Researches and Discoveries

RESEARCHES AND DISCOVERIES

st thomas becket and the pilgrim souvenirs in canterbury’s collections

Saint Thomas Becket’s brutal martyrdom and the subsequent mass pilgrimage movement generated an exceptionally large range of pilgrims’ souvenirs. Pilgrim badges directly associated with the saint have been discovered in locations throughout Britain and stretch across every corner of the Continent, reflecting the infectious spread of his cult.¹ By the mid thirteenth century he had become one of the most popular saints in Medieval Europe.²

Souvenirs first took the form of ampullae (a small flask filled with miraculous water purportedly mixed with Becket’s blood) hung around the pilgrim’s neck and swiftly developed into badges that were pinned onto clothing or affixed to a pilgrim’s staff.³ These hand-held objects both established one’s status as a pilgrim and recorded the experience of pilgrimage for the bearer. Some souvenirs were perceived to possess apotropaic powers which could, for example, heal the sick and/or grant successful harvests.⁴ They further acted as symbols among long distance travellers of a shared pilgrimage experience underlining Becket’s international appeal.⁵

On average, these badges do not exceed the length of one’s index finger and, as an object type, pilgrim signs (their contemporary name) are one of the earliest examples of mass-production in European material culture.⁶ These tiny tangible objects provide an unparalleled insight into the devotional habits of ordinary pilgrims. The analysis in this article builds on the invaluable work of the leading scholar in this field, Brian Spencer – ex-keeper of the Medieval Collections at the Museum of London – who created a detailed catalogue of the rich badge collection held there.⁷

The City of Canterbury holds a large, but relatively unknown, collection of pilgrims’ souvenirs. Overall, there are a total of 282 such items currently stored in the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge.⁸ This article provides an overview of these remarkable medieval souvenirs with a focus on their form, function, and provenance. It places particular emphasis on the badge types displaying an image of St Thomas Becket and the most prominent amongst these, in terms of the greatest surviving number of designs, are those which depict the head of the saint.

Exploring the Canterbury Corpus

After a careful inspection of the Canterbury collection the details of each individual souvenir were recorded and entered into a database as follows:

Approximate dating

Dimensions: in millimetres

Type of material

Find-spot, where known

Condition, rated on a scale of poor (damaged/unidentifiable)

to excellent (complete/identifiable)

Brief description

In addition, each souvenir within the collection has been photographed. This database allows a thorough analysis of the Canterbury Collection and an external comparison with other established souvenir collections such as those in the Museum of London and the British Museum.

Find spots

Each pilgrim badge conveys its own unique story – of the craftsman who designed, cast and sold it, as well as the journey of the pilgrim who purchased, wore and eventually disposed of it – only for it to be rediscovered again. The vast majority of pilgrim souvenirs discovered across the Continent have been found at the bottom of rivers.⁹ The Beaney collection items were found both in the River Stour at Canterbury and the Thames in London.¹⁰

Three separate find-spots have been identified along the River Stour.¹¹ One of these locations was Westgate (Map 1, point A), where a bifurcated section of the Stour exits the city. The discovery of badges at this site here appears to indicate that pilgrims deposited some of their souvenirs immediately upon leaving the city. Other examples were found along the river opposite Eastbridge Hospital (Map 1, point B), undoubtedly a busy location for Canterbury visitors since Eastbridge acted as a popular guesthouse for pilgrims. The third location was by the Greyfriars Chapel (Map 1, point C), which suggests pilgrims regularly made a stop there.

Many scholars have speculated on the reasons pilgrims would throw their personal souvenirs into rivers. One explanation widely offered is that the action was an intentional expression of devotion.¹² If these particular items were purchased for their apotropaic powers then their placement in water might have been seen as a means of guaranteeing safe passage over water on their journey home.¹³ That said, there is no concrete evidence that confirms this action as an accepted ritual and art historian Jennifer Lee has asserted that, without any such evidence, it is impossible to make any assumptions about a ritualistic habit.¹⁴

There are also significant numbers of secular badges found mixed with the pilgrim signs in rivers which raises doubt that this was solely a ritual act.¹⁵ Other possible explanations for the presence of so many badges in riverbeds may be simple accident or the disposal of waste products by local craftsmen.¹⁶

Manufacture

Medieval badges were made from either pewter or lead-alloy, both of which were a combination of inexpensive metals.¹⁷ Undoubtedly, their shiny silver finish would have appealed to the contemporary pilgrim and encouraged their decision when choosing which badge to purchase; indeed, ‘Ech man set his sylver in such thing as they liked’, according to the fifteenth-century Tale of Beryrn, a narrative following Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the Canterbury Interlude.¹⁸ They were easy and quick to produce, affordable for all types of pilgrims and, using a mould, the manufacturer could readily meet the demands of the crowds of pilgrims visiting Canterbury.¹⁹ In fact, as present day replications have confirmed, it only takes a matter of seconds to cast a pilgrim’s badge.²⁰ Artisans would carve out their design onto a stone mould, of which two examples survive in the Canterbury Collection. One, a complete mould, shows a standing figure of Becket blessing with his left hand and holding his archiepiscopal staff in his right. A second, broken example, simply depicts a corner of a souvenir with an inscription which reads ‘TOMA’ (Fig. 1). Despite the damage of this particular mould, the pattern on the stone matches the decoration depicted on one of the earliest souvenirs within the Canterbury Collection in the form of an ampulla (Fig. 2). Their identical designs demonstrate an example of a local mould alongside the finishing product.

Types of Badges

In the Canterbury collection, 109 souvenirs portray the popular local saint (see Table 1). Concurrently, amongst the 173 items not directly depicting Becket, there are a selection of signs that reflect other local Canterbury cults. For example, there are 18 items associated with the Virgin and Child which could relate to the Chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Undercroft located in the centre of Canterbury Cathedral’s Crypt. These particular badges are in the form of a crescent moon (Fig. 3), fleur-de-lys symbols, or square framed.²¹ Similarly, a badge depicting an ostrich feather and scroll represents the Black Prince, Prince Edward of Woodstock (1330-1376), whose tomb is located in the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel and would have neighboured Becket’s shrine.²² Moreover, an additional badge of an iron comb is connected to Saint Blaise; the comb was an instrument of his gruesome martyrdom and, like Becket, he had relics located in Canterbury Cathedral.²³ Furthermore, the corpus includes souvenirs devoted to creating noise, such as a Canterbury bell, a rattle and a whistle.²⁴ Whilst other secular signs display nature scenes in the shape of trees and birds.

In the Canterbury badge corpus, there are at least 12 different types of badges relating to Becket (Table 1). The ‘Becket’s head’ group is undeniably the most popular of these types with 58 items in this category. Meanwhile, the second largest type that survive in association with the saint are the ‘Becket encircled’ badges with a total of 18 artefacts currently stored in the collection and they typically depict the saint’s head in a circular frame. One of the rarest types shows an incomplete scene from Becket’s martyrdom where only Edward Grim (died c.1189) is visible (Fig. 4). Grim was a monk who witnessed (and was injured at) the event and who is often identified in Becket’s martyrdom illustrations; indeed, he wrote a compelling vita of Becket.²⁵ The iconography of this fragmentary badge is similar to the imagery on three examples of the five surviving ampullae which show the saint kneeling in prayer at the altar whilst facing the knight who is holding his sword (Fig. 5).

Dating of Badges

The Canterbury Collection ranges in date from the thirteenth century until the early sixteenth century, thus spanning the whole period of the Becket pilgrimage movement. Dating these signs requires a number of different approaches. The find-spot location of each souvenir is a vital source for determining their dates, as other artefacts excavated from the same area can contribute to accurate dating.²⁶ In addition, badges within the collection can be cross-examined in terms of their iconographic and stylistic features, with other larger established souvenir collections such as those in Brian Spencer’s catalogue of the Museum of London pilgrim souvenirs and secular badges.²⁷ Art historian Sarah Blick has shown that it was common to combine the facial characteristics of pointed noses with large almond-shaped eyes during the second half of the fourteenth century.²⁸ Moreover, another particularly useful tool for dating the Becket badges is to compare the patterns of archiepiscopal clothing with the attire of the figures illustrated on the signs. A final technique suggested by Michael Mitchiner’s rich catalogue of souvenirs implies that size can be a contributing factor as they tended to become smaller and flatter in fashion over time, perhaps due to economic factors.²⁹ Yet, due to the fragile nature of these hand-held artefacts, many were damaged, and therefore it is often difficult to assess their original size.

Analysis of the Head badges of Saint Thomas Becket

As we have seen, the most popular design that survives in the collection depicts the head of St Thomas Becket. The 58 badges follow an image that portrays a bust-length portrait of the saint, who is forward-facing, expressionless, wearing a jewelled mitre and dressed in a decorated archiepiscopal cope around his shoulders. Figs 6-8 demonstrate this typical design whilst simultaneously revealing their variations; the head badge in Fig. 6 reflects the stoic saint, with a large forehead, tight curls of hair that fall on either side of his face and a cross at the apex of the mitre, whereas Fig. 7 depicts a heavily bejewelled design with similar but narrowed features, and Fig. 8 incorporates the same characteristics with an additional inscription THOMAS along the bottom border of the sign.

