Memorials to a Medieval Family

by Michael Goddard

There are several monuments in Tickhill church which are connected with different generations of the de Estfeld or Eastfield family who were prominent benefactors of the church as it stands today. The earliest of them whose memorial still exists was a “Willelmus Estfeld” whose tomb stood on the north side of the altar until it was moved in the 1881 restoration to where it is now in the north-west corner of the church. Its side panels are decorated with the same quatrefoil pattern found elsewhere in the church (e.g. in the tower frieze) and, with one plain end and side, it was almost certainly designed to stand in its original position of prominence beside the altar. The commemorative brass that refers to this tomb-chest is not attached as we might expect, but is mounted on the north wall of the chancel. The chest may be closer in date than the brass to the time of his death. The abbreviated Latin inscription on the brass informs us that this William was formerly the Seneschal or Steward of the demesne or lordship of Holderness and of the honour of Tickhill together with the Lady Philippa, Queen of England, and of the demesne or lordship of Hatfield with Edmund, Duke of York. The brass also commemorates his wife, Margaret. It gives the date of his death as 24th December, 1386.

Tickhilland Holderness were two of the four huge groupings of manors called “honors” created across Yorkshire by William the Conqueror in the 1070s after his “harrying of the north” followed the rebellions against Norman rule in Durham and York. In each case a castle, which was supported by a large number of landholdings, was placed conveniently for the administration of its huge estate. The manors of the honour of Tickhill were scattered through Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The honour was held by Queen Philippa from 1331 until her death in 1369, after which it was transferred to her third son, John of Gaunt, in 1372. The Queen was popular and well-regarded, but has sometimes been viewed as a spendthrift (the King took over her responsibilities in 1363). Her finances were always in deficit and much blame was placed on her officials. Nevertheless, although it probably was William de Estfeld the Seneschal who, with John de Holand, acknowledged a debt of 40/-to Queen Philippa in 1359, it had been a “William de Estfeld the elder” who was commissioned, with others, to “certify the king of the whole truth touching the alleged waste and destruction” in the castle and honour of Tickhill in 1347.

At the time of the Conquest, Hatfield was part of Earl Harold's jurisdiction of Conisbrough, and was transferred with it to John de Warenne. Its chase was a vast private hunting ground akin to a royal forest that then belonged to the Warenne earls. It became the greatest chase of red deer that the kings of England had, containing in all limits above 180,000 acres where herds of wild deer roamed until the 17th century. On the death of the last of the Warenne earls in 1347 it reverted to the crown and was granted to Edward III’s fifth son, Edmund of Langley. However, because he was only six years old, the lands were temporarily entrusted to Queen Philippa. The manor of Hatfield was finally granted to him when he came of age in 1358. He was created Earl of Cambridge in 1362, but was not made Duke of York until August 1385. He held Hatfield until his death in 1402 when it passed to his son, Edward, Duke of York, who died at Agincourt and who, significantly, translated a book on hunting, The Master of Game.

Understandably, disputes arose around claims of various rights that were said to have been held under the Warennes and were now being withheld by the Queen’s officers. “William de Estfeld the younger”, with others, was appointed by royal decree in 1348 and again in 1364 to enquire into such matters; to enquire into banks and ditches there in 1367 and into the breaking of park boundaries in 1367 and 1368. He was also commissioned in 1351 and 1353 to investigate “trespasses” against the Statute of Labourers in the West Riding (which was an attempt to limit the wage rises that were resulting from the labour shortage following the Black Death), and in 1358 to investigate the avoidance of duty on cloth processing by “the machinations of merchants” in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. From 1360 to March 1386, as well as more inquiries into the breaking of parks, closes, warrens, turbaries etc. in many places in south Yorkshire and north Nottinghamshire, he was commissioned with others to hear and determine a number of other property disputes (as well as a couple of deaths) and a siege at Sheffield castle. From 1364 he was much occupied with commissions of banks and ditches in Holderness, Hatfield and the Isle of Axholme, areas which suffered drainage and flooding problems throughout the Middle Ages. He also acted as one of the coroners for Yorkshire from 1377 to 1382 (a post with responsibility for a wider range of investigations than today).

