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We've set out to uncover the story of one place through the whole of English history. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:09 | |
Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons... | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
That is a piece of an Anglo-Saxon bone comb. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
..and all with the help of the local people. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
I told you it was only going to get better! | 0:00:18 | 0:00:20 | |
We think we've found a mortar floor here. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
If in doubt I put it in the tub and then Robert throws it out. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:28 | |
The more you find out about the village, the more intriguing it gets. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:33 | |
You don't realise the heritage that a village like Harcourt or Beauchamp has. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:38 | |
The place is Kibworth in Leicestershire. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:42 | |
HE SPEAKS MIDDLE ENGLISH | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
Using archaeology and science, we've already found a lost past. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
-I can tell you who may well have lived on this spot. -Oh, really?! | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
His name was Aelfric. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
So basically we're going to have to dig up your entire garden! | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
The first chapter took us as far as 1066, the Norman Conquest. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
What does it feel like to suddenly have this new world coming on top of you? | 0:01:04 | 0:01:11 | |
It's not, it's the end of the world. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
It's not a new world, it's the finish. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:14 | |
-The end of the world? -The end of the world. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:16 | |
It's a disaster. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
So how did the villagers respond to this disaster of conquest and war | 0:01:18 | 0:01:24 | |
and brutal foreign occupation? | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
How did it shape them and change them? | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
How did they become us? | 0:01:30 | 0:01:32 | |
On October 14th, 1066, Anglo-Saxon England fell to the army | 0:02:16 | 0:02:21 | |
of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
'Everybody's getting butterflies in their stomach. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
'The fear is starting to bite.' | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
Standing in the shield wall that day there may have been men of Kibworth, under their Lord Aelfric. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:42 | |
'They've slammed into that shield wall again. They're really giving it some hammer now.' | 0:02:42 | 0:02:46 | |
"The flower of the English nation fell there," | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
said the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "and God gave victory to the Normans." | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
'We have groups here from all over Europe. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
-' -They're from France, from the Netherlands... | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
'from Germany, from Poland... | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
'The Grentmesnil family are one of the big Norman aristocratic families.' | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
They're the warrior bands who come with William for fight for him, | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
to make his new crown possible. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
Hugh de Grentmesnil, he gets a huge cut of the new lands of England? | 0:03:14 | 0:03:19 | |
He's given a large chunk of land in and around Leicestershire, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
with the town of Leicester and the new Norman castle that's built there. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
And castles are one of the great innovations that the Normans brought to England. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:32 | |
The Norman Hugh de Grentmesnil now became the chief Lord in Kibworth | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
as the villages passed under Norman rule with a resident Frenchman. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
Reporting in English, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
says that the Normans spread their grip over the whole of England, | 0:04:03 | 0:04:08 | |
and they oppressed the English people by building castles everywhere. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:14 | |
Now, I think they built one in Kibworth using the old Roman mound | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
in the centre of the village, the Munt. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
But how to prove it? | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
The Normans siege Leicester, sack it, | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
destroy half the city, level 120 houses to build a castle. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
And in the hinterland, they built small castles, motte and baileys, earth mounds with outer enclosures. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:41 | |
And here in Kibworth, one of the most populous villages | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
in Leicestershire, that would be the context for building this here. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:49 | |
You can imagine the Norman knights, they're heavily-armed, like SAS men, tough as nails, | 0:04:52 | 0:04:58 | |
press-ganging the villagers to dig the ditches, to throw this up, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
building the stockade on top, imposing a garrison locally. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
This is the area that we surveyed, it's hardly discernible. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
-No obvious features. -No, no obvious features. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:17 | |
More work needed. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
Proof that it was a castle was frustratingly elusive. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
It's all rubbish obviously, from gardens. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
It's been so heavily disturbed. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
I was still convinced that we'd got a Norman castle. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
In other places in Leicestershire where there's a Frenchman in the village, there's also a castle. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:37 | |
We drew a blank with the Hallaton Group. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
The site's been too badly damaged in the last couple | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
of hundred years to be able to tell whether it's a Norman castle or not. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
But the evidence has to be there somewhere, and where better to look | 0:05:47 | 0:05:53 | |
than in the great 18th-century History Of Leicestershire by John Nichols? | 0:05:53 | 0:05:59 | |
Kibworth Church before the spire fell. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
And this is what the Munt was like in the 1790s. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:09 | |
"At the back of the Red-Lion Inn," | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
that's the Boboli Pizzeria today, | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
"a large mount, encompassed with a single ditch, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
"the circumference of which at the bottom is 122 yards. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:26 | |
"And the height in the slope of the mount about 18 yards." | 0:06:26 | 0:06:31 | |
Huge difference with what we see today. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
And then, this is really interesting - | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
"Running away from it for 55 yards north-east, another ditch, three or four yards deep." | 0:06:37 | 0:06:44 | |
That's the crucial clue. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
Now, when you compare that | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
with what you see today, surviving Norman castles | 0:06:49 | 0:06:54 | |
like the Hallaton here, | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
its almost...identical size and shape. | 0:06:56 | 0:07:01 | |
And you draw that... on the map of the village... | 0:07:02 | 0:07:08 | |
then what you get... | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
..is a Norman motte and bailey castle. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
So even little Kibworth Harcourt got its Norman castle with its Frenchman | 0:07:30 | 0:07:37 | |
dominating the Saxon village with its allotments behind. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
