Tales from the ‘Yarmouth Hutch’: Civic Identities and Hidden Histories in an Urban Archive

Abstract

All archives have a purpose; their collection, organization and deployment is never neutral. Historians take from the archive those fragments that seem to us to prove a particular case, or to enrich the story we wish to tell. But it is hard for us — in our teaching, in our writing, perhaps also in our thinking — to capture the endlessly protean nature of the archive. This article tries to capture some of the ways in which an archive sustained certain stories and how it frustrated others. The tale told here is unapologetically local: it engages with a particular community at a particular time. The objective is to reconstruct something of the way in which archives made sense to early modern people. The article resituates the town archive of Great Yarmouth — the ‘Yarmouth Hutch’ — in its original context at the heart of an urban community. We will see that the Hutch sustained a detailed sense of the past that reached back to the fourteenth century and spawned two remarkable histories of the town, written respectively by Thomas Damet in 1594–9 and Henry Manship in 1619. It is argued that rather than representing a novel expression of early modern civic humanism, these histories were formed within a longer tradition of urban historical writing, one that reached back to the late Middle Ages. Yarmouth’s corporate sense of the past was generated for a middling, bourgeois audience that was partial and, in many ways, exclusive. Urban political culture — encompassing not just political affairs, but the writing and archives within which it was recorded — thereby emerges as more elitist and divisive than recent historiography has supposed. A closer look at both the histories and at the archive that supported them, reveals the fissures and tensions that were the reality of urban politics. In the end, these fractures in the historical record defeated the efforts of writers to shape a particular narrative of the past. The fundamental purpose of this essay, then, is to historicize, and so to expand, the boundaries of what we mean by ‘the archive’. Located at the mouth of the River Bure, Yarmouth was an important part of the North Sea economy.1 In 1588, it was estimated that there were a thousand houses in the town. A 1565 census of Norfolk ports guessed that four hundred Yarmouth people were employed by fishing.2 The town was governed by two bailiffs, elected by twenty-four aldermen. The cutting of a new deep harbour in the 1560s allowed ships of up to 250 tonnes to berth, ushering in a sustained period of prosperity.3 Prior to this, the harbour was constantly silting up and required dredging or the creation of new harbours. Funding this work entailed appeals to the Crown for finances and relief from tolls and subsidies. The town held jurisdiction over the local herring trade: every year, between 29 September and 10 November, the Herring Fair took place, in which the Yarmouth authorities upheld the law, collected revenues and controlled processing. Since the thirteenth century, this monopoly had been challenged by the Wardens of the Cinque Ports.4 Yarmouth also came into regular conflict with its neighbours. The inhabitants of Caistor, Gorleston and the Hundred of Lothingland threatened its land boundaries, while Kirkley Roads, the sea approaches to Yarmouth, were challenged by Lowestoft.5 The governors of early modern Yarmouth inherited a tradition of victory over opponents to their rights, a tradition that had much to do with its easily accessible town archives.6 This archival turn was underwritten by a sense of the town’s history that stretched back to the mid fourteenth century. By 1386, a ‘chronographical table’ chronicling the town’s history had been installed in St Nicholas’s church. This dwelt heavily upon the recent impact of the Black Death, which had carried away 7,052 people. In 1587, the table was still hanging in the church; by 1612 it had been replaced with a newer version. This ‘chronographical table’ represented the Ur-text for subsequent representations of the town’s history.7 The later fifteenth century saw the increased use of vernacular English at all levels of the polity.8 Yarmouth shared in this: in 1491, when the borough’s constitutional arrangements were reconfigured, an ‘olde boke of the laws & customes of yermouth’ was ‘t[ra]nslated oute of French in to Englissh by Thomas Canyard’ and entered into the archive. Canyard noted that ‘variances & disorders’ had ‘ben moved amongs[t] the burgesses & co[mon]altie’, and that consequently there was a need that that ‘the peple may be ruled a[nd] lesse offende’. Noting that oral tradition concerning the town’s governmental arrangements provided insufficient authority for the town’s power — ‘the mende of man passyth lytely’ — it was ‘nedefull to have remembrance’ of the town’s governance. That the resultant document appeared in the vernacular is suggestive of a desire to reach deep into the layers