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Sir William Grevill of Arle Court died ‘the ix day of Marche the iiij [4th] yere of the reigne of Henry the viij [VIII]’. His memorial brass in Cheltenham parish church, now very much worn, shows him with the coif of the serjeant-at-law, a black patch worn on top of the wig; it is one of only four brasses in the county showing a judge. Beneath him are the figures of three sons. He and his wife are turned towards each other, and under her are eight daughters. The brass was originally in the chancel, but when Cecil T. Davis wrote The Monumental Brasses of Gloucestershire in 1899 it had been moved to the bottom of a step, where it was subjected to heavy wear. Now it is back in the chancel, but on the wall, having been reset in 1920. photogr a ph: c a r n egie, 2009
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Puckham and Broad Campden was to supply money for building the church at Llanthony; and the next year the money from the wool clip was to be used for building the cloister vault at Winchcombe. There are references to his manor of Dorne, and lands in Hanging Aston in Worcestershire, in Cheltenham, Alstone and Charlton, and to a burgage in Moreton. The manor of Overhampton (Great Hampton near Evesham) was to provide money to build a north aisle and tower in the church at Todenham near Lemington. His wife, Margery, was to enjoy a life interest in the manor of ‘Elmstone in Hardwicke’ (part of the lost township of Elmstone was in Uckington), and other lands in Gloucestershire. These lands were not necessarily all held outright: some may have been leases with time still to run. There was no mention in his will of burgages in Cheltenham, though the ‘mese’ or messuage occupied by John Atwood, nailer, was bequeathed to twelve most honest persons for ever for finding the ‘holy loaf’. This was a religious, rather than a charitable, donation. There was a custom that at the end of the parish mass, a loaf of bread was presented by one
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Elborough Cottage in Charlton Kings was a tenement in the manor of Ashley, and stood on a narrow croft on the south side of Cudnall Street, with 40 acres of land on the north side. Two or three cruck-framed bays are dated to the fifteenth century, one a ‘hall’ open to the roof (as confirmed by smoke-blackened timbers). A grand stone fireplace and chimney were inserted in the sixteenth century, and the service bay to the right extended and converted to a parlour lit by an oriel window. Three men with the surname Elborough in Charlton Kings were assessed on goods in 1522: John Elborough senior on £4, Thomas on £3 and John junior on £2; Alice Elborough, widow, owned a burgage and a quarter in Cheltenham borough in 1617. photogr aph: author, 2009
of the householders, blessed, cut up and distributed to the congregation as a substitute for the reception of holy communion; it was a solemn ritual, performed by each household in turn.53 Did William Grevill find the Cheltenham householders too poor to provide the loaf each Sunday? He must have been a devout and rather puritanical man, asking to be buried simply and without an ostentatious memorial, in the church wherever he should happen to die. He entrusted the abbot of Winchcombe with the rent of lands and house in Dorne and Hanging Aston for twenty years, to provide a priest to pray for him, and made large provision for prayers to be said for him, for his family, and for others, probably relatives, including John Arle with wife Alison and daughter Margaret. Nine abbots and no fewer than eighty poor men, given two pence each, were to say prayers in 35 named churches; Cheltenham, Swindon, Leckhampton, Charlton and Prestbury were named first in the list. Near-contemporary examples suggest that these were perhaps the places where he sold wool: John Fortey, a wool merchant of Northleach, asked in 1458 for prayers to be said in 120 churches, and William Midwinter, also of Northleach, whose will was proved in 1501, in 21 churches, while his wife, a year later, specified a more modest ten churches ‘where I have been most accustomed to buy wools’.54 A brass memorial to William Grevill was placed in front of the altar in Cheltenham church, showing him in his judge’s robes, his wife and their seven or eight daughters and three sons kneeling beneath. The brass survives, although very worn and moved from its original site, and is one of only four in Gloucestershire showing judge’s robes. Three daughters were living when William died: Alice, wife of Robert Wye; Eleanor, wife of Robert Vampage; and Margaret, wife of Sir Richard Lygon. He left his ‘books of law and other subjects’ to his three sons-in-law, ‘to the entent that they should have corage to lerne the better and to
