh Bowman, who joined
skill in theology to a slight knowledge of Latin.*7 The other parishes
would apparently have to be content with the Homilies, which the arch-
bishop maintained were not so efficacious.®

Such caution in the issuing of licences was bound to lead to unauthorized
preaching, and in 1582 one of the visitation articles promulgated in the
archdeaconry of St. Albans inquired after preachers without cure of souls,
while another dealt with the preaching of political sermons ; in every case
non-committal answers were obtained.” By this time, however, the licensing
system seems to have been somewhat relaxed, for when the ignorant clergy
were enjoined to take their exercises to a preacher, ‘because they shoulde not
pretende ignorance who be the preachers the. . . Judge did decre that they
should repayre . . . eyther unto those which are Bachelers of Divinitye,
masters of Artes or preachers licensed.’* In March 1583-4 the Privy
Council issued Articles of inquiry the answers to which show an improve-
ment in this archdeaconry. ‘There were no regular preachers at Sandridge,
Codicote, Ridge, St. Paul’s Walden, and, apparently, Newnham, but at
Codicote due provision was made for quarterly sermons." Of the remaining
parishes in this county seven replied that they had a minister who was their
vicar, a form probably implying that he was a preacher, while the incum-
bents of Redbourn, Sarratt, St. Peter’s, Abbot’s Langley, Northaw, Chipping
Barnet and Rickmansworth are definitely spoken of as preachers.” At
Watford, where the vicar, Henry Edmonds,* was a man of no learning, one
John Chapman, M.A., acted as preacher,* probably strengthening the
foundations of that Puritanism for which the town was already distinguished.

33 cf. the clisaae s letter to the bishops 7 May 1577 (Cott. MS. Cleop. F ii, fol. 287). Bishop Cooper
in 1573~4 thought ‘that the cheefe parte and funccion of a prieste or mynister consystith in preachinge
goddes woord’ (Line. Epis. Rec—Bp. Cooper—[Linc. Rec. Soc.], 146).

34 Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 260. 35 Lambeth MS, xii, no. 1.

36 None held degrees in divinity which would ipso facto have given them the right to preach. 37 Thid.

38 Morrice MS. loc. cit. In 1576 Ralph Tomlyn was licensed by Bishop Cooper to preach in the
parish church of Aspenden (Linc. Epis. Rec.—Bp. Cooper—[Linc. Rec. Soc.], 141) ; a similar licence was granted
in the following year to Samuel Otes for the deanery of Baldock (ibid. 142).

39 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 17-20.

40 Ibid. 21. cf. the articles issued by Archbishop Whitgift in October 1583 (Gee and Hardy, Doz.
illustrative of English Church Hist. 481-4). 41 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 26-35.

42 Tbid. 43 He had started life as a chorister of St. Paul’s (ibid. 36). 44 Thid. 29-30.

327

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

With this list may be compared one made in July 1586* which gives as

reachers the incumbents of Elstree, St. Peter’s, Redbourn, Ridge and
Shephall, while those of St. Paul’s Walden, St. Michael’s and Watford are
marked as non-preachers, this probably meaning that they did not even
attempt a quarterly sermon. The deanery of Braughing also showed a
better state of things, where all were preachers but Thomas Clerk, vicar of
Barkway, Simon Williams, vicar of Cheshunt, Francis Rydall, rector of
Reed, Evans Offludd, vicar of Stanstead, and Nicholas Compton, vicar of
Sawbridgeworth,” while Tristram Moore, rector of Wymondley, was a
preacher but not admitted by the bishop.”

The review of the county may be completed by a reference to the
return for the archdeaconry of Huntingdon made at about this date.* Here
a different policy seems to have been carried out. While thirteen graduates
were licensed, ten men of equal standing had no licence to preach, and this
fact suggests that a certain discrimination was used in this archdeaconry ;
all are said to be conformable, but the weight of the return on the point is
modified by this remark being also appended to the name of Richard
Chambers, vicar of Hitchin, who in another part of the document is
especially mentioned as a ‘recusant.’ ” Besides these ten, fifty-six of the
clergy were not licensed, while of four more no details are given.

Further instructions as to preaching were issued by the Bishop of
London in 1588, when ministers, if preachers, were ‘urged to make some
exhortation every week’ at the time of prayer,” while ‘strait charge’ was to
be given to the ministers ‘that they have not above one Sermon on any one
day.’*! The synod of December 1586 had thought fit that certain articles
should ‘be put into execution by the Bishops, though not a judicial act by
authority of Convocation.’* These articles provided for the attendance at
the exercises of such graduates as refused to preach after admonition by the
ordinary, for the preaching of twelve sermons yearly at the least by every
licensed preacher and for itinerant preachers, ‘so that there may be in every
parish one Sermon at least every Quarter.’ * These provisions seem to have
formed the basis of the action taken by the Archdeacon of London in
January 1586-7," but nothing was done in the archdeaconry of St. Albans
until the following winter. In the return then made it was reported that
under Mr. Thomas Wetherhead was a Mr. William Dyke, who ‘ preacheth
at St. Michaells but hath no cure, he is of no degree, he is only a deacon,
and licensed . . . as he saith.’** From the first Dyke had been suspect,”
but he had powerful friends and was maintained at St. Michael’s by the
widow of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who had prevailed on Cecil to recommend
him for a licence to the bishop.” As the parishioners ingeniously put it in

45 Visit. 1586 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

4° Against the name of Nicholas Warde, the preacher here, is written ‘ adiit.’

47 Visit. 1586 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). 48 Lambeth MS. xii, no. 2. 4° Ibid.
5° Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 63. 51 Tbid. 52 Thid. 66. 53 Ibid. 67.
54 Strype, Life of Aylmer (ed. 1821), 83-4. 55 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 69.

50 As preacher of Coggeshall, Essex, he had been suspended and imprisoned for non-conformity
(Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 106).

57 Strype, Life of Aylmer (ed. 1821), 104, 202. For Dame Ann Bacon see Dict. Nat. Bing. Many of her
letters are printed by Spedding, The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, i. She was a convinced Puritan and
regarded Whitgift as ‘the destruction of our church’ (ibid. 112), Though a woman of violent temper she
acted with great kindness towards those of the Hertfordshire clergy who met with her approval (ibid. 312).

328

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

1589, *they had lived without any ordinary preaching until within four or
five years. By which want they knew not, as they ought, what did belong
to God, what to their Prince, their rulers, their neighbours, their families,
to bring them up in that obedience and subjection as was meet.’** Bishop
Aylmer’s version of the matter was that Dyke was ‘troubling his auditory
with new opinions and notions, thwarting the established religion, ® and
that he had refused to take priest's orders though a deacon of long standing.”
On the petition of the parishioners Burghley remonstrated with Aylmer,
pointing out that the people were now untaught, having ‘for a Curate a
very insufficient, aged, doting man,’ and that Dyke, who had probably erred
through excessive earnestness, ‘would hereafter be more advised and in a
temperate sort carry himself.’° The bishop seems to have complied with
this request from so powerful a quarter, for Dyke was still preaching at
St. Michael’s in April 1590.”

How the duty of preaching was discharged by the more able and zealous
of the clergy may be gathered from the conduct of Andrew Willet, who
preached ‘in his church of Barley, for a long time, thrice every week.’ ®
‘And although he had been chaplain to that noble young Prince Henry,
and both during that time, and sometimes since, had preached at court, and
knew how to tune his tongue to the most elegant ears; yet amongst his
own people he taught . . . after a most familiar way, affecting a plain
phrase and humble style, applying himself to the capacity of his hearers ;
reputing that sermon best adorned, that was least set out with human
learning or eloquence, or perplexed with curious questions that help not to
heavenwards.’ *

By the time of the accession of Whitgift to the primacy in 1583
Puritanism had gained a definite position and the controversy had shifted
from mere matters of order to the constitution of the Church. None
appreciated better than the archbishop how serious was the position nor how
greatly the danger was aggravated by the ignorance of the authorities as to
its extent. His first act, therefore, after his election was confirmed in
September, was to issue articles which were sent to the bishops under cover
of a letter dated 19 October. The returns for the archdeaconry of St. Albans
have been preserved, and it seems possible that a summary list of clergy
within the archdeaconry of Huntingdon may also be referred to this date,
but no return for the archdeaconry of Middlesex is available, and the review
of the county must therefore be incomplete. The Bishop of London
forwarded Whitgift’s letter to the Archdeacon of St. Albans on 31 October,
and followed this on 31 December with a letter from the archbishop dated
12 December and inclosing further articles of inquiry promulgated by the
Privy Council.* Nothing, however, was done here until March. The
first three of the archbishop’s articles dealt with attendance at divine service

58 Lansd. MS. 61, fol. 70-1 ; printed by Strype, op. cit. 301-2.

5° Strype, op. cit. 104. For the charges against Dyke and his defence see Lansd. MS. 61, fol. 72-4.

6° Strype, op. cit. 203. 61 Ibid. 203-4.

83 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 75. In 1591 he was presented to the vicarage of Hemel Hemp-

stead in the diocese of Lincoln (Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 115, 427).
88 Fuller, Abel Redivivus, ti, 319.

84 Tbid. For the truth of these remarks see Willet, Eccéesia Triumphans, being sermons preached in
Barley Church.

65 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 35.
4 329 42

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and Roman Catholic recusancy, while the tenth related to the translation of
the Bible used in the church. The intermediate questions, however, were
concerned with the important matters of the use of the Prayer Book, con-
formity to the established order and the prescribed habit, the qualifications
of the minister and the occurrence of private preaching.” Though most of.
the replies were in the affirmative they must have been highly unsatisfactory
to Whitgift, for they revealed the fact that the ‘conformity of the layman

in Hertfordshire was by no means what the authorities understood by the
word. This was especially noticeable in regard to the habit of the minister,
for while the incumbents of Redbourn, Codicote, Hexton, Norton, Watford,
St. Peter’s, St. Michael’s, St. Stephen’s, Rickmansworth and Barnet were all
returned as ‘conformable’ they all failed to wear the prescribed vestments,

though several declared themselves ‘ willing and ready’ to do 80. At Red-

bourn the vicar, Edward Spendlove, though he wore the surplice, said that

‘otherwise’ he would ‘reform his attire according to the Queen’s Majesty’s

Injunctions as soon as he shall be able to provide the same,’” but it is

uncertain whether this referred to the outdoor dress of the clergy ™ or to ‘a

Coape an Albe and a tunicle,’ to which the Puritans complained that they

were bound by the Prayer Book.” The most serious state of affairs revealed

was at Rickmansworth, where the vicar was Andrew Arnold, a graduate

who had been collated to the living in 1581.” From the grudging answer

to the sixth article of the Privy Council’s inquiries that ‘ our Minister which

now serveth the cure is a sufficient man and of good conversation for aught

we know or have heard,’ it would seem that he was somewhat unpopular

with his parishioners, and this may have influenced the character of the other

replies. According to the churchwardens and ‘sworn men’ Arnold some-

times omitted to read the epistle and gospel on Sundays, and did not show

conformity, for, they continued, ‘during the time of his abode with us he

hath not worn nor used the surplice in saying of divine service and adminis-

tration of the sacraments.’ That the archbishop took a serious view of his

case seems probable, for though no direct evidence of deprivation has been

found his successor was instituted in the following year, no reason being

given in the register for the change.” The return by the sworn men of

Sandridge that the incumbent had ‘had business and a sufficient man doth

supply his charge and that we think he will be conformable’™ supplies a reason

for the anxiety of the queen and her counsellors for the abolition of pluralities.

Curiously enough no list of subscriptions for this archdeaconry has been

found, but the list for that of Huntingdon shows that in its parishes within

this county only three ‘recusants’ were found—Richard Chambers, vicar of
Hitchin, John Potkins, rector of Lilley, and Thomas Wilcocks, curate of the

chapel of Bovingdon.”

6° §. P. Dom. Eliz. clxiii, 31 ; Strype, Life of Whitgiff, i, 228, 232. 67 Strype, op. cit. 27.

8 In 1595 the Bishop of London wrote to the Archdeacon of St. Albans commanding that as some
ministers have attended visitation * attired very undecently, as in coloured cloaks and other unseemly fashions
+ . . they are to come either in gowns or in comely black cloaks’ (Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 93).

6° Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 327. 7 Clutterbuck, op. cit. i (1), 201.

1 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 31. 72 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

3 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 26. The curate was probably William Peggrym. About
Michaelmas 1584 he was ‘detected’ in the archdeacon’s court for brawling in the churchyard and his vicar
for brawling in the church. Finally he was ‘inhibited unless he would procure a licence and departed
immediately’ (ibid. 51). 7 Lambeth MS, xii, no. 2. There were two ‘recusants’ in Huntingdonshire.

33°

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Considering the number of benefices and the comparatively easy reach
of London and its turmoils the number of known deprivations during this
period is remarkably small. But evidence in this respect is almost entirely
confined to parishes within the diocese of London owing to the serious gap
in the Lincoln registers. Though few details have been preserved there
seems little doubt that Nathaniel Baxter, vicar of Redbourn, was deprived in
the spring of 1579-80 when the churchwardens presented that it had been
‘appoynted by my lorde of Canterberyes grace that Mr. Baxter shall departe
and Mr. Spendlove to be in full possession of [the] vicarage in consideration
whereof he must paye unto Mr. Baxter a certen sume of monye.’” Edward
Spendlove apparently met with the approval of the authorities ; he was an
examiner of unlearned ministers, a preacher.and a scholar. For a time all
went well, but in the summer of 1588 he wrote to the archdeacon that
‘whereas by reason of a certain crime objected against me, I was convented
before the Justices at the last Sessions, and by them adjudged either to sustain
open punishment or else to resign my benefice . . . I chose rather to forego
my benefice, for my profession’s sake, than to incur that open infamy.’”
Humphrey Wildblood was instituted to the vacant living in November
1589, apparently by the influence of Francis Bacon.” Though little is
known of his career, his views may be judged from the fact that in May
1590 Lady Bacon wrote to her son that she thanked God ‘ for the comfort-
able company of Mr. Wyborne and Mr. Wylblud.’"* He seems from the
first to have been hostile to the established order of things, and in 1590 he,
White of Northaw and Warren of Hexton were the only clergy in the arch-
deaconry who ignored the summons to an inspection of the military equipment
charged on the clergy.” He was deprived before October 1592,” probably
for Puritanism, for immediately afterwards he was acting as preacher at
St. Michael’s, though refusing to appear before the archdeacon to show any
letters of orders or any,other instruments.® His successor at Redbourn was
Rodolph Bradley® ; he, while performing the military service expected from
him, refused to produce letters of orders or other documents for the satisfac-
tion of the officials in January 1592-3,” and he may have maintained this
recalcitrant attitude, for in June 1602 Richard Gardton was instituted on
Bradley’s cession of the vicarage.®

A better index of the progress of Puritanism than is afforded by these
deprivations can be found in the character of the services and ministry of
the day. In 1566 ‘moderate men’ complained that ‘in the public prayers,
although there is nothing impure, there is, however, a kind of popish
superstition, * but by 1583 this had given place to a thorough hatred of the
Book of Common Prayer, not only for its papistry, but for the length of its

75 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 11.

78 Ibid. 61. No entry regarding this case is to be found among the Sessions Records.

77 Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 182 ; Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, i, 115.

7a Spedding, op. cit. 114.

78 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 80-1.

79 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

80 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 88.

81 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 82 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 88.

83 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. It must have been Bradley that Lady Bacon maintained to be ‘a Papist or
some sorcerer or conjurer or some vild name or other’ (Spedding, op. cit. i, 312).

4 Zurich Letters, 1558-79 (Parker Soc.), 163.

331

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

services, which hindered preaching.” Whitgift’s articles had been especially
directed against those who preached but refused to use the Prayer Book,
and while under its ordinance daily prayer was recognized as obligatory it
so rapidly fell out of use that in 1588 the archbishop issued special directions
to his diocesans® for prayers to be held in every parish church at least
thrice in the week.” The order had again to be issued in 1589-90.™

With the promulgation of the canons of 1604 a new phase in the
struggle began, though it is noticeable that the resisters were not the younger
men but the protagonists of Elizabeth’s reign. John Burgess, who led the
protest, was beneficed in the diocese of Lincoln, and among the thirty
Lincoln clergy who followed him to the interview with their bishops at
Buckden were three from Hertfordshire parishes. These were Nicholas
Chambers, Nevill Drant and Timothy Fisher.” All were probably in a like
case with Burgess, men who had hitherto subscribed to the Prayer Book as
an expression of the intention of the church, though they could not approve
its details. Nicholas Chambers was perhaps more advanced in his views than
the others. He it was who with Wilcox and Potkins had refused subscrip-
tion at an earlier date,” though he must have ultimately satisfied his conscience.
The protestants got little satisfaction out of the bishop, and on 1 December
they presented their views to James I, praying that if the new subscriptions
were retained the threatened deprivations might be at least delayed. They
drew a pathetic picture of their trouble, their journeyings to conferences
with the ordinary, with each other and the lawyers, and their desperate case
should they be deprived. James heard them out and suggested a conference
at Huntingdon. The ministers agreed to accept this, but put forward as
conditions that the disputants on the side of the established order were to be
the bishop himself and Dr. Montaigne, that the point in question should
alone be discussed, that the conferences should be open to all and that
reporters should be in attendance. In the eyes of the government the
proposal would have been a mere advertisement of the impotence of the
hierarchy and the ideas of the Puritans. It was accordingly rejected. What
actually took place it is difficult to determine, but in November a petition
from the inhabitants of Royston” and the neighbourhood implies that
deprivation was generally threatened. Beside the language of this petition
may be placed the words of Bancroft to the Bishops of London in a letter
dated 12 March 1604~5 and probably one of a series addressed to all his
suffragans. The letter relates chiefly to Roman Catholic recusants, but opens
with a desire that Vaughan would not desist from depriving two or three
factious ministers till he had purged his diocese of them.” Nothing,
however, was done until 1609, when Richard Scott, rector of Bushey, was
deprived.** Scott had been educated at New College, Oxford, but had taken

%° For a schedule of objections see Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’ Lib.), B, fol. 327. The Puritans asked
‘whether it be not an unseemlie gesture, yt y° mynister in saying the service, should go poste up and downe
from place to place, as by the booke is appointed, as to the chauncell for sayinge the service, and singing the
communion, to the bode of y® chirch for the Letanie and mariage, to the church dore for baptisme and to
the church stile for buryall And to y* bellfrey on working dayes to toull the bell himselfe.’

8 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 75. 87 Tbid. 88 Ibid. 73-4.

8° Add. MS. 8978, fol. 116 d. 9° Lambeth MS. xii, no. 2.

*! Harl. MS. 677, fol. 44. This must have been the petition presented to James as he was hunting at
Royston. ‘The King took in ill part this disorderly Proceeding, commanding them presently to depart’
(Winwood, Mem. ii, 36). % Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Aibans, 124. 93 Newcourt, Repert. 816.

332

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

no degree. He seems to have had some influence, and was patronized by
the Lord High Admiral and the Earl of Northampton to whom he was
chaplain in 1603.* In 1584 he was presented to this living by Henry
Hickman ; at this time, possibly, his views were not fully formed, for he
was ‘no preacher’ and did not obtain licence to preach until eight years
later.” In 1603 a return was made that at Bushey ‘ divine service was twice
duly said and the word likewise painfully and profitably preached twice every
Sabbath day’; yet this does not necessarily imply that the Prayer Book
was used, and the Prayer Book could be manipulated to meet the views of
men whose conscience could not endorse the new canons. ‘The second
deprivation was that of John Spenser, vicar of Hoddesdon,” whose successor
was collated to the living in March 1609-10. Spenser had held the living
since 1592, and so may be presumed to have had considerable influence in
his neighbourhood.* Three resignations took effect in the years 1606-9 ;
all were of livings in the archdeaconry of St. Albans, but only one can be
assigned with probability to the cause of conscience. Erasmus Cook, B.A.,
was presented to the vicarage of St. Michael’s by Dame Ann Bacon in 1591,
and doubtless belonged to the advanced Puritan school of thought of which
she was a patron. ‘The records of the archdeaconry represent him as a man
of good learning, who catechized diligently, who preached twice on Sundays
and generally once on holidays,’ this last a fact of some interest as indicating
that he followed the Prayer Book in the observance of such feasts.

With the first decade of the 17th century the ecclesiastical and academic
aspect of Puritanism passed away and gave place to a movement which was
essentially political. The old forms were indeed retained and their language
popularized, but the informing motive had changed. A learned and preaching
ministry and external pressure had spread seriousness from the universities to
the middle classes and the middle classes had applied its formulae to politics.
But while Puritan ideas were thus making their way in the country at large
a reaction was setting in at Oxford and Cambridge, and the study of the
Fathers, which in the past generation had led men to long for the
re-establishment of the primitive order, was now reviving the conception of
the historical church.

The dislike to episcopacy was perhaps the most marked characteristic
of public opinion, and with this went a growing distrust of sacramental
doctrines. In Elizabeth’s reign complaint had been made of the general
superstition that sent children in hundreds to be confirmed ; the practice
was discouraged by the clergy, and by 1614 the archdeacon reported to the
Bishop of Lincoln that he could not ‘ perceive any Forwardness in any of
the Ministers to have the Children of their Parishes confirmed,’ and in the
opinion of the chancellor of the diocese a special charge for that purpose
was necessary.”

Neglect of the ordinances of the Church was coupled with direct
hostility to its rulers and hence, in the opinion of the time, to the civil

94 Newcourt, Repert. 87, 116. % Ibid. 69, 87. 9% Ibid. 113. 7 Ibid. 813.

% One other vacancy may possibly be due to deprivation. Thomas Talbot, M.A., vicar of Hexton, was
succeeded in July 1609 by Oliver Burdsell, but no reason for the change is assigned (ibid.).

99 i.e. Sarratt, St. Michael’s and Hexton. 100 Rec, of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 85, 114.

1 cf. Pocklington, A/tare Christianum and Sunday no Sabbath. 2 Add. MS. 5853, fol. 166.

339

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

In March 1621-2 the archbishop sent a general letter to
his suffragans in which he stated that the king had been ‘informed that
divers Preachers have cast out words in the pulpit, as if there were some
danger that Religion should be changed amongst us, which canna be esteemed
less than a seditious speech, and very scandalous unto the King.’* The letter
was forwarded to the provinces, but no action seems to have been taken, and
five months later the archbishop addressed a further letter in which complaint
was made that ‘divers young students, by reading of late writers and
ungrounded divines,’ did ‘ broach many times unprofitable, unsound, seditious
and dangerous doctrines, to the scandal of this Church and disquieting of the
State and present government.’ * The letter was accompanied by royal
directions which restricted Sunday afternoon sermons to points in the
Catechism, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, and
forbade political sermons and the preaching to a * popular auditory ° of ‘the
deep points of Predestination, Election, Reprobation, or of the Universality,
Efficacy, Resistibility or Irresistibility of God’s Grace.’* These rules were
especially framed with a view to the control of the Lecturers, ‘a new body
severed from the ancient Clergy of England, as being neither Parsons, Vicars,
nor Curates.’* The establishing of Lectureships was a recent phase of the
Puritan propaganda, and one which was obviously open to much abuse.
The ‘ Directions’ endeavoured to bring the lecturers under episcopal super-
vision by insisting that they should be licensed ‘in the Court of Faculties
only, upon recommendation of the party from the Bishop of the diocese under
his hand and seal, with a fiat from the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and
a confirmation under the Great Seal of England.’’ It is difficult to say to
what extent the practice had spread in Hertfordshire at this date, but the
visitation of the archdeaconries of Middlesex and St. Albans in 1628 ° gives
the names of preachers other than incumbents or curates at Stortford, Standon,
Ware, St. Albans and Watford. Ware and St. Albans had both two of
these additional clergy, who in each case are characterized as schismatics.
At Widford and Wymondley appeared clergy of whom some suspicion was
entertained as to their being in fact lecturers, though put forward as curates,
but no evidence has been found to show whether further action was taken
in the matter. Laud as Bishop of London was fully alive to the importance
of keeping control over the lecturers, but he could not make his subordinates
oa alanine his anxiety. There seems to have been considerable neglect in
the archdeaconry of St. Albans. In September 1630 the archdeacon had an
interview with Laud, who was seriously annoyed at the failure to certify the
names of the lecturers and their conformity to the royal directions. The
result was an urgent letter to the commissary that forms a curious comment
on the administration of affairs under Laud. ‘What more particularly the
Official or you are to certify,’ wrote the archdeacon, ‘I doubt not but you
shall find in my Lord of London’s Letter... . concerning that business.
I make no question but he was careful enough in the keeping of the Letter,
so that I hope you shall soon find it among his papers. Let me entreat

government.

> Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 147. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 149. 8 Ibid.
7 Ibid. 149-50.
® Visit. 1628 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

334

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

your care that we hear no more of it, for the displeasure upon further
neglect will fall heavy upon whomsoever.’®

As the visitation of 1628 was the first held by Laud as Bishop of
London it is particularly regrettable that no returns exist beyond a bare list
of names. Against these, however, occasional notes have been made, and
the degrees of each man are noted as well as cases of absence from reasonable
cause. The incumbents of Hunsdon, Great and Little Hormead, Stocking
Pelham and Bishop’s Stortford are noted as schismatics, together with the
curates of Stortford and Standon and also Thomas Owen," one of the two
curates of Ware under Charles Chauncey. It is remarkable that with a single
exception the beneficed clergy thus singled out held their livings until their
death.” Inthe case of Nathaniel Morris, M.A., rector of Stocking Pelham, no
entry in the episcopal registers occurs for his immediate successor, and it thus
appears probable that Morris held the living until the Commonwealth period.”
If so he must have become more conformable, though special inquiries were
directed to be made in the metropolitan visitation of 1636-7 concerning the
incumbents of Stocking Pelham, Furneux Pelham and Albury.”

The enforcing of ecclesiastical order both on clergy and laity rested
with the courts of the bishop and archdeacon. Various efforts had been
made towards reform, but the officials stood in the way," and the courts
gradually lost their effective power, the tendency being either to bring to
bear personal influence or to appeal to the Court of High Commission.
The position of the Consistory Courts is exemplified by the case of certain
parishioners of Walkern who petitioned Archbishop Laud in 1637. Their
rector, John Gorsuch, D.D., had some trouble at Christmas 1636 over the
question of communicating at the altar rails, and on the eve of Good Friday
Thomas Humberstone and his wife went to Dr. Gorsuch ‘and acquainted
him with their purpose of receiving the Holy Communion on the next day.
They paid him their accustomed offerings on Good Friday, and drew all of
them out of the church into the body of the chancel, and there kneeling
desired to be partakers thereof, but were refused by the Doctor and his curate,
unless they would come up to the rail.’ They then applied to Holdsworth,
archdeacon of Huntingdon, who saw Gorsuch on the subject, and wrote ‘a
persuasive letter to them to reform their carriage.’ Thereupon they addressed
a petition to Williams as Bishop of Lincoln, begging his intervention. The
bishop, whose views on the position of the altar were widely known through
his book, The Holy Table: Name and Thing, at once took the part of the
parishioners, saying of Gorsuch that it was ‘a bold part in him and more in
his curate to deny the communion upon such weak foundations,’ and
requiring him ‘to warn a communion and to administer the same to as
many of those parties as shall present themselves, in any part of the church,

® Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 155. 10 Visit. 1628 (Lond. Epis. Reg.).

11 Thomas Owen may have moved into the diocese of Lincoln, for one of that name was curate of
King’s Walden in 1630 (Urwick, op. cit. 667), of Datchworth in 1635-40 (ibid. 574). He was given the
living of Bramfield in 1643 (Commons? Journ. iii, 134), was ejected in 1660, complied, and was presented to
Sandridge in 1661 (Urwick, op. cit. 332). Thomas Leigh, curate of Stortford, apparently remained there
(ibid. 124 5 cf. 696, 699 n.). :

12 Newcourt, Repert. i, 836, 838, 840, 896. 13 Ibid. 857.

14 §, P. Dom. Chas. I, ccexxxix, 53; ccccli, 100. By order of Laud a special charge was sent to the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s that they should take better care of their peculiars (ibid.).

15 cf. Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 119-21.

335

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

kneeling, under pain of suspension in him and deposition in his curate,’
Gorsuch then appealed to Laud, alleging that he could obtain no order
against Humberstone in the courts of the Bishop of Lincoln as that prelate
would not suffer them to be presented and remitted all punishment in such
cases; he prayed that the case might be referred to the court of High
Commission. Humberstone and his wife also petitioned the archbishoprand
stated their readiness ‘to receive either at the rails or in the chancel.’
Gorsuch had thus won his point, and Laud in October issued directions to
Sir John Lamb, commissary to the Bishop of Lincoln, that any process
against Humberstone should be quashed, and that Gorsuch should ‘ cease all
further suit and do what shall be fitting in a peaceable and Christian-like
way." A further case of a slightly simpler character occurred at Welwyn,
where sixteen men complained to the archdeacon of the refusal of their
parson to communicate them otherwise than at the altar rails. In this
instance there appears to have been no appeal to the bishop or his courts,
but Holdsworth and the men went to Laud, who, however, refused to inter-
fere, leaving the matter to be settled by the archdeacon.”

Contempt of the Consistory Courts seems to have been general, and in
1638 a correspondent wrote to Sir John Lamb that ‘ those refractory women
of King’s Walden, who were enjoined to penance at your last court at
Hatfield . . . not only please themselves in contempt thereof,’ but
threatened to appeal to the High Commission. Such cases demonstrate the
truth of the remark of Hacket that at this time the Consistory Courts had
become ‘in a manner despicable.’ ”

They had indeed been superseded by the court of High Commission
which was constituted under the Act of Uniformity. Its absorption of the
authority of the ecclesiastical courts may be illustrated by a few typical cases
from this county for 1634. The old moral jurisdiction of the episcopal
courts is seen in the long suit for alimony brought by his wife against Sir
William Cade of King’s Langley.* In this year the most distinctively
ecclesiastical causes brought before the court from this county were those of
John Downes the curate and the churchwardens of Shenley,” of Robert
Clarke, vicar of Sarratt,” and of Charles Chauncey, vicar of Ware, and
Humphrey Packer, yeoman of the same town.* As an illustration of the
action of the court as well as of the moderate Puritan thought of the time
it will be well to examine the case of Chauncey in detail.

Charles Chauncey was the son of George Chauncey, esq., of Ardeley
Bury and New Place, Gilston; he was born in 1592 and was related to
several well-known families in the county. He was educated at Westminster
and Trinity College, Cambridge, and proceeded M.A. in 1617.% His college
gave him the living of Ware in February 1627-8,* but he resigned this in
1633 after he became vicar of Marston St. Lawrence (co. Northants). His
immediate successor at Ware had been John Mountfort, rector of Anstey
and prebendary of Sneating, who, however, held the living for only a few

1° Cal. §. P. Dom. 1637, pp. 484-6. For Gorsuch and his parishioners see also Lords’ Journ. ix, 389.

V Hutton, The Engl. Church, 1625-1714, p. 51. 16 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1637-8, p. 492.
a Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, 97. 20§. P. Dom. Chas. I, cclxi, passim. 21 Thid. fol. go.
*2 Ibid. fol. 102. ™ Tkid. fol. 60. 4 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 307n.; Dict. Nat. Biog.

© Newcourt, Reper?. i, 904.

336

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

months, being succeeded here by Isaac Craven, a man of an entirely different
school of thought. Chauncey had been convented before the High Com-
mission Court in the spring of 1629-30 for Saying in a sermon that idolatry
had been admitted into the Church, together with much atheism, popery,
Arminianism and heresy.” Religious opinion at Ware was sharply divided
in 1633, and Chauncey seems to have found himself in such continual
opposition to Sir Thomas Fanshaw*® of Ware Park as to need a special
episcopal admonition to be present at the consecration of the domestic chapel
of Sir Thomas. In 1633 a general meeting of the parishioners was held, and
with the consent of the majority the churchwardens arranged ‘that the
communion table should be placed in the chancel and a rail set round about
it. The consent of the bishop and his chancellor was obtained, but the
plan was strongly opposed by Mr. Chauncey, ‘ who professed that he would
thereupon leave the place, and gave out that the parishioners had set up that
rail and bench of purpose to drive him away.’* The work was carried out
while Chauncey was at his living of Marston St. Lawrence, but Humphrey
Packer, a yeoman of Ware, at once journeyed thither with the news.
Chauncey returned to Ware and stayed at Packer’s house, where he ‘ used
reproachful speeches against the setting up of the rail and bench and the
lawfulness thereof, and affirmed that it was an innovation, a snare to men’s
consciences, superstitious, a breach of the second commandment, an addition
to God’s worship, and a block in the way of Mr. Craven,’ the new vicar.
Craven does not seem to have viewed the matter in the same light, for in
June 1634 he was associated with Sir Thomas Fanshaw in bringing
Chauncey’s words to the notice of the Court of High Commission. The
case dragged on through the following autumn, and it was not until April
1635 that witnesses were sworn.” Sentence was delivered in November,
when the court pronounced Chauncey guilty of contempt of the ‘ ordinary
and the jurisdiction ecclesiastical, and of raising a schism and distraction in
the parish of Ware.’ Chauncey was suspended until such time as he should
make submission in a prescribed form and was condemned in costs.” Packer,
who had said that the rails could be put to better use in his garden,” was
also condemned in costs and called upon to make submission, while both
men were committed until they should find bonds ‘in £100 apiece for the
performance of the order of the court.’ To his life-long regret Chauncey
submitted, and in open court made the prescribed recantation, in which he
was made to acknowledge ‘that kneeling at the Sacrament was a Lawful and
Commendable gesture, that the Rail set up in the chancel with a Bench
thereunto annexed, for kneeling at the Holy Communion, was a decent and
convenient Ornament,’ and further to promise ‘never by Word nor Deed to
oppose either that, or any other Laudable Right or Ceremony prescribed in
the Church of England.’* Finally he was dismissed with an exhortation

26 Rushworth, Hist. Coll. ii (1), 34.

27 Chauncey, The Retractation of Mr. Charles Chancy, 17. 28 Cal. §. P. Dom. 1635-6, p. 123.

29 Ibid. 124. 30 Chauncey, op. cit. Introd. ; §. P. Dom. Chas. I, cclxi, fol. 60 et seq.

31 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1634-5, p. 188. 32 Tbid.

33 According to Chauncey (op. cit. 35) Packer said ‘of the raile whilst it was in the Joyner’s shop’ that
if they ‘did not like them, hee would buy them for his garden.’ 34 Cal, S. P. Dom. 1635-6, p. 124.

35 Rushworth, Hist. Coll. ii (1), 316. Chauncey pleaded that he had set up a rail at Marston
St. Lawrence (Ca/. S. P. Dom. 1635-6, p. 124). For his conduct of the services there see ibid. 1635,

Ppp. 489-90.
4 337 43

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

from Laud. The case was bound to create much sympathy with the minister,
and years afterwards when Chauncey was in America the parishioners of
Ware begged him to return ; he was actually on his way when he accepted
the invitation to become the first president of Harvard College.

That disturbances were frequent at this date there is ample evidence to
prove, and the trouble generally centred round the communion rails. What
was, perhaps, the first outrage was committed at Much Hadham, where
Dr. Thomas Paske had set up rails and inserted new painted glass in the east
window.” Three men of Hadham, who ‘did not like the rails nor the
pictures of the window,’ promised the blacksmith and two others money ir
they would take them down,” apparently during the rector’s absence one
day in August 1640.% The affair was attributed to the soldiery, but there
seems no doubt that the actors were local men, as William Lord Salisbury
wrote to Secretary Windebank that the three that ‘ pulled the window down

. might easily have been prevented and apprehended, if the town had
not connived at it.’ His report brought a request from the council to the
justices for a note of any riots or profanation of churches ; the return made
showed that in five churches in Broadwater Hundred the altar rails had been
pulled down by the soldiers." The action seems to have met with general
approval, for though their number in no case exceeded five, and they entered
either by finding the door open or by fetching the key, no one would identify
the rioters.” More serious was the outrage at King’s Walden, where Puritan
feeling seems to have been strong. Here ‘on Sunday, during divine service,
24 soldiers entered . . . and sat in the chancel till the sermon was ended,
and then, before all the congregation, they tore down the rails and defaced
the wainscot, inviting themselves to the churchwardens to dinner, exacted
money from the minister, brought an excommunicated person into church
and forced the minister to read evening prayer in his presence.’ “

In 1641 orders were issued by both Houses for the removal of the altar
rails,* and these were generally carried out, though Henry Hancock, the
pugnacious vicar of Furneux Pelham, ‘walked with his Sword about the
Church-yard in the night, saying, “he would rather loose his life, than suffer
them to be pul’d up.” =At Tewin when the rails were removed John Mount-
fort ‘ placed formes instead of them,’ ** a device probably adopted elsewhere.

While moral and disciplinary cases were being tried in the Court of
High Commission, and smaller offences, such as absence from church, were
coming before the justices of the peace,” public opinion was becoming more
and more definite in hostility to the government of both church and state.
The unfortunate association of the bishops with the administration of affairs
and their support of the theory of divine right lent point to the academic
Presbyterianism of the Puritans of the older school with their yearning after
primitive order. In Hertfordshire the divergence of policy evident between

86 Dict, Nat. Biog. 37 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1640, p. 580.

38 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 64. 39 Thid. 68. 4° Cal. S. P. Dom. 1640, p. 580.

*) Ibid. 1640-1, pp. 69-70. At Rickmansworth eight soldiers impressed in the county entered the
church and broke down the communion rails after morning service ; in the afternoon they defaced the font

cover (Urwick, op. cit. 307). 42 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1640-1, p. 70. 43 Ibid.
“! Shaw, Hist. of Engl. Church, 1640-60, 1, 106.
* White, First Century of Scandalous and Malignant Priests, 17. 46 Tbid. 45.

“" cf. Cal. S. P. Dom. 1625-49, p. 526.
338

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Laud and Juxon, Bishops of London, and Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, must
have led to a questioning of episcopal jurisdiction that could not fail to be
disturbing, while the failings and misfortunes of Williams were matters of
common knowledge." By 1640 it was evident that it was useless to look to
the Crown for reform in the desired direction, while the episcopal reforms
were regarded rather as confirmations of abuses. The whole trend of public
events pointed to the Parliament as the only way of escape from what many
regarded as an impossible situation, and Parliament was ready to undertake
the work. The religious policy of the Commonwealth was the direct
outcome of the policy of Henry VIII. Thus to the Parliament of 1640 were
presented petitions which may be compared with those addressed to King
James in 1604. The petition from the diocese of Lincoln asked for action
against the increase of Popery, idle and frivolous ceremonies and the profana-
tion of the Lord’s Day ; it further objected to the canons, and prayed that
no canon might be made without consent of Parliament, while a further
clause was directed against the restrictions on the periods within which
marriages might be legally celebrated. Besides this a further petition was
presented from Hertfordshire, and this boldly demanded the abolition of
episcopacy. It is noteworthy that the petition was brought into the House
by Arthur Capell," who for many years had represented the county of
Hertford and was well known for the moderation of his views. The most
important of the petitions thus presented was that of 700 to 800 ministers.
A committee was appointed to consider the points raised by this and to
report heads for debate by the House. The committee referred as suitable
for discussion the questions of the secular employment of bishops, the large
revenues of deans and chapters and the sole power of the episcopate in
ecclesiastical matters.” Feeling itself in need of expert assistance, the House
gave audience to certain chosen divines. The spokesman of those called in
to defend the existing state of affairs was Ralph Brownrigg,® rector of Barley
and a scholar whose ‘ great wit was not forced, frothy or affected, but native,
apt and free.’ ** Essentially a moderate man, he had ‘a particular esteem for
the Liturgy,’ while, according to his biographer, ‘if against anything (next
sin and gross errors) he had an antipathy and impatience, it was against those
unquiet and pragmatick spirits which affect endless controversies, varieties
and novelties in Religion, that hereby they may carry on that study of sides
and parties in which they glory; and under which skreen they hope to
advance their private interests and politick designs.’ * To him was opposed
another Hertfordshire divine, Cornelius Burgess, who had been vicar of
Watford since 1618 and from 1626 also rector of the City living of.
St. Magnus.” Though one of the chaplains in ordinary to Charles I, he
had been brought into the High Commission Court for a sermon preached
in 1635 containing aspersions against the bishops, and was charged with being

48 Laurence Osbaldeston, who was found guilty with Williams of slandering Laud, was collated by
Williams to the living of Wheathampstead in 1635. After the trial he absconded. Laud presented to the
living thus vacant and succeeded in establishing his nominee after some opposition from Williams.
Osbaldeston was restored by the Long Parliament in 1642, but was ejected in 1655 (Urwick, op. cit. 472 5

Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 517). 49 See above. 50 D’Ewes, Diary, i, 8. 7
5] Rushworth, Hist. Coll. ii, 1127-8. 52 Shaw, op. cit. i, 47. 53 D’Ewes, Journal, ili, 937.
54 Gauden, 4 Sermon preached... at the Funeral of . . . Dr. Brownrig, 147. Brownrigg was made

Bishop of Exeter in 1641. 55 Ibid. 166, 169. °® Newcourt, Repert.i, 906. *" Ibid. 399 ; Dict. Nat. Biog.
339

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

a ‘vexer of two parishes with continual suits of law,’ this possibly referring
to the tithe case which he prosecuted during the years 1629-34." In spite
of his love of power he was not an extremist, and his ‘ Vindication’ shows
that he disapproved of active rebellion. He may be regarded as the spokes-
man of the Moderate Presbyterian party.

While the Lower House was busy with petitions the House of Lords
had appointed its own committee for Religion ‘to take into Consideration
all Innovations in the Church,’ with power ‘to send for such Learned Men
as their Lordships shall please, to assist them.’ Laud in his Diary noted
that the members consisted of ‘ten Earls, ten Bishops, ten Barons,’® his old
enemy Williams being among the number. Williams, indeed, presided over
the body, and must have been instrumental in co-opting Holdsworth Arch-
deacon of Huntingdon, Hacket his own chaplain, Brownrigg and Burgess,
all of whom were among those most constant in their attendance at the
meetings.” Williams was as much distinguished for his tact as for his moral
laxity, but his task must have been one of considerable difficulty. There
was much discontent in his own diocese, and a sub-committee of the Lower
House was appointed to examine the ‘ Matters of Complaint concerning
Religion’ there and especially the abuses in the ecclesiastical courts; in
December this sub-committee was made a committee of the House.®

By 1642 the clumsy method of calling in divines for consultation by
the Houses was dropped in favour of the permanent council which was to
earn such fame as the Westminster Assembly. The members were elected
by the House of Commons from names proposed by the burgesses and
knights of the shire, Brocket Smith, D.D., of Barkway and Cornelius
Burgess, D.D., of Watford being chosen for Hertfordshire.“ Herbert
Palmer, B.D., of Ashwell and Richard Vines of Caldecote were also members,”
and Burgess became one of the assessors. While the Parliament was thus
preparing an instrument for the exercise of the spiritual functions of the
episcopate it was arrogating to itself the administration of the dioceses.
Thus in May 1642, when the living of St. Peter’s in St. Albans was about
to be filled by the Bishop of Ely, the House of Lords sent a peremptory
order requiring him to certify to whom he had presented the living before
he actually collated his nominee.” At the same time the system of lecture-
ships was being promoted by the House, and it lent its powers of coercion in
April 1642 to force the vicar of Broxbourne to accept as lecturer Daniel
Evans, whom some of the inhabitants of that town had undertaken to support.”
A similar order was made on 6 June in favour of Philip Goodwin, who was
settled as lecturer on Sunday afternoons and Thursday mornings at Hemel
Hempstead,” while some three weeks later Parliamentary sanction was given
to the establishing of a Monday lecture at Berkhampstead St. Peter.” The
most elaborate lectureship at this time was that appointed for Tuesdays at
Hitchin ; this was served by fifteen ministers in turn.”

58 Lambeth MS. ix, 62. 59 Lords Journ. iv, 174. Ibid. 177. © Rushworth, Hist. Coll. ii, 1088.
®° Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, ii, 147. 83 Commons’ Journ. ii, 56.
* Peacock, The Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers, 63-4.
® Hetherington, Hist. of the Westm. Assembly, 109. 66 Ibid. 111.
. Shaw, Hist. of Engl. Church, 1640-60, ii, 181. 8 Commons’ Journ. ii, 538.
: Ibid. 608 ; cf. 730 (22 Aug.), where George Kendall was appointed Lecturer.
Tbid. 639. 71 Tbid. iti, 681.

340

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Although in course of time Parliament arrogated to itself the whole
functions of the episcopacy in discipline, ordination, institution, collation and
administration, the system was somewhat slow in growth. In 1643, however,
the Parliamentary claim to control the theology, morals and politics of the
clergy was fully stated both in word and action. The number of recorded
ejections in this county was nineteen, all but one of which were carried out
in 1643. The first case dealt with was that of Dr. George Seaton, who
had succeeded the Puritan divine Edmund Staunton at Bushey in 1631.”
The Commons ordered the sequestration of the living on 26 January,” and
on 1 February the Lords decided to inquire on what evidence the action of
the Lower House had been based.% Sequestrators were appointed by both
Houses a week later,” and on 11 July Marmaduke Browne, M.A., a ‘ godly,
learned and orthodox divine,’ was settled as parson of Bushey.” It is
impossible to feel that the decrees of both the Parliamentary and county
committees were other than arbitrary.” Apparently on the report of the
local commissioners the Commons passed an ordinance for sequestrating the
profits of the living to the use of their nominee ; the committee at St. Albans
then called witnesses, but in every known case the sequestration was com-
pleted. The vast accumulation of work thrown upon the Houses when
they assumed the government of the kingdom led in 1654 to the delegation
of the work of the Parliamentary committee to local commissioners. For
Hertfordshire the matter was placed in the hands of Henry Lawrence, Lord
President of the Council, Sir John Wittewronge, John Fiennes, John Marsh,
Francis White, Isaac Puller, William Turner of Hertford, Alban Cox,
Master Combes the younger of Hemel Hempstead, Colonel Washington,
Thomas Nicholl, William Leman, Ralph Gladman, William Packer and
William Hickman.” These or any five of them were to act with five or
more local divines—Philip Goodwin, John Warren of Thorley, John
Lightfoot of Great Munden, Samuel Tomlin, Thomas Mocker of Gilston,
Thomas Halsiter, John Young, Isaac Bedford of Willian, Nathaniel Eeles,
William Tutty of Totteridge, ‘ Mr. Slater,’ John Pointer, Daniel Dyke of
Much Hadham, and ‘ Mr. Lee of Hatfield.’”

Clergy were removable in 1654 ‘ for ignorance, insufficiency, scandal
in their livesand conversations, or negligence in their respective callings and
places,’® but in 1643 the ground of the ejection was generally political,
though theological antipathies were the cause in some cases and a few men
were charged with moral offences. It is noticeable, however, that whereas
serious charges of moral misconduct were brought against various Essex
clergy," but one accusation of the kind is heard of in the case of the clergy
of this county.” It may be well here to review what little evidence has
been found bearing on the personal conduct of the clergy during the late
16th and early 17th centuries. From the first the Puritans, with their fine
insistence on personal morality, had striven to improve clerical as well as
lay morals. If the deanery of Braughing may be regarded as typical, the

72 Newcourt, Repert. i, 816. 3 Commons’ Journ. ii, 944. 74 Lords’ Journ. v, 584.
7 Ibid. 594. 78 Commons’ Journ. iii, 161. 77 cf. Add. MS. 15669.

78 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ii, 971.

79 Ibid. 980; Calamy, Nonconformist’ Mem. (ed. 1802), li, 303, 304, 313-15.

80 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ii, 977.
81 White, The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests. 82 Lords’ Journ. v, 667.

341

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

clergy in 1576 were generally married." No Puritan comperta such as those
made for Staffordshire * and elsewhere exist for this county, though the
commissioners, naively enough, expressed their opinion that a survey was
‘verie likelie to be as badde as others.’** The case of Edward Spendlove
has been already mentioned. In January 1593 a return of the clergy in the
archdeaconry of St. Albans showed that all the Hertfordshire ministers were
‘of good life and conversation,’ though William More, vicar of St. Peter’s,
had been ‘detected by Mr. Archdeacon for suspicion of evil life,’ but had
purged himself thereof.* The social position of the clergy had improved
as steadily as their learning, and the personal defects charged against them in
1643 were the defects usual among the gentry of the day. Thus Joseph
Soane, vicar of Aldenham, was sequestered for being ‘a common gamester,
a Common Ale-house haunter, and frequently drunke, and a common
quarreller,’*’ while similar charges were brought against Philip Leigh, vicar
of Redbourn,® and Henry Hancock, vicar of Furneux Pelham, who was
further characterized as ‘a prophane swearer of bloudy oathes.’® Griffith
Roberts, vicar of Ridge, was described as ‘a common drunkard and tipler in
Ale-houses, and drinker of healths, quarrelling with them that will not
pledge him therein,’ a description that points to politics as the real ground of
offence.”

Of more importance are the charges of innovation in the conduct ot
services and in doctrine. There was of course considerable variety of opinion
even among Puritans, but men like Staunton, vicar of Bushey (1627-31),”
would urge their parishioners to communicate at other seasons as well as at
Easter,” and Chauncey spoke of celebrations lasting ‘two or three houres’
together as the rule ‘in many popular Congregations.’ The services of the
‘malignant’ clergy are well described in the charges brought against them.
Dr. Mounttord, rector of Anstey, was accused of having turned ‘the Com-
munion Table Altarwise, and having a great Crucifix and Picture of the
Virgin Mary in the East-window . . . used bowings and cringings before
the said Table and Crucifix . . . and caused the said Table to be railed in,
and the Jesuits Badge to be set upon the Carpet there, compelling the
people to come up to the railes, there to kneele to receive the Sacrament,
teaching them “ that God was always present at the Altar by the presence of
his Grace, and was therefore to be bowed unto,” and in his going up to the
Table to reade second Service, usually caused that part of the 43 Psalme to
be sung viz. Then shall I to the Altar goe, of God, &c.’* Richard Taylor,
parson of Buntingford, Westmill and Aspenden, had ‘ not only used frequent
bowings to the Communion-table set Altar-wise, but affirmed that there was

y ae MS. xii, no. 1. The proportions were six bachelors to twenty-nine married men.
= aan ibe a ay 338. 65 Morrice MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, fol. 51.
cc, Of the rchd. of St. Albans, 87. More was suspended at this time for failure to preach,
pero exercises and catechize (ibid.). 87 White, op. cit. 7. 88 bid. 4. 89 Ibid. 17.

Ibid. 12. 51 Newcourt, Repert. i, 816.

. aa A Dialogue . . . between a Minister and a Stranger, 141-2. 93 Chauncey, op. cit. 33.
is carpet’ still belongs to the church. It is of plum-coloured velvet, and was probably made to

cover the top, front and side of the altar ; its dimensions are 7 ft. 3 in. by 4 ft. g in., these measurements
including the fringe of green silk mixed with gold, which is 24in. deep. A large oval medallion is worked

upon the frontal in green and gold ; it is surrounded with rays and has in the centre E SS S This altar

1637

cloth was exhibited (exhibit 253) at the Church History Exhibition held at St. Albans, 1905.
*° White, cp. cit. 13,

342

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

a more peculiar presence of God there then in the Church’; he pressed his
people to bow three times at their coming into the church. And further
‘there being a Crosse at the head of the Font in his Church, upon every
approach . . . used to bow to it.’ Complaint was also made that he had
urged some of the parish to make auricular confession to him, and that he
kept in his parlour a picture of Christ to put him in mind of his Saviour.
As surrogate he was said to ‘improve his authority to introduce the late
Innovations.’ * He further shocked the susceptibilities of his parishioners
by declaring the fourth commandment to be ‘meerely ceremoniall,’ and
accordingly would ‘hire servants, ride journeys, buy wood and send his
Hopps to market on the Lord’s Day.’*? Mr. Horwood, a successor of
Soane at Aldenham, annoyed his people by carrying himself ‘ very super-
stitiously . . . in kneeling downe to his devotion upon the staires leading
up to the pulpit when he went up to preach.’ But still more important
from the point of view of the Parliament were the political views held by
these clergy. Thus Humphrey Tabor, vicar of All Saints’, Hertford,” refused
‘to read the orders and ordinances of Parliament or obey the Commands
thereof, as not of any Authority.’ John Taylor of Hemel Hempstead was
so outspoken in his expressions of malignity ‘against the Parliament and
the Power and Proceedings thereof’ that he was sent to prison,’” while
Robert Pory,’ parson of Thorley, besides affirming a Puritan to be a ‘ Limb
of the Devil,’ abused the Scots, ‘ publicly affirming them to be damned
Rogues, and them that took their Parts.’? He refused to read Parliamentary
ordinances, but they were read by another, and it is recorded that Pory
‘flung out of the Church, calling such as he met to go out with him,
and not to stay to hear (as he called it) a kind of bibble-babble Things, to
no purpose at all.’®

It was evident that the mere ejection of malignant clergy was not
enough to secure conformity. Many advowsons were in the gift of Royalist
families, and Parliament decided to confiscate such property in the national
interest. ‘The Houses, however, realized their incompetence to deal with
the technical questions involved in deciding the suitability of candidates for
the ministry, and this duty was delegated to the Assembly of Divines.* The
first incumbent to be instituted under this system was Richard Brookes,
rector of Puttenham,* and various other cases occur during 1646-8.°

Nothing but admiration can be paid to the manner in which the various
Parliamentary committees attacked difficult problems of administration, some
of which still trouble the church. Thus ordinances were passed to regulate
pluralities and non-residence,’ while parishes were divided as in the case of
Wheathampstead, from which in 1656 Harpenden was separated.* Parochial

98 White, op. cit. 38.

97 MS. exhibited by Lord Aldenham at the English Church History Exhibition, St. Albans, 1905.

98 He had been presented to the living by Charles I in Feb. 1638-9 (Ca/. 8. P. Dom. 1638-9, p. 505)
on the cession of Archer, the previous vicar, who had deserted his cure (ibid. 1637-8, p. 563).

99 Lords’? Journ. v, 662. 100 Tbid. 667.

1 Pory was made archdeacon of Middlesex in 1660 (Hennessy, Novum Repert. 9).

* Lords’ Journ. v, 690. 3 Ibid.

4 cf. ibid. ix, 26, in the case of William Turnour, vicar of Barkway. 5 Ibid. viii, 130.

6 Ibid. 257 (St. Andrew’s, Hertford) ; ix, 652 (Digswell) ; 96 (Radwell) ; 444 (Ashwell) ; 567
(Barley) ; 612 (Little Hormead) ; x, 403 (St. Albans) ; $79 (Barkway).

7 See Shaw, op. cit. i, 110-11 ; ii, 188. 8 Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1656-7, p. 96.

343

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

endowments were also considered and grants made in augmentation, such as
the £50 allowed in 1656 to the minister of Offley and the sums allowed
in January 1658-9 to Watford and [King’s] Walden.’
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 came the re-establish-
ment of the Church of England. It is difficult to say what was the exact
number of ejections of Parliamentary clergy, but changes took place in at
least forty-one cures in this county in the first few years of the reign.” In
many cases the living was handed back to the incumbent whom the Parlia-
ment had disseised. Thus Herbert Thorndyke returned to his living of
Barley," his whilom successor, Nathaniel Ball, finding employment as public
preacher of Royston, where he held a lecture on market days until silenced
by the Act of Uniformity of 1662.” Such cases made no appearance in
the episcopal registers. Within that part of the diocese of London which
lay in Hertfordshire eight institutions were made between 25 March 1661
and 25 March 1662 on the removal or resignation of the intruding incum-
bents of Amwell, Reed, St. Peter’s and St. Stephen’s in St. Albans, Anstey,
Codicote, Hunsdon, Brent Pelham, Ware and Watford.’* The ministers
thus displaced do not, however, appear to have been in the first rank of
importance, Philip Goodwin of Watford being the only ‘Tryer’ among
them.'* Proceedings against them may possibly have been somewhat in the
nature of a threat, for Goodwin held preferment in Essex until his death.”
In the autumn of 1661 work was begun on the revision of the Book of
Common Prayer, and in May 1662 the Act of Uniformity passed into law."
This Act required episcopal ordination from all beneficed clergy, and made
the use of the revised Prayer Book compulsory ; it also required an under-
taking to observe conformity from all clergy and schoolmasters. The Act
came into force on St. Bartholomew’s Day (24 August), 1662, and was
followed by numerous cessions of the clergy. Although but eight institutions
to livings in Hertfordshire apparently vacant through the Act have been
traced in the London episcopal registers,” and four in those of the diocese
of Lincoln,”* the number of displaced clergy was probably considerable,”
and most of the prominent Puritan ministers now devoted their talents and
Piety to the small bodies of separatists which sprang into being all over the
country. Their conviction was probably obtained through the working of
the visitations which accompanied the Act. The Articles of Inquiry were
particularly minute in character, sections dealing with the church and its
ornaments, the minister, the parishioners, parish clerks, sextons, schoolmasters,
midwives and physicians. The churchwardens were required to answer
whether their minister had had episcopal ordination and institution and
whether he was resident and a preacher. One inquiry was whether he ‘ read
the prayers distinctly, gravely, plainly and with due attention and reverence,’
without omissions; another whether he observed Holy Days and Fasting

° Cal. 8. P. Dom. 1656-7, p. 164; 1658-9, p. 254.
10 Newcourt, Repert. i, passim ; Calamy, Nonconformists’ Mem. (ed. 1802), passim ; Harl. MS. 7048.
1 Newcourt, Repert. i, 800. 2 Calamy, op. cit. ii, 309.
: Newcourt, Repert. i, 789, 790, 797, 824, 840, 854, 904, 906. 14 See above.
. Newcourt, Repert. ll, 393. 16 Stat. 13 & 14 Chas. II, cap. 4.
a Newcourt, Repert. i, 788, 792, 800, 816, 826, 842, 848, 896.
: Harl. MS. 7048, fol. 2494. 19 Calamy, op. cit. ii, passim.
See below. For the conforming vicar of Hatfield see Wilde, The Recantation of a Penitent Proteus

344

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Days, the Ember weeks and Rogationtide; another asked whether he did
or did not wear surplice and hood." These were for the Puritan ; for the
restored Royalist the questions were whether his hair was of an immoderate
or uncomely length,” whether he wore ‘any coif, and wrought night caps, or
only plain night caps of silk, sattin, or velvet,’ whether he wore ‘any light-
coloured stockings,’ or whether his dress was the ‘ gown witha standing collar,
and wide sleeves strait at the hands, and a square cap’ prescribed by the canon.”

The returns for the archdeaconry of St. Albans have been preserved.”
They show that the services and usage of the Church of England were being
restored without much difficulty though William Joel, vicar of Sarratt,
confessed that ‘he did not constantly use the Surplis, nor Read the Prayers
accordinge to the Rubrick’; moreover, the churchwardens ‘ declared that he
could not Read y® Prayers for y° Queene and the Duke.’ ‘ My lord monished
him,’ ** and apparently Joel heard no more of the matter, for he was vicar
until his death in 1702."

Joel’s attitude towards Roman Catholicism was probably that of the
majority of Hertfordshire folk both clerical and lay, for when James II was
succeeded by William and Mary very few in this county refused to take the
oath to the new rulers.*7 In the archdeaconry of Huntingdon Alexander
Horton, rector of Norton, was deprived, and the same fate met Richard
Milles, vicar of Ridge, and William Sherlock, the controversialist rector of
Therfield, who both, however, afterwards complied.” The curates of Eastwick
and Cheshunt were also nonjurors, while the oath was refused by Arthur
Battel, an usher at Hertford School, by Aaron Hodgson, an usher at Stanstead
Abbots, and by one Pulford, who may have been a layman.” The most
distinguished of this small body was Nathaniel Salmon,” who gave up his
curacy of Westmill and devoted the rest of his life to that study of the
antiquities of the county that produced his History of Hertfordshire.

This ejection of High Churchmen following that of the extreme men
of the opposite school left the moderates in possession. Unfortunately that
fear of enthusiasm which is always present with those in authority had
spread to the middle classes; preaching had lost its novelty, sacramental
teaching had been allied with abandoned political theories and survived their
discredit hardly. The Restoration had been followed by a great revival of
religious zeal that found expression in London in the building of churches
and the forming of the great missionary societies.” In the country no such
salient features of the change present themselves, but the stimulus was both
needed and felt, for there was much work to be done to the fabric of the
churches and to their equipment. Still more serious was the necessity laid

2 Articles to be enquired of within the Archdeaconry of St. Albans . . . 16623 Articles to be enquired of
within the Archdeaconry of Middlesex, 1662.

22 Articles to be enquired of within the Archdeaconry of St. Albans . . . 1662.

% Articles to be enquired of within the Archdeaconry of Middlesex, 1662.

24 Visit. 1662 (Lond. Epis. Reg.). % Ibid.

26 Urwick, op. cit. 335 ; Newcourt, Repert. i, 883. He had married in 1662 Mary widow of Henry
Child, the patron of the living (Urwick, loc. cit.). 27 Overton, The Nonjurors, 481.

% Ibid. 486; Newcourt, Repert. i, 874; Visit. 1680 (Lond. Epis. Reg.) ; Urwick, op. cit. 821 n.;

Dict. Nat. Biog. ;
29 Overton, op. cit. 472, 481, 890. Charles Bankes is here called vicar, not curate, of Cheshunt, but

this seems to be a mistake (Newcourt, Repert. i, 822). 30 Overten. op. cit. 491 3 Dict. Nat, Biog.
31 See V.C.H. Lond. i, 341, 353-4.

4 345 44

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

upon the clergy of reconciling their people to the services and teaching ot
the re-established Church.

The repair of the fabric of the church other than the chancel was the
duty of the parishioners, and the charge was usually met by a church rate ;
the obligation seems to have been generally discharged during the Com-
monwealth period,” but the chancels had suffered, as the rectors, if lay,
were often Royalists with sequestrated estates, or if clerics were frequently
doubtful of their tenure, especially during the later years of the Protectorate.
Thus at Aldenham, where the rectory was in the hands of the lord of the
manor, the chancel was in 1666 in such ruin as to be unusable, and the court
of the Archdeacon of Huntingdon ‘ ordered that a curtain of baize or some
other thick material should be hung up between the ruins of the said chancel.’
Nothing further was done for some months, but in 1667 the vicar was ordered
to say prayers in the nave, as ‘the roof was fallen down in the part over the
reading pew or desk of the minister.’ Since no remedy could be obtained
from the lay rector, recourse seems to have been had to a church rate.™

Internally the churches underwent considerable alterations. The galleries
which Wren and his followers put into the London churches to increase
their seating accommodation set a fashion which was followed in the country.
The motive for their adoption in Hertfordshire is not very clear. Returns
of accommodation in the churches were made to the Bishops of Lincoln at
the beginning of the 18th century, and were compared by them with the
estimated population and number of Dissenters, but the galleries seem
generally to have been private erections. That built in Benington Church
by the Dods** was probably used as a family pew, as was that built at the
west end of Braughing Church by Ralph Freeman.” In other cases they
were provided for school children ; that at Aldenham ‘ was erected by the
worshipful Company of Brewers, London, trustees of Richard Platt, citizen
of London, deceased, in the year 1686’ for the use of the master and scholars
belonging to the free school of Aldenham, founded by the said Richard
Platt.* At Ware ‘a handsome Gallery at the West End of the church’ was
built by the governors of Christ’s Hospital for their ‘colony of children.’
At Bishop’s Stortford the trustees out of rents for beautifying the church
built one gallery, while the parishioners, not to be outdone, subscribed for
the building of a gallery on the north side for ‘the young gentlemen of the
school,’ successors of the youths whose good order and diligence in noting
the sermon had been commended to Laud in 1636.

One of the articles of inquiry of 1668 was whether there was ‘a decent
Font of stone with a cover’ standing ‘at or near the neather end of your
Church, in such manner as anciently and usually Fonts have stood for the
baptizing of children,’ or whether it had ‘been removed and converted to
any profane or private use.’* In most cases the fonts remained.*' One

2 Ousrter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 114; Besse, 4 Coll. of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers,

1, 240-1. 33 Urwick, op. cit. 251.

: “Ibid. Henry Coghill and W. Briscoe refused to contribute. Coghill had objected to a similar rate

in 1637 (Cal. S. P. Dom. 1637, p. 575). 35 «Speculum Dioecesis’ (Doc. in Alnwick Tower, Linc.).
* Salmon, Hist. of Herts. 196. 37 Tbid. 231. 38 Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 136,
%°2 Salmon, op. cit. 248. Ibid. 272.
40 Yrevcs 15 be enquired of within the Archdeaconry of St. Albans... 1662, p. 1.

cf Rep. of Re. Com. on Hist. Mon. of Herts. passim.
346

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

exception, however, was at Berkhampstead St. Peter, where the Baptists
were strong in numbers* ; here a new marble font was given to the church
by Francis Wethered, comptroller of the works to Charles II.“ The fine
hangings provided for the chapel of Chelsea Hospital and other London
churches at this time found their counterpart in the cushion and pulpit cloth
of crimson velvet fringed and embroidered with gold given by Mrs. Bird of
Mardocks to the church of Ware in 1694,"*in the purple cloth and cushion
and ‘Suit of Dammask Linen’ given to Hitchin in 1704,* in the altar-cloth of
‘Red cloth, with gold and Silk Fringe embroider’d with Gold: The Pulpit-
Cloth and Cushion of the same Cloth and Embroidery’ given to Little Berk-
hampstead,“ and in many other gifts of the same time. Still more extensive
were the gifts to Widford Church made by John Plummer of Blakesware,
who in the autumn of 1708 set up there a new pulpit with a purple cushion
and in 1712 gave a new communion table furnished with a purple ‘ carpet.’ #
The use of liturgical colours seems to have been unknown in Hertfordshire
in these early years of the 18th century, but the dislike to pictures in church
was not then felt, for about 1703 a Captain Polehampton gave to the abbey
church of St. Albans a picture of the ‘Last Supper,’ which was used as a
reredos throughout the century. A ‘branch’ or candelabrum was given to
Hitchin Church in 1678 and gifts of plate were numerous.”

Apart from these minor gifts a good deal of restoration was done, chiefly
by the local squires. William Gore of Tring Park was especially active,
and in 1714 he relaid the pavement throughout the church with freestone ;
the pillars were painted and ‘a handsome vestry’ arranged under the belfry,
while Sir Richard Anderson wainscoted the chancel, making it, in the best
opinion of his day, ‘decent and capacious, and worthy a Choir.’ ®

Anything like a modern trained choir was unknown in the county
parish church of the 18th century. At Bishop’s Stortford, and probably
elsewhere, there had beenachoir of men and boys in pre- Reformation days,”
but no record of it in later times has been found, though Elizabeth’s
injunctions provided for the maintenance of choirs for the comforting of
such as delyte in musicke.’*” Music was not encouraged by the Puritan
clergy, and in Salmon’s time almost the only Hertfordshire churches with
organs were those of All Saints, Hertford, and Bishop’s Stortford.” Hertford
was fortunate in having as vicar Ralph Battell, whose unmarried daughter
Mary was organist.“ Mr. Battell seems to have had some struggles with the
churchwardens over the instrument, for on bequeathing a sum of money for
the organist’s salary he added the proviso that the trustees should pay for

#2 Urwick, op. cit. 377-8.

43 Salmon, op. cit. 126. ‘The churchwardens’ accounts (Add. MS. 18772, fol. 173) show that in
1661-3 IIs. were given ‘to John Turner bringing the font’ and £1 to Rich. Ward ‘about the font.’

44 Salmon, op. cit. 249. 4 Tbid. 46 Thid. 26.

“" Lockwood, Widford and Widford Church, 11. 48 Guildhall MS. 43. The picture is still in the church.

* Salmon, op. cit. 163; V.C.H. Herts. ii, ili, passim. See also Topography, above.

50 Salmon, op. cit. 131 ; Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 508 ; ‘Speculum Dioecesis.’

el Glasscock, Ree. of St. Michae?’s, 41.

52 Injunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie, 1559, § 49. Sandys in 1571 inquired whether ‘such partes
onely of the Common prayer be Sung, as by the Booke of Common prayer are appoynted to be Song’
(Articles to be enquired of . . . in the Visitation of the Dioces of London, § 4).

53 Salmon, op. cit. 272 ; Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 158.

54 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. She died in January 1698-9, and on 13 February died Elizabeth Cranmer,
who left £200 ‘for a perpetuall encouragement to the organist ’ (ibid.).

347

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the tuning should the churchwardens refuse to do so. Further endowment
was provided under the will of Mistress Dyonisia Battell, perhaps sister of
Mary, who died in 1730."* At Bishop’s Stortford the organ was perhaps
a little later, though there had been one here in the time of Henry VII.
The organ was given by a Mr. Pape, and, says Salmon, ‘the expence
of so fine an Instrument is great, but chearfully contributed to by the
Inhabitants, as well as by other Gentlemen.’ By 1815 Watford had also
obtained an organ which stood on the gallery built at the east end of the
nave in 1766. Here as elsewhere the school children were the only trained
singers,” but the music was strictly limited in character, being confined by
Bishop Gibson in 1724 to the Psalms in ‘ five or six usual tunes.’ Where
there was a school the children would form the choir, and at Hertford the
boys of the Green Coat School were required to be taught to sing the
psalms and responses in and during divine service.® Singing, however, seems
to have fallen into disuse in many village churches, and when John Jones
went to Shephall in 1767 he found that there had been none for many
years.” His ambition was to establish the singing of Psalms v, xxiv, lxxiv, c
and civ, and he added that he ‘would be contented with these few, being
plain and proper tunes, and the words suitable.’ Singing seems to have been
revived towards the close of the century,® and in 1790 Bishop Porteus feelingly
described how in most country churches the music was ‘ generally engrossed
by a select band of singers, who have been taught by some itinerant master to
sing in the worst manner, a most wretched set of psalm-tunes in three or four
parts, so complex, so difficult and so totally void of all true harmony that it
is altogether impossible for any of the congregation to take part with them.’

Religious education was not neglected by the Church at this time. The
injunctions of 1550 provided that every curate should teach the catechism,
whensoever just occasion was offered on Sunday or holy day, and at least
once every six weeks should call upon his parishioners and present himself
ready to instruct and examine the youth.” Queen Mary required that every
parson, vicar or curate upon every holy day and every second Sunday in the
year should hear and instruct all the youth of the parish ‘for halfe an houre
at the leaste, before Evenynge prayer, in the ten commaundementes, the
Artycles of the belyefe, and in the Lordes prayer, and dylygentlye examyne
them, and teache the Cathechisme, sette forth in the booke of publike
prayer.’ Articles of 1571 instructed the curate to catechize on Sundays
and holy days, and the duty was constantly being urged.” The early Puritans
found here an excellent opportunity for expounding their views” ; in 1603
John Rudd, minister of Shephall, preached every Sunday at least twice, ‘in
the afternoon referring all his exercises unto catechising, handling either

54a Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 175-6. 55 Glasscock, op. cit. 28. 56 Salmon, op. cit. 272.
57 Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 258. 58 Charge of Edmund Bishop of Lincoln . . . 1717.

59 Gibson, Directions given to the Clergy of the Diocese of London (1724), 114-15.
60 Clutterbuck, op. cit. 1, 174. 81 Jones MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B, 16. 82 Thid.

63 A pitch pipe once used at Aldbury and a hautboy belonging to the church band at Aldenham were
shown at the English Church History Exhibition at St. Albans, 1905.

64 Porteus, Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, 20.

85 Injunctions geven in the Visitation of .. . N 'ycolas by shoppe of London, 1550, § 9.

86 Injunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie, 1559, $44.

87 Articles to be enquired of . . . in the Visitation of the Dioces of London, 1571, § 9.

88 Rec, of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 45, 54+

348

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

some choice places of Scripture for that purpose, or insisting on some ordinary
catechism,’ and this seems to have been a usual plan.” During the Com-
monwealth catechizing seems to have been disused,” and articles of 1662
inquired whether regular instruction was given to the young before evening
prayer, and whether the afternoon sermons had, according to the king’s
instructions, been turned into catechizing by way of questions and answers.”
How greatly the exercise was neglected may be seen from the return made
for parishes in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon in 1717"; some attempt
was generally made to gather together the children during Lent, but again
and again it is recorded that the parishioners are backward in sending their
children and servants. Much the same report was made in 1763.% Here
and there, as the century progressed, catechizing was regarded seriously.
John Jones of Shephall laid down ‘ catechizing on Sundays and Holy Days’ as
one of the most important ‘duties of a parish priest’; he divided his cate-
chumens into classes, the younger to be instructed in the Church catechism
only, the older in a separate class, to be supplied with commentaries.” He
was prepared to give separate instruction to ‘the more sober and serious who
are not yet communicants.’ Porteus was the first Bishop of London to see
the importance of Sunday schools, which he persistently advocated.”

The articles of 1571 contained inquiries whether any had been admitted
to the holy communion ‘that cannot say by heart the Ten Commaundements,
the Articles of the faith, and the Lordes Prayer in English,’ and knowledge
of the catechism would thus seem to have been accepted in place of con-
firmation. In 1662 the churchwardens were asked if their minister prepared
the children and presented them to be confirmed,” and in 1706 the Bishop
of Lincoln required candidates to be ‘of Age and Ability not only to say,
but to understand their catechism’ and to be duly prepared.” The returns
of 1717 show that the sacrament was much neglected at this time ; thus at
Shenley many were unconfirmed, and at Caddington ‘very few’ had been
presented to the bishop.” In 1770 the Bishop of Lincoln issued an order
for a general confirmation, the centres for Hertfordshire being apparently
St. Albans, Bishop’s Stortford and Stevenage.” The second half of the 19th
century saw confirmation take its place among the most important functions
of episcopal work, and in 1912 no less than 160 centres were appointed for
the diocese of St. Albans.®

89 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 115.

7 [bid. 113-16, cf. 148 ; Calamy, Nonconformists’ Mem. (1802), li, 309.

™ Gauden, 4 Sermon preached . . . at the Funeralof. . . Dr. Brownrig, 159.

72 Articles to be enquired of within the Archd. of Middlesex, 1662.

73 «Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.) ; Bp. Gibson’s Visit. (Lincoln Diocese), 1717-47 (Lib.

of D. and C. of St. Paul’s). 74 Guildhall MS. 481.
75 Jones MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), A 39. At Shephall in 1767 he had a class of eleven, five of whom
were boys (ibid. B 16). 78 Ibid. A 39.

77 Porteus, Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, 1788, p. 20; Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of
London, 1790, pp. 15-16. A Sunday school was promoted at St. Albans in the winter of 1785 with a view
to establishing ‘an early habit among the lower class of attending church’ (Car. Engl. Church Hist. Exhibition,
[St. Albans, 1905], 112). A Sunday school was instituted at Hoddesdon in July 1791. The children were
to appear in the schoolrooms at 8 a.m. in summer and at 9 a.m. in winter ; at both seasons afternoon school
began at 2.30 (Tregelles, Hoadesdon, 420).

18 Articles to be enquired of . . . in the Visitation of the Dioces of London, 1571.

79 Articles to be enquired of within the Archd. of Middlesex, 1662. 80 Bp. of Lincoln’s Charge, 1706.

81 Bp. Gibson’s Visit. (Linc. Dioc.), 1717-47 (Lib. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s).

% Jones MS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.), B 16. Jones presented three candidates. °° Sz. Albans Dioc. Cal. 1912.

349

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

As to the actual services held at the beginning of the 18th century very
full information is available in the ‘Speculum Dioecesis’™* drawn up for
Bishop Gibson and based on returns made at a visitation in 1717.% In
nearly every parish morning and evening prayer was said on Sundays“ only,
but at Caddington the rector said it once daily, and at Caddington and
about four other places services were held on holy days, Wednesdays and
Fridays. In most churches the holy communion was administered thrice,
or at most four times yearly; in this respect also Caddington was an
exception, for here there were celebrations eight times a year, on Christmas
Day and the Sunday following, on Easter Day, Low Sunday, Whit Sunday,
Trinity Sunday, ‘Ordination Sunday in September,’ and the Sunday
after it. Both at Wheathampstead and Ardeley there were seven celebra-
tions, and at Stevenage eight or nine. At Harpenden, Herttord and Hitchin
the holy communion was administered monthly and on the three great
festivals, at Hertingfordbury and Tewin monthly, and at Hemel Hempstead
fourteen times in the year.”

The next fifty years brought little alteration in the number of services.
A return made for 1763 ® shows that morning and evening prayer was still
confined to Sundays, that the Eucharist was still celebrated thrice or at most
four times yearly,” and this remained the standard for the next half-century
at least.”

Hertfordshire was singularly little touched by the revivals of the late
18th and early rgth centuries ; their influence was almost entirely mediate.
The most obvious result of the Evangelical movement was the establishment
of chapels of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion at Whitwell and
elsewhere. By the second decade of the 1gth century the new spirit had
permeated everywhere and was making itselt felt in both the ornaments and
administration of the Church. Thus in 1820 St. Peter’s, Berkhampstead,
was restored, the outside stuccoed, the ceilings plastered, and a gallery erected
at the west end. Six years later was made the first attempt at the
subdivision of parishes since the time of the Commonwealth, and the district

™ Preserved in the Alnwick Tower, Lincoln.

§5 Bp. Gibson’s Visit. (Linc. Dioc.), 1717-47 (Lib. of D. and C. of St. Paul’s).

88 At Wigginton and Long Marston service was only said once a month (Salmon, Herts. 128, 133).
This was evidently exceptional. In 1706 the Bishop of I.ncoln had desired incumbents to read public
yravers, if they could get a congrecation together, every day, at least on Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays, holy
cays and their eves (Bistop of Linccin's Charge . . . 1m his Primary Visitation, 1706). 7 Visit. cit.

“ Ibid. ; ‘Speculum Dioecesis.’ Prayer on Wednesdays and Frida,s was enjoined in 1550 (Injunctions
wecen in the Visit of ©. . Nyeslas byshoppe of Lindsn) and 1559 (Injunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie). The
siving of the Litany on these days was presupposed by the Articles to be enguired of within the Archd. of
Middiciex, 1662.

°° There were four celebrations only at Knebwvorth in 1605, i.e. at Christmas, Easter, Whit Sunday and
Michaelmas (Jones Ms. (Dr. W lIliams’s Lib.], B 21). For services at Shephall see ibid. B 16.

% Bp. Gibson’s Visit. uf supra.

$1 «Speculum Dioecesis.’

*° This must have been compiled from the answers to the visitation articles put forward by Bishop
Osbaldeston in his primary visitation of this year, see Jones MS. B 16, no. 149.

8 Guildhall MS. 481. Among the ‘duties of a parish priest,’ as described by Jones (Jones MS.
(Dr. Withams’s Lib.], A 39\, wa: ‘to explain the duty and pres the necessity of frequent Communions ; and
t) endeavour to introduce the practice thereof.’ A very interesting account of the services at Stevenage and
chephall in 1763 and 1-66 will ce f-und in Jones Ms. B16. Here, tuo, is a list of ornaments necessary
ror the decent conduct of the communion service, but missing at Shephall.

*4 Bishop Porteus complained that in many places service wa, held on Sunday once only. He
enjoined one sermon and prayers twice in the day (Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lindin, 179¢, pp. 13-14)

% Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Dacorum Hund. 37.

35°

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

of St. Peter’s, Colney, was formed from St. Peter’s and St. Stephen’s in
St. Albans and Shenley. The Oxford Movement proper had no notable
adherents here, and it was not until about 1860 that its effect began to be
felt. What this was on the fabric of the churches can be judged from a
comparison of the plates inserted in the county histories of Clutterbuck
(1815) and Cussans (1879-81). A wave of restoration passed over the
county. In 1862 Tring Church was being renovated, while Harpenden was
being rebuilt, these being the first churches affected ; in 1879 only three
of the eighteen parishes in the hundred of Dacorum were unrestored.”
At the same time services were being increased, and monthly celebrations
became general. The readjustment of parishes had been begun some time
before ; seven new parishes were formed between 1840 and 1850, ten
between 1850 and 1860, eight between 1860 and 1870, and eight in the
next ten years. Only one new parish was formed in 1880-go and four in
1890-1900. Since the opening of the 2oth century twelve parishes have
been constituted, special attention being paid to the needs of Watford with
its growing industrial population.®
With the passing of the Act of Uniformity and the consequent ejection

of nonconforming clergy separatist congregations came into being all over the
country. The bitter feud between Independents and Presbyterians must, of
course, have resulted in local meetings even before this date when a member
of the rival party was in possession of the parish church, but organized Dissent
must be dated from 1662.% It is known that ejected clergy set up con-
venticles at Watton at Stone, Hertford, Hitchin, Bishop’s Stortford, Minsden
(in Hitchin), Rickmansworth, Bovingdon, Theobalds and Kimpton’; the
majority of these were of Independents, for the Parliamentary appointments
to Hertfordshire churches had been markedly Independent in character. From
1662 to 1672 meetings such as these were, of course, illegal. Under the
statute of 1593 any person of over sixteen years of age who absented himself
from church, persuaded any other person to abstain, or was present at a
conventicle was liable to imprisonment till he conformed; if he failed to
conform within three months of conviction his goods were declared forfeit
and the offender was to abjure the realm.’ This Act had fallen into disuse
during the period of divers opinions under the Commonwealth, but was
revived in 1664 as the Conventicle Act. Nonconformists were also liable
under the Acts specially framed against Roman Catholics in the time of
Elizabeth ; by these any person of over sixteen convicted of non-attendance
at church was liable to a fine of £20 for every month of absence, or to
forfeit two-thirds of his lands. Except in the case of Quakers and Roman
Catholics these laws do not seem to have been generally enforced. On the
whole, there was very little disturbance, though a certain amount of vexation
of ministers.2 The story of the funeral service held in the abbey church

98 $+ Albans Dioc. Cal. 1912, p. 88. It was not, however, legally constituted until 1909.

