By J. D. Marshall

Students of Warton history are well aware how fortunate they are in having such a local recorder as the remarkable John Lucas. Professor V.G. Hoskins in his 1966 inaugural lecture at the University of Leicester, had this to say about Lucas.¹ ‘

… parish histories, when they began to flow in the eighteenth century, tended to be written by parsons and to be mostly concerned with the squire and his relations. There were of course notable exceptions to these generalisations, but they stand out because they are so rare, like John Lucas’s History of Warton in Lancashire, which was compiled between 1710 and 1740 but not published until 1931. Lucas was a schoolmaster and therefore had a wider range of interests and sympathies than the squires and the parsons. ‘

So, there we have it – the History ranges so widely because Lucas had taught at school, and was, of course, a man of much learning and even more curiosity. Members of the Mourholme Society will have an advantage over Professor Hoskins in that some, at least, will be conversant with the much longer manuscript of the History which has not so far been published.

In this short article, I am quoting from the Ford and Fuller-Maitland published and edited version, and am concerned with Lucas’s comments on Funeral Rites as given on page 23-4 of the 1931 edition, and on fols.260 and following of the original manuscript. Lucas’s description of funeral customs is as detailed and graphic as we are likely to find in any local or antiquarian source, and there is ground for supposing that the customs relate to a much wider area of North Lancashire and Cumbria. However, the actual customs may have varied notably from place to place. Mrs Marjorie Rowlings’s ‘The Folklore of the Lake District’ (1976) describes them as follows²:

‘A bidder was … sent round to invite people to funerals … It was an affront to both living and dead to refuse. He also recalls that a small table with a white cloth was placed outside the door of the deceased on the day of the funeral. It held a vase or basin with sprigs of box or yew in it. Mourners took a sprig to drop on the coffin after it had been lowered into the grave. Old people can remember arval bread or biscuits being given to those who attended a funeral Some think the word arval means ‘ inheritance’ while others that it derives from an ancient Scandinavian word for funerals. It is still the custom in Cumbria for the deceased’s next of kin to invite relatives and all who have attended the funeral from a distance to join in a meal or refreshments, after the ceremony.’

Lucas is especially interesting on this very point -and the author of The Folklore of the Lake District did not quote him, or the other authorities who are mentioned in this article. Lucas wrote:

‘The heir of the Deceased plentifully furnishes one, two or more tables, according to his ability, of which the whole Company partake, every one according to his liking. And afterwards there is distributed to everyone a Penny. Wheaten loaf, and a large Shive of Cheese (which they take away with then), and also a Drink of Ale. If the Heir be poor. he had no feast, and I think I have heard that of late years, some have omitted the Cheese’

I shall return to this last sentence. Meanwhile, Lucas goes on to give a description of the further custom whereby ‘Relations and dear Friends help to carry the Dead, especially out of the Church to the Grave.’ Afterwards, ‘Friends and Relations are desired to go to the Alehouse in the Town (which he names) . . . where everyone had a Penny Loaf and Ale allowed, according to the Ability of the Deceased; and this they call an Arval. People afterwards ‘look into the Grave, and throw in the laurels, rosemary and c. they have in their hands’, the evergreens being seen as a symbol of the Resurrection.

Lucas’s commentary is especially valuable as fixing these customs in a given period. But we can go earlier for further evidence. William Stout, in his autobiography, and writing of the year 1692, (from what were evidently prepared notes used on a later occasion) , writes that ‘At this time we would much cheese to funeralls in the country (side) from therty to one hundred pound weight as the deceased was of ability, which was shived into 2 or 3 slices in the pound, and one, with a penny manchet given to all the attendants’. He adds that Naples biscuits were also given to attenders. So, then, the arval custom was certainly used in the seventeenth century. As for the eighteenth, the Browne MSS (at the Kendal Record Office) reveal that at the funeral of George Browne of Troutbeck (1702), payment was made for: ‘Bread 16 doz. at 14 to the dozen dealt whole loaves, 16s. Mr. Robert Wilson arvall cheese 78 1bs‘ This gives an idea of the number of people who might be catered for in the case of a deceased person who was well known in the community, about 200 in the case of George Browne. It should be added that the dialect word shive for a slice is still used in the Lancaster area, and that manchet means a small loaf.

So, Lucas was describing a funeral custom which was not peculiar to Warton, and he fixes it safely in a given time. Mrs. Rowling, in The Folklore of the Lake District, in the preparation of which she used some oral questioning of old people, makes quite clear that this custom lasted into the lifetime of people who were alive in this century: ‘Old people can remember arval bread or biscuits being given to those who attended a funeral‘. Accordingly, we should not be surprised that yet another diarist or commentator, this time from early nineteenth century, also comments on the arval custom. This is William Fleming of Pennington, about whom members of the Mourholme Society have already heard; and on January 20th, 1812, William entered the following in his Journal and Commonplace Book:

‘This morning, I attended the funeral of Henry Fell. There was first brought into the Room a Cup of Chocolate and Biscuit or Dry Toast for each Person and immediately after these were removed each Person was served with a Glass of Wine and Sweet Biscuits’.

