A tile tells a tale

This tile, found buried in the ground when the major part of St Michael’s was being built 1913-15, is set in an inside wall at the bottom of the church tower.  I have pointed it out vaguely as a mediaeval relic to people over the years - although I discover now that it is actually Tudor.  Hugh Winfield, who took the picture at the head of the previous post, took this ‘enhanced colour’ picture of it last week, and I’ve been paying proper attention to it for the first time.  I’ve found a lot in a very short period.

First, I’ve found some background information about the Tudor ownership of the Manor of Little Coates. 

I’d already been told that the seventeenth century antiquarian Gervase Holles records the 1421 Will of a Sir John Cotes of Little Coates and an example in a window in the church of an Inglethorpe coat of arms ‘who heyr Cotes marryed... The inheritance came after by marriage to Del See and from Del See to Hildyard likewise – Sr Christopher Hildyard now enjoyeth it, Ano 1634’.  He also records several sets of ‘Del See’ coats of arms in the church windows – all now long gone.

I haven’t been able to chase down a reference to either a Cotes-Inglethorpe nor to a Del See-Cotes marriage, but I have identified a late fifteenth century marriage of a Peter Hildyard to a Joan de la See, the parents of a Christopher Hildyard (1490-1538, this is a hundred years before the Christopher Hildyard who was Holles’ contemporary and owner of the Manor of Little Coates at that time).  I have also identified a grant to Joan’s grandfather Brian de la See in 1419 when he is described as being ‘of Parva Cotes near Grymsby’ (although his wife inherited the Manor of Barmston, near Bridlington, and it is there that their son Martin, Joan’s father, lived).

So it is at least clear that a Brian de la See lived at Little Coates, and, whether or not he held the Manor of Little Coates himself, the Manor had certainly come to his family by the time his granddaughter Joan married Peter Hildyard.  The Hildyard family, beginning with Joan and Peter’s son Christopher, continued to hold the Manor over a number of generations (but only as a piece of property – the Hildyards and all subsequent owners of the Manor of Little Coates lived elsewhere).

Secondly, I’ve found some background information about the tile itself.

I find the design actually appears all along in an art book we have (Medieval Floor Tiles of Northern England J Stopford 2005 page 242).  It was used by (and it was may have been commissioned by) this older Christopher Hildyard when building the Manor House in which he actually lived at Winestead, which is about ten miles from Little Coates albeit across the Humber. 

It shows the coat of arms of Brian Tunstall  (1480-1513) and his wife Isabel (c1483-1535).  They are of some significance - Brian was killed at the Battle of Flodden and was brother of the Cuthbert Tunstall who was a contemporary lawyer of Thomas More, a friend of Erasmus and a prominent conservative Bishop of London and then of Durham through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. 

This all links up because Isabel Tunstall’s mother was a de la See (a half-sister of the Joan de la See who married Peter Hildyard – which means Isabel, whose great-grandfather came from Little Coates and whose coat of arms is on the tile, was a cousin of the older Christopher Hildyard, who held the Manor of Little Coates and who had the tile made).

Thirdly, some remaining questions.

Was Gervaise Holles right to suggest that the de la Sees acquired the Manor of Little Coates by marriage with a Cotes sometime after 1423?  Brian de la See was already ‘of Little Coates’ in 1419 and his heiress wife was a Monceaux not a Cotes.  Perhaps Little Coates was part of her inheritance (she did inherit Lincolnshire property)?  Their son Martin’s wives were a Spencer and a Wentworth and it is at his death that it goes to his daughter Joan and her husband Peter Hildyard.

If Brian de la See and John Cotes were both ‘of Little Coates’ (one or other holding the Manor) at about the same time (1419 and 1423), where did they live?  There is no surviving identifiable Manor House site.  Perhaps, in the same way that the Barnardistan Manor House at Great Coates gradually disappeared after they ceased to use it in the seventeenth century (although we know where it was), any Little Coates Manor House gradually disappeared two centuries earlier when there ceased to be a resident holder of the Manor there?  Those who have discovered impressive dressed stone near Toothill speculate about a lost church building there – but just perhaps these stones come from a lost Manor House instead?  Or does the total isolation until a century ago of Little Coates Church make more sense if there was in fact a lost Manor House and/or village nearer to it?

