Bottisham Second Millennium
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payment to the gild could be made in kind e.g. at Bottisham
there are records of four bushels of barley, two pounds of wax
and contributions to the street light. Records show that under
Richard II, of the more substantial tenants, 28 men and one
woman were named as wardens or stock holders. There were
between 300 to 400 taxpayers in Bottisham at this period: 392
paid poll tax in 1377. The names of John Skenhale, John James
and John Norman appear. The story of guilds in the medieval
countryside has been well reviewed by Bainbridge. Members
of the bishop of Ely’s household also lived in Bottisham.
What was life like at this time? The story of the
Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340-1400) gives an
insight into a language that England could be proud of, an
understanding of the relationships within society and a picture
of the virtues and vices of this period in the second millennium
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3. 1400 A.D. to 1700 A.D.
By the fifteenth century Bottisham had received a
degree of fame for the worthies who lived in the village. This
is illustrated by the following quotations from Fuller’s 1880,
‘Worthies of Cambridgeshire’:-
“Bottisham is a small village ....... pleasantly seated
in pure air, having rich arable on the one, and ye fair heath
of Newmarket on the other side thereof. It hath been the
nursery of refined Wits,......... Let all England shew me if you
like three eminent men which one pretty village did produce.
Let Bottisham hereafter be no more famed for its single
Becon, but for these three Lights it afforded.”