Reconstructing late-medieval and Tudor Stebbing from its manorial records

Posted on May 9, 2014 by admin

In this guest blog post, Prof. L.R. Poos shares a preview of the research he will be sharing with us at Essex through the ages: tracing the past using manorial records on Saturday 12 July (more information here). Prof. Poos is an expert in late-medieval and early-modern English social and legal history, and is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

In 1922 the British Library acquired most of the muniments of the Capells, Earls of Essex, from their estate at Cassiobury Park. The Cassiobury Papers include collections of documents from many manors in Essex. Among these are extensive document collections from Porters Hall and Stebbing Hall, the two principal manors in the parish of Stebbing, acquired by the Capells in 1481 and 1546 respectively.

Neither of the published guides to the Cassiobury Papers – the Historical Manuscripts Commission’s Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. vii, and the British Museum’s Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, 1921-1925 – contains much more than summary descriptions of the collection. It has taken several trips to the U.K. and significant time in the B.L. Manuscripts Room to begin to appreciate the possibilities of the records for a reconstruction of late-medieval and Tudor Stebbing. How appropriate that I should have the opportunity to talk about them as part of an event honouring the Manorial Documents Register and its dedication to making manorial collections more accessible to historians!

I had worked briefly with Stebbing’s manorial records years ago as part of the research for a book, A rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525. My re-acquaintance with those records is a story in its own right: two years ago I received an email out of the blue from Graham Jolliffe, Chairman of the Stebbing Local History Society, who had seen my references in A rural society to Stebbing documents and enquired politely whether I had any translations of the texts of them that I could share. The answer was no, then. But as we continued to chat I realised this was a chance for a worthwhile project.

Tithe map of Stebbing, c.1840 (D/CT 332B)

The Stebbing records are not rich in manorial court rolls and even less so in manorial accounts. However, they are exceptionally rich in surveys, rentals, and other records setting out the landholding patterns of Porters Hall and Stebbing Hall from the late thirteenth into the seventeenth century. In addition, the collection includes some remarkable records that are not typical of manorial documentation and in some cases pertain to the parish as opposed to the manor.

Combining and cross-referencing the Stebbing manorial and parish records have set in motion several lines of investigation. These include: Stebbing’s involvement in the 1381 revolt – which appears to have been previously unknown – and the backgrounds of some of its participants; a remarkable farmer’s account for the year (1482-1483) after William Capell acquired Porters Hall, and the detailed view it affords of local trading networks; the very rare survival of an assessment roll for parishioners’ contributions to wax money for the parish church and the glimpse this affords into the parish community and economy. The main Stebbing project currently underway is editing and translating for publication the series of land surveys and rentals, and – in collaboration with Graham Jolliffe and with an American colleague who is an expert in GIS (Geographical Information Systems) – to create a computer map of Stebbing and its tenancies. ‘Essex through the ages’ will be the first opportunity to present these projects to an audience.

Join us to hear more from Prof. Poos about this fascinating project at Essex through the ages: tracing the past using manorial documents on Saturday 12 July 2014. There are more details, including how to book, here.

Recording of the Month May 2014: Docking of the Jervis Bay

Posted on May 7, 2014 by admin

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

SA 19/1057/1

In the early 1980s the Essex-based broadcaster and journalist Dennis Rookard produced a series of radio ballads to be broadcast on hospital radio. This month’s recording is an extract from one of those programmes – called Wind Over Tilbury – which was based around Tilbury Docks and told the story of the enormous changes to working practices brought about by the introduction of containerisation in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on Basildon Hospital Radio.

‘Radio ballad’ is a term used to describe a particular type of radio programme which uses a mixture of songs and the spoken word to create an entertaining, possibly sentimental, form of documentary. The term was coined for a series of programmes made between 1957 and 1964 for the BBC Home Service by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. They were entirely new in that they used the voices of the ordinary people involved, carefully edited and interwoven with the music, to tell the story without the need for a narrator.

Dennis Rookard was greatly influenced by this series and he used a similar template to make his radio ballads which, like the originals, were generally focussed on the working lives of ordinary people and used folk music to tell the story. In Wind Over Tilbury and other programmes the South-Essex musician and songwriter Jack Forbes has composed songs specifically related to the subject in hand.

The extract I have chosen is the part of the programme in which we hear a large container ship called Jervis Bay being lined up to enter a lock. Amongst other things, it provides evidence for the assertion that radio is better than television because it allows you to create your own pictures. I hope you enjoy it.

