Eavesdroppers

A guest post by Dr George Redmonds, author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary.

If I were accused of eavesdropping I might be mildly embarrassed but I would certainly not expect to

be punished for it. The truth is that we use the word loosely these days, not stopping to consider that the eavesdropper was once the scourge of the local community – a person who lurked at night under the eaves of a neighbour’s house in the hope of gathering titbits of gossip that could then be turned to advantage. The serious nature of the misdemeanour is clear from definitions in Law dictionaries, one of which describes the eavesdropper as a person who ‘hearkens after discourse … to frame slanders and mischievous tales’.

Entry on Eaves-droppers from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1768.

There is no record of just when eavesdropping started to be considered as an offence but in 1377, in Methley near Wakefield, Matilda Seamster was indicted at the manor court for listening under the walls of her neighbours’ houses at night and ‘narrating idle speeches’. That entry was in Latin, so the word ‘eavesdropper’ was not used but in Nottingham, in 1487, a jury found that Henry Rowley was a man who wandered around the village during the hours of darkness, and they indicted him as a common evys-dropper.

In Yorkshire it was more usual for the offender to be called an ‘eavesing dropper’ or an ‘easing dropper’ and a few early examples are found in the court rolls. In 1577, for example, Elizabeth Banke of Acomb, a village near York, was ordered to kepe hir house in the neight season and not be an esinge dropper; in Rastrick, in 1664, Elizabeth Dyson was presented for standeing under the ewse of the house of Joseph Goodheire as an ewseing dropper and was fined 10 shillings.

St Peter the Little, York today - now called Peter Lane

It is not difficult to see how the word had acquired its meaning. In Old English the noun ‘eavesdrop’ (yfesdrype) referred originally to the water that dripped, or dropped, from the eaves of a house, but from that it came to mean the edge of the roof itself. In 1338, the sale of a house in York, in the narrow lane called St Peter the Little, required the parties concerned to agree about the space they would need should repairs or rebuilding be necessary. Two English words that were included for greater clarity were gettes and efsdropes, that is to say the ‘jetties’ or overhanging upper storeys and the ‘eavesdrops’ or projecting parts of the roofs.

The Shambles, York
showing jetties and eavesdrops

Clearly, both of these affected the space available between the buildings at ground level and that could be a problem in narrow town streets – like the Shambles in York. As a consequence it became customary to restrict a person from building right up to the edge of his land, lest the water dripping from his eaves should cause a problem. That custom appears to be implicit in a Kent charter dated 868 where the word ‘yfæs drypæ’ is on record for the first time. It was in the space between the house wall and the ‘eavesdrip’ that our more inquisitive ancestors found shelter and were privy to a neighbour’s secrets. 

Etymologically, the Old English word ‘efes’ was actually singular but the final –s has been mistaken for a plural and that is how we interpret ‘eaves’ now. When John Tyndall wrote in 1872 that ‘water trickles to the eave and then drops down’ he was employing what is called a ‘back formation’ – as we do when we use the word ‘pea’ and not ‘pease’.



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Edit 25/01/2019 The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is now available online at yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk

A Yule... Clog?

"Wassail drink were allus best, when o'er a yule-clog boiled"

Illustration of people collecting a Yule log from Chambers Book of Days (1864), p.734. 

I think I can safely assume that any Brit, at least, reading this blog will be familiar with the concept of a Yule log at Christmas. These days, it probably takes the form of a delicious swiss roll coated in milk chocolate. However historically, in Yorkshire and further north into Scotland, the Yule log was more usually termed a Yule clog. Nothing to do with footwear - a clog was originally any substantial or roughly shaped piece of wood. This definition pre-dates the shoes by hundreds of years and in fact it’s probable that our modern day clogs take their name from the historic term for a piece of wood.

Father Christmas with a Yule log,
Illustrated London News, 23 Dec 1848

The Yule clog was burnt on the fire at Christmas and was the subject of lots of traditions and superstitions. In the East Riding, it would be brought into the house on Christmas Eve and set on the hearthrug in front of the fire. In some areas the clog was sprinkled with corn and cider, or a girl would sit on top as it was dragged inside. Each person in the house would then sit silently upon it and wish three wishes (which were sure to come true if only they were kept secret). In Swaledale, it was deemed unlucky to have to light it again after it had been begun and it shouldn’t be allowed to go out until the whole clog had burned away. However, a fragment of it must be rescued and kept as kindling to light the next year’s clog. In Ripon, the chandlers sent large mold-candles and the coopers yule clogs, which had to be large enough that it didn’t all burn away in one night. On some farms, the servants were entitled to ale with their meals as long as the Yule clog lasted.

