Fourteenth Century evidence for the Cult of St Clement in north-east Somerset

In earlier posts I have discussed the Cult of St Clement and its supposed connection with the adoption of the Clement hereditary surname in England.  At that time I was unable to find any evidence for the Cult of St Clement in Somerset during the medieval period.  The purpose of this article is to correct this omission by considering a fourteenth century image of St Clement that has been on public display in north-east Somerset for over six hundred years. As a consequence of its prominent position it seems reasonable to think it was available to, and perhaps known by, generations of the Clement family who lived locally during that period.

The area of north-east Somerset in which the I-Y33765 Clement family originate is today within the Church of England Diocese of Bath & Wells which is centered on the medieval Bishops Palace and  Cathedral church in the City of Wells.  Wells is an ancient religious site (Rodwell, 1987). This is evident to the east of the present Gothic Cathedral where a group of natural springs, or wells, may have been venerated during the pre-Christian period and from which the settlement takes its name.  Near these springs archaeologist have found a late Roman mausoleum and a mid-Saxon Christian chapel together with the foundations of the first Cathedral which was built before the Norman invasion of England.  Inspite of this early Christian heritage Wells was never a monastic site and after 1088 the Bishop's seat was moved to the Abbey of the monks at nearby Bath.  However Wells has always been a focus for pilgrimage with many chantries which, together with its ownership of estates within the region, gave it both wealth and influence particularly after the Cathedra was eventually restored to Wells in 1274.

The Gothic Cathedral, which is broadly the structure we see today, was built between 1175 and 1490 (Harvey, 1987) and concurrent with this extended period of construction, between 1274 to 1347, we have documentary sources (South West Heritage, DD/HI/A/47 and DD/HI/A/48) that record the Clement family living about 19km (12miles) to the north, on the Wells to Bristol road, at Temple Cloud.  It was during this time, in the first half of the fourteenth century that the Lady Chapel was built and the Quiore extended (Ayres, 2004).  As part of these works the new windows were glazed with leaded stained glass.  Some of this medieval glass has survived the ravages of the intervening six centuries.  Among this group, a window now designated "South II" or "SII", situated in the upper celestory of the quoire, on the south wall at its eastern end, contains a named image of St Clement (see Figures 1 & 2).

Figure 1: The position of the St Clement image at Wells Cathedral. (a) External view looking at the south elevation of Wells Cathedral showing the celestory window, South II (SII) arrowed at the eastern end of the building (right). (b) Internal view of the quiore at Wells Cathedral with the celestory window SII arrowed, above and to the right of the High Altar.  (c) Plan of the eastern end of Wells Cathedral showing the six celestory windows in relation to the High Altar.  Windows NII & SII contain images of six Martyrs and windows NIII & SIII contain images of six Confessors. At Wells during medieval times, of the five Martyrs who are identified in Windows NII & SII, the Feast of St Clement, celebrated on the 23 November was the most important being celebrated by a service of nine lessons. 

According to Ayres (2004) the clerestory windows in the three new eastern bays of the Quiore were installed in the early 1340's.  In the most eastern bay, windows NII & SII contain almost complete medieval glass images of six named Martyrs.  Two show former Popes, St Clement and an unidentified martyred Pope.  Two are of beatified Anglo-Saxon Kings, St Oswald and St Ethelbert.  One is St George, England's patron saint and the final saint is St Blaise.  In the next bay, the stained glass images in windows NIII & SIII illustrate six Confessors, Pope Gregory, Abbot Giles, Bishop Richard, Bishop Brice, Father Andrew and an unidentified Bishop.  All the images show the figures standing under an ornate architectural canopy and originally all had their names inscribed as white capital letters in a box on the plinth at their feet.  Some of these names have been damaged to an extent that prevents the subject being identified with certainty.

Figure 2: Celestory window SII.   The window contains three stained glass panels each showing a full-length figure of a martyr standing beneath an ornate canopy with pinnacles. In order, left to right, the saints are; St Clement, St Oswald and St Ethelbert. 

The image of St Clement shows him dressed in mass vestments, wearing a conical papal crown and holding a cross attached to a staff in his right hand.  In his left hand he carries an inverted gold and white anchor, which in his iconography is a symbol representing the method of his martyrdom when he was supposedly thrown into the Black Sea tied to a ships anchor. 

