Archdeaconry
court records- a different slant on 16th century
Appleby
John
Petcher of Appleby was brought before the Leicester archdeacon's
court on 29th October, 1597 charged upon a
"common fame" of having committed adultery with Sara
Winter, wife of Robert Winter, one of his neighbours. We later
find that John “purged himself” of this offence “as well
by his own oath as by the oaths of four of his honest neighbours”,
was acquitted of the charge and “restored again to his good
name”. (Leics. Record Office, Archdeaconry Court Proceedings,
1D41/4/673a)
Some
two or three dozen pages of court depositions or witness
statements for this case survive among the records of the
Lincoln archdiocese. The vast records of the archdeaconry courts
are of particular interest to local historians because they
provide fascinating insights into the behaviour and social
attitudes of the villagers. Their revelations of innocent
merrymaking, gossip, intrigue and common roguery are a reminder
that the villagers shared our human strengths and failings.
These records can indeed provide an alternative view of
village life, a corrective to history based upon the bare bones
of census and taxation records.
“Bawdy
Courts”
Apart
from church and probate business the archdeaconry courts dealt
almost exclusively with moral offences.
Their twin preoccupations with illicit sex and defamation
earned them the popular name of "bawdy courts". The
broad scope of the courts’ jurisdiction and diversity of
clientele ensured that every town and village in Leicestershire
had its quota of offenders.
Indeed in some cases whole communities were called forth
to give evidence and the investigative dragnet was widened even
further by the courts’ admission of hearsay evidence,
encouraging litigants to heap scorn on their accusers to bring
prosecuting witnesses into disrepute.
Elizabethan
Social System
Robert
Winters’ allegations against John Petcher can thus be set in
context of the village social system.
Appleby in Elizabethan times was still an open field
parish with between 300-400 inhabitants. Robert and Sara Winter occupied a smallholding as
tenants of Edward Griffin, lord of the manor of Great Appleby. Petcher was a sheep farmer whose own wife had died
about a year before the presentments and whose goods were worth
only about ten pounds at his death in 1621 (will and
inventory of John Petcher, 1621).
Edward Taylor, the principal witness was a more
“shifty” inhabitant, perhaps a cottager or vagrant with
connections to the labouring poor.
The court also questioned witnesses from outside the
parish, including Hugh Draiton, an Atherstone alehouse-keeper,
and three Swepstone farmers who were in Atherstone on the day
that Edward Taylor claimed to have seen John and Sara cavorting
together.
A
“Wayward wife”?
Petcher
was brought before the court on presentments based upon
“common knowledge”, but most of the evidence is
circumstantial. He
was reported to have been in the company of Sara Winter on
several occasions, and to have frequented Robert Winter’s
house in his absence. A
certain Galfridus Meassen from the adjacent village of Measham
is alleged to have told Richard Aldret of Appleby that he saw
John and Sara “together between two rye lands in Measham
fields” (though he does not say what they were doing there.)
However the principal articles of the indictment are more
concerned with Petcher’s luring Sara “by diabolical
persuasion and enticements of the flesh” to local towns and
fairs – specifically to the market towns of Ashby, Atherstone
and Leicester. This
mention of fairs is especially interesting, as Q.R.Quaif found
from his study of Somerset Consistory Court records, “wayward
wives” and their lovers often met secretly in alehouses and at
fairs. These
festive occasions provided opportunities for illicit liaisons
denied to couples within the narrow watchful world of their own
parish. (Wanton Wenches
and Wayward Wives, 1979 pp. 128-)
Adultery,
intrigue and bribery
It
seems that Sara was particularly attracted to fairs, and her
husband may have already tried to put a stop to her
philandering, for there are reports of his having “put away
his wife”. This
could explain why she was staying with Nicholas Taylor and his
family in the days leading up to the Atherstone fair.
Robert may have been trying to “entrap” her when he
offered a reward to Edward Taylor “to watch Sara and Petcher
to take them in adultery together”.
