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Small-town conflict in the later Middle Ages: events at Shipston-on-Stour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Christopher Dyer
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Extract

The seventeenth-century Worcestershire antiquarian Thomas Habington knew of great agitations around 1400 at Shipston-on-Stour, a manor of Worcester Cathedral Priory. He reported that after an arbitration of 1405–6 ‘the discontented tenants not satisfied broke out against their lord again, but all these being long since buried, shall not be revived by my pen, which shall never prejudice or blot any with infamy’. This article will rescue the rebels from the oblivion to which Habington sought to condemn them. This is not just to correct his bias (as a recusant he sympathized with Benedictine monks; as a member of the gentry he disliked disturbance of the social order), but more to use the Shipston story to investigate general problems of urban conflict in the Middle Ages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , October 1992 , pp. 183 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the Shipston-on-Stour and District Local History Society and the University of Birmingham Medieval Society, both of which stimulated this paper by inviting me to speak. J. Barrow, C. Carpenter, P. Harvey, R. Holt, J. Röhrkasten, T. Slater and R. Swanson gave useful information. R. Stratton made the records available in Worcester Cathedral Library, and J. Greatrex helped and advised.

References

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4 Reynolds, S., An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), 171–87Google Scholar; but for contrary views, Rigby, S. H., ‘Urban “oligarchy” in late medieval England’, in Thomson, J.A.F. (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1988), 62–86Google Scholar; Swanson, H., Medieval Artisans (Oxford, 1989), 107–26.Google Scholar

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7 These general problems are discussed in Hilton, R.H., ‘Popular movements in England at the end of the fourteenth century’, in Hilton, , Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London, 1985), 152–64.Google Scholar

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9 The charters recording this process are calendared in Finberg, H.P.R., Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1964), 92, 115, 119, 120, 124, 126, 128–9, 130Google Scholar; later sources showing the fragmentation are Domesday Book, ed. Farley, A. (Record Commission, 1783), fo. 173Google Scholar; and Red Book of Worcester, ed. Hollings, M., 4 parts (Worcs. Hist. Soc, 1934–1950), 3, 292–3; 4, 412, 431, 436, 438.Google Scholar

10 Victoria County History (henceforth V.C.H.) of Worcestershire, 4 vols (London, 1901–1924), 3, 523, 541, 550–1Google Scholar; the rectory was valued at £99 17s 4d in 1535: Valor Ecclesiasticus, 6 vols (Record Commission, 1810–1834), 3, 257.Google Scholar In 1246–47 the parson's corn alone (from tithes and glebe production) was sold for £60: Bodleian Library, Worcestershire rolls, no. 4.

11 Registrum Prioratus Beatae Mariae Wigorniensis, ed. Hale, W.H. (Camden Soc, 1865), 64b–69b.Google Scholar

12 By 1275 the town's development must explain the presence of thirty-two taxpayers at Shipston compared with eighteen at Blackwell: Lay Subsidy Roll for the County of Worcester circ. 1280 (recte 1275), ed. Bund, J. W. Willis and Amphlett, J. (Worcs. Hist. Soc, 1893), 74–5Google Scholar; the royal charter is in Liber Pensionum Prioratus Wigorn, ed. Price, C. (Worcs. Hist. Soc, 1925), 41–2.Google Scholar

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14 The plan has been drawn and discussed in Aston, M. and Bond, C.J., The Landscape of Towns (London, 1976), 93Google Scholar; Slater, T.R., ‘The analysis of burgages in medieval towns: three case studies from the west midlands’, West Midlands Archaeology, 23 (1980), 57–9.Google Scholar I am indebted to Dr T.R. Slater for discussion of the town plan. On the contrasts between adjacent village and town plans, see Beresford, M.W., New Towns of the Middle Ages (London, 1967), 106–8.Google Scholar

15 On Stratford's success, Carus-Wilson, , ‘First half-century’; C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society. The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 61Google Scholar; the burgage plots at Stratford are discussed in Slater, T.R., ‘Ideal and reality in English episcopal town planning’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new ser., 12 (1987), 191–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the Shipston ones in his ‘The analysis of burgages’. His deduction of the dimensions of the plots from modern topography is confirmed by a 1402 statement that a quarter burgage was 16 feet wide: Worcester Cathedral Library (henceforth W.C.L.), E43. Slater's observation that Shipston's and Stratford's burgage plots were of the same size was made before the discovery (see below, p. 197) that Shipston tenants claimed the liberties of Stratford. Likewise his calculation that the town originally contained about forty plots is confirmed by the thirty-seven whole tenements listed in the rental of 1502 (W.C.L., C787).

