Living in Medieval England: The Turbulent Year of 1326

Introduction

1326 was the year when the queen of England invaded her husband’s kingdom with an army, grotesquely executed his powerful chamberlain who was perhaps also his lover, and brought about the forced abdication of a king for the first time in English history. It was also the year of the great drought, one of the hottest and driest summers of the English Middle Ages, and the year when the majority of English people carried on living their normal, ordinary lives: Eleyne Glaswreghte ran a successful glass-making business in London, Jack Cressing the master carpenter repaired the beams in a tower of Kenilworth Castle, Alis Coleman sold her best ale at a penny and a half per gallon in Byfleet, Wille Muleward made the king laugh when he spent time with him at a wedding in Marlborough, and the unfortunate John Toly died when he relieved himself out of the window of his London home during the night and lost his balance. Living in Medieval England: The Turbulent Year of 1326 tells the story of a country and its people throughout a single year, from January to December as per the modern calendar (in the fourteenth century, the new year began on 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation).

My main source has been the account book of Edward II’s chamber (one of the divisions of his enormous household), now kept in a library in London. I have long thought that this wonderful document, written daily in medieval French by the king’s clerks, opens a window into England in 1326, and am delighted to have been able to make use of it as such. With a few exceptions I have not made generalisations about the era but have focused specifically on this one year, almost exclusively using sources which date from 1326. Although I have of necessity written much about King Edward and the invasion of his kingdom which his queen Isabella of France led, I wanted chiefly to shine a spotlight on the common people of England: the carpenters, the fishermen and fisherwomen, the shipwrights, the brewsters, the royal chamber valets, the archers, the carters, the wheelwrights, the sailors.

January

In the middle of the night between Tuesday, 31 December 1325 and Wednesday, 1 January 1326, an 80-year-old woman called Alis Pursere passed away a day and a half after falling down the stairs in her home in the London parish of St Mary Colechurch. Alis received the last rites before she died, and was survived by her husband Richard. In cases of death by misadventure, the value of the inanimate object which caused the accident had to be paid as a fine to the king and was called deodand, ‘gift to God’. The staircase down which Alis slipped was valued at 4d by the jurors who investigated her death.¹ A few hours after Alis’s death and 75 miles away, two men called Richard Grene and Wauter Somery, who was known by the nickname ‘Watte’, approached the village of Haughley, 2 miles from Stowmarket in Suffolk. They were leading an expensive dapple-grey palfrey horse and carrying its saddle on a cart. The men had set off from the royal manor-house of Sheen on the River Thames west of London a few days before, and had now, after almost 90 miles, reached the end of their journey. John of Dunchurch (Warwickshire) and Thomas Wheler, known as ‘Thomme’ or Tom in modern spelling, both carters, also approached Haughley on 1 January 1326. For the last three days, each man had driven a cart pulled by five horses and full of military equipment: a hundred aketons (padded jerkins often worn under armour), a hundred basinets (a kind of helmet), and a hundred pairs of gauntlets, all of which they were taking to the king.

Anneis May – ‘Anneis’ or ‘Anneys’ was the fourteenth-century spelling of the name Agnes – was already in the village of Haughley with her husband Roger. The couple came from the area of Lindsey in Lincolnshire, and their friends called them Annote and Hogge. Anneis was a talented seamstress who in January 1325 had stitched shirts for the two most powerful men in the country, the king and his chamberlain.² Her husband Roger ‘Hogge’ May had worked in the royal household as a valet of King Edward II’s chamber since 1324 or earlier, and on 5 December 1325 Edward broke with convention and hired Anneis as one of his chamber valets too. It was unheard of for any royal or noble household in the fourteenth century to hire a woman in such a position. Great households, even those headed by women, consisted entirely of men, except the lady’s personal attendants and the nurses of any small children. Rather remarkably, Edward seemingly was an early believer in the concept of equal pay for women, and Anneis May received the same wages as her husband and all the other thirty or more male valets of the royal chamber: 3d a day. In the fourteenth century, women were usually only paid half of what men received.³ On 1 January 1326, Anneis May received the wages of 7s (84d) she was owed for the first twenty-eight days of her employment, and with her husband, worked in the king’s couche chambre or bedchamber. ‘Valet’ is a difficult word to translate and in the fourteenth century had many different meanings, but in this context basically meant a servant of low to middling rank.

