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Medieval Religious Houses (1155 -1550)

In the Middle Ages the Church exerted an enormous influence on people’s lives and featured in almost aspect of political, social, and economic life.  Even the monarch had to tread carefully when dealing with the Church as King Henry II found over his quarrel with Thomas Becket and his son King John experienced by excommunication when he opposed the wishes of Pope Innocent III over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The Church took taxation in terms of tithes from the people.  It gave alms to the poor.  Those few who learnt to read and write were taught largely by monks.  In the days before printing, monks performed a vital task in writing and copying official records.  The King’s administration would not have functioned without its scribes. 

At the height of the Middle Ages Marlborough possessed more religious houses than any other Wiltshire town save Salisbury, which was one of the country’s major ecclesiastical centres.

The most important of Marlborough’s religious houses was the Priory of St Margaret of Antioch.  This was a Gilbertine priory built outside the town south of the river.  The Gilbertines were the only purely English religious Order.  They were founded in 1131 by St Gilbert of Sempringham who was canonised in 1202.  The Order was a mixed one of canons and nuns.  The nuns adopted the Benedictine rule and the canons the Augustinian rule.  The Marlborough house was not mixed and had only canons who wore a black habit with a white cloak.  Of the 24 Gilbertine houses in England 10 were mixed with nuns and canons and the rest were for canons only.  The mother house was in Sempringham in Lincolnshire.  Sempringham is commemorated by an apartment block in Salisbury Road which recently replaced a large house of that name.  The priory’s meadows are today commemorated by the St Margaret’s Mead housing estate.  The earliest mention of it is a list of houses, which King John took under his protection in 1199-1200 but it is likely to date from the reign of King Henry II (1154-89).  King Henry III (1216-72) did much to benefit the priory in addition to his granting of a fair in 1236.  In 1224 he gave them permission to gather firewood from Savernake Forest.  A tenth of the bread, meat, fish, and ale consumed by the King’s household during royal visits to the castle were granted to the priory in 1232.  Various money gifts were made including fifty shillings a year for a canon to celebrate daily in the castle chapel of St Nicholas and seven shillings and four pence a year from the Constable of Marlborough castle.

In 1337 the priory was robbed and partly burned by 50 men.  The priory suffered a further violent attack in 1486 when their tenant of Kennett Manor, John Wroughton, and his sons broke into the property in pursuit of John Seymour, the warden of Savernake Forest, and his brother Alexander, lieutenant of the forest, who had been failing to stem a rise in deer poaching.  The Wars of the Roses had been a turbulent period within which lawlessness seems to have gone unchecked.  In 1485 the Battle of Bosworth brought these wars to an end as the victor became the first Tudor King, the Welshman King Henry VII.  As the owner of the royal forest he sent a warning to John and Alexander demanding that no-one hunt without his permission and asking for the names of infringers.  They replied with the names of the Wroughtons.  Incensed at being “grassed up” the gang broke into the priory and ransacked the place looking for the Seymour brothers intending to murder them openly threatening to cut them into pieces “as small as flesh for the pot”.  Fortunately for them John and Alexander were not there.  St Margaret’s was dissolved in 1539 and the property given to King Henry VIII’s queen, Anne of Cleeves as part of her divorce settlement.

The second major religious house was in the town itself between the High Street and the river on the site of the present house called the “Priory”.  Now divided into flats for the elderly, it was built in a “Gothick” style in 1820 to replace an older building that had been destroyed by fire.  That older building was the medieval Carmelite friary.  

The Carmelite Friars or White Friars, as they were better known, were granted land by William de Rammeshulle and John Godhyne, town burgesses in 1316.  Unlike the Gilbertines, who were a contemplative order, the Carmelites were a mendicant order (from the Latin “mendicus” meaning “beggar”) relying on alms and gifts from the townspeople and benefactors.  In 1447 Henry VI gave to the friars "in relief of their poverty as much fuel as boughwood and shrobbes from Savernake as a horse can carry thence weekly for three days going and returning".  In 1535 a visiting commissioner from the King was shocked by the poor conditions the friars were living in.  The friary was dissolved in 1538.

