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Reforming The Waters: Holy Wells and Healing Springs in Protestant England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Alexandra Walsham*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Extract

All too often neglected and overgrown, holy wells still dot the AA English countryside. Many more are merely a distant memory: names recorded by dead antiquarians, folklorists, and topographers and since forgotten, sites marked on Ordnance Survey maps soon to be obliterated by the encroaching urban and industrial world. Despite the heroic efforts of a group of local historians, this aspect of British heritage is in rapid decline. Those which have survived represent only a tiny fraction of the vast number that were scattered across the rural landscape on the eve of the Henrician Reformation. Wells were an integral part of the late medieval geography of the sacred, a matrix of ancient holy places where ordinary people could approach and invoke the divine. Casual weekend visits by ramblers and picnicking families are almost all that remains of the thriving culture of pilgrimage to such hallowed spots.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Professor Patrick Collinson and Dr Mary Heimann for reading and commenting upon earlier drafts of this essay.

References

1 The Holy Wells Research and Preservation Group formed in October 1984 has its own journal. Source, os, 1-9 (1985-8), ns, 1- (1994-).

2 See, for examples, Whitelock, D., Brett, M., and Brooke, C. N. L., eds, Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church I: AD 871-1204, 2 vols (Oxford, 1981), 1, pp. 320, 463, 489Google Scholar; Powicke, F. M. and Cheyney, C. R., eds, Councils and Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church II: AD 1205-1313, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), 1, pp. 303, 622, 722Google Scholar; 2, p. 1044.

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6 Rattue, Living Stream, ch. 5, esp. p. 88, though this should be read in conjunction with Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven, CT, 1992), ch. 5, esp. pp. 190205.Google Scholar

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17 Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, chs 4-8, citations at pp. 59, 67, 103; Sumption, Pilgrimage, ch. 5, quotation at p. 77.

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34 See Hill, J. E. C., ‘Puritans and “the dark corners of the land”’, TRHS, ser. 5, 13 (1963), pp. 77102Google Scholar and Haigh, Christopher, ‘Puritan evangelism in the reign of Elizabeth I’, EHR, 92 (1977), pp. 3058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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36 Judging by the studies of Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570-1640 (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, Ralph, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation 1520-1570 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar and Marchant, Ronald, The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 1560-1642 (London, 1960).Google Scholar

37 This is surprising as Stubbes was nothing if not comprehensive as a critic: The Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1583). The relevant sections are on sigs M3v-7v. Hall, Thomas, Funebriae Florae (London, 1661)Google Scholar. Wells are not mentioned in Hutton’s, Ronald The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Ruth, and Morris, Frank, Scottish Healing Wells (Sandy, 1982), pp. 159, 38–9, 189, 188, 190, respectively.Google Scholar

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42 Aubrey, John, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, ed. Britten, James (London, 1881), p. 33.Google Scholar

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45 Parker, Kenneth, The English Sabbath (Cambridge, 1988), esp. ch. 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Aston, “Puritans and iconoclasm’, passim, quotation at p. 104 and see p. 105.

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48 Drayton, Michael, The Works, ed. Hebel, J. William, 5 vols (Oxford, 1931-41), 4, pp. 53–4Google Scholar. See also Hutton, Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 164, 169, 190. But cf. here Richard Helgerson’s reading of Poly-Olbion as an oppositional text imbued with nostalgia for the age of Elizabeth and disdain for James I and his court: Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992), esp. pp. 128-31, 146-7.

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50 For example, Naylor, Peter J., Ancient Wells and Springs of Derbyshire (Cromford, 1983)Google Scholar; Valentine, Mark, The Holy Wells of Northamptonshire (Northampton, 1984)Google Scholar; O., P. and Leggat, D. V., The Healing Wells: Cornish Cults and Customs (Redruth, 1987)Google Scholar; Whelan, Edna and Taylor, Ian, Yorkshire Wells and Sacred Springs (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Weaver, Cora and Osborne, Bruce, The Springs, Spouts, Fountains and Wells of the Malverns (Malvern, 1992).Google Scholar

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52 Hope, Legendary Lore, p. 186; Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, p. 88.