The Becket heads differ in size and style, yet each design shares parallels. These intricate similarities indicate that the tiny portable head badges all stem from a reputed likeness of the head reliquary that once contained the skull of the saint, which was located in the far eastern end of Canterbury Cathedral in the Corona Chapel before it was destroyed in 1538.³⁰ The designs of these head badges can be compared with contemporary descriptions, such as by Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) who wrote that ‘there, in a little chapel, is shown the whole figure of the excellent man, gilt, and adorned with many jewels’.³¹ Pilgrims who owned a Becket head badge therefore carried a commemoration of the head reliquary they had witnessed and a piercing image of the saint’s face.³²

Additionally, the corpus contains an array of head badge designs which depict the familiar bust-length silhouette of Becket with slight variations in the form of added frames. Some Becket heads, for example, are framed in a six-point star, a square frame, a broken micro-architectural frame, or are encircled with an inscription. These latter designs tend to be smaller in size (with the exception of one) and on average, their circumference spans 24mm. The inscription, in Latin Lombardic script, reads CAPVT THOMAE ‘Thomas’ Head’ (Fig. 9).³³ The incorporation of text on souvenirs (even when the words were illegible, or where the characters form the illusion of letters) indicate a degree of literacy among some pilgrims.³⁴ Other examples within the Canterbury Collection include the illuminated initial of the letter ‘T’ for Thomas, and a head badge with THOMAS inscribed along the bottom border of the design (Fig. 8).

The sample of souvenirs stored in the Canterbury Collection discussed here give some indication of the variations that survive. Much scope remains for further study of the iconography of these objects, particularly amongst the 173 non-Becket badges and fragments within the corpus. It is intended that this initial study and its database will be developed into a working catalogue for the benefit of the Beaney Museum and form a platform for further analysis of these precious artefacts. As material objects, they are vital resources for an understanding of the rituals and routines of pilgrims in Canterbury.

acknowledgments

An investigation into the Canterbury Collection of pilgrim souvenirs would not be possible without the generous access granted by the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge and in particular by Craig Bowen, the Collections Manager. Dr Emily Guerry and Dr Rachel Koopmans have both played a key role in exploring ideas about the badges and their local history. There is no doubt that without the aforementioned scholars this study of the Canterbury Collection would not be possible – the author offers her grateful thanks to them.

lucy splarn

bibliography

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Altman, Nathaniel, Sacred Water: The Spiritual Source of Life, (New Jersey: Hidden Spring, 2002).

Barlow, Frank, Thomas Becket (London: The Bath Press, Avon, 1986).

Borenius, Tancred, St Thomas Becket in art (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1932).

Brent, Cecil, ‘Pilgrims’ Signs’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii, 1880, 111-115.

Butler, John Richard, The quest for Becket’s bones: the mystery of the relics of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury (London: Yale University Press, 1995).

Duggan, Anne, Thomas Becket (London: Hodder Education, Hachette Livre UK, 2004).

FitzStephen, William, ‘Vita Sancti Thomae’, Reading Medieval Latin, trans. by Keith Sidwell (Cambridge: CUP, 1995).

Gelin, Marie-Pierre, ‘The Cult of St Thomas in the Liturgy and Iconography of Christ Church, Canterbury’, in The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c.1170-c.1220, ed. by Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), 53-80.

Heale, Martin, ‘Training in Superstition? Monasteries and Popular Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (2007), 417-439.

Heslop, T.A, ‘Medieval Seals as Works of Art’, in Seals and Status: The Power of Objects, ed. by John Cherry, Jessica Berenbeim and Lloyd de Beer (London: British Museum, 2018), 26-34.

Jeffs, Amy, ‘Disciplining the Digital: Virtual 3D Reproduction, Pilgrim Badges, and the Stuff of Art History: Introduction’, British Art Studies, 6 (2017). <http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-6/virtual-reproduction> [last accessed August 2018.]

Jeffs, Amy, ‘Pilgrim Souvenir: Ampulla of Thomas Becket’, British Art Studies, 6 (2017). <http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-6/ampulla-souvenir> [last accessed July 2018]

Koopmans, Rachel, ‘Visions, Reliquaries, and the Images of ‘Becket’s Shrine’ in the Miracle Windows of Canterbury Cathedral’, Gesta, 54 (2015), 37-57.

Marks, Richard, Image and devotion in late medieval England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2004).

Moore, Simon, ‘Medieval Badges’, Antique Collection (1981), 15-18.

Ochota, Mary-Ann, Britain’s Secret Treasures (London: Headline Publishing Group, 2013).

Pollard, Alfred William, Fifteenth century prose and verse (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co. Ltd, 1903).

Slocum, Kay Brainerd, Liturgies in Honour of Thomas Becket, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).

Slocum, Kay Brainerd, The Cult of Thomas Becket: History and Historiography through Eight Centuries (New York: Routledge, 2019).

Smith, Charles Roach, ‘On Pilgrims’ Signs and Leaden Tokens’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1 (1846), 200-212.

Spencer, Brian, ‘Pilgrim Souvenirs’, Miscellanea, 2 (1988), 34-48.

Swanson, Robert Norman, Religion and Devotion in Europe c.1215-1515 (Cambridge: CUP, 1995).

Webb, Diana, Medieval European Pilgrimage, 700-1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

Woodruff, C. Eveleigh, ‘The financial aspect of the cult of St. Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xliv (1932), 13-32.

references

¹ Richard Gameson, ‘The early imagery of Thomas Becket’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. by Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), pp. 46-89 (p. 83).

2 Anne Duggan, ‘The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Thirteenth Century’, in St Thomas Cantilupe, Bishops of Hereford: Essays in his Honour, ed. by Meryl Jancey (Hereford: The Friends of Hereford Cathedral, 1982), pp. 21-44 (pp. 29-30).

³ Jennifer Lee, ‘Beyond the Locus Sanctus: The Independent Iconography of Pilgrims’ Souvenirs’, Visual Resources, 21 (2005), pp. 363-381 (p. 363).

⁴ Brian W. Spencer, ‘Medieval pilgrim badges: Some general observations illustrated mainly from English sources’, in Rotterdam Papers: a contribution to medieval archaeology, ed. by J.G.N. Renaud (1968), pp. 137-153 (p. 144).

⁵ Janet Shirley, Garnier’s Becket: translated from the 12th-century Vie Saint Thomas le Martyr de Cantorbire of Garnier of Pont-Saint-Maxence (Phillimore & Co., 1975), p. 157.

⁶ Megan H. Foster-Campbell, ‘Pilgrimage through the Pages: Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts’, in Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. by Sarah Blick and Lauran D. Gelfand (Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 227-276 (p. 230).

⁷ Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998); Brian North Lee, ‘The Expert and the Collector’, in Beyond Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges: Essays in Honour of Brian Spencer, ed. by Sarah Blick (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), pp. 4-16 (p. 5); Sarah Blick, ‘Reconstructing the Shrine of St Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral’, Journal of Art History, 72 (2003), pp. 256-286.

⁸ It is important to note that during the recording of information the 282 badges were held at two Museums. The majority were stored at the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge (250) and the remaining 32 were on display at the Canterbury Heritage Museum, which is now closed to the public (2019). Together, they establish the Canterbury Collection and are now all united at the Beaney, Canterbury Museums and Galleries.

⁹ Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, pp. 24, 37.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 1.

¹¹ An unpublished letter dating from 1987 currently held in the Beaney Museum offers an insight into the events that led to the recovery of such a substantial collection and are significant in authenticating the find-locations of the badges. This correspondence between the curatorial teams at the Museum of London and the City Museum, Canterbury discloses that the building of a wall near the Stour River triggered metal detector volunteers to search the riverbed there.

¹² Gary R. Varner, Sacred wells a study in the history, meaning, and mythology of holy wells and waters (Algora Publishing, 2009), p. 72.

¹³ Igor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1956), p. 144.

¹⁴ Ibid.; Jennifer Lee, ‘Medieval pilgrims’ badges in rivers: the curious history of a non-theory’, Journal of Art Historiography, 11 (2014) 1-11 (p. 10).

¹⁵ Lee, ‘Medieval pilgrims’, p. 6.

¹⁶ Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 39; Lee, ‘Medieval pilgrims’, p. 6.

¹⁷ Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard, Medieval finds from excavations in London: Dress Accessories c.1150-c.1450 (London: H.M.S.O, 1991), p. 17; Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 39.

¹⁸ H. Snowden Ward, The Canterbury Pilgrimages (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1904), p. 152; Anon., ‘The Canterbury Interlude and Marchant’s Tale of Beryn’, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions, ed. by John M. Bowers (1992), <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/bowers-canterbury-tales-fifteenth-century-interlude-and-marchants-tale-of-beryn> [Last accessed September, 2019], lines 170-174.

¹⁹ Brian Spencer, Medieval Pilgrim Badges from Norfolk (Norfolk: Norfolk Museums Service, Witley Press, 1980), p.7; Sarah Blick, ‘Comparing Pilgrim Souvenirs and Trinity Chapel Windows at Canterbury Cathedral: An Exploration of Context, Copying, and the Recovery of Lost Stained Glass’, Mirator (2001), pp. 1-27 (p. 9).

²⁰ For a video tutorial on the method of casting a pilgrim badge, see: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGBa2IVgoOo> [last accessed September 2019] a YouTube clip produced by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Lionheart Replicas.

²¹ Michael Mitchiner, Medieval Pilgrim & Secular Badges (London: Hawkins Publications, 1986), p. 100; Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 157.

²² Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 276.

²³ Ibid., p. 178.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 179, 182.

²⁵ Ibid., p. 37.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 28.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Sarah Blick, ‘King and Cleric: Richard II and the iconography of St Thomas Becket and St Edward the Confessor at Our Lady of Undercroft, Canterbury Cathedral’, in Beyond Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges: Essays in Honour of Brian Spencer, ed. by Sarah Blick (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 182-200 (p. 183).

²⁹ Mitchiner, Medieval Pilgrim & Secular Badges, p. 155.

³⁰ Denis Bethell, ‘The Making of a twelfth-century relic collection’, in Popular Belief and Practice: Papers Read at the Ninth Summer Meeting and the Tenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. by G.J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge: CUP, 1972), pp. 61-72 (p. 71); Spencer, Pilgrim, p. 102; Jonathan Foyle, Architecture of Canterbury Cathedral (London: Scala Publishers Ltd, 2013), p. 92.

³¹ Anon., ‘Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536): Dutch Priest, Theologian, Humanist & Writer’, Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society (CHAS), <http://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/erasmus/4590809485> [Last accessed September 2019], para 1 of 3; Erasmus Desiderius, Pilgrimages to Saint Mary of Walsingham and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, trans. by John Gough Nichols (Westminister: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1849), p. 51.

³² Paul Binski, ‘Thomas Becket and Medieval Cult of Personality’, The Annual Cathedral Archives and Library Lecture (Canterbury: June 2017).

³³ Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 107.

³⁴ Bredehoft, Thomas A., ‘Literacy Without Letters: Pilgrim Badges Late Medieval Literate Ideology’, Viator, 37 (2006), 433-445 (p. 434).

alexander iden, captor of jack cade (1450): his family and the evidence of a memorial in penshurst church

Past research led to the claim that Alexander was the father of Thomas Iden of Malmains in Stoke parish (on the Hoo peninsula), known to be the ancestor of such a celebrated figure as the poet Shelley as well as the prominent Browne family of Wealden iron founders (King 1899; Iden 1941). A firm link between father and son could not, however, be established.

The authors’ recent investigations into the history of this branch of the extensive Iden family between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries confirm the father-son relationship of Alexander and Thomas. Their study includes the origins of Alexander Iden and the place of his capture of Cade in 1450. The second part of this paper also sheds light on the marriage connections of the family revealed by the heraldry displayed on an Iden memorial in Penshurst Church.

An abridged version of the Iden family tree in so far as this can be firmly established is shown in Fig. 1. Further identifications of the Iden family relationships based on analysis of the heraldry displayed on the Iden memorial at Penshurst are more speculative and they are not shown in the figure. However, it is an established fact that some time after Alexander Iden’s notable action, he married Elizabeth Cromer, née Fiennes, whose husband, William Cromer, Sheriff of Kent, and father, Sir James Fiennes Lord Saye and Sele, had both been killed during Cade’s rebellion. Alexander died in 1457, leaving a will in which he mentioned his wife Elizabeth and three daughters Ann, Elizabeth and Eleanor, but no sons. It can clearly be shown that Elizabeth was not his first wife, as explained below. Executors for the will were his wife Elizabeth and a Stephen Norton (see below).

The Family of Thomas Iden

Thomas Iden of Malmains fought on the winning Lancastrian side at Bosworth in 1485. When he died in 1511/12 his will identified his children as: Alexander (apparently deceased), Robert (named as executor), Edmond, Alice and Jasper, as well as his grandson William, son of the late Alexander (Fig. 1). An inquisition confirmed that several properties were in Thomas’ estate, including one called Cheynes Court (aka Donyngbury) in Chart Sutton which reappears in the history of the family in following generations. It determined that Thomas’s heir was his grandson William, then aged about 14 (King 1899, p. 38).

Paul Iden was another son of Thomas, although not mentioned in his will. Their connection is revealed by Paul’s legal action in a Chancery Equity Suit taken against executor Robert Harvey alias Iden, who was described similarly in the probate to Thomas’s will in the Rochester Consistory Court. Paul had sold property at St Mary Hoo in 1492 and lent the proceeds of the sale to his father, who did not pay it back. Paul was left nothing in the will, so his only recourse was to take legal action against the executor for recovery of the money.

In this suit Paul stated that Thomas was his father. The claim was not challenged by Robert so it seems to be established. Paul also stated that his grandfather was named Alexander, and his father in turn was another Thomas. V.G. Iden appreciated the significance of this suit. He showed that while it names his father only as Thomas Iden, the matching details in the suit and in the will of Thomas Iden of Stoke confirm that Paul’s father was Thomas of Stoke (Iden 1941, p. 17).

Thomas of Stoke’s son Jasper Iden had several children of his own, including a daughter Sicelie. In 1626 her grandson, the King’s gunfounder, John Browne received a grant or confirmation of arms, at royal request. This set out his descent through his father Thomas Browne another Wealden iron founder and his grandparents Sicilie Iden and Thomas Browne, through Jasper Iden and Thomas Iden of Stoke to Thomas’s father Alexander Iden who took Jack Cade. The grant of arms alone would not have been considered reliable evidence of descent. However, his descent from Thomas Iden is confirmed by parish registers and wills, and his descent from Alexander is established in this paper.

Was Alexander who killed Jack Cade indeed the father of Thomas Iden of Stoke?

Circumstantial evidence for this is provided by a record from the Court of Common Pleas which states that an Alexander ‘Edenne’ acquired an interest in a manor at Fawkham in 1455, dying before 1465 after which his son, Thomas Iden, was contesting possession of the property in 1466 (Mackman and Stevens 2010). Unless there was another Thomas Iden with a father Alexander (of a landed class) around at the time, they were presumably Thomas of Stoke and his father. Certainly, this Fawkham Alexander died in the period 1455 to 1465 as did Alexander the Sheriff (1457), and since we have no other wills for an Alexander Iden in the period, it would seem that ‘Alexander Edenne’ and Alexander, father of Thomas of Stoke, were one and the same. A second indication that Thomas of Stoke’s father was Alexander the sheriff comes from the memorial to Thomas’ son Paul which is discussed in detail below. The memorial includes Fiennes arms, the family arms of Alexander the sheriff’s wife Elizabeth.

Alexander the Sheriff’s Origins

According to many historians Alexander Iden the Sheriff who died in 1457 was one among a number of members of the Iden family who lived in Westwell (near Ashford) during the fifteenth century. For example, John Iden of Westwell died leaving a will in 1488; Thomas Iden of Westwell in 1498 and Alexander Iden of Westwell in 1515 (King 1899, p. 37). No contemporary documents have been found to confirm Alexander the Sheriff’s connection with the parish, but it was a natural assumption for historians to make in the absence of any other obvious origin for him.

It is clear, however, from various documents cited below that, on the contrary, Alexander was of Milton (Middleton). (While there are a number of Miltons in Kent, notably one by Gravesend, there seems little doubt that Milton (Regis) by Sittingbourne is meant here as several parishes close by are mentioned in the records cited below.) Alexander was stated to be of Milton on 7 Sep 1450 at his indictment for the arrest on 11 July 1450 of Harry Wylkhous, one of Cade’s lieutenants. The record of his indictment is included in the Ancient Indictments of the King’s Bench held at the Public Records Office (Virgoe 2006).

The last transaction (191) from the Catalogue of the Archives in the Muniment Rooms of All Souls’ College (Martin 1877) is doubly informative as it confirms Paul Iden’s statement that Alexander’s father was named Thomas, and also shows that Alexander was of Middleton in 20 Henry VI (1441).

20 Hen. VI. 20 Dec.	187	Grant by Alexander Cheyne to Thos. Chichele, Birkhede, Bolde, and Danvers, of 7 acres called Grete Goseney, in Opcherche [Upchuch]
20 Hen. VI. 10 Feb.	191	Release of Grete Goseney by Alex., s. and h. of Thos. Iden, of Middelton, to Thos. Chichele, Birkhede, Bolde, and Danvers

The following record from the Feet of Fines (Harrington 2012, p. 331) is highly significant as it shows that a Thomas Idenne, probably in fact Alexander’s father, was living at Middleton as early as 10 Richard II (1386).

(542) Morrow of the Purification 10 Richard II

Q: Thomas Idenne of Middelton

D: Richard Drury and wife Lucy

3 acres 3 roods land in Bobbynge [Bobbing] and Middleton. Quitclaim from Richard and Lucy and the heirs of Lucy to Thomas and his heirs.

Warrant against the heirs of Lucy. Thomas gave 100s.

It is clear, therefore, that Alexander was not of Westwell when he took Cade. Idens were living at Milton from 1386 or earlier, giving no reason to think that Alexander was ever from Westwell. (This has direct implications for the question considered below on the place where Cade was captured and killed.)

Was Elizabeth Fiennes the mother of Alexander’s children?

Thomas of Stoke was probably at least 21 when he took legal action over the Fawkham property in 1466, placing his birth no later than 1445. This indicates that Thomas of Stoke was born well before Alexander’s marriage to Elizabeth Fiennes (some time after the Cade rebellion of 1450), so evidently Alexander had an earlier marriage and Thomas of Stoke was one product of it.

