Introduction+to+Holland+transcript

Introduction to Cratfield parish papers

Few suspect the importance of those documents which are lying entombed in the Parish Chests of England. In too many cases clergy and laity alike have sold as waste paper, or committed to the flames, records of the past, which can never be recovered, regarding them as useless lumber. Such, happily, was not the case with these, with which the student of history is presented in this volume.

Through the industry of my lamented neighbour the following transcript was made. It has been committed to my charge as Editor, and I have endeavoured to carry out my duties as I feel that the Author would have desired.

I have restored for several reasons the original spelling, which he had modernized. Of late the study of medieval English has so spread itself, that not many would now be deterred from examining these pages by reason of old-fashioned spelling. Indeed a certain piquancy and quaintness is added to the narrative by the curious forms in which words thus appear, and sometimes valuable philological hints are afforded.

The history of the parish of Cratfield is probably but a type and figure of the history of most English parishes.

The vast billows of an ocean make themselves felt in countless little ripples which run up the creeks of coasts of inland seas. So the great disturbances in the political world, or in religious thought, or in international discord, will be found to have transmitted their forces to this remote village on the Suffolk boulder clay.

Cratfield is about as unknown a place as one could well find. It lies near the head of one of the little streams which form the inconspicuous Blyth, crossed by the traveller from London to Yarmouth or Lowestoft, near the Halesworth Station. The extent is mainly westward of the parish church, towards my parish of Fressingfield, and northward towards Metfield. Other boundary parishes, the names of which will occur in these pages, are the Linsteads, Cookley, Huntingfield, and Laxfield.

The "beating of bounds " which took place on the Rogation Days, traced to those Litanies which were ordered by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, c. 470, took a mixed multitude annually over brook and pale, by where the tall trees on Silverleys Green mark the watershed between the Waveney and the Blyth, back to the "Gylde Halle," whence the start would be pretty sure to be made. The reader of these financial items will soon be face to face with " pullerers," or with " them that went a polloren," in which rugged terms some would fail to recognise the French pelerirz, still less the English pilgrim or the Latin _peregrinus. The acreage is nearly 2,123, and the population at the census of I8gr was 467- In 1841 it was qzo, and the steady drop notes the gradual decay of the agricultural interest. Machinery has greatly lessened the demand for labour, and as the English palate is too delicately constituted to consume flour which can come of English wheat, the supply of that staple article is largely in excess of the demand for it.

The labours of my predecessors in Suffolk archaeology supply me with all that is necessary for a general sketch of the annals of Cratfield. In the time of the Confessor, Tored held three carucates and a half as a manor; but at the compilation of Domesday Book, Ralph Bainard was lord of the entire soil. There were five franci homines, a class difficult to describe, something between a yeoman and a gentleman. It seems strange that out of twenty-nine recorded in the whole county, Cratfield should have contained five. Very likely the sturdy "forefathers of the hamlet," whose doings and dealings are set forth in the parish account, may have traced their origin to one or other of these "Franklins."

From Ralph Bainard, through his son Geoffrey, the manor came to a grandson William, who lost it by forfeiture early in the reign of Henry I., on which occasion it appears to have been broken into three parts, for in iioo Matilda de Liz granted to the Priory of S. Neot's the third part of the whole manor of Cratfield, which she speaks of as " liberum maritagium meum." The history of this manor cannot be traced, though it probably continued in the Priory (of which frequent mention will occur in the accounts) till the Dissolution. The other manors formed out of the original manor were " Cratfield " and " Cratfield Roos." The former passed from the Albini family by various changes, partly by inheritance, partly by attainder, to John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, to whom it was granted by letters patent of Edward IV. in 1468. The "Dominus Norff" of 1509 (see p. 36), is doubtless Thomas, Earl of Surrey. The year belongs to one of the hacunoe in the Norfolk title, but Surrey preserved under Henry VIII. the same influence which his ready acquiescence in the result of Bosworth Field had gained him under Henry VII. However he might be regarded in Suffolk, the Duchy of Norfolk was not restored to him till 1514, after his services at Flodden in the previous year.

In the changes and chances of the Howards Cratfield Manor passed to Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, whose name will be found in these annals ; and after more changes, which need not be rehearsed, to the Cokes, and finally to the Vannecks, the present head of which house, Lord Huntingfield, now holds it. This is the paramount manor : that of Cratfield Roos, which is of less interest, is now in the possession of Sir Hugh Edward Adair, Bart., of Flixton Hall.

