Goadby's History of Loughborough Chapter 5 Pt 1

We continue the story of Loughborough as presented as a serialisation by Edwin Goadby in 1864 Loughborough Monitor. Chapter 5 covers the Beaumont family, who were lords of the manor of Loughborough. As far as possible this transcription follows the layout of the original article, although I have inserted a few paragraph breaks, just to make it a bit easier to read.

As mentioned in previous posts, more of Loughborough's history has been uncovered since Goadby was writing in 1864, and language usage has also changed, so there will be facts that are wrong, and words we may no longer use today - reader, beware!!

THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH TIME OF THE BRITONS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Chapter 5, Pt 1 The family of the Beaumonts, &c.

In: Loughborough Monitor 10 November 1864, pg 5

Part 1 - Origin of the Family - The First Lord Beaumont - His coming to England, dignities, marriage, and insult to King Edward II. - Takes the side of Isabella, and captures the King - Is presented with the Manor of Loughborough for this service by Edward III. – Banished - Previous Residence at Whitwick Castle and afterwards at Beaumanor - Cause and result of the Petition of Edmund, Earl of Kent - Returns, and invades Scotland - Capture and Ransom - Succeeded by his son John, Lord de Beaumont.

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It ought, perhaps, to be a source of honest pride to the inhabitants of Loughborough, and in some way compensate for the occasional scarcity of local facts, that the town has been constantly in the possession of some of the noblest families of the land, so that its history becomes intimately connected with the history of the nation itself, and each is made more intelligible when viewed in its relations with the other. We have already seen it to be so in the case of the Earls of Chester and the Despensers, and while the tragic fate of the latter still saddens us with its reality, and the awful shadow of the scaffold is flung across our page, we repeat the watchword of another family - Erectus non elatus - unfurl its banner, and open the bead-roll of its history.

The family of the Beaumonts was of French origin, and of great antiquity. Its surname was derived from the city of Beaumont in France, and its noble members figure conspicuously in the annals of England and their own country. Two of the Lord Beaumonts took an active part in the crusade of St. Louis, King of France, in 1248, and one "Messire Jean de Beaumont" is mentioned as a knight of his household. The heiress of one of the Crusaders, Agnes, Viscountess of Beaumont and Mayne, brought the seigneury to her husband, Lewis de Brienne, the second son of Charles, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and the nephew of Louis IX of France.

Sir Henry de Beaumont, the one with whose history we are immediately concerned, was the fourth son of this union, and came to England, as Dugdale, Burke, and others suppose [1], at the instance of his near relative, Eleanor of Castille, the wife of our Edward I. In the records of the time we find him styled consanguinis regis, and documents addressed by Edward II consanguineo nostro carissimo Henrico de Bellomont. When Edward I, by a combination of force and fraud, had obtained possession of Scotland, he made him Constable of Roxburgh Castle, and also King of the Isle of Man for life. Upon the accession of Edward II, the barony of Beaumont was conferred upon him, and in right of his marriage with Alice, heiress of Alexander, Earl of Buchan, then living at Whitwick, near Loughborough, he assumed that title also. He attended Edward II in his expedition into Scotland, fled with him from the fatal field of Bannockburn, June 24, 1314, and afterwards obtained the King’s precept granting him 200 marks (equivalent to about £140 of our present [1864] money) out of the fifteenths collected in Yorkshire, towards defraying his expenses during the campaign.

He was constantly summoned to the Parliament of Edward II, by special writ, for since the extinction of the Montfort rebellion the parliaments had been composed of such barons only as were so summoned, and it was considered a degrading insult not to be served with a king’s writ when it had hitherto been an invariable proceeding.