57 Cussans, op. cit. passim. 98 $4. Albans Dioc. Cal. 1912.

°° In April 1633 James Pope of Hemel Hempstead stood excommunicate for keeping conventicles at the
house of Michael Suett (S. P. Dom. Chas. I, ccclxxxvii, 68).

100 Calamy, Nonconformists Mem. (1802), ii, passim. 1 Stat. 35 Eliz. cap. 1.

2 Ibid. 23 Eliz. cap. 1; 29 Eliz. cap. 6; 3 Jas. I, cap. 4.

3 cf. Calamy, op. cit. ii, passim ; Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, passim. Many laymen, however,

were presented in the ecclesiastical courts for failing to attend the services at the parish church (Urwick.
op. cit. 187, &c.).

351

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

of St. Albans in May 1662 by the ejected William Haworth and interrupted
by the soldiery with fatal result aroused indignation which could only be
expressed for an exceptional occurrence.*

Conventicles of the Independent persuasion were reported in 1669 as
being held at St. Albans, Sawbridgeworth, Rickmansworth and St. Paul’s
Walden, but the preachers mentioned were undistinguished, and indeed some
of the most notable of the ejected had either died or left the county.’ One
of the licences* granted to Independents in 1672 under the Declaration of
Indulgence was to an ejected minister. Nathaniel Eeles remained at
Harpenden after his ejection from that curacy until the passing of the Five
Mile Act,’ when he himself moved to Bovingdon, leaving his wife and
children at their old home. In 1672 he obtained a licence for his house at
Harpenden,* and with the help of an assistant preached there and at Codicote
until his death in 1678.°

From this time organized Nonconformity became a recognized fact,
though its legality was not ensured until 1688—g, when the Toleration Act sus-
pended the prosecuting laws in cases where Nonconformists attended an assembly
certified under the Act and took the oaths of supremacy and allegiance."

A return of 1715 speaks of Independent congregations at Bendish,
Bishop’s Storttord, Barnet, Cheshunt, Hertford, Hitchin, Royston and
Theobalds ; that at Bishop’s Stortford was said to have a congregation of
600 persons." Dissent had by this time a firm hold on the county, and the
Bishop of Lincoln noted * that among the parishes under his care Willian
and Digswell alone were unaffected. At Harpenden there were 130
Dissenters, at Hertingfordbury about a quarter of its eighty-nine families,
at Totteridge fifty out of a hundred did not contorm, while at Walkern were
eighty-four Dissenting families.”

Congregationalism continued to hold its own in the county, and between
1852 and 1884 no less than twenty-three new chapels were registered as
belonging to Congregational or Independent bodies."

Presbyterianism, with its unccmpromising discipline, had never been
popular in Hertfordshire. The most distinguished leader in the county was
undoubtedly Edmund Staunton, some time rector of Bushey, and from 1648
to the Restoration President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford." On his
ejection from Oxtord in 1660 he settled at Rickmansworth, receiving there

4 See Calamy, op. cit. 1i, 300 ; Urwick, op. cit. 174-8.

5 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Lary None: i, 92; Urwick, op. cit. passim. e.g. Isaac Bedford, late vicar of
Willian, died in 1667 (Calamy, op. cit. li, 315), Jeremiah Lurwell, late vicar of St. Andrew’s, Hertford, in
1668 (ibid. 308) ; Nathaniel Ball, late vicar of Royston, had settled in Essex (ibid. 311).

® The rest were to Mr. Jonathan Pitman’s house in Theobalds ; Mr. Hill’s house in Aybrook (Cross-
brook) Street, Chesham (Cheshunt); the house of Mr. Cusors (? Ewers) at Ponsbourne ; the house of
Widow Heath at Preston ; Mr. Thomas Porhil’s house at ‘Chesham’ (Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. i,
284, 304) ; the house of Thomas Morrice at Ashwell (ibid. 319); the house of Sarah Adams at Hit hin,
of Wil iam Eeles at Flamstead, of — Cox at Hertford, of John Wheeler at Royston and of Robert Pemberton
at St. Alcans (Bate, Decésratisn of Indulgence, App. vil, pp. xxxi, lxix).

7 Stat. 17 Chas. II, cap. 2. ® Cal. S. P. Dom. 1672, p. 237. ® Urwick, op. cit. 419-20.

10 Stat. 1 Will. and Mary, cap. 18. Cases still occurred of prosecutions for absence from church or any
other place of public worship (Quarter Sess. R. [Hert:. Co. Rec.], ii, 24, 30), and schoolmasters teaching
‘grammar’ were still required to produce episcopal licence (Visit. 1715 [Lond. Epis. Reg.]).

MN Add. MS. 32057, fol. 84. 2 «Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.).

13 But in January 1714-15 licence was applied for for the house of John Necdham here as a place of
worship for Protestant Dissenters (Urwick, op. cit. 629). 14 ‘ Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.).

18 Urwick, op. cit. 854-7. 16 Mayo, Life and Death of Edmund Staunton, 16.

35

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

‘a very kind welcome, both from the gentry, as a gentleman, and other good
Christians of inferior rank, as a minister of Jesus Christ.’ He preached
publicly there and elsewhere, apparently in the parish churches, until 1662,
when ‘his wife now labouring under some weaknesses, and being weary with
the burden of household affairs, he retired to a chamber or two in a private
Family some miles distant. . . As long as he lived there, there was a church
always in that house.’’* He afterwards moved to the neighbourhood of
St. Albans, and later to Bovingdon, being ‘led thither by the invitation of a
religious and very kind Gentleman, freely accommodating him, with all the
conveniences of an habitation of his in that place.’ ‘Seeing he could not
preach in a church to many, he would preach in a chamber to a few,’ and
Bovingdon became the centre of a work which extended through all the
villages about. A regular meeting was established before 1669 at the house
of a Mrs. Bachelor in ‘the Abbey parish’ of St. Albans, and here Staunton,
William Jenkyn of King’s Langley,” and Isaac Loeffs, late rector of Shenley,
preached Sunday by Sunday to a congregation of a hundred persons.”
Staunton and Loeffs also preached regularly at Codicote, where there was a
meeting of a similar size.* At Ridge conventicles were held at the house
of John Clarke, gentleman, and of John Nicholls, a rich yeoman, and the
Presbyterians had the support of Mr. Lomax, an attorney. Here, too,
the preachers were Staunton and Loeffs.* At Theobalds in the parish of
Cheshunt there was a congregation whose ministers were Thomas Wads-
worth anda Mr. Bragge.* Staunton died in 1671,” and it may be that with
his death the congregations at Codicote and Ridge dispersed, for no licence
was asked for either of these places under the Declaration of Indulgence in
the following year. When driven away from Acton in 1669 Richard
Baxter and his wife settled at Totteridge, where they lived until 1672, and
here he preached in his own house.” It was in Hertfordshire in 1676 that
Baxter first preached publicly after his ejection. He had still an old licence
of the bishop and preached first at Rickmansworth and after that at the
churches of Sarratt, of King’s Langley, and of various places in Buckingham-
shire.® While at Rickmansworth he had a great discussion with William
Penn, the Quaker, and they ‘continued speaking to Two Rooms full of People
(Fasting) from Ten a Clock till Five (One Lord and Two Knights, and Four
Conformable Ministers, besides others, being present, some all the Time and
some part), for ‘the neighbourhood of Rickmansworth abounded with
Quakers.’*® Presbyterianism, indeed, at this time seems to have been chiefly
in the east and in the extreme south of the county with the exceptions of
St. Paul’s Walden and Ashwell.® Licences were issued for meeting-houses
at Bishop’s Stortford, Sawbridgeworth, and Little Hadham in the east, and at
Watford, Garston, Chipping Barnet, Little Berkhampstead and Abbot’s
Langley in the south.” Only two Presbyterian congregations—at St. Albans
and ‘ Bloxam’ (? Broxbourne)—are mentioned in the return of 1715,” and

Mayo, Life and Death of Edmund Staunton, 19. 18 Tbid. 22. 19 Thid. 23. 20 Tbid. 25.

21He had been ejected from Christ Church, Newgate Street, London, in 1662 (Hennessy, Novum
Repert. 126). 22 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. i, 92. 8 Ibid. 93. 4 Thid. 94.

25 Ibid. 95 ; Urwick, op. cit. 509. %6 Salmon, op. cit. 117. ;

27 Reliquiae Baxterianae (ed. Sylvester), pt. iii, 60, 103. 8 Ibid. 174. Ibid.

30 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. i, 215. 31 Bate, Declaration of Indulgence, App. vil, p. XXxi.

32 Add. MS.32057, fol. 84.

4 353 45

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the report made for the Bishop of Lincoln two years later shows Presbyterian
families scattered here and there over the Hertfordshire parishes of the arch-
deaconry of Huntingdon, but in considerable numbers only at Cottered.”
The anti-Trinitarian tendency discernible in many Presbyterian congregations
began to make itself markedly felt at about this time, but it seems probable that
many of the Hertfordshire followers ultimately joined the Congregationalists.
The most important secession of this kind was that of the congregation
at Theobalds, numbering 300 persons in 1715. In 1733 these formally
united with the members of the Congregational chapel at Crossbrook,
Cheshunt.* By 1825 the only remaining Presbyterian congregation was
that which met in the chapel in Lower Dagnall Street, St. Albans. The
teaching was ‘ distinctly Socinian,’ * and the chapel finally became definitely
Unitarian. Dr. James Martineau was associated with it and had much
influence in the town. After 1868, however, there was no regular minister
here; the congregation gradually dispersed, and finally the chapel, built in
1690, was sold in 1895 by order of the Charity Commissioners, the proceeds
being added to the funds of the Provincial Assembly of London and the
South-Eastern Counties.”

From the earliest days of the Reformation infant baptism had proved a
dividing point among Protestants. From the beginning of the 17th century
entries in the parish registers up and down the county seem to show a
dislike to the ordinance, and presentments in the archidiaconal courts of
neglect to have children baptized were not infrequent.” Bitterly as the ruling
parties in the Commons, the Independents and Presbyterians, opposed the
Baptists, it was owing to the direct influence of the House of Commons that
George Kendall, one of their most distinguished ministers, obtained a footing in
Hertfordshire. In 1642 the House of Commons settled Kendall as lecturer
at Hemel Hempstead.” On complaints that Kendall refused infants baptism *
Dr. Burgess was sent down to inguire and report. The result was that
Kendall was lodged in Newyate during the pleasure of the House.” Other
notable Baptists at this time were Edward Harrison, vicar of Kensworth, and
Daniel Dyke," rector of Much Hadham ; pronounced views, Antinomian as
well as Baptist, were also held by Robert Baldwin, who was committed to
the prison of the Gate House in Westminster.*| In 1653 the Council of
State had declared itselr satishled ‘concerning the gifts and abilities of Major
William Packer to preach the gospel,’ and had described him as eminent in
godliness.'* Fox tells how ‘Coll: Packer had gotten Tybballs and was
made a Justice of peace there: and there sett upp a great meetinge of ye
baptists in Tybballs parke.’* Here in March 1657-8 a congregation was

38 «Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.). 34 Urwick, op. cit. 513.
38 Tis Manchester Socinian Controversy, 132. 6 Ibid.
* George E. Evans, Vestiges of Pretestert Dissent, 245 andn. % See Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. passim.
39 Ibid. 209 ; Crmmens’ Journ. ii, 730. Lords Journ. vi, 433, 446, 479.
41 Ibid. 4-0; Lightfoot, Werks, xiii, 186. 42 Lords Journ. vi, 470, 480, 500.
: Bs Cite, Hist. ge ale deka iffy Ug 55°55 1¥, a ee was see of William Dyke of St. Michael’s
ee ee ee
8 Lope Jon, FOO, OS F, * Cal. S. P. Dom. 1653-4, p. 13.
* Fos, Jcarn. (ed. 1911), i, 165. ‘They were exceedinge high and rai‘ed against freindes and truth
and threatned to apprehend mee with there warrants if ever I came downe there: I was moved of ye Lord

God to goe down to Tiballs and appointe a meetinge harde by,’ but Packer ‘had not power to medle with
mee ’ (ibid. and 166).

354

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

under the ministry of John Spencer,‘ probably that ‘Captain Spencer ’ who
according to the report of 1669 was preacher to a Hertford ‘meeting of
Anabaptists to the number of 400 and upward.’* The report, which is
obviously incomplete, further mentions conventicles at St. Albans where
the congregation of fifty persons met occasionally at various places, at
Watford, where ‘ some of considerable estates’ were among those who met
at the house of John Crawley, a joiner, and at Redbourn.” These con-
venticles were, of course, illicit, and that at Redbourn seems to have
disappeared shortly afterwards.” The return, however, makes no mention
of the meeting at Pirton, for which the house of Thomas Carter was licensed
in 1672, the licensed teachers being Robert Collinson, Thomas Silby and
Thomas Vaux." A return of 1715 reports Baptists at St. Albans, Bishop’s
Stortford, Barnet, Berkhampstead, Codicote and Rushden, Hitchin, ‘ King’s
North’ near Hemel Hempstead, Marlowes, Markyate Street, Tring,
Theobalds, Ware and Watford,” and shortly afterwards a conventicle was
noted at Wheathampstead.* Within the next ten years further meetings
had been formed at ‘ Bedenham,’ ‘ Pond’ and Coney Street and Braughing.™

‘The congregation which had met for many years under the protection
of the Joscelins® of Hyde Hall, Sawbridgeworth, had dispersed ‘a consider-
able number of years’ before 1772, and most of the congregations
mentioned in 1715-17 seem to have come to an end at an early date, the
only survivors in the 19th century being those at Barnet, Berkhampstead and
Tring.” The church at Tring joined the New Connexion in 1801,” as did
the church of Berkhampstead in 1809"; the latter is now, however, a
member of the Baptist Union.”

The history of Wesleyanism in Hertfordshire is somewhat curious. It
was not until some twenty years after the establishment of the society that
John Wesley visited Hertford. Hehad evidently heard that the place would
offer him little encouragement, though his meeting was undisturbed ; at
the close of it he wrote that he doubted not but ‘much good may be done
even here.’ His subsequent visits had some effect, but before December
1772 ‘the servants of God quarrelled among themselves till they destroyed
the whole work,’ even preaching being discontinued.” Wesley was bitterly
disappointed, and never afterwards mentioned the town without com-
miseration.* In 1775 and twice in 1778 “ he was back preaching at ‘ poor
desolate Hertford,’ and on one occasion he added that ‘they heard me with
something like seriousness.’ He also preached at Barnet, where he had in
the evening ‘a larger congregation than ever, and a greater number of
communicants.’ Encouraged by such results he asked ‘ Will this poor barren
wilderness at length blossom and bud as the rose?’ Wesley’s forebodings

47 Urwick, op. cit. 507. 48 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. i, 84. 9 Ibid. g2-3.

50 The two Baptist congregations established here by 1884 were of modern growth (Urwick, op. cit. 301-2).

51 Bate, op. cit. App. vii, p.xxxi. ®? Add. MS. 32057, fol. 84. °° «Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.)

54T. S. James, Hist. of the Litigation and Legislation respecting Presbyterian Chapels and Chantries, 663.

55 Carter had lived with Sir Robert Joscelin after his ejection from the rectory of Graveley (Calamy.
Nonconformists’ Mem. [1802], ii, 304).

56 Urwick, op. cit. 687, quoting Josiah Thompson’s MSS. (Dr. Williams’s Lib.).

57 Minutes of the General Assembly (Baptist Hist. Soc.), i, p. lix. For Barnet cf. ibid. ii, 37, 48.

58 Tbid. i, p. lix. 59 Ibid. 36 n. 60 Tbid. ii, 332. 81 Journ. (ed. F. W. Macdonald), iii, 153.

6 Ibid. 494 (18 Dec. 1772). 83 Ibid. iv, 39 (13 Jan. 1775).

64 Ibid. 115, 143 (9 Nov., 30 Oct. 1778). © Ibid. 143 (30 Oct.1778). ® Ibid. 115 (9 Nov. 1778).

a55

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

were evidently fulfilled. No circuit was formed for the county until 1824,
when that at St. Albans became part of the Second London District,” the
minister changing once every month with the preachers at Luton.” Ir
1825 the congregation numbered 145,° and 192 in 1830”; the minister
was to live at Watford.” The Watford congregation dated from 1808, its
first chapel in Water Lane being built six years later.” It became a circuit
town in 1869.% New Barnet attained that status ata still later date. New
Barnet, Watford and St. Albans are now the heads of circuits in the First
London District, the sixth circuit of which is known as that of London
(Hertfordshire Missions).™

Great as were the hardships encountered by members of all the non-
conforming bodies in the 17th century, none can equal the sufferings of
those who belonged to the Society of Friends. Though Fox visited Hert-
fordshire soon after his conversion,” he does not seem to have imparted his
peculiar tenets to any at that time, and no mention of Quakers in the county
has been found before 1656. By this time the distinctive features of
their belief had fully developed. The Quaker held that there was no
warrant from Scripture for a paid ministry, that tithes were without justifi-
cation, that sacraments were unnecessary. Doctrine such as this earned
for them the hatred and execration of all the other sects, while the civil
authorities looked with distrust on a body which asserted the sinfulness of
oaths, the unmeaningness of rank and the unlawfulness of resistance in any
shape or form. The principles of the Friends, indeed, cut at the root of all
that both Royalist and Parliamentarian held most essential to the adminis-
tration of Church and State.

In 1704 Henry Sweeting, who must then have been an old man,
declared that ‘the first Publick friend that came into Hertford’ was James
Naylor. He lodged with Sweeting, and at a meeting in his house his host
and hostess with their two daughters were convinced.” This must have
been before 1658, when Nicholas Lucas of Ware was imprisoned for seven
months for non-payment of 3s. tithe.” Henry Stout of Ware was also
imprisoned in this year,” and it seems probable that a meeting there was
already in existence. The Quakers were especially strong at this time in
the east of the county, and seem to have roused the popular hatred,® for in
1659 the rabble broke up meetings at ‘Standborne’® (? Standon) and Saw-
bridgeworth." It would seem that at the latter place the Quakers already
had a meeting-house, for the report describes how the mob after ‘striking
them as they came thither, throwing them off their Horses, and Wallowing
them in the Mire, daubing their Faces and Clothes, filling their Hats with
Dirt, and so putting them on their Heads,’ then broke down the tiles,
boards, windows and walls of the meeting-house. The assault continued for
the three hours the meeting lasted.” In 1660 the authorities broke up

87 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, v, 476. 88 Ibid. vi, 16. 69 Ibid. 38.

70 Ibid. 580. 1 Ibid. 560. 7 Urwick, op. cit. 363-4. 73 Ibid. 364.

"4 Wesleyan Methodist Church: Names and Addresses of Circuit Stewards, 1912.

7 Journ. (ed. 1901), 1, 3- 78 Besse, 4 Coll. of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, i, 240.

7 The First Publishers of Truth (Friends’ Hist. Soc.), 342. 78 Besse, op. cit. i, 241. 79 [bid.

80 Perhaps owing to their ‘testimonies.” Henry Fest and Thomas Harris would seem to have ‘ borne
testimony’ in 1658, for both were convicted of having disturbed ministers (Extracts from State Papers relating
to Friends [Friends’ Hist. Soc. Ser. 1]), §2. 51 Besse, op. cit. i, 241. 8 Ibid.

356

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

meetings at Baldock, Royston, Hitchin, Hertford and Ware, but these
measures were entirely futile. Pepys when riding north in the following
year describes how he ‘ got to Baldwick ’ (Baldock), and how he found that
both there and everywhere else that he came ‘the Quakers do still continue,
and rather grow than lessen.’ The Quaker Act, which became law in
May 1662, made it penal for five or more persons of over sixteen years of
age to assemble at one place or time for unauthorized worship. On con-
viction, confession or notorious evidence of the fact the offender was liable,
for the first and second offences, to fines not exceeding £5 and {10
respectively, and for the third to transportation with the alternative of
abjuring the realm. Twenty-four persons were tried under this Act at the
Midsummer sessions of this same year.” In 1663 meetings were discovered
at King’s Langley and at Widford.*’ At Hertford divers of the Quakers
were ‘men of estates and repute,’® and there seems to have been some
reluctance at prosecuting them. According to a report made in 1664 ‘the
Sectaries are said to grow so numerous there out of y® dislike and prejudices
they have taken up against one of y® vicars of Hartford,*® who hath very
fewe auditors.’ It was suggested that if two or three clergymen of parts and
temper could convince the Quakers it would be instrumental to the undeceiv-
ing of the rest of the sectaries ‘in this chrisis of time’ before the new Conventicle
Act came into force on 1 July 1664.% The Act was straightway put in force,
and on 12 August Henry Feast and eight others were indicted for the third
offence under the Conventicle Act.” The witnesses for the prosecution
agreed that while they had found the Quakers assembled ‘ they neither heard
any of them speak, nor saw them do anything.’ The Grand Jury returned
a bill of ‘ignoramus,’ but the judge, Orlando Bridgman, sent them back
with fresh instructions and they finally returned a true bill; one of the
prisoners was found not guilty, the rest were sentenced to transportation to
the Barbadoes and Jamaica.” Meetings seem, however, still to have been
held at the house of Nicholas Lucas at Hertford, and three men and four
women were indicted at the quarter session for having been present.” Five
of them stood mute and were sentenced to the Barbadoes.%* In October
twenty-one Quakers were sentenced to transportation.” The meetings still
persisted, however,” and in 1669 it was reported that a public meeting was
held every Sunday at Hertford at a room specially fitted up for the purpose.

83 Besse, op. cit. i, 241-2.

84 Diary, 6 Aug. 1661. On 2 Aug. he had ridden to Ware, ‘on the way having much discourse with
a fell-monger, a Quaker, who told me what a wicked man he had been all his life-time till within two years.’

85 Stat. 13 & 14 Chas. II, cap. 1. 86 Besse, op. cit. i, 243.

87 Tbid. 2443 cf. Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 153.

88 Extract from State Papers (Friends’ Hist. Soc. Ser. 2), 192.

89 Thomas Ashton, vicar of St. Andrew’s, instituted 20 Dec. 1660 (Urwick, op. cit. 532 n.). For the
scandals connected with him see Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. 1, 84-5 ; Ralph Wallis, Room for the
Cobler of Gloucester (1668), 17-18. 9° Extracts from State Papers, \oc. cit. ; Stat. 16 Chas. II, cap. 4.

91 Besse, op. cit. i, 244 3 cf. Urwick, op. cit. 533-5 and n.

92 Tbid., where their adventures are related in detail ; cf. Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 164.

93 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 162. Margaret Bevis was wife of Thomas Bevis, gent., whose
children were registered as born (not baptized) in 1647, 1649 and 1652 (Urwick, op. cit. 532). She was
fined £20 with an alternative of prison for six months.

%4 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 166. 95 Besse, op. cit. i, 248.

98 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 176. Nicholas Lucas was a maltster. He lay in Hertford
Gaol under sentence of transportation from 1664 to 1672, and afterwards became one of the proprietors of
West Jersey (Friends? Hist. Soc. Journ. vii, 43).

357

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

It was attended by a great number and was dominated by a Captain Crook,

‘a. Justice of the Peace under Cromwell . . . of dangerous principles, a
subtle tellow and one who oa too much sndueriee upon the people of that
Town and the country about.’ A meeting was also said to be held ey

Sunday and W ednesday at a ae hired for the purpose at St. ail bans.”
and at this Crook also attended. At Redbourn meetings were held in the
houses of William Barber, gent., and Thomas Bigge, yeoman, and were
sometimes attended by 200 or 300 persons. Crook had also followers at
Norton, and at Shephall a small meeting was held at the house of Daniel
Mardell, a smith.” At about this time there were seventeen ‘established
and settled meetings within the County of Hertford of the People of God
there,’'° and comparatively few of these seem to have been disturbed.’
Public opinion, indeed, seems to have been against the persecution,’ and
when the Quaker Act was renewed in 1670 the penalties of transportation
and imprisonment were superseded by fines.’

Owing to the peculiar tenets of the Quakers they were liable to be
charged under a number of Acts for offences not strictly ecclesiastical in
character, as well as for non-attendance at the parish church. The charge
most commonly brought forward was under the statutes which made it an
offence punishable as praemunire for any person over the age of eighteen to
refuse to take the oath of allegiance. The Restoration was followed by a
number of prosecutions under this Act, as many as nine Quakers being sent
to gaol on one day for refusing the oath.’ If a prosecution under another
Act failed it was no uncommon thing for the justices to tender the oath
which the Quaker’s principles made it impossible for him to take.° In this
way Henry Sweeting and three other Hertford men were outlawed in 1662 ;
they were, however, sent back to Hertford Gaol, but after thirty-one weeks’
imprisonment they obtained a royal pardon.’ The Toleration Act provided
that those who scrupled to take the oath of allegiance should subscribe to its
terms,” and from this time the collection of tithes alone gave an opening for
the vexing of the Quaker. From the first the objection to the payment of
tithes and church dues had been one of the most difficult of the Friends’
principles to reconcile with law and custom. The trial of one who refused
payment lay in the ecclesiastical courts, and under a Tudor statute’ the judge

7 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nencn’ 1, 84-5. Crook died at Hertford in 1699, aged eighty-one
(Urwics, op. cit. 536).

* The Quaker burial-ground still exists in Victoria Street, St. Albans. 99 ‘Turner, op. cit. i, 92.

10 Friends’ Hist. Soc. Journ. vill, 111. They were: 1. Hertford; 2. Ware; 3. Widford, Sawbridge-
worth, Hertford; 4. Royston; 5. Rushden (Ryston), Sandon, Cottered and Buntingford; 6. Ashwell;
~. Baldock ; 8. Hitchin ; 9. Shephall and Stevenage, Langley, Rabble Heath ‘in Stevenage Welling parish’ ;
1o. Sacombe ; 11. ‘ Bendick,’ Lilley ; 12. St. Albans ; 13. ‘S'epside’ 5; 14. Cheshunt, Broxbourne ; 15. Mark-
vate Street, Redbourn, Gaddesden ; 16. Nurthchurch, Tring ; 17. Hoddesdon. ‘The list is from the earliest
SHARES Meeting Minute Book, but the exact date is unknown.

1 Meetings were disturted at Baldock in 1670 (Besse, op. cit. i, 249), at Hitchin, at Sawbridgeworth

and od idford in 1672 (ibid.), at Royston and Bubeinevard | in 1674 (ibid. 250).

= er. ibid. 2494 251, 2533 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 250. 3 Stat. 22 Cha. II, cap. 1.

4 Stat. 5 Eliz. cap.1; 7 Jas. I, cap. 6; cf. ibid. 16 Ric. I], cap. 5. The oath was to be tendered by
two fectiees if refused the affender was to ‘be committed to gaol until the next assizes. Ifrefused at the
assizes, pracmunire, i.e. outlawry, was incurred,

5 Hesse, op. cit. 1, 242. ® For gossip on this point see Pepys, Diary, 4 Apr. 1668.

* Besse, op. cit. i, 243-4; Extracts from State Papers (Friends’ Hist. Suc. Ser. 2), 165. For another
pardon by Charles II see Besse, op. cit. i, 244. ® Stat. 1 Will. and Mary, cap. 18.

YE. 2 & 3 Edw, VI; cap. 13.

358

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

might excommunicate the offender, and after a lapse of forty days might
sue a process of de excommunicato capiendo from the temporal courts ; a further
statute ° enabled the offender to be imprisoned until he rendered obedience.
Innumerable cases of this nature were tried" and great hardships inflicted,
Quakers being imprisoned for neglect to pay tithe as late as 1690,” for the
Toleration Act had not touched the point. In 1696, however, it was
enacted that two justices might ascertain the amount due and might
obtain it by distraint. From this time prosecutions ceased, and in the 18th
century the Quaker frequently came to a friendly understanding with the
parson by which distress was levied in the least inconvenient way possible.
With the 18th century begin the extant records of the Hertfordshire
meetings. The society seems to have been spreading at this date, and in
1704 there was a monthly meeting at Watford.” A request for the licence of
a dwelling-house for worship at Watton at Stone was made in 1707,” and in
1710 a similar request was made for the house of John Kilbey at Ickleford.”
Three years later Samuel Peet sought a licence for his barn at Graveley,”
and in 1719 the Friends at Hemel Hempstead had newly erected a meeting-
house on land behind the Bell Inn." The Quakers had been strong here for
some time past, and a school was kept by John Owen, a Quaker,” who in
1722 was found not guilty of a charge of keeping a private school without
episcopal sanction.” A licence was sought for meeting-houses in Crossbrook
Street, Cheshunt, in 1726 and near Kilne’s Lane, Ware, in 1729.” Some
twelve years before the greater part of the Dissenters in Welwyn were
Quakers, but the return™ then made seems to show that the number of
Quaker families had decreased in the past few years.* In 1785 the Hert-
fordshire Quarterly Meeting was united with that for Bedfordshire, and so
continued until 1865 ; since then it has been entirely merged in the Bedford-
shire Quarterly Meeting. In 1865 the Albans Monthly Meeting ceased to
have a separate existence, being merged in that for Leighton and Luton.*
In 1852 meeting-houses were registered in Norton Street, Baldock,
Brand Street, Hitchin, Lord’s Lane, Hoddesdon, Great Berkhampstead and
Kibe’s Lane, Ware.” In addition to these other meetings were established
at Hertford and Hemel Hempstead.” Monthly meetings were held at
St. Albans, Hertford and Hitchin, while the quarterly meetings were held at
Hertford or Hitchin. Towards the close of the 19th century the number
of Friends in the county greatly decreased. The migration from London
to the home counties has resulted, however, in the establishment of new

10 Stat. 5 Eliz. cap. 23. 1 Besse, op. cit. i, 241 et seq. ; Quarter Sess. R. passim.

12 Besse, op. cit. i, 254. 13 Stat. 7 & 8 Will. III, cap. 34.

M4 Friends Hist. Soc. Journ. viii, 108. The records of the Albans Monthly Meeting and the Albans
Monthly Meeting of Women Friends date from 1703. In 1688 Mark Swann had been appointed ‘to keep
the monthly and quarterly meeting books and to record all the things concerning the county’ (ibid. 11, 6).

15 The First Publishers of Truth (Friends’ Hist. Soc.), 342.

18 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 38. There was a Quaker meeting here in 1717 (‘Speculum
Dioecesis ? [Alnwick Tower, Linc.]). 1 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co, Rec.), il, 41. 18 Ibid. 44.

19 Ibid. 54. This must have superseded the house licensed in 1699 (Urwick, op. cit. 437). Fora
list of meeting-houses in 1717-29 see T. S. James, Presbyterian Chapels and Chantries, 663.

20 Clutterbuck, op. cit. 1, 424. ; 7

31 Quarter Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, §5. He had been indicted for the same offence in 1720 (ibid.).

22 Ibid. 60, 65. 73 « Speculum Dioecesis’ (Alnwick Tower, Linc.). 4 Thid.
25 Friends’ Hist. Soc. Journ. vill, 108. *6 Urwick, op. cit. 855-7. ;
7 An Account of the Times and Places of holding the meetings . . . of the Society of Friends, 1854. 8 Ibid.

359

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

meetings at Watford and St. Albans, as well as of a small evening meeting
at New Barnet; all these belong to the London and Middlesex Quarterly
Meeting.” There is also a quarterly meeting for Hertford and Hitchin.
Hertfordshire as a whole seems to have accepted the Reformation with
little hesitancy. In 1561 Robert Manners, late parson of Watton at Stone,
was the only ‘recusant at large but confined within limits >in the county,’
while in 1576 Robert Chauncey, gent., was the only person certified as being
a fugitive over sea for the sake of religion.” Ifa return of the following
year may be trusted, there were but five men and two women in the county
who followed the old faith, but these were all of gentle birth and within the
diocese of London. A month before this report was made the Bishop of
London had notified as popish recusants Francis Sellis of Redbourn and the wife
of Robert Holmes of Watford, both apparently cottagers, also one Brewster of
Ardeley, then in prison in London and owner of land valued at £10." The most
important recusants were undoubtedly Anthony Throckmorton and his wife,
whose lands in Cheshunt were expected to realize £1,000 if sold. At Ware
John Chapman and his wife were also well-to-do, but John Maye seems to
have been a poorer co-religionist.“* Roman Catholicism was indeed, both then
and later, entirely confined to the east of the county, and the Bishop of Lincoln
was probably justified in his report that in his visitation this year he could hear
of none but such as he ‘ understoode of before,’ although he had ‘ used all the
lawfull meanes’ he could * to come to the knowledge of suche persons.’ ”
Returns such as these have, however, an air of incompleteness, and in

1580 the Privy Council complained to the Bishop of London that the
certificates were ‘very unperficte,’ the names and residences of the recusants
not being distinctly set down, while various persons were accused of non-con-
formity ‘ because of their lawfull absence’ from church.” Further attempts
were made in 1581 to obtain a full list of popish recusants, but apparently
without much result.* The Act of this year® made attendance at church
compulsory on every person over sixteen under a penalty of a fine of {20
monthly or forfeiture to the Crown of two-thirds of the offender’s land.
The Privy Council ordered quarterly returns of recusants to be made by the
churchwardens and sworn-men of each parish to the justices of the peace
that indictments might be framed under the Act.” In the archdeaconry of
St. Albans the ecclesiastical officials went about the work with great
reluctance, and in November 1 587 the bishop wrote to the archdeacon that the
matter was ‘like to come in question before many days’ and that serious
trouble would follow further evasion.*! The admonition does not, however,
seem to have had much effect, for much the same complaints were made in
1604,” and all the parishes within the archdeaconry declared themselves free
of recusants.* The bishop does not seem to have been satisfied, and in June
1605 the archdeacon wrote to him that there were no recusants ‘ except only

%° Religious Society of Friends: Progress in London and the Home Counties, 1911.

30 The Friend? Yecr Book, 1913. 31 Cal. §. P. Dom. 1547-65, p. 522.

32'S. P. Dom. Eliz. cx, 9. Maurice eldest son of John Chauncey of Ardeley was a monk of the London

Charterhouse in 1535. He became pricr of the newly-established house of Sheen in 1556 and retired to
Flanders on the accession of Elizabeth. He was Prior of the Carthusian convent at Louvain at his death in

1581 (Dict. Nat. Biog.). 33 Ibid. cxix, 20. Forty-six persons were returned for Essex, nine for Middlesex.
34 [bid. cxviii, 73. 35 Tbid. 38 Ibid. cxvii, 13.
87 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 12-13. 38 Ibid. 14, 15, 16. 59 Stat. 23 Eliz. cap. 1.
* Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 56. 4 Ibid. *2 Ibid. 126. 43 [bid. 128.

360

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

within the parish of St. Albans and there none other but such as are become
Recusants since his Majesty’s reign.’ They remained obstinate in spite of the
suasion of Mr. Roger Williams, parson there, but all were found ‘to carry
themselves peaceably not seducing others to our knowledge being persons
of mean account and ability.“ There were David East a pewterer,
Margaret Smyth, maid-servant to her uncle Leonard Wilkes a haber-
dasher, Thomas Shepham a weaver, Richard West and his wife, sojourners,
and Sarah wife of Richard East.“ Christopher Moore was the only recusant
in the county who in 1612 desired to be compounded with for the oath of
allegiance.®

The Recusant Rolls of 1679 show only nine names, those of John
Downes, labourer, and John Newport, gentleman, both of Furneux Pelham ;
of John Belson of Hertingfordbury, Basil More, esq., of North Mimms,
William Gawen, gentleman, of Harpenden, and Walter Lord Aston,
William Newport, George Parson and Francis Hinde, all of Standon.”
The lists of persons charged under the Recusancy Acts in February 1682-3 give
names of offenders in Rickmansworth, Berkhampstead, Thundridge, Cottered,
Wyddial, Tring, Meesden, Ardeley, Clothall, Ashwell, Hertingfordbury,
Flaunden, Little Gaddesden, Barley, Cheshunt, Reed, Royston and Therfield.*
At first sight this looks as though Roman Catholicism had spread far and
wide over the county ; comparison of the names, however, with those of
Quakers who are known to have suffered under these Acts leads to the con-
clusion that the majority of those indicted and fined belonged to the Society
of Friends. At the same time known Roman Catholics were fined, and
fined time after time.” A congregation seems to have already grown up at
Standon, where Walter Lord Aston lived at the Lordship. Father P.
Southcote, a Benedictine, lived here from 1705 to 1717, and recusants of the
neighbourhood, if known to the family, attended the chapel.” In 1751 the
last Lord Aston died and the house was let. It passed into the hands of
Bishop Challoner, under whom Father Richard Kendall opened a school
there in or about 1753, but moved it to Hare Street four years later.” By
this time the Church in England had become regularly organized,” and in
furtherance of his scheme for providing Roman Catholic education Bishop
Talbot in 1771 bought a house at Old Hall Green.” Father Kendall’s
students moved here in 1769, and the school, afterwards St. Edmund’s
College, became the centre of a district which included the whole of
Hertfordshire.* In 1780 the ‘Standon congregation’ was formed by about
seventy Roman Catholics from Royston, Buntingford, Puckeridge, Watton,
Ware, Stanstead, Standon and Magdalen Laver in Essex.” The mission at
Old Hall Green was the only one in Hertfordshire in 1786." In 1850 the
church of Mary Immaculate and St. Gregory the Great was opened at Hertford,
and this was followed by that of the Sacred Heart and St. John the
Evangelist at Bushey in 1863. Since that date twenty further chapels have

44 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 131. 45 bid. 46 Lansd. MS. 153, fol. 526.
47 Exch. L.T.R. Recusant Rolls (Chancellor’s Ser.), R. 57. No entries for Hertfordshire occur on
Rolls 45-53, 55, 58, 59, 62. 48 Ibid. R. 60. 49 Tbid. R. 58.

50 Ward, Hist. of St. Edmund’s Chapel, 21.

51 Ibid. 21, 31, 34; Ward, The Dawn of the Catholic Revival, i, 40.

82 Ward, The Dawn of the Catholic Revival, i, p. xi. 63 Ward, Hist. of St. Edmund’s College, 35.
§4 Ibid. 39. 55 Tbid. 56 Ward, The Dawn of the Catholic Revival, i, 40.

4 361 46

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

been opened, some in connexion with the houses of the various religious
orders which have been founded up and down the county.

From the very nature of the case a description of ecclesiastical events,
of religious tendencies, must of necessity be unsatisfying and incomplete ;
so much has been left unrecorded, so much but partially set down. What
has come to us is more often the story of failure than of achievement and it
is easy to forget how exceptional such cases are and how much is covered
by the churchwardens’ ‘all well.’ Behind the struggle of party with party
lay ideals and hope; we cannot but be grateful to men who century by
century handed on the tale of such spiritual strife and attainment.

APPENDIX
ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY

Mediaeval Hertfordshire was divided between the two dioceses of London and Lincoln, by
far the greater proportion of parishes being under the latter see.!

The whole of the eastern portion of the county from Royston southwards to Cheshunt lay in
the diocese of London and its archdeaconry of Middlesex, which last came into being before 1138.3
With the exception of Albury, Brent Pelham and Furneux Pelham, peculiars of the Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul’s, all these parishes were included in the rural deanery of Braughing. The
deanery far exceeded the hundred in extent,’ and was fully organized in 1291, when it contained
the parishes of Amwell, Anstey, Barkway, Braughing, Broxbourne, Buckland, Cheshunt, Eastwick,
Gilston, Much Hadham, with its chapelry of Little Hadham, Great and Little Hormead, Hunsdon,
Layston, Meesden, Brent Pelham, Furneux Pelham, Sawbridgeworth, Stanstead Abbots, Bishop’s
Stortford, Thorley, Ware, Widford and Wyddial.1_ To these must be added Stocking Pelham,
Reed, Royston,> Standon, Thundridge and Wormley. These parishes remained in the arch-
deaconry of Middlesex until 1845.°

The western half of the county lay within the diocese of Lincoln, and was divided between
the two archdeaconries of Huntingdon and St. Albans, this last being a peculiar. The diocese
was divided into seven archdeaconries by Remigius (1067-92), who placed the three counties of
Cambridge, Huntingdon and Hertfordshire under the care of one Nicholas, the first archdeacon.?
On the formation of the see of Ely in 1109 Cambridgeshire became part of that diocese,® but the
greater part of Hertfordshire remained in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon until 1845.® The
p-rishes in this archdeaconry were organized under the rural deaneries of Baldock, Berkhamp-
stead, Hertford and Hitchin, all of which were formed before 12919 In no case did these
deaneries correspond with a hundred.

The deanery of Baldock comprised the twenty-three parishes of Ardeley, Aspenden, Aston,
Baldock, Benington, Bygrave, Caldecote, Clothall, Cottered, Hinxworth, Kelshall, Great Munden,
Little Munden, Radwell, Rushden, Therfield, Throcking, Wallington, Walkern, Westmill, Weston,
Welwyn and Willian.

The deanery of Berkhampstead included the fourteen parishes of Aldbury, Aldenham, Berk-
hampstead St. Mary (Northchurch), Berkhampstead St. Peter, Great and Little Gaddesden,
Hemel Hempstead, King’s Langley, Kensworth, North Mimms, Puttenham, Shenley, Tring and
Wheathampstead ; of these Aldenham and Shenley were outliers."

The deanery of Hertford contained the seventeen parishes of Ayot St. Peter and Ayot
St. Lawrence, Bengeo, Little Berkhampstead, Bramfield, Digswell, Datchworth, Essendon, Bishop’s
Hatfield, St. Andrew Hertford, St. Nicholas Hertford, Hertingfordbury, Sacombe, Stapleford,
Tewin, Watton at Stone and Welwyn.

} For the historical significance of this division see H. M. Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation, 2, 3.

2 Ralph de Diceto, Hist. Works (Rolls Ser.), i, 251.

3 The hundred contains the parishes of Braughing, Eastwick, Gilston, Hunsdon, Sawbridgeworth,
Standon, Stanstead Abbots, Thorley, Thundridge, Ware, Westmill and Widfurd. Of these We.tmill was in

the diocese of Lincoln. 4 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18, 20.
5 Constituted a separate parish in 1540 (Stat. 32 Hen. VIII, cap. 44). ® See below.
7 Henry of Huntingdon, Hist. Ang/. (Rolls Ser.), 302.
8 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 325. ® See below.

10 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 36, 37. 14 Owing to the intrusion of the archdeaconry of St. Albans.
362

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The remaining deanery, that of Hitchin, was composed of the fourteen parishes of Chelsfield,
Graveley, Hitchin, Ickleford, Kimpton, Knebworth, Letchworth, Lilley, OMey, Pirton, Stevenage,
King’s Walden and Great and Little Wymondley.

The extensive liberties enjoyed by the Abbots of St. Albans secured freedom from the ordinary
archidiaconal jurisdiction for the parishes in the possession of their house. These were accordingly
organized at least as early as 1190 # under the archdeaconry of St. Albans, which later comprised
the parishes of Bushey, Codicote, East Barnet, Chipping Barnet, Elstree, Hexton, Abbot’s Langley,
Northaw, Norton, Redbourn, Rickmansworth, Ridge, St. Albans, St. Michael’s, St. Paul’s Walden,
St. Peter’s, St. Stephen’s, Sandridge, Sarratt, Shephall, and Watford, and also the Buckingham-
shire parishes of Abbot’s Aston, Grandborough, Little Horwood and Winslow.

The abbey was surrendered to the Crown in December 1539. The event had, of course,
been anticipated, and at the beginning of the year St. Albans had been included by Henry VIII
in a list of dissolved houses which were to become the seats of his proposed new bishoprics. ‘ For
as muche,’ the king wrote, ‘ as it is not unknowne the slowthful and ungodly lyf which hath been
usid amonst all thos sort whyche have borne the name of religius folke, and to the intente that
hens forthe meny of them myght be tornyd to better use, as heraffter shall show werby Gode’s
worde myght be better sett forthe, chyldron brought up in lernyng, clerces nuryshyd in the
universites and servantes decayed to have lyfynges, almes housys for pour folke to be sustaynyd,
and leders of grece, ebrew and latyne to have payd stypende, dayly almes to be mynystrate, mend-
yng of hyght wayse, exhybissun for mynysters of the chyrche. It is thowght therfore unto
the kynges hyghtnes most expedient and necessary that mo bysshopprycys, colegyall and cathe-
dralle chyrchys shube establyshyd insted of thes forsayd relygyus housys w' in the fondacion
werof thes other tytylles affore rehersyd shalbe stablysyd.’*% The Act to which this was the
preamble was passed in May 1539 ; it empowered Henry to create under the great seal such new
bishoprics as might seem good to him.4 Under this Act a scheme was prepared for the foundation
of twenty-one new sees, including Hertfordshire, with the abbey church of St. Albans as its
cathedral.16 Essex was to form a separate diocese with its administrative centre at Waltham
Abbey.

Unfortunately ‘ the best part of the scheme died under thought,’ !? and nothing came of it
in regard to St. Albans. A later Act of the same year provided that such places ‘ as were before
exempted from the visitation and jurisdiction of the ordinary’ within whose diocese they were
situated should henceforth be included within the jurisdiction of such ordinary. But the arch-
deaconry continued as a royal liberty outside episcopal jurisdiction until 1551, when Edward VI
by Letters Patent reconstituted it and annexed it to the diocese of London.® This arrangement
was confirmed by Queen Mary in 1554.?°

No further changes were made in the ecclesiastical divisions of Hertfordshire until 1845,
when under the provisions of an Order in Council of 8 August! the diocese of Rochester was
reconstituted to include the archdeaconry of St. Albans ; the Hertfordshire parishes of the dioceses
of London and Lincoln were added to this archdeaconry, while the four Buckinghamshire parishes
were removed to the archdeaconry of Buckinghamshire and diocese of Oxford. At the same time
all peculiars were abolished. In 1863 the jurisdiction of the archdeaconry of St. Albans was
extended to include the city and deanery of Rochester, and its title became ‘ the Archdeaconry
of Rochester and St. Albans’ ; % this arrangement was brought to an end by an Act passed in 1875,
and separate archdeaconries were again constituted.”4

This rearrangement was, however, only part of a much larger change, for the same Act
founded a new diocese of St. Albans, which came into being on 4 May 1877.% By an Order in
Council of 30 April 1877 the new see was given jurisdiction over Hertfordshire, Essex and the
portion of Kent north of the Thames. The abbey church of St. Albans was assigned as the
cathedral, subject to the rights of the incumbent; the bishop was constituted a body corporate,

12 Add. Chart. 35537. 13 Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv, fol. 366, 14 Stat. 31 Hen. VIII, cap. 9.

15 See Geoffrey Hill, Engl. Dioceses, 388-9.

16 The establishment was to include a president of the college, ten prebendaries, a reader both of divinity
and humanity, eight minor canons ‘to singe in the quyer,’ eight laymen to sing, eight choristers, a master
of the children, a gospeller, an epistoler ; provision was also made for an auditor, and a sum of £66 135. 4d.
was to be spent annually on repairs (Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. xxiv, fol. 15-16).

V7 Collier, Eccl. Hist. (ed. Lathbury), v, 50. 18 Stat. 31 Hen. VIII, cap. 13.

19 Aug. Bk. 236, fol. 19; Newcourt, Regert. i, 94. These Letters were issued under Stat. 31
Hen. VIII, cap. 13.

20 Newcourt, Repert. i, 94. 21 Under Stat. 6 & 7 Will. IV, cap. 77.

23 Lond. Gaz. 20 Aug. 1845, p. 2541. 73 Stat. 26 & 27 Vict. cap. 36.

% Thid. 38 & 39 Vict. cap. 34, § 9 (2). The arrangement was not completed until 1882 (Lond.
Gaz. 14 Feb. 1882, p. 598). © Lond. Gaz. 4 May 1877, p. 2943.

363

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

was invested with all episcopal right and jurisdiction, and was made subject to the Archbishop
of Canterbury as metropolitan.?®

On the reconstitution of the diocese of Rochester and archdeaconry of St. Albans in 1845
the Hertfordshire parishes were arranged under the eleven rural deaneries of Baldock, Barnet,
Benington, Berkhampstead, Hertford, Hitchin, St. Albans, Bishop’s Stortford, Ware, Watford
and Welwyn.

The deanery of Baldock contained the parishes 2? of Ashwell, Baldock, Bygrave, Caldecote,
Clothall, Hinxworth, Kelshall, Newnham, Norton, Radwell, Sandon, Therfield and Wallington.
It remained unchanged until 1882, when the parishes of Rushden, Walkern and Weston were
added from the deanery of Benington. It was further enlarged by the addition of Royston
from the deanery of Buntingford in 1884. Walkern was restored to Benington in 1892, and
these parishes with their modern subdivisions now (1913) constitute the deanery.

The deanery of Barnet in 1845 contained the parishes of Chipping Barnet, East Barnet, North
Mimms, Shenley and Ridge with their chapelries, and these parishes still remain in this division.

The deanery of Benington in 1845 contained Ardeley, Aspenden, Aston, Benington, Cottered,
Great Munden, Little Munden, Rushden, Throcking, Walkern, Westmill and Weston. In 1882
this deanery was abolished ; nine years later the name was revived, the deanery of Buntingford
being called the deanety of Buntingford and Benington. In 1892 it was freshly constituted with
its old parishes, with the exception of Rushden and Weston, which were removed to Baldock
deanery. The parish of Sacombe was added from Welwyn deanery in 1895.

In 1845 the deanery of Berkhampstead contained the parishes of Aldbury, Berkhampstead
St. Mary, Berkhampstead St. Peter, Great Gaddesden, Little Gaddesden, Kensworth, Puttenham,
Tring and Wigginton. To these Hemel Hempstead was added in 1907, when Kensworth and the
modern vicarages of Flamstead and Markyate Street were removed to the deanery of St. Albans.

The deanery of Hertford in 1845 contained the parishes or chapelries of Bayford, Bengeo,
Little Berkhampstead, Essendon, Hatfield, All Saints with St. John, Hertford, St. Andrew
with St. Mary and St. Nicholas, Hertford and Hertingfordbury. To these Stapleford, formerly
in the deanery of Welwyn, was added in 1907.

In 1845 the deanery of Hitchin was composed of the parishes of Graveley, Hexton, Ickleford,
Ippollitts, Letchworth, Lilley, Offley, Pirton, Stevenage, King’s Walden, Willian and Little
Wymondley. Abbot's Walden was added in 1895, having been previously in the deanery of
Welwyn.

The deanery of St. Albansin 1845 contained the parishes of the abbey church, St. Michacl’s,
St. Peter’s, St. Stephen’s, Hemel Hempstead, Redbourn, Sandridge and Wheathampstead. Hemel
Hempstead was removed to the deanery of Berkhampstead in 1907, while this deanery was
increased by the addition of Elstree and the modern vicarage of Radlett from the deanery of
Watford and of the parish of Kensworth, and modern vicarages of Flamstead and Markyate Street
from the deanery of Berkhampstead.

In 1845 the deanery of Bishop’s Stortford contained the parishes of Albury, Braughing,
Gilston, Much Hadham, Little Hadham, Sawbridgeworth, Standon, Bishop’s Stortford, Thorley
and Widford. Widford was removed to the deanery of Ware in 1907, but otherwise the con-
stitution of the deanery has remained unchanged.

The deanery of Ware in 1845 comprised Great Amwell, Broxbourne, Cheshunt, Eastwick,
Hoddesdon, Hunsdon, Stanstead Abbots, Thundridge, Ware and Wormley. To these Widford
was added in 1907.

The parishes contained in the deanery of Watford in 1845 were Aldenham, Bushey, Elstree,
Abbots Langley, King’s Langley, Rickmansworth, Sarratt and Watford.28 Elstree was removed
to the deanery of St. Albans in 1907.

In 1845 the deanery of Welwyn contained the parishes of Ayot St. Lawrence, Ayot St. Peter,
Bramfield, Codicote, Datchworth, Kimpton, Knebworth, Sacombe, Shephall, Stapleford, Tewin,
St. Paul’s Walden, Watton at Stone and Welwyn. Of these St. Paul’s Walden was removed to
the deanery of Hitchin and Sacombe to that of Benington in 1895.

6 For a further order see Lond. Gaz. 13 July 1877, p. 4126. Under Stat. 3 & 4 Geo. V, cap. 36, the
Essex parishes are about to be constituted under the newly-created see of Chelmsford.

37 The following lists are taken from the Clergy Lists and Diocesan Calendar.

28 Much of the parish of Watford has now been divided among six daughter churches.

% Together with the modern vicarage of Radlett, formerly in the parish of Aldenham.

364

Hertfordshire was at this date 1635 under ners Io MAP
the following jurisdictions:-
BISHOPRIC OF LONDON & ARCHDEACONRY OF MIDDLESEX HERTFORDSHIRE
The Deanery of Braughing Showing the = t
ARCHDEACONRY OF. ST.ALBANS Deaneries as a er
The Jurisdiction of St. Alban's Abbey the time of the Valor, 1535
ae
Religious Houses.
BISHOPRIC OF LINCOLN & ARCHDEACONRY OF HUNTINGDON A C4
The erat of Baldock f { ) MBRIDGESHIR»
” » Berkhampstead ee ( a
. Hertford Fd = pe oa et |
» Hitchin ( Yo Reis.
\ Wye { \
Note The parishes of Aldenham, North Mimms eae i \
and Shenley are in the deanery of Berkhampstead; i : \
the parish of Wormley is under the jurisdiction of af ffl i; | i
the Abbot of Waltham, Holy Cross (Essex), the et \ 5 dll HL > w) ey
parish of Markyate is in the deanery of | “MS NS Clothall i Anstey : A
Dunstable (Beds) and the parish of Holwell as 1 i 25 “a 21, )
is in the deanery of Shelford (Beds). Wii H Aa ‘ oO N
Hitehin® x |
14, itt! . !
yY A Warncniiey my ro) ap a \
Ra Nog UaroCH aN eee
as \ >. Great { w
S A & Munden ) \ os
D ee iy eee
7 e) : ie
BE D \ ie Standon =
413° wee
co. aT 5
Ea 2 \ Ss Lg
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\ \ IN. " 7 13
tenet ings Pa Pa m. i oWare aa
EN B - Ne ot he AD TN a Hertford) —y ° 16,20 Z
: || amie a
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- S if Inm ; & Pepianatead, 7)
“ Margarets
z ee pRereieniuEteae J OStlaibany \ Hoditeadon® ri ae.
4 ae ontifl Hp/7128 W Aiber nes Fe
~~ 5 < a, vf Sin int
° pe King’: ie » Pr rm. re? yY
0% \ Langley \ ) « AUN ) Cheshunt (
a > Comet cs fs | ie Ce.
aa (te ae \ “sn
op Aldenham a\ 5 a
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r A al Vin, =
_ { ao a | aml
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as \ SUN ae py) ‘Y y
[7 ay
WU S
\ D \S
w epee
—— —
Rerertsce To Retictous Houses
BENEDICTINE MONKS GILBERTINE CANONS ALIEN HOUSR
1. St. Albans Abbey 12. Hitchin, New B.zzing Priory 20, Ware Priory
2. Redbourn Priory
3. Hertford Priory KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS
4. Salburn in Standon Priory 13. Standon Preceptory HOSPITALS
BENEDICTINE NUNS KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 21. Anstey, St. Mary Bigging
5. Sopwell Priory 14. Temple Disney Preceptory 22. Berkhampstead, St. Joha Baptist
6. Cheshunt Priory 23. Berkhampstead, St. John the Evan-
>. St. Albans, St. Mary de Pre Priory FRIARIES gelist
8. Flamstead, St. Giles in the Wood 15. King’s Langley Priory 24. Cheshunt, St. Erasmus and St. Mary
Priory 16, Ware, Friars Minor Magdalene
g- Great Munden, Rowney Priory 17. Hitchin, Carmelite 25. Clothall, St. Mary Maztatene
18. Hertford, Trinitarian 26. Heddesion, St. Laud ani Sn aA
AUSTIN CANONS ° 27. Rovston, St. Jo ee ne St. anes
to. Royston Priory COLLEGIATE HOUSE 2% Royston, St. Nicholas
11, Wymondley Priory 1g. Thele or Stanstead St. Margaret's ag St. Albans, St. Julian

THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES
OF HERTFORDSHIRE

INTRODUCTION

N considering the religious houses of Hertfordshire the main impression
is that of the overwhelming pre-eminence of St. Albans Abbey. The
abbey indeed had more than a great local position, which was of
course insured by its possessions and its ecclesiastical and secular

jurisdiction. In virtue of the saint over whose relics it arose it held the first
place among English abbeys, while the fame of its culture and discipline
at one period reached foreign countries. Its name deserves to be honoured
to-day for the service rendered to history by the literary labours of its
monks. The other Benedictine monasteries were all dependent houses :
Hertford and Redbourn Priories were cells of St. Albans, the second practically
an annex of the abbey; the priory at Ware, the one alien priory in the
county, was a cell of the abbey of St. Evroul in Utica; and the small
community at Salford in Standon, a dependency of Stoke in Suffolk. From
a reference about the middle of the 12th century to ‘the monks serving
God in the church of Sawbridgeworth’? it is possible that the priory of
Hurley or Walden, owners respectively of the tithes? and church of Saw-
bridgeworth,*® may have maintained a cell here at one time. The existence
of this house is, however, quite problematical. Richard Abbot of St. Albans
(1097-1119) contemplated the foundation of a subject monastery at Langley,‘
but the project was not carried out.

There were Benedictine nunneries at Cheshunt, Rowney in Little
Munden, Flamstead and Sopwell near St. Albans, all founded during the
12th century, though, if the convent placed at Sopwell was an offshoot of
the abbey, as seems likely, it could claim an earlier origin. All were more
or less small and poor, but Sopwell’s connexion with St. Albans saved it no
doubt from pecuniary cares and difficulties and gave it a certain standing.
The Cistercians were not represented in Hertfordshire; nor were the
Carthusians, in spite of the avowed intention of the Countess of Pembroke
in 1362 to establish monks of this order either at Westmill, Meesden or
Little Hormead.*

1 In a letter of William de Albini Brito to his men of Sawbridgeworth (Madox, Hist. gy Exch. i, 120).

2 Newcourt, Repert. i, 867.
3 Geoffrey de Mandeville granted the church to Walden Priory, which he founded in 1136 (Dugdale,

Mon. iv, 133).
* Gesta Abbatum Mon. 8. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 149. 5 Ing. a.q.d. file 365, no. 18.

365

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The only Gilbertine house, the priory of New Bigging, Hitchin, did
not arise before 1361 and had few inmates.

There were two houses of Austin Canons, the one at Royston, founded
shortly before 1181, of some importance on account of its privileges, but
the other at Little Wymondley never anything but insignificant.

The Knights Templars had a preceptory at Dinsley, probably as early
as the reign of Henry II]; the Knights of St. John, who succeeded them
there, maintained for a time a community at Standon on the estate given to
them at the end of the 12th century.

A hospice especially for Franciscans and Dominicans was built shortly
before 1247 within the precinct of St. Albans,° but the Mendicants, perhaps
on this account, never got a permanent footing in the town. The three
friaries of the county were of rather late date: the priory of Friars Preachers
within the royal manor of Langley was founded in 1308 by Edward II, who
was probably also responsible for the establishment of Carmelites in 1317 at
Hitchin ; the Friars Minors did not settle at Ware until 1339. Langley,
of which the king was patron in a very special sense, must have had a con-
siderable position ; the other two houses were obscure. The sole nunnery
of a Mendicant order was the priory of Langley, refounded by Queen
Mary for Dominican sisters.

Counting St. Nicholas Royston, which seems, however, to have been
within the boundary of Cambridgeshire, there were eleven hospitals."* Five
or six of these besides St. Nicholas were for lepers: St. Julian’s and
St. Mary de Pré near St. Albans, St. John Evangelist at Berkhampstead,
St. Mary Magdalene, Clothall,’ St. Mary Magdalene near Hertford, and
perhaps St. Laud and St. Anthony, Hoddesdon. The first two were
dependent on and closely connected with the abbey: for instance, sisters
of three successive abbots in the 14th century entered St. Mary de Pre.

The hospital outside Hertford about 1261 was transformed into a house
of Maturine friars; St. Mary de Pre before the end of the 14th century also
underwent a change and became a Benedictine nunnery. The other hospitals
were at Anstey, Cheshunt, Berkhampstead and Royston, none apparently
earlier than the 13th century.

The one college was that in the church of St. Margaret, Thele.

From time to time there must also have been many cases of persons
living a religious life in solitude. The oratory of St. German, St. Albans,
was used as a hermitage in Saxon days*; a recluse called Roger® and Sigar,
a hermit of Northaw, who lived in Abbot Geoffrey’s time,’ established such
reputations for sanctity that pilgrimages were made to their tombs in the
conventual church of St. Albans"; the anchorite living in 1258 at
St. Peter’s had successors in the 15th century, when there is mention
too of recluses at St. Michael’s.”

8 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 600. ® There were perhaps more. A hospital is
mentioned once in connexion with Offley (see p. 310) and there is reference to one at Therfeld in 1566
(Cler. Subs. R. bdle. 40, no. 820), but this may have been a house of post-Reformation foundation.

7 The hospital at Baldock mentioned by Tanner is the same as this house, which in the course of

its history was transferred from one site to another. 8 Gesta Abbat. i, 21.
9 If he really lived at Markyate (ibid. 97), he does not belong to Hertfordshire (see Sopwell Priory).
0 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 358. N Gesta Abbat. i, 105. 12 Ibid. 388-9.

3 ¥.C.H. Herts. ii, 403m. In 1530 there was a hermit or anchorite in the chapel of St. Mary
Magdalene (ibid. 401).
366

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Of the communities very few lasted until the General Dissolution.
With the exception of Hoddesdon, which continued up to 1575 as a kind
of almshouse, all the hospitals mentioned had disappeared before 1530, or
survived only as chantries; the college at Thele had come to an end in
1431, the preceptories of the Hospitallers before 1500; and the monastery at
Salford had ceased to exist in the 14th century ; Rowney Nunnery and the
‘alien priory at Ware had been dissolved in the 15th century ; Redbourn
Priory had been abandoned before the Act of 1536, under which the houses
of Cheshunt, Flamstead, Sopwell, Royston and Wymondley were suppressed.

HOUSES OF BENEDICTINE MONKS

1, ST. ALBANS ABBEY
BEFORE THE CONQUEST

The legend of the foundation of St. Albans
Abbey has been graphically written by Matthew
Paris, a 13th-century monk of the abbey.
According to his account Offa II, King of the
Mercians, desired to found a monastery in
atonement for the murder by Quendreda, his
queen, of Ethelbert, King of the East Angles, a
suitor for the hand of their daughter! Being
at Bath in 793, Offa, it is said, was visited one
night by an angel who admonished him to raise
the body of St. Alban, ‘ protomartyr of the
English or Britons,’ and place it in a more
worthy shrine? The king told Humbert or
Higbert, Archbishop of Lichfield, of his vision,
who, taking with him the Bishops of Lindsey
and Leicester with a multitude ‘ of both sexes
and divers ages,’ went to Verulamium, where
they were joined by Offa. There the place of
Alban’s burial being forgotten, the king was
guided to it by a ray of light, and upon digging
the ground the body of the martyr with the
relics of divers saints left there by St. German
were found. The archbishop and _ bishops
raised the relics from the sepulchre and carried
them in procession with hymns and shouts of
praise to a church outside the town of Veru-
lamium, built by the early British converts,
and consecrated in honour of St. Alban. After
this the king called a synod (or provincial
council) at ‘Celchyth’ in 793, at which it was
determined to establish a monastery, where
the relics of St. Alban should be preserved.
For this purpose a large endowment was made
by Offa and Egfrith, his son, with the consent
of the synod, and extensive liberties, including,
as Matthew Paris asserts, freedom from all
interference by ecclesiastics or laymen, were
granted.

That Offa wished to found a monastery, and

1 Vita Offae Secundi (Wats ed.), 983.

2 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. (Rolls Ser.), i, 356 ; Will.
of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum (Rolls Ser.), 316.

3 See above, p. 286.

that his choice fell upon a spot near Veru-
lamium on account of the sanctity of the
memory of St. Alban, is doubtless correct.
Nevertheless, a further determining factor in
the selection of the site was that the productive
lands in England had been at this time granted
out and settled, and there only remained the
forests and marshes with which to endow
any newly-founded monastery. Besides which
monks seem to have been the great settlers of
unreclaimed land.4

The gift of so many *manses’ or ‘ man-
siones ’ or land of so many ‘ manentes” did not
indicate a strictly defined area,® but probably
a district of waste land such as all the south
and south-west parts of Hertfordshire then
were.6 This manner of endowment led later
to many disputes and to the system of forging
charters in support of claims. Although Offa’s
and Egfrith’s charters, which the monks
of St. Albans proffered as their original title
deeds, are probably such forgeries, yet their
contents as regards the territorial gifts may be
correct in substance. Offa’s original endow-
ment’ of 34 ‘mansiones’ at Caegesho or Cashio

4 Elton, Origins of Engl. Hist.228. The monasteries
of Worcester, Evesham, Pershore and Westminster
divided the greater part of Worcestershire, which was
unreclaimed forest, and cleared and settled it;
St. Augustine’s and Christ Church, Canterbury,
drained and settled the great marsh districts of south-
east Kent, and it was the same with Croyland in
Lincolnshire and Westminster in Western Middlesex.

5 Maitland, Domesday Bk. and Beyond, 227.

8 Offa’s charter suggests that the lands granted to
the abbey were woodland, for in it he forbids anyone
to do harm either to the church or the woods (si/vis)
belonging to the monastery (Matt. Paris, Céron.
My. vi, 2).

7 These charters are all taken from Cott. MS.
Nero, D i, fol. 148, 148d., and are printed in the
most accessible form in Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi,
add. 1-11. See also Birch, Cart. Sax. i, 367, 373,
388, 389; Dugdale, Mon. ii, 223, 224; Kemble,
Cod. Dipl. i, 195, 197, 208, 209. ‘The charters
were confirmed by Inspeximus of Edward IV printed
by Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. i, App. 1.

367

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and 6‘ mansiones’ at ‘ Heanhamstede,’ probably
Park, represented the whole of the south-west
section of what is now the county, comprising
most of the later hundred of Cashio, and
forming, roughly, a triangle with Sandridge as
the apex and the county boundary from Rick-
mansworth to Barnet as the base, later repre-
senting some twelve ancient parishes containing
over 60,000 acres. There was further included
in Offa’s grant a great area of Middlesex
forest expressed as Io ‘ mansiones’ in Stanmore
which is said to have extended to London.

In 795 Offa added a great district around
Winslow, in Buckinghamshire, probably com-
prising the greater part, if not all, of the old
hundred of Mursley. The lands are described
as 12 ‘ manentes ’ at Winslow and 3 ‘ manentes ’”
at Salden (Scelfdune) or ‘ Baldinigotum,’ and
Io ‘manentes’ at ‘ Scuccanhlau’® or ‘ Fenn-
tunn’ with the wood called Horwood, to
which were added 5 ‘ manentes’ at ‘ Lygeton.’
Egfrith, son of Offa, in 796 also granted 5
‘manentes’ at ‘ Pinnelesfeld’ #2 and 10 ‘ manen-
tes’ at ‘ Thyrfelde.’* These lands formed the
original endowment of the abbey. They were
probably very sparsely populated, each of the
“manentes’ or ‘mansiones’ possibly repre-
sented the land of a household, and later
equated with a hide.14

Before dealing with the history of the monas-
tery during the Anglo-Saxon period it may be
well to state that the main sources of informa-
tion are the various works of Matthew Paris,
whose material for this period is evidently
scanty. It is clear that the lists of the abbots
set out in the ‘ Vitae Abbatum’}5 and ‘ Gesta
Abbatum ’?6 are unreliable. Only two abbots’
names are given for a period covering a little
over a hundred years beginning early in the gth
century, and there is a confusion regarding the
abbots in the roth century. Matthew Paris
viewed the conduct of the gth andearly roth-
century abbots from a 13th-century standard.
He could not appreciate the life in a Saxon

8 Gesta Abbatum Mon. 8. Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 50.

® This has been identified with Shecklow in Bucks.

10 This is identified by Luard (CAron. Maj. [Rolls
Ser.], vi, §) as Harwood, part of Brill Forest, but it
is clearly Horwood near Winslow, where St. Albans
held lands.

ll Possibly Luton, co. Beds.

12 Pinnelesfeld has been identified with the manor
of Pinchfeld in Rickmansworth.

18 Thyrtelde has been identified with Therfield in
Herts. and Weston Turville in Bucks., but there is
no evidence that St. Albans held lands at either of
these places.

M See will of King A&thelwulf, where reference is
made to ‘decem hidis vel mansionibus’ [vel manen-
tibus] (Matt. Paris, Chron. May. i, 386 and note).

18 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Wat’s ed. 1640).

16 Printed in the Rolls Series.

monastery in the gth century. If, as he asserts,
the abbey was founded for the Benedictine
tule, that rule was soon afterwards very laxly
kept or abandoned before its revival in the
roth century, for it is obvious from what he tells
us that the abbots, like other Saxon abbots,
lived in the abbey with their families, and thei
manner of living savoured more of the secular
than monastic life. The abbey was always
distinctly an aristocratic house. All the Saxon
abbots were drawn from the nobility, many of
them being kinsmen of the reigning monarchs.
The monks came from the same class, and
Abbot Leofric would not receive any as monks
unless they were well born.1? Like many other
Saxon abbeys, St. Albans was a double monas-
tery and comprised both men and women.}8

Willigod the priest, a faithful minister of
Offa, was appointed the first abbot. He was
to teach the monastic life, and after his death
the brethren with the counsel of the bishop
should elect one of themselves as his successor,
but if it should happen that no one worthy
should be found, the bishop, with the consent
of the brethren, was to appoint a successor. It
was determined at this time !® that Offa should
himself visit Rome to treat with the pope for
the canonization of Alban and to procure
special liberties for the monastery then to be
built. Offa went to Rome, and Pope Adrian I
granted all that he asked, and adopted, it is
said, the monastery as a daughter of the Roman
Church, making it subject only to the apostolic
see without interference of any archbishop or
bishop,” which claim to exemption overriding
the provisions of Offa’s first charter is pro-
bably a later invention™ Offa at the same
time granted Peter’s Pence from his lands in
England, excepting to St. Albans Monastery
the Peter’s Pence collected in its lands.”

On his return to England Offa granted
further lands to St. Albans in 795. In the
meantime Willigod had brought together
monks specially selected for their holiness,”
and a church was built by Offa and appa-
rently finished in that year, for Offa then

1” Gesta Abbat. i, 31.

18 Thid. 11.

1 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. i, 358.

2 Thid. 359.

*1 See marginal note by Matt. Paris in ibid. vi, 2.
This claim was probably invented when the monas-
tery desired exemptions from episcopal authority in
the 12th century. See the appointment of Abbot
Wulsin and episcopal control under Abbot Richard.

22 In ibid. i, 361, Matt. Paris states that St. Albans
was to have Peter’s Pence collected from all Hertford-
shire, obviously an anachronism. In Gesta Abbatum
i, 5, it is stated that the abbey was to have Peter’s
Pence from their lands.

* Gesta Abbat. i, 43 Chron. May. i, 360; Vita
Offae Secundi, 30.

368

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

appears to have visited it and laid his charter
upon the high altar in the presence of the
convent and a great gathering of magnates.%4
Offa died shortly afterwards, in July 796, and
Willigod within two months later died of
remorse for not having secured the burial of
the founder of their house at St. Albans.?5

Willigod was succeeded as abbot in 796 by
Eadric, a kinsman of King Offa, who seems to
have met with some opposition to his rule, but
governed the monastery with a firm hand.%6
Wulsig, called the third abbot, is said to have
succeeded in the time of St. Edmund (856-70),
and ruled till the time of Athelstan (925-40).
He was one of the royal house, and is described
as a proud man, dressing in silks and living
rather as a prince than a monk. He excited
scandal by inviting noble women to his table,
and wasted the substance of the abbey on his
female relations, probably his daughters, whom
he married to nobles and gave them portions
from the possessions of the abbey. The convent
rose against him, and he is said to have died
from poison. His kinsmen, who had fattened
on the goods of the abbey, were dismissed and
the property of the house rescued.??

Wulnoth, called the fourth abbot, was elected
apparently in the time of King Athelstan
(925-40). He spent two or three years in
correcting the evil doings of his predecessor,
and changed the colour and form of the habit
of the monks. He ordained that the nuns
(sanctimontiales semisaeculares), whom his pre-
decessor had placed in a house too near the
church, should live together in one house in
the almonry to avoid suspicion, and should
hear matins and the daily hours in the greater
church (in majort ecclesia), and should be
restricted in their eating of meat.28 Wulnoth
later relinquished his zeal for reform and
indulged in hunting and sport, neglecting the
care of the monastery to the scandal of religion.
Matthew Paris refers to the plundering of the
abbey by Danes in the time of this abbot and
the carrying off of the relics of St. Alban to
Denmark,?° but the account is an interpolation
and with little doubt refers to a later episode,
which will be dealt with hereafter. Abbot
Wulnoth afterwards repented of his evil ways,
and after ruling the monastery for eleven years
died from a stroke of paralysis. He was suc-
ceeded by Eadfrith, the fifth abbot,?° a member
of the Saxon aristocracy who had been prior.
He is described as good-looking in appearance,
but vain and despicable in conduct, constantly

24 Gesta Abbat. i, 6.
2 Thid. 7.

%8 Ibid. 9.

27 Tbid. 10.

28 Tbid. 11.

29 Tbid. 12.

30 Ibid. 21.

4 369

in his chamber, rarely in the cloister and never
in the quire. He presented a precious chalice
to the monastery, and with his permission Ulf,
the prior, built the chapel of St. German on the
site of the house where St. German was sup-
posed to have dwelt and where the body of
St. Alban was found. Here he lived the life of
a hermit, and after his death Abbot Eadfrith,
repenting from his evil living, resigned his
office of abbot and retired to this hermitage.

This brings us to the middle of the roth
century, to the time of the revival of the Bene-
dictine rule and the introduction of reform
into the English monasteries. In consequence
probably of these changes the abbey remained
vacant for a year owing to discord among the
monks as to the election of a successor, the
greater number favouring the prior and the
minority, probably the party of reform, opposing
him. At length the discord was compromised by
the intervention of the bishop, and Wulsin was
elected abbot. His appointment, however,
was but a compromise, and on that account he
is unlikely to have effected any great changes
in the monastery. Besides which he was
evidently an old man when he undertook the
office, as his rule was not a long one, and we
are told that he died full of days. He is
described as a pious man, and it is said that he
established the market-place at St. Albans and
encouraged people to settle there, assisting
them with money and material. It is also
recorded that he built the churches of St. Peter
in the north, St. Stephen in the south, and
St. Michael in the west of the town.*?

Great confusion follows from this date in
the account of the abbots given in the Gesta
Abbatum. It is here stated that Wulsin, the
sixth abbot, was succeeded by A’lfric, the seventh
abbot, Ealdred, the eighth abbot, Eadmer, the
ninth abbot, Leofric, the tenth abbot, #lfric II,
brother of Leofric, the eleventh abbot, after-
wards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Leofstan,
the twelfth abbot8% From other evidence,
however, a more probable succession seems to
be that here suggested.

When St. Oswald, then Bishop of Worcester,
desired a place in which to establish the regular
monks, for whom there was not room at Wor-
cester and Westbury, he was offered by King
Edgar the choice of the monasteries of St.
Albans, Ely, or Benfleet, in Essex. Instead,

31 Gesta Abbat. i, 6.

32 Tbid. 22. St. Michael’s Church is situated
within the city of Verulamium, a grant of the site of
which the abbey did not receive till some fifty years
later. It is improbable that the abbot would build
a church on land which was not his, and therefore that
this church was built till early in the 11th century.
This date would correspond better with its archi-
tecture.

33 Op. cit. 1, 23-40.
47

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

however, of selecting any of them he founded
in 968 the monastery of Ramsey.#@ At the same
time he did not lose the opportunity of fur-
thering the interests of reform, and used his
influence with the king to procure the appoint-
ment of men of his own views to fill the vacan-
cies at these abbeys. The monasteries of
St. Albans, Ely and Benfleet, we are expressly
told, were emptied of secular clerks, who were
teplaced by professed monks, and Elfric, son
of an ealdorman of Kent, was made Abbot of
St. Albans35 Elfric had been a monk at
Abingdon, where we may besure he had
imbibed the views of thelwold with regard to
monastic vows, and was evidently a friend of
Dunstan, for the Sancti Dunstani Vita Auctore B
is dedicated to him. Matthew Paris states
that he was chancellor to Athelred while he
was a layman (saecularis); so that he was
apparently middle-aged when he became a
monk. It is probable that he brought in some
monks from Abingdon or elsewhere to teach
and enforce the Benedictine rule, and those in
the monastery who would not accept it were
expelled. We have unfortunately no authentic
information as to his life at St. Albans. We are
told that he purchased Kingsbury from the king,
destroyed the castle and drained the fishpool,3?
but there is some doubt even as to this small
item of information. Having regard to the
confusion existing between Elfric and_ his
brother Leofric, it seems probable that much
attributed by Matthew Paris to the latter refers
to the former. The famine mentioned as in
the time of Leofric** is probably that of 976,3*
when £lfric was, so far as we know, still
abbot, for he was not made Bishop of Rams-
bury till 990. The abbot at the time of this

famine is said to have spent the treasure and

34 Hist. of the Ch. of York (Rolls Ser.), i, 427.
There does not seem to be sufficient evidence for Sir
James Ramsay’s assertion (Foundations of England, i,
326) that Edgar refounded St. Albans Abbey, which
was, he says, at that time in a dilapidated condition.

35 Hist. of the Ch. of York (Rolls Ser.), ii, 71, 495,
505; Gesta Abbat. (Rolls Ser.), i, 23. Much con-
fusion has arisen as to the identity of this abbot,
partly originating in a mistake of Matthew Paris
followed by Walsingham in the succession of the
abbots, who has confused Aélfric, afterwards Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, with Leofric his brother. He
has also been confused with AElfric the grammarian,
author of the celebrated homilies and lives of the
saints, A&lfric Puttoc, Archbishop of York, and /Elfric,
Abbot of Malmesbury.

38 Nemorial of St. Dunstan (Rolls Ser.) ; Gesta
Abbat.i, 32. Matthew Paris must here mean Edgar.

37 Gesta Abbat. i, 23, 32, 33. It is here supposed
that the two -Elfrics given by Matthew Paris are the
same person.

38 Tbid. 29.

39 Anglo-Sax%. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 230; Matt.
Paris, Chron. Maj. i, 469.

goods of the monastery in the relief of the
starving poor, which caused much dissent among
the monks.#° After being at Ramsbury for a
few years /Elfric was made Archbishop of
Canterbury in 995,“ and at his death in 1005
he left considerable property to St. Albans
Abbey, and appointed his brother Leofric, then
Abbot of St. Albans, his executor.”

It is clear from Matthew Paris that one
brother succeeded the other, and such dates as
we have also point to this. Leofric, we are
told, was a handsome and stately man, but
despised all worldly vanities and refused to be
Archbishop of Canterbury, asserting that his
brother 4lfric was more worthy of the honour.
At the same time he was a respecter of persons,
and would not admit as a monk of St. Albans
anyone who was not well born.

Leofric was undoubtedly Abbot of St. Albans
in 997, when he isso described as a witness toa
charter.“4 He is again mentioned in 1005,
1006 #8 and 1007,47 which is the last date
when reference to him has been found. During
his abbacy St. Albans seems to have been
wealthy and many gifts and purchases of land
were obtained. At one of the threatened
invasions by the Danes at the end of the 1oth
century, when #Ethelred was compelled to buy
off the invaders, the abbot lent the king a large
sum of money on security of lands. In redemp-
tion of this loan the king granted to the abbey
in 1006 a ‘cassata’ of land at Flamstead and
§ ‘ cassatae’ at Verulamium.‘® The two brothers
besides this grant acquired from the Crown
lands at Kingsbury, Burston and Childwick, all
near to St. Albans, Oxhey, Weston, Norton,
Upton, Rodenhanger and elsewhere in Hertford-
shire.‘9

Abbot Leofric was probably succeeded about
1007 by Ealdred and he by Eadmar. Both
these abbots, of whose dates there exists no
independent evidence, are placed by Matthew

* Gesta Abbat. i, 29-30.

‘| It was stated that he also expelled the clerks at
Canterbury and put monks in their place (Angi-
Sax. Chron. [Rolls Ser.], i, 244-5), but see Dict. Nat.
Biog. under AElfric.

* Thorpe, Cod. Dipl. Wills, 547. The charter of
1007 of #Ethelred to St. Albans refers to Leofric,
Abbot of St. Albans, as brother of AElfric, then late
Archbishop of Canterbury (Matt. Paris, Céron. Maj.
vi, 25).

43 Gesta Abbat. i, 28.

“ Kemble, Cod. Dipl. no. 698. It may be his
name which occurs in 993 (ibid. no. 684).

** Ibid. no. 716; Thorpe, Dip/. Angl. 549.

46 Matt. Paris, op. cit. vi, 22; Dugdale, Mon. vi,
219.
*’ Kemble, Cod. Dipl. no. 1304.

48 Matt. Paris, CAron. Maj. vi, 21; Dugdale, Mon. in,
225, no. x.

4° Cott. MS. Nero, D vii; Matt. Paris, Chron.
Mg. vi, 24.

