The wisest thing we suppose that a man can do for his land,
Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that lie
under his hand.
Rudyard Kipling
Life was hard for all in the Middle Ages: the feudal system bore hardly on the tenant-in-chief himself. A bad winter and a poor harvest bore hardly on all.
The rights of wardship and marriage were guarded jealously: in 1205, Mabel, widow of Hugh Bardolph offered 2,000 marks and 5 palfreys "that she be not constrained to marry herself and that she may remain a widow as long as she pleases".
The Countess of Warwick in the same year offered 1,000 marks and 10 palfreys "that she may remain a widow and not be forced to marry".
It is held in these days that to be unfree and a villein was a terrible burden, bit it had its advantages. There was no fear of unemployment; every man worked his land in co-operation with his neighbour; the great 8-ox plough was held in common, and in the event of loss of animals and damage to tools, the help of his landlord. Undoubtedly landlords differed, both in their ability and wish to help their tenants, but it was to their advantage to do so. For they were utterly dependent on these same tenants for the cultivation of their own demesne, and a willing worker is inevitably vastly superior to an unwilling one, as the storms which ended in the Peasants' Revolt after the Black death testify.
Living conditions were certainly poor for the villein, but until the advent of glass and tapestry they were not so much better for my lord in the castle. And if any man found life on the manor absolutely unbearable, he could "run away" and make for the nearest town to obtain apprenticeship in some craft. If he succeeded in evading capture for a "year and a day" he was a free man. Or so tradition would have us believe.
Nottingham would be too near for a Gedling man so that he would make good his escape to Derby if he could. But little chance would be given him to try and few would desire it. For in Gedling, he had a home: there was a priest, a church and a fishery: 2 mills, meadow for pasture and fields to till. He knew his obligations to his lord, and the manor court to which he "did suit" would iron out all his quarrels with his neighbours. There, he and they could make the decisions vital to life such as when the hay should be cut; the grain sowed and reaped; momentous decisions indeed, English weather being as unaccountable then as now. A manor-court roll extant at Elston, Nottinghamshire, illustrates such a decision. "Each man should keep his beasts on his own holding, and not allow them to graze on the meadow land cleared of hay until a certain date in the interests of all".
May it not be possible that elected Parliaments come naturally to the English because they had managed their own business locally from time immemorial?
But life would have its compensations to the Gedling man. Sunday was a holiday: Saints' Days were numerous, and provided that he attended mass, the villager could spend the rest of the day as he liked - at the village ale-house, - a house like all the rest, wood and wattle and daub, but with a bush strapped to a pole at the door to mark its calling.
At one time there was a choice of inns; now only the "Chesterfield Arms" remains but formerly there was one at Dovecote Farm; one at the east end of Carnarvon Grove, and a third in the Rectory Grounds near the Stables! There was the Great Nottingham Goose Fair once a year only four miles away, and at other times life might be enlivened by peddlers offering their wares, and jugglers passing through on their way to fairs in other towns. Services in the little church would be a source of pleasure; the Latin words would be familiar if not understood, and there would be stories of the Saints and Bible characters painted on the walls on which they could gaze.
But above all other sport and amusement was Poaching. The Forest laws were indeed savage, the very ferocity of their wording suggests the possibility that by the fierceness of language the powers that were trying to deter a practice they were powerless to stop. In those days of bad communications, few good roads (practically only the old Roman roads were viable in bad weather) with no police and no standing army, surrounded by woodland, Gedling Wood, Thorney Wood Chase, Marshall Hill Chase, it would be a poor thing if a Gedling man could not produce a hare or a rabbit or two for the pot. Deer were a somewhat different matter. There is very rarely a case of poaching before the Courts: one occurs in the Constable's Accounts of 1706 for Bunny: it refers to "dere stealers in that part of Thorneywood chase included in the parish of Gedling branch of the Forest of Sherwood of which the Earl of Chesterfield is hereditary keeper". But this is the only one, and at a late date when the red deer were disappearing in Sherwood, and only fallow deer remained.
