Welcome to ‘Medieval Faversham’ A Free Heritage Hub Pop-Up Exhibition
We hope you will feel inspired to visit the many heritage sites in and around
Faversham – the Market Town of Kings
London, British Library, Maps K Top 16.54.a
The Faversham Magna Carta: Law Liberty and Legacy
‘For
the barons of the port of Faversham’
Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was originally issued by King John on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede. The charter established that the king was subject to English law and it is widely believed that Magna Carta was a foundation for democracy and liberty. The charter was reissued on multiple occasions throughout the thirteenth century including 1216, 1217, and 1225. The 1225 issue became the definitive version and was later reissued in 1297 and in 1300 by Edward I. The Faversham Magna Carta is one of just seven surviving copies of this last issue, which is why it bears Edward’s great seal and it was among the last to be drawn up by the royal chancery, making it even more significant. At the foot of the document you can see the charter was intended for ‘the Barons of the Port of Faversham’ and it was issued on 28th March 1300.
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Faversham Abbey’s Book of the Dead
This beautiful book is the key to the spiritual culture of Faversham Abbey. The Abbey’s Martyrology is a book that lists the death days of all the saints and martyrs and how they died. They were remembered in the prayers of the monks on each anniversary of their death. These saints were not only heroes and heroines of persecution, they were imbued with the Holy Spirit. To their stories of miracles, piety, and bravery were added a calendar with the names of local people who had supported the Abbey, investing their names with blessings simply by being written in the same book as the saints and commemorated with them each year. The page above reveals how the Abbey remembered its first Abbot Clarembald who was appointed by Archbishop Theobald in 1152. His name is in red and he is called ‘blessed’. This page also records the deaths of the Abbey’s founders, King Stephen and Queen Matilda and their generous bequests to the Abbey, where they were once buried. On the next page the book records the deaths of Faversham Abbey abbots and monks with the names of local people added in the margins. Last entry dated 1557: m.vc.lvij
The final folio has a note that the last four members of the Faversham Abbey community were housed at Westminster monastery in 1557 after it was re-founded by Queen Mary I. This Faversham Abbey book shows the beginning and the end of the Abbey and how Stephen and Matilda enjoyed over five hundred years of monastic remembrance of their generosity.
Back flyleaf re-using earlier pages with added Ave Maria.
Made between 1350 and 1400, this Martyrology is now Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Jones 9. It is in excellent condition with original medieval covers and leather tabs. Its original flyleaves, used to protect the book, were re-used from a twelfth-century liturgy, a communal prayer book, with the Ave Maria added, so this treasured book of prayers for the dead is also bound with prayers. DEH
The Faversham Custumal
‘Here begin the uses and customs of the town of Faversham . . .’
A ‘Custumal’ is a written account of the customs of a town, manor, or a community, such as a monastery. The Faversham Custumal was a very important part of a town’s archive records and it was kept in a large chest with other town documents. The Custumal contained the town’s regulations and procedures, covering how Faversham was governed by those in authority. Civic custumals often include by-laws and copies of documents relating to the town such as charters, records about important decisions concerning the town, and material about how it should be run. Today, only one copy of the Faversham Custumal still exists and it is in a small parchment book. A single writer produced the longest section of the book, written between about 1382 and about 1405, which contains the Custumal. Further material, including copies of agreements between Dover and Faversham, was added by perhaps nine other writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The men who wrote this book were well educated, maybe having trained as royal clerks, and this is probably a reflection of Faversham’s close links to London. Apart from the Latin heading, the Faversham Custumal is written in French and begins by describing how the town officials shall be chosen. It then outlines their duties in terms of law and order, good government, and includes copies of types of document that could provide useful examples for later clerks. Within the Custumal is a ‘perambulation’ – a description of the boundaries of Faversham that could be walked by the town officials.
