Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

MEDIEVAL BUCKDEN: THREE GLIMPSES 213 variant spellings of Edenham, a parish near Bourne in Lincolnshire. The name of Bishop Gynwell—already mentioned as possibly deriving from the Viking Gunhildr—may also be topynomal in origin: there is an area called Gynwell in Naseby, Northamptonshire. Names from first names Today most surnames come from given names. John and Robert Dande were not dandies, but took their name from Andrew. Dande Cosin was probably Andrew’s cousin, which appears to be the only place where a relationship is fairly positive in this list. William Saunder has his name from Alexander. Aubrey and Morice are self explanatory. Catwine, as in John Catewine, is the Anglo-Norman French for Catherine. Isabella Robot did not descend from an android; almost certainly it was a misspelling of Robert. The addition of –son as in Kennison (probably son of Kenelm) is commonplace now but it seems it was just starting in the fourteenth century. Here we have only John, son of Gilbert. Nicknames John le Long may have been above normal height and John Grosse a big man. The Le Herls (or Erls in 1332) are most likely men who worked for an Earl, or acted in a high and mighty way, as also probably Robert Bishop. Matilda Boner appears in both lists. This could have been an occupational name, but it is more likely that it comes from the French ‘bon’ meaning good. It could be also from ‘bon air’ as in debonair. Whether the original person with the name was exceptionally affable or if the name was given in a sarcastic or facetious manner, we have to guess. If the latter perhaps her method of obtaining her income is questionable. But this is speaking ill of the dead, and perhaps maligning her unjustly. Other names Names for which derivations are not known are Loin’ch, Gloraunder Adaones, Morse, Hounid, and Harnchine. Canoun has a slightly different meaning from today, when it is a rank within the hierarchy of the church. Then a canon was usually a member of a religious order attached to a cathedral who undertook religious duties. If we had lists from several years later, the sons of the people on this list might have taken the fathers’ name as their surname but they might have been called—for tax purposes—something different. ... and Numbers: a look at the figures Some of our readers will remember pounds, shillings and pence. For those of you who don’t: the standard coin was the penny, originally a small silver coin. Twelve pence were a shilling, and twenty shillings made up a pound. For sums up to twenty-four pence (two shillings) sums might be recorded as pence, so one shilling and sixpence would be written down as eighteen pence. Otherwise, sums would be done much as today, except you needed three columns, £ - s - d, rather than two (£ and p). As explained on page viii, the penny today bears no relationship in value to the penny of the fourteenth century. The highest sum collected in 1327 was from John le Hunte who paid 4s. 10d.; then John Dande and Godfrey Canoun paid 3s. 6d. and 3s. 5d. respectively. John Hunte and Godfrey Canoun were almost certainly members of the retinue of the bishop who lived in Buckden, and they appear on both lists. Other high payers were probably in the same position, or were employed by the residual owner in the village who owned the Manor House. The least sum collected was from several villagers who each paid 6d. But it should be remembered that even these people had goods sufficiently valuable to make them liable to tax; there would have been others too poor ever to appear on the lists. In 1327, when the rate was 10 per cent, the total sum collected was £3 17s 1d from sixty-five people. In 1332, however, when the subsidy was set at one fifteenth (of the value of moveable goods), the total was £5 6s 4d from fifty-five people. On average this means that each paid more than double the 1327 rate, representing an inflation rate of about 10 per cent a year. This was probably because prices had been driven up by year-on-year poor harvests (mainly the result of the weather – see below). The smaller numbers of people liable to taxation may have been caused by deaths, or by people falling below the tax threshold as a result of hardship. At least three women are on the first list—Amicia Brunis, Margaret Loin’ch, and Matilda Adaones—and not on the second, indicating they had either died or dropped below the lower limit for paying taxes. The Weather In 1313 the weather suddenly became colder, and there was a famine for several years. Boughton, the small village between Diddington and Little Paxton, is known to have died at this time. In 1327 there was a drought and subsequent years were also poor crop years, so some of the poorer and others died of starvation or poor health due to lack of food. The shortage of food also probably drove prices up and was the cause of the inflation, which we see in these documents.