And pretty soon after the invasion and conquest the Anglo-Saxon landowners here, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:46 | |
Edwin and Aelfric and Aelfmer, were removed, part of a wholesale removal of the English ruling class. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:53 | |
By 1086, there's only two out of 1,400 chief tenants in England are of English origin. | 0:07:53 | 0:08:00 | |
And even more fantastic, for the next 100 years there's virtually | 0:08:00 | 0:08:05 | |
no inter-marriage between the Norman aristocracy and the native English. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:09 | |
The Normans quite clearly consider the Anglo-Saxons socially and ethnically inferior. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:16 | |
And the English here are living not only under occupation, but under apartheid. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:22 | |
It took William and his mercenary armies nearly 20 years to subdue the English. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:30 | |
And then, in winter, 1085... | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
MAN SPEAKS MIDDLE ENGLISH | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
The King had deep speech with his councillors about England, | 0:08:40 | 0:08:44 | |
what sort of land it was, what kind of people. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:47 | |
And he sent his men all over the country to find out. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:58 | |
The jurymen from Kibworth and Smeeton were summoned to their assembly place. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:07 | |
It lay in the countryside north of Kibworth, and for centuries | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
was the meeting place for the local Hundred, the sub-division of the shire. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
And as its name suggests, it was a tree. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
I've come here to meet a Kibworth man who's been obsessed | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
with local history all his life, and who thinks that he can pinpoint the lost site of the Gartree. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:31 | |
These now forgotten meeting places lie at the root of the English system of local representation. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:40 | |
Hi, Stuart. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
And Stuart knows more than anybody about this one. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
Good to see you. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:49 | |
And you. Come in. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
The den, oh, gosh. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:54 | |
The Gartree stopped being used for local government and oath-taking in the early 1700s, | 0:09:54 | 0:10:00 | |
but the site was recorded by the great 18th-century antiquarian, | 0:10:00 | 0:10:04 | |
John Nichols. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:05 | |
Because in here, there is actually... | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
..one of the very early maps of where the Gartree bush used to be. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:16 | |
-Isn't that fantastic? -There. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
And it's on the Roman Road, the old Roman Road, on the north side | 0:10:19 | 0:10:24 | |
of the Gartree Road. Let me show you on the map. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
So on the Roman Road itself. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
It is. I think it's there. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:29 | |
'These trees and mounds were important places for the English. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
'As late as the 19th century in many places, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
'they voted in the open air, just like their ancient ancestors.' | 0:10:35 | 0:10:40 | |
When I was a lad, there used to be a big tree, which has now gone, and this is what I'm looking for here. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:49 | |
That's the old, the last Gartree that stood on the point. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:56 | |
And there it is beside the road itself... | 0:10:59 | 0:11:02 | |
..with the Roman Road disappearing into the distance. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
I always believed it was the site of the Gartree bush. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
Not many years after that, it...died. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:20 | |
It was a sad moment because it was the only thing that identified | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
where we think the spot is. And when it fell it rotted away. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:29 | |
The farmer didn't touch it for several months, knowing it to be hallowed ground, he left it. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:37 | |
-And they are kind of hallowed ground actually, aren't they? -They are. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:40 | |
I mean, thousands of years of being the landmark for the people for this part of the shire. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:46 | |
Such was the importance to me of this spot that I actually got a piece of the tree | 0:11:46 | 0:11:54 | |
that was lying in the field. And there it is. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:58 | |
It's the last piece of the Gartree. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
'Holy trees, ancient myths, Herne the Hunter, Robin Hood. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:07 | |
'It's a fragment from the roots of England.' | 0:12:07 | 0:12:09 | |
It's like an elephant's skull. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
It is! | 0:12:11 | 0:12:12 | |
I took loads of aerial photographs through the years, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
and on one day, when the sun was going low one evening, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
I actually took a photograph of the crossroads. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
It was not until I got it developed and blown up, I actually saw | 0:12:23 | 0:12:28 | |
what seemed to be an enormous mound on the site where the tree stood. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:34 | |
-Yeah, yeah! -I think there's something ancient about that. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
That's amazing because the name, the Gartree, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
is probably Scandinavian, probably post-9th-century. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
But the earlier English name is recorded in the Middle Ages | 0:12:45 | 0:12:50 | |
and it seems to be "mathelew", or something like that. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
The Normans couldn't get the language straight. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
But it seems to mean, "the speech mound", or "the meeting mound", | 0:12:56 | 0:13:01 | |
or "the mound where people spoke". | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
-We should go and have a look. Let's do that, can we? -Yeah. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
The Gartree stood at the physical centre of the Hundred. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
It was a place known to everyone. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
Great view across the Welland Valley. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
It's absolutely fantastic, isn't it? Look at that. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
Across the Slawston Hills, | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
and over to the south bank of the Welland. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
-Which I suppose is what you want for a moot place, isn't it? -Exactly. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:33 | |
And who is to say that they didn't light a bonfire on the day the moot was being held, to summon people? | 0:13:33 | 0:13:39 | |
Thorpe Langton and Stonton Wyville, Church Langton - | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
all the south, southern villages of the Gartree Hundred. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
Medbourne and Hallaton. You can see through there even Market Harborough. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
And of course Kibworth, just over here. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
All connected. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
You would get the message, whether it was by bonfire or signal, and the villagers would see | 0:13:55 | 0:14:00 | |
where the point of the meet was, the moot site, they could see clearly. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
It must have been this time of year in 1086 that the jurors, the ordinary freemen | 0:14:04 | 0:14:11 | |
of these villages, including Kibworth, all came to this spot, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:15 | |
maybe over a few days, to give all the information about themselves to the foreigners, to the Normans, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:23 | |
with their English secretaries presumably, | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
