The History of Our Villages

Past

A History of Our Villages

The 17th & 18th Centuries

James I 1603 William & Mary 1689

Charles I 1625 Anne 1702

Commonwealth 1649 George I 1714

Charles II 1660 George II 1727

James II 1685 George III 1760

I shall begin where I ended the last section, for this too was a time in which many of our well known homes were built in our villages, and this must inform us about what was happening in terms of growth and prosperity locally.

The 17th Century brought us the following properties, now listed: Meadow Cottage, Stocks Barn, Copton Manor Barn, Colley’s Farmhouse and Barn, Green Edge, The Red Lion, Falcon Farmhouse Barn, Little Fisher Street House, the new Lees Court, Newhouse Farm Cottage, Gosmere Dovecote, Went End, The Old Bakery, The Old Cottage, and the Old School - to give them today’s names. In the 18th Century came Throwley House and Stable Block, Orchard Cottage, Harrow House, the Old Post Office and Cottage, Woods Court Barn, Leaveland Court Barn, much of Lees Court such as the Stables and Dairy and Newhouse Farm Stables.

Given that our three villages today comprise well under 300 dwellings altogether, it is remarkable to see the list on this page alone. But building houses and barns was not the only thing to occupy the lives of our village forebears. In the 17th Century the fear of witches swept Cromwellian England and many women were hanged and worse - were our neighbours involved? Significant dates that Century were:

1600 - Shakespeare completes ‘Hamlet’.
1603 - Elizabeth I dies.
1605 - Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.
1620 - the Pilgrim Fathers meet in Canterbury to arrange provisions for their voyage to New England.
1625 - again the Plague devastated Kent.
1629 - Charles I dissolves Parliament and rules alone for 11 years.
1636 - in Faversham 79 people die of the plague, and no doubt some villagers.
1638 - Sir Didley Diggs dies and leaves £20 every year to fund these instructions in his will: ‘There is a yearly running match on Sheldwich Lees ... Two men and two maids. Who on May 19, should run a tye at Old Wives Lees, in Chilham, and prevail. In pursuance of which the two men and maids run at Old Wives Lees yearly, on the 1st of May, and the same number at Sheldwich Lees on the Monday following each by way of trial, and the two of each sex which prevail at each of these places, run for the ten pounds at Old Wives Lees as above mentioned on the 19th of May.’
1642 - Civil War.
1644 - Battle of Marston Moor with Cromwell.
1649 - Charles I executed.
1658 - Cromwell dies.
1660 - Monarchy restored and Charles II returns as King of England.
1665 - the Great Plague kills 75,000 in London alone and ravaged Kent again.
1666 - Great Fire of London.
1688 - A man arrested from a boat off Faversham proves to be King James II attempting to escape the country. He had left London in disguise with a friend who was recognised by some local blackguards near Sheerness who robbed the king and brought the boat to Faversham. Somebody recognised the king who was taken to the ‘Queens Arms’ and kept for a few days at 18 Court Street before being sent back to London.
1692 - there is a local earthquake which rattles houses at 2.00 one afternoon.
1698 - more local employment as Shepherd Neame (now called) Brewery opens.

