FILKINS
The place name Filkins is usually said to derive from the Anglo-Saxon name Filica and the word “ing” or possibly “kin”, meaning field or family. Historians and archaeologists have long been aware of early records which refer to someone called Filica, but until recently nothing was ever discovered about the actual person behind the name.
Although it was generally assumed that Filica was the name of a local tribal chieftain, new research has established that Filica was, in fact, a woman. She was an early Christian missionary who had studied under Saint Augustine in Kent, and who was sent by him about the year AD 600 to investigate reports of disorderly conduct amongst the inhabitants of the upper Thames Valley.
Filica discovered that the centre of local hooliganism was a small village called Broctun (meaning “tun” or enclosure on a brook) which, after the Norman invasion, became known as Broughton Poggs.
Broctun was situated close to where the ancient trackway from the north-west crossed a stream in what is now West Oxfordshire. The villagers had acquired some notoriety as brigands because of their practice of waylaying and robbing travellers on their way from the Cotswolds to Lechlade to take boats down the Thames with goods such as salt, cheeses and wool.
Instead of simply returning to Kent to report her findings, Filica decided that she could do more good by staying in Broctun, and she eventually managed to persuade the people to give up banditry in favour of cultivating their herb and flower gardens, which became famous for their beauty throughout the region.
It is said that Filica was extremely fond of parties, especially those at which mead and wine flowed freely, and she was reputed to be able to drink many a local champion under the table, which no doubt is the origin of the name by which she became known - Saint Filica the Frolicsome.
Modern students sometimes ask about the lack of official information about Filica's canonisation. It is recommended that reference should be made to a disastrous fire in a Vatican library in the fourteenth century in which many records, especially those of Celtic, Cornish and Anglo-Saxon saints, were lost. The Italian writer Umberto Eco famously transposed a vivid account of a similar event in his superb book The Name of the Rose.
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LITTLE FARINGDON
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Little Faringdon stands several miles, an unusual distance, from its namesake Great Faringdon – nowadays usually just called Faringdon. A clue to this possibly lies in the original meaning of the name - “fern-clad hill” - in the curious, half Celtic, half Anglo-Saxon dialect of the region in the later fifth and sixth centuries. There were a number of gently sloping, wooded hills overlooking the upper reaches of the river Thames, facing the chalk Downs further away on the south side, of which Great and Little Faringdon were but two.
In fact, Little Faringdon was a very special place to the Druids of Great Faringdon, who claimed it as their own. Although it was relatively small, on the slopes of this particular hill were a number of secluded groves of oak trees, wherein grew the mistletoe on which much Druidical magic and ceremony depended.
Cutting the mistletoe was, even for fully initiated Druid priests, potentially hazardous unless the proper rituals were followed. Firstly, of course, mistletoe was never to be cut with iron, only a gold sickle would do. Then, the sickle or curved knife had to be brandished skywards three times before each lopping, chopping stroke. And thirdly, and even more importantly, the correct words had to be recited while the cutting took place.
We know a little of the detail of this because one of the Druids’ key spells has come down to us in the form of the extraordinary counting-out rhyme that children still chant at the start of some of their games – Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo – the “mo” representing the cut.
Faringdon proper was then in what we now call Berkshire , and even in early Anglo-Saxon times the area was famous for having partially domesticated the local wild boar to the extent that hog farming had become a major occupation; the superior quality of locally cured gammons and hams was second to none. Some of the secret recipes for curing and smoking the meat were said to have been devised by the Druids themselves, and the whole verse of Eeny Meeny recalls this:
Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo,
Catch a piggy by his toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo.
Only the best and strongest boars would do for breeding Faringdon porkers: the ones which just squealed when caught instead of putting up a fight would be rejected.
Little Faringdon was what we would now think of as a conservation area – protected from intrusion and desecration by all manner of blood-curdling threats. The tiny village at the foot of the hill there was especially noted for its reluctance to give up the Old Ways and embrace Christianity *.
The Augustinian missionary-envoy, Filica, when she arrived at Broctun (now Broughton Poggs) a mile or two up the road, around AD 600, had been warned that converting the folk of Little Fern-clad-Hill would be especially difficult, but she persevered. The breakthrough came as a result of a spectacular mead-drinking contest (which were many and frequent in those parts) at which Filica defeated the local champion, an amiable but mighty warrior called Teilo, thus earning enormous respect and making her reputation at the same time.
