The First General Entry Book of the City of Salisbury 1387-1452
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Wiltshire Record Society (formerly the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society) VOLUME 54 FOR THEYEAR 1998 Impression of 500 copies ‘K ‘, _*%<< ,. v iF saw“- ~ ; ../Y. ~ _,, 0 §_ § . ~ sf‘ as 34 48*-"mu Siizs "ii-qawf-ti-.4""”'" - .,,.,( »~"" 1.» .. °*";’_””" -5‘ Qfixl‘? ~.‘:N\y-ab» - ‘Jr (#i'IHl»‘§ QM m’Q,;;§‘ F‘ ,' ~:<:'~!-I-v--»\l $4uiw>.. ‘-aw. ‘J!’-95$-t_'§"é"=-l_“§=q 3 $8 - A1,): 4"“ ,~; easily’ q”I~;¥-6‘ tan!’ -» . W Q. <\~‘l‘/"*»~‘*”""“** *7 ' ‘*3 ‘$4 ta-~= ~ = ,,y_- r avg»-~¢~4 Detail from 107 (see 317). The names qf Salisbury archers (and sums paid to them) who were sent to resist the siege qf Calais in 1436. Note the typical water damage to text above this entry. THE FIRST GENERAL ENTRY BOOK OF THE CITY OF SALISBURY 1387-1452 EDITED BY [U¥JH)I{.CHKRl{ University of South Florida, St. Petersbmfg TROVI/BRIDGE 2001 ©Wi1tshire Record Society, 2001 c/0 Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, Bythesea R0ad,Trowbridge BA14 SBS ISBN O 901333 31 X Typeset by john Chandler Produced for the Society by Salisbury Printing Company Ltd, Salisbury Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS Preface vii Abbreviations V111 INTRODUCTION ix The Manuscript ix Medieval Salisbury xi The Bishops Control of the City xi The Citizen Body xiv Civic Ojficers xvii The Business of the Assembly xxv Editorial Method xxx Collation of the Manuscript xxxi Mayors of Salisbury 1380-1453 xxxiii Glossary xxxvi THE FIRST GENERAL ENTRY BOOK OF THE CITY OF SALISBURY 1 INDEX OF PERSONS 249 INDEX OF PLACES AND SUBJECTS 295 List of Members 307 List of Publications 315 PREFACE The Wiltshire Record Society acknowledges with gratitude the formal permission to publish this manuscript of Salisbury District Council, its owner. Professor Carr wishes to thank the University of South Florida for supporting his efforts through a Faculty Research Enhancement Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, a Research and Creative Scholarship grant from the Research Council, and a semester ofrelease time from teaching responsibilities at the St. Petersburg Campus. He acknowledges too the Travel to Collections grant provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.The editors of the VViltshire/lrehaeological and Natural History Magazine and Southern History have kindly allowed material which originally appeared in those journals to be used in the introduction to this volume. Professor Carr and the Society are grateful to the staff of the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Ofiice inTrowbridge, who not only provided hospitality and kindness while the manuscript was consulted there, but also permitted its temporary transfer on two occasions to London, to the University of London Institute of Historical Research and to the British Library. The assistance of the staff of each institute is also gratefully acknowledged. The translation and interpretation of this difficult manuscript have been immeasurably improved by the painstaking labour of Professor Christopher Elrington, the President of the Wiltshire Record Society, who has not only examined the text in its entirety, but has also prepared the index of persons, and contributed to the index of places and subjects and the introduction. I have assisted with the indexing and a limited amount of checking, with which I acknowledge the help of Steven Hobbs of the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office. Professor Carr wishes to place on record the editorial help and encouragement of Christopher and myself, and our friendship shown to him during his visits to England. His principal debt, however, is to his wife, Guna, who has patiently encouraged him throughout the quarter of a century consumed by this project.\X/hile she took to referring to the manuscript as ‘the other Mrs. Carr,’ her patience with and faith in him have sustained his effort. ]OHN CHANDLER ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations have been used in the citation of books and articles. Ballard, British British Borough Charters, 1042—1216, ed. A. Ballard (Cambridge, Borough Charters 1913) Carr, 1990 David R. Carr,‘The Problem ofUrban Patriciates: Office Holders in Fifteenth Century Salisbury’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. 83 (1990), 118-35 Carr, 1997 David R. Carr, ‘From Pollution to Prostitution: Supervising the Citizens of Fifteenth-Century Salisbury’, Southern History, vol. 19 (1997), 24-41 Chandler, Endless john Chandler, Endless Street: a History of Salisbury and its People Street (Salisbury, 1983) H.M.C. Var. Coll. IV Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Various Collections, I/ol. IV (1-I.M.S.O. 1907) Hatcher Robert Benson and Henry Hatcher, Old and New Sarurn, or Salisbury (London, 1843, published as part of Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s History of Modern Wiltshire) Sarurn Charters Charters and Documents Illustrating the History of the Cathedral, City, and Diocese of Salisbury in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, ed.W H. Rich-Jones andW D. Macray (Rolls Series, London, 1891) Street Fanny Street,‘The Relations of the Bishops and the Citizens of Salisbury (New Sarum) between 1225 and 1612’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. 