SKIPPING church to go hunting must have seemed an innocent enough escapade to Thomas Harwell of Islip, in Oxfordshire. Little did he know that he would be caught red handed and his name would go down in shame for eternity. He was duly reprimanded in 1584—and a churchwarden’s report preserved the memory of his misdeed for more than four centuries.
Kept meticulously up and down the country, parish registers, churchwardens’ accounts, vestry minutes, wills and presentments (reports of misdemeanours to higher church authorities) ‘build up a detailed picture of what happened in and around old churches in their heyday,’ notes Justin Lovill, who collated material from more than 900 communities across the country for his latest book,. His findings shine the light on life in medieval and modern England, whether it’s countryside economics—in 1582,
