Accident of Murder?

 Welcome! You are going to use your skills to do some serious Tudor Detecting!

First or all a task for you! 

Using not more than one piece of paper, make a list of what is in your bedroom (it sounds odd but there is a good reason for this!). A list of items like this is often called an inventory. Off you go! 

Once the list if completed 

Once you have a list, ask an adult to look at it with you? What have you listed in your inventory?
You may have included clothes (all of them - every pair of pants and socks?), toys, books, teddies, musical instruments, jewels, money, furniture? Have you listed your bed? What about your bed sheets or your curtains?

Inventories tell us lots of interesting things about a person. What do you think a stranger would make of you? Do you play a musical instrument? Are you young or old? Rich or poor? Do you share a bedroom? What sort of work might you do? 

What about the things that are missing? They may be outside (like a bike) or something you don't consider to be important (like a toothbrush or a school uniform!)  

We can apply the same principles to learning about the past, from the inventories made by people of their  items. Often people would make a list to be included within their will, which would set out what they wanted to happen to their things after they died. 

Now for the next part of your History Detecting! You are going to be finding out about a man called Thomas Bateman who lived in the Cotswolds in England and who died in 1587. 

To start with you are going to be examining what he had in his house. Later, we’ll look at what he had outside.  

A question for you. Who was the ruler of England in 1587? 

You are going to use your detective skills to find out about Thomas Bateman who lived in the Cotswold in a village called Hazleton. 

Thomas Bateman died in October 1587. He had made a will earlier in the year saying what he wanted to happen to his things after his death. A will had to be taken to a court to be ‘proved’ (accepted as genuine) before it could be carried out. The court wanted to see a list of Thomas’s possessions and how much they were worth, so on 18 October 1587 four men went round his house making a list (an inventory). They wrote ‘clothes’ (apparel) rather than listing the separate garments. They also wrote down what they thought was important. Because they wrote down how much they thought things were worth, they were called praisers (valuers). For legal reasons they did not include buildings or land but only things which could be moved (chattels).

You will find below a copy of the first part of Thomas Bateman’s inventory (it is in the pdf file which is called "Thomas Bateman - Inventory, inside the house) which lists and values the things in his house. 

Some of the words and spellings may look funny. This is because in Tudor England, there were no standard spellings and no dictionaries! 

 If you find a strange word, try saying it out loud and remember that they didn’t say the final ‘e’ on lots of words.

Underneath there is a glossary – a list of the words you may not know (like ‘andiron’) or which have changed their meanings a bit (like ‘bed’ and ‘carpet’). If you want to know what something looked like, use your detective skills to search online! 

Tudor Money

The Tudors used old money: Pounds (£), Shillings (s) and pennies (d – short for denarius, the Latin word for a penny). There were 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pennies in a shilling, which makes 240 (20x12) pennies in a pound. Originally, if you weighed 240 silver pennies you would have 1 pound weight of silver. Everything in Thomas Bateman’s inventory is valued in fractions: 2 shillings = 1/10th of £1; 5 shillings = ¼ and so forth. Even the odd amounts make sense: 6 s 8 d = 80 pennies (6x12+8) which was = 1/3rd (80/240) of £1. So 13s 4d = 160 pennies or 2/3rdof £1. A basic wage was 8d a day ( 4 shillings a week or about £10 a year).

Things to do - Print out the Inventory for Inside the House 

Using marker pens in four different colours, mark up:

1. Anything  to do with beds and bedding
2. Any  other furniture
3. Anything  to with cooking and eating
4. Everything  else

Which was the most valuable group of things? 

Which was the most valuable single item (not the sheets, there were 10 of them)?

Is there anything you are surprised he had or did not have?

Finally, can you think about: 

• Two things you know about Thomas Bateman for sure? 
• Two things you can guess about him? Why?
• Two things you would like to know about him?

This is the story of Robert Rowden who was arrested by Roundhead soldiers in 1643,when he was a young man during the English Civil War. 

The Civil War was between the Cavaliers (supporters of the King who wanted to rule without anyone telling him what to do) and the Roundheads (supporters of Parliament who wanted the King to do as they said at least sometime of the time). The King, Charles I, lost both the war and his head (choppy choppy). 

In Gloucestershire, where Robert Rowden lived, most of the county was for the King but the city of Gloucester was for Parliament. This mean that often neighbours or families could support different sides in the war. 

