HISTORICAL NOTTINGHAMSHIRE By Everard L. Guilford, M.A.

Modern historians look askance at the writers of fifty years ago, their methods, and their results. Their work is unreliable, supported by little documentary evidence, and therefore of no worth. But these despised historians of an earlier generation did what many modern writers forget to do—they made history live. They remembered that the characters in the great drama were once such men and women as themselves, and they tried to reproduce them as such. Their frequent inexactitudes in the light of modern knowledge have discountenanced this school, and the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. No statement is accepted unless it can be amply and substantially supported by documentary evidence, and, what is more, if I may use the expression, by documentary evidence of the bluest blood. Thus it is that our national history, and more especially our local history, has lost many of those picturesque sketches which riveted our attention and, like the piers of a bridge, helped us to span the intervening gulf of interminable yet necessary detail. Nowadays we must eradicate from our minds the stories of such heroes as Robin Hood and place them among the national fairy tales. This is quite an unnecessary surgical operation. It is as though we cut off our leg to cure a sprained ankle. Much may be learnt from the adventures of Robin Hood if we regard them from the social point of view, for we can obtain from them no mean nor incorrect idea of what England, and particularly Nottinghamshire, was like in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

I do not wish it to be thought that the importance of documents is disregarded, but rather that they can be used much more than they have been in conjunction with tradition and the study of natural features. In this sense the study of local history is still in its infancy. Some historians have even gone so far as to refuse to consider Nottingham prior to the first definite date recorded—868 A.D. This is mere stupidity, this erring on the safe side. One other side of the question I would venture to point out before I deal more particularly with Nottinghamshire history, and that is that it is impossible to gain a clear and correct knowledge of a district without making a personal acquaintance with the territory in question. Large scale maps will do much to help, but a tramp through the land under consideration will give clearer insight into the minds of the men who made the country, the natural features and the artificial features will then assume their proper positions and due proportions, and the why and the wherefore will in many cases be as clear as the noonday sun.

Nottinghamshire has a great history—greater perhaps than any of its sons realise—a history reflecting in miniature the history of the country at large. The tale of all that has happened in this little Midland shire cannot be rightly understood unless we appreciate the importance of its geographical position and its natural features. Nottinghamshire is par excellence the Midland shire. Its four neighbours all differ from one another, and Nottinghamshire in its turn partakes of the characteristics of that which is nearest. Hence we have a county of very varied character with two strongly predominating features—Sherwood Forest and the Trent. Both of these have played a great part in local history, the latter especially, for the importance of the former was more trivial and not so permanent. Truly the “smug and silver Trent” is the predominating feature in whatever way we consider Nottinghamshire. By it the middle of England could be reached by sea-going ships, and the commerce of the world distributed through districts otherwise extremely hard to reach. Besides the Trent served as a boundary between north and south England for legal and ecclesiastical purposes. The crossings of the Trent at Nottingham and Newark gave to these towns no small measure of their medieval importance; they became keys to the north.

The earliest human inhabitants of these islands had a predilection for dwelling in caves, and we know that they were able to attain to their desires in one place at least within the county—at Cresswell Crags. Their remains are so scanty that we can readily believe that they were few in number, perhaps mere northerly outliers on the edge of a great uninhabitable unknown. These men we call the Palæolithic men, and their successors—though there is a great gap between—the Neolithic men. We have good reason to believe that in the earliest times Britain was not separated from the Continent, but we are certain that this cleavage took place before Neolithic man made these shores his home. In Nottinghamshire at any rate Neolithic man was much more numerous than his predecessors had been, assuming that we may argue the comparative population of races by the quantity and distribution of their remains. Of neither of these races, nor of any that succeeded them till we come to the Britons, can we obtain any fact which we can safely place on the modern side of the distant border between history and pre-history.

The historians of the picturesque era brought the British period into bad repute, just as the writers of thirty or forty years ago discountenanced archaeology by classifying all architecture of uncertain age as Saxon. But if we want to get at the truth we must not be frightened of the pre-Roman days. The Britons were after all very human, and acted in given circumstances as men may always be expected to do. We must not look for their fords at the deepest parts of the river’s course, nor must we expect their roads to take a difficult ascent where an easy slope presents itself.