16 Holt, R. and Rosser, G., ‘Introduction: the English town in the middle ages’, in Holt, and Rosser, (eds), The Medieval Town, 4.Google Scholar

17 W.C.L., B753; E3; E7–13. The E-series of court rolls are the main source of information in the following analysis.

18 Banbury cheese was a sufficiently famous delicacy to be included among provisions sent to France for the Duke of Bedford's household in 1430: Cal. Close Rolls, 1429–35, 74. I am grateful to Prof. P.D.A. Harvey for this reference.

19 W.C.L., E25: William Spycer took Richard Peremon's hood and placed it for a pledge at a tavern.

20 W.C.L., E29.

21 Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust R.O., Stratford-upon-Avon, DR 98/865.

22 The calculation is based on the assumption that each brew of three quarters of malt produced 180 gallons of ale: Dyer, C., Standards of Living in the later Middle Ages. Social Change in England c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the quantities brewed at Hampton Lucy see Dyer, , Lords and Peasants, 348.Google Scholar

23 On the Feldon: Hilton, R.H., Social Structure of Rural Warwickshire in the Middle Ages (Dugdale Soc. Occasional Paper, no. 9, 1950)Google Scholar; Harley, J.B., The settlement geography of early medieval Warwickshire’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34 (1964), 115–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dyer, C., Warwickshire Farming 1349-c. 1520 (Dugdale Soc. Occasional Paper, no. 27, 1981)Google Scholar; the calculation is based on the 1327 subsidies: Lay Subsidy Roll, Warwickshire, 1327, ed. Bickley, W.B. (Trans. Midland Record Soc, 6, 1902)Google Scholar; Lay Subsidy Roll for the County of Worcester, 1 Edward III, ed. Eld, F.J. (Worcs. Hist. Soc, 1895)Google Scholar; Gloucestershire Subsidy Roll, 1 Edward III, 1327, ed. Phillipps, T. (Middlehill Press, n.d.)Google Scholar, assuming that about half of the households were exempt.

24 On the patronage of small towns by gentry households, Dyer, C., The consumer and the market in the later middle ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 42 (1989), 314–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Worcester Cathedral Priory purchased grain from the Stour Valley, e.g. in 1294–95: Early Compotus Rolls of the Priory of Worcester, ed. Wilson, J.M. and Gordon, C. (Worcs. Hist. Soc, 1908), 31.Google Scholar Tenants of Tredington manor obtained wood and timber from Lapworth in north Warwickshire: Red, Book of Worcester, ed. Hollings, , 3, 292Google Scholar; in 1420 the priory gave timber for Shipston mill from their woods at Himbleton, in north Worcestershire: W.C.L., E48.

26 W.C.L., E49. John Essex, the dyer, became mayor of Coventry in 1440: The Register of the Guild of Holy Trinity, St Mary…of Coventry, ed. Harris, M.D. (Dugdale Soc, 13, 1935), 48.Google Scholar

27 W.C.L., E27.

28 E.g. Liber Pensionum Prioratus Wigorn, ed. Price, , 56.Google Scholar

29 Or perhaps in Staffordshire or Herefordshire.

30 W.C.L., E7. On turbulent immigrants at the small town of Halesowen, Hilton, ‘Smalltown society’, 82–4.

31 For the planned extension (from topographical analysis), Aston, and Bond, , The Landscape of Towns, 93.Google Scholar A deed of 1319 stated that the tithes from the twenty new houses should go to the rector of Tredington, not the sacrist who had the tithe of demesne land on which they were built: W.C.L., B753. The cottages are recorded in W.C.L., Ella.

32 W.C.L., E7: ‘all the shops in a new building’; a messuage with a solar is mentioned in 1375: W.C.L., E27; a house with a crosschamber in 1389: W.C.L., E34; a stallage and solar in 1465: W.C.L., E69; for the fire W.C.L., E73.

33 The calculation is based on information in the cellarer's account for 1336–37, W.C.L., C57.

34 Hilton, ‘Medieval market towns’, 19–20.Google Scholar

35 W.C.L., C787.

36 In 1435 a messuage in the town held by Walter Bayly, who also held agricultural land, was said to be that ‘in which David, servant of Richard Borowolde, now lives’: W.C.L., E54. In 1482 at least eight tenants had sublet holdings: W.C.L., E75.