In 1379 Edmund of Langley promoted Robert de Moreton, (whom he had appointed Chief Bailiff of the manor and lordship of Hatfield in 1369) to Steward for life of his lands in Yorkshire on £20 a year, an appointment confirmed by the new king Richard II in 1383. The liberty of Holderness was granted to Edward III's daughter, Isabella, in 1356. She held it (jointly with her husband, Enguerrand de Coucy, from 1365 to 1377, when he forfeited his English lands) until her death in 1379.

William Estfeld’s position would have made him an important representative of the law and the royal administration throughout large areas of south and east Yorkshire andnorth Nottinghamshire that were held directly by prominent members of the immediate royal family. A sense of his importance can be conveyed by the fact that one of his contemporaries, William Finchdean, who served John of Gaunt as Steward of Pontefract, became Chief Justice of Common Pleas when the previous holder of that office, Robert Thorpe, replaced William of Wykeham to become Chancellor of England.

His commemorative brass is mounted on a slab of ashlar that contrasts with the surrounding thirteenth century stonework on the north wall of the chancel. Although it records the date of the Seneschal's death as 24th December 1386, it was recently dated -from the “London B” style of its high quality inscription -as unlikely to be earlier than 1420, probably forty years after the death it records. Although no doubt cheaper than a figured brass, such a full inscription with its fine close black letter script in relief represents a considerable outlay on the part of the family, in keeping with the quality of the other aspects of the church with which they and other patrons were associated. Its relatively late date of production, at least thirty five years after William Estfeld's death may indicate something of how far the rebuilding of the church had progressed by then. Its wording is interesting. It stresses the high rank of the members of the royal family with whom the Seneschal was associated. (Edmund of Langley was only created Duke of York in the year before William Estfeld died, but he served as regent three times before his own death in 1402.) The nature of the Seneschal's connection with them implied by the word “cum” ( together with), is suggestive of equal status. It demonstrates clearly his descendants' pride in his standing, which the church being rebuilt around him was also intended to enhance.

The next memorial in date is the recently rediscovered and relocated incised slab dedicated to the memories of another William Estefeld about whom less is known and of his wife, Joan. He was possibly a son or grandson of the Seneschal and must have been active at the time of the church's great rebuilding c1380-1420. A “Wm. de Estfild, bailiff of Tickhill” appears on a grant of 1408 and is described as “Lord of Stansalle” in 1411; another, almost certainly this William, is referred to as a “gentleman” in a petition by the Prior of Blyth in 1427.

The incised slab's earlier position was beneath the altar, which is where it was when it was described by Joseph Hunter in 1828. As he says, the inscription around the two figures tells us that they both died on the same day (1st March 1434). A national epidemic of plague recurred from 1433-35.However, several months later, on 6th October1435, William's son -who was twice Lord Mayor of London -was recorded as having already paid money so that Joan “in her widowhood” would release her husband's lands in Tickhill and his “lands, woods, rents and services” in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to him, leaving to Joan just the manor of Stancil and “lands, rents and services in Wadworth and Wilsic” for the rest of her life. After her death these too would pass to mayor William. Moreover, the widow Joan, and her husband's other executor John Lambard, are recorded, at some time between 1432 and 1443, as being involved in a dispute over £20, owed at the time of William's death, which they are alleged never to have repaid.

It looks as though the husband and wife could not, as the tombstone and Hunter say, have “died on the same day” any more than the Seneschal and his wife Margaret did. Is the shield below the female figure blank, not as has recently been suggested, because it is worn away, but, as Hunter implies, because -for whatever reason -nothing was engraved therein (Illustration courtesy of Joy Tudbury)the first place?