Teilo later became the first of his people to become a Christian, although he never allowed this to interfere with his social life. He was very attached to the old traditions, always believing that no-one could organise a party like a Druid. He and Filica remained firm friends in spite of the fact that Filica occasionally had a problem with Teilo’s roistering lifestyle, which actually was her own writ very large. But she was essentially a pragmatist and knew when and when not to push her luck.
* Not surprising, really, since its prosperity appeared to be closely tied up with Druidism.
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LANGFORD
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A mile or so to the east of the village where Filica lived, there was a small poultry farm astride the stream we know today as the Broadwell Brook. It was owned by a youngish man named Landa who had inherited the property from his father, who himself had been given it in recognition of his loyal services as a yeoman archer to King Creoda.
Landa was decent and hard-working, but very shy and, by all accounts, had few friends. Filica would visit him occasionally to buy a capon or a goose for feast days in Broctun, and although she found Landa always civil and anxious to please, she was puzzled by his reserve, and would sometimes ponder the fact that he was a single man, living alone, at an age well beyond that at which most men would have been married with growing families.
One day, Filica was strolling along the banks of the river when she came across Landa laboriously collecting rocks and large stones and tipping them into the water. He explained in an embarrassed sort of way that he was trying to build a ford to help him improve access to his land on both sides of the stream.
For years he had thought that he was permanently destined to be the victim of Bucca’s Law, the early Anglo-Saxon equivalent of what we now call Sod’s Law: every time a customer came to buy a bird, the one they wanted was always on the other bank. Landa would have to get out his coracle and paddle across and back, which seemed to him to be a lot of trouble for a relatively short distance and small reward. Swimming was obviously out of the question, but Landa figured that if he could raise the bed of the river to less than knee deep at the busiest spot, he could wade across with little effort in no time. A ford was the answer.
Filica thought it was an excellent idea, wished him well and went on her way.
A few days later, Filica heard that poor Landa had become the butt of several jokes going around the district. It seems that his efforts to make a ford had been only partly successful and he had almost given up. He had certainly enshallowed the stream, but an unintended effect had been to accelerate the speed of flow of the water over the place, rather like creating a set of rapids, so that it was impossible to keep ones footing while attempting to cross.
Filica felt very sorry at all the wasted effort but could think of nothing herself that might help the situation. She mentioned the problem one evening to Pybba, one of her own neighbours, when she went to dinner at his house. It was fairly well known in Broctun that Pybba’s only daughter, Tette, had always fancied Landa but she had never been able to catch his eye. The girl was practical, good-natured and modest, but rather plain in looks and seemed fated to remain a spinster for the rest of her days.
Pybba and his family were local millers and, while he and his sons generally concentrated on important things like grinding stones and the price of grain, Tette used to spend hours watching the mill race, staring into the rushing water, lost in her innermost thoughts. If Filica had been watching, she might have seen a small gleam in Tette’s eye as she busied herself clearing away the dinner things.
Some weeks later, when Filica went down to visit Landa again, she was astonished to see as she approached that both he and Tette appeared to be splashing about in the river more or less where Landa had tried to make his crossing point. They were both wet and very muddy but clearly happy in each other’s company as they worked away, digging out the banks and carrying more stones to drop in the water as the stream grew wider.
They stopped for a rest and a chat with Filica, and gradually the story came out. Landa had been in despair over his ford until one day Tette had come to see him with an idea. She thought that if the stream were widened at the point where Landa had made it shallower, this would compensate for the rapids effect and the flow would be slowed to a rate which would allow waders to at least keep their footing. With renewed hope, Landa attacked the task, and Tette joined in whenever she could get away from her duties at the mill. The idea proved good, the ford was a great success, Landa proposed to Tette, and Filica was delighted to officiate at their wedding, at which a bemused Pybba expressed his complete happiness and just as complete lack of comprehension.
It was several years and children later that Tette confessed to Filica that she had had a back-up plan. Before she was married, she had visited a well-known Druid one day at nearby Little Fern-clad Hill. The Druid told her that regrettably he was all out of love potions, but if she was really set on capturing the love of her life, he would help in another way. He gave Tette an ivy leaf over which he had muttered a few words, telling her to hide it inside her bodice and, when she next came near the object of her affection, she should recite the following :
Ivy, ivy, I love you
In my bosom I put you
The next young man who speaks to me
My future husband he will be !
