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A History of Preston in Hertfordshire
The Early History of Temple Dinsley - Reginald L Hine
1811c
“Once upon a time - it must be thirty years ago - I sat in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford and
listened to a lecture on “ The Province of History ” by James Bryce, afterwards Lord Bryce. Though it
was a noble and eloquent discourse, it would be hard to recapture more than the spirit of it now. But I
can recall the ringing words with which he brought it to a close : “Gentlemen, History is not an epic. It
is not a philosophy. It is a pageant.”
(Editor’s note: Hine also remembered this when writing the conclusion to ‘The History of Hitchin’
Volume Two, writing: “I am of those - happily a growing number - who say that History is not an epic,
nor a philosophy, but a pageant.”)
By an odd chance, that memorable saying rose again into my mind when I began to prepare this
brief account of Temple Dinsley ; and I remembered also that one of the meadows belonging to this
manor bore the name of Pageant Field. We shall do wisely, I think, to follow the prompting of that
word. Clearly, with all the wealth of printed and manuscript material at our disposal, we cannot
attempt an elaborate narrative, it could not be contained within the four hundred pages of a royal
octavo book. But we can stand on Preston Hill, as it were, and watch the procession of the ages, and
speak with some of the more picturesque and famous figures who loom through the mists of time
and stand out in bright armour or priestly habit or peasant homespun from “the fiery arras of the past”
At the head of it all rides the chieftain Dyne who, according to Professor Skeat, gave is name, Dynes
Hill or Dynes Lea, to Dinsley 1 . There is a charter dated A.D. 816 that gives a clue to him. But you
cannot behold his face as you peer at him over the rim of his shield. He is still as vague and
insubstantial as the warrior Hicche who gave his name to Hitchin.
(Evelyn Lord in ‘The Knights Templar in Britain’ makes these comments [albeit hiding their source in
a footnote]: “Suppositions about Temple Dinsley continued down the centuries. In the early twentieth
century descriptions of the area included word pictures of files of knights travelling fully armed down
the local footpaths, and the field named Pageant Field in Dinsley was thought to be where the
Templars held their tournaments. Pageant Field did not get this name until 1729 when it was
enclosed from a larger field, and holding tournaments would have been against the Order’s Rule as
encouraging competition and pride”
Editors note: Hine was clearly pleased with the typically whimsical description which embroidered the
beginning of this piece, and it wouldn’t have taken much effort to have checked when the field
became known as Pageant Field. But he is merely using this as a device to describe a procession of
historical characters associated with Dinsley. Lord is herself stretching a point - Hine doesn’t write of
footpaths or the Templars holding tournaments in Pageant Field.
Her comment about the field not getting its name until 1729 when it was enclosed is also
questionable. Ippollitts was enclosed in 1811 - although it is possible that individual fields were
enclosed before that time. But, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies has a holding which is
described, “Deeds of enfranchisement to one acre of land in Pageant Field in St Ippollits, copyhold of
the manor of Maidencroft. Old style date: 1707”.)
Following him (Hicche), you should be able to discern the commissioners who presided over the
court of the Half Hundred of Hitchin and heard evidence and took particulars for Domesday Book. “
King William holds Deneslai. It is assessed for seven hides (that is 840 acres). There is land for 20
ploughs. In the lord’s demesne are 3 1/2 hides and 3 ploughs are on it, and 19 villeins have 8
ploughs between them, and there could be 9 more. There are 7 bordars (or small-holders) and 7
cottars and 6 serfs, and one Frenchman and one almsman (elemosinarius) of the King.” The Survey
goes on to describe the 2 mills, worth 16 shillings by the year, the meadow and pasture “sufficient for
the live stock of the Vill ”, and the wood-lands whose oakmast and beechmast could support as
many as 300 swine. At the foot of their report the commissioners refer to the disputes and quarrels
that had arisen in Harold’s day over the obligation to provide men and horses for the King’s
bodyguard, and for carrying his baggage, taking advantage of which Peter de Valognes, when
Sheriff, appears to have seized the manor and annexed it to Hitchin “ as the whole Shire-moot doth
testify ”.