Unsurprisingly, candles were closely associated with the yule clog. Mrs Day, a native of Swaledale, related in 1914 that

‘just before supper on Christmas Eve (where furmety is eaten), while the Yule log is burning, all other lights are put out, and the candles lit from the Yule log by the youngest person present. While they are lit, all are silent and wish. It is common practice that the wish be kept a secret. Once the candles are on the table, silence may be broken. They must be allowed to burn themselves out, and no other lights may be lit that night’.

The similarity in spelling between the Yule log and the Yule clog is interesting. You could easily be forgiven for assuming that they are closely related terms. Possibly they are, but the etymology (that is, the roots of the words, back into Old English or Norse) for both words are so obscure that it’s impossible to say with any certainty.

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Yule clog: the heavy piece of wood burnt on the fire at Christmas, in Scotland in particular.

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Alexandra Medcalf

Project Archivist, Yorkshire Historic Dictionary (@YorksDictionary)

Edit 25/01/2019 The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is now available online at yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk

Bibliography

• Brand, John, Observations on popular Antiquities, Vol. 1, 1813.
• Crowther, Jan, ‘Christmas Facts and Fancies (with particular reference to East Yorkshire), www.skeals.co.uk/Articles/Christmas%20Facts%20and%20Fancies.html, accessed 6th December 2017.
• Partridge, J. B., ‘ Folklore from Yorkshire (North Riding)’, Folklore, Vol. 25, no. 3, 1914, pp. 375-377.
• Rose, H. J., ‘Folklore Scraps’, Folklore, Vol. 34, no. 2, 1923, pp. 154-158.
• Turner, J Horsfall, Yorkshire Anthology: Ballads and Songs - Ancient and Modern, 1901.  

Strike in the Chapter House: Archbishop Neville and the Canons of Beverley

The Registers of the Archbishops of York contain a great many interesting stories - but few more dramatic than the story of what has been described as the ‘most notorious clerical strike in medieval English history’ - Archbishop Neville’s feud with the Chapter of Beverley Minster in 1381 from Register 13, f 77r -92v. 

Here, Gary Brannan, our Access Archivist, takes us through this fascinating period - a dispute that eventually resulted in deep divisions between clergy, church and state.

For stories from this (and other) Archbishops’ Registers, see http://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk

It is the 2nd March, 1381.

A messenger arrives at the heavy doors of the Chapter House of Beverley Minster. He has come the short distance from the Archbishop's Manor in Beverley to bring the news that the Archbishop of York - Alexander Neville (c.1332-1392) - intended to visit the Chapter House of Beverley to undertake a Visitation of the Chapter, sometime around Lady Day (25th March). The Canons - and other clergy - were ordered to appear in person. The Archbishop had been busy in this regard, and had already appointed Roger de Pickering as his judicial assessor, and John Stane of Beverley - now at the door with the order - as his official runner and messenger.

The Chapter House, Beverley Minster

To say that this, relatively normal, procedure caused outrage amongst the Chapter understates things greatly. By the 20th of March, an official appeal had been sent to his Holiness Pope Urban VI appealing this jurisdiction. In the appeal, the Chapter set out their many rights and privileges that they said existed over the Archbishop. For 60 years or more, they argued, they had run and governed themselves, and had managed their own issues of discipline and correction and that, anyway, they were all good natured and peaceful men, undertaking their duties lawfully, and that the Archbishop knew this, too. They feared, they said, the Archbishop's’ use of his power, and that the Archbishop's’ argument that he had a seat in the Chapter may be true, but that he had no official power such as a vote there. 

The Chapter threw themselves on the mercy of the Papal Court, desperate not to be subject to the Archbishop. The Archbishop was, as one could expect, having precisely none of this, and the footnotes and annotations by the Archbishop give a very rare insight into the fury of a prelate scorned. In a section describing the past use of rights in the church, the Archbishop writes ‘Careful! This story is false!’. 

'Careful, this story is false!'

