Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'With sheep and cattle in the fields, what do these people do for bread, which is the staple of life?' I asked.

'They buy the raw wool from the lords and landowners, who enclosed the land and brought in these people-'

'Wait,' I interrupted. 'What of the peasants who lived here first? The Angles and Saxons?'

'Three things,' he replied, as we toiled up a hill steeper than most on a track hedged with a thorny shrub with bright green leaves sprouting; pinched off between thumb and forefinger they made a delightful savoury salad, which we nibbled at as we walked along. Hawthorn, it was called. 'First, the plague carried off most of them a hundred years ago. This left the lords with a problem – too much land, not enough labourers. Wages rose. Second, those who survived married into the families of the Flemish people, each happily absorbed into the other. Third, those who were dispossessed by enclosure, and would not marry to become spinners and weavers, took to lawlessness and the forests, which they call the Green Wood. There they live off the lords' venison, rabbits, hares and so forth, or hire themselves out to the lords as soldiers in these wars. I'm surprised we have not met any. In many ways they practise what I preach.'

But I was more interested in how the spinners and weavers worked.

'They buy the wool,' Peter replied, 'then spin and weave it. They take it to market where they sell it to merchants. There is a difference, a surplus, between what they pay for it and what they sell it for, and with this difference they buy the necessaries of life, including flour from other parts.'

But by now we had breasted the crest of the hill and were able to look down into a wide lush valley where there nestled a small town or large village. My curiosity about the wool trade was forgotten for a time.

'Burford,' said Peter.

On the way down we passed a small pit in the hillside from which two men were cutting a bluish-grey caked but powdery clay and loading it into a cart.

"Fuller's earth,' said Peter. 'With abundant running water one ol the necessaries for a flourishing wool trade. The others are good pasture for sheep, and skilled craftsmen. The fuller's earth is used for cleaning the grease and fats out of the wool, which help keep the sheep waterproof and well.'

'They certainly need it.' I supplied, for it had come on to rain again. 'Why do they cultivate giant thistles? Surely they are no use to anyone except donkeys.'

Just below the fuller's earth pit there was a small plot filled with the tall spiky plants, as yet only in bud.

'They are not thistles but teasels. Once they have flowered they form hard, brittle seed-cases with bent almost barbed bristles. The weavers use these to tease up the nap on their cloth, which they then shear off leaving a fine almost silky finish, which is much valued by the richer sort.'

'It seems there is a conspiracy between man and…'

'And… God?'

'Nature. To make this a region in which cloth manufacture can flourish.'

'Not forgetting history, the past. Remember the plague.'

Burford was indeed a prosperous place, and newly so. A main street of commodious new houses, timber-framed and brick, leads down from the Oxenford road, which we crossed to a small river on whose bank stood a curious church. Curious, because though three hundred years old it was undergoing substantial refurbishment and rebuilding. A new and graceful steeple had already been erected on top of the massive square tower, while the nave and aisles were being laboriously raised to new galleries with new piers supporting the new roof. Yet most of the lower structure, the side-chapels and so forth, remained unaltered.

I put these anomalies to Peter. 'Surely,' I said, 'it would have made more sense to start afresh. That way they would have-produced a building in a uniform style, harmonious and properly proportioned, instead of this mish-mash. I suspect, too, it would have been cheaper.'

In answer he took me by the elbow, always his practice when something conspiratorial, confidential or requiring persuasion was in the air. and led me into the nave. He pointed up to a niche crowning one of the older arches. There was a statuette, a crude and primitive representation of a woman riding a horse. He then conducted me round the capitals of the older side piers and pointed at equally crude representations of the act of procreation and so forth. Finally in the churchyard he construed what we had seen.

'This,' he said, 'is a temple, not a church. It is a temple not to God hut to the goddess, the white lady who throughout these parts rode on a white horse, naked but for her golden hair and garlands of flowers, at the midsummer solstice. There are signs of her and of the cult that still worships her, all over the place if you know where to look. At Banbury she has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. In Coventry she is Godgifu. The rulers of the Church may try to hide all this by building over it, but they dare not wipe it out.'

'So why,' I asked, 'is this temple, disguised as a church, dedicated to a man. the prophet John the Baptist. I mean, why not to Mary, the mother of the prophet Jesus, whom your people call God and whose mother must therefore be a goddess?'

He looked at me with solemn but expressionless eyes. 'You probably do not know this,' he said, 'but the day on which St John is remembered, and his death especially, is the twenty-fifth of June, the summer solstice. But you will be aware that he was beheaded as the result of the dancing of a beautiful naked woman, was indeed a sacrifice to her. In a few weeks' time you will believe me when the solstice conies and we see the bonfires that will be lit throughout the land."

He preached that evening and, as usual, carefully pitched his sermon to the small group who had turned out by the bridge across the river. Most were buxom, pink-cheeked women, done out in some finery for the occasion, though not ostentatious like the nobility but rather neat and clean in whites, greys, browns and blacks, all with starched caps sometimes tilted up like sails above their not inconsiderable gold necklaces and brooches.

He spoke of the virtues of hard work, of prosperity as a sign not only of hard work but of godly living, not only of godly living but of God having chosen them to be his handmaids. He went on to say how a person was not saved and numbered amongst the elect by good works, or by the sacraments, which were but toys for the simple-minded, but – and this is what 'elect' means – by being chosen. And how does one know one is chosen? First, by an inner certainty that it is so, and second, by the outer signs, the prosperity brought about by good works and hard-won skills. In all this he used as support and example the words, in Inglysshe, of St Paul, also from the Wycliffe Bible. This Paul seemed something of a philosopher in the way he teased at the problem of faith, the chosen, and the efficacy or irrelevance of good works.

This they all loved. The women smirked and smoothed down their aprons, the men puffed out their chests, cleared their throats, ahem!, and nodded meaningfully at their companions.

'What need have we of priests and Latin,' cried Peter, coming to his peroration, 'when we have the Holy Scriptures set forth for us in plain good Inglysshe to guide us? What need of churches when two or three gathered together in His Name have been promised that He will be with them? What need of confession and absolution when we have our own consciences to guide us?'

Finally he produced a story that he said he took from the Gospel of St Matthew, chapter twenty-five, in Wycliffe's version, the story of the talents, and how the master praised the men who made best use of these weighty pieces of gold he had left them with and condemned the man who merely buried his and gave it back.