The publication of the first two volumes of the Victoria History of the County of Nottingham is an event of great importance to local historians and archaeologists. The volumes, in which are gathered all the store of present knowledge, show us how much we really know, and how much work lies before the earnest seeker for the truth. A list of more than a hundred earthworks is given, and of these hardly one has been adequately explored, and yet each holds some secret which would help us to a greater knowledge of our county’s story.

Historians nowadays divide the Britons into three races who came to these shores one after the other, beginning about 600 B.C. and ending only a short half century or so before the Romans arrived. The first to come were the Goidels, with whom we have no concern, then came the Brythons, who inhabited at the arrival of Cæsar all Britain north of the Thames, and finally, south of the Thames, were the Belgæ. Nottinghamshire of course did not then exist as a county, but the use of the term must be excused because of its obvious convenience. So then Nottinghamshire was inhabited by a Brythonic tribe called the Coritani, a peace-loving, sparsely-scattered race, who offered no resistance to the Roman invaders, and of whom we know but the one fact that they existed. It seems hardly necessary to point out that Julius Cæsar’s two exploratory expeditions do not concern us. They were passing incidents whose importance has been greatly exaggerated by the survival of the Roman leader’s account of his little war. It was not until a hundred years later that the Roman world realised that there were still lands unconquered to the west. The realisation was father to the accomplishment, and within a very few years—by 50 A.D. to be precise—the Roman wave had passed over Nottinghamshire, and, what is more, had passed over very lightly.

Historians of the Romano-British period ignore Nottinghamshire as containing nothing meriting notice, but the truth is that few or no efforts have been made to find out more. There are four acknowledged Roman stations within our borders, and of these two remain totally unexplored, the exact sites even unknown, while only tentative explorations have been undertaken on the remaining two sites. Yet, while it can claim no such important station as Ratæ or Lindum within its borders, Nottinghamshire cannot really be ignored, for it occupies an intermediary position in Roman Britain between the hardy north, where there was seldom peace, and the fertile and peaceful south, where the colonists could live a life more congenial to their southern desires. After all negative fact is often extremely useful. Why did not Nottinghamshire assume a more important position in Roman Britain? Why was not a strong station fixed on the twin hills of Nottingham? No race with self-protective instincts would ignore such a strong position as this, and yet the Romans passed hastily from Ratæ to Lindum without approaching Nottingham. To have utilised the British trackway which almost certainly crossed the Trent, passed through the camp on St. Mary’s Hill at Nottingham, and vanished into the dark forests to the north, would have brought into operation forces against which the Romans seldom opposed themselves if they could be avoided. A road driven through open country is more easily defended than one which carves its way through many miles of dense forest, and even when the forest was passed there lay to the north a wide marshy expanse, watered by the Idle, now a well-drained fertile tract, but formerly a wilderness of morass. The strong natural position of Nottingham would not appeal so forcibly to the Romans as it did to later invaders. It was then more a river town than a road town, and the Roman system of defence and communication ignored rivers as much as possible. Leicester and Lincoln could be linked together without any interference from the Trent, while the road from Lincoln to Doncaster was in every way suitable to Roman engineering—an easy ford over the Trent, and then a road for the most part over raised ground, which avoided the marshes of the Idle and the Cars to the north, and ran on the narrow crest of the hills between Drakeholes and Scaftworth.

Nottinghamshire in Saxon times was a piece of essentially border territory. When the kingdoms of the Heptarchy were fighting among themselves the boundaries were ever changing, so that at one time a piece of Nottinghamshire would be in Lindsey, another piece in Northumbria, and yet a third in Mercia. During the early part of the Saxon period it was pretty equally divided between Northumbria and Mercia, but during the Danish invasions it was entirely Mercian. Of actual history there is little, yet one or two facts there are which must be recorded. About 630 St. Paulinus introduced Christianity into the valley of the Trent, while in 617 Rædwald of East Anglia, sheltering Edwin the exile King of Northumbria, defeated the usurper Æthelfrith at the battle of the Idle, fought, I am inclined to think, at Rainworth. This battle gave Edwin a kingdom which he kept until his death in 633 at the hands of Penda at Heathfield, perhaps near Doncaster, perhaps just north of Sherwood Forest.