of literate society, grounding a document-conscious sense of the town’s constitutional history. Canyard’s translation was stitched into a compilation of documents relating to the town’s constitutional history.9 The succeeding document in this volume is a 1502 appeal from the town to Henry VII requesting financial aid in dredging its silted-up harbour. Significantly, it was built upon a clear narrative of the town’s history.10 Yarmouth’s historical struggles with the sea, with its neighbours and with the Cinque Ports generated an ever-expanding corpus of documentation: petitions, legal papers, charters, grants, correspondence, abstracts, indentures, licences, accounts, court rolls, surveys and maps. These were deployed in the legal defence of the town’s liberties and in a carefully crafted version of Yarmouth’s history, articulated in petitions, legal papers and in two narrative histories. The first was written in 1594–9 by the leading townsman Thomas Damet, the second in 1619 by his enemy Henry Manship.11 The histories provided what can be seen as an authorized narrative that emphasized Yarmouth’s loyalty to the Crown and the Protestant religion. The contribution of the town’s maritime assets in the maritime defence of the realm and its economic significance as a fishing town and a port underwrote its national significance. Particular emphasis was placed upon the mid Tudor crisis. Yarmouth’s hostility to Kett’s rebellion and its allegiance to Queen Mary during her seizure of power were (contradictorily) cited alongside its loyalty to the Protestant religion during the Marian persecution. These issues are discussed below. The ‘Yarmouth Hutch’, currently on display in Great Yarmouth Town Hall. By kind permission of Great Yarmouth Borough Council. Photograph by David Wiles. In 1612, a ‘sumary reporte’ of the contents of the Hutch was drawn up by a committee led by Henry Manship.13 He was a disputatious man, caught up in the factional struggles amongst the governors of early Stuart Yarmouth.14 Retained by the town as an attorney, Manship was typical of lesser gentlemen who elsewhere found employment as estate stewards or bailiffs. They were possessed of at least a grammar school education; in order to facilitate their work, these men sometimes built up collections of local manuscripts. Occasionally, as with Manship, this led them into antiquarian studies.15 Henry Manship despised Thomas Damet, whom he called a ‘dunce’ and a ‘sheep’.16 Manship chose his opponents poorly: Damet was a prosperous merchant who served as member for the borough in four parliaments and as bailiff on three occasions. Damet wrote the first history of the town, entitled ‘Greate yermouthe A boke of the Foundacion and Antiquitye of the saide Towne and of diverse specialle matters concerning the same’.17 Thanks to the insult he had given Damet, Manship was expelled from the common council ‘as not fit to be of that society’. Manship’s way back into ruling circles in the town, he hoped, was through his legal-historical knowledge. After authoring the ‘sumary reporte’ of 1612, he produced a copy of the medieval cartulary of the town’s former hospital and, in 1619, a major work entitled ‘The history of Great Yarmouth’.18 Henry Manship would have been pleased to find that his 1619 history of Yarmouth has cast Damet’s work into the shadow. Phil Withington has read Manship’s history as a bold statement of civic humanism. In contrast to such grand attributions, Damet’s book has received little attention. Paul Rutledge perceives in Damet’s ‘Foundacion’ merely an aid to the business of ‘preparing petitions to lay before the central authority’. 19 Damet’s history is to the point, avoiding the rhetorical flourishes and classical allusions of Manship’s work. Yet both manuscripts have their utilitarian qualities, providing an historical spine to Yarmouth’s legal and constitutional claims. Thomas Damet was clear about the function of his book: he had written a chronological narrative that would provide an historical context for the defence of the town’s interests: to the Intent that thes thinges mighte Remayne for a Memoriall to all of this corporacion which nowe be and that hereafter shall succeede to be provident for the upholdinge of the state of the Towne … And to the intent there maye be some good Presidentes lefte unto them in the tyme of there necessities to make and frame there sutes and peticions … The wrighter hereof hathe taken some paynes to sette downe in this booke Some good Instruction for the better direction and more needye and speedier dispatch of those Busynes, whiche muste needes be taken in hand & followed by those carefulle travayles of some good men of the same Towne … And suche he doubteth not but God wille rayse upp even of that corporacion that shalbe meete and willinge to doe good unto there native countrye and Towne in the whiche they have bene bredd and borne (as the said wryghter hereof was, whoe manye tymes travayled in and about thees busynes).20 Damet explained