53 Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 41, 112.

54 County Folk-Lare, VII, Fife, ed. J. E. Simpkins (London, 1914), p. 15; Porter, Enid, Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (London, 1969), p. 11.Google Scholar

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56 See ibid., pp. 94-5; Masani, Folklore of Wells, ch. 16.

57 Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 380n.

58 Jones, Holy Wells of Wales, p. 95.

59 Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 100, 180, 185; County Folk-Lore, II, The North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty, ed. Mrs Gutch (London, 1901), pp. 32-3.

60 County Folklore, IV, Northumberland, ed. M. C. Balfour (London, 1904), p. 6; Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, p. 517; North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty, ed. Gutch, p. 30; County Folklore, VI, The East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. Mrs Gutch (London, 1912), p. 14.

61 Northumberland, ed. Balfour, p. 3.

62 On pins and fairies, see Smith, Ancient Springs…of the East Riding of Yorkshire, pp. 42-3; Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, p. 179.

63 Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, pp. 171-2.

64 Carew, Survey of Cornwall, p. 203; Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions and Folklore, p. 272.

65 Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, p. 215; Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, p. 172. For Roman cursing tablets, see Cunliffe, Barry and Davenport, Peter, The Temple of Suits Minerva at Bath, 2, The Finds from the Sacred Spring, Oxford Committee for Archaeology Monograph, 16 (Oxford, 1988), ch. 4 and plates XXIXXVIIIb.Google Scholar

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67 Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 197-8; The East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. Gutch, p. 11. On the latter, see also the editor’s additions to Camden’s Britannia, ed. Edmund Gibson (London, 1695), p. 747-

68 North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty, ed. Gutch, p. 26; Northumberland, ed. Balfour, pp. 4-5.

69 Binnall, ‘Holy wells in Derbyshire’, pp. 58-9.

70 Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 378.

71 Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, pp. xv-xvi.

72 See Adams, Charles Phythian, Local History and Folklore: a New Framework (London, 1975). pp. 711Google Scholar; Bushaway, Bob, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England 1700-1850 (London, 1982), ch. 1Google Scholar; Hutton, Ronald, The Stations of the Sun: a History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996), pp. 419–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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75 Jones, Holy Wells in Wales, pp. 88-92, is a useful summary.

76 Hope, Legendary Lore, p. 54; Northumberland, ed. Balfour, p. 5.

77 See Bord, Sacred Waters, ch. 4.

78 Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, p. 273.

79 Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 72, 76; Northumberland, ed. Balfour, pp. 1-2.

80 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 89, 132 and chs 712Google Scholar. The assumptions underlying Thomas’s bipolar model of ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ have, of course, received fierce criticism: see, in particular, Geertz, Hildred, ‘An anthropology of religion and magic’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975), pp. 7189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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82 Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, pp. 71-2; Hope, Legendary Lore, p. 53.

83 The North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty, ed. Gutch, p. 30.

84 See also Brand, Popular Antiquities, pp. 375-6; Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 40, 42-3, 60-1, 204.

85 AnBoll, 6 (1887), pp. 318-19.

86 Hutton, ‘The English Reformation and the evidence of folklore’, p. 95.

87 Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 327.Google Scholar

88 Morris, Scottish Healing Wells, p. 155.

89 See Jones, Holy Wells in Wales, pp. 130-3.

90 Hope, Legendary Lore, pp. 156, 164; Trubshaw, Holy Wells and Springs of Leicestershire and Rutland, p. 13. See also Aubrey, Remaines, pp. 244-5.

91 Baxter, Richard, The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691), p. 157Google Scholar; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 7. 3, fol. 5 v.

92 See Scribner, Robert W., ‘The Reformation, popular magic, and the “disenchantment of the world”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993), esp. pp. 485–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), ch. 4 and passim.

