Ben Walsh [email protected] @History Ben

Ben Walsh Ben@Bwalsh.Uk.Com @History Ben

Whose history is it anyway? Finding the common people and giving them a role in the history curriculum OR ‘Packaging the People’

Historical Association Conference 2014

Ben Walsh [email protected] @History_Ben

Where are the ordinary people in the Norman Conquest?

SOURCE A School textbook (Ben Walsh, Empires and Citizens Vol 1) The ordinary people Domesday tells us a lot about the richest, most important people in society. It is not so easy to see what happened to slightly less important people under Norman rule. However, we do know about some people. For example, there was a priest in London called Regenbald. He drew up many legal documents for Edward the Confessor. He also drew up documents for William the Conqueror. This suggests that many of the ordinary officials in the government who did the day-to-day work kept their jobs after the Norman invasion. It is much more difficult to work out how the Conquest affected ordinary people in English villages. Most historians think that the Conquest did not affect them very much. Freemen, villeins and smallholders still worked their lands and their lord’s lands. The only difference was that their lords were Normans after 1066 rather than Saxons.

SOURCE B The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The king gave his land as dearly for rent as he possibly could; then came another man and offered more than the first, and the king let it go to the man who had offered more; then came a third and offered still more, and the king gave it up to the man who had offered most of all. And he did not care at all how very wrongfully the reeves got it from poor men, nor how many illegal acts they did.

SOURCE C Domesday Survey 1086 for Wath (1) and Ilkey (2), Yorkshire

SOURCE D From Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest, published 2013 Some areas of the country recovered in the years between 1066 and 1086. The average value of manors in Norfolk, for example, had risen by 38%. It would be wrong, however, to read too rosy a picture into such rises because the value of a Domesday manor was the value to its lord in rents, and there is ample evidence to indicate the new Norman lords had racked up rents to intolerably high levels …

The Normans appear to have been uniformly rapacious in pursuit of profit: elsewhere the Chronicle laments that ‘the king and his leading men were fond, yea, too fond, of avarice: they coveted gold and silver, and did not care how sinfully it was obtained’. The final question of the Domesday commissioners, as preserved in the Ely Inquest, was whether more could be taken from an estate than was currently being taken.” For this reason, where the Domesday Book shows a fall inmanorial values in areas not associated with widespread ravaging, we can be fairly certain that this was not due to leniency on the part of the landlords. In certain counties it has been shown that the sharpest falls in value coincide quite precisely with brand-new Norman lordships - the kind carved out from scratch, with no reference to previous landholding patterns, One View is that this reorganization process was so disruptive that it caused a drop in economic output. A more likely reason is that new manors had been constructed on a new model, more favourable to the lords and more oppressive for the peasantry For it is also in these counties that we witness dramatic falls in the number of free peasants. In Cambridgeshire, for example, the number of freemen plummeted fiom 900 to 177; in Bedfordshire from 700 to 90, and in Hertfordshire from 240 to 43. At the same time, we discover that the number of servile peasants has rocketed. Frequently in Domesday we find the phrase ‘he is now a villein’.

Values were only lower in these areas, it seems, because the before and after figures record different realities. Those for the pre-Conquest period had been calculated by combining the incomes of all the various English freeholders on a particular estate; the figures for 1086 by contrast, simply represented the income the new Norman lord derived in rent, having forced these former freemen into financial servitude. This was a bad bargain for the small landowners, but alter the Conquest their bargaining power was not strong. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says at one point that the Normans ‘imposed unjust tolls and did many injustices which are hard to reckon up’. The tenurial revolution, in short, had prompted a social revolution. English society in certain areas at least, was a lot less free after the Conquest than it had been before.”

Yet even as lords were driving up profits, they were paying less and less money to the king … As the reign continued, the concessions appear to have increased, so much so that by the 1085 some tenants-in-chief were paying almost no tax at all.

Wills and inventories, Tenancy agreements, Court Records etc

A list of possessions of William Lene, a villein from Walsham in Suffolk. William was killed in a fire in his barn in 1329. This record lists his belongings. 3 large brass pots; 2 brass pans; basin and jug; table with 3 benches and 1 chair. 2 oxen; 8 cows; 1 bull; 3 calves; 1 mare and 1 foal; 30 sheep; 1 sow and 4 piglets. Granary containing wheat, rye, barley, beans, peas, oats, malt. 7s 8d in money. 3 wooden barrels; 4 vats; 2 tubs. 1 plough; 1 cart with unshod wheels. 3 geese; 1 cockerel; 6 hens. 10 yards of red cloth; 1 griddle; 2 straw baskets; 2 troughs; 1 robe for William’s body; 4 linen sheets; 2 table cloths; 2 trowels; 1 mortar and pestle 12 acres of land sown with wheat

