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‘A grudge among the people’: Commercial Conflict, Conspiracy, Petitioning and Poaching in Cranbrook, 1594–1606

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

STEPHEN HIPKIN  and
SUSAN PITTMAN
STEPHEN HIPKIN
Affiliation:
Department of History and American Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University, North Homes Road, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU, UKstephen.hipkin@canterbury.ac.uk
SUSAN PITTMAN
Affiliation:
Department of History and American Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University, North Homes Road, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU, UKstephen.hipkin@canterbury.ac.uk
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Abstract:

During the later sixteenth century, increasing competition for wood fuel supplies led to rising tension between Wealden cloth manufacturers and ironmasters and to a prolonged but unsuccessful campaign by clothiers seeking parliamentary legislation that would radically curtail iron production in the Cranbrook area. Remarkably revealing files among the papers of Sir John Leveson, one of Kent's late Elizabethan deputy lieutenants, show that during the winter of 1594–5, Cranbrook's frustrated clothiers and their allies among other chief inhabitants of the parish attempted to hijack plebeian distress over low wages and high food and fuel prices for their own ends. It is unlikely that those devising or encouraging industrial sabotage that winter included Cranbrook's richer clothiers, but they were certainly behind plans to mobilise a mass petition to the crown for the suppression of ironworks. In turn, two of Cranbrook's parish officials, deftly exploiting fears of a disorderly march on London, managed to persuade Sir John Leveson to lobby the privy councillor Lord Cobham on the clothiers’ behalf, although to no avail. Thereafter, Cranbrook clothiers vented their frustration against the Bakers of Sissinghurst, who owned the local iron forge and furnace, by frequently raiding the family's deer park, sometimes in conjunction with local gentry pursuing their passion for unlawful hunting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , October 2013 , pp. 101 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

Notes

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2. S. Pittman, ‘Elizabethan and Jacobean Deer Parks in Kent’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Kent, 2011), pp. 152–3, 279, 318, 326; Buckingham, C., ‘The Troubles of Sir Alexander Culpeper of Goudhurst’, Kent Recusant History, 1 (1979), 20–4Google Scholar; British Library (hereafter BL) Cart. Harl. 77 C 44, 79 F 3, 5, 77 D 10, 85 H 13. By 1628, the financial troubles of the Roberts family had forced the disparkment of Glassenbury, but there were certainly deer in Glassenbury park in 1604. The National Archives (hereafter TNA) STAC 8/53/5.

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8. Manning, Hunters, pp. 5–20, 35–56, 232–6, quotation at p. 232; Manning, Village Revolts, pp. 285–6, 289–92, 298–9.

9. For a recent overview that attempts to ‘match up the image of the peace-loving, temperate landed ranks working together to achieve an orderly community to that of the hot-tempered, status-obsessed elite fighting to ward off any damage to their good name’, but which unaccountably overlooks Manning's Hunters, see Pollock, L., ‘Honor, Gender and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46: 1 (January 2007), 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation at p. 4. Cf. Hipkin, S., ‘“Sitting on his penny rent”: Conflict and Right of Common in Faversham Blean, 1595–1610’, Rural History, 11: 1 (2000), 25–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11. G. Markham, Maison Rustique, or the Countrey Farme (1616), p. 669.

12. Manning, Village Revolts, p. 289.

13. TNA STAC 5/B55/30. Following the death of John Baker in 1596, when Henry was ten years old, the Baker estate was in the hands of the crown until May 1598, when possession for the remainder of Henry's minority was granted jointly to Sir Henry Guldeford, Sir Thomas Walsingham, and Thomas Baker. On 1st February 1601 Guldeford and Walsingham sold their interest in the estate to Thomas Baker (knighted 1603). Centre for Kentish Studies (hereafter CKS) U24 T/426, TNA STAC 8/53/4, 5; T. E. Hartley, ‘The Sheriffs of the County of Kent, c. 1580-c.1625’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1970), p. 321.

