Adam's merry men

Throughout 1263-4 Adam Gurdun continues his rampage across Dorset. The royalists can do nothing with him: he pops up all over the place, seizes some loot and vanishes into the forests. He raids Crewkerne to steal weapons, and then embarks on a string of large-scale robberies aimed at royalist knights. At Cheddar he breaks into the manor of Sir Ralph Bakepuz, battering down the door and smashing windows, and steals £100 for his war-chest; he attacks the lands of another wealthy royalist, Thomas Audenham, at Chiselborough and Norton, cuts down the woods and takes goods to the value of 200 marks.



Adam’s followers hail from all over Dorset and Somerset, and include a great crowd of peasants as well as local gentry. There is something remarkable about these men. Other Montfortian captains in Dorset, such as Sir John de la Warr and Sir Robert Verdun, were later accused of forcing men into their service. No charges of coercion were ever laid against Adam, and the peasants who joined him appear to have been volunteers, drawn by Adam’s charisma and (perhaps) their own political convictions. His company included two priests who were accused of ‘abetting him’; they probably acted as preachers, making a form of crusade out of Adam’s revolt and the reform movement in England. At Chiselborough and Norton his band also included ‘Robert le Clerc of Norton’, the local priest.