King Edward was halfway through the nineteenth year of his reign, and was 41 years old. He spent the Feast of the Circumcision, 1 January 1326, in Haughley, and gave permission for two of his ‘bondmen’ – villeins or unfree tenants – of the village, Thomas Wright and William son of Laurence of Hoo, to take holy orders.⁴ The king appointed Sir Simon Warde as constable of the massive and important castle in Pontefract in distant Yorkshire on 3 January, ‘for the bridling of any malefactors in those parts’, and rather insultingly declared that the inhabitants of the county of Lancashire were ‘flighty and violent’ and in need of good leadership. He therefore ordered Simon Warde to choose the best man he could find to act as the county’s undersheriff.⁵

The Suffolk village of Haughley belonged by right to the queen, Isabella of France (c. 1295–1358), but the king had confiscated all his wife’s lands in September 1324 after he went to war against her brother King Charles IV of France (r. 1322–28), and Haughley was presently in Edward’s own hands. The palfrey horse brought to Edward in Haughley by Richard Grene and Watte Somery was a gift from his eldest and favourite niece Eleanor, Lady Despenser; it was the custom for the king to give and receive gifts on the Feast of the Circumcision. Eleanor sent letters to her uncle too, though her messenger who carried them to him, John Mot, arrived in Suffolk two days before Richard, Watte and the dapple-grey palfrey. Lady Despenser, born in October 1292 and now 33 years old, just eight years younger than her uncle, had married Hugh Despenser in May 1306 when she was 13 and he about 17. Twenty years later, Hugh was the king’s chamberlain with responsibility for controlling access to Edward, and the man who had really been in charge of the English government for the previous few years.

Hugh Despenser was the son of the earl of Winchester (Hugh Despenser the Elder, born in 1261 and still alive in 1326), grandson of the late earl of Warwick and step-grandson of the late earl of Norfolk, a nobleman of high birth, and a pirate and an extortionist. He was present with Edward II in Suffolk at Christmas 1325 and the beginning of 1326. It is beyond doubt that the king loved Despenser and was highly dependent on him, and quite possible that the two men were lovers. The queen of England, Isabella of France, loathed and feared Hugh Despenser, and had sworn to destroy him. Edward refused to send Despenser away from court as Isabella demanded, and so the queen refused to return to England from her brother Charles IV’s court in Paris, or to permit her and Edward’s 13-year-old son Edward of Windsor, heir to the English throne and in her custody in her homeland, to return either. Such was the state of affairs in England at the start of 1326.

Edward II had until very recently been at war with France, and still expected his brother-in-law Charles IV to invade his kingdom at any moment. Besides the king of France, the enemy Edward feared most was Roger Mortimer of Wigmore in Herefordshire, an English baron in his late 30s who had escaped from the Tower of London in the summer of 1323 and was currently at the French court making threatening overtures in Edward’s direction. On 3 January 1326, the king ordered Roger’s mother Margaret Mortimer, née Fiennes to be sent to Elstow Abbey in Bedfordshire as a punishment because she had supposedly been holding ‘meetings of suspected persons’ in Worcester and Radnor. Edward must have changed his mind or released Margaret very soon, however, as two months later he told her to make repairs to Radnor Castle (in Powys, Wales).⁶ Edward realised that Roger Mortimer and his allies on the Continent had plenty of allies in England and Wales as well, and his concern is apparent in his order on 3 January to many dozens of men in ports all along the coast of England to ‘search in all places where ships put in … and to arrest all men carrying letters prejudicial to the crown, and send such letters with all speed to the king’.⁷

With the king at Haughley in early January 1326 was his master carpenter Jack Cressing, who often travelled with Edward and who received 6d a day in wages. Jack came from Essex, and his father John Cressing was also a master carpenter and worked for the king until November 1324 or later. Jack had eight journeymen working under him: brothers Thomme and Watte Cadewelle, Adam of London, Jack of Lincoln, Robert Albon, John Hardyng, Robert of Bedford and Thomme of Edwinstowe (a village in Sherwood Forest). Two sawyers called Thomme Crabbe and Willecok Bovyndon from Langley in Hertfordshire, and the woodcutter Wille Stonaysshe, completed the team. The king had left Jack Cressing behind when he departed from Dover Castle in Kent in September 1325 and charged him with ‘putting right the defects’ in the castle, a task Jack and his men had completed by 24 November when they were set to work enlarging the hall at Edward’s manor of Cippenham in Berkshire. Earlier in 1325, they had constructed a new chapel at Henley just outside Guildford in Surrey – the king sent 115 gallons (522 litres) of ale to them and six ditchers also working there – and before Christmas 1325 Adam of London and Watte Cadewelle worked for twenty-one days repairing a ship called La Blome on the River Thames while their colleagues did some work on the king’s bedchamber at the Tower of London.⁸