The Druid warned that it was, of course, important that both of them were not in a crowd or at a party at the time, but Tette gratefully hastened away, confident that since Landa lived on his own and his house was well away from the others, there would be no mistake. And indeed there wasn’t.
Officially, Filica had to register strong disapproval at the old pagan superstition, but she forgave them all anyway. Subsequently, in her less guarded moments, she was sometimes heard to observe that indeed there were more things in heaven and earth...
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SOUTHROP
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Saethrith and her younger half-sisters, Ethelburga, Sexburga and Withburga, were daughters of King Anna of the East Angles. The girls all became nuns in one of the best finishing schools of the day at Faremoutier-en-Brie in France, this being the only choice of career for young women other than marrying a virtual stranger as part of some political arrangement that their fathers were always devising in those times of constantly shifting alliances.
In writing about her much later, the Venerable Bede said that Saethrith never left Faremoutier, ending her days there sometime in the late seventh century, and in this he was right, but there was more to the story than he realised.
In her youth, Saethrith’s sister Ethelburga, who eventually became Abbess of Barking, had a secret love. Before taking the veil and while at her father’s court, she fell for a handsome young Welsh falconer named Owin who was coaching Anna’s hunt servants in what is now Essex . No-one in East Anglia had an inkling of the affair, and when Owin went back to South Wales and Ethelburga went off to Faremoutier, it seemed that would be the end of things.
Not so. The lovers found a way of meeting secretly in a remote part of Gloucestershire, a risky business for both of them, since, if they had been discovered, Ethelburga’s father’s wrath would likely have been spectacular. The tryst was facilitated by an old and close friend of Ethelburga, none other than Filica of Broctun, a Mercian village close to the border.
Ethelburga knew that, once she was in Faremoutier and had taken her vows, she would be a virtual prisoner there for years to come. Her elder sister Saethrith, however, had already achieved some seniority and in consequence had more freedom to travel. Ethelburga and Owin contrived a scheme whereby she would slip away from the nunnery, pretending to be Saethrith on one of her occasional missionary trips to Southwest England and the Welsh borders. The sisters looked very alike, and from a distance the deception was near perfect.
At first, Filica strongly disapproved, but her fondness for her friend and her love of a good (and, as she saw it at the time, harmless) conspiracy meant that she was soon persuaded to collaborate in the plot. She knew of an old shepherd’s bothy a mile or so outside her own village, secluded and well-hidden from the highway, where Ethelburga and her swain could meet in safety for a few hours at a time. She had it refurbished and made comfortable with the help of a trusted circle of local craftsmen.
There was, alas, little future in the affair, but fate dealt the lovers an even crueller hand than could be expected. During one of the periodic surges in border fighting between the Hwicce people from the area to the north known nowadays as Wychwood, and the West Saxons coming up from the Wiltshire plains, Owin was caught by the marauding men of Wessex as he tried to go around the scene of the fighting on his way to meet Ethelburga; he was charged with being a Mercian spy and summarily executed.
Ethelburga was distraught. She stopped bothering to hide herself away in the spot which today bears her assumed – her sister’s – name, Southrop, and the sound of her weeping and wailing could be heard from a distance. Filica was at her wits’ end trying to save her friend from discovery but managed to put the word about that Saethrith, during one of her visits to fellow members of her order in Wales, had caught the fever, was delirious and had to be quarantined. Eventually, heavily sedated, Ethelburga-Saethrith was smuggled out of the country and safely back to her sisters in France . The real Saethrith was outraged when Filica told her the whole sorry tale, but nevertheless was blessed with much compassion and understanding. It remained a secret between the two until many, many years later, when some diaries kept by St Filica, as she became, were discovered near her own adopted village in West Oxfordshire .
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| KELMSCOT
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Kenelm (the original Anglo-Saxon spelling was Cenhelm) was a Mercian prince, the son of Coenwulf, who reigned from AD 796 to 821. When his father died, Kenelm was only seven years old, but he himself died in mysterious circumstances very soon afterwards.
His sister, Quenreda, who was Abbess of Minster at the time, had something of a shady reputation for running her abbey in a rather non-kosher way: there were stories of blasphemy, satanic rites and regular orgies. God-fearing pilgrims avoided the place, but it seems that Coenwulf had been prepared to turn a blind eye to the goings-on at Minster provided they didn’t appear threatening to him either personally or politically.
