Goadby’s History of Loughborough Chapter 4

In this blogpost, we continue the story of Loughborough as presented by journalist Edwin Goadby back in 1864. In this chapter, chapter 4, Goadby discusses life – particularly trade and travel – in the fourteenth century.

As previously mentioned, for the most part, I've kept the text and the layout as it appeared in the original newspaper serialisation, although have split some of the text into separate paragraphs to aid reading. I've added a few explanatory notes at the end, if I think these might be useful. In the 160 years since the original publication appeared, there have been many more discoveries and revelations about Loughborough's history, and some terminology will have changed, so some of the information contained in this article will be wrong: I have not tried to amend these in any way, so reader, beware!

 

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

Chapter 4 Trade and travelling in the fourteenth century.

In: Loughborough Monitor 13 October 1864, pg 5

Chapter IV The Feudal system oppressive to the Trading Class - No security for Person, Land, or Goods - Danger of being abroad after Curfew - Murder of William of Loughborough, in Leicester, etc. - A Specimen of a Trader's Grievance, in the case of Richard Calf, of Loughborough - Danger of Travelling on the King's Highway - A Merchant Robbed and Slain, returning from the Market - Bad state of the Roads in and about the Town - Dispute about the Repairing of Cotes' Bridges, and how settled.

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The Feudal ages are stirring times to look at through some martial romance, read in a cosy nook by a bright fire on a frosty night, but they were miserable enough to live in, unless one were a mighty baron or a doughty retainer. The castles were bold, picturesque-looking objects, no doubt; the jousts and tourneys [1], excellent; adventures, daring and plentiful enough; and the women handsome, the men stalwart, the children hardy; but for all that it was not an agreeable period for an honest man to live in.

Provisions were cheap and pretty plentiful, and a man could build his own house, spin his own garments, grow his own corn, kill his own cattle, and brew his own beer if he pleased, subject to a few manorial imposts. And yet, being an honest man, he would find it a queerish age that he had been born into, and had to do a man's work in. "Honesty is the best policy," was a maxim as yet undiscovered. Many men tried hard to discover it, and failed. Indeed, how trade, excepting that concerned with eating and drinking, ever managed to struggle into a respectable existence at all in these days, is a puzzle to all our political economy. The trader did somehow vindicate his right to be, in this bickering Barondom [2], and we admire him for it, but he had to submit to robbery, spoliation, violence, and occasional incarceration for his imprudence. Now and then he thrived, and got patronised by the warriors, as a man who ought to have been a jolly baron but had missed his vocation. In the small towns this was painfully evident, but in larger ones it was not so bad. In fact, a burgess [3], who carried a short sword with him, as a final piece of constitutional law, was not a man to be spirited away at the sight of a suit of mail and a poleaxe [4].

Outside of a fortified town matters were different. A man wore side-arms just the same, but he rarely used them except to wound his neighbour in a drunken brawl. In the city, tradesmen were protected, but out of it they were treated as individuals expressly created for baronial experiments, in the spirit of that celebrated aphorism of Lord Orford's [5], which describes timber as "an excrescence on the face of the earth, placed there by Providence for the payment of (gentlemen's) debts". This may seem humour now, but was sternest fact then. Magna Charta [6] was a fine thing, but it did not cure the Barons of their injustice.

We have already hinted at one or two inconveniences resulting from this system, as to corn-grinding, market tolls, and the like. But matters did not end there, and we can never know the amount of petty tyranny our townsmen had to bear in their daily life and trade. A Loughborough tradesman of the thirteenth and fourteenth century was a happy man if he had no other grievances than those just named, and went to church in a thankful spirit, as became him, on the Sabbath Day, and sold his commodities, and reared his children honestly and well. But, unfortunately, there were others who had no honesty, and did no work, and they hung about him perpetually. After the curfew had sounded - and it is but a few years since it left off sounding - such villains stole from their hiding places and made their spoil of his property. If he ventured out of doors, they waylaid him, and if he stayed at home, they might burn him out of his house, and chuckle over his hard earnings and captured goods. If pursued, the thick forest sheltered them, and the game sustained them. It was a rare time for thieves and poachers.

