Conviviality and charity in medieval and early modern England - response to Judith M. Bennett, Past and Present, no. 134, February 1992

(6) Ibid., 28.

(7) Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, ed. W. Baildon et al. (Yorks. Archaeol. Soc. Record Ser., xxix-, Leeds, 1901-), i, 1274-97; ii, 1297-1309; iii, 1313-16 and 1286; iv, 1315-17; v, 1322-31, tourns for the year 1326, The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, ed. H. M. Jewell et al. (Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., Wakefield Court Rolls Ser., ii-, Leeds, 1981-), ii, 1348-50, all tourns; iii, 1330-32, 1350-52. For a brief account of the fines imposed on alewives, see H. M. Jewell, `Women at the Court of the Manor of Wakefield (1348-1352)', Northern Hist., xxvi (1990). We cannot follow the help-ales through the fourteenth-century crises since such offences were not mentioned at that time.

(8) The 1430s were the only serious patch of bad harvests in the fifteenth century. Unfortunately some of the Wakefield rolls for this decade have not survived, while others are unrestored or illegible. The 1439-40 rolls, however, can be read without much difficulty: Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., W. Yorks. Archive Service, Leeds, MD 22511/165-1 and 165-2. For years of good and bad harvests, see Dyer, Standards of Living, 263, 268. On the crisis in the north, see P. J. P. Goldberg, `Mortality and Economic Change in the Diocese of York, 1390-1514', Northern Hist., xxiv (1988).

(9) H. Ling Roth, The Yorkshire Coiners, 1767-1783, and Notes on Old and Prehistoric Halifax (Halifax, 1906), 138.

(10) The maximum fine for drawing blood was 12d. in 1399, it reached 40d. in 1406 and again in 1412: Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., MD 225/11125/1-2, 132/1-2, 136/1-2.

(11) Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity', 29 n. 27. The abbreviation po (ponit se super patriam, or `is brought to trial') is written above some culprits' names instead of the usual amercements. That they were brought to trial implies that the drinking parties were recognized as a nuisance. There was at least one case of attachment at the Kirkburton tourn of October 1416 and three at the Brighouse tourn of April 1421, where the culprits awaited trial: Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., MD 225/11142, 147. Brewers of help-ales were also attached in the neighbouring manor of Methley in the 1430s: H. S. Darbyshire and G. D. Lumb, The History of Methley (Thoresby Soc., xxxv, Leeds, 1937), 176.

(12) The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman by William Langland, ed. W. W. Skeat, 10th edn (Oxford, 1923), Passus vi, 136, 71; John Bromyard, Summa praedicantium (Venice, 1586), `Furtum' and `Munus'.

(13) Such was the case in 1315-17 and still in 1625: J. de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blancforde monachorum Sancti Albani chronica et annales, ed. H. T. Riley (Rolls Ser., London, 1866), 96; Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor Law History, 3 vols. (London, 1927, repr. 1963), pt 1, The Old Poor Law, 76. The pattern of peasant cereal consumption had of course altered considerably in the intervening 120 years between the famine and the 1430s: Dyer, Standards of Living, 268.

(14) Ian Kershaw has examined the different behaviour of the Pennine uplands in wet weather: on the upland estates of Bolton Priory the barley crop was normal in 1315-16, although in the fields further down it was reduced to 41 per cent: Ian Kershaw, `The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315-1322', in R. H. Hilton (ed.), Peasants, Knights and Heretics (Cambridge, 1976), 101, 99.