Quenreda resented and hated her younger brother because he stood in the way of her succession to the throne of Mercia, and it was whispered that she herself was responsible for the boy’s death: a hired assassin is said to have posed as a new tutor at Kenelm’s school near Halesowen, where amongst his references was found a letter of recommendation from Quenreda to the Principal.
However, Quenreda reaped a just and terrible reward for her crime of fratricide.
The evil deed apparently came to light when a white dove dropped a note describing the murder, written in Anglo-Saxon, onto the high altar of St Peter’s in Rome , where it was found and translated by some English tourists who happened to be passing through. The authorities immediately called for retribution, but before a posse could get back to England to arrest and arraign Quenreda, another form of justice intervened.
While she was working on a bit of black magic to be used at one of her infamous parties, and concentrating on the difficult task of reciting a psalm backwards, her eyes fell out. Alternately wailing and cursing, Quenreda ran hither and thither in a panic, tripped over her cat, and fell headlong into the carp pond, where she drowned. Her body was never recovered: the nuns were too afraid to go near the pond for years afterwards, and when the pond was eventually drained two centuries later, all that could be found was a ring she was known to have been wearing at the time of her disappearance.
Kenelm’s body was buried at Winchcombe alongside his father, whose favourite weekend retreat had been a secluded house near what is now Lechlade-on-Thames. The site was later renamed Kenelm’s Cot in memory of the unfortunate innocent, but it is better known today as Kelmscot, where the manor, later patronized by the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement, is sometimes said to be haunted by the ghost of a young boy playing hide-and-seek with his unseen schoolfriends. |
| KENCOT
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It is sometimes forgotten how close Filkins and Broughton Poggs are to the Welsh border, which for centuries has been the natural barrier of the River Severn . Gloucester is only a day’s gallop away. First the Romans and then successive waves of invaders from Northern Europe glared at Cadwaldr and his Celts across the river but it was not until much later that Wales was theoretically conquered and had English castles with adjoining chariot parks built all over it. The Welsh, whilst resisting military bullying from the east with all their might, nevertheless welcomed the hearts and minds approach represented by peaceful Christian missionaries, and took to singing hymns with great gusto, a tradition which has persevered to this day.
Brychan, the Welsh patriarch, had several children who themselves became missionaries in South Wales and Cornwall in the seventh century. One of his daughters, Keyne, was exceedingly beautiful but, being very devout, she refused all offers of marriage. One day, to escape the unwelcome attentions of a crowd of would-be suitors in her home town of Llangeinor, Keyne crossed the Severn into England and went to visit her friend Filica in Broctun. The two had met at university in Canterbury and kept in touch after they graduated, and Keyne had heard much about Filica’s reputation for combining down-to-earth practicalness with religious sincerity.
Filica gave Keyne welcome and lodging, and, by all accounts, the people of Filica’s village took quite a liking to the rather quiet and solemn young Welsh woman who had arrived in their midst.
Keyne became determined to stay in England and lead the life of a solitary, and Filica’s people helped her to build a small cottage a mile or so away from Broctun where she lived for a number of years in great piety. Pilgrims from Wales and the South West would go out of their way to visit her and seek inspiration from her serenity and devoutness.
She only once left her cottage for any length of time, and that was when she was persuaded by some relatives in Cornwall to travel down to a place near Liskeard to dedicate a new well.
Filica and Keyne saw each other regularly and remained close in spite of the fact that Keyne disapproved of Filica’s roistering lifestyle and always refused to join in the occasionally hectic socializing that was the custom in pre-television Middle England.
After her father’s death, Keyne returned to Wales to adjudicate in a dispute over the succession but never came back. Her eventual fate remains a mystery to this day.
Keyne’s cottage became a sort of shrine and a small village grew up around it to accommodate the resident gardeners and caterers that were needed to maintain the cottage and deal with the crowds who came to the area on not one but two feast days dedicated to St Keyne each year. Over the years, the name of this settlement became shortened to “Kencott”, and even today, fourteen centuries later, it regularly opens its gates and gardens and serves tea to all comers in memory of the saint. |
| STANTON HARCOURT
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A daughter of Penda, who became King of Mercia , Edburga is known as Edburga of Bicester to distinguish her from several other Edburgas (viz. Minster, Repton, Winchester , etc.), who lived in England between the seventh and tenth centuries.