This notable Lord Beaumont appears to have been a man of a haughty, imperious disposition, for when the King held a special council at Bishopthorpe, near York, to consider the propriety of a treaty with Robert Bruce, he behaved himself in such a manner as to incur his Majesty’s severe displeasure. The King asked each one for his opinion and counsel, and asked Lord Beaumont in turn;

"hereupon the said Henry," we quote from the Close Rolls in the Tower, "with a certain intemperate motion or gesture, and in a spirit of disrespect, answered the King that he would not give counsel to him in this particular. The Lord King being disturbed at this answer, commanded the said Henry to depart from the council, and as he was going out he spoke as he had done before, and said that he was better pleased to be away from such a council than in it.”

He was then committed to prison for his contempt and disobedience, but several noblemen promising "to have him before the King in the same condition in which he now is when they may be summoned on that account," their bail was accepted, and he was set at liberty.

He afterwards regained the royal favour, and retained it until he took the side of Isabella of Hainault against him and the Spencers, and was, in fact, the person who delivered him up, with the younger Spencer, after their escape from Bristol. Froissart’s [2] account of this capture and the chase by sea is a piece of fanciful tradition, palmed upon his credulity by some designing or ignorant Englishman. The King was taken in Glamorganshire, and sent to Berkeley Castle, where he was inhumanly murdered. For this especial service the young King, Edward III, then only Duke of Lancaster, granted him the Manor of Loughborough, which he confirmed on his accession to the throne by a writ, dated Westminster, February 15, 1327. Lord Beaumont was banished the kingdom in 1328, for the active part he took in the confederacy against the Queen mother, and partly as a scapegoat for others, and lived in France again until 1332, according to Henry of Knighton, the old chronicler of Leicester Abbey.

Previous to his ostracism he lived at Whitwick Castle, which had been built by the Norman, Hugo de Grentesmaisnell, but appears to have somewhat decayed, since we find Lord Beaumont especially licensed to fortify it. The castle had been erected two centuries, and possibly this renovation could only be a temporary affair, since he soon afterwards moved to Beaumanor. The exact date of this change cannot be determined. Mr. Potter [3] thinks it was about 1330, but Lord Beaumont was yet in exile, and the manor was held for the King by John de Insula, and was, as we have seen, described in an inquisition made that year as "wasted by war" - viz. the feudal raid against the Spencers already detailed. The change must have been effected after 1332, and before 1340. He built a large mansion there, surrounded it with a moat, and enclosed a spacious park of many miles in circumference, which long continued to be called after him, according to the common spelling of the time, by the name of Beaumond Park.

In the grant of 1327 the different members of the Manor of Loughborough were not mentioned by name, and this oversight led to a suspicion in the mind of Edmund, Earl of Kent, to whom the King had definitely granted the other lands in the county of Leicester belonging to the late elder Spencer, that they had been unlawfully seized by Lord Beaumont. There was certainly a little ambiguity in the words used, but there could be no doubt as to the King's intention to include all its recognised members. However, in 1328, the Earl of Kent petitioned the King, in Norman-French, as follows:

"To our Lord the King, Edmund Earl of Kent sheweth that, whereas the same Lord King hath lately given to by him by his Charter all the lands and tenements which belonged to the elder Spencer, in the county of Leicester, except the manor of Loughborough, with the appurtenances thereof, which he had before given to Sir Henry de Beaumond; and whereas the said Henry hath come and claimed to himself the manors of Beaumanor, Ernesby, Hugglescote, Donnington, Barrow, Burton, Prestwould, Cotes, and Fritheby, which belong to the said Spencer, in the same county, and holdeth them as appurtenances to the said manor of Loughborough, whereas they do not appertain, and never have appertained to the said manor. Wherefore, the said Earl prayeth that a remedy may be ordained by the King and his Council, so that the gift which he hath made to the said Earl may take effect, to the profit of the same Earl."

The King answered: "Let a brief be made to Sir Henry de Beaumont, that he be, on a certain day, in the Chancery, with his Charter of Loughborough, to show then and there, and to answer to the King, why he hath entered upon the Manors, and that they are, notwithstanding, appurtenances to Loughborough, and to do and to receive then and there what the Court shall award."