On March 18, 1624 a new vicar was appointed in Sheldwich, one Abraham Bromydge. His wife Lydia had ten children in the village, and together they baptised them all and buried eight of them. As we shall see in later details from parish registers, every family in the villages knew what it was to lose very young children - something mercifully rare today. Abraham’s successor, noting the bad luck of this former vicar, writes about him in the register ‘He was vicar 35 years of Sheldwich only, but I hope his and my successors will have better luck.’ The Bromydges did indeed have bad luck. Not least the vicar lived through the period of our history involving a Civil War which began in 1642. After the king was executed in 1649 (wearing the gloves you can still see in Lambeth Palace) the Commonwealth began. There was an open season on royalists and their sympathisers. Our three churches were using the official Prayer Book for services - with its prayers for the king - so that had to be stopped. That book was banned, and along with it was prohibited any celebration of Christmas or Easter. The Mayor of Canterbury enforced Parliament’s rules by publishing a week before Christmas 1647: ‘Whereas Saturday the next is 25th December, all persons are to take heed ... that Christmas days and all other superstitious festivals are utterly abolished. Whereas all ministers ... are warned that there be no prayers or sermons in the churches on the said 25th December, and whosoever shall hang at his door any rosemary, holly or bayes, or other superstitious herb, shall be liable to the penalties decreed, and whosoever shall make or cause to be made either plum pottage or nativity pies is hereby warned that it is contrary to the said ordinance. .... All persons are required to open their shops on the said day.’ Canterbury rioted, the Mayor was mobbed and half killed, and everybody had a good Christmas with houses decorated and shops closed!! The Mayor sent for help and although the citizens locked the city gates troops broke through, arrested the ringleaders and threw them into Leeds Castle. Two hundred gentlemen of Kent and 20.000 ordinary people signed a petition to get them freed. A rumour broke out that Parliament’s reply was a plan to hang two people in each parish who had signed the petition. The Kent men replied, basically ‘try it and see what happens!’ Whereupon its writers were ordered to be whipped and imprisoned.

So our villagers lost several opportunities to have some fun, a break from the daily grind. Add to that sombre thought the terrible fact that sport and entertainment were counted blasphemous and all pubs were closed. You couldn’t even meet with a group of friends - soldiers who found you in a group could assume you were up to no good and impose a fine on the spot. Some property was sequestrated and people could not say what they liked in public. Adultery was now punishable by death. If a young woman had a child without a husband, she was imprisoned. Village vicars were normally thrown out of their livings: church services were prohibited and most churches wrecked and closed. An edict of 1644 ordered the defacing or demolition of all representations of God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit, Angels and Saints. Chancels should be levelled and rails removed with all tapers, candlesticks and basins. No fancy robes: no water fonts; all organs to be taken away.

But something remarkable happened in Sheldwich. There was something unusual about vicar Abraham Bromydge. Was he very discreet, or very well liked perhaps? Whatever, there is in our parish registers this entry (with original spellings):

Abraham Bromydge, Vicar of Sheldwich, was - by vertue of an Acte
Of Parliament dated the 24th day of August 1653 entituled an Acte
Touching Marriages and the registering thereof and also touching
Births and Burials - being first presented unto me by the parishioners
of the same, was approved and sworn Registrar for the said Parish
by me, one of the Justices of the Peace for the said County, the tenth
Day of March 1653.

This is then signed by Michael Belke.

So although poor old Abraham was no longer able to be vicar in his own parish, at least he could still have a clerk’s job in his own church which had to be kept open for the JP to use for marriages.

The Belke family farmed at Cobrahamsole, over the road from the church. If you look in the centre of the uncarpeted part of the chancel of Sheldwich Church (between the choir stalls) you will see a brass inscribed ‘Here lyeth the body of John Belke, gent. eldest sonne of Valentine Belke of Sheldwich, who died a bacheler March 30th Ao. Dni. 1663 aetatis suae (aged) 67.’ His father was in Sheldwich in 1554 and his four brothers Michael, Christopher, Gabriel and Thomas were all married. This first Michael (who died in 1616) married Catherine (daughter of a Chilham family) and it was their son - also Michael - who was the JP. No longer a ‘simple’ farmer respecting the Royal Family and his Church, he instead held the rank of Major in the Cromwellian army - a revolutionary if you like. He was a member of the tribunal called ‘the Regicides’ who condemned the king to death. Certainly Abraham the vicar knew him well enough because he had baptised all his eleven children ! But I wonder how the relationship changed when Michael, who was younger than he, watched Abraham sternly as he carried out local baptisms and burials. Worse still, from 1654 to 1659 the ex-vicar could only write down details in a book as Major Michael actually married people in his old church. In fact Sheldwich was one of the very few places around where you could get married (remember most churches were closed) and folk came to St James from places like Selling, Throwley, Badlesmere, Leaveland, Preston and so on - arriving by cart or on foot after a long walk. Normally there had been (and, interestingly still is) about three weddings a year in Sheldwich Church. But suddenly in a short time 103 couples were married in Sheldwich!