Tenancy agreement c1300 Richard Est will pay his lord one quarter of wheat in October. In November he will pay wheat, four bushels of oats and three hens. And at Christmas one cock and two hens and two pennies worth of bread. He will work one day every week ploughing his lord’s land. And he will work a second day a week mowing or reaping, or whatever other work shall be imposed on him by the lord or his bailiff At harvest time he shall work two extra days and on each of those days he works he shall find two other men to work with him at his own expense. Without his lord’s permission he will neither marry his son or daughter [to someone else], nor sell his oxen or calves, nor his horses, neither will he fell the oak or ash trees without permission from his lord. However often he brews he will give one penny to the lord.

Tenancy agreement 1386 Stephen Walker of Keteryng shall render to the lord 18 shillings yearly in four. He shall do two ploughings a year and will receive fair warning from the bailiff of when he will be needed. He shall still do week work, except that the lord will find him food and drink. At harvest time he shall reap for two days a week. On one day he shall find one man to work with him, on the second day he shall find two men. The men will be supplied with food by the lord. He shall give 4d to the lord for a horse if he decides to sell it. He shall pay a fine if he decides to marry his daughters [to someone else] and he shall pay the lord for his sons to attend school.

Medieval court records This file will help you to tackle Part 1 of the Brainwork activity on page 89

Source 1 Decision from a guild of cloth makers in King’s Lynn, Norfolk in 1258 Roger Aldith, John's son, was charged that he had twice offended against the rules of the gild: he had made a blanket which was partly of good warp [the up and down thread of a cloth] thread and partly of bad warp thread … He had his membership of the gild taken away and was expelled from the gild.

Source 2 Judgements made at the local manor court of Walsham in the year 1329. Walsham is a village in Suffolk Matilda Coppelowe, Richard Qualm and Nicholas Kembald were each fined because they did not clean out the ditch above the demesne [the lord’s land] as they promised the hayward [the official who looked after the fences on the manor] they would. William Kembald the younger was fined 12d for keeping from his lord a hen for the last two years. Alice the daughter of Robert Rede is to be placed under the control of the court because she married without permission from the lord of the manor. John Green must return to the court at another time to answer to the lord for allowing his pigs to damage the fences in the meadow. William Hawys was fined 18 shillings for demolishing a house on his land without the permission of the lord. The lord agreed that it should not be rebuilt because nobody dares live there because of thieves. The lord confirmed that William Patel, Nicolad Denys, Walter Qualm, Agnes and Alice Typetrot and Agnes Gooch should all be allowed to inherit their lands without paying a fee to the lord, because that is the custom in this manor [peasants usually did have to pay a fee to inherit their lands].

Source 3 Extract from the London Assizes (Courts) of Nuisance 1341 William de Stanesfeld, parson of St. Stephen de Walbrok complains that Geoffrey Aleyn and Maud his wife have two newly-made windows less than 16 ft. from the ground opposite their house through which their tenants can see all the private affairs of the William’s tenants and servants;

Source 4 Extract from a court case brought in York in 1399 The weavers of the city of York pointed out that King Henry III [1216-1272] granted that nobody should make dyed or striped cloth in the county of Yorkshire except them; now many foreign weavers have often made such cloth and still continue to do so, in contempt of the king, and damaging the business of the weavers of York. and that for because Geoffrey and Maud do not have a gutter, their rainwater falls upon the parson’s land; and, further, that they have two latrines so closely adjoining Stephen’s land property that the sewage penetrates and rots their timber and walls.

Having viewed the premises, the mayor and aldermen adjudge that, as far as concerns the two windows, there is not a valid complaint, but that within 40 days Geoffrey and Maud must build a stone wall 2ft. thick or an earthen wall 34 ft. thick between their two latrines and the parson’s property and repair their gutters.

Source 5 Extracts from an enquiry by royal officials into the wool trade in 1366. John Kervyng of Rotterdam … said three merchants had taken loads of wool to Rotterdam… There was, he said, a tavern in Rotterdam called 'Calais', and several others called 'France', 'England', 'Hemelrik', 'Helle'. And he said that when any merchants were in the tavern called 'Calais' and sold goods they said between themselves "now we have been in Calais".

