flitch of bacon festivities in 1905 The best-known example of the awarding of a flitch of bacon to married couples occurred at
Little Dunmow Priory in
Essex. The origin of the custom is unknown. According to tradition it was begun by
Robert Fitzwalter in the 13th century, as a condition of the land he gave to the priory. In a version of this story created by the Victorian writer
William Harrison Ainsworth, Fitzwalter and his wife disguised themselves as peasants and begged the prior of Dunmow for his blessing after a year of marriage; the prior gave the couple a flitch of bacon and Fitzwalter in return gave land to the priory on the condition that they should give a flitch of bacon to any subsequent couple who could swear that they had not regretted their marriage for a year. The origins of the custom may be significantly earlier: Francis Steer suggests that it may have been used by the Saxon church to encourage marriage. The Dunmow flitch was apparently widely known by the late fourteenth century, when it was alluded to by
William Langland in
Piers Plowman and
Geoffrey Chaucer in "
The Wife of Bath's Tale". The earliest surviving record of the flitch being awarded, from the
cartulary of Dunmow Priory, dates to 1445, some time after the custom was mentioned by Langland and Chaucer. Two further occasions on which the flitch was awarded are recorded before the
dissolution of the monasteries, after which the tradition fell into abeyance. After the
Reformation, the flitch tradition was continued by secular authorities. It was awarded on two occasions in the eighteenth century; following the second of these, in 1751, the custom once again fell into abeyance. Couples attempted to claim the flitch several times but the lord of the manor refused to award it. In 1772, the gates of Dunmow Priory were nailed shut to prevent John and Susan Gilder from claiming it, and in 1832 Joshua Vines and his wife similarly failed to claim the flitch. In the first half of the nineteenth century, several flitches were awarded privately: in 1830 a silver flitch was given to the Duke of St. Albans, and in 1837 the mayor of Saffron Walden awarded a flitch at the annual agricultural dinner. In 1841 it was rumoured that
Queen Victoria was offered a flitch on the anniversary of her marriage to Prince Albert. In 1851 a farmer from nearby
Felsted was refused the flitch, but on this occasion there was sufficient popular support to revive the custom that a flitch was awarded privately at the nearby village of
Little Easton. The 1751 ceremony was painted by
David Ogborne, and prints of Ogborne's depiction were published on at least three occasions. One of these prints was cited by
William Harrison Ainsworth as a source for his 1854 novel,
The Flitch of Bacon. Ainsworth's novel proved so popular that it revived the custom which has continued in one form or another down to the present day and is now held every leap year. For the three awards of the flitch before the dissolution of the monasteries, there is no record of a jury judging the claimants; according to Steer "it must be assumed that the seriousness of the oath was sufficient to prevent perjury". In 1701, a jury of five women assessed the claimants, while in 1751 there was a jury of six men and six women. The records dealing with the 1751 ceremony record the oath: in
Little Dunmow. It is uncertain whether the oath was originally sworn by the husband alone, or by both husband and wife. The reference to the custom in the ''Wife of Bath's Tale
suggests that it was only the husband, whereas in Piers Plowman'' it seems as though both husband and wife are expected to swear. The original form of the oath is also unknown. Charles Kightly observes that the surviving oath has a "suspiciously 18th-century ring", and
Francis Peabody Magoun comments that it is "certainly centuries younger than that by which any friends of the Wife of Bath ever swore". Steer traces the oath as far as 1662, when it is quoted in
Thomas Fuller's
Worthies of England. By the time of the eighteenth-century awards, the oath was taken by the couple kneeling on pointed stones, after which they were carried in a wooden chair around the village. A chair which was used for this purpose, made from medieval choir stalls, survives in the church at Little Dunmow. There are six known recipients of the flitch in the period prior to its revival: • Richard Wright, a
yeoman from
Bawburgh, Norfolk, 1445 • Stephen Samuel, a
husbandman from
Little Easton, 1467 • Thomas le Fuller, from
Coggeshall, Essex, 1510 • John Reynolds, a gentleman, and his wife Ann, from
Hatfield Broad Oak, 27 June 1701 • William Parsley, a butcher, and his wife Jane, from
Great Easton, 27 June 1701 • Thomas Shakeshaft, a weaver, and his wife Ann, from
Wethersfield, 20 June 1751
Revival In 1855, the year after the publication of Ainsworth's novel
The Flitch of Bacon, the flitch custom was revived in the nearby town of
Great Dunmow. Ainsworth presided over the ceremony and presented one of the two flitches awarded. The revival turned what was originally a private claim into a public spectacle. In its modern incarnation, the awarding of the flitch involves a
mock trial, with representatives for the claimants and "for the bacon" making their cases in front of an audience and jury. Modern flitch trials continue to be held at Great Dunmow every leap year. The flitch trial committee ruled that only legally married couples should be eligible, and that civil partners were thus unable to claim the flitch. Following the legalisation of same-sex marriage in England, Wales, and Scotland in 2014, the 2016 trials were the first in which same-sex couples were eligible to claim the flitch; in 2024 a Dunmow couple, Emma Hynds and Emma D'Costa, became the first both to apply for and to be awarded the flitch. Since the revival of the Dunmow custom, flitch trials have been held in several other places in Britain, including
Ilford,
Tunbridge Wells, and
Oulton Broad. In 1905 a ceremony was also held in New York. ==Wychnor==