There was light snow on the ground as Alan rode into the village of Thorrington in the Hundred of Tendring in northern Essex, with four Norman men-at-arms at his back. They were the swordsmen Hugh and Baldwin, and Roger and Warren the archers. An English gebur with a light donkey cart hired in London, which carried their goods, trailed slightly behind. They had ridden the 64 miles from London to Colchester over two days, resting at Chelmsford. The road had passed through the immensity of the Waltham Forest, in which the villages of Barking, South Weald, Ingatestone and Margaretting were tiny and trivial intrusions by man into the world of nature- insignificant pockets of cleared land in an immense wilderness.
The great expanse of woodland through which the rutted and muddy dirt track that was the main road had wandered had been relatively open, with the upper storey of branches bare for the winter. Massive oak and elm trees, and the white trunks of smaller silver birch, stretched for mile after mile. Because of the dense shade cast by the trees in summer the forest was virtually clear of bushes and undergrowth, with only the trunks of the trees and the occasional fallen giant limiting visibility to 100 paces or so.
Occasionally fallow deer or muntjac had been seen either flitting through the trees or foraging for nuts lying on the ground. Squirrels and hares darted about and game birds occasionally burst into flight as the riders approached. Overhead an occasional hawk had been seen circling looking for prey.
Travellers had been few and far between. Alan’s party had overtaken a few groups on foot or slow-moving wagons drawn by oxen, the oxen occasionally being whipped by their handlers to keep them moving. In the forest most travellers moved in groups of usually of a dozen or more for safety.
It was not until they reached the more open country and arrived at the River Can at Chelmsford, where the road emerged from the great forest, that the hand of man could be seen with any regularity. Even then the land was mainly forest, woodland and waste between Witham and Braxted before the road passed into Lexden Hundred and proceeded through Feering, Stanway and Lexden before it eventually arrived at Colchester.
The traffic on the road had increased after Chelmsford, with travellers being there prepared to journey alone. Roughly dressed peasants and the poorer townsfolk and villagers had walked on foot. Merchants travelled on wagons with their goods. Hawkers walked on their way from village to village either with their goods on their backs, or those selling heavier or more bulky items using a small cart which they either pulled themselves or used a donkey or mule. Only very occasionally had the more wealthy been seen on horseback, and then usually with a handful of retainers with them. After leaving the forest the villages had been five to ten miles apart, with the cultivated land encompassing perhaps one mile on each side of the village.
They had stayed overnight at an inn in Colchester, before the next morning, the third of their journey, leaving the town at daybreak. They crossed the wooden bridge over the River Colne after paying the pontage fee and rode the six miles to Thorrington in a little over an hour, passing through the villages of Wivenhoe and Alresford on the way.
On riding through each village and town since leaving London they had felt the hostile eyes of the local population on them. The few workers out and about in the fields near Thorrington stopped their winter work of gathering wood or repairing fences and stared at the strangers as they rode past, although Alan presumed that in such an isolated area they would have done so with any passers-by.
It was Tuesday the 16th of January and a bitterly cold day. The frozen ground crunched at each step taken, and the breath of man and beast hung in the still air before them. The men sat slumped on their saddles, wrapped tightly in their thick woollen cloaks.
Despite the feeling of hostility all around them, Alan had insisted that they ride without armour. He was determined that if he was going to live in this land he was not going to live in fear of an arrow in the back. However, all five had kept their swords handy and loose in their scabbards.
Alan noted that the village of Thorrington was arranged around the usual village green, with a tavern and a small wooden church with the tithe-barn alongside. There were probably thirty cottages facing the dirt track that ran around the village green, nearly all with a small vegetable garden at the rear and many with a pig-pen or chicken coop, and often both. There was a large barn and a granary. Snow sat heavily on thatched roofs and here and there it had been blown by the wind into drifts several feet deep on the ground. Smoke rose from the stone chimney of the smithy and the regular banging of metal on metal could be heard. A stream, the beginnings of Alresford Creek, ran through the village, with a little wooden bridge over it. Just downstream of the village was the mill, its water wheel turning lazily. At the far side of the village was the manor house fortified in the usual Saxon style with a wooden palisade surrounding the Hall and its outbuildings at a distance of about twenty paces.
