Duties and succession of the Millers of St Andrew’s Priory, Rochester, c.1235

The requirements of the millers references a bakery, possibly once part of the long medieval building to the north of the Cathedral, now Minor Canon Row. This intriguing, if not slightly confusing, account seems to suggest that the miller, under-miller, the winnower and the winnower’s son (i.e. Eylaf, Galfrid, Robert Grente and Herbert Russell) came under scrutiny for large economic losses at the priory sometime during the time Gundulf was bishop (1077-1108).  The result was that all four men were expelled from the monastery.  However, Galfrid, the under-miller, regained his position, due (at least in part) to the fact that he was, or subsequently became, the husband of the sister of the cellarer who, of course, was one of the senior monks.  Once the ex-master miller Eylaf died, a certain Gilbert took over as master miller at the invitation of Ernulf the prior, who shouldn’t be confused with the Ernulf who became bishop of Rochester in 1014/15.  Bishop Walter, who was around several decades later (bishop 1148-82), appears to be the source for this information.

Translation

Concerning the office of the millers: here is what they ought to do: The master of the millers ought, in fact, to see and feel the wheat at the door of the granary.  And, if he is able or not to make for the monastery the best and finest bread, even by his mouth¹ he ought to accept or reject it.  He weighs the bread.²  Also he ought to reach agreement on all bread at the storeroom of the cellarer; and, after, he will have one monk’s loaf and at Easter time a flan.³  His wages: 7 shillings.  To him it belongs to mix and knead the dough of the monastery.
What the second rank [miller] ought to do: The second rank will measure all the wheat that pertains to the bread of the monastery, both in receiving and sending forth from the mill-house.  He himself ought also to measure the flour when it will be brought back from the mill-house, and to see whether he has 7 skeps of flour from five skeps of wheat.⁴  He will also measure, on receiving it and at the nod of the cellarer, all servants’ metecorn⁵ for the free servants.  And afterwards he will have one monk’s loaf and a gallon and a half of ale.  He will mill the wheat as often as is necessary, and he will have a horse for this office and a groom; which groom will likewise have a room in the guest-house and twelve pennies per year from his master, paid once at the command of the Lord’s Supper.⁶ His wages: 5 shillings.  To him it belongs to mix and knead the dough of the monastery one day and the master the next day [i.e. they alternate].  They will obtain the equipment for preparing the bread of the monastery, and they will manage the production of the bread of the monastery, the master one day, the second-rank the next.  They will make consecrated loaves and wafers, and on the same day they have a loaf and a gallon and a half of ale and a single dish of pottage from the kitchen.
What the other three millers ought to do: The other three millers: according to how their days fall, the first will heat the oven, the second will form the bread according to measure, the third will sit at the grindstone.  Their wages: one for each of them, 4 shillings. They will have in common one loaf and three gallons of ale.  It is noted that they ought not to eat there [in the bakery] nor have ale until luncheon.  They will carry wood and draw water.  They will bolt⁷ the flour and when they do the refining they will enter this room.  The guard of the granary, or anyone else appointed by the cellarer, will make firm the door over them until they have finished this.  The cellarer will obtain overalls.  They will have a small round loaf of the weight of one monk’s loaf⁸, and for carrying the bread to the cellarer, four guest loaves.  And it will be observed that the first loaf which is weighed is Christ’s.

Footnotes

1 i.e. he tastes the grain.

2 Keeping therefore to the rules of the Assize of Bread and Ale, i.e. the thirteenth-century law governing the price, weight and quality of bread and ale produced in towns and villages.

3 Flan: In Middle English, known as a flawn or a flathon (there are numerous variant spellings in English culinary collections of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). The flan was essentially an open tart made with an egg and dairy custard filling. Versions containing cheese are recorded but more common are sweet milk/cream egg custards, usually sweetened with sugar. Dried and/or fresh fruits were sometimes added. During Lent, almond milk and a thickener, such as rice flour or wheat starch, were substitutes for milk, cream and eggs. Some surviving recipes include saffron and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Since dairy foods and eggs were forbidden fare during Lent, a flan would have been a suitably delicious way of marking the end of abstinence.

4 Skep: a dry measurement.  Latin eskippa, from Old English sceppe and Old Norse skeppa, originally meaning a wicker or wooden basket.  In the 13th century, a skep was equivalent to a half-bushel.  A bushel equalled 8 gallons.  A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases, ed. Christopher Corèdon with Ann Williams (D. S. Brewer, 2005).

5 Metecorn: from Old English metecorn meaning ‘corn-measure’, i.e. the allowance of corn for dependents.  A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, J. R. Clark Hall (4th ed. University of Toronto Press, 1960).

6 The command of the Lord’s Supper: meaning, most likely, that the groom’s wages were to be paid once a year on Maundy Thursday, the commemoration of Christ’s Last Supper.

7 Bolt: to further refine milled wheat that has already been sieved to remove the coarser particles of bran; this was done using a bolting cloth made from fine-meshed linen. The result would be fine white flour for making the monks’ loaves. See Peter Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, p. 115.

8 Small round loaf: tortellus, the word in the text, is a Latinised form of Anglo-Norman turtel, a small round and flat loaf made using unbolted flour. Compared to the monk’s loaf, the turtel was coarse, but it may have been more nutritious. Woolgar discusses the large variety of breads made at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, around the same time as Custumale Roffense; this included the largest loaf, ‘turta’, weighing 1.62 kg; the turtel was evidently the smaller version of this. Woolgar explains that the turta was ‘largely for servants’ and may be synonymous with the ‘treat’ loaf which ‘[a]ccording to the Assize of Bread and Ale of c.1256 was the lowest quality of wheat bread’. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the servants’ loaves were made from barley. See C. M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500, pp. 154-55; for definitions, see the online Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, tortilla; and the online Anglo-Norman Dictionary, turtel [accessed 28 March, 2022].