Beginnings to King John’s Charter

Introduction

The origins of the town of Marlborough in Wiltshire are shrouded in myth and mystery. This first chapter is an attempt to find how and when the town originated by using the available historical and archaeological evidence. The argument put forth may not be completely right but has developed not by fanciful speculation but by a determined attempt to make as few unsubstantiated assertions and assumptions as is reasonably possible. Hopefully the picture presented will encourage an informed debate on what really happened.

The Mound – Marlborough’s Primordial Feature

Medieval Marlborough developed on the north side of the Kennet valley north east of an artificial feature known as the Mound, now within the grounds of Marlborough College.

The Mound is in the shape of a truncated cone 83 m in diameter at its base, 31 m at its summit and just over 18 m high. It became the motte of a motte and bailey castle during the early medieval period with a curved shell keep with pilaster buttresses constructed on its summit. A small inner bailey now occupied by college buildings and gardens lay south-east of it. Apart from the Mound no trace of Marlborough castle survives today.

Seen most notably from the A4 behind the gap between the college chapel and the memorial hall, the Mound is an impressive and dominating feature. Recent core-sampling has dated the monument to the third millennium BC making it contemporary with the much larger Silbury Hill 8km to the west. Silbury Hill is close to the source of the river Kennet, is flanked by the Winterbourne stream, and is nearly surrounded by water during wet periods. The Mound is close to the river Kennet and had a nearby spring which fed the moat built around it when it was used as the motte for Marlborough castle.

The Mound would seem to be Marlborough’s primordial constructed feature. There is, however, no documentary evidence of its existence before the Norman Conquest; it does not appear in any Anglo-Saxon charter. Archaeological evidence of any prehistoric origin is not robust: pieces of red deer antler were unearthed in its side in 1912 during the course of constructing a flue for a water-pumping engine housed at its base. The antiquarian, William Stukeley recorded the finding of Roman coins in it whilst it was landscaped with a spiral walkway as a huge garden feature in the 17th century. The pieces of antler were identified as from red deer by the Natural History Museum in Kensington. Pieces of antler would not be unusual as nearby Savernake Forest was, in the medieval period, a royal hunting-ground for deer. It is not conclusive that the pieces originally made up antler-picks, which were Neolithic tools. Roman coins and antler tines, though far from conclusive, do however suggest a pre-Roman construction date.

Logic went against the theory that the Mound was built by the Normans. It would have made little sense for the Normans to construct a substantial motte on a low lying, difficult to defend site when better more easy to defend higher sites were available. Ring works are far more common in Wiltshire than mottes. Oxford and Wallingford are the nearest Norman castles with distinctive mottes. It would have made sense for the Normans to adapt an existing mound. The practice had an historical precedent in the Anglo-Saxon construction of a stockade on the summit of Silbury Hill around 1000 AD in response to the threat from marauding Danes.

A medieval myth that King Arthur’s wizard Merlin lay buried under the Mound and that “Marlborough” really meant “Merlin’s barrow” continues to endure through the inscription on the Town Coat of Arms, “Ubi nunc sapientis ossa Merlini” or “Where are now the bones of the wise Merlin?” The myth was condemned by the famous schoolmaster-historian William Camden in his “Britannia” written in Latin in 1586. An English translation of 1610 described Marlborough as,

…that antient towne called by a new name Marleborow, in old time Marleberge, standeth upon this river Cuneto, now Kenet, stretching out East and West on the pendant of an hill. Whether this name Marleborow came in latter ages of marga, which in our language wee call Marle and use in stead of dung to manure our grounds, I am not readie to affirme. Certes, it lieth neere a chaulkey hill which our Ancestours, before they borrowed this name Chaulke of the Latine word calx, named Marle. But the Etymologie thereof that Alexander Necham in his Booke of Divine Wisdome hath coined and drawen from Merlins Tombe (as appeareth by his distichon of his making) is ridiculous.

As Abbott of Cirencester during the reign of King John, it is probable that Alexander Necham visited Marlborough and could have come up with the Merlin myth. Awed by the Mound, Necham could easily have imagined its use as Merlin’s grave. However, Marlborough could not have been named after Merlin, as Merlin was not built into the Arthurian legend until Geoffrey of Monmouth popularized him in his fictional “History of the Kings of Britain” in the 1130s. The place-name “Merlebergh” appeared in the Domesday Book half a century before Merlin was welded onto the Arthurian story.

It is inconceivable that local people would have allowed such a myth credence if the Mound had been built by the Normans. The building of Marlborough castle after 1066 would have been witnessed and remembered: the event would have passed down through popular memory so that 140 years later the idea of Merlin being buried under a Norman motte would have been rejected utterly and the story completely discredited. If the Mound had been built by the Normans no-one, least of all Neckham would seriously have thought of it as the grave of a Dark Age hero. By 1200 the Anglo-Saxons had been used to Norman rule and Norman kings, like King John, associated themselves with English values and traditions. Nowhere else was a Norman motte named after a man believed to exist before the Norman Conquest. Neckham did not associate Merlin with a Norman motte; he associated him with the Mound known by all to have been around long before 1066.

How ancient is Marlborough?