Beyond the village, about half a mile away near the tidal headwaters of Barfleet Creek, was the salt-house that serviced the salt pans on the flat tidal land next to Alresford Creek, Barfleet Creek and, further away, the Colne estuary near the mouth of Alresford Creek.
All the buildings in the village were of cob or half-wood construction with thatched roofs. The Hall was quite large, about forty paces long and twenty wide. Its walls were neatly lime-washed and pierced by four windows on each side, the shutters closed to keep out the winter cold. Smoke rose lazily from a small hole centrally located in the roof, and also escaped in a tendrils from the thatched roof. A stable-hand could be seen at work mucking out the stables and forking new straw into each stall. The kitchen was a separate building located about ten paces from the Hall, to minimise the risk of fire and also to keep the bustle, noise and smell of the cooking away from the nobles in the Hall.
They dismounted just inside the palisade without being challenged and having seen no guard. Alan called for the stable hand to come and take the five horses, instructing him in slow but understandable English to rub them down, water and feed them. He clapped his gloved hands together to restore circulation in the bitter cold- he had been hardly able to feel the leather straps of the reins during the ride. The noise of their arrival had attracted a small crowd and when he turned to face them Alan called out in Anglo-Saxon English, “Who’s the senior here?”
A small man with long brown hair and about thirty years of age, looking a little like a weasel and dressed traditionally in a woollen tunic with breeches and cross-leggings advanced to the front of the crowd and said, “That would be me, Sir. My name is Kendrick. What can I do for you?”
“You are aware that the former owner of this estate, Estan, died at Hastings with no heir. The king has given this estate to me and I’ve come to claim it,” said Alan. “These are my men Hugh, Baldwin, Roger and Warren. They speak little English, so some patience will be required on both sides until they learn. Now let’s get inside out of this damn cold!”
On walking inside Alan saw that most of the building was comprised of the usual single Hall, but that somewhat unusually one end of the building had been divided off into two rooms. The light in the Hall was dim, mainly cast by a roaring central fire and a few smoking rush torches set into brackets on the posts that ran in two rows down the Hall, supporting the roof. The smoke from the fire and rushes cast a haze in the air and caught at the throat. The Hall was sparsely furnished with a few benches and tables, mainly drawn near the central fireplace; a thick layer of reasonably fresh rushes were underfoot. A quick look through the door into each of the rooms showed one to be a bedchamber with a large bed and the other a solar or private sitting room.
“Firstly, show me the strong-box and give me the key,” Alan ordered Kendrick.
As was usual the strongbox was in the bedchamber, and once he had secured the key Alan was not sufficiently ill-mannered to check what it contained before he spoke to the Hall staff. Alan had Kendrick call the staff together, asked each their names and addressed them together, letting them know that, provided
they performed their duties properly, their positions were secure. Alan then asked Kendrick to call a meeting of all the freemen of the village the following day, to be held at the tithe-barn at noon with the church bell to be rung before the meeting, and before that for Alan to meet with both the village head-man Tolland, a wealthy cheorl, and also the village priest.
Next Alan went into the bedchamber and used the key to open the strongbox. There was very little money in the box, less than?1, and no books of account. Most importantly it contained the ownership records for the manor, the landboc, confirming the grant of land to Estan by King Edward. Alan went back out into the Hall and sat on a bench at a scrubbed wooden table near the fire, still with his thick green woollen cloak wrapped around him as he ate a bowl of thick vegetable pottage and warmed his hands on a cup of mulled ale.
