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What happened at Rockingham in 1095

. . . also called . . .

The Meeting of the Great Council of the Realm at Rockingham Castle 1093

Two copies of this title are known: the one in the British Library has the top title given above; the copy in Northamptonshire Central Library has the lower title. They are printed on sheets of a different size, but the main text is the same in both. The British Library copy is recorded as Miscellaneous pamphlets and wall charts under the author James Joseph Lloyd Carr and is stored in a large folder with six of Carr's maps and two longsheets for some reason, so you have to see it in the Maps room. It may be that Carr sent this pamphlet to the British Library with the maps and longsheets, so they are all catalogued together. The accession date is 3 January 1966, so it was probably produced in 1965.

The difference between the two versions may be because Carr put the wrong date on the copy in Northampton, as the Council was held in 1095 not 1093, so revised the cover and title, and printed it on different sized paper. I'll need to see them again to check.

(Last updated on 28/5/2021)

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Content: The publication consists of 11 mimeographed pages of text in blue ink with underlining and bullets in pink, with yellow paper covers. The title on the yellow cover is written by Carr with text above 1 pamphlet and a price of 6d, so presumably some copies were sold.

Written inside the rear yellow cover is: From J Carr Esq, 'The Northants Campaigner', 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering. This is not in Carr's handwriting and was probably added by Library staff.

Notes: This is probably one of Carr's first publications since The Old Timers (1957), which was also printed on a cyclostyle or mimeograph machine, as was The Battle of Birmingham. It is one of several publications of The Northants Campaigner, before the establishment of the Quince Tree Press.

The Council of Rockingham was convened by William II on 25th February 1095 in the village of Rockingham in Northamptonshire at which he intended to depose Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury. Carr described the negotiations in just under 2,000 words of text. Carr saw it as a parable for the time in which he was writing.

A tyrant, ruthless as any Fascist, was determined to destroy the only effective opposition to his total power in England. This was the Church, represented by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. This elderly man could not rely on support from either clergy or laity because they were afraid of loss of liberty and property and cowed by the very real menace of physical punishment – castration and blinding were royal deterrents. He could not even rely on support from his Headquarters in Rome because there they were engrossed in a struggle for power by rival claimants to the Papacy. In fact, all this independent, tough-minded man could do was to keep his nerve, to hang on and wait for better times and to bluff. To bluff chiefly by leaving most of the talking to his opponents and to let them inhabit his silence with their own imagined fears.

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Content: The content is the same as the edition above.

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