Figure 3: Stained glass image of St Clement in Wells Cathedral created circa 1340.  The saint is shown dressed in mass vestments and wearing a conical papal crown.  He is carrying a green staff capped with a cross (left) and an inverted gold coloured anchor (right).

What seems to me particularly interesting about the St Clement window at Wells is its significant position within the Cathedral and the date at which it was commissioned and made.  

The location and associations of the saint's representation suggest that his cult was important to those members of the fourteenth century Cathedral community who commissioned his glass image to be made.  We can see that these worthy clerics chose St Clement to be in a group of six Martyrs who are positioned looking down upon the high altar of the Cathedral.  This group are placed to watch over the altar as eternal witnesses to the central Christian sacrament and ritual of the mass; that miracle of faith in which the bread and wine of the Last Supper are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.  The medieval Cathedral community placed St Clement in this privileged group along side two Saxon kings of England and facing a fellow martyred Pope, St Blaise and England's patron saint.  

Clearly we might expect that his image was included in this special location at a time when his cult was most popular in England.  However, according to Professor Crawford (2008), author of the definitive volume on the Cult of St Clement in England "the cult [of St Clement] faded in it's popularity in the thirteenth century......certainly there was a gap from about 1200 to maybe 1400 when the cult went into decline" (Crawford, 2019).  So, these comments make it noteworthy that in 1340-5, when the Quiore stained glass windows were installed, St Clement's cult was less popular in England and hence it may seem strange that the saint's image should be incorporated at that time in such a significant position within an important Cathedral. 

One explanation may be the springs after which Wells is named and the strong association between St Clement's cult and watery places.  However the springs at Wells are associated with St Andrew to whom the Cathedral itself is dedicated  and it consequently seems to me that this would be a rather tenuous connection when seeking to justify the prominent and significant position in which St Clement's image is displayed.  Another possibility is that St Clement's cult was particularly venerated in the area administered by the Bishop of Bath and Wells.  But, if this were so then surely there would be more evidence.  It seems to me very hard to make such a claim without some supporting evidence from Somerset parishes.  The only other pre-reformation stained glass image of the saint in the county is within the Rose Window at All Saints Church, Langport.  But this glass dates to the "revival" phase of St Clement's cult, circa 1450, and the saint's image is just one of the ten larger saints images portrayed in that window.  Similarly the Guild of Mariners chapel dedicated to St Clement in Bristol was founded in 1455 and so it too dates to the period of his later cult revival. Lastly an even later medieval statue of St Clement, circa 1500, is sited on the east elevation of the tower of the parish church dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary, Isle Abbots, Somerset. 

Whatever the true reason for commissioning St Clement's image in Wells Cathedral circa 1340, it seems to me reasonable to think that this beautiful example of medieval glass-work illustrates an active belief in the Cult of St Clement within the fourteenth century Christian tradition of north Somerset.  Having evidence that the cult was active in this area of the county at that time is important for our I-Y33765 Clement narrative since it is not until this date that hereditary surnames become common among the lower classes in England (Berg, 2019). 

In north Somerset our earliest evidence for the use of Clement as a family name agrees well with this timescale.  We have the name used by witnesses to a marriage settlement apparently dating from 1274 (South West Heritage, DD/HI/A/48/4) and to a land grant dated 1283 (South West Heritage, DD/HI/A/47/8).  Both witnesses are members of an extended Clement family who then lived at Temple Cloud, a settlement on the Bristol to Wells road, that abuts the Domesday Manor of Clutton.  The lord of this manor in 1060 was a Scandinavian thegn, Thorkel the Dane, and as I have explored in an earlier article, the Cult of St Clement had particular significance for the seafaring societies of Scandinavia.  In England and Denmark this was particularly the case during the reign of Cnut the Great (Crawford, 2008).  

So it seems possible that, bearing in mind the Scandinavian origins of our I-Y33765 clade, our Clement patrilineal family name could have become adopted because, even in the restrictive feudal society of thirteenth century Somerset, an active Christian faith and belief in St Clement's cult was able to evoke some subliminal folk memory of a distant ancestral homeland. On the other hand, it might seem more logical and safer to explain this interesting association of hagio-geography, Y-DNA and hereditary surname as an example of simple coincidence.