Although Edburga of Bicester is thus identified, her relationship with that town is somewhat vague, the only known connection being that her relics were translated there sometime after 1182, but the splendid base of her shrine is to be found in the church at Stanton Harcourt. Edburga was actually a nun at Aylesbury between AD 620 and 650, and her home was in Adderbury, some thirty miles away.
Edburga of Bicester was not the world’s most popular person in early seventh century Middle England. She was said to be extremely severe and uncompromising in her attitude to sinners, which meant just about everybody.
Inevitably, therefore, she and St Filica, who enjoyed a laugh and a drink the same as the next man, did not get on especially well. The professional relationship was businesslike enough: people noticed that it was marked by a kind of unspoken mutual respect, but on a personal level the best that could be said is that it was uneasy.
The story behind Edburga’s apparent coolness is probably predictable. It is a tale of unrequited love.
Edburga had enjoyed a normal happy, upwardly-mobile, middle-class childhood, laughing and playing with schoolfriends in the fields and water meadows near her home in north Oxfordshire. When still only a teenager, however, she fell deeply in love with a man several years older than her named Berenwald, who was training for the priesthood. Her parents discovered the illicit liaison and furiously denounced him to the Bishop, who promptly packed the lovelorn cleric off to a lonely hermitage on Lundy Island , where he died. A heartbroken Edburga was sent to the nunnery at Aylesbury and kept in conditions of virtual imprisonment until she was considered ready to take her vows, by which time she had become cold, hard and bitter towards the world in general.
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On one occasion when she and Filica had met to talk over matters of mutual ecclesiastical interest, they got to discussing the case of a young girl in Eynsham whose life, as it turned out, bore remarkable similarities to Edburga’s own experience. As they talked, Filica noticed a tear welling up in Edburga’s eye and gently asked what was the matter.
Years of pent-up emotion poured out, and Filica listened in silence to the whole sad story. She made sympathetic noises at the end of it, but then Edburga recovered her composure. She seemed angry at her own weakness in revealing her innermost thoughts to a virtual stranger, and made Filica swear never to tell a living soul a word of what she had heard.
Filica swore, and the subject was closed. Filica kept her word and never told a living soul. The unhappy Edburga wrote of the encounter with Filica in her private diary, which was not discovered until many years after both saints had marched into immortality. |
| CHARLBURY
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Dimma, sometimes spelt Diuma, was of Irish origin and was one of four delegates sent by Finan, the bishop of Lindisfarne, to attend a conference in London about AD 652. Of the others only their names – Cedd, Betti and Adda – are known.
At the Great Conference in London Dimma met up with St Filica, who was giving a presentation on her experiences with the Mercians and Middle Angles in that part of England between the Roman towns of Corinium and Lactodurum where she had dedicated her life’s work.
Dimma was fascinated by Filica’s account of how she had avoided head-on conflict with the always suspicious and mistrustful Druids by working with them to show the people how their ancient customs of dancing round Maypoles and Mulberry Bushes were not incompatible with her beliefs, even if she did find their earthy symbolisms took a little getting used to.
After the conference, Dimma sought out St Filica and persuaded her to take her on as an apprentice, provided Bishop Finan agreed. Filica had no difficulty with the decision, as she was already overworked to the point of needing an assistant, and Dimma seemed a bright young thing with a robust sense of humour – a girl after her own heart, as it were.
Finan gave his consent – even as far north as Northumbria he had heard of Filica’s work – and Dimma in due course came to live in Charlbury, a village some ten miles or so to the north of Broctun, where Filica lived.
Dimma was of a vigorous and sporting inclination and she soon found her own way to the people’s hearts by organizing a festival of sport which became known as the Cotswold Games *. The events prescribed in Dimma’s original rules included cudgelling, wrestling, skittles and football, and later on horse-racing was added. It is not clear whether there were events for women at any of these fairly strenuous sports, but had there been it seems likely that both Filica and Dimma would have entered with enthusiasm.
Another legacy which St Dimma gave to the village of Charlbury was a strong theatrical tradition. Nearby Chipping Norton, then called simply North Tun, was big enough to attract strolling players, mummers and troubadours, who scratched a living by touring the markets and local feast days, but Charlbury was too small and too poor to be on the main circuit. Unable to persuade the professionals to come to her village and perform, Dimma started what must have been England ’s first amateur dramatic society, whose performance of Beowulf was subsequently talked about in hushed tones round firesides all over Middle England.