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pray for my soule’. He also had numerous brothers, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews. His clothes at Arle he left to Robert Vampage, and his goods there were to be divided between his wife and two elder daughters. He also had a house at Lemington where his father had lived; clothes there went to Robert Wye and household stuff to his daughter Margaret, but she was given relatively few bequests because it appears that when she married Sir Richard Lygon of Madresfield Court near Malvern, Arle Court was her dowry. William Grevill’s wife, Margery, was still living at Arle Court in 1522, when she was the only one of the five Grevills listed in the military survey to be assessed on goods as well as land; her goods in Arle were valued at £40, a relatively large sum. She also had land in Cheltenham, Alstone, Lemington, Deerhurst and Deerhurst Walton, and Evington in The Leigh. After her death Sir Richard Lygon and his wife may have lived at Arle until his mother died, and the couple then presumably moved to Madresfield.55 Margery’s relation, Sir Edward Grevill, was also a major Gloucestershire landowner in 1522; his estates included Charlton Kings (£20), Charingworth (£26), Over Quinton (£12), Welford on Avon (£7 18s. 8d.) and Weston on Avon (£5 6s. 8d.).
T he Milit ar y Sur vey of 15 2 2 The Military Survey made in the summer of 1522 was an ambitious attempt by Henry VIII and his chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, to raise large sums of money and to recruit an army to renew war with France. Commissioners required township or parish constables to submit two lists: one to record who was the lord of each ‘town’ and who owned the land, with its value; and a second enumerating the taxable wealth of the inhabitants in ‘goods’, the able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60 years, and the military equipment that was available for use (whether ‘harness’, that is, suits of armour, or weapons). They were also to include the value of church benefices, and the income of hospitals, chantries and guilds. The Gloucestershire manuscript conflates the two lists, and those for the western half of the county are more informative than for the east.56 People were taxed on whichever source of wealth would yield most revenue to the king. Assessments were usually in round figures, such as £10 or £20, though some used the mark, the older unit which was two-thirds of a pound (13s. 4d.). Local returns show that constables followed a geographical order round the streets and districts. The method of compiling the lists was clearly not standardised. In Tewkesbury, for example, large numbers of names were entered with no assessment for land or goods, and these men were ‘able’ to serve in the army, but Cheltenham appeared to be short of able-bodied men because few names are entered without an assessment. Winchcombe’s list was notable for the eleven men noted as ‘a Scot’, obviously not expected to contribute to an English army. There were twelve sets of harness, or full suits of armour, in Cheltenham, 26 sets in Cirencester and 34 in Tewkesbury, but only four in Winchcombe. The variety of weapons reveals what early
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Numbers assessed in the Military Survey, 1522
Parish or tithing Cheltenham parish Cheltenham township Alstone Westal, Naunton and Sandford Arle Charlton Kings Leckhampton Prestbury Swindon Cirencester Tewkesbury parish Winchcombe parish
Assessed on lands, salaries Assessed only and stipends on ‘goods’
Total tax-payers
Nil assessments
40 25 8 4
162 95 26 24
3 3
14 10 1 2
14 6 3 20 5
3
41 14 29 8
14 47 17 49 13
1 3 1 15 1
23 76 20
67 112 87
90 188 107
6 111 71
122 70 18 20
2
‘Able’
14 113 106
sixteenth-century warfare might involve. Tewkesbury could offer bows and arrows, bills, axes, swords, and a ‘pollaxe’ used customarily to slaughter animals, but the Cheltenham constables did not record such everyday implements of husbandry or butchery. Cheltenham had more taxpayers than Cirencester, and the town considerably outweighed the rural townships. ‘Goods’ could be personal or commercial stock, and few Cheltenham inhabitants were wealthy in these terms; overall, 7 per cent were assessed with £50 or more in goods. The highest individual assessment among the four towns was that of Christopher Tolle of Cirencester, with £280 in goods, and Tewkesbury had more men than Cheltenham whose goods were valued at £50, though none was as wealthy as Tolle. Owners, rather than occupiers, were taxed on land – there were relatively few of these assessments – but those who occupied their own land may have been assessed only on their moveable goods, as were those holding land by lease or copy of court roll. Sir Edward Grevill was much the largest landowner in Charlton Kings, assessed at £20, and Henry Knyght in Leckhampton owned the same amount, while his assessment for goods, £200, was the largest in Cheltenham hundred. Margery Grevill in Arle, the widow of the wealthy judge William, had 53s. 4d., in land and £40 in goods. All other land valuations in Cheltenham are below £10, most substantially so. There were many more small landowners here than in either Tewkesbury or Cirencester. The role of the Church as a landowner stands out. Both Syon abbey and Cirencester
