Ink, Stink Bait, Revenge, and Queen Elizabeth

A Yorkshire Yeoman's Household Book

Steven W. May, Arthur F. Marotti

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780801455551
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Renaissance History
• Index: History

In Ink, Stink Bait, Revenge, and Queen Elizabeth, Steven W. May and Arthur F. Marotti present a recently discovered "household book" from sixteenth-century England. Its main scribe, John Hanson, was a yeoman who worked as a legal agent in rural Yorkshire. His book, a miscellaneous collection of documents that he found useful or interesting, is a rare example of a middle-class provincial anthology that contains, in addition to works from the country's cultural center, items of local interest seldom or never disseminated nationally.

Among the literary highlights of the household book are unique copies of two ballads, whose original print versions have been lost, describing Queen Elizabeth's procession through London after the victory over the Spanish Armada; two poems attributed to Elizabeth herself; and other verse by courtly writers copied from manuscript and print sources. Of local interest is the earliest-known copy of a 126-stanza ballad about a mid-fourteenth-century West Yorkshire feud between the Eland and Beaumont families. The manuscript's utilitarian items include a verse calendar and poetic Decalogue, model legal documents, real estate records, recipes for inks and fish baits, and instructions for catching rabbits and birds. Hanson combined both professional and recreational interests in his manuscript, including material related to his legal work with wills and real estate transactions.

As May and Marotti argue in their cultural and historical interpretation of the text, Hanson's household book is especially valuable not only for the unusual texts it preserves but also for the ways in which it demonstrates the intersection of the local and national and of popular and elite cultures in early modern England.

1

THE ELAND-BEAUMONT FEUD

This news which is called true is so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.

(SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale, 5.2.25–26)

Roughly a third of the Hanson manuscript is given over to recording two versions of a mid-fourteenth-century revenge story centered on a conflict between two Yorkshire families from Hanson’s own neighborhood, the Elands and the Beaumonts—the first a prose narrative (ff. 12–18v) and the second a long ballad (ff. 33–42).¹ The former, either by design or accidentally, creates the (false) impression that the latter literary treatment of the feud is consistent with the historical record, or at least with the historical memory of those living in the area in which the original events of the story took place. These accounts of the Eland-Beaumont feud in prose and verse comprise a unique combination of materials from what might be termed “folk history.” Every episode narrated in the ballad could have been drawn from the prose version, which is ultimately independent of the ballad since its last part covers events omitted from the poem: the subsequent careers and deaths of the avengers who brought the Eland family line to an end. Whether or not the balladeer made immediate use of the prose narrative, Hanson’s anthology preserves the only known sixteenth-century combination of a contemporary and unpublished prose parallel with its companion text, a “popular” or “folk” ballad.

The basic story is one of crime, revenge, and vengeful overreaching in mid-fourteenth-century southwest Yorkshire, extending from one generation to the next, with consequences for a third. It begins, shockingly, with the account of how a local sheriff, Sir John Eland, and his men murdered Hugh Quermby and William Lockwood, friends and supporters of Sir Robert Beaumont, before invading the moated manor house of Beaumont himself and murdering him in the sight of his family. Beaumont’s son Adam and the sons of the murdered Quermby and Lockwood and the Beaumont kinsman Thomas Lacy² were taken to Lancashire, where they grew to manhood and resolved to take revenge on Eland. The second part of the story begins with the now-grown Adam Beaumont, Quermby, Lockwood, and Lacy returning to their home territory to ambush and slay Sir John Eland before retreating to safety in Lancashire. The third part of the story portrays the avengers’ overreaching in their ambushing of Sir John Eland’s son and grandson (thus destroying the patrilineage of the Elands), then fleeing the neighborhood pursued by local Eland supporters. The pursuers seriously wound and then callously kill Quermby, whom, after an emotional parting, his friends had been compelled to leave as they fled. The ballad ends with this slaying of Quermby by Eland’s men, while the prose account extends the story further, adding an episode in which Lockwood is betrayed to his enemies by his lover and concluding with a brief account of the subsequent histories of Lacy and Beaumont.³

Differences between the Prose and Ballad Versions of the Eland-Beaumont Conflict

The prose narrative of the Eland-Beaumont conflict and the ballad version of the events differ somewhat in both details and emphasis. The prose narrative begins in medias res with Sir John Eland getting right to the planning of the attack on Sir Robert Beaumont: “It happened in the monthe of maye that sir John Eland forcasted the waye and whan to betray Sir Robert Beaumont” (f. 12). The ballad, by contrast, starts with general moral reflections on the dangers of pride, ambition, and social rivalry, before presenting Eland as a prideful villain ready to assault Sir Robert. The ballad gestures toward a possible context for the antagonism in alluding to oral history:

Some saye that Eland sheryff was

by bea[m]ount Dysobeyed

whiche myght hym make for such trespase

wyth hym the worse appeyd

(f. 33v, st. 14)

The precise historical circumstances of the feud, however, are occluded in both narratives.⁴