It was not until some common foe appeared that the Saxons ceased from intertribal warfare. During the early part of the ninth century all western Europe had suffered from the cruel plunderings and harryings of the Vikings—great sailors and great soldiers, whose fierce strength gave them the victory over higher though more effete civilisations than their own. Wave after wave of these fierce invaders broke on our shores, but could find no resting-place. But at length the Danes came to stay, and soon the north and east were overrun by these virile warriors. York fell in 867, and in the next year Nottingham yielded reluctantly to the Danish yoke, and entered on a bondage which was to bear so grand a result in the hardy hybrid race who peopled the East Midlands during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was left for the Danes to recognise the strategic importance of the twin rocks that stand sentinel above the Trent. Every school-boy knows all about the Five Boroughs, and in this loose confederacy Nottingham probably occupied the premier place. What is perhaps of most importance to history is that the Danish jarls who ruled in each of these towns held sway over territory which a few years later was to be formed by Edward the Elder into the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire, the great size of the last being due to the union of the jarldoms of Lincoln and Stamford. The English revival under Edward the Elder led to the emancipation of the East Mercians, and at Nottingham we hear that the town was fortified and “occupied by English as by Danes.” This phrase may possibly imply the existence of a Danish as well as a Saxon town, each on its rock and each with its own defensive earthwork.

We must pass over the brief invasion of the Five Boroughs by Anlaf Guthfrithson, the quarrels of Eadgar with Eadwig, and Æthelred with Cnut, and pass to the period shortly before the Norman Conquest, when we find that England is divided into several great earldoms. Though Nottinghamshire was at first part of a small earldom with Leicester, yet soon it appears to have formed part of Siward’s vast Northumbrian territory.

The history of Nottinghamshire after the Norman Conquest has been told many times, and therefore may be treated in a more cursory manner. William the Conqueror was at Nottingham in 1068, and then passed on, leaving the castle to be rebuilt by his powerful dependent William Peverel. It is almost certain that the English were sufficiently strong in the county to merit consideration, and in the county town itself we find that two boroughs were definitely established, an English and a French, each constitutionally separate and each surviving in name, if not in fact, till comparatively modern times. The great feudal castle at Nottingham becomes the dominating factor in the history of the town for the next 150 years, but before the end of this we see the awakenings of commercial and corporate life. The great forest of Sherwood provided a playground for kings, and throughout the county religious houses were founded to give knowledge to the people, alms to the poor, and rest to the weary.

This county played a large part in the civil war of Stephen’s reign; both the castles of Nottingham and Newark were in the King’s hands, though the former changed sides several times, and in the process the town, whose prosperity and beauty Florence of Worcester belauds, was burnt.

Henry II. had no intention of having Nottingham Castle held against him should occasion arise, and in 1155 he took possession of it himself, and at the same time ordered all adulterine castles to be dismantled. Probably Cuckney Castle was one of these latter, and there were almost certainly others, but the matter is obscure.

Henry II. gave the castle of Nottingham to his favourite son John in 1174, and it remained this despicable prince’s chief and most frequented residence, and here he made his rebellious stand against his brother Richard, until he was ejected in 1194. It was in this year that Richard discovered the suitability of Sherwood Forest for a royal hunting-ground, and on April 17 he met the King of the Scots at Clipstone.

After the conference at Runnymede had driven John into a corner, that treacherous monarch determined to make a last stand at Nottingham Castle, which he ordered Philip Marc, the constable, to prepare for a siege. Newark, too, was faithful to John, though the surrounding country was suffering much at the hands of his enemies. It is fitting that, as John had loved this county and been loved by it, he should end his worthless life here, and perhaps here alone was he regretted when he passed away at Newark.

