Then an English knight went out and challenged any to break a spear for his mistress's sake. Robert Fitzwalter came over, and, encountering with his great Lance, overthrew both the Knight and the Horse, and so returned to the King of France.
Then said King John, by God's Troth, he were a King indeed who had such a Knight in his Retinue. His friends, hearing this, knelt before the King and said, Sir, he is your Own Knight, and ready at your command, Robert Fitzwalter. The next day he restored to him his Barony with all appurtenances, and the two Kings were reconciled by the interposition of Robert, and all the banished persons were recalled, with leave to rebuild their castles.
"The death of Robin Hood with the lamentable Tragedie of Chaste Matilda, his faire Maid Marian poisoned at Dunmowe by King John," printed in 1601, is one of two plays on the subject, and is reprinted by Hazlitt. Michael Drayton wrote poetical accounts of the story, and in 1639 Robert Davenport produced a third play, "King John and Matilda."
CHAPTER VI
The Jury of Spinsters
The last Prior of Dunmow was Geoffry Shether.* After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the duty of giving the Bacon seems to have passed to the Lords of the Manor of Little Dunmow. They held their Courts—as they have been held within living memory—at Priory Place, formerly a farmhouse and now four cottages. In a parchment book belonging to a former Lord of the Manor, the Rev. James Hughes-Hallett, and now in the possession of Mr. de Vins Wade of Great Dunmow, the present Lord of the Manor, there is an account of the Bacon ceremonies which was written in 1737.
* See [Appendix].
It is therein stated that the custom was first instituted by the monks "in ye year 1111 and continued to this day." The "two hard stones" are described as "yet to be seen in the doorway of the Pryory," and it is explained that "the oath was administered with such long process, and such solemn singing over him, as doubtless must make his Pilgrimage Painfull."
If it be true that the ceremony took place, as described, "before the whole Towns," and that the successful applicant for the Bacon was "carried after through the Towns with all the Fryers and Brethren and all the Townsfolk, young and old, following them with shouts and acclamations," it would appear that Great as well as Little Dunmow had its share in the Flitch custom. The Manor of Little Dunmow extends some distance into Great Dunmow.
In the Hughes-Hallett parchment (as also in Lansdowne Roll, 25, British Museum), the Manorial ceremony is chronicled—