how, by the time of the Norman Conquest, a fishing community had grown up on this narrow spit, its French, English, Flemish and Dutch population attracted by the autumn teeming of the herrings. In the reign of William Rufus, a chapel was established which grew into the parish church of St Nicholas. King John granted the rapdily expanding town its first charter. Damet detailed the town’s subsequent relations with the Crown, its struggle with the Cinque Ports, controversies with Lowestoft, Gorleston and Caistor, the Black Death and other local disasters. A key moment came in 1340, when Yarmouth’s contribution to the English victory at the Battle of Sluys cemented its relationship with the Crown. Setting a precedent for later monarchs, Edward III rewarded Yarmouth by financing the cutting of a new harbour. Improvements to Yarmouth’s townscape were noted: the paving of the the of town the of a the of a and the of by the explained the of a urban Damet closer to his his narrative Crown for the cutting of new in and the the defence of the town Kett’s for in the of in Yarmouth’s the of its and of the Damet’s history, then, much more than a narrative of the of the town’s the story at its the book about and history. Damet the story of a people neighbours and a Significantly, the concerning the of a fishing on the emphasized its this was important when the population of Damet’s Yarmouth was so The contrast between Thomas Damet’s work of 1594–9 and the 1619 history by Henry Manship has been Manship’s history from that written by his not in its but in its in his in use of and in his of the context within which his history make a of Manship made use of what is to have been a grammar school He found in the of and a way of Yarmouth as a civic This provided with an and a that was much than Phil Withington has seen Manship’s as upon the that he an of civic Manship a of on rather than for all their the of Damet and Manship’s lay in the defence of Yarmouth’s local and and, in in its relationship with the Crown. Manship’s civic was a The emphasis placed by both Damet and Manship upon and of the early modern sense of the that it was to in the Damet and Manship’s histories were of a the story of a that they had from their histories were heavily upon archival — the within the ‘Yarmouth In the mid Thomas Damet led Yarmouth’s over Kirkley It was at this time that he was writing his history. in Damet’s hand can be found all over the borough’s court and In and in Damet the town’s before the with manuscripts drawn from the These a book of a of vernacular of key documents which later as Thomas Damet, then, was not just the ‘Yarmouth he was to it and it in such a way as to it a and so than Manship, Damet both to the Hutch and provided an spine that to the town as Manship and Damet’s historical the of the town in the so the contents of the Manship was of this when he up his ‘sumary reporte’ on the Hutch in The archival by his committee were Manship He that the and in the and other doe not but also and have not of been and read to the little of the is a one that upon the historical of urban authority in early modern has noted the of urban in the early century, to and their Paul has that in some and the of authority entailed a upon and a culture of In in that to archives was by within the political Yet in Yarmouth there was a of urban governance. in the authorities to to its in Yarmouth there was a to the borough’s past both accessible vernacular and Damet and Manship’s Damet’s the expression of the desire to see that the town’s archival be employed doe more good to the estate of this in the clear hand of a and by Thomas Damet’s at the of the volume was by It is a work, the of a of and with the histories and the Damet’s formed part of a bourgeois It the past and to a — but not — the and people were the of the ‘olde & men on Thomas Canyard had produced his of the borough with the that thereby ‘the peple may be ruled a[nd] lesse the town’s Thomas that into a of in and the of her that for state and see that power the Yarmouth as a saw that … to in which one is all and all is but that in as they are not all This was, then, a borough by of their town’s liberties was to them in the to of the authorized narrative its amongst that in as the town’s with of good It not be that Yarmouth’s the national In the noted that is a in this of to all but which be has when in between Yarmouth’s and the the town’s constitutional arrangements in a that he to … when he that fundamental of order and were In this it is that when the common council to Manship from its they ‘as not fit to be of that In their to the town’s governors constantly the in their Withington of the that was a of … it was … with civic … at and by those who to be its Some version of civic was at work but it was one and a sense of the local past. both Damet and Manship’s historical bourgeois to the same kind of audience as — what has as an urban It is that Manship’s of the urban community is with an about the nature of the urban a on