What are you looking at?
This is a census of dogs owned by residents in the Kent town of New Romney in 1579. It is one of five such lists, with others from the years 1560, 1581, 1591, and 1597. We’ve selected 1579 here as it displays perhaps the most intriguing variety of dogs, but this resource touches on all five dog censuses. In each list, the writer notes down the owner (and sometimes their status in the town, such as “mayor”) and a visual description of the dog they owned, including colour, various details (like a cut tail), and their “breed” or type. This includes descriptions like “mongrel” for non-specific or cross-breed dogs, “mastiff” for those large dogs used in baiting, or “greyhound,” as well as “spit” (for a working dog, perhaps used to turning spits in a kitchen), “cur” or “shuck” (general descriptors of a large dog). The full list is in modernised English in Appendix 1.
Why is it important?
This list and the others like it provide visual details about each dog in question, resulting in some curious descriptions:
- Henry Chandler [owned] a White branded [brindled?] mastiff bitch & a red gelded cur with a White face (1560)
- John Cheeseman, mayor, a great bald branded Mastiff (1579)
- Thomas Master, a shagged-hair mongrel mastiff, whitish (1579)
- Mr James Thurbarne, a coal black greyhound dog, with a white upon the breast & with some white claws on their hind feet (1597)
These visual accounts help us analyse some of the data emerging from the zooarchaeological and ancient DNA strands of the project. How will the sample of dogs we are analysing (from bearbaiting arenas on Bankside) compare with this wide canine range from the Kent coast?
The list also gives insight into who exactly owned dogs in this period. The first 11 names on the 1579 list are “jurates,” or members of the town government. Similarly, there are a number of female dog owners on some of the lists: widows like Elyes Wydowe, Hobbyes Wydowe, and Johnsones Wydowe—who are noted not to have any (but by implication could)—and women like Mistriss Edalf, allowed to keep dogs “at hur pleasure,” or a curious entry struck through in this list of 1579: “Mistress Wilcocks, a little black turn spit with a white garland and 4 white feet.” A number of dog-owning jurates were prominent members of the community; John Cheseman, owner of the bald mastiff (among other dogs), was mayor of New Romney in 1563-4, 1573-4, 1579-80, 1584-85, and 1591-2 and was a baron and returning MP for New Romney (with another name of the list, William Epps) in 1558. Other names on the list were also MPs and barons, like William Southland.
The list is also important because it gives insight into how ownership was regulated. According to the prefatory information, “decrees for dogs” were read out in the town’s church and all had to subscribe to them and register any dogs they owned. Some seemingly paid a fee for the privilege of ownership, perhaps to avoid some of the specific requirements demanded of owners in the decrees (the specifics of which are now lost). Although these lists are somewhat unique, it is quite possible other towns also regulated dog ownership in a similar manner. Manchester, for instance, ordered on the 21 October 1561 that nobody could own a greyhound unless they possessed 40 shillings of freehold land, and in 1562 emphasised that nobody may keep a mastiff dog (those used for animal sports like baiting) unless the canines are kept chained and muzzled. Regulating the movement of dogs (particularly ferocious ones!) was clearly a priority for towns across the country.
What does it tell us?
Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of this 1579 list—like those from other years—is the sheer quantity of dog owners in a relatively small community. A diocesan survey taken in 1563 showed the population of New Romney to be about 200 people. The dog ownership list of 1560 records at least 49 dog owners, in 1579 34 people, and in 1581 35 owners. Might this (nearly 25%) be a typical proportion of dog owners in a town?
We can also speculate, based on these lists, where dogs and their owners might go for recreational activities. New Romney occupies a somewhat notable place in the leisure history of Kent thanks to its annual play and “Play-Book”—presumably, a dramatic manuscript that sadly does not survive. Other “Cinque Ports” (the collection of towns on or near the coast once granted royal status as important ports and joined together by administrative oversight) share in a culture of playing activity. In nearby Lydd, a range of playmaking expenses are recorded in the 1550s (and beyond), including infrastructure expenses for a “playing place.” Might the dogs described here have been familiar with this spot?
We can detect other forms of violence and regulation of animals in some of the lists from other years. In 1597, Bartholomew Browne was ordered “to hang his bitch by the appointment of Mr mayor and his brethren, and he is to pay for every week she shall be unhanged after this day, 12 pence” The request perhaps suggests something of the punishment meted out to violent and ill-behaved dogs, such as in Manchester in 1580 when the “foreman of the Jury had likely to have bene overthrown by a great Mastiff dog supposed to be one John Cowpe’s, smith, being unmuzzled and going loose in the street” (A Volume of Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester in the Sixteenth Century, ed. John Harland (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1864), pp. 49-50.) Broadly, the rationale behind who is allowed and who is not allowed to keep dogs remains tricky to recover. But instances like Browne’s order and Cowpe’s attack illustrate the “killability” of dogs—what the theorist Donna Haraway identifies as the moral acceptability of violence against animals—as well as moments where notions of docility and domestication break down.
Where does it come from?
New Romney decided, at some point in the sixteenth century, to draw together various administrative details and records, and the result is an idiosyncratic collection of orders, lists, and memoranda (known as the “Book of Note”). Among them are these lists of individuals “permitted to keep dogs.” The list is now housed at the Kent Archives in Maidstone (Kent History & Library Centre).
Further Facts
By the Elizabethan period, New Romney was no longer, as it had long been, a port, its coastline translated into shingle and silt. James Gibson describes its sixteenth-century existence as “terminal decline” (Records of Early English Drama: Kent, ed. James M. Gibson, Vol. 2 (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002), p. xli.) Its earlier wealth and vibrancy as a busy commercial port would have been a long-faded memory by the time our list of dog owners appears, although the town became an incorporated borough under the Queen in 1564 and maintained privileges as a member of the Cinque Ports. The Tudor incorporation charter allowed the town to elect a mayor via the jurats and commoners (rather than a bailiff appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury), thus furnishing us with the administrative materials that indicate some of New Romney’s historical day-to-day business.
