St Andrew’s Day food payments to Rochester Priory, c.1235
The list below provides the breakdown of the special customary payment – or xenium – made to the court of Rochester Priory on St Andrew’s Day (30th November). Payments came from the manorial estates held by the monastery and took the form of piglets, hens, geese, eggs, sturgeon, lampreys, as well as grain. The manors owing these food payments are listed as Frindsbury, Denton, Wouldham, Southfleet, Stoke, Haddenham and Darenth. All but Haddenham were (and still are) in Kent; Haddenham was (and is) in Buckinghamshire.
Transcription
66r (select folio number to open facsimile)
De exennio sancti Andree. Frendesberj. De frendesberia : v frecingas, et unum quarterium et quater
uiginti, et iiij gallinas, et xx et unam aucam, et
duo millia et centum ouorum. Inde episcopo quingenta oua, et
celerario quingenta oua, et residua in curiam, et
iij partem de sturgun et de lampridis, et sexaginta1
fasciculos de furra. Denintune.2 De denitune : unam frecingam et tria quarteria
unius frecinge et xxiiij gallinas, uno anno et altero
xxv, et unam partem de sturgun, et de lampridis, et sex3
uiginti et tria oua. Wuldeham. De Wuldeham : tres frecingas et dimidiam et xl gallinas, et
duas partes de sturgun et de lampridis, et xl fasciculos de
furra, set hoc contra cartam Gundulfi episcopi. Et notandum quod
super manerium de Wuldeham constituti fuerunt olim de firma4
duo menses cum centum solidis, de suthflete. Suthflete De suthflete: tres frecingas et dimidiam et centum
gallinas et duas partes de sturgun et de lampridis.5 De stokes: duas frecingas et xxxvi gallinas et ix6
aucas et quingenta oua, residua in curiam et xii
summas auene, et unam partem de sturgun et de7
lampridis. Hadenham. De Hedenham8 : piscem ualentem xx sol’.9 Derente. De Derente10 : dimidium millenarium de lampridis.
Translation
Concerning the customary payment of Saint Andrew.11 Frindsbury.
Concerning Frindsbury: 5 piglets12 and six quarters [of wheat grain];13 and 4 hens, and 21 geese;14 and two thousand and one hundred eggs.15 Of these, to the bishop fifty eggs, and to the cellarer fifty eggs, and the remainder to the court [of the priory]; and three parts of sturgeon and of lampreys;16 and sixty bundles of spelt.17 – that is, for 1 month –18
Denton Concerning Denton: one piglet and three quarters [of wheat grain], a single piglet;19 and 24 hens one year, and on the alternate [year] 25; and one part of sturgeon and of lamprey; and 123 eggs.20 Wouldham Concerning Wouldham: three piglets, and a half,21 and 40 hens, and two parts of sturgeon and of lampreys, – that is, for 1 month –22 and 40 bundles of spelt – but this is contrary to Bishop Gundulf’s charter.23 And it should be noted that the above manor of Wouldham there were formerly established two months of rent with a hundred shillings from Southfleet.24 – that is, for 2 months –25 Southfleet Concerning Southfleet: three piglets and one hundred and fifty hens and two parts of sturgeon and of lampreys. – that is, for 2 months –26 Stoke Concerning Stoke: two piglets and 36 hens and 9 gees and fifty eggs, the remainder to the court, and 12 seams of oats,27 and one part of sturgeon and of lampreys. Haddenham Concerning Haddenham: fish, equivalent value of 20 shillings.28 Darenth Concerning Darenth: half a thousand of lampreys. 1 A note in the margin records ‘i.e. pro j mense.’
2 ‘Denintune’, an error for ‘Denitune’.
3 A note in the margin records ‘i.e. pro j mense’.
4 A note in the left margin records ‘i.e. pro ijbus mensibus’.
5 A note in the left margin records ‘i.e. pro ijbus mensibus’.
6 A note in the left margin records ‘Stokes. ’
7 A note in the left margin records ‘i.e. pro j mense’.
8 ‘Hedenham’, variant spelling of ‘Hadenham’.
9 The case ending of solidus is unclear so I have left it abbreviated.
10 The scribe made a mistake which he corrected: in the manuscript it reads ‘Derente’ with a superscript ‘de’ above.
11 The exenium (or xenium) of the text was the customary offering or payment brought to the priory on the feast day of Saint Andrew, i.e. the 30th November. According to Colin Flight, in his discussion of the priory’s fraudulent charter that was supposedly written by Bishop Gundulf (see note 23, below), this ‘gift’ (as Flight translates it) was the food, or cash in lieu, that was delivered to the incumbent bishop on St Andrew’s Day. Here though, in Custumale Roffense, the focus is on what the monks should receive, though the bishop is mentioned in a few entries. See Flight, The Bishops and Monks of Rochester 1076-1214 (Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society, 1997), p. 109.