This proceeding was doubtless gone through in the usual form, and the ambiguity of the terms "appurtenances, hamlets, and members" made apparent. A delay of some years, however, took place in the adjudication of the matter, owing to the absence of Lord Beaumont. The affair appears to have been settled in his favour, for the King re-granted the manor more explicitly, July 28, 1336, including several places that were not previously a part of it, and some even mentioned in the Earl of Kent's petition; as Walton, Barrow, Cossington, Ravenstone, Quorndon, Mount Sorrel, Woodthorpe and Knightesthorpe (sic), the two latter places being usually included under Beaumanor. The advowsons of Walton, Cossington, and Ravenstone were also expressly included.

The whole was said to be granted "in consideration of the many dangers encountered by the said Henry, as also of the great charges he had been at for the King's sake; also to make the more fully known his former princely intention, and to take away all ambiguity as to the promises for the future; and lastly, the better to provide for the security of the said Henry and Alice their heirs." The manor of Whitwick was also the property of Lord Beaumont, including, as its members, Sheepshed, Markfield, “Wydington, Rokeby, Newton, and Botharaton," so that his Leicestershire possessions were both extensive and valuable.

In 1332 the banished Lord returned, joined other notable Lords in the invasion of Scotland, making Baliol their general, and ostensibly warring to support his claim to the Scottish throne. But he had a strong personal object in making the campaign. The Earldom of Buchan had been lost to him by the revolutions that had taken place, and he sought to win it back again. This is very apparent according to Hardyng's rhymed chronicler [4], which says:

"Sir Henry Beaumont also went that while

His heritage to gett and to conquere;

Th'erledome of Boughan should bee his clere (lot)."

In 1334 he was besieged in the Castle of Dundarg, and for want of assistance he was obliged to surrender, and was made prisoner. A large ransom was fixed upon him, which appears to have been paid by Edward III, his sovereign, since, according to Tyrrell [5] (who quotes from a Patent Roll we have not been able to verify), a year afterwards the King cancelled all his debts that were due to the public exchequer as a requital for his services. He died in 1340, leaving his son John, who was then twenty-two, to be his heir.

This second Lord Beaumont married Alianore, fifth daughter of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and was sent on a public expedition to Flanders in 1338. This year was one sure to be remembered by the farmers and wool merchants of Loughborough, since by decree of Parliament they were bound to make over for the King’s use one half of their summer’s wool, whilst he unceremoniously seized all belonging to the clergy, and made them pay nine marks (£10 of modern [1864] money) for every sack they had of him. Such a curious way of levying taxes was then common, but must have been extremely unpleasant. For instance, two years before this wool tax, the inhabitants of the town had to pay the King a taillage [6] of one-tenth of all their moveables, and if a list of their names and contributions had but been extant, we might have had a very fair picture suggested to us of the wealth and occupations of its principal persons.

The year his father died, the second Lord Beaumont was residing in Brabant, his lady waiting upon Queen Phillippa, and here his son Henry was born, for whom he subsequently obtained the King's letters patent, to the effect that his being born there should not hinder his inheriting his father's estates in England. He died in 1342.

The 'new' Beaumanor Hall built around 1845

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NOTES

[1] This is probably a reference to William Dugdale (1605-1868), an English historian who specialised in the study of Mediaeval history, and probably to a ‘History of England’, a series of works written by philosopher, economist, and historian David Hume (1711-1776)

[2] A French-speaking poet and historian from the Low Countries

[3] A reference perhaps to Thomas Rossell Potter (1799-1873), who wrote ‘History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest’, published in 1842.

[4] Probably John Hardyng (or Harding; 1378–1465) who was an English chronicler, born in the north of England. 

[5] This probably refers to James Tyrrell (5 May 1642 – 17 June 1718) who was an English author, Whig political philosopher, and historian.

[6] Taillage was a type of land tax

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Transcribed and presented here with the kind permission of the British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Goadby’s History of Loughborough Chapter 4

In this blogpost, we continue the story of Loughborough as presented by journalist Edwin Goadby back in 1864. In this chapter, chapter 4, Goadby discusses life – particularly trade and travel – in the fourteenth century.