the collaborators(!), who wrote all this down! | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
Including taxable information. I mean, that's what it is, isn't it? | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
I wonder how accurate they were over their, erm...! | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
The first real declaration of their inventory. The hand-over. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:42 | |
TRANSLATION FROM MIDDLE ENGLISH: | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
He was a hard man! | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
HE SPEAKS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH | 0:14:57 | 0:14:59 | |
Which means that he was a very hard man, yes. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:05 | |
"And afterwards," says the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, "all the results of the survey were brought to him." | 0:15:11 | 0:15:17 | |
They're in the National Archive in Kew today, in Domesday Book. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
This is Leicestershire, and here you can see how it's organised. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:30 | |
Here's the list of the landowners, most of them Norman lords, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
who of course have replaced... | 0:15:33 | 0:15:35 | |
It's not a neutral historical source, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
it's the record of a cataclysmic takeover in English history. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
Grandmesnil. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
Here we go. Kibworth. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
Cheborde, Chiborde, Clyborne, even - that's obviously Normans mishearing Anglo-Saxon, isn't it? | 0:15:50 | 0:15:57 | |
Oh, and that's actually the Frenchman. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
Kibworth Harcourt first of all. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
There's 12 carucates of arable land on this, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
it's the old Danish system of measuring land, which they used in the East Midlands. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:13 | |
In Kibworth Harcourt, the population was mix of free and unfree people | 0:16:13 | 0:16:18 | |
with some slaves, and the Frenchman. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
But in Kibworth Beauchamp, curiously, in view of its later history, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
there were no free people at all. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
While in Smeeton and Westerby, the majority were free. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
As for what happened to the Anglo-Saxon lords before 1066, | 0:16:48 | 0:16:51 | |
Aelfric and Aelfmer, Edwin Aelfrith and the rest, we simply don't know. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:57 | |
But perhaps there's one little clue, one trace of human feeling | 0:16:57 | 0:17:02 | |
in all this bureaucratic detail, in an entry from a village further south, | 0:17:02 | 0:17:08 | |
where one Aelfric had farmed his land freely before 1066, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:13 | |
but now farms it at a rent from William, a Norman, "gravitare et miserabilitare" | 0:17:13 | 0:17:20 | |
miserably and with a heavy heart. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
And you can bet that they felt the same way in Kibworth too. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
For the English people, it was the start of a long time of oppression, | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
and in Kibworth they saw the horrors close-up. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
1124, in this same year before Christmas, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
Ralph Bassett held a court of the King's Thanes | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
at Hound Hill in Leicestershire, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
and hanged there more thieves than anyone had before. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
44 men were killed in no time, six of them were blinded and castrated, | 0:17:55 | 0:18:00 | |
and many honest people said many of them suffered very unjustly there. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:06 | |
But our Lord God, from whom no secrets are hid, sees the poor oppressed | 0:18:08 | 0:18:15 | |
by every kind of injustice, deprived of their property and their lives. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
A terrible year was this. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
Beloved of Hollywood scriptwriters, the Norman yoke was not just a myth. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:35 | |
There was rage and racism on both sides. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
The defeated English retreated into their own language, their own jokes, their own customs. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
To the Normans, the English were lazy, cowardly, treacherous, superstitious, | 0:19:02 | 0:19:07 | |
not to mention their dog-like barking that passed for speech. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:12 | |
INDISTINCT SPEECH | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
But most of all, the Normans thought the English were uncontrolled boozers. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:20 | |
And it's at this time that you get the first descriptions of that hallowed English institution | 0:19:20 | 0:19:25 | |
which existed in every village, including Kibworth, | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
the domus potationis, the alehus, the pub! | 0:19:28 | 0:19:34 | |
One Norman writer describes the interior of one of these places where, | 0:19:35 | 0:19:39 | |
"the rustics sat at their tables and benches and where, if you looked carefully, | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
"you could see little devils perched on the lip of every man's cup." | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
He's the old one, I'm the good-looking one! | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
HUBBUB | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
So even then, the English seemed to have seen the pub as a place | 0:20:02 | 0:20:07 | |
where you could get away from it, to chew things over. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
You know, see a man about a dog. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
But the Normans, for them, the pub was a place you wouldn't be seen dead in. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:19 | |
Kibworth in the 12th and 13th centuries was split between several Norman lords, | 0:20:24 | 0:20:30 | |
two of whom have left their surnames in the village till today the Harcourts and the Beauchamps. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
To get a picture of the village then, we have to turn to the maps drawn up by a later landlord | 0:20:38 | 0:20:44 | |
who took over Kibworth Harcourt in the 1260s. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
Merton College, Oxford. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:49 | |
That is absolutely fantastic, isn't it? | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
Astonishingly, Merton kept a record of all the families who lived here from that time. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:05 | |
All the old families. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
The Parkers, the Foxes, Colemans... | 0:21:08 | 0:21:12 | |
Wayne's ancestors, the Bryans, the Sanders - | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
they go back into the Middle Ages. Isn't that just gorgeous? | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
London Way. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
So that's the A6! | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
And Kibworth's on the right route! | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
And still presumably working as an open-field system village. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
As it had been in the 13th, 14th century. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
It's absolutely wonderful. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
And St Wilfrid's Church still has its beautiful spire. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
Right! | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
One of the village tragedies! | 0:21:44 | 0:21:45 | |
When did that disappear? | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
It fell in 1825, I think. 160 feet, it was absolutely beautiful. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
But the key to the Merton maps, the centre of life in Kibworth from the Anglo-Saxons until 1779, | 0:21:53 | 0:22:01 | |
is the open fields. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
And if you want to see what life was like in the heyday | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
of the open fields, there's one place you can go - Laxton, the last open-field village. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:16 | |
INDISTINCT SPEECH | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
Here in Laxton you can see how our ancestors made their living for over 800 years. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:26 | |