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Assessments for goods in the Military Survey, 1522 Parish or tithing
£2–£9
£10–£49
£50–£99
Cheltenham parish Cheltenham township Alstone Arle Westal, Naunton and Sandford Charlton Kings Leckhampton Prestbury Swindon
43 30 8 2 4 28 8 24 7
23 13 4 4 2 13 5 5
4 4
Cirencester Tewkesbury parish Winchcombe parish
38 74 73
25 56 23
1 1
£100 or more
1
1 7 10
4 5
Totals assessed 70 47 12 6 6 42 15 29 8 74 145 96
Abbey were important absentee landlords in Cheltenham, their estates being valued at £70 each. Tewkesbury and Winchcombe abbeys were also outstanding landowners in their ‘home’ towns, and the bishop of Hereford in Prestbury. No secular owner’s land assessment approached them. ‘Home’ town estate Tewkesbury abbey Winchcombe abbey Bishop of Hereford in Prestbury
Lands
Rectory
£127 3s. 4d. £104 £92 12s. 0d.
£36 £23 18s. 0d.
Thirteen years later the valuations of Cheltenham lands in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, an enquiry in 1535 into church property, were similar: for Syon £79, and for Cirencester £74 in tithes, rectory land and a mill. Income varied little from year to year. The accounts for Syon’s Cheltenham manor in 1540, after it had been taken over by the Crown, itemise almost £56 in rents, and £14 for the ‘farm’ or lease of the manor and its land. Lord Andrew Wyndsor, the brother of Syon’s last prioress, was the farmer. Other sources of income to Syon had been ‘tolls of the fairs’, a modest 6s. 8d., the traditional payment of ‘tithing silver’ or ‘cert money’ of a penny per man in each tithing, totalling £3 8s. 4d., and fees and fines paid in the manor court, £1 17s.57
The Knappings was an Ashley manor tenement in Charlton Kings, dating from the fifteenth century or even before; it contains three mighty pairs of crucks, one of which is shown here (right). The oldest part of the house is in the centre. There was a two-bay open hall (smoke-blackened timbers testify to a central hearth with no chimney to take away the smoke) and a service bay; possibly there was originally a fourth pair of crucks. A further single bay has been added at each end, and the whole subsequently cased in brick. The mullioned window at the south end may be late sixteenth-century, and the fleur de lys casement fastener. At this time a chimney was inserted in the hall, which was ceiled, and fireplaces built back to back in hall and adjacent room. The Knappings was a high-quality husbandman’s house. An informed guess is that in 1557 it belonged to Walter Currer, who was assessed in the Military Survey with goods worth 40 shillings. The parallels with Elborough Cottage suggest that there had been some enfranchisement of Ashley copyholds in the fifteenth century. photogr aph: author, 2009
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Reformation The dissolution of the monasteries The dissolution of the monasteries and, a little later, the suppression of the chantries, had important long-term effects in Cheltenham. Religious institutions were ‘perpetual corporations’ – that is, they never died and their ownership of land would have continued indefinitely. Often they had properties and estates scattered across England. The dissolution, at a stroke, ended that arrangement, and represented a dramatic shift in landownership. While monastic houses were major business enterprises, by the sixteenth century they perhaps tended to conservatism. Certainly, their dissolution seems to have encouraged agricultural change and, in particular, the process of enclosure which was under way in the mid-century. The monasteries associated with Cheltenham were among the richest in the country. Syon’s gross income in the Valor Ecclesiasticus was £1,944, that of Cirencester £1,326 and of Llanthony £849. Tewkesbury, too, was a wealthy abbey, with a gross income of £1,478 while St Peter’s, Gloucester, with £1,745, was the wealthiest in the county. Its abbey church became the cathedral for the new diocese of Gloucester, created in 1541. Only 28 monasteries in the whole country had incomes of over £1,000.58 As discussed in chapter 2, if a monastery had been granted a rectory – with the intention that part of its income would support a priest