Source 6 A law suit put before a court in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 1431 John Coyn of Bury in Suffolk and John shepherd and John Goodbody of the same town on November 14th last at Bury assaulted Axsmyth and Piers, the keepers to whom the king had trusted his ostrich. They imprisoned them for 5 days, and arrested and plucked the ostrich grievously … and openly showed him for nothing to all manner of people

1 Read through sources 1-6 and decide how they are useful to historians. If you find part of a source which tells you Highlight this section and change it to about …  What peasants had to do for their lords italic text like this  What peasants needed their lords permission bold text like this to do  The rights of peasants to inherit land underline text like this  The power of guilds bold italic text like this  International trade highlighted text like this  Entertainment a different coloured text like this

 Sanitation in medieval towns a completely different coloured text like this

2 This table might help you take your investigation further

Area of study for historians Further questions I would Evidence I would need to like to ask answer these questions What peasants had to do for their lords What peasants needed their lords permission to do The rights of peasants to inherit land The power of guilds International trade Entertainment Sanitation in medieval towns

Peasants, Profits and Early Entrepreneurs? (And what’s with all the sheep?)

http://www.norwich-market.org.uk/Medieval/wares.shtm

Cloth making areas c1400, based on tax receipts

BL Images Online http://imagesonline.bl.uk/

National Archives Image Library https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank-nationalarchives/action/viewHome Image library E 43/649 reference: Title: Receipts for duties on exported wool at Boston, Seal obverse 1 Edw III Date: 25-01-1327/24-01-1328 Receipts for money received from the collectors of customs at Boston on account of wool Catalogue context: exported: [Linc.] Exchequer, and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, and Creator: the Court of Augmentations

Chris Dyer, Making A Living in the Middle Ages, publ 2002 Livestock were kept on peasant holdings mainly for the revenue that could be obtained by selling wool, dairy produce and surplus animals. Some of the cheese and bacon, and pieces of salt beef and mutton for the wealthier peasants, went into the peasants’ larders, but most wool was destined for the commercial cloth industry, not domestic weaving. The potential for surplus is most easily demonstrated for the more pastoral regions. For example, when David Fychan of Marchros in Merioneth was assessed for the tax of 1293 (and no doubt was under-assessed) he owned four oxen which he would have used for ploughing, and also had six cows and twenty sheep. The 5oo pounds of cheese and butter that he could have expected to obtain from the cows would have been well in excess of his family’s consumption, and the cash (about 1os if he sold half of it) was needed to pay rents and taxes. Fychan’s flock of twenty sheep was fairly typical in size, and throughout Britain there were many thousands of these modest flocks, an enormous number taken together. The scale of peasant sheep-keeping can be appreciated from the total of 46,382 sacks of wool exported from English ports in 1304-5, the peak year. If each sack contained 260 fleeces, the wool came from at least I2 million animals. We can estimate that at least two-thirds of wool production for export came from peasant flocks. At East Meon in Hampshire in 1302, the lord kept I,3OO adult sheep, which in the course of the year had produced 555 lambs. In the same year, the rector of the parish collected in tithes 150 new lambs, implying that 1,500 had been born in the parish. The peasant flocks in the parish therefore contained a cumulative total of about 4,000 adult animals.

Peasant producers were stimulated by rising prices. Wool from a dozen sheep fetched about 2s in 1209. In 1302 the same quantity could be sold for almost 4s. In the same way a quarter of wheat (approximately the crop of an acre of land) was sold for 2s 7d in 1209, and 5-6s a century later. Peasants responded to market demand by changing their farming practices.

Why was the Reformation a big risk (and a massive dislocation)?

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, publ 1992 The religion of the English late Middle Ages has recently been characterized as increasingly “an occupation for the individual as well as, if not more than, the preoccupation of the community”. ln this perspective, changes in the layout of church buildings, like the introduction of pewing, are taken to indicate the growth of “introspection and non- participation” in church services.1 A vision of the replacement of corporate by private devotion, of the laity kneeling separately at Mass, conning their primers or meditational guides, or with their eyes closed in private supplication, lies behind this picture of the breakdown of that corporate Christianity which other historians have seen as the essential feature of late medieval Catholicism.

Such a line of argument begs many questions: the apparently individualistic use of devotional books, and especially primers, during church services did not necessarily isolate the reader but may well have had the opposite effect of binding the individual more tightly into the shared symbolic world of the community. But certainly among the aristocracy and higher gentry at least there were signs of a privatizing tendency, notably the growing number all over the country who secured for themselves the convenience, and the status symbol, of a private chaplain and therefore a private Mass?