Stories from the stores: William Raymond Scott and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii)

Posted on May 5, 2014 by admin

Archivist Allyson Lewis blogs for us about a recent interesting discovery…

While preparing for our Discover Parish Registers workshop at Harlow Archive Access Point on Wednesday 14 May 2014 (see our events page for details), I came across a note that the registers of St Mary Magdalene, Harlow had been closed as they had been taken to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) by mistake and were not returned for two years, by which time new registers had been started. Intrigued, I investigated further and found that the perpetual curate, Revd William Raymond Scott, had undertaken to accompany the newly-appointed Bishop of Honolulu to the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was then called, in 1862. In addition, he and his wife were to chaperone 70 girls emigrating to Australia.

Extract from D/P 533/1/1

They sailed on the steamer the Tynemouth and the voyage was a disaster from start to finish. The crew mutinied in mid-Atlantic and the ship had to put into the Falkland Islands. Order was restored and the ship continued to Victoria. On arrival Scott would not let the girls leave the ship due to the ‘moral dangers’ ashore.

He continued on to the Sandwich Islands and was present when the King and Queen of Hawaii were confirmed and received their first communion. The service was translated into the Hawaiian language and sung.

He established a church on Maui and a school but left the islands in disgrace and returned to England where he ministered to the poor in the East End of London including Wapping Workhouse during a cholera epidemic. He died in 1894 in Marlborough, Wiltshire.

To find out more about parish registers and how they could help your research, coming along to one of our Discover: Parish Registers workshops. There are two coming up soon, at Harlow on Wednesday 14 May, and at Walton-on-the-Naze on Wednesday 21 May. Find out more here.

Lumières, Caméra, Action!

Posted on May 3, 2014 by admin

We had a little bit of glitz and glamour at the record office today as the international television cameras started to roll in the Searchroom. The occasion was the filming of part of an episode of ‘Qui étes vous?’ which is the French-Canadian version of our own ‘Who do you think you are?’

Members of the crew prepairing to shoot in the searchroom.

Members of the crew preparing to shoot in the Searchroom

The crew and local expert Patrick Denney spent an enjoyable morning filming for the episode which features the award winning actor Antoine Bertrand. A number of our original documents were consulted but we won’t let on which in case some of our Canadian readers get upset.

The crew from Quis Etes Vous? Along with Antoine Betrand (5th from right) and Patrick Denney (6th from right)

The crew from Quis Etes Vous? Along with Antoine Betrand (5th from left) and Patrick Denney (6th from left)

Do you have any North American connections among your ancestors or does your family history wend its way back to British shores? Either way it can be a frustrating but rewarding obstacle to overcome in the course of your research and hopefully the Essex Record Office and our colleagues in the UK and elsewhere will be able to help you.

The lives and times of the High Sheriffs of Essex

Posted on May 2, 2014 by admin

Today at ERO, we welcomed a number of High Sheriffs of Essex, past and present, to a reception hosted by Cllr Kay Twitchen, Chairman of Essex County Council, to mark the deposit of a unique set of records.

One of the High Sheriff’s journals which has been deposited at ERO

Would you like to know where to find a trumpeter, or how much it costs to put on a good garden party, or how to deal with a really cold judge? These and other more serious questions will soon have better answers thanks to the High Sheriffs of Essex.

When asked to think of a sheriff, our mental picture library might supply a greedy, grasping figure (possibly played by Alan Rickman), predictably defeated by the rather less interesting forces of goodness and virtue. Beyond that, usually, nothing. Considering that with the exception of the Crown itself the shrievalty is the oldest public office in England, this is a pity, but it is about to become less true.

High Sheriffs past and present gathered at ERO, hosted by Cllr Kay Twitchen (in red jacket)

High Sheriffs past and present gathered at ERO, hosted by Cllr Kay Twitchen (second from right)

Former High Sheriffs looking at documents relating to the history of the role which are held at ERO

The High Sheriff of Essex for 2014, Mr Nicholas Charrington (centre)

Looking in one of our storerooms to see the conditions in which the journals will be kept

The post of High Sheriff dates back to before the Norman Conquest. The origins of the post are in Saxon times – the title of ‘reeve’ was used for senior officers with local responsibility to the king within the shire, and over time ‘shire reeve’ became ‘sheriff’.