370

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Paris before Abbot Leofric, but as we have a
definite date for Alfric, who, as has been shown,
was succeeded by his brother Leofric, there is
no room for them unless they come after
Leofric ; besides which all we know about them
is with regard to their excavations and searches
at Verulamium, which was not granted to
St. Albans till the abbacy of Leofric. Matthew
Paris gives an account of the remains found
during the excavations by Ealdred and tells a
story of a cave at a place called ‘ Wormenhert,’
which was the habitation of a dragon. This
abbot collected a great store of stones, tiles and
wood for the fabric of the church, but was
prevented by his death from carrying out his
intention of rebuilding the abbey.6° Eadmar
continued the work of his predecessor and
collected more material from Verulamium.
During the searches it is said some books were
found, one of which was the life of St. Alban
written in the ancient British language, and
after being translated by a priest, Unwona, it
fell to pieces. As no known manuscript has
ever been discovered in the ancient British
language the story is apocryphal. Like his pre-
decessor, Eadmar left his intention of rebuilding
the church unfulfilled.52

Matthew Paris gives a second Abbot Atlfric,
but as some of the events attributed to his
abbacy, such as the loan to King #thelred,
above referred to, appear from more authentic
sources to belong to the time of Leofric, it seems
probable that his existence forms a part of the
confusion already mentioned. To the time,
however, of this abbot, and in the reign of
Edward the Confessor, Matthew Paris attributes
the well-known story of the removal of the
relics of St. Alban to Ely for security during
a threatened invasion of the Danes, probably
that of Magnus, King of Norway and Denmark,
in 1045. The scare being over, the Abbot of
St. Albans demanded the return of the relics, but
the monks of Ely refused to restore them. After
appeals to King Edward and the pope, the monks
of Ely were induced to return what they
professed were Alban’s bones, retaining, however,
what they considered were the true relics. The
Abbot of St. Albans then declared that he had
only pretended to send the real relics to Ely and
the authentic bones he had concealed in his
church. Later St. Alban, it is said, appeared
to one of the monks and declared that his true
telics had been hidden in the middle of the
church, from which they were publicly and
solemnly taken. Arising out of this story is
the further legend of the carrying off of the
bones of the saint to Odense in Denmark, where
they were deposited in a monastery. This
episode is given by Matthew Paris under the

50 Gesta Abbat. i, 25.

51 [bid. 28. 52 Ibid. 34-6.

abbacy of Wulnoth * in the first half of the
toth century, but as the Danes were then
heathen and the priory of Odense was not
founded till the 11th century, it is obvious
that it belongs to a later date. By the recent
researches of Mr. W. R. L. Lowe it has been
shown that St. Canute or Knud came to England
in the Danish expedition of 1069-70 to assist
the English refugees under Hereward at Ely,
and according to an 11th-century MS. ‘ Passio
of St. Canute’ and a tablet erected at Odense
the Danish king St. Canute then carried back
with him some of the supposed relics of
St. Alban probably from those retained by Ely.
These were deposited in the priory of St. Mary
at Odense, which thereupon received the addi-
tional dedication to St. Alban, and it was in the
church of this monastery that Canute was
murdered in 1086.54 The further story how
Egwin the sacrist, after receiving a message
from St. Alban in a dream, became a monk at
Odense, where he stole the relics and sent them
to England, is perhaps an adaptation from the
legend as to the relics of St. Oswald taken
from Peterborough.®

The next abbot was apparently Leofstan
‘surnamed Plumstan’, who was appointed
shortly after the accession of Edward the
Confessor, possibly about 1048.56 He had
been a member of the royal household, and
was the confessor of King Edward and Queen
Edith, with both of whom he had considerable
influence.®? Possibly on account of his court
interest he obtained numerous grants of lands
from the nobility and others, and very
largely from wealthy Danes, many of whom
appear to have settled in the neighbourhood
of the monastery.®® He further improved the
estates of the abbey by clearing the woods from
the confines of the Chiltern district almost to
London, at the same time securing the safety

53 Gesta Abbat. i, 12-19.

54 «The Cult of St. Alban Abroad,’ reprinted from
the Hertfordshire Post, 13 July 1910. ‘The priory
church at Odense has been destroyed, but the market-
place there is still called St. Albans Market, and there
is a St. Albans Bridge and St. Albans Street in the
town. There is, again, another story that the bones
of the saint were carried by Abbot Frederic to Ely
when he fled there in 1077, which is indignantly
denied by Matthew Paris (Gesta Abbat. i, 51). See
also Festskrift udgivet af Kyjobenhavns Universitet: Knud
den Helliges Martyrhistorie (1907).

55 Dugdale, Mon.i, 349.

56 The earliest reference to him is in a grant by
fEgelwin the Black to the abbey in his time, which is
attributed to 1042-9 (Gesta Abbat. i, 39; Kemble,
Cod. Dipl. iv, no. 962). A grant by Tova, a widow,
to Leofstan the Abbot and the congregation of
St. Alban is attributed to 1049-52 (Gesta Abbat. i,
39; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. iv, no. 950).

57 Gesta Abbat. i, 38.

58 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii.

371

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

of travellers and pilgrims to St. Albans by
repairing Watling Street and the bridges on it.
That the road might be maintained in safety
he granted the manor of Flamstead to Turmot,
a knight, who with two fellow knights was
bound to keep those parts free from thieves and
wild beasts. Leofstan died ‘immediately after’ 5®
Edward the Confessor (§ January 1065-6),
leaving the abbey ‘ overflowing with all good
things.’ 6

After, or perhaps a little before, the death of
Leofstan the abbey seems to have been seized
by that rapacious prelate Stigand, Archbishop
of Canterbury,® who at this time was obtaining
the revenues of many of the larger monasteries.
Besides St. Albans he held in this way the
abbeys of Winchester, Glastonbury, St. Augus-
tine and Ely. They did not, however, remain
with him for many months, for Harold seems to
have filled the vacancies. To St. Albans he
appointed Frederic, who was descended from
the old Saxon nobility, and was also a kinsman
of King Cnut and a friend of King Edward and
of Harold. We know nothing of what hap-
pened at St. Albans during Harold’s brief reign.
William the Conqueror must at once have
recognized the abbey as a source of danger. Its
great wealth and reputation and the intensely
national and aristocratic tendency of its
inmates, many of whom were of noble blood,
compelled him to lessen its power and influence.®
It is clear that he promoted the rivalry between
St. Albans and Westminster by conveying to
the latter much of the St. Albans property and
giving to it lands adjoining those of St. Albans.
In this way and by grants to his Norman fol-
lowers William impoverished the abbey. Thus
St. Albans lost its property in Middlesex, at
Flamstead, Studham, Bushey, and probably
Aldenham and other places in Hertfordshire.*

Abbot Frederic was openly opposed to
William, and immediately after the battle of
Hastings and the death of Harold he gave the
influence of his birth, position and wealth to
the English party, headed by Aldred Arch-
bishop of York, Earls Edwin and Morcar and

«Cito post” (Gesta Abbat. i, 41). © Tbid.

§' This may account for the terms of William’s
charter to St. Albans, whereby the abbey was to hold
such liberties in such places as Stigand had on the
day King Edward died (Matt. Paris, Céron. May.
i, 33). From this it would appear that Leofstan
died before Edward or that Stigand held the abbey
before Leofstan died. This theory is confirmed
by Domesday, where, under the abbot’s manor of
Redbourn, it is stated that Stigand held it at the time
King Edward died, but he could not alienate it
from the abbey, and Napsbury was held by a man
of Stigand on the same terms (V.C.H. Herts. i,
275, 315).

© Historiae Anglicanae Script. Vet. (Hist. Eliensis,
G41); 11; 5 ta:

8 Gesta Abbat.i, 50. “ See under Topography.

the townsmen of London to place Edgar
Etheling on the throne. At that memorable
occasion when William was met at Berkhamp-
stead by Aldred Archbishop of York, Edgar
Etheling, Edwin and Morcar and all the chief
men of London ®* who submitted to him,
Abbot Frederic, according to Matthew Paris,
administered the oath ®? whereby William
swore on the relics of St. Alban that he would
be a loving lord to them.

Abbot Frederic appears to have been looked
upon as one of the leaders and spokesmen of
the English party. A story is told that
William one day taunted the English with being
so easily conquered, and the English knights
and nobles not being ready with an answer
Frederic replied for them that the king owed
the easiness of his conquest to the Church, which,
by the gifts of his predecessors, held so much
of the land and could not rebel against him.
The king made answer that if that was the case
he would not be safe from the King of Denmark,
or any other who might wage war upon him,
and therefore * out of your own mouth I judge
you, and I begin with you, resuming the posses-
sions with which you are so abundantly supplied,
that knights may be provided from them for the
defence of the kingdom.’ The king thereupon
seized all the lands which the abbey held
between Barnet and London to a place called
‘Londonestone.’ ® Whether this story is true
or not is uncertain, but there is no doubt that
William did seize extensive property of St.
Alban in Middlesex. Frederic was evidently
the cause of suspicion with William and Arch-
bishop Lanfranc, as one of the chief favourers
of the English. It is possible that he was con-
nected with the rebellions of Earl Waltheof,
Roger Earl of Hereford and Ralph Earl of
Norfolk in 1075-6, for Wulfstan Bishop of
Worcester, who had taken part against the
earls, offered to make peace between him and
the king and Lanfranc. The abbot, however,
fearing treachery and that he might be im-
prisoned or put to death, in 1077 suggested
to the chapter that he should flee from his
persecutors. By the licence and advice, there-
fore, of the convent he fled to the Isle of Ely,
where a few days afterwards he was taken ill
and died.*

AFTER THE CONQUEST

Anewera wasintroduced by the appointment as
abbot of Lanfranc’s kinsman Paul,?°an energetic

© Gesta Abbat. i, 47.

* Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 339.

°" Gesta Abbat. i, 47.

“Ibid. 49, 50. William of Malmesbury (De
Gestis Regum Anglorum [Rolls Ser.], ii, 349-52)
mentions Frederic’s presence at the council of 1072.

© Gesta Abbat. i, 50, 51.

™ Tbid. 51. Some said he was Lanfranc’s son.

372

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

ruler with the Norman instinct for organization
and love of order. He rebuilt the monastery
and church with the bricks of the ruined Roman
city collected by the former abbot,” and, what
was more important from the Norman point of
view, converted a careless and ill-regulated
convent into a model community.”? The Bene-
dictine rule was more strictly enforced with
the emendations made by Lanfranc for Bec.
Thus the eating of meat was discountenanced ;
in the infirmary it was seldom allowed, and in
the case of monks who were bled a kind of
fish pie was substituted for the accustomed
meat diet; dress was reformed ; silence had to
be kept in the church, cloister, frater and dormi-
tory; discipline was enforced in the infirmary ;
and measures were taken to ensure due attention
at the nocturnal services.”

The changes were introduced gradually, so as
not to excite rebellion, probably until Paul, by
making a dark and strong dungeon,’4 had the
means to coerce the refractory. The nuns—for,
as already stated, St. Albans was a double
monastery—were confined by him to the
almonry and its neighbourhood, and regulations
were made for them as to clothing, food,
exercise, observance of silence and attendance
at divine worship.”

A lover of learning, Paul founded a scrip-
torium at the abbey, in which books could be
made for the convent.76 This was a beginning,
perhaps, of that great school of history on whose
works we largely depend for our knowledge of
the 12th and 13th centuries. It was endowed
with tithes in Hatfield, given by a Norman
noble for this purpose, and others in Redbourn ;
while for greater convenience the abbot ar-
ranged that the almoner and cellarer should pro-
vide daily food for the copyists whom he
brought from abroad. Not the least of his
benefactions to the church were the twenty-
eight volumes, besides service books of all kinds,
which he presented.””

At the back of Paul almost throughout his
abbacy was Lanfranc, the value of whose sup-
port can perhaps hardly be overestimated. To
the archbishop the abbey undoubtedly owed
the Conqueror’s two charters,’® one granting to
St. Albans sac and soc, tol and team, and all cus-
toms that Stigand’® had in Edward the Con-
fessor’s time, the other ordering that the abbot
and convent should have all the lands, churches
and tithes of which they could prove seisin at

" Gesta Abbat. i, 52. 7 Ibid. 59-61.

73 A lantern was carried round the quire to rouse
the lazy and sleepy.

™ Gesta Abbat. i, 60. 7 Tbid. 59.

Ibid. 57-8. 7 Ibid. 58.

78 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi, 33-4. The first
was granted at the prayer of Lanfranc, to the other
Lanfranc was a witness.

79 See above.

the time that William became king. The second
must have facilitated the recovery by Paul of
the abbey’s lost possessions. The restoration
of Redbourn by Lanfranc was almost a matter
of course,® but Childwick, ‘Cnicumba,’ ® the
land at Napsbury, Eywood and ‘Tiwa’ were
also regained.82

The respect which the abbey at this time
inspired is seen in the many donations made to
it,88 and in the foundation and endowment of
cells of St. Albans at Hertford by Robert de
Limesi, Wallingford (co. Berks.) by Robert
Doyley,84 Belvoir (co. Lincoln) by Robert de
Todeni, Tynemouth (co. Northumb.) by Robert
Mowbray, and Binham (co. Norfolk) ® by Peter
de Valognes. It had become famed far and wide
for its strict observance of the rule.® If the result
excites admiration, some pity cannot but be
felt for the English monks during the process.
The path of reform must have been doubly
hard for men under the rule of an alien with
little sympathy for the conquered race. Abbot
Paul destroyed the tombs of his predecessors,
whom he habitually spoke of as fools and block-
heads, and although his scorn was probably for
their lack of rule, he conveyed the impression
that it was largely for their nationality.6?7 His
neglect in one instance to show a little friendly
courtesy to a landholder because he was English
is said to have cost St. Albans an estate which
was secured by Ramsey.®8

After Paul’s death in November 1093 St.
Albans remained without an abbot for more
than three years, that its property might be
wasted by the king.89 Within the abbey itself
there seems to have been a struggle for
mastery between the English and Norman
sections of the convent; but all hopes of the
former for predominance were crushed by the
appointment of a second Norman Superior.%°
Richard de Albini, the new abbot, was ap-
parently well chosen. Of noble birth, he made

® Lanfranc was very generous to St. Albans. He
gave 1,000 marks to the rebuilding of the church,
vestments and plate, and bequeathed to the abbey
£100, of which, however, it only received £50
(Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 86).

8 By Robert Bishop of Lincoln, who left the abbey
at his death £46 (ibid.),

® Odo remitted payment of the {£20 promised
him for the land (ibid. 864).

8 Gesta Abbat. i, 56-7.

® The foundation of the cell is attributed in the
Gesta (i, 56) to Abbot Paul, but it was made possible
by Doyley’s gifts (V.C.H. Berks. ii, 77).

% Gesta Abbat. i, 57. It is doubtful, however,
whether this priory was founded in Paul’s time
(V.C.H. Norfolk, ii, 343).

8 Gesta Abbat. i, 52.

8" bid. 62.

% Ibid. Yet it was an Englishman, Lyulph, who
presented two great bells for the tower (ibid. 61),

® Ibid. 65. * Thid. 66.

373

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

good use of the opportunities arising from the
circumstance to benefit his house. William
Ru'us is said to have been on friendly terms
with him, as was Henry I, who showed
marked favour to the abbey in his time. This
king wore his crown here one Whitsuntide ® ;
on another visit to the monastery in 1104 he
granted to the abbey an annual fair to last
eight days. He also kept Christmas here in
1115,°4 and was present three days later with
his queen and son at the dedication of the
conventual church ® by Robert Bishop of
Lincoln,®® and gave to the monastery Biscott
in the soke of Luton.8? During Richard’s
abbacy the abbey received numerous gifts,
among its special benefactors being William de
Albini, the king’s butler, and Henry de Albini
with his brothers Nigel and William.® In
some of the transactions with regard to the
property of the abbey which appeared to be
disadvantageous to the house Abbot Richard
was believed to have furthered his relatives’
interests at the abbey’s expense, and one grant
was made against the will of the whole convent.®
Yet his motives may have been wrongly sus-
pected. It is not impossible that the surrender
of Tewin} was the price paid for William
Rufus’s amity, and that of Sarratt! to Peter,

" Gesta Abbat. i, 66. He sent a brief to the
sheriffs on the abbot’s behalf (Matt. Paris, CéAron.
May. vi, 35).

” Reg. Palat. Dunelm. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 52. It was
on this occasion that he restored Ralph Flambard’s
lands to him, so that the date is possibly 1101.

* Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26, p. 20. The charter is
dated at St. Albans and is witnessed by Waldric the
chancellor, who held office in 1104.

“ Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Earle and Plummer), i, 246.
The chronicler begins the year at Christmas and
therefore date, the visit 1116.

® Gesta Abbat. i, 71.

* The author of the Gesta says that Gcoffrey
Archbishop of Rouen consecrated the church. Ap-
parently he was to have performed the ceremony, but
the state of his health made assistance necessary, and
in the end it was the Bishop of Lincoln who actually
officiated (Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 142).

* Natt. Paris, Chron. May. vi, 36-7 ; V.C.H. Beds.
ii, 361.

* Gesta,i, 67-8 ; Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. g1 d.,
g8 d.; Raine, Historicns of the Church of York (Rolls
Ser.), lili, 54-7.

® Gesta Abbat. i, 72.

© The chronicler’s story is not consistent. He
first says (ibid. 52) that William Rufus deprived
Abbot Paul of Tewin for the benefit of Hugh de
Evermori, and afterwards (ibid. 72) that this manor
and the church of Flamstead were lost by the col-
lusion of Abbot Richard in order to provide the
better for his kinsfolk.

1 This had been granted by Abbot Paul to Robert
the Mason, no doubt in payment for his labours in
building the church, but had been restored to the
abbey at Robert’s death.

butler of William Count of Mortain, a return for
services rendered to the abbey. Richard is
said to have first subjected St. Albans to the
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln that he
might control his monks more strictly,? but how
far the statement can be accepted is doubtful?
Possibly he maintained unusually close relations
with the bishop in the interests of discipline.
The high repute of the abbey was at any rate
maintained under him. That is evident from
the profession here of Robert Mowbray Earl of
Northumberland,‘ the choice of Bernard, one of
the convent, in 1202-3 to be Abbot of Ramsey,®
and the subjection of the priories of Wymond-
ham and Hatfield Peverel to St. Albans ® by
their founders, William de Albini and William
Peverel. The abbot, whose withered arm had
been miraculously restored at the translation of
St. Cuthbert, built a chapel in honour of the
saint at St. Albans.” His gifts to the church
included two shrines, one adorned with golden
images, several precious vestments and a missal
used for early mass.8

Richard died in 1119, and Geoffrey de
Gorham became abbot by the monks’ unanimous
choice.® He was a native of Maine, who had been
summoned over by Abbot Richard to take
charge of the school at St. Albans!; but when
he arrived the post was already filled, so he
retired to Dunstable to wait for the next
vacancy. While there he borrowed from the
abbey some choral copes for a performance of
the miracle play of St. Katharine,4 and a fire
breaking out in his house they were destroyed.
The accident determined Geoffrey’s career. In
place of the lost vestments he made an offering
of himself to God and took monastic vows at
St. Albans.!2 His course as abbot befitted the
circumstances of his profession. A very real
devotion was expressed not only in gifts to the

* Gesta Abbat. i, 72.

* For the exemption of St. Albans see below.

“Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi, 372. He could not
have taken the vows before 1095, so much is certain.

* Ramsey Chartul. (Rolls Ser.), i, 237-8.

* Gesta Abbat. i, 67. A small cell of St. Albans
was also established at Millbrook (co. Beds.), but was
soon absorbed by Beaulieu (V.C.H. Beds. i, 351).

"Gesta Abbat. i, 70. An altar of Frosterly
marble, now the top of a tomb in the south aisle of
the saint’s chapel, is by tradition the altar belonging
to this chapel.

® Thid.

* Ibid. 73.

* For the St. Albans School see V.C.H. Herts. il,
47-69.

" The church of St. Mary, Rickmansworth, was
assigned by him when abbot, for the repair of ornaments,
to the sacrist who had to render his accounts and
give a feast to the convent on St. Katharine’s Day
(Gesta Abbat. i, 75).

" Ibid. 73.

374

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

church of ornaments and vestments, many and
costly as these were,'® but in all his actions.

There was great activity at the abbey at this
time. A guest-hall, apartments for the queen,
the infirmary and its chapel were built.4 An
elaborate shrine was begun in 1123,!8 and on
2 August 1129 the body of St. Alban was
translated in the presence of four abbots
besides Geoffrey, and of Alexander Bishop of
Lincoln,!* who gave an indulgence of forty days
to all visiting the abbey on the feasts of the
Invention or Translation.!”

The hospital of St. Julian for lepers was
founded and endowed by the abbot from a
laudable desire to atone for omissions of prayers
and alms due from the abbey for its benefactors.18

Probably a similar motive caused the estab-
lishment of the nunnery at Sopwell,!® and this
priory, always closely connected with St. Albans,
was intended to compensate for the removal
from the abbey of the sisterhood, to which there
is no reference after Abbot Paul’s time. By the
Gesta Geoffrey is credited also with the foundation
of Markyate Priory, but with how much truth is
doubtful, though it is unnecessary to reject
entirely the story of the abbot’s friendship for
the saintly recluse Christina, and their benefits
to each other. Geoffrey was concerned, too,
with the formation of the convent at Beaulieu,
which became a cell of the abbey.

No relaxation of the rule was permitted at
St. Albans under this abbot. He insisted on
silence at meals in the infirmary, on abstinence
from meat unless such food was needful for
health, and on the return to the cloister of the
monks as soon as they had recovered from
illness. Yet he was anything but a hard man.
It was he who assigned the church of St. Peter

3 Among other things he presented 7 beautiful
copes, § chasubles (one of which was afterwards
burned for the sake of its gold), 3 albs, a tunic, a
gold chalice and paten, a reredos for St. Alban’s altar
of gold, silver and gems, a silver-gilt censer, several
books, a great hanging, on the gold ground of which
was woven the Invention of St. Alban, and 2 smaller
tapestries (Gesta Abbat. 1, 93-4).

4 Ibid. 79.

5 Ibid. 80.

6 Ibid. 85.

" Tbid. gz.

8 Ibid. 77-8.

® Tbid. 80-2.

” V.C.H. Beds. i, 358.

" He is said not only to have founded and
endowed the priory in spite of the murmuring of his
monks, but to have rebuilt it after a fire. She for
her part was his adviser in spiritual matters, and by
her prayers saved him several dreaded journeys (Gesta
Abbat. i, 103-4). His influence may, in fact, have
had much to do with the formation of the community
and foundation of the house (V.C.H. Beds. i, 358).

* Gesta Abbat. i, 78; V.C.H. Beds. i, 351.

® Gesta Abbat. i, 79-80.

to the infirmarer to provide necessaries for the
sick and old; by him, too, the sums allotted for
the convent’s food and for alms were increased.*4
He was moreover very charitable.25> During a
famine ** he had the partly completed shrine
stripped of its precious covering to obtain means
to feed the poor.??

Such information as there is about the monks
is all favourable to them. The shrine was made
by an inmate of the house, Anketil, at one time
moneyer to the King of Denmark.?8 Walter
Abbot of Eynsham, present at the Translation
in 1129, was an ex-prior of St. Albans*®; and
another prior, Godfrey, was made Abbot of
Crowland by the Council of Westminster in
1138.89 It is specially noted that the foundation
of St. Julian’s had the approval of the whole
community.

Geoffrey was succeeded in 1146 by Ralph
Gubiun, whose election received the assent of
the king when visiting the abbey on Ascension
Day. Ralph had been chaplain and treasurer
to Alexander Bishop of Lincoln, with whom he
had remained even after he had become a monk.
The bishop had promised to make him abbot
and possibly directed the convent’s choice. A
consciousness that the election had not been
quite free would certainly explain the abbot’s
extreme uneasiness at finding an uncut seal on
Anketil’s table. Suspecting the prior of a plot to
depose him, he removed him from office, and
drove him at last to seek refuge from persecution
with the Abbot of Westminster. He is said to
have protected his church manfully,*4 possibly a
reference to some special occasion for his
journey to France to obtain from Pope
Eugenius III a bull similar to that of Celes-

* Gesta Abbat. i, 74-5.

* The Bishop of Lincoln’s ordinance in 1129 that
300 poor people should be fed at the monastery on
the festival of the Invention was made by the abbot’s
counsel and assent (ibid. 92).

% There was scarcity in 1124 and 1125 (Angh-
Sax. Chron. [Earle and Plummer], i, 254, 256).

” Gesta Abbat. i, 82. The same feeling doubtless
prompted the sacrifice of a reredos to save the town
from being burned by Stephen’s followers (ibid.
93-4), apparently in 1142 (Matt. Paris, Hist. Ang/.
i, 270-1).

8 Gesta Abbat. i, 80. Most beautiful work was
done also in the scriptorium, to judge from a specimen
still remaining (Herbert, I/um. Manuscripts, 136).

” Gesta Abbat. i, 85.

%° Chron. of reigns of Stephen, Henry 1 and Richard I
(Rolls Ser.), ili, 175. In the Gesta Abbat. (i,
120-1) Godfrey is said to have been appointed in
the time of Abbot Rodert de Gorham (1151-68) at
the wish of Alexander Bishop of Lincoln, who, it
should be remarked, died in 1148.

51 Matt. Paris, Hist. Angi. i, 276-7.

3 Gesta Abbat. i, 106.

% Tbid. 107-8.

* Ibid. 106.

375

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

tine II.35 His principal acts besides were the
institution of a weekly procession in honour of
the Virgin Mary, the building of rooms for the
abbot near the church, and the purchase of
Bramfield.2@ He left the abbey clear of all debt,
but he had taken the silver-gilt plates of the
shrine to pay for the new estate.8?7_ In 1150 he
was attacked by an incurable disease, and it
was apparently by his own wish that he was
superseded.38 By permission of King Stephen,
who came again to St. Albans in 1151, the monks
exercised their right to elect, and chose the prior,
Robert de Gorham,®9 who received the benedic-
tion nineteen days before Ralph’s death.*°

Robert de Gorham was the nephew of Abbot
Geoffrey, in whose time he had transferred
himself from a continental monastery to
St. Albans. Here he had become secretary, and
in 1149 prior.*! He made a clever, politic abbot,
devoting all his powers to the aggrandisement
of his house and working indefatigably for its
material advancement. Early in his abbacy he
took the opportunity afforded by the confusion
of ownerships and overlordships under Stephen
to acquire the church of Luton, with its endow-
ment of land in ‘ Hertevelle,’ Battlesden and
Potsgrove.?

A prolonged struggle with Robert de
Valognes # arose from the abbot’s decision to
put beyond doubt the abbey’s proprietary
rights in Northaw Wood, endangered by the life
grants of his predecessors to various members of
the Valognes family.

The quarrel with the Earl of Arundel seems
also to have been caused by the abbot’s desire to
test and substantiate claims,‘4 in this instance
unjust ones.45

In both these cases the abbot was victorious, **
but in the dispute with Westminster Abbey over
Aldenham* he met his match. Laurence, then
Abbot of Westminster, had formerly been a monk
of St. Albans,48 and on succeeding to the

35 Gesta Abbat. i, 107. Pope Celestine confirmed
grants past and future made to St. Albans (Cott. MS.
Nero, D vii, fol. 8 d.).

8° Gesta Abbat. i, 107-9.

37 Ibid. 109.

38 According to the Gesta 4bbat. (i, 108) he got
the monks to put the prior in his place.

89 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 187.

40 In the Gesta Abbat. (i, 110) he is said to have
lived some years after the appointment of his
successor, obviously an error if he fell ill in the
fourth or the beginning of the fifth year of his rule
and died 5 July 1151.

41 Gesta Abbat. i, Y1O-11.

#2 Ibid. 113-19; V.C.H. Beds. ii, 356.

8 Gesta Abbat. i, 159-66.

44 Ibid. 166-75.

45 7 C,H. Norfolk, ii, 336-7.

46 Partly owing to his energy and pertinacity.

47 Gesta Abbat. i, 134.

Tbid. 159.

abbacy had been very kindly treated by Abbot
Robert. Expectations, however, that he would
be bound by past ties were doomed to dis-
appointment. He was as uncompromising and
unscrupulous in support of his own house as his
opponent, over whom he carried the day.

Of all Robert de Gorham’s struggles that with
the Bishop of Lincoln was incomparably the most
important. The abbot, sent with other eccle-
siastics to Rome by Henry II on the king’s
business, seized the opportunity to secure the
abbey’s independence.4® The occasion was
propitious. Pope Adrian IV, a native of Abbots
Langley, had reason to be interested in St.
Albans,5° and was generous with gifts ® and
privileges.6 By him an annual procession of
clerks and laymen of the county to St. Albans
was ordained, the abbey and its cells declared
exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of
Lincoln, and the abbot authorized to wear the
mitre and other pontifical ornaments. The
bishop, after remonstrance, agreed to the
procession, but the abbey’s exemption he
refused to recognize, and when Pope Adrian was
dead *4 contested the point. The abbot is said
to have convinced the king that Adrian had not
given but restored freedom to St. Albans, though
it seems probable that no exemption existed
before this date.5* However, as the submission
of the house to the see of Lincoln at any rate at
one period &? was an undeniable fact, Robert
came to an agreement with the bishop, and in
March 1163 made over to him the manor of
Fingest (co. Bucks.) ®8 in return for a renunciation
of all episcopal rights over the monastery.®

49 Gesta Abbat. i, 126-9.

5° His father took vows there (ibid. 124-5). The
story of his own attempted profession at St. Albans
and its frustration by Abbot Robert is obviously
fictitious, for he became Cardinal of Albano in 1146
after a residence of some years on the Continent.

51 He gave the abbey relics of the Theban Legion,
a beautiful silk cloth sent to him by the emperor,
valuable sandals and ring (ibid. 132), and a goblet
for the refectory (Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi, 248).

52 Gesta Abbat. i, 129-30.

83 Tbid. 54 Ibid. 135-6.

55 The question was argued first at Winchester
and afterwards before the king at Westminster (ibid.
139-54).

56 References to its exemption before this time are
either suspicious or interpolations of a later date.
The exercise of jurisdiction by the Bishop of Lincoln
over St. Albans at an early period is proved by the
bishop’s appointment of Wulsin as abbot in the 1oth
century when there was a dispute in the monastery.

57 Robert and his two immediate predecessors had
been blessed by the Bishop of Lincoln and made pro-
fession of obedience to him.

58 Compensation was offered by the king’s advice
(Gesta Abbat. i, 154-5).

58 Ibid. 155-7; Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.),

go.

376

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

St Albans was recognized as first among the
English abbeys at the Council of Tours in 1163.°°

In his relations with his monks Robert
managed to combine a kindly ease in ordinary
intercourse with a somewhat severe dignity in
chapter. He is said never to have refused alms
to the poor. He left the abbey 600 marks in
debt, and this is hardly surprising, considering
the expenditure necessitated by suits and
processes,® a considerable amount of building *4
and the work on the shrine destroyed by his
predecessors. ®>

The assent of the king to the election of
another abbot was withheld for more than
four months.*¢ Then out of three monks
selected by the convent he chose Simon, the
prior, who received the benediction from the
Bishop of London 20 May 1167.87 Simon loved
learning and was anxious to encourage it in the
cloister. The increase of the library was there-
fore his particular care.6° He not only repaired
and reformed the scriptorium,*® but kept two
or three picked writers at work in his own
room,” and had an aumbry or cupboard made
in which books could be kept.7

It is related that he was an intimate friend
and admirer of Archbishop Thomas, and earned
his grateful thanks by interceding on his behalf
with the young king at great personal risk.”
The archbishop’s murder seems to have turned
the abbot’s thoughts to their own martyr, for
his work on the magnificent outer shrine of
St. Alban is said to date from that time.”
Prudence perhaps would have suggested its

60 But the Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds usurped
Robert’s place (Gesta Abbat. 1, 177-8).

61 Ibid. 180.

62 Tbid. 183.

63 The abbot gave the king £100 to have his case
over Northaw Wood submitted to the justiciar (ibid.
164), and offered him the same sum during his con-
test with the Bishop of Lincoln (ibid. 146).

64 The chapter-house, royal parlour with the
chapel of St. Nicholas, part of the cloister, a lavatory,
stable, &c. (ibid. 179).

85 Tbid.

86 Tbid. 183.

87 Tbid. 184.

68 Ibid.

69 Tbid. 192. One of the books he had made, a
copy of the Homilies of St. Gregory the Pope with
illuminated initials, is now in the library of Stonyhurst
College (Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ii, App. ii, 144) 3
another, a beautifully written ‘ Polycraticon,’ is in the
British Museum (Matt. Paris, Hist. Ang?. [Rolls Ser.],
Introd. p. xi).

70 Simon is believed by some to have created the
office of historiographer at St. Albans (Hardy,
Descriptive Cat. of Materials for Hist. of Britain (Rolls
Ser.], iii, p. xxxiv).

1 Gesta Abbat. i, 184.

72 Ibid. 184-6.

73 Ibid. 189.

4 377

postponement until finances had recovered from
the strain of Abbot Robert’s expenses. The
convent incurred obligations which it had great
difficulty in discharging. Aaron the Jew,
indeed, told the monks to their faces that St.
Alban owed his shrine to him.?4 Yet whatever
they suffered in their endeavours to honour the
saint must have appeared rewarded by the
discovery in 1178 of the relics of St. Amphibalus,
the instructor of St. Alban in the Christian
faith. An inhabitant of the town, a devout
worshipper of St. Alban, was led one night by
the saint himself to Redbourn and shown
where St. Amphibalus and his companions lay
buried. The abbot was told, and excavations
were made at the place indicated, with the
result that the holy remains were found. As
the relics were on their way to the monastery,
they were met by a procession of monks bearing
the shrine of St. Alban, who testified by miracles
his joy at the encounter.

When Simon died the choice of the whole
convent, with one exception, fell upon a Cam-
bridgeshire monk called Warin.7® The dis-
sentient 7? objected on the ground that Warin
was almost blind, and that the burgher stock
of which he came cared only for money, and
prophesied that he would oppress the brothers.”8
The objector’s judgement was perhaps better
than his motives. The abbot helped a horde
of relatives at the monastery’s expense.” He
was very self-willed, and his brother, whom he
soon made prior, very suspicious.®° The result
was that the older monks were slighted in favour
of the younger, and opposition of any kind was
treated as rebellion and punished by banishment
to the more distant cells.6t The example given
of the abbot’s obstinacy is his foundation of the
hospital of St. Mary de Pré without regard to
remonstrances. It is easy to see the con-
vent’s objection to impoverishing their own
house to endow another. On the other hand,
tothe abbot, who believed he was acting in their
best interests, they may well have appeared
factious. Apart from the obedience due to the
vision commanding honour to be paid to the
place where the relics of St. Amphibalus and
St. Alban had met, expediency urged the
commemoration of the miracles which had there
attested the genuineness of the remains inclosed

Gesta Abbat. i, 193-4.

™ Tbid. 192-3 ; Chron. Maj. ii, 301-8.

78 Gesta Abbat. i, 194-5. He was noted before he
became a monk for his good life and learning. He
and his brother Matthew both studied medicine at
Salerno.

77 William Martel, the sacrist.

78 Gesta Abbat. i, 194-5.

7 Ibid. 216.

80 Ibid. 196, 215.

81 [bid. 215-16.

82 Ibid. 215.

48

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

in St. Alban’s shrine : for on this point there had
certainly been uneasiness.®

Warin’s mitigation of the severity of the
rule was no doubt popular. Services were
shortened ; on fast days the monks were
allowed to sleep after dinner ®°; those who had
been bled were excused attendance at certain
services 8; the eating of meat was no longer
so restricted 87; Redbourn was made a health
resort where the routine of the cloister could be
relaxed for a short time.®8 One or two altera-
tions were made in dress for greater decorum :
henceforth monks were not to serve at dinner
without their frocks when seculars were present ®;
as soon as novices had received the tonsure
they were to wear the monastic habit ®; boots
were to be worn instead of shoes, the fastenings
of which caused inconvenience.

Warin was zealous in maintaining the abbey’s
liberties. When Walter de Coutances, as Bishop
of Lincoln (1183-6), would have called the
monastery’s exemption in question, the abbot
appealed to the king and thus stopped the
discussion.92 For better assurance he pro-
cured in 1188 a confirmation of the pact with
Lincoln from Clement III and other bulls con-
cerning the abbey’s freedom.®* Warin seems
to have made a point of ingratiating himself
with King Richard and the queen mother ™
and succeeded,® though not without expense.
John de Cella, the Prior of Wallingford, who

succeeded him in 1195, was a learned * and

83 In Geoffrey’s abbacy doubt was expressed by an
assistant worker on the shrine, but was allayed by the
saint appearing to Anketil and promising to reward
his labour (Gesta Abébat. i, 87). It is evident that the
question recurred at intervals, and was not settled by
the verdict against Ely following an inquiry made by
the pope’s orders at the request of Abbot Robert de
Gorham (ibid. 175-6). Nor in truth, whatever Warin
hoped, was the triumph of St. Albans assured by the
Invention of St. Amphibalus. Discussion still went
on in the 13th century, and it was a monk of Matthew
Paris’s time who remained unconvinced until one
night he saw St. Alban issue from his shrine and
heard him declare who he was (ibid. 37).

84 Ibid. 212-13. 85 Tbid. 86 Ibid. 207-9.

87 Monks who were delicate might eat meat in the
oriel (ibid. 211).

88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 214. 9° Ibid.

81 Such as soiling the monks’ hands (ibid. 211).

82 Ibid. 197-8. The king and bishop were then
visiting the abbey.

93 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. vi, 43, 53-61.

84 Gesta Abbat. i, 216. He sent Richard a hand-
some present on his return to England (Matt. Paris,
Hist. Angl. il, 47).

8 Roger de Hoveden, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 212 ;
Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 403.

96 He could be considered a Priscian in grammar,
an Ovid in verse, and a Galen in medicine (Gesta
Abbat.i, 217). He had a marvellous memory, and
was able to repeat the whole psalter backwards (ibid.

232).

devout man, but he had little capacity for
temporal affairs which he committed largely to
others.9?_ Possibly his unlucky experiences in
building induced this course. Warin had left
100 marks °8 to renew the front of the church,
which was accordingly pulled down. But mis-
fortune seemed to dog the work.®® The builder
first put in charge proved untrustworthy, and
when one of the brothers was given the superin-
tendence and a portion of the monastery’s
income was set apart for the work, the rate of
progress was still very disappointing. The re-
building of the refectory was not attended by
so much difficulty and was finished in John’s
abbacy ; anda new dormitory!” was also begun.

A great deal of trouble was caused to the
abbey at this time by Robert Fitz Walter. As
the husband of Gunnora de Valognes he revived
the Valognes’ claim to Northaw Wood and
persuaded a discontented and unscrupulous
monk, William Pygun by name, to attach the
conventual seal to a forged charter in his
favour! The abbot’s desire to hush up the
matter saved Pygun from any punishment
but transference to Tynemouth Priory,? and
perhaps operated to the benefit of Fitz
Walter, who received Biscott in return for
Northaw. Later there was a quarrel over
Binham Priory, a Valognes foundation, and
Fitz Walter is said to have relied again on a
forged document. Failing in his lawsuit, he
tried to take possession of the priory by force,
but the king sent to its relief. For John’s help
the abbot and convent had to thank his hatred
of Fitz Walter. They had personally little
reason to be grateful to him. At the beginning
of his reign, it is true, he had shown them
favour: on 28 May 1199, the day after his
coronation, he visited St. Albans and made
offerings? ; in June he confirmed his father’s
charter of liberties®; in August he granted them,
moreover, a weekly market in Barnet. They
were not excepted, however, from the bad treat-
ment meted out to the religious generally during
the Interdict. On 29 March 1208 the custody
of the house was committed to a clerk named
Robert de London,’ who appointed his own

7 Gesta Abbat. i, 218.

9 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 484-5.

100 To raise money for this building the convent
gave up its wine for fifteen years (Gesta Adbat. i, 220).

Ibid. 221-4. Pygun had a grudge against the
abbot for refusing to receive his nephew as a monk.

? Here he had a horrible end. Retiring to the cloaca
one night to gorge himself undisturbed with food and
i. he fell into a drunken sleep and so died (ibid.
224).
3 Ibid. 226-8 ; V.C.H. Norfolk, ii, 344.

4 Matt. Paris, Hist. Ang/, i, 81.

5 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 231.

® Cal. Rot. Chart. 1199-1216 (Rec. Com.), 114.
7 Rot. Lit. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 81a.

% Ibid. 21s.

378

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

doorkeeper and cellarer and made his hand so
much felt that the abbot paid 600 marks to be
free of him.6 In the same year the king by
Richard Marsh demanded an aid of 500 marks,
which the abbot dared not refuse.®

The abbot fell ill in 1214, and, knowing his
end was near, had himself helped into the
chapter-house, where he begged the convent’s
pardon for his offences and insisted on receiving
discipline from all. When he had bidden them
farewell, he was carried to his room, and there he
died three days later, as he had predicted from
his symptoms.!° Good and pious" as he un-
doubtedly was, he was perhaps not an ideal
abbot. He seems to have depended too much
on advisers, who were not always well chosen.
Roger de Hertfort, John de Seldford and
Alexander de Langley were flatterers and mis-
chief-makers, and by their means, sometimes
without the abbot’s knowledge, monks who
had committed no fault were removed from St.
Albans to the cells and from one cell to
another? Sometimes, of course, the banished
had only themselves to blame for their sentence.
When Walter de Standune, Almaric and others
accused the abbot to the papal legate of buying
land for a kinsman with the church’s money,®
they must have known it meant his removal 14
or theirs.

When Abbot John was on his death-bed
Alexander de Langley joined Walter de Rheims
and William de Trumpington in begging him to
seal a charter prohibiting such transference at
the abbot’s will. The dying man, unable to
speak, refused by a sign, but notwithstanding
the keeper of his seal, Alexander de Appelton,
sealed the deed.

After a vacancy of four months William de
Trumpington was elected, partly through out-
side influence. A complete contrast to his
predecessor, William found his sphere in the
active not the contemplative life. His strength
lay in governing and organizing. Of a buoyant
disposition, he was undaunted by any misfor-
tunes and equal to all emergencies. During
the war the abbot needed all his strength of

8 Gesta Abbat. i, 241-2.

9 Ibid. 242-3. 10 Ibid. 245-6.

ll The belief in his holiness is shown by the story
that his attendants having fallen asleep on one occa-
sion while he was singing nocturns, the responses
were made by angels (ibid. 230-2).

122 Ibid. 251. 13 Ibid. 252.

14 John explained that he had given the convent
the equivalent of the money, and was exculpated by
the legate.

15 Which was therefore more readily approved by
the Archbishop of Canterbury (ibid. 247-9).

16 Tbid. 250. William’s kinsman, the steward of
Saer de Quency, worked hard for him at court, and
the convent believed that the king would accept no
one else as abbot.

nerve. His refusal to do homage to Louis was
met by a threat to burn the town and abbey,
and destruction was only averted by a money
payment”? The immunity purchased from one
side was the incentive to attack by the other.
Falkes de Breauté swooped down on St. Albans
on 22 January 1217, and after ill-treating and
robbing the inhabitants, demanded {100 as
ransom of town and monastery.1® On 30 April
the abbey was in danger from French mer-
cenaries,!® but again escaped, though it was
swept bare of all stores. The anxieties of the
abbot may be measured to some extent by the
losses of his house, which were estimated at
£2,555.2° Meanwhile a trial of strength had
been going on in the abbey itself. Those
responsible for William’s election soon repented
their choice,24 in some instances no doubt
because hopes of their own predominance were
disappointed. His constant association with
laymen gave offence, and he was twice reproved
in chapter for his conduct and for breaches of
the charter he had made. The first time he
promised amendment,” but when accused the
second time #3 he threw himself into a violent
rage, and said that in making the charter he
had not known what he was doing 4 and that
he did not mean to be bound. The excite-
ment was so great that he agreed to consider
the question, but evidently only to gain time.
By his secret request the papal legate 6 came to
the abbey and asked to see the charter. When
he had read it he tore it to pieces, afterwards
telling the abbot to send for him if he had any
more trouble. William, now supreme, disposed
of the leaders of the opposition. Raymond, the
prior, of whom he was probably jealous and
afraid,?”? he banished to Tynemouth; he also

W Gesta Abbat. i, 259.

18 Thid. 267, n. 3. Frightened by a dream he
afterwards professed penitence at St. Albans, but
made no restitution (ibid. 268).

19Qn their way to relieve Mountsorel Castle
(Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. iii, 15-16).

0 Gesta Abbat. i, 298. The sums of money paid
to various people amounted to £950.

1 Ibid. 254. 22 Ibid. 255. 23 Ibid. 256.

24 In other words, he had been unaware that he
was tying his own hands.

2 Tbid.

76 [bid. 257. The papal legate who intervened
in John de Cella’s time is said to have been Gualo,
and on this occasion Nicholas, but this must be a
mistake, for Nicholas preceded Gualo as legate. If,
as seems probable, the names have been accidentally
transposed, the first incident took place in 1213-14
and the latter between May 1216 and 1218.

27 Matthew Paris says (ibid. 258) there was in
those times no greater monk in the order than Ray-
mond. The prior had busied himself under Abbot
John in adding to the library, chief among his acqui-
sitions being the ‘Historia Scholastica’ of Peter
Comestor (ibid. 233).

379

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

exiled Almaric, Walter de Standune and John
de Seldford,®8 and rid himself of Alexander de
Langley by promotion.”®

When the abbot had ensured his position he
showed himself in a different and better light.
The conclusion of wars internal and external
was followed by a visitation of the cells.3° At
three out of eight priories, Belvoir, Wymondham
and Hatfield, the priors were unsatisfactory.
The abbot confined himself at first to admoni-
tion, but as the delinquents did not amend he
removed them.*!

In 1218 the abbot obtained from Honorius III
papal protection for the monastery, its property
and cells, and confirmation of all the privileges
of St. Albans? The next year he brought
about a settlement of certain disputed points
with the Bishop of Lincoln,** particularly in
relation to the cells of Belvoir, Hertford and
Beaulieu.*4 An agreement of a similar kind was
made in 1228 with the Bishop of Norwich as to
the priories of Wymondham and Binham.
When circumstances permitted, William turned
his attention to the improvement of the fabric
and ornaments. Here much was done.3® The
dormitory was finished, part of the church
roofed, the tower heightened and repaired,*’
cloisters were made on the south side, altars to
St. Mary and St. Wulfstan constructed, the
chapel of St. Cuthbert rebuilt, and the west
front at last completed.®* All this necessitated
heavy expenditure. In 1229 the king’s pro-
tection was given, apparently in May when
Henry was at the abbey,®° to those sent from

28 Cesta Abbat. i, 260.

39 At the request of the Earl of Arundel, Alexander
was made Prior of Wymondham. He had, however,
soon to be recalled to the abbey on account of mental
aberration. ‘There he recovered for a time and was
made keeper of the abbot’s seal, for he was very clever
at composition. But he went mad again, and with
the cruelty always shown to the insane in those days
he was whipped in chapter and sent to Binham Priory
to be kept in chains till he died (ibid. 266).

30 Tbid. 270-3.

31 Tbid. 274-5.

32 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 232.

33 Gesta Abbat. i, 275-7. One of these was the
ordination of a vicarage in Luton Church.

34 The abbot alone was to have authority in these
cells, but the priors on appointment were to be pre-
sented to the bishop and do canonical obedience for
the spiritual administration received from him.

35 Gesta Abbat. 1, 278-9.

36 1.C.H. Herts. li, 485.

37 Under the direction of Richard de Tyttenhanger,
lay brother and chamberlain. After hisdeath the tower
was embellished at the suggestion of Matthew de
Cambridge, keeper of the abbot’s seal, who managed
the alterations connected with the new altar of
St. Mary (Gesta Abbat. i, 280, 285).

38 Tbid. 280-8.

39 Cal. Pat. 1225-32, p. 252.

St. Albans to collect money for the repairs by
preaching and begging,*® and in October royal
letters were directed on the abbot’s behalf to
his men for help to pay his debts.4!_ For decora-
tive work William had an artist at hand in
Walter de Colchester, the sacrist, an accom-
plished sculptor and painter “ who had already
given proof of his ability in John de Cella’s
time.*8 His fame was not limited to St. Albans,
for he was employed at Canterbury on the shrine
of St. Thomas.44 Walter established a school
of painting at St. Albans, which flourished for a
century. The abbot was punctilious in the
performance of his religious duties, and well-
informed on all matters relating to divine
service.46 The changes he introduced testify
to his love of beauty and order in religious
observances. He ordained a daily mass of St.
Mary ‘cum nota’ 4” for which he made careful
arrangements ‘48; he added several lights 4;
and appointed that the daily private service of
All Saints should be said in the quire, and not
interrupted by processions.°°

His recorded acts of administration were very
sensible. Thus he purchased a hostel in London
for lodging himself and his monks when neces-
sary,>1 and a house at Yarmouth for storage of
fish bought as occasion offered.

If William de Trumpington was not without
faults, he was a commendable and exceedingly
able abbot, probably the best that the monastery
could have had at that time, when it needed a
strong rule. Whatever may have been the feel-
ing towards him at the beginning of his abbacy,

10 Cal. Pat. 1225-32, p. 252.

41 Ibid. p. 273.

“2 For his works see V.C.H. Herts. ii, 485.

‘3 He engraved the silver-gilt covers of two copies
of the Gospels and painted pictures for the altars of
St. Mary, St. John, St. Stephen, St. Amphibalus and
St. Benedict (Gesta Abbat. i, 233).

44 Matt. Paris, Hist. Ang/. ii, 241.
translation took place in 1220.

45 W. Page, ‘The St. Albans School of Painting,’
Arch. \Wwiii, 278-85.

48 Gesta Abbat. i, 303-4.

47 There was already one ‘sine nota.’

48 Six monks were deputed to celebrate in rotation,
and a bell called St. Mary was assigned to summon
them to their office. ‘The abbot provided the missal
and all necessaries (Gesta Abbat. i, 284-6).

49 A candle crowned with flowers before the image
of the Virgin on the principal festivals (ibid. 286),
and six wax candles near the shrine of St. Alban, for
which a mark from Binham Priory (ibid. 284) and
2s. payable from Bradway (Cott. MS. Jul. D iii,
fols. 65-6) were assigned. The two candles burning
daily at the mass of the Blessed Mary ‘sine nota’
were also in his time increased to four (Gesta Abbat.
i, 284).

50 Gesta Abbat. i, 293.

51 Tbid. 289.

82 Ibid. 290

The saint’s

380

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

he succeeded in gaining the approbation and
affection of his convent and was much lamented
at his death.58

The royal licence to elect was asked and
given immediately,®4 and at the same time the
monks negotiated successfully for the custody
of the house while vacant. John Prior of
Hertford was chosen, most unexpectedly to
himself.56 His was the first election since the
Council of Lateran had enjoined that exempt
abbots must be confirmed by the pope, but as
John was elderly and not strong, proctors were
sent in his place.5?_ Reinforced by letters of the
king and his friends, their request was granted.
The Bishop of London blessed the abbot, who
made profession of obedience to the pope, to find
that unwittingly he had bound himself to go
every three years in person or by proxy to
Rome. ‘ What should I do there?’ asked the
abbot; ‘ Make offerings, my friend,’ answered
the bishop.°® St. Albans, in fact, at one time
might have existed for little else. The demands
of the pope never ceased. Two Franciscans
visited the abbey as papal collectors in 1247,5°
and in the same year the pope required a
contribution for the Earl of Cornwall.®° In
1254 the Bishop of Norwich came to St. Albans
to take the tenth granted by the pope to the
king for three years.® The Bishop of Hereford,
Henry’s agent at Rome, pledged the convent’s
credit for 500 marks on the pope’s behalf, and
on 9g April 1256 papal letters were sent to them
to pay the money to certain merchants within
amonth.® Failing to discharge their obligation,
they were placed under an interdict for fifteen
days, ®4 and of course did what they were ordered.
Any treatment was considered good enough
for them: the monks sent to do honour to the
Archbishop of Messina, the pope’s envoy, in
1257 were virtually imprisoned in his house
until they paid what he wanted.®

The monastery was also burdened through
papal provisions. St. Peter’s near St. Albans
was claimed in 1252 by a papal nominee, but the
church was proved to be appropriated and
therefore not available.66 The struggle over

53 Gesta Abbat. i, 303.

54 Cal. Pat. 1232-47, P- 95+

55 Gesta Abbat. i, 306.

56 Tbid. 312. The present he had brought for
the new abbot fell out of his clothes in the church
just after his own election.

57 Thid. 307-8.

58 Thid. 309-10.

59 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. iv, 599-600.

6 Ibid. vi, 134-8.

81 Tbid. v, 451-2.

62 Gesta Abbat. i, 379-82.

68 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. v, 552.

64 Tbid. 589-go.

85 Ibid. 614.

88 Gesta Abbat. i, 331-7.

Hartburn Church ® (co. Northumberland) was
not so easily determined, since the appropriation
had been obtained only just before the rector’s
death. The case was taken to Rome, and though
the abbot and convent gained their point, they
had to pay the claimant 25 marks a year until
they should give him a living worth 80 marks.®*

Still the proctors of St. Albans reaped some
advantage from their stay at the papal court.
They secured the appropriation of the churches
of Wingrave (co. Bucks.) and Coniscliffe (co.
Durham) ® and many privileges,” besides in-
dulgences for the benefit of their monastery.

With the pope’s example before him, it is not
surprising that Henry ITI, devout worshipper
of St. Alban as he was, should have tried to
exploit the house for his own ends. In his less
important attempts he was successful,7! but
when in 1258 he asked the abbot and convent
to be surety for him for a large sum, they
sheltered themselves behind the bull of prohibi-
tion of Pope Clement III,7? and could not be
moved from their position.”

The abbot had a hard task to resist the many
and varied encroachments on the monastery’s
rights. Early in his abbacy he was harassed by
Ralph de Chenduit, who set him at defiance
and laughed at his sentence of excommunica-
tion.” For years, too, he had contentions over
right to free warren with the tenants of St.
Albans,” particularly with Geoffrey de Child-
wick, who, strong in influence at court, hunted
in the abbot’s lands and maltreated his servants
with impunity.7? At last the abbot and convent
had to abandon the hopeless struggle and make
peace with him.78 Geoffrey and Ralph had cost
them 2,000 marks.7®

In 1249 there was another contest with West-
minster Abbey over Aldenham, which was not
settled until 1256.8

A stand had also to be taken more than once
for the abbey’s privileges. The justices in 1254

87 Gesta Abbat. i, 346-50.

88 Cal. Papal Letters, i, 333-4.

69 Gesta Abbat. i, 350-1.

70 Ibid. 351-4. One declared that the abbey and
cells could not be bound to any merchants without
their common assent or the seals of their convents ;
another permitted them to use their liberties, statutes
of legates and nuncios notwithstanding.

1 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. v, 240-1.

7 Ibid. vi, 60.

® Tbid. v, 684-7.

74 Thid. iv, 262.

Gesta Abbat. i, 319.

76 The abbot won his case against them in 1240
(Chron. Maj. iv, 50-4), but there was further trouble
in 1248 (ibid. v, 27), the year in which he obtained
a charter of free warren from Henry III (Cad Chart. R.
1226-57, p. 330).

Gesta Abbat. i, 315-17.

78 Ibid. 319. 79 Ibid. 320.

80 Ibid. 361-6. See V.C.H. Herts. ii, 150.

381

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

summoned the men of the St. Albans juris-
diction outside the liberty, and imposed a fine
of {100 for non-attendance, but the abbot
brought his cause before the King’s Council and
the judgement was reversed.*! The point at issue
between the abbot and the Bishop of Durham
in 1248 and 1256-8 ® seems to have been of this
kind. Archbishop Boniface in 1258 had to be
reminded that the abbey was not subject to
Lincoln.®

Of the convent at this time little but praise
is recorded. The choice in 1247 of one of the
monks, the celebrated Matthew Paris, to reform
and instruct in the Benedictine rule the monas-
tery of St. Benet Holm, Norway,* is testimony
of the widespread relations and high reputation
of St. Albans.®®

At the end of October 1251 a visitation of the
abbey was made by the Prior of Hurley and the
Sub-prior of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, who,
after a careful inquiry lasting four days, found
nothing amiss.° The replies of the abbot and
convent on the subject of the reformed Bene-
dictine statutes in 1253 give the same good
impression.*”

Artistic and literary activity here was at its
highest point in the abbacies of William de
Trumpington and John de Hertford. Walter
de Colchester died in 1248,8§ but seems to have
had a worthy successor in his nephew Richard
the Painter,®® who in 1250 already had a long

81 Gesta Abbat. i, 338-46.
to Earl Richard.

82 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. v, 11-12 ; vi, 327-30,
379-80.

83 During the vacancy of that see he tried to
celebrate orders at St. Albans (ibid. v, 718-19).

84 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. v, 42-5.

85 The monks of St. Benet’s asked for Matthew
because he was a monk of the best regulated house in
England and a great friend of their king’s.

*6 Ibid. 258-9. It is remarked, however, that
the abbot did not keep a promise made just before
the visitation that he would restore the pittances of
the sick converted by his predecessor to his own use,
and would remit his allowance and pittances unless
he dined in the refectory or oriel.

8 Tbid. vi, 235-47. They observed the rules as to
attendance at services, general confession, communi-
cating and silence, the disposal of offices, care of the
sick, that requiring the abbot and prior to remain in
the cloister with the brothers and to be present at
service, chapter and collation, those prohibiting monks
to have property and to go out as they pleased, and
the abbot to give the church’s property to his kinsfolk,
those also forbidding the diverting of alms and the
giving of leave to monks to talk alone with women ;
they observed too the rules regarding dress, a common
table, borrowing and rendering of accounts, with im-
material modifications, and that concerning novices
with the addition that profession was allowed within
the term of probation.

88 Matt. Paris, CAron. Maj. vi, 278.

88 Gesta Abbat. i, 233.

After a gift of £100

list of works to his credit.°° Master Simon,
Richard’s father,*! also painted at St. Albans,
and there is mention of another painter here,
Alan, a lay brother.

The house was strong on the literary side
during this period. Roger of Wendover, the
Prior of Belvoir recalled to the abbey by Abbot
William,* found there occupation better suited
to his gifts in the compilation of a chronicle.
When he died in 1236 his place as historiographer
was taken by Matthew Paris, who continued the
Chronica Majora and wrote also the Historia
-{nglorum. Matthew was the author too of the
Vitae Abbatum S. Albani and several other
works.9

To a man endowed with the faculty to observe
and record, life at St. Albans afforded great
opportunities. Visitors of all kinds came to the
abbey, mendicant friars, for whom special
quarters were set apart,®® strangers from the
East,°”? princes and kings,°® some to remain a
night or two, others, like the dispossessed
Bishop of Ardfert, to stay for years.%

Abbot John’s principal work in building, it
may be noted, was a beautiful guest-hall,1° and
he devoted the revenues of Hartburn Church
to the increase of hospitality,! in the exercise of

90 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi, 202. In Abbot
Roger de Norton’s time he was warden of the altar
of St. Amphibalus (Cott. MS. Jul. D iii, fol. 27).

91 He was Walter’s disciple or pupil (Gesta Abbat.
i, 233). It is improbable, however, that he was one
of the convent (Arch. lviii, 280).

% He died in 1245 (CAron. May. vi, 277).

93 See above.

°4 He continued a work begun in the time of
Abbot Simon or John de Cella (Hardy, Descriptive
Cat. of Hist. Materials [Rolls Ser.], iii, Introd. p. xxxiv ;
Luard, Céron. May. i, Introd. p. lxxvi). The latter
believed John de Cella to be the author of the earliest
compilation (op. cit. ii, p. ix).

95 Hardy, op. cit. ili, pp. xlvii-xlviii.

96 Matt. Paris, CAron. Maj. iv, 600.

7 The Archbishop of Greater Armenia in 1228
(ibid. iii, 161) and Armenians again in 1252 (ibid.
v, 340-1). Other interesting visitors were the chap-
lain of the Emperor Baldwin (ibid. iii, 80-1) and
the English monk from the valley of Jehosaphat, who
came to sell relics (Gesta Abbat. i, 291).

8° Henry III came several times, twice in 1244
(Chron. May. iv, 358, 402), in 1251 (ibid. v, 257),
1252 (ibid. 319), 1255, 1256, 1257 (ibid. 489,
574, 617) and 1259 (For. Hist. [Rolls Ser. 95], i',
431), and made many offerings, especially of silk
hangings (C4ron. May. vi, 389), to the church. Visits
are recorded of the Earl of Cornwall (ibid. iv, 43),
Queen Eleanor (ibid. v, 653), and the King and
Queen of Scotland (Fur. Hist. ii, 459).

9° Matt. Paris, Chrom, Maj. iv, 501-2. The prior
and some monks of Coventry received hospitality
here for over a year (ibid. iv, 171-2), and Richard
Bishop of Bangor came in 1248, intending to stay
for some time (ibid. v, 2).

100 Gesta Abbat. i, 314. 1 [bid. 321.

382

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

which he seems to have shone. It was his easy
munificence as much as his goodness that made
St. Albans attractive in his time as a training
school for young nobles.2_ He spent no doubt
on his house * what so many of his predecessors
had lavished on their kinsfolk.4

At John de Hertford’s death in April 1263
the king again sold the vacancy to the convent,
but doubled the price. The papal confirmation
of the election of Roger de Norton cost at least
{800.6 The dominant note of Roger’s adminis-
tration seems to have been diplomatic prudence.
He could bow to circumstances and yield a
point, if by so doing he gained on the whole.
Thus his agreement in September 1264 with the
Countess of Arundel as to the advowson of
Wymondham Priory 7 and his arrangement with
John Fitz John about Horwood Chase (co.
Bucks.)® were both in the nature of a com-
promise. His complaisance to Robert de
Pynkeney in 1279 over the presentation to
Datchet Church,® and the purchase from the
Earl of Hereford in 1285 of a dubious claim to
the advowson of Hatfield Peverel Priory,!° were
prompted by the like discretion.

Relations between the abbot and convent
and Archbishop Kilwardby were very much
strained on one occasion through the refusal of
the St. Albans proctors on the archbishop’s
demand to show evidence of appropriations of
churches.4 The abbot, however, invited the
archbishop to St. Albans at a convenient oppor-
tunity, received him with great ceremony, and
explaining how the abbey stood, completely
mollified him. While in the North on a
visitation of Tynemouth in 1278 he was as
successful with the Bishop of Durham.¥

In company with the other exempt clergy,
Roger ignored Archbishop Peckham’s summons
to a council at Lambeth in October 1281.
When sequestration followed he appealed, but

2 Gesta Abbat. i, 397.

3 Besides being hospitable he was generous to the
convent. He gave about 1,000 seams of corn to
improve their ale (ibid. 323), and for their benefit
separated their buttery from his and from that of the
seculars at a cost of 463 marks (ibid. 395-6).

4 He is noted (ibid. 323) as quite an exception in
this respect, and complaints had certainly been made
of Paul, Richard de Albini, Geoffrey de Gorham,
Ralph de Gorham, Simon, Warin and John de Cella
(ibid. 64, 71-2, 95, 181, 194, 216, 252).

5 They paid 600 marks (Ca/. Pat. 125866, p. 256).

6 The amount that the pope gave the St. Albans
proctors leave to borrow (Cal. Papal Letters, i, 386).
Probably the business cost more (Gesta Aébbat. i, 399).

7 Gesta Abbat. i, 407-9.

8 Tbid. 423-5. ‘This ended a long dispute.

9 Ibid. 440-4.

10 [bid. 471.

Ui Ibid. 431-3.

12 Thid. 434.

13 Ibid. 436.

eventually, like the majority, compromised to
save expenses. It is in Roger’s time that the
abbey first had difficulties with its subjects, the
townsmen in 1274 challenging the abbot’s right
to multure by setting up mills of their own.!®
The law was against them, and in 1275-6 they
made submission to the abbot, who received
their peace-offering graciously and made some
concessions.16 While the quarrel was at its
height the queen came to St. Albans, and the
abbot tried to get her into the monastery by a
little used way so as to avoid the people who
were waiting to lay their grievances before her.
The move, however, was discovered by the
townspeople in time, and the abbot had to
excuse himself as best he could to Eleanor, who
much resented the attempted trickery.”

Less is now heard of royal and papal extor-
tion. But the abbot and convent were treated
with flagrant injustice by King Henry in 1265,
when they performed their knight service, and
were made to pay a heavy commutation fine as
well.18

A painful sensation must have been caused
by the discovery of the frauds perpetrated by
the abbot’s two chaplains.!# To all appearance
irreproachable, they took advantage of the trust
reposed in them to seal charters and contract
loans without the convent’s knowledge, and
finally absconded with ornaments and treasure.
Greater carefulness on the abbot’s part might
perhaps have prevented this and other losses :
for instance, the unnecessary expense and
trouble caused by mislaying the deeds of Stan-
more Manor which had been recovered by John
de Hertford.2° The large corrody given in
return for Pinchfield Manor* may have been
justifiable, but it would be difficult to defend
the grants of corrodies to his kinsfolk in his last
illness. Yet the convent might consider itself
on the whole fortunate in Roger, for he was a
man of good life, religious and literary, and
left the house scarcely 100 marks in debt.
Under him the abbot’s apartments and the
infirmary were rebuilt * and three bells made,
St. Amphibalus, St. Alban and St. Katharine.

14 Reg. Epist. Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.), 276-80;
306-7 ; Rishanger, Chron. et Annales (Rolls Ser.), 96.

15 Gesta Abbat. i, 410.

16 Ibid. 413-23.

W Ibid. 411-12.

18 Rishanger, Chron. et Annales, 41.

19 Gesta Abbat. i, 447-8.

20 Ibid. 466-7.

21 Ibid. 484.

22 He took care that these should be under the
convent’s seal, so that they could not be revoked
(ibid.).

23 Ibid. 484. Yet taxation was sometimes heavy.
The abbey’s contribution as tenth in aid of the
Holy Land imposed by the Council of Lyons in 1274
amounted to 200 marks (ibid. 468).

4 Ibid. 482.

383

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

His own gifts besides contributions to these
works consisted of 17 choral copes, § chasubles
and several books.» Before his death, which
occurred 3 November 1290,2¢ the prior John
Maryns approached the king?? about the
vacancy, but to no purpose. The convent’s
worst fears of the escheator’s rapacity were
realized.28

When the new abbot John de Berkhampstead
returned from the papal court he found the
abbey so impoverished that he was unable to
discharge the obligations contracted in Rome
at the terms fixed.2® His benediction had been
delayed through a grievance of the Friars
Minors against his predecessor®® For the
moment restitution of temporalities, too, seemed
likely to be deferred owing to a defect in the
seal of the bull of confirmation.2?_ However, the
abbot was at last installed on 22 June 1291,
and gave a splendid feast.

In November 1292, apparently at the sugges-
tion of the Prior and convent of Tynemouth,
the king laid claim to the advowson of that
priory, of which he said he had been wrongly
deprived.** The abbot wisely decided to submit
to Edward’s favour, and in May 1293 received
a grant of the advowson in perpetuity.*4 Pro-
bably John was at that time unaware of the
part played by the prior, for he made no move
until two or three years later. Then he effected
a sudden and secret entrance into Tynemouth
with an armed force, seized the prior and several
of the convent and sent them in fetters to
St. Albans, on the ground that they had intended
to revolt35 The abbot had also difficulty,
though of a different kind, over Wymondham
Priory. Sir Robert de Tateshall, out of revenge
for the withdrawal of a livery,,°* twice prevented
him holding a visitation here.3? Possibly the
abbot jacked tact. It seems at least that a
little pliability would have saved him these

*5 Gesta Abbat. i, 482-3.

26 Roger was ill for three years or more before he
died.

*7 When he was at the abbey (ibid. ii, 4).

38 Ibid. 4-6. He turned out the tenants of the
abbot’s manors and even seized the convent’s estates,
but these he was forced by royal writ to relinquish.

29 Tbid. 19. He had borrowed 1,300 marks.

80 Tbid. 12-16. Roger as conservator of the privi-
leges of Westminster Abbey and of the Cistercians
had been obliged to oppose them.

31 Gesta Abbat. ii, 18.

32 Thid.

33 Ibid. 19-20; Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.),
58s.

34 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301, p. 113 Gesta Abbat. ii,
20-1.

35 Gesta Abbat. ii, 21-3.

3° The livery was due to the patron, and Tateshall’s
right to the patronage was questionable.

3? Gesta Abbat. ii, 63-6.

affronts and the unpleasantness with Arch-
bishop Winchelsey.*®

The villeins again gave trouble and the
abbot used excommunication,3® and in 1297
invoked the law against those who tried to
injure St. Albans.*¢

On the financial side the abbot had many
anxieties. He began his rule in pecuniary
embarrassment, and taxation at this time was
very heavy. The bull clericis latcos made
matters, of course, no easier: the abbot still
paid a subsidy to the king, and had to endure
also cessation of all services at the abbey until
he could buy papal absolution.“t In 1300 he
was disturbed by the pope’s demand for
1,000 marks # deposited in the abbey by the
papal collectors and borrowed in 1286 by the
king.“8 The abbey had to find the money,“
but over this transaction it did not make a bad
bargain. The king on 20 July 1301 confirmed
their charters,** and granted that the prior and
convent should have the custody of the house
at every vacancy for 1,000 marks 4¢; he, more-
over, remitted all their debts to him.‘

The abbot’s shortcomings appear to have
been the result of financial straits. He sold
much wood and burdened the house with pen-
sions and liveries.48 Though kind and affable,
he was hated by many because he removed the
priors of cells for very slight reasons after he
had received large sums of money from them.
He was religious, too, yet he made no provision
for masses for his soul and deprived the con-
vent of the manor of Childwick, given to them
by Abbot Roger to keep his anniversary.‘®
He died, worn out by cares, in October 1301.°°

38 When Winchelsey in 1300 asked to stay at the
abbey, John required him first to seal a letter of
indemnity. The archbishop declined and lodged in
the town, and naturally saw intentional slights to
himself in every pretension of St. Albans to exemp-
tion (ibid. 47-8). Abbot John had made no difh-
culty about receiving Archbishop Boniface in 1253
(Chron. Maj. v, 414), nor Abbot Roger about Arch-
bishop Peckham’s stay in 1280 (Gesta Abbat. i,
444).
3° Gesta Abbat. ii, 23-4.

40 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301, p. 316.

41 Gesta Abbat. ii, 26-7.

#2 Tbid. 28.

483 Cal. Pat. 1281-92, p. 232.

* Cal. Close, 1296-1302, p. 430.

4° Gesta Abbat. ii, 35 ; Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26,
pp. 17-21.

% Gesta Abbat. ti, 31-43 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301,
p. 604. If the house was vacant for more than a
year a proportionate amount was to be paid in
addition.

47 Abbrev. Rot. Orig. (Rec. Com.), i, 1143; Gesta
Abbat. ii, 34.

48 Gesta Abbat. ii, §1.

4 Ibid.

§ Ibid. 50.

384

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The electors’ choice of the prior, John de
Maryns,* pleased everybody but Richard de
Hatford, Prior of Redbourn, who baulked in
his own ambition tried to get the Archbishop
of Canterbury to interfere, but only drew
reproof upon himself.# Maryns received the
papal confirmation on 25 May,® and celebrated
the inauguration of his abbacy with a splendid
feast at which two abbots and thirteen knights
were present.*4 His first work was to settle
outstanding quarrels and grievances. He
appeased the archbishop,** and conciliated
Tateshall by a grant of the livery he wanted.
The manor of Childwick was restored by him
to the convent,5? and on 18 October 1302 he
removed another cause of discontent by fixing
the amount of bread and ale which the abbot
could require from the refectorer.58

On the death of the Prior of Wymondham
in 1303 the abbot successfully asserted the
exemption of the cells from the escheator’s
authority.°° He also guarded the abbey’s
liberties in Buckinghamshire against the
sheriff.6°

Maryns apparently found it no easier than
his predecessor to reduce the financial affairs of
the house to order. The expenses at the papal
court were very heavy, over {1,700,% and if the
fine of 1,000 marks was paid to the king in
June 1303," it was only done by borrowing.®
St. Albans was at any rate so much in debt in
April 1305 that its custody was committed by
the king to William de Bolum, who held it until
December 1306.64 Even then it was not free
from difficulties. Only a few months later Walter
Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, the king’s
treasurer, was endeavouring to get from the
abbey an annual pension of {30 for three lives in
return for his loan of {g00. One of the
brothers pointed out to the abbot that to pay
debts thus was not only uneconomical but
dangerous, as it would lead to similar demands
from the king and others. Maryns faced by
a present peril would not listen, and in the

51 Maryns had had long experience of office. He
had been cellarer from 1281 to 1287 (Stowe MS. 849,
fol. 15 d.18 d.), and had probably then been made
prior.

52 Gesta Abbat. ii, §3-4.

53 Thid. 55.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

57 Thid.

58 Thid.

59 Thid.

60 Ibid. 79-80. 61 Ibid. 56-8.

82 Cal. Close, 1302-7, pp. 42-3.

63 According to the Gesta Abbat. (ii, 108), at the
abbot’s death the 1,000 marks were still owing.

64 Cal. Pat. 1301-7, Pp. 335.

8 Gesta Abbat. ii, 90-3.

4 385

bishop’s presence enjoined the convent to grant
the annuity. Butas the monks were most dis-
inclined to acquiesce, the business was pro-
rogued,®* and before further pressure could be
used Edward I died and Langton’s fall followed
immediately. The relief, of course, was only
comparative, for the money had still to be repaid.”
Maryns’s neglect to supply two carts on the
new king’s demand seems to have been a
mistake. Edward was so much annoyed ® that
the abbot, to placate him, after sending a peace-
offering of money,® made him a present of his
wood at Langley.” Maryns was unable to
fulfil his intention of putting the temporal
affairs of the house on a satisfactory footing.”
Before he died he explained to the prior and
senior monks that the house was about {2,000
in debt, and advised them to choose for his
successor a good and simple man, and not one
proud and pompous.”?

The ordinances he made for the abbey and
cells 78 show that discipline and conduct were
no longer what they had been. The rule of
silence was to be kept,’4 and satisfaction was to
be made for every infraction, not occasional
amends after much breaking of the rule; there
must be no idle talk and slander; there was to
be no swearing by the wounds, blood or limbs
of Christ; none but the cellarer or kitchener
was to keep a dog for coursing; there must be
no wandering about alone, nor loitering at doors
talking to women, and except in company of a
brother of mature age none was to hold converse
with a woman; private property was strictly
forbidden; the chamberlain was never to give
money to the brothers instead of clothes, and
when new clothing was allotted the old must be
given up; food left over from meals was to be
distributed in alms; the order of priesthood
was not to be given too soon, and outside office
was not to be bestowed on a monk who had not
been three years in the cloister and behaved
well during that time.

The changes Maryns introduced, if generally
in the direction of diminished strictness, were
marked by humanity and good sense. Certain

88 To consult the priors of cells, who refused to
burden their houses.

87 To the king, intsead of Langton (Gesta Abbat.
ii, 94 3 Cal. Fine R. 1307-19, p. 29).

8 When he came to St. Albans he would not see
Maryns (Gesta Adba?. ii, 95).

6° He sent 100 marks through Gaveston, to whom
he gave {40 (ibid.).

70 For the houses the king was building for the
Dominicans (ibid.).

11 Ibid. 107.

® Ibid. 108.

78 Ibid. 95-106.

74 Tt is said he allowed the convent to talk for the
sake of learning, and the rule of silence was in con-
sequence very badly observed (ibid. 107).

49

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

services were shortened that greater devotion
might ensue 7°; charities of drink on festi-
vals between Michaelmas and Easter 7* were
abolished, but permitted instead on Sundays
from Easter to Michaelmas; the period of rest
for those who had been bled was extended, and
privileges of recreation were restored that John
de Berkhampstead had withdrawn on account
of their abuse 77; in pittances to sick brothers
suitability to the needs of the recipients was
alone to be considered, and not price as
hitherto.78

In spite of Maryns’s last injunctions the
electors made a bad choice. Still the mistake
is not surprising: as cellarer 7? Hugh de Evers-
den had had a training in administration, and
as a favourite of the king he might be expected
to benefit the house. He was a tall, handsome,
pleasant man.®° On his election he is reported
to have said that the brothers might have
chosen a wiser and more learned man than
himself but no better fellow.®! Unfortunately
in an Abbot of St. Albans qualities other than
social gifts were needed.

Hugh’s small knowledge of Latin made him
shrink from a visit to the pope, so he sent
proctors to obtain his confirmation. The result
was but double expense. His deputies, after
staying a long while and making many presents,
returned with the message that Hugh must go
himself. He went, and to make up for de-
ficiencies in learning gave so lavishly that he
drew praise even from the greedy papal court.®
Such generosity was hardly in keeping with the
state of the house, which in October 1309 had
to be protected from the consequence of its
inability to pay its debts.®

Hugh, who had a special devotion for the
Virgin Mary, seems at once to have set about
the completion of the chapel in her honour
begun long before.84 He also renewed the
quire stalls, in this work receiving help from
the king, for Edward, hearing while on a visit
to the abbey in March 1314 ® that it had been

1 Gesta Abbat. li, 101-2.

76 On account of the shortness of the days (ibid.
103). John de Cella had abolished misericordes of
drink (ibid. i, 235), but apparently they had been
reintroduced.

7 Ibid. ii, 104-5.

78 Thid. 103-4.

7 As cellarer he held the manorial courts of
Codicote from 1304 to November 1398 (Stowe MS.
849, fol. 26-31).

80 Gesta Abbar. ii, 113. His head, probably a
portrait, is sculptured in the arcade he built on the
south-east part of the nave.

81 Thid. 82 Ibid. 113-14.

83 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 194.

84 Gesta Abbat. ii, 114-15.

85 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chron. et Annales
(Rolls Ser.), 83. He offered to St. Alban a gold cross
set with gems and containing relics.

his father’s intention to restore the quire, gave
100 marks and timber for that purpose.** This
was but one of many favours to Hugh ®” and
the monastery. The abbot was appointed in
April 1309 to survey the Templars’ manors
south of the Tweed, then in the king’s hands % ;
in May 1311 he received licence to acquire in
mortmain property to the value of {100 ®; in
1312 the abbey’s charters were confirmed ®; in
1313 one of its liberties was defined for its
advantage %; in April 1314 its privileges were
declared unannulled by disuse.‘? From a writ
to the Exchequer in February 1314 it appears
that the king had given the abbot and convent
£100 and lent them {300 %; and in November
1325 he granted them a respite for two years
of all debts due to him.®?

Edward’s friendship for Hugh is shown even
more plainly in the affair of Binham Priory.
The abbot, on the authority at first perhaps of
a papal faculty,® had extorted large sums from
the cells. If his demands were refused, he
threatened to quarter himself on the house or
its manors for a protracted period, and the
prior yielded to avoid a worse evil.® At last
the Prior and convent of Binham revolted,®”
and with the aid of their patron, Robert de
Walkefare, in 1319 excluded the abbot from
visitation.%® William de Somertone, the prior,
appealed in person to the pope, and the abbot
was summoned to Avignon to answer him.
Here the king intervened. Hugh, apparently
ready to obey the pope, started, but at Dover
was arrested by Edward’s orders and made to
desist from his journey, much to his satisfac-
tion.®® Through the king’s help too he was
enabled to take the rebellious monks prisoners
to St. Albans ! and get hold of Somertone and
his papal bulls, which of course were not seen
again.1 It seems a curious anti-climax that the

88 Cal. Close, 1313-18, p. §33 Gesta Abbat. ii,
123-4.

87 It is said that there would have been no limit
to the riches and honours Hugh could have obtained
had it not been for his modesty (Gesta Abbat. ii, 119).

8 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 112.

89 Thid. p. 346.

90 Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26, p. 204.

91 Ibid. p. 216.

82 Tbid. p. 245.

%3 Cal. Close, 1313-18, p. 38.

54 Cal. Pat. 1324-7, p. 193.

% Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 75.

% Gesta Abbat. ii, 130.

7 V.C.H. Norfolk, ii, 344.

9 Gesta Abbat. ii, 130; Cal. Close, 1318-23,
p- 140.

99 Gesta Abbat. ii, 133, 135-8. He was forbidden
to leave the realm by royal writ 26 March 1320
(Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 226).

‘ 100 Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 271; Gesta Abbat.
ii, 131.
1 Gesta Abbat. ii, 140.

386

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

abbot should afterwards have restored Somer-
tone to Binham; but the prior had powerful
supporters* and Hugh was not courageous?
The abbot’s conduct towards the cells makes it
improbable that the villeins were treated justly
by him. Their attempt to throw off the abbey’s
yoke just after the deposition of Edward II was
certainly characterized by bitter hostility.
They laid regular siege to the abbey, and tried
to reduce it by starving out the monks and by
a sudden nocturnal attack. The negotiations
at St. Paul’s resulted in a victory for them,
and the abbot had to cede to them freedom of
his warren and the right to raise hand-mills at
their will.6 It was a crushing blow to Hugh,
who survived the humiliation only a few
months. He left debts of 5,000 marks and a
large burden of pensions and corrodies. More-
over, for immediate gain he had let property
very disadvantageously, and had recklessly
wasted wood.® Altogether from extraordinary
sources he raised over {18,000 during his abbacy.’
It is not denied that some of the expense was
legitimate and even unavoidable. He was
heavily handicapped at the start with the debts
and heavy charges of the three preceding
abbots. Wars diminished the value of the
abbey’s possessions,® especially in the North!;
in 1315 there was a bad famine™; and the
collapse of buildings in 1323 ! made extensive
repairs ‘Sinevitable. The arrangement by which
the appropriation of Coniscliffe Church was at
last rendered effectual !* was not made without
cost, and the same is true as to the acquisition
of Caldecote Manor and other property. Yet
when all is said, the abbot’s actual needs and

2 Gesta Abbat. ii, 141.

3 Ibid. 176.

* Ibid. 158-9 ; 160-1.

5 Ibid. 163-76.

8 In March 1327 the king appointed commissioners
to inquire by whose negligence the abbey’s revenues
had been dissipated (Ca/. Pat. 1327-30, p. 84).

7 Gesta Abbat. ii, 178-81.

8 Ibid. 181.

9 Ibid.

10 Tbid. 117-18.

1 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chron. 89,92. When
the king came to the abbey in August that year there
could scarcely be found food for his household.