Imagine the scene: you walk to church to be intimidated by Major Belke and his soldiers at these civil ceremonies and finish up too frightened to have a party afterwards even if it had been legal! No wonder these were unpopular measures. There was, incidentally a further problem caused to those who in the future might like to trace their family origins. Church registers had to record where the groom lived - the bride normally came from the parish in which she was married. Now folk might come from almost anywhere, so the Cromwellian registers didn’t bother to write it down at all. As long as the marriage tax were paid on the spot, what did it matter to them where folk lived?

Not all the Belkes around that time were revolutionaries. William Belke became a Canon of Canterbury, one of his sons Thomas a Prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral and his brother Antony was Auditor of the Dean and Chapter.

Almost as soon as Cromwell died the system collapsed and Revd. Bromedge makes one of his final entries in his own registers again, declaring himself ‘Abraham Bromedge, VICAR’ again. Meanwhile Michael Belke JP disappears, maybe fined and disgraced, and Michael was the last Belke to live at Cobrahamsole.

We must not forget the large local landowner Sir George Sondes who was born the year before this century began and took over his father’s estates at the age of 19. When the Civil War broke out he was openly supporting the king, but the battles stayed north of our villages so he didn’t get involved. When the king to whom you are loyal gets his head chopped off, the best strategy is to keep quiet, so this is what George did. But he was very heavily fined and three times Cromwell’s soldiers knocked on his door and looted his home. No doubt he thought he might as well get on with something useful which wouldn’t offend, so he pulled down the family home and built what we now know as Lees Court, Sheldwich (or at least as it was before the great fire last Century). Many believe the design was by Inigo Jones: certainly it was a palatial mansion. But things did not go well for Sir George. I shall relate part of his tragic story - one of Sheldwich’s most famous legends. You can read the full story in Faversham Paper No 37 from the Fleur de Lis Heritage Centre, Faversham.

In the Spring of 1634 the Lord Mayor of London Sir George Freeman died leaving great debts (partly because he liked entertaining the king and queen lavishly, it was expensive anyway being a mayor, Algerian pirates took a couple of his ships off Morocco, a relative embezzled £10,000 and his stocks and shares lost £15.000!) His wife had been dead 20 years, having lost countless children in infancy. But the mayor had a daughter Jane who was the light of his life. When she was 19 she married 21 year old Sir George Sondes of Sheldwich in 1620. They too lost about half a dozen children under the age of 5. But two boys lived and the eldest was called Freeman (to remember Jane’s family name), the younger George (sorry there’s so many Georges to get mixed up with!). Freeman sadly died aged 4, but 18 months later a ‘replacement’ was born and also baptised Freeman. Before long Jane herself died, leaving Sir George Sondes with two boys aged 4 (George) and 18 months (Freeman). These two little boys were to grow up and act out a major drama in Lees Court.

It was a large, influential household indeed. Sir George had his own bread baked; his own beer brewed; he ate his own meat, fruit, vegetables. His own carpenters made furniture and carried out repairs. His many maids wore simple uniforms made from flax grown on his own estate. Lees Court had its own chapel where prayers were said daily - on Sundays they were in Sheldwich Church. Sir George had 50 horses, 500 sheep, over 100 cattle. His granaries held over 1000 quarters of his own wheat and malt, together with barns full of corn, flax and hops.

When little George was 10 and Freeman 8, their father was imprisoned in the Tower of London for several years, where they visited him ( - what a journey!) Eventually England got its king back, Sir George was released and his sons were attractive young men. As Lees Court was completed, his fortunes improved. Sir George was very protective of his boys and tried hard to keep them out of mischief. He had them taught singing, fencing, riding, dancing, and they had to read two chapters of their Bible every night. He commented that he kept them ‘from idle company and not fitting sports. I dissuaded them from debauchery. No man can tax me for swearing, drinking, whoring or gaming.’