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Faversham and the Cinque Ports
This is the Corporate Seal of Faversham from the reign of Edward I (12721307). It is similar in design to other Cinque Port seals, with its ship and royal lions on the obverse. The origins of the Cinque Ports may pre-date the Norman Conquest. The five towns or Head Ports were Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings. Together they linked up to offer defence along England’s southern coast, providing the king with 57 ships in total, crewed by 1197 men and 57 boys, for a set number of days each year, receiving in return valuable tax and trade privileges, including ‘den and strand’ at Yarmouth – the right to dry their fishing nets on shore. To aid the Head Ports, other ports provided ships and crews as required. Faversham was one of three ports or members linked to Dover. Thus, Faversham became a member of the Cinque Ports in 1229 when it was expected to provide 1 ship. It received the same privileges as its Head Port, as detailed in the General Charter of 1278. The king’s officer who acted as the head of the Cinque Ports was the Lord Warden and at first his court was held at Shepway, near Hythe. The Lord Warden helped Faversham in a dispute with the local abbot during Edward I’s reign and was given a gift of fish. Later Lord Wardens also expected such gifts – 2,000 herring and 100 ‘grayling’ or salted fish – from the town each year. The last year the Cinque Ports were required to undertake naval service was 1596 and today Faversham’s role as a Cinque Port is purely ceremonial, but the mayor still attends the coronation. This is a legacy from medieval times of one of the Cinque Ports’ most jealously guarded privileges, the right to carry the canopy over the king at his coronation. From 1978 until her death in 2002, the Lord Warden was Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
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King Stephen and Queen Matilda Founders of Faversham Abbey FAVERSHAM ABBEY was founded in 1147-8 by King Stephen and his wife, Queen Matilda of Boulogne
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Designs for Statues of Stephen and Matilda for Westminster Palace, Illustrated London News, 1855. Faversham Abbey on Matthew Paris’s map, Chronica Maiora c. 1250 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi MS 26, fol. 1r).
The abbey was dedicated to St. Saviour and was initially home to a group of Cluniac monks, although in the thirteenth century it had become a Benedictine house. It is likely that Faversham was chosen as the site for a royal abbey as it occupied an important place along the River Swale, a major shipping route to the capital. The construction of Faversham Abbey began at a point in the civil war when Stephen and Matilda believed they had defeated the rival claimant to the English throne, Empress Matilda, and achieved peace. In 1148-9 Matilda of Boulogne spent some time living in nearby Canterbury at St. Augustine’s Abbey to help supervise the construction of the royal Abbey at Faversham. This silver penny, which shows Stephen and Matilda as joint rulers, dates from around this time. As originally intended, Faversham Abbey became a royal mausoleum and was the burial place of Queen Matilda in 1152, her son Eustace in 1153, and King Stephen in 1154. Yet it was also on the pilgrimage route from London, as this mid thirteenth-century map by Benedictine monk and chronicler Matthew Paris demonstrates. The Abbey played an important and controversial role in the town’s history for nearly four hundred years until it was dissolved during Henry VIII’s Reformation in 1538. Stephen’s tomb was stripped of its lead, and it is traditionally believed that his bones were cast into Faversham Creek together with those of his wife and son.
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The G r a v eney Boa t
The remains of a cargo boat from c. 950 were found in Graveney Marshes in September 1970 This beautiful oak sailing boat originally measured nearly fourteen metres long or forty-four feet; it seems to have been a cross-channel trading vessel and it is the only one of its kind to have been discovered. Perhaps even more exciting was the discovery that the boat carried hops. Hops are used for a variety of purposes, such as medicine, ropemaking, and dyeing, but are also an ingredient in beer and there are indications of their use in brewing in ninth and tenth century European sources, such as the monastic records at Corbie monastery in France, although there is far less evidence for Anglo-Saxon beer. The hops on board the Graveney boat may have been imported from Germany, like the millstones it also carried. The Graveney boat is a significant find that points to overseas contact and exchange, it is proof of a thriving maritime culture, fine shipbuilding skills, and international trading networks. The boat is now preserved in the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich. DEH
Faversham’s Moot Horn
Dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, Faversham’s moot horn is unusual because at one time it was encased in a leather cover. As the leather aged it affected the copper alloy horn underneath. In the sixteenth century it had to be repaired at least four times. As a group these metal, mostly bronze, moot horns from the Cinque Ports are an important collection. They vary in shape and size. There are also others in Kent, including Canterbury’s fourteenth-century horn, which is another one of the earliest in England. The moot horn was used to call the citizens together. For example, in medieval Faversham the custumal says that: the people there are to be summoned by one common horn called a Burghorn to be sounded at the crossroads of the town the day after Michaelmas, 30th September, and then all the people shall assemble at a place called Ildhalgren and there by common assent shall select three praiseworthy and trusted men sworn and approved for the office of mayor of the town.
