Helen J. Nicholson's Blog, page 9

PhD research opportunity!

Dr Paul Dryburgh of the National Archives and I have drawn up a doctoral research project on the Knights Templars’ estates and we are applying to various Doctoral Training Partnerships in Britain for funding. If you are interested in applying to the South, West and Wales doctoral training scheme, please contact me — and see the SWW DTP webpage for more information.

The Knights Templar in Shropshire

As I have now completed the first draft transcription of the accounts for the Templars’ former estates in Shropshire and Staffordshire, I have put up pdf files of the transcriptions here: http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/knightstemplarsestates/2015/11/03/the-accounts-for-the-templars-estates-in-shropshire-and-staffordshire-1308-9-and-1311-13/

Penkridge Hall, Shropshire, on the site of the Templars’ former commandery of Lydley.

A tragedy at Lydley

I have been blogging on my ‘Knights Templars Estates’ page about a sick horse at Lydley commandery in 1311-12, as described in TNA E 358/18 rot. 54. What does an estate manager do when half the motive power of the estate has gone? Answer — he borrows another horse from Stanton Long.

The church at Stanton Long in Shropshire

Let them eat porridge!

I have been blogging on my ‘Knights Templar estates’ blog about the food allowances that were paid to the Templars’ former farm labourers: oat porridge and various mixtures of grain.

How many acres did the Templars farm at Gislingham?

… or rather, how many acres did the king’s custodians farm?

I’d hoped that the custodians’ accounts from 1308–13 would record how much land the Templars held at Gislingham in Suffolk.

Alas, the surviving accounts for the Templars’ lands in Norfolk and Suffolk don’t cover the whole period between the Templars’ arrests and the official handover to the Hospitallers. The only accounts surviving are those submitted by Thomas of St Omer, who was custodian in the first year and part of the second, and Simon of Heyford, which cover the period from 9 October in the fifth year of King Edward II’s reign up to 29 September in the sixth year (1311–12).  In common with many other accounts in the rolls of account for the Templars’ lands from 1308–13, now in the National Archives of the UK at Kew, there are two copies of each of the accounts that survive. This is very useful because where one account has been damaged the reader can check what the other account says. However, it isn’t so useful where the two accounts are different: and unfortunately in the case of Thomas of St Omer’s accounts they are.

Simon of Heyford’s accounts are fine. According to TNA: E 358/18 rot. 38  and TNA: E 358/20 rot. 44 dorse, Simon oversaw the sowing of 28 acres of wheat, 10 acres 1 rood of barley, 19 acres of peas and 18 acres 1 rood of oats, a total of 75 acres 2 roods (there are 4 roods to an acre.)

However, Thomas’s accounts don’t agree. According to TNA: E 358/18 rotulus 3 (8 Jan to end Sept 1308, Thomas oversaw the sowing of 6 acres of barley, 11.5 Acres of draget, 20 acres of peas and 23 acres of oats: total 60.5 acres.

But in the duplicate account in TNA: E 358/20 rot. 24d there were only 9.5 acres of draget, so the overall area sown was only 58.5 acres.

Somehow, xi (eleven) had become ix (nine) — or the other way around.

In the second, part of a year that Thomas was in charge of the estate, he oversaw the sowing of 15 acres of land with wheat, 8 acres of barley, 15 acres of Draget’, 22 acres of peas and 25 acres of oats, a total of 85 acres.

But the duplicate accounts gives 40 acres of wheat, bringing the total up to 110 acres!

In this case, xv became xl — or the other way around! The firm downstroke of the pen at the start of the ‘v’ in rotulus 3 is very like the downstroke of the l in rotulus 24d – but was the upstroke that followed merely a flourish or the upstroke of a v?

In addition to the land under the plough, there was also pasture for sheep — but that is another problem. In 1338 the Hospitallers recorded that there was a ruined building here and 100 acres of pasture — but no mention of arable land.* They valued Gislingham at 5 shillings a year, a far cry from 1308 when Thomas of St Omer made profit of over four pounds in the first nine months alone.

(all photos kindly supplied by Dr Phil Slavin of the University of Kent.)

*The Knights Hospitallers in England, being the report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for A.D. 1338, ed. Lambert B. Larking, intro. John Mitchell Kemble, Camden Society first series 65 (1857), p. 167.

The Templars at Gislingham revisited

When the Templars’ properties in Suffolk were taken under the king’s control on 10th and 11th January 1308, they became the responsibility of Thomas of St Omer, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. Thomas’s administration of the estates in the first year after the Templar’s arrest suggests that they had been busy places, even though no Templars were arrested there in January 1308 and so presumably no Templars had been living there.