As previously mentioned, for the most part, I've kept the text and the layout as it appeared in the original newspaper serialisation, although have split some of the text into separate paragraphs to aid reading. I've added a few explanatory notes at the end, if I think these might be useful. In the 160 years since the original publication appeared, there have been many more discoveries and revelations about Loughborough's history, and some terminology will have changed, so some of the information contained in this article will be wrong: I have not tried to amend these in any way, so reader, beware!

 

THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH FROM THE TIME OF THE BRITONS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Chapter 4 Trade and travelling in the fourteenth century.

In: Loughborough Monitor 13 October 1864, pg 5

Chapter IV The Feudal system oppressive to the Trading Class - No security for Person, Land, or Goods - Danger of being abroad after Curfew - Murder of William of Loughborough, in Leicester, etc. - A Specimen of a Trader's Grievance, in the case of Richard Calf, of Loughborough - Danger of Travelling on the King's Highway - A Merchant Robbed and Slain, returning from the Market - Bad state of the Roads in and about the Town - Dispute about the Repairing of Cotes' Bridges, and how settled.

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The Feudal ages are stirring times to look at through some martial romance, read in a cosy nook by a bright fire on a frosty night, but they were miserable enough to live in, unless one were a mighty baron or a doughty retainer. The castles were bold, picturesque-looking objects, no doubt; the jousts and tourneys [1], excellent; adventures, daring and plentiful enough; and the women handsome, the men stalwart, the children hardy; but for all that it was not an agreeable period for an honest man to live in.

Provisions were cheap and pretty plentiful, and a man could build his own house, spin his own garments, grow his own corn, kill his own cattle, and brew his own beer if he pleased, subject to a few manorial imposts. And yet, being an honest man, he would find it a queerish age that he had been born into, and had to do a man's work in. "Honesty is the best policy," was a maxim as yet undiscovered. Many men tried hard to discover it, and failed. Indeed, how trade, excepting that concerned with eating and drinking, ever managed to struggle into a respectable existence at all in these days, is a puzzle to all our political economy. The trader did somehow vindicate his right to be, in this bickering Barondom [2], and we admire him for it, but he had to submit to robbery, spoliation, violence, and occasional incarceration for his imprudence. Now and then he thrived, and got patronised by the warriors, as a man who ought to have been a jolly baron but had missed his vocation. In the small towns this was painfully evident, but in larger ones it was not so bad. In fact, a burgess [3], who carried a short sword with him, as a final piece of constitutional law, was not a man to be spirited away at the sight of a suit of mail and a poleaxe [4].

Outside of a fortified town matters were different. A man wore side-arms just the same, but he rarely used them except to wound his neighbour in a drunken brawl. In the city, tradesmen were protected, but out of it they were treated as individuals expressly created for baronial experiments, in the spirit of that celebrated aphorism of Lord Orford's [5], which describes timber as "an excrescence on the face of the earth, placed there by Providence for the payment of (gentlemen's) debts". This may seem humour now, but was sternest fact then. Magna Charta [6] was a fine thing, but it did not cure the Barons of their injustice.

We have already hinted at one or two inconveniences resulting from this system, as to corn-grinding, market tolls, and the like. But matters did not end there, and we can never know the amount of petty tyranny our townsmen had to bear in their daily life and trade. A Loughborough tradesman of the thirteenth and fourteenth century was a happy man if he had no other grievances than those just named, and went to church in a thankful spirit, as became him, on the Sabbath Day, and sold his commodities, and reared his children honestly and well. But, unfortunately, there were others who had no honesty, and did no work, and they hung about him perpetually. After the curfew had sounded - and it is but a few years since it left off sounding - such villains stole from their hiding places and made their spoil of his property. If he ventured out of doors, they waylaid him, and if he stayed at home, they might burn him out of his house, and chuckle over his hard earnings and captured goods. If pursued, the thick forest sheltered them, and the game sustained them. It was a rare time for thieves and poachers.