Everyone had strips in the open fields. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
Everything worked by co-operation, | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
'overseen by an elected field jury of 12 good men and true.' | 0:22:38 | 0:22:42 | |
So this is exactly what they did in Kibworth back in the 1200s and the 1300s. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:47 | |
This is the field jury going out into the fields to check the width of the strips, hammer the stakes in, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:53 | |
check whether one farmer has infringed on the others' fields. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
So what are you looking for then, Roy? | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
What are you...? | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
How can you tell where to put 'em? | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
Just where the curve of the...? | 0:23:08 | 0:23:10 | |
The roadway should be 15 foot wide. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:12 | |
-Right. -All these roadways should be at 15 foot. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
-If it's less than that, somebody's ploughed too far. -Right. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
You know, the great thing about this is that you get a real sense of what | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
an open-field landscape looked like with these huge open fields. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
There's no division between the strips, apart from the baulks and the stakes. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:36 | |
This great, wide, open landscape, it's just what Kibworth would have looked like then. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
A well-off peasant might have 50 or 60 little strips scattered through the three fields. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:51 | |
None of them are straight. Not a single piece is straight, I don't think. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:55 | |
Not one that I know of! | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
I always think it's to do with the land because... | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
You can't plough... | 0:24:00 | 0:24:01 | |
The soil changes as it goes across and it pulls your plough. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:06 | |
And if you keep ploughing it every time the same way, where it's gone one way, it'll keep going the same. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:11 | |
The light man ploughs straight, the strong man ploughs wide. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
'Here at Laxton, you can get a sense of the communal effort | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
'of our ancestors - men AND women - that was needed to maintain such a complex system.' | 0:24:19 | 0:24:25 | |
-You can see the line though. -Oh, yes, yes. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
So he's left it. If it had been the other way, if it'd come to here, he'd have been in serious trouble. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:33 | |
I want somebody who knows what they're doing to go round there. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:40 | |
Are you going that way, Carl? | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
It's kind of a great image of medieval farmers of Kibworth going, | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
"I want somebody who knows what he's doing! | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
"You go down to the Sheep's Bottom and you go up to Blackwell Syke." | 0:24:49 | 0:24:54 | |
Today the Laxton Field Jury meets in the Dovecote Inn. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
'Up at the top of the map, we've got' | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
the old motte and bailey castle site where the lord of the manor lived. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:14 | |
We've got West Field, Mill Field and South Field. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
And the way this developed was that so people got a fair share of good land and bad land. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:24 | |
It's a way of distributing the land | 0:25:24 | 0:25:26 | |
so it was equal and fair to everybody. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
One is always fallow, one is then followed by wheat and then the third field is always a spring-sown crop. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:37 | |
And then the woodland forms our parish boundary. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
So you can see how the rural landscape developed | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
from the centre of the village out into the countryside. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
What findings have we got off Mill Field? | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
We've got Donny Godson here, not ploughed far north. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
-Langwell? -Langwell, yes. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
This is how the Kibworth jury worked during the Middle Ages. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
Then we've got Ivan Rainer on... | 0:26:00 | 0:26:03 | |
What do you call it? Top of Westwood edge there, ploughed too far. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:10 | |
About a foot. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:11 | |
Fine or warn...? | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
Fine him. It's fairly blatant.. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
< Yeah, yeah, it is. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
So we're going to fine him. Go on then. I'm open, what we putting? | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
50 quid! | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
But this is much more than a quaint survival - | 0:26:24 | 0:26:28 | |
you're watching the roots of the English system. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:32 | |
Fiver? All in agreement? | 0:26:32 | 0:26:33 | |
Co-operation, respect for your neighbours and the idea of fairness, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:40 | |
that good, old Anglo-Saxon word. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
The Kibworth documents from the 13th century in Merton College paint the same scene. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:55 | |
Easter, 1270. | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
Meeting of the Manor Court for Kibworth Harcourt. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:02 | |
Grant of land to Robert, the son of Richard the Parson, | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
eight acres in Kibworth field divided as follows. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
One acre on Little Hill near Roger White's strip. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:15 | |
One rude upon Wrayland near the land Rob Joy holds. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:20 | |
Three rudes near the land Hugh Hurtlebol holds. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:26 | |
One acre that sticks into Peashill syke next to the strip of land held by Nicholas, son of Simon the Reeve. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:32 | |
One-and-a-half rudes on Peascroft near Rob Joyce's land. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:37 | |
CHURCH BELLS TOLL | 0:27:37 | 0:27:39 | |
Back then the Kibworth jury probably met not in the alehouse, but in the church. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:45 | |
'Everything happens here, it's the focus of the parish. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
'Parish officers are the public officials of the day. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
'People meet here to sign contracts, get married in the porch,' | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
and that's particularly important, of course, when you've got | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
a settlement with more than a one manor, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
three or four manors, as is the case here. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
The parish church is where the whole community comes together. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
It's the powerhouse of the community in many, many ways. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:15 | |
Witnessed here at Kibworth Church by Robert Knolle, Henry White Hart... | 0:28:15 | 0:28:22 | |
Richard the Huntsmen, William Gunsey... | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
Ivan, son of Roger of Kibworth, Sylvester, the village scribe. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:30 | |
The 12th and 13th centuries were a boom time in England. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:37 | |
In our big dig with the villagers, we'd dug an unprecedented 55 test pits across the village. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:44 | |
And after scanty evidence for the Romans, Saxons and Vikings, | 0:28:49 | 0:28:53 | |
suddenly the village seems to be much richer and more populous... | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