12 The northern wall behind the dormitory and
part of the south side of the church both fell. The
accident to one of the brothers and his man in the
hostrey shows that restoration was needed elsewhere
(Gesta Abbat. ii, 127-9).

13 The abbot incurred great expense, and he and
the convent made some sacrifice to repair the damage
to the church (ibid. 125).

M4 Ibid. 115-17 ; Reg. Palat. Dunelm. (Rolls Ser.),
ii, 1042-4 3 1051-2; iv, 126; Cal. Pat. 1313-17,

. 260.
15 Add. Chart.

Pp. 563.

19959; Cal. Pat. 1317-21,

difficulties only make his profusion more in-
excusable. What can be thought of a man
who, while wringing money from the dependent
priories, bestowed a pension for life on a baby
merely to get a name for munificence?16 He
seems to have been equally shallow and selfish.
Religious in the sense that he was careful to
ordain his anniversary,}” he brought his reputa-
tion and profession into contempt by his fond-
ness for women’s society.1®

He was followed by the most interesting of all
the Abbots of St. Albans. Richard de Walling-
ford, the son of a blacksmith of Wallingford, lost
his parents when he was ten years old, and was
cared for and educated by the prior of his native
place, who sent him to Oxford1® When twenty-
two years of age he became a monk at St.
Albans, but after three years there returned to
Oxford, where he spent the next nine years ” in
the study of theology, philosophy, and particu-
larly mathematics, for which he had a special
bent.

His hesitation at accepting office was believed
to be feigned,” but the thought of undertaking
such responsibility might well make him pause.
Everything spoke of difficulty. The financial
problem was prominent at once, for all the
obedientiaries and most of the priors of cells
omitted to give the present usually made to a
new abbot. When Richard in the company of
Nicholas de Flamstead, who became his great
counsellor and friend, reached Avignon he found
that his election was not in form.24 To avoid
delay and expense he therefore asked the pope
to provide an abbot, and was himself appointed
by papal provision. From the first he struck
the note of retrenchment: in the interval
between election and the journey to the pope
he had lived in the humblest style,? and at the
feast of inauguration he dined in the frater
with the convent, not with the great people in
the abbot’s chamber.2? At one time too he
certainly meant to live away from the abbey

16 Gesta Abbat. ti, 177.

17 In February 1313 (ibid. 126-7). The Bishop
of London in August 1312 had offered an indulgence
of forty days to those who prayed for the abbot’s
good estate and for his soul after death (Reg. Palat.
Dunelm. i, 192-3).

18 Gesta Abbat. ii, 177.

19 Ibid. 181-2.

20 He appears therefore to have been thirty-four
when he became abbot.

21 Gesta Abbat. ii, 182. He regretted afterwards
that he had not spent longer in the cloister, and that
he had devoted so much of his time to mathematics.

22 Jbid. 185. * Ibid. 186-7. 4 Ibid. 187-9.

% Ibid. 190 3 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 269.

28 Gesta Abbat. ii, 186.

27 Thid. 194.

8 Royal licence for this purpose was given 6 Feb.
1329 (Cal. Pat. 1327-30, p. 362).

387

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

for economy. The revelations at the abbot’s
first visitation of the convent *? made plain the
need of reform. Many were accused of carnal
sin, though some cleared themselves, but, says
the chronicler, how God knows *°; others were
found guilty of disobedience,*! some of holding
property, and certain, of obtaining entrance
into the convent by simony. Richard dealt
gently with all the offenders,3? but required
those who had paid to become monks to re-
nounce the order publicly. If his mildness was
construed as weakness by any they were soon
undeceived. Five obedientiaries, after repeated
admonitions, continued to neglect payment of
their share of the clerical tenth. The abbot
therefore proclaimed them in chapter, removed
them from office, excommunicated them and
sentenced them to corporal discipline twice a
week. It is true he was persuaded immediately
to remit the sentence on a promise of amend-
ment.3 The episode was a revelation of
Richard’s determination to be master, and was
like a challenge to the disaffected. A con-
spiracy was set on foot to depose the abbot on
the ground of his illness, for he was believed to
be suffering from leprosy,®4 or to get the king to
appoint one of their party as warden. Richard,
outwardly unperturbed, said it was a matter of
indifference to him whether he remained abbot
or not, but he cared enough to excommunicate
all who were trying to wrest his temporalities
from him.35 This may have quelled the sedition,
for it was not successful. The abbot in due
course visited the cells, published constitutions
of reform,®* the nature of which is probably to
be gathered from those for Redbourn,?? paid the
poorest and most pressing creditors or came to
terms with them,?8 repaired the abbey’s pro-
perty °° and replenished stores.4° He found time
too for his own pursuits, compiling books on

29 Gesta Abbat. ii, 196-7.

30 The prevalence of sexual immorality shows that
the women of the district may have had ground for
their complaints of the monks made to Queen Isabella
in 1327 (ibid. ii, 367), and explains the villeins’
hatred of the abbey then.

31 To Abbot Hugh.

32 He felt he must go very carefully at first (Gesta
Abbat. ii, 196).

33 Ibid. 198.

34 Immediately after his return from Avignon he
had something wrong with one of his eyes (ibid.
193), and he was ill within a few months of his
arrival at St. Albans (ibid. 197).

35 Tbid. 199.

36 And saw that they were observed (ibid. 201).

37 Tbid. 202-5. See Redbourn Priory.

38 Gesta Abbat. ii, 201. In one instance he com-
pounded by payment of £40 for a debt of £127 10s.
(ibid. 336-8).

8° Ibid. 280-1.

49 Ibid. 281.

experiment.

He made at least one agricultural

astronomy and geometry,‘! and constructing a
wonderful clock, to which he gave the punning
name Albion.42 In this work he received no
encouragement. The brothers thought it sheer
folly, and the king, when on a visit to the
monastery, told the abbot reproachfully that
he ought rather to bestow his attention on the
south side of the church still in ruins. Richard
made an apt rejoinder: his successors could
restore the church, for builders were always to
be had, but if he left his clock unfinished, so it
must remain.** Absorbed as he might appear
in his occupations, his vigilance for the abbey’s
interest never failed. The attempt of the nuns
of Sopwell at independence was quietly frus-
trated,“4 and the abbey’s hold over St. Mary
de Pré was strengthened.*

To regain the rights of which the monastery
had been deprived by the villeins was a more
serious enterprise, and for this he had long to
scheme and wait. With unobtrusive care he
prevented the possibility of complications
through ties of relationship between townsmen
and convent and provided himself with friends
among the neighbouring gentry.4® When the
moment seemed propitious he began the contest
by a legitimate exertion of his ecclesiastical
authority which was resisted,4?7 as he had
doubtless expected it would be. The villeins
further put themselves in the wrong by indicting
the abbot and archdeacon of the murder of the
two men killed in the scuffle. The abbot easily
cleared himself, and then assuming the offensive
brought a counter-charge of conspiracy against
the coroner of the liberty, and accused the
villeins of having extorted privileges from the
abbot and convent by force. After winning a
verdict as to his right to multure, he frightened
or cajoled the townsmen into complete sub-
mission.4® They entered into bonds of 3,000
marks to keep their agreements, gave up their
common chest and mill-stones,5° and in April
1332 surrendered their charter and seal into
Chancery. Once triumphant he made friends
with them unreservedly and delighted them all
in spite of his disfigurement,” for uncertainty

41 Gesta Abbat. ii, 201.

#2 Ibid. 281. All by one.

‘3 In this, said the chronicler (ibid. 282), he spoke
truly, for in that art he left none like him. A star
placed conspicuously over his head on his mutilated
grave slab in the abbey church evidently commemo-
rates his proficiency as an astronomer.

44 See Sopwell Priory.

45 See St. Mary de Pré.

48 Gesta Abbat. ii, 202.

47 Thid. 217-18.

48 One of whom was the abbot’s marshal.

4° Gesta Abbat. ii, 218-54. 50 [bid. 254-5.

51 Cal. Chose, 1330-3, p. 5583 Gesta Abbat. ii,
256-7.

°? Gesta Abbat. ii, 256.

388

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

about his disease had long since vanished. He
was now in an advanced state of leprosy,® and
his removal was again suggested, though not by
the convent, whose admiration he had gained
by his success over the villeins. As the result of
outside intrigues the pope ordered an inquiry
into the alleged maladministration of St. Albans
through the abbot’s ill-health,®4 and before the
visit of the commissioners to the monastery took
place in January 13335 provided to the abbey
Richard de Ildesle, a monk of Abingdon.®* On
hearing of the papal provision, Richard dis-
patched Nicholas de Flamstead, now prior, to
represent his case to the king in Parliament,
and secured the support of the Council.5?
Moreover, to afford no ground for future inter-
ference, he proposed to the convent that he
should have a coadjutor, and the prior was
selected for that office.58 But his strongest
defence lay in the monks themselves, who let
Ildesle know that if he ever tried to effect an
entrance into the abbey they would kill him.
The abbot appears a rather lonely figure towards
the end, for his affection for the prior sensibly
diminished after Nicholas became coadjutor.®
He thought him ungrateful for siding with the
convent in a dispute about pittances. In the
winter of 1334 he became much worse,® but he
lived until 23 May 1336.8

Among his many benefits to the abbey must
be reckoned the register he made of its deeds
and the table of its privileges.64 Through the
influence of Richard de Bury, keeper of the
king’s privy seal, to whom he gave and sold
books,® he obtained licence in January 1331 to

53 In June 1330 he was said to be very infirm and
weak (Cal. Clse, 1330-3, p. 41), and by this time
his voice was affected (Gesta Abbat. ii, 256).

54 Gesta Abbat. ii, 284-5 ; Cal. Papal Letters, ii,
509.
& Gesta Abbat. ii, 286.

58 Ibid. 287.

57 Ibid. 287-8.

58 [bid. 289. The prior and convent then wrote
to the pope stating that the abbey had derived great
benefits from Richard’s rule and explaining the
measures he had taken for supplying his deficiencies.

59 Ibid. 292. The author of the Gesta Abbat.
adds they probably would have done so, for they
were tall, strong men who had little scruple on this
score.

60 Tbid. 210.

$1 Richard had come into collision with the con-
vent before on this subject (ibid. 211-12). He
may have been especially hurt at Nicholas’s attitude
because the monks who had wanted to depose him
tried to injure him in respect of his pittances
(ibid. 199).

63 Thid. 293.

88 Ibid. ; Cal Pat. 1334-8, p. 270.

64 Gesta Abbat. ii, 207.

85 He gave him four and sold him thirty-two
(ibid. 200). Many of them were regained after-
wards.

appropriate the church of Appleton in Ryedale
(co. York).** He also secured a grant that on
the signification of the Abbot of St. Albans as of
a bishop the chancellor should issue writs for
the arrest of excommunicated persons. He
helped to erect the new almonry and school-
houses, began a new cloister, and built exten-
sively at Tyttenhanger.®

Richard had a worthy successor in Michael
de Mentmore, a devout and learned man who
had made profession at St. Albans in Abbot
Hugh’s time and had had charge of the studies
there.®® Conditions from the beginning were
easier for him than for Richard. The pope con-
firmed his election without demur” on 18 Novem-
ber 1336,% and a few days later granted an
indulgence of 100 days to benefit the fabric.”
The king, too, gave very favourable terms for
the payment of the fine.

Of course Michael had difficulties, but com-
pared with Richard’s they were unimportant.
Through his predecessor’s omission to cancel a
bond of {200 he had to grant a pension to
redeem the obligation.”4 Claims to an annuity
and a debt settled long before were revived,”
but here the abbot was sure of his ground. The
abbey’s ownership of Caldecote Manor 8 and of
a messuage in London” had to be defended from
the Prior of Bushmead and the Knights Hos-
pitallers. The affair that gave most trouble was
the endeavour of some of the abbey’s tenants at
Barnet to prove by forged charters that their
land was not held in bondage. Both sides
bribed freely, and the abbot’s victory was at
one time anything but certain.”

Michael’s ordinances for the convent, for the
most part explanatory of the statutes of Pope
Benedict, published by him in 1338,8° show
throughout a sense of equity and order. One
half of the convent was to dine in the oriel one
day and the other half the next, that there might
be no favouritism in granting relief from the
monotony of meals in the frater.§! The kitchener

86 Cal. Pat. 1330-4, p. 48.

87 Ibid. 46. Possibly this was in preparation for
his struggle with the townsmen.

88 Gesta Abbat. ii, 282-3.

69 Ibid. 299-300.

70 Ibid. 301.

1 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 531.

7 Ibid. 532.

73 It was to be paid in annual instalments of
100 marks (Ca/. Close, 1337-9, p- 13).

4 Gesta Abbat. ii, 316-17.

7 Thid. 336-8, 355-7.

78 Tbhid. 330-3.

7 Ibid. 342-3.

78 Ibid. 317-26. The charters were smoked to
make them appear old.

79 At the critical juncture the abbot gained great
advantage from the miraculous recovery of a drowned
child through the merits of St. Alban (ibid. 326).

80 Ibid. 305. 81 Ibid. 304.

389

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

was to provide two good and sufficient courses
on fish and flesh days,® for by this time it was
permitted to eat meat. The amount of clothing
to be allotted yearly was fixed, and not left as
heretofore to the discretion of the chamberlain.®
There was to be a fund to supply the monks with
a few luxuries,®4 and this, with the money con-
tributed in like manner by obedientiaries and
priors of cells for the maintenance of scholars at
the university, was to be administered by a
committee of three chosen by the abbot, prior
and convent respectively.® For the encourage-
ment of learning at the monastery the abbot
provided special quarters for students and
changed the hour of one of the masses for
their convenience.®

As the result of actual losses 87 Michael
forbade priors of cells and obedientiaries to act
as proxies or executors of wills or undertake any
public duty without the abbot’s consent. Con-
stitutions were made by him also for the hospital
of St. Julian and for Sopwell.®

Michael’s goodness and charm attracted to
the abbey an old knight, Sir Ralph Wedon, who
boarded there for a time and gave the convent
his manor of ‘Heymundescote’ (possibly in
Amersham, co. Bucks.). For this, which it
was judged more prudent to sell, they received
500 marks.®° The stone quarry at Eglemount,
another of Michael’s acquisitions, was useful
for his expensive building operations.° From
motives of economy, since residence at Tytten-
hanger involved expensive hospitality, he pulled
down and sold his predecessor’s hall there and
built a house at Bradway which was more
retired.1 He did much to the cloisters® and
finished the restoration of the south side of the
church.* The abbot gave many books to the
church,*4 and costly offerings were made by
Dame Parnel de Banstead, who deserved remem-
brance, moreover, for her practical lesson to
the convent.%

®2 Gesta Abbat. ii, 304. 83 Ibid. 309.

84 Ibid. 307-9. The sum given to each monk
varied according to his rank in the convent.

85 Tbid. 305. 86 Thid. 306.

87 The Prior of Wymondham had seriously involved
his house by acting as collector of wool (ibid. 313 ;
Cal. Pat. 1345-8, p. 404).

88 Gesta Abbat. ii, 315-16.

89 Ibid. 364.

91 Tbid. 3€2-3. 82 Ibid. 362.

83 Ibid. 361-2. The altars were consecrated by
Hugh Bishop of Damascus.

°§ He spent over £100 in this way (Cott. MS.
Nero, D vii, fol. 21).

85 Gesta Abbat. ii, 365-6. To secure herself from
robbers she brought into the abbey a box supposed to
contain treasure, but really filled with lead and sand,
as the monks found to their dismay when requested
to give it back. She reassured them, but pointed
out how unwise it was to receive any deposit without
examining it before witnesses.

% Ibid. 363.

Abbot Michael fell a victim to the Black
Death in 1349. He was taken ill on Thursday in
Holy Week,® grew rapidly worse and died on
Easter Day. He was gentle, modest and just,
and was deeply mourned by all.

Michael’s speedy burial did not prevent the
spread of infection. The plague wrought havoc
at the abbey, where forty-seven monks died,”
including the prior and sub-prior.%

The abbot’s election was as usual by way of
compromise, and the electors ® after Henry de
Stukle, Prior of Wymondham, had absolutely
declined office, chose another of their number,
Thomas dela Mare, Prior of Tynemouth.) There
could have been none better fitted for the post.
He had shown his ability in the offices of
kitchener and cellarer at St. Albans and in his
rule at Tynemouth’; his goodness was as un-
doubted as his devotion to religion? ; and, points
by no means unimportant, he was handsome,
well bred and well connected.8 At that time
he was about forty years of age, in the prime of
life and vigour. His journey to Avignon was
not without dangers. One of the two monks
accompanying him died of the pestilence at
Canterbury, and owing to the disturbed state
of France the party separated at Calais,
where secular dress was assumed by all. At
the papal court one of the examiners, Cardinal
Gillelmo, hoping for presents, tried to delay the
proceedings, but his efforts were frustrated by
Cardinal Périgord, who had conceived a great
liking for the abbot-elect.4 When confirmation

98 Gesta Abbat. ii, 369. Nevertheless he performed
all the services of that day without help.

97 Gesta Abbat. ii, 370. What proportion of the
total number died is not known. ‘There is no clue
to the size of the convent in early times except the
ordinance of John de Cella limiting the number of
monks to 100.

% Ibid. 381. The convent made Thomas de
Risburgh, S.T.P., prior, and he created John Wode-
rove sub-prior.

99 Nine in number (Ca/. Papal Letters, iii, 339).

100 Gesta Abbat. ii, 382.

1 A full account is given in the Gesta Adbat. (il,
373-5) of his profession under Abbot Hugh, who
placed him in the cell of Wymondham, of his life
there for ten years, his transference to St. Albans
under Abbot Michael and his promotion to be Prior
of Tynemouth.

2 He is said to have been devout from childhood
(ibid. 372). As abbot he rose long before the
convent for private devotions and was regular in his
attendance at service, hearing three or four masses
daily and celebrating one (ibid. iii, 400).

3 His father John de la Mare was a knight, his
mother, the daughter of Sir John de Herpesfeld, and
he was related to William Montagu Ear] of Salisbury,
William de la Zouche, lord of Harringworth, the
Grandisons, John de Seintleger, John Argentein, &c.
(ibid. ii, 371).

4 Ibid. 384.

39°

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

and benediction § had at last been received the
abbot fell dangerously ill, recovering strangely
enough after the drinking of some putrid water
seemed to make the case desperate.®

On reaching home he went to do homage for
his temporalities to the king, who was much
attracted by him. It is said indeed that
although he might be prejudiced against the abbot
in his absence, his resentment always vanished
as soon as he saw him.’

The king’s assistance had to be involved at
once against the papal nuncio who was unjustly
demanding first-fruits from the new Prior of
Tynemouth. The abbot had prevented, but
only by heavy payment, a papal nominee being
placed in the cell.®

In 1351, after sufficient time had elapsed for
life at St. Albans to resume its normal aspect,
Abbot Thomas published in a chapter-general
at Michaelmas certain constitutions to be
observed in the abbey and its cells.!° All the
brethren were to attend and remain throughout
divine service, which was to be given in its
entirety ; the psalms, sung hitherto without
point or sense, were now to be rendered with
requisite pauses, and that the service might
not take longer one or two omissions were to
be made; a limit was also put to the reading of
commemorations, that by preventing tedium,
the divine office might be celebrated more
devoutly than it had been; the festivals
marked out for special observance were Christ-
mas, Easter, Whitsuntide, the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin, and the Passion of St. Alban ;
the Dedication day of the abbey was to be
kept in the cells. Priors of cells were to be as
much as possible with their convents in order
to instruct them by example and words;
priests must not allow more than three days
to elapse without celebrating mass; all the
brothers, however small the convent, were to
rise at night for matins, and that it might be
easier for them to do so they were to sleep in
the dormitory ; the priest whose turn it was to
perform high mass for the week must remain
with the rest of the convent and not leave the
cloister for any cause except illness; the then
archdeacon, however, on account of the dignity
of his office and his degree had permission to go
to his study and to the consistory, the sub-prior
was to visit the sick as usual, and the rule was
not to apply to any guardian of the order who

5 The election was confirmed 8 July 1349 and
benediction received shortly afterwards (Ca/ Papal
Letters, iii, 336-9).

8 Gesta Abbat. ii, 385-7.

7 Ibid. 389-go.

8 Ibid. 393.

® Ibid. ; Cal. Papal Petitions, 172.

10 Gesta Abbat. ii, 418-46.

ll Like smiths beating iron on an anvil, says the
chronicler (ibid. 395).

had no superior in the house at the time of his
course. That the hardness of the religious life
might be apparent to novices, they were to be
called to a chapter by their master at least
every fortnight and punished for their faults ;
moreover, the Benedictine rule was to be read
to them frequently that they might know
what would be required of them. Brothers
when their faults were published in chapter were
not to deny their guilt wotruthfully or defend
their wrong-doing. The quiet of the cloisters
was not to be disturbed by concourse of secular
persons, and when the monks were there the
entrance of women was forbidden. Monks both
of the abbey and the cells instead of outdoor
labour 12 were to occupy themselves with study,
reading, writing, illuminating and binding books,
or in such work for the benefit of the house as
the abbot or priors thought best. The rule as
to silence was to be strictly observed, a distinc-
tion being made in the punishment of habitual
or occasional offenders. Brothers summoned
to the table of the abbot or prior or to eat in
the oriel were to abstain from detraction, con-
tentions and idle conversation; there were to
be no superfluous potations or empty talk after
dinner, and not even in summer was the warden
of the frater to allow this kind of indulgence as
had been usual; confession to secular priests
or religious of other orders was forbidden except
in special circumstances ; monks without leave
of the head of the house where they lived must
neither undertake to look after the property of
secular persons nor deposit property with them.
Food was to be provided for the brothers
according to ancient custom as far as means
allowed, so that they had at least two dishes
daily ; clothing to the annual value of 245., but
never money, was to be given to each brother ;
the rule as to old clothing and remains of food
was reiterated. Alms must not be sold; the
sub-prior was to visit those ill in the infirmary
daily, and see that their needs were supplied ;
as far as their illnesses permitted, the sick were
to be content with ordinary food, and they were
not to stayin the infirmary longer than neces-
sary ; playing at dice or chess was forbidden to
all; obedientiaries were exhorted to behave
circumspectly, since by their conduct the out-
side world judged the religious generally ; they
must abstain from unlawful and fraudulent
contracts and from misrepresentation in buying
and selling, oppress none by force or unjust
exactions, avoid women everywhere, never
enter taverns, eat and drink only within the
bounds of the abbey or priory, and if obliged to
be away a night, first state the reason. To
procure office by prayers or threats and the
intervention of secular persons was forbidden

12 Gesta Abbat. ii, 433. ‘Manual labour’ appears
to mean agricultural pursuits.

a9?

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

on penalty of disqualification for office during
three years; on the other hand, persistent
refusal of ofhce was to be punished by excom-
munication and imprisonment.

The ordinances are an interesting revelation
of the abbot’s character as well as the state
of the convent. The changes in the services
aimed at making religious exercises real instead
of mechanical; obstacles to the profession of
suitable persons arising from matters un-
essential to religion!3 were removed; at the
same time an effort was made to prevent the
entrance of those unfitted for monastic life.

The abbot may have had good reason to
believe that the novitiate had not always been
a test of vocation. That he found it necessary
to forbid disputes and frivolous conversation at
his own table is sufficient comment on discipline
at St. Albans. He himself was exceedingly
particular about manners 4 as well as conduct,
and in the end both his monks and servants
became noted for the correctness of their
behaviour. But the result could not have been
attained without great steadfastness of purpose,
and the immediate consequence is probably to
be seen in the many monks who ‘ unable to
bear the rigour of religion’ apostatized in his
time. Some of them returned,! and to avoid
the scandal caused by the frequency of public
penance at the abbey for desertion it was
provided that if the monks had run away from
cells they should be punished at those places.!®

There is an indication that after a few years
of rule the abbot became rather disheartened in
his wish to resign, communicated to King John
of France when he visited the abbey during his
captivity in England? On the king’s return
to France he was reminded of his promise to use
his good offices with the pope in the matter, but
was dissuaded by the Black Prince, who was
convinced that the monastery would be ruined
if the abbot carried out his intentions. The
abbey chronicler regarded the projected resig-
nation as an attempt to shirk a solemn trust, for
which the abbot’s subsequent trials were a
judgement. It could hardly be said, however,
that the abbot in actual deed failed in his duty.
His sense of responsibility can be seen in his
many contests on the abbey’s behalf. These are

13 The excessive number of stories of saints to be
learned by heart had proved a stumbling-block to
many (Gesta Abbat. il, 395).

14 However occupied with business, want of
decorum never escaped his comment (ibid. iii, 410).

15 Fight did not. One of these, Stephen Gomage,
may have been the brother Stephen whom the rectors
of St. Mary and St. Nicholas and a chaplain of
Hertford were accused of taking away from Redbourn
in 1354 against the abbot’s will (Anct. Indict.K.B. 9,
file 38, m. 11).

10 Gesta Abbat. ii, 415.

17 Ibid. 408-9.

sometimes cited, though unfairly, as a proof of
his litigiousness. It would have been impossible,
for example, to ignore the affront offered to the
house by Sir Philip Lymbury, who put John
de la Moot, the cellarer, in the pillory at Luton.8
This matter was soon settled by Henry Duke
of Lancaster; but the proceedings in John de
Chilterne’s case lasted for years.'®

Chilterne, one of the St. Albans tenants,
apparently disputed the abbey’s right to a rent
and refused to pay. The abbot at last, by way
of distraint, seized fifty cattle which Chilterne
defiantly told him he could starve for all he
cared. Horrible to relate, this was done, the
abbot’s advisers telling him he would prejudice
his cause if he fed them, Chilterne naturally
enough was furious, and it was probably then
that he accused the abbot of usurping the
king’s overlordship of certain land, Verdicts
were given in the abbot’s favour in 1364 and
1366, and Chilterne came to an agreement with
the abbot and promised to abstain from further
molestation. Resuming hostilities, he forfeited
the bonds he had entered into, was outlawed,
and fled to France, where he remained until the
Black Prince and other influential friends of
Abbot Thomas were dead. As soon as he
returned the abbot had him imprisoned by writ
of outlawry. Chilterne obtained his liberation
once by assuring the king that he could give
him information worth {1,000 against the
abbey, but was immediately prosecuted again
by the abbot. While in prison he renewed the
matter of the overlordship, and, although the
abbot gained the day in the end, the affair
lasted until 1390.

In 1356 and 1368 the abbot brought a suit to
recover from the parson of Harpole (co. Nor-
thants) arrears of a rent of 305.20 which by an
agreement of 1348 was paid in lieu of tithes” ;
in 1365 he took proceedings against Richard
Pecche for unlawful distress in a tenement
belonging to the abbey in London,” and in 1367
against the nuns of Markyate for payment of a
rent which the prioress could not deny she owed.

Nor can it be said that his firmness was
reserved for insignificant and comparatively
powerless opponents. He prosecuted his case
vigorously in the papal court in 1379 against
the Archbishop of York, who had fined him for
non-appearance at a synod to which he had not
been summoned, and had unjustly sequestrated
the issues of the church of Appleton in Rye-
dale (co. York) appropriated to the monastery.”

18 Gesta Abbat. iii, 3-5.

19 Ibid. 5-25.

20 Thid. 44-6, 54-5.

21 Lansd. MS. 375, fol. 108.
22 Gesta Abbat. ili, 77~80.
%3 Ibid. 87-92.

4 Ibid. 278-9.

392

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The king himself in his persistent attempts
to exact a second corrody from the convent in
1358 met with a resolute resistance. The
abbot, however, saw the wisdom of leaving no
room for future encroachments of this kind,
and in 1364 bought out the royal right to a
perpetual corrody,”* as in 1350 he had given the
king the advowson of Datchet Church in
exchange for the convent’s obligation on the
creation of every new abbot to pay an annual
pension of Ioos. to a clerk nominated by the
Crown.2?, It says something for the position
occupied by Alice Perrers that she was the sole
person before whom Abbot Thomas gave way.
The relative of a former owner claimed some
land in Oxhey granted to the abbey by John de
Whitewell and his mother,” and to hold his own
made it over to feoffees, one of whom was Alice
Perrers.22 From that time until she fell from
power the abbot let matters rest. He then
entered upon the land, and although he had
subsequently a long contest on the subject with
Sir William de Windsor and his nephew he made
good his right.%°

The question of exemption had to be fought
more than once by Abbot Thomas. When the

25 Gesta Abbat. iii, 100-12. The king, at the
solicitation of one of his servants called John
Gardiner, asked for him the office of warden of the
warren of St. Albans on the ground that it had been
held previously by William de la Marche, one of the
royal household, and must therefore be in the gift of
the Crown. The abbot proved that William had
not held the post, and the allowance which he
enjoyed had been given not because he was the king’s
servant, but for a special service rendered to the abbey.
John Gardiner was a favourite of Edward III, and
aided by the counsels of his father-in-law William
Cheupayn, the king’s jester, holder of the royal
corrody at St. Albans, he caused some trouble until
the Prince of Wales came to the abbot’s aid (ibid.

—5).
ae The king received instead land in Abbots Lang-
ley (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 5461 ; Cal. Close, 1364-8,
p- 48). The corrody was to expire at the death of
William Cheupayn.

27 The king’s nomination was made 20 Jan. 1350,
the exchange on 14 May (Cal. Chse, 1349-54,
PP. 153, 222).

8 John de Whitewell, the abbey’s steward (Gesta
Abbat. ili, 227), was a great benefactor to the house.
He and his mother had licence in 1372 to grant to
the abbot and convent five tofts, 2 carucates of land,
6os. rent, half a mill, meadow, pasture and wood in
Watford, Cassio, Oxhey, Walround, and the reversion
of a messuage, six tofts, 3 carucates of land in Kings-
bury, Childwicksay and Sandridge. In conjunction
with John Roland, Whitewell gave land and rents
in Cassio, Watford, Park and Rickmansworth, and
jointly with William de Bourton four messuages, a
dovecot, 129% acres of land and rent in St. Albans
and Redbourn (Pat. 46 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 15).

29 Gesta Abbat. iii, 227-9.

8 Ibid. 234-57; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 457-8.

4 393

Bishop of Lincoln asked to come to the obsequies
of Blanche Duchess of Lancaster at the abbey
in 1369 the abbot, suspicious of his intentions,
made his consent conditional on a written
acknowledgement of the monastery’s privileges,
which the bishop very reluctantly conceded.

In 1380 De la Mare challenged the right of the
Bishop of Norwich to make the Prior of
Wymondham sub-collector of the clerical tenth
in his diocese. The bishop persisted in his claim
to the prior’s obedience, but to no purpose ®;
and in August of that year the king granted
that neither the abbot nor the priors of his cells
should be collectors or assessors of any subsidy.*

The proposed visitation by the Archbishop of
Canterbury of the Benedictine College at Oxford
in 1389 concerned all the exempt monasteries,
but Abbot Thomas was left to deal with the
matter, principally, no doubt, because of the
archbishop’s affectionate regard for him.34 The
archbishop, in fact, received and heard the
abbot’s messenger with the utmost kindness and
in the end graciously yielded.

Yet, notwithstanding the abbot’s successful
activity, it is more than hinted that fear or
favour blinded him sometimes to the monas-
tery’s interests. For instance, he suffered a rent
of 335. 4d. due from the Earl of Salisbury, his
kinsman, for a house at Paul’s Wharf, London,
to remain unpaid year after year; and in his
time various rights granted by popes or kings
were first withdrawn, especially the fines and
amercements of the St. Albans tenants in the
marshal’s and other royal courts.36 But it is
unlikely that he submitted without protest to
any injury to the abbey. He had once, at least,
in the case of the clerk of the market of the
king’s hospice in 1364, claimed his privileges
and won.*?

The insurrection of 1381°8 was the most
formidable difficulty encountered by Abbot
Thomas. Early in his rule the villeins may have
shown signs of disaffection. The charge brought
against the abbot in 1354 of permitting escapes
from his gaol is said to have been due to a
conspiracy on their part.

31 Gesta Abbat. iii, 274-5. The bishop, though
angry at the time, laid aside his grudge when he met
the abbot and became his fast friend (ibid. 277).

82 Thid. 123-34.

83 Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. 532.

34 Partly, perhaps, because Simon de Southerey,
then prior, was a monk of St. Albans.

35 Thomas Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana (Rolls Ser.),
il, 189-92.

36 Gesta Abbat. iii, 417.

87 Thid. 55-6.

38 See p. 198 above.

39 Gesta Abbat.iii, 48-52. Attempts were also made
by individuals to raise their legal status by making
the abbot answer them in a court of law (ibid.

39-41).
50

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

It was possibly, indeed, a foreboding of danger
in this quarter that induced the abbot in 1357
to crenellate the monastery.“ There can, how-
ever, have been no apprehension or reason for it
just before the rising. In fact, it seems certain
that but for the outbreak elsewhere there would
have been no movement here: there was no
premeditated plan, no sudden explosion of anger,
and very little violence and destruction. The
villeins departed for London with the abbot’s
sanction,*! and it was not until they reached the
city that there was a sign of the feeling that
made the abbey’s retainers hurry back to warn
the prior and other unpopular members of the
convent to escape. The deputation of townsmen
in their negotiations with the abbot owned that
he had been a just and kind lord and said they
would have made no disturbance in his days if
the opportunity had not been too good to let
slip. The abbot’s behaviour throughout was
characteristic. He had first determined not to
yield, and it was only the entreaties of the
frightened monks that made him give way.
Afterwards, if he was careful to recover the
rights wrested from him, he did not forget it
was his duty to protect his subjects, but inter-
ceded on behalf of the St. Albans villeins
implicated in the London riots, interfered when
Lee tried to frighten a jury into indicting the
ringleaders, and seems to have done his utmost
to avert the king’s visit. The villeins, embittered
by failure, accused him of hypocrisy and
vindictiveness, but apparently without foun-
dation.4# They did not cease to harass him
where they could,# though the malicious
burning of conventual property at Sandridge
and elsewhere* a few years later is probably not
to be attributed to them.

Just before the peasants’ rising Abbot Thomas
had undertaken measures of the greatest
financial benefit to the abbey. The fine of 1,000
marks at every vacancy was in September
1380 exchanged by the king at the abbot’s
entreaty for a yearly rent of 50 marks.4? To
avoid the heavy expenses incurred by abbots-

4° Cal. Pat. 1354-8, p. §74.

41 The abbot, it is true, did not want them to go
in a body as they did, but they left St. Albans appa-
rently on good terms with him.

*? Hearing that copies had been made of the
charters before they were surrendered he petitioned
the king and Parliament that record might be made
of their annulment (Par/. R. iii, 1292).

“8 They said that far from endeavouring to stop
the king the abbot had offered him £1,000 to come.

“4 The author of the Gesta, who was bitterly hostile
to the villeins, and therefore could not have approved
of the abbot’s attitude to them, clearly did not doubt
his sincerity.

% Gesta Abbat. iii, 360-1.

46 Ibid. 361~2 ; Cal. Pat. 1385-9, p. 549.

47 Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. $45.

elect at the papal court 4 Thomas negotiated
with the pope in 1381 4? for a bull declaring
election sufficient without confirmation and
permitting benediction by any Catholic bishop.
The indult was granted at last in October 1395,
and first-fruits with all other payments on
vacancies were commuted for 20 marks a year,80
Another bull of the same date empowered the
abbot and his successors to bless ecclesiastical
vessels and ornaments of the monastery and its
subject priories, churches and chapels.*

There is an occasional side-light on the
internal affairs of the house. To remedy the
lack of priests in the convent caused by the
plague the pope in 1351 licensed the abbot to
choose for ordination thirty monks of St. Albans
and its cells between twenty and twenty-five
years old,® and in 1363 he granted similar
dispensation for twenty monks aged twenty.

Visitations by deputies of the Abbot of Peter-
borough in 1378 ®4 and of the Prior of Ely in
1381 5° redounded to the praise of the convent.
This satisfactory state of things was not the
result of mere repression and severity. Abbot
Thomas was a kind and just ruler.66 Extremely
ascetic himself,5? he did not expect similar
austerity in his monks. The increase in the
income of the kitchener’s office at his expense in
1363 ®8 had for its object the improvement of
the convent’s food supply,®® and the reform
he effected at Redbourn was to the same end.
But he insisted on the obedience due to him.
Though he could not forbid, he undoubtedly
resented the departure of the monks ® for the
crusade in Flanders in 1383, and he promptly
expelled those ® who in 1387 secured exemption
from discipline by obtaining papal chaplaincies.

The work of members of the convent is
perhaps the best testimony to his rule.

48 Abbot Thomas spent 1,000 marks exclusive of
the cost of the journey and his illness (Gesta Abbat.
ii, 387).

‘8 The abbot was much cheated by his agents,
who, professing to be on the point of concluding the
affair, received large sums for which they did nothing
(ibid. 146-82, 397-8).

50 Cal. Papal Letters, iv, 517.

51 Tbid. sor. 52 Thid. iti, 383.

53 Cal. Papal Petitions, 425.

54 Chron. Angliae, 1328-88 (Rolls Ser.), 203.

55 Ibid. 284.

°° He visited and tended his monks in illness. He
gave pittances too in compensation for the extra
religious exercises he required from his convent and
the nuns of Pré and Sopwell (Gesta Abbat. iii, 408).

*’ If obliged to relax his abstinence, he made up
for it by severer fasts afterwards or by alms.

58 See below, p. 413.

°9 Gesta Abbat. ii, 397. 6 Tbid. 397-8.

$1 Ibid. 416. He received them back with
‘unhoped for grace.’ 82 Except one who was old.

3 Gesta Abbat. ii, 418. These honorary chap-
laincies were sold to raise money for Pope Urban.

394

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Full use seems to have been made of the
scriptorium, rebuilt at his cost through the
energy of Thomas de Walsingham, the pre-
centor.*4 The beautiful ‘ Book of Benefactors
of St. Albans,’ now at Cambridge, witnesses to
the great appreciation of artistic merit at this
period.® Literary activity then was probably
greater than since the days of Matthew Paris.
‘The Chronicle of England, 1328-88,’ ‘The
Chronicle by a Monk of St. Albans,’ &* ‘ The
Annals of Richard II,’ ®? and ‘The English
History’ called Thomas Walsingham’s were all
largely due to his monks, whose work was at
least equal in quality and surpassed in quantity
that of their predecessors in the 14th century,
Rishanger,®* Trokelowe and Blaneforde. Of the
brothers living at the abbey in 1380, Thomas
Walsingham was the author of the Gesta
Abbatum from the abbacy of Hugh de
Eversden.”° Nicholas Radclif wrote against the
Wycliffite doctrines,7 and Simon de Southerey
was noted in his day for his verse and know-
ledge of astronomy.” But scope was found for
talent in other directions besides compiling
or writing books.% John de Bokedene and
William Stubard, a lay brother and stonemason,
carried out various building operations,’4
Robert de Trunche was apparently a painter,”

64 Gesta Abbat. ili, 393.

65 For description see James, Car. of MSS. in Corpus
Christi Coll. Camb. i, 19. The illuminations of the
other and artistically inferior ‘ Book of Benefactors,’
Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, were due in part to a secular,
Alan Straylere (fol. 108), but in the Corpus Christi
MS. he is mentioned only as contributing money
to the cost of the book (Trokelowe and Blaneforde,
Chron. App. p. 464).

66 The two are printed together in a volume of
the Rolls Series.

67 Included in the volume of the Rolls Series con-
taining Trokelowe and Blaneforde’s Cé4ron.

68 And the author of the chronicle that bears his
name, see Rishanger, Chron. et Annales (Rolls Ser.),
Introd. pp. xxxii-iv.

69 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 81 d.—83 d.

7 See Gesta Abbat. ii, Introd. p. xix. The portion
between Matthew Paris’s work and Walsingham’s was
probably written by Rishanger (ibid. pp. ix—xix).

71 Cott. MS. Claud. E iv, fol. 331 d. seq. printed in
Amundesham, Annales, ii, 305, App. E.

72 Ibid. He was evidently well known outside
the monastery, for on 8 Nov. 1395 the king granted
him an annual pension of £10 for life (Ca/. Pat.
1391-6, p. 662).

73 Three in 1380 copied or bound books. John
de Rikemaresworthe wrote the great graduals for the
precentor and sub-centor in the quire and two great
bocks assigned to the abbot at matins, and made at
his expense two books to be used at the mass of the
Virgin (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 82).

7 Thid. fol. 83.

75 Ibid. fol. 84d. He is said to have painted
the figure of St. Thomas of Canterbury in the
church.

and a monk, William Walsham, helped to repair
Abbot Richard’s clock.78 Several made hand-
some gifts of vestments and ornaments to the
church 7? in emulation of their abbot, who was
lavish in offerings.78 Though these were the
outcome of his own religious fervour, he was
doubtless aware of the aid that splendour and
beauty of ritual might render in that revival
of devotion which he tried to promote”? by
preaching ® and organizing solemn processions
of intercession on special occasions.#! Thomas
de la Mare resembled John de Hertford in his
open-handedness. Unsparing of money on the
affairs of the abbey, in upholding its rights,
extending its privileges, in acquiring property ®

78 Gesta Abbat. iii, 385.

7 The great organs for the chapel of St. Mary
were provided through the industry of John of Yar-
mouth ; Thomas Goldsmith acquired for the house
a chasuble, cope and alb of cloth of gold and another
alb of green tartarin embroidered with gold goblets ;
Robert de Trunche gave a cope of cloth of gold
elaborately worked, a sapphire ring to the chapel of
St. Mary and a cloth of gold for the great altar ;
three others presented albs; Richard Savage had
two silver-gilt suns made for St. Alban’s shrine,
and gave, besides various copes and albs, a set of
vestments of green cloth of gold sprinkled with gold
birds, the red orphreys decorated with images of
St. John Baptist in gold; and William Westwik,
the chamberlain, gave a beautiful jewel to contain a
relic of St. Amphibalus (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol.
81 d.-85).

78 Among his gifts were a Lombard picture costing
over £45, white and gold vestments priced at £186,
a vestment of black velvet striped with gold, prite
£10; vestments to complete the set given by the
Black Prince, £70; three mitres, (100; a pair of
pontifical gloves set with pearls, (10 ; cloth for chairs
and stools, over £148; the bell called ‘Christus,’
a silver-gilt tabernacle, censers, candelabra, &c.
(Gesta Abbat. iii, 380-5).

79 The fraternity in honour of St. Alban formed by
the townsmen in 1377 to take part in processions in
which the shrine figured shows that his efforts were
to some purpose (Chron. Angi. 1328-88, p. 146).

80 He made a careful study of preaching (Gesta
Abbat. ii, 379), and apparently made a point of
sermons to the people delivered by himself and his
monks or others whom he appointed (ibid. iii,
408).

81 Tbid. iii, 408. These went to Sopwell and Pré,
the chapels of St. Mary Magdalene and St. German,
&c. There were also processions barefoot round the
cloister or the church on Wednesdays and Fridays, and
in them he took part in the coldest weather when
very old and ill.

82 The church of Appleton in Ryedale (Yorks.) was
appropriated in 1349 (Ca/. Papal Petitions, 171) ata
cost of £200 ; for the manor of Gorham he paid 800
marks ; for that of ‘Wrobbele Myrenden’ (Meriden
in Watford) £260; Snelleshall in Rickmansworth,
co. Herts, £80, and for half the manor of
Norton-le-Clay (co. York), acquired in 1354 (Cal,
Pat. 1354-8, p. 89), £50 (Gesta Abbat. iii, 375-6).

395

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and in building,® he also incurred great expense
in presiding over the provincial chapter
1351-63, in visitations of monasteries, probably
those undertaken at the request of King
Edward,® in presents to royal and noble
patrons,*® and especially in entertaining. He
added new accommodation for noble guests,*’
and hospitality must have been continual and
generous, for a staff of huntsmen and falconers
was maintained, though neither the abbot nor
his monks even looked on at sport.%

The Black Prince was probably a frequent
visitor®; the King of France was received with
all fitting ceremony %; and among the many
admitted to the fraternity of the convent, appa-
rently while the abbot’s guests,” were the Prin-
cess of Wales with her daughter and two eldest
sons in 1376,” King Richard and Henry Earl of
Derby in 1377,* the Duke of Gloucester in 1380,"
and in 1386 the Duchesses of Gloucester and
Lancaster.®* Archbishop Sudbury visited the
monastery in 1380,% and Courtenay, his
successor, came by the abbot’s invitation in
1382 and was splendidly entertained.”

The outlay was not impolitic nor without
return: the abbey gained a great reputation

83 He rebuilt the Great Gate, part of the wall and
the almonry, &c. (V.C.H. Herts. ii, 509). Altogether
he spent considerably over £2,000 in this way (Gesta
Abbat. iii, 387-9; Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol.
22 d.-24).

4 Gesta Abbat. iii, 414-18. He became president
in 1351 (ibid. ii, 402), when he published constitu-
tions for the province, interesting for the light they
throw on the general condition of the order (ibid.
ii, 449-62). As president he gave pecuniary and
moral support to Ralph Archbishop of Armagh in
his contest in 1357 with the mendicant friars (ibid.
il, 405 ; Knighton, C4ron. [Rolls Ser.], ii, 93-4).
He presided, moreover, in 1363 (Chron. Angi.
1328-88, p. 52).

85 Eynsham, Abingdon, Battle, Reading, Chester,
where the abbot was forced to resign (Cal. Pat.
1361-4, p. 214), and St. Edmundsbury (Gesta Abbat.
ii, 405-6).

88 Gesta Abbat. ili, 390.

87 Tbid. 387; Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 22d.
The difficulties of the office of sub-cellarer under
Abbot Thomas (Gesta d5bat. iii, 390) were caused
partly by the great number of guests who came to
the monastery.

8 Gesta Abbat. iii, 400.

8° This seems the conclusion to be drawn from
ibid. ui, 377.

90 «Curialiter et laudabiliter’ (ibid. 408).

1 Tt seems to be mentioned when those who
became capitular brothers or sisters were not present.

82 Besides gentlemen and ladies of her household
(Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 129).

% Tbid. fol. 129d.

94 Thid. fol. 131d.

% Ibid. fol. 132 d.-133.

% Chrcn. Angl. 1328-88, p. 280.

7 Ibid. p. 348.

and numerous friends, to its incalculable advan-
tage. The list of benefactions in Abbot Thomas’s
day in itself is remarkable,® but the good feeling
towards the monastery was manifested not only
in gifts. The Black Prince,®® Richard II,!%
John of Gaunt,! Archbishop Sudbury? and
others ® rendered services of more or less
importance to the abbey.

The abbot was attacked by plague during the
second pestilence, and in his old age suffered
constant pain from strangury.> Yet not until
he was physically prostrate did he yield to
remonstrance and forgo his accustomed penance
and abstinences. He was very infirm when the
king visited him at the abbey in March 1394,
and told him to ask what he wanted of him.®

98 Richard II gave a gold collar in offering to
the shrine (Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chron. App.
p- 433); Joan Princess of Wales gave a collar of
gold, a silver-gilt cup to the abbot, and a cask
of wine annually for many years (ibid. 435);
Robert de Hatfeld, Bishop of Durham, bequeathed
100 marks to St. Albans (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii,
fol. 87) ; Mary Countess of Pembroke, a silver-gilt
image of St. Vincent containing a relic (ibid. fol.
103 d.); Adam Rous, the king’s surgeon, gave vest-
ments, a silver-gilt chalice and a tenement in Dowgate,
London (ibid. fol. 104 d.) ; Robert de Walsham, at
one time confessor of the Black Prince, gave altogether
to the work of the cloister 400 marks (ibid. fol.
105d.), and bequeathed to the church a silver-gilt
basin, an ornament of gold and jewels to the abbot
and convent for pious uses, and 100 marks to the
monastery in relief of its poverty (Harl. MS. 602,
fol. 6d.) ; Richard de Threton, executor of Sir Robert
Thorp, chancellor, gave 140 marks (Cott. MS.
Nero, D vii, fol. 106) ; Sir Robert Knolles, £100
to the fabric of the convent kitchen (ibid. fol. 110) ;
the Duke of Gloucester, 6 cloths of gold and a collar
of gold and enamel set with sapphires (ibid.) ;
Constance Duchess of Lancaster, £10 to the fabric
of the kitchen, to the abbot a light blue cloth of
gold for the orphreys of the copes given by the Duke
of Gloucester, and a gold vestment trimmed with
fur which was afterwards sold for the benefit of the
church (Trokelowe and Blaneforde, CAron. 435, &c.).

9 Gesta Abbat. ii, 377, 403-4 3 ili, 395.

100 Tbid. iii, 151-8.

1 The duke’s interposition in 1391 saved St. Albans
from lending 500 marks to the king (Walsingham,
Hist. Angi. ii, 199).

? He confirmed the indulgences offered on the
abbey’s behalf and granted another (Chron. Angl.
1328-88, p. 280).

3 Archbishop Courtenay, for instance (see above and
Gesta Abbat. iii, 281), and the Earl of Warwick, a
chapter brother (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 129 d.),
who in 1383 renounced the claim to Redbourn
Heath, which had caused the abbey 30 much annoy-
ance and loss (Gesta Abbat. ili, 257-62).

4 That of 1362.

5 Gesta Abbat. ili, 403.

8 ¢ Annales Ric. I’ in Trokelowe and Blaneforde,
Chron. 167. The abbot’s request for the confirmation
of the abbey’s charters remained, however, unfulfilled.

396

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

In October 1395 a papal indult was obtained
permitting the claustral prior in the abbot’s
illness or absence to admit novices and absolve
and dispense the monks for irregularity.’
Tended devotedly by his monks, the abbot
lingered on, helpless and often in agony, but
careful to the end of the welfare of his house.®
He died at length on 16 September 1396,
aged eighty-seven, universally respected and
admired.®

The convent’s choice of the prior, John de
la Moote,!® to be abbot seems natural in the cir-
cumstances. During the last two years he had
had entire control over the house, and as he had
great experience in administration," he would
appear best fitted to deal with a financial situa-
tion that called for able management. It was
said, however, by some that the new abbot had
been anything but loyal to his predecessor, that
he had used promises and threats freely to secure
his own election, and that he owed his success
largely to the archbishop and the king. The
last charge is curious in the light of after events.
Thomas de la Mare not having attended Parlia-
ment for some years before his death, his place,
the first amongst the abbots, had been taken by
others. On John de la Moote’s appearance
in Parliament the Abbot of Westminster
attempted to take precedence of him. Moote,
in a dilemma because of the king’s friendship
with his rival, decided to appeal to Richard
himself, but the king, after telling him that he
should have his rights, requested that the Abbot
of Westminster might sit above him every other
day until the matter was discussed further, and
Moote, from fear, gave way. Richard’s favour
could be relied on so little that to preserve it
Moote is said to have given him altogether
£1264 The abbot conceivably owed him no

7 Cal. Papal Letters, iv, 400.

8 He delayed receiving extreme unction to prevent
usurpation of the goods of the monastery (Gesta
Abbat. iii, 420).

9 Ibid. 422-3. The author of the‘ Annales Ric. II”
speaks of him as the father and pattern of all religious,
and says he was deservedly called ‘ Monachorum
Patriarcha.’ 10 Gesta Abbat. iii, 432-3.

11 He was cellarer almost twenty years (Cott.
MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 49d.), and had been prior
certainly sixteen (ibid. fol. 81 d.).

12 Gesta Abbat. iii, 463-5.

13 Harl. MS. 3775 printed in Amundesham, Annales
(Rolls Ser.), 1, 414-17, App. B. The general order
of precedence was perhaps not very definite (Hurry,
Reading Abbey, 66, n. 2) ; but as regards Parliament
it is worth noticing that among the triers of petitions
in 1363 and 1366 (Par/. R. il, 275, 289) the Abbot
of St. Albans comes before the Abbot of Westminster,
while in the roll of the Parliament held Feb. 1512
(Add. MS. 22306) Westminster is first and St. Albans
second, the same order being observed in the roll of
1534 (L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 391).

14 Gesta Abbat. iii, 454.

good will, but it is difficult to accept entirely
the story that the Duke of Gloucester’s con-
spiracy against the king was set on foot at
St. Albans and that Moote was present at the
meeting at Arundel1® He could hardly have
played so prominent a part in the affair and
escaped all consequences. Still, there could
have been no doubt to which side Moote inclined,
for on the king’s fall he was appointed to guard
the Bishop of Carlisle, Richard’s partisan.® If
Moote engaged in political intrigue the departure
from Abbot de la Mare’s neutral attitude !” was
scarcely justified by results. The immediate
consequence of the accession of Henry IV was
to increase the power of his half-brother, the
Bishop of Lincoln, and so put the abbey at a
disadvantage. When the bishop was to per-
form the obsequies of John of Gaunt at St.
Albans in 1399, Moote obtained a royal writ to
Beaufort forbidding anything derogatory to
the abbey’s privileges, and was able to exact
letters of indemnity from the bishop and refuse
to allow him and his mother to lodge in the
monastery.!® But after Richard’s fall the abbot
permitted Beaufort to stay at the abbey and
exercise episcopal rights within the exempt area,
and only after propitiatory gifts secured from
him an acknowledgement of the immunities of
St. Albans.!8 It is true that Henry IV was the
first to give to the abbot the array of the clergy
of the exempt jurisdiction,?® and that shortly
afterwards he came to the abbey, and was
present at the services on Ascension Day 1400
in royal state, but when the relations of the
king and Abbot Thomas are considered these do
not seem extraordinary marks of favour.
Moote is said to have been responsible for
some of Abbot Thomas’s wisest measures, and
perhaps truly. He showed his sense in his
conciliation of the villeins at the beginning of his
rule 2? and in the useful papal bulls he obtained.

18 DY stoire de la Traison er Mort du Roy Richart
Dengleterre (Engl. Hist. Soc.), 121-6.

16 Thid. 221 n.

17 «The chronicle of a monk of St. Albans’ known
as ‘the Scandalous Chronicle’ proves that strong
party feeling existed at the abbey, but it was evidently
not apparent to the outside world. John of Gaunt,
who is violently abused by the chronicler, was a good
friend to St. Albans. The benefactors and chapter
brothers of St. Albans were of all parties. Even Sir
Lewis Clifford and Richard Stury, reputed Lollards,
were admitted to the fraternity (Cott. MS. Nero,
D vii, fol. 129, 131).

18 Gesta Abbat. iii, 438-40, 472.

18 Ibid. 440, 474-5. Moote gave the bishop £5,
and exchanged for a sapphire ring one given by the
Duke of Gloucester to Abbot Thomas containing a
piece of the holy cross.

20 Ibid. 437; Close, 1 Hen. IV, pt. ii, m. 19,
printed in Dugdale, Mon. ii, 241.

21 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chron. 332.

22 Gesta Abbat. iii, 435.

397

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Yet as abbot he was not satisfactory. In
striking contrast to Thomas de la Mare, whose
mistakes even arose from his generous nature,™'
he readily gave ear to whisperers and informers
and bore grudge silently against those he sus-
pected.4 But the principal cause of his failure
lay in his one-sidedness, that had before mani-
fested itself in an attempt to aggrandize each
office held by him at the expense of the others.4
His love of building, beneficial to the house as
long as it was kept within limits, with the
removal of control became a mania to which
everything was sacrificed. While cellarer and
prior he had done much good work ® in keeping
the abbey’s property in order,?® and after he
became abbot he continued his improvements
to the monastery and began to rebuild the
students’ rooms at Oxford. In the construction,
however, of a princely residence for himself at
Tyttenhanger, a scheme of doubtful value to
the abbey,?? he passed all bounds in extrava-
gance and forgetfulness of duty. Estates were
neglected so that rents decreased; hospitality
and alms were cut down, numbers of hirelings
were fed by the abbot, while obedientiaries and
tenants were burdened with carriage to the
detriment of their business; the cells were
unvisited and, owing to his mistaken or careless
choice of priors, were badly managed; and
now, in order to urge on the operations
at Tyttenhanger, the abbot was continually
absent from the monastery, so that ‘religion
perished.’ 28 At one time Moote had ingratiated
himself with the convent, distributing among
them the pigeons of his dovecot, doubling their
supply of spices ®® and relaxing the rule as to
recreation in Lent and Advent %; latterly he
had been mean and ungracious, and the monks
were beginning to murmur loudly, when he was
seized with pleurisy at Tyttenhanger, and died
after a short illness at St. Albans on 11 Novern-
ber 1401, leaving many debts and stores and
furniture much reduced.

The election was notable for the outside
influence exerted on behalf of the kitchener,
Robert Botheby. Fortunately the king’s per-

22a He was too impulsive and trusting, and thus put
people into offices for which they were unfit (Gesta
Abbat. iii, 416).

33 Thid. 458.

4 Ibid. 460.

3% Ibid. 441-7;
fol. 24.

“6 He rebuilt many manor-houses, granges, &c.

37 Gesta Abbat. iii, 448. See also Abbot Michael.

*§ Gesta Abbat. iii, 448-50.

29 Possibly while he was prior (ibid. 444, 447).

3° Tbid. 470-2. These ordinances, which deal
also with certain services, were made at the urgent
request of the convent.

31 Ibid. 450-3.

32 Ibid. 476-8.

Cott. MS. Nero, D

vii,

suasions and the interference of his treasurer
were alike unavailing ; the convent elected the
cellarer, William Heyworth, by a_ large
majority.8 The new abbot, still only a pro-
bationer in religion, was very young,* but he
was obviously skilful in dealing with men and
affairs. He reconciled the king at once to the
convent’s choice, got through the necessary
formalities with unusual speed and economy,
and secured more credit.3§

The promotion of Botheby to be Prior of
Wallingford,3* while calculated to please the
king, was also prudent in view of Heyworth’s
absence for two years from St. Albans to keep
down expenses.3? When finances had been
reduced to order, the buildings at Oxford and
Tyttenhanger were finished ** and the cloisters
completed.*

The abbot saw that the newly-acquired papal
indults did not fall into desuetude,*® and care-
fully guarded the other privileges of his house.
In 1405 he obtained from Henry confirmation
of their charters, with the addition of a clause
restoring to the Abbots of St. Albans fines of
their men and tenants amerced in the courts of
the king’s steward and marshal, and clerk of the
market of his hospice."! He asserted in 1408
his right to the chattels of a felon taken within
his liberty,*? and checked the attempts of the
clergy of his exempt jurisdiction to deprive
the abbey of Peter’s Pence and _ other
dues.48 Payment of pensions owed by the
parsons of Girton “ and Lubenham * was en-
forced, and compensation received for the
abbey’s claim to the rent at Paul’s Wharf.‘®
Possibly Heyworth after a time found his task
irksome : he showed certainly a strange apathy
in allowing the Abbot of Westminster in 1417 to
erect gallows on debatable territory, still called
No Man’s Land, between the abbey of West-
minster’s manor of Wheathampstead and the

33 Through Botheby’s party the election was by
scrutiny, which offered greater opportunity than com-
promise of influencing the electors (Gesta Abéat. iii,

477).

34 Ibid. 493.

35 Ibid. 491-3. He obtained credit probably by
dissimulating his need of money, for he gave the
entertainments customary at an installation.

36 Thid. 493. 37 Ibid. 494.

38 Ibid. 495.

39 Extract from Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, printed
in the Reg. of St. Albans (Rolls Ser.), i, 451, App. D.
He repaired, moreover, his hospice in London.

1° Gesta Abbat. iii, 495.

“1 Ibid. 497-9. These fines were withdrawn in
the time of Thomas de la Mare.

"2 Gesta Abbat. 509-12.

43 Ibid. 505-9.

“4 Lansd. MS. 375, fol. 160-2 d. ; Gesta Abbat. iii,
518-22.

45 Gesta Abbat. iii, 523-5.

46 Ibid. 513-17.

398

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

St. Albans’ manor of Sandridge. On 20 Novem-
ber 1419 he received the bishopric of Lichfield
by papal provision,*? and in 1420 resigned the
abbacy.

John Bostock, or Wheathampstead, Hey-
worth’s successor,48 was a remarkable per-
sonality. Whatever may be thought of his
learning, of his capabilities there can be no
question. The friendship of Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester for him, whether literary or political,
is in itself evidence of his ability. Pedant as he
seems in his letters, he was undoubtedly a
clever man of the world, who succeeded to an
extraordinary degree in making St. Albans
attractive to the great and influential. Duke
Humphrey visited the monastery frequently :
he came on Christmas Eve 1423 with his wife
Jacqueline of Hainault and 300 retainers,5°
remaining until after the Epiphany; in 1426
he spent three days here on his way to
Leicester 52 ; in 1427 he offered at the shrine on
recovering from an illness, and that year kept
Christmas splendidly at the abbey ; in 1428
he made a short stay here ©; and in 1431 his
second duchess, Eleanor Cobham, was received
into the fraternity with some of her relatives
and attendants.°6 The Duke and Duchess of
Bedford with a train of 300 persons were enter-
tained here in 1426 on the Festival of St.
Alban 7; Queen Joan came in 1427 for wor-
ship,®* and Queen Katharine and the little king
in 1428 stayed for nine days at Easter 5°; Henry
Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, visited the
abbey in 1424, 1426, as cardinal in 1428 and
twice in 1429 ®; and in September 1430 the
Duchess of Clarence was at St. Albans.™ Visits
from the Earl of March,® the Countess of
Westmorland,® the Bishop of Lichfield,* Sir

47 Cal. Papal Letters, vii, 134.

48 He was then prior.

49 Many of these are printed in Appendix E of the
Reg. of St. Albans (Rolls Ser.), ii, 365-475.

50 Chron. Rerum Gestarum in Mon. 8. Albani,
printed in Amundesham, Annales Mon. 8. Albani
(Rolls Ser.), i, 4-5.

51 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 147. On this
occasion he became a chapter-brother.

52 Amundesham, Annales, i, 8.

53 Tbid. 12-13.

54 Tbid. 19.

55 Ibid. 25.

56 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 154. It is re-

lated that she was once cured of a toothache by the
intercession of St. Alban, and the duke in gratitude
offered a golden tooth at the shrine.

57 Amundesham, Annales, i, 10.

58 Ibid. 16.

59 Ibid. 21.

80 Ibid. 5, 11, 28, 34.

61 Tbid. 54. 62 [bid. 5.

63 She came on a pilgrimage in 1428 with her son
and his wife (ibid. 24).

84 Tbid. 50-1, 55, 57.

William Babington, the chief justice,® are also
mentioned. The Earl of Warwick was laid up
here in 1428 and made liberal acknowledgement
of the attention he received ; he was admitted
to the fraternity “like many others," for the con-
ferring of this honour was as much used as
hospitality to increase the abbey’s well-wishers.%8
It is a tribute to Wheathampstead’s literary
reputation that he was one of those chosen to
represent England at the Council of Pavia-
Siena in 1423 ® and that of Basle in 1431 7;
and that he was asked in 1427 to compose the
letter from the English clergy to the pope.”
While in Italy the abbot seized the opportunity
to go to Rome,” where he procured certain
bulls,”3 and so established himself in the pope’s
favour that the Bishop of Lincoln decided to
cease his attack in the Council on the abbey’s
exemption.”4 The question was afterwards
raised in other quarters. The Archbishop of
Canterbury took umbrage in 1424 at the non-
appearance of the priors of the cells of St.
Albans at his visitations, and the letting of
tithes of appropriated churches to laymen
without his leave.” As part of the campaign
against the abbey Wheathampstead was made
collector of the tenth in Hertfordshire and
Buckinghamshire, but while obtaining the
revocation of the appointment from the chan-
cellor, he very sensibly went to see the arch-
bishop 7° and managed to disarm his hostility.
A similar difficulty with the Bishop of Nor-
wich was settled less easily. The bishop in

85 While he was here in 1437 the abbot asked his
advice about the questions between himself and the
Abbot of Westminster (Amundesham, Annales, ii, 127).

66 Amundesham, Annales, i, 22, 67.

87 Ibid. 65-9 ; Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 136d.,
147d., 150d., 155.

88 Many handsome gifts must have been re-
ceived from chapter-brothers and sisters. Duke
Humphrey in 1436 gave elaborate altar frontals and
vestments, 25 cloths of gold and a great silver-gilt
tabernacle (Amundesham, Annales, ii, 187-90). Mar-
garet Duchess of Clarence presentedz silver-gilt censers,
frontals and splendid vestments (Cott. MS. Nero,
D vii, fol. 152d.).

69 Amundesham, Annales, 1, 99.

7 Ibid. 275. The royal licence to him to take
£400 in bullion with him was not granted until
6 May 1433 (Cal. Pat. 1429-36, p. 267).

71 Amundesham, Annales, i, 17.

72 He fell seriously ill here, and the pope sent
him plenary indulgence (Amundesham, Annales, i,
148-50).

73 Among them one for the use of a portable altar
at the abbey’s houses of London and Oxford, where
the chapels were not yet consecrated (ibid. 161).

7 Ibid. 73-81.

7 Ibid. 195-6.

78'To show him Archbishop Reynolds’s letter of
1318 declaring the Abbot of St. Albans not subject
to the archbishop (ibid. 200).

399

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

revenge for the discourtesy shown him by the
convent of Binham during a visitation made
the prior collector of the next tenth.”7 The
abbot in vain tried to pacify the bishop by letter
and personal interview, and by the intercession
of the Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford.”® He
then contested the matter in the Court of
Exchequer and Convocation,’® and after a long
struggle seems to have been successful.®°

These cases are characteristic of Wheat-
hampstead, who like De la Mare has been called
litigious 8! and with as good or as bad foundation.
He was undoubtedly tenacious of the rights of
his house, but seems to have been diplomatic
rather than aggressive. In the means used to
attain his ends, however, he was not always
quite scrupulous. It has been noticed,” for
instance, that while Offa’s charter contained
nothing about exemption from episcopal juris-
diction, there was much that bore directly
on the point in the copy produced by the abbot
before the Exchequer judges on the above
occasion. The way judgement was ensured
against the rector of Harpole can hardly be
approved. After a consultation with Bekyng-
ton, Dean of Arches, over a pension withdrawn
from St. Albans for thirty years,® the abbot
secured the Bishop of Lincoln’s consent to the
trial of the case in the Arches Court, where the
decision in favour of the abbey in 1430 *4 was
a foregone conclusion.

Wheathampstead showed his discretion in
coming to terms the same year with Thomas
Knollys over right of chase in Tyttenhanger
Heath, that had been in dispute in Heyworth’s
time ®; he was also prudent and fortunate
enough to persuade William Flete to submit the
questions between them to the arbitration of
Sir William Babington, and thus settle amicably
an affair that might have proved as harassing

™ Amundesham, dnnales, i, 300-1.

78 Toid. 305-10.

79 Ibid. 311-65. The point seems to have been
whether Wheathampstead had protested for the abbey
and cells when the convocation granting the tenth
had declared that no collector should be excused by
obtaining royal immunity or privilege.

80'The result is not given in the Annales, but in
the account of the abbot in Cott. MS. Nero, D vii,
printed in Reg. of St. Albans, i, App. D.

§1 Riley’s Introduction to Amundesham, Aznales, ii,
p- xiii. Wheathampstead was apparently considered
litigious for defending the abbey’s rights and Hey-
worth indolent and unsatisfactory (ibid. i, p. xxvii)
for not doing so.

82 Ibid. ii, p. xvii.

83 Apparently after a verdict against the abbey in
the Court of King’s Bench on a technical issue
(Amundesham, Annales, i, 233).

4 Thid. 232-54; Arundel MS. 34, fol. 25-31 d.
For the examination of witnesses for the abbey see
Lansd. MS. 375, fol. 6-17 d.

85 Amundesham, Annales, i, 254-61.

as Chilterne’s.*@ A dispute with the rector of
Girton about a pension was referred in 1434
to Bekyngton as arbiter ®?; and in 1435 the
abbot recovered two quit-rents from tenements
in London, one by agreement, after it had been
unpaid for forty years.%%

The mistakes in the Whitman case, 1433-5,
were not Wheathampstead’s. The archdeacon,
after declaring Richard Whitman, an inhabitant
of Rickmansworth, contumacious for not appear-
ing to answer a charge of slander,®* excom-
municated him in face of his appeal to Rome
and letters of protection from the Court of
Arches.

The Archbishop of Canterbury naturally
began proceedings against the archdeacon, who
thereupon resigned his office. Wheathampstead,
now left to cope with a difficult situation,
invoked the goodwill of the official of the
Arches, appealed in his turn to Rome and forced
Whitman into submission.°° Whatever sym-
pathy may be felt for Whitman,® it should be
remembered that the abbot could not afford to
be defied by a subject.

In the affair with the Abbot of Westminster
Wheathampstead’s good and bad points were
alike displayed. The matters at issue were the
gallows on Nomansland, which by Wheathamp-
stead’s orders had been cut down in 1427, and
toll demanded in the St. Albans market and re-
fused by the Abbot of Westminster and his men.*?
After the dispute had dragged on for years it
was brought in 1437 before certain judges, in an
unofficial capacity. When both sides had been
heard Wheathampstead invited the judges to
dinner and undoubtedly tried to influence them.
But, although he was willing to abide by their

© Amundesham, Annales, i, 263-73. Flete and
Babington were both admitted to the fraternity.
Unpleasant conclusions have been drawn from the
presents to Babington and Bekyngton entered in the
abbot’s expenses (Riley, Introd. to Amundesham,
Annales [Rolls Ser.], ii, pp. xl-xli), but compensation
to a man for his time and trouble is not necessarily
a bribe, and when and in what circumstances the
gifts were offered and accepted is not known.

®7 Amundesham, Annals, ii, 89-103.

8 Tbid. 113-15.

89 Whitman’s account was that William Creke had
entered his tenement and taken his goods, and to
cover this act had charged him with defamation. He
said the archdeacon intended to make him submit to
Creke and this meant the loss of his tenement, and
he accused the abbot of showing partiality throughout
to Creke, who was his relation by marriage (Early
Chan. Proc. bdle. 44, no. 235).

% Amundesham, Annales, i, 369-90 ; ii, 7-87.

°1 He gave in only after imprisonment for more
than a year.

% Amundesham, Annals, i, 14-15.

83 ‘Their goods had therefore been seized and their
horses impounded by the bailiff of the Abbot of
St. Albans (Amundesham, Annales, li, 128-31).

400

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

award, his rival was not. The case therefore
came into a court of law, but was not finished,
Wheathampstead suspending proceedings on
account of the famine.

A plea of the Crown against the abbey for
deodands*4 awakened the abbot to the dis-
advantageous obscurities of the charter of
Henry II and the limitations of the confirma-
tion in 1405. With the help of the Duke of
Gloucester and at a cost of £82, he obtained in
April 1440 a patent defining these privileges and
confirming to the abbot and convent the return
of all writs, the goods and chattels of their men
and tenants and of residents on their lands for-
feited for outlawry or felony, fines for trespasses,
conspiracies, &c., year day, and waste, deodands,
treasure-trove, wreck, and anything that usually
pertained to the king from murders or other
felonies committed by their men or on their
lands.%® By securing a general pardon from the
king in 1437 he astutely safeguarded himself
from the consequences of infringement of the
Statute of Mortmain; for he feared that his
recent acquisitions were in excess of the licences
granted to him.°? These new possessions in-
cluded the cell of Beaulieu, which, being likely
to become burdensome to the abbey, was sup-
pressed in 1428 by arrangement with the patron,
Lord Grey de Ruthin.®

The ordinances drawn up by the abbot after
a visitation of the monastery previous to his
departure for Pavia in 1423,°° although partly
in common form, suggest some carelessness of
observance and indiscretion. The monks were
admonished to be punctual at vespers, not to
leave the quire during service in order to walk
about the church and talk, nor to loiter and
chatter at the vestry door; frequent requests
to visit relations were discountenanced ; journeys
to friends were not to be made on foot; the
brothers were forbidden to talk with women, or
without the superior’s leave to go to the
nunneries near St. Albans or Redbourn; they
were exhorted not to swear nor address each
other discourteously in the second person
singular, nor to loiter and drink, especially when
they should be present in the quire; at Red-
bourn they were not to sit up late, and in their
walks were to have an adult companion ;
officials were to amend their ways as regards

8a Amundesham, Annales, li, 128—57.

%4 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 461, App. D.

%5 Tbid.

6 Cal. Pat. 1436-41, p. 422.

” Amundesham, Aznales, ii, 168-73.

% Lord Grey released his right of patronage to
Wheathampstead and the Prior of Beaulieu on 12
May 6 Hen. VI (Arundel MS. 34, fol. 32-3), not
13 Hen. VI as is said in Amundesham, 4unales, ii,
106. The brothers were withdrawn in 1428.
(Amundesham, 4unales, i, 29-30.)

89 Amundesham, Annales, i, 101-15.

4 40]

attire; there were besides regulations con-
cerned with the training of the younger monks.
One rule clearly expresses the abbot’s distrust
of secular greed—to give no room for extortion
the treasure of the house was not to be shown
to strangers except with the prior’s leave.

Asceticism was certainly not required of the
convent by Wheathampstead. He granted the
manor of Borham at this time to increase their
wine and pittances,! and obtained a papal bull
substituting a fast on the vigil of St. Alban
for that between Septuagesima and Quinqua-
gesima 2; in 1428 he madea beneficial change in
the diet of the novices,’ and provided for the
monks pittances on Sundays during the winter,
in 1431 adding others on Mondays and Thurs-
days in summer.®

Important changes in administration were
introduced about this time.6 Wheathampstead
established a common chest? from which loans
could be made to the abbey or cells in emer-
gencies 8; it was to be kept by three monks
nominated by the abbot with the convent’s
consent, and for its funds the rent of Gorham
and a tenth of all gifts to the convent were set
aside. At the same time a ‘master of the
works’ was appointed® to superintend and
account for all repairs to the fabric; he was
also to pay the money allotted for the brothers’
clothing and pittances, provide torches and
candles on certain festivals, and distribute the
doles to be given on Wheathampstead’s anni-
versary. To his office was assigned the property
acquired between 1425 and 1431, the issues of

100 They were not to wear tunics with fastenings
forbidden by the canons, nor costly cowls and rare furs.
From Wheathampstead’s ordinance when president
of the provincial chapter in 1429 (Amundesham,
Annales, i, 39-40), expensive dress was a common
monastic failing then.

1 Amundesham, Annales, i, 116.

2 Ibid. 159-60. The relaxation was asked on
account of the difficulty in getting fish (ibid. 153).
To the fast on the vigil of St. Alban, the convent
added fasts on two other vigils (ibid. 183-4).

3 Amundesham, Annales, 1, 28-9.

4 Ibid. 29.

5 Ibid. 285.

6 The ordinances were made on 1 March 1429-30
and ratified June 1432, after an inquiry by the pope’s
order (Arundel MS. 34, fol. 56-8 d.).

7 Ibid. fol. 52 ; Amundesham, Annales, i, 275-9.

8 Possibly the effect of the disclosures at visitations
of Wymondham and Binham in 1426 (Amundesham,
Annales, i, 205-11) may be seen here.

® Ibid. 279-85 ; Arundel MS. 34, fol. 52. There
had already been masters of the works in the 14th
century, but they were seculars entrusted with certain
definite building operations, while the master of the
new ordinance was a monk who relieved the sacrist
permanently of all responsibility for the fabric and
some other cares. .

10 For this see Arundel MS. 34, fol. 4-10, or
Amundesham, Aanales, ii, 162-8, 175-7.

SI

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

which were to be deposited in the common
chest.

The convent does not seem to have been
very tractable. They manifested decided dis-
approval of a sale of land by the abbot to Sir
John Cornwall in October 1429, two monks abso-
lutely refusing their consent; and possibly in
connexion with this incident there were shortly
afterwards mutinous grumblings against the
abbot, for which they had to ask his pardon.”
Some, again, murmured rebelliously at Wheat-
hampstead’s ordinances for Redbourn in
1439.% These regulations provided for a
proper rendering of the services, and required
the monks to avoid visiting doubtful places on
their way to the priory, to abstain from late
hours, and drinking or other excesses which
unfitted them for their religious duties, and to
employ their leisure in reading or study.
Several of the rules should not even have been
necessary and the successful opposition to
them, for Wheathampstead, in view of his pro-
jected retirement, forbore to press them, gives
an unfavourable idea of the standard of con-
duct at the monastery. It certainly makes
incredible the annalist’s statement that the
house then enjoyed high repute ‘for the brothers’
sober and religious way of life.’ 14

Of individual efforts of the convent there is
not much sign. The abbot’s zeal against
Lollardy 36 did not apparently inspire his monks
to combat heresy in treatises or sermons.
Wheathampstead wrote!® and caused to be
written more books for the brothers, it is said,
than any other Abbot of St. Albans,!? but with
disappointing result as regards original work by
the convent. The Annales known as John
Amundesham’s in the inflated, tiresome manner
of Wheathampstead whose deeds they eulogize,
are a poor exchange for the straightforward
narrative of the Gesta Abbatum; while the one
historical production is the ‘Chronicon Rerum
Gestarum,’!® from its style probably a mere
diary. It is interesting to see that some atten-

Ml Amundesham, Annales, i, 43.

12 Ibid. 45.

13 [bid. ii, 203-12.

M4 Ibid. 233.

15 He took proceedings against the Lollards at a
synod held at St. Peter’s in 1427, attended the Bishop
of Lincoln’s inquisition in 1429 and was associated
with the Bishop of Ely in another in 1431
(Amundesham, danales, i, 13, 34-5, 64).

16 Of his many works, none of which is published,
the chief were the ‘ Granarium de Viris Illustribus,’
in four volumes, and the ‘ Palearium Poetarum.’

7 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 462, App. D. A good
deal of copying was probably done in the scriptorium,
for the abbot borrowed (ibid. ii, 445-7, 456-7,
458, App. E) and made presents of books (Amunde-
sham, Annales, ii, App. A).

18 Harl. MS. 3775.

tion was now bestowed on music, hitherto
apparently neglected, for a monk in 1421 had
deserted to Christchurch, Canterbury, simply to
enjoy opportunities of studying that art.!° The
appointment of two salaried singing-men here
in 1423,2° the suspicion of the Bishop of Durham
that a singing-boy had been enticed from his
chapel to St. Albans,” and the purchase of new
organs for the conventual church in 1428,”
all point to Wheathampstead’s endeavours to
improve the services on the musical side.

Wheathampstead resigned on 26 November
1440.3 The reasons for the step can only be
hazarded, but they were probably not so much
declining health, shyness and anxieties enduredin
the past *4 as difficulties anticipated in the future
through the waning of the Duke of Gloucester‘s
power. His expenditure for the benefit of the
house had been from {5,000 to {6,000%7: over
£1,400 had been spent in buying and securing
property in mortmain **; about the same sum
in repairs and improvements to the manors, the
town of St. Albans and the college at Oxford ”” ;
{£891 at the abbey; {142 on building a small
chapel in the church and on ornaments for it
and the Lady chapel *°; £641 on vestments and
plate for the church ®°; over {100 on plate for
domestic use; {326 in presents, principally for
friends of the monastery.*

John Stoke, Prior of Wallingford, was
chosen in Wheathampstead’s place.8# He very

19 Amundesham, Annales, i, 89.

0 Tbid. 106-7. The abbot tried in 1439 to intro-
duce paid singers at Redbourn also.

71 Wheathampstead’s letter of excuse to the bishop
c. 1422-4 (Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 406-8).

*2 Amundesham, Annales, i, 25.

23 Ibid. il, 233-45.

4 Thid. 233.

25 He himself estimated it at over 10,000 marks
(ibid. 236).

28 Arundel MS. 34, printed in Amundesham,
Annales, ii, 264-7, App. A.

*” £680 on the manors, £665 on the Great Gate
and repair of tenements at St. Albans, £108 in
making a library and little chapel at Oxford (ibid.
261-4).

% Tbid. 257-8. In rebuilding the infirmary and its
chapel and constructing a large room for the abbot.

% Ibid. 258.

30 Ibid. 258-9. A chasuble, six tunics and twelve
copes made of material given by Eleanor Hulle
cost £200, twelve copes of another suit £103, twelve
copes of a third suit £50.

31 Two gilt basins given to Queen Katharine, £55 ;
others to the Duchess of Bedford, £25 ; silver cups
to Sir William Babington and Thomas Bekyngton for
favours shown to the monastery, £5 and £6 135. 4d.;
one to the Sheriff of Hertfordshire for favours shown
in the plea against the Abbot of Westminster,
£4 65. 4¢.; three books given to the Duke of
Gloucester, £10 ; a book of astronomy for the Duke
of Bedford, £3 65. 8¢., &c., &c. (ibid. 255-7).

32 Cal. Pat. 1436-41, p. 527.

402

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

soon began to wrangle with his predecessor,
grudging apparently the provision made for
him. The Duke of Gloucester was appointed
arbitrator between them on 6 January 1442
and on 1 September delivered his award 33;
Wheathampstead was to surrender all estate
in Tyttenhanger, and was to receive for life
Park Manor and lands in Radwell; he was to
have the house near the infirmary which he had
rebuilt and he might go where he pleased except
to Tyttenhanger Manor; a certain amount of
plate was also allotted to him. It was probably
fortunate for the ex-abbot that Duke Humphrey
was then making arrangements for the cele-
bration of his anniversary at St. Albans. In
June 1441 he had obtained the royal licence to
give the alien priory of Pembroke to the abbey
for this purpose,*4 but it was not until 1 August
1443 that he actually granted the property.®
The ordinances, drawn up presumably at this
time, provided for daily masses at his sepulchre
and services and distributions on his anniversary
at a cost of {44 17s. 2d. a year and for the annual
payment of {60 to the relief of the convent’s
kitchen.3 The duke died on 23 February 1447
and was buried in the tomb already made for
him in St. Albans.37_ Some jewels belonging to
the abbey, which had been in his keeping, now
came into the hands of the king, who presented
them to his colleges of Eton and Cambridge.3*
The abbot and convent put in their claim, and
it seems likely that there was a connexion
between these events and the grant of extensive
privileges made to the abbey by the king in
November of that year. On 18 December
1448, however, avowedly in compensation for
the loss of their goods,®® they received acquit-
tance of {20 in every clerical tenth until the
sum of {600 should be reached, ratification of
the duke’s gift of Pembroke Priory and of
their possession of the churches of Tenby
and Manorbeer, co. Pembroke, appropriated
under a licence of 1445,4° and confirmation of
the Letters Patent of 1440 and of the recent
grant.

