Warwickshire: The Land of Shakespeare

by Clive Holland

The Danish leader’s reign brought peace and a large degree of prosperity for the people over whom he had been destined to rule. And during his sovereignty Warwickshire at least experienced immunity from ravishment by fire and sword, and enjoyed a measure of good government. In the years which immediately followed little happened to disturb the peace of the county, although bloody feuds occasionally wrought destruction in contiguous localities.

With the death of Edward the Confessor a brief period of unrest ensued, whilst Harold was engaged in a struggle to retain the throne he had ascended and in resisting the invasion of William of Normandy, who claimed that the crown of England had been left him by Edward the Confessor.

In the fierce Battle of Hastings, waged on the heights of Sussex, Harold fell fighting, and with him ended the history of the country under its Anglo–Saxon kings.

Under them England had gained a foretaste of those principles of individual and personal liberty, in comparison with which all other so–called freedom can be but a mockery.

The extent of the occupation of Warwickshire by the Saxons can be easily traced by the curious from the number of marks, as their early settlements were called. Thirty–one of the large number of thirteen hundred and twenty–nine names of settlements, which have been traced throughout the land, belong to Warwickshire. Some few of the most notable were Leamingas (Leamington), Beormingas (Birmingham), Ludingas (Luddington), Whittingas (Whittington), Poeccingas (Packington), Ælmingas (Almington), Secingas (Seckington), and Eardingas (Erdington).

Warwickshire is not possessed of many Saxon remains. Of architecture dating from before the Conquest the fragments of round–headed door cases at Kenilworth, Stretton–on–Dunsmoor, Ryton, Honingham, Badgeley, and Burton Dassett may be mentioned. While at Polesworth nunnery, the ruins of Merevale Abbey, and in the churches at Salford Priors and Beaudesert there are some fragments. Occasionally Saxon jewels have been turned up in the soil. Perhaps amongst the most interesting of these relics are the two Saxon jewels of cut gold, one set with an opal and rubies, and the other adorned on both sides with a cross between two rudely–fashioned human figures, each holding a lance or sword in one hand, found more than a century and a quarter ago at Walton Hall, near Compton Verney. Tumuli, of course, exist in different parts of the country, from which at various times bones, skulls, and small ornaments have been excavated.

Until the coming of William the Conqueror Warwickshire was almost without historians or records, although an attempt at a survey and the accumulation of historical data had been made in the previous reign of Edward the Confessor. Though the Saxon Chronicle gives many interesting and valuable details concerning lands, places, and incidentally also of the life of the people of the period, it is to the Domesday Book, that monumental work of the Conqueror, all historians and students have to go when in search of information regarding the English counties at the time of, immediately prior to, and after the Conquest. The value of this truly wonderful work as regards Warwickshire in particular is considerably enhanced by reason of its containing a comparative report of the nature, extent, and value of the different estates, names of towns, and position of roads in the reign of Edward the Confessor. From its pages one is enabled to gain a more or less vivid idea of the extent of the county, its inhabitants, and its peculiarities at a time when English history and that of Warwickshire was in the making.

In this wonderful work, commenced in 1081 and completed in 1086, are to be found records of all the original Saxon landowners (many of whom were afterwards dispossessed by their conquerors), and the value and extent of their estates. The original holders of the Saxon manors and estates in Warwickshire suffered severely at the hands of the Norman invader; and the pages of the Domesday Book afford interesting evidence of how wide–spread these confiscations were. The population of the county at that time was a few less than seven thousand, all told.

The period immediately succeeding the Conquest was one of great suffering for the vanquished. Year after year the Saxon Chronicle sets down a tale of wars, pestilences, storms, and famines, and although there is no direct reference to Warwickshire, it is certain that the county bore its part in “the sufferings inflicted by the acts of tyrannous man and the wisdom of God.”