..as the Norman occupation opened new trade links with Europe. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
Back in Cambridge, Carenza Lewis was now processing all the evidence | 0:29:06 | 0:29:10 | |
that the villagers had gathered from their test pits. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
Take us on from 1066, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
the next couple of hundred years how does it look on the ground? | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
It's very interesting actually, really quite dramatic. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
When we get into the post-Norman period, look how it changes. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
A huge explosion of growth in all of the villages, really! | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
Certainly Kibworth Harcourt, that looks like a nucleated village. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
By nucleated village, you're talking about a street with houses along the | 0:29:31 | 0:29:36 | |
street, a church, there's a kind of nucleus and the fields are outside. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
This is what you're seeing for the first time, perhaps. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:43 | |
I think absolutely. You can look at Kibworth Harcourt. It's a street running along there, | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
every single test pit just about that we dug, along both sides of the road, is producing pottery. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:53 | |
-It's a populous place. -Absolutely. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:54 | |
And Kibworth was also a place where travel and communications were developing. | 0:29:57 | 0:30:02 | |
Take the A6, the bane of all Kibworth people's lives today. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
It was made a turnpike in the 18th century but it starts in the 12th century, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:15 | |
linking the village with Leicester and London. | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
The village was doing well. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:23 | |
And in March 1223, the King awarded Kibworth Beauchamp a licence for a market. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:29 | |
"King Henry to the Sheriff of Leicester, we grant to our trusty | 0:30:32 | 0:30:37 | |
"and well beloved Walter de Beauchamp that he may have a market | 0:30:37 | 0:30:44 | |
"in Kibworth on Wednesdays, providing that | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
"that market does not prove a nuisance to other merchants in the region." | 0:30:47 | 0:30:52 | |
And at our History Day in Kibworth High School, an unexpected source | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
of new evidence came up for the beginnings of this boom time from local metal detectorists. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:09 | |
You didn't pick up any coins from that period, did you? | 0:31:09 | 0:31:13 | |
If I could find it, I've got an Aethelred II. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
Aethelred the Unready. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:19 | |
That's the one. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
It's only a half penny. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:23 | |
They cut it in half? | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
They're actually made with a voided cross so you can cut across the line. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
'So the Normans took over an already sophisticated coinage system, | 0:31:30 | 0:31:36 | |
'and in the next period, there's a flood of finds telling us about wealth and travel.' | 0:31:36 | 0:31:41 | |
Probably from Walsingham. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
You know, you've got these | 0:31:45 | 0:31:46 | |
plants there that I'd interpret at least as a sort of lily pot | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
on there, which is to do with the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:56 | |
And on the other side a crown. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:58 | |
Henry III gave a golden crown to the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Walsingham, so that fits. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:04 | |
Fantastic. Absolutely amazing. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:08 | |
So somebody's got an Islamic coin | 0:32:08 | 0:32:12 | |
and turned it into a brooch. | 0:32:12 | 0:32:14 | |
I can't read Arabic script, I'm afraid, I'm ashamed to say! | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
I didn't think it would be a drawback doing the history of Kibworth! | 0:32:17 | 0:32:22 | |
Constant surprises here! | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
'So the economy boomed, the population more than doubled, | 0:32:25 | 0:32:28 | |
'markets opened everywhere and the common law developed.' | 0:32:28 | 0:32:33 | |
Even the poorest English men and women had rights as well as obligations. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
At this point in the tale, the community of the village becomes part of the community of the realm. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:45 | |
In the early 1200s, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:49 | |
new laws began to restrain rulers like King John. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
The most famous was Magna Carta. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
But among them one was especially important to the people | 0:32:55 | 0:32:58 | |
of the village, because it made them more free to use their own countryside. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:03 | |
It's called the Charter Of The Forest. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
It talks about their liberties and their rights, which had been held before in England. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:13 | |
English people hark back to their Anglo-Saxon past as a time when, so they believed, they had all these | 0:33:13 | 0:33:19 | |
common rights and common laws, | 0:33:19 | 0:33:22 | |
which had been eroded during the period of rule since 1066. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:28 | |
In 1264, these conflicts came to a head in civil war. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:36 | |
The barons had forced great reforms on King Henry III, which were | 0:33:36 | 0:33:40 | |
published now not only in French but in the people's language, English. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
Among the rebels was the Lord of Kibworth, Saer de Harcourt. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:48 | |
The rebel army confronted the King at Lewes in Sussex. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
No other country in Europe had gone so far, and so early, | 0:33:52 | 0:33:57 | |
in attempting to reduce the King to a constitutional monarch. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:01 | |
To force the King to rule according to custom and law, to consult not only with his great nobles, | 0:34:03 | 0:34:09 | |
but with the representatives of the shires, shires like Leicestershire. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:14 | |
The leader of the barons was the French-speaking | 0:34:15 | 0:34:19 | |
Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort an unlikely people's champion. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:24 | |
He gives a speech to the army, he's a great speaker, De Montfort, | 0:34:24 | 0:34:29 | |
epigrammatic and forceful, somewhere on this spot. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
"You're fighting for England," | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
he says now, "for honour, for God, for the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints and the Holy Church." | 0:34:35 | 0:34:42 | |
This revolution is almost a religious crusade to him. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:46 | |
The clash was brief and savage. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:53 | |
The King's army was broken, peasant soldiers cut the throats of knights in armour. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:58 | |
The victory of Simon de Montfort here at Lewes unleashed | 0:35:01 | 0:35:05 | |
a surge of elation among many, and for some, an almost revolutionary fervour. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:10 | |
"England can once again breathe the air of freedom," | 0:35:12 | 0:35:16 | |
wrote a poet in 1264. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:20 | |
"Liberty is theirs and Englishmen who were once despised like dogs can | 0:35:20 | 0:35:26 | |
"now walk with their heads held high, their oppressors overthrown." | 0:35:26 | 0:35:31 | |
So two centuries after the Norman Conquest, the English people once more found their voice. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:41 | |
All generations quarry the past for defining moments of identity. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:47 | |
And for the English people, De Montfort was one. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
Simon de Montfort had seized power from the King | 0:35:59 | 0:36:03 | |