Such official occasions were not the only time the moot horn was blown. During a dispute in 1301 between the mayor, the vicar and their followers, and St Augustine’s Abbey, which appointed the vicar at St Mary’s church, the townsmen responded to the sounding of the horn and a scuffle took place between the townsmen and the monks in the church and churchyard over the burial of a local citizen. SS
Henry VIII’s Charter
In 1546, a year before his death, King Henry VIII granted Faversham its Charter of Incorporation. The charter re-established the administrative structure of the town following the dissolution of Faversham Abbey. Faversham’s civic government comprised a mayor who was to be elected each year, eleven jurats and, initially, fifty-six freemen. The man appointed as the first mayor of Faversham after the charter was John Seath, who took his oath at Westminster before the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The charter laid down the procedures of appointing men to these positions, how they were to be replaced, and the rights they held. By this charter the town’s tenurial, jurisdictional and mercantile rights and privileges were renewed. Henry VIII also granted various other corporate privileges including a common seal, portmote (borough) court, a market three times a week and a fair in February and August. The king also allowed Faversham to create its own byelaws, a right enjoyed by many of the other Cinque Ports. The charter itself is written on parchment and measures an impressive 91x104 centimetres. The first line of the charter is beautifully illuminated with the initial ‘H’ featuring a depiction of an enthroned Henry VIII. The charter also has an illuminated top border of heraldic symbols, including a scarlet dragon.
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Faversham’s Chronicle
Medieval towns rarely produced chronicles, which means Faversham’s Chronicle is an important document in the town’s archive. It begins with the creation of the world and ends in 1382, the year a great earthquake shook the whole of England – a momentous event. As Faversham is a royal town, the writer compiled a list of English kings and the date of their respective coronations. He was also interested in their place of burial and for King Stephen this brought together national and local events. For the chronicler wrote that ‘in the year 1135 was the coronation of King Stephen at Westminster. This king in the 19th year of his reign was interred at Faversham.’ Military history similarly caught his attention, and as Faversham was a Cinque Port that helped to provide Ship Service for the Crown, he recorded victories relating to the Scottish wars – the defeat and capture of King David of Scotland at Durham in 1346; and military campaigns in France such as the Battle of Crecy in September 1346. This mix of international, national and local was also captured in his reference to the arrival of plague in England in 1348, as well as to further major outbreaks in 1361 and 1368.
Woodcut of a hurricane Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus
Moreover, this sense of awe and fear is also evident in his recording of weather events, such as ‘hailstones the size of eggs’ and ‘fiery dragons and evil spirits flying about in a whirlwind’ on St Lucy’s Feast in 1222. HK
Pilgrims, Poverty and Piety
St Mary’s Hospital on Watling Street at Ospringe gave overnight shelter to poor pilgrims. It was also called the ‘Maison Dieu’ or ‘House of God’ and was one of three hospitals in Kent on the main pilgrimage routes to St Thomas’ shrine, all dedicated to Our Lady, Christ’s mother, St Mary. The Maison Dieu at Ospringe was ideally suited for poor pilgrims before they travelled the last ten miles to Canterbury. The other hospitals were at Strood, near Rochester Bridge, and at Dover, and they were all founded in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries. Henry III was a major benefactor of the Ospringe hospital and royal patronage continued, for it was in Ospringe’s royal chamber that King John of France stayed in 1360.
Drawing of the Maison Dieu before its alteration in 1894. Archaeologia Cantiana XXX
Many ordinary people from Faversham and the surrounding area also supported the hospital. St Mary’s received numerous small grants of land and rent, including an annual rent of 3d from William Palmer of Faversham to pay for a candle in the hospital’s chapel. Chaucer mentioned Ospringe in his Canterbury Tales but his wealthy pilgrims stayed at local inns. In the Jubilee year of 1420 there was confusion about the papal indulgence pilgrims would receive. Master Lawrence Barry, the master at Faversham’s grammar school, fixed a note in English to the Ospringe hospital saying that pilgrims who truly confessed might receive the indulgence at any time throughout that year at St Thomas’ shrine.