Alexander and Elizabeth were married for up to 7 years and we know she was of child-bearing age because she went on to marry Lawrence Rainsford and produce a son John, so it would be expected that they had children. This suggests that Elizabeth was the mother of Alexander’s daughters mentioned in his will. On the other hand, there are indications detailed below that Elizabeth was not their mother, in which case there were no surviving children of their marriage. Thomas Idenne was an adult in 1386, so if Alexander was his son then he could have been born c 1390. That would make him about 60 when he married Elizabeth, and could explain the absence of children.

Alexander Iden’s will was written on 8 November 1457 and probate was granted on 19 November, so the will was written shortly before he died. He bequeathed 200 marks to each of his daughters Ann, Elizabeth and Eleanor, payable at the age of 21 years or on marriage. He did not mention Thomas his son, and left the balance of his estate to his wife Elizabeth.

Alexander called Ann, Elizabeth and Eleanor his daughters and there was nothing in the will to say that Elizabeth was their mother. The fact that one of them was named Elizabeth might suggest this, but it is a common name so no conclusion can be drawn. If Elizabeth was the mother of Alexander’s daughters, they would be aged under 7 when Alexander wrote his will. His bequests to them seem unusual for children so young, providing for their marriages but not their upbringing. It seems much more likely they were older and products of the earlier marriage.

The fact that Thomas of Stoke was not mentioned in his father’s will suggests that he may already have been gifted property, so that he was already 21 when his father died in 1457, which would push his birth back to about 1436. His birth in 1436 would be compatible with his death in 1511, as it would make him 75. Ann, Elizabeth and Eleanor could have been born soon after him, and then they would have been approaching age 21 when Alexander died. If Elizabeth Fiennes was not the mother of Alexander’s daughters, then Stephen Norton, the second executor, could have been a relative appointed to look after their interests, suggesting that their mother may have been a Norton.

If this conjecture is all correct, Alexander married a Norton before Elizabeth, and she was the mother of Thomas and his sisters. This conclusion receives independent support from the heraldry on Paul Iden’s memorial (see below) in which he claimed Norton descent.

Where did Alexander capture Jack Cade?

There are broadly two different stories of the capture of Jack Cade. In one, the capture of Cade took place after Alexander had been appointed Sheriff. Alexander and his men pursued Cade and caught him at Heathfield in East Sussex, at a place that has since become known as Cade Street. The other account says that Alexander was a private citizen who encountered Jack Cade in his neighbourhood and captured him, and later being rewarded with the position of Sheriff. The capture took place at Hothfield, the neighbouring parish to Westwell where Alexander is widely thought to have lived. The evidence that Alexander was from Milton not Westwell seems to discredit the story that he killed Cade at Hothfield. Leaving aside this misunderstanding of Alexander’s origins, the similarity of the names Heathfield and Hothfield perhaps invites confusion; indeed, Hothfield was spelt ‘Hathfeld’ or similar in medieval times.

That Cade was caught in Sussex rather than in Kent is in fact confirmed in an item dated 19 October 1450 in the Issue Roll (Devon 1837). This records the payment of a reward to John Davy (evidently one of those who assisted Alexander Iden) for the taking the rebel John Mortimer (another name ascribed to Jack Cade) at ‘Hefeld in the county of Sussex’.

Was Alexander appointed Sheriff of Kent before or after capturing Jack Cade?

There has been some debate as to whether Alexander was already Sheriff when he killed Cade or whether it was an honour granted to him afterwards. Hasted gives a list of Sheriffs of Kent (Hasted 1797-1801, vol. 1, pp. 177-213). It mentions neither Cromer nor Iden as sheriffs in 1450.

Sheriffs in the time of King Henry VI who began his reign in 1422 [excerpts]

– William Cromer of Tunstall, in the 23d year [1444]. He married Elizh, daughter of James lord Say and Seale, lord treasurer, and was barbarously murdered by Jack Cade, and his rebellious route, as he was opposing their entrance into London.

– Gervas Clifton before mentioned, again in the 29th year [1450].

– Alexander Iden of Westwell, who slew Jack Cade, and married the widow of William Cromer, slain before by that rebel, was sheriff in the 35th year [1456].

Hasted’s listing is incomplete, and entries in the Calendar of the Fine Rolls show that William Crowemere (Cromer) was appointed sheriff 20 December 1449 and that Gervase Clyfton was appointed 3 December 1450 (Davies and Latham 1939). That volume of records does not seem to mention anywhere the appointment of Alexander as sheriff in 1450. 

However, Alexander is described as the Sheriff of Kent in a royal proclamation on 15 July 1450 awarding 1,000 marks to Iden and others with him who brought the body of John Cade to London, quoted in Rymer’s Feodera (Rymer 1739-1745):

After which Proclamation so made, oure trusty and welbeloved Squier Alexandre Iden, Shirrief of oure said Countee of Kent, and othir with him have brought unto our said Counsail the Body of the said John Cade

Alexander was described as sheriff of Kent also when he was appointed keeper of Rochester Castle on 1 September 1450, recorded in the Calendar of Patent Rolls: ‘... the king’s esquire, Alexander Iden, sheriff of Kent …’ (Bland and Isaacson 1909, p. 401).

Thus the established facts are that William Cromer was appointed Sheriff of Kent on 20 December 1449 and was killed on 4 July 1450. Alexander Iden was described as the Sheriff of Kent on 15 July 1450 and again on 1 September 1450 although formal appointment has not been found. His successor Gervase Clifton was not appointed until 3 December 1450.

The finding that Alexander was Sheriff as early as 15 July 1450 falls short of answering whether he was appointed before Cade’s death on 12 July 1450. However, the wording of the proclamation above suggests that Alexander was already Sheriff when he brought Cade’s body to London.

Was Alexander knighted?

Some historians have said that Alexander was knighted. Perhaps this originated from Shakespeare’s play Henry VI part II which is thought to have been written in 1591. However, no contemporary reports of him having a knighthood have been found and evidence points to the contrary.

In the announcement of his reward in July 1450 for the capture of Cade and in his appointment as keeper of Rochester Castle in September 1450 (both quoted above) he was the king’s esquire Alexander Iden, and in his indictment in September 1450 for the apprehension of Harry Wylkhous (cited above) he was simply called Alexander Iden.

He was Alexander Iden esquire at his appointment as Sheriff of Kent in November 1456, as recorded in the Calendar of Fine Rolls (Davies and Matthews 1939). Most tellingly, in his own will of November 1457 translated from the Latin he was still just Alexander Iden, esquire.

Memorial to Paul Yden (Iden) in Penshurst Church

Paul Iden died in 1514, leaving a will which mentioned his wife Anne and his daughter and heir Joane (who married Edward Shelley, and they are direct ancestors of the poet Shelley). A brass in Penshurst Church commemorates Paul and his wife (there called Agnes). A representation of the brass taken from The Pedigree of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Forman 1880) is shown in Fig. 2, with the family names added. (Note that the original Roman numerals for the year of death have been wrongly translated as 1564 instead of 1514.) The brass shows a pictorial representation of Paul and his wife and daughter, has heraldic symbols at each corner and names Paul’s father as a Thomas Iden.

The shield near the man’s head has Iden impaling Guildford, which may represent Paul and his wife. No other evidence has been found as to whether Paul’s wife Ann or Agnes was a Guildford.

The shield near the woman’s head has Iden impaling Halden. This may represent Paul’s father Thomas, who is mentioned on the memorial, and his mother. This interpretation is supported by the fact that their son Paul appears to have inherited property at St Mary Hoo formerly owned by the Halden family.

A record in the Feet of Fines, TNA CP 25/1/117A/345 number 125, shows Paul Iden relinquishing any rights to the manor of Hoo St Mary in favour of the Robert Reed in 1492 for the sum of 200 marks of silver (Some Notes on English Medieval Genealogy).

Hasted records that the Halden family owned the manor of St Mary Hoo but it seems that is not the full story, because he has a different version of how the family disposed of the manor (Hasted 1797-1801, vol. 4, pp. 20-27). Regardless of exactly what happened, Paul had claim over St Mary Hoo and he would have inherited this, which would be consistent with his mother being a Halden. If Thomas’s Halden wife had owned St Mary Hoo it would have passed to him, so seemingly she was not an heiress and it was left to Paul by another Halden relative.

There is a memorial brass at Warminghurst (West Sussex) to Paul Iden’s daughter Joane and her husband Edward Shelley. Shields from the brass are lost, stolen, but a sketch from Mrs C.E.D. Davidson-Houston shows one with Iden arms containing a crescent, meaning a second son (cited by Hutchinson and Egan 2003). This would indicate that Paul was Thomas’s second son. The fact that Thomas Iden’s heir was grandson William Iden means that Alexander was his eldest son, presumably named after his grandfather who took Jack Cade. Nevertheless, it was Alexander’s brother Paul who apparently inherited St Mary Hoo. One possible explanation for this would be if Thomas of Stoke married twice, with Alexander being a son of the first wife and Paul being the eldest son of the second wife, a Halden.

The coat of arms at the bottom right of the Penshurst brass is now heavily worn and there is need to rely on past descriptions for some of the symbols it contained. It quarters the arms of four families, and in numerical order they are Iden, Cheyne, Fawkham and the Sutton Valence branch of Norton family (Fig. 2). Under heraldic convention this represents a male Iden, descended from heraldic heiresses from the other families, with the arms in the order they were acquired. It seems the quartered shield describes Paul’s ancestry.