References

Ayres, T. (2004), The Medieval Stained Glass of Wells Cathedral, No.4 Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain, OUP / British Academy, 838pp

Berg, A. (2019), An Economic Theory of Surnames (July 11, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3418074 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3418074

Crawford, B.E (2008) The Churches Dedicated to St Clement in Medieval England: a Hagio-geography of the Seafarer's Saint in 11th Century North Europe, 237pp. Axioma, St Petersburg.

Crawford, B.E (2019)  The cult of St Clement and excavations at St Clements Church in Trondheim.  A lecture given on 18 February 2019 at the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies.  Sound recording available at https://soundcloud.com/user-37693948/barbara-crawford-excavations-at-st-clements-church-trondheim

Harvey, J.H. (1987), The Building of Wells Cathedral, Chapters 3 & 4, 52-101, In: Wells Cathedral, a History, Ed. LS Colchester, Open Books Publishing Ltd, Wells

Rodwell, W. (1987), The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Churches at Wells,1-23, In: Wells Cathedral, a History, Ed. LS Colchester, Open Books Publishing Ltd, Wells 

 

 

Your AncestryDNA autosomal test and what it can tell you about your I-Y33765 status

If you are male and if your family name is a variant either of Clement, or of Eklund, or perhaps Dahlberg or Hallberg, then it is possible you may test positive for the I-Y33765 Y-DNA marker.  You can check if this may be likely very easily if you already have your result from an Ancestry.com autosomal DNA test. This is because the AncestryDNA test chip contains a selection of about 1700 Y-DNA SNPs and a few of these will undoubtedly have tested positive in your analysis.  Based on these positive Y-DNA SNPs a man can determine his approximate Y-DNA haplogroup.  The simplest method to do this is to use the Y-DNA Clade Finder tool which is available at YSeq.com.

The YSeq Clade Finder is free to use and its use doesn't require you to login or register with YSeq.  You can find the Clade Finder tool using this link, https://cladefinder.yseq.net/  .  To make it worth considering ordering a I-Y33765 analysis a man with one of the family names mentioned above should also believe he has documented male ancestry from North Somerset, England or Tjust, Sweden and that he has a predicted I2a Y-DNA haplogroup.   As I discussed in my article published 8 May 2021, it seems likely that only about one in five men with the Clement surname will have an I2a Y-DNA haplogroup.  At present we have no information on haplogroup frequency among the Swedish family names mentioned but it seems plausible that a combination of, for example, the Eklund name with a genealogy from Tjust is predictive for an I2a Y-DNA haplogroup.  

Whichever family name you hold it is certainly worth using the Clade Finder tool and your AncestryDNA raw data to confirm your predicted haplogroup before placing your order with YSeq. To use the Clade Finder you will first need to login to your Ancestry account and download your raw data text file.  To do this:

1)    Sign into your Ancestry online account.

2)    Click on the top right hand menu bar to access Your Account

3)    Click on DNA in the left hand Settings list

4)    Scroll down to the Actions box at the bottom of the page

5)    Click on the Download DNA link

6)    Enter your Sign in password and tick the consent box and Confirm

7)    Check your email account for an email from Ancestry with the download instructions

8)    Click the Confirm Data Download box in the email.  This will open in your Ancestry account showing a button, Download DNA data.  Click this and open the Zip file with Windows Explorer.  The text file named AncestryDNA is your raw data file.  Save a copy of this to your desktop.

9)    Open the Clade Finder link given above in your browser.

10)   Click on the Browse button which is near the bottom of the page and select the AncestryDNA text file from your desktop and click Open. 

11)    After a few seconds the lower text box will fill with a display giving the Most specific position on the YFull YTree is ?-????. If in your case the prediction is I-L460 then you are likely to be I-Y33765 (+) and it would be very worthwhile considering confirmation by using a single SNP test at YSeq.  Please contact me at braceydna@gmail.com for help in arranging this.

Example display of Y-DNA haplogroup prediction using an AncestryDNA rawdata file for a man who is derived (+) for I-Y33765.  His most specific haplogroup prediction made by the Clade Finder tool will be I-L460.   If you obtain this result it is certainly worth considering ordering a test for Y33765 at YSeq.

The Black Death and downstream expansion of I-Y33765 -- Part 2: I-Y33765 in Somerset after 1348-9

The decrease in population caused by the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century was profound.  Regeneration was very gradual and there was a lag of several centuries before population numbers began to increase (Figure 2 in the previous post 18 December 2020).  It is my belief that within the English arm of the I-Y33765 clade its relatively late expansion at the level of I-Y33767, TMRCA 1502, is coincident with this gradual recovery in the English population.