39 (1916), 185-257, 319—67 VCH I/Vilts. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Wiltshire, vols. iii (1956), iv (1959), v (1957), vi (1962) Wilts. Borough List qfWiltshire Borough Records earlier in date than 1836, ed. Records Maurice Rathbone (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Records Branch, vol. v, 1951) INTRODUCTION The first extant minute-book or general Entry Book of the city of New Salisbury relates to the years 1387-1452. It contains valuable and unique information about the administration and the social and economic life of the city.While it is a formal record of meetings of the citizens, with long lists of those attending the meetings and of those assessed for taxes, it illuminates many facets of the city’s history. Interspersed among the records ofmeetings are miscellaneous memoranda, notes, and documents related to the business of the meetings. THE MANUSCRIPT The book is the first of a series of eight which runs to 1836, and it was traditionally known as ‘Ledger A’. It is one ofthe earliest such minute-books for an English town. It was formerly kept in the Council House at the east end of the market place, and it was badly damaged by water used to extinguish the fire which damaged that building in 1780.‘ It was transferred from the Salisbury District Council muniment room at Bourne Hill, Salisbury, to the \X/iltshire (now\X/iltshire and Swindon) Record Office atT1owbridge about 1981, and was given the call number WRO G23/1/1.The volume consists of 163 paper folios, measuring approximately 40cm high by 28cm wide, and numerous interfoliated sheets, usually of parchment but occasionally also of paper. All the folio sheets, though used over a period of 65 years, have the same watermark, the outline of a steeply-roofed church surmounted by a simple Latin cross.The precise origin of the paper has not been traced,but it is most likely to have been imported from the continent, perhaps France, as a single shipment? A local mercer trading through Southampton could have been the supplier. The manuscript was repaired and rebound at the Public Record Office in London in 1951, perhaps at the instigation of Dr A. E.]. Hollaender, who in 1949 listed and numbered the city’s accumulated records?’ No record appears to survive at either the Public Record Office or the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office of the repair and rebinding, which seems to have retained the arrangement of an earlier rebinding made, apparently, about 1907. 1 Wilts. Borough Records, 69; VCH Wilts. vi. 87. 2 British paper production began only in the late fifteenth century, and regular production did not occur for another century beyond that. Mercers came to control the importation of paper by the mid fifteenth century: Richard L. Hills, Papermaking in Britain, 1488-1988: A Short History (London, 1988); F. H. Norris, Paper and Paper Making (London, 1952). 3 Wilts. Borough Records, 68. x INTRODUCTION The volume is made up of twelve gatherings, with two additional gatherings, one at the front and one at the back, each offour modern leaves glued to a guard round the adjoining gathering. The collation of the volume is set out below, on pages xxxi- xxxiii, where each folio that is not marked as an insertion or as ‘single’ is one halfofone of the double leaves that form the gathering. Four of the gatherings are each of sixteen folios (eight double leaves), two are each of fourteen folios (seven double leaves), and four others are variously of ten, nineteen, seventeen and fifteen folios, those with odd numbers of folios containing just one single leaf. The last two gatherings, of four and seven folios, each contain only one double leaf. Many smaller pieces of parchment or paper have been sown into the book, including royal writs which are shown by internal evidence to have been inserted when the manuscript was being compiled. The gatherings are in general in chronological order, following the dates which are recorded on them or may be inferred, and accord with the different enumerations of the folios as described below. Meetings in the periodjuly to December 1393 (194- 200) appear out oforder on folios 63v—66 between two of November 1418 (193, 202) on folios 62v and 67, the recto offolio 63 being blank and the lower part the recto of folio 66 and the verso ofthe same folio being used for a rental of 1419 (201); the most likely explanation is that the scribe who entered the meeting of 11 ]uly 1393 began on a new page, the verso ofthe third folio in the gathering, leaving blank pages for meetings that had not been recorded, that when the record was resumed in or after_]anuary 1393 the scribe went back to the first gathering, and that later, in February 1417 (174, with which folio 61 and gatheringV begins), the partly used gathering containing the record of the meetings of 1393 was taken back into use.