Earlier, however, he had stated in one of his 1806 entries, that:

‘It is a singular Custom, still followed at Dalton by the more respected Inhabitants at Funerals, to Divide the people who attend the Interment into three Classes: the First Class consists of the richest and nearest Relations who have a warm Dinner provided… The Second consists of the Poorest and more distant Relations, together with their richer Acquaintances or Friends, who partake of a cold Dinner, and the third, of the Farmers and people in the Town, who are not Relations … who have Bread and Cheese’. (Vol.4, fol. 1063; a microfilm of this source is held in the University of Lancaster Library).

We learn from these entries that the customs could vary with the social position and wealth of the deceased, and as for the ‘third class’, John Lucas had hinted that there was some social segregation in Warton when he explained, in the passage quoted, that:

‘Nor are the Poor forgotten, but all that come (and great numbers I have seen upon this Occasion, many whereof would rather go 7 or 8 Miles to a Penny-Dole, than earn Six Pence in the Time by more Laudable Industry) are put into some large Barn or Yard, and as they come out receive everyone a Penny or more according to the Charity or Circumstance of the Giver …. ‘.

No wonder that funerals were well attended! Was such expenditure connected with the deeply-founded feeling that a man or woman might hope to fare better after death when the person concerned had performed acts of charity? (‘Fire Insurance’, as we know, is the unkind expression for this state of mind). Or was it simply a matter of the fairness of the family name? For after all, the relict and survivors in the family circle had to make all the arrangements and do all the ‘bidding’ or inviting, and they had to spend a very large sum of money. It is possible. to find how much was spent in literally thousands of cases, by looking at the lists of items in probate inventories. Many copies of these have been made, as regards the Warton district, and it should be possible to estimate the average spending on funerals at different times in different social groups. Indeed, I actually did such a calculation for the parish of Hawkshead, with the following results:

1691-1720

1691-1720
Group	No in Group	Gross Total Inventory (mean)3	Mean Funeral Expenses
Professions	4	£52.19	£6.06
Upper Peasantry	33	£211.45	£6.41
Middle Peasantry	31	£61.73	£4.65
Lower Peasantry	44	£22.78	£3.20
Crafts Without Land	7	£78.74	£3.43
1720-1750
Professions	3	£655.43
Upper Peasantry	47	£286.77	£8.39
Middle Peasantry	22	£69.38	£4.85
Lower Peasantry	51	£22.85	£4.01
Crafts Without Land	13	£69.62	£5.03

John Lucas’s comment, written in the second of these periods, was ‘I think I have heard of late Years. some have omitted the Cheese‘ In point of fact, there is no evidence at all that people were spending less on funerals, and even the Lower Peasantry who were often very humbly placed, might spend a sixth or more of the value of their total assets on a reet good do where the funeral expenses were concerned. Some of these average funeral figures represent something of the order of £1000 in current values and this thought suggests that the changes have not been very great, for many of us will have faced catering and other bills of that size. However, we have been looking at a society which was much poorer in the first place, and this makes the expenditure all the more remarkable.

There remain a number of other items for brief mention. People really did make an outlay ‘according to ability‘ (to use an expression employed by both Lucas and Stout), but, as the Hawkshead figures show, the poorly off ‘lashed out’ relatively greater sums than did the better off. This suggests that community pressure was quite heavy, and that people were frightened by the tongues of the neighbours, or were at least very prudent in keeping up appearances. It is also a very common human failing to wish to look at least as well as one’s neighbour, even if one pays heavily for the effort.

As to the origin of the word arval, the Oxford English Dictionary is somewhat cautious on the subject, but tentatively relates it to the Old Norse, erfi-ol, “funeral feast’, although a later form suggests that the meaning was ‘inheritance banquet’. The custom is certainly a very old one, but, as the great mediaevalist G.C. Coulton remarked in another context, “we do not know, we only suppose’. Meanwhile we can give thanks to John Lucas for the graphic information he supplies on this subject, while at the same time refusing to rest content with what he says. It is always necessary to look outside one’s own corner for further enlightenment.

1. W.G. Hoskins, English Local History; the Past and the Future (Leicester University Press 1966) pp.5-6 ↩︎
2. Readers will also find Dr. W. Rollinson’ Life and Tradition in the Lake District. especially p.53, interesting on this point ↩︎ ↩︎
3. The average value of the probate inventories in the group including credits but not taking debts into account. ↩︎

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 13 1990