* Historical Note: The Games died out during the Wars of the Roses but were revived in 1605 and held on Dover ’s Hill near Chipping Camden until 1851. |
| BAMPTON
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St Frideswide, as everyone knows, is the patron saint of Oxford, and although the present church dedicated to her name is some way from the city centre down the Botley Road, she was very much involved in city affairs. It is less widely known that she also had strong connections with the area further to the west of Oxford , notably in Bampton,
St Filica was getting on in years and did not get out as much as she used to by the time Frideswide was born in the latter part of the seventh century AD.
By this time, West Oxfordshire had fallen again under Mercian dominance and was ruled by a satrap called Dida of Eynsham. His daughter, Frideswide, whilst still quite young, was put in charge of a nunnery which stood on the site of what is now Christ Church in Oxford .
The historian William of Malmesbury tells how Ethelbald of Mercia took a fancy to Frideswide and she was forced to flee from Oxford , taking refuge in the minster church endowed by her father at Bampton.
Filica heard of Frideswide’s plight and persuaded the men of her own village to round up as many warriors as they could and go over to Bampton to help protect the fugitive. There had never been much love lost between the mainly urban Mercians and the countryside-based West Oxonians ever since the Battle of Broadwell Brook, at which the Mercians had been soundly thrashed and their leader, Tilt the Unsteady, terminated.
When he got wind of where she had gone, Ethelbald pursued Frideswide, but met with a serious accident on the way: his horse galloped under a low overhanging tree branch which Ethelbald did not see in time to duck. He was carried, grievously hurt and blinded into Bampton church, where Frideswide took pity on him, bandaged his eyes and arranged nursing care for him until he recovered sufficiently to return to his home in Coventry.
The peaceable people of Bampton were quite glad to see the back of him, and, of course, the large squadron of heavies from the Broctun area who had been hanging around since shortly after Frideswide’s arrival, exchanging dark looks with Ethelbald’s bodyguard and occasionally coming to blows with them after an evening’s drinking in the many local inns in and around Bampton.
Bampton had always been famous for the quality and inventiveness of its folk dancing, which in those days was a largely male pastime based on traditional war dances. To celebrate the departure of Ethelbald and all the other strangers in town, the local bard, a gifted musician and choreographer named Maurice, composed a special dance routine which involved much banging of cudgels together to symbolize a battle, and the waving of white flags to signify surrender. Filica was invited to its premiere performance and was apparently so impressed that she resolved to introduce Maurice’s dances to her own part of the country (now known as Filkins) as soon as she returned to it.
The rest, as they say, is history.
* Historical Note: Named after St Maurice , the principal officer of the Theban Legion in AD 287, which, although recruited in Africa , consisted mainly of Christians. |
| LECHLADE
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Towards the latter end of the Dark Ages, a monk was sent to the British Isles to evangelise the reaches of the river Thames. Accordingly he landed at the mouth of the river, and proceeded to make his way westwards. Sadly he did not speak much of the local language, and the Bibles he had been given to distribute to the local inhabitants were written in Flemish which no one could understand, so he had very little success in his enterprise.
He progressed slowly up river, passing through Londinium and what is now known as Reading , until he reached the Oxen Ford. This settlement was ruled over by one Mary the Unhappy, whose name comes down to us today as ‘Mary Maudlin.’ Mary the Unhappy did not want any competition from another — and a foreigner at that — and sent our monk packing. So he continued his journey.
It is often felt that missionary priests travelled very lightly, with nothing in the way of luggage with them, in accordance with Jesus’ instructions to his disciples, ‘Take nothing for the journey beyond a stick: no bread, no pack, no money’ . . (Mark 6, 8). Nothing could be further from the case. There would have been few — if any — hostelries at which he could have found lodging or shelter, so would have had to take all means of survival with him, such as fishing tackle, as well as some form of tentage. And in addition he still had his Flemish Bibles which added considerably to the weight he had to carry.
By the time he reached the settlement at the junction of the river and the track leading from the West Country to the Midlands he had had enough, and, dumping his load on the ground, he exclaimed in frustration, “Doch! Dieses Lecht zu lade wird!” — or the equivalent in mediaeval German — which, very loosely translated means, “I’m not carrying this lot a step further!’ And there he stayed.