As discussed previously there are indications that before Elizabeth Fiennes, Alexander Iden may have married a Norton and she was the mother of Thomas of Stoke and his sisters. The further information that Paul claimed descent from a Norton heraldic heiress tends to support this possibility, so that Alexander’s Norton wife would be that heiress. Heraldic rules would dictate that any other arms brought to the marriage by the Norton heiress were acquired by the Idens after hers, but there are none, and the Cheyne and Fawkham arms were acquired before hers so these heraldic heiresses would be ancestors of Alexander.

Paul Iden’s claimed descent from a Cheyne heraldic heiress is supported by the Iden family’s possession of Cheynes Court in Chart Sutton (see above). The register of John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, records that on 14 February 1448/9 Alexander Iden Esq. was given a commission to administer the goods of Alexander Cheyne Esq., who died intestate, and to furnish an inventory by Easter (Foss 1986). This indicates a close connection between the Iden and Cheyne families, and is consistent with an Iden marriage to a Cheyne heraldic heiress.

No evidence has been found for Paul‘s descent from a Fawkham heraldic heiress. As mentioned earlier, a record from the Court of Common Pleas states that Alexander Edenne acquired an interest in a manor at Fawkham which passed to his son Thomas, although this interest could have been forfeited later depending on the result of the court case. However, the record shows (Mackman and Stevens 2010) that Alexander acquired the manor from several persons, none of them Fawkhams. This raises the possibility that Paul’s claimed Fawkham descent was a misunderstanding.

The single coat of arms at the bottom left of the brass is that of the Fiennes family. Elizabeth Fiennes was Alexander’s wife at the time of his death, but not the mother of his son Thomas of Stoke. Apparently the Fiennes shield does not indicate any Fiennes descent for Paul, but just references the Iden connection with that prominent family.

Conclusions

The Alexander Iden who took Jack Cade was the father of Thomas Iden of Stoke and ancestor of the poet Shelley (1792-1822) and the Browne family of Wealden iron founders prominent in the seventeenth century. Alexander Iden’s father was named Thomas Iden, Idenne or Edenne.

Alexander was the father of Thomas Iden of Stoke as mentioned, and in addition in his will of 1457 he mentioned 3 daughters. He married Elizabeth Fiennes after her husband William Cromer was killed in Cade’s rebellion in 1450, but there is nothing to suggest she was the mother of those children. Thomas was too old to be hers, indicating Alexander had an earlier wife, thought to be a Norton, who appears to be the mother of his daughters as well.

The commemorative brass for Paul Iden at Penshurst church with heraldic symbols showing the arms of Paul’s ancestral families confirms Iden connections with various families by marriage. It supports the idea of Alexander’s Norton marriage, but beyond that there is insufficient information to construct a pedigree.

Despite the statements from later historians that Alexander was of Westwell, no contemporary records were found that suggest this. On the contrary, records were found showing that Alexander was of Milton before and after he took Cade in 1450. In fact, records show that the Iden family were in Milton as early as 1386.

There are conflicting accounts regarding the capture of Jack Cade. Either he was pursued by Alexander as sheriff with others and caught at Heathfield in East Sussex, or he was caught by Alexander as a private citizen at Hothfield near his Westwell home. Given that Alexander lived at Milton and not Westwell, the second story is discredited. That Cade was taken in Sussex is confirmed in the record of a payment later in 1450 to one of those assisting in the capture.

As to whether Alexander was made sheriff before or after capturing Cade, records show that he was Sheriff of Kent for a period in 1450 although his appointment does not appear to have been announced in the usual way. The earliest reference found to Alexander as sheriff of Kent was on 15 July 1450, three days after Cade’s death, but the wording suggests that Alexander was sheriff when he bought Cade’s body to London.

Some have said that Alexander was knighted for his services in taking Cade, but the records show this was not the case. All contemporary records found call him just Alexander Iden or Alexander Iden esquire, and that includes his own will translated from the Latin.

In a pedigree appearing in Archaeologia Cantiana, King (1909) correctly recorded that Alexander Iden was the father of Thomas of Stoke. The only evidence cited for this was a grant of arms to ‘Thomas Brown’ in 1626. In fact, the confirmation of arms was to John Browne. The pedigree wrongly had Elizabeth Fiennes as the mother of Thomas of Stoke. It also wrongly stated that Alexander was from Westwell, and that his father was John Iden instead of Thomas. The present paper corrects these errors in King’s generally very valuable research.

acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance given by the staff at the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies with their interpretation of Paul Iden’s memorial brass at Penshurst.

kathryn smith and donald lloyd

bibliography

For the convenience of readers, URLs have been included for reference material available online. These are current at the date of publication.

Bland, A.E. and Isaacson, R.F., 1909, Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, Vol. V, Henry VI 1445-1452 (H.M.S.O.).

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158009711549&view=1up&seq=413

Davies, P.V. and Latham, R.E., 1939, Calendar of the Fine Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office Vol. XVIII Henry VI 1445-1452, p. 145 and p. 187 (H.M.S.O.).

https://archive.org/details/calendaroffinero18greauoft/page/144

Davies, P.V. and Matthews, E.C., 1939, Calendar of the Fine Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office Vol. XIX Henry VI 1452-1461, p. 176 (H.M.S.O.).

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015008370523;view=1up;seq=190

Dawes, M.C.B., 1929, Calendar of the Fine Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office Vol. XI Richard II 1391-1399, pp. 165-166 (H.M.S.O.).

http://www.archive.org/stream/calendaroffinero11greauoft#page/166/mode/2up/search/idenne

Devon, F., 1837, Issues of the Exchequer, p. 468 (John Murray, London).

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uIZTAAAAcAAJ&pg=p468#v=onepage&q&f=false

Forman, H.B., 1880, The Pedigree of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 13 (self-published).

https://memory.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2007/20070601070pe/20070601070pe.pdf

Foss, D.B., 1986, The Canterbury Archiepiscopates of John Stafford (1443-52) and John Kemp (1452-54) with editions of their registers, Vol. II, Part II, p. 596 (King’s College London Doctoral thesis).

https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/2933353/289219_vol2pt2.pdf

Harrington, D., 2012, Kent Feet of Fines Richard II 1377-1399 Nos. 1-1170, Kent Archaeo-logical Society Records.

https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/kent_records/KRNS4-3.pdf

Hasted, E., 1778-1799, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, vol. 3, pp. 205-206 (first edn, Simmons and Kirkby, Canterbury).

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015039587194&view=1up&seq=245.

Hasted, E., 1797-1801, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (second edn, W Bristow, Canterbury). Viewed at various webpages of British History Online.

Hutchinson, R. and Egan, B., 2003, ‘History Writ in Brass - the Fermer Workshop Part II (vii)’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, Vol. XVII, Part 1, p. 62 (London).

https://www.mbs-brasses.co.uk/public/files/2003-transactions-volume-xvii-part-1-1949 94357.pdf.

Iden, V.G., 1941, The Sons and Daughters of Randall Iden (Raymond J. Iden, Mount Vernon, Ohio).

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King, W.L., 1899, A Genealogical Record of the Families of King and Henham, in the County of Kent (Mitchell and Hughes, London).

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King, W.L., 1909, ‘Pedigree of the Family of De Fynes’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xxviii, 24.

https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/Vol.028%20-%201909/page%20v%20+%20vi%20%20contents.htm.

King, W.L., 1914, ‘The Iden Brass at Penshurst’, Notes and Queries, Eleventh Series Vol. IX January-June 1914, p. 28 (John C. Francis and J. Edward Francis, London).

https://archive.org/details/s11notesqueries09londuoft/page/n33.

Mackman, J. and Stevens, M.F., 2010, ‘CP40/818: Hilary term 1466’, rot. 159, in Court of Common Pleas: the National Archives, Cp40 1399-1500 (University of London & History of Parliament Trust, London), British History Online.

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Martin, C.T., 1877, Catalogue of the Archives in the Muniment Rooms of All Souls’ College, p. 65 (Spottiswoode & Co, London).

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Rymer, T., 1739-1745, Rymer’s Foedera with Syllabus, Volume II, pp. 273-279 (London). British History Online.

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‘Some Notes on English Medieval Genealogy’, Abstracts of Feet of Fines

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_117A_345.shtml

Virgoe, R., 2006, Some Ancient Indictments in the King’s Bench referring to Kent 1450-1452, p. 236, Kent Archaeological Society Records, vol. 18.

https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/KRV/18/5/236.htm

when was canterbury cathedral’s medieval library building demolished?

As a major Benedictine house, the priory of Christ Church Canterbury was a considerable user of books. Lanfranc’s rebuilding in the 1070s did not include a library; it is assumed that books were kept in cupboards in the cloister, as was normal in a monastery. By the late-twelfth century, a more commodious book store had been provided in the closed-off passageway leading out from the cloisters to which an upper floor was added in the early fourteenth century.¹ By the mid fourteenth century many books had left Canterbury to stock libraries in its daughter houses, especially at Canterbury College in Oxford where Canterbury monks went to study at the university. Eventually a library building was constructed to house the books which remained. It was founded and funded by Archbishop Chichele by an agreement made with the Prior and Chapter in 1432 and seems to have been completed in the mid 1440s.² Its location was above the Prior’s chapel on the spot where its seventeenth-century replacement is now to be found.