No doubt the manorial Lord had some protective kind of an institution for the town in the shape of a watchman, who hung about the market cross, stamped along in thick-soled jackboots, and made weather notes, like an accomplished member of a meteorological society. But so long as the Lord himself claimed all the waifs, that is, the stolen goods, left or thrown away by the felon when pursued, his interest could not be said to be identical with that of his vassals [7] and tenants. Neither life nor property could be secure in this general lawlessness. It might be that your neighbour wanted a little more land, or a few heads of cattle, that the Lord's bailiff was short of money, or some noble baron found that his retainers were getting overfed and wanted exercise; all a man could do was to grin and bear it. We do not say there was no redress for these grievances, or that Loughborough was in any way worse off than other towns. One of the benefits derived from that local parliamentary representation which Simon de Montfort brought about, was a pretty direct communication of these evils to Parliament, and their amelioration, if possible; and as one of the Dispensers was his associate and confidant, there is good reason to suppose that, in his time at least, such evils would hardly exist. That they did, however, after his death, is easily shown by facts.

Such facts as have come down to us are not very extensive, but they suggest a great deal as to the actual conditions under which they could occur. Here is an adventure that happened to a townsman at Leicester. Now, Leicester was walled, well ruled, and garrisoned, and if such an affair could happen there, it plainly shows what a spirit of misrule would sway in a smaller town open to waste lands on every side, and with only a semblance of municipal government. The event happened in 1301, on the night of St. Stephen's. William of Loughborough was in Leicester, but whether occasionally or not, does not appear, and was proceeding, after the curfew had tolled, along the lane near to the Church of St. Martin, and had reached the Church of the Grey Friars, when he met one Adam, a groom in the service of Lady Pitchford, in company with Richard the Smith, of Leicester. No provocation or altercation ensued, yet Adam immediately drew his bow, shot William of Loughborough with a barbed arrow just above the belt, and then fled. His companion the Smith, then drew his sword, and struck the wounded man across the left hand, leaving his fingers hanging by the thumb. In a few hours the man received the last rites of the Church, and died. His wife, Hawys, who seems to have been in the town and opportunely informed of the disaster, raised the alarm at the town gates, but the murderer had already escaped, and the Smith alone was apprehended. He was taken to Warwick gaol, and there tried, but was strangely enough, acquitted. The very same year, Elias of Loughborough, with Richard of Quorndon, Alicia his wife, Walter of Langton, and William of Keythorpe, committed a robbery in Leicester, by night, upon the goods of Melicent of Quorndon, and were all tried, sentenced, and executed. Land, we have said, was also seized and appropriated, and the Parliamentary petitions enable us to record a case in which a Loughborough man was the thief. There was a bovate of land - that is, as much as an ox could plough in a year - situate in the township of Stanford, belonging to one Mabell, the sister of the grandfather of one "William, the son of William, the son of Adam, the clerk, of Stanford," which this last patriarchally designated person complained to the King, had been illegally seized upon by Robert Stier, of Loughborough, and sold to the elder Spencer, who was then Lord of the Manor of Loughborough. As the petition is on record, the complainant probably got redress, but it would be in a roundabout way.

A notable instance of how the poor merchants were experimented upon, is given us in another Parliamentary petition of one Richard Calf, a wool merchant of this place, in 1321-2. The original is in Norman-French, and so curious that we present a translation of it:

"To our Lord the King and his Council. Richard Calf, of Loughborough (Loughteburgh), merchant, showed, that on the Gules of August (August 1) last past, the Lord Ralph of Crophull came to Hemynton and Bonyngton; and the Wool of the same Richard -  which he had put in two chambers under a good lock, namely, four sacks of good Wool, of the value of XLiiii Li (£44) - he hath taken and carried away, and thereof hath done his will. And besides this, the goods and locks of the chambers aforesaid he hath broken in pieces, wrongfully, and against the peace of our Lord the King, and to the grievous damage of the afore-named Richard.

