Prehistoric Middenshire

Before commencing upon our perambulation with William Thuck, it would perhaps be useful to look at a condensed history of the county.

The 'bare bones' of Middenshire were laid down during the Jurassic period (c. 136-195 million years ago), when local erosion and subsequent deposition created the Kimmeridge Clay Beds. Over the course of time, numerous fluctuations in the sea level resulted in the creation of new overlying strata. However, due to the exposed position of our embryonic shire, these later deposits were almost entirely eroded away, except in the area closest to the Isle of Portland. Major changes to both climate and sea level during the Pleistocene era (about 2 million years ago) resulted in the exposure of the old clays, and thus was born Middenshire as we know it. Once the county was high and dry, the somewhat sluggish currents around its coastline began to lay down the deposits of mud, sand and silt for which Middenshire became famous (or infamous).

Because Middenshire was swallowed up before the advent of archaeology as we know it, it comes as no surprise that details of its prehistoric inhabitants are somewhat sketchy. William Thuck and his university contemporaries did at least attempt to record details of ancient monuments in the shire, but their efforts, although well meaning, were rather unscientific, and in any case virtually all of their papers are now lost. Lemuel Thuck, William's brother, who was given the nickname 'terracotta' by his contemporaries, was also a noted antiquarian, but his talents did not lie in the systematic excavation of graves or other ancient sites. Rather, he would employ local labourers to dig into the centre of burial mounds in the hope of finding gold, jewels, pottery, or any other artefact that would provide an interesting talking point for him and his friends. Sadly, he made no written records of his finds, preferring to leave such technicalities to his brother. Because, once again, these papers are lost, our knowlege of prehistoric Middenshire is reduced almost to zero. But we should not use hindsight as a stick with which to beat Lemuel Thuck. His method was an accepted practice at that time, and it was not until the nineteenth century (and here one calls to mind the excavations of 'Troy' by Schliemann in the 1860's) that those investigating the past discovered the value in minutely recording every find. Those few "facts" (and here I use the word with care) that still survive exist in a small pamphlet, written and published by William Thuck, entitled, 'Homo Brutalis; or ye Rude and Nakyd dwellers of Midenshire; together with an discription of their Religion, customes and tooles.' This apparently authoritative title belies the pamphlet's contents. William has handed down to us a work of almost complete speculation on the lifestyle of Middenshire Man, based on nothing more than the odd bone needle, arrowhead and potsherd. This aside, it is worthy of paraphrasing here as an example of the workings of the seventeenth century mind, if nothing else.

According to William, home would have been a rude hut, constructed of mud and animal dung, and surrounded by a wickerwork fence to contain the inhabitant's herb and vegetable garden. Inside the hut, all furniture was made of pottery, covered with the skins of the Middenshire Vole (their staple diet, eaten raw) for comfort. Thuck says that, despite the weather being much colder in those times, the men and women were not intelligent enough to realise that, by covering their nakedness, they would be warmer. He was sure that they had discovered fire by accident fairly early on, and used it to deter wild beasts from entering their houses and temples. It was not until many thousands of years later that their descendants discovered its additional uses - cooking and warmth. The nakedness of these first Middenites led Thuck to believe that birth rates were very high. As he pointed out,

When menne and women have no cloathes, the which to cover their nakydness with, it doth followe that those lewde passions, which in clothed men are held prisoner, doe rise up in one lackyng ye same.

Although early man in Middenshire did not understand the concept of clothes, he did at least understand the use of tools. Lemuel Thuck excavated huge numbers of bone needles, arrowheads and scrapers, which points to the fact that there was no naturally occurring flint in the shire. A few, rather badly worked flints were found, which shows that here must have been some trade with the rest of the country. One particularly interesting tool, which consisted of an antler with one of the branches sharpened to a point, was probably a pick, or some kind of rudimentary plough. William Thuck described it as a 'Heade opener, an instrument of torture, or of sacrifice, for to make a hole in ye heade.'

Mention of sacrifice brings us to the vexed subject of tribal rituals. Thuck thought that the people must have had some kind of religion, probably revolving around mud worship. He believed that the Mud Monday ceremony (of which more later in this blog) was a kind of race memory of early man's activities, mainly for the purpose of ensuring the fertility of the land, but also to provide some respite for the female tribe members from the incessant demands of their menfolk. He thought the rites probably took place at the summit of one of the shire's barrows (most of which, at that time, would probably not have existed!) and involved human sacrifice.