This library remained in use in the late Middle Ages and after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. It is described in detail by Margaret Sparks in her book on the buildings of the cathedral precincts.³ William Somner refers to its location over the Dean’s chapel (formerly the Prior’s) in his Antiquities of Canterbury in 1640:

Over this Chapell is the Church-library … being built … by Archbishop Chichley, and borrowed from the Chapell, or superadded to it.⁴

Somner goes on to lament the loss of the greater part of the books in the library since the Reformation:

It was by the founder and others well stored with books, but in mans memory shamefully robbed and spoiled of them all, an act much prejudiciall and very injurious both to posterity, and the Common-wealth of letters.

He notes that ‘the present Churchmen hath begun to replenish it’, referring to the initiative of Dean Isaac Bargrave in 1628 to stimulate the re-establishment of the library and to urge gifts for it which would be recorded in the new Benefactors’ Book.⁵

This revival in the fortunes of the library was about to be curtailed by the events of the English Civil War and the abolition of the Church of England. In April 1649, Trustees for Deans and Chapters had been set up by the ‘Act for the abolishing of Deans, Deans and Chapters, Canons, Prebends, and other officers or titles belonging to any Cathedral or Collegiate Church or Chapel in England and Wales, and for the employment of their revenues’.⁶ The main purpose of the Act was ‘to sell the Lands of the Deans and Chapters, for the paying of publique Debts; and for the raising of Three hundred thousand pounds, for the present supply of the pressing necessities of this Commonwealth’. The Act covered buildings as well as estates:

the said Surveyors are hereby authorized to demand, require, receive, and put into safe custody, the Charters, Deeds, Books, Accompts, Rolls, Writings and Evidences that concern the premises or any part thereof; to the end the same may be put into such place as the said Trustees or any five or more of them shall appoint.⁷

Having been authorised in this way, the Trustees in March 1650 issued an order to Captain Sherman in Canterbury to have the Cathedral Library catalogued and the books sent off to the Trustees’ office in Gurney House in London.⁸

At a meeting of the trustees for deanes and chapteres Londo[n] the 6th of march 1650

Ordered that Captne Sherman doe make a catalogue of all the Bookes in the liberarie at Canterburie and that hee take Care for the spedie sendinge of them to Gurny House in the ould Jurie London

The order was signed by the requisite five Trustees: ‘Johnstoun’ [John Stone], ‘Mar Hildersom’ [Mark Hildesley], ‘Collonell Roulfe’ [William Rolf], ‘Georg Langham’ [George Langham] and ‘William Wyberd.⁹

The Cathedral’s estate records were also seized and taken to Gurney House.¹⁰ The catalogue of the Library which had been ordered was duly drawn up in 1650,¹¹ although the books were not immediately sent off to London: it appears that government agents in Kent were being uncooperative. On 3 April 1651, one year after the original order to ship the books to London, the Trustees wrote to the Committee for Compounding to protest about obstructiveness on the part of the Committee’s agents in Kent:

Trustees for sale of Dean and Chapters’ lands to the Committee for Compounding.
Being obliged by our trust to secure the libraries of the late deans and chapters, we directed the removal of those at Canterbury, as in other places, to London, for disposal by Parliament, and to be kept from the embezzlement threatening them by the decay of the place where they were. Some of your sub-commissioners having interposed, we desire you to prohibit any further interruption in the removal of the books.¹²

The Committee for Compounding followed this up on 18 April 1651:

Committee for Compounding to the Commissioners for Sequestrations, co. Kent.
The Trustees for sale of Dean and Chapter lands inform us that you withstand their order directing the disposal of the library belonging to the late Dean and Chapter of Canterbury to Mr. Griffith, minister of the Charter House, London. We desire you to deliver the said library to Mr. Griffith, or his assignee, by catalogue, to be indented, one part thereof left with you, and the catalogue returned to us.¹³

The present author’s interpretation of these documents is that the books did indeed remain in Canterbury following the Trustees’ order to Captain Sherman and the drawing up of the catalogue in March 1650 and that it took a further instruction from London a year later to ensure their delivery, though it is not clear that a two-part copy of the catalogue was prepared as requested. The date of carriage of the books to London was May 1651 as noted by Sheila Hingley: ‘They went by road and then by river to London, in four barrels, a hamper and a box’.¹⁴ It is possible to deduce from this that the medieval library was still standing in mid 1651.

Following the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England in 1660, the Cathedral’s archival documents had been retrieved from Gurney House. The medieval library had definitely been demolished by this time, as William Somner lamented its fate in that year:

The Deanes privat Chapell, and a faire and goodly Library over it, quite demolished, the Bookes and other furniture of it sold away.¹⁵

He makes no mention of the survival of the books and was presumably still unaware of the decision by the Committee for Compounding in 1650/1651 to award them to Mr Griffiths at the Charterhouse in London. The Chichele library, together with the Dean’s chapel below it, must have been demolished at some point after mid-1651. Nevertheless, it can be shown that both were probably still standing two or three years later.

The year 1655 saw the publication of the Monasticon Anglicanum by Roger Dodsworth and William Dugdale, with significant contributions by William Somner.¹⁶ Somner’s friend Meric Casaubon was also involved in this project, being paid 5 shillings in November 1652 for making a fair copy of ‘a quire except 3 pages’, and 7 shillings for correcting proofs for the Monasticon.¹⁷ The dedicatory poems by local Canterbury figures inserted into the preliminaries give equal praise to Dodsworth, Dugdale and Somner as authors of the Monasticon.¹⁸

Among the four engraved plates illustrating Canterbury Cathedral is a ground plan which shows many of the adjacent monastic buildings, including the location of the Chichele library. The library is marked with the number 37; the key at the foot of the plate explains this as Decani nup[er], Prioris olim, Capella, cum Librario sup[er] ædificato [recently the Dean’s chapel, formerly the Prior’s, with the Library built over it]. This suggests that the chapel and the library might still have been in place at the time that the plate was commissioned and its caption engraved.

Evidence from William Dugdale’s correspondence, as printed by William Hamper, enables us to be more precise about the dates for the survival of the medieval library. William Somner proves to be a significant figure in this.

It is not surprising that Somner was a collaborator of Dugdale, who already knew him at the time of the publication of the Antiquities of Canterbury in 1640. Hamper records that Dugdale recommended Somner to Sir Symonds D’Ewes in 1639/40.¹⁹ In the preliminary letter to his Warwickshire (1656), Dugdale acknowledges among other earlier antiquarian works ‘the Antiquities of Canterbury by my speciall friend Mr William Somner’.²⁰ Somner continued to collaborate with Dugdale, sending corrections to the ‘Preface’ of Warwickshire in a letter of 7 March 1655/56 together with a letter from Meric Casaubon.²¹ Both Dugdale and Somner were of course also active in the field of Anglo-Saxon lexicography.²²

The history of the plates for the Monasticon is discussed in detail by Marion Roberts.²³ Most of the plates were engraved by the English engraver Daniel King. The Canterbury ground plan was the work of the superior artist Wenceslas Hollar. More significantly, the four Canterbury plates were commissioned by Dugdale through the good offices of William Somner in Canterbury. Roberts identifies the artist who made the drawings for these plates as Thomas Johnson of Canterbury, a member of the London Painter-Stainers Company.²⁴

William Somner worked closely with William Dugdale on the final stages of preparation of the Monasticon for the press, including drafting captions for the completed plates in late 1654.²⁵ He was the one person who would know (and care) about the safe keeping of the Chapter Library and who was still resident in Canterbury. This seems to indicate that he knew that the Library was still standing not only at the time of the drawing and engraving of the plates, but also at the time of their going to press.

Marion Roberts makes it clear that the decision to include plates in the Monasticon was a late one. She notes that Dugdale’s 1653 correspondence includes frequent references to plates for his Warwickshire, ‘there are no references to the plates for the Monasticon before 1654’.²⁶ The text of the book had been ready to print as early as 1650 but Dodsworth and Dugdale were advised that conditions were unsuitable for the publication of such a specialist work. It may be that the decision to include plates was intended to increase the book’s saleability. Patrons were sought to finance individual plates, which would carry their coats of arms. On 13 March 1654, Somner wrote to Dugdale about the corrected proof of ‘o[ur] Cathedral’s groundplott’ which Sir Thomas Peyton had promised to pay for. He sends the drawing of the ‘frontispiece’ of the Cathedral done by Mr Johnson, for which he has paid 10 shillings. Somner had recruited Sir Anthony Aucher and Sir Thomas Peyton to pay five pounds each for their plates, which covered costs and allowed a little profit to subsidise other aspects of the venture.²⁷ In November of the same year Somner wrote to Dugdale with further comments about the text of the Monasticon.²⁸

The Latin key to the ‘ground plot’ drawn by Thomas Johnson was no doubt prepared by William Somner or at least done with his oversight and approval. The wording Decani nup[er], Prioris olim, Capella, cum Librario sup[er] ædificato suggests a building which was still standing. If we can assume that he would have labelled the Dean’s chapel and library as demolished if it were no longer standing, it is possible to suggest that the building was still intact in late 1654 when Somner wrote to Dugdale with comments about the preface. It would not have been too late even at that date to have the key re-engraved with minor corrections.

It seems possible that the chapel and library were only demolished in the mid to late 1650s, just a few years before the restoration of the monarchy and the return of the Church of England and its dignitaries. The Dean and Chapter were able to have their books returned from London in 1661, though they had to pay compensation to Mr Griffiths at the Charterhouse.²⁹ The clerk at Gurney House who made the arrangements wrote at the foot of the 1650 inventory ‘Pray place your books whear you had them’,³⁰ presumably not realising that the library no longer existed.

