October 2009

The residents of Stainton-By-Langworth in
Lincolnshire who happened to be near St John
the Baptist’s Church (pictured above) on Thursday,
24th January 1805
would have seen a wedding taking place. But who
were the wedding party, and why was the wedding
being held there? Read on, and all will be revealed!

The Wedding Party

As you may have guessed, the groom was
William “Big Bill” Jerrems (b1782), who has
been a
popular subject in previous Journals and sends us
emails from Heaven. His bride (who no doubt looked
radiant, like all brides) was Elizabeth Clarke
(b1781).
The groom’s parents William and Mary Jerrems
would have attended, as would the bride’s
parents Thomas and Anne Clarke, the
groom’s siblings Jane, Robert, John, Charles and
Mary, the bride’s siblings (including teenage sister
Mary), and Big Bill’s aunts Alice, Ann and Mary (and
Mary’s husband Mark).
The officiating Minister was Mr Thomas Brown (no
relation to Tom Brown of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”
fame).

Why this Church?

Elizabeth and her parents lived at Newball, a mile
south of Stainton-By-Langworth. There was no
Church of England Church in Newball, the parish’s
church was in Stainton-By-Langworth. So the
wedding was held there.

This was of course quite a long way for the groom’s
family to travel, from the village of Willingham-By-
Stow. It is about 20 miles from Willingham-By-Stow to
the church. This would have been a cold and slow trip
by horse drawn vehicle (for instance by sulky) in the
middle of winter. On the other hand, winter was a
convenient time for a wedding for farmers because
there were no crops to tend and the stock were kept in
yards!

I do not have definite information on the occupations
of Big Bill’s relatives. I have assumed that they were
farmers (or connected with farms) because Big Bill
and one of his sons owned farms.

Why not St Helen’s Church at Willingham-By-Stow?

St Helen’s Church (pictured below) was much larger,
holding 200
people, and it had larger grounds and a prettier
setting. We know that Big Bill’s parents were married
there, and Sue found the gravestones of Big Bill’s
mother and a daughter-in-law in the graveyard (I wrote
about these people in the Journals of August 2006
and November 2007), so Big Bill’s family had a
longstanding connection with this church.
Probably the simple answer regarding the choice of
venue was that it was protocol for weddings to be held
at the bride’s church of choice.

More information on Stainton-By-Langworth and
the Church

The little village is on a gentle hill above the
Langworth River near an ancient Roman road. At the
time of the wedding it had about 166 inhabitants,
compared with a combined population of 134 for this
village and Newball in 2001.

The original church dated back to the 13th Century,
however it fell down through neglect and was rebuilt in
1796, nine years before the wedding. Original items
like the medieval bell (bearing a cross and the
inscription “Jesus be our Spede”) were recovered and
incorporated in the new Georgian-style stone building,
which consists of a chancel, nave, and bell-turret.
A chancel is the area around the altar of the church,
usually enclosed, for the clergy, choir etc. A nave is the
main body, or middle part, lengthwise, of a church.
Although the church therefore had the basic facilities
of a church the most obvious limitation of the building
was its size, it would only hold 80 people. It reminds
me of many modest little churches built in colonial
times in rural areas in Australia, although the
Australian churches were mostly of timber
construction.

The Lord of the Manor, who owned the village lands
and paid the Church vicar 180 pounds per year (and
presumably paid for the reconstruction of the church in
1796), was the Earl of Scarborough.

Inside the Church is a War Memorial and plaque for
the two World Wars. There is a graveyard on the other
side of the access road, with plenty of vacancies.
The website of the Church of England’s Diocese of
Lincoln lists an amazing total of 637 churches in the
Diocese. Most of these served a parish, which could
have comprised several villages within walking
distance of each other.

How did the bride and groom meet?

This is a matter of complete conjecture. Quite a few
spouses of the Jerrems families lived in villages near
Gainsborough (for instance Willingham and East
Retford) where it would have been logical for them to
meet in Gainsborough while shopping or attending
social functions. However, the closest major market
town for the residents of Newball was Lincoln,
whereas the closest market town to Willingham-By-
Stow was Gainsborough (where Big Bill set up his
merchant business). In the case of Big Bill and his
bride-to-be one can only surmise that the bride and
groom met through mutual friends or at church
functions.

Why get married on a Thursday?

Firstly, how do I know it was a Thursday? I have found
a website which tells you the day of the week for any
date. I looked up the day out of curiosity, expecting to
find that the wedding had been held on a weekend,
the usual custom these days. But once again there is
a simple explanation. It did not matter to farmers
whether a wedding took place during the week, in fact
it was probably the best time so that they could return
home by the weekend to go to church at St Helen’s
Church in Willingham-By-Stow and attend any social
functions.

What did people wear to the wedding?

It is tempting to draw on movie films of this period, for
instance those based on Jane Austen and the Bronte
sisters. These books and films conjure up pictures
of weddings and other functions with the men
dressed in top hats and smart suits and ladies
decked out in fancy hats, lace and hooped dresses.
The reality was probably quite different. The Big Bill’s
bride would no doubt have worn a fancy wedding
dress with all the trimmings, made specially by a
herself or members of her family, and wore or
carried “something borrowed, something blue”.

Big Bill, as an up-and-coming young Gainsborough
shopkeeper, may have sported a new suit with a
cravat (ties did not come into vogue until later). But the
Jerrems families probably came from modest farming
stock and everybody else (including the children)
would have merely been wearing their
practical “Sunday best”, with stout shoes or boots
designed to withstand muddy conditions. The women
would probably have worn bonnets, lending colour to
the proceedings. Being winter, there were probably no
flowers.

