The History of Our Villages

Past

A History of Our Villages

The Years 1000 to 1400

Danish Rule 1017 - 1066 John 1199

William I 1066 Henry III 1216

William II 1087 Edward I 1272

Henry I 1100 Edward II 1307

Stephen 1 1135 Edward III 1327

Henry II 1154 Richard II 1377

Richard 1 1189 Henry IV 1399

No doubt the few people in our villages did little travelling, their lives revolving around the yearly agricultural cycle. In any case ‘posh’ people might speak French rather than English, and English itself had so many dialects that folk from different regions were quite unintelligible to one another. Villages were ‘feudal’ - that is, people who held land did so in return for obligations to a superior lord: perhaps local landowners had to supply troops if required. Peasants worked on the estates of others: even if legally a free man, a person might be required to, say, plough the lord’s lands for 20 days each year, but most villagers were like slaves who ‘belonged’ to their owners who could buy and sell them, and call on their labour at any time. But they were protected, unlike slaves, by common law, and if ambitious had considerable opportunity for advance. Life was very communal and folk were not expected to live alone: privacy was almost non-existent and it would be normal to share living space with animals. People might rise at dawn or before, and having started the day at 5.00 a.m. would have dinner at about 10.00 a.m., supper at 6.00 p.m. and bed at 9.00 p.m. with a tallow candle made from animal fat. In the village might be a knight of the shire who sat in Parliament and was expected to observe a code of honour and virtue. The mediaeval priest was central to the village and had a duty under Canon Law to provide free education to all the children. Men and women might wear identical woollen dresses, long stockings and a cloak. Men kept up their stockings by tying the tops to a sort of loin cloth underwear. The average peasant survived on about £1 a year.

It is very difficult to find specific stories of happenings in our villages for this period. We can only look at what was happening around us and make educated guesses at those things which might reach into the lives of villagers, enough to make a difference. Even then our guesses might be very poor because we can hardly imagine the different culture in those distant days. The late 11th Century for instance saw the beginning of the Crusades when men who claimed to be followers of the Prince of Peace (and probably included some local knights who were required to fight as part of their service) saw nothing peculiar about going to the other side of the world to knock hells bells out of people with a different faith. I would hope that today’s Christians might view a Crusade not as a means of missionary work but rather a form of religious colonialism, and would want to question whether baptism by force was quite the way to go about things! I sometimes wonder whether people swallowed these (to me) odd ideas because they could not read for themselves what Jesus actually taught - it would be centuries before they had the Bible in their own language. So worshippers in our three churches could not read the Christian message for themselves and were dependent on their priest or what could be conveyed by sculpture or stained glass. The language of the church for half a millennium had been Latin rather than the original biblical languages, and you only learned Latin if perhaps you were in a monastery. Monks would have had an influence on our villagers. Faversham Abbey must have been hugely impressive (being larger than Westminster Abbey) and its monks would tell villagers of the need for repentance, poverty, communal life and little liturgical extravagance. It was quite open for peasants to become lay brothers and take an active part in monastic life. It was in 1147 that King Stephen and Queen Matilda founded St Saviour’s Abbey in Faversham, served by an Abbot and Benedictine monks. It proved to be a place of controversy until destroyed under Henry VIII, when it is believed that the bones of its royal founders and of their son Eustace, may have been thrown into Faversham Creek and their lead coffins ‘recycled’! If you wonder where most of the stone of the abbey finished up, go to Calais - it belonged to us then and it’s walls were strengthened at Faversham’s cost.

This chapter may well be the most ‘churchy’ of all! That’s because all over the land this was a very busy time indeed for church building - and all our three villages featured in that. Almost everyone wanted the church to mark the baptism of their babies, rites for the dying, marriage - and to give a rhythm to life with Christmas, Easter and as many as 20 to 30 annual feast days. Parishioners got involved in dozens of celebratory processions every year. At mass only the priest, monks and nuns would receive bread and wine, but at Easter everyone was expected first to confess, then to receive. Ordinary villagers stood during the service to say or sing the mass in Latin, or to gossip and conduct business during the service. At other times the church building would be the venue for a market, a school, a social event, etc. The priest might settle quarrels and get involved in all aspects of village life. Most folk would be very poor, living off a small portion of land and hoping for a good harvest from fields which belonged to someone else - perhaps a lord.

