The Tichborne Dole
The strange-but-true story of a Lady Day tradition.
1135-1154
King Stephen 1135-1154
The strange-but-true story of a Lady Day tradition.
1135-1154
King Stephen 1135-1154
In the days of King Stephen (r. 1135-1154), Lady Tichborne in Hampshire warned her heirs never to fail in their charity to the poor. To do so, she said, would be bring the family line to an abrupt end, and six hundred years and one meddlesome magistrate later, her unlikely fears came true.
BACK in the twelfth century, as Lady Mabella Tichborne lay dying she asked her husband to give the peasants on his estates a free gift of flour every year on Lady Day. Sir Roger, whose instincts were decidedly thrifty, replied that they could have the harvest of any field his bedridden lady could mark out — alone, by hand, and at night, in the time one torch would take to burn out.
After dragging herself around fully twenty-three acres* of her husband’s estate - called ‘the Crawls’ to this day - Mabella warned Sir Roger to keep his side of the bargain. Otherwise, there would be one generation of seven sons, and one generation of seven daughters, and the Tichborne name would be extinct.
In 1796, a magistrate ordered the dole suspended after it began to attract vagrants. Sir Henry Tichborne, one of seven sons himself, promptly fathered seven daughters. The dole was hastily reinstated, and is still distributed to families in Tichborne today.
23 acres is approximately thirteen football pitches.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What was Mabella Tichborne’s dying request to her husband?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Sir Roger promised to help the poor. He imposed conditions. He intended to do nothing.