Patrick Comerford
In recent days, I have been describing my visits to the village of Maids Moreton, a mile or two outside Buckingham, and I have been looking at its traditional timber-framed and cruck houses, the thatched cottages and Saint Edmund’s Church, the oldest building in the village. The church dates back to the late 14th century, but, as I suggested on Sunday afternoon, it probably stansd on the site of an earlier, Anglo-Saxon church, and many of the pretty houses and cottages date back to the 16th and 17th century.
Local lore says Maids Moreton takes its name from two sisters, the Maids of Maids Moreton, who also co-founded or re-founded the parish church in the village. The legend is so popular and so widely accepted and believed that the sisters are commemorated in a number of ways in different parts of the church.
Tradition in Maids Moreton says the two sisters lived at Manor Farm, a 16th-century house in Maids Moreton.
But who were the Maids of Moreton?
What were their names?
Indeed, did they ever live?
Are they historical people? Or are they merely part of a popular story, albeit heart-warming and inspiring?
By tradition, the church is said to have been built by two pious maiden ladies of the Peyvre family. But this tradition is first recorded only in 1644 in the Civil War diary of the antiquarian Richard Symonds, 200 or 300 years after the sisters are said to have lived.
A stone slab now under a section of the nave floor near the north door that can be lifted, carries the outline of the commemorative brasses for two women with a hairstyle that is said to date the figures to a time between ca 1380 and 1420, and there are reproductions of the images of the two figures in the north-east corner of the chancel.
So, I returned to the church yesterday, and there the Rector, the Revd Hans Taling, and I lifted the covering in the floor to see the brass and stone memoorial with the two figures, its heraldic images and an inscription that dates from as recently as 1890.
Above the north door of thde church is a 17th century painted inscription with the coat of arms of the Pever or Peyvre family and commemorating the founding of the church with the words: ‘Sisters and Maids, Daughters Of The Lord Peovre. The Pious and Munificent Founders of this Church.’
Thomas Peyvre (1344-1429) may well have paid for rebuilding the church. He acted as a banker and would have had the kind of wealth needed to pay for the work. But we start encountering problems when we realise that the painted inscription is 300-350 years later than Thomas Peyvre’s lifetime.
In addition, this is the heraldic emblem of a man, not that of a woman or of two sisters, they are not named, and their father is not clearly identified.
Below this, a black-and-white image shows two women with interlocked arms and in 16th or 17th century dress. But this depiction does not match the images in the brass and stone monument set in the nave floor below, nor does it match the two brass rubbings in the chancel, and it has no label, caption or description, and no explanation of its provenance.
The Revd Hans Taling and I lifted the floor covering in the nave near the north door yesterday to see the stone slab and to inspect the commemorative brasses for two women with hairstyles that are said to date the figures to a 40-year time period between ca 1380 and 1420.
New brasses were inserted in 1890, and a tablet under the feet of the figures bears the inscription: ‘In pious Memory of two Maids, daughters of Thomas Pever, Patron of this Benefice. These figures are placed in the ancient Matrix by MT Andrewes, Lady of the Manor, in 1890. Tradition tells that they built this church and died about 1480.’
But Thomas Peyvre’s only daughter Mary was not what was once called a ‘maid’, nor was she one of two sisters. She died before her father, but by then she had married John Broughton. Their son, also John Broughton, inherited both the Peyvre and the Broughton estates.
Once again, this inscription was put in place about 500 years after the date it gives for the death of the two sisters, and that date, ca 1480, is perhaps a century after both the dating of the images and the probable date when the church itself was built.
Research in 2016 found documents recording two sisters, named Alice and Edith de Morton, who held part of a manor in Moreton from 1393 to 1421. Could they have been the true maids of Maids Moreton and, if so, was the stone slab theirs? But then, if this is the case, the two shields with Peyvre arms on the slab are later embellishments, if not forgeries.
The story of the Maids of Moreton has developed different strands over time. One version says the sisters were conjoined or ‘Siamese’ twins, and pictures were produced showing them with their arms linked, suggesting that they were joined at the arm.
This version of the tradition says that when one sister died, the other refused to be separated from her and so died also.
The maiden sisters are commemorated not only in the church and in the name of the village, Maids Moreton, but also in a Victorian poem by the Revd Joseph Tarver, Rector of Tyringham with Filgrave, Buckinghamshire.
The story of the Maids of Moreton seems to have been enriched with details from the legends of Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst or Chalkhurst (1100-1134), conjoined twins commonly known as the ‘Biddenden Maids’, who were from Biddenden in Kent. But the story of the ‘Biddenden Maids’ is new known to be a legend, drawing in part on ancient Irish manuscripts, including the Chronicon Scotorum, the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Clonmacnoise.
Perhaps we should stop trying to match the name of Maids Moreton with the legends associated with the ‘Maids of Moreton’ and the foundation of Saint Edmund’s Church, and simply allow a good story to remain a good story – and nothing more than that.