At sun rise ye inhappetants dyd commence a foule and debauchyd daunce, howlyng and moveing their limbes in a wilde manner. The priest, holdyng a parcell of leaves, beats the folke and singeth the laye of some ungodlie songe. Anon, a sacrifice was chosen who, beyinge anoynted with mudd and stucke about with leaves, was readie for ye seaven folde death. Firstely, he was stranguled by seven ropes about his necke. Secondly, his throte was cutt seven tymes. Nextlie, his head was open'd with the head opener, in seven spotts. Forthlie, he was plounced intoe a brooke or streame as many times. Fifthly, his bellie was ript asunder and the seven vital parts therin pulled forth and et. Sixthlie, his seaven extreames, viz, hys eares, nose, hands and legges, were cutt off. Seventhlie and laste, if the sacrifice dyd still live, hys fundament woulde be stuck with seven arrowes and fired.

Thuck also thought it possible that there was a main place of worship and sacrifice. He had heard of Stonehenge in Wiltshire and, mindful of the fact that Middenshire was somewhat lacking in the Stone Department, put forward the concept of Mudd Henge, a circular temple, constructed of tall pillars of mud, with a kind of sacrificial mud altar or sump in the centre. He believed that the structure would have been aligned to the movements of the heavenly bodies, most likely the sun or moon. One thing he did not consider was that the whole structure, if it ever existed, would have needed rebuilding every few months as the mud pillars, saturated with rainwater, would surely have become excessively glutinous and started to disintegrate.

Time marched on. Britain (and, no doubt, Middenshire) was visited by the Beaker People from central Europe, so named because of the distinctive shape of their drinking vessels. It is likely that these visitors drank a form of ale, made from fermented grain, and could therefore be credited with the invention of the hangover as well as the beer mug. Judging by some of the pottery artefacts sketched by Thuck, it seems that some settled in Middenshire, and probably became the ruling class by dint of their prowess with pottery and metals, especially copper. From these beginnings, the Bronze Age evolved, and a good many items from this period were found in the shire's few round barrows. Thuck had in his possession 'The heade of an axe, wrought of copper and tinne alloyed.' However, when he experimented with this axe and attempted to cut down a small tree in his garden, he noted that 'This nearuppon coste me one of my thumbes, having forgott to move ye same from the pathe of the moveinge blade.'

For the next few hundred years, Middenshire vanished into obscurity, and nothing is known until the arrival of the Romans.

Let's go to Middenshire

So, what happened to the inhabitants of Middenshire? Having fled their now drowned homeland, they eventually managed to blend in with the mainland population, changing their names to avoid the ridicule of the general population. Middenshire names were nothing if not distinctive, and to admit to their origins, especially in those parts of Dorset where the shire's existence (or rather, former existence) was still widely known, would have been as unwise as us admitting a spell in a psychiatric facility. This explains the name 'Throcke' found on Thuck's gravestone; the name was not the result of anomalous spelling, but rather that of deliberate concealment. There must now be many thousands of people with Middenshire ancestry as a result of this migration. Who knows, there might even be a descendant of William Thuck, living somewhere in the West Country, blissfully unaware of his now famous precursor.

Once all the manuscripts and books had been briefly examined, Dr. Mowbray published a short paper entitled, 'Middenshire - an England in Miniature.' Primarily intended as a scholarly work, the paper was not intended for public consumption. Apart from a full list of the contents of the cannon, much of Mowbray's treatise was concerned with Middenshire politics, the operation of the Manorial System, and other serious socio-economic issues. This narrow brief, of necessity, ignored the treasury of anecdotes, folklore, humour and social comment that Thuck had included in his diary and printed works, especially the Perambulacion. I came across Mowbray's paper a few years ago quite by chance in the British Library whilst I was researching medieval cures for an article I had intended to submit to a history magazine. Some of Thuck's printed material seemed both relevant and useful to the topic I was looking at, so I contacted Dr. Mowbray with a view to gaining access to Thuck's books and notes. The ever-generous Dr. Mowbray granted me unlimited access to the Thuck papers. However, at that time I was holding down a full time career in London, and spending sufficient time on the papers was out of the question. Now, however, I find myself free of work and, following a move to the south coast, somewhat closer to the archive where Thuck's papers are stored. Thus it is that I am able to introduce Middenshire to a wider public, and the current popular method of blogging seemed an ideal medium in which to do so. Unlike Dr. Mowbray, it is not my aim to tell the reader how many oxen were held by each Manor, how much tax was paid in 1350, or what ordinances existed to ensure the town ditches were kept scoured. I am sure he or she would rather hear about the penalty for stealing cowpats; about the farmer who paid part of his tithe in urine; and about the astronomer who saw stars of a different kind when he failed to spot one of the ditches.

So, come with me, if you will, back through the mists of time, as we prepare to explore England's forgotten corner. And, by the power of the pen, I shall attempt to restore to life all those men and women, so long dead, who lived, loved and breathed, and who made up that rich, but not terribly well-executed tapestry that was Middenshire.