In 1643, Charles I and his army laid siege to the city of Gloucester but failed to capture it. When  Robert Rowden made his journey in November from the village of Northleach to the village of Dursely to visit his aunt, he travelled quite close to the area round Gloucester where there were Roundhead soldiers.

Below you will find the account Robert gave of his capture from the Roundhead soldiers  (and his escape!)  Some of the words which Robert uses may sound funny to us today and some words have changed their meaning a little. ‘Starve’ meant to kill – and not just by keeping someone without food. A chamber was a bedroom. A musket was a gun.

Clothes: A doublet was a close-fitting jacket. A shirt was much longer than a modern shirt and would hang down over the thighs. Men didn’t generally wear pants but tucked the end of their shirts between their legs and wore breeches (like trousers to below the knee) over the top. Women didn’t wear pants either but often wore more than one petticoat under a dress or skirt. You can find lots of pictures of Tudor and Stuart clothes on-line.

This is the amazing story of Olaudah Equiano who was  kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery. He later became a free man.  

Most black people from Africa who were transported to the Americas in the 18th century were treated extraordinarily badly and many died as the result, both during the sea crossing to the Americas and on the plantations where they were sent to work. 

 However, there were some black people who had very different experiences and Olaudah Equiano is one of them.  We know about him because he wrote his life story, which became a best-seller and was very important at the time  in persuading people that slavery was wrong and should be abolished. He became an inspiration for black people at the time and continues to be today.  Below you will find a timeline of some key events in Olaudah's life, which he tells us about in his book. 

1.. How old is Olaudah when he is kidnapped into slavery?

2. Who actually first makes him a slave?

3. Was slavery unusual in the Kingdom of Benin? 

4. What would you feel about someone changing your name, whether you liked it or not? Why do you think his name was changed? What did this represent? 

5. How many times is he bought and sold as a slave that we know about?

6. Olaudah is well-educated – how does he learn to read and write? Do you think lots of people could read and write then? How about if they were black people living in England? Does that make a difference? 

7. How old is he when he is involved in all the big sea battles?

8. Olaudah is very widely travelled – what are the countries that we know he has visited? Have you been to any of them? What do you think they would have been like at that time? 

9. How does he get the money to buy his freedom?

10. How old is he when he is able to buy his freedom?11. Why does he then settle in England? (There had been an English court ruling in England in 1772 that an escaped slave in England could not be returned to slavery)12. Do you think that he always disapproved of the idea of slavery? What might have made him change his mind?13. Do you think that he ended up rich or poor?  Have a look at his picture.14. How long did he stay with Lt Pascal, or Mr Robert King? 15. Do you think that Olaudah was very lucky or was he very clever 

The text above is an extract from the diary of a woman who lived in America in the 1900s. We do not know her name or where she lived, but it was likely to be in one of the very rural states in the middle or America,  such as Kentucky, Iowa or Kansas. We do know that she lived on a farm and that she was married to a farmer. 

 The diary has been written in modern English, but some words have slightly different meanings.

 “Toilet” in those days referred to the general activities involved in getting washed and dressed, not going to the loo!

“Churning” was the act of stirring cream around in a barrel until it solidified into butter. It was very hard work.

“Setting a hen” meant to encourage it to sit on a clutch of eggs to hatch out chicks.

1.Why does Mary start a fire in the kitchen stove when she gets up?

2.  What tasks does Mary undertake during the day? Are these inside the house or outside? 

3. How does she spend most of her time? What do you think she enjoys most about her day? 

4. How many different sorts of animals does she look after? Can you count up how many animals in total? 

5. What might the family get from each sort of animal that they could use ?

6.  What sort of plants does Mary grow? 

7. What sort of food do you think that the family might eat? ( if you like you could try the recipe in the craft section). 

8. How do you think they might earn money to buy the things that they cannot grow or make for themselves?

9. Are there any tasks round the house that she doesn’t mention that you might expect her to have to do at some point?  

10. Does Mary have any time to herself?  If so, how does she spend it?

11. Do you think that she cares about her appearance? If so, why?

12.  Is she a practical sort of person?

13. Do you think that the family were rich or poor or somewhere in the middle?

14. Mary tells us that this is how she spends her day in May: do you think that she might do different things at different times of the year or on different days of the week? If so, what  might she do that was different?

15.  Mary is writing in 1900: how many years is it since Thomas Bateman’s will was written (look above at the Thomas Bateman section for this!)?  Do you think that farming changed at all since then and if so, how – as far as you can tell from the two documents that you have read?