Goadby's History of Loughborough Chapter 2 Part 2

Edwin Goadby, once editor of the 'Loughborough Monitor' began an extensive history of Loughborough, which was serialised in the newspaper during his time with the paper. We continue the history, with Part 2 of his chapter on the time of the Normans. I’ve kept both the text and the layout as it appeared in the newspaper, but have added one or two notes, where I have found useful information. As mentioned last week, in the 160 years since the original publication, there have been many more discoveries and revelations about Loughborough’s history, hence some of the information contained in these serials will be wrong. I have not tried to amend these in any way.

THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH, FROM THE TIME OF THE BRITONS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Chapter 2, Pt 2 Loughborough in the time of the Normans

In: Loughborough Monitor 30 June 1864, pg 5

CHAPTER II.

LOUGHBOROUGH IN THE TIME OF THE NORMANS

Part II – A Transcript from Domesday Book – Importance of its small Facts – Extent of Arable Lane in the Manor – The Mills and the Lord’s rights in connection with them – Meaning of Town and Village Bakehouses – The Number of Inhabitants – The Thanes – Law of Conditions supplies the omissions of the Survey – A Church or Churches, Halls, Households, Priests, Millers, &c. – Mount Sorrel [Mountsorrel] Castle and Feudal Customs.

When the general survey of the Kingdom was made by the Royal Commissioners in 1086, the following was the return as far as the town of Loughborough was concerned:

“In Lucteburne Roger holds of Earl Hugh eight carucates; [?] Ralph, three carucates and a half; Hugh, three carucates and a half; Godric, three carucates and a half; and Roger half a carucate. In the demesne or lordship, there are five ploughs and teams, and eight Villani, with fifteen Sochmanni, and sixteen Bordarii. They have twelve carucates and a half. There are two water-mills (molini) of ten shillings in value, and forty-five acres of meadow-land. There is also a wood of seven furlongs in length and three furlongs in breadth. And the five Thanes held in freehold (Quinque Thaini libere tenuerant). Lewin holds of the Earl one hide in Burton. The soke belongs to Lucteburne.”

These details are bare, and apparently insignificant enough, but the smallest facts are charged with meaning when viewed in all their relationships, and a little perseverance will enable us to secure through them a considerable amount of reliable history, and a very fair picture of the place and the people.

The actual amount of land belonging to the Manor of Loughborough is seen by the above enumeration to be considerable. It was chiefly arable. A carucate, from the low Latin caruca, through the old French caruc, a plough, is generally rendered as ploughland, or “as much land as could be tilled with one plough, and the oxen thereunto belonging in a year.” Bede [Venerable?] says it was as much as would maintain a family comfortably. But there are vague estimates of what was for two or three hundred years a very variable quantity, and by no means satisfactory for those unlearned in early agriculture and its curious measurements. A carucate, then, has been reckoned by competent persons to consist of from 100 to 150 acres, and at the first estimate there would be 3,050 acres of arable land in the manor at the time of the survey, and at the second 4,575 – certainly a very large proportion of arable to meadow land, and sufficiently showing the chief employments of the various descriptions of persons occupying the town. The amount of woodland mentioned is also small, and we are not informed whether any forest rights were claimed or not, but as neither Garendon nor Quorndon are mentioned as places in the Domesday Book, we may suppose that they were still waste and provided excellent masting for cattle. 

The water-mills, in all probability, occupied site adjacent to, if not actually the same, as those now standing, and were afterwards known as the King’s Mills, and more modernly as the Upper and Lower Mills. To these mills all the inhabitants were compelled by law to take their corn to be ground, paying a fixed and reasonable sum for the same, appears by feudal custom elsewhere, and expressly by a deed of complaint of one of the Earls of Huntingdon against several parties in the town, which is still preserved in the Court of the Exchequer. It appears that the right afterwards extended to some malt-mills, one of which is known to have existed upon the spot now occupied by Messrs. Paget’s factory in the Mill Street [now Market Street], and to have given the street its earlier name of Malt Mill Lane. The words of this deed are curious, and deserve quotation. It is declared “that all the tenants, residents, and inhabitants of, and within the said manor, by custom, tenure, covenant, or other lawful means. And have been and are, bound and obliged, and have used and of right ought to grind all their corn, grain, and malt, which they use spent ground in their respective houses within the said manor, at the said mills and not elsewhere; and that no person have or ought to erect or keep any other mills, querns, or other engines within the said manor in prejudice to the complainant; nor ought any miller, loader, or carrier, of or belonging to any other mill, or mills, to come within the said manor, to fetch and carry away the corn and grist of any person residing within the said manor to any other mill or mills.” These conditions are severe enough, but were everywhere common in the feudal ages, and one of the good things that came out of the loan Napoleon demanded from Prussia, in 1810, was the entire destruction of this surviving feudal monopoly in that kingdom.