It is the Balliols who next catch the eye, an ambitious and powerful family who were lords of Hitchin
and Dinsley for two centuries till 1296. Of them much has been written in my History of Hitchin (1927)
and by Wentworth Huyshe in The Royal Manor of Hitchin (1906) - and much might still be written.
The theme is a tempting one: high sounding names, tournaments and trappings of gold favours and
disfavours of kings, knight’s fees and forfeitures, plots and counterplots, dungeons, rescues,
braveries of battle, exiles and banishments - all the materials of romance are here. Oh! to be
Froissart for one hour, and to write ‘their chronicles of gold! It is a temptation, nevertheless to be
sternly set aside. These Balliols belong not so much to the parish of Hitchin and to the castle of
Dinsley as to this realm of England. Let us fix our attention simply upon Bernard de Balliol who in
1147, at a Chapter of the Templars in Paris, bestowed his lands at Preston and Dinsley, under
the name of Wedelee, on the Knights of that Order:-
“In the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, to all his Lords and friends and the sons of the Holy
Church of God, Bernard de Balliol greeting in the Lord. I wish it to be made known to all, both future
and present that, for the love of God and for the Salvation of my Soul and of my ancestors’ souls, I
have given and granted to the brethren, Knights of the Temple of Solomon, fifteen librates (about 780
acres) of my land which I possess in England, in perpetuity, freely and without any custom, Wedelee
by name, which is a member of Hitchin; fields rough and smooth, streams with woodland. I make this
gift in the Chapter held in Paris in the Octave of Easter, the Apostolic Legate Eugenius being present,
and the King of France, and the archbishops of Sens, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Trascunnie, and one
hundred and thirty brethren, Knights of the Temple, arrayed in white cloaks, being present.”
Of the Preceptory church that was shortly afterwards founded at Temple Dinsley not one stone now
stands upon another. The very site is conjectural. But, preserved in Hitchin church, there is the
battered effigy in Purbeck marble of Bernard de Balliol, which aforetime graced the chapel of his own
foundation. Likewise, in the church of St. Martin at Preston there is preserved a grave-stone cover of
the thirteenth century, carved with a floriated cross, that once marked the resting-place of a Master or
Preceptor of the Order. Some of the floor tiles of the chapel have come to light ; and a valuable
paper, describing and identifying the heraldic designs upon them, has been compiled by Mr. H. C.
Andrews. Skeletons of some of the brethren have been dug up in the kitchen yard. One of the skulls
used to stand as a memento mori on Lord Hampden’s study table when he was tenant of Temple
Dinsley. Found with the bodies of the Knights was a pewter chalice of early fourteenth century date,
similar to those that were wont to be buried with priests. In 1887 this chalice was exhibited to he
Society of Antiquaries by William Ransom. A fourteenth century bronze jug was discovered in Mr.
Douglas Vicker's day, and has recently been presented to the Hitchin Museum by Mrs. Barrington
White.
In some respects parchment is more durable than brass, and we still have the agreement made in
1218 between the Knights of Temple Dinsley and the nuns of Elstow who held the advowson of the
church at Hitchin, by which the nuns undertook to provide a chaplain resident at Dinsley to celebrate
mass on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning and vespers in the afternoon, receiving
therefore one mark in silver by the year and four pounds of wax for the chapel lights. The Templars,
on their part, undertook to pay tithe issuing out of all the lands they ploughed in Hitchin, and out of
any ground newly broken up and sown. Relieved by the Nuns of matters spiritual, the brethren could
engage more freely in matters temporal, and it is evident that they were highly competent, not to say
exacting, in the affairs of the world. In 1252 their preceptory church was valued at 40s. But their
manorial rights and their sporting rights brought in forty times that figure. According to Sir Henry
Chauncy, they claimed “ divers large Privileges in as ample a Manner as Kingly Power can grant to
any religious house: Soc, Sac, Toll, Theame, Infangethef, Utfangthef, Hamsoken, Assize of bread
and ale, and exemption from all secular services ”. They required their tenants to prove their wills
before the Court of the manor, and they even asserted the sole right of fishing from the river Hiz to
the Ivel as far as Biggleswade.'