This would explain too why Edward’s kinsfolk took her
to Atherstone. There
is also an accusation that Robert had a hand in a crafty scheme
whereby Nicholas Taylor tried to persuade Sara to start a suit
against her husband on the grounds that he had refused to
cohabit with her – a ploy to entice Petcher to lay out money
for a court action. And
there are rumours that Robert bribed Edward Taylor, by providing
fuel, bread and money to secure him as a witness against Petcher.
(721c)
Annual
fair at Atherstone
The
court proceedings revolved around events which took place on the
fateful afternoon of the annual fair in Atherstone, and centred
around the alehouses with which the town was particularly well
provided. (There
were in fact 32 alehouses in the town in 1720, VCH
Warwickshire IV, p. 126).
Hugh Draiton’s alehouse was probably right in the
market square, shown in a map of 1716 (Warw.
Country R.O. ref. P7).
A mid sixteenth century court roll lists Hugh Drayton as
a customary tenant paying 1s 3d for a burgage plot in the town,
while a Christopher Drayton paid rent for a barn in the market
place and five acres of land (B. Bartlett, History
and Antiquities of …Manceter, 1791, pp 150-3). Draiton’s alehouse was evidently well frequented
by local villagers and the festive atmosphere is captured in
witnesses’ depositions. Arriving on the scene Edward Taylor,
the key witness, was barely able to conceal his delight upon
discovering that John and Sara were sitting together in the
alehouse. But his
enthusiasm seemed to have exceeded discretion for not long after
his arrival, perhaps after a few ales, we hear he “did openly
before witnesses slander John Petcher…and called him
whoremaster”. This
was a serious accusation which had to be carefully examined.
The
events which followed can be pieced together from witness
depositions. By mid
afternoon the fair was at its height and a merry throng had
crowded into the alehouse. The downstairs rooms were “greatly
frequented with guests going in and out continually”.
Several groups of people sat eating and drinking in the
hall which joined onto the parlour where John and Sara sat with
Nicholas Taylor and his wife. It’s not certain how long the
couple were left alone together after Nicholas and his wife
withdrew. However,
as it was pointed out, although the parlour door was closed it
was unlocked; so there was little chance of their being left
undisturbed. Much
was made of the suggestion that “most men coming into a
victualling house on a fair day, especially if they lack a place
to sit in, do usually look into a parlour where guests use to
be”. If they
couple were fornicating, it was argued, surely the landlord, his
wife, his servants or his guests would have known!
The
court was rightly sceptical about Taylor’s claim to have
“taken” the couple in adultery and his supposed refusal of
sixpence from Petcher to keep silent about the matter, since no
one else came forward to verify this tale.
Also there is strong evidence that Taylor spent most of
the afternoon drinking with Hugh Draiton in a nearby alehouse.
It is hardly surprising that his allegations were
described as expedients for him to “release or excuse himself,
and not for any truth that is in the matter”.(673a)
Witness
Accounts
The
sworn depositions of the three Swepstone farmers, Richard
Dudley, William Chilwell and Thomas Burrows, all support this
judgement. According
to their account they were sitting in the hall when Nicholas
Taylor’s wife entered “meaning to see whether the said
Petcher and Sara were naughty together”.
But she “could not, nor did see them in any such sort
and was reproved of the said Dudley for her peeping in”.
Dudley’s admonition suggests that the Swepstone farmers
did not think well of spying on their neighbours.
All three swore that they had been in the alehouse or in
the street outside all afternoon and they had not set eyes upon
Edward Taylor or his wife in that vicinity.
Furthermore they avowed that their beasts were so crowded
against the alehouse that no one could possibly have approached
the parlour window from outside.(721c)
Elizabethan
Criminality
The
case against Petcher thus turned into an attack on the character
of the principal witness. Edward Taylor is scornfully caricatured as “a man
that hath not land, lease, stock or possessions…to maintain
his wife and children”, who had “for very poverty, idleness
or some other cause given over his occupation of blacksmith
wherein he was trained and brought up” taking up “bad,
shifty and unhonest practices”.