The severity of this feudal custom has, as yet, perhaps, been understated. It extended beyond the simple grinding of corn, which a wise thrift might secure ground beforehand, to even the daily domesticities of life. Whether the inhabitants of the town, excepting of course the Thanes, could even bake their own bread at home is more than doubtful, since we find that in the old Norman seigneuries and elsewhere, the peasants were obliged, “by custom, tenure, covenant, and other lawful means,” no doubt, to take their dough to the bakehouse provided for the,, perhaps kindly and fatherly enough by their respective manorial Lords. The village bakehouses, once scattered almost everywhere throughout England, as, for instance, the one still remaining at Cotes, are remnants of this old custom. And it is well known to octogenarians that upon the site of the offices of Messrs. Cradock and Woolley, there previously existed what was called the “town bakehouse,” and what was at an earlier period the only one in town. The street abutting it is now known as Baxter Gate, and it is curious that Baxter is nothing but an earlier and more northerly form of Baker.

The existence of these water-mills by the river-side implies a good road to them and bridges over the stream. So that, as we shall find as we proceed in our narrative, the repair of both became very early in the history of the town a most important matter.

The number of inhabitants in Loughborough, according to the letter of the survey, was only forty-four, but there is every reason to believe that there must have been a larger number. The express purpose of the Commissioners in making the survey was to ascertain the number of men actually capable of bearing arms, the extent of the lands cultivated in each place, and the names and condition of the chief proprietors. Beyond this they issued few instructions, and the utmost capriciousness is observable in all the returns. Here, for instance, are evidently serious omissions, which a comparison with the returns from other places, and what we know of the state of the country at the time, enables us to supply. There is, in fact, no mention of a church or churches, nor of the private residences of Roger, Ralph, Hugh, Godric, and Roger, or even their households. Now it is expressly stated, as will be seen by the original words quoted in parenthesis, that these men were Thanes, and as we know what the conditions were which entitled a man to be a Thane, we can remedy this threefold defect of the Domesday account. These Thanes, or Thegns, were Anglo-Saxons, and any man could attain that rank, even though formerly a slave, upon certain conditions. The conditions as set forth in an old Saxon law, still extant, are somewhat curious, as they are for us, very much to the point. He was to possess five hides of his own land – the Saxon hid being, according to Kemble, about thirty acres – a church, a kitchen, and a bell-house – the latter of course in addition to his residence – and then followed as the privileges of his thane-ship, a judicial seat at the burgh-gate, or a selection as one of the twelve witness thanes of a hundred, and, it is conjectured, a seat in the Witena-gemot or Saxon Parliament. 

There were two orders of Thanes – King’s Thanes, or, as they were afterwards called, Barons, and inferior Thanes, subsequently known as Knights and Squires. The Thane’s residence was designated as a Hall, a spacious living-room occupying the centre, and the bedchambers of bowers (bur) where the birdes or ladies dwelt, with other apartments, were situate on either side, as appears from the illustrations to their manuscripts. The extent of their households was not very considerable, but it is singular there is no mention whatever of either their wives, children, or maid-servants. A Thane’s house was an asylum, and if a thief too refuge there he was allowed three days’ safety and protection. The omission of any reference to a church or churches in connection with the names of the five Thanes recently given, is easily enough understood when known to be implied by the express rank of the proprietors themselves, and the general course of procedure in compiling the survey, as testified to by eminent authorities. “I may add here,” says Dr. Lingard, [1] in his History of the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, “that the number of churches and chapels in England at the time of the Conquest was very great.” Yet, he remarks further, “in Domesday they are entered only occasionally.” If the building were omitted, one would think that the officiating clergyman might have been mentioned, but a very few of them really were in any returns. In county after county we do not find even so much as a solitary entrance of the word presbyter, and only thirty-four are recorded in the entire county of Leicester. 

“All the monks,” says Sharon Turner, [2] “and nearly all the parochial clergy, are omitted.” Backed by these authorities, then, we may safely conclude that there was a church, if not churches, in the manor of Lucteburh, at the time of the survey, with one of two priests officiating at them. Such church or churches would be constructed probably of sawn forest timber, with the smooth sides inward, the interstices being filled with moss and earth, and the whole building roofed with reeds, many village churches being so constructed, according to the Venerable Bede, who calls the style more Scotorum – after the manner of the Scots – as though such a style would not be most perfectly natural in all places where timber abounded and architecture was comparatively unknown. There would be a belfry at one end of the edifice, and possibly it would not be destitute of some kind of pretensions to beauty.

Another omission is also curious. Two mills are mentioned, but no millers, and these are elsewhere distinguished with considerable precision. Nor is there any mention of bercary, which can be proved to have existed soon after the Conquest, and which would probably employ one or two men. We deed [need?] not be surprised at the omission of the Berquarii, since, according to Turner’s analysis of the Anglo-Saxon population as given in the Domesday Book, the only county in which they are mentioned at all is Sussex. It will not also fail to be noticed that there is no mention whatever of women in the returns for Lucteburh. The Commissioners would here and elsewhere appear to have been indulging in a little pleasantry to relieve their dry statistical labours, and thinking it would be naturally enough concluded that where the men were the women would be also, they have almost ignored the very existence of the latter, imagining, perhaps, that in so doing they paid a dry compliment to the ingenuity of the human understanding. Reckoning, therefore, a fair quota of women and children of Lucteburh in 1086, we may honestly put down the population, in addition to other omissions already inductively supplied, at something like one hundred and twenty instead of the forty-four actually given in the letter of the return.