93 As noted by Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 215.

94 On spas, see Lennard, Reginald, ‘The watering-places’, in idem, ed., Englishmen at Rest and Play (Oxford, 1931)Google Scholar; Mullett, Charles F., Public Baths and Health in England, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Supplement 5 (Baltimore, MD, 1946)Google Scholar; Addison, William, English Spas (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Hembrey, Phyllis, The English Spa 1560-1815: a Social History (London, 1990).Google Scholar

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96 BL, MS Sloane 640, fol. 341v.

97 W., G., Newes out of Cheshire of the New Found Well (London, 1600)Google Scholar; Rattue, Living Stream, p. 111.

98 Harrison, Description of England, p. 287; Carew, Survey of Cornwall, p. 198.

99 Anthony Wood, The Life and Times, 5 vols, ed. Andrew Clark, OHS, 19, 21, 26, 30, 40 (1891-1900), 2, p. 302.

100 Carew, Survey of Cornwall, p. 198.

101 For example, Jones, , Benefit of the Auncient Bathes of Buckstones ; idem, The Bathes of Bathes Ayde (London, 1572)Google Scholar; Bailey, Walter, A Briefe Discours of Certain Bathes or Medicinall Waters in the Countie of Warwicke neere unto a Village called Newnham Regis (London, 1587)Google Scholar; Venner, Tobias, The Baths of Bathe (London, 1628)Google Scholar; Rowzee, Lodowick, The Queenes Welles… A Treatise of the Nature and Vertues of Tunbridge Water (London, 1632).Google Scholar

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103 Ibid., pp. 82-6.

104 As noted by Fuller, Thomas in The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), 3rd pagination, p. 188Google Scholar; and Stanhope, Michael, Cures without Care, or a Summons to…repaire to the Northerne Spaw (London, 1631), p. 29.Google Scholar

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106 Stanhope, Newes, p. 10 and pp. 4-19 passim; Deane, Spadacrene Anglica, chs 8-10. The pair were in fact mistaken: John French exploded their theories and proved that the English Spaw was chalybeate: The York-shire Spaw, ch. 7. On the development of chemical analysis of mineral springs, see Coley, Noel G., ‘“Cures without care”: “chymical physicians” and mineral waters in seventeenth-century English medicine’, Medical History, 23 (1979), pp. 191214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

107 Deane, Spadacrene Anglica, p. 95.

108 Ibid., pp. 72-4.

109 As summed up by French, The York-shire Spaw, p. 1.

110 Ibid., ch. 17; Wittie, Robert, Scarbrough Spaw (London, 1660), pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

111 French, The York-shire Spaw, ch. 2; Jorden, Edward, A Discourse of Naturali Bathes, and Mineral Waters (London, 1631)Google Scholar. See also Turner, William, A Booke of the Natures and Properties as well of the Bathes in England as of other Bathes in Germany and Italy (Cologne, 1562).Google Scholar

112 See Kocher, Paul H., Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (New York, 1969), ch. 5Google Scholar; Walsham, Providence, ch. 5. For examples of such acknowledgements, see Jorden, Discourse, pp. 109-10; Bailey, Briefe Discours, p. 5.

113 As noted by Harley, David, ‘Religious and professional interests in northern spa literature, 1625-1775’, Society for the Social History of Medicine, 35 (1984), p. 14.Google ScholarPubMed

114 Stanhope, Newes, pp. 28-9. Catholics did seek to adapt old hagiographical motifs for polemical ends: the well dedicated to St Thomas at Windleshaw allegedly sprang up when a priest saying Mass was decapitated by rabidly Protestant pursuivants: Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, p. 109. Stanhope (pp. 1-2) also believed that it was vital to establish Knaresborough as an alternative to the German Spa because Catholics ‘pretended the use of that water, the better to colour other intentions not very allowable’, i.e., conspiratorial discussion with Jesuits and seminary priests. The State Papers suggest there was more than a grain of truth in this claim: see, e.g., PRO, SP 12/242/3. Hembrey makes this point central to her argument in The English Spa, esp. ch. I.

