by Harry Ludlum
More interesting in relation to the Borley story, however, is the now well-proven existence, until 1538, of another rather more obscure order, in fact a very small Priory cell, which had its premises close by the present-day main road between Sudbury and Long Melford, near to what is now St Bartholomew's Lane, so named after the order.
It was, as Mrs Dawson had stated, of the Benedictine order, and was founded by Wulfric, Master of the Mint to King Henry I. The existence of this is apparent from an entry in Dugdale and it also appears in a gazette entitled English Medieval Monasteries 1066-1540, published in 1979.
St Bartholomew's Priory was older than that in Sudbury itself, having been founded in 1115. Of this priory, only the ruins of the church now survive, the prior's lodging having been destroyed in 1779.
It becomes apparent that here indeed, at last, lies the most probable answer to the persistent stories about a Borley monastery.
Two main points now need to be examined concerning St Bartholomew's Priory. Georgina Dawson stated that the Priory had 'free warren' or access to woodland within Borley's boundaries, and therefore, it would be interesting to learn just what the Priory possessed in terms of local land or land rights.
Also, one would naturally be curious to know whether anything in the Priory's history involved Borley, and the site of Borley Rectory in particular.
Readers will recall that mention has already been made of a long-standing belief that part of the grounds had once been a plague pit, wherein had been buried victims of that scourge of the Middle Ages.
The period during which the Priory was in existence did indeed cover those years in which this country, and especially southeast and eastern England, was ravaged by appalling epidemics of bubonic plague. By far the worst of these was that of the autumn and winter of 1348/49.
It is thought to have begun in China, or Cathay, as it was then known, in 1346, as a result of the failure to bury the victims of a famine. The disease then spread through the caravans of merchants returning overland from the Far East, and eventually crews of ships returning to England from the Continent brought the plague to England.
When it struck, the results were nothing less than disastrous and it hit monasteries and nunneries just as badly as it hit the towns and villages. None but a few totally enclosed orders were safe from the consequences.
Very wet weather during the late autumn of 1348 helped the disease to spread out of control and, in a contemporary account, Cardinal Gasquet tells of the disease 'killing by midday many who had been fit and well in the morning'.
In East Anglia, the plague is alleged to have wiped out some 60,000 people in the Norwich area alone. The inference here for the fate of the monks of Sudbury Priory is very obvious and it is virtually inconceivable that either Sudbury itself or Sudbury Priory could have escaped the plague unscathed.
So, how does this relate to Borley and its supposed plague pit?
We will assume that during this epidemic some monks of Sudbury Priory contracted the disease. When one realises that some monasteries used to shelter the poor and the wayfarer in times of bad weather or at night, when it might well be unsafe to travel the open road, it becomes obvious that it would need only one traveller who carried the plague to set the black death loose among the hapless monks.
Faced with this, and the resultant deaths among them, what might the brothers do? They might simply consign the bodies to their own graveyard, or perhaps even burn them, but even at that early date they might have been aware enough of the idea of isolation to protect those not affected to have their dead taken out to a more remote spot to be buried.
What better place than on an isolated and at that time possibly unoccupied spot on a knoll a good mile from the Priory itself across the river?
Although it may not be possible to prove this, the theory does not, to the writer, seem at all impossible. In this case the legend may very well fit the history without any journalistic assistance.
There is more concerning the fate of the monks of Sudbury Priory that lends weight to a connection between the Priory, the plague and the plague pit on the site of the Rectory. Georgina Dawson began by stating the existence of a priory on the opposite side of the River Stour to Borley, no great distance away.
We know now, both from Dugdale and from Roy Midmer's gazette, that in this statement she was indeed correct. She also stated that the Priory had access to land in Borley.
The main difficulty in this lies in our not being able to know just where the boundary lay between the land held by the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, who held title to the manor of Borley at that time and any possible land owned, held or tenanted by or on behalf of Sudbury Priory.
Therefore, it is of course, possible that the site of the Rectory could have belonged to either party, or of course, to neither. Alternatively, as both the Canterbury order and Sudbury Priory were Benedictine, it is just possible that they might have shared some land.
In any case, insofar as the site's use as a plague pit is concerned, the tiny community of Borley itself could well have buried victims of the plague on that site, away from the cottages, some of which almost certainly date back to the 15th and 16th centuries and probably replaced even older structures.
When the epidemic of 1348/98 eventually burned itself out, as far as the monasteries were concerned, the deaths of so many monks and nuns - whole communities in some cases - so damaged these communities that in the opinion of many historians they never really recovered.
In many ways, it is a miracle that a small priory such as that which now concerns us survived those dreadful days at all, more especially when one learns that there were further outbreaks of plague in 1361 and 1368.
By 1665 and the Great Plague, Sudbury Priory had, of course, been suppressed, but one cannot help wondering just how many victims of the Black Death might have been consigned to that knoll above the Stour Valley and to the graveyard of Borley Church.
How short a time it was between the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the alleged death at Borley of Marie Lairre the nun, in 1667, a story that will occupy a later chapter.