The eight journeymen carpenters working under Jack Cressing were paid 4d a day. In November 1325, Edward II bought cloth from the London draper Simon Swanland and had elbow-length cloaks made for all nine men which were striped vermilion and black and were decorated with yellow, white, black and vermilion threads. The cloths cost a pricy 46s 8d each, the equivalent of about four and a half months’ wages for each journeyman – vermilion and black were both very costly dyes – so this was a hugely generous gift. By late April 1326, Thomme of Edwinstowe had found alternative employment (or perhaps had retired or died), and Jack of Lincoln’s brother Henry of Lincoln joined the team in his place. Henry had already worked for the king in October and November 1324, travelling the 170 miles from a job in Ravensdale, Derbyshire to Portchester, Hampshire to join Edward, and sometime before February 1325 complained that he had been assaulted and robbed by twenty men in Derby.⁹ Two other men made the same complaint, so apparently the twenty were a gang who preyed on whatever victims they could find. Jack Cressing the master carpenter was assaulted in July 1320 in the Essex village of Ingatestone a few miles from his home; England in the fourteenth century was often a violent and dangerous place.¹⁰

It was extremely common in the 1320s for men to go into the profession their father had practised, as Jack Cressing did, and for brothers to work together, as Thomme and Watte Cadewelle and Jack and Henry of Lincoln did. Three brothers from Warwickshire, John, Henry and Thomas ‘Thomelyn’ Palington, were all hobelars, men-at-arms on horseback. With at least three and sometimes five other hobelars, the Palington brothers formed the personal bodyguard of the king’s powerful chamberlain Hugh Despenser. On Friday, 29 June 1325, the three Palingtons and their colleague Robert the Irishman were attacked inside a house belonging to one Robert Gumby on Fleet Street in London. They were assaulted and robbed by twenty-three men, ten of whom were fishmongers.¹¹ This may have been an indirect attack on the hated Despenser, or it may have been a random attack, or something personal against the four men. John, Henry and Thomelyn Palington, Robert the Irishman, Henry the Lombard from Italy, and Roger atte Watre from London left court with Hugh Despenser on 2 January 1326 and rode the 20 miles from Haughley to the village of Winfarthing in Norfolk, a manor held by Despenser. Edward II gave the six hobelars a gift of 20s to be shared out among themselves when they left court, and later in the year thanked them for their excellent service in protecting Hugh Despenser. This was probably not an easy job; Despenser was widely loathed, and in November 1325 rumours that he had been assassinated swept the country.

Still at Haughley, Edward sent his chamber valet Watte Pramptout to buy yarns to make fishing nets for him, an activity the unconventional king enjoyed. He had gone fishing by himself on the River Medway at Tonbridge in Kent in August 1324, borrowing a boat from a local fisherman, Henry, and in April 1325 went out on the lake near Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire with a fisherman called Jack Bere and seven others.¹² The yarns cost 23d. Edward also sent another chamber valet called Jack Pyk to Eleyne Glaswreghte, a glasswright who ran her own successful business in London, and Jack bought twenty-eight glass bowls and other containers from her at a cost of 4s. The bowls were used to keep rosewater and other types of water (not specified) in Edward II’s bedchamber at the Palace of Westminster. Red and white roses had been bought from a man called Syme in London a few months previously to make rosewater.

Women were often economically active in the England of the 1320s, ran their own businesses, and sold produce. In 1325/6, Edward II and his household bought sail-cloths from Margery Faderwyf and Sabyne Warin of London; fish from numerous fisherwomen along the River Thames including Isabelle Fisher and Alis atte Churche; rope from Maud Roper of London and Anneis of Portsmouth; ale from Alis Coleman, Anneis atte Churche, Maud Taillour and others; wood from Cristine Wytherlok of Greenwich; leather from Cecile Maar of Lenton near Nottingham, Margery Muleward of Nottingham and Isabelle Lynne of King’s Lynn; thread from Hawys Turel and Katherine Crewes of South Elmham in Suffolk; oxen and cows from Emme atte Gate of Mortlake; nails from Isabelle atte Churche of Winchester; carthorses from Anneis of Kimbolton; carts from Alis Lely and Eleine Lambley of Nottingham and Maud atte Rode of Henley-on-Thames (Alis and Eleine both worked as carters); hemp from Bele Beneyt, Anneis Rode and Alis Poyntel of Preston in Kent, Johane of Rochester, Alis Moundel of Sandwich and Isabelle Bonbrigg of Melton Mowbray; fishing nets from Emme Palmer, Alis Brewere, Nelle Prat and Emmote atte Cros of Walsingham in Norfolk; cheese from Anneis la Deye of Isleworth; and others. Women generally took their husband’s name on marriage and kept that name until their death, though Anneis la Deye’s husband was called Thomas le Botiler. ‘La Deye’ translates as ‘the dairy-maid’ in the variant of medieval French used in the king’s accounts, and ‘le Botiler’ means ‘the butler’, so we have an example of a married couple in different jobs who each used their occupation as their name (and ‘butler’ in the fourteenth century meant either a bottle-maker or a cup-bearer). Margery Faderwyf ’s surname means ‘Fader’s wife’. Many people bore their occupation as their surname, such as the sailor Hobbe Shypman, others their place of origin, such as the king’s carpenters Jack of Lincoln and Robert of Bedford, and others the part of their native village where their house stood, such as Geffrei of the Brugg or ‘Geoffrey of the bridge’, Jack in the Lane and Robyn atte (‘at’) Lane, Wauter atte Park, Alis atte Churche, Emmote atte Cros, Geffrei atte Chapele, Roger atte Watre, Henry atte Wode (wood), William atte Grene, Emme atte Gate, John atte Ponde, and so on.