Marlborough has been represented as a town that dates back further in time than there is any real evidence for. The 18th century antiquarian William Stukeley ascribed ancient origins when he “discovered” a Roman town called Cunetio in the environs around the mansion next to the Mound, a site now occupied by Marlborough College. Stukeley visited Marlborough in the summer of 1723 and recorded his description of what he called the Roman “castrum” of Cunetio,

The ditch I suppose went through the garden by the southern foot of the mount, and round the house through the court-yard. There is a spring in the ditch, so that the foss of the castrum was always full of water. I suppose it to have been 500 Roman feet square within, and the Roman road through the present street of Marlborough went by the side of it. Afterwards in Saxon or Norman times they built a larger castle upon the same ground, after their model, and took in more compass for the mount, which obliged the road to go round it with a turn, till it falls in again on the west side of the mount at the bounds of Preshute parish. Roman coins have been found in shaping the mount, which was the keep of the later castle, and now converted into a pretty spiral walk, on the top of which is an octagonal summer-house.

Stukeley made a plan which he entitled “Castrum Cunetio”.

Stukeley’s findings were later dismissed as wrong when the real site of Roman Cunetio was revealed in Blackfield south of the nearby village of Mildenhall. An Iron Age hill-fort at Forest Hill was likely to have been the impetus for the Roman settlement. Marlborough clearly was not Roman in origin although the Roman road from Cunetio to Bath must have passed through close to the Mound. The exact route the road took past Marlborough has not been established. The finding of Roman coins on the Mound in the 17th century suggests the Romans may have visited it. They certainly visited Silbury Hill, where the road is known to have passed by, as the remains of a substantial settlement have recently been discovered. However, Roman “tourists” depositing coins on the Mound does not constitute a settlement.

The Marlborough College art master Christopher Hughes published at 35 Kingsbury Street in 1953 his book “Marlborough – the story of a small and ancient borough”. In it he asserted,

The Romans passed beneath it (the Mound) on their way to and from Bath and must have wondered, as we do, what people raised the mound and what it had meant to them. Then the Saxons came to the valley and, seeing the mound marvelled at it and named the district from it, and at the crossing of the roads built their small town and made a defence round it.

It was not unusual for the Anglo-Saxons to name territories after landscape features whether natural or artificial. There is little doubt that the district was named after the Mound and that the name “Marlborough” stemmed from it, but it is conjecture that a town was built here by the Anglo-Saxons. The crossing of Roman roads was at Cunetio 3 km to the east where the road south from Cirencester crossed the east – west road from London to Bath. If the Anglo-Saxons had built a town at the crossing of the roads, they would have built it at Mildenhall. That is not to say that the Anglo-Saxons did not pass through: there may well have been a crossing near the Mound, but in that case any Anglo-Saxon settlement would more logically have been sited there, near to the present Preshute church.

However, Hughes placed his road junction at the Green and deduced that the Green must have been the nucleus of a pre-Norman Saxon town. Examination of the evidence does not support his deduction. It is logical to begin with the evidence of the place-name itself.

Place-name evidence: English Chroniclers

The earliest documentary mention of Marlborough is by the medieval chronicler Florence of Worcester who recorded the imprisonment in Marlborough of Aethelric II, the deposed bishop of Selsey, in May 1070. Aethelric had been a victim of a purge King William I had performed on the Anglo-Saxon church in his efforts to replace the English prelates with his own men.

Florence was a monk from Worcester who wrote a universal history of the known world from the creation to the year 1117. Known as the “Chronicon ex Chronicis” or “Chronicle of Chronicles” it was a compilation of the works of others but nevertheless invaluable. It is known that Florence died on 7th July 1118 as his work was continued by John of Worcester, who recorded his death. It is not known when Florence was born but he was probably alive in the years immediately following the Norman Conquest: he was certainly English. The later chronicler Roger of Hoveden, who died in 1201 or shortly after, later used Florence’s “Chronicle of Chronicles” in his “Annals”. Written in Latin, the actual words Florence wrote when he mentioned Marlborough were,

In qua synodo Agelricus Suth-Saxonum pontifex non canonice degradatur, quem rex sine culpa max apud Mearlesbeorge in custodia posuit: abates etiam quam plures sunt degradati.

This can be translated as, “At this synod Aethelric, bishop of the South Saxons, was degraded in an un-canonical manner; and shortly after, for no fault on his part, the king placed him in confinement at Marlborough: several abbots were also degraded.” In 1070 the bishopric of Sussex, or the South Saxons, was based at Selsey near Chichester. Earthworks suggest the old cathedral was at Church Norton overlooking Pagham harbour.

The imprisonment of the Anglo-Saxon bishop of Selsey in “Mearlesbeorge” implies that a castle of sorts must have been constructed as a secure place would have been needed to hold him. Aethelric’s contemporary Ealdred, the abbot of Abingdon, was deposed in 1071 and imprisoned in Wallingford castle.

The most well known English sources from this period are the various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Peterborough manuscript for the year 1110 recounted in its original Anglo-Saxon language the visit to Marlborough of King Henry I in 1110,

On þisum geare heold se cyng Henri his hired to Cristesmæssan æt Westmynstre. 7 to Eastron he wæs æt Mærlebeorge. 7 to Pentecosten forman siþe his hired on þam niwan Windlesoran heold.

This can be translated as, “In this year the king Henry held his court at Christmas at Westminster; and at Easter he was at Marlborough. And at Pentecost he held his court for the first time in the New Windsor.”

