A Flower of the Well for the Flower of the Month – conflicts over old customs in Aldborough
Cause papers in the Diocesan Registry of York (Borthwick Institute, York, H.C.C.P. N.D./11 [1594-5]) provide two records of conflict over the performance of folk customs in Aldborough:
1. In July 1594, Robert Rodes (alias Scotson) heard that Thomas Hudesley, the vicar of Alborough, had reproved a group from Roecliffe who brought rushes to the church and strewed them there. The group included some in disguise, whom the minister advised “to come in more humble & reverent maner to {th}e place.” Rodes immediately hired a gun from an alehouse-keeper in Boroughbridge, went to the church, and, just as the sermon ended, aimed above the vicar’s head and fired!
2. Then on Sunday, 6 January 1595 (the Feast of the Epiphany), a group of at least nine men attempted to bring their “Mammet com{m}only called the floure of th<e> well … on a barrow into {th}e churche in prayer time.” Denied access to the church, they proceeded to the churchyard with such “a noyse of pyping, blowyng of an horne, rin<g>yng or strikinge of basons, & showtinge of people {that} the minister was co{n}streyned to leaue of readinge of prayer.” One Mr. Ralph Ellicar, “being a stranger merueled att it.”
What was the “Flower of the Well”?
The “flower of the well” regularly referred to the new year’s water from a sacred spring or holy well. This group would have certainly needed a ‘barrow’ to make that easier, especially if they were bringing the water from St. Mungo’s well, about four miles to the southwest in Copgrove Park. Perhaps the epithet is metonymic as used here, referring not to the water, but to the image or effigy—the ‘mammet’—of the patron saint of the well.
Image of St Mungo from http://www.clyde-valley.com/glasgow/mungomus.htm
The “flower of the well” incident seems clearly to illustrate Protestant opposition to customary practices associated with Catholicism. The use of the word mammet, a word derived from Mohamet a variant spelling of the prophet’s name (OED), links the practice to the worship of false gods and idolatry in general and to Catholic images of Christ or the saints specifically. But we should probably reserve judgement about what was at issue in the case of Robert Rodes: did the church authorities object in principle to rush-bearing? or to the inclusion of disguised people in the group? or to the behaviour of those who preferred customary revelry to latter-day reverence? Perhaps disguise, role-playing, and revelry were of the essence of the ancient practice; to excise them was to eliminate the old custom itself.
Map showing Boroughbridge, Aldborough and Roecliffe, North Yorkshire (googlemaps).
This month’s Flower has been very graciously provided by Professor Ted McGee (University of Waterloo, Ontario), co-editor of the REED West Yorkshire volume.
To this day the Christian churches, esp. the Catholic church, is at loggerheads with some customary feasts, esp. “carnival”. However, most heathen and “bacchanalian” elements have been purged and e.g. the festivities in Bale/Switzerland are completely “pour le dauphin” while only catholic Cologne/Germany we still find the same bacchanal that already irked the bishops back in the mediaeval ages. If you go only about ten miles outside Cologne you will find normal citizens completely shocked and outraged at the 8about) three-day promiscuous “feast of the flesh” held there. I could imagine that in the 16th century, more diverse local customs still prevailed and that even there were actually three “factions”: the steadfast “Papist” Catholics, the “Calvinist” puritan interpretation of Protestantism and still those who were more of Dionysian frame of mind and might have hoped to get away now that either denomination was busy fighting the other?!