12 - “.j. veel feble fauchon dil anxien temps.” The Selection of the Falchion as Symbol of Tenure: Form, Function and Symbolism

Summary

THIS PAPER CONSIDERS THE symbolic significance of three falchions; the Conyers’ falchion held at Durham Cathedral, the Pollard Falchion, no longer surviving but also connected with a Durham family, and a third referred to in a fourteenth-century inventory of the contents of Wigmore Castle. All three of these were being used as symbols of tenurial exchange, and the conveyance of land. The paper seeks to understand why such distinctive weapons were selected for the purpose, and argues that far from being random selections, the falchions were chosen because of their peculiar form and the symbolism and cultural associations which this engendered.

SYMBOLS OF CONVEYANCE

When Edward II's officers put together an inventory of the goods and chattels left by Roger Mortimer in his castle and the abbey of Wigmore after his rebellion in 1322, everything was listed down to bed linen, the cruets, even the peacock. Amongst this collection of aristocratic bric-a-brac, in the keeping of Wigmore Abbey and sandwiched between “four books of romances” and “one coffer containing charters, deeds and other records”, is recorded “one brass horn that with a certain falchion is said to be the charter of the land of Wigmore”.

Such symbols of conveyance are not unusual. A wide variety of objects either has survived or is recorded as being used to mark grants. There is a long tradition of so-called “tenure horns”, such as the “Pusey Horn” held in the Victoria and Albert museum with its early fifteenth-century inscription recording it as being token of a grant by King Cnut to William Pusey. Knives are also common tokens. Such objects served as a tag for a memory in the “pre-literate” period, the transfer of the object being a physical act that could be watched and remembered at the same time as the words of the transfer were heard and remembered.

Whilst knives seem to have been common symbols of conveyance, swords were not. Clanchy provides three examples of swords being used in a symbolic form connected with land ownership. He repeats Walter of Guisborough's famous account of how Earl Warenne, attending Edward I's Quo Warranto proceedings, presented an ancient and rusty sword as proof of his right; the sword by which his ancestors had gained their lands, fighting alongside Duke William in the Conquest.