A History of the Midland Counties (Guthlaxton Deaneries and adjacent parishes), together with an account of the condition of the people in the Middle Ages: also a Diary of a journey by ... Sir T. Cave ... from Stanford to the North of Scotland, etc

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HISTORY OF THE MIDLANDS. catthorpe church. A HISTORY OF THE MIDLAND COUNTIES (Guthlaxton Deaneries and adjacent Parishes) , TOGETHER WITH An Account of the Condition of the People During the Middle Ages : ALSO A Diary of a Journey by the Late Sir Thomas Cave, Bart., of Stanford Hall, from Stanford to the North of Scotland and Back. BY THE REV. C. HOLME, M.A., - Rector of Catthorpe ; (LATE SUB-EDITOR OF THE FIRST PART OF THE LETTER "B" IN THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S DICTIONARY.) RUGBY : GEORGE E. OVER, THE RUGBY PRESS. 1891. CONTENTS

Chapter I

Geological forma/ion ; primitive races that inhabited Britain before the coming of the Romans under Julius Cæsar. In writing the history of any country, town, or village, three things should be considered : ist, the geological features of the locality ; 2nd, whatever there is of an arch æological nature — what we may suppose to have been the condition of the country and its inhabitants in former times ; and, 3rd, we should endeavour to record its past history and its present condition. This last is the chief duty of the historian ; the two first are matters of con jecture, at least to a considerable extent, but historical facts are derived from ancient documents, family registers, and various other sources. First, as regards the geological formation of this part of the Midland Counties, the soil belongs to what is called the Tertiary, or latest formation.

In the parish of Catthorpe there is a layer of gravel below the soil, and then a deposit of dark mud, a stiff blue clay or lias several feet in thickness. In some places a very fine laver of sand, exactly resembling sea-shore sand, is met with ; and this shows that sand, and gravel, and clay were formed at the bottom of the sea. There was a time when all England was buried beneath the waters of the ocean. In some places immense tree ferns and other similar growths have given us the coal deposits; and in other portions of the Midlands the deposit was formed bv the action of water. This conclusion would be true in thc main ; rivers form the valleys, the action of water wears away the softer portion of the rocks, and de posits it in the form of sand, gravel, and mud or clay. This process being continued for thousands of years, forms layers of gravel and clay, and in the case of most of our English valleys, a rich deep loam soil.

Where the rivers, like the upper part of the Avon, are small, and of no great force, we shall generally find a low elevation of the sur rounding high ground ; but where the rivers are large, and of great force, we find the valleys are wide and deep, and the surrounding mountains rise to a great elevation. We have examples in most parts of the Northern Counties ; in Yorkshire, Westmorland, and Northumberland we meet with large and rapid rivers, running through deep valleys, and surrounded with high mountains, ln the south of England, for the most part, and in the Midland Counties, the rivers are less rapid, and the surrounding country of lower elevation than they are in the Northern Counties. This is a proof that the valleys were formed by the action of water. The diversities in the elevation of the ground are caused by the eating away of the softer portions by the force of the river and by the rainfall.

And then the deposits of clav and other substances are accounted for in the same way. The dark clay, over which, in the parish of Catthorpe there is generally a covering of gravel, was slowly deposited in the hollow of the bed of the ocean, being washed in bv the currents, and then confined by the rising undulations of the land on either side. The waters of the ocean around our coast (and we may suppose that at this early period England was joined on to the Continent, and that the Straits of Dover did not at that time exist) were full of all kinds of life ; many remains of fishes belonging to this peril xl are still found imbedded in the clay. Ammonites, some small, but others of large size, are met with in this locality. Two years ago, when Catthorpe Church was being restored, a piece of an ammonite, about eight inches long, was dug out of the clay.