How Middenshire met its end

Years passed, and the responsibility for the Middenshire archives remained with the Thuck family until, at last, the duty fell to our William. He took his task very seriously, spending much of his adult life collecting information on every aspect of his home, its history, settlements, people, flora, fauna and customs. This blog is largely based on a perambulacion which Thuck undertook in 1664, and during which most of the descriptions, customs and stories that have found their way into this volume, were obtained. Apart from being an archivist of squirrel-like intensity, he still found time to carry on the business of a full time printer/publisher (of which more later), keep an extensive diary, write books on any number of subjects, and indulge his hobbies of producing engravings and woodcuts. Throughout his long incumbency as County Remembrancer, Thuck often bemoaned Middenshire's ostracism. Although he entertained the wish that the Monarch would one day discover the truth of the business that had condemned Middenshire to oblivion, he was realistic enough to realise that there was little likelihood of this. As time wore on, Middenshire passed out of mind. It was only in the immediate area, and particularly in those coastal parts of South Dorset from which the muddy, sprawling county could be seen, that its existence remained common knowledge. It became the butt of many cruel jokes. Thuck, a veritable magpie, collected the lot.

I have not yet spoken of the 'dreadfull day of Doome' mentioned in Thuck's letter. The time has now come to explain Middenshire's vanishing act. The answer is very simple; it was swallowed up by the sea. This disappearance should not be seen as anything very surprising, or indeed, unique. There are many examples throughout Britain of towns and villages being inundated by the sea; witness the fate of Lyonesse, the land that lay between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly; and, more recently, the disappearance of Dunwich in Suffolk. Even today, despite our ingenuity in the face of hostile nature, many areas of East Anglia are still fighting a losing battle with the sea. In common with these present day areas, the Shire was fairly low lying. From the open sea it resembled nothing so much as a half submerged green whale. Much of its coastline was made up of deposits of mud and silt, and the land behind it was in some cases below sea level. These parts were subject to frequent flooding, being described as 'bogsome and marishy,' and of little or no agricultural use. Throughout the centuries, enterprising local engineers had constructed ingenious dykes, sluices, drainage channels and sea defences, in an attempt to keep the ravages of the tides at bay. Until the end of the seventeenth century, they enjoyed some measure of success. However, in 1692, (a year which, some pointed out, was ill-favoured, since its numbers added together totalled 18, or 'thrice six, the marke of the beaste') there was a major disaster in the eastern (and more low lying) part of the shire. An undersea earthquake (possibly related to the one which flooded Framlingham in far distant Suffolk) caused a great east to west surge in the English Channel, a surge which was made even worse by a storm. This by itself would have been sufficient to swamp the coastal areas of the shire. However, coupled with the fact that the earthquake also caused the almost instantaneous lowering of the land by several feet, the eastern part of Middenshire was utterly destroyed by the encroaching sea, with only a handful of survivors from Winkwood Pisham and Gargley left to tell the tale. Continuing the tradition of looking after their own, the West Middenites (whose own buildings suffered severe damage, but who fortunately sustained only light casualties) made land available to their dispossessed neighbours and helped them to rebuild their shattered lives. But the end was clearly in sight. Many saw the inundation as a punishment for past misdeeds, and were convinced that the next great storm would spell the end of both West Middenshire and their own lives. Submerging their suspicions about the world beyond the Causeway, they began to leave the shire. At first, the exodus was small, but that trickle of refugees soon became a flood.

When, in 1697, a great storm arose at the time of a spring tide, the shire's remaining sea defences were at last breached and what was left of Middenshire sank beneath the waves. When the end finally came, there were only a few souls left in Middenbury and Pendlebury. Unfortunately, Thuck's diary, otherwise so rich in detail, (he tells us he was the last person to leave the shire before it disappeared, on the back of a donkey called Gideon) does not tell us the actual date on which his home was swallowed up by the sea. We can only conjecture that it occurred on the 26th of November 1697, the day upon which Isaiah Stone's hat blew off in nearby Portland.

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.

The ostracism of the Shire

These are the facts surrounding Middenshire's disappearance from history.

Middenshire's archers were once considered the finest in the land. Being mindful of this, King Henry the Fifth ordered the county to supply 'xxx bowe menne at ther owne coste' for the French Wars in early 1415. It appears that the messenger charged with delivering this order became lost somewhere near Croydon and (so Thuck tells us) was murdered by Surrey outlaws. As a result, no Middenshire bowmen were forthcoming, and the king, angered by what he believed to be the Shire's defiance of his direct command, issued the following decree. Henry was, incidentally, the first monarch to use English as his 'official' language since the ill-fated Harold Godwinson:

I wolle that henceforwarde ye nayme of thys covntie of Miden Shere shal be stryken from mappe and boke, nor shal yt be uttered abroade by anie manne, on peyno of forfyt of hys gignytors, whych shal be ysnippen off wyth ye blounte sheares and then somtyme brent yn ye fyre.