No doubt the manorial Lord had some protective kind of an institution for the town in the shape of a watchman, who hung about the market cross, stamped along in thick-soled jackboots, and made weather notes, like an accomplished member of a meteorological society. But so long as the Lord himself claimed all the waifs, that is, the stolen goods, left or thrown away by the felon when pursued, his interest could not be said to be identical with that of his vassals [7] and tenants. Neither life nor property could be secure in this general lawlessness. It might be that your neighbour wanted a little more land, or a few heads of cattle, that the Lord's bailiff was short of money, or some noble baron found that his retainers were getting overfed and wanted exercise; all a man could do was to grin and bear it. We do not say there was no redress for these grievances, or that Loughborough was in any way worse off than other towns. One of the benefits derived from that local parliamentary representation which Simon de Montfort brought about, was a pretty direct communication of these evils to Parliament, and their amelioration, if possible; and as one of the Dispensers was his associate and confidant, there is good reason to suppose that, in his time at least, such evils would hardly exist. That they did, however, after his death, is easily shown by facts.

Such facts as have come down to us are not very extensive, but they suggest a great deal as to the actual conditions under which they could occur. Here is an adventure that happened to a townsman at Leicester. Now, Leicester was walled, well ruled, and garrisoned, and if such an affair could happen there, it plainly shows what a spirit of misrule would sway in a smaller town open to waste lands on every side, and with only a semblance of municipal government. The event happened in 1301, on the night of St. Stephen's. William of Loughborough was in Leicester, but whether occasionally or not, does not appear, and was proceeding, after the curfew had tolled, along the lane near to the Church of St. Martin, and had reached the Church of the Grey Friars, when he met one Adam, a groom in the service of Lady Pitchford, in company with Richard the Smith, of Leicester. No provocation or altercation ensued, yet Adam immediately drew his bow, shot William of Loughborough with a barbed arrow just above the belt, and then fled. His companion the Smith, then drew his sword, and struck the wounded man across the left hand, leaving his fingers hanging by the thumb. In a few hours the man received the last rites of the Church, and died. His wife, Hawys, who seems to have been in the town and opportunely informed of the disaster, raised the alarm at the town gates, but the murderer had already escaped, and the Smith alone was apprehended. He was taken to Warwick gaol, and there tried, but was strangely enough, acquitted. The very same year, Elias of Loughborough, with Richard of Quorndon, Alicia his wife, Walter of Langton, and William of Keythorpe, committed a robbery in Leicester, by night, upon the goods of Melicent of Quorndon, and were all tried, sentenced, and executed. Land, we have said, was also seized and appropriated, and the Parliamentary petitions enable us to record a case in which a Loughborough man was the thief. There was a bovate of land - that is, as much as an ox could plough in a year - situate in the township of Stanford, belonging to one Mabell, the sister of the grandfather of one "William, the son of William, the son of Adam, the clerk, of Stanford," which this last patriarchally designated person complained to the King, had been illegally seized upon by Robert Stier, of Loughborough, and sold to the elder Spencer, who was then Lord of the Manor of Loughborough. As the petition is on record, the complainant probably got redress, but it would be in a roundabout way.

A notable instance of how the poor merchants were experimented upon, is given us in another Parliamentary petition of one Richard Calf, a wool merchant of this place, in 1321-2. The original is in Norman-French, and so curious that we present a translation of it:

"To our Lord the King and his Council. Richard Calf, of Loughborough (Loughteburgh), merchant, showed, that on the Gules of August (August 1) last past, the Lord Ralph of Crophull came to Hemynton and Bonyngton; and the Wool of the same Richard -  which he had put in two chambers under a good lock, namely, four sacks of good Wool, of the value of XLiiii Li (£44) - he hath taken and carried away, and thereof hath done his will. And besides this, the goods and locks of the chambers aforesaid he hath broken in pieces, wrongfully, and against the peace of our Lord the King, and to the grievous damage of the afore-named Richard.