Yet however real such trends may have been, the overwhelming impression left by the sources for late medieval religion in England is that of a Christianity resolutely and enthusiastically orientated towards the public and the corporate, and of a continuing sense of the value of cooperation and mutuality in seeking salvation. At its most obvious this continuing and indeed growing commitment to corporate Christianity is witnessed by the extraordinary and lavish spate of investment by lay men and women in the fabric and furnishing of their parish churches … Many of the most magnificent parish churches of the Middle ages were constructed or remodelled on a lavish scale by the devotion of late medieval men and women. Nor was this explosion confined to the wool-rich eastern counties. Maybe as many as two-thirds of all English parishes saw substantial rebuilding or alteration in the 150 years before the Reformation.

Also recommended The Use of the Church: Blisworth, Northamptonshire, on the Eve of the Reformation http://www.blisworth.org.uk/images/Barnwell/Barnwell-paper.htm

Why did people want Charles I back on the throne in 1646? http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/civilwar/g4/

Petition of Mary Baker to stop a County Committee in Kent taking her husband’s money, July 1643 (Catalogue ref: SP 19/90) The humble petition of Mary Baker Wife of Sir John Baker, Baronet Shows That in April the Committee in Kent seized the estate of Mary's husband in Kent, where his mansion house (about 40 miles from London) and all his land lies, to the value of about £2000 … Mary's husband is in very poor health, his whole estate has been seized, and so he cannot pay an extra 20th part [5%]. Yet a warrant was issued against Mary's husband to pay the rest. In truth Mary's husband is much in debt, and has at this time no means left to maintain himself, and his wife and children. …

The Georgians – another way of looking at old stagers? http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/georgians/georgianhome.html

Also compare to the same feature on the Victorians http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitize n/victorians/victorianhome.html

Abolition of Slavery

Post from Schoolhistory.co.uk http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=1682 I have found a few details in 'Staying Power, the history of Black people in Britain', by Peter Fryer, published by Pluto press, ISBN: 0861047494 on pages 209-213 about working class abolitionists and radicals … A brief summary: In 1788 over 100 petitions were sent to parliament demanding abolition and reflected the emergence of w/c radicals such as Thomas Cooper and Thomas Walker, both from Manchester. This was the first time that mass opposition to slavery had been expressed - over 10,000 people in Manchester signed the first petitions. In 1792 another petition from Manchester was signed by over 20,000 people, which is incredible when you consider that the population of the town at that time was only 75,000. Opposition to slavery was central to radical beliefs - Olaudah Equiano was known to have stayed in the house of Thomas Hardy, chief founder of the radical London Corresponding Society and was a member of the group. There was a great fear from the ruling classes of the new radical, anti slavery groups and this was summed up by one noble who said 'The idea of abolishing the slave trade is connected with the levelling system and the rights of man ... What does the abolition of the slave trade mean more or less in effect, than liberty and equality?' radicals and abolitionists were therefore branded as agents of the French revolution and William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson were called 'the Jacobins of England'. Sheffield Radicals organised their biggest ever mass meeting in April 1794 attended by 1000s of artisan cutlers and called for the emancipation of black slaves as well as the end of the slave trade; 'Wishing to be rid of the weight of oppression under which we groan ... we are induced to compassionate those who groan also ... (as) no compromise can be made between Freedom and Tyranny ... (there should be) a total Emancipation of the Negro Slaves.'

From UK National Archives http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/abolition.htm Recent studies show that, in addition to the more well-known abolitionists Mary Birkett, Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft, a considerable body of working and middle-class women in Britain were involved in the campaign from the very early stages. These White women spoke out against the slave trade, boycotted slave-grown produce and wrote anti-slave trade verses to raise awareness of the violation of family life under slavery. The strength of their support for the campaign can also be gauged through their subscriptions to the Abolition Society; as the historian Clare Midgley reveals, 10% of the 1787-8 subscribers were women. Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter and abolitionist, produced a ceramic cameo of a kneeling male slave in chains with the slogan 'Am I not a Man and a Brother?'. Later, women campaigners secured production of a similar ceramic brooch, with the caption 'Am I not a Woman and a Sister?'.

From Workers Liberty http://www.workersliberty.org/node/7936 As for the architect of aboliton, William Wilberforce, he was one of the architects of the first anti-union laws in Britain. The Combination Act of 1799 banned meetings to discuss wages and conditions and a second Act in 1800 banned strikes, union meetings or the collection of union subscriptions. As AL Morton put it in his book, A People’s History of England: “These laws were the work of [prime minister] Pitt and of his sanctimonious friend Wilberforce, whose well known sympathy for the black slave never prevented him from being the foremost apologist and champion of every act of tyranny in England, from the employment of Oliver the Spy or the illegal detention of poor prisoners in Cold Bath Fields gaol to the Peterloo massacre and the suspension of the habeas corpus.”