The Forest was a very large part of life to Gedling. In 1279, the King, Edward I, during a long stay at Nottingham Castle issued a grant for William de Colwick "to have 8 live does and 4 live bucks from the Sherwood Forest near Ghellinge, therewith to stock his park at Colwick".
In 1294, about to go to the Gascon wars with the King, Hugh Bardolph, as tenant-in-chief, had the inspiration to cut down and sell timber from his wood at "Gedelinge" to the value of 100 pounds to help defray his expenses. Gedling responded with a fury which can only be likened to the anger shown by their descendants towards a much later bureaucracy which planned to cut the village in two by a major road. An "Inquisition" was demanded; the Twentieth Century would call for a White Paper or a Commission of Enquiry, but it comes to the same thing. "The good men and true" called to sit on the "Inquisition" reported that "if such timber were cut down nothing would remain there, and that the King would lose attachment of the Forest". They also found that this wood was the best harbourage for the King's deer because it was near to the King's enclosure (haye) of Bestwood. It would also be to the hurt of the country (in other words the village of Gedling) who for pannage (food for their pigs) claim and ought to have common in the said wood. Gedling won.
My lord had to pay his own expenses. But Hugh Bardolph (being a Bardolph) tried again in 1303.
This time he was more successful. At a second inquisition, the jury returned that it would not be to the damage of the King if Hugh Bardolph were allowed to fell and remove 100 pounds worth of oaks from his woods here and at Carlton, if the undergrowth was preserved to afford harbourage to the King's game, and pannage for the Gedling swine.
As well as arable land, Gedling had pannage in Gedling woods (as mentioned above) and pasture in the water meadows of the Trent. All these matters were arranged in the Court Leet and Court Baron, held for Gedling at Stoke Bardolph castle, to which every man must attend, as said before. In the Manor of Spaunton in the Yorkshire Dales, the following notice appeared this year (1979) on the village notice-board. "Notice is hereby given that the Court Leet and Court Baron with view of Frankpledge of Geoffrey Wardle Darley, Esquire, Lord of the said manor will be held at the Manor House, Spaunton, on Thursday, February 5th at 11 o'clock in the forenoon. Notice is hereby given that under the Enclosure Act of 1773, it is illegal to turn Rams on, or suffer Rams to remain upon, common lands between the 25th August and 25th November. Signed Anthony Pearce Leach. Steward of the Manor of Spaunton."
England is still England.
There is a mention here of the dreaded word "Enclosure" which looms so large in the later Middle Ages and Tudor Times. As far as the arable was concerned, probably enclosure was an advantage: it was more timesaving to have all one's land together, and then one could sow what one wished with no reference to neighbours. But hardship came when the common lands were enclosed. A man who only owned a strip or so in the common fields, could not afford to fence his plot, and so was, in many cases, "bought up" by richer neighbours, or his lord. Also, it became more profitable to turn the arable into pasture for feeding sheep, because of the value of the wool trade. Many a fine house, and fine church, in the Cotswolds and the Midlands is built on "wool", at the cost of bringing into being the landless labourer, and all that meant in want and poverty. The beggars, wandering in groups over the country were a menace with which the government of the day in the 16th century was quite unable to deal: statutes against the Enclosure of land were practically a dead letter. "Sheep eat men" said Sir Thomas More.
The Gedling Enclosure Act came in 1772 and must have altered the whole character of the village; which in early times had consisted of a few houses clustered around the church on the hill and more beside the Ousedyke, the village stream, where it reached the valley from its source on Mapperley hills, on its way to join the Trent.
Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, claimed the lordships of Gedling, Stoke Bardolph and Carlton. Charles Pierrepoint, Duke of Kingston, claimed "divers remainders in the Manors of Gedling, Stoke Bardolph and Carlton". Both these lords and their predecessors had respectively held Courts Leet from times immemorial.