The Vicarage had been in the patronage of the St. 1V cot's Priory, which held the great tithes. Huntingdonshire men, as John de Temesford and Henry Cokyl de Eton, probably Eaton Socon, appear in the fourteenth century.

The first Vicar whose name occurs in the pariah books is John Chyrche, alias Lestan, whom Bishop Lyhart collated by lapse in 1458. His long tenure of office ended in 1.502, when the St. Neot's Priory appointed William Williamsou ; and at the next vacancy exercised their function for the last time by presenting for institution Robert Thyrketyll, who seems to have endured the changes of his day with equanimity. The grantees of the Priory appointed Thomas Millesent, who was succeeded by William Byllinge, the firstt nominee of Mr. John Lany, who had in the interim purchased the advowson From the same family came the nominations of John Page, Francis Wheatly, and the two Elands, Francis and Gabriel, of whom the latter seems to have been living when our present chronicle closes.

With regard to the Lany family, I extract the following from a manuscript* "formerly belonging to Mr. Appleton (nephew of Mr. Ryece of Preston), a great Antiquary, now in the possession of Mr. Thicknesse, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 1729," which has been kindly lent me by George Josselyn, Esq., of Ipswich:

" In Cratfield is the antient family of Laney, John Laney, Esq., father of John Laney, Esq., both Counsellors at law, were Recorders of Ipswich, the one after the other very many years; the elder of them lies buried in St. Margret's Church in Ipswich, the younger in St. Nicholas Church there." This second John was his father's eldest son. The youngestt was Benjamin Lany, D.D., Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Dean of Rochester. He was one of the Commissioners who endeavoured to treat with the Presbyterians at Uxbridge, and after the Restoration became successively Bishop of Peterborough and of Ely, where he died in 1674.

The prominence of the Parish Guild will, I trust, be my excuse for enlarging a little on that subject.

Our Political Economists have hitherto occupied themselves so exclusively with Trade Guilds and Merchant Guilds in the towns, that these widespread Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods are in danger of being forgotten. Yet their little parchment deeds slumber in the recesses of our stout iron-bound chests, their perishable property indeed was swept into the vorago of the " Augmentation " office; but their realty still remains, applicable as yet in many cases to the sustentation of the fabrics of those venerable parish churches where the " brederhode " and "susterhode" worshipped in their day. Sometimes we can find when they were founded, sometimes we come upon them as going concerns, and this is the case at Cratfield, where for a short time the " Gylde " seems to have absorbed financially the parish.

They present themselves to us as Friendly Societies, intended for the bodily and spiritual benefit of such as chose to belong to them, and were allowed so to belong.

Feasts for the whole, a refuge for the aged, Masses for the deceased, these three are the main objects of the Association, to which must be added the due preservation and repair of the Parish Church, a portion of which formed the Chapel of the Patron Saint of the Guild. To provide for these charges the sources were the contributions of members and the income derived from property, the history of which is in many cases not traced, and in some not to be traced. At Cratfield the principal guild properties were "Rose Larks " and " Tonks," with divers "pytylls" and " parcels of medowe ; " and the " Cherche Box " which still remains, inscribed,

Roger A• al{ri)e gaf tfjns cfjei{t¢, 1i)rane for C)n0 fowl¢ to 9)1)'4 CCrei{t,

contained £6 13S. 4d. on May 22nd, 1534, when the Gylde account,which lasted but a few years, began. Gatherings were made on Plow Monday, and on other occasions, and there seems never to have been wanting a supply for guild purposes in this village.

The detail for the feasts may be read in the accounts for the various years. Sometimes they were held in the churches, as at Dennington, where there is a considerable charge for cleaning up after the feast; and there can be little doubt that in the prevalent gross living, the commemorations of the Nativity (24 June) and Decollation (Aug. 29) of S. John the Baptist, the Martyrdom and Translation of S. Thomas of Canterbury (Dec. 29 and July 7), who is the Patron Saint named in the accounts of the Cratfield Guild, or of S. Edmund, King of East Anglia, (Nov. 20), murdered at Home by the Danes, were celebrated with what Archbishop Cranmer calls "superfluous belly cheer."