14. TNA STAC 5/B55/30, STAC 8/53/4, 5.

15. TNA STAC 8/53/4.

16. Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 281–2.

17. Manning, Hunters, pp. 20, 136, 163–8; Manning, Village Revolts, p. 295.

18. Staffordshire Record Office (hereafter SRO), D593/S/4/36/10, 11.

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21. Alsop, ‘Baker, Sir John’; Hartley, ‘Sheriffs’, pp. 33, 58, 60, 319; Zell, M. L., ‘Landholding and the Land Market’, in Zell, M. L., ed., Early Modern Kent, 1540–1640 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 62–4Google Scholar; CKS U24 T428/2, U24 T283.

22. TNA STAC 5 B/55/30; CKS U24 T428/2; L. Flisher, ‘Cranbrook, Kent and its Neighbourhood Area, c. 1570–1670’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Greenwich, 2003), pp. 16, 200; Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 355–6.

23. TNA PROB 11/84 fos 17–18; CKS U 24 T428/3; William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent Conteining the Description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shire (1576), p. 49.

24. The park was returned as containing 750 acres in 1657, by which time it was probably rather smaller than it had been in Elizabethan times. Most Kent deer parks were less than 400 acres. CKS U24 T279; Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 46–51.

25. While there is evidence that Sir Richard Baker ‘maintained a Catholic priest’, the preamble to his will is not inconsistent with, though hardly proof of, doctrinal Calvinism: ‘I commend my soule to the hands of my maker and saviour Jesus Christ beseeching him to take the same to his mercy and to make me partaker with his elects of the life everlasting, which I trust assuredly to obtain through his infinite mercy and grace.’ TNA PROB 11/84 fo. 17; Zell, M. L., ‘Kent's Elizabethan JPs at Work’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 119 (1999), 11Google Scholar, 31; Goring, J. J., ‘Wealden Ironmasters in the age of Elizabeth’, in Ives, E. W., Knecht, R. J. and Scarisbrick, J. J., eds., Wealth and Power in Tudor England (1978), p. 219Google Scholar; Hartley, ‘Sheriffs’, pp. 14–15, 59, 69, 84, 319–20.

26. Slack, P., Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (Harlow, 1988), pp. 124–5Google Scholar; 14 Eliz. c. 5, sec. xvi (1572), Statutes of the Realm, Volume 4 part 1 (1819), p. 593.

27. Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, p. 134; Zell, ‘Elizabethan JPs’, pp. 31, 35.

28. The national legislation of 1598 shifted the burden of responsibility for enforcing the poor laws into the hands of parish officials, leaving Justices of the Peace with merely a supervisory responsibility. Slack, Poverty, pp. 126–7; CKS P100/5/1. We are grateful to Lorraine Flisher for sharing her transcripts of the Cranbrook churchwardens’ accounts; Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 101–2, 112–120; P. Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), p. 401; Hindle, The State, pp. 204–15.

29. Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 101–2, 196, 231–2; Hindle, The State, pp. 218–21.

30. Ibid., p. 219. See also Hindle, S., ‘The Political Culture of the Middling Sort in English Rural Communities, c.1550–1700’, in Harris, T., ed., The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 139–40Google Scholar.

31. CKS P100/5/1 f. 131.

32. If Sir Richard Baker favoured cool conformity, Walter Roberts’ Protestantism was of the hotter sort. Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 180–203, especially pp. 193, 199–201, 210–11, 225–7; Collinson, Godly People, pp. 399–426.

33. By 1609, Henry Baker had assumed control at Sissinghurst. Sir Thomas Baker remained on the Kent bench until 1607, when his possession of the family estate came to an end with Henry's majority, at which point he moved to Essex. TNA STAC 5 B55/30, STAC 8 53/4; Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of Assize Records: Kent Indictments, James I (1980), pp. 33Google Scholar, 40, 46; Hartley, ‘Sheriffs’, pp. 59–60, 321.

