THE BAILIFFS' MINUTE BOOK OF DUNWICH 1404-1430 SUFFOLK RECORDS SOCIETY President Sir Anthony Wagner, Clarenceux King of Arms Vice-Presidents Sir John Plumb, FBA James Campbell, FBA Chairman Dr John Blatchly GeneralEditors Norman Scarfe (post-medieval) G. H . Martin (medieval) Christopher Harper-Bill (Suffolk charters) Secretary Peter Northeast c/o Suffolk Record Office County Hall, Ipswich, Suffolk IP4 2JS THE BAILIFFS' MINUTE BOOK OF DUNWICH 1404-1430 Edited by MARK BAILEY Prepared from a transcription by RICHARD ALLNUTT The Boydell Press Suffolk Records Society VOLUME XXXIV Editorial matter and translation © Mark Bailey 1992 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner A Suffolk Records Society publication First published 1992 by The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604, USA ISBN O 85115 306 2 Issued to subscribing members for the year 1991-92 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Bailiffs' Minute Book of Dunwich, 1404-30. - (Suffolk Records Society Series;Vol.34) I. Bailey, Mark II. Allnutt, Richard III. Series 942.646 ISBN 0-85115-306-2 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984 Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION Topography 1 Administration and Government 4 Legal and Parliamentary Representation 9 Disputes with Blythburgh/Walberswick 11 Fishing 15 Trade and Town Life 19 THE BAILIFFS' MINUTE BOOK OF DUNWICH 23 Map of Dunwich in 1400 24 Note on Editing Style and Format 25 APPENDICES A. Glossary of Terms used in the Minute Book 144 B. Bailiffs of Dunwich 1403-1430 146 C. Catalogue of Dunwich documents, 1400-1450 147 Index 148 Abbreviations B.L. British Library C.P.R . Calendar of the Patent Rolls C.C.R. Calendar of the Close Rolls C.Ch.R Calendar of the Charter Rolls C.F.R. Calendar of the Fine Rolls I.P.M. Inquisitions Post Mortem P.R.O. Public Record Office (Chancery Lane) S.R.O. (I) Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich branch) Acknowledgements History should be a passion as well as a discipline, and medieval Dunwich allures and impassions more readily than many historical subjects. Thus I am especially grateful to John Ridgard and John Blatchly who first guided me towards the Minute Book. Passions, of course, require some financial indulgence, and for this I am indebted to the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Ormonde Pickard read an early draft of the introduction, and his insights, derived from a deep knowledge of early modern Dunwich, were highly instructive . Duncan Bythell's suggestions improved the flow of the narrative, and he also encouraged me to write the section on Trade and Town Life. Ted Powell kindly answered my queries about legal procedures in the early fifteenth century. Any student of medieval urban history would benefit from Richard Britnell's masterly study of Colchester, which served as a constant source of reference during this research . He has also helped me to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding Dunwich's trading regulations and financial commit­ ments . When the Latin text of the Minute Book proved intractable, Christopher Brooke , David Clements and John Ridgard offered solutions. Interpretation of the local fishing terms which litter the Book depended largely upon the expertise of David Butcher, who was a ready and enthusiastic correspondent. Phillip Judge converted my illegible sketches into an impressive map of the town. My wife, Julie, has endured innumerable visits to Dunwich, and patiently laboured over the proofs and index. David Dymond, for the Suffolk Records Society, read the final draft and made numerous editorial improvements. The volume would be much poorer without the generosity of all these people. The usual disclaimers apply. The publication of this volume is largely attributable to Richard Allnutt. After his retirement from the Civil Service, he returned to Ipswich and secured part-time work in the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich Branch . In the early 1980s, Allnutt taught himself to read medieval Latin , and in his spare time transcribed the Minute Book onto computer disk. In 1984 he first approached officers of the Suffolk Records Society about the possibility of publishing the text , but died in 1987 with the task of editing scarcely begun. When I inherited Richard Allnutt's work in 1989, his fascination for medieval Dunwich was everywhere apparent. After carefully re-checking against the original manu­ script, I was deeply impressed by the quality of his transcription. Furthermore, he had located the contemporary Dunwich material in the British Library and briefly noted their contents. He had composed lists of Dunwich