Why would Christopher Hildyard use tiles with the coat of arms of a cousin?  He must have wanted very badly to parade his link with the Tunstall family.  Was it because his cousin Isabel’s husband was a famous war hero?  Was it rather because the war hero’s brother (Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall – not a direct relative of his at all) was one of the great men of state?  If so, would this have been about personal patronage and loyalty (we know that Christopher’s brother Richard was the Bishop’s Chaplain for a period)?  Or would this have been about strong religious conservative party affiliation in the years leading up to the Act of Supremacy (1534) which was only finally enacted four years before Christopher Hildyard died?

How did the tile end up in the ground?  There is an obvious general link since the same tile was being laid at Winestead Manor not too far away and its owner held the Manor of Little Coates.  But more specifically?  Were there (in addition to the de la See coats of arms in the church windows) de la See monuments in the church or churchyard?  Might the sorts of changes which resulted in the loss of the windows have also resulted in the breaking up or replacing of some floor tiling relating to any of these?  Might what we assume from a major date stone on the outside must have been a major restoration of at least the chancel in the 1690s have been a possible occasion for this?

What does OBOII above the coat of arms mean?

Revisiting Ann Askew

 

It is twenty-four years ago (when working on a new calendar of saints for the diocese of Lincoln, being prepared to match the introduction of the national Common Worship services) that I last read about Ann in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.  I’ve just re-read all he says about her, much based on her own record of her interrogations.

A friend to whom I mentioned this knew who she was, but hadn’t realised she came from northern Lincolnshire (Stallingborough and South Kelsey).  The one thing which stuck in her memory was the damage done to her on the rack had been so severe it meant she had to be carried in a chair to the stake at which she was to be burnt.

The Constable had refused to go any further, so the Government ministers inexpertly turned the screws themselves.  He ran from the Tower to the King to report what was happening and gain pardon for disobeying the ministers.  He saved himself, but not her.

I’ve rediscovered that she was being racked after she had already been condemned.  She was caught up in something much bigger - they wanted her to name the members of the household of the Queen (Catherine Parr) who were of 'her sect’ so they could move against them and her.

I’ve also rediscovered her confident polemic: if nothing of bread is left after consecration, she says, communion hosts would not grow mouldy if stored for months, and her God does not grow mouldy.  And all her other witty, clever parrying of trick questions.

I’ve been reminded how young she was: just fifteen at the time of her forced marriage; just twenty-five at her execution.

My reading came because last week the University here had a talk to launch an American novel about her (Prize for the Fire, Rilla Askew) which has been an impressive read this week.

And yesterday, a local drama group presented her story in a clever and interesting manner as well.

At the events, a question came as to why she was willing to die for a fine point of theology.  Another about who might play her if the book was filmed.

It doesn’t feel to me that her opinion about the nature of the Eucharist was in itself the one determinative thing for her.  Instead, it was the one things on which her accusers chose to focus.

She had access to an English Bible.  She found there that a lot of what she had been taught by those in power wasn’t actually true.  A conspiracy theorist couldn’t be more determined not to be contradicted as a result. 

Her forced marriage, the restrictions on her access to the Bible text, the threat of being burnt (‘I don’t find that Jesus or his disciples burnt those who disagreed with them’ she tells her accusers) were all things against which she then spoke out.

So I thought Greta Thunberg might be a good model.  Fiesty (the American author used the word ‘sassy’ several times when talking of Ann), caught up in a message those in power fatally fail to take seriously, able to speak both to crowds and to the United Nations assembly.

Then I thought Malala Yousafzai might be an even better model.  Or any girl in Afghanistan today saying ‘the plain reading of the Qu’ran doesn’t seem to me to justify the restrictions power imposes in my choices about marriage, my access to education or on the nature of my modest dressing in public’ and going on saying so despite the possibility of death for doing so.

Which is a reminder that we've been the Taliban. 

Finally, and much less importantly, I’ve noticed how few gentry families there were in northern Lincolnshire in Henrician times who held the manors, got embroiled in the Lincolnshire Rising, went to Parliament, acted as Sheriff, and so on.  So it seems inevitable that they all seemed to be related to one another.

