Festive Culture in Pre-Reformation Rural Suffolk
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Festive Culture in Pre-Reformation Rural Suffolk by Katharine Louise Jewell A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia November 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This thesis is a study of the relationship between festive culture and rural communities in the pre-Reformation period. Using a wide range of evidence, both material and documentary, it uses the county of Suffolk as a case-study. This thesis argues against the prevailing view that festive culture constituted a distinct break from everyday life. It demonstrates that festive culture was an important part of the quotidian working routine and, as such, takes as its starting point evidence of festivity rooted in everyday practices, much of which has never been studied in detail before. This study argues for consideration of the commerciality of festive culture since a large proportion of the evidence is, necessarily, of a financial nature, and it proposes a new methodology for examining the place and function of festivity in pre-Reformation communities. The first four chapters survey a wide range of pre-Reformation festive behaviour, exploring its organizational and economic significance, its relationship to the landscape, and its impact on personal possessions. The last two chapters redress the concept of festive culture as entertainment, and festive culture as carnival. They argue that these expressions of festive culture are just as important to everyday livelihoods as they are a break from the working routine. 2 Contents List of Figures 7 List of Appendices 8 Abbreviations 9 Introduction 10 • Introduction: Festive Culture 10 • Previous Studies 14 • Suffolk in the pre-Reformation Period 19 • The legal landscape of Suffolk 28 • Community 32 • Structure of the thesis 34 Chapter 1: Those that work whilst others play: the organization of festive culture 38 • Churchwarden s 39 • Gatherings 42 • Ales 45 • Games 50 • Women in Games and Ales 53 • Funerals and Anniversaries 56 • Conclusion 64 3 Chapter 2: Festive Culture and the Landscape 67 • Reverence of the Landscape 68 • Rogationtide 71 • Fertility Festivals 81 • Processions 86 • Conclusion 90 Chapter 3: Pilgrimage 92 • Motivation 93 • Bury St Edmunds 100 • Woolpit 102 • Local Pilgrimage 106 • Provision for pilgrims 108 • Rural Suffolk parishioners and European pilgrimage 111 • Conclusion 126 Chapter 4: Use of Objects in Festive Culture 129 • Transubstantiation 130 • Everyday Objects as part of Religious Ritual 135 • Reliquaries 139 • Jewellery 146 • Clothing 150 • Drama 155 4 • Conclusion 160 Chapter 5: Festive Culture as Entertainment 163 • Seasonal Manorial entertainments 164 • Church Ales and Parish Drama 175 • Sport 186 • Conclusion 192 Chapter 6: Carnival and the carnivalesque 195 • European Carnival 196 • Shrovetide and the carnivalesque 199 • Disguisings 203 • Drama and carnival 213 • Sport and carnival 222 • Conclusion 226 Conclusion 228 • Festive Culture and Communities 228 • Festive Culture and Individuals 230 • The Commerciality of Festive Culture 232 • The Ambivalence of Festival 233 • Where Next? 234 5 Appendix: Provision and Costs for sailings from Southwold 238 Bibliography 242 Image Credits 262 6 List of Figures 1: Woollen Broadcloth Weaving Parishes 22 2: Linen Weaving Parishes 23 3: Number of Taxpayers, 1524 24 4: Routes across Blything Hundred 115 5: Pilgrim’s token from the shrine of Our Lady, Walsingham 125 6a and b: Ring found at Covehithe 148 7: Walberswick and Huntingfield Playing Networks 181 7 Appendix Provision and costs for sailings from Southwold 8 Abbreviations BL British Library CUP Cambridge University Press EETS Early English Texts Society ERO Essex Records Office NA National Archive NRO Norfolk Records Office OED Oxford English Dictionary OUP Oxford University Press PL The Paston Letters PSIAH Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History REED Records of Early English Drama SIAH Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History SRO(B) Suffolk Records Office, Bury St Edmunds SRO(I) Suffolk Records Office, Ipswich SRO(L) Suffolk Records Office, Lowestoft SRS Suffolk Records Society UEA University of East Anglia 9 Introduction Introduction: Festive Culture This is a study of the relationship between festive culture and the daily lives of rural communities in England, specifically the county of Suffolk, in the period leading up to the Reformation. It is important, therefore, to first specify what is actually meant here by “festive culture”. The word “festive” can be defined as “of or pertaining to a feast” and, in the Middle Ages, the word “feast” was very much associated with religious anniversaries. 1 The medieval calendar was full of days dedicated to saints and other religious holidays. These were particularly important to rural communities as they meant a total or partial abstention from work. Workers were also expected to attend matins, Mass and evensong. 