In dealing with his monks the abbot was not
successful. One only actually apostatized, but
eight others escaped from his control by pro-
curing bulls of emigration or promotion, among

33 Arundel MS. 34, fol. 82 d., printed in Amunde-
sham, Annales, ii, 278-89, App. B.

34 Cal. Pat. 1436-41, p. 567.

35 Chart. R. 27-39 Hen. VI, no. 40.

36 Cott. MS. Claud. A viii, fol. 195, printed in
Dugdale, Mon. ii, 202.

37 4n Engl. Chron. of Reigns of Ric. II-Hen. VI
(Camd. Soc.), 117-18. It cost Abbot Stoke and the
convent £433 6s. 8¢. (Dugdale, Mon. ii, 202).

38 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 273 Chart. R. 27-39
Hen. VI, no. 40.

39 Chart. R. 27-39 Hen. VI, no. 40.

40 Cal. Pat. 1441-6, p. 356.

them Henry Halstede, Prior, and Robert Mor-
path, Cellarer of Wallingford. The Prior of
Belvoir in 1449 secured himself from removal
without reasonable cause,” evidently as a pre-
caution against such action on Stoke’s part as
had just resulted in the loss of the cell of
Wymondham to the abbey. Stephen London
had been Archdeacon of St. Albans, and Stoke,
who disliked him for telling him too plainly of
his faults, had made him Prior of Wymondham
to get rid of him and then after a few months
had arbitrarily recalled him.“ The patron, Sir
Andrew Ogard, espoused London’s cause, and
obtained bulls which raised the priory to an
abbey in 1449 and made it independent.** The
petty spitefulness shown by Stoke * to London
leads to the conclusion that the defections in
his time were due to his faults, not to his re-
forming zeal. It is said that Stokes was avari-
cious 4* and that in his time learning 4? and
preaching were neglected at the monastery,*®
but it must be remembered that the information
comes from Wheathampstead’s eulogist and
may be biased.49 The difficulty is to know
how much allowance to make for prejudice,
especially as regards the story *° told about
Stoke’s favourite, William Wallingford,®! the
official-general.®* Stoke on his death-bed in-
formed the prior and others that he had saved

41 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 146-7. Stoke on 20 Oct.
1448 asked for the arrest of the last two as apostates
(Chan. Warr. [Ser. 1], file 1759, no. 35). After
Stoke’s death Halstede sought readmission to the
convent, and promised if he were made Prior of
Binham to pay the debts of the house and rebuild
the dormitory. It needed, however, strong persuasion
and remonstrance on Wheathampstead’s part to make
the monks agree to his return (Reg. of St. Albans, i.
138-42).

42 Cal. Pat. 1446-52, p. 247.

43 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 148-54.

44 His pardon for procuring papal bulls is dated
16 March 1449 (Cal. Pat. 1446-52, p. 260).

45 It appears again in his sale of the missal given
by Wheathampstead to his chapel (Reg. of St. Albans,
i, 427).

46 Ibid. 116.

47 For years there was no learned master to teach
the youths in the cloister, and scarcely a scholar was
sent to the university (ibid. 24).

48 Under him the monks ceased to preach to the
people during Lent (ibid. 25).

49 The ill-feeling between Stoke and Wheathamp-
stead had not been removed by the settlement of
1442. It tells against Stoke that Wheathampstead
was befriended by his former opponent Alnwick, who
had now become Bishop of Lincoln (Amundesham,
Annales, i, 364, N. 7).

50 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 102-35.

51 Abbot Gasquet says (Abbot Walling ford, 6-7)
that from the author’s description the Wheathamp-
stead Register cannot be regarded as official.

5la Wallingford held five offices, including that of
archdeacon.

403

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

1,000 marks,® of which his official-general and
Thomas Wallingford, his senior chaplain, had
charge. When he was dead the two brothers
produced 250 marks and denied all knowledge
of the rest. The election resulted in the return
to power of Wheathampstead, who was informed
of the episode, but said nothing for a time.
When, however, Wallingford presented his first
accounts at Michaelmas 1453, it was discovered
that although during Stoke’s time seasons had
been good, much wood sold, many serfs manu-
mitted and extreme parsimony exercised at the
monastery, and under the new rule expenses
had been kept down, yet the granaries were
empty and debts amounted to 600 marks and
more. The abbot showed his surprise and dis-
satisfaction, expressed his opinion to the
convent that there was dishonesty somewhere,
and told Wallingford that unless he could
manage better he must be removed. Walling-
ford then manipulated his accounts so that there
appeared to be fewer debts and {160 in hand ;
but when required soon afterwards to make
certain payments he said recourse must be had
to borrowing, telling the abbot that the sup-
posed ready money had really been expended
in repairs, and informing others that he had
given most of it to the abbot. Wheathampstead
thereupon accused him of peculation and
ordered him to surrender his unlawful gains,
which he heard amounted to {1,000, or he would
proceed against him. Wallingford, however,
promised through an intermediary to pay every-
thing necessary, clear off the debts, and within
two years have {200-300 in the treasury, and
was allowed to retain his post.

In what is apparently another version of the
tale, it is related that the abbot, finding that the
official-general and the senior chaplain said
nothing about the 752 marks, began to suspect
them, and at last questioned them on the sub-
ject ; both declared they had not had the money,
and Wheathampstead, though convinced that
they were lying and telling them so, let the
matter drop.8

The story can hardly be dismissed as entirely
fiction.54 There must have been at least un-
pleasant rumours about Wallingford, possibly
he was actually charged with dishonesty. His
innocence is also not proved by his retention
in office. That may have been a matter of
expediency. He had a party in the convent

*2 The account in the Registers (i, 115-17) is
certainly unfair to Stoke in implying that he had a
secret hoard. He had apparently saved out of his
revenues as other abbots had done, to leave money
for pious objects.

53 Reg. of St. Alans, i, 119-22.

54 Abbot Gasquet, however, considers it an absolute
invention (4dbot Halling ford).

55 Reg. of St. Alhans, i, 104.
make him abbot (ibid. 5).

Some had wished to

and influential friends outside §*; moreover,
he could best put right the financial difficulty
he had created. The affair is discreditable to
St. Albans in any case, for if Wallingford was
blameless, one or more of the monks must
have been guilty of gross slander.

In 1454 the monastery was threatened with
the loss of Pembroke Priory through Parlia-
ment’s confirmation of the earldom of Pembroke
to Jasper Tudor,5? and of Burston through
Charlton’s action while Speaker of the Com-
mons,®8 but Wheathampstead managed to avert
both dangers.5®

St. Albans on 22 May 1455 ® was the scene
of one of the most important battles of the
Civil War. The town was pillaged by the
northern followers of the victorious Duke of
York; the abbey, however, was spared. Its
escape, ascribed by the chronicler to the fact
that the king had not by lodging there com-
promised its neutrality, was probably due to
the monastery’s connexion with the late Duke of
Gloucester and its supposed inclination in conse-
quence to the side of the Duke of York, Hum-
phrey’s political heir. If Wheathampstead could
not rely at all on the duke’s favour, he merits
greater praise for doing what no one else dared,
asking the duke to allow his former enemies to
be buried. Permission was immediately given,
and the bodies of three Lancastrian nobles were
brought in by the monks and interred in the
Lady chapel.*

The Act of Resumption of 1456 caused the
abbot some anxiety: the prior sent to the
Parliament to guard the abbey’s interests as
to the clerical tenth, had a proviso inserted in
the Act, but discovered afterwards that 1t was
invalid ; the end was only achieved by a fresh
grant in November 1457.%

The reconciliation between the two parties
on 24 March 1458 was of direct benefit to the
monastery in so much as the Yorkists were to
pay {45 a year to the convent for masses for
the Lancastrians buried at St. Albans.** The
king seems to have come immediately after-
wards to the abbey to spend Easter and stayed
three weeks. On 20 June he came again for

58 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 112. He asked the Earl
of Pembroke and Lord Sudeley to intercede for him.

57 Ibid. g2—-4.

58 Tbid. 136-7.

59 The first through one of the late Duke of
Gloucester’s servants.

6 Paston Letters (ed. 1896), i, 327-31.

61 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 171-2.

62 Ibid. 173.

®3 Ibid. 175-6.

4 Ibid. 177-8.

65 Ibid. 250-68.

® Ibid. 295-302; An Engl. Chron. o Reigns of
Ric. I]—Hen. VI (Camd. Soc.), 77.

®7 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 73.

404

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

six days, and on 29 August for nearly six
weeks. His offerings ®® on these occasions
undoubtedly did not represent the whole ad-
vantage derived by the house: it was by
royal letters that John Cheyne this year was
induced to make terms with the abbot over
a rent from land in Chalfont St. Giles, which
he had refused to pay for ten years.” The next
year Henry broke his journey north here on
7 May, and at his departure presented to the
abbey his best robe, redeemed by the treasurer
at once for 50 marks.7

John de Hertford’s days are recalled by the
king’s visits and by the way the convent was
kept in touch with important outside move-
ments and affairs. To St. Albans in 1457 came
the Hungarian priest with news of the defeat
of the Turks by Hunyadi”; at St. Albans
kindly hospitality was extended to the three
monks sent from Cluny in 1458 to petition the
king to restore to them the houses of their
order 7 ; and here in 1459 the pope’s legate made
a short stay when on his way to seek the king’s
support of the proposed Council at Mantua.”4

This side of the abbey life seems to end
abruptly with the second battle of St. Albans,
17 February 1461, and the terrible blow then
inflicted on the prestige of the monastery. The
abbot begged the king to save the town and
abbey from spoliation, but Henry’s proclama-
tion forbidding the troops to plunder was un-
availing ; and if the queen had power to control
her forces she lacked the will.?> The northerners
sacked the town, emptied the convent’s granaries
and cellars, and departed leaving desolation
behind them. So complete was the destitution
that the monks had to separate for a time, and
the abbot, with a diminished household, betook
himself to the seclusion of Wheathampstead.’6
It is not surprising that the author of the

68 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 74.

68 The first and third time he gave a robe of
purple, and on the Feast of St. Alban a picture or
relief of the Virgin on gold ornamented with pearls
and precious stones (ibid.).

1 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 308-11.

™ Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 74d. The Registers
record no royal visits in 1458, and say of the visit in
1459 that it occurred at Easter, and that the king on
leaving the abbey went to London (ibid. ii, 323-5).
But there seems no reason to doubt the accuracy of
the Golden Book : its statement that the king was
on his way north 7-8 May 1459 agrees with the fact
that he was at Northampton on 14 May (Paston
Levters [ed. 1896], i, 437) 3 and from the Registers
themselves it may be gathered (i, 317-18) that some
time during 1458 Henry was staying at St. Albans.

72 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 268-79.

3 Ibid. 317—22.

7 Ibid. 330-6.

7 She herself took one of the monastery’s jewels
(ibid. 390-7).

76 Thid. 399.

Register welcomed the accession of Edward IV.
The abbot’s first care in the new reign was to get
a re-grant of Pembroke Priory, which would
otherwise have been lost under the Act of
Resumption of 1461, and this he secured in
December 7’ through the friendly offices of the
chancellor, George Nevill.”8 In November 1462
he also obtained charters similar to those of
1440 and 1447.79 Wheathampstead, who had
probably been long in bad health, died in
January 1465 ®° much regretted by the monks.®!
He had treated the convent generously in acquit-
ting them of a debt of over {220 ; and he appears
to have been considerate to his impoverished
tenants.

He made additions to the property of St.
Albans, which attest his thoughtfulness for the
abbey’s welfare.83 He also carried out his former
intention of building a library,®4 made anew bake-
house, apparently a model of its kind,® and put
stained glass in the cloisters.66 The chapel of
St. Andrew was entirely rebuilt by him,®? and
the ornaments of the church increased, notably
by some works of art in silver-gilt.°° The
purchase of an organ, which from its cost, viz.,
£50,8° was immeasurably superior to any instru-
ment hitherto set up at the abbey, illustrates
again Wheathampstead’s cult of music.

William Albone, the prior, whose election
had been proposed in 1451, now became abbot.”
He was a native of St. Albans, and was reputed
a gifted and cultivated man, generous in
character and works.® As known and accept-
able to various great persons he had been en-
trusted by Wheathampstead in 1455 with the
negotiations for the exemption of St. Albans
from the Act of Resumption.

He seems to have been interested in learning :
in December 1465 he was asked to find a prior
for the Benedictine students at Cambridge ®;

7 Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 120.

78 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 417.

79 Chart. R. 2 Edw. IV, m. 24, printed in Clutter-
buck, Hist. and Anzig. of Herts. i, App. i. Other
charters are confirmed, but these are made anew
without reference to the original grants.

80 Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 386.

81 Reg. of St. Albans, i, App. D.

82 Ibid.

83 They were made to avoid contests, such as
those with Chilterne and Flete.

84 Reg. of St. Albans, 1, 423-4.

8 Ibid. 424. In the opinion of many it was the
best in the whole kingdom.

86 Tbid. 427.

87 Tbid.

88 Ibid. 425, 429. One which represented the
Saviour enthroned with saints on either side cost
£146.

89 Tbid. 432.

90 Cal, Pat. 1461-7, p. 345-

91 Reg, of St. Albans, i, 475.

82 Ibid. 259. 93 Ibid. ii, 53-5.

405

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and in 1469 he presented a young man, whom
he had educated from a boy, to the living of St.
Michael’s that he might have the means to study
at Oxford.™

Visitations of the abbey were made by the
Abbot of Peterborough in 1465, and by the
Abbot of Eynsham in 1468, but the results
are not recorded. Albone’s gifts to the church
were valued at 600 marks,% and he acquired
property for the abbey worth {66 a year ®”; but
on the other hand at his death in July 1476 he
left debts amounting to {1,830.*%°

The burden on the house may have been the
determining cause of the unanimous election of
William Wallingford,®* who had a gift for finance.
If there had been any scandal connected with
him, it was many years before, and had certainly
made no difference to his career: he had con-
tinued to hold office under Wheathampstead,
and had been made prior by Albone. He had
to his credit the accomplishment of expensive
works and payment of debts,! and the education
of ten young religious at his own cost.?

He inaugurated his abbacy with much
splendour, giving two great banquets, one at
Tyttenhanger, and another at St. Albans, which
he entered accompanied by a train of 440
servants and tenants.2 Outwardly the abbey
might be unchanged. In reality its position had
been much altered by the Civil Wars, so that for
its security the conciliation of those in power
became an ever-increasing necessity. This seems
the meaning of the grants of nominations
to benefices begun by Wheathampstead* and
continued by Albone and Wallingford,® and the
bestowal of the office of steward on one of
the dominant political faction.6 The same

4 Reg. of St. Albans, it, 83.

5 Tid. 47-9, 76-9.

© Ibid. i, 475, App. D. Among them were
seven copes of purple velvet embroidered with golden
flowers, which he presented at the beginning of his
rule in honour of the Seven Joys of Mary, and six
missals and six graduals for the choir.

§7 Ibid.

S Thid. 477, App. D.

8 Ibid. 142-58.

10 On 18 March 1464 (ibid. ii, 50).

1 Tbid. i, 476-7, App. D.

? Ibid. 476.

3 Ibid. ii, 159-60.

4 In 1464 he gave George Nevill, the chancellor,
the next nomination to Great Stanmore Church
(ibid. 21-2).

® Albone made six such grants (ibid. 58, 60-1, 97,
106, 111, 198), Wallingford seventeen, of which
three occurred in the first four months of his rule
(ibid. 161, 162-3, 164, 166-7, 167-8, 183-4,
197-8, 202, 223, 224, 227, 238, 246, 255, 257,
253-9, 280).

§ Lord Hastings received this office for life in 1478
(ibid. 199), and after his execution in June 1483
it was given to William Catesby (ibid. 266-7).

policy caused Wallingford’s confirmation of
Richard Lamplew as Prior of Hertford for life
in 1484 at the request of the Chancellor, Chief
Justice, Sir William Say and William Catesby.’
It may also account in part for Wallingford’s
conduct with regard to Tynemouth Priory.
The abbot promised the Duke of Gloucester
and Sir John Say that Nicholas Boston, Arch-
deacon of St. Albans, should be Prior of Tyne-
mouth when John Langton died or retired §; on
15 March 1477-8 he removed Langton for re-
belling against a visitation,® and in May made
Boston prior for life.1° On 8 May 1480, as the
result of disclosures at a visitation held by
Langton and William Dixwell,4 Prior of Bin-
ham, as it was said, Boston was deposed by
the abbot and replaced by Dixwell.! In
September Wallingford authorized Dixwell to
inquire into Boston’s conduct, and after a short
interval requested the Bishop of Durham to
arrest the ex-prior as an apostate.8 About ten
weeks later he had to order another visitation of
the priory owing to the mutual recriminations
of Dixwell and Boston.4 On 8 March 1482-3
Dixwell, again Prior of Binham, accused himself
of having procured Boston’s deposition and
destroyed the deed giving him his post for life,
and asked that his opponent might have a
new grant of his office in perpetuity.® The
object of the confession seems to have been
to exculpate Wallingford for the past proceed-
ings. Boston, however, must still have felt
unsafe until the convent’s seal as well as the
abbot’s was affixed to the fresh grant, and on
19 November this was done at the request of
King Richard.!® .

The abbot’s course looks bad from any point
of view. The discovery of Langton’s unfitness
just then was too convenient not to be sus-
picious, and if his removal was warranted, he
was unsuitable as a visitor. For the same
reason Boston’s deprivation and re-appoint-
ment cannot both be justified; and in any
case he was treated most unfairly. Moreover,

7 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 268.

8 Ibid. 165.

9 Ibid. 186-7.

10 Tbid. 184.

11 Wheathampstead in January 1454 had asked for
Dixwell’s arrest because he was wandering about like
a vagabond and apustate (Chan. Warr. [Ser. 1],
file 1759, no. 36; Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 16-17).

12 Boston was deposed 8 May, and on 17 May
‘of his own free will’ resigned the priory (Reg. of
St. Albans, ii, 214-15).

13 Ibid. 233-4.

4 As to losses of the house through them (ibid.
239). Boston had apparently been inconsiderate
about expenses (ibid. 182).

18 Ibid. 254.

© The king had promised to contribute £100 to
the priory (ibid. 262-3).

406

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Wallingford was guilty either of using Dixwell
to oust Boston by indefensible means, or of
entrusting authority to a man convicted on
his own confession of intrigues for his own
advantage.

It is unlikely that the weakness or lack of
principle so manifest here was displayed in this
instance only, and the easiest explanation of the
list of the abbot’s good works attested by the
prior and convent in August 148417 is that it
was intended as a defence against actual or
anticipated attacks on Wallingford’s adminis-
tration.16

In April 1487 John Rothbury, the archdeacon,
went to Rome to ask for certain additional
privileges : among other things that the abbot
and his successors might confer holy orders on
monks of the abbey and cells, and on seculars of
their jurisdiction, and also confirm children born
within that area, and that the exemption of St.
Albans might be declared to extend to pleas in
the Court of Arches.!® This attempt to secure
absolute ecclesiastical independence, unsuccess-
ful owing to the opposition of the cardinals and
bishops,”° argues unmistakable apprehension of
episcopal and archiepiscopal activities, and may
thus afford a clue to the date of the suit brought
against the abbot in the Court of Arches by the
Prioress of Sopwell,#* to be referred to later.
Her case subsequently came before the arch-
bishop as Chancellor, and undoubtedly helped
to give him an unfavourable opinion of Walling-
ford and his monks. Some move on Morton’s
part, probably his warning to the abbot to
amend what was wrong,” made Wallingford
think the abbey’s exemption in danger, for on
6 February 1490 he procured a papal bull which
ordered the archbishop to protect the privileges
of St. Albans.23 Morton, however, on 6 March
was commissioned by papal bull to visit exempt
monasteries, and under its powers he wrote on
5 July to the abbot threatening him with a
visitation unless within thirty days the abuses
reported to exist at St. Albans *4 were reformed.
The abbot was accused of simony and usury,
and of being so remiss in his rule and in his

17 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, printed in Reg. y
St. Albans, i, App. D.

18 See Dr. Gairdner, ‘Archbishop Morton and
St. Albans,’ Eng. Hist. Review, xxiv, 95. Abbot
Gasquet thinks it was occasioned by the convent’s
discovery of the accusations against Wallingford con-
tained in what purported to be Wheathampstead’s
Register (4bd0t Walling ford, 30-2).

19 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 287—9.

# Tbid. 289.

*1 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 181, no. 4.

#2 He says in his letter of 5 July that he had
admonished him shortly before (Wilkins, Concifia, iii,
632).

23 Gasquet, Abbot Wallingford, 50.

* Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 632.

administration of goods that regular observances
had been given up, hospitality and alms had
decreased, and daily diminished, and not a few
of the monks led dissolute lives, defiling even
God’s temples by intercourse with nuns; the
abbot is said to have admitted as a nun into
the house of Pré and made prioress a married
woman named Helen Germyn who had previously
left her husband to live in adultery, and he had
taken no measures against her guilty intimacy
with Thomas Sudbury,”> one of his monks; he
had also not corrected other monks who resorted
to the nunnery for immoral purposes; he had
changed the Prioresses of Sopwell at his caprice,
and both here and at Pré had deposed the good
and religious and promoted the idle and vicious ;
he had moreover appointed as wardens of those
houses monks who had dissipated their goods ;
he had dilapidated the property of the monastery
and cells, sold the jewels and cut down wood to
the value of 8,000 marks and more; the monks
neglected divine service; some consorted with
harlots even in the precincts of the abbey, others
to pay for promotion had stolen the jewels of
the church and robbed the very shrine and had
not been punished,

On 11 July the abbey’s proctor represented
to the pope that St. Albans had peculiar privi-
leges as to exemption from visitation, and asked
and obtained his protection for the monastery
pending its appeal.2® The case was submitted
to two papal chaplains, and by their advice
Morton on 30 July received special faculties to
deal with St. Albans.2?. Whether he acted on
them, however, is not known.28 In the absence
of the information that the account of an in-
quiry ®° or injunctions would have afforded, the
truth or falsehood of the charges in the letter or
‘monition ’ remains a question of inference and
probability.

Abbot Gasquet ®° considers that the actual
facts about Wallingford and the abbey at this

25 He was almoner in 1485 (Reg. of St. Albans, ii,
273).

26 Gasquet, op. cit. 51-2.

27 Ibid. 52-3. The statement in the Obit Book
(printed in Reg. of St. Albans, i, 478, App. D) that
Wallingford won a just victory in his contest with
the archbishop, and preserved all the privileges of
the abbey inviolate, means, therefore, not that he
prevented a visitation, but that he secured an
acknowledgement. of the abbey’s peculiar and extra-
ordinary immunities.

28 Dr. Gairdner thought it probable that the
visitation took place (‘Archbishop Morton and St.
Albans,’ Engi. Hist. Rev. xxiv, 321). | Abbot
Gasquet (op. cit. 59) thinks it more likely that Morton
did not visit, but was satisfied with the testimony of
the community that Wallingford had been slandered.

29 Froude (Short Studies, iii, 127) assumed that
Morton’s letter was the result of an official inquiry,
but he was quite mistaken.

30 Op. cit.

407

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

period make the charges incredible. He relies
upon the assumption that Wallingford was good
because he erected the beautiful high altar
screen at the abbey, which is no evidence of
moral character; that he fostered education,
when he really only barely fulfilled the abbey’s
obligation ; that the inquiries at Pré and Sop-
well in 1480 were thorough, but of this there is
no evidence; that he was appointed in 1480
visitor of the Benedictine houses of the Lincoln
diocese, which only shows that he was of good
fame at that particular date. He thinks that
the charges of the monition are so sweeping that
they suggest the purely formal attribution of
crimes in a general pardon; and says further
that it would have been impossible to read in
public the eulogy of Wallingford contained in
the Obit Book if it had been untrue and he
had been a villain and spendthrift as he is some-
times depicted.

But the actual ground for one of Morton’s
charges appears in a petition in Chancery.
Elizabeth Webbe, the Prioress of Sopwell
appointed in March 1480-1, had brought a
suit in the Court of Arches for unjust removal
and had won; on reassuming her position she
had been beaten by the archdeacon’s deputies
and thrown into prison. There was evidently
foundation also for the report about Pré, for
shortly before Michaelmas Helen ceased to be
prioress,*? and her successor seems to have been
chosen from Sopwell. These two cases are a
gauge of the credibility of the other accusa-
tions. The changes at Pré, indeed, as showing
the need for reform at the nunnery are a pre-
sumption against the innocence of the monks
who were said to share the nuns’ guilt. This
was not the only time the monks had been
mentioned in connexion with the communities
of women near the abbey. Years before Wheat-
hampstead had had to forbid visits without
leave to these nunneries.34 With relaxation of
discipline, therefore, trouble in this direction
might be expected. Wallingford, as the Tyne-
mouth affair proves, was to say the least careless
about the fitness of those to whom he gave
office, so that it is very unlikely that the monks
were kept under proper control. It need
hardly be said that ill-considered appointments
to office made the maladministration of the
dependent houses probable.

The actual sins of commission attributed to
him are usury, simony and waste of the abbey’s
property for immediate gain. Years before, it
may be observed, the author of the so-called
register had declared him guilty of usury and
peculation. But putting this aside, he had been

31 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 181, no. 4.
32 Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 275.

33 See below, St. Mary de Pré.

34 See above, p. 401.

accused in Chancery of sharp practice and
dishonesty. A certain William Browning had
said that the evidence of his holding had been
erased from the Court Rolls so that the abbot
might seize his lands **; in another instance a
lease had been granted by Wallingford to
Edward Leventhorp, with Lord Hastings as
trustee, and after the death of the two men the
abbot tried to get the lease from Lady Hastings
to the detriment of the owner, the lessee’s
former wife % ; proceedings against Wallingford
were also instituted by the executors of a will
about some goods which had been deposited by
the testator in Pré nunnery, and had been
seized by the archdeacon and kept by the
abbot.’?

It will be generally allowed that a man who
laid himself open to this kind of charge gave
cause for the belief that he had no scruples
where his own profit was concerned. As to the
notice of him in the Obit Book,38 it describes
what he had done for the abbey as archdeacon,
prior, and kitchener, then relates that as abbot
within fourteen years he had paid his prede-
cessor’s debts, made the screen valued at
1,100 marks, finished the chapter-house at a
cost of {1,000, expended {100 on the church,
£100 on the endowment of a weekly mass in
honour of the name of Jesus, {60 on making a
mitre and two pastoral staves, {100 on building
his chapel and sepulchre ; he had also incurred
heavy expenses in defence of the abbey’s
immunities against the Archbishop of Canter-
bury ; yet in spite of all this he left the monastery
free from all debt. These were works for which
the convent owed him praise ; but they do not
make his neglect of discipline and the con-
sequent disorders at St. Albans impossible, nor
preclude his raising money by unlawful or
wasteful methods.

Wallingford appears to have died just before
20 June 1492.39

Of Thomas Ramryge,* who succeeded him,
it is almost impossible to form a clear estimate.
A very unfavourable opinion of him might be
drawn from various petitions in Chancery.

35 Early Chen. Proc. bdle. 54, no. 387. The
case occurred either in 1476 or 1483-5.

36 Tbid. bdle. 66, no. 46. The date of this petition
is 1483-5.

37 Thid. bdle. 97, no. 6. This case happened when
Morton was chancellor.

38 Printed in Reg. of St. Albans, i, App. D.

3° The abbey was already vacant on 20 June (Add.
Chart. 34350), but the congé @’élire was not given until
nine days later (Pat. 7 Hen. VII, m. 3). Abbot
Gasquet first pointed out the mistake in Dugdale’s
Mon., where Wallingford’s death is dated 1484 (Engi.
Hist. Rev. xxiv, 92).

‘0 He is mentioned in 1476 as third prior (Reg. of
St. Albans, ii, 142), in 1480 as sub-prior (ibid.
239), and in 1484 as prior (ibid. i, App. D).

408

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Between 1493 and 1500 John Harpesfield
accused the abbot of detaining from him docu-
ments relating to the entail of Harpesfield
Manor “1; Robert Newbury said that he had
been deprived without cause of the post of
keeper of the gaol of the liberty and porter of
the abbey conferred on him for life in 1484 @;
and Ralph Ferrers, master of St. Julian’s, com-
plained that Ramryge, in order to put him out
of the hospital, had asked to see his letters of
collation and refused to give them back, and
now detained from him the revenues of his
house “8 ; in 1500 or 1501 the Prioress and nuns
of Sopwell declared that the warden of their
house had for a bribe altered a lease to their
disadvantage.**

Yet in two out of the three cases brought
against Ramryge personally, right may not
have been on the plaintiff’s side. According
to the abbot, Newbury had been guilty of
misdemeanours in his office, and if so his re-
moval was necessary for the sake of the abbey.‘
For the attempted deprivation of Ferrers,
dilapidation was the alleged “* and probably
the real cause.47 But if Ramryge’s aim was
justifiable, neither his methods nor his judge-
ment can be commended. He seems to have
acted under the advice of a Dr. William
Robinson, to whom he had promised the post
if Ferrers could be ousted. The result, as far
as he himself was concerned, was the suit in
Chancery brought by Ferrers, who remained in
possession until his death, and proceedings
against him later in the Star Chamber for riot
on Robinson’s accusation.4®

Henry VII arranged in 1504 for the per-
petual observance of his anniversary at the
abbey “®; but as he founded obits of the kind

41 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 208, no. 50.
field is in St. Peter’s.

“It had been given to his father and to him
(ibid. bdle. 216, no. 10).

43 Ibid. bdle. 201, no. 30.

“4 Ibid. bdle. 245, no. 28.

45 In 1505 the abbot paid £80 of the {100 which
he had been fined for the escape of a felon (Lansd.
MS. 160, quoted in Page and Nicholson, St. Albans
Cathedral).

48 Star Chamb. Proc.
no. 26.

47 It seems unlikely that Ramryge would have
risked incurring further censures from Morton, who
was then chancellor.

48 See below, St. Julian’s Hospital.

49 Harl. MS. 28. The abbot and convent were
to celebrate services on 11 Feb. during the king’s
life, and after his death on the day of his burial, for his
soul and the souls of his late consort, his parents and
children. On these occasions they were to provide
a hearse, cloth for covering, and four waxen tapers
tach weighing 8 Ib., and they were to toll the bells.
{n return they were to receive 100s. a year from the
Abbot and convent of Westminster.

Harpes-

Hen. VIII, bdle.

345

4 409

in seventeen other religious houses,®° he showed
in this matter no special favour to St. Albans.

Of Ramryge’s activities and administration
there is not much definite information. He
undoubtedly bestowed some attention on the
church and the services: he built a beautiful
chapel which still exists, and was responsible
also perhaps for paintings in the church ®!; and
during the early part of his abbacy the celebrated
musician Robert Fairfax is said to have been
organist at the monastery.™

The abbot was apparently straitened for
money in 1511, since he was among those then
put in suit for non-payment of debts to the
late king.58 Financial difficulties 54 were con-
ceivably one reason why Cardinal Wolsey,
who on 2 June 1519 had been made legatine
visitor by the pope,®® used his powers in October
to appoint William Fresell, Prior of Rochester,
coadjutor to Ramryge, then very old and infirm.*¢
That this measure might be for the abbey’s
benefit is evident, but it is not easy to see what
good Wolsey did by exempting Tynemouth
during the life of its prior, John Stonywell, from
the jurisdiction of St. Albans.5?

Ramryge died early in November 1521, and
Wolsey at once set about securing the abbey
for himself. The king on hearing his wish °°
said he would rather give the abbey to him
than to any monk, and immediately wrote to
ask the pope that Wolsey might hold the

monastery in commendam.5® The appoint-

50 As well as in the two universities (Har’. MS.
1498, fol. god., &c.).

51 Page and Nicholson, S¢. Albans Cathedral, 12,
n. I.

52 Dict. Nat. Biog. Fairfax was here apparently in
1502, but afterwards entered the king’s service. He
was buried in the abbey, where his grave slab still
exists.

53 L, and P. Hen. VIII, i, 1639.

54 In the convocation of the province of Canter-
bury held in 1523 Wolsey, who had then had
St. Albans for about eighteen months, was left to
decide what proportion of its usual amount of subsidy
the monastery should give, as it had previously fallen
into debt and could not pay its contribution (ibid.
iii, 3239). A list of the abbey’s creditors and the
sums due to them in S. P. Hen. VIII, xxvi, fol.
68-74d., shows that the house was indebted at
Ramryge’s death, but unfortunately leaves the extent
uncertain. The accounts are not at all clear: they
profess to give the sums owed at Michaelmas 1522,
but money borrowed on 20 Oct. 1522 is included ;
and among the old debts, which should mean those
contracted under Ramryge, there is one of £50 for
the election of the new abbot.

55 T. and P. Hen. VIII, ili, 510.

56 Ibid. 487.

57 Ibid. 510.

58 Communicated to him by Pace (ibid. 1759) the
day after the monks had asked for the congé d’élire.

59 Ibid. 1896.

§2

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

ment *° was made simply to increase Wolsey’s
income with an almost cynical disregard for
the monastery’s rights and welfare. The car-
dinal’s residence as head engaged in the
administration of the house was out of the
question, an occasional visit was all that could
be expected. Naturally the connexion with
so powerful a person as Wolsey was not devoid
of advantages. Before he held the abbey,
it is said, the king’s purveyors had been accus-
tomed to have 300 or 400 qrs. of wheat yearly
from the town and liberty, an infraction of the
charter of Edward IV which Wolsey would not
allow. He intervened also on behalf of the
privileges of the house when the clerk of the
market of the king’s hospice tried to exercise
his functions in the town while Henry was
staying at the abbey.™ But the benefits
received by the monastery, which were appa-
rently all comprised in the cardinal’s protection
and the plate he presented to the convent,®4
sink into insignificance before the drawbacks
of the position. So little attention was paid by
Wolsey to the affairs of the house that in his
time the abbey was involved in debts amounting
to 4,000 marks through one of its officials,
Robert Blakeney. The utter selfishness of his
attitude was strikingly displayed when he fell

6° The mandate for restitution of temporalities of
7 Dec. 1521 (L. and P. Hen. VIII, iii, 1843) recites
that the abbey had been commended to Wolsey by
the pope, but as a matter of fact certain formalities
had not been completed at the death of Leo X, and
the papal bull was not issued until 8 Nov. 1522
(Rymer, Foed. (Orig. ed.], xiii, 775). Pope Adrian
in May had given Wolsey leave to receive the
revenues of St. Albans as if it had been already
granted in commendam (L. and P. Hen. VIII, iii, 2260).

81 It has been doubted whether he ever stayed
there, but he probably did once or twice. The pay-
ments of William Seyntpeir on the king’s business
in 1524 include costs of riding to the More and
St. Albans to get money from the cardinal (L. and P.
Hen. VIII, iv, 167). It seems probable that Wolsey
was at St. Albans in 1526, for the accounts of the
receiver-general of the abbey from Michaelmas 1525
to Michaelmas 1526 include maintenance of the
dean, sub-dean, chaplains, clerks and boys of the
cardinal’s chapel for seven weeks and four days in
August and September (Aug. Off. Misc. Bk. cclxxii,
fol. 64). The king seems to have stayed at the abbey
at some time (Dugdale, Mon. ii, 207), possibly in
1525 (L. and P. Hen, VIII, iv, 1736 [12]; Aug.
Off. Misc. Bk. cclxxii, fol. 63 d.), and if so the cardinal
would certainly have been there.

6? Articles on which he was convicted under the
Statute of Praemunire (Dugdale, Mon. i1, 207).

83 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 207.

54 Tt consisted of a basin and ewer, parcel gilt, two
standing pots of silver, parcel gilt, two salts with one
cover, gilt, and a standing cup with cover, gilt (L. and
P. Hen. VIII, iv, 6748).

65 In a letter of 1535 this is said to have happened
in the last abbot’s days (ibid. ix, 1155).

into disgrace. In 1529 he granted an annuity
of 200 marks out of the abbey’s lands to Viscount
Rochford, Anne Boleyn’s brother,® and if it
be argued that in this matter he could not help
himself, that excuse cannot be urged for his
attempt to get a pension for himself from St.
Albans.*? He resigned the abbey to the king
on 17 February 1530, but the house was not
treated as vacant until his death at the end of
the year.®

Robert Catton, Prior of Norwich, became
abbot in March 1531.7 A condition of the
appointment to the abbacy seems to have been
the cession of La Moor Manor to the Crown,”
and this was done in September by the abbot,”
who received in exchange the property of the
priories of Pré and Wallingford which had been
suppressed by Wolsey. An annual fair of three
days at St. Albans and the advowsons of the
church of Aston Rowant and chapel of Stoken-
church, co. Oxon., granted by Henry to the
abbey in October 1§32,”8 may have been intended
to make the bargain fairer.

Catton, though ready enough to oblige those
in authority, offered some resistance to the
attempt made in 1534 to obtain the fee farm of
one of the monastery’s manors for William
Cavendish, Cromwell’s servant. Such a grant,
he told Cromwell, might cause a claim from the
donor’s heirs and the loss of the manor to the
abbey; if this difficulty were overcome, he
would do what Cromwell wanted.74 The in-
denture was drawn up, but Cavendish in the end
was baulked by the convent, who, in spite of
Dr. Lee’s persuasions, refused to seal a deed so
prejudicial to their house.7§

The religious changes had some supporters
at the abbey: the archdeacon was praised to
Cromwell in the spring of 1535 as one of the only
two in the liberty to manifest the full truth in
their preaching.” But it is not likely that
many were as ardent as he in the cause, or the

86 L. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 6115.

87 Ibid. 6181, 6182, 6224.

88 Ibid. 6220.

9 29 Nov. (Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey
[Dent’s ed.], 243-8). The convent asked for leave to
elect on 3 Dec. 1530 (L. and P. Hen. VIII, v, 28 [ii]).

0 L. and P. Hen. VIII, v, 28 (i).

1 «Clause declaring the obligation that if A. B.
prior of St. Albans be elected abbot of that monastery,
within twenty days after he shall suffer... . all
that shall be devised by the king’s council for the full
assurance of the manors of More and Tyttenhanger
to the king’s use’ (ibid. 78).

™Tbid. 405. The agreement was made in
September, in November the abbot ceded the
manors, and in December received the property in
exchange (ibid. 275 ; 627 [24]).

73 Tbid. v, 1499 (26-7).

™ Ibid. vii, 1125.

% Ibid. 1249.

7 Ibid. viii, 407.

410

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

monastery would have had a better report from
John ap Rice, who with others visited it for the
king in October.””?_ He merely states that ‘ they
found little at St. Albans, altho’ there were
much to be found.’ 8 This grudging admission
that no scandals had been discovered is good
evidence that the convent as to morals was
impeccable. Probably little fault could have
been found too with the standard of culture
there. Six of the community were at Oxford
in 1§29-30,”® and Leland mentions that when
he visited the abbey (about 1535) the treasures
of the library were displayed to him by a monk
of polished learning, much given to the study
of all past ages.8° The monastery deserves
some credit, moreover, for the printing done at
St. Albans between 1534 and 1538, for John
Hertford had his press in the precincts of the
abbey, and published certainly one book at the
abbot’s request.8t Where the house was un-
satisfactory was on its financial side, and after
the visitation and the rules then imposed, as
regards the relations of the abbot and monks.
Catton told Cromwell on 22 January 1536 ®
that his position was ‘ so intricate with extreme
penury, daily calling of the old debts of the
house, daily reparations as well within the
monastery as without, and most of all encum-
bered with an uncourteous flock of brethren,’
that it was impossible for him to continue in
such a case, and he asked for relaxations of
some injunctions. Shortly before or after this
letter the prior and seventeen monks wrote to
Sir Francis Brian,™ saying that they had begged
the abbot to devise a remedy for the decay and
misery of the abbey, but he had taken it ill, and
they had therefore applied to Brian to bring
about the desired reforms through Cromwell,
the visitor-general. They asked that the abbot
should not be permitted to make Robert
Blakeney receiver-general, as he was most unfit
for the office; that he might not waste or sell
the convent’s woods without their consent, and
that sales lately made might be stopped ; that
he should show how much more or less the
monastery was in debt than when he became
abbot; that the convent might not be forced to
use its seal to the detriment of the house, espe-
cially for borrowing ‘ any two thousand pounds
or other large sums’ until the old debts were
cleared off; and finally that those who had

7 It was probably during the visitation that the
abbot on 15 Oct. absolved from obedience to the
rule and dismissed William Green or Amphibal and
John Campyon at their own request (Wills, Archd.
of St. Albans, Wallingford Reg. 1, fol. 234 d.).

8 L. and P. Hen. VIII, ix, 661.

7 Aug. Off. Misc. Bk. cclxxiv.

89 De Scriptoribus Britannicis (ed. 1709), 316-17.

81 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 207 ; V.C.H. Herts. ii, 56.

82 TL. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 152.

83 Thid. ix, 1155.

petitioned the abbot might not be punished for
it and expelled. On g April 1536 Richard
Stevenage, the chamberlain, appealed to Brian
again for help,®4 saying that if he did not inter-
fere the abbot would punish them severely ;
that he himself was to lose his office, for the
abbot had forbidden the tenants to pay any
more rents to him, and ‘though this were
grievous to him and contrary to the king’s
injunctions, he would be ready to suffer if the
monastery prospered and were well ordered,
which can never be so long as the abbot can do
as he will’ ; finally he suggested that ‘ a discreet
and circumspect brother’ should be appointed
coadjutor.

Catton may not inspire admiration, he was not
a hero,®* but he is more deserving of respect
than his detractors, some of whom a few months
later were informing against the third prior,
William Ashwell,®* to curry favour with Crom-
well.

They reported that Ashwell, talking of Queen
Anne when she was in the Tower, said that he
trusted ‘ere Michaelmas Master Secretary would
be in the same case, and that he would jeopard
all he was worth to see that day, for he and she
were maintainers of all heresies and new-
fangledness’ ; secondly, that while Ashwell and
others were in the oriel at dinner Stevenage
complained of their fare, which was neither good
nor wholesome, contrary to the king’s statutes,
and Ashwell had said, ‘What should we pass
upon these statutes which be made by a sort of
light-brained merchants and heretics, Crom-
well being one of the chief of them,’ and when
ordered by Stevenage and others to be silent
he added, ‘Why should we pass upon them
that purpose to destroy our religion, let us pass
upon the old customs and usages of our house’ ;
thirdly, that at the shaving-house door he had
questioned a young man named Newman who
wanted to leave the monastery, asking him by
what authority he would depart; Newman
said, by the king’s authority, since all under
twenty-two years of age were to remain no
longer in religion, and he was kept there against
the king’s commandment and his own will; to
this Ashwell rejoined, ‘I marvel that you pass
upon that commandment which was not heard
of this thousand year before the king hath done
it of his high power, contrary to the law of God
and man both, for there is no man can say
against him’; fourthly, that at supper in the
prior’s chamber one night the conversation
turning on the suppression of the religious

houses, Ashwell had said that if the king reigned

84 T. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 642.

85 On an outbreak of the plague at St. Albans in
Oct. 1534 he had retired to Tyttenhanger (ibid.
vil, 1324).

86 Exch. T. R. Misc. Bk. cxx, fol. 78.

411

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

seven years longer he meant to leave only four
churches in England; lastly, that he had dis-
closed secrets of the confessional.

Of the nine witnesses examined 24-8 August
1536,87 one only, Thomas Newman, swore to
the whole truth of the first four articles, another
swore to two and one to the fourth; two had
heard Ashwell say something like the first ;
Stevenage denied the first and third articles,
could not vouch for time and place as regards
the fourth, and gave the following account of
the incident mentioned in the second: some
of those dining in the frater came into the
oriel during refection, and said they would like
some of that meat because theirs was not good ;
Stevenage remarked that by one of the king’s
injunctions, which he thought ought to be kept,
they should all dine together and have the
same food; Ashwell then said, ‘As for the
king’s injunctions I pray you who made them
but a sort of light persons and heretics? Let
us keep well our old statutes as others have
done before us’; to which Stevenage replied,
‘TI think the statutes were made by the king’s
council, therefore I pray let us talk of other
matters.’ Ashwell, as to the second, affirmed
that all he had said was that ‘ neither the king
nor his council will break any laudable customs
of our monastery or do anything to the hindrance
of good religion’; he denied the first, third
and fourth, but had heard several say that only
four religious houses should be left; and he
declared the allegation about the confession to
be false.

The affair looks rather like a continuation
of the intrigue against the abbot, the move
this time being to discredit and cow his party.
Catton was undoubtedly well disposed to
Ashwell,88 whose adversaries were the same as
his. Eight out of the nine witnesses called
against Ashwell were the abbot’s opponents,
and the one exception, Guynett, gave evidence
most damaging to the informers.

The appointment by Cromwell of Stevenage
as prior in the autumn of 15378® boded no good
to Catton. On 10 December Lee and Petre made
a visitation of the monastery, and reported %
that the abbot, from the examination of the
monks and his own confession, could be justly
deprived for breaking the king’s injunctions and
for dilapidations and negligent administration,
but he refused to entertain the idea of sur-

87 Exch. T. R. Misc. Bk. cxx, fol. 79-82.

88 In sending the accused man to Cromwell he
said that he had hitherto regarded him as an honest
man (L. and P. Hen. VIII, xi, 251).

88 Chr. Hales to Cromwell 10 Oct. 1537: ‘The
prior of St. Alban’s lately made by your lordship
desires that he may receive the money of the house
as other priors have done’ (ibid. xii [2], 873).

® Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv, fol. 43, printed in
Dugdale, Mon. ii, 249.

41

rendering the house,” declaring that he would
rather beg his bread all the days of his life.
They asked Cromwell whether they had better
remove him at once, when the house being in
such debt none would take it except for the
purpose of surrender, or whether they should
delay sentence and leave him in suspense until
he should give the abbey into the king’s hands
in order to assure himself a living. The former
course was adopted. Catton was deposed, and
the convent compromitted the election to
Cromwell, who in April 1538 made Stevenage
abbot.®

The ex-abbot is mentioned again in connexion
with his supplanter, for Stevenage in September
declined to seal an indenture providing for
Catton, on the ground that it differed from the
agreement made between them before Cromwell,
and insinuated that Catton was trying to get an
advantage over him.*4

The visitors had not underrated the pecuniary
embarrassments of the house. The new abbot
was actually detained a prisoner by Gostwyke,
the collector of the king’s tenths, and wrote
to Cromwell that he had offered to pay {300,
the utmost he could raise, but was utterly
unable to meet Gostwyke’s demand for first-
fruits.° The weight of debt was becoming
unbearable.

An incident which occurred in October 1539
seems also significant, though in another way.
Stevenage, in obedience to Cromwell’s letters,
then sent to him ‘ John Pryntare,’ in company
with three stationers of London, ‘ to order him
at your pleasure,’ and promised that he would
search for copies of the little book of detestable
heresies that the stationers had showed him.*
The end was not far off when heretical books
were being printed at St. Albans, probably
within the monastic inclosure.*? The abbey
was, in fact, surrendered on § December.®®
Stevenage, or Boreman, as he is henceforth
called, was given a pension of {266 135. 4d. a
year, and all the monks also received annuities.”

91 The surrender was expected at this time. See
John Husee to Lord Lisle (L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii
[2], 1209).

92 [. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (1), 181.

3 Ibid. 887.

4 Tbid. (2), 385.

% Ibid. (1), 182. The farmer of Hexton parson-
age applied to the abbot in vain for £4 due for repairs
(Ct. of Requests, bdle. 2, no. 52).

% 1. and P. Hen. VIII, xiv, 315.

97 John Printer certainly suggests the John Hertford
mentioned above as having a printing-press within
the abbey.

98 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 249-50.

°° L. and P. Hen. VIII, xv, 547. Sums varying
from £5 to £13 65. 8d. were still paid to twenty-
four monks in Queen Mary’s reign (Clutterbuck,
Hist. and Antig. of Herts. i, App. ii).

2.

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The convent at this time numbered thirty-
eight, including the prior. Like others, it had
decreased in the course of years. At the end
of the 12th century John de Cella had fixed the
maximum number of brothers at 100, unless
there was special reason to receive anyone
further1°0 Whether this number was ever
attained before the Black Death is doubtful ;
it certainly was not reached afterwards. In
1380 the community at St. Albans, not counting
the abbot and prior, comprised 52 professed,
2 novices and 2 lay brothers}; there were
51 brothers besides the prior at the abbey in
1396,2 54 in 1401,5 46 in 1451, 48 or 49 in
1476,5 atleast §4 in 1492,° and 48 with 6 others
at Oxford in 1529-30.”

Boreman, who bought the site of the abbey
from Sir Richard Lee in November 1551 ® for
the grammar school he had been authorized to
establish,® made it over in December 1556 to
Queen Mary, no doubt for the refoundation of
the monastery,!® but nothing further is heard
of the project.

The income of the abbey was reckoned in the
Valor of 1535 as {2,102 75. 1d. clear4 Of
its extensive possessions the largest amount
lay in the county of Hertford, where in 1303
and 1401 the abbot held six knights’ fees in
the hundred of Cashio.2 From the episode of
the fight at St. Albans in 1142, when King
Stephen captured William de Mandeville, it
appears that the holders of land by military
tenure under the abbey at that time had
quarters within the precincts to defend it when
necessary. The knights of St. Alban, it is
related, offered valiant resistance to the king
until he made satisfaction to the church
for its violation by his followers. One of the
knights sent by Abbot Roger in 1277 to Wor-
cester for the war against the Welsh was Sir
Stephen de Chenduit,!4 while John de Gorham,
William Tolomer and Richard Baccheworthe
are mentioned among the six knights who went

100 Gesta Abbat. i, 234.

1 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 81 d.—3 d.

2 Gesta Abbat. iii, 425-6. Priors of cells are
excluded.

3 Ibid. 480-1.

4 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 11-13.

5 Ibid. ii, 145-6. 8 Add. Chart. 33687.

7 Aug. Off. Misc. Bk. cclxxiv. 7

8 Palgrave, Anct. Cal. and Invent. (Rec. Com.), i,
420.

9 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 56-8.

10 Close, 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary, pt. ii, m. 13.
The property was to be devoted to such pious uses
as Cardinal Pole should advise for the salvation of
Boreman’s soul.

Ul Ygbr Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 451.
only remains.

12 Feud. Aids, ti, 425-7, 444-

13 Matt. Paris, Hist. Ang/. (Rolls Ser.), i, 270-1.

4 Gesta Abbat. i, 435.

The sum total

to Carlisle in 1299-1300 to do service for Abbot
John de Berkhampstead.6

The convent, as has been already mentioned,
had their own possessions apart from the abbot.
The separation of property seems to have been
a gradual process. Before the Conquest one or
two estates1® had already been allotted for
special purposes, but these were probably ex-
ceptions. In the early part of the 12th century
the abbot and convent seem to have received
their maintenance from the same property, the
revenues being divided between them ina fixed
proportion.” Shortly afterwards, however, the
various offices of the obedientiaries began to be
endowed with separate estates. Thus Abbot
Geoffrey gave to the office of kitchener the
manor of ‘Esole’#® (St. Albans Court in
Nonington, Kent) and Abbot Ralph Gubiun the
manor of Shephall!® (Herts.). The offices of
sacrist,2° hostillar, chamberlain, refectorer, in-
firmarer and almoner# each received its own
estate, which was augmented from time to time.
An important readjustment of property was
made in 1363 by Abbot Thomas de la Mare.”
The kitchener’s office was then especially
needy,” for its income was {181 and its expenses
£255 8s. 8d. The abbot reduced its charges
about {51 a year by relieving it of the pensions
payable to four scholars at Oxford and four
monks at Redbourn, and of the maintenance of
seven monks at the abbey; while he increased
iis permanent revenues about the same amount
by an allotment of lands. He effected, too,

15 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, App. D, 329.

16 Childwick for the food of the younger monks
(Gesta Abbat. i, $4), Westwick for the monks’ table
(ibid. 64), Redbourn for their clothing (ibid. 52).

7 Ibid. 74. There were fifty-three ‘ferms’ of
46s. Of these fifty-two were divided between the
cellarers of the monks and ‘curia,’ the first receiving
33s. and the other 13s. Out of the monks’ porticn
3s. a week went to carriers who brought the food
from London and elsewhere.

18 Gesta Abbat. i, 74. 19 Tbid. 107.

20 For the property of this office see Cott. MS.
Jul. D iii.

21 Lansd. MS. 375 gives an account of the almoner’s
property.

22 Cott. MS. Claud. E iv, fol. 250d.-2d. The
mutual payments of abbot and convent here recorded
are very interesting. Among others are the follow-
ing: the kitchener received from the abbot rent
from his manors called ‘ kitchener’s ferm,’ amounting
to £75 135., toll-corn from Sopwell mill, from the
abbot’s kitchen a dish daily, from his cellarer daily
4 gallons of ale, money in lieu of fowls and eggs,
altogether a sum of £96 a year; the abbot received
from the kitchener an allowance of food priced at
£13 165. 8d. a year, pittances worth £52 annually,
20 marks from Wingrave Church, and a mark for a
Christmas present. The infirmarer paid the abbot
yearly £12 16s. 8¢., of which £10 was for wine.

23"Thomas had had personal experience of the
difficulties of this office (Gesta Abbat. ii, 374-5).

413

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

various rearrangements of the possessions of
other obedientiaries.

In 1529-30% all the offices*® were seques-
trated, and the monks were receiving stipends :
the prior {40, the sub-prior {11, 47 brothers
sums ranging from {8 135. 4d. to £6 135. 4d., the
total amounting to {416 135. 4d. Six students
at Oxford had each f10. The expenses for
illness 26 were {30 175. 11d. Fees and wages,
such as to the chief steward, solicitor, the
abbot’s secretary, the organist 2” of the church
and others cost {74 13s. 6d. The household
servants received {43 16s. They numbered
thirty-five, and included a clerk of the
kitchen and three engaged in the work of
the kitchen, two butlers, three poor men to
assist the brothers celebrating mass, an
attendant for the sick, another for one
particular invalid, the prior’s carver, butler
and the keeper of his horses, two brewers,
people making the monks’ clothes, and wash-
ing the linen of the convent and church,
the keeper of the church clock and bells, and
of the convent’s firewood in the oriel. Liveries
due to officers and servants were reckoned
separately and cost {75 10s. 4d. Alms on anni-
versaries and for the soul of King Offa came
to {2; diet of 12 poor men praying daily for
King Offa’s soul, {17 125. 84d.; payments to
the king and pope, {48 Is.; annuities, £138
19s. 4d.; cutting and carting wood for the
convent’s use, {45 135. 0}d.; mowing and
making hay, {7 8s. 10d.; shoeing the convent’s
horses, {14 os. 8d.; purchases of wax, oil and
wine, {19 185. 7d. ; repairs, {105 25. 3d. Under
necessaries, which cost {55 15s. 14d., are
included charcoal for the dormitory, expenses
of the justices in time of session, cleansing the
stream and ditch, mending the organs, mole-
catching, cords for the bells, mowing nettles
round the monastery, &c., the largest outlay
being {9 7s. 2d. for candles. The money spent
that year amounted altogether to {1,203 os. 54d.
The house must have been rich in treasures.?8

*4 Aug. Off. Misc. Bk. cclxxiv. The folios are
not numbered.

25 They numbered nine in 1525-6: the offices
of the kitchener, chamberlain, refectorer, sacristan,
almoner, infirmarer, and those of spices and of the
ordinances of Abbots Wheathampstead and Ramryge
(ibid. cclxxii).

°6 Sixteen monks exclusive of novices had been ill.

°* Henry Bestney, who received 2 marks a year and
his board.

?8In the time of Henry IV it had 11 rings, 2
containing balas rubies, 7, sapphires, one, a topaz, and
one, a peridot ; 8 other precious stones, probably unset ;
2 gold chalices, 24 others of silver or silver gilt ;
26 phials of beryl or silver, g mitres, some of precious
work, 2 ‘ paxbreds,’ 2 pastoral staves, 8 pectorals, and
§ censers of silver-gilt, &c. (Amundesham, Annales, il,
App. 1). Large additions were made to its plate and
ornaments under Wheathampstead.

At the Dissolution the gold of its brooches and
rings weighed 122} 0z.; of silver-gilt plate it
had 2,990 oz., of parcel gilt 680 oz. and of white
plate 354 0z.”

Aspots oF ST. ALBANS

Willigod,®° 793, died 796

Eadric, 796

Wulsig, 9th century

Wulnoth, probably early roth century

Eadfrith, roth century

Wulsin, mid-1oth century

Zlfric, c. 968, made Bishop of Ramsbury 990,
Archbishop of Canterbury 995

Leofric, 990, died c. 1007

Ealdred, c. 1007

Eadmar, living 1045

Leofstan, surnamed ‘ Plumstan,’ c. 1048, died
1066

Stigand, 1066

Frederic, appointed c. 1066,5! occurs 1072,%7
fled to Ely c. 1077

Paul, appointed 28 June 1077,54 died 11
November 1093 35

Richard de Albini, appointed 1097,5 died
16 May 1119”

Geoffrey de Gorham, elected 1119,°* died
25 February 1146 %

Ralph Gubiun, elected 8 May 1146,° died
5 July 1151”

Robert de Gorham, received benediction
18 June 1151, died 23 October 1166 *
Simon, received benediction 20 May 1167,4

died 1183 4
Warin, received benediction 8 September
1183,47 died 29 April 1195 48

29 Monastic Treasures (Abbotsford Club), 29.

30 For authorities for the sequence and dates of the
first twelve names see above, pp. 368-72.

31 Gesta Abbat. i, 44.

32 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Angl.
(Rolls Ser.), ii, 349-52.

33 He is said in the Gesta Abbat. (i, 44) to have
ruled for twelve years, but this seems a miscalculation.

34 Ibid. 50.

35 Ibid. 64.

36 Ibid. 66.

37 Ibid. 72.

38 Ibid. 73.
Magy. ii, 148).

39 Gesta Abbat. 1, 95.

40 Matt. Paris, Hist. Angi. i, 276.

41 Gesta Abbat. i, 110.

42 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 187.

43 Gesta Abbat. i, 182.

44 Ibid. 183. The royal licence to elect had been
delayed for some months.

45 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 318. The year
given in the Gesta Adbat. (i, 194) is 1188, but this
is obviously a slip. One of Warin’s acts is dated
1186 (Gesta Abbat. i, 205).

48 Gesta Abbat. i, 195.

47 See n. 45.

48 Gesta Abbat. i, 217.

He was prior (Matt. Paris, Chron.

414

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

John de Cella, elected 20 July 1195,* died
17 July 1214 °°

William de Trumpington, elected 20 November
1214, died 24 February 1235 ®

John de Hertford, elected March 1235,°% died
1g April 1263 ®

Roger de Norton, received papal confirmation
g September 1263,55 died 3 November
12g0 56

John de Berkhampstead, elected 9 December
1290,5? confirmed by the pope 13 March
1291,°8 died October 1301 °°

John de Maryns, elected 2 January 1302,
died 23 or 24 February 1308-9 ©

Hugh de Eversden, elected 1309,™ received
papal confirmation 11 February 1310,®
died 7 September 1327 ®4

Richard de Wallingford, appointed by papal
provision 1 February 1328, © died 23
May & 1336 &

Michael de Mentmore, elected 1 June 1336,
confirmed 18 November 1336, died
1349 7

Thomas de la Mare, elected 1349,7 died 15
September 1396”

John de la Moote, elected 9 October 1396,”
died 11 November 1401 7

49 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. ii, 411.

50 Ibid. 576.

51 Gesta Adbat. 1, 253. He was blessed 30 No-
vember (ibid.). 52 Ibid. 300.

53 The congé d’élire was given 28 Feb. (Ca/. Pat.
1232-47, p- 95), the king’s letter to the pope
announcing the election 1 Apr. (ibid. p. 98).

54In the Gesta Abbat. (i, 396) the year is given
as 1260, but that it was 1263 1s shown by Cad. Pat.
1258-66, p. 256.

55 Cal. Papal Letters, i, 393. The king’s order for
the restoration of temporalities is dated 21 Dec. 1263
(Cal. Pat. 1258-66, p. 304).

58 Gesta Abbat. i, 485. 57 Ibid. ii, 7.

58 Cal. Papal Letters, i, 531-2.

59 Gesta Abbat. ii, 50. Here he is said to have
died 19 Oct., but the abbey appears to have been
vacant on the 14th (Cad. Close, 1296-1302, p. 470).

60 Gesta Abbat. ii, §3. Mandate to restore tem-
poralities is dated 12 Aug. (Cas. Pat. 1301-7, P- 53).

61 Gesta Abbat. ii, 108.

62 Before 27 Apr. (Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p- 112).

8 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, 66.

64 Gesta Abbat. ii, 178.

65 Cal, Papal Letters, ii, 269. The election of
29 Oct. 1327 (Gesta Abbat. ii, 18 3) had not been in
form.

88 Gesta Abbat. ii, 293.

87 Cal. Chse, 1333-7» P» 583-

68 Gesta Abbat. il, 300.

89 Cal. Papal Letters, ii, §31.

70 Shortly before 18 Apr. (Cah Pat. 1 348-50,
p- 277) oa 7

1 Order for the restitution of temporalities,
22 Nov. (ibid. p. 430).

72 Gesta Abbat. ill, 422.

73 Ibid. 425-31. 7 Ibid. 479.

William Heyworth, elected 12 December
1401,"5 consecrated Bishop of Lichfield in
1420 76

John Bostock or Wheathampstead, $.T.D.,
elected in 1420,77 resigned 26 November
1440 78

John Stoke, S.T.B., elected January 1441,”
died 14 December 1451 8

John Wheathampstead, re-elected 16 January
1452,°! died 20 January 1465 ®

William Albone, elected 25 February 1465,"
died 1 July 1476 84

William Wallingford, elected 5 August 1476,®°
died June 1492 8

Thomas Ramryge, elected 1492,%7 died 1521 °8

Thomas Wolsey, received the abbey in
commendam 7 December 1521,®* died 29
November 1530

Robert Catton, elected in March 1531,
deprived January 1538 ©

Richard Boreman or Stevenage, S.T.B.,
elected 1538,9 surrendered the abbey
5 December 1539 4

A pointed oval seal of the 12th century %
represents St. Alban seated on a carved throne,
with his feet on a small footstool; he holds

7 Gesta Abbat. ili, 487-8.

78 He was given the see by the pope 20 Nov. 1419
(Cal. Papal Letters, vii, 134), and must have vacated
the abbacy about July 1420, since leave to elect his
successor was given on 5 Aug. (Cal. Pat. 1416-22,
p- 312).

77 Order for the restitution of temporalities,
23 Oct. (Pat. 8 Hen. V, m. 12).

78 Amundesham, Annales, ii, 240.

79 The king assented to the election 15 Jan.
(Cal. Pat. 1436-41, p. 527).

80 Reg. of St. Albans, i, 5.

81 Ibid. 10-18.

82 Ibid. ii, 25.

83 Tbid. 29-35

84 Ibid. 140.

85 Ibid. 141-58.

88 The abbey was vacant 20 June (Add. Chart.
34350). The king’s leave to elect was given 29 June
(Pat. 7 Hen. VII, m. 3).

87 The king assented to the election 16 Sept.
(ibid. 8 Hen. VII, pt. i).

88 The monks asked the king’s leave to elect
12 Nov. 1521 (L. and P. Hen. VIII, iii, 1759).

89 The king’s order for the restitution of tempo-
ralities is dated 7 Dec. (Rymer, Foed. [Orig. ed.],
xili, 760).

90 Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, 243-8.

91 The convent asked for the king’s assent to the
election on 14 Mar. (L. and P. Hen. VIII, v, 166
(28)). ;

%° The king’s leave to elect to the vacant abbacy
was granted 15 Jan. (ibid. xiii [1], 190 (13]).

93 The royal order for the restitution of temporali-
ties was made 10 Apr. (Pat. 29 Hen. VIII, pt. iv,
m. 14).

94 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 249-50.

95 BLM. Seals, lxiv, 58.

415

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

a long cross in his right hand and in his left a
globe and a palm-branch. Legend:

SIGILLUM : SC] ALBANI: ANGLORV : @TOMARTIRIS

The seal of Abbot Simon * (1167-83), also
a pointed oval, shows the abbot arrayed in
vestments and mitre, standing on a platform,
with a crozier in his right hand and in his left
a book.

The seal of Abbot John de Hertford is
attached toa charter of 1258.9 On the obverse,
a pointed oval, is depicted the abbot, mitre on
head, raising his right hand in benediction and
holding in his left, from which hangs a maniple,
a pastoral staff. All that remains of the
legend is the letters

+ ALBAN .

The counterseal, a smaller pointed oval,
shows the martyrdom of St. Alban and the
headsman’s eyes falling into his left hand;
above a hand issuing from clouds holds a crown
above the saint’s head. Legend:

MARTIR OBIT VICTOR PRIVATVR LVMINE LICTOR

The seal of Abbot Thomas dela Mare appended
to a document of 1389 is of pointed oval
shape. The abbot, who wears a mitre and
embroidered vestments, stands in a carved
niche under a triple canopy ; he has in his right
hand his crozier and holds in the other a richly
ornamented book. In a small canopied niche
above is a representation of the martyrdom of
St. Thomas of Canterbury. On tabernacle work
at each side and between two flowering branches
is an elaborately cusped panel containing on
the left St. Alban’s head with a sword across
the neck, on the right a bust, probably of
St. Amphibalus; the field is powdered with
roundels. The corbel is adorned with a carved
string-course and foliage. Legend:

« ».- OME: DEI: GRA: ABBATIS : MONASTERIIL:

SCI : ALBANI

A seal of the early 16th century,” probably
belonging to Abbot Thomas Ramryge, shows
our Lord enthroned and blessing, between two
small canopied niches, that on the left contain-
ing a saint, the other a king wearing a crown
and ermine tippet and holding a sceptre and
orb. The legend is missing.

There is a fine but imperfect seal ad causas
of the 14th century in style, but attached to
a charter of 1510.1 It depicts in a carved and
canopied niche the martyrdom of St. Alban
with the miracle of the executioner’s eyes. In

96 B.M. Seals, lxiv, 59.

87 BLM. Chart. L. F. C. vii, 6.
88 Add. Chart. 19911.

9 Ibid. 18184.

10 Thid. 21377.

the base, upon masonry, is a shield of the
arms of the abbey. Legend:

M[ARTIR ; OB]IT : VICTOR : PRIUATUR : LUM[INE :
LICTOR]

2. REDBOURN PRIORY

The cell of St. Amphibalus at Redbourn was
established as the result of the miraculous
discovery of the remains of St. Amphibalus and
his fellow-martyrs in 1178.1 St. Alban appeared
at night to an inhabitant of St. Albans called
Robert, and told him that he wished to make
known the burial-place of Amphibalus, who had
converted him to Christianity. Robert rose,
was led by the saint to Redbourn, and shown
the spot where Amphibalus and his companions
lay. After marking the place for future identi-
fication, Robert returned with St. Alban, who
disappeared when they arrived at his church.
The story was spread abroad, and in the end
reached Abbot Simon, who sent some monks
with Robert, and set a guard over the ground,
the holiness of which was attested by miracles
of healing. Exploration there was rewarded by
the discovery of several bodies, one of which
was identified as that of St. Amphibalus from
the received account of the manner of his death.
The remains were removed to the abbey, and on
their way were met by a procession of monks
with the shrine of St. Alban, who showed his
joy by wonderful signs.

The foundation by the Abbot of St. Albans
of the cell on the portion of Redbourn Heath
which included the grave of St. Amphibalus
and the chapel of St. James? is left unnoticed,
possibly because it was regarded as part of the
events just recorded,? but the house existed in
the time of Simon’s successor, Warin (1183-95),
who used it as a health resort for the convent of
St. Albans.4 The priory and monks were
plundered unmercifully by the soldiers of Louis
of France on 1 May 1217.5 One of the treasures,
however, a silver-gilt cross containing a piece of
the holy cross, was soon recovered. The man
who, unknown to his fellows, had stolen it was
seized with a fit after leaving the priory, and
became so violent that his comrades had to bind
his hands and take him thus to Flamstead
Church, which they meant to raid. At the
entrance the cross fell from his bosom, and was

1 Matt. Paris, Chrom. May. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 301-8.
The remains, there is little doubt, were those of a
pagan Anglo-Saxon burial. See V.C.H. Herts. i,
256-8. ;

? Gesta Abbat. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 400.

3 An agreement of 1383 concerning the heath
says the priory was built immediately after the trans-
lation of St. Amphibalus (ibid. iii, 260).

4 Ibid. i, 211.

5 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. iii, 16-17.

416

Sr. Arpans ABBEY Simon, Apsor or Sr. Axsans

(12¢h century). (1167-83).

Joun ve Herrrorp, Assor or St. ALBans
Counterseal

(1235-63). SaLBuRN Priory IN STANDON
(1344 century).

CuesHuNT Priory
(12¢h century).

Hertrorp Priory
(134 century).

HERTFORDSHIRE MONASTIC SEALS :—PLATE I

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

picked up by the parish priest, who inquired
what it was. The robbers, recognizing that
their companion’s seizure was a punishment for
sacrilege, were terrified and begged the priest
to take the cross back at once to the monks. It
was possibly to compensate for losses then sus-
tained that Abbot William de Trumpington
(1214-35) gave to the house a beautiful psalter
and ordinal and two gilded shrines. For the
safety of the shrines and the relics in them he
appointed a monk with a colleague to relieve
him to guard them continually. During the
time of this abbot the conventual church was
consecrated by John Bishop of Ardfert.?

The regulations made by Abbot Roger in 1275
with regard to monks who died at Redbourn §
show that there was no cemetery here. The
cell was, as in Abbot Warin’s day, a place where
the monks could have a brief relief from strict
discipline.

The constitutions of Abbot Richard de
Wallingford (1326-35) for Redbourn® aimed
chiefly at preventing too great relaxation of the
tule. The three monks taking their turn there
were to remain a month, and were neither to
go nor return on foot; a brother at Redbourn
who by permission came to St. Albans must be
accompanied by his prior; the brothers were
to go to matins, say together the canonical
hours, and hear the mass of the day, and those
who were priests must not omit for four days to
celebrate mass ; constant transgressors of these
rules were to have their stay shortened; they
were to take the air together in places removed
from public concourse and return in good time
for dinner; they were forbidden to visit
neighbouring houses and friends or go beyond
the boundaries without the prior’s leave, and to
go on foot a mile beyond the priory, or stay the
night anywhere without the abbot’s permission ;
they must not eat before the common meal or
sup in time of regular fast without leave of the
prior, who was to be very careful how he gave
it; their food was to be served daily from the
kitchen of the abbey as for monks at St. Albans ;
the prior and brothers were not to keep hunting-
dogs, hunt, look on at the sport, or leap over
the hedges of their neighbours ; they must not
bring into the house persons of doubtful Treputa-
tion to eat or talk with them, or have inter-
course with such outside.

The arrangement about food did not work
at all well: hot dishes sent from the abbey

° Gesta Abbat. i, 282, 294. The shrines were
those made to receive the remains of St. Amphibalus
and his companions.

"Ibid. 289. An indulgence of forty days was
granted on this occasion.
* Ibid. 452. By tradition the bodies of the monks

dying at Redbourn were brought to St. Albans by the
River Ver.

* Ibid. ii, 202-5.

4 417

were naturally not very palatable when they
reached Redbourn, about 3 miles off, and
when sold at St. Albans fetched little; 30
that the monks at Redbourn were reduced to
all kinds of shifts for their maintenance.’
This state of things was ended by Abbot
Thomas de la Mare" (1349-96), and the sum
of 5s. a week was given in lieu of food.”
He also simplified the matter of the convent’s
supply of fuel, ordaining that they should
have sixteen cartloads of wood at Michaelmas
instead of the two logs a day from 1 November
to 2 February allowed them by his predecessor,
Michael de Mentmore.%® Abbot Thomas did
much for the priory, giving vestments, plate,
furniture and books,!4 rebuilding the chapel of
St. James,!® which had been burned down many
years before,!® and among other improvements
to the buildings 1? constructing a house 18 which
he could use both as a wardrobe and study when
he visited Redbourn. He was very fond of the
place and frequently stayed there, though he
was careful that his presence should not cause
constraint or be burdensome in any way to the
convent.

It was no doubt through his endeavours that
Thomas de Beauchamp Earl of Warwick in
1383 renounced his claim to Redbourn Heath.?°
The dispute on the point had for years # caused
the priory great inconvenience, for the Flam-
stead men, relying on their lord’s support, had
kept up a continual feud with the convent; on
one occasion they had seized the cart with the
monks’ provisions and taken it to Flamstead,
and the prior had been so frightened lest his
food supply might be cut off that he had bought
another less public approach to the priory.”

The stone walls round the outer court were
repaired by Abbot John Wheathampstead
(1420-40), who also gave {7 to the fabric of the
kitchen # and contributed to decorate the chapel

10 Gesta Abbat. ii, 397-8. 1 Ibid,

This seems the inference from ibid. 400.
Bread and ale probably continued to be supplied
from the abbey (Amundesham, Annales [Rolls Ser.],
ii, 206). 8 Gesta Abbat. ii, 398.

4 His gifts included spoons, tables, napkins,
hangings for the hall, graduals, a complete volume of
Legends of the Saints commemorated throughout
the year, red silk curtains for the altar and a frontal
to match and precious frontals and drapery for the
altar in Lent (ibid. 399).

15 Brother John de Bokedene and William Stubard,
a lay brother, carried out this work (ibid.).

16 Thid. 400.

™ He spent 100 marks here in building and
payment of debts (ibid. 391).

18 Thid. 399. 19 Thid. 400.

20 Thid. iii, 259-60.

7! It had gone on in the time of the previous earl,
who died in 1369.

2 Gesta Abbat. iii, 258.

3 Amundesham, Annales, ii, 264, App. A.

53

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

and improve the altar. From the regulations,
however, which he would have introduced in
1439,”5 internal amendment seems to have been
what the house most needed. Sometimes there
were only two monks there, sometimes the place
was left empty. Wheathampstead ordered
that with the prior they must number at least
four, and they were to remain their appointed
time without interruption unless recalled by
their superior; they were to go to the chapel
every day and say together the canonical
service; at festivals mass and vespers were to
be sung,”¢ and to help in the singing two clerks ?”
were to be added to the house, due provision
being made for the expense of the increased
convent 28; St. Amphibalus was to be com-
memorated at Redbourn as at the abbey; the
brothers were each to celebrate mass daily, and
that they might be the readier for their duty
they were to go to bed earlier®® and abstain
from late potations, superfluous repasts, from
roaming about and excessive recreation; they
were to avoid doubtful places while on their
way to the priory and were to bring nobody
into the house from whom scandal might easily
arise. The abbot, moreover, exhorted them to
employ their leisure time there in reading,
learning, or other useful employment to prevent
idleness. These rules in essentials differed very
little from Richard de Wallingford’s, yet they
were so strongly opposed by a section of the
convent at St. Albans as encroachments on their
liberty and novelties that the abbot had to let
the matter drop.®°

Beyond the mention of the prior in 1492%
nothing more is heard of the house until 1535,
when apparently it was already abandoned.

24 Amundesham, Aznales, ii, 200. It was perhaps
the parochial, not the conventual, church, over the
nave of which a chamber was built at this time.

25 Ibid. 203-11.

28 Abbot Thomas had had mass sung there on Sun-
days and the principal feasts (Gesta Abbat. ii, 401).

27 "They were besides to serve the monks at table
and do anything they were asked in reason
(Amundesham, op. cit. ii, 206).

28 The sum of gs. a week for food was allowed,
besides extra bread and ale from the refectory, the
money and the clerks’ stipends being paid by the
master of the works out of the issues of the manors
of Radwell and Burston and messuages in Sleap and
Sandridge assigned to him for that purpose (ibid.).

9 The abbot in 1423 had ordered them not to sit
up too late, since from this cause they omitted to keep
the vigils they were bound to observe (ibid. i, 113).

80 Tbid. ii, 211-12. 31 Add. Chart. 34350.

82 Tt is described as a cell annexed to St. Albans
(Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.], i, 451). The king’s
commissioners in 1§37 returned it as uninhabited
by religious persons (Transcript of Land Rev. Rec.
bdle. 66, no. 3. This document, owing to rearrange-
ment of the class to which it belongs, cannot now be
traced).

The priory received small gifts from time to
time from secular persons,* but as far as can
be seen practically all its resources were derived
directly or indirectly from the abbey. The
tithes of Winslow, co. Bucks., of old belonging
to the almoner, were assigned by Abbot Thomas
de la Mare to Redbourn,*4 which appears to have
held also the manor of Beamonds.®® The place
was said to be worth {9 25. a year in 1535, but
it is impossible to say what was then meant by
the priory.

Priors oF REDBOURN

Gilbert de Sisseverne 9”

Vincent, died January 1248-9 %8

Geoffrey de St. Albans, occurs November
1290 %°

Richard de Hatford, occurs January 1302,
deposed soon afterwards #°

J. Woderove, occurs before 1383 4

William de Flamstead, occurs 1380

William Wylum, occurs October 1396 ® and
December 1401 44

Hugh Legat, resigned 1427

William Bryth, appointed 1427 4

Richard Myssendene, appointed 11 November
1428 4”

33 The secular benefactors are given in Lansd.
MS. 260, fol. 302. Of the donations the chief
were § quarters of wheat from Sir John Bibbesworthe,
kt., 66s. 8¢. from William Hemelhemstead, 20s.
each from Sir Adam Newenham and Alice Lightfoote,
and 20s. to the work of the kitchen, and 7s. for a
pittance bequeathed by Emma Imayne.

34 Gesta Abbat. ii, 413.

35 The site of the house was granted in 1540 with
the manors called ‘the Priory’ of Redbourn and
Beamonds as if they were connected (L. and P.
Hen. VIII, xv, g. 611 [46]).

36 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 451.

37 He was prior at the time of the dedication of
the church, which was performed by John Bishop of
Ardfert in the presence of Abbot William de
Trumpington, and therefore took place between
about 1215, when John settled at St. Albans (Matt.
Paris, Chron. Maj. iv, 501), and 1235, the date of
William’s death.

38 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 112 d.

39 Gesta Abbat. ii, 6-7.

40 Ibid. 53-4.

41 No definite date can be assigned to the trans-
action in which his name appears, viz., the buying
of the new road through fear of the Flamstead men
(ibid. iii, 258). He seems to have been the man
on sub-prior of St. Albans in 1349 (ibid. ii,
381).

“ Cott. MS. D vii, fol. 81d.

3 Gesta Abbat. iii, 258.

#4 Thid. 480.

; 45 «Chron. Rer. Gest.’ in Amundesham, Annales,
i, 13.
46 Ibid.

or Lansd. MS. 375, fol. 26d. He had been
Prior of Beaulieu (Amundesham, Op. cit. i, 30).

418

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Thomas Westwode, occurs 16 January 1452 4
and 25 February 14659

Thomas Albon, occurs 5 August 1476, 30 June
1480 4 and June 1492 ®

3. HERTFORD PRIORY

The Benedictine priory of St. Mary of Hert-
ford, a cell of St. Albans Abbey, was built about
the end of the 11th century + by Ralph de Limesi
for six monks who were to be sent from St.
Albans.2- Ralph gave as endowment a good
hide of land at Hertford, the church of Pirton
with tithe of his land and that of his men and
24 hides of land,® the mill, pasture for the oxen
of the monks’ ploughs with his own and feed for
their pigs in his woods; a carucate of land in
Itchington (co. Warw.) and certain tithes there
and in Ulverley in Solihull (co. Warw.),4
Cavendish (co. Suffolk), Bibbesworth in Kimpton
(co. Herts.), Epperstone (co. Notts.), and ‘ Torp.’

The charter was confirmed between 1108 and
11235 by Henry I, who granted the priory sac
and soc, tol and team, infangthef and its own
court. The monks received from Ralph later
the church of Amwell with tithe, and from his
wife Avice land of her dower in Bradwell, on
condition that she had three corrodies 7 from the
priory while she lived, and that after her death
another monk was added to the convent.
Several other members of the Limesi family
figure as protectors and benefactors. Alan,
Ralph’s son, besides confirming his father’s gifts
to the monks, granted the church of Itchington®;
Gerard, his son,® gave them land in Cavendish
and Itchington and forbade interference with
their jurisdiction in places owned by them”;
John son of Gerard de Limesi™ acquitted their

48 Reg. of St. Albans (Rolls Ser.), i, 12.

49 Thid. ii, 30. 50 Tbhid. 145.

51 Ibid. 228-31. 52 Add. Chart. 34350.

1It is said to have been founded in the time
of Abbot Paul (1077-93) (Gesta Addat. i, 56-7).
Ralph died apparently in 1130 (Hunter, Gt. Roll y
the Pipe 31 Hen. I (Rec. Com.], 60).

2 Lansd. MS. 863, fol. 157d.

3 The land in Hertfordshire was reckoned at £30.
See charter of confirmation by Henry I (ibid. fol.
159d.).

4 See V.C.H. Warws. i, 340, n. 8.

5 When Ranulf was chancellor (Lansd. MS. 863,
fol. 159 d.). a

6 Alan de Limesi’s charter of confirmation (ibid.
fol. 158).

7 She was to have three ‘prebendas’ when she
chose (ibid.).

® Lansd. MS. 863, fol. 158.