When he had finished eating he collected the bottle of ink that he had set by the fire to thaw, and a quill and parchment from his bag, before returning to the table and queried Kendrick about the accounts. He was told that there were no books of account, Kendrick using the ‘poor illiterate and ignorant servant’ routine. On being pressed Kendrick agreed that perhaps there were some books that Estan had kept and promised to look for them amongst his former master’s possessions.
Alan then had Kendrick sit and specify the obligations of each cheorl, sokeman, gebur and cottar and the names and details of each slave, while he made notes with quill and ink on parchment for future reference.
That night Alan slept in the bedchamber. His men slept in the solar and took turns to stand guard outside the adjacent doors of the two rooms, while the remainder slept.
At Terce the following morning Tolland arrived. Life in the country was more difficult than life in the city for several reasons; one being the difficulty in arranging and attending meetings. In the absence of abbey bells ringing every three hours, time was largely a matter of mutual consent.
Tolland was a large and strongly built man of middle years with dark hair. He was a wealthy freeman, as was shown by the well-made but not ostentatious brown woollen tunic and trews that he wore. He brought with him his deputy, Erian the Taverner, a portly man of medium height.
Alan grasped forearms with both and invited them to sit at the high table and eat and drink as they talked. Alan had Tolland give a general description of the village and its inhabitants and the way that cultivation of the land occurred. “This looks like a prosperous and well-run community. I have two ploughs and teams, and the men of the village have three,” said Alan. “There are four hides of land- that is 480 acres, of which about one third is in my demesne. The king has decreed that geld will again be payable, and the village assessment is 8 shillings a year. One third of that is payable by me. That’s two shillings and seven pence. The rest is payable by the freemen of the village, payable in instalments each Quarter Day. For the freemen of the village to pay the geld each Quarter Day, the first on Lady Day in just under three months, is likely to take food from the mouths and clothes from the backs of your villagers. That is not in the interests of either myself or the villagers, who I see as being my people.”
Toland frowned and nodded his acknowledgement of what Alan had said. “Why the imposition of the geld, after fifteen years? I would have thought with the coming of the Normans we would be safer from attack by the Danes, rather than more vulnerable. Does the king intend to reintroduce the fleet that Edward paid off fifteen years ago, and hire more huscarles?” asked Tolland astutely.
“I doubt it,” replied Alan honestly. “It’s a revenue-raising exercise that we all must pay, Norman and English alike. In addition, I have to provide six mounted and armoured men-at-arms for forty days a year- not just from this village but from all the manors I have been given in this Hundred. At least myself, and the villagers in my honour, do not have to pay the Heriot that many of the thegns and even the Church will have to pay. In the end it is the freemen who suffer, as all the wealth of the land comes from their efforts. What is my problem is also the problem of the village, down to the lowest slave. And vice versa- what is the village’s problem is my problem, as I’m responsible for all that happens here. So we have a problem that affects us all.
“As you know, I’ve called a village meeting for later today. I would suggest that you seek the counsel of the other senior cheorls in the village. My suggestion is that what we should do is to increase production so that we have more to sell and can pay the taxes. I see three ways we can do this.
“Firstly, there is waste land outside the area that the village now cultivates, which can relatively easily be brought into cultivation. It is further away and less fertile than the land currently used, but at least we won’t have to clear it of trees as this Hundred is largely open land.
“Secondly, we can increase the number of saltpans we have in operation. Currently I have one on the estuary, one on Alresford Creek and two on Barfleet Creek. Over the next few weeks I’ll be using the labour owed to me to build another salt-pan for my demesne in each location. Salt is a high-value item that we can all sell easily. I suggest that the village also increases its salt pans. I understand it has two pans on the estuary, one on Alresford Creek and three on Barfleet Creek. Unless we have a particularly wet summer the salt pans bring in a good and regular income with minimal work.” Alan didn’t mention that all of the salt would be processed through his salt house, with him retaining ten percent of the salt processed for other producers.