It didn’t work! Both boys got heavily into cock fighting, gambling and spent a fortune on fancy clothes. George used to ride over to Lynsted to visit uncle Nicholas where he took a shine to cousin Anne - a beauty without money. Anne possibly became pregnant by him (despite ‘fornication’ being punishable by 3 months in prison) and so they thought they had better get married. A furious Sir George stormed over to Lynsted and said ‘If she be with child, the bastard must be kept: but I tell you George, if you marry her, you must not come to look within my doors.’ Half an hour after his father left, young George followed and the affair was over. Despite this George was the heir and still loved, whilst Freeman felt left out. Although ‘religious and learned’ he may have been pock-marked because he cost his father £40 to be cured of smallpox. His father thought he was bored, stubborn and difficult, ‘pleasing and courteous to no one, but cross-grained to all, as much to his father as any, and I knew not how to break him of it.’ Others just found Freeman to be shy - my guess is that he was unhappy at having no mother, a father who preferred his brother and a brother with a life of his own. Or perhaps he was becoming increasingly ill, though not physically. Freeman took to feeling disgust when his father was around and took to hiding for long periods. He would go to London without telling anyone and spend all his allowance on mistresses, gambling and clothes.

Easter Day was on 15 April, 1655. The two brothers were summoned to be at home for the festival. Both boys had grey doublets for riding but George had gone off without knowing that his manservant had packed Freeman’s doublet by mistake: George had worn it out and had it repaired. A week after Easter Sir George heard the boys arguing over the doublet in George’s bedroom. His comment was ‘what a do is here about a foolish doublet. Get you to bed!’ Next day the argument continued and Sir George warned Freeman that if he didn’t do as he was told he’d lose his allowance. Two days later the argument returned and, for the first and last time, Sir George thumped Freeman who went white and sat in aggrieved silence for nearly five hours. He decided he had no future and should kill his father and brother.

The 7th August was a fine day and Freeman rose early, opened a chest and took out a butcher’s meat cleaver and a dagger. About 5.00 a.m. he tiptoed into his brother’s room where George was sleeping heavily on his left side. Freeman hit him five times with the back of the cleaver. George’s skull was smashed, he was mortally wounded and very bloody. As his brother turned onto his back and moaned, Freeman took the dagger and stabbed 7 times around the heart - George still moaned. Freeman threw the cleaver out of the window and, feeling more victim than murderer, went to his father’s room. He drew the bed curtains and shook the sleeping Sir George with his bloody hands. ‘Father’ he said ‘I have killed my brother’. Sir George tried to take it in. ‘What sayest thou? Hast thou, wretch, killed thy brother? Then thou hadst best kill me too!’ ‘No sir’ said Freeman ‘I have done enough’, to which his father replied ‘Why, then thou must look to be hanged.’

Servants were called and Freeman locked in his bedroom. Someone saddled a horse and went to the JP (our old friend Major Belke). Father and son never met again. The Assizes met in Maidstone, Freeman pleaded guilty and was thrown in the dungeon. On August 21st he mounted the scaffold and was hanged on Penenden Heath. Large crowds had gathered to watch so the funeral procession was a mile long - no doubt our villagers were there. Poor Sir George! At 55 with no wife or family: he married again but had daughters not sons. But at least with the Restoration, King Charles II gave him great rewards for his loyalty to the throne. He was made Earl of Faversham, Viscount Sondes of Lees Court and Baron Throwley. His eldest daughter married the king’s favourite general. Outliving Michael Belke by one year, Sir George died in 1677 at the age of 78.

A few extracts from our parish registers to give a flavour of the times. These are from Sheldwich’s Baptism, Marriage and Death registers, which are often annotated by notes written by the vicar and other officials:-

1694. ‘Sheldwich Church was formerly called St Augustine - James, in which are memorials of ye interrment of Sr Tho At Lees, a knight, above 270 years agoe, also of Cely 240 since, and Lifle & Deyere very ancient’ and signed ‘Ben Hollingworth, vicar.’

