The story of the life of John Wenlock of Someries is likely to be of some interest to Bedfordshire historians. His family, while retaining property in their native Shropshire, had settled in Bedfordshire in the fourteenth century. John’s father and another member of the family, perhaps an elder brother, had now and then represented the county in Lancastrian parliaments. So did John himself, six times in all : in 1433, 1437, 1439-40, 1447, 1449 and 1455-6. On the last of these occasions he acted as Speaker for the Commons.

Wenlock’s election as Speaker, in the parliament which met soon after the Yorkist victory in the first battle of St. Albans, was the culmination of his career as an occasional member of the Lower House. It was not the acme of his career more widely regarded. Even so, by 1455 he had come far. In the 1430s closely connected with a Bedfordshire magnate, Lord Fanhope of Ampthill (a great-uncle of Henry VI by marriage), it was in the 1440s that Wenlock moved quickly forward, first, as an usher of the King’s Chamber, and then, after diplomatic services in the cause of an Anglo-French peace and the King’s marriage with Margaret of Anjou, as an usher of the Queen’s Chamber and, later (by quick promotion), as her Chamberlain. Perhaps partly as a result of being a victim of Henry VI’s chronic financial insolvency, by 1459 Wenlock had cut adrift from intimate association with the Lancastrian Court and thrown in his lot with the Yorkists.

Wenlock took a very active part in those movements of Yorkist rebellion whose final outcome was the displacement of Henry VI and the accession of Edward IV in 1461. His help to the Yorkist cause had been worth having, and clearly still was. And Wenlock got his price : immediately, Edward IV made him a member of his Council, raised him to the peerage, and appointed him as Chief Butler of England, Chamberlain of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Treasurer of Ireland. Much reliance was also put on his obvious flair for diplomacy with the French, and in the last ten years of his life never a year went by but Wenlock crossed the Channel as a member of some embassy.

This list of Bedfordshire apprentices has been compiled from the Apprenticeship Books or Register of Apprentices, lately in the custody of the Inland Revenue authorities, but now transferred to the Public Record Office. The names have been extracted from two series of Registers, the City (Town) Registers and the County Registers, which run more or less concurrently. The volumes searched are 1 to 7 inclusive (Town Registers), dating from 1 October 1711 to 3 September 1720; and Vols. 41 to 46 inclusive (County Registers), dating from 1 May 1710 to 14 February 1721, covering that is to say a period of a little over 10 years.

These Registers were originally necessitated under a Statute passed in 1709, by which a duty was imposed on all members of professions or trades who received clerks apprentices or servants at a fee, and taught them their employment. The duty was assessed by Statute at 6d. in the pound for all fees received by the master or mistress under £50, and I/- in the pound where the apprenticeship fees exceeded £50.

The greater number of Bedfordshire apprenticeships were made to local masters; and the following trades or occupations are found mentioned as existing in the county:—Apothecary, Baker, Barber, Barber-Surgeon, Blacksmith, Bricklayer, Carpenter, Chandler, Clockmaker, Clothier, Collar maker, Cooper, Cordwainer, Currier, Cutler, Farrier, Fellmonger, Gardener, Gingerbread maker, Glasier, Glover, Grocer, Hair buyer, Hatter, Hemp dresser, Innholder, Jersey comber, Joiner, Lace maker, Linen draper, Locksmith, Maltster, Mantua maker, Mason, Mercer, Merchant tailor, Painter Stainer, Peruke maker, Pipe maker, Plough wright, Plumber, Poulterer, Rope maker, Saddler, Shoe maker, Stone cutter, Tailor, Tallow chandler, Tanner, Tyler, Victualler, Weaver, Wheelwright, Whitesmith, Wool comber, Wool stapler, Wool winder, Woollen draper.

But apprentices were by no means bound to masters within the limits of the county. Apprenticeship of Bedfordshire youths to London citizens was fairly frequent. As a rule, though not invariably, the fees were very much higher, and we find the apprentices drawn from a different class. Thus Robert Gilpin, gentleman, whose family had long been connected with Hockliffe, bound his son to Haldenby Langley, goldsmith of St. Clement Dane, for a fee of £40. Henry Whitbread, again, bound his son to Samuel Phillimore, silk-thrower, paying £100.

I. Stodden Hundred.

The name of Stodden has recently been discovered as applied to one of the “Open Fields” of Pertenhall. This reference occurs in an original terrier of the glebelands of that parish, dated 1607. These lands, amounting to 34 acres, are detailed in the usual way under the headings of the five following Fields—Haile or Hall, Marche, Lytle, Chawdwell and Stodden Fields, the glebe-lands lying in Stodden Field totalling 8 to 9 acres. In a later terrier of the same lands, dated 1708, this field is termed Hony Hill Field, the other names remaining as before. That the Stodden Field of the 1607 terrier is identical with Hony Hill B'ield is readilyproved by comparison of the nearly identical descriptions of the glebe in the two cases. Honey Hill Wood lies over the N.W. border of Pertenhall in Kimbolton parish; and as half an acre in Stodden Field is described as lying upon “Swynsheed hyll,” Stodden Field is therefore located in the N.W. portion of the parish of Pertenhall. This conclusion is confirmed by the process of elimination of the situation of the other fields.

(i) Hall Field (spelt Haile once only in the 1607 terrier) certainly derives its name from the brook (called Hallbrooke in the same terrier) which crosses the parish from W. to E., and was apparently called the Hail Brook in the parishes of Swineshead and Riseley higher up. The road to Little Staughton, as set out in the Pertenhall Enclosure Award (1797) is described as leading out of the Bedford to Kimbolton Turnpike Road “in a south-eastward direction to and over the brook or ford called Hail Ford and into the parish of Little Staughton.” An allotment of 60 acres under the same Award, “lying in Hail Field bounded on the S. by the parish of Little Staughton and on the W. by the Little Staughton Road” clinches the question of the situation of this field, i.e. in the S.E. of the parish.

