There Was A Market In Fenny Stratford 772 Years Ago (5 March 1976)

My fancy is tickled by the Fenny Stratford traders’ idea that a royal charter dated 1608 gives them the right to hold a weekly market on Mondays.  I rather approve.   I do not know whether the claim could be made to stick, but I would be delighted if it could, even if the traders then found it impracticable to proceed.

For in these days, when anything and everything seems to be at the bidding of one or other department of national or local government, it would be nice to find something beyond their yea or nay.

As regards the market, it seems to me that the Fenny traders are being too modest, rather than the opposite.  For, if they look hard enough, they may well find that the right to a market at Fenny on Mondays goes back not a mere 368 years, but no less than 772 years – more than twice as long.

Three local historians have had a go at this.  The first was Dr William Bradbrook, sometime honorary secretary to the Bucks Archaeological Society.  In his History of Fenny Stratford, published in 1911, he says:

“In 1104 Roger de Cauz had a grant of a market at Etone, of which nothing more seems known, but as the whole of the ancient parish of Bletchley was included in the designation Etone, it is a fair hypothesis to suppose that the market may really have been held at Fenny Stratford, as being on the main road, that being more likely to be a place of public resort, as containing houses of refreshment and used by strangers travelling.”

The good doctor was mistaken as to the date.  The de Cauz family did not come into possession of the manor until 1189.  The date of the grant was 1204.

However, he then goes on “. . . In an inquisition 17 Edw II (1324) it was returned that John de Grey died seized of a Monday market at Fenny Stratford, valued at one mark.  This market may have been the one granted in 1104 at Etone, as in 1607 James I confirmed by charter a weekly market on Mondays, held immemorially by prescriptive right . . “

The next local historian, the Rev F W Bennitt, Rector of Bletchley, was much more definite.  In his History of Bletchley, published in 1931, he says that Roger de Cauz was granted a market to be held on Mondays.  He then adds portentously and in parenthesis:

“Cart:  Regis Johannis, 1204.  Rex dedit Rogero de Cauz unum mercatum apud Eton ad diem lunae habendrum.”

Now I myself, having no Greek and less Latin, do not know what that means.  Moreover, all experienced journalists are mortally wary of all such quotations.  This is said to date from a time when two pseudo-archaeologists walked into a newspaper office and produced a grubby metal vessel bearing an inscription in Roman lettering, which they said they had dug up and which they claimed was an ancient bronze urn.

The story, with picture, is said to have got into the paper before it was realised that the whole thing was a hoax.  For the words of the inscription needed only a little readjustment to read that the vessel was, in fact, a bedchamber utensil and ATINONE!

However, I think we can safely clear the rector of any such irreverence.  That being so, he must have been quoting a document, and that document, in all probability, is still around somewhere.  He employed professional searchers.

In the 1924 “Records of Bucks,” Dr Bradbrook had an article on some rolls of the Etone manor court, 1371 to 1834.  Mr Bennitt took advantage of this and included a number of extracts in his History of Bletchley with due acknowledgements to the doctor.

Among them is the item:  “It is ordered to all the tenants of Etone and Bletchele that they use the lord’s market on Monday at Fenny Stratford under penalty to each one of them to be laid on them by the steward.”

So there it is again – a market at Fenny on Mondays.

Finally, Sir Frank Markham, in his History of Milton Keynes, 1974, says:  “In 1204 Roger de Caux, lord of the manor of Water Eaton and of the smaller Simpson manor, was accorded the right to hold a weekly market on Monday, but from the first the market appears to have been held at Fenny Stratford and not at Water Eaton, the great street (Aylesbury Street) making it a much more suitable venue . . .

“ . . . In 1324 we find the market going strong, and the tolls and stallage were then reckoned as worth about 7s 6d for a third of the year.  Seven and sixpence in those days was a goodly sum, for the average wage of a farm worker was but a few pence a week and land rented at as little as a penny an acre.”

At the time of writing, the James I document has not been fully translated for the Fenny traders.  When it is, the most interesting point will be:  to whom is the charter granted?

In the 18^th century, Dr Browne Willis apparently considered that, as lord of the manor, he still held the rights, for he built a small market hall and shambles slap in the middle of Aylesbury Street.

The question therefore could be:  who now is the lord of the manor?  Is there one?  Or does every Fenny trader with freehold property consider himself to be in that category?  In other words, not one lord, but dozens of them?  And what about all the other freeholders who are not traders?

Manorial courts continued in some places to the end of last century, but whether they were manors without lords is a question I cannot answer.

It is a curious fact, however, that as recently as 1911, Fenny journalist, Forbes Oldham, wrote that although the local market had been held on a Thursday since it was revived in about 1880, national directories were still giving Monday as Fenny’s market day.

So who gave Mr Wigley permission to hold a market in Aylesbury Street on Thursdays?  In all probability the parish vestry.  Were they entitled to do so?  If so, their latter day successors, the borough council, would seem to hold the whip hand.  Perish the thought.