Just on the opposite side of the page, next to a section explaining that the Archbishop had usually been absent from Beverley and never laid claim to a Canonry there, the Archbishop furiously responds “And wrongly - consequently, this Archbishop will purge the negligence of his predecessors’.

'And wrongly, consequently, this Archbishop will purge the negligence of his predecessors'

In an appeal from Richard Ravenser, Archdeacon of Lincoln and Canon of Beverley, he notes a sarcastic ‘Show your authority’. Later, when explaining how the Archbishop was a mortal enemy of his, the Archbishop writes ‘ Yet your messenger came to the Archbishop with this writing and the archbishop asked him to dinner as he would have invited you if you had come’. Others complained of the many occasions the Archbishop had exceeded his authority - going to the place behind the altar, once citing the executors of Richard Kylling to appear; the same with the executors of Robert of Beverley; and wickedly made Margery, wife of Adam Cook of Beverley purge herself for her wicked crimes.

'Yet your messenger came to the Archbishop with this writing and
the Archbishop asked him to dinner as he would have invited you if you had come'

The notices of visitation were affixed to the seat of the Chapter House on the 26th March (the day after Lady Day). The names of 47 priests were cited to be present- but only 3 appeared. When asked where the rest were, he was told they were outsude, but were scared to appear because of the Canons of the Minster, and so they left. The Archbishop angrily demanded their return. The day after, only another four appeared. Now furious, the Archbishop demanded to know why they should not all be excommunicated. 

By now, it was the 5th April, and only another four vicars had appeared, the rest having left. They were summarily excommunicated. But now, who could undertake services? The Archbishop went to Matins - the evening service - on the 8th April, and was so saddened at the fact that the lack of priests meant there could basically be no adequate service, he called for priests trained in serving and chanting to be urgently sent from York to take services in place of the excommunicated priests.

Register 13, showing the Beverley visitation

And at this point - it got serious.

On the 21st April, letters were received from the King, Richard II. In these, he delicately explained that, actually, Beverley’s independence came from the time of his ancestor, King Athelstan. Under pressure to appeal to Rome but worried that this would ‘take more money out of the Kingdom’, the Archbishop was commanded to appear before the King before St George's day to settle the matter. The matter was settled on the 11th May - with a slight whimper as it was found the Archbishops’ Counsel did not have the full authority to represent him, the visitation was therefore ordered to be formally suspended.

The Archbishop was outraged - he notes in the margin that 'It is not the business of the temporal to interfere with the spiritual court' and that 'the request is not just and is therefore not granted'.

'the request is not just and is therefore not granted'

In this, the Canons of Beverley had won a significant battle with York over their independence. Beverley was not visited again as a result, though the Archbishop kept a Manor close by, just in case, and was able to visit the other churches in Beverley - all while the Canons no doubt kept a close eye on his comings and goings.

For Neville, the feud with Beverley was a marker of his obsession with local clerical issues, and also a sign of how his strategic decision making with marr his future. Neville became closely involved with the inner retinue of Richard II. Caught in the maelstrom of Richard's downfall, Neville found himself charged with treason in 1388 after being caught off Tynemouth while attempting a clandestine crossing of the North Sea. Spared execution, he finished his days in Leuven in the Netherlands as a lowly parish priest in 1392.

BIA, YDA/Abp Reg 13, available via <http://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk>, accessed 29/03/17

‘Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book of the Collegiate Church of St. John of Beverley’, A F Leach, Surtees Society Vol 108 (1903)

‘Alexander Neville’, Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19922>, accessed 29/03/17

Image: ‘Beverley Minster’ Steve Cadman, CC-BY-NC-SA, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/7171749305>, accessed 29/03/17

Present and Future Consent: proving marriage in fourteenth-century Yorkshire

If, like me, you’ve been enjoying BBC4’s Medieval Lives, you will have been fascinated by the recent episode on Marriage. The idea that a marriage in the Middle Ages could be contracted and considered valid on the strength of a few words of consent, often spoken in private and/or under pressure from one’s family or friends, is one that’s alien and disconcerting to modern western sensibilities. Much of the evidence for these practices comes, as Helen Castor showed, from the records of the church courts which, amongst many other things, dealt with proving and enforcing marriage contracts, annulling invalid marriages and punishing adultery. Here at the Borthwick we hold the papers relating to around 15,000 cases pleaded before the diocesan courts of York between 1300 and 1858, the largest such archive in the country. Just over 1500 of those are matrimonial and of those around 200 come from the period 1300-1500 – there are well over 600 medieval causes in total. All of these papers have recently been digitised and indexed in a project run by the Universities of York and Sheffield and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Anyone can now search the database of about a million instances of personal names, over 5000 places mainly in Yorkshire but spread as far afield as Sweden, America and Russia, and an almost endless variety of subjects. Scans of the papers are also available on the University of York 'Discover' digital library.  The Church Courts from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century had jurisdiction over a wide variety of business including matrimony, defamation, tithe, probate, breach of faith and church rights.