and carried through gigantic reforms of the realm. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
He sent a legal official round the kingdom to hear | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
everybody's complaints, even from the lowliest peasant. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:16 | |
And some of the legislation, the abolition of various impositions, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
various types of fines, were directly designed to benefit the peasantry. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
So you can see that the peasants themselves believed passionately in these kinds of reforms. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:29 | |
And I think particularly this area, this area of Leicestershire, | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
south Leicestershire, is very radicalised politically and very informed. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
The peasants know what's going on. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:39 | |
And almost miraculously, | 0:36:42 | 0:36:44 | |
we've got a glimpse of that heady summer of 1264 from Kibworth itself. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:50 | |
A month after the Battle of Lewes, the villagers went on their annual local pilgrimage | 0:36:50 | 0:36:56 | |
to the ancient church of St Mary Arden, five miles away at Great Bowden. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:02 | |
Pilgrimage is hard-wired into our DNA. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:07 | |
99.9% of pilgrimages in the Middle Ages were local ones. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:13 | |
Every parish has a place outside of the village, outside the centre of settlement, where people will go. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:21 | |
And that summer day in 1264, the people of Great Bowden, | 0:37:31 | 0:37:35 | |
who were Royalists, met the villagers of Kibworth with axes. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
Aw, it's great! Hello, everybody! | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
I see the Bowden people have come armed with their axes! | 0:37:50 | 0:37:54 | |
What followed is a tiny moment in a bitter civil war, | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
but it shows how deep the passions ran even at local level. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
Right, are we meant to be afraid now? | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
No, you're friends now because you're wearing the badge. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
Of course, the King has been defeated at the Battle of Lewes the previous month. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:14 | |
The people of Kibworth come on their customary, whatever it is, | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
pilgrimage or whatever it is, Graham is going to try and elucidate this for us | 0:38:17 | 0:38:23 | |
and when they try and go into the church as was their custom, | 0:38:23 | 0:38:28 | |
then some of the people of Bowden led by this guy called William King, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:32 | |
suitable name for a royal estate, barred their way. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:36 | |
And then an axe was produced. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:40 | |
'The man at the centre of the fracas came from a well known Kibworth peasant family. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:47 | |
'He was called John Wodard. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:49 | |
'He's later found with de Montfort's army down in Kent.' | 0:38:49 | 0:38:53 | |
Brought this back some years ago and put it here. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
-Was it not originally...? -It was originally, but it was taken over there for care. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
'The locals in Great Bowden are now restoring this 17th century chapel, which was built from the remains | 0:39:05 | 0:39:12 | |
'of what was once the medieval mother church of Kibworth.' | 0:39:12 | 0:39:17 | |
If you imagine going back and back and back, this graveyard must have many thousands of burials in it. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:23 | |
It's a huge churchyard. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
It's far, far bigger | 0:39:28 | 0:39:30 | |
than one would need for a common or garden village church. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:35 | |
It implies that St Mary-in-Arden is the regional mother church. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:41 | |
Really important place in their religious calendar. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
When the people of Kibworth are coming here it's Whit Monday. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:50 | |
There were earlier processions of this type, not just Pentecost but | 0:39:50 | 0:39:55 | |
probably Easter, made by daughter churches | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
of Anglo-Saxon minsters to their mother church. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:03 | |
What we do nowadays at Easter, like you said, the clergy gather | 0:40:03 | 0:40:08 | |
at the cathedral where the oil is blessed | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
and that's the chrism oil as well, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
and the clergy take it with them into the parishes. That's what's happening nowadays. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
It always seems to be the same. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:20 | |
One parish is trying to keep another parish behind it in the procession. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:25 | |
They're competing for the privilege of going first into the church! | 0:40:25 | 0:40:30 | |
Maybe two dozen parishes converging on this place, and for a ceremony | 0:40:30 | 0:40:37 | |
which was full of movement and light and sound and joyousness, | 0:40:37 | 0:40:42 | |
because Pentecost is the birthday of Christ's Church. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
Do they walk barefoot? Was there a particular tradition? Did you carry banners? | 0:40:46 | 0:40:50 | |
You would certainly carry banners, you were representing your parish, | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
so when somebody tries to tell you to get back in the queue, | 0:40:53 | 0:40:57 | |
local patriotism takes over, I suspect. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:01 | |
I think anger, actually, probably, | 0:41:01 | 0:41:02 | |
because if the King was captured | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
and this was the King's estate still, | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
so they would feel absolutely furious | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
and really red raw with rage. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:13 | |
And so it may have been a religious procession, but the people in Bowden | 0:41:13 | 0:41:19 | |
could have felt quite differently about it and very, very angry. And I think that's what it was. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
And they come tooled up! | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
They still do! | 0:41:25 | 0:41:26 | |
They still do! | 0:41:26 | 0:41:28 | |
Axes, axes hanging at their belt. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:33 | |
In the National Archive, the record survives to tell us what happened here that day. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:43 | |
"When the men of Kibworth came to the Church of Harborough to make their procession there, | 0:41:43 | 0:41:50 | |
"the foresaid William King of Bowden came to prevent them from proceeding into the church | 0:41:50 | 0:41:56 | |
"and struck the foresaid Wodard with an axe and kill him if he could. | 0:41:56 | 0:42:02 | |
"And the foresaid John Wodard, perceiving this, turned round and struck the foresaid | 0:42:02 | 0:42:07 | |
"William in the head with an axe so he afterwards died of that blow." | 0:42:07 | 0:42:12 | |
And the jury, actually loaded with people from Kibworth, | 0:42:14 | 0:42:18 | |
seems to have concluded that it was self defence. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:25 | |
One of the things which has really emerged | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
from recent work on this whole period | 0:42:31 | 0:42:33 | |
is the way peasants were radicalised and took part in the actual fighting. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:37 | |
They both took part in raid and counter raid in the bands | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
of Montfortians burning villages in surrounding areas. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
But they also fought in the great battles. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
I mean, I would have thought Wodard was very likely in his troop at the various battles and we may think | 0:42:47 | 0:42:52 | |
of contingents from Kibworth, peasant contingents from Kibworth physically on the fighting side. | 0:42:52 | 0:43:00 | |
That summer, de Montfort summoned a great | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