37 Beresford, M. and Finberg, H.P.R., Medieval English Boroughs: a Handlist (Newton Abbot, 1973), 43–51Google Scholar; Beresford, M.W., ‘English medieval boroughs: a handlist: revisions 1973–81’, Urban History Yearbook (1981), 59–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Hereford and Worcester County Record Office (Worcester branch, henceforth H.W.C.R.O.), ref. 009:1 BA 2636/9, no. 43,696, fo. 93. On the law of Tait, Breteuil J., The Medieval English Borough (Manchester, 1936), 351–2.Google Scholar

39 W.C.L., E1. Soon afterwards Nicholas Robynes married her and became tenant of her holding. On urban morality, Goldberg, P.J., ‘Women in fifteenth-century town life’, in Thomson, (ed.), Towns and Townspeople, 118–21.Google Scholar

40 W.C.L., E1; Bonfield, L. and Poos, L.R., ‘The development of the deathbed transfer in medieval English manor courts’, Cambridge Law Journal, 47 (1988), 403–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 W.C.L., E44. Three tenants were distrained at Stratford for tolls ‘where never in the past any paid toll there’.

42 E.g. at Boston, Rigby, S.H., ‘Boston and Grimsby in the middle ages: an administrative contrast’. Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 51–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 In 1314 Richard Baret and Robert le Taylour were granted a row of shops, ‘with all of the lesser amercements of the market of Shipston which come from the piepowder pleas (a placitis pepoudrous)’ for 40s per annum: W.C.L., E7. The ‘market court’ appears in 1427: W.C.L., E52.

44 St Edmund is likely to have been a pre-1200 dedication. In the early nineteenth century, before the rebuilding of the church, it had ‘round arches’, presumably of romanesque type: Society of Antiquaries Library, Prattinton Collection, 32, 30.

45 Nash, T.R., Collections for the History of Worcestershire, 2 vols (London, 1781–1782), 2, 434–6.Google Scholar

46 W.C.L., B753; Rosser, , ‘The essence of medieval urban communities’; Hilton, R.H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), 91–4.Google Scholar

47 W.C.L., E9, E10.

48 On the general ills of the period, Baker, A.R.H., ‘Evidence in the Nonarum Inquisitiones of contracting arable land in England during the early fourteenth century’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 19 (1966), 518–32Google Scholar; at Shipston in 1341 four buildings were reported to be in decay (W.C.L., E1), and in 1342 a general order was made against those who allowed their stalls to deteriorate (W.C.L., E2).

49 W.C.L., E2; ‘It is ordered under penalty of 40d. that none of the lord's tenants should sell avers or any other cattle before they were shown in the market of Shipston’; W.C.L., E14.

50 ‘The custom of New Shipston’ was last used in July 1341 (W.C.L., E1): immediately after this date no phrase of this type appears, but by October 1352 (W.C.L., E17) the ‘custom of the manor’ had been introduced.

51 W.C.L., E27.

52 Nash, , Collections for a History of Worcestershire, 2, 434–6.Google Scholar

53 W.C.L., E28. In January 1375 the township of Shipston was amerced 20s for not attending the court and John Gurdeler, a burgage tenant, was amerced 20s as a ‘rebel’: E26.

54 Britnell, R.H., ‘Feudal reaction after the Black Death in the palatinate of Durham’, Past and Present, 128 (1990), 28–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on principals see Field, R.K., ‘Worcestershire peasant buildings, household goods and farming equipment in the later middle ages’, Medieval Archaeology, 9 (1965), 121–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A typical case of their misappropriation was Walter Stappe's sale of a lead vessel used in brewing in 1387 (W.C.L., E33).

55 W.C.L., E31 (in January 1385).

56 Phythian-Adams, C., ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E.A. (eds), Towns in Societies (Cambridge, 1978), 166–7.Google Scholar

57 The tolls and stallage rents are recorded in the cellarer's accounts, W.C.L., C55, C57–62, C64–6, C69–70, C76–7; and a reeve's account, C857. The exceptional fines were levied in 1401 and 1402, W.C.L., E41 and E43. For a similar pattern of fine payments at this time, Z. Razi, ‘Family, land and village community in late medieval England’, in Aston, T.H. (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), 382–3.Google Scholar

58 Emden, A.B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols (Oxford, 1957–1959), 3, 2101Google Scholar: Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1408–13, 177; his prebend at Ramsbury (Wilts.) and benefices of Tredington and Preston-on-Stour (Glos.) were together worth £152 in 1535: Valor Ecclesiasticus, 2, 151, 502; 3, 257.

