1539 - Dodsworth, Roger - Notes

Allusion
Date	No later than 1539 or c. 1605-1615?
Author	Dodsworth, Roger
Title	Notes
Mentions	Robin Hood's Well [near Barnsdale]

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By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-05. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2021-06-05. Revised on the basis of comments from Geoff Spencer.

Allusion

At Himsworth there be 2 or 3 litle springs which meeting together make a small current, & come to South Kirkby (a towne pleasantly seated where the family of the Tregotts haue a long time liued in good reputation), by Elmsall where Wentworth hath his mansion, haueing long since descended out of Wentworth Woodhouse, & by marriage of the daughter and heire of . . . . Biset haue good Lands in this Tract from whom the Lo. Wentworth descended. Thence it goeth to Hampull a house of Nunns [...] nere vnto w^ch place St. Richard the Hermit liued, from hence to Robbin- [p. 112:] hood-well w^ch J rather take to be the Hermit's well near Adwicke in the Street, And through Bentley by Arksey, & falleth into Dun at Wheatley.^[1]

Source notes

The MS source is 'M [vol. 160] 16'.^[2]

IRHB comments

A. H. Smith appears to date this passage from one of Roger Dodsworth's notebooks to the 16th century.^[3] Dodsworth, whose dates are 1585–1654, 'devoted himself early to antiquarian research',^[4] but I find it hard to believe that he could have written the above before he reached the age of 15. Moreover, had this been the case, the date would be so shortly before 1600 that Smith would hardly simply have dated the note to the 16th century. Something like 'c. 1600' or 'late 16th cent.' would have been more natural. Dodsworth's first dated writing on antiquarian topics is from 1605, and few other dated items from his hand are as early.^[5] On the website of the Bodleian Library, the c. 160 Dodsworth MSS in the Bodleian Library are described as 'Dodsworth's manuscripts, including transcripts, extracts and notes relating to Yorkshire and monastic houses, and pedigrees, mainly of Yorkshire families', and their dates of creation are cited as '12th-17th century'.^[6] When assigning the note to the 16th century, Smith must have been treating Dodsworth's note as a copy of an older source and suggesting a date for the latter, and there seems to be support for this conclusion in the text. The sentence 'Thence it goeth to Hampull a house of Nunns' does not seem natural if written long after Hampole Priory was dissolved, which happened on 19 Nov. 1539.^[7] Hence I arrive at the tentative date cited above. I have not made a serious attempt to narrow down the date of the passage on the basis of the references to local people and families. It is possible this could be done with further research.

Though the way the mention of the nunnery is phrased makes this seem less likely, it is possible that the passage was authored by Dodsworth himself rather than copied from an older source. If so, Smith's dating of the passage on the well may be a simple slip or he may have meant to date the passage to the 1600s rather than the 16th century. In either case, the upper date for the entry must then be 1615, for an entry made in the same MS as that which includes the mention of Robin Hood's Well concerns a visit Dodsworth made to a church on 8 Dec. 1615.^[8]