Visiting Those Long Gone...

Haven't looked it up yet, but I came across a couple of interesting records while on Ancestry this miserable wet Sunday afternoon...

They are both for brothers who were Broadloom Weavers in the late 1600's in Gloucestershire...they are inventories of all their goods and chattels, including the clothes they were wearing at the time and the money in their pockets.

Not the same as a Will...these inventories appeared to be obligatory...I'll Google later on and see what occurs.

While looking at this particular branch of our family I found three Reverends...all of whom were incumbents at small village Churches in Gloucestershire...the earliest chap was alive and well in 1535...

And I was wondering what kind of lives they led...those clever men who'd been to Oxford and wrote in flowing script on the pages of vellum, records of baptisms and marriages...burials and grave plots bought. They were cousins of mine, those worthy men, who probably had to kick the odd straying pig out of the aisle and ask a local farmhand to put clean straw down on the floor because there was a wedding due to take place...

I wish I could stand beside them for a little while when they baptised tiny babies from ancient fonts and cussed at the pigeons nesting in the roof...lean over their shoulder while they dipped their quill into an ink-pot, to carefully write out a new baby's name...sprinkle a little sand to dry the ink and put the precious book back in the wooden chest at the back of the church...

Were they kindly disposed towards the young Curate who slept in the attic room of the vicarage...shivering with the cold in winter...sweating with the heat in summer-time...did they make sure he was properly fed and had a decent pair of leather shoes to wear...

I'd liked to have gone to the vicarage for supper one night, to sit at the long wooden table with the sons and the daughters and eat from a pewter platter and drink rough ale, while my cousin, the Incumbent, read a passage from the Bible out loud and pinched the serving girls bottom as she ladled out a greasy soup...

Edwardus, the Broadloom weaver, who was married to a woman named Julien, would have been another interesting person to spend some time with...he was born in the early 1600's and lived his entire life in the same small village.

Broadlooms were much larger than the standard loom and needed two people to operate them...his loom, according to the inventory, was worth three pounds...I don't know what kind of a dwelling he would have lived in. Perhaps it was small and modest enough...maybe it was the biggest home in all of the village with a good view of the stocks from the windows.

It would be so interesting to spend time with Edwardus...watching him and his assistant work the loom that turned out fabric for the households all around. Bed sheets and tablecloths and dinner napkins were in his inventory...as were bales of cloth, probably ready to be sold on.

He would have had servants I expect...perhaps Julien was kindly towards her cook and the girl who tended the children...maybe she was rough and beat them when they didn't work as hard as she wished for...but I'd like to meet her and ask her what her life is like...living as she does with a man of some importance in his immediate society.

I hope she and Edwardus didn't take the children to watch a hanging or bear baiting in the local town...

And I'm wondering whether the Vicars and the Weavers spent time together...did they meet in a local ale-house for a gossip and to hear the news from the Court...did they visit each other on a Sunday afternoon or go for a picnic down by the river...

Did they worry about the cost of living and what was going to happen when the King died...or were their concerns perhaps more trivial...having new quills cut and a supply of ink for the Vicars to keep their records, might have taken precedence over what was happening in the Royal Chambers... maybe the weavers were more likely to fret over the ready supply of wool, especially after hearing of the devastation a pack of wolves had caused a local flock of sheep...

Every time I go onto the Ancestry site...whether I'm researching our own family or someone else's, I'm left with more questions than answers...

Who were they...those people I find with their old names...Margaretha and Alsye...Jone and Ricardus...do their phantoms and essences still drift about the burial grounds in small villages...absorbed into the soft red bricks of ancient homes...can they be met in tiny churches with stout wooden pews and a poor box chained to the wall...do they waft over grassy paths on a winters afternoon...