The Killer of Pilgrims

Historical Note

On 28 December 1349, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a letter to the Bishop of London ordering him to ensure that God was suitably thanked for rescuing the country from the ‘amazing pestilence which lately attacked these parts and which took from us the best and worthiest men’. The people were urged to ‘break forth in praises and devout expressions of gratitude’. It is almost impossible to imagine the impact of the plague on those who survived it, but some would certainly have thought that mere prayers were inadequate to express their relief, and would have undertaken pilgrimages.

Pilgrimage was thus big business in the fourteenth century, and like the tourist honeypots today, places that attracted large numbers of visitors were considered lucrative propositions. Not only was there accommodation and food to be supplied, but shrines also did a roaring trade in souvenirs – from simple scallop shells to elegant creations in gold and precious jewels. Many were in the form of badges, which the pilgrim could wear to let everyone know what he had done. Indulgences and signacula were highly prized, and the unscrupulous almost certainly scrambled to profit from them.

Besides the great official pilgrimage sites, such as Canterbury, Santiago de Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem, there were many local ones, such as Hereford and Walsingham. There were also unofficial cults, like the one surrounding John Schorne of North Marston in Buckinghamshire. Schorne was a rector who was said to have conjured the Devil into a boot, and whose spring was thought to cure gout. He died in 1315, but pilgrims continued to visit his shrine right up until the Reformation.

Another popular medieval pastime was camp-ball, a game that was still played well into the twentieth century. It could be extremely violent, and although there were rules, they tended not to be ones that protected the players. Sometimes, the teams comprised a limited number of competitors in a field of a specified size, but at other times an entire settlement might be considered the ‘ground’, and participants could number in the hundreds. Injuries were commonplace, and deaths not infrequent. Savage-camp was an even rougher version of the game.

Real people in The Killer of Pilgrims include John Gyseburne, who was a Cambridge physician in the mid-fourteenth century, and his colleague John Meryfeld, who later went to work in St Bartholomew’s Priory in London, and became a famous medicus in his own right. Thomas Kendale, from the York Diocese, studied at Cambridge in the late fourteenth century, and so did John Jolye.

Michaelhouse’s Master in 1357 was Ralph de Langelee, and Fellows included Michael de Causton, William de Gotham, Thomas Suttone, John Clippesby, William Thelnetham and Simon Hemmysby. Thomas Ayera and John Valence were members much later, and Ayera donated property to the College. Michaelhouse, along with neighbouring King’s Hall and several hostels, became Trinity College in 1546. Michaelhouse’s name survives in St Michael’s Church, which has been lovingly restored, and is now a community centre, art gallery and a popular coffee shop. For more information, visit www.michaelhouse.co.uk.

Michaelhouse, like all early foundations, relied heavily on charitable donations for its survival. In return, its priests would pray for the souls of the benefactors. An early document belonging to Michaelhouse lists a number of such people. They include Emma de Colvyll and her daughter Alice, Alice’s husband Thomas Heslarton and their daughter. John Drax and his wife, John Poynton and Hugh Fen are others whose souls were to be remembered, as were Agnes and Margaret, the two wives of Hugh Neel.

The Gilbertine convent was called the Priory of St Edmunds, and was located more or less where Old Addenbrooke’s Hospital is today, on Trumpington Street. Its Prior after 1355 was John de Leccheworth. The Dominican Friary was where Emmanuel College now stands, and its head in the 1350s was Prior Morden. He had a friar named Griffin Welfry.

Any remnants of the Carmelite Friary now lie under Queens’ College. Its Prior by 1362 was William Etone. John de Horneby later went on to be one of the Order’s greatest thinkers, taking part in a highly publicised debate in 1374, in which he took on the Dominican Order and won. The convent here, like the one in Oxford, was said to have been founded by St Simon Stock, probably some time after 1249. Simon, about whom much is written but little is actually known, was probably one of the Order’s early Prior-Generals.

Legend has it that on 16 July 1251 the Virgin Mary appeared to Simon in a dream, and handed him the scapular that has been part of the Carmelite habit ever since. Because Simon was thought to have been in Cambridge between 1249 and 1251, it has been claimed that the dream occurred there. There is a dearth of contemporary evidence, both about Simon Stock himself and about the scapular vision, and theologians have reached little consensus about either.