classical humanism, in the to his history, Manship that it is that all do by ruling and St … to and is to the laws of nature and a were a unto a a and the and to Manship his history on this was it about the history of Yarmouth that that some unto a a the historical he had drawn with such The may in the upon which his civic was That was both political and as much in the of Yarmouth’s people from their past as much as they were from authority in the This is in Manship and Damet’s of the of we have both men upon as a key In their accounts, Kett’s Lowestoft, its which was deployed the men of Yarmouth the the the from The on Yarmouth’s upon a of the late century, represented both of and of Yarmouth’s Manship and Damet had good to up the of But here their narrative its the that the town’s authorized narrative at its — its upon an its with its neighbours and its loyalty to the Crown — its authorized narrative Manship in his narrative of to a of documents concerning the These four from to his to and men from a from the the on a from Edward and a of by the for the defence of the Damet’s of the rebellion is the Lowestoft, its Yarmouth and are in a with the Yarmouth In their the the harbour that had just been in Yarmouth’s loyalty was, to Damet, ‘the Towne and not or the the Towne for the to there the Manship to the same with that the of the led ‘The town of to and God for so a But the that Manship in his history, the of his his that ‘The was Manship’s concerning the of his of the to whom his was John a who in the of had led concerning the of Yarmouth’s in the and the town’s constitutional the was to and in Yarmouth, at his That there was a within the town is clear from of Manship’s the of for the of the town during the of Yarmouth, which the to for and to are in the the at … and … to how many of the be in the Manship’s on the document that there were within the he that the were to and not to the town the said but their were more them be of their were the Yarmouth’s John had in were in and were still Manship’s as a for the town’s in All of this the crafted narrative that the town authorities concerning the of Yarmouth as a Damet and Manship had to the of the of within their narrative of Yarmouth’s loyalty to the Crown, they had still with the of the town’s governors to for the in This Damet as of the Tudor that when as that the of had to be of The Towne of yermouthe and the Towne for … the Towne one of their to her to the and whiche the saide in good … to this the as as the new of the history of Yarmouth’s governors and people in the mid Tudor is the of by Damet and Manship to oral tradition and the In a society, what was and what was seen concerning the local past for many Yarmouth more important than the written held in the ‘Yarmouth A concerning the of the town that in in the of oral The the with and on the significance of one particular — a silted-up as or by the town’s inhabitants as the of Yarmouth’s first Manship’s 1612 ‘sumary reporte’ not to the Manship’s Damet’s history the they provide detailed into the of oral tradition in the town and the significance of the to of its past. In these the that are collected in the a of from that of the ‘Yarmouth a that from the of oral when he to in how in he and his had men upon the same and that his had to and said how be be by In the the thereby had the of the town upon his The also represented a of the town’s for a the town court was to It was that of the town to the in the who served between and were for to the had for local it was that ‘the and boundaries … have not been and to the and … so that they of of the on the of and a of that had replaced some The significance of both lay in oral The John had of the significance of from what was and by men how, in the mid fifteenth century, had been there on one for a who up in and the of the was not the that took on the in the the of at parish boundaries, the a key in the of the The Yarmouth men of were clear that they an one had been by Henry that when he and other the with they were some that were into the at the between and Yarmouth and were told that they made and had of that is to by III or as has been argued Yarmouth’s archives were and accessible in order to a past for the town’s — that that the archives represented the expression of a bourgeois — the of the town’s history the ways in which the of its In one the is John and his were from the histories and archives of Yarmouth they represented an of local history that was to the town’s This to the of people from political power in the Historians of urban have not to this of But for all the of the in English of a or of civic humanism, or of a all of it was built upon — of also and The for a new history of urban political culture that engages with and of and power is but it has to be All of this the that archives are the of the town’s record of a of its We make a for the of the of — but with an important The that Manship from more than his of they that is at

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