59 P.R.O., JUST 1/1035, m. 1. The Beauchamp affinity in Worcestershire is discussed in Maskew, H., ‘Fifteenth century Worcestershire gentry’ (unpublished M. Phil, thesis, University of Birmingham, 1990).Google Scholar

60 H.W.C.R.O., ref. b 716: 093, BA 2648/4 (v), 28–32; Cat. Papal Reg., v (1396–1404), 207. On Waldon's link with the Beauchamps, British Library, Egerton Roll, 8769; Goodman, A.E., The Loyal Conspiracy. The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971), 148Google Scholar; Ministers' Accounts of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, 1432–85, ed. Styles, D. (Dugdale Soc, 26, 1969), xliii, 66Google Scholar; V.C.H. Worcs., 3, 548–50, includes a description of the niche for the image, which still survives.

61 W.C.L., E38.

62 W.C.L., E38.

63 W.C.L., E38.

64 W.C.L., Reg. AIV, the Liber Albus (henceforth L.A.) fos. ccccxxviir–ccccxxviiiv.

65 P.R.O., SC2/210/26.

66 P.R.O., KB27/576 Rex m.x.

67 The claim that the road was narrowed can be checked objectively. The modern Sheep Street, which must correspond to the Campden-Banbury road is 40 feet 6 inches wide at the western end of the market-place, and 44 feet wide at the eastern end. The modern shoprow reduces the width to 19 feet in places. A map of 1793 shows a distinct narrowing at the east end of the shoprow which may well have made the road as little as 14 feet wide: J.A.S. Tolson, A Directory of the Manor of Shipston-on-Stour; 1793 (Shipston-on-Stour and District Local History Society, Occasional Papers, no. 2, 1985). Evidently the obstruction of which the tenants complained resulted from the building of a new stall (see note 84 below).

68 On Stratford's catchpolls, V.C.H. Warwicks., 3, 247; on ancient demesne Hallam, E., Domesday Book through Nine Centuries (London, 1986), 74–108Google Scholar; on Altitonantis, The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory, ed Darlington, R.R. (Pipe Roll Society, new ser., 38, 1962–1963), xiii–xixGoogle Scholar, and Barrow, J., ‘How the twelfth-century monks of Worcester perceived their past’, in Magdalino, P. (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London, 1992), 69–74Google Scholar; on popular interpretations of ancient demesne, Faith, R., ‘The “Great Rumour” of 1377 and peasant ideology’, in Hilton, R.H. and Aston, T.H. (eds), The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), 54–6.Google Scholar

69 Willard, J.F., ‘Taxation boroughs and parliamentary boroughs, 1294–1336’, in Edwards, J.G., Galbraith, V.H. and Jacob, E.F. (eds), Historical Essays in Honour of fames Tait (Manchester, 1933), 417–35Google Scholar; Hallam, , Domesday Book through Nine Centuries, 105–8.Google Scholar

70 Fuller, E.A., ‘Cirencester: the manor and the town’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 9 (1884–1885), 298–344Google Scholar; The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, ed. Ross, Cd., three vols (Oxford, 1964–1977), 1, xxxvi–xl, 99–126.Google Scholar Shipston and Cirencester were linked by the Fosse Way.

71 W.C.L., E38.

72 L.A., fos. ccccxxviir–ccccxxviiiv (the rules on toll were for 4d to be paid for multure of malt and 4d for each brew. No brew was to exceed three quarters of malt). On rebel tactics, Hilton, R.H., Bondmen Made Free (London, 1973), 63–95.Google Scholar

73 L.A., fos ccccxxvir–ccccxxviir: ‘a certain charter of those liberties granted by Richard once prior of Worcester and the convent to certain men, tenants and residents of the vill of Shipston’.

74 W.C.L., E40.

75 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1399–1401, 197; L.A., fo. ccccxxiiir; W.C.L., C78; Cal. Close Rolls, 1402–5, 310. The priory took the precaution of obtaining an inspeximus of the 1268 charter: Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1399–1401, 384.