In Anglo-Saxon England the sheriff was responsible for the maintenance of law and order through the system of tithings, groups of approximately 10 men who were bound together in mutual assurance. All able-bodied men aged 12-60 had to belong to a tithing, and each man in the group was responsible for the good behaviour of each of the others. They were bound to observe and uphold the law; if a member of tithing broke the law then the others were obliged to report the culprit and deliver him to the constable, failure to do this would result in everybody in the tithing being fined. The sheriff was responsible for inspecting the tithings (although after the Norman Conquest many lords of the manor acquired the right to do this for themselves).

Under the Norman regime the sheriff was the means of enforcing (literally) the King’s writ in the localities, with the authority to summon the posse comitatus (county force or power) to help maintain law and order. The sheriff discovered criminals and delivered them to the royal courts for judgement and executed writs issued by the Crown. In addition the sheriff supervised Crown lands in the county and handed over the revenue to the Exchequer and he could also compulsorily requisition food and supplies for the King (e.g. to fight war). With no oversight from central government, these powers could give the sheriff opportunities for extortion and corruption (hence the Sheriff of Nottingham).

The sheriff also presided over the shire court (the shire courts along with the hundred courts are thought to be one of the means by which Domesday Book was compiled in 1086). From the mid-13th century knights of the shire were elected in the shire court to sit in Parliament and coroners were also elected there. The last duties of the shire court only passed to county courts in 1886 with the County Courts Act.

The medieval sheriffs were also over-burdened with routine business (they have been described as ‘workhorses’ of medieval local government) which meant that law enforcement could be patchy and on occasions arbitrary. As early as 1327 ‘good and lawful men’ were appointed in every county to ‘guard the peace’, called conservators or wardens of the peace and in 1361 justices of the peace were created. In the 1540s lord lieutenants were appointed to take over the military duties of the sheriff.

By 1881 when the High Sheriffs of Essex started to keep the record books which are being deposited with ERO, they had long given up persecuting peasants. Their real powers and duties were, in fact, quite limited. This makes their later history a fascinating parallel to that of the monarchy itself: an exercise in finding new roles, while still keeping up appearances. This was not always easy.

Essex County Council, 1892. Andrew Johnston, the Council’s first Chairman and the High Sheriff who began the journals, is in the top centre of the photograph, sitting aside the cannon which used to be outside Chelmsford’s Shire Hall

At first they were concerned especially with the expenses of an un-salaried office set about by all sorts of costly ceremonies (hence the trumpeters, part of the formal escort provided by the sheriffs for the assize judges when they visited Chelmsford). From about 1890, however, sheriffs started to write more general reflections on their year of office. In 1916 one sheriff’s car broke down on the way to the assizes, leaving him and his chaplain to complete their journey to Chelmsford ‘in an open hawker’s cart’. In 1959, when the hot water system at the judges’ lodgings failed during the Winter Assizes, the High Sheriff ‘nearly had [his] neck wrung’, the judges threatened to leave for London forthwith, and the sheriff ended up having to stoke the boiler himself.

Even so, during the 20th century the sheriffs were able to simplify many of their office’s remaining ceremonial duties and to develop a new social role. Today’s High Sheriffs continue to attend on visiting High Court judges, and, together with the Lords Lieutenant, to act more generally as the Crown’s local representatives, especially, in their case, in areas of crime and punishment. They also work to promote the voluntary sector. A mainly symbolic role, maybe, but who says that symbols are not important?

St George and the dragon

Posted on April 23, 2014 by admin

To mark St George’s Day, Archivist Katharine Schofield takes a look at a very rare pen and ink decoration of George slaying the dragon on a manorial court roll from Great Waltham, dating from 1541.

Extract from D/DHh M151, a manorial court roll of 1541 from Great Waltham, showing St George slaying the dragon

George and the dragon sit in the initial letter of the document. The words ‘Waltham Magna’ appear just beneath the decoration

Among the hundreds of manorial court rolls deposited in the Essex Record Office, a very small number have pen and ink decorations. These include a court roll for the manor of Great Waltham alias Waltham Bury (D/DHh M151) where the court for Easter 1541 has a drawing showing St. George slaying the dragon in the letter V (for visus or view, the view of frankpledge carried out twice a year in the court leet). The original is approximately 3.5 cm high and 7.5 cm across. The rolls were the working records of the court and not intended to be decorated so a ‘doodle’ as elaborate as this is a rarity.