34. Zell, M. L., Industry in the Countryside: Wealden Society in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 66–9; Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, p. 25.

35. Ibid., pp. 42–3; Zell, Industry, pp. 155–6.

36. BL Cotton Ms. Vesp. F. xii, fo. 168, cited in Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 20–1, and Zell, Industry, pp. 158, 166. Underlying the 1566 act was a degree of domestic political hostility towards the cloth industry. In 1564, William Cecil had concluded that ‘the diminution of clothing in this realm were profitable for many causes; first, for that thereby the tillage of the realm is notoriously decayed . . . secondly, for that the people that depend upon the making of cloth are of worse condition to be quietly governed than the husband men. Thirdly, by converting of so many people to clothing, the realm lacketh not only artificers . . . but also labourers for all common works’. R. H. Tawney and E. Power, eds, Tudor Economic Documents, Volume 2 (1924), p. 45.

37. Zell, Industry, p. 153; Clay, C. G. A., Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700, Vol II, Industry, Trade and Government (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 108–15Google Scholar.

38. Ibid., pp. 115–19; Hipkin, S., ‘The Maritime Economy of Rye, 1560–1640’, Southern History, 20:1 (1998–99), 122–3Google Scholar; Zell, Industry, pp. 226–7, 241–2.

39. Ibid., pp. 190–1,200–1, 207, 219–227; Collinson, Godly People, p. 410; E. Melling, ed., Kentish sources, III. Aspects of Agriculture and Industry (Maidstone, 1961), pp. 110–112; Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 58–61, 122, 129.

40. Ibid., p. 56, Zell, Industry, pp. 189, 209–14.

41. Ibid., pp. 166–176. Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, p. 51.

42. Zell, Industry, pp. 176–8. Weavers’ wages remained appallingly low in the early seventeenth century, Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, p. 258.

43. Zell, Industry, pp. 126, 200–1; Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, pp. 166, 258–9.

44. Hipkin, ‘Maritime Economy of Rye’, pp. 118, 123. D. C. Coleman, Industry in Tudor and Stuart England (1975), p. 43; Zell, Industry, p. 127.

45. Ibid., pp. 127–8.

46. Ibid., pp. 126–8, 237; Cleere, H. and Crossley, D., The Iron Industry of the Weald (2nd edition, Cardiff, 1995)Google Scholar, p. 168; 27 Eliz. c.19. Statutes of the Realm, Volume 4 part 1, pp. 726–7.

47. SRO D593/S/4/36/10/1, 3, 9; Zell, Industry, pp. 126, 237; Cleere and Crossley, Iron Industry, pp. 170–2; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Third Report (1872) Appendix, p. 7; Sir Simonds D'Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth both of the House of Lords and the House of Commons (1682), p. 520.

48. It is, however, worth noting that Baker did also invest in the cloth trade. Among more than one hundred tenants named in his will, Baker recorded that Christopher Austen and Thomas Basden occupied ‘two fulling mills with the lands thereto belonging’ in Maidstone that Baker owned in fee tail. TNA PROB 11/84, fo.18.

49. TNA C2/Eliz./B18/43; CKS P26/28/2; Cleere and Crossley, Iron Industry, pp. 139, 149–150, 315–16, 332; SRO D593/S/4/28/3; Goring, ‘Wealden Ironmasters’, p. 210.

50. Sir Richard Baker's will, made in 1591, refers to sixteen parcels of woodland in Cranbrook, Hawkhurst and adjoining parishes, of which half a dozen parcels are explicitly identified as his own purchases, two of these being ‘late’ purchases: TNA PROB 11/84 ff. 17–18; CKS U24 T428/3; Goring, ‘Wealden Ironmasters’, pp. 208, 210–11; SRO D593/S/4/36/11/9; Hartley, ‘Sheriffs’, p. 319.

