Category: Medievalism

The Later Middle Ages: A Missing Chapter in the History of Migration to England

Dr Bart Lambert, University of York

I must confess I had an ulterior motive in inviting our December speaker, Dr Bart Lambert of the University of York, to give a talk about late Medieval migration. Migration has been one of the topics of Manchester Museum’s thematic collecting project for the last 18 months, which culminated for me  in a visit to the Greek island of Lesvos to collect a refugee’s life jacket just over a year ago.  As part of the project I’ve looked at Roman inscriptions from Mancunium or Manchester in the museum collection but the medieval period  posed more of a challenge. Everyone’s familiar with the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans but Dr Lambert’s talk opened up a whole new chapter about the movement of people during the later Middle Ages.

Statue of the Black Prince in Leeds

We are certainly no stranger to late Medieval migration in Leeds. One of the city’s prominent  landmarks in City Square opposite the railway station is a statue of the Black Prince created by sculptor Thomas Brock (1847-1922). It was set up thanks to the generosity and civic-mindedness of Colonel Thomas William Harding  who sought a suitably distinguished subject to be the focus of the Italianate piazza he had created. That there was no direct link with the history of city  mattered little and the bronze scroll around the base of the statue reads like a roll-call of the Ladybird book of well-to-do, respectable and famous people during the reign of Edward III: Sir John Chandos, Sir Walter Nanny, William of Wykeham, John Wycliff, Chaucer, Froissart, van Arteveldt and du Guesclin. Not to mention bronze panels depicting the battles of Crecy and Sluys and a plaque honouring the Black Prince himself, ‘Edward, Prince of Wales, surnamed the Black Prince. The Hero of Crecy and Poitiers. The Flower of England’s chivalry…’

Van Arteveldt’s name in the scroll around the plinth of the statue

Of these, van Arteveldt is credited with encouraging Edward III to bring Flemish weavers and dyers to England, which Colonel Harding may have believed helped to lay the foundations of the West Yorkshire textile industry. As our speaker explained it is more likely that van Arteveldt was finding a home overseas where political exiles from Flanders wouldn’t pose a threat.

If civic statuary inspired by Victorian medievalism is a rather dubious source of information about late Medieval migration, Dr Lambert presented data of far more reliable kind: the records of the country’s alien population that were created for taxation purposes during the reign of Henry VI in order to help fund the war in France. The tax operated between 1440 and 1447. Juries were appointed in each community to identify who was an alien. Returns from the alien subsidy  highlights the presence of French people, many of whom must have been refugees fleeing parts of France which had been occupied by the English but were being recaptured by the French monarchy. There were also   labourers and servants from the Low Countries who realised that they could earn more money on the other side of the Channel. Similarly, there were Scottish People on the borders and Irish people in the West Country who at that time would have been classified as aliens because they came from a different kingdom of the British Isles.

If any of this echoes recent events  you might not be surprised to learn that the immigrants brought with them new skills in making fine and fancy goods including clothing, footwear and jewellery that native crafts people found difficult to compete with. This caused tensions that resulted in appalling acts of violence against the newcomers,  and even threats to mutilate immigrant workers so that they could not compete with English (in practice London) crafts people.

The tax came to an end in 1487 because it had ceased to gather significant sums of money. Bart suggested that by this time people on local juries had formed relationships with the immigrants and had less reason to report them to the authorities for taxation. So what begins as a rather unpleasant story about penalising vulnerable people in medieval society develops into something more heartening, a story of solidarity not marginalisation of the other.

Someone once said there’s nothing new  under the sun except perhaps the cigarette. In this lecture the echoes of Brexit were all too loud. Many thanks to Bart for making us think as much about the present as about the past.

Desperately Seeking Silver Salver

Silver salver presented to Peter Muir. What happened to it?
Silver salver presented to Peter Muir. What happened to it?

The latest issue (June 2015) of Arrowhead, the newsletter of the Archer-Antiquaries, features an interesting article by Manchester Museum’s Curator of Archery, Wendy Hodkinson, about a silver salver awarded to a man called Peter Muir in 1878.  The occasion of the award was Muir’s retirement from his position as Officer and Bowmaker to the Royal Company, a role he had held for more than fifty years in an exemplary manner. The salver is inscribed with the legend ‘Royal Company of Archers The Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland’ above and ‘His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch Captain General’ below. The General Council and Members of her Majesty’s Bodyguard also presented Peter Muir with 450 sovereigns, which as Wendy points out in her article, is some golden handshake!

Muir was born in the west of Scotland in 1809 and was the only bowyer to win a gold medal for his products at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was one three bowyers who dominated the trade in the 19th century. Muir competed in archery tournaments. He was champion in England in 1845, 1847 and 1863, and Scottish National Champion in 1859. One of his duties was to teach new members of the Company to use the bow. Yet Peter Muir seems to have to fallen into the position by accident. When the previous Bowmaker to the Company of Archers fell ill, enquiries were made of Peter Muir’s father to see if he knew of anyone who could fill the position, and he recommended his son. Peter Muir’s service lasted fifty years.

In the 21st century it may appear quaint, even a little strange that the Victorians attached so much importance to archery. The Victorians were fascinated with the Middle Ages because  it seemed to them to have been a golden age before the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, when it seemed to them social relations had been more harmonious. If there were strict social divisions and people were expected to know their place, at least the great and the good had acted in the interests of the commoners out of a sense of ‘noblesse oblige’. Of course this was all utter nonsense, but it was very influential at the time. It is not for nothing that in the city centre of Leeds, there is a statue of the Black Prince (not that there is any connection with Leeds), Armley Gaol was built to look like a Medieval Castle, and in Thornton’s Arcade shoppers are treated to a clock that shows characters from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe every hour.  The popularity of Neo-Gothic architectural style as exemplified by the Houses of Parliament, Manchester’s Town Hall and our very own Manchester Museum shows how important Medievalism was to the Victorians.

So popular was archery in  19th century Scotland that there was a long list of archery societies with names as eccentric as the sport was archaic: the Kilwinning Papingo (!), the Ardrossan Archers (before 1845), the Dalry Archers (c.1842),  the Irvine Toxophilites (1802-1866), the Paisley Archers (1805-1815; 1858-1910; 1968+), the Saltcoat Archers  (c.1856) and the Zingari Archers of Kilmarnock (c.1860). I mean you couldn’t make it up could you?

I would read the vogue for archery, including the inauguration of a Royal Bodyguard or Company of Archers as but one rather quaint component of their Medievalism. However, the fact that such a large amount of money and a silver salver were presented to Muir, and the elevated social circle in which he operated show that archery was taken very seriously. As an adjunct to royalty and the highest levels of the Establishment, Victorian archery was akin to another popular Medieval sport, falconry. Muir described himself as a ‘working-man’ and there is nothing unusual in that, in the same way that royalty today happily rub shoulders with jockeys in pursuance of ‘the sport of kings’.

Wendy ends her fascinating article about Peter Muir with an appeal for members of the public to come forward if they know what happened to the silver salver given to Peter Muir. It is known not to be in Archers’ Hall in Edinburgh. It’s not in the Beechin Wood Collection. Nor is it in the Museum of Scotland. So where is it?  Over to you dear reader…..

In writing this blog I have drawn heavily on Wendy’s article in Arrowhead, the newsletter of the Archer-Antiquaries, issue 129 for June 2015, pp. 6-10. I am grateful to her for sharing her archery expertise.