“Thirdly, I’ll be changing my demesne land over from the two-field cultivation system to the three-field system that is becoming common on the continent. Instead of two fields, one in cultivation and one lying fallow, there are three. One is planted for winter wheat and barley, one is planted with spring crops such as wheat, oats, barley, or rye and the third is either left fallow or preferably planted with legumes- beans and alfalfa. This increases the land under cultivation by one third. The planting rate is also to be increased on my land from two bushels of seed per acre to three. With proper fertilizing and marling of the land I can get six times the seed return for wheat, or more, instead of the usual four. I’ll have just over 100 acres of land under cultivation each year instead of 70 and I’ll more than double the number bushels I harvest, with little impact of labour because the ploughings and plantings take place twice a year, but each occupies less time.”
Tolland was an intelligent man who could read and write. Moreover, like all farmers he could count and could calculate bushels per acre in his head. However, again like all farmers, he was also very conservative. What had been good enough for his grandfather on the same land should be good enough for him. However, he did appreciate the need to increase village income to pay the new tax, or suffer reduced living standards in good years and starvation in bad years. He promised to discuss the ideas with the other village elders and raise the matter at the folkmoot called by him at Alan’s request later that day.
Next Alan met with the parish priest, Brother Godwine. Brother Godwine attended in his own good time, coming late- perhaps in the hope of an invitation to the mid-day meal. In this he was disappointed as Alan was less than impressed with the man whose parish took in the villages of Thorrington, Brightlingsea, Frating, Frowick Hall and another of Alan’s manors at Great Bentley, which was laenland leased by a thegn called Swein.
Brother Godwine was fat, which Alan could accept. However, he couldn’t accept the priest’s unctuous and falsely servile manner, and his lack of personal hygiene with his cassock dirty from accumulated food-stains and odiferous from both the garment and its owner being unwashed. The lack of learning of the priest and his simple stupidity were also not acceptable to Alan. He had also gathered from comments made by Kendrick that the priest kept a mistress at Frating. The priest was also lazy, in that with Tendring as a central location, Brightlingsea at three and a half miles was the greatest distance he had to travel and the other villages were only two miles away- yet Brother Godwine performed Sunday Mass in only one village each week
.
Alan informed him in no uncertain terms that this was not acceptable and that Mass would be said in Thorrington each Sunday morning at Terce at midmorning, Great Bentley at Sext at noon and in one other village at None at mid-afternoon. The remaining village would have Mass said on one other day of the week, or in summer on Sunday at Vespers in the evening.
Alan also instructed Brother Godwine that he would attend each of the villages for one day a week to visit the ill and infirm, give them the sacraments individually, hear confessions and tend to the poor and wealthy alike. Brother Godwine was horrified to hear that he was apparently expected to work for the benefice that was within Alan’s power to maintain or withdraw, together with the income the priest received from both the tithes that all in the area paid into his tithe-barn and the produce from the strips in the village fields allocated to him but worked on his behalf by the villagers. He had an easy life with virtually all the work required to maintain him in comfort being performed by others.
Brother Godwine bleated about the time taken to travel from place to place and the very onerous nature of his duties. Alan’s reply was unsympathetic and cold. “You are not owed a living, and a rich living, by this parish. You earn it, just as every other man in the parish earns what he receives. As regards travel, buy a hackney or a mule. That’ll get you from one village to the next in less than half an hour. God knows that you can afford it just from the tithes you receive just from my estate. If you prefer, I can give you one as my next month’s tithe payment. Your onerous duties? Try spending more time tending to your flock and less time tending to your mistress in Frating- more time in church hearing confessions and performing Mass and less time in bed fornicating and sinning. You can either modify your ways or find another position. This is my first and final warning to you.”
The folkmoot was held on the village green, as not just the freemen of the village wanted to attend, but also their womenfolk and children of all ages. Even the few slaves were there, and Alan allowed them to remain rather than chasing them off to work. Fortunately the weather remained clear, but cold.
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