In the part of Yorkshire about Whitby, ammonites are called "St. Hilda's snakes ;" according to ancient legend, they were petrified by the prayers of an Abbess of Whitby. Another small shell, commonly found in the clay of the London and Hampshire basins, was also found at Catthorpe, when tlie ground was being excavated for the vestry. Thc geological nature of a locality has an important bearing on its future condition and history. A rich soil, such as we find in the Midland Counties, is well adapted for rearing and feeding cattle ; a lighter soil, overlying the chalk, as in Kent and some adjacent counties, is better suited for growing co.:i and feeding she :p. Sometimes the fossil remains of a locality give indications of a primitive race of men who were its aboriginal inhabitants. The oldest race of men that is said to have inhabited the British Isles, lived in caves.

These caves, supposed to have been human habitations, are chiefly found in the Yorkshire coast, in the neighbourhood of Whitby, and also in the limestone rocks in the Mendip Hills in Somersetshire. The primitive colonists, wh i came by way of the German Ocean, first took up their abode in caverns along the sea coast, and gradually made their way into the interior, which was thickly covered at this time with jungle and forest trees, and inhabited by the elk, the bison, and red deer. In these large caverns the black aborigines seemed to have lived for many centuries ; for weapons they used flints chipped off" from the rocks, but not polished (the polishing of flints belongs to a later race). They supported themselves on the flesh of animals caught in the chase, and on fish which they caught by means of wooden or bone hooks, still found among the refuse on the floors of the caves.

They are supposed to have decorated themselves with drilled ammonites and fossil sea-urchins from the neighbouring shore. Some few years ago, the caverns of the Mendip Hills were examined by Mr. Boyd Dawkins, a geologist. H : gives the following account of these cavern-dwellers, or first inhabitants of our island. "In the ravine of the Wokey (the name Wokey is derived from the Celtic ' Ogo,' a cavern) is a large dark cave, in which a mass of stalagmite is know as the 'Witch of Wokey,' petrified, according to the usual legend, by some monk. Another remarkable cavern has been foimed of late years in the same ravine. In this cave remains of hvænas, rhinoceroses, mammoths, cave lions, great elks, and many other animals were found in great abundance, and amongst them one white flint spear head — a sufficient proof that man was living in this valley, along with the extinct mammalia.

The cave was un doubtedly a hyæna den. The hyænas lived in these caves in large numbers, and dragged into them the bodies of those animals whose bones are still found there. Many of these, either from their bulk or their ferocity, they would not have ventuied to attack until they had in some way been maimed. It is a well-known fact that in the present day wolves and hyænas, hunting in packs, are in the habit of chasing their prey over precipices, so that they may fall on them below in a mangled and helpless condition. We may be sure the old hyænas of the Mendip Hills had the same habits, and that they scared the great elephant and rhinoceros over the cliffs of Wokey and Cheddar, and then dragged them for food into their caverns. The hunting of that day was on a grander scale, as regards the prey, than can now be seen on those hill slopes ; but the hunts men were sadly inferior, according to the accounts given of those aboriginal sportsmen.

A miserable savage," says Mr. Dawkins, "armed with bow and spear, un acquainted with metals, but defended from the cold by coats of skin ; the bone needles found in the caves seem to prove that these aborigines had some sort of garments. Sometimes the savage took possession of the den, and drove out the hyænas ; for it is impossible for both to have lived in the same cave at the same time. He kindled his fire at the entrance of the cave to cook his food and to keep away the wild animals. At length he changed his abode, and the hyænas came back to their old place ; and v.hile all this was taking place there were floods from time to time, until eventually the cave was completely blocked with various deposits. The winter cold must, at that time, have been very severe, to admit of the presence of the reindeer and the leming, bones of both animals are found among the rest."

This cavern, in the Wokev district, has yielded the greatest number of animal remains; but there are other caves in the neighbourhood, and elsewhere, which also contain remains of wild animals. In one very remarkable cave, between Cheddar and the sea, about 50 human skeletons were discovered, ranged on the floor of the cave, with their weapons beside them ; but these are supposed to belong to a later race, which succeeded the first inhabitants of our island. The exact condition of the second, or yellow race, that inhabited our island, is a matter of conjecture ; they are supposed to have used polished weapons of flint and stone; bronze implements have been found in tombs along with the more ancient stone weapons. The use of bronze articles implies considerable progress in the knowledge of the arts.