12 Or ‘suckling pigs’.
13 Literally ‘one quarter and a quarter of twenty’. Wheat is implied as the quarter was a unit of weight for grain. It equalled eight bushels; see ‘Quarter 3.’ in Christopher Corèdon with Ann Williams, A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004).
14 Literally, ‘twenty and one geese’.
15 Most probably meaning hen’s eggs, though goose eggs or a mixture of both are possibilities.
16 We should probably understand the use of Latin pars ‘part’ to mean a set amount of the fish referred to, though the amount is not explicitly specified; however, see my comments below in note 12. In the charter of Bishop Gundulf, alluded to later in the Wouldham section, the manors of Wouldham, Frindsbury, Denton, Southfleet, Stoke and Lambeth are to provide a thousand lampreys each, which suggests we should not be thinking of small numbers of fish. Likewise, Darenth, the last manor of the present text, is required to pay 500 lampreys. Though fish were often salted to preserve them, lampreys and sturgeon, as with some other varieties of fish, may have been first stored and then transported live; see Richard C. Hoffmann, ‘A Brief history of aquatic resource use in medieval Europe’, Helgoland Marine Research 59, pp. 22-30 (2005), at p. 24; the article is available online here. The late-fourteenth-century cookery treatise of Richard II specifies that lampreys were to be killed ‘with vinegar or white wine and salt’ implying they arrived at the royal kitchen alive; see ‘Launpreys in galentyne’ (‘Lampreys in galentine sauce’), recipe 124, Fourme of Cury, Manchester, John Rylands Library, English MS 7, folio 63 (my own translation).
17 ‘bundles of spelt’. The word I’ve translated as ‘spelt’ is furra which the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources states is a variant of farra, the plural of far, meaning ‘spelt or emmer wheat’: logeion.uchicago.edu/far [accessed 14 July 2023]. The Latin word for ‘bundle’ – fasciculus – is more often associated with sticks, that is, a faggot, used for fires: logeion.uchicago.edu/fasciculus [accessed 15 July 2023]. This, along with the fact that grain would ordinarily have been threshed and transported in quarter sacks, as is already implied in the text, makes me doubt somewhat that the meaning is spelt, but it is difficult to put forward an alternative for furra.
18 It seems the marginal notes ‘for 1 month’ and ‘for 2 months’ throughout this section relate to the quantities sufficient for either one or two months. Here, ‘for 1 month’ is next to the line referring to sturgeon and lampreys.
19 The scribe appears to have repeated himself regarding the piglet – understandable, since he had turned the page and probably lost his concentration.
20 Literally, ‘six twenty and three’.
21 Perhaps meaning a half unit (half of a quarter) of wheat grain.
22 The marginal note is next to the line concerning sturgeon and lampreys.
23 Gundulf’s charter states it was to be 60 bundles of spelt. I hope to write a piece on Gundulf’s charter in due course. Colin Flight observes that the monks forged a charter which purportedly made Bishop Gundulf grant favours to the monks, including their right to keep the whole exenium, or customary payment, should the bishop not be present on the feast day: Flight, Bishops and Monks of Rochester, p. 109.
24 The meaning of the Latin in this sentence is unclear to me; I have translated it quite literally. It is possibly saying that Wouldham had at one time made a monetary payment rather than a food rent. See the comment on commutation in note 22, below. The ‘de suthflete’, which I’ve translated as ‘from Southfleet’, may be a scribal mistake, anticipating the ‘De suthflete’, ‘Concerning Southfleet’ that follows, and therefore should be ignored.
25 The marginal note is placed alongside the line concerning the manor of Wouldham’s former rent.
26 The marginal note is next to the line about sturgeon and lampreys.
27 The seam (summa) was identical to the quarter for dry products; see the entry for seam in A Dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Isles: The Middle Ages A Dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Isles: The Middle Ages ... - Ronald Edward Zupko - Google Books.
28 Twenty shillings is probably what is known as the commutation or commuted value, where a monetary payment is made in lieu of produce (or services), in this case fish. There are other commutations for food payments in Custumale Roffense and it is possible that at the time of its writing, in the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, there was beginning a more general shift towards this form of payment, replacing food rents, though it is difficult to be certain. See Denis Stuart’s introduction on custumals in his Manorial Records (Chichester: Phillimore, 1992), p. 63.
Footnotes