At times the church was at a low point with the papacy corrupt and abuse rife. It owned vast lands and wealth and could be controlled by leaders who were compromised because their job was a gift of someone to whom they had to swear loyalty. In 1046 King Henry III deposed all three rival popes and installed a new one (Leo IX) who tried to stop abuse and bring reform. But our three churches (as we shall see later) also provided the care for the poor (giving coal to the elderly in the village only finished a generation ago), the sick and needy. It encouraged education and served its village in a myriad of ways. There is no doubt that many people in Sheldwich, Leaveland and Badlesmere were devout. After Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, villagers would make a pilgrimage there regularly. It was at this time that a new nursery rhyme appeared. The knights who murdered Becket went behind the Cathedral to wash the blood off their hands and blades, under a Mulberry bush. The descendent of that bush still thrives in the Archdeacon’s garden. Have you guessed the nursery rhyme? ‘Here we go round the Mulberry bush, the Mulberry bush, the .... This is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash ......’

It is likely that there were older, probably wooden church buildings originally in Sheldwich, Leaveland and Badlesmere, but certainly the stone buildings we now know were built and well established at this time - indeed Sheldwich had been much enlarged by the end of this period. In Canterbury Cathedral is preserved an ancient manuscript called the Domesday Monachorum which lists churches and dues paid by them to the Archbishop at Easter. Faversham with Sheldwich attached paid 28d (now 12p) but little Badlesmere only 7d (3p). Certainly Sheldwich had its stone church before 1168 when, after a destructive fire at St Augustines in Canterbury on 29 August, Pope Alexander III gave them Sheldwich Church. We know (unusually) the very year Leaveland Church was built - 1222. Badlesmere Church was there in the 1200’s too. Meanwhile down the road and well within the walking distance of our villagers, the Hospital of Blessed Mary (‘Maison Dieu’) was founded by Henry III in 1230. In a specially built rest room many a king would stay there on his travels to and from the coast, our villagers dashing down to the ‘A2’ to watch the entourage passing and returning to gossip to neighbours. Once they had to tell the tale of when Ospringe Church tower fell down whilst its bells were ringing to welcome the king!

Readers may be interested to know that we have a full list of all the vicars in Sheldwich starting from the year 1279 - on a board at the back of the church.

The practical skills of the villagers would be offered to the life of their church. In an age long before printing, never mind TV, cinema, videos and computers, the church provided an annual cycle of entertainment which fitted well with the seasonal cycle the villagers had always respected in agriculture. It was not just the Sunday services which brought colour into their lives (and there was very much more colour in church decoration on walls, etc.), but there were feast days, saints days and seasonal celebrations to provide distraction from the monotonous weekly round. Villagers provided objects for the processions by exercising their talents in carving, music, painting, embroidery, decoration, candles and so on. In Badlesmere someone had a go at explaining the hard to understand doctrine of the Trinity - that God is three yet God is one. He elaborately carved the end of one bench with a shield-shaped picture. At each corner was carved one word in Latin - Pater, Filius, Spiritus. These were connected around the edge with ‘non est’ (is not). In the centre he wrote ‘Deus’ and connected it with each corner, writing ‘est’ (is). So today we still have this rare national treasure teaching us that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are all God: but the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. The carving is probably from the year 1415 when Richard was 7th Earl of Badlesmere and Oxford (one carving has B and O on it) and Henry V made him a Knight of the Garter. In Sheldwich Church they made three elaborate rood screens in front of three altars - a sort of beam on which stood carvings of Jesus on the cross with a figure either side. Over the main altar this would include St James; in St Margaret’s Chapel (now destined to be the new parish room) one of the carvings would be St Margaret; in St Mary’s chapel (where the organ is) a statue of the Virgin.