It is also thought that this race of yellow men cultivated wheat and barley, and ground their corn in stone mills ; they are also said to have domesticated several animals, as the dog, sheep, goats, and cows, and t. have lived not in caves like their predecessors, but in wattled huts, common amongst later tribes. This race is said to have been driven out by an Eastern or Aryan race, who swept over the Continent of Europe from the plains of Central Asia. One great Colony, which spoke the Sanscrit language, founded the Hindoo Sovereignty, and established the religion of Brahma in the great plains across the Himalayan Mountains. An other Colony, a portion of whom were Celts, invading the south of Europe, colonized ancient Greece and Latitim ; spread into Gaul and adjacent parts; and some of them crossed the narrow straits and invaded the British Isles.

These invaders drove out the yellow men to the colder parts of the North, and seized upon the best parts of the Continent of Europe and the British Isles. CELTIC RACES. Our Island retains many reminiscences of the ancient British in its local nomenclature ; the names of all the chief rivers and most of the mountains are of Celtic origin. " Over the whole Island," says Isaac Taylor, in his Words and B/aces, "almost every river name is Celtic, most of the shire names contain Celtic roots, and a fair sprinkling of the names of hills, valleys, and fortresses bears witness that the Celtic was the aboriginal possessor ofthe soil." It would seem that the Cimric race inhabited the low lands of Scotland as far as the hills of Perthshire ; this portion of the Cimri had the name of " Picts," who, along with the Scots, a Gaelic tribe from Ireland, formerly called " Scotia," invaded England after the withdrawal of the Romans.

When the Romans conquered Britain, they did not exterminate the original inhabitants ; they did not come as colonisers, but as military conquerors ; they held the Island much in the same way as we now hold India. They permitted the original inhabitants to live in a state of sub jection, it is true, but in the peaceable possession of their own lands and habitations. The chief memorials of the Celtic occupation of our Island are found in the names of natural objects. In the infancy of a language, original names or nouns would stand for individual and actual things. When a new tribe in vaded a country they would give names to the simplest natural objects ; they would call the river which supplied their wants by a name which indicated water ; and they would call the mountain which over-hung their huts by a word which expressed height, or snow, or some visible quality belonging to the object.

The elements of river-names are divided by Mr. Tavlor into two classes : — The First Class consists of those words which originally meant simply "river" or "water;" the Second Class comprises those names which denote some particular quality or attribute, as "dark," "swift," etc. The names of the chief rivers of Britain, and ofthe Continent of Europe, and also the names of many smaller streams, both in England and on the Continent, will be found in some one ofthe five following Celtic roots for "water:" i . Avon or Aon (river). 2. Dur, dwr, or ter (water). 3. Visge or wysg, wy, is, eo, oise, usk, esk, ex ax (water). 4. Rhe or rhin (swift motion or current). 5. Don or dan (meaning uncertain). The Second Class comprises those names of rivers which denote some particular quality, and is as follows : — 1.

Gam meaning rough. 2. All and Ban .. while. 3. lam send Ian .. spieading*, quiet. 4. Cam .. .. crooked. 5. Clith .. .. strong or warm (Welsh dyd) 6. Dhu .. .. black' This locality contains illustrations of the first and last, Avon and Dhu. The last word, dhu, occurs in a local name, Dove or Dow-bridge, where the three counties meet ; the Irish river, the Avondhu, has been immortalised by Spencer : " Swift Awniduff, which of the Englishmen Is called Blackwater."

Chapter II

The Roman occupation of Britain ; what the Romans did for England ; what Roman remains are found in the Midland Counties. The best way to civilize a country and to develope its natural resources is by establishing a regular system of communication between one part of the country and another. Before the introduction of canals and railways, this was done by means of roads ; the Romans have the honour of being the first civilized occupiers of our Island, and our first road-makers ; they constructed the great highways intersecting the Island from North to South, and from East to West. The names of these roads, or " streets," (so called from the Latin strata, paved, and adopted by the Saxons under the form strœti, hence our street) were Watling street," "Jermyn," or " Hermyn street," " Ikenild street," and the "Fosse way."