Wherefore, the same Richard prayeth to our Lord the King for his grace and a remedy, for the said Lord Ralph is 'of so great power in his country that no man can have recovery from him at the Common Law'".

We have purposely italicised the last clause of this petition; it speaks volumes. The petition was answered in the usual form - "Habeat Breve de gratia Regis" ("Let him have a brief by the King's grace"), and there can be little doubt that the issue of the trial would be in favour of the suffering merchant.

These are specimens of the indignities to which people, and especially harmless tradesmen, were liable in these remarkably "good old times," which seem so romantic in the chronicles of Froissart [8], or the novels of Scott [9], that sentimental young ladies and dreaming boys would sooner live in those days than be safe, successful, and matter-of-fact people in our own!

Travelling was not even then "a fool's paradise," as it has been called, much less a wise man's delight. One needed to have a navvy [10], a woodsman, and a couple of soldiers with one continually. Adventures with robbers were so common that any diarist would have been extremely short of materials to have made the most of the sight of half-a-dozen fierce-looking men and an arrow-stricken horse. Every wood had got stocked with banditti [11], just as every park had with game. Even the King's retainers varied their employment by a little occasional free-booting excursion for pocket-money. Before the year 1285 matters were so bad, that in that year a statute was passed, commanding that the highways leading from one market town to another should be increased in width, and that no trees or bushes likely to shelter an assailant should remain within 200 feet of the roadway. Whatever townships failed to carry out these orders were made responsible for the robberies that might be committed within their several jurisdictions. This measure might disclose an assailant, but did not much diminish the chances of robbery. It was a common practice to waylay a man returning from market with his goods, or the proceeds of his commodities.

Here is an instance. Robert of London, a mercer, had been to Loughborough market, and was returning to Leicester on the Thursday following the feast of St. Nicholas (i.e. December 13), 1322, and had proceeded as far as a part of Wanlip, then called Langdale, when he was suddenly shot at by some persons concealed near the wood, and wounded by an arrow underneath the left shoulder blade. He immediately fell to the ground, when an assailant, leaping out upon him, smote him on the head with a sword, inflicting a mortal wound. He was plundered of all his goods, and left on the road. He survived until the Monday following, when he died at his own house at Leicester, whither he had been conveyed. Thomas Fraunceys, of Ratby, John, son of Richard of London, of Quorndon, Richard Hart and Robert Duval, of Cropston, were concerned in the affair, but all of them escaped the hands of justice.

The roads were not only dangerous by reason of robbers, but by reason of their rugged unpaved condition. A ploughed field was comparatively smooth beside them. The roads were in ruts, widened and deepened year after year until they were like brooks in wet weather and ran mud. The old notion of roadmaking was, that you had only to make the sides of the road higher than the middle, and the rain would keep it in repair by washing down the gravel from the sides into the centre. This was the pre-Macadamite, concave system, [12] and had its enthusiastic believers for years, but unfortunately water was an element that would not disappear immediately it was done with, and so the traveller slipped about like a drowning man in a quicksand, only that he did not drown. And then huge blocks of stone lay about the road in the most ugly positions, and there were holes you went into before you knew what you were doing, that threatened to engulf man, horse, and waggon, for ever. Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak would have been of little use even in a civilised town.

Loughborough was no better than its fellows. Its streets were narrow, unpaved, boggy. Yea, blocks of stone as big as wheelbarrows lay about them as late as the end of last century. There were only two good through roads, the Leicester and Nottingham and the Leicester and Derby highway. Carriers went along these when they could collect goods enough, taking a good long day to reach any of the three places from Loughborough. Letters went seldom. A man did not exactly write his letters and take them himself, but he did very much like it. He must either send them by his own messenger, or wait for a passing pilgrim, whose rags sheltered him from assault. Pilgrims and minstrels were the only news-bringers, and what people found to talk about is one of those mysteries that Lord Dundreary [13] might appropriately consider past understanding. The Ashby turnpike only extended as far as Snell's Nook Gate, then called Highway End, and beyond it was an open waste. The Forest Lane Gate was about where the Woodbrook Bridge is now, and beyond that all was waste. The Meadow-lane was probably in existence, but would be nothing like so long as it is now, and all open to the fields.