Until seminars were set up for educating clergy (in the 1500’s) there was little control over who became the vicar or how he was trained, so local powerful men would be able to gain the lucrative church jobs, or give them to one of the family. Alternatively the rural parish priest may well have had little education and might work with and dress like everyone else unless he was taking services. When Sheldwich Church added its tower, a room for a travelling priest was built half way up - it’s still there. It had a fireplace in one corner (the chimney is now the central heating flue) and enough room to settle down for the night, and a hole to look through into the church towards the altar to keep an eye on things. After all, the church was the biggest covered space the villagers had, and would be used frequently for all sorts of village meetings and parties. No pews or seats, the floor might be strewn with rushes: animals might wander in and out at times but things like sheep were kept from the ‘holier’ places in front of the altar by a rail. Under the priest’s room (now where bellringers stand) is a gallery where musicians would blow their pipes and scratch their fiddles long before organs were invented.

I hope I have said enough to illustrate how the church stood literally and socially at the centre of village life. What a shame that somewhere along the line of time our parish churches lost touch with the ordinary needs of most folk. Although I am painting a caricature, it’s a long way from using the largest building in the village to bring meaning and fun to villager’s life, to its occasional solemn use where folk sit in screwed-down, hard seats looking at the back of other folk for an hour a week, then lock the door against vandalism and theft as they leave! I do not believe that people are fundamentally different, and many show a deep spirituality, but the church has in some ways forgotten what it’s there for in village life. Meanwhile we build Village Halls to fulfil functions the church building is quite capable of, if only it were differently ordered. I paint too bleak a picture, but you perhaps understand what I am lamenting. We still have a village church: it’s questionable whether we have a villager’s church. Of course the buildings serve the Christian life and teaching of those who have faith in God: but whilst these Christians hopefully serve their neighbour, the very expensive plant they struggle to maintain finds little other service in the village.

I shall end this chapter by leaving the church life of our villagers, always keeping in mind that they would not separate that part of their life from any other.

I have already mentioned that our villages were heavily wooded. The 12th Century was an age of forest clearance nationally and this would be reflected locally, adding to our landscape large areas of arable land and pasture. Because of the increased production of food by farm workers, it was possible for the population to grow quickly. So new dwellings were built, some remembered today not by physical remains, but name places. Any substantial home built (say for a yeoman but this would be towards the end of this period) would require more wood clearing. Halke House though not large, may have required the cutting down of up to 300 young oaks. The rulers of course were well pleased: the more homes built, the more they were able to tax them. There was great progress in economics and politics which certainly affected local large landowners and changed the lives of their workers. Certain areas of knowledge became popular such as medicinal plants. Centuries of invasions were over for a while and with the new agriculture (helped by monastic farmers) and new trade passing along the road through the villages, each community grew in prosperity and planned to build its own permanent church. At one end of Sheldwich Copton Manor was built. Somewhere in or near our villagers a large wood-yard employed craftsmen to square newly felled trees and joint them to make floors, walls, roofs. The carpenters marks served to show where each piece fitted into the next. Then the structures built flat on the ground were taken to pieces and carried by cart to new building sites where the jigsaw kit was reassembled.

1296 may well have seen some of the village men sail on the ship ‘Nicholas’ from Faversham port - one of 57 vessels provided for King Edward I as he embarked on his second conquest of Scotland.

We cannot however get away with believing that people were permanently pious and never had fun at the expense of others! The bawdier aspects of life are well illustrated in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales written towards the end of the next Century.

The 14th Century did not have a good start. Villagers were shocked by the ‘riot’ in Faversham Church in 1301 when there was much violence between the people and the monks from St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury. The church was badly damaged and an attempt made to burn it down. During the reign of Edward II there was an interesting event as far as one of our villages is concerned. The Lord Badlesmere rebelled against the King! He was not only at that time Warden of the Cinque Ports, he was Governor of four castles, including Leeds Castle nearby. He knew that the King wanted Leeds Castle, so he put a garrison in there, where Lady Badlesmere waited for developments. Edward sent Queen Isabella (nicknamed the she wolf of France) on a ‘pilgrimage’ to Canterbury. She came to Leeds Castle wanting, she said, a room for the night. Lady Badlesmere judged that the Queen’s following was rather more warlike than any pilgrimage required, and refused to lift the drawbridge! Shots were fired from the Castle and some royal followers killed. The insulted queen told her husband who marched on Leeds and Lady Badlesmere finally surrendered. The king caught up with Lord Badlesmere who was trying to organise a rebellious alliance with the Scots, and executed him. He was hanged as a traitor on Tyler Hill, Canterbury and his head stuck on a pole at Burgate. His son Giles died without children and that was the end of the family Badlesmere.