peasant army from all over England, including John Wodard of Kibworth, to repel a French invasion. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:10 | |
But that was the high point of the revolution. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:13 | |
The following year it was crushed at Evesham. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
The rebels had fallen out among themselves, | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
and finally de Montfort was trapped by his enemies. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
De Montfort arrived here in Evesham about 6 o'clock in the | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
morning, and his army, who were desperate for rest. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
But soon afterwards they became aware that out on the green hill there, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:50 | |
a large army was arriving. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
De Montfort sent his barber Nicholas up the abbey tower to see who they were. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:59 | |
Nicholas was an expert in heraldry. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:03 | |
When they reached the top of the hill, they unfurled their Royalist | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
standards, and Nicholas knew exactly who they were. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:10 | |
"God save our souls," he said, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
"for we are dead men." | 0:44:13 | 0:44:15 | |
In the final battle, de Montfort was hopelessly outnumbered. | 0:44:17 | 0:44:21 | |
And here we are on a 13th century battlefield. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
Why doesn't Montfort try to escape? | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
He just wasn't made like that. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:32 | |
He was a man of rigid | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
discipline, both for himself and for his cause. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:40 | |
In fact, he believed he was doing God's work, this is what he'd convinced himself he was doing. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:46 | |
So the revolution was God's work, the constitutional revolution was God's work in his eyes? | 0:44:46 | 0:44:51 | |
It was, yes. And of course when | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
people become convinced that they're doing God's work, they're capable of anything. | 0:44:55 | 0:45:00 | |
-Yes, yes. -And when they got up here and they could see what they | 0:45:00 | 0:45:04 | |
were really facing, they panicked and fled in all directions. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:09 | |
What happens to Simon himself at this moment? | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
Well, he's very quickly surrounded | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
by his enemies. His horse is killed under him and it's said that he was struck through the neck by a lance. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:22 | |
Pretty nasty thing. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:23 | |
And he, of course, fell to the ground. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:27 | |
And people were so fired up at this point that his enemies pounced upon the body and chopped it up. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:34 | |
Chopped all the arms and legs, head and the private parts as well. They were all chopped off. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:41 | |
The same thing happened to all those people who'd fled. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:49 | |
The rest of the day they were chased all over the landscape, wherever they could be found, and killed. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:55 | |
Some people got into the town and thought, "We'll hide in the abbey, we'll be safe there." | 0:45:58 | 0:46:04 | |
But they weren't. They were killed in the abbey. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
The high altar itself was splashed with blood. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
Bodies lay everywhere, it was the most appalling scene. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:13 | |
Did John Wodard of Kibworth die here? | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
We'll never know. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:22 | |
This is the traditional spot where Simon was killed, isn't it? | 0:46:22 | 0:46:26 | |
'The site of Simon's death immediately became a place of pilgrimage. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:31 | |
'And people of all walks of life came here from all over England, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:35 | |
'including peasants from around Kibworth, seeking miracles.' | 0:46:35 | 0:46:39 | |
People came from far and wide | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
to make use of this water, which they believed had miraculous powers. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:46 | |
A real emotional response to his defeat welling up among ordinary people, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:53 | |
for whom the revolution had meant something even though it failed. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:58 | |
So it's a window, a brief window, which closes after about 10 years, | 0:46:58 | 0:47:03 | |
into what ordinary people were inspired by at the time. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
Even in remote places like Kibworth, it was the talk of the village, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:13 | |
you know, "What Earl Simon is going to do for us and what are we going to do now he's gone?" | 0:47:13 | 0:47:21 | |
After the battle, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
the King's men swept into the villages around Kibworth which had supported de Montfort. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:45 | |
Saer de Harcourt was captured and thrown into jail, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:48 | |
and the King's assessors made an inventory of his estates. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:53 | |
And this is the... | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
November 1265, this is... | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
Full of anger and bitterness towards Saer de Harcourt, the King demands to know what he | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
possesses in his manor of Kibworth how much arable and meadow, | 0:48:04 | 0:48:10 | |
how many freeholders and villeins? | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
The condition of the manor house, the dovecote and the windmill, | 0:48:13 | 0:48:18 | |
and its annual taxable income. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
And in this time of vengeance, close to Kibworth, we can hear the voice of the peasants themselves. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:32 | |
At Peatling Magna, a Royalist called Peter de Neville sends a troop of men through the village, | 0:48:32 | 0:48:39 | |
and the peasants stop them. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
They try and prevent them going through the village. | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
And what Peter de Neville actually says, alleges, that they actually said was, "Why are we doing this? | 0:48:46 | 0:48:52 | |
"It's because you're committing all sorts of seditions and treasons, because you're acting against | 0:48:52 | 0:48:58 | |
"the utility of the community of the Kingdom and against the Baron." | 0:48:58 | 0:49:03 | |
The utility...the welfare of the community of the Realm. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:07 | |
De Neville was in a cold fury and threatened to burn the village down. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
Men took shelter inside the church and a small group of the villagers, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:25 | |
mainly women, stood out here and argued with the King's men. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:29 | |
They were led by a woman, by Mrs Pillerton, the wife of one of the peasants. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:35 | |
That's so beautiful, isn't it? 'She said to the King's men that they were guilty of | 0:49:38 | 0:49:43 | |
'heinous treachery and other crimes because they were against the barons | 0:49:43 | 0:49:48 | |
'and they were against the welfare of the community of the Realm.' | 0:49:48 | 0:49:53 | |
I imagine she was a fairly buxom, sturdy, real woman of the soil. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:59 | |
And certainly very, very determined. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:01 | |
But she was backed up by her other women, I believe the record says that the women pleaded with Peter's men. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:08 | |
So you can imagine, they'd promise anything really to protect their families. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:12 | |
We would, wouldn't we, Margaret? | 0:50:12 | 0:50:14 | |
The King spared Saer de Harcourt's life, but imposed a huge fine for his treachery. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:30 | |
So Saer was forced to put the manor of Kibworth Harcourt up for sale, | 0:50:32 | 0:50:37 | |