while most would fund the functions of the monastery – a vicarage should have been instituted, with an endowment of some land and the church dues paid by parishioners. Bishops (who were responsible for pastoral care within their dioceses) might encourage, but could not enforce, such an arrangement. In many cases the monasteries merely appointed a salaried ‘chaplain’ or curate, dependent on the monastery and his parishioners’ generosity. Thus, at Cheltenham in 1522 Richard Drake was the chaplain, with a stipend of £6 13s. 4d., although the income of the rectory was no less than £70. He was probably the man of that name who in 1540 was parish priest of Tewkesbury, occupying one of the Abbey Cottages.59 The 1522 Military Survey made no reference to a chaplain at Charlton Kings, but there was a vicarage in Prestbury. Neither Cirencester nor Tewkesbury had instituted a vicarage, while that at Winchcombe had been appropriated as well as the rectory. It would take centuries to provide well-established clergy in these places.60 The abbeys of Syon and Cirencester, and Llanthony Priory, were all closed in 1539 and their lands and revenues transferred to the Crown. A special Court of Augmentations was established to deal with the former monastic estates, and to arrange for sales to laymen. As a result much land passed out of ecclesiastical possession and into the hands of ambitious courtiers who were in a good position to identify the best bargains, or was acquired by existing landowners. However, the Crown retained the manor of Cheltenham, including Charlton Kings, and also the rectory, letting both out on leases. They were not sold until the early seventeenth century. In contrast, the small manor of Redgrove was sold immediately following the dissolution of Llanthony Priory.
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Suppression of the chantries The destruction of the chantry chapels in the reign of Edward VI had a more immediate effect on the inhabitants of Cheltenham. A chantrist was a priest who sang or intoned prayers, and in the previous two or three centuries numerous chantries were founded across England by pious inhabitants. In many instances this was to provide a minister in a local church or chapel where there was no incumbent rector or vicar, as in Cheltenham and Charlton Kings. Others were private chapels, where the priest was dedicated to praying for the souls of the founder and his kin. Chantries might also be founded by the influential citizens of a town to provide their own organisation and communal meeting place where there was no town council or guild.61 There were guilds in Cirencester and Tewksbury and a Guildhall in Winchcombe, but none in Cheltenham. It was also common for chantry priests to teach boys who might in turn become priests, which seems to have been the case with St Katherine’s chantry in Cheltenham. As with the monasteries, a survey of chantry property was made to ensure the Crown’s acquisition of all their assets once suppressed; it was authorised in the last year of Henry VIII, 1546, but was followed by a second assessment in 1548 because there had been suspicions that property was being concealed. The commissioners’ reports are known as the ‘chantry certificates’. Cheltenham had two chantries, one for a priest to sing prayers at the altar of the Blessed Mary and another at the altar of St Katherine, in memory of the founders and of all Christian souls. Thomas Ball was the priest of one, with an income of £4 13s. 4d., and Edward Grove of the other, earning £4 a year. These were the same amounts listed in the 1522 Military Survey. The chantry founders were
The north porch was the last medieval addition to Cheltenham St Mary’s, perhaps about 1500, with a vaulted ceiling with Tudor roses carved in the bosses, supporting an upper room that was reached from the outside by a spiral staircase. This room might have been for a chantry priest who watched at night and had a window into the church to enable him to keep an eye on anyone below, or it might simply have been a muniment room. The ancient parish chest, now in the south aisle, used to be in the porch. Between 1729 and 1847 the upper room housed a Blue Coat school; this had been started in 1713, one of a number founded at that time to spread religious knowledge. A large opening in the wall of the upper room was made in 1890 to turn it into a small gallery. At the same time the porch was converted to a baptistry, and windows were inserted. photogr a ph: c a r n egie, 20 09