We do not find in the Guild accounts any regular payments for decrepit members, though afterwards the Churchwardens looked well after some special cases. But whoever notices in the Guild houses the number of small rooms, and the absence of any hall for meeting, will perhaps agree with me that the main use of these buildings was as a refuge for those decayed members of the body, whose work in the busy world had come to an end, while in their day and generation they had kept up their Guild payments and supported their antecessors. As we find no payments made for them, it is thought not unreasonable that they had a voluntary "basket income" in the shape of bread and meat, eggs and milk, butter and cheese, sent to them by the kindly disposed. The Guild Chaplain, an office served from 1439 to 1444 by Sir John Caryell de Redenhall, Vicar, was an important person. Having got a license for their chapel, the brethren were not bound to the Vicar, and often we find the Vicar and Chaplain two distinct persons, the latter receiving his quarterages from the Guild purse, and eking out his scanty income by winding up the church clock, small dealings in timber, etc.

The dissolution of the Guilds in 1545 no doubt carried a great mass of personalty into the Augmentation office, as I have said: but though Tudor rapacity would have gladly laid its hands on the realty, there seems to me to have arisen this difficulty. So far as I can observe, the deeds are simply conveyances from one body of feoffees to another, from A, B and C to D, E and F. Nothing is said in the deed about any purpose to which the "ferm " of land or house is to be applied ; and the lawyers even of that day may have shrunk from the application of their statute to that which had no superstitious use defined in so many words. Thus, as it appears to me, the Guild properties remained in their feoffees, and were in process of time conveyed by one set to another, down to the present day, applicable to the only use remaining of all the original uses, the sustentation and improvement of the parish churches.

Coming to usages, I can only say how strongly I am impressed with their temporary character, in so marked a contrast with the Eternal Truths which they dimly shadowed. For some years past there has been steadily growing an impression that mediaeval use was a thing permanent, derived from earlier days, and itself claiming to be handed on intact. When the past comes to be examined for itself, its own voice heard instead of the voices of its admirers, this impression will not be strengthened. With regard to bell usages, I have endeavoured to point this out in Chapter V. of my Church Bells of Suolh, referring to the history of the Angelus Bell and of the Sandus Bell.

On this occasion I would instance the light suspended before the Rood, called the Rotula or Rowell, for "fellyng " (filling), of which there is an annual small charge, the money sometimes being earned by the Guild Chaplain. The Rood-screen, early Fifteenth Century work, remains at Cratfield, placed against the tower ; but I do not find there as at Fressingfield, the pulley in the Nave roof, over which the Rowell cord passed, nor the guider for the rope, embedded in the easternmost of the arches between the Nave and the South Aisle.

Now though the Rood-beam appears as far back as 1174, 1 can find no coeval hints of the Light, though I have sought diligently for them; and it is almost unimaginable that there could have been a Rood-screen in an Ante-conquestal or Early Norman Church.

In passing from this topic, it may be observed that at Cratfield the "rowell " was called the "comen lyght," as the outcome of the parish chest or of the Guild Purse Thus it is noted that " John Stobard have receyved out of ye gylde purse in ye xxix yere of ox Soueran lorde Kyng h. ye viij for ye waxe of ye comen lyght for ye sayde year xvd." Yet it appears to have been taken away shortly after that time, according to the Act then passed against lights before images, and brought back again in 1540-1, where the usual sum of xvd. for "fellyng of the rowell " recurs, together with the same sum for " baryng and fetchyng of ye rowell."

The circumstances of Cratfield did not probably vary much from those of other parishes, and the coarse view that changes were good for trade may have been held here as in the parish of Mildenhall, where the various changes of the altar as to position and material did not necessarily imply a change in the personality of the tradesmen who carried them out. The payment for the rowell was made in the first year of Edward VI.

Further on, with the help of Mr. Holland's notes, the story of the English nation in petlo will be found to tell itself.

I take this opportunity of correcting one or two errors, which escaped me. "Wynkyn de Worde" ought to have been printed on p. 31, and " Glemham " on p.178.

I have no doubt that Mr. " Besweak," on p. 143, is a mistake for Keswick, the old schoolmaster. Ps. L. on p 88 was not Deus deorum, but the more appropriate Miserere, our Psalm LI. Foxe follows the Vulgate notation.

This transcript of each year's account, with a commentary from the great events of the corresponding period, was an excellent idea. Many people now, as of yore, want to have the whole narrative told them. Some of more vigorous mental texture may prefer to have the plain facts before them. It was for such that Mr. Holland laboured.

J. J. RAVEN. The Vicarage, Fressingfield,

May, 1895.