What do the available records have to say about this little priory whose history seems to have been so scantily told?
In fact, details as to what land holdings this tiny priory possessed are scant indeed. The Ecclesiastical Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV, 1291 states that Sudbury Priory had property in the Deanery of Sudbury. It also held some other possessions, among which were properties in Acton (Suffolk), Chelveton, Clare, Kedington, Melford, Thorpe and Wratting. The holding of Clare is of some interest in the overall story, because Clare lay out in the countryside beyond Borley, and itself in later years had an order of monks since re-established in recent times and functioning today. No mention is made of Borley in this list.
The reader might well, at this point, feel that this lack of mention of Borley in the list of Sudbury Priory's holdings proves that it held no land there. Historically this may be true, but lack of a listing for Borley among Sudbury's books is not proof one way or the other of course. But the writer asks his readers to remember the statement by Georgina Dawson that the Priory existed and had free warren in woodland in Borley. We have seen how the existence of the Priory is proved from known recorded history, and as I intimated earlier, I see no reason to doubt the comment about the woodland rights either, though it would, of course, be of interest to know the source of Mrs Dawson's evidence.
It is a somewhat peculiar coincidence that it should have been Clare to which Fred Cartwright was going to work, when he came upon the ghostly nun outside the Rectory in 1927.
To conclude, therefore, the writer suggests that Sudbury Priory held either title or right of access to some small portion of land in Borley, the suggestion of which may have attracted Mrs Dawson's attention through knowledge of the Clare holding. It remains to be seen whether or not the writer's submission results in the coming to light of any fresh information concerning this matter.
CHAPTER 18
A Lost Ghost and Sir Edward Waldegrave
It seems perhaps rather strange that the one person so well known in the history of Borley should have been all but passed by in the search for the identities of the ghosts of the Rectory, and yet this individual cries out to be set in his due place as an almost certain character in the Borley Rectory saga.
The reader would have to search hard for any hint that Edward Waldegrave from Bures, one of the earliest Waldegrave Lords of the Manor at Borley, could conceivably be one of Borley Rectory's ghosts.
Only in The End of Borley Rectory is there a brief mention of the fate of Sir Edward, and a suggestion that the psychometrist Fred Marion was referring to Sir Edward when, from a piece of touchwood found in the Rectory, he drew the sensation of a tall disillusioned man who became an enemy of the people in the Church. I cannot help but wonder whether the personality that Marion thought he had detected was that of Harry Bull rather than Sir Edward Waldegrave, but for the present it is Sir Edward that must concern us.
When one examines what history has to say about this devout and powerful Catholic baronet, it is hard to believe that he is not one of the strange spectral inhabitants of the now vanished Rectory.
If one believes that ghosts seem to be a visual end product of a sense of injustice or persecution by someone long since dead, then Sir Edward's known history presents the researcher with some very strong ammunition on the side of Edward being the ghost.
Although his exact date of birth does not appear to have been recorded, his age at the time of his death, 44 years, gives at least the year of Edward's arrival on the scene, and that is 1517. In The Ghosts of Borley, he is recorded as having inherited Borley from his father but elsewhere, including the local historical guide to Borley Church, the documentation tells us that he came originally from Bures, where the Waldegrave family seat, Smallbridge Hall, still stands.
However, according to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press), Edward did in fact inherit lands from his father at Borley. His father was John Waldegrave. What very probably happened was that young Waldegrave inherited land other than Borley Manor from John Waldegrave and only later, at the time of the Dissolution, did he come to Borley Hall.
Edward Waldegrave was born the second son of John Waldegrave and Lora Rochester and he was also a descendant of Sir Richard Waldegrave of Bures, at one time Speaker of the House of Commons. As one of this line, young Edward would ultimately have inherited Smallbridge rather than the Manor of Borley, and it would seem to be as a result of the Dissolution that Edward Waldegrave came to little, remote Borley.
In 1546, King Henry VIII enacted the final repossession of the Manor of Borley from the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, not apparently by force but by consent, since the Dean and Chapter could no longer afford the estate's upkeep. Shortly after that, the Manor of Borley was given to Edward Waldegrave.
Sir Edward, as he later became, was Master of the Great Wardrobe to King Philip and Queen Mary and was also at one time Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was also one of the representatives for the county of Essex who gathered at the meeting of Parliament on January 20, 1557. Waldegrave also held the position of a senior member of the household of Princess Mary Tudor, herself a Catholic who spent some time imprisoned because of her faith, an experience that ultimately led her to round on the Protestants and earned her the unenviable title of 'Bloody Mary'.
In 1551, Waldegrave was ordered to enforce the prohibition on the celebration of Catholic Mass in Mary's household, and perhaps not surprisingly even in those dangerous times Edward Waldegrave refused.
He was promptly sent to the Tower of London, a close prisoner under the authority of Henry's successor, Edward VI, but the sickly boy King Edward did not long survive his coronation and fortunately, for Waldegrave at any rate, Queen Mary succeeded to the throne. After he had become ill whilst still a prisoner, Waldegrave was granted partial release to what amounted to house arrest at his home at Borley Hall before finally being set at liberty by the new Catholic sovereign.