51. SRO D593/S/4/36/10/1, 5.

52. SRO D593/S/4/36/10/5. John Austen and Thomas Humphrey had negotiated a lease of Sherndon furnace commencing Lady Day 1595 with the guardian of its owner John Brattle. However, they alleged that the existing tenant, Johnson, had made clear that he would ‘keep Sherndon furnace going after our lady day by force’. Johnson, for his part, claimed that his workmen had heard that Austen and his workmen were planning to cut up the bay of the furnace pond. In February 1595 Sir George Carewe, officer of royal ordnance, petitioned Lord Cobham stressing the importance of keeping the gun foundry in operation, and Cobham, in turn, urged that the suit ‘concerning the title of some things appertaining to the same furnace’ that was due to receive trial at the next assizes be compromitted. The outcome is unknown, but in 1596 the furnace was being worked for Sir Thomas Waller. SRO D593/S/4/36/10/1–9, S/4/36/11/13; TNA E178/4143.

53. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/2.

54. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1.

55. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1, 2, 5.

56. SRO D593/S/4/11/1, 5.

57. Hipkin, S., ‘The Structure, Development, and Politics of the Kent Grain Trade, 1552–1647’, Economic History Review, 61 S1 (2008), 124–8Google Scholar, 130–1.

58. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/17.

59. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/2, 4, 5.

60. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1, 2, 5.

61. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/3, 15.

62. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/6, D593/S/4/36/1/13, 21.

63. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/16.

64. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1, 18.

65. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1, 8.

66. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/11.

67. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/8, 16.

68. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1, 5.

69. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/11.

70. Hoyle, R. W., ‘Petitioning as Popular Politics in Early Sixteenth-Century England’, Historical Research, 75: 190 (2002), pp. 365–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 384–5, 389.

71. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/9.

72. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14, 17. The news that all the established local gentry were in London prompted Cobham to remark ‘I fear me that will be a cause to have them put out of the commission of peace, for what service can they do to Her Majesty not continuing in the shire?’ In fact, of the three named by Leveson, only Mr (Thomas) Roberts was a member of the Kent county bench at the time. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/6.

73. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/7, 17.

74. Hipkin, ‘Kent Grain Trade’, p. 122.

75. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/7, 8, 16.

76. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/8.

77. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14, 16, 17.

78. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14, 16.

79. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14, 17.

80. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14, 17.

81. SRO D593/S/4/36/10/7.

82. Unfortunately, since the Privy Council Registers covering the period 27th August 1593 to 30th September 1595 are lost, it is not possible to check whether any of the organisers of the supplication did ever appear before the Privy Council. Five of those examined by Dering and Leveson in connection with the conspiracy to destroy Baker's hammer pond subsequently appeared at Rochester Assizes in February 1595, of whom four were released on bail and one was discharged. Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of Assize Indictments: Kent Indictments, Elizabeth I (1979)Google Scholar, numbers 2244, 2245.

83. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/9.

84. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/6, 12.

85. The Baker family still owned the forge in 1650. Cleere and Crossley, Iron Industry, p. 316; Zell, Industry, p. 237; Flisher, ‘Cranbrook’, p. 258.

86. TNA STAC 5/B55/30.

87. CKS QM/SB, Q/SR1–4, QM/SR/5, Q/SRg. In theory, manorial courts might present poachers but, other than as a property register, manorial courts in Kent had fallen into desuetude.

88. Cockburn, ed., Kent Indictments, Elizabeth I, nos. 435–6, 676, 831, 860, 991, 1806, 2545, 2856.

89. Sharpe, J. A., Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750 (Harlow, 1984), p. 128Google Scholar. For the game laws see Munsche, P. B., Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws, 1671–1831 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 8–12Google Scholar; Manning, Hunters, pp. 58–66; Sharpe, Crime, pp. 125–6.