Besides the roads, we are indebted for many other substantial improvements to the Roman occupiers of Britain, especially as regards agriculture. Before the invasion of the Romans agriculture had made some progress in certain parts of Britain ; the rich valleys of the South-east of England were fairly cultivated; the inhabit ants had fixed abodes, and small towns were already in existence ; but the cultivated land of this time was very limited. The Romans certainly were the means of vastly improving agriculture, antl extending it almost throughout the Island. Hitherto in most of the Midland and North ern Counties, the pastoral tribes moved about from place to place, and in case of invasion from other tribes, they used to drive their cattle for safety to a stockaded encamp ment or hill fort.

These " British camps," as they are generally called, were constructed on a hill, or "dun"; modern towns ending in " don " were once hill fortresses, such as Wimbledon, Weedon, London, and several others. London was originally a collection of huts round a fort on Ludgate hill ; and it has retained its first name with very little change. The same word is seen in " down," and in Scotch local names, as Dunbar, Dundee, Dum barton, Dunkeld {keld, a spring) ; it is also seen in the Welsh Dinas, hill, as Dinas-Moudie, &c. These stockaded villages were the cradles of important towns ; in more peaceful and settled times the nomad tribes fixed their dwellings in the plains, near to some navigable river, where pasturage could be obtained for their increasing herds, and where they had the means of disposing of their goods.

In this way, York, Chester, Leicester, London, and other towns favourably situated soon rose into note. The three great divisions of England were Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex ; or the counties north of the Humber. the Midland Counties, and the Southern. Their chief towns were York, the capital ofthe North, Lichfield the capital ofthe Midlands, and London, the commercial capital and the chief city in the South, though not always the residence of the King, or the seat of Government. We may sav these three towns were rivals for the honour of becoming the capital of England. For a time Lichfield held its place ; Offa, king of Mercia, appointed his own Archbishop at Lich field ; but the Southern province of Canterbury disliked this innovation, and the title of Archbishop was changed to Bishop.

Lichfield, however, has the honour of being one of our oldest English Bishoprics. The real contest lay between York and London ; and for some time it seemed doubtful which would gain the victory. The valley of the Ouse was much larger than that of the Thames ; but this advantage was more than counterbalanced by the better commercial position of London ; the chief Roman roads passed through London ; there was a bridge over the Thames connecting the North and South ; the river was navigable for a very great distance ; the produce of the Thames valley could easily be brought down to the city ; large quantities of wheat and other agricultural produce were conveyed to the chief towns on the Continent. From these natural advantages in the way of commerce, the small Roman town of about 12,000 inhabitants soon grew into an important city, and finally became the capital of England.

" On the Eastern side of Northamptonshire, the Er mine street coasted by the side of the Wash, and crossed the narrow strip between the valleys of the Nen and the Welland. In the Nen Valley the experienced eye of the Roman found clay which was suited for making pottery, and the station of Castor became the seat of an industry whence blue and grey earthenware were exported to various parts of England. "* Earthenware is commonly found among old Roman ruins ; a great quantity of pottery was dug out among the debris of the Roman town of Silchester. The article goes on to say, "similarly, on the Western side, the Roman road of Watling street traversed the district on its way to Chester, and the Romans left the mark of their presence in the name of that station on the river Tow, now called Towcester.

Between these lines of communication lay the forests of Holdenby, Rockingham, and Yardley Chase, which were scarcely inviting to the Roman Colonist." f The most accessible parts were first Colonised ; and these were the flat portions that lay along the courses of rivers. The mountainous regions and the land that was covered with forests or brushwood were occupied by later Colonisers. These old Roman castles were generally of quadrangular form, that is, either square or oblong. Now several of the old ruins are oval in shape, and for this reason many persons have supposed that they are not Roman, but Saxon. It seems, however, to be admitted that the Romans, at a late period of the empire, were not very particular in this respect ; and in Britain, especially, castles and camps were made, not exactly according to the old methods, but were often adapted to the nature of the ground, either for the purpose of commanding a good view of the surrounding country, or because they wanted to have as strong a position as possible.