In spite of all their other commitments at that time, the Dean and Chapter set to work to replace their library on the same footings as its predecessor. The building costs were borne by a bequest of £500 from Archbishop Juxon and the fittings from a gift from Bishop Warner of Rochester, a former canon of Canterbury. The building work was supervised by William Somner’s brother John.³¹ By 1666 the new library was ready, the books had been rescued from the Charterhouse and the task of enhancing its holdings commenced.

david shaw

¹ T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The medieval library at Canterbury Cathedral’, Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle (82, 1988), pp. 35-42.

² Margaret Sparks, Canterbury Cathedral Precincts: A Historical Survey (Dean and Chapter of Canterbury: 2007), p. 36.

³ Ibid., pp. 36-38.

⁴ A new biography of William Somner has been written by David Wright. See, ‘The Life of William Somner of Canterbury (1606-1669), Parts I and II, in Archaeologia Cantiana, vols 140 (2019), 13-36 and 141 (2020), 25-46.

⁵ William Somner, The Antiquities of Canterbury (London: 1640), p. 174.

⁶ Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1600, ed. C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (3 vols; London: 1911), ii, 82.

⁷ Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1600, Trustees for Dean and Chapter Lands to take over muniments, ii, p. 83 (1649, Apr. 30), p. 201 (July 31): and provide for their safe custody, p. 86.

⁸ David Shaw, ‘The Chapter Library of Canterbury Cathedral during the Parliamentary Interregnum’, Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle (Canterbury: 2013), pp. 26-29.

⁹ Canterbury Cathedral Archives CCA DCc-LA/1/5.

¹⁰ Nigel Ramsay, ‘The Cathedral Archives and Library’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral (OUP, 1995), p. 382.

¹¹ Canterbury Cathedral Archives CCA DCc-LA/6.

¹² Calendar, Committee for Compounding, part 1, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1889), I, p. 429.

¹³ Calendar, Committee for Compounding, part 1, p. 435.

¹⁴ Sheila Hingley, ‘Cathedral Libraries: The Great Survivors’, in CULIB – Cambridge University Libraries Information Bulletin (Issue 63, Michaelmas 2008). See also, Margaret Sparks and Karen Brayshaw, A History of the Library at Canterbury Cathedral (Canterbury: Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, 2011), p. 10 and note 16.

¹⁵ Quoted from J. Craigie Robertson, ‘The condition of Canterbury Cathedral at the Restoration in A.D. 1660’, Archaeologia Cantiana (x, 1876), 93-98: 95.

¹⁶ Roger Dodsworth and William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, Vol. 1 (London: 1655). ESTC R225645. For Somner’s contribution to the work, see also Wright, 2019, 29-30.

¹⁷ William Hamper (ed.), The life, diary, and correspondence of Sir William Dugdale (London: 1827), p. 294, note; see also Dugdale’s Diary for 8 Nov 1652, Hamper, p. 99.

¹⁸ This is a single leaf inserted between gatherings d and e in the preliminaries. The catchword on the verso of leaf d4 makes it clear that it was added after the printing of the other two gatherings. The authors of the poems are Frederick Primrose, a Canterbury doctor of medicine; Edward Browne, headmaster of the King’s School; John Boys of Hoth Court; Richard Fogg of Dane Court; and a poem in fake medieval English by Joshua Childrey, at that time a schoolmaster in Faversham.

¹⁹ Hamper, p. 197.

²⁰ William Dugdale, The antiquities of Warwickshire illustrated (London: 1656), a3r.

²¹ Hamper, pp. 304-305.

²² Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (OUP: 1995), p. 246.

²³ Marion Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar: History Illustrated (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002).

²⁴ Roberts, p. 113.

25 Hamper, pp. 282 (10 November 1654), 288 (13 March 1654 [1655 n.s.?]). Somner’s contributions are singled out for praise in Sir John Marsham’s preface to the Monasticon (‘Propylaion’, d3r).

²⁶ Roberts, p. 51.

²⁷ Hamper, p. 288.

²⁸ Hamper, p. 282 (10 November 1654).

²⁹ Sparks and Brayshaw, p. 10.

³⁰ Canterbury Cathedral Archives CCA DCc-LA/1/6v.

³¹ Sparks and Brayshaw, p. 11.

the ‘hales palace’ estate map (1715) recovered to canterbury

Canterbury deserves its prominent place in the early history of map-making. The mid twelfth-century Waterworks Drawing included within the Eadwine Psalter (Trinity College Cambridge R.17.1) is of great importance in this context. This extraordinary plan of Canterbury Cathedral and its precincts showing their water supply, with an accompanying sketch showing its source, was drawn in the city. It is an exceptionally rare example of a medieval map of a locality, and one of only two examples of plans of water supplies surviving from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹ Its importance for the study of the cathedral and city is well established.² The draughtsman of the Waterworks Drawing is not known, although Francis Woodman has suggested it could have been the monk Gervase of Canterbury.³

Also not known are the draughtsmen of two very fine parchment maps dating from the beginning and middle of the seventeenth century, which form part of the city’s archive. The earlier (reference CCA-Map 57) shows the boundaries of the city, while the latter (reference CCA-Map 123) shows the city in extraordinary detail in about 1640; while this item has been extensively referred to in studies of the city, as a map it awaits further scholarship.

In the seventeenth century, Canterbury developed a ‘school’ of surveying, specialising in the production of estate maps. This included William Boycot and his son Thomas, from Fordwich, who were active between about 1615 and 1679. It is thought that Thomas Boycot may have trained Thomas Hill of Canterbury, thus passing the skills to another local family.⁴ Thomas Hill was active between 1674 and c.1702; his son Jared (baptised 1687) became a mapmaker, as did Francis Hill (died 1711), who was probably Thomas’s brother. Recognising a particular need for accurate surveys of its estates after the Restoration, the cathedral’s Dean and Chapter employed the services of all three members of the family, particularly Jared. There are ten maps by Jared Hill in the cathedral’s own archive.

One of the happier moments of the bleak year of 2020 was the acquisition for the archive of the City of Canterbury of an estate map by Jared Hill dating from 1715, on parchment, measuring 88 by 68cm (reference CCA-CC/W/38) (Fig. 1). It is a map of the ‘lands belonging to the Palace’, thus the estate associated with the former royal palace on the site of St Augustine’s Abbey, then belonging to Sir John Hales, fourth baronet (died 1744). The lands lay in the parishes of St Martin, St Mary Northgate and Fordwich, and filled most of the triangle between the road from Canterbury to Fordwich, and the road from the city to Littlebourne and Stodmarsh. St Martin’s Church is shown clearly as are the grounds of St Augustine’s Abbey. The cathedral is shown in the bottom right-hand corner, unfortunately in an area which has suffered some damage. Thus, all three elements of the UNESCO World Heritage Site are included.

The map includes an extraordinary level of detail, showing ‘Trees, Gates, stiles, ponds, foot-paths, and horse-roads’, as well as four conduit houses or tanks for water supply systems, some of which were survivals from the medieval water supplies of the cathedral, as depicted in the twelfth-century Waterworks Drawing, and of St Augustine’s Abbey. (In 1733, Sir John gave water from this supply to the City of Canterbury.) The map also marks the parish boundaries, showing the location of boundary stones, and records field names, some still familiar, others not. A set of intricate symbols, including the twelve signs of the zodiac, is used to identify the twenty-one ‘users’ of the land (twenty tenants and Sir John himself), identified in a table at the bottom of the map. This intriguing method was used in other maps by Jared and also Francis Hill, but is not usually seen elsewhere in eighteenth-century cartography. The map is presented with north at the bottom.

Like all estate maps of this type, this Hales example was designed to be put on display, and to impress the viewer with the extent of the family’s landed wealth. It has a decorated border, and three decorated cartouches, with a compass rose and a scale bar. The heraldic crest of the Hales family has prominence in the top right corner. Sir Edward Hales, the second baronet (1626-1683/4), acquired the St Augustine’s site through his wife, Anne, who was the daughter of Thomas Wootton and who died in 1654. His son, Edward, the third baronet (1645-1694), bought Place House at St Stephen’s Hackington, just outside Canterbury, and the family lived there until the substantial mansion of Hales Place was built nearby in the 1760s. That house was demolished in the late 1920s, with now only a detached chapel, once a dovecot, remaining. The St Augustine’s estate was dispersed in sales in 1791, 1804 and 1805. The ‘Hales Place’ archive is kept at the Cathedral Archives (reference U85), including material from the thirteenth century onwards relating to the various branches of the family and their various estates, and would prove a rich resource for further study. Its survival is very much indebted to William Urry, who found most of it in 1956 in an outbuilding in the cathedral precincts. Urry assumed it might have been moved there when the Jesuit order bought Hales Place in 1880, or when the house was demolished.

Eighteenth-century estate maps have proved collectable and many have passed out of their original hands. It is not clear when this map strayed from Canterbury. It was purchased for the city’s archive by the Friends of Canterbury Museums from a gentleman living in the Scottish Highlands, who in turn had acquired it when he bought a house local to him along with all of its contents. The driving force behind the purchase for the archive was the late Ken Reedie, mbe, Curator of Canterbury Museums from 1974 until 2011. Co-incidentally, Ken was from Scotland, born in Dunfermline and a graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. He was a great friend to those who look after the material heritage of Canterbury, and those who study its history and archaeology. He believed strongly in the importance of continued collecting to keep collections alive. Very sadly, Ken never saw the map: it arrived in Canterbury nearly two months after his death on 28 September.