9 He occurs in 1161-2 (Red Bh. of Exch. [Rolls
Ser.], 29). 10 Lansd. MS. 863, fol. 158 d.

11 John de Limesi occurs in 1196-7 and 1199-
1200 (Red Bk. of Exch. [Rolls Ser.], 110, 126). He
died in 1212 or 1213 (Rot. de Oblat. et Fin. 1199-
1216 [Rec. Com.], 507).

tenements within his fee of scutage and made
over to them the church of Cavendish,” while
from his sister Amabel de Limesi they acquired
land in Bibbesworth.18

Their possession of the benefits granted was
not always left unquestioned. In the reign
of John they had to prove by their charters
their exemption from services demanded of
them in Amwell by Ralph de Limesi14 About
the same time Wiscard Ledet, owner of the
chapel of Ramerick in Ickleford, disputed their
right to the sum of $s. payable apparently as
tithe from the mill there. The monks, how-
ever, agreed to supply a chaplain to celebrate
mass four days a week in Wiscard’s chapel 15
and were allowed the 5s. and 20d. more.

The question whether the Abbot of St. Albans
or the Bishop of Lincoln ought to have juris-
diction over the priory was settled in 1219,1¢
when it was decided that the prior must be
presented to the bishop and do canonical obedi-
ence to him for benefices in his diocese, but that
he was to be appointed by the abbot, who
also had the right to select and remove the rest
of the convent and to check abuses there.

Gilbert, Earl Marshal, after the accident
in the tournament at Ware, June 1241, was
carried to Hertford Priory, where he died
and his viscera were buried!” Contrary to
expectation, the occurrence was the reverse of
profitable to the house: the earl’s brother
Walter at the time promised the convent a
rent of 60s., but afterwards refused to fulfil his
obligation, and subjected the prior to some
persecution into the bargain.18

Small gifts were occasionally made to the
monks for special purposes. Thus Richard de
Puteo c. 1200 gave them 12 acres of land in
Bibbesworth for their kitchen,!® and in 1258, at
the instance of Abbot John,2® once Prior of
Hertford," a rent of 25. was assigned to
maintain the ornaments and lights of an altar,
probably that of St. Mary, in their church.”

The indulgence of ten days granted by the
Bishop of Lincoln in 1302 to those going to
the altar of St. Theobald in the priory and

12 Lansd. MS. 863, fol. 159.

13 Charter of David de Lindsey (ibid. fol. 159 d.),
who was one of the Limesi heirs (Dugdale, Hist. of
Warwickshire, 343; V.C.H. Herts. iii, 46).

14 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 95.

15 Add, Chart. 15470.

16 Gesta Abbat. i, 275-7.

17 Matt. Paris, Chron. May. iv, 136.

18 Ibid. 495.

19 B.M. Chart. L. F. C. x, 12.
of John de Limesi.

20 Ibid. vi, 1.

21 Gesta Abbat. i, 312.

22 B.M. Chart. L. F. C. vii, 6. Some of the
work of Richard the Painter, 1240-50, was done
here (Matt. Paris, op. cit. vi, 202).

He held the land

419

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

making offerings™ suggests that money was
then needed for building. The fact that in
1318* and 1321” the prior was borrowing
points in .the same direction, though the
extortions of the abbot from the cells at that
time 26 would account for debts.

The prior in May 1309 went abroad,?? pro-
bably to obtain the pope’s confirmation of the
election of Abbot Hugh de Eversden. Another
prior, Nicholas de Flamstead, a notably good
and able man, accompanied Richard de Wal-
lingford, abbot-elect, to the papal court in
1327.28 His connexion with the priory seems
then to have terminated. As cellarer of the
abbey he came to the priory in 1331 to make
provision for the entertainment there of the
justices of Trailbaston.?®

As far as can be judged, the house throughout
the 14th century was quietly prosperous. It
was one of the three cells to give a present
to Abbot Richard in 1327,3° and made its con-
tribution to the expenses incurred by Abbot
Thomas de Ja Mare in obtaining the substitution
of a fixed annual payment for the sums due to
the king and pope, when some cells had to be
excused owing to debt.*! Yet it was not among
the richest of the St. Albans cells: its share of
the above yearly payment was fixed by Abbot
John de la Moote (1396-1401) at 3os., the
smallest but one.*

The house in 1461-2%3 was extremely unlucky
in its prior, Thomas Walden. The payments
made to him within this time and not entered
in his accounts amounted to {50 at least, and
the goods*4 alienated by him, not counting
jewels, to {46 more. The priory was ill able to
stand such malversation of its funds. The
accounts for 1488-9 show that the receipts,
£115 10s. ofd., did not quite cover expenses,%
and in 1497-8 the income of {90 Ios. 3}d. barely
sufficed.36

The priors during this period were not always
well chosen. John Bensted,3? prior in 1489,
apparently left the house {12 poorer than he

3 Lincoln Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, fol. 44.
It was a ratification of the indulgence granted by the
Bishop of Spoleto while papal nuncio in England.

24 Cal. Close, 1313-18, p. 596.

°° Tbid. 1318-23, p.360. 7° Gesta Abbat. ii, 130.

27 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 112.

28 Gesta Abbat. ii, 186-7.

29 Tbid. 222. 30 Ibid. 187. 31 Tbid. 456.

32 Ibid. 468. Hatfield Priory paid the same,
Beaulieu 65. 8d. 33 Mins. Accts. bdle. 865, no. 15.

34 Among these were 3 bowls, 6 spoons, a silver
‘poudyrbok,’ 2 towels, 10 napkins, 2 candelabra,
a pair of sheets, a portifory and certain muniments.

8° Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 1696.

36 Rentals and Surv. R. 277.

37 John Bensted, gentleman, son of Edward Bensted,
esq., master of the game, was received as a monk at
St. Albans 11 July 1470, and was then fifteen years
old (Reg. of St. Albans, ti, 90).

found it28 William Waterman, prior a little
later, had a suit brought against him in Chancery
for appropriating plate valued at 20 marks and
{5 in money entrusted to him by a widow named
Alice Newbury.2® He declared that she had
given them to him to reimburse him for paying
her debts, but this she absolutely denied,
though she acknowledged she owed him § marks
which she professed herself ready to pay on the
restoration of her property. Even if the case
against Waterman was not so bad as it seems,
it was not to his credit.4°

The proportion of income spent in law and
travelling expenses in 1497-8, {11 16s. out of
£90 1os., is also rather significant, considering the
past record of the prior, William Dyxwell.“! The
receipts in 1525-6, {85 155. 94d., were {5 above
the expenditure,” but whether the financial
soundness of the house was due to wise admini-
stration is doubtful. The convent apparently
numbered only four, including the prior, and
£42 had been spent on the kitchen and hospice,“
so that unless food was at famine prices hospi-
tality there must have been on a lavish scale,

The grant of the priory and its property by
the king to Anthony Denny on g February
1538 4 appears to prove that the house was then
already dissolved. Yet from a settlement about
the tithes of Amwell it was presumably still in
existence in July 153948; if so its end was no
doubt delayed till the fall of St. Albans.

Its possessions, in 1297 worth about {30 or
£40 a year,‘” were reckoned in 1535 to be of the
clear annual value of {72 145. 24d.48

38 Sir Edward Bensted, kt., directed in his will in
1517 that £12 should be delivered to the Prior and
convent of Hertford in recompense of such money
and goods as his brother John Bensted found there at
his first coming (W. F. Andrews, ‘Sir Edward
Bensted, kt.,” Bast Herts. Arch. Soc. ii [2], 190).

39 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 151, no. 27—30.

40 There is probably little to be said in his favour.
He was one of the two monks of St. Albans who
behaved with disgraceful violence to Elizabeth Webbe,
Prioress of Sopwell, in removing her from office
(ibid. bdle. 181, no. 4). 41 See St. Albans.

42 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cclxxii, fol. 77.

43 A stipend of £4 was paid to the prior and 4os.
each to three other monks, a mark extra being given
to the one who had charge of the church of St. John.

“4 It is headed expenses of the hospice, but it
clearly corresponds to the payments for the kitchen and
prior’s hospice or guest-house of the earlier accounts.

* Pat. 29 Hen. VIII, pt. ii, m. 19.

“° Add. Chart. 35315. It may be noted that the
commissioners in March 1537 did not take the sur-
render of the house, but sent the prior to the Court
of Augmentations (Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3).

47 The property mentioned in Pope Nich. Tax.
(Rec. Com.) amounts to £29 135. 1 14d., but it does
not include the church of Amwell, which appears,
however, at that time to have been appropriated to the
Priory and was worth £12 (Harl. MS. 60, fol. 30).

*8 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 451.

420

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Priors oF HERTFORD

Ralph, the first prior *

Nigel, c. 1200 °°

William de Sandruge, instituted 1213 (?),
died July 1222 ®

John, instituted January 1223, became
Abbot of St. Albans 1235 54

Richard, instituted 1237 55

Nicholas, instituted 1241 56

Simon, died September 1247 °”

Richard, occurs 1252,5® died 1253 5°

Thomas Martel, instituted 1254-5 ®

William de Hertford, instituted January
1270-1 &

Mark de St. Edmund, instituted September
1276 &

William de Romeseye, instituted 1299 ®

Richard de Hertford, instituted July 1303,%
Richard occurs 1309 ®

William de Kirkeby, instituted 1312 §

John de Walsingham, instituted 1315 °”

William de Kirkeby, instituted 1316 ®

Stephen de Withenden, instituted 1317 %

Richard de Wathamstede, instituted 1318 7°

Geoffrey de St. Albans, instituted 1323 7

Nicholas de Flamstede, occurs 1327

Adam de Doncaster, instituted 1350 7%

Robert Nony, instituted 1352 74

John de Colby, occurs April 1389 7

49 Ralph the prior witnessed the charter of founda-
tion (Lansd. MS. 863, fol. 157d.). He also witnessed
the charter of the founder’s son Alan (ibid. fol. 158).

50 He was contemporary with John de Limesi
(ibid. fol. 159). See also B.M. Chart. L. F.C. x,
12, and Add. Chart. 15470.

51 The Prior of Hertford died in this year (Ann.
Mon. [Rolls Ser.], 41), so that William may have
been appointed then.

52 Matt. Paris, op. cit. vi, 270.

53 R. of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), iii,

54 Gesta Abbat. i, 312.

55 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. ii, 152.

58 Tbid.

57 Matt. Paris, op. cit. ili, 277.

58 Feet of F. Herts. 36 Hen. III, no. 413.

59 Matt. Paris, op. cit. vi, 279. Here called
Richard de Wendene.

8 Lincoln Epis. Reg. Rolls Lexington (Hunting-
don Arch. Anno 1).

61 Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 152.

82 Thid.

® Lincoln Epis. Reg. Inst. Sutton, fol. g2 d.

64 Clutterbuck, loc. cit.

85 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 112.

§ Lincoln Epis. Reg. Inst. Dalderby, fol. 245.

8 Ibid. fol. 249 d. 88 Thid. fol. 250d.

89 Tbid. fol. 252. 70 Ibid. fol. 254d.

7! Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, fol. 365.

Gesta Abbat. ii, 187.

73 Lincoln Epis. Reg. Inst. Gynwell, fol. 345.

7 Ibid. fol. 352.

Ibid. Memo. Buckingham, ii, fol. 357.

421

a large 13th-century vesica.
sented a half-length figure of the Virgin standing,
and holding on her left arm the Child, whose
head is surrounded by a cruciform nimbus.
All that remains of the broken legend is
ere SANCTE. [M]ARIE. [DE.HJERTO. . .

William Wynselowe, occurs 9 October 1396,78
Io January 1397-8,77 October 1398,78
12 December r4o1 7

William Giles, occurs 1420 8

William Ellis, occurs 1423 ®

William Brit, occurs 1429 ®

John Welles, occurs 16 January 1452 8

Thomas Walden, occurs 25 March 1461-
25 December 1462 %4

John Welles, appointed 1463,8° occurs 1465 8

Richard Lamplew, occurs 1476,87 made prior
for life 1 August 1484,8° died 1489 8°

John Bensted, occurs 25 March-29 September
1489 9

William Waterman, occurs c. 1490-3 ® (?)

William Dyxwell, occurs 29 September 1497-
29 September 1498

John Kelyngwurthe, occurs 16 September
1507 and 1511 %

Thomas Hampton, occurs 1512-13,% Feb-
ruary 1520,°° June 1525-June 1526,%” Janu-
ary 1537 * and July 1539

The seal attached to a charter of 15201 is
On it is repre-

4. SALBURN PRIORY IN STANDON
The Benedictine priory of St. Michael of

Salburn in Standon was a cell of the priory of

78 Gesta Abbat. ii, 425.
77 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 345d. Here

no surname is given.

78 Add. Chart. 40755.

79 Gesta Abbat. ii, 480.

80 Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 152.

81 Tbid.

82 He was made Prior of Binham about the autumn

of 1429 (Amundesham, Annales, i, 42).

83 Reg. of St. Albans (Rolls Ser.), i, 10.

84 Mins. Accts. bdle. 865, no. 15.

85 Ibid.

86 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 30.

87 Ibid. 145. 88 Ibid. 268.

89 Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 1696.

90 [bid.

91 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 151, no. 27-30. The

document can only be approximately dated as from
1486 to 1493 or 1504 to 1515.

92 Rentals and Surv. R. 277.

93 Harl. Chart. 75 G 5.

4 Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 152.

95 Dugdale, Mon. iii, 299.

96 B.M. Chart. L. F. C.x,13. No surname given.
97 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cclxxii, fol. 77.

98 Add. Chart. 35477:

99 Thid. 35315.

100 B.M. Chart. L. F.C. x, 13.

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Stoke by Clare. Between 1173 and 1178?
Richard de Clare Earl of Hertford granted to
his monks of Stoke the hermitage of Standon
which William the Anchorite built, that they
might celebrate service there to the honour of
St. Michael, St. John Baptist and St. John the
Evangelist for him and his relatives, saving,
however, the right, peace and quiet of William
the Anchorite.?

It was apparently the earl’s intention to
establish a community of religious there, and the
hermitage was probably for a time a cell of
Stoke, for in the 13th century it was known as
the house of St. Michael of Salburn,® and several
grants 4 were made by various persons to the
‘brothers of Salburn.’ 5

From the beginning of the 14th century
there is no sign of any community here. In
1306 Roger de Castone, chaplain, was made
brother of the Chapel of Salburn,® but as the
expression ‘house’ never occurs again in this
connexion the place had no doubt already
become a free chapel,” and is so named in 1384 §
when the king presented owing to the minority
of the patron. The anchorite William had
successors: Richard le Hermit® of Salburn

obtained papal confirmation for certain gifts
made to him!; Brother John the hermit is
mentioned in the Standon Court Rolls in
13574 and John Benwell, hermit chaplain,
received the hermitage of Salburn in 1398.”
The chapel was leased to different people
by Stoke College # from 1471 to 1516," at first
for 30s. a year, later for 26s. and finally for 20s,

WaRDENS OR CHAPLAINS OF SALBURN

John de Salburn, chaplain, appointed 27 May
1269 16

Roger de Castone,
Ir June 130616

Andrew, chaplain, occurs 1351!”

Robert de Lincoln, king’s clerk, appointed
1384.18

Simon Bynham, chaplain, appointed 1392 ®

John Benwell, hermit chaplain, appointed
1398

chaplain, appointed

A seal of the 13th century, in shape a
pointed oval, shows St. Michael trampling on
the dragon and piercing its head with a long
cross. Legend: s’. Domvs sCI MICAELIS

D’SALEBVRNE.

HOUSES OF BENEDICTINE NUNS

5. SOPWELL PRIORY

The Benedictine nunnery of St. Mary of
Sopwell, near St. Albans, is said by Matthew
Paris to have owed its foundation to the build-
ing by Geoffrey, sixteenth Abbot of St. Albans
(1119-46), of a cell and houses for two holy
women who had settled near Eywood about
1140 in rough shelters made of branches of
trees wattled together! His account cannot be

1 Richard succeeded his father Roger in the earldom
in 1173 or 1174 (Dict. Nat. Biog. x, 397), and
Gilbert Bishop of London, to whom the charter is
addressed, died in 1178.

2 Extract from the register of Stoke by Clare,
printed in Dugdale, Mon. vi, 1658.

3 B.M. Seals, xlili, 13 ; appointment of a warden
of the house of Salburn 27 May 1269 (List of Muni-
ments of Edmund Earl of March in Add. MS. 6041,
fol. 73).

4 These cannot be dated.

5 Add. MS. 6041, fol. 73, no. 5-9, 11-14, 16-18.

§ Tbid. no. 20.

7 On 3 May 1325 the warden of the Chapel of
Salburn asked to be relieved of his charge (ibid. no. 21),
and on 16 May 1334 Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of
Clare, appointed a warden of the C/ape/ of Salburn
(ibid. no. 22).

8 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 488.

9 A hermit of course was not the same as an
anchorite, but the word is often used in the sense of
anchorite.

1 Gesta Abbat. i, 80-2.

altogether correct, for the cell first occupied by
the convent was an ankerhold repaired or
rebuilt by a recluse named Roger? Still, the

10 Add. MS. 6041, fol. 73, no. 7.

Ct. R. portf. 178, no. 44.

12 Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 416. But in this case the
free chapel was apparently granted to a man who
happened to be a hermit or anchorite. There was
probably no longer a hermit in addition to the
chaplain at Salburn.

13 Jn 1415 the priory had been changed into a
college of secular priests.

14 Harl. Chart. 44 I 30-50.

15 Add. MS. 6041, fol. 73, no. 19.

16 He became ‘brother in the chapel of Salburn’
(ibid. no. 20).

17 He is called chaplain of the chapel of Salburn
(Ct. R. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 178, no. 42, m. 2d,).

18 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 488.

18 Ibid. 1391-6, p. 241. He was granted the
chapel or hermitage of St. Michael, Salburn, on condi-
tion that he stayed there and celebrated service.

20 Ibid. 1396-9, p. 416. 71 B.M. Seals, xliii, 13.

? Grant of Henry de Albini (Dugdale, Mon. iii, 365,
no. li). It would almost seem that in the Gesta
Abbat. the origins of Markyate and Sopwell have
been confused. There Markyate Priory (op. cit. i,
98-193) is said to have arisen through the occupation
of the hermitage of Roger, a former monk of St.
Albans, by a saintly recluse called Christina, for whom
Abbot Geoffrey built a house. But in reality Mark-
yate was not dependent on St. Albans, as it would
have been if founded by the abbot, and as Sopwell was.

422

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

house apparently arose in Geoffrey’s time,®
and as very early in its history it became
dependent on St. Albans, the abbot was pro-
bably concerned in its foundation,‘ with the
object no doubt of accommodating the nuns
who existed at St. Albans Abbey through the
Saxon period down to about this date.

While Geoffrey was abbot the cemetery of
the nuns was consecrated by Bishop Alexander,
probably Alexander Bishop of Lincoln (1123-48),
and it was then ordained that without the
consent of the abbot none might enter the con-
vent, the number of which was limited to
thirteen.5 Geoffrey is also said to have directed
that the nuns for their safety and good name
were to be locked in at night under the abbot’s
seal, and that maidens only were to be received
into the community.®

Among the earliest grants to Sopwell were
those of Henry de Albini? and his son, the
former giving in frankalmoign 2 hides of land
in his manor of Cotes, in Cardington parish, co.
Bedford,® and the other adding a virgate in the
same place when his sister Amicia became a
nun at Sopwell ®; Roland de Dinan’s gift to the
nuns of half a hide in Ickleford; Richard de
Tany’s?° grant of land called Black Hide in
the soke of Tyttenhanger"; that of Hugh de
Keynes}? of a hide in Croughton, co. Northants.8
Other benefactions included assarted land
in Shenley, the yearly allowance of 50s.

3 Henry de Albini’s gift was made for the souls of
the Conqueror and his sons, so that it was probably
not earlier than 1135, while the wording of the
grant ‘to the work of the cell and the nuns’ suggests
that the house had just been established. The gift
of Henry’s son Robert to Sopwell was witnessed by
Abbot Geoffrey (Dugdale, Mon. iii, 365, no. iil).

4 See St. Albans.

5 Charter witnessed by the bishop and the abbot
(Gesta Abbat. i, 81-2). The rule as to numbers was
perhaps made in view of the convent’s income, to be
set aside if this increased ; it was certainly disregarded.
Abbot John blessed fourteen nuns at Sopwell in 1212
and there were at least nineteen here in 1338 (ibid.
i, 2325 li, 212). 6 Tbid. i, 81.

7 He was a benefactor of St. Albans (Dugdale,
Mon. ii, 220). 8 Ibid. iii, 365. 9 Ibid.

10Tt is witnessed by his son and heir Reginald,
probably the Reginald de Tany who occurs in 1156
(Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hund. of Hertford, 34).

1 Dugdale, Mon. iii, 365, no. vi.

12 Hugh de Keynes occurs in 1140 (Baker, Hist. 9,
Northants, i, 350). 13 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 5065.

4 Confirmation temp. Henry III by grandson of
donor (ibid. B 3218), Ralph de Chenduit, who
occurs temp. Henry II (Hearne, Black Bk. of Exch.
i, 208). The nuns also received in the 13th century
rents in St. Albans and elsewhere (Anct. D.[P.R.O.],
A 996, 1140, 1152, B 1253 Cal. of Chart. in
Bodleian Lib. 677; Cal. Pat. 1272-81, p. 4593
Cart. Misc. Augment. Off. vol. xv, no. 67), and land
between Eywood and the nuns’ orchard from Warin
de Redbourn (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], B 1371).

from the issues of Hertfordshire, granted in
1247 by Henry III to support a chaplain cele-
brating daily the mass of the Virgin, a rent of
5s. in West Wycombe received in 128118 from
Henry de Norwyco, whose daughter Philippa
was a nun at Sopwell in February 1266-7, and
was then promised by Abbot Roger the first
livery to fall vacant of the three called the
Maundy of St. Mary, delivered daily from the
abbey’s refectory and kitchen.1”

The convent, apparently not satisfied with
its dependent position, on one occacion tried to
elect the prioress. On the death of Prioress
Philippa, c. 1330, they talked the matter over
among themselves, and the majority decided
on Sister Alice de Hakeneye® The Abbot of
St. Albans hearing what had occurred sent
Nicholas de Flamstede, the prior, to the priory
unexpectedly. Hesaid that although the abbot
had the right to select their head he wished to
hear their opinions, and asked each to state
her choice in writing. Sixteen and more gave
their votes for Alice de Hakeneye, about three
for the sub-prioress, Alice de Pekesden.
Nicholas, however, by previous instructions
from the abbot, declared Alice de Pekesden
prioress and installed her. She was probably
indeed the best fitted for the post, for she is
said to have been more zealous for religion
than all the rest.

A glimpse of the state of the house twenty
years later is afforded by the injunctions issued
by Abbot Michael in 1338 after a visitation.2®
These order that the nuns were to sing the mass
of St. Alban once a week with a few exceptions ;
that no sister undergoing the penance of silence
was to be debarred from religious exercises or
from seeing mass celebrated; that the custom
of the chaplain of our Lady to help the confessor
at certain services was to be observed; that
when it was time to rise the sub-prioress was to
ring the bell in the quire and no one was to leave
the dormitory before without permission, all must
then get up and attend the mass of our Lady,
and after this sit in the cloister occupied with
their private devotions until Prime, at which
all except the sick were to be present, then they
should attend the chapter and in the interval
until their meal go about their work ; the doors
of the garden and parlour were to be closed
when curfew was sounded at the abbey, and the

16 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 312.

16 Cal. Pat. 1272-81, p. 459.

7 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 339, App. D.

18 Gesta Abbat. ii, 212.

19 He said that he had heard that certain good
customs that used to be observed by them were now
omitted, while various abuses were maintained, and
then ordered the observance of the customs as
renewed by him (Dugdale, Moz. iii, 365-6, no. vi).
Also printed and translated by Riley in Gesta Abdat.
ii, App. D, pp. 511-19.

423

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

door of the garden should not be opened before
Prime; that in chapter only three persons
should speak—the president, sub-prioress or her
substitute, and the sister charged with an
offence; those disobedient to the prioress in
chapter were to be put on bread and water for
the day ; that all who broke the silence ordered
by their rule should acknowledge their fault in
chapter and receive regular discipline, and if
they did not do so voluntarily they should be
charged by the guardian of the order and have
the hardest penance; that those who quarrelled
and thus created disorder should not be spoken
to and be in penance for three days; that the
sisters were not to come into the parlour to
speak to secular persons except with neck and
face covered with kerchief and veil as ordained
by their order; that only persons of good fame
were to be allowed to enter the priory and were
never to eat in the nuns’ rooms without the
abbot’s special permission; that workpeople
such as tailors and furriers employed at the
priory must be respectable, and should have a
place near the cloister set apart for them, and
were never to be called into the rooms; that
nuns who were ill were to be in the infirmary
according to the custom formerly observed ;
the prioress was forbidden to give leave to the
nuns to remain with guests for the night and
the dormitory was to be occupied by the sisters
only. These rules perhaps suggest precautionary
measures rather than indicate great lack of
discipline.

The orders given by Abbot Thomas”® (1349-96)
to the Warden or Master of Sopwell show
the necessity of more care: henceforth no man,
secular or regular, was to be allowed to enter the
nunnery without the abbot’s permission, and
then not before Prime had been sung, and he
was not to stay after the bell had been rung for
supper at St. Albans; and the master himself
was always to enter and leave in the company of
others and not to remain longer than the time
fixed above, except in special circumstances.

There are occasional references to individual
nuns that are not without interest. Agnes
Paynel figures in the Book of Benefactors of
St. Albans™ for her gift of three copes with
beautiful orphreys, chasuble, tunic and dalmatic
of black satin, powdered with stars and the
letters A and P in gold, for her monetary con-
tributions to various works of the abbey and a
gold ring offered to St. Alban’s shrine. Letitia
Wyttenham, prioress 1418-35, also ranked as a
benefactor™ on account of her industry in
embroidering and mending the vestments of
St. Albans. Cecilia Paynel and Margaret Euer,
nuns of Sopwell, were admitted to the fraternity

20 Gesta Abbat. ili, 519.
21 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 104d.
23 Thid. fol. 148 d.

of St. Albans in 1428 on the same day as the
Earl of Warwick’s household. Lady Margaret
Wynter made regular profession at Sopwell in
June 1429,"! and offered a girdle enriched with
precious stones worth 10 marks.» Two more
nuns mentioned in the 15th century were of
London citizen families, and received bequests,
the one 26 of a mark, the other®? of 2 marks a
year.

Visitors of high rank were not uncommon at
the time of Margaret Wynter’s admission.
The Duke of Gloucester in 1427 and Cardinal
Beaufort in 1428 called at the nunnery on their
way from St. Albans to Langley,?* and the
Duchess of Clarence was apparently staying at
Sopwell in 1429, when she was received into the
fraternity of St. Albans.® One of the convent’s
guests was the cause of an alarming attack on
the priory in 1428.9 William Wawe, the
famous robber-captain, expecting to find a
certain Eleanor Hulle*! there, broke into the
place with his men one night. After terrifying
the nuns with threats they began to plunder,
when hue and cry was raised by an energetic
man in the village,®* and the robbers made off.

Abbot William Wallingford on 8 March
1480-1 commissioned John Rothbury, the
archdeacon, and Thomas Ramrugge, sub-prior
of St. Albans, to visit the house of Sopwell and
remove the prioress, Joan Chapel, from her
office on account of her age and infirmities,
putting Elizabeth Webbe in her place.33 The
abbot must have regretted his choice after-
wards. When Rothbury some years later
deposed her she brought an action against him

23 Amundesham, Annales, i, 67.

*4 The title ‘Lady’ was used then in a less re-
stricted way than at present.

#5 Amundesham, Annales, i, 40.

26 Joan Welles, granddaughter of Richard Odyham,
grocer of London (Sharpe, Cal. of Wills proved in Ct.
of Husting, London, ii, 474).

27 Amy daughter of John Godyn, grocer of London
(ibid. 564-5).

28 Amundesham, op. cit. i, 13-28.

29 Tbid. 40. From this passage it has been
imagined (Dugdale, Mon. iii, 363) that the duchess
was a nun at Sopwell, but this appears to be a mistake.
She intended in 1429 to settle near Syon Monastery
to receive spiritual benefits from the priests there
(Cal. Papal Letters, viii, 149).

30 Amundesham, op. cit. i, 11.

31 This lady was of some influence at the court of
Henry V. She was partly instrumental in intro-
ducing to the king’s notice Thomas Fischborn, the
monk of St. Albans who obtained a dispensation to
become a secular priest (ibid. 27). In 1417 she was
in the service of Queen Joan and received a pension
of §0 marks (Ca/. Pat. 1416-22, p. 304). She is
mentioned among the benefactors of St. Albans, see
Dugdale, Mon. ii, 222.

** Roger Husewyf, who took priest’s orders in
1430 (Amundesham, op. cit. i, 49).

%3 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 239.

424

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

in the Court of Arches and was reinstated.
Upon this two monks of St. Albans, sent by
Rothbury, came to the nunnery, broke down
Elizabeth’s door with an iron bar, beat her and
put her in prison.# She then appealed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury as chancellor,®> and
it can hardly be doubted that she was the
authority for some of Morton’s charges against
St. Albans. In his letter to the abbot, 5 July
1490,° he accused him of changing the
prioresses not only at Pré but at Sopwell as he
pleased, and deposing the good and religious
for the benefit of the evil and vicious, so that
religion was cast down and needless expense
caused. He also said that the monks put in
as wardens used their opportunities to dissipate
the goods of these houses, and he no doubt had
grounds for hisstatement. In 1500-1 Elizabeth
Prioress of Sopwell, probably the same Elizabeth
Webbe, complained to the chancellor’ that a
deed of lease by the convent had been secretly
altered to their disadvantage by Thomas
Holgrave, keeper of the priory, and his clerk,
who had been bribed by the tenant.

The house was dissolved in March or April
1§37 88 under the Act of 1536. Very different
reports of Sopwell were given by John ap Rice
in October 1535,29 and the commissioners sent
to receive the surrender in March 1537,4° the
first telling Cromwell that, as he would see by
the ‘comperta,’ it would be well to suppress
the priory, the others declaring that the five
nuns composing the convent were of good
character.

There were then two children living at
the priory, probably for instruction by the
nuns.4t

A pension of {6 a year was assigned to the
prioress, Joan Pygot#; the other nuns, a
priest and four servants received {10 $s. 8d.
among them. The buildings, which were in

34 Karly Chan. Proc. bdle. 181, no. 4.

35 The petition is not dated, but the archbishop
addressed is obviously Morton (chancellor 1486-93),
and not Warham (chancellor 1504-15), because
Rothbury predeceased Abbot William de Wallingford
(see Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 97, no. 6), i.e., he died
before 1492.

36 Wilkins, Concilia, ili, 632.

37 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 245, no. 28.

38 The date is given in Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII,
no. 1606, as 14 April, but the surrender appears
from L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (1), 571 (1), to have
taken place in March.

39 L. and P. Hen. VIII, ix, 661.

© Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

41Jn the Warden’s Accounts of 1446 there is
entered the payment of 22s. 6d. from Lady Anne
Norbery for commons of her daughter, apparently a
boarder here (Rentals and Surv. R. 294).

# Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.
paid in 1555 (Add. MS. 8102, m. 9).

48 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

It was still

4 425

a fair state of repair, contained little of much
value beyond the lead on the roofs, priced at
£40, and the four bells, reckoned at {18.44 The
plate consisted of a silver-gilt chalice and
paten weighing 14 0z.° The furniture of the
church,*® including an alabaster table, the
hanging of the quire, two altar frontals,4? and
a copper cross, was sold for {1 15s. 6d.; the
timber-work of the quire for 4os.; the stone in
the church with the vestry staff for 6os.; and the
stuff in the parlour for 1os.48

The net income of the priory was reckoned
in the Valor of 1535 at {40 75. 10d.,4® at the
suppression at {46.50

PRIORESSES oF SOPWELL

E., occurs 1233 5

Philippa, occurs September 1310, 1324,5°
and 1327 54

Alice de Pekesden, appointed c. 1330 *5

Margaret Fermeland, occurs February 1341 *

Joan, occurs 6 January 1370-1 5? and March
1383-4 °°

Matilda de Flamstead, occurs 28 September
1388,5° resigned or was removed before
20 September 1412 °°

44 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

4 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 63. The sum
total of goods and plate came to {11 8s. gd. ; in the
inventory of the commissioners made just before the
suppression (K.R. Church Goods, $2) it was esti-
mated at only 76s. 11d, but the list of goods
included neither timber nor stone.

46 The vestments were of the poorest kind : a cope
valued at 12¢., a vestment of old black velvet priced
at 25. 4¢., two tunicles of baudekin, two others
very old, a vestment of black cloth, and another for
Lent valued at 16¢., 25., 12¢. and 6d. respectively
(ibid.).

47 'The frontal of an altar, 20d., the front of another
altar, 12d. (Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 63).
The second altar was probably that of St. Katharine
mentioned in 1445 (Herts. Gen. and Antig. ili, 140).

48 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 63.

49 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 451. The sum only
is given and not the sources from which it was
derived ; possibly the difference of nearly £6 is
caused by the annuities being reckoned in one case
and not in the other.

50 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

51 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), D 285.

52 Ibid. D 611.

53 Cart. Misc. (Aug. Off.), vol. xi, no. 119.

54 Plac. de Banco R. 269, m. 12d.

55 At the death of Philippa (Gesta Abbat. ii, 212).

56 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), D 1286.

57 Thid. A 5443.

58 Ibid. D 419.

59 Ibid. D 463.

60 Alice Charleton then bequeathed 6s. 8¢. to
Matilda Flamstead, late Prioress of Sopwell (Herts.
Gen. and Antig. i, 47). She died in Feb. 1431-2,
aged eighty-one years, having been in religion
seventy-one years (Amundesham, Annales, i, 61).

54

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Letitia,§ occurs 29 September 1418,
10 October 1419,® 1434 and 29 September
1435 %

Eleanor, occurs 4 November 1465 ®

Joan Chapel, removed March 1480-1 %

Elizabeth Webbe, appointed March 1481,
occurs I§00 or Iso1 ®

Agnes Wakefield, occurs November 1528 °°

Joan Pygot, occurs 2 March 15377

6. CHESHUNT PRIORY

Nothing is known about the foundation of
the priory of St. Mary, Cheshunt,1for Benedictine
nuns except that it took place before 18 Decem-
ber 1183, for Pope Lucius III then issued a bull
in its favour.? By this its property was taken
under the papal protection, the celebration of
service was allowed there during an interdict,
the nuns were to have their own chaplain to
minister in their church, and a cemetery in which
they and others who so desired could be buried ;
the election of the prioress was to belong to the
convent and to be free; archbishops and
bishops were not to levy undue contributions
from them; and none was to molest them or
carry off their possessions.

Henry II in 1186 made the nuns a gift
from the issues of Winchester.2 In 1229
Henry III ordered that they should have
peaceful possession of a virgate of land in
Feltham, co. Middlesex, given them by William
de Rivers, and in 1240 gave them all the lands
and tenements formerly held by the canons
of Cathale.6 Possibly this charter merely
confirmed the grant of Humphrey de Bohun,
Earl of Hereford and Essex, by which the

61 Letitia Wyttenham in Cott. MS. Nero, D vii,
fol. 148d.

62 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 32.

83 Ibid. no. 31.

64 Ibid. no. 32. It has been supposed that Dame
Juliana Bernes, Barnes, or Berners, author of The
Book of Sports and Heraldry, was a Prioress of Sopwell
in the 15th century, but no evidence has come to
light in support of the story, though its truth is not
impossible, as can be seen from the present list. It is
perhaps more probable, if she was connected with the
priory, that she was a lady boarder in it.

65 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 2491.

88 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 239. 87 Thid.

88 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 245, no. 28.
surname is given.

89 Aug. Off. Convent. Leases, iv, no. 140.

1 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (1), 571 (1).

1 Also called St. Mary of Swetmannescrofte, see
L. and P. Hen. VIII, xi, 519 (12).

? Transcript made March 1459-60.
Epis. Reg. Fitz James, fol. 35.

3 Pipe R. 32 Hen. II, m. 12d.

4 Cal. Close, 1227-31, p. 149.

5 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 253.

® Dugdale, Mon. iv, 329, no. il.

No

London

convent received all the land given to the
brothers of Cathale by Humphrey’s uncle,
William de Mandeville, viz., that which lay
between the priory’s estate and the bounds of
Enfield Park, pasture for 1§ horses, 60 oxen,
and 100 sheep, and pannage for pigs in the
park, and a special entrance into the park for
them and their carts; in return they were to
find a chaplain to celebrate for ever for the souls
of William de Mandeville, Humphrey and his
wife Maud.

The nuns in 1290 petitioned the king for help in
distress caused by a fire, and although nothing
was done then,? in 1297 they were excused
from payment of the eleventh out of compassion
for their poverty. Not many years passed
before the same misfortune again befell the
priory. An undated petition from the nuns to
the king and council,® begging for a renewal of
their charters destroyed by fire, says that their
house, church and goods have been twice burned,
to the great impoverishment of the convent ;
from their lands and rents they have an income
of only £26 on which to support thirteen ladies,
two chaplains and other ministers and servants,
and they therefore ask that they may acquire
more property in mortmain. To their first
request assent was made, and the exemplifica-
tion in 13151 of the charter of 1240 seems to
have been the result.

It was doubtless the priory’s special need that
moved the Bishop of Lincoln in 1312 to offer
an indulgence of thirty days to those con-
tributing to the fabric of the conventual church,
dormitory and other places of the house, or to
the maintenance of the * poor handmaids of
Christ’ themselves.4 The poverty of the
convent was evidently considered by Ralph
Bishop of London, their diocesan, in dealing
with a case there in April 1309. The nuns had
elected a prioress whom the bishop refused to
confirm as unfit for the post; he thought,
however, that the difficulties of the house might
perhaps be more quickly overcome by one of
the convent than if a stranger were appointed ;
he therefore allowed them to elect a second time.
The sale of their Feltham property in 1311%
may have been forced on them by necessity.

Protection to the prioress for two years was
granted in 1323,!4 13251 and 133118 by the
king.

7 Parl. R. i, 534.

® Cal. Close, 1296-1302, p. 115.

® Anct. Pet. no. 1886, file 38.

10 Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 292.

1 Linc, Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, fol. 237.

1! Reg. of Ralph Baldock (Cant. and York Soc.),
106-7.

13 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 2433.

14 Cal, Pat. 1321-4, p. 323.

1 Tbid. 1324-7, p. 191.

16 Thid. 1330-4, p. 108.

426

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The nuns were excused in November 13401”
from payment of the ninth of sheaves on
pleading the insufficiency of their property for
their maintenance and their previous exemption
in consequence from all such contributions;
and in October 134618 the king ordered that the
tenth and fifteenth should not be demanded of
them. The convent escaped payment only by
reiterated complaints,!® so that it was a great
point gained when the king on 13 January 1352
granted®? them a perpetual acquittance of
all tenths, fifteenths, aids and charges what-
soever.

Edward III was apparently kindly disposed
to them. On 8 September of that year he gave
them licence to acquire in mortmain land and
rent to the annual value of {10,74 and on 3 July
1358 granted them free warren in all their lands
in Cheshunt.” Moreover, when the nuns repre-
sented their extreme want to him again in 1367,
saying that they had often had to beg in the
highways, he ratified their property to them as
desired,*® and in 1370 made them a present of
{10.74

When Queen Isabella was on her way to
Hertford in May 1358 the nuns came out to meet
her, as they did every time she subsequently
passed the priory.”

There seems always to have been a close
connexion between Cheshunt Nunnery and
London. The value of its possessions in the
city and suburbs in 1367 far exceeded that of
its property elsewhere, and it is mentioned
frequently in wills of London citizens during
the 14th and 15th centuries.2?. The bequests
were often small, but not always. In 1392 Maud
Holbech left 10 marks,?® and in 1431 Thomas
Elsyng, rents in St. Lawrence Lane®® to the
house, which must have derived substantial

Y Cal. Close, 1339-41, p. 585.

18 Thid. 1346-9, p. 104.

1 Ibid. 1341-3, pp. 221, 616 ; 1346-9, pp. 299,
427.

0 Cal. Pat. 1350-4, p. 195.

41 Ibid. p. 319.

22 Chart. R. 32 Edw. III, m. 3, no. 5.

3 Pat. 41 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 11.

*% Devon, Issue Roll of Thomas de Brantingham,
44 Edw. III, 101.

* E. A. Bond, ‘ Notices of the last days of Isabella
Queen of Edward II,’ Arch. xxxv, 461, 464. In
acknowledgement of their attention, Isabella gave
them a noble.

*6 Its income from tenements in London was
£18 tos. 8d., from those in Hertfordshire £8 145.
(Chan. Ing. Misc. 41 Edw. III [2nd nos.], no. 40,
file 192).

"Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 3894. ;
Sharpe, Cal. Wills proved in Ct. of Husting, London, i,
445, 460 ; 650, 697; ii, 20, 37, 41, 61, 152, 170,
185, 220, 225, 313, 341.

%8 Sharpe, op. cit. ii, 303.

* Thid. 456.

benefit from the legacies of Agnes Gyffard®
and Richard Jepe, rector of All Hallows, Honey
Lane.*t Agnes Gyffard’s daughter Cecilia was
a nun at Cheshunt,? and personal ties may
account in other instances for the interest of
Londoners in the priory.

There is little information about the house
except on the financial side. Tiphania Chaum-
berleyn, the prioress, obtained a papal indult
on 30 May 1352 to choose a confessor to give
her plenary remission at the hour of death.
When she died many years afterwards an
irregularity of form made void the election of
her successor, Agnes Amys, but the bishop,
Robert Braybrook (1382-1405), finding her very
suitable for the office, provided her to the
priory by his authority.24 Agnes Amys paid
20s. in 1415 for a confirmation of the Letters
Patent exempting the convent from payment
of aids,®> which were again confirmed in 1429%
and 1470.87 Prioress Margaret Chawry had
some litigation with Nicholas Cowper, vicar of
Cheshunt. Sir Thomas Lovell, who had leased a
farm of her in 1508, refused to pay tithes;
Cowper therefore demanded them from her and
took proceedings in the Consistory Court of the
Bishop of London, Richard Fitz James.3® The
prioress won her case, whereupon Cowper
appealed to the archbishop’s court®® and in
1520 to Rome.*? Lovell died in May 1524 and
Margaret wrote to Bishop Tunstall begging him
to make Cowper drop the suit and pay her
expenses and to induce Lovell’s executors to
make some recompense. She evidently felt that
she had suffered because Lovell was too power-
ful to be coerced.

The dissolution of the priory under the Act of
1536 occurred before 9 September of that year,
the house and all its possessions being then
granted by the king to Anthony Denny.”

30 Sharpe, op. cit. ii, 450. By will dated June
1423 she left a tenement in the parish of St. Nicholas
Cole Abbey to her daughter Joan for life, the re-
mainder in trust for sale and part of the proceeds to
Cheshunt Priory.

31 Ibid. 482. By will proved Oct. 1437 he
bequeathed a tenement to his sister for life, with
remainder to the Prioress and convent of Cheshunt.

32 Sharpe, op. cit. ii, 556.

33 Cal. Papal Letters, ili, 472.

34 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 312d. The
letters are undated.

35 Cal, Pat. 1413-16, p. 374-

36 Ibid. 1429-36, p. 78. *7 Ibid. 1467-77, p. 188.

38 L. and P. Hen. VII, iv, 368. 39 Tbid.

40 Citation in Oct. 1520 by the auditor of the Papal
Court of Cowper and the prioress (ibid. ili, 1026).

41 She said that Lovell being a great man refused
to pay tithes (L. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 368).

42 Pat. 28 Hen. VIII, pt. ii, m. 25. The inden-
ture about the goods was made between the commis-
sioners and Denny, not the prioress, on 28 May

1536 (K.R. Church Goods, $3).

427

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

The convent had by that time dwindled to four,“
of whom the prioress, Margery Hill, received
an annual pension of {5,4 the other three nuns
a small gift.

It is not unlikely that poverty prompted
their early surrender. As the lead on the
church was only worth {2,5 it looks as if the
building was in ruins.f® The debts, too, were
{8 9s. 8d.,47 while the net income was only
£13 105.48

PRIORESSES OF CHESHUNT

Isabel,*® occurs c. 1227-74

Cassandra, occurs 30 September 1250 °°

Dionisia, occurs 1256-7 *4

Alice

Agnes *

Mary, occurs 20 February 1298 *4

Helen, resigned 1309 *

Emma de Haddestoke, elected April 1309,
but the election annulled °°

Alice de Somery, occurs 24 August 1311 5” and
28 May 1315 58

43 Paid to three nuns and eight servants of the late
priory of Cheshunt £4 19s. 4¢ (Mins. Accts.
Hen. VIII, no. 1606 [28 & 29 Hen. VIII).

4. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (1), 1520. She was
still receiving the pension in 1555 (Add. MS. 8102,
m. 9).

Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606. The two
bells were priced at 60s. Goods and church orna-
ments were worth £51 18s. 4d. The inventory of
the articles on 28 May 1536 in the church, hall,
dormitory, maidens’ chamber, priest’s room, buttery,
&c. . . . and of the store (K.R. Church Goods, $4
is printed in Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hertford Hund.
267, App. ii. The goods in the chancel, quire and
belfry were reckoned at £8 7s. 2¢, those in the
dormitory, including most of the vestments, at
£7 115. 4d. The plate, valued then at £4 185. 42,
a little later at £8 115. 4¢., consisted of two chalices,
a salt with cover, a small cross and six spoons (Aug.
Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 71).

46 The house seems to have needed repairs in
1475 (will of Thomas Prowett, clerk, P.C.C. 23
Wattys).

47 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

48 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 452.

49 She was prioress at the time of Humphrey de
Bohun’s grant, made between William de Mandeville’s
death in 1227 and his own in 1274. If the charter
of Henry III to the nuns was a confirmation of the
grant, Isabella must have been prioress c. 1227-40.

50 Feet of F. 34 Hen. III, file 75, no. 1037.

51 Hardy and Page, London and Middlesex Fines,

37-
52 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 26a.
53 Predecessor of Mary (Ca/. Pat. 1292-1301,
p. 376).
54 Thid.
55 Reg. of Ralph Baldock (Cant. and York Soc.),
106-7.
58 Tid.
57 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), C 2433.
58 Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 292.

Tiphania Chaumberleyn, occurs May 1352,59
died c. 1382-1405 °°

Agnes Amys, Tiphania’s successor, occurs
3 December 1415 ®

Cecilia Gyffard, occurs 1 August 1451 ©

Isabel Forest, occurs 8 February 1470

Isabel, occurs December 1474, 1475, 1476-
82 65

Alice Clerk, occurs 1483-8 ®

Margaret Chawry, occurs 30 September 1507,°7
30 September 1511,°° 1524 © and 1532 7°

Margery Hill, the last prioress 7

The first seal is a pointed oval of the 12th
century,”? showing the Virgin seated on a throne
adorned with animals’ heads and feet ; the Child
sits on her lap, and she holds a ball in either
hand, that in her left having a lily issuing from
it. Legend: ...LLVM.c....

Another seal attached to a document of 1474 7
is a very small pointed oval, on which is shown
the Virgin, crowned and enthroned, holding
the Child on her right arm and in her left hand
a sceptre.

7. ST. MARY DE PRE PRIORY,
ST. ALBANS

The foundation of the nunnery of St. Mary
de Pré in 1194 by Warin, Abbot of St. Albans,
was the outcome of a vision. St. Amphibalus
appeared in a dream to a man of Walden, and
ordered him to tell the abbot to honour the
place where the relics of himself and his com-
panions on their way to the abbey had met the
shrine of St. Alban,! for the spot was very dear
to God and those martyrs.?

In obedience to this direction Warin built
there a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary
and houses for leprous women,? who were to
be veiled and live under a rule. The endow-

5° Cal. Papal Letters, iii, 472.

69 While Robert Braybrook was Bishop of London
(Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 312 d.).

61 [bid.

82 Cal. Pat. 1413-16, p. 374.

83 Sharpe, op. cit. li, 556.

4 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p. 188.

85 Harl. Chart. 44 C 2-10.
Forest.

66 Ibid. 44 C 11-15, 18-25.

87 Cart. Misc. (Aug. Off.), vol. vii, no. 11.

88 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 330, no. ii.

°° L. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 368.

70 Ibid. viii, 612.

"1 [bid. xiii (1), 1520.

72 BLM. Seals, Ixiv, 61.

73 Harl. Chart. 44 C2.

Probably Isabel

1 For the importance of this encounter see
St. Albans.

? Gesta Abbat. i, 199-200.

3 Ibid. 201.

428

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

ment was made entirely at the abbey’s expense,4
and was of a nature to keep the new priory
very dependent on St. Albans. Warin gave to
the house ® the site, church and buildings on
both sides of the street and various tithes, in-
cluding those of the abbey’s demesne of Luton,
of the new assart at Sarratt and all assarts made
in future and of all pannage belonging to St.
Albans; a rent of 20s. in Cambridge for the
sisters’ clothing *; and to each leper up to the
number of thirteen a monk’s left-off frock and
cloak; for their maintenance the corrodies
already given for past abbots, and one at the
death of every abbot in future,’ until they
numbered thirteen; the corrodies of Kings
Offa and Henry and Pope Hadrian when the
holders died, and meanwhile an allowance of
bread, meat and ale from St. Albans; two
loaves from every ovenful of the abbot’s portion ;
leave to grind a measure of oats and another of
malt at certain mills; 3d. a week from the toll
of the town of St. Albans; food for two horses
every day from the abbey granary; and a cart-
load of wood every week; while the chaplain
and his clerk were to receive their food daily
from the abbey, a mark a year from Walden
Church and half a mark from the church of
Newnham.

The sisters were fortunate in their first
warden, John de Walden, who was an able
advocate of their cause, and as he enjoyed the
royal favour it was probably through him that
King John confirmed to them in I199 2 acres
in Eastbrook” given them by Queen Eleanor,
and granted them a yearly fair on the vigil and
feast of the Nativity of the Virgin ®; in 1204
he further gave them 30 acres of assart in
Eastbrook Wood® and in 1215 received the
house and sisters into his protection.

A papal mandate of January 12231 forbade
the abbot and convent to use their patronage
to lay burdens on the lepers at Pré, but the
actual grievance of the subject community is
unfortunately not explained. According to
Matthew Paris Pré was so poor in the middle
of the 13th century that its inmates had scarcely

4Matthew Paris is rather bitter on the subject
(Gesta Abbat. i, 205).

5 Ibid. 202-4.

§ Land in Cambridge was granted by Warin to
Anchitel de Grantebreg and his heirs for this rent to
St. Mary de Pré (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 11069).

7 The seventh was claimed and granted on the
death of Abbot William de Trumpington in 1235
(Gesta Abbat. i, 305).

7a Eastbrookhay in the parish of Hemel Hempstead
(V.C.H. Herts. ii, 222).

* Cart. Antiq. M. 20; Inspex. of Ric. III
(Dugdale, Mon. iii, 358, no. viii).

® Cart. Antiq. M. 18.

10 Rot. Lit. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 131.

11 Cal. of Papal Letters, i,go. It was issued owing
to a complaint of the lepers.

the necessaries of life? The exaction of the
clerical tenth in 1254 must therefore have
pressed hardly on them, especially since the
house had just then to be rebuilt. It seems
indeed that they could not have finished what
they had begun if Pope Alexander IV had not
helped them by offering indulgences to those
who contributed to the work.8

Abbot Richard de Wallingford (1328-36)
made a few regulations for the house.!4 He
required the brothers at their reception to swear
fealty to St. Albans before the abbot and arch-
deacon, and vow never to procure the entrance
of brothers, sisters or nuns except through the
abbot; they must also promise in writing to
live in chastity, voluntary poverty and obedience
according to the rule of St. Benedict. Up to this
time it is said the brothers and sisters had pro-
fessed no certain rule.

Some idea of the life led by the inmates may
be gathered from the ordinances drawn up 8
possibly by Abbot Michael or his successor
Thomas de la Mare!* who is known to have
made a rule for Pré.”

The master, who must be versed in temporal
affairs, was to transact the business of the house
with the advice of his brothers and the prioress
and to render an account to the abbot every
year ; chapters were to be held twice a week by
such brothers as were monks to treat of the
needs of the house; when the bell was rung in
the morning all were to rise, and after washing
their hands go to church, where the brothers
and chaplains were to say the matins of our
Lady and of the day, then after a short interval
the hours, and finally high mass, at which all
unless very ill were to be present ; the brothers
were tohave a common board, and the prioress,
nuns and sisters were likewise to dine together
in the frater, and none was to be late or leave
before grace; from Easter to All Saints there
were to be two meals a day, from All Saints to
Lent one only, except on Sundays; intervals
between mass and vespers were to be occupied
with work or devotions in church; talking in
church and after Compline was forbidden; the
doors between the men and women were to be
closed except at service-time; the brothers
were not to speak to the nuns and sisters, and
all were forbidden to talk to seculars where
suspicion of evil might arise ; no men must eat
in the nuns’ close without leave of the prioress ;

12 Chron. May. (Rolls Ser.), v, 452.

13 Dugdale, Mon. iii, 356, no. iv, v, vi.

14 Gesta Abbat. ii, 213-14.

18 Cott. MS. Nero, D 1, fol. 173-4 d. :

16 Both had personal reasons to be interested in
Pré. Michael’s sister Alice entered the hospital
in 1342-3 (Mins. Accts. bdle. 869, no. 22), and
Thomas’s sister Dionisia became a nun there (Geste
Abbat. ii, 373).

UW Gesta Abbat. ii, 402.

429

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

visitors were to be kindly received, men by the
brothers, women by the nuns and sisters, who
must never allow secular persons to eat in the
private rooms, such as the dormitory; the
prioress was to see that the nuns slept in their
beds in one house and the sisters in another ;
no brother or sister must go out of the house to
roam about?8 or talk to friends or enter a town
without leave of the master and consent of the
archdeacon; obedience to the master was
enjoined on the brothers and obedience to the
prioress on the sisters and nuns.

The division of the inmates into nuns and
sisters holding an inferior position seems not to
have been contemplated by Abbot Warin, who
intended the house apparently for thirteen
sisters, but the mention of a prioress in 1255
proves that the two classes existed soon after
the foundation.1® Of the proportion of sisters
to nuns there is no information, but in 1341-2
there were four sisters,2° in 1342-3 five, and in
1352-3 eight nuns besides the prioress. As
leprosy died out and the house became less of
a hospital,?8 the distinction was found unsatis-
factory, and Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349-96)
provided that no more sisters were to be
received and those there then might become
nuns if they wished.24 At the same time he
insisted on a higher standard of education.
Most of the nuns were so unlettered that they
could only repeat one or two prayers,” but the
abbot now required them to learn the service and
say it daily, and because they had no books
gave them some from St. Albans. In the
interests of discipline he ordained also that all
entering the house in future must profess the
rule of St. Benedict in writing and take the vows
before the Archdeacon of St. Albans.” He did
not forget their temporal welfare, but had what
was due to them from the monastery noted in
a register to prevent its withdrawal at any
time.?8

18 The passage is headed ‘ Le defence de passir hors
de la porte en perigrinage alir.’

19'W. Page, ‘The Hist. of Mon. of St. Mary de
Pré, St. Aloans and Herts. Archit. and Arch. Soc. Trans.
(New Ser.), i, 12.

20 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 21.

31 Tbid. no. 22.

22 Tbid. no. 25.

33 In the 13th century it was generally called a
hospital, and represented officially by the master
(Feet of F. Herts. 32 Hen. III, no. 344; 7 Edw. I,
no. 97; Lay Subs. R. 19 & 24 Edw. I, bdle. 120,
no. 2 and 5). In one instance the prioress and nuns
figure with the master and brothers (Add. Chart.
19279).

*4 Gesta Abbat. ii, 401.

°5 They said the Lord’s Prayer and the ‘ Hail
Mary’ instead of the service.

26 Gesta Abbat. ii, 402.

37 Tbid.

38 Tbid. gor.

The accounts of the wardens 1341-57
provide much information as to buildings,®#
food 8! and domestic economy generally. Among
the receipts are one or two interesting items :
40s. paid at the entrance of the abbot’s sister
in 1342-3; 155. 3d. paid to Sister Isabella
Rutheresfeld for her ale®? in 1350-1; {10
received from John Kyrkely on becoming a
brother of the house in 1352-3.3 Every ex-
pense is noted, the lock for the larder, thread
and pack-needles, wax and cotton for candles
and payment to a man making them, the
stipend of a brewer for four days and payment
toa barber. The servants in 1350-1 numbered
fifteen and comprised three tenatores, appa-
rently farmers, a huntsman, cowherd, shep-
herd, swineherd, four ploughmen, a maidservant
of the kitchen, the nuns’ maid, the master’s
servant, and a man collecting bread and ale for
the nuns at St. Albans. The income in 1341-2
was about {55, the expenses {46; both were
much the same in 1342-3; in 1350-1 the re-
ceipts were {63 135. S4d., expenses {75 35. g4d.,
but in 1352-3 the balance was {15 on the right
side; so on the whole the management must
have been good.34

Early in the 1§th century the nuns received
an important addition to their property,
Henry V in 1416 granting them the reversion,
after the death of Queen Joan, of the alien
priory of Wing, co. Bucks. He also exempted
the estate from payment of all subsidies,
though owing to an omission in the wording of
the grant the convent’s claim in this respect
was not acknowledged until 1440.36 On the
accession of Edward IV the convent obtained
a fresh patent, which mentioned the parish
church and its advowson as well as the manor.®”

29 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 21-6.

30 Besides the church there is mention of the hall,
almshouse and bakchouse, all tiled, the chamber of
the brothers, that of the nuns and sisters, the refectory,
laundry-house and cowhouse outside the gates.

31 Their purchases included salt for the larder and
white salt for the household, spice, meat, olive oil,
milk, cheese, butter and eggs; in 1350-1 100 fish,
called Middelwoxefich ; in 1356-7 1,000 herrings,
2 salmon for 45., 6 salt fish 85. ; on feast of Nativity
of B. V. Mary ox-meat 3s. and 4 geese 20¢. In
1352-3 at each of the six principal feasts the nuns
received 60 flagons of ale, and a memorandum was
made that they ought to have 100 flagons (ibid.
no. 25).

82 Tbid. no. 23.

33 [bid. no. 25.
1356 (ibid. no. 26).

34 Ibid. passim.

38 Cal. Pat. 1416-22, p. 38. It was in his hands
in 1420, and he then gave them the issues (ibid.
p. 276).

36 Ibid. 1436-41, p. 469.

37 Ibid. 1461-7, p. 53. It cost the convent
£9 17s. 6d. (Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 30).

He was warden of the house in

430

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

From 1461 to 1493 the accounts of the house,88
now kept by the prioress, again supply many
details about its administration.®® There were
then nine or ten nuns besides the prioress, and
the expenses were usually kept within the limits
of an income of about {65. The house finan-
cially seems generally to have been well ordered.

Of its condition in other respects nothing is
known “° except from the letter of Archbishop
Morton to the Abbot of St. Albans in July
1490.41 Morton had heard on good authority,
* he said, that Helen Germyn, the prioress, was a
married woman who had left her husband for a
lover, and that she and others of the convent
were leading notoriously immoral lives with
some of the monks of St. Albans. There was
enough truth in the report to cause Helen’s
removal, and apparently the selection of the
next prioress from Sopwell.*

Beyond the accounts of the prioress in 1515 “4
and in 1526~7 4 there is no further information
about Pré until April 1528, when it was found
on an inquiry * that the last prioress, Eleanor
Barnarde, had died in the previous June, and

38 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 30, 32, 33-6;
Hen. VII, no. 274.

39 The nuns had 10d. a week for board, and
pittances on feasts of St. Nicholas, St. Leonard, the
Circumcision, Epiphany, St. Mary Magdalene, and
Nativity of B. V. Mary, 16 December and the anni-
versary of Henry V. On the Nativity of the Virgin
Mary, the fairtime, over {1 was spent on the convent
and visitors. Payments for wassail at New Year and
Twelfth Night, harpers and players at Christmas, for
May games, for bread and ale on bonfire nights, and
for coals in the dormitory show that the nuns had
amusements and even luxuries. A good deal of hospi-
tality was shown to tenants, strangers and the poor,
and rooms were let in the precinct, so that the con-
vent was by no means cut off from the world. The
accounts of 1490-3 (Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 274)
include payments for cutting the vine, mowing the
convent garden, shaking the fruit trees there, gather-
ing palm and flowers for Palm Sunday, cartage of
herrings and sprats from London, and cleaning the
great kitchen and guest-chamber, and making trestles
and forms in connexion with the fair.

40 A certain Joan Sturmyn had so much confidence
in Alice Wafer, prioress 1480-5, that she entrusted
to her keeping goods worth £50. It is clear, too,
that though the goods were afterwards detained from
Joan’s executors, Alice was not to blame (Early Chan.
Proc. bdle. 97, no. 6).

41 Wilkins, Concifia, iii, 632.

42 Theaccountsof the house (Mins. Accts. Hen. VII,
no. 276) show that shortly before Michaelmas 1490
Amy Goden had succeeded Helen, here called
Kydyer, who must therefore have been removed,
unless by a coincidence she had died.

43 In 1465 there was at Sopwell a nun called
Amy Godyn (Anct. D. [P.R.O.], A 2491), the name
of Helen’s successor.

4 L. and P. Hen. VIII, ii, 959.

45 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cclxxii, fol. 79.

48 Cardinal’s Bdles. i.

that the three nuns composing the convent
had deserted the place. It had apparently
been represented to Pope Clement VII before
that regular discipline was much relaxed and
the nuns did not live as good lives as they
ought ; for it was on this ground that in May
1528 he dissolved the priory and annexed it to
the abbey of St. Albans, then held by Cardinal
Wolsey in commendam.*” In July Henry VIII
granted the site of the late nunnery with all its
possessions to Wolsey himself,#® who conferred
it on his new college at Oxford.4® Its property
comprised ®° the manors of Pré, ‘ Playdell’
and Beaumonts, rent in lieu of tithes in Red-
bourn, Sarratt, Codicote (co. Herts.) and
Dallow ® (in Luton, co. Bedford), and various
parcels of land, the manor of Wing with the
advowson of the church and the rectory and
the manor of Swanbourne (co. Bucks.), in
which place the nuns had a holding in 1252.

WarbeEns or Masters oF St. Mary pre PRE
PRIORY

John de Walden, the first master 54

Richard, occurs 1235 5

William, occurs 1248 58

Richard, occurs 1278 5?

Roger, occurs c. 1316 58

John le Patere, occurs March 1325 *°

Richard de Bovyndon, occurs September 1341
to September 1342 ®

Nicholas Redhod, occurs March 1352 to
March 1353 *%

John de Kyrkely, occurs 13 August 1356 to
25 March 1357 ®

PrioressEs oF St. Mary DE Pri Priory

— de la Moote, occurs 1401 ®
Lucy Botelere (?), occurs 1430 ®

47 Dugdale, Mon. iii, 361, no. xi.

48.1, and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 4472.

49 Tbid. 5714, 5786. 50 Ibid. 4472.

51 In 1350-1 they kept a senawr and a huntsman
here (Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 24).

62'They had property here in 1350-1 (ibid.
no. 23).

53 Cal. Pat. 1247-58, p. 139.

54 Gesta Abbat. i, 201. 55 Ibid. 305.

58 Feet of F. Herts. 32 Hen. III, no. 344.

57 Ibid. 7 Edw. I, no. 97.

58 Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 38.

59 Lansd. MS. 375, fol. 95 d.—96.

60 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 21.

61 [bid. no. 25. 82 Tbid. no. 26.

63 The sister of John de la Moote, Abbot of St.
Albans, who when dying asked the convent to restore
to her {40 which had been used for the monastery,
or provide for her otherwise, such as by a livery (Gesta
Abbat. iii, 452).

64 She is not called prioress, but as she is the only _
one named among several nuns then received into the
fraternity of St. Albans (Amundesham, Annales, 1,
51), it is probable that she was the head.

431

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Isabella Benyngton, occurs 1446 ®; Isabella,
occurs 1460-1 %

Isabella or Elizabeth Baron,® occurs Septem-
ber 1468-71,° retired 4 April 1480

Alice Wafer, appointed April 1480,” occurs
1482-5 7

Christiana Basset, occurs March 1487 to
December 1488 ”

Helen Germyn, occurs July 1490%

Amy Goden, occurs 29 September 1490-3 74

Margaret Vernon, occurs 29 September 1513-
1c 75

Eleanor Barnard, the last prioress, died
4 June 1527 76

The seal of the house attached to a 13th-
century charter7? is a pointed oval. On it
is represented a three-quarter length figure of
the Virgin, crowned and enthroned, with a
sceptre in her right hand; she holds on
her left knee the Child, who has a cruciform
nimbus. At the sides are two lily branches.
Below, under the words ave MariA, which the
cutter has reversed, is a leper-woman praying,
and behind her a star. The only letters re-

>

maining of the legend are: s’...€... To.

8. ST. GILES IN THE WOOD PRIORY,
FLAMSTEAD

About the middle of the 12th century Roger
de Todeni or Tony?! founded at Flamstead a
priory in honour of St. Giles for Benedictine
nuns and endowed it with land and certain small
tithes in the parish.2~ He ordained that the
assent of himself and of his heirs must be
obtained at the election of the prioress, and
that without their consent there should never
be more than thirteen nuns in the house.

The priory, to which a pension of 5 marks out

8 Dugdale, Mon. iii, 357.

66 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 30.
Isabella Baron.

67 She is in the Book of Benefactors of St. Albans,
as giving 2 marks for the ornaments of the church
and decoration of various altars (Cott. MS. Nero,
vii, fol. 115).

68 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 32, 33.

89 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 209. She died in 1491
(Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 275).

7 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 209.

1 Mins. Accts. bdle. 867, no. 35-6. She either
resigned or was removed, for she was living at Pré in
1487-8. 7 Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 274.

73 Wilkins, Conci/ia, iii, 632.

74 Mins. Accts. Hen. VII, no. 275.

7 L. and P. Hen. VIII, ii, 959.

78 Cardinal’s Bdles. 1. 7 Add. Chart. 19279.

1 This family held Flamstead from the time of the
Domesday Survey until the 14th century (V.C.H.
Herts. 11, 194).

? Dugdale, Mon. iv, 299, no. i. This is evidently
the charter shown by the prioress at a visitation in

1530.

Possibly

of Dallington rectory was assigned in 1220,
received from Agatha de Gatesden in 1228 some
land in Hemel Hempstead and acquired before
1244® land and 3os. rent in Edlesborough (co.
Bucks.) from Nicholas son of Bernard, whose
granddaughter Isabella afterwards sold to the
nuns all that she owned in that place ®; pro-
perty in Potsgrove (co. Bedford) was made over
in 1257 to the convent,? who in 1270 held
20 virgates of land in Wingrave given to them
by William de la Hyde.®

The statute of Pope Boniface VIII for the
stricter cloistering of nuns, obedience to which
was enjoined upon them in 1300,° added re-
strictions to a life already sufficiently hard, for
there is no doubt that the nuns were very poor.
William Dalderby, Bishop of Lincoln, in ap-
pointing delegates in July 1308 to examine a
recent election at St. Giles’s, commissioned them
to act for him in choosing a prioress if necessary,
evidently from a desire to save the nuns
expense, and on 17 June 1316" he granted
an indulgence of thirty days to all who gave
alms to the priory.

Careful administration was of paramount im-
portance, and it was at the earnest supplication
of the prioress and convent that the Bishop of
Lincoln on 17 March 1336-7 appointed as
master of the house a priest called Roger de
Croule, of whose prudence and industry he was
assured.¥

Pestilence with its agricultural consequences
must have aggravated the nuns’ difficulties 3
in the latter part of the 14th century. The
petition of the convent to Pope Urban VI}*

3 Bridges, Hist. of Northants, i, 494.

* Dugdale, Mon. iv, 300, no. il.

5 In that year Margery widow of Nicholas
renounced her claims in dower in return for a life
grant of a messuage, a mark of silver, 34 qrs. of
wheat and 12 cartloads of wood a year (Feet of F.
Bucks. 28 Hen. III, no. 47).

® Dugdale, Mon. iv, 301, no. iii.
Henry III in 1267-8.

7 Feet of F. Bucks. 40 & 41 Hen. III, no. 147.

8 Ibid. 55 Hen. III, no. 134. William was the
grandfather of the tenant of 1270.

® Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 10 d.

10 Thid. fol. 112d. 1 bid. fol. 327.

Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 355 d. Onthe same
day he gave them as confessor a Dominican friar.

8 The extreme poverty of the house may have
been the reason why Helen Lovell, a novice there,
decided in 1352 not to take vows (ibid. Gynwell,
Memo. fol. 7).

14 Tf, as Dugdale says, the bull to the Bishop of
Lincoln for inquiry was issued by Pope Urban IV
(Mon. iv, 301), its date must be March 1263, and in
this case the nuns over a century later presented a
petition containing precisely the same details (Linc.
Epis. Reg. Buckingham, Memo. pt. ii, fol. 232 d.).
But it seems most unlikely that history repeated itself
so exactly, and the bull should probably be dated
March, the second year of Urban VI, ice, 1380.

Confirmation by

432

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

begging that the church of Dallington might be
appropriated to them’ represents that their
original endowment had been so slender and the
place of foundation was so sterile that the rents
did not exceed 15 marks a year, and each nun
was allowed only 2s. a year for her clothing
and 4d. a week for food; so many of the
people serving the priory had died, and the
houses were in such a bad state and the live
stock so diminished, that the conventual lands
were left uncultivated, and unless some remedy
were provided the nuns would have to beg the
necessaries of life from door to door. The
Bishop of Lincoln vouched for the truth of these
statements, and the pope gave the necessary
licence in August 1381,1° a vicarage at Dallington
being ordained a few months later” Beyond
one or two notices of the election of a prioress
and the commission of Bishop Grey for a visita-
tion !8 nothing is heard of the priory during the
15th century.

When the chancellor of the diocese on behalf
of Bishop Longland visited Flamstead in May
15302 there were seven nuns *° besides the
prioress. Three of them said that all was
well, another reported that young girls were
allowed to sleep in the dormitory, and another
that the prioress had a nun to sleep with her,
apparently because she was afraid of being late
for matins. The prioress was enjoined to give
up this practice and to exclude children of both
sexes from the dormitory. From the second
injunction it may be inferred that the nuns kept
aschool. The priory came to an end on 3 March
1537 under the Act of the previous year
dissolving monasteries of less than {200 annual
value. The conduct of the nuns was irre-
proachable, the commissioners returning them
as ‘of very good report,’ % and the management
of the place had evidently been efficient, since
the house was in good repair.

Agnes Croke, the prioress, received a pension
of {6 a year, but the seven other nuns seem to
have been dismissed with a small sum of money.

The income of the priory was estimated in 1526
at {39 6s. 8d. gross and {17 175. 6d. net,” in

18 They obtained the king’s permission in 1313
(Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 591).

16 Linc. Epis. Reg. Buckingham, Memo. pt. ii,
fol. 232 d. 1 Apr. 1382 (ibid. fol. 233).

18 Tbid. Grey, Memo. (1431-5), fol. 89.

9 Doc. of Bp. of Lincoln at Exchequer Gate.

20 Five ‘ladies’ and two sisters.

21 1. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (1), 571 (3):

22 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

23 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (1), p. 577. She was
still receiving it in 1555 (Add. MS. 8102, m. 9).

4 The sum of £16 125. 10d. was divided among
the seven nuns and ten servants (Mins. Accts.
Hen. VIII, no. 1606).

5 Salter, 4 subsidy collected in the diocese of Lincoln
in 1526, p. 193.

4 433

1535 at {30 195. 64d. clear ®6 and in 1537 at {37
net 2”; it was derived from the manor of Wood-
hall in Hemel Hempstead, land and rents in
Flamstead, Gaddesden and St. Albans (co.
Herts.), in Studham and Hockliffe (co. Beds.),
Cholesbury, Dagnall, Edlesborough and Win-
grave (co. Bucks.), and the rectories of
Tilsworth (co. Beds.) and Dallington (co.
Northants).28 The goods and chattels of the
nunnery with the ornaments of the church were
sold for {44 85. 344.29; the plate was valued at
£6 4s. 744.89 and the three bells at {10.3

Prioresses oF St. Gites, FLamsTEAD

Agnes, occurs June 1244,° died 1254-5 %8

Petronilla de Lucy, elected 1254~5,°4 occurs
1256%

Loretta, occurs 1270%8

Laura, died 1291 *”

Joan de Whethamsted, elected 1291 58

Cecilia de Morteyn, elected July 1308,%°
resigned 1316 *°

Helen de Dunstaple, elected 13164

Maud Lucy, elected 1415 @

Joan Mourton, died 1454 *

Catherine Colyngryge, elected 1454 4

Joan Bone, occurs 12 March 1498-9 *

Agnes Tryng, elected 1509,* occurs IS1o
and 1514,47 resigned 1517 %

26 Valor Eccl, (Rec. Com.), iv, 276.

27 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

28 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 8, no. 415
Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

29 Counting the wheat sown in the demesne lands,
which sold for £15. The stuff in the parlour fetched
5s., that of the quire 65. 8¢., of the vestry 665. 82.,
of the kitchen 15s., of the high chamber 3o0s., of the
middle chamber 36s. 4d., of the buttery 205. and of
the bakehouse 26s. 8¢., a table of alabaster 20..,
another for our Lady altar 35. 4d., the glass in the
church windows 2os., the timber in the quire 26s. 82.
The nuns had 6 horses, 7 kine and z heifers, 7 swine
and 28 sheep (Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 65).

30 Ibid. It consisted of a silver salt, six silver spoons,
a chalice and paten gilt, and ‘the garnishing of a
mazer band.’

31 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

32 Feet of F. Bucks. 28 Hen. III, no. 47.

33 Linc. Epis. Reg. Lexington’s Rolls (Huntingdon
Archd. Anno, 2). 34 Thid.

35 Feet of F. Bucks. 40 Hen. III, no. 147.

36 Ibid. 55 Hen. II, no. 134.

37 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Inst. fol. 85 d. She
is mentioned in the Lay Subsidy Roll of 1290-1
(bdle. 120, no. 2).

88 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Inst. fol. 85 d.

39 Ibid. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 112 d.

40 Tbid. fol. 327. 41 Ibid.

42 Tbid. Repingdon, Inst. fol. 361 d. ;

43 [bid. Chedworth, Inst. fol. 186. “* Ibid.

45 Aug. Off. Convent. Leases, iv, no. 118.

46 Linc. Epis. Reg. Smith, Inst. fol. 423.

47 Aug. Off. Convent. Leases, iv, no. 116, 120.

48 Linc. Epis. Reg. Wolsey and Atwater, Inst. fol. 47.

55

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Agnes Croke, elected 1517,4* occurs 1530,5°
and at the dissolution of the house, March

1537 9

9. ROWNEY PRIORY, GREAT MUNDEN

A small priory for Benedictine nuns was
founded in honour of St. John Baptist c. 1164}
by Conan Duke of Brittany and Earl of Rich-
mond, at Rowney in the parish of Great
Munden, and endowed by him and later owners
of property in the neighbourhood with tene-
ments there of the annual value of Io marks.?
Among these benefactors were Richard son of
Gilbert de Munden, John son of William de
Munden, Stephen, Andrew and Richard de
Scales,? Richard and Gerard de Furnival,4 Guy
Delaville and Reginald de Tanet,® the grant of
the last in ‘ Chelsea,’ ® with that of Stephen de
Scales in Munden receiving the confirmation of
Pope Alexander.? The lords of the manor of
Great Munden were as such patrons of Rowney,$
which meant that at the election of a prioress
their consent had to be obtained.®

It has been said that during the 14th century
the priory was comparatively wealthy,!® but
for this idea there seems little or no ground.
The advowson of the priory in 1302 was worth
nothing, because of the poverty of the house,!
the regular income of which according to a

49 Linc. Epis. Reg. Wolsey and Atwater, Inst.
fol. 47.

5° Doc. of Bp. of Lincoln at Exchequer Gate, Visit.
of Bp. Longland. She also occurs several times
between March 1521 and June 1534 (Aug. Off.
Convent. Leases, iv, no. 114, I15, 119, 120-30,
133, 134).

51 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

1 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 342.

2 Pat. 37 Hen. VI, pt. i, m. 15, printed in Dugdale,
Mon. iv, 343. The wording of the document implies
that the benefactors therein mentioned were owners
of the lordship of Munden, but apparently this was
not true of all.

3 Stephen de Scales, who lived in the time of
Henry II, and Richard, who died 1230, held the
manor of Little Munden; Andrew de Scales was
instituted rector of that place in 1219 (Cussans, Hist.
of Herts. Broadwater Hund. 148, 155).

4 Two of this name were owners of Great Munden,
the second dying in 1219 (Chauncy, Hist. Antig. of
Herts. 341).

5 Perhaps Reginald de Tany, who occurs in the
reien of Henry II (Red Bk. of Exch. [Rolls Ser.],
346, 379):

®° Possibly Chelsing in Bengeo, not far from Rowney.

7 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 344, no. ili. In all proba-
bility Pope Alexander III, 1159-81.

8 Feet of F. Herts. 13 Edw. I, no. 157 ; 32 Edw. I,
no. 388; 26 Hen. VI, no. 138.

9 Linc. Epis. Reg. Lexington Rolls (Huntingdon
Archd. anno 4).

10 Cussans, op. cit. Broadwater Hund. 140.

1 Chan. Ing. p.m. 30 Edw. I, no. 31.

rental of c. 1336-7 was {7 15. 4}d.,"? and there
is no proof that the convent received any con-
siderable gifts afterwards.

Luke, rector of Throcking, was made master
of the nunnery in March 1302, Richard
Punchard of Willian chaplain in 1318 at the
request of the prioress,! while in February
1327-8 the administration of the house was
committed to Ralph, rector of Great Munden.!$
John Prior of Wymondley in 1302 was appointed
confessor to the nuns.!@ One of the convent in
December 1350 received a papal indult to
choose a confessor who might give her plenary
remission at the hour of death.!”

Out of the scanty information extant about
Rowney a large proportion is discreditable to
the nuns. From the Court Rolls of Munden
Furnival in 1375 18 it appears that the prioress
had then been guilty of a hand-to-hand scuffle
with a chaplain called Alexander of Great
Munden, each being fined for drawing blood
from the other, and the lady having also to pay
for raising hue and cry unjustly on her opponent.

An order was issued in 1401 for the arrest of
one of the nuns, Joan Adilesley, who was wander-
ing about in secular dress; and a visitation
of the house in 1418 2° was followed by the de-
privation of the prioress, Catherine Grenefeld.#1

It is perhaps unfair to form an opinion from
isolated cases separated by such long intervals
of time, yet the suspicion is unavoidable that
the place was not altogether what it ought to
have been. It should, however, be remembered
that life at Rowney may have been very hard.
The revenues, always small and certainly not
increased after the Black Death, could have
supplied only the barest necessaries. Early
in the 15th century the chalices, books and
ornaments were stolen by robbers, and the
nuns were left without the means of performing
the divine offices. On this occasion the Bishop
of Ely helped the convent by offering an
indulgence in 1408 to those who assisted them.”

The nuns on one occasion petitioned the
chancellor,* saying that their church and other
buildings were likely to fall down for lack of

12 Rentals and Surv. R. 293.

13 Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 44.

M4 Ibid. fol. 366.

16 Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 176.

16 Tbid. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 44.

W Cal. of Papal Letters, iii, 372.

18 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 9, m. 6d.

19 Cal. Pat. 1399-1401, p. 418. The prioress
notified Joan’s apostasy to the secular authorities
12 Nov. 1400 and again in March 1401 (Chancery
Warrants [Ser. 1], file 1759, no. 29, 30).

2 The bishop’s commission was issued on 12 June
(Linc. Epis. Reg. Repingdon, Memo. fol. 176).

21 Tbid. fol. 185.

22 Gibbons, Cal. Ely Epis. Rec. 406.

33 Anct. Pet. (P.R.O.), no. 15063.

434

aa cl Rowney Priory Friars Minors oF Ware
4 y)- (137A century). (14¢h century).

Jouy, Prior or Ware

(1260).

Rozert, Prior of RepBourn
(140th century).

Kine’s Lanciey Priory
(15¢h century).

Hoppespon Hospitat

Hoppespon Hospirat
(15 zh century).

(1522 century).
HERTFORDSHIRE MONASTIC SEALS :—PLATE II

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

repairs, which they had no money to do, and
begging him to grant them a patent for a
proctor to go about the country to collect alms
on their behalf. The convent at some time
must have received such a licence, for a letter
dated August 1431 authorizes a proctor 4
to solicit for them the charity of the faithful,
since through misfortune they had come to
such want that they could not live on their
own resources.

They seem to have suffered, too, from the
encroachments of unscrupulous neighbours.
Margaret Lyle, the prioress, complained to the
chancellor, c. 1431-43,% that one Thomas
Howard had deprived them for years of Langhoe
Wood, in Great Munden, which had long been
theirs, and owing to a technical flaw in her
evidence and her fear of him she had no remedy
in common law.

The nuns in 14488 found it difficult even
to pay for a chaplain, and begged the king that
they might have as priest John Tyvnham, an
old Franciscan, who preached well and was
of good reputation, because unless they had a
young man, and that was not fitting, they were
asked a larger salary than they could afford.

The continuance of a community there was
at length found impossible. Through the
neglect and bad management of the prioress, it
was said, the property had so diminished that
it was insufficient to maintain any nuns, support
the necessary charges and rebuild the church
and house, then in ruins.2? The prioress and
convent, therefore, on 11 September 1457 made
over the place with all its possessions to John
Fray, chief baron of the Exchequer,?* who ten
years before had bought the manor of Great
Munden and the advowson of the priory.”

Fray, unwilling that the religious services
should lapse, established in the priory church
and endowed with the conventual property a per-
petual chantry of one chaplain to celebrate for
the good estate of the king and himself, and for
the souls of the founder and benefactors of the
late nunnery.*® The convent c. 1336 had land
in Great and Little Munden, Standon,*! West-

4 Cart. Misc. (Aug. Off.), vol. xxi, no. 196. The
proctor’s name is represented by the letters A. B.

5 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 11, no. 308.