Wherefore, the same Richard prayeth to our Lord the King for his grace and a remedy, for the said Lord Ralph is 'of so great power in his country that no man can have recovery from him at the Common Law'".

We have purposely italicised the last clause of this petition; it speaks volumes. The petition was answered in the usual form - "Habeat Breve de gratia Regis" ("Let him have a brief by the King's grace"), and there can be little doubt that the issue of the trial would be in favour of the suffering merchant.

These are specimens of the indignities to which people, and especially harmless tradesmen, were liable in these remarkably "good old times," which seem so romantic in the chronicles of Froissart [8], or the novels of Scott [9], that sentimental young ladies and dreaming boys would sooner live in those days than be safe, successful, and matter-of-fact people in our own!

Travelling was not even then "a fool's paradise," as it has been called, much less a wise man's delight. One needed to have a navvy [10], a woodsman, and a couple of soldiers with one continually. Adventures with robbers were so common that any diarist would have been extremely short of materials to have made the most of the sight of half-a-dozen fierce-looking men and an arrow-stricken horse. Every wood had got stocked with banditti [11], just as every park had with game. Even the King's retainers varied their employment by a little occasional free-booting excursion for pocket-money. Before the year 1285 matters were so bad, that in that year a statute was passed, commanding that the highways leading from one market town to another should be increased in width, and that no trees or bushes likely to shelter an assailant should remain within 200 feet of the roadway. Whatever townships failed to carry out these orders were made responsible for the robberies that might be committed within their several jurisdictions. This measure might disclose an assailant, but did not much diminish the chances of robbery. It was a common practice to waylay a man returning from market with his goods, or the proceeds of his commodities.

Here is an instance. Robert of London, a mercer, had been to Loughborough market, and was returning to Leicester on the Thursday following the feast of St. Nicholas (i.e. December 13), 1322, and had proceeded as far as a part of Wanlip, then called Langdale, when he was suddenly shot at by some persons concealed near the wood, and wounded by an arrow underneath the left shoulder blade. He immediately fell to the ground, when an assailant, leaping out upon him, smote him on the head with a sword, inflicting a mortal wound. He was plundered of all his goods, and left on the road. He survived until the Monday following, when he died at his own house at Leicester, whither he had been conveyed. Thomas Fraunceys, of Ratby, John, son of Richard of London, of Quorndon, Richard Hart and Robert Duval, of Cropston, were concerned in the affair, but all of them escaped the hands of justice.

The roads were not only dangerous by reason of robbers, but by reason of their rugged unpaved condition. A ploughed field was comparatively smooth beside them. The roads were in ruts, widened and deepened year after year until they were like brooks in wet weather and ran mud. The old notion of roadmaking was, that you had only to make the sides of the road higher than the middle, and the rain would keep it in repair by washing down the gravel from the sides into the centre. This was the pre-Macadamite, concave system, [12] and had its enthusiastic believers for years, but unfortunately water was an element that would not disappear immediately it was done with, and so the traveller slipped about like a drowning man in a quicksand, only that he did not drown. And then huge blocks of stone lay about the road in the most ugly positions, and there were holes you went into before you knew what you were doing, that threatened to engulf man, horse, and waggon, for ever. Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak would have been of little use even in a civilised town.

Loughborough was no better than its fellows. Its streets were narrow, unpaved, boggy. Yea, blocks of stone as big as wheelbarrows lay about them as late as the end of last century. There were only two good through roads, the Leicester and Nottingham and the Leicester and Derby highway. Carriers went along these when they could collect goods enough, taking a good long day to reach any of the three places from Loughborough. Letters went seldom. A man did not exactly write his letters and take them himself, but he did very much like it. He must either send them by his own messenger, or wait for a passing pilgrim, whose rags sheltered him from assault. Pilgrims and minstrels were the only news-bringers, and what people found to talk about is one of those mysteries that Lord Dundreary [13] might appropriately consider past understanding. The Ashby turnpike only extended as far as Snell's Nook Gate, then called Highway End, and beyond it was an open waste. The Forest Lane Gate was about where the Woodbrook Bridge is now, and beyond that all was waste. The Meadow-lane was probably in existence, but would be nothing like so long as it is now, and all open to the fields.