During the immediate aftermath of the Black Death no documentary evidence has been found for the Clement family in Somerset other than the record of a juror named John Clement at Wincanton, 2 July, 1427.  To give this statement context, between 1399 and 1447 there were 4088 named jurors at courts held in the county of Somerset while in the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll for the county there are five Clement names out of 10751 taxpayers listed.  Based on these figures we can judge Clement individuals were about one in two thousand of the Somerset population before the Black Death and about one in four thousand, some fifty to one hundred years later.  Hence the reduction in Somerset Clement folk caused by the plague seems to have mirrored the fall in the total English population, where typically the decline is thought to have been about 50% (see Figure 2 in previous post).

So at present, the earliest record that can be conjectured as I-Y33765 Clement activity in Chew Valley during the "plague centuries" is in the parish of Compton Dando, a few miles northeast of Temple Cloud where, in 1518, a dispute between members of the family has survived in proceedings at Chancery.  This litigation is between plaintiffs, Thomas Clement of Compton Dando, husbandman, and Johan , his wife and two defendants, John Rede, husbandman and Isabel Clement, widow, both of Burnett circa 1518 (C1/487/1 & C1/487/2, Chancery Proceedings, The National Archives, Kew). Their argument was over two manors, "Suardis" and "Shewardis" and a considerable associated acreage of farmland, that was leased by the plaintiffs. Unfortunately we get no idea from this Chancery record about the relationship between Thomas and Isabel although it seems clear they were very likely related.  Possibly, Isobel's deceased husband was the father or maybe a brother of Thomas?  In the Lay Subsidy Roll of 1522-24 Thomas Clement "of Wyke" in Compton Dando is assessed with his son Richard.  Richard must have been born at least 15-20 years earlier, so circa 1502-5.  Hence Thomas must have married his wife, Johan, circa 1500 and so have himself been born about 1475. Anyway, from this court case we can conjecture that a century and a half after the Black Death members of a Clement family, very possibly descended from those Clement kin who lived at Temple Cloud in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, were now thriving in the parishes of Keynsham Hundred within Chew Valley.

Certainly, based on TMRCA estimates (Table 1, Part 1) the downstream expansion of the English arm of I-Y33765 happened decades after the Black Death and most likely during this recovery period (Figure 2, Part 1). For example the Y33767 mutation, which has been confirmed in four Clement men representing three male lineages, has a TMRCA of 1502 (Table 1, Part 1).  Using the evidence from the 1522-24 and 1524-5 Lay Subsidy Rolls plus the 1569 Certificate of Musters (Figure 1) which each show a similar distribution of individuals named Clement in the parishes of Keynsham Hundred during the sixteenth century it seems almost certain that this area of the lower Chew Valley was at that time a center for family expansion.  The known genealogy of Clement men derived (+) for I-Y33767 would seem to support this (Figure 1).  

Figure 1: Earliest locations for documented I-Y33767 Clement genealogy in Chew Valley, Somerset, England, and the relationship to documented Clement localities before and after the Black Death.  The Tudor Lay Subsidy Rolls 1522-1525 and Certificate of Musters 1569 each suggest the primary area of Clement expansion in the early sixteenth century was in the parishes of Keynsham Hundred in the lower Chew Valley.  At present it seems to me likely that the Y33767 mutation formed in a Clement man living in this area at some time during the two centuries after the Black Death 1348-9.  The earliest event linked to the I-Y33767 B742594 Clements lineage is the marriage at Compton Dando of Francis Clement and Katherine Peacocke, 29 July 1663.  

Downstream from I-Y33767 two of the three Clement lineages are derived for the BZ4354 marker. At this level, both FTDNA and YFull prefer to use FT314945 as the phylogenetic marker to define this branch but unlike BZ4354, FT314945 is outside the CombBED regions and so may seem less suitable. 

As I have explained earlier, before the Black Death the documented Clement/s locations are centred in an area where the boundaries of Chew, Chewton & Keynsham Hundreds meet near the parish of Cameley, Temple Cloud (1273-1347) and the parish of Farmborough (1334). The genealogies of the four men who are derived for I-BZ4354 originate in parishes within Chew Hundred. From the mid-sixteenth century onward there is documentary evidence for Clement/s individuals throughout the parishes of Chew Valley, from Keynsham, Englishcombe and Bath in the east to Butcombe and East Harptree in the west.  The north south distribution was from Keynsham and Norton Malreward in the north, across the eastern Mendip Hills to Emborough, Milton and Doulting in the south (Figure 2). 

