Chapter One - The Evidence

Summary

This book is primarily concerned with the documentary evidence for the history of Willington from 1382, the year after the Peasants’ Revolt, to 1522, which was the date of the last surviving manor court roll before the manor was bought by John and Joan Gostwyk in 1529. Numerous documents relating to Willington manor are extant for the period.

The central theme of the volume is the story of the co-operation of the bailiff, manor elite and the other tenants to regulate and control their own affairs within the context of the management of the Mowbray lords’ and ladies’ councils and their officials. The prestigious and powerful Mowbray family was at its most influential at the end of the fourteenth century and in the early fifteenth century when they became Dukes of Norfolk and Earls Marshall of England, but they had financial problems before the male line died out in 1476. Willington was part of the dower of Katherine Neville, widow of the second Duke of Norfolk, from 1432, and the extant records document consistent management by her, her third and fourth husbands, their stewards and their councils October 1448-May 1482. The Mowbrays enjoyed close, but often dangerous, relationships with the English kings and their courts. Their properties and lands included Willington, Bedford Castle, Bromham, Cardington, Cople, Haynes and Stotfold in Bedfordshire and part of Wing in Buckinghamshire.

The text draws on the information contained in primary sources from several collections. Because the sources are incomplete, analysis of the information is problematic, but it is clear that serfdom lingered on throughout the 140 years covered by this volume, that tenants worked together under the leadership of local bailiffs, and that by the end of the fifteenth century villein tenure was almost as secure as free tenure.

Then, as now, the inhabitants were dependent on the landscape in which they lived. The geology, topography and archaeology of the landscape help to put information from the early documents and other records into context.

In his introduction to The Making of the English Landscape, W. G. Hoskins says that, ‘everything is older than we think’, and this is very true of Willington. The landscape of Willington manor and parish can be described as a palimpsest: something which has been rewritten or redrawn at least once.