Marlborough had two medieval hospitals: the Hospital of St John the Baptist on what is now the Parade on the site of the present St Peter’s junior school, and the Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr which seems to have been situated on the eastern outskirts of the town.  It is important to understand that the word “hospital” literally means “house of spite” or house of malignancy.  Illness was seen as bad, evil, or malignant so the word is not inappropriate.  Hospitals in the Middle Ages were run by the Church and relied on benefactors in the same way that other religious houses did.  Confirmation of land granted to the Hospital of St John the Baptist was made in 1215.  As a hospital, dissolution came late.  Its buildings were used, as a result of letters patent of King Edward of October 1550, for the new "grammatical schole for the inducement of youth".  The present St John's school is named after this house.

The Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr was a house of lepers first mentioned in 1231 when King Henry III granted it letters of protection and gifts of wood from Savernake Forest.  In 1393 the house was granted to St Margaret’s Priory.

On the downs north-west of Marlborough near Rockley was the only Wiltshire preceptory of the Knights Templar.  The Order of the Knights Templar was founded in 1118 by Hugh de Payens and nine Knights as a religious military order to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem.  The order based itself on the site of King Solomon’s temple from which it took its name.  Hugh de Payens brought the Knights Templar to England in 1128.  Their English headquarters were at the Temple in London.  The Temple church remains today by far the most complete of the 40 or so preceptories which existed just before the order was suppressed in England in 1308.  The naves of Templar churches were always circular in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  John the Marshal, castellan of Marlborough Castle, gave one hide of land to the Knights Templars in 1155.  This was the basis for the preceptory of Temple Rockley.  In 1185 his family added another two hides at Lockeridge.  The preceptory at Temple Rockley was the centre of a vast sheep-farming enterprise which aimed to make money to help finance the Crusades.  The Templars bred sheep for wool not for dung for cereal crops.  They had a licence for exporting wool so were well placed to make fortunes out of the wool-trade in Flanders and the low countries.  The estate at Rockley passed to the Knights Hospitallers but they did not establish a preceptory on it.  

The Castle’s Later History (1216 – 1610)

King Henry III, like his father, spent much time in Marlborough Castle.  Mills and fishponds were used by the king. The largest fishpond, the King's Great Bay, filled the valley between the Swindon and Ramsbury roads at the eastern edge of town. It had been made on the demesne land of the castle estate in the Og valley north east of Marlborough by 1179 (“The Great Roll of the Pipe” for the 5th – 34th year Henry II 1158-8).  In that year 28s 1d was spent stocking it with fish.  An earthen dam, sometimes called a bay, was raised across the Og to make a long narrow lake, which extended north to Bay Bridge.  The dam can still be seen today.  The pond was drained by the early 19th century.  In use it supplied bream, pike, and eels to the castle and fish were exported to other places in England.  The modern housing development of Baywater is named after it. 

From 1222 to 1259 building seems to have been going on almost continuously within the castle on walls and turrets, roofs and windows, porches and kitchens, stables and fences, and on a new dovecot.  Constant improvement was made on the King's and the Queen's chambers and on the two chapels that stood within the castle dedicated to St. Nicholas and St. Leonard.  St. Leonard was the patron saint of prisoners and his was probably a small chapel in or before the Great Tower.  There is some evidence that the stone-built tower on top of the mound was the work of Henry III.

Like his father, Henry III had problems with the barons.   A group led by Simon de Montfort brought the country to civil war in the 1260s.  Henry III was compelled to redress the accumulated grievances of the barons in the Statute of Marlborough of 1267 in the presence of his two sons and the Papal Legate, the greatest and almost the last episode in the history of the medieval castle of Marlborough.  The preamble declared that it would end “the many tribulations and unprofitable dissensions” of the past and guarantee the “peace and tranquillity of the people”.  It confirmed Magna Carta, regulated wardship ( In English feudal law, the guardianship that the feudal lord had of the land of his vassal while the latter was a minor) and protected persons outside the lord’s jurisdiction being forced to attend his court.  When Henry died in 1272 the written, enacted law of England consisted of four documents, the Magna Carta, its sister charter which defined forest law, the Statute of Merton, and the Statute of Marlborough.