Rather than being a day-to-day record of court proceedings, the Cause Papers are full, formal documents submitted to or issued by the courts. They were used by litigants to introduce their arguments and by the court to transmit its findings. They are a wonderful source and capture rich detail about human existence and interactions. I came to the Borthwick to work as an archivist two years ago. Up till then I had specialised in the records of English medieval royal government. Since arriving I have taken a crash course in ecclesiastical records, and the Cause Papers have regularly grabbed my imagination. I was fortunate to help behind the scenes on filming and sit in on the discussion between Helen Castor and Dr Bronach Kane. Inspired by the show (and, I should add, by recent discussions with Sara Powell, a York MA student who has just completed a dissertation on matrimonial causes in medieval York), I’ve done a bit of digging. The case I’m going to focus on is not untypical of the kind of disputes the church courts tackled. Indeed, those which attempted to enforce contracts and make one partner to stick to their vows with the other, make up the greatest number of marriage dispute cases.

CP.E.181.1 & 181.2

In the late winter of 1389/90 Emmota, a servant of Henry Rayner of Beal in the West Riding brought a suit before the Curia Ebor', York's central church court. She complained that though she and Robert son of John Williamson of nearby Kellington had contracted to marry, he had not yet solemnized their vows and would not now marry her. What was worse, in a parallel suit brought by Emmota she complained that Thomas, Robert's brother, also of Kellington, had publicly defamed her good character by alleging he had slept with her (or, as the record more prosaically states, 'knew her carnally') in an attempt, she claimed, to prevent the marriage taking place.

Those are the bare bones of the story, which are laid out in a variety of documents now available to view for free through the York Digital Library Cause Papers portal, although, be warned, you will need to know some Latin to make sense of them. In essence, Emmota's case hinged on proving the words she claimed she and Robert had spoken openly before witnesses in the private house in which she worked at Christmas a year previously (which, by my calculaton, would be December 1388) had actually been spoken, and that she had not slept with Thomas. In the formal articles her attorney William de Killerwyk presented to the court, Emmota argued that Robert had publicy and willingly confessed that he and she had both lawfully contracted marriage

'p(er) v(er)ba mutuu(m) co(n)sensum exp(ri)me(n)cia de p(re)senti ac spo(n)salia p(er) v(er)ba de fut(ur)o carnali copula postmod(um) int(er) eosd(e)m subsecut(a) ... /

by expressing words of mutual consent in the present and their spousal by words of future [intent], carnal intercourse between them having followed afterwards...

In the formal articles her attorney William de Killerwyk presented to the court, Emmota argued that Robert had publicly and willingly confessed that he and she had both lawfully contracted marriage ‘p(er) v(er)ba mutuu(m) co(n)sensum exp(ri)me(n)cia de p(re)senti ac spo(n)salia p(er) v(er)ba de fut(ur)o carnali copula postmod(um) int(er) eosd(e)m subsecut(a) … / by expressing words of mutual consent in the present and their spousal by words of future [intent], carnal intercourse between them having followed afterwards …’ If she could prove this, she wanted the court to declare the marriage valid and to compel Robert to recognise her as his lawful wife and solemnize their marriage.

Section of CP.E.181.1 p.7

The court documents, written in heavily abbreviated, legalistic Latin, unfortunately give us no idea of what words they actually said to each other. I think we can imagine them taking each other’s hand and Robert saying something like ‘Emmota, here I take you as my wife, for better or worse, to have and to hold until the end of my life; and of this I give you my faith’.[1] Legally though, it is the emphasis on ‘present’ and ‘future’ consent that mattered. By claiming both, Emmota hoped to prove her marriage was doubly valid and indissoluble. The theory that words of present consent created a perfect, complete marriage and a permanent bond had held sway in Canon Law since the mid-twelfth century.[2] But it often cut little ice with ordinary people! Many tended to see these words as merely making a contract not the marriage. The theory meant that Emmota and Robert were married; the only things remaining for them to do at that point were to solemnize their union in church and to consummate it afterwards. It is clear that Robert wanted, initially, to have no more to do with the marriage, and he challenged the truth of Emmota’s case in court. But, as will become apparent, he had indulged in sexual intercourse with her at some point after saying these words, which, by his words of future consent, theoretically made the marriage valid, complete and unbreakable.