He had already confessed himself before witnesses to
adultery and was commonly known to be a cozener or defrauder of
men. A long
catalogue of his alleged crimes include allegation that he
robbed a woman upon the highway, with a threat that if the woman
informed upon him he would say that she gave him money for
sexual favours. He
is also accused of stealing candlesticks from a house in Ashby
and barley sheaves from Appleby fields.
He was accused of extorting money from the young men of
Appleby with a document purporting to give him authority to take
soldiers and one occasion he apparently tried to steal a horse
from George Smaller’s stable at Snarestone, “and was riding
away with him, and had ridden so away if the said Smaller had
not met him and scared him”.
If
these stories were true it is amazing that Taylor had so far
escaped imprisonment or hanging.
Indeed, it appears that he had spent time in Leicester
gaol but he had persuaded the keeper to allow him “to go
awhile into the town” and absconded, despite a solemn promise
to return. His wife
Helen, who was “commonly accompted to be light fingured and of
no credit or reputation at all” had also spent time in Ashby
gaol for stealing a pair of shoes.
It’s possible Taylor’s criminal tendencies were
exaggerated to blacken his name and destroy his credibility as a
witness, but these accusations do lend support to the notion
that there was a great reservoir of “tolerated criminality”
in Elizabethan times. Local
ne’er-do-wells were to some extend shielded by their
neighbours. In fact
one Somerset magistrate complained in 1596 that as much as four
fifths of crimes that had been committed went unreported (G.R.
Elton, introduction to J.S. Cockburn’s History
of English Assizes, 1558-1714, p. 107)
The
Social Sanctions of Church Courts
The
case against Petcher is typical of its kind.
It is first mentioned in the Liber
Actorum or Instance Court Act Book for October 1597.
Witnesses were still being examined the following March
and April, after which the case seems to have been abandoned.
Ten years later, following an archdeaconal visitation,
Petcher’s name is included on a list of those suspected of
fornication who had been overlooked by negligent churchwardens (Leics.
Record Office 1D41/11/30 f121).
Clearly
the effectiveness of these courts in suppressing immorality must
be questioned. The courts of quarter sessions and assizes meted
out punishments that included imprisonment, branding, amputation
and hanging for crimes against the state - but the archdeaconry
court had to rely on social sanctions.
Convicted adulterers and fornicators were usually made to
perform “penance in sheets” which according to William
Harrison in 1587 needed replacing with “some sharper law”
since it was “counted as no punishment at all to speak of, or
but smally regarded of the offenders” (Description of England, ed. G. Edelen, Ithaca, 1968, p.
189). It’s not
surprising that the villagers often treated the church courts
with contempt (Elton, in Cockburn p.3)
Petcher’s
acquittance owes much to sworn depositions against the principal
witness and the hint of Winter’s own complicity in using the
court to entrap his wife.
In
Conclusion
The
investigation throws some light on the petty intrigues of
Elizabethan village life in Appleby, but of course there are
many unanswered questions.
The witnesses’ depositions reflect ambivalent attitudes
towards sexual misbehaviour- ranging from vehement denunciation
on the one hand to apparent indifference on the other.
The court proceedings can penetrate only the surface
layers of this tightly-knit world at irregular intervals, yet
they provide a strong impression of social intrigue and
surreptitious behaviour in seemingly “quiet” villages, not
unlike that of our own times.
We do not learn whether Sara and John continued to keep
company together, or whether Sara returned to live peacefully
with her aggrieved husband, or whether Edward Taylor was dragged
before the assizes for his roguish ways.
But we can be sure that the Appleby villagers had their
own ways of settling disputes and reconciling parties at enmity
outside the courts. We are left with the impression that they lived
socially more eventful, emotionally more unsettled and sexually
more active lives that one might at first suppose from studying
economic records alone.
©
Alan Roberts 2000