Thomas of Brotherton (born 1 June 1300), earl of Norfolk, the elder of the king’s two much younger half-brothers, was at court with Edward II from 27 December 1325 or earlier until 7 February 1326.¹³ There were nine English earls alive in 1326 plus three underage heirs to earldoms, and it was the highest hereditary rank in the country after the king, as the titles of duke and marquess were not yet used in England (except that the king was also duke of Aquitaine in France).¹⁴ Edward spent three days from 5 to 7 January visiting the earl of Norfolk’s manor of North Lopham, 17 miles from Haughley. He was somewhat estranged from both his half-brothers, who had been shunted out of power by the king’s all-powerful chamberlain Hugh Despenser, and the other brother, Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent (b. 5 August 1301), had joined Queen Isabella in Paris and was now also refusing to return to England. Edmund married the widowed Margaret Comyn, née Wake, sister of Lord Wake, in mid-December 1325 without Edward II’s permission. The king ordered the seizure of Margaret’s lands and goods on hearing of the wedding, though changed his mind and gave them back to her on 27 January 1326.¹⁵ Thomas of Brotherton and Edmund of Woodstock were the sons of King Edward I’s (r. 1272–1307) old age: they were born when the king was over 60, and their mother was his second wife, Marguerite of France (1278/9–1318). Edward II’s mother was the long-dead Spanish queen of England, Leonor or Eleanor of Castile (c. 1241–90).

A clerk called Rauf (Ralph in modern spelling) of Nottingham died on Tuesday, 7 January, the day after the feast of the Epiphany, in the home of James Beauflour in the London parish of St Martin Vintry. At the hour of Vespers or sunset on 30 December 1325, Rauf quarrelled with a fishmonger called William Turk, apprentice and relative of Godwin Turk, outside a tavern. William Turk hit Rauf of Nottingham hard over the head with a shovel – why he was carrying a shovel around with him was not explained – and inflicted a wound 7 inches deep, ‘reaching to the brain’, as the jurors appointed to investigate solemnly declared. Rauf was carried into James Beauflour’s house nearby and lingered for over a week with his serious head injury. William fled and was never caught.¹⁶ James Beauflour himself was a well-off vintner and the collector of customs in the port of London. He leased a tavern belonging to Thomas Drinkewatere at the north end of London Bridge, called, not very creatively, ‘Drinkewaterestaverne’. Probably this was the tavern near his home where William Turk attacked Rauf of Nottingham. James and his wife Emme had sons James, John, Thomas, William and Hugh (a fishmonger, d. 1347) and daughters Isabel and Katherine, and owned 12 acres of land in Stepney, then called ‘Stebenhuthe’ or ‘Stebbenheth’. The Beauflours lived near a wharf called La Lauenderebrigge or ‘The Laundress’s Bridge’ owned by a John White, and in November 1324 James was one of the neighbours questioned about a woman who had drowned in the Thames under the wharf. He wrote his will in September 1328, and probably died soon afterwards.¹⁷

The king’s minstrel Ivo Vala, who played a string instrument called the citole which was not dissimilar to a modern guitar, returned to court on 9 January. Ivo had accompanied the king’s 12-year-old son and heir to France on 12 September 1325 when Edward of Windsor went to pay homage to his uncle Charles IV for the duchy of Aquitaine in south-west France and the county of Ponthieu in northern France, territories ruled by the English kings. (Edward II inherited Aquitaine from his father and ultimately from his great-great-grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine [d. 1204], and Ponthieu from his mother Queen Leonor, who although Spanish had a French mother.) Ivo Vala and his wife Annote had travelled together from London, where they lived, to Dover before Ivo and the rest of the party sailed to France with the king’s son in September 1325, and Edward II gave Annote 10s for her expenses.

Presumably Ivo performed for the king on his return to court four months later; Edward, in common with most medieval kings, loved music. In 1325/6, his other court minstrels included Jennan, Henry Newsom and Wille Bromley the harpers, Little Aleyn and Laurence the hornblowers, Master Richard Dorre and Thomas who both played the vielle (a string instrument similar to the modern violin), and William, King of Heralds. Mention is made