The slab is chamfered down the right hand side, indicating location on a tomb chest –possibly that “with quatrefoil compartments like that of Eastfield” in the “north chancel”recorded by Joseph Hunter (and perhaps now in the churchyard near the north door). Also, it is marked in the centre and near the four corners by consecration crosses. Before its recent relocation the slab was on the very site of the altar itself and at some time has obviously been prepared for use as an altar. Possibly this was in 1553 when QueenMary succeeded to the throne and Roman Catholicism was briefly restored. In many churches old tomb slabs were used temporarily to replace the wooden altar tables which had in their turn replaced the original stone altars (ordered to be destroyed in 1550), before the order was reversed afterMary's accession. Doncaster, Tickhill and the north generally were probably conservative in these matters: witness thePilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and the Northern Rising of 1569-the very year in which the Vicar and Churchwardens of Tickhill were briefly imprisoned after admitting to theArchbishop of York's Court of High Commission that there was an altar or old tomb in the Maison Dieu and that people went there to pray and perhaps to hear Mass. That altar was ordered to be pulled down and defaced.Both the slab and the tomb of the Seneschal were obviously located in the places of highest honour in the church in the sanctuary.

The third and most obvious memorial is the Estfeld or Eastfield coat of arms, which appears in several places around the church and in several forms –as Joseph Hunter observed. He mentions first a shield by the west door on the tower, now much worn, but in Hunter's time identifiable as a “fess [a broad horizontal bar] between three maids' heads”, which he attributes to William Estfeld, the Seneschal. The shield incised beneath the male figure on the slab mentioned above has on it just three maids' heads with headdresses and bobbed or netted hair, but no “fess”.

However, the most prominent and impressive example is in the place of highest honour over the centre of the chancel arch. It has a chevron, spotted with ermine, between three maids' heads cut off at the shoulder with loose hair.When Roger Dodsworth visited the church on 11th August 1620, he also noted a further example in the glass of the east window of the chancel which he described as a black chevron between three maids' heads “coped” (cut offs smoothly at the shoulder). This glass has since been lost, although the same arms can still be seen in some fifteenth century glass in the apex of the west window of the church of St. Mary in Gilston, Hertfordshire. The reason for this will soon be clear.

The Monumental Brass Society's article of 2008 about Tickhill's incised slabs points out that the notes on Tickhill in the College of Arms 'Yorkshire Arms' manuscript are merely a translation of Dodsworth into Latin and bear the same date as his visit. However, a Harleian manuscript in the British Library devoted to arms in Hertfordshire and London gives a sketch of the coat of arms (left © British Library Board Harley MS 504) and another illustration of it (right, courtesy of hrionline, University of Sheffield) appears in Anthony Munday and Humphry Dyson's expanded edition of Stow's Survey of London published in 1633 (though not in the earlier editions of 1598, 1603 or 1618). In the edition of 1618 Munday had added a list of lord mayors of London, including –from 1422 –their paternity and, in the edition of 1633, he and Dyson added their arms. These illustrations were reproduced in John Strype's Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster in 1720.

In the case of both these illustrations, the arms are said to be those of “Sir William Eastfield, son of William Eastfield of Tickhill in Yorkshire”. He was twice Lord Mayor of London (in 1429 and 1437), represented London at three parliaments(1430, 1439 and 1442) and was knighted in 1439 (the only alderman to be knighted in the ninety years between the Peasants' Revolt and the accession of Edward IV). He acquired the manor of Netherhall in the parish of Gilston and made a bequest to the church there in his will.

All these examples mention or show the ermine spotted chevron with three maids' heads in silver cut off at the shoulders and with loose golden hair -exactly like the example over St Mary's chancel arch, shown right.

This William Eastfield was one of the most prominent men in the kingdom in the second quarter of the fifteenth century and immensely wealthy. He had amassed a huge property portfolio by the time of his death, which included a “capital place” at the west end of the Guildhall where he was given permission to add his own chapel in 1428. His wealth sprang from his lucrative position as a stapler (one who shared in the monopoly in wool exports). This brought him into contact with royal finance and -with others -he is recorded lending enormous sums totalling over £10,000 to the crown in the 1430s. He was the biggest individual lender in the 1440s. In 1445 a necklace that the King had bought from him is mentioned. All of these loans would have been with interest, but because of the laws against usury, the sums recorded as being repaid actually already included whatever “interest” had originally been agreed but which was never shown.