In 1253 Henry III conferred another “large privilege upon Brother Rocelin the Master and the brethren
of the Order, to wit "free warren in all the demesne lands of Dinesle, Stagho, Preston, Chirleton,
Walden, and Hiche in so far as the same lie not within the King's forest" 2 . To men who had come
back from hunting the infidel and the Turk out of the parched wilderness of the Holy Land, what a
blessed relief it must have been to wake up of a morning to the singing of birds in this little paradise
of Hertfordshire in England, and after a hasty hunters' mass to ride after the wild boar or the deer or
with hawk upon wrist through the woods and coppices and wastes of a manor that then extended
into nine parishes 3 .
Sometimes the brethren rode in chase of bigger game: those wild beasts - the outcasts of society
- malefactors, murderers, sanctuary-breakers, escaped serfs and the like whom the long arm of the
law sought to bring within its power. At this stretch of time no cry comes across the centuries from
those who rotted in the dungeons - of the Balliols, no word from those villeins and bondsmen who
raised their brown and horny hands and cursed the cruel castle of Deneslai, whose walls scowled at
them from above. But now and again in the Assize Rolls you can still hear the voice of the accuser
and the shrieks for mercy from those whom the Knights had hunted down. The right of gallows was
always a valued privilege at Temple Dinsley, and woe betide those felons who were caught red-
handed within the bounds of the manor 4 . In 1286 Gerle de Clyfton and Johannes de Tykkull were
hanged for stealing a silver chalice and four silver spoons from the priest at Temple Dinsley, and
Peter, son of Adam, met his just reward “for taking a certain woman and torturing her ”.
(Editor’s note: Perhaps the previous paragraph is excessively flowery even by Hine’s standards.
However, it should be noted from this and a later paragraph that Hine believed the historical fact that
Dinsley Castle existed.)
It is as pity that the court rolls and the capitular records of this period have perished, for without them
one can but follow the religious and secular life of the community in a fitful and fragmentary way. It is
clear, however, that the house was highly esteemed in the Order, for General Chapters were held
here 1n 1219, 1254: 1265, 1292, 1301, and 1304.
Still surviving are some twenty charters granted on these great occasions, or witnessed by one or
other of the masters and brethren. For the most part they concern the property of the Order in these
parts: rights of way, repairs, tenurial services, the mill at Charlton, and the castle of Dinsley, which,
when the Balliols were banished was brought into ruin and rented by the Prlor of Wymondley at a
mere 10s. by the year. Amongst the charters is that whereby Robert de Mara, in 1309 sells one
of his own bondsmen or nativi Richard Godley, with all his goods (cum universis terris suis) and his
wife and children (seguela sun) and his goods and chattels. The purchaser was Adam, son of
‘William, one of the brethren here, and it is thought, though Professor Coulton, to whom I submitted
it, has his doubts, that the purchase was made for the purpose of securing freedom or manumission
for this slave. One observes other signs of enfranchisement in this period, for the villeins, cottars,
and bordars on the manor of Temple Dinsley were allowed to commute their corporal services - their
week days and boon days, sowings and reapings and thrashings - into money. By the end of the
thirteenth century only the ploughing custom was retained. In addition to these obligations, levies
were made upon the goodwill and generosity of those who belonged to the manor. In 1260, for
example, all the tenants of the Knights Templars in England were urged to contribute of their goods
and possessions for the support of the brethren in the Holy Land, “who are now in great want by
reason of the Saracens and Turks now approaching those parts.”
Money is said to be at the‘ root of most evils, and evidently it played a vile part in the events that led,
not long afterwards, to the suppression of the Templars. According to Nathaniel Salmon, our county
hlstorlan, “their crimes, or their riches (for riches are sometimes crime enough) exposed them to be
plundered. But plundering was not all. In 1308 a commission went forth to the Sheriff of Hertfordshire
“to execute the things contained in a sealed order, with twenty-four men, all to be sworn likewise”.