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Faversham Church and Pilgrimage
The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket by four of King Henry II’s knights in 1170 inside Canterbury Cathedral is an infamous event in medieval history. In 1220, Becket’s body was moved from the Cathedral’s crypt to the Trinity chapel. The translation of Becket’s bones was commemorated by a jubilee celebration every 50 years and great swathes of pilgrims made the journey to Canterbury to visit Saint Thomas’ shrine. Whilst some pilgrims made the journey with purely religious motives, others travelled with the hope of a cure for their maladies or to seek pardon for their sins. The parish church of St Mary’s, Faversham, housed an altar of Saint Thomas in the north chancel aisle. Pilgrims often stopped off at the church to pay their devotions to Thomas at this altar before undertaking the final stretch of their journey to Canterbury. There was probably a wall painting of the saint’s martyrdom. A wall painting that does survive in St Thomas’s chapel features St John the Evangelist disguised as a pilgrim beggar, who was said to have received a gold ring from King Edward the Confessor as an act of charity. St John is shown carrying a pilgrim’s bag with a staff in his left hand. The painting is no longer visible but these Victorian drawings record the medieval pilgrimage scenes. HK
A Medieval Friar ’s Vision in St Mary ’s Church, Faversham
Italian seal matrix, Victoria and Albert Museum, ref 1201-1854
In 1222 a man called Aimone was praying before a cross in Faversham Church when he experienced a heavenly vision. In his vision Aimone saw a knotted cord, like the belt Franciscan friars wear, being lowered from heaven. Grasping the cord he was raised up to heaven and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The effect of his vision on Aimone was startling, he immediately joined the Franciscans – then a very new Order which had only arrived in England in 1221. By 1240 Aimone had risen to become the head of the English chapter of the Franciscans. On this seal of the Franciscan Order of Pisa, made in about 1350, you can see this is the story being told. The cord is being lowered from heaven to the friars. Their boat represents the Franciscan Order. The Faversham connection to this beautiful Italian seal matrix (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) was only discovered in 2015 by Professor Chiara Frugoni, an acclaimed Italian medievalist.
Gouache of Faversham Church by S. Hooper Godfrey, c. 1776. Drawn after the medieval church tower was demolished but before the new tower was constructed. National Trust, Smallhythe, Kent © National Trust / Andrew Fetherston
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John of Bridlington’s Prophecies in the Faversham Custumal
The Beauchamp/Beaufort Book of Hours, British Library, Royal MS 2 A XVIII, fols. 7v and 8r, fifteenth century
Prophecies from a saint? John of Bridlington was canonized in 1401. In this Book of Hours (a private prayer book), once owned by Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII, there is a magnificent illumination of the saint and a Latin/French poetic prayer to beseech his aid, beginning: ‘O Prior Brydlingtonie pie, Imitator caste vie, Representa nos messye.’ (‘O Holy Prior of Bridlington, follower of a chaste life, pray for us.’) This saint had a series of prophecies attached to his name and some appear in the Faversham Custumal.
The prophecies discuss animals and signs of the zodiac and seem very strange, almost dreamlike, like this rhyme: ‘Amodo de gallo taceo tauro tibi psallo’ which means ‘Now I am silent about the Cock; I sing to you, Bull.’ This does not seem to make much sense. However, ‘gallo’ refers to the French king Philip Valois (the coq d’or or golden cockerel is still the symbol of France), and ‘tauro’ or Taurus refers to King Edward III (perhaps we might imagine a British bulldog). This prophecy speaks of the victory of Edward III over the French at Crecy in 1346. At the top of this page of the Custumal, Edward III’s dynastic rights over France are explained, ‘Taurus cornutus, ex patris germine Brutus, Anglicus est natus, Gallus de matre creatus’ (The horned bull, [descended from] Brutus in his father’s line, born English, created French from his mother’). Further down the page, his victory over ‘Cancer’ is prophesied. ‘Cancer’ or crab refers to the King of Scotland and Rumbus (or turbot) to the King of Denmark, Scotland’s ally. John of Bridlington’s prophecies were considered to have been written before the events they describe and they were explained in an early fifteenth-century manuscript. However, scholars now think that the prophecies were written between 1362 and 1364 when these events had already taken place. They were written to praise King Edward III and to remind him of his regal and national duties to lead his people.
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The Beautiful Painted Column in Faversham Parish Church
Scenes from the octagonal painted pillar going from south to east, north, and west
Reading the images Pope Gregory the Great famously allowed images of saints and sacred events to be depicted in churches to aid the faith of those who could not access the Latin texts. This early fourteenth-century painted column in Faversham’s parish church is a rare survival of the Reformation when such images were routinely destroyed. The eight-sided column has three tiers of scenes: lower, central and topmost. The lower tier features scenes from the Annunciation when archangel Gabriel appears; the Visitation when Mary’s cousin Elizabeth hugs her and says the first Ave Maria prayer; and Epiphany when the Magi presented gifts to Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven, with the Christ child. The central scenes depict the Shepherds hearing the news; the Presentation, when the baby Jesus was taken to the temple; and Mary breastfeeding at the Nativity in the stable. The highest tier shows an angel with the three Marys at the tomb with its empty graveclothes draped across the sarcophagus; and the Crucifixion with Mary and John either side of the Cross.
