About 40 members attended the meeting of the Romsley and Hunnington History Society on Tuesday 28th April when Dr. Michael Hall gave a talk on What the Court Rolls Tell Us.
Romsley is fortunate in having a set of Court Rolls from about 1279-1643. They record property transactions and the everyday misdemeanours of the villagers. These have become a rich source of local history. For some time a small group of members have been indexing them. So far they have filled in 3,250 cards recording people, places, property transactions and fines. Dr. Hall has been sorting through all this information and gave a fascinating talk, illustrated with wonderful graphics, on life in Romsley in the 15th century.
The Courts met on a regular basis and imposed fines ranging from 2d to 20 shillings (or £1.00). The villagers were fined for not clearing out their ditches (2d), damaging the highway, stealing wood to make a sledge (2d), and over burdening the common land with their animals. Woe betide you if, like John Rede in 1400, you allowed your ducks to trample the grass in the Churchyard and dirty the water in the Holy Well, when the fine was 6/8d. A huge sum, when the rate for a days work was just 2d!
The fine for assault was 6d and if you drew blood 18d, except of course unless you were the chaplain, then assault and drawing blood would only cost 6d. It paid to know people in high places, as all the fines went to the Abbey anyway! One family, the Eggeoks, managed to avoid paying their fine of 2d for not clearing their ditches, from 1406 to 1470 when the fine was eventually paid. Perhaps they had other things on their minds. As Mike Hall pointed out, these everyday events in the little backwater of Romsley were nothing compared to the turmoil that the rest of England was experiencing with the Wars of the Roses and the rise and fall of many kings, in the same period.
Speculation forms the basis of a lot of history and there is still a lot of work to do on the Court Rolls. There is the intriguing task of matching people to places and connecting families, possibly with families who are living in Romsley today. Our thanks go to Dr. Hall for showing us that the Court Rolls have made our local history very real.
Pat Evans