When you look at the photo of the Church use your
imagination to picture the scene after the wedding
ceremony, with everybody spilling excitedly out of the
Church and onto the driveway area in front of the
Church to form an arch for the bride and groom to
walk through. Children would have been rushing
around, and perhaps a stray dog joined in the
festivities.

Where did Big Bill and Elizabeth live after the
wedding?

Big Bill is listed in an 1805 Gainsborough directory
as “Jerrems & Metcalfe, Grocers and Tea Merchants”,
so it is clear that Big Bill already lived in Gainsborough
and the couple would have set up house there. This
is confirmed by the fact that their first child Ann was
born in Gainsborough in 1806.

Big Bill and Elizabeth went on to have 11 more
children, seven of whom survived childhood.

Acknowledgements

A lot of the genealogical information in this article was
provided by Dorothy Pearson, President of the
Gainsborough and District Heritage Association,
which started in 1994.

Conclusion

Now we know what wedding the residents of Stainton-
By-Langworth who happened to be near St John the
Baptist’s Church on Thursday, 24th January 1805
would have seen.

In the early 1800s there was a coin shortage in
England, so some merchants showed a lot of initiative
by issuing their own coins or tokens. Big Bill (who was
a tea and grocery merchant at the time) was one of
them.

The following are extracts from an old book (see
footnote for details) setting out the reasons for issue
of the coins:

“With our present regular supply of Coins of all
denominations, we can hardly conceive the state of
the currency when for nearly thirty years, from 1787 to
1816 no Regal Silver Coins were struck in England for
circulation. This was towards the end of the long reign
of George III, when the Silver Coins were very much
defaced, counterfeited, filed and clipped, and though
many designs were produced, the Government
neglected to provide any adequate supply of Silver
cons for the country, so the trading classes issued
Silver Shilling and other Token, most belong to the
years 1811 and 1812. These included a coin with
Front: The words “WILLIAM JERREMS.
Gainsbro.” and
a large illustration of a three-masted sailing ship.
Back: The words “ONE SHILLING. SILVER
TOKEN.
1811.”, and a large illustration of a windmill.

A photograph of the coin is shown at the start of this
article; it was submitted by Jerry Jerrems V, who has
one of the coins. Jerry inherited
the coin from his grandfather “Jerry III” upon his death
in 1968.

The coin was about the size of a dollar. For the sake of
simplicity I will call it a “coin” although it is more
precise to call it a “token” because it was not an
official Government coin.

The Purpose of the Coin

A person presenting the coin at Big Bill’s shop was
entitled to receive goods of value up to one shilling,
quite a lot of money in those days. You have probably
seen a “token” system used at some stage in stores.
It is similar in principle to a gift voucher.

No doubt it had the additional advantage of attracting
business for Bill. Obviously he saw the idea as being
commercially viable despite the cost of production of
the coins, including the cost of the silver.

The Reasons for the Illustrations on the Coin

The reason for the sailing ship is clear to me. It is a
three masted square rigger which would have been
typical of the ships which were employed in the tea
trade at that time. I have some doubts as to whether a
ship of this size would have actually sailed up the
Trent River to Gainsborough in 1811 because the river
was not very deep (it was deepened later).

Perhaps Bill got the idea from E. Sanders, who had
issued a token in the same year with a similar ship on
one side and a three arched stone bridge,
representing a notable local landmark built across the
river at Gainsborough.

The reason for the windmill is less clear. There were
many windmills in the Gainsborough area but none
(as far as I can ascertain) which typified
Gainsborough. My theory is that it symbolised the
grocery trade because grocers relied on milled grains
for a lot of their stock (eg wheat and corn flour). There
is no record of Bill owning a mill, nor as a retail grocer
with his shop in Gainsborough’s main shopping
street is it likely that he would have owned one.

The account handed down to Jerry was that Big Bill
had a linen shipping company. This would also fit in
with the use of the ship and windmill on the coin, so
this is another possibility.

Big Bill issues a Second Coin

The coin must have been a success because the next
year Bill issued another one, in conjunction with three
other people. We do not have a photo of this coin so
we have to rely on the description in the book, where it
is described as having on one side the words “A
POUND NOTE WILL BE PAID FOR 12 OF THESE,
PAYABLE BY E. DAWSON, MANSFIELD; W. JERREMS,
GAINSBOROUGH; J HEDLEY, LYNN, NORFOLK; H
MORGAN, LONDON,1812.” and on the other side as
having the words ” SILVER TOKEN FOR Xll PENCE”
and an illustration of the Arms of the City of Bristol
within a Garter, inscribed DOLLAR SILVER, with a
crest above the Garter.

I must admit I am rather lost on some of the terms
quoted, particularly the word “Garter”. I thought a garter
was an item of clothing worn by a lady above the knee,
a rather risqué thing to have on a coin at a time when
showing an ankle was considered to be the absolute
limit. No doubt our historian Chuck Keller
would say
that is an heraldic term.

Turning to the names on the second coin, the person
referred to last, H. (ie Henry) Morgan of London,
minted
that token, just as he minted a number of other
tokens.
Hoping to come up with something of great
significance
I then checked the locations of Mansfield and Lynn,
where Dawson and Hedley lived. The towns of
Mansfield
and Lynn are quite a distance from Gainsborough so I
am none the wiser as to why they joined William on
the
token. Dawson was the Mansfield postmaster. A
significant factor may have been that the printing costs
would have been shared.

Nobody could say that Bill’s contribution to coin history
was only a token effort.

Good work Big Bill, we are proud of you!

Footnote: The book quoted is “Lincolnshire
NOTES AND QUERIES” (the author is not known, the
book was published in 1891). The descriptions of the
coins, taken from that book, originate from
Boyne “Silver Tokens of Great Britain and
Ireland,1866”. Thanks to Dorothy Pearson of
Gainsborough for providing the extracts.