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George Rowe may have romanticised his drawing of Swindon church, but it was made at a time when a drastic restoration of the church was under discussion. This is one in a set of local views advertised in 1840. Rowe shows the simple, cottage-like nave, and the interesting small north aisle, which was actually the seventeenth-century chapel of the lord of the manor. The thatched cottage in the churchyard belonged to the church, and until the nineteenth century there was no wall separating it from the churchyard; otherwise the cottage survives. It might originally have housed a chantry priest. g l o u c e s t e r s h i r e a r c h i v e s a3 2 4 /8
unknown, but were said to be ‘divers’ people at unknown dates. There was also a chantry in Charlton Kings; again the date of the foundation and the names of the founders were not known, but its purpose was the same as in Cheltenham. There William Hall, aged 40 years, received 10s. for serving the altar of Our Lady. In 1548 he had no other church living, but he was possibly the same man who had been a chaplain in Stow-on-the-Wold in 1522, with an income of 30s.62 The abolition of the chantries dispossessed many of the priests who had ministered in the churches and chapels. After the second visit by the royal commissioners, it was noted in a memorandum that Edward Grove was charged by special covenant between the parishioners of the said town of Cheltenham and him, always to teach their children, which town is a market town, and much youth within the same, near whereunto is no school kept. Wherefore it is thought convenient to
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signify unto your worships the same to be a meet place to establish some teacher, and erect a Grammar School so it might stand with the King’s Majesty’s pleasure.63
The school probably met in the chantry chapel of St Katherine in the north transept of the parish church, where there is a splendid rose window which echoed the wheel upon which the saint was martyred. For the rest of Edward VI’s short reign and into that of Mary Tudor, a salary of £5 a year was paid to ‘the schoolmaster of a certain Grammar School of the foundation of the Chantry of St Katherine’ in Cheltenham. The flowing cusped tracery of the exceptionally large rose window in the north transept of Cheltenham St Mary’s is early fourteenth-century; the glass is Victorian, donated at the time of the major rescue and restoration of the church. Windows with a wheel-like shape are thought to have been inspired by the martyrdom of St Katherine, who was broken on a wheel, and beneath the window there would have been an altar dedicated to the saint. One of the two chantry foundations in the church was for the service of St Katherine, and the priest would have sung prayers at the altar. In 1546 St Katherine’s chantry priest was Edward Grove, who also taught some of the boys of the town, probably in the same north transept. This led Richard Pate, a chantry commissioner, to recommend the establishment of a grammar school in Cheltenham. photogr a ph: c a r n egie, 20 09
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Cheltenham Grammar School The memorandum about the school may have been drafted by Richard Pate, one of the chantry commissioners in Gloucestershire, and a Gloucester lawyer, MP and recorder, who is best-known as the man who founded and endowed Cheltenham grammar school. Several members of his family had land in Cheltenham in the Tudor period, and some were evidently prosperous. Richard Pate himself was probably born in Cheltenham in 1516, almost certainly the son of Walter Pate, a substantial tradesman who was assessed on the considerable sum of £20 of goods in 1522. Walter was a butcher, baker and innkeeper, and in the manor court rolls for 1527–29 was one of two men accused of charging too much for candles.64 William Pate was assessed on £12 of goods in Charlton Kings in 1522. No other Pates were named in Gloucestershire. In his will Richard Pate named his brother William, and if this was the same man assessed in 1522 the link with Cheltenham is much strengthened, for William’s parents were both buried in the Lady Chapel in the parish church, a position indicating their high status and a connection with the rectory. In several documents Richard Pate named Minsterworth as his residence, rather than either Cheltenham or Matson near Gloucester (an estate which his wife had brought him and where he started to build a sizeable house). In his will he referred to his ‘convenient portion’ of lands and tenements, and he had clearly amassed considerable property in the Gloucester area, including leases of the rectories of Minsterworth, Norton and Churchdown. As a Chantry Commissioner, Richard Pate could identify the property with which, together with other lands, he later endowed both the grammar school and almshouses in Cheltenham. He paid for a school to be built in the High Street in 1571 and three years later received a grant from Elizabeth I of the former
