Largesse, commerce and dynasties in medieval Chippenham

The later 11th and 12th centuries did not see substantial royal interest in Chippenham resumed. The town went unnoticed by the numerous chroniclers of the Anglo-Norman period, making it unlikely that it was ever the site of important political or military events, as it had been in the ninth century. A reference to ‘the King’s Old Hall’ in a grant to Badenstoke Priory (c 1200-1228), may nonetheless indicate that Anglo-Saxon royal buildings were still standing in Chippenham. It is difficult, however, to find reference to the town in the later 11th or 12th century. When the name Chippenham (usually ‘Chepeham’) does re-emerge into the documentary record in the pipe rolls (financial records) of Henry II, it is at first in the context of entries referring to the royal forest, or to the Monks of Chippenham. Like his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, however, Henry II did use Chippenham as a source of royal largesse. Reginald de Pavilli, a member of Henry’s household who had travelled with him to Ireland, was granted 60 librates (pieces of land with a value of £1 a year) in Chippenham, for which he accounted £10 to the exchequer a year for the rest of the reign.

Henry II’s reign does for the first time provide us with the names of a few of the wealthier inhabitants of Chippenham. Pipe roll 14 Henry II (1167-8) preserves a list of the men of Chippenham who contributed to the wedding of Henry’s eldest daughter, Matilda, to Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony:

Edric de Rugedun: 20 shillings

Roger de Durhierd: 2 marks

Radulph de Dicherigga: 3 marks

Aedolf de Durhirda: 1 mark

Wulric de Rigelega: 1 mark

Ailwin de Rigelega: 1 mark

Richard de Haga: ½ mark

Erneis: ½ mark

William de Rigelega: ½ mark

Richard fitz Berewin: ½ mark

This is just a few years before the probable date of the composition of the "dialogue of the exchequer", with its frank admission that the breakdown of distinctions between the Normans and English was making enforcement of the murdrum fine (payable by the hundred where a murder happened unless the killer was produced or the victim proved to be a Saxon) impossible. Chippenham provides us here with a case study of that process in action: a mixture of French/Norman names like Roger, William and Richard alongside Anglo-Saxon names like Edric and Wulric, though with the latter taking ‘de’ surnames derived from place names.

Commercial, social and physical development

The records of the 13th and 14th centuries suggest a settlement of increasing complexity and commercial development. A charter of King John (1 April 1205) to Roger Torodvill granted him the right to hold a weekly market at Chippenham on Wednesdays and a fair for two days each year on 17 and 18 October. Walter de Godarville was granted similar privileges on July 1231. Henry III granted to Geoffrey Gascelin and his heirs an annual fair from 10 to 12 June in 1267, and Edward II granted to Edward Gascelin a fair on 5, 6 and 7 May in 1313, privileges which were supplemented a year later with a weekly Saturday market in gratitude for Gascelin’s service in Scotland. 

As is very often the case, the development of commerce seems to have been mirrored in the changing political status of the town. Chippenham in the 11th century had not been recognised as a borough, but from the early 13th century on, references to burgage properties (properties held in return for service or annual rent) in the town proliferate. It is called a borough repeatedly in the veredictum of 1281. From 1295 Chippenham was generally required to send two burgesses to parliament (though with a break in the mid 14th century). 

Early members of parliament were townsmen, though the late 14th century saw their replacement by men of greater property. Chippenham was taxed as a borough seven times between 1294 and 1336, and the records of 14th century taxation show that the town itself remained wealthy, as did the hundred. Indeed, it has been suggested that, by 1377, Chippenham, which was second only to Salisbury in terms of portable wealth, may have been the most wealthy town per capita in Wiltshire.

Lordship and dynastic politics

In terms of local dynastic politics, the history of Chippenham in the high and late middle ages can essentially be divided into a Godarville/Gascelyn phase in the 13th and 14th centuries and a 15th century Hungerford phase. In the period after Domesday, the lands of the old royal manor of Chippenham were reorganised, split into the manors of Chippenham and Sheldon, Rowden, and Lowden. In July 1231, Henry III granted Chippenham and Sheldon to Sir Walter de Godarville (given in some sources as Cardevil or Cardevell), probably in recognition of his recent service against Llywellyn the Great in Wales.

On his death in 1250, it passed to his daughter, Joan, who had married Sir Geoffrey Gascelyn. Geoffrey’s family continued to hold Chippenham. Edmund Gascelyn inherited the manor in 1287. Edmund Gascelyn the Younger succeeded in 1307. Eleanor Gascelyn (Edmund the younger’s wife) held Chippenham after her husband’s death in 1336, to be succeeded by their son Geoffrey, who seems, like many landowners of the mid 14th century, to have struggled with the economic consequences of the Black Death and the consequent collapse of rents and soaring costs of labour. Geoffrey’s successor, his younger daughter Christina and her husband Edward Hales, did continue to hold the manor for a short time. But after Edward’s death, Christina sold the manor to Sir Walter de Hungerford for £1,000. Chippenham retains, however, the use of the heraldry of the Gascelyn and Hussee families as the town coat of arms, which appears in many places in the modern town centre.