The ‘Hales Palace’ Estate map awaits further study, for what it can tell us about the topography of Canterbury and land use in the city, for how it can inform archaeological study and for its place in the story of map-making in Canterbury. After only four years since its existence first became known, it is back home.

acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Dr Alex Kent, Reader in Cartography and Geographic Information Science at Canterbury Christ Church University, for his comments on a draft of this article.

cressida williams

¹ For an assessment of its significance, see Victoria Morse, ‘The Role of Maps in Later Medieval Society: Twelfth to Fourteenth Century’, in David Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography, vol. 3 (2007), available at https://press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V3_Pt1/HOC_VOLUME3_Part1_chapter2.pdf [accessed Nov 2020].

² See, for example, Frank Woodman, ‘The Waterworks Drawings of the Eadwine Psalter’, in Margaret Gibson, T.A. Heslop, and Richard W. Pfaff, eds, The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image, and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury (London, 1992).

³ Woodman, op. cit., p. 177.

⁴ See Sarah Bendall, Dictionary of Land Surveyors and Local Mapmakers of Great Britain and Ireland 1530-1850 (British Library, 1997); Anne Oakley, ‘The Hill family of Canterbury, St Paul, mapmakers’, in Margaret Sparks (ed.), The parish of St Martin and St Paul Canterbury: historical essays in memory of James Hobbs (Canterbury, 1980); Alex Kent, ‘Thomas Hill’s Map of Lyminge, 1685’ in Lyminge: a history (2014), available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282134556_Thomas_Hill%27s_Map_of_Lyminge_1685 [accessed Nov 2020].

examples of kentish dialect in james blackman’s letters to the governor of new south wales, ¹⁸⁰⁶

Preserved in the manuscripts of the King Family Papers at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, are two four-page autograph letters written by an anonymous correspondent who signed his name ‘B’, and were addressed to the Governor of New South Wales, Philip Gidley King; the first dated 17 May 1806, and the other thereafter undated, and concerned the illicit distillers and ‘Drinking companyes’ prevalent at this period in the region of Richmond Hill, on the Hawkesbury River.

The original identity of the author’s name in the first letter has been deliberately erased with ink – presumably by the Governor himself – and the second letter is signed ‘Your Hum(b)le Obed(ien)t Serv(an)t B’. Despite the anonymity of these letters there are at least two sources of internal information that allow for an identification of the author as a James Blackman.

James Blackman was born in Deptford (in 1759) and from about 1782/84 he served as a civilian in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich in ‘a place of the utmost trust and Confidence’.¹ On the 3 December 1785 he married Elizabeth Harley (1765-1842), and in 1790 she gave birth to their first child Samuel (1790-1843), and from about this time the family began to live on a farm near to Elizabeth father’s estate at Shooter’s Hill, in the parish of Eltham.² Here four more children were born, James jnr (1792-1865), John (1795-1860), Elizabeth (1798-1849), and William (1800-1854).

In 1801 Blackman and his family emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales as free settlers, leaving aboard the convict transport Canada on the 21 June and arriving in the Colony on the 14 December.

Possibly as a result of the large family that accompanied him, he was not settled immediately and so the Governor ‘gave him one of the cottages attached to Government House to live in until he could secure a home for himself’.³ Before being settled James was appointed by the Governor as Superintendent of Agriculture at the new settlement at Castle Hill, ‘to direct the labor of the prisoners employed at cultivation on the Public Account’,⁴ and was in charge of about 300 convicts.

He received a land grant on the 31 March 1802 of 100 acres in the District of Mulgrave Place at Richmond Hill, along the Hawkesbury River,⁵ and by the middle of the year he had already cleared 12 acres, 4 of which were planted with wheat, 5 with maize.⁶ His appointment at Castle Hill only lasted one or two years before he was ‘obliged to retire ... his Health becoming so Impaired’.⁷

James Blackman wrote phonetically and the orthographic characteristics of his language display the influence of his native Kentish dialect as well as influences from other neighbouring dialects, and also evinces archaisms inherited from earlier 18th-century speech. His level of written literacy is typical of military-based education at the end of the 18th century. The era in which Blackman was writing is almost at the fin de siècle of Early Modern English, and his written dialect displays characteristics of both the 18th century, as preserved in Samuel Pegge’s Alphabet of Kenticisms, and Collection of Proverbial Sayings used in Kent (1735-36),⁸ and the first quarter of the 19th century, as preserved in John White Masters’, Dick and Sal at Canterbury Fair: A Doggerel Poem (Canterbury, c.1821).⁹ Two of the most distinctive characteristics of this period of the Kentish dialect: th- > d- (Pegge-Skeat 57 §5, Parish-Shaw vi, Ellis V 131) and v- > w- (Pegge-Skeat 57 §3, 61 §3, Parish-Shaw vi, Ellis V 132), are nowhere displayed in Blackman’s letters, and it may be surmised that these were considered as solecisms that were taught to be avoided when learning how to write, or was influenced by the London dialect. Blackman’s letters may also be compared to those of the convict Margaret Catchpole (Nile, 1801), who wrote phonetically in the adjacent Suffolk (Ipswich) dialect, and who was a direct contemporary of Blackman and likewise lived in the Richmond Hill district. In his later years Blackman’s writing style developed into standard English, and two autograph letters addressed to the Colonial Secretary, April-May 1824,¹⁰ contain almost no trace of his original phonetic writing style, with the exceptions: (329) off = of, Royal Arssinal = Royal Arsenal, (330) usal = usual, and (333) Memorialst = memorialist.

The written form of Blackman’s letters displays several vowel alternances broadly characteristic of the transitional period of the Kentish dialect at the fin de siècle of the 18-19th centuries (although not all of the alternances were uniquely exclusive to Kentish).

An edition of these unique letters is published on the KAS website together with a full phonological analysis of the Kentish dialect contained therein.

darren hopkins

¹ SRNSW CS 4/1836A, Fiche 3078 (pre-27 April 1824): n70a, p. 329 ‘Previous to his coming to this Colony was in the Royal Arssinal [sic] in Woolwich for Seventeen Years’, 4/1836A, Fiche 3078 (early May 1824): n70a, p. 333, ‘having served in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, for 19 years’.

2 Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 6 Nov 1931, 5.

³ Ibid.

⁴ SRNSW CS 4/1836A, Fiche 3078: n70a, p. 329; HRA 1.3: 404, 646, 748.

⁵ Land Grants: 151.

⁶ 1802 Muster: AG304.

⁷ SRNSW CS 4/1836A, Fiche 3078: n70a, p. 329.

⁸ Walter W. Skeat, ‘Dr. (Samuel) Pegge’s MS. Alphabet of Kenticisms, and Collection of Proverbial Sayings used in Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana, ix (1874), 50-116.

⁹ Parish-Shaw: xii-xxiv.

¹⁰ SRNSW CS 4/1836A, Fiche 3078 n70a, pp. 329-333.

Map 1 Map of Canterbury showing locations where pilgrim badges found. Ordnance Survey Limited, <https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/os-open-greenspace.html> (last accessed August 2019).

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2017.

Fig. 1 Fragment of a souvenir mould, c.1260-1280 (60 x 45mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 3 Virgin and Child in crescent moon, c.1500-1540 (26 x 20mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 2 Ampulla depicting Saint Thomas Becket, 1270-1349 (78 x 75 x 20mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Table 1. THE badge types in the Canterbury Collection

Badge Type	Beaney House of Art and Knowledge Collection	Originally in Heritage Museum Collection*	Total
Ampulla	2	3	5
Becket in architectural frame	0	1	1
Becket bell	1	0	1
Becket coin	0	1	1
Becket encircled	18	0	18
Becket’s glove	4	0	4
Becket’s head	35	23	58
Becket’s initial	5	0	5
Becket’s martyrdom	1	0	1
Becket mould	1	1	2
Becket in a square	1	0	1
Becket in a star	2	0	2
Possible Becket**	9	1	10
Total Becket related	79	30	109
Non-Becket pilgrim badges/fragments	171	2	173
Grand total	250	32	282

*See endnote 8. **Damaged/broken pieces yet to be categorised.

Fig. 4 Broken martyrdom scene depicting Grim at the altar, c.1350-1399 (52h x 25mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 5 Ampulla depicting Saint Thomas Becket’s martyrdom, 1250-1279 (50 x 55mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 6 Jewelled mitred head badge of Saint Thomas Becket c.1490-1499 (53 x 28mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 7 Decorated head of Becket, 1400-1490 (38 x 28mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 8 Head badge of Becket with inscription ‘THOMAS’, c.1400-1499 (70 x 36mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 9 Head of Becket encircled in a frame with inscription, c.1320-1399 (26 x 23mm). (Reproduced courtesy of Canterbury Museums and Galleries.)

Fig. 1 The Family Tree of the Alexander Iden branch (abridged).

Fig. 2 Paul Iden’s memorial in Penshurst Church.

Fig. 1 The 1715 ‘Hales Palace’ map by Jared Hill.