It is undoubtedly true that the Saxons made use of the old Roman fortresses : and when they found that these were not large enough to hold all their forces when thev were at war with the Danes, they extended the sides of the Roman camps, thus making their shape oval, and gaining sufficient room for their army. Another instance in which it is thought an old Roman encampment was made use of by a subsequent race is found * Bishop Creighton, Leisure Hour, April, 1891. t Ibid. at Thenford, near Thorpe Mandeville. Here, about a mile and-a-half north of the town, is a hill of considerable elevation, called " Arbury Hill," which bears the appear ance of having been a fortified post. Some Roman remains were found : an urn, with ashes in it, in the churchyard ; and some small square bricks, used by the Romans for pavements, were found in a field.

Hence, it has been supposed that a Roman encampment had been made on Arbury Hill, and that the Danes subsequently fortified it some time before the battle of " Danesmore." At Cheping, or Chipping Norton, there is an earth-work, called Wallow-bank, which is supposed to have been an old Roman fortress, raised bv the Romans to secure their conquests against the incursions of the native Britons, who inhabited the forests of Warwickshire. Roman coins have been frequently found here, which fact seems to prove that it was once a place of considerable note.* The three counties meet at Dowbridge ; this is probably the "Tripontium of Antoninus," which perhaps means "the bridge of the three counties ;" as " septimontium " is the district of the seven mountains. Camden supposes that the Roman "Tripontium" was at Towcesi-r, from the fact of there having been three bridges over the stream there, but most authorities think that Dowbridge has better claims to the honour of being the locality ofthe Tripontium.

The following account ofthe Roman town of Silchester (which I have frequently visited), taken from a local paper, is verv interesting : — " Near Reading, and on the estate of the Duke of Wellington, there once was a Roman city, now called Silchester, but in old times known as Calleva Attrebatum. It stood at the junction of two great roads running to the south and west, and was probably one of the most important Roman cities in England — more important than London itself. The site is a sort of peninsula of high land, whence extensive views may be obtained towards Aldershot and the Hog's Back. The walls and part of the foss are still intact, but the interior is simply arable land. But even the corn showed what was beneath the surface. Camden, in his ' Britannia,' says : — ' The people who live here- ♦Bridge's Northampton, p. ill. abouts mentioned to me a circumstance they had long ago observe.!, that though the soil is very rich and fruitful, the corn will not grow in certain places, intersecting each other in lines, which they suppose were formerly the streets of the city.' The present Rector of Silchester says that the same thing may still be observed in dry seasons.

Now rather more than twenty years ago certain excavations were undertaken by the late Rector of Strathfieldsaye, which revealed to us the fact that up to that time we knew nothing of Roman houses in England. The discovery suggested further investigation, and a few months ago Mr. G. E. Fox, F.S.A., proposed to the Society of Antiquaries that another excavation should be made. The Duke of Wellington, the tenant, and the Duke's agent entered warmly into the plan, and the work was begun forthwith. This afternoon the results were shown in the rooms of the Society at Burlington House. A complete Roman house has been discovered. It confirms the former discovery that a Roman house in England was not in the least like the houses we know at Pompeii and in the dictionaries of antiquities. There is no atrium, and the whole design is different.

A Roman house at Calleva formed three sides of a quadrangle, with a courtyard and a kind of cloister. There were winter apartments, warmed by a hypocaust. Probably the idea of such a house was bortowed from Gallic houses of the better class. In a waste pit near this excavated house was found a complete collection of carpenter's tools. Among them were a plane ofthe variety nowadays called a ' Jack plane,' chisels, smith's tongs, gouges, axes (of the American type, preferred by Mr. Gladstone), anvils, hammers, rasps, and files. A very curious grindstone, with a circular bob in the middle to hold a vessel containing gravy, was also unearthed. The fragments of pottery are numerous but of unequal value. We have Samian ware, with animals — among them a bear (not common in Roman pottery), a pigmy and a crane, and a stag at bay — a rare black ware, and a very rare ware with a micaceous glaze.