The road to Nottingham appears to have been most important, and the bridges between Loughborough and Cotes the wonder of travellers. They were erected in some degree of substantiality in the second half of the thirteenth century, if not before, and probably upon piles. Very early in the fourteenth century we find that the question of their repair was agitated. A good deal of dispute was indulged in as to who ought to repair them. It was alleged that William Bosard, of Loughborough, and Robert Oseveyne, of Cotes, the keepers of the bridges, with the surrounding villages benefitted by them, Stanford, Cotes, Rempstone, and, we know not why, the Abbey of Garendon, were responsible for the proper repair of the bridges in question. This they denied.

The two bridge keepers were the representatives of the Lord of the Manor, and collected tolls upon the corn passing over it to the water-mills, but as they alone are mentioned as responsible, and not the Lord of the Manor for the time being, it is pretty clear that they paid him an annual sum for the tolls, and squeezed their profits out of their unfortunate neighbours who were obliged to take their corn to the mills or submit to unpleasant consequences. Private tolls, as we have good reason still to know over some bridges a few miles away, are very heavy affairs, and when men farmed them out like this for a living they were extremely likely to be extortionate, and probably Loughborough people were only retaliating when they said, "The bridge-keepers get more out of the bridges than anybody else; let them pay for their repairs".

The matter was sufficient to attract general attention. Probably the King was petitioned about it, as in 1322, an inquisition was held at Nottingham to settle the question. The Chartulary of Garendon Abbey fortunately preserved an account of this inquisition, or we should hardly have known of it. The inquiry was held in the presence of Lord Radulph de Neville, Lord John Sturmyn, Peter de Crete, William of Walton, and others of the King's Counsel. The whole matter was investigated by them, and the following witnesses examined upon oath:

William, Lord of Stanford, John, Lord of Rempstone, John Poutrel of Cotes, Thomas of Thorp, William, the son of Stephen of Prestwold, Robert the Juryman, of Loughborough, Thomas Marshall, Robert Pegg, of Loughborough, Robert Ingaram, of Walton, Henry Jordan of Burton, Roger Barkoff of Cotes, and Peter Herbert of Shenton. The result was they affirmed upon oath, that the said keepers, townships, and abbey ought not of themselves to repair the bridges, but that the work ought of right to be done by the free-offerings of the whole country, "as the sheaves of wheat in autumn (the tithes), the money given at the Sacrament, the various gifts and legacies of infirm folk, and the tolls asked and collected of the passengers by the bridge keepers". This toll was called ponting, from the Latin word for a bridge, and was chiefly paid by agriculturists and merchants, the clergy and the poorer peasantry being sometimes exempt. This appears to have settled the matter for some considerable time, until these and other bridges about the town were repaired out of the proceeds of the lands and tenements left by the town's great benefactor, Thomas Burton. And there can be little doubt that this inquisition shaped the proceedings of a later one in Henry VIII's time, when the charities were diverted from their originally religious uses to relieve the neighbourhood of this somewhat heavy burden.

Flooding on the A60 at Cotes Bridge, February 2020

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NOTES

[1] A tourney is a tournament

[2] on the physical territory of, or under the rule of the local baron

[3] an inhabitant, or fully-fledged citizen

[4] a poleaxe is simply a battleaxe

[5] Probably Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, 1717-1797

[6] The Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 and was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law. It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and placed limits of royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself. See: https://www.parliament.uk/magnacarta/

[7] landowners in feudal times

[8] A French-speaking poet and historian from the Low Countries

[9] Sir Walter Scott, author of such novels as ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘Waverley’

[10] a general labourer

[11] gangs of robbers or outlaws

[12] Thomas Telford was probably a supporter of the concave road surface, and John Loudon McAdam was the proponent of the layer of soil with a crust of stone atop

[13] Lord Dundreary, a good-natured, harmless aristocrat, is a character in the 1858 play ‘Our American Cousin’, which was written by Tom Taylor.