*° The answer was given 28 Feb. 1449 (Acés of
P.C. 1443-60, p. 67). p

7 Pat. 37 Hen. VI, pt. i, m. 15, printed in
Dugdale, Mon. iv, 343, no. il.

78 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 343, no. i. Ill-luck dogged
the nuns totheend. An order was given on 24 Oct.
1457 for the arrest of John Vale alias Parys to
answer concerning riots and offences done to Agnes
Prioress of Rowney (Cal. Pat. 1452-66, p. 402).

9 Feet of F. Herts. 26 Hen. VI, no. 138.

39 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 343, no. ii.

31 They received 8 acres here in exchange for land
in Little Munden from William de Munden in 1339
(Cal. Pat. 1338-40, p. 242).

mill, Alswick in Layston, Sandon, Wyddial and
Welwyn“ The net annual value of the
chantry’s property was estimated in 1535 at
£13 tos. gd.54 and in 1548 at £18 155. 14,35

Prioresses oF Rowney

Rose, resigned 1256-7 36

Nicholaa, elected 1256-7 97

Agnes de London, resigned August 1291 *

Alice de Chingford, elected 1291,° died 1318 4°

Joan de London, elected 1318

Joan Spenser, elected December 1327 #

Joan de London, occurs 1338 (?)

Margaret Costance, died 1371 44

Catherine de Hemsted, elected
Catherine occurs 1397 and 1399 *

Catherine Grenefeld, removed 1418 47

Alice Lyle (?) 48

Margaret Lyle, occurs c. 1431-43, resigned
or died before February 1449 °°

Elizabeth Brandon, appointed 16 January
1450, resigned 20 May 1455 ®

Agnes Selby, surrendered the priory October

1457 °°

1371;

The circular seal attached to a 13th-cen-
tury charter 4 in the British Museum shows
a right hand between two sprays of conventional
foliage issuing from the base of the design
supporting a dish on which lies the head of
St. John Baptist. The legend is: siciLw’
OVENT . SCIMONIALIV DE RVGNH’

32 They had land here in the 13th century (Anct.
D. [P.R.O.], C 2035).

33 Rentals and Surv. R. 293.

34 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 278.

35 Including 65. 8¢, the farm of the priest’s
lodging (Chant. Cert. 27, no. 7).

86 Linc. Epis. Reg. Lexington Rolls (Huntingdon
Archd. Anno 4).

37 Tbid. 38 [bid. Sutton, Inst. fol. 85 d.
39 Tbid. 40 Ibid. Dalderby, Inst. fol. 253.
41 Thid. 42 Tbid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 174.

43 Confirmation 10 Sept. 1338 of a lease by her
(Cal. Pat. 1338-40, p. 154).

44 Linc. Epis. Reg. Buckingham, Inst. fol. 301.

45 Tbid.

46 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 11.
may have been Catherine Grenefeld.

47 Linc. Epis. Reg. Repingdon, Memo. fol. 185.

48 In 1466 there is mention of a lease granted by
Alice Lyle, late Prioress of Rowney, but nothing is
known of the date of the deed except that it was
previous to July 1454 (Ct. R. [Gen. Ser-], portf. 178,
no. 16).

49 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 11, no. 308.

50 Acts of P.C. 1443-60, p. 67.

51 Cant. Archiepis. Reg. Stafford, fol. 33. The
nuns omitted to elect within the proper time, so the
Archbishop of Canterbury appointed, the see of Lincoln
being vacant. :

62 On becoming Prioress of Hinchinbrook (Add.
Chart. 33621). 53 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 343, no. 1.

54 BM. Chart. L. F. C. iv, 2.

She

435

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

HOUSES OF AUSTIN CANONS

10. ROYSTON PRIORY

The priory of St. John Baptist and St.
Thomas the Martyr of Royston seems to have
originated in a chapel built by Eustace de
Merk in his fee of Newsells for three chaplains ;
this was enlarged or rebuilt at his request by
his nephew Ralph de Rochester, who placed
there seven canons regular, and gave them in
frankalmoign the site, the green before the
door and wall of the close, 140 acres of arable
land near the precinct and pasture for 120
sheep in his manor. The licence granted by
Walter Abbot of St. John Baptist, Colchester
(c. 1164-79),? to the poor brothers at Rose’s
Cross to build a chapel and consecrate a ceme-
tery in the parish of Barkway ® probably relates
to Eustace’s house.** The date of Rochester’s
foundation is fixed as earlier than April 1184
by the bull of Pope Lucius III,‘ then directed
to Simon the prior and the canons, taking under
the protection of St. Peter the church of St.
John Baptist and St. Thomas the Martyr ® at
Rose’s Cross, and ordering the rule of St.
Augustine to be observed there inviolably.
They might receive as brothers any clerks or
laymen who were free and without ties; those
who made profession there must not depart
except to enter a stricter order; the election of
the prior was to be free; during a general
interdict divine service might be celebrated
there with closed doors; there was to be free
burial there saving the rights of other churches ;
the convent could present to the parish churches
which belonged to them priests who should
answer to them for the issues; sentence of

1 Harl. MS. 7041, fol. 7. The charter of
Richard I (see below) gives Eustace alone as founder,
but the Prior of Royston in 1277-8 associated
Ralph with him (Assize R. 323, m. 46).

2 The dates of the early Abbots of Colchester are
only approximate (V.C.H. Essex, il, 101).

3 Cart. Mon. S. Johan. Bapt. de Colecestria (Rox-
burghe Club), 513. The document must concern
the priory, which was in the parish of Barkway (Inq.
a.q.d. file 3, no. 31), while the two hospitals were
not. For Rose’s Cross see Royston, V.C.H. Herts. iii,
253.

sa It must be owned, however, that the mention
of a prior seems to point rather to Ralph’s foundation.

4 Cott. MS. Aug. ii, no. 124. If the house was
dedicated from the first to St. Thomas the Martyr,
as was said in 1277-8 (Assize R. 323, m. 46), it was
founded after 1170. Its foundation was at any rate
not before 1163, for Ralph’s charter was addressed to
Gilbert Bishop of London, 1163-89.

° The first saint was possibly chosen as patron out
of compliment to Colchester Abbey. In early times
the house was generally called the priory of St. Thomas
the Martyr.

excommunication, suspension or interdict was
not to be published against them or their church
without reasonable cause; and _ interference
with them and their property was forbidden.
The pope also confirmed to them their posses-
sions, among which were specified the churches
of Coddenham (co. Suffolk) and Chesterton
(co. Huntingdon) with certain small tithes and
land given by Eustace de Merk, the grant of
Ralph de Rochester, and land worth 2os., the
gift of Ralph Walensis.

From the charter of Richard I to the priory
in November 1189 ® it appears that Eustace de
Merk’s endowment included also the church of
Owersby ? (co. Lincoln) and land in ‘ Lagefare,’
‘ Haclinges,’ Owersby and Thornton, and that
the canons had acquired from other donors
small pieces of land in ‘ Ruyt,’ possibly Reed,
and Barley (co. Herts.), Melbourn, Bassing-
bourn and Kneesworth (co. Camb.), ‘ Halse-
wic,’ probably Alswick in Layston, and
‘Wanlinton,’ perhaps Wallington. The king
confirmed these to the convent and granted
them a fair at Royston throughout the
week of Pentecost and a weekly market
according to the custom of the canons of
Dunstable; he gave them sac and soc, tol and
team, infangthef and utfangthef and murder;
freedom for them and their men and tenants
from all scot and geld, aids, hidage, danegeld,
shires and hundreds, wardpenny and burgh-
penny, works of castles; and acquittance of
all toll in fairs and markets and crossing of
bridges throughout the kingdom; the canons
were to have the chattels of thieves and all
forfeitures which occurred in their lands or
those of their men, and they were not to be
impleaded as to their property except before
the king and his chief justice. The charter
was confirmed in February 12728 and several
times afterwards,® and the important privileges
it conferred were claimed by the prior and
allowed in 1277.10

Improvements were being made to the house
in December 1225, for the king then gave the
prior leave to inclose the road beneath the west

® Cart. Antiq. R. 6, printed in Dugdale, Mon. vi,
405, no. i.

7 All three churches were confirmed to them by
a papal bull dated 29 July, second year of Pope
Celestine, apparently Pope Celestine III, and if so
in 1192 (Cott. MS. Aug. ii, no. 130).

® Cal. Chart. R. 1257-1300, p. 180.

* In 1344 (Chart. R. 18 Edw. III, m. 2, no. 7),
1378 (Ca/ Pat. 1377-81, p. 181), 1400 (ibid.
1399-I40T, p. 98), 1413 (ibid. 1413-16, p. 136),
1427 (ibid. 1422-9, p. 427).

1° Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 283, 412.

436

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

wall of the priory for its enlargement," and
granted him timber to build a chamber for
himself.

For the rest, information about the priory
during the 13th century relates either to diff-
culties with other religious bodies 8 over con-
flicting liberties or to its additions of property.
The canons obtained in 1242 a second fair at
Royston to be held on the vigil and feast of
St. Thomas the Martyr,!4 and in 1254 a weekly
market and annual fair at Chesterton.® Part
of the manor of Hamerton was acquired
c, 1221-216; before 1251 they received the
manor of Eriswell in Suffolk from William de
Rochester,}? their patron,!® who gave them
besides land in the neighbourhood of Royston! ;
from Peter de Rochester they had the mill of
‘Beriton’ with multure and fishery in Eriswelland
Coclesworth 2° and a holding in Lakenheath, and
from two others land in East and West Reed ;
and c. 1255 a carucate of land in Chesterton
from Giles de Merk.» Houses in Fleet Street,
London, were bequeathed to them in 1290 by
Richard de Staunford, clerk of the Exchequer,
to maintain a chantry in their church,” a rent
of {4 145. in Royston was alienated to them
in 1292 by Isabella de Harleston,? and land
and rent in Coddenham in 1293 by Geoffrey
Lenvyse.”4

The priory was not badly off compared
with most religious houses in the county,
but its resources were perhaps hardly equal to
its responsibilities, judging from the constant
disturbances within its area of administration.
Some men of Bassingbourn about 1269 knocked
down thewalls of Royston and broke the gates**;
and business at the Whitsuntide fair in 1292

Providing a new road was made on the prior’s
land (Rot. Lit. Claus. [Rec. Com.], ii, 10).

1 Tbid.

18 With the Templars in 1199 (Rot. Cur. Reg.
(Rec. Com.], ii, 82), 1247 (Assize R. no. 318,
m. 12d.) and 1254 (Abbrev. Plac. 137) ; with the
Hospitallers (Rot. Cur. Reg. [Rec. Com.], i, 359);
and in 1247-8 with the Abbot of Westminster
(Assize R. no. 318, m. 5 d.).

4 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 218.

18 Cal. Pat. 1247-58, p. 378.

18 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 184-5.

” Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 360; Hund. R.
(Rec. Com.), ii, 196.

18 The son of Ralph de Rochester (Harl. MS. 7041,
fol. 7). 19 Tbid.

Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 360. Probably
Barton Mills (Coppinger, Suffo/t Rec. ii, 312).

”! Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 196.

® Sharpe, Cal. of Wills proved in Court of Husting,
London, i, 93.

3 Cal. Pat. 1281-92, p. 476.

* Ibid. 1292-1301, p. 28; Feet of F. Suffolk,
22 Edw. I, no, 25.

* V.C.H. Herts. iii, 259.

*° Cur. Reg. R. 189, m. 6, 15d.

was suspended by rioters, among whom was
the lord of Newsells’ steward.” Some of the
convent indeed about 1308 came to close
quarters with a gang of robbers.*® The prior
and sub-prior, Robert de Bernwell, on this
occasion were set upon near Royston; Bern-
well ran to the town, collected a band of men,
headed the pursuit and took an active part in
the affray, during which one robber was killed
and others wounded and captured. Without
any dispensation for this bloodshed, Bernwell
continued to exercise his priestly functions, and
was sent by the Bishop of London in 1308 to
the pope for absolution.

The spirit of violence had infected the cloister.
At the same visitation the bishop found that
Ralph de Ashwell, another canon, in the course
of a quarrel had badly wounded Bernwell,
‘causing great scandal in many parts of
England.’ Ashwell had also to go to the pope.”

John de Waldene confessed that he had
raised his hand against the late prior, and,
although he was thereby excommunicate, had
celebrated mass, and he therefore begged to be
sent to the papal court to obtain dispensation.
The bishop, however, suspected that Waldene
would have preferred the journey to the penance
already imposed for other misdeeds, so refusing
his request he sent him, as he had intended, to
the abbey of St. Osyth, there to be kept in prison
and to fast on bread and water twice a week.

These cases give point to some of the episco-
pal injunctions, viz., plotting among the
canons, revelation of the secrets of the house,
insults and quarrels were to be sharply checked
by the prior without respect of persons, and a
prison was to be built in a safe place in the house
for the punishment of delinquent canons. The
others, as might be expected, indicate general
carelessness and slackness in discipline, religion
and management. Money in lieu of clothes
was not to be given to the canons; the sick
were to be provided with suitable food ; silence
was to be kept according to the rule; the
decrease in the number of the convent must be
remedied as soon as possible ; the prior on pain
of deprivation was to enforce a better observance
of the injunctions of the Archbishop of Canter-
bury and of the Bishop of London ; canons were

27 Chan. Ing. Misc. file 53, no. 4.
8 Reg. of Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London (Cant.
and York Soc.), 69-70.

29 Tbid. 70. the oe

30 The bishop’s letter to the pope’s penitentiary
(ibid. 70-1).

31 Ibid. 72-3. In January 1310 the bishop

empowered the Prior of Royston to mitigate this
penance, but John was to have no dealings with
women, not to go out of the bounds of the priory,
and not to officiate in the church until further
orders (ibid. 117-18).

32 Thid. 174-5.

437

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

not to wander about the town or enter the
houses of laymen without good cause, the prior’s
leave being first obtained, nor eat and drink
except in the refectory, infirmary or the prior’s
room; women, especially those of the neigh-
bourhood, were not to eat within the precincts
nor enter the cloister and other places reserved
to the convent, unless the prior gave permission
in the case of women of good repute coming with
a proper escort; the brothers were to eat and
sleep together and be present at the services
day and night; no office was to be committed
to a canon not instructed in his rule; obedien-
tiaries and those receiving the goods of the
house must render accounts at least once a year,
and the prior must make known the state of
their affairs and consult the most experienced
of the convent about expenditure.

In 1310 another canon had to seek papal abso-
lution for celebrating service while excommuni-
cated for violence## This man, Walter de
Kelishulle, had behaved like one frenzied: he had
assaulted the prior and a clerk so as to draw blood,
attacked one of the convent with drawn sword
in the church, and dragged the sub-prior about
the room, tearing his clothes off his back. In
September he was consigned by the bishop to
St. Osyth’s,54 with directions that he was to be
last in quire, cloister, chapter, refectory, and
dormitory, attend all the services, and celebrate
mass daily; and except at the most important
festivals he was to have only bread, soup and
ale on Thursdays and Saturdays. The punish-
ment in this instance appears light for the
offence, and it would be interesting to know all
the circumstances. It is evident that Bishop
Baldock considered the prior most unsatisfactory.
Geoffrey Hakoun seems to have had a special
faculty for surrounding himself with undesir-
able familiars and servants. By an injunction
of 1308 Robert Cook was to be removed from all
office. Later® the prior was ordered to avoid
the company of John Loth, who was to be
deprived of office after rendering account, and
to remove the warden of Eastwood, putting in
his place a trustworthy person with the convent’s
consent. He himself was forbidden under pain
of deprivation to alienate property without
urgent necessity, as he had done, or contract
heavy loans without the convent’s assent; and
in future he must neither receive nor spend
the issues of the priory save in the presence of
a canon deputed by the rest.

In 1311 Hakoun practically set the bishop at
defiance by procuring from the general chapter
of the order the reversal of his commands about
John de Waldene and the administration of

33 Reg. of Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London (Cant.
and York Soc.), 125.

34 Ibid. 133.

35 Ibid. 175-6.

the conventual property,® and in April 1313
was threatened with excommunication and
deprivation by the bishop if he did not observe
his injunctions, hitherto utterly neglected.%”
What happened in the end is not known.
Bishop Baldock died shortly afterwards,
and Hakoun remained in possession until
November 1314 and then resigned,** possibly
under pressure, for the choice of a canon from
another house to succeed him hints at reform.

Surrounding conditions probably made main-
tenance of discipline and management of pro-
perty particularly difficult here. The prior
complained in 1313 that the gates and doors of
the priory had been broken and the bailiff of
his market assaulted,4° and in 1314 that his
goods had been carried off.

The house continued to add to its possessions.
The manor of Reed was bought in 1303 from
Adam de Twynham *; in 1354 land and rent
in Cockenhatch and Reed were acquired from
William de Norton * and 70 acres in Cocken-
hatch from Michael de Spayne the next year“;
and grants of land in West Reed, Royston and
Buckland were made to the convent by Thomas
Palfreyman between 1358 and 1368, partly to
maintain a lamp at the high altar of their
church and to endow a chantry and obit. The
prior and convent also received from William
Slyng and his wife Maud in 1363 a messuage in
Holborn worth 8s. a year to find a candle at
high mass on Sunday before the high altar.‘
In 1385 they obtained licence to acquire pro-
perty in mortmain to the annual value of {10,‘7
and in 1386 William Koo gave them messuages
in Royston to half the amount.48 Edmund
Earl of March, their patron,‘ bequeathed
40 marks to the house in 1382-3 that a daily
mass might be celebrated for his soul for a
year.®°

William Pynchbek, who had been made prior
in March 1398-9," was accused with two of the

38 Reg. of Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London (Cant.
and York Soc.), 146-7.

7 Tbid. 176.

38 Leave to elect was given 5 Nov. 1314 (Cad, Pat.
1313-17, p- 195).

39 Tbid. p. 202.

49 Ibid. p. 62. 41 Thid. p. 229.

4% Cal. Close, 1302-7, p. 92.

43 Cal. Pat. 1354-8, p. 52.

44 Ibid. p. 191.

4 Pat. 32 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 1, 26; 37
Edw. III, pt. i, m. 20, 39; 40 Edw. III, pt. ii,
m. 8, 9; 42 Edw. III, pt. i, m. 12.

48 Cal. Pat. 1361-4, p. 401.

47 They paid 20 marks for it (ibid. 1385-9, p. 45).

48 Ibid. p. 238.

49 See below.

50 Nichols, Royal Wills, 109-16. Elizabeth Lady
Clare, by will proved 1360, left the priory 60s. and
two cloths of gold (ibid. 23-43).

51 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 304-6.

438

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

canons, John Burgh and Walter Adam, in 1401
of having procured his election through secular
power and simony.™ They denied the charge,
and cleared themselves before the bishop’s
commissary by bringing beneficed clergymen to
testify to their life and conduct.

Except as regards its temporal jurisdiction,®
very little is heard of the house for a century.

In 1517 two changes were made at the priory
by Bishop Fitz James at the request of Robert
White, the prior.54 To replace more easily the
service books now worn out, the adoption of
the Sarum use was authorized instead of that
of Bangor. The feast of the dedication of the
conventual church was at the same time trans-
ferred from 22 June to 19 October, because the
former date came too near St. John Baptist’s
Day, the festival of the place.

The church was then undergoing repairs,
which must have extended over some time, for
Thomas Gery in 1517 left 40s. for that purpose,
and in 1527 a bequest of {10 was made by
William Lee to complete the chancel roof.®

When White died on 1 April 1534 5° a difh-
culty arose between the convent and the Earl of
Oxford, who as owner of Newsells believed he
had a voice in the selection of the prior. Richard
Bretten, one of the canons, he told Cromwell,
was canvassing the gentlemen and yeomen of
the district ostensibly to have a free election,
but really to get the post for himself; and
in Cromwell’s statement that the king was
founder he could only see the result of Bretten’s
intrigues.58 But Bretten was right on both
counts. The patronage of the priory had long
since passed from the lords of Newsells, and
belonged to the king as heir of the Mortimers * ;
and the choice of the prior rested with the
convent. The congé délire was given on
14 May,® Richard Bretten was chosen, and
the king assented on 12 June to his election.
The affair, however, was evidently not yet
settled. Bretten appears to have been absent

53 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 350.

83 The prior’s claim to the market at Royston was
challenged in 1434 (Memo. R. [L.T.R.], Rec. Hil.
12 Hen. VI, m. 18), and a difficulty arose over the
alleged escape of a felon from Royston (ibid.).

4 Lond. Epis. Reg. Fitzjames, fol. 117 d.

55 Kingston, Hist. of Royston, 56, 81, 84.

58 Add. MS. 5828, fol. 26d.

57 L, and P. Hen. VIII, vii, §17.

58 Thid. 537.

59 Alice de Scales, who inherited Newsells from the
Rochesters, made over the patronage about the middle
of the 13th century to the Earl of Gloucester (Harl.
MS. 7041, fol. 8). Atthe division of the Gloucester
estates after Earl Gilbert’s death in 1314 it was
allotted to Elizabeth Lady Clare (ibid. fol. 6), and
passed by the marriage of her daughter and heir to
the Mortimers (Chan. Ing. p.m. 22 Ric. II, no. 34).

80 L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 761(29).

51 Ibid. 922 (26).

when the acknowledgement of the royal
supremacy was made by the house, 1 July
1534, and although he was styled prior in
October, when he borrowed 20 marks for his
monastery ‘in his great necessity,’ ® the royal
assent was given a second time in December."

The Earl of Oxford had called him unthrifty
and unfit for rule, and declared that he would
ruin the house, but his opinion is too biased to
be trustworthy, and the available evidence is all
in Bretten’s favour. The commissioners who
received the surrender of the priory in 1537
pronounced the convent to be of very good
report and name and the building in very good
repair.®

At the dissolution of the house on g April
1537 Bretten received an annual pension of
£16 135. 4d., but the other six canons were
dismissed with a small present.®

The goods were worth {132 135. 6d.°7 and the
plate £30 35. 2}d.®; the lead was valued at
£28 and the three bells at {29.6 The income
of the priory in 1291 was about {61 7; in 1535
it was reckoned at {89 16s. net,” perhaps a low
estimate, as its gross revenues in 1537 were at

least £133.

62 Dep. Keeper’s Rep. vii, App. ii, 299. The
document was signed by the sub-prior and eight
other canons.

63 Kingston, op. cit. 53, note I.

84 I. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 1601 (23).

85 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

66 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606, schedule.
The sum of £11 135. 4¢. was divided among the
canons, a priest and twenty-four servants.

87 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. ccclxi, fol. 67-68d. This
amount, however, included the cloister and dormitory,
sold for £24, a house next the porter’s lodge for
£20, and the future crops of the sown fields,
£50 9s. 8d. The stuff in the hall, buttery, pantry,
kitchen and bakehouse fetched £8 5s. The church
apparently contained nothing very valuable. The
stuff at our Lady’s and St. Katharine’s altars and in
the rood chapel brought in only 12s., the organ in
the quire 40s.,and another 11s. There were several
suits of vestments, green baudekin, black worsted,
black camlet, shot silk, red velvet, a very old one of
damask, and another of tawny velvet and 9 copes,
but the highest price given for any was 305.

68 Ibid. fol. 68d.69. A cross of silver-gilt
weighing 44 0z., a silver censer of the same weight,
2 silver chalices, parcel gilt, 12 silver spoons, a salt
with cover, parcel gilt, the garnishing of 2 great
mazer bands gilt and of 2 little mazer bands gilt.
There is also an account of goods and plate in K.R.

Church Goods 22, in which the value was estimated

lower.

69 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

10 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 124, 144, 18,
255, 284, 36, 50d, 51, 514, 115, 1294, 130, 2664,
269. The whole amount was £71 145. 5d., but the
vicar of Coddenham was paid {10 135. 4d.

11 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 289.

72 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

439

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Priors oF Royston

Simon, occurs April 1184 7

W., occurs October 1229 74

Osbert, occurs 28 October 1254 75

Richard, occurs 1290 76 and 129477; Richard
de Leccinton died c. 1297 78

Thomas, occurs May 130279

Geoffrey, occurs 1313,% resigned 1314 ®

John de Broome,® elected 1314 8

John de Beauchamp, occurs 1339 ®

Thomas, occurs 1346 ®

John de Arneburgh, occurs 1354,8° 1361 8? and
1362,°° and died 25 July 1369 ®°

John West, elected g August 1369 ®°; John
occurs 25 November 1383 %

John Adam, died ro March 1398-9 ®

William de Pynchbek, elected 21 March
1398-9," occurs October 1401

Walter (Adam), occurs 15 October 1413 %

Richard, occurs 24 October 1427,% 1434,97
February 1439,°% died 24 December 1441

George Wright, elected 23 February 1441-2 1

John Borough, occurs 30 November 1451,!
died 26 April 1484 ?

73 Cotton MS. Aug. ii, fol. 124.

™4 Cal. Close, 1227-31, p. 225.

7 Cal. Pat. 1247-58, p. 378. He was prior
when Alice de Scales transferred the patronage of
the priory to the Earl of Gloucester (Harl. MS.
7041, fol. 8).

7 Memo. R. (L.T.R.), Mich. 18 & 19 Edw. I,
m. 6d.

7 Feet of F. Suffolk, 22 Edw. I, no. 25.

78 Cal. Pat. 1292-1301, p. 377.

"9 Cal. Close, 1296-1302, p. 553.

8° Baldock’s Reg. (Cant. and York Soc.), 175.

51 Here called Geoffrey Hakoun (Ca/. Pat. 1313-
17, p- 195).

52 He was a canon of St. Botolph’s, Colchester.

83 Royal assent given 4 Dec. (Cal. Pat. 1313-17,
p- 202).

84 Add. Chart. 44502.

86 Add. MS. 5843, p. 247.

87 Cal. Pat. 1361-4, p. 40.

88 Cal. Close, 1360-4, p. 408.

89 Lond. Epis. Reg. Sudbury, fol. 144.

% Thid.

1 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 330.
Adam.

*? Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 306.

§3 Tbid.

% Ibid. fol. 350. In Nov. 1414 he was made
chaplain ofa hermitage in Norfolk (Ca/. Pat. 1413-16,
P- 254).

% Cal. Pat. 1413-16, p. 136. Walter Adam occurs
as prior in the time of Henry IV (ibid. 1422-9,
Pp. 370). % Tbid. p. 427.

7 Memo. R. (L.T.R.), Hil. 12 Hen. VI, m. 18.
Here called Richard Hugh.

85 Feud. Aids, Vv, 53.

This may be John

8 Cal. Chart. in Bodleian Lid. 89. Here called
Richard Higham.
89 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 405. 100 Tbid.

1 Aug. Off. Leases, iv, no. 136.
2 Add. MS. 5820, fol. 24d.

John Kyrkeby, occurs temp. Henry VII3

Robert White, occurs 1517,4 September 1521,°
August 1532,° died 1 April 15347

Richard Bretten, elected 1534,® surrendered
March 1537 ®

The seal of this priory, of 15th-century date,!°
is vesica-shaped, with a design of two niches
with elaborate canopies and having tabernacle
work at the sides ; in the one on the right stands
St. Thomas of Canterbury with mitre and
crozier, blessing with his right hand; in that
on the left is another saint, presumably St. John
Baptist. Below under the round-headed arch
supporting the niches is a little figure of a prior
praying. Legend: siciLtU ‘ coMMUNE © PORAT

. . DOMUS ...@° THOME’ DE‘ RO..

11, WYMONDLEY PRIORY

The hospital} or priory of Austin canons at
Little Wymondley, dedicated to the honour of
St. Mary,? was founded by Richard de Argen-
tein,’ the lord of the manor, apparently at the
beginning of the reign of Henry III, but of the
endowment nothing is known except that it
included land in Wymondley * and the church
of Little Wymondley, of which the master of
the hospital was put in possession in 1218 on
the resignation of the parson and vicar. The
patron’s rights did not include a voice in the
selection of the head of the house, for although

3 Aug. Off. Leases, iv, no. 139.

4 Lond. Epis. Reg. Fitzjames, fol. 117 d.

5 Add. MS. 5820, fol. 26d.

® Without the surname (Aug. Off. Leases, iv,
no. 135).

7 Add. MS. 5820, fol. 26d.

8 L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 922 (26).

5 Ibid. xii (1), $71 (2).

10 B.M. Seals, Ixiv, 71.

1 During the 13th century it was often styled
‘hospital’ (Rolls of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York
Soc.], i, 1413 ili, 43; Cal Close, 1231-4, p. 845
Cal. Pat. 1281-92, p. 195; Pipe R. 19 Edw. 1),
but apparently not afterwards.

2 The house seems generally to have been called
the priory or hospital of St. Mary in the 13th and
15th centuries (Rot. Lit. Claus. [Rec. Com.], ii, 88 ;
Cal. Close, 1226-57, p. 159; Cal. Pat. 1281-92,
p. 195; B.M. Seals, Ixiv, 74), but Tanner (Notit.
Mon.) says it was dedicated to St. Lawrence. Possibly
it had a double dedication, for the two altars in the
church mentioned by name at the dissolution of the
priory were those of St. Lawrence and our Lady
(K.R. Church Goods, 42).

* Visit. of Bp. Alnwick, 1442 (Doc. of Bp. of Linc.
at Exchequer Gate).

4 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 183.

5 Rolls of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i,
141. The prior and brothers presented a vicar in
1223 (ibid. ili, 43), so they evidently did not at
first serve the church themselves.

440

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Giles de Argentein, Richard’s son and successor
opposed the election of a canon of Dunstable
as Prior of Wymondley in 1247, he was unsuc-
cessful.®

The convent acquired various property during
the first seventy years of its existence. In 1232
Henry III granted them a virgate of land in
Dinsley ? for 5s. a year and the maintenance of
his anniversary and that of King John; in 1275
they owned a carucate of land in the hundred
of Hertford, bought of Ivo de Hoverile ®; they
then had land also in Beeston, co. Nottingham,®
and in 1278 held in Tewin 40 acres,!° to which
8o acres more were added in 1285 by the gift of
Walter de Neville.4

The resources of the house, however, were
stillinadequate toitsneeds. William Dalderby,
Bishop of Lincoln, in 1315 wrote to the rectors
and vicars throughout the archdeaconries of
Buckingham, Oxford, Bedford and Huntingdon,
requesting them to permit the proctors of the
poor canons of Wymondley to solicit the alms
of the faithful within their districts, and offer-
ing an indulgence of forty days to those who
gave to them??; and in 1323 Bishop Burghersh
sent similar letters to the clergy of his diocese
and granted an indulgence for the benefit of the
canons.}8

The house seems also to have had other
difficulties at the beginning of the 14th century.
John de Wymondley, the prior, who had ruled
for ten years,4 was removed in 1300, and
after a long delay,!® which points to disagree-
ments among the canons, John de Mordon, a
former prior, was reinstated.!?_ Mordon died in
1304, and was succeeded by Elias de Wheat-
hampstead,!® but it was not until 1310 that
John de Wymondley at last formally resigned.

The canons, in electing John de Buckden
prior in 1340, seem hardly to have chosen a
person circumspect in temporal affairs, as
advised by their bishop.2” He was accused, with
others, in March 1345 * of ‘ attempting things

8 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 175.

" Cal. Chart, R. 1226-57, p. 159. It was before
committed to them during pleasure (Rot. Lit. Claus.
[Rec. Com.], ii, 88).

8 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 191.

* Tid. ii, 314.

10 Assize R. 323, m. 13d.

1 Cal, Pat. 1281-92, p. 195.

# Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 311.

38 Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 109 d.

4 Thid. Sutton, Inst. fol. 84 d.

¥ Ibid. Dalderby, Inst. fol. 231.

6 Ibid. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 11.

™ He must have been a man of good character or
the bishop would not in 1302 have made him con-
fessor of the nuns of Rowney (ibid. fol. 44).

8 Ibid. Dalderby, Inst. fol. 235 d.

19 Thid. fol. 242.

” Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 371.

| Cal. Pat. 1343-5, p. 501.

4 441

very prejudicial to the king and his crown,
which if allowed to proceed will be not only to
the king’s prejudice and the subversion of laws
and the rights of the crown, but also to the
manifest lesion of ecclesiastical liberty.’ Un-
fortunately the offence for which his arrest was
ordered is not stated, but it possibly was con-
nected with the suit brought against him at
that date by Joan daughter of the late John
de Argentein for detaining a charter entrusted
to Elias his predecessor.”

The Argentein deeds caused a later Prior of
Wymondley some unpleasantness. As he was
on his way to Halesworth, co. Suffolk, in 1382,
to assist at the funeral of John de Argentein, he
was seized at Newmarket by the partisans of
one of the heirs and forced to surrender certain
muniments which John had deposited in the
priory for safety.

The inconsiderable bequests made to the
priory by Argentein #4 were apparently but a
small portion of what the convent obtained at
his death, for under the will of Ann Maltravers,
John’s mother,” they were then to receive *
a great cup with a cover, a dragenall, 6 dishes,
6 pottingers, 6 saucers, 2 pitchers and
2 pottles, all of silver, as well as a ‘ dozer’
of green powdered with dolphins and 4 ‘ cous-
ters’ of the same suit.

Some land in Hertford was given to the
convent in 1330 by Roger de Luda to main-
tain a chantry in Tewin Church,?”? and four
cottages in Shefford Gn Campton, co. Beds.)
in 1392 by John Cokkowe for a chantry in the
priory.28 An indulgence for their relief granted
by the Bishop of Ely in 1394 ® shows that they
then needed help. When the house was visited
by Bishop Alnwick in 1442 % its general state
was quite satisfactory, none of the four canons
having any complaints to make. It had then
an annual income of {20 clear, which cannot
have offered much margin for extra expenditure.

At the visitation of May 1530! the one ques-
tion of importance was the financial situation,
which was certainly gloomy in the extreme.
The prior had just spent 100 marks on the

22 Plac. de Banco East. 19 Edw. III, rot. 144,
given in Year Bk. 19 Edw. I/I (Rolls Ser.), 23,
n. 6, &c.

23 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 260.

2 905. for the repair of the priory and 20s. to the
convent to celebrate for his soul (Gibbons, Early
Lincoln Wills, 25). .

26 Chan. Ing. p.m. 49 Edw. III, pt. 11, no. 17.

26 The articles were left to John for his life with
remainder to the priory (Nicolas, Test. Vetusta, 91).

27 Cal. Pat. 1333-45 P- 17+

28 Tbid. 1391-6, p. 187.

39 Gibbons, Cal. of Ely Epis. Rec. 399- ;

8 Visit. of Bp. Alnwick (Doc. of Bp. of Linc. at
Exchequer Gate).

81 Visit. of John Rayne, chancellor of the diocese
(ibid.).

56

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

belfry, and other parts of the church were still
badly in need of repairs,3? while to add to the
difficulties of the convent eighty of their sheep
had died that year, and only eighteen were left.

The acknowledgement of the royal supremacy
was signed on 14 October 1534 by the prior and
four canons,3 and there were five religious living
there,*4 according to the royal commissioners
‘of slender report,’ on 6 April 1537, when the
house was dissolved as one of the smaller
monasteries. The prior, John Atewe * or Yate,3?
was given a pension of {5 58; the other canons
received a present only.® It is not surprising
to find that in 1537 the buildings were in ruin
and decay.*? The only piece of plate there then
was a chalice valued at 725. gd., but a few
years before the convent had certainly had
more.*? The four bells, weighing 24 cwt.,®
were probably those noted in 1442 as lately
bought.#

The income of the house in 1526 was said to be
£46 gross and {23 8s. 6d. net #; in 1535 it was
reckoned at {29 19s. 11}d. net,*® and at the
Suppression {23 clear, apart from demesne lands
worth 1075.47 The canons were rectors of Little

%2 The chancel and nave were both in a ruinous
state, and they were not the only buildings in this
condition ; yet £12 had been spent on repairs in
1526 (Salter, 4 subsidy collected in the diocese of Lincoln
in 1526, p. 192).

33 Dep. Keeper's Rep. vii, App. ii, 306. This
seems to have been the usual number, for there were
five brothers in the priory in 1442 (Visit. of Bp.
Alnwick) and five also in 1530 (Visit. of Chancellor
Rayne), if John Atue, curate of Little Wymondley, is
included.

34 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

35 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

36 Ibid.

37 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (1), 1520. 8 Thid.

39 The sum of {9 15. 8d. was divided among them
and eleven servants (Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no.
1606).

40 Transcript of Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

41 Aug. Off. Misc. Bk. ccexli, fol. 66. The total
of the goods and plate is given at £13 125. 9d. In
the inventory made by the commissioners just before
the Suppression (K.R. Church Goods $2) it was
estimated at £6 19s. §¢, and this sum included 445.
for crops sown and 25s. for five cart-horses. The
stuff in the quire was very poor, the article of the
highest value being a pair of organs priced at 5s.,
while the only vestments were apparently a very old
one of blue silk valued at z0¢., two others, one of
baudekin, the other of red silk, reckoned at 35., and
an old cope at 8d. (ibid.).

# At the visitation of 1530 they had more than
one chalice and a silver ship.

43 Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 1606.

44 Visit. of Bp. Alnwick. The canons in 1530
said they had, and had of old, four bells (Visit. of
Chancellor Rayne). 4 Salter, op. cit. 192.

48 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 276.

47 Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3.

Wymondley, the church of which was served by

one of them as curate.*®

Priors oF WYMONDLEY

William, occurs c. 1218 #

Hugh, occurs 1233-4 5°

Martin, instituted 1246, died 1247-8 7

Richard de Waldia, elected March 1247-8,5
occurs 1251 8

John de Mordon, resigned 1290

John de Wymondley, elected 1290,°° deprived
1300 58

John de Mordon, re-elected 1300,57 occurs
1302,58 died 1304 °°

Elias de Wheathampstead, elected 1304,
occurs 1310," died 1340

John de Buckden, elected 1340, occurs

1345,°4 died 1347 °°

William Legat, died March 1349

Roger de Beston, elected 1349,” resigned
1 May 1374 %

John Anabull, resigned 1404-5 88

John Stevens, instituted February 1404-5 °°

Richard Chapman, occurs November 1442 7°

John Bawdry, died 14787

William Howse or Hawes, elected 1478,”
occurs 1488,” resigned 1513 74

Robert Ellys, elected 1513,7° resigned 1520 78

William Weston, elected in 1520,7? occurs
15 30,78 died 1531 7°

48 Parochial Visit. of 1527 (Doc. of Bishopric of
Linc. at Exchequer Gate) ; Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII,
no. 1606.

49Temp. Mabel Abbess of Elstow (Cott. MS.
Nero, E vi, fol. 128).

50 Feet of F. Herts. 18 Hen. III, no. 168.

51 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. ii, 548.

82 4nn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 175.

53 Richard Prior of Wymondley (Anct. D. (P.R.O.],
D 506).

54 Linc. Epis. Reg. Sutton, Memo. fol. 2.

55 Ibid. Inst. fol. 84 d.

56 Ibid. Bp. Dalderby, Inst. fol. 231.

57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. Bp. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 44.

58 Ibid. Dalderby, Inst. fol. 235. 60 Ibid.

81 Tbid. fol. 242.

62 Ibid. Burghersh, Memo. fol. 371.

®4 Cal. Pat. 1343-5, p. 501.

65 Tbid. 1345-8, p. 262.

68 Linc. Epis. Reg. Gynwell, Inst. fol. 344.

87 Ibid.

68 Ibid. Buckingham, Memo. pt. i, fol. 134d.

68a Clutterbuck, op. cit. ii, 549. 69 Tbid.

70 Visit. by Bp. Alnwick (Doc. of Bp. of Linc.).

71 Linc. Epis. Reg. Rotheram, Inst. fol. 119.

72 Thid. 3 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 366, no. I.

7 Linc. Epis. Reg. Smith, Inst. fol. 427.

75 Tbid.

78 Ibid. Wolsey and Atwater, Inst. fol. 49. He was
receiving a pension in 1526 (Salter, op. cit. 192).

77 Linc. Epis. Reg. Wolsey and Atwater, Inst. fol. 49.

78 Visit. of Chancellor Rayne (Doc. of Bp. of Linc.
at Exchequer Gate).

79 Linc. Epis. Reg. Longland, Inst. fol. 224 d.

83 [bid.

442

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

John Dorchester, elected 1531,8° occurs
14 October 1534 &
John Atue or Yate, occurs 4 March 1537 ®

The oval 14th-century seal of this house

represents the Virgin crowned and standing
with the Child on her left arm in a niche, witha
pinnacled and crocketed canopy. The field is
powdered with slipped roses. Legend: {s’]
CAPITVLI BEA(TE MAR) IE DE WILMVNDE.. .

HOUSE OF GILBERTINE CANONS

12, NEW BIGGING PRIORY, HITCHIN

The priory of St. Saviour, New Bigging,
Hitchin, was founded by Sir Edward de
Kendale, kt., at the end of 1361 or beginning
of 13622 for three canons of the Gilbertine
order, of whom one was to be prior.3

Tanner and others have called this house a
nunnery, but as there had to be at least seven
canons in a double establishment‘ of the
Gilbertine order, there could have been no
women there at the foundation, and there is no
trace of any afterwards.®

Kendale received the royal licence in February
1362-3 ® to give to the prior and canons in
order that they might celebrate for the souls of
Robert and Margaret de Kendale, his father and
mother, and of King Edward II, the advowson
of the church of Orwell (co. Cambridge) and
some land there which Margaret had intended
to assign for this purpose to the warden and
chaplains of the chapel of St. Peter in the
church of Hitchin. The canons at the same
time had leave to appropriate Orwell Church to
their own uses.

From William Rous, chaplain, the convent in
1372 obtained eight messuages, 63 acres of land
and 3s. rent in Willian and Hitchin in aid of
their maintenance.? The resources of the house,
no doubt still very small, were augmented
thirty years later by other means. On 22 Sep-
tember 1402 the pope empowered the canons

80 Linc. Epis. Reg. Longland, Inst. fol. 224 d.

8! Dep. Keeper’s Rep. vii, App. ii, 306.

82 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (1), 571 (4).

83 B.M. Seals, Ixiv, 74.

1 Cal. of Papal Letters, iv, 349.

2 The inquisition ad guod damnum preceding
Kendale’s grant of land to the canons for their
buildings took place in November 1361 (Inq. a.q.d.
file 340, no. 4). 3 Ibid.

4Graham, St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the
Gilbertines, 33.

5 The lack of proof that New Bigging was a house
for both sexes has been noticed by Messrs. Pollard
and Gerish, ‘The Religious Orders in Hitchin,’ East
Herts. Arch. Soc. iii (1), 3.

8 Pat. 37 Edw. III, pt. i, m. 37.

" Ibid. 46 Edw. II, pt. ii, m. 32.

to choose eight priests, seculars and regulars, to
hear the confessions of and absolve penitents who
on the feast of the Annunciation between the
first and second vespers visited and gave alms
for the conservation of the priory church, and
granted to such penitents the same indulgence
as to persons visiting on 1-2 August the church
of St. Mary of the Portiuncula, Assisi.8

The grant was perhaps made to meet a special
emergency, for the statement in 1400 that Sir
Robert Turk, kt., held a free chapel in Hitchin
called ‘le Bygynge’® may mean that he had
a mortgage on the place.

The house, the net annual value of which was
returned in 1535 as {13 16s.,!° figured in 1536
among the smaller monasteries marked out for
suppression," and in that year Rauf Morice was
petitioning Cromwell for a farm of the priory.”
As, however, the first Ministers’ Accounts * of
the place date from Michaelmas 1538, and the
prior was not granted a pension until De-
cember of that year, the priory appears to have
escaped dissolution #5 until the surrender of the
parent-house of Sempringham in September
1538.16

John Mounton, the last prior,!” is the only one
recorded.

8 Cal. of Papal Letters, iv, 349. The indulgence
in 1402 for the benefit of certain religious dwelling
by the vill of Hitchin is mentioned in ‘Annales
Ric. II et Hen. IV,’ see Trokelowe and Blaneforde,
Chron. et Ann. (Rolls Ser.), 348.

® Chan. Ing. p.m. 2 Hen. IV, no. 36.

10 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 276.

WL. and P. Hen. VIII, ix, 1238.

2 Tbid. xi, 1479.

13 Hen. VIII, no. 1617.

14 (4 a year until he received an ecclesiastical
benefice of that amount (Aug. Off. Misc. Bks.
ccxxxiii, fol. 97).

18 The commissioners who dissolved the small
houses made no report on New Bigging, but sent the
prior to the Chancellor of the Court of Augmenta-
tions (Land Rev. Rec. bdle. 66, no. 3).

16 V.C.H. Lincoln, ii, 186. It is here pointed out
that the master of Sempringham used his influence
with Cromwell to save the small Gilbertine houses
from dissolution under the Act of 1536.

17 L, and P. Hen. VIII, xiv (2), 1355+

443

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

HOUSE OF KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS

13. PRECEPTORY OF STANDON

The Knights Hospitallers received from
Gilbert de Clare Earl of Hertford, in the reign
of King Stephen,! the church of Standon and
140 acres of land and his vineyard in this
parish,? and from Gilbert’s brother and suc-
cessor Roger before 1174 a mill outside the
gate of Standon.! Here, according to Tanner,
a preceptory was established for sisters of the
order, who in 1180 were removed to Buckland
(co. Somerset).® As regards the sisters no evidence
has been found, but it seems certain that the
knights had at one time a preceptory here. In
certain agreements of 1280 and c. 1291-3 the
Hospitallers arranged that payments should be
made to ‘their house of Standon,’® and all doubt
about the connexion of the hospital of Standon
mentioned in 1319-207 and in 13238 with the
Knights of St. John is removed by the entries
in the manorial court rolls of 1360.§

Scarcely anything is known of the history of
the house. The master in 1319-20 was accused
of carrying off the corn of the lord of the manor
from the fields by night and of assaulting the
lord’s reaper’; but when the prior, apparently as
the master’s superior, answered the charges» it
was found that the Hospitallers had only taken
their own corn. In 1323 the master was said to
have broken into the king’s parks of Little
Hadham and Milkeley, hunted there and carried
off the deer.” Possibly the character of the
head of the house at Standon had something to
do with the neglect of duties! incumbent on the
Hospitallers, of which from 1320 to 1328 there
are frequent complaints.

1 Earl Gilbert’s grandfather died in 1150 and was
succeeded by his son Richard. Gilbert himself died
in 1152 (Dict. Nat. Biog.).

* Confirmation by King John, August 1199 (Cai.
Rot. Chart. 1199-1216 [Rec. Com.], 16).

3 He died before July or August 1174 (Dice.
Nat. Biog.).

* Confirmation by Roger’s son Richard Earl of
Hertford (Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 123).

5 Tanner, Notitia Mon.

§ Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 119. The same
expression is used for Clerkenwell in an indenture of
1376 (ibid. fol. 138).

7 Ct. Rolls (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 37.

8 Cal. Pat. 1321-4, p. 383.

® Ct. Rolls (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 45.

10 Tbid. no. 37.

Ul The prior and master were accused separately,
as if there was no connexion between them, but the
master’s case was postponed until the lord could be
consulted, and nothing was said about it in the later
court when the prior made his settlement.

12 Cal. Pat. 1321-4, p. 383.

13 Withdrawal of a chantry and alms (Ct. Rolls
[Gen. Ser.], portf. 178, no. 37, 39).

In August 1330 Prior Thomas Larchier leased
the hospital’s manor and the church of Standon
to William de Langford for 67} marks, and as
Langford was to receive the brothers coming to
the manor,! it seems improbable that there was
a preceptory here then. Yet if the cell had been
given up, it was revived, for in 1358 there are
references to the master of the hospital of
St. John of Jerusalem at Standon,!® and in
September 1360 to the preceptor of Standon,
against whom charges of trespass were then
brought.”

After this nothing more is heard of the
preceptory. In the 15th century the rectory
and lordship of Standon were let to Ralph
Asteley, who in March 1443-4 bequeathed his
lease to his sons William and Thomas in equal
shares for the term of their lives on condition
that they supported the charges on the estate.18
It was therefore no innovation when in 1505
the knights let the manor and parsonage of
Standon and Pagwell to John Kirkby,!® who
had to provide a priest for the chapel of the
manor and maintain for two days the steward
and surveyor of the Hospitallers coming to hold
the manorial courts and transact other business.

The Hospitallers’ property here was estimated
in 1338 at £34 15s. 4d. a year gross value and
£10 15s. 4d.net*°; in 1535 its annual value was
reckoned at {23 105.2!

\IAsTERS OR PrecEPToRS OF STANDON

Thomas de Bassele, occurs November 1323,”
1324, and October 1326

Thomas Hether, occurs July #4 and September
1360 25

4 Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 120.

15 The same conclusion might also be drawn from
Prior Philip de Thame’s report in 1338, that the
chaplain at Standon was paid a stipend of 5 marks
because he had no board, though the mention of the
prior’s visitation in the same account might of course
be taken to prove the existence of a community
(Larking, The Knights Hospitallers in Eng. [Camd.
Soc.], 89).

16 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 178, no. 45.

17 Tbid.

18 Cant. Archiepis. Reg. Stafford. fol. 135 d.-136.

19 Cott. MS. Claud. E vi, fol. 10. The lease of
1524 (ibid. fol. 245 d.) is exactly the same.

20 Larking, op. cit. 89—-go.

21 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 403.

22 Cal. Pat. 1321-4, p. 383.

*3 Brother Thomas de Bachele is mentioned in
the Standon court rolls at these dates, but not called
master of the hospital (Ct. R. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 178,
no. 37, 38).

*4 He is not called preceptor then (ibid. no. 45).

25 Ibid.

444

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

HOUSE OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

14. PRECEPTORY OF TEMPLE DINSLEY

In a chapter of the Order of the Temple held
at Paris in the Octave of Easter 1147, at which
Pope Eugenius III was present, Bernard de
Balliol gave the knights ‘ Wedelee,’ a member
of Hitchin, or land to the value of {15.2 This
estate, which was at Dinsley,?* was confirmed
to them by King Stephen, who added two
mills with the land and men belonging to
them, and granted them also sac and soc, tol
and team and infangtheof, with all other free
customs in Dinsley.6 At what date the precep-
tory at Dinsley was founded is not known, but
that it was already established at the beginning
of the 13th century is certain, since a chapter
was held here between 1200 and 1205.® Besides,
the agreement of Mabel Abbess of Elstow,
c. 1218-22,” to pay the Templars a mark a year
and 4 lb. of wax for the maintenance of a
chaplain and the light of his chapel at Preston §
was apparently later than the arrangement by
which the nuns were to find a chaplain to
perform divine service three times a week at
Preston for the brothers of the Temple living
at Dinsley.®

The property of the knights in the neighbour-
hood was increased from time to time,!° among
the larger gifts being 13 acres of land in Wandon
in King’s Walden,4 and Charlton received in
1244-5 from Maud de Lovetot, formerly the
wife of Gerard de Furnival,!2 and 2 marks rent
in Welles in Offley }2* from John de Balliol.

The Templars in January 1252-3 were
granted by Henry III free warren in their
demesne lands of Dinsley, Preston, Charlton,
Walden and Hitchin.14

1 The year is not given, but at this chapter arrange-
ments were made for the second crusade (Addison,
The Knights Templars, 25), which began in 1147.

? Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 133 d.

* V.C.H. Herts. i, 297 ; ili, 10.

3 Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 134, 133d.

4 Ibid.

® Thid. fol. 134.

8 It was held by Aymeric de St. Maur, master of
the Temple, and William de Bernewood, preceptor
of London, was present (Madox, Formulare, 185).
Aymeric appears to have become master in 1200,
and William in or before 1205 ceased to be
preceptor of London (V.C.H. Lond. i, 490).

"V.C.H. Beds. i, 357, n. 10.

® Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 128.

® Ibid.

1 Ibid. fol. 125 d., 126, 127, 130, 134.

" Y.C.H. Herts. iii, 7, 33.

Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 133.

128 V.C.H. Herts. iii, 41.

8 Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 133.

1 bid,

Not much is known about the preceptory, but
it was perhaps fairly important. Chapters of
the order, besides that already mentioned, were
held here c. 1219-29,!8 c. 1254-9,!8 in 1265,1?
1292,!8 1301,}® and 1304,20 and, to judge from
evidence given in 1310, on several other occa-
sions.

The preceptor’s jurisdiction extended to
Baldock, for in 1277 he was summoned to show
warrant for hanging a man there.”

At the time when the Templars were all
arrested by the king’s order in January 1308
there seem to have been six brothers at Dinsley,
since the manor was charged with the main-
tenance of that number between 14 February
and 12 June while they were imprisoned in
Hertford Castle.22 Whether, however, they
were resident at Dinsley, and whether they
included Richard Peitevyn and Henry de Paul,
‘brothers at Dinsley,’ who were afterwards sent
to the Tower of London,” is uncertain. There
were besides six men then living at Dinsley as
pensioners of the house: one who had meals at
the squires’ table and five who boarded with
the brothers.*5

After the suppression of the Order of the
Temple in 1312 the manor was occupied for
some years by the lords of the fee, and then let
by them for 27 marks a year to William de
Langford, who in 1338 was still the tenant.”
The Knights of St. John had meanwhile become
the owners in virtue of the Statute of 1324,”
and eventually placed members of their order

15 It was held by Alan Marcell (Cott. MS. Nero,
E vi, fol. 131 d.), who occurs as master of the Temple
at those dates (V.C.H. Lond. 1, 490).

16 In the time of Amadeus de Morestello, master
of the Temple. On this occasion the Templars
granted a messuage in Hitchin for an annual rent
payable at their house of Dinsley (Cott. MS. Nero,
E vi, fol. 127).

17 Cal, Pat. 1258-66, p. 586.

18 Wolley Chart. i, 52.

19 Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 129.

20 Harl. Chart. 83 C 39.

21 Wilkins, Concilia, ii, 335, 337, 340-3, 365-6.
As a proof that the place was well known, it Js
perhaps worth noticing that it was given as the
scene of more than one of the crimes alleged against
the Templars (ibid. 361-2).

2 Assize R. 323, m. 41, 6 Edw. I.

23 L,T.R. Enr. Accts. 18, roll 23.

2% Wilkins, Concilia, il, 347-

25 Two were serving as priests (L.T.R. Enr. Accts.
18, roll 23). A man and his wife also received
their food and drink from the preceptory.

26 Larking, Kwights Hospitallers in Eng. (Camd.
Soc.), 172. :

27 Stat. of the Realm (Rec. Com.), i, 194—S-

445

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

there, for the preceptory of Dinsley is men-
tioned in the reign of Richard II.¥

How long this cell was maintained is doubtful.
The manor was leased 12 September 1498 ® to
John Tong, preceptor of Ribston and Mount
St. John, for the term of his life at a rent of
£26 135.4d., Tong undertaking to find a chaplain
to perform the religious services for which the
lands had been given to the Templars®? It
may, therefore, be concluded that Dinsley
had then ceased to be a preceptory. Yet it
seems likely that the arrangement marked a
new departure and was regarded as temporary,
for g November 1500 Prior Robert Kendal and
the Chapter granted to Robert Shawe, chap-
lain,*! his board in the manor of Dinsley at the
table of their gentlemen there, a room and
salary of § marks to be received from the
prior, or from the preceptor, farmer or warden
of the manor, and in return Shawe was to
perform the services in the chapel as long as he
was able.

It is clear, however, that the preceptory was
never re-established. The manor was let in

1507 at {26 135. 4d. a year to Thomas Hobson,

who was to provide the chaplain and maintain
for two days and nights the officials sent once
or twice a year by the Prior of St. John to
survey the property. In 1514 it was let on
the same terms to Reginald Adyson and his
wife Dorothy for fifty years,3 and their lease
becoming void in 1519 through non-payment of
the rent, to John Docwra for forty years.34

It is evident, therefore, that beyond a change
in the ownership of the land the dissolution of
the order of St. John in 1540%5 made little
difference here.5¢

The receipts of the Templars’ estate at
Dinsley from Michaelmas 1311 to Michaelmas
1312 were {82 19s. 9}d.,37 but of this sum the
amount derived from rents and profits of court
was only {24 125. 8d. In 1338, as has been
said, the manor was let for {18, 8° in 1535 it
was valued at {29 35. 4d. a year.9

PreceptTors oF DInsLey

Richard Fitz John, occurs 1255 4°

Ralph de Maltone, occurs 11 June 1301 “

John Dalton, occurs 1380-1 # and September
1389 ©

FRIARIES

15. KING’S LANGLEY PRIORY

The Dominican priory within the royal
manor of Langley was founded in 1308! by
Edward II in fulfilment of a vow made when
in peril? On 1 December the king made the
friars a grant of {100 a year until further
orders$; on 20 December he gave them his
garden near the church and land there for

8 Cott. MS. Nero, Evi, fol. 129, 134d.

29 Lansd. MS. 200, fol. 54.

3° At an inquisition in 1347 the jurors said that
the Hospitallers held the manor of Temple Dinsley
of the heirs of former lords of Hitchin, Dinsley
Furnival and King’s Walden, by the service of
finding two chaplains to celebrate in the chapel
of the manor for ever for the souls of those who
enfeoffed the Templars (Cott. MS. Nero, E vi,
fol. 133).

31 Lansd. MS. 200, fol. 78.
farmer of the manor.

1 Rey. C. F. R. Palmer (‘The King’s Confessors’,
Antig. xxii, 159) gives 1307 as the date of foundation,
but there seems no mention of the house before
1 Dec. 1308. The friars were probably brought
from Oxford. The two houses, at any rate, were
closely connected, for in the chapter-general at Pavia
in 1423 it was ordained that the government of
Langley should chiefly belong to the brothers of the
visitation of Oxford, ‘who by their sole labour and at
their sole expense had caused the priory to be built’
(Cal. of Papal Letters, vii, 514).

2 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, Pp. 453-

3 Ibid. 95.

Tong was still

building,‘ and the next day assigned to them as
a dwelling until the priory could be built a
place called ‘Little London.’5 The first prior

32 Cott. MS. Claud. E vi, fol. 51.

33 Ibid. fol. 144d. On this occasion an inven-
tory was made of the contents of the chapel, among
which were 3 mass-books, one new and two old, 3 old
graduals in parchment, an old portifory of parchment,
a vestment of red camlet with a cross of black damask
and Sir John Tong’s arms upon it, another vestment of
white linen, a cope with Sir John Tong’s arms, 8 altar-
cloths including one of red tarterine with images of
gold thereon with a frontal of the same, 8 curtains of
various kinds, 2 canopies, one being of ‘cypres bordered
with silk with 4 knoppes of red silk,’ 3 paxes, one of
ivory, a chalice of silver parcel gilt weighing 6 oz.,
2 pairs of cruets and a bottle of pewter, a copper
cross, a pair of censers and two candlesticks of latten,
&c. There were two altars besides the high altar and
images of the Virgin Mary and St. John Baptist.

34 Ibid. fol. 200, 217.

35 [, and P. Hen. VIII, xv, 498.

36 Tt does not figure in the list of preceptories then
(Add. MS. 21315, fol. 59).

37 L.T.R. Enr. Accts. 18, roll §1.
amounted to £40 6s. 642.

38 Larking, op. cit. 172.

39 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 403.

# Assize R. 320, m. 4.

41 Cott. MS. Nero, E vi, fol. 129.

42 Tbid. fol. 134d. # Ibid. fol. 129.

4 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 148; Memo. R. (Exch.
L.T.R.), Mich. 9 Hen. V, rot. 9.

5 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 96.

Expenses

446

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

was John de Warefeld, who had for some time
belonged to Edward’s household,® and in
August 1315 became his confessor.”

The king in March 1312 gave the brothers
7oo marks for building expenses,* and in the
summer of that year the conventual church
was dedicated and a cemetery consecrated.®
Possibly, however, the church was not yet
finished, for the body of Piers Gaveston, who
was killed about this time,!° was not buried
there until the end of 1314,4 when the ceremony
took place with much state, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and four bishops as well as many
other ecclesiastics taking part in the funeral
rites.

In October 1311 the king increased the
annual income of the house to {150 to provide
for fifteen friars added since the foundation,
so that his grant in September 1312 of 500
marks during pleasure may have been intended
for building purposes.14 He gave the friars in
June 1315 a house with closes in his manor of
Langley 4° and leave to take wood for fuel and
other necessaries from Chipperfield Wood
(Chepervillewode).1® During some years of
scarcity he also supplied them with corn.1”

The king, however, felt that this state of
dependence on the Exchequer was unsatis-
factory, and wished to endow them per-
manently. To overcome the difficulty that
friars-preachers could not own property he
proposed to found a house of Dominican nuns,

6 Rev. C. F. R. Palmer, op. cit.

7 Ibid. ; Wardrobe Accts. (Exch. K.R.), bdle. 376,
no. 7, fol. 4.

8 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 453-

§The Bishop of Lincoln’s commission to the
Bishops of Bath and Ely is dated 29 July 1312
(Linc. Epis. Reg. Dalderby, Memo. fol. 227 d.).

10 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chron. et Annales
(Rolls Ser.), 77. His anniversary was kept 18 July
(Wardrobe Accts. bdle. 376, no. 7, fol. 5).

The London Chronicler (Chron. of reigns of
Edw. I and Edw. IJ (Rolls Ser.], i, 232) imagined
that the church was built by Edward II to receive
Gaveston’s body.

12 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, op. cit. 88. For this
occasion 23 tuns of wine, price £64, were delivered by
the king’s butler to John de Becoles, friar of the
convent of Langley (Wardrobe Accts. bdle. 376,
no. 7, fol. 115 d.).

13 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 397.

4 Thid. 515. The patent, however, says, ‘for their
sustenance until the king shall give further order for
their status.’

18 <The dwelling-place of our manor of Langley’
(ibid. 1313-17, p. 297). Possibly this is a formal
grant of the priory buildings.

16 Ibid. The prior and convent when presented
at the manorial court in 1400 for cutting down
wood here and selling it claimed to be owners of
Chipperfield Wood (Ct. R. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 177,
no. 51, m. 3, 7).

1 Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 70.

who were to hold lands in trust for the brothers,
and in 1318 he sent two friars to the pope for
his authorization!® Robert de Duffeld, the
second Prior of King’s Langley and the king’s
confessor, had been dispatched in October 1316
to the master of the order,!® apparently on the
same errand, but nothing was done in the
matter for years.

The drawback to allowances is shown in the
complaint of the friars to Edward III in 1345 2°
that owing to the irregularity of the payments
from the Exchequer they had not wherewith
to live, carry on the works they had begun, and
pay their debts. On this occasion, at their
request, the money due to the king from the
alien priory of Harmondsworth was assigned
to them in part payment.

Edward III seems to have been as much
interested in the house as his father had been.
In 1346 he granted the friars part of a quarry
in Shotover for their works,#4 and in 1347 gave
them leave to enlarge the ditch round their
close 3 ft. in breadth and 2,000 ft. in length.”
He gave them in April 1358 the fishery of his
water of King’s Langley with permission to
have a weir in that water, and free entrance
and exit to and from the weir through his park;
also the head of a stream in Abbots Langley
with leave to dig up his land in making an
aqueduct underground to their house.** In
January 1361-2 he gave them, moreover, {20
a year during pleasure to their new work.”
Personal feeling seems to have prompted his
grant in 1358 of 4 tuns of wine a year,” and the
gift in 1377 of forty mazers, one of which was
called the Edward.2” The wish of Edward II
was at last carried out in 1349, and a house of
Dominican sisters founded, which, although
at Dartford in Kent, was regarded as the
complement of Langley priory; and in
December 1356 the prioress and nuns had
licence to acquire in mortmain property to the
value of £300 for the sustenance of themselves
and the friars of King’s Langley.® Here
the brothers possibly owed something to the

18 Rymer, Foedera (Rec. Com.), ii, 359-60, 384.
He wrote also to the master of the order in 1318,
asking him to have seven sisters ready to send when
required (ibid. 361).

19 Cal. Close, 1307-13, p- 438.

20 Anct. Pet. no. 12196.

21 Cal. Pat. 1345-8, p. 45.

22 Tbid. p. 428.

23 Pat. 32 Edw. III, pt. il, m. 19.

24 Ibid. m. 20.

2 Ibid. 37 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 37- ;

2 Cal. Pat. 1358-61, p. 30. The quantity was
unusually large as judged from the wardrobe accounts.

37 Pat. s1 Edw. III, pt. i, m. 23.

2 The pope’s confirmation was asked in Nov.
1349 (Cal. Papal Pet. 187).

99 Cal. Pat. 1354-8, p. 486.

447

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

influence of John Woderowe, the king’s con-
fessor, who in June 1356 is mentioned as their
prior.

Still, the foundation of Dartford for some
time did not change materially the financial
position of Langley. The king in October
1363 granted to the convent of twenty brothers
200 marks a year of his alms—viz., to each
friar 100s. for his maintenance and 33s. 4d.
for clothing, * and in March 1371 ordered that
the money should be paid to them from the
issues of the alien priory of Burstall.®?

But the appropriation of the church of
Langley in 1374 to the nuns of Dartford ® is
the beginning of a new arrangement. In
October 1376 Edward III made over to John
Duke of Lancaster, Simon Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and others in trust for the convent at
Langley the hundred and manor of Preston
and the manors of Overland in Ash, Elmstone,
Wadling in Ripple, Packmanstone in New-
church, Harrietsham, ‘ Godmeston,’ * Beaure-
paire, Waldeslade in Chatham, Ham and
Westgate in the Isle of Thanet, co. Kent,®
and these were granted to the friars from Easter
1382 for forty years,°° with the idea that during
this term they might be secured to them in
frankalmoign.3’? The convent let them to Simon
de Burley, who shortly afterwards received a
grant of them in fee simple from Richard II.38
The brothers in 1383-4 represented to the king
that the rent was much in arrears, and begged
that King Edward’s intention might be fulfilled
and the lands given to them in mortmain®;
but this was not done, for in September 1386
the king assigned to them the farm of the
alien priory of Ware instead of the manors held
by Burley.4° After Burley’s execution and
forfeiture in 1388 the friars were allowed
possession of the property pending inquiry into
the king’s right, but complained that they and
their sureties were harassed by the Exchequer,
while large sums due from Burley were still
owing.“ The desired Letters Patent were not,

30 Cas. Pat. 1354-8, p. 444.

31 Pat. 37 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 37.

2 Ibid. 45 Edw. III, pt. i, m. 26. To leave
something for general expenses, the allowance for
clothing was now reduced to 20s.

33 Linc. Epis. Reg. Buckingham, Inst. pt. i, fol.
306.

34 This may be Goodneston, but Hasted (Hist. of
Kent, iii, 703) does not mention any property here
belonging to Langley Priory.

35 Parl. R. ili, 60-1, 1808.

36 Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), Mich. 9 Hen. V,
rot. 9.

37 Anct. Pet. no. 991, printed in Parl. R.
1804.

38 Tid. 39 Tbid.

4 Cal. Pat. 1385-9, p. 213.

41 Anct. Pet. no. 12488.

iii,

however, granted until 24 April 1399, when
the king considering that the house of King’s
Langley *was not yet sufficiently built and
endowed, and as the foundation required,’ gave
the manors to the nuns of Dartford in frank-
almoign to hold for the friars.#* Five years
earlier they had acquired in the same way from
Richard II the advowson of Willian, co. Herts.,#
and from John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury,
and Warin Waldegrave that of Great Gaddes-
den,*! co. Herts., with leave in both cases to
appropriate the churches to their own uses.

When Richard died in February 1400 he was
at first buried at Langley priory “; afterwards,
however, his body was removed by order of
Henry V to Westminster Abbey.*® But the
conventual church of Langley still retained a
sign of the priory’s connexion with the royal
family in the tomb of Edmund of Langley,
Duke of York, interred here in 1402 beside his
wife, the daughter of Peter, King of Castile.4”

Henry IV in 1399 *® and Henry V in 1413 #
confirmed the grants made to the friars, who
therefore could easily prove their title to the
Kentish manors, when the escheator seized
them in 1420 on the expiration of the term for
which they had originally been given.°° The
experience showed the expediency of royal
confirmations, and the prior and convent
obtained the ratification of their charters
from Henry VI in 1424,5 Edward IV in
1466, Henry VII in 1486, and in 1510 from
Henry VIII.8

The house seems to have been now provided
with an income, not only assured but sufficient.
The certain livelihood it offered is said to have
been the reason why Richard Wycherley, a
former prior promoted to be Bishop of
‘ Olivence,’ asked to be appointed prior again
about 1497, and this time for life®4 He
promised that he would live under the obedience

42 Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), Mich. 9 Hen. V,
rot. 10.

43°The king had received the advowson from
Robert Braybrook, Bishop of London, on condition
that the church should be appropriated to the nuns
(ibid.).

44 They had acquired the advowson from the Earl
of Huntingdon, the king’s half-brother (ibid.).

45 < Annales Ric. II et Hen. IV’ in Trokelowe
and Blaneforde, op. cit. 331; Devon, Issues of the
Exch, 276.

46 Trokelowe and Blaneforde, op. cit. 326-7.
The king gave the brothers £22 on this occasion.

47 Tbid. 344.

48 Cal. Pat. 1399-1401, p. $9.

49 Ibid. 1413-16, p. 139.

50 Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), Mich. 9 Hen. V,
rot. 9. 51 Cal. Pat. 1422-9, p. 263.

52 Ibid. 1461-7, p. 556.

53 Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), Hil. 9 Hen. VII,
rot. 15.

54 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 266, no, 2.

448

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

of the provincial, enrich the house with his own
possessions, require only the same living as
priors usually had, and render due account of
the revenues of the priory. The post was given
to him, but according to the story of his suc-
cessor the appointment was not to the convent’s
benefit: after four years of office he was {64
in debt to the house. In his last illness he
desired that the sum should be paid, and in
further recompense of charges on the priory
caused by his episcopal dignity he bequeathed
to the convent his crozier and mitre worth {40.
After his death his executors sued the prior
and convent for some of his property—viz., a
silver ewer and holy water stock,®§ a counter-
pane and a dozen napkins. The friars declared
that they belonged to the house, and the bishop
had them in pledge, and asked that the trial
of the case in Worcestershire might be stopped
as detrimental to their interests. The friars
may have been wronged, but it must be owned
that their tale is not very plausible, for it is
unlikely that they would pawn goods to a
person in their debt.

The house was subjected to an attack on its
rights and property from — Verney in 1533, when
Cromwell showed himself disposed in their
favour.56 Richard Yngworth,5’ the prior, on
16 December §* sent him a present of apples,
and thanked him for his help and counsel to
the provincial (Hilsey), by which he himself
was enabled to serve God quietly and keep his
study and office without trouble. Verney
several months later was still causing the con-
vent annoyance and loss, but the prior would
not take steps against him without Cromwell’s
leave. Yngworth’s attitude here expresses
his policy, which was complete subservience to
Cromwell, naturally for his own advancement.
In April 1534 he went on a visitation to the
eastern counties to secure the acknowledge-
ment by the friars of the king’s claim to be
supreme head of the English Church,® and
later made himself useful to Hilsey elsewhere in
the same business. The convent at Langley,

Valued at £4 and £5 respectively.

5 Christopher Hales wrote to Cromwell, 1 Jan.
1534: ‘The Prior of King’s Langley tells me you
have been very good master to him, in which I
think you do well. I know neither the place nor
his adversary, but I have seen several of his charters,
showing that former kings have been good to the house,
and I see no reason why such an officer as Mr. Verney
should do them wrong’ (L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii,
11),

57 His name is not mentioned, but there is no
doubt that he was prior then.

58D, and P. Hen. VIII, vi, 1532.

69 Hilsey’s letter to Cromwell (L. and P. Hen. VIII,
ix, 1154). As Hilsey was then Bishop of Rochester
the date cannot be earlier than August 1535.

% Thid. vii, 595.

® Ibid. 939 ; ix, 373+

4 449

needless to say, made the formal declaration
required,®

Yngworth’s labours were not unnoticed.
When Hilsey was made Bishop of Rochester,*?
Thomas Bedell wrote to Cromwell recom-
mending that the Prior of Langley, ‘ who had
taken great pains in the king’s matters,’ should
have the office of provincial ®; Russell also
urged his appointment. The post, however,
was not vacant, and Yngworth had to wait for
preferment until December 1537, being then
made Suffragan Bishop of Dover.** Probably
he ceased to be Prior of King’s Langley from
that time.*? He was commissioned by the king
in February 1538 to visit all friaries in England, ®
and in May he was ordered to put their goods
into safe custody and take inventories of
them, evidently in preparation for suppres-
sion. Langley was surrendered towards the
end of that year.” Many of the friars were
very old and poor,” but it is doubtful whether
any provision was made for them. Yngworth
begged for the house immediately, and in
February 1540 it was granted to him with most
of its lands, to be held until he obtained eccle-
siastical benefices worth {100 a year.” The
priory was reckoned in the Valor of 1535 as
worth {122 45. a year clear,” a fairly accurate
estimate, to judge from the statement at the
Dissolution.7> Its gross annual value was
then said to be {130 16s. 8d., but to this
must be added {11 13s. 44. for the obits
of Sir John Cheyne and Sir Ralph Verney,
so that its net income after the deduction of
£18 6s. 8d. for salaries and other payments
was {124 35. 4d.

It is impossible to ascertain the size of the
convent at any period. Edward II intended
the house to hold a hundred,”® but there is no
proof that it ever did. His allowance of {50
extra for fifteen brothers in 1311 77 implies that
there were then forty-five here. Edward III
in 1356 gave licence to the nuns of Dartford to
acquire land sufficient to maintain forty sisters
and sixty friars,”® but the number he actually

82 L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 665 (2).

63 August 1535.

64 T. aad P. Hen. VILL, ix, 373.

66 [bid. xii (2), 1311 (13).

87 Palmer says he was prior until 1537. ‘ Prelates
of the Black Friars of England’ (Antig. xxvii, 114).

88, and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (1), 225.

69 Thid. 926.
70 Ibid. xiii (2), 1021. The account of the house,

dated 10 Dec. 1538, seems to have been drawn
up very soon after the Suppression (ibid. 102 2).

7 Ibid. 1022. 72 Ibid. xiv (1), 348.

73 Ibid. xv, 1032, p. 542.

7 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 276.

75 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (z), 1022.

78 Cal. Papal Pet. 1342-1419, Pp» 187-

77 Gal. Pat. 1307-13, P- 397:

78 Ibid. 1354-8, p. 486.

6 Ibid. 598.

57

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

provided for at Langley from the Exchequer
did not exceed twenty, apparently increased by
twenty under his will.”

The priory of King’s Langley was refounded
by Philip and Mary in June 1557 ®° as a house
of Dominican sisters, at the request, and for
the benefit of seven nuns, formerly at Dartford.
The prioress and convent were declared a cor-
porate body, having perpetual succession and
power to acquire property and to sue and be
sued at law. They were given the house and
site of the late friary,®! the land called ‘le
Courte Wike’ in King’s Langley which had
belonged to the priory, and a house and build-
ings within ‘the old manor’ lying near the
pales of the royal park.

On 8 September 1558 ® the king and queen
granted to the Prioress and convent of Langley
the reversion of certain tenements in Dartford,
formerly demesne lands of the nuns of that
place, and until the expiration of the lease,
the rent of £3075. 7d. They gave also, besides
other demesne lands, the house of the late
nunnery with the property in Dartford assigned
after its suppression to Anne of Cleves, and
it has been supposed ® that the nuns now
returned to Dartford. In any case, the convent’s
existence was very short. Queen Mary died
in November of that year, and by an Act
passed in Elizabeth’s first Parliament all
restorations or foundations of monasteries since
the death of Edward VI were made void, and
their possessions given to the Crown.™

Elizabeth Cressener ®° was the only prioress.

Priors oF Kino’s LancLey

John de Warefeld, 1308-15 *

Robert de Duffeld, appointed 1315,8? occurs
October 1316 ® and 1319 ®

Roger de Woderowe, occurs 1329 and 1340 %

John de Dunstable, died c. 1343 %

79 Nichols, Royal Wilks, 60.

80 Pat. 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary, pt. vii, m. 23.
Cardinal Pole instituted the nunnery at the wish of
the king and queen.

81 From the report on the place in 1554-5 (Aug.
Off. Misc. [Exch. Q.R.], bdle. 83, no. 13) the priory
was habitable.

82 Pat. 5 & 6 Phil. and Mary, pt. iii, m. 20.

83 Rev. C. F. R. Palmer, ‘ Prelates of the Black
Friars of England,’ 4nsig. xxvil, 114.

84 Stat. 1 Eliz. cap. 24. Palmer says the house
was suppressed July 1559.

85 Pat. 3 & 4 Phil. and Mary, pt. vii, m. 23.

86 Rey. C. F. R. Palmer, ‘Prelates of the Black
Friars of England,’ Antig. xxvil, 114.

87 Tbid.

88 Cal. Close, 1307-13, p- 438.

89 Rey. C. F. R. Palmer, ‘The King’s Confessors,’
Antig. Xxil, 159.

90 Rey. C. Ff. R. Palmer, ‘Prelates of the Black
Friars,’ Antig. xxvii, 114.

1 Tbid.

John Woderowe, occurs 9 June 1356

Thomas Walsh, occurs 1374 %

John, occurs October 1384 %

William Syward, occurs January 1394-5

Philip Boydon, occurs 1426 8

John Henle,®” removed before May 1427 8

John de Hunden, D.D., resigned in 1458 on
becoming Bishop of Llandaff

William Wignale, S.T.D., occurs 16 July
1458 100

Thomas Welles, occurs 14 July 14661

Richard Wycherley, resigned on becoming
Bishop of ‘ Olivence ’?

Thomas Powel or Poynes, occurs 1494 3-
c. 1498 4

Richard Wycherley, Bishop of ‘ Olivence,’
appointed 1498-9, died c. 1502-3 §

Robert, occurs c. 1502-3 ®

Thomas Cowper, S.T.B., occurs 1519 7

Robert Mylys or Miles, occurs 1522 8

Richard Yngworth, S.T.P., occurs 1530 ® and
December 1537 1°

A 15th-century seal of the house,” in shape
a pointed oval, bears a representation of the
Annunciation in a niche of very elaborate
design, below which the royal founder kneels
in prayer. On either side of him is a shield
not of the arms of Edward II, but of France
and England. Of the legend only two letters
survive.

A later seal, also a pointed oval, repre-
sents our Lord in majesty. In the base,
under a carved four-centred arch, is the king
as in the earlier seal. The inner border is

8 Cal. Pat. 1354-8, p. 444.

% Rev. C. F. R. Palmer, ‘Prelates of the Black
Friars,’ Antig. xxvii, 114.

°4 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 47.

% Tbid. no. 49. He was Prior of London in 1382
(V.C.H. Lond. i, 502) and vicar-general of the order
in England in 1387 (Chan. Warr. [Ser. 1], file 175,
no. 7).

96 He ceased to be prior then (4untig. xxvii, 114).

97 He succeeded Boydon (Antig. loc. cit.).

% Cal. Papal Letters, vii, 514.

99 Antig. xxvi, 212.

100 Add. Chart. 27339.

1 Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 556.

? Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 266, no. 2.

3 Antig. xxvii, 114.

4 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 266, no. z.

5 Ibid. He rendered his accounts 17 Hen. VII,
i.e., 1501-2, after holding office four years, and must
have died shortly afterwards, since his successor Robert
petitioned the chancellor on the subject of his
executors in 1502-3.

6 Ibid.

7 Antig. loc. cit.

8 [bid.

® B.M. Seals, xlv, 41.

10 [, and P. Hen. dri, xii (2), 1156.

11 B.M. Seals, lxiv, 69.

13 Tid. xlv, 40.

450

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

engrailed. Legend: siciLLtuM : COMUNE
FRATRUM : PREDIC : DE : LANGELEYE.

A 16th-century seal,!8 of the same shape but
slightly larger, shows the coronation of the
Virgin in a niche with two-arched canopy.
On each side there is a smaller canopied niche ;
the one on the left containing St. Margaret,
crowned, standing on the dragon, which she
pierces with a long cross, and holding in her
right hand a book; in that on the right is an
archbishop with mitre and crozier. Below is
the founder on his knees under a carved round-
headed arch; he holds a church and in front
of him on the ground is his crown. Legend:

. VENT . MONAST'II DE LAN... y¥. The
counterseal shows two impressions of a shield-
shaped signet with arms, a bend engrailed
between six fleurs de lis with three crosslets
fitchy on the bend, the ownership of which is

unknown.

16. THE FRIARS MINORS OF WARE

The Franciscan priory of Ware owed its
foundation to Thomas second Lord Wake of
Liddell, who received the king’s permission in
February 1338 to give to the Friars Minors a
messuage and 7 acres of land in Ware for an
oratory, houses and other buildings.“ In Sep-
tember 1350 the pope confirmed the acceptance
of the site by the minister-provincial and Friars
Minors in England.15 Land for the enlargement
of the priory was granted to the friars in 1372 by
Blanche Lady Wake2* For their maintenance
the community depended mainly on alms. They
thus came into collision with the Franciscans of
Cambridge, on whose complaint they were
forbidden by the pope in August 1395 to extend
their bounds for begging and preaching within
5 miles of any place, except Puckeridge, which
before their house was founded had belonged
to the district of the Cambridge friars.1”

Henry IV, after the death and forfeiture of
Thomas Holland Earl of Kent, allowed them
the underwood of an acre of wood near Ware,
two cartloads of hay from the meadows there,
and the fishery of the water along the priory
during such time as the late earl’s property
remained in his hands.18

13 BLM. Seals, xlv, 38, 39.

14 Cal. Pat. 1338-40, p. 14. Weever, Chauncy
and others, confusing it with the alien priory, dated
its foundation far too early (R. Waters, ‘Priory of
Ware,’ East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. i [1], 41).

8 Cal. of Papal Letters, iii, 394 ; Wadding, Annales
Minorum, viii, 75.

16 Pat. 46 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. 32.

W Cal. of Papal Letters, iv, 517.