The Peterborough scribe spelt Marlborough in the Anglo-Saxon as “Maerlebeorge”: the English chronicler Florence of Worcester was writing in Latin but spelt it very similarly as Mearlesbeorge.

Place-name evidence: Marlborough coins

There was a mint in Marlborough producing silver pennies during the reign of King William I. An earlier mint in nearby Bedwyn had produced silver pennies of King Edward the Confessor.

In the 1950s the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles was established in an attempt to create a catalogue of existing British coin finds. Within it six Bedwyn and three Marlborough coins are included. The Bedwyn coins date from 1046 to 1062. They share the same moneyer, Cild, spelt either “CILD” or “CILDA”: “CILDA” is inscribed only on the earliest coin dated between 1046 and 1048. The Marlborough coins are all from the reign of William I and date from 1077 to 1086: the earliest dated between 1077 and 1080 is inscribed “MAERLBI” and the latest dated between 1083 and 1086 are inscribed “MIERLEB” and “MAERLEB”; Cild spelt “CILD” is inscribed on all three. A fourth Marlborough coin, dated between 1074 and 1077, inscribed with the moneyer “CILD”, is listed within the corpus of early medieval coin finds but is not included in the SCBI.

It is likely that Cilda and Cild are the same person but possible that they were father and son. In 40 years of producing coins from c.1046 to c.1086 it is disappointing that only 10 are known with any degree of certainty. What is certain is that the mint at Bedwyn was moved to Marlborough with its moneyer by the mid-1070s at the latest. There is a significant gap between the latest coin listed in the SCBI for Bedwyn, dated between 1059 and 1062, and the earliest Marlborough coin in the corpus of early medieval coin finds, dated between 1074 and 1077. Reasons could be that Bedwyn mint ceased before it was started again in Marlborough or simply that not enough coin finds have been brought into the public domain to quantify exactly the dates within which Bedwyn and Marlborough mints operated. There is some evidence that Cild continued to mint coins in Bedwyn into the early years of King William II’s reign.

The first reference to an early medieval mint in Marlborough was by James Waylen in 1854,

That Marlborough was regarded by the Conqueror as a fortification of some note is evidenced by the fact of his instituting a mint here. The only production of this establishment known at the period of the publication of Ruding’s Annals of the Coinage in 1817 was a penny having the name of the town contracted thus MRLBRGEI. But a collection of early coins found at Beaworth in Hampshire in 1833 revealed the specimen referred to above, in which the spelling is FILD MIERLEB.

An interesting adjunct to Waylen’s observations was a letter published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” dated 9th June 1836 from a John Lindsay from Cork in Ireland. In it Lindsay asserts that he knew of a William I coin from the Bedwyn mint,

A brother numismatist has lately directed my attention to a coin of the Conqueror of unusual legend… the reverse presents the legend + CILD ON BEDEPIND. This mint, Bedwyn, which has not hitherto occurred on the Conqueror’s coins, is noticed by Ruding, Vol.1, p.392, amongst those of the Confessor; Ruding however expresses a doubt whether the coin may not be read PINDECILD ON BEDE: any doubt is, however, entirely removed by this coin, which in reading agrees with that of the Confessor as to moneyer and mint, and from the position of the cross, cannot be read in any other manner than Cild on Bedewind; and the type also is that of the Confessor and Harold II, and decides it to be unquestionably an early coin of the Conqueror.

It seems that Bedwyn mint continued producing coins into the early reign of William I. In his letter Lindsay went on to describe a Marlborough coin from the same moneyer,

In the list of the coins found at Beaworth… I find a coin of the type of Ruding…bearing the legend CILD ON MIERLBI; and as Marlborough was only six miles from Bedwyn, it seems not unlikely that it was the same moneyer, or perhaps his son, who struck coins at both these mints. The Confessor died in 1066, and Rufus was on the throne in 1087; the same moneyer therefore may have been employed by the three kings.

To your readers it is scarcely necessary to remark, that Bedwyn was anciently a place of considerable note, evinced by its sending members to Parliament. The coin I have noticed, although in good preservation, is not so boldly struck up as most of the side-faced coins of the Conqueror, and forms part of the valuable collection of John S Coxon, Esq. Flesk Priory, near Killarney.

The spelling of Marlborough on the coin as “MIERLBI” differs slightly to the coin described by Waylen, which was spelt, “MIERLEB”. This points to Lindsay’s coin being an additional William I penny. It is very interesting that Lindsay mentions William Rufus’s succession in 1087 as it shows that he firmly believed Marlborough mint survived into his reign. However, no William II coins from Marlborough are known.

In 1923 J R Taylor, H C Brentnall, and G C Turner revised and updated A G Bradley’s earlier history of Marlborough College. They attempted an account of Marlborough’s early years in which the mint was included,

…numismatical evidence points to the existence of a royal mint at Marlborough from Michaelmas 1068 till 1090, between which dates a series of silver pennies was struck bearing the name of the mint usually spelt MIERLEB or MIELEBER.