(ii) Marche Field was the land lying to the S. of Green End, as the following description of an allotment of 41 acres in this field shows—“bounded on the N. by the St. Neots road8 and on the S.E. by the parish of Little Staughton.”

One of the officers appointed to Okey’s regiment to fill a vacancy caused by the departure of officers for the Irish service was Captain Francis Freeman. It is to Freeman’s published account of Okey’s quarrel with him that we owe a number of details regarding the Colonel and his regiment during the years 1649 and 1650 : it is unfortunate, however, that Okey did not give his own account of the affair. The quarrel was about religion, on which Okey had strong views, for he was an Anabaptist, as were many of the leading officers of the Army and Navy. Freeman, who had been arrested in 1647 by the Mayor of Taunton on a charge of blasphemy, had some peculiar and extravagant views. He mentions a discourse he had with Captain Lieutenant Leigh and Cornet Friend “touching forms in the worship and service of God, and touching several administrations or dispensations that the people were under : and my position was, that God might be seen in the lowest form or ministration, and that I had now no prejudice against the person of any man, that was above me, or below me, and that I saw God in all things and in every thing that had a being in the whole creation : working in the creature, according to the several dispensations wherin he had placed them.” Freeman tells how these officers “made some complaint to Colonel Okey of some strange points which I should hold (as they said) which occasioned some dispute amongst us, in the presence of one Capt. Smith and others. Now the Colonel meeting me at Bedford (with some other officers of his Regiment) told me that he had heard of some strange opinions I should hold, but never had any discourse with me, as to know what they were; Therefore he desired to propound some questions unto me. My answer was, that I should be very free to answer to any question that he should propound unto me, so that it might be done in a way of love.”

Introduction

The cartulary of Harrold Priory in British Museum MS. Lansdowne 391 contains on fo. llv the brief abstract of documents concerning the church of Stevington (Beds.), a neighbouring parish church which this Austin nunnery held by the grant of Baldwin of Ardres in the twelfth century and which was appropriated to the priory by Bishop Hugh de Wells of Lincoln in or before 1227. The abstract was printed in translation by the late Dr. G. H. Fowler in B.H.R.S. xvii, 35-6. At that time the text of the documents abstracted was unknown. The originals or copies had been among the muniments of Harrold Priory concerning Stevington when the cartulary was compiled in the fifteenth century, and the compiler noted of one of them (no. 2) : ‘a copy of this charter is in the fair psalter’ (copra istius carte est in pulcro psalterio’). This must be the copy which has now come to light, in a series of no less than nineteen documents concerning Stevington church, copied in the early part of the thirteenth century into a handsome psalter belonging to the nuns of Harrold.

Mr. N. R. Ker, Reader in Palaeography at Oxford, when examining the psalter in the summer of 1950, discovered these documents and kindly brought them to the Society’s notice. The psalter is now in the library of the Baptist College at Bristol (Z. c. 23), to which it was bequeathed in 1784 by Andrew Gifford; and the documents are here published by the kind permission of the College authorities. Mr. Ker points out that the psalter belonged earlier to Sir James Ware, in whose catalogue (Dublin, 1648) it is listed as ‘Theol. ms. 3 : Psalmi Davidis sive Psalterium. Adjiciuntur chartae quaedam domus monialium de Harewold in Com. Bedfordiae, in 4o [i.e. quarto] membran.’ He adds that the psalter is of the twelfth century, and is preceded by a Christ Church, Canterbury, calendar, in which an obit in a late twelfth-century hand shows that the book was at one time in Kent and came to Harrold second-hand. At the end of the psalter are various prayers. A sixteenth-century owner, John Sunnyng, ‘vicarius de Luswe (?)’ wrote his name on the last page of the text.

The document transcribed below is preserved in the Public Record Office. It is twofold in its interest, for not only does it form an important addition to early local history, but it also provides material of some value as throwing a sidelight on early administrative history. As may be gathered below, the document consists of three pieces of parchment; of which two, the writs, have been attached to the largest membrane at some date unknown, but comparatively recent. Of these three parchments two are closely related to each other, the writ of 31 July 21 Henry III, and the inquisition of 24 Henry III which is its return. It is mere accident, apparently, which has preserved the earlier writ of 20 May 21 Henry III where, technically speaking, it does not belong. At first sight the documents appear sufficiently confused in character; a writ of distraint for a tax of a fortieth in 1237 when no fortieth was levied, another writ, dated the same year demanding a copy of the returns of a carucage levied in 1220, and lastly the required copy dated more than two years later. The explanation appears to be that the mills of the Exchequer, though they ground exceeding small, were yet compelled by circumstances of local administration to grind slowly, and the known history of taxation at this period enables us to get a right perspective of our documents.

In 1232 a grant of a fortieth on all moveables was made to the Crown, and this was followed in 1237 by a further tax of a thirtieth. The business entailed in issuing the writs for the thirtieth must have emphasized the fact that the Bedfordshire returns had not yet been made in full for the taxation of 1232! Hence the peremptory writ, ‘venire facias,’ of 20 May 21 Henry III issued to the Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, directing him to send William de Bechamton’ the Bedfordshire collector, and John of Devon of the Giffard Honour, to the Exchequer to answer for arrears, and to distrain where necessary for such arrears. The returns made on the dorse of the writ state that John of Devon acting as Steward of the earl of Arundel had no lands in either county, in other words the Sheriff had no personal hold on him.