115 Turner, Booke… of the Bathes in England, sig. A2r.

116 Bailey, Briefe Discours, sigs A2v-3r.

117 Stanhope, Newes, pp. 20-8.

118 See Jones, Whitney R. D., William Turner: Tudor Naturalist, Physician and Divine (London, 1988), esp. pp. 123–9.Google Scholar

119 Harley, David, ‘Spiritual physic, providence and English medicine, 1560-1640’, in Grell, Ole Peter and Cunningham, Andrew, eds, Medicine and the Reformation (London, 1993), pp. 101–17Google Scholar. See also Kocher, Science and Religion, ch. 13.

120 Stanhope, Cures without Care, pp. 7, 10-11.

121 Ibid., pp. 15-14 [sic, 14-15], 9 [sic, 6], 10. Cf. the cures listed in BL, MS Sloane 640, fols 342r-351r; BL, MS Sloane 79, fols 110r, 111r; PRO, SP 12/131/86, and in AnBoll, 6 (1887), pp. 305-52.

122 Stanhope, Newes, p. 20.

123 Banister, Richard, A Treatise of One Hundred and Thirteene Diseases of the Eyes, and Eye-Liddes (London, 1622)Google Scholar, sigs (d)iv, (c)8v. For tensions between religion and medicine in another confessional context, see Gentilcore, David, ‘Contesting illness in early modern Naples: miracolati, physicians and the Congregation of Rites’, P&P, 148 (1995), pp. 117–48.Google Scholar

124 Stanhope, Newes, sigs B2v-3r.

125 Deane, Spadacrene Anglica, chs 12-15, quotation at p. 131; Stanhope, Newes, sigs B1r-2r, idem, Cures without Care, pp. 22-44; French, The York-shire Spa, chs 10-13.

126 Deane, Spadacrene Anglica, pp. 112-13; Venner, The Baths of Bathe, pp. 15, 16; Stanhope, Newes, sig. A4V. See also Harley, David, ‘A sword in a madman’s hand: professional opposition to popular consumption in the waters literature of southern England and the Midlands, 1570-1870’, in Porter, Roy, ed., The Medical History of Waters and Spas, Medical History, supplement 10 (London, 1990), pp. 4855.Google Scholar

127 Turner, Booke… of the Bathes of England, fols 14v-15r; Jones, Bathes of Bathes Ayde, fols 27v, 34v-35r; idem, Benefit of the Auncient Bathes of Buckstoncs, fol. 21r-v.

128 See Thomas Short’s lament for the recent removal of these things at Buxton; The Natural, Experimental, and Medicinal History of the Mineral Waters of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire (London, 1734), pp. 49-50.

129 Stanhope, Cures without Care, pp. 29-30; Jones, Bathes of Bathes Ayde, fol. 33r; idem, Benefit of the Auncient Bathes of Buckstones, fol. 20r.

130 Short, Natural, Experimental, and Medicinal History, p. 245.

131 Cf. the conclusions of Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton, NJ, 1989), p. 21.Google Scholar

132 Stanhope, Cures without Care, p. 27; 14 Eliz. c. 5 xxxvi; 39 Eliz. c. 4 vii.

133 As described by a seventeenth-century antiquary: Taylor, Holy Wells of Lancashire, p. 55. Cf. Jones, Holy Wells of Wales, p. 70.

134 For examples of conversions, AnBoll, 6 (1887), pp. 317, 321. The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Christopher Morris (London, 1947), pp. 181, 82.

135 See, for example, Acts of the Privy Council of England, 32 vols, ed. J. R. Dasent (London, 1890-1907), 11, pp. 116-17; 13. pp. 396-7; HMC, Fourth Report, pt 1 (London, 1874), p. 333.