It was during the days of the Norman and Plantagenet kings, from William I in 1066 to the end of Richard II in 1399, that the foundations of modern England were well and truly laid. It was a time of great activity, and the history of this period is full of picturesque romance – of wars and sieges and battles, of intrigue and revolts, of the splendid adventures of the Crusader knights. Churches and cathedrals were built, colleges and schools arose in the towns, monasteries and religious houses dotted the countryside. A great impetus was given to learning. Towns were founded and increased in population. Merchant guilds arose for the protection of trade. Hospitals for sick and poor were built by pious founders. In short, the England of today was very largely shaped by the Norman adventurers and their descendants amongst whom the land had been divided.
It was in those days, as we have seen, that Doncaster was recognised as a town and received its early charters, with a right to have a mayor and corporation. There are several references to Doncaster in that period. It was not a big town, for even in 1379 the assessment of the poll tax, levied on all persons over the age of 15, shows that the population included only 757 persons over that age. In other words, if we put the total population of between 2 and 3 thousand we would probably be well within the mark. The amount paid by Doncaster under this tax was £11 14s 10d. The town had already been represented in Parliament. It seems to have ignored earlier summonses, and it was not until 1337 that it sent 3 burgesses to Westminster. There names, in modern English, were John Frere, Robert Messingham and John Hedelot. It is worth while recording that, at that time, Members of Parliament were paid – not by the state, but by the town that elected them, the rate of payment being about 2 shillings a day, equal, perhaps, to about £55 of todays money.
Many of the knigs of England passed through Doncaster on their way north or
south, and it is recorded of Henry III that one night he “slept at Doncaster on his way to York, where he spent the Christmas Holy days”. In the same reign, a hospital for sick and leprous people was built, this making 2 within the town. Mary Magdalen church occupied the centre of the town, and the fairs granted in the several charters were held near by. As the church was in the present market place, it follows that the site has been used for open-air trading for 8 or 9 hundred consecutive years.
Edward II was in Doncaster for a period of 4 days in 1316; and Edward III stayed here at least twice, on his way to and from Scotland, in 1333 and 1336. Before Henry IV came to the throne, when he was Earl of Bolingbroke, he came to Doncaster and stayed at the house of the Carmelite Friars.
The visit of Bolingbroke has historic interest, for it gives our town a line in the immortal page of William Shakespeare. Bolingbroke met several nobles at Doncaster. He swore to them that he intended to take possession of the inheritance of his father, John O’Gaunt, which Richard had taken for himself. Later, Bolingbroke seized the crown and had King Richard murdered in Pontefract Castle; and thereupon the barons reminded him how he had falsified the oath he had taken at Doncaster. Shakespeare write of the incident here:
“You swore to us – And you did swear that oath at Doncaster, that you did nothing purpose ‘gainst the state, nor claim no farther than your new fall’n right, the seat of Gaunt, Dukedom of Lancaster.” (First pt of King Henry IV, act 5, scene 1)
The town does not seem to have produced any outstanding figure during those times, but very near to it there lived and died a man whose name is engraved deeply into the literary history of our country. Hampole is a little village about 4 miles north-west of Doncaster, and there in a cell lived and died Richard Rolle, the hermit poet and philosopher, whose works are known to every collector of books.
Rolle was a Yorkshireman, born at Thornton, near Pickering. He studied at Oxford, and then, after wandering about the country, he established himself at Hampole, near a Cistertian nunnery. His fame as a writer and the manner of his life as a hermit in a cell, brought him many visitors; and we may be sure that Doncaster was proud of the simple figure of its neighbour, philosopher and recluse.
Rolle’s claim to fame is that he was a prolific writer, that he was the first Englishman to use the English language almost solely for his writings, and that one of his works was one of the very earliest books to be both printed in English and actually illustrated as well. It was printed in London in about 1500 by Wynkyn de Worde, the successor to William Caxton, the inventor of printing. Rolle died at Hampole in 1349, so that his book was not printed until about 150 years after his death.
His books and manuscripts are priceless, being preserved in the british museum
and in the oxford and cambridge libraries. The first of them, the one printed in about 1500, is entitled Richarde Rolle hermyte of Hampole in his contemplacyons of the drede and love of god – and it is generally known as “Rolle’s Contemplations.” A literary critic says of him: “The originality and depth of his thought, the truth and tenderness of his feeling, the vigour and eloquence of his prose, the grace and beauty of his verse, everywhere is detected the mark of a great personality, a personality at once powerful, tender, and strange, the like of which perhaps was never seen again.”
Another of his works was called The Pricke of Conscience, and this is partially illustrated by an extraordinary 15th century window, in the church of All Saints, North Street, York.
Here we may leave Richard Rolle. He deserves a place on this site because he was a neighbour of Doncaster, and must obviously have visited the town and been known to the town’s people. There is no trace of his cell, no clue to his burial place, but somewhere in little Hampole village the emerald green grass grows above the soil where sleeping in peace is this early master of our language.
Doncaster History 