The road to Nottingham appears to have been most important, and the bridges between Loughborough and Cotes the wonder of travellers. They were erected in some degree of substantiality in the second half of the thirteenth century, if not before, and probably upon piles. Very early in the fourteenth century we find that the question of their repair was agitated. A good deal of dispute was indulged in as to who ought to repair them. It was alleged that William Bosard, of Loughborough, and Robert Oseveyne, of Cotes, the keepers of the bridges, with the surrounding villages benefitted by them, Stanford, Cotes, Rempstone, and, we know not why, the Abbey of Garendon, were responsible for the proper repair of the bridges in question. This they denied.

The two bridge keepers were the representatives of the Lord of the Manor, and collected tolls upon the corn passing over it to the water-mills, but as they alone are mentioned as responsible, and not the Lord of the Manor for the time being, it is pretty clear that they paid him an annual sum for the tolls, and squeezed their profits out of their unfortunate neighbours who were obliged to take their corn to the mills or submit to unpleasant consequences. Private tolls, as we have good reason still to know over some bridges a few miles away, are very heavy affairs, and when men farmed them out like this for a living they were extremely likely to be extortionate, and probably Loughborough people were only retaliating when they said, "The bridge-keepers get more out of the bridges than anybody else; let them pay for their repairs".

The matter was sufficient to attract general attention. Probably the King was petitioned about it, as in 1322, an inquisition was held at Nottingham to settle the question. The Chartulary of Garendon Abbey fortunately preserved an account of this inquisition, or we should hardly have known of it. The inquiry was held in the presence of Lord Radulph de Neville, Lord John Sturmyn, Peter de Crete, William of Walton, and others of the King's Counsel. The whole matter was investigated by them, and the following witnesses examined upon oath:

William, Lord of Stanford, John, Lord of Rempstone, John Poutrel of Cotes, Thomas of Thorp, William, the son of Stephen of Prestwold, Robert the Juryman, of Loughborough, Thomas Marshall, Robert Pegg, of Loughborough, Robert Ingaram, of Walton, Henry Jordan of Burton, Roger Barkoff of Cotes, and Peter Herbert of Shenton. The result was they affirmed upon oath, that the said keepers, townships, and abbey ought not of themselves to repair the bridges, but that the work ought of right to be done by the free-offerings of the whole country, "as the sheaves of wheat in autumn (the tithes), the money given at the Sacrament, the various gifts and legacies of infirm folk, and the tolls asked and collected of the passengers by the bridge keepers". This toll was called ponting, from the Latin word for a bridge, and was chiefly paid by agriculturists and merchants, the clergy and the poorer peasantry being sometimes exempt. This appears to have settled the matter for some considerable time, until these and other bridges about the town were repaired out of the proceeds of the lands and tenements left by the town's great benefactor, Thomas Burton. And there can be little doubt that this inquisition shaped the proceedings of a later one in Henry VIII's time, when the charities were diverted from their originally religious uses to relieve the neighbourhood of this somewhat heavy burden.

Flooding on the A60 at Cotes Bridge, February 2020

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NOTES

[1] A tourney is a tournament

[2] on the physical territory of, or under the rule of the local baron

[3] an inhabitant, or fully-fledged citizen

[4] a poleaxe is simply a battleaxe

[5] Probably Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, 1717-1797

[6] The Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 and was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law. It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and placed limits of royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself. See: https://www.parliament.uk/magnacarta/

[7] landowners in feudal times

[8] A French-speaking poet and historian from the Low Countries

[9] Sir Walter Scott, author of such novels as ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘Waverley’

[10] a general labourer

[11] gangs of robbers or outlaws

[12] Thomas Telford was probably a supporter of the concave road surface, and John Loudon McAdam was the proponent of the layer of soil with a crust of stone atop

[13] Lord Dundreary, a good-natured, harmless aristocrat, is a character in the 1858 play ‘Our American Cousin’, which was written by Tom Taylor.

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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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