 Figure 2: Earliest documented location for I-BZ4354 (I-FT314945) in Clement IN82043 genealogy at Chew Magna circa 1750.

At the moment we can only be sure that the I-BZ4354 mutation divides the Chew Valley Clement family.  In the future, it would be helpful to understand the geographic distribution of Clement/s men who are derived (+) for BZ4354 mutation against those who are ancestral (-).  At present only one of the five Clement/s  men who are derived for I-Y33767 is ancestral for BZ4354. This BZ4354- man (B742594) has documented ancestry from the parish of Compton Dando.  Using this very limited evidence my hypothesis is that men from families originating in parishes to the west of the Bristol to Wells (A37) road, which divides the I-Y33767 area north to south, may be derived and those from families with ancestry in parishes to the east of that old highway are ancestral.  This very arbitrary idea certainly needs more research and I have been trying to locate Clement/s men who are likely descendants of the family of Ephraim and Ann Clement of Butcombe parish circa 1725 who may wish to test their Y-DNA.  It seems to me this family originate at the western extremity of Chew Valley and so are, if my theory has any foundation, likely to be I-BZ4354 + .   

In conclusion and to summarize my thoughts; it seems to me that, based on the documentary evidence and the history of the plague in north east Somerset, it is likely that some Clement/s family members from Temple Cloud or nearby settlements in Chewton hundred moved north-east into parishes of Keynsham hundred.  This expansion happened at a time contemporary with, or some years after the Black Death.  Church registers and other contemporary sources confirm that descendants of these incomers prospered in the villages which cluster along the banks of the River Chew between Keynsham and Pensford. Our results from genetic testing of descendants and TMRCA estimations indicate that the man in whom the I-Y33765 SNP formed lived among these folk probably at the end of the fifteenth century.  Some generations later, and perhaps as late as the first half of the seventeenth century, men from these villages possibly moved upstream, along the Chew and, in one of these chaps, the I-BZ4353 mutation formed in Chew Hundred.

All these speculations concern those men who moved northward out of Chewton Hundred but, the 1569  Certificate of Musters and parish registers confirm that some Clement families remained in Chewton during the "plague centuries" while others perhaps drifted south towards the towns of Wells and Shepton Mallet.  As yet we have no genetic evidence for this group that radiated south.  Hopefully this situation may be remedied before too long.

 

The Black Death and downstream expansion of I-Y33765 -- Part 1: I-Y33765 in Somerset before 1348-9

One of the important benefits of Y-chromosome Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) analysis for the genealogist is that the technique identifies all the base substitutions or SNPs that have happened in the lineage of the man who has been tested. As discussed in earlier posts, by comparing NGS results for related men, and by using the estimated SNP mutation rate, we can calculate the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) or approximate date at which their most recent common ancestor would have been living.  At present seven men with the I-Y33765 mutation have NGS results and the age estimates for phylogenetically important mutations within the clade are shown in Table 1.   

Table 1: Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) age estimates for phylogenetically important mutations within the I-Y33765 clade.  Estimates calculated using the SNP mutation rate observed in the Nils Swensson pedigree.

One observation that can be made about the figures shown in Table 1 is the relatively late date we estimate at present for the expansion of both the English and Swedish arms of the I-Y33765 tree (for our latest tree see the post published 8 August 2021).  The three lineages so far identified in England having a TMRCA based on Y33767 of 1508 while for the several Swedish lineages the TMRCA based on FT250135 is 1650.  In this article, using English documentary sources, I will explore my idea that descendants from putative earlier branches may have been "pruned" by medieval plague events, in particular the Black Death.

The Black Death of the mid fourteenth century caused an unprecedented demographic trauma that halved the medieval population of Europe between 1348 and 1351.  Subsequent recurrent plague episodes restricted population regeneration for hundreds of years.  In England these "plague centuries" were those between the initial pandemic of 1348-9 and the mid seventeenth century when, for example, the "Great" plague afflicted London in 1665-6. 

Contemporary accounts suggest that a characteristic of the initial fourteenth century spread was that the disease was "non-selective" killing all social classes, all ages and both sexes with equal ferocity.  In Somerset the epidemiology during 1348-9 has been inferred from records for deaths of parish priests and the institution of a new priest at that locality.  