There are fragments of earlier pottery, probably Celtic. Indeed there can be little doubt that Silchester was once either an oppidum or a fortified camp of the Belgic tribe of Attrebates. The irregular form of the walls shows this. There was a mound of Celtic origin, which the Romans seem to have cut away and faced with their wall, the ditch being beyond. One of the gates has been thoroughly explored by Mr. Fox and his fellow labourers. It was a very large one, and is in itself sufficient evidence of the importance of the Roman town. In later times — perhaps when the Romans had retired and the English were invading Britain — the inhabitants had partially closed the gate with rude masonry. Near it were found Corinthian and Doric capitals of great size, which must have belonged to a municipal building of imposing grandeur.

One interesting exhibit is a slab of clay on which, while it was still moist, a baby had made the print of its little toes. Another find was Purbeck marble, used as a lining for the walls. This marble was also discovered in what is called opus Signinum — that is, a sort of concrete pavement in which fragments of marble or pottery are embedded."

Chapter III

The Feudal System in England; the tenure of land; tenants, labourers ; mode of cultivation ; farm produce and stock. The Feudal System was introduced into England from France ; there was constant intercourse between these two countries for some time before the Conquest ; many French customs were introduced into England in the time of the Confessor, and by other kings at a later period. Some of these laws and customs relating to the tenure of land resembled the Feudal System as it existed on the Continent ; but it was William the Conqueror who really established the Feudal System in England. In ancient times, especially in France, lands were divided into two classes ; the first was called Alodial, or a freehold ; the second was called feudal, or a fief, held under some superior lord. The holders of alodial lands were free from every burden except the duty of national defence ; every one in olden times was bound to help his sovereign to defend his country in case of evasion.

This national duty is still kept up in Germany, Switzerland, and some other countries. These alodial lands, or freeholds, were the owners' private property; no one else had any claim upon them ; they were for the most part hereditary, and were handed down from father to son, just as here ditary estates are done in our time. We are told, however, that in the ioth and i ith centuries many of these proprietors on the Continent had, from some cause or other, become feudal tenants under some superior lord as their suzerain. A powerful noble made war on a weaker neighbour and seized on his freehold, which he was permitted to hold as his tenant. In England, at the time of the Conquest, most of the enclosed land was the property of Saxon freeholders ; but within a few years after the Conquest nearly every one of these old Saxon proprietors had been displaced by the Conqueror's Norman followers.

In the Midlands the manors, with scarcely one exception, were in the hands of Normans. The Earl of Morton, William Peverel, Rein budcurt, and others, held large districts in the Midlands ; they sub-divided their lands among the Saxon Thanes, or Franklins, as the Normans called them, on certain conditions ; these Thanes held the lands in fee, that is, they had to pay a certain amount of ient, in money or produce ; and they were also obliged to serve in war. The lands could be let out to vassals, but military service was always enjoined in addition to rent. William divided the kingdom into 60,215 Knights' fees, and gave the lands to his followers on condition of equipping one Knight for each fee.* When the King wished to go to war, he called out the the great Barons, and they in turn summoned the lesser nobles, and these brought their vassals ; so the King had a powerful army ready for battle.

This condition of military service continued for a few reigns. After a time, however, this forced service was found to be inconvenient, both to the King and to those who were bound to serve ; and so in the reign of Henry II. * The Knight's fee was fixed in England at the annual value of Every estate supposed to be of this value, aud entered as such in the rolls of the Exchequer, was bound to contribute the service of a soldier, or to pay an escuage. or money payment to the amount assessed upon Knight's fees. — Hallam, " State of Europe," p. 121. an important change was made. "This was the introduction of scutages, or pecuniary compensation for that personal service which the military vassals had to perform. The services of a feudal army were always very inconvenient, as it was undisciplined and intractable, and the time of attendance was limited to the short period of 40 days.