When those sealed orders were opened, the men-at-arms and the Sheriff made their way to Temple
Dinsley and arrested the six brethren in residence there. Two of them were taken to the Tower by
John De Crumbewell, its Constable ; the other four were haled off to Hertford Castle. Besides the
Templars there were six other men living as pensioners at Dinsley, one who had meals at the
Master's high table, two priests acting as chaplains, and three others who boarded with the brothers
These pensioners were left at large, as also were another man and his wife who slept in their own
quarters and received their food and drink from the preceptory. A commission of inquiry into the
manor in 1309 speaks of other retainers: a resident bailiff, a carter, four ploughmen, and four other
labourers, besides a cook-gardener". (Mins Accts., bundle 866, No.17). These hired servants
were placed under the control of Geoffrey de la Lee, keeper of the Templars' lands in Hertfordshire,
and made to look after the 142 horses that the King (Edward II) put out to pasture on the manor. The
King’s grooms, John de Reding and Walter le Ferrour, were to receive 6d a day each for themselves
themselves and 16s. 5d. to spend upon the horses.
In the proceedings against the knights which dragged on for years, Temple Dinsley was cited as the
scene where some of their alleged immoralities were committed. But it is clear from the State Papers
of the period that popular sympathy locally was on the side of the Templars; and at any rate all men
agreed in their dislike of the money-lending Jew, Geoffrey de la Lee to whom the lands were
assigned. As some of the lands lay in Hitchin, some at Temple Dinsley, and some at Baldock, de la
Lee proposed to hold a Court or View of Frankpledge at the place last named. The tenants however
were suspicious for they had yet to meet an Israelite in whom there was no guile. The moment the
trades people were ordered by the new bailiff to produce their weights and measures a tumult arose.
The bailiffs standard weights and measures were “ forcibly carried off ” and smashed to atoms. The
new collector of tolls was assaulted and battered and maimed, and his goods, to the value of £10,
parted amongst the tenants who then proceeded to commit other “orible and abhomynable dedis”.
If the spendthrift and dissolute King hoped, in suppressing the Order, to make himself master of the
treasure they were rumoured to possess then he was tricked and foiled at Temple Dinsley. A third
commission issued in 1309 “to inquire touching concealed goods of the Templars in the county of
Herts”. But their jewels and their silver and their gold were not to be found. In the following reign,
Edward III granted licences to two of his subjects to dig and excavate and hunt for treasure trove at
Temple Dinsley, the Crown to have a half share in the spoil. But nothing came of it, and though men
and women in agonies of baffled expectation have been digging for 600 years the buried treasure
still eludes them and still awaits its joyful resurrection.
According to Solomon, wisdom is more precious than rubies, but it is reported that the religious
community of collegians who now inhabit this hallowed spot are seriously distracted in their studies
by the lure and solicitation of untold wealth lying.- it may be - at their very feet; indeed, one of these
scholars was recently discovered in class-time wandering up to her middle in the lower pool, in the
sure and certain hope that at any moment her toes might touch the bars of gold and the fabled iron
casket.
(Editor’s note: For Hine this is an abrupt finale. Why does he finish here with six centuries of Temple
Dinsley’s history stretching ahead? The obvious answer is lack of space, not of material.)
1
Hine’s footnotes:
1 Salmon, our county historian, holds a different view: " Deneslai might be derived from the Danes
Land, who were much in the Hundred of Dacorum and nearer as the Six Hills [in Stevenage]
convince me.
2 Cal. Chart. Rolls, 1226-57, p 415 This charter was sealed at Windsor and must have given rise in
the course and corruption of time to to the tradition that the owner of Temple Dinsley has the right to
stand on the front doorstep of Stagenhoe on Christmas Day and fire off a gun.
3 Hitchin, Kings Walden, Abbots Walden, St Ippolyts, Offley, Pirton, Wymondley, Ickleford and
Astwick.
4 The criminal jurisdiiction of the Templars extended as far as Baldock, for in 1277 the Master was
summoned to show his warrant for hanging a man there.”
‘The Early History of Temple Dinsley’ was originally intended to be included in Hine’s ‘History of
Hitchin’, but there was no room for it when it came to publication.
It was subsequently published in East Herts Archaeological Society Transactions Vol X Part 3
Pages 284-291, 1939.