The numismatical evidence alluded to is actually quite difficult to find. A footnote to the assertion that Marlborough had a mint from 1068 to 1090 stated,

The Saxon ie is the equivalent of the Norman e. On the reverse these coins have the name of the Saxon moneyer Cild or Cilda. This name first appears on coins of Edward the Confessor struck at Bedwyn, and again on the earliest coins of William I from the same mint. As no subsequent coins of Bedwyn are known to exist, the inference is that William transferred Cilda to his new mint at Marlborough. For this information we are indebted to Mr. Shirley Fox, F.R.N.S., lately resident in this town, who possesses a remarkable series of these Marlborough pennies.

Unfortunately it is not known what happened to these coins. The whereabouts of Shirley Fox’s coin collection may be unknown but it does at least strengthen the case that some coins were still minted at Bedwyn in the early years of William the Conqueror’s reign. The Victoria County History asserts,

The only Wiltshire mint mentioned in Domesday is that of Malmesbury, which yielded £5, but the evidence of coins proves that in the reigns of the first two Norman kings mints existed also at Salisbury, Wilton, Cricklade, Bedwyn, and Marlborough.

The known Wiltshire mints from the reign of Edward the Confessor were Bedwyn, Cricklade, Malmesbury, Salisbury, Warminster, and Wilton.

As yet no definitive evidence has been found of any Bedwyn or Marlborough coins of William II despite the assertion of the VCH. However it is possible that there were at least some minted in Marlborough and that the years Marlborough mint operated could have been from about 1068 to about 1090. On what basis Taylor et al fixed Michaelmas 1068 as the start date for the mint is difficult to assess. Hard evidence, however, suggests the dates to have been from the earliest 1074 to the latest 1086, a period of not much more than a decade. If, as seems likely, it can be accepted that Cild continued to mint coins in Bedwyn into King William’s reign and then minted coins in Marlborough from the mid-1070s to about 1086 or later the conclusion would be that he was pressured into moving his mint to Marlborough. Clearly Marlborough had been selected by the mid-1070s to supercede Bedwyn: the establishment of a castle on the road to Bristol, which Bedwyn was not on, must have been the impetus for the foundation of the town of Marlborough.

The Bedwyn mint appears to have been discontinued at some point in the early reign of King William I and it is therefore safe to assume that it and its moneyer were then transferred to Marlborough. It is of course possible that both Bedwyn and Marlborough mints continued for a while in tandem with the same moneyer but the fact that the latest known Bedwyn coin was struck earlier than the earliest known Marlborough coin would tend to make parallel mints unlikely. The fact that it was moved from a major Anglo-Saxon borough to a new site on the other side of Savernake Forest must be significant. The repression of a serious rebellion centred on Exeter in the south west in early 1068 and a major attack on Bristol in the summer by Harold’s sons with a raiding ship army from Ireland must have been an incentive to create a strongpoint at Marlborough, situated on the main road to the west from London.

Origins of the place-name “Marlborough”

The Norman conquerors who took advantage of the prehistoric Mound to site a castle at “Maerlesbeorge” would not have taken kindly to its English name. In the 1084 Geld Rolls the name appeared as Merlebec, Merleberga, and Merlleberga. In the 1086 Domesday Book it appeared as Merlebergh. In the Register of St Osmund of 1091 it was spelt, “Marleberge.” It was later spelt “Merleberge” in the accounts for works on the Royal mills and castle at Marlborough in 1237.

“Maerlic” in the Anglo-Saxon language means “great, magnificent, glorious, splendid, illustrious (of persons or things)”. “Beorg” means either “a hill, mountain” or “barrow, a heap of stones, place of burial”. So “maerlic-beorg” means “great barrow”. The 18 metre high prehistoric earthwork known as the Mound located within the grounds of Marlborough College is certainly the great barrow from which the town’s name is derived.

The castle built on and around the “great barrow” and the settlement that developed outside it, later acquired a French/Norman rendition of “maerlic-beorg” which appeared in Domesday as “Merlebergh” and evolved into Merleberge and Marlborough. Certainly the Anglo-Saxon name for the Mound was the basis of the Norman name for the castle and later town.

More prosaically the Norman name could be derived or influenced from the Old French “merle” meaning “blackbird” in which case it could be based on the Mound being notable for its blackbirds. It is intriguing that the name is written with an “ae” and an “ie” on coins from a Norman mint although the moneyer, Cild, was English as he had previously worked the mint at Bedwyn. Florence of Worcester’s spelling with “ea” also reflects his English origins. This would suggest that the name “Maerl”, “Maerle”, “Mierl”, and “Mearles” was essentially English: the spelling without the “a” as illustrated by the “Merleberge” of Domesday was essentially French/Norman. The implication is that the Normans varied the English name to a more French sounding word: if that was the case then blackbirds could well have been the inspiration. A more modern comparison with this could be the British in 19th century China calling the imperial capital “Peking” rather than the more “foreign” sounding “Bei-jing”.

The difference in spelling does, however, point to a pre-1066 root. It is possible that it was the name of an Anglo-Saxon settlement that predated the Norman castle: the difficulty is that that settlement, if it existed, is not documented anywhere before 1070. It is far more likely that “Maerlesbeorge”, as Florence of Worcester spelt it, was simply the “Great Barrow” from which the surrounding area was named.

Evidence of Domesday

There is little doubt that the name Marlborough is named after the Mound. If the Mound is prehistoric, like nearby Silbury Hill, the feature could well have lent its name to the area known since the late 12th century as “Preshute”. If the parish name Preshute was originally synonymous with Marlborough and included both the town developing east of the castle and the surrounding district, it would certainly explain its late emergence and the town’s position entirely within the original parish. It would also suggest that Preshute church was Marlborough’s first church.