At Gislingham in Suffolk, for example, in the second year of the accounts (1309: see TNA E 358/20 rot. 24d), Thomas recorded that money had been spent on pruning the vines — so had the Templars been making wine? There was no wine made under Thomas’s administration, but he was running a minimal establishment. The wages bill covered one servant, a ploughman and a shepherd, and a maid. It isn’t clear what the servant’s job was, but as he was the best paid of the group presumably he had more responsibility than the others. The ploughmen and the shepherd’s work was obvious from their job titles. In a later account (TNA E 358/18 rot. 38, for 1311–12), we learn that the maid made the potage for the farm workers. There was also a harrower employed for part of the year. Unlike the former Templar employees in Herefordshire, the Suffolk workers were all paid in grain, rather than cash: a nourishing (if not appetising) mixture of wheat, barley, peas and grindings from the mill.

As well as growing wheat, barley, oats and peas, in 1308 the farm at Gislingham kept two or three draught animals for ploughing, four oxen, a bull and a cow, a heifer and a calf, seventy sheep (a small flock by early 14th-century monastic standards) and one ewe, who had one lamb. There were also half-a-dozen geese, four ducks, eight hens and a cockerel. There was a beehive, and vegetables were grown in the garden, including garlic and onions. During the course of Thomas’s administration, the ducks vanished and the hens were sold; a later administrator bought some more hens, but there were no more ducks. Did a fox eat the ducks? Were they stolen? Did the workforce eat them? Or did they run away?

The buildings are mentioned only in passing: a windmill, the chapel with two bells, the hall with one, chairs and benches in the chapel and tables and benches in the hall. There were several vats and casks but no mention of what was in them — so perhaps they had been used for winemaking but were now empty. As discussed in an earlier post, there was also a tumbledown building which had been a place for distributing alms to the poor. The King’s administrator didn’t bother with repairing this: he had enough to do repairing the barn roof and the mill.

A particular point of interest is that the estate at Gislingham was paying tithes in geese, hens and chicks, and fleeces. As the Templars were normally exempt from paying tithes this will require further investigation.

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk: the files so far

I have now made preliminary transcriptions of the accounts produced by King Edward II’s officials for the former Templar estates in Suffolk for 1308–9 and 1311–12. Here they are: the main text is in Latin, with some translations in the footnotes. As the accounts are heavily abbreviated I have expanded the abbreviations, using square brackets to show where I have done this — but sometimes it isn’t possible to work out what the word should be, so I have left a question mark.

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_18 rot 3

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_18 rot 38

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_20 rot 11

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_20 rot 24d

The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA E 142_112 tidied

Penarth Hustings 2015

Gawainsdad and I went along to a hustings this afternoon, for South Cardiff and Penarth constituency. Six candidates attended��to answer previously submitted questions: from the Tories, the��Greens, Labour and Co-op, the LibDems, Plaid Cymru and UKIP.

The results were perhaps as expected. The three parties of government were the most polished. The Green candidate was passionate, the Plaid candidate personable and pleasant, the UKIP candidate sometimes well-informed but basically UKIP.

But where was the far left-candidate? Ross Saunders of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was absent. This was particularly disappointing because he is one of the only four candidates who has so far sent us any election literature. (We have so far not heard a peep out of the Tories, Greens or LibDems.) Apparently he was present at one of the earlier hustings, which we missed because we are disorganised. or busy. or whatever. In any case, we missed it.

So: we have seven candidates to choose from in this safe Labour and Co-op seat. Six of them gave us their views at this afternoon’s hustings. Four of them have sent us paperwork about their policies. Rumour has it that they also go door-knocking, but I think that’s just a myth; they never make it down here. At least, they never have yet.

 

Knights Templar in Norfolk and Suffolk: banking at Dunwich

I’ve added some comments on the Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk to my ‘Knights Templar estates’ blog here. My transcription of the accounts for the��first and second years that the Templar’s estates in Norfolk and Suffolk were administered by royal officials are on Wattpad here, with the inventory of these estates that was made in November 1311. The accounts for 1308-9 are also attached to this post: The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_18��and you can see the inventory here: The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA E 142_112.

I’ve described some of the interesting goings-on at��Gislingham in Suffolk in��earlier posts.��The Templars also had an impressive chapel at Dunwich, to judge from the accounts — which mention valuable plate, collections of holy relics, and some valuable items including over ��100 deposited with the Templars for safekeeping��by Robert de Seffeld, parson of Brampton. The king’s official who had taken charge at Dunwich returned the money to its owner. It’s good to read that the parson didn’t lose his money when the government closed his bank, but where did he deposit his valuables when the Templars could no longe3r look after them?