My past work was on the family of Christopher Hildyard who held Little Coates at about this time.  I find one of Ann’s grandmothers was a Hildyard, aunt of that Christopher.

My present work is on the family of the Roger Dalyson who was Precentor of the Cathedral when William Byrd was appointed, and the site of the burial of whose nephew William (a judge) is marked on the floor there.  After William’s death his widow quickly married Ann’s brother Francis.

I want to go back again to the superb monuments of the St Paul family in Snarford church, especially Thomas and Faith St Paul lying in state in what looks for all the world like an six poster bed.  It seems extraordinary that this married couple, almost cousins, had mothers who were Ann’s sister in one case and step-sister in the other. 

And it is even more extraordinary to find this couple's son's monument near by, with his wife, who is then also represented with her second husband Richard Rich, grandson of the Richard Rich who tortured her when the Constable of the Tower refused to continue doing so.

Salt and Somme

Our second dip into the Wolds Walking Festival this morning was blustery and a little wet, but we enjoyed being introduced to the succession of sea banks at Marshchapel and to the salt making which went on between them.  These gentle hillocks are not what one would expect on coastal marsh and not what one finds on flatter landscape immediately inland of the village.  They are actually a form of ‘post-industrial’ landscape, albeit the industry was mediaeval.  Once the shore had been scrapped and the takings filtered to produce the concentrated brine needed for salt making, the remaining sand and soil accumulated in piles which became hillocks like this.  The village hall has a full scale reproduction of a detailed map from the 1590s, and this indicated that Christopher Hildyard was involved in the process in its last days.

Meanwhile, the other ‘local history’ activity was a visit last week to the Research Room at the Imperial War Museum to read some of the the letters sent home by Lt Col Kyme Cordeaux, the Great Coates man who made his home at Brackenborough and who was commanding the ‘Grimsby Chums’ Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment on the first day of the Somme.  My most striking personal discovery (military historians may well already be aware of this) was that the failure of the bombardment to damage the German defences ahead of the assault far from being a surprise on 1st July was something he’d actually forseen when writing to his wife the previous week.  I’m lined up to do a talk at St Nicolas’ on the evening of 28^th June which will be partly based on this material.

Owners of Little Coates

The Essex County Record Office holds a set of papers indexed as ‘The Little Coates Estate 1759-1938’.  I finally got down to Chelmsford last week to read them.

I already knew that the estate was held at the beginning of the period by a Robert Newton from Sixhills, Lincolnshire.  North East Lincolnshire’s archive holds a large and beautiful mid-eighteenth century map of the whole parish which shows each field colour coded to indicate the surname of each of his tenants (Codd & Marshall, Jackson, Marshall, Neville and Sheardown – the earliest surviving gravestones in the churchyard from fifty or so years later are for Nevilles and Sheardowns). 

The field names are evocative.  In the north, Far Marsh, Little Marsh and Great Marsh lie just west of what is still today called the West Marsh of the neighbouring parish of Grimsby.  In the south, West Platt, Middle Platt and East Platt lie just east of what is still today called Cottagers Plot (but was still Cottagers Plat in early twentieth century OS maps)  in the neighbouring parish of Laceby.  I once tried to copy them across onto a contemporary street map.

I also already knew that the estate was held at the end of the period by two successive Sir Walter Gilbeys of Elsenham Hall, Essex - which is obviously why the papers have ended up in the Essex Record Office rather than at the Lincolnshire one.  Again, it is in North East Lincolnshire’s own archive that I have seen one of many surviving copies of the map of the Estate divided up into lots and offered for auction in 1927.

My wildest hope was that the Essex set of papers would provide a trail of ownership and sale showing clearly how the Manor and Estate passed from the Hildyards (who held it in Tudor times) directly or through others to the Newtons, and then on from them through others (I knew of some Tennyson and Yarborough involvement and then of Angerstein ownership through most of the nineteenth century) to the Gilbeys.

It doesn’t.  It contains just two small clusters of papers from 1758-60 and then some further sale papers beginning 1898, with nothing in between.