The Act put an end to these dissensions, finally dividing the land and the tenants thereon between them.
The even tenor of life in the Middle Ages was upset by the disaster of the Black Death which spread from end to end of the country in the year 1349.
As a result came the explosion of the Peasants' Revolt. There is no record of how this affected Gedling: whether a Gedling man was among the mob that terrorised London. It would be pleasant to know in anyone from this village saw the little King, Richard II, shake off his guardians and ride forward into the middle of the mob, crying "I will be your Leader".
But life did start to change. Villeinage disappeared after the Peasants' Revolt, although it took long to die. For instance, in Edward I's reign William Bardolph has 49 shillings and.4 pence from free tenants in Stoke, Shelford, Carlton and Gedling, against 12 pounds, 4 shillings and a halfpenny from the villeins - the unfree, but who are evidently commuting their service on the lord's land for money payments. He also gets one mark for the boat which carries men across the Trent (Stoke Ferry), and 12 pence for "a fishery".
When the next disastrous plague struck the country - the Great Plague of 1665 - Gedling seems to have escaped, although Nottinghamshire was badly affected. In Newark there were 1,000 deaths, about one third of the population, and in the Peak District of Derbyshire the village of Eyam was practically wiped out. The six mounds in the field of Riley Farm on the outskirts of Eyam bear witness to the horror of the disease; the farmer and five of his children died in a few days and were buried by Mrs Hancock, his wife - at the end alone - there being no help available; all being in a like case.
The Gedling church registers begin in 1558 and according to these, burials in the year 1665, 13, as against 21 in 1664, and in 1666, 12, These figures are not large enough, nor do they vary sufficiently from the average to prove any form of the violent epidemic from which much of Nottinghamshire and the nearby Derbyshire suffered.
One outstanding feature of the Lords of Gedling during the later Middle Ages and the Tudor period, was their tendency to lose their heads, either literally or figuratively, due to their own folly or the mischance of being on the wrong side in the troubled times of the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War. The aim of all, gentle or simple, was to acquire more land. Thomas Bardolph married Rosa, the daughter and heir of Ralph Aslin, the fourth Aslin in the direct line to hold the manor of Gedling (although Aslins holding property in the district are found much later). Her son, Doun Bardolph, also married, most advantageously, Beatrice de Warenne who brought him the barony of Wirmegay in Norfolk. In 1299, Hugh Bardolph, who took an active part in the French and Scotch wars, was summoned to the first "Parliament" as Baron Lord Bardolph. John, 3rd Lord Bardolph married Elizabeth, the great grand-daughter of Edward I, and gained further land.
But Thomas the 5th Lord Bardolph came to grief. In the Wars of the Roses, he was on the Lancastrian side, and among those barons who put Henry IV on the throne. Unfortunately, Henry, as King, did not come up to the expectation in the eyes of many of those who had put him there; one of whom was Bardolph. He joined the Earl of Northumberland and the famous Harry Hotspur in rebellion. Hotspur was killed and Bardolph forced to flee to France for a while, returned in 1407, to be defeated at Bramham Moor, and died of wounds. His head was placed on the gate of Lincoln: he was attainted, his peerage forfeited. He left no male issue, but a daughter, Joan, who was married to Sir William Phelipp of Denningham.
This Sir William was a great man of his day. He fought at Agincourt in 1415: 1421-1422 was Captain of Harfleur: Treasurer to the household of Henry V, Privy Councillor and Chamberlain to Henry VI. It is not surprising that he was raised to the title of Baron, William Phelipp, Lord Bardolph. He had no sons, and his only daughter and heir married Lord Beaumont. Beaumont assumed the title of Lord Bardolph. His life was one long series of tragedies. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Towton: attainted in the following Parliament in 1461, and his honours forfeited: restored briefly in 1470: attainted again in 1471, when Edward IV was once more on the throne, restored and summoned to the Parliament of 1485 as Viscount Beaumont and Lord Bardolph. All this was too much for his reason, and he "went mad". His heir Francis, Lord Lovell, supported Henry Bolingbroke against Richard III, and under Henry VII should have been secure to succeed to his birthright, but was so unwise as to rebel against the Tudor, and perished at the battle of Stoke on the Trent near Fiskerton, not so far from his land at Gedling, in the field still talked of as Bloody Gutter and Red Field.