Marlborough is mentioned twice in the Domesday Book of 1086: it is listed as paying a third of its revenue to the king and William of Beaufour holding a hide of land with a church there valued at 30 shillings.

The payment of every third penny to the King was not unique in Wiltshire to Marlborough. The practice was recorded amongst the customs of Wiltshire before setting out land holdings,

From the third penny of SALISBURY the King has £6; from the third penny of MARLBOROUGH, £4; from the third penny of CRICKLADE, £5; from the third penny of BATH, £11: from the third penny of MALMESBURY, £6.

Bath, although in Somerset, is included because the custom was paid by the sheriff of Wiltshire,

Edward the Sheriff pays £11 of the third penny of this Borough.

Clearly revenues raised from the third penny were collected by Edward the Sheriff who was Edward of Salisbury, sheriff of Wiltshire. Salisbury was naturally held by the bishop of Salisbury and paid tax before 1066. Bath and Malmesbury were both specifically described as boroughs and along with Cricklade were important Anglo-Saxon towns. Marlborough’s inclusion amongst such places would seem to suggest it too had Anglo-Saxon antecedents. It is especially interesting that 64 Bath burgesses paid £4, the same custom charge Marlborough had to pay. Marlborough burgesses are not mentioned in Domesday but such a class must have existed in order for them to be taxed. Otherwise, where would the £4 have come from?

The Victoria County History goes so far as to state that a settlement of borough status existed in Marlborough at the time of the Conquest,

The reference to the third penny of Marlborough (worth £4) is in itself proof that this place ranked as a borough both before and after the Conquest.

From Domesday it is to be inferred that in 1086, and likewise in 1066, there were ten boroughs in all – Salisbury, Wilton, Malmesbury, Cricklade, Marlborough, Warminster, Bedwyn, Tilshead, Calne, and Bradford-on-Avon.

Paying the third penny certainly reflects Marlborough’s borough status in 1086 but it does not prove that it was a borough before 1066: it only implies it.

In the Domesday Book for Wiltshire only Malmesbury and Wilton are specifically described as boroughs. There were, however, more: Bedwyn, for example, had a 10th century guild merchant. Malmesbury, Wilton, Bedwyn, Cricklade, Salisbury, and Warminster had mints in the reign of King Edward the Confessor. These places at least were certainly pre-conquest boroughs as mints were not established in places of lesser status.

The existence of burgesses is conclusive evidence of a borough. Burgesses are included in Domesday for Malmesbury, Calne, Bedwyn, Warminster, Tilshead, Cricklade, Salisbury, Bradford-on-Avon, and Wilton. Marlborough had no burgesses mentioned in 1086. Calne, Bedwyn, Warminster, and Tilshead are listed amongst land formerly held by King Edward the Confessor. King Edward also held Amesbury, Chippenham, and Britford: known Anglo-Saxon towns but not listed with burgesses.

It is extraordinary that no burgesses for Marlborough can be found in the Domesday Book but they must have existed to have paid the third penny worth £4. It is notable that Marlborough is not included within the 22 places listed as lands of the king. Those places were, with three exceptions, all formerly held by King Edward or members of the Godwin family.

One of the chief difficulties with the theory that Marlborough may have been in existence before 1066 is that nowhere in the Domesday Book does it reveal who held Marlborough before 1066 or anything else about it. Domesday does reveal that Salisbury paid tax for 50 hides before 1066 and possessed a known Anglo-Saxon mint as did Cricklade. But there is absolutely nothing known about Marlborough before 1066. The only other reference to Marlborough in the Domesday Book other than the payment of the third penny is the statement that William of Beaufour held a church and a hide of land valued at 30 shillings.

William of Beaufour has 1 hide with a church in MARLBOROUGH. Value 30s.

The fact that William of Beaufour held “a” church could be very significant. Ten churches are mentioned in the Wiltshire Domesday as being held for the King. All except Marlborough are described as “the” church. The implication is that there was more than one church in Marlborough as early as 1086. The register of St Osmund, which was the foundation charter of the cathedral at Old Sarum, listed the manors and churches with which it was endowed. Osmund was the first bishop of Salisbury. The, “ecclesias de Marleberg”, proves there was more than one church by 1091.

Churches plural can be logically explained if an Anglo-Saxon settlement around Preshute church had been forcibly moved to a new site on the Green: St George’s Preshute would have been the old church and St Mary’s the new church. William of Beaufour would naturally have held the new church of St Mary as the old church would probably have fallen into disuse to be reused only when the castle declined in the 14th century. The high status Tournai marble font in St George’s was almost certainly placed there from the old castle chapel of St Nicholas. It is no surprise that William of Beaufour, from Calvados in Normandy, was one of William the Conqueror’s clerks. On 25th December 1085 he was nominated bishop of Thetford. When he died in 1091 Osmund, the bishop of Salisbury, was given the Marlborough churches.

Domesday shows that by 1086 a town must have evolved to be able to pay a substantial tax. It shows that a church and a hide were held for the king by William Beaufour. It hints at, at least, one further church. There is no mention of the castle, but as direct royal desmesne along with its barton lands and the tithing of Elcot, there would not have been any need.