There was appalling weather from 1315 to 1317. So there was food scarcity from which it took years to recover. Then suddenly, around the mid 13th Century the growing overseas trade brought a very unwelcome visitor indeed - carried by a creature inside a flea feeding on a black rat. The Black Death made its first devastating visit to our land and many villagers died. It continued on and off for years and a third of all Europe died. The attack began with appallingly sudden swellings in the groin, armpit or neck, red spots and vomiting of blood with delirium. You died within three days. Fear was everywhere. Sometimes a whole household died and it was not unusual for a family of survivors to move into empty property better than their own.

The land needed working still, but the workers were fewer and small farmers could not continue. An observer at the time wrote ‘So great was the deficiency of labourers and workmen of any kind that more than one third of the land all over the kingdom remained uncultivated. The labourers and skilled workmen were imbued with such a spirit of rebellion that neither King, law or justice could curb them. The whole people for the greater part ever came more depraved, more prone to every vice, and more inclined than before to evil and wickedness.’ Some peasant villagers began to realise they had undreamed of power because their labour was so sought after. They could ask for wages, or more wages, or go to some other employer who would treat them better.

Priests died like everyone else - after all they visited the dying and buried the dead. Commenting on the particularly serious effect of the Black Death in this area of Kent, one writer comments ‘In 1348 arrived the common death of all people and by this pest barely one third of mankind were left alive. Then also there was such a scarcity and dearth of priests that the parish churches remained almost unserved, and beneficed parsons, for fear of death left the care of the benefices, not knowing where to go.’ In another contemporary account, again in Kent, we read ‘This mortality swept away so vast a multitude of both sexes that none could be found to carry the corpses to the grave. Men and women bare their own offspring on their shoulders to the church and cast them into a common pit. From these there proceeded so great a stench that hardly anybody dared to cross the cemeteries.’ Ordinary people were told they could hear each other’s confessions and, horror of horrors, even a woman would do if there wasn’t a man around! A strain of morbidity crept into public devotion as chantry chapels were built to sing masses for the souls of their founders and speed their entry to heaven. Sheldwich would build its two chapels then.

But with cereal prices low and land values falling the population began to stabilise with a smaller number sharing more of what was left. Much farming by landowners died out with them, there was no capital available for working farms and leasehold came in, so tenant farmers became numerous. The successful ones became richer and improved their homes. In my home I believe this was the time they knocked down one section and built a better one - it would be happening all round our villages. The peasants became much more aware of their potential power if they were united. This awareness exploded when a most unpopular poll tax (of three groats per head!) was introduced and in 1381 other people from this area joined Wat Tyler in the Peasant’s revolt. On their way they took Canterbury, Maidstone and Rochester, doing quite some damage around Faversham, then marched through Fleet Street burning shops. By this time there were about 100,000 of them. They beheaded a judge and 18 leading citizens before beheading 35 Flemish people in the street. Taking over the Tower of London they dragged the archbishop out and executed him on Tower Hill, then nailed his mitre to his head set up on London Bridge. It certainly gave locals a new thing to talk about.

Some probably went to watch when they heard that the Black Prince was passing nearby after victory at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, complete with captive King John of France who stayed at the Maison Dieu on his way to the Tower of London.

In 1394 Richard atte Lese died and was buried in the North chantry in Sheldwich Church. Living in Lees Court he was Lord of the Manor of Sheldwich and served as Sheriff for Kent in 1368. Two years earlier he was chosen Knight of the Shire and summoned to sit in Parliament. In that part of the church you see his handsome canopied brass, where he is buried with his wife Dionisia who died in 1404.

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