Thus, Middenshire ceased to exist, becoming terra non grata by Royal order. It is, perhaps, predictable thatwhen the decree was issued, the only part of the realm that was not informed was the shire itself. The Middenites only realised that something was wrong following a visit to the mainland by Roger Bigot, abbot of Middenbury. Passing through Chipping Blandford (now Blandford Forum), he and his riding companions received inexplicable treatment from its inhabitants. There were dark mutterings and whisperings. At the inn, they were jostled, cursed, and one of the group was violently assaulted with an ale-mug. The angry Bigot confronted the High Sheriff of Dorset concerning his treatment, and received with dismay the news of the King's decree. Bigot decided to make the difficult and dangerous journey to London to petition the King. He arrived only a few days before Henry was due to set sail for Normandy, and was given audience at once.

Roger Bigot, Abbot of Middenbury

King Henry, the Fifth of that Name, by the Grace of God King of England, was a great and dignified ruler, by Abbot Bigot had chosen a bad time for his appeal. Henry was still white with anger from the discovery of the plot against his life and, in his anger, accused the shire of being implicated in the intrigue. Bigot tried to explain that the Royal Messenger had never arrived, but his explanations fell on deaf ears. Even when, two days after this meeting, the body of the messenger was found in a Carshalton thicket and was brought, bloodied and still clutching the conscription order, to Court, the King would have none of it. He insisted that the men of Middenshire had arranged the murder and were in league with Scrope, one of the plotter's against the King's life. Even if this evidence had preceded Bigot's visit, it would have been useless for the abbot to plead any further. Even if the King had been swayed by the arguments and the evidence brought before him, it would have been impossible for him to rescind the decree without a massive loss of face. Such a situation would have been playing straight into the hands of the French Court. If Henry's courtiers had any doubts about the guilt of Middenshire, they kept these doubts to themselves.

In the next post, I'll explain how the King wiped Middenshire off the map, and how the shire dealt with its change in circumstances.

Middenshire - the island county

In his Perambulacion, Thuck produced a map, placing the county in context with part of the south coast of England. This map it crystal clear that the county no longer existed, since the area it occupied is now nothing but sea. Albeit seventeenth century maps were not known for their cartographical accuracy, it indicated that Middenshire was an arrow-shaped piece of land, the point facing east, lying in the English Channel off the coast of Dorset. It appears to have been about 18 miles long by seven and a half at its widest point, and joined by a narrow causeway at its western extremity to the Isle of Portland. This causeway was, according to Thuck, negotiable only at low tide, so, to all intents and purposes, Middenshire was an island. Its insularity was not merely physical, however. Thuck's book suggets that a kind of 'island mentality' existed in the county, its people tending to regard anyone from the mainland as 'foreign,' and warranting deep suspicion. The Dorset people likewise regarded Middenites (a term coined by one of the many fringe religious groups that at one time inhabited Middenshire) as alien, inbred, superstitious and stupid. It has to be said that some, or more truthfully, many, of the documents preserved in the cannon tend to add credence to this view. Thuck, in a number of pen portraits of fellow countrymen and women that echo John Aubrey's Brief Lives, attempted to show that the county did produce people of intellect and ability who, but for the accident of being Middenshire born, could have risen to true greatness. However, one thing that becomes apparent to us in these more cynical times, is that most of these people's achievements seemed flawed in some way. By a cruel twist of fate, they seemed doomed to fail in what even enterprise they undertook. The greatest failure of all - possibly the only one in its history to which the population of Middenshire did not contribute - occurred in the fifteenth century and wiped the name of Middenshire from the map.

The details of this 'failure' and its consequences I will relate in the next post.

Middenshire?

The team decided initially to take the letter at face value. William Thuck, who calls himself a 'Remembrancer' (a kind of record keeper or archivist), planned to take documentary evidence of 'Middenshire' (wherever that was) to God on Judgement Day, in order to counter an alleged act of treason supposedly perpetrated by the men of Middenshire against Henry the Fifth, who had made some decree concerning Middenshire's obscurity. This bald interpretation didn't help very much. What was the 'Dreadfull day of Doome' that Thuck had witnessed? What was this decree of Henry the Fifth? And where on earth was Middenshire?

Fortunately, the teams did not have to wait long for the answers to these questions. One particularly fat oilskin packet contained a thick unbound book, covered in handwritten notes, jottings and containing primitive woodcut illustrations. This book was entitled (using that economy of words for which the seventeenth century was justly famous):

A Perambulacion of ye entire countie of Midenshire, with a trew Historie of that place from ye earlyest dayes, and divers observacions concerning ye People, Townes and Antiquities therof, by Willm. Thuck, Printer.

The team could hardly believe what they were reading. Middenshire was an 'entire Countie', hitherto unknown. A quick perusal of the long and rambling introduction to the Perambulacion provided information on its location, and the reason why it was totally absent from every map and, indeed, from every single book on English history.