Aluredus de Merlbergh

Aluredus de Merlbergh is listed as a major landholder in the Domesday Book of 1086. He is known in the Anglicised form as Alfred of Marlborough. His lands are also listed in the 1084 Wiltshire Geld Rolls. By 1084 he already had the Marlborough appellation for two hundreds in which he held lands, although in the other hundreds he was described as simply Alueredus. In version C of the Wiltshire Geld Rolls for Warminster Hundred and Blackgrove Hundred Alfred appears as Alueredus de Merlebec. In versions A and B for Blackgrove Hundred Marlborough is spelt “Merleberga” and version B for Warminster Hundred spelt it “Merlleberga”.

Alfred of Marlborough’s fief was made up of 142½ hides in Wiltshire (112½ had belonged to Karl). Alfred also held a 20 hide manor in Surrey, 2 manors in Hampshire (13½ hides), and a 5 hide manor in Somerset which all previously belonged to Karl. In Herefordshire he held Ewyas castle and some 60 hides. All had belonged to Harold Godwinson except a 15 hide manor in Thornlaw Hundred which had been held by Alfred before 1066 and was held for him in 1086 by his daughter Agnes. He also held 15 hides in Worcestershire, 12½ of which he had held before 1066.

The Domesday Book reveals that the Herefordshire manors of Burghill and Brinsop were held by Alfred’s uncle Osbern Pentecost after Godwin and Harold had been exiled in September 1051. Osbern was a Norman favourite of King Edward the Confessor who had built Ewyas Castle in Herefordshire at some point before 1052 when he was exiled following Godwin’s return to power. There is little doubt that the “Aelfredum regis stratorum” mentioned in Florence of Worcester amongst those allowed to remain is Alfred of Marlborough.

The history of Ewyas castle between 1052 and 1066 is difficult to discern. The fact that William Fitz Osbern re-fortified it between 1066 and 1071 suggests it had fallen into disrepair. Ralf of Mantes almost certainly would have used it as part of his defences against the Welsh leader Gruffydd ap Llewellyn. His son Harold, from whom the name Ewyas Harold derives, probably used it after his father died in 1057. Harold Godwinson relentlessly pursued Llewellyn until he finally had him cornered in 1063.

What is clear is that Ewyas castle was Alfred of Marlborough’s power-base or caput.

Alfred of Marlborough holds the castle of Ewyas from King William. The king himself granted the lands which Earl William, who had refortified the castle, had given him

William Fitz Osbern had given him Ewyas castle – clear evidence that Alfred already had a history on the marches as a capable leader. It is the inescapable conclusion that Alfred was entrusted also to defend Marlborough from a possible rebellion from Godwinson’s allies. All his Herefordshire lands which he did not already own were from Harold Godwinson’s estates. Marlborough castle was probably modelled on Ewyas. It has exactly the same design and shape and even had a chapel dedicated to St Nicholas. Marlborough castle was certainly built by 1070.

The Early Years of Marlborough Castle

The castle was begun as a wooden motte and bailey. It was rebuilt in stone in the 12th century and considerably enriched and strengthened over the next hundred years. Thus it enjoyed 200 years of prosperity followed by another 200 years of slow decay. Its fortunes can be deduced from the records of expenditure on the building, and from accounts of events, which took place, rather than from evidence on the ground.

It is possible that William I founded the castle as much for the sake of the hunting in Savernake as for defence of the roads. Henry I, youngest of William I’s sons and the only one born in England, dated letters from Marlborough in his arguments with Anselm, and spent the Easter of 1110 here with the archbishop who went on to become a saint.

When Henry I died in 1135 his nephew Stephen tried to take over the throne. Stephen seized the castle at Bristol, which was held by the powerful Earl Robert of Gloucester. Earl Robert also held Marlborough and Devizes castles. He declared for Queen Matilda, Henry I’s daughter and his own half-sister. Stephen laid siege to Marlborough castle, which was held for Earl Robert and Matilda, by John Fitz-Gilbert the Marshall, in 1138; but the siege was abandoned when Stephen heard that Matilda had landed with her army.

Robert Fitz-Hubert, a mercenary from Flanders, who held Devizes castle for Earl Robert, aimed to overrun the region. Hoping to get control of Marlborough, he came to propose a scheme of treachery to John Fitz-Gilbert; but John turned the tables on him, closed the gates against his followers and threw him into prison, where he practised upon him all the tortures that he, Fitz-Hubert, had applied to others. Robert of Gloucester, nominal lord of both men, hurried to Marlborough, persuaded John to hand over his prisoner for 500 marks and took Fitz-Hubert to Devizes where he was shown to his Flemish followers with the demand that they open their gates. They replied that they had promised Fitz-Hubert never to do so whereupon Robert hanged him on the spot.

John Fitz-Gilbert was described by a medieval chronicler as,

A very firebrand of hell and the author of all wickedness, who appeared to rule the castle for no other purpose than to scourge the realm with his ceaseless injuries

He was a survivor in a cruel age and civil war fulfilled his greatest ambitions. When it ended in 1154 he reaped the rewards of having backed the winners. Matilda’s son, King Henry II, conferred on him the manors of Marlborough, Wexcombe and Cherhill. John’s son William the Marshall later become Regent of England to the young King Henry III. However, four years later in 1158 Henry formally re-installed the castle as a royal residence.