The castle declined in the 14th century.  By 1390 a commission of enquiry reported,

“. . of all the goods of the king in the castle of Marlborough there remain only lead in old guttering to the value of £8, old iron in utensils, doorhinges, bolts and window-bars to the value of 2s 1d and 2 bells in the chapel worth £10; various persons (and notably the late parson of St. Peter's, Nicholas Halle, and John atte Mill) have despoiled it to the wasting and worsening of the said castle, as to the walls, gates, turrets and other things...it is impossible to assess the damage since only complete reconstruction would restore them.” (Quoted in Stedman, A R  “Marlborough and the Upper Kennet Country” pp47-8)

By 1541, Leland, King Henry VIII's antiquary, described Marlborough castle as,

“A ruine of a great castelle, hard at the west end of the town, whereof the dungeon tower partly yet standeth.”

Camden's "Brittania" of 1610 stated,

“Now being daunted by time there remained an heape of rammel and rubbish witnessing the ruines and some few reliques of the wall remain within the compasse of a dry ditch.”

The Development of the Borough (1216 - 1576)

By the late Middle Ages, the castle’s decline lost Marlborough its importance in national history.  The town, however, prospered and grew while other boroughs like Great Bedwyn and Ludgershall stagnated.  One reason for this was its position on the King’s Highway between London and Bristol. 

Bristol had become a flourishing port as early as the Norman Conquest when it was used for shipping slaves to Ireland and importing wine from Bordeaux.  Bristol Castle was a key Norman fortification and the town had been Earl Robert of Gloucester’s base in supporting his half-sister Matilda in the 12th century civil war.  By around 1240 the River Frome had been diverted to create a deep harbour.  In 1373 Bristol was incorporated as a county and in 1377 Edward III’s poll tax showed it had become the largest provincial town in England after York.  The opening up of the New World following John Cabot’s expedition to Newfoundland from Bristol in his ship the “Matthew” in 1497 led to the town’s rapid growth.     

After London and Bristol, England’s most important medieval port was Southampton.  Again Marlborough benefited as a major north-south road passed through to Southampton via Salisbury.  Southampton had originated as the Saxon port of “Hamwic” which had given its name to the county “Hampshire” as early as 755.  From the 11th century it became the sea-port for the continent and was visited frequently by Genoese and Venetian traders.  Salisbury, too, was a major town planned on a grid formation by its bishop in the 13th century and becoming the fourth largest in England in the 15th century.

Traffic passing through Marlborough to or from London, Bristol, Southampton, and Salisbury allowed a healthy flourishing of trade.  The guild-merchant, established during the 12th century, clearly regulated the local economy.  King John’s charter also encouraged and supported such institutions allowing trade to be fully exploited to the detriment of rival towns.  In 1229 King Henry III confirmed his father’s charter.  The first mayor is recorded in 1310.  The authority for the creation of the office of mayor is unknown but it was an important step towards corporation status.  A little known charter of King Henry IV is the first to mention the mayor.  Dated 20th May 1408 it stated,

“Know that of out especial grace, and for the amendment of the town of Marlborough, and for the increase of the inhabitants of the same, we have granted to our beloved subjects, the mayor and burgesses thereof, that they and their heirs and successors, burgesses of the said town, shall be for ever quit and discharged of murrage, quayage, coverage, and chiminage (tolls for transportation and storage: quayage was a harbour duty and chiminage a tax for passage through a forest), to be paid and taken for their goods and merchandize, within our kingdom of England, and elsewhere within our realm.”