But the greatest folly of all was that of Henry Norreys, who was granted the Bardolph Manor in Gedling, Carlton and Stoke in 1520. It is unwise to dally with the affections of the Queen, especially if that Queen be the wife of Henry VIII, and Norreys paid for his folly with his life. He was executed at Tyburn in 1536, immediately before the death of Anne Boleyn.
It was in February 1537 that the Crown granted to Michael Stanhope and Anne his wife the whole of the manors, advisons and properties of the Manor of Shelford, now dissolved, at a rental of 20 pounds: property described as late of Henry Norreys, attainted. He was not the only applicant. A letter from Cranmer to Cromwell is on record " I desire your favour for the bearer, my brother-in-law who is now clerk of the Kitchen to have the farm of the priory of Shelford". So that Cranmer, born nearby in the village of Aslockton, comes into the Gedling story - Cranmer, the scholar, the compiler of the finest liturgy in any language, torn from the Cathedral cloister his natural home, to bear a part in that fierce political struggle for which he was so totally unfitted.
The career of Michael Stanhope shows the dangers to which anyone taking part in public life was subject. The Duke of Somerset, Protector of the young Edward VI, was a man with liberal ideas before his time, but shewed no political acumen in his attempts to carry them out. It is evident that Michael Stanhope was his enthusiastic supporter, for in 1547 he was appointed Deputy Protector to the King; represented Nottingham county in Parliament; was Governor of Kingston-upon-Hull, Keeper of Windsor Park; but on the fall of Somerset, all this was changed. He was committed to the Tower of London. Although he was released and partially re-instated for a time, in 1551 he was charged with conspiracy against the new Protector, the Earl of Northumberland, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. His widow, Lady Anne Stanhope, was now Lady of the Manor of Gedling for her life.
How much effect had all this turmoil on the villagers of Gedling? Perhaps very little. Many historians state that unless in the wake of the contending armies, life in England went on much as usual during the Wars of the Roses - the justices in eyre continued on their rounds: land was bought and sold: grievances brought before the Court and adjudged.
On the other hand the Aslins, Bardolphs and Stanhopes had "halls" in the district of Gedling and Stoke: a large part of their personal servants, the grooms for their horses and keepers of their dogs must have been drawn from the surrounding district. Cranmer's people were at nearby Aslockton. It takes very little imagination to realise the unhappiness and bitterness which must have been caused by the Wars of the Roses, and the Civil War on the families of Gedling - brother set against brother, father against son if they should be on opposing sides. Especially the Civil War. Nottingham was Royalist, the King raised his standard in Castle Gate, whereas the Rector of Gedling raised a troop for the Parliament. Shelford Manor, one of the seats of the Stanhopes was a Royalist stronghold.
In 1645 Major General Poyntz and Colonel Hutcinson attacked and overcame the Manor, 140 men were killed and the house burnt. The house was subsequently rebuilt, but never again inhabited by the Stanhopes.
Naked and grey the Cotswolds stand
Beneath the autumn sun
And the stubble fields on either hand
Where Stour and Avon run,
There is no change in the patient land
That has bred us everyone.
She would have passed in cloud and fire
And saved us from this sin
Of war - red war - twixt child and sire
Household and kith and kin
In the heart of a sleepy Midland Shire
With the harvest scarcely in.
More bitter than death this must prove
Whichever way it go,
For the brothers of the maids we love
Make ready to lay low
Their sister's sweethearts as we move
Against our dearest for.
Rudyard Kipling
Written by: F.M. Swann
Transcribed by: Allen Copsey