We come now to the condition of the other classes of the inhabitants. The Villani were, in fact, nothing better than slaves, and answered to the Roman class of coloni. They were farm servants who were part and parcel of the several estates upon which they laboured, having neither constitutional nor political rights, but nevertheless protected by laws intended to promote their industry, good behaviour, and, finally, emancipation. The reward of good service was frequently manumission, and many masters manumitted their serfs by will at death. The Sochmanni were of Northern descent, probably Danes, and were usually freemen, though sometimes holdings their lands by peculiar tenures, honourable and otherwise, as repairing the castle gates, mills, implements of husbandry, &c., or following their lord with hawk and hound when it pleased him to recreate himself in the sports of the chase. Authorities are divided as to whether soc be derived from soca, a plough, implying services relative to it, or from another term expressive of privilege and freedom, but anyway they were known as freemen. They were liable to military service. Lewin, who held on hide of land of the Earl in Burton, was a Sochman, and held his land by virtue of some periodical but now unrecognizable service done for the benefit of the inhabitants of Lucteburh. The Bordarii or Boors, were so called from their living in cottages which were the property of the manorial Lord, for which they paid rent or bord in provisions, as bacon, eggs, butter, wheat, honey, and fruits. The two latter classes only must be understood as holding the twelve ploughlands and a half, since a Villain could not usually hold land without ceasing to be designated by that name.

Such were the inhabitants of Lucteburh in the time of the Normans. The place itself would be only remarkable for its rustic simplicity. Low wooden buildings with gable ends and thatched roofs almost reaching to the ground, interspersed with garden plots and scattered trees, would form the abodes of the generality of the inhabitants. Rude in dress and rough in manners, they would be hearty in such enjoyments as were common to them – probably running, leaping, wrestling, and other manly games at the neighbouring Holy Well, where such sports were usually indulged in, as appears from Mr. Wright’s account of their manners (‘Art Journal’, Vol. III, N.S., p. 169), enlivened by the song and the jest of the wandering minstrel and the noisy clamour of itinerant pedlars. But for the feudal system that overshadowed them, and perhaps in spite of it, they might have led a contented if not a very refined or progressive life. It was not permitted them to forget that they were a conquered people. The Earl of Chester was a wary, wily Norman, and took good care to secure what had once come into his full possession. Some time about 1080, it is conjectured, if not earlier, he erected a castle upon Mount Sorrel Hill, with the view to defend his surrounding properties if attacked, and command the allegiance of his subjects. All his tenantry, according to feudal custom, would repair at stated periods to its gates, and present themselves before him or his representative, and an armed retinue, to have their oaths of fealty registered, their tenures renewed, and such regulations made for their order and submission as might seem befitting and necessary.

Doubtless there were many aspects of this feudal life which were very pleasant, and even congenial to those upon whom we may ordinarily suppose its restrictions told most severely. The roving military propensity was certainly capable of immense gratification then in those in whom it might be wrong. Castle sports were hardy, healthy, and exciting enough. Even a lawless affray or a booty-hunting expedition would be dashed with the glamour of romance. There was plenty to catch the eye and command a certain awe and admiration. Discipline and subordination were also good educators of the directly governed classes, and helped to fashion the stalwart freemen of succeeding generations. But the condition of the agriculturists, of which the town of Lucteburh was mainly composed, was not very enviable. “A few paternal acres” are all very well when “our wish and care” can be gratified as we please, but somewhat burdensome when we are compassed by the rights of another, and haunted, not by an inoffensive tax-gatherer with a book, but a man sheathed in “complete steel,” with a battle-axe, perhaps, and neither an amiable disposition, nor any knowledge of such an item as “arrears of former rate.” To quote the words of M. de Tocqueville, [3] when writing of a similar class elsewhere – “As the peasant crosses the river, the Seigneurs wait for his passage to levy his toll. He finds them at the market, where they sell to him the right of selling his own produce; and when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder of his wheat for his own sustenance – of that wheat which was planted by his own hands, and has grown under his eyes – he cannot touch it until he has ground it at the mill, and baked it at the bakehouse of these same men.” It would have been well if all their annoyances had ended here, and no savage raids had despoiled their crops, destroyed their houses, and desolated their homes. We have yet to see that this was a part of the bitter experience of the inhabitants of Lucteburh and its neighbourhood in the feudal ages.  

END OF CHAPTER 2, PART 2

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NOTES

[1] Dr. John Lingard (1771-1851) was a catholic priest and a historian who wrote the multi-volumed work, ‘History of England’, published between 1819 and 1830.

[2] Sharon Turner (1768-1847) was an English historian, known for his multi-volume,  ‘History of the Anglo-Saxons’, published between 1799 and 1805.

[3] Alexis Charles Henri Clerel, comte de Tocqueville (1805-1859), as well as being a French aristocrat, was also a political philosopher and scientist, a sociologist, a diplomat, and a historian.

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Transcribed and presented here with the kind permission of the British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/  

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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