Henry II spent Christmas in Marlborough castle in 1164. On Christmas Eve he received his ambassadors from the Papal Court in Sens and on December 26th told the Great Council of their failure to win the Pope’s favour in the affair of Thomas Becket.

Walter Mapp, a clerk in Henry II’s court who visited the castle with the king in 1182, wrote of Marlborough,

There is a spring there, whereof if any man shall taste, ’tis said he speaketh French after a barbarous fashion, so that when a man misuseth that tongue we say he speaks the French of Marlborough.

Marlborough and much other land including Ludgershall Castle and the county of Gloucester was given by Richard I to his brother John in 1189, the year of Richard’s accession. On August 29th, John married Isabella, daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, in the chapel of Marlborough castle. During his brother’s absence on the Crusades, John tried to take over his possessions, but Richard’s justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, led an army of Barons against him. In February 1194 he laid siege to Marlborough castle. The castle capitulated within a few days; its defenders lives and limbs (and that can be read literally) were spared. John and Richard eventually made up on Richard’s return to England. In 1199 Richard was shot with a crossbow bolt whilst besieging a recalcitrant vassal’s castle at Chalus in the Limousin in France. The wound went sceptic and he died at the age of 41. John became king.

King John spent 135 nights at Marlborough though never a week together. Only Winchester and London saw more of him. Like Richard before him, he arranged that the Warden of Marlborough castle should supply a penny a day to various needy persons, such as Adam le Kat of Marlborough and Eve, the anchorite of Preshute. As his control of the country weakened, he strengthened the defences of the castle, importing ballistae, artillery, and ammunition, and building a retaining wall round the mound where it was bounded by the moat, as well as a barbican tower commanding the drawbridge. John also repaired roofs, made windows and rebuilt the houses of the castle.

The 1204 Marlborough Charter

A medieval charter was a written grant or sometimes confirmation of rights from the Monarch to the people of a town.

An examination of the 1204 charter reveals its key points. It begins,

JOHN, by the grace of GOD, King. Know ye that we have retained in our hands our Borough of Marlborough with all things pertaining to it.

John stamps his mark with the royal “we” emphasising his role as overlord. John has recognised the already existing borough and is now legitimising it. He goes on to authorise a summer fair,

And have there… given… and by this present charter confirmed the Fair at Marlborough to be held every year for eight days, at the feast of the assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary, that is… on the eve of the… feast and seven days following. And we have granted that all men of all lands… who are in our peace, may resort to our… fair, and shall go and return… in peace, and shall enjoy all the quittances and liberties which they possess in the fairs of Winchester or Hoyland or elsewhere in our land.

John’s fair, associated as it was with commemoration of the Virgin Mary would certainly have been held in St. Mary’s parish, probably on the Green. By the 20th century it had evolved into a sheep fair held on the Common, still going up to the 1960s.

John granted specific rights to the burgesses, who were the merchant class. The twice weekly market was the most significant concession as it allowed the town to develop and continues to this day.

…we have granted that our burgesses of Marlborough and their heirs shall hold a market within their borough every week throughout the year… on Wednesday and on Saturday, with all the liberties and free customs which our citizens of Winchester or of Oxford or others in our dominions hold… in their markets. And we have granted that the… borough of Marlborough and all our burgesses. . and their heirs shall be quit and free of all toll arising from pannage (the right to let your pigs forage on the Common), pontage (a charge for crossing the town bridge), passage and pedage (establishing rights of way and keeping them free), stallage (charges for erecting stalls in markets and fairs) and lastage (a tax on the carriage of goods) whether in shires or hundreds… And from the summons and aids of Sheriffs and their servants…

As John’s charter was never repealed, a legal case could possibly be put forward to allow Marlborough people to park for free within the town under the “quit and free of all toll arising from passage”. People would not have had to pay to tether their horse or park their cart because of the charter. The car is, after all the modern equivalent of the horse and Wiltshire Council the modern equivalent of the shire, the sheriff and his servants.

John goes on to grant important property rights.

…we have granted that… our burgesses… and their heirs shall… hold their houses and possessions of us and our heirs, with quittance . . throughout our desmesnes, and with all liberties and free customs; so that they… in peace and as freely… may have and hold their possessions and liberties, as do our citizens of Winchester or Oxford, or as others of our subjects holding them in… free and undisturbed enjoyment.

Effectively John allowed free liberty of buying and selling, and established local jurisdiction for crimes and disputes involving property. Much of what John apparently granted appears to have already been in existence. A pipe roll reveals that the burgesses paid £5 in 1163 to John’s father King Henry II for the right to have a merchant guild. John tries to take the credit for this himself,

…we have granted to our said burgesses of Marlborough their own guild-merchant, prohibiting them… from decisions by duel, according to the laws of Winchester.

It would seem that before 1204 disagreements amongst the burgesses were sometimes settled in the time honoured method of a fight! Otherwise why insert a ban on duelling?