That is unless Emmota could not disprove the allegations that had apparently been made around this time by Thomas son of John Williamson, brother of her supposed husband. In her articles submitted in this second case Emmota claimed she was a woman of ‘good fame and honest conversation’ who had never previously been accused of adultery or incest. Thomas, she said, had declaimed before a multitude of local people that he knew her carnally in order to impede the marriage contracted with his brother. For this, she wished Thomas to be excommunicated. We can suspect, I think, since there is no real hint in the records of a fraternal row over Emmota, that the brothers colluded in concocting the story of Thomas’s fornication with her. Local men John May, John Warde and Alan son of Robert appeared before the court to testify for Thomas, and they appear to suggest that Emmota had refused to say to which of the two brothers she had promised herself for fear of them. Their evidence, presented in March 1390, of a sexual relationship with Thomas, though, appears to have been trumped after much toing and froing by a surprise confession from Robert.

On the back of the document bearing their witness statements is a memorandum that on 3 November 1390 Robert and Emmota came before the court. Having sworn on the Gospels, Robert admitted he had made the contract of marriage a week before Christmas last one year hence. He had then first slept with Emmota (‘p(ri)mo carnalit(er) cognovit’) on the feast of St Stephen (26 December) following. Both parties confessed to the truth and the judge moved to deliver his verdict, that,

‘Because we have heard both by the confession of the said parties made in the judgement before us and by other sufficient and lawful evidences in this business, the abovesaid Emmota, plaintiff, has sufficiently proved her action brought before us in this case, therefore in this writing we have adjudged as our sentence and definitively the same Robert, defendant, to be the lawful husband of the same Emmota and the same Emmota to be the lawful wife of the same Robert.’

In short, Emmota had won. Robert had confessed and the truth of her side of the story had been lawfully upheld. Sadly, the sentence handed out by the court does not survive. Robert may well have joined his wife in solemnizing their marriage and may have had to do penance. I’ll leave you to speculate.

Emmota was a woman of humble origins who fought tooth and claw against men of, perhaps, greater means to persuade a church court to recognise her version of events. It appears from the Poll Tax records of 1379 that she worked for a tailor. She herself is not listed as a taxpayer (although there are a couple of Emmas in the Beal list which might be her), while her ‘husband’ Robert may be the same man as the ‘Robert Williamson’ noted as being taxed at fourpence, the lowest rate, in Kellington.[3] We are dealing here then not with the wealthy in society or with the urban or rural gentry but with ordinary people. We have a brief window into their everyday concerns and lives. Emmota and Robert had promised themselves to each other away from many prying eyes. For over a year she had been forced to wait. She must have been getting worried about not being able to publish banns of marriage and to have her union blessed by a priest, both of which were considered sins. Ultimately, she took her man to court and won the day. Their case is one among many at the Borthwick which give us intimate detail about the lives of our ancestors from all ranks of society. I hope this will have persuaded you that the Cause Papers have a great deal of interest. Do please take a look on the database and see what you can find.

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This post was written by Dr Paul Dryburgh, one of our archivists who specialises in our medieval records.

[1] Emmota probably returned the words. These were the words a witness reported that John Beck, a saddler, and Margery daughter of Simon Taylor had exchanged, in a cause paper from 1372: C.P. E.121: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers/causepaper.jsp?id=91754.

[2] For what follows and for an excellent overview of the Cause Paper evidence in English matrimonial cases, see R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 26-36.

[3] Henry Rayner of Beal and his wife, Agnes, were taxed at sixpence in 1379: Carolyn C. Fenwick, The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381: Part 3, Wiltshire-Yorkshire (Records of Social and Economic History, New Series 37, 2005), pp. 361-2. For leading me to these references, and for help in nailing down the place names in this cause, I am very grateful to Dr Jonathan Mackman.