Lecht is one word for load or baggage, and lade means heavy, so the place where the monk finally came to stop has been known as ‘Heavy Baggage’ ever since.
W Glazebrook, Perth , Scotland |
ALVESCOT
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St Alphege was originally a career cleric who rose to the top of his profession only to discover that dreams can sometimes turn into nightmares.
He was born into a privileged family of minor nobility in the Bath area in the latter part of the tenth century, but whilst quite a young man he decided to join the church. He retreated to a monastery in Gloucestershire, where he stayed quietly for a number of years before moving to Glastonbury, where he became Prior.
It was while he was at Glastonbury that he caught the eye of Dunstan, primate of all England, who appointed him Bishop of Winchester in the year 984. On the death of Archbishop Aelfric in 1005, Alphege became Archbishop of Canterbury.
At this time, England was threatened with fresh turmoil. After centuries of strife and invasions from successive waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, it was just beginning to look as though some sort of multi-cultural calm might prevail when the Danes and sundry other Norsemen renewed their efforts to chip away at the uneasy peace that Alfred the Great had achieved.
For someone who might have been thought to have led a fairly sheltered existence, Archbishop Alphege turned out to be remarkably aware and forward thinking in his knowledge of political and military affairs. He attended the Council of Enham, for example, where he is said to have inspired everyone with his ideas for organising a national defence against the marauding Vikings.
In 1011, however, the Danes, aided by the traitorous Alpmar, Abbot of St Augustines, finally captured Canterbury. With the city in their hands, they committed every kind of cruelty and atrocity, eventually plundering and setting fire to the cathedral itself. Alphege was taken prisoner and held captive at Greenwich for several months.
His captors hoped for a ransom, but Alphege steadfastly refused to allow his people to be burdened with the price of his freedom. One night, the Vikings got exceedingly drunk and started to beat Alphege with bones and stones. Near death, the poor man was finally put out of his misery by a Dane who despatched him with a blow from his battleaxe.
For several days his body lay where it had fallen, the frustrated warriors refusing to allow him to be taken away and given a Christian burial.
However, one of their number happened to pick up a wooden spear handle which had been covered in Alphege’s blood and it suddenly grew green again and burst into blossom. The shaken Vikings immediately released the body to Bishop Ednoth of Dorchester, who carried it away for burial in St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Some time later, King Canute, persuaded by his Christian wife Emma to try to make amends for his countrymen’s crimes, had Alphege’s body moved and reinterred with great dignity in Canterbury.
St Alphege was widely and immediately regarded as a martyr and his canonisation was almost a formality. For many years afterwards, pilgrims flocked to whatever place he had been associated with, especially in his earlier priesthood career in the foothills of the Cotswolds. His memory is perpetuated in a few church dedications, but most notably by the village of Alvescot, a small village not far from the Thames upstream from Dorchester and Oxford, a part of the country which Alphege had loved. |
| BURFORD
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THE LOST LEVELLER
In early May 1649, the English Civil War had ended, but, although there were still pockets of Royalist sympathy here and there, particularly in parts of Gloucestershire, one of Oliver Cromwell’s more pressing problems was the Levellers.
Discontent had been widespread in the New Model Army for several years: the whole business of King versus Parliament (1) had left the people confused and anxious about how they were to be governed, and many of the soldiers on whom Parliament depended for their authority had not been paid for a long time. Feelings in the Army, stirred up by leading Leveller agitators and pamphleteers like William Thompson and John Lilburne, ran strong.
Cromwell and Fairfax had already reluctantly agreed to institute Army Councils and to meet with representatives of the loose alliance of malcontents and protesters that made up the Leveller movement to discuss their grievances. But at the time Cromwell was particularly concerned to maintain discipline in the army in order to pursue his controversial policies in Ireland.
Things came to a head at Burford on May 17th.
The thousand men of Colonel Scroop’s Regiment of Horse, who had been lying at Salisbury, were told that they must either go to Ireland or be discharged without arrears of pay. Incensed, they sent delegates to Commissary General Ireton demanding that they be heard at a Council. Before they could receive a reply, though, their leaders received news that Colonel Harrison’s Regiment at Abingdon was similarly disaffected, and it was decided that they would try to link up with them and march together to Banbury, where it seemed that the Levellers were gathering in some force.