As I have explained before, I-Y33765 in England seems to be localized among men with the last name Clement whose male ancestry is within the Chew Valley, North Somerset. The Cult of St Clement and the conversion of Viking Age Scandinavian kingdoms to Christianity may have some significance for the adoption of this saints name by a male line with Scandinavian roots or this may just be an interesting coincidence.  Whatever the truth, the earliest recorded use of Clement as an hereditary surname in England occurs in Oxford in a charter dated 1153 by Agnes de Sibbeford, wife of Ralph Clement, which is witnessed by Hugo Clement and by William son of Richard Clement, who is later called Willelmus Clemens, with a brother Robertus Clemens (Reaney,1967). This charter is preserved in The Sandford Cartulary which was compiled in the second half of the 13th century, by order of Robert le Eascropp, Preceptor of the Sandford Templars in this period. It was transcribed by Agnes M Leys in 1938 for the Oxfordshire Record Society  and she describes it in her introduction as ‘the only complete record of the estates of any house of the Templars in England’ (Leys, 1941).

Here again,this connection between the Clement surname and an enterprise managed by the Knights Templar would seem an interesting coincidence since the earliest recorded use of the Clement surname in north Somerset is in two deeds which each mention lands at "Temple" Cloud in Cameley parish.  According to Faith (2009) "the Templars became lords of the vill of Cameley in 1201-2" and Mills (1991) suggests the affix "Temple" in the name Temple Cloud "probably refers to lands here held by the Knights Templars".  One of these documents is an undated marriage settlement drawn-up circa 1274 by Everard le Franceis for "all lands which I have in la Cloude in the parish of Cameley", which is witnessed by "Clemente de Cloude" (SW Heritage Trust; DD/HI/A/48/4) and the second deed is a grant, with warranty, dated 13 February 1283, for a fardel of land in Cameley to John Roger "Atete[m]ple" witnessed by William Clement (SW Heritage Trust; DD/HI/A/47/8) .  So, taken together, these two medieval deeds make it certain that the Clement hereditary surname was in use on the southern edge of Chew Valley in the second half of the thirteenth century. 

The 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll for Somerset (Dickinson, 1889) allows us to estimate the distribution of the Clement name in the county in the decades prior to the Black Death (red symbols, Figure 1).  At this time 60% of Clement name holders who were liable for taxation lived in Chew Valley, specifically in the contiguous parishes of Cameley and Hinton Blewett. The 1569 Certificate of Musters for Somerset (Green, 1904) gives a similar opportunity to estimate the distribution of the Clement name (green symbols, Figure 1) during the "plague centuries".   

Figure 1: Clement locations in Somerset before, and after, the Black Death, 1348-9.  Prior to the Norman Conquest it is my conjecture that the locus for I-Y33765 in England was the manor of Clutton (blue cross symbol) which was at that time held by Thorkel "the Dane".  From 1274 until 1347 thirteen medieval deeds document the Clement family living 1km south of Clutton at Temple Cloud in Cameley parish. The 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll records 60% of the Clement taxpayers in Somerset (red circle symbols) living in Cameley.  During the plague centuries documentary sources such as the 1569 Certificate of Musters record 80% of Clement militiamen (green circle symbols) living in parishes a few kilometers north and south of the parish of Cameley.  

The two medieval deeds mentioned earlier are included in two deed bundles among the Papers of the Hippisley Family of Ston Easton (SW Heritage Trust; DD/HI/A/47 & DD/HI/A/48) which contain 95 documents relating to property in the parish of Cameley which were written between 1263 and 1398.  Thirteen of these deeds, dated between 1274 and 1347, mention members of an extended Clement family who lived at Temple Cloud.  The earliest reference, to Clemente de Cloude, is in the fourth earliest deed in this collection and implies the family were in the parish of Cameley from at least the mid thirteenth century.  There are no Clement references after the 8th April 1347 although about twenty further documents cover the next fifty years with the last being dated 20 May1398.  Perhaps significantly, 1347 is on the eve of the appearance of the Black Death in Bristol & north Somerset.