2 G.C. Homans, writing on rural communities in the thirteenth century, noted that the major religious festivals signified a time of rest for agricultural workers: “Easter Week…together with Whitsun week and the twelve days of Christmas, were the villein’s three long holidays.” 3 The full definition of a feast, however, is “a religious anniversary to be observed with rejoicing”, and to describe something as festive is to depict it as “mirthful, joyous, glad, cheerful.” 4 Certainly, for pre-Reformation workers, these rest days were marked with rituals and entertainments. Some feast days were less noted for their religious observances than for their more secular rituals. St Agnes’ Eve (21 st January), for example, was a 1 OED , s.v. “festive”, “feast”. 2 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 , (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), p.42. 3 G.C. Homans, English Villages of the Thirteenth Century, (New York, 1941), p.379 in François Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage , trans. Janet Lloyd, (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), p.91. 4 OED , s.v. “feast”, “festive”. 10 time when young women sought to discover the identity of their future sweethearts. 5 Homans also noted that: “the celebration of these great feasts of the husbandman’s year fell into a single pattern. They began with a feast of the Church. There followed a week or more in which a villein was set free from working […] Then the end of the vacation and the resumption of work was marked by another festival […] a feast of the folk. This pattern is clear in the celebration of Christmas. It began with the feast of Christmas itself. There followed the twelve days of holiday, and then work began after Plow Monday.” 6 James Stokes, in his work on performance in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, has found evidence of a “rich culture” which marked religious and folk festivals. 7 His definition of performance encompasses any “mimetic, musical or ritualistic form of play used to entertain or otherwise engage an audience.” 8 These activities occurred on important dates in the liturgical and seasonal year including Christmas, Epiphany, May Day, Whitsun and harvest time. 9 David Cressy has stated that “special days called for special action” and identified a “versatile vocabulary of celebration”. 10 This vocabulary took on a multitude of forms including religious services, public processions, pageants, banquets, plays and dances. According to Cressy, “customary festive behaviour involved commensality, liberality, conviviality, and lavish 5 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars , p.13. 6 Homans, English Villages , p.379, in Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World , p.91. For more on the celebrations of Plough Monday see below: Chapter 2: Festive Culture and the Landscape. 7 James Stokes, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Lincolnshire , Vol. 2, ‘The Editorial Apparatus’, (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press and the British Library, 2009), p.530. 8 Stokes, Lincolnshire , p.530. 9 Stokes, Lincolnshire , p.405. 10 David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England , (Stroud: Sutton, 1989), p.67. 11 dispensations of alcohol.” 11 Meg Twycross in her introduction to a collection of essays on festive drama has concluded, however, that, while “festive” is something connected with a festival, it is not necessarily cheerful and celebratory. Sometimes, rituals, such as those on Good Friday, are more solemn. 12 It is important, therefore, that any study of festive culture should also consider this element. The link between festivity and ritual was further highlighted by Charles Phythian- Adams in his work on the communal year in Coventry.13 Between Christmas and the end of June, everyday life was interrupted by periods of festivity. He identified the period of the year from Christmas to the 24 th June, which could coincide with the feast of Corpus Christi, as the “ritualistic half” of the year. 14 Phythian-Adams observed that amongst other things, during this ritualistic half of the year, the citizens of Coventry took part in the burning of palms on Palm Sunday, decorated the city with foliage at summer feasts, and lit midsummer bonfires. Parish churches also dramatised Palm Sunday with the unveiling of the rood and Easter day with the resurrection from the Easter sepulchre. 15 In Coventry, the ritualistic half of the year also embraced every major public ceremony and was emphasised by processions. That on St George’s Day included a representation of the saint’s fight with the dragon, whilst no less than four processions were held on the feast of Corpus 11 Cressy, Bonfires and Bells , p.67. 12 Meg Twycross, Festive Drama: Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July, 1989 , (Cambridge: D.S.