8 Cal. Pat. 1399-1401, p. 226. The Earl of
Kent was the heir of the Wakes through his grand-
mother Joan, Princess of Wales. The friars pro-
bably enjoyed these privileges under the Wakes and
Hollands.

They must have derived some advantage from
burials in their church,!® from legacies” and
probably from obits, though only one is recorded,
that of Thomas Hyde, established in 1525.4
But the house must always have been small
and poor, and its obscurity was perhaps the
reason why Roger Donwe or Dewe, the minister-
provincial, removed for just causes in 1430,”
was sent here to end his days.*8

The royal supremacy was duly acknowledged
by the convent in May 1534.24 The warden seems
to have been friendly with Lord Hussey in
1537,% but there is no evidence to connect him
with the religious troubles. The surrender of
the priory took place in the autumn of 1538.%6
Its lands, including the site,?” were worth only
295. 8d. a year.

WaRDENS OF THE Friars OF WARE

Paul, occurs 3 October 1525 78
Thomas Chapman, S.T.B., occurs § May 1534”

The contemporary seal®° is a pointed oval.
On the right kneels the founder, Lord Wake,
in armour, with a shield of his arms; oppo-
site to him is his wife, Blanche of Lancaster.
The object of their adoration seems to be the
Crucified. The field is powdered with stars ;
there isa little tree between the two worshippers
and a larger one at each side. Below, under
a four-centred arch, the warden is represented
in prayer. Legend: s’ GARDIANI (FRATRVM)
MINORVM DE WARE.

17. THE CARMELITE FRIARS OF
HITCHIN

The Carmelite priory of St. Mary in Hitchin
was founded in 1317, apparently by Edward II,

19 Weever (Antient Funeral Monum. 312) records
two or three burials here.

20 Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, bequeathed
them 40s. in 1355 (Nichols, Royal Wills, 23, 33) 5
and they are mentioned in other wills (Herts. Gen.
and Antig. i, 47, 316 [2], 3185 ii, 91 [2], 238;
ili, 274; P.C.C. 21, Bodfelde ; 22, Porch).

21 Add. Chart. 36070.

22 Wadding, op. cit. x, 169.

23 Monum. Francis. (Rolls Ser.), i, 5393 Little,
The Grey Friars in Oxford, 259.

%4 Land P. Hen. VIII, vii, 665 (2).

25 Ibid. xii (2), 2 (3)3 157 (2).

% The Bishop of Rochester wrote to Cromwell
27 Sept. 1538 offering to bring about its
surrender (ibid. xiii [2], 437), which was made,
however, to the Bishop of Dover (ibid. 1021). It
seems to have been in the king’s hands about

Michaelmas 1538 (Mins. Accts. Hen. VIII,
o. 1617).
a ee at 20s. (Mins. Accts. Hen. VIL,
no. 1617).

28 Add, Chart. 36070.
29 7. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 665 (2).
30 BM. Seals, Ixiv, 73-

451

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

who on 8 June gave to friars of that order a
messuage there which he had of the grant of
Adam le Rous, that they might build a church
and house! In February 1351 John de Cobham
received the king’s permission to assign to the
convent two messuages, two cottages, and 6
acres of land to enlarge their dwelling-place.*
Cobham seems to have taken some time to
complete his gift: in fact, half an acre of the
land was made over to them as late as 1375,
and was in consequence seized by the escheator
in 1392 as acquired without the royal licence,
the friars not recovering it until 1395.5

Beyond a few references in wills * nothing is
heard of the house during the r§th century.

Henry VIII in September 1530 made the
friars a gift of 405.35 The royal supremacy was
acknowledged by the prior for the convent on
5 May 1534,%8 and the house lasted four years
longer. Then the king, finding, so he said, that
it was ‘in such a state that it was neither used
to the honour of God nor to the benefit of the
commonwealth,’ directed Sir William Coffyn
and Henry Crwche to obtain its surrender from
the prior, allotting him what portion of the
goods they thought fit.7 The surrender was
made 17 October 1§38 by the prior and four
friars.88 The plate and ornaments were sold,
and the church, of which the steeple was
knocked down, was stripped of its bells, lead,
glass and stone, and soon fell into ruins.

The property of the convent, valued in 1535
at {4 9s. 4d. a year net, lay in or near
Hitchin.“

31 Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 662; Tanner, Nofit.
Mon. Chauncy says (Hist. of Herts. 390) that John
Blomvill, Adam Rous and John Cobham founded
the priory which was dedicated to the honour of our
Saviour and Blessed Virgin Mary, and Edward II
merely confirmed the grant. Adam Rous may have
given the land to the king for the site of the house,
and John Cobham later was a great benefactor, but
as the editors of Dugdale point out (Mow. vi, 1571)
the coats of arms of Edward II and Edward III on
the priory seal show that the house was considered a
royal foundation. With regard to the dedication,
Chauncy seems to have confused this with the
Gilbertine priory, for it is unlikely that both were
called St. Saviour's.

3? Ing. a.q.d. file 303, no. 12 ; Ca/. Pat. 1350-4,

. 48,
. Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), East. 18 Ric. II,
rot. 3; Mich. 1g Ric. II, rot. 6.

34 Herts. Gen. and Antig.i, 234, 236-7; ii, go,
190, 276; iii, 238 ; Add. Chart. 35245.

35. and P. Hen. VIII, v, p. 751.

36 Ibid. vii, 665 (2).

37 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. iii, 20.

38 Ibid. The house was dissolved the next day
(Rentals and Surv. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 8, no. 29).

39 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 8, no. 29.
Report on the property in 1546.

49 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 276.

41 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 8, no. 29.

Priors oF Hircuin Friary

John, occurs October 1395 ®
John Butler, occurs § May 1534 and 17
October 1538 “4

The priory seal of the 16th century “ shows
the Virgin seated with the Child standing on her
knee; in the field on each side of her is a
flowering branch. Right and left are two shields,
the former bearing the arms of Edward III, the
latter those of Edward II, and beneath each is a
kneeling friar. Legend: s’ cOITATIS FRA’ CAR
MALITAR’ DE HVCHE.

18. THE TRINITARIAN FRIARS OF
HERTFORD

Who founded the hospital of St. Mary
Magdalene outside Hertford, afterwards a Trini-
tarian Friary, is not known, but it was in all
probability one of the earlier owners of Herting-
fordbury Manor,** possibly one of the Valognes,
whose heiress Christina wife of Peter de Maule
or Maune ‘4? held the advowson * in 1247 and
sold it then to Henry de Neketon. The master
of the hospital at one time was accustomed to
receive a rent of 205. from Christina de Valognes’s
water-mill in Hertingfordbury,‘* presumably
the gift of a former lord of the manor. It is
also noticeable that the hospital among its
small amount of property held in 1263 a rent
of gs. from land in Roydon, co. Essex, where
Robert Fitzwalter, the husband of Gunnora de
Valognes, Christina de Maule’s predecessor at
Hertingfordbury, had had a manor.®!

In 1248 Simon de Cokham, a citizen of
London, complained that the master and
brothers of the hospital had dispossessed him
of 80 acres of land in Stanstead which they
had let to him for eight years from February
1247 at an annual rent of 12 marks.® The

“2 Memo. R. (Exch. L.T.R.), Mich. 19 Ric. II,
rot. 6.

“ L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, p. 751.

“4 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 20. He was living in
1546 (Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.], portf. 8, no. 29).

4 Arch. xviii, 447.

‘6 Ralph Baynard held it at the Domesday Survey
(V.C.H. Herts. i, 326).

47 An arrangement was made in 1238 about their
fine for the barony which had belonged to Gunnora
de Valognes (Excerpta ¢ Rot. Fin. (Rec. Com.], i,
317).

48 Feet of F. Herts. 31 Hen. III, no. 332 ; Assize
R. 320, m. 12. When Hertingfordbury was made
over to Edward III, the patronage of the hospital or
priory of Hertford, as it was sometimes called, was
specially excepted (Ca/. Pat. 1345-8, p. 123).

“° Christina bought the rent of him shortly before
Nov. 1279 (Chan. Inq. Misc. file 37, no. 6).

5% Cal. Ing. p.m. Hen. III, 163.

51 Tbid. 2.

52 Assize R. 318, m. 2d.

452

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

master could not deny the agreement or its
non-observance, and was ordered by the
court to pay damages and a fine, but was
afterwards pardoned the one because he had
sowed the land and the other on account of his
poverty.

In 1255 Avelina wife of Geoffrey le Clerk
sued Walter, the warden of St. Mary Magdalene,
for withdrawing the corrody ® granted to her
for life by a former warden, William Peverel.*
Walter’s plea was that the wardens, who were
removable by the patron, could not make any
valid charter without his consent. It was
proved, however, that William and his prede-
cessors had let their lands as they chose, and
that masters of the hospital had often granted
corrodies similar to that given to Avelina, who
accordingly recovered hers.

Avelina and her husband 5 in 1263 sold to
Robert, prior of the hospital, gos. rent in Hert-
ford.

As the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene was
in the hands of friars of the Holy Trinity in
1287,58 there can be no doubt that it was the
leper-house outside Hertford, of which brothers
of the Trinitarian order had taken possession
about 1261 5? after removing the lepers.*

The hospital appears to have been under
the direction of the head of the friary at
Easton,®® and it is interesting to notice that
Prior Robert’s attorney in 1263 was a certain
brother Robert de Eston. Houses under the
Maturine rule were always dedicated to the
Trinity, and after 1287 the hospital of St.
Mary Magdalene is heard of no more. As the

53 A brother’s allowance and feed for a horse
during four months of the year.

54 Assize R. 320, m. 15.

55 Here called Geoffrey de Horemedwe (Feet ot
F. Herts. 47 Hen. III, no. 571).

58 Cal. Pat. 1282-91, p. 267.

57 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 194. The lepers are
also mentioned in a rental of the monks of Hertford
(B.M. Chart. L.F.C. x [14]) as follows: ‘from the
lepers of the hospital of Hertford 8¢. viz. 42. for
3 ac. of land given them by Ralph son of Chapman
which lies in Middelfeld and 4d. for land in Middel-
feld given them by Reyner Holman.’

58 The revenue of Trinitarian houses was divided
into three parts and devoted to the support of the
friars, the relief of the poor and the redemption of
Christians taken captive by infidels (Dugdale, Mon. vi,
1558). The leper hospital was probably brought to
an end by financial straits, which are indicated in the
cases cited above.

°° Presumably Easton (co. Wilts.), where there
was a house of Trinitarians, though it is difficult to
understand such an arrangement when there was a
much nearer friary at Hounslow.

Dugdale, loc. cit.

hospital of Holy Trinity it was receiving a rent
of Ios. from a water-mill in Hertingfordbury in
1355, 1360 © and 1383-4," and at the last date
is mentioned as holding a fair,® half the tolls
of which it paid to the king’s bailiff of Hertford.
There was apparently still a community here in
1448, when the chamberlain and warden of ‘the
hospital of the poor of the Trinity and St.
Thomas the Martyr’ at Hertford admitted
Walter Devereux and his wife Ann to the
benefits of the order and of masses in the
hospital.

How much longer it lasted as a religious house
is uncertain. A bequest to ‘the chapel of the
Trinity in Hertford’ in 1504 ® does not neces-
sarily imply that the friary was then no longer
in existence, though it probably came to an end
some years before the general Dissolution, for
it was described when granted to Anthony
Denny in 1540 as a ‘messuage’ called le
Trynytie in Hertford formerly belonging to the
Crossed Friars in Mottenden.®

Its property consisted of 10 acres of arable
land in the common fields, half an acre of
meadow and a close called ‘le Freres Crofte’ in
Hertford, 10 acres in Dixwell, 4 acres in Hat-
field, and 6 acres of wood in Amwellbury,®
where 5 acres had been acquired in 1300 by the
friars of Easton.®

Nothing is said of the rent in Roydon, co.
Essex, or of the land at Stanstead.

WarvENs oF HERTFORD

William Peverel, occurs before 1255 ®
Walter, occurs 1255 7°

Robert, occurs 1263 7

William, occurs April 1287 ™

61 Mins. Accts. bdle. 865, no. 17, 18.

82 Tbid. bdle. 53, no. 998.

63 As the fair was held on the feast of St. Mary
Magdalene it was probably not of recent grant.

64 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iti, App. 251.

6 Will of Sir Robert Watson, clerk (P.C.C.
4 Holgrave).

66 Pat, 32 Hen. VIII, pt. iii, m.1. Mottenden
in the parish of Headcorn (Kent) was the head house
in England of the Maturine brothers, here called
Crossed Friars because they wore a cross on their
gowns. The Trinitarians, of course, are not the same
as the Crossed or Crutched Friars, one of the four
great orders of Mendicant Friars.

87 Tbid.

68 Ing. a.q.d. 29 Edw. III, file 35, no. 10.

69 Assize R. 320, m. 15.

70 Ibid.

71 He is called prior (Feet of F. Herts. 47 Hen. III,

0. 571).
ae is called minister, as the Maturine rule
required (Cal. Pat. 1282-91, Pp. 267).

453

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

COLLEGIATE HOUSE

19. COLLEGE OF THELE OR STAN-
STEAD ST. MARGARET'S

The rectory of St. Margaret’s, Thele, is said
to have grown so poor that at the beginning of
the 14th century it was becoming almost
impossible to find a priest to accept the living.?
It was in these circumstances that Sir William
Goldington, the patron, the better to provide
for divine worship, established in the church at
the altar of St. Mary a chantry of five chap-
lains ? which he endowed in May 13168 with a
messuage, a carucate of land, 8 acres of meadow,
15 acres of wood and {10 rent in Thele, Amwell
and Bowers Gifford, pasturage for six cows and
100 sheep in his demesne lands in Thele, and
the advowsons of the churches of Thele and
Aldham * (Essex), with leave to appropriate
them to their own uses.

The rectors of Thele and Aldham having
resigned, Gilbert Bishop of London agreed to
appropriate the churches to the college on con-
dition that a vicarage should be ordained at
Aldham and that the Bishop of London should
present the vicar of Aldham and the warden
of the college, who was to have cure of souls at
Thele ; his choice, however, was to be restricted
to members of the college, vacancies in whose
ranks were to be filled up by Goldington and his
heirs.4 The bishop died before he could carry
out his intentions, but his successor, Richard, in
August 13175 completed the appropriation and
laid down certain rules for the chaplains: they
were to say all the hours and were to celebrate
five masses daily, one of St. Mary, another of
the day which was to be sung, and three others
for the dead in a low voice; they were to live
together in obedience to the warden and at
service were to wear black.®

In 1348 Philip de Aungre and his wife Alice
gave the college three messuages and some
land in Chelmsford and Broomfield, co. Essex,
towards the maintenance of a chaplain to cele-

1 Cott. Chart. xxix, 44.

2To pray for himself and Margaret his wife,
Robert Earl of Oxford and Thomas his son (Lond.
Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 199d.). Earl Robert
confirmed Goldingt«n’s grant to the chantry (ibid.).

3 Ibid. The royal licence for the alienation in
mortmain was given in February (ibid. fol. 199 ;
Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 434).

38 Morant, Hist. of Essex, ii, 201.

4 Cott. Chart. xxix, 44.

5 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 200. Golding-
ton’s ratification of the appropriation made at his
instance is dated 12 Mar. 1317-18 (Cott. Chart. v,

6).
: ° «Superpelliciis et capis ac amiciis nigris superius
induantur.’

brate for them daily,’ and Alice the next year
bequeathed to them a place in the parish of
St. Bartholomew the Less, London.® The chap-
lains also obtained in 1353 land in Amwell,
Stanstead and Hoddesdon ® in part satisfaction
of land and rent to the value of toos., which in
1346 they had received the king’s permission
to acquire.!0

The college came to an end in 1431, after an
existence of a little over a century." It was
alleged by the Bishop of London, in his request
for the royal consent to its dissolution and the
transfer of its property to Elsingspital, London,
that much of its property had been alienated
through the carelessness, neglect, and_ ill-
governance of the wardens, and for want of the
defence of pleas often brought against them,”
and the rest would probably soon be lost, unless
a remedy were provided. Yet, on comparing
what they then possessed with the grants made
to them, the difference is not striking. Pro-
bably the condition of the college was unsatis-
factory and a fresh arrangement needed to
secure the due performance of the religious
services. It was ordained that henceforth
three regular canons should celebrate in Elsing-

spital for the souls of the founders, and two at
Thele.

Masters or WarRDENS OF THELE COLLEGE

Richard, occurs Michaelmas 1326 and Easter
13273

Hugh, occurs 1349 14

Ralph at Hall, resigned 1384 1

John Buk, appointed 6 August
resigned in 1385 17

John Brunne, appointed 5 May 1385,!% resigned
138619

John Aston, appointed 4 November 1386,
resigned in 1395 ?0

1384,1°

7 Cal. Pat. 1348-50, p. 100.

8 The will was proved Nov. 1349 (Sharpe, Cal. of
Wills proved in Ct. of Husting, London, i, 618).

9 Cal. Pat. 1350-4, p. 433.

10 Tbid. 1345-8, p. 87.

11 Tbid. 1429-36, p. 146.

1? It is interesting to see that in one case recorded,
a claim by Ralph son of Arnald in the Hale in 1326
and 1327 to land, wood and pasture in Amwell, the
master of St. Margaret’s did not appear (De Banco R.
269, m. 48).

18 De Banco R. 269, m. 48. 4 Sharpe, loc. cit.

15 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 28 d.

1 Ibid. 1 Ibid. fol.36. Ibid. 1 Ibid. fol. 49.

20 Tbid. On g Nov. a man of the same name is
mentioned by the Bishop of London as preaching
without licence and spreading erroneous doctrines

(ibid. fol. 330d.), but he can hardly be the warden.

454

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Richard Shellee,
1395 ™

appointed 21 October

ALIEN

20. WARE PRIORY

The foundation of the Benedictine priory at
Ware was due to Hugh de Grentemaisnil’s gift
of the church, tithe and 2 carucates of land
here} to the abbey of St. Evroul in Normandy.?
There is no evidence when the house was built,
but the large amount of property in England
granted by the Conqueror’s Norman followers
to St. Evroul’s must soon have made the
establishment of a cell expedient, if not neces-
sary

Apparently the earliest reference to the house
occurs in a charter of William Bishop of Lincoln
c. 1203-6,4 ratifying as a grant of Earl Robert
of Leicester to Hubert Prior of Ware a gift
that had been made by the earl’s mother,
Parnel, to St. Evroul’s.= But it seems likely
that the Prior of Ware had long transacted
the abbot’s business in England, for from
this time onward he is spoken of as the owner
of the English possessions of the Norman
monastery.®

Of the priory there is never much information.
Something, however, is heard of its relations
with its patrons, the manorial lords, in the 13th
century. Through the marriage of Parnel,
Hugh de Grentemaisnil’s great-granddaughter,
Ware Manor had passed to the Beaumonts.’
Robert Earl of Leicester ® dying without issue
in 1204, it fell to his sister and co-heir Margaret
wife of Saher de Quency Earl of Winchester.
The Countess Margaret built in the priory a
great hall, a large chamber, and a chapel for
her greater convenience when she chose to stay
there, and in this hall she held her manorial
courts.® Her son Roger,!° who succeeded her
in 1235,4 made the same use of the priory, as
did also his brother Robert, to whom he trans-

21 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 49.

1 Charter of William I from Ordericus Vitalis
(Dugdale, Mon. [ed. 1682], ii, 966).

® Hugh and his relatives refounded the abbey (ibid.).

3 For a list of the possessions of the monastery in
England see Round, Cal. Doc. France, 229 et seq.

* Round, op. cit. 227.

* A house at Charley (co. Leics.) and a carucate of
land in the essarts of Anstey (co. Herts.) (Round, op.
cit. 228).

°R. of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York. Soc.), ii,
274, 319; see also Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.),
passim.

” Round, op. cit. 229.

8 Parnel’s son.

° Assize R. 1256, m. 39 (12 Edw. I).

10 Called William in the Assize R.

1 Excerpta e Rot. Fin. (Rec. Com.), i, 274.

John Howeden, occurs at the dissolution of
the college, March 1431 2

HOUSE

ferred the manor." In 1271 Robert’s daughter
Joan, wife of Humphrey de Bohun, became
lady of the manor of Ware The incon-
venience to the monks of a semi-public hall
must by this time have become apparent, for
the prior built a small one for their own use
during Humphrey’s frequent visits.4 After
her husband’s death Joan added another
chamber to ensure herself better accommodation
during residence at Ware. She died in Novem-
ber 1283,!5 and when the escheator arrived at
the priory to take possession of her property in
the king’s name he found the windows and
doors of these houses in the close barred against
him by the prior. Afterwards with the help
of the Earl of Gloucester’s men a forcible
entrance was effected, but meanwhile the prior
had had Joan’s new chamber pulled down, and
a suit was brought against him in consequence
by Joan’s heir, her sister Hawise Wake.16
The prior’s action seems unjustifiable, but it
may have been a protest against the patron’s
real or supposed encroachment.

The head of an alien priory was not in an
easy position. The fulfilment of his duty to his
superior sometimes meant unfairness to the
people among whom he was living; on the
other hand, if he did not uphold his rights
firmly he might certainly have lost them all.
The pension of 10 marks demanded by the
prior from the vicar of Ware made it almost
impossible to get a priest to serve the church.
The parishioners therefore appealed to Pope
Gregory IX, and the Bishop of London and
Dean of St. Paul’s, appointed by him to settle
the matter, decided in 1231 that the prior was
not to require the pension in future, and if he
did the vicar should have certain tithes.?”

In the dispute between Fulk Prior of Ware
and the Abbot of Cumbermere in 1281-2 over
the church of Drayton, in Hales, co. Stafford,"
the abbot was undoubtedly in the wrong. After
judgement had been given by the Archbishop of
Canterbury for the prior, he was dispossessed of
the church by the secular authority through the
abbot’s misrepresentations. However, he wonin

22 Cal. Pat. loc. cit.

12 Assize R. 1256, m. 39.

13 .C.H. Herts. iii, 386.

14 Assize R. 1256, m. 39.

18 Chan. Ing. p.m. 12 Edw. I, no. 27.

16 Assize R. 1256, m. 39.

17 Lond. Epis. Reg. Gilbert, fol. 169-70.

18 Reg. Evist. John Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i, 209-10 *

ii, 432.

455

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

the end,!* for the church figures in the list of the
Prior of Ware’s property in 1297.”

Fulk’s predecessor, William, had been ex-
communicated by Archbishop hilwardby, but
the reason is not disclosed. Archbishop
Peckham absolved him in August 1279, the
penance enjoined being that every sixth day to
the number of forty he should fast on bread,
fish and ale, feed ten poor, and on that day and
the following say fifty psalms.

During the war with France, 1295-8, the priory
was taken into the king’s hands. In these
circumstances a warden was put into the house
to see that the monks had no communication
with France, to answer at the Exchequer for the
issues of the property and receive from the
Exchequer what was necessary to maintain the
convent. [ll-feeling with France in 1324
caused Edward II to seize the priory’s posses-
sions. Two men were appointed to account to
the Crown from 8 October to 10 December for
the monastic manor and the church at Ware,
but these, it was found, had been previously let
on lease.4 The prior at this time was probably
in difficulties, because in July 1319 the king
had borrowed of him 100 marks which he did
not repay.%6

Under Edward III the war with France
stopped for a long while the usual relations
between the priory and the abbey. The trans-
mission of money to St. Evroul’s was forbidden
in January 1337,”” and the property of the house,
then in the king’s hands, was farmed, with the
exception of the advowsons, to the prior for
£230 a year.® In April 1348 the king at Queen
Isabella’s request and on payment of 100 marks
granted the prior the advowsons,”* but from
September 1349 Edward again presented to the
convent’s livings,®° a fairly sure proof that the
prior had fallen a victim to the Black Death.*!

19 After an appeal to Rome.

20 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 2434.

21 Reg. of John Peckham (Cant. and York Soc.),
140.

tn Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 2494. Protection
was granted to the prior from 1294 to 1298 (Cal.
Pat. 1292-1307, pp- 91, 97, 176, 270).

33 Ordinances for the alien religious in 1295 (Cal.
Fine R. 1272-1307, pp. 362-4). Though principally
concerned with the houses near the coast, certain
provisions must have been intended for all.

%4 Mins. Accts. bdle. 1125, no. 11.

25 In 1327 he was sued for a rent of 4 marks,
which had been unpaid for years (De Banco R. 269,
m. 48).

a Anct. Pet. (P.R.O.), no. 7868. The debt was
paid by Edward III (Cal. Close, 1327-30, p. 6).

27 Cal. Close, 1333-7, p- 643.

28 Cal. Pat. 1334-8, pp. 466, 519.

3 Ibid. 1334-50, p. 51.

3 Thid. 394.

31H. P. Pollard, ‘The Alien Benedictine Priory
at Ware,’ East Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iii (2), 126.

The farm due to the king seems to have been
sometimes in arrears** because the prior’s
tenants did not pay, and between 1342 and
1356 payment of rents to the priory had more
than once to be enforced by collectors appointed
by the Crown.* On the Peace of Brétigny in
1360 royal control over Ware ceased,™ but when
the war was resumed in 1369 the priory was
taken into the king’s hands and again committed
to the prior at a rent.

Richard II in November 1377 made William
Herbert, the prior, custodian of the house for
£245 a year,’® and on 20 May 1381, at the
request of the Princess of Wales,” confirmed the
grant to him for life or as long as the war con-
tinued. But when the princess, his patron,
died in 1385 Herbert’s rights were disregarded,
and the custody was given at the same rent to
John Golofre, one of the gentlemen of the
king’s chamber.**

In March 1398 the king assigned the house
during the war to his nephew, Thomas Holland
Duke of Surrey, without rent,2® and it was
probably the duke*® who made it over to
Mount Grace Priory, co. York.

Henry IV in February 1400 gave the Abbot
of St. Evroul leave to grant in mortmain the
priory of Ware with all its property to the
abbey of St. Mary, Leicester,“ but this cannot
have been done, for in December the king gave
Philip Repyndon, Abbot of Leicester, for life
the rent paid by the Prior of Ware as farmer of
his house.#

In August 1405 Queen Joan received the
custody of the priory, valued at {240 a year."

The prior, Nicholas Champene, in February
1410 had licence to bring a monk from St.
Evroul’s with a servant to live in the priory for
life for the maintenance of divine service.
Ware was leased on 24 November 1413 to
Champene, a fellow-monk of his called Richard

32 On 25 June 1343 he was threatened with the
loss of the custody if he did not pay £160 imme-
diately to one of the king’s creditors (Ca/. Close,
1343-6, p. 69).

33 Cal. Pat. 1343-5, pp. 226, 3853; 1345-8,
P- 3033 1348-50, p. 525 5 1354-8, p. 340.

4 Cal. Close, 1360-4, p. 318.

35 Close, 44 Edw. III, m. 3.

36 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 13.

37 She became lady of the manor and patron of
the priory in 1381 on the death of Blanche Lady
Wake (V.C.H. Herts. iii, 386).

38 Anct. Pet. (P.R.O.), no. 7262.

39 Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 332. The duke was then
patron of the priory.

40 Mount Grace was of his foundation.

41 Cal. Pat. 1399-1401, p. 532.

# Ibid. 221.

43 Ibid. 206. The prior was farming the property
of Ware in May (ibid. 276).

4 Cal. Pat. 1405-8, p. 48.

45 Thid. 1408-13, p. 157.

456

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Baussain, the Earl of Arundel and others for
400 marks a year,4® but in 1414 it was sup-
pressed with other alien priories, and finally
passed to the king, who granted it and all its
possessions on 1 April 1415 to his new founda-
tion at Sheen.”

The establishment at Ware appears at one
time to have been fairly large, for the prior was
accompanied on a journey to France in 1343
by ten of his household.4® Of the convent
nothing is known, but it is probable that it
dwindled considerably during the 14th cen-
tury.49

The property of the priory was valued in
1297 at about {200 per annum,® but as this
amount at least was paid for its custody in the
14th century it must then have been worth
more.

Priors oF WarRE

Richard (?), occurs 1174 4
Hubert, occurs c. 1203-6 ®

A., occurs 1219 5

William, occurs 1231 ®4 and 1234 55
Nicholas, occurs c. 1235~9 *8

John, occurs January 1259~60 5

William, occurs 1278-9 58

Fulk, occurs 1281-2 ®

Ralph, occurs June 1297 6°

Hugh, occurs 1327-8 &

William Herbert, occurs November 1377-
May 1381 ® and 1385 8

Nicholas Champene, occurs February 1410,®
24 November 1413, and at the dissolution
of the priory °

A seal, a pointed oval in shape, attached to
an agreement of 1260,%7 shows the prior vested
for mass and standing on a carved corbel with
a book in his hands. Legend: s’ 1oHannis :
PRIORIS : DE : WARE,

On the seal of Ralph, prior of this house,®
two figures are represented standing in a
double niche under a canopy, the one a
king, the other a bishop or abbot; in the
field on each side are three roses. In the
base, under a pointed arch the prior kneels
in prayer. Legend: ...™M: RADVLPH...
ORIS : DE...

HOSPITALS

21. HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY BIGGING,
ANSTEY

It is not known when or by whom! the hospital
of St. Mary Bigging or of the Bigging in the

48 Parl, R. iv, 313.
March 1415.

47 Parl. R. v, 365.

48 Cal. Pat. 1343-5, p. 35-

49 If the monks were French the number of the
convent must have decreased through the restriction
on the admission of aliens during the French wars.
But in any case the higher rent paid by the prior for
the custody as time went on indicates less expense in
the house itself or in other words a smaller convent,
since it is not likely that the property of the priory
increased much in amount or value.

50 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 314, 38, 384, 454,
496, 56, 57, 594, 63, 63, 64, 644, 65, 654, 67,
694, 1004, 114, 162, 1654, 1964, 219, 223, 227,
228, 2376, 2434, 2494, 251, 2514, 2703; Harl.
MS. 60, fol. 124, 29d.

51 He was then proctor of St. Evroul in England
(Round, op. cit. 226), and therefore probably Prior
of Ware.

52 bid. 227.

53 R. of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i, 49.

54 Lond. Epis. Reg. Gilbert, fol. 169-70.

55 R. of Hugh de Welles (Cant. and York Soc.), i,
323.

58 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 2447.

1 Possibly the owner of Anstey was the founder or
principal benefactor, for in 1435 the hospital was
said to be of the foundation of the Duke of York
(Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 39, no. 24), then lord of
Anstey (see above, p. 13).

The farm was paid until

parish of Anstey was founded, but it existed and
had land in Buckland in 1287? and paid subsidy
in 12913

An exchange of lands was effected between
Dionisia de Monchesney, lady of Anstey Manor
at this time, and John the warden of Bigging,®
possibly John de Boclonde, master in 1308.®

57 Har]. Chart. 84 D 56.

58 Reg. of Archbp. Peckham (Cant. and York Soc.),
140.

* Reg. Epist. John Peckham (Rolls Ser.), 1, 209-10 ;
lil, 432.

60 Cal, Pat. 1292-1301, p. 270.

61 De Banco R. 1 Edw. III, m. 42; 2 Edw. III,
m. 237.

82 Cal, Pat. 1381-5, p. 13.

63 A petition from the prior, who must have been
Herbert (Anct. Pet. [P.R.O.], no. 7262), speaks of
the Princess of Wales as dead, and is therefore later
than Aug. 1385.

64 Cal. Pat. 1408-13, p. 157.

85 Parl, R. iv, 3139.

6 20 July 1414 he is called Prior of Noion of
Newmarket, afas Prior of Ware (Cal. Pat. 1413-16,

p- 89).

67 Harl. Chart. 84 D 56.

68 B.M. Seals, lxiv, 72.

2 Assize R. 325, m. 2.

3 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no, 2. The master paid
315. 344. for property in Anstey, 215. 34¢. for that
in Little Hormead. ;

4 Ibid. ; Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Edwinstree Hund.
56. She died in 1313.

5 Anct. D. (P.R.O.), A 1040.

Sharpe, Cal. of Letter-Bk. B. 95.

4 457 58

pt

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Protection was given by the king in May 13167
and December 1325 ® to the keeper or warden
of this house.

In 1343, at the request of John Darcy le fitz,
Edward III gave the chaplains of the hospital
licence to acquire in mortmain land and rent
to the yearly value of {10°%; and in part satis-
faction of this amount they received in 1350
1oos, rent from land in Great and Little Chishall
(co. Camb.),!° in 1353 messuages and land in
Buntingford, Barkway, Hormead, Braughing,
Buckland, Wyddial and Alswick in Layston
worth 16s. a year,4 and in 136675 acres and Ios.
rent in Great and Little Hormead, Braughing
and Buntingford.”

This house is sometimes called the ‘ poor’
hospital of St. Mary,!3 no doubt with truth, since
only the brothers’ pressing need could have
caused their arrangement in 1405 with a certain
Ralph Cokkyng.4 For §0 marks they made over
to Ralph for sixty years land in Little Hormead
and elsewhere valued at § marks a year. It was
understood that Ralph was to settle land in
Royston worth 40s. a year on the hospital, but
he never did so. Thirty years later it was
alleged that damage to the extent of more than
50 marks had been done to the hospital’s
property by Ralph’s son and successor. The
hospital or free chapel,}® as it had now become,
is not mentioned again until August 1589, when
it was granted by the Crown to William Tipper
and Robert Dawe.!®

MasTERs or WarpENs?’ or St. Mary Biccine,
ANSTEY

John, occurs 128718

John de Boclonde, occurs August 1308 }°

Richard, occurs 1368 2°

Nicholas Mokkyng, occurs January 14017
and c. 1405 2

Thomas Whightfeld, occurs c. 14357

7 Cal. Pat. 1313-17, p. 462.

8 Ibid. 1324-7, p. 202.

® Ibid. 1343-5, p. 155.

10 [bid. 1348-50, p. 569.

11 Ibid. 1350-4, p. 423.

12 Pat. 40 Edw. III, pt. ii, m. g.

13 Cal. Pat. 1343-5, p- 155 3 1348-50, p. 569.

M4 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 39, no. 24.

15 In 1401 it is called a chapel or college.

16 Pat. 31 Eliz. pt. v, m. 37.

17 The master in the Lay Subs. R. of 1291 (bdle.
120, no. 2) is called ‘ prior.’

18 Assize R. 325, m. 2.

19 Sharpe, op. cit. 95.

2 Dugdale, Mon. vi, 762.

21 Cal. Pat. 1399-1401, p. 363. He was also a
prebendary of the collegiate church of Llandewybreny
in the diocese of St. Davids.

*2 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 39, no. 24.

33 Ibid.

22. HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST,
BERKHAMPSTEAD

The earliest mention of this hospital occurs
in a charter of Geoffrey Fitz Piers Earl of
Essex,% which shows that the custody of the
house had already been committed by him to
the brothers of St. Thomas the Martyr of Acon.

On 1 March 1216-17 Queen Isabel for the soul
of King John gave the hospital to the canons
of Acon,® but whether this was a confirmation
of Fitz Piers’s deedoranamplificationis not clear.
The queen added that the hospital had of her
gift tithes of all her mills in the sokes of Berk-
hampstead and Hemel Hempstead, 1§ acres of
land in ‘ Selidone’ and all the dike work with
herbage between the fish-pond and the hospital,
the whole length of the fish-pond, viz., from the
road called Water Lane to the church of
St. James, the land late of Roger the Cordwainer,
and another piece next the hospital, 15 cartloads
of fuel in the ‘hay’ of Berkhampstead and
25 loads in the wood of ‘ Brennendon,’ perhaps
Bovingdon in Hemel Hempstead, leave to feed
20 pigs in the said ‘hay’ and wood, and pan-
nage and pasture for the hospital’s cattle in
the common pastures of Berkhampstead. As
Isabel confirmed to the hospital whatever it had
already acquired in her fee of Berkhampstead
and in Hemel Hempstead, these gifts were
possibly fresh endowment. It will be noticed
that the hospital had, or by this charter acquired,
rights in the property lying between its site and
the chapel of St. James, the proximity of which
appears to have led to an interchange of the
names of the two foundations. Thus Chauncy 76
speaks of the hospital of St. James so called
from St. James’s Well,?? while the spring itself
has for some time now been known as St. John’s
Well. The hospital chapel was rebuilt in 1331
and was consecrated at the end of that year or
the beginning of the next.%8

24 Inspeximus and confirmation July 1325 (Cal.
Pat. 1324-7, p. 128).

25 Inspeximus and confirmation 1o Dec. 1318
(Cal. Chart. R. 1300-26, p. 399). A hospital of
Berkhampstead was confirmed to the canons of Acon
by Pope Honorius 7 July in the fourth year of his
rule, probably Honorius III in 1220 (Cott. MS.
Tib. C v, fol. 271).

26 Hist. Antig. of Herts. 587.

27 Cobb (Hist. and Antiq. of Berkhamstead, 72)
marked this spot as the site of one of the hospitals,
pointing to the names ‘ Spital Mead’ and ‘the Spital
trees’ in proof, but he thought the hospital that
of St. John the Evangelist. The nearness of the
hospital of St. John Baptist to the old parochial chapel
makes the connexion of both with the brotherhood of
St. John Baptist seem more probable. See V.C.H.
Herts. ii, 163, 172.

“6 The Bishop of Lincoln’s commission to Peter
Bishop of ‘Corbavia’ to consecrate is dated 8 kal.
Jan. 1331 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Burghersh,
fol. 239).

458

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

From that time there is no mention of the
house of St. John Baptist. A report, however,
made in 1540 on the leper hospitals of Berk-
hampstead ®° says that a warden, brothers and
sisters had been possessed of two, one called the
Overspitalhouse or St. John the Evangelist, the
other the Netherspitalhouse or St. Leonard,
and as the property in Berkhampstead, North-
church and Hemel Hempstead included the
tithes of six water-mills and a fulling-mill, it
seems likely that the hospital of St. Leonard %°
was identical with that of St. John Baptist.*
Apparently the two houses had been united
before 1515-16, since there was then only one
warden, and at that time the departure of the
inmates brought the existence of the remaining
hospital to a close.

There are several references to the hospital
of St. Thomas the Martyr of Berkhampstead,
but it is clear that they refer to either the
hospital of St. John Baptist or that of St. John
the Evangelist, which both belonged to the
monastery of St. Thomas the Martyr of Acon,
and were therefore probably known by the

name of the superior house.5*

23. HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN THE
EVANGELIST, BERKHAMPSTEAD

The hospital of St. John the Evangelist for
lepers was founded at Berkhampstead certainly
before 1213, for it is the subject of a charter of
Geoffrey Fitz Piers Earl of Essex, who died in
that year. The earl, who was evidently patron
of the hospital,?4 committed it to the custody of
the brothers of St. Thomas of Acon, so that
under their supervision its goods and alms
might be expended on the poor and sick of the
hospital, and not be removed elsewhere.

The master, brothers and sisters of the house
received letters of protection in February 1222
until the king’s coming of age,®* and in May
1227, when the king had attained his majority,

29 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 25, no. 37.

30 St. Leonard was a favourite saint with com-
mercial communities, and this would therefore be a
probable invocation, supposing the connexion between
the gild and the hospital.

31 Especially as the foundation of both hospitals,
St. Leonard’s as well as St. John the Evangelist’s, is
attributed to King John.

32 As to the connexion of this hospital with Berk-
hampstead Grammar School see V.C.H. Herts. ii,
72, 172.

33 See Ror. Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), ii, 19, 21 3
Cal, Pat. 1317-21, p. 68 ; Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120,
no. 2; Cant. Archiepis. Reg. Courtenay, fol. 2804 ;
Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. 15.

3 No doubt in virtue of the king’s grant of
Berkhampstead Manor to him.

35 Inspeximus and confirmation 3 July 1325 (Ca/.
Pat. 1324-7, p. 128).

36 Cal. Pat. 1216-25, p. 325.

the protection was renewed.8? A few weeks
before Henry had ordered the constable of
Berkhampstead to supply the lepers of St.
John’s for their maintenance with 4 qrs. of corn
from his grange and two ‘ bacones.’ 88

Whatever Fitz Piers’s charter may have given
the canons of Acon,** the right of appointing
the master of St. John’s was not included,
This apparently belonged to the owner of
Berkhampstead*°: in November 1336, when
the honour was in the king’s hand, he gave the
custody of the hospital to one of his clerks“;
and Henry VI, while he held the manor, pre-
sented the warden.”

In 1391 the house is mentioned as the hospital
of brothers and sisters of St. Thomas the
Martyr and St. John the Evangelist.

Edward IV in November 1461 inspected and
confirmed Fitz Piers’s deed in favour of the
brothers of Acon,*4 and when the hospital, with
that of St. Leonard, came to an end in 1515-16 %
the master of St. Thomas of Acon entered into
possession of the house and its property.*
Probably the chapel was served for some years
longer.4? In September 1533, however, the

37 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 35.

38 Rot, Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), ii, 173.

39 As far as is known the house of Acon had no
land at Berkhampstead, and in that case the suit of
court there owed by the master in 1498 and 1507
(Ct. R. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 177, no. 15) can only have
been due from him as representative of the Berk-
hampstead hospitals.

40 The honour, which reverted to the Crown soon
after Geoffrey Fitz Piers’s death, seems after the gift
of it with the earldom of Cornwall by Henry III in
1227, to have been held by the Earls of Cornwall.
It was thus held by John de Eltham, who was created
Earl of Cornwall in 1328 by his brother Edward III ;
and it was in the interval between John’s death in
Oct. 1336 and the bestowal of the duchy of Cornwall
upon Prince Edward in Feb. 1337 that the king
presented to the hospital. From this date for a long
period the manor belonged to the Duke of Cornwall
or Prince of Wales, and in 1423 the hospital was said
to be in the gift of the king as Prince of Wales (Ca/.
Pat. 1422-9, p. 163). For the descent of the manor
of Berkhampstead see ”.C.H. Herts. ii, 165~-8.

41 Cal. Pat. 1334-8, p. 336.

42 Ibid. 1422-9, p. 163; 1446-52, p. 42.

43 Lambeth, Cant. Archiepis. Reg. Courtenay,
fol. 280d.

44 Cal. Pat. 1461-7, p. 60.

45 By the voluntary departure of the inmates
(Rentals and Surv. [Gen. Ser.], portf. 25, no. 37).

48 Ibid.

47 At the inquiry of Mar. 1540 it was stated
that Laurence Copferler, late master of St. Thomas
of Acon, and John St. John, chaplain, held the
hospitals and the issues = ae ai ants from ae
1c2¢ to Sept. 1533 (ibid.). ere scems to bea
ae as ae first date, for Copferler did
not become master of St. Thomas of Acon until

1527 (V.C.H. Lond. i, 495)-

459

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

place was made over to Thomas Jakes of Berk-
hampstead, gentleman, who in January 1536
disposed of a gilt chalice, a mass-book, three
vestments and other ornaments, and in Sep-
tember 1539 sold the lead roof of the chapel and
its bells.48 The existence of the house was over
long before the king granted it and its lands in
June 1540 to Robert Horderne.*

WarDENS OF THE HospitaL oF ST. JOHN THE
EvancELisT, BERKHAMPSTEAD

John de Rasen, appointed 15 November
1336 30

Henry Cows,
1390-1 5

John Mildenale, resigned 1423 *

William Seyntpoul, appointed 11 December
1423,5 died February 1447 *4

Walter Osbarn, appointed 24 February 1447%

chaplain, appointed March

24. HOSPITAL OF ST. ERASMUS AND
ST. MARY MAGDALENE, CHESHUNT

There was at one time in Cheshunt a hospital
of St. Erasmus and St. Mary Magdalene, appa-
rently very small and insignificant.5*?7 The
proctor, Thomas Glasedale, when asked by the
vicar-general of the Bishop of London in
October 152758 whether the king was their
founder, answered that they had neither
foundation, incorporation nor bills of privileges.
The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene mentioned
in connexion with Cheshunt in the Prior of
Hertford’s accounts of 1497-8 5® was no doubt
this house.

25. HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE,
CLOTHALL

The leper hospital of St. Mary Magdalene,
Baldock, was founded within the boundary of
Clothall parish, apparently at the beginning of
the 13th century, by Sir Hugh de Clothall, kt.,

48 Rentals and Surv. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 25, no. 37.

49 Pat. 36 Hen. VIII, pt. ix, m. 26.

50 Cal. Pat. 1334-8, p. 336.

51 Through delay in appointing the master, the
nomination had fallen to the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, the see of Lincoln being then vacant (Lambeth
Cant. Archiepis. Reg. Courtenay, fol. 280d.).

52 Cal. Pat. 1422-9, p. 163.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid. 1446-52, p. 42.

55 Tbid.

58-7 Tr does not seem to have been known to
Tanner.

58 Consistory Ct. of London, Vicar-General’s book,
Foxford, 106.

59 Rentals and Surv. R. 277. The entry is as
follows: ‘18¢. paid to the hospital of St. Mary
Magdalene and 12d. to the nuns of Cheshunt for the
said hospital by reason of a certain agreement.’

60 Harl. Chart. 112 A 3.

lord of the manor, the patronage remaining
with the owners of the manor.*

In April 1226 Henry III gave the brothers
leave to have a fair at their hospital outside
Baldock on the vigil and feast of St. Bar-
tholomew until his majority, and ordered the
Sheriff of Hertfordshire to have the fair pro-
claimed throughout his bailiwick,® but as he
came of age in January 1227 and the grant was
not renewed, they can only have held the fair
once. The brothers and those sent by them to
preach for the lepers’ maintenance were also
given royal letters of protection to last for a
year from Christmas 1226.8 Pope Innocent IV
in 1244 took under the protection of St. Peter
the master and brothers, their house and present
and future possessions.®4

A charter of the 13th century concerning a
small grant to the lamp of St. Nicholas ® men-
tions that the chapel was served by two priests.
This church was inconveniently situated
outside the close at some distance from the
hospital, and the master and brothers on
26 April 1275 obtained licence from the king to
inclose the intervening high road 588 ft. long
and 17 ft. broad on condition that they made
another on their own ground.® A few years
later the house itself became untenable owing
to its solitary position.*? The brothers suffered
such damage from robbers, who attacked and set
fire to the place, that the patrons, John de
Hauvill and John de Poleye and his wife
Muriel,®8 allowed them to remove to another
spot in the parish, providing, however, that the
chapel should be built on their fee in ‘le Brada’
and that a mass should be celebrated every day
at the old foundation for the souls of Sir Hugh
de Clothall, his wife and parents. The new
hospital was finished in 1308, since leave was
then given by the Bishop of Lincoln fur the
brethren to dwell there and have services in the
chapel on obtaining the rector’s consent.”

Royal protection for a year was granted in
December 1325 to the master, John de Wotton.7

61 The descendants of Simon, Hugh’s brother and
successor (V.C.H. Herts. ili, 222).

62 Rot. Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), li, 107.

83 Cal. Pat. 1225-32, p. 95.

4 Harl. Chart. 111 A 16.

65 Ibid. 112 C 14.

8 Ing. a.q.d. file 4, no. 7; Cal. Pat. 1272-81,
p. 85.

67 It was evidently in a lonely spot, for a pre-
meditated murder was committed in the road by the
hospital in 1284-5 (Assize R. 325, m. 31 d.).

68 Daughter of Simon de Clothall (V.C.H. Herts. iii,
2:22).

69 Harl. Chart. 112 A 3. Perhaps this meant
that these services were not to be discontinued at the
old chapel until they could be performed in the new.

7 Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Dalderby, fol. 239.

1 Cal. Pat. 1324-7, p. 192.

460

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The office of warden or master was held more
than once with other livings. In 1384 Richard II
resented the warden, John atte Lee, to a church
in South Wales”; in 1446 the pope provided
John Bagot, the then master, to a canonry in
the college of South Malling,” and in 1526 the
master, Thomas Dalison, was rector of Clothall.74
As usual it is difficult to discover how long the
place was really a hospital. There is no actual
reference to the brothers after 1308, though no
doubt a community existed there until much
later 7°; but as in 1446 it is styled the hospital
or free chapel of Clothall® it had evidently
already become a mere chantry, which under
the name of hospital 7” survived until the reign
of Edward VI. Its net value was returned in
1535 as {3 25. 8d.,"8 in 1547-8 as {3 115, 11}d.7°

Masters oR WARDENS OF CLOTHALL HospitaL

J., chaplain, instituted 1242-3 %°

John, died 1265

Reynold de Little Stokton, instituted 1265,
resigned 1301 8

Walter de Little Stokton, instituted 1301,84
resigned 1314 ®

John de Wotton, instituted 1314,%* occurs
3 December 1325,87 died 1349 8

John de Leecheworth, instituted 1349 °°

John atte Lee, occurs 16 July 1384

7 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 443.

® Cal. of Papal Letters, vill, 310.

74 Salter, 4 Subsidy Collected in the Dioc. of Linc. in
1526, p. 179.

7 The human remains found near the traditional
site of the hospital seem to indicate that the house
had a burial-ground (H. C. Andrews, ‘The Hospital
of St. Mary Magdalene, Baldock and Clothall,’ East
Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. iv, pt. 1, 90).

18 Cal. of Papal Letters, vill, 310.

7 It is called hospital in Chan. Ing. p.m.
33 Hen. VI, no. 31; 4 Edw. IV, no. 25; (Ser. 2),
i, 1343 xi, 123 free chapel or hospital in the Valor
Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 278.

"8 Valor Eccl. \oc. cit.

79 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 65. It is described here
as a free chapel, founded towards finding a priest
for ever. The foundation cannot be shown. The
chapel was distant from the church a mile or more.
It had no plate, jewels, goods or chattels.

80 Linc. Epis. Reg. Grosteste R. 8.

81 Clutterbuck, Hist. and Antig. of Herts. iii, 506.
Probably the man instituted by Bishop Grosteste.

82 Tbid.

8 Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Dalderby, fol. 231 d.
Reginald occurs 1290-1 (Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120,
no. 2).

8 Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Dalderby, fol. 231 d.

85 Thid. fol. 248.

86 Tbid.

87 Cal. Pat. 1324-7, p. 192.

% Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Gynwell, fol. 34.3.

89 Ibid.

0 Cal. Pat. 1381-5, p. 443.

William Tamworth ®

John Bagot, occurs October 1446 %

Walter Dyer, instituted 1453, resigned 1468 ®4

John Edom, instituted 1468,% occurs 20
October 1473,% died 1474 9”

William Hanford, instituted 1474 %

John Serle, resigned 1486

William Frank, instituted 1486, resigned
14911

William Exham, instituted 1491,? died 1493 8

William Awnger, instituted 1493,4 died 1502 ®

Thomas Dalison, instituted 1502,8 occurs
1526,” died 1541 §

Thomas Boldron, instituted 1541 °

26. HOSPITAL OF ST. LAUD AND
ST. ANTHONY, HODDESDON

The earliest mention of this hospital is in 1390,
when the Bishop of Ely granted indulgences
for the poor and lepers of that house and of
St. Margaret, Thetford1° One of the two seals of
the Hoddesdon Hospital, both apparently of
the 15th century, shows that the house was also
called St. Clement," so that there was probably
at some time a change of dedication.12_ During
this period, too, the character of the hospital
itself was perhaps altered. It seems to have
been originally intended, in part at any rate,
for lepers, but in the 16th century it was

91 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 3, no. 34. He ex-
changed with John Bernard, parson of Elstree, who
could not obtain the office vacated and petitioned the
chancellor on the subject. The case occurred
between 1386 and 1413.

92 Cal. of Papal Letiers, viil, 310.

93 Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Chedworth, fol. 186.

94 Thid. fol. 199 d.

5 Tbid.

96 Add. Chart. 35385.

97 Linc, Epis. Reg. Inst. Rotheram, fol. 111 d.

98 [bid.

99 Ibid. Inst. Russell, fol. 138.

100 Tbid.

1 [bid. fol. 142.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid. fol. 144.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid. Inst. Smith, fol. 407 d.

8 Ibid.

7 Salter, op. cit. 179.

8 Clutterbuck, op. cit. ili, 507.

® Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Longland, fol. 233 d.

10 Gibbons, Cal. of Ely Epis. Rec. 397. William
of the Hospital, one of the tenants of Hoddesdon-
bury Manor in 1394 (Tregelles, Hist. of Hoddesdon,
229), may have been the master of the house.

fl B.M. Seals, D.C., G 19.

12 Tregelles, op. cit. 27. ;

13 Mr. Tregelles doubts it (op. cit. 235), but the
warden said in 1568 (ibid. 231) that the foundation
was given for poor lazars, leprous and impotent persons
then and thereafter to be maintained.

461

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

a hospital or almshouse for poor men and
women. Apparently there was no foundation
charter, but the warden or ‘ guydor’ held the
house on lease from the lord of the manor."
Wiliam Thompson, master in 1518, then
obtained a fresh lease of the place to himself
and his wife at a rent of 2 marks.} He was
succeeded in 1535 by Gregory Peryes.1® The
house and its property were let in 1561 at 20s.
a year for twenty-one years to William Smythe
of Newington, who at once sold his interest to
Robert Reve, a butcher, and by him the
hospital with the government of its inmates
was leased for 60s. a year to Thomas Jackson.1?
On 22 April 1568 Jackson complained to Sir
William Cecil that Reve did not, as he had
promised, repair the hospital, which was in a
ruinous state, and that he was making un-
reasonable waste of the woods belonging to the
house.18 The survey made!® in consequence
a few days later proves the truth of his state-
ments: the two little rooms occupied by the
poor people at night let in the rain, and the
groves were much damaged by cattle.

As the possessions of the hospital consisted
only of a few acres of pasture and wood, the poor
there must have maintained themselves by
begging ; in fact, of the eight inmates 2° six were
absent at the time of the survey * gathering the
devotion of the people.’ The number to be
received was left to the warden’s decision, and
the surveyors drew the natural conclusion that
the founders had lately troubled themselves
little about the management of the place. The
hospital lasted but a short time longer, the
building #? in 1573 being used for a school.

WarDENS oR GovERNoRS OF HopDDESDON
HospPitTaL

John Jenkinson, shortly before 1518 4
William Thompson, occurs 1518 to 1535 %
Gregory Peryes, became warden in 1535 %8
M4 Survey of the hospital 29 Apr. 10 Eliz.
(Tregelles, Hist. of Hoddesdon, 234).

1 Tbid. 235. 16 Thid.

17 Tid.

18 Ibid. 231.

19 The petition and survey which are at Hatfield
House are printed in full by Mr. Tregelles (op. cit.
231-4).

* From Jackson’s petition it might be inferred
that there were twelve brothers and sisters, but
perhaps he meant that the hospital was intended for
that number.

1 To these there is no clue. The one bequest to
the house known is Sir William Say’s in 1529
(P.C.C. 6 Thower), but a legacy of 65. 8d. does not
argue great interest.

22 It comprised a hall, kitchen, chapel and the two
little rooms mentioned above.

33 Tregelles, op. cit. 235.

% Ibid. 3 Tbid. %® Ibid.

Thomas Jackson, became warden § October
1566,?” occurs April 1568 7°

Thomas Thurgood, occurs 1569 *

John Malden *

A seal of this house,®! in the style of the
15th century, is a pointed oval, and represents
two saints in a niche with heavy canopies and
tabernacle work at the sides. The saint on the
left, St. Antony, holds in his right hand a long
tau cross, in the other a book, while at his feet
is a pig; St. Laud, wearing mitre and vest-
ments, holds blacksmith’s pincers in his left
hand and a hammer in his right. In the back-
ground are sprays of foliage. Legend: siciLLt
OSPITALIS SANCTI ANTONI LOCI DE HODSTUN.
Another ®* of the same shape and style also
shows two saints under heavily canopied Gothic
niches. The saint on the left is again repre-
sented with a tau cross in his right hand and
a book in his left, but the pig is not shown at
his feet.3 St. Laud,§4 as before, holds a
hammer, but in his left hand: his right is
raised in benediction. In the base are two
emblems, the anchor of St. Clement under
St. Antony and a horseshoe under St. Laud.
Legend : siGILLUM HOSPITALIS SANCTI CLEMENT’
LOCI DE HODDESDON,

27. HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN AND
ST. JAMES, ROYSTON

The founder of the hospital of St. James at
Royston 5 was probably Richard Argentein, as
stated in 1547-8.86 The patronage belonged in
1276 to his son Giles Argentein, and continued
to be exercised by his descendants ®’ ; while the
house was certainly in existence in Richard’s
time, since in 1227 Walter de Gray, Archbishop
of York, granted an indulgence of thirteen days
to all who contributed to the support of the sick
brothers and sisters coming to the hospital of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and St. James of Royston.%

37 Tregelles, op. cit. 232.

8 Ibid.

29 He rented the land then (ibid. 235).

80 He still occupied the land in 1573, when the
school took the place of the hospital (ibid.).

31 B.M. Seals, lxiv, 68.

32 Ibid. D.C., G 19.

33 The catalogue describes the object under the
saint on the left as a pig, but there seems no doubt
(Tregelles, op. cit. 21) that it is an anchor.

34 According to the catalogue description this is
St. Clement.

35 From a survey of the parish taken in 1630 the
hospital was evidently situated at the corner of
Baldock Street and Dead Street in co. Hertford (Add.
MS. 5820, fol. 33, 34.d.).

36 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 62.

37 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 561.

38 Archbp. Gray’s Reg. (Surt. Soc.), 24; Cussans,
Hist. of Herts. Odsey Hund. 102.

462

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

Possibly it was a hospital not only for the
sick but for poor wayfarers: in 1389 it is
mentioned as the house of alms,8® and the
Chantry Returns, although confusing the hos-
ital with a chantry there,“ report that it was
founded for the relief of poor people coming
and going through the town of Royston.

Letters of protection were given by Henry III
to the master and brothers in 1251,4% and in
1267, when the hospital is called St. James and
St. John.*

In 1302 Bishop Dalderby visited the hospital
by deputy, and found its state entirely satis-
factory.®

Very little is known about its affairs. The
master of St. James was a party to a law-suit
about a tenement in 1260-1," and in 1295 the
hospital was taxed at 115. 2$d. for the eleventh
and seventh.4® Before the middle of the 14th

+ century the chapel of St. Nicholas was amalga-
mated with the hospital of St. James,** to the
material benefit of the latter, which also in
August 1359 received permission from the king
to acquire in mortmain land to the annual
value of 1005.47

In 1389 Thomas Strete bequeathed to the
house 20s. to buy beds,4® and in 1393 Henry
Strete left 6s. 8d. towards the roof of its chapel.

How long the place continued as a hospital
is uncertain: in 1486 it was already a free
chapel.#® It is still called hospital in the
Valor,5° but the term is evidently a mere sur-

39 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 398d. No
other hospital is known at Royston at this date but
that of St. John and St. James.

40 It is called the hospital of Richard Argentein
founded by licence of Edward III to find a priest for
ever for the relief of poor people, &c. Part of this
refers to the chantry of St. Nicholas, which was re-
founded in the reign of Edward III, but part does not.
(See Hospital of St. Nicholas, Royston.)

41 Pat. 35 Hen. III, m. 9.

#2 Ibid. 51 Hen. III, m. 20.

43 Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, fol. 49 d.

44 Kingsbury, Hist. of Royston, 48.

45 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 5.

46 See Hospital of St. Nicholas, Royston.

4 Pat. 33 Edw. III, pt. ii, m.12. Licence was
given at the request of John of Gaunt, Earl of Rich-
mond, who appears to have been the overlord of the
Argenteins (Chan. Ing. p.m. 33 Edw. III [1st nos.],
no. 44).

48 Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 398 d., 405 d.
The first was rector of Much Hadham, the other,
rector of Barley.

49 Cal, Ing. p.m. Hen. VII, i, 14. William
Alington, who died in 1486, held the advowson of a
free chapel in Royston. His descendant, Sir Giles
Alington, had the advowson of the hospital of
St. John and St. James (Feet of F. Div. Co. East. 2 & 3
Philip and Mary), so the free chapel was clearly the
same as the hospital. The Alingtons were the heirs
of the Argenteins.

50 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 278.

vival, as in the Chantry Returns of 1549-50
where it is applied to what was obviously the
chantry of St. Nicholas refounded in the hos-
pital of St. James in the 14th century.

__ Its yearly value in 1535 was {5 65. tod. net,™
in 1549-50 {7 55. 5d. gross and {6 85. 64d. net,
its revenues being apparently derived from
property in Barley and Therfield (co. Hertford),
Kneesworth, Melbourn and Chishall (co, Cam-
bridge).54

Masters oR WarpDENS OF THE HospPITAL oF
Sr. Joun anp Sr. James, Royston

William, occurs 1291 5°; William de Melreth,
died 1297 58

John de Litlington, instituted 1297,57 died
1335 %8

William de Langrave, instituted 1335, re-
signed 1355 °°

John de Norwich, priest, instituted 1355,
occurs 1358 and 6 July 1359 ®

Walter Spersholt, resigned 1363 ®

John de Eston, instituted July 1363 ®

Philip Walles, resigned 1377 ®

Richard Freman, instituted 1377, resigned
1389 °7

Thomas Gery, instituted 1389

Thomas Foulmere, resigned 1397 ®

John Wigworth, instituted 1397”

Robert Eyr, instituted 14087

John Yernyng, instituted 1444”

William Alyngton, died 1452”

51 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 62.

52 Valor Eccl. loc. cit.

53 Chant. Cert. 20, no. 62.

54 Pat. 5 Jas. I, pt. xvii, m. 16.

55 Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 2.

58 Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Sutton, fol. g1 d.

57 Ibid. It is now called the hospital of Saints
John and James.

58 Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, fol. 383.

59 Tbid.

60 Ibid. Gynwell, fol. 359.

61 Tbid.

62 Chan. Ing. p.m. 33 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 445
Cal. Chose, 1354-60, p. §87. He is called warden
of the hospital of St. Nicholas, but that had been
amalgamated with the house of St. John and St. James.

63 Linc, Epis. Reg. Inst. Buckingham, pt. i, fol.
283d.

64 Ibid.

65 [bid. fol. 314d. He then exchanged with
Freman, but is still called master of the hospital of
Saints John and James, Royston, in 1381 (Cal. Pat.
1377-81, Pp. :

ae Inst, Buckingham, pt. i, fol.
314d.
67 Ibid. pt. ii, fol. 258.
68 [bid. He exchanged with Freman.
69 Ibid. fol. 286.
7 Ibid. He exchanged with Foulmere.
71 Tbid. Repingdon, fol. 338.
72 [bid. Alnwick, fol. 167.
73 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 562.

463

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

John Byke, presented 1452,74 died 1486 7
Thomas Payn, presented 1486,” died 1514 7”
John Colyngton, presented 1514,78 occurs

1517 79

28. HOSPITAL OF ST. NICHOLAS,
ROYSTON

The hospital of St. Nicholas, Royston, with
a chapel in which mass was to be sa‘d three
times a week for lepers there, was tounded,
according to the statement of the warden in
1358-9, by a certain Ralph son of Ralph son
of Fulk, who afterwards granted the chapel and
advowson of the hospital by charter to Giles de
Argentein. As, however, the house was cer-
tainly in existence in 1213 ® and Ralph was still
living in 1283, he appears to have been the
founder of the chapel rather than of the hospital.
Possibly the patronage of the chantry was given
to the Argenteins because they were already
connected with the house: for they seem to
have been lords of the site,® which there is good
reason to believe was on the Cambridgeshire
side of Royston.*4

King John received the brothers of the house
into his protection in January 1212-13,8 and
granted them a fair to be held on the vigil and
feast of the Translation of St. Nicholas 8; and
Henry III in March 1235-6 confirmed to them
the fair, extending its duration to three days.§?

This fair and 30 acres of land in the neigh-
bourhood given for the maintenance of the
chaplain §§ comprised apparently the whole

4 Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 562.

™ Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Russell, fol. 138.

78 Ibid.

*T Clutterbuck, op. cit. ili, 562.

78 Ibid.

79 Kingston, op. cit. 207.

& Chan. Inq. p.m. 33 Edw. III (1st nos.), no. 44.
He was concerned to prove that the hospital and
chantry were not of royal foundation, and that their
lands therefore should not have been taken into the
king’s hands. Apparently he established his case
(Cal. Close, 1354-60, p. 537).

"I! Rot. Lit. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 96.

2 See Broadfield, ?.C.H. Herts. ili, 210.

83 In 1359 the land was held of the Earl of Rich-
mond and John Argentein by the service of finding a
lamp in the church of Wendy, co. Camb.

“4 The old burial ground found at the north end of
the town (Kingston, op. cit. 46-7) was probably the
cemetery of this hospital, for the advowson of St.
Nicholas Chapel, Royston, figures in the 15th century
among the Cambridgeshire possessions of the Alingtons,
the descendants of the Argenteins (Chan. Ing. p.m.
a8 & 39 Hen. VI, no. 42).

® Rst. Lit. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 96.

88 Cal. Rot. Chart. 1199-1216 (Rec. Com.), 1894.

87 Inspeximus July 1371 (Pat. 45 Edw. III, pt. ii,
m. 32).

& Cal. Clse, 1354~60, p. 587.

endowment of the hospital, which must have
depended largely on alms.

Poverty, plague or fear of robbers may have
brought it to an end. In July 1359 it was
reported as long deserted, ‘lepers refusing to
come or dwell there,’ and the services with the
chantry endowment had in consequence been
transferred from the chapel of St. Nicholas to
that of St. James.8® No names of masters
survive, for although John de Norwich was
called Warden of St. Nicholas in 1359, there
was then apparently no hospital of that name
in Royston.

29. HOSPITAL OF ST. JULIAN BY
ST. ALBANS

Geoffrey Abbot of St. Albans (1119-46), with
the consent of the convent, built a hospital for
lepers outside St. Albans on a piece of land
called Kingesho along Watling Street, and
dedicated it to the honour of St. Julian. For
its maintenance he assigned ® tithe of rent of
the vill of St. Albans, viz., 605.9%; rent of 30s.
from Sarratt; tithe of corn of the lordships of
‘“Hamstede’® and Kingsbury; portions of
tithes in the parishes of St. Michael and St.
Stephen, Aston, Codicote, and in the lordships
of St. Albans and of Roger de Limesy in
Bradway in St. Paul’s Walden, and certain
tithes in Streatley, Henlow, Silsoe, Stanford in
Southill (co. Beds.), Ralph Perot’s lordships of
Lindsell and Hawkswell (co. Essex), and a hide
which Robert son of Weneling had in Ast-
wick (co. Beds.). The endowment of Geoffrey
and others was confirmed to the hospital by
Henry II,® who himself made the lepers a per-
petual grant of 1d. a day,®® and the sum of
30s. §d. was paid to them annually by the
Sheriff of Hertfordshire from 1160 onwards.%

59 Cal. Close, 1354-60, p. 587.

8 Cott. MS. Nero, D 1, fol. 193. Charter of
foundation and charter granting the lepers the land
on which their houses were built free from all inter-
ference.

*! Abbot Roger in 1287 confirmed to the lepers
all that they then held of Geoffrey’s endowment
(ibid. fol. 193 d.).

* Abbot Richard de Wallingford withdrew this
rent for two years, but after inspecting the brothers’
charters paid it and confirmed it to them in 1329
(ibid.).

% Probably ‘Henammesteda’ of Domesday, now
represented by Park and Tyttenhanger (see V.C.H.
Herts. ii, 319).

4 Cott. MS. Nero, D i, fol. 193.

% Ibid.

°° Pipe R. 6-14 Hen. II (Pipe R. Soc.), passim ;
Hunter, Great Roll of the Pipe 1 Ric. I (Rec. Com.),
20; Close, 2 Hen. III, m. 13; Rental of St.
Julians, 1506 (Cott. MS. Claud. D i, fol. 169).

464

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

The brothers received two papal bulls,®? that
of Pope Gregory ® extending the protection of
St. Peter to them and their goods and confirming
the gifts of Abbot Geoffrey, the King of England
and others; that of Pope Innocent ® granting
papal protection and confirmation and _for-
bidding tithes to be taken of their orchards,
woods and animals.

The perpetual right which the Perots claimed
to place a leper in the hospital was disputed in
1278. The master refused to admit Ralph
Perot’s nominee, and a suit was consequently
brought against him.1° However, in the end
Abbot Roger came to terms with Ralph and
settled the difficulty.

No light is thrown upon the working of the
hospital until the 14th century, but in 1305
it had as master a certain papal chaplain,
Reginald of St. Albans,? who held three churches
and three prebends, so that it is hardly likely
that the lepers received much of his attention.

The events recorded in an undated petition of
the lepers to the king ® occurred probably in the
reign of Edward II.4 It states that the abbot
while on a visitation had demanded the keys of
the common chest and view of the lepers’ own
goods. On their demurring he had them turned
out of their house, and had broken the locks and
carried off their private property to the value of
{60 and more, the greater part of which belonged
to two brothers, Walter and Hugh de Aylesbury;
he had moreover broken open the common chest
and taken away their charters and privileges.
They therefore begged the king to appoint
persons to inquire into these and other matters
which they would then disclose. The confiscation
of the money seems sheer robbery, but it is not
easy to arrive at the truth in these cases. The

brothers resented, and probably resisted the
visitation itself, as contrary to their rights,°

57 Cott. MS. Nero, D i, fol. 193.

88 Probably Gregory IX, and in that case the bull
was issued in 1228.

99 It is dated 4 May, sixth year of his pontificate,
and may have been granted by Innocent II in
1135-6, Innocent III in 1203-4, or Innocent IV in
1249.

100 Assize R. 323, m. 31 (6 Edw. I).

1 Gesta Abbat. (Rolls Ser.), i, 480.

? Cal. of Papal Letters, ii, 1.

3 Anct. Pet. (P.R.O.), no. 7075, file 142.

4 At the end of the reign of Edward I there was a
royal official called Walter de Aylesbury (Ca/. Close,
1302-7, pp. 67, 404, 484), and although there is
nothing actually to connect him with the leper of
that name, the latter and his brother were very well
provided with money and were apparently the most
important inmates of the hospital, for only one other
of the six is mentioned. Besides extortion from
dependent houses was characteristic of Hugh de
Eversden, Abbot of St. Albans 1309-27.

5 They considered it a contravention of Geoffrey’s
charter (see above).

4 465

and in this were quite wrong, The constitutions
made by Abbot Michael in 1344® show that
discipline was lacking there, and the author of
the Gesta Abbatum? says plainly that the lepers
had hitherto had more freedom than was good
for them or the reputation of the hospital.
These regulations, after stating that there were
often fewer lepers § than could be supported on
the hospital property,® provided that in future
there should be six lepers there who were to be
admitted by the abbot or his archdeacon;
preference was to be given to monks of St.
Albans or persons born within the abbey’s
jurisdiction, and married men were not to be
received except under certain conditions!°
Their dress of russet colour was to consist of
a tunic with sleeves which were to extend to
the hand and were not to be stitched up or
buttoned, a super-tunic closed to the ankles
with sleeves covering the elbows, and a cowl;
when they went to church they were to wear
black cloaks with hoods as of old; they were
to have large boots and might wear hose. At
a suitable hour, not very early because of
their ill-health, a bell was to be rung, and they
were to go to the chapel to hear hours and
mass said by the rector, called the chaplain
of the lepers ; afterwards they must go straight
back to the hospital. They were forbidden to
loiter on the high road between the church and
the house, or to pass the bounds of the hospital
except by leave of the master, who must never
allow them to go to the town of St. Albans, to
stay away the night, or to enter a brewery, bake-
house or grange." No women were to enter the
hospital but the washerwoman on her business
or near relations of the brothers visiting them in
sickness, and then only in daylight. When a
leper was received as brother he was to make an
inventory of the goods he brought with him, one-
third of which he might bequeath by will to
servants of the place or meritorious persons ;
the rest at his death went to the community.
By old custom each leper was allowed 7 loaves
a week, 5 white and 2 brown, 14 flagons of ale
or 8d.; on certain feasts? a loaf, a measure
of ale or 1d., and 3d. in money; at Christmas

6 Cott. MS. Claud. E iv, fol. 371-4 d.
7 Vol. ti, 315.
8 Generally not more than three, sometimes only

one.
9In 1254, according to Matthew Paris (Chron.

Maj. [Rolls Ser.], v, 452), the revenues had barely
sufficed for the lepers’ maintenance.

10 The wife must also adopt a religious life, so that
the husband was freed from the marriage tie.

11 A sanitary precaution for the protection of

others. eee
12 All Saints, St. Julian, the Purification of the

Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation, Trinity,
St. Alban, St. John Baptist, Assumption and Nativity
of the Virgin.

52

A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

40 flagons of good ale or 4od.; at Martinmas
a pig from the store or money ; and during the
year a quarter of oats, a bushel of beans, another
of peas and 2 bushels of salt or the current price,
14s. for firing, 4s. for clothing, an occasional
penny for a pittance and a share of the king’s
gift of 305. 5d.13 Instead of the one priest 4
there were to be five, and more if the income of
the place increased ; they must be men of good
character ® and were to be examined by the
archdeacon and admitted by him or the abbot.
Their dress, like that of the priests of Pré, was
to be a tunic, long-sleeved super-tunic closed
to the ankles, tabard and hood, all of black,1¢
and each was to have a mark a year for clothing,
the master 2 marks. They were to have meals
together,!” and were to live and sleep in pairs
until a common dormitory could be made.
Services 18 were to begin at dawn, the priest of
the week !® saying the hours and another brother
the mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; then were
to come the services for the lepers, to be followed
by the mass of the day said by the priest of the
week ; all the inmates were to attend vespers
and compline; arrangements were made for
festivals, and for prayers for the benefactors of
St. Albans and St. Julian’s. The master, who
was to be chosen from the chaplains by the abbot
and if unsatisfactory was removable by him,
was empowered to correct small faults, but
correction otherwise was to be left to the abbot.
Chapters were to be held twice a week; and
pensions and corrodies”° were never to be
granted on any pretext whatever.

13-The rest of the hospital imcorne was to be
applied to the maintenance of the master and chap-
lains.

14 Certain tithes in the parishes of St. Michael
and St. Stephen were allotted to him from the
foundation (Cott. MS. Nero, D i, fol. 193).

15 Natives of the districts ruled by the abbot to be
preferred to others.

16 They were to wear boots or low shoes with
black or brown hose, but were not to be shod in any
colour they pleased.

17 In illness food was to be taken to them and
money given for medicine and special diet.

18 Abbot Michael gave beautiful books to the
hospital both for divine service and secular use (Gesta
Abbat. ii, 315).

19 A table of services and those to celebrate them
was to be made, so that all should take their turn in
order.

20 The king often provided for old servants by
quartering them on religious houses. In 1318
Edward II requested the same provision to be made
for Simon Plane at St. Julian’s as John Giffard
lately had (Cad. Close, 1318-23, p.116). Edward III
in May 1327 asked the abbot to admit a servant of
his who was smitten with leprosy (ibid. 1327-30,
p- 199), but when this man died another who was
probably not a leper was sent to replace him (ibid.

1339-41, Pp. 461).

In 1342 an attack had been made on the
property of the hospital at Park and Tytten-
hanger, and the common seal, deeds and other
muniments stolen,# and usurpations of its
possessions, attributed by Abbot Michael partly
to the carelessness of the brothers, were
apparently not unusual. Edward III made them
the reason for appointing a commission of
inquiry in 1355, on the ground that there had
been in consequence a decrease in the number
of lepers in the house, and therefore of prayers
for his ancestors, who he assumed were
founders. The result is not known, but it is
unlikely that Thomas de la Mare, then Abbot
of St. Albans, acquiesced in this encroachment
on his rights.

This abbot interested himself personally in
St. Julian’s, acting as confessor to the lepers
in spite of the physical unpleasantness of the
task.8 He also made rules for the place.
After a preamble stating that the hospital
was founded and maintained by the Abbot and
convent of St. Albans, and that to the abbot
therefore belonged the control of spiritual and
temporal things there, he insisted on the rule as
to clothes being kept; the lepers must wear
high boots with three or four lacings, and low
shoes were prohibited; those who wished to
become brothers were to be on probation that
their ways and speech might be under observa-
tion; the brothers were to love God and show
mutual charity; in church they were to sit in
the order in which they entered the hospital
and not to presume through pride to take
another’s place, and silence must be observed
during service ; loitering near the high road was
forbidden; none was to pass the bounds of
old established ; only the brother to whom such
charge was committed was to enter the brewery
or bake-house, and he was never to go near the
bread and ale, since it was not fitting that men
with their disease should touch things destined
for the common use of men; the doors towards
the garden were to be kept well closed to
prevent scandals and other evils that might arise
from free entrance, and brothers were not to
go out without special leave ; a brother passing
the bounds should be punished by the with-
drawal of his allowance, and anyone absenting
himself a day and a night without leave of the
abbot or archdeacon should be accounted a
fugitive, and not enter again without the abbot’s

21 Cal. Pat. 1340-3, p. 554.

2 Ibid. 1354~-8, p. 330.

23 Gesta Abbat. iii, 406.

4 Cott. MS. Claud. E iv, fol. 375-6d. In the
form of oath to be taken by the rector or chaplain of
the lepers the abbot’s name instead of being repre-
sented by a letter is given as Thomas (fol. 376 d.).
After Thomas de la Mare there is no Abbot Thomas
until 1492, when the need for rules at St. Julian’s
was over.

466

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

permission; the regulation about women was
again laid down with more emphasis ® ; brothers
who perpetually quarrelled and sowed discord
were to have their allowances withdrawn ; they
might have private property,?* but when they
died or left the hospital it should belong to the
house; no brother might make a will without
the master’s leave; seculars and probationers
were to be excluded from chapters, and private
chapters ‘which might rather be called con-
spiracies ’ were forbidden. The points touched
on were the same as before, but penalties for
disobedience were more clearly defined, and the
inference is that the rules had not been kept
and greater severity was necessary.

The advowson of the chapel of St. Julian was
given in 1353 to the master and brethren of the
hospital, who had permission to appropriate
the church?’ ; but in 1396 the rectory was made
over to the chamber of the Prior of St. Albans 8
on the resignation of William Burcote, the rector,
who was assigned a pension for life.2® This may
mean that the character of the place was
changing, and the disturbances of the 15th
century merely hastened the end of an institu-
tion already in decay. It was still called the
Hospital of Priests and Lepers of St. Julian in
1470, when it was excused payment of the tenth
on the score of poverty,®° but the community
probably survived only in the title.

Abbot William Albon by appointing Ralph
Ferrers master for life in 1475 %! caused con-
siderable trouble to one of his successors.
Ramryge, who became abbot in 1492, wanted to
deprive him for dilapidating the property, and
hoped to attain his object through a doctor of
canon law named Robinson, who was to have
the office if Ferrers could be removed. At
some stage of the proceedings the abbot
managed to get possession of Ferrers’s letters of
collation and sequestrated the revenues of the
hospital. But it was all useless. Although

25 The washerwoman was to be of mature age
and good conduct and was to enter the brothers’
houses only at certain hours. Women of bad
repute were not to be allowed in the hospital.
The brother who broke the rule as to female
visitors, viz., with regard to the time of their de-
parture, &c., was to be punished as if convicted of
incontinency.

26 The portion allotted to them in the hospital was
recognized as insufficient for all their necessities.

27 Cal. Pat. 1350-4, p. 481.

28 Ibid. 1396-9, p. 24.

29 Gesta Abbat. iii, 440-1.

30 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 86-8.

31 Tbid. 120.

32 Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, bdle. 34, no. 26.

33 He asked to see the letters and then would
not return them. See Ferrers’s petition to the chan-
cellor, c. 1493-1500 (Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 201,

no. 30).

Robinson was appointed,*4 he could not turn
his rival out, and at last resigned his claim to
the abbot.35 When Ferrers died Ramryge
granted the nomination to the king, but mean-
while Dr. Robinson gave the hospital for
maintenance to Sir Robert Sheffield, knight, who
put in his brother and five others to occupy it
forhim. The abbot at the king’s request took
measures to get rid of the interlopers and was
thereupon accused of riot by the disappointed
Dr. Robinson. It was probably the result of
this affair that he obtained the king’s licence
on 7 May 1505 to annex the hospital or free
chapel of St. Julian to St. Albans.3¢

The property appears to have been worth
then about {16 a year.3?

Masters oF THE Hospiray oF St. JULIAN BY
Sr. ALBANS

Ilbert, occurs 1145 88

William %°

Nicholas, appointed in 1235 *°

William Peytevin, occurs 1278 41

Reginald de St. Albans, occurs December
1305 #2

John de Lancaster, appointed 2 June 1349 @

John Trylle, occurs 3 December 1449 44

John Walter, appointed 1o January 1463-4 *

John Hankyn *

Ralph Ferrers, LL.D., appointed 20 December
1475,47 occurs 1500 or 1So1 #8

William Robinson, appointed in succession to
Ferrers *

34 Robinson as master of St. Julian’s in 1500 or
1501 was trying to recover the muniments from
Ralph, whom he called the late incumbent, and
Edward Ferrers (ibid. bdle. 245, no. 20).

35 Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, bdle. 34, no. 26.

36 Pat. 20 Hen. VII, pt. iii, m. 18.

37 £15 7s. 11d., but this did not include the
tithes in the parishes of St. Stephen and St. Michael,
which were let with the hospital and cemetery in
1506. Rental of St. Julian’s (Cott. MS. Claud.
D i, fol. 169).

38 Cott. Chart. xi, 6, 8.

39 He was the son of a citizen of Rochelle hanged
in 1224 for his fidelity to Henry III (Matthew
Paris, Chron. Maj. [Rolls Ser.], iii, 84).

40 By the king during a vacancy of the abbey
(ibid. 386). 4] Assize R. 323, m. 24.

” Cal. of Papal Letters, ii, 1.

8 Cal. Pat. 1348-50, p. 330.

44 Herts. Gen. and Antig. iii, 278.

4 Harl. MS. 602, fol. 73 d.

46 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. 137. He is called
master of St. Julian’s when he was admitted to the
fraternity of St. Albans, 6 June 1478, but this must
be a mistake. 47 Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 120.

48 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 245, no. 20. He is
then called ‘the late master,’ but apparently was
never actually removed.

49 Tbid. He professed to be master in 1500 or
1501 (see above).

467

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