Not only was Waldegrave now free, but he was by the grace of Queen Mary, soon to be a very wealthy man as well. Among properties given to him was what was to become the main base of the Waldegrave family, at Chewton Mendip in Somerset.
When Waldegrave objected to Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain, he was reportedly bought off with a pension of 500 crowns. All this, however, was to prove to be something of a lull before the storm. Queen Mary died suddenly on November 17, 1558, and though the persecution of the Protestants was to end as a result, the subsequent arrival on the scene of Elizabeth was to signal a time of equal terror for those of the Catholic faith, to which the Waldegraves solidly remained loyal.
With the rise to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I, the enigmatic daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Catholic hopes in the person of her half-sister Mary Queen of Scots received a serious blow with the Scottish monarch's confinement in Fotheringay Castle, where she was eventually to end up on the block in 1587.
More trouble now lay in store for Edward Waldegrave. Staunch Catholic as he was, he refused to accept the Oath of Supremacy, making Elizabeth sole head of the English Church, and also rejected the Act of Uniformity. As Sir Thomas More had already found to his cost during Henry's reign, this was to be a fatal mistake.
Whether Elizabeth had decided as a result of his rejection of the Oath to have Waldegrave's head for treason, or whether she was more concerned to have him convicted of the 'crime' of Popery in carrying on the forbidden Catholic practices, is not clear, but on or about April 20, 1561, having held Mass with his wife, his physician Dr Fryer and others of his household at Borley Hall, he was arrested and again consigned to the Tower of London. This time, however, he was not to emerge alive. A letter preserved in the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts tells of Waldegrave's arrest and imprisonment, the writer of the letter being Sir William Seyntlow and the recipient Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.
According to most recorded versions of events, Edward Waldegrave died in the Tower on September 1, 1561. It is at this stage that the possibility of 'Waldegrave the Ghost' comes into play, not so much because of his imprisonment and death, but because of the way in which his downfall came about, and the persecution that lay behind it. When one learns of his ultimate fate after his death, then it becomes clear as to a cause for his ghost to appear near the site later occupied by Borley Rectory, if not actually in the Rectory itself.
According to the authors of The Ghosts of Borley, Waldegrave was buried beneath the Tower Chapel but other accounts tell us that though this is what happened to begin with, he was subsequently exhumed and brought back to Borley, where his family tomb survives in the church.
Ironic, is it not, that a devout Catholic should end up buried in a Protestant church at a service where the Book of Common Prayer was used? That alone would be anathema to the Waldegraves, the last straw, a persecution and an insult on a grand scale.
A modern view of Borley Hall. On or about April 20, 1561, Sir Edward Waldegrave was arrested here, charged with heresy.
Among many other aspects of the story of Sir Edward, we need to find out exactly how he died, because this bears considerably on which of the strange spectral figures seen near the Rectory could reasonably be identified as his ghost. A learned local resident of Borley who helped with a number of historical details intimated in a letter to me that Sir Edward Waldegrave was eventually executed for heresy.
Is there evidence to prove or disprove this suggestion? Some are of the opinion that he had died after an illness, and indeed this was the view of the archivist of the Public Records Office (PRO), based on the fact that during August, 1561, William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, requested the wardship of Sir Edward's son, if Waldegrave himself died.
The opinion of the PRO was that this indicated the natural death of Sir Edward, rather than his execution. The Marquis of Winchester's letter was dated August 8,
1561, which is just about four and a half months after Waldegrave's arrest, thus supporting the natural death theory. But it is worthwhile pondering for a moment on some other aspects of the case that could suggest otherwise.
In those days, prison conditions could be very harsh, though it is a fact that several of the more illustrious of the Tower's unwilling occupants were allowed some personal comforts: books, servants, reasonable food and so on. It is also true that the majority of inmates found themselves incarcerated under exactly the opposite conditions, and many died from illness and gross maltreatment.
Sanitation in those days was appalling and such medical knowledge as existed was often crude and sometimes based on horribly erroneous fallacies. One wonders whether Edward Waldegrave died as a result of illness after a period of just over five months' incarceration. One might also consider that he might have been ill at the time of his arrest to have perished during his confinement.
His medical adviser, Dr Fryer, was present at Borley Hall when Waldegrave was taken, but there is no direct evidence to tell us whether Fryer was there in his capacity as a physician, or whether he was there to take part in the banned liturgy as one of this staunch Catholic family.
There are other questions that arise. In requesting the wardship of Sir Edward's son, did William Paulet perhaps know the likely consequences for his friend if the baronet was found guilty of Papist activities, or did he suspect that an informer had been planted in Waldegrave's household? It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Queen had made up her mind to get rid of a rich and powerful potential enemy anyway by having him despatched to the next world, a man whom she must have considered to be guilty of treason in refusing to accept the Oath of Supremacy, and guilty of heresy under Protestant law.
If Waldegrave was to be executed, he may have known what was coming and made haste, as far as he was permitted, to settle his affairs for he certainly made a will, recorded in the Public Records Office.