By May 12th , led only by some junior non-commissioned officers who included one Cornet Henry Denne, they had reached Wantage, where Colonel Scroop himself, accompanied by some officers under direct orders from Cromwell, caught up with them. Scroop was, however, unable to dissuade the mistrustful mutineers from their purpose, and they pressed on to join up with two troops of Harrison’s Horse, crossing the Thames at Sansom’s Ford (2) in order to avoid about a hundred of General Fairfax’s men who held Newbridge.
They decided to spend the night at Burford, billeting in the town and in the surrounding hamlets, which had always been strongly Parliamentarian, and where they thought they would be safe.
During the night, though, Cromwell himself, after a forced march from the other side of Oxford, arrived with two thousand loyal Dragoons. They immediately rounded up as many of the tired and befuddled Levellers as they could find, imprisoning 340 of them in the Church at Burford.
Cromwell – “Old Noll” – harangued them at length, hinting at redress for their grievances if they repented and returned to duty, but not all were convinced. Veiled threats of “decimation” – one man in every ten to be executed – also had little effect on the men’s sullen and desperate mood.
Eventually, four of them were singled out as ringleaders: Cornet Denne, Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins and Private Church.
They were taken out to be shot, one by one, in Burford Churchyard. Three of them, Thompson, Perkins and Church, were executed immediately and were buried nearby (3).
But Cornet Denne, the last, was strangely reprieved at the very last moment. One of Cromwell’s aides, a Major White, a man widely disliked and rumoured to actually be Cromwell’s principal spymaster, intervened with the Dragoons and whisked Denne away from the churchyard in a closed and darkened coach.
The story quickly spread that Denne had come to an arrangement with his captors and would-be executioners. It was known that he had family connections in a place called Broughton-cum-Filkins, a few miles south of Burford, and it was sometimes suspected that some of his kin were, in fact, active Royalist sympathisers who were continuing to plot against Parliament even though their cause, with the King dead and gone, seemed lost.
To save his own life, it was said, Denne had betrayed his family, saying that they were hiding two of Prince Rupert’s former companions, who had prices on their heads, in the cellars of a “large house” in Filkins, which he would not name but offered to lead his captors to if they subsequently allowed him his liberty.
According to one contemporary account, White ordered nine of the Dragoons (4) under a trusted officer to take Denne to find and arrest the fugitives, and take them directly to Oxford.
But it seems that word of the infamous deal travelled faster than a party of Heavy Dragoons and a coach could move through the thickly wooded countryside. They arrived in Filkins late on the evening of May 18th. Although it was dark, almost the entire village had come out of their houses, carrying torches, to line the street, standing in grim and total silence as they watched the soldiers, accompanied by a frightened-looking but still defiant Denne, beat down the door of one of the houses and rush inside.
What happened inside the house remains a mystery, for none of them came back out, not Denne, not the troopers, nor their intended quarry. No villager dared go near, and it was days before a search party came out from Burford, sent by White who by then had realised that his men and their prisoners had not reached Oxford.
The house was searched from top to bottom but it was quite empty. There were no signs of violence, apart from the splintered front door, and no sign either of the family who had lived there. The strangest thing was, though, that the large dining table in the main hall was set for eleven places at dinner – almost as if Leveller Henry Denne, the Dragoon officer and nine troopers had been expected as guests.
It is said that on May 18th every year, if you stand quietly in the road in Broughton Poggs or Filkins at midnight and listen, you can hear the faint sounds of a troop of cavalry, the horses’ hooves, the jingling of harness, the clatter of sabres and the muttered oaths of approaching soldiers.
But you cannot hear them departing.
[1] King Charles had been tried and executed in London the previous January
(2) To the west, i.e. upstream of Newbridge. Tadpole Bridge had not yet been built.
(3)The holes made in the wall by the firing squad’s musket balls are still to be seen. The Levellers are commemorated by a plaque set in the wall and remembered each year on May 17th – Levellers Day – in Burford.
[4] This regiment was later renamed the 13th Dragoons, otherwise known as the Green Dragoons from the colour of their badges and helmet facings. In more modern times they became the 13th Hussars. |
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The archivist, Mike Clark, may be contacted at almonclark@aol.com
Background images © Courtney Davis |
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