First, there appears to have been some financial obligation on the owner of Little Coates to make a payments to the owner of neighbouring Laceby (on both 1^st May and Michaelmas Day each year).  .  I think the spelling 'Warnal Rent' is clear at the head of this post in the picture of a scrap of paper (it may need clicking on to enlarge it).  I’d dearly like to know what that is; I assumed putting the term into a search engine would reveal all, but it doesn’t.

The signature is that of twenty-five year old Sir Cecil Wray of Fillingham who seems to have been enforcing this in 1758 to cover a period which goes back to a short while before his father’s death, so he might have been putting neglected pieces of business in order; he spells Michaelmas as Micklemas, which is as it is pronounced. 

There are two further annual receipts (4^th July 1759 and 9^th May 1760) and then a major legal document dated 10^th May 1760 (the day after the final payment) in which Wray releases Newton from the obligation in return for a payment of £25 5/10.

Secondly, at about the same time (30^th April 1759), there is what is largely an exchange of land between Newton and John Sutton of Carleton, Nottinghamshire, who I take to be a member of the Sutton family which has consistently owned (much of) Great Coates since the seventeenth century.

Sutton takes some equally evocatively named Great Coates fields (Millholme, Mr Grantham’s field, Edward Gilliat’s Field, Bibon Field, Old Mill Causeway and North East Carr), which presumably consolidated his holding west of the Freshney.  These are farmed by Edward Phillipson (again, the surname occurs on an early surviving 1816 gravestone at St Nicolas’) or his under tenants.

Newton gets fields called The Ings and The Carr in Little Coates (West Ings and a number of Carrs are both names on the map), which presumably consolidated his holding east of the Freshney.  He also gets (or perhaps Sutton is simply surrendering) two ‘colt gates’ in the Great Marsh, which is defined as the right to pasture two colts there between 12^th May and 12^th August.

Most tantalising to me is that this is said to ‘release’ (that is, I take it, end any rights or obligations) not only Newton but also Christopher Hildyard, late of Kelstern, Lincolnshire, deceased.  This can only mean that Newton’s title to the land has come to him from the Hildyards - whether by purchase or inheritance I still do not know.

Anyway, sixty-six years later, in 1825, I already knew that the Executors of the fabulously rich Russian born London banker and art collector John Julius Angerstein invested by buying the estate.  I haven’t yet pinned down from whom they did so (as I have said, there are both Tennyson and Yarborough references; the Tennysons might  just have inherited rather than purchased from the Newtons, and Yarborough owned the neighbouring Grimsby land).

The Angersteins held it for seventy-two years until John Julius’s grandson William died in 1897, and this is where the papers resume.   The Gilbey purchase the following year was from the Norwich Union, the documentation saying that William Angerstein’s life interest had fallen in on his death.  What this means is that John Julius’s family had mortgaged away the Little Coates estate (as well as most of the rest of his vast inheritance - I’ve found references to Norwich Union also taking possession of the family home at Weeting Hall in Norfolk) which must have been quite a spending achievement.

The few papers here are in the most part sales of land, in particular the sites of what will be Little Coates Primary School and of Dixon’s Paper Mill.  At this time Gilbey was developing all the housing next to these sites, as the Gilbey Road, Elsenham Road and other Essex related road names in the immediate area give away.  

All this property stands today on the old Marsh fields of Little Coates and are now assumed by most people (including those who moved the Little Coates First World War Memorial from next to the school to the grounds of the West Marsh Community Centre) simply to be part of the West Marsh of Grimsby.

One of the transfers of land was to extend the churchyard, and the second of the pictures at the top of this post comes from the relevant document.  My next task might be to try to map this against the present churchyard.  My estimate is that at least the north-eastern corner of the church built 1913-15 stands on a bit of the Gilbey-given land outside the original churchyard.  

The churchyard has, of course, twice been extended further, first on the south (what was the Mountain family Private Burial Ground) and then on the north (in the 1940s).  And the line of the road is that of the present lay-by orphaned by the straightening of Great Coates Road in the 1950s.

To complete the picture, at first the land south of the Haven remained rural.  In the 1920s, Little Coates as a Civil Parish was incorporated into the Borough of Grimsby and some land was sold (principally to Grimsby Golf Club) until the second younger Sir Walter Gilbey, as I have already mentioned, divided the rest of the Estate into lots and auctioned these off.