So clearly Revd Hollingworth was quite interested in finding out a bit about the past story of his church. But was he ‘good with people’ as they say? - for another entry in his handwriting states:-

Sep ye 29th 1696. ‘Mr Hollingworth left Sheldwich & Throwley for Stone in ye Isle of Oxney’. After this another handwriting finishes the entry with ‘where I wish he may behave himself better than he did at Sheldwich.’!!

You get an idea of how much there was a need to show appropriate reverence to the lords of the village such as Lord Sondes. One entry (all of which I cannot read) says:-

Jan 17th 1714. John Welles admitted Vicar of Sheldwich & Throwleigh day of next ensuing ........ To both by the favour of the Right Hon.ble ..... Lord Sondes whom God long preserve to be a defender and ye father of many defenders and Patrons of Religion and Libertie.’ Signed Jo Welles.

Although each page of the early registers are signed, it is clear that even some of the village elders were unable to write, so it is common to see their name written by the vicar and then their mark beside their name. From 1700 onwards the baptism registers also record, in addition to the date of baptism other very useful information. A forward looking and learned vicar began to record also the date of birth, the parents names and their occupation. An example might be:

‘Farmer. Lovina Friend the daughter of George and Mary Friend was baptised March 14 and borne also upon the same day.’ It is quite common for babies to be baptised at birth - many did not live long enough to get to church later. In the early 1700’s there seems to be about 7 baptisms each year - not very different from today - and the parental occupation shows what was going on in the village: farmer, labourer, weaver, miller, smith, seaman, waterman, blacksmith, carpenter.

In the marriage and banns register, a spinster is written as ‘singlewoman’. A typical entry is:

‘Ezekiel Black and Elizabeth Scott were married in this church by Banns this 25 of April 1754. This marriage was solemnised between us Ezekiel Black (who signed) and Eliz Scott her mark (a scrawled cross) in ye presence of John Rate his mark (squiggle like a crossed-out capital I)’

The burials register of the times also records occupations, showing that the older generation had work little different to the young marrieds: thatcher, mason, poor woman, carpenter, farmer, weaver, labourer, miller, clerk, taylor, poor maid, aged poor widow, aged householder, infant, ancient widow, married man, ancient householder, travelling woman’s infant. This last one is a very sad entry, don’t you think?

And so our villages moved into the eighteenth Century, the people themselves continuing to take note of the happenings around them:-

1703 A disastrous storm destroys boats in Kentish waters - 1,519 seamen drown.
1707 Scotland and England unite under the name Great Britain
1710 St Paul’s Cathedral in completed in London
1721 Walpole becomes our ‘first’ Prime Minister
1786 Internal gas lighting first appears
1789 Over the Channel, the French Revolution begins
1797 Jenner introduces vaccination against some diseases

From about 1700 we have detailed records provided by the churchwardens. Remember that we have to forget the modern ‘split’ between sacred and secular - those involved with church and those not. In those days it is almost true to say that the church was the village: at least it ‘ran’ the village in every practical sense. It would be centuries before we had a Parish Council: all the work done by such bodies now, was carried out by those on the church Council. Churchianity and sometimes Christianity helped to organise and to enable the whole community: it was ‘religious glue’ which held the villages together. So you get entries like these which may seem far removed from ‘church’ - they are from Badlesmere’s Churchwarden Accounts, each entry normally referring to a year’s cost:

In the 1600’s. Payment to the Honourable Lord Rockingham for his woodland, seven pounds and seven pence. (£7.03)

1700. For washing the church linen , two shillings (10p)

1701. For carpenters work and nails and for bricklayers works and tyles and mortar, eight shillings and twopence (41p)

1702. For bread and wine, five shillings (25p). Paid for clerks wages for this year ending our Lady Daye, seventeen shillings and sixpence (87p)