He benefited from some very exclusive treatment as a result of his financial support for the crown's expensive campaigns in France. In 1443 he received the rare privilege of a licence for life to hunt in any royal park, forest or chase in Essex and Middlesex (“so that this be done in his own person”). In October 1444, because the Queen's coronation was to take place in 1445, the King requested the Mayor and aldermen that Sir William should be elected Mayor for a third time, though the city's rules would not permit this, and in April 1445 a papal letter allowed him, “who is counsellor of Henry, king of England, and is old” the privilege of eating “flesh and milk-meats” on fast days.

He died in May 1446 and was survived by an only daughter, Margaret, from his first marriage. He left the gold cup and ewer - which Henry VI had given to him when William Eastfield was Lord Mayor at the time of the king's coronation - to his grandson John and his heirs, or alternatively to John's younger brother Humphrey Bohun. He left a gold collar, which he had received from the king, and some silver vessels to his son-in-law.

Amongst numerous bequests were: money to Tickhill's vicar and chaplains, its poor, its friary and to the castle's chaplain –and to three other churches, seven nunneries, numerous friaries, various hospitals and prisons around London and to the poor in five other parishes. As well as leaving his and his late wife's silk and gold apparel to be converted into church vestments, another gold and jewelled collar and a gold and jewelled setting were to be offered to important shrines. He left a cask of red wine to each of five priories; various sums to the Mercers' Company; funds for the repair of a bridge and a road and forsermons to be preached. He funded conduits to supply drinking water to parts of London that were still being mentioned two hundred years later. He was buried in St Mary Aldermanbury, where he had founded a chantry to pray for his soul and those of his late wives, Juliana and Alice (a chaplain is recorded there in 1436 and there was still one there in 1525). The church was destroyed in the Great Fire and its replacement destroyed again in the Blitz.

It is undoubtedly true that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries people awarded arms to themselves and that family members were not consistent or systematic in their adoption. Nevertheless, could it possibly be that the most prominent displays of this family's arms in Tickhill church (over the chancel arch and in the glass of the east window) as well as the expensive “London B” commemorative brass, represent a contribution made by this most celebrated son of Tickhill, providing the final touches to the church that was nearing completion at the time of his father's death, and that the Lord Mayor was the family member who was directly or indirectly memorialised in at least one example of the family arms? After all -as we have seen with some facts surrounding the other two -medieval memorials may not always be quite what they seem at first glance.

Principal sources for Memorials to a Medieval Family

T W Beastall, Portrait of An English Parish Church, The Blessed Virgin Mary Tickhill, Yorkshire

T W Beastall, Tickhill, Portrait of an English Country Town, Waterdale Press, 1995

J Birch & P Ryder, Hatfield Manor House, S. Yorkshire, in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol 60,1988

British Library, http://www.bl.uk/

Calendar of Patent Rolls, HMSO, www.archive.org

J.W. Clay (ed), Yorkshire Church Notes 1619-1631 by Roger Dodsworth, Y.A.S. Record Series 34, York, 1904

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, Yale UP, 2005

Patrick Farman, Peter Hacker & Sally Badham, with appendix by Peter Ryder, Incised Slab Discoveries at Tickhill, Yorkshire, in Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society Vol. XVII part 6, MBS publications, 2008

John Goodall, The English Castle 1066-1650, Yale UP, 2011

Revd. Joseph Hunter, South Yorkshire (a History of the Deanery of Doncaster) Vol. 1, E.P. Publishing, 1828 & 1974

E.F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485 (Oxford History of England), Oxford, 1961

C.L. Kingsford (ed.) A Survey of London, by John Stow –Reprinted from the text of 1603, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=60003&strquery=stow survey of london

H.C. Maxwell Lyte, (ed.), Calendar of Close Rolls, 1898, http://www.british-history.ac.uk

May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399, (Oxford History of England), Oxford, 1959

National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

W Mark Ormrod, Edward III, Yale UP, 2011

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/

John Stow, The Survay of London, continued corrected and much enlarged by A.M., 1618, http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=stow

John Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, London, 1720, http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/strype/

Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London, Trade Goods and People 1130-1578, Ashgate, 2005