Mary and Joseph in the stable with the Ox and Ass above.
However, the column format allows the viewer to see connections between the scenes not only horizontally but vertically and diagonally. For example, the standing shepherd in the centre looks not only to the angel giving him the glad tidings of the birth of Jesus but also to the angel at the empty tomb. On the west face of the pillar, Mary crowned as Mediatrix, Queen of Heaven, is enthroned with Christ when she receives the Magi, and this depiction is beneath the Nativity lying-in and the Crucifixion scene, so that Christ’s birth and death are on a single vertical side of the column.
The many references to Mary on the pillar arise because the church was dedicated to her. Among her many lights and images in the nave, the pillar was close to a light to Our Lady of Gesyn, that is the lying-in of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and this scene is on the important west face. The pillar is a medieval painted prayer to Christian love and to Marian devotion.
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Faversham and Tudor Gunpowder
Stonebridge Pond, photograph by David Anstiss, CC BY-SA 2.0
Tudor, Stuart, and later governments were all keen to produce gunpowder for it was essential for the state’s defence during the long military revolution. Faversham early became a key location for its manufacture; Thomas Gyll set up as a gunpowder-maker here before 1573. The reasons for the town’s success were both socio-economic and geographic and might be summed up as location, location, location.
Compressing gunpowder into cakes, Italian print, 1555, British Museum No. H, 5.76
Faversham’s merchants were able to develop the market for the town was already an important port for goods being shipped to London, including the Arsenal. This made it easy for merchants to bring in imported saltpetre, one of the three ingredients of gunpowder. Faversham’s streams were powerful enough to turn the watermills to manufacture gunpowder, for example at Stonebridge Pond; nearby Blean Woods supplied suitable timber for charcoal; while Tankerton near Whitstable manufactured sulphur (brimstone). Cornelius Stephenson of Whitstable is mentioned in a letter dated 1569 to William Cecil, chief adviser to Elizabeth I, as ‘having found out the making of brimstone’ using iron pyrites found on the beaches there.
Saltpeter, which contains potassium nitrate, remained a mysterious chemical although it was known to derive from soils rich in dung and urine. We might liken its importance to uranium today. Elizabeth I commissioned ‘saltpeter men’ to go round the country looking for suitable sources, which meant ransacking her people’s dovecotes and stables but did result in supplying nearly half the State’s requirements of what was later called this ‘inestimable treasure’. DEH
Rare Elizabethan gunpowder flask, c. 1580, wood and staghorn engraved with a classical scene. Victoria & Albert Museum M.950-1983
Treating saltpeter from the German Treatise on Ores & Assaying by Lazarus Ercker, 1574 http://echo.mpiwgberlin.mpg.de/home
Acknowledgements: Thank you for visiting The Centre for Kent History & Heritage Research Team at Canterbury Christ Church University is grateful for your visit and for the help and participation of the following people and organisations in the preparation of this exhibition on Medieval Faversham
Louise Bareham Professor Paul Binski Dr Justin Croft Martin Crowther Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt Duncan Harrington Peter Heath Dr Patricia Hyde†Cllr Nigel Kay Dr Brian Phelp Dr Patricia Reid Dr Patricia Stewart Peter Tann Geoffrey Wade
We hope you are inspired to visit heritage sites in and near Faversham; please see details on www.faversham.org. This exhibition is also online at www.canterbury.ac.uk/medieval-faversham Professor Louise Wilkinson, Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, Dr Diane Heath, Dr Harriet Kersey
Archaeologia Cantiana Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library Canterbury Christ Church University HEIF Fund Faversham Creek Trust Faversham Parish Church http://builttoinspire.org/tithe-map/ Faversham Society Archaeological Research Group Faversham Town Council Kent Archaeological Society Kent History Library Centre Maison Dieu, Ospringe Swale Borough Council British Library Bodleian Library, Oxford Corpus Christi College, Cambridge National Portrait Gallery Visionofbritain.org.uk