Court rolls form the majority of the manorial records held in the Essex Record Office, which are held by Act of Parliament of 1924 under the authorisation of the Master of the Rolls. The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) was established two years later to record the location of the documents to ensure that they could be traced if they were required for legal evidence. The National Archives is in the process of computerising the Manorial Documents Register county by county and the work completed so far can be seen on the National Archives’ website here.

After more than two years of work the Essex contribution to the MDR is complete; you can find out more about the project and how you can use these fascinating documents at Essex through the ages on Saturday 12 July 2014.

Manorial titles are not part of the MDR and records such as the letters patent of 1467, although relating to the rights of the lord of the manor, do not form part of the register. However, a search of Seax will locate this and many other ‘ancillary’ manorial documents, including deeds of sale of manors and also of copyhold premises.

By the later 15^th century St. George’s Day was a well-established feast day in England. In June 1467 Edward IV granted Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex (his uncle by marriage), lord of the manor of Stansted in Halstead, the right to hold two three day fairs in the town, one of which was to take place on St. George’s Day and the two days either side (D/DVz 3). The other fair was to be held on the feast day of St. Edward the Confessor and the two adjoining days, 12-14 October. After the Reformation St. George’s Day was one of the saints’ days that continued to be celebrated in the Church of England and today churches throughout England will fly the flag of St. George on the feast day.

St. George was a soldier in the Roman army who became a Christian martyr. He came from a Greek Christian family and became one of the foremost military saints, venerated in the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox churches. The flag of St. George is also used as the basis of the national flag of Georgia.

The adoption of St. George as the patron saint of England was a phenomenon of the Middle Ages. In 1222 the Synod of Oxford declared St. George’s Day (23 April) a feast day. At that date the most venerated saints in England were St. Edmund King and Martyr, whose shrine was at Bury St. Edmunds and St. [King] Edward the Confessor. This changed after 1348 when Edward III founded the Order of the Garter and associated St. George with the country’s highest order of chivalry. The chronicler Froissart recorded that English soldiers used St. George as a battle-cry at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and throughout the Hundred Years War of the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Famously Shakespeare copied this in Henry V with Cry God for Harry, England and St. George!

On this day: opening of the M25

Posted on April 22, 2014 by admin

The M25, hate it or love it, celebrates an Essex birthday today. After being first proposed in the 1960s, the section which runs from Potters Bar to the Dartford tunnel (The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge not opening until the early 1990s) was finally opened on 22 April 1983 by David Howell, the then Transport minister, and a bevy of special guests, VIPs and celebrities. As part of the opening many of the invited guests were able to take their first ride on the new three lane motorway courtesy of The Eastern National Omnibus Company.

Thanks to that Company we have a small collection of photographs celebrating the event, prominently featuring many of their green liveried buses. The M25 was opened in sections between 1973 and 1986, and work on alterations and improvements has continued ever since.

D/F 271/12/50

Recording of the Month April 2014: ‘I didn’t want medals’ – One man’s experience of the First World War

Posted on April 1, 2014 by admin

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

SA 24/1011/1

This month we have extracts from a talk given in 1992 by Alf Webb who had served as a machine gunner in the First World War. The recording from which these extracts are taken is an incredible resource. Alf Webb was talking to a group of school children and his recollections of both the mundane detail and the harsh reality of the war are delivered in a matter-of-fact and unflinching way (perhaps surprising given the audience) as he talks about mud and lice, tactics and trenches, the death of friends and colleagues, and his own unheroic attitude towards the war as he did his best to ‘try and survive and get out of this.’

If you are interested in finding further resources held in the Essex Sound and Video Archive which relate to the First World War, a sources list is available.

We will be hearing a great deal about the First World War over the centenary period, but few things will bring us closer to understanding the reality of events than to hear the experiences, thoughts and authentic voices of people who actually lived through them.

Document of the Month April 2014: Papers relating to repatriation and reburial of remains of Captain Fryatt, 1919 (D/P 174/1/83)

Posted on March 29, 2014 by admin

Each month in the Searchroom a new Document of the Month goes on display. The DoTM for April 2014 is a set of four papers relating to the repatriation and reburial of Captain Fryatt in 1919 (D/P 174/1/83).

Charles Algernon Fryatt was born in Southampton in 1871, but while still a child moved to Harwich. On leaving school he followed his father’s example and became a merchant seaman and in 1892 joined the Great Eastern Railway Company as a seaman on the SS Ipswich. He rose through the ranks and at the outbreak of the First World War was a master mariner engaged in the G. E. R. continental service between Harwich and Rotterdam. He continued to make regular voyages on this route despite the German blockade.

