In Kent the orders arrive in a day and the house in a fortnight, and the danger is too much attention. In the north the journey alone takes eleven days, the Concord answers a season late, and the danger is that nobody comes at all. The fees are the same in both. Everything else is different.
“We signed in the ende, and we signed for the chapitre and nat for the shire. Thei have the instrument. We have the thing that was nat writ in it, and Kent hath lived upon that difference thise six hundred yeer.”
What Canterbury Kept
The see that lost the ordering and kept the right to bury
Canterbury lost the ordering of rite, burial and the examination of power to Oxford in the Obedience War, and kept its see, its lands and its right to bury. It may still hallow ground by a rite every southern diocese honours, and attest that a burial was done correctly, and those certificates decide disputed estates and are forged; the chapter will check any one of them free on any weekday. It cannot attend, suppress or mend anything. In the Kentish form the words are spoken over the grave before the body is brought, names the ground aloud, may be spoken by a lay person, and requires the mourners to come back at a stated interval.
The Four Grounds
The lost burial grounds of the Obedience War
Between 3942 and 3949 Canterbury buried more than four thousand of its own in at least nine places, consecrated while the chapter’s authority stood in dispute. Some sites are known; four, the Four Grounds, are described only against landmarks that are gone. Building is refused in a defined area without any reason given, finds below the old paving must be reported, and the act book reads the matter aloud every year with no motion on it. Of the visitation returns naming a place, the two ever inspected were found already hallowed.
Grey Nails and Proved Dealing
Witchcraft in Kentish law, and those who attend ground
In Kent a hanging for witchcraft needs proved dealing, compact or commerce with demons or spirits; charm fraud and grave interference are lesser crimes, and possession is never indicted. The Grey Nails, a sworn lay order of sixty to ninety men, hunt witches without commission, record, appeal or fee, crop ears and burn charm houses, and convict at a rate the clerk of assize has remarked on. They are not the walkers, reeves and hunters outsiders lump together as the Chalk Wardens, who have no roll or master and read ground the old way: a beast means a bounty, a haunt means sending for the people who attend ground, and a spirit means do not kill the first thing you see.
At Dover the flat bell at the head of the eastern quay is rung before every closure, an instruction in the pilots’ book with no reason written beside it; it is said to be rung for the unconsecrated foreshore where three centuries of drowned lie.
Where Cambridge Does Not Reach
The north without the Collegium
No Collegium house and no resident licensee: a surveyor comes perhaps twice a decade, the nearest practitioner wants six pounds and a fortnight’s notice, and about fifteen unlicensed practitioners fill the gap, prosecuted only for falsely claiming a licence. Excluded ground cannot be insured. Blight is formally the Collegium’s business and receives a reply about licensing and nothing else. There are nineteen pieces of it, walled, walked and measured each Lady Day; burning, ploughing, lime and blessing have all failed; one piece will reach a drove road in forty years and another a village in ninety.
Struck at the Boundary Stone
Stones, fold bells, ferries and charcoal in the march
Children are struck at each boundary stone so that they will remember it as witnesses, and a blessing is said at the last stone that nobody agrees is for the child or the bound. Every fold hangs an unconsecrated bell, rung on first entry each season because the ground is used to it. The ferrylords must carry parish, priest, midwife, coffin and whoever rings the staithe bell, and the Wiggenhalls have lost two men to that duty. Nine charcoal families lay about forty hearths a season, with bells on the hearths, iron at the hut corners and a charm under every centre stake, and the priory has twice ruled it not occult.
Eleven church ruins stand in the march, nine still consecrated. Five deep ruins of mortarless dressed stone go down further than anyone has followed, each ringed by kept ground.
The Valley That Costs Twice
Why northern ground costs far more than its price
Four purchases of northern ground in a century have all failed in their third or fourth year, from observances nobody costed, the lack of a consecrated burial ground and open-ended company hire at four pounds a week. Ten men for twelve weeks cost about forty-eight pounds; the first year runs past a hundred; a difficult valley swallows a hundred and fifty pounds long before it yields ten a year in rent. One company now governs its valley unpaid, because it has become the arrangement.