town officers in the early fifteenth century, and compiled a glossary of fishing terms with the help of David Butcher. The final text, introduction, and all of the editing is my work and responsibility. It is my hope that these meet the standards Richard Allnutt set for himself . The volume is dedicated to his memory. Mark Bailey, The Ship Inn, Dunwich, April 1992 Introduction Dunwich is so enveloped in the halo of traditionary splendour that he who ventures to elucidate its history . must exercise unusual caution, lest he be misled by imaginary light. Alfred Suckling The history of the Suffolk coastal town of Dunwich needs little introduction. Once one of medieval England's wealthiest ports, it has succumbed to a relentlessly encroaching sea and is now reduced to little more than a hamlet . Yet for all the forlorn beauty of modern Dunwich, and for all the legend and folklore associated with its name, there has been limited academic research into the economic, social and political history of the medieval town. In part, this is due to an obsession with Suckling's 'traditionary splendour', but it also owes something to the sparse and fragmented nature of the town's own archives. It is significant that much of the work which has been undertaken on medieval Dunwich draws largely upon the fiscal and legal records of the Crown. This translation of the Bailiffs' Minute Book of Dunwich presents an opportunity to fill this gap in our scholarship, and to consider Dunwich from the perspective of its own borough records . The Minute Book is the only substantial medieval document to have survived from the town's own archive , although its existence was not widely known until recently . It was still in the town's possession in 1848 but was not listed in Copinger's catalogue of Suffolk manuscripts, whose Dunwich section is otherwise extensive. 1 It was probably removed from the archives soon after the borough was disbanded in 1886, and has since been secreted in private hands. First deposited at the Suffolk Record Office(Ipswich Branch) in 1982, it was then purchased from its owner in 1989. It is written in clear early fifteenth-century handwriting with late sixteenth­ century pagination. One of the scribes was himself a burgess of Dunwich (page 90). TOPOGRAPHY An Anglo-Saxon settlement of some importance, Dunwich grew rapidly after the Norman Conquest and by the late twelfth century it was one of England's largest ports after London and Bristol, paying an annual fee-farm of £108 to the Crown. Thereafter a number of violent marine incursions accelerated Dunwich's decline, so that by the early sixteenth century it did not even rate in 1 A. Suckling, History and Antiquities of Suffolk, ii, (London, 1848), p. 260; W. A. Copinger, The County of Suffolk. Being Materials for the History of Suffolk, five vols., (London, 1904-5), pp. 256-72. Introduction the top fifty English towns. 2 The Minute Book itself makes only one indirect reference to sea storms. In 1408 six men were hired to maintain a nocturnal watch over the harbour 'after digging the ditches' (page 28) - presumably after sea-defences had been hastily constructed against the rising spring tides. This isolated reference implies that there were no serious inundations during the early fifteenth century, which would strengthen the argument that medieval Dunwich suffered its greatest losses to the sea in the seventy-five years before the Black Death, a period of unusual storm activity in the North Sea.3 The most dramatic disappearance ofland and property occurred in the ferocious storms of 1286-8, 1328, and the 1330s. Indeed, after 1286-8 the original harbour mouth at Dunwich was periodically blocked by sand and shingle, and then irredeemably in 1328. During the storms of the 1280s the sea had diverted the river Blyth to a new haven opposite the up-river port ofWalberswick, but it was shallower than the original and therefore more dangerous to shipping. The deterioration of the harbour was 'an incurable wound', for with the deep-water haven went Dunwich's wealth and importance. Marine incursions were not the only threat to Dunwich's prosperity during the fourteenth century. The Black Death reached East Anglia in the early spring of 1349, and many of the region's ports were severely affiicted. No direct evidence survives, but it seems likely that in 1349 Dunwich lost at least a third of its already diminishing population, and suffered further losses in the epidemics of 1361, 1369 and 1375. Edward Ill's government accepted Dunwich's complaints that its losses in 1349 seriously undermined the town's ability to meet royal tax demands, a rare concession which could only reflect genuine difficulties.