76 Cal. Close Rolls, 1402–5. 484–5, 488; L.A., fos. ccccxxvir–ccccxxviir. The priory paid Wych 40s at Christmas 1407, presumably to make him even more friendly: W.C.L., C79. In 1409 Wych was accused of an attack on the bishop of Worcester's manor and mill of Tredington, of which he had once been farmer: Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1408–13, 177. He returned to Salisbury by 1411: The Register of John Chandler, Dean of Salisbury, 1404–17, ed. Timmins, T.C.B. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. 39, 1983), 34.Google Scholar

77 P.R.O., KB 27/576 Rex m. x.

78 W.C.L., C78.

79 W.C.L., E49: the accident occurred in January 1421.

80 W.C.L., E2; P.R.O., KB27/331, m. liii. A few years later Thomas Jones and others from Shipston and nearby villages were accused of attacks on John de Beauchamp, son of the earl of Warwick: Cal Pat. Rolls, 1345–8, 314–15.Google Scholar

81 W.C.L., E5.

82 W.C.L., E27, E30; in 1396–97 Brailes' tolls were 14s 4d: British Library, Egerton Roll, 8769; the market continued into the early fifteenth century: Birmingham Reference Lib., 168115; W.CL., E51.

83 They are listed in L.A., fos ccccxxiiir, ccccxxviir–ccccxxviiiv.

84 W.C.L., E45. It is just possible that the cottage was the building obstructing the road, of which the tenants complained in 1398 (see note 67 above).

85 P.R.O., JUST 1/1034; V.C.H. Warwicks., 5, 26, 216; W.C.L., C81.

86 W.C.L., E34.

87 Carpenter, C., ‘Political society in Warwickshire, c. 1401–72’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976), 79–80Google Scholar; V.C.H. Warwick;., 5, 100, 210; P.R.O., SC6/1123/5; Brit. Lib., Egerton Roll 8772; Cal. Close Rolls, 1413–19, 448, 502; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1416–22, 147; Putnam, B.H., Early Treatises on the Practice of the justices of the Peace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford Studs, in Social and Legal Hist., 7, 1924), 68–72, 256–7Google Scholar; Powell, E., Kingship, Law and Society. Criminal justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989), 236–9.Google Scholar

88 P.R.O., KB9/22/42, 43, 44; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1413–16, 111. The two deaths appear in the court roll of August 1413, but no reference is made to the cause of death: W.C.L., E46. The attacks took place on Fridays, on the eve of market day. Compton and Bayly acted together as pledges for John Prat in 1413: W.C.L., E46.

89 Hist. MSS. Comm., 5th report, part 1, appendix, 303.

90 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1408–13, 378; P.R.O., E164/21, fos. 227–30. Perhaps the recording of rents and services in 1411 stirred up some trouble. We may speculate that Compton, whose rent of 66s 8d made him the largest tenant in Honington, sympathized with the monks both at Coventry and at Worcester.

91 Carpenter, ‘Political society’, 97; Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation Records. The Guild Accounts (n.d.), 7, 15, 16, 19, 22; R. Horrox, ‘Urban gentry in the fifteenth century’, in Thomson (ed.), Towns and Townspeople, 22–44; the wills of Suffolk townsmen sometimes refer to gentry patrons; e.g. Suffolk Record Office (Bury St Edmunds branch), IC500/2/7, fos. 236r–236v, a Sudbury weaver in 1459 named an esquire (‘my master’) as his overseer. P. McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV, the Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge, 1987), 191–4.

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98 The efidence for economic fluctuations comes from the annual stallage rents, which stood at 54s 4d in 1395–96, hovered between 40s and 46s 8d between 1421 and 1467, and rose in most years above 65s in 1479–90. After a setback, they increased to 95s 5d in 1507–8. Tolls on ale fell steadily from 39s 8d in 1412–13 to below 10s Od per annum, even 3s Od, in the 1460s to 1490s, surely the result of successful evasion. W.C.L., C77, C81, C84–90, C93–8, C101–6, C488, C490, C490b, C538. Entry fines for a burgage rose to occasional heights of £6 13s 4d and £9 6s 8d in 1400–2. A more normal range was from 3s 4d to 13s 4d in the years around 1400. There were still wide variations in the 1460s and early 1470s, from as little as two cheeses worth 8d to as much as 53s 4d, being paid no longer on burgages but on tenements called ‘messuages and curtilages’ that had once been burgages. In the 1490s a fine of £6 13s 4d was paid for 1½ former burgages, 40s for a former burgage and 20s for a half-‘burgage’, representing rates of £2 and £4 8s 10d per ‘burgage’. The fire of 1478 destroyed 56 tenements, perhaps two-thirds of the total, but left the shoprow largely unscathed. The monastery showed a rare sensitivity in the aftermath of the fire, letting tenants off rent, and pardoning entry fines. By 1491 only three messuages had not been rebuilt.