(Dunwich, of course, is now a ‘lost town': read about it here. The Templars’ house here was probably the basis of Burnstow in M. R. James’s ghost story ‘Oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad.’)

Charity, alms and almonries: the Templars at Gislingham continued

Following my post on the Templars’ ruined ‘alms-house’ at Gislingham in Suffolk, Dr Paul Webster has pointed out that the kings of England maintained ‘almonries’ from which alms were dispensed. King John maintained almonries at��locations where he stayed on his travels, while����Sally Dixon-Smith, in her article ‘The Image and reality of alms-giving in the great halls of Henry III’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 152 (1999), 79-96, at p. 86, describes King Henry III’s ‘building��and maintenance across the country of almonries’. She continues:

“There are almonries mentioned at Marlborough (re-built 1241-2), Westminster, Kempton, ��Winchester, Windsor, Nottingham, Havering, Clarendon, Guildford, and Woodstock, whilst instructions were issued for the building of new almonries at Hereford, Nottingham, Ludgershall, Rochester, and Gillingham.”

As the��almonry at the Templars’ former manor of Gislingham was ‘broken and ruinous’ in November,��1311,��how were��almonries normally constructed?��Dixon-Smith explains (p. 86) that Henry ordered Robert de Mucegros, the keeper of Ludgershall to ‘make an almonry of 6 pairs of rafters … the walls being made of cob and plaster.” She adds: “Henry’s castle almonries were sizeable wooden structures. In 1233 the almonry at Hereford was built with timber from the king’s wood, whilst the new almonry at Nottingham measured 40 ft x 25 ft, and that at Havering 50 ft x 22ft.” The inventory��gives no indication of the size of��the almonry at Gislingham, but if it were constructed of timber, cob and plaster, this would help to explain why it was broken and ruinous in November 1311, after almost four years out of use.

King Henry III’s almonries were busy places:

“The almonries were probably used for the local storage of the vast amounts of herring, no doubt cured in some way, which were purchased for the king’s alms. It seems likely that the daily distribution to the poor was made from the almonry, some of which had their own oven attached” (Dixon-Smith, p. 87). Henry’s custom was to feed 500 poor per day (p. 86) on a budget of 1 d. (one penny)��per person (p. 87) — ��a cost of 2 pounds, 1 shilling and 8 pence per day, which would��add up to����760, 12 shillings and 4 pence in a year.

How did the Templars’ charitable donations compare to this? King Edward II’s enquiries into the Templars’ assets and liabilities produced some information about the Templars’ almsgiving. For example, the jurors who in 1309 reported on the value of the Templars��� former manor of Foukebridge (now Foulbridge) in north Yorkshire stated that alms were given on three days each week to all comers:

“dicunt etiam quod solebant facere in eodem manerio elemoseria cuilibet pauperi venienti per tres dies in qualibet septimania, an de iure an de gratia sua; tam de caritaria quam de elemosinia predicti iurati ignorant” (they say that they (the Templars) were accustomed to give alms at the same manor to each poor person coming throughout three days in any week; the aforesaid jurors do not know whether this was��done from their rule��or by grace, from charity��and from alms). (From TNA: E��142/16, mem. 15.)

Similar alms were given at the Templars’ commandery at Temple Cressing in Essex:

“Item predicti fratres solebant distribuere per constitucionem tocius Capituli qualibet septimana per iij dies singulis annis omnibus pauperibus ibidem venientis panem et bladem pro voluntate eorumdem et estimata quod eadem elemosina potest fieri per annum de lij s” (the same aforesaid brothers were accustomed through the constitution of the whole Chapter,��in any��week throughout 3 days each year to distribute��to all the poor coming there bread and grain according to their will and it is estimated that the same alms could amount to 52 shillings per year). (From: The Cartulary of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England, Secunda Camera, Essex, ed. Michael Gervers (London, 1982), p. 56, doc. 85, from British Library ms Cotton Nero E VI, fol. 304r; see also Alan Forey, ���The Charitable Activities of the Templars���, Viator, 34 (2003), 109-41, at 118 and my article ���Relations between houses of the Order of the Temple in Britain and their local communities, as indicated during the trial of the Templars, 1307���12���, in Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar presented to Malcolm Barber, ed. Norman Housley (Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-5527-5), pp. 195���207.)

If one commandery distributed 52 shillings (2 pounds 2 shillings ) a year, how much did the Templars in England and Wales��give away in charity overall each year? At present, we can only speculate. As I continue to work through the records of the Templars��� estates from 1308���13, I will post further information as I find it.

Many thanks to Paul Webster for his assistance with the first part of this post.