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Transcribed and presented here with the kind permission of the British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Goadby’s History of Loughborough, Chapter 4. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/12/goadbys-history-of-loughborough-chapter.html  [Accessed 7 December 2025]

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Lynne

A View From the Window

Last week I was thrilled to share with you a view I’d seen that week from a first-floor art studio. This week, I’ve been to the Beaumanor Hall Christmas gift fair, and managed to take a few photos out of a couple of the windows, which show the scaffolding, presumably around the chimneys. I’ve trawled back through my photograph collection and discovered that I seem to like Beaumanor Hall – could it be its connection with the architect of Nelson’s Column? – and I’ve taken a few photographs looking out onto various parts of the estate.

Of late there have been problems at the hall: recently it was closed for some emergency repair work to its chimneys, and there is concern that the hall doesn't earn enough money to pay for its upkeep, and is thus in danger of being sold off by the county council who own it. It's currently used as the Register Office for the area, and hosts events like the Christmas Fair, as well as history and building tours, and as an outdoor pursuits centre for schools. There has been a recent consultation asking members of the public for fundraising ideas, in the hope that the predicted shortfall of over £500K can be averted - or at the very least decreased. 

So, please enjoy this selection of views from the windows of Beaumanor Hall!

 

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). A View from the Window. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/12/a-view-from-window.html  [Accessed 2 December 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

A View From The Studio

Another couple of weeks of frantic activity, and so many things to blog about that it’s making it difficult to choose!

I shan’t blog about our wonderful fair, despite this year it being spread further around town, so this year taking in Derby Square. I did visit, and it was as spectacular and atmospheric as usual!

A week later I found myself out at nighttime again, this time visiting the venues that were open for ‘Loughborough Lates’. Who knew there were so many artists, art events, and art studios in town?! 

Sure, I knew of Fearon Hall, where there loads of people drawing and painting self-portraits, and still life pictures, and I’ve taken some classes myself at Charnwood Arts, where during ‘Loughborough Lates’ there was a display of some fantastic artwork. I’ve also previously visited Modern Painters New Decorators in their new home on Aumbry, sorry, I mean Aumberry Gap, so it was fantastic to see so many people enjoying the artwork in this venue. Last year I also went along to what I still call the Albert Street Artists on Southfield Road, better known now as The Tangent Gallery, and I was thrilled to see some lovely paintings this year, too.

The venue that was completely new to me was the one in Stone Yard! I mean, Stone Yard is one street/road/path that I usually walk past without even noticing, either when walking along Church Gate, or along Biggin Street, so to learn that there was an art studio along there was fascinating. It was actually upstairs, sort of over the carpet shop, I guess, and it was huge!!! While I was there to see the artwork, I admit I was a little bit distracted by being able to see the upper floors of the buildings around the area.

Here's hoping for more successful ‘Loughborough Lates’ in the future, and more new venues joining in!   

The other place I visited last week was the Mountsorrel Museum and Heritage Trust which is based upstairs in the public library building on The Green. I’ve been before, but this visit was specifically to see the temporary exhibition about local tiles, researched and presented by the Charnwood Forest Geopark. This was a lovely little exhibition, and I was pleased to see that our local brickmakers, Tuckers, were mentioned! Do pop along if you! The museum is, I think, only open Thursday and Friday afternoons and Saturday 9.30-12, but do check for yourself as I might have got this wrong!

Here's hoping I find lots more Loughborough connections on my travels!!

Following a trip to Nottingham on the train, walking up Nottingham Road, I was saddened to note that the ghost sign for Putts, on the side wall, has now been obliterated.

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). A View From the Studio. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/11/a-view-from-studio.html  [Accessed 24 November 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne