Middenshire sinks into obscurity

The King appointed a group of 'Scavengers' to ensure Middenshire's obscurity would be complete. These scavengers were charged with the removal of the shire's name from all government records and other archives. Thus, Court Rolls, letters patent, land grants, deeds, bills of sale and even personal letters, were gathered up, and conveyed to 'Ye Kinges Pype', a huge furnace adjacent to the Tower of London, used for the destruction of unfit food and the belongings of people who had died from infectious diseases. In this furnace, much of the history of Middenshire turned to smoke and ash, and all would have been lost, but for the quick wittedness of William Thuck's ancestor, Geoffrey. One of the few literate laymen in the shire, he was asked to accompany Bigot to London in order to record the exchanges between the abbot and the King. He was able to bribe his way past the guards, and by a further bribe of six marks (a very large sum of money) was able to rescue a stack of doomed parchments. Geoffrey took them back to the Shire and placed them in one of the huge, iron bound chests which lay in the Muniment Room of Middenbury Abbey. As the lid of the great chest boomed shut, plunging its contents into darkness, Geoffrey no doubt mused on the shadow which had fallen across his beloved County. In recognition of his quick thinking, and the considerable sum of money he had expended, Bigot appointed him 'County Remembrancer,' charging him with the preservation of Middenshire's history. Bigot did not know whether he had the right to make this appointment, but, in the absence of any higher authority at that time, he thought the decision reasonable. It is to Geoffrey that we should be indebted for much of what is written in this introduction. King Henry (and all subsequent monarchs) demanded that all business relating to Middenshire should be dealt with off the record; this explains the absence of any mention of the shire in the Curia Regis rolls of the period, and thereafter.

It will be remembered that part of the King's decree mentioned the removal of Middenshire from the map. All known existing maps were destroyed, and the country's foremost cartographers, who prided themselves on their accuracy, dared not show the county on their maps. Any new maps produced tended to be based on information found on older ones, so subsequent cartographers were largely unaware of Middenshire's existence. Any map maker ignorant of the decree, and brave enough to carry out a survey in the area, would be given the answer 'Mudde and Shitte' when he asked what lay east of the Isle of Portland. If he subsequently went ahead and actually included the county in his map, the mistake was soon rectified by the Royal Cartographer General, and the usual result was the snipping off of more than just the offending part of the map, and that without benefit of a trial.

When Bigot conveyed the news of Middenshire's ostracism to the people, reactions were predictably mixed. Some howled with anger, some in disbelief, and some, as always, were too drunk to notice. However, the majority of the population regarded it as a blessing. They held the view that 'outsiders' had meddled in their affairs for far too long, and believed they would be better off without mainland interference. Although the land was not fabulously fertile, it was sufficient to sustain the small number of inhabitants above subsistence level. No one in the county was more than a few miles from the English Channel with its plentiful supply of fish, and the people were hardy enough to be able to live without the kind of luxuries on offer on the other side of the causeway. So it was that Middenshire turned its back on the outside world. There were, of course, a few Middenites who ventured into Dorset and beyond, and, equally, a small number of explorers who found their way from the mainland and into Middenshire; but the Royal decree was never far from their minds and the name of the shire was never mentioned in their diaries or journals.

In the next post, we meet William Thuck, and discover how Middenshire met its end.