This is interesting because it equates burgesses with inhabitants and clearly bestows rights and privileges on Marlborough people whilst engaged in trade or commerce anywhere within the realm.  It extended John’s charter from freedom from tolls within the town to freedom of trade elsewhere.  It clearly advocated free trade and must have helped to advance the prosperity of the town in the period leading up to the Wars of the Roses in the second half of the 15th century.  The complete rebuilding of St Peter’s Church in the mid-15th century in the Perpendicular Gothic style must reflect the wealth the town had then for such expensive projects. 

At Marlborough, the castle estate did not surround the borough, which was able to expand eastwards in the early 13th century.  This area east of the Green, now known as St Martins, but then as "Newlands" occasioned a long running ecclesiastical dispute over the paying of tithes as it originally encroached into the parish of Preshute, which originally surrounded the town.  As parishioners of Preshute, the people of Newlands had to attend St George’s Church in Preshute and not the much closer church of St Mary.  As a result, a chapel dedicated to St Martin was built where Coldharbour Lane now begins.  The chapel survived until the 16th century when the area was absorbed into St Mary's parish.

By the 16th century Marlborough could be considered to be second only to Salisbury in the county.  In 1537, during Henry VIII’s reign, Thomas Morley was appointed suffragen bishop for the town. 

The Tudor Corporation (1576 - 1603)

Elizabeth, Henry VIII’s daughter by Anne Boleyn, became queen in 1558.  In 1576 she granted a charter of incorporation to the town of Marlborough allowing it the right to pass its own bye laws and administer itself.  This was the most important charter since King John’s of 1204.  The years between 1576 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 were to mark Marlborough as Wiltshire’s second town.

The byelaws, passed as a result of Queen Elizabeth’s charter, paint a picture of Marlborough as a lively market town.  Innkeepers were not allowed to brew on their own premises but had to buy from public brewers.  No tippling was allowed in inns during time of prayer.  After fairs and markets, and on every Saturday night, every one had to sweep clean their own doorstep.  Every inhabitant had to have at hand in his dwelling or business premises, “a club, bill or other necessary weapon, that he or his servants may be in readiness to assist in suppressing any outcry or breach of the peace.”

Many byelaws related to the market, law and order, and the keeping of animals.  The Common was used for grazing at day but at night animals had to be penned by their owners in the town.  It was laid down that, “after the herdsman has brought home the beasts at night, the owners must pen them close, not suffering them to stray in the thoroughfares of the borough, until such time in the morning as the herdsman shall blow his horn, when he comes to drive them to field again”.  The street name, “Blowhorn Street” commemorates this practice today.

The Green was used as an open area for the preparation of wood for the building of timber-framed houses.  A sawpit on the Green attracted the stockpiling of timber, which was frequently cited as a nuisance.  Townspeople worked together to provide security.  An order read, “At 10 in the morning the alderman of every ward shall cause the figure of a bill or axe to be chalked upon the door of every householder whose turn it is to provide for the ensuing night a sufficient and able watchman, which watchman is to be ready at the High Cross by 9 o’clock in the morning.”

The Early History of the Grammar School (1550 - 1603)

A "grammatical schole for the inducement of youth" was founded in Marlborough by the letters patent of King Edward VI in 1550.   Many towns had a King Edward's grammar school, whether or not he founded it.  Marlborough had a King Edward's School but didn't name it after him.     
           
It was called a free school because it was supported by borough funds and open to the sons of Marlborough's burgesses.   St John's Hospital, a mixed religious community that had existed since before 1215, was dissolved as a result of King Henry VIII's religious reforms.  Its buildings were used as the first school on this site.   A Tudor lath and plaster schoolhouse replaced the old medieval buildings in 1578.  This was itself replaced by a red brick school in 1791, which was replaced by the present building in 1905.
           
In the past, scholars at the Grammar School had to learn what was known as the trivium.  The trivium consisted of Latin grammar and authors, writing of themes, and the writing and delivery of a speech in Latin.  None of this was particularly “trivial” and it wasn’t called a “Grammar School” for nothing.  Lessons started at 6am in the summer and 7am in the winter.