Richard Pate is an example of a man made rich by the huge transfers of property at the Reformation. His portrait hangs in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was a student between 1532 and 1536. The college, founded in 1517, encouraged modern humanistic learning, which may have made Pate a keen Protestant, and enabled the college to escape dissolution. In 1544 Pate was appointed under-steward and keeper of the manorial courts pertaining to the former Cirencester Abbey, a significant link with Cheltenham; two years later he became a chantry commissioner in Gloucester and Bristol. He used these positions to financial advantage, and was able to buy jointly with Sir Thomas Chamberlain a large amount of chantry property, some of which was later given for charitable purposes. He had also married a well-endowed widow. He was buried in Gloucester Cathedral. bridge m a n a rt libr a ry
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When Richard Pate Esq. transferred property to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1586 to support a free grammar school and an almshouse in Cheltenham, he employed a scrivener of unusually exuberant style, who put four drawings above the elaborate letters in the first line of the deed. One shows a two-storey school house with a tiled roof, and the second is inside the schoolroom, with six pupils sitting on benches facing each other, a schoolmaster and an usher; in the middle there appears to be a small brazier giving off smoke. The second set shows a larger, tiled two-storey house with three chimneys, and next to it the scene inside: two women praying at the back, three men in the front, and a priest facing his little congregation. The pictures may be notional but were clearly relevant. c o p y r i g h t c o r p u s c h r i s t i c o l l e g e , u n i v e r s i t y o f ox f o r d
Cheltenham chantry lands with which to endow it. In 1585 he transferred these chantry lands, with others which he had purchased, to Corpus Christi, the Oxford college which he had attended, requiring that three-quarters of the income should be devoted to ‘the perpetual maintenance and foundation of a free Grammar School at Cheltenham’ and a ‘Hospital or Almshouse for six old poor people’, of whom two were to be women.65 The master’s salary was to be £16 a year, for teaching at least fifty children some Latin and Greek. The transfer was to take effect from Pate’s death, which occurred in 1588. The deed recording this was decorated with drawings of a school with its pupils and staff and an almshouse with its inmates. This was the beginning of a long association between the town and Corpus Christi. A map made in 1787, showing the property owned by the college in Cheltenham and Swindon, identified 34 separate and scattered lots totalling 18 acres, mainly narrow burgage plots, each one given its abutments, and the four largest each of ¾ acre.66 The schoolhouse was built on one of them; there was a pasture adjoining it, and with it came the right to pasture one cow on the common fields.67 In 1682 George Townsend, who had himself attended Cheltenham grammar school, gave the school the right to present a scholar to Pembroke College, Oxford, in rotation with the grammar schools at Northleach, Chipping Campden and the Crypt School in Gloucester. He also endowed a small charity school for poor children. Population in the Chantr y Cer tif icates The chantry certificates contain the first accounts of parish populations, described in terms of the number of ‘houselinge’ people, that is, those who received the bread in the communion service (a ‘housel’ being a sacrifice). In 1551 Bishop Hooper surveyed his new diocese of Gloucester, again asking for returns of communicants, though in these the numbers returned were modestly qualified by the word ‘about’. Twelve years later Bishop Cheyney had to inform
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the privy council of the number of households in each parish. Taken together, these returns give a good estimate of the number of people in each parish: after careful research John Moore concluded that they are generally reliable.68 Parish populations in the mid-sixteenth century Communicants Parish Cheltenham Charlton Kings Leckhampton Prestbury Swindon Cirencester Tewkesbury Winchcombe
Households
1548
1551
1563
500 310
526 315 102 160 60
164 103 20 54 16
1,400 1,600 800
1,460 2,600 700
320 396 199
The first chantry certificate for Cheltenham returned 500 communicants, but the second, in 1548, noted 600; the lower and more consistent figure has been used. The population of Cheltenham parish was smaller than that of Winchcombe, while Cirencester and Tewkesbury were significantly larger, a position which remained relatively unchanged throughout the next two centuries.