90. Manning, Hunters, pp. 61–3, 67; Sharpe, Crime, pp. 126–8; Whatever the popular perception, park owners certainly regarded the deer and conies in their parks as their property.

91. Manning, Hunters, p. 81. As Manning has shown, even when poachers were indicted at the assizes, efforts to punish them might be ‘remarkably unsuccessful’. Only twelve of 105 persons indicted for unlawful hunting at the Sussex assizes are known to have been caught, tried and found guilty (eight by confession) and only four received the prison sentences specified in the 1563 game act. Only one poacher indicted before the Kent Elizabethan assizes is known to have been convicted, and this was only because Nicholas Sumner of Speldhurst confessed to killing a deer with a crossbow in Hungershall park in 1573. Manning, Village Revolts, p. 299; Cockburn, Kent Indictments, Elizabeth I, number 676.

92. Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 75–93; Wrightson, K., ‘Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Brewer, J. and Styles, J., eds, An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1983), pp. 21–46Google Scholar.

93. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/1.

94. Manning's observation that ‘one seldom comes across a poacher in Tudor and Stuart England who hunted unlawfully because he was hungry’ is surely a much more telling commentary on the difficulties deer keepers faced in apprehending low-key subsistence-oriented poachers, as well as on Manning's over-reliance on Star Chamber records, than it is upon historical reality. Manning, Hunters, p. 20; cf. Birrell, J., ‘Peasant Deer Poachers in the Medieval Forest’ in Britnell, R. and Hatcher, J., eds, Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 80Google Scholar, 84–5; Sharpe, Crime, pp. 126–7.

95. CKS QM/SB 154.

96. CKS QM/SB 162; Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 264–5.

97. CKS QM/SB 162, 163, 168, QM/SI/1597/8/11, 12, 13; Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 265–8.

98. TNA STAC 5/B55/30. For county sessions papers related to some of these activities see CKS QM/SB 387, QM/SRc/1602/197, QM/SR1 [Q/SR5]/15, 16 (m.2).

99. TNA STAC 8/53/5; Pittman, ‘Deer Parks’, pp. 277–9.

100. TNA STAC 8/53/4; CKS QM/SIq/4/29, 30. Thomas Baker, who was knighted 1603, served as sheriff of Kent in 1604/5, and was still in office on 17th November. Hartley, ‘Sheriffs’, p. 321.

101. TNA STAC 8/53/4.

102. Canterbury Cathedral Archives (hereafter CCA) PRC 10/40/96.

103. CCA PRC 27/2/45, 28/15/106, 32/49/93, 10/60/102.

104. de Launey, J., ed., Cranbrook, Kent, Wills 1396–1640 (Canterbury, 1984)Google Scholar p. 252; CCA PRC 10/40/168, 17/57/480.

105. de Launey, Cranbrook Wills, pp. 361–2, 378–9; CCA PRC 28/5/517, 28/15/184, 32/42/113, 32/49/638.

106. Cleere and Crossley, Iron Industry, p. 314; Zell, Industry, p. 237.

107. Goring, ‘Wealden Ironmasters’, p. 211; Cleere and Crossley, Iron Industry, p. 314.

108. Goring, ‘Wealden Ironmasters’, p. 211.

109. Manning, Hunters, pp.148–52, quotation at p. 148.

110. Braddick, M., State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111. SRO D593/S/4/6/4.

112. SRO D593/S/4/18/7; Hipkin, ‘Kent Grain Trade’, pp. 124–5.

113. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/9, 16.

114. Hindle, ‘Political Culture’, pp. 126, 137; Braddick, State Formation, pp. 68–77.

115. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/14,17.

116. Cockburn, ed., Kent Indictments, Elizabeth I, number 2228. On the politics of seditious words see Wood, A. ‘Plebeian Languages of Deference and Defiance, c. 1520–1640’ in Harris, T., ed., The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 67–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117. SRO D593/S/4/36/11/2, 5, 8.