John’s charter was dated at Winchester on the 20th June 1204. It was not drawn up in Marlborough as the statute was to be 63 years later. It needs to be understood that John was constantly travelling around his kingdom: he never stayed in one place for any length of time and would cause much stress amongst his retainers as he would suddenly decide to move on or worse change his mind when the pack horses were ready. John was an itinerant king and, as such, had an excellent grasp of the state of his kingdom. For the common people John was respected as he would frequently intervene if he came across injustice. For the same reason the barons found him unsettling and a nuisance as they never knew when he was going to turn up.

He was regarded as odd: he had the very strange habit of wishing to bath regularly: his tub was carried around with him. He even had a garment prepared specifically designed to wear after bathing. John was the first known Briton to possess a dressing gown!

References to Winchester, Oxford and Hoyland simply reflect John’s knowledge of those places. Winchester pops up most frequently possibly because it was where he kept his treasure.

Less well known than the 1204 charter is an earlier charter dated at Portchester on April 28th 1200 granted to Savernake Forest. Richard Esturmy had arrived in England with William the Conqueror. Known as Richard the Wary, he was given the wardenship of Savernake Forest taking over from the Saxon Aluric the Huntsman. It is the Savernake horn that is represented on Kennet District Council’s heraldric crest. In the 1190s a Geoffrey Esturmy sided with Prince John in a plot whilst Richard the Lionheart was busy on the crusades. On Richard’s return Geoffrey was in disgrace barely hanging on to his wardenship. Geoffrey died soon after John became king: it is perhaps not surprising that his son Henry Esturmy solicited from John a charter to confirm and legitimise his continued hold over the Royal Forest of Savernake. The charter states,

Know ye that we have granted, and by this our charter do confirm, to Henry Esturmy …all the land and bailiwick of the forest of Savernake as Geoffrey Esturmy his father had . . to have and to hold to him and to his heirs, of Us and of our heirs by the service which …Geoffrey, father of …Henry, and his ancestors were wont and bound to our ancestors…

…it is our will …that …Henry and his heirs after him shall have and hold all the …land and bailiwick, with all its appurtenances well and peaceably, freely and quietly, wholly and honourably; in wood and in plain, in roads and in paths, in meadows and pastures and in all places and things, with all liberties and free customs pertaining to the said land and bailiwick.

On the 750th anniversary of the town charter in 1954, an exhibition was held in the town hall and a service in St Peter’s church. The exhibition was reported in the Marlborough Times on June 25th 1954,

Among those on the platform were Lady Cardigan and the Mayors and Mayoresses of Malmesbury, Salisbury, Calne, Devizes, Chippenham and Swindon.

The Mayor went on to say that she felt it was good in these uncertain and insecure days to be able to stand for a moment and look back upon the history of the Borough through the ages and appreciate the craftsmanship of past generations and the patience put into their work.

In his opening remarks, Lord Cardigan recalled that his ancestor had also held a charter from King John just on the other side of the Kennet, and it was interesting to reflect that, after 750 years, he was himself a neighbour of the town some 25 generations later. He had heard some people discussing the granting of the charter to the town as one decent thing that King John had done. “I wonder” said Lord Cardigan, “because when he gave my ancestor his charter he made him pay a very stiff price for it. In the case of my ancestor, the charter merely contained all rights he already had and he was compelled to pay a very heavy price for having his existing rights set down on parchment.” His ancestor had, he said, been charged 200 marks, which in actual face value corresponded to a sum of £133; the equivalent figure today would be £10,000. “My guess is that the people of Marlborough likewise paid a good fat price for their charter. I don’t think anyone got anything out of King John for nothing”.

It is not known how much the people of Marlborough paid for their charter. In June 1204 John lost Normandy to King Philip of France following a disastrous chain of events. The town of Rouen was the last to fall surrendering to Philip on 24th June, four days after John signed Marlborough’s charter. John was already looking to find the money to raise a new army to retake Normandy. The charter came at a very bad time for John: for him it may have been simply a covert tax-raising device, a kind of medieval stealth tax.

King John’s creation of Marlborough Common

King John gave what is now the southern part of the Common to the burgesses, or citizens, of Marlborough in exchange for land near the Castle. Marlborough College was later built on the site of the Castle. The Common was originally part of the Castle Barton, effectively farmland controlled by the King. Before King John’s exchange, the Common was entirely outside the borough boundary in the parish of Preshute. The incorporation of the southern part within the borough extended the borough boundary northwards. The Common, known historically as “The Thorns” provided the burgesses with pasture land for their animals.

Hares and rabbits were hunted with greyhounds on a large warren on Marlborough Common. It is likely that the two flanking greyhounds on the town coat of arms reflect this history. On the eastern side of the modern Swindon road the Portfields, or town fields, were until enclosure in the early 19th century, for the specific agricultural use for the town burgesses.

King John was effectively distancing the town from the castle by means of this exchange. The land near the castle that he gained became later the south-western end of the High Street known in Tudor times as the “Bailey ward”. It almost certainly would have been part of the castle’s outer bailey: only becoming part of the town when the castle later declined and the town expanded into that space. It is significant that even today the market is contained within the part of The High Street between the Town Hall and the Castle and Ball hotel; the old Tudor “High ward”. The burgage plots are much clearer to define at the north-eastern end of the High Street reflecting the probability that that part of the town developed as a rectilinear block as a direct result of King John’s exchange.

The Common and the market came into existence through King John. The town developed the way it did because of King John. It is right and proper that the reminders to his charter of 1204 should be seen by all who visit the town today.