While the prose version mentions that Eland gathered “agreat number of mene” (f. 12), the ballad is more specific in identifying them as “frendes and tennantes all” (15.2) who were selected because they were “stowt sturdye mene and taulle” (15.4)—that is, thugs. In the prose version, Eland and his men slay Quermby and Lockwood because “Eland suspected [they] wolde stand in armes agaynst hym in behalf of theyr kynsman Sir Robert” (f. 12). In the ballad, the two victims are called “Syr Robartes [sic] beamount ayde” (18.2), but their murders are presented first without justification. In the prose version, the moat around Sir Robert Beaumont’s house is not specifically mentioned, though it is in the ballad, and the drawbridge figures in both accounts, for the home invasion takes place after “a mayde of the howse” (f. 12) lets down the bridge in the early morning. The prose version notes that the “famylye [was] in bedde no thynge syspectyng the mater” (f. 12v), while the ballad cuts right to the invasion into the “knyghtes chamber” (21.2). In the prose account Sir Robert gets up suddenly and, with his family members, fights the attackers, forcing them to retreat. In the ballad, Sir Robert “fought agenst theym manfullye” (22.3) though he was “unarmed” (22.4), and only then “hys servantes Rose and styll wythestood / and stroke wythe myght and mayne / in hys defence” (23.2–4)—in vain. In the ballad, though not in the prose account, Lady Beaumont “cryed and skyrked wythall / from hyr than whan they ledde / hyr Deare husband into the haule / and there storke [sic] of hys heade” (24.1–4)—a detail missing from the prose but amplified emotionally and interpreted morally in the subsequent ballad stanzas.

In the prose narrative, the death of Sir Robert Beaumont takes place in the context of armed struggle, and the death of Beaumont’s brother William is mentioned, as well as the killing of someone named Exley. The latter is identified as a relative who “aforetyme slewe sir John Eland brotheres sonne for the Which to agrement he gave acertan peece of land to the Elandes yet after the agrement made Sir John Eland sought to have slayne hym and therefore Exle was constrayned to flee unto thafforsayd sir Robert Beaumont for ayde who bycause he was hys kynsman Rescued hym whiche partlye was the occasyon of the great malice that was betwyxt the sayd sir Robert Beaumont and sir John Eland” (ff. 12v–13). At the point in the story at which Beaumont dies, a context that might explain Eland’s own wish for revenge is provided (instead of being presented at the start), information that is missing from the more simplified circumstances of the ballad, except possibly in the vague reference in stanza 14 to an act of disobedience on Beaumont’s part when Eland was sheriff.

The prose narrative and the ballad differ in their presentation of the involvement of Beaumont’s Lancashire relatives, to whom the family appeals for rescue. In the midst of the prose account of Eland’s attack, we are told that “one of Sir Roberte kynsmen and a frend of hys went to lancashyer to geyt knowledge [of the attack] unto Sir John brewerton and Syr John Towneley” and, in response, “they assented to come over wythe Dyverse gentlymen and otheres well armed to Rescue Syr Robert beamount” (f. 12v). On the way, a messenger informs them of the death of Sir Robert and they return to their home county, sending later for Sir Robert’s surviving children and those of Quermby, Lockwood, and Lacy to put them under their protection. In the ballad, the help of the Lancashire relatives is sought after Sir Robert’s death, and because they were Lady Beaumont’s relatives, after she has fled they take the widow and the children into their protection in Lancashire at Bruerton (Brereton) and Townley Hall.

Both the prose text and the ballad include a scene in which Eland and the home invaders force the Beaumont family to sit down to breakfast with them after they have killed Sir Robert. In the prose account this happens (improbably) after the Lancashire relatives are assured of the safety of the family and return home; in the ballad the Lancashire relatives are not involved at this point. In the prose text, Eland calls Beaumont’s children before him and offers them bread, “whiche they Receyved but adam Beamount theldest after he hade taken yt, he wythe dysdeignne threwe yt at hym agayne, which Eland perceyvynge sayd that he would wede owt thofspring of his blood as they wede the weedes owt of corne” (f. 13r–v), but Eland does not kill the children, allowing them to go to Lancashire. In the ballad, there is less detail about the incident: after slaying Sir Robert, the murderers sit down to eat before the rest of the family, and after Eland ordered Sir Robert’s sons to dine with him, one of them, Adam, “wold nether eite nor Drynke” (30.4), at which point Eland foresees the child’s growing up to avenge his father’s death and threatens to kill him if he sees him “wax wilde” (32.1). Though at this point the prose narrative continues uninterruptedly, the ballad here marks the end of the “fyrst fraye” (33.1).

The next part of the story deals with the relocation of the Beaumont, Quermby, and Lockwood children, along with Thomas Lacy, to the houses of Lady Beaumont’s Lancashire kinsmen. The prose account does not mention Lady Beaumont, though the ballad has her fleeing her home territory with her children. In the prose version the next stage of the story abruptly begins by noting that the sojourn in Lancashire lasted until “they” (the children) were “xx yeires of age” and “weare strong and of good audacitye and well cowlde h...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Eland-Beaumont Feud
• 2. Two Lost Ballads of the Armada Thanksgiving Celebration
• 3. Verse and Prose from Other Printed Sources
• 4. Other Texts from Manuscript Sources
• 5. Recipes for Ink and Stink Bait plus Other Utilitarian Items
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index