Liverpool MP William Roscoe speaking in debate about abolition of slave trade 1807 For whatever may be thought of the people of Liverpool, in other parts of the kingdom, I must beg leave to inform this House, that they are by no means unanimous in support of the Trade in question. A great and respectable body of the inhabitants of Liverpool, are as adverse to the Slave Trade as any other persons in these realms; and I should greatly disappoint their expectations, and their wishes, if I were not to vote for the abolition of that Trade.

What did factory reformers want?

Extract from a speech by Lord Shaftesbury in Parliament 1844 Everything runs to waste; the house and children are deserted; the wife can do nothing for her husband and family; she can neither cook, wash, repair clothes, or take care of the infants.

These households fall into dirt, discomfort, ignorance and recklessness. Females are forming various clubs and gradually gaining all those privileges of the male sex.

Fifty or sixty females, married and single, form themselves into clubs for protection, they say. In fact, they meet together, to drink, to sing and to smoke. They use the lowest, most brutal and most disgusting language imaginable.

A man came into one of these club-rooms, with a child in his arms. Come lass, said he, addressing one of the women, come home, for I cannot keep this bairn quiet, and the other I have left crying at home. To which the woman replied that she would not, for she had earned her drink

Report from The Time of a meeting of factory reformers to celebrate the passing of the 1847 Factory Act His lordship then moved … ‘That the most important consideration now for all philanthropists is how to extend the advantages which it is believed will result from this act, amongst the female factory workers, and how to encourage them in the promotion and improvement of their domestic habits, more especially the younger branches of this class of workers, and in all moral, religious and intellectual acquirements, by which alone they can be fitted to become the mothers of the future generations of this mighty nation.

Why did they all line in …..? They didn’t know or they had no choice?

What did ‘poor’ mean in the early 1900s and how far did that meaning changed in the 20th century?

Extracts from a report by the City of Bradford Medical officer on the effects of school meals 1907 (PRO ref: ED 50/8)

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/britain1906to1918/g2/cs2/g2cs2s4b.htm

Thanks to JCS Online Resources for access to Daily Mail Archive http://www.jcsonlineresources.org/

Resources from the UK National Archives / University of Sussex Project on Household Budgets http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/cpd/sussex-teacher-scholar-resources.htm

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/cpd/poverty-in-1900s.htm

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/cpd/1950s-age-of-affluence.htm

Grace Golden https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank- nationalarchives/action/quickSearch?keywords=grace+golden

What did people write about in their letters to Churchill?

Churchill Archive www.churchillarchive.com

Postwar Britain

Extracts from the People’s History Museum Manchester http://www.phm.org.uk/

20 http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10082.html

Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century Francisco Bethencourt

Hardcover | 2014 | $39.50 / £27.95 | ISBN: 9780691155265 464 pp. | 8 x 10 | 73 halftones. 18 maps. | Shopping Cart

eBook | ISBN: 9781400848416 | Our eBook editions are available from these online vendors

Groundbeaking in its global and historical scope, Racisms is the first comprehensive history of racism, from the Crusades to the twentieth century. Demonstrating that there is not one continuous tradition of racism in the West, distinguished historian Francisco Bethencourt shows that racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions. In this richly illustrated book, Bethencourt argues that in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources.

Bethencourt focuses on the Western world, but opens comparative views on ethnic discrimination and segregation in Asia and Africa. He looks at different forms of racism, particularly against New Christians and Moriscos in Iberia, black slaves and freedmen in colonial and postcolonial environments, Native Americans, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Jews in modern Europe. Exploring instances of enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing, Bethencourt reflects on genocide and the persecution of ethnicities in

twentieth-century Europe and Anatolia. These cases are compared to the genocide of the Herero and Tutsi in Africa, and ethnic discrimination in Japan, China, and India. Bethencourt analyzes how practices of discrimination and segregation from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were defended, and he systematically integrates visual culture into his investigation.

Moving away from ideas of linear or innate racism, this is a major interdisciplinary work that recasts our understanding of interethnic relations.

Francisco Bethencourt is the Charles Boxer Professor of History at King's College London. He is the author of The Inquisition and the coeditor of Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, and Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World. He has served as director of the Gulbenkian Cultural Center in Paris (1999-2004) and the National Library of Portugal (1996-1998).