A bell is standing on the north side of the chancel in the parish church, with the date 1674. It weighs over 100 lbs. Its provenance is unknown, but it seems likely that it was a school bell, used to summon the pupils to a church school in the morning. If so, when new buildings were erected, it would be appropriate to move the bell to the church and so preserve it. photogr a ph: c a r n egie, 20 09
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Two doorways in the south wall of Prestbury church once gave access to a rood loft, which would have spanned the width of the church, effectively separating the priest’s area of the church in the chancel from the congregation in the nave. When Henry VIII and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, began the work of reforming the Church of England to make it Protestant, they required what they regarded as superstitious images to be removed, and most rood lofts were torn down. Unusually the stairs as well as the doorways have survived at Prestbury. A similar rood staircase has recently been uncovered at the parish church of South Lopham, Norfolk. p h o t o g r a p h : c a r n e g i e , 2 010
In the mid-sixteenth century communion was first taken at the age of ten, so the numbers have to be adjusted to allow for younger children and thereby arrive at an estimate of total population. A quarter of the population may have been under ten, and a multiplier of 1.33 has been applied to give population totals which can then be related to household size in 1563. It seems clear, using this method, that the Tewkesbury return for 1551 should read 1,600, identical to three years earlier.69
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Population and household size, 1548–63 Parish Cheltenham Charlton Kings Leckhampton Prestbury Swindon Cirencester Tewkesbury Winchcombe
Population estimates (× 1.33) 1548 1551
Ratio of population to households 1548 1551
665 412
700 419 136 213 80
4.0 4.0
4.3 4.1 6.8 3.9 5.0
1,862 2,128 1,064
1,942 3,458 931
5.8 5.4 5.3
6.1 8.7 4.7
In 1551 there was a widespread outbreak of the ‘sweat’ which, often accompanied by plague, severely affected Gloucestershire. In consequence, the population may have fallen in some parishes. Between 1556 and 1563 the population of Gloucestershire declined more than the national average, during a period of poor harvests followed by typhus, ‘famine fever’ and, in 1557–59, an epidemic of influenza. In small parishes such as Leckhampton and Swindon, average household size was influenced by the existence of one or two large households – for example, Leckhampton Court or Swindon Manor – where there were likely to have been several household servants. A national average of 4.75 people per household has been generally accepted, and the local figures are consistent with this, lending credibility to the returns and the picture they give for the mid-sixteenth century.70 A ‘grammar’ school was designed to teach boys enough Latin to enable them to study at a university and become clergymen. The chantry priest of St Katherine in Cheltenham was required to teach, and the school continued certainly into Mary Tudor’s reign. When Elizabeth became queen in 1558, the school was probably restarted with a Protestant ethic, and Richard Pate was probably involved. In 1571 he started to build a house ‘sufficient for the instruction of boys and for a dwelling for the schoolmaster’. In 1586 school and almshouse were endowed and Corpus Christi agreed to administer the foundations; the school master was to be assisted by an usher. Pate died two years later. Corpus Christi gave up the management of the school in 1881. This photograph was taken in the 1880s. © c h e lt e n h a m a r t g a l l e r y a n d m u s e u m