On 28 March 1915, while in command of the SS Brussels he was ordered to stop by a German U-Boat when near the Maas lightvessel. Seeing that the U-Boat had surfaced to torpedo his ship, he attempted to ram it and forced it to crash-dive.

Thereafter he seems to have become a ‘marked man’ and on the 25 June 1916 the Brussels and her crew were waylaid and captured by five German destroyers soon after leaving Holland for the return journey to Harwich. Captain Fryatt was charged with attempting to destroy a German submarine and was tried by Court Martial at Bruges Town Hall in Belgium on 27 July 1916. He was found guilty and executed on the same day. The execution provoked international outrage and was widely regarded as murder.

In July 1919 Captain Fryatt’s body was exhumed from its resting place in a small cemetery outside Bruges and returned to the United Kingdom for reburial. After a funeral service in St. Paul’s Cathedral on 8 July 1919, his coffin was taken by train to Dovercourt and interred in All Saints’ churchyard. He was posthumously awarded the Belgian Order of Leopold and the Belgian Maritime War Cross.

He was survived by his widow Ethel and seven children.

The papers will be on display in the Searchroom throughout April 2014.

Papers relating to the repatriation of the remains of Capt. Charles Fryatt from Bruges to Dovercourt (D/P 174/1/83)

First World War centenary – more useful resources

Posted on March 28, 2014 by admin

Earlier in the year we published a list of useful resources for those researching aspects of the First World War, which you can find here. There are new resources appearing all the time, so we thought we would share some more with you.

The British Library

The British Library have recently launched their fantastic First World War web pages, using which you can explore over 500 historical sources from across Europe, together with new insights from First World War experts. The web pages include nearly 500 historical sources from both sides of the conflict, contributed by institutions from across Europe, specially commissioned articles from historians, and resources for teachers. The pages cover a huge range of different themes, from the origins of the war, to the lives of soldiers, to propaganda, to historical debates.

You can find the World War One resource here:

http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one

The National Archives

The National Archives hold the official UK government records of the First World War, including a vast collection of letters, diaries, maps and photographs. You can explore these collections and advice on how to use them on TNA’s First World War web pages. You will also find details of their extensive programme of events marking the centenary.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/

Middlesex military service appeal tribunal records, 1916-1918

The National Archives have recently digitised the records of the Middlesex military tribunal appeals from 1916-1918. When conscription was introduced in 1916, men could apply to a local military tribunal for exemption, and could appeal against a local decision to the county appeal tribunal. They often include supporting letters written by family arguing why their son, brother or husband should not be called up.

The tribunal heard over 11,000 cases, most of which were rejected outright. Only 26 men succeeded in being completely exempted from being called up. Only 577 of the cases the Middlesex tribunal heard were conscientious objection cases (just over 5%), and most of them were rejected.

The Middlesex records are rare survivors; at the end of the war, the government ordered the destruction of the tribunal records due to the sensitive material they contained. Only the Middlesex records and a set in Scotland were kept as representative samples.

The records have been difficult to access, but are now searchable by name, place, or reason for appeal. You can access the records here, and you can find out more about the background here.

Some incomplete sets of records relating to local tribunals are held at local record offices. At ERO we hold the Chelmsford Local Military Tribunal records, because it was largely staffed by Chelmsford Borough Council councillors and was clerked by the clerk to the council. The records are catalogued as D/B 7 M3/2/1; you can find their catalogue entry on Seax here.

Operation War Diary

The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum are running an online project called Operation War Diary. The 1.5 million pages of the unit war diaries kept on the Western Front have been digitised, and TNA and the IWM are asking for volunteers to help reveal the stories contained within them. You can find the Operation War Diary web pages here, and find out more about the project here.

Closer to home…

Chelmsford Civic Society has been awarded a £10,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant for their project Chelmsford Remembers, which will investigate the impact of the war on our county town.

A new website has recently been launched focusing on men from Southend and district who lost their lives during the war, with details of the names inscribed on memorials, graves, and rolls of honour. You can find the site here: http://www.southend19141918.co.uk/

Havering Museum are asking for Havering residents to contribute memories and photographs of relatives who fought in the war to a memory wall, which will be included in an exhibition launching in August. Find out more here.

You can also keep up with what is going on in Essex on the Last Poppy project blog. Recent posts include:

If you have a resource that would be of use to First World War resources do let us know by writing to hannahjane.salisbury@essex.gov.uk