To all intents and purposes the history of Nottingham itself is the history of the whole county. The character of this history undergoes a change early in the thirteenth century. Henceforth Nottingham the town attracts our attention instead of Nottingham the castle as formerly. To quote Mrs. J. R. Green, “The interest of its history lies in the quiet picture that is given of a group of active and thriving traders at peace with their neighbours, and for the most part at peace with themselves.” Commercial Nottingham owes everything to its magnificent geographical position and fruitful geological formation. No marauders pillaged it, no warring barons held it to ransom and impoverished it. It dwelt in peace and grew in prosperity. Linen and woollen goods, ironwork, bells, brazen pots, goldsmiths’ work, images, and ale were all made in this wealthy town. During the fourteenth century the coal that lay all along the western border of the county began to be worked, and rich quarries of stone were cut to build the churches and houses that sprang up everywhere. Compared with other towns in the Middle Ages there seems to have been a noticeable absence of poverty in Nottingham.

We have seen how John used Nottingham as his headquarters in his insurrection, and 200 years afterwards Richard II. attempted his coup d’êtat there—an attempt which was to have made the King absolute.

Nottinghamshire had been but little affected by the Hundred Years War. Except for an occasional demand for men or supplies—a demand frequently occurring in connection with the Scotch wars of the end of the thirteenth century—the records of the county are barren. The fifteenth century saw the suicide of feudalism in the Wars of the Roses, and here again Nottingham’s policy was a purely commercial one. It was quite immaterial to her which side gained the victory, so long as her trade was not interfered with, and so we find that whichever side was on the top, to that side did the powers that be in Nottingham send congratulations and men.

Edward IV. and Richard III. were much at Nottingham, and to both of them the castle owed much. It was from here that Richard set out to fight his last fight at Bosworth, and a few years later the river meadows beneath the rock were black with the troops of Henry VII., drawn together to meet the puppet of the Yorkists, Lambert Simnel. Henry passed from Nottingham to Newark and thence down the Fosse Way, while Simnel’s troops crossed from Mansfield to the Trent, which they forded, and met the King at East Stoke. This one important battle in the county’s history was a most bloody affair, and the pretender’s forces were completely routed.

The Tudors for the most part neglected this county, and though we meet with such men as Wolsey and Cranmer now and then, they are but lights that emphasise the darkness.

Nottinghamshire was shortly to awake from its lethargic commercialism to its great struggle during the seventeenth century between the King and the Parliament, between Newark and Nottingham, a struggle which harassed the trade of the towns and ruined the agriculture of the villages, which saw the standard of war raised at Nottingham, and the unhappy King surrender himself at Kelham. Newark gained eternal honour, and the county showed itself the birthplace of great men.

If we except the industrial riots of the early nineteenth century, Nottinghamshire was to feel but once more the stirrings of civil strife; the invasion of England by the Young Pretender progressed as far as Derby, but the reputation of the fierce Scots covered a much wider field, and the horrors of war were felt to be very close at hand.

But we must glance back for a moment and record the invention in 1589 of the stocking-frame by the Rev. William Lee, curate of Calverton. Like many great inventors Lee was unlucky and without profit in his own country, yet, if we may be permitted to quote Master Ridley’s famous dying words, Lee had lit “such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” This stocking-frame was the small beginning whence came the great lace and hosiery trades which, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, may be said to have been the staple industries of the county. Almost every village round Nottingham earned its living by hosiery, and before the days of the big factories, in 1812, there were said to be 30,000 frames at work.

It is impossible here to do more than state the fact that every great invention in the cotton trade emanated from Nottinghamshire. We have mentioned the early beginnings of the coal trade, and since then this mighty industry has continued to spread, until now it occupies the attention of one-third of the county, and in the near future it will undoubtedly spread further.

Such is a brief history of Nottinghamshire, and though we realise that history is still being made, it behoves us to turn now and then, and by considering the past, try to wrest its secret from the Sphinx.