Simon de Montfort’s body was given to the monks of Evesham, in whose abbey it was buried. His tomb lies now in the ruins, beneath the high altar, marked by a granite cross. In his death he was by some considered to be a martyr and his burial place became an object of pilgrimage. Here was the grave of a rebel in the cause of righteousness, and failure only added lustre to his reputation. Rumours spread of miracles in the abbey.
But they were not enough to save his supporters. Those who were not slaughtered on the field at Evesham were scattered. Some fled to Kenilworth, the castle of the de Montforts, while others took refuge in the Isle of Ely. Some escaped to the wild woods, and it is possible that the saga of Robin Hood emerged from the life of one such wandering lord. They were known as the ‘disinherited’, and they only found their way back into the king’s grace with massive payments.
Henry resumed his reign. The great seal was returned to him, and he sat as before with his council. The imposition of order was swift enough, although in truth the country had not been much affected by the wars between its lords. Local difficulties had occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of the fighting, but the business of the realm continued as before. Henry’s son and heir, Edward, felt able to leave the country and take the part of a crusader in the Holy Land. He prepared himself to ascend the throne in the service of Christ.
The king himself was free to press ahead with the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, where he was impatient to remove the relics of Edward the Confessor to a new shrine. The abbey itself was another example of the community of the realm. For twentyfive years 800 men had worked upon the glorious fabric with its new presbytery, new chapter house, new crossing and a slowly rising north front. It was a work for the generations. The stonemasons of Purbeck, the craftsmen of all England, the sailors and wagoners, had all played their part in this mighty enterprise. The tilemakers, the mosaicists and the workers in metal had collaborated in the service of the king’s passion for curiously crafted things. He lavished so much money on the building that it has become a permanent memorial of his reign. He expired in the fifty-sixth year of that reign, on 16 November 1272; at the age of sixty-five, he is likely to have died simply of old age. The tomb of Henry III, with a gilt-bronze effigy of the king, is still to be seen in the abbey that he built.
18
The seasonal year
Of the ways of marking time in England, the calendar of the years of the king’s reign was the least significant; the sacred calendar and the seasonal calendar were pre-eminent. They represented the habitual and unchanging nature of the world; they expressed a deep sense of belonging to the land and to the everlasting that are the true horizons of the medieval period. Seasonal and sacred time were intermingled.
Winter, lasting from Michaelmas on 29 September to Christmas, was the season for sowing; wheat and rye were known as winter seed. Some of the cattle were removed from their summer pastures to the relative warmth of the stalls, while the rest were slaughtered; the pigs were hustled to their sties. November was known as the blood month. What was not eaten was salted. The twelve days of the Christmas celebration were the only long holiday that the farmers and labourers enjoyed; it was a time of feasts and drinking, and of the mysterious rituals of the mummers’ plays.
In spring, from Epiphany on 6 January to the Holy Week of Easter, the men set the vineyards and made the ditches; they hewed wood for fences and planted the vegetable garden. The world of work had begun again. The first Monday after Epiphany was known by the women as Distaff Monday and by the men as Plough Monday, thus neatly describing their two occupations. One spun and the other delved.
On Plough Monday, a ‘fool plough’ or ‘white plough’ was dragged about the village by young ploughmen covered in ribbons and other gay ornaments; they asked for pennies at every door and, if refused, they ploughed the ground before the cottage. The leader of the ploughmen, or ‘plough-bullocks’, was a young man dressed up as an old woman and known as Bessy. Another participant would wear a foxskin as a hood, with the tail hanging behind his back. This ancient ceremony was still being performed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, perhaps testifying to the customary nature of English rural life. It is still practised in certain areas of eastern England, where its origins in the Danelaw are assumed to lie. The feast of Candlemas on 2 February, commemorating the Purification of the Virgin, was the time for tillage to be resumed; it was the moment for the ‘lenten seed’ of oats and barley and beans to be sown. This was also the time for the pruning of trees.
From Hocktide, the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter, to Lammas, on the first day of August, came the summer. That is why the May queen or Flora was known as the summer queen rather than the spring queen. On the day before Hockday the females of the village captured and bound as many men as they could find, and kept them until a fee or ransom had been paid. On Hockday itself the males of the village engaged in the same sport. Days of festival were always celebrated before the resumption of serious agricultural work. This was the time when the husbandman must lay down the manure, cut the wood, shear the sheep, clear the land of weeds, repair fences, rebuild the fish-weirs and the mills. The fallow fields were ploughed. Midsummer occurred on the feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist. On St John’s Eve, 23 June, as a thirteenth-century monk from Winchcombe observed, ‘the boys collect bones and certain other rubbish, and burn them, and therefrom a smoke is produced on the air. They also make brands and go about the fields with the brands. Thirdly, the wheel which they roll.’ The wheel was the wheel of fire, set aflame and sent rolling down the hills of the region. In this way the pagan rituals and the Christian calendar were united in one celebration. On St John’s Day itself the harvest of hay was brought in. When all the hay had been stacked a sheep was let loose in the field; it became the prize of the mower who caught it. Only after St John’s Day were the thistles in the fields cut down; it was said that if they were removed earlier, they would increase threefold.
From Lammas to Michaelmas, at the end of September, came the harvest time of corn known as autumpnus. The name Lammas came from the Anglo-Saxon hlaf-Mass or loaf-Mass; in a good year it was a time of fruitfulness. When the last sheaf had been ceremonially cut, a supper known as harvest home was served. As Thomas Tusser wrote in the sixteenth century,
In harvest time, harvest folk, servants and all
Should make altogether good cheer in the hall.
In their laughter and in their dancing they were keeping time with the seasons and at the same time celebrating the continuities of the earth; they were part of a universal rhythm which they experienced but did not necessarily understand.
After the harvest had been taken in, the cattle would be allowed to graze on the stubble. At the same time rye and wheat would be sown in the fallow fields after they had been ploughed and harrowed. After the sowing was over there was customarily a feast with seed cake, pasties and a dish of milk, wheat, raisins and spices known as furmenty or frumenty. Then came a time when the sheaves of the harvest were threshed, separating the ears from the straw; this was followed by the winnowing, when the grain was divided from the chaff. Also at this period the labourers were obliged to prepare the sheep-pens and the pigsties.