1703. Paid for 500 of playne tyles, eleven shillings and ninepence (58p)

1719. For Six Hedge Hoggs, two shillings (10p). For coale money six shillings and eight pence (33p). For writing the accounts one shilling (5p)
Now you might, with good reason, wonder what on earth is going on when people are paying for hedgehogs! Were they eating them? The plot thickens if you look at these entries from the same book:

1704. For 6 poolatts and 1 hedghog and 1 stoate, three shillings (15p)

1718. Paid for 2 hedge hogs and a fox, one shilling and eight pence (8p)

No, they were not eating this wild life! One of the jobs of the churchwardens was to keep them out of church. So when they did a bit of pest control they got a fee for it. You can’t have hedge hogs running about the building frightening the ladies!

1715. Gave to two seamen, two shillings (10p). For a bell rope, two shillings (10p). For a flaggon, basin and two plates, fifteen shillings and eight pence (78p). Paid the glasier three pounds, eighteen shillings and nine pence (£3.93)

Readers are unlikely to be aware of an ancient right which still today extends to those inside the parish boundaries. People who die in the village may be buried in the village, whether they live here or not. So occasionally in the books you read an entry like this one:

1714. For burying of a stranger, sixteen shillings (80p). Spent when we proclaimed peace, nine shillings (45p).

You can imagine that a traveller - a gypsy, someone passing through, whatever - died in Badlesmere and there was no means of knowing his name, where he was from, whether he had family. Whatever his situation he has a right to burial, so this is carried out and the churchwarden claims back the expenses in this example. Looking through the registers, this is not an unusual happening in those days. The other entry shows how the villagers had times of communal celebration paid for communally and organised by the churchwarden.

It was to be a century of religious revival throughout the land. John and Charles Wesley had been taught by their mother Susannah ‘There are two things to do about the Gospel - believe it and behave it.’ They tried their best with little success, John even going to America to try to convert the native Indians. But it was after he returned home that, listening to a discourse on Paul’s letter to the Romans, he wrote in his diary ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed’ and personally believed that God actually loved him. Methodism as it became known swept the country, but John Wesley did have his problems. Speaking in Faversham after arriving on horseback in 1738, no doubt with people from our villages in the crowd, he noted in his diary that ‘I addressed a few of those called Christians, but indeed were more savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have seen’! Interestingly, the addition over the following years of lots of Non-Conformist church buildings in the area never became firmly planted our three villages: even today Christians either go to the Parish Church, or move outside altogether for their worship - there is nowhere else to meet.

1762 - As Faversham’s trade continues to flourish, local roads (which were notoriously poor) need to be upgraded. The current A251 was especially important, so it was turnpiked to bring in some revenue to pay for its upkeep. If you look at the windows facing the road in Toll House Cottage (narrowest part of the road at the start of North Street, Sheldwich) you will notice that one pane of glass is larger than the others. Through that the toll was paid. An Act of Parliament further upgraded the road on 17 May 1824, noting that ‘Waggons, carts and other Carriages heavily laden ... passing between the Town of Ashford and the Port of Faversham .... Road in a ruinous condition.’. As a result tolls were doubled. Vehicles were divided into two categories, being passenger (‘Coach, Chariot, Berlin, Landau, Chaise, Calash, Curricle, Cabrioet and Gig’) or freight (‘Caravan, Waggon, Tug, Wain, Cart and Drag.’) Today we don’t even know what those vehicles looked like!

1763 - more local excitement when a live whale over 56 feet long is washed ashore at Seasalter!

1764 - more employment as Rigden’s Brewery opens in Faversham (closed 1922)

1767 - villagers hear a large bang: another explosion at the Royal Gunpowder Factory takes with it part of Davington Priory. Then in1781 an even bigger one kills 3 workmen, causes much damage to the Priory, Faversham Church and other property. A Sheppey clergyman (see below) writes in his diary ‘17th April at a quarter before ten in the forenoon the Dusting and Corning House at the Powder Mill Faversham with near 100 barrels of gunpowder, blew up and killed Winfield Brown, Stubberfield and Peter Ganding, ......’

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