In the vicinity of Temple Cloud the plague outbreak seems to have been most severe in the winter 1348-9 (Bates-Harbin, 1917).  For example the Manor Roll of Ston Easton records that 12 of the 16 tenants of the manor died in 1348 (Janes, 2003).  It would seem the Temple Cloud Clement family either succumbed during 1348-9 or, in the immediate aftermath of the plague they were stimulated to move.  Evidence for the severity of the contagion in the parish of Cameley is unfortunately lacking but there are circumstantial details that suggest mortality could have been high.  For instance, in the adjoining parish of Hinton Blewett the incumbent priest died and was replaced in December 1348, but this replacement died too and was replaced after a few weeks in February 1349 (Bates-Harbin, 1917; Holmes, 1896).  Also in February, the priest at High Littleton, who had been instituted in June 1348, died and was replaced (Bates-Harbin, 1917; Holmes, 1896).  As both Cameley village and Temple Cloud are located midway between Hinton Blewett and High Littleton it would seem probable that some residents of these settlements would have died about the same time the neighbouring parishes were so afflicted.   
 
On the other hand, in the 1433 Lay Subsidy, the total national tax yield, that had been fixed since the 1334 Lay Subsidy, was reduced by £4000. As a result each county was granted a remission of 10.4% of its tax quota, which was to be applied among ‘poor vills, cities and boroughs, desolate, wasted, destroyed, or very impoverished, or otherwise too heavily burdened with tax’ (Lee, 2002).   While in 1433 High Littleton & Hallatrow were given the highest reduction (38.14%) of any parish in the Hundreds of Chewton, Chew & Keynsham, presumably indicating that those villages were still desolate and wasted by the effects of the Black Death, Temple Cloud, Hinton Blewett and Cameley received no reduction on their pre-plague assessment (of 1334), implying perhaps that their economies and population had not suffered as greatly or had recovered.  

Figure 2: Historical population of England and I-Y33765 timeline in Chew Valley, Somerset (1000-2000). 

What is beyond doubt is that in 1348-9 the Black Death caused an uniquely large reduction in the population of England and that it took almost three centuries before that population had recovered to its pre plague level (see Figure 2). Between 1347, at Temple Cloud, and 1518, at Compton Dando, a period of 171 years, approximating to perhaps six or seven generations, we have no documented evidence for the Clement family in Chew Valley.  It seems to me this gap in the documentary record is most likely due to the economic and social adjustments that occurred throughout England during these “plague years” but I think it also strongly hints that several local Clement lineages probably became extinct at this time.  Evidence for the low frequency of the Clement surname in Somerset during this period is given by the index of Jurors in the Inquisitions Post Mortem Vols 18-26 (1399-1447) which contain only one Clement entry for the county, at Wincanton in 1427 (Ref E-CIPM 24-557).
 
So we can be sure that following the original wave of the Black Death in Somerset, and the repeated "ripples" of contagion during subsequent centuries, the size and distribution of the I-Y33765 Clement family in Chew Valley became significantly changed.  In Part 2 I will discuss some genetic and historical evidence for their relocation and expansion. 

 

 References

Bates-Harbin, E.H.(1917) The “Black Death” in Somersetshire, 1348-9,  Proceedings of the     Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, V63 pp 89-112

Dickinson, F.H.(1889) Kirby’s quest for Somerset. Nomina Villarum for Somerset of 16th of      Edward the 3rd. Exchequer Lay Subsidies 169/5, which is a tax roll for Somerset of the first year of Edward the 3rd. County rate of 1742. Hundreds and parishes etc. of Somerset as given in the census of 1841. Somerset Record Society, Vol 3. 360pp

Faith, J (2009), The Knights Templar in Somerset, The History Press, Stroud 115pp

Green, E. (1904) Certificate of musters in the county of Somerset, temp. Eliz., A.D. 1569.         Extracted, and with notes, by Emanuel Green.  Somerset Record Society, Vol 20,370pp.

Holmes, T.S, (1896) The Register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath & Wells                    1329-1363. Somerset Record Society, Vol 10. 877pp

 

Janes, R.(2003) Pensford, Publow and Woollard, A Topographical History, Biografix, 92pp.

Lee, J.S. (2002) Tracing regional and local changes in population and wealth during the later  middle ages using taxation records:Cambridgeshire 1334-1563.  Local Population Studies Vol 69, 32-50.

Leys, A.M (1941) The Sandford cartulary, Oxfordshire Record Society Vols 19 and 22

Mills, A.D.(2011) A Dictionary of British Place Names, Oxford University Press.

Reaney, P.H (1967), The Origin of English Surnames, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 415pp