Matilda of Halecroft

To whoever shall read this after I am gone, which will be soon enough, and I have had a long life and a good one and I am not complaining, only setting down what I know so that whoever comes after will have it.

My name is Matilda. I have kept the bees at the Hale since before the lord Ranulf came, and I kept them after he came, and I told the bees about him as is proper, and the bees took the news as bees do, which is to say they kept on. I have told the bees about every lord and every death and every birth and every marriage in this house for sixty years and the honey has been good throughout, which I take to mean that I have been doing it right.

Thomas Hale holds the land now. He is the last of his family by the pestilence and he was eleven when he came home and he has held it these forty years by the labour of his hands and I have watched him and he has been sufficient, which is all anyone can be.

I am writing this because Margery has married and gone to Pershore and I tracked her there and I know where she is, and her children will not know what they are, and their children will not know, and one day someone will need to know and there will be no one left who does unless I write it down.

*I have kept these bees through six reigns and four religions and two pestilences and I have seen what families do when the land is taken and what they do when the land is held, and I tell you that the holding is the thing. Not the holding back. The holding on. There is a difference and it matters.

*And I do set down here, for the keeping of the record, that Margery Hale married Thomas Voss of Pershore in the year 1373 and that she is the daughter of William Hale and the granddaughter of Thomas Hale who survived the pestilence and who came home from Pershore with a cooking pot and held this land alone from his eleventh year until his death. She carries that in her. Her children will carry it, though they will not know the name.

*Margery is a good woman and a careful one and she will manage what she has been given as the women of this house have always managed what they were given, which is to say: better than the men expected, and with less complaint than the men deserved, and with a thoroughness that the men noticed only when it was absent, which it rarely was.

*I write this not for the sons of this house, who will have the documents and the deeds and the court rolls and all the paper that paper requires. I write it for the ones who will come without knowing they are coming. Margery's line. The ones in Pershore. They will not have the paper. They will have the bees, if they are [word unclear], and they will have the land in their hands even if the land is not theirs, and they will have the question, which is: is this sufficient? And the answer, which I cannot give them, only tell them to keep asking.

*The deed-box is in the Hale. The keys are in the deed-box. The indentures are in the deed-box. If someone comes from Pershore with the name Voss and says they have a claim, they have a claim. This is the claim. I am setting it down here so that the truth is somewhere and so that when it is needed it can be found. The truth requires somewhere to be. I am giving it somewhere.

*I have been thinking about this for thirty years, since Margery was born and I held her in the yard and thought: she has Aelswith's eyes. I have been thinking about what to do with it. The answer is this letter. It is not much. But it is what I have and it is true and that is, I believe, [word unclear].

Keep asking. Keep the land. See to the pig.

Tell them the name does not end here.

Matilda. Her mark. Halecroft. Written c.1390.