with its new windmill, its dovecote, its freemen and villeins, and its 1,400 acres of prime arable. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:45 | |
A fine piece of medieval real estate. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:48 | |
And with that, a new character enters our story. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
Merton College Oxford. | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
The college had recently been founded by Walter of Merton, a supporter of the King | 0:50:59 | 0:51:03 | |
whose lands in Surrey had been plundered in the war by de Montfort's troops. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:09 | |
Simon de Montfort has lost and is dead, | 0:51:09 | 0:51:12 | |
and therefore, Walter de Merton knows that he's on the winning side! | 0:51:12 | 0:51:19 | |
And so all the lands of the Montfortians, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:23 | |
of whom Saer de Harcourt was one, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:27 | |
are in a poor way and heavily indebted. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
There's a document in the National Archive where the King says, "I have put aside my anger | 0:51:31 | 0:51:37 | |
"and rancour towards the said Saer de Harcourt and a fine will do instead." | 0:51:37 | 0:51:44 | |
So he has to sell up, | 0:51:44 | 0:51:47 | |
basically, cos he's been ruined. But Walter de Merton, who now | 0:51:47 | 0:51:51 | |
realises he's on the right side, seizes the moment... | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
That's right, and as he's the former chancellor of Henry III, he's in a good position | 0:51:54 | 0:52:01 | |
and pays off these debts and buys... | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
It's interesting, he buys first the advowson of the chapel and then | 0:52:08 | 0:52:15 | |
three days later he buys the manor, in 1270, October 1270. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:22 | |
In the purchase document, doesn't he use some word like, | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
"my old friend", "associate", "dear old fellow"? | 0:52:26 | 0:52:31 | |
Yes, yes, yes! | 0:52:31 | 0:52:32 | |
Walter perhaps was sensitive to the passionate feelings | 0:52:33 | 0:52:36 | |
aroused by the failed revolution, best perhaps let bygones be bygones. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:42 | |
This is what you've really come to see. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
Wow! That's just wonderful. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
So when was this built, Julian? | 0:52:54 | 0:52:56 | |
It was finished in 1291 and it was built to be fireproof. | 0:52:56 | 0:53:00 | |
A stone roof. You can see there's no wood in the roof. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
There's no wood in the floor, it's all stone and tile. | 0:53:02 | 0:53:05 | |
So it's state of the art for the late 13th century. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
'And here are 750 years of the records of Kibworth Harcourt, | 0:53:08 | 0:53:14 | |
'an almost unbelievable treasure trove of the social life of the village. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:19 | |
'And they even have Saer's sale document.' | 0:53:20 | 0:53:24 | |
I cannot believe that this is... | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
Whose seal is that? | 0:53:28 | 0:53:29 | |
That's de Harcourt. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
That's the Harcourt seal. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:34 | |
Here's the text. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:36 | |
"Saer de Harcourt sends greetings" | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
and then saying he's "conceded and by this charter confirmed come Walter de Merton." | 0:53:39 | 0:53:45 | |
Absolutely great! "My dear friend." | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
Taking the shirt of my back, my dear friend and fellow. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:51 | |
MUSIC DROWNS OUT SPEECH | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
Across the courtyard is the early 14th century college library. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:12 | |
Isn't this wonderful? | 0:54:15 | 0:54:17 | |
The oldest, continuously functioning library in the world. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:22 | |
And here is the earliest complete survey of Kibworth and its people. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:28 | |
The magic of the parchment trail. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
It's one of those medieval documents where the life of the past, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:35 | |
the life of the people of the past, just comes leaping off the page. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:39 | |
It's a list drawn up by the estate managers of Merton College in the 1280s. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:45 | |
The first description of the village of Kibworth Harcourt, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
and in it are listed all the families of the village. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
The Polles, we can trace them over 15 generations. The Browns, | 0:54:52 | 0:54:57 | |
a branch of whose family will become aldermen in Coventry and wear the ermine. | 0:54:57 | 0:55:03 | |
A fabulous case of medieval social climbing. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
There are 11 free tenants and their families. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:13 | |
There's 27 customary tenants, they're people who owed part of their labour to their lord. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:18 | |
There are seven cottagers, people who did jobs in the village. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
A washer woman or thresher. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:24 | |
And there's a dozen other families who have no land. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
A wonderful snapshot of the village. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
Suddenly with this, the village and its people come to life. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
And who better to introduce the Kibworth people of the past than today's villagers? | 0:55:40 | 0:55:46 | |
Emma Gilbert, villein. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
Robert the doctor. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:51 | |
Alice Starr, Matilda Starr. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
Sisters! | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
Robert the thresher, cottage holder. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
Beatrice Sybble, villein. | 0:56:02 | 0:56:04 | |
Henry Polle, freeman. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:06 | |
Richard Polle, freeman. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:08 | |
John Polle, villein... | 0:56:08 | 0:56:10 | |
ALL: Cousins! | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
Alice the washer woman. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:14 | |
Robert the broker. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:17 | |
Scalastica, villein and widow. | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
John Goodyear, villein. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:22 | |
-Hugh Bond, villein. -Will Raines. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
Henry Button, freeman. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
And for almost 750 years, the relationship has continued. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:43 | |
On behalf of the college choir, can I say what a very great pleasure it is for us to be with you this evening | 0:56:43 | 0:56:49 | |
and to bring greetings from the Warden and fellows at Merton. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
Our founder, Walter de Merton, would be pleased to know that | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
the relationship between his college and Kibworth is alive and well today. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:03 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, the choir of Merton College Oxford. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
CHORAL MUSIC | 0:57:19 | 0:57:21 | |
So that's how Merton College became the lord of the manor of Kibworth Harcourt, | 0:57:33 | 0:57:38 | |
after the triumphs and the tragedies of the Barons' War. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
By that time in the 1260s, the people of Kibworth | 0:57:42 | 0:57:46 | |
have already known Roman lords, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:52 | |
So how will it fare now with an Oxford College? | 0:57:52 | 0:57:56 | |
And how will the villagers cope with the horrors that lie ahead | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
in the 14th century the most catastrophic in our history? | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
That's the